Rates & Barrels - Wading Into the Pool

Episode Date: July 1, 2020

Rundown3:23 Minor League Season Officially Cancelled10:22 Desmond, Zimmerman, Ross & Leake Opt Out24:08 60-Man Player Pool Observations44:17 Prospect of the Week!58:36 Rankings Adjustments for Universal DH64:27 Breaking News -- Jorge Mateo Traded Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Get a free 30-day trial subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 108. Derek Van Ryfer here at the Eno Saris. It's Tuesday, June 29th. On this episode, we have lots of ground to cover. We got the official word. Although it was expected for a while now, the minor league season for 2020 was officially canceled on Tuesday. We had a few players already opt out of the 2020 season, so we'll talk about that. There's probably going to be a lot more to come in that area in the near future as well.

Preliminary 60-man pools or the first wave of 60-man pools were released over the weekend. So we'll talk about what some teams did, who left spots open, why they might have done that. We're going to have our first prospect of the week segment in a year of the year. It's been a while since we've had that. Pandemic time. Yeah. I mean, there hasn't really been a prompt for prospect of the week, so we've got that back.

And we got a mailbag question about adjusting rankings for Universal DH, so we'll get to that on this episode as well. Edo, how's it going for you on this Tuesday? We went from, like, staring at the wall to just like 120% effort I wish I had the foresight to like prepare for this or like to have something like have like clean my desk

or something how about even having finished my taxes I didn't even do that you didn't do those yet? What the hell was I... I feel like I'm awakening from a stupor and I'm like, where have I been for three months?

I've been sitting right here doing nothing. Well, I mean, I hope some of my articles are alright. You've written some articles. We've hosted some podcasts. You've generated content. You've tweeted. You've all right. You've written some articles. We've hosted some podcasts. You've generated content. You've tweeted. You've taken pictures.

You've drank beer. But the amount of effort and the amount of staring into nothingness that each of those pieces of content required, like maybe I can't walk it back. Like maybe I couldn't have done something else because it seemed to have required all of that effort. I think, you know, 100% of output or 80% of output required 120% of effort. But now there's like, you know, all sorts of stuff going on. I got a big old beer print piece dropping tomorrow. Some beer scouting piece tomorrow. And I'm trying to get these rankings done.

I got another piece that's kind of really fun about where minor leaguers are going to play this year and podcasts now start to have some actual information that we can chew on and you know, just, it's good. It's good. But like, I'm like, I'm just, I just went immediately into stress mode. It's crazy. I've got football season kind of currently running with the new lead up to fantasy baseball season. So that's crazy. I've got football season kind of concurrently running with the new lead up to fantasy baseball season. So that's different. Hopefully it never happens again. Right. Hopefully these are unique circumstances only to 2020. I'm grateful that we at least are trying

to have a 2020 baseball season and we'll see. We'll see how all this goes. You kind of brought it up. where are minor league players going to play this season some of them are going to be playing at the alternative sites with their major league affiliates but um as i mentioned at the top there is going to be no minor league season and it's just knowing it's coming doesn't make the official word any less brutal jj cooper baseball amer America has a great thread running on Twitter today. He just put it out there. He said, feel free to share what minor league baseball means to you. And I think for people who really haven't spent time at a minor league park

and don't really know people who've worked for minor league teams, it's easy to just kind of say, oh, well, yeah, they can't play. That sucks. But it's a way of life for a lot of people. I mean, it's where a lot of announcers and a lot of people who go on to work for teams, where they get their starts. It's where people who become talent evaluators spend most of their time. It's where players are developing their skills and building friendships. players are developing their skills and building friendships. And the people around the game are in this summer-long grind every year together.

And it builds this sense of camaraderie that's huge. I mean, what minor league teams do in many of their communities, they provide opportunities to see live baseball when you live three, four, five- plus hours away from the nearest major league team. And they do it at a much more family-friendly affordable price too. So minor league baseball just makes the game more accessible to most people. And that's a good thing. And not having that this summer and knowing that the PBA, the agreement that sends professional players to the minor league teams, that expires later this year.

There was the story that came back out, I think, what month was that? January, maybe even before that, about the league looking to drop 40 minor league affiliates. It's been a roller coaster 12 months for minor league baseball, and this is just kind of the lowest of the low points so far. Yeah. Yeah. I was just talking to a major league baseball player the other day that said, the reason I play baseball is because I saw these guys playing locally, you know?

Um, and you kind of think of like, why does Brandon Nimmo play baseball? And how likely is it that there will be a baseball team within three hours even of where he grew up playing baseball um so yeah it's going to be sad and you know one of the things that's really cool about baseball is all of the you know some of the i don't know what how to say the pageantry or the sophistication or the sort of high-end the expensive stuff you know all the expensive stuff is stripped away and what you get is maybe not necessarily the same quality but

there will be you know one or two people on that field that will play major league baseball. And so it's kind of fun to, to kind of try. That's something that I do professionally is, you know, try to go to these games and try to look through it, look at it through a scout's eyes and try to see if I can figure out who I think is projectable and who can make the major leagues. But as a fan, you know, that you can, you can either take part in that or you really just access that easygoing attitude of a baseball game. Because you don't really have to wait in the same kind of lines. You don't have to, you don't have an usher. You know?

You don't have people in your face. You don't, like, when I think of baseball, face you don't like when i think of baseball like minor league baseball i think of like going to modesto and sitting like three seats away from the person i was hanging out with the original social distancing just because you have extra spaces yeah we had all that space in the world you know and i remember running from one side of the other to try and get you know video of uh kelinich and and elliot ramos so uh yeah that was that's modesto san jose here is a little bit more popular vancouver was a sellout um and so it's not always how i'm describing but there is still something about it being brought down a notch and being more easygoing

and accessible and friendly because even in van Vancouver, where it was super crowded, me and my friends that were there, we ended up talking to people next to us on all four sides. I don't think that that's a common experience at the pro level. No, I don't think it is.

Maybe in the bleachers, you might meet someone, it gets a little rowdy in certain spots, but if you're sitting in 75% of those seats, you're sitting and hanging out with the person you came with. I think minor league games are a little bit more like either you know everyone there because it's Modesto, or you go, like Vancouver, you go and you actually meet people. So it is a cool little thing,

and I hope it doesn't ever go away completely um or get really really diminished sad it's a really uncertain future for a lot of those teams i mean their core business is to bring as many people into the ballpark as possible for their home games and having zero for a year just goes a very long way toward damaging those businesses and hurting the people who work for them too i mean it's a terrible time i think of beloit first i don't know why i think it's because it's it's probably the most empty stadium i've ever been in and i went there because it was byron buxton playing for the Twins. It was when the Twins affiliated at the time, I think it was Quad Cities in the Midwest League. So they were playing the Beloit

Snappers. The Snappers were still at that time affiliated with the A's. And I saw Buxton, I saw Nico Goodrum, I saw Matt Olson, I saw Matt Chapman, I saw Renato Nunez, and I saw Daniel Robertson all in the same game, which was pretty amazing. And sure, at that time that I think all six of those guys were surefire big league players, no, but being able to see those guys and to sit in the third row and just enjoy a night at the ballpark, and I don't know, like there's not really anything quite like it. I guess it's like, if you haven't been to a minor league game, maybe it's like going to a high school football game instead of going to an nfl game yeah but they have beer and food so it's better you know it's a little level it's better and it i saw something about parents um getting drunk at

their kids games like high school games and stuff. And I'm like, I'm not advocating for that. No, no, no, no, no. I'm advocating instead to go to the minor league game and have a beer. Yeah. So it's a very sad day. Check out JJ's thread on Twitter, at JJ Cooper. Just cool to see what minor league baseball means to so many different people out there.

It's been a very difficult week because we've had a few players already decide that they're not going to play in the 2020 season. Ian Desmond, Ryan Zimmerman, Joe Ross, and Mike Leak already have made that announcement. And we're going to see more players choose not to play in 2020. And it makes perfect sense. We're still dealing with a pandemic. It's a situation where many players have someone close to them who is high risk. And even in situations where they don't, I think there are other questions that players are thinking about. I mean, Ian Desmond's statement, if you didn't read it, he put it out a full statement on Instagram last night.

I would highly recommend checking it out. It's the beginning of a very different year. And I would be very surprised if these are the only four players who choose not to play. Yeah, it is weird, though, that we had a first burst. It is also extremely hard for me to talk about this. though, that we had a first burst. It is also extremely hard for me to talk about this. The one thing that makes it hard for me is I'm not even sure.

The opt-out thing, okay, I can understand. But at some point, we're going to have to talk about somebody going on the coronavirus deal. And I tweeted about how a player was telling me that he had coronavirus and that it had been a four-week process for him. And that's inevitably going to be a question that we have to tackle, that we have to think about, that we're going to say is, oh, this person went on the COVID deal.

Is he going to miss half the season or two weeks or what is it going to be? I almost think we shouldn't know it seems really private and it's this weird thing about hipaa um hipaa is the health information protection and privacy act i think um and it basically says that we're not allowed to discuss a person's medical history. Except in the case of Major League Baseball players who have signed away all of their rights to patient-doctor privilege because it's actually literally in their contract

that the teams can talk with the doctors, can talk to the doctors without them present, and can release certain medical information about them to the public. Like, think about how weird that would be if you were just dealing with something. Just like an enlarged prostate or something. And the athletic was like, you know, Cyrus is going to take four weeks off.

His prostate is hurting him. We hope he comes back fine and healthy. It's a world that the majority of us don't live in. It's unique to professional sports. And I think, you know, I'm looking at, I think it was Pete Abraham from the Boston Globe. Brian Cashman, Yankees GM, earlier today said it's his understanding if a player goes on the COVID injured list,

teams will not announce that, which again, makes sense based on HIPAA. But he won't be at the park. Right. He'll just be gone, which that seems weird too. And like you, something about these conversations is just odd because I think most of what I focus on tends to be fantasy analysis. And I don't know, when you boil it it down it just seems stupid to even try and play baseball in a pandemic so then you kind of get back to that original state even stupider to try and do fantasy baseball right yeah but it's like we said last week like we're we're dealing with something that we've just never seen before so i don't really know where i fall on on all of

this in the sense of like am i changing how much i want to play i still don't know know where I fall on all of this in the sense of like, am I changing how much I want to play? I still don't know if that's changed. I think I'm still kind of sitting where I was a week ago. I'm more about the camaraderie and the community and getting on Zoom and spending some time with my friends and hoping that this isn't a complete disaster health-wise because there are so many ways in which it can go wrong. Yeah. And for the opt-outs, I think you kind of see a slightly different reasoning in each case.

You know, I hate to, again, after what I've just said, I hate to sort of speculate about stuff, but it seems like maybe Mike Leak's, I think it's either his father or stepfather that is a paraplegic, I believe, after an accident, is perhaps more at risk than

other people. That could be part of Mike Leak's decision-making process because he did reference family and health as sort of part of that process. And then Desmond seems to be a little bit more about the kind of existential self-questioning that I don't want to say that you've done, but I've certainly done over the past three, four months about the usefulness of my job, the things, am I helping the world? Is this a net positive? That sort of deal. I think Ian Desmond, when I read his piece, I got a sense from him that he just didn't think that baseball was the most important thing he could do right now. Yeah, I think it was very clear. It was a nine-page statement that he put out on Instagram. He talked about social justice. He talked about problems that Major League Baseball has in its clubhouses,

problems that Major League Baseball has in its front offices. And he talked about his family and wanted to make a difference closer to home in the community where he grew up. So again, I'm boiling it down to a few bullet points. It's an outstanding statement. It's well worth your time you should definitely check it out and i think what i would just say as kind of a blanket statement is regardless of a player's reason or even a staffer i mean someone on the coaching staff could choose not to participate in this season there's no reason at all to to question it to to judge these people.

This is well within their right. It's completely understandable for any reason. That's kind of where I was going. It's like these are all different reasons, and they all seem fine to me. Some is I should be doing something more important in my life. Some is I fear for my health and safety. And this is not the time to come at them with mortality rates and this and that. And, oh, Ryan Zimmerman, you know,

just because like babies aren't any more risk than anybody else, you idiot. No. I can believe that happens on Twitter, but I still can't believe that happens. Yeah. It's disgusting. It's the worst side of humanity. Yeah. And you know that the bullpen coach for the Blue Jays, I believe,

would love to be there this year, especially if they, you know that the bullpen coach uh for the blue jays i believe would love to be there this year especially if they you know kind of put together one of those magical runs but i think in that case the organization decided that they felt that they the coaches were a little bit old and maybe a little bit at risk i will say i'm not sure how many it ends up being just because i figure that this is like we have to hear about it now because players are being put on the 60-man rosters right now, and they are supposed to report tomorrow. Yeah, July 1st is the report date. Teams are lining up to begin workouts. I think Friday is the earliest,

and Saturday is what I've heard for some teams. I know the Brewers are among the teams going with that July 4th first day. So I just can't imagine going at someone for choosing not to participate. I don't understand where that comes from. I think the final number of players will be close to 10 at most because they've been thinking about this for a long time and they've been talking with their teams and I think it wouldn't be great for the relationship between the team and the player if we hear that they opt out next week. if we hear that they opt out next week. That meant that there was some miscommunication or something that happened between the two of them. So I think most of the stress happened Saturday and Sunday

when Sunday, I believe, the 60-man rosters were due. I think the reality for some players is they kind of had to make that final call set in, too. Even if they had been thinking about this for several weeks and had been planning on not participating, making that final call saying, yeah, no, not for me, not doing it this year, that's the cliff they had to choose. It's weird to have to learn all these new rules, too. it's weird to have to learn all these new rules too um because it doesn't even seem like the 60 man there was a there was a deadline on sunday but it doesn't even really seem like that much of a deadline you know like uh the average number of players that was put on the 60 man was 53 so this is not like they filled them out and if if your team has what's called a breakout which means you have

three or more people with coronavirus at once um you actually have a fair amount of leeway and like who you can add and what sort of players will be uh associated with a way like what what players will have to be put on waivers and stuff so for example if you lose five players you can add five players and when those five players are done being added or done you know being used at the major league level then they are not subject to release. So you do not have to release them to waivers and allow every other team to try and get them. So if you have a quote unquote breakout on your team, you can go get more players than you have on your 60 man.

Yeah, which is very strange to see that spelled out that way. I understand why they did it that way, but it's just bizarre. I think it's the first time I've seen anything that gets close to what I think is the most uncomfortable conversation, the thing I've seen the least talked about, the thing that is the weirdest and grossest and gets right to the whole problem,

the whole difficulty of playing baseball during a pandemic, which is what is the number at which baseball stops? Right. When do they say this was wrong? Which, again, I said it on the last episode. I don't think they'll necessarily say those exact words, but I have to think that there's some point where things reach a level where you just can't continue and setting that level is horrible problematic yeah so they don't want i can understand why it's not written in words anywhere the closest is this three person equals a breakout

but let's say let's look at the number five which is only two more than what they call a breakout. But let's say, let's look at the number five, which is only two more than what they call a breakout, which seems they're okay with three, but let's talk about five. You know who works together? Pitchers. What if you just lost five guys in the bullpen or five guys in the rotation? Well, you just lost your whole starting rotation. Isn't your owner going to be like, Hey, um, guys, um, it's a, it's a fair amount to ask all these young people who would love to go out. And that's what they generally do after games, uh, and on road trips, you have to tell them, you know, in these presentations and the presentation setup is always like, here's the man telling you what to do, you know, and you're like this young player and they're

telling you please stay inside always wear a mask unless you have like a strong veteran leadership that kind of uh that also in the clubhouse says hey guys let's do this for each other let's try and stay healthy so that we can so that we don't get sick so so we don't lose the season. I think it's likely that people get sick. And, of course, some of them will get sick, and they won't feel anything. They'll be totally asymptomatic or just symptomatic for two days. And then they'll be quarantined for two weeks, being like, why am I in quarantine?

I'm fine. Let me get out there. And then there'll be other people, like the person person I talked to that four weeks after he got it, he couldn't go 100% on the bike. It's a lot to unpack there. And I just keep thinking maybe because everybody's safety in the room, like people that you spend a lot of time with maybe maybe it can work maybe people can follow through for each other in this environment given that they have friendships and pre-existing relationships and that they're doing this they're doing this for a common goal of having the season to play because they want to make money right like that's a huge part of it's the only reason it's happening at all.

So I don't know what kind of buy-in teams are really going to have across the board. It's total unknown. I hate thinking about it. And by the end of this week, I mean, teams are having players report. Like we said, they're going to be tested. They're going to be tested often. Players are going to test positive.

It's a terrible situation. And every time I start to get excited about baseball coming back, eventually I end up back at this place where I start thinking about how unrealistic and utterly ridiculous it is that baseball is trying to come back. This is the wild ride we're on. And I'll tell you, it is not Toad's wild ride. It is not. It's something much more

sinister and gross the 60 man rosters come out on sunday and you know we're all looking at those on twitter and we're seeing the prospects who are included and we're seeing some names who aren't included and okay yeah like baseball like this is this is familiar this is the news flow that we're used to this this feels like what should be happening in some form in the middle of the summer. But then the reality of players choosing not to play comes the following day and you're like, yeah, wait, this isn't normal. This is horrible in every conceivable way. So you look at these teams and what they're trying to do, and I don't know. Some teams left a bunch of spots open, and they said the average is 53 of the 60-man spots were filled.

I assume teams are adding draft picks as they sign them just to have those players training and trying to continue player development. Those draft picks lost their college seasons. I was talking to Kyle Bode. He mentioned Reese Hines, a prospect of the Reds. He said Reese Hines got in and got like 30 plate appearances in rookie ball and then something happened to his hammy and

he lost the rest of the season. If he doesn't play this year anywhere, he's going to be going on 30 plate appearances when he's 22 and repeating rookie ball or going to A ball. And it'll be of no fault of his own. So one thing that I do think we all have to remember as a blanket statement is that age at level is going to be weird for everybody for a little bit. And then a less blanket statement, or another blanket statement that's anti-blanket statement, which is looking at these 60-man rosters, you have to almost look at them team by team

and sort of think about their goals, where they are on the win curve, what their goals are with this given year, and so on and so forth. on the wind turf, what their goals are this given year, and so on and so forth, it's not that easy to just make a wide sweeping statement about the makeup of these 60-man rosters. Yeah, you can't

because every team has different things they're trying to do. When I think about how teams problem solve, I think the Tampa Bay Rays continually fall in that group of teams that problem solve better than others. And I think it's interesting that they were a team that put 60 players in the pool right away. And there could be a whole different group of reasons why they did that. why they did that. But I'm looking at some of the things that people might try to conclude

from looking at their roster. The first thing people are doing when they see these rosters, they see prospects get added, and they think, oh, okay, this prospect, Wander Franco, is on the roster. Therefore, Wander Franco is going to see the big leagues this year. Now, I realize a lot of people listening to this show

are not making that assumption, but just the broader population of baseball fans sees a top prospect in the roster and thinks, maybe there's a chance we're going to see him this year. I don't think a prospect's inclusion in the 60-player pool increases their chances of playing in the big leagues very

much. Obviously, it gives them a chance, a Lloyd Christmas sort of chance, as opposed to not being in the pool at all. Clearly that's a zero. But I would be very careful to look at any prospect and say, he's in the pool, therefore I'm now expecting him to play. I don't think that's the top priority, even for contending teams. I think we talked about this back when the idea was first floated. And I think when it was a 50 player pool, that was the original thought that was kind of going around probably back in April.

There were going to be some really difficult decisions with making sure that your near big league ready prospects were playing somewhere this season going to 60, I think erased a lot of those, those questions that we had back at that time. Yeah, because we talked about C.J. Abrams as possibly being the 50th man for his Padres, but if you've got 10 more slots, you can put 10 more prospects. And what the Padres ended up actually doing once they saw the rules was putting 17 prospects in their 60-man player pool, including nine of their top 10. I think part of it is getting these guys to play and having them as possible backups if you need them,

but also because of how lax the rules were regarding coronavirus replacements. So if your team, so if you get, if your team has a breakout, then you probably think, oh, we just lost three to five players for as much as half the season, since we have this demonstrated

four-week recovery period for one player. We're toast. I'll just go sign Russell Martin to be my catcher and, uh, you know, maybe try to pick Dan Straley up, uh, off of KBO or, you know what I mean? Like, you know, like I'll just put together some players and I won't, I won't even have to, you know, promote CJ albums or, you know, these guys. You know what I mean?

Because of the way the roster rules set up, it's beyond just adding a 10 extra roster slots. It's saying you have these 10 extra roster slots and you have a lot of leeway when it comes to replacing coronavirus problems. Right. So since you have the leeway in the event that something goes terribly wrong, you might as well maximize the players you have

who are getting instruction in the organization, getting reps, logging innings, getting plate appearances. Why not? You want those players to be doing something because you're thinking about the future too. You're not just thinking about 2020. And there is a why not. There is a slight why not. Because if you look at, let's just look at the Tigers and the Marlins and the Orioles, because those three teams are in the same spot. The Tigers and the Marlins and the Orioles are not going to win many games this year, even with the added chance of making the postseason. Their chance of making the postseason is around 1%. And they have a lot of young players that they would theoretically want to develop and play.

So the Marlins, let's see, they put 19 of their top 30 prospects in, including by MLB, they're 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. So basically, just their top 11 off of MLB, invite them to camp, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. So basically, just their top 11 off of MLB. Invite them to camp. Play, but probably don't play in the big leagues. Sixto Sanchez, probably don't play in the big leagues. Blede, Chisholm. Llewyn Diaz might.

We've talked about him a fair amount. Jesus Sanchez might, but I doubt Braxton Garrett does. So there's a fair amount of these guys who won't see the major leagues but they're they're bringing them up to to play around um and the Tigers did did something similar too I mean um they might you know like things could go well and they bring up Casey Mize and Matt Manning and Tariq Skubal but a lot of their other guys like Green and Paredes, who knows if they're all the way ready. But they still said bring them up.

The Orioles, on the other hand, did none of that. Here's the Orioles' top 30 prospects in camp. Austin Hayes, number 5. Hunter Harvey, number 12. Dylan Tate, number number 27 that's it that's all the prospects they put on their on their top 30 so i think that sticks out like a sore thumb and you know this guy comes from like an astros rays type background um you know mike elias is is going to be analytics forward you know he's trying to think about this in terms of strategy.

And I think this is what punting looks like because you don't bring Adley Rutschman and D.L. Hall into camp in case you have a bunch of injuries and all of a sudden you have to play Adley Rutschman. Or you have to go get Russell Martin, wake him up off the couch. Sorry. I don't know why I'm picking on Russ Martin. He's decent,

but he's, he's not, he's not signed anywhere. So you have to go, you have to go get someone. And then I had the restaurant. It's like, really?

Like really? You had to go get that guy and you, and I'm right here. Yeah. So if you have him on the roster, then you get in trouble if there's a need and you don't promote him and you add somebody else to promote that guy instead when you had this guy on the reserve list in the pool the entire time so upon reflection and the flip side is the flip side is that when other people get into

roster crunches you might be able to come you know nab them as they fall yeah i saw this in eric longenhagen's AL East breakdown today over at Fangraphs, part of the Orioles blurb. He also suggested that having fewer players in camp also hopefully reduces the risk of an outbreak. Or, but you had the flip side of that when you were talking about the Rays. Well, I think with the Rays, yeah, so I think if you bring everybody in and you're not bringing players in and out of the pool, then you're reducing new exposures.

So I don't know how much of that factored into the Orioles thinking with the way they did it or the Rays thinking with the way they did it. I have to imagine teams are trying to come up with some way to keep people as safe and healthy as they can. We just don't know if it's going to work. That's where we're at. But yeah, the other thing with roster selections too is looking at what the Reds did,

they have the MLB squad working out in Cincinnati, and then they have the alternative site, and I forget where in Ohio there's is, but Aristides Aquino is not with the big league squad and you guys like, you know, Philip Irvin and Mark Payton are, I thought that was kind of strange. You know, I don't know. They have a lot of outfield depth and he's blocked for all intents and purposes without a couple of injuries in that outfield. But do you think it's fair to try and come up with internal assessments

and evaluations of a player based on some of these structural things, or do you think it's actually kind of a fool's errand to go down that path? That was like what I proposed to you as this podcast, right? That's what we thought we were going to do. But as I went through it, I was like, it's impossible. Because here, think about this. In the context of my piece that I'm writing about, like where they will play, there's likely going to be a league in the Dominican.

a league in the Dominican. It will be, I don't know exactly what kind of league it will be, but they're going to have stadiums and they're going to have players and they're going to play. Now, if you put Aristides Aquino on here, you're bringing him to America, to a situation where he's only going to face your pitchers

that you have in camp. Most likely. That's my understanding. And maybe not even the Major League pitchers, because the Reds will be at Prasco Park. The baby Reds will be at Prasco Park, and the Major Leagues will be over at Great Americans.

So maybe they think Aquino will play more and needs to play more and work on his play discipline and he'll do that in the Dominican bed and anywhere. So that could be a thing. I think about like Luscious Fox, right? So I want it to be able to like, oh, wow, the Rays, they put Luscious Fox on. That must mean that they like him more internally than we do externally, right? So I want it to be able to like, oh, wow, the Rays, they put Luscious Fox on. That must mean that they like him more internally than we do externally, right? Total hint. I can't even,

I don't even know if I can say that because, you know, Luscious Fox is not rated well by anybody. You know, he's not in any top 30s. He's kind of, He kind of sticks out a little bit as being included. However, he plays shortstop. And if the season's going, you almost have, like, maybe the Rays have a good and bad situation figured out, right? And in the good situation, where they're winning a ton and they're winning the division

and somebody goes down, Wanda Franco comes up. Yeah. In the bad situation where they're middling along and then five guys get sick, Luscious Fox comes up. You kind of

have the built-in decision-making process where you're not as worried about Luscious Fox in year seven because you're not even sure about luscious fox in year seven because you're not even sure that luscious fox will be that useful to you in year two yeah i think that's probably what they're thinking at least having that versatility or that depth behind willie adames i mean they don't have that it's one of the things like if

you had to they got brujan they got brujan they got franco and they got fox and that's that's their middle infield depth. Other than Wendell and the guys in the major leagues. And those are great young players. I guess the thing that they lack are quality defensive shortstops who are already at the big league level. That's one of the few weaknesses that they actually have in Tampa Bay. And then I was just thinking, in the context of the CBA

negotiations, do you even think that you'll get a seventh year? Yeah, that was kind of – so I wrote about Ryan Mountcastle on Monday and one of the commenters said, but you want to have Ryan Mountcastle through 2027. So if you don't use him in 2020 and you call them up a few weeks into 2021, then you have them from 2022 to 2027 as a six years of control. And I was like,

A, my brain is not at all ready to think about 2027. That's just so far. I'm barely hanging on with 2020. Yeah, I can barely see December of this year right now. B, CBA and see at what point are you just being ridiculous? Like Ryan Mountcastle is a nice prospect, but do you see a superstar there?

Like I mean, I just I think it's a little bit ridiculous. And I realize that saving money matters to every team. All the teams do this, but come on. This is a guy that had to move off the left side of the infield. He's going to probably play first base or left field in the big leagues. He's there to hit. Are you really, really worried about 2027 right now if you're a major league team? You really should not be because there's a lot

of things that can change between now and then you're better off letting him play letting him develop letting him see big league pitching and having him to be as ready as possible once your team is ready to compete again and I realize I'm saying this about a team that's as far away from competing as any team in the big leagues

there's no team further away from being a major league playoff team than the Orioles right now. Even with that, I still think it's kind of ridiculous to be worried about 2027 with Ryan Mountcastle. Yeah, I agree, especially with the CBA looming. On a more predictable level, I thought a lot of teams would do what the Yankees did, which is it's pretty hilarious, actually. So I'm going to read you a list of numbers that seem like they don't make any sense, and then I'm going to make them sense for you.

These are the prospects that the Yankees loaded up on their 60-man roster. Number two, number three, number five, number six, number seven, number 10, 11, 14, 16, 25. Why do those numbers make sense? Because they're all the pitchers. They just loaded up all the pitchers. And it makes sense for them because they seem to be a right-handed reliever factory. And I don't think,

I'm not even sure that any single one of these guys is a starter. Clark Schmidt, Luis Gil. I'm still reeling from luscious Fox earlier. It's gotta be luscious. Esteban Florio, Alexander. It can't be luscious Fox.

That's not a baseball player's name. No, it's not. It has't be Luscious Fox. That's not a baseball player's name. No, it's not. It has to be. Albert Abreu. Listen, I think Albert Abreu is a little bit interesting. I think Davey Garcia could maybe start. But I think that the needle is much more likely that none of these guys is a starter, which is kind of amazing.

They're really good at pumping out relievers. They have the greatest bullpens every year, and then they just spend a ton of money on starters. It's a thing. It's a thing. It is a thing, as they say. I think just in the

half dozen or so rosters that we just touched on, we've illustrated that teams have a variety of different variables that they're considering as they kind of put all those pieces together. And there's going to be churn. There's going to be some players that become available. I think a team like the Orioles is going to look a lot like maybe the Giants last year where they're claiming anyone, everyone they can

just to see if they can find more players to have as they go through their rebuild. That's what rebuilding teams do now. They make a lot of waiver claims and hope that they find someone who develops into a Max Muncy or going back a long ways. Nelson Cruz is a guy that passed through waivers I think twice back during his earlier part of his career. So that's part of why I think some of those teams went really light with their rosters. And it's not the only reason. Yeah.

I mean, the one, the one thing that you could say, um, is, uh, that there was, uh,

there, that pitchers make up more than hitters. It's about 55% pitchers. Craig Edwards had the breakdown. 55% pitchers on the taxi squad, satellite squads, whatever you want to call them. And that's just because of attrition and injury. attrition and injury um and the the there's like a less likely less less likely for you to be able to pick up someone that can fake um you might be able to pick up a catcher russ martin is available um but uh uh you uh uh to to get like you know a good reliever or good or even worse a good reliever or even worse, a good starter. You'd rather be picking from your own pool, I think.

And then also, with the way that versatility has been a trait that has been prized and fostered among teams, I know the Giants out here are basically asking every single one of their top prospects to play three positions. With the advent of that focus in the minor leagues, I think there are more top prospects that you can pencil in in three different places. You could take Mr. Fox, for example, and put him all over it. Vidal Brujan, you could play him at three different positions probably. So if you do have that sort of versatility in your player prospect pool,

then you're going to take advantage of that and load up with more pitchers, I think. So one thing I was doing as the rosters were being revealed, as the pools were being revealed, rosters will be set closer to opening day in late July. be set closer to opening day in late July. I was just looking for some names that might be kind of in the opposite situation of Aristides Aquino, where they're going to be working out with the big league club, even if they're not necessarily going to start the season there. And one of the players is a guy I want to feature for prospect of the week. Daniel Johnson in Cleveland is a pretty interesting

player to me. I don't see him inside of top 100 prospect lists. He's within the top 200 on our friend James Anderson's list over at Roto-Wire. And I think the reason I'm interested in Daniel Johnson is I think speed is going to be at a premium this season. Most likely, he's kind of a watch list player, somebody who at some point this year, if the opportunity arises, we're going to be thinking about adding as a waiver wire player. But what I like about him, aside from bringing some speed to the table, he controls the zone pretty well.

Split last year between AA and AAA. Walked just over 9% of the time at AA, just almost 9% of the time at AAA as well. Doesn't strike out a lot. Has an 80-grade arm, according to fan graphs. So he's an above-average runner with a plus-plus arm. He actually has some power, and the hit tool

is not bad. So this is clearly a good fantasy skill set, and it's backed by some skills that could drive his playing time in the form of making him an above-average defender. I'm looking back through some of the minor league numbers. 2018, he was in the Nats organization. 21 for 25 as a base stealer.

Last year, 19 combined homers between AA and AAA. I just think there's a lot to like here. And Cleveland, they've got a ton of names on the depth chart, but they don't necessarily have clear-cut solutions in the outfield. I mean, I think as long as Mercado's healthy, as long as Domingo Santana and Fran Milreis are healthy, those two guys are also going to play a lot. But left field, if they do the Naquin-Lepelau platoon, that could work.

Naquin's coming off an ACL tear. Jake Bowers is still there. Delano DeShields is still there. Greg Allen's still there. But I think with the exception of maybe Bowers, I don't have any reason to believe that Allen or DeShields could be more than a part-time player, whereas Johnson could be at least a big side platoon guy,

if not an everyday guy, should the opportunity arise. And you have to think about the shape of the season. The beginning of the season, we're going to have the largest rosters, and then there's going to be that second two-week period, so we're going to go from 30 to 28 to 26. When you're at 30, there's a chance that you can keep DeShields, Allen, and Johnson on the roster. You have the extra

innings rule where you're going to put a guy on second. You're going to want somebody for that. And then another one to be a fourth outfielder. So there is a chance. And you could treat Bowers as an infielder or one be DH. So you could have DeShields, Allen, and Johnson all make it as basically the backup outfielders and pinch runners. Bradley Zimmer also probably gets a mention at least. I wouldn't say that you could put all four on, and I think even putting all three on is a stretch.

But however, having all three in spring to decide between, I think Greg Allen actually becomes the person stretch but however having all three in spring uh to decide between i think greg allen actually becomes the person that johnson can leap over because if you think about it they have similar skill sets and maybe if the shields is also on the roster you're not you don't feel as that you necessarily need um daniel john Johnson to have the best defense. And so Johnson is projected to be nearly a league average bat, whereas Allen is projected to be a pretty poor bat. So let's say in camp Daniel Johnson leaps over Greg Allen,

then all he needs to do is leap over DeShields, and all of a sudden he's the fourth outfielder. Right, and if an injury happens and opens up a spot, that could easily be the path for Johnson to get that role too. I think that's what really stood out to me is that none of the other guys who might be on the initial roster, even

if Johnson goes to the reserve group to begin the year, none of those guys are players who I would expect to necessarily be starters if there's a need for a starter they might make sense as good bench guys but they're certainly not locked in as regulars yeah and it might be much to do about nothing remembering of course that they have to get down to 28 and 26 eventually and there's not going to be a lot of spots for the Billy Hamiltons

and Greg Allens of the world they may just be there for the beginning of the season and then be gone. After which, did we just do all that speaking to talk about three extra stolen bases? It's possible, but there's Keeper League and Dynasty League. Three extra stolen bases might win you the league. And there's that, but I think this is a guy that in some leagues that don't have more than i don't know probably 10 prospects per team johnson could still be out there as someone you could pick up now and possibly could see him emerge for a larger role next season even if it doesn't happen in 2020 yeah um my uh prospect of the week comes from a certain level of prospect analysis that's similar

or actually sort of rule and roster analysis that's similar to yours. The one thing that everybody has on all of their provisional rosters in abundance are catchers.

Almost every team has four and a lot of teams have five. And the reason is... I'm not going to say his name again. He's fine. He'll probably play this year. He'll probably even play this year. But my point is,

the reason is that with framing, receiving, game calling, and offense, you're asking catchers to do more than anything. You want them to be familiar with the team. You do not want that scenario that once happened with the

Red Sox and the Padres where they sent that catcher to San Diego, but he was the only one who could catch the knuckleball and he didn't want to play in San Diego, so San Diego cut him and then he had to go back and sign with the Red Sox just to catch

Wakefield I don't know if you remember any of that yeah wasn't that Doug Mirabelli yeah the whole Mirabelli gambit right like you just don't want to have to sign a catcher that has to learn all your pitchers in three days and go out there you know so um you know I I think that's why everyone's got their – and then if you know about how spring training works, there are so many catchers. They say pitchers and catchers report because there are so many catchers in every camp because you have to have people catching all the bullpens. They'll line up.

There will be four catchers catching bullpens simultaneously in the spring at the beginning of the year. And you have to have someone catching the A game, the B game, the blah, blah, blah game. So you just like every spring, there's a rush for catchers. And I think that the, the, the, the thing that you see in these 60 man rosters is that rush for catchers over the full season, where they're just like, we are going to put all these damn catchers on our roster. So we don't have to go looking. And, uh, so therefore I'm kind of interested in, I don't know if you'd call them the fringe catchers

or maybe the prospect catchers that are on this list. One of them is not fringe. Tyler Stevenson, I think, definitely has a better shot of playing Major League Baseball this year than he did before. I'm not sure. Maybe the games played will even out, but it'll be a bigger part of the season. But he's behind Tucker Barnhart, Kirk Asali. They're fine. Kyle Farmer is not necessarily what you want out of a catcher. So I would say

that they're kind of too deep at catcher and they have an emergency catcher and then they have Tyler Stevenson. And Tyler Stevenson's a legitimate prospect that we saw uh actually play a little bit in the fall league um he he had some buzz going around him uh because of a good attempt first attempt at double a came up to double a was 30 better than the average struck out less than he'd ever had before and added that walk rate um really nice ground ball fly ball mix just a really nice statistical um landing there in double a for his first attempt um at 23 years old so like i think he's ready to go really and and he's up and he's on the roster he's going to play this year two catcher leagues take notice two catcher leagues also take notice of my lesser prospect of the week, Sam Huff.

There's so many questions about him. It's funny because you can see who uses which sort of prospect reports. There was a piece by Evan Grant about Sam Huff, the Rangers' other top prospect. the Rangers' other top prospect. And so I jumped on over to Fangraphs, and he's ranked 12th overall on Fangraphs, 12th for the team, and he's not even in the top 100 overall.

This does not suggest he's a top prospect. 45 future value, so average or worse. However, he's a catcher. He's on the roster. And if he can make any progress at all when it comes to strikeout rate, he does look like the kind of kid who can put a wallop on the ball and be your kind of 230-25 homer hitting in a regular season type catcher. You know, AL only leagues, he might be a major FAAB at some point.

Yeah, I think just the broader point about how catchers tend to be very important over the course of a season is a good one. And it kind of brings me to a question about Dalton Varshow. I mean, I look at him and think he can play other spots too. I mean, a rare catcher who's athletic enough to go play center field if needed what do you think varsho's chances are of getting big league plate appearances i mean like stevenson really impressive at double a even better numbers as a hitter 18 homers 21 steals and 26 attempts a 159 wrc plus i. He also looks like a big league

ready bat and there might be more paths for him to find time. Yeah, I think youth is the name of the game this year. I have to say that the game was already trending towards youthfulness. The average median age in baseball was trending down.

The number of players on a minimum salary is trending up and that's partially because aging curve suggests that players just enter the league and don't actually get worse uh no don't actually get better they just get worse so that you'd want to get them in there when they're cheap and get them in there as quick as possible and then you add to this that there is an age component to the coronavirus and that the player I was talking to that had the four-week thing was a veteran. So you're talking now about Carson Kelly being young, maybe not having that long of a recovery process if he does get it, but there's Steven Vogt there.

And I think that's an opportunity for Varshow. I would put, you know, I know that J.R. Hicks is also there, but I would put Varshow ahead of Hicks if there is a longer term problem and the D-backs are at least 500. You have to think, anybody who's 500 is in it. 31 and 29 is going to win a division. And so anybody who's 500 is in it. And so if vote goes down, VAR shows up. That's how I see it. Well, we're just kind of left to guess how important making the playoffs will be to each team. In that mid-pack range, if the injuries strike, is it worth burning the year of service time?

I'm thinking about the Mountcastle situation again again just in the light of what you're saying if you arrive at your peak and you're only in decline from there it's another reason to not wait a year you know i also think i think how much you're dependent on uh gate receipts is actually part of this too because you'd have to think the cubs may be fairly desperate to compete this year because playoff money is real money and if we believe at all that the way they set up their tv such situation the new tv channel that they've that they've come up with means that they are going to make 20% of their revenue this year, then the playoff money is a real carrot for them.

I don't know what that means in terms of what they're willing to do in terms of what we're looking at right now. It's not like they necessarily have a prospect where you'd be like, oh yeah, they'll push this guy.

I mean, Brennan Davis? Is that possible? He's a little younger than – He's 20 years old and played A ball last year. Anybody who's played at AA can make that leap pretty reasonably. And, yeah, it might be a major adjustment phase, but I think if you're jumping up a player from A ball, you got to be looking at a Franco, like an elite of the elite type player.

I think that's a much more difficult transition if you haven't seen double A yet. I think it might be more likely that Brandon Davis gets moved in a trade. I think he could get you whatever you wanted, almost. I'm not saying that he's a top 10 prospect, but a top 50 prospect in this season might be one of the better prospects that gets moved, right? If everyone's going to play conservatively a little bit. So maybe their all-in move is Brennan Davis and Albert Azoulay

for Caleb Smith or something. I don't know. That'd be kind of an interesting trade. I'd be okay with that. It just came out of my butt. Good job making that up on the fly. I have no sources. I have no sources on this other than my butt.

Maybe keep that as an anonymous source in the future. Well, I don't want to name my butt. Let's move on to the mailbag question about adjusting rankings for the Universal DH. The question came from Brandon. He just wanted to know, he referred to it as a noob like question i think it's just a good question how do you adjust your player ranking specifically those of whom the universal dh rule would affect such as nl hitters and what kinds of stats help you move those players up or down in the ranks would it be counting stats advanced stats what would actually prompt you to bring those players up and down.

So, all right, I think this is tricky because we've gone through and we've kind of looked at every team's depth chart and said, okay, if there's a universal DH, this guy or these guys are going to play more because of it. So I don't know if there's a consistent bump across the board for hitters. I think Ioannis Cespedes could end up being the biggest winner in the NL pool from the Universal DH. But at the same time,

maybe Ryan Braun and Abisail Garcia both become six-day-per-week players because of it, whereas before they were both going to start four games a week. There's a lot of different ways you can get a bump, so you almost have to go player by player or team by team and individually adjust from there, which kind of sucks because there's not a simple add 10% to one guy on each team, at least as far as the hitters go. And there's no real job there.

I mean, we talk about the National League DH as a job, but I just wanted to point out, last year, the major league leader in plate appearances by a pitcher was the Dodgers with 365. So a regular job you'd think of is at least 500 plate appearances, if not sort of more 600. And the top of the lineup is like 670. So we're talking here about it's a half a job. You know, it's a half a job because we've had pinch hitters in the National League before. We've gotten plate appearances out of these other guys before. We haven't given pitchers 670 plate appearances ever before, thank God. So we can't just say, okay, Yo don't know before.

Now he's got a job. So therefore, the addition to the math here is that Yo gets 600 plate appearances. He gets the full job. That's the DH job. No, it's more like Yo might have been forecast for 100 plate appearances before, and now Cespedes is likely to get 300. Well, that would be a full season. The prorated version of 300.

I think we're going to probably still talk about playing time shares with full season numbers just to make it easier to scale them accordingly. I think if we started talking in partial season, if we started to say, oh, he's going to have 175 plate appearances, our brains are wired for that to be a third of a job instead of almost a full season. And on the opposite side, so yeah, in your Avisel Garcia, Ryan Braun thing, I would add, if we were talking full season, I would add, you know, like 50 plate appearances out of the 350 to Avasale, and I'd add like 150 to 200 to Braun. So obviously

Braun wins more out of the situation, but he does not go from a zero to a full-time player. It's just too much of a sliding scale. So I would recommend just kind of going through and deciding who you think will be the DHs on each of these teams. The Fangraphs has a good depth chart tool where you can kind of do that. And then just add a little and subtract a little

off of their plate appearances that are projected at Fangraphs. And you can do that in your head if you'd like. Nothing about this year is going to be easy and nothing about it is going to have any certitude. So might as well just say, hey, I'm going to bump up Ryan Braun five spots in my draft or 10 spots in my draft because I feel like he's going to play more. So that's one thing. On the pitching side, I did have in the strategy guide for starting pitchers that pitchers pitch about 10% worse.

NL pitchers pitching against AL pitchers against AL hitters pitch about 10% worse than NL pitchers against NL hitters. And then somebody pointed out, it was a good point, that pitchers have multiple categories and their strikeout rates and a lot of these other things moved less than than you might think they did um and so maybe it's not a full 10 so i feel uh okay guesstimating about a five percent reduction in uh sort of on-field results for nl pitchers um and i anticipate doing things like probably moving garrett cole of Jake DeGrom. That's moving my number two ahead of my number one. Maybe moving Marcus Stroman down three or four spots around the 40s where I have him. So I anticipate this being a bunch of small moves

in different directions for these different players. And it therefore goes to the bigger point that you were making, that this is not an easily a blanket sort of assessment. Yeah, a lot of nudges. But I do think looking at the breakdown you had in that piece is helpful just to kind of get a sense for the schedule and how much the things are going to have to be adjusted. The categories should maybe be tweaked, relatively speaking.

We have breaking news. Off the wire. Breaking news. Breaking news. Off the wire. The San Diego Padres are acquiring middle infielder Jorge Mateo from the Oakland A's for a player to be named later. Oh, okay.

Okay. And it is Jeff Passon with a check mark. It's not Jeff Passon with three N's at the end but somehow people retweet it. It's real. It's weird for me because I thought Mateo had

a lot easier time making this roster at 30 and 28 as the designated runner. But I did know that long-term, the A's had to make a decision by a month in the season or maybe two weeks in the season. They had to make a decision between Franklin Barreto and Jorge Mateo. And just given the fact that they played Franklin Barreto in the major leagues last year at all,

suggested to me that Franklin Barreto was ahead. And I think they think of Barreto as the backup second baseman and backup shortstop, and Tony Kemp as the starter. And if you start Barreto, Kemp is your pinch runner. And if you start Kemp, Kemp is your pinch runner. And if you start Kemp, Barreto is your pinch runner. Because both of them run pretty well. So I don't think that the A's are super

interested in keeping someone around as a pinch runner. Whereas maybe the Padres are trying to milk every single win out of the season where a win might do them in one way or the other, and they don't really have that speed on the bench. I don't see anybody on this team other than perhaps Franchi Cordero

that could do that, and maybe they want to start Franchi Cordero sometime. Franchman, I don't know. I don't think it's not a big deal. I guess he could take the pro-far job from him. Mateo, I want to point out, if you look at his numbers,

they look good. Because he played in a nice park in AAA with a rabid ball. So he hit.289 with a.330 OBP and a.504 slugging, and he had 19 homers and 24 stolen bases. The problem is he was 4% worse than league average with that line. Can you believe that? Yeah, it's the, I think Mauricio Dubon is a guy that I've seen that from before.

Like in 2019 with the Brewers, he had 16 homers, 9 steals, 297, 333, 475. It was a 92 WRC+. And you have to go back to 2017 in AA for Mateo to have good WRC+. And what does he have in 2017? He had a.356 Babbitt and a.372 Babbitt, which, fine, that happens in minor leagues, but I don't think that necessarily and yes he's a speedy but a guy with his kind of meh pop is not necessarily deserving 372 babbitts you know

um so i think it's you know his projections are for like a 70 wrc plus and i can't i can't argue with him that much he's so mateo's interesting to me, though, because I'm looking at the scouting grades that Fangraphs has on his player page. They've only got a 40 future value on the hit tool, present 35, so there's your flaw. Why hasn't it happened for him yet? 45 future game power, 55 future raw power,

but that's current 55 raw power, 80-80 for speed, 55 arm, future value 40. Some of the parts, worse than the parts. He just hasn't been able to put it all together. Because his best numbers are at the worst and least important things. Right. He's got an arm. A below average hit tool just sinks you. The five tools are not weighted evenly equally no no so uh mateo outside shot of stealing from

profar just if profar has the yips can't throw it to second and mateo comes in hitting well for power but um i don't think this is this is necessarily that important of um a deal i do i do feel a little bit better about tony camp baby yeah one fewer one fewer player pushing for that time in oakland and you know i think the thing that makes mateo interesting though from a fantasy standpoint i think he's going to struggle to find playing time. For NL-only leagues, he is shortstop eligible. So, you know, you lose your shortstop, he's on the bench, he's at least giving you some cheap speed. That could play. If he moves around a little bit, maybe picks up outfield eligibility at some point.

A little versatility. But I do think the flaws with him are real. And I think I'm always curious to see who the A's get as a player to be named later. That's always kind of a fun little twist. I guess a reliever. You're going reliever? I don't think that Mateo deserves much better

as a prospect. San Diego's a good organization to take a player to be named later from. Plenty of interesting names up and down that prospect list. And some depth that pushes guys later down so that they can report it as, they only got our 25th best prospect, but

hey, you know what? That's better than a lot of other teams' 25th best prospects. Bingo. Alright, if you're enjoying this show on a platform that allows you to rate and review it, please take a moment to do that. We greatly appreciate it. If you do not already have a subscription to The Athletic, you can get one at 40% off at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels.

You can find us on Twitter. He's at Eno Saris. I'm at Derek Van Ryper. And you can also email us, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com if you want to get a hold of us that way. Pitcher rankings, they're coming up Thursday right around the corner. It's on our next episode. So I'm hyped for that. I think

Eno's hyped for that, too. Hopefully, you're all hyped for that. This week is breaking Eno down. Super hyped. Yeah, he'll be ready to go by Thursday. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels.

We are back with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening.