Rates & Barrels - Will Bullpen Decay & The Mets' Success Against Relievers Define This Postseason?

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss the Dodgers' altered bullpen game approach in Game 2 of the NLCS which included an earlier usage of Landon Knack, who surrendered a critical second-inning grand slam to Mark Vientos. Plus, they examine the Mets' success against relievers throughout the year as highlighted by Robert Orr of Baseball Prospectus, a few potential fits for Alex Bregman and Willy Adames in free agency, and the success of Carlos Rodón in Game 1 of the ALCS against the Guardians. Rundown 1:41 The Mets Slug Against the Dodgers' Bullpen to Take Game 2 7:16 Mark Vientos' 2024 Breakout 12:23 How Will Alex Bregman's Defense Age? 18:01 Willy Adames' Foray Into Free Agency 22:55 Did the Dodgers' Hold Back Their Top Relievers in Game 2 to Limit the Mets' Looks? 26:39 Robert Orr's Breakdown of the Mets' Success Against Relievers 35:20 What Would You Put on Your Hitters Skills Checklist? 39:55 Can the Guardians Begin to Turn Good Hit Tools Into More Power? 47:51 What Changed for Carlos Rodón in Game 1 of the ALCS? 52:37 Will Luis Severino Add Wrinkles for the Dodgers' Lefties in Game 3? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Producer: Brian Smith Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It's free and easy to use, and you can get cash back deposited into your PayPal account or sent to you as a check. It's the smartest way to shop, plain and simple. Start your shopping at rakuten.ca or get the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N.ca. Hockey is back on ice and the Athletic Hockey Show has the game covered four days a week, all season long. Hear from the Athletics, NHL writers and insiders Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Plus keep up with the game's future stars on the Friday Prospect series. Whether we're diving deep on one topic, discussing the latest news, or breaking down last night's OT winner, you can't miss a single episode. Listen to the Athletic Hockey Show wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Tuesday, October 15th. Derek Van Riper, EnoSaris here with Brian Smith producing on the ones and twos in the background. Almost was on the show, forgot to put him in the background before hitting the record button. We'll get Brian on camera one of these days, we appreciate all the hard work he's doing

for us behind the scenes. On this episode we discussed the Mets drawing level in the NLCS with some success against the Dodgers bullpen. We're gonna look at a bigger picture question around teams that hit bullpens effectively. Yes there was a Robert Orr story in there that got us thinking about this a little bit as well so we'll connect a few dots there. Head a few follow-ups to our Tigers Vuelogy that I thought were pretty interesting. So we'll get to those.

And of course we'll talk about the ALCS, which has game two getting underway on Tuesday night. We're not gonna preview game two because it's going to be happening by the time many people hear this podcast. But we've got some interesting observations about Carlos Rodan who pitched effectively in game one as the Yankees took the opener of that series.

Edo, how's it going for you on this Tuesday? Going good. All the family's out of the house now, so we're back to just the regular zoo that we've got going here. Yeah, like the movie, we built the zoo. Yeah, two kitties, two dogs, six fish, two sons. Everybody's happy, that's the key. You can join our Discord with the link in the show description by the way. Get some more lively chatter going as these playoffs continue. But let's start today with the Mets.

The bulk pen game backfired on the Dodgers. The Mets slugged their way to even the series. A Marc Vientos grand slam really punctuated a five run second inning for the Mets. That's all they ended up needing in that game and a lot of ways to pick this one apart. But the thing that surprised me was that the Dodgers went to land a knack so early in this game compared to the usage in the bullpen game of,

I think it was game four of the NLDS against the Padres, we thought we'd see Nack this early then, instead we saw him in the final inning of a game that was out of hand. So I wonder what it was matchup wise that the Dodgers preferred here because with the off day on Tuesday and with very few high leverage relievers needed behind Jack Flaherty in game one, the card was wide open and the Dodgers chose to go this route. Now I realize because it didn't work, it's gonna get the extra criticism,

but the order matters a lot. I thought they'd follow a very similar script to what worked in San Diego. You know, I think Knack has one of these fastballs that has surprising movement given his slot. And I wonder if, you know, the Dodgers say, Hey, NAC faced the Padres like a week ago, you know, when they last had this decision.

And maybe we think that this is the kind of fastball that has faster decay as in batters see it, you know, and can do more with it once they've seen it rather than batters see it, you know, and can do more with it once they've seen it rather than batters who'd never seen it. And what you saw with the way that Landon Ack pitched too was that he was gonna be, he came in as a two-pitch guy. He was fastball slider. He was not, you know, throwing the curve or the change that he threw 15, 16 percent of the time during the regular season. He was a two-pitch guy and I think that the game plan was change that he threw 15, 16% of the time during the regular season. He was a two pitch guy.

And I think that the game plan was thought that they're going to actually have some hard, a hard time hitting this fastball and it's a good slider. So that's what he's going to be. He's going to be a two pitch, you know, reliever type for us. And he's going to go one time through the order. And instead, I think you saw that they saw his fastball pretty well. And in particular, in this Mark Vietos at bat, what I think you saw that they saw his fastball pretty well. And in particular in this Mark Vietos at bat, what I think you see is, you know, there's one fastball, the fourth pitch of it. So he's got it with just sliders.

He's got him to a one, two count with two fouls on sliders. Then he throws a four seam fastball. That's like four inches above the zone and Vietos fouls that sliders. Then he throws a four-seam fastball that's like four inches above the zone and Vientos fouls that off too. And the next slider is a ball in the dirt thinking okay well maybe he'll just swing over the top of something. But by the time he throws the sixth slider and the seventh pitch overall, he does something that puts him in trouble. That seventh slider is a ball. And at that point, it's a three-two count, and he hasn't gotten a single swing and miss

from Mark Viento. So Landonak has tried everything. He's tried the high fastballs, high sliders, low sliders, and now with the three-ball count and the bases loaded, he has to throw a fastball that's not four inches above the zone, like his last fastball. That must have been the thinking. And so he throws a fastball that's in the zone

and it just happens to be middle middle. And I think this is like, you know, when you are a two pitch pitcher and one of your pitches is a fastball, and we know that pitchers miss 10 to 13 inches on average is what the research suggests. That means that every time you're throwing a fastball in this situation, it's like you're in the eighties ripping packs. And one of those, you're going to rip the pack open. It's going to be the manager card and nobody wants the manager card. And that's

the middle, middle fastball. That's the Tom Kelly on your piece of cardboard, you know, sitting in the dugout is his action picture. That's the home run. That's the grand slam he gives up, you know, and I think it's about count leverage there, but it's also just not about not sneaking in any of his other pitches when he's starting to see, Oh man, he's fouling everything off. There's gotta be some idea, a right on right change you brought up. You know, maybe that's not the best idea across, you know, everything,

but it's probably something Vientos hasn't seen that much, you know? Or just a big old lollipop curveball that Vientos takes for strike three. Probably would have been a better idea than the middle, middle fastball. When you're seeing him, he's geared up to hit everything. pop curve ball that Vantos takes for strike three. Probably would have been a better idea than middle middle fastball. When you're seeing him, he's geared up to hit everything. Right, middle middle fastball wasn't the plan. It was the failure of a plan. But I think that's the part that's tricky to me

is like you do have a third and fourth pitch even if you don't like them. In that situation where you're not getting any sort of swing and miss and you didn't have the command of the fastball dusting something else off. I think if you said, it's your call DVR, what would you have thrown? I think I would have gone with the curve

because I think you want to change speeds again. If he's following everything off and the change is about the same speed as the slider. He's on that like 87 to 94, like he's right, he's hot. He's hot, he's up there. Throw something that's right. He's hot. He's hot. He's up there throw something at 79 That's what I would have tried and maybe Maybe he would have just hit the crap out of that or followed it off or something, too And this would have happened eventually anyway the other part of this though is you know mark fientos has been?

Phenomenal in the playoffs and he was been he's been very good all year, right? That's that's one of the stories stories of how'd the Mets get here and why is this working? He's added some depth and quality to this lineup. I mean, this is a guy that had major questions about his defense. That's the main reason I think people like me were on Brett Beatty instead.

Brett Beatty's not a smooth defender at third base, but I thought he was less of a liability than Vientos. I thought we saw some signs that Beatty was going to take a step forward this year, and instead Mark Vientos was that guy. He had the breakout that I thought Brett Beatty was gonna have, and the way he does it, tons of hard contact, right?

We've seen that from day one from Mark Vientos in the big leagues. He's keeping the K-rate around 30%. He's patient enough to draw walks. He can do the damage. Where do we go in 2025? There's still a few chapters of his season to be written in this series, possibly in the World Series, but for a guy that popped 27 homers and 454 played appearances and did it in an environment that is pitcher friendly for half of his games, I think people are going to be looking at Vientos

as a legitimate top 100 target in some instances because power comes at a premium in those middle rounds and I think he's done more than enough this year to establish himself as a core piece for the Mets going into next season. The Mets are also losing a core piece that I'm also gonna put onto every team in baseball by the end of the offseason, which is Pete Alonso. And I do think the flaws are still there. I, you know, the defensive numbers line up with the eye test for me,

Mark Vientos. I don't think he's a good third baseman. You know, we've already had plays in the playoffs that could have led to, you know, bad situations and just happened not to. But we've seen him bobble, I don't know, three balls at third. We've seen some poor throws. It doesn't look like good hands to me. So if I were the Mets, I would love to already, I think, I think I would love to already move Vientos to first if I'm not going to wrap up Pete Alonso and that does paper over one problem for the team but it doesn't necessarily solve everything because then you need a third base. You can give Brett Beatty another try you're also as the Mets going to clean up a fair amount of the books this year with

Quintana, Severino, Harrison Bader, JD Martinez, Brooks Railey, Adam Ottavino, Ryan Stanek, Jesse Winker coming off the board of the books along with Alonzo. Right now they have even with the arbitration set up they have a hundred and seventy two million dollars under contract next and luxury tax, they were at 358 last year. So obviously that means they could just sign Alonzo back and maybe that's what's most likely. But it does open the door for them to do something different and sign like an Alex Bregman or

something, you know, to play third, move Fientos to first. And obviously from the names that I mentioned, they have to spend on starting pitching. Right. That'll be, regardless of how things go, something the Mets are trying to address this winter. I think the Bregman possibility makes a lot of sense. I think not putting JD Martinez on the roster again next year

also leaves the door open for Vientos to coexist with a re- a resigned Pete Alonso They could share first base in DH. So they basically platoon the DH with Winker and JD right now There's no compelling reason to bring both of those guys back People keep putting Juan Soto on the Mets too. So that's gonna be a big outlay of cash But I think you know, I think that think that going from 358 to 172, I think that there is enough room for them to do, I think it's probably Soto or Alonzo.

Because I think they do have to spend a fair amount on starting pitching. Do you think they could do Soto and Alonzo and three starting pitchers? Maybe. I think the limit does not exist. I think it is a situation. They were comfortable with 358 last year.

Look at what the Dodgers just did this winter. There's actually no reason that we know of that the Mets can't do stuff like what the Dodgers just did spending wise with Otani and Yamamoto and extending glass now. Everything's on the table for the Mets right now. With their defensive shortcomings of Mark Vantos though, maybe some of their, you know,

one of their signings should be a little bit more tilted towards defense if you think about it, like either Bregman or signing Willie Adamas to play third or something. Oh, come on man, we're just gonna do that. We're just gonna give him everything. You just wanted to give him everything, I've given him everything.

No, it's true and I think with Bregman, how do you think Alex Bregman's defense is going to age? I think his bat is aging pretty well. We've seen a few lulls, even in these years, these last three seasons have looked pretty much the same by the end, this year being the outlier from an OVP perspective, he dropped all the way down to a 315, so maybe we're starting to see a little bit

of decay with the eye in particular, but if defensively, Bregman is going to be good or solid for most of a long-term deal, and we think he's the type of hitter that won't age poorly, then that ends up being a pretty nice long-term deal for any team that signs him, I guess. Do you agree, though, that the defense holds up fine over time for him at third base?

If you ignore UZR, and I think in this case, it might be a good idea because the Astros at some point were on the forefront of shifting and UZR doesn't use starting position. And you focus more on DRS and outs above average. So DRS has a negative for Alex Bregman in 2022 and a negative in 2017, but it also has seasons where he was worth eight defensive run saves and out above average has never had a negative. So I just voted on the Fielding Bible Awards. And one of the things

I did was when I'm looking across the different stats, I gave people credit if they had like, you know, like a 15 out above average or like a 15 DRS, even if out above average or DRS didn't agree with it. I was just like, Hey, one of these systems thinks this guy's out of sight. And the other thing I did was if one of the systems had a negative on there, I would kind of put them, push them down a little bit. Oh because one of these systems thinks he's not good at all When you look at Alex Riggs and page what I see is the systems both agree. He's excellent Yeah, so if you're excellent today

we're gonna probably slowly regress you down to average over like a six-year deal if that's what he ends up getting and All the top along the way the skills are so excellent in terms of making contact and and walking I know he's not our type in terms of barreling and max CV and hard hit but you know I just feel like that the the average in the OPP are always going to be pretty good and if he only hits you 15 to 20 homers by near to the end of that contract it's everything else is gonna be all right. It depends on the number. It really depends on the number.

If he wants hundreds of millions of dollars, like I don't know. Well, I think you have to look at him compared to what else is out there. And if you're considering something like Willie Adames as an option to play off of shortstop, where Adames is still a good enough defender to play for just about any team that would be looking

for help there, right? How do they compare apples to apples? If you had to go to the same number of years and the same dollar amount, and I've been, for the entire time, I've been thinking about what it would take long term for any team to have Willy Adamas. I've said, well, the Dansby Swanson contract,

the Cubs, seven for 1777 is probably attainable for him. I mean, Bregman turns 31 around opening day next year and March next year. Adamis will turn 30 next September. So they're close in age, but Adamis is a year younger and he plays the more valuable position, so it matters. He's a better athlete than Bregman. So let's assume Bregman. So let's assume Bregman's gonna get maybe one less year,

but the AAVs are comparable. Is that a reasonable place to put the conversation? If that's the situation, which one would you sign if you could only add one, because some other team's gonna swoop in and get the other one? I think I'd lean towards Adamas, because I would be nervous,

especially if I was the Mets in particular, is I'd be a little bit nervous to see how Bregman's power poured it over to my stadium. Yeah, okay. And Adamas has like kind of that no doubt power. He fits into the hits the ball very hard bucket, which I think is a big part of why he popped up in Discord. Logan I-54 listening to our eulogy for the 2024 Tigers

on the Monday episode suggested Willie Adamis is a fit for the Tigers, which would mean they'd push Trey Sweeney off of short. I don't think it's impossible. I think you can basically look at this off season for the Tigers and say, we've got some defensive flexibility at a couple spots. As a result, we're gonna get the best possible hitter

and we'll make the pieces fit, right? With our mixing and matching. I could see that as one of the options. I think the thing that Adamas satisfies is hitting the ball hard enough to still have power at Coamerica, right? We've got four consecutive seasons with a double digit barrel rate,

still right close to his power peak, age-wise, couple of 30 home run seasons, showed more speed this year, mentioned the defense before, still being generally good at shortstop you know occasionally makes the mistake on like a routine play but generally a very good defender so what do you think about the Tigers as a fit for Willie Adames? I was thinking about you know my sort of offhand comment of you know going cheap with right-handed veterans like Turner, Justin Turner, or JD Martinez. And I think if I'm the Tigers,

I kind of feel like, no, I, you know, even if it's just a mini resurgence from Torkelson or, or somebody, you know, stepping up from, from what we have, we can kind of do that level. What we need is either youth where there's a like a like Torkelson where there's a chance that these even better like he like he finally breaks out right so that the arrow bars in the right direction or we need someone who can hit the snot out of the ball. And one of my reasons for this is I was looking at the Statcast venue park factors and what they have are speed and angle park factors and including this one line called environmental park factors they say extra feet of distance

versus average given the same exit velocities and I think this is a kind of a really important spot here it was minus 4.5 feet last year in Quamerica so basically to achieve the same results that you would want in a neutral park you'd have to hit the ball four and a half feet farther. So I do think that for them, if they're looking for right hand power, they're looking for somebody who hits the ball super hard. And I think Willie Domus is on that list. Oscar Hernandez is on that list. Pete Alonso is on that list.

And maybe Anthony Santander is on that list. Pete Alonso is on that list and maybe Anthony Santander is on that list but Alex Bregman is probably not on that list. Maybe even somebody like Paul Goldschmidt is not somebody you necessarily want to even do on a one-year deal at this point. I think Cody Bellinger is not on that list. There are certain fits where you're like if you're kind of a medium hitting guy I'm not sure I want to put you in my stadium if you're kind of a medium hitting guy, I'm not sure I wanna put you in my stadium that minuses four and a half feet off your distances. I think the Bregman part for the Tigers

that would be interesting though, is that because the defense is good and because Scott Harris is absolutely, as you said, a control the zone guy, you mentioned that. He mentioned it in his end of year debriefing, Cody Stevenhagen had a breakdown of that on the athletic. That part makes me think Bregman could fit.

There is the connection to AJ Hinch as well, so maybe that gives them an inside track. So Bregman's gonna have a few suitors. I think Bregman's going to become even more wealthy a few months from now because there's a lot of things he does really well. But yeah, Willie Adames could be a fit there. Also saw a comment on the aforementioned

Cody Stevenhagen piece from Chris E. I don't know if he listens to the show or she. Yandy Diaz as a Tigers trade target. And I kinda like that for the same sorts of reasons. Could play both corners as needed, gives them some versatility. Harris mentioned not wanting to be too left-handed. So Diaz as a righty that hits the ball hard.

He's a control the zone guy for sure. 100% control the zone guy. And we've wondered for a while, you know, how long are the Rays, even though they've got Yandy on a nice team friendly deal, how long are they going to ride that out before they decide to move on and let somebody else maybe enter the equation such as, you know,

Jonathan Aranda who could be good enough to DH, but if he's going to play a defensive position, would probably end up settling it at first base if the playing time opened up there. It's just like, do you have to trade Yandy Diaz? Because right now their luxury tax number is 87 million. Tempted to say $87. No, it is 87 million. Oh. Attempted to say $87. No, it's 87 million.

87 million, and last year it was 124. So, you know, they're almost set up to, you know, offer some big, you know, they're always rumored, the RASR, to have some sort of offer out for Aaron Judge. You know, they're always willing to like, high, you know, AAV, low years offers to some of these veterans. I wonder if they'll have a surprise for us in the other direction instead of trading Andy away.

Cause they don't really need that $10 million as much as they need production next year, especially when it comes to their bats. He's one of the few guys that hits the ball hard and makes contact, you know, that's something that's a little bit missing from this. You know, the other side of the argument is, hey, let's play Brandon Lau at first. That can happen too. Right, or they could trade Brandon Lau.

And as Brian mentioned, I mean, also, among the many things damaged in hurricane season so far, the trop losing its roof, like maybe the park will end up being the same home park too Costs millions of dollars to fix right? That's insurance stuff But you know it's just more of like well if the rays have to play in a different ballpark for a little while like that That could be something that changes the calculus of players. They're able to go get in free agency, too So how much money they can bring in I mean at the trop?

I don't think has we know that it doesn't have great attendance, but going to like a minor league park, it's you're cutting your even possible attendance down. Hockey is back on ice in the athletic hockey show as the game covered four days a week, all season long here from the athletics, NHL writers and insiders Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. Plus keep up with the game's future stars on the Friday Prospect series. Whether we're diving deep on one topic, discussing the latest news, or breaking down last night's

OT winner, you can't miss a single episode. Listen to the Athletic Hockey Show wherever you get your podcasts. We started this conversation looking at how the bullpen game didn't work for the Dodgers this time around and the decision to use landed a knack when they did but also to then not bother with using the rested A bullpen options they had, right? They just kind of said, all right, we're going to cruise through and let Brent Honeywell chew up a bunch of innings and I mean, hey, we may only see Brent Honeywell one more time in this series even if it goes seven. This may have been Brent Honeywell's only opportunity.

Edgardo Henriquez pitched two innings, Banda pitched one. So those three guys chewed up six innings and for me it wasn't about resting the other relievers as much as it was about not letting the Mets get a look at those guys. Because one thing we've started to talk about a little bit more on this show is diminishing value of relievers as teams get those second, third, and fourth looks in a short period of time.

It's the same, we talk about the third time to the order penalty. Like there's going to be decay the more you see reliever, relievers have fewer pitches. So there's a couple ways to go here, but first and foremost, do you think that there is an actual team skill component to being more effective at hitting relievers?

Or are there things that teams, some teams do better than others, be that scouting, the trajectory machine, like what could it be that leads a team to be better against relievers than they are against starters? I would guess coaching and preparation. And you know, I think the bad word here is guessing.

That's a word that has been used to sort of denigrate certain hitters, oh he's a guess hitter. Anticipating. Huh? Anticipating. Right, exactly. Anticipating is the much nicer word, and I've even talked about that specific sort of,

the semantics of using those two words with hitters. And I think the consensus from what I've had in these conversations, a lot of them off record because hitters don't like to talk about approach, but I think the consensus is that with VELO to where it is right now, a certain amount of anticipation is required. You know, and what you did see from Vientos there was,

I think his anticipation, what he was anticipating was, it's all gonna be hard. It's either gonna be an 88 mile an hour slider, or it's gonna be a 94 mile an hour fastball. I'm not going to see those 79s and 82s, you know, from the change up or the curve. That allowed him to sort of gear up and, you know, be like, I'm trying to get the fastball and I'm going to foul. I'm just going to relax my hands and foul off, you know, the 88 mile and I can do that. And so anticipation is underlying a lot of these things that are happening. We talked about, you know, Pierce Johnson's great curveball, great by stuff plus throws

a 70% of the time, you know, gets crushed in three, oh, counts when he has to come into the zone. That's where anticipation meets, you know, stuff plus and anticipation can win. And then we look at Robert Orr's great piece from baseball prospectus where he looks at Seager and Seager is making good decisions. So it's not outcomes, it's did you swing it, that's a little reductive to say did you swing it

strike strikes and not at non-strikes, but it's like that. It's a little bit like looking at zone swing minus chase rate. And when you look at that piece, you have this great graph that he's made where he shows team Seager against starters and against relievers. And the Mets are bottom five in the league in Seager against starters, and they are top five in the league in Seager against relievers. And that's a little bit weird because you have the Dodgers who are tops against relievers and third against starters.

You have the Yankees that are top five against both. You have Atlanta who was second best against starters and, you know, six best against relievers. So, you know, you have generally the teams that you think are good, are good at approach against both starters and relievers, the Mets are just the weirdest they're there. The only one in their quadrant, basically, you know, there's no team around them in inches of graph space.

And so when you see something like that, you, you know, Robert Orr then goes and looks at like number of pitches and there's some, there's some light effects there, but I think there's something about relievers reliever tendencies, smaller arsenals. And you saw that play out, I think, in the land and knack, where they were like, maybe they do a good job of what we talked about before, is sort of self-scouting. If we were telling land and knack what to do

against Marc Vientos, what would we tell him to do? We would tell him to do high fastballs, high and tight, specifically, get some chases outside of the zone on high fastballs, and then sliders in the dirt. You know, that's basically what Lananac tried to do. And Vientos on the other side just knew that was the approach,

and was just waiting for the mistake. You know, the one that was in between. So I'm curious where the Padres ranked in Seeger against relievers, because by OPS, just by results, and again, OPS is what it is, but they were number one against Relievers, and they were great against Starters too. They were, I think, six or seven.

Really, because by Seager against Relievers, they were bottom eight. Interesting. It's like maybe six or seven. It's hard when you look at it graph like this, but Seager against starters, they were not a good secret team. They found ways to be good. They were bottom five against both starters and relievers.

So they were good because they slugged and because they made good contact. And in fact, this was an interesting thing. It's come out of the Cleveland situation, which is depending on how the series goes, you know, there's always, you know, the kind of the afterwards, let's say they lose, there's going to be some soul searching in Cleveland because what they've they found a certain type of hitter that's undervalued maybe by the draft or by free agency or all the different ways they've accumulated these hitters

and in trades and what they found is high chase rate, low slug, high contact. That's the Cleveland hitter these days. And what I think you found in San Diego was, we're not too concerned about chase if they can make great contact or slug. So it's a modified sort of Cleveland approach where they're like, yeah, we want to make great contact, but we also want some sluggers on this team.

So I think I've lost the question. No, this is what happens. We start thinking about things differently and our brain kind of pulls on a bunch of threads and we'll tangle up in the threads sometimes. The Padres also had this strange thing that I've noticed with the splits against relievers. And just for reference, I mean, like, generally teams saw 24, 25, 2600 plate appearances.

There is a bit of a range on how many plate appearances you saw against relievers from team to team. I believe they had the lowest strikeout total against relievers, but that's like almost a Luis Arias like team, like think about Luis Arias impact on a team that already didn't strike out a lot. Like against everybody. Right, like they were a low strikeout rate team anyway. So that, like, I wonder if that helps you maybe outperform some decisions, right?

Like you can still hit everything. You still make contact. Maybe you're not making the best decisions, but your hit tool's good enough where you're overcoming that. Like so maybe there's some of that going on, and that. Seager is just eye, and it's missing both batted ball oomph and contact rate ability.

It is interesting to see that the Padres are down there, you know, in the bad place. I mean, other teamsres are down there in the bad place. I mean, other teams that are down there with poor Seeger against both starters and relievers, the White Sox, the Guardians as I pointed out, the Padres, Boston, and Boston seems to be making a big bet on taking high contact rate guys and adding bat speed.

That's how Christian Campbell became a top five prospect, you know, overnight. That's how even somebody like, who's the shortstop there that didn't hit very well this year, but he was kind of the backup shortstop. Is it on Raffaella? No, the other guy. David Hamilton.

David Hamilton did bat speed training to get where he is. There's a couple of, I think Roman Anthony did some bat speed training to get where he is. So they're making a bet on guys who have natural contact ability and coaching up the bat speed. And I guess that they're assuming that those two things, even with Bad Seeger, you can be successful because that's sort of where the Padres are. St. Louis was not successful, the Chicago White Sox were not successful, Cleveland did it all on contact rate for the most part.

So those are the Bad Seeger teams. You wanna know the good Seeger teams against both sides. It's the Dodgers, it's the Yankees, it's the Braves, it's the Mariners. And the A's and the Rays. Arizona is also in the good place, and then Kansas City might be a little bit surprising. Good Seager against both starters and relievers. Houston's right on the line.

They're the very best team for Seager against starters, and they're middle of the pack for Seager against relievers. Yeah, it's interesting because Seager is a relatively new thing that Robert developed a few years ago and I think I'm still learning the best ways to apply it. Use it as an analyst, use it as a fantasy player. It's a really good way to look at who's making good choices. That's what it's made for. But it mirrors our own meandering obsession

with Chase Raiden on this podcast of maybe overvaluing it early on and then trying to fit it in with zone swing to get a better idea. And then ultimately, we've admitted many times, it's definitely part of why some hitters are good, but not every hitter is good because of their eye. And I think this is also something

that people struggle with bad speed. It's like, how important is bad speed? You do look at the best power hitters, they all have great bad speed, right? For the most part. There are people like Arise, who are great without bad speed. There are multiple ways to be good, even on the hitter side.

I think we want the hitter side, we want them to do everything. We know this on the pitcher side, oh, you can be a multiple, you can be a Seth Lugo type, or you can be a Spencer Strider type, or you know, like there's, we've assumed that we've figured out

that there are different ways to be good in starting pitching. And I think it's the same in hitting. If you don't have good bad speed, you limit the amount of ways you to be good in starting pitching. And I think it's the same in hitting. If you don't have good bat speed, you limit the amount of ways you can be good. If you don't have good Seager eye at the plate, you limit the amount of ways you can be good. If you have a prospect coming up

and they are good at Seager and they hit the ball super hard and they make contact, that feels like somebody you should really invest in. Most likely you're gonna get one or two of the three. So imagine that you have a checklist of hitter traits and there are, I don't know, 10 things that you care about for hitters. And you say going in, like if any hitter has

half of those things, they're probably gonna be at least a competent major league hitter. If they have six or seven of those things, they're to be above average if they have eight or more of those things they're going to be an all-star right they have 10 out of those 10 things they are a superstar hall of famer right so like imagine thinking about it that way instead of saying oh this hitter doesn't do that it's like okay every hitter has something they probably don't do as well as has something they probably don't do as well as others. Like there's a relative weakness in every single profile. Which weakness or weaknesses are okay to have

with certain strengths. That's sort of like the whole analysis process. And now that I'm thinking about checklists, is it worse to pull a checklist card or a manager card? Oh, the checklist card was awful. Those are probably both going in the bike spokes, right? I mean, I'm so glad that they stopped making those cards. Like, why?

Why did you put a checklist card in there? Why would anybody be happy to pull that? It was back when sets had 792 cards in them. 792, it's like, well, we don't need 26 managers and we don't need 12 checklists. Now they divided the 792 cards over three different things. So all the rookies are in the Bowman set. Different years, yeah, I know.

Now there's 792 different refractors for every card. Yeah, which refractor should I put in my bike spokes? The answer's probably none. The dumbest thing about refractors is now I don't know how to describe them when I'm looking up how much they're worth. And I'm like, it's kind of rainbow-y. Oh wait, wait, this one has like, it's rainbow-y but it's X. I think this is an X refractor.

And then there's all these different refractor names. And it's like, oh wait, this is kind of like a wavy one. Is it like a wavy refractor? I think refractor variants have gone completely too far. Back to your question. I actually think if I had to give something away, it might be I it's, I think this is, Oh, this is interesting. I hadn't thought about it this way. So I is one of those things that makes Joey Votto

stick around for really long. And we've talked about how bad, how badly chasing outside of his own ages, right? But what if you don't care about 31 and 32 and 33? We've talked about that. But just think about it organizationally. What if as an organization you're like, I'm probably not gonna sign any of these guys long-term.

It's like, what if specifically you're like the Rays? Or the A's? How about this? Did the Cubs? And you don't care about I as much. Did the Cubs care about Javier Baez's I at his breakthrough age? The Cubs didn't, but the, the tigers do.

Right. It doesn't matter how it ages. If you have it for six years cost controlled and you can just bail at any time, if you're not happy, that doesn't matter. That has implications for how you run a player development situation. Cause you're like, okay, most of these guys are not going to sign long term. And if we do develop, if develop, even if we have values that we develop certain things,

we're gonna accidentally develop guys that have good eyes anyway. Right? Then we can sign those guys to long-term deals if we want. But if we value something, I hate to say it, I think Boston's got a bit of a ticket here. They give, I'm gonna develop something, I think Boston's got a bit of a ticket here. They give you, I'm going to develop something. I want to start with good bat to ball and I want to have, I want to have good bat

speed. If I have good bat to ball and good bat speed, I'll try to prepare him really well for the games, you know what I mean? Anticipate, you know? So organizationally speaking, Cleveland's done, I think a good job for a long time of finding Hit Tool. It goes as far back as, Lindor was an early draft pick, but Jose Ramirez, I think we've said this a few times, he's turned into a player that if you look at him at the beginning

of his career as a prospect and projected this, you deserve all the trophies and all the flowers because this outcome compared to where he started his career, is absolutely absurd. But even it goes down to like the Tyler Freeman types they've had in their organization. Like they've done this well for a long time. Can they take a blueprint like what the Red Sox are doing and actually successfully implement that? Can they start to be a team that turns these hit tools into more than just bat to ball? Can they start developing that power? Can they do the bat speed training? They do it on the pitching side.

They were the organization that would get guys to add Velo for a long time. I know for a fact that Stephen Kwan did bat speed training. I know that Ramon Lloriano did the bat speed training, but that wasn't along with Cleveland. He just did it on his own, which I just love him for that. Like he literally bought bats off of Google and like off of eBay and just figured it out. So I love that. You bought used bats?

Yeah, he bought like used weighted bats and like, cool man, I mean, he did have one of his better barrel rates of his career. I can't say that I know for a fact that Andres Jimenez or Josh Naylor do it or you know what I have heard you know about like the Baltimore Orioles as they come up through the minors is that weighted bat training is part of the everyday process.

And that's one thing that I've heard you know analysts wonder about is it something you can do and sort of get into a new stratosphere or is it something you need to do all the time? How sticky are those gains? And do you need to have those weighted bats with you and do them on a daily, weekly, whatever it is basis to retain that bat speed?

I know that JD Martinez brought his weighted bats to the Mets this year and was showing them showing that to a lot of the players there. So my guess is Cleveland is already underway and that's part of their idea is get good bat to ball and try to coach up the power and not worry so much about chase rate because right now they chase only Miami, Colorado, Houston and the White Sox chased more than Cleveland this year. I'm surprised that Cleveland chases that much but it's because I'm staring at Stephen Kwan's player page as we're having this conversation. As for the stickiness and even the ceiling on

bat speed training, all right, I, can you can you actually add multiple times over multiple seasons? Like, do you have an individual plateau that you're going to hit for the early part of your career? Like, these are all things we don't really know yet. But Stephen Kwan, compared to when he broke into the big leagues in twenty twenty two, added just over 30 points of ISO this year, right? So you get to 14 homers in a little less than a full season. So if you got to 650, 700 played appearances, maybe you would hit 17, 18 homers.

That's pretty big jump. Could he add a little bit more? Could he get to 150 ISO next year? Or if this is even where his plateau is, like you'll take that, that's worth it. That's a completely different player. At least an extra eight to 10 times, he's gonna do more damage as a result of that.

That's worthwhile, as long as it doesn't come with some kind of downside akin to sitting closer to your max as a pitcher and tearing your body up. We wondered about that with the Tristan Cassis injury and some of the things that we're starting to see. Like you're still pushing the human body in into like a max sort of situation or closer to a max. But can you live where Stephen Kwan is right now without getting hurt from swinging harder and then sustain that gain for multiple seasons?

That's still really interesting. If that's if you turn a six homer guy into a 14 homer guy, great. That's still really interesting if that's if you turn a six homer guy into a 14 homer guy great You're probably turning a 12 homer guy into a 22 homer guy like you're you're getting a pretty massive Gain, even though at a glance you're like oh He's still kind of a slaps the ball over the place guys like no he does a little more now That's a that's an important adjustment remember our first weighted bat success story was JP Crawford and You know he did something similar where you know his peak ISO before The first weighted bat success story was J.P. Crawford. He did something similar where his peak ISO before had been like 145 and he got it to 172, which is like at first glance you say,

okay, he went from slightly below average to slightly above average, but that's going from a pro rated 10, 11 homers to 19. And it also, in terms of wrc plus that's going from a 95 wrc plus to 136. Now of course he didn't quite show that in 2024 and he was more injured so you know he kind of fits into our overall conversation here but still you know even nine even nine homers and 451 played appearances for him is a pretty good outcome compared to what he did before. So there was some stickiness there, even though he lost some, he regressed some. The other thing I would say is like, if I was coaching people and if I was in charge of a player development for a team, I would see some parallels here for

hitting and pitching. What I would say is what I want all of you guys to do is push your max speed in training environments so that you can throw 106 and you can swing the bat 86, you know? But then I want you in games to not be selling out to get that 86 and not be throwing 106. So have, you know, have 103 sit 98, you know, have 86 as a bat speed, sit 80. Like sitting 80 would still make you one of the fastest bats in baseball.

I think that mitigates some of the concerns that some hitting coaches have when they talk about bat speed and they're like, oh, but how did you get the bad seat? Are you selling out? Are you just pulling through? Are you opening up? Are you doing these things?

And it's like, okay, yeah, I don't want you. I'm not telling you that I want people to do more bad speed, do it badly. I want them to do it in good mechanics. That's why I would say like, Hey, do something where you can get to 86, but you actually sit 80. You're not swinging hard When you swing hard, you know what I mean? Does that make sense? Like you're not in your head. You're not swinging hard. You're actually you think this is free and easy

Oh, I'm at 82 free and easy. That's what you want the bats to be training to do for you is not Turn you into someone who's always like looking to see how hard you swung You know due to somebody well you can swing 86, but you actually don't always do. We don't need a Joel Zumaia with the bat. Like, we don't need to go, don't go that route. Looking up at the ribbon board, how hard did I swing that bat?

Do you remember, yeah, do you remember the outfielder for the twins that couldn't make any contact, but hit the ball really hard, and he never made it to the major leagues really. Are you talking about Adam Walker? Yeah, he had really good bat speed. I do remember Adam Walker. Yeah, so it's obviously not the only thing,

but if I was training guys, I think I would focus on bat to ball, like acquire, it would be somewhat similar to my pitching plan. I think I'd be acquiring bat to ball, coaching up bat speed, acquiring command, and coaching up pitch speed. I think I would want the nine pocket around.

Not all the time, but I think I'd wanna have it as a training tool. I like it, it's old school, it's simple, but hey, if it works for George Kirby, I'm convinced it could work for a lot of people. That's all he throws to in the off season, I love it. Maybe he should go one step beyond that, but I think it should be part of the tool bag.

Let's take a look back at the game one between the Yankees and Guardians. I wanted to know what you saw from Carlos Rodin that you thought might have been different. I mean, of course, by results, like geez, 25 swinging strikes, I mean, that's just a phenomenal outing overall. So when six innings struck out nine, like a one run on three hits, he was rolling just five

hard hit balls from the Guardians in those six innings. And I think last time we saw him a little over a week ago against the Royals started off strong and things started to unravel on him a little bit the second time through the order. But was it Velo? Was it Stuff? Was it Command? What caught your eyes as you were watching Rodana Monday.

There's been some excellent stories about, you know, the like sort of reigning in of a passion that we saw that Carlos Rodon had, he always has like the flapping shirt with the, you know, no undershirt, you know, and he's always been kind of a yeller and a barker, but there, there was this back and forth that we saw where Carlos Roudon is, you know, screaming about things. And then after the game,

Michael Garcia said something like you celebrated too early or something like that. And we also saw Carlos Roudon fall apart in the fourth inning. And you know, so my inclination was to be like, you know, there's a lot of reasons to be hyped up and that we know that some part of pitch velocity, you know, is actually intent. And that's, you know, one of the things we heard from Charlie Morton at some point was like, yeah, I just decided I was going to throw harder and he wasn't going to like leave it in the tank.

And so, you know, my first inclination is like, oh, you know this intensity helps him and He did average 97 on the fastball in the in the ALDS and You know among his games this year that only there was only one game this year where he had he had a nice 7.1 in July and otherwise and then the this this the third fastest game Vila wise was nice six four in August so that was basically like the hardest he could throw

and he was screaming and hollering and letting it all out and It was fun to watch and it was some ways good for him, but it was also bad for him. And I looked at that fourth inning and he threw 13 fastballs in that fourth inning of the divisional series. Carlos Rodón did eight of them were not even in shadow or, you know, they were in waste. He wasted eight of 13 fastballs. I think it became pretty easy for people in that inning, especially with him sort of yelling and screaming

and running around to be like, yo, man, this guy has no idea where he's going. You know, like you just get one that's like above your head and you're just like, oh, Carlos, simmer down, you know? And you know, what you got for Radone in the second game was a 95-8 on the four seam, which, you know what you got in for Rodin in the second game was a 95 8 on the fore seam Which you know just fits in in the sort of upper third of his of his games in terms of you know this year But also just I had to go through the fourth and fifth inning to find I think three

That were in the waist maybe two The other thing that he did was he mixed it up more. He was very fastball slider in that fourth inning against the Royals, maybe because of game plan, maybe because he was amped up, maybe he couldn't command the other pitches. In this game, he mixed it up more. There was more changeups, more curves, more cutters.

Maybe that's something that's a little bit easier to do when you're not, you know, screaming. Yeah, I mean, you want intensity. You can just go a little too far. Maybe that's a big part of why that command waned, but that was a version of Carlos Rodan that gives the hinkies a lot more at the front of that rotation in tandem with Garrett Cole,

who they have going in game two, or not previewing game two, because like I said earlier, it's gonna be happening by the time people hear this podcast. So I thought we should spend a little bit of time just looking at the Dodgers-Mets game three matchup on Wednesday, because there will be some time for people to digest this.

And one thing that I'm really curious to see is what Luis Severino is going to try and do against the Dodgers lefties. This year, Severino struck out almost 23% of the righties he faced. Nothing in that arsenal's working really well against lefties. Home run rate goes up, K-rates under 20%.

We've talked about the overall stuff numbers looking generally okay for Luis Severino. And what did he add this year? Kind of a sinker and a sweeper. That's not gonna help him against lefties. Not gonna work against lefties. So I guess what is going to be his plan against the lefties and Tommy Edmonds,

a switch hitter in that lineup too. I mean, you think about Otani, Freeman, Muncie, Edmond. Those are gonna be some pretty tricky spots for Severino trying to get through that Dodgers lineup in game three. I bet you he does some weird things because a lot of those guys probably have mental Rolodexes against Luis Severino because he's been around for a while. And so, you know, I bet you he tries to do some weird things where he just throws some

sinkers and sweepers to lefties just to, you know, not be completely predictable. That's one of the reasons he did add the sinker this year is to be less predictable. That's one of the reasons he did add the Sanker this year is to be less predictable and that's something that the Mets really value. As we've said, they've got more pitchers with three fastballs than anybody else in the big leagues. So, you know, that's probably what he's going to do is try to mix it up more than just be fastball slider against them because they'll know all about his fastball and slider. I did want to mention real quick, Chris Kirschner has a great story about the Rodin intensity and how Andy Pettit was an important part of reigning that in Andy Pettit.

One of the more legendary postseason pitchers out there. I would, I would say that he got more chances than a lot of people. You know, he was sort of legendary in terms of how calm and collected he was. And he's, there's a great story here about how he influenced Rodin ahead of that start. Yeah, I gotta check that out, yeah, I should check that one out. If you don't have a subscription,

theathletics.com slash rates and barrels gets you the door for $2 a month. The other side of that matchup, Walker Bueller in game three. So maybe one benefit of going the route the Dodgers did in game two, by staying away from all of their A relievers, is that it's fewer looks for the Mets hitters, right?

Is if the Mets are doing a good job scouting and anticipating what those relievers are likely to do, not burning them, even with an off day, perhaps has some value the longer that this series goes. Yeah, and you kept them away from looks. I mean, if you're Evan Phillips, there's a lot of just two pitches, and the more the left-hander gets a look at Evan Phillips,

the more that he feels comfortable in the box against him. They kept those relievers away. I would say that the Dodgers have a little bit of an advantage in this one. I mean, I prefer Severino to Bueller, sort of devoid of context, but with all this context we're giving it, it makes me a little nervous.

Today, though, Bybie and Cole, that's gonna be a fun one. It sounds like a pitcher's duel, of course. Who knows what that means in the end. Yeah, it sounds like it. I think the only thing I'm wondering as the Yankees Guardian series goes on as far as pitching usage goes is will there be some diminishing returns with Luke Weaver?

He's been fantastic, but they're using him for four and five out saves kind of on a regular basis, going a little thinner with their A bullpen list right now. I wonder if that will come back to bite them in this series or possibly in the World Series as teams keep getting extended looks at him. I haven't seen a lot of cutters. So I think you might have one more wrinkle to show them.

You know, I think the last outing, I saw a lot of fastballs and changeups. And you know, the cutter was something, you know, I'm gonna write about this today, but the Yankees really have it dialed in in terms of plans for pitchers when they get there. And they were like, hey, Luke, we want you to move your fastball grip like this much.

And we want you to move your cutter grip like that much. The change-up one was the most obvious one because they went from a two-seam to a one-seam, but they had plans for all of his pitches and they really affected one of the biggest pitcher turnarounds. I know that he was starting to show us something when he switched to relieving,

but year over year the Yankees did a lot with Luke Weaver and they're reaping the benefits. Yeah, and the thing that's also working really well for the Yankees in the early part of this series too, is just thinking about Rodin and Cole, if they keep giving them five plus shortening that list of relievers gives them an easy script to follow. I don't know if the guardians are built to knock a Garrett Cole out of this game

early. I I'm trying to come up with a, a script, a plan in my head that they're going to execute, that's going to have us talking later in the week about, wow, Garret Cole went two and two thirds and got rocked by the Guardians, what did they do? And I'm struggling to even imagine that scenario in my mind short of Cole having just no command and just getting hammered in the snow.

I was going with command. I would say, I think wait a minute. I think that this version of Cole right now is not at the best command wise. So I'd try to wait him into some deep counts, I think. That might be the secret. We'll see how it plays out on Tuesday. And of course, we'll talk about it as the week unfolds.

That is gonna do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. You can find Eno on Twitter, at EnoSaris, find me at Derek Van Riper, find the pod at Rates and Barrels. Thanks again to Brian Smith for producing this episode. We are back with you on Wednesday. Thanks for listening.