With Blake Snell's return to Cy Snell levels since coming back from the injured list, DVR, Eno and Trevor discuss how teams should game plan against him during the final two months of the season. Plus, they examine some of the biggest surprises among position players in 2024, and the recent uptick in sinker usage around the league. Plus, they discuss the White Sox's decision to part ways with manager Pedro Grifol, the possibility of MLB players in the 2028 Olympics, and more.
Rundown
1:15 Pedro Grifol Fired as White Sox Manager; Evaluating Managers on Bad Teams
7:37 Typical Player-Manager Interactions
15:00 How Will MLB Approach Baseball in the 2028 Olympics?
25:02 The Game Plan: How Do You Prepare to Face Blake Snell
42:38 Pleasant Surprises of 2024: Brenton Doyle
50:57 Tyler Fitzgerald's 8.0 fWAR Pace
54:37 Brent Rooker's Step Forward From 2023
1:01:03 What Has Led to the Uptick in Sinker Usage This Season?
1:06:20 Notable In-Season Bat Speed Increases
Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris
Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper
Follow Trevor on Twitter: @IamTrevorMay
Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels
Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris
With: Trevor May
Producer: Brian Smith
Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
With big wireless providers, what you see is never what you get. Somewhere between the store and your first month's bill, the price you thought you were paying magically skyrockets. With Mint Mobile, you'll never have to worry about gotchas ever again. When Mint Mobile says $15 a month when you purchase a three-month plan, they mean it. No hidden fees, no upcharges, how great is it that Mint Mobile is straightforward? Mint Mobile is here to rescue you with premium wireless plans starting at $15 a month. Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all of your existing contacts. To get this new customer offer and your new three-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com/rates. That's mintmobile.com/rates. Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at mintmobile.com/rates. $45 upfront payment required equivalent to $15 a month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Speed's slower above 40 GB on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. This episode is brought to you by our good friends at NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV. I'm sure by now you've all got back into your Sunday routines, but they could be even better. With NFL Sunday Ticket and YouTube TV, you get the most live NFL games all in one place every game, every Sunday, and you can even watch up to four different games at once with MultiView, one of my favorite inventions of this decade. It's exactly what you need to catch all the action. Make your Sundays more magical and also YouTube TV is great. I got it this year. It's awesome. Sign up now at youtube.com/bs device and content restrictions apply. Local and national games on YouTube TV and a fall Sunday Ticket for out-of-market games excludes digital only games. Look the rates and barrels. It's Thursday, August 8th. Derek and Ryan Breeno, Sarah's Trevor Mae here with you on this episode. We have a game plan segment. How do you hit Blake Snell? It's been very difficult since he came off the aisle, of course, through with no hitter. Two starts ago at a quality start on Wednesday night against the gnats. Just looks like a different guy now that he had earlier this year's next matchup is going to be against Atlanta next week. We'll talk about what the Braves hitters might do to try to prepare for Snell in his current state. We're going to talk about some pleasant surprises among hitters. Some guys that have had great season so far try to figure out where we're going from here. You don't notice that sinker usage is up again around the leagues. We'll talk about why that might be the case and we're going to take a look back at a new toy. We were excited about a few months ago. We have statcast bat tracking. We're going to look at bat speed risers from the first two months of the season to the second two months and see if there's anything we can pull out of that that might be meaningful. Probably more questions than answers in that part of the show but it's fun to look at those shiny new toys. Get some news as we get started today gentlemen. The White Sox have dismissed manager Pedro Griefall. I like in soccer how the manager gets sacked. I prefer that terminology. I think I want to use that going forward. It just seems like a great way to say someone was let go. But Pedro Griefall no longer the manager of this brutal White Sox team. Simple question to start Trevor. How do you evaluate a manager on any bad team? Because the outside looking in perspective I have is always they shouldn't be this bad. So perhaps there is something the manager could be doing differently. Have you been on some teams that have been less than great? So how do you evaluate a manager in those situations? A team like that going into the season and I was in a very similar situation going in 2023 where a team we knew wasn't going to be great. It was always a question like how far is the fall going to be before with the turnaround? Is that going to happen this year? And I think that's kind of what they're hoping for. Like let's see if we can get some diamonds in the rough to kind of come out and be our core guys and we can start building on top of that again. And there's a lot of responsibility. I think there's more responsibility on a manager in those situations than there is when the team is pretty good or getting close because you measure it a little bit differently. I think that we had a lot of conversations about hey we are not going to be we need to not like look at ourselves or evaluate ourselves based on you know wins and losses at this point that's just not where we're at. But it is are we better now than we were three weeks ago like our guys improving incrementally and are we developing players because we're in a situation where we have to develop players in the big leagues. And I think that's where his failure may be glaring because not only did they lose 21 games in a row and it's semi I think almost brutal to fire a guy after he finally breaks the streak and then then he gets fired. They're like oh that's over anyway you need to leave. That sucks but they've lost over 10 like four times in a row and that's a you can't stop the bleeding that's a we're not you're not that's not the philosophy get better than we were just a couple weeks ago and I'd say they're getting worse and that's not personnel wise that's you know you can you can win games in the big leagues. I'm of the opinion that the the difference in talent like the from the best to the to the worst players isn't as big as other sports. Like any guy can be the hero in a given day and a lot of comes to do like if you have really good processes you can scrape together wins even if you don't have the best talent in the world. But if you don't the best talent and you don't have that philosophy that's when you get a team that's 30 and 90. It's almost hard to do. It's like it's a that's where the I think ineptitude maybe shows a little bit more and that's you know the messaging must not have been good like you just got to call it what it is and maybe there's there's pressure there like you got to kind of act like you just don't look at the elephant in the room but when guys look at the elephant in the room and go hey this is the deal let's just try to get better every single day and if I end up not having a job at it in the day and that's but this is me doing my best in the situation. File accounts doesn't sound like that's what it was. I think it was a kind of pie in the sky. Hey we could be better than we we look like we're going to be but you have to develop. You don't have the guys with experience to do that so you got to learn how to do it and I don't think he was doing that. My general stance on managers is that they're kind of like vibes and personnel managers that they are trying to keep you know a bunch of men in the same direction but you know a lot of people think of managers as tacticians the choice of when to take the picture out or what the lineup card looks like is is most important thing that a manager does and I think that might actually be the least important thing that a manager does because a lot of those decisions are made in concert with the front office and a lot of those decisions seem really important in retrospect. Oh man that guy that you put eighth in the lineup went four for four if only you put them second they would have scored a bunch of runs yeah it's not where that works you know. Yeah by the way if had I known that I would have done it too right. Yeah right and it's the same thing it's like oh you took that guy out too early oh but did I take the other guy out too late you know like you know it's like you know there's there's there's it's a lot of the ipso facto like sort of backwards looking oh the manager and the idiot because he didn't do these things that were obvious now but weren't obvious at the time but when I say that I don't I'm not trying to denigrate how important a manager is because vibes and process and personnel are super important they're just not something we see as much and so my input you know my best way of seeing this is like I see a marcadze and I see the A's and I see them a lot and I see david force saying we do a lot of player development at a major league level I see marcadze answering questions in the scrum saying you know we've asked Lawrence Butler to make him a little adjustment with his head and and and to kind of keep his head more still in his swings and we're why and we're asking him to to make better swing decisions so that's what he's working on we've asked zageloff now to make a to make a big change to the way he swings the bat and he's telling the media this to give the kids a little grace right so he's saying yeah zageloff is hitting 196 but we've asked him to do something it's really hard to do he's trying to change the way he swings a little bit so give him a little time and if he does come out of that then you can say well you know little self-servingly you know marcadze had an adjustment for him was just talking about him last week and now look at him he's hitting 300 in the last couple weeks but yes that's what you're talking about is like you know getting better it seems to me that marcadze has put in to place some processes in terms of what we expect to see out of you we expect to see better swing decisions we expect to see damage at the plate whatever it is certain metrics they care about certain processes they care about and they're in place and the team knows about it he transmits that belief he tells them that but at what question i have for you Trevor is what is your interaction and i and keep it general it doesn't have to be with marc or you know any specific guy but what is the average player's interaction with the manager my impression is not much it's a two prong approach right cott's say is a very i'll just use him as example he's a good example um he's a very he's a younger guy he it's not that long since he played his doors open like he's a very approachable guy he he wants to be approachable that's very much on purpose which i greatly respect the vibe i got was maybe a little bit of an experience in terms of that vibe stuff like as a player what like what kind of things can you like what do how much does the players want the manager to be involved with that that's a way crazy wide ranging thing like buck show altar was completely different than like rocko ball deli rock was pretty so laid back just listen to the fish in his office but it's open the door is open but like he's not out here raw wrong or like hanging out in guys lockers that much buck was way more so it's like they want to show their personalities off they want to meet you at a human level and those guys are the best in my opinion but then there's players that like seek out hanging out with their manager a lot like going and sitting there and like talking about the game and just like hanging out late longer after the game and like you know having dinner and like the manager there'll be the last couple guys there like set browns one of those guys he's always he he would he likes to sit and and shoot the breeze with this manager right and i'd say like's doing that stuff i'm uh getting get out like i'm just that's not the way i am but when it came to talking ball like we we i was comfortable knocking on his door and be like hey skip i got something to had a request to make i remember going in there and be like hey when i came off the aisle for the anxiety being like hey if i could get like one outing in low leverage or like no leverage just one before we get into this thing because i understand the nature of our bullpen and where we're at right now he's like absolutely in that first outing i just it was a situation where it was kind of leverage and it weighs like every kind this is the least leverage it was that or you're gonna sit out there for a few days i was like you know what i appreciate that but he was clear about it and that that was good so at the end of the day i think just being approachable is the number one thing you can have um and be as honest as you can and when you can't be like i can't give you a bunch of detail because of the nature of this business just say that and that's enough and i think he's he's learning that really quickly i'll be honest there was times where i was like i could i didn't know what was i didn't know what was a mark cotsay decision and what wasn't that gets frustrating a little bit you don't know who to like if you don't agree with something and you don't know where it's coming from like it's hard to not be mad at everybody so a good manager is one that can is approachable can alter his approach to fit a little bit what the player wants and then i think the one thing that i get from melvin a lot is just super honest super like you know just be like you know i'm taking accountability i'm not trying to be like oh this was the pitching coach's decision so yell at him i take accountability it was a decision the coaching staff but you know you can still sort of suddenly be like you know that was a full coaching staff decision or was my decision you know so you can kind of you can kind of read between the lines and understand sort of see the organization see the organization fault lines because that's what they're that's what they're representing right that's a great way to put at the organizational fault lines and if everyone's willing to take accountability and overlap those things and take a little brunt from other people i think that works the best and i want to be very clear players can clock coaches that like kind of shrug off blame a little bit oh yeah that was the pitching coach's choice that was emo the first thing you're told by every big leader when you get up there is be accountable so like we have to be accountable we get really sensitive when it seems like people aren't that's why there's so much vitriol for that sometimes because it's like we can't fathom not being accountable for everything you do especially the longer you've been around and that's just the where but the nature of the manager is that he's sort of at the middle of the front office and the coaching staff and the players so he'll he will be broadcasting a decision that will be a front office decision or like you know he will be broadcasting a decision that came from his coaching staff and he can tell you most of the time specifically what it was or he shouldn't because it would have caused more problems than it actually right but he yeah so it's really it's a difficult job it's a dance it's a difficult job i mean you're you it's you want to broadcast honesty and accountability but there there are different ways to do it and mark that uniquely he's got other things going on that there's no other manager has to deal with in terms of front office decisions and stuff yeah because then there's that dance between the ownership and the front office which also might be a little muddy so it's like he can't tell what's you know like he's also doing the same thing we're doing with him and but it looks like especially from last year this year it looks like that stuff is he's getting figuring it out a little bit like okay it's the best way to do this and make sure players feel like they're seeing and heard and they know what they need and what they feel like they're it looks like to me like they're getting much more on the same page but that's what happens when you have you give guys a few years to get it going because it's a unique situation so yeah and maybe petro just wasn't given enough time but at the same time yeah and maybe there's some unique challenges there with ownership as well and and and so on but i haven't heard great stuff and we're gonna we're gonna hear more soon i think but you know i haven't heard great stuff about the processes there like in terms of you know uh the numbers the players are seeing the preparation the players are getting and that was part of the reason he was supposed to be there to improve those processes what i'm curious to see greaty size more is going to be the interim manager you know anything changes if this team just looks a little bit better in the final two months maybe there's a chance that the interim tag gets removed and they actually keep greaty around i mean they just the white Sox processes are so so steeped in loyalty that ordinarily it's said they have to go outside the organization they have to start over with all these things i don't think they necessarily have to do that because of all their past behaviors but yeah changes are slowly taking shape i did see a funny tweet about like what would be the most ridiculous hire for them would it be buck shawaltor or joe madden and i don't i don't think that's the direction they're going they're they're they're gonna try and do something like you maybe have it like ollie marmal in in in st louis where they take somebody who's within the organization understands the organizational values and can grow into the job i mean that was i think part of the idea with peduro that's what it seemed like at the time they hired him and i think it just because it was a change from tony la rusa i thought this has to be better and unfortunately it didn't work out that way but one more question for you guys before we get into the the meat of today's show the game plan against blake snell i've been riveted by the olympics in the brief moments when i've been able to focus on them 2028 the olympics are going to be in los angeles baseballs back will major league baseball find a way to let its players compete in the 2028 olympics with the logistical tweaks of maybe moving up the start of spring training you know breaking down the schedule having a gap around the time the games be played what do you think the biggest hurdles are actually going to be Trevor for this to happen because it sounds like some of the superstars of the game want to be a part of this for years from now and i would think from just sort of a global marketing opportunity there would be a lot of interest within the group of owners to make this happen because you would be getting baseball in front of a lot of people who don't get to see it very often if they even get to see it at all it would be huge for growing the game which seems to be an initiative for the mob in a big way which i am a huge fan of i think they're doing a good job i heard recently that there are rumblings of playing at the bristle speedway putting a game in the middle of wherever i don't know where you put it but like if you get 120 000 people into a thing and i don't know how it works but it's cool it's just like outside the box thinking i like that the olympics are one of the coolest things that i think humankind does i i think it's like andi anderson the the really the famous uh skateboarder who who's completed yeah miss had a comment to tony hawk recently that really hit me hard and he said uh there's only a few reasons the world gets together and it's like the un uh war and the olympics wow and only one of those is positive most of them and he's the older skateboarder that is skateboarding in these olympics against these like 14 year olds yeah and he's like he's a really unique guy but uh that was one of the like that makes it seem so much crazier and then we also know how what the players said especially last year with the emotional attachment i felt like we felt like we had more emotional attachment at least in the public eye of the wbc players and the guys they're like i'm so excited to play for my team so if they can pull it off they should end it's in the united states like i feel like that's the plan it's aligning you gotta try to get it done now it depends because obviously they do like they do like sections of events in the in the olympics where like people from people go they compete for 10 days and they leave and then more events start or whatever there's like gymnastics was before track and field and so they kind of most of gymnastics is gone yeah yeah gymnastics is over and like the rugby team's been home for a week now like so like they would have to figure out what point of time because it's the middle of summer but then it would they could just do an extended i don't know if you can play mlb games during the olympics and that's the interesting thing like do you want teams playing without their best players at all like in the season because it matters and then there's the injury concerns but at the same time like in my opinion if someone gets hurt because they're in the field of dreams game they run in the poor they don't see something or something like then is that any worse or better it can happen at any time really yeah it's germi afill torres acl picking up his kids like you can't worry about injuries you just got to go play and i think that the fun of baseball should happen if they can if they can get it done they should definitely get it done especially because a lot of the best players from all the different countries are already in the united states so the travel everything would be easy getting them there in one day would be easy getting them facilities would be easy because california's full of baseball fields they're everywhere like teams could have everyone could have their own facility to work out in and it's so it just lines up really well in that like the infrastructure and stuff they need to do it but it's the timing like how much time do they need and i'm not certain what that is and whether it's a week if they could do the whole thing in a week or if they could they need two weeks to do it then now we're you know pool play with qualifying made off seasons and then only the there is no pool play you just go straight to bracket play i don't know yeah that'd be interesting to switch pool play from bracket play i like that idea the discussion with marcate in the in the scrum this week or on tuesday was the idea that it would be two weeks and then how do we fit that into schedule and if we make it the all-star game does the all-star game just not have any all-stars in it do we not have an all-star game and have a two-week all-star break which is the olympics you know so producer brian says apple also got hurt separating frozen burgers with a knife so oh yeah there was then there was clint barmus with the deer meat yeah pure peep bear banks dunked on his kid in a swimming pool and got hurt like snow i think dropped a sink on his toe or something or yeah pedestal what happens i want to shoe off towards your killies yeah i mean this stuff just happens life happens two weeks is a lot two weeks is a lot i mean you know because we do these things where we send them to so the soul games and the soul games there are only two games themselves but there's you know it's kind of like two travel days before and two travel days after it becomes basically a whole week so if they could fit it into a week i think it could really happen and then maybe the way to do that is there's a separate pool play pool play in march i mean could they could they could they had to pull that off but then the other teams have to send people to but but a lot of them would be major leaguers they would be in america anyway for march so i i think that'd be cool because you'd you'd create some of that hype at the time that wbc normally happens yeah so you have that energy in the spring it would be build it build up more anticipation for what happens in the summer and then i think you know missing an all-star game for a year isn't the end of the world you could maybe feature the futures game more that year because those guys won't necessarily be on the t like there's other ways to work around that there's probably a bunch of you can you can because there's revenue around the all-star game right you can create a whole like call it like the break mid-season break or something and it's got all kinds of interesting different kinds of baseball to consume it's not like things just go away but i think that just overall viewership-wise it would be it'd be incredible and it'd be really cool to see i don't know like uh chinese type team or like taiwan or some like like one of these teams like have some crazy you know like stud pitcher comes and just you know gets them their win every time kind of like the lily world series works i think we would get that same kind of vibe where some we we get to see some teams even that don't even get to go to the wbc yeah because you probably have to do one and done and if you do one and done you can have 16 teams if you just do the bracket play that's four games yeah yeah it's not too bad for each for the for the team that plays the most you know you have to be limited really limited in teams so like qualifiers would be important and then you could do regional qualifiers to the work travel i know that's not necessarily how they work but i can't do the math on the fly but maybe if you had if you only had uh eight teams that made it or 16 teams that made it and then you did the way they do little league here is like you if you lose you can lose once and you go into the loser's bracket so that might that might you might be able to fit in you know six to seven games do it in a week i don't know i i don't have a i'm not a schedule maker on the fly like that but uh you know for seven maybe even 10 days and you could fit it in uh that may be pretty cool i i you know i would i just hope that somebody takes it seriously and thinks about it and tries to make it happen yeah would love to see it come together we'll see of what kinds of hurdles we run into in the next a couple of years trying to iron out all the logistics to actually make it a reality that game at Bristol has been confirmed it's uh reds braves matchups gonna happen next season and they did play a college football game at that track before they put a field on the infield it was a Tennessee Virginia tech game a hundred and fifty six thousand nine hundred and ninety was the attendance largest crowd ever to watch a college football game what are you seeing you know if you're the if you've got the hundred and fifty fifth thousands best seat in the house hey you know what you're probably you're there for the atmosphere you've probably taken care of a cooler of beverages before the game started and you're not really that worried about how far away your seat is you're just having a nice timeout in the sun at Bristol that's my guess as to what the vibe is like you get the worst seat in the house for something like that think about going to a NASCAR vet what are you seeing yeah you see blurs these the cars are bigger you know oh okay so he's in last got it yeah i've been to some races i've been to uh indy car races before i've been to two different tracks the milwaukee mile which is similar to nascar's in the sense it's ovals right but then i've been to more of a road race style there's a little track up in elkhart lake wisconsin it has a bunch of sharp turns and stuff on it and there you can't see most of the track you kind of pick your spot where you're going to be so that's a totally different experience it's interesting so you if you have a good turn like you're just you're just rooting for the turn you're just like whoa look at that you know there's one yeah you can see all the different turn strategies but you don't see what they do in the straightaway is right over yeah one of the years i was there they were coming right at us down a hill into the turn you're like man i hope everything's working with breaking you know i just yeah this is going to be bad if it's not uh if it's not tuned up the way it needs to be but i actually had a lot of fun at races it's been a while it's been more than 10 years highly recommend doing it at least once just for the experience you know we love talking stats here at the athletic here's one that's super simple to remember discover automatically doubles the cashback you've earned on your credit card at the end of your first year with cashback match that means with discover you could turn 150 cashback to 300 dollars that's right you could put it towards some memorabilia you've had your eye on or treat yourself to a premium sports network you earn and discover doubles see terms at discover.com/creditcard the olympics are rolling along and the athletic podcast network has you covered the athletic women's basketball show NBA show and full-time with megalinahan are bringing you reports from france after all the big team USA basketball games and soccer matches plus check out summer of champions on the no dunks feed every night when the action in paris wraps up check it all out wherever you get your podcasts let's get to our game plan segment let's talk about how you would prepare to face Blake Snell the good version of Blake Snell which is most of the time right at the beginning of the season is really a relative outlier and there was something Trevor brought up during our meeting yesterday that i hadn't picked up on the big the big difference in terms of what's working for Blake Snell right now is off speed stuff early in counts right that's the thing he didn't have clicking earlier in the year and i went back to at the recommendation of all three of you including our producer brian smith i went back and looked at some of the the footage from the game against the Rockies on the 27th july the one where he had 30 swinging strikes it was the start rate before the no hitter he was completely filthy that day there's a sequence we're going to watch it's on the screen right here he starts with a curve ball and a change up before going three fastballs to brenton Doyle and it's just like he almost gets a swing on the on this first pitch down in the dirt gets the change up down and away and then it's just all heat fast ball up fast ball in that gets fouled off another fast ball up above the top of the zone that actually finishes off that played appearance for the strikeout and it's interesting too because if you go back that was the second time he faced Doyle in that game the first matchup he opened up with fastballs and Doyle ripped the line drive to centerfield that Elliot Ramos misplayed that actually turned into a double so all this is the same this version of Blake Snell when it's all clicking what do you do how do you begin to approach him to reduce his effectiveness against you because he's pitching like Cy Young Snell again here in the midpoint of the season i try to like look at yeah for example he's facing the Braves i try to look at Braves against fastballs up you know that you know like snells and i did a search for just lefty fastballs with as much ride as snow has and like the most sample was like six and i was like does that do they face like snow you know and i think maybe the only other guy is like mckenzie gore maybe you know so you're talking about you know primo ride from a lefty like that um you know up in the zone that you know there's there's not too many guys who who are like that so i decided i'd rather open it up and and look at guys who are just generally good at ride up in the zone and Aussie albies is good at that and Akuna is good at that and that doesn't help the Braves on this particular Monday so Marcel Azuna is somebody that i i keyed in on because Marcel Azuna is a high ball hitter and he's he's good at it so these are all of the pitches that blake snell is throwing Marcel Azuna i think they've had four at bats Marcel Azuna has a homer blake snell has a strikeout there's a a walk and then there's a a ball and play that was announced so they kind of they've they've split the difference so far as you can see with the fastball snell still wants to go above in the zone but i would i would venture that those balls that are so far up in the zone were never meant to be strikes because he i think he knows that Marcel Azuna is a high ball hitter so he doesn't really want to give him balls in the zone up there and otherwise he's filling up the bottom of the zone with slider curves and change ups and you know i would say that this is a really at least an obvious strategy and that Azuna you know could just key in on the high fastball anyway and just spit on everything down but the homer is on that changeup that's middle middle you can see it's the little spot the blue spot that's middle middle on the changeup that's the homer so Azuna did a great job of being open to something soft that didn't get down enough while waiting and looking for a high fastball and i think that's that's the challenges you know especially if you're a high ball hitter you do want to get that high fastball but he could just try to fill up the zone with you with you know curves on the on the inside backfoot corner changeups in the zone but as you can see this is a tough matchup for Blake Snow this will be the toughest matchup he has on Monday i think it's interesting okay so i have done a lot of thinking about Blake Snow and also discussed with him about what he's trying to do a lot so there's a few things you should know about Blake we talked about tunneling and like picking a tunnel and throwing off that tunnel Blake is very much one of those guys he is a tampa bei rei so you got to remember he was one of the first guys they they talked to about this he throws a very very good riding foreseem one of the best in the league i think that last one you showed with Doyle said 10 inches a drop which is like 22 inches of ride according to true media so like that's tops of the league like there's only a couple guys that are even with him regularly at all so he throws his foreseem it's up and into righties up and away to lepies it's the same spot so that's his tunnel so he throws his curve ball which is the opposite of that i go straight down off of that there was a slider off of that that ends up a little bit more into righties but he throws it off of it so like where are the he throws his breaking pitches so whether where they're spotted if they're slightly in the zone that means they tunnel off as fast but well if they're out of the zone he didn't tunnel so early in the year he wasn't throwing them off the pits do they look different and he was commanding it very well and he was also just guys weren't chasing he's dependent on chases that's when the difference between his high fastball and his low breaking ball is just easier to discern it's easier to discern they're taking his breaking ball more but when he's throwing his curve ball a little bit up earlier in counts like you said throwing one early in the strike so close to the zone where guys think about swinging at it or like oh wow that was close then now his fastball is open and he's got one of the best right fastballs that and he throws 97 so good luck so as long as he's tunneling there he's fine there's no identifying a pitch and going off it if they're tunneling that it's the stuff's too good so what you need to do with Blake Snell is look for patterns and he has them so this is when he gets in trouble this is when guys are giving him a little bit of the fits here's some pretty glaring stuff what I did was I went and just got a I have a posing pitching report and it just tells me what his usage is in each count to the different guys inside of the plate and it's pretty glaring a couple things when he is in a mid count or behind he is comfortable throwing his slider for a strike to lefties and it's changed it for a strike to righties that's what he goes to the usage of those two pitches is far and away the highest in the middle counts one's doesn't bury the change is something I've noticed it's it's a change for strikes it's a change for strikes he's trying to throw it a little bit of higher that is I throw this for strikes pitch early in the year he only had his fastball and he only had his change up that he could throw in the strike zone that is his first best pitch and his fourth best pitch and he was a two-pitch pitcher with those two pitches that's why he was getting hit like he was getting hit now he's got his curve ball back that is that the chase in the curve ball is crazy but this is why oh two to righties 61% curve balls not a single slider on the year and it's 30 it's like 33% fastball so it's 94% fastball or curve ball with two strikes to the righties to lefties it's like 45% slider 10% curve ball and the rest is fastball so he goes slider to lefties for the swing of swing and miss curve ball to righties over half of the time so if I am one of those two guys I'm like I know this he goes to a two-pitch pitcher depending on where you are in the count and if it's 60% I'm sitting curve ball with two strikes 2-0 to a righty 2-0 61% change up that's why Marcell Zuna was sitting probably sitting change in that count and saw that I'll never forget this this was in 2019 C.J. Krohn who is listed here as one of the guys who has some success against Blake Snow the way he gets ready for pitchers is this is what he looks at he looks at what are your glaring patterns I'm gonna sit on a pitch and account and he's gotten in three times so that year at that point it was like June and Blake was 100% change up 2-0 to righties so he sat 1-0 2-0 got 2-0 on and took him deep and I'm like what do you that's you got it you can't be 100% how much of that's on Bailey should Bailey be just calling something else I mean it doesn't matter if Blake Snow the two times I wonder which is what he's doing so he's showing you very clearly if you go look if I'm a hitter I'm going look if he's throwing this type of percentage that's a comfort thing he's comfortable doing that I mean he's not comfortable doing something else and his fastball is the thing he's most comfortable with so instead of guessing which north or south it is just try to pick one that you think you're confident on the 60% if you get in these counts and then know what pitches he's using mid counts more often than not and you can eliminate a pitch you can turn him into a two-pitch pitcher based on the count and I think that's when he gets in trouble when guys when his stuff isn't really elite that day maybe it's just like a little bit diminished he's a little tired he's still really good because a little tired he's not commanding as well and he starts getting guys are fighting off pitches he's staying in those patterns so they're getting more confident in making the decisions on I'm guessing one or two pitches I can get him and then you got to try to get him for a homer and that is one thing that the Braves are going to try to probably do and as soon as probably your best option because he naturally can hit his stuff a little bit better than other people's so like Austin Riley right he's going to get heaters up and he's going to get curveballs below the zone what Austin Riley needs to do is try to get him because he'll throw a slider every once in a while try to get a slider mid count because he can drop the head on that that's his best pitch to hit from him or sit on a change up in like a two-oh count like if you get one of those that's what Austin Riley's going to try to do and just style everything else off that's how they're going to approach him but he's one of those guys like if he's dialed in and he's hitting every single spot you have to sell out and just try to get him like a two run homer after a walk or something like that's your best option he's got some of the most glaring patterns and he always has though it is better this year it was worse earlier in the year and it's getting more like he's willing to take more chances but he sticks with the best stuff within that one tunnel and every single target is that up pitch so just know everything's going to look like it's up here and if he's dialed in it's going to look like it's a strike and based on what the count is if you know which two pitches he's using in that count maybe you can you can adjust your swing to get a good swing on one of the pitches guess right whatever and if he's not going really well you might you might be able to get him to throw a lot of pitches that's how you be like so and I think you know hitters don't want to be want to admit this and I think the I think one of the problems is the word guests has you know these connotations that like oh you can't see the ball and you're just guessing out there and another way you can say it is anticipation and a lot of this the swing is a you know a lot of the way I see the swing is yes yes no right and so you kind of in order to catch up to the biggest heat you do have to start you know with the pitcher you have to be yes yes yes and then what I think really helps is if you have a sort of you anticipate a certain type of pitch and you're yes yes yes and then you know off of that right so you you either hold up or you check your swing right you see it so often and I think that's the pitchers that's the hitter saying that wasn't the pitch I guessed or that wasn't the pitcher I anticipated you know that wasn't the pitch I anticipated and so I stopped my swing you know and so I think a lot of the the sort of right now with pitchers really not only optimizing their stuff but now optimizing their arsenals where I have three fast balls I have this as this I think it's more important than ever to kind of play along with the pitcher and try to anticipate something and match the right swing because you do you will might have like two or three swings in your pocket that you can use against his two or three pitches and so you have to kind of anticipate and be like well I think it's gonna be sinker and I'm gonna put my I'm gonna do my scoop swing you know and so I have to do my scoop swing here's my scoop swing yes yes yes oh no there's a four seam note try check you know and so that's the sort of you can call it guessing but guessing makes it sound sound bad that's the only thing I was gonna push back but I also Jared Kellnick is a high ball hitter you know and so you might say well he matches up well against sale but he's a lefty and so those percentages that you brought up make him make it harder for him to anticipate something you even brought up what was it two O counts or O2 counts you know where it's like oh well with lefties it's kind of 30 30 30 but with righties it's 60 30 you know so the lefty already is like crap it could be slider fastball it could be you know it could be slider fastball or curve it could be any of three pitches whereas you know the the righty can say man this two-thirds of the time it's gonna be this one pitch and anytime you see any percentage I think you said this before anytime you see a percentage past 60 percent you're opening yourself up for for hitters sitting on it those numbers are glaring in the major leagues a great example of what you just talked about by the way if anyone wants to go back and watch this I went to the Mariners game last night catcher Rogers handle the handlebar mustache the Tigers yeah Rogers got Kirby on a four seam up like three inches above the zone not a pitch he hits it was the flattest wing I've ever seen him take by far like he was and he was so excited he's like I did it like I get I did it and I got him and it was 95 wasn't the heart it wasn't his best fastball either and that was a prime example of a guy he probably won't do it again all year but he did it he was confident and the usage of the forcing fastball that day for Kirby was really high he was going up for everybody so he just took a shot and it worked out did you say it was he said it was outside the zone too it was outside the zone his way up Kirby was like what the that's interesting because I had a piece come out today where I talk about with Kirby the fact that he had to go further outside the zone he was kind of too in the zone with two strikes and when I looked at the heat maps his aggression has all been above the zone he is less in the zone but in a sort of maybe predictable way it's all like kind of above the zone so Jake Rogers you know they have advanced scouting they can say hey when he gets the two strikes now it's not really in the zone much it's it's like two or three inches above the zone so Jake Rogers like oh it's two strikes this is gonna be a fastball two or three inches above the zone you know I'm gonna put my best swing on this guy yeah it's uh just one thing you mentioned kind of at the beginning of this you know it's just they with no acuna and no albies in particular it takes a tough matchup for the Braves against Snell and makes it a lot harder right I mean like that's two very important bats that in this particular spot would have been really helpful but yeah some of the guys that it most the guys that hit him well there I mean they're all righties right Gary Sanchez has five homers against them nobody else has more el two van bragman hit him well Pete Alonzo's hit him well Janathan Daza uh Pete Alonzo's a high ball hitter Pete Alonzo's a high ball hitter there you go and a ball hitter off speed wise he can go way down there but yeah he is Pete Alonzo if you were kind of grow an opponent first like Snell in the lab who did Pete Alonzo you know somebody who's comfortable with the high fastball and the low breaking ball in you know has that ability like has the natural ability to touch the fastball and has developed over time you know a response to the kind of the back foot slider you know that's why crones can too crones really get on the back foot slider one thing that's always weird about the batter versus pitcher stats is that they they don't mean much they're not predictive because the samples are so small and they're usually stretched out over several years right I mean you see some guys a lot more if they're in your division you're both there for a long time you get those larger samples even then you're talking 30 to 40 plate appearances usually at the high end I wonder what would be the best match up so you can conceive of if we somehow had a like a simulation but like a real actual i've tend to do it where a guy has to face someone like a hundred times in a season like what what are the dream match ups of great hitter versus great pitcher that would just be absolute battles throughout do you know what uh Mike Patrick I'll tweet the other day he said that Ted Williams faced 74 pitchers in one season and that last season mooke bets faced 295 mmm that's that's a big difference yeah the game has changed that's just sort of a little side note what you're saying it's like yeah if we went back to like 1910 when like you might have actually only seen 50 pitchers all year and I who did Babe Ruth hit the most homers off of I want to know that way I bet you a ton of one guy step head search will be done momentarily let's get to some pleasant surprises it was brenton dole in that particular clip against blake snell that we looked at earlier i'm surprised that brenton dole has improved this much from year one mostly in a strikeout rate right it's a 35 k-rate when he debuted last year a small school guy it's the organization that i don't have a lot of faith in but to see him striking out 26 percent of the time this year and juicing up the barrel rate too brenton dole looks like a 30 30 guy who can play gold glove defense in center field like this is a great development for the Rockies and i'm trying to learn from my mistakes like why did i underestimate brenton dole in a way that is like a repeatable mistake or did i get torched by an outlier who's doing some extraordinary things to get this k-rate down to such a manageable level so quickly i didn't see this coming and you know i guess one thing is that like last year the 17.5 percent swing strike rate that did line up with what he'd done in the high minors you just don't expect that person to make a lot of contact uh 17.5 and higher you know in this year is um Alex Jackson um you know matt walner uh tre cabbage uh florile kyle stowers gave real area areas guys who were striking out more than 30 percent of time some of these guys striking out 40 percent of the time but another guy who doesn't strike out as much as you expect given even that high of one is his deco tovar and i do think that on some level what we're seeing is that cores can help you make the most of your your balls and play and it can even help you maybe make more contact over time because you're going to see more fastballs at home um and if you can sort of figure out how to have a fastball approach at home and a and a breaking ball approach on the road um then i think you can you can improve but i also just wonder um what's going to happen in the future because he Doyle sported 30 plus percent strikeout rates in the minors all the way along the way and there's some other guys we'll talk about here where the k-rate kind of jumped around a little bit so you can say oh maybe this is a developmental thing for Doyle it seems almost like maybe he's being a little lucky on strikeout rate which is not what numbers suggest they suggest 450 played appearances into the season that you actually know a lot about a strikeout rate um i'm saying maybe we don't maybe he's maybe this is going to come back uh to earth and it'll come back to earth when it comes to contact yeah those minor league rates and his age to level were part of the reason why i rode off the possibility of an improvement like this like sure if he shaved two or three percentage points off of what he did last year okay but that's just two percent now right that's that's kind of like where my head tends to go because that's usually more in line with what we see but what do you make a Bretton Doyle Trevor how did he make this much of an improvement from year one to year two well i'm looking at which pitch is he handling the best this year and uh last year he was a negative three run value on sinkers this year he is the plus ten um so they're where i me know we're gonna talk a little about this a little bit next but there has been a rise in secret usage it's been notorious uh this was one of the first things like what that was in the conversation about cores about sinkers are terrible there guys who are thinkers going there basically go there to die rest in peace cal Kendrick so that might be guys are adding that wrinkle going to colorado trying to throw it more and he's crushing him and he's hit he hit sliders fairly well as well but better than he did last year's well that might be the big adjustment he he's made but i think that possibly the way the thing that makes him most successful the types of pitches that he wants to see located where he wants them in the zone he's getting more now because of the way the pitching has changed and maybe uh he's just gotten to take advantage of that just a few more times that has given us that little bit of a of an adjustment but generally all pitches pretty much across the board he's down about three percent with percent so that's also what tells me that he's getting a better understanding of what he handles the best and how to spoil things that he doesn't that are in his own also and again like he would only need to do that just like every once in a while like spoil a pitch that he was missing before and then getting another one and putting it in play that would change this strikeout rate in a big big way he just fell off one more pitch that he wouldn't have felled off before slightly and then he gets to make contact that he didn't get to make and that would attribute a lot to that percentage as well but in terms of his production i think that he's just hitting the pitches that he can handle the best really really really well and that doesn't scream lucky to me that screams like an adjustment to to approach but i don't think he's ever going to be like a 15 percent strikeout guy but all he needs to be is a 25 percent strikeout guy because he's back there defensively and he can run and he just needs to get on base something that'll be true of a and something that'll be true of a lot of the other guys that we talk about and is true about dole that i like is that the defense is really good you know we've seen i there's a bit of a this is younger paul diong but you know there was a time at which paul diong and timanderson had like the worst uh bait uh walk to strikeout ratios of like all time like they were they like i made a list once where i was like you know can you have a 10 to 1 k to walk ratio and and like be a major leaguer and paul diong and timanderson at some point like we're very close to that and i was like oh so you can in today's league if you also hit for power and play defense right so you know maybe the strikeout rate we can you know we can we can disagree a little bit out where that's going but with plus defense with a modicum of of on base ability and with plus base running he's going to keep he's going to it's sort of a tent pole that keeps everything alive even while he maybe slumps with the bat and so i do think he'll continue to be irregular i don't know exactly what the strikeout rate and therefore the batting average are going to do but if you're just asking for him to hit for power steal some bases and play excellent defense and center those things i believe in and i think we've seen enough of those to believe in those and it's sort of the the younger paul diong stayed on the field for a lot of these same reasons playing great short stop doing all the things except necessarily maybe walks and strikeouts doing them really well i think it's a lot easier to improve if you're getting regular run as opposed to getting two or three starts a week i think it's just so much more difficult to problem solve big league pitching in a situation like that so that's where the value of defense and fantasy in that roundabout way always comes back if your glove buys you everyday playing time that's a great thing projections not surprisingly basically split the difference between last year's k-rate and the current one so that's where i think most people are going to try and value doyl going into 2025 i might depending on how aggressively people are drafting him i might actually be more in than out even if the significantly increased price by the way you asked earlier who uh who to be a bruce homer the most off of stat head says rube walberg 17 career home runs off of rube rubber total rube you got 14 off of hook's doss also what what a great name names were just better like they were just better everyone went by nicknames to like rubes shoot short for rubin i'm sure and hook i have no idea probably just like william henry just gets to be hooked for some reason because off-season was a great fisherman or something i have no idea there's usually a story yes that's probably exactly what it is something's gonna look at a milli yes correct let's talk about tyler if it's Gerald for a minute on an eight war pace through 53 games now it's like 36 homers and 21 steals strike our eight flirts with 30 percent i don't want to make the same stupid mistake i just made with rent and oil this year with tyler fits gerald this season right that's totally possible what is happening here is he unlocked something that makes him a kind of a key core piece for a giants team that's been looking for an answer at shortstop yeah you know i'm close to this one and been watching him for a while and you know he's athletic for sure and i don't and i'm not suggesting these all tools and and without baseball IQ but he's been also moved all over so he was centerfield and third base and shortstop and some of that's the giants philosophy of just making people play all over the place but some of that for me was that i didn't think he was a natural shortstop and i also know that the giants pretty much are desperate for a shortstop so i'm not sure that he has the exact same sort of defensive acumen that i'm going to ascribe to dole and another thing that dole has that fits Gerald doesn't have his top and exit velocities that match his barrel rates so right now you've got tyler fits Gerald supporting a 13 percent barrel rate which is excellent and that supports you know his crazy home run barrage and it is it's a good number but then you pair that with a 107 max cv even if you go down to the minors one oh nine five i mean that's brison stott territory and if you just you know whatever you think of brison stott's pure power you know put that up against tyler fits Gerald's 20 home runs in 250 played appearances across triple a in the majors this year and so there's a bit of a disconnect between his raw power and his game power maybe he's just a guy who gets to his game power really well maybe he has good game plans i do respect heavily the giants approach to uh you know game day preparation you know their tech is is is bar none basically and so you know they're they're hitting off the trigect and so on so forth so i think you know maybe there's uh gonna be some disconnecting game power and raw power but that's the thing that i think is most interesting yes he's also going to strike out a lot but if he is going to hit 25 homers a year then you know he's a little bit more viable as a shortstop that may only have a 300 obp and may not be the very best defensive shortstop but he does he has 25 homers and you know 15 20 steals and looks generally fine out there and will play shortstop for them for three or four years that that's a that's an outcome i can get to but the the the question for me is the power which is weird to say about a guy who just hit a ton of homers but i i think you know there's still you know guys can hit a bunch of homers in a short stretch and then go again go you know go quiet for a while he is nice and pull happy though so as far as getting the less than ideal raw power to play up a bit more that's the best place to go in st. francisco too for sure that's definitely going to help 99th percentile in sprint speeds to do so a burner that if the power were to tip like to slip a little bit you know maybe you come back and add some bags too so i think a lot of ways for him to be really good from a fantasy perspective but yeah nice pop-up guy i mean at 26 to define this is a nice surprise for the giants. Trevor do you have anybody that's going to caught your eye that you know has just stepped forward in an unexpected way this year there's plenty of candidates out there i mean josh smith for the rangers the popular one but who's really caught your eye this year and surprised you. josh smith's a good one um i don't want to say surprise per se though there is a little bit of surprise because it was a kind of a repeat and a build-on of from last year after the beginning of their career brett roger but i've had lots of conversations with rook about approach like this is all stuff that he is very interested in he's we we i see a lot of parallels between us and just where our interests lie and how to make decisions and how to be prepared i mean he's a really smart dude but the one thing that's so impressive is that he has he's better now that he was last year for his all-star campaign in my opinion and he's like a top maybe eight production hitter overall in the major leagues and nobody nobody's really taught and he's been there for a while he's been there all year and he was there for most of last year so to have a mid 900s ops for this long in that stadium is rare hard to do and they still not have guys that do that regularly or ever i'm picking like jason jambi like this is that type of production so he's it's been very impressive and it's sustainable in my opinion because he is he's increased his walk rate reduced his strike at rate year over year his hard hit rate has stayed the same or gotten better he has improved his run values against the pitches that he's notoriously struggled against to the point where they're not quite liabilities as much anymore they're not he's not great at hitting them but they're not liabilities like he's taking away holes or at least confidence pitchers throw them there so he's doing a lot of things that i think are sustainable and then he's a you know he's a he's an older guy later bloomer and it's just awesome to see him get these opportunities but i think that he he would hit in the middle of most lineups he might have to hit fourth for the Yankees but everywhere else he's like in terms of just general production like he's up there with like Bobby Witt and Gunnar Henderson like in overall like yeah he doesn't run like them i get that he's not defensive like them but hitting he's up there with the guys we're talking about for MVP so doing this for two years is very very hard a lot of guys do flash in the pan for one year and then they come back down to earth he is not and especially with the production protection he's had in that line at the whole time it's even more impressive brother he does remind me of you he's he's very curious you know last time i was in the clubhouse so two times two times ago i was in the clubhouse and he stumped me with two questions about stack cast stats that i was like i don't know what that is and i had to go and do some research and come back to him to answer his question i mean one one we both agreed was maybe not super valuable but the adjusted exit velocity on on stack cast he was like what is this and we're looking at it it says average of 88 and we're just like what's this 88 what is going on here and we thought maybe the 88 was the pitch the pitch velocity coming in it was like adjusted for pitch velocity i talked to my petriello and it's basically takes every eggs of velocity over 88 and averages it so that you remove the noise of all the sort of squib hits and the you know the useless 50 mile an hour 40 mile an hour whatever those like those those apparently those bad balls to have less signal on them they they don't mean much they just mean you you've made bad sway it was a check swing whatever was it wasn't it wasn't a real swing so once you get to 88 and over you start to get a little more signal and you get to you know what when i was talking about bad speed he's like yeah i called up the guys at drive line and and talking about bad speed for a while so like you know he's he's one he's very inquisitive he wants to know how to make the most and i think you know on some level he has to be because he has to make the most of of of of a less less time in the big leagues you know just because of you know the way that his his career on rammed so you know you know and i think that's maybe true for Trevor too it's like you know when you when you see your your your career span and you're like i only have this many years you know one more year could mean you know seven 10 million more you know you're gonna you should be inquisitive like that that's why sometimes i want to shake it you know the young guys that are like oh i don't look at that stuff you're like dude like you don't have that long to make this money like you have a very short careers i am certain that they're gonna stick literally i think it's number one number one tool for me if i meet a guy and he's super curious about why everything oh why does that happen oh why is he throwing that to me why is it if you are really good at asking why you make adjustments faster than other people and the longer you do it the faster you get and before you know you're maximizing your own time and then you just hit a ceiling where you know you're not physically good enough that's one thing i am happy with my career especially at the end i was like i think that i maximized my stuff time i had my life last year this is what i have and this is as good as i could be doing and i have more time i think overall it'll look better but like i am i am doing the best version of myself right now and that is the bull and then you get kind of bored and i think the rooker is also a really great influence you know tommy fans like this i've always you know liked him for that rookers like that and both of them sort of proselytize a little bit so like you know they'll just be you know they're just hanging out on the couches it's not like he's sitting there being like oh and you shall read this and do this but he's like you know rookers the the guy in the clubhouse you know and so there's a bunch of couches right around him and gelloff and and butler are always hanging out there and you know a lot of times i've i've gotten in the middle of the conversation where we're talking about is the ball juiced or you know how important is bat speed i'll start a conversation and gelloff will chime in and and rookers leave in the conversation because he's encouraged he's asking me questions you know and so that's a really fun when you have a dynamic like that that's good and that's why i do believe in gelloff you know you know fixing things because you know i think that rookers gonna you know shine off them all right so there's something we stumbled into when we were looking at rooker during our meeting this week and he destroys sinkers and this came up with doil now too where if the league is making this broader adjustment sinker usage ticks up around the league like it has this season some players end up just being in a situation where they see something they can crush a bit more often and that seems to make a pretty big difference when that's maybe the best pitch that you hit so what has led to the slight uptick the resurgence in sinker usage this season you know i mean i i think mostly it's uh the fact that the less you use a pitch the more it surprises people and the more it starts to do well and so if you look at sort of the history of how well banners have done against the sinker you know i think in you know the 2008 2009 people were pounding the sinker because there was a still a little bit of the vestige of i'm an established loan away with the sinker and then you know over the next few years you have the rise of the foreseamer and as the foreseamer goes becomes more prevalent and the sinker since 2008 we're just using it less and less and less and less and less you start to see the one sinkers the sinkers that left are a good sinkers and so you're not throwing any mediocre sinkers and b the people who are throwing sinkers are surprising people with it so in 2022 it really hit a bottom point in terms of production battle production against the sinker and i think that you know pitching coaches were like geez you know if it's going to return that kind of return on my investment in terms of i throw the sinker i get a 340 wall bar on average that's a lot different than when it used to do a 370 wall bar you know i'm cool with this let's throw some sinkers and then on top of that just what we've all been talking on this show and i've written about and you know the diversification of your portfolio there is throwing your best pitches the most often but then there is also hey i have three fastballs so i can throw a sinker to righty a cutter to to lefties and the foreseamer at any time and then as a batter you're like crap you know i put my foreseam swing and i got a cutter and i just pounded into the ground where i put my foreseam swing on it i got a sinker pounded the ground where i put my sinker swing on the foreseam and then i i i i hit a pop up you know so you know matching your swing plane to the fastball that you're trying to time to is a lot harder if you have multiple fastballs so i think this sinker usage is not necessarily a lot of people upping you know not a lot of sinker dominant people being like i'm going to throw the sinker more often because we know that fastball usage across baseball is going down it's more people adding a sinker you know and starting to throw sinkers it's like the tyler glass now situation tyler glass now dominant foreseam curveball slider he starts throwing a sinker so that batters who were trying to key especially righty batters who were trying to key in on the foreseam oh crap that ball just had seven inches more run towards me than i expected so you've put the foreseam swing on the sinker it's seven inches closer to your handle than you expect and so it's playing with the different pitches and what you'll see you know i just did a quick search in terms of being superlative against both sinkers and foreseams you'll see guys actually prefer one or the other in terms of being superlative against both sinkers and foreseamers i'm going to say just a relative is a five run value or higher you only have one soto bobby wit jr. erin judge shoyo tani the best in the game brent rooker who's still a little bit more towards the sinker le de la cruz and then it you really not too many cda brooms brian Reynolds couch warber and that's pretty much the end of the list those are all the guys who are superlative against both sinkers and foreseams and a lot of times it just causes you to be better you have a swing that aligns better with one of those with one of those fastballs and you just try to avoid the other one to be able to do both says you have you have an adjustable bat you can hit the ball hard you can time to the fastball and you have a foreseam and a sinker swing swim sinker swing so you can do you can do something against both didn't sound right yeah i think the interesting thing too is i think back to the beginning of that chart like oh eight oh nine twenty ten i think of guys like justin masterson who were out there just trying to throw heavy heavy sinkers trying to get guys to pound the ball in the ground repeatedly that's just pretty much gone there are very few guys that try and pitch that way and now it's just not the not the way it works most people have a scoop swing and i think you know what we've had is you had the scoop swing then you started adding the flat swing you know for the foreseam and then as people were like oh i have a flat swing you know now you're bringing the sinker back to be like oh do you also have a scoop swing you know and it's kind of hard to have both let's connect the dots with the very last thing for today uh bat speed changes in season we're looking for notable changes this is a really odd thing to be looking at because we don't have past seasons we just have the current season so we tried to slice it in half and you know put together a board of bat speed risers i was wondering if gavin lux would appear on the list because he is swinging the bat a little bit harder but nope he's not among the top 15 just off he's like he's like 23rd or something so he's he's among these guys he's just not having to be in the top 15 yeah so i look at some results for these players the thing that i saw pretty consistently for anybody that was in this group adding you know a mile and a half per hour to their average swing speed from the first two months to the last two months k-rates were down wrc pluses were up like the only exception i think i saw was brison stott it's not surprising and yet brison stott yesterday just hit the hardest hit ball of his career now it was 109 nine which is not necessarily impressive but it was the hardest hit ball of his career and i think you know i i did the same thing where it's not obviously batting averages aren't up for all these guys and you know it's a lot of slugging a lot of slugging is up for these guys and what you'll see is top-end exavilos exavilos like you know uh for nolan arnato who you know this is this is a huge swing for him and really important for him because he was really flagging on the bat speed for him to add 2.4 and then you look at the results numbers you might say well these aren't that great before and after what is better is the slugging percentage in the exavilosities and when you have a hard hit rate that jumps by like 10 percentage points it may not turn into results right away but i do think that this is good news for most of the people on this list i i can't imagine um that i would say this is bad news for these guys even if maybe the batting averages down in the sample i mean lee's capisano makes tons of contact if he pairs tons of contact with better contact with like better exavilosities on that contact then it doesn't matter how much he walks you know what i mean then he can just be a guy who hits 20 homers and hits 260 and has like a 310 OVP that's a great outcome for a catcher and then jaren duran who's just a you know an exciting blossoming young player for him to add this component of elite bat speed to the the foot speed that he has to all the entire package he has you know on this list if there is a future MVP that that isn't obvious like a yordan alverez could be a future MVP i think jaren duran is is another name on this list that somebody could be an MVP yeah he's one of those guys that where he was drafted he's been an exceptional value he's been almost like a first round fantasy guy that went in the 12th round of drafts this year and increasing bat speeds a great sign to see from him forever one thing we we did when when exit vilo became kind of a new thing we could all see was we wondered if looking at lysocal rolling chart would give us some insight as to players who might just be hurt right i think that's something you know presented at first pitch arizona conference a long time back where you'd see this dip and say okay what was going on there maybe you get a chance to talk to the player yep hurt my shoulder got hit by a pitch you'd find some things that kind of explained the fluctuations what types of explanations could there be for bat speeds maybe rising and falling over the course of the year because my suspicion is if we look at something like this mapped out on a rolling graph once we have those available we're going to see some ebbs and flows but like what would cause those changes to happen that are kind of normal baseball things injuries are one big time especially like oh but we don't think about how getting jam can affect you can bruise your palm or something they're dealing with stuff like that constantly and so you're a little more tentative that'll that'll just kill your bat speed and then inversely it might go up because you're most most confident with your you found something and now you're swinging with gusto at that pitch mechanics like a mechanical thing even right be a mechanical thing it could be any of those things and the interesting thing for me is going to be uh i think the highest value is going to be seeing that rolling seeing the rolling average especially when they get swings swing speed stats for like every game game over the game and you're able to see trends and then map it to what you're feeling and map it to the types of things they're having on the game on the field and maybe you're looking for something like why am i mishitting everything and then you could start with okay bat speeds now one of the one of the places you can calibrate your compass with to point you in the right direction so i think that's going to be the biggest value and then pitchers conversely are going to also see things like this and be like maybe there's something going on here slower bat speed maybe me see susceptible to fastballs i'll be looking into that the crazy thing for me too to remember um and i just really want to touch on airnano really quickly it's increased bat speed and he's been publicly said i'm trying to increase it as soon as that came out as a stat it's not surprising at all he's like oh interesting i don't want to be below average i want to be above average what that does is his swing is getting a little bit bigger now where his barrel ad is in time is different than he is naturally used to it that's what's happening now i think he's got the swing speed down he's got it good he's feeling good about how quickly he's able to get the bat there and now he's like when do i started to get my barrel in position to hit the ball over the fence and that's what he's struggling with he's miss hitting balls that he wasn't used to miss hitting he looks really frustrated about it because he loves hitting this guy but i would say if i'm a cardinals fan this is really encouraging because there's a chance in the next two two to four weeks that he just goes off right and this is this is better the beginning of the season when he said i hate my swing i've lost my swing he's also swinging sixty eight miles an hour you know so there's nothing to hold on to at least here he'd be like okay he's got some speed back maybe he can get the timing back yeah the thing that's interesting too if you look at where Aronato's hitting his home runs this year they're not as tightly clustered to left there's a few that are more like center close to center at least so that would kind of be that that visual proof like hey the timing is different right now he's still looking for that but just having more bat speed it makes you think there is something still left in the tank where he's back in april in may we were wondering if it was the beginning of the end for a great player and maybe a quicker decline than we had previously expected so nice to see him turning things around he's in another inquisitive guy that like studies swings and and cares a lot and you know so i'm not too surprised to see another act but i i do wonder how it uh how it goes from here we are going to go very long episode today if you'd like a subscription the athletic can get one for two dollars a month at the athletic dot com slash rates and barrels you can find us on twitter Trevor is at i am Trevor may you know is that you know seris i am at derrick van ryan for the pod is at rates and barrels shout out to our producer ryan smith for putting this episode together that is going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels we're back with you on friday thanks for listening [BLANK_AUDIO]
