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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 FL Sunday Ticket for out-of-market games excludes digital-only games. Welcome to Raids and Barrels. It's Thursday, August 1st, nice clean new month, Derek and Ryberg Trevor, man. Enosair is all here with the special shout out to the Live Hive watching us on YouTube. On this episode, we are digging into the best pitching staffs in baseball. We've got an eye toward the post-season, trying to figure out which teams will be the most dangerous if their current groups of pitchers are healthy and if they are playing in October. We're going to take a look at the worst pitches of 2024 so far. Good news, two months left. You could still be a winner in this category by the end of the season, but there are some current frontrunners that look like they may have it locked up, at least with a few different pitches. We'll dig into why. Got a couple of great mailbag questions. We'll take some live questions along the way today as well. Trevor, how's it going for you coming out of this trade deadline? I just had a fried brain for an entire day yesterday a little bit. I got to be honest. It was I did not know that it was going to be like this, but it's a lot of fun. I mean, it's just man. There's a lot you can say about it. But overall, doing all right, I'm just trying to wrap my head around the fact that you just said it's August. My wife's baby, my wife's baby. My baby's due next month, which is diamond that moment. I'm going to be doing more of the work on that day. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, a lot going on, a lot going on, but it's good. Everything's good. Life comes at you fast. How are you doing today? It does. It is weird as a member of the media, huh? It's a big day. It's on the radio. I'm sure you were on a couple of different places, and you got to do stuff yourself. You got to tweet. You got to write. You just got to do a bunch of stuff. And yeah, at the end of it, I was just like, ah, like I need to just get a beer and sit down and watch a game. That's just get back into relaxed mode for you for a second. Yeah. Our stream on Tuesday was riddled with some hiccups on the output. So that was extra stressful that made the edit of the episode extra stressful. It felt like we had a week in the first two days of the week. So hopefully everything is rolling smoothly for us today. But we begin today's show ranking the best pitching staffs in baseball. He's making an attempt to. There's a lot of ways to go about this. You could take a look at a projected war leaderboard, or you could look at something like stuff plus, which we tend to do a lot on this show because I think this opens up more dialogue. War has a lot of teams you'd expect to be there, right? Look at that leaderboard. It's the Phillies, the twins, the Dodgers, the Mariners, Braves, Orioles. They're all in there among the contending teams. We pulled out some of the teams that are below 10 percent for playoff odds for the purposes of this conversation because they are very unlikely to rally back and make the postseason. If it happens, of course, we will talk about those rotations at the appropriate time. But you know, you put together a massive leaderboard here. I am stunned that the Red Sox are number one in stuff plus as a rotation. You could have given me 10 guesses as the Whitt team was in that top spot. And I would not have used any of those 10 guesses on the Red Sox. Yeah, I snuck in your war projection with the depth chart rank, basically. That's their what their overall rank is on fan graphs. But this is the top three starting pitchers for each playoff bound playoff contending team. And what their stuff plus is the Red Sox are killing the fastball and maybe rightfully so because later in today's show, we're going to be talking about the worst pitches in baseball. There was one way in which I sorted the worst pitches in baseball. And it was all fastballs. And so the Red Sox have seen stuff like that results on fastballs, results on consecutive fastballs, results on fastballs, third time through the order, all sorts of different results on fastballs. And they have cut their fastball usage more than any other team in baseball down to depths we've never seen before. That also helps your stuff plus because your slider has a better stuff plus than your fastball most likely. And what we're seeing there is a kind of modern pitching at its finest. The reason their ERA isn't projected so amazingly is that's a tough park. And you had that a little bit with the Yankees too. Those are two teams that I think if you just focus on projected ERA, you would miss the fact that they have really good starting pitchers. They have a really good playoff starting pitching situation. Just look at the stuff plus for the Giants and how that links up to such a different number when it comes to ERA. So, you know, I think this passes the sniff test mostly. One of the big surprises for me is down at the bottom. The twins have, you know, by the depth chart, you know, the second best rotation in baseball by ERA, only an okay number by stuff plus a number that fits between the cardinals and Mets and royals. That's not, you know, Cardinals Mets, that's passes the sniff test. The twins get there on location. They have the best command among all of the different rotations. But if you think about all of their top three guys, they have home run issues. Maybe, maybe not Pablo Lopez so much. But, you know, you're talking about Ober and Ryan, they've had home run issues. So, I think that's just a really interesting result that you have the twins near the bottom despite, I don't think if you were doing just sort of a blink assessment, if you were, if I just asked you off the top of your head, would you put the twins in the bottom of the sort of playoff eligible teams? I'm sort of a question for you guys. But Trevor, you're kind of a twins homer. Yeah, I mean, you could say that. Being towards the bottom is a little bit interesting. I would have, if you would have been like guests, I would have said probably middle of the road. But, you know, it doesn't surprise me that the stuff plus isn't crazy high for those top three guys, you know, even, even Pablo Lopez, who is the ace is at times kind of a couple of his pitches are kind of just average, like he's forcing fastball, for example, is just kind of an average fastball, more it's more on the dead zone than not. And he has to use the other stuff off of it. And then Joe Ryan and Bailey Ober have ride, but they don't throw overly hard and they don't have like high swing and miss on that forcing either. So like having to depend solely on other pitches, you know, we know we just talked about the Red Sox, but like that makes the command so important and that's why they focus so heavily on it. So it's like an example of like they know, they know they don't have that power arm at the front of the rotation. And they use their stuff. They're just really, really efficient and really optimized. And that's why they keep getting guys coming up that are super optimized. So it's not super surprising for me. But that's an issue when you get to the playoffs, because some of that stuff goes out of the window, your sample sizes are just smaller by their nature. And so we see this happening constantly where you have three solid pitchers going out there, and then two of them have slightly worse days than they've had all year or worse than average. And then you lose the series and it's over. So the problem is you got to have a, I think you need a number one guy who can take over a game and then use the momentum and the pressure of a playoff series to enhance their stuff. I think that's always going to be what you're looking for at least one guy that the game one guy that just goes the Madison bum gardener guy. Yeah, Madison, I grew up in Atlanta and you know, we had, we had Glavin, we had Maddox, we had Smolz. I always liked Smolz so much, especially in the postseason, because he was the fire breathing monster. He was the guy that could get that extra tick of miles per hour and become more dominant. Whereas, you know, Glavin and Smolz were kind of relied more on carving people up, relied more on the umpire. What if you got the right umpire, we saw Glavin with Eric Greg, I think it was, you know, that was a crazy game. Glavin versus live on Hernandez with Eric Greg, giving them like a foot outside the zone. But, you know, but at the same time, like Smolz didn't depend on anybody. You know, he was the guy who was just going to throw nasty stuff in the zone and, and dominate. That's your kind of, your kind of playoff monster, I think. But I do think, you know, it is interesting to see the Red Sox so far near the top because, I don't know, I guess as Pavetta, they're playoff, like who's their, who's their ace? Like, they almost seem to be like a similar team where it's like, you have three pretty good guys, I guess. But, you know, to see them up there is a little bit surprising. The Giants have been made fun of for saying they had the best rotation in baseball, but they're not far off. In terms of ERA projection, they're second to the Dodgers. In terms of stuff, they're third. You know, you going out there with web, web, snell and Ray, that's pretty nasty actually. So, I think they're getting too much hate for putting it that way. But, you know, I do think that this does represent a little bit of a problem when it comes to the Cardinals, the Mets, the Brewers are near the bottom, the Guardians are near the bottom, Diamondbacks are near the bottom. I don't know that I would say this immediately makes them underdogs in any postseason series, but that is my tendency to think that way. Yeah, yeah, this is a good point. Yeah. Uncle Ted in the Live5, Rangers didn't have an ace last year, and they won. It happens. It just puts pressure on the rest of your team, right? Like, it's just your bullpen needs to be great, and your and your and your offense needs to be great. With the Rangers, the offense was great, and the bullpen was just good enough. That bullpen, that bullpen was not like the traditional fire-breathing, great bullpen. You look at and say, okay, fine, starter went for and changed, starter went five, no problem. It was bumpy. And Jordan Montgomery, as Steven points out, jumped in and pitched kind of like an ace in October, even by results, even though it wasn't necessarily overpowering electric stuff, right? He had that kind of run for them. He did it, but would anyone have predicted that he was going to do it? No, he'd never better again. It's just one of those things like, again, Bayley over could just go and be just absolutely lights out in the playoffs. And then we're just like, oh, well, then we just didn't anticipate that happening because that's just not necessarily what he does. All of them, he's had moments, like he's done that. So it's all about timing too. But you want the guys you can count on that do that more often, the Garrett Coles of the world, the, you know, the Justin Verlanders, the, I mean, and they had he evolved. It's not like they didn't have a guy where the guys will step in the box. Like it's 96, 97, the guy throw seven pitches. Like I have to, you know, it's not like everyone was throwing 91 and just dotting the edges, right? They had a guy that could take over a game. He didn't, not necessarily, he threw well, he threw fine, but like, he could. He's a guy that could be that guy on any given day. And you, you at least want a guy who could be that guy on any given day. Yeah, I know a lot of people have been disappointed about what Pablo Lopez did for most of the first half of this season relative to what it took to get him back during draft season. There's a question here from Steven over Ryan, Pablo Lopez, all have good changeups and splitters, which, you know, could maybe hurt that stuff great a little bit because it's interesting if you compare that stuff number to something like the K minus BB percentage of the starter so far. The twins lead the league in that again. I think they let it last year or they were right there and at the top of that leaderboard. So there is something in house stuff is spitting out a number that is a little bit misaligned with what the twins are doing. Yeah, at the same time, you know, as they are great in K minus BB, you know, they are also great in home run. Yeah, they're they're they're pretty bad. There's six six worst. Yeah, that's their flaw. I think that they kind of fill up the zone and have good command. Some of the stuff that comes up with changeups and splitters is that like a guy comes up and he pitches two games and then everyone says, why is a splitter grade bad? He looks good and I have to tell people it takes longer. But once you have as much sample as you do with these guys, you know, chain of grades is here's another way of saying it. We're doing bad pitches later. And you know, one of the things I was looking at was who throws a bad pitch a lot by stuff plus. And I didn't find a single splitter that someone threw 15% of the time that had worse than an 80 stuff plus. There are other pitches we'll get. So, you know, it is I think it is good to have if you trust a splitter and you throw up 15% of the time, it's probably going to be pretty good. The question is, is it going to be, is it going to really line up with the results or, you know, I don't know. So, it's possible to be underrated. It is totally possible. It is also possible that they understand something about command that is hard. I think that command is one of the hardest things to really nail in metrics. And I bet you that teams have some better numbers behind the sauce. I've got a question for you both about the Orioles. We talked about them a bit on the stream on Tuesday. They added Trevor Rodgers as the second rotation edition. Of course, Zach Eflin has a guy they previously traded for from the Rays. So, it's a good deadline when you add two guys that are in your rotation. And one of those guys, Eflin should be a playoff starter. He should be their game three starter behind Burns and Grayson Rodriguez. So, as a trio, Burns, Grayson Rodriguez, Zach Eflin for the purposes of his exercise. Where do you think they belong in terms of quality? Are they top-end among playoff teams? Are they kind of middle-to-pack among playoff teams? Are they kind of bottom-third among playoff teams for you guys? Just based on what you've seen from them over the course of this season. And maybe even going back to last year a little bit too because Zach Eflin's performance going back to last year is a little bit uneven. So, we don't really know which Zach Eflin we're going to get down the stretch and in October. I mean, for me they're top four or five among the playoff contenders. I've got them six by Stuff Plus. They are second by third by ERA projection. They have good command. If you're asking me like just to sort of assess without the numbers, Burns and Rodriguez I think are really solid. I think you could make a pace case for like third or fourth maybe. I mean, I think it'd be really like I have the pirates in this mix, you know, because they're technically, you know, still playoff eligible playoff contenders. If you're coming at me with Snell and Jones and Keller, I know the numbers don't have the number one but- You mean Skins by the way. Skins. Skins. Skins. You're a gentleman in Miss Keller? No. You said Snell. Snell. Snell. Nice. All right. I was looking at the Giants. Yeah. If I'm doing Skins, Jones and Keller, like, does their team that beats that? I think it's as good as any trio you're going to put out there right now. Yeah. Yeah. I would take them in a three game series. Actually, to be honest, the only one that I think that the matchup would be awesome would be Giants and Pirates. Yeah. I want to see that. I want to see the way that that plays out. Also, with their offenses, it feels like one-nothing wins those games. So with the Affluent thing, the interesting thing about the Orioles, I'll take Burns against anybody. I think he's just as an ace as the aces get. And I think Grayson Rodriguez, though, has been up and down and had some clunkers that have inflated his numbers, in my opinion. He's another guy who could just take over a game and has that type of stuff. So I take one as one to the problem. The thing is, if you mention with Affluent, Affluent's a big command guy and he's not a takeover the game guy and he's the type of guy then in the playoffs. If he's not feeling really, really, really good, it might not go great. I don't think he has that dominant pitch. He's got the cutter. Grayson Rodriguez, I think probably the fastball, but he has a bunch of different pitches. I think with Affluent, there was a time when the curve was really going well. And then this year, for some reason, the curve's really falling off. And I think that's left him without a dominant pitch that he can go back to if something's going if he or if it's the playoffs. We see that in the playoffs a lot, right? Guys just going, this is my, like, no, I can hit this today. I'm just going to throw this. Like, this is the plan. And you got to be able to go there. Someone's got to beat this before I'm changing. Yeah. And then honestly, like I always, the big comparison I always do for Affluent is the way they pitched and the way the demeanor was, it was Gibson, Kyle Gibson. Like, Gibby's a great guy to help you get to the playoffs, but he tends to go to the bullpen for the playoffs. Just because of the nature of how he pitches, he just doesn't take over games. He eats innings. And in the playoffs, it's just a different beast. And it's a different, you got to go to a different place. And that's not like just throwing everything out the window and going to the best two pitches you have that day. It's just not the way that they pitch. It's just not, they're not comfortable doing that. They don't feel like they're doing everything they can. And there's just, that's a completely valid way to approach things. It's just not, it doesn't fit very well in a playoff kind of mindset. And that's why we kind of see that. The Phillies don't do amazingly by ranking of Stuff Plus, but they also have great command. They've got, you know, by Fangraph's death charts, they're number one. And if you just, if we, again, step away from the numbers, and I'm telling you, you go Wheeler, Nola, Ranger Sanchez. I mean, Ranger, if he's healthy. Ranger. Ranger? Yeah, I mean, that's the same picture, in my opinion. I take Ranger for experience, honestly, at this point. And this might be controversial, but I get a little bit more of the Eflinish vibes off of Sticking Ranger in there. But Wheeler and Nola, I think you could put up against anybody. The weird thing for Nola for me is just the year to year changes are so wide. You know, like, oh, that's a good point. You know, I think, you know, there's some home road splits here, which we'll talk about. But Nola's year to year splits are so wide. If he's just good in the years, he's good, then this is a good year. Then good Nola, then I think he deserves to be in the conversation with the Pirates, you know, the Pirates and the Giants. I think the Yankees have a similar thing with Cole, where it's just like, if it was last year, Cole, you know, Cole Rodon Heel, which is the trio I put together, could be number one. Yeah. At times, it feels like it's so far away for the Yankees, but it's not. I mean, Garrett Cole just rounding into form after missing time in the first half. That's not a difficult story to tell yourself. And even if Rodon is halfway between the guy he was with the Giants and the better versions of himself that he's been with the Yankees, that's still a really good pitcher to have in a playoff rotation. Trevor, what do you think of whole body soreness? He was sick, man. He was just sick. Didn't Joe Kelly go on that? I all for that for like a month. Total body fatigue. Just general body fatigue. Yeah. Yeah. I saw a follow up on it, but yeah, that's what it was a follow up. Yeah, he just feels weak and like no energy and lethargic. Yeah, he got a flu or something. He probably had fun. He probably had COVID. He probably did. And they just like this. It's just the flu. Like it just looks like the flu completely now. So, but that's why it lingers. But again, it's one of those years for him where you just keep taking it in the chin. Like you come back. I actually had the same thing. He just seemed to be getting right again. Yeah. And 22, I came back from my arm and then got COVID like two weeks coming back. And then I had to take 10 days off again. It was just like one of those things like, I felt good. I think it was getting going. And he was too. So, but fortunately, there's still too much left. I get those vibes from Snell sometimes where it just sort of sometimes the injuries just sort of like, he's like, what the heck, man? Steamroll. Yeah. What now? My groin now. Like what? He seems like he's back to being himself now. We talked even before the struggles happen. We thought, hey, maybe this is going to be a little bit of an adjustment phase is having a new catcher and just looking back to what he did even in San Diego. His first year in San Diego was his worst year. Once he got settled in, then we saw Cy Young Blake Snell again. So, if that adjustment has already taken place, he could be that guy down the stretch. I mean, the giants are so fringy for this conversation. 11.2% chance of making the playoffs according to fan graphs, but just enough to hang around. Yeah, it seems a little bit, you know, disingenuous to be throwing the giants and pirates in the mix when you're just like, I don't even know if they'll make it, you know? So, among the like, really, like among world series contenders, I feel like, because they're offenses, it's not about their pitching staffs, it's more about their offense. But if you're thinking about world series, you know, contenders, I put the Phillies, the Yankees, the Orioles are in the mix. I think the Dodgers have too many question marks in terms of health and who's there and what they're going to look like. But the only one that we haven't mentioned yet is the Mariners, who I think, you know, it's a collection of guys where you're not sure, I don't know, actually, no, screw it. Kirby's an ace. It's not necessarily stuff forward. It's more like command forward, but I think Kirby's an ace. Logan Gilbert's pitching like an ace. And whoever you put in the third spot is going to be better than most people's third. You know, if you're putting Miller in there or you're putting Wu in there, like, they're going to be better than you guys. Oh, sorry, Castillo, I didn't even mention it because their fourth is going to be better than anybody's fourth. That means that if you take Castillo out in the third because he just doesn't have it, you might stay in the game because it's Bryce Miller coming in. And the other part of this equation is you kind of look at the quality of every team's best three or best four. If they have a fourth, they want to throw in a longer playoff series is how good is that bullpen? How many relievers can you rely on a team like the Pirates? I feel like their able pen would be okay. And they may only need to use their able pen if they were to get in and their starters pitched really well. They're going to take the Rangers path of success and then three guys is good enough. Nationals did that one. Yeah, there's a handful of teams that have had success that way. But then for teams that have more questions in the three and four spot, do you trust your fourth, fifth, your sixth reliever to come in and keep games close and pitch well and the deeper. That's where I think the Dodgers and Padres, if you think of a whole staff, which honestly, every game in the playoffs is whole staff. You know what I mean? Like there you can take a guy out in the fourth. It doesn't matter what his name is. You can take your call out in the fourth. You know what I mean? If it's a big part of the moment, a game and you're not sure. So, you know, the Padres bullpen now goes 60 with quality, quality pitchers. And I think the Dodgers, if they move River Ryan to the bullpen, and if they move some of these guys that won't make their starting rotation to the bullpen, that bullpen gets a lot better. And I just think that sometimes that doesn't go as well as people want. Think, go move into the bullpen in the playoffs. I'd love to hear Trevor's idea on this. Like if you've moved from starting at the bullpen, what if you had to do that for the first time in the playoffs? It was easier for me than most people. And I would have preferred to do it in the real season first. It's just or spring or else or at any time other than that. Not the playoffs. Yeah, if there's a nerves, there's a nerve scene. There's like a turning it on, kind of thing you have to experience because starting is just such a slow ramp up burn. Like, you know exactly what you're going to be in. Not knowing managing those that like nerves is a skill that that some guys struggle with a lot or they don't really like it. And that's just random. Like, God, you can't tell what type of guy it is until he does it. Like, I thought Tyler McGill was going to pick up relieving like immediately and he just didn't like he's just not the way he functioned. And so it's it's not as easy to just throw him out there. There's certain guys different temperaments, but you know, especially in River Ryan's case, they'll probably be having opportunity at least for the last couple of weeks to give him some opportunities out there just because I was thinking about those Trevor Rodgers. I thought that Trevor Rodgers could at least be maybe a slightly better Trevor Richards. If it came to it, like really good change up, get the fastball up, but there's an amount of training you have to do also to be max for 12 pitches and then do it again the next day, right? Like, I bet you if we looked at it, people who switched to relieving gain more Vilo in the off season, like the next off season, like they go to the bullpen, they don't actually get they maybe get a tick or something because they just throw nearer to their max. But you really get more like gas if you have a whole off season to prepare for being a reliever, right? Did you see a Vilo increase right away? Maybe not right away, but it was quick. It was quick just because I just leaned into the I already had that ability, like as a starter, I would have an inning where I would like get really like keyed in and then we saw we were sending that baseball there and I wrote down did it towards the end. He was just like the Vilo was climbing and the sixth inning because he knew it was getting close to the end and he just like in his I could see it on his face. He's like, just keep blowing heaters by guys until they get all in the fifth inning the other day. Yeah, it was all 96. Yeah. So those type of guys, if they moved to the pen, they would have a hundred and like like row could throw a hundred one out there. I think I do believe that. Well, he kind of did when he relieved at the beginning through really hard. So but some guys are built that way and some guys aren't like like hate to use Kyle Gibson again, but he doesn't add any Vilo on the pen because it's just not going to put him in the pen and be like, Oh, he's 95 because he's not going to try it. He's not that's not what he's going to do like that's not what he's going to try to do. So I yeah, I just went out and I basically I got the green. Someone Kevin Jepsen. Here's a there's a deep cut for you. He was my, he was my kind of mentor at that time because Glenn Perkins was hurt and he was a closer. So I like I went out and I kind of became the faith in a guy because I added Vilo. But basically, just a dude, you can just see what you got like just some you're a fast ball guy. Yeah, your guy throws fast balls and you try to get fastball swings misses. So I'll see what you can do. And then as soon as I saw like a 97 up there, because I hadn't seen one as a starter, I was like, let's see what else we got. And then it just went from there. And that's that's really what happened. I started to believe that that was how I was. And then I went for it. But I had the luxury to do that because my team was 20 games under 500 every year. And you also hadn't been a starter in the big leagues for many years. Like, yeah, it was. Yeah, I didn't have autographs. 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. That's right. You could put it towards some memorabilia you've had dry on or treat yourself to a premium sports network. You earn and discover doubles. See terms at discover.com/creditcard. Got a couple questions here coming in from the live hive. Jamie wants to know do we have faith in the guardians starting rotation? Yeah, I love Alex Cobb to death as a person, but no. Well, what about the other guys? What about Bobby? What about Gavin Williams? Gavin Williams, I was looking at him recently. It's very strange. So he comes into the big leagues and he has a certain fastball shape and he has a certain release point and he has certain velo. And ever since that first two or three starts, it's been changing. He's just been losing shape on the fastball, losing velo, and it just hasn't been as good. There's been some injury concerns. I don't think Gavin Williams is the same guy that we saw when he busts out of the gates. So no, I don't trust Gavin Williams. Tanner Bibi is going to be on the wrong side of a list that's coming up. Yeah, he is. But he does a lot of things well. He has a really, really good slider. I'm not saying Tanner Bibi is bad. I'm just saying he's on the wrong side of a list that's coming up. And then Alex Cobb would be your fourth or fifth guy or maybe your third guy in a pinch in the playoffs. He's suddenly like they're two and he hasn't pitched in the big leagues yet this year. So no, I don't, I don't have faith in that. Just erasing Ben Lively right there in real time. Oh, he's going to feature heavily on our on our bad list coming up. How about the royals though? They made the additions to the bullpen. They kind of quietly got Chris Boobich back. He's been working in relief too. So you take the good relievers they had, the relievers they traded for. A guy like Boobich, you look at the rotation. Reagan's and Lugo at least as a one two look like a solid one too. I think the questions for them start to pop up in like a game three and game four. Like did they have enough to work through the longer series? That's where I think they would be the most vulnerable in the postseason. Lugo is a is a wide arsenal, a little bit more of a givvy type. I like him and I was big on Lugo and kind of expected a little bit of a year like this. But when you get to the playoffs, you know, the lack of Vilo changes things. Although I do wonder, I mean, he does have a ton of pitches, you know, he's a Chris Bassett type too. So like, you know, maybe he can just get in there and be fine in the postseason too. Because in the postseason, the hitters probably are trying to key in on that fastball, get hyped and hit homers off the fastball. And he's going to say, Oh, no, that was the cutter or the slur or the he says he has nine pitches actually. Of course it does. You can be like, well, you got eight pitches. Actually, it's 10. It'll just add to it. So it's just very sad. That's very sad. These are actually it's more. I like Seth in playoff series, especially with the number of breaking balls, because I think you're right. I think he could dip like I think that they won't be able to get a get a, if he's dialed in and commanding it really well, getting a bead on that and squaring anything up is also anticipating the right pitch. Yeah, yeah, you can't guess with him. You can't guess with them. And if he gets you off balance, it could be a really quick, like, Oh, wow, some thing, we're getting shut out situation. And also, I don't like I've not heard a lot about Brady Singer, but you guys having a really good year, really good. Results are there. Obviously, metrically, he's never been projectable in a big way. They improve their bullpen, maybe as much as more than anybody at the bullpen at the deadline. Absolutely. So the addition of the bullpen, it's almost as if they know, like, we're going with the 2015 Royals, five innings, trying to get to the pen type situation, especially with our third guy. I mean, as much as I like Singer, if you can take him out in the fourth and you've got enough really farms to get to the end of the game, then I think that makes him even better. First sign of danger guy. First sign of danger. Red light goes on. We got to get somebody up. Sub 3 ERA so far this year, 15.3% K minus BB for Brady Singer. And well, we had the big addition was the forseamer, just to give him another look on the hard stuff and the sweeper. So he was kind of a sinker slider guy with a traditional slider. And he added the forseam for lefties and the sweeper for righties. So he's more of a four pitch guy. So we kind of have a few tiered groups. And I think the Dodgers not having their clear cut, like, these are our three guys right now, especially with Kershaw last time out, didn't look good last night. There's plenty of time to really hard time deciding when we were talking about this in the production meeting, like we had a really hard time even deciding who the top three were. Yeah, they need these final two months to sort it out from a health perspective and just see like where where things at. I mean, I think there's a world where River Ryan has to start game three for them. If injuries continue to be a problem and he's pitching well, he could be their third best option. We had that sort of Bobby Miller moment last year. This year, I picked Flaherty glass down Kershaw as the top three. But if you know, you're kind of hoping Yamamoto comes back and I think maybe you could make Kershaw into a bit of a floating guy. I don't know. Would Kershaw be cool with that? Like, it's so weird. I don't know. He's very competitive and he wants the team to win. I get a get a real good teammate sense from him. But also, you know, a little bit of Maxters or competitive fire where he might be annoyed that you didn't start him. Maybe you just you start him. Yeah, I say you start him. If you're gonna piggyback, piggyback someone with him as opposed to the other way, I think you're just better off that. If even if you think he's only going to give you three and he still start him because I think that's just the like he's you're building Yamamoto back. So you're like Yamamoto, you're we believe we need you. It's you and him. It's just we're going to let him start for two innings and then you go in. I think regardless of the number of questions about health and role, the amount of talent the Dodgers have stockpiled give you enough where you you can kind of comfortably say, yeah, we'll figure out how they're going to be pretty good. There's some teams you can't say that about. Like maybe the Guardians are in that bucket where like stone starts a post a playoff game. Wouldn't it be better than anybody but Tanner Bybe on the Guardians? And I didn't have him in a playoff. Then I put on rotation. We even talked about the Astros at all as part of this conversation. Like Verlander still down with an injury, but Fromber Valdez, El Blanco, Hunter Brown, they had a Kikuchi at the deadline. We know we'd like at least four, maybe five relievers in that pen. They've got a lot of experience in that group. Overall, a little more experience in the bullpen than the rotation right now as far as playoff experience goes. But this is a pretty nice collection of talent as well. So where do you see the Astros right now? Are they mid pack among these teams or actually a little bit better? Are they perhaps even a little underrated right now? I mean, I have them seventh by stuff plus but behind, you know, guys like the Giants and Pirates. So if you take them out, you know, top five among playoff rotations, that feels right. You know, I don't know that I'd make them number one. I didn't have Verlander in the top three. I didn't have Verlander in the top three. I also don't. Kikuchi. Yeah, Kikuchi Brown. I mean, it's just questions. I mean, it's supposedly just a neck thing. And when he went on the aisle, it was like, oh, yeah, he'll be, he'll miss a turn and be back. And it's just like, oh, he's, he's old old now. I mean, yeah, it's not not only baseball old. He's, he's getting close to my age is old old now. Just the neck thing when you're our age is, it's not usually just a little thing. Next and backs, guys. Take that seriously, especially when people get older. Yeah. Yeah, it seems like it could linger a bit longer. But yeah, I do like it. But if you, if you, if Verlander comes back in his somewhat vintage, then Brown is your floating guy or fourth guy, like, that's pretty exciting or blocko, especially the float blocko around too. I wonder if blocko in the final, yeah, I mean, bring a change up guy in off of a guy who's like, you know, big breaking ball fastball guy and you bring this, this guy with a change up, you know, who's just going to soft toss you. I just think with blocko, I look at the workload and I wonder how effective is he going to be not only in the postseason if they get there, but just these final two months, are we going to see him hit a wall? He's been great for them, sub three ERA, even one whip, almost a strikeout per inning. I mean, this is for a guy who, like, supposedly has 45 command. Yeah, it's incredible. And he's basically at the lowest walk rate we've seen from him at any point as a starter over a full season before. I would call them underrated. Dangerous team to underrate in October, I think. Red Sox, Astros underrated in the top five. If we're taking the Giants and Pirates out of this, it's like the top three are Phillies, Mariners, and Orioles, I think, but the Yankees are right there. So it's, you know, that's six is really hard to kind of sort through. Let's get to the bad place. Let's get to some bad pitches, the worst pitches of 2024 so far. A lot of ways to do this. We were looking at run value. So looking for the most extreme negative run value, the worst four seamer in baseball we learned for this season belongs to Tristan Mackenzie, who has spent some time at triple A. So if you'd been up in the big leagues all year, that number could be worse. He's allowed 16 homers on his four seamer this year, but we're not going to watch a video of Tristan Mackenzie because his teammate Tanner Bybee is the most surprising picture of all on the leaderboard of pitchers with a negative pitches have a negative run value. He throws his four seamer a lot and it does not get good results. So we are going to watch a Tanner Bybee four seamer. This looks like a good pitch to me, you guys watch this one. It's going to be up top of the zone, not in real far, Jose Miranda takes it out, crushes it 97 miles an hour. And that was a one two count. I don't know like why he was looking high fastball there, but it seemed like he was. I mean, stuff says it's not a great pitch. What's wrong with it? But it doesn't say it's a terrible pitch. He's got a little dead zone fastball. It's a little bit dead zone. It's yeah, it's it's it's he throws it as if it has ride and it doesn't. I mean, it does. But it doesn't. So and he's commands good too, but he's got a little cut and it doesn't ride a ton, but like a little not a real cut. It's more of a true straight force. So you either need a little bit run or you need a lot of ride. If you're going to be throwing that type of it's like a 14 for here in terms of inches of drop, which is just getting into the dead zone area. And all of his breaking pitches have good horizontal movement, including a sinker is above average and horizontally. And he's trying to go vertically with one of his pitches. And that's the one that is not spotable to them, right? Yeah, if everything else is sideways, got some sideways. It might look a lot different. The one. Yeah, that's the one that's straight. So do you change eventually over time? I don't know if he's going to do this on the fly, but do you got to go to a two seemer if you're tanner, Bobby? I think adding another fastball would be amazing for him. Lean into whatever works. Like if there's a cutter, yeah, then it's like something that looks like your fastball, but has a little bit of sideways movement. I bet you could throw a pretty good cutter. The question then is if he throws a pretty good cutter, what happens to a slider? What happens to his foreseam shape? Because sometimes like Garrett Cole was always worried that if he threw the cutter too much, that it would affect his foreseam. So, you know, the two seem, I think, may affect your foreseam less because it's more of a grip thing and not being on the side of the ball. You're just sort of letting the grip do it. You get on that edge of tronic and you and you try to find some seems to have to wake on your two seem and you give something that is hard and they think they read hard, but then it goes somewhere different. So, the other question I have with Bobby then, you look at how effective the slider is. Like opponents are getting at 136 against it, slugging 233, the stat cast with percentage is like 34.8%. So, it's a really important pitch. Does that make you more inclined to try the two seemer first, given the impact that adding the cutter could have on that pitch, Trevor? Is that the better way to go into it? I would say that is a big factor and also determining I would look at splits and see if it's usually it's like lefties are either killing you or righties are killing you now because it's got sliders. So, then if you add the sinker, like you just get another weapon against righties. Against righties and if he's not having a problem with righties, sinkers to lefties just don't unless he's throwing like front door up and in or whatever. And that's just not a place to stay. So, cutter might be a better situation to get lefties off of your foreseem. That might be the thing for 52 slugging against lefties, 311 and slugging against righties. So, I would say cutter is a better option and you try it. And a lot of times when guys have a really good feel for breaking balls, which he does, he's looks like from watching him pitch too, he looks like he rolls out of bed and he just can flip stuff up there. Like it's just net because he's a supinator too. He's already on the outside of the ball. So, that kind of movement patterns also kind of natural. That's probably where it starts to, you can't differentiate what you're feeling as well with the foreseem and the cutter. That's what happens usually. So, he is in danger of them melding together and him losing like both pitches that are either side of that movement profile, the foreseem and the slider. But if you have the type of feel, maybe he's a, but guys with that type of feel for breaking balls though tend to be able to do that more, more so than, than needing pitches to feel differently. So, that's what I would say. But other than George Kirby, most of this is off season stuff, I think. It's not, not probably a good time to do it. I think what we'll see out of Tanner Bibi in the post season is he jumps that slider percentage up to like 40 percent. And you see that a lot in the post season anyway, where I've seen hitters be like, I didn't see us fastball today. Yeah, Lance McCullough is just literally just scrapped every pitch. Yeah, memory. Yeah. So, that was hilarious. It's entirely possible. Yeah. So, we got a few other candidates here for worse pitches in baseball. I mean, some of these are not surprising. Patrick Corbin's sinker has a -14 run value. We don't need to watch a video of that. We've seen that pitch for a few years. It's just not, it's not working for him anymore. But the surprising one that Eno mentioned earlier is Zach Eflin's curve ball being down to a -9. That was a good pitch for him and using it more as one of the things that the Rays had him change when he got to Tampa Bay. So, this pitch was a +10 in run value just a year ago. It's a pretty massive swing to go from +10 to -9 with your one of your offerings like that. I don't think you see a whole lot of that. And we do have a video of this one. He tries to throw one to Tyler O'Neill down and in. Tyler O'Neill just hammers it up to the top of the monster, over the monster. So, what's changed for Eflin with the curve ball this year? Is it a V-Lo drop? Is it a movement profile thing? Are hitters looking for it more? It's just, how does it get so bad so quickly? I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on. He's definitely dropped in V-Lo about a tick this year. And there's not too much of a change in vertical movement. But it has lost some horizontal movement over time. So, I think part of it is some changes in movement. And then part of it is, you know, when he got to the Rays, the big change that they made with him was to feature the curve ball more. He jumped from Philly, you know, 2021 in Philly, 11%, 2022, 20%, 2023, Tampa, 26%. And I think when you're at 10%, that's like sneaking cheese by a rat a little bit. Like nobody's really prepping for the pitch you throw 10% of the time. They're not really thinking about it too much. When you get to 20%, now that's in the scouting report, everyone's like, when's he do the curve ball? What counts? What am I thinking about it? When you get to 26%, somebody might even sit on it, you know, because that's a quarter of the time he throws this thing. I might anticipate this one. I might, in this count, be like, I'm sitting curve ball. And I think if you sit curve ball, it's a pitch that Major Leakers can hit. If you're not sitting curve ball, it can freeze. You can get freeze takes on it. You know, you get a lot of fewer swings on curve balls. I think curve balls are easier to spot. And so you see lower swing rates generally. But what you see with Eflin is some change in the swing rates too over time. So, you know, when you look at swing percentage by year on the pitch, which I'm trying to get up here. Yeah, this year 59% swinging percentage on a curve. He's never had it so high. And the league averages 40. So whatever's happening mechanically on the pitch is one thing. I think people are just keen in on it now. I think so too. I think, I think he's having a classic, it's popping situation going and he's not, he doesn't elevate on purpose very often to cut her a little bit up and into the lefties. But for seems not really it's not something for his force him up is not something guys are worried about. They're just like, fouling it off or just taking it. And so he's, he works down in the zone and he throws a pitch that's big and starts high and then comes down. And so it looks differently than others. The more he shows it, the more different it looks than everything else. I think it's the same situation as Bobby. And by the way, Bobby had a plus 10 run value on his force him last year and now he's a negative 12. So that's a big swing too. So it's like, I think there is a, it's, it's, it's your approaching tipping at that point. And it was something I had to worry about with my slider kept getting bigger and slower. And so I got farther away from my fastball. And the more I did that, the more guys were like adjusting mid swing and fouling it off and not missing it and with frame kept going down. So he, because his commands the same commands were really good on his curveball. He bought him a zone the whole time. He's like, got really good command. He always has. It's just interesting because it might be popping and there might be a shift like, Hey, when effluents come up here, he's throwing a every one of every five pitches as a curveball, no matter what, lefty, righty. And look for something popping out a little bit. And then if that's the type of pitch you want, then crush it. And that's, and then, and then it just takes like it getting crushed four or five more times to flip this like this, like giving up two or three more homers than he did last year, it completely changed the, how the profile, how the pitch is performing. Yeah, that's true. And then, you know, Philly, and Philly, he did throw the foreseem 15% of the time, even when he had was an increase in the curveball usage. So either the foreseem of the cutter up, I think, you know, could do it, could sort of do that eye level thing that people talk about just sort of. So they can't, they say see something up there like, Oh, that's curveball. Even though I see it, I'm seeing it up, they, he has to like hide some hard stuff in there so that they don't. Oh, that's, that could be the curveball or the cutter, you know, a row don't did it on, on Sunday with opposite though, he's throwing fast was up and the red socks were jumping him. And then he just started throwing his curveball a bunch and they just got off of it. And then he started swinging it, they start, they swung a miss like 30, he got like 30 swings of misses or something. So it was like, but that was exact, that's a prime example of noticing that the problem is Efland's not like a curveball. Now I got my foreseem, like he does doesn't won't go there. That's just not his game. Forces isn't like good enough. He's going to go back to sinker or slider or sweeper, which is like, you know, there that's not a great, you know, what he doesn't throw very often is high and tight cutters to righties. Yeah, never. It's always up in the left. That would look, that would look like the fill he was. Yeah, the fill he used front door. No one does that anymore. It's not like people throw. Yeah, nobody really does it. But in this case, I think it'd be interesting because it would look kind of, it would kind of look a little bit. Oh, this is kind of bendy. It's kind of high. This is the curve, isn't it? Oh, crap. I think that's off your handle. I get a lot of freezers on that too. Tension. Yeah, but it's also really dangerous. You could pull it a little bit. Now it's a cutter right down the middle to a righty and that's perfect. That's the thing. It's high risk, I reward. But if you have the command for it, which I think he does, like, that might be an option. He could try to get guys off of that curve ball a little bit. Maybe try it a couple times with like a three run lead. Nobody on mess with it a little bit. See if it works out. Yeah, just don't. I guess you got a little time. All right. You know, you pulled this up by stuff plus to look for the worst pitches in baseball. We were talking about run value before. I did it a couple of different ways. And this is, so the first time I did it, I just looked at, I just take 300 pitches because I wanted to be like, you throw this pitch a lot and then worst stuff plus. And of course, it's all fast balls. So like Matt Waldron's fast balls on there, of course, Zach LaTel's, you know, it's all fast balls, Cole Irvin's fastball, Carlos Carrasco's, even Trevor Williams fastball, it's all fast balls. So what instead did was go through each pitch type and get the five worst basically and put them up here. And like I said, there's no splitters on here. There's very few sliders. So what you see at the very top is Chris flexons, fastball. Interestingly enough, it has 18 IVB, which is slightly above average. And you'd think that's good, except he has a very high release point. And so he actually has less vertical movement than the release point suggests he would, he should have. Or it's just, in other words, it's pretty vanilla. People see the release point. They think this is what's going to do. And it does it. He's a 506 slugging against, and he has poor, you know, vertical approach angle. It's a bad pitch. I don't know. Minus two is a little aggressive. How does that even happen? I'm interested in how do you get a negative and stop plus? It's so bad. I mean, it's just, it's all about deviations from the mean. So this is, this is like four standard deviations from the mean. It's, it's a real true outlier. But it's not come around to the point where you're like, Oh, is it so bad? It's good? No, it's just, it's just really bad. With Taiwan Walker, with the slider, it's a little surprising. The slider is 86 miles an hour. I think it's a cutter, though. So 86 is a little bit slow for a cutter. 5 miles an hour off of the foreseam, he has a 590 slugging. So I can't say this is wrong. And I also think that if you know Taiwan Walker, you don't think he has a really good breaking ball. So that's not too surprising. Chris flexin comes back on the list with another hard pitch, 455 slugging on that. I don't know. It's, it's hard to like have a rule of thumb about why these are bad. They're all bad in different ways. Hayden Woznenski has a 12 IVB on that foreseam, which is really, really low. The only person on this list who has less than a 450 slugging on this pitch is Taylor Scott's change up, which has a 209 slugging. Maybe that's just a miss by the model, but everything else, you know, the Logan Allen foreseam at the bottom, 617 slugging with a 15 IVB and very poor extension and 91 miles an hour. So a lot of these pitches are thrown softly with poor vertical movement. That, that could be your rule, if you wanted a rule of thumb. So the question then is Ben Lively has two fastballs on the list. Those are his two most thrown pitches combined. He throws them like 60% of the time and 450 slugging combined. It's so far working. He's got the home run problem, but he doesn't walk a lot of guys getting good results. Is this just something that's going to continue to fade over time by results or is there something really strange? The guardians have the worst fastballs in the big leagues and they throw them the second most. Yeah, I almost wonder if they'll see how aggressively the red socks changed up their fastball usage and say, Hmm, maybe we should implement something like this. I mean, they've had some guys like that in the past that were soft tossers that threw the sliders a lot. I don't know why. Lively does have maybe some deception that we're not picking up. He was a person that came up in the invisible discussion. You use a mirror petite has been lively. This is an interesting mechanical thing. I want to ask you Trevor. The concept known as layback, when you're coming through and this thing, yeah, right? Petite and Lively come through really far back, have a lot of layback. You lose the ball as a hitter and then it pops up last minute. I was talking about that and some pitchers and other analysts said, well, everybody has layback. So just some extent, yeah, to an extent. Some people have more layback than others and that could be a source of deception, right? I don't feel like I had a ton. Yeah, I think that even like getting back to the flat, like I couldn't do that and there was other guys who could and I could definitely see you don't see the ball. You see elbow. Yeah, like you like you leave when you lead with your elbow. I've heard guys say things like it looks like the balls coming out of their shoulder. It's like a very, like there's no swing or anything to track. It's like everything's like, yeah, it's ball here and I'll ask it at you. And it just feels that way. And yeah, that is like, that combined with ride is the invisible. I think feeling it's like, but 15 IVB from live basically. Yeah, so then therefore, then it's not really ride. So if he, but if he didn't have that deception, then it'd be even worse. So maybe he's just getting enough deception to make it, to make it work. And there might be a chance that like Bobby doesn't have it at all. And that could also be, it's very like, like you said, with flexing, it does what it looks like it's going to do. And maybe with lively, it doesn't quite look like it's going to do what it's supposed to do. You know, in 90 miles an hour with this sort of deception, I think you do run the risk a little bit of running into somebody in the playoffs that has seen you. Yeah, that too. Especially if they seen you recently and they're just like, okay, you know, I got I'm just going to stare at his elbow. I'm going to stare at his shoulder and the ball is going to come out there eventually. And I'm not going to, not going to look in other places. You know, you have the interesting to see if the teams that have seen lively a little bit more, if they start to hit him better over the course of the second half, we had a mailbag question that could relate to this may not relate at all. But it was a question from FinStick and Discord, wondering if a pitcher could play around with two different four seamers, one with good IVB, one with bad IVB, and then just trying to, you know, manipulate that on a pitch by a pitch basis by design just to create that pitch hitter thinks it's going to do this, but it didn't do that because it was manipulated accordingly. Like that, that seems like a very fine adjustment that might be tough to do. But do you think that's something that some guys can actually do effectively Trevor? Maybe not consciously. I don't know if the value of doing it, like purposely throwing in, like, I think that, so if I'm understanding this right, starting from a high IV person, an IVB person, a person like, I think see while it's given, which actually, he doesn't actually have that high of an IVB. He's got a, he's funky and just a weird release point. And then his, his approach angle is like kind of low enough. So like, let's say Pavetta, Pavetta has high release high high IVB high through like a dead zone fastball on purpose. So that's the, that's the interesting thing. There are probably better options, like seam shifting wise to get the, you rely on movement more than you rely on deception cutter. Yeah. And I think that staying away from a bad IV pit, bad IVB is you want it to be a sinker. Like you want it to be really bad. Like you don't want to just be like in the dead zone that there's very little value out of, out of throwing a dead zone fastball. But like how a pitch that maybe spins similarly, maybe a cross between I'm, I'm hearing that a little bit like I was messing around last year with like a 15, 15, like fastball, seeing if I could get it. And I don't really, that's kind of more of the two seam up in him before has said that he wanted to have his, his X matches Y. So maybe, maybe that would work. But again, that's, that's pretty good horizontal at that point where it's a, it's a true, like, it's more like a true, it's like a reverse cutter, frankly, like a little bit. So it moves, it moves like the opposite of like Kenley's cutter, which if you could pull that off, I would say do that. And I think guys are more likely to be able to do that, maintain their carry while adding horizontal. I think that that maybe would work. And that might be something that we see, especially for guys, you can't figure out how to throw a seam shifter or even a true sinker, but then want something to stay up. So maybe that, but I would say not a true for not to foreseems now. I don't think so. It requires a little bit of level of savantism to like, you know, just to be like, I'm going to take two inches of IVB off this pitch, you know, like maybe Kirby could pull it off. But, you know, but I think it would be. You Darvish would try that. I do. I do have a piece on my cutting room floor about a picture who told me he did it on purpose. And I talked to the hitter that he did it to. And the hitter said, yeah, I noticed. So Alex Bregman was like, yeah, I was really pissed. I even have the video where it's true about where he throws. He throws a low IVB pitch to get a grounder from Bregman because Bregman's really good at targeting the top half of the ball. You can't go above Bregman swing. You can't. It's really, really hard. I tried it to you. Yeah. So he just throws like a dead zone ish IVB fastball to him and Bregman pounds it in the ground. And Bregman actually looks up at him on the way. What was that as he's running to first? Like, yeah, yeah, has like a what was that? So I guess it's possible. And we do see it with like Justin Seals slider, right? We do know that like people take breaking balls and be like, Oh, I want to add three inches of horizontal. I want this to be more sideways. I want this to be more vertical. So I just think with fast balls, fast balls are like, that's your bread and butter. That's your thing. If you're messing around with that too much, you start like we were just talking about the cutter. Start getting side of the ball. I don't know. V. Low is the thing. Anyways, really it is when it comes to when you're throwing your fastball, you're trying to get the V. Low, that is what's causing you most of the value most times. Even difference, even if you don't throw a really hard 92, you throw a slider, slider, slider 92 plays you want the 92. It's not the movement you're going playing on. What's the average fastball on my list? What's the average V. Low on the fast balls on my list? 89. It's going to be terrible. Yeah. So why do you know, people say, "Oh, you're 89 with locations." Sorry, dude. Those are the worst fast balls in big league. And then Stephen here has a great question. Does IVB drop as the season goes on and weather gets warmer? I don't know if it's the weather that's getting warmer that does it, but yes, I found a piece, a little thing from Max Bay. If you want to look at it, he's choice_fielder on Twitter. He showed that IVB peaks early and then goes down and it actually comes back up. So there's a weather component to that. I wonder if there's an injury component to that too. Fatigue. Yeah, fatigue. But I don't know why it comes back up again at the end. So that speaks to maybe weather being a factor. But the general course of IVB over the course of the season, he did it by like percent of fast balls with more than 20 inches of IVB and it started high and went down low and then went back up again with it. Interesting. Very interesting. It also has been changing over time and there's actually a slightly lower percentage of 20 IVB fast balls over time, partially because of sticky stuff enforcement and partially maybe because teams are now... The dang it's now. But also because I think teams are now chasing different shapes. You're starting to see more seamshifted wigs, sinkers and cutters and so that's the teams are trying to add those to the mix and so if you don't have, they're not... If you have like a 16 IVB fast ball, they're not saying we need to push this to 18 or 19 anymore. They're saying, hey, let's look at what kind of a sinker you can throw. I've got one more question here that we should get to. This is a question they wanted Trevor's take specifically on home road stats, but using Nick Pavetta as an example, his ERA in Bapip at Home been higher every year since 2021, which makes sense in Boston, a part that you know, has mentioned as being notoriously painful for starter psyches, etc. The odd stat about Pavetta's split is his home walk rate is almost double his road walk rate, this season and last season, as if his plan is to walk more guys versus give up contact at home, which still seems to be hurting him. Conventional fantasy wisdom says to ignore pitchers home road splits, but if an approach is different or as a human being, something is different, then shouldn't we pay more attention to it? Absolutely. It's more of a... I feel like that's just more of a 201 level of looking at it and but yeah, there's a ton of stuff that goes into it like just like if you if you go look at your at the half, for example, go look at how pitches performing, even if it's performed well in the past, I did this with my curve ball in 2019 and I'm like, this thing is just bad. It's just like not doing well. You're probably not gonna throw it as much. I just scrapped it. I just stopped throwing it. The same exact same thing is if he's getting crushed at home by the wall, probably mostly, he's like, I'm gonna stop giving them opportunities to crush that wall. And that might lead to more pitches that are balls or trying to get guys to chase a little more at home. And and you're aware of it, especially guys that are really in tune with what the things are doing and what are making them successful or not, they make those decisions more often. So that is a big big part of it. The park factors, there's a part of like some guys, the pressure is different from place to place in their division and being on the road, they feel more comfortable being supported versus being cheered against. That's a thing. But obviously some guys love that though, like they're opposite, like they love throwing on the road. And there's a bunch of that little stuff, but in terms of decision making, and it's you can tell based on sequencing and the way that like how misses are and like three, two counts or whatever that he's very clearly would rather walk the guy than give up a double off the monster. That's 100% viable. And it's about survival and just getting winning the game. If you can avoid that, you're willing to take those chances. A guy who actually has said this explicitly to me that he is more open to walking certain guys in certain situations or like there's out days, he is like, he knows his stuff isn't moving, like Otto Vino knows when things aren't moving the way that he wants them to move. And he was more likely to be okay with a walk or two that day, as opposed to giving up the big damage. It's about avoiding the damage. Maybe against lefties, right? Yeah, exactly. So like making that some guys have been around long enough that they can make those decisions in real time and it may look like they're pitching differently than they ever have, but they know something that you don't know. And that is something you can pay attention with guys like Pavetta who have been around a lot, I would say. Now if it's a guy's rookie, like he just might not know what he's doing. That's why I want to jump in is just like, you know, what you're doing when you do home road splits is cutting your pitcher in half, right? So you're cutting your sample in half. And a lot of times you'll have, you know, basically a reliever's a sample then. And so if you look at cutter Crawford at home last year, he had a six ERA. And you can say, well, you know, the Babip wasn't that bad, 317. He just walked a lot of guys and didn't strike out as many guys as he struck out on the road. So he's just not as good as home. Well, this year, his ERA at home is a four. And he's just cut his walk rate a little bit. And the Babip is a little bit different. And, you know, he went from a one four whip at home to one one whip at home. So you could have thought, Oh, cutter Crawford is doing the Nick Pavetta thing. He's just trying to walk guys and, you know, he's afraid of the big monster and, you know, blah, blah, but like green monster, I know, but it's a big monster. It's a big monster. If you're the pitcher there, you know, I just caution looking too heavily, especially with the young player, I think maybe the older they get more sample. But then you kind of start to know who the guy is generally. And I don't know what the, I don't know what the good sample is. I would say I would want to be looking at like 200 250 innings at home before I was like, you know, gonna say he was different at home. Guys change teams so much. You don't always have the luxury of even getting that sample in order to make your decisions. You're just kind of wondering with something less. Is this a thing? We've talked before to the park factors, you know, having some that boost strikeouts, some that depress strikeouts, coolers being the obvious one that depresses them the most. But there are other parks that deflate strikeouts for a variety of different reasons. So I think on a skills based level, you do need to account for some of that just within the differences. So you shouldn't ignore home road splits. You should try and use them carefully. I think with the appropriate context. Bryce Miller. Bryce Miller. 281 at home. 527 away. Is this slugging? That's a little, I don't know, home. What number is that batting average? No. Yeah. Right. Oh, yeah. 281 at home. 527 away. And what he does is he strikes out nine, he strikes out 26% of the batters he sees at home, he strikes out 18 and a half on the road. Wow. Right. And as we know, T-Mobile. But that fits in with the park factors. In strikeout park factor. So you get that 10% boost compared to a neutral park and that helps a lot. That's in 141 home innings. So it's kind of close to my sample. It's a pretty good sample. That's, I kind of almost believe in that a little bit. I don't know. And knowing that too gives you confidence too. You get confidence and it helps a little bit. Like you're willing to throw pitches knowing that you feel more confident that it's going to give you the thing you want in this book. Maybe you don't throw it in the road because you're not certain. There's a little bit of that. I don't know that I believe that he's a five ERA true talent guy on the road. I don't believe that. That's inflated in my opinion. So it is interesting. It might be, I would look like sequencing. Is there a big difference? Home run rate to 160. See, and then that's interesting. So if you, if you're looking at different, at different process bits, then you have to think about each of these little things that's different on the home road has its own requirements for sample. So the fact that he has a 160 home run rate, 1.6 home runs per nine away from home in 130 innings. That's not enough innings to believe that number. Because home run rate is really noisy. He could go five more starts and give up one homer and those five starts away from home. And he's also in different parks in each of those places. So that's 140 innings of him being in different parks. So what if so many of those were in Colorado? They're not. But the parks themselves are adding noise to it. So I'd just be careful. Strikeout minus walk is a really powerful thing. So if you see differences in strikeout minus walk like Bryce Miller, that becomes something that kind of catches my eye in a way that I didn't expect before I looked it up just now. Yeah, that just seems a little more extreme than what you'd expect. You'd bake something in, but it wouldn't be as much as what you're seeing on Bryce Miller's player page right now. So great question. Thanks for the questions today. Fin Stick, you got question for a future episode. Hit us up in Discord. It's the best place to send those in the link to join the Discord in the show description. If you're not there already, you can find us all on Twitter. Trevor is an I am Trevor May. He knows that, you know, Sarah, I'm at Derek and right with the pod is at rates and barrels. If you enjoyed the show, smash that like button for us. It's going to do it for this episode of the rates and barrels. We're back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
