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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 false Sunday Ticket for out-of-market games excludes digital only games. Welcome to rates and barrels. It is Friday, July 12th. Derek van Riper, you know, Sarah's here with you doing the Thursday episode on Friday this week and for, I think, most weeks going forward because we figured, hey, why not move the stream up a day, move the fantasy content back a day. It might be the best of all worlds on this episode. We will take a look at the recent dominance of Paul Schemes, who carried a no-hitter into the seventh through the seventh inning. In his start against the Brewers on Thursday, we've got some mailbag questions wondering about where Garrett Cole stands after his first few turns off the IL, the struggles of Josh Lowe, Louise Castillo's slider, we've got some project prospect stuff today and we've got some weekend waiver preview pickups to discuss as well. So we begin today, you know, with Paul Schemes lifted after seven no-hit innings against the Brewers. Pitch count was just in that triple-digit range where everyone starts to be nervous and given the way the pirates have handled Paul Schemes up to this point, I was not surprised that he was taken out of this game. He had an interview on MLB Network afterwards, didn't seem to have any overwhelming, you know, problem with it. Just given, given the situation, it was a one-huthing game and they could use their two best relievers in Colin Holderman and Arnoldis Chapman to finish it off. And other than some, you know, traffic that Colin Holderman had to deal with, the pirates did get the win. So at the end of the day, I think everybody was happy except for people who wanted to see Paul Schemes make a run at the no-no and given that we're up against the all-star break, I think there was a case to be made for letting him go a little bit longer if they wanted to do it. But I don't think it was necessarily a missed opportunity that we should skewer them for either. Yeah, the pirates, oh, nobody anything, you know, like their main goal is to win and to get into October. And there's probably a fair amount of angst about that, you know, given their timeline and where, you know, how long this team has been run by, the people has been run by, you know. So like, you know, I think that they want to get as far as they can this year, they want to get in the playoffs this year. They know that they only have a certain amount of innings penciled in for Paul Schemes this year. So maybe those two innings become even more precious later. Maybe those two innings mean another start, you know, and I'm sorry, if you had gave me a choice between, oh, we got Paul Schemes no hitter this year, or we get another start from Paul Schemes in September or October. Yeah, dude, I'm taking that. And then lastly, you know, there's two other things that I think are important. One is the concept of a kute tachronic we talked about a lot, which is you have to build up to a certain level in order to get to a certain level. Like, you you you don't go out there and throw 100 if you threw 10 pitches in your last outing. I mean, that's that's obvious. I mean, in the in the in the sort of extreme, it's obvious. He was basically right at where he normally stops pitching. He was like, he was at 99 pitches, I believe, and the most he's thrown this year is 107. You could throw him back out there for the next inning, but then you're going to probably he's going to probably throw the most he's thrown all year, you know. And then lastly, you know, people say, oh, we shouldn't be looking at things like innings or pitches. We should be thinking about how stressful the pitches are. We should be looking for indications that they're flagging. Well, how about this Paul Skeen's average 99 in the first inning on his fastball and 97 in the last two innings on his fastball. Is that enough? I don't know like I he definitely wasn't and by the way, he was not throwing his fastball anymore. So he was already I would if you got in, honestly, I'd say he would say he was a little bit tired. Yeah, there's probably a little bit of that. That's probably why he wasn't that mad on the radio. What he has done so far this year is just unbelievable, right? We made the Strasbourg comps in terms of expectations, hype, just overall productivity coming out of college and then dominance through a brief time in the minor leagues and the anticipation around the debut. All of those things, I think made that a fair comp and he's delivered on all of that. It's an Yara of 190 through 11 starts 89 Ks against 13 walks that second number 13 walks. That's the bigger surprise for me. I knew we were going to get a boatload of Ks. We're getting it with an elite walk rate as well. And it seems like the only way to really get them is to pair the occasional walk with the mistake that gets taken out of the park for a home run. That seems to be the only little wort against Paul Skins right now. He's pitching like an ace right from the jump. And I think all of those sort of ceiling 2025 expectations that we suggested where maybe he's a top five starting pitcher in drafts going into next season, all the groundwork has been laid for that to happen. The literal only thing that would hold him back from that would be some kind of massive innings cap that comes into play sooner than expected or an injury. That's about it. There's no other real way I could see him tanking his way out of there because the performance has been that good. Yeah, it's a little bit like the LeBron James is almost my comp, you know, like the height there. And then he just delivered on it. You know, one thing that is interesting is that we talked about, you know, unideal shapes. I hope the way I remember it is that I said, you know, don't don't fixate too much on his stuff plus numbers in the minors or don't fixate too much on the shape. He's throwing 100 like he's probably pretty good. I hope that's if if somebody wants to check the record, maybe, maybe I said something different, but that's how I remember it. And I think what we've seen so far is the fastball is surprisingly hitable for a 99 mile an hour fastball. It's it's obvious like it still has a 400, 402 slugging, you know, like it's given up four homers and three doubles and 15 singles. It's the easily the the pitch of his that has given up the most hits by far and the most slugging. So, you know, I I think that part was true. But you also have to give room for somebody who throws that hard and has an aptitude for pitching the the room to, oh, I don't know, add a splinker, you know, that is immediately one of the most valuable off-street pitches in baseball, you know, and that people are hitting 157 and slugging 193 off of. So, what you saw in that last inning that was that was so remarkable was he threw one fastball. And so, you know, he he has the opportunity, he has the ability to pitch backwards. He has enough command. He has enough like enough good off-street pitches to offset a little bit of that shape problem. Oh, and it's still 99. Yeah, it's the the fastball getting hit a little bit. It's not unlike what we saw with 100 green in the first two seasons of 100 Green's career. It's been a lot better this year. Part of the reason 100 Green's all-star in this year is just that he's been able to do more with that fastball a little bit better. Yeah. And I think that's the other thing is being more fine with command, even if Paul Scienz didn't have any sort of command problem per se, like locating it exactly where he wants to and not making mistakes with it will ultimately make it even more effective in the long run. But just blown away by how good he has been up to this point. Every time you turn him on, he's really been must see TV through his first 11 big league starts. And I just thought, like, how many, how many pictures could you even rank ahead of him right now? You're going through that exercise. Like, what? Where does he fall now? He's somehow going to be even higher than he was the last time you went through the rankings exercise. Yeah, the only thing that's ever held him back is just innings by projections. He is a top two pitcher. Tyler Glass now has a 2.91 ERA projection. And he has Paul Scienz as a 3.1 ERA projection using stuff plus. And then there's a little group around 3.3 to 3.5 like Corbin Burns, Terry Scooble. So he's obviously top two, but it's interesting that the top two guys both have, you know, quantity concerns. And that's the only thing that's kept me from ranking them one and two all season. And last season, of course, between LSU and the brief time he was with the pirate Scienz got up to 129 and the third innings this year, combining what he did at AAA with what he's done with the pirate so far, he's at 93 and two third. So there's still some room in these final two and a half months for him to continue pushing that work. And I had heard the number it would be around 130. But if he's made 130 before, I believe that's a conservative estimate. Yeah. That might be a going into the season estimate. The better the team is, the more the further they get, the more likely he gets to 150. But you're right. If there are, I think you could push to 160 maybe. If there are two or three starts like this one where he's really good and they could push him for another inning and choose not to. You do that a handful of times that does create that extra room at the back of the schedule to just let him keep going when your whole season could potentially be on the line, depending on what happens in between now and then for the pirates. So what they're doing is Jordan Lawler had a setback. He was actually starting up a rehab assignment in the Arizona Complex League. He's going to miss six to eight more weeks after aggravating the hamstring yet again. I just think he's kind of interesting because if you're in a league where maybe you're in a play for next year or sometime down the road, Lawler is a top 10 prospect, I think by just about anybody's rankings. And we've barely seen him this year. And I think that makes it easier to trade for him because you'll find people saying, okay, he's not going to help me this year the way I thought. I'm trying to go all in right now and he's the best young player I can trade that I'm getting nothing out of right now. That's usually the sweet spot for the best available prospect that you can trade for in a lot of leagues. I think Lawler ticks those boxes. Yeah, I mean, it's why I traded away Drew Jones earlier this year. And I don't know that I'm super, super sad about trading major Jones because he's still striking out nearly 30% of the time. But this is the best stretch of baseball Drew Jones has ever played. And I'm just using him as an example for, you know, maybe you could follow that process with Lawler, same guy, same team, and just get on the other side of some injuries. It is a little bit weird that he's had now like two or three kind of fairly catastrophic injuries. This isn't the first, you know, he had the big shoulder injury. I mean, a six to eight weeks hamstring injury is a big injury. So this is, I don't know, two, maybe three big injuries on the on the on the roster for Lawler. Again, we're on this podcast not going to call someone injury prone too early. So I think mostly in on on buying him. Yeah. Yeah, the other injury he had back in the spring was a thumb injury. He suffered that while trying to just scoop a ball off the ground with his throwing hand during a minor league game. That's it. So yeah, that's pretty random. The hamstring coming back. I mean, yeah, you start to worry about a soft tissue problem like that that comes back being a little more chronic in nature. But we'll just have to see if you can make some kind of adjustments, right? Is he a long strider? Like we've talked about that a little bit, I think with Trevor on the Thursday show, maybe there's something in the way Lawler is running right now that can be tweaked slightly that will hopefully reduce those injury chances in the future. Also comes up a little bit with pitchers. Like, I wonder if you just get these lost seasons with players because think about it with a pitcher. How many times have you heard or I was just talking about called comforter, even I can be a hitter. He's got the best max EV of his of his of his like the last four years, right? Since his shoulder surgery, right? And I was like, oh, so you're fully healthy. And he said, well, one thing is I can finally now, you know, follow through with one hand because I had been rehabbing off of the shoulder surgery before. And during that rehab process, we went with a two hand finish because you don't, you don't trust it. You don't want to re-injure it. You know what it's like to injure it. You don't want to do it again. And so there's like that fully trust. But then there's also, you know, without the full normal offices, and you'll see this, like, somebody will rehab something, come back, like, we'll talk about Jericho later, but you know, they'll rehab something and come back. They didn't have a normal spring. So we don't know where Cole is right now. And in terms of if it was like, is he in the middle of March, you know what I mean? Like, you know, we don't know where he is in terms of like how a normal off season would progress. So I wonder if Jordan Lawler gets hurt and he's not doing the normal sort of this is how my season goes, right? You know, I my hamstrings, you know, get stronger and warmer as the season goes on. And then maybe he like hurt himself, tried to come back, you know, you know, you know, he's coming off of the thumbs. He's not thinking about the legs or whatever, not doing the same progressions or doing way more legs because he can't do anything with the hands, you know, and then he comes back and hurts his legs, you know. So I wonder if there's these things that kind of steamroll because you're because their players are kind of creatures or habit and they have all these things mapped out for them. Let's say you put an injury in the middle of it, it it changes the whole timeline, you know, it changes the whole way that they prepare. You'll definitely hear from hitters like, the year after my injury was way better because I had just a normal off season, you know. And so, you know, what we want from Lawler is not so much that he's going to come back and dominate. We want him to come back, be fine. And then next year, we'll be fine all the way through spring and see what we can do with like a normal year. Right. And I think that will probably be an opportunity for the Diamondbacks to clear up their infield a little bit. I think when Lawler's ready, he's going to play and someone's going to get pushed out anyway. It's just a question of who that is and how much time Lawler has to yield to a veteran. If it were Eugenio Suarez, for example, we talked about the struggles of Suarez a few weeks ago and he's been better sent that he mentioned it maybe last week or two weeks ago. He's actually started to look more like Eugenio Suarez, maybe about to go on one of his patented midsummer tears. And Blaze didn't didn't take his job. Blaze Alexander didn't do it. So I think we're probably looking at Lawler. Yeah, more for 2025. Maybe we'll get a late season run in September for him or he's part of the picture for the Diamondbacks. But Pradomo is also kind of looking. He's becoming an even more extreme version of himself where he has zero homers and one stolen base for the year. It's one of the emptier lines in baseball in terms of fantasy. But it is interesting in terms of real life because he's probably headed to kind of league average status by the end of the year. It's kind of when you have somebody like that who's not expensive and he's on the minimum and he's with you for a long time and he's league average. It's kind of hard to be like, okay, now you need to go away. So maybe they'll just choose which has the better arm between Pradomo and Lawler and move that guy to third. Am I right about Brian Rocchio being this year's Pradomo? It's kind of an ugly slash line to 13 309 306. But 19% k rate, 10% walk rate, cheap seven steals, plays a lot because of his gloves only pop three homers. It just seems like better fortune on balls and play and suddenly I'm right. So maybe I just I'm just unlucky in that call. Did you call it before? Yeah, it was Rocchio. You're new Pradomo. Yeah, Rocchio was my new Pradomo. The guy that nobody wanted who would play a lot and probably in deep deep leagues be okay. Mixed leagues, it's not really working out. It's one of those reasons to to to care about defense. You know, there are players that are that are that are that stay on the field longer for the defense. Yeah, even in that organization, I wonder though, as as they continue to tweak other hitters that they can't get more of a Rocchio, they'll eventually move on in Cleveland. I did have a story today about Stephen Kwan and the Guardian's new approach. Anybody's been listening to podcast knows a lot about we've been talking about how the Guardians are pulling the ball more. And I just like tried to find the luckiest power hitters this year. And I went through a couple different kind of ways to process it, which some people didn't like. They accused me of trying to find an answer. But I really was just trying to let people in on my process, which is often like make a list. Think about the list, interrogate the list. Is it the list you want to put? And instead of just putting the final the final list up, I kind of put up the different lists, like I showed people how I work. And some people just felt like I was trying to get to an answer, which, you know, to some extent, I was because the first list had show Hayo Tani on it as a lucky power hitter. And I was like, it's just not right. You don't want to put your name on that one. Yeah, like this is not the right list. I'm sorry. You could you could say I'm just looking for the right list. But like, I mean, yeah, I am. I just it just shouldn't have showy O'Tani Bobby Whit and Gunnar Henderson on it as lucky power hitters. I'm sorry. That's the wrong list. But the further I went, Stephen Kwan stayed on the list. He stayed on the list. I was like, Oh, well, Stephen Kwan makes a lot of contact. Let's try just try one that, you know, that adjust for contact. For contact rate, you know, barrels over plate appearances, instead of barrels over over batted balls. And then I found a spray. I found an ex-woble with spray angle in it from a ton K. That's on the Google Doc for anybody who's listening. And Stephen Kwan was still one of the luckiest players. In fact, the luckiest power hitters were Luis Ranjifo. Who else was on it? Luis Ranjifo, Stephen Kwan. I mean, it was it was such a letdown in the end, actually. Because it wasn't good power hitters. Yeah. I mean, Luis Ranjifo has got a 2.8% barrel rate behind those six homes. So I wasn't necessarily looking at him and saying, this is real. Right. It didn't it didn't like open up anybody that was really surprised to see. And it didn't open up anybody that you would count on for power. I mean, I think even the biggest Stephen Kwan supporters would be like, yeah, like, maybe he won't hit another nine homers in the second half. Yeah, the list was Luis Ranjifo, Isaiah kind of Folefa, Josh Smith, Stephen Kwan, and Sedan Rafaela. It's like, okay, did anybody have those guys down to equal their power in the second half? I don't know. So anyway, the power pulled fly ball was part of that process. And I don't think that Rokio has really unlocked that yet. No, not yet. Josh Smith has been just great in this first half. We talked about that as a kind of a counterpoint to the Josh Young absence. He's basically done what you'd hope Josh Young would have done with a step forward. But it's very hard to rely on it the way Josh Smith has done it. I didn't have in my latest hitter rankings update, because I thought the playing time was going to completely dry up. And that was prior to young having a setback and another month's worth of quality played appearances have been tacked on to the ledger for Josh Smith. I was two years early on Josh Smith. I know that I had gone on my anti-comp rant, but sometimes it's just it's fun to put a positive one on it and somebody gave me this comp. So I'm just passing along. Somebody in that organization called him a Tommy Lestello with Glove. Okay, well that's good because the Tommy Lestello that was definitely a shortcoming in his skill set. But the idea is high walk rate, low strike out rate, decent power, if not great power. So, you know, maybe kind of a 260 10 10 guy or a 260 15 10 guy. I wonder, would it be a smoldering hot take if I said Josh Smith will steal more bases than he will hit home runs the rest of the way this season eight homers against four steals so far. But like if he flipped that really supported by barrel or EVs, really. Yeah, so he's got 61st percentile sprint speed. And if he's on base all the time, maybe that's the way he's able to add a little extra value if he's not hitting homers. Yeah, be interesting. When Evan Carter comes back, this team becomes pretty fast. I mean, Carter Langford Smith, like you've got some guys with wheels. I don't know if that's going to change their team philosophy in terms of stealing bases, but they still have power hitters. But yeah, they have been pretty quiet on the base paths overall. Hello people. I am a Kim Malera here, host of the athletic FC podcast. The new Premier League and European football seasons are here and the athletic FC has you covered. Join me David Ornstein, Phil Hay and the most stacked footballing newsroom ever assembled every Monday to Thursday, as we take a deep dive into the biggest football story of the day. Then every Friday, Adam Leventon and our club reporters will preview the potential tactics drama and jeopardy riding on the biggest game from that coming weekend. Check us out wherever you get your podcasts from for free. We hope you can join us for what is set to be another blockbuster season. One more baseball news item to get to. We have another update in the wander Franco case. Franco's been charged with sexual exploitation of a minor and human trafficking. The latter charge was kind of the added thing that we didn't see coming necessarily carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. That's just for the human trafficking. The first preliminary hearing for the case is next month, August 14th. We'll probably have some more information once that happens, but things are moving very slowly in the wander case. Yeah, I think you just legally, you don't like to bring cases unless you win them in terms of prosecutors. You wait until you have everything in mind, and then you drop the hammer. They also indicted the mother of the daughter. There's some blame to be spread around some people that helped him do what he did, but it looks like he did. I don't expect him to come back. Some people were surprised to learn that he'd been being paid because he was on administrative leave. He's now on restricted list and not getting paid. I think it's hard. Administrative leave is something where you're telling them to stay away, and so if you're telling someone to stay away, you kind of have to pay them because you're telling them to stay away. That's something where charges are pending or we need to figure out what's going on. That's administrative leave. That's how it works. Restricted list is he can't be here. Physically can't be here because he can't get a visa. He's charged, so now he's not getting paid anymore. That's a technical matter, but that's really what's happening. It's a really sad story all around. Sad story, and it keeps getting worse the more details that we get coming out of the Dominican Republic about Juan de Franco. Moving on to some mailbag questions. We had a nice group of those come through our Discord. If you'd like to join the Discord, you can do that with the link in the show description. This first one comes from Peel's 25. Our thoughts on Garrett Cole after his first four starts hasn't been an impressive run for him so far, so where are you on Garrett Cole since you've got a picture rankings update coming up here in the near future? Yeah, I do have a working ranks that I update a little bit. I put a date on it, the eighth, and I'm going to update it again. When I do a working ranks, it's just like a view into my process. I'm refreshing it, trying to get rid of injured guys. Also, leaving it, I've opened it up to the Discord and told people on the Discord, argue somebody up or down, tell me what you think, and I'll look at it. I think there was already an argument up for Luis LRT's after what we talked about with the cutter and the change up. He's at 113. Maybe he'll go up. I hear you on that one. Whoever reached out to me on that on him. Right now, I have Cole 25. The projection is still good. It's for a 3, 4, 9 ERA. The stuff plus despite going down is good. It's a 111 stuff plus. That's on par with 109. 109 on my sheet. Is it 109 here? Anyway, it's still good. Yeah, 109. 109 is just below a Fromber Valdez. It's tied with Cole Reagan's, you know what I mean? Like, it's a good number. Tanner Howk is a 109. So, I think he can succeed with the stuff he has. But the reason he's 25 and not top 10 is because the strikeout minus walk rate is not there. Right now, he's got an average strikeout minus walk rate. The locations aren't there. He's got a 10% walk rate and the worst location plus of his career. The first time it's ever been below average. And then the last thing that's just it just makes me nervous as all heck is he's not throwing a slider. He's got to cut the usage of that in half and he's replaced it with the cutter. And I do not like this for very many reasons. One is Garrett Cole himself has said I'm a little bit worried about throwing the cutter too much because it might affect the shape of my side, my fastball, you know. The other reason I'm worried about this is when you come back from TJ, they tell you not to throw your slider. We always wonder if the pitch changes that come off of an injury, whether it's TJ or not, this is not a TJ situation for Cole, but is it because something doesn't feel good? Because it hurts. Right. Or is it part of building up and just trying to get everything else right before going back to it? Maybe he'll come back to it later. It's not encouraging to see that usage basically cut in half through four starts. The thing that I think is trending in the right direction on a start by start level is the foreseen velocity. That's at least ticking back up, right? Like he started at 95, got to 95, 4, 95, 9, and now 96, 3, his last time out. So if he's pushing that back up to his previous norms, the foreseen was a really important pitch for Garrett Cole. Look at the run value on that here over here. He's just phenomenal with that. So if he's going to throw the slider less, which is also a really important pitch for him, the foreseamer has to sort of come all the way back. If that happens, then you probably split the difference between where he was top two, top three, where you're saying he probably is now in that top 25 range, and he can probably push himself back towards the top 10, which is still very good. Most top 10 pitchers, even most top 25 pitchers, they're in your lineup all the time. You're rarely taking someone like that out, but it comes back to what would you do in trade? Like if you're trying to get an ace, maybe you're not trading for Garrett Cole in redraft leagues, because there are 24 other pitchers that are going to come out likely ahead of him on that next set of ranks. Yeah, but the interesting thing about the mindset about people, what they have, you know, like is it really attainable? Can you go get Tarex Google and win one of your leagues? No, I tried trading Tarex Google at a keeper league. You did? You asked for everything? Well, I was trying to get Jackson Churio in the keeper league in return, and I was close, but it didn't happen. Shelley V shot the deal down. Shelley V's got a chance to win the keeper league we're playing in, and I don't think I have a chance to win it. So I tried to make a godfather offer. She wants to win with Jackson Churio. That's another thing that I've been in that mindset where I'm winning. And I'm like, right now, everyone wants to mark Mark Vientos in one of my auto new leagues. And I've got him cheap. And I'm like, could I win with him? Vientos, I might be a little more tempted to say this is a pretty nice time to cash out. It doesn't mean he's going to come crashing back to earth. But I started, I think it was maybe it was probably just about three or four weeks ago, right before the June that Jackson Churio put together happened. It was kind of in the middle of it. That's when I got that offer out there. And it was like every day, I felt like every day Shelley was thinking about it. Churio was going like two for four, stealing a base, doing all the things like completely validating the I don't think I want to trade him vibes that I'm probably like for the first reaction. I'm just saying like Garrett Cole seems attainable. If it's a keeper league, maybe I wouldn't pay prices like, Oh, he's going to be a top five keeper starter because this does feel like maybe he's going to be injured next year. Or maybe it's like I mentioned the cow braddish where he's going to come back for a while and then it's not going to work, you know, that's that's still a possibility I think for him. So I would treat him as a little bit of a depressed asset when it comes to keepers. But if I just wanted to go for it this year, I think he's probably one of the most attainable guys in the top 25. I mean, you could maybe get Garrett Crochet, but like, who's going to throw more innings going forward Garrett Crochet or or or Garrett Cole? I think I probably take Garrett Cole classic battle of the Garrett's. Yeah. I mean, who else could you like you could maybe get Pablo Lopez Pablo Lopez might be on the same level in terms of ease of trading for and it's all it's relative. It's it's hard to trade for an ace. Most people can't part with one. So unless they are extremely frustrated, or maybe just doing really well with pitching overall and just need to make up ground on hitting now or at the point in the season with the all-star break coming up after the weekend where people will make trades like that. They'll trade a twenty five or thirty dollar hitter for a twenty five or thirty dollar pitcher. Those types of trades are a lot less likely to happen for most of the first half of the season. Yeah, because they'll see some sort of imbalance on their team and think this is actually something I need to do. Yeah, now correcting for it's something that more more teams are comfortable trying to do with two and a half months left to play. Thanks a lot for that question, Peels. Let's go to this one from Len. What is going on with Josh Lo? I'm trying to figure out why Lo has been so much worse than last year, although the batted ball quality has been almost the same. If not better in some places, the only significant difference I could find in this profile is that he's going up a lot more. Could that mean his timing is off? That's weird. I don't actually keep center and oppo in my dashboard. I just keep pulling. I mean, you run out of space after a while. Well, you got to get a bigger monitor. Why don't you have like a 40-inch monitor? I do, but you're watching. You're kind of running out of space on Fangura. Yeah, I think eventually the start's going off. The grid's not happy. Yeah, exactly. That does suggest something. For me, this is a theory I'm developing. It has to do with me. I've been talking about talking to hitters about contact points and stuff. I think I'd like it when the only thing that is different about a hitter and they're struggling is if they're polar or oppo rates. I think I'd like it because I think that's something that can turn on a dime. Right. I do think it's timing. As Len suggested in the question, I think that's often the explanation. Now, I'm trying to think of an outlier explanation. Could teams be pitching someone differently and that's causing them to go the other way more because they are seeing a heavier dose of stuff that's outside compared to previous years where maybe they were pitched inside more often. Sure, that's possible. I don't know if that much of a shift would happen just from how teams are game-planning against the hitter. I mean, he's seeing a lot more sliders and a lot fewer foreseemers because I think his initial problem speaks more to timing. Yeah. Because you're not going to fill up a lefty away with sliders. No. I mean, that's a lefty sliders. But if it's a righty, yeah, 10 or half might. But normally, the righty approach to a lefty and he faces more righty. He doesn't even face that many lefties. So the normal righty approach to a lefty is to backfoot that thing. So he's not going oppo on a backfoot slider. So I don't think it's about how he's being pitched. But I did notice when Josh Lowe came into the league, the first time we analyzed them, we said, hey, he's struggling with fastballs and he closed that last year. A big part of the breakout last year was that he improved against fastballs. Josh Lowe hit 11 homers, slug 549 on fastballs last year. He only sluged 398 on fastballs in 2022. And this year, he's back down, at least for now. The difference is if you look at the width percentage, which I know is a little bit how they calculated on stack casts, not always the same way up on sliders. It's it's up a little unbreaking. It's the same as last year, almost on fastballs. He was 28.4% by the stack cast with percentage of fastballs last year, he's 29.4. Now when he broke in 22, get that extended run, it was at 36.8%. So seeing that the the width rate on fastballs hasn't gone back to that 2022 level, that would be another small indicator I'd look at and say, okay, yeah, this could be more of a timing thing than anything else or a correctable sort of thing. Matt Olson said that once he got really good at fastballs, it opened up the bottom of the zone for sliders. And if you saw Matt Olson, you know, that one year where a strikeout rate went down, that was the year he made the adjustment to hit forcing fastballs. And so his strikeout rate went down. So it is an interesting debate. I'm just going back to the Saver magician talking about how, you know, we care too much about these things that have decimal points or whatever. But one, one thing that's interesting is maybe he's a true talent 30% strikeout rate guy. Like we tell ourselves these stories about why he improved his strikeout rate and all he got better against fastballs and he covered up. Well, Matt Olson said, well, I covered the forcing fastball and it opened up the bottom of the zone for sliders. And so they just started filling up the bottom of the zone with sliders because they knew I was targeting the fastball at the top of the zone. And what did we see with Matt Olson's strikeout rate? It normalized his career rates the next year, right? So I think the one thing that is true now that we know about Josh Lowe, that's not necessarily a positive is he's probably a true talent 28 to 30% strikeout rate guy. That's where I would take him. So I don't think it necessarily a strikeout rate is going to get a lot better. I think his babbop will get better. That's a little low. I think his his in game power will get better. And I think he's probably a true talent 230 to 240 hitter, maybe 310 to 320 OBP. Still a guy who can go 2030 like he did last year. Just I don't think he's going to hit 290 and have a 330 for 340 OBP going forward. All right. So I think that's generally a buy indicator grade from, you know, like short term and long term, because it seems like when healthy, Josh Lowe has the, what are the coveted everyday spots in the raised lineup as opposed to the shared spots, which are always a source of frustration for us on this show. Got a question here from spider, spider 3909 to be exact. What is going on with the event? No, I don't think so. What's going on with Louise Castillo's slider year over year, the stuff plus numbers on that it was a 109 back in 22, a 117 a year ago and a 77 at the time spider sent this question for 2024 by stack has spider thinks the slider looks less consistent also. So it's something wrong with that pitch this year for Louise Castillo. I don't know what's going on in July, dude, but he's averaging a three on it. It's the worst he's averaged on the pitch since 2018, which was when it wasn't a very good pitch for him. He's just learning it. And that was only the first half of 2018 since then he's been 86 on that slider ever since. So that's not good. In terms of vertical movement, he was also losing a ton of vertical movement over the course this year. So even though, you know, even before he lost all that Vilo in July, he was losing drop on the pitch. These are the kind of the wise in terms of wise stuff plus down, you know, you know, it doesn't tell us why why is he losing drop on the slider? You know, why is he losing Vilo on the slider? I don't have an answer for that. You know, possible ones are injury. I would, I would almost say it is some sort of injury. The question is just how big is it like a little thing that's nagging him and he's trying to adjust to it. And that's why he lost a slider. Or is it a big thing that we're going to find out as soon? Isn't that like, what's another reason why you would just lose it? I would wish, I wish Trevor was here. What's another reason you would just lose a bunch of drop on your slider? Losing drop on the slider doesn't seem like a flooky thing. It seems more like something's causing this kind of problem. It could be mechanics, I guess. One thing that is interesting about Lewis Castillo is that he was like a natural sinker change guy. Right. Kind of added force him slider. So maybe, maybe he's just he's reverting somehow and he's got to fight and fight reverting back and he's got to, you know, bear down on that slider a little bit. I generally think he's a good pitcher. Yeah. He's still good by results. Kays down. Kays down a little bit. Like 24% now. So maybe we're drifting into the Lewis Castillo is a nice SP three or Lewis Castillo is about to hit the Jose burrios button at some random point. Oh, and just have like a really bad year. Maybe he's in that range where the downside of him when he's healthy is lower than it used to be. Seems like one of the highest sword pitchers in baseball though still. I think the part goes a long way to help that even with the stuff declining in the slider, the four-seamer and the slider are great by results. They don't get punished. Low average against. I mean, the four-seamer gives up the occasional home run, but it's the old stuff. The sinker and the change that I said this before. The least Castillo's change up for a long time was one of my favorite pitches just to watch because guys when he broke in that change up was his main go-to pitch. It was nasty. Like this is five years ago now when it was great and it was even pretty good. I don't know. It was recently is 2021. Kind of started to fall off a little bit after that. And now the sinker and the change just don't work the way they used to for him. It's really kind of a bizarre transformation, but it's good for him and that he found the other two pitches necessary to keep pitching at a high level. As the VLOs drop, the movement has increased. That's normal. And there's a lot more horizontal and drop on it now in July, but it's become more like a curveball. Because it's 82, 83. For a second, I was like, is he experimenting with a sweeper? It doesn't. I don't think that's it. I don't think it's some purpose. I don't think you would do this on purpose. I think most people around the league know throw your slider as hard as possible. All right. We will bug Trevor about this at some point in the near future and see if you can find a reason why that would be that way for Luis Castillo. Yeah, we have two questions for him. Like the cold cutter question too. Like, why would you not touch a slider coming back? Yeah. Just piling them up. One more question here for us, the answer from the mailbag. It's like Friday. It's just like our natural internal clock is just like, where's Trevor? Look, I'm looking at the middle of the screen. What do you think, Trevor? Yeah, what do you think, Trevor? And he's like, oh, crap. It's Friday. He's not here. Thursday now. Dang it. This one came from Strongbell in Discord. Strongbell wants to know, would it be worthwhile for teams to curate their own version of what happened? Data examples would be getting rung up on a three, two pitch that might have been three inches outside. Like you could record it as something that should have been a walk in your database, even though it was a strikeout, because it was called incorrectly, you know, fielder botches a play, but it's scored a hit. You can think about how that impacts ratios for someone and then hit a home run off a position player during a blowout, like basically adding more context to some of the things that happened. Would it be worthwhile to do that and have your own version, your own database of that internally? Yeah. I think, you know, the way this works is simulations. And, you know, I just spoke of Mattanke's, you know, ex-woble with spray angle earlier when I was talking about, you know, this, this expected woba has a push and pull in it, which makes, I think, a superior pitcher list, I think, has a push and pull in, and there's two. The way he does it is he simulates it a bunch of times, and he kind of gives you the mean as a result. I think it would be really useful for teams to basically have like an outside the park, an OOTP simulation of their season, you know, kind of going alongside. And maybe it's like, actually, the mean simulation out of 50,000 simulations. I was going to say, yeah, you could run a few thousand, maybe for the upcoming week, the next couple of series and just see. But also retroactively, you know, just to get a sense of, I think that would be a really good way to nail down the true talent of your players, you know, because you could look at the differences between what's happening in your simulation and what's happening in real. It would give you a better sense of the true talent of your team. You know, you're headed towards the deadline. You're three, three games under 500. The simulation is six games over 500. Right. Maybe you, maybe you stick in a little bit longer. Maybe you don't sell. You know, I think it's super, I think it would be super useful. I bet you, I bet you some teams are doing this. And for us, it also came up when we were talking about the future of Statcast, and we will do simulations of alternate realities, you know, for broadcast. And that's, so that's, you know, broadcast people are thinking about this. And so I think teams are as well. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. One of the questions that came in with this one from strong bell, do teams consider the strength of pitchers faced? We see that metric a lot of times on the player pages at baseball reference in the spring when you're trying to contextualize spring stats. And do you feel like it tends to vanish in the regular season or doesn't get talked about as much? We talked about it. Geez, was that back in May, looking at the Blue Jays and I think the Blue Jays at the time had faced the best stuff plus the first month of the season. We were kind of like working backwards off of the Red Sox, having an easy schedule and that may be propping up their pitchers. But then we asked the kind of inverse question, which pain, which hitters have seen the toughest pitchers so far. For what it's worth, Vlad has done better since. Yeah, yeah, it's been fun. I've got Vlad a few places, got a few teams that were bottom third of the league that have made their way into the, they're no longer in the underbelly. They're just in the belly. So I think it's useful. I just think it's really, really hard to do, because you have to think about how often we on this show talk about how good a player actually is. And we're just talking about how good the player himself is. When you're talking about strength of competition, now you have to talk about how good is the player you're looking at and the player they're facing. So you're just doubling your work, you know. And so if you have, like if you, like people do this with teams or they're like, you know, they're going to face teams with the X record. Again, it's not the simulated record. It's not the mean record out of all the simulations. It's the actual record could just be an unlucky team. It could be, are you facing the Yankees now? Or are you facing the Yankees, you know, two months ago? So, you know, I think that it's, and it's something that we as fans, people are thinking about all the time, because we're like, you know, should I start Jordan Hicks at home? Yesterday, I had the choice of Jordan Hicks at home against Toronto Blue Jays and Shane Boz at home against the Yankees. Did you owe Boz? I went Hicks. How do you feel about your decision? It was wrong. It was auto new points, but do you feel so Hicks gave up two homers and was a minus 17? Oh, yeah, I haven't played out a new points yet, but yeah, minus 17 seems pretty bad. The you kind of want 20 to 30 points out of a starter. So it's really pretty bad. But do you look at that and say right process, unlucky result, or do you question your process because you were on the fence about it? I do question my process a little bit in how much should I wait like recent stuff plus, you know what I mean? Because we know that there's a little bit of predictive action to changes and stuff plus, and we know that Jordan Hicks is one of the biggest stuff plus leaders over the course of the season. But I don't necessarily know how much I messed up process wise in gauging the opposition. Right. I mean, I think you still saw the boss. Blue Jays look terrible at times, and then they look fine against the Giants for a couple of games. Yeah, I'm going to say I saw the basically when they started hitting Logan Webb, and then as I tweeted, every time I watched the Giants shun jelly pitches, just every time. He's been pretty good this year. But he got hit. It was, I think they put up nine runs in a two or three inning window. They just went off and I was like, oh, maybe the Blue Jays are starting to wake up a little bit. And San Francisco has been a little bit warmer than usual and the Hicks was a day game. I mean, there's so many different things we can think about. Yeah. Boss wasn't great either. He was fine. Boss basically did what you would expect if the Yankees were playing the way the Yankees should play with their true talent level. Yeah. I didn't think he looked. I test in the stuff plus tester a little bit off for me. Because again, the stuff plus looks great, but I don't think he looked really crisp. And one thing I will note is that the slider and curveball stuff plus are much closer to average than you'd expect. He's kind of his the fastball is the one that's carrying him right now. He's a 110 stuff lost on the slider 100 on the curve and average for the sliders like 105 and for the curve is like 100 101. So it's like, he's kind of got two average breaking balls and they didn't look very crisp. So I don't know. Boss is definitively a matchup sky. And I guess I didn't use them against the Yankees. But I do think Hicks is a matchup sky too. So no. Yeah. That's that's where he's been lately home. Most of the time, though, I think you're probably using Jordan Hicks. That's that's but maybe not home day. Yeah. I do. I do lose that sometimes with the Padres too. Yes. Those two parks play because temperature is a big source of why those parks play picture friendly sometimes or most of the time and the temperature is different during the day. News flash and the temperatures fluctuate faster in those places like some places. Oh my gosh. The heat lingers more into the evening, but yeah, it you don't like the weather in a particular day in the Bay Area blink and it might be different. I mean, it can change also just over the course of the day, even in Palo Alto, we can get up to 80 or 90 during the day, but it almost always gets cool at night. It always goes above. Whatever the high temperature is, it'll lie. It goes above that every day for a little while and it comes back down and then it gets even a little cooler than you expected to without fail. You got always have a jacket on you in the Bay Area. You do. You do. It's or hoodie. Sorry hoodie. It's definitely hoodie place. But you say you use it less now than you used to because you know things things are changing. By the way, it's hot everywhere, which means Summer League is back, which means the NBA, we have like NBA show, no dunks. They're actually at the Summer League. Lots of great content. They're breaking down all the big stories. Be sure to check out both of those shows wherever you get your podcasts. They're doing prospects. We're going to do prospects. It's right. We got a project prospect here. Eno did some digging. You were looking for players who had 2024 ETA's from fan graphs with a 50 future value. And this has to be players that have not debuted above average prospects that have not debuted and are healthy. And so basically here's your stash list. Warning. It's a little ugly. Kevin Alcantara, who has like a 115 stuff plus stuff plus 115 WRC plus in the minors. But you know, could be on the list at some point. I kind of doubt he's coming up and Manuel Rodriguez is playing okay. He's the twin center fielder with a lot of power. But he doesn't seem to be on the list yet. You know, like where does Julian figure in and is Julian before him? And you know what I mean? Like, I guess maybe with a buckston injury, you could see in a manual Rodriguez call up. Will Warren still has okay stuff plus numbers in the minors for the Yankees, but not good results. And I think they'll trade for an arm before they promote will Warren unless of course there's an injury. So he could come up. I just don't think he's necessarily an amazing stash. Drew Gilbert has been hurt. He's an outfielder for the Mets. He also hasn't played well. Then there's Hyrule Iriarte, who went to the White Sox in the in the Dylan Seasteal. He's doing okay in AA. I suppose you could come up, but I don't know how excited I am to stash him. Mick Abel is not pitching well for the Phillies. And they're a great team. I think they would trade before calling him up. And then Diego, Diego Cartaya, who's a catcher for the Dodgers who strikes out 30% of the time. And they've got a pretty good catcher. Will Smith's pretty good. Yeah, that list that to me is all guys with the exception to maybe Iriarte who need a trade to actually get an opportunity. They could be traded. I don't think the Cubs are buyers, but the twins. I mean, I think it would be a Pablo Lopez type deal if they were going to give up a minute over. Yeah, I don't get the sense they want to do that. He's actually just working his way back from a thumb injury. So he's been playing in the Florida complex league recently. Got hurt in June sliding into second base. Geez, man. His slash line is bonkers. I just want to see what he does over a larger sample. Who runs a 479 OBP at double A? Yeah, but he does have strong in zone swing and mess problems. Even though his swing strike rate so far this year has been really good. So if he's closing any holes, then he becomes even more exciting because he has top, top shelf power backed up by any sort of, you know, bad balls, velocities and stuff that have leaked through. You know who's probably going to the fall league? Emmanuel Rodriguez, he's probably going to fall league. Yeah. Kevin on Contra went last year or so. I don't know if he's going to go again. Kevin on Contra, I feel bad because the look we got wasn't a good look. And every time I get a bad look in the fall league, I need to develop the ability to just care less about that. It's okay. It's like my toe in my toe bar. Look, it happens. It's late in the year. This guy's been playing for a few extra months by the time we get there. Like what? And also, like, you can just look at a guy for a couple of days and you're not really getting the full picture of what they can do. Right. And he also, but I think he was, there was the home run derby too. Just even in that setting didn't look great. And I think that that was also kind of weighing on me all season. But yeah, I'm curious to see like what they do with a contract. It's a really high ground ball rate for Kevin on Contra too. And it has been, it's only only been one stop where it's been below 50 really. So I'm a little pessimistic about him. Do you get him as more of like a throwing the keeper dynasty league though? Because if it clicks, I get it. I understand why the raw tools are grazed 22 and it and has only been above average at double A. Yeah, even with the struggles, air quotes, he's still been good above average everywhere he's played other than a brief stint in rookie ball when he was 16. What? Yeah. So I think there's still a ton to like, even though it's not necessarily jumping off the page yet with Kevin on Contra. Let's get to our weekend waiver preview. Oh, and by the way, if you like prospect talk, Melissa Lockard is going to join the show on Monday. We'll talk a lot about the players drafted on day one of the MLB draft, which gets underway on Sunday. We can wave a preview though. Is it going to be different this time for Matt Walner? Can you tell me that the second time around will be everything we'd hoped for from the beginning for Matt Walner? I mean, he has plus bat speed and he showed it with I think the second hardest hit ball by the twins this year in his in his call up. I just, for me, I just don't know, I don't know about the playing time. I mean, like the corresponding move was Austin Martin. Yeah, Martin Martin got hurt, right? And Austin Martin wasn't playing. You know, so it's like if he's if it's just a one for one thing, then I don't know, but since he's come up, he's played in left field four for four. Yeah, he started in right field the other one. He's no every game. He's played all four since it came up over the weekend last weekend and had two homers. Who is he taking time from then? Larnock a little bit. Larnock has played left field in DH. So Larnock's still playing a little bit. Larnock lost one start. And yeah, I mean, Martin was playing a little because of his defense and center is Miranda playing at third because Miranda's playing more Miranda. The last four games has DH played third base played first base and actually gave him a day off last Sunday, but usually he's playing Brooks Lee has been playing mostly third and he got one day off on my use a DH on Wednesday as part of the double head of the first game of the double header. You know, who does this pretty well is roster resource. You can kind of see everybody's at least last four or five games. Yeah, so Kepler got a day off randomly. It's kind of been just a little bit of everybody so far. How's the Miranda got a day off randomly? Carlos Santana got a day off randomly because they've all faced righties. It's hard to see who's in the in the strict platoon, but I would guess that one of Kepler or Larnock is just not playing against lefties. Yeah, I guess the soft spot of all those players would be Trevor Larnock again, right? Because they do similar things. They have similar limitations and Larnock has been fine, but not necessarily great. And especially recently, this is always though. What have you done for me lately sort of question and Larnock's been in a slump. So I think that's probably where the playing time comes from from now on. They're just making Larnock play a lot less than chipping away at the playing time of a few of the other veterans there. I think I do like one or better than than Larnock. There's obviously a lot more swing in this and it may be untenable, but there is primo primo bad speed here for one long. If you take off the if you take off the filters on the bad speed thing, it's number two. That's a ton of bad speed. I imagine Reese Hines has a lot of bad speed just based on the rough power he is showing so far. We talked about a little bit on Thursday and what types of leagues are you interested in in Reese Hines? I think I'm only trying to catch lightning in a bottle. I'm not trying to spend a ton. I don't think I don't think I want to drop like $100 out of my thousand on him. It's a really bad strikeout rate. And then what's the team context for you? I know they had Fraley. Fraley was on the bereavement list, if I remember correctly. And let's see. There was an injury to Stewart Fairchild. I think that was part of why they had to make a move. Yeah, so Fairchild's on the I.L. Frito's still on the I.L. Nick Martini went on the I.L. Outfield is Fraley Hines and Benson Steer. Fraley Hines Steer and Benson. Fraley Hines Steer and Benson has four people. And then they also have Austin Slater on the bench who plays against Lefties. Well, they've done the same thing with Hines the twins have done with Walner. Like since coming up, he's started all four games, two against Righties, two against Lefties played right field every single time. So they've been consistent in terms of catch lightning in a bottle. I think they I think there could be a chance that he takes a job because Will Benson is Will Benson's Stewart Fairchild and Austin Slater seem to me like role role players. So if they're all role players and Reese Hines says, no, I'm an everyday starter. There's there's a place for him, I think. Right. And when you look at the way they've performed, Benson's got an 82 WRC plus and they've given him a good run. 284 played appearances this year. You've basically given him a half season to see what he does. Stewart Fairchild to me is more glove fit-out fielder, like sure, you bring him off the bench. You know, Martini also being hurt was mostly a DH 74 WRC plus. You don't have to play him anymore. And even Fraley, where'd Jake Fraley's power go? He's got one homer in 65 games this year and a 92 WRC plus. You've got enough weakness across that deck. He's he's the center fielder because of his defense. Yeah, but I think Reese Hines could be the right fielder. It could be. Yeah, if everyone's healthy and you're trying to field your best offensive lineup with good defenders, it's steer Frito Hines. Yeah. And Frito's a lefty, right? Yes. And they added Austin Slater to be a platoon option in the outfield with some of those lefties because Slater's a righty. So Reese could end up in a large, well, he could have been a small side of the tune, but I doubt they'd keep him the big leagues for that. I don't know. The other thing about Reese Hines, I noticed when we were started talking about him yesterday, too, is like, he's not young, young, and he's old enough where you're going to want to see what he is and decide if it's going to work, if he's going to make the adjustments enough. He's going to be 24 in September. He's over 800 played appearances at double A and triple A to combine. He wasn't actually that good this year in triple A. It was actually 79 76 WRC plus. And of course, the it's all about the K rate and the projected K rate is 39%. So that's why I, you know, okay, the team context is good, power lightning in a bottle, power and speed, it's all there. You can go for it, but I just wouldn't do 100. I wouldn't do 10%. I wouldn't do 15% because of that K rate. I mean, the projections are for 210, 208 average from the bad X, you know, so this is the kind of thing where I might throw $30 out of $1,000, you know, or $26 out of $1,000 has really desperate for power. But like, I'm not, I'm not going over 100. If somebody wants to go all in on somebody like that, then then go for another name to throw out there. If you're looking for someone who's been playing a ton on El Martinez for the guardians has started eight consecutive games. He's the latest to join the Tyler Freeman, Daniel Schneeeman. I play everywhere club. He's played in center. He started games at center field, five in center, one at second, one at third and one in left. So plays an important position and plays other positions. And he's been hitting second. Such a guardian. Doesn't strike out, doesn't hit the ball hard. What am I supposed to do with this? Ah, he even, you know, pulls some fly balls. God, I hate this switch hitter. Good OBP. It's the ball doesn't have like a terrible hard hit rate, but also doesn't have a great hard hit rate just kind of in the hmm. Yeah, probably more of a 15 team league and deeper player, maybe keeper and dynasty or auto know you throw them out there for a buck and just see what happens. Uh, a guy in that class, I think is one. Yep, as yeah, he's playing a little bit too. He's played every game in the last five against righties and lefties. Looks like he's the starting first baseman in Washington. Um, and yep, as is a bit of a hit tool over power guy, if I remember correctly, from his Cardinals days. Um, you know, right now, uh, the swing strike rate suggests the strikeout rates going up, but he's walking well now. Um, barrel looks good now 38% hard hit rate. I know it's a small sample, but also that park is a little bit more forgiving than St. Louis. So if he, if, if his rookie year is what he is, 250 hitter with, you know, 20 home run power, um, you know, that, that might play a little bit higher in Washington. So this might actually be my favorite of the guys so far. I don't, I'm not saying put a hundred bucks on them. I'm just saying, maybe you put 20 bucks on all these guys and you win, you want yepas and you're happy about it. You know what I'm saying? The cheap, uh, waterfall bid comes through the contingencies back up plan. So we talked about a few of the arms that are available. Like Gilbert Diaz, we saw his debut earlier this week, uh, Luis Ortiz camp a little bit earlier in the show. We kind of like what he's been doing, getting an opportunity with the pirates right now. I think there are two relatively new names to the pitching pool. People are wondering about one with the Dodgers and Justin Roblesky and then the other Keter Montero, who's getting a spot in the Tigers rotation lately. And they just put Kenta, my eta in the bullpen. So I actually, I kind of think Montero kind of missed that. Montero is interesting, man. Like I was, I was looking at the pitch mix and it's, it's decent. There's not a lot of ride on his fastball. So that's probably going to be one thing that models don't love about him, but pretty good Vilo. I actually saw a little bit of maybe like, I don't know, like an approach that works against minor leaguers that won't work against big leaguers with where he was throwing his fastball. He was throwing a lot of low four seamers throw at 97, but I don't think that's going to work for a long time. So I think part of my, my intrigue with Keter Montero is trusting that Tigers will get him to throw his fastball higher in the zone and that he can do it. Like he's able to do that. He's got a good slider, got a curve and a change up. So it's four pitches with a nice home park. I think he could be one of those relative out of nowhere, guys that comes up and is actually useful in deeper leagues. Yeah, I would target him for at home starts against, you know, the Royals and White Sox and, you know, be conservative at first, but there's a lot to learn here about him in the next few days because the slider looks legit. The curveball looks like a, a positive in terms of, you know, his third, his third pitch. And, you know, he even throws a change up which rates sort of average-ish, you know, right now and the command looks okay. So, you know, it's not, does not yell to me like this could be like an ace? No, no, no, but I think a functional mid-rotation ceiling is possible and it might be, I don't know, we've talked about a lot of guys like Davis Daniel and some guys that were getting chances in other organizations that have been a lot less interesting that I think there's, there's a little bit here to work with. Yeah, Roboleski, I think he may just be keeping the seat warm a little bit for, for. I think it's River Ryan. Yeah, I, it's maybe not immediately, but I think it's soon after the second half begins. I think we're gonna see River Ryan get that shot. I like landing NAC more than Roboleski. Paxton versus Roboleski becomes more of just a matter of what do you get from James Paxton. If Paxton struggles enough, he can pitch his way out of that rotation. That's absolutely possible. But after the really early, ugly underlying numbers, things have occasionally looked a bit better from him. Yeah, I think he's out of the rotation before September. I just don't know if he's gonna hold on to it for the next six weeks and it kind of frustrates. Oh, James Paxton, you're saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I, I, yeah, I don't, I don't get it. You know, in the last, like, last time I talked to Paxton was like, last week, you know, he's telling me he doesn't care about, you know, pitch movement numbers or any of that, and that he can see what a good pitch is. But I don't know if I trust his eye, because he threw that cutter at 85 miles an hour for three years, you know, when it wasn't a good pitch. And he claims he can see what a good pitch is with his eyes, but he was throwing a bad pitch over and over again. Um, with the curveball as a secondary pitch, we can see that his whiff rates are down, his came out as BB is terrible, and stuff less than terrible. I think he's been lucky to, to have a four or two area. Yeah, I, I, I think he's losing the job eventually. I just don't know how long they're going to go before they finally make that move. I, Roblesky's not, I don't know, he's not bad. He's, he's got some stuff to work with also, but even, like, if you're taking one shot between Roblesky and, and Kidra Montero, is it Montero because of the current situation with role? Or do you shoot for Roblesky because the team situation's better? Montero, I like the park. The Dodgers are playing 500 baseball. Yeah, it's been a rough stretch for them. Gilbert Diaz is, um, on the forefront of a bunch of people's, uh, minds because he's up with the D backs. Um, he always had, um, really bad, um, command metrics and command grades. Um, if I remember correctly, let me see if I have that right. I got to see some of that debut. He looked pretty good. 30 40 30 present 40 future command from fan graphs on Gilbert Diaz. Uh, and walk rates that until this year were consistently 12 to 14%. Uh, this year, there's been a little step forward and with the ABS. Um, so that command looks interesting. I thought it looked okay. Um, but, um, there's an interesting thing out here. Let me see if I can find it. David Girth, G-E-R-T-H, um, has a picture similarity tool where you can input some key metrics for a pitcher's pitch and, um, and then find who, uh, who he's most like. And I put Gilbert Diaz's, um, fastball in and it spit out Logan Gillespie, uh, Adam Maser, uh, Hayden Burton song, Roanzi Contreras as the most similar fastballs. Um, and, uh, so I, I'm, I'm fairly, I'm fairly certain that stuff plus has him nay, has a nailed when it comes to poor fastball. It's, it's a fastball with like a round average movement, but it comes from a release point where you'd expect that average movement. You know what I mean? So there's nothing deceptive about it. It is 96. So that's good, but there's nothing else that's good about it. Um, and then the curveball that people have asked about that, that stuff plus says is terrible. Uh, 23% curveball, 20, 23 stuff plus curveball for you over Diaz. Um, well, he threw seven of them. Um, it's possible that, uh, that's not enough, but it also, um, I don't know, it's a 78 mile an hour curveball. Like, is that going to change? Is that like, let's say that's a hundred instead of that. It's still not a great arsenal for me. Um, I think the command will be exposed at some point. 83 mile an hour slider. You want your sliders over 85. Um, so there's, there's the only thing you really has going for him. And literally process wise in the pitch movements and shapes is the V low and the fastball. Everything else looks pretty bad. It just looks like a profile that will struggle against lefties to me. That's currently built. That too. I mean, they'll have to throw that curveball a lot more against lefties and we'll have to see, we'll see how that does. Uh, we are going to go on our way out the door. Reminder, get a subscription to athletic for just two dollars a month at athletic.com/ratesandbarals find Eno on Twitter at, you know, Sarah's find me at Derek and Rypert find the pod at rates and barrels. That's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
