Konnor Griffin Gets the Call & New Pitches That Have Our Attention

0:00Today on Rates & Barrels, we discuss the promotion of Pirates Top Prospect, Conor Griffin, how pictures can slow down a hitter's bat speed and a few new pitches that have caught our eye in the first week. Let's go. Welcome to Rates & Barrels, Thursday, April 2nd, Derek Van Rhyperinos, Sarah's Trevor May here. Tons of baseball news you should know as you get started today and the most exciting item is that Conor Griffin is set to debut on Friday. It's going to be part of the Pirates home opener. I mean, imagine that Trevor, all it took was a week at Triple A for Conor Griffin to answer the lingering questions the Pirates had about his development. It's amazing how quickly that all comes together though. He did start pretty hot seven hits, though no homers. That's a big issue for me. I'm just saying, I mean, is he ready? Yeah, it doesn't really solve the, what was it, April 9th was going to be the avoid super

1:04two date, I think. What is the thinking? I think it's having the big party for the home opener. I think it's, hey, we're really all in. We started three and three after a really weird opening day where O'Neill Cruz had one of the worst defensive days in the outfield possible in a Paul Schienz outing, no less. And yeah, Griffin, yeah, seven for 16 and five games at Triple A, a couple steals, five walks, four Ks. I don't know. It's just, there's just weird things teams do where the, yeah, this didn't really change anything. I don't know if they'd be four and two if they brought him up sooner, but I'm just excited he's up because we've seen the lofty comparisons at a Keith Law, said Griffin could be the most exciting prospect we've seen since Mike Trout, right? I mean, like that's a pretty high bar for anyone to try and clear. I think to be charitable, and since they aren't doing this for the super two cutoff, maybe the idea is just to give him the softest possible landing spot. And so to get him going well in Triple A and to get him coming off of a hot streak,

2:10coming into home, playing at home in front of the home crowd, I feel like maybe that's the whole thing. And you mentioned O'Neill Cruz, O'Neill Cruz hit a homer off of a lefty breaking ball that landed in a spot that he's never homered in. And as bad as that first series was for him, he does have two homers off of lefties now so far the season and it couldn't have been a good season for him. Maybe not a great defensive season. Maybe he's headed for somewhere else, but in this current, we talked about this already and this current roster is no other else for into play. So, you know, Connor Griffin is another way for them to try and sneak some defense, some offense into this, you know, onto this roster without completely tearing apart the defense, I think. Yeah, I think the big thing here in your red about O'Neill Cruz, like after opening days, been really good. I think he's got the OAA out above average back to an even zero too after going in the

3:11red right away. So maybe it all works out just fine. I still like what he could do at the plate. I just think the fit in center field is the ongoing question. With Griffin, rest of season projections actually spit out the same numbers that they spit out dollar-wise for Kevin McGonagall. Both of these guys are top 20 short stops from a fantasy perspective. That means they're a roster bowl everywhere because of MI and UT spots, so not at all surprised to see those numbers being pretty close right now. Of course, the possibility with both players is that they exceed those projections and leap up and play like top 10 guys at the position at some point this season. But the bigger question around the pirates and just like the whole approach they've had to this off season is, will it work? Did the things that they did over the course of the winter, the upgrades, adding Brandon Lau for more thump and making the moves that balanced out this lineup a little bit better, adding Marcelo Zuna to be the DH, calling up Conor Griffin now, does it actually help them snap their streak of seven consecutive losing seasons, right?

4:15I mean, do you see a team that finishes above 500 Trevor D? Do you see them as a team that actually gets a wildcard or possibly even wins the NL Central? Are you buying what they're selling right now in Pittsburgh? I'm buying it more than I have in those seven years. I think that, I don't know, it screams more complete of a team to me, especially with like the upside of the rest of the rotation even behind skins like, like these guys, Ash Kraft and we got Jared Jones, we got Bubba Chandler, these guys are all, if they click and they're going like, they're filthy and they could, their ceilings are just as high as any other rotation, it's just, they're unproven and a lot of times it doesn't pan out that way. And so like, I just think there's more talent than there's been there in a while. I think we've added a few veteran players to come, like take some pressure off the young guys because they constantly brought these young guys up their hydropics quickly and

5:15been like, you're the guy and then they don't pan out and maybe even, you know, I'm going to throw a crazy thing out there. I don't know, like, maybe they get more out of Gonzales or run that the plate or they get more out of Davis, but like, they've had a lot of first rounders and they come up and they're not really taking on a lot of the brunt of the offensive production. I think I like loud or her and Ozuna, it's going to be all right. We can, we'll help you out here and let these guys kind of flourish a little bit more. And then some of these other pitchers maybe hit their, hit their ceilings. I just, I really just want to Mitch Keller break out really badly. I just think that he is, he is never quite been to his potential. Yeah. So I buy it. I think it's a win-able division. It's always win-able division. I know that your brewer is very nip, but like, it's, you know, everyone's just like, it's probably one of the, these four teams will win it this year and it's that way every year. It's just the way it's put together. So it's not without the outside of the room possibility that they pull, they pull

6:16the reds and they go 83 and 79 and they sneak in. There's 12 flat teams. I don't, like, I don't want to get into the semantics of what best means, but like, I think this might be the tightest division, you know, in baseball this year. The Cardinals are not as bad as people thought they were going to be. And they find a way to never be really terrible. And I think that this will be something, I think this will be the tightest division. I think that you'll find even the worst team in this division is only a game or two under 500. And I think it'll be hard for the brewers to give that separation if it's the brewers of Cubs to give that kind of separation where they're getting into 100 wins or something. I think this will be something where the top team has like 91 wins and the worst team has like 80 wins. All right. So the belief across the board in the NL Central, I love the work that I have done on you over the years to get you on board. People who used to come on the show and hold their nose talking about these things. Well, that's why I said, that's why I said the semantics of the word best.

7:18I mean, it'll be tightest. I don't know what that means. It's the best. I think the NL Central is better than the A at least. Oh boy. That was not a real take. I'm not going down that road. I do think they snap the streak of losing seasons. I'm still much like with the royals. I'm like, they're good, but they're probably that first team out for me as I think about it. But I'm glad to see Griffin get the quick call doing right by the player. Always a good thing. The other part of this too, they have been in talks about an extension with Connor Griffin for weeks, maybe even months now. So it's entirely possible that in the near future, we get some kind of announcement that he's signing a deal similar to, but probably larger than the one we talked about earlier in the week with Colt Emerson, where it's an eight or nine year deal, something that buys out a couple of years of free agency, which is a huge part of why teams want to do that, right? You're getting cost certainty for players at and even maybe before peak.

8:23So that's probably part of this thinking too. It makes them better right now, and they might be doing something like that anyway. Speaking of extensions, there was one we did not talk about when the news broke a few weeks ago. The Orioles extended chainboss, five years, $68 million, and Keyesder in the discord just wanted to know kind of our overall thoughts on the deal. The key here is that the Orioles would have had three more years of control. Boss wouldn't have been a free agent until after 2028, so it gives you a sense of what they did. They added the two years at the end. Injuries, as we know, have been a huge part of the story, 286 big league innings prior to this season, even though he debuted in 2021. We know last year pitching at Steinbrunner Field for half of his games, the home run rate was worse than usual. I talked about that throughout the winter as something that I just didn't see as a major concern long-term. He's had home run issues prior to last year, but I don't think he's the starter that

9:27leads the league in home run rate in a bad way. I don't think his stuff gets hit that hard that often. I don't think he's that problematic. I want to get your assessment of this one, Trevor. From a pure skill standpoint and an outlook standpoint, what do you think about the Orioles making this commitment to Boz based on the combination of injuries and things that we've seen from him to this point in his career? A lot of times these contracts are, I think, put together when a guy puts together one full season and a lot of the internal conversations are built around the idea that something was figured out. Like, oh, this was the change we made and then that turned into a full season of me being on the field. And therefore, we feel like that problem solved and we feel like the chances of the injury stuff comes back are lower. That's a big part of it. Also, five year 66 for a starting picture is just severely team-friendly deal. It just is.

10:27They have a lot of leverage and there was a time where guys at Kyle Gibson were making $16, $18 million a year, so if that puts in perspective, given 12 to a guy with this upside, is a chance you're willing to take, assuming that you'll be okay with as long as you just not hurt the whole time. So I think the calculus there makes a lot of sense. I think that he has been highly touted for a while and does have really good stuff, showed flashes of it. He was above average in almost every single pitching category outside of barrel, but he's like, you know, a foreseen guy. I strike out guys sometimes barrel rates are a little bit lower, so I can pass on that. And last year, I'm throwing out a lot of like the traditional stats for last year because they put like 100 games on the road. It was just a nightmare. Just a nightmare of a season to be array. I think that was the biggest reason they were kind of not in the picture for most of the year, just because that's just a disadvantage that you can't overcome playing in a minorly

11:28stadium for 60-year games and then just having to constantly be able to suitcase. It's just really hard to do that. I think that had they been in the trap all the whole time that he would have been better, everyone would have been better, the team would have been better. And so you put all that stuff together, you're like the upside is worth it to lock down for long term. And the commitment isn't that much in terms of an investment. This could be a young, I wouldn't say necessarily soup. He wasn't. And also his trollability was coming, getting kind of low. So like being able to do this, the closer it gets to Frazier, the harder it would be to sign something like this, especially if he puts up 20 plus starts this year and throws. If he even threw a four, he would still be way more expensive than he is right now. So the timing worked out, they feel more comfortable with it that they're like we think that we can avoid the injury thing and he's going to take the ball. And if he takes the ball, 20, high 20s this year, then we'll get way more value even if it's not like the front end.

12:29But in the best case scenario, he becomes a two or a one. And if he does that, heck yeah. So it's kind of a win-win. And I don't know Shane, but like I can assume that with all these injuries, you're like dude, am I going to be like I got to stay in the Bay Leagues, right? And then he finally had last year and then you get some security. So I think it's a great deal. It's a great deal for him. I know there's lots of team friends, he's supposed to say get Fred and see as much money as he can. But like sometimes sometimes like the circumstances call for it. You got to take advantage of the deal that you never thought you were going to get. I think that's what happened here. Yeah, I can't speak too much on, I think you probably would get more than this if you'd gone to free agency. But you know, it has been kind of a slog so far. So maybe he's just like man, like this hasn't, this hasn't gone so easily. Yeah. Like he was the the star of the futures game when he was in it and you know had the absolute most blazing stuff in the futures game and you know, everyone thought he was a super

13:31can't miss prospect. And so to come to this point, probably he's he's feeling a little bit of fatigue, just I'm like, man, like what happened to those days, you know, and when I talk to him, he's pretty you know, aridite and he has all these kind of tools and things that he does, he he paints his own balls, you know, to get, it's almost like the clean fuego where he's trying to, you know, get the the true spin on the four seam, but he paints his own balls and he actually does like the reverse of the of the clean fuego, like he paints the outsides of the ball. Anyway, he does, he has like these little things that he does and he's he's I think brought his arsenal along to a place where I think from the team perspective, they're paying for like a as Trevor said, like a four or five with this. I mean, you know, the AAV on this is 14 million or less than 14 million. That's like, if you got a one year deal on a on a fifth starting pitcher, you expect

14:31to pay 12 to 14, right? So they're getting they're getting a they're getting him on a four or five deal. And I think the worst case scenario, he pitches to those four is that you're talking about those those four year rays. And he's a he's like a four or five type guy and he's on a good contract. But I, you know, I did want to point out that I still think the upside is there. I think Trevor talked about this a little bit, but I just wanted to show the cops for his curve ball. If you look at the cops for his curve ball, using arm angle, velocity and movement, I think it's really important to get arm angle in there because that's that's the expectations for hitters. And using those things, the cops for him are joined Durand's curve ball, which is surprising. That's a reliever. When you have a starter who cops with a reliever, that's pretty good. That gallons curve ball is there. That's that gallons best pitch. Tyler Phillips, another reliever, Joe Kelly, another reliever and Grant Holmes. That's his best pitch. So you've got in Grant Holmes, I think himself an example of how Shane boss could have

15:36some ups and downs, you know, over the next few years and have a year where he's amazing and everyone thinks, oh my gosh, this is great. Maybe have another year. He's not as good. Holmes himself has been. He'd still be worth this contract easily. So the upside comes from boss putting together the pieces around that curve ball. And you know, we've talked to on this pot a lot about how he ditched the slider. He couldn't command. He's he's up the cover cutter usage with the Orioles. It's the same shape. What he's done with the Orioles is add another tick to the curve ball. It's 86 miles an hour. I didn't think people understand like this is an 86 mile hour power curve. It is a very good curve ball. It's a reliever quality curve ball. And then he added an inch of ride with the Orioles. I don't know exactly how, but you know, to throw 97 and have 18 inches of IVB, this is a it's a really good fast ball. It's a really good curve ball. I think the cutters bet on the slider. And I know it wasn't the best first game, but there's a little bit of babbub to death

16:39in there. It was like a 450 babbub batting average on balls and playing his first game and that's going to come back down. His number is below 300 for his career. So he's next starts our at Pittsburgh versus the Giants versus the Diamondbacks. I'm pitching him in every single one of those. And I think he's going to have a good run here that'll make people understand that the upside a little better. His spin base movement is consistency tilt exactly at one. It's been one almost every single four seed. And last year is 50 50 between going down to 115 and one. So it was inconsistent. So it spends hyper consistent and that's why it's he's got that right. Sorry. What do you think that'll hold up? Like that's one start. Do you think that'll hold up? Or, you know, I mean, it's pretty impressive to do it every single pitch, every four seed. Like that's kind of tough. He didn't throw one that went past one at one. So like that's a there's that hand position slight change there that he's feeling comfortable with, which is a good sign. If you look back at last season, this was part of the question that came into and Shane

17:41Boss was above league average for K minus BB percentage. We love that. And I think when you also just pull back and think about similar deals, I mean, Mitch Keller got five for 77 that covered 2024 to 2028. I think I think boss has more upside the more ceiling and a scary or injury history, but more ceiling for sure. And then you start thinking about what just happened in this winter's free agent market. Ranger Suarez Dylan sees both 30 years old getting nine figure deals, right? So if boss just puts together, you know, four pretty healthy seasons, maybe one of those years, the fifth year is a little banged up as long as it's not the platform year. He could put together a really impressive resume and actually cash in in a big way after this extension because it's only going to be 30 years old at the end of it too. So I think it actually works out really well for both sides and still excited about what boss can bring to the table. So really appreciate that question. Glad we got a chance to fold that in because it was an interesting extension at the Orioles sign giving them some stability with their pitching long term.

18:43I think there's some questions there about what they're going to end up doing with the rest of that rotation that they're going to have to sort out here because Trevor Rogers actually is a free agent at the end of this season. I mean, that's a, that's a really tough case, I think, as far as do you want to try and extend them? Does he want to hit the open market and see what the open market gives him? Like, I don't, I think he's one of the more challenging players to value from a real life perspective right now because so much has changed in his profile. Yeah, but I think it was a good deal for the team. For the player, I think you're right. It's interesting that he can come out of this at 30 and still, you know, get one more big deal. That's at least what I'd be telling myself if I was in that situation like, hey, this is a, this is a really good extension and the next one could be even bigger. We're going to hit a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk about how pitchers can impact a hitter's bat's beat. Welcome back to Rates and Barrels. We've been talking a lot about bat speed from the perspective of hitters who swings the

19:45bat really hard as they're downside to that. What good comes from it, but we didn't even talk a lot about the impact that pitchers can have on how hard hitters are able to swing. So I just want to put this out there as a kind of an open question, Trevorly, in what ways do pitchers have that influence? What things can you do as a pitcher that might actually slow down an opposing hitter's bat? The big obvious glaring one here, especially on this list, you know, we got sail, sail schemes, manaya, Google Bassett, George Kirby, Dylan Seas. What like the one big one, six hours of Bassett, huge difference in velocities in all of his pitches, right? He goes super slow curveball, he can throw a low 90s, even get 94, 95 when the times, then he got a 72 mile, like so when you, when a guy's got to be able to keep the bat in the zone in a 20 plus mile an hour variation between different pitches and throwing a lot of different pitches, you need to drag the bat through the zone and you tend to subconsciously slow it down to try to make sure you're not missing and falling stuff off.

20:50I also think maybe there's an application here for like sail, for example, a slider is slower than other people's sliders and his velocity, the big difference between those pitches. The basically the best off speed pitch and your fastball, the big, if your big difference between those two pitches and velocity, that could be a huge thing that's part of it. And then you can add in the, so it's like difference of velocity, then it's number of pitches that you throw, he's a great example, he throws the splinker and the changeup and the forcey and the sinker and the sweeper and the, I don't know, what else is there always in the slider. He's got two versions of every pitch and he throws tons of strikes. So guys are like, I'm going to have to swing and I need to be able to cover more than just one of these pitches because there's so many options that would maybe lead you to slow it to be conservative with your swings as opposed to a guy like, for example, Spencer Strider who's been forcing fastball and really good slider, pick one. Like pick one, you're going to hear you swing off a little bit more because when you get

21:53it, you know, they get those guys are prone to homers. So you're going for that, right? He's the same thing and I think that maybe sees, it says, sees the surprise here. I think that there's the idea that that's the head that weird changeup thing, that not only the super slow changeup, that not only did he throw like fairly regularly, but it was also like a pitch that guys really wanted to hit, but it was way slower than everything else he threw. So like being ready to hit that might slow down your, your, your bad as well. And then, and then Kirby's a guy with a lot of pitches, bass is a guy with a lot of pitches. And then scuba, the big thing is his best offsuit pitch is a changeup. So it's like difference in velocity is the thing. So like, if that is what they do, if it's, if it's a variation in velocity that you have to account for or a variety of pitches that you need to cover, those, all those things mostly will, will slow down the average bat speed on your pitches because you need different bat speeds and have different pitch types. So in general, that's kind of the, the through line I'm seeing with all these guys,

22:56they all do something in that, in that realm. Yeah, I wonder, you know, the very top of this list, you know, you were, we were looking at the starting pitcher top of the list, but if you just do the very top of this list without starting pitchers on it, it's Andre's, Munoz, Mason Miller, you know, Andrew Nardi, Tyler Rogers, you know, but there's, there's some high stuff guys at the very top of the list. And that's, there's a through line there between, I think, you know, Mason Miller and Andre Munoz and Dylan Sees, you know, people often kind of refer to Dylan Sees as like a closer for five innings, right? And I think the through line there also is about location. And so I wanted to just show this heat map real quick, which shows that, you know, this is right on right and this is pitch locations, you know, and then there's the bat speed by

23:56pitch location. It was created by Gemini, but I've checked it and I think it's, it's the correct thing. And it's, it's right on right bat speeds in September last year. I had to limit it to one month to get it to a manageable data set. This is what I've seen before and what you see is down and in is the fastest bat speed. And I think that's, people talk about, you know, quickening their bat, throwing down and in, like people know down and in is a place you can drop the bat head, right? That's like a, that's like the thing people say. And where is it slowest up and away, you know, down and away, further away from your body. It's a little bit harder to get the bat going as fast. So Dylan Sees, high fastballs, Mason Miller, high fastballs, even Chris Bassett. High fastballs, high sinkers, you know, I looked at, I cross check this against the number of people who throw high and away. And Bassett, Sees, skeens are all top 10 in high and away fastballs. You know Kirby's a high fastball guy. So to some extent, the sort of high and away fastball.

24:59Now, I think what's really interesting about this is that we know that bat speed is measured at location of contact. And so you could say, oh, the bat speed's just lower because a high and away fastball, you're going to let that travel more, right? So you're not getting the bat to full speed. But because we're not focusing on batters and what they're doing, we're focusing on pitchers, pitchers, since we're focusing on pitchers, I think it's irrelevant. You can force them to see the ball deeper. You can force them to not get the ball out in front by throwing high and away. It's really, really hard to get the high and away pitch out in front. You know, so if you have a good enough fastball, of course, command is an issue. Can you always hit high and away? I know. If you don't hit high and away and it leaks high middle, there are a little bit more, a lot of the hitters can make you hurt. You know, Carlos Carrera can make you hit if it hurt if it's high and in, you know. But like, high and away is generally a hole for almost every hitter.

26:03And it's really hard to get that ball out in front. So if you want to suppress bat speed, if that's a goal of yours by itself, then, then you can pitch high and away. Lastly, the spread on this is not very big. So when we're looking at the best pitchers by bat speed, and this is since 2024, Andres Munoz has gotten a 70.3 mile-hour average bat speed. And the worst on this list is Clayton Kershaw, which is why I brought up stuff and I'm not saying anything bad about Kershaw. It's just the end of his career, right? The worst on this list was 72.9. So we got a two-mile-hour difference in bat speed among pitchers. And if you think about it among hitters, it goes from 66 Luis Aurei's territory to Giancarlo Stanton 80. So hitters have a bigger spread. Hitters have a bigger impact. Hitters bat speed is tighter year to year. The correlation is about twice as tight than it is for pitchers.

27:04But that's not to say the pitchers don't have an impact. It's just something to think about when you're thinking about small sample batters. And I think it's something to think about. I think stuff is capturing some of this. I think stuff plus captures some of this, where you're certain shapes, maybe slow down bats. I mean, you were talking about bat Trevor, if you've got different pitch types, if I start my A-swing and then I realize, oh my god, this is a big curveball, I'm going to slow it down. And so my bat speed will be slower. So yeah, getting fooled will slow your bat down. We see this big, we see this bright blue box down in the way from Ratties. That's got a lot of guys probably get fooled on breaking balls down there. That's happening quite a bit. There's a couple things. They're trying to slow their hands to like, yeah, or they're not, or they could be noticed and then they can't slow it. But it's going to, they're hitting the brakes on the swing and they can't like, they can't slow it down enough to touch it. It's all like that is a, that's one thing you, you need to keep in mind. But also remember like, like what if you are,

28:04but wiser with the red socks and you face judge and send like more than guys need to face those two guys and you face them all the time and they're bringing the average way the hell up because you don't face that many hitters in the air. Like there's, there's little things like that to you. Like you just don't face enough guys. It's a reliever, but also up in a way you got to understand from riding and riding. Just it's, there's an intent thing to this. It's a hitters think are, are like, where is my A-swing at? Up and away, your goal is to try to pull the ball in the air if you can't, if there's a pitch that you can pull, you're going to hit that ball harder. And so you're going to swing harder at it because you can hit it harder or you're more committed to swinging harder at it. That's why closer to use, you're going to slap the up and away pitch. You're going to just slap at that. You're protecting it's your, it's like almost like plan B. Like no one's, there's very few guys who are like, I'm trying to try to go out to right center here because it's not easy to do, not easy to hit hard. So you just don't A-swing at that pitch very often. So there's also that, like, it's just a pitch that they don't want to, they don't think they can hit hard. Not many guys do outside of like pedalanzo who actually likes the pitch.

29:05No one else really likes it. So it's, so that's also going to bring it down where just everyone's like, I would rather take that pitch in the zone than swing as hard as I can at it because I'm not going to still can't get the ball out even if I squared up that way. So like, if that's your job, stands the only guy I think of where like, hide away, he might actually home around that pitch. But he's, he's not, he's never swinging under 80. Every single pitch is a, like, he's not adjusting his swing at all. Can't, he knows he can't slow it down. He can't, or he talked about, or his elbow will brill. Yeah, he talked about this with Mason Miller trying to warm up. You're like, you can't take anything off. You can't, he said like this too. Like, I think stands like that on the hitter side. He just can't slow down. It like hurts more to slow down. They just keep, they keep going. Remember, can't open a bag of chips, but he started on a hot streak through the air. So like, keep doing what you're doing, bud. I was thinking about this instead of average bat speed. What if we're looking more at something like fast swing rate against pitchers? I mean, because that's like how often you're getting up over 75 miles per hour with the swing.

30:07And if you sort by that, Kershaw still the worst. If you just look at 2025 and a little bit of 2026, we have 37% of the swings against Clayton, Kershaw, 75 plus at the bottom end. He doesn't have a big velocity range to Trevor's point. He throws a 90 mile an hour fastball or an 89 mile an hour fastball, an 88 mile an hour slider. And everyone talks about the curveball, which he threw like 8% of the time for his career. Exactly. Yeah, and it's just big and you can see it and he knew that. That's why I didn't throw that much. The bread and butter of his pitches, yeah, it was just like, and then they started to melt. He just wasn't getting the movement on the slider much anymore. So they just kind of turned into the same pitch. He's just throwing, he's just throwing one pitch at 88 every time he picked the right time to go. Yeah. I mean, he's not an idiot. The guy knows the top 10 for fast swing rate going the other way. I'm not going to list them all, but they're all 20% or lower. So there's just a greater spread on the actual fast swing percentage than there was on the average bat speed.

31:08So I just wonder if that might tell us a little bit more about where some names off of that one. It's a strange list. Mike Vassel, Kyle Leahy, Carlos Vargas. I'll get to some pitchers that are like regarded as consistent good pitchers. Yeah. Graham Ashcraft, Ryan Berger, Jose Ferrer. I'll keep going. Jeremiah Strata, Chris Sale, Will Vest, and Hunter Green are the top 10. You know what's sticking out. So Carlos Vargas and then Graham Ashcraft, they're like Carlos Vargas was just bowling ball. Like at 99, just the hardest thing is where you're like, ah, like it's like kind of scary. Ashcraft shows crazy cutters the same way, like you can't, it's hard to commit because it's a unit. It's really unique. What I'm hearing is a bunch of weird, no, but these are high, these are high fast swing rates. These are the, these are the best. These are the lowest. These are the 20% or lower. Oh, those are the lowest. So what they, they throw, they're very, there's something weird. So they probably have, I bet you, I'm going to go double check this against unique. There might be something there. Something weird. There's something weirdness, something that you're finding hard to commit to that, because

32:10Australia's got the weird slider, but the really good fast ball, like, and the weird splitter. Like the, like, it's just weird. Like the guys who throw that hard don't usually have those off speed pitches and Ashcraft's got a weird fast ball and Vargas is a weird fast ball that's not comfortable. There's like a lack of comfortable here with all those guys, even if they're like, Lee, he throws that 90 mile an hour, seven, seven slider. Yeah, it's weird. Just cherry picking the aces around the top of the list, those sale 19.7%, green 20%. All skeens, 20.5, got Terrick Scoobal, 21.4, so I do think there's a little something here. Something about stuff and command, I bet it's not command list, and what's weird for me is like hunter green there, it's, you'd think that you'd have to get your A swing off just to compete with hunter green, but he maybe throws enough sliders where you're like, oops. Yeah, so further, further digging, I think, is, is coming. Or maybe it, but batter's seeing them, you know, like it's, it's like release point.

33:11It's, yeah, maybe it's about unique deception, something like that. This is the Trevor's, Trevor's deception model. Bat speed's got a lot to do with that deception, because if you're just like, you're making an assumption, then you're really wrong, you're going to slow your back down, because you're trying to adjust, you're trying to adjust, the last thing you want to do is just miss all the time. So you have to make context somehow, and that, oh, that's what you do is just slow down and because it's usually a difference in loss of your movement and the pitch is slower than the pitch, you thought it was going to be. That's what's happening most often. So the same thing for getting a fast swing rate is like committed to the swing and then continuing with that commitment to the swing, and if you're constantly adjusting, you're going to slow it down. It's going to be, the commitment doesn't matter, because you're going to slow it down the swing anyways. So like, then that'll change it. So again, I'm sure strider somewhere, it's like, it's just a coin flip. They're both very, very good pitches, but like, you're going to be right, like, it's a good, you got good odds, you're going to be right. And then even when you miss, you can still stay committed longer. You don't need to adjust as much because it's just the other pitch. It's not like a, you know, it's not, there's not a lot of different things that are going

34:14to happen here. There's not a lot of different outcomes. But there were a ton of outcomes, a lot of times you're trying to cover a lot more outcomes by slowing your back down. It's subconsciously. That's just what you do is a hitter. That's why you learn. So it's fascinating. Now, if we could just get some misdistances out of it in here, we got something cooking. Number I would definitely like to have at my disposal. I want the misdistances on the umpire leaderboards, too, while we're, we're tracking, I just want to know, come on, like, if you're, if you're close and you're wrong, okay, if you're not close and you're wrong, often, that's a bigger problem. Well, I got back cooking too. If you want to look at it. Excellent. I got found some good stuff. We're going to take one more break. When we come back, we're talking about some new pitches that have our attention this season. Welcome back to Rates Barrels. We are looking to look at a few new pitches that have our attention. You know, you did some digging trying to find the pitches that are just showing up for

35:15the first time, the first time through the rotation, complete now. So did you expect to find a longer list of new pitches than you actually found? I think it's really hard to actually use queries and use leaderboards to find new pitches because some of the movement changes will be subtle. Maybe it's horizontal. Maybe it's vertical. You know, maybe it's VLO. It's kind of hard to get all three of those things onto one chart. I tried to use just usage. And so what I looked at was who's using a pitch more this year. So 10% more often this year so far than last year. And when, and they did, they lose, use it less than 10% of the time as a pitch last year. So, so basically a pitch that didn't use very out much this year, they're using a lot more this year. And if you're looking now, you'll see Jose Sorianos, you know, fastball usages up, brand sprotes, cutter.

36:16There's a bunch of new cutters, Sprote, Gilbert, Cucucci, Rogers, Cicconi, McCullors, they're all throwing more cutters. That's the one that had the biggest increase across all the different pitch types. Oh, Tony's throwing the splitter more, Gore and Boyle are throwing the sinkers more. Cavalys got the new sweeper. And so that's, you know, Joe Ryan's new curve ball is pretty interesting to me. I know that the last start doesn't look like a good one, but Joe was throwing in the rain and they really should have cut that that start short. So I think the curve ball could be really big for Joe Ryan because he's never really had a plus breaking ball. It's always been the splitter that's been good for him. So having a plus breaking ball would be great, but this is my attempt to try to find it through usage. When I looked at movement changes, it didn't pop as well. There was a lot of really small sample, oh, he threw one of these pitches and it's just, you get really kind of messed up leaderboards when you try to use movement to find new pitches.

37:19It's really much better to sort of watch and listen to people. Like for example, Kyle Harrison's didn't really pop on whatever search I did for whatever reason, but Kyle Harrison does have a new change up. It's got more drop than what he had last year. That's the difference throwing it about 5% more often. So it's still behind the four seamer and slurved by a healthy margin in terms of usage, but it is, it is different even though it's not like brand new didn't have one before. In terms of like, you know, making a new pitcher out of these guys and who's the most exciting, like especially for me at the top, I mean, Kyle Harrison is pretty close, but the slurves not that great. So it's still kind of like fastball kick change slurved, you know, and so I don't know that it kicks him into another level for me. He's still kind of an interesting guy that I would be like, I would start in fantasy leagues in certain situations and not in other situations, but the guy that kind of may, and I wanted to ask Trevor a little bit about this is, it might be pushing himself into a new kind

38:24of stardom every time. Maybe this is a guy that might get side votes or like could really push what you think of him is Jose Soriano. But the thing that's so interesting is he's just added a four seamer. So now he's four seam sinker curve all elite, well, at least the sinker and curve are elite pitches. Stuff really loves him. Command doesn't. What do you think of a package like that Trevor? Do you think that's enough to continue to continually turn lefties over and turn line ups over and get deep into games or is he going to regress a little bit more towards a guy who's a high whip and sometimes is out of the game earlier than you like. I think it helps. It's better than what it was before like for like the four seam ad is probably a step in the handling lefties direction, you know, he's a hard thrower. So like a lot of times it's like what is what is something where we can just get a lot of yellow, get in on a guy so we can open it up for that. So we can throw up and into lefties with with the four seam.

39:24That's what a lot of guys have learned cutters that that are have better feel for movement and have a little better command. Maybe the four seam is just a pitchy can command better than something that cuts a little bit or or maybe it, you know, something else that spins that way starts to take away from his curve ball. That was something I experienced where they started meld together and it is they both were bad. Sometimes that's what happens. That's why he doesn't throw a slider very much. He doesn't command it well and it might screw up his curve ball. Might screw up his curve ball and then you go look and you're like a curve ball so good anyways. And we're all worth the, you know, the state of the game is story best pitch more often. When you have a really, really, really, really good one like you have to be really careful with with what pitches you're putting around it so that they don't take away from how good that pitch is. And so it's almost like, you know, I think ideally like having a splitter probably is something that would be more effective, especially splitter that moves more like a sinker so that you can throw them off each other. So now you have like different in the decision tree, a different couple different options. Scott that he just doesn't throw it.

40:24It must be a command thing. It must be a command thing or confidence thing. So it's either build the confidence or start to use those things together or and maybe what's happening is the force team came out of something he picked up quickly and they're like good, good, good. There's a third pitch that's that's pretty solid and it also just like with the other two being better, we just need velocity. We don't need this thing to be like high ride or some crazy, you know, crazy fastball. We just need it to be hard. And then it makes it into better. So that's probably a step we're in. Yeah, that's probably the step we're in and improving his command. It has 12 inches more ride than his sinker. So it's like it's pretty different. That's pretty different. And it's hard to make decisions. Having two fastballs is kind of the first step a lot of guys are taking like everyone needs one now. There's two. And maybe that's just the step in the in the staying in ace conversation. But it's not enough to answer your question, probably not going to end up being enough long term. And he's going to have to either greatly improve his command, which will then kind of push

41:27kick the can down the road even longer or add another pitch. I mean, I think I feel like Roki, he's kind of like he's got an incredible pitch, but like he doesn't have command. So he either needs to find another pitch or find command quickly. One of those two things had to happen very quickly. So around us got he's pitching well, but like it's it's it's kind of the same thing just not as a stream. Like you're going to have to do that first. And if anybody's looking at his overall location plus numbers or command numbers or walk numbers and thinking why he doesn't look like he has terrible command, that's because the pitches he throws he commands. It's actually really obvious. If you go on fangirats and you look at the location plus chart, you're like, Oh, the four seam, the sinker and the knuckle curve, those pitches all have over a hundred location plus the slider that he doesn't throw has a 91 for his career and the splitter that he doesn't throw has an 82 for his career. So he throws the pitches he can command, so but but how do you get command of a splitter?

42:32You throw it more and you don't really throw it that often. Even bullpen's right? You might throw two or three in side sessions and you how often do you throw a high effort, you know, splitter in the offseason, you know, that that really gives you a command of that pitch. So, you know, maybe maybe he can go along the lines of other pitches that have developed better feel for their secondaries over time just by throwing them more in games and that takes some confidence, takes some good success on a couple of splitters, throw some more splitters and then that could be the next step. So yeah, I think I agree that Soriano looks better with the four seam and I think he'll have a better season than he did last year, but I hesitate to push him into like a top 50 of pitchers or anything. I think top 50s doable though, I mean for his career, it's a 375 year A and a 130 whip that's kind of close to that sort of range already. The big difference for me though is looking at the usage. The sinker usage last year, both the lefties and righties was right around 50%.

43:33The way he's approached his first two starts this year, he's got a much more even mix really against hitters on both sides of the plate, right? 24% curve balls to the lefties, only 16% sinkers, 33% four seamers and 24% splits. So there's just a lot more for hitters to think about. I think it's 33, 33 and 21 for the curve, the sinker and the four seamer against righties. He's I think caught both lineups that saw him so far a little bit off guard with this new approach, right? I think six scoreless on the road against the Astros and the Cubs with all the swinging strikes he was piling up. Some of that is, you know, advanced scouting maybe didn't have the right book. I'm very curious to see what kinds of adjustments lineups can make now that they've got a better sense of what his game plan is, but I would also say that game plan looks a lot more sustainable. I think it would lead to is less variance on a start by start basis, a more consistent version of Jose Soriano, where you're like, he looks so good on this good days, it looks

44:36so bad on his bad days. Maybe he'll just look good more often and look less terrible on the bad days. Blader also is moving way more depth this year. So there might be a change he made too, which maybe it's starting to be reflected. They're like, we need this blender to be thrown to lefties and then he's doing it. So maybe that's something that that is an improvement though, it is still the clustering is not great. Like the movement profile, it's gone all over the place, but the depth is consistent. The horizontal is not, which tells me it's maybe in the fork ball we're getting in that realm again, but like it's nasty and it seems like guys are swinging it. So maybe there's some confidence comes right. So we might just be really throwing it in two strike counts, probably a two strike and swinging count, but something he didn't do before. So maybe it takes a couple of starts to evolve more than a couple, usually. So it'd be interesting to see where we are, 10 starts in, what is usually just how it's changed. I think he's probably, even if he's only back in top 50, he's probably pick up in all

45:38these. These two pictures that have changed a lot about what they're doing, I'm not sure about what to do with them. Mike Irvin has dialed down the foreseemer and he's throwing it harder. He's dialed down the curve ball and replaced that slightly with cutters and sliders. Both his cutter and a slider have new shapes. So that's five new pitches, his stuff pluses up, his change up has a slightly different shape. It's more sideways now. And it's harder. It's a seven. I mean, now he's a guy with a 94 mile hour foreseem that throws against righties. He throws five pitches more than 10% of the time. And against lefties, he throws a different five pitches more than 10% times. Or he's a five pitch pitcher who started with decent command, had a really good first start, gets the Dodgers next, then the Brewers and then at Pittsburgh.

46:39I'm not starting against the Dodgers. So I think he's still in that, like, be careful about how you use them. But what do you see when someone changes a lot of stuff at once? Do you think that they probably did something sort of mechanically that flowed down to all this? Do you think they attacked a lot of these pitches one by one or when you look at Jake Irvin's page, what it comes to mind for you, Trevor? Well, he came up to 23, he had a 32 degree arm angle, then it went to 29 and 24, then it went to 27 last year, not 24. So it looks like he's looking, he's getting down there. He's down there within the skiing's 22 degree area area. So maybe he's hopped on the, that's more comfortable, that's a, that's a, a more repeatable arm angle. Maybe that's where the Velo came from. And then the Velo bumping would have a lot to do with that. But it also looks like all of his pitches had started to get a little bit more east and west, which would correlate. So like, it could be as simple as just three degrees down, hand positions, a couple millimeters

47:42turned. And now all those pitches are moving a little bit differently, but he's, he's feeling more comfortable. And then, and then there's a confidence that comes along with that. It could be as simple as he just tried to adjust the arm angle or like, find the comfortable slot, then you just keep kept through all his pitches. And then they evaluated what pitches were moving and how they were moving. And then they're like, maybe we should, this stuff is, is looking better. Let's throw this more. And as we know, a new regime just took over in with the nationals as well. And they're all throwing less fastball, just as a team. So like, this could all just correlate it together where he's like, I made these changes that are, okay, these are the best pitches. This is what we're going to do. And then he's just like, let's go. So that's good. Well, we're seeing and we're getting results apart. That would be my guess at everything that's happened, but likely one of those things happened. But it is showing on the page. We were talking, he throws a weird slider. And it's not exactly the slider we were talking about. I would, I'd loved you to talk about the, what we were talking about before. So Jake Irwin now throws a 81 mile an hour slider with eight IVB.

48:47I don't even know what that is because he also throws a cutter. Yeah, that is great. And we were talking about some pitches earlier where I think we were so far into the breaking ball space and like the Kyle Lee, he 91 mile an hour, seven, seven pitch was something that driveline pointed out to me as being a nearly unique pitch that their model loved and my model loves it as well. Are we, are we so far into the breaking ball space that people are just trying to find shapes and below combinations that just don't exist anymore because in 81 mile our slider with cutter IVB and then a lot of horizontal, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't think there's a con. It's a sweeper. It's a sweeper. Yeah. Well, that's sweeper movement. And I'm looking at it. I can't see the, not enough pitches to show the, but you had a more unique pitch that you had your finger on. Yeah. Well, there's, oh, the, the, so the way he throws his slider, we talked about Jake Irwin still. Was it, no, what was the, what was the slider you that we were talking about before the

49:51weird slider? Oh, oh, the Jalen beaks slider and then Trevor Rogers is also throwing the same slider. So I actually went and let me grab the ball. So I throw sweepers when they throw it, they're pulling through this seam or this seam. So like, you're going to see, it's usually has a little bit of tilt. So you're going to see like a horseshoe, like kind of revolving there to get this big round dot as opposed to like a bullet spin. You get like a seam staying there and you'd see the, the dot, right? That's what the sweeper was. Now instead of seeing this rotate, we're seeing this rotating, which it's like a sideways curve ball, like you want curve balls to tumble, it's tumbling sideways like this, which gives depth. It's a depth, it's a death ball, but the death ball guys were throwing theirs where the horseshoe, this wasn't here, it was like tilted off like this a little bit. So it was like, you're getting a wobble. This is a tighter spin, but it turned, it's spinning kind of like this. So when that happens, you get, so it's cutting horizontal. Yeah, it's like a little bit, little bit cut like a cut like two, three inches and then

50:53you're just getting more depth. It kind of just spins and then just goes down. It's almost like, it's also super slow. It's also super slow. I'm trying to like, I think this is a visual visual. Most people can, can visualize bowling, people who bowl and they're trying to just spin every once in a while, you'll get the spin and it just never goes, it just kind of goes and stays straight. Never catch it. That's what this pitch is. So if we're going to go down, but it goes down, so there is movement. It's just the spin of the pitch isn't actually creating it as much. It's like, it spins like it's going to go horizontally and then it doesn't. That's the weird part about it. It's like, it's so bad, it's good model and then it's slower to give it more depth. So like, it's a death ball, but guys were throwing it through a death ball, it's trying to throw them hard. This is a slow death ball. When I look at it, I'm like, you know, Savant calls Trevor Rogers new pitch a cutter, you know, and it's 81 miles an hour. And I mean, to be fair, he did throw some of them last year, but it is just a weird pitch.

51:56It's a cutter that's at 81 miles an hour and has a little bit more depth than a regular cutter. That's why you're calling it sort of the death ball. You don't normally throw cutters at 81 miles an hour, especially, you know, a cutter you think of, he throws 93, a cutter would be 88. Maybe that's why they like, they're like, everyone's trying to throw really hard breaking balls. Let's throw a slow breaking ball. It's not a curve ball. Yeah. It's a, it's a strange, maybe it's a new pitch, maybe new pitch alert, not new pitch just for Rogers and, and beaks, but like a new pitch across baseball, we have to, all we have to come up with the new name, the slow death, so appropriate for you, you're 26, death by old age. I'm still very intrigued by Jacob and for what it's worth. I don't know if I can count him as an anti model guy right now because the model likes him. No one liked him a month ago or six weeks ago.

52:59So if I would have got this out there in February, I could have been ahead, but the models are the one like, are what flagged this for me. It's a lot of pitches. It's big time extension too. It seems to be weird as you guys outline just so much changing that organization. And even if you just go back to that 2024 season, I mean, a 120 whip over 187 and two thirds innings is actually good. The ERA being bad could be the function of giving up some homers and the stuff wasn't quite as good. I mean, it's a command guy who, who, who changed some stuff and the stuff has popped. And I mean, maybe should just go with it, you know, it could work. I think it could be a top 50 top 60 starter. He could be, and I think I found what the, what, if, if I were the pitching development person there, like what would be glaring is all his fastball is forcing not a huge ride. It was kind of a dead zone movement wise. And then his sinker ran quite a bit and his change is in that same cluster. So like his change of a sinker look a lot like. And then all of his breaking balls were death heavy. So he's like, he's to west with his fastballs, north to south with the breaking balls.

54:03Those don't work together. So like, they just were being identified. So they're like, let's make all your breaking balls also be easy. That's why his pattern is, he's a slider is a sweeper. He's throwing a sweeper. You can see it in his first start. If you go watch the video, you can do like it, the, the, the angle in Chicago, you could just see like it's, he's trying to sweep this thing. He's like a sinker, he's a sinker sweeper, four seam slide. And he's using the four seam to like get it, get it, get it, get it, get it, get it in on guys. But really the movement pitches are the sinker, change up her, even the curve balls moving more horizontally. And not as much depth. It's still more depthy than he probably even wants it, but that's probably why he's throwing that sweeper more because that's, that looks like something that's clicked for him a little bit. So like, expect a lot of this now with him and it looks like it's a better, a better use of his arsenal. It's an interesting thing to like, you know, populate your sleeper list with because there's another guy who's popping just like him and Jansen junk, who had the command, had

55:03a wide arsenal, and then made wholesale changes. I mean, Jansen junk is up to 19 IVB and 95 miles an hour on his four seam. That's good stuff. You know, that's just a straight up good stuff, you know, like he's got the stuff up on everything. He's changed the shape of his change up completely. It has four inches more drop this year. The sweeper has more drop and, you know, he's throwing a new curve ball, you know, in terms of shape. So like, you know, he dialed down the four seam usage, surprise, surprise. Marlon's, you know, joining the revolution. And now he's kind of like a four pitch guy where you don't know what's coming and he throws four pitches to both sides and suddenly the stuff is better at 95 with that, with that good vert. So, you know, I need, this is a shame on me moment to some extent, which is that I need to try and identify in the off season more guys where the command is there, the arsenal's big and they could just make a tweak or two.

56:05But the thing that's frustrating about is these are things we can't know. I mean, because everybody will tell you in the off season, oh, yeah, I got to do this. I did this. I did this. And you're like, oh, that's nice. But it doesn't pop for everybody. So to some extent, you just have to be ready in the early season when you see a junk or you see an urban kind of pop in the model and you look at all underneath, you're like, okay, there's a lot of change here. And there's a guy who always had good command. I'm going to buy it. I'm going to jump in now. So maybe, you know, junk might have a better schedule. So maybe do junk in the short term over urban because you just don't want to throw anybody against the Dodgers. I don't think even if, even if Gavin Williamson did so well, but junk has Cincinnati at home, Detroit on the road and Milwaukee at home. I mean, that's an easier schedule. So I might take junk over urban just for the schedule, but both those two guys, I think, are eminently pick upable in most leagues. Yeah, if you have a, I don't know, a Shane Smith that didn't work out on the bottom of your roster, you quickly make that adjustment because the gap between the 60th picture on

57:08draft day and the 110th picture is actually very small and can close and even flip very quickly. I think that's kind of what we're seeing here with this group. One more thing to get to before we go. I thought this was actually an April Fool's joke that just made its way into my feed just a day late. Apparently, the Rangers are going to offer a nacho sombrero. So imagine a paper sombrero with a lining kind of like a taco salad shell going around the outside. And then of course, your standard yellow kind of gross, but we all give them anyway tortilla chips in the middle. All the fixings on top of that shell, you got to see the model wearing this hat. This guy just has this look of like, I'm happy that I'm getting paid for this, but I'm pretty concerned about stuff falling from my hat, but don't ask me to move. Yeah. Yeah, don't ask me to move. Get the picture before cheese and meat and other filling start falling all over the

58:12place. I am 10 out of 10 for efficiency, I would say, but probably like a one out of 10 in terms of practicality. I could just see soggy hats just raining toppings down all over people sitting around you. That's the worst part. It's going to fall like to the people all around you. I mean, it's the home or nacho hat, but the thing that's so silly about it is it makes all of the food way more attainable for the person behind you than for yourself. I mean, what are you supposed to do? Take your hand and like, you know, dig a round of top, you don't even know what you're going to come up with. This is a hat is my question. First of all, their park has a roof. Second of all, they just expect you to carry it back all and I'm sure it's rigid. But yeah, yeah, it's not going to carry it back and then put it on your lap, probably. And it's huge. I don't know. It doesn't seem practical to me. I think if someone sits in front of me and is blocking my view with a hat full of nachos,

59:14I'm trying to eat whatever nachos I feel like I can eat. You know, like that's just your block, your block in my view. But yeah, you probably wouldn't want to use it to block out the sun. I think the sun is going to be the enemy of a nacho hat pretty quick. That's so fair. I mean, I guess it's good that they have a dome because the sun beaten down a nacho. The birds are just going to come and eat the nachos out of your hat. Yeah, you got to watch out. Creatures from the air eating your nachos. It's not what you want. But if you put them on top of your head, you are inviting them to the party. We are going to go on our way out the door, reminder, you can join our discord conversation continues in there. Light slate of games on Thursday. So it may be a little quiet on Thursday, but of course, back to a full slate on Friday. That's going to do it for this episode of Raids and Barrels. We're back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening. Thanks for tuning in. Make sure to hit that subscribe or follow buttons so you never miss an episode. If you enjoyed it, drop us a like, leave a rating, or sound off in the comments. We'll see you next time.