PODCAST EPISODE 386 - MLB’s 2025 OVERACHIEVERS AND UNDERACHIEVERS -

In this episode of Batflips and Nerds, hosts Russell Eassom and Darius Austin delve into the performances of MLB players from the previous season, categorising them into overachievers and underachievers based on their hitting and pitching statistics.

They discuss various players, their potential for the upcoming season, and the impact of injuries on performance. The conversation also touches on projections for the 2026 season, highlighting players to watch for potential bounce-backs and those who may struggle to maintain their performance levels.

Listen to the podcast or watch the show on YouTube.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello, and welcome to bat Flips and Nerds, the Baseball podcast with a British twist. I am your host this evening, Russell Lison. I’m delighted to be joined by my fellow stats nerd, Darius Austin. Darius, how are you doing.

I’m doing well. Thanks for us. Excited to get together and statnud it up. We always get these opportunities where the others mistakenly let us off the lation.

We just talk about stats for an hour, so it’s gonna be a great time. Yes, there is plenty of things to talk about in baseball right now, and we’re going to talk about none of them. There will be a podcast in the very short term which will be around the WBC. We’re just waiting for the final rosters to be confirmed and then we can go through all of that and all of the potential shenanigans that have occurred around player selections, eligibility form, great great grandparents, and insurance as Team Puerto Rico and Dominica Republic have seem to complain about in the last couple of weeks.

If you are. Interested in those things, please do you check out the website. GAV has been pumping out content about all of these things where you can keep yourself updated and do sign up for the newsletter that Gav has been pushing now once a week to keep yourself in the loop. But we are going to discuss today.

I mean, there’s going to go through some of the top over and underachievers from last season compared to some projections and give you some thoughts on whether we think they’re going to keep that level or whether they’re going to return to a different a. Different level. Let’s let’s also say that they will be worse, but they won’t quite be the same stardom that they had in twenty twenty five. So we’ll start up on the hitting side a quick piece.

We’ve kind of I’ve calculated some top players on O performance based on a war rating, but donate basically actually based on a quite appearance rate, so we can actually get for the rid of some of the people who had bad injuries or some of the people who just got more playing time than the experts board. So that’s our general principle. Start off with some of the top hitters. Darias, when you when I asked you about this, did you have some names that you thought, you know what these are going to be these people are going to be on the list.

Yeah, I think so I didn’t get the list and go, oh wow, I’m super surprised by this. I think the name at the top of the list is definitely the name I expected to be at the top of the list because he kind of shocked everybody with how good it was last year. But yeah, overall, I think there were certainly players who you know, surprised me with their level last year, but it retroactively. I don’t think there’s anyone who I didn’t expect to see on this Hitterus list outperforming their projections.

Yes, so the top ten on the list that I have are Nick Kurtz, Kyle Stowards, Jeremy Paiinier, Haraldo Podomo, ben Rice, George Springer, Tyler Surdiers from Roman Antity, michel Garcia, and Kyle Schwarber. I think interestingly we have kind of two or three different types of kind of like players here. There’s there are the young players that have performed better than the predictions would have gone for. There are some what would have been like average MLB players that then had a all star level season, and there’s a couple of old guys that have not necessarily turned back the clock but have thrown out like a big season compared to that.

So there is which one of. Those archetypes do you believe in more for how they’re going to perform in twenty twenty six. I think the boring answer maybe is Schwarber, just because you know, he’s been doing this for a long time and he does seem to kind of just get a little bit better every year, even though he might hit two hundred. He has that OBP floor.

He has the power, You’re always going to get the power. It kind of feels like it would be really surprising if Schwarber came out and put up a, you know, a one war season or something. It just doesn’t seem like it could happen the level of hitter that he is now. He’s also not going to come out and put up an eight war season just because he’s a DH and he can only provide so much value.

But what Carl Schwarber is I think should be fairly well established at this point in time. The guy who I actually believe in the most, I think based on his performance last season, maybe flies against the track record, and that is Nick Kurtz because after a sort of brief introductory period to the majors, he genuinely looked like a top ten, maybe top five hitter in baseball. And I don’t really see anything to suggest that that was not real, that that was a fluke. He genuinely performed that well, you know, while the underlying metrics suggest he was an outstanding hitter.

So I’m all here for the Nick Kurtz being great this year, and I think the projections have pretty quickly come around on him already. He’s not protected for top ten, but I don’t think he’s too far off. So I think I’m on the Kurts train, and I think the A’s have got a real superstar on their hands. Yeah.

I think it’s very difficult for projections to immediately jump and be like, Okay, you’ve gone from basically being predicted like a one war season and having a five war season using Bangrubs war here, and you know what the projections are now going to say this season is probably going to be three four, which in itself is like that’s a massive jump from what they were saying last season. I’m just really interested to see how he does or if he gets found out, because he hits like oppo better than basically everybody else in baseball, Like he had more home runs in the opposite field than anyone else. That kind of like a late contact point as well. So do you think that’s has the potential for kind of like that sophomore slump if teams actually work out the way to pitch to it.

Yeah, there’s always a chance, so that that risk is always higher. I think with the guys who are newer to the majors, there was almost certainly a period last year where other teams were not really worrying about him. You know that here’s a rookie didn’t really hit that well to start his career, wasn’t a lot of advanced scouting on him, so you could definitely believe that. Now they’ve got several hundred play appearances and he’s increased his profiles, and the point that when they look at the A’s lineup, even though the A’s lineup is pretty good, everybody’s eyes are probably going to be on Nick Kurtz first.

Now I could see there being another adjustment or two he has to make. What he did last season gives me pretty high confidence so that they’ll be able to make those adjustments quickly, and certainly the A’s are playing in a place where it should help him quite a lot offensively. Anyway, that park played pretty friendly. Wasn’t quite a number one in the majors, but I think it was maybe third in the stadcast part of park factice last year.

So yeah, there is always that risk, and I think you’re right the wall see some adjustments from opposing pictures. It will be interesting to see how quickly he can make those adjustments back, because that’s what the really great hitters do. Yeah, No, definitely want to look forward to. It’s again another thing about do how serious do teams take playing games against the A’s.

It’s not a slight on some of the players, but the pitching side is not there, so kind of like they have, teams may have a very different approach about how they handle those games. Be more direct, to be more aggressive, be more willing to give up kind of like single home runs, which is to the benefit of himself and Tyler’s Donut, who ended up on this list as well. I think for me looking through. The list, the one that I’m going to stick with a young player as well.

It’s not particularly hard to jump onto the Roman Anthony train and be like, you know what everybody’s thought, He’s good, came out, was potentially even better than people thought, and you kind of to stick to and stick to that performance level as he goes on. But I think that’s again I’m thinking, I think people still don’t have enough to know exactly what he’s like. So he’s going to get that second season where he’s gonna be in the heart of a lineup that is potentially going to be playoff bound, and he’s not necessarily going to be in a key position at that lineout, So I think he’s going to get pitched too, because there are going to be other people in that team that they’re going to be avoided. And I think he’s gonna have a great opportunity to put up the sort of numbers that he did in a short season across the whole season.

Yeah, I think Antony is a shame that we didn’t get to see more of him because he got injured. We sort of got this quite outlandish line that was a very small sample, but what he showed was pretty incredible. So yeah, I think there’s high hopes in Boston. I think maybe the shape of the production will not look quite as weird as it did this past season.

He had a four or four BABIT, so maybe we don’t see the two nightty two average, but I think the other skills that he showed and obviously all the prospect pedigree suggests that he can be a real force and this Red Sox lineup for many many years to come, and they obviously believe very highly in him. So yeah, I’m excited to see how that goes. I think the Red Sox could have a pretty good lineup. He’s definitely the young guy that looks like he’s got the highest ceiling at the moment offensively so well.

Hopefully see some of those other younger guys come along too, but he’s the one to have confidence in for sure. So far to twist your arm, Darius, which one of these ten feeding most? I hate to say it, I think it might be George Springer just because he is thirty six, and it kind of came out of nowhere that season last year. You know, he’d been on this bit of a decline for a few years in Toronto. His tenure there started out well and then it kind of just like like, hey, this is a guy in his midday he’s falling off, and then he came out and had, you know, kind of a peak Springer level season at age thirty five.

Not many guys do that. We’ve seen him have injury troubles quite a bit over the years, and it’s just not the kind of thing you should bet on, really at age thirty six. I don’t have anything against George Springer of like watching him player of the course of his career, but what he did last season was very much out of line with the way his career had been trending previously. So yeah, maybe he stays healthy and somehow maintains some of that level, but I am not buying another five plus win spring a season.

I think we’ll probably be for seeing him fall back at least in that two to three win range. Hopefully it’s not any more than that. Yeah, I think it’s it’s the harsh but probably one of the fair ones. Personally, I think I’m not sold on mikel Garcia.

It’s very difficult to kind of to watch a player go from kind of a season of basically almost two full seasons of being a below average hitter and then a season of them being an above average hitter and be like, you know what, like I believe in the last year more than you believe in the track record. Obviously, players could change, players can develop. It’s it’s a question of how much do you believe that that power, that power was real, and how much do you believe that he’s no longer striking out Like twenty twenty to twenty five percent at the time. Was real.

And I don’t know. Some of the snack Gas stats are a little bit some of it’s I think he’s there, but I will be shocked if he puts in like another what ended up being a five and a half four season into my twenty six. Yeah, me too. That that was an another possibility I was considering.

I think I believe more in the strikeout games than I do in the power. He just does not hit the ball that hard. And maybe the Royals bringing their fences in, you know, Garcia is one of the guys they think that’s going to help the most. But it’s very much Paul power.

I think there’s definitely scope for him to fall back at least into the you know, the low double digits in home runs, and it’s very difficult to put up a season of that quality. If that is your level of power. He did well to do what he did with with sixteen home runs last year, but I think we are going to see it at least something of a step back in that batting line. I think he’s are going to be a good useful player for them, but not to the level we saw last year.

Yes, so I think we’ll now move on to the underachievers from a hitting perspective. Same again, similar method. I have tried to do this so that we just removed the players who basically got injured and basically didn’t get a full season. Because if you do that, basically jor Dane Alvarez is effectively like top and it is like, okay, he didn’t have the grade of season, but that was predominantly because of injury.

So what we’re actually gonna do the same again. It’s basically based on three hundred innings, three hundred three play appearances minimum. How their rate of walk for per six hundred compares to against the projection, So our top ten this time, so theoretically the worst performing layer against projection was John Pediton and Jeronaheim Trace. We we’re going to hopy Michael.

Toglia, Mike Trout, Josh Lowe, Michael Harris the Second, Addley Ruschman, and Nolan Jones. I don’t think it’s quite as easy to group these characters, these kind of players together. There’s a lot of very different reasons for why some of these players underperformed. Who do you have the most faith that they can actually do something better in twenty twenty sixth areas.

I’m still a believer in Adlei Ruschman. I think he’s had injury struggles. Obviously, things have not gone super well for the Oriols slightly definitely not as well as we expected. But I think the injuries have played a part for Ruchman.

It is hard to be a catcher in the big leagues. He does a lot, and I think he does you know the other parts of the game very well. So I think even if he never reaches his offensive ceiling, we’ll still see the defensive value come through and give him more than he’s got at the moment. But I do also believe in the back coming around.

I think that talent is still in there, and hopefully we can see him healthy this year and see him raise that back up. He’s the guy, I think, Yeah, he’s he’s got the young the young age on his side, and he’s got the pedigree and we have seen him have success in the majors, so I think he’s got all those factors that you’re you’re looking for from a bounce back a lot of these other names. So we’re the guys that I never believed in, or you know, guys that are going towards the end of their career. I think I think probably Michael Harris is the other exception to that.

But yeah, who are you looking at? I think, yeah, Reuchman. It was me a toss up between Rutchman and Harris Harris because he had a much better second half of the season. That’s what you would kind of you’re inclined to kind of move towards that. But I then had a like a more in depth look at Harris and it actually looks at like he basically starts poor every single year.

So it’s like not quite the franciscol Indoor effect of the you don’t want to basically you might as well just not play him in April, you can just. Let him have the. But no, it feels that like there’s there’s something that’s there, There is a provable talent level but I can’t work out why he seems to struggle at the start of the season and what kind of like suddenly gets better to him. With a lot of these players, it could be injuries, It could be these things that we haven’t seen and we don’t know that basically they’ve they’ve been injured.

I think looking at this list, like you can definitely say that like Trout and Josh Lowe spent part of the seasons injured, and so you’re kind of like, more how much how much were they playing through injuries to start off with before then not doing particularly well. But yeah, I think. It has to be Adley’s going to be given the time to get better, and I’m not certain beyond probably Harris and Mike Shrout who might actually get the time to actually be better in twenty twenty six. Yeah, yeah, I suppose.

You know, Josh Lowe is on the Angels, and the Angels are never overflowing with offensive talent these days. But it’s probably a bad sign that they’re going to ask him to play some center field because he’s not really a center fielder. Is either him or Goadell, who’s also shown us that he’s not really a center fielder, So it’s possible the Angels would just laugh them share up there and they’ll both look periodically bad and then a bit more comfortable when they’re in a corner. But yeah, the rest of these, I mean, you know, we’ve got guys who haven’t even got major league deals now this season.

Ben has a mug now commemorating Michael Tolia’s futility from last year. So yeah, I don’t think there’s a lot of other hope here. I guess Logano Hoppy is like the other guy who people had high hopes for and was just really shockingly bad over the second half of last season. It was quite remarkable how bad he was, and I don’t I think quite a lot of people didn’t pay attention to because the Angels were irrelevant for so much of the season, but he really really fell off badly, and he was somebody who I think, you know, if you’d ask people a year prior, they would have said, you know, good, good age twenty four season looks like he’s going to kick on and be catch in the future, And now it’s you know, is he going to have a roster spot in a year or two? Times? Because that’s how bad he looks in the second half last year.

Yeah, I think I’m probably one of those people who would have been like, this guy has the potential to be like a top five catcher in baseball or from from from what we saw, and it’s completely netly in the wrong direction. And then yeah, like Donaheim, is anybody even going to give him a deal? Like when you end up like barely hitting over the Mendoza line and you’re just showing that sort of decline. I think, obviously as a Cleveland fan, watching Nolan Jones come back and stink was was also a bit. Of a a bit of a hard one.

He was definitely for me one of those. One of his players, one of those prospects where I think I’d finally really gotten into baseball, and I was like, he was probably the first big prospect at Cleveland, and I was like, well, he’s obviously not going to play third base, where he was spent his whole entire time in the minors, and because we have Isaia Ramirez and watching him be forced to train in other places kind of be bad. Then go to Colorado and do okay for a season and then come back and it was like, oh, yay, no, not Yeah, I don’t think we can really expect too much from him. Just ask what do you think of do we think we’ve seen the last of Josh Pedison? Do you think like he’s going to be given much opportunities in twenty twenty six.

I think people will probably keep trying Jock as the platoon bat as long as he hangs around the majors. I think this is the kind of profile left handed hitter, you know, pretty long track record of being great ans rieties. I think unless you know that the battered ball metrics just completely crater, you know, it seems like it’s about to be this gone or something. I think there’ll still be teams out there who say, yeah, we need we need a platoon guy.

You know, we know Jock can do it now. Everybody has the DH now, but obviously that his one utility. You know, he can’t play the field anymore. Really, you can’t give him a whiff of left handers.

So if he isn’t going to mash righties, I think that his career might be pretty short from here right out, this is this is probably it. This season. We might see him bounce around a few places if he doesn’t start hot, but yeah, you can’t argue with the track record. You know, this is a guy who’s perhaps a pretty incredible offensive seasons purely on the basis of being able to hit right handed pitching.

Yeah, it’ll be interesting if he ends up being one of those guys that gets like put on the waivers by four different teams and picked up and somehow end up on a season roster because he has a like a hot a hot like August and September. Yeah, you could definitely see that kind of trajectory for his year. Okay, so let’s move on to pictures. Try to do a similar thing.

Looked at rape based war and tried to see basically which pictures outperformed that. This one ended up getting a little bit muddied because we have pictures who have moved gone from starters to relievers and therefore have performed better than expectations. But I think there are some of the names. You’d expect in here, and then we have some far more interesting names to potentially discuss Darius.

But the names that we have are Sean Nukom, Jansen, jug Hases Lozado, Chris Bubitch, Nathan i Abaldi, Jimmy Herget, Christopher Sanchez, Jacob Letz, Carol Ay. And Chad Patrick. Now from perfectly honest like Evaldi, Sanchez, Hazes Liza. They were the names that I was expecting to be on this list.

I kind of really hadn’t thought about the other seven at any point during the season, Darius, I don’t know if that was the same for you. Maybe Chad Patrick. Actually, I will say I didn’t think about Chad Patrick. I got a bit of time.

I definitely thought about Chad Patrick, primarily because Chad Patrick was not a guy I had thought about at all before the season, and then it was a very Brewers thing to be like, hey, here’s this random guy from Triple A. Guess what he’s good. So that was like extremely Milwaukee. I thought about Jake Latts a bit, just because the Rangers kind of had the hey what happened to when you have a rotation that is full of guys whose health you can’t trust.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t Jacob de Grom’s fault, but you know, if Oldly got her and Tyler Marley got hurt, it’s like, well, obviously, but also we need somebody to be in the rotation. And Jake Latz actually came out of the bullpen and did a pretty good job for them. So yeah, him, I kind of see it. And then something other, Yeah, Jansen Junk was not somebody I was thinking about.

I guess you know, he did have an all right season, but it was not somebody I was like, Oh, yeah, he had a fantastic beat. The projections type year wasn’t the top of mind. Yeah, I saw this list and that was the first name that jumped out, And then I had to go like, okay, so I have to now look some more to be like, what’s going on here? And then be like, oh, once again, this is all based on like fangrafts data and so like then to see that like, oh, he has like an FIP that is like a whole run lower than his era, to be like, what is going on here? How has he suddenly managed to drop his war crate to one per nine instead of like two per nine and have a really low like flyball rate? Is any of this. Potentially like going to be better? And then looked look at it even more.

You realized that he started the season as kind of like a long man out of the bench, like out of the pen and did really quite well actually for for for Miami had had an instance of throwing like five shutout innings as as a long relief and then went to start and kind of slowly got worse as the season game on, but still not like bad, like still like actually like performed. I think most people had anticipated that he would be bad and he wasn’t. Do you know what I thought of when I saw jazz and junks peripherals And you will get this as a Cleveland fan, Josh Tomlin, Oh, just Josh never walks anybody Tommlin And it did. It did work for a little while there, right, you know, the fact he walked guys so infrequently that even though he struck out rate was kind of terrible, it’s still kind of played the years that the bad ball luck.

Was good at least. Yeah, and that’s it, and it’s but it’s just like, yeah, there’s no belief that that’s gonna gonna happen. There. There’s always a bit more interesting with Sean Newcombe.

I think his go from starting to then going into the bullpen when he’s switched over to the age or he switched over to a bullpen roll when he was at Boston as well, but going over and doing that and potentially doing that in the stadium that we’ve already discussed. That was a bit of a surprise. Yeah, it was not an easy place to pitch. And we were talking a bit about you can before just in that he’s had quite a weird career, like well regarded prospect, good start to his major league career, then looked like he might just end up out of baseball in a couple of years.

He drops off so severely. So yeah, not an unfamiliar route. I suppose for a guy to flame out as starter and then come back and be a successful reliever. It just seems to have taken him quite a long time to achieve that successful reliever part.

So we’ll see whether he can keep it up. He’s landed in a great place to get a lot of run with the White Sogs. You know that they should be well prepared to give him a relatively prominent role and that bullpen, and you know she’s playing well then dealing with the deadline I expect. So nice nice to see you come come back and have a four season.

I think it had been seven eight years or something since we’d already seen him have like a good, good old run in the big league, so fair place to him. But yeah, I’m not not not buying really that he’s going to be an elite reliever going forward. Okay, so I’m going to split this into two parts then, Darius. The ones that we have that are starters and the ones that we have with the believers of are kind of like starting five in the Abaldi Sanchez, Lozardo be Richard Patrick.

Which which one of those five you are you buying. Most Christopher Sanchez? I was. I was all in. Actually, if you’d given me these two war numbers at the start of last year and said which one do you think he would be closer to? I would have picked the one he actually got because I was I was on Sanchez in fantasy.

I was drafting him everywhere. I was big Sanchez guys. So it was fantastic to see him up to that potential and I didn’t see anything to think that it was a floke. He genuinely look like one of the best starts in baseball, could easily if won the Cy Young in a weaker year in a league where Paul Skins doesn’t exist.

I think that was Christopher Sanchez’s awards. So yeah, very encouraged by his development, and I think this is legit. I think we can easily see another five plus win from him. Yeah, I do have to say, I think I did actually remove Paul Skins from this list because you thought it was unfair.

Yeah, I think I did it with Otani as well, because I’m just like, now, like it’s like even Judge nearly hit the bottom of like the top ten, and I’m just like, it’s more just projection. Don’t for the top guys, they don’t. They’re not willing to basically say the regress too hard. Yeah.

Yeah, they’re not going to say they’re going to be ten win players. They’re going to say they’re going to be eight or six or whatever. So I knew they were going to be good, and they just had another bloody good season. I don’t think anybody really thinks that Sken’s performed out of his skin, but obviously heformed out of his skin, but out of like any kind of like major expectations, whereas a few of these others did.

I think Sanchez is the is the obvious answer here, Like Ivaldi would be cool if it would would continue like that and they see what Zada can continue to do with Philadelphia. But like, no, I think you can’t really look past Sanchez. I think he’s going to have to be considered a top ten picture this season. I think once once those sorts of like fantasy drafts start to continue as well, it’s going to be going in a much higher position than he was going the previous year.

Is it wrong to basically say that, like, Evaldi is probably the one that you have the least I’ll say I think Evaldi is the one that I have the least confidence to be able to produce this sort of thing. Like obviously, the injury doesn’t help to what you do with that, especially where he is in his career, because when we get to talk to some of the negative performers, all the most underachievers compared to projections, coming back from injuries as a picture is a pretty hard thing to do. Yeah, ive Al has never had a glittering injury history. You know him making burrants? Shall we say? He was on his way to a sub two ERA season when he was on the mound last year, So I guess that’s a point in his favor.

He has always looked pretty good when he’s pitched. Not that good, but you know, like a well above average starter. It’s just been the staying on the mound apart that’s been tough for him. But yeah, again like George Springer’s thirty six, a thirty six next season, and yeah, it’s it’s just not a thing that you should be betting on with pictures.

Really, I think there are some red flags for Chris Boubage maintaining the performance that he had as well. You know, I don’t think he was going to stick at that level of season, and then he got hurt as well. The Royals kind of said he kept saying it was going to come back, and he didn’t, so that was that was kind of a concerning layoff. So yeah, injuries are good injury, but given everything else that’s gone on with evolving in his career and how old he is, I think sadly you wouldn’t really want to bet on him out performing anything next season.

And given the relievers are pot look at best Darius, who do we think is going to continue to have a just say a below three e ra A as a. Reliever in twenty twenty six below three, which is these guys, Yeah, this literally anything could happen, he can’t it. Who do I look off, you know, I haven’t. I can’t even say I’ve even looked at Kyle Lee’s performance in terms of his underlying stuff, So it doesn’t look great.

Actually, I’m just gonna go ahead and stick with Jake Latts because he’s probably the one that I did follow the most last season. He made some nice improvements. Whether the Rangers actually start or relieve him more often, I guess is up for debate. But now that they’ve got be Kenzie Gore in the fold, that might well push Lat’s back to the ballpen.

A lot of that depends on Kumar Rocker in Jack Whiter’s development as well, I suppose, But yeah, he made some nice strides last season, so I’ll go with him. Yeah, he’s one of the ones. Like I saw a few appearances from him every now and then. But I was watching a few games towards the end of the last season, just playing the I started to play the roulette of I’m just going to turn on the game that like, I’ve not watched much of these two teams play last season, and I saw him strike out the Reds in an inning.

Not particularly hard maybe, but he looked pretty impressive. That now it obviously it’s difficult to go from like can you continue to do that? He’s not a lights out, strikeout like pitcher, so as a reliever, I think the concern more with him is he might get put in higher leverage situations after having the good the good season, and might have to face. Some better batters. I always I always worry about this sometimes with the those middle relievers who kind of end up doing well and you’re like, well, did you actually face anybody good? No, every game you brought and got brought into was like against six, seven, eight in the lineup, and you’re already down by six rounds and.

Yeah, so no, I just just to take my random punt. It’s it’s one in four, or actually, dearly, it might not even be one in four. It could be all all four of these could be terrible. In twenty twenty six, and we never really had a chance of picking someone who who was good, okay pitching under performers.

I think this is a list where I think I predicted I think eight out of the ten people, I think this is probably the one list where I was most confident in who I thought was a pitching underperformer. The list is Walker Buler Spencer, Strider, Bryce Miller, Max Schas Antonius and Szella, Dustin May Heremen Marquez, Aaron Nola, Chris Paddock, and Sandy Alcantra. This is. At one point, who’s who have pitchers? Yeah, I guess to underperform you have to have had some track record to make the projection think you’re going to.

Most of these guys were not only high ranked prospects, but have also been probably called ices at various points in their career, or at least potential aces. I would say, yeah, all of. These on a kind of pro rat races were projected kind of like at least about two wars, So they were all basically predicted to be league average given the opportunity, not just replacement. And I stuck a little bit through like some of these seasons, Like I think for me looking through this, you kind of group them into like a few kind of like kind of like categories.

The return from injury guys Strider, Arcantra, Buelah. None of them really looked good coming back off their injuries. Did they do? So? They did not know? I think with Strider and Alcantra, certainly with our contra, things got better. Yes, the season went on.

You know, I think there was a point where are was over seven eight maybe, you know, it looked really bad, probably to the point that it prevented them, the Marlins, from getting anything really of real value for him in trade. By the end of the season it was still over five. But I think he did quite a good job to get that down to that level, because it was pretty horrific. You know, he looked really out of sorts at the start, and we saw maybe not vintage Lcantra, but something a lot closer to what people remember pre injury.

Yes, three thirty three d Ra second half of Sandy, and we saw we saw a couple of those you know, classic Sandy type pitching deep into game starts as well. I think, so I have some confidence that he can at least be a good workhorse type guy and maybe we don’t ever see you know, that Cy Young level again, I think Stryder. Yeah, it was concerning to see how much he struggled because you know, he was so dominant, unlike our Candra, he was really striking everybody out when he was pre injury, and you know, you thought, hey, this guy is maybe the best picture in baseball and the stuff just didn’t look like it was all the way back. Last year.

Was like three or four miles an hour down pretty most. Yeah, And so I think a lot a lot is resting on that for him the season. You know, if we come out and we see him throwing ninety seven and spring training and the slider’s popping again, then then maybe we’ll see him return to those levels. But he was always really a two pitch guy, and if you’re a two pitch guy, that both of those pitches need to be real good.

You know, he can’t live with that fastball at ninety five. I don’t think the way it was. So Yeah, I’m I guess maybe still optimistic that he can get back to that level, but I wouldn’t say confident. Yeah, and then see the other wise.

Basically, the two Colorado guys, I don’t know, like they’ve both at times done well given the circumstances that they play in, but it almost feels that like Sentencella and marcz could just get left out there, and Colorado just doesn’t seem to care about winning games or at least trying to keep game close, so they just eat runs on every like every now and then. That most other teams would be like, yeah, you know, we’ll pull the guy. Yeah. I guess Marquez must have really loved Colorado because he signed that extension, which I thought was a bizarre choice at the time for somebody who just had that opportunity to get out and was pretty well regarded at that point in his career as well.

You know, everybody was kind of like, hey, if we could get this guy out of course Field, imagine what his numbers would look like. And then he voluntarily decided to stay in Corsefield for a few more years, much of which we’re interrupted by injury. Now it kind of looks like it’s all gone. You know, he’s turn thirty and the stuff’s not there anymore.

Sens Orry is kind of remarkable. He sort of feels like a throwback, doesn’t he, Like, you don’t you don’t really see pitching lines like this anymore, because, like you say, it’s kind of a relic of when teams would just go, well, you’re you’re supposed to pitch the whole game, aren’t you. You know, you just stay out there and eat the runs. So you know, he’s done a good job pitching a discent amount of inks for them over the years without ever being hugely successful.

I guess he’s had one year where his ERA was under four career five eighteen at this point, which is quite impressive for somebody who’s thrown eight hundred and twenty two innings in the big leagues. Guys don’t usually get to stick around that long with that kind of performance anymore. Yeah, so yeah, fair play to him. I think he actually has black ink on his Baseball reference page.

Bad black ink, well, bad black ink, but hey, it’s black ink. I think he has like the most losses in a season. I think he got it last season. I think he had fifteen losses last season, which was the most out of anybody.

Is that because Patrick Corbyn finally didn’t take that there more than the twenty last Patrick corbyns season? Yeah, obviously. Then the other guy is the kind of. Like health really didn’t play out Sureser May Miller, Like I think Miller at times looked okay, but then just like just never really performed it anywhere near what we were expecting. I think, Darius, you were all in on that Seattle pitching staff going into last season.

I think I had at least one fantasy league where you had like three or of not four out of the projected starting five. Yeah. I did famously draft four of the five Marina starters in our UK Invitational league. The one I did not was Bryce Miller, So I guess that maybe speaks to my level of confidence going into last year.

I didn’t think he was going to be this bad. But yeah, he really backed up. I mean a lot, a lot of the underlying stuff didn’t back up his twenty twenty four performance. You know, he had that sab three ra sor I’m on the surf is you know, maybe a strikeout an inning that that era looks pretty good but didn’t actually miss as many bats as you think.

Actually gives up quite a lot of hard contact Miller, and so when the struck out rad did drop off a bit more last season, the control wasn’t as good or that hurt him a lot more. And he also struggled with injury, as did much of the Mariner’s rotation. So maybe he can he can get back to being you know, they don’t they don’t need him to be a stud. You know, they’ve got they’ve got the studs.

They just want him to be a four or a five. So I think he can probably still get back and be at that level. But yeah, I never never thought that Miller was up there with Kirby and Gilbert and blanking on his name. Now I should know, Brian will there we go.

You know those guys. That’s that’s the trio that they are relying on. I think they just need Millers to pinch some decent innings at the back of that rotation. Yeah, and probably one of the names that I would have definitely expected on the list of this list, and probably other people might not have.

With Chris Paddock personally, I think he’s one of the main reasons why Detroit didn’t beat Cleveland. I spent a lot of the postseason, a lot of the the offseason still trying to work out how Cleveland won that division last year, because I probably sound like a broken record on this podcast about how this Cleveland team but it’s not good, Like it isn’t a good team and it only wins because the other teams are worse, not because they actually like performed particularly well and having like a five and twelve record with a five point five point three ra or whatever, that’s not a Detroit should not be putting out a picture like that if they have any intention of winning a division, like, there should not be somebody getting that amount of game time for a postseason contender. Now it’s kind of incredible, really. I mean, we do rag the Ale Central a lot here, but it does very much feel like nobody wants to make that level of investment to actually stop believing.

You know, we thought it was the Twins for a while and they stalled out, and now they’ve gone through this fire sale. The Royals always seem to be sort of digging around in this like bargain basement tier of players for the most part. You know, they’ve got probably where they extended him, but then it’s like, yeah, who can we get in the outfield? You know, let’s we don’t we don’t want the big stars, you know, let’s let’s get these bargain basement guys instead. And then yeah, you’ve got Detroit given Chris Paddock lots of starts in like a really crucial Pennant race.

So it does very much feel like, no, none of them are really serious about this. You know, they could with a little bit more investment, maybe we could do something about this, but we’re not. We’re not going to do that. We’re we’re in the AL Central and none of them have done that.

But it’s this season either up and coming, so we’ll probably talk about that in a in a future podcast. But when when you look at the AL East and the AL Central, I can understand why some people want to redistribute the leagues. So these fiveteen is all just collectively decided. But what if we don’t invest in our team? I have a lost update for you, sadly, Antonio, Sincela didn’t get any black ink last season because he was beaten by both Herman Marquez and Kyle Frieland in losses.

Oh because the Rockies, in case you missed last season, lost quite a lot of games. Carl Frilland had seventeen last year, seventeen seventeen. So sentence, I’ll have show. He wouldn’t have like at fifteen because he would have been Corbyn all the time, wouldn’t it.

Yeah, I think Corbyn had I want to say, four straight years of lead in the majors and losses. It was a pretty incredible run. It looks like twenty one he was sixteen, he was a leader. He had nineteen and twenty two three he led the NL, but not the League.

It looks like with fifteen and then he only had thirteen in twenty four, so I’m doing him a disservice. Yeah, and then it was you know, well he wasn’t. It was like a replacement, I wele picture for the Rangers last year. But he did there one hundred and fifty five innings for them, which is what Patrick Corbyn does yet still unsigned, I believe.

So whoever is out there in spring training and somebody goes down and they’re like, we need some innings, Patrick Corbyn is waiting to call Patrick Corbyn if you want. If you want thirty starts, Patrick Corbyn is your man. Okay, I think I might know your answer, and it probably is Sandy Lcantra. But is he the one that you’re predicting to have for the biggest bounce back in twenty twenty six? Yeah, I think so, based on the way he trended over that second half, I think, you know, he he should be fully healthy.

He’s had a long time to sort of recover from that injury. Now, there are several names on the list who I think, you know, Yeah, you either, I don’t think are going to really make a full seasons worth of starts, or if they do, they’re not going to be worth using like sense of teller. I guess Aaron Noner is a weird one because we’ve seen him have great seasons, but he really did look quite cooked last year. Yeah, I felt with no other there were just like he always had the odd blow up.

And this is the same for a lot of pictures that like they’ll have like eighty percent of their starts will be quality starts, and then they have two or three where they give up like a lot. But he seemed to be giving up the long ball like a lot more than I expected. Yeah, is the home run problems have been kind of prevalent in the last three seasons or so. He is really really.

Getting bitten by those. And he used to, you know, have a bit better command, and he’s not. He’s never it was never like kind of blow you away type guy. It was a bit more craft than that.

And it seems like maybe that the controllers sit a little bit on that and everything has gone away with it. He also obviously picture got hurt last season, but it does feel like that the knife is not there on those pictures anymore. And I’m not super optimistic coming into his what are we now age thirty three season again, a guy who has been pretty durable over the course of his here out outside of last season, but it feels like the time might be find me running out for Nola. Yeah.

I think the only thing I’m thinking about Nola right now was if he’s going to end up facing Team GB and he’s as he’s on the Italian Robster for the w the WBC. There are parts of my head that are just like, imagine if I Team GM lit up like Aaron Nola and Clayton Hershaw and. They’re sort of great starting pictures that are at the ends of their careers that yeah. Yes, uh yeah, I don’t disagree.

I think our country should anyone who should any form kind of like in any improvements kind of like throughout that season, I didn’t see here. I was looking at the details when I was looking at some notes looking into Marquez that on his road starts against other teams in the NL West, he had a fourteen point seven ERA, so like that was even outside of course I get that, like there’s part of that is the Dodgers and the Padres and the Giants went bad, but it was just like, this is your chance to kind of bring the number down. He has had an unfortunate run. I mean, as you know, the Giants are bid, yes, but you know, the Dodgers are an absolute juggernaut.

The Padres have had a pretty good offense for most of this period he’s been in Colorado. The Diamondbacks lineup is pretty good. Like, he does not have life very easy, even aside from pitching in cause, yeah, that that division is is not the easiest place to pitch. So, yeah, I feel feel bad for the guy.

He was definitely right up there. You know, he was close to ace level picture at one point in his career. Okay, And I think it’s been easy to maybe say, so, who’s going to have a bad one? So I’m gonna I’m gonna limit your options to Spencer Strider, Bryce Miller, and Aaron Nola. Which one of those three do you think is going to continue at this level of performance the most.

I’m going to take Nola. I think he’s he’s the oldest. Uh. You know that the downward trenders has been going on for a couple of years now, and I just I don’t see that stuff coming back at age thirty three.

Yeah, we’ve seen great pitches learn different way to pitch, I suppose, and that that is a possibility. But Philadelphia not an easy place to pitch, and I didn’t really see any signs last season of life, So I’m going to take him. I think Midder and Strida are both young enough that even if they don’t get back to their peak levels, I think they’ll still have good productive seasons. Yeah, I’m I think that’s I might take Strida just because, as you said earlier on, when you’re a two pitch pitcher and you don’t have both of those pictures working at their best, like, how long can you actually stay at the picture? Obviously like he didn’t.

He didn’t perform horrendously like this season. It just wasn’t. The the potential side young winner that he was beforehand. And I think, do we just have to get adjust to that his new norm is league average and not like top five, top ten pitcher.

Yeah, there’s there’s still quite a big gap between those two things. We’ve we’ve seen it, I guess is the thing, you know, is one thing to say or we think this guy could be a nice but we have seen him be an AE. You know, we know that that’s in there, So yeah, one of those that I do think. You know, they say not to worry about the spring training too much, but I do think it will be very revealing to come out and see what those numbers look like on the on the gun.

Oh yeah, it’s it’s in the spring. Honestly, a pictures Vila with one of the probably the only things you can actually judge in pre season training, to be like, well, can they throw the wall as hard as they could before? Yes? Or no? Like that gives you a pretty a pretty good idea. All right, thank you Darius for going through this wonderful list of players with me. We will hopefully be back in the not to dis the future with that World Baseball Classic podcast that we have teased a few times now.

We will be waiting for the rosters to be released on the fifth of February, so it will probably get to you early next week with that. As I said also at the start there, there’s plenty of good content out on the website right now. Please do go check that out at bat person nerds dot com if you want to write something for the website. Gavin is looking for five reasons for optimism for all of the teams in the major leagues.

If you are a fan of Cleveland, maybe someone else can have five reasons for optimism, because I don’t. I think I’m going to struggle to write five five reasons for optimism this season for Cleveland if it falls, if it falls back on me, I don’t know if you’ve got five reasons for optimism, Darius at San Francisco, but. I could give you to give them to you, and now I suppose and then make Gaff type them up for the website. I know he has to pitch this to fans of quite a few teams in our various chats, and I think you said more than one response of I don’t have five, or sometimes I don’t have one, which I think I might have been the thread of the podcast.

Nick Rights responses. So I think Gav has actually written up the Jews himself based on that from Mick. Yeah, the Giants, it’s so mid it’s it’s quite distressing. And I am in a Giants fan chat and they sort of that the hope that Posey’s going to make the big move has been waning with every passing, Adrian Hawser and Luis a Riess signing, So the.

Only optimism that I have is that I’m now pretty certain that Jeszi Mi Jose Ramirez is going to have a Cleveland cap, a Cleveland cap on his Hall of Fame plaque. So dude just loves Cleveland. What can we say? What can we say? Yeah? So, thank you, Darius. Do you have anything have you been writing anything for Baseball Prospectus recently that people should be waiting for or is it just about is it all about the actual prospectus itself? The Prospectus? Yeah, it’s it’s done, it’s printed.

I’m not sure exactly when they’re going out, but you can. You can certainly pre order your copies now. So yeah, you do go and check that out. In case people don’t know what Baseball Prospectives anueal is.

It’s basically a very large book about every team in the majors. We preview about We do about sixty to seventy full player profiles per team, and then there’s a bunch of essays in there, lots of great statistical analysis. There’s prospect lists. You know, we’ve got our top one hundred and one prospects in there, great analysis from our prospect team.

So if you’re just you know, you want to get a preview of the season. You want to say, who’s who’s on each team this season. I don’t know about these players. I want to find out about this players.

You all our advanced stats, all are analysis, it’s all in there. It’s really great. Some of the comments are so funny as well. We’ve got a lot of really talented writers, so definitely worth picking up for something a bit different than just your usual pre season blurb on the you know, the news aggregator websites or whatever.

It’s certainly a different, different flavor of previews, so highly recommend. And yes, I did the Dodgers this year, which I think was the first time in a long time that I’ve had not a terrrible team, So it was quite quite enjoyable. Over the years I’ve had like the Rockies and the Angels and all these depressing clubs where i feel like I’m just being negative for sixty comments, So it was quite nice to be like, hey, this is a great team, and they won the World Series and they played like the most ridiculous postseason games ever, so I’ve got to have a lot of fun with their comments. So sneak preview, You’ve obviously just predicted the Dodgers to win again.

Yeah, there’ll be the new Yankees well because this time Brenner has lost his wallet. Right. I hope you will have all enjoyed this. As always, you can follow us about Underscore Nerds on Twitter or Buttforts and Nerds on Instagram and touch.

Please do check. Out the website. Please you check out our YouTube channel if you would like. If you listen to do this in an audio format, you can see Darius and I having a chat to see him in his lovely San Francisco jacket and.

This is this is the best thing that happened to the Giants this offseason, my jacket. Yeah, so you can come see to see the images of me with my Andy Brown painting in the back, which how has its new place permanently, permanently hung up. So yes, right, thank You, and we’ll hopefully see you or listen to you listening to us again in the future.