I wanted to begin this week’s recap by taking a moment for a quick farewell to our friend Nando Di Fino, who has left The Athletic for a new opportunity.
As long as there has been fantasy coverage on this site, Nando was leading it, bringing in great writers and constantly pushing to try new things while working with a massive newsroom to build friendships and collaborate in ways that few people can.
Anyone with leadership experience knows that getting buy-in from a large team is tough. Getting buy-in from a group of people with overflowing to-do lists is even more difficult, but Nando made it look easy. Humility is a necessary trait in any good leader, but a great leader brings more. Nando brought genuine enthusiasm and creativity, a willingness to color outside the lines to make something truly unique, and a level of care about the people around him that made you feel lucky to be one of his friends.
Every place you have ever worked is better if you’re lucky enough to have had a Nando there, and that’s doubly true in a world of cynics.
In a reasonably short amount of time, Nando helped launch our first wave of fantasy podcasts (baseball, football, basketball, and hockey) — we even had a game show! On my first day at the company in 2019, there were a slate of fantasy shows already in development. A few seasons ago, we had a Sunday morning football livestream that was truly fun to be a part of each week. (Shoutout to the tight end whisperer Ed Malyon, who is probably doing something fun, hanging out somewhere cool these days.)
There have always been “Nando’s Guys.” If I see or hear Jedd Gyorko’s name, I immediately think of Nando even though that one pre-dates UTR. But Ty France, Adolis García, and Jurickson Profar were all hits to varying degrees.
We also did the “Under the Radar” show with our friend Ian Kahn for four seasons. Every week, it was the best 67 minutes of your life. Nando had the rundown for those episodes, and we would usually have a dozen things listed even though we never checked off more than half of them because his mind would offer up great tangents along the way — detours, rather than dead ends.
“In true Under the Radar fashion, I would like to start with number 18.”
I started listening to an episode of “Under the Radar” last weekend — it was published two years ago as of Saturday — and Nando uncorked an optimistic take on the Rangers that I had forgotten about. At the time of the recording, they were 29-33, and the suggestion was that they might be ready to take a leap to become a playoff team. They finished 68-94, but just one season later turned a 90-72 regular season into a playoff berth and a World Series title.
“C’mon Divver!”
Alright, I’ll wrap it up.
The best twist of all usually came at the very end of the show, when Nando would spin off a recall from a point earlier in the show and, even though you knew it was coming, you couldn’t ever predict what it was going to be. It’s a brilliant way to close out a show, and something that I would never try to replicate because I know it wouldn’t be as good. It’s a show that loyal listeners really miss, but the archives are still out there if you want to reminisce or slap the table when you hear a Glenn Colton mention.
Coming up on our Friday livestream episode with Trevor May (1p ET: YouTube), join us!
We are discussing…
- Rickwood Field ahead of next week’s matchup between the Cardinals and Giants
- Teams with low playoff odds that we see as rebound candidates before the trade deadline
- How we would game plan to hit against Yankees starter Luis Gil
Listen to Rates & Barrels wherever you enjoy podcasts — including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, the ad-free option within The Athletic app.
Did we underrate Gunnar Henderson even as a top prospect?
On Tuesday, Katie Woo joined us to discuss The Athletic’s 2024 MLB Players Poll, where the presence of Gunnar Henderson in the “others receiving a vote” group of “Best Player in Baseball” prompted that question.
Henderson’s leap forward was evident after 2022, when he started the season at Double-A and finished with a 34-game stint in Baltimore and more than held his own as a first-time big leaguer (128 wRC+, 0.8 fWAR). That spring, Henderson was still prospect-eligible and was the No. 2 prospect behind Corbin Carroll on Keith Law’s 2023 Top 100 list. From Keith’s write-up that winter:
“Henderson has made incredible strides as a player even just in the past two years, from swing adjustments to physical development to going from a raw athlete on defense to a potentially elite glove at third base who can stay at shortstop too. The Orioles’ second-round pick in 2019, signed to a first-round bonus, Henderson performed better in High A than he did in Low A in 2021, moved up to Double A and hit better there than he had in High A, only slowing down when he reached Triple A last year at 21, hitting a measly .288/.390/.504 in half a season there. He’s simplified his swing since he was drafted, ditching the toe-tap and using his lower half more to generate power, resulting in a more fluid swing and better adjustments to different pitch types. He’s at least an average defender at short, more than good enough to stay at the position, but is at least a 70 defender at third, and could have a Scott Rolen-like upside if he ends up at the hot corner. Henderson has been much better against right-handed pitching, with a .208/.316/.354 line against lefties at all levels last year, although that’s not unusual for a young left-handed-hitting prospect, and there’s no reason to think he won’t improve with experience. Rolen’s a Hall of Famer, so I don’t throw that comparison around lightly, but Henderson looks like a 25+ homer, high OBP guy who spends fifteen years on the left side of an infield.”
My pre-2022 trepidation with Henderson was the result of a 30% strikeout rate at High-A from his 2021 season, and perhaps the cancelled 2020 minor league season should have been a more prominent factor in my evaluations of all minor leaguers coming off of a significant layoff. The other related concept that comes up on the show frequently is that the process by which a hitter strikes out matters, probably a lot. We want to know more about why a hitter is struggling in that particularly area, whether it’s chasing a lot of pitches outside the zone, missing hittable pitches in the zone, or taking too many hittable pitches as called strikes.
As for getting a mention in the ‘Best Player in Baseball’ poll, it’s not absurd. Consider that Henderson is eighth among all position players in fWAR (10.1) since debuting on August 31, 2022, and this is the short list of players who have been more valuable in that span:
- Aaron Judge (12.8)
- Freddie Freeman (11.7)
- Mookie Betts (11.5)
- Juan Soto (10.8)
- Bobby Witt Jr. (10.5)
- Ronald Acuña Jr. (10.5)
- Shohei Ohtani (10.2) — hitting WAR only
Recognizing the Pirates as an organization that might be developing pitching well
Drafting a pitcher 1.1 and having that pitcher in the big leagues less than a year later isn’t a headline-worthy call. Paul Skenes is excellent, and when Keith Law joined me on the show Wednesday, I suggested that Skenes is already a Top 10 starter without rebuttal. The development of Jared Jones — a second-rounder drafted out of high school in 2020 — and the progression of Bubba Chandler, Anthony Solometo, and Thomas Harrington will be the group that largely grades the progress of the organization in this year, but even the ability to churn out a full rotation of major league starters would give the Pirates an edge they have lacked for a long time.
During this episode, we also discussed a few early MLB draft toss-ups (Charlie Condon v. Travis Bazzana and Chase Burnes v. Hagen Smith), and the need for increased patience with young hitters given the increasing quality of big league pitching, and the dilution of the pool of high-quality minor league arms.
Promotions of Note
Coming out of the weekend, our Monday episode featured a lot of prospect promotions and debuts.
- Adael Amador, 2B, COL — Amador is getting a look with Brendan Rodgers on the IL, though it seems likely that he will return to Double-A or Triple-A once Rodgers is healthy, unless he hits a ton during his first opportunity in Colorado. The overall downturn in power from Amador since being moved up to Double-A might be scaring some people away, but his hit tool is very good, and Coors Field is the best place in the league to put a lot of balls in play, so the long-term outlook is more encouraging than the sluggish start at Hartford (.194/.337/.329) would lead you to believe.
- Tyler Locklear, 1B, SEA — We noted the similarities in Locklear’s profile to Justyn-Henry Malloy, though the key difference is that Locklear has better grasp on a defensive home at first base. A Ty France injury (hairline fracture in his heel) opened the door for Locklear, and unless there are more position tweaks on the horizon once France is healthy, or a willingness to play Mitch Garver less as the DH, this opportunity will likely be a temporary one with France tracking toward a return around the time he’s eligible for activation early next week.
- Hurston Waldrep, SP, ATL — The Stuff+ model isn’t enthusiastic about Waldrep, but as someone who has lived vicariously through math for most of my life, I’m going to push back on the model. Waldrep’s splitter is excellent, and his fastball averaged 95.7 mph in his debut, which is enough for me to gamble on him to find his way into an important role. After giving up seven earned runs over 2.2 IP in his first start of the year, Waldrep settled down at Double-A and made a cameo in Gwinnett before getting the call to Atlanta. The range of outcomes includes becoming a closer if he’s not consistent enough with his command and secondaries to stick in the rotation long term (Raisel Iglesias is under contract through 2025, if you’re tracking that for keeper league purposes).
- Drew Thorpe, SP, CHW — A four-seamer average of 91.3 mph is going to temper expectations right off the cuff, and playing for one of the worst teams in the Wild Card Era won’t help as far as run support or bullpen bridges go — but it does afford Thorpe time to continue his development against top-level hitters. Thorpe’s changeup and slider are very good offerings, and the long-term key might be finding a way to hide his four-seamer by working in another fastball to keep hitters from sitting on that pitch. For now, Thorpe looks like a streaming option for deeper leagues.
- Carlos F. Rodriguez, SP, MIL — As a 21-year-old last season, Rodriguez reeled off a 2.77 ERA and 1.09 WHIP over 123.2 innings at Double-A Biloxi with a 152 strikeouts and a walk rate that you can live with (10.3%). After making the leap to Triple-A to begin the season, Rodriguez’s swinging-strike rate tumbled from 15.5% a year ago with the Shuckers to 11.2% in Nashville. Like Thorpe, Rodriguez needs to be careful about using his four-seamer too much, but that’s already baked into the game plan, as we saw in his debut against the Blue Jays. With a true six-pitch arsenal — three fastballs (four-seamer, two-seamer, cutter), two breaking balls (slider and curveball) and a changeup, Rodriguez has a lot of ways to give hitters different looks, and at 22, an eventual velocity bump isn’t out of the question. Rodriguez has the look of a matchup-dependent starter for fantasy purposes, at least in the short term.
The “Don’t Buy” List
After writing about buy-low hitters to target via trade, Eno Sarris put together another list for the Thursday episode of the podcast, highlighting a few players who look like buy-lows, but may continue to underwhelm. Introducing, the “Don’t Buy” list, sponsored by The Bluth Company.
Half of the names on this list are players you wouldn’t even think about targeting anyway, and the most useful application might be to temper short-term expectations for the younger players here (even if they’re good long-term targets like Evan Carter and Colt Keith), while looking elsewhere instead of trading for Nolan Arenado or Anthony Rizzo in leagues where you’re trying to make up ground.
As for Corbin Carroll’s presence on this list, his 2024 has been a mystery wrapped in a riddle, but the one-year rolling leaderboard at FanGraphs might help us to better understand his present value and floor. Since June 14 of 2023, Carroll is hitting .242/.319/.383 with 13 homers, 47 steals, 101 runs scored and 62 RBI (8.9% BB%, 18.7% K%). By comparison, CJ Abrams is hitting .253/.308/.446 with 23 homers, 51 steals, 99 runs scored and 69 RBI (5.8% BB%, 19.1% K%). As the next in-season hitter rankings update rapidly approaches, don’t be surprised if their rest-of-season values are in lockstep, which is a potential two-round tumble from Carroll’s draft-season ADP.
Thanks for reading — Rates & Barrels is back on Monday!
(Top photo of Gunnar Henderson: Daniel Kucin Jr.-USA TODAY Sports)
