Today on Rates and Barrels, Keith Law joins the show to talk about his in-season prospect list update.

He tells us what he looks for in a body or a organization when it comes to developing pitching.

Things might be bad for the Giants at the big league level right now, but they may have a future number one prospect in that system.

Let's go.

Wugged Rates and Beryl's Tuesday, June 2nd, Derek Benryper, you know Saris, and our senior baseball rider at The Athletic, one of our senior baseball writers.

Keith Law is back with us on this Tuesday. Keith, thank you so much for joining us again. Thanks. I'm not quite the most senior. I think Ken's got me on that. He's got a little more gray than I do. A little more gray, yeah, not the most senior baseball writer. A senior baseball writer. Fresh in-season prospect rankings dropped last week. A lot to talk about there. We may get into the College World Series a bit later on in our conversation. But I wanted to start, not by asking more questions about Jesus Made. I know it's not a Brewer's show. He's taken the wheel as your number one prospect. That's all we have to say about my day for today.

But Franklin Arias, according to the internet, multiple sources have pinned you as a Franklin Arias guy.

Being ahead of a lot of other prospect analysts in the last couple of years with where you've had him,

had him a little more

aggressively ranked.

It's all happening, Keith.

The power is there at AA.

What clicked?

What's been the thing that's unlocked him and really kind of making, made you right here so

far in 2026?

I don't, like, I think this is a case of more just natural physical development. He was so young. When he first showed up on my list, he might have still been 17, he's probably 18, might have still barely been 17. It started with it with tip from a scout, honestly, who's like, this guy is, like, he's a superstar. He saw him in the complex league. So before I got to lay eyes on him, I think it was the end of that same summer. I got to see him for the first time. Like, oh, my God, this guy can, there's a little bit of everything here. He's just a tight, right? You're just waiting on these guys to come into their bodies. And I, that's the difference. I have seen, I saw Arias a month ago, maybe less than a month ago, actually. And that's what it is. He just looks more filled out, more like a man here. The swing is not drastically different. But you can see there's just more bat control there. So he is not, he had big issue when he was first year or so in the minors. The batted ball data was good, except he was hitting it on the ground a lot, which a lot of guys do because they haven't had, first of all, a lot of them haven't had real swing help. They haven't been in a pro system for very long or maybe gone to one of the few colleges where they actually work on that stuff. There's not many. And a lot of them just need to get, like, build up more wrist, hand strength so that they can keep the bat on playing more through contact. And there's nothing in his swing or stance that made me think, well, he's never going to get there. Like Justin Crawford has always been a big ground ball hitter, but it's because of where his hands start and his path and because no one has ever changed him, which absolutely blows my mind. But we've talked about him at some other point. But in Arias's case, it was, no, he should get there. Just just see them get stronger'll be, again, he'll be able to stay on plane. And we know that the hard contact is there. We know the bat speed is there. And always thought he could play shortstop. And he had a really good idea of the strike zone. He was able to make a lot of contact at the lower levels when he was very young, even against better pitching and try to go through through some of the data sources that I have access to, just go through and figure out, you know, what is he? I don't care if he can hit 87, right? That's not interesting. But what does he do when he sees 94? Because once they get to the big leagues, they're going to see 94 all the time. If you can't hit that as a prospect, you're kind of off my list. There's just

really no way around that. You have to be able to catch up to Major League velocity, at least

consistently enough, to get to your other tools. He could do all of those things, except that

the power wasn't coming through actually in the game. And I think the big difference for him,

again, it's been physical maturation rather than, say,

a massive swing overhaul.

What sort of biological markers?

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