Welcome to Rates and barrels. It's Wednesday, July 13th, one day early, Derek Van Riper here with Enosaris on this episode.

We discussed the possibility that our speed wish from our episode on Monday has actually been granted.

May there always be another John Birdie on your waiver wire. Maybe, just maybe there's a player that could scratch that itch.

We're going to talk a lot about long-term hitting targets. As you're probably detecting, there's usually a pattern with our show. If there's a pitching topic that comes up on one day, a related hitting topic usually comes up on the next one. Sorry to break the fourth wall, but that's going to be the main topic we get to. Maybe we'll squeeze in a few mailbag questions, time permitting today.

Otherwise, we'll get to a lot of them next week.

Now, we begin, Eno, with Estuary Ruiz.

He is getting an opportunity with the Padres.

We have seen great slash lines from him at AA and AAA this season.

We have seen a ton of stolen bases at both of those levels.

So with Estuary Ruiz in particular, could he be the type of player who is a clear difference

maker in the second half?

Is there not playing time or the skills good enough for him to be a John Birdie type pickup where if you land him,

you end up maybe solving your stolen base problems in one move.

I, uh, he has the speed and he probably has the opportunity because he's better than Azokar,

I would guess. and we don't

know as of this moment how long Jerkson Profar is out. So there's an opportunity there that I think

is real. He plays all three outfield positions. Trent Grisham has been scuffling offensively and

then recently has been starting to add some defensive scuffling

so there's a chance that he could just take a job um so that is all the good news the bad news

came from sam dykstra pointing out on twitter the other day that he has an 18% hard hit rate at AAA.

That very few of his balls go harder than 95 miles an hour, let alone the sort of

hundred plus you want for power.

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