Rates & Barrels - Can the Guardians Battle Back in the ALCS?

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss the Yankees' Game 2 over the Guardians and the missed opportunities for Cleveland as the series heads to Ohio and wonder how the Guardians might be able to climb back into the series. Plus, Eno shares his frustration with the unfair critiques of one-knee down catching, and they discuss the lack of right-on-right changeups.  Rundown 2:20 Missed Opportunities in Game 2 of the ALCS 7:40 The Absurdity of Complaints About One-Knee Down Catching 12:49 Pedro Avila's New Splitter May Matter Beyond the Playoffs 21:32 How Can the Guardians Climb Back Into the ALCS? 29:02 Why Don't We See More Right-on-Right Changeups? 35:43 Can We Have More Broadcast Options in the Playoffs? 45:33 Hawk-Eye Purchases KinaTrax; Potential Benefits on the Public Data Side in the Future? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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the Athletic Hockey Show wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Wednesday October 16th, Derek VanRyper, Enos Seris here with you. On this episode we discuss the Yankees Guardian series as it moves back to Cleveland with the Yankees holding a 2-0 series lead. We'll break down some of the things that happened in game two and discuss a few ways the Guardians will have to make some adjustments if they're going to climb back into the series. Now that it's in Cleveland, we're going to take a look at some trends,

including the usage of right on right change ups. We've got some interesting stuff that Sam Blum wrote about for the athletic, about how local broadcasters on the TV side get sidelined or in the postseason. We've got some solutions that maybe could change that in the future and give us a few more options along the way. You know, how's it going for you on this Wednesday? It's going well. I have Kitty sitting right now and I'm going to risk something here and say, hi.

See, it's good. It's more than just the pets channel in the discord. The pets are just taking over. Adorable. So that's the kitten. If, if your connection, if your mic goes out during the show, that cute little kitten is the reason why, because that kitten probably gave a wire. I mean, all of our clothes now have holes in them.

And one of her favorite things to do is to like. Perch on your neck. So, uh, yeah, I have holes on like the necks of my stuff and also, uh, the claws are surprisingly rough. So sometimes you'll just hear somebody in the family go, ow, which you might actually hear during this podcast. It's going to be you this time though. Yeah.

The zoo needed another entrant. Clearly. Well, congrats on the addition. Adorable. And if you want to share that in pets on discord, you can do that. You want to join the discord. You can do that with the link in the show description on to the baseball where the Yankees have opened up a two nothing series lead over

the Guardians in the ALCS. This one felt a little bit tilted from the start. There was the drop pop-up in the first inning the early hook for Tanner by B, but the longer it went on, the Guardians had chances. They just couldn't cash any of them in. I mean, as early as the top of the third, they had first and second for Jose Ramirez. There were two outs, and Garrett Cole

threw a cutter that was actually pretty hittable. He flew out to right field with that. I think the question for a lot of people was the decision to pinch hit with David Frye for Bo Naylor with the bases loaded in the fourth. I mean, the cost of that is ultimately if you don't get some runs there, Austin Hedges is going to hit multiple times.

And that's a downgrade from even Bo Naylor, right? Both catchers have struggled. And the Austin Hedges at bats happened. And the Austin Hedges key spot came up just an inning later, right? You had Quan and Mazzardo both single in the top of the fifth, Ramirez walked. Aaron Boone probably should be second guessed a little bit for letting Cole stay in when that command was wavering,

right? We talked about ways this could potentially unravel on the Yankees and Garrett Cole not having the ability to locate consistently was kind of the way it could happen. Fortunately for Cole and for the Yankees, it didn't bite them. But letting Cole face Naylor a third time was a really risky decision. There was a very crushable four seamer that Naylor hit that sack fly on where you give him that pitch a few times, he's going to hit it out of the ballpark

more than once. Like, I think that was one of those decisions that people will be talking a lot more about today if that inning played out differently. Yeah. And you know, I don't even know if Cole should have started that inning with quantum and Zardo up there than lefties and you know, the third time through the order. And I understand like, you know, as a fan, you would love to see Cole battle into the eighth.

But I just don't think that that's a great strategy. I think if you're got an off day the next day and you've got a rested bullpen and you're, you've got him through four innings, you're happy with that. I mean, look at the opposing manager who got one point, we'd get four outs, five outs from Bybee. It, uh, it was bad. It was one and a third we'd get four outs, five outs from Bybee. It was bad. It was one and a third, it was four outs. Four outs from his ace.

So, you know, if you look across the aisle, you say, well, I got four innings from my ace. So, you know, I'm gonna take that. And then to let that go all the way to Naylor a third time after Naylor had hit the ball hard into the outfield twice and nailer hit the ball hard into the outfield a third time. It just, you know, was a sack fly instead of a home or a single. So I thought that was risky business, uh, for Aaron Boone. I don't, I don't know if that was really awesome managing from either side.

I love voter and I don't think, I think Aaron Boone's been underrated, but you know, um, some of those decisions, I think what they wanted to do, if you have Kwan, Manzardo and, uh, Naylor at the top of the lineup is they wanted to set that up so that Fry would come in for Manzardo. Right. Mm hmm. And that's how, that's how they set up their lineup that, that, that, oh, you think it's three lefties in a row?

No, it's not. It's actually Frye when we need it to be, you know? Uh, but Frye coming in for Naylor sets up a problem where you have a choice between sub par defense behind the dish where Frye has caught games, but. Probably will not be a long-term catcher. And if you have the option between hedges, framing and blocking to, to Fryes, you do that. But I think. I don't think I burned that just yet.

I think I'd just say, I rolled the dice and say, Frye, can you just catch three innings? Dude. You would have hit Frye in that spot instead of Naylor, but you would have let Frye stay in the game behind the plate. I think so. Interesting. I think there's a lot of people who wouldn't agree with me and I'm not sure of it, but I think a lot of the stuff when it comes to catcher defense and stuff is you're rolling the dice anyway.

And over the course of a season, what I want fries my catcher necessarily, not necessarily, but I'm talking about three innings. Do you know what the pass ball rate is? You know, it's, it's like, it's one every thousand pitches or something. It's not even one every hundred pitches. It's, it's, it's a really small number. And so it could happen obviously, and then you'd be in trouble,

but you're not going to throw a thousand pitches over the next three innings. So I would say Frye, do your best. As Kenny Maine would say, that would be a record. Yeah. So I, I, I would roll the dice with Frye there and keep him in there. Cause Hedges, you know, it was two outs with the bases loaded or with two on or something? Yeah.

That was the spot that came up in the fifth. He comes back up in the fifth with, you know, and actually a part of that sequence too is that Austin Wells blocked a pitch in the dirt that would have brought a run in. So that kind of, that was a huge swing where you have first get this block ball that could have been an easy run for the guardians and then hedges is still up at the plate and he strikes out and the rally is just squashed. Little sidebar here. I'm glad that Austin Wells had a catching clinic last night because, you know,

there's this whole thing about one knee down and you know, one knee down catching has added to more framing at the bottom of the zone and more and more teams are going to it. I would guess it's about 80% of the league is one knee down now. And there are these old schoolers claiming that it leads to more pass balls. But if you look at the numbers, they're not more passballs. In fact, there are fewer passballs. Now there are some people say, well, they're fewer passballs because of pitch

calm. And so, you know, now there's no cross-ups and, uh, that's why the passballs have gone down. And if they hadn't gone to one knee, they would have gone down more, which is, uh, crossing over into, uh, some serious mental gymnastics, but we also have inside edge who does, you know, uh, people scouting along with number of scouting. The other, they're kind of like baseball and Phyllis solutions where they have people watching the games inside edge, broke it down into one knee catchers and

a non one knee catchers and the one knee catchers blocked more balls and got, and got more strikes. And I personally have people who coach, uh, catching, you know, in my DMS and, and my text messages telling me, cause I've said things like, there's no evidence that it's worse for your defense. And then I've got them being like, thanks for fighting the fight, but there's actually evidence it's better for defense. And I'm like, I don't, I like the, the fight is so strong right now that I

don't even want to go there. The fight is so strong that John Smoltz is out here saying that one knee down has led to more pass balls when that is absolutely not true. So, you know, there are, there are, there's a section screaming on Twitter about one knee down every time that something happens. And I would just say this, Naylor caught a bad game. It wasn't because of one knee down. He just caught a bad game.

And on some of the pitches that he missed, he had a high fastball target on a ball that that missed low. And it looks like, Oh, Oh, one knee down. He couldn't block that because of one knee down, dude, that's a three foot miss. If you're a catcher and you're setting up somewhere and they miss three feet, I'm not sure it matters what knee is down. You know what I mean? Like that's a huge miss. So there's huge misses, nail or not catching a great game. Austin Wells comes out here and I think he did amazingly.

Like if you, if anybody wants to go through, he blocked like four or five balls that were really strong, like candidates for pass balls. Uh, you know, I thought Wells looked like a real veteran out there. Uh, you know, I thought Wells looked like a real veteran out there and, um, you know, they have really good catching, uh, uh, coaching in New York. I don't know if you know this, but you remember Jose Trevino, like became a good framer. It was phenomenal. Yeah. Just for the Yankees, nobody else.

And like, so like they, they know what they're doing there. And so the Wells, the Wells thing, that's, that was just a little aside if you like. Yeah. I think Wells's defense has been even better than expected throughout the season. Right. That was something that we didn't know was necessarily a guarantee. Even when the Yankees made him a first round pick a few years ago, it was the bats definitely going to play in the big leagues and the defense is a little more of a work in progress.

And defense can slump too. Like, you know, he, he slumped offensively at the end of the year. He could be tired, you know, but the defense has been there. And even as I've advocated for switching him and jazz like in the lineup, like the defense was there last night. I felt like the other thing that was happening in the game last night is the, the Yankees were just leaving the door open for a long time. They gave away two outs on the base path in the bottom of the sixth inning. John Sterling on the radio call said they were running

the bases like a bunch of drunks, which. Oh my God. Don't know if the younger generations of announcers are getting away with that call, but John Sterling can pretty much say whatever he wants at this point. The Yankees radio announcing, you know, we'll go talk a little bit more about this later,

but the Yankees radio announcing was pretty stellar during that game because it was Susan Waldman and John Sterling. And at some point they asked Susan Waldman to read a promo for some sort of concert that's coming up. And she doesn't understand the words that she's saying. Just yeah, the copy is it's just, you know, artists and something she's never listened to.

Right. It's like trying to struggle through it. She's like, she's like, honestly, I'm trying. I'm sorry, but like I have no idea what I just read. And it was like seven dust down. It was like some sort of like, it was like some sort of like show that of music she was not familiar with. It was just hilarious. So that was that was trending on Twitter for a little bit.

Got to get that copy of the broadcasters before the game. Make sure everything's ironed out on that front. Hockey is back on ice in the athletic hockey show as the game covered four days a week all season long. things ironed out on that front. breaking down last night's OT winner, you can't miss a single episode. Listen to the Athletic Hockey Show wherever you get your podcasts. One other thing that caught my eye, just from a usage perspective, and it didn't end up mattering at all, because I think he only faced one batter

and got that batter out, Pedro Avila, who is in the Guardians bullpen, has added the roster for this series, pitched pretty well in game one. They made a big deal on the broadcast about the new grip that he has on a splitter. And that pitch looked pretty nasty. And you think about the way the Guardians have operated in recent years,

not necessarily having that stockpile of pitching prospects knocking on the door right now. Avila could be a sneaky number five starter candidate for them next spring. Right. You get a guy like this in your organization, you make a couple of tweaks and all of a sudden, it's an opportunity. I mean, who would have thought Ben Lively was going to have the season he had in 2024, right? So I think I'm kind of watching carefully

just to see what Avila brings to the table and any other appearances he might have because there's still some organizational trust here in the Guardian's ability to find inexpensive starters that end up giving them pretty high quality innings. Yeah, I have a story out today about Luke Weaver and I think this is a similar thing where they just, they didn't have much acquisition cost for getting Luke Weaver. They said, you know, your four-seam fastball in the past has been much more efficient can we figure this out he has a kind of a weird finger middle finger that's like an inch and a half longer than his index finger. And apparently he'd been putting that index finger off of the seam on the forcing.

And they were like no you need to have both those fingers on the forcing that on the seams because that'll that'll get you more. both those fingers on the foreseam that on the seams because that'll that'll get you more. Don't get you more spin efficiency get you more ride out of it and now he's having the most ride out of his career they they also found a way I think that they the Yankees are very good at seem shifted wake. My evidence for this is Luke weavers. changes grip and added seem shifted wake out of drop clay Holmes. Uh, not only did they identify that he was good because of seem shifted wake, but they augmented that when they brought him over from the pirates. And then lastly, I'm looking now at Pedro Villa's, um, you know, you know, splitter change up movement. Um, and, uh, you know, I'm seeing a kind of a, a real difference from when he, uh, we used to be throwing a change up when it was classified as a change up and that now to where it's a split.

And I don't know if they just, um, you know, recognize that quickly or recognize that the changeup was, um, you know, that, that good of a pitch or if they augmented that as well. of a pitch or if they augmented that as well. You know, and his, you know, there's differences in his in Pedro Villa slider and curve movement and there's, you know, a slider is more horizontal. So it's more likely that it's a sweeper of some sort now. So they are pretty good at not only identifying undervalued guys, but then taking those guys and having a plan for them as soon as they get there. And I, you know, from what it's worth, what I've been in that clubhouse, Cole is, is pretty smart and he doesn't always agree with the internal analytics. And he sometimes has his own people do research.

I think that's healthy in a way. I mean, it's, it, it, it shows that you care a lot and you're willing that you're, you think that this is interesting stuff. It's better than, you know, a clubhouse like the Cardinals were, where weaver came out of where, you know, they were in curious about, you know, pitch movement numbers. And he had to buy weaver when he got to Arizona He had to buy his own rap Soto and ask rap Soto what numbers he should be looking for because he didn't have that you know that coaching infrastructure that was helping him in st. Louis and So, you know when you get to New York, not only are they coming to you with a plan?

But the other pictures around you are all speaking nerd. Clay Holmes speaks nerd. Clark Schmidt speaks nerd. Garrett Cole speaks nerd. Garrett Cole is the leader of the pitching staff and he cares enough to have his own nerd. You know what I mean? And I, and I say these, I call myself a nerd. So I'm not calling anybody names here. I do have to explain that to a lot of people when I call myself a nerd. It's a term of end names here. I do have to explain that to a lot of people. When I call myself a nerd, it's a term of endearment.

My circles, it's not, it's not 1982. You know, we're not out here getting wedgies or giving wedgies. And that's what he calls me a nerd on Twitter. I'm just like, wow, that one missed me. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks for the compliment. Just for people who don't know, what is a rap soda?

I mean, I think they make golf technology too. So if you search for a rap soda, you're like golf tools. Look, we ever got a golf tool. What did he do that for? Yeah. Rapsodo, uh, along with track man were, you know, the two are probably still are the two that are vying for pitch tracking, personal pitch tracking device. Um, and they have slightly different technology, slightly different things they can do.

Um, but they, they are basically, you know, a way for pitchers to coach themselves in the off season, maybe they're free agents, maybe they're between teams. Maybe their team doesn't do enough of this, but it's a way to kind of get the stuff that you would get from Hawkeye or from baseball savant, but to get it on your own. And one thing that is a little bit difficult, uh, that can, can show up is that there's can be slightly different naming conventions and number conventions. So you'll get different numbers and, and, and for a rap soda from a track man or from Hawkeye. And so, you know, that's where it really helps to have a culture of learning in your, in your, in your organization, right? Cause then they can tell you, oh, you know, oh, you're looking for, you're looking for 13s on the rap soda. If you've got a rap soda, but you're looking for 18s on the track, you know, at least, you know, what number you're looking for. Cause that, you know, there aren't, um, there isn't like necessarily one, um,

counting standard for pitch movement, which is a little bit annoying, but. Almost seems like a programming languages, right? You just need a few folks in the room that understand more than one. And if you're all kind of working out together, you can get where you need to go. I think there's a, what is that? Is that comic that does nerdy comics like X, Y, D or something? You know, it's like stick figure comics that did the Twitter one. I don't know what, I don't know where I see him on Twitter, but, uh,

I was complaining about this to Max Bay and Max Bay sent me one of these comics and the, in the first thing they're saying, you know, Hey, you know, there really should be one standard, uh, for this. You know, let's get to work. And then the, and the next panel says they are now 15 standards. Yeah. I mean, come on, and we're not even using the metric system in America. Like we're never going to get something as, as specific as baseball movements to be universal across the board.

I mean, because, you know, one of the things that Max would like is, um, he really likes, uh, G force. So he wants to use G force acceleration, um, in terms of movement. And I, there's some things I like about that because you're countering gravity over the course of pitch, right? So if something theoretically had one g-force of vertical acceleration, it would cancel out gravity completely. You know, which no pitch does, but then that sort of helps you understand what's happening. But then that sort of helps you understand what's happening. Oh, this has three quarters of G force.

That's pretty cool. You know, I understand why he's saying it because it acceleration also means a lot more than these movement numbers that we have because these movement numbers are movements based compared to a theoretical spinless 00 pitch, which like a bullet, the gyro slider, right? And the perfect gyro slider and that that's again, now we're talking like sort of theoretical stuff. Yeah, it's like, can we do something that was actually based in what we're actually seeing? That would be the most logical way to me to do it. But hey, I'm not the one making any of the stuff. I'm just trying to consume and understand it. I'm still trying to. I got I was raised on like Brooks baseball, so I'm always like 10 is a good number.

And pitchers are like 10. No, you want 20s. And I'm like, ah, yes, 20. Your loyalty to Brooks is phenomenal. I appreciate that about you. The bigger picture question with the series, you know, how can the guardians climb back in? They've had opportunities.

They haven't cashed them in. We know the relative weaknesses of this club. I mean, I think one prominent example for me is Will Brennan coming up as the tying run down to, but he was their number six hitter and we've talked about Will Brennan occasionally on this show is someone that's interesting is probably a bench outfielder But not necessarily somebody you want up in a key spot with a game on the line, right? so I wonder how they're gonna find a way to Overcome the lack of depth in their lineup. They haven't got anything from either one of their catchers the plate so far

The I think that's part of why they were willing to make that move with Bo Nailer in their lineup. They haven't got anything from either one of their catchers to plate so far. I think that's part of why they were willing to make that move with Bo Naylor, but if you think about that matchup, Naylor lefty on righty is just as good as David Frye righty on righty. Frye does a lot of his damage against lefties, so that to me was probably the thing I disagree with vote about is making that move. Then I think you were right to point out waiting until there was a spot to use them in place of Manzardo where a lefty was going to face Manzardo in leverage, like Tim Hill or something. I guess I forgot that piece of context.

Like, yeah, I'm just saying that, you know, at some point you need some offense from your catcher and they keep coming up in these big moments with the bases loaded and you have the kind of offense that sort of like, keep it going, keep it going, keep it going. At some point I might be tempted just to put fry in at catcher for the whole game and just be like, come on, we need some offense from that spot. It just keeps being the reason the inning is over, you know? And so, you know, the other thing that I just keep circling is like, what is the pitching plan here? Because you just threw your ace and got punched in the mouth. And I don't know.

I guess you have Boyd and Gavin Williams and a bullpen game for these next three games. Right. Well, Zach Meisel wrote about this a little bit in his post game story for the athletic because by the only through 39 pitches, they're going to see how he bounces back. There's a chance if this goes five games that by the actually starts game five. How much they use lively for because they use the lively is the replacement for Alex Cobb and they use them in that game.

Yeah, like that there's there's that part of it, too. And how much do you want to use Ben Lively? It was just one third, 26 pitches. So he should bounce back within a couple of days. I think you, so what you use is you go with Boyd and then Gavin Williams is a bull guy and we, we had said that Gavin Williams at some point might need to do something. And I feel like game, like the two, the second game, so game for the second

game and a three game stretch, you can't go heavy on your bullpen all three games. So you go with Boyd and you hope this is a four or five inning board and not a two inning board. If it's a two inning board, then you need Gavin Williams to go five. Cause if not, then you need Tanner Bybee to go five in, in game five. Right. You can't, you can't keep rolling the bullpen usage this heavily and have it not bite you later. Yeah, that's that's what it gets.

It's just going to cost them in this three game stretch. Like that's where I feel like it's going to get them the worse. OK, so yeah, you got to figure out the pitching. That's a big thing. The bullpen's been great so far, but you need to get bulk from someone probably in two of those three games. You can get away with a shorter start, I think one out of three times. I think everyone has this vibe on the series that it's just over, that it's

going to be over in a sweep or it's going to be over in five. It's not even going to make it back to the Bronx. And I'm not sure that's necessarily fair because as we were pointing out, the Yankees haven't played flawlessly. Like they've left the door open enough times. If they continue to do that, I think the Guardians are good enough to eventually make them pay for that. The other takeaways that Zach had that I thought were kind of interesting, getting timely hits

from the heartbeat of the lineup, yeah, maybe that late home run Jose Ramirez hit off of Luke Weaver is the beginning of a Ramirez heater. That would be huge for them to have that. Kwan's been very good. Manzardo's had a few nice played appearances, like Rokeo at the bottom has been good. It just seems like that five through eight stretch has been really inconsistent for them. Right. So other than Lane Thomas hitting some massive home runs, they need someone else from that

chunk of the lineup to come to life. Yeah. I mean, it was amazing to me is that the Yankees and guardians have hit the same amount of homers this postseason. Of course the way we would expect it. The guardians, uh, have 25 more plate appearances, but, uh, the Yankees have the best offense of the postseason, even with a 386 slugging, they have a 116 WIC plus and Cleveland has, you know, because the Yankees are walking, they have a 358 OBP. The Cleveland has a 283 OBP.

And this comes back a little bit to the discussion we were having earlier about how this is a high chase, high contact, low power lineup. And that sort of comes back to our conversations. Like if you wanted, if you wanted to build a batter, you'd want two of, you want two good things. And this seems like they do one good thing right now. So they need one more good thing. Either suddenly more patience from some of that backend of that lineup, you know, to get some runners on, you know, I thought

that Andre Samanas had a big walk, you know, if you're not hitting that well, you know, why not see more pitches and then, uh, some, some more power, you know? And I think the power now has to come from Naylor and Ramirez. There needs to be some power there. Because they've had a little bit of power from unexpected places. How about power from expected places? That would be the switch that needs to flip, I think,

if they're going to get back in it. Now the matchup comes against Clark Schmidt in game three. So thinking about the way that Schmidt has changed and proved his arsenal. This is Ramirez and Naylorers. I'm just trying left. Yeah. The lefties like lefties have stored historically been the hitters that have done the most damage

against Schmidt. I was improved a lot against them this year. What do you think the guardians need to do? What's, what's their mindset against Schmidt in particular that's going to give them a chance to be successful and get on the board with a winning game three. I mean, he's mostly cut or curve against lefties Clark Schmidt.

And so it's going to be frustrating for anybody wants to kind of sit dead red because it's not dead red, it's dead red with a wrinkle. It's a, it's a cutter, you know? And so you're going to choose between something coming in on your hands or something sort of falling off the table. And then the, the kind of difference between Clark Schmidt, 1.0 and what he is now is that just when you start to get used to. You know, him throwing, um, just cutter and curve, he is actually throwing sinkers and sweepers to lefties too. Now this actually goes into a conversation with something that

guardians do really well, but you know, I do think that sometimes we get too obsessed with the platoon split on a pitch and forget about the predictability quotient. And so if you're throwing, you know, sinkers and sweepers to, uh, to right on left, that's not good. You don't want to do that a lot. You don't want to make that 80% of what you're throwing because we know that platoon swits are bad on sinkers and sweepers, right? But if you're 80% cutter and curve and 20% sinker and

sweeper, now those sinkers and sweepers are surprise pitches and you can do things like throw a, uh, a front, no, a back door sweeper where you're throwing a sweeper. That's ball to strike. Now they see sweeper and they're like, Oh, what's he throwing a sweeper for? Plus it seems a mile away. There's no way this is, this is going to be a strike. You get a take, you get a called strike, you get back into account leverage. You can go back to cut or curve.

You know what I mean? Throw a high sinker, throw something, throw, throw something that's not unexpected. And so the, the guardians have been doing this and Brent Rooker had a really cool post where he, he was showing, he was talking about a high and away right on right changeup. So it's a pitch from, let me see if I've got it here. It's a pitch from Eli Morgan, where he's throwing it to a tiger and he throws a high and away

change up that comes back in Rooker says that pitch is almost impossible to swing at. There's not another pitch from a righty that comes out even close that same window that ends up a strike. So your brain and body both just basically give up on it out of the hand. So your internal cues are just not to swing. Like you're, you're just not getting anything that would trigger the swing. Yeah. It's so rare. And we've seen from the research that drive line did that if you throw something

that's so different from your other pitches, you get non swings. So these are great way to get called strikes. And I looked it up and Cleveland, uh, was a third in high changeups. Uh, this year, right on right. Um, and they were third in right on right changeups. Of course, Minnesota was number one. We've always known that they threw like 1100 right on right changeups this year.

Um, Cleveland threw something like 700. And you know, you can say, okay, if I look at the platoon splits on these pitches, the reason we don't throw right on right changeups is the, that the changeups had the biggest reverse platoon split at any pitch, meaning that they are so much worse. They're that they're more, there's so much worse right on right than they are right on left that you shouldn't throw it. You know, based on the difference, but not based, but not based on how bad the

actual result is relative to other right on right pitches. Right. So, you know, okay. So a right on right slider gets a two 66 Woba a right on right changeup gets a three Oh one Woba. Okay. If you have a slider, most of the time you want to throw a right on right slider that we know that from years and years of baseball. But the surprise might be that a 301 Woba right on right change up is lower than a right on right sinker. It's lower than a

right on right fore seam. And it's lower, it's pretty close to a right on right curveball. It's lower than a right on right cutter. So it's basically better than fastballs still, you know, it's in the sort of nether region between the fastballs and the better and breaking balls, you know, when you throw a right on right changeup, but it still has value. And I think that the value is something that Trevor may has talked a lot about on this podcast, which is they're just not a lot of righties who prepare for right on right changeups. You know, they just don't, they, that's something they can eliminate easily.

They have a plan for fastballs and sliders, you know? And, uh, so there's been times when Cleveland's done this really well. You saw some of those in the game last night and I laud them for thinking outside of the box, um, and for their pitchers, one thing is if you do it all year, if you do it enough, if you throw 700 right on right changeups during the year, you're, you don't, you're not scared to throw it in the postseason. And they only threw like something like 60 right on right high changeups. So that's a little bit rare still.

However, that's still 60. So the person's, the people who still. However, that's still 60. So the person's, the people who are likely to throw that got some practice in during the regular season. It's not the first time they're asked to do it. And there is a, there is a corollary to this where Rooker says, oh, as a hitter, you see that so rarely, you know, um, you know, you just, your brain doesn't know what to do with it.

The corollary on the pitching side is you practice it so rarely that it's really hard to pull it off, but if you throw 60 during the regular season, brain doesn't know what to do with it. The core layer on the pitching side is you practice it so rarely that it's really hard to pull it off. But if you throw 60 during the regular season, throw 600, you know, uh, right on right, change of some regular season and you're, and you're sort of generally you're like, maybe I won't get this exactly high. Maybe that was a perfect Morgan pitch, right? We, he did exactly what we want to do, but what you can do is aim for it to

not be on the ground and be, you're used to that because you've thrown some high and some middle pitch changeups and to, for it to be outside and to come back to the, to the zone. And if you've practiced that and you've done that enough during the season, then you can do it in the postseason, especially where people are like, God, what was that? Yeah. Well, I think the thing that got me thinking about the right and right change-ups more was what we talked about in the last series Michael Wacha being so effective against Aaron Judge and thinking about how he does it and Wacha has a very good change-up

It's not just a here's a change-up. I throw once in a while. So that's part of the calculus too But this does seem like another wrinkle that for guys that at least can have a feel for it It should be more of an option given that the results aren't even as bad as all three of those fastball types That's the surprising part is you would expect it to be worse. Those are those those are quoted league average numbers, right? so if you have an elite change-up like and you have a like where your Luke Weaver you have an elite change-up and you have a slightly above average cutter. There's going to be times when that elite change up makes more sense. Yeah, definitely. So interesting stuff there.

And maybe something we'll see another wrinkle going forward from a few different teams. So Sam Blum wrote a story for the athletic about the local broadcasters, the TV crews that end up doing pre and post game shows like Gary Cohen does on SNY. They go from being in that seat at the mic all season long to a different position. And I think it's kind of weird that you have what seems like more options than ever to consume sports.

And we get to the playoffs. And if you are a fan of a team, you get the national broadcast. And sometimes you get the Altcast. I know they're doing the Nerdcast on think they're running that on TNT with the main broadcast on TBS. So you get a little bit of that alternative flavor. But if you don't like the booth or someone in the booth or a combination or whatever, what are you supposed to do?

I think you should have all the options available, including each team's TV crew, each team's radio crew, national broadcast and national nerdcast. Should be that many combinations you can have, because what I would do for a lot of games, I'd probably toggle in a close game for the teams that are hitting. Maybe at the end of the game, I'd listen to the radio or TV broadcasts for the team that's winning, even as a neutral fan, if I wasn't crazy about the play by play or the commentators that are in the booth on that national feed. Yeah.

I mean, I have particular gripes about, you know, particular broadcasters this postseason. And generally I've found the level of broadcasting to be pretty poor. Um, and this is not every single one of them, but there's been enough where I've been like, I don't want to listen to this person anymore. I really felt that way. And I felt like I don't really have that many options. Now, the one thing I would push back against what you're saying is just like maybe from a dollars and cents points of view, it's a little bit expensive to continue on paying

radio and TV for the teams when you also have to pay the national broadcasters, right? Maybe there isn't enough demand for it to make this work, but I will say radio broadcasters for the team, all broadcast through the playoffs, they continue to broadcast through the playoffs. And I think one thing that we taught when we were talking on it off air, that I think is completely doable. That could be done with the technology and without spending any more on people and production is just a little button you can click in MLB TV

where you get the radio audio over the TV and they sync it for you. Yep. I think that is possible technology wise. It's it would be a reward for people that have listened to the Cleveland guardians all year to at least listen to the Cleveland guardians radio crew while they're watching MLB TV. If they got the MLB postseason package, it could be part of how you sell more postseason MLB TV packages. Hey, you want to listen to your radio over the TV. We've got that.

That's a cool little function we got. So this is, I think, a really actionable thing. Now pie in the sky. I agree with you. I would love to have, um, you know, multiple, uh, options for every, for everything, and then I could just pick what I want. Um, but I do think it is a little bit weird and I think it probably has to do with money and with, um, with broadcast rights, you know, Sam wrote in the story, like right now the local telecast stop

because it's part of the contractual agreement with the national broadcast and not run both. Right. So, so that's why you don't have, you know, SNY also running the Mets game, but that's also so that they can sell TBS postseason games. And so then if they sell TBS postseason games, TBS wants to have its own broadcasters. Which makes sense. And they don't want to like, they don't want Homer, they don't want people thinking they're homers for one team or the other. So they can't just hire the Cleveland crew to do

the Cleveland series, you know? So I understand sort of some of this is business and there's something we can't, stuff we can't do about that. And, and maybe you'd have to, maybe TBS would argue, I don't want you to be able to listen to radio over, over our broadcast, but, but, um, I, I would be one. I'd wonder if there was some loopholes or like, no, we still owe the, we, MLB TV still owns the video rights to be, you know, so we can show it. So maybe we can put whatever audio we want over it, whatever it is. I don't necessarily feel like we're being best served by the current format.

No. And I think even in the story, Brian Anderson calls the games for TBS. That's played by play for that booth. It's the Andrew it's the ALCS booth right now. He's at these, he's the Brewers main announcer during the season on TV because he calls college basketball and NBA. He's kind of in and out in the spring. Even he sites just like they're not going to be as sharp

on the teams they're not covering all year. As they in the playoffs. It's difficult for us. We cover, you know, everybody is difficult for me as a writer. You know, I understand that, um, you know, there's certain things you can do about that, which is what we try to do is just read up, you know, you know, get as much as you can from local writers and so on and so forth. But I understand that, but it's still a fact.

Yeah, I also thought it was interesting in Sam's story, Len Casper, I understand that, but it's still a fact. Yeah. I also thought it was interesting in Sam story, Len Casper, who was previously TV for the cubs left to do radio a couple of years ago for the white socks to not be left out of playoff runs, which people are going to say, ha ha ha white socks. No, it's just being in a position to continue that run. Like think about being the TV broadcaster for the cubs a few years white socks, no, it's just being in a position to continue that run. Like think about being the TV broadcaster for the Cubs a few years ago when they

made that run, won the world series and being in the position where you didn't get to call it, that would not be fun. The Padres guys, Mudcat and Don Arcillo, Mudcat Grant and Don Arcillo, they accessed that fun feeling by being in the stands. Yeah. They took a bunch of pictures of themselves in the stands. Do you think when they're sitting there, they just pretend like they're calling the game? Yeah, I wonder, I wonder if they still like kind of do their banter and you're

sitting next to them and you're like, Oh my God, you guys are just always like that. Yeah. It's I mean, if we watch a game at the fall league, it's a little bit like a partial episode of rates and barrels. These are the people there that aren't here when we're recording. So we talk to them, but it probably feels like a podcast for little stretches of time where we're just hanging out, talking to the baseball game. So I'm sure for them, it feels like they're on air, even though they're not.

Yeah. I wonder, I don't think that we could get them, you know, to the table to announce more games without paying them. So, you know, money is part of it. Pay them, like I am. This shouldn't be done out of the goodness of anyone's heart, I think. For as much money as there is involved in all of this, we could at least have a few more choices, especially when we get to the college football playoff and it's on four different channels.

Is that just because... Is college football ahead of MLB in terms of viewership and fandom? I think it's pretty massive when you get to that, the playoffs. The top 25 programs. Right. Well, and I think it's also the contracts, the right. Stanford's not getting multiple casts. I'm not seeing, but think about the broadcast every, the team that it's,

it's all bundled by conference there. Right. It's not like you, you don't sign up for one channel to watch one college's team. You get the whole conference. And like I went to Wisconsin's, I watched a lot of Wisconsin games they play. Now they play games sometimes on CBS, sometimes they're on the noon Fox game. Sometimes they're on the Peacock app like they're they're all over the place now because the rights are sold to multiple places and the playoff is on ESPN and ABC. Tracking this stuff and staying on top of it is unbelievably like a ton of work.

And then think about just how so even if college football playoffs is all on one network, MLB sells their playoffs to multiple networks. That's why you get Joe Davis and John Smoltz on Fox and you can get Brian Henderson, Jeff Frankour and Ron Darling on TBS. You get different desk people for both networks. Instead of just running everything through one network, they slice it up into a bunch of pieces because they probably found that that's more lucrative for them. I would also suggest that they should do some polling and ask people what they think, because I don't think that you can look at ratings for a series and know anything about how good

the announcers are. Well, that's a totally different thing. Right. And I think the ratings are going to come in. The ratings are going to come in high for these LCS matchups because it's Mets Dodgers and Yankees guardians. Right. That's other than swapping out the Guardians

for a bigger market team, I think MLB's pretty happy with that outcome. Yeah, but I just see an uneven quality to these broadcasters. There are some that I like that you just mentioned. I think Dave's been great, I think Anderson's been great. I think Darling's fine, but the rest, I've not enjoyed. Leaving you wanting more. Well, you know, just the rest I've not enjoyed.

Leaving you wanting more. Well, you know, just, just do what I do. Turn the volume down if you get frustrated. Also kind of keeps the volume on the- The way we watch our household, I'm not, you know, it's okay to like, I, you know, there's a lot going on. We have a zoo here, so. Yeah, you're not getting uninterrupted viewing. So it's probably less, uh,

less taxing on you than it is on people that actually get to put their feet up for three hours and taking the game that way. Well, it's also especially because as we're moving to night games, like now it's moving into time that I'm making dinner and stuff, you know, I got a lot more of each announcer than when we were doing four games a day. True. Very true. Well, we have one little piece of news here real quick. Oh yeah, we do have one more piece of news.

This is super nerdy. So we left it till the end, but, um, it turns out that Hawkeye has bought Kinnatracks and, uh, Hawkeye is the provider of, um, most of the data that you see in baseball savant. So it has many, many optical cameras around the ballpark and those optical cameras are picking up the way the bodies move. And that's why we're starting to get things like bat speed or arm angle and those sorts of things. Um, but I was going to write, uh, a piece this spring that there was a lot of

people in baseball who think that kin attracts, who was one of the first people to do markerless motion capture. So that's, you know, using video to tell you something about how the body moves. Um, kinetrax was kind of first on the scene. There are a lot of people in baseball who think that kinetrax is better at telling you how the body moves, the biomechanics, that sort of data. Then Hawkeye and it turns out that maybe Hawkeye agrees and they just bought KineTRAX in order to maybe improve their ability to, I've heard particularly that Hawkeye is bad at the pelvis and at some of the sort of hip movements that you could maybe see that that's

the intersection of what you can see with cameras and also like a biomechanics model, right? Cause you can't see exactly what the pelvis is always doing, what the hips are doing. You have to kind of infer that sometimes from what you see. So buying kinetrox gets them access to those biomechanical models, makes their biomechanics data better. The question is, what will that mean for us?

I'm not sure that we're going to get something, you know, when the very, very basic biomechanical pieces of information that we've gotten out of this research is that hip shoulder separation is huge for velocity. I don't even know, you know, if savant is going to give us that even with this acquisition, because the people that they're serving are broadcasters and writers. And I don't know how many broadcasts and writers other than myself would be interested in, you know, the hip shoulder separation for every pitcher in baseball. And, and how that ties into bat speed for hitters and how that there's a difference between those and

stuff like that. So I'm not sure this will mean too much. And that's why we left it for the end. But I, you know, for the heads out there, uh, it was a little piece of news that caught my eye. And, uh, it might mean something. It'll mean something for teams. And what's what, what really could be cool is there is now a real effort to open up, uh, data, make it open. So like, you know, Kyle Bodie and driveline have an open data, uh, you know, a way to access their data. And so other teams are pushing team analysts. There's a, there's a great piece on fan graphs by Michael Rosen about how

there's a push now to open up data, to have something like a project health, you know, where everybody is working together and looking at the same data and trying to make some advances and keeping pictures healthy. And so maybe there's an aspect to that where if they buy kinetrax and they give kinetrax data to everybody every team then you know there's a surprising analyst on this one team that makes a huge. there's a surprising analyst on this one team that makes a huge advancement based on, you know, they didn't have kind of tracks before and now because they get it through Hawkeye, you know, that analyst can make the big realization that it's going to help us keep pitchers more healthy in the future. So that that's a maybe a long shot, but it is maybe a way to tie that into, you know, big trends in baseball right now. I'd fund that grant by the way if you could you know put that out there as an area of

research. Yeah if it's a Kickstarter I'll put five bucks on it. Yeah I'll throw some money in on this. When you had your swing analysis you had done at driveline a few years ago, was that Hawkeye that identified your pelvis as a problem spot or unusual? I don't actually know exactly what it is, but I would guess it was Kinnatracks. Okay, so that's the better one. So it's still confirmed, the unusual, unusual pelvis. Yeah, because Hawkeye is, I think, the most expensive one.

So that's a lot of cameras and I don't know that, you know, they set up in independent labs like that. It also, you know, what it could have been is just proprietary, just, you know, Kyle's a kind of a coder and a computer guy. So he's put together like things that I'm like, what is that? And it's, it's like literally exposed wires and he's like soldering. And I'm like, okay. literally expose wires and he's like soldering and I'm like, okay. Nah, I figured if, um, if the motion capture cameras have determined that you have a bad pelvis, that I also from sitting in the chair and moving very

little for the last 19 years, um, probably would come up with a similar result. I was hoping there was something out there like, oh no, we can do it again. And maybe I'd come out for some testing too, but I was going to assume if you're a mess, I'm also a mess. Well, there is a drive line in Arizona. Maybe we could stop by while we're down there. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know if I would love to know more about my limited biomechanical abilities, some feedback we got via discord. This is a good call from TPH noob in the discord. Yoshinobu Yamamoto has not made any starts this season on fewer than five days rest. So that's why he's going in game four and probably won't go again in the NLCS. So the good news would be it would line up for him to pitch twice in the World Series, even on that regular rest. But that was something I had not previously noticed that all of his starts this year came with that full five days rest. Yeah, that's good. Good eye. Very good eye.

And one of the questions that was thrown out in the discord was about the guardians and if they'd be the first team in LB history to win the world series the same year that they made the first overall pick, they would be. If that happens, that's never happened before. I remembered the worst of first world series that I was a big fan of as a kid was the twins against the Braves, but they were worst to first in their own divisions. I do not believe they were worst in baseball. Hmm. That's a good call.

By the way, there was a, there was a poll question that went out yesterday, just rates and barrels on Twitter, which poll was worse as a kid. We referenced the Tom Kelly baseball cards and the checklist. Checklists have won that with 25 minutes remaining on the poll by a 71 to 28% split. There's some love for managers out there. I love it. Yeah.

I think the only comment that came in was one that sometimes the checklist actually had a player on them, but I was thinking of just the completely blank, like 1990 Donrus, orange frame, white and black text with blanks, nothing garbage, not a, not a nice checklist with some kind of player on it. That tops has now put those on mine, which is a good idea and not what they belong out of them. They belong not in the pack. That's a, that's my takeaway from that.

But thanks everybody who voted in that. Uh, we're going to go on our way out the door. Just a reminder, you can get a subscription to the athletic, check out Enos feature on Luke Weaver. You can check out all the great playoff coverage we have around the league as well, the athletic.com slash rates and barrels, $2 a month gets you in the door. You can find Enos on Twitter at Enosaris. You can find me at Derek VanRiper.

You can find the pod at rates and barrels. That is going to do it. We're back with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening.