Rates & Barrels - Kershaw deals, Tyler Glasnow throws a ton of pitches, and the Dodgers take Game 1 of the World Series

Episode Date: October 21, 2020

Eno, Britt and DVR discuss Clayton Kershaw's excellent Game 1 outing against the Rays, the curious handling of Tyler Glasnow, Mookie Betts' big night, and predictions for Game 2.  Rundown 1:42 The Rays’ Curious Handling of Tyler Glasnow 8:18 Clayton Kershaw Finds His Slider and Delivers a Gem 13:34 Mookie Betts' Big Night 15:47 'Who Would Trade Mookie Betts?' 23:06 The Importance of Speed 25:43 The Dodgers’ Pitching Plan for Game 2 28:27 Nick Anderson & Reliever Velocity 34:38 Game 2 Predictions Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Britt on Twitter: @Britt_Ghiroli Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic for just $1/month: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one. Just start moving with the Peloton Bike, Bike Plus, Tread, Row, Guide, or App. There are thousands of classes and over 50 Peloton instructors ready to support you from the beginning. Remember, doing something is everything. Rent the Peloton Bike or Bike Plus today at onepeloton.ca slash bike slash rentals. All access memberships separate. Terms apply. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, playoff episode number 18.

Derek Van Ryper, Eno Saris, Britt Giroli here with you. On this episode, we recap the Dodgers' game one win over the Rays. Clayton Kershaw pitched very well. The Dodgers had a huge inning, a four-run fit that was really pretty pivotal in this one. We're going to break it all down and take a look ahead at Wednesday's Game 2 matchup. I know we had really high hopes for this game going in. We had our live stream about 30 minutes before first pitch on Tuesday night, and all of our scores were low and close, and we didn't get a game quite like that. And if you told me then that we'd be criticizing

a pitcher-related decision from one of the managers, I think the obvious choice would have been, well, it has to be Dave Roberts. And instead, we get a gem from Clayton Kershaw. His slider was working. That was a huge story. 8Ks over six innings, just one earned run allowed. Weirdly, a home run to Kevin Kiermaier. Stupid sexy Flanders with a bad hand homering off of a lefty. Never saw that one coming. Dave Roberts and Clayton Kershaw and how that was mismanaged. It was Kershaw coming out and having one of his best postseason starts we've ever seen before.

Yeah, I don't know how I feel about Glass now continuing to pitch when, as we were talking off air, it seemed like the writing was on the wall there in the fourth inning. This game was decided by the middle innings sure the Rays put some runners on later the Dodgers tacked on some runs there were some good defensive plays um but to me that this game was decided by leaving Glass now in and you know the the Dodgers kind of putting this game out of reach because once you're up four or five runs for a Tampa Bay's offense, the way they're going right now, it does seem kind of out of reach. Does it not? It sets up the B bullpen for the Dodgers, puts them in a pretty good spot after game one. And I guess I'm just wondering guys, what, why keep glass now in, in that situation?

Is it, why? Take them out! I don't know. Yeah, I mean, some people pointed to, like, Glassnow had decent splits third time through the order this year, but I think that's a little bit like trying to project someone into a reversible tune split or something. I wouldn't do that until they had that for a long time in their career.

I wouldn't expect, especially someone with two pitches, to be good the third time through the order. Someone with two pitches who was fighting his command the whole game, that walked six guys eventually, walked two guys in the fourth. And, you know, DVR, you're making references to the sweater song in the fourth inning you know it's true like right yeah you could just watch it the threads were coming undone with every pitch I mean Glasnow was missing low he was missing up he walked Muncie gave up the home run to Bellinger and with the top of the order coming back up to start the fifth and the pitch count being high, it seemed like the clearest possible path for the does he do against bets okay he got bets out how does he do against seager oh he got seager

out they weren't going one batter at a time they just kept the foot on the gas like i thought a quick hook was a certainty and i mean it was the running joke on twitter it was oh my goodness tyler glass now still here i have no explanation explanation. 112 pitches. That's so weird. It's a World Series game. It's not even like, let's test it out on the backfields of Bradenton. Like, I just thought it, I don't know. Did it catch Kevin Cash flat footed? Didn't know.

There was nobody warming up. It wasn't like the Rays had guys up in the fourth, which they probably should have. And you can't even say like, well, you know, you know, this was like a bullpen management thing. If they were going to go to Ryan Yarborough, which is the guy they went to eventually, they could have gone to Ryan Yarborough in the fifth. You know, like, Ryan Yarborough is kind of a long guy. Right.

Right. Right. They could have started the inning with him there, and instead they waited. I mean, the Dodgers' top six is loaded. It's weird to see Cody Bellinger hitting sixth in any lineup. You have to alternate righty-lefty, righty-lefty, righty-lefty. So you have to kind of think about your matchups,

who you trust against hitters on both sides. And to start the inning, I think the question is, if you were going to put a reliever in the game, I'm not sure Yarbrough's the guy I would have picked at the very beginning of the inning. I think I would have started with someone, one of the righties, maybe Thompson, someone that's a very different look from glass now. Let him face the first three hitters and then probably switched over to Yarbrough for that

lefty righty lefty sequence, right? The Muncie, Will Smith, Bellinger trio. That would have been my move is to go to one of the righties for those first three hitters, go to Yarbrough for the four, five, and six. If you have to go that far, maybe you're lucky. Maybe you got an out or two before you even get to Muncie, and Yarbrough maybe only has to face one hitter. I don't think this impacts Yarbrough's availability for a possible game four start. I think when we were mapping out how the rotation might be put together, he was the guy that made sense as the game four starter. He threw fewer than 20 pitches, I think. So he's fine as far as going in a few days potentially. But the main question I have, when people screw up, we're so good at saying, hey, this is wrong. This person screwed up. This was a bad decision. We have to answer the question, what should they have done instead?

That's where I feel like a lot of times we all kind of fall short. Not the three of us, but the collective we. It's so fun to just throw the stones, but what should have been the move instead? I think for me, it would have been Ryan Thompson. It seems very clear that they didn't have a good plan B and that plan A, 1A, 2A, 3 3a 4a was to get glass now through five innings because it went against everything that the rays normally do right it was so unraised like i i just kept like so i was stunned yeah so maybe maybe they were maybe they were the ones that got caught in the roberts situation from the last world Series he was in where he was too scripted.

You know, in that World Series, we were always going to go to Kenley Jansen for two innings. Right, that's a good point. Maybe it was the Rays today that said we were always going to go to Tyler Glass now for five innings. Listen, I'm into analytics, but you've got to give people autonomy in their jobs you know that's one thing i think it's amazing about the athletic is they let us do our jobs and yes they

ask us to do certain things and do certain things but there's often a time like all these collaborations that i do with like brit and other people it has to do with like me feeling like i can just say hey you let's do this thing together you know and I and I don't feel like I have to like check with everybody I think you know you've seen some moves from Dave Roberts that suggest that maybe the the the Dodgers loosened the the grip on him a little bit and said maybe you can make some decisions on your own sometimes it's leaving in Kershaw too long you you think that the Dodgers front office, like I said earlier today on our live stream, if this dork can see it, other dorks can see it.

There were dorks in the Dodgers organization that said, take Kershaw out earlier. But maybe Roberts was allowed to make that decision. And maybe Cash wasn't allowed to make a different decision today if they didn't have guys warming to start the fifth. So, you know, that was a little bit weird. One thing that also occurred to me today while watching this was interesting. Kershaw on the first came out and was throwing 92.5 on his fastball, and that would be one of his best fastball velocities of the year.

But he couldn't find the slider at all. And, like, everyone's joking, where like everyone's joking where's the slider where's the slider then he comes out in the second inning and now he's throwing 91 and a half and he found the slider and John Smoltz once told me you know I wish he I wish he was a little bit more honest sometimes on the on the cast I think but John Smoltz told me on my podcast, he said, I said something like, you know, I always bet on you in the postseason among the Braves.

Like, I always thought you were the postseason guy for the Braves because I thought you could take it up a notch in the postseason. They were kind of command artists, and they had to depend on the umpire. And he said, yeah, you know, yeah, I was better than the other two. Did he?

All the famous. He said, yeah, I agree with you. And he basically said, I was a power pitcher. And so that extra velocity, you know, in the postseason, there's about an extra mile per hour on average, that extra velocity benefited him, whereas it might not have benefited people like Greg Maddox or Tom Glavin or Clayton Kershaw. And if we're talking about homers and being tired in the sixth inning and Kershaw being amped in this start, it kind of all came together where I was like, ah, maybe Kershaw is a command artist. Maybe Kershaw has more Maddox and Glavin than Smoltz and maybe some of these problems have come out with him throwing too hard losing a little bit of that command that makes him so great especially in the fifth and sixth and seventh inning so

great start though from Kershaw when he settled down he really found that command and I really thought that he had he, it almost looked like he had three breaking balls going. There was kind of a super slow slider that he used too. So just showed really great feel after the first inning. And kudos to him, man. I think his ERA is down below three for this postseason. We talk and talk about like, hey, can't overextend Clayton Kershaw.

And not once did any of us or anyone really that I saw say like, hey, maybe if the Dodgers did go out and score a whole bunch of runs, we don't have to sit here and debate whether Clayton Kershaw was left in too long or not. You knew though, if it were 2-1, if the massive four run fifth inning didn't happen, it's 2-1 going into the sixth, the question was going to be a much more difficult one to answer, right? I put it out there as a poll when the game was still 2-1. It was, so what's your move to start the sixth? 77% said leave Kershaw in. 23% said go to the pen. And I think the move was to go to the pen at 2-1. At 6-1, you don't have to do that.

You could try to get him through a few more hitters, keep an eye on the pitch count, keep an eye on the stuff. You can work with that buffer a little bit more, but in a one-run game, the right call, despite a low pitch count, would have been to go to the pen. I don't have a doubt about that after what we've been seeing from Kershaw in so many of his postseason starts. He has the tendency to give up the home runs when he's left in too long.

And in a one-run game, you can't have that happen. So, yeah, I agree with you. It was kind of nice. You see guys kind of hugging him in the dugout. And you could see that he actually was able to enjoy, or at least kind of enjoy, watching the Dodgers after he came out of a game, which I imagine just must be torturous for some of these postseason starts where he's either given up the lead or the offense hasn't done anything. We've watched Clayton Kershaw suffer through so many postseason games.

As much as I would like the race to win, I picked the race to win. It's kind of hard to not pull for Clayton Kershaw, right? At some point in time to do well. Just because this is a Hall of Famer who has just been absolutely dogged throughout his career for not being a playoff guy. And the fact that he's not really the story at all tonight has to be some kind of major win for him, no? Yeah. I mean, it's a win for Dave Roberts that we're not spending this whole show analyzing his decisions. We're blaming Kevin Cash instead.

Dave Roberts is like, finally, somebody else. Make fun of his bullpen decisions. This was a great start for Kershaw just across all of his starts. I've seen a lot of good stats. Alex Fast had one. Kershaw finishes the game with a 43.5% called strike and whiff rate. I mean, that's outstanding. It's the CSW we're talking about, second highest of the season,

fourth highest of his entire career. So not just postseason Kershaw, but all Kershaw. Check this out, the athletic MLB, nice pull here. 19 swings and misses on 38 swings. That is the highest whiff rate of any start in Clayton Kershaw's career. And then I saw another one from Katie Sharp. She pointed out Clayton Kershaw, first pitcher in Dodgers history with eight plus K, eight plus strikeouts, two hits or fewer allowed in a World Series or an FCS game. I i mean some of these are kind of funny like i think

there's one about a mookie bets being the first one to like i have a homer and two steals in a world series i don't know and two runs scored that's a weird that doesn't seem like that big of a deal it's a great game but that's never happened in the postseason before you're kind of playing bingo there you're like oh he's the first one to like scratch his knee and sniff and sneeze yeah and also see six pitches and one of bad and yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah once it gets that much but this kershaw one i mean 8k two hits and in dodgers history like this is a pretty there's an extensive dodgers history of the postseason there's some hall of fame pitchers in there and I think one of the things that probably sets it apart is eight

plus K's we're in the we're in the time of K's so you know maybe Koufax never had eight strikeouts or or any of those old Dodger greats but still uh uh pretty pretty amazing stats there for Kershaw and I'm I'm happy for him, man. I mean, I don't think anybody, no one deserves to struggle in the postseason for their whole career. Exactly. A lot of haymakers being thrown on Twitter at the Red Sox and John Henry as Mookie Betts, though, putting together a great game. We knew those punches were going to come if Mookie Betts showed up in Game 1, and he more than showed up in Game 1. He was outstanding.

Other kind of subplot here, Cody Bellinger's shoulder seems to be fine. He, of course, hit that early home run, made that catch in the ninth inning, did kind of hesitate on a ball in I think it was the seventh inning, if I'm not mistaken, the ball in the gap. Looked like he was kind of trying to avoid a collision with the wall, but I don't think you have much to worry about as far as Bellinger's shoulder goes. At this point, that was something we were a little unsure of

as this game began, of course, the celebration with Quique Hernandez. Congrats to Britt for hitting the over-under on Tyler Glasnow's strikeouts, by the way. That was a real sweat that he got over the six and a half. We should have done an over-under on his walks, though. Or pitches we would have all lost. There's no way any of us would have picked anywhere in the stratosphere of that. You could have got great

odds on Glass now going over probably even 105 pitches, and he went way over that. And the Mookie Betts thing is the who would trade Mookie Betts? Is that now becoming just regular lexicon in baseball? It's like, hey, how are you? who would trade Mookie Betts? Is that now becoming like just regular lexicon in baseball? It's like, hey, how are you? Who would trade Mookie Betts? Because that's all you see every time he makes a good play. It's all you see on Twitter.

And what was the now deleted Red Sox Twitter account response, which taught me a Twitter acronym that I didn't know because I'm an old man. Yeah. I-Y-K-Y-K. If you know, you know you know yeah i yeah i y k y k yeah i did not know that before now i know creating cap space and they like tweeted a photo of like a computer and i think it was like the delete button maybe or something similar it was about celebrating creating cap space and then if you know you know which now you know you know now you know, which now, you know, you know, now, you know, I was raised and I was raised on fan graphs like that.

I was raised on chickens. You know what I mean? So like, I understand the whole idea and the chickens. But I was, you know, I was raised on the idea of like financial efficiency and like, you know, paying the least amount of dollars for your wins so that you can have the financial flexibility. Like, I understand all that. I get that.

But when the Dodgers saw all this and they are too born of the same idea. They are too born of the Rays idea. They have Friedman as an executive. They want to be efficient. They want to get the most. They traded away Ross Stripling in the middle of a World Series run just because they were like, hey, we can get something for him. They're just always trying to get something.

And yet, when they saw Mookie Betts as attainable and as someone they could add to their roster, they went and did it. And you can tell me about win cycles or whatever, but tell me this, you don't think the Dodgers are going to be useful? I mean, the Red Sox are going to be useful in the next three years? You don't think they're going to get back to being contenders and Mookie Betts could have been there through some bad years and then be there again when they get to the World Series? That's what the Red Sox have done. So yes, you want Verdugo types that are cheap and will give you three to four wins however when you start getting up to seven eight nine ten wins out of one player there's almost no amount of

money that it's not worth because you're getting 10 wins out of one player and nobody else is there's like three other players like that in the big leagues he's a generational guy you get a chance to get a top five player yeah generational, a generational player, you do it. Especially if you have the money to do it. And the Red Sox have the money to do it. The Rays, that's something we can talk about. Like, are the Rays going to sign Trevor Bauer? We'll talk about that thing offseason.

But right now, it's relevant that the Red Sox, who have money, decided they'd rather have financial flexibility and Alex Verdugo and some other guys who might be three-win players instead of holding on to a superstar. I think it's worth being mad at the Red Sox for that. And it's separate almost from any sort of pro-labor concerns or salary cap or free agency. It's just about, are you a team that wants to win? Right. Then you keep moving bets. When you make moves like that, it is a fair question to ask. I think there was always this other question with bets. Did he want to stay with free agency? Would he have taken the same

deal to stay in Boston? Or did he want to call his own shot and go play somewhere else eventually? And were the Dodgers on the list of teams that he would have signed with as a free agent had he just played out the rest of his team control years in Boston? No one gets mad at Boston. No one gets mad at you as the owner if you let your superstar go as a free agent. If you trade him away and then get the flick, yeah, you still get the qualifying offer, gets you the pick.

So it's not like you get nothing, and you still get the chance to win with him. Yeah, and also California has a really hard time attracting free agents. Because of the tax rate? Yes, it's pretty bad. Like the Giants have been screwed on this before, and I'm sure the Dodgers have been screwed on it. There are teams where players take less money to go because the overall

money they get is more than if they go to california i mean it's just it's just a thing that's happened so you you could say hey he's he's not really loving our offers right now but you know once it's us versus the dodgers we're going to be able to say hey our our deal here is worth like 30 more million to you because of taxes. That's true. I mean, here's the thing about Mookie that I kind of like that kind of gets lost. Even when he's not hitting, you know, he makes those crazy plays. We talk about those a lot. And we talked about the thing with the stolen bases and why that's so rare. And that's because like speed isn't a thing we see in modern baseball too much anymore.

I hope Mookie Betts kind of brings, I hope we realize how exciting speed can be because you saw it with not only the stolen bases, but with the way he aggressively scored that run. They didn't have a chance on that play. So I really hope that we kind of get back to some element. And you talked about this on the pregame show, you know, how fast the Dodgers are. And you can already see that they're going to push the envelope here during this series. And wouldn't it be really cool if we had speed again in this game, where it's become home runs and strikeouts that we also saw some excitement on the base paths again. To me, Mookie Betts is a player that can like make that cool, right? He can make speed and base running cool. And there aren't many other players who are that

dynamic who you can watch and be like, yeah, this is what I want to do. This is what I want to emulate. So I know that was just something I was thinking about while watching the game tonight, that speed used to be such a cool element in these games. And it's just not anymore. You just don't see it anymore. I think it's interesting that we still have some superstars who can run like that. Christian Jelic is another one that steals a lot more bases than the typical superstar player in this era and runs the bases really well too,

even when he's not stealing the bases. If you watch Jelic at all, it's similar to Betts. I mean, the guy that easily goes first to third, just is in complete control, kind of does everything technically about as clean as you can while running, and it's a very overlooked facet of the game in so many circles. By the way, all of this talk about Betts and the Red Sox decision to trade him, we're going to have those conversations when Cleveland trades Francisco Lindor.

I know he hasn't quite reached the ceiling of bets, but it's a similar type of decision. I think Cleveland's going to go down the same path Boston did. They're going to prefer flexibility, put that on a jersey, and look, you're just not going to get great value back. You can get the poo-poo platter, as Eno calls it. You can get multiple players back. You can get those years of control.

You can get above players back. You can get those years of control. You can get above average contributors, but you don't get high ceiling, top end players back in those deals anymore. It just doesn't happen because the elite of the elite prospects really don't get traded. You're just not going to find Robert, Adele. Those guys aren't going anywhere.

Unless you trade with the Pirates because they give those guys away. Oh. Always fun to rip on the Pirates. One thing that I was thinking about, I'm trying to research this in the offseason. I got some data on it and I'll write about it. But, you know, we've talked about this on the offseason. I got some data on it and I'll write about it. But, you know, we've talked about this on the podcast too, like speed is important for defensive value as you age. Think about Andrew McCutcheon. Think about even like Curtis Granderson when he signed that deal

with the Mets. Some people thought that wasn't a good deal with the Mets because he was near the end of his career. He struck out too much. Well, his speed allowed him to be a defensive asset in the corner outfield. He still had the power and the patience. As Mookie Betts gets worse and worse, the speed will make sure that he's still a good defender. Lindor, the speed will make sure that Lindor can play third base when he can't play short. But also, the speed is relevant when it comes to, um, where defenders play you. If you've watched Albert Pujols this, this past season, the defenders were all in the outfield grass. There was almost like zero infielders for, for defending him. And that takes away hits that he would even get because he's just so slow to first that they can

play him so far back. So speed is just one of those things that is kind of hard to see and if you do something like just try to take speed as a tool in the minors and correlate that to future success you won't do well because you'll find a lot of like magnarious sierra types you'll find a lot of like guys who ended up Terrence Gore types. You'll find guys that were just speed only. But if you add speed to the rest of the package, that's when you get superstars. I mean, even Bryce Harper signing his deal, Manny Machado signing his deal, speed was part of that because they were, even Jason Hayward, which might not have been an amazing deal, but like the speed was a part of that. They showed that speed. So hopefully more teams begin to realize that. And maybe it's not like we'll have a ton of more stolen bases,

but they'll value speed more. And you'll start to see more and more players with speed. You'll start to see more and more players with 10 or 15 steals, as opposed to finding a lot of guys who steal 80 or whatever. Like that almost seems gone. I mean, we're just not going to give a guy who has no power and speed, we're not going to give Billy Hamilton a full season to get to 80 or 100 steals. But we could

get more and more guys who steal 15 and 20. Functional athleticism. Even if it's not just straight line speed, it's good decision making. It's a quick first step. It's all these things that will age really well even if straight line speed itself maybe tails off as you get past age 30. So let's be clear.

When it comes to shipping internationally, can I provide trade documents electronically? Mm-hmm. The answer is FedEx. Okay. But what about estimating duties and taxes on my shipments? How do I find all the— Also FedEx. Impressive.

Is there a regulatory specialist I can the... Also FedEx. Impressive. Is there a regulatory specialist I can ask about? FedEx. Oh, but let's say that... FedEx. What? FedEx. Thanks. No more questions.

Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx, where now meets next. Let's take a look ahead to game two. At the time of this recording, we don't know exactly who's starting for the dodgers i'm waiting for it to scroll by but i have not seen it we've assumed it's going to be some combination of maybe tony gonsolin and dustin may i don't think we'll see julio urias i don't think it's impossible if they wanted to go a little shorter with him as part of the mix but

the big thing for the dodgers from game one is that all the relievers they used behind Kershaw were basically the B-team relievers. And if they needed to use any of them in Game 2 on Wednesday, they all should be available because none of them even reached 20 pitches and you've got the off day coming up on Thursday. So if the decision were yours, Eno, what would your pitching plan be for the Dodgers for game two? You got one win in the bank. You didn't use your A-team really, reliever-wise. I think there's still some relievers. You could put together the best reliever squad that you've

got and you've got the off day after it. So I think this is the perfect time to try and give the rest of your starters rest and go in there and do a Gonsolin May situation. If you can get four innings from Gonsolin in May and then you just start breaking out the A-team relievers, I think you can maybe get there having given up against this offense, two, three runs, and you just hope that you score four or five runs against them. I knew your boy Gonsolin was going to be in there.

I'm thinking to myself, he's going to say it, he's going to say it, he's going to say it. Oh, there it is. But it's the best plan. I mean, the only thing the Rays were looking to do there late was to try to force Dave Roberts to put some of those guys in tonight, right? That's what it seemed like after the middle in middle innings it's like all right they're probably not going to come back are they going to hit six solo home runs no okay then what's the next best

thing to get those relievers in like they did in the Astros series when they forced Presley out there that that I think that was somewhat meaningful it didn't end up being specifically meaningful but it was like okay we forced Presley into the game next time he played pitches it's four times and he rolled his ankle too didn't he is that the outing that he like kind of rolled his ankle so yeah so in this one you got like you got jansen who's now at that new velocity uh you didn't use trinen you didn't use bruisdar so that's three guys and then you can reuse some of the guys used tonight because they didn't go that long. I thought we might have seen Jansen tonight because it was a blowout.

You can ease him in. Were you guys surprised at all? I thought maybe instead of Joe Kelly, they would have put Jansen in just to get his feet wet, get his confidence going. No? Was I the only one who thought that? I think because he did it in the last series, they didn't have to. Had they not seen that velocity come back, then this may have been a situation where they did it in the last series they didn't have to had they not seen that velocity come back then this may have been a situation where they did it now i think i was beginning to look at nick

anderson again and reconsidering what eno was saying about his velo being way down last time out the same questions we were asking about kenley jansen almost a week ago we're sort of asking those questions about and. Reliever velocity can be so fickle. It can come and go after a couple of days off, after a mechanical tweak, it can come back. I don't think it's a full-on, like, the sky is falling situation.

So, what do you think the problem could be? Is it mechanical? Is it workload? Is it a little from A, a little from B? I get the sense we'll know what the Rays think based on how they use him, but I just want to see how much do they trust him right now. Are they comfortable putting him out there in the highest leverage spot if that's what the matchups dictate?

I don't know, man. Two whiffs on the fastball in the postseason from nick anderson velo down not you know not really placing the curveball i saw that his his release point was down all year he didn't get the same ride on his fastball all year um i don't know i just think uh i think that his regular season era obscured uh some mechanical stuff that we're starting to see come to come to fruit here now so um i mean we i think if you kind of now think back peter fairbanks was the guy yeah that's a good point so i i would say peter fairbanks is really the closer right now uh and next next time they bring Nick Anderson in, I think it'll maybe be not necessarily a blowout,

but it'll be something where I think they'll do it in the Peter Fairbanks situation where it's early enough in the game that if he does give up a run or two, they can get back in it. Yeah, that's fair. I mean, they do need him if they're going to beat the Dodgers here now over a seven game series. And while we don't know what the Dodgers are doing tomorrow, we know the Rays are sending Blake Snell to the mound, right? And it kind of feels like a must win, right? I mean, you're not crazy about the idea of going down 2-0. Talk about a guy who we don't really know

what we're going to get either. There's no way he goes as many pitches as Glass now, right? There's no way they try to force him through this now. They have to manage this more like, I think, with the off day, especially looming, as Eno pointed out, Kevin Cash has to manage this a little more like elimination game. And it was almost like he kind of hung back a little, you know, knowing this is a long series, maybe knowing like, all right, we're probably not going to come back

the way Kershaw's pitching. I don't know if that factored in, but they can't do that tomorrow. You can't just sit out there and watch the Dodgers put up four or five runs and say, well, there goes that one. So what do you guys expect

out of Blake Snell, I guess? Like, what do you think we're going to see? What Blake Snell are we going to see tomorrow? Cy Young Blake Snell out of Blake Snell, I guess? Like, what do you think we're going to see? What Blake Snell are we going to see tomorrow? Cy Young Blake Snell or 2020 Blake Snell? The command hasn't been there. He's never reached the sixth inning in a postseason start.

He's made, I think, five of them now going back to last season. That's never happened. And it would be very surprising if it happened against the Dodgers. It's not impossible. He has the stuff to do it. He has to be crisp with his command, though. There's just there's so little margin for error. The Dodgers punish mistakes so well. They put so many balls in play. They have so many guys who can hurt you even the bottom of their order like Chris Taylor against lefties Kike Hernandez against lefties those are not matchups you feel great about especially second and third time through the order if it gets that far I don't think Snell's gonna see those guys a third time because they're buried but I think we see five and fly and that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing that might just be good timing and Kevin Cash sort of getting back to the magic touch of getting to the pen and just putting the relievers out there in

the right order. I think that's the best case scenario for the Rays. And I think the other thing we got to see is we got to see as they switch their lineup back over to their righty lineup, you get G-Man Choi, Austin Meadows back in. Hunter Renfroe, Yandy Diaz probably go back to the bench. They've got to figure something out. Brandon Lau did not look good. Those were ugly plate appearances for him in game one. So you need to find those secondary sources. There were some other down lineup good feelings.

I mean, Kevin Kiermaier coming out there with the bad wrist and hitting a homer. That was one of three homers by lefties off of Kershaw's slider this entire year. And it came with him coming right back off injury. I feel like, you know, he's one of the few guys that has like a league average strikeout rate. So he counts as like a contact guy for them. Brousseau got a hit. Wendell got a hit and he had another one where it was super close um and uh margot got a hit i don't know there's there were some percolations uh down lineup and they just they're these they need more of that you know they just need more of that you're right i mean you're right but also you know if they scored one or two more runs you would have think you would have thought, oh, the Rays could win this one.

I think the thing that happened too, the Dodgers made a few really nice defensive plays. Justin Turner, as I mentioned earlier, took away a ball that Yanni Diaz hit really hard. Mike Zanino with runners on in a situation where one swing, I think, would have made it a two-run game, ripped one back up the middle, like 105 and change, and it just happened to find the glove of Victor Gonzalez. Credit to him to have the wherewithal to turn around

and double off the runner on second to end the inning. But that was a scalded ball. It was two-thirds of an inning scoreless appearance for Victor Gonzalez, but it wasn't good with two hard-hit balls and one very hard-hit ball that could have opened up a rally. 105.6 with a 660 XBA. I don't know. That one

was a real big turning point. Turned into a double play, not even just a one-out. Yeah, that was critical. Real quick, Game 2 predictions. What do you got, Britt? I picked the Rays to win the series, so if I pick them to lose game two, I'm not looking too good overall.

I'm going to have to go stick with the Rays. Hopefully they find a way to win. Like you said, Blake Snell, just five innings. That's all they ask. They're going to have to eke it out. I'm going to say six to five Rays tomorrow.

Or today. Oh, 6-5. They're going to hit a lot of home runs, a lot of solo shots. Yeah, I had this one circled as a Rays win. So even though I think I had Dodgers in six, I kind of thought the Snell starts would be some of the best situations for the Dodgers. So once you get back to Morton Bueller and Urias Yarbrough bullpen,

that's when the Dodgers start winning again. But this one, I think I can see the Rays winning. Yeah, I'm going to go like 6-3 Rays, I think. Yeah, I think. And if it's more than 6-3, then they can rest some of the bullpen, and then maybe some of that bullpen game situation starts to favor them. But, you know, bullpen game against Urias. Urias is a good starter.

So, yeah. And this one, if it is Gonsolin May against Snell, I'm taking Snell. All right, there you have it. We are all on the raise for Game 2. That's the way it was drawn up at the beginning of the series. We'll see if it actually plays out that way on Wednesday night. If you don't already have a subscription to The Athletic, you can get one for $1 a month at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels.

Get all the playoff coverage, Britt's articles, Eno's articles, everything we got going on Twitter. She's at Britt droly he's at you know saris i am at derek van riper that is going to wrap things up this episode of rates and barrels we are back with you after game two thanks for listening.