Rates & Barrels - Preparing for a different, imperfect postseason with Ken Rosenthal

Episode Date: September 28, 2020

Ken Rosenthal joins Eno, Britt & DVR to discuss the different and imperfect 2020 postseason and consider the teams best suited for the unique twists of this October.  Interview w/Ken Rosenthal 4:05 Are the Rays Optimally Suited for This Postseason? 5:02 Atlanta's Tough Wild Card Round Draw 6:22 Does Home Field Advantage Even Matter? 7:39 Is Previous Playoff Experience Less Important? 9:09 Tactical Adjustments to a Packed Schedule 11:04 Are the Cubs Getting Overlooked? 12:23 The Impact of Neutral Parks After Round 1 14:17 Ken's American League Predictions 17:08 The Brewers & Having a Puncher's Chance Against the Dodgers Series Breakdowns 20:38 Rays vs. Jays 24:08 A's vs. White Sox 27:27 Twins vs. Astros 30:09 Indians vs. Yankees Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Britt on Twitter: @Britt_Ghiroli Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Ken on Twitter: @Ken_Rosenthal 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

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 143, really episode number one though of this 2020 postseason. It is Monday, September 28th. On this episode, we are going to be joined by the athletic senior baseball writer and MLB insider Ken Rosenthal to discuss the very unusual postseason before us and the unique challenges it will create for these 16 teams that made it. We're also going to make our AL predictions with the AL wildcard series getting underway on Tuesday. Eno, how's it going for you on this Monday? It's good.

Went to the beach, went to the pool. I am ready. I'm ready for this. It's going to be crazy. I mean, it's like the quad box situation, right? Like, I'm happy now that I've got five screens going because I will have a game on four of them. Yeah, I think you set up perfectly for this unique postseason.

Britt, can you top Eno's trip to the beach this weekend? I can't. I went to a five-year-old birthday party with Paw Patrol. That's my normal life. So I learned a lot about what these characters are named, but other than that, no. And guys, I have to say, they just announced that MLB TV, like you won't be able to watch the postseason now.

And so I will spend the rest of the day scrambling, trying to figure out how to add TBS, MLB Network, and Fox to my lineup. Now, I'm insane, and obviously I do this for a living. But what are the casual baseball fans, like what are we doing here? If you bought MLB TV, you should be able to watch the games, no? The package you're going to need is Sling because it's cheap. You can do it for a month. You can ditch it, and you can add the MLB channel for like $10.

You also get Red Zone. So that's your way around if you're scrambling to get it. And you can do the ESPN option instead of the NBC and regional sports network option. I have to tell you, in the sort of realm of cord cutting and what the future of broadcasting is, the only reason I keep cable around is for moments like this. Yeah. Exactly. TBS, FS1, Fox.

If you're trying to Hulu or whatever, like you're saying, even Sling, you kind of have to Frankenstein this thing together just to watch games. Or you pay for this clunky old thing called cable that has 600 channels you'll never watch. I mean, I watch HBO. I watch some news. And I watch the MLB Network. And even if you put my kids in, they watch a couple channels. We probably watch eight channels.

And you're right with the red zone thing. They should have something with baseball this year with the expanded postseason where you could turn on one channel and watch four games. I do think that they will have something like red zone. I was talking to Mike Petriello. It sounds like ESPN will have some sort of coverage on ESPN where they're just cutting into games. And if Petriella is going to be there, they'll have some smart analysis along with it. So I don't know exactly what the shape of that is and when that'll be, but I assume it would be

kind of during the wildcard round when there's so many different games to cut into. So now that we've explained how to watch all of the games, you can start adjusting your cable packages over the next little while. Send me your login. Share the logins on Twitter. She's at Britt underscore Drooly. I'm at Derek Van Ryper, and he is at Eno Saris. Now it is our pleasure to be joined by Ken Rosenthal,

MLB insider and senior baseball writer at The Athletic. Ken wrote a great playoff piece today for The Athletic. It was our featured A1 story examining the very unique nature of the postseason in front of us. Ken, how are you doing today? Thanks for joining us. Doing well, thanks. Looking forward to an absolutely crazy week of baseball and a very strange postseason. And thinking about your piece from today, without off days, the teams that are more flexible with pitching usage seem to have an advantage.

There's one line in your column that's kind of in my head on repeat. The Rays, who have had 12 pitchers start games and 12 earn saves, trust virtually every member of their staff, at least when deployed in specific roles. I think that's really true. I think they just love that flexibility. Do you believe they are among the most prepared teams for this unusual postseason? I certainly do. And they are one of the few that can say they have depth. I think the Twins are in that category. Dodgers certainly are in that category. And the Indians.

Those four teams, to me, stand out. Maybe Brito, you know, could name one or two others. But it would seem, once we get out of this first crazy round where anything can happen, that that depth would really come into play, especially with no off days in the DS and LCS. Yeah, Ken, my question to you is, you know, you look at a team like the Braves and you've kind of wondered all season, like how did they run away with NL East?

Now they're a little banged up. You heard about, you know, Ronald Acuna's wrist. Obviously they've had some, some injuries. What do you make of a team like them and how far they can potentially go without really any sense of a rotation?

That is a great question. And I'm worried about them, particularly because their opponent, Cincinnati, which has the opposite kind of club, strong starting pitching, a little bit of a disappointing offense, but one that's certainly capable. If Freed pitches well, okay, they're in. They got a good shot, but they're up against Bauer and Castillo and Gray. And while they're a great offensive team, it's one series. In two games, it could be over.

So obviously we all love Freed, assuming he's healthy. We all like Ian Anderson. He's done a really good job for them. But beyond that, it is meager. And if they get to the division series, I don't know how they survive it. And I love that team. That's a fun team to watch, offensively especially. But think of the injuries they've had in the rotation alone. It's just been devastating to them. And now it probably will come into play more. You know, this seems like

such a crapshoot, like just a crazy situation here. And I wonder about home field advantage. You know, over the course of this year, we saw home field advantage was like disappeared for a little bit. And then it kind of came back. By the end of the season, home teams had won 55% of their games. But home teams on the road did really poorly. They only won about 40 percent of their game so i wonder what you think of this this situation where they're all flying they're all

flying somewhere and yeah supposedly one team's the home team but do you think that home teams have any advantage in this format um other than maybe being the better team over the course of the season but like do you think there's any advantage to being the home team in a short series like this when you're playing in san diego or whatever it is i guess you think there's any advantage to being the home team in a short series like this when you're playing in San Diego or wherever it is? I guess it's always better to be at home, right? Because you're comfortable, you're in your environment, you know the ballpark better than anyone else. But at the same time, we've seen in recent years, of course, most notably as Britt knows

with the World Series last year, that home field, even with crowds, can be overstated. So I would say it's a small advantage, but I don't know that it's a huge deal either way. And I would not be surprised at all to see several of the home teams go down in this format in this first round. One of the things I've been thinking a lot about just with this unique postseason too is if teams that have previous playoff experience don't really have a leg up, right? A team like the Padres or the White Sox, a young core that hasn't really been in this position before, they're not going to feel that same pressure on the road because the crowds are so different. Do you feel like those young teams actually have a more level playing field in these environments? Derek, that's a fair point and a good point.

It's interesting with the Padres. We talk about them as a young team, yet I heard someone mention this yesterday. They have a lot of players who have been in the postseason. Hosmer, Moreland, Machado, you can go right down the line. Now, granted, a lot of them haven't, and the Morelands are a team without that kind of cachet. I'm sure they only have a handful of players at most that have been there. But the beauty of this season for these clubs,

and I would include the Blue Jays as well, they have had nothing to stop them from just going out and saying, hey, what the heck, 60 games, we'll do our best, see what happens. We've got nothing to lose. And that has resulted in some unusual outcomes, which was expected in the 60-game season. I think people before the season were saying, you're going to see some funky things, and we have.

We've seen the Marlins, we've seen the Blue Jays. And I would expect that in this format, those teams will not have any different mentality. What do we have to lose? Let's just go out there and play. We think we're good. Let's see what happens. Speaking of funky things, Ken, one of the differences this year is that there's no off days except for in between series. We saw kind of in past years, a team would maybe get up, get to that clinching situation and not really go for the jugular. And I'm wondering if you think that's going to change now because of the added emphasis on maybe getting a day or two, the chance to set up your rotation.

We all know the 2019 Nationals who had their starters pitch out of the bullpen is basically impossible. But I'm wondering how much gamesmanship you think we might see because of the schedule. Britt, I don't know how much gamesmanship there can be. You have to use your whole staff. It's actually like normal baseball. And I still am amazed. I looked this up the other day that Sanchez, Strasburg, Scherzer, and Corbin last year pitched 70% of the Nationals' innings in the postseason.

That's an astonishing number. That's not happening here. postseason. That's an astonishing number. That's not happening here. And what will happen is the risk that you're going to burn out relievers, most of whom have not gone three days in a row this year. There's a stat in the story today in which I think there were five teams that didn't go back to back to back at all this year. There were four others that went once. It was not something that was done because managers and clubs were trying to protect their bullpen arms. So now you have a situation, you're playing five straight days in the DS, seven straight days in the LCS. You simply cannot maneuver your staff the way you have. It's

going to be very tricky. So that gamesmanship you speak of, that is gone. You cannot simply take, That gamesmanship you speak of, that is gone. You cannot simply take, for instance, the Dodgers case, Kershaw and throw him in relief. That's probably not a great example. He might not do that anyway. But the one guy who is a difference maker in this scenario to me is Bauer because he likes to throw. He likes to throw on three days rest, and he will do pretty much anything. It's going to be really interesting to see how it all plays out.

Are there any teams that are just being completely overlooked? In my mind, the Cubs. No one's talking about them. They kind of played their best baseball right out of the gate to begin this season, but they do have that experience. Maybe they don't have the pitching depth of some of the other favorites league-wide, but how do you see the Cubs kind of fitting into this postseason picture? I see them possibly winning the first round, for sure. And they've got the Marlins. Obviously, it's an upstart team. It's not going to be easy, necessarily, because the Marlins starting

pitching is outstanding. But at the same time, if they get past the first round, the Cubs, then it starts to kind of crumble a little bit because of what we're talking about here. Okay, you start off with Darvish and Hendricks. Fantastic. After that, Lester, Mills, and then what do you do in game five? I don't know. Now, you asked, Derek, about teams that I think might be overlooked here. I'm going to say the White Sox, and I know they played horribly down the stretch.

be overlooked here. I'm going to say the White Sox. And I know they played horribly down the stretch. I know they have some different issues going on, injuries, but this is a team that played really well for most of the season. And we've seen so many times in the past teams stumble into the postseason and then suddenly wake up. And I'm not saying it's going to be them, but I wouldn't be shocked if it was them. You know, one thing that I think of when i look at the slate is you know everyone's going to these different parks i mean i hate to harp on that point it's just the that's the weirdest thing about this postseason is like they're going to san diego and arlington and houston so yes you know i think that's super weird and one thing is i think uh over the course of the season that arlington and san diego have kind of shown themselves to be

unique ballparks. So in San Diego, the lefty power just seems to really be suppressed. And it's lefty pull power. And in Arlington, I think Arlington has been playing surprisingly pitcher friendly. It's really deep and it doesn't have the same temperature. It doesn't have the same heat factor that the old stadium did there. Do you think that there's any team that's just going to have a rude awakening, like the Brewers and Arlington, and just be like, what is this park? We've been playing in a very different park all year. Is there anything that sort of comes to mind when you think of that? I haven't looked at that closely outside of reading your story

that kind of touched on this. But I can see once we get to Arlington and San Diego, things that would affect, like say the Braves get to San Diego. I don't even know where their bracket ends up, but that's an offensive minded team. And could they stumble there?

Yeah, I can see that happening, but in general, all teams are facing the same issues with these parks and as opposed, well, the left-handed issue, that's, that's significant because if you have a team that's built that way, it's going to possibly hurt you, but I don't know. I just believe it all balances out and granted it's harder to balance out in the samples being this small, but I don't know that that will be a factor.

But I'll tell you this, I look forward to Eno Saris' article when it does become a factor because you're going to be the one that picks it out. All right, Ken. So we're not going to any of these games. Most people are not going. You are getting to be on the ground. And so therefore, your predictions are going to any of these games. Most people are not going. You are getting to be on the

ground, and so therefore your predictions are going to weigh even heavier. They're going to matter even more. So we need to know what Bubble Ken thinks, and we're going to start with the American League. What are your predictions for how the wild American League playoff format, how that all shakes out?

Well, Britt, I just made my predictions for the athletic, and I've already forgotten them. There's like the Rays. There's a lot of teams. I like the Rays. I like the White Sox, even though obviously they're in tough against the A's. I actually think there's an upset chance there. And Twins-Astros, I like the Twins. And I like the Indians. I think the Indians are going to snuff the Yankees. Their pitching is that good. And yes, the Yankees have not played well. And that's a factor for me, even though I'm dismissing that logic with the White Sox.

I just don't see the Yankees as being that kind of team. And the Indians have found something in the last couple of weeks. Their offense still stinks. So we know that. But I do see them starting with Bieberieber shutting the yankees down and taking this thing i just think the thing about the cleveland rotation is that they're all so good that they could make their bullpen almost irrelevant they could make that struggling

offense irrelevant if everyone kind of pitches to their ceiling and that's what makes that team so dangerous ken one last question for you about Cleveland in particular. Do you get the sense that internally they might feel like their window is closing a bit with the uncertain future of Francisco Lindor and whether or not he's going to stay long-term? There's not even a question about that. This is a moment for them that they know they have to take advantage of. Now, it's possible they don't trade Lindor this winter, but he's going to be making somewhere in the $20 million range next year. They're going to be cutting payroll like everyone else. It's just going to be really hard for them to carry him. So this is probably it for Francisco Lindor and the Indians as we know them.

And yes, I would imagine that's driving them. And the other thing that's interesting about them, and I don't know if it's been talked about enough, Francona is not managing this team. Sandy Alomar Jr. has been managing this team and it's a different thing when you don't have Terry Francona at the helm in the post-season. But all of these different points, Lindor and Francona, are kind of rallying points where if a team wins, they're going to look at that and say, Hey, this was something that brought us together, et cetera. If they lose,

they lose and they just got overmatched. But I don't know. There's something I like about them. I like their culture from the front office down. I like what they've done the last couple of weeks. I love Ramirez, of course, like everyone else. I just have a feeling about them. I think they're going to be well-suited for this. Well, you know, I wonder one last question maybe about the NL. You know, I don't think that necessarily – it was interesting for me to hear the tension of you talking about how the White Sox have been doing very recently versus how the Yankees have.

doing very recently versus how the Yankees have. And I wonder about on the National League side, you know, you've got the Brewers kind of losing on the last day to get in. I wonder if that matters, if they can just wipe the slate clean and they just get back on it, or if you think that leaves a weird taste in your mouth, especially when you're going up against, you know, the heavy favorites in the NL and the Dodgers in the first round.

They are a fascinating team. They're one of my favorite teams, actually. This is the third straight year they'll be in the postseason. First time in club history. And if they had Burns for this series, I'd give them a puncher's chance. I'd still give them a puncher's chance because a general manager pointed this out to me the other day. They have high-end talent on the pitching staff.

Woodruff, Hayter, Williams. Now, granted, they're going to have to figure it out in game one. They're probably going to go shooter in game one, Woodruff in game two. It's difficult for them, obviously, but they have been there. Off there offensively they're not what they were we all know that it's just a different looking team no moustakas no cane you know it's just not no grandal and and christian yelich has not been the same guy but they're a team that at least could give the Dodgers a scare. They certainly won't be cowed by any of this. And I don't know. If somehow they steal game one with Suter and then go into game two with Woodruff,

I mean, we're going to have an apocalyptic scenario for the Dodgers. And they'll be really interesting. So much pressure on the Dodgers, too, with their shortcomings over the years, too, right? I mean, it could just turn so quickly. And look, Suter, for at least one time through the order, he just creates these matchup nightmares. It's a funky slot.

He works quickly. He locates really well. It worked for them in that critical series against the Cardinals as well. Ken, thanks for taking the time to join us today. We're really looking forward to seeing your coverage from the bubble throughout the postseason. Thanks very much, Derek. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Ken. Good luck. Thank you, Britt. Talk soon. Last week is in the books. Now it's time to review the tape and prepare for this week.

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Rent the Peloton Bike or Bike Plus today at onepeloton.ca slash bike slash rentals. All access memberships separate. Termsals. All access membership separate terms apply. All right, let's talk about these matchups series by series. We begin with those Tampa Bay Rays. We talked about with Ken. I think they are really well suited for this unusual condensed postseason without days off because they do really trust all their pitchers and all those roles. They do have quality starting pitching up top as well. And even though their offense can waver a bit and kind of hang around that

league average mark, they have power. They have guys who can come in and steal a base in a certain situation as well. They're like a true one seed. And the first round matchup for them against the Jays, I don't think it's a bad one in part because I don't trust most of the Jays pitching staff. Although I would say that bullpen is a little bit better than people give it credit for. So do you think the Rays are actually one of these teams that's perfectly built for this type of postseason? Well, the only thing I have to say that's negative about them, and I'm going to be contributing to the coverage for the Rays in the postseason. The one thing that occurred to me while I was kind of doing the preview for them is that they strike out a lot. And not only do they strike out about, you know, I think second

worst rate in baseball for the year, but in the last month they struck out at 31% rate. And one thing that we have found about the postseason in the past is that not striking out is good. found about the postseason in the past is that not striking out is good. It just puts lottery tickets in play. So there's kind of a rock versus an immovable force situation here when it comes to the Jays pitching staff and their raise willingness to strike out. So I think that there's a little bit of a daylight for the Jays if If, you know, Ryu can win a game, they just need to figure out how to win one more game. It'll be a little bit tough because that game will have to have like three innings from Tyjuan Walker and inning plus from Thomas Hatch. And, you know, they'll have to use all five of their good pitchers to make it happen.

But they'll be in trouble, I think, if it goes to three. Yeah, I mean, I agree with Ken. I think the Rays are probably the most well-balanced team outside of the Dodgers, right? But what troubles me, and you kind of touched on this as well, they also can't really hit right-handed pitching. They're very susceptible. They don't have a whole lot of power from that left side. I think anything can happen.

Look, what's going to happen here is we're all going to make our predictions going off what team we think is better. And in a three-game series, anything can happen, right? Whoever wins game one can all of a sudden, you know, sneak out one more win over the next two games. So I'm not writing off the Blue Jays. I think, you know, they're certainly very young. They haven't been here before.

But like Ken said, that could work in their favor. Why not? Who cares? No one expects them to win. There's one other thought here. There was kind of the cynical a team might punt if they fall behind trying to preserve arms for the next day in a series. But if the Jays were to win game one against the Rays, if Ryu beats Snell, you could Johnny Holstaff it in game two

and just throw all of your pitchers out it in game two and just throw all of your pitchers out there in game two and just hope you win. Because if you do, you get days off anyway. You actually do get a little time off while the rest of the wildcard series play that third game. Maybe there's a little case for that, at least with the reliever usage being a little more aggressive in that game two and saying, well, if we don't have this guy available in game three, three days in a row, at least we made our best effort and maxed out our win probability in that second game. But look, anything can happen. That's going to be the refrain of this entire postseason.

But I would still, even with that caveat, be surprised the Rays didn't get past Toronto in this opening matchup. The 2-7 matchup in the AL is brutal because I don't want either one of those teams to have to go home. I want to see the A's and the White Sox playing deeper into October. I mean, Britt, as you look at these two teams, the White Sox were one of the most fun teams in the league for about the first half of the season. They've still played well in the second half, but it feels like they've kind of come back to earth a little bit. How do you see them matching up with Oakland? I think Oakland's kind of a nightmare matchup for anyone because their

bullpen is so good. And we've seen how important that is in the playoffs. And without these off days, right. It's going to be even more important that you have more than one or two guys. You trust with the white Sox. Clearly,

you know, Tim Anderson, a Bray, you, they've emerged as these really fun, young superstars, right? Both guys that probably are going to get some votes for MVP, you know, when we talk about awards and things like that.

But I think Oakland's going to win here. I do. I think, you know, you look at Oakland, they're kind of that team that's always kind of in it. They're always a pesky team. And I imagine that when it comes down to it, having that kind of a deep bullpen is really going to be it. Yes, there's been issues in their starting rotation. They've had a lot of guys been hurt or just simply regress. But I think for a three-game series, you can rely a little heavier on those relievers and do what you have to do to get past them.

I'm going to disagree with Ken. I think that Oakland takes this. What do you think? You know, this is an Oakland team where the rotation has kind of been falling on tough times here in the last couple of weeks. that Frankie Montas and Jesus Lizardo and A.J. Puck were just a dominating force at the top of the rotation. That really hasn't come to bear. As much as Lizardo has pitched well, I would say that in the fifth and sixth inning, he's shown some vulnerability. I don't really know why, because I think he does have two good secondaries, but the breaking ball is behind the changeup,

two good secondaries, but the breaking ball is behind the changeup. And I wonder if that's what's contributing to some late falling apartedness on the part of Lizardo. So, you know, Montas just not had the same year, even though the velocity is pretty good. He just hasn't trusted the splitter as much. And I don't know, the strikeouts are just not there. Puck has been hurt. So you're going to see like Mike Fiers maybe pitch another postseason game for them, which just seems pretty weird. And the guys I thought would be their studs are not.

I think they're gettable, especially with Chapman out. I envision this as me being more confident about the A's chances in the postseason when we got here. Yeah, I would have thought Lizardo was a huge part of what they were going to do in a series like this, and now that's not really a certainty at all. I think with Giolito and Keichel going in one and two, the pitching edge definitely goes to the White Sox. They're going to be one of those teams that has nothing to lose, but they do have a few guys who have been in this situation before. You have Grundahl, you have Keichel. You get that mix of young guys who haven't been there and veterans who have,

and I think that's what makes them really well balanced and really capable of pulling off the upset. So I'm going to go with the White Sox in this wildcard series. Let's talk Twins Astros. The Astros limping into the postseason, much like the Brewers at 29-31. And the stock answer is, well, they're the Astros. They're fine. But this is not the same Astros team that we're used to seeing playing deep into October. A couple injuries for the Twins down the stretch. We could see Byron Buxton limited. He suffered a concussion over the weekend.

Josh Donaldson continues to be banged up. How do these two teams match up, you know? Yeah, the Astros offense has just, that's what's missing. I mean, they've found pitching, and even though it's not Verlander and Cole, they've got enough pitching if that offense was how it used to be. So I just wonder if there's a chance that something clicks and the offense does sort of rejuvenate because it's looked old. You know, frankly, Brantley's the only one kind of hitting like he the back of his playing card suggests he should just do.

Do Korea and Springer suddenly get healthy and Altuve suddenly find his bat? Like if that happens, everything changes, I think. But the way that they've looked this year, I would take the Twins in a landslide. Yeah. So I think the Twins are the better team here. But again, I think that there has to be some kind of upset here, right? Isn't this kind of more like March Madness, the way this is set up? Someone is going to win a series that has no business winning a series.

And I think if you look at the Twins, and talked about their bad luck with some of the timing, Nelson Cruz is also dealing with a sore knee so you take into account you don't know what you're getting with Donaldson, you don't know what you're getting from Buxton Snow hasn't really hit all year I think it's a bad time for the Bomba Squad to kind of be beat up and not really be the full

Bomba Squad so if there's a series that kind of to me is gettable, it's playing the Twins right now. And I don't think the Astros are a better team at all. You know, they don't have Verlander. You know, they lost Garrett Cole. They are not the team that went to the World Series last year and took the Nationals to seven games. They are missing a ton of components from that team. But I still think there's a way that they sneak in here and that they eke out these two wins. Yeah, game one, Maeda versus Grinke

is going to be a great pitching matchup. We'll probably see Barrios go in game two, maybe Lance McCullers on the Astros side, and then Pineda versus Jose Urquidy in game three. But I think my takeaway is that those three starters match up really well. So those are equal pitching matchups. The Astros are still dangerous.

They haven't been very healthy as a team all season. They might be a little healthier now than the Twins are, and that might be the difference. So I'm going to pick the Twins, but it's not with a lot of confidence as I look at this particular matchup. Last AL wildcard matchup, Cleveland against the Yankees. This is incredible because Shane Bieber Carlos

Carrasco and Zach Plesak are lined up to go up against Garrett Cole Masahiro Tanaka and Jay Happ I think those Yankee starters are still unconfirmed for games two and three and they've got a lot of bullpen weight they could throw behind any starter anyway so it might be short outings no matter who takes the ball in those cases. It sounded like Ken's pretty high on Cleveland, Britt, and I definitely see them as a team feeling the pressure of Francisco Lindor's seemingly imminent departure. Are they going to get it done? Are they going to get a title before Lindor leaves? Yeah, I don't know if they're going to get a title, but I definitely see them getting out of this first round. I think Judge and Stanton are back for the Yankees, but in what capacity, right? Are they 100%? I don't think they are quite as scary as a fully

operational Stanton and Judge normally would be. And you look at Cleveland's pitching, and yes, they can't hit, but most of the time in the postseason, it comes down to pitching, and that rotation, as you said, is just out of control. I know the Yankees fans are starting to get angry, right? They haven't won since, what, 2009? I just don't see this as their year either. They've got some holes. They've got some injuries. Would it surprise anyone if Stanton or Judge tweaked something again here

in the early rounds of the postseason? I just don't see them advancing. I agree with Ken. I think Cleveland's a dangerous team. I think both teams out of Ohio are dangerous teams and that we could see some really interesting postseason baseball. Yeah, I mean, this Yankees offense going up against Cleveland's pitching is just a battle of titans, really.

I mean, you're looking at a Yankees team that's got a 116 WRC plus that led the American League. It was fourth in Major League Baseball. Would you kind of agree, though, with Britt's assessment? This is not the fully operational Death Star. It's only a partially operational Death Star for the Yankees this year. Yeah. I mean, I really wanted to push back because this Yankees team, as it is now, as it's being healthy, it's a juggernaut. It's a really good team. But I remember, you know, how much people were losing their crap about this New York Antiques team playing to 500 baseball in the middle of the season. And I remember thinking, I won't matter. They'll get to this point. They'll get healthy. They'll be great. they played poorly for so long that they lost home field advantage. And even though home field advantage is a sticky thing to kind of nail down without fans in this time, it does matter, I think,

for the Yankees hitters. If you think of guys like Brett Gardner hitting home runs down the line, that right field is something that Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton take advantage of when they go oppo. It's easy to get. That's the friendliest right field in baseball. Now they're going to go play in Cleveland. And, you know, Cleveland not only suppresses power, but it plays, it helps the pitchers there play up. And they're used to kind of the intricacies of that park. Basically, I do think there is some home field advantage. The Indians played themselves into home field advantage in a crucial time.

And as much as I'd like to pick the mini-upset of the Yankees, I think I'm hearing what everybody else is putting down. I'll fall in line and give the Indians a first-round win. A lot to look forward to on Tuesday, including another episode of our show. We're going to break down the NL series and make our picks on that side as well. If you're enjoying this show on a platform that allows you to rate and review the podcast, please take the time to do that. We greatly appreciate it.

And if you don't already have a subscription to The Athletic, you can get one for $1 a month at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. That'll get you Ken's article that we talked about, all of Eno's stuff, all of Britt's stuff, fantasy baseball coverage, even fantasy football coverage too, if you're playing that this season. As always, you can reach us via email, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com.

Just spell out the word and if you go that route. As mentioned before, on Twitter, he's at Eno Saris. She is at Britt underscore Droley. I am at Derek Van Ryper. Thanks to Ken Rosenthal for joining us on this episode. That is going to wrap things up for today's episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you

Tuesday with some NL wildcard predictions.