Rates & Barrels - Roberto Clemente Day & Erasing the Stigma

Episode Date: September 12, 2020

Eno, Britt & DVR discuss Roberto Clemente Day, erasing the stigma around mental health, and using baseball as a way to cope. September is National Suicide Prevention and Awareness Month and Sep. 6 — Sep. 12 is National Suicide Prevention Week. If you or somebody you know is dealing with mental health issues, please reach out to the Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255. The Lifeline provides 24/7, free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you or your loved ones, and best practices for professionals. Rundown3:45 Roberto Clemente Day12:31 Erasing the Stigma22:40 Baseball as an Escape27:48 The Battle for the AL Central37:03 Are You Buying the Marlins, Rockies or Mets?43:31 Wild & Crazy Stats Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow Britt on Twitter: @Britt_GhiroliFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Get a subscription to The Athletic for just $1/month at theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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That's 20% off with free shipping at Manscaped.com and use code TheAthletic20. And for a limited time, subscribers get not one, but two free gifts, a travel bag, a $39 value, and the patented high-performance Manscaped boxer briefs. So go to manscaped.com today and use code THEATHLETIC20. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 137. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris and Britt Giroli. It's Friday, September 11th. On this episode, we're going to discuss the celebration of Roberto Clemente. Of course, Roberto Clemente Day was Wednesday of this week. We'll talk about a few interesting award nominees perhaps along the way

as the league continues to honor him that way each and every year. Wild stats. We'll get some fun stats that we wanted to pass along, a variety of different things that just caught our eye recently. We'll take a look at the wild race in the AL Central, which continues to be probably the most fun division in baseball.

We saw Joe West call security to throw Mike Rizzo out of a game, so we'll get to the bottom of how that happened and some other really interesting stuff to get to on this episode as well. Britt, how's it going for you on this Friday? Yeah, it's going good. I can't complain. How are you guys? I'm doing pretty well. You know, how are you doing? Okay, but I'm a little bit worried this weekend is going to have some of the worst air quality in the history of the Bay Area. So I'm trying to plan some sort of escape because I don't want to breathe in the air right now. It's slightly orange again. Yeah, it's been a really scary couple of weeks for a lot of people out there on the West Coast.

How far from your home do you have to drive before you get away from those air quality advisory warnings? The coast is helpful. We may just go to the beach again. Once you get over there, the breeze is coming in pretty good and it moves the stuff. It's really bad to be in a valley right now to be in like fresno and um sadly i found out that a family member has lost a house uh in a fire so um we may i don't really want to go to fresno i think another family member will go uh to to try and help them out i just don't really really want the kids to be inside all day, and I also don't want them to be outside.

So it's kind of a tough place to be. Can you bubble them? You're right. Just a traveling bubble. Maybe we'll go to Monterey or something. Yeah, it's just tough because most of North Carolina is still locked down. So you can't really go anywhere to go inside and you can't go outside. We feel very trapped right now.

Yeah, understandably. You seem like you really don't have a lot of choices right now. Here's to hoping for the absolute best in the wildfire situation that's happening out there. Let's talk about Roberto Clemente for a few minutes. Because I just think this is... He's such a fascinating player. And he's one of those guys that the three of us only see highlights. And we only get to read stories about him.

We didn't get a chance to watch him. We didn't get a chance to cover him. And the more you learn about Roberto Clemente, the more you kind of feel jealous of people who got to know him and got to cover him and got to watch him play. His love for the game topped really just by his love for humanity and the amount of great work that he did. And I think some people first become familiar with the name because of the award, right? I mean, if you grew up in our generation, you heard about this award, and it's the award that best exemplifies sportsmanship and community involvement and individual contributions to a team. And I think a lot of times we get caught up in things that players don't do, their performance, and we don't talk a lot about the good works of players.

And I think it's good that this is part of Roberto Clemente's legacy. I'm glad that it seems like we're getting closer to the point where the league might actually retire number 21. It kind of seems silly to me when you think about the impact he's had on Latin American players, that it hasn't happened already. We were talking before we started recording. To our knowledge, we don't really understand why this hasn't happened yet. It seems inevitable at this point that number 21 is going to be right there in the rafters at every big league stadium next to number 42, right? Yeah.

I guess you'd have to look up to what current players are wearing 21. And then maybe it's a scenario where they kind of phase it out or they stop giving it out altogether. You know, that's kind of how some teams do it, obviously. I don't know why, but I always think of like Mariano Rivera and some of those guys who have, you know, their uniforms retired. Mariano Rivera, I think, was the last guy to wear Jackie's number, right?

The last guy to wear 42. So hopefully they can figure out a way to honor him. Because you're right, Derek. I mean, you hear so much about him and what he did, and players get really into being named the Roberto Clemente nominee. I don't think enough can be said about how much guys really honor and value that award. It's a big deal.

Each club gets a nominee. They announce one at the end of the year. But it's something that, you know, we talk about these guys being so into stats and numbers and bonuses and things like that. And here's something that doesn't really have a tie to anything performance

wise. Doesn't, as far as I know, get them any extra money in their contracts. But it's still a really big source of pride. And I think a lot of that, a lot of the credit goes to some of these older Latin players who have really passed down his legacy as best as they can. And just the way the game really honors its greats. I don't know why it's not retired. I hope it can be soon. What's interesting to me is that even beyond the day, right, two days

ago, Roberto Clemente day, the Nats didn't play, for example. Manager Davey Martinez basically said that that's his guy. That's his icon. He wore 21 yesterday, even though it wasn't the day. And I saw other teams did as well. And that should really show you the impact. No one was forcing them to honor him. It wasn't even Roberto Clemente Day.

But people who hadn't had the opportunity to still wanted to participate. And that to me kind of speaks volumes about the, the atmosphere and how people really feel about Roberto Clemente. Yeah. And he's such a remarkable player. You know, I don't think that really looking at the stats kind of gets it across and maybe that's, maybe that's part of it. You know, Jackie Robinson stats kind of leap off the page a little bit more in terms of on-the-field performance. But there's something about Clemente that goes beyond on-the-field performance that, of course, he died in the midst of giving back. And so what you have, I think, in Clemente is a player that's bigger than his production on the field.

Obviously, his legacy to Latin players is there. But also, just in terms of what kind of a player he was, it's really interesting. I think he's something like if Mike Trout played the game like Fernando Tatis and also spent every off day at a food bank. You know, like... It's an amazing person, right? That was great. As one person, either one of those things would be amazing,

but to be both of those things is just unimaginable. Maybe Mike Trout is giving him too much credit because he never had a 10-win season or blah, blah, blah. Maybe it's more like if Starling Marte played like Fernando Tatis and was at the food bank every day. That's still kind of an amazing player in person. And, you know, I agree. I think that, you know, one thing that is a little bit weird to me is how they sort of automatically, every team gets a nominee. I wonder if every team deserves a nominee.

Is that a question worth asking? I don't know. Sometimes it seems like, or maybe it's just me personally, I kind of am like, okay, yeah, these are the nominees again. Maybe I'll do the tweet. And it just becomes kind of rote. And it might be a little bit more special if there were five nominees across baseball. And the bar for entry was a little bit higher.

But as you say, I do think that the players really value it as it is. And every team's nominee gets a chance. And that's another thing. By doing it by every team, every team gets a chance. Every player that gets nominated gets a chance to highlight what he's doing. Even if it's just one Zoom call or one press conference or one or two questions once he's been nominated, he gets to highlight the charities he works with. He gets to highlight the work that people are doing around him, and he gets to shine the spotlight in a place where he doesn't normally do it. So I think that's a valuable part of the exercise. I think it's cool that every team has a nominee in this case, because we're talking about good works. I think it encourages everybody to try and find something

they're passionate about and to pursue something off the field. Like for the Brewers this year, Brent Suter was their nominee. And Suter's focus is largely on environmental matters. So I think it was spring training last year. He was worried about just cutting out plastic bottle waste around the clubhouse, which you guys know, there's so much clubhouse waste every single day. It's off the charts. And he was working with the Brewers. He was working with SC Johnson, which is a Wisconsin-based massive company, to try and work on local river cleanups and all these other initiatives.

And I think he was an environmental studies major at Harvard, if I'm not mistaken. So that's where the interest originally comes from. But it's cool to see the wide variety of different things that players are interested in, the different ways that they all try to make an impact because suitors is really pretty unique. Yeah. I always feel bad too for like the people who go against nelson cruz every year like the teammates because that guy wins humanitarian awards all the time he is just constantly like building like fire departments for where he used to live in the dominican um it just seems like like you said there's just such a wide variety but also like

you're not competing with that if you're on the twins uh you know, so it does seem like when I was with the Orioles and kind of same thing with the Nats, they have Sean Doolittle. It seems like every year it's the same couple guys. It would be nice if there was a way to kind of open it up a little bit. It was always either Nick Markakis or Adam Jones with the Orioles. And then, you know, with the Nats, it seems to be Sean Doolittle a lot. He does terrific things. He should be recognized for that.

I just wish that maybe there was a little bit of a better opportunity for some of these other guys to, you know, kind of say, you know, maybe I should do something. Maybe I should start something. I don't know. I don't know how that happens. I'm kind of getting off topic here a little bit, but I would like to see some of these guys, I guess, like step up. Some of these young guys start to realize their own power, their own platform, which we are seeing. But hopefully in a year like this, it kind of magnifies that maybe a little bit more. Yeah. No shortage of opportunities in a year like this. I mean, certainly with social justice really being front and center in a lot of people's minds and then, of course, being in a pandemic, opportunities to help those in need are really around every corner. So I think it's a great

opportunity for people to give a lot back. But it kind of segues into this other situation that occurred on Thursday. And I don't even want to mention the jerk by name because I think this person thrives on getting attention, right? It's the whole point of what this person does. But the story is that Dak Prescott, the Cowboys quarterback, which is a little strange for us to talk about football on a baseball show, but stick with it. It'll be worth the payoff. Dak Prescott opened up about feeling depression after the suicide of his brother in an interview and was taken down, criticized for that, which is just outlandish, totally outlandish. Scott Van Pelt summed this up really well on the Evening Sports Center last night. We haven't had access to players like this before. Players open

up more than ever before. They're more comfortable opening up. And when players open up about something as important as depression and any mental health related issue, being supported is important because everybody with those issues needs to be supported. But I think it opens up so much in terms of a dialogue and it erases the stigma associated with those conditions. You know,

I think we've, we've made a lot of progress because the reaction to, I'll finally say his name, Skip Bayless's moronic comments were overwhelmingly just dragging Skip and saying he's an idiot. Because he is. There's no way around that. That, to me, felt like a good marker of progress compared to how Twitter might have reacted even 10 years ago if he'd made the exact same comments. So as you think about what you can do with a platform and how you can help other people, it doesn't always have to be something with the environment or something with money. Sometimes it's just talking about an issue and helping people realize you're not alone. You're not

the only person suffering with this pain and carrying this weight with you every single day. Yeah, and one of the things that it perpetuates, there is a stigma about, I think, showing weakness in this manner or showing perceived weakness. I don't think it is necessarily a weakness. Sometimes it's chemical. Sometimes it's just the pressure put upon you by, you know, 2020.

You know, like, I feel like everyone should understand depression a little better after this year. Is that there is, there is, there's a stigma that's's real and I see it in people around me in my life against admitting that you need help and specifically either going and talking to somebody or or getting some sort of you know sort of chemical intervention for for something that might be going on there you know i don't know what it is but it's it's old and it's real and it's and it's there and this sort of thing just helps it grow or helps it stay alive when it's something that needs to go away because you know the most important thing when you are feeling down is to feel that you can reach out to someone and

talk to someone. And if you are around people that denigrate that ability or, or, or see it as weakness, then you might internalize that struggle and you might not ever let it out. And it'll only get worse. Um, and, uh, you know, the fires in the and the the covid together got to me and um you know i called my mom crying and um you know it it was good you know by the end of it we were laughing again and that's something that I would just want to pass on because Dak Prescott, his brother, just... Reach out. Don't feel like you need to do this yourself.

Don't feel like this is something you soldier through. If you're not feeling right in the head, if you're not feeling right emotionally the head, like if you're not feeling right emotionally, like other people can help you. There are people that you can pay to help you. It's okay. It's the right thing to do. Yeah, I mean, thanks for sharing that.

You know, I think everyone has had, to some varying degree, some kind of terrible moment this year, just with everything that people are dealing with. And to me, what Dak did was important, I think, for two reasons. One, he's the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys. He's arguably the most prominent sports athlete there is, right? The Cowboys build themselves as America's team. The quarterback, as we all know, is the leader of the team,

the vocal, the guy. And so I think for him to say that was really important because people, I mean, not us quite as much because we're around athletes a lot, but I think people make the mistake of thinking that pro athletes somehow don't have the same problems that we do. When in reality, a lot of the times they have more problems than we do so i think that was really really important for people to realize that hey this guy is quarterback of the dallas cowboys and has the the courage to say he's struggling he's not right so it's okay for other people to not be all right and we have the tendency to put these pro athletes on a pedestal and to kind of put them in a box and say,

they should be this. And I thought it was awesome for him to come out there and say, you know, a real leader doesn't keep this inside a real leader. Doesn't pretend he's okay. Uh, we do have to still to some degree, um,

really tear down those like ultra macho, um, old school kind of thoughts in sports. We really do have to get past that. And every time you hear someone like that come forward, someone like Michael Phelps talk about his struggles. You know, a lot of guys, the NBA, Kevin Durant, have been really vocal about this as well. The more we can normalize it, the more we can help people, the more we can save people, the more this becomes an accepted part of our culture.

Yeah, and I think the leadership aspect is really important to me because as a father, I think about leadership all the time. And I think about how to create values of leadership in my children. We actually talk with the older child a little bit more than the younger child is just turning six. But we talk about what a leader is. And even just walking the dogs to school today, there's something about leadership that comes up in how you deal with the dogs and what you're doing. And what I teach them is that true leadership is listening. And true leadership is empathy. I cannot think of a better way to be a true leader than what Dak Prescott did.

You know what I mean? Skip's comments are so nonsensical to me because it's like Skip must have some opposite idea of what a true leader is. To me, a true leader is someone who says, I feel your pain. I understand your pain. I understand your pain. I share your pain. I've had this pain. These are the problems I have that are like yours. That's a true leader. That's someone I want to be like, hey, wow, okay, this is someone who understands me. This is someone who's on my level. This is someone who has dealt with these issues and knows how to maybe go forward. A true leader is not one that just ignores the problem and says,

this isn't a problem and buck up and just put some dirt on it. Come on. Yeah, I think it is hard to ask for help. I'm one of those people who thinks if I'm not doing well with something, the only way to get better is to work harder at it, right? Look inward, do some self-reflection. And sometimes you're not going to lift yourself out of it. You just can't. I've struggled at times because my wife deals with a chronic pain condition. And aside from watching her suffer on a daily basis, not being able to fix that,

I carry the extra burden of trying to keep things together around the household while doing my job as well as I can. It's heavy. There's some days where I'm exhausted at the end of the day and I got nothing left. Nothing left to write, nothing left to say. And I do feel really alone. And I think part of getting over that is just saying, hey, look, other people have these problems too. This is not unique to you. You can reach out. There are people that will help you. There are always people willing to listen. And I realize I'm a sports podcast host, so I'm not always the best sounding board. But if anyone out there is struggling and needs someone to talk to, hit me up. I'm always willing to listen. If nothing else, I can help you feel like

you're not the only one feeling that way because I can assure you there are plenty of times where I feel overwhelmed. I feel those dark clouds. I just want to point out to a couple of our colleagues. I know Lindsay Adler had a really great piece where she opened up about her depression that went up on The Athletic late Thursday night. I highly recommend you check that out, regardless of whether you yourself have dealt with depression or you know someone who has. I think just about everybody listening to this either has experienced it themselves or knows someone who's been in this situation before. And I think we should also point out September is National Suicide Prevention and Awareness Month. This is actually National Suicide Prevention Week. So if you do know someone who is dealing with mental health issues, you can reach out to the Suicide Prevention Hotline. That's 1-800-273-8255. 1-800-273-8255. That lifeline provides 24-7 free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you or your loved ones, and best practices for professionals.

So if you need help, don't hesitate to get it. It will change your life in ways that you really can't imagine. On that note, I will say I use baseball to cope a lot. If I'm down, baseball is one of my coping mechanisms for sure. I flip on a game. I zone out. I watch teams I root for. I watch teams I don't.

I look at how my fantasy teams are doing. It's certainly one of those things that most of the time helps. Sometimes because it's part of my job, it's an extra rock in the backpack, so to speak, where it weighs me down. But I have found that in the pandemic, in this difficult year, watching baseball has helped me feel normal. Even having a Thursday night football game on, I like baseball more than football. I've said that a million times. It felt normal as hell to see football on TV. It was probably the most normal thing I've seen in about six months. Baseball coming back, opening day wasn't normal. That was

almost a normal opening night outside of the limited capacity at Arrowhead Stadium. But did you guys feel that sense of normalcy with the start of the NFL season, even though training camp and the preseason weren't normal at all? Yeah. Well, also, there were fans there. So you're right. Even though it was limited capacity, it made it feel a little normal. It wasn't totally contrived noise. Also, I don't know if you guys saw this.

Yesterday was the first time in history that there was baseball, football. There was the WNBA. there was the nhl there was tennis um i think one more but uh there were so many sports on yesterday it was such a nice escape and i agree with you i i i tend to do the same thing with baseball i've also really gotten into walking and listening to baseball on the radio um there's something very calming about it uh one the walking is very relaxing and two just listening to baseball on the radio. There's something very calming about it. One, the walking is very relaxing. And two, just listening to baseball on the radio, I don't know, just kind of always reminds me of my dad.

He used to always listen to it on the radio. And it's just a really, really nice way to get out of your head for a little while, which I think we all need, especially with everything going on. So highly recommend that too. It's been weird for me. Football, I think I'm totally out.

You know, I think it is maybe a little bit what Britt said, like with everything going on at the same time, I've had to make decisions. And so I saw not a minute of that football game. Did not, you know, nothing of it came through other than the booing of the national moment of unity or whatever. And I think I might just move on from the sport full time for now because when faced with the decision between all the sports,

I watched a little bit of the basketball game until it was basically out of hand. And then it was back to baseball. So one thing that I have done that's kind of fun is I now have five screens in my office, six if you count the phone, which I can sometimes get a game on separately. And so I now have the ability to have like three or four games going uh at the same time which i i don't think i've ever really taken a taken advantage of before um so today through this afternoon um and uh and some of the days this week i'm just gonna have like four games going uh and just just really let it wash over me and inundate me with baseball.

So that does, even just talking about it, makes me smile a little bit more. So definitely baseball has helped my consciousness, and I feel like the national consciousness on some level. Yeah, I mean, I think the sprint season has been a lot of fun because you have so many teams that are in the mix who ordinarily wouldn't be. We've talked about teams on the rise. The Padres are probably our favorite team as it comes to Friday topics. But the AL Central, this is a huge series this weekend.

Cleveland on the road in Minnesota. Looking forward to watching that series this weekend. The White Sox are hosting the Tigers. And, man, the Tigers had a wild stretch. They gave up 19 runs to the Brewers on Wednesday. They got blasted in Game 1 of a doubleheader by the Cardinals on Thursday and then came back to win Game 2, which in terms of emotional highs and lows for a team that surprisingly is hanging on and at least long shot sort of playoff contenders is a pretty nice sort of turnaround for them. is a pretty nice sort of turnaround for them. But I've found that listening to games, as Britt said, is actually more realistic.

It's more similar to a normal season than watching the games on TV because you're not seeing foul balls fly into empty seats or smash into cardboard cutouts. The crowd noise being piped in on the radio actually is very normal. If you listen to your games on am radio at all you hear that familiar almost kind of like low staticky sound like something about that even though it's distortion and like annoying it is normal it is it is like this real sound that you expect to be there and you can lose yourself in the game a lot more easily you can kind of daydream while listening and taking a walk or playing fetch with the dog and really lose yourself in those moments. But as you guys look at this AL

Central race, we're talking about a situation now where the White Sox enter the weekend 27 and 16. So they're two, they've got two in hand still to play over Minnesota. They've got a one game lead over the Twins at 27 and 18. And then you've got Cleveland at 26-18, so they're a game and a half back of the White Sox. It's safe at this point to say, barring a collapse, that all three of these teams make the playoffs because whoever isn't top two probably gets a wild

card. There's enough of a gap in the AL. That's pretty much safe at this point. Who do you like most out of these three teams? Who do you actually think is best suited for an october run we'll go to you first you know the weird thing is that home field advantage may be meaningless you know given the fact that they seem to be coalescing around this bubble idea and if home field advantage is meaningless then then the American League down the stretch is mostly meaningless.

I mean, like, really? Like, everyone's in. Who's, like, the only person, like, the only team that's, like, maybe in or maybe not is, I don't know, like, the Astros versus the Orioles. And that seems like it's pretty easily you'd put the money on the Astros. Hey, I'm rooting for the Orioles, and that seems like it's pretty easily you'd put the money on the Astros. Hey, I'm rooting for the Orioles, you know. I don't think the Angels are dead yet, by the way. They're 18-27. They're only a few back.

With five back of the wild card, if you said, who's one team that looks really bad on paper record-wise that could find a way in, I think they could get hot enough to actually make it. Except they shouldn't be that bad. One other team has... You name their top four or five players and they could compete with anyone.

Then they just kind of drop off a cliff. I think they don't put enough attention on player development. I've heard that from inside the organization. Obviously, their moves in terms of furloughing the entire player development staff and most of their scouts seems to point to the fact that they don't really care about player development like other teams do or they don't do it the same way. And that shows up in depth.

I mean, as bad as the Astros have been and how many injuries they've had or as bad as the injury problem and the raise has been, look at them. They're 28-16. They have the second best record in baseball, and they've done it with the second most injuries of the pitching staff. How do they do it? They just keep cranking out guys where they pitch design them and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They have like a million arms that they can bring up or trade for and make better. So the Angels just don't have that ability and they have the best players in baseball, but the depth behind them has never been there. And they keep trying to just keep acquiring, keep acquiring to get to the point where they have some depth,

but it just hasn't worked yet. You know, the one thing that took back to your original question about the central, I would say that the one thing that matters more in the playoffs than the regular season, you get away from that depth. So in some, in some ways,

I think the Indians having like a policelesak and Savali in the back end of that rotation matters less when you get to the postseason, because then they just turn into long relievers or something, like your fourth and fifth starters, you may never use them. and fifth starters, you may never use them. And so I think in some ways the White Sox get a little bit of a bump when they get to the postseason because someone like Giolito could put the entire team on his shoulders from a starting pitching standpoint. And some of their weaknesses at the back end of the rotation and the back end of the bullpen become less important. And I don't think the twins necessarily, you know, I love Berrios. Is Berrios equal to Giolito? You know, does having Maeda and some of their other pitching pitchers matter in a short series as much.

I think the White Sox actually gain a little bit once you get to the postseason. Interesting. See, I don't know how I feel about the White Sox. Dallas Keuchel needs to keep up whatever magic he has found recently. I think he's important. Cleveland, to me, obviously has a good pitching staff, but they can't score runs. So I could very easily see them kind of exiting early from the postseason

because you give your offense, like you said, pitching is so important in the playoffs. They're going to face the best pitching. They already are having trouble generating runs. I just see a very fine, fine, razor-thin line of error. The Twins are probably the most well-rounded team, I would say, in the Central, right? I mean, you've got a pitching staff that has a lot of strikeouts, and

you've got a team that hits a lot of home runs. And we can say what we will about, is the pitching diluted? Is the ball juiced? Is it a combination of everything? But it doesn't seem like the home runs are going to go away, especially in the postseason. Unless they get a random ball. The random

ball generator. That's true true wasn't it last year that they changed the ball again for the postseason they kind of deadened it and the most recent research from rob arthur is that the ball to ball variation this year uh is bigger than it's been in the last five years so uh there is a little bit of a slot machine effect when it comes to which ball you're going to get in the postseason just crazy um what's weird guys is that the central is the only division according to fan graphs where three of the top five teams uh in terms of percentages in the al to win the world series which um is crazy just speaks to i guess how how deep that entire rotation i mean that entire uh division is but

minnesota 7.8 percent um then you you've got Cleveland in third at 6%. Chicago tied with Tampa Bay, 5.7%. Like you said, Derek, they're all locks pretty much to make the postseason. But those are some pretty impressive World Series odds, too. When you look at how deep this division is, whoever kind of is still left standing might have a fairly easy path to the World Series, dare I say it? Here's what I think is unique, too, about this season. If you're a team like the White Sox, and this applies to the Padres and the NL side, too, I don't think the recent

playoff experience matters quite as much because of the absence of home field advantage, right? If we're in a bubble scenario or playing in empty stadiums, those are not ruckus road environments, right? That's not a – those situations, I think, are less likely to overwhelm you, right? So I think a team like the White Sox, they're playing with house money. They can play free and easy. Like Cleveland, there's a lot of pressure internally, I think, because in that clubhouse, they have to know that the time with Francisco Lindor in that room, on that team, on that roster,

those days might be numbered. Those days could be over at the end of the season. That's entirely possible, especially if you think about how ownership groups might be clinging on to cash and trying to save payroll in 2021. So I do look at that Cleveland team and I say, the offense is good enough to wake up. To me, there's a little bit of a sleeping giant sort of thing that could happen there. At least they could get up to the point where they're a league average offense

and you pair that with elite pitching, that's absolutely good enough to win it. But I think they carry probably as much pressure as any of these three teams coming out of the AL Central. I think that's a really great point. And I think it's a secret, a thing that secretly works against the small market teams. As much as they try to shuffle the roster and, you know,

like the Rays, like always just focus on the next two years and then trade the guy. Like you trade for Tommy Pham one year and then trade Tommy Pham the next year. You know what I mean? Like the way that the A's, the Rays, and the Indians have to work, trading away Mike Clevenger in a year where you're in it.

You know, just the amount of movement it takes to be a small market team and compete, I think creates stress internally, like you're talking about. And it creates a feeling of like, am I going to be here next year? Am I going to be here if we lose? Yeah. You know, am I going to, is this team ever going to reward any one of our players? I think, you know, the A's almost paid Chris Davis just to be like, yeah, we'll reward guys sometimes, you know, because otherwise the number one feeling I feel in the A's clubhouse near the end of the year is, well, this is the last chance we get to do this together. You know, like just think about like, there's a zero chance that Marcus Simeon comes back to the A's.

And even, you know, Matt Chapman refuses to sign like an extension because he just knows, you know, he works with Scott Boris and he also just knows how the A's work and that any given year they'll be really bad. And then maybe two years later, they'll be good again, but they'll have traded him away. You know, so they'll just, if they sign into an extension, they just use that as leverage in a trade. So I just think it is an unfortunate little piece that works against small market teams as much as the money itself works against small market teams. Yeah. No, it's an interesting dynamic. Well, it is kind of fun, though.

I don't know how you guys feel. We talked about the AL and the wild card there. But the NL, the Marlins right now, I think, would make the postseason. Are you buying them? Are you buying the Rockies, the Mets? Who emerges from there, right? Look at the Mets. It's wide open, really.

The Mets are better than those teams, but they're the Mets. They've got a lot of injuries with the rotation, too. The pitching, go past DeGrom, and I guess Seth Lugo has obviously pitched really well too. So they got some back-end problems. They have some bullpen issues. They could still get there. They could just hit their way there.

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Chris Bryant is struggling, you know, Javi Baez is struggling. Even Anthony Rizzo is not playing to his, like, it's almost remarkable that they are 26 and 19. Yeah. I don't think they're,

you know, even the Braves, as much as the Braves are a juggernaut offensively, like they didn't fix any of their pitching problems. And, you know, they, like they could't fix any of their pitching problems. And, you know, they like they could literally go into St. Louis again and not score runs again. Yep. You know, they run into a pitcher to Jack Flaherty, you know, even Dakota Hudson can be tough on a given night. And if they don't score the runs, you know, they didn't they don't really

have a better pitcher than Mike Fulton Avich now i mean maybe current mike faulty navage but they don't have a better pitcher than last year's mike faulty navage right now uh behind uh behind their ace so you know maybe cole hamels coming back will be a big deal um i think ozzy albies said he looked really good um but you know as much as they scored 29 runs there's still questions about them and i think that there's only one team in the national league where you maybe two where you say okay these guys are the favorites yeah i agree and it can't be the phillies right because they're a train wreck they keep fixing the bullpen and it's never good i can't believe they're above 500 actually i just looked and i was like what they're above 500 you guys zach wheeler hurt himself putting his pants on you guys heard about this, right? He broke

his nail, so now he's not pitching for a few days. I mean, Joe Girardi... Are they catching LOL Mets? Yeah, it's contagious. You just cannot make this stuff up. And they blew the game last night to the Marlins. And you kind of have to wonder, I know everyone's kind of got a mulligan this year, but how

much longer do they give Matt Klintak there? You know, they've already made a managerial change. You only get so many managerial changes before the problem becomes you. And, you know, I covered Matt Klintak in Baltimore. He was one of Andy McPhail's lieutenants. I think he's made some good moves. But how much longer are Phillies fans going to put up with a subpar product? And the owner, after they've spent $330 million on one player

and have then spent another, at least Harper and Wheeler are playing well. If those two were playing poorly, I think he would have one foot out the door. I mean, if I ran the Phillies, I think I would look at the pitching program. As exciting as Spencer Howard is, he hasn't really turned out to be as good as maybe we thought he was. And the pitching program seems to have a hard time turning. Like the bullpen being bad is something that I would say is a pitching program problem. Because like I said about the Angels, if you have a good pitching program, you should be turning out good pitchers.

Look at the Reds. They haven't even had the pitching program in place very long, you know, the good pitching program you should be turning out good pitchers look at the Reds, they haven't even had the pitching program in place very long the new pitching program and they turned out to Jay Antone and Tyler Molle this year and turned Lucas Sims into a dominant reliever so that's the kind of stuff

that you should be finding pitchers in your pocket every year, you know what I mean? and I think the Phillies maybe the park is part of that but phillies are having maybe the park is part of that but the phillies are having a hard time with that one yeah and like you can have a bad bullpen right from year to year and supplement it but this has been like two three years now and they've added a they've cycled through a big volume so you're right the fact that they don't try to spend money on it they try to trade for it they don't have one or two guys

to plug in from within. And they do have some really exciting younger position player prospects. Who's that third base kid? Baum? Yeah, he's raking. He's legit. He looks terrific. So they do have some hope. And you mentioned Harper playing well. Their starting

pitching's been okay for the most part. Nola's had some really encouraging outings for them as of late. But you can't win in the playoffs without a bullpen. You can't even do what the Nats did last year and use the same two arms because they don't really even have two arms that are locked down. Yeah, if you had stress,

if you had a legendary rotation like the Nats did last year, maybe you can do it. But most of the time, and I guess the Red Sox, when they they won they didn't have a great bullpen and like evalde and a couple of their starters you know supplemented the bullpen um but um most of the time yeah you need a good bullpen that's why you look at teams like the yankees and dodgers the the perennial the astros the perennial teams they they always pay attention to their bullpen. They always put resources in their bullpen. They always try to make sure their bullpen is really good.

And you know, I don't know. Are we going to do a crazy stat? I got one because it seems relevant right now. We need like a music drop. Crazy stats. I'm going crazy. This is why I love doing this show. I don't have to produce anything.

You just do the sound effects and they're there. We need like a, like one of those like, oh, the whistle. What's the, I don't know. How do you make a crazy sound? We need like the anvil to drop after you announce your stat or something. Oh, bang. Anvil, Mario. That's like a Super Mario from SNES end of world sound that Eno made.

I don't know what you call that thing. I'm sure you can get it on Amazon. I'm sure you can get it on Amazon, Derek. Get on it. Yeah, I got a list of things to look for. So my crazy stat is that the Dodgers right now are outscoring their opponents by 2.17 runs per game. are outscoring their opponents by 2.17 runs per game. And that would be the third best runs per game differential in the history of baseball behind the 1939 Yankees and the 1927 Yankees.

Those are teams led by Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio. Those are legendary teams. When I did the best teams of all time, they were the two finalists. So, yes, they still have to go all the way. But I kind of love the move of putting Mookie Betts at second, just creating more versatility on a team, especially with a DH. Now you can play some of those guys like Mats Muncy at DH. And the team that has Cody Bellinger struggling, you can play some of those guys like Mats Muncy at DH.

The team that has Cody Bellinger struggling, Jock Peterson struggling, and traded away pitching depth looks like, I think, the best team in baseball right now. Yeah, they're certainly the favorite at this point. If we played a game, maybe we'll do this on next week's show, pick three or the field to win the World Series. The Dodgers would be in the three teams you'd pick every time. Even if you thought those two sides were even,

like the field of the other 13 playoff teams versus the three of your choice, all three of us, I think, would choose the Dodgers as one of the three teams. There'd be no doubt about that. How about you, Britt? How about a wild stat from you? Yeah. Now I'm thinking about what three teams I'd pick for the World Series, though. Dodgers.

I'd probably go Tampa Bay. Ooh, there you go. You got to pick one A's team. Yeah, and I'd go Padres. So you go Dodgers, Padres, Rays would be your choices. I was thinking maybe Dodgers, Padres, A's. Definitely, it is funny that the American League has solidified quicker, but also the playoff teams are a little bit better, I think,

than the National League. So I think you would want to take two National League teams because you feel like there might be one or two sub-500 teams that make it in the NL. So you kind of want to take an NL team because they might just get lucky and like, get to play, you know, a sub 500 team and then a 500 team before they get to the World Series, you know? Yeah, agreed. So here's my stat. Obviously, that 29 run game with the Braves was just like full of random shit, right? Like random, like, how did that even happen?

Kind of stuff. But the Braves were the first team since the 1945 Cubs to have three different guys score five runs in a game. But what's crazy guys is that who those guys were wasn't like the, really the middle of the order necessarily. It was Dan B. Swanson, Austin Riley, Adam Duvall hitting in the five,

six, seven holes. No team since 1900 has ever had those three hitters that low in the order score at least five times in the same game. So got that and get most of my stuff from the great Jason Stark and his useless stats column. But really, you look at that game, and I don't know about you guys, I think they had scored double dits real early,

and I went to the game just to watch, and I was like, I figured all the scoring was over. It was kind of going to be like a kind of a boring game from there on out. Take all the starters out. Exactly. Could not be more wrong. Also, if you're the Marlins, you score, what is it, nine runs? You feel pretty good about your chances to win a game.

Yeah, kind of epitomizes the Braves' flaw as a team right now, though, right? It was Tommy Malone, I think, who started that game for them and didn't end up mattering. But yeah, I saw that game in the fifth inning on the MLB app, and it was 22-8 in the fifth. And I was like, wow, that's weird. 30 minutes later, I start recording a show, and I open it up again in the seventh. It's 29-8. I'm like, are they going to get to 30? This is insane. No, but that's a great stat, though. I looked at that box score. I was like, this seems like a lot to 30? This is insane. No, that's a great stat. I looked at that box score. I was like, this seems like a lot of fives in the runs column. You just don't normally see that for multiple players low in the order.

So that's a great poll. Yeah, I definitely zeroed in on Duvall because, like, you know, he was how I see Austin Riley's career going a little bit. You know, all pop, not much much defense not much patience um up and down career but there he is three homers six rbi five runs scored just a monster day and at the bottom of the of the lineup so that's it's a lineup that basically has no holes i guess if duvall's gonna hit like that right it's just weird like you would have bet money if i told you three guys hit five that you would have said akuna or Albies or Freeman, right?

Like, none of those guys? None? Very strange to get that from the bottom half of the lineup. My crazy stat of the week, Adalberto Modesty and Trevor Story, they have 13 stolen bases each. That's more than the Cardinals, the Pirates, and the Twins each have as a team so far this season. Now, the Cardinals, maybe it's a little unfair

because they got some games to make up and they played some shorter games, but the Twins, they're not built to run. Byron Buxton runs and that's pretty much it on that team and he's even missed some time. What are you doing, Pirates? You have nothing to lose. You should be the most aggressive team in the league

on the base pass. That was the part that got me scratching my head. I'm like, when you're a bad team, everyone gets a green light. Everybody. Everybody can run all the time i'm not going to get mad run run run try to make something happen oh but you're not thinking like a like a front office executive in the beginning of the rebuild we have to have organizational philosophies and we have to instill them in all of our players and they need to know that this is how we think and you know so we aren't we aren't going to take chances like that because they get injured and they're not worth much unless you have an 80 success rate and so we need to start doing

that now so that when we're good which gm is that yeah which executive are you is that is that kind of familiar because i want to ask brit about this as soon as it happened joe west called security this was i think last weekend now but as soon as it happened i put it into our rundown for this week joe west called security to get mike rizzo thrown out of a game rizzo was on the second deck i think in or near a suite and they stopped the game to do this so brit what did mike rizzo say do we know like what exactly he said that actually got him kicked out now you could say something from anywhere in the stadium and people on the field can hear it in an empty stadium like that's that's legit it's gonna echo it's gonna they're gonna hear it two or three times strassburg got kicked out of the game

for something he said right they've had anabel sanchez got kicked out in the stands once this year like they've really like kind of i don't know i mean i don't know who's keeping that stat but i think they've got a rank up there um yeah so mike rizzo was yelling at joe west um you know tough to envision that scenario right somebody angry at joe west uh behind the plate and he was further up maybe even like third deck, depending on what you count that first level as right in a suite by himself. Joe West said that he got kicked out for not following the rules,

AKA not wearing a mask. So you take a guy who is yelling, not near anybody and you go make security, get close to him. I don't really understand any of the logic there at all. If you think about it, you take a guy who is socially distanced, make sure people come near him to kick

him out of the ballpark. It just seemed like, again, hard to envision, guys. Joe West was just trying to make a scene. Again, for a guy, an umpire who has a history of making scenes, it just seemed so ridiculous and also so 2020. Everyone is yelling at umpires all day long.

Why Mike Rizzo? Same thing with Strasburg and Sanchez earlier this season. Are we now at a point, guys, where you can no longer yell at umpires? I don't really know. I will say this. I don't feel like as a society we respect officials very well. Having coached high school soccer for 11 years and having myself as a younger, let's say less seasoned coach, maybe I've been a little too verbally chippy with the linesmen. I've learned a little.

We need to be better about this, generally speaking. At that level, the rules are a bit different though. Yelling at the officials at your kid's game, bad. Not really ever an excuse for that. Yelling at the officials at the top level when they miss a call, maybe a little more excusable because that's the job. It's a high pressure environment and it's a very important job. But I think we are getting to that point because you can't come out of the dugout unless you have the mask on. And maybe those dynamics are changing a little bit. And maybe that is for the better if the chirping is from the dugout.

We're not stopping the game for stuff like that. I mean, those arguments, they get the fans riled up, but they don't really solve anything. Usually it's an ejection. I don't think it fires a team up to see the skip get tossed. I don't think that really changes a whole lot. Before we sign off, I should point out we have a special offer right now at theathletic.com

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TheAthletic.com slash Rates and Barrels. As always, you can email us, RatesandBarrels at TheAthletic.com if you'd like to reach us that way. On Twitter, she is at Britt underscore Giroli. I'm at Derek Van Ryper. He is at Eno Saris. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. Have a great weekend.

We are back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening.