Rates & Barrels - Spring Injuries Are Piling Up, But Spring Eno is Back!

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

Eno and DVR discuss a weekend packed with spring injury news including Gerrit Cole facing a potential Tommy John surgery, George Kirby's delayed start to the 2025 season, and lingering questions about a timetable for Grayson Rodriguez to return from a triceps injury. Plus, they discuss a few changes for Tanner Bibee and Gavin Williams as Eno visits Guardians camp, before answering a few mailbag questions.  Rundown 2:20 Gerrit Cole: Tommy John Surgery Recommended 16:48 George Kirby: Won't Be Ready for Opening Day 21:42 Awaiting More Details About Grayson Rodriguez 25:50 Shohei Ohtani Slows Down Pitching Progression 30:47 Eno in Goodyear at Guardians Camp 41:02 Pete Crow-Armstrong's Power This Spring 46:32 Roster Building MLB Comps 53:35 In-Season Viewing Habits Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social Follow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.social e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Producer: Brian Smith Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It's the season to shop new styles, electronics, and definitely a holiday trip. And what if each time you made a purchase, you got a little something back? With Rakuten, you can. Earn cash back on just about anything you buy from over 750 stores. So if you're looking to buy a new phone, clothes, skin care, or a getaway, well, you can get cash back. So treat yourself, family, and friends and book that holiday trip now. Start getting cash back today by joining Rakuten.

It's free and easy to use and you can get cash back deposited into your PayPal account or sent to you as a check. It's the smartest way to shop, plain and simple. Start your shopping at rakuten.ca or get the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. I play wordle in Spelling Bee every single day. That's the first thing I do.

Play wordle while making coffee. I pour myself a cup and do the crossword, which is the jewel of my morning. What's our starting word today? I think it should be ocean. I have seen you do Spelling Bee during meetings. The New York Times crossword. It's a moment of zen that cleanses my brain. I wish the days were shorter and that the wordless were longer.

Join us and play all New York Times games at NYTimes.com slash games. Subscribe by March 10th. Derek VanRyper, EnoSaris here with you on this episode. We dig into the recent rash of injuries around the league, especially to pitchers. It's been a rough couple of days for rankings, for rotations. We'll dig into the implications of that. Eno is on location in Goodyear. If you're watching us on YouTube, you see the background, you see Eno, the spring training shades on. So we are in true March form on this pod. We're also going to do a few mailbag questions a bit later on in the show as

well. And as we have for the last few shows, we're going to start with a little bit of housekeeping, a reminder of our upcoming live shows at Bear Bottle Brewing Company in San Francisco on opening day, March 27th and the Friday after opening day, March 28th, 430 local start free admission. We'd love to see as many of you out there as possible for that because we had a special beer we collaborated with. Eno got to make it and we're excited about that. We're excited to get out there and have some live shows right around the festivities opening day. Oh, we've seen the merch. We've seen the merch. New logo. Exciting. It's a merch logo. We're going to keep the bats

for the podcast, but we've got a new merch logo that we're going to use. So we're excited about that. I think people are going to dig it and we'll have that merch on hand when we get to those live shows, unless there's some kind of like shipping error. I shouldn't promise anything because you can't trust shipping. Right. We're on time for it right now.

Oops. I'm always the guy who's like, this and this and this. And I'm like, oh, well, that didn't work out. Sorry. We're supposed to have it there. We'll see. We're supposed to have it there. We'll see. We're supposed to have merch. Well, we'll have merch of some sort.

So. Yeah, it might just be personal items that we've gathered that the backup merch. It's kind of like at First Pitch Arizona for years, Ron Chandler, he would be downsizing, getting ready for his retirement move to Florida. So he'd just bring stuff? Yearbooks of the team media guides

and various collectibles. It was always like a great prize table courtesy of Ron's basement. So that might be the merch if our merch doesn't show up on time, but hopefully our merch will show up on time. As for the news. It is not good.

It's not good. It was a bad week in news. Usually, you know, we were cruising along pretty good for the first week of spring training, I felt like we may have been a little bit under for how things normally progressed, but you get through that first and second turn through the rotation, elbows and shoulders and lats all start barking. And the big one is that Garrett Cole has been advised to undergo Tommy John surgery.

He's going to get a second opinion so we're in that part of the limbo right now but this is not great for the Yankees of course because it's tacked onto a significant injury for Luis Heal and it's pretty rare to get the TJ recommendation reported only to have them say no no we're going to do the PRP injection or it's going to be fine. So I don't, I don't think this ends particularly well. You know, if you are thinking about a draft right now, you're probably not even drafting Cole outside of the last couple of rounds in case you get some miracle good news, but this really looks like it's going to be a full year absence for Garrett Cole.

Yeah. I had a really depressing piece up on the site today about how far the Yankees rotation has fallen with this news. And I think your pencil in Cole for zero and heel for 75 or something, you know, it's that devastating. And when you do that, this rotation falls from something that was sixth. When pitchers and catchers reported, this was the sixth best rotation in baseball.

And now it might be bottom third. I mean, that's, that's the analysis I provided, but I do, you know, there's always a sliver of hope is always a, like a, like a, maybe something cool that can come out of disaster like this. And for me, that's Will Warren. Um, I'm excited to see what he can do with this rotation spot. When you look at stuff plus it said he had five viable major league pitches and the kind of starter Michael kin packet, Michael King package.

And that's what I chose to highlight as the piece of hope here is that, you know, he threw 130 innings last year. The ERA wasn't good at the major level, but the pieces looked okay, at least by the model. I do want to throw out there, um, that I read Keith's laws prospect piece about the Yankees and he had will Warren. I forget it was like 15th or something. And the, and the blurb is devastating.

He's like, it's so funny too. He's like, no matter what your model says, he's like, this is a, this is a middle, middle game reliever, no matter what your model says he's like this is a this is a middle middle game reliever No matter what the model says It was so good Keith I love you But I mean that does represent the bay the range of opinions about will Warren I'm still on the positive side, especially after I don't know if you saw that start He had a great start against Zach Wheeler where he out-dueled Zach Wheeler and the baby, baby Bronx, the baby pinstripes guys, Spencer Jones and Jason Dominguez both had big games.

And I don't know. I was like, this is the future. This is what, this is what they need to be. And we're going to finally maybe get some more information about the ongoing discussion we've had about how good Yankee player development actually is. I mean, this is going to be the year where they're going to have to turn to the kids. Cabrera at third, Will Warren in the rotation, Volpe every day, Jason every day. It's going to happen.

Spencer Jones may get a shot with the other bad news, the other elbow news in New York. What do you think is going to happen because of John Carlos Stanton's, uh, double possible double elbow surgery. I, yeah, that, I mean, I'm laughing because it's just like, it's just like, oh man, John Carlo, dude, what a career. I don't know how tennis elbow turn double tennis elbow turns into possible season ending elbows surgeries. And I'm not getting, I like, you, I'm not, I'm not actually laughing at John Carlos Stanton.

Oh my God. It's just. You can't make this script up of all of this stuff happening. It's really about the worst the news could be for them. Yeah. I think there's even DJ Lemahue news too. It's like, there's just nobody's, all the old guys just suddenly were like. Yeah.

They all broke at the same time. I think the Stanton situation, well, for one, in conjunction with the LeMahieu, it creates a scenario where Cabrera and Peraza might be in the lineup together a lot. Like that's among the first iterations. I wonder if it leaves the door open for Trent Grisham. Yes, I've seen some more mockups with Grisham starting in center and Bellinger to a corner. But I think they're going to want offense. I mean, there's enough, there's enough question around whether

or not Paul Goldschmidt, how much he has left. You're, you're, you're leaving, you know, at least third base open for somebody who's not proven offensively, you know? And with Stanley, you know, at least third base, um, open for, um, somebody who's not proven offensively, you know, and with Stanton gone at DH, now you've got two spots that may not have offense in them. So I think most days it's Jason Cody and judge in the outfield. Um, maybe we'll see more Ben Rice. Uh, but with the way Spencer Jones is playing, there's, there's at least an

out, like a small possibility that they'd rather, uh, go with that. Um, with his up offensive upside, but can we, can we build a bench real real quick? I mean, it's really hard because you can we, there's no Stanton, there's no, let's say Stanton LeMahie were out, right? So Paraza makes this team now for sure. Uh, wrong with Cabrera. Cabrera is the starting third baseman. Carazza is the backup shortstop, backup middle infielder.

So you got Paraza and Jackson. Uh, Grisham, we didn't have starting. So that's three. We don't have a starting DH and we don't have a backup DH. We don't, we have two spots left. And so it could be Ben Rice and Erisyn Pereira, Ben Rice and. Anthony Rizzo, like, you know, signing somebody, uh, seems like maybe Ben Rice and Oswald Peraza make the team with this news.

Yeah. I just started to think maybe a reunion with Rizzo makes some sense because you add a guy that's a lefty that can DH, mix and match with Goldschmidt, gives you a little bit more insurance if Goldschmidt is washed. I don't think Goldschmidt's completely done. I think even his step down last year would be acceptable if he repeated that over a full season.

You could live with that. The hole is still third base like we talked about I think last week. But as far as how the bench goes, yeah, I think Jackson Peraza, Grisham, and Everson Pereira. And Pereira is kind of a post-hype sleeper for really deep leagues, right? The question is going to be the approach. Is there too much swing and miss for him to stick as more than a small side platoon player? But I don't know, man. When you look at the quality of contact Everson Pereira has made in the brief time he's been with the Yankees, that was in 2023,

and what he's done at AAA where we have some hard hit numbers, it might actually be enough damage to get by. So if you said they're not signing Rizzo, they're doing this with internal options, the Ben Rice-Everson-Pereira duo playing more in some kind of tandem, maybe that actually leaves Perera as a bit of a sleeper that comes in and claims more playing time than expected. It might not happen right away,

but he's at least an interesting guy to give some playing time to. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think that's the way I'd, because right now, Brenton Rice is projecting to be, you know, 5% or more above league average with the bat. And I know that's just projections and it's theory at this point and hasn't been really been demonstrated, but I think that's something that they would look

at as like, okay, we want the offensive option per rara can play more in the outfield. So that gives them a sort of fourth outfielder that can be a DH. The other options are less exciting offensively in sort of Horbjort, Vivas. Yeah, I like Vivas. And Pablo Reyes. Um, so if they wanted a little bit more of somebody who could play infield, do you like either of those guys a little bit more?

I mean, Vivas is having a good spring at least, uh, seven plate appearances doesn't suggest they're giving them that much of a look though. least seven plate appearances doesn't suggest they're giving them that much of a look though. I think Vivas is more of a, uh, like a one burrito sort of profile, right? Where it's not a lot of hard contact, but he controls the zone really well. And, and maybe you're just looking for somebody that brings some speed to the table, can play a couple of infield spots. I, the thing I don't know about Vivas is if he plays any spot well, but if you have a floating DH spot, maybe you can get away with that.

So he's another interesting name. A lot of these guys are really like mono league type players. Initially, you don't really see an immediate mixed league impact sort of guy other than maybe Ben Rice because of the two catcher aspect of a 15 team league. But even then he's your third catcher, probably not your second catcher because we're not locking him into the full share of playing time. We're too far into the weeds here. These things don't matter for most people, but I would say, uh,

just looking at over Pablo Reyes is playing more he's 31. So he has no upside, but, um, they may just want his ability to play third. Um, to, you know, uh, to have some defensive ability there. I don't think they want to play jazz at third a lot with the elbow. So I think Pablo Reyes may make this team, you know, it's, it looks like right now, if they don't make any more signings, I think there's two out of the three of Rice, Pereira and Pablo

Reyes make the team. Going back to what you said before, the Will Warren and Keith, Keith Law telling you to, to basically take your model and throw it in the dumpster. Shut it. F your feelings and your model. That's a shirt that Keith would probably wear.

I think Will Warren is a little underrated right now because the numbers were so bad at AAA last year, but he was well over a strikeout per inning. He's had swing and miss stuff throughout his time in the Yankees system. He's a converted reliever out of college. And when you get to AAA and have a home run problem, you know, it's not PCL because they play Scranton-Wilkes-Barre's in the international league.

I still wonder how much of that is just the artifact of the league though. Like I think there is some. Having to come into a smaller zone or something. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like how much of that is an ABS thing where you're working differently and then you're

getting punished for it. Right. So I mean, we've seen other guys come through the system of various organizations, pitch well up to about AA, have the numbers go really sideways at AAA, come up and then pitch a lot better in the big leagues, get better results in the big leagues. Jared Jones's AAA numbers are just, you're like, what? I don't understand. Everything else is normal.

Yeah. So I think Will Warren is kind of like a fringy top 300 overall sort of pick. I think he's probably like a bench pitcher for a lot of people. I think in 12 team leagues, he may get scooped up eventually, probably more of an in-season ad or one of your last picks in that format. Yeah, you could, I mean, he could be one of those guys that like you, you like him or you like Soriano Jose Soriano, like one of any of these sleepers, you take one of them, you give them two or three turns of the rotation, maybe not

on your line in your lineup in a, in a shallower league. And if they're no good, you move on to the next flavor of the month. Do you put Marcus Stroman kind of in the, um, the Jameson tie on sort of bucket now that his job security has increased? Just a capable veteran. The one thing is though, that I was looking this up and, you know, you can't just like when you're, you're doing the depth chart thing, he's like, Oh, you know, call his heart, smooth, Strowman and give him 180.

He hasn't pitched 180 innings since tune about 2019. So he has become, he is the guy that does miss time, you know, so I would give him 140 innings. The problem is innings are like basically his best argument for value because it's not the strikeout rate. In fact, he's going to hurt you in strikeout rate and he's not projected to do help you in ERA and he's always had a bad whip because he's kind of a ground ball guy. So, um, 140 innings of a poor ERA and a poor whip at the poor strikeout rate is not, um, a great argument

for, I would take Tyon over him and I would take Warren over him. Cause I'd rather have the upside of Warren than. You know, like bad oatmeal. It's like that camping oatmeal that like instant oatmeal. You just put the water in. You're like, this is not really the good stuff.

Undercooked, chewy, a little tough. Yeah, yeah, you don't want that. I, there's going to be a, and I'm with you, I prefer Warren to Stroman. I think Stroman is draftable in 15s, but he's more like a streamer. He's not somebody you're going to throw out there every single start and feel good about it.

There is a related question to all these pitching injuries that we're going to talk about is, will this move Kyle Gibson or Lance Lynn onto a roster, or will this expedite a Sandy Alcantara trade? And I think trading Sandy Alcantara in the spring when he hasn't pitched outside of spring games yet coming off of TJ seems kind of unlikely. It's not like the Dylan Cease trade a year ago

where you're talking about a healthy guy that just is looking for a new team because his current one's rebuilding. It's that plus the rehab question. So there are options out there. I just don't know if Gibson or Lin really solve a problem for the Yankees. I think you already have guys that can do something similar, so you're probably waiting until you get

to that in-season trade point. And maybe the first 50 or 60 games actually dictates how aggressively they wanna pursue a big upgrade like Sandy when we get to the deadline. If things don't break well for this roster, they could be in trouble. My nightmare is that they actually put Warren and the miners and go with Carrasco. How do you convince Carlos Carrasco to pitch in AAA and, and offer you sort of emergency depth? That's what I'm saying.

It's like that if you want to keep Carlos Carrasco, you may need to start the season with him, but I do think is Gibson or Lynn much better than Carlos Carrasco, maybe a little bit better, but they're asking for more money. You know, Carrasco came in a minor league deal. So there's still like, you know, little bit better, but they're asking for more money. You know, Carrasco came in a minor league deal. So there's still like, you know, when you're, when you're trying to project warrants, like ER innings total, like I just put one 40 down, but that that feels too aggressive still because the games that people play with rosters and with young players, you know? And I think there's at least a what five, 10% chance that they give Carlos Carrasco the first shot at the rotation because they're going to lose them if they don't. Again, guys that probably won't make a big impact for us from a fantasy

perspective, but that's the situation the Yankees are looking at right now, where it's been a rough, rough spring for them in Tampa. It's the season to shop new styles, electronics, and definitely a holiday trip. And what if each time you made a purchase, you got a little something back? With Rakuten, you can earn cash back on just about anything you buy from over 750 stores. So if you're looking to buy a new phone,

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It's the smartest way to shop, plain and simple. Start your shopping at rakuten.ca or get the Rakuten app. How about this news? This one doesn't seem as bad, but George Kirby won't be ready for opening day. There are no structural concerns, according to Mariners GM Justin Hollander. The way Hollander described it, quote, this is more like a week to week thing than a day to day thing. We just want to make sure we're doing the right thing for the big picture of the whole season as opposed to worrying about opening day, end quote. So is this similar to you to what they did with Luis Castillo? I believe that was just last season,

slow play a little bit in April, came back and he was actually fine. I mean, is this more of that or is this a greater cause for concern? Yeah, I think there's actually something going on here that clouds the picture when it comes to injuries, because we're all on high alert because the number of injury placement days is up. Um, but, um, you know, there was an interesting thing that Mike Petriello was looking at where he was talking about, you know, number of, um, you know, there was an interesting thing that Mike Petriello was looking at where he was talking about, you know, number of, um, pitchers that, you know, through at least 50 innings

or something has actually been quite a steady, um, and that the big increase in the number of pitchers used has been of the sort of up and down variety, the, like, uh, the guys who get 20 innings or something in a season. And what that says to me is it's the 10 day I L stupid. It's the, we went to a 10 day I L. So now I think teams are using the 10 day I L more liberally to be out in front of injuries like this. So I'm talking in season stuff, but this, I think it relates to this is that I think that teams are being more cautious ahead of time and trying to promote

with their pitchers, a sense of tell us if you're feeling anything, it's better to miss two or three weeks now than to miss the season, you know? And so that's, that's what I see. You know, the, the, the common thread here is let's, let's shut this down a little bit now and see what's going on rather than, you know, let this turn into a problem where you miss the rest of the season. And shoulders in particular are the really the one you don't want to have surgery on. So with that in mind, George Kirby was your number 10 starting pitcher on your pitching rankings when those were first published.

Cole was 11th by the way. So we'll do some would you rather's. George Kirby versus Framber Valdez if you're drafting today for the upcoming season. I would take Framber. I still have Framber down for 174 innings. I had him 12 which may be a little bit ahead of the market but he's just a really solid guy and that used to be what Kirby is but now you can't say he's as solid. All right. George Kirby versus Blake Snell. I've got 150 innings for Kirby and 141 for Snell. Snell is going to outstrike out him in fewer innings. So, Snell. All right. How about this one? George Kirby versus Jacob deGrom if you're drafting today.

DeGrom is healthy now? All right. How about this one, George Kirby versus Jacob de Grom, if you're drafting today. Uh, De Grom is healthy now. I think it becomes harder. Maybe Max Fried, Hunter Brown. All right. So then you, you're glassing out over George Kirby right now. Yeah, I think, and I think maybe Fried. Yeah.

So I think, I think I've, I'm going to move him down to something like 17th or 18th. Maybe he'll take Grayson Rodriguez's spot, which that's a whole nother story. Oh yeah. In, in the meantime, by the way, for any time that George Kirby misses, it looks like Emerson Hancock will get the first opportunity to be the fifth starter for the Mariners to begin this season. But I think I agree with the rough adjustment here. I think what's complicated the rough adjustment here.

I think what's complicated about it is where Glassnow and Fried and Brown go relative to where Kirby was going, you might move Kirby down in the rankings below those guys, but you're not necessarily drafting the guys you like better than him now at the same price as Kirby before. There's going to be some late movement, of course, in the pitching market because now we're at the point where most of the leagues being drafted are typical leagues with in-season moves, we were in draft and hold season

for a while and that kind of pushes pitching down a little bit relatively speaking. So yeah, probably a five to seven spot tumble on the rankings for George Kirby based on this news, cause it's a couple of starts at least. And like what you're saying too, like people just rise in the rankings cause they're just stayed healthy, other people are dropping around them.

I mean, it's, it's why I'm going to have an update. Um, I'm hoping to do it next week. Travel makes it hard and all that. I'm doing other aspects of it. I've got working ranks. I'm moving guys up and down as we speak. And, uh, I moved Grayson Roger, he has down into the forties, I think. Cause he won't be ready for opening day either.

A Madison live show at the working draft brewery at some point, because we are whole lives are working drafts. It's just the perfect name for how, how we operate. So yeah, slight downgrade though, for Kirby for the time being. I think the greatest Rodriguez situation is slightly more ominous on a one to 10, how ominous is this injury new scale? This is more like a four. Cole's like a 10.

Kirby's like a two. I really don't like it. It really doesn't feel good when they're like, nothing's hurt. Well, maybe something's hurt. OK, he's going for an MRI. OK, it's torn. That's how it feels like we're going. I found a good story.

Andy Koska from the Baltimore Banner had a pretty good group of details about it. Had some quotes from Brandon Hyde and it's discomfort in the back of Grayson Rodriguez's right elbow, it's the triceps initially, it's okay, back of the elbow triceps, that checks out. Hyde said it's not a ligament issue. You will miss time into the regular season and

will seek multiple opinions before deciding on a treatment path. So yeah, maybe even a five on the ominous scale. Multiple opinions I do not like. It happens. I mean, it's a somewhat common thing for more serious injuries, but yeah, usually, usually multiple opinions, the imaging and you know, sometimes that stuff's inconclusive.

I'm trying to guess what they, with the, like, I guess if you say it's not a ligament issue, then they're saying is the tricep torn or not. Or could it be a nerve problem or something along those lines? Ah, yeah, okay. Those are always a little trickier to diagnose and going to set forth on your treatment path. So this leaves one of Albert Suarez or Cade Povich in the rotation for the Orioles to start the season. Do you have a favorite between those two? Yeah, I'm coming around on Povich. Load him for the Orioles to start the season. Do you have a favorite between those two? Yeah, I'm coming around on Povich.

Lodum for the win. You know, by the way, I didn't finish that analysis off. Emerson Hancock is not really, I don't think it's a Lodum situation for me. I don't think he's very, you know, somebody I want to bet on. But Povich, I do actually like a little bit. And the reason that I like Pvich is not i think.

The reason that was given to me is why you so good he is not really dominant he is not a stuff guy. I think he's developing a wider arsenal so let me see here what i have here for his arsenal scores. From baseball prospectus i have him. Um, let me see here what I have here for his arsenal scores, uh, from baseball prospectus, I have him, uh, in the 72nd percentile, you know, with six pitches. Um, so he's developing a, an ability to separate the movements on his pitches and separate, you know, and, and surprise people with different pitches. So it's a, it's a wide arsenal with, I think, better command than he had last year. That was, he was supposed to have command coming up.

So, um, you know, he has a four 18, uh, oopsie projection for ERA and a 21.6% strikeout rate, that's not terrible. I mean, that is definitely somebody who could pitch to like a three, six, three, seven ERA for three months, you know? So, um, I, I like Kate Povich. I have him right now in the 130s with 99 innings, but I don't know. I think he's probably gonna get more than 99 innings now.

So give him 121 innings and he probably moves into like the top 115, 110, something like that. And even if you didn't wanna change the innings projection right now, you're changing the timing of the innings projection right now, you're changing the timing of those innings, right? When you pre, you know, project 90, 100 for a guy like this, it's well, I don't know when they're

happening, so that's part of why he's buried. If they're front loaded, you're just ranking them for the first month of the season. Right. Is he in the opening day rotation or not? Yeah, totally. Yeah, because he could pitch well, someone else could get hurt.

All those scenarios are on the table as well. I liked Povic a little bit last year because he was pitching well at AAA. He was over a strikeout per inning. And as you said, control was pretty good. So I thought that was going to be a strength for him. I think, you know, year two should be better. And Albert Suarez is kind of interesting,

but there's still something missing in that mix. He's also a little older, having played overseas and come back. So I think Povic is the guy I prefer here. There's still something missing in that mix. He's also a little older, having played overseas and come back. So I think Povich is the guy I prefer here. I think of the new starters that are breaking through, Warren first, Povich second, Hancock third for me, Stroman probably ahead of Emerson Hancock, but they're both in that streaming bucket.

I think Emerson Hancock might be easier to stream because of his home park. So I think those are the initial thoughts I have on these new guys that are kind of in the mix for us. I got this update. This is from Fabian Ardaya. The Dodgers have slowed down on Shohei Otani's throwing progression. So he hasn't thrown a bullpen session since February 25th, but he hasn't stopped throwing completely. He's still playing catch and doing flat ground stuff. It really seems like the previous timetable of Otani

pitching in games in May is in question. The Dodgers won't really say as much. I think what I underestimated about Shohei Otani in this instance was just that because of the shoulder rehab, he was going to have to take longer to do everything. Like I didn't really factor that in. Like that was probably a mistake on my part all along, being too optimistic that because he usually

just does everything that he would plow through it. I think this is relatively like normal news, as much as you could have normal news for a two way player, you know, it's like, of course they're backing off him because he's already playing in spring games as a hitter. He had a tank in his first plate appearance of the spring and he's going to play in the series in Japan next week.

So the fact. When does he have time to pitch? Yeah. Then that's what they pointed out. Dave Roberts pointed out, I was like, with the game schedule ramping up, like we just figured it was better to back off a little bit. So I think he's still going to pitch this year.

I think it's more like June or July is probably where they're going to end up setting that timetable. And it's more maybe backloading those innings because, hey, once we get to the playoffs, we have innings in the tank for Rotani. That's probably a really good thing. If we use them all up in the first five months of the regular season when he starts pitching again, maybe he's running on fumes in October, and that's not the best thing either. It's a bummer if you pulled the DVR, draft him as a pitcher only, and leave these for his two players,

and you're sitting there with a guy on your non-IL bench that you have to wait for, but it's a very specific scenario. So I don't know, man, like, should we even be surprised that they had to back off in this case? And does this change your valuation of Otani overall? Like, do you feel like maybe he'll hit a lot less

than we previously expected as a result of pitching again? They've said that he'll hit a lot less than we previously expected as a result of pitching again? They've said that he'll hit less than he did last year, but how much less, right? And when will he hit, just hit less in the second half of the season when he's pitching, you know? Right.

The timing of that is interesting. I think also, what do you think the over under is on, on his innings? I just, I just moved him to, um, you know, uh, 92 innings. That almost seems aggressive given this news. It's the only 80 was probably about right. Cause they're going to, they're going to have extra days off for all their starters anyway, and if there's anything that's bothering him, like they have depth, they

don't need to push it and they do want to keep his bat in the lineup as often as possible. So you can go back to sort of a, a kid gloves sort of approach and it's completely justified given the circumstances. Yeah, I agree. You know, um, yeah, I think that's generally sort of what I was talking about earlier too,

but I think everyone's just more cautious now. So, but they should be, it just, it just makes some sense. Got some news here from a C-Trent Rosecrans of the athletic Novy Marte option to AAA, not a big surprise. And if you've been reading C-Trent, he's been telling you it's not, has not been Novy Marte working with the starters, the A-Team, like the guys that are clearly breaking camp, it gives them an opportunity to just kind of press reset,

maybe go down to Louisville, mash for April and part of May, and maybe come back to a depth chart that will be thinned out by injuries or an underperformer that they want to play less, right? I think the situation while it's bad for short-term value might actually be the right call long-term to get Novy Marte back on track. Yeah, I do have some shares, but mostly what I did was treated him as a prospect at the position. So the shares are like draft and hold third,

third basement kind of things where it's like. That doesn't that, that prospect status hasn't changed. He's still a prospect that is close to the big leagues. He's like a six starter in a rotation, right? He's like one of these guys who's had his feet wet is ready to play in the major leagues, he's like a six starter in a rotation, right? He's like one of these guys who's had his feet wet is ready to play in the major leagues just needs to maybe show it needs to, you know, maybe, maybe do some

penance for, for getting in trouble. And maybe he has to, you know, this is what he has to, this is the coal he has to deal with for the meantime. Uh, his status is also reduced by his place since he came back from the suspension. So there's a lot of things going on there. We have to sort of reclaim his status, but I do think that there's still a job waiting for him because, uh, you know, Heimer Candelario at 31, uh, projected to be below league average as a bat by most projection systems, um, is no longer an

asset on, uh, on defense either. And so if hypercavalier is out there with a 90 WRC plus playing third base poorly, you could still get no Ellie Marte in that lineup pretty quick. Right. And I think they probably saw Marte as a player who's also young enough to justify playing him every day at AAA ahead of playing him three or four times a week with the big club initially. I would say though, your model, after you pull it out of the dumpster, needs to be updated to reflect that Candelario in odd numbered years is just good, man.

He's usually 10, 15, 20% better than league average in these odd years. All right, you are on the scene in Goodyear, checking in from Guardians Spring Training today, right? Guardians and Reds, I believe also out in Goodyear. Yeah, they share the facility out here. All right. Ohio love out in Arizona. So who have you been talking to?

Well, I was good to check in with Kai Correa, who's one of my favorite coaches, behind the scene coaches out there. Um, he is the defensive genius, uh, behind the guardians sort of defensive surge at one point and he was in charge of the program that was just pumping out short stops, um, for the guardians. And then he, he moved on to, uh, you know, helping the giants with that old team that won like a 107 games or whatever. Um, he was a big part of the genius there.

So good to see him. Uh, he's a Hawaiian dude, uh, in baseball, which is also just a cool thing. Um, and so we reminisced, uh, about the big Island a little bit and just, uh, just talk shop and, you know, there was some talk about, you know, what, what is Oakland going to play? Like not only as a field, uh, you know, we were talking a little bit about how hot, uh, Sacramento is going to be. Um, and then how bad the field might be. See, he's a defensive coach.

He cares about these things, but how bad the field might be because they're going to be playing, um, more than than your normal 81 it's going to be closer to 150 games on that turf and they didn't decide not to do turf because it'd be too hot. So the heat and the turf, uh, all it's kind of, you know, this, that's what people are talking about. People are talking about what the facilities will be like, you know, in terms of players, you know, will it be, um, you know, in a pro level, you know, big league level, uh, situation over there, or will everybody roll

their eyes when they see Sacramento on the schedule? So, um, that was a little part of the conversation. I'm also doing some pieces, pieces about, um, coaching and makeup. So it was good to see Stephen vote, who I think is, um, through the roof in coaching and makeup. Uh it was good to see Stephen vote, who I think is, um, through the roof in coaching and makeup. Uh, love that dude. Uh, and then I checked in with the two starters are, I think, um, you know, our prime

to, to break out this year, Tanner by B already pitched pretty well last year, but, um, he was talking to me about his fastball. He thinks he's, he's showing more vert this spring, but also that command was part of this. And so I put together this, this heat map here, um, on the left, if you're looking on YouTube and I'll show us on discord later is the, is the heat map for where Tanner Bybee throws his fastballs to lefties and he generally gets a high end zone. He's a high end zone guy, but you see it's all over the zone.

There's a little bit too much middle middle. Then you look over at the right and that's the slugging percentage on lefties versus his fastball. And it's like middle, middle up. They like it. And he says he's trying to mostly throw his four seam up and away to lefties. You look at that heat map and he said, I was yanking it. And he said, when I, he said, he's a big supinator.

He's a big on the side of the ball slider, you know, breaking ball guy. And when you throw a fast ball and you're supinated a little bit, you can tend to hold onto a little bit longer and yank it. So, uh, he said the solution for him was, had to do with being taller coming through. So that if you're hunched over, you kind of Clark Schmidt, when he comes through, is kind of hunched over. He does a sinker, slug, sinker sweeper kind of action. He wants to be a little bit more vertical.

That's something that Casey Mize talks about, about getting his vert on his foreseeing better and getting better with staying vertical just so that the spin on the fast ball is more vertical. If you're more vertical, you know, uh, something that's as simple as that. So he was running me through the cues that he has to try and not yank the four seam. I asked him about the two seam. He said it's his old two seam that he used to throw and he's just, he's working it back in. I asked him, why did you only throw one? You talked about adding a sinker and then you went out you threw one he goes well they had like five

straight lefties at the top and I'm just wasn't gonna throw a lot of sinkers to his lefties so you know it is something that's gonna help him against righties not Yankee in the fourth team will help him against lefties I think you know he's a good pitcher not the greatest fastball in the world but it might be a little bit better this year and I think he reminds me, he's a good pitcher, not the greatest fastball in the world, but it might be a little bit better this year. And I think he reminds me a little bit of Bieber, you know, just a really good breaking balls, really good supinator that has pushed his foreseam to being viable. And Gavin Williams, on the other hand, said that injury was really the reason for everything

last year. He said that he was kind of babying his elbow a little bit and that he, he just was aware of possible injury there. Um, and that led to certain things in his delivery that he wasn't comfortable with. He said this year he feels good. He's got the best extension in the big leagues among starters. Um, in, and he thinks, uh, you know, voter even said that he's got his shapes back. So he's got, he's got like a power slider that has a little bit more depth than it's not a cutter.

It was labeled as a cutter last year. What he wants is like a power or gyro slider because that'll pair well with going against lefties with the curve ball. So he's a very sort of vertical guy that, you know, that has a huge extension down the mound at you. And I continue to believe that he's ready to break out. He said a huge spring so far. I mean, it's 16 strikeouts and eight innings so far, just a 113 year.

He struck out half the batters that he's faced so far at the spring. I would say Gavin Williams is, uh, is trending towards the popular sleeper that's going to jump up boards a little bit with this health this spring, but also might still be worth it at a rising price. Even if you're talking about him at pick 150 by the time we get to end of the month, you may still get enough value from Gavin Williams to justify that. It is interesting to hear that Bybee's trying to fix that four-scene problem. The specific details of that, I think, are really interesting just because

we've talked about that being his biggest hurdle on this show. If he can unlock that fastball, make it just a little bit more effective, a little bit more consistent by location or by ride, that would go a long way towards pushing him into firmer SP2 status. He's kind of fringy for SP2 status right now, but you give him a Zach Galen sort of workload in his peak year. I think you could see similar results from Tanner Bybee. So two really interesting guys to catch up with. And thinking about what you said with Kai Correa,

has Kai ever mentioned particular in fields that are better or worse than others around the big leagues? I can still, in my brain, because I'm not an on-field coach, never played in the big leagues, I'm like, they're big league fields. They're all very well maintained and short of the Luke Bryan concert that tears up an very well maintained and short of the, uh, Luke Bryan concert

that tears up an outfield here and there throughout the summer. Like generally the fields are in really good shape, but I imagine the players and the coaches, especially coaches focusing on fielding are hyper aware of differences in surfaces. I have asked about that. I forget what the rankings were and who was bad and who was good, but I do know that this is the source of differential. It comes a little bit from my conversation about which mounds are different. So depending on how wet your area is, like just in terms of humidity and rain,

um, how much wetness your field sees changes the type of mud, the type of dirt you use and the type of grass you use. And so, you know, if you are in a super dry place, you are trying to use something that might retain moisture so it won't be like super hard gravel that the ball's hitting, you know? And if you are in a wet place, you'd want to use something that's gonna be drier

and let that water go. But then you'll have days where you're in a wet place, but it's dry. Right? So I could imagine that maybe if you're in San Francisco and it just happens to be a dry week, they have these weird early season, late season where the weather is great, you know, if you want to go to San Francisco, go in like October or February, like that's like the best time it's the weirdest thing. And, uh, I bet you that sometimes that gravel gets a little bit dry because

it's meant to be dry is designed to be dry. You know, uh, might be the, I think I've heard the cases in San Diego that sometimes it plays drier than other times. So, um, yeah, that is something that is, and it is also from a modeling standpoint, from a number of standpoint, I remember, uh, Andrew Perpetual used to hate singles. And he said that singles are the worst thing because you can't model them because they hit the ground a lot of times.

And once the ball hits the ground, you have no idea what it's going to do. He said, it's just, you know, that's the biggest source of chaos. And that's why he maybe, you know, if you think about it, we've, we've barrels power doubles, homers, like those things, they don't hit gravel and go flying in the other direction. And so the game has the game always tends to like organize towards things that are predictable and have less chaos in them. And that might be why there's a little bit of the death of the single across

baseball is that it's hard to model. And it's, you know, you can't be reliably a singles hitter unless you're like Luis Araya's or Stephen Kwan. Well, I think for a home park, if you have a climate controlled you know, situation with a roof, maybe then you can model that more effectively, but the outdoor, like the sun and the factor of just how that would impact would be a big deal. Oh, that just jogs something loose.

That's a great comment because the Rays don't care about lifting the ball as much. They care about hitting the ball hard and making contact and having a good plate discipline. We've seen this. They're not a barrel king. They're a hard hit king. And that is funny because they play in a dump. Right.

And I would imagine that the trop, if I had to guess the trop is probably the fastest infield in the big leagues. Guys that play on those infields could probably give you that, at least the top ones that are fast and the slowest ones that are slow. The middle of the pack might be a little harder to discern. Could be a fun story this year. Yeah. So, all right.

We step in again, step on new rakes. That's our mantra on this show. Anytime you can step on a step in again, step on new rakes. That's our mantra on this show. Anytime you can step on a new rake, step on that. Got some mailbag questions to get to here before the internet melts down. Probably going to melt down more at my house than the press box, which is saying something about my internet service provider.

But first question today comes from Dee Rivas. It is about Pete Crow Armstrong's spring heater that he's on right now. Do you think there's anything to that as far as a breakout coming? And I guess I'll broaden this question. When would you be interested in something you see in spring? We've talked about bat speed increasing and how sticky that is, but what else actually matters to you?

Are there any process stats you're looking at as we move further into spring training play? Yeah, right now, the only thing that I care about in PCA's line is steady with last year and has not shown real breakout potential, which is swing strike rate and strikeout rate. That's about the only thing that I'll look at the strikeout rate for him. The spring is 26, nine last year is 23 nine. He's been up and down the miners.

He has a 14.9% swing strike rate. PCA does right now. Uh, it was 15.8% last year. So I would say that he's steady when it comes to contact, when it comes to balls and play, I mean, it's 26 plate appearances. If we were, uh, nine games into the regular season, we wouldn't be reporting on this. When you start getting to maybe 15, 20 games,

maybe double the sample, I think you can look a little bit of groundball-flyball mix. He is hitting fewer groundballs this spring. But I think on a nine-game sample, what happens is, and one of the reasons why you can't, groundball rate can be sticky early, but you have to have some sample, what happens is, and one of the reasons why you can't, ground ball rate can be sticky early, but you have to have some sample is because that they could just be pitching in a certain way where he can hit the fly balls and then the, then they'll change pitching him that way.

Like, you know, there'll be an adjustment at some point and ground balls come from lower in the zone, you know, generally, and fly balls come from higher in the zone generally. So the way balls come from higher in the zone, generally. So the way the pitchers are pitching him has something to do with his results right now. And then very obviously, depending on the quality of the pitchers he's seen. Right, and the quality is a fun thing to bring up.

Because if you look at the spring training homer leaderboard, I believe you'll see Trace Thompson's name at the top. He's popped six homers. Is Trace Thompson seeing the best pitchers in the game or is he seeing the back half of the game pitchers so far? There's probably more of the latter than the former explaining how he's been doing that. And he has an 81% fly ball rate.

No one has ever had an 81% fly ball rate. I would love to see it, just to say that I saw it though. Give me an 81% fly ball rate. Spencer Tor love to see it. Just, just to say that I saw it though. Give me an 81% fly ball rate. Spencer Torkelson's got three homers this spring, a CES is showing he's healthy, you know, like a rule five pick like Gage Workman getting to some power that those things are all interesting. Curtis Mead having a big spring, Alan

Roden hasn't struck out yet. Like there's, there's little things in here. Plate appearances. Right. Plate appearances. You can see, there's little things in here. Played appearances. Right. Played appearances. You can see, you can see that they're still playing. Spencer Torkelson has, uh, 24 plate appearances and Meade with Junior Caminero has a, has some

sort of nagging injury, right? He's got that back. Yeah. So Meade has 24 plate appearances. I think, you know, that's something that I would track. So plate appearances and strikeout rate is about it. Yeah, that's good. Good call.

Look at that straight through that plate appearance leader board, Egi Rosario getting a lot of plate appearances for the Padres. I liked him for draft and hold purposes. Don't know if he's breaking through on that roster right away on opening day. Oh, you know what that means? How many more plate appearances does he have

than Tiersa Ornelas? one, they're both getting similar. Okay. You said probably that's probably, I didn't realize this. That is probably a roster battle that we didn't cover. Cause it's not obvious because they don't play the same position, but. You're you're some, some of these at bats are coming from DH. So you could pick Rosario Rosario over to your soreness for this team I think tier so would be set up to play more though because they have the need in a corner outfield spot

And and he's shown really good plate skills for several minor league stops. I know he got to more power than ever During his this time last year in the upper levels of the minors. And it wasn't like it was all Albuquerque or all El Paso either. It was like four homers in 55 games there, 11 and 72 at double A before that promotion. So I think Tiersil Ronellas is a good deep league sleeper who's actually putting together a spring that gets you excited. Aggie has no options left. Oh, sometimes you lose to the guy with no options left or sometimes they DFA that guy that happens too. Yeah.

So that's he's fighting for his life right now, but that must be so stressful. Oh God. It must be so stressful and he's doing okay. I don't know. Yeah, that's a tough one. Uh, because they also have Jose Iglesias in camp. I missed that. So, uh, and it's, because they also have Jose Iglesias in camp. Yeah. So, uh, and it's a minor league deal for Jose Iglesias. So it's a little bit of Jose Iglesias versus Egi Rosario versus Tyler

Wade for maybe two spots there. And, uh, Wade and Egi Rosario don't have options and Iglesias doesn't have options either you lose him if you don't, you don't put them on the roster. So I think that's too many guys to keep all of them. I think that you'd keep two of those guys and, or Nellis makes the team. Yeah. Maybe they try to sneak eggy through waivers at the end of spring training. Thanks a lot for that question.

D Rivas got a question here from PNW Rays fan, that specific Northwest Rays fan. Don't want to make any assumptions though. This question came to mind for last Friday's pod, all caveats aside on the importance of adjusting for team needs in leagues. If you were to liken your roster building strategy to that of a major league teams approach to roster building, which team would it be and why? This is pretty fun. So the initial thoughts here, Eno leans towards a raise bill, the crewing value while balancing

needs and DVR skews Dodgers or pods, high risk. Dodgers. Dodgers. You're a Dodgers. I was going to say that. I've had load up a lot of Dodgers pitchers too. So I'm accepting the injury risk. You can see arguments for Eno being the recent

Kansas city regime, identifying and acquiring potential risers and underrated role players before they're outside of comfortable range. DVR being like the Chris Young Rangers, sometimes getting a payout on investments like in 2023, other years, down years being more like 2024. Anyway, I know it's a total oversimplification of the roster building process in fantasy

and major league baseball. Curious to know what you think, keep up the good work. Thought this was a fun question. So do you want to self-diagnose or do you want to diagnose me with a team that I follow the pattern of? I think I'll try self-diagnosing. I, the thing that's that, uh, makes it a hard to, to comp to the major leagues is that the major leagues or teams have different levels of resource.

And we theoretically going into any draft have the same amount of resources as everybody else. Right. And we theoretically going into any draft have the same amount of resources as everybody else. Right. Um, so, uh, one thing that I do think that the brewers do that I'd like to think that I do is they there, there's a real, they'll trade pitching for hitting. They've done it multiple times and it seems like they're trying to, given the resources they have,

put together the lineup first, you know, and then sort of put together the rotation. And that's always been my sort of approach is I'm focused on the lineup. I've said, I put it, I think I said this on the pod the other day, which is that I'm trying to take hitters. I like, I don't even use the projections for pitchers, like in an auction calculator way, because I'm trying to take hitters all the time. And anytime I'm like, I don't really like the hitters, I like, I don't even use the projections for pictures, like in an auction calculator way, because I'm trying to take hitters all the time. And anytime I'm like, I don't really like the hitters. Then I take a picture. And you can pretty easy look at the snapshot of who's likely to go,

choose the one you like the most that won't be there next time and move on. Yeah. So there's a little bit of that with the, um, brewers, or I feel like they're always trying to improve their lineup because it's hard. My lineups take money and they don't necessarily have that kind of money, you know, so I'm always trying to, and then they also put a, uh, uh, uh, a priority on defensive, uh, positions, which isn't something that's obvious in fantasy, but I do put a priority on infield positions because I feel like I can fill out the,

the outfield. So they wanted Joey Ortiz in that trade, you know, they, who did they trade? a priority on infield positions because I feel like I can fill out the, the outfield. So they wanted Joey Ortiz in that trade, you know, they, what did they trade Drew Rasmussen for? That was for. Rasmussen was the Adamas trade I think. Yes. See, they traded Drew Rasmussen for Adamas. Uh, they traded, they traded Corbin Burns for

Joey Ortiz. I think that like that's, that's, I'm always trying to do stuff like that. Yeah, that's a good call. I think that's something they've done effectively as an organization. I see you do that effectively as a fantasy player as well. I do think the, the, the Padres, the Padres and Dodgers and Rangers all do kind of describe what I, what I do though. Like I'll, I'll take high end shots in the pool aiming for past peaks,

knowing that you might miss the past peak because of injury risk. Like I would have been a GM that would have said, yeah, let's throw that money at Corey Seager. I don't care that you might miss 30 or 40 games any given year with the various things that he's dealt with when he's out there, he's a difference maker. He's the kind of player that's impossible to sign and very difficult to draft and develop. So I do like to take shots like that.

I think the longer term view to the Padres, they're very pot committed right now because of the way the team's built. And it was something that the late Peter Seidler wanted was to try and bring a championship to San Diego. I think the more I played, the more I realized the future is overrated. All right. Prospects are great. Prospects are fun, but the future is overrated.

Like every time I have to play for the future in a keeper league, I feel like I have just wasted a year of my life. Like I just, it's a missed opportunity, right? And I'm immediately, I could be the A's too. And I don't want it to come with all the baggage of the A's or whatever. I'm not talking about a lot of the business decisions or anything, but, um, when I do rebuild, I don't have the patience for a long rebuild. So whenever my auto new team is not doing great, instead of like being like, oh, I'll

recover in the draft next year. I'm like, the work starts now and the work starts with trading away guys for guys who were in the big leagues. I don't want your prospects. I want your big leaguers. I want a young big leaguer back. I will trade you five overpriced veterans, give you all the rental money you need

if you give me one, one measly young bat at a good price. You know what I mean? And so, you know, there is a lot of like, you know, I would rather have a guy who is also gonna play this year for me in the big leagues so that I can decide if he's part of the rebuild or not, you know, I would rather have a guy who is also going to play this year for me in the big leagues so that I can decide if he's part of the rebuild or not, you know, quickly, I don't want, I'd rather have guys that are going to show me quickly rather than I'm not that big a fan of the 17 year old. And we are in this league together where people are

drafting guys who might, you know, be drafted in the first round of the of the draft next year. And it's like, I don't have the patience for that. I don't know. I'm going to, what am I, I can get a 19. I got, I just picked up Jared Serna in that, in that draft. Jared Serna is my kind of guy. Okay. He's too small.

You know, we're not sure what his power is like, but he makes contact. And guess who he plays for the Marlins and he plays in the middle infield, you know, and he's, he's played at AA and AAA. I don't have to wait that long, you know, and he's still like, he's still young gish, he's 21 or 22, like, why do I need to go get a 17 year old that has to, you know, has to make it through two or three hoops before he's actually, you know, of great value. So I'm a, I'm a Jared Serna guy.

So I'm that's, Jared Serna is like very much an A's type approach. And the Marlins are kind of pulling an A's type approach too, of just getting a lot of guys who are close to big leagues and hoping one of them works out. Yeah, I would say the pitching risk and budget thing is like, I am kind of like the raise in how I think about pitching. Like think about all the guys they've got that have had multiple TJs in that mix

for the rotation. I'll take that chance because when they're out there, kind of like that Corey Seeger philosophy, they're well above average pitchers. They have extremely high ceilings. I'll try and find depth and I'll use that sort of low to me. No one likes these guys. I'll take my chance on them inexpensively and just see if I find something that other people or models aren't necessarily as in love with yet.

I think that's a little bit of a raise sort of approach that I try to merge with my big spender mindset because yeah, we don't have the... I don't walk into the auction with $400 instead of 260, so I can't go full Dodgers as suggested in the question, but a fun question. Thanks for sending that one in in PNW raise fan. Last question for today. What are the in season viewing habits you guys have watching games?

Are you watching specific teams? Are you watching specific pitchers, MLB beginning? How do you build your viewing schedule over the course of the year? This question comes from Anya. It's all about pitching. All pitching for you? I just look at the pitching probables.

Because I think you'll get the hitters over time if you're following the pitchers. And I'm expected to analyze the pitchers, so that's where I'm expected to be. And then I think that watching a pitcher, you might catch something like a new pitch like a new pitch or a new philosophy, new mix, something like that, that you can catch faster. Not even necessarily faster than the numbers

because the numbers are capturing all of this, but like you can see it and react to it faster and be on top of it more rather than like, do I have to run a query every day? That's like, who changed their pitching mix? No, instead I can watch two or three innings and you can watch two or three innings, you don't have to watch the whole game. And I, I do have, I do struggle with the hardest time for me to decide what to

want, when to watch is sort of like August when we're not really bringing up the young guys to, to, to start, there's a lot of like just veterans and I, and I'm trying to like, maybe watch to know about what they'll be in the postseason, you know? And so then I'm just trying to watch a team that maybe is hot or cold and just be like, why are they struggling or why are they so hot and is it just luck or is there something else going on? So, but mostly it's just a pitching problem. So I, you know, one thing that I've found is that Nick, uh, Pollock has a, a morning

tweet or blue sky that's like, here are the pictures to watch for. And he just like lists the ones that'll have video. I find that helpful. I just go there and I'm like, Oh yeah, I want to see him. I watch him for two innings, watch that guy for two innings. I watched a bunch of Jacob Mizorowski because he's always highlighting him. He's always on TV.

I mean, I think a lot of people that cover baseball think about it pitching first for that reason, because the hitters are there every day. Other factors for me, I mean, I do sort of prioritize the Brewers most days because I still get to have a rooting interest. The best part of not being in the clubhouse is I can still kind of keep that a little bit. If I still go into the clubhouse, I have to get rid of that. But I think I actually care about the announcers too, as far as like picking which games I'm gonna watch,

at least I'll choose the feed that I like better. So that's always a consideration for me if there's similar batonais on where there's not necessarily a picture I wanna watch, I'll just choose the most enjoyable booth because sometimes I have to do other things while I'm watching. So I don't get to have the full like locked in

sort of experience. I do think big inning is better than, better than I thought it would be just because there's so much dead time in games. Having four on the screen at once is pretty helpful and not having to flip around. How does it. And they know which games are kind of important.

Like they're slightly different games. And they choose the audio for that? On and off the screen. Yeah. They'll, they'll cut to the audio on the most important game. They'll throw it back to the studio, then go back to their game and kind of bounce around. Like I think it's generally pretty helpful for what we do because you can get eyes on more hitters and pitchers that way.

And especially at the busy times, like Tuesday nights when all the teams are in action, Friday nights, all the teams are playing. You don't have that ability to pick and choose as effectively. So you need to kind of cover more. So I have actually found beginning the last year to be pretty nice. And then of course, um, uh, what do they call the recap show?

The one that's on before the Rosa quick pitch. Yeah. I watch a lot of quick pitch in the morning too, just to get back through and just see the stuff that may have slipped through the cracks the night before. I find that to be a really good recap show. You, you bring up an interesting idea of the sort of,

the default viewing, the default team. I, we, I can't call it like a rooting interest for myself, but my family has a default team. So the Padres games are on. So we do a lot of Padres in, you know, we'll switch around, you know, through the East coast games. And then, you know, if, if a game is just on while we're eating or in the background or something, it'll always be Padres. So I can't say that my family are intense baseball fans. My young, my, my oldest Felix does hop around with me.

Felix does hop around with me. So he likes hopping around and he likes, he like knows the stars and he knows like, he's not like, I know everybody on the Padres roster. He's more like, I know the biggest players, you know? So and he gets, he also loves the baseball America prospect book, you know, that we get. So he'll read that. And so he's always looking out for prospects. So his viewing is a little bit different where when we switch our team,

I'm doing it for the pitcher and he's asking me who are the prospects, who are the young guys that are coming up. So I've got one person on board to just be totally schizophrenic with our watching. We're just like, bap, bap, bap, bap, like this is a switch. This game's worrying, like onto the other one.

Yeah. But the Padres are kind of the default and then, you know, when, when there's no other other reason to watch something else, they're also on last. So where you live also, I think shapes your viewing patterns a lot. So it was very easy on the West coast to get through all the early games and stay up to the end of the late games. Very easy to do. I think once you get to like central where I've

lived most of my life, it's much harder to watch the end of West Coast games as your various life responsibilities and stages come along. Like babies and children. Like the fifth or sixth inning, if I get to the sixth inning of a West Coast game on a weeknight, I'm doing very well right now. So I do miss that part of living in California

where I was, I would watch a lot of giants games out there and I felt, cause that was, I think the, I was there for the magical year and the year after. So that was pretty, pretty good twist of like. Both reasons to watch. They can't be this good. They can't be this bad.

Yeah. So I caught way more giants games when I lived out there. I think it's mostly Dodgers and Padres. Part of it's the booth though too, again, like the Padres booth or Ceylon Grant, like you just sort of gravitate towards them if you're not seeking out a pitcher on that particular part of the slate.

But a great question, Anje, and it screens anywhere and everywhere we can find them and constantly battling for the remote to just keep cranking more baseball into the lives of the other people in our homes. Yeah. I think they like the break of the off season. My wife is just like, no, the youngest is on his iPad.

Felix will play along for a little bit before he goes upstairs to do his gaming. They're putting me on the iPad now and taking the TV away. Oh no. It's okay. It's fine. before he goes upstairs to do his gaming. They're putting me on the iPad now and taking the TV away. So I think that's okay. It was, it's fine. They put baby in the corner.

Yeah. They're like, do some dishes and watch the game over there. Fine. Put my headphones on. We'll multitask. That's fine. If that's what has to be done. We appreciate the questions.

Drop us some questions in our discord. The discord link is in the show description. Now we do have our listener Champions League getting underway Tuesday night. We're gonna do a slow draft for that one. So invites are out. I think all the seats have been filled. If you were part of that group and didn't respond,

you can still respond late and we'll figure out a way to get you into a league with us in 2026. We'll find some kind of make good. But I think everybody for the most part was able to join, which is exciting. You can find eno on blue sky, enocerous.bsky.social, I'm dvr.bsky.social. Thanks to me, I think I'm the producer today. Brian Smith has a couple other shows he's working on for the athletic today, so I guess I'll thank myself for putting this episode together. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Tuesday.

Thanks for listening. this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening. Load them for the win.