Rates & Barrels - The Dodgers are World Series champions, Kevin Cash takes heat for his removal of Blake Snell, and Justin Turner tests positive for COVID

Episode Date: October 28, 2020

Eno, Britt & DVR wrap up their playoff episodes as the Dodgers take Game 6 and win the World Series on a night where third baseman Justin Turner was removed from the game due to a positive COVID test, and Rays manager Kevin Cash gets hammered for pulling Blake Snell instead of allowing him to face the Dodgers' lineup a third time.  Rundown 3:58 Blake Snell and Kevin Cash's Decision 10:21 Looking Ahead to the Rays' 2021 14:08 The Playoffs Were Great 19:29 Snell's Dominance & A Huge Night for the Dodgers' Bullpen 25:40 Corey Seager Wins the World Series MVP 33:21 Suspensions for Hinch & Cora Are Over 38:11 Is This Championship Tainted by the 60-game Season? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Britt on Twitter: @Britt_Ghiroli Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic for just $1/month: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one. Just start moving with the Peloton Bike, Bike Plus, Tread, Row, Guide, or App. There are thousands of classes and over 50 Peloton instructors ready to support you from the beginning. Remember, doing something is everything. Rent the Peloton Bike or Bike Plus today at onepeloton.ca slash bike slash rentals. All access memberships separate. Terms apply. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 21 of the postseason, the last of our playoff episodes, because we have a winner. We have a World Series winner, the Dodgers, got the job done on Tuesday night, ending the series in six games, making me right with one prediction, just one prediction this postseason.

I guess if you're going to be right about one series, being right about the World Series is the one to be right about, but I was wrong about everything else. So here we are. Ito Serra's Bridgeroli, Derek Van Ryper, our swan song for these postseason pods, and

if you told me at the beginning of the series there was going to be one very controversial managerial decision that everybody would be up in arms about in the decisive game of the series, I would have said, surely Dave Roberts did something with Kenley Jansen, and that is what set Twitter ablaze, but no, it was Kevin Cash who started the fire.

And Twitter is going nuts right now. I can believe this justin turner got removed from the game because he had a positive covid test oh geez what that's why he what okay so uh what did they hide this before like did he just results? Like, how did he get into the game? Like, when? How 2020 is this? We get to baseball. We get to the World Series. We crown a champion.

Oops. The guy who just played in it has COVID. How 2020 is this? At least he didn't, like, hit a homer that decided the game so that we would have to be like, should he have even in there this is why we can't have nice things 2020 oh my god 2020 just can't not be 2020 even on the last minute when we're like that was a that was a normal this series i mean we've got stuff to talk about but like you know six game series between the two best teams in baseball. Hey, let's rip on Kevin Cash. Oh, wait, COVID. Yeah, right. I am not here to rip on Kevin Cash, though.

I'm going to say that right now. Where do you want to start? Do you want to start with this Justin Turner COVID thing? Or, I mean, holy crap. I'm not even prepared to talk about that. There's nothing to say. We'll get more details on that later, I guess. That means that he can't even jump around with his teammates.

It's too late. He's been in the bubble all over these guys. He played eight innings. Are they really going to celebrate like nothing's wrong? They all should be getting tests. But they'll probably do a silly thing and be like, no, you've got to go away now. Come on.

That's what I mean. Like, should they really be continuing with this ceremony? Oh, and the celebration. I mean, these guys have all been, I mean,

life that we live, forget it. They've all been hugging and high fiving and God knows what else in this bubble. And he played eight innings of the game. When did the test get released? How did he even get it in the bubble? Oh the game when did the test get released tonight i didn't even get it in the bubble oh man when did this test get released doesn't everyone feel like it's kind of shady he played eight innings yeah if he was waiting on his test results

he shouldn't have been playing why did the test results take till the eighth inning i mean guys get them at night right but is he pulling out his cell phone and checking his MyChart as a player? No. Look, I thought it was weird that Edwin Rios was playing third base, but I just figured that it was an ankle or – He even got a defensive play where you're like, oh. Oh, this might be a thing that matters, and he handled it fine. I'm speechless about the Turner thing

because that literally just broke as we started recording. So I've had some time to think about the Blake Snell removal from this game. And Kevin Cash is actually talking about that right now. The quote, I didn't want Mookie seeing Blake a third time. This was the plan the whole time.

This wasn't decided in the moment. It wasn't decided by kevin cash unilaterally it's a group decision this is a decision that had a lot of thought that went into it and sure look people killed it immediately like there are people on twitter angry before any results angry before the dodgers tied it angry before the dodgers took the lead against nick anderson my first thought was, why Nick Anderson? Because we have talked on this pod about Nick Anderson not being himself, experiencing a little bit of diminished velocity in recent weeks, and yielding a ton of hard contact.

In that situation, not going to Diego Castillo seemed like the greater offense than taking Blake Snell out of the game. Yes. They left Blake Snell in longer than they left any other starter in in this World Series. They did leave Blake Snell in because he was dealing. But you don't leave a lefty in against a righty the third time through the order, especially when it's a righty superstar that makes contact and doesn't chase you know like and blake snell had you know used all his tricks he threw some change-ups to mookie bets and he got him out with curveballs like he was trying everything he could to get blake's to get mookie bats out the first couple of times like

i don't think he struck him out twice though didn't he strike him out but he didn't have any other tricks left if he goes to the back foot slider like mookie betts is all over that i mean that's something that i saw in the preview i think that they never thought that snell would face mookie a third time and you want to kill them for being scripted i understand that makes sense a little bit we've talked about the dodgers being too scripted i hear that but snell threw his lowest fastball of the outing to Austin Barnes in that one before. So he didn't really have that 97 left. I don't know. I think it's dispensable.

I think David Castillo is the wrong problem. Here's my issue, though, is that we've seen this a few times. Here's my main, like, bigger issue than just the Blake Snell came out. Over a seven game series and over this long of a postseason, the Rays' bullpen has been exposed. There's no cute magic tricks to pull out now and overwhelm them. Nick Anderson

didn't look good. Fairbanks gave up that home run. They had lost some luster off that bullpen. I think that's something that I guess doesn't come up in the script at all. Hey, if Snell's dealing has really had effortless innings, has a low pitch count, hasn't exhausted himself really at all, wouldn't you rather lose with that Cy Young guy than with a reliever who has been struggling no matter who it is? I mean, the Rays have had reliever issues

very quietly. A lot of their guys have been hit and the Dodgers are a team that has proven to adjust quickly. So I don't know. I think the move's totally indefensible. It's happening everywhere. I think if Dave Roberts did this, he'd be crushed. He'd be crushed for sticking to the script. Kevin Cash does it, and there's a faction of people who say, oh, well, this is how they got here.

True, but at what point in time do you watch a guy and say, you know, I'm going to go with this here and see how this works out? He's going to get crushed either way. Either way, Kevin Cash takes ownership of the move, whether it's his idea or not his idea. I think the thought I had, too, was, okay, is there something in an individual game performance that would be analytics-based that would lead you to go against the numbers that guided this decision, right? If Blake Snell were still holding velocity close to his max, right? If he's throwing 97 in the fifth inning instead of 94 or whatever it might be? Is there something on a granular level,

data-driven, or is it only a gut decision? Is it only instincts? Is it only trusting your eyes? Is it only taking a very old school approach? I don't want it to be analytics versus old school. I'm wondering if there's uncharted territory for knowing when somebody's at or near peak performance, right? And if they're at or near peak performance, if that's the sort of level that would cause you to say, yeah, actually, this is the better option than going to the pen right now. And even if it's only one or two more batters, it doesn't necessarily mean he's going seven or eight innings, right? I mean, the home run that Mookie Betts hit in the eighth to put the Dodgers up three to one, at that point, the fourth time through the order, Blake Snell would not have been in the game by then. It doesn't mean the same receiver would

have been in. The situation could have been different. It's not apples to apples, but I just keep wondering, are we going to reach a point where you can pitch so well that the third time to the order penalty gets tossed out because you do have that electric stuff and it kind of checks out on the back end with data? I mean, isn't reliever burnout a real thing in the postseason too? Don't you guys feel like by the time we get to the World Series here, teams... There's also got to be like, you see these relievers more and more, right? Exactly. Since the Rays have been using them, the Dodgers have seen them. And if there's a third time through the order penalty, maybe there's a third time you've seen the reliever penalty.

That's a good point. Nick Anderson is not fooling me right now. So I don't know. I think the big mistake was the Dio Castillo versus Nick Anderson decision. But I think that in the end, the reason that the Rays lost is the offense. I think it was the offense. Yeah, beyond game six.

I mean, they scored one run in game six, but throughout the series, it was a lot from Randy Rosaranda and not much from the rest of the offense, unfortunately. And every Zoom with Kevin Cash was like, started with, you know, what are you doing in this lineup? And why is this guy here and this guy not in?

And it was always Kevin Cash saying, we're just trying to figure something out. We're trying to find a spark. We're trying to get something from somebody other than Randy. Like, he admitted that. And so I can't help but say that, like, if, like, it's a funny thing about baseball is, like, we're always, like, looking forward to spring.

And, like, the minute the World Series ends, like, there'll be pieces out this week that are, like, you know, what should Team X do and what should Team Y do to win next year, right? Like, baseball is so like, turn the page, here we go. And I would say that the reason to be hopeful about the Rays is that they've done something really cool in terms of preventing runs. And if they can improve the offense, then there could be something, you know, they could get over the mountaintop eventually. And they've got in Wander Franco and Vidal Brujan, two guys at the top of the, you know, the minor leagues that make contact, you know, and it looks like powerful contact.

Now, maybe they get into the major leagues and like Adamas and Lau, like strike out more often. But if they don't, if they if they end up being guys who can make more contact, then that can change the whole lineup. And then going forward, maybe they'll have a better lineup that makes more contact and is better for the postseason. So I don't think that necessarily this was like the last chance for the Rays. In fact, I think that in some ways, the Dodgers are closer to, you closer to most of their players being peak. You know what I mean? Who are the young players on the Dodgers that you're looking for more out of

in the future other than Gavin Lux? So the Dodgers finally made it. You can't say that analytics or old school beat analytics because the Dodgers are just as analytics-based. They've got the biggest or second biggest analytics. Yeah, it was computers versus computers the the dodgers had the second biggest analytics uh department in baseball r&d department of baseball there's no way um that the that analytics doesn't become part of that and if you think it was scripted for cash we don't know that you know dave roberts was less scripted this year we know

that it's been scripted in the past. It could have been just as scripted by the front office in L.A. So it just turned out to be a bad decision in terms of results. I'm still not convinced 100% it was bad in terms of process. I do think, and maybe I'll agree on this, even if the Rays won tonight, we all kind of thought the Dodgers were the better team. The Dodgers were probably going to win the World Series no matter what.

They had Walker Bueller going tomorrow. Sans that crazy ending to Game 4, they would have already won. It took a lot for the Rays to even get to this Game 6. So as much as we can debate whether Kevin Cash did the right thing or not, I don't think he took the World Series away from them. Do you guys think that's fair? Right? I don't think he took the World Series away from them. Do you guys think that's fair? Right? I don't think he's the reason the Rays didn't win the World Series.

No. I mean, look throughout the postseason, too. I think there was a lot more prior to today that was pointing to Kevin Cash being one of the league's best managers, making the perfect in-game adjustments, choosing the right relievers at the right time. Again, more of a group effort than Kevin Cash solo the entire time. That's the DNA of the franchise, not just the DNA of the

manager. I don't think he managed them out of the series. That would be a complete overreaction. I expect someone much louder than me, with a much bigger following than me, to make some kind of argument like that on a nationally syndicated radio and TV show probably on Wednesday. I saw it on Twitter. So, you know, it's completely out of control and out of context.

So I thought I would pull the group here. Yeah. Well, I mean, what were what were our calls you know going into the season series i think it was like dodgers and six versus dodgers and seven or did you did you have the race i had the race in six you had the race in six okay well i mean they ended up they were pretty good look they were i think what we should take out of all this too is the fact that like we got two really good teams in the world series this was a really good world series for all the talk about hey too many teams covid shortened season we're not going to get this saturday you know like top 10 game of all time

yeah in the postseason all right so we got to see some really good baseball in a year where nobody was sure we were going to see any baseball we got to see a really good six games of the World Series. So I think as much as the Justin Turner COVID test puts a real fitting end to all of this, you've got to be happy as a baseball fan for what you were able to see and what MLB was able to accomplish once they figured their way out around the testing and the rules and things like that. We got through this, and I'm not so certain anybody on this podcast can say that they 100% were confident placing money on the fact that MLB was going to get here. Especially when we had one of our first episodes, I think probably around the time the Cardinals and Marlins both had breakouts, right?

I mean, it seemed like we were one more team away from possibly having a full stoppage for a couple of weeks. And if that happened, maybe we weren't going to get to the postseason. So much has changed week to week, or at least month to month. We've talked about that in the show a little bit too, right? The days of wiping off groceries groceries fortunately those days are over but the Turner news is I think a very sobering reminder that we are in the midst of a pandemic that has not been handled well and despite that we did get through a partial season that was a distraction and was enjoyable, especially in the playoffs. I enjoyed the playoffs.

And how close were we? I mean, it shows us how close we were to not finishing the season. I mean, like, what would have happened if the Rays had won? Would the Dodgers have had to quarantine? We put Game 7 off for two weeks? A more cynical person would say that they knew about these results before the game, perhaps, and said, hey, you know what?

The Dodgers are right there. Let's play it. I would love to see a real concise timeline of what's going on. I'm guessing that there's some effort being put forward into making that timeline something that we can all read at some point in the near future manfred looks terrible uh in his post-game interview and everyone's everyone's now asking about you know how this turner thing could have happened and uh everyone's like thinking about the wrong things really uh at at this time it's very very very very strange very 2020 he got booed, apparently.

Well, I mean, I guess it's the Dodgers and it's Manfred. I mean, we're going to boo him. You know, I also wonder, you know, we talk about this being a showcase for the game. Pretty weird to me that the Dodgers just won the World Series and analytics is being slagged and the Dodgers just won the World Series with an opener and six relievers. Yeah, they got away from

Tony Gonsolin real quick. He knows, boy. Yeah. Dude, I think he's good. I don't... Okay. He doesn't have good command. And it was kind of pulling nail pulling teeth today but he got through it a little bit i don't know i actually don't know it would be really fascinating to me to where i rank him next year as a starting pitcher like

this has been uh terrible to watch for people that think tony gonsolin is a good pitcher and i think baseball america gave him the Rookie of the Year award. No, but I think, like, was that sort of reliever parade? We had the most relievers of all time, like the most pitchers of all time in the average postseason game. Was that a problem for y'all? Tonight? No. I thought the game's pace was okay.

You mean overall? Yeah, overall and tonight. There were the most strikeouts in a nine-inning game tonight too, right? I think they announced that as well. I mean, I don't know if I've gotten used to it by now or the fact that it was such an exciting

World Series on the line game. Yeah, this was tight. Kind of made me forget about it a little bit. of gotten used to it by now or the fact that it was such a exciting you know world series it was tight game yeah it was this was tight kind of made me forget about it a little bit um i guess that's just the way the game is going unless they make some significant changes i guess i didn't have a huge problem with tonight's pace of game or really the way the game unfolded tonight i mean you knew the dodgers were going with the bullpen game you knew it wasn't going to be a pitching matchup between both teams. No one was going to go seven innings. So no, I didn't really have a problem with it.

Did you, Derek? No, I almost think the pitching changes don't bother me in a close game, but they drive me crazy when a team is up by three plus, right? When it's not very close. Spring training in the ninth inning, they're making it. Yeah, like those situations. That's when pace sort of becomes a problem.

Given the stakes, it didn't seem problematic. It was a close game. There was plenty of drama throughout. I keep thinking about a few things performance-wise in this game. I mean, Blake Snell was outstanding. We didn't really talk about just the numbers themselves. Nine strikeouts, no walks, just the one earned run, two hits, five and a third innings. I mean, that was an outstanding start from him.

And a couple of things on the Dodgers side. Alex Wood out of the bullpen as the glue guy gets six outs, three strikeouts nobody on base so that was a really important bridge in the middle innings for them they got one and third from victor gonzalez with three k's you know it was a great johnny holstaff effort by the dodgers when we were talking about it as sort of a soft punt situation again much like like game two, right? They got more mileage out of some guys that we had some low expectations for. And I feel like that's what kind of puts the spotlight back on the Rays offense for me,

is that you shouldn't go scoreless for seven plus innings against Dylan Floro, Alex Wood, Pedro Baez, Victor Gonzalez, and Brewsgar, right? I mean, Julio Urias is really good. But the middle innings especially, you've got to do more damage than that. That's not a good enough group of relievers to keep you completely off the scoreboard. One thing I spotted that was weird in the preview that I did was that the bad relievers, the quote-unquote bad relievers for the Dodgers

had a better strikeout minus walk rate than the good ones. That might be partially because Trinan and Gradderall are like sinker guys. They don't have that big strikeout rate, and May doesn't either. But tonight they did well. But I do think that it's on next year austin meadows returning to form even someone like andy diaz returning to form there's going to be a trade i mean as much as willie and and i almost hope that they learn some of the soft science that was so successful for them that they made they had such a team of brotherhood and togetherness that I think it would be

folly for them to trade Willie Adamas, even though Willie Adamas has like the strikeout rate and they might have Wander Franco is going to come up behind him. And it could totally be like a raise thing to trade Willie Adamas in the middle of all these years of control for something else. And, you know, that could be something they do, but Willie is really important to this team in terms of making friendships across all different kinds of lines and just being the energy factor.

So maybe they trade Brandon Lau instead. But if you're looking at a place to improve strikeout rate, it's Austin Meadows, Brandon Lau, Willie Adamas. Those are the places where you can get more offense and you could either get it by trade or by sort of improvement from one of those players. With Adames, a 124 WRC plus in the regular season. I mean, 24% better than a league average hitter, even with that strikeout rate. And that strikeout rate was well above what we'd seen from him in the past.

So to me, there's optimism in targeting him via trade if the Rays don't keep him. But I think you could probably turn him into more of a super utility guy. And they love to platoon in enough spots. Defensively, he's a fine shortstop, but he could play other spots if needed. Maybe that's the way to do it, right?

Still bring the energy. Still there every day. Still plays pretty much every day. Probably starts three or four games a week instead of six or seven. Maybe that's the energy. Still there every day. Still plays pretty much every day. Probably starts three or four games a week instead of six or seven. Maybe that's the rule for Adames next year. Trade Wendell or something like that. Try to find

something else that works. But Franco's coming up. Bruon's coming up. There's more news coming through on the Turner test. In the second inning tonight, says Jeff Passan, the lab doing COVID tests informed MLB that Justin Turner's test from yesterday came back inconclusive. The samples from today had just arrived and were run.

It showed up positive. The league immediately called Dodgers and said to pull Turner. In the eighth inning? I don't know about this. I mean, this is not the last bit of info we're going to hear about this. And I hope it's the truth. God damn it, dude.

He got to play a test. He got to play in a game when his results were inconclusive. Yeah, I guess he was already playing. They're saying the second inning. So these guys took the field without their results. The, the God damn it for me is not

necessarily aimed at the Dodgers or MLB. It's more just like really? Right, like how come the NBA and NHL pulled off bubbles and MLB has to get totally pooped on in the big stage, right?

This couldn't have happened on an off day, you know um of course so let's be clear when it comes to shipping internationally can i provide trade documents electronically the answer is fedex okay but what about estimating duties and taxes on my shipments how do i find all also fedex impressive is there a regulatory specialist I can ask about? FedEx. Oh, but let's say that... FedEx. What?

FedEx. Thanks. No more questions. Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx, where now meets next. Yeah, the national media tomorrow, I guess we're national media, but like, you know, I'm thinking more of sort of like, you of like on the radio and ESPN types. The two storylines are going to be analytics suck and baseball couldn't handle themselves when it came to COVID.

I think it's a little more nuanced than that in both cases. Yeah, but the families, the issue to me isn't just the Justin Turner test. It's the people you put in jeopardy by letting justin turner play and then pulling him if they didn't get the test results for these guys maybe maybe it was just justin turner but why were they getting results in game they're the only they have two labs this is no longer the regular season where they're testing all these players it is a very small group now and they should be the first test done and there was something about like you weren't supposed to interact with your family like there could be at the thing but like willie adames was saying that he was saying hi to his family from like 30 feet

away like you weren't so but they won and they just showed all of the dodgers family on the field so like was that like a super spreader event that we all just watched on tv where like everyone's kissing their their wives for the first time with you know justin turner germs on their lips i don't know like maybe uh we'll we'll see what what happens but it just like i can't believe that 2020 managed to rear its head again at the very end of this you guys what if you're cory seger you win an mvp of the world series unanimously it is your moment and literally no one is talking about you not a one we didn't even mention it's 26 minutes into this pod and i felt like we should maybe mention who won the mvp i mean in our defense justin turner testing positive for COVID as the World Series ended was a pretty big deal.

We should talk about Corey Seager, though. He was my pick on the hitter side mid-series because he was just crushing it. Kershaw, I think, had a case, and that was something that Alex, one of the listeners of our pod, threw our way. I think his case was based on the series going 7, Kershaw coming into game 7 and kind of doing what Urias did in game 6, right? Shutting the door with an inning or two and kind of tacking that on. Either way, he's

exercised his playoff demons. Not only did he get the World Series, but he just pitched really well in the series as well. He's going to... We wrote these... We have these briefs that we do um right after a game ends or just a short sort of here's what we've got here's some insights and we have andy and pedro and me and you know pedro more and me like sort of just writing about what just happened as we're writing longer things and you know what does um andy have a thing

about clayton kershaw and how he won the title and how even though he has the three cy young awards this is a big deal so he may not have won the mvp but clayton kershaw will get a fair amount of the of the dap for for winning this like he will he will get some dap for this i think uh it makes a lot of sense to give the actual hardware the mvp to cory seager because it was just sort of like an everyday thing where like every time he comes to bat the rays are terrified basically and they're asking willie dominic's about cory seager you know i mean like it's it was one of those things where he just every time he hit the ball it was a rocket it was in the right angles uh you know i have this nitro stat he was the leader in the lead in the postseason in terms of hitting the ball in the right angles of the right velocities like he

he uh he he showed us what a healthy cory seager can look like. Interestingly enough, I got asked, you know, one of the things that I got asked on the radio about this, one of the things that he said was, I used to do video all the time, and now that I don't have video, I don't overthink it. Which is just funny, you have Javi Baez

and JD Martinez saying no video is why I struggled so much this year, and then you have World Series MVP saying no video is part of why I did so well this year. Yeah, the overthinking it thing is pretty funny. I think with Seager, there's also a nice comeback story with him. I mean, he was just not the same hitter coming off of injuries. You look back at the numbers, 2019, 19 homers, that's a nice year from a middle infielder in typical times, right?

But he'd shown so much potential with the 26 homers back in 2016. Comes out last year off of two injuries, and it's just good, not great. And comes back this regular season, hits 15 home runs, shows that power, gets the average back up, kind of ticks all the boxes, a 151 WRC+. It was really the best Corey Seager we'd seen yet, even though it was in a partial season. And the exit velocity this year was up a ton, 93.2 for his average exit velocity. He was down to 88.8 last year by comparison. So it gives you an

idea of where he might have been at health-wise seeing that drop. So I think it's a nice story too that's kind of just lost completely in the shuffle of what's happening tonight. I mean, my Twitter feed is a complete chaos. I mean, between Dustin Turner, I guess all the Dodgers will receive rapid tests tonight after they get back. However, they've already been celebrating Sands Mask on the field. Rapid test full of champagne. Exactly. So that's interesting.

And then Kevin Kiermaier apparently kind of threw a little shade and said, I don't care what the numbers say. Blake Snell had a couple more innings in him. So there is a lot of things going on right now. And Corey Seager was good, but he's like the fifth most important storyline in the World Series, even though he won the MVP. I don't blame us for getting to him late. At least we got him in there.

I mean, Kiermaier's comments are interesting too, just because he's a long tenured ray he's a leader in that clubhouse too right and there were some player reactions on twitter i saw christian yelich tweeted a gif of a man destroying his computer at the time that snell was removed and i laughed but then i thought dude your manager would do the exact same thing like i i'm not convinced that that craig counsel would have handled that situation any differently I laughed, but then I thought, dude, your manager would do the exact same thing. I'm not convinced that Craig Council would have handled that situation any differently than Kevin Cash. But to get some players pushing back, and Snell's reactions when he comes out of games all the time are generally, I think, pretty demonstrative.

He's not the guy that's quietly just hanging his head, walking off the mound. He's mad that he's coming out of a game because he's just one of those guys that wants the ball. That's not a bad thing. But this is one of those decisions. People are going to talk about it for a very long time. Yeah, and the Justin Turner, we're just tipped the iceberg here. By the time this pod comes out, there might even be more info on this because it's hopefully everything was true like we were

saying you know hopefully mlb didn't actually know the results it seems to me that nobody was pulling harder for the dodgers tonight than mlb it would have got real dicey here if the rays had won this game yeah yeah and just the way that manfred looked on the field at the end i think speaks to the gut shot that he got in the eighth inning where he thought maybe, and even on the field, he said something about, we're glad we got this done. Did he? Yeah.

So, I don't know. It's not an amazing look for baseball. I think none of it was an amazing look for baseball. I mean, the whole 60 game series, the way that labor and ownership fought before this started, and ownership seemed to be fighting for fewer games, just trying to get to the postseason and make as much money off the postseason as they could. The ill will that will be there between the players and the owners is still there.

The Manfred talking about how much money baseball lost this year on the eve of Game 6 in an interview doesn't look good. AJ Hinch giving, or is it Jeff Lunau giving an interview about how people just

wanted to, you know, trounce him for cheating. And they just, the media had it in for him. And, you know, it wasn't his fault. I mean, baseball can't help but punch itself in the nether regions. Sometimes, yes. I use the gender neutral term i think that's probably what i mean i mean i think that's probably a fitting point to end with manfred and everything that's gone wrong because i do i do want to point out really

quickly uh another gem of manfred's tenure in that now the season is over, all those suspensions, Alex Cora, AJ Hinch, Jeff Luhnhau, they are now free to be hired. They will be moved off the restricted list, as I was told by somebody inside MLB. We polled about immediately

as soon as the season is over. So tonight, I guess the second that Justin Turner's COVID test came back positive, A.J. Hinch and Alex Cora are free to slide in. The rest of baseball is not excited about this. Well, I guess I try to equate it to like a regular person job. Like if you got in huge trouble, you know, for plagiarism, and they told you to sit out for 60 games or half a year, would you be allowed to

slot back in at the same level position you're at, or maybe even a better position? Because the White Sox job's a good job. Yeah. Would that be allowed? Like with the Astros aging, like, you almost say that could be a better job. You know, you're jumping over to a young team. So I think most people are okay with the second chance but a lot of people are not okay with these guys sliding into these plum jobs like nothing ever happened in like alex core is like being rumored to come back to the red socks i think he does i think a guy who won there can do no wrong in in that media market that's a fishbowl it's strange if you want to read the story, that was Britt

working with Andy McCullough and Mark Kerrig getting the pulse of a lot of people around the league about the returns of Cora and AJ Hinch. It was a featured story on The Athletic on Tuesday. Sign up for $1 a month, theathletic.com slash rates and barrels.

I think I'm just disappointed that the league can't develop more interesting managerial candidates. There are 30 of these jobs out there, and there are, what, 1,500 people working in baseball at all different levels that, in some form, are on some sort of track to lead a team, maybe, if you count up all the position coaches and hitting coaches and pitching coaches and coordinators. I mean, some of these guys didn't even have managerial experience

before getting an opportunity. They didn't manage in the minors, that is, before becoming Major League managers. AJ Hinch was, I think, what, the D-backs farm director before he was a manager? It's strange. Carlos Beltran was going to get a job without ever managing a minor league game.

There are people that spend their entire lives trying to strike this balance and get on this track. And then you have two guys get suspended for a year, and they immediately come back, and they're going to be offered potentially the best jobs that are out there. That would frustrate you. That would frustrate you. If you were one of those people spending your entire life rising through the ranks, doing everything you could to become a better candidate, that would be a really frustrating thing to see play out. Yeah. And, you know, you touched on this with the Pine Tower. I had an agent bring that up that, you know, MLB's history is to just turn a blind eye towards PEDs, towards science-dealing cheating, which they knew was going on before this. Same thing with Pine Tar.

They just kind of don't address it, don't address it, don't address it. Then it becomes such a huge public outcry that they have to do something about it and their punishment is always just kind of halfway. And it makes nobody happy. You know, it's like it's either, you know, from the Astro side, too punitive. Like there's Astro fans who think it's too punitive. And why was it so punitive when you know that the Red Astros side to punitive, like there's Astro fans and things is too punitive. And why,

why was it so punitive when you know that the Red Sox and the Yankees were doing it and that there's other players coming out and saying, you know, there's more teams than that, you know? So why was it so punitive to us? Like the, why like people were mad at the athletic for,

for, for supposedly pushing this Astros story where it's like, no, we're just reporting what's out there. And baseball itself said that the Red Sox thing wasn't as bad, but can we believe them? What do we know about what the other teams were doing? So yeah, I agree with you 100%.

They always get backed into a corner before they make a decision. It's always zero-sum brinksmanship where it's just like it comes to the end and then something has to happen. And so they hurriedly, like their COVID policy, putting things together as they go along. They're trying to build the car as they drive it. It's always just like, what are you doing?

It seems obvious, but I don't know. Maybe there's something about the structure of the way the MLBPA is stronger than it is in other sports and the way ownership and there's no salary cap. And so there's ownership might have these old like issues where they they're still mad about, I don't know, free agency. I don't know what it is, but something is so mad about something. And so there are these old fishers that just like don't allow people to work together and um you know it comes out switching gears a little bit but is is this year is the title tainted in in any way because of the 60 game season and the weird pro season and just all this stuff is it like like somebody hitting 400, or is it totally legitimate? No, that was a good gear.

We went from cheating to tainted, so you did a nice little... Because if it is tainted, that's a funny thing to put up as an equivalency because if it is tainted, that would be like the third tainted title up as an equivalency because if it is tainted that would be like the third tainted title in four years or something right like we're talking about like which tainted title is the most tainted next race of barrels we'll make that

a twitter poll and let people write long responses that i will read to everybody on the air it'll be a fun way to go about it punch myself in the nether regions. You know what, though? This is my last thought of the night because I'm running out of energy. I think this was a legitimate title.

And I think despite the weirdness of 16 teams being in the postseason, I think MLB lucked into having the two best teams in the World Series. They actually did. And I think even the fact that the Rays had to go five with the Yankees to get there, you know, the path the Rays took, not only was it exciting, it was a grueling path to prove that they deserve to be there. And I think as we said earlier, we all look at the Dodgers and they're just a better team the Rays right now were the Rays good enough to if you play a series like this 10 times did

the Rays win two or three of the series yeah probably probably two or three but seven or eight of those series are going to go to the Dodgers and I think in a year where so much could have gone wrong with 16 teams in the playoffs, it's one of the very few things that sort of played out the right way. I completely agree. I think at the beginning of this crazy year, which feels like 20 years ago, but was July,

I thought to myself, this season isn't real. You're going to put an asterisk by it. But by the time we've gotten through this strange March madness, playoffs, postseason, nobody got shut down. Nobody got a positive test until Justin Turner at the end. Until Justin Turner. It was like 45, 50 days without a positive test, right? Yeah.

You know what? And as you guys have heard as well, I've talked to players that are like, this season not only counts, it should be worth double. I feel like I played 300 games. Oh, they're so tired. It was so hard on the players. And actually, I think you're also right, DVR, to point out that these are maybe the two best teams in baseball this year

because the way that you would say that wasn't legitimate is by saying, oh, like the Marlins, right? Or the Astros. Like if the Astros won this year, they were like below 500, right? You know? Yeah. Like if a 500 team had just like limped its way to 29 teams, 29 wins, and like found a way to win in the postseason

and like just gotten to the end, like I think that maybe you'd have a point but the dodgers don't have a problem winning regular season games like no they could have they could have challenged the mariners maybe for for you know wins in a season this year i think that's how good they were so um it's legitimate and i in some, the weird postseason they came up with actually makes it more legitimate, right? Because it just made it more like, no, man, they had a gauntlet, man.

They had to beat everybody. There was, you know, everybody got in and so they had to beat everybody. So, and as much as like, I think, you know, I do have one response. It's like, calm down, you know, illegitimate ass 60 game season or whatever it is but um i think mostly we're all gonna remember this year right like like i'm gonna remember

unfortunately i'm gonna remember this run with y'all you know on this podcast i'm gonna remember uh just wondering if the season was gonna happen just the ups and downs of the season. I thought 60 games ended up being interesting because there were some teams that jumped out to crazy leads in terms of wins, and then just there was time for regression. There was enough of a season that some of the teams that were rabbits kind of fell back to earth. Like the Orioles, they didn't make it. Just the whole, i i i'm

so thankful for you guys um and i'm thankful for our listeners and our readers because um there's been times where i thought there would be no sports there would be none of this i thought we were going to descend into madness in the streets um and uh just a little bit of normalcy even if it comes with the weird turner thing at the end a little bit of normalcy a normal world series and um some some good baseball fun with you guys on the podcast and and you guys as listeners like i'm very thankful for that man i am very very thankful for that yeah amen second all that yeah i'll tack on a third i think the sanity that comes from getting to work with your friends goes a long way all the time

and it goes twice as far in a pandemic and a huge thank you to the many of you who've stuck around we've never done playoff episodes before is the first the first time we did it. A lot of people seem to like it, so hopefully it's something that we'll do, at least in some form, in the future. As for the show Beyond Today, I think we're going to get back to you twice a week. I don't know what exactly everything's going to look like, but

we'll have more details on that on the very next episode. We might take a little bit of a break to get some sleep. Yeah, there's going to be a little recovery period in here. It's not going to be super long, but we're turning the page to 2021 very soon. So hopefully everybody enjoyed the show. I thought it was a great postseason.

I'm just glad we made it thus far. So for Britt Giroli, at Britt underscore Giroli on Twitter, and Eno Saris at Eno Saris, I'm Derek Van Ryper. We hope you enjoyed the Rates and Barrels playoff shows. Thanks for listening.