Rates & Barrels - Assessing the AL Division Leaders & Offense Holding Steady Despite Increased Drag

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

Eno, Jed, and DVR discuss the three division leaders in the American League, examining the strengths and weaknesses of the Astros, Tigers, and Yankees with the Trade Deadline looming at the end of the month. Plus, they explore how offense has held up to 2024 levels despite the increased drag on the baseball this season.Rundown1:03 Yordan Alvarez's Setback & Increasing Needs for a Left-Handed Bat in Houston10:13 Balancing Team Spending Limits w/Available Upgrades20:59 The Tigers Have a Commanding Lead in the Central36:53 Yankees Under Pressure in the AL East47:52 Drag on the Baseball is Up, But Offense is SteadyFollow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.socialFollow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.sociale-mail: [e-mail] our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFeSubscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrelsHosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno SarrisWith: Jed LowrieProducer: Brian SmithExecutive Producer: Derek VanRiper Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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visit WatercolorWestport.com. Welcome to Raids and Barrels presented by E-Trade from Morgan Stanley. It is Wednesday, July 2nd. Derek Benriperino, Sarah's Jed Lowry here with you on this episode. It's a companion pod to the Tuesday episode in this feed. We are taking a look at the AL division leaders trying to figure out what direction those teams are going in the second half, what they're likely to do at the trade deadline at the end of this month. We also have a big picture question we're going to try to answer a little bit later

on in the show. Drag on the baseball is up, but offense is not down. We'll dig into why that might be the case in just a little while. Gentlemen, a lot of ground to cover today and in the effort of avoiding an 85 minute pod and pushing Eno from one pod to another with no lunch, we're gonna go right after it.

We're gonna start in the AL West. We have some news as we get started today. Jordan Alvarez was shut down from all activities after experiencing some soreness while taking swings on Monday. Prior to that he was tracking toward a return maybe this weekend which the Astros I think really need despite the fact they've opened up a sizable lead in the AL West. They're up to a seven game lead now on July 2nd. Now the follow up plan is that he's going to see a specialist the next few days.

I imagine, you know, when urgency index 3.0 drops, the Astros need for a bat, particularly from the left side, is probably going to pop as a more urgent need than it was just 24 hours ago. They are 17th against right handers. I did not expect to see that. I mean, it's still a 100 WRC+. I don't know how that works. You'd think 100 equals 15th, but whatever. They are 17th and I think they need help there. I think even when he's back, it's a pretty right-handed lineup. I think they could use some help for him from the left side.

And we were trying to kind of go through the options and I think you've got, you know, Jesus Sanchez, I keep trying to put on somebody's team, but he might cost a little bit because they, you know, it's like two or three years, the team would get him. The rentals are Ryan O'Hern and Cedric Mullins. Ryan O'Hern, little bit of an interesting fit there because that

would force one of them into the field. We had a fun one though we came up with maybe. Jake Fraley from the Reds. The Reds are competitive and may not want to sell, but maybe there could be a deal there where they get a reliever they own for a while that they have team control of for a while. That bullpen could probably use some help in Cincinnati. So maybe there's a bat for an arm tray that could be found there. But you know, the supply of bats in particular is not high right now. I think you're just being limited by the constraints of your own imagination. You know, I mean, come on, Jed, they're good players out there.

You just got to work a little harder to find a way to get them on your team. I guess everybody's got a price, right? And so I guess it depends on how much the Astros believe in this team and if they're willing to pay the price for somebody who might cost more. It's easy to find the most linear path

like a Ryan O'Hern or a Cedric Mullins and try to find the teams that are not going to be competitive and find a fit. But to Eno's point, the supply side on that, Brian just threw up their, you know, Strunsky and San Francisco, depending on the direction they choose to go as another option. But yeah, like I said, everybody's got a cost and I think it just, it really depends on the Astros and how leadership and ownership feels about this team and what they're willing to do. Cause that's a huge blow to lose Alvarez at this point,

kind of on the cusp of his return in a really right hand dominant lineup. That was one of my major notes for them when I was prepping for this 36 hours ago and all that's been flipped on its head. You look at what they've been able to do without Alvarez for a good portion of the season. He's been down since the early part of May with this injury.

14th as a team in Woba, 316, tied for 14th in Homer, so not as much thump without Alvarez, not a surprise there. The strength of this team is clearly its pitching, right? The starters are third in Fangraph's War as a group, they're second in K minus BB percentage, the relievers are phenomenal, first in War as a group, first in K minus BB percentage, so they could trade from that strength

and trade big league talent for big league talent. That could be one way that they unlock something, even as simple as a Jake Fraley trade, which would, I think, help them given how right-handed they are. The other part, which would, I think, help them given how right handed they are. The other part of the equation, I think, for their lineup, and this is still a question even a month or so ago, we had Chandler Rome, the Astros beat writer from the athletic on the show is,

can they get more out of Christian Walker and Yiner Diaz? Even Jose Altuve, relative to his norms, is under producing, even though he's been, you's been above average by WRC+. They've kind of quietly moved L. Tuve back to second base over the last couple of weeks, so it really makes it easier to go find something on the market when a corner outfielder is the need, as opposed to a second baseman specifically.

So you look at those veterans that have underperformed relative to expectations. Walker, of course, had the oblique injury at the beginning of the season, so I think that's a big part of why his first half didn't go to expectations. Walker, of course, had the oblique injury at the beginning of the season, so I think that's a big part of why his first half didn't go to script. But around that, they've got a lot from Jeremy Pena, who landed on the IL this weekend.

Isak Paredes has been really good, just bounced right back to being the guy he was in Tampa Bay. And then Cam Smith, the rookie who they got back in the Kyle Tucker trade, has started to play really well. His last 30 days hitting 319 nine team with a three sixty seven OVP. He's popped four homers during that span for the season. He's third in WRC plus in this team. He's 22 percent better than league average.

So Cam Smith has delivered really from the jump and they've needed that in the wake of the Tucker trade and the Bregman departure and all the changes they've had. But I think it's those other veterans that you're kind of looking at and saying, all right, if you're going to add to this core, those guys also need to do something more in line with expectations for them to be a dangerous playoff team.

I would say Christian Walker in particular, right? And he's over 300 at bats in at this point. So, like settling in to a new situation, probably that honeymoon phase is probably over, but he's striking out more than he ever has and he's walking less. That leads me to believe he's trying to do too much still. He's trying to live up to that contract

instead of just being the guy that they signed. It's a really weird team to me because you're talking about the pitching staff being dominant, it's really just two guys. It's Fram weird team to me because you're talking about the pitching staff, you know, being dominant It's really just two guys is Framber and Hunter Brown. You look at the mix if we're just going off a war You know the other four Gusto Blanco Gordon McCullers their negative war. So my big question to them is like who's their third starter? Let alone their fourth and fifth, but then you look at the way that they've played above 500 teams, they have more wins than anybody else

in the American league against above 500 teams. Yeah, I think that the recipe is kind of like, be just good enough with the starter, get them through three or four or five innings, and then have a good bullpen. It's kind of an old strategy they've had for a while, but it is top heavy in the rotation, But it is, that's also the thing is like, if you're top heavy in the rotation and there's only like two really good starting pitchers that might

be available at the deadline, are you going to spend, you know, what it takes to get one of those two starting pitchers? And if it's, if you're then like, Oh, well, let's just get one of these like rentals that get us to the finish line. Maybe you don't even spend on that because you have in Brandon Walters and Ryan Gusto and Colton Gordon, you have capable guys that, you know, I know Ward doesn't really like them, but I think they're capable enough to sort of get you through four or five with three earned runs. That's not exciting, but with their offense,

it should be enough to keep them in the game and it's worked so far. So I don't know that they need to go get a starting pitcher, but I did, I it should be enough to keep them in the game. And it's worked so far. So I don't know that they need to go get a starting pitcher, but I did. I'm listening to you, Derek. I tried to expand my brain and I came up with a name. So I've got this this thing here. The worst corner outfields in baseball. We can we can look into that for a second.

And as you can see, the Astros are have the 10th worst corner outfield. It just added together their projections for us this season. The Giants are ninth. I don't think that they'll sell. So I don't know about Yastremski. What about Brandon Lau? Okay, I'm listening. Brandon Lau has played the outfield, has played second base. So whoever you think is better at second or in the outfield between him and Jose Altuve, you've got a situation. He is been a platoon guy. You could just use him as a platoon guy because you have Altuve, you can have somebody else

who can play second base when he's not playing second base. If you decided playing the second base, the Rays are playing well, but he is one of the highest paid players on the team. And so they always do something like this where they buy and they sell at the same time and there could be something there. You heard it here first, right? Yeah.

I'm intrigued by it because I fancy the race to be buyers at the end of the month. And I do think they operate in that middle ground where like the trader player that's helped them get to where they are, but also add something else that changes a different part of their roster.

The challenging thing for me with Houston, especially in a trade like that, but even if a team wants more future value is their system's not good. Keith Law had him, I think 29th going into the season out of 30. Cam Smith was their best prospect. Cam Smith's on the big league roster. He's a big piece of their future, right? And even though the Astros keep exceeding expectations from a player development perspective, a lot of the prospects they've traded away, the near big league ready guys, haven't really done a lot where they've gone.

So I just wonder how many other teams look at their system and say, yeah, there's a few guys we really like that we could reasonably go get. So that's what I think also makes it harder for me to line up trades with Houston. The other thing is they're at $236 million right now in Houston. The first apron is $241.

They have operated the past. That's a sort of a hard cap for them. So my other big brain idea was Trevor Larnack. Oh, okay. There's only two more years left on his deal. He's only due two million dollars for the full season this year. So he's affordable.

He might be somebody that helps them going forward. You know, I think that the Astros kind of like more multi-dimensional players, at least when they trade for young players. Larnack's a little bit of a slow, not great defensive, just pretty much just like a slugging corner outfielder. But when you add that to the mix of other guys who are more athletic and can maybe take over

for him in the seventh defensively or whatever, then it actually, it adds a dimension that they don't usually go after, but it might just work and it might work money-wise. And to your point, team defense you know, team defense wise, they're one of the better ones in the league right now. If we're just going out above, you know, average, maybe they could take a big swing on a guy that can slug from the left side

that might not be the best defensive outfielder. Yeah. And I think the other part of that too, is, you know, you have a smaller left field with the Crawford boxes. It's different playing the angles off the wall and different things, but maybe that also hides someone with limited range, depending on how you feel about the fit overall. They always do really interesting positioning and do you notice that in Houston? Oh yeah. They position their, what is it they do with their left fielder? They use the boxes. Yeah exactly, because you know you have to be prepared for those, you know, for those balls that either it's an inch from going, you know, kind of behind the Crawford boxes or hitting off of the wall. And so the one that burns you is if you're waiting for it to come off the

wall, and it goes into the you know, goes all the way to the bullpen. So I think that they play them really far off the line. Yes. So they can be near that spot where the boxes come out and they can go get it or, you know, cause they figured down the line is maybe a homer or a double cause it's short down the line. I mean, if you got a burner, you know, it might be different cause you don't, the odds of a triple down the left field line when it's that short are very slim.

So it's kind of going to be a double unless you're talking about like a Byron Buxton running or, you know, somebody with elite speed. So I think their left fielder's play really close to center because they're trying to like play those boxes. But in San Francisco, they do something similar to where they pinch triples alley. They play their right fielder far off the line

because it's short down, it's actually short down the line in San Francisco. And so they want their fieler covering the most ground as possible. So they kind of pinches towards, anyway, so Houston's an interesting place defensively, you know, it might be weird to put a guy in that doesn't excel defensively, but maybe you just put Al Tuve back more there and Larnac DHs while he gets to know the place, you know, because maybe Jordan's out for a while. The other thing that's interested me about these Jordan situation is like, and you've been through this Jed, is just, you know, there's like the level of reporting that we're getting from the team,

which, you know, I think Houston is probably the, they give us the least information in the league. I remember when Altube's knees were an issue and I was in a scrum with Altuve and he was like, I can't tell you. And we're like, what? And he's like, I can't tell you what's wrong with my, like, I can't tell you those things. And we're like, okay, thanks for the information. And we're all like, Altuve's knee hurts. We don't know what this means.

We don't know anything. No timeframe, no nothing. So Houston's always been like that. But you know, what do you, what is this process like where now you're seeing a second and third, like you definitely went through this. Like, I know it's just frustrating, but what, like, is everybody involved? Is like the agent involved and you know, how many, how many people in the front office are involved and like, you got multiple doctors. What is that? What's going through your your non's head right now?

And hands in particular, we talked about this with Chapman a couple of weeks ago, can be very tricky. And I had a couple of things. I tore the UCL on my thumb. I had wrist surgery. And you go and you wanna make sure, at the end of the day, it's about the player and him feeling confident in his ability to perform.

And so, I understand from the team's perspective, they want Yordon in the lineup because they're envisioning Yordon at 100%, or even if they say, oh, Yordon at 80%, right? Well, it's not that if you have Yordon at 80%, it's not like you're gonna get 80% of his production. You're going to get less than that, right? Especially when you're talking about hand.

And so he might be at 80% medically, but I think teams equate that to 80% production, and 80% production of Jordaan is better than anybody else they've got. I think it's a stretch to assume that you know 80% of Jordan Alvarez medically is 80% of his you know feeling good production. But I suppose that like some of this comes down to like some of these injuries are supposedly like just pain tolerance ones like when you're coming back from a handmaid they say like you could come back theoretically right after the surgery if you could handle the pain. But you're like, well, how are you confident in swinging?

How do you get to that primo bat speed if you're like, ow, every time, right? Your body shuts it down. Unless you're masking the pain in some way that will eventually catch up with you, you're really not, and I'm sure that that is still, you know, considered in certain circumstances, but, but it's not sustainable when you're playing every single day. But then you might have some old school people were like, Oh, well, we did the

imaging, everything's fine. You're not, we looked at, we looked at every MRI we've done, not been able to MRIs there, we can't find anything wrong. It doesn't matter. And yeah, it's your point. Like do the agents get involved? Absolutely, right? And the agent's gonna say, like, my guy's not right.

And he's telling you that, whether you're listening to him or not, he's not right. Like, something is not right. You know, I think this is where the medicine of, you know, the compressed schedule, right? And getting a guy on the field, like, every day lost is a game, you know, that they can't get back.

And so the club is pushing, hey, we need to get this guy back. We need him in the lineup. Like we're in a good position. Like we need him. We need him. We need him. The player is like, listen, guys, like I want to be there, but am I really going to be productive for you? Am I really going to be the guy that you expect? And now all of a sudden, and I think the baseline is that if you're on the field, you are presumed healthy and a hundred percent. So if you go out there at let's call it 80 percent medically, right, then the media is like, why is your done sucking? You know, like what's going on? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly right. And so now all of a sudden you are, you're compromised. You're trying to compete at the highest level You know, you're you're not capable of what everybody expects, you know what you're capable of

Yeah, your dawn still I mean has years remaining on that long-term deal He signed the six-year hundred and fifteen million dollar contract that started back in 23 He's not even halfway through that yet So it's really in the best interest of player and team to make sure that his hand is actually healed properly because he's a huge part of their franchise. It shouldn't even require the long-term deal. It should just be the obvious right thing to do.

But in this instance, I don't understand why there's so much disconnect. I mean, the Kyle Tucker situation last year was pretty weird, too. Why they're different, like I'm a little surprised, I think just from the outside, how different, different doctors opinions can be too. That's why it's a practice, right? I like that.

Do you know? Like, you know, they're same thing with a house, right? Like you get an appraisal at very different levels, you know, you get a medical opinion that, that differs, you know, and especially when you're reading an image, you know, how you interpret that image can be different depending on who's looking at it. Yeah, and even when the image was taken,

there might be some parts that are obscured and things you just simply cannot see. We learned that too. Sometimes the swelling makes that impossible. When you were talking about the pain tolerance with handmaids for some reason, the pain tolerance with ham mates for some reason, the pain tolerance jogged a memory for me of Adam Dunn having his appendix removed

and him playing six days later, which is just mind blowing to me. Like that might be an all-time, there's not a chance that he felt that good six days later, but still managed to get back on the field. So I had to verify back on the field. So I had to verify the number. And this is a guy who supposedly hated baseball.

He wanted to play the next day. I remember at the time, I was like, I'll play the next day and everyone's kind of like, no, no, you won't play that soon. But he played sooner than people expected. So you gotta give him some credit for that. My experience with Adam Dunn was not that he hated baseball, but that he had a healthy disrespect

for some of the leadership within baseball. Not that he hated baseball, but that he had a healthy disrespect for some of the leadership within baseball. He literally said to me, GMs don't matter. I like that. That sounds like Adam Dunn. Shop with Rakuten and you'll get it. What's it? It's the best deal, the highest cash back, the most savings on your shopping.

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Let's shift the focus over to the Tigers. Little news item here, actually two. Reese Olsen may actually be back from the IL to start on Friday. They've got Sawyer Gibson Long going on the IL, but Olsen coming back is pretty important to this team because of the long term absence for Jackson Job. They also lost Kerry Carpenter to an IL stint recently. But you look at this team at a glance, 5th in Woba. This is a lineup that has exceeded my expectations in a big way.

They're even top 10 in homers, 106 on the season. Jed mentioned the Astros being really top heavy in their rotation when you've got Tarek Scoobel reigning AL's Cyung Award winner at the top, pitching really, really well. And Jack Flaherty's pitched well too. Probably a similar thing happening right now in Detroit where a lot of their starting pitcher war goes on the first two guys in the rotation. That's true of most teams though I think if you broke it down in great detail. As a group, 3rd and K-minus BB% though, 17.5%. The relievers. We knew they needed relievers Detroit. We were calling for trades even before the season started. I think my idea at the time was

the Padres got to save money. Let's send Robert Suarez to the Tigers and let someone else close in San Diego and let's go from there. They're going to get bullpen help at the trade deadline, no doubt about it. I think the question I have about this team is how much do you trust some of the improvements they have seen from guys at the plate? We talked about Wensil Perez last Friday, small sample. He's been mashing. Riley Green's been doing Riley Green stuff.

Glamber Torres, not as much power as expected but a nice rebound from him. Zach McKinstry, you got the Torkelson rebound. Javier Baez showing signs of life. Colt Keats at least been a league average bat which is nice to see even though it's not quite the level some were expecting Dylan Dingler's been good mentioned Carpenter who's hurt right now not playing at the typical Kerry Carpenter levels but still contributing nonetheless they have nine players with a WRC plus of a hundred or better right now but Jed do you trust it

as you look up and down that lineup do you believe in that as sustained improvement or is it a combination of guys getting off to really good starts where maybe the league's going to start to make some adjustments to how they're pitching this group? I lean into this group. I think it's one of the more balanced lineups in the game and they're really not as a team. They're not really outperforming their expected results either, right? Like you're really talking about it's a Delta of seven, their Woba versus expected Wobba And then I think there's some there's some interesting parts of that too

Like you talk about Colt Keith his expected Wobba versus actual is 45 So I think that you know, here's a guy who's probably hitting the ball really hard and not getting the results that you know He is expecting on the flip side of that, you got McKinstry and Baez, both have actual Wobas of 32 points higher than they're expected. So, if I'm buying on Colt Keith, can McKinstry and Baez keep up their production? Those two, I would be a little bit more worried about, but when you got Colt Keith,

I would say that he's gonna balance those two out. But this is a team that's based on their run differential and their simple projection on their record. They're right in line with what they should be. I will say, I'm a little bit more, you talk about Flaherty pitching well. I'm a little bit worried about that. He's walking almost four per nine innings.

That's a lot for a guy that is not, he's gonna have to find a way to get guys to chase more. I mean, the stuff is good, but he's walking four guys per inning with him is I don't think that leads to good results. Casey Mize has thrown the ball pretty well. And the only question about Casey is just the health aspect. He's thrown 150 innings one time in his career

coming off an injury. So can he sustain the health aspect. He's thrown 150 endings one time in his career coming off an, uh, an injury. So, you know, can he sustain the health aspect of it? This is a really interesting team. I do think that the hot start is covering up some warts. I was just looking at Spencer Torkelson's line and, you know, in March, he was great. And in March and April, he was great. He had a 149 WRC plus in May. He was pretty good.

128 WRC plus in June. I mean, frankly kind of stunk. I mean a 207, 298 OBP, 366 slugging was 16% worse than the average. And we know that he's kind of gone in and out of pretty good streaks in over the course of his career. So I don't really know what I'm getting out of Spencer Torkelson going forward. And it's been nice that some of, you know, some of the more type role players like Zach McKinstry have stepped forward.

But Colt Keith is a little bit of a interesting fit when it comes to glove. Like they're kind of moving around trying to find a place where his glove fits. And there's some uneasy fits here. Like they were supposed to be Trey Sweeney's job at short and now it's back to Javi Baez. Parker Meadows has I do think some upside but at 25 you know some of it maybe we ascribed more upside to him than he has but you know the defense will keep him on the field but he needs to do better than a 70 WRC plus. So I actually look around this team and see some flaws where I'm like, what's

going on in center, you know, what's Colt Keith's actual position is Spencer Torkelson, you know, just going to be either really great or really bad. What happens with Carrie Carpenter out? Now he's hurt. What is going on with Matt Bierling? So I just, I think that I'm like surprised that they have this record and I'm looking at the team being like, I think there's question marks here like who's the fifth starter right now and

Could they have a better closer than will vest? I think that they should be active I think that they should maybe get a bat and an arm And I guess the nice thing is they do have a plug-and-play sort of lineup that people can move in a lot of places So the bat could just be a bat, I guess. I think Kerry Carpenter is okay in the field. If they think they're a little bit weaker against righties than lefties, if they think that Ryan or her, that shouldn't cost them much, that might work. You'd play Kerry Carpenter in the field a little bit more.

I think it's okay. So I think they don't have to spend at the top of the market in what they're getting, but I do think they should get a relief arm and a bat. And I think it's fairly important. The nice thing is they banked all these wins. They're at this point, even if they have some regression, they can sort of ride the goodwill that they've created the sort of wins that they banked early on in the season. Yeah. I think the things that have happened to the other three teams that we thought

would be chasing them have also kind of changed what the Tigers should be focusing on right now. Like right now you're not looking in the rear of your mirror. You're kind of looking at the teams that are also winning their divisions and thinking about how you stack up with them in October. Like you're kind of saying, okay, we had a good taste in the postseason last year

and we did it in a pretty unconventional way, you know, mixing and matching and leaning really heavily on the bullpen in the second half of the year. What are we going to do this time around with the shortcomings when we actually got there? What was the problem with our lineup when we had to face elite bullpens and better teams day after day after day, right? Yeah, could we get a reliever that's not overused and get them in here or get a reliever in here that we can overuse that our other ones are better? You know what I mean?

Like they, they, they kind of gassed out a little bit at the end of the season with that bullpen and you look at the usage now, I mean, they got all the top five relievers are all at 35 innings already, so that's a big workload for the first half of the season. The fun thing about the tigers though, as far as an organization, is they have a good farm system. They have players they can trade right now. They were seventh in Keith's rankings back in the spring when those dropped. So they're sitting there next to the Cubs like they could go out and get as much

impact as they feel they actually need or as much as actually available. I wonder if they do need the get them their sort of starter. Even if you want to look at the combination of Scoobal and Flaherty and Olsen and say it in Mize and say, yeah, I feel good about whatever combination of those guys we have to use behind Scoobal in a series. You still need some depth to help get through the schedule in the second half to keep the wear and tear off. Yeah, speaking of wear and tear,

the guys they're using in the fifth spot, they use in a way that uses their bullpen hard. So they use Sir Gibson Long with an opener and taking them out in the fifth. So like, oh, you've got four innings and you had to use a reliever to get to five innings, right? That's pretty hard. Like Kader Montero is similar too.

So whenever they use a fifth starter right now, they're hitting the bullpen kind of hard. And that's, you know, we've talked about how every pitch that you're starting pitcher pitches today lowers your bullpen ERA tomorrow. It was a study that we read. So they're doing the opposite of that. They're not getting a lot of pitches out of their,

the fifth starter and that's making their bullpen worse going forward. I think they could of pitches out of their, the fist starter and that's making their bullpen worse going forward. I think they could also focus because of their market size and maybe the, the money they can spend. Maybe they can focus on getting somebody that has multiple years left. I keep throwing that Hazel Sanchez name around, but maybe that's somebody that could help them

as somebody that they could be there for two or three years so that they're not just buying a rental. And I think that would be maybe how Scott Harris wants to work things. Yeah, that's my expectation. They'd be looking more in the bin of something that helps them short term and long term. Yeah, either super cheap, where it's a rental

and it doesn't cost them almost anything. Or, like, I don't think they'll get, like, the best rental starters, you know? Or the best rental bat that's out there. I think they'll get the best rental starters, or the best rental bat that's out there. I think they will either get somebody that has years of control or go on the super cheap side. Would you put them in the Sandy Alcontra sweepstakes if it's still a sweepstakes? Because it's not a rental,

and you'd probably need that sort of impact, and if next year or even second half Sandy is better than first half Sandy, you've done a lot to really fortify a strength. I would, but I also know that Scott Harris left San Francisco and that Detroit seems to be like a little bit of a tough place to hit. I'd be interested in Jett's opinion on that.

I'm not the one to ask. My highest career average is in Detroit, remember? Really? Yeah. Wow. I'm not the one to ask. My highest career average is in Detroit, remember? Really? Yeah. Wow. I love hitting there. All right. I actually think right field is very generous.

It's big, so they have a lot of ground to cover. It's big. So, I mean, my hitter profile worked perfectly. Big gaps, shorter down the line. You know, Seattle was kind of the same build. Bigger gaps, shorter right field. I think Seattle was my second. So I'm probably not the one to talk to on that

because the two places that people complain about because of a big center field, I actually liked because the gaps were bigger and I could still get it out relatively easy. That's probably why Parker Meadows' job is safe though too. You really want a good center fielder in that park. Oh absolutely, you have to. You have to have one.

Who is the most Jed-like player in the big leagues right now? Who's the current Jed Lawry comp? That's the question. Let us know in Discord. I don't think we're gonna come up with that one off the top. Unless Jed's like- I get a little bit of Colt Keith vibes. Jed's defense is better,

because he came, Jed came from short. I'll take that. Colt Keith. Keith talks about like, yeah, Colt Keith talks about like, you know, going the other way, like taking the ball where it comes, and like, you know,

he talks about it similarly about baseball. Do you think anyone makes this division race interesting, or are the Tigers really gonna cruise in the the second half as far as the central goes? I mean, it might be more about avoiding playing in the wild card round than actually winning the division. I have a hard time seeing, you know, Cleveland or Minnesota or Kansas City catching them with the dynamics of that. Like we could talk about some of the questions that you know Detroit might have I think those are far

Greater and deeper with the teams, you know behind them I kind of want to see the twins drift into cell mode If only because it creates a lot of interesting possibilities larnac was just sort of scratching the surface You know now you got me thinking big about sending a bunch of players from Minnesota to other teams to enhance those rosters down the stretch. Buxton to the Tigers. Oh, yeah. That would be actually kind of fun because he's just then you could have really good defense, you know, all the way across that outfield.

And that might be an interesting thing with that outfield. But I'm actually surprised when I look at the playoff odds and I see 21% for the Twins and 19% for the Guardians when they're three in five games under 500 respectively. I'm a little surprised by that, but I think it speaks to like going forward, they have these all basically around 500. And the projections from Fangrass are the Twins as a 519 team and the Tigers as a 534 team. So that is much closer than you might expect given what has happened to date.

But you know, there's also what they've done so far in terms of like a run differential and the Guardians have a bottom eight run differential, minus 50, and the Twins are at minus 16. So it's not like they haven't deserved their record so far. They've pretty much deserved their record so far. It's that the projection systems are picking up individual players and saying, these players will be playing better in the future. And that's why the Twins who've had a minus 16 run differential so far will have a plus 10 going forward the Guardians has shifted

though it used to be minus to date and then plus going forward it's minus minus now for them so I'm not in on the Guardians I have the twins circled as they could go in either direction right now they're pretty healthy for who they are if they can withstand some of the pitching problems they have a chance to go either way. I'm not going to circle the guardians as the biggest contenders to the throne there. A fun twins fact for you too. Brooks Lee has been just about as good as Camp Smith over the last 30 days, doing

pretty much the exact same thing with a little bit less hype because, you know, Brooks Lee wasn't the centerpiece of a trade involving a superstar this winter. He also doesn't hit the ball as hard underlying so from here on forward I expect Kancemith to have much more power than Brooksley. Yeah there's a pretty big gap there but I think Lee's one of those really solid high floor players that is going to be a big leaguer for a long time. Let's go to the Yankees who appear to be in a really tight battle in the AL East. Pressure coming from the J's and Rays,

not from the Orioles and Red Sox. So a little surprising maybe to some folks as to who is chasing the Yankees and how close they are right now. I saw an interesting note from Chris Kirschner, one of our beat writers, covering the Yankees for the Athletic. The Yankees are now 13 and five when Max Fried starts,

and they're 35 and 32 and everybody else's starts. I mean, Fried's been phenomenal. Fried's I saw young contender. It's a little good statlet, but like that's how it works. That's what teams do. They have 105 plus 105 run differential. I feel like the Yankees get more screwed. That's after getting whooped yesterday.

Sorry. Right. Yeah. I mean, I just feel like I feel likekees get more scrutiny. That's after getting whooped yesterday, sorry. Right, yeah, I mean I just feel like, I feel like they just get more scrutiny. They're a really good team. There's nothing wrong. I think, well Chris's point was they've been, like Fried's been excellent. It was to highlight Max Fried.

It wasn't to suggest the Yankees are mediocre, but yeah, they're second in Woba, they're second in Homers, they're behind the Dodgers. Oh, I guess I was just sort of jumping ahead and being like, I can see how social media is gonna take this step. Yeah, right? I mean, but it was actually a video that Chris made,

so I could tell the tone was not like, look at this team when Fried doesn't pitch, they're horrible, it wasn't like that at all. No, it was more, Max Fried is awesome. Like Max Fried and Tarek Schubel should be in the same conversation for the Cy Young, I think was a little more of the tone of what Chris was trying to put out there. In the Yankees in a season without Garrett Cole, fifth in war among starting pitchers, fifth in K minus BB percentage. The bullpen has been a little wobbly, but not bad. Pen has been a little wobbly but not bad. 13th in war, 8th in K-BP, and only 20 seconds in innings pitched as a group. So they're not taxed the way some of the other contending teams have had to lean very heavily on their relievers. Defensively, it depends on the

numbers you look at. If you want to say the Yankees are a good defensive team, look at defensive run save. Plus 34, that makes them sixth. If you want to say the Yankees need help defensively, look at outs above average. They're a minus seven, that puts them 20 seconds. So I'll let you guys hash out how good you think they are defensively. I'm not sure their defense is a concern, but I think they have a couple spots on their roster that stand out as in need of possible upgrades here

at the end of the month. You know, you talked about the bullpen. Luke Weaver, once again again just continues to dominate. But here's a guy that when he does give up hits, they're really hard hit. And so I think that they went out and got Devin Williams to be the closer. He hasn't been the same guy in New York yet. And so I think that when you start leaning leaning on Luke Weaver to close games out again They said highly if I mean you're talking about a point seven five whip, you know, the guy is highly effective

I just worry about him being able to get outs in the zone in big spots You know long long term and so Fernando Cruz's has pitched well And so Fernando Cruz has pitched well, but I do think that they could use a bullpen arm. And then I look at a guy like Ben Rice, who he's actually got a 67 point delta in his expected Woba versus Woba. So I feel like he's hitting the ball incredibly hard right now and that shows up in his hard hit rate

at almost 54% right now and not, you know, and that shows up in his, you know, shows up in his hard hit rate at almost 54% right now. You know, his EV, his average EV is above his career. So I think there's a guy that could, you could see more production in the second half of the year. You know, judge is just on a, on a tear. You see it yesterday with the Blue Jays game. I think they, you know, he's already up to 21 intentional walks on the season. Somebody else is going to have to step up and I, you know, I'm looking, we were talking

about defense. I'm looking at Volpe right now, right? Cause I think here's a guy that leads the league in errors at shortstop and the range is average and the hitting is not really making up for the lack of production on the defensive side at a premium position. There's some like weird fits. There's some problems maybe like Jazz Chisholm Jr. is playing third base.

They've sort of announced they want to be third base, but his defensive numbers are better at second base. And he just recently said he's a second baseman. There's some stuff going on there. I think it's like, well, DJ LeMahieu is so bad defensively at this point There's some stuff going on there. I think it's like well DJ LeMahieu is So bad defensively at this point that we have to play him at second for some reason that's must be what that is because that's where they're they're kind of playing him so they they need an infielder and And I would make it a third baseman

So, you know, it's not obvious to me who that would be in the past I just kept thinking that Arnado would have been a great fit for them but that hasn't cleared up. I don't know like actually kind of a fun one is Cabrion Hayes. All right like that's yeah let's get weird let's put Cabrion Hayes on the Yankees I mean at the very least you're improving your defense. Charlie Hayes. You're putting him in a much more hitter friendly environment, new coaching staff, there's a lot of positives to something like that. Yeah, and you're saying like, well, at least, very least, we're going to have a good defender over there.

We're going to improve our entire team defense by putting Jazz where he wants to be, where the numbers are better, and putting Hayes at third. So it's not a crazy idea. I don't know if there'd have to be money exchanging hands because of the contract, but you know that the pirates just signed Mitch Keller and we're having reporting from Ken Rosenthal and that I can confirm myself that Mitch Keller is available. He's on the market. So anybody who's signed

to long-term deals in Pittsburgh is, I guess Brian Reynolds could be available as well. Again, there are not a ton of options on these teams that are obvious sellers, so we may have to wait to see what the D-backs do, because Eugenio Suarez would be a great fit in New York as well. These team-friendly deals, absent a no-trade clause, actually become more valuable to teams

that are willing to take on that salary. And so I love the idea of Cabrion at third base for the Yankees because I think Jazz slides over to second. I mean, I watched Jazz play at third and he's serviceable in the sense that he can field a ground ball and he can throw it across, but the instincts are clearly better at second base. The actions are better at second base.

You know, I- He's played more there. Yeah, and you know, some people are just, like I personally, like I was able to play third base. You know, I, I, yeah. And, and, you know, some people are just, why, like I, personally, like I, I was able to play third base the way I'm wired. I was much better at second base and I, I had my most productive offensive years when I was a second baseman. And so I think there, there are other factors other than just

defense standing out there and making the plays. And I think jazz jazz to me looks like a second baseman, his actions look like a second baseman. And it also, you know, I think it frees him up to be a little bit more focused on the offense, especially when you're not learning a new position. Hey, so what did you want to talk about? Well, I want to tell you about Wigovie.

Wigovie? Yeah, Wigovie. What about it? On second thought, I might not be the right person to tell you. Ohagovi. Wagovi? Yeah, Wagovi. What about it? On second thought, I might not be the right person to tell you. Oh, you're not? No, just ask your doctor. About Wagovi? Yeah, ask for it by name. Okay, so why did you bring me to this circus? Oh, I'm really into lion tamers, you know, with the chair and everything. Ask your doctor for Wagovi by name. Visit When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit but there's

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to the things that matter to you, because they matter to us too. Toyota, for what matters most. The fact that they're starting pitching his top 10 is just a testament to Matt Blake, who is another one of my favorite pitching coaches. What he's done with Max Fried's arsenal is pretty amazing. I mean, he made Max Fried's sinker and curve better. Frank's been throwing the curves since he was like 10. No, I don't want to put that on him.

I didn't say that he did before he's 12. I just, he's been throwing a curve ball forever is all I meant to say. But Clark Schmidt and Will Warren, I think are reaching the upper ends of what people expected of them. And you know, in terms of needs going forward, I don't know that they need to get a starting pitcher, but every time we do the urgency index, I put them in as like an honorable mention because you just never know the Yankees could be like, Hey, we'd rather have a third established arm and push Schmidt and Warren in the playoffs to kind of emergency blankets rather than game three and game four starters.

So that's a possibility. But with Luis Heal coming back, I could see Heal coming all the way back, being so good that he becomes their third starter, and Schmidt and Warren are their fourth and fifth. Maybe they don't have to engage in the starting pitching market at all. And if that's the case, then a bat on the infield, and I would say a reliever just because you know they've

used Luke Weaver a lot I don't think Mark Ladder jr. is that great I like Lil Isaaca Tim Hill's a real funky guy Ian Hamilton is underrated so there are some pieces that are here but just one more reliever I think would take pressure off everybody like a power lefty out of the pen maybe to vary it up a little bit yeah cuz the only lefty they have is Tim Hill who is not power. I like your assessment. I do think it's an infielder. It's, it's probably somebody, you know, that plays plays third base.

You know, I, I go back to Volpe. I mean, they're not doing anything with Volpe. I guess that's, that's my maybe plea of like, you know, this guy is really talented. Hopefully he can, you know, regain some of that form from a couple of years ago. If he's able to do that, this team looks really strong, especially if they add a defensive third baseman and move Jazz to second.

One thing I was thinking about is just the general lack of days off for Anthony Volpe. He has had two in June, but those are the only two, I think it may be three all season now. He started 82 out of 85 games. I mean, maybe it's a little bit of fatigue just from being an everyday guy for the better part of the first half.

That could be one way to possibly help him out a little bit, just give him a more occasional break than you have up to this point in the season, but it looks like they're starting to do that here in the last few weeks. Let's get to our big picture question here before we go. So we have put the chart on the screen on YouTube a few different times of the drag on the baseball being up. It's as high I think as it's been at any point since we've had publicly available information about drag. The expectation would be that well offense would probably go down if drag on the baseball is up

and offense is basically steady in terms of runs scored per team game or within, I think, a.01 of.02, so it's a very small margin of last season. So we're not getting the effect that you'd expect from the drag on the baseball being increased. You know, what is your reasoning for why that might be the case? One piece of evidence we have is that hitter tendencies are changing. And so we have this chart that just shows the relative exit velocities,

barrel rates over the last three years. You can see that we went from an 89.6 mile per hour exit velocity in 2023 to 89.9. That doesn't seem like a lot, but when you start to look at the other ones, you're, oh, okay, hard hit goes from 40.5 to 41.8. Barrels go from 6.8% per plate appearance to 7.3. Bat speed is up 0.1. All of these are small, but when you're talking about league averages, it's really hard to move league averages. And I would say this is a somewhat significant, especially if you think about it this way, there are tons and tons of balls in play when you're talking about the league. So if the hard hit percentage changed one percent, that's

across all the games that are played all the time, you're talking about thousands of balls that are affected by this change. So I think to some degree, and I don't know if this is controversial or not, I'm interested to hear Jed's opinion on this, but I think to some degree, once you start measuring something, once we started measuring spin rate,

spin rate went up. Once we started measuring fastball velocity on like a and I don't mean like Ever started measuring I mean like as a league Published leaderboards like MLB publishing leaderboards and publishing data that they've collected Once they collected fastball velocity it went up every year after that, you know, and it hasn't stopped It's still going up. The same thing was happening spin rate until they were like, oh well You actually the way you guys are doing this is against the rules Hold it on the sticky stuff, right?

So, you know bat speed has been up now for three years and lo and behold it's gone up now I don't know that we're gonna see bats be go up every year over every year like fastball lost me my point is once you measure it, you can train for it. And we saw a little piece of news. It's a little tiny piece of news, but I think it means something here. Blast Motion was bought by Win Reality. Now Win Reality is a virtual reality game basically that purports to help people train by like, and we've talked, I've talked to Jed about this before. Some hitters, I think feel like the technology is not quite there with VR to like really trick your brain, but it might

be there soon. It might get there. You know, it keeps getting better and better. VR keeps getting better and better. And just the idea that there's a company that's doing VR that was like, oh yes, and give me all of the access to the training data, like the blast motion, you know, bat sensor data. I want that too. And I'm going to put these two things together.

It says to me that like training is going in an interesting direction. Hitting training is going in an interesting direction. And it may affect things like exit velocities and stuff. And that's covering up a little bit of the drag. The three feet that are missing, they're sort of gaining it back by hitting it harder. Yeah, and I mean, it's starting earlier. We talked about this briefly on Monday, but the Wall Street Journal put out an article

talking about college baseball has a power problem, right? And it was from June 21st by Jared Diamond and Tom McGinty, but they were saying that the highlight for me is 1.2 out of every 1 every 1000 batted balls in Major League Baseball have been hit at 115 miles an hour or harder compared with 1.7 in the journals sample at the college level right. You're 42% more likely to see a college ball hit 115 mile an hour plus than you are at the Major league level. So amateur baseball players are hitting the ball harder

than major league baseball players are. And I don't know if that's a bat thing or to Eno's point, a training thing. Yeah, but the training that, to your point, soon as you can measure something and account for it, you can train for it. So I do think that the training is getting better. Kids are becoming more efficient early on,

delivering the barrel more efficiently and faster at lower levels. And how that will eventually translate into the major leagues and professional baseball is yet to be seen. But it's an interesting trend that you're seeing more consistent hard hit balls at the amateur college level than you are in the major leagues. I just had another thought about the variables. We talked about these in our meeting on Monday. I didn't think about the differences between the college baseball and the major league baseball, though.

Has Dr. Meredith Willis, has she has she carved up any college baseballs that we know of? I don't think we have. And in fact, I did the research on the bats and the bats did have a big change where they made them debtor in, I believe it was 2011. And then in 2020, they banned white barrels. I, I don't know what that has to do with anything. I do know that there's something called rolling bats that can happen. That's basically almost like the corkingking of bats except it's just an equivalent thing. It's not at all like corking but like you...

Turbocharging the bat. Yeah. Yeah you do something to the to the metal bat that makes it that can make it produce more of egg velocity. So I'm not suggesting that that's what's going on in college baseball. I don't have any sourcing on that, but I do know that that happens. I know that rolling bats happens. And I think it maybe happens more in like semi-pro, not even semi-pro, like, you know, your local league, you know, then it may happen in the NCAA because the stakes are higher. Your bats are probably inspected better than they are by the, you know, the local dude. I do know that could be part of it. I hadn't thought of the ball. That is an excellent point.

There could be a change in the ball. We know that manufacturing costs for everything are rising, so that's a possibility that some change was made in the manufacture of the NCAA ball. I would also point to training for another reason. So here's a chart. This is from a baseball prospectus piece by Rob Maynes and it's about strikeout rate. And oh my gosh, this is, this is so great. Finally, we've seen strikeout rate just go up with velocity forever and ever and ever. And it seems we've plateaued. And now it might even be down a little bit this year and it's like the first

time ever. I mean just look at this chart. It just goes up straight from 2000 to 2021 and then finally we hit a plateau. And Rob Maynes has an excellent article and he said it's threefold. The players that play a lot and don't play again the next year are high strikeout players. So the league basically, if you don't play well and you strike out a lot, you're more likely to leave the league. And then it's, you know, that was the driver for like last year's improvement.

This year's improvement has some of that where high strikeout guys leave the league and more low strikeout guys come in. But there's also been here. This is it. Nearly a third of veteran players have graduated to a better quintile so far in terms of strikeout rate. So a third of veteran players just got better. And I put this hand in hand with the trajectory news that we got out of Washington, that the nationals are the only team without our trajectory.

So I think that trajectory may be having somewhat of an effect. So you're having the trajectory where you can see these things before you see them. You can basically, if you have a third time through the order penalty, the trajectory kind of gives you the first time through the order where you're like, I'm going to sit in and get a plate appearance against him before I have to get in the game against him. There's no doubt. I mean, that information is so valuable. We hit on this a couple of weeks ago, but like, you know, video is only so helpful.

Actually standing in the box and seeing the pitch dynamics, that's where that's where it really matters. So you can visualize what is actually happening when you're in the box. If you can do that prior to stepping into the box, it's a total game changer. I remember playing in the Arizona Fall League. It's kind of gone, like the Major League game for the last few years kind of went towards that model where you were just trying to get three or four innings

out of your starter, maybe one, two times through the order and you'd see a new arm every single time. And it's really hard to hit like that when you're working on limited information, visual information. And that's why I said the other day, all of the analytics have favored pitching and defense up until the trajectory. The other thing that I wonder is just if there's team building philosophies that are at play

here where things are a little bit different on the team building level. My example for this is like when I was coming up watching baseball in the 80s, late 80s, early 90s, we had multiple players on every team that would be almost complete zeros on power. They were just like, I just remember I was a Braves fan. I think our middle infield at some point was Mark Lemke and Rafael Belyard. Exactly. And you're just like, are they going to hit 10 homers combined all year? Let's find out.

You know? And then I think during the 90s, for whatever reason, maybe the ball changed, maybe steroids, whatever it was, the 90s really set this thing in motion where teams kind of expected to have power at every position. And so we no longer were like cool with a zero anywhere. You had to have at least 15 homers from every spot on the diamond you know and you could fill it. We didn't we haven't expanded as a league for a long time. Since we haven't expanded then that means that supply is getting larger and the demand is staying the same in terms of there's 30 teams you know. So you're like yeah we

can put a guy with 15 homers every spot. Now for whatever reason, I was just looking at the leaderboards here. Here are qualified Major League players that will not hit 10 homers this year. Xavier Edwards has zero. Yeah, I'd say comfortably he probably won't hit 10 this year.

Cabrion Hayes has two. Could hit 10 if he got traded to the Yankees. Probably won't. Jake Myers has three. He's not in there for his power. He's in there because he does other things. He makes contact. He gets on base and he plays really good defense.

Nico Horner, same guy. Luis Arayas is like a magic Wando guy in terms of like he puts the bat on the ball. So these are, we have 10 guys this year that are qualified major league hitters that have four or fewer homers guys like Victor Scott, Ernie Clement. So I think team builders are saying. I have at least one or two spots on my, on my team now that can be dedicated to contact, you know, or Narayas type, you know, like Clement, like the reason we have Clement on the team is he can play all over

defensively and he'll make contact and we don't care about the power. So I think some teams have done the analysis where they're like, you know, we do want to make more contact. And the way to do this sometimes is to have some diversity in our lineup and maybe have a guy in there that all he does is hit singles and play good defense. You know, getting on base gives you a chance to win every single day, right? It's the idea of the three point in basketball. Like you're going to live and die off that. Same thing with the home run. The singles and and getting on base every day is the big man,

you know getting the getting the points in in the post every day, right? Like it gives you a chance to win day in and day out. That's a really good example because what happened in basketball was they went so far to the three point line that some teams were like, no, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get two big men, or I'm gonna get two post threats. I'm gonna beat you guys by going old school.

I'll still hit the threes, but I'm gonna have guys on the inside and get those, right? And so what happened, the coreary in baseball is we used to be Like the money ball came out. Everybody's like OBP OBP. Oh my god. We forgot about OBP. We got a thing about OBP and Then if you did the analysis slugging was tied tighter to team outcomes than OBP for a long time So I think teams especially in the age of exit velocity and barrels were like nah, we're all about slugging You know and you even have this on the team level, you know teams like I think the Orioles and the Red Sox Their development philosophy for hitting is hit the ball super hard. Well, that's what we care about

We care about EV 90 we care about you know We care about maybe some decision-making numbers like chase and stuff but we really care about how hard you hit the ball and what angles. And I think to some extent, the new money ball is the old money ball. It's like, but let's also get on base, right? No. It's funny how the game is cyclical, right?

You got, you had the scouts looking for the kid. Sinkers are back. Yeah, but like, you had the scouts before money ball looking for the kid that ran theers are back. Yeah, but like, yeah, you had the scouts before moneyball looking for the kid that ran the fastest, threw the hardest, hit the ball the hardest. Oh, now we're doing that? Now, moneyball comes in and is like, why do I care about that?

If the guy gets on base, I don't care about, you know, what he looks like in his uniform or anything like that. Then we bring in stat cast and everybody's going back to, well, the only thing that matters that's predictive is how hard he hits the ball, how fast he runs and how hard he throws it. That's right. The funny thing too, is that the Angels came up earlier this week

and Eno said they are second as a team league wide in barrel rate. 11% barrel rate as a team, which is great. It's great to have be good in barrel rate. The Yankees the only thing that's higher. But the Angels are not a good offensive team because they don't get on base and they strike out a lot. They only walk 7.5% of the time. Where are they in runs scored across the league?

363. Yeah, 363. They're 17th in runs scored. So that's probably as much as you can do striking out as often as they do. Second most in strikeouts. That Joe Adele is a stack cast god, you know. He's like a, he's like a, runs hard, throws hard,

hits the ball hard. Exactly right. Sparks out a lot. But you're missing, like, when he hits those homers, no one's on base, because your team OBP's a 297. It's rough. Yeah, that's not good. It's not gonna get it done. It's hard to win, like, you know, they're there. I actually just I looked up the wild card.

They're the closest now one and a half games. They're ahead of the Red Sox outside of their only game and a half back at a 500 record. But, you know, this is a team, like you said, like they're it's going to be really hard to sustain winning when you just don't get on base at a consistent clip. I did see Wes in our Discord wondering if they might get in on that Mitch Keller trade frenzy that Eno was talking about earlier. And like, yeah, it's exactly what the Angels would do.

They would trade for a guy like Keller because he's not a rental. They do spend money. They don't always do it effectively. The moves don't always make sense. They think their window is always now when it's not always now. So yeah, I could actually see them making a trade like that, because I don't think if you're taking on the Mitch Keller money in its entirety, I don't think that players are giving up to get him are going to hurt you that much in the long run. So even if they shouldn't do it, I think they could do it and convince themselves that it's a good decision along the way.

We are going to go. I'm getting the signal from our producer, Brian Smith. Thanks to Brian for putting this episode together. We are running long, 65 minutes. Not 85 though, so he didn't have to just hit the red button and make the show end. Join our Discord. Nah, we did great. Join our Discord.

If you haven't done that already, you can do that with the link in the show description. If you watch this on YouTube and you're still here, thanks for watching to the end. Hit the like button, subscribe to the channel if you haven't done that already, you can do that with the link in the show description. If you watch this on YouTube and you're still here, thanks for watching to the end. Hit the like button, subscribe to the channel if you haven't done that already. But again, thanks to Brian for putting this episode together. That's gonna do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening.

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