Rates & Barrels - Atlanta Brings Home the 2021 World Series!

Episode Date: November 3, 2021

Eno, Britt & DVR discuss Atlanta's dominant 7-0 win over Houston to capture the franchise's first World Series title since 1995 on the strength of a massive Jorge Soler homer and an excellent Game 6 start from Max Fried.  Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Britt on Twitter: @Britt_Ghiroli Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at 33% off for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels presented by Topps. Check out Topps Project 70 celebrating 70 years of Topps baseball cards. It is Wednesday, November 3rd, and the Atlanta Braves are World Series champions for 2021. Congrats to all the fans out there. First time since 1995. Plenty of heartbreak between now and then. A well-deserved title with a dominant Game 6 performance that we will dig into in great detail. And I feel like I should just hand it over to Britt right away for the victory lap since I was on the anti-Atlanta side in each series. I believe Eno was right there with me,

just talking ourselves out of this Atlanta team, getting it done. So, Britt, congrats to you as well for great predictions. I think it's like a half lap, though, guys, because I yesterday said the Braves are going to lose. And I still thought this was going to go seven. So I did have a little faith. I had a little more faith than you two, but the bar was low. Ants were getting over that bar. But I think we can all agree on this podcast that while we thought with our heads that the Astros were going to win,

our hearts are happy that the Braves have won, or at least mine is. I think they're just a better story. If nothing else, in a copycat league, I was thinking this last night, every World Series teaches you something. This World Series teaches you that if you're even close to in it, you should roll the dice because you just never know what's going to happen. And I think that's a positive lesson for baseball, that if you're just a team that's okay around 500, you roll that dice. And we talk about competitive balance. We talk about, you know, the structure of these behemoths and these small market teams, but you know what Atlanta did in becoming just the fourth team to be a under 500 at the all-star break to be in the world series is remarkable.

And I hope more teams that are kind of on the fringe next July are like, you know what, look what Atlanta did. Why can't we do it? Why can't, why can't it be us? And the nationals in 2019 had a lot of those characteristics too. And so I really hope again, that a lot of teams look at that and emulate that and model that going forward. And so I really hope, again, that a lot of teams look at that and emulate that and model that going forward and don't just say, well, we're only playing for a one-game wild card.

Yeah, I think it'll be interesting too that if they spanned the playoffs, what that will do. I mean, there were other teams that bought. I mean, the Yankees bought and didn't get as much for it um and so it's not it's not the only thing that we could learn but i do agree like the braves were like you know try not try and they tried and they won so it's like that's definitely something to celebrate um i uh i if they if there are only two um uh if there are more teams, though, we'll have pressure on teams to try less hard. So there is something at stake here when the CBA battles come up, and we'll have to do some podcasts on that.

But let's not talk about that right now. Let's talk about how awesome Max Fried was because that was pretty amazing. You know, he had his best change over the year. Only twice this year. Did he have a slower change up? So he had a bigger, he had a bigger gap between his fastball and change up than he had almost all

year. He threw it more often than he had all year. So that was a wrinkle, but then he also took the same game plan that he took in the other game, but just executed it better. If you look at where his fastballs were, his fastballs, by the way, he threw the third hardest fastball of his career to strike out Yuli Gurriel in the first inning.

And that this game was the fifth hardest he's ever thrown his fastball on average. And the other four were this postseason. So he's been throwing the rock pretty good. And in this game he had the same game plan he had before but except he dotted the bottom of the zone if you look at his fastballs he just he just lined them up among the edge of the zone at the bottom and so he never he'd like once i think once or twice he came up and in correa like pounced all over one and fouled it, and that was it. That was all he did. Just executed the game plan.

Max Freed was beautiful. Had a couple of huge double plays, like in the third and the fourth, too. Any whiff of the Astros getting something going quickly extinguished in those sequences as well. Lots of love for Britt and her background in the chat, including Mr. ABCD, ABCD 1122, loves the deer heads on the wall. Britt, when you did the thing that I think, well,

I think this is what you did. I think you probably just hit the close window on the wrong window. That's my greatest fear on videos that I will close the actual window of broadcasting people onto the internet. But uh no you are not big everyone you're just human like the rest of us i can't believe uh that that first in that first inning i was really like okay so here here it goes like max free's gonna give up two in the first inning and he just got his ankle cleated uh that was just gruesome looking i thought it was definitely going to be an injury and And he just got out of it. And the ground balls are not like his thing.

But if you're forcing him low in the zone, I guess you're going to get some ground ball double plays. Yeah, I'm giggling in the comments about Mitch hiring me Sandy, Coffee Cat League. All it takes is being crappy in the first half of the season, and then you win. The Mets could do that part really easily. I mean, the Mets could have a 485 winning percentage on June 25th

and no one would bat an eye. We've been here before. Yeah. I think a lot of credit goes to Brian Snicker, right? And this is where we talked about this yesterday with having the Bob Melvins of the world and these veteran managers. Brian Snicker has spent 45 years in the Braves organization, which is basically unheard of in the current game.

He was demoted a bunch. Front offices change if you're not their guy. You kind of get demoted. You move around. Finally gets his dream job in the dugout at 60 years old. How many people would have already quit? Me. Yeah.

Managing the Marlies is not easy. Finally gets this job, and they get to the World Series without their best player. They lose their best player in the middle of the season, which could have and should have torpedoed them. So I think a lot of credit goes to that coaching staff, but really Brian Snicker, who similar to Bob Melvin is so well liked, so well respected by so many players. Just a really cool moment. And I think if you have a team similar to the Nats, again, in 19, the last full season winner that had a lot of similarities,

and then Alex Cora and the Red Sox, like they have that calming presence to them where they don't ever go one way or the other. They showed Snicker after that grand slam two games ago, and there was just no emotion either way. And I think having that kind of like steward for your club in the dugout every night, there's no way to quantify.

There's no way to have some kind of quantitative value on it, but it has a lot of value. Yeah. He went on, on one of the MLB network shows. I forget which one it was. I think with Brian Kenney. And they asked him about that moment,

about that Grand Slam and how he didn't seem to react. And he's like, you know, I was thinking about too many things. He's already thinking like, you know, pitchers and relievers and like pinch hitters and stuff like that. And he said,

and it is my job to not get up too high or too low. So, you know, he knows that's his job. And I think that's a big thing. I think it had something to do with Tingler's dismissal in San Diego, where it's just like, you know, there were times when his fluster seemed obvious, I think.

Yeah, and I think players can pick up on that. The example that pops into my head is Rick Renteria in the playoffs last year. If you remember Renteria in the dugout for the White Sox in that series against the A's, he was projecting so much nervous energy. You think about a younger team in the playoffs. I think his hands were on his knees at some point. I mean, he was all over the place. He was mimicking throwing up in the dugout. I'm exaggerating a little bit now, but I do think that calming presence is something you want in leadership, especially with the ups and downs of a 162-game season. Even the highs and lows within the postseason,

you want someone who's a lot more steady. And yet I find that people are often critical of managers who have that temperament, especially in places like New York. Aaron Boone isn't fiery enough. It's like, well, what do you want him to do? Do you want him to show up every day after a loss and fire a chair across the clubhouse? That would get old so quick.

Yeah, that's lead tasso, right? I mean, that's a trick in the bag. When you're not normally someone who's fired up like that, you can maybe get away with that one time and get people to react to it, but it's not going to be an effective style. Just look at how many dugout fights have been started by someone firing their helmet around in the dugout.

Like, this is the thing. It's not something that just happened once. I can't think of any details because it happens a lot where somebody comes back and they're a red ass and they start firing stuff around and someone gets in their face so like you know yeah if someone's always doing that it's just people really roll their eyes at it you also see a lot of broken bats in the tunnel just because you don't see a guy go crazy doesn't mean he's not going crazy right you see a lot of stuff you see them calmly walk to the tunnel and then they just smash the shit out of bats and helmets and they yell. Like I've heard all kinds of stories about fights that go down in there.

I bet you, I bet you going to the tunnel is a bit of a coping mechanism for those red asses. Right. Cause they're like, okay, I've been yelled at before for firing my helmet around. Let me just go into the tunnel where I'm not going to hurt anyone. We'll just let me go bash something in the tunnel.

And then I'll come back and I'll feel fine. Who was it, man? I remember someone. I think Yonder Alonzo was involved. Like someone threw a helmet and it like hurt Yonder Alonzo's knee. And he got super pissed about it. I mean, I'd be pretty mad if we were just sitting around drinking beer and you got the ass and you threw a batting helmet at me and hurt my knee, like I'd,

I'd get pretty mad about that. Yeah. It doesn't, it doesn't quite happen in that scene. So he said, Ozzie, get into the Mets. Is that,

they're not even interviewing for that manager job yet. They still need a president, right? That's not right. March by the time they get that sorted out. They need a somebody. Musical chairs right now. I think they should hire a GM and sort of punt P.O.B.O.

until next year when Sandy's gone. So I heard all kinds of crazy stuff this morning that, like, Steve Cohen was saying that he's still going to hire David Stearns in two years when his contract's up. It's like, maybe David Stearns doesn't want to go there. Did that ever cross someone's mind? Maybe if you were trying to get a job in New York, you would choose the good franchise.

Maybe you'd go work for the Yankees someday when Brian Cashman retires. Maybe that's what you'd do. I don't know. That's what I would do if I were a highly motivated, qualified person who could do something like that. I had somebody say to me yesterday, an executive, like, New York is a place where your career goes to die. Like the Mets, which is kind of true the way it's set up now. Like, look at how you viewed Sandy Alderson now versus how you viewed him maybe three years ago. Has he upped his stock at all?

No. I mean, but it's all his own doing. I think we've got a whole winter to laugh at that stupid franchise for being a stupid franchise. I like this question that Sam threw into the live stream. He's a huge fan of pitchers like Freed who try to wind up with those low pitch counts.

Do you see more starters trending this way? And I think it's kind of a chicken and egg problem in some ways. I don't think any pitcher is avoiding an approach that would give them a low pitch count. Every starter wants to pitch deep into games, right? But it's more of a how do you do it sort of question. How do you become more efficient in today's game? What enables pitchers like Freed to have that kind of success? Because a lot of the conversation throughout the postseason was starting pitching is dying,

and we're going to have three innings starting pitching, and baseball is ruined, and the kids can't stay up and watch it, and your kids are eating too much Halloween candy. That was the swirling narrative around baseball the last 72 hours. The games start too late. The games have started at the same time for 50 years. Okay, you guys, they're 5 p.m. for you guys, so let me chime in as something. He eats dinner, walks their dog, watches TV for like an hour,

and it's like, God, how is this game not on yet? Totally different. I do think the pace of the game is the biggest problem. I also think on the weekends, there's no reason they can't have a game start at 7. It's a Saturday. It's a Sunday. The West Coast people are still not working. Why can't those games start an hour earlier?

There's no reason. All fair points. I think the efficiency thing would also help too, though. Shorter plate appearances, fewer pitches thrown is one on-field way for the game to speed up. Now, I realize that's player performance and tactics and things that are not necessarily easy to do, but I think every starter would like to be more efficient. How can starters be more efficient, though, in today's game with hitters being on the arc? I think some of the key is actually fastballs and where you put them

because Freed actually does do some up and down. I think some of the key is actually fastballs and where you put them because, you know, freed actually does do some up and down. I mean, he does throw his sinker and he has a ground ball rate over 50%, which sort of surprised me because I, I pigeon him pigeonhole him as a, as the high four seam guy. That's the trend in baseball is for everyone to throw higher and higher four seams.

What that gives you are more homers, more whiffs, more balls. And so, you know, homers, more whiffs, more balls. And so, you know, those things extend the game. Those things, you know, are not efficient. Efficient is, you know, rolling over the ball early in the count, throwing them a sinker that looks delicious and getting them to roll over the ball and hit a ground out. That's more efficient.

So, you know, maybe what it takes is some of the pushback against the current trend in baseball, because I think what you're seeing is a lot of hitters who've already reacted to the high four-seam trend. If you look at Marcus Simeon's big breakout, we talked about on the show about how he hits the high four-seam really well now that he made an adjustment against Roldis Chapman. You know guys like Josh Donaldson were leading the way way and Jose Bautista were high ball hitters.

Now you look at the Astros. What are those three righties all high ball hitters, you know? And so I think, you know, we might see some people watch, oh, the game plan against the Astros now is low. You know, it's like low, lowballs and and sneak them but sneak them down there and that might mean more efficiency around the game so max scherzer has talked a lot about this because early on in his career he was like a five inning starter all of a sudden that 100 pitches had to come out of the game um a couple things that he has noted is you know one it's always going to be about strike one like you look at pitchers and you talk to pitchers just about the confidence they have

once they're consistently ahead in counts. And the outcomes are always much better. The outcomes are just through the roof when you look at guys who consistently get ahead. But also Max has talked a lot about, you know, having some in the tank. And he trains more like an endurance athlete. And I wonder if, you know, those last 15 pitches,

lots of times you hear him grunting from the press box. Sometimes Justin Verlander is like this too their hardest pitchers are that last inning Carlos now because of this Max trains like an endurance athlete as I said he trains he runs like a crazy person he builds up his legs to have that stamina and John Smoltz talked about this a lot with me about a month ago and the nationals coincidentally are going to add more endurance training this year for their pitchers specifically and i wonder if that's something that has to shift within the industry because we're at a throw as hard as you can high velocity starters pitch like relievers game do we have to shift into training these guys to have the endurance to get up six seven times and pitch and have the legs to pitch seven innings. I think that's important. That's super interesting. I was just watching Kyle Bodie had a live stream

yesterday right before the game. And it was just an aside, but he was talking about how their sort of prepackaged game plan for pitchers did not include a lot of running. But if a pitcher came to him and said, I enjoy running and I think it has these benefits that he was super open to it uh and that he thought personally that we might be undervaluing long distance running as part of the regime uh for pitchers so uh we may be seeing that that sort of come back uh as well it was you never know if they start making different rules for like how many pitchers you can have in a game or how long a pitcher has to go or stuff like that. That might go hand in hand with having to train more for,

for long distance. Yeah. When I was in New York, I remember you'd get to the stadium early and you would see Andy Pettit run the stadium steps, right? You'd see AJ Burnett was a big run the stadium steps guy. And I do wonder if we've gotten so far away from that

that part of the reason we don't have guys go deep is we don't we don't train them to go deep like i swam the mile in college um and so i could go x amount of laps right now if you told somebody whose event was two laps was the the 50 free to go that mile they wouldn't be able to right like they would drastically drop off in performance after those two laps. And so I think, you know, you are what you train for. Your body is just a terrific example of adaptation, right? Stressing it and then adapting to those stressors. And I just wonder, this is something, you know, maybe we get into in this off season,

you know, I just wonder if the training mechanism is what is flawed because the injuries are not down at all in the age of being ultra careful with pitchers. Soft tissue injuries are at a record high. Guys aren't able to go deep into games and it's trending worse. So what we are doing, even though we are smarter by all means in terms of data and numbers, is not working. So maybe we do have to go back and think about this as more of an endurance sport. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely an endurance task, trying to pitch deep into games. It is surprising to me that more pitchers aren't relying on distance running as just a part of what they do. If you had that and you were doing the max effort to get the top-end velocity,

that seems like that'd be maybe the best of both worlds if you could pull both of those off. I mean, I'm doing my running training and in order to run further, I have to run faster as well. So I do sprints on Fridays. I do my long run on Wednesday and I do an as you feel on Monday. So I think that almost every facet of training should kind vary the, the, the utensil. You have to like change what you're throwing. That's the weighted ball, weighted bats, all that stuff. You have to vary the distance and you have to vary the intensity. Uh, that's, I think, you know, anything that you're training for, you have to vary around it. Cause if you just did the one

thing that you were training for, you would never really get better at it. You know, if I wanted to do 50 sit-ups as fast as possible, and I just did 50 sit-ups every day, I actually wouldn't get better. I'd have to do a hundred sit-ups or sprint through 20 sit-ups, you know, like you have to kind of change it up. So I think that's something that, you know, I think people are, that's called sort of differential or interval training. That is something that's very common to you know pitching coordinators pitching coaches know all about it but how you implement it is uh is different from place to place i mean uh donnie ecker was doing donnie ecker just got hired by the rangers one of the things that he was doing uh with the with the

giants that was so amazing was um he was doing things where they would fail 90% of the time. He turned the machine on to 95 mile an hour sliders and told him to swing at 20% and told him to do it for an hour. Can you imagine doing that? You're swinging at 20 and 30%. You're failing 90% of the time. You're barely making contact. And he's telling you to keep doing it. I would find that super annoying first of all,

but, but you know, apparently that's the kind of thing you you fail a lot in practice in order to to do better in the game yeah i mean stuff anyway the braves won the world series we've gotten on a great interesting tangent though we need to like write this down for later in the off season when we're like what should we talk about mitch has mitch has a good a good question too um about lessons to be learned from them um and one thing i was thinking about when you when we were looking at these high ball hitters for the astros right you know i feel like if you can pitch to carlos correa you can pitch to altube you can pitch to bregman and there you take the three righties and and to some extent yuli guriel is a highball hitter too right so if you've got four guys who are all the same um on one side then you can pitch to those righties if

you figure something out that's sort of what happened with free he just it clicked and it was like oh this is the game plan it's working um the one thing that i think the braves had that is interesting is i think all the hitters are different. I mean, I think that Ozzie Albies is way different than Freddie Freeman, is way different than Eddie Rosario, is way different than Jorge Soler. So, like, whatever game plan you have, you kind of have to kind of individualize it, and it might not match up with the strengths of a pitcher, but you're more likely to break through if you have a diverse lineup like that where you're like, you know,

all this guy's pitching a no hitter. And then, Oh, Eddie Rosario just took a fastball, 102 mile an hour fastball at his nipples out. And he can do that because he's done. He did that this year. He had the hardest fastball this year for a Homer,

a one hundred, one or two from Broussard Gratterall. So, you know, you have these guys with different strengths and somebody will break through at some point. It's a little different than the Astros, who around the league are well known for kind of developing a style of hitter. There is the Astros set up. There is the Astros approach. And that is mostly be a highball hitter, spit on everything low, set up with the bat on your shoulder once.

Bam. That's the Astros style. So if you become too homogenous in the lineup, I think you can be pitched to. Real quick, when we go back to last night and we go back to kind of the ramifications now, Brent Strom, Astros pitching coach, is now going to leave, which is super sad. Jim Crane apparently said last night that Dusty Baker

is going to either get a one-year or a two-year deal. If you ask me, he needs at least a one-year with an option. You can't keep lame ducking a guy who went to the World Series. They gave him that one year initially. You never know what Dusty's saying. I guess Dusty would always want more years. I mean, exactly. Really unfortunate as much as I think most people were probably rooting for the Braves,

that Dusty Baker continues to be what the most managerial wins without a World Series win. He has won as a player. But, you know, that was really sad. Brett Strom, people are asking. He spoke last night and said he's not retiring, but he's not going to be a major league pitching coach. He kind of hinted at other opportunities.

He said that they have some young pitching coaches, the Astros organization, who it should be their their time they don't want to lose them um and i think it's a grind for somebody that's in their mid-70s when you think about as just he said he hadn't been home since february and it's damn near thanksgiving um you know that it's just a lot so um some changes coming i wonder on the great side they sort of kick him upstairs where he's like a special advisor on pitching or something like that. Yeah, potentially. Such a smart guy. Well-respected, well-liked. I think the Braves staff will probably stay intact.

I don't think Ron Washington gets a managerial job. I think Snicker would probably try to keep that group together, though certainly things can happen. But the Braves lose a lot of players yes freddie freeman you have to resign now right the guy just won a world series for you he's your face of the team uh i think you have got to get that done you have super below market contracts on albies and acuna so like you can afford to maybe overpay a little bit for the first baseman. Right. That's what I was going to ask you guys.

Dynasty wise, can this Braves team, even though they weren't supposed to get here, nobody thought they were going to get here. Can they get here again next year? What do you think? I mean, I think they can,

of course, because this is how every sport works. The odds from bed MGM were in my inbox this morning and Atlanta's plus 1000 to win the World Series next year. So that puts them within the top four, I think, odds-wise. So at least from a betting market's perspective, there's a belief they can run it back. And I think when you look at the core of that roster, because they have those young guys, because Acuna is going to be healthy, that gives them a shot again. that gives them a shot again.

It's going to be, I think it's contingent upon just how aggressive the rest of the division is, but their core is as good as any other core in that division right now, right? I mean, I think if you're looking at the next

two to three years, which team in the NL East is the biggest threat to Atlanta, realistically? Is it still the Mets despite all their front office stuff? Is it the Marlins because of their young talent?

The Nationals, they're kind of going into a little bit of a reshuffling that might not be a quick reshuffling. I think that's Marlins, because of their young talent, the Nationals seem like they're going into a little bit of a reshuffling that might not be a quick reshuffling. I think that's going to be interesting to see how that plays out. And then the Phillies, as Britt likes to remind us all the time, they just can't

execute. They spend money, they try, and they just can't get to that next level. They're interesting because they're projected to be an 84-win team right now, which is really boring but it also is like uh you know like oh you know if they were actually just a little bit better in in some of the facets of the game you know if they actually had a good bullpen one year you know and maybe added one starter or you know a key player like they have maybe 30 million to spend i i could see them if they made all the

right moves you know being right there with them in the division next year they were right there with them in the division this year you know and and we're we're all saying hey try every year learn from the braves you know i think the phillies should try and if things i think particularly if they ever had a good bullpen, they would push the Braves. Yeah. I think everyone should try. I think that should be the theme of baseball. Try.

It's 162 games. This isn't football. Try. You have months before. You know what I mean? If you're hanging around in July, try. Try. Everyone should just try.

It's been a buyer's deadline at the trade deadline for the last several years. The types of players that Atlanta acquired, they don't require much in terms of long-term value to give up for them. They're undervalued players when it comes to being tendered contracts. They're undervalued players in free agency, and they're undervalued again at the deadline. And then you see the impact guys like this can have. If it just fits in as secondary pieces and replacements for injured players, it certainly makes a lot of sense. I mean, the Jorge Soler home run, can I call BS on 446 feet?

That ball definitely went further than that. It cleared the tracks. It was like the Albert Pujols blast 15 years ago, and he ends up winning World Series MVP honors, and this is a guy that... How many teams actually wanted Jorge Soler back at the end of July when he was available? Because he had COVID and wasn't on part of their playoff roster. Yeah.

This time during the postseason. It's just nuts. Yeah. That's kind of what you love about the playoffs, though, right? All of a sudden, just these random heroes emerge. But you knew when he came back. I think his first at back from kovic was like i don't know i want to say 10 or 11 pitches you just knew he was kind of like locked in from the jump it didn't look like he had this much time and that's really what's unfortunate is alexanthopoulos had covid and

couldn't celebrate last night apparently but he should have been the world series mvp for the moves he made. I mean, it's unfortunate that executive of the year gets voted on before the playoffs actually begin. Because when you look at some of the way that Anthopolis constructed this team and guys like Solaire and somebody mentioned Dan's be Swanson, really stepping up in the post season. Like to me, it was really hard to pick an MVP because the Braves just got Tyler,

Matt sick. They just got like contributions from everywhere. It felt like they could have just given this to the bullpen and we would all have been okay with that too. Time person of the year, you reflective cover. I think I had Bojack Horseman. It was,

we are all secretariat. That was what they went with for the secretariat movie, but I'm losing the plot in a big way. They also get Mike Soroka back at some point, potentially. It might not be right away, beginning of the season, but there's a guy that could come in and pitch similar to a frontline guy, if not like a frontline guy, health permitting.

It's a long road back for him, of course. I think Dansby Swanson would have been a perfectly fine option to throw out there as World Series MVP as well. I agree with you, Britt. I think you had a few different players you could have went with for that award. And James wants to know, do the Braves re-sign Jorge Soler? And does that depend on Universal DH?

I would say almost certainly it does. I think if they have Universal DH, that could make a lot more sense. Yeah, it also depends on the Marcel Ozuna situation. Also true. Big unknown among the players. Because I think Ozuna, I think when they signed Ozuna, some part of the discussion was, will he be our DH when there is a universal DH?

Yeah, based on length of deal. He's not a very good outfielder. Right, based on length of deal. You might be right. So that could actually be the deciding factor that keeps Soler from returning to Atlanta. But I think his market definitely up after what he did over the course of the postseason.

There's a question here from James. Why did Christian Javier throw a Dansby Swanson of their fastball after game four? No idea. Could not tell you. That doesn't make any sense. No, no. Yeah, I mean, some Braves underperformed their Pythagorean

by six wins and their base runs by three wins. Huh. I mean, that's a great point. They'll probably be a better team in 2022. Maxwell Bay, I think we can all agree if they're healthy. Just getting back Acuna, they're going to be a better team. They've got Borton. They've got, you know, Freed coming back.

We talked about Soroka at some point. This has been their division. They've won the last, what, three years in a row? Someone in the comments correct me if I'm wrong, at the last couple years they've owned this division so until some other team proves otherwise the nl east is the atlanta braves division so yes i think they could win the division next year and i think they could still continue to be a a force in the postseason so you know they're gonna they're gonna to, they're going to be good for a while. They are. And I think the Astros, you know,

their window hasn't closed. And we talked about this a little bit yesterday. They've got the, you were done Alvarez is they've got the Kyle Tucker's kind of coming up next. And so these are two teams that I think are going to still be four division titles. Thank you,

James. They're going to still be in this mix here for a while. We're going to be talking about them for a while, guys. I guess get used to the Braves being part of Braves and Merrills. Yeah, they're not going away anytime soon. Mitch wants to know, are Christian

Pache and Drew Water still part of the three- to five-year plan, or are they trade bait to boost the rotation? It seems like it'd be weird if both of them ended up sticking around long-term, but that's where the uncertainty is right now in this roster. I mean, the players are going to lose.

The position players are going to lose or are set to become free agents. Soler, Rosario, Peterson, Duvall. That's your entire outfield that you just work through the postseason with. I think a lot of the players that they're about to lose are easily replaceable. I've got the free agent outfielders up, and guys that they could sign without spending a lot of money are Tommy Pham,

Corey Dickerson. They could sign Eddie Rosario back. I think Soler might cost a little bit more, but we'll see. I mean, he definitely helps us start with the whole second half, not just the playoffs. Let's see who else could be interesting. Actually, it drops off after that pretty quickly. Those are the names.

Pham, Dickerson, Rosario, Mark Kanha could be an interesting guy. But they'll find corner outfielders like they did this year and the big thing is the long-term plan at centerfield because i think you you can stick acuna there maybe but coming off of uh the the the injury i think that you might want to put less stress on him put him in the corner outfield, in which case I think Pache is starting opening day because you're not going to find a center fielder on the market. That's just not... You don't usually buy

a center fielder in free agency because that's a young position. With Pache, I mean, I think you have potential gold glove defense regardless of what you get from the bat. You have enough bats otherwise for your offense to justify that and you might end up developing a guy that turns into a nice offensive

player i think the year he had a triple a he ended up finishing as a league average player in terms of wrc plus was striking out 27.5 of the time he popped 11 homers in 89 games he was stealing some bases i mean for a guy that still he is 22 years old when he did that, there's still a reason to believe he could take one more step forward over time, especially without a lot of pressure on him offensively. Waters' approach has always been in question. So I think there's a lot of people that are skeptical of just how good of a big league hitter he's going to be. They also just have a really good lineup.

So if Pache is their eight hitter, you know can go with the young cheap defense first guy you don't want to pay anybody to be a defense first guy but a young cheap defense first guy give him a year or two if it doesn't work out then you have to figure something else out but yeah you you're also developing other guys um that'll pop up in the meantime so i think i think you know i don't think that pache is the next star uh or the you know the quote-unquote you know solution or whatever but i think that he is going to be their opening day center fielder yeah a couple comments um in the comment stream about carlos correa um i spent a lot of time around houston in october the sentiment is very much that carlos correa is not resigning in Houston.

They don't do these big mega contracts. It's just not what they do. Jim Crane did say, you know, they're going to talk, but obviously I think they are preparing to move on without him. People mentioned Detroit. I know the Tigers have a bunch of interest. I think the age is a little bit of a factor when it comes to Correa, how long he's looking for looking for some kind of deal.

Somebody else asked about the quality of the games in the World Series, which I feel like we've talked about a little bit. I do wish the games were closer, but I think part of it is what we talked about with the starters just not going deep. So you're just running into that problem, and you're going to have a lot of runs when you've got mostly bullpen games, right? And that's what we saw. And i do hope it reverts back i hope maybe it's an anomaly from the 60 game season last year um but you know i don't know one thing that one thought i had about that is that the dh is going to lead to a higher run environment and a higher run environment means

more lopsided games and what we saw was the ALCS had more lopsided games. The NLCS had more tight games, the NL, the games played in NL parks in this series were closer. And so, you know, the one thing that may happen, you know,

we don't like watching pitchers hit and they suck at it. But one thing that may happen with the DH is a higher run environment and more laughers, which is not exactly what we want as a sport either. Right, right. I saw a comment here. Adam Duvall, contract through 2022. I think it's a mutual option. And because he's constantly non-tendered, I just expect him to be kind of bumped back out into free agency

and then brought back in. Also, don't. The last two years. I don't want to start him in center field no i'm amazed they play him there but i think the correa thing it sure seems like he's gone following the footsteps of george springer as a big free agent to leave where he goes i i keep seeing him in pinstripes i keep seeing him as the the yankees choice on a massive contract to, to be their shortstop. And maybe he finishes the contract at a different position, but I would assume that we're talking like a eight plus year deal pretty

easily for Korea, despite the injury history. And I don't know if, if Houston's going to make a commitment like that. No, I think that they're kind of planning for him to move on. That's just what it seems. Um,

just from people I talked to over the last month, like I'll see if they and Bregman are going to spend their careers in Houston, right? They're going to hear the booze the rest of their life. They're probably going to be Astros for the rest of their careers. There's never been that sense about Correa. New York is interesting because he idolizes A-Rod. They did that commercial together.

And I was told that like Correa really idolizes Alex Rodriguez, which not really who I would pick to idolize, but you know, And I was told that Correa really idolizes Alex Rodriguez, which not really who I would pick to idolize, but each their own. I do think it'll be interesting to see. When you look at that shortstop market, someone asked about Marcus Simeon. Trey Turner has one more year. If you're Detroit and you're not going to win next year, do you just wait and try to make a play for Trey Turner, who may command less money, you're Detroit and you're not going to win next year. Do you just wait and try to make a play for Trey Turner? You know,

who may come in last money, who, in my opinion is still kind of undervalued underrated to some extent, going to LA probably helped him a little bit more, but you know, that shortstop market and what a team like Detroit does when they're still kind of at the tail end of the rebuilding mode, does Correa end up being, they just got out from under the Miguel Cabrera contract, right?

They're just about to get out from under that and you're going to now saddle yourself with a deal that could end up being really bad in a couple of years. I think that the difference for me though, with shortstops especially, is that with those guys playing up the middle, you're going to more likely settle in to the back half of a contract. That's much more tolerable. And even, even so we talk about this all the time, right?

These big contracts still end up being bargains for the teams, even though they end up kind of building around them and saying they're an excuse later to not do something. But I do think there's with Korea, if it's like a 10 year deal, his injury history does give me a little more pause on a massive deal like that than some of the other players who have been extended in recent years. I saw a comment in here about Harris, the other prospect for Atlanta, too,

the other outfield prospect. I mean, that's another reason why I would say Waters. That's exactly who we're talking about, like, you know, the kind of pop-up guys that are, you know, you put Pache in there and maybe Harris takes the job from him halfway through the season. Right, and that's part of the reason why I think Waters is so expendable. But yeah, to that question about just the way these games played out, the weekend games I thought were the best games overall.

Like the Friday, Saturday, Sunday stretch. In Atlanta. Yeah, that was the best stretch of this series. If you're an Atlanta fan, it was last night. But from just a neutral perspective, that three-game stretch was the best of what this series had to offer us. The thing about mucking with the game, which I'm a fan of, is changing the game, changing the incentives, changing the rules.

I'm a fan of that because I think that the game changing the incentives changing the rules i'm a fan of that because you know i think that other sports have done it to to to great success um and the break and the and the baseball is still kind of looking for it the the thing about it is you have these things pointing in so many different areas in directions right let's say you put in the dh for everyone you're like yay well that's a lot of offense right so what what are you going to do to like mitigate that um and you know they've been trying these things and the moving the mound back didn't actually seem to reduce offense that much you know so maybe you do the pitch clock and the dh in the same year

and what's funny is that like people will be like oh baseball didn't change be like well there was like some underlying stuff that happened there that went in different directions. I wish you could almost change one big rule a year and see what happens. Always has to be done one at a time to really get the full impact. I got an important

item to get to before we sign off. Dan's Bishwanson. Interesting. Huh. Okay. Huh. Okay. Yeah. It's like Sean Connery in The Rock, dude. I can't.

So if you didn't see it on Twitter and you're not watching us on YouTube, Eno last night tweeted, you ever have to say a name one way in your head? I can't not say Dan's Bishwanson in a bad Scottish accent. It's a failure of mine. Probably one of your most popular tweets in the last week or so. Two people were into that. Oh, God.

Well, everyone who joined us on YouTube, thank you. It's been really fun to see the live comments. Maybe we'll do it in the off season too because I kind of enjoy the banter and what people care about versus just what the three of us care about. So it's been fun.

Yeah, a great crew asking a lot of questions. I like having the feedback. Thanks, guys, for all the questions and comments. It's been fun. A great crew asking a lot of questions. Thanks, guys, for all the questions and comments. It's been really cool. We really appreciate all of you. Keg status check on the way out the door? I can pick it up with a couple fingers now, so there can't be that much left in it. Sounds like maybe

five to six pints still left in there. Thank you to all of you who've tuned in throughout the postseason, whether that's live or the podcast version. We'll get to the normal version of the show again next week. You can get 33% off a subscription to The Athletic at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels on Twitter. He's at Eno Sarah.

She's at Britt underscore Droli. I am at Derek Van Ryper. And, of course, if you're watching us on YouTube, be sure to hit the Like button on this video and subscribe to the channel in case we do feature future live episodes. That is going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We are back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening.