Rates & Barrels - Home Run Derby picks, Futures Game excitement, and our favorite first-half storylines

Episode Date: July 9, 2021

Eno, Britt & DVR discuss their picks for the Home Run Derby, the players they are most excited to see in Sunday's Futures Game, and their favorite storylines from the first half of the season.  Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Britt on Twitter: @Britt_Ghiroli Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Subscribe to The Athletic for just $3.99/mo: 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 Friday, July 9th. At least I'm pretty. It is Friday, July 9th. At least I'm pretty sure it's Friday, July 9th. Derek Van Ryper, Richard Oli, Eno Saris here with you just ahead of All-Star Weekend, a much-needed break in the schedule and lots of fun stuff to talk about on this episode. The Home Run Derby field is officially set. We will talk about the matchups in the first round, who we'd like to possibly win that event this year. We'll also talk about some players we're excited to see in the Futures game, which will go down

on Sunday afternoon. A few of our favorite storylines from the first half of the season, and a question about innings concerns in the second half, what some teams might be doing to combat that. Let's get right after it, though. Let's start with the Home Run Derby. The field, eight players in it. The bracket-style format continues. Great adjustment, as we talked about a couple of shows ago. Shohei Otani versus Juan Soto. Joey Gallo versus Trevor Story. Matt Olsen versus Trey Mancini. And Salvador Perez versus Pete Alonso, who could be one of the handful of players to win the event twice if he happens to win in Denver this weekend. When you guys think about the Home Run Derby, what matters to you? What are you looking for? Because it's really a glorified batting practice, but it's kind of hyped up and sped up in a way where you don't get to relax.

You actually need to be pretty fit to do well in the current format of the Home Run Derby. Britt, comparing this to the older format where guys could really take their time and the lumbering slugger could do a lot better, it seems like it takes a different type of player to thrive with the timed head-to-head environment. Yeah, you hear guys often say that it's exhausting, and you could see why. This is why some guys opt to not do it, or you have the claims that it changes their swing because it's totally different. It's not just BP. It's BP on steroids, more or less, right?

Like we're going to be in a ballpark where, you know, the balls could fly out. We, apparently they're not using the humidors. So this could really be. Whoa. Yeah. This could really be an exciting home run derby. Also, I think the high today is 99. I saw that.

So basically someone made the joke that these balls are just going to explode into dust, which maybe they will. I think it's going to be great fun. I think, like you were saying, Derek, guys, this is why you don't often see the best hitters do it. Like you were saying, Derek, guys, this is why you don't often see the best hitters do it. This is why it's so cool to me that Otani, who I learned a few days ago, does not even take batting practice, is going to partake in this. This is why I have a problem picking the favorite, too, though. Because what I don't like about this is you can hit like 50 in the first round and it doesn't carry over. So it doesn't really behoove you to have that crazy Josh Hamilton round that everyone remembers. You have to be consistent and steady. So there's actually a game plan to this, in my opinion. And just in talking to guys, like you have to conserve your

energy and do just enough to win every round and not go out there trying to hack and get 80 home runs right away. You have to kind of have the wherewithal to say, Hey, if I'm going to win this, which again, do players really care that much about winning it? Not really. It depends on who you talk to.

I think guys just don't want to be embarrassed. A lot of guys are like, just get me past the first round or just make sure I hit a few. Yeah. Like it is sad when you see a guy go out there and he hits like two home runs, right? You're kind of like golf clapping and hoping that it,

he hits a few more. because that's kind of embarrassing. But I think the home run derby might be more exciting than the All-Star game this year, just because of the storylines. You know, there's a lot of guys to root for. I'm really having a hard time picking a winner, as I said earlier. But also, I want so many of these guys to win at once. Like Otani would be amazing to win for the sport. Trey Mancini, the guy beat cancer. Like, wouldn't that also be awesome? Like Juan Soto doing the Soto shuffle. Yes, please. Yes. Story and maybe his last, you know, few games in Denver. Yes. And he'd be the first guy to win at home since, remember Bryce Harper at Nats Park? What a show he put on. What a special moment it was for the home fans. I was there.

It was incredible. So having a hometown player win is really special. Watching Joey Gallo is going to be great. I just, I don't know how you guys feel here. I'm going to be just a huge fan girl out there in Denver. I want everyone to have fun and hit a lot of home runs. And I just don't know if I could pick a winner.

Yeah. I mean, I think the potential for like an Otani triple crown where he like wins the home run Derby strikes out three guys and his inning of work, and then like hits a Homer in the all-star game, it would just be so mind boggling. And he's had such a storybook year outside of the, you know,

Tim team wins perspective that I think, you know, that would be really fun. It would be a storyline that we all deserve. I was thinking about this, though, because we're talking about how much this is an athletic feat. It is interesting that he has kind of a longer swing, you know. And what if that, like, takes more to sort of duplicate each time? Um, and he's just such a tall guy. Uh, I,

I kind of, I love, you know, Harrison Bader types. I've talked about this before, like guys that are just like, like fire hydrants. Like,

uh, I think that Pete Alonzo is a little bit closer to that, where it's just like kind of of compact and have a compact swing. Another thing that Pete Alonzo brings up to me is that Derek was saying something about a jet stream to right center. And normally, I think of this as being like pull power, raw power, that's all that matters. You're just going to try and pull a ton of homers, and that's it. you're just going to try and pull a ton of homers and that's it. But Pete Alonso, the year he won, hit opposite field homers in the home run derby.

I don't think I've ever seen that before. I think I saw him do that and was like, oh, you're going to lose. You can't do that. You can't be going for opposite field homers. But he has kind of that kind of swing and it worked for him and he won. So, you know, I think that I would like to say that lefties are favored and that, you know, somebody who barrels the ball and has a huge max exit velo, somebody like Otani, that would be my natural favorite. And that's also what the betting lines indicate, that Otani is the favorite. But maybe a righty going oppo is going to win this. Yeah, I mean, looking at the odds, it's pretty interesting just to see Otani the favorite at plus 325, according to BetMGM.

Trey Mancini, the biggest long shot, at plus 1100. And for years, during the All-Star break when I worked at Rotowire, we had an annual trip to Las Vegas. We would always bet on the home run derby because sports basically stopped during the MLB All-Star break. It was the only thing to bet on. And usually, you're just looking at the bottom couple names and kind of talk yourself into a longer odds option. Some of the odds, good odds. Yeah. Right.

Because, I mean, it's always been a relative crapshoot. A lot actually rides on just how good your thrower, your designated pitcher in this case, actually is. Like the person grooving you pitches. You think back to the Robinson Cano year. Like his dad knew exactly where to throw him pitches that he could crush. Having a person comfortable throwing BP on a big stage actually matters. Like it's actually a thing. We've seen a couple guys go out there and get the yips, and that has cost guys an opportunity to win the derby.

I would look at Alonso at plus 500 as kind of a good value relatively speaking, just because he has won it before. He should have every advantage in his first round matchup going up against Sal Perez. That's a great draw for Alonso. And just thinking kind of tactically about this, there is

an advantage to being the higher seeded player, right? If you're the higher seeded player, I believe you get to go second. You know how many home runs you need. And like Britt was saying, if you're going first, you just have to hit as many as you possibly can and expend all of your energy. So that's one little thing that I think is kind of important to look at. It is weird to see Soto at plus 900 because you think about the best hitters on the planet and he's one of the first names that comes to mind.

He goes up against Otani in the first round. Yeah, but I kind of like Soto there. Yeah, I do too. You know, you made that great point about Otani taking a lot of energy and everything Soto does, like, okay, the shuffle certainly takes some energy, but

his swing is just, I think, a little bit more effortless. Otani has a violent swing, which is really hard to repeat that many times, I think, without getting fatigued. Yeah, I think like him and Olsen, now that I'm thinking about it, like these are long swings. It's like it seems like maybe they could be at a disadvantage. I don't know. Yeah, and Otani's never hit BP. So to me, I don't know if I'd call him the favorite, right? Like, a guy who's never taken BP

is now going to put into an atmosphere that, like I said, is BP on steroids? I don't know. I think Soto can sneak in here. He's got Kevin Long throwing to him. He works really well with Kevin Long. He's the Nationals' hitting coach. They take a constantly are doing cage work at

midnight. I kind of like Soto as an underdog here in that first round, at least. Yeah, I'm with Britt on this one. I think plus 900 especially, Soto's the way I would try to go here if I was going to bet one of the longer odds options for this contest. You can also go AL player at minus 200 to win or Or NL player at plus 160. So in the NL player side. You get Soto. You get Story. You get Alonso.

Kind of an interesting way to possibly go about things there. What does Otani do in place of batting practice? Does he do T-work? I bet you he hits the high Velo machine. He's kind of like One of these data tech guys I could see him Just being like why Dominate against

A coach throwing 40 What is that going to do for me That's a fair question Because BP is nothing like What you get in the game I know it's more to calibrate your swing And work on that, but in terms of timing the ball,

that doesn't really help you at all. One thing that I've seen that's pretty interesting out here in San Francisco, and I don't think they're the first team to do it, but the first team I've seen do it regularly, they do two distances at batting practice.

And they even bring out a machine. So they'll have two people throwing batting practice from different lengths and a machine. And so what they're trying to simulate is off-speed versus fastball versus breaking ball. And the closer one looks like it's maybe like 25 feet away from the batter. And that one sometimes is a machine. So they're actually simulating velo there. But it's weird because you have to pick it up so late.

But there are teams trying to fiddle around with batting practice. And I could see. And now that the media is waiting for them out on the field i'm sure there'll be tons of players who are like nah i'll just hit in the cages down below yeah i guess that's uh one way things could go uh by the way otani's first half which is still in progress we still have three more days for him to add to this. He's at 279, 364, 700 for the slash line, 32 homers, 12 steals.

He's got 63 runs, 69 RBIs in 84 games. He's got a 349 ERA at a 121 whip with 87 strikeouts in 67 innings pitch. I know this is something that was written about on The Athletic this week, but we really need to stop and just enjoy this as something we will probably never see again. Even if Shohei Otani is a great player in the big leagues for a long time,

this could be the absolute best season he ever puts together. Yes. And I'm also tired of the Babe Ruth comparisons. Let's just enjoy Otani. That's how I feel. People are like, is this what watching Babe Ruth was like? Well, I don't know. You guys don't know. None of us got to see Babe Ruth. So I know sports in general are about comparisons, but let's just watch and enjoy Otani, like Derek was saying. We may never see this again.

Is he the next Babe Ruth? I don't know. He's the first Shohei Otaniani though, and that should be enough. Yeah. He's such a stat cast god. I mean, it's like crazy. Here's a guy who can throw the ball 100 and hit the ball 120. It's just pretty amazing.

You gotta let him do whatever he wants to do. I know there have been arguments. I've made some of these arguments that I see him maybe as a shutdown closer slash right fielder in the future. But I'm not saying he should. I'm not saying that he has to do that or he should do that. I'm just saying that's where I kind of see him going. He should do what he's doing as long as he can because it's awesome.

Yeah, it is awesome and more valuable. I thought we were at that point, too, where they're going to have to make that decision this year and possibly not let him be a two-way player, and I'm glad I'm wrong about that. Right, exactly. One of the things I'm very happy to be wrong about, because it's been a lot of fun.

All right, so Britt and I both like Soto at plus 900. You know, is there a longer shot option you like here? I'm just staring a hole into Gallo versus Story. I just think that they're right there. You could have a winner between those two. I just think that Gallo is a moonshot

guy, and he doesn't have to worry about swinging and missing, hopefully. And then Story, I do think that the hometown guy gets a little juice. I think that the fans will be rooting for him. The people will be yelling for him. They know the stadium really well.

So if there is a jet stream to a certain location, they can just sort of pepper that area. And Story knows the batter's eye better than anybody. So I could just see the winner coming out of there. And, of course, Gallo's see the winter coming out of there. And of course, Gal is the favorite. Um, and he goes second. So,

uh, I guess that would be where I go, but, um, uh, story, you know, I think it'd be kind of fun.

Yeah, I would agree. I mean, we expect him to be on the move before the trade deadline at the end of the month. It'd be a nice way to sort of put a stamp on the end of his time in Colorado. And on a positive note, since there haven't been a lot of happy

moments during his time there. Did you see what Nick Groke was reporting that other teams don't know who to call? Yeah. That's weird. That's good.

You have one of the best maybe the best Yeah, that's weird. That's good. That's good. You have one of the best, maybe the best asset to sell at the deadline. And people don't know who to call. Yeah. Maybe get that information out there if you're the Rockies. Make it very clear who's actually calling the shots as it pertains to the Trevor story deal. All right. So we've got the home run Derby picks in the books. Let's talk about the Futures game.

It comes prior to the Home Run Derby, but I think more people will take the time to watch the Derby. Hopefully, more and more people are watching the Futures game, though. The rosters are loaded, as they often are. Simple question for all of you. What would you like to see in this game? And who are you most excited to see playing in this game as we get a look at a lot of these players for the very first time? We'll start with you, Britt.

Gosh, this is really hard because, as you said, Derek, it's loaded. I really want to see Adley Rushman because I haven't seen him play yet. I keep meaning to make it down there. Orioles top prospect, one of the top prospects in baseball. Was it two years ago now that he was drafted? I have like no concept of time, everything in the post-COVID regime. Catcher, kind of the guy who, if you're an Orioles fan, you remember how much Matt Wieters was kind of run up the flagpole.

Well, this is kind of the next. The projections were amazing. Yes, this is kind of the next. The projections were amazing. Yes, this is the next guy here. Looking at these rosters, though, it is unfair. Bobby Wood Jr. would be great on the AL team. You got Spencer Torkelson, who I'd also love to see. Then in the NL, it's also stacked. Cade Cavalli, the Nationals' top arm.

One of the few guys in the Nationals system who people believe is like a can't-miss prospect. We'd like to watch him. More than anything, guys, I'd love this game to be more than seven innings. Can somebody explain to me why a sport trying to celebrate itself with stacked rosters here, this is the all-star team of the minor leagues, is only going to play seven innings? Why is that? Why? I mean, I think it's the pitching. They just don't want to, like, you know, stretch the pitching. But invite more pitchers then. I mean, the rosters are fungible, you know? Like, you could have a larger number of players there, you know?

And, you know, you're only asking three outs of these guys most of the time. So that's one of the things that is actually a little bit misleading, I think, about the Futures game sometimes is that you're only asking three outs. A lot of these guys are starters. So it sometimes isn't the best place to scout a starting pitcher. They'll sit there and sit 100, you know, for three outs. And they may not even throw their secondary as much. They may just be all fastballs. Um, so, you know, I I'm interested in some of the pitchers, but like Max Meyer stands out for me because I know his fastball and slider are good.

Um, he's close to the major leagues and I think that he'll probably put on a show with those two pitches. Um, and, uh, so that's one that stands out. And then I'm always interested in like who's closest to the big leagues. So, you know, there are some younger guys that are more exciting and then they're more flawed. Older guys are closer, but I'm, you know, me, dude, I'm always looking at the guys who might be a little bit less, you know, people might be a little bit less lusty after. Like Nolan Gorman and Elliot Ramos, who both have like near 30% strikeout rates, but are either repeating double A or playing in triple A, playing for a team that has a need at their position. I kind of want to see what that swing and miss looks like, you know. Is it a velo problem? Is it

a spin problem? Or is it just the byproduct of an aggressive power forward kind of approach? Yeah, I think that's a really good point about the pitching in particular. Guys can max out. It's a showcase game, essentially. And you're not going to draw a lot of conclusions about a starter who's up three or four ticks with his fastball. That's not who he is most of the time. It's more of just a sit back and enjoy, but also maybe put the

physical attributes of the player in place. You can see athleticism a little better in person than you can on a stats page. You can see how does Marco Luciano look? What does his movements look like? What does his swing look like? There's some things like that that I think are pretty interesting.

Stiff versus loose, right? And speed is not always easy to see. There are guys who have some speed but just aren't asked to steal a lot in the minor leagues. And they might have three to four steals or something and you don't know how fast they are. Or guys that steal a lot that are not as surprised, like maybe not as fast or as not as sort of liquid as you'd like. So yeah, definitely. I like that. I like the sort of looking at their body movements. Yeah, Luciano, I think is pretty high on my list of players. I

had him in a dynasty league, never had seen him play before, was excited about what he was doing. The league unfortunately folded, so I'll have to get Marco Luciano in a different league once he gets closer to the big leagues, but he's having a great season at low A. First full season for him in the minors and 14 homers, a 134 WRC+. He's young for

the level. He's just one of those guys that could move very quickly in that giant system and has a huge ceiling. I would say Shane Boz is still very much on my radar because I'm convinced he's among the players in this game that we'll see in the big leagues before the end of the season. I think seeing him in a shorter outing might be more indicative of what he will look like when the Rays bring him up this year because I don't know if he necessarily comes up as a starter, even though long-term, I think he's absolutely in their plans as a starter. So I think in that case, I'd be a little more intrigued by, oh, he's hitting 101. What does the top heel look like? Yeah. Yeah. He's maxed out at 101. That's a pretty good late-in weapon.

He comes up in the McClanahan role of last year, right? Bingo. So those are the two guys I'm really excited to see i think everyone wants to see jason dominguez i've compared him to cameron's dad's ferrari and ferris bueller just because the yankees they've kept him kind of in the garage and the complex league all season long this is really our first chance to see jason dominguez against some advanced prospects what does the bigness look like back to your point about about looking at the bodies. I've seen some footage, and okay, I've seen some video, and he looks big, and he looks like he hits bombs. But how does it move?

Because he used to be kind of a little bit smaller, and then he just really blew up in terms of size. So is he more Vladdy? Or is he... When we first saw him, people were talking Mike Trout, you know, but he almost seems like he blew past that in terms of size. But Mike Trout is that like ideal combination. That's why he's so amazing is he's that ideal combination of power and speed. He's almost like a middle linebacker in football where he's like, that's the thing that always stands out for me when i see mike trout is like whoa that dude shouldn't be that fast you know anything like that dude is big he shouldn't be that fast that's like the kind of thing you see when you

watch football or basketball sometimes you don't always see that in baseball in baseball you're like that dude is big he's not fast yeah with trout in particular like if you imagine trout playing high school football he was the guy that probably get 25 tackles every game because he was the first one to the ball playing the middle of the defense. Question for you about body type descriptions. You mentioned fire hydrant earlier for Pete Alonso. A fire hydrant in my mind is more of like a running back or a fullback if we're sticking with the football body types. Alonso's a little bit big. He's a little bit big. I was thinking Harrison Bader. Bader's a fire hydrant for me. Yeah. Baseball, the physiques are just totally different.

They're more everyday than your football. I did want to mention, though, before we get too off tangent, in the Futures game, what's not really getting any attention and I think is notable is Rachel Balkovec is coaching. She's the first woman to coach in the Futures game. Yankees hitting coach in the minor leagues. Yeah, she's spent about 15 years. It's by no means a token gig.

She's been working hard for about 15 years now, was with the Astros for a while, has stints in the Dominican Republic and speaks Spanish. And she is going to be the first in the history of the Futures game to be on that staff. It's a pretty big deal. We'll often get overlooked, I'm sure, but I did want to mention that because I just think it's pretty cool.

Yeah, that's a really cool thing. I did see her name on the rosters now that I think about it. It's a great call to bring that up too. The game starts, I believe, at 3 Eastern if I converted the time zones, right? I'm in a time zone that's not my own yet. And the game's happening in a different time zone that I never go to because it's on mountain time. I think it's one mountain. So that's 3 Eastern if I'm doing all the math correctly.

Yes. And draft starts after that, a little after that. It'll be on MLB Network? Yep. All stacked up on MLB Network. So people will be locked into that channel all day long. Great rosters up and down, though, really. And one of the few players who unfortunately can't play due to injury who I wanted to see, C.J. Abrams, I would say, would have been high on my list of players I'd like to get a look at.

Because I thought he might be a guy that we'd see in the big leagues by the end of the season if the Padres had the right need. Yeah, I was just down in Slam Diego, and there was a little bit of sadness for Abrams' injury because right now they're kind of nursing Jorge Mateo along as probably the worst use of a roster slot on that team. But he becomes more valuable in the postseason because he's like the second or first fastest player in the big leagues right now. So he kind of, if you can get him to the big league, and if you can get him to the postseason, then he's your Jared, Gerard Dyson, Terrence Gore,

kind of pinch runner extraordinaire. And that's why he's still on the roster. But you could have done that with Abrams because Abrams is super fast. You could have done that with Abrams with a little more upside with the bat. And so there is a spot there for the Padres to upgrade there. And, of course, we'll get into trade deadline as once we get past the All-Star game. But it was interesting because they lost a 10-0 game that I was attending as a fan with the kids.

And there was already like, I got a tweet the next day, be honest with me, is this a playoff team? I'm like, yes. Yes, this is definitely a playoff team. It was the Nats series, right? It was the Nats, right?

Yeah. Do you get the sense that Padres fans, because it has been a franchise really riddled by futility for most of its existence, they're not really willing to buy in to their own success in some ways. Or they're just convinced that it's going to turn to dust really quickly, even though they're well built for the foreseeable future. There's always the Mets thing where pain is always around the corner. But I will say that in the past, I've been going to Padres games.

My in-laws moved there, I don't know, 10 years ago. And I've been going to Padres games for a while. And a lot of the Padres games in the past, even when they've been competitive, like I went to this series, I don't know, five, six years ago, where it was the Giants against the Padres late in the season. And both of them had a shot still at the postseason. And it was like, I don't know, like 40 to 50% Giants fans in the stands. And I was like, this is weird. And, you know, we were even talking about like how this, like among people that I was talking to at the game,

we were talking about like how in the past, you know, if the Cubs come to town, that's the biggest draw, you know? Or if the Yankees come to town it's like the people who moved from New York to San Diego to retire you know like I used to be the list you used to live in Chicago the Cubs are coming to town I'm going to the game uh so they used to kind of almost draw when depending more on who was in town but they don't have a big core of uh Washington DC fans uh so Nationals on a Tuesday night, which is the game I covered, wouldn't have had almost anybody in the stands.

That would have been a night of sort of 5,000 people. They had like 35,000 people there. I would say it was 80%, 90% Padres fans, and they had a really good time with it uh Manny Machado's birthday was that night and they had this it had this funny thing that happened up on the board it said Manny Machado's never faced a pitcher named Machado right and then it was his birthday so the the whole the whole all the fans start singing happy birthday to Manny Machado and the next pitch he gets after they sing happy birthday he swings so hard he lands on his ass.

And he's sitting on the plate, and he might be hurt. And he's, like, taking a real long time to get up, and everyone's like, ooh, one of those birthdays, you know? He gets up, like, takes a practice swing, gets back in the box, and hits a game-tying double. Of course he does. And the place just goes wild. And everyone's having a good time.

I would say that there is some of that in San Diego, but they've now had a team that's been building for two to three years. They have such a good core. Everyone's in love with Tatis and Manny. Yes.

That's enough. I saw the cutest little kid, little three-year-old kid with one of these chains on. Guys, Eno's wearing a swag chain for those of you who are only listening. Yeah. Eno's wearing...

Let's even back this up for just a moment. I went downstairs today and Eno's pouring a bowl of Lucky Charms with the swag chain on. It's just nothing. Good morning. Just trying to bring some swag to my everyday life. You're bringing a ton of swag. And I agree with everything you said because my family lives in San Diego and they've been going to Padres games for years. And my mom said, I'm sorry, the other day, she said, I've never seen

anything like this. She works at a hospital in San Diego. She's a nurse. And she's like, for the first time ever, we're allowed to wear Padres stuff on Fridays. They're kind of like a football team because they have all they've had there. So there's my mom wearing her little – Yeah, the Chargers are gone? Yeah, there's my mom wearing her like Tatis jersey and her swag chain at some hospital in San Diego on Fridays. I just think it's hilarious. I keep telling her, send me a photo of all these nurses dressed in like Padres swag.

I'll tweet it. It's hysterical. Casual, casual Friday. Love it. Yeah. Oh, but just the little three-year-old I saw had like a hat with fake Tatis dreads on the back. It's amazing. Amazing.

Oh, he had like gloves on and a jersey and sliding shorts. And like, oh my God, he just, he was so cute. And yeah, everyone's just having a really good time. And that ballpark, what's great about that ballpark too, is it was a great ballpark anyway, with great food and great beer options. And now it has a great team. So it's really, it's popping off in San Diego.

Yeah, one of my favorite places to go catch a game. I caught a couple there, geez, three, four, probably four years ago now. They were still pre-competitive mode for sure, but didn't change anything about how much I enjoyed the park and the area around the park. And I would say the Padres are among my favorite first half storylines. We expect them to be good again,

but I think I had a little bit of that, yeah, what if it wasn't real? That was a little bit of doubt that kind of crept into my mind earlier this year. I'm glad they're still good. I like that team. They are a fun team and they are great for the game. I think the other big first half storyline aside from Otani, who we talked about earlier, we've talked about Vlad Jr. in recent weeks, like Vlad rising to stardom. That's pretty amazing. I think the Giants have to be part of this too, because I think the Giants, and maybe people who live in the West Coast feel differently than I do about this, but I think of the Giants as one of those teams that when they're

good, that's also good for the game. You want your kind of pillar franchises to be competitive, to have success, to draw big crowds, to be a good marquee sort of team. And the ways they have done it, the things they have accomplished with the resources they have in place, they're getting as much out of a group of players as any team in the league right now where they're exceeding expectations. I keep waiting for that fade to happen and they're at least well in the driver's seat for an NL wildcard spot if they don't win the division, which I didn't think I'd be saying in July. They actually look like a possible contender in the NL West as we get to the second half of the season.

Wouldn't it just be a poke in the eye of the analytics nerds if the old dudes won? Yes. No, not really. I mean, kind of, but I mean- But they've embraced it. They're winning because of analytics too. They're not like taking all the I mean, they are taking the old guys because they're undervalued. I mean, because the analytics say they're still good and they're coaching the heck out of them with the largest coaching staff in the big leagues. And and and, you know, really interesting people.

You know, they've got Fernando Perez, who's like a poet, former baseball player slash poet. He's one of their coaches. They've got Alyssa Naken, one of the, is she the only woman coach? On the big league level, yeah. On the big league level.

And just like three hitting coaches is not super rare. There are like probably about eight teams that do that, but they have 15 coaches and the second, the next tier of teams, there's a bunch with 13. So they were like, we're going to coach the crap out of this. We're, you know, like teacher to student ratio. We're just going to have a ton of teachers here. And you've got, you've got someone to talk to at any time. And something I didn't put in the story though. And this goes back to the old regime. If they talk to somebody,

they have an internal communication system. And this is something that other teams that don't have, this is what separates some, some of the has and have nots. They have an internal communication system where they're like, I just talked to Brandon belt. We talked about not getting too rotational. And we did this drill with the net. And we're hoping the outcome is more line drives up the middle. Bing, bang, boom. It's like cues, drills, conversation, who the coach was,

who the player was. You just fill it in. And that sounds like maybe a tps report you know it's really annoying that you have to do that but really i think you can do it in like five minutes and what's amazing about that is you press it you press enter and everybody in the organization knows that you just did that anybody who logs onto brandon belt's page says oh you know what it's not now is not the time for me to go talk to Brandon Belt. I know who Brandon Belt is. He's not a guy who wants to get overcoached. And we just talked to him today. So I'm going to stay away from him for a little bit and let him work on whatever he's working on.

And you can also then go later and like, every time we told the player this cue or we use this drill, we got these kind of results afterwards. So it's like an analytics dream to get that kind of data. And, and so it's a combination of them. They were actually pretty far out in front of this because of Silicon Valley, you know, even Sabian and, and, and Bobby Evans being more of a sort of scouting forward group, they had this in place where they were communicating all the time with all their scouts and all their coaches in this very centralized information system. Yeah.

I mean, if we're talking first half storylines, guys, we have to mention Jacob deGrom, though. And the fact that the Mets are in first place. To me, that's another big storyline. You hit on some of the ones that I definitely would have mentioned, Derek. I think the White Sox are an important first half storyline. With the injuries, too. It's crazy that they're this good and they've had so many injuries. I definitely would have mentioned, Derek, I think the White Sox are an important first half storyline. With the injuries, too. It's crazy that they're this good and they've had so many injuries.

I feel like maybe we underestimate how good they might be in the postseason. Maybe they're a World Series contender, like a championship contender, because they've been sort of humming along. And then they are going to get some of these guys back. Eloy is going to be back in a few weeks, I think. Yeah. So there's, I mean, you know, you look at some of like Jason Starks. I always love Jason Starks mid-season column where he goes through and I didn't, I guess I kind of forgot that Rodan was, he was released or waived last year or non-tendered. That's what it was. And it's remarkable to be where he is,

which is leading the White Sox. And some of the reasons that they've been able to keep afloat. So I think the White Sox are always going to be a storyline. Just because of Tony La Russa. And like you mentioned, the injuries, you know, they're a very good team. We talked about the Giants like getting off to that fast start. And it looks like it's not just a fast start, right? They're going to continue to hold this over. On the flip side, look what happened

to Cleveland. Look what happened to Chicago. I mean, you look at some of these teams that were playing, we can all probably say way above their skis. They flatlined here. The Giants haven't had this like two week losing 13 to 14 kind of stretch. And I just don't think they're going to at this point in time. They may have a bad series, a bad week. I just don't think they're going to at this point in time they may have a bad series a bad week i just don't think they're set up for that kind of i think the imposters have already been revealed here by this like mid-july you know early july kind of point there was a finding from our 60 game season we were looking at um uh how much information you get about a team by season length, basically. And one of the things that we found was that like sort of 60 to 80 games really does separate teams and that there's not that actually that much more information we gain that like this is we have a good sense of who's

who's good. Now, of course, injuries can still happen. You know, other things can still happen to change. And we're not saying I'm not not saying that like these, uh, standings are set in stone, but, um, you know, like you said, like we had, we've had had flashes in the pan, uh, like the Cubs and they've fallen back already, uh, because we've given them a fair, a fair sample. I mean, we're getting up on 90 games here. Um, so, you know, I, I think that the athletics kind of, you know, having 50 wins already is kind of a cool story because, you know, they get counted out every year. And they have one all-star, even though they have Chris Bassett and Sean Mania, two guys that I think a lot of baseball and myself included, like I always sort of doubted Minaya,

but those guys being the two aces for the team when we always thought it might be Lizardo and Puck is kind of interesting too. Yeah, well, they're the Tampa Bay, aren't they? They're like Tampa Bay. Tampa Bay's good. No one really cares that much, right? It's the same kind of thing.

It's like, cool, they're good on no money. people don't realize how incredible and amazing that is you know and these teams have fun and personality and uh you know i think on the flip side we can't mention first half storylines maybe this isn't a favorite but don't act like some people listening to this podcast are not watching the yankees fault this dumpster fire going on and excited. I know some of you out there are like, you know what, I don't feel bad. Well, it's a storyline, so it doesn't have to be positive, right?

So on the negative side, I think the Yankees and Braves are disappointing a lot of people. And it's interesting because they are close enough to 500 where they could get it going. And the Yankees have more favorable underlying stats than the braves the yankees are third in barrel rate uh have the best bullpen by war like you know as much as people are chicken and idling that situation um i think a couple things could go right with them like tyon is is kind of back on his horse if if something like

that happens if kluver comes back and pitches it all, I could see the Yankees kind of sneaking in on a wild card and surprising people. And they would go back and be like, oh, Cashman's angry speech turned it all around or whatever. But the Braves, on the other hand, I don't know. I don't see the same like, oh, look at this. They're unlucky here and unlucky here. They're just not quite as good as we thought in a lot of different ways and then suffered some injuries that were key too as well. I think the key in the AL West is just that Boston continues to play at a level above

what anyone would have expected, right? I said they were good enough to finish third in the division and I was called jabroni. Clearly, they are at least good enough to finish third in the division. But are they really this good? They're 20 games over 500 right now. The Rays, we expected to be good. We thought this was going to be Rays versus Yankees for the division. And then maybe the Jays or the Red Sox would push for a wild card.

That's what we expected coming into the season. And things haven't fallen into place like that. The AL East is really tough in large part because the Red Sox are exceeding expectations. Yeah, I mean, okay, we have to say they're a surprise. I don't know. This is something I don't, because I've lived in Boston. I went to school in Boston, and my dad's been a Giants fan since the 80s, so I've been going to Giants games since the 80s. I don't get the sense of like, do people hate the Red Sox as much as they hate the Yankees? No, they do not.

Do people hate the Giants as much as they... Like you mentioned that. Do you really hate the Giants like that? The only people who really hate Giants fans are Dodgers fans. That's it. Because outside of the West Coast, we don't care about the giants like they they're they're pretty much irrelevant from just like a day-to-day fan perspective the so maybe they're actually sort of similar giants and red sox are like these they're good teams with big budgets uh that have some hate in in

small rivalries but outside of those regions, people are like, you know, okay, the Red Sox are good. That's fun. Yeah. If you're caught in the middle, if you're not a Cardinals fan,

you hate the Cardinals. Like that's, that's the rule in the middle of the country. Right. I mean, I don't really know if, if the AL central fans have strong rivalries, it feels like that division has maybe the weakest rivalries of all the

divisions in baseball. Like do you think there's a lot of animosity between Tigers and White Sox fans or Twins fans and anybody? Twins fans are generally so polite. Why is that? That's just... It's the Midwest. They're nice.

I don't know why. Everyone's nice. No, maybe there hasn't been a dominant team. Part of that, yeah. They haven't had one team run the division for 40 years. That hasn't really been the case. And no real big budget team sort of outspending the rest. Although White Sox could have the ability to, maybe.

Yeah, they feel like they're on a pretty level playing field across that division more often than not. I can see a run of dominance making you the evil empire, right? The Yankees winning all those World Series and spending all that money puts them on the radar for everybody in America in a different way than Cleveland winning a few AL pennants. They got one, right? They got one World Series. Did they get one? No.

Cleveland lost to Atlanta in seven when we were kids. Yeah, I was talking about that Atlanta time. They didn't get one back then? No, because then they lost to the Cubs recently. It's been a while. Yeah, they lost to the Cubs. I knew that. But I'm saying I thought they got one in the 90s.

Pretty sure they lost that series to the Braves and didn't get one otherwise. They've got a long losing streak in Cleveland. When was the last time the Indians won a World Series? Like 1953, something like that. 1944, that's the war. 48. 48, yeah.

It's been a while. They must have the longest drought then. Yeah, it's because they're good during the regular season too that I think I think people are like, oh, it's not long-suffering. But they kind of are long-suffering. One last thought, kind of tying these teams together that are among our favorite first-half storylines. Oh, here it is. Astros.

Longest World Series droughts active in all time. Indians. Wow. 72 years. Yeah, that's the longest active. Rangers, second, with 60. And Wow. Rangers, second with 60. And the Padres are third with 52. All right, baby.

I never had one. All the reasons in the world to watch us on YouTube today with the swag chain that Eno is sporting. Be sure to hit the like button if you're watching us over there as well. The Astros, my Astros,ros your astros our astros plus 275 to win the al uh so they're still the favorites but it's close the white socks are down to plus 325 then you get the red socks at plus 500 raise it plus 600 a's at plus 750 and yankees at plus 800. Rays at plus 600 is where the odds coming together with the likelihood make me interested, I think.

Yep, I'm with you there. Wanda Franco has held his own, and if he can turn that into a dominant streak, then I think that changes a lot. And he's probably still going to get better before the season's over, too. That's been the thing I've thought all along, is that he could make those adjustments faster than most players, given what he's accomplished to this point in his career.

All right, let's get to a few questions here before we go. This one comes from Tom. Tom wants to know, I've heard many times that a pitcher should not go more than about 20% over the previous year's inningsnings with 2020 only being 60 games. This year, we're already at that level. Is there cause for concern for even more pitching injuries as we move through the second half of the season? And have you guys heard anything about teams changing up their workload plans in the second half?

Because a lot of teams talked about doing things kind of on the fly figuring out as they go have you heard any rumblings of teams backing off guys or changing things up from their previous very loose plans i haven't you know i don't know if you have i think going into this season i spoke to a lot of people that were like we have not seen the end of the injuries and certainly we've seen and they've seen injuries continue to go up. I think the bigger issue here now is, you know, you saw Clayton Kershaw with the forearm. What is going to happen with these? You're going to see maybe a lot of forearm and elbow or hand issues

because of the lack of sticky stuff. So I think the 60-game season certainly is going to play a little bit of a part here. But a lot of guys adapted their offseason routines. If they needed to throw more, they threw more. I think what you might see here is what's happening in terms of the sticky stuff. That's what I think. I don't know about you. I haven't heard too much about teams saying,

well, because of COVID, we've got to shut down these guys. Maybe in the minor leagues, but not really at the big league level. Yeah, I do. I talked to, I'm going to write this up soon, but I talked to a major league pitcher who said my arm effing hurts since they stopped using the sticky stuff, uh, my arm, my elbow really hurt. So, um, I think that's going to, uh, start to come down through the pipe. So that though, I guess you could look at the RPM losers. Uh, you can do the work on Savant, um, and, and kind of maybe guess, but, um, I think that'll be really tough to get out in front of. I just, I think that, I think that'll be really tough to get out in front of.

I think that that'll be just shots in the dark, and I wouldn't necessarily trade away Corbin Burns or somebody just because they dropped 200 RPM. I just think that that might be overthinking it. Some of the guys that we've seen lose RPM are pitching just fine and haven't seen almost any drop-off in their results. Others have had some result drop offs, you know, most notably maybe one in New York,

but, but who knows? Like he, he might just have hit a matchup problem. You know, you might just, you think he might've had a bad stretch of three games randomly, you know,

like even the best pitchers have three bad games. So it's like, you know, you can ascribe too much to being like, oh, these RPM are down. Therefore, he's never, you know, never going to be a good pitcher again. So I don't know that I would react too heavily to this. One thing I would say is also just just in terms of innings management, when you look at the innings leaders, so those are the ones that you might be most worried about in terms of being shut down, there's almost not a single, like there's one name that comes off the page for me as a young pitcher that hasn't maybe reached these heights in innings before, is on a team that might have

enough pitching depth to deal with it and may slow him down and that is Julio Urias on the Dodgers 10th in baseball at 106 innings I guess Trevor Rogers at 32nd on the second page is a possibility maybe Tyler Molle. But in general part, I think they've already been effing with the innings. You know what I'm saying? Like, they didn't let their youngest guys get to 90 innings already. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, I think some of those guys were over-managed in the first half in some ways. A couple of them had injuries. Like, Michael Kopech was going to be carefully managed. Some of them started in the ballgame. Yeah, some of them have been in between. Yeah, Patino got hurt, had a finger injury for a little while. That cut his innings.

Sandy Alcantara is second in the league in innings behind Zach Wheeler right now. I think I'd probably add him to your list along with Urias. Younger guys that you just look at and say, well, tracking towards 200 innings, that might be a little too much. I think the key difference for me, too, with Urias versus Alcantara, one of those guys pitches for a team that will likely go to the playoffs. The other one pitches for one that will not go to the playoffs. So the Marlins have a lot more flexibility to just say,

okay, you're good. You got to 175, 180, wherever their number is. We feel good about this workload. Let's shut you down now. Have you ready to go? You'll be fresh and good for 2022. So I would say I'm a little more concerned about Sandy Alcantara than most. Yeah, I guess Alcantara and Rodgers then maybe are near the top. Urias, you know, the Dodgers may just have like a three or some three or four inning starts where they just try to keep him low that way. Because I do think they might need him.

I mean, that division starting to look like a dog fight, you know, and like, they don't necessarily have the depth anymore. I mean, like past Gonsolin, I don't know what you're really looking at.

Unless it's calling up Josiah Gray. They need a starter at the deadline. I think they need a starter. You don't know what's going to happen with Kershaw. And again, I think this is going to be a, how do you parse out what's a COVID related shutdown versus what's a regular shutdown versus a guy's sore because of sticky stuff or maybe he didn't sore otherwise. Like you're almost, I mean, you will kind of drive yourself insane, right? Like chasing your tail in circles. It all kind of factors in there's no one there's no like control group that didn't go through covid that's yeah that's perfect and then on top of

that we like just an extrapolation what you're saying is we also don't know like certain teams are better at getting keeping their like coaching their pitchers through covid like that was one thing i was talking to cal bie and he was really proud of how his Reds have been doing guys like Gutierrez and Santillana. Those guys are coming up. They've they're coming up with 90 plus pitches. They can, they can pitch to five through five innings. Whereas other teams don't necessarily have that with their young guys when they come up.

And he was talking about all the tech and stuff that they did to stay in touch with their pitchers during COVID and stay on top of that. There are other organizations that were just like, hey, see you when I see you. We'll let you know when we have spring training 2.0. And some of those, like the Cardinals, are having massive injuries up and down their pitching staffs and are struggling right now with pitching staffs and are struggling right now with pitching devs. I did single out two,

one in either direction, but I don't think even if I used all my sourcing that I could really give you a ranking of how well they coached their pitching staffs over COVID. I don't even think I could tell you. And I wouldn't necessarily go pick up Vlad Gutierrez

because the Reds did a better job. So there's not really, I think it's one of these things where it's like, it's really hard to find something actionable here. It's just, it's like a, oh man, we're all screwed sort of situation. It really is. I think outside of those handful of younger guys,

especially the two in Miami, where you can just really kind of figure out the plan if they want to cut things short, everybody else is just still trying to figure it out. They're working in the dark with a flashlight just trying to figure out where the next innings are going to come from because they don't really know. They haven't gone through any of the changes like this.

We had an email come in from Ryan trying to help us out here. He writes, you guys talked about it today and it got me wondering. I know there are foods that do certain things to your body. For example, eating too many carrots makes your poo orange. Do you think there is a chemical or some food that you'll sweat out that when combined with rosin makes it stickier than normal sweat and rosin? What if you have a certain type of electrolyte that when you drink it, it gets sweated out? It makes your RPMs go up. You guys know anything.

Let me know. We could split the profit selling it to players. Ryan. I love it. Well, I think that maybe the answer would be like more salt, sweating out more salt. But then I think that you might get dehydrated doing it. But it is interesting to turn your body into a spider tack machine. Yeah. I mean, I know you can, if you eat too much garlic, you just smell like garlic. It kind of

comes out of your pores. I don't think that, I don't know if stickiness, tackiness is something you can change about your sweat, but it's one of the more creative solutions to the creating a sticky substance problem that I've seen. One thing I love about this though is absolutely the way pitchers think. This will not be the first or last time that this thought has been had, as great as it is, because I was talking to a pitcher about developing a new ball. Britt and Lindsey and I have a story up on The Athletic about developing a new ball uh brit and lindsey and i have a story uh up on the athletic about developing a new ball and uh he was talking about like the idea that they might

spray the balls with like a tacky substance uh and he's like okay spray the ball with a tacky substance i'm gonna rub all the tack off of one ball throw it away ask for a new ball now i've doubled up and i was like oh my god and he oh, you have a thing you spray on the balls that's tacky? I'm going to find out what that substance is and just spray that on my hands. Bam, double tack. And I was like, oh God, your depravity knows no bounds. So somewhere, you're telling me somewhere in this country or somewhere in the world, there is someone eating gallons of honey every single week. They're slathering honey on bagels, on pizza, on hot dogs, on everything they eat because this is the stickiest food I know about.

And trying to see if they can make that sweat stickier. I do think that eventually there is going to be some kind of pre-tag and there's almost no way to stop like what Eno said. These guys are going to find the line and push it and push it and push it and as long as it's not the level that it got to i think most players are going to be okay with it right like they're going to be okay knowing that some guys are using a little extra as long as we're not using tucking spider attack and getting this crazy yeah i think that i think that was this player's point too is like i don't think the problem is these smaller levels because i think it's almost impossible to stop pitchers from doing this sort of stuff. The problem was plus 500 RPM,

just blowing people out of the water with glue, basically. Yeah, exactly. God, I hope no one's putting glue on a bagel. Oh, Eno, tell everybody who may want to come to our little all-star shindig on Sunday. That's right. On Sunday in Denver, we are playing wiffle ball at Tivoli Brewing with beers and at least one food truck, which now I really hope the one that shows up at least. But Tivoli Brewing from four to 7, Wiffle Ball. Wiffle Ball and beer. And it should be fun.

Outdoors. Hopefully cool down a little bit by then. Denver looks pretty hot. But I'm excited to do it. Oh, there will be, I found out, a portable PA system. So if you don't want to do the playing, maybe you can take over the DJing or the announcing. I might want

to take an inning with my all-time announcer voice. Here comes Brittorolli to the plate. Amazing. Derek, I think we should FaceTime you for at least part of this. Please record this. She's a double to center field and she's off to the races.

I may... Imagine living in a world where everyone talked like that. I love it. Did they or was it just like the technology

that sent them through like that? I mean, everybody, every voice you heard on the radio sounded like that. It's amazing.

Oh, God. Truly amazing. If you want to join in the festivities, I think there's still some room there. You get the links on Eno's Twitter account, at Eno Saris. You can find Britt at Britt underscore Giroli. I am at Derek Van Ryper.

If you don't have a subscription to The Athletic, you should get one. They are $3.99 a month to start at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. Going to have a lot of great stuff coming out in the next couple of weeks. More questions to be answered. Feel free to send us questions, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com. Happy to answer as many of those as we can as we get ready for the second half of the season.

That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening.