Rates & Barrels - It's a Houston-Atlanta World Series?!

Episode Date: October 25, 2021

Eno, Britt & DVR discuss a Houston-Atlanta World Series on the heels of LCS clinching wins over the weekend, and say goodbye to the 2021 Dodgers and Red Sox.  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. Derek Van Ryper, Richard Oli, King of Waffles, Eno Saris here with you on this Monday. You're going to keep that nickname, I think, Eno, because Sam already wants to know, how are the Waffles this morning? Be sure to get both sides of this World Series matchup. Yeah, anxiously awaiting your prediction of both teams finding a way to win this one. On this episode, we will dig into the conclusion of each LCS series. Yeah, how did we get here? In case you may have forgot what happened over the weekend,

or maybe you were just busy doing other things, we'll try and paint a picture, and then we'll talk about what might be next for Boston and for the Dodgers, for that matter, since we've got really every day this week to talk about the series in great detail. We'll save some of the Game 1 series preview stuff for tomorrow's episode. So I figured today we should begin on the NLCS side. Things are a bit more fresh in everybody's mind from that series. But Atlanta did it. They found a way.

The Dodgers had to go to Walker Bueller on short rest. And the question that we've been starting to ask more and more as teams are bringing guys back in situations like this and using guys in their throw day is what are the lingering effects? What happens to guys coming back like that? I didn't see any velo issues with Walker Bueller, but I did see a big drop in spin rates on all of his pitches. So I'm curious to know, Eno, was that something that you thought

made him a little bit less effective in that game six start for the Dodgers? Yeah, it's something that happened in the second half for him. So some of those spin rate drops are a little bit deceiving because they're off of his seasonal average. So he's been pitching that way for a few months.

But either it's the enforcement or fatigue or both, I would guess that having the most innings of his career coming off of the short season and then being used in short rest, that his fatigue was probably off the charts. Yeah. They talked about this a lot on the broadcast, how not necessarily velocity is what goes on short

rest but the location the stuff so the finer things so i think we all look and say well he's not tired he's still throwing hard and that's not doesn't mean he's not tired right and we've talked about this in previous episodes it just seemed like the dodgers in particular just looked exhausted i think a lot of these pictures are exhausted but the dodgers you wonder how much did it take out of them getting past the giants yeah yeah they they emptied some of the coffers just trying to to win the division um is that that much is that seems clear i mean like you know you could have done a lot of resting of Urias and Buehler in September. The average 107-win team probably has rested their players

in the last couple weeks of the season. Yeah, really has. The other side of this game, of course, Ian Anderson, I thought, pitched well, and they were quick to go to the bullpen. He only went four, just gave up the one run, scattered the three hits, struck out four, got out of one pretty bad jam where the Dodgers could have done a lot of damage, but they went to Minter for two innings, Tyler Matzik for two with four Ks. He got into a jam and worked out of it as well.

I think he had a runner on, nobody out, struck out the side. I mean, Tyler Matzik is a fantastic story. He's a guy that had a horrible case of the yips, went years without pitching in the big leagues, and now is one of the key A relievers that this Atlanta team uses to get the ball to Will Smith at the end of games. So I think maybe one thing we underestimated, or at least one thing I underestimated coming into the postseason, Britt, was just the quality of the A relievers. I thought they were okay or good and not great, but they've actually pitched really well to this point in the postseason, Britt, was just the quality of the A relievers. I thought they were okay or good and not great, but they've actually pitched really well to this point in the postseason. Yeah, I think we all underestimated them. And then even after the first round, we were all like, well, how much is

it that the Brewers can't hit, right? Like nobody really kind of wanted to give him that credit. And Matzik is a great story. He got out of a huge jam by Luke Jackson. That really, in my opinion, was the game probably. I want to give Brian Snicker a lot of credit because if that move to pull Ian Anderson doesn't work out, we're on this show screaming about it, talking about how he shouldn't have done that. That was a really risky move. There were two outs. There was a runner on first.

It wasn't like there were the bases loaded. And it paid off. And I think a lot of the reason it paid off is because they had so much trust in those lefties and they had set it up so well to have those three lefties kind of rank and file against the Dodgers. And make no mistake, I don't think Tyler Matzik thought that Tyler Matzik had those six outs in him. You know,

there was some thought to maybe having him start that third inning and then bringing in Will Smith. That's how dominant he was. I think he needed six pitches for one of those innings. To me, it was really cool to see. It's also really cool. You know, we don't talk enough, and I know the cool trend in baseball is to hire all these young guys.

Brian Snicker's a baseball lifer. He's a great guy. In my opinion, he's one of the more underrated managers in the game. And you look at his staff and he's got a ton of old school baseball guys, uh, guys who are able to take the numbers, but also relate to players. Ron Washington,

Rick Granitz, the first pitching coach I ever covered, um, in 2008 in Baltimore has over a thousand wins as a pitching coach. He hit it earlier this season. And we just don't see that kind of longevity in sports. And I think you have to give credit to Snicker and the staff that he assembled to be able to weather some of the things that they did this season.

I mean, this was a 500 team in August. Yeah, I will continue to praise the Atlanta front office and even just the ownership group for being willing to push chips in and to increase payroll in season after losing Acuna specifically, because a situation like that is one we often see where you're just not going to get that help. You're not going to get anything at the deadline. It's going to be more of a, well, if you get there, great, but expectations are lowered. We're going to save some money and credit to them for actually pushing through and going out

and getting a bunch of guys who've been non-tendered in the last year, including Eddie Rosario, who is having a fantastic postseason, got the NLCS MVP honors and hit the decisive home run off of Walker Bueller in game six. Might've been the MVP even without that home run if someone else had come through with that. But I think this is kind of a nice counterpoint to something that's been frustrating to all of us. With bullpenning and with starters going shorter into games, I think we've said this is not a great future direction for baseball. But it's nice to see players who were cast off because of salary coming through on the big stage. I feel like there's a little bit of redemption in that a little bit of a,

Hey, maybe you shouldn't pinch pennies quite so hard when you're making those roster decisions, because you have guys that can make an impact. If you're willing to just pony up the few extra million dollars from Kyle Schwarber too, right? We saw that on the AL side,

but this Atlanta outfield is loaded with guys that the previous team simply didn't want to pay. Yeah. It's interesting with Eddie Rosario. He comes over and immediately starts playing a lot better than he had. And it actually brings to mind like maybe some of the shortcomings of our park adjustments because, you know, he was in Cleveland cleveland actually is not terrible of it's not that terrible of a place to to hit when it's warm uh but it's super cold in the beginning of the season um and so he was there in the beginning of the season and so maybe his bat was maybe just the

balls in play were slowed by the fact that it was cold now he comes to atlanta which is is thought of as much more of a hitter's park even even with the correction, he goes out. So maybe it's just noise, but also I see when that Homer, he hits it to the shortest part of the park, right? I looked at the Chris Taylor double and the Eddie Rosario Homer, the Chris Taylor double went 30 feet further. They were hit at the same launch angle and chris taylor's ball was hit like five miles per hour harder so chris taylor hit that ball better and he got a double for it eddie rosario hit it smarter i mean like yanked it down the line where it's 325 versus where it's 385 where where taylor hit his so yeah, so,

you know, Santiago, Rosario comes over when the weather gets good in Atlanta, when the ball starts flying and he puts the ball in play, you know, so that's, that's a big part of the mystery there as to like why he's so much better now. And he was released by the twins at some point.

Yeah. And I would say, I thought things would work out a lot better for Eddie Rosario in Cleveland. I thought he'd be a good pickup for them. I thought he'd help solve some of the corner outfield issues they were having. So for him to be available midseason and not require much in a trade, that was a surprise to me.

Why he was non-tendered in the first place, I would say that comes down to how a team like Minnesota allocates resources. It was having Alex Kirilov coming up and being big league ready, having some redundancy on the roster, not having flexibility with the DH spot, a few things like that that kind of let them off the hook,

but at the same time, you can justify keeping him. He's also like Duval, though, where he's not that good a player overall. He does certain things really well, but he's not a really good defender. In fact, he's a pretty poor defender. And then he's not a good base runner. We've seen

it in these playoffs. He's had a couple toot plans of his own. So there's ways that he chips away at his value at the plate with his play in the field. Wasn't Kyle Schwarber not tender too? schwarber and david doll who i i definitely screamed about and said that was a bad decision so i'm glad mitch

called that out i'll take another l for that one so like you're in my opinion there's just such an emphasis on value in baseball about the second a guy isn't worth what they think he's making that's the shift now versus 10 years ago even efficiency yeah yes everything is is down to that you know as you said efficiency and value and trying to get some below market deal and that's where you get these guys who get non-tendered and you know i think that's going to continue to become a trend that impact guys and non-tender uh you know if you're a gm you're sifting through that and you're looking at who was discarded and why and whether it makes sense for your club. And we've seen some really good

examples already this year. First base, corner outfield, fourth and fifth starting pitcher really seemed to be the place where you get a guy on one year and eight million, one year and 10 million, one year and six million. And if you hit the lottery just right, you get an Eddie Rosario situation or a Kyle Schwarber situation. Yeah, there's definitely opportunity every year in that group of non-tenders. There are some players that got non-tendered for a reason that won't come through for you, Dahl, kind of being among them from the 2020 class. But here's a question from James.

Anything to Dusty and Snicker making the World Series have an impact on the managers being hired this offseason? We just learned on Sunday, according to The Athletic's Katie Wu, Oliver Marmol was hired as the replacement for Mike Schilt in St. Louis. I would say in that case, no, just because Oliver Marmol wasn't on my radar at all as someone who was going to get a managerial job. That was more of a, oh, who?

Schilt was the same way, right? I mean, these are organizational guys. But isn't Snitker kind of the same way? Wasn't Snitker basically in the Braves organization forever? He played as a minor leaguer, and he started managing in 1982. Yes, Snitker is a different scenario. It wasn't a 35-year-old they promoted because they felt like they could tell him what to do,

which is exactly what the scenario is. Sorry for saying the quiet part out loud. I'm sure he's a nice guy. But this is exactly what it is, especially when you look at why Schilt left, right? Because of the friction between him and GM Maziliak. So you knew Maziliuk wasn't going to be like, hmm, we should hire somebody with a lot of experience who's going to really

challenge me. That was never going to be the case in St. Louis. Now, that could be the case in San Diego. You could argue that they need that in San Diego. You could argue that maybe they need that in New York with the Mets. But given what happened in St. Louis, it was always going to be the path of least resistance. And I do hope it shifts back. I think it's a great question. And why I wanted to point out some of the guys that are also on Snickers staff, because it's a copycat league. And you look at the teams that have won as of late, and people wonder, are people going to copy the Nationals? Are people going to copy what the the dodgers did albeit in the 60 game season um no i don't think ron washington gets another manager job he's got some background stuff that kind of causes people to raise some eyebrows

somebody uh clayton just raised that question i think he's a great coach i think he's very well liked well respected in atlanta terrific infield coach um i do not think you're going to see Ron Washington manage again yeah yeah but it does I think it does sort of uh point out like different ideas of hiring I mean Dusty Baker is uh maybe the kind of hire that San Diego is looking for right like should be but but you know they're not who knows who knows what they go into yeah but like you know that's that could be what what people want for them but like you know that's that could be what what people want for them is like a steady hand who's been there before uh does listen to the front office but also will you know kind of manage his own way and then i think the ollie

marmal is a little bit more a little bit more like i know snickers older but like it's a little bit more like the organizational hire a guy from within you know from within that knows your way of winning. You're right. The difference is the age. There's a big difference between hiring a 35-year-old and hiring someone who's been in there forever. But Schilt was in there forever and he was an organizational hire. And that actually seems very similar to Snicker to me. Well, I think it comes down to balance, right? So if you have a first-time manager or a younger manager, you're probably going to want some more experienced bench coaches

and base coaches and positional coaches, right? That makes a lot more sense, too, to get that sort of balance. I think that's a good point that Mitch brought up in the live stream. Anything else from – I think Guerin in L.A. was a big hire. Because Guerin was – I think it I think Guerin in LA was a big hire. Because Guerin was... I think it's Bob Guerin. I think he was a manager for a while.

Yeah, for the A's, yeah. For the A's. And to get that... And for the A's, it's kind of an important organization to get someone from for the Dodgers. Because you get Dave Roberts, first-time manager, and you put Bob Guerin,

former manager with an analytics forward team as his bench coach. I think that was a big hire. Yeah, I agree. I think the bench coach like Joe Espada in Houston has been named as a future manager forever. And he's Dusty's go-to guy, right?

He does a lot of the day-to-day stuff. And I think you have to have that balance regardless of fans zero in on who the manager is but it always it isn't always just the manager what's fascinating to me i don't know if you guys saw this you know but the padres hired are hiring a pitching coach without a manager which is kind of like repeating past mistakes because the issue with jace tingler was he didn't get to hire his staff he didn't get to hire anyone on his staff. So, I mean, I think it's okay to give them a short list. You know, Davey Martinez, until he won the World Series, didn't get to pick his entire staff.

It's okay to put a few coaches on a short list and say, Was Davey Martinez interim at some point? No. He never came on as interim manager? He was hired as a full-time? Okay, okay. He was hired as a full-time manager, and they did give him Chappelle at first, so they had an experienced bench coach.

However, I think there's a danger in picking a staff for the manager because then it becomes like what we saw where that's a preller guy, right? So the manager trusts him, but he also knows that it might be a front office spot. And so the dynamics of it are very interesting to me, and I almost wonder what have San Diego learned if they're going to do this

again? I know. I know. The only thing that balances it for me is if I could hire a pitching coach right now, it would be Ruben. So it's like, but couldn't you wait?

Couldn't you just tell Ruben? Hey, we're going to hire you. Probably. Can you hang on? It is a bad time for an, for a rumor like this. Yeah,

I think so. Right. It is a bad time for a rumor like this. Yeah, I think so. Right? It is a bad time for a rumor like this. Ideally, you'd want to be talking to Ruben Niebla and let him know you're interested, but not have the rumor out there because you want to hire that manager first and then pretend like the manager hired Ruben Niebla.

Right? I mean, that's what the Padres wanted. Did you have any more thoughts on the NLCS before we move on to the AL side? Well, I just had this number down. 35Ks in 25 innings with two earned runs. Matzek, Minter, and Smith. So, I, you know, and, and I,

this is relevant because I, you know, I just wrote a little blurb, you know, and we don't have to get into the world series, but I was like, you know, I said something like neither team's bullpen is a strength. And now I'm kind of like,

God, well, that's pretty sexy. I mean, that's like mentor and Smith are really killing it. You know, I think that Smith is probably a little bit over his skis. Matzek still doesn't have great command. I mean, that was the reason he left baseball.

He still doesn't have amazing command now. And they are all three are lefties, but it hasn't seemed to matter. Not yet anyway, yeah. Yeah, So anyway, I, I, that's, that's something I wrote down.

And then I had that, that Rosario Taylor batted ball comparison. And I just, I was, that's the, that's a kind of piece of luck that people don't think of is kind of spray angle, like which part of the park the ball goes to.

If you, if you rewatch both of those batted balls off the bat, the Taylor double looks more like a home run. Rosario looks like he just hits the ball into the corner, which, I mean, he does. He homers into the corner. But he knew, though. Like, the way he reacted to it, he knew he got a nothing. Because it's 325 to the corner there.

Yeah. That was the thing that surprised me. I'm like, oh, this doesn't look like he, you know, off the bat, like, that doesn't look like it's doing as much damage. And, oh, no, here it is. It's a home run. off the bat, that doesn't look like it's doing as much damage. Oh, no, here it is. It's a home run. Let's move on to the ALCS because that was exciting as well. I think Luis Garcia coming out

and throwing a gem, I feel a sense of pride in some ways because I am a fan of Luis Garcia in part because of Eno's work. It feels like a small victory for the pod to see him come out. But he's part of the late series turnaround

with the starting pitching. I think the question we were starting to ask mid-series in the ALCS was, how are the Astros going to make it pitching-wise through the rest of this series? Valdez and Garcia came back and said, no, we're good. We got this.

And Garcia was pitching extremely well in that game. And I think because they had the off day, because they had everybody they wanted in the relief core healthy, they decided to go to the pen maybe a little earlier than they would have had to if there wasn't an off day there, right? If they had some more fatigue in that pen, Garcia may have pitched a little deeper in that game, but he's shown some warning signs that third time through the lineup. So I think they were right to pull him when they did. But how much does this change the way you feel about Houston going into the World Series, seeing these last two performances

from Valdez and Garcia? Changes a lot. I think, and again, I don't think we give enough credit to Brent Strom. The Astros pitching coach, in my opinion, it's probably the best coach in the big leagues. Right. Another guy who's been in baseball forever, a guy who really took this young staff and made significant adjustments. I think Garcia said he moved on the mound a little bit.

Valdez had a similar adjustment and they were both able to completely turn it around. And, you know, I was in Boston for the valdez game not for garcia but you could kind of see the difference in confidence in these guys just talking after the game they believed that they could um go deep valdez said after he came out of that game in game one he's like i was humiliated it was embarrassing i had to figure out a way to

go deeper um and i think when you have Lance McCullers, who's your most veteran guy, not able to pitch, and he's not able to pitch in the World Series, it looks like when you have that, you have to have somebody take control. And I think Strong kind of got them together and was like, we can do this. We just need to change our approach. And it was fascinating to see.

Did you guys see the broadcast put up all kinds of graphics about what the Red Sox were able to do through the first three games, maybe four games? And then what they were able to do after they were totally shut down. Alex Corey even said that they made adjustments and the Red Sox could not adjust that quick enough. They looked like a completely different lineup those last couple of games. And it really it really changed the whole tenor of that series yeah you know i think they're very well coached at strom is is just so um amazing to me because

he's been in the game so for so long and pitching coaching has changed uh so much pitching has changed the data the tech and he's stayed up with it and he's and he's been as inquisitive anyone i think the one of the biggest toughest skills to spot and i think this matters for players it's part of the quote-unquote makeup but it matters so much for coaches is that like lifelong commitment to learning um and the the more that someone um you know the more that someone stops asking questions the more you should try to get them off your staff i I think that Strom just keeps asking questions, keeps learning. And with Garcia, I watched a bunch of tape to try and figure out the difference.

Yes, he was closer to first base on the rubber, which probably gave him some better sight lines on the slider. Two lefties probably let him sort of bury it it, you know, bury it in their back foot and make it look more appealing until that moment. But, you know, the big thing is the velo, right? Like, you know, there were some people online, you know, basically saying steroids or whatever. And I think that's ridiculous. But also, you know, also amazing. This was the hardest he ever threw the ball in a start. And it was like 97.

And the closest, there were some other starts. Like he can throw hard in short stints. But the last time he threw 60 pitches, the closest one when he threw 60 pitches was 94.6. So he threw a tick and a half faster than he'd ever thrown in his life. And there's this phenomenon in the postseason. We used to have a bigger adrenaline bump, a bigger postseason velo bump. So, you know, something like 10 years ago. God, I can't believe I've been doing this shit for so long.

I mean, excuse me. Beep. Yeah, that'll fix it. excuse me, beep. Um, but, uh,

like 10 years ago, the velocity bump in the post season was over a mile an hour. So everybody got to the post season was like, we it's time, you know, like I'm going to throw harder five years ago. It was, uh, and this is a weighted average,

uh, five years ago, it was a half mile an hour, two years ago, it was a quarter mile an hour. So what's happening is baseball during the regular seasons become more like october where for pitchers are just throwing closer to their maximum all the time and so they have nothing left to add in the postseason anymore

they're like no i've been throwing as hard as i can all season yeah there's nothing left to add so uh in that context garcia's extra mile and a half is even more amazing because we don't see this anymore. We don't see guys being like a whole tick and a half above their seasonal average in the postseason because they've been throwing hard all season. But I was looking at the video, and for me, it just seems like he brings his arm through faster. When you look at where he is, his body is, when his foot lands,

just in his last start, he's a little bit further back. This time his arm was further through. And I think Liam Hendricks said when he started throwing harder, the thing I just did was bring my arm through as fast as I could. So sometimes it's a little thing like that, that, that can do it, but it like,

it is amazing. I just wouldn't just jump. The steroids is like the lamest thing to jump to. This is, but it is, it was amazing. It was crazy to see him out there. It's averaging 97 for a start.

Yeah. 18 swings and misses from Luis Garcia in game six, just a great start from him. Ivaldi, I thought, pitched pretty well given the circumstances. Just wasn't enough against a Houston offense that did some more damage late in this game. There were a couple of close breaks that went against Boston. Quique Hernandez narrowly missed a great catch in the first inning that allowed Houston to get the first run. The strike him out, throw him out.

I mean, Martin Maldonado throwing out Alex Verdugo to end the seventh inning. That was the moment where if you were an Astros fan, you probably started to feel it. Because if you were just watching that game as a fan of baseball, you said, oh, I think Houston's going to win now. I think this is it. I think this just locked it in. An iconic moment probably in playoff history, really, just in terms of the quality of that play, because that was an absolute missile for Maldonado to end that inning.

Yeah. I mean, if Eddie Rosario is the story of the NL series, then I think you look at the Astros and Jordan Alvarez is the story of that series, right? I was thinking about his hits off a snail. Those opposite field hits off a snail were pretty amazing. Or just ridiculous. And I agree with you, Derek. The double play was really, really cool to watch. And I think once Kyle Tucker hits that ball,

and I remember in the first series, one of the early games, White Sox fans were like, who the F is Kyle Tucker? I think there was a sign, in fact, that said that. And it's because nobody really knows who he is um and now i think he's had this coming out party right and the astros are really scary if you think about kyle tucker alvarez these guys are not old they are the next wave and as much as people don't want houston to be good or you don't want to go back to the cheating stuff like they're just a they a deep team. They're set up well.

And I think the Braves are set up for the next few years as well, which to me makes it even more exciting. These aren't one-and-done teams that stumbled in. Yeah, we could have a re-rack of this, I guess. Especially with Acuna. Because the regular season was so different in terms of how many wins each team racked up. But I think losing Acuna is a big deal.

And I think that the Braves, you know, have the resources to add going forward and have people in-house that are on such cheap contracts in Albies and Acuna that, you know, they'll add Freeman. I bet you they'll add a pitcher, too. Yeah, it does make them dangerous again for the future too. But, of course, we get to see how this plays out over the course of the next, well, nine days or so. Anything else from that?

There's an interesting question here from Sam about the lefties and Braves. I don't know. We're jumping ahead too close too much. But, you know, without looking at the splits, I think if you throw high 90s and have a wicked breaking ball, you see this one here? It seems the Astros crush lefties. Yeah. There's a few questions about that.

I think you just throw them out there. There are some pens out there that were almost all right-handed. I can't, off the top of my mind, remember. The Astros don't have any lefties in their pen. That's it, where they have one. I think that splits sometimes, especially with the three

batter rule, you'd rather have a quality reliever than someone that really you can leverage the splits on, I think. Right. I mean, we'll get into this later in the week, I'm sure. But to me, Luke Jackson, that's where Luke Jackson becomes very important.

Like, you've got to get him right. He needs to be a weapon for you from the right side. And he just hasn't been. He struggled in that last series. Well, I mean, I think his slider is so much better than his fastball that he should maybe even consider going like the Matt Whistler route where he's just like 80% sliders. But then, you know, I've talked to him about this and he says once he starts getting to like 60, 70% sliders, he sees batters kind of like start to lean over the plate and do an inside out strategy and try to serve his sliders into the opposite field for hits. and try to serve his sliders into the opposite field for hits.

We went through an at-bat that he'd had against Adam Jones, where Adam Jones did exactly that. Question from Juan on the live stream. Will Minter, Matzik, and Smith slow down Jordan? I don't think so. I mean, for his career, Jordan Alvarez has a 153 WRC plus against lefties. That's just amazing for a left-handed hitter. I think all three

are some... Minters got pretty good command, but Matzek and Smith, there's enough bad command where even if they're throwing sliders and Jordan doesn't like it, he's going to spit on a lot of their pitches. He's going to take some walks against those guys, too. People keep saying, like, why do they keep pitching to your Don? I don't think they are trying. I think he's kind of, he's just got a

really big zone. Like he can he can do a lot with a lot of different pitches. There's just not one exposed part of the strike zone, at least not yet. And he has really good discipline, too. So like, yeah, so it's, you know, when someone has really good discipline, too. So when someone has really good discipline, you kind of have to pick somewhere in the zone or else you're just walking them. Right. Yeah, I think he's definitely more of that new school masher where you pitch him outside,

he's going to just take the ball the other way and go for a double the opposite way. That's just his approach. He can do that. He can hit balls all over the zone and even on the edges outside the strike zone, too. He just has that sort of ability. I think the interesting thing, I mentioned we talked a little bit about the teams that were eliminated,

because we're going to dig more into how could Atlanta win this series, or what's going to be the difference if Houston wins this series. We're going to get into all that starting on tomorrow's show. Some of the reaction to the Dodgers, and we talked about this a little bit at the end of last week. Oh, the band's breaking up. Yeah, they're going to lose some of this core. But the idea that the Dodgers aren't going to be here in some form next season seems far-fetched to me. I know the Giants took a big step forward.

San Diego's still trying. It's a three-team division, right? Arizona's not going to be a playoff team. That's not going to happen. Colorado's a joke. So you have a three-team division. You have a team that develops young talent well. You have a team that still spends money as much as anyone in the league spends money. So even if they lose some talent, most teams don't have a Gavin Lux who is just kind of an extra guy on their roster. roster. Gavin Lux plays a larger role next year. Yeah, maybe you have to go at it with Bobby Miller coming up and being your midseason call-up instead of having a Josiah Gray who was a little further along. Miller might be a lot better anyway, right? This is a team that still, I think despite the fact that they've made big trades, still well-balanced and still has a lot of young

talent that's going to come up and make an impact. Did you guys find that the stories about the Dodgers' demise were a little overrated coming out of the weekend? What do you think about this, Britt? I find most stories about the Dodgers completely overrated. Is that a shot at anyone in particular? No, it's just like, I don't know. Yeah, it's just like you've heard so much about them for God knows how many years.

Again, and I said it on this show, what annoyed me was that it was the Dodgers lose every I don't know. Yeah. It's just like, you've heard so much about them for like God knows how many years. And again, and I said it on this show, what annoyed me was that it was the Dodgers lose every night, not the Braves one. And it just took until the end of the series for people to be like, Oh, the Braves are actually playing well. And people kept talking about the Dodgers injuries.

Meanwhile, the Braves lost their best baseball. So I just kind of find a lot of find a lot of that fatiguing. And now it's like, oh, the end of the Dodgers because they have like six key free agents when they may resign some of these guys. You mentioned Gavin Lopes. Dustin May, I know he had Tommy John.

He may be a factor as early as next season. He could end up being a reliever for them, right? Late in the year coming off of Tommy John, depending how that goes. So they have a really good farm system even though they made some trades um and if you look at the trade uh where they got scherzer and trade turner not only does that pay dividends because they still have trade turner next year but a lot of people think the nationals got totally swindled and should have asked for more so they really in my opinion probably won that trade so the doctors

are going to be good. You're right. The whole goodbye to the era that was the Dodgers is just not happening. They're a good team. They're a savvy front office. They have a big payroll. Those teams aren't just going to go away. It is going to get harder for them. But I don't think we can sit here and say, well, San Diego is going to be back in it.

To me, they're more of a question mark than the Giants and the Dodgers right now. They've got a lot of upheaval. We're not sure long-term what's going to happen with Datis Jr.'s shoulder, right? We talked a little bit about that. And so I think that window is closing more than a window anywhere in San Francisco or LA. Yeah. I mean, when you look at the Giants, you're like, they have a window? The Giants are somehow doing it without having a young core that you would be like, this is their window. I think I have no idea how good the Giants will be next year. I think a lot of us are really like, what are the Giants going to do next year? Because they'll have some money to spend, and they might even get Seager away. They might buy one of the dodgers uh free agents but there is a commitment to spending in la that will will remain so i believe that at least one of those big free

agents will come back maybe even two and they might add from somebody else's free agents so um you know they're gonna the thing that they do is basically keep spending to to win regular season games get in the playoffs and then hope and then hope the young players build within that context of free agents that they spent around them right and provide you that depth and that that that thing that you need to win it all so they're just going to keep doing that where they're like yeah we can we can spend our way to a 90 win team every year and we'll spend our way to a 91 team and then when the kids are good it's 100 win team and we can we have a chance at winning it all so i think they'll just do that again until maybe lux takes a step forward or somebody else maybe will smith has more

in him you know like he could be uh we already talk about him as like one of the top two or three catchers in the league at least offensively he could take a step forward defensively and i think there might be even a little bit more there offensively so then you're talking about a team that is led by smith and lux and has uh some of these other older free agents still around oh and still uhookie Betts, who should age really well and probably have a better 2022 than 2021. Hopefully, man. He looked kind of injured this year. It wasn't a great year for him in terms of, you know,

I hope this isn't like the beginning of a bunch of injuries. Yeah. And they weren't all like, you know, oh, it wasn't like Trout where he's like out for six months. It was like nagging little injuries that sapped him of his power and speed a little bit. I know we're running very short on time, but quickly we'll say

goodbye to the 2021 Red Sox. I think the key here is that they usually run a top five payroll in 2021. They didn't. So I guess they're going to do. They're probably going to spend more. You know, they're going to add to the core they already have. They have a lot of guys coming back. The problem for them. I think Scherzer would be a big get for them.

I think that would make a lot of sense. It's not going to be a long-term commitment in terms of years. It's a big dollar commitment, but it's not a long-term, signed them for seven years sort of thing. I think that could be really appealing for them and a really good fit. I think the hardest thing for them is that division is getting tougher. That's a four-team division.

That's four legitimate playoff teams that are set up to continue pushing chips in for the foreseeable future. I think that just naturally makes things a lot more difficult for them as they try to get back to the postseason next year. I think Scherzer's going to

prefer a warm weather climate. He's older. I think LA makes sense to bring him back. They're a team that's going to be winning again. He's going to look for that. I think Boston is a team that got better sooner. We knew they were going to be good soon, but to me, you look at them and they

epitomize the team that beat their window. They got better sooner than we thought. I think you look at them and you have to be encouraged by the moves that Hein Blum has made, by the farm system, by some of the young guys that they have coming. I know Bobby Dahlbeck kind of struggled

a little bit there at the end, but they have like a lot of really good young players that are coming up through the farm system and they have that payroll. So I think you have to feel good about where the Red Sox are at relative to a Yankees team, right? They're always kind of compared to New York because of the payroll thing.

And I think the Red Sox are in a better avenue. I mean, trading Mookie Betts, as much as we all said it was lopsided, it was terrible, it allowed them to do a lot of things. And it's going to continue to allow them to do a lot of things in terms of players and payroll flexibility that I think is going to make them competitive for the next three to five years. Yeah. A well-positioned team, I think, and ahead of their curve maybe by a year, but they weren't far away in the first place. I think they had an old core with a few young players they got back, especially from the price trade that I thought made them pretty intriguing coming into the year, hence the third best team in the AL East pick.

Well, at least they exceeded my expectations there, even though they let me down in a big way against Houston. Still disappointed. I thought they were going to hold on and win that series. So here we are. We got a great matchup, Atlanta-Houston. We're going to dig into it throughout this week. Again, we'll break down everything we expect to see in Game 1 and the entire series on tomorrow's

episode. There's a ton of great stuff you can read about the series at The Athletic. Go to theathletic.com slash Rates and Barrels. Get 33% off a subscription. Gets you all the baseball content we're doing. Plus, every other sport is going right now, too. So we're covering all of that as well.

You can find us on Twitter. I am at Derek Van Riper. He's at, you know, Sarah. She's at Britt underscore Jirola. You can follow the pod at Rates and Barrels. If you're watching us on YouTube, be sure to barrel up on that like button. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels.

We are back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening. Thank you.