Rates & Barrels - It's not fun to be a hitter right now, a no-hitter draft, and accounting for the unquantifiable

Episode Date: May 21, 2021

Eno, Britt & DVR discuss the current league-wide edge to pitching and the likely related six(!) no-hitters that we've seen in the first two months of 2021 before drafting pitchers in an effort to predict who will throw the seventh no-hitter of the year. Plus, the return of Stephen Strasburg, another unwritten rules violation, projections and different run environments, and an inquiry about the unquantifiable.  Rundown 1:14 Hitters Are Not Having Much Fun 11:50 The Sixth No-Hitter of 2021(!) 17:51 The Bottom End Offenses 23:01 The No-Hitter Draft! 34:25 Expectations for Stephen Strasburg 43:23 That Rule is Written Somewhere 53:14 The Weight of the Unquantifiable  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 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, Brichiroli, Eno Saris here with you on this Friday. It turns out hitters are no longer having fun, so we will explore why that is the case. Britt had a great piece with Ken Rosenthal breaking down some of the problems with the

current landscape of baseball. That includes another no-hitter. Yes, Corey Kluber threw one this week, so we're up to six for the season, and that would be seven if we counted Madison Bum, Corey Kluber threw one this week. So we're up to six for the season and that it would be seven. If we counted Madison Bumgarner seven inning one against Atlanta, but apparently that doesn't count. So we're,

let's say we're at 6.78 no hitters for the season. To be more precise, we will try and predict who throws the next no hitter in major league baseball. And as we started to hone in on it on Wednesday, we've got a few suspects that we're going to pick on. Plus, Steven Strasburg comes back, so we'll talk about what we might see from him

as he gets back on the mound for the first time in more than a month. But let's begin with that piece that I referenced, Britt. Great collaboration with Ken. Hitters are not having fun anymore, and we're starting to get some comparisons to the steroid era just in reverse with pitchers having complete control over everything. Yeah, well, Eno kind of stole the show.

I want to give him a big shout out on that as well. Ken said, hey, can you come up with a graph to kind of show spin rate, what's been happening? And, you know, I think that graph was basically worth the price of admission showing how crazy it is that all the fastballs basically have doubled, right? And spin rate that's over 2400 RPMs has doubled since the StatCast era started. Now, here's something Ken and I were talking about a little bit. You know, there's no way to naturally create this kind of jump, right? It's kind of like velocity. You're either born with it or you're not. and you can make some minor adjustments along the way. But what we're seeing

right now, there's no way it's natural, right? Yeah. I mean, some people might quibble with you about the velocity thing. I mean, like driveline would be like, hey, no, we can coach velocity. But I mean, I think you're right, though, because you have a maximum velocity. And basically what driveline does is get you to be able to throw closer to your maximum more often, I think you're right, though, because you have a maximum velocity. And basically what driveline does is get you to be able to, like, throw closer to your maximum more often, I think. But driveline did the studies on this, and they were public with it. And they said that we can't find any way to increase your spin rate other than, you know, these substances.

I've had some pushback from pitching coordinators and coaches that say, no, you can, this is that. But they didn't tell me what it was, i don't know if i believe them um and uh uh the only other caveat i want to give is that like uh a spin rate goes up with velocity so you will see guys that their spin rate goes up if their velocity goes up but if you're just talking about a guy who has the same velocities before if his spin rate goes up i mean we saw 500 with spider attack with that crazy insane oh goop um and uh and yeah i mean i thought i thought you know it was really compelling um the compelling the most compelling piece about the piece uh was that's that's really good really

good radio there uh the most compelling part of your of your piece was um that people are getting tired of it man yeah they're just like like you have pictures when i started like talking right right about this i had pictures telling me don't write about this wow and now as i told you guys off air this started because i had pictures call me and hey, this is getting out of control. And I think that's important because people keep asking me like, oh, you know, they've been putting pine tar on their hands forever, you know. And I spoke to Jim Palmer, who was really good at explaining the difference now. They were putting pine tar on their hands back in the day to grip the baseball. They were putting pine tar on their hands back in the day to grip the baseball. There was no advanced analytics saying, if you put stick them here and here, you can increase your spin rate by this and this. And I had a guy tell me yesterday, there are teams doing this that are saying to minor league guys, put this here and here, and our analytics show that you can throw a spin rate of this. So it's always been around, but it's never been utilized because we've never been as

smart as we are now. And people are like, well, how is, you know, if everyone's cheating, why is Trevor Bauer, for example, why is he still better than other people? These guys are smarter than other people at applying stuff. So gone are the days where they're just slapping it on their hands. Everything is very calculated now. And certainly Trevor Bauer years ago blew the whistle on this and nobody did anything. And now it's gotten worse and worse. Yeah, I think you're right. There's a difference between, oh, some sunscreen and rosin for better grip. We found there's a 500 RPM difference with a spider tack.

That means there's probably something that's better than spider tack that someone's put together, you know, that we just don't even know about. There's probably some sort's better than spider tag that someone's put together, you know, that we just don't even know about. There's probably some sort of plus 600 stuff. And that memo from baseball saying, oh, we're going to look at differences in spin rate. That actually does that actually incentivizes what you're talking about. Yeah. Right. It's incentivizes a team to say, whoa, if they're going to check this at the major league, we made sure that our minor leaguers come up using it already.

league we made sure that our minor leaguers come up using it already spin class where you learn how to put sticky stuff on your fingers and actually utilize it properly before you set those baselines you got to set those baselines exactly and and one thing that i've uh that i haven't put in a story yet that you know because once you start writing about this people like tell you start telling you more um you you made a little motion with your hands you can see it on youtube she made a little motion like put this thing here and here i didn't know this but some people have two substances one for the thumb and one for the fingers wow i didn't know that either so there's like you'll have like the hat is for the thumb because you see them like touch the hat the underside with the thumb there you go

and then you'll have something else by your belt buckle or in the glove and you kind of put your fingers in there for the other thing so you can have and i that actually solves a riddle for me which is like how do you throw a good change up if uh especially if you have like a straight change up or something how does lucas like i'm not saying lucas giolito uses i'm just saying like if you get lucas giolito uses for his breaking balls how does he then throw a straight change and i bet you that and i'm still not saying this about giolito but i'm just saying that like you know one way of doing it is to have two substances and just be like kind of alternate and and do different fingers so that's that's fascinating i derrick view i have not heard that at all.

You know, it's like the resident sticky stuff whisperer though. Uh, no, but you got, you know, you got real Muto on the record or the, we had real Muto on the record and that doesn't surprise me actually.

Cause a catcher is a catcher, but he's also a hitter, right? Like he works with the pitchers, but he's, he's also a hitter. So at some point the hitter part, like there's a catcher part of him him who's like, ooh, I don't want to bust my guys, you know? But the hitter part of him is like, gah!

Yeah. Yes. And it's funny because one of the pitchers that I spoke to in the article was like, at first, everyone's like, yay, pitchers. We're going so well. Who cares about the hitters? He's like, but then you realize you're competing against guys who are doing this, right? You're going to arbitration against guys with insane stats.

All of a sudden, it's not that fun anymore when it's cutting into your money and your contract and your job status. If you can't beat them, join them and now you're seeing everybody kind of cheat. I think that's the calculus Bauer made, right? And he was right.

Like, does he get that $40 million deal? No. No, he wasn't on track for that. No, he was an average big league starter. Yeah. Yeah, and that might be at the higher end of the impact because he understands the application as well or better than just about anybody out there.

Because I think you're right, Britt. I think there's probably a sliding scale. You have a bunch of guys out there who are doing what they're told and they don't quite understand the why it works. Bauer gets the why it works part. But other guys are out there and their hands are getting sticky and then they go to the wrong part. They go to the belt instead of the cap and they mix up the two goos.

And they're like, what do I do now? How do I fix this? Or they're just using pine tar like you know when i did see players pitchers like loading up in front of me it was pine tar it was just they were just like kind of using the pine tar stick and and kind of putting it between their their glove fingers you know it's a little different than like i'm gonna boil this thing together i kind of wish it was more like that i kind of wish this was like the the result of everyone

being home last year was that pitchers were in their kitchens just boiling things up, freezing things, trying every possible chemical experience possible. If it were actual homemade science that were pushing this, it would be a little bit fun, but I think because it's

so... It is to some extent. Some of my reporting is Coca-Cola and CBD oil and people are boiling this stuff together. Yeah, it's true. I guess our Eagle Moon hemp ads have been very effective. You know what's crazy too? I had guys

tell me about this. You watch sometimes after a pitcher strikes someone out and the infield's throwing the ball around and all of a sudden one of the infielders is a few feet away and he will he will throw the ball and bounce it because it's so sticky and they're not used to it then all of a sudden it's like you know like velcro to them they're just like uh you know and and uh don't want to call anyone out but i had a guy send me videos and this is definitely going on and they call them stickle balls like a montage of like infielders throwing it into the ground and then he's looking at his hand and he's like

rubbing it and it's like all right you guys like and i think that's the crazy part of this story too spider tech if you can hold a cinder block even if it's like people were like people don't think that's a real cinder block okay even if it's a light cinder block, it weighs more than a ball. So that means if you have spider tack on your fingers, you could just hold the ball like this. Yes, it's just nuts. And it's funny because no one's trying to hide it because MLB is doing nothing about it. And I guess that's the bigger issue. Why send that memo out and then pretend you're collecting data?

Or maybe they are collecting data. But are are you just gonna let this whole year go because you're talking about guys jobs and lives and money at stake i just don't think i think maybe spring training was the time to collect the data i don't know how you guys feel about that you have to always allow for a charitable reading this is my charitable reading of what baseball is doing right now. The Mitchell report. They're doing the like first bit where they're like trying to figure out how much of a problem it is. Also, they probably don't want to start a huge fight with the players union when they're already in the middle of a huge fight.

Unless they, unless they think that's a way to like leverage, you know, and be, you know, leverage it in the CBA discussions. I was thinking maybe resolving it during the CBA discussions is a little easier than starting that fight right now. If you're Major League Baseball, you don't want this to be as much of a story as it's going to be throughout the season.

You're kind of hoping that people, as the weather gets warmer, the hitters start to hit the ball at the park a little more, offense starts that people, as the weather gets warmer, the hitters start to hit the ball at the park a little more, offense starts to tick back up in the right direction, and then we kind of forget about this. Because after the Bauer sticky baseballs were removed a few weeks ago,

we really hadn't talked that much about sticky stuff. It'd been like a month since this topic had come up. But now, I just think now that we have almost two months of offense being as deflated as it is, people are asking these questions and are

taking it a lot more seriously. Well, there's a certain phenomenon, right, that's happening right now that's going to keep it in the news if it keeps happening. Exactly. Guys who aren't cheating

and pitching well, it's got that ripple effect, right? Everyone thinks that they're cheating. And what's interesting with the union thing, though, is we got guys on the record that are upset about this. So you're kind of already angering half the union by not enforcing a rule. This isn't something the union has to agree to because it's already in the rulebook. That's my, I guess, issue with it. And, you know, I was talking to a guy yesterday and he's like, what they could do and what they refuse to do is just get that tacky ball. But it would cost money and it would require them to start over. MLB owns part of Rawlings. They can do whatever they want to the ball without any player input. And players have to go along with it. Like players had no say in what this new baseball did. But what this new baseball did was create even more movement by those higher

seams. And so you combine that with these crazy sophisticated concoctions and you're just feeding into these guys who all of a sudden have swing and miss stuff. And Real Muto said it in the story. Everybody now in baseball has swing and miss stuff. And we can blame the hitters all we want. But when you see these no hitters every night, these no hit bids every night, at what point are we like, okay, baseball, maybe we should start enforcing these rules.

If it pisses off players, it pisses off players. But you're still gonna have a lot of players that are like, thank you for enforcing these rules because it's just not fair hitting's already the toughest thing to do in pro sports right we talk about it all the time hitting's already really hard why are we going to go for the three-point shot and make the drastic move the mound back why not go for the layup and enforce the rules first see how that goes yeah just gonna take a right take a few managers, we're going to start enforcing this. So if you've been doing some things, you're going to have to change it up because if we're going to call other teams out, they're going to call us out.

And if you don't have a plan, you're going to get hit and we're going to have a problem. But the straw that may have broke the camel's back, I don't like that expression, it was probably Corey Kluber's no-hitter. Camel violence. Yeah, let camels back. I don't like that expression. It was probably Corey Kluber's no-hitter. Camel violence. Let camels be. It seems like they're not protected the way they should be.

Corey Kluber threw a no-hitter this week, and this was all cool when it was Eno's guys, when it was John Means and Spencer Turnbull, but Corey Kluber coming back from the early season dead to throw a no-no, I think that's the last straw. This wasn't supposed to happen.

No, it's not the last straw because it's Corey Kluber. What it is is, was it like three days in a row? Plus the record for no-hitters of the season is seven. So the next no-hitter that gets thrown is the record, and we're in May. Yeah, we have a chance to break the record before the end of the month. That is absolutely possible. The weirdest thing about this, three teams have each been no hit twice. Cleveland, Texas, Seattle.

So you have these bottom feeder teams. In addition to pitchers being more ahead than ever, you've got this greater disparity between the league's good offenses and the league's bad offenses. I don't think the next one has to come from one of those three teams, but I'm really inclined to say it's been weird enough this year where it probably will come from one of those three teams. Yeah, those teams are terrible. And I don't know if any kind of sticky stuff, ball, whatever would change that. I think those teams just show what happens when you don't try to win, right? Or when you don't try to add any kind of offensive output at all.

Like, that's to me. I mean, Ken and I talked to a lot of people for this story. Nobody wanted to say, hey, these no-hitters are cheap. I do think people feel like, hey, these no-hitters are getting to the point where they feel cheap just based on what's going on. But certainly, I think some of these lineups, like, again, how are these teams not penalized for some of these lineups that are running out there?

It's like in spring training you get in trouble for not sending enough starters on the road and for not trying, but in the regular season it's okay to not try? There's a lot going on here. I mean, I think all of these stories that we're talking about kind of come together, right? I think the ball does have a little bit of something to do with it. We're seeing higher V-lows and more movement than ever.

Plus, it deadens the ball. Like, there was a story on Fangraphs from Dem Fink about how this is turning homers into outs. So if you turn homers into outs and you add velocity and you add movement, that's going to have an effect on – that's going to lead to more no-hitters, right? Then you take the stratification in baseball where it's like some teams don't try as hard, which I think is true. But then if you think about it, these three teams also play in pitcher's parks. So it's a little bit of a, just a regular baseball story where there's kind of a

pitcher park in April and May. So cold, right? So some of it is regular baseball, some of it is the ball, some of it is the finances of baseball, and then some of it is just the long-term trends towards all-or-nothing baseball, where we're having more strikeouts than hits the last few seasons. So I think that's all coming together, but I kind of think it'll keep going. I know that the weather will warm and there'll be more offense, but I kind of think that'll keep going. I know that the weather will warm and there'll be more offense, but I kind of think that we're going to get to, like, what's your over-under? What's your guys' over-under on no-hitters for the year? Is it, like, 12 or is it 10?

I think 10. I think 10 because you're right. And here's the other thing is people are like, well, this team's hitting or this guy's hitting. Guys are still hitting mistakes, right? Like, mistakes are still going to fly out, and they're going to fly out even more as it warms up.

We are going to, in my opinion, go over that. We're going to be in double digits and no hitters for sure. It's hard to imagine we don't set the record this year. Two more seems like a certainty, even if we don't get another one before the end of May, which being a little facetious, it's probably not

happening that quickly. I'm just not ruling facetious. It's probably not happening that quickly. I'm just not ruling out the possibility. Let's do the draft. I like this idea. Oh, yeah, we're going to do the draft. Well, yeah, we'll run through that. What's amazing, though, real quick, is that you look at the teams that are struggling offensively. They're either, let's just say they're 10% worse than league average in terms of WRC+.

Most of these teams are rebuilding. It's the Orioles, the Royals, the Marlins, the Indians, the Mariners, the Pirates, the Brewers, the Tigers, and the Rockies. And the Rockies, a 76 WRC Plus. I mean, that is unbelievably bad. That is embarrassing. Like, that is so, so bad.

But there's two teams in there that are legitimately trying. And I would say the Royals, because of what they're trying to do is different. They're not punting on the season. So you've got basically three of in there that are legitimately trying. And I would say the Royals, because of what they're trying to do, is different. They're not punting on the season. So you've got basically three of those teams that are actually trying. Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Kansas City. And those teams, the Brewers especially, strike out a ton. They've been missing Christian Jelic.

I know Keston here has been at AAA. But these are teams that have serious holes in their offense that until they make a trade, they're probably not going to be able to fill it with prospects coming up. Because if they had those prospects at the ready, they'd be using them already. They would have them up there because they're looking for solutions. Yeah, I don't have an easy answer. I think that's where you start talking about the sticky stuff a little bit. Because, I mean, the strikeout rate is just through the roof, man.

And there's a big leap forward. It's not just like, oh, it's 0.1 more than last year. It's like 0.5 more than last year. There's a big leap forward. Although there's one little interesting thing I saw, which is that if you take pitchers out, it's only like 0.1 more than last year. So we're seeing a little bit of aggressive difference

because we had the DH last year. I wonder if pitcher hitting performance is even worse than usual because of the year off and fears about injuries and all sorts of different adjustments to... Pitchers are hitting worse than ever before. I think it's the death knell.

We don't have to litigate it now because it gets people angry. Yeah, I think it's time. death now. It's just – we don't have to litigate it now because it gets people angry. Yeah, I think. I think it's time. We'll litigate that on a future date. It's true. It's time. But I guess like the thing too that I don't buy into like the hitters being just the hitters' fault is they didn't wake up this year and say, hey, launch angle, launch angle.

That's been going on. No. No. No. So you can blame hitters's approach all you want, but we've seen the hitter's approach. We've seen this approach over the last few years.

It's something else. What did we get? We got a new baseball. What else do we know that's going on? We know that the spin rates are through the roof. We know that guys that are past their prime pitching ages are coming up with these huge jumps in spin rates. We know that guys that are past their prime pitching ages are coming up with these huge jumps in spin rates. We know that's not normal.

It's not very hard to figure out who's using if you look at the charts. Guys should not be in their 30s and having this huge jump. I think we can all agree that's not an anomaly. They're using something to go over the edge. And I think it's starting to spread. Like, I want to do what he's doing, right? Like, you know, one of the guys in the story mentioned it, and it's true.

Like, you watch this, and we're all like, oh, my God. You watch Pitching Ninja and all these overlays, and you're like, these are video game pitches. These are pitches you cannot do with just the human hand. I think we all need to acknowledge that. This is not normal. It's something that's come up in the stuff research that I do is I keep looking is not normal um it's something that's that's come up in the stuff research that that i do is i keep looking at it and it's like it just keeps saying

sliders are really good and there was this point in one of the stories i was doing about this so it was about the the plate moving back anyway a pitching coordinator said that uh he would just have his pitchers uh throw 80 breaking balls and uh um And I had another pitching coordinator I talked to who said, you know, one analyst said, no, players would just adjust to it. They'd just be able to hit breaking balls, right? They would just sit breaking ball and they'd be able to hit it. But I had another pitching coordinator who said, no, man, you can tell people that a slider is coming in the cage

and it's still harder to hit than a fastball. So I don't know if maybe like three or four years would change things. But it does seem to be something like all the best stuff numbers come from sliders. And we're seeing more and more sliders every year and we're seeing crazier and crazier sliders every year. So it's the slider league and everyone's using gooey stuff. I think that's a major part of the strikeout right yeah if you get rid of the gooeyest of the gooey stuff you will help reverse this trend a little but you're not going to completely undo it because there are other changes in play here defensive efficiency would be the other thing i would point to

also tempering offense quite a bit you knowifting is peaking. It's as optimized as it's ever been. Balls in play, less valuable than ever as a result of that as well. More valuable. Happening less. Well, they're happening less, so they're more valuable because they're more scarce. But I'm saying when you put a ball in play,

it's more likely to be turned into an out than it ever really has been in the past. So that's why those are becoming less valuable, even though they are more valuable from a scarcity standpoint. They're being rewarded less. They're getting less out of their balls of play. The rewards of putting a ball in play have diminished.

That is the correct way to say it. Proper radio and podcast speak. All right, we are on to our no-hitter draft. I didn't think it would come to this, but you know what? We said earlier this year we're looking for new, creative, and simple ways to play fantasy baseball. It really doesn't get easier than this. There's one category. There's one event we're looking for.

It's basically a pool, right? If we get a no-hitter, we win. First person to get a no-hitter wins. If two no-hitters happen on the same day, the tiebreaker is which no-hitter ends first. So a slight lean towards the games that start earlier in the day. So if you did your homework on this and you know which of these games are day games and you want to leverage that, good for you. You've done a great job. But we're narrowing this down. It's not a draft of the entire league this time around. Because we want to pick on the Rangers, the Mariners, and the Indians. We are only allowed to draft starting pitchers facing one of those three teams, and this will

run through the end of the month. So if we don't get a no-hitter from one of these pitchers by the end of this month, it resets. We try again in June. Maybe we even open it up, but it seems like it should be fun. So Britt brit you are new to fantasy baseball and new to our absolute weirdness that we have as a group depravity yeah so as a result of subjecting yourself to this nonsense you know and i are always subjecting ourselves to nonsense you can have the first pick we'll go across the screen from right to left so it'll go brit you know me we're not going to snake it. I'm not going to do two picks in a row. So that'll be the

order for each round. So Britt, you have the first pick. Okay. Well, the Padres are playing the Mariners. So kind of like those chances, don't you? They don't. I mean, Paddock's tonight. So should I take Paddock and just be on time? It's tempting, isn't it? Yeah. You know what? That's what I'm doing.

I'm doing it. All right, just keep the ball rolling. All right, Chris Paddock, who goes on Friday night, is the first pick to Britt. Ido, you've got the second pick. I kind of want to pick another Padre, but I'm going to leave him out there and go off board a little bit. He's not even healthy yet.

No, geez. What are you going with? Marco Gonzalez leads the league in decisions since he's been in baseball. The Mariners leave pitchers in longer than anyone, and he'll have one of those excellent command nights against the Rangers at the end of the month. So I'm going for the long-term payoff there.

All right. Well, I'm going to take the Padre that Britt was probably thinking about and the one that you probably considered as well. You, Darvish, catches them. There you go. Yeah, it's Sunday. I wish it were – it's probably an afternoon game. I wish it were a night game.

That would be even better. But it's the Mariners. You, Darvish, can take care of the Mariners. So I will take Darvish with my first pick in hopes of getting that no-no on Sunday against Seattle. It's back to you, Britt. This is getting interesting.

Looking at the Angels and Mariners play the Rangers after that, but the Astros play them right now. What about Lance McCullers Jr. later this weekend? That's a good call. It's a really nice call. Yeah, he's got the start on Saturday.

Yep. Tyler Ivey's going in the first game of the series. I don't think Ivey's going to pitch deep enough into the game. So I think you're right to go with McCullers. I'm still, my rubric is boring old dude that they will leave in longer. Like Wade Miley. So Kyle Gibson. boring old dude uh that they will leave in longer like wait finally um so kyle gibson come on down i hate that that's actually a really good pick for what we're trying to accomplish here and i am yeah i'm impressed i i'm gonna go i'm gonna pick on cleveland for the first time

in this draft i know he's been absolute rubbish, and using Eno's rubric, the guy who starts the day after him would be probably a slightly better pick, even though he's been terrible too. Kenta Maeda is going to be the pick. He's got Cleveland on Saturday. It'd be nice to see Kenta Maeda fix those ratios and turn around his slow start with a no-no. So, yeah, if it comes at Cleveland's expense, I am fine with that.

Are we going to three? Are we going three? Let's go four rounds. Let's each do four. Two more picks each. It's got to be one of those teams that already got no hit because how have the Orioles had a no-hitter and not been no-hit? Can we go off?

Because the Tigers, man. The Tigers are begging to be no-hit. are begging to be no-hitter. And they've had a no-hitter. So it's just crazy. Like, I think... Let's do the last. The last round can go off. Okay.

All right. Last round can be anybody in the entire league. This round's got to be from one of the three teams that we mentioned. So I don't know if he's going to pitch or not, but I think he might. But what about Otani against the Rangers? It could totally happen. I'm a little worried about that velo drop. Yeah, like the game.

And the length, too, because of the command. So I think that's the – if you want him, he's yours. If you want to reconsider, I think he's shaky for reasons beyond his talent. You know, one thing I've noticed in these no-hitters, it's often that the pitchers most like, they don't throw any pitches. Yes. That's why they get left in. Like, Kluber is not a guy they were going to push.

Yes, agreed. Yeah, right. They weren't going to push him to 120 pitches. He only was left in because he did it in, like, 89 or something ridiculous. Yes. So that would be just, Otani would just have one of his, like, you know, peak days and do it in 89 pitches. Yeah. And also, I like my first two picks.

I like Otani as my sexy third rounder who may pop, but I don't necessarily need him to pop. That is a veteran fantasy move to just take the players you like later on just to be like, you know what? I want to be right about this. I'm taking this guy. Yeah, if Otani throws an 0-hitter, I want to be the one who has picked him. All right.

Then I'm going to go with young – he's not even young anymore. Matthew Boyd. Matthew Boyd. Nice call. Yeah. Matthew Boyd has got Cleveland near to the end of the month. Unfortunately, all of mine come near the end of the month, so I will be the laggard on this leaderboard if there are multiple no-hitters.

Yeah, I'm just trying to crowd as early as I can to the nearest possible day. I'm going to go Christian Javier for my last one. I think he's got the Rangers on Sunday. So if McCullers doesn't do it for Britt on Saturday, I've got two swipes at it with Darvish and Javier both going on Sunday. All right, so it's wide open for your fourth pick. Any pitcher on any team in any matchup to get a no-hitter before the end of the month, and it's your pick, Britt.

Patrick Corbin against the Orioles on Sunday. You've got day game. You've got the Orioles offense, and you've also got Patrick Corbin, who has had a little much needed resurgence here as of late. So I would have picked Scherzer, but they're missing Scherzer. They're not going to get Scherzer at all during this series. So I'm going to go Patrick Corbin against the Orioles. Impressive. I didn't think you'd go with a guy struggling that much, but he does fit the Eno rubric of someone that can easily pitch deep into that game.

Exactly. And he's been better as of late. And I think you make the mistake with no-hitters of saying this guy has to be really good to have a no-hitter. That's not the case this year. Anybody can do it. All right, Mr. Baller, who's your last pick? I am looking at... Actually, I'm also looking at a name change. Now I am Action Eno. Action Eno. I'm looking at the schedule right now to see who catches the Tigers. So Savali pitched very recently. One, two, three, four.

Ooh. Savali is more likely than Shane Beaver to catch the Tigers. They both could based on the starter's grid that I'm looking at. So that's a pretty interesting series to pick on. What's funny is that if I pick Beaver, if I pick Beaver, I will have... Don't I have multiple guys on the 27th?

I will have three guys on the 27th. So you're just loading up one day. They could go up against each other that day. Oh, Beaver against Boyd? Yeah, that could actually be the matchup. I kind of love it. I got guys on both sides of that game. I guess I'm guys on both sides of that game.

I guess I'm calling for the under on that one. All right, I'll take it Beaver and Boyd. I'm sure it's sure to be a 7-5 game. Yeah, stack that game in DFS. If you're playing on DraftKings that day in a tournament, just load up the hitters on both sides. Shake Beaver, baby. Fade Eno as much as you can.

It's really tempting. So Jacob deGrom is supposed to be back against Colorado at home in his next turn. Did you see what he did to the minor leaguers? He was just obliterating them. Through like 102. Can you imagine being in high A and be like, so who's the starter today? What? Hey, at least he got a scouting report on him. Everyone's seen him before.

He struck out eight of the ten batters he saw. Yeah, he had eight strikeouts and three scoreless innings. I think the only case against DeGrom would be that they could just yank him after like six innings even if he's pitching really well. If they're up 7-0, I think they'll let him finish it. So I don't feel real good about that particular situation. Super David Peterson, coward. I do want to pick against the Rockies.

That is my priority. So my options, I'm not doing it at Coors, and the matchups are bad. It'd be Bumgarner or Corbin Martin if I had to do that. At Coors? Yeah. You know who it's going to be? Bumgarner. It's going to be Marcus Stroman. Marcus Stroman's my pick.

There you go. We need a Marcus Stroman no-hitter. Ton of ground balls. Yep. Ton of ground balls could be really efficient. That was actually a secret thing for Kluber. It wasn't a ton of strikeouts. It was more ground balls.

Less pitches that way. It's a good way to go. I think this is going to be fun. To recap it, Britt's got Paddock, McCullers, Otani, and Corbin. Eno's got Marco Gonzalez, Kyle Gibson, Matthew Boyd, and Shane Bieber. The olds and Bieber.

Bieber and the olds. Bieber and the olds. I've got Darvish, Maeda, Christian Javier, and Marcus Stroman. Good mix here. I hope one of us gets this right because it'll be amazing. I don't know what our celebration is going to be or if we could bring money to a charity.

It's supposed to be a super rare event that you could never predict. Right. And we may have predicted like four as a group just now. I think winner gets sent like two six-packs from the losers. I like that. Two six-packs from the losers. I like that. Two six-packs is the wager. If you somehow got two, then it doubles to 12

packs. I don't think that's going to happen. I'm not too worried about that. The fact that you have a tiebreaker says everything we need to know about no-hitters this season. Well, there might be more than one. You have to cover all the possible scenarios when running a league. What if we all get one?

If we all get one, we all just send each other beer. We just all have a beer and clink it. Have a Saturday night Zoom drunken live stream. That could be fun or the end of rates and barrels as we know it. Yeah, right. Not really sure.

Not really sure which way that is going to go uh let's talk about steven strasburg for a moment he gets the orioles in his first start back from the il and i don't think uh when it was a wide open pick anyone you want i don't think any of us thought yeah strasburg in his first start back it's gonna come out and throw a no hitter but the thing about strasburg that i'm most curious about guys is if the velocity doesn't come back to its previous levels, do we still think his secondaries are good enough where he can reduce the fastball usage, throw more secondaries,

and actually still be very effective? First start of the year against Atlanta, of course, didn't have great velocity there, pitched well, got knocked around, went on the IL. I tend to believe he has good enough secondary stuff where he's not going to fall completely on his face unless he is still very hurt. Am I wrong for having that optimism, Britt? You seem a little more skeptical.

Yeah, I'm skeptical just because I watched a guy in 2019 have a year so far outside the norm. And I think instead of people saying, this is an anomaly, it may never happen again. They said, here it is. This is Steven Strasburg. When all the numbers and all the data from every other year pointed to the fact that this wasn't Steven Strasburg, right? Like this is what we thought he could be, but he has not been able to stay healthy or sustain it. So I am going to the game tonight.

I am going to drive down to DC, watch him live. I'm curious to see how the ball looks, what his velo is. But I have a little bit more, I guess, tempered optimism than you do, Derek, about this. Just didn't pitch at all last year. Dealt with some, you know, hand issues that a lot of pitchers haven't. Oh, surgery. Yeah, like we don't really have a whole lot of data

on what happens to him. David Price had the same surgery. He's kind of, I don't want to say fallen off the radar because he probably would be in the rotation if he wasn't on the Dodgers, right? He probably would have started the season in most big league rotations. However, I think there's just a lot we don't know

about how that's going to affect a guy like Steven Strasburg long-term. So optimistic, just a little bit more tempered that he can be the guy the Nationals need to turn it around because the Nationals' first 40 games have been pretty ugly, guys. And I know the Marlins are the only team in the NLEs

with a positive run differential. So every team has been ugly, certainly to some extent. But the Nationals, more than maybe any other team, certainly in that division, are going to live and die off that rotation. And that rotation just has not been there. Yeah, I mean, the Stuff Plus numbers on both Price and Strasburg this year are not good. Strasburg was 5% worse than league average. Price is 17% worse than league average in terms of stuff.

I don't think they ever kind of climbed back to, or Price never really climbed back to where he was pre-surgery. But again, that's such a small sample. I'm not going to say that that's definitive for Strasburg. What I'd be watching, and I do agree that his secondaries are good, but he has to throw some fastballs. When he was doing it, he was throwing the sinker.

If somehow the time off has allowed him to even throw the foreseam, even at a reduced velocity, then I think that we could see not vintage Strasburg, but a Strasburg that throws the fastball less, uses the foreseam, he mixes up,

kind of does the old pitcher trick where he throws everything 20% of the time. There is that possibility, but I really struggled with ranking him just because there is the chance that he comes and the velocity's back and everything's fine. And we've seen glimpses of that from him. So I don't want to be completely wrong.

So I kind of just threw a dart on the Strasburg rankings that came out today. Where did I put him? Well, you're 25, which is just... Yeah, that's not bad. It's like destined to be wrong. Either he's healthy and he's better than that or he's not and he's worse than that. Yeah.

You've averaged two outcomes that are equally likely and you've got an outcome that is unlikely. Exactly. Eno still has PTSD from hating on Kluber, so now he's going to toe the middle. Everybody is okay. You'll make good on it next week. And by the way, you want to check out those rankings.

You want to check out that piece that Britt and Ken Rosenthal and Eno's chart are all in. You can check that out at theathletic.com. Slash rates and barrel. $1 a month is the current subscription deal. One last thing about the Kluber thing that's interesting to me is that if you think about it, it's really rare for people to come out negative on a player. It's very rare because we don't like it. It's not fun to do. We don't want to criticize the players, right, for example.

And then also, it's just, I've seen this in the beer right uh it's better i think i think people just feel better about themselves when they're like rah rah rah about the beer or prospects man this happens so much in prospects you don't want to come out and say oh juan franco doesn't lift the ball i'm out i think he's kind of just like a low-powered middle infield uh all-contact guy you don't want to be the guy who says that. So instead, you're just like, oh, I love Vidal Brujan or whatever. You know, like you, you, everyone like wants to be remembered as the guy who loved a guy, you know?

And then I think, I wonder if sometimes it's like, you know, also Kluber had a no hitter against a team that's been no hit before. Right. And one of the, his earlier starts that was really good before that was the Tigers, right? And so, like, some of it's matchup-based. So I could still be right long-term where, you know, he ends up the season with like a 4 ERA and a 1-4 whip or a 1-3-5 whip, and it's not vintage Kluber. But he was going to have good games right so if i'm

gonna go negative you know there's still gonna be always these moments where like all of yankee's twitter descends on me and calls me just horrible names and just like there's like these images out there that i'd like to unsee um and and it's like i didn't say that he would never have a good game again so there's just like all these consequences for coming out negative where they could like you know like even uh kevin goldstein wrote a piece on fangraphs about javier baez right and he said is it time to worry about javier baez right and then people were tweeting at him every time javier baez hit a homer and it's like kevin goldstein didn't say that Javier Baez is never going to hit another homer.

I've got an example too. I think it was last week on the Athletic Baseball show, I was talking about the Twins eventually, when they're completely healthy, could be at a point where they could say, you know what, we've seen all we need to see from Miguel Sano, and he's the kind of guy they trade, or in the offseason they

non-tender him and they move on as a way of opening up a spot so that way they can have Kirilov and Larnik and Buxton and Kepler, all those guys in the lineup together, right? Because you've got Nelson Cruz as your coach. They let Eddie Rosario go just for nothing at some point. And I think Minnesota fans generally, a little more polite maybe than some of the other fan bases out there, haven't come and dunked all over me for Sano hitting, I think, five homers since I said that. Five homers in the last two days.

And I think on the same podcast, I said, it's really interesting that Randy Rosarena is swinging missing so much in the zone. He's gone on a tear since then, too. Again, Rays fans haven't come back and thrown that in my face. But you're absolutely right. People remember, especially when you put it in writing, it's so much more likely to come back around. But yeah, it's bad nicknames, huh? You don't want that. You want good nicknames. That's why you keep coming up with new, interesting, like artist-related names. Yeah. I mean, guys, remember this. The internet is undefeated. Like, it will find what you write. It will never actually go away. And people love, people never like saying you're right.

People just like the negative you're wrong. That's what it is. Yes, that's what it is. They don't really want to say you're right. They would love to say you're wrong. Yeah. What's weird to me is that like they're super angry and they're like super excited that I'm wrong.

And like from my perspective, I'm like, yeah, dude, I'm wrong a fair amount. Like I read all baseball. I'm wrong. And from my perspective, I'm like, yeah, dude, I'm wrong a fair amount. I write about baseball. I'm wrong all the time. Do you know someone who writes about baseball? Do you know someone who writes about baseball who's not wrong sometimes? I don't know that person. I'm wrong about stuff all the time. You don't need to go get the receipts. I know that. I remember being wrong. I will call myself out for being wrong i make enough dumb mistakes that believe me i'm still trying to learn from the last 10 dumb mistakes that i made so no it was like the best player of all time barry bonds still only reached base like 45 of the time

that's a ridiculous number for people who understand well we had another unwritten rules violation this week and that story has been really just crushed from every possible angle. So I don't think we need to go real far. Everyone heard about how I walked naked past my wife's zoom again. Again. How many times can a person do that in a year? It's like you're having,

you're like having the nohitter year with naked Zoom walk-bys. Maybe that should be a written rule somewhere. That is a written rule somewhere. It is. I don't know where it's written, but I'm sure it's written somewhere. It needs to be written somewhere. I can write it down for you if you want. Thanks.

I think we'll all write it down for you on this one. It's sort of sticky on my computer. I'll give you some stick-em. It'll never fade. You'll be good. This is America. Wear pants. Tony...

The Tony La Russa storyline is like the most overdone, overplayed, gives me a headache. I hate baseball. Everything and everyone. That's how I feel when we start talking about Tony La Russa. Does he want... It's so predictable. Is this what he wanted? It's just,

it's obnoxious. The thing that really bothers me about this story that is probably getting less attention. Tyler Duffy gets suspended three games for throwing behind your mean Mercedes at the request of Tony La Russa, which is just weird. Appeals the suspension, gets it reduced on the day of a double header where he'd already pitched a

game, got to serve it in a seven inning game where he probably wasn't going to pitch anyway. So he basically got a suspension reduced from three to one for caveman antics, as I call them, during the same week where Kevin Pillar gets hit in the face with a pitch that was unintentionally thrown up and in that way. And I just, this is part of the game that has to go away. The retaliatory beanings and throwing behind guys, because clearly guys without the intent of hitting someone can accidentally hit someone in a very bad spot.

We've covered this a million times. How on earth did they decide to reduce Tyler Duffy's suspension for being a caveman? Yeah, it's, but again, Tyler Duffy's suspension for being a caveman. Yeah. But again, I thought all the sticky stuff was supposed to help pitchers with knowing where the ball was going. Again, that excuse is nothing but an excuse because hit-by-pitches are at an all-time high.

Guys are getting hit in the face. I agree, Derek. There's just no – I'd rather – give me the Bauer to tease trolling all day over a fastball in the ribs because too many guys now don't have the command to throw a fastball in the ribs. You're promoting guys because they're throwing hard and because they have a lot of spin. You're not promoting guys who have command anymore. Command is becoming that lost art. So we can no longer play by these barbaric rules of you did this so i'm going to hit you yeah because you might not hit the spot that you're trying like you're like trying to throw drill them in the butt right be like just you know give them some sort of thing to think about

and instead you break their rib or try to get them in the ribs instead you hit them in the face so yeah yeah it's not it's not good and you know, so I hate to bring him up. I hate him. Mad Dog was talking about. Cover your ears, kids. You're nothing for us. Mad Dog was talking about how he missed a sign. Jermaine missed a sign.

And he disobeyed a direct order. And Tony Russo was yelling from the top of the dugout, take or whatever. First of all, I don't think that any player is listening for his manager to be yelling take. And they're not listening for an oral sign. They're not listening for a sign. They're looking to hit.

And people miss the other signs all the time so maybe he just missed the sign and he didn't hear his manager i don't think it's uh that terrible thing and even if it was a terrible thing that he should that he should react to and i'm not really into this whole like military order thing but even if it was like you know a transgression handle it you know like do even do the Girardi thing where you don't you say

like you're at the presser say no man I hand we talked about it it's over yeah he called

Jermaine Mercedes clueless he said he wanted to spank he like what did he say something about like yeah he said

he's too big for me to spank yeah he made it about him it was very clear like you said with joe gerardi joe gerardi did it with a pure heart like right he wanted to not let this play out in the media tony larusa has let this play out in the media which shows me that he just wants the attention and he got what he wanted nobody would shut it. It was all over my Twitter timeline. You know, we're talking about it still. And then he gets to play the sanctimonious in the end when he says, oh, if you want to tell me that sportsmanship is not important, I'm going to absolutely disagree with you. Yeah.

Is this really about sportsmanship? No. No, it's not. It never was. It never will be tony you proving a freaking point and making it about you and making it a big deal and i think signs of him losing the clubhouse and that was i that's why i wanted to just give a shout out to alana rizzo like i do think that she's been a good uh addition to that show because she pushed back and she's been in a

clubhouse way more recently than him yeah and she's like she's been in a clubhouse way more recently than him yeah and she's like i've been in a clubhouse he's losing the clubhouse when he does stuff like that and what do we see we see giolito making comments we see lance lynn i don't even think of lance lynn as a guy who talks about stuff like this you know i was i wasn't actually that surprised when giolito made a comment because i'm like yeah yeah, G Alito is, you know, he's outspoken. He says stuff, right? Lance Lynn said these old rules are going out the door. Tim Anderson, like social media, his players on social media are clowning on him. Yeah.

I think maybe he just doesn't know it because he said something like, oh, you think I'm going to lose? I'm not losing anybody in this clubhouse on that. I'm like, you don't know it, but it's happening. He never had them. I don't think he ever earned their respect because Tony LaRusse is the kind of guy that walks into a room and thinks that his resume commands respect from everyone in the room.

He gets pulled over for a DUI and says, don't you know I'm a Hall of Famer? Do you think every cop is a baseball fan? Yeah, it's just ridiculous. Who could have seen this coming? Yeah, I can't imagine. How could we have ever known something like this was going to happen? We had a great email come in from one of our listeners, Bobby, who took a look at the different projection systems, and he noticed that the steamer projections seem to be adjusting for the current run environment more effectively than the other systems, which is really interesting because if you're trying to use projections for the rest of the season to approximate value, if you have wildly different run environments,

you're going to get some pretty different looking values for pitchers and for hitters. It was something I hadn't really thought about, but just something that really I thought we should pass along. I don't know how quickly the other systems could or would adjust to the run environment but it's just something to definitely think about i talked to derrick cardi about it and um he said that i think one of the major differences is not necessarily looking backwards because they all kind of do adjust to the run environment in in a given season. It's that they have different ideas about what will happen when offense peaks in August. So offense peaks in August, and so they have different opinions

about how much more offense is coming. And I think that's actually germane to our discussion about no-hitters and what the over-under is on no-hitters going forward. I'm sure there are some who feel like, why are you guys talking about 10 as the over-under? It should be like 15 or 20, but there is just this fact that usually offense comes back. There was a great piece on Baseball Perspectives by Rob Cranes

about how some of the offensive indicators that should actually be starting to go up by now are lagging. So maybe we don't get that much offense back. Maybe it's just going to be one of those years. I tried to look at where we stand this year in terms of OPS going back. It's the 26th worst OPS of all time. I don't know. Does that sound like alarm bells to you?

Well, I just threw a graphic up on the screen for people watching on YouTube. It's a big chart that you can find over at Baseball Reference. It's the year-over-year totals for per game everything. So you got runs, hits, homers, RBIs, steals, everything. And it is a steep, steep drop so far compared to previous seasons. I know it's a little small if you don't have a screen zoomed in all the way.

Well, also remember, the single previous season didn't have a March and April. Right. And was the universal DH. So there are these factors that make the year over year change seem much worse than it might, than it should be, maybe. Well, even scoring last year, though, runs per game were down last year in the shortened season, even with the universal DH. Right.

So they're definitely the ongoing trends that are killing offense. So interesting chart there and one of my favorite pages at baseball reference i check it out from time to time to see how things look i don't think we're getting like look at hits and singles singles are just like dead absolutely gone pac-man dying sound.mp3. Yes, I like this. I just, I say the name of a sound and he don't try to make it. He don't try to make the sound. What could go wrong there? Varying degrees of success.

So we had one more email come in and this one is from Barry. And Barry wanted to know, in player analysis, I keep going back to the non-numeric part of the calculation. To be simple, what amount of percentage credit

do you give to things like adrenaline or clutch or it factor? Should this be considered for revenge games, as we call them? I'm failing to grasp a true name to it, but maybe it can be summed up as the mental part of the game. If you can keep this thinking going, what can be said about a player in a slump? Is it possible they lose their mojo for a bit and that creates or adds up to this undefinable 5%? they lose their mojo for a bit and that creates or adds up to this undefinable five percent so curious just to know like the things we can't quantify how much does that kind of factor into our analysis brit i want to start with you just because you spent more time directly next to the game than ito and i have we're a little more removed and looking through the

numbers lens all the time what kinds of it like soft sciences. What kinds of factors like this do you think we sometimes miss in our analysis? Like the clutch debates on Twitter, those are like 10-year-old Twitter debates now. Does the clutch gene exist, right? Not really, but does it not exist at all? I don't know. I'm still kind of receptive to the idea that there are some things like this that we simply cannot measure, that we want to account for, but can't account for very accurately. I do think there are certain guys who step up to the moment, I guess, more, or maybe just aren't phased. There are certain cases. When I used to cover the Orioles, we'd go in with a young pitcher.

And, you know, not we. I didn't play. But the team would go in. They'd start a young pitcher. And you would just see it on their face as soon as they got into trouble. Right? I remember one time Buckshaw Walter had an absolute conniption in his office. And he was like, this guy is going out there and taking a dump on the mound.

He said it in more swear words. But he was like screaming over and over. He's just out there. And he's scared. He's taking a dump on the mound. He said it in more swear words, but he was like screaming over and over. He's just out there and he's scared. He's taking a dump on the mound. I can't ever forget that. You do see it with a lot of these you can't quantify that.

You can't quantify the fact that a lot of these really elite pitchers, if you don't get to them in the first inning, you don't get to them at all because that's it. They're done. They're not going to succumb. Max Scherzer isn't going to all of a sudden give up 10 runs in an inning, right? He's just not. He's not going to fall apart in will. Some of these younger guys are. So there is that factor, right, where how do you quantify what Max Scherzer does versus a younger guy, right? How do you quantify a guy making his first start shaking at Yankee Stadium?

Like those things get missed a little bit. And a guy like Trey Mancini is a great one because nobody liked him. The numbers didn't like Trey Mancini. He was supposed to be a 4A guy. Well, here's a guy who had cancer, came back, and is probably the leading candidate for comeback player of the year just based on having stage three colon cancer. You know, the numbers account for a lot, but there's two things, in my opinion, that they really miss. One is the late bloomers. Two is the steroid guys, right? The guys who are cheating. There's no way to

account for that by that pure date. You can't project that. So there's a lot of things that we miss, right? We talk about the mental component a lot. That's something that, you know, you don't really see unless you're around these guys all the time. But I always think when we talk about this kind of stuff, like things that you miss, you miss the manager postgame saying this guy was so terrified he was taking a dump on the mound. These are the things you miss when you're just sitting at home and you're watching the game and you're wondering like, hey, why was that guy falling behind every single hitter? His stuff looked okay. Well, because he didn't have the wherewithal to correct it.

It's not just a physical game. Sports is not just a physical game. And I think most of us understand that. But we still, you know, we still try to pretend that that's what what it is that we can put all these numbers in and be fine and i think the teams who who really get it have that blend right and you know and dare you guys have talked about this all the time it's not just putting the numbers in or saying oh this guy's gonna have a big year because of x y and z well did you know that his dad died this winter did you know that you know he he didn't have enough money to train? Like, these are the side things that contribute to what you're seeing. I think I've, I, I for so long didn't have access for so long was a writer that,

you know, a basement blogger type, um, that, you know, I kind of just sometimes go to the numbers because I know the numbers and I, and I don't know those other things. Like I didn't have the access to know a lot of those other things. And I don't know that I always trust my ability to, um, parse body language correctly. Um, and to like understand exactly,

like we were talking about Logan Gilbert in his debut. He kind of had some weird body language but was that just him calming himself down was he was he was he successfully reigning it in or was he taking a dump on the mound like like how much of it um how much can we really see that without being in the dugout you know know, without really being up close. So I tend to just go towards the numbers because I don't. But but on the flip side, there are things that I do that aren't necessarily supported by numbers like I don't usually pitch a guy in a debut in fantasy baseball because I'm just like, I'd rather just see. First of all, I kind of want to see the pitch FX numbers.

I kind of want to see the movement numbers and numbers. I kind of want to see the movement numbers and the VLO numbers, which we don't have for minor leaguers. But I also just don't want to have the guy who's taking that dump on my roster. I just want to put him on the bench, see what happens, and not take the big L

if they weren't ready yet. And so that ends up sometimes I'm being conservative and I miss a week of a guy being on fire because I've got the guy on my bench. But there are certain things that I do that kind of try to approximate understanding the game the way a manager does. I think the manager has to include the numbers and the body language, the human aspect.

The manager will know if the guy had a big butt dust up last night. The manager will know if the guy came in hungover. That was the other part of Barry's question. For players, especially on the road, this could obviously happen at home too. If you have the Sunday day game after the Saturday night outings. That's time to rest the veteran coming in with the red eyes. Right. I mean, how real is that? It's just a regular rest day.

Nothing to see here. You're not going to forget the taking the dump on the mound thing, right? Once you hear it, it's hard to like ever forget that. I won't ever forget that. Is Buck actually a home movies fan? I don't know if anyone listening has ever

watched this show, but it's an animated adult swim cartoon from about the time I was in high school. It's almost 20 years old now. H. John Benjamin is one of the voices, of course. Bob's Burgers, Archer, a bunch of other stuff. He's voicing a soccer

coach, coaches little kids, but he basically talks like Buck and they bleep it. But I wonder if Buck actually, I mean, that's not a tough metaphor to pull on your own, not to say that Buck couldn't do it. But I just wonder if he actually watches that show, because that's exactly something that Coach McGurk would say on home movies. Anyway, to your point, Britt, I assume you've noticed players maybe not being at their peak on a Sunday

following a Saturday evening out on the town. Guys, I've seen guys not come in until like 20 minutes before we get out of there. I've heard about guys who don't come into games until like the seventh inning. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff. Miss the bus. Yeah.'s the bus sick uh ate some bad food uh yeah you know the whole gamut of excuses on the like symptoms but i don't know how you get the flu or is it not what it's just flu-like symptoms if it's so what does that mean he's just on the on the crapper all day

just not feeling well and having some sort of issue that you could have with the flu he drank too many shots last night bingo flu like symptoms sort of flu like it is sort of flu like so I don't know if you can quantify it in either case but those things are real Barry and you know we want to account for

them as much as we possibly can before we go I want to let everyone know $1 a month is the deal right now for a subscription. It's the best deal that we do all year. Theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels gets you in the door. On Twitter, she's at Britt underscore Giroli. He is at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Riper.

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