Rates & Barrels - Jackie Bradley Jr. joins The Crew, looking for Jake Odorizzi suitors, and spring training things we're excited about

Episode Date: March 5, 2021

Eno, Britt & DVR discuss Jackie Bradley Jr. in Milwaukee, the Brewers' improved defense and loaded bullpen, how things are shaping up in a four-team NL Central battle, potential suitors for Jake Odorizzi, spring training things they are excited to see, and more.  Rundown 1:03 Jackie Bradley Jr. to Milwaukee 10:55 A Four-Team Race in the NL Central 14:06 Jake Odorizzi to Houston? 20:26 Is Spring Training Worth the Risk? 26:04 What We're Hoping to See This Spring 33:59 Get Well Soon, Aaron Boone 36:42 Brad Hand and the Nats' Bullpen 39:58 Re-Thinking 90 Feet Between Bases Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Britt on Twitter: @Britt_Ghiroli Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Please fill out our listener survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/athleticaudiosurvey Subscribe to The Athletic for just $3.99/month to start: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It's Friday, March 5th. Derek Van Ryper, Brichirola Inoceros here with you on this Friday. We have a lot to talk about. We have Jackie Bradley Jr. joining the Brewers. We'll talk about the implications of that signing. Jake Odorizzi still needs a team. We'll try and find a fit for him.

We'll talk about some things we're hoping to see this spring now that the spring games are completely up and running. We'll talk about Aaron Boone and his recovery from surgery to receive a pacemaker. He's 47. What's a pacemaker at 47? That's terrifying for me as someone who's in my late 30s now. We also

got a question about the Nats bullpen and one of many ideas that we received from our great listeners of how to save baseball. And I think how we could save baseball this week is actually a pretty clever solution because it doesn't cost the owners any money. So it might actually work. Let's get going right away, guys. Let's start with this Jackie Bradley Jr. story. I'm glad you all wanted to talk about it.

It wasn't just me saying, let's talk about the Brewers. The Brewers are the most interesting thing in the world. Just me saying, let's talk about the Brewers. The Brewers are the most interesting thing in the world. I'm just starting to wonder if the defensive upgrades with both Colton Wong and now Jackie Bradley Jr. are really getting us to a point where some of the Brewers pitchers might be underrated. The impact that the defense has on that staff as a whole is significant. And those were massive upgrades with both of those players. Bradley, they have someone who can spell Lorenzo Kane in center field. He'll also play a ton of right field and kind of make Avisail Garcia more

of a, it's not a fourth outfielder. It's kind of like 3A and 3B, right? It's like Jelic is going to play a lot and the other three guys are going to share two spots. And it kind of works because all three of those guys are good defenders. And now if Kane gets hurt, they don't have to play Avisail Garcia in center field anymore, which seems like a really good thing because while he seemed to put forth a great effort at that position last year, that's not the optimal usage of his skills. So am I right to be very high on the Brewers defense, especially as they continue to make moves with Bradley being the latest addition? What do you think about this, Britt? I think you are right.

I think the Colton Wong signing kind of went a little under the radar. And we've talked on this podcast about all these teams that are loading up offensively and teams like the Mets, the Nationals, teams that are just getting kind of worse and have those question marks defensively. So I like what the Brewers are doing here. I think this is the way the Brewers have to do it. And honestly, what's kind of interesting is they've set themselves up because they didn't make this big splash. They can make a move at the deadline. You know, Ryan Braun can come out of his like semi-retirement and decide to play for a couple months. They can add an addition. We know

they're always good with expanded rosters that unless they actually change those rules, the Brewers seem to rule the final month of the season. So I thought the move was great. I think it's a great fit. And honestly, it's really the end of an era in Boston, right? The three Bs are all gone. Ben Attendee, Betts, Jackie Bradley Jr. I'm going to Red Sox camp tomorrow, guys.

And I'm like, who is on the team? Who can I talk to? Because it's just really, truly the end of an era, it feels like, who is on the team? Who can I talk to? Because it's just really, truly the end of an era, it feels like, in Boston. Yeah, you know, what's fun about the Brewers, too, is that I feel like there's an underrated, you know, by the market acquisition here in all three cases with Jackie Bradley Jr., Colton Wong, and Brett Anderson. the market does not like defense, it's not like paying for defense and the market does not like paying for bad strikeout rates

and ground ball rates and yet if you go and you get these guys in tandem you know maybe it can work out it also is not going to cost you very much the group has cost them like $25 million for three players if all three of those guys end up close to league average,

uh, they should be, uh, worth a lot more. So, um, you know, I, I think that, uh, it's a really cool way to construct a team. Um, and, uh, you know, just generally thinking about how good this team can be, you know, usually they cobble together a starting staff. Well, now it looks like they maybe have two aces or two, like, really good starting pitchers at the front. They'll cobble together the back end of the staff. You know, usually they have mix and match at a lot of positions. I would say that they do this year at third base. Fair. And that's about the only position I think that they're kind of

just trying to figure out. And they got Travis Shaw and Luis Urias, and I think they're hoping one of those guys works out. But maybe they'll mix and match. So the things that we held against the Brewers in the past I think are not as bad as they were in the past. I think there's two legitimate stars in front of that rotation. I think most of the positions have a guy.

And then the bullpen, which is always a strength, is more of a strength than even the depth charts will show at Fangraphs. The depth charts at Fangraphs say they're like a top five bullpen. Great. That sounds great. But when you look at how bullpens are used, they use the best relievers in games you're going to win. So like what are the brewers in hater games? It's like 95 and 5 or something. Yeah.

It's off the charts good. It's a crazy stat where like if they use hater, they win 95% of their games. So what you should really look at, I think, in terms of bullpen strength, is almost just the strength of the top four guys, in which case the Brewers become third in baseball. And if you really want to think about it, it might be just the strength of the top two guys. And if you look at the top two guys,

nobody in baseball has a better top two in their bullpen in terms of projections. The top two are projected for, I think, 3.1, 3.2 wins. Nobody in baseball, the Yankees have about the same with Chapman and Britton. And that's it. Those are the two best bullpens if you just look at the top two guys. And I think that's meaningful. They're going to win the games that they can win. So I think the interesting thing with the Brewers too is that compared to the Yankees who paid top dollar to get Aroldis Chapman and paid top dollar to get Zach Britton, Hayter's a guy they traded for, but he's still a guy they helped to develop. Devin Williams, they developed him entirely. They found Justin

Topa, who's going to be kind of a key piece for them as a flat ground app guy. They've got Freddy Peralta, who they acquired in a trade as a rookie ball pitcher, developed him. He might even be a starter. Freddy Peralta could be the third best starter on this team. That wouldn't even be that much of a surprise if the slider is as good as it was at the end of last season. If he keeps throwing that consistently, that unlocks a lot of possibilities for him. Drew Rasmussen is a guy that can get into the 98-99 range. He's a guy that came to their system with not a lot of prospect fanfare because there were doubts about his ability to stick as a starter, but he looks like a possible lights-out reliever. It is strength up top, but it's more depth than they've had in that bullpen in a few years. I think the back of

the rotation is definitely the question mark. Third base, you can get by with one spot where you're rotating guys. I think the other concern I have with this team, they resemble the 2020 Rays in terms of their biggest flaw offensively. They struck out too much last year. And that's been kind of part of who they've been as an offense for the better part of the last four or five years now. And I'm not sure they've completely remedied that. I mean, I think if you have a guy who's a free swinger at first base last year, like Justin Smoke got a lot of time there. You move Keston Hero there, and you put Wong in at second base. He brought the K rate down a little bit because Wong doesn't strike out a ton.

Hero could K less. Hero could bring the number down. Yelly should K less. Luis Dureas in the minors didn't strike out that much. So if he's playing more, maybe he brings it down. To me, that's still the problem. That's the trouble spot. They could be a feast or famine sort of offense

if they don't get a few of those things to happen on the development side. Yeah. Well, the Rays got pretty far, though. I mean, I think you would take the 2020 Rays, wouldn't you, more often than not? Also, those of you watching on YouTube, Derek is absolutely glowing right now. We have given eight minutes of unfiltered Brewers talk, which might be

probably a record on this show. And Derek looks absolutely vibrant right now. So energized by this Brewers baseball talk. I mentioned Freddy Peralta unprompted. I put on a really nice collared shirt. The sun is hitting my eyes in just the right way. So the blue is really coming through. It's all happening over here for me right now. I'm as happy as I

could be. You know, Justin Topo, that one, that was a fun little reference. I don't think I've seen a guy throw from that arm slot that hard. I would love to hear from people in the inbox or on Twitter because he throws sidearm, but he sits like 95, 96. When I think of sidearmers, I think of 89, 90. I'd love to hear. I guess Sale and Randy Johnson, pretty close to sidearm. Lower slot guys that throw really hard, sure.

They're so tall, though, you wonder if that factored in, right? If they're like, I don't know, if they were able to from here get, I don't know, still get that same velocity, same kind of movement. I don't know. It's interesting. Is that the next reliever? Sidearmers throwing like mid-90s? Because that seems crazy.

I don't even know. It doesn't look right. Like I was watching. He's also righty. So, you know, maybe it's just more common from the left. I don't know. But I'm really surprised. When I watch him, I'm like, okay, what?

95? 96? What? You know it's a good sign when your depth relievers are being featured in pitching ninja tweets. Like Aaron Ashby's been featured multiple times. Do you understand how happy that makes me when Aaron Ashby's out there getting swords from pitching ninja?

That's so great. Rasmussen popped on my... He made it into my top 200 starters. Let me see what I got here. I had it somewhere. He had a good stuff number. I'm so mad. I lost my pitching ranks.

I had to actually copy and paste my own pitching ranks off of The Athletic because of a computer mishap. And it's just so amateur. I feel so dumb. So anyway, Drew Rasmussen's stuff number disappeared somewhere. Well, maybe we'll find it again. If not, someday we have that to look forward to on a future episode. But I think the other question I have for you guys,

Pocota had the Brewers atop the NL Central. That was before they added Bradley. I'd assume that margin probably jumped up by a win, maybe a win and a half, possibly two. But the NL Central took a lot of heat this winter, some from us, but a lot from everybody for not spending money. Those were five franchises that didn't spend. The Brewers have spent a little. I mean, the Reds were trying to shed payroll via trade. The Cubs were doing the same thing. The Cardinals, of course, acquired Nolan Arenado and got the

Rockies to pay for him. So cool. Good job. But they're trying. I still see this as a pretty clear four-team race, though. Even though the Reds might not have quite the same momentum behind them as opening day gets closer that they would have had this time last year, I think this is a legitimate four-team race. Yeah, the Pirates obviously not in it right now, but do you think this is going to be a very competitive division even if we don't see a 95-win team emerging from this group? Yeah, that's fair because I think they're not a bunch of 95 win teams. They're a bunch of like 85 win teams at best that are going to duke it out. So hasn't the NL Central had the lowest win total for a while in terms of the division champion, right?

It seems like they do pretty consistently. They don't have the 100 game winner. They don't have like the best team in the NL. At least, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. I'm sure someone who's listening will. But it seems like that's always been the case, right? They've always kind of beat up on each other. And like 84 wins is the team that gets into the postseason. And everyone complains about it. But that is the NL Central. Yeah, the only team I can even think of that was kind of maybe an exception

would be like the peak Cubs teams from like four or five years ago. Because they were built more like a Dodgers or a good Nats team where you had strength all over the place and a clear advantage over the other teams in the division. I just think a lot of times the top three teams in the NL Central are all so close together that they kind of beat up on each other a little bit. And then a lot of those teams don't spend quite like teams on the coast do. So the high-end talent is a little bit lacking in some instances as well. Let's also not forget the good Cardinals teams. Those teams that went to the World Series, there were some hundred win teams in there. But that was a while back, though, no, I mean, I'm talking about the last recent history, the last couple years.

I mean, like just for example, last year, if you're talking about strength of schedule, you know, one of the things that was that went against Bauer was that he faced people with the lowest OPS among the Cy Young candidates. His strength of schedule was the easiest among the Cy Young candidates. And we saw that a little bit in terms of just pitchers in general. The Central was a great place to pitch last year. So I think that speaks a little bit to just the quality of the lineups, at least. Some people want to flip that and be like, well, the pitching was really great. I think it was more of the lineups. I mean, take a gander at Pittsburgh and Kansas City and check out some of those OVPs.

Yeah, the Tigers last year, they were a very soft landing spot for the pitchers of the two central divisions. I want to talk about Jake Odorizzi for a bit because, you know, we spoke about the Frambois Valdez injury a little bit on the Wednesday episode. We still don't have an official word. There was a report, I believe it was Thursday morning, from John Heyman suggesting that the first doctor who looked at Valdez recommended a season-ending surgery. He's getting a second opinion, so his season is not over yet, but that's at least in the range of outcomes right now. And we talked about Luis Garcia, Forrest Whitley, some of the young options they could turn to. The Astros were previously linked to Bradley, though. They have a hole in center field.

They didn't spend the money on Bradley. Now they have a potential hole where they need some innings in their rotation. Am I wrong to think that Jake Odorizzi to Houston actually makes a lot of sense? It seems like they have some extra money to spend. When I was looking at their finances, it looked like they could have fit somebody like jto real muto and they haven't

really spent that kind of level of cash so i i thought they had some money to spend um you know every owner is reacting differently to last year so we'll see if that's just if they're just uh pleading poverty and and not wanting to spend way, or if they think that their internal candidates, you know, Forrest Whitley, if he gets the command going, he definitely has the stuff. And then we liked I like Luis Garcia. I put him in my top 100, you know, in today's update. But Luis Garcia is not in camp. I don't I don't know why. You know, we always like doing this dance.

It's like, is it COVID? But it could be a visa. I don't know. But if that gets resolved quickly, I think between Garcia and Whitley, they'll probably just figure it out. Are you guys surprised that a fractured finger, which is what he has, right, is going to be a season-ending surgery? I was really surprised.

This isn't a 60 game season. Um, I was talking about this yesterday with someone. How is that a season ending surgery? It must be ligament. You know, the fracture itself, like I fractured my thumb and,

uh, like JT, JT Romuto has a fractured thumb. Uh, kind of like the one that I fractured playing basketball. And that's sort of three to eight, you know, because you're depending on if it's displaced or whatever, like you're just waiting for the bone to heal. And bones actually heal, from my understanding, bones heal better than ligaments.

And so either has a strain or maybe something worse. So I think he really shouldn't have pitched anymore after he got hit yeah you're right that's probably what did it too i guess what also is we don't really hear too much from pitchers right infielders trade turner play with broken fingers like you can't pitch with your finger not right it's going to affect every pitch so maybe that factors in right like if he was a short stop would it end his season probably not right. I just was a little surprised by the timeline, I guess. I definitely was too. I was like, oh, fractured finger, he'll be back in April. I thought four to six weeks was

I was going to ding him maybe three to four starts, drop him 15 or 20 spots among pitchers and say, hey, look, he's fine. You can get by for a few weeks without him. Then that report dropped and yikes. I just took him out of the rankings because I was just like, I don't know. Where am I supposed to put this guy? Yeah. Getting back to Odorizzi, though, what sucks for him, I think, is he signs with the team.

He's still got to quarantine for what? Five days? Something like that? He's going to be behind no matter what. He's behind no matter what. Teams are counting on him lowering his price. Meanwhile, what he really needs is an injury or two to drive up the price. So it's just a weird spot to be in, I think.

For a guy who was considered the top end of that second tier of pitchers. So it's really weird. I hope he signs somewhere soon. He's a guy who I think could fit with the Nationals. He really worked really well with Jim Hickey when he was a Ray. I think the Nationals, especially with the news about Jon Lester, not too certain what you're going to get there. What is the news about Jon Lester?

He's having an operation on his thyroid. Oh, that's right. He was really, really tired. I think every team could use – no team says we don't need jake or is he right like i think as good as he is he slots into pretty much every rotation is as an upgrade somewhere uh whether that's the front end the back end depends on the team's starting staff but i was just thinking about the fact that he could sign today and he's still

probably a week away from even being at camp yeah and i He's throwing in Florida at an academy. So he's not going to be the kind of guy that if he signs, we have to wait four weeks for him to get totally stretched out. I think there was always this misconception years ago that pitchers are just sitting at home on their couches and don't know what to do without the coaches telling them what to throw or when to throw. It's like, no, it's not like that. You could sign in mid-March, go through the quarantine, come out, throw like 75 pitches like, no, it's not like that. You could sign in mid-March, go through the quarantine, come out, throw like 75 pitches in a spring game a few days after that and be ready to go for opening day.

Maybe. I mean, game speed is a little bit different than coach. Like, you know, coach, you know, we talked about this a little bit with the quarantine. Like, even people were saying that game speed last year wasn't necessarily 100% game speed with COVID last year, so without the fans. I think Sean Doolittle told me once, I always have two or three ticks left in me

between spring and regular season because in spring, I'm just out there slapping ass and waving at people. Sounds like a Sean Doolittle thing to say. I mean, I think the older you get, the less bullets you try to fire at spring training. No one hates spring training as much as like Ryan Zimmerman, for example. The guy just doesn't want to waste any energy or any,

you really don't want to waste your bullets in spring training. If you're trying to make the team, okay, you can act like it's game seven. But I think the older you get, the more guys are like, Max Scherzer is like the, obviously like the outlier here. He shows up and it is the World Series 70, you know, 70 game. 70 pitch full-time sessions. Wants to grind your bones into dust. Yeah, like, so I think he's the exception.

But I think most guys as they get older, they're like, you know what, this is 200 games dust. Yeah. So I think he's the exception. But I think most guys, as they get older, they're like, you know what? This is 200 games here. This is absolutely – I'm not blowing it out here in this first spring game to light up the radar gun at Joker March in Stadium. It's just not happening. You know, I hate to write – I've written this before, and other people have written it a million times, the whole like let's shorten spring training thing. But I had, I had an interesting maybe angle on it. Maybe I'll write it.

But if you think about it, like, okay, from the owner's angle, the reason why we're not going to cut spring training, even though the beat writers would rather not have to be away from home for six weeks straight. The,

you know, the players are not getting paid. You know, they, they get just getting a stipend. They don't love spring training. You know, even fans, like it's nice. The players are not getting paid. They're just getting a stipend. They don't love spring training. Even fans. It's nice that fans are showing up now,

but I think on an average spring training game, if your team is not that great, there's not that many fans there either. But it adds up, and the owners get gate receipts for a lot, and they're not paying as much. They're paying their coaching staff, but they're not paying their players. And so it has to be seen as a win for owners.

However, Stephen A. Smith, however... Trying to get your own eight mil, aren't you? Yeah, he is. That was really bad. What happened to the rundown? I thought we were talking about LeBron all day. That's right. Trying to get that money, dude.

Trying to get that $8 million a year. Shout out to Skip, I guess. Good for you if you can play a villain on TV and get $8 million a year. I'm never going to shout out Skip Bayless. No, I don't care. It's not a real shout out. It's steeped in rage. Jealousy.

$8 million a year, man. Here's my dollars a year man here's my point though here's my point you lose a lot with injuries you're gonna do a six-week semi-game situation and you're gonna lose a lot of money with injuries how much this is what i'm actually asking around to find and i can't find it on Google. The Google machine's not helping me. How much money are they making, the owners, in spring, right? It can't be lots. It's a little bit, and that's why they like it, but it can't be like lots and lots. Now, take that money and subtract the injury losses you've got. If JTL Maruto loses a month, put that salary on there. If Franck Vivaldi loses the whole month, put that production on there. So you're losing with injuries.

I mean, maybe you could make the financial case where ownership is like, okay, yeah, four weeks is okay. Yeah, I think you should write that. That's interesting. Yeah, I think four weeks is a good medium, I guess. Here's the other thing this year, guys. Most teams aren't broadcasting a lot of their games because of budget cuts. So they're also not making the TV money.

So I guess I'm wondering what the point is. They're making some gate. Let's be honest. These are small stadiums. Most teams are not broadcasting all the games. Like a handful. Like Orioles, Nationals, mass and i don't know if they're doing any uh so teams so you're not building excitement people aren't like tuning in at home up north like dreaming of opening day i was trying to watch man i thought like half the games yesterday were not televised

i was looking through mlb tv and i was like what it's all radio. Exactly. So to me, that to me would seem like the money source, right? Everything is driven by TV, except clearly not because it's the first hacks they make to spring training. Don't want to send people down there. So are they making a lot of money? I don't think so. Fair question to ask because it doesn't align with how players need to prepare for the season. So if players hate it, if owners aren't really making that much money, why are we doing this this way? Right. I mean, there's a massive amount of risk there. I'm going to try and find out how much they're making because I don't think it makes sense. If you talk to hitters, they say, I need two to three weeks. It's like a rehab. If they've been gone for injury for a long time, when they come back, sometimes they're even only the minors for like a week you know trying to get their timing back and i think pitchers yes they do need to stretch out however you know they're doing a lot of work uh in these

independent labs with these you know with their own pitching coaches you know in their own facilities uh if you ask them to show up ready to pitch two innings instead of one in a game, you could cut two weeks. You could cut that first time through. So, you know. I like that, you know. A month, four weeks, like March is spring training then we start the season. That's sort of

what it is this year though, huh? Well, yeah, it started late. Pitchers were... I guess it's because they were arguing. Yeah, they've kind of condensed it down. They were arguing. They're always arguing. Yeah, constantly arguing.

But spring training started back when being a baseball player wasn't a full-time job. So coming in and running and stretching and doing those things was the actual start of the season for players. It was the end of working in a factory season and the beginning of being a baseball player season. It's obviously not like that anymore. So it's like maybe adapt this to kind of fit the game that has changed quite a bit over the last 150 years. Did you hear Chris Bryant on ESPN talking about standing in cleats?

No, but I mean, I'm not making that up. It's real. Right. What'd he say? After we talked about it, Chris Bryant said that he'll stand in his driveway

in cleats for a couple days at a time in preparation for the season just to be standing in cleats. You heard it here first. If I had just done that as a kid, I would have been less sore all the time when sports season started. That's brilliant.

Absolutely brilliant. After just ripping on spring training for being outdated by 100 years, I do want to ask you, what are you hoping to see this spring? It could be a player. It could be a team. It could be anything. I mean, there are so many fun storylines in baseball this time of year. Shohei Ohtani just murdered a ball over the batter's eye on Wednesday. And I want to see how he pitches. He's pitching Friday afternoons. By the time people listen to this show,

there's a good chance he will have already made that spring pitching debut. I want to see what he looks like as a pitcher because it was hard to watch him in the two starts that he made last season. There was just no command whatsoever. And if we can get the debut Otani back, the 2018 Otani, I think that is now, if we get that guy back back he's one of the must-see players in the game and i think i'm rooting for it it's chaos for us in the fantasy world but a two-way player that plays that well on both sides is so rare we may never see a player like shohei otani again so i want him to get back to what we saw just three years ago yeah i think that would be really fun the impression I get from sourcing and just sort of looking at him is that he kind of was just a guy who crushed

the weights I don't think the people understood that he was kind of just an athlete that just crushed weights and was like just a behemoth that ran real fast his sprint speeds were amazing, could throw real fast. I don't think it was as refined as it could have been.

And now he spent the offseason. There's some fabulous reporting by Fabian about how he went to driveline, but he also went to a bunch of facilities in Japan, tried to refine his hitting mechanics and his pitching mechanics. And I'd love to see if that improves his command, if the shape on his pitches have changed. And he also fits into the category of what I'm looking for, which is I want to see these young players that didn't have a minor league season.

I want to see all these prospects. I want to see the youngest players. I want to see the debuts. I want to see people we haven't seen play any ball, that we don't even have futures game B you know, B roll of, you know, that sort of stuff. I want to see, you know, Jared Kalnick, Kalnick, Kalnick, Jared Kalnick, murdered a ball, right? And I made a, I made a thing of it. I wish I had audio on it, but the announcer was, was interviewing Scott Cervais. And he was like, you know, given the stuff that happened with your executive

and the way players are talking about minor league players and bringing them up, what is your philosophy about bringing players up out of the minor leagues? And Scott Cervais says, the players will let you know when they're ready. And when he finishes saying that, Kelnick hits an opposite field bomb! Just absolute tater. And Cervais, like, realizes the irony of what has just happened.

And he can't help himself but flip into front office mode. He goes, well, you know, the wind's blowing out a little bit today, but that was a really good hit from Kelnick. Oh, God. He's going to have to make the team. If he's good enough.

If he keeps this up, he's going to have to make the team, or people are really going to cry. I think that now the front office is disseminating information. I saw a thing. Oh, Taylor Trammell might be playing his way into the left field situation in Seattle. Oh, really? Not some other guy? Weird. be playing his way into the left field situation in Seattle. Oh, really? Really? Not some other guy? Weird.

So you can have Taylor Trammell as your opening day left fielder and then after a few weeks send him down and then bring up the other guy. Hmm. Weird. Yeah, manage two guys. Why don't you just trade Mitch Hanegar already? Damn it.

But he's not the only guy. I want to see even Taylor Trammell. I want to see these guys. Haseong Kim, I want to see all the guys who debut. I want to see guys we haven't seen before, particularly the minor leagues. I want to see how the layoff has affected them. I want to see Whitley.

I want to see all those guys. Yeah, I do wish it was more widely available right now to watch these spring games and kind of flip around on TV to see them. What's unfortunate to me, guys, I guess, is because of the way the access is, is you're only... A lot of those feel-good stories we usually get

out of spring are now by the wayside. If they're not available on Zoom, we're not getting it. The guy whose lifelong dream was just being big league camp, he's not doing a zoom with the media no one's requesting him so as like you know knows like the best part of spring training is going to a camp like kind of like sidling up to like the guys who don't have anybody by them yeah just talking to people and and writing those feel good stories about the guy who overcame all the odds, who's not going to make the team. You know, these great backstories of guys who are nobodies, and that gets lost because they're not the stars. They're not the ones that fans normally care about. You have to make them care. And just

the way it's set up this year, you just can't do that. You have to go to camp and basically say, here's who I want to talk to, rather than organically have the hitting coach be like, hey, did you see this guy? What a story. And then you follow up. Right. So I think that's, that's an unfortunate piece. Yeah. Another thing that I think spring is great for are these like weird thought pieces. It describes most of my writing, but you know, like why, you know, why don't we have good pitchers throw BP, you know,

or like, or why do you do BP? Or why do you do this? Or why do you do that? You can have these stupid conversations with players and write weird pieces, but you ask that on a Zoom? Am I going to really ask the pitching coach on a Zoom in front of everybody else? Why don't you guys have someone better throwing BP than you? And then, and like,

what's he going to say in front of everybody? I gotta hate the Zooms, man. I hate the Zooms so bad. Yeah, agreed. And like, you can't ask, like in spring training some days, like I'd have some days I'd be totally useless, but some days I'd have like a hot day.'d get like five six seven guys and you're like oh man this is great on one thing and you could bang out a story uh that's literally impossible right now you ask somebody something is on twitter immediately if their answer is half decent uh you know because the rest of the group is listening and then also you're not getting that volume of guys. So it's, yeah. You can't even really do, like, you know, follow-ups or, you know, like, you know, the fluff question first to get them in the good mood. And then, you know, kind of like, you know, you know,

hide your punch till the end, you know, sort of deal, you know? Like, you can't do, the art of interviewing is just, well, we're complaining about our craft. Let's not do that. Nobody else cares. They want our jobs. jobs yeah it's not even a complaint it's that i enjoy bringing those stories to people right and those stories are i feel bad for the guy who like will never be in a big league spring training camp again this was his yeah you're my guinea pig i'm not planning on going until i i hear about what your experience is like the next week. If it's just bad hotels, which I can see already.

That looks fine. Excuse me. I can see the beach from my window, Eno. Okay. Okay. That's better than what I would do in Phoenix already. Yeah, you rough it pretty bad. I can see the strip mall from my hotel. If I look out this window. I can see the strip mall from my hotel.

If I look out this window, I can see another strip mall. Yeah, right. That's like 98% of Phoenix. Sorry, Phoenix. I love it. I love it. There's so much baseball. Don't get mad at me.

No, there's a ton of beautiful views in Phoenix, but there are just 10 times as many less beautiful views. Strip malls. Yeah, there's a lot of strip malls. Just a checkerboard of strip malls. One other story that surprised me when I saw this roll by this week, Aaron Boone is recovering from surgery to receive a pacemaker. As I mentioned earlier, he's only 47 years old.

That's what surprised me by it. I mean, that's not that much older than me. By all accounts, he was tweeting earlier today. It seems to be making a full recovery and will be back relatively soon. But this came out of relative nowhere, didn't it? Well, I don't think the baseball lifestyle is good for you. True. Breaking news. Breaking news.

Yeah, breaking news. I mean, also, I don't know. I mean, the FaceMakers, it's like sometimes it's just a congenital kind of you were headed there anyway. It's there to, you know, because you have like bad rhythms or whatever. I'm not a doctor, obviously. Dr. Nick says you've got the bad rhythms. Hey, everybody. Nick says you got the bad rhythms.

Hey, everybody. Every six months, you admit you're not a doctor because we're all very suspicious of you being a doctor on the side but not telling us. Are you a doctor? No, it's more like the

disclaimers you got to do. Well, you know, I said I should get a dispacemaker, so I should get a disc pacemaker. Going to sue him now. No, it is scary with Aaron Boone. I do wish him well. We've gone off the rails. Yeah, we really have.

I do wish him well. It's scary. Davey Martinez with the Nats in 2019 had a heart issue down the stretch. And basically, they told him, like, you can't get stressed. And I think that's really like telling these guys you can't breathe air. You're right. Because the whole nature of their life is stress. So, yeah, it's a. There's a thing in Major League where they make the guy,

they don't let him watch the games, the manager. Yeah. In Major League 2. It's one of them. But, yeah, it's the same kind of. I mean, what's he gonna do so i am glad it seems like the pacemaker seems like they caught stuff early now they're monitoring i'm sure he's gonna have to make some adjustments maybe but uh at least really scary 47

yeah definitely one of those things that i i was not expecting to see but you're right the lifestyle of being a manager after a long career as a player and being a second or third generation player where you've been around the game your whole life, you've probably eaten a lot of hot dogs if you are a third generation baseball player. And as I'm told, I'm not a nutritionist, not a PhD in nutrition. Hot dogs, I think, are pretty bad for your heart. All right. we had a couple questions come in. One's more of a solution to baseball's be more interesting problem that we talk about. And one is a question about the Nats bullpen.

Let's knock out the Nats bullpen question real quick. Do you envision the Nats adding a left-handed reliever before the season begins? Other than Brad Hand, they don't seem to have a lot of other options from that side. Would be interested to hear your thoughts. I don't think they need to add another lefty for Brad Hand to close, if that's what this question is driving at. I think they brought Hand in for some stability. But do you guys see this pen being more of like 75-25,

where Hand gets the bulk of the save chances, and then someone else comes in and gets the rest? That's how I see it. And I think think you're right i don't think they go and get a lefty because they only have brad hand this was a bullpen that only had sean doolittle for a while uh the astros are another team that you know you were starting to see kind of that shift where you don't need like x amount of lefties right it seems like now that you just want people that are going to get guys out they're going to you know where you're not because of the the minimum rule with the batters,

you're moving away from that specialist role a little bit. And so I don't think they're going to go out and get another lefty. I think you're right. It's probably hand closing most days. If they need it, they have guys who have closed. They've got Daniel Hudson. They've got Will Harris. They've got other guys that they can use.

Hannah Rainey is kind of seen as their future closer. So I think the bullpen, if they stay healthy and actually perform, like Harris and Hudson were really bad to start the season, make of that what you will because of a 60-game season, I think the bullpen is going to be a strength. And I would say don't just throw a lefty in there to throw a lefty in there. You'd rather a good righty than just a bad lefty, right? As the old saying goes, or at least the saying in baseball goes.

It's even more true now with the three-batter rule or whatever, I think, because you've got to be able to, you can't just, we just don't have those one loogies anymore. That's my favorite term, too. I love saying loogie. Pour one out for the loogies. Yeah, pour one out for the loogies yeah pouring out for the loogies but uh if you do that then i saw a very i tried to look at this it wasn't enough to write about but i saw

this very slight trend towards relievers throwing more pitches too and i think that's because we're seeing um you know we haven't expanded in a while we're seeing some of the guys who might start in the past are in the bullpen now. And if you talk to relievers, they talk about, it's just better for me to have more pitches. Why did Adam Adovito try to develop a cutter when he had one of the craziest, nastiest sinker slider combos in baseball? Well, because the batters were starting to sit on one or the other and he needed to have a third thing, a wrinkle, a pitch he could throw in the strike zone, you know? So I feel like if pitchers are just going, if relievers are going to add more pitches and get more people out, that's fine. I do think it might mean, and this is sort of a fantasy angle, it

might mean that somebody other than hand is going to get saves. Because I think there's going to be times when they're like, oh, well, the two big masher lefties are up in the eighth. And I think that we want to use Hand here and finish it out with Hudson or finish it out with Harris or Randy. I think having those three righties means that someday Hand is going to pitch in the eighth. I think you guys nailed it. I think that's the good state of the state of the Nats bullpen at this point. Let's get to this email from Kyle real quick.

He gave us a lot of reasons why he thinks this would work, but he sent us a proposal to shorten the distance between bases to 85 feet, which does a lot of different things, right? It increases the chances of successfully stealing bases, which makes steals a bigger part of the game. It's going to increase the number of hits. Balls in play are going to be rewarded a little bit more, right? There's a lot of things that would end up happening as a result of a change like that. And it passes the doesn't cost any money test. All the things we think about that would make baseball better would probably hurt

the owners, right? It would cost them money to do things that we want them to do. This is just a tweak that it doesn't mess with the pitcher at all too, right? We always talk about maybe lowering the mound. There's no injury component, right? Like I can't think of what the injury is. Maybe you can make the bases softer too. If you made the bases, whatever it is, you know, made the base softer, made them just plates or whatever, like did something to reduce injury. You could even reduce injury if you added that part but just

just changing the length i don't think has an has an injury component to it i'm actually surprised they didn't adopt the softball the the you know adult softball put a second first base in like just to avoid collisions around the bag and stuff i'm surprised major league baseball didn't just do that years ago and i mean obviously you could round first base faster that way instead of what they did which is move the base the base is in fair territory right now right or half and half or something you know it used to be half and half and they moved it in fair so now uh like a right-handed hitter has to run to the box and then

get back in fair territory. Anyway. So it's important we're on a video so I can make a funny angled gesture with my hand that doesn't make any sense because the planes are all wrong. But can you think of anything that players wouldn't like about this, Britt? It seems like kind of a win-win solution to increase offense a bit.

I guess the pitchers wouldn't like it. Well, yeah, the pitchers don't want anything that's going to allow more runs to score, but this seems like a good thing. It's less of a question and more of a proposed change. But, yeah, I'd have to look at it and really think about it. I don't think it has any huge drawbacks from the the jump i mean people always hate change right but to me i'm kind of i'm kind of for it i read it and i was like cool it kind of seems like a good idea yeah very well very well thought out very well researched email that kyle sent us so we're on board kyle pass it

on to the powers that be uh you know maybe we'll try to bring it up in passing to people that could hate it and find out why they would hate it. But nothing stands out to us as far as a reason why Major League Baseball couldn't put the bases a little bit closer together. Except it's always been 90. Right. Like, why? I don't even know why.

I got an old Ken Burns baseball book here. Maybe it tells me in there why the bases are 90 feet apart. I don't think it's always been 90. And I've now heard from two sources that it is not actually 90 in every park. What? They got that inconsistent from

park to park? I was sitting on this for a long time thinking, oh, this is going to be a great, you know, expose. I'm going to write this. I'm going to figure it out. And then I realized there's no way, A, in COVID times, and B, just in regular times, that anybody on that grounds crew is going to figure it out. And then I realized there's no way, A, in COVID times, and B, just in regular times, that anybody on that grounds crew is going to let me anywhere near the bag. What's the bag?

You know, the bag's not in, and the whole plate's not in until game time. And they're not going to let me walk on the field and be like, excuse me, can I just measure this real quick? Good point. Good point indeed. We have to run. to run we gotta go but if you want to subscribe to the athletic 399 a month to get you in the door theathletic.com slash rates and barrels you can read the great piece that brit had earlier this week with katie strang a follow-up on what cleveland knew about the mickey calloway situation tons of good stuff there brit also

has a great story about moGaba that got some hardware. Congratulations. That's great. Congrats on that, Britt. Thanks, guys. Keep killing it. On Twitter, she's at Britt underscore Droli. He is at Eno Saris.

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