Rates & Barrels - The best shape of our lives, another entry into baseball's weird injury club, and Seattle's bright future

Episode Date: February 26, 2021

Eno, Britt & DVR discuss the value of players being in the 'best shape of their life', Spencer Torkelson's arrival in the Weird Injury Club, and say goodbye to Kevin Mather and hello to a great group of young players on the brink of contributing in Seattle.  Rundown 3:19 Who Isn't In the Best Shape of His or Her Life Right Now? 10:29 What Do the Numbers Say? 19:51 Spencer Torkelson Joins the Weird Injury Club (We're All Members) 31:02 Goodbye, Kevin Mather. Hello, Great Players En Route to Seattle 42:55 Remember Four-Man Rotations? 53:07 Lowering IP Floors 56:23 The Original Ben Zobrist 61:34 February Beer of the Month Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Britt on Twitter: @Britt_Ghiroli Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper 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

This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one. Just start moving with the Peloton Bike, Bike Plus, Tread, Row, Guide, or App. There are thousands of classes and over 50 Peloton instructors ready to support you from the beginning. Remember, doing something is everything. Rent the Peloton Bike or Bike Plus today at onepeloton.ca slash bike slash rentals. All access memberships separate. Terms apply. Welcome to Rated Barrels. It's Friday, February 26th. Derek Van Ryper, Richie Rolla, Eno Saris here with you on this Friday, on this episode.

We discuss whether or not it matters to be in the best shape of your life at the beginning of spring training. Of course, we're seeing all of the best shape of his life stories rolling in this week. We have Spencer Torkelson joining the Weird Injury Club. We'll talk about how he injured himself. We'll say goodbye to Kevin Mather. We will also take a look at a question about four-man rotations from Oren, kind of going back in time a little bit there. Also had a few follow-ups, one suggesting that we have an original Ben Zobris to talk about. So we'll get to that later on in this episode as well. Britt, how's it going for you on this Friday?

Oh, it's going well. It's going well. It's nice to see you guys. It's nice for it to be Friday. This time next week, guys, I will be in Florida. It's exciting. I will be jealous. I will be in Florida.

It's exciting. I will be jealous. How's your Friday going so far? It's good. I was just thinking about this. I may have mental problems. I was on a podcast last night or yesterday afternoon, the Auto New podcast, and I slipped into announcer voice, which anybody listening to this knows I have the old timey announcer voice.

And I slipped into it and back out of it. And then somebody on the podcast said, what was that voice? And I was like, I don't know what you're talking about. So I just did it for a little bit without even thinking about it. So, uh, yeah, you guys have wrecked my brain.

Apparently. Oh, we've, we've wrecked your brain. Let's stick with that. Let's clear the air real quick on this one. What do you think about when you take your dog for a walk? Oh yeah.

Right. Uh, usually I think about when you take your dog for a walk? Usually I think about how many steps do I have because my husband and I try to hit 10,000 a day. Right now I'm sitting at just about 5k and I'm always like, all right, how many more, how many steps have we gone? How many more do we have left? My first question was, is it forced calisthenics for the dog? So you're answering that one right there. You're like, dog, I need another thousand steps. The dog's like, no, I want to go back in. It's cold.

Pretty much. Our dog would basically just sleep all day if you let him. So, yes, it's basically me yelling and dragging my dog around our neighborhood. That's where it all started. All right. Well, you're not thinking about being Truman Showed and you're not thinking about apocalypse survival techniques. So I feel like that's a lot more normal than both of us. Easily the most normal of the three of us.

Yeah, Wednesday's episode, if you didn't catch the intro to that, we got deep inside the mind of Eno Saris. I'm not proud. Wasn't your best moment on the show, but let's talk about the common refrain that we see on baseball Twitter and in baseball stories this time of year. Best shape of his life. And I saw, I thought, the most impressive transformation, at least of this offseason, from one Avisail Garcia. And if I were to describe the typical Avisail Garcia body type, I would say it's that he's built kind of like an NFL tight end. Like broad shoulders, pretty thick legs, looks like a guy that could play other sports.

Linebacker. He's like a linebacker, a tight end or a linebacker. He's a big guy, but he moves well. And that's reflected in sprint speed. You see pretty good power. It's kind of on a prorated basis because we don't often get full 150 plus game seasons from him, but he looks like a different person in the videos. First, there was a tweet from Sophia Minnert. She is on the field for the Brewers. And it's interesting because I didn't think Garcia at this stage of his career could completely change his body. You expect this from someone kind of in their earlier mid-20s.

Garcia is like in that age 30 window where it's like you kind of feel like he is what he is but 30 pounds from cutting out sugars and salts during the week which you know it's just cutting out the excess sugar and the excess salt cutting out the good stuff cutting out the stuff that we all love but this dude's pants don't look like they fit anymore like i mean like this is a big like he looks trim and i wondered like how many good examples do we have of players who have significantly transformed their bodies? A lot of times this is just lost 10 pounds, lost 15 pounds, add a little bit of muscle, right? Like lean guys get a little bigger. Big guys get a little leaner.

It's sort of the normal ebb and flow of getting ready for a season. But when does it move the needle for you? When do you guys see a player and say, whoa, this is actually different? Because Garcia was one of those rare examples for me where I said, this is interesting and I wonder how it might actually impact his performance, probably in a positive way or possibly in a negative way. Because if power is one of your strengths and you lean up too much, you might lose some power. It's at least possible that you could lose a skill even though your body is healthier. What do you think about this, Britt? Have you seen legitimate transformations that have paid off in a big way over the time that you've covered teams?

Not that much. If we're talking about this year, I think Vlad Guerrero Jr. deserves to be in the conversation, right? He gave up a rip-off, which anyone who's ever had no rip-off, like that's a tough thing to give up. I kind of have thought about the list of guys who have transformed. And a lot of times, like you were saying, Derek, it actually doesn't help. Victor Robles added a lot of weight last year to add some power. And instead he got slow and fat.

So now this year he has lost all that weight from what we can see, and they're hoping that he's gained back the foot speed and gained back some of the athleticism that he had. So I think the drastic changes don't really stick, and there's a reason for that because in our society, how many people do you know who have lost drastic amounts of weight and kept it all off, right? The 10, 15 pounds or even five pounds

are more in that realistic, okay, I added some muscle, I lost some fat, this is going to help me without being significant. I think sometimes guys can get too into wanting to add muscle, not realizing that every pound on your body, whether it's fat or muscle, is five pounds on your knees, right?

So you really have to be careful with that. And there's a lot of guys that I've talked to who don't lift to get big and bulky or don't lift to add muscle until they're done with playing baseball. Because baseball players, you know, you look at guys like Bartolo Colon, like that's the absolute extreme. But baseball players don't need to be these like shredded guys. think about david lowe who used to play was never really much of a player was in the espn body the uh body issue talking about how he never had an injury well that's great he also never really played so like like which way do you want it you know that's what i mean that's what i feel like derek dietrich with his shirt off whoo like there are some yes

yeah so there are there are some good i there's some good to come of it i think but for the most part these drastic things uh usually either one don't pan out uh or two just simply don't last right you see these guys kind of revert somewhere back into the middle because whatever they did in the off season three hours a day running and stuff and stuff, you don't have that time during the season. Offseason training is totally different than in-season training. So you don't have the time to be lifting for three hours after a game, nor do you want to because you won't have the recovery to play nine innings the next day. the next day. Yeah, I have heard like pitchers or, you know, because pitchers in particular can't really do as much lifting during the season because there's just, they have that, that hyper schedule. But I think it actually may be hitters too. I think I've heard of some people

saying, I want to put on weight at the big, you know, in the off season so that I can kind of lose it through the season. You know what I mean? Like that I, that I, you know, so that I'm in a better position to lose it through the season. I guess that's sort of like Survivor mentality. But when I watch Survivor, it's actually not the guys that come in big and hope to lose it over the time they're there that do the best athletically in Survivor. It's actually the guys who come in lean. The guys who come in lean. I'm sorry.

People don't know this about me. I watched Survivor for like 12 years. Awful. It's a weird little factoid. But anyway. I have no idea. This is the second time in my life I've worked alongside someone

who is a huge Survivor fan and I didn't find out until years later. The first time it happened, my coworker left his job at Rotowire to go work on the dream team for Survivor fan, and I didn't find out until years later. The first time it happened, my co-worker left his job at Rotowire to go work on the Dream Team for Survivor. Eno probably knows what that is already. For those who don't know, the Dream Team is a group that actually tests out the games

on Survivor and tries to break them to make sure the contestants won't break the games when they play them on the show. So they get to go on location, they get to be part of the production team, and he's kind of worked his way up. I think he still works with the production company that makes Survivor. That's fun, man. You're traveling to the crazy places,

and you don't have to do the whole mental aspect of Survivor, and you don't actually have to sleep out there like they're doing. You're sleeping in a bed. Yeah, he's seen the whole world. So actually, it was a great career choice for him. So shout out to Zach if he's listening to this podcast. I mean, that's one of the coolest jobs I know about. But I had no idea he even watched the show until he came in to tell us, hey, guys, I'm leaving the company.

I'm going to go work on Survivor. That's great. That's awesome. My point is that I think I'm almost into the I lost weight idea. You know, like Eugenio Suarez lost 30 pounds. It was a rip us. And he gave up beer giving up beer or scaling back on beer well I hope he didn't give it up completely but either way he lost some weight and I think that's good Ben Lindbergh actually tried to look into this numbers wise he had a sample of about 200 best shape of his lifers um and he found almost no effect uh on the batting side on the batting side he found no effect

what's that what are you laughing i'm laughing at this because there's no effect like it's such a it's such a demoralizing study on wellness well, no. 200, but it's part of this is the way it's reported. 200 people that were in the best state of their life and it didn't matter. There's some self-reporting happening here. And we're talking about people

who've already sort of hit various athletic peaks in the first place that they may have just been staving off some decline. Like there's any number of things that could happen. Okay, so there was

one little finding, which was they stayed on the field more. That's something. And the idea is that a lot of best shape of lifers are reacting to a season in which they were hurt. I can see. I do agree with that. Here's like the whole best shape of their life thing.

It just seems like something everyone says in spring training to prove that they didn't just sit on the couch and eat Pringles. But yeah, I want to see if Mike Moustakas said he was in the best shape of his life last year because he was very demonstrably not. So the whole premise is built on kind of a subjective thing. So good for Ben for investigating it. But the whole thing is kind of like to me just totally subjective, right? Like I could say I'm in the best shape of my life this spring. I have virtually been the same size since high school, right? So have I'm in the best shape of my life this spring. I have virtually been the same size since high school, right? So have I been in the best shape of my life every spring since high school?

No. It's just like I'm around the same size I've been working out. Like, I don't know. I could talk about this all day because, as you guys know, for people who don't know, I am an avid power lifter. I swam in college. I am big into, like, injuries and working out and this kind of thing. And you mentioned the pitchers, Zeno. And it's interesting to me because a lot of pitchers have routines now because of the every fifth day. Corey Kluber will lift weights. This is kind of

unusual after he pitches because he has found that he can't recover if he does it the next day. So these guys are constantly operating on that rest-recover schedule, the starting pitchers. Whereas if you're a position player playing every day, I know a lot of guys that just go – When do you do it? Right. A lot of guys just do the pump,

or they just do a little bit of squats or legs afterwards. But really, it's more the pitchers who can stay on any kind of schedule. We've heard about Max Scherzer and his grueling secret running routine. I think for players, it's less the lifting and more of that like the zero to 60, the power. That's what goes quickly. You can maintain strength for a long amount of time, but after like a week of not sprinting, you lose it. And baseball is a game of like quick twitch, right? You're quickly advancing from first to third. You're quickly running down the line. You're quickly chasing a ball in the outfield. That speaks to like calf injuries being a big

deal, I guess. Right. So I think that that is the more important thing that they try to maintain during the season. You're not going to add 50 pounds to your back squat, but it's fun to watch all those videos of guys like deadlifting, right? 500, 600 pounds. Those guys aren't doing that. Gassiel Puig is doing ridiculous things again i mean he's doing things that just look like ridiculous but is he also taking questionable substances because he's not in mlb right now because guys always talk about that like those like not not steroids per se but like the jack 3d or the stuff that's got like questionable the pre-workout powders with questionable stuff that doesn't get by mlb as soon as guys get out of baseball they're like yeah time

to take the questionable pre-workout powders. Like time to get huge. You know, so you kind of wonder. Yeah, well, I mean, there was a little bit of effect with pitchers too. Like there might've been something with pitchers being in the best shape of their life. So it's interesting to think about their schedule

and how being in the best shape of your life might affect your, you know, like Brandon McCarthy always told me that he couldn't, he couldn't gain weight, you know, he would only lose weight. So he tried a couple of times to come in a little bit bigger because he would just lose weight over the whole season. And he thought it might be better to like come in a little bit heavier just to lose it. But, you know, I, I, uh, I can't, I can't imagine, you know, you do, you, you throw your hundred pitches, it's exhausting. You have your whole, you do your game game day, and then you go back down and lift because, you know, that's what your

schedule says. That's yeah. I guess you sleep well that night. Yeah. When else could you lift though? If you're in Corey Kluber's position? You don't want to be sore or extremely tight going into a start. So if your recovery window is a couple of days, getting it in after you pitch, as difficult as that probably is, that's an unusual solution to a problem that I'm sure a lot of pitchers solve by saying, I'm just not going to do those lifts in season. And you lose something by not doing those lifts in season. But yeah, this is just one of those topics that it's interesting that there's no significant impact. If you're like me, by the way, and you heard about Arepas being cut out of a diet, good news is AJ Puck's been eating them all because he was living with Jesus Lizardo. I saw that from Alex Coffey on Friday morning. Is this a reverse best shape of life situation? He's living his best life. If you're eating those, you're in a happy place. And I think AJ Puck's one of those guys that's

really tall. So adding a little mass is probably not the worst thing for him. It makes me sad. It makes me sad that they had to give up all this stuff to eat. You know why? Because you're working out so much. Like you're burning so much. Couldn't you just eat what you want during that time? Are they though? Because like pitchers, yeah.

But think about baseball as a whole. Think about outfielders. A lot of sitting down. A lot of standing. A lot of like not real, like short bursts, like we talked about. It's not soccer. Soccer players are eating as many arepas as they can, right? Yeah, because they're running around all day.

They run like 13 miles a game. You know that? It's crazy. Like soccer, like rugby, swimming. When I was swimming, I couldn't eat enough. Oh, my God. It's just insane. So I think baseball.

Swimming burns so much. Yeah baseball, they kind of do. Swimming burns so much. Yeah, like you kind of do have to watch it in baseball, especially as you get older, right? Like Nelson Cruz is a great example. That guy works out like a maniac. He's in terrific shape. He's in his 40s. He's doing stuff like posting stuff on Instagram that like I'm just like, how?

How is he even still doing these things at that age? You know, so I think baseball is a little different in terms of calories burned and preventative stuff. But what's funny is we mentioned there was no, like, it didn't really matter. It doesn't make them any better. I'm always reminded of the Orioles, like forever. They would always make fun of Wayne Kirby, who played for a long time in Cleveland, a bunch of other places.

He's now in San Diego as a coach. And he was always like, well, I never got hurt. And they're like, well, yeah, you't strain fat so i mean that's a good point that's cold donaldson did say on his uh zoom the other day that like baseball there's so much sitting in baseball that you know that you have to kind of uh that's like, I want to play every day. But there is some sort of like settling into baseball shape, and he then said something about sitting. So it's like sitting and not doing anything is part of baseball shape. What?

Just like wearing cleats. The first week of spring training, guys would always complain about how bad their shins hurt because they had to get used to wearing cleats again because all winter long they don't wear cleats, which is another thing you don't realize, right? You have to build it up. Yeah. That's totally real. I played soccer through high school, and the first week of practice, you're overdoing it probably even if you were preparing for the season. You're cutting and you're working on pretty firm ground.

It doesn't rain a lot here in the midwest so you're basically on what feels like concrete in cleats and all that stopping and starting your joints feel terrible your ankles your shins it takes at least a week to get kind of through that soreness if not a little longer it doesn't take six weeks it doesn't take six though no uh. So I think this is a veiled criticism of the length of spring training from Eno here. Not even veiled. Outright. Well, it's about the money,

right? It's about trying to broadcast the games, trying to sell the merchandise. Because they don't pay the players. They don't pay the players. And they do take gate receipts. They do. And by the way, Britt, do take gate receipts. They do. And by the way, Britt, where can Nats fans watch spring training games this season? Nowhere.

So they released the schedule yesterday, guys, that said it's going to be streaming on their website, and there's going to be games on the radio. So far, the Orioles announced, too, the same thing today. So far, the games start Monday, and their television network, Masson, has not announced if it's covering anything. How ridiculous is that? Wow. Very well done. Very, very well done by Masson.

Shout out to them for all the hard work and effort to grow the sport for us. It's like 1990 all over again. I'm going to have to get my transistor radio out while I walk my dog to listen to a Nationals game. And then you'll start thinking about the development of the radio and the transformation of technology over time, like a very educated line of thinking instead of the dumb stuff that you know and I think about when we walk our dogs. All right. Spencer Torkelson has joined the Weird Injury Club. And when the story first broke on Thursday, it referred to a fake can opener being the source of the injury for Torkelson. He

had to have some stitches put into one of his fingers. Fortunately, no ligament damage or anything like that. And I thought, fake can opener. Did he buy something that was supposed to be a can opener on Amazon and he didn't get an actual can opener? Or was it a MacGyver situation? He's trying to make a can opener? I'm so happy to learn that it wasn't the A scenario, which is just capitalism gone wrong. It was ingenuity gone wrong. It was Spencer Torkelson being in a situation where he didn't have a can opener in his home during spring training, and he tried to use the blade on the end of a wine corkscrew. The blade folded as he was trying to open the can, cut his finger. Fortunately, he's okay. 10, these weird injuries seem like lies to cover up something else that is even more embarrassing. I don't think that was the case. Torkelson was on Twitter and making fun of himself about it.

The story checks out in this case. While he's a member of the weird injury club, I feel like this is the actual truth. Do you believe this story, Britt? I believe anything after one time there was a pitcher who hit the DL because he went to a tanning bed so yes yeah so he got himself like so sunburned and like whatever that he felt uncomfortable even moving like who hasn't who hasn't accidentally forgotten to reapply their spf however this guy went to a tanning bed which to me makes it even better. Oh my god. And hit the DL. Yeah. It's because he had to miss the start. So yes,

I think there's no reason for Spencer Torkelson to lie. He's now going to get a ton of can openers as gifts. I think AJ Hinch made a comment, like, maybe that's part of the development process. You know, so it's kind of like a funny thing. I think that the truth is often stranger than we imagine.

And yes, I believe this story. Because again, after the tanning room thing, how could it possibly get any weirder? It's the weirdest injury I've ever heard. Do you guys have any weird stories? I feel like... Go ahead. You know, has to have one, right? You gotta have one.

Well, like how I've hurt myself? Yeah, what's your weirdest injury story? Well, I was just looking through something. Did you, was Hunter Strickland with the Nats? When he punched the wall? No, there's another one. He attached one of his like cords. What did he do?

What happened? This was just two years ago. This is 2019. And of course, because I'm a gym rat, I had to kind of explain it to the other reporters. What happened? This was just two years ago. This is 2019. And of course, because I'm a gym rat, I had to kind of explain it to the other reporters. So you guys know the bands they have at the gym for like stretching? Yeah, they have like the resistance bands. Yes, the resistance bands. Not the tiny little guys, the bigger ones that you loop around.

Right? So he was looping one around to stretch his shoulder, doing like a classic shoulder opener. And he didn't realize that the barbell was right there and so the barbell came off and hit him um and so he had a pretty good like shiner for a while and nope not that one even like a broken no no like um you guys know that they're like longer i actually have some in my gym bag i would have brought it they're like bungee they're almost like bungee. Yeah, they're bungee. They're a little longer. Not this, if you're watching us on YouTube.

Not this. He's wrapping it around and he's going down into that nice classic shoulder opener and instead the whole thing came and hit him and got him right in the eye. It was an interesting... Or maybe it was the nose. I don't remember. He had some kind of bruise. I think he broke his nose.

Yeah, some kind of bruising action. And we were in Pittsburgh. And I remember the other reporters being like, this sounds so made up. I'm like, no, actually, it's a big fear of mine. And I have also. Trust me, this can happen to you. I feel like somewhere along the way, there was like a Nair incident in baseball, too. Do you feel like this, Eno?

I feel like I've heard something about some kind of Nair injury too. There's been some really – Like the shave gel stuff? Yeah, like the hairless stuff. Yeah, I feel like Jason Stark – How do you injure yourself? We should have had Jason Stark on today. Get it into an eye or something?

Yeah, I feel like there was something else that happened there. I mean, we know this is a sport where blisters can sideline you for like months, right? Which is, again, kind of like what babies., but again, you can't grip the ball. It's a big deal. But there's some really, really weird injuries. Then there's the phantom made up injuries that no one ever talks about. Yeah, like Carlos Correa, man. Just admit it.

Just admit it that you had some raucous wild sex and broke your rib. What? Just admit it. You don't remember this? No, I need backstory. He got a massage. He said he got a massage and the masseuse broke his rib and nobody believed him. And then he went on YouTube with his wife sitting next to him and was like, no, really, it was a massage.

wife sitting next to him and was like no really it was a massage it's just like you're just making this he dial dust protest too much you know right leave the if it's a lie you just gotta leave it out there and then just pretend like yeah it was a massage and then just move on with your life you don't you don't call a press conference get YouTube, make you drag your wife out next to you. That's terrible. I feel like, I don't know about you guys, but everyone has embarrassing injury stories. I remember in spring training once I went to jerk a bar over my head, which people probably don't really understand, but went to lift a bar quickly over my head, like you're doing Olympic style lifting lifting hit my lip and my lip blew up and like buck like days later was like you're fine people pay big money for that they pump collagen in there yeah he's like he's like my wife pays big money for that i'm like i

don't think your wife wants people knowing yeah right yeah don't make that joke now we've outed her i'm sorry uh no i've definitely done the glasses thing so like uh quintana yeah jose quintana sliced his hand doing dishes yeah i've done that i've definitely really that's not too weird to me that's actually just sort of i do a lot of the cooking and cleaning so that's like that's like occupational hazard i feel like the one thing is that I'm sometimes surprised that some of these guys who have so much money are actually doing anything. Like what I've hurt myself a lot of times it's been like totally obvious. Like, um, I broke a rib, uh, jumping off a 65 foot cliff when I was like 12 years old.

I don't know. It's like, yeah, dude, you, you didn't know what you were doing and you hit the water pretty hard. And I'm just glad that I didn't drown because I couldn't move my arms or breathe and I was in water. So that's more of a catastrophic injury or like a you deserved it kind of deal. I don't know. Wow. I've never, knock on wood, broken a bone. Derek, what do you got? No broken bones. The most embarrassing injury I ever had, I was walking back from my internship in college and I had a laptop bag, an over-the-shoulder laptop bag. So I'm walking down the sidewalk and the uneven sidewalk, which is like the most common thing in

a cold weather place because the sidewalk pieces like shift, got me. So I hit it and I kind of like started to stumble and I didn't fall from that. But the laptop bag swung outward and started spinning completely sideways, like rotating as it came back into me. And it hit me between the calves and just took me down. And this is just on campus, just walking down the sidewalk. A guy that just can't walk down the sidewalk without falling on his face. He should probably look glorious too. Spinning bag.

I mean, it had to be hilarious. And I did the thing where I got up, kind of just dusted off the shoulder. Meant to do that. Looked over my shoulder. I'm like, anybody over there? Anybody over there? And there was like a mail carrier. I think the mail carrier saw me.

So I probably mumbled something like, whoa, hey, look out for that sidewalk, and just went out with my life. But it was brutal. It was embarrassing. I didn't get hurt that bad, but probably my most embarrassing thing, that if I had broken my ankle or something that would have been a horrible story to have to retell yeah and there's something about the non-contact version you know what i mean like you know at least in brit's story there was like a

barbell involved and like some you know she was exercising she was performing a feat of strength when she was injured i was walking down a sidewalk after a four-hour sedentary internship role. I got a high ankle sprain one time walking to get the ball that had gone out of bounds. Oh, no, I did that. I did something like that, too. And everybody was not looking because it was just like, oh, Eno's going to go get the ball. It was like in my weekly pickup game, right? And then all of a sudden, I'm screaming on the ground.

And they're all like, what the hell happened, dude? I then all of a sudden I'm screaming on the ground and they're all like, what the hell happened, dude? I'm like, I'm out. I'm out. It was like a three-week injury too. It sucked. I ran up to a ball that was rolling out of bounds at one of my soccer games. And like stepped on it. Already out of play.

I tried to like, without slowing down too much, I tried to kind of like run up to it and trap it with like a spin move, which was really stupid. I'm not good enough to do that anyway. Rolled over my foot, and my foot, if you're watching on YouTube, it went toes under heel. It just folded all the way. I'm amazed I didn't break anything. Missed a couple games after that, actually, too.

If you just run up to the ball and pick it up like a normal person, you're not out. You're not going to miss games, dude. To this day, I still don't know how I sprained my ankle. Unbelievable. I was like, walking over to get the ball, and I'm on the ground screaming. I think that those I have broken a couple bones. The small one in my finger.

Basketball has been a source of most of my injuries. It popped my head open as a kid. I think the thing that's been most painful in my life has been a lot of the source of most of my injuries and uh like popped my head open as a kid but uh i think the thing that's been most painful in my life have been high ankle sprains those things really hurt yeah yeah i love random injury stories so if you have any on twitter i'd love to hear them we're gonna hear more i mean there's a kend Kendris Morales hurting himself in the celebration, right? Oh, that one's horrible. That's like a tragic injury because it cost him a lot of time.

I mean, that almost cost him his career, and that was just jumping on home plate celebrating with teammates. That's a terrible one. But, yeah, Sammy Sosa sneezing his way to the DL. I mean, I thought that was funny until I sneezed so hard that I actually have tweaked my back. This is part of aging, I guess.

So that one stopped being funny after I turned 30 and pulled off that feat myself. But yeah, hit us up on Twitter. Bauer with the drone, I guess. Yeah. I think that's a little bit more like the jumping off a cliff thing where it's like, you did that to yourself, man. Yeah, what did you think was going to happen?

What's going on here? Yeah. All right, let's talk about a few other interesting stories that unfolded over the past few days. We probably could have led with this story. Goodbye, Kevin Mather. Kevin Mather, of course, is the former president of the Seattle Mariners,

a longtime employee. He started there in 1996. This is something I did not know until this week. Team presidents are people that hold a lot of power in an organization, and they're people that you rarely hear

about outside of the teams that you follow most closely. I mean, it was not, at the time, in 2018, it was not a story that I was aware of that Kevin Mather was in trouble for sexual harassment in the workplace. And there was a large settlement made with the victims of that harassment.

And the Mariners kept him anyway. And it was Kevin Mather who of course was on a call with a Rotary club where he said racist things and offended nearly everyone in the entire Mariners organization, which is less hyperbolic than you would think. It's actually, it's amazing. It's tough. If you haven't read the transcript or watched the video yet, it is incredible. It is one of the most unfiltered things a front office executive has ever said in front of

a group of public people. And I don't think there was no question. There were no questions that prompted it. It was just like total stream of consciousness for this man to come out and say all these things to this group of people. I do have one question about it. I mean, you know, it utterly

just terrible stuff about, you know, it utterly just, uh, terrible stuff about, you know, Julio Rodriguez not speaking English. Well, which, uh, he does.

Uh, yeah. And then like throwing, uh, Hisashi Iwakuma under the bus, like one of the most popular players they've had. Also again, about language,

all this sort of like, come to my country, speak my language BS that like, you know, it's just that like, you know, it's just, you know, baseball is an international sport. There's so many languages that are spoken, you know, that just all that stupid. One thing that I think about, though, that's that just occurred to me, you talk about team president and power. It's is he on the business side? Because it's not there is a little bit of a separation between the business side because it's not uh there is a little bit of a separation between the business

side and and operations like there there is a chance that he doesn't actually know what he's talking about you know what i mean like but he's on the email list right or for things for matters of like how player development and and things like service time manipulation happen. He clearly knew what the plan was. He knows he's in the office. He's in the virtual office, I guess, at this point. But he's not on the call. He's not in the room when they make the decision about Jared Kalanich, if he's up or not.

So I think he did this to kind of up his game, to make himself seem as more important than he is. Think about what's his motivation for speaking like this? this to kind of up his game like to make himself seem as more important than he is like think about what's his motivation for speaking like this it and i've seen it it's like that like you you're kind of a part-time role player but you're in baseball and you're kind of like trying to prove that like you know stuff you know and like you know i i actually think that he's probably on the business side his stuff is probably his business. His actual role probably has more to do with, you know, what jerseys do we sell this year? And, you know, like park stuff and like how, you know, what sort of corporate sponsorship agreements are we going to make and stuff like that.

I don't think that he is in the room when they decide who to trade or, you know, like team president is not in the room when you're deciding who to trade or who to call up. No, but he knew enough. And he was also the team president. He wasn't some lower level staffer trying to impress them like the part time baseball player would be right. Like this is a guy who should have been fired years ago when they had the other issue with women. That issue, by the way, was like 10 years old.

So the team was made aware of this. It just got like dragged out a little bit in terms of court. So he should have been fired years ago. One. Two, my other issue with this is whenever something like this happens, how come we never, how come nobody ever takes accountability? It's like, oh, it's just this one bad apple, just the way this guy thinks. This guy's been in the organization for like 20 years more than that and we're supposed to believe he's the

only one who felt that way he admitted that they kept uh what's his name kellenick jared um down in in that they didn't promote him because he didn't accept their extension offer right so that now they're trying to manipulate service time he admitted all these terrible things that like we know goes on but he said the quiet part out loud. And to me, the most infuriating thing isn't that he was fired right away because he had to be fired because just some of the stuff he said that the owners have tried to say doesn't actually happen. Again, the quiet part out loud. But now the Mariners are like, well, he doesn't represent our views. Like, let's push him aside and alienate him as much as we can.

There's no way he was one bad apple. He was the team president. He had significant power. Like, come on. Look at some, and you can also just look at decisions they've made as, you know, in the past. Evan White did not have that much playing time in the minors, was not even as highly regarded as Kellenish.

I don't think there was a ton of people out there banging down the door saying Evan White is ready for the major leagues, but Evan White signs a $24 million deal, and Evan White gets the job from day one. Right. And he didn't even perform that well. It wasn't like he made them make him the first baseman. It was like, oh, well, he signed the deal. He's he's he's cost controlled.

You know, there's there's our first baseman. So the proof is in the pudding on some on some of this stuff for sure. And the reaction from players was pretty swift. from players was pretty swift. You know, I was on that Josh Donaldson call where he was talking about, you know, just, you know, being happy that he said it out loud because now it's just obvious that this is how they think. And also, you know, the idea that the best players, I think that's also a PR win for the players.

The idea that the best players in baseball are not in the big leagues, I think is something that no fan wants to hear. That's got to be some point of leverage for players. You heard Garrett Cole talk about it too.

Do you guys think they blow up the way this is done or at least try to the arbitration stuff because they're the only sport that does this? It's so tricky because in most of these negotiations that i've followed as an adult it always seems like the veteran players needs come first and baseball's problems impact the youngest players and the unrepresented players the minor leaguers do not have representation in the union, and yet how

they're treated is effectively determined by the players association. That's messed up, right? Like part of the reason minor leaguers get paid like garbage, they don't even have a seat at the table within their own union. That's part of the problem too. I hope that they get this right. I think they can get it right fairly easily, but how they get it right is going to be the problem, right? Is it going to be shorter paths to free agency? Is it going to be increases to the minimum salary? Is it going to be immediate forays into arbitration instead of having league minimum cost controlled years for two to three years to begin a player's career? That's the stuff they're going to probably fight about when we get to next offseason. I'm cautiously optimistic. I think having Kevin Mather say that quiet part out loud helps the player's case quite a bit. But I also don't want to expect too much

because I will be disappointed in the outcome if I expect too much. If I expect the players to be treated completely fairly, I will be disappointed in the outcome if I expect too much. If I expect the players to be treated completely fairly, I will be almost certainly disappointed by how things eventually play out. Check this out, man. This blew my mind. This blew my mind. Okay.

Remember as I read this. This is ownership proposal dated June 14th, 1994. Ownership proposal. The proposal would guarantee... Don't worry about that. Ownership proposal would also have forced clubs to fit their payrolls into a more evenly based structure. Salary arbitration would have been eliminated.

Free agency would begin after four years rather than six. And owners would have retained the right to keep a four or five year player by matching the best offer. That would have been the right to keep a four or five-year player by matching the best offer. That would have been good. Oops. That would have been great compared to what we have. Oops.

Should have took it. Yeah. Yikes. That's so far away from what they've got right now. The problem was that was in the context of a cap and floor. But the system they got it was a de facto cap i mean what we have now is is being treated as a cap if you only have one or two teams that ever go over you know it's a it's at least a soft cap yeah agreed the thing

that aside from the comments themselves especially the just the absolutely discriminatory comments that Kevin Mather made, the other thing that bothers me about this is that we're talking about an idiot executive instead of talking about the exciting players that are the subject of this. This is a team on the rise. This is a group of players that we as fans and analysts are excited to see. I'm super excited about the Young Mariners, man. Kirby, Gilbert, Kalanich, Rodriguez. We should be talking about them.

That's what we would rather be talking about yet again. And here we are having to go through this. Why isn't he on the rotary call saying, oh man, it's about to get good here. Why is it so hard to do that? I don't understand. That's literally the easiest thing to do. You have an exciting young team

that's going to be full of superstars. He's going to be a slugger. He's got a really engaging personality. This is what you want your team president out here talking to the Rotary Club about. Get them excited, man. Gilbert. Kirby's got five pitches, four pitches in command. Gilbert's got a hammer.

These guys are all coming up right now. We've done these things organizationally. Player development is doing this. Man, I could have done his job better than he did. Your window to be a possible championship contender is about to open in Seattle. Guess what? That doesn't happen very often.

So this should be the beginning of a really exciting phase, and it still will be. Step one of a few other steps is to get rid of Kevin Mather. There's more work to be done there because you don't ascend to team president and you're not on the field for every award presentation that the team has done for years. If you're not a big part of the culture within the organization, it doesn't work like that. You know, you're not out there because you're just posing for a picture. You're there because

the organization thinks that you're important or you even are a big part of the organization. But yeah, Kelnick's going to be up soon, sooner rather than later. He's betting on himself, as we learned in the call. Good for him. And he's going to be a very good player. I think he's going to be the kind of guy that makes an impact upon arrival.

That's the type of ceiling he brings. One of the problems is we just had no minor league system, no minor league games for a whole year. So all the baseball executives around baseball have the built-in excuse of, well, he hasn't played in organized games for a year. So even if like, you know, they'll spend some time talking about how ready Kellinage is, but they just want to see him play some organized ball for a little bit. And then he'll be magically up in April or May or whatever it is,

whatever day they have circled. Yeah. So a fun team for all the reasons that we're talking about. And hopefully we'll see a lot of those players coming up to make an impact sooner rather than later. All right. We've got a great question here from Oren. Oren writes, back in 1990, when Mike Harkey was a young cub, they went to a four-man rotation for a while. It was unusual even then, but was explained in a way that made sense. They claimed it would make pitchers more efficient. First, as

all those old pitching coaches like George Bamberger used to say, the key to control is throwing the ball often. Second, knowing you'd be going again in four days would encourage you to throw strikes and get out of innings quickly instead of just trying to strike guys out. But now we're headed to six-man rotations, and we don't even expect a bunch of guys to go five innings in their starts. Never mind all the one-inning guys who can throw however many pitches per appearance. Do we know, and do numbers show, this is all making pitchers less efficient in terms of pitches thrown per batter, strike-to-ball ratio, etc.? Interesting question here from Oren. Any general thoughts on just the first part of this? I mean, the idea of having to pitch more often does entice you to not overwork yourself, which is kind of an old-school funny thought that has really escaped modern thinking in baseball. We've seen that basically pitchers are throwing an extra pitch or pitch plus per inning

just over the last 10 years or so as strikeouts have gone up. It may just be that there's, you know, it just, there is a relationship between strikeouts, balls in play and efficiency. There definitely is. It takes more pitches to strike a guy out than it does to get a ground ball, but ground balls turn into hits. And so, you know, that's, we've, you know, we've created this game where we've optimized for the strikeout,

and so we were asking them to throw more pitches, and that's why they don't go as deep into games and blah, blah, blah. I mean, it's all together. I just don't think that you can goose it in the other direction just by doing the four-man rotation. You know what I mean? Like, I just think that you do the four-man rotation, and all those guys in the four-man rotation. You know what I mean? Like, I just, I think that you do the four-man rotation and all those guys in the four-man rotation would still want to strike guys out because they know they get paid in arbitration

for the strikeout. They know that they get paid in free agency to the strikeout. They know that everybody's looking for the strikeout. So I don't think that just changing to a four-man rotation would be enough to, I think you'd have to change incentives in the game, either change incentives in arbitration or do something to the ball or, you know, do something to the rules of the game to incentivize balls in play somehow. I agree. And what I think too, when you, as you said, they're not going to throw any, they're not going to throw slower. I think what you're going to see is guys throw four inning starts now in that four man rotation, right? Because they don't

have the juice, they're losing the extra day of rest. I think what's going to happen is guys throw four inning starts now in that four man rotation, right? Because they don't have the juice. They're losing the extra day of rest. I think what's going to happen is you see like what we see in the playoffs sometimes with those short little high energy starts, and then you have the bullpen pick up the bulk of the game. So I don't think it actually really makes anything better at all. It's really actually a really good point. You know what would happen on a roster if you had a four man would, where would you use that extra roster slot in the bullpen? Right. So you'd have another reliever. And so you'd have, I mean, it could be interesting to like do four guys who throw four innings, you know, and then you have two guys in the bullpen who throw two innings or three innings. Right. And you kind of just like,

you might be able to do something interesting there, but still it would be about strikeouts. It wouldn't necessarily be about efficiency. It would be about those guys. You have four guys who can throw four innings and throw max effort for those four innings every four days instead of, you know, what we have now. So I think it is interesting to think about, but we're going the other direction.

We're going to six-man rotations. That's what we're doing. And we're going to do the same thing. We're just going to give them more days of rest, ask them to throw as hard as possible and get all those strikeouts. And we're just going to do it with six people. They're already doing that in Japan.

Yeah. Yeah. I would like to know, I guess we would probably get an unsatisfactory answer if we asked most major league teams that's just thinking about Alex Anthopoulos' comments, you know, this is how we do it. I forget what the question was,

but we've talked about it on the show before. It's like, why do we do it this way? The innings increases. That's just kind of what we do. I would love to get explanations from teams in Japan, Japan too and say, why do you guys do it this way with the six-man rotation? And I wonder if the answers would still be similar. Like, that's just how we've always done it.

You have six starters. Because I think going to six starters here is a way of trying to let pitchers live closer to their max velocity over a full season, right? If we're finding that that's the thing that causes pitchers live closer to their max velocity over a full season, right? If we're finding that that's the thing that causes pitchers to break down, but it also makes them optimally effective, it's the counter adjustment to allow health within the framework of optimal efficiency in terms of stuff, right? If you can get that balanced, right, that's great. But the other end of the spectrum, the, the Orin era pitchers like the mike harkey cubs i think of greg maddox i mean like the most efficient pitcher i can recall ever

watching mostly watching him as a kid he did pitch into my early adulthood but pete greg maddox when we were kids was cruising through games with low pitch counts i mean why are we not trying to develop pictures that way too the maddox it's like a complete game with 85 pitches or something. But why are we not trying to make... Maybe we're talking about an amazing outlier that's legitimately possible. Yeah, why aren't we trying to make more of that? Yeah, why are we trying to make more guys

that throw gas in the rotation? That's what they're doing right now. But that seems like you could probably make pitchers more like Greg Maddox more easily than you can make guys that are more like, I don't know, let's say Noah Cinder guard, right? A guy that throws really hard.

I mean, in his broken down, like I just think you're, yeah, I think you're, you're running a lot more risk of taking your best talent and breaking it, going the current direction, even with the six man rotation adjustment, then you are trying to figure out, Hey, lot more risk of taking your best talent and breaking it, going the current direction, even

with the six-man rotation adjustment, than you are trying to figure out, hey, how do we make more Maddoxes? Again, maybe it's impossible. Maybe there was just an amazing talent there that we can't replicate. But in my mind, finding people that do what Greg Maddox used to do, developing people that could do what Greg Maddox used to do seems easier than rolling more Noah Sindergards off the developmental assembly line. Yeah, well, we'll have to see. Sorry, I was just picturing a factory belt of Noah Sindergards just one at a time

just rolling through the drive line. Noah Sindergards. It's like a long conveyor belt, like a moving walkway going into a driveline facility. And it's like kind of tall, skinny, blonde dudes. And then they come out like jacked like Noah Cinderguard throwing gas. Terrible cartoon world that I live in.

Yeah, I don't know. I think Japan is a little bit of, this is just how we've always done it. But also, Japanese workloads in a given game are heavier right they i think they have a slightly different attitude about like the hundred pitches hundred pitches for us is one of those we don't know why but we just do a hundred like a hundred pitches nobody throws more than 100 pitches anymore we don't know why it's just because it's the number it's the second it's the same reason if you if you bid 20 on a player in an auction and you're

a little bit less likely to have someone bid $21. If you bid $18, it's very likely someone goes $19 just because there's a mental aspect to that number. Oh, $19.99. Yeah. It's not $20. But yeah, maybe if they have those increased workloads. Also, I kind of like it from a work-life balance situation. I know I'm talking now as a reporter and not as a player,

but I think it would be kind of cool if baseball had a day off. If everybody had a day off every week. I think people would like that because for times when teams are home between series, they would actually have a day to spend with their families. And if you don't want to make it Sunday, because Sunday, there's a lot of money and people come to the park and stuff. I mean, Tuesdays at

the ballpark, I have to tell you, man, I've never seen worse crowds than Tuesday nights. And what if you just said Tuesday is National Baseball Day. We always have Tuesday off. And then you could always have these, you could still do fun stuff in the media with the tuesday day off right be like the this week in baseball remember twib whatever this week in baseball that show

like you could have like weekly recap baseball shows on tuesday that you kind of as a producer or as a media content creator you could be creating all week because you have this day that you know the day is off and like you know what i mean like you could do fun things with the day off you guys the original question, and the pitchers. We all know when this conversation started. It was like... It was a day off. It was when this conversation started because this guy wanted four-man rotations. Like, guys,

doing more work. And I said, six-man rotations and give us all the day off. You know, for Kvich. I was just like, what are we like What are we talking about My tagline would be Everyone work less He's got a strong

Strong case I think Monday should be the day off Half the best pizza places in the world Aren't even open on Mondays Just because everyone's got to rest someday Monday's a crap day You don't go out to eat on Monday You don't go to baseball games on Monday

You hate going to work on a Monday for most people. I eat broccoli. I run five miles. It's cleanse day. If Derek can't get a pizza, damn it. No one can watch baseball. Yeah. Can't get a decent pizza on a Monday in this town.

So might as well give up baseball that day too and do the crossword. What else am I going to do? Our pen's hands are falling off. Now that's more, that's more in line with Eno's apocalypse scenario. That's the Lloyd Christmas dumb and dumber. Another great email here. I got to find the name on this one.

I copied the email and not the person who sent it. I was hoping for your take on a potential issue. Granted, camps are just starting, but with all the talk surrounding innings limits for pitchers and potential six-man rotations, I was wondering if minimum innings requirements need to be lowered. So in a lot of fantasy leagues, of course, you have a limit. In this particular league, this is a 12-team only league. They have a 900-inning minimum, which in the past wasn't an issue. Yeah, I think you could lower that. Knock it down to like 800 because you're

still not going to be able to take nine pitching spots in a typical fantasy league and jam in all relievers and get to 800 innings. You're still going to fall short, right? The whole point of that innings minimum is to make sure that people have a balance of starters and relievers. I think you could lower it slightly. 900 is not that hard to hit.

Yeah, so you don't have to go crazy with that. Even in a season where we're... How many 200-inning guys do you think we're going to see this year, Britt? Two? Yeah. We talked about this last week, right? There's no way... I took the over on three and a half. Yeah. Not very many. So yeah, you have to scale it back. I mean, when we did

that story, everyone was basically like, yeah, you're going to have to... First off, everyone gave us the collective shrug Like we have no idea. We're just guessing, but also it seemed like they're going to err more on the cautious side. Cause who wants to be the team that pushes their young pitchers and they're all hurt. Right. Like, right. Now you all not only wasted 2020, but oops, there goes 2021. Like, okay, now you're in big trouble. Yeah. But I have like a, I have a have just an insight into like a one particular team. The Blue Jays have, I think, two really interesting arms in the back end.

Hatch, Thomas Hatch, Julian Merriweather. You know, neither of them have enough innings because they've either worked as relievers or there was no minor league season last year. And they are on the outside looking in. They're sort of six and seven starters. But the plan is for Hatch to stretch out and maybe even make the rotation and maybe have like sort of 100 to 120 innings in him. And the plan is for Merriweather to be more of a swing man, opener, long guy,

and try to get him to 90 to 100 innings himself. And these are like two of their prized arms behind Nate Pearson. So there's going to be a lot of pitchers in that sort of 70 to 100 inning that are reliever slash starter, and it's going to be really hard to gauge their fantasy value, that are reliever slash starter, and it's going to be really hard to gauge their fantasy value, use them correctly. So if you wanted to take some pressure off your league and drop that down to 850 or something,

just so that you could roster a Hatch or Merriweather, and he's not a reliever, you're not doing reliever streaming, but you're also maybe not going to have a harder time get to 900. I don't know. But in my history, I think 900 is fairly achievable. Yeah. The pool does get more diluted if we have a lot of injuries. You'll still find innings to hit that limit,

but the quality of those innings will go down. So if you do lower the threshold a little bit, you can tinker a little more with roster construction. So I wouldn't go any lower than 800. I think that's easily low enough. And I think 900 is still reachable, as Eno said. Other question that came in with that one. On another matter, wasn't Tony Phillips the original Ben Zobrist?

I remember watching Tony Phillips when I was really young. I mean, he was out of the league. Oh, 1999 was the last season that he played. So that was my freshman year of high school. And when I was growing up as a kid, I definitely had Tony Phillips baseball cards, but I don't think I really noticed his versatility. He's a good player. When you look back at his career, low strikeout rates under 20%. I mean, for that era, like throughout the eights and 90s, strikeouts were down quite a bit compared to where they are now. But a high walk rate.

Tony Phillips had a 14.5% walk rate for his career. 46 war. That's a lot. I mean, it's a 17-year career. Not as much power as I remember as a kid, but later in his career, he did have a 27 home run season with the Angels in 95. As far as that defensive versatility goes, had positive defensive value earlier in his career,

kind of just moved around a little bit. Played short. Wasn't a good defender anymore. Had 101 games at short in 83, 91 the next day, next year. I'm surprised. I thought of him as a second baseman outfielder. Isn't Tony Phillips also the guy that had the super, super open stance? I thought he had more of a squat.

Is that Tony Fernandez, the guy who's super open, looking straight at the pitcher? Here's why he wasn't the original Zobris, though. The reason that Zobris was so original, like we said, is the power. He didn't have the power numbers. Yeah. Right? The reason that Zobris was such a was such a like wait a second how's this guy is because he he hit he had like the power hitter numbers and he didn't have a position he

didn't have a role yeah the game was different back then right there wasn't as much we're now at a time where home runs are hit by the you know one to nine and in the order and they're increasing every year it seems like the home run record is shattered. It's a good comparison, but it certainly still doesn't stand alone as that 2009 Ben Zobrist Zorilla season. Yeah, there's no Tony Phillips season that gets close to it, but there is some versatility. Remember the number letter jumble I dropped on you guys last week

from Baseball Reference? Tony Phillips has a lot of that going on in the position column. There's a 5-4-7-H-6-8-3-9-D in there. That's crazy for a guy that could actually hit a little bit. So I'll accept it as a very good comparison. I think someone else on Twitter threw Phillips our way too, so I don't remember who that was offhand. But it kind of laid the groundwork for a player like Ben Zobrist

to become Ben Zobrist and just didn't quite hit that same offensive ceiling. I do wonder when you think back to players from the 80s and the way some of us were taught how to hit as kids, and I'm sure when Tony Phillips was coming up, he had plenty of coaches in his year telling him, hit the ball on the ground and run, right? That's what so many coaches told hitters back then. If he was coached to hit the ball in the air more often, he was younger. I wonder if he could have put together a season more like Zobrist. We could have been a 20 homer guy on more than one occasion just because he got there at age 36 for the first time. What a, what an interesting career that Tony Phillips had. Definitely a great player that, you know, did a lot of things for a lot of teams over a long

period of time. Thanks a lot for that question. We got a question from Laura. Can you give me tips for a baseball trip in the Dominican Republic? Thinking about Santa Domingo in 2022. That sounds fantastic. I've never been to the Dominican Republic, so I have nothing to offer on this question. Do either of you have any tips for Laura? No, I hope she gives us tips because I've never been there to watch baseball. So she's going to have to give us tips. I texted a contact and I got one word response, don't. Oh.

Yikes. Wow. See, I want to go. I have not gotten clarification on on that so uh yeah so hopefully she can give us tips email us after you go i was born in jamaica man i love the islands down there if i could do a tip where i went to jamaica and saw baseball i would do that in in a second so i think it's gonna be fun maybe uh i think it's got to be fun. Maybe I think it's got to be like go around the World Series down there, like the Winter League World Series. It's a lot of fun.

It's January or something. Yeah. Yeah, keep us posted if you're listening. Let us know. I want tips. I would do it. If you're listening to this show and you've been down to the Dominican Republic to watch baseball,

let us know how the experience went. Yeah, we're gathered some rocks. Ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com. Yeah, try to help Laura out. Try to help everybody out. People want to go places as soon as we can start going places again. On the last episode, I referred. Yeah, I got a pretty good list going too.

Last episode, we were talking about player descriptions, talking about Eno's terrible pelvis. And we got an email here. My favorite player description, Chris Bozzio, good arm, bad body. Dating myself here, your friend, Gern Blandston. Yeah, that's a fair description of Chris Bozzio, I think, at this point. Thank you for that email, Gern.

We got to Britt's normal thoughts while dog walking, so I'm glad we covered that, which brings us to our final topic of this week. It is time for Beer of the Month. All right, you can go first. What is your Beer of the Month selection for February? I had a really interesting beer the other night uh called down for my day ones uh and it was a wizened ipa uh from uh pacifica eagle rock and hen house a three-way collaboration and it was basically a

haferweiss but it was an ipa and um one thing that made it just really interesting for me was that like it was a hazy. Sometimes people say hazies taste like Hefeweizens. I was like, yes, but there's this very distinct taste in Hefeweizens that's not in hazy IPAs. I liked it. I also had this weird revelation while I was drinking it that while I bought it, I was like, I may hate this beer. Very strange for someone to buy a beer that they

later might hate. I was questioning my own decision-making skills. It turned out that I liked it. You've had so many. You've covered so many on the great beer bingo card that you're now moving into beers that you might not even like just to try something new. I think that is it.

Yeah. This looks weird. I guess I'll try one. I love buying, by the way. It also is awesome that you can buy single cans. That is my – I love – in my beer place, I go to the single cans first. And I have to – something has to be elevated. Either.

I have to know it's great. I've had to had it before. It has to be elevated to four can status, but one can status. Hell yeah. I'll try it. Wow. Yeah.

So that's like hard to follow. Cause you know, like covers beer for a living. It's not as much anymore. Really though. It's like a 10 minute spiel and i just like was gonna just name a beer that i enjoyed uh i'm interested to see what kind of beer you enjoy i've been sending boxes to people i said you a box of beer at some point okay well to me i need to know what you like as it starts to get warmer it's like sour beer season

i think like more like in the fall winter it's more like cideries you can have like heavier like stouts if you wanted i'm not a huge iba person but when we get into like i do like when we get into the summer uh you know i do go i do like lining kugel i know it's not as like uppity as all these other ones but summer shandy is a big one in our house once it gets warm uh the sour beers i'm trying to think of the specific sour beer. There was this raspberry one that I had that was like top end. And I can't remember the name of it. They had it in Michigan last summer.

Or I guess two summers ago, right? Because nobody goes anywhere. Yeah, right. It wasn't last summer. Rubius? Rubius? Rubius? I forget how you pronounce it but founders had a a fruity beer that was pretty big that people like quite a bit

that might be it uh michigan's got such great like if you guys haven't yeah you guys are both like yeah we know britney like that's a legitimately like well above average craft beer state yeah yeah really really good um hopefully we can get up there at some point this summer. That's definitely an easy, fun trip. But yeah, let's go with the Founders one then because it's delicious. But yeah, it is officially, if you're going to send me something, it's sour beer season. Because the sun is coming out. All right, lots of sours coming up.

Practically in March. I love sours. Just makes me feel like summer is here. Just nice and refreshing, you know? Yeah, yeah. So not on the... Big fan. Yeah, the one thing that some sours,

they're like blending fruit into it or blending gummy worms into it and stuff like that. And so some sours are getting kind of thicker. I'm getting a sense, if you like the summer shanties, you like a little bit on the crisper and lighter side. Yeah, some of them are too, too sour. Like i'm not a sour patch kid like those people who like the sour the more sour the better i don't want to like pucker my lips after every sip i just want

that nice little hint of of sour to go with my still needs to be beer right i don't want to be drinking sour patch kids yeah full tilt near you does the – they just like take Skittles and actually like blend it into the Sour Patch and like all that stuff. They're good people over there though. Yeah. They're really nice people. They are, yeah. Big baseball people. They are, yeah.

They had me tour their facility before it opened. I was going to come back, but 2020 happened. Yeah. The recommendation I have is one that I have not actually tried yet. It's one that I'm going to come back, but 2020 happened. Yeah. The recommendation I have is one that I have not actually tried yet. It's one that I'm going to have this weekend. I'm going to drink this before the weather gets too warm because I agree with Britt. Seasonal beer approaches are really important, especially if you live in a terribly cold place. It's called Hazelnut Coffee and Cakes.

It's another beer from Hubbard's Cave in Illinois. cakes. It's another beer from Hubbard's Cave in Illinois. And yeah, so we're going to get like a imperial maple coffee stout with a little bit of hazelnut in there. And I don't even really like a lot of flavors in my coffee. I like pretty straight up coffee where the beans kind of speak for themselves. I don't want flavors added to them. But I do think when I go for a flavored coffee anyway, it's hazelnut. So this one really spoke to me because I think maple stouts are delicious. I think it's going to taste like breakfast in a bottle. It checks in at like 12 ABV. And also good night in a bottle. Good night in a bottle. It's going to be a one and done beer for me probably on Saturday night,

watching a movie or something. But I'm really looking forward to it. The other Hubbard's Cave stuff I've had has all been really good. I think this is the first stout that I've had. That's what I'm saying. I've had a ton or something, but I'm really looking forward to it. The other Hubbard's Cave stuff I've had has all been really good. I think this is the first stout that I've had. That's what I'm saying. I've had a ton of IPAs for them. A lot of hazies with them. Yeah. Yeah.

Everything else I've tried there has been good. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. I mean, the scores on it are all fine, so I expect it to be absolutely delicious. So let us know what you might be cracking open since it's Beer of the Month Day. You can hit us up on Twitter. He's at Eno Saris. She's Britt underscore Droli. I am at Derek Van Ryper.

You can email us, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com. You can also sign up for a subscription. $3.99 a month gets it done at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. Plus, if you're still listening to this show 75 minutes in, we'd really appreciate it if you took a minute to fill out our listener survey. It's for all the podcasts we do at The Athletic. We're just trying to make all of our shows as good as they can be and serve you the best way we possibly can. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes today as well. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening.