Rates & Barrels - The Birds Are Back in Town

Episode Date: April 30, 2020

Rundown1:10 Eno Needs Rice4:34 Birds 1, DVR 07:35 Another Temporary Realignment Proposal13:11 Will Some Teams Need Alternative Home Parks?21:45 Raising Expectations for Pitching Prospects?31:08 (Still) Unsettled Closer Situations42:03 Beer Bracket Update Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Get a 90-day trial to The Athletic: theathletic.com/free90days Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 91. It is Thursday, April 30th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we have reached the final four of Eno's Beer Bracket. We'll get to that as part of our Beer of the Week segment at the end of the show. There was another proposal about realignment that included 10 team divisions, a Mega West, a Mega East, and a Mega Central. So we'll talk a bit about that.

And I stumbled into a thought, a few thoughts, I guess, last night during the NL Triple Crown auction. I started to wonder if perhaps we're not giving rebuilding teams with interesting pitching prospects enough credit, mostly not thinking about the possibility that they're going to want those guys to actually throw a lot of meaningful innings in order to not hurt themselves in future seasons in terms of having restrictions later. So we'll get to all those topics and perhaps a few others along the way. Eno, happy Thursday.

How's it going for you today? It's going well. The weather's good. I've been having trouble sleeping and I wonder if it has, I mean, there's obviously all sorts of reasons, potential reasons for that but um i've had some achilles tendonitis so i've been i after nearly running nine miles last week i've sort of stepped back from that i've been doing the bike instead and i just don't know if it's tiring me out enough um and so my wife is like oh you got to get on the peloton app and you got to like

really push yourself and you got to like really push yourself and you got to really do like the, and I'm like, I'm trying, man. I'm like huffing and puffing and going as fast as I can and turning up the, you know, the resistance and all that stuff.

But I don't know. Um, I'm happy for the weekend and the tendonitis is slowly getting better. Doing my rice. Was it rest ice? What's the compression? and the tendonitis is slowly getting better. Doing my rice. What is it? Rest ice. What's C? Compression.

Compression. What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to put like a rice on it? You're supposed to wrap it. Hmm. Yeah. I've not been doing the C part. I've just been doing rye.

Rye. Rye IPA. Yeah. You can change that I to a Y. But it's slowly getting better. I just wish, you know, one of the things that was interesting to me about muscle activation technique was a piece that I did about Matt Boyd and the things he did to get his body right. And one of the things I liked about muscle activation technique is they ask why.

You know, there's a lot of Western science that doesn't really ask why as much as it asks, like, what can we do about it? What can we do about it? You know, how can we mitigate it? And muscle activation technique is like, if you've got soreness here, so like, I've got soreness in my Achilles, why? What is the underlying problem? And I guess you could say just be like it's overuse, but that doesn't make sense because your body is like, yes, soreness the day after something makes sense. That's your body's trying to recover and getting stronger eventually over time. But persistent soreness means something's wrong. And muscle activation technique says what's wrong is that you have a corresponding weakness somewhere and so basically that achilles area that muscle or ligament or something is receiving

too much stress because you're you're weak somewhere else um unfortunately my muscle activation trainer that i went to uh they that they close up shop during this, like that place no longer exists, and I don't really want to have that close contact with anybody right now, although I'm getting closer to being like, you know, I'd like to go see her again, maybe drive all the way up to Marin and have her check out my ankle, because I think it's related to my ankle, but I think that's interesting, you know, because, you know, I have stomach problems too. And, you know, when I go to talk to people about my stomach problems, they're always like, you know, what are the symptoms?

How can we stop the symptoms? And, and there, and that, and like, there's not, there's been, it's been taking me a long time to get any doctor to be like, you know, what about the diet and what is, what is it that you're doing that's causing these problems? They mostly just want to solve the problems. So anyway, that was a rant. Your problem seems more complex than mine.

My problem of the day, which is, again, tiny in this world. In the last couple of days, it's been raining here a lot. And somehow, I didn't know birds did this, but birds apparently make nests very quickly when it's raining. And they put a nest above my patio light, which is about two feet outside my patio door, which is about three feet above where I like to grow tomatoes in the summer. So, you know, I can't really have birds right there.

Also, is your dog going nuts? It will make my dog go nuts. I don't think the birds are in it yet. I think they just finished building it yesterday. Oh, you've got to get in there and get it out of there. Today is the day. I have to very quickly and ethically move this nest to a new place. Make sure there's no eggs in there and get them out.

I know. If I look in there and there's eggs in there, it's going to be very frustrating because I'm not going to move it and it's going to cause some stress because we just bought a bunch of seeds and a bunch of stuff to just grow some of our own food. We started doing this last year anyway,

but we don't have the luxury of a yard yet. So our patio is our space and when birds take over our patio it causes us problems and it's happened more than once we boarded up all the gaps in the deck above us because they like to nest in there and uh yeah our maintenance crew did a good job they covered up all the gaps they cut up a two by four and we thought okay we're finally bird proofed entering our fourth summer in this place. And it turns out they just put one right out in the open, which was a huge middle finger to my wife and I. They have no respect for us.

So I'm going to do what Madison Bumgarner would do in this situation. And no, it's not what he did to the snake that ate the rabbit. Madison Bumgarner would politely and gently move the nest if only there are no eggs in it. So that is what I'm going to do. I'm going to be like Madison Bumgarner for about five minutes this afternoon. The birds are back in our...

I've taken fewer humans around. The birds are back in our neck of the woods. I saw a hawk almost you know catch her a squirrel the other day just swooped down and just last minute had to veer out of the way um and uh uh the heron has been eyeing our we have a koi pond and the heron has been eyeing our fish yeah he also the heron has been like walking around the streets, which I've never seen before. Herons are legit. Apparently, they remember.

Now that he's seen our pond, it could be an issue. I didn't know herons also had memories, though. I've seen them strut around a little bit around here. That happens on occasion. I'm just thinking the birds are back in town would be the worst Weird Al song ever if he ripped off the old Thin Lizzy track and had a bunch of chirping birds in there. It's just the worst.

All right, on to the baseball. The 10-team division proposal, I think it originated with Bob Nightingale of USA Today in terms of where it was first reported. My apologies if that is inaccurate, but I started looking into that just a little bit and thinking about ways that could actually work. And that proposal was part of one in which teams would play in their own stadiums, just empty, and this would reduce travel. So the West Coast teams would stay on the West Coast. Teams in the middle of the country would stay in the middle. Teams out east would stay out east. And you'd have something that at least gives you variety in the schedule, doesn't create the bubble scenario. And I think if you're going to expand the playoffs, 10-team divisions actually makes a lot of sense.

Because you could do something like the top two in each division automatically go through into a full series. Maybe third place in each division gets a wildcard berth and then the very best record overall remaining from teams that hadn't already qualified, maybe they would get in to a wildcard as well. So you'd have 10 out of 30 teams making the playoffs with four of those teams playing in some kind of wildcard scenario, maybe So you'd have 10 out of 30 teams making the playoffs with four of those teams playing in some kind of wildcard scenario, maybe a three-game series instead of a five or whatever. You could mix it up any number of ways, and then once you knock out the wildcard teams, you have an eight-team bracket to go play it out the rest of the way, which logically made sense to me, and geographically, the way the divisions combined combined it wasn't quite as disorienting as the uh the cactus league and grapefruit league realignments that were going around where the

brewers were suddenly in a division with the rangers the royals the padres and teams that you just don't see a lot of like that was a that was a pretty weird realignment this one at least made sense in my mind. Yeah, yeah. It instantly creates some winners and losers, though. And you're going to have teams like, I don't know, the Mets not wanting to play the Yankees and Red Sox a ton, and the Rays maybe being mad about that, being moved into that division. Um, I could see the, uh, well, I don't know who, I think that the,

um, otherwise I think, uh, you know, people might, there's enough sort of winners and losers in the other two that I think might work. And I think that the carrot for everybody is baseball. And so if this is what it takes to get it done, I don't think this will be the hurdle necessarily. You can see that it's actually kind of evenly mixed when it comes to favorites and dogs. If you look at the New East, you would have, I think, the Yankees, Nationals,

and Rays atop the pile with the Marlins and Orioles and Pirates as the worst teams. In the West, you would have the Dodgers, Astros, and A's atop the pile. Seems like a pretty much equal amount of studs. And at the bottom, you're maybe actually, this might be the tightest one

because you really only have the Giants at the bottom. And there's a big scrum in the middle with the Angels, Padres, Diamondbacks, Rockies, Rangers. Maybe you want to put the Mariners at the bottom too. So that one might be the tighter one. And then you've got in the Central, probably the best teams are the Cubs, Brewers, Cardinals, which comes right out of the NL Central,

but also the Indians and the Twins. So maybe that one's the tightest one. But at the bottom, you've got the Tigers and Royals at least. So, you know, these are fairly well-matched divisions. I think that I like that it cuts down travel. Travel, I think, is the main component. Nobody really wants to get in an iron tube with a bunch of other people. But also the flip side is they could probably do private airplane travel.

And maybe this would lead to a lot of bus travel uh because uh they're pretty close to each other the main problem i have with this plan versus the arizona plan is the uh two things the timing and um the uh certain hot spots so So I feel like the timing on this rumor was aggressive. June, June timing, like early June, actual baseball playing would mean that we would have to basically settle on this plan in the next two weeks or so, just in terms of logistics, I think. Right. Because we keep hearing that it's a three week run run-up to get players ready to play again.

Right, so they would have to decide this week that this is the plan, and then start spring training in a week in order to start in early June. So I think early June is not realistic. given the second problem I have the plan which is that there are hot spots I think in terms of New York and Illinois are kind of the main hot spots right now and that's a problem because there's four teams there you know and I don't think like having the Yankees and Mets play upstate is in the plant in this plan. You know what I mean? This plan is everyone plays in their own stadiums. Yeah, I wonder if that's been discussed.

It hasn't been really reported. At least I haven't seen it reported anywhere. Are the teams in the most hard-hit cities considering an alternative site as their home park? I mean, Detroit's also a hot spot as well. So you look at that situation with both Chicago teams and Detroit in one division, is it feasible for those teams to actually play at Wrigley and Guaranteed Rate and Comerica? California has a pretty strict shelter-in-place thing with the ban on gatherings. And if you add up the two teams and the number of

personnel um you get close i mean you can you start getting close to 100 yeah pretty quickly actually and we've talked about this before too it's not just the players it is the team personnel it's security it's everybody involved just and that's why I thought Arizona would make sense. And I think you could maybe do a split season where you say, hey, we're going to start in Arizona. And we're going to try and play 40 games in Arizona. Play 40 there, maybe have a two- to three-day break. It's not really even an all-star break.

It's just a break to get everybody back home. And then see if all the shelter in places are gone and if the bans on public gatherings or the gatherings there can be you know like 150 now or 200 or something lobby the local governments if you need to see see how the virus goes um arizona is not like you know a shining beacon in this whole mess, but in terms of getting everybody in one place, in a state that hasn't been hit as hard as the others, and has the infrastructure to do this. I mean, Phoenix is not only a baseball town,

but it is a convention town, which means that it has a lot of hotels, it has a huge convention center, it has a lot of hotels it has a huge convention center it has a lot of place to put these people and uh it also has 14 parks now that means somebody has to be off for three days or they have to kind of fudge it on the 15th park but um you know they've got uh they've got i'd say mostly infrastructure so i'm kind of more in favor of the arizona plan they can uh do something like this in terms of the realignment i think that makes sense uh maybe it's a little bit different based on the actual geography of how arizona would

be broken up but um you know i guess part of the problem is, you know, how do you house the teams that don't have Arizona complexes? How do you, uh, make room for their minor league teams to have complex ball? How do you, you know, how do you, how do you handle that? Um, and that's why, you know, Arizona, Florida. But I don't think Florida is necessarily in the shape to pull this off right now. So, you know, there's a lot of people. There's a lot of pessimism online. And I'm a little surprised by it. An $11 billion industry is going to try and start up again.

That's what they do. They're there to make money. Yeah. And you can argue about the safety but uh the mortality rates for uh the for 98 percent of the people that play baseball and are in baseball um are are minuscule and so therefore yes there becomes a question of sort of how much separation do you do how much quarantining do you do how much that uh but i think the general plan for us to get out of this is to kind of help separate out the most at-risk people uh where the mortality rates are higher and and protect them um and try to reopen the rest. And in baseball,

that actually seems easier than in some other businesses. And, you know, like for example, I don't know, you know, nursing homes are a really big problem. How do you staff a nursing home and keep the people in the nursing home

safer? You know, because the people who work in the nursing home are younger and they have to be able to go to work, but they're going to be interacting with the people who are most at risk. So that sort of stuff, hospitals and nursing homes and stuff like that, that can be more complicated. But creating a place for people to play baseball,

in some respects, seems very possible to me. Yeah, it's not as far-fetched to me as it was to some other people when this was first pitched. I know there were people who initially reacted to the Arizona plan and just said, no chance, not going to happen. All it takes is a few players not wanting to do it, and it all collapses. But they were focusing on this as being like a quarantine situation

where we're dragging Mike Trout away from his pregnant wife. Um, and I don't, I use, I just, I, yes, I don't think that's going to happen,

but I also think that there's a way to do Arizona without doing that. Um, and, uh, um, I've been looking at a lot of data and a lot of, uh, a lot of studies on this.

And, um, there's a, there's a, there's a, seems to a, there's a, seems to me, it seems to be a consensus that some people haven't examined about this situation.

So I don't know if I want to get too far into it as gets a little political, but I would say that I, I remain hopeful that one of these plans is in place. I still like my July 4th date. It could maybe happen a little bit earlier, but we'll see. We'll see we'll see how they figure this out yeah I remain optimistic

I've been pretty optimistic I think from the jump that by July 4th we could get things rolling I would say in terms of fantasy and stuff I would say that both of these plans now uh would lean towards universal dh seems like a lock at this point right just because you're mixing up a on nl

you've got concerns about not having enough depth potentially i mean there was the report that was eventually refuted yesterday that the minor league season was canceled. That hasn't happened. Several sources reporting that was a false report. So it's going to look different. We've known that for a while. And we've been talking here how we doubt it's going to be regular and it's going to be more like complex ball. it's going to be more like complex ball. And if it is that, then there is some pressure on major league teams to maybe create some space for those ready prospects. And the DH helps that.

In terms of scheduling, the DH helps there. And in terms of reducing injury risk for the pitchers, the DH helps there. The risk for the pitchers are already going to be pretty high. The DH keeps them off the base pass at least. From swinging, they look pretty terrible swinging anyway.

Let's just not do that so much. As someone who has seen pitchers get hurt hitting, running the bases bases diving back into bases um i i'm ready for the universal dh as we talked about a couple weeks back the black tux believes every groom deserves a better experience when it comes to finding formal wear a suit or tuxedo for their big day did you know the black tux was actually started by two guys who had one of the worst tuxedo fittings you could imagine. It turns out they aren't alone in this frustration.

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and I was going through the NL Triple Crown auction reserve rounds last night, so 15 teams, just like the AL League we talked about last Thursday for a bit, five reserve rounds after purchasing 18 players. And I was desperate for anybody with a glimmer of hope for the 2020 season as I was moving through the final round. My queue was empty. And I landed on Edward Cabrera as the best dart I could throw in the last round of my reserve draft because I started to think about young pitching and the way teams still really build guys up progressively year over year. Like the Verducci effect was debunked years ago now, right? But there's still something that guides

the process of how teams build up their pitchers, even when they're not coming back from injuries earlier in their career. I mean, Julio Rios, look at the way the Dodgers have handled him for a couple of years. They've been very careful with him. But you can look at year-over-year workloads in the minor leagues. You see this progressive buildup. If you don't follow that, you do run the risk of having problems down the road where you can't let someone throw as many innings as you might want and Cabrera jumped into my mind in the reserve rounds last night because talent-wise he's probably one of the five best starters in the Marlins organization already and it's similar to the problem the Tigers have with Casey Mize and Matt Manning and Tarek Scouble

probably similar to the situation that the Royals even have with Casey Mize and Matt Manning and Tarek Scouble, probably similar to the situation that the Royals even have with Daniel Lynch. Those teams need those guys to get innings, and if they're able to throw them in complex minor league games or whatever it is, maybe that's good enough for their arms. But I'm beginning to warm up to the idea that a few of these young pitching prospects might actually skip levels and might actually have larger roles in the big leagues maybe not necessarily as starters could be as multi-inning relievers but have i overlooked that previously as something that might be different about this season

yeah i was talking to lindsey adler about this and tom tangango. Tango was predicting that we would have a lot of games where you'd basically have one pitcher throw three innings, another pitch two, maybe a bunch of ones after that. We'd basically have stuff that looks like bullpen games with maybe slightly more bulk beginning than a true sort of one nine pitchers one inning kind of bullpen game so I could see that happening especially if they expand the rosters and allow more pitchers and it's been something that's been happening in the game anyway anyway I you know one of the things I was trying to do when I looked at the relative value of

command and stuff was try to predict innings pitched per appearance because I felt that a lot of teams were kind of moving towards a different model where they thought of a guy as a two-inning guy, a five-out guy, a six-out guy, a nine-out guy, a 12-out guy, and not necessarily as a binary decision between starter and reliever. And I think that this situation this year is going to push that decision, push that trend even harder. And it's going to push it really hard in the short term. And I'm not sure what it'll look like in 2021 and 2022 when you get back to 162 game seasons and more organizations maybe wanting to develop true starters that can go five or six. But I do think in the short run, we're going to see a lot more three and four and two and three. short run we're going to see a lot more three and four and two and three as long as you put a priority on developing extra pitches and i don't know if maybe tarik scoogle comes in and pitches two major league innings and then goes out to the bullpen after he's done and throws another

simulated inning in the bullpen to continue to like you know that way you're getting him to face improve uh face improved uh um you know batters and improve himself that way uh improve his his best two pitches and his use and command of those and also work on his third pitch and gain that extra bulk that you may want out of him. So I think that could be what we see with some young pitchers is, hey, I need, you know, that two innings from you in this game, not only from sort of a structural standpoint, because with so many bullpen games, I'm going to need a lot of arms, standpoint because with with so many bullpen games i'm going to need a lot of arms uh but also from a developmental standpoint um and uh so i think there are ways that we're going to see uh teams use that and i i think that's how we kind of ended last episode where i said

if you want a blanket statement from me about what's going to happen here with the young guys i would say all the you know all the major league ready pitching gets a nudge forward. And I think it's exactly the sort of effect that you're talking about. Yeah, I just think maybe that thought landed in practice with an auction in front of me where it's like, how are teams really going to get through this? I mean, do you really want Jordan Yamamoto going five or six innings every day all season while Edward Cabrera

pitches against your minor leaguers? Is that really the best long-term decision for his development skills-wise and health-wise? I think that hybrid idea that you brought up, the example with Scooble, makes a lot of sense. You can still use him like a starter overall that day from a physical workload standpoint and not necessarily use him as a starter in your game because of how you have to distribute innings and how you want to manage his own workload and things like that.

Yeah, there was an interesting comment somewhere and I can't place it, so I apologize for not giving credit, but somebody pointed out about the of the first commenters pointed out that you know i was saying that like there's the cheapness of the teams and the coming sort of or the the economic crisis that we're in and how teams are going to react to that and how that plays out versus their need to develop these players and their increased ability to be in it in a shorter season. They increased variance in a shorter season. So there was that dichotomy, and the commenter pointed out, well, wouldn't cheaper labor right now be the focus then? Wouldn't they rather kick the can down the road six or seven or at least three or four years

in terms of that and use the cheaper labor now. Yes, I guess. It depends on how large the rosters open up. Because if the rosters open up one or two, then yes, it'll be a couple opportunities for the young guys. But the rosters as they are are mostly written in pen. And so the choice isn't like, do I sign a $4 million guy or use a $500,000 guy? Because the rosters are mostly written in pen.

I don't think they're going to release a lot of people in order to play cheaper guys. I mean, that would just seem, A, it would seem very tone deaf, you know, to release a capable, expensive starter and just immediately dump half your roster and bring a bunch of 500,000K guys in to save money. I mean, that would be very transparent. I think the union would go nuts, right if veteran let's say like veteran relievers who make four to six million a year or something if those guys start getting dfa'd and prospects are

promoted to take their spots a prospect at 500 we're talking about going into the season if right now the Marlins are like screw this crap and release VR, Dickerson Aguiar Kinsler maybe even a Caleb Smith if they just went hey you six guys

later and tank their payroll down to like, you know, 10 million or something. Like, I think that would be kind of crazy. So, you know, we're talking mostly about a couple new roles, maybe a couple new roster spots opening up. And yes, I do think those will be filled by prospects.

And that's why we think across the board, you know, prospects get a little bump this year but uh it's mostly going to be pitching prospects i think there was there's one other thought that came out of the the auction uh last night too just thinking about bullpen management and teams that still haven't figured out their save situation or closer situation and i the cardinals are that team that are really a trouble spot for me like i have no good sense of what they're going to do and the variable in that bullpen is jordan hicks i mean he's supposed to be back at some point in july but there's a lot here as far as you know not knowing

how much of his rehab he's been able to push through on his own in isolation. That's a big question for a guy coming off Tommy John surgery. So he's a variable that might have a larger role in this season than previously expected because it's a shortened season. Giovanni Gallegos is frequently atop the depth chart a lot of places. I know Ryan Helsey is a guy that you like quite a bit. They pay Andrew Miller a lot of money. They got to do something with Alex Reyes someday. I don't know what exactly that's going to be

or when exactly that's going to happen, but they have a lot of ways they could handle the ninth inning, and it could be E, none of the above. It could be John Brebby or somebody else. Yeah, because Brebby is pretty decent, yeah. Yeah, they have a lot of ways they can go, and I don't feel like I've really seen a lot of strong indicators from them as to which route they're going to choose. I mean, hell, it could even be Carlos Martinez.

I think they're going to need some bulk out of Carlos Martinez, though. I think they're going to need a 6th or 7th starter, even. I think Kwon Hyun Kim is going to be their 6th starter, vulture guy, doubleheader starter type guy. And so I think with those two out, at least you can focus a little bit on the Hicks, Helsley, Gallegos group as a leader. But I wouldn't be surprised if the Cardinals saves leader has like 10 saves next year, this year, this season. They could be a little bit Tampa Bay-like. I mean, I know with Nick Anderson,

generally people are looking at that situation and saying he's the guy, but the Cardinals have the depth to run something similar and just say, we're going to play the matchups. We actually don't care who gets the last three outs. They could very justifiably do that with the pieces they have in place. I think so. And Gallegos, you know, he really upped his slider usage

to the point where he's almost 50-50. And that had a good effect on his home run rate, which has been kind of up and down in his Major League time so far. And so that's why you look at his projections, and you have Zips giving him 1.1 homers per nine, and you have the bat giving him 1.5 homers per nine. That's a fairly large spread. And I think there is some risk to a fly ball guy,

especially if they're not going to play in St. Louis. So I know that people love Gallegos, but I've also, you know, Cards Twitter is dot, dot, dot. I wasn't sure which direction exactly you wanted to go there I'm not going to render judgment on a whole fandom but I do

I would say that there have been people within Cards Twitter that assure me and assure other people that Gallegos is not a top to get depth chart and the team will not go in that direction. So, I don't know.

Take that for what it's worth. Sometimes when you're talking about closer stuff, you're literally trying to read tea leaves. But I've kind of mostly avoided the situation. The other situation that I think is somewhat complicated not because they have as many options as the cardinals but because somebody who was named the closer was just so bad last year that i can't really believe he's actually the guy is colorado and i think my davis yeah that's exactly what i thought in my head scott oberg is a good pitcher and if we're talking about maybe

upgrading marquez and john Gray and the starters, if they're not pitching in Colorado, if they're pitching in Arizona instead, I mean, Scott Oberg becomes a really nice cheap closer option anyway. He might be good enough to get the job done having to deal with Coors. He's cheap enough where I feel like you can throw the dart. If you don't like what you see, you cut bait and you move on. And that's the main problem I have with the St. Louis situation is that, you know, with Halsley's late helium, at least when we were still doing drafts, he was even kind of evading my grasp. And so it actually is kind of a potentially expensive bullpen to buy into.

Yeah. It's not like Iogos is cheap, and Miller is even costing some money. So, you know, that one's a tough one to get into, but Rocky's bullpen is fairly cheap to buy into. And, like, if you want a dark horse, Jairo Diaz throws 97 and has the potential to strike more guys out. So, you know, I think that's an interesting one, especially if they don't play at home. I could see buying into that. You know, other ones, I don't shy away from what I see as unsettled situations completely because

I have some shares of Hunter Harvey and Michael Givens in Baltimore. What I want to see out of a bullpen situation is, when it's bullpen by committee, I want to see that buying in is cheap, because I don't like buying a guy who doesn't have the role right now. I don't want to pay a lot of money for the guy who doesn't have the role right now well that's the one anderson problem too it's the same thing you just described with gallegos where the assumption is that they're the guy and that they're going to keep the job and the price is high enough where you get burned pretty badly if they don't right that's my point exactly so i want the price to be low and then the other part that the cardinals the other test the cardinals fail is i want the usual suspects i want the committee to be small enough that i'm either getting half

a handcuff or a third i don't want to be like one of four and um ideally i'd love to get two out of three you know and have my final pick like i i think it'd be fine to take oberg and like the third to last round and then jairo diaz at the last pick because the last pick very rarely ends up on your team you know and that's just basically um jairo diaz is going to be the guy i drop unless uh in this spring that we have that i find that jairo diaz is is the guy getting more buzz you know um so that's so you know baltimore has been a place that i've gone i've got i've bought into Diaz is the guy getting more buzz. Baltimore has been a place that I've gone. I've bought

into the Tampa discussion because I've found that Diego Castillo is cheap. And Jose Alvarado. Jose Alvarado is super cheap.

And I think even if Nick Anderson is the guy with the capital T and the capital G, I think those guys will get some saves. So I don't know. What's another unsettled bullpen? Marlins. I've actually had a couple shares of Ryan Stanek. Not because I think Kintzler's terrible. They could do the thing where they just have a credible guy do it all year

and keep Stanek cheap. But because I think Stanek will get some saves and because i think he's the better pitcher than kinsler and should eventually take that job and also because he's cheap as hell and because there's no other i mean steckenreiter maybe and that's it maybe urania that's like that's and those are a little bit more long shots. The other guys in that bullpen, I'm not giving them the job. Yeah, I mean, Brad Boxberger's done it before, and Yemi Garcia was interesting once, but

I would also be looking at Stanek if I were going to go away from Brandon Kintzler. I haven't done a lot with the Marlins bullpen so far, but that's another one. At least everyone's cheap, so you can throw a cheap dart if it hits. Great. If it doesn't, it's okay. But you can still fail the other

test, which is the Giants. Everyone is cheap, but the usual suspects list is too long, I think, personally. That one's been a mess all along. Sean Anderson, Sam Coonrod, Trevor Gott, Tony Watson.

You're already four deep, and then Handel Gustave. You don't really... None of them really seems like, oh, yeah, that's the guy. I mean, Gott, I don't know. If I put my money on two, it might be Gott and Anderson. If you only got one of those two? Yeah, I don't know. If I could pick two and sort of consolidate but i think it's a fairly wide thing and it could just be watson and give him the closer role

until he leaves town you know i think i would go got over anderson but i feel like watson's the guy to start yeah certainly could be yeah the mariners one I've gotten a lot of shares of because I actually think it's down to three or four, and one is hurt. So Austin Adams is coming back off of ACL surgery. So you can say file him for later. And so therefore, I think, and Matt Maggio was hurt too. So I thought it really got down to Carl Edwards Jr. and Yosihisa Hirano. Yeah, Maggio might be healthy, though, once the season actually starts.

Adams will still have some time. But at least they're cheap, and I would say that it's fewer potential suspects than the Giants. Yeah, the Giants, seven, eight guys are all kind of on similar footing, I think, as far as getting those opportunities. Top performers in business and sports often attribute their success to their morning routine, whether it's waking up early, setting their goals for the day, exercise, or meditation. But not everyone has the time to do it all.

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of the beer bracket. We've made it. You've been watching those results come in. Did you get a push on Hazy Little Thing or on 805? Actually, my math must have been off. We're in the Elite Eight. More bracket to go then, even better. Yeah, but yeah, the beer bracket is up.

And what's fun about the Elite Eight is it's the last chance for style to beat, to go up against style. And so what you find is, like, when we get to the final four, when we get to the final four, we're definitely going to get to a point where Guinness is going to go up against

All Day IPA. I think that's my finals, basically, is Guinness versus All Day IPA. I'm pretty sure that's what's going to happen. Let me just read off the Elite Eight. I would love y'all to get in there and vote. If you're a listener, the Elite Eight. I would love y'all to get in there and vote. And if you're a listener,

mention that to me in a tweet and maybe I can get you into the bracket. You know. The actual place that you vote is not behind the paywall. But I wish it would load

because I would love to tell you the Elite Eight. I know that Yingling has been a Cinderella story. I think I was a little surprised to find Yingling making it to the Elite Eight. But Stella against Yingling have come out of the light category. Stella beat Coors Light. light category. Stella beat Coors Light. So the sort of huge macro loggers have fallen away and have given us Stella Artois versus Yingling at the top there. The other light bracket has given us Sam Adams Boston Logger against Founders All Day IPA. And I will vote in front of you I'm going to go with Stella and

Founders All Day IPA and then the next one is I'm totally skewing the bracket here but whatever Lagunitas IPA versus Sierra Nevada Pale Ale I knew this was going to happen

and I feel like this is two titans going head-to-head. And I'm picking Lagunitas. Although Sierra was like my first craft beer ever. And then the bottom of the Elite Eight, or not the bottom, but the last two of the Elite Eight, Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout against Guinness. There's a big matchup between kentucky breakfast stout and the goose island bourbon county stout it was a really close one 366 that was really 34 yeah that was a really close one um i'm i'm uh it's a little sad

for me that we had like 3 000 votes um in the first round and then went down to about 600 600 700 votes in the second round um so i'd love to sort of beat the ground and get people uh voting in this and and get it to the end but um i would say that i think it'll be lagunitas or uh i said lagunitas and sierra are going to go up against Guinness. That's going to be really tough. I do think the final four will be Laganitis or Sierra. I can't call that one. It's pretty early and it's close.

Laganitis and Sierra versus Guinness. I think Guinness is going to win that one easily. On the other side, I think it's going to be Yingling versus Founders All Day. My prediction for the finals is Founders All Day against Guinness. Which, you know what? I think I wouldn't be all that mad about that finals.

I know that there's been a lot of great beers like Saison DuPont. I was sad about that going out. Firestone Walker Easy Jack, sad about that one. Negro Modelo, sad about that one. Sierra Hazy Little Thing didn't make it out of the second round. So there's been a lot of great beers that have gone by the wayside. But if it comes down to Founders All Day versus Guinness, then I'll be happy about it, I think.

I think that'll be a good bracket. I the the beer i like the most in the field is omegang three philosophers i think that one lost a pretty close matchup to newcastle early and i think it may have lost because newcastle's just been around longer i think more people have just had it definitely more name recognition there was a name recognition one because as much as people as much i tried to pick beers that we've all had, there will be beers that you haven't had, and you'll just pick the one that you just know more about. Yeah, I think Three Philosophers would be my choice. Delirium Tremens is really good. That's a really tough matchup they had earlier in the bracket going up against Guinness.

I had no idea. Honestly, Guinness and Fat Tire were the hardest for me to put anywhere. Because Guinness is a stout, but it's very drinkable and light. And, you know, it was in a bracket with some stronger Belgians. Like, I ended up putting it up against DeLorean Tremens. But, like, it was in a bracket that where it might've been like, if it had been up against KBS, Kentucky Breakfast Stout or Bourbon County Stout earlier, I think it still would have just beaten those, you know? So I kind of just, I did treat it as a little bit of a one seed and just, you just put it where I could fit it. And

Fat Tire is an amber ale, and there's not that many other popular amber ales. I'm a little surprised by Fat Tire being Hazel Thing, but I wasn't surprised to see Fat Tire lose to Lagunitas IPA. Fat Tire against Newcastle would be a pretty fair matchup.

Except that Fat Tire is so much more bitter. Just in terms of taste, it didn't seem. But maybe that would have uh cleaned things up a little bit if i'd done that maybe i could have put omegang against deliam tremens and get good matchup too yeah kept it kept it more belgian like longer uh and yes i have to apologize publicly for not putting bells uh too hard in here it should have been in there um this my bias is i'm in california it's a really big state we have a lot of grocery store beers and my bias was towards you know what's at safeway

and two-hearted is in 40 states but it's not in the western states basically didn't they just release a more sessionable version of two-Hearted? Did they call it Half-Hearted or something? Yeah, they did. Is that actually what they called it? Light-Hearted. Light-Hearted. Half-Hearted is probably. Yeah, Half-Hearted is not as exciting.

It's not a very good name for a beer. Half-Hearted thumbs up. Yeah, I've heard good things about Light-Hearted. That's what it was for just being. Yeah, so I apologize, and I hope it doesn't invalidate it for people and in fact what I might do is once the the highest

rated IPA leaves or if it makes it to the finals or whatever I will do a final poll on Twitter so once basically there's a winner out of, of logging this IPA versus Sierra to pale ale,

I will put that winner up against two hearted. And perhaps that could be the basis for future seedings. Yeah. Or it's just, it's just a thing that we can say, Oh, well, you know what?

Maybe a two hearted, you know, and, and, and if they get to the and if they get further, they get to the finals, and I can re-rack the finals, basically, and be like, would two-hearted have won this finals, or lost this finals, so, just a, that'd be just a thing that I can do to appease the two-hearted people, because, hey, I'm a two-hearted person, I like two-hearted,

you know, it was a big train beer for me, whenever, you know whenever I was on the train out to see the Mets. You could buy two-hearted, like even a Duane Reade, and take it on the Long Island Railroad. Is it allowed? Am I admitting to something illegal? Everyone does it. Probably not. Everyone does it. They put a little bag around it and everyone's doing it i wanted to be a lawyer for 10 minutes when i was 20 years old so i think i'm qualified to say that you can't be implicated for anything you say on this podcast oh nice nice good

sure that makes sense so that's my pre my pre uh beer of the month is uh i suppose uh lagunitas ipa or guinness those are uh my favorites still in this thing i've got a beauty that i'm looking forward to drinking i'm gonna drink it this weekend because it's a mini bomber a pint size bomber it is from fort george uh It's from our friend St. Danny. It's the Matryoshka is the beer. What is it? A dark or an IPA? It is dark.

Danny likes the darks. He sends really good stuff. It's a Russian Imperial Stout that is transferred to barrels and then aged for about a year. Jeez, that sounds exciting.

Pretty excited about that. That's going to be a one-and-done beer this weekend. It'll be an enjoyable one-and-done beer. Your wife will find you asleep on the couch. Yeah, yeah. She's going to just watch me crater on that particular evening.

So check out that beer bracket if you want to weigh in on those final matchups. If you're enjoying the show on a platform that allows you to rate and review it, take a moment and do that. We appreciate everybody who's done that. If you're looking for a subscription to The Athletic, you can get a free 90-day trial at theathletic.com slash free 90 days. If you're able to support the site with a paid subscription,

you can get 40% off at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. You can find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. You can find me at Derek Van Ryper. And as always, you can reach us via email, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com. Be sure to spell the word and if you go the email route, that will help the email actually make it to us.

We've got the second run of Project Goat coming up very soon. So those are being tabulated. We'll get those results out, I would imagine, probably on one of the two episodes next week. But that's going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening.