Rates & Barrels - The Dodgers Are World Series Champions & Baseball's Death Star

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss the Dodgers' series-clinching Game 5 victory over the Yankees that made them the 2024 World Series Champions, which featured a string of defensive miscues that opened the door for a five-run fifth, and a clean ninth inning from....Walker Buehler?! Plus, they look ahead to busy offseasons for both clubs as the Dodgers weigh options for a few potential upgrades, and the Yankees prepare to make a massive offer to retain Juan Soto.  Rundown 1:18 The Dodgers' Pitching Staff Had Just Enough in the Tank 7:33 One Brutal Inning for the Yankees' Defense 15:20 The Yankees' Need for More Bullpen Depth in Future Postseasons 19:24 The Dodgers Have Taken Over Baseball's Death Star 30:06 Long-Term Concerns About Jack Flaherty's Velocity? 37:38 The Yankees' Offseason Plans & Juan Soto Watch Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The Dodgers just defeated the Yankees in the World Series and we are here to break it all down. They did it in unusual fashion, but they did it in five games. So a lot of ground to cover today. We'll talk about how the Dodgers got their win, how they're going to continue building upon their fully functioning Death Star. They have taken the mantle from the Yankees. They are Major League Baseball's Death Star now.

And then we'll talk about where the Yankees go from here. Trying to snap that drought this year, coming up just short, having a huge winter ahead of them with the pending free agency of Juan Soto, among a few other questions to answer. You know, how's it going for you? How you feeling post game right now? Exhausted it's late and I've been up doing Halloween stuff and trying to put together last minute costumes for the kids before I head off to Arizona fall league. So, uh, pretty, pretty exhausting day, but, um, you know, I'm not as exhausted as the Dodgers pitching staff. I'd have to say they really emptied that one out.

I, I feel like just had enough. Like if that game, if they tied that game, the Yankees had, then I feel like, yeah, I don't know. I don't know who would have pitched next unless they would have just been like, Hey Walker, can you go three? Cause Daniel Hudson had thrown 50 pitches in two days from me talking about Brent Honeywell through 50 pitches in one inning yesterday. I mean, they were running out of options and they just barely snuck it over the finish line there.

I thought the worst case scenario for the Dodgers would have been Walker Bueller entering the game to face the bottom three hitters in the Yankees lineup, giving up only a game tying run in the ninth, and then the Dodgers having to decide what to do after that, whether it was to keep pushing Bueller a little longer, which I don't think they would have done for a guy that's been down with two Tommy Johns, someone that they have penciled in the start later in the series. I don't think that was on the table.

I think they would have gone back to Ben Casperius again, even though he threw two innings in game four. And then from there, maybe Dan Hudson first. But it's not like Dan Hudson was great in his appearances. Right. And yeah, his his performances in back to backs was something a lot of folks in our slack were writing about is just he wasn't recovering very well from from outings. So and he's an older man who's been through a lot of injuries.

So it makes sense. I mean, the fact that they got two and a third from Blake Trinen. Oh my gosh. Which included a pretty non-competitive walk to jazz chism. At that point, the consensus in the discord was toast. It was, he's, he's done. They have to do something. They have to make a move.

They didn't. He reached back through his hardest fastball the entire season, struck out the next batter, he's done. They have to do something. They have to make a move. They didn't. He reached back through his hardest fastball the entire season, struck out the next batter, ended the inning. I mean, that was huge for the Dodgers as well. That's, you know, in between came the mound visit from the manager being like, you know, tell me how you're feeling.

I mean, it's kind of rare to have someone go out there and not have the decision made. You know, what, on the other made. You know what? What? On the other hand, like, what are you, what's going to happen there? The pitcher is going to tell you that he wants to stay in. It's very rare that they tell you. I mean, you're going to, you, you run the risk of being Matt Harvey. You know, Matt Harvey, you know, talked to himself back on the mound in, in the Mets against the Royals series.

And that did not work out well. I think it was just calling a timeout, essentially, giving him a few extra seconds to catch his breath, hoping that a little extra would be there on a few pitches as a result of that. I mean, that's as much as you're really hoping for in that instance. He probably liked, quote unquote, the matchup, you know, against against Giancarlo Stanton there, were, you know, training right on right with the sinker and the sweeper is theoretically the right choice.

But, you know, one thing that was occurring to me when this all was going down was there's this nice chart that was put out there that I retweeted where it showed like how often you know batters had I think sandwich pick put it out there and it showed how often each of the relievers had seen you know people three times on the other team and Michael Kobeck is the only one and he's seen Gleyber Torres Austin Wells and Alex Verdugo three times. So I think that's a little bit the bottom of the order.

So they're like, we're not as worried about that. We think that's an okay thing. Everybody else had some twos out there. I'm sure after last night, after this game, there were some threes, but they'd kept it pretty clean. Whereas if you look over the Yankees, Luke Weaver has seen Mookie Betts three times. Tim Hill has seen Freddie Freeman three times. Mark Leiter Jr has seen Tommy Edmond three times.

Clay Holmes has seen Max Muncie three times and Will Smith. Jake Cousins has seen Will Smith three times. So like, they have lots of threes all over. It did occur to me in this game that if you try so hard to make that grid look the way it does, you might get into a situation where you run out of arms, you know. And they did have a little bit of that, that that essence in the box score where you're saying, you know, you had Anthony Banda out there

for 16 pitches and two outs, you know. You know, Kopek was a starter like a year or two ago. He only threw 18 pitches in one inning. You know, Brews Darger, Adderall, he threw 24 pitches. We only got two outs. If you pushed any of those guys a little bit further, if you'd pushed all three of those guys one more out, you, you wouldn't have needed Blake trying to do that last thing. He might not have needed Walker Bueller.

Who knows if the score would be the same. I mean, we're going into alternate realities now. But my point is, and it's something I wrote in the, in the preview was you can do all these things and you can plan all these things. And at some point you just have to give up because you have no other options. It's game five, game six, game seven. He's seen the guy three times. What are you going to do? Not, you know, bring out Jake Cousins because Luke Weaver has seen him four times. No, you're going to go with Luke Weaver. So on some level you can plan a pretty picnic, but you can't predict the weather. And I think that's, you know, what the Dodgers thing came down to today was we tried our best and now we're just hoping that

Walker Buehler can get three out here basically. Just the fact that Jack Flaherty only gave them one and a third the Yankees jumped all over early. That just caused everything to snowball because if you're the Dodgers you know looking at the series from a big picture as you say okay we're going back to LA no matter what. Worst case scenario we're down down three, two, we have an off day. We can keep using our A relievers to try to keep this game as close as possible and see what our lineup can do because we know our lineup has, has done enough against this Yankees A bullpen where anything's possible.

And the fifth inning, the Dodgers getting five runs in the fifth inning. None of them earned the Yankees having just a series of terrible defensive plays, right? Aaron judge drops a ball in centerfield. Volpe makes a bad throw, trying to get a force at third to jazz chism. Garrett Cole doesn't cover first base on a grounder. I mean, any one of those things can cause you to give up a run or two because things can snowball off that.

But doing all three of those things in the same inning cost them the season. I mean that that that is it right there. You can it jumps right off the page. It's the easiest thing to look at. I mean, Garrett Cole pitched so much better than the raw numbers would indicate. Right. You see the five runs allowed, but none of them were earned. He struck out six, did walk for walks were a problem for both teams throughout this game, but he did the ace thing. The only thing he didn't do is cover first base on a play that he's probably made hundreds of times. They'll even thinking twice about it.

Yeah. If you watch closely, the ball that Mookie Betts hit to Anthony Rizzo looked like it was going straight down the line, but it had a fair amount of spin on it. And so Anthony Rizzo takes this tack towards the ball. That seems like I'm going to take this ball and run straight to the bag. And if you do a freeze frame, you'll be like, yo, Anthony Rizzo, you pretty slow these days. Like you couldn't beat him from there.

But what happens is it's a little subtle. The ball has the spin on it that takes them the ball to the right of Anthony Rizzo. And it's sort of, it's just enough to make him sort of like stumble. Like he makes the play, but he, he's no longer heading towards first. And that costs him also he's older and slower. I think that has to be part of it. And then yes, Garrett Cole should have covered but I'm sure he's watched Anthony Rizzo make that play before in the past and just thought, you know, he's got this, you know, so, you know, that one thought it occurred to me a little bit that, you know, luck is a weird word here because you're like well they

did screw up and they made the mistakes that led to this inning but you could have taken all three of those mistakes and scattered them a little bit more liberally through the game right if you if you mix and match them you don't have the crooked number like that and it doesn't it doesn't quite come out take the drop play ball in the second and we'll take the not covering first over here and you give up like one extra one, not five, you know? Um, so. Yeah, that was, that was tough to watch. I don't, I don't know. You know, is there, is there blame to be handed out in the situation? I think in New York the blame will

rest on Aaron Boone's head. Like do you think they might fire him? No, I don't think so. I think Aaron Boone getting fired would have happened if the Royals had eliminated the Yankees in the divisional series. That was the Aaron Boone is safe for another year, I think once he got past there, or at least getting to the world series made him safe regardless of outcome. But, but having this game with like defensive miscues, you know, and, and, and then, and having this out there that they're the terrible base running team. Those like, those are two things where you're like, should our coaching

stuff be on top of this? Like you, we just talked about how the Dodgers and the, and the Yankees, if you try to do like a one to one defensive comparison, where you leave positioning out and you just look at the skills of the players, you say, yeah, these teams pretty evenly match. But then you look in the Dodgers lead the league in positional runs and you're like, dang, can we have what they have? Like, can we, can we have the coaching staff that puts our guys in the

exact right position every time? Like what did they have that we don't have? Um, so, you know, we have a, we have a young shortstop that is great defensively. We shouldn't, you know, we shouldn't be making these mistakes. And in terms of base running, you know, are we being too aggressive? So I think those are some actual questions that they'll ask is, is what, why, why is our, why was our defense lacking? Not just in that specific game, but like not as good as it could have been all year.

And, um, you know, do we need to get a true center fielder? I think that's going to be a real question. I think having Jason Dominguez in the organization, you could maybe make the argument that a young Jason Dominguez will the organization, you could maybe make the argument that a young Jason Dominguez will play center field at least as well as Aaron Judge. They didn't like him over Verdugo and left. So I can't imagine that he's the answer. But the problem all.

It wasn't necessarily all a defensive call, I think. When we pull back and look at that, I think Dominguez missing a lot of time with injury this year and questions about how quickly he would adapt to big league pitching. I think those were at least a part of it as well. I don't think it was purely a defensive call. You can make a short term play. And we're going to mirror some of this on the downer side, but like just going forward,

like you could do something where you put jazz in center for a short term. I mean, just came from playing center. But he looked pretty good at third though, throughout the end of the season, Like you could do something where you put jazz in center for a short term. I mean, just came from playing center. I thought he looked pretty good at third though, throughout the end of the season, made a couple of nice plays in the postseason. Does he need Tommy John surgery? Uh, I think so. Well, remember it's like, is that what it was like hurt and then he just came back, came back, played pretty well though.

I just want to know how healthy though. I just want to know how healthy is. I would want to know. I'm just saying this, if you are going to do free agency, it's going to be a lot easier to find a third baseman than it will be to find a center fielder. Yeah, well yeah, you have options for sure. And if you want to be the team that signs Alex Bregman, then okay, great. Made your lineup longer, got an upgrade defensively at third. You move in jazz back to center field, moving judge to a corner. Not playing Dominguez in center field either.

Those might all be good things. The trickle down might make you better at multiple positions. I guess it is only that Alex Bradman, because you're not gonna be like, we're moving jazz to center and we signed Juan Moncada. No? Yeah, I don't think they do that. Eugenio Suarez. How does that sound, New York? We're moving jazz center and we signed Juan Moncada. Yeah, I don't think you hang your Suarez.

Come on. Does that sound New York? We signed geo or shell a back. Centerfield, uh, maybe you could make a play for Cody Bellinger if, if he opts out, um, it's, it, it, improving defense is one of those things that needs to come from within. That's the difficulty here. And it's, it's actually a little bit of a difficulty in LA too. I think because if you look at their roster and the players they have, they

kind of need a little bit better defense and youth at center and, and short. Now these two teams making it to where they are without that, without young guys up the middle says to me, like, there are different ways to build teams. You don't have to have youth up the middle. But if I was, you know, in charge of the Dodgers, I'd be like, maybe Tommy Edmond can solve center or short, but obviously he can't be in two places at one time. So do we go out and

spend the money on Willie Domus? Do the do the Yankees go out and spend the money on Willie Domus to make them their third baseman? Hmm. I think, I think Willie Domus might get into some good money where my back of the napkin math was six for 150 because he's, he's turning he's 29 and he's a little bit older than Danzy Swanson, but Danzy Swanson got seven and one 77. So maybe we're talking about seven and one 80 for a 29 year old. Uh, maybe we're talking about 200 million for William Thomas. If the Dodgers and Yankees both decide this is a way for us to improve our infields.

I think when I look at both of these teams, there's a couple things that still, some of the similarities at least that carry over. One of these teams is just a little bit better at building bullpens than the other. It's the Dodgers, right? They have a little bit of an edge, their depth matter. They had just enough left in the tank. I mean, Luke Weaver, who was phenomenal for the Yankees all season. Yeah. I was going to say that they did a pretty good job with Luke Weaver and Clay Holmes. I'm thinking both these teams are decent at building bullpens.

It just, but they just had the Dodgers had more. They just had a few more. And you could tell just in the group of relievers that were trusted and Mark Leiter Jr. Came in and cleaned up a little bit of a mess that Weaver left behind. Weaver actually did a pretty good job of getting out of the mess that Tommy Canely left him, but that was enough for the Dodgers to take the lead. Canely came in through eight pitches and put three runners on base. He threw all changeups again. on base. You threw all changeups again. I can't, I can't, I can't with them.

It doesn't, it's, it's not Mariana's cutter. I'm sorry. You just can't keep doing it. I don't get it. I also have to say that I just don't get the Mark Leiter thing. I know that he had a 33% K rate this year, but it was not supported by stuff numbers and, you know, 58 innings in one year. And in fact, you know, his strikeout rate went down with the Yankees. So it was really a 35% strikeout rate in 36 innings

for the Cubs that they really pounced on that was not supported by at least my stuff plus, maybe there's a stuff plus out there that like them better. What is a four two era in a four nine eight year over the Yankees like that i think that was a poor choice it took them actual assets to get mark lighter because he had you know. He had years left of team control and i thought i think that they thought this was their big bullpen acquisition. And it was a poor one there were much better bullpen acquisitions. I think the Michael Kopeck one ended up being a lot better for the Dodgers. It's just, this is almost a one-to-one comparison guy who was available at the

trade deadline to both teams and the Dodgers went and got Michael Kopeck and they went and got Mark Leiter. It's like, well, I'd rather have Kopeck. Kopeck was better for the Dodgers and the bullpen in the postseason. I think we talked about it earlier in the series, but Freddie Freeman being the World Series MVP, if someone had told you that was going to happen a week ago, how hard would you have laughed at that? Yeah, he's just he's amazing.

35 years old and you know, you'd be at some point you'd think you know this guy is going to slow down and I guess he has 137 WRC plus for him counts as a poor year for Freddie Freeman actually I mean compared to his best seasons I think I wouldn't I wonder if there'll be some sort of off season surgery. Although do you know that he was on the fielders choice? That was a big one in game four. I think he was the fastest he'd been in a year. So he's still got it in there and he's such a,

he's got such a sweet stroke. And I think what will happen is that the power will go down. We'll have it. We'll have a year in the next two or'll happen is that the power will go down. We'll have a year in the next two or three years where he hits like 15 homers. But he seems to be a lock for 280 plus every year. And on that team, tons of runs in RBI. Still a great eye, still hitting the ball hard pretty consistently.

41.6% hard hit rate again in the regular season. Not quite what he was doing a few years ago in the later part of his peak, I guess we'll call it, but still still dangerous as we saw in this series, a well-deserved world series MVP after he homered each of the first four games, a little disappointing homer in all five. But, um, well, he already has the record. Six is the record. Well, he should have showed off and should have made it seven, just to show us he could do it.

He almost did. He hit one to the wall. He did. Hey, it's Lauren Dragon from Wirecutter, the product recommendation service from the New York Times, and I test headphones. Sweat is actually conductive because of the saline content in it. So we basically make our own fake sweat and spray it over and over on these headphones to see what happens to them over time. This is 85 dB of airplane noise.

We're going to put on some noise cancelling headphones and see how well they actually block out the sound. Put them on the ground and kick them over there. Okay. Go. Are they broken? No. I have 3,136 entries in my database.

Kids, workout, running. Does it have a connector that's lightning or USB-C? What version of Bluetooth is it? Does it have FDX HD? We have ones that track your work. At Wirecutter, we do the work so you don't have to. For independent product reviews and recommendations for the real world,

come visit us at nytimes.com slash Wirecutter. We even have one that's solar powered. There's a lot of ways to go from here, but as I said at the intro, I think the Dodgers are officially Major League Baseball's new Death Star. They are the team you're trying to beat, right? Some people look at the 2020 World Series and said, well, that was a little bit different, right? That was a shortened season.

You didn't have to deal with road fans playing in your playoff games. It just it wasn't the same. I pushed back on that because it was an expanded field playoffs. You had to win more games to get through it. Conditions in 2020 were just odd. Nobody had to go on the road air quotes. So I counted that as like a legitimate world series and they're always in the mix with the core they've put together these last few years, but they're the

team everybody's trying to chase. I think a lot of the conversations around the Yankees this off season are going to be similar to what they were talking about when they had trouble beating the Astros in the playoffs in recent years. Now they've reached that next level and we'll get to some of their questions in just a minute. The problem I think you have if you're the Dodgers would be that Tyler Glass now, we talked about him earlier in the week is getting good reports, nice imaging on his elbow right now.

If that turns into a problem, you are missing a really important PC rotation. Again, you will have Shohei Otani pitching in 2025. That's a huge boost right off the top. So you've, you've already added to your rotation. You may need to field six starting pitchers because Yamamoto and Otani, you know, you may want to put on, on, on a six day schedule, but they already did that with Yamamoto this year. They gave them five days of rest for all of us starts. Right. So they, they've operated like this for a while,

but you also in the meantime lost river Ryan Emmett Sheehan. Like you lost a lot of your guys, not, not just like for the rest of the season, but for to Tommy Johns or for next season too. So they don't have a Gavin Stone either. and Emmett Sheehan, like you lost a lot of your guys, not just like for the rest of the season, but to Tommy Johns or for next season too. So they don't have Gavin Stone either. Right, Stone's injury into being a big one. So they've kind of run through everything. I mean, they may have to go into free agency

and buy a starting pitcher just to stay afloat, you know? And I think Ben Kasparis is in line for 10 to 15 starts next year. Will that be okay though? I mean, what do you, what'd you make of Casperius? They used them a little bit more as just like a bee reliever in the postseason, but he didn't, it's good. That bad, good breaking balls and, and decent V lo,

but it's not great shape on the fastballs. And it's, I think you saw that he doesn't have good command. What kind of role do you see for Landon Nack? Yeah, I think he's he's nine nights ahead of Kasperius, but I'm just saying like that's what's in the cupboard, I think. Like, what's our what's our rotation here? Otani, Glass, Naoya, Mato. Geez, what a what a great top three to have already just coming back.

Twenty twenty five player option for Kershaw. So maybe you just he wants to come back. So he expects to come back. 2025 player option for Kershaw. So maybe you just, he wants to come back. So he expects to come back. Kershaw, Gonsolin is actually only in arbitration three. Right. So Gonsolin moves back in the rotation. So that's nominally five players. And then Laninac is six and Ben Casperius is seven, I guess.

Dustin May should be back in the equation. He had a really strange throat surgery that he needed because of an esophageal tear horror story stuff. It sounded terrible. I mean, yeah, they, they, so that's, that's eight players, but you know, of the eight players that we named, what's the overrun door on each of their innings? Oh, it's low for a lot of them. Yeah. A hundred or less for many of those guys.

So if we, if we came up with eight, if we came up with eight, uh, guys that pitch a hundred innings, let's look at the team start from their star on the pitchers, which you really need. Uh, 800 would have put them 25th, which is where they were this year. They got 800 innings when they're starting pitchers. That's all they think they need. No, they've talked about things.

I guess that's what they got. I would, I would assume that they would try to spend some money on a starting pitcher, they know both these teams will make money off of this World Series run and a fair amount of it. And both these teams, you know, have, you know, a cheaper team next year. So the Dodders would be 250 million right now. And I guess they're they're losing to Oscar. You can't say they're losing Jack Flaherty, but they're losing to Oscar. But but they are losing Jack Flaherty, but you know, they're losing to Oscar. But they are losing Jack Flaherty even though they traded for mid season.

Right, but you know, they didn't have them all season. But yeah, okay, so they're losing to Oscar and then losing to Jack Flaherty. They're losing Enrique Hernandez, Joe Kelly, Daniel Hudson, Blake Trinan, and Walker Bueller. You know, you could replace a lot of those things. I think that the, the, what I would like to do is, you know, there's a reason I brought up really dumb is, is to somehow, you know, improve the defense while doing this. Like Teoscar was a great signing and it helped them, but I would probably

rather just try to find a corner outfielder than spend $23 million on a corner outfielder when I've got some weakness at center and at short that maybe somebody like Adonis could help. And then I think from a, you know, like a starting pitcher standpoint, wouldn't, wouldn't it be nice to have somebody that has like a, like a Garrett Cole, like, um, like penchant for being healthy. Is there somebody like that? You want an a health grade starter that made it to free agency at Corbin burns is the closest thing to that. Either that, or I just, I just, you know,

lean into the injury thing and sign Shane Bieber and Lucas G Lido and tell them to race to health or sign Robbie Ray and Shane Bieber or something like, I mean, they, they have that kind of money. They can throw that kind of money around, you know, um, I do think that they should spend some attention to the pitching staff and try to make their bat acquisition something that sort of helps them put the pieces together because they're getting older. Like Chris Taylor used to be the glue that holds us together and now you're just sort of waiting for Chris Taylor's contract to go away.

You know, I don't think he's a real asset for the team anymore. Tommy Edmond could be the new Chris Taylor, but you might actually need him to play at shortstop or centerfield. So that's why, you know, getting somebody like Adamas and pushing Edmond into a centerfield slash shortstop slash Chris Taylor situation would be better. You might even DFA Chris Taylor. Yeah, Taylor will be entering the final year of the deal in 2025. So I think they're at the point now where if they have someone else they want on the roster they can accept the sunk cost a little easier.

They could have done it sooner, but I think the final year of the deal is when a lot of teams are willing to just part ways. I think Walker Bueller came up earlier in the week just as someone that we think has a fascinating case for free agency. We deserve a, he deserves a tip at the cap for his performance coming in and getting those last three outs, getting a couple of strikeouts, throwing that knuckle curve right around the bottom of the

zone, bounced a couple of them, but generally had the command where it needed to be. That was a really tight spot to use him in since he just started two days ago. That's a really impressive performance, even if it was only a one ending performance to close it out. Yeah, I don't know what to do with Walker Bueller. The stuff signs are all in the right direction. He finally was looking right. There's an interesting piece by Michael Rosen about how he was getting better at getting to checkmate like he's Michael Rosen has how he was getting better at getting to checkmate.

Like he's Michael Rosen has this nice piece on Fang grass where he's kind of talking about, you know, it's one thing to get to two strikes and it's another thing to finish somebody off. It's, it's one thing to get close to checkmate. It's another thing to actually get checkmate in chess. And, um, you know, I, you know, when I look at somebody who was down to an 8.2 swinging strike rate this year, like Walker Bueller, the stuff was down. And then he has these two big starts in the postseason where it's cold and, you

know, everybody's stuff is up, you know, are we going to overvalue that even in the postseason, he had an 18% strike rate, strikeout rate. So, um, you know, the daughters had the best seat on it. So I could see them actually maybe bringing him back. Maybe that's, that's, that's their signing. He, and then they're thinking like, maybe he can get back to 150 innings because now he's fully healthy again. And that's what we saw in the postseason.

So that's definitely a possibility. Um, if anybody gives Walker Bueller more money than you expect Would you think it'd be the I think we'd be the Dodgers because everybody else would be like and we're looking at your medicals We don't know we don't know you know I mean the Dodgers be like no we saw it all you know up close No, I think as long as the angels are owned by Artie Moreno I think the angels remain a candidate to sign the contract that you're like, whoa That was a lot. Like the Robert Stevenson deal.

Oh, I signed Blake Trine into a big deal, right? When his stuff is, you know, cratering, you know, according to the models. And also if you, if you want to get excited about Blake, trying to just look at how many innings he's put together and the fact that he's come off of labrum surgery, I think, um, I, I'd be careful with that signing as well. Yeah. I mean, I think it will tell us a lot if the Dodgers do make a large commitment to Walker Bueller.

I think it would give me some confidence that they like what they see that everything physically with his arm came back as expected with the stuff trending in the right direction. Like you mentioned more is on the table right now than it would have been even just six weeks ago for him. So it's a better outcome. I would rather sign you say Kikuchi whose stuff was better this year. I think Kikuchi sort of makes sense as like a middle option, right?

There's only one Corbin Burns to go around. There's half a dozen teams that probably are willing to spend the money on him right now that could use him. The other people in the middle with Kikuchi are probably somebody like Robbie Ray. Blake Snell is probably more at the top with Corbin Burns. And then you have like Verlander and Scherzer is just like big old question marks. Maybe, maybe that's a Dodger signing where they're like, we'll just add another veteran arm on here.

And then Jack Flaherty who knows where he's going to go? I think I think he's he's a trap. You think he's a trap. So you think an unwise team will be the one that spends. Four and well, it's four and 80. Maybe it's similar to the Bueller high end number I was throwing out there. I think, I think Flaherty is going to get paid.

He had a great regular season. There've been a couple of nice high points. I think he might get one of those. You might get one of those Gossman, um, Rodin contracts, not the, not the Yankees were down, sorry, the Gossman and Ray contracts, the five and 125, I think. Possible. It really is. I, but I wouldn't give it to him because you can see his V lo splits.

And the one thing that just doesn't really happen with aging pictures is that their V lo gets better. I think the question would be, do you see another secondary behind the slider that you think could develop enough? Did you see what they did with this curve? He shows five pitches. He really only throws three. He added horizontal movement to his curve and he went from, you know, early in his career, 10% on the curve to, uh,

20% last year to like 25% with the Tigers to 40% in the playoffs, um, with the, with the Dodgers. So they really pushed the curve ball to where he was using it twice as much as a slider. And this actually brings up an interesting comment. Somebody was asking me about, oh, was this the year of the slow spin? Was this like the,

was there something in the post season that you saw like a trend when it comes to pitch usage? And I, and I was poking around and curve ball usage was the same results were the same. Um, the thing that I found that really surprised me was we do see often in the past in the postseason, we saw trends like reducing the use of the fastball, extra V lo on the fastball, reduce usage of the fastball. And what we saw for a long time was slider usage just going up every year in the postseason.

And then we saw that in the regular season. So from 2013, slider usage, 9%, 2016, 13%, 2019, 20%. Right. Then we hovered around 16 to 18 for, until 2022. The last two years, 12.8% and 14.6% on the slider. And I think you saw even with Jack Flaherty, reduced usage of the slider. The only person that kind of. Through the slider more was Yamamoto.

Garrett Cole stopped throwing the slider this as much as here. And it reminded me of the thing that we saw with the Braves where we thought that the Braves were so good that one year by sitting slider. And so I think that conversation that we had, um, we're, we're hitting coaches are telling us, Oh, we sit slider against the Red Sox and how the Red Sox, you know, really push pitch usage at the beginning of the year. And then, and then really fell apart after that, I think more and more teams and more and more hitting coaches are being comfortable sitting slider. And that has pushed some teams to reduce slider usage.

This year, fastball usage was up in the post season. And I think that would be a surprising trend. So I think that we are pushing back on some of the trends. This is the first time that I've thought, okay, you know, maybe we'll see fewer sliders in the major leagues next year. I, I've been kind of waiting for that moment and maybe we've come to some equilibrium. I think you mentioned just a couple of shows ago, the quality of the fastballs

in the post-season though is exceptionally high. So maybe it just happened to be a year where the playoff field also was loaded with teams that had good fastballs. So they threw more cause that was a strength relatively speaking. It is a copycat league though. You know, so if they, people see that, they'd be like, Oh, I actually, you know what? I need a good four seam for the postseason, you know, when my guys are, you know, feeling good and throwing hard, I want,

I want some guys with a good four seam with ride, you know, the other thing like the Mets and the Dodgers, um, you know, seem to really like is having multiple fastballs. So I do think that's going to be a big trend. So if you have multiple fastballs, you might throw more fastballs. So there might be kind of a reversing of the trend now where, you know, it doesn't look like we're seeing a lot more fastballs because it's a little more cutters and sinkers than we have before.

That's definitely what happened this year in the regular season. But if you just, if you count cutters as fastballs, you sum them all up, you're like, oh, we're back up to 55% fastballs, which we haven't seen in a long time. I could, that's, that's the future I see. Any other thoughts on the Dodgers before we move on to the Yankee side of this? No, I they deserve to be called a dynasty and that's what they are and I have no reason to Nitpick the 2020 Win, I don't know Why we should do that. That was a very difficult year for all of us

or I mean at least most of us. And I think for players to not play in front of fans for most of that year and have all the restrictions that they had and the travel restrictions and the angst that must have come with traveling a lot and, you know, and performing for people at a time like this, it must have been a really hard year. And so I'm, I'm, you know, I don't know. And, and it was a bigger playoff field. You know, they had to get

through more people. Yeah. They had to get through more teams to get it. I don't, I don't take it. I don't take anything away from that 2021. And if you do something as simple as look at, you know, who's won the most games, you know, in the last, let's just give them, let's give them 10 years, you know? And who's won the most games in the last 10 years? I'm going to guess it's the Dodgers, 851 to the Houston's 803 to the Yankees' 778. I'd be willing to call the Yankees kind of a mini dynasty if they had won

some championships in there. The Astros got, you know, well, I think it's so hard to win the World Series that my bar for dynasty is actually pretty is lower than most people's. It's like two in five years. That's what the Dodgers just did. I thought the Braves were a dynasty. I think they got, they got one, but they were in the world series a lot and they

won a ton of regular season game. I'm talking about, I'm talking about the old, but the 90s Braves. Yeah. So just to give you a perspective of where I'm coming from, but any case, uh, it's that's a, that's a dynasty for me. It's all relative, but enjoy it Dodgers fans. And maybe you had a few more coming on the way because there's no reason to think that they're going to take their foot off the gas pedal anytime soon.

We talked about the quality of that roster coming back. Yeah, sure. It's getting a little old, but they can go out and get anything they want. And free agency, they can be active in international free agency. They still draft. Well, they still develop talent. Well, they trade. Well, they still develop talent well, they trade well, they do everything you could really want right now.

And they're on the top as they deserve to be. Flipping the script to the other side, you know, what's on tap for the Yankees this winter? Juan Soto is the first question, I think. I'm wondering if he'll sign before the end of the winter meetings. I'm hoping he'll sign during the winter meetings since we'll be there. And it would give us a great live episode experience. Yeah.

Soto Palooza. But you do have to kind of pull back and give Brian Cashman some credit for being the GM that went out and paid the price to get Soto this year. I mean, a player like this is rarely available via trade. Amazing that he was traded twice before becoming a free agent. That's stunning to me, given how good he is and what he's been able to accomplish to this point in his career. A player development win too, to develop people like Johnny Brito and Randy Vasquez and Drew Thorpe to the point where they became assets big enough to trade for, for, um,

for soda. Yeah. So, um, you know, I think that was, that was the right move. They made the right move. And I think they got to, I think they got to do it. The only, the only thing that, the only thing that gives me pause is, you know, the whole joke that

the, that the Yankees had two good hitters. And that, of course, that two good hitters changed to like Stanton and Soto at times. And it's really not true that they only had two good hitters. But I do question like maybe, do you want to spread that money around and make your lower spots in the lineup better? and make your lower spots in the lineup better.

I know that you've got DJ LeMay, he's money on there. I think you just gotta call it a sunk cost and I don't even know if you plan to like basically have him on the roster next year. Which means that you've got first base, second base, and an outfield spot to fill. And you could do the thing where you just fill that outfield spot with $45 million. I think they have somewhere $70, $80 million to spend. You spend $40, $45 million on Soto, you know, and then you then you take that rest of the 40 million, 30 million that you have and just sort of spread it around and try to find that one year to

Oscar Hernandez type deal for 20 million for, you know, on the infield somewhere. If that, if that exists and try to find a starting pitcher for 5 million, you know, try to find a good reliever for 3 million, whatever it is, you could do that with Soto, but you could also shop at the top end of the market and go get, we've talked about is sort of what would make sense like Alex Bregman, Corbin Burns, and Willie Adamis. Could you do that with $70 million? That's an old school Yankees spending spree. But yeah, like if, if you said Soto is taking a higher offer from someone else

and there's nothing you can do about it, that's a heck of a plan B. It's about as good as you can do. Trying to get better at multiple spots and maybe be a better team overall, even though your, your ceiling comes down, prove your strikeout rate with Bregman, improve your defense a little bit, maybe put jazz back in center, you know, jazz and Dominguez pairing and center, you know, like you get a little bit, you know, get a little bit better in some key spots. Corbin burns powerhouse next to, to, to Garrett Cole. Like the, you get, you say we get to the postseason, we have two guys like that

that we know can go out there and then maybe they're down and then we can figure out the bullpen again, like we usually do. Both of these teams don't traditionally, um, I'm waiting to see if I'm wrong, but I think they don't traditionally spend a lot on, on relievers. No, I think there are few instances where they've had to in recent years. They kept the Jansen around for a while in LA, you know, when he was getting expensive, but, uh, I think these, both these teams feel like they can, they can find relievers. So that's the, that's the,

the two paths in the, in the wood in front of them is, you know, do we go big on Soto and then, you know, try to take the remaining 30, 40 million and sort of spread it out to the rest of our positions. Are you giving Gleyber Torres a qualifying offer? Less than two war this year was a down year, but a lot of previous two seasons, 3.6 and 2.6 war. And I think the defense didn't grade out quite as poorly in each of the previous two seasons, 3.6 and 2.6 war. And I think the defense didn't grade out quite as poorly in each of the previous two seasons. I don't think so. I don't think so.

I think, I think his projection will probably be for something like 2.5 war. And this, it smacks a little bit too much of like, you remember when they gave jock Peterson, the qualifying offer and you're like, technically by war, like you're paying market rate, but you're paying market rate on one year deal. It's a, it's a little weird though, because if Gleyber's not there, second base can be a difficult spot to fill, even though it's not necessarily the critically important. I don't know. I don't know how they would replace him.

It's not a really great place to go shopping unless Jorge Polanco's $12 million club option gets turned down. I think he's probably still a starter league average type player. Brandon Lowe has a, Brandon Lowe. Brandon Lowe has a $10.5 million club Lowe has a 10.5 million in our club action. I think the raise will pick up.

You can maybe acquire him and trade. Yeah, that's a tough position. I've changed my mind. I kind of think that maybe they give him the QA. I think he might take it though. There's, it's a non-zero chance he would accept it and it's a good place to be for one more year. It gives you a chance to have the walk year you hope to have in 2024.

Maybe it's a win-win for both sides for one year. I don't know if they wanna do a long multi-year deal with GLABER, but I kinda think they could settle there. According to Fangraphs, who has the arbitration salaries put in and does all the things with, you know, adds up all the benefits and everything, you know, if you put Soto for 45 and Glaver for basically 20, right? That's, QO is like 19 or something.

You have the Yankees at 295 and they were at three 13 this year. So that, so it'd be even, it'd be even tighter. So now you're trying to find, what are you trying to do? You, you just with, with $65 million, you just got back to where you were last year and you need a little bit more, right? And you need, you need one, one more upgrade. Yeah. You need a little bit more, right? You need one more upgrade. Yeah, a little bit more. You need a first basement.

Yeah, I get the sense that the. Maybe they just go for it. Just have a $350 million payroll. It's really just a matter of choice. Sign Pete Alonso and Juan Soto. I just want to see if Hal wants to spend more because they didn't win it this year. If it actually motivates him to open up the wallet. Or he tells him tear it all down.

Stone over. I don't know, man. This team's terrible. As a person who is a reasonable, but competitive person, I would want to just make this core better. I would want to keep Soto. I'd want to add and add and add and say, let's go back and let's win this time. Like I would have that all the way, but I'm less certain that they're as committed

to it as I, as I think they should be, which is kind of sad, but sad. But it's a tough path every year in the AL East. I mean, that's part of it, too, right? And I think when you think about getting back from the AL side, this year felt like a little bit easier. The Central was more represented in the postseason than we all expected when the season began. Those teams deserve to be there. But at the same time, I don't think they had quite the quite the ceiling

and depth that you'd look for from typical playoff teams. So as that field gets tougher, I think that makes the road just to get back more challenging. I mean, look, look what happened to the Phillies this year, right? I thought the Phillies were going to be the team that they got through, but the windows can close really fast. I think that's the thing that I always take away from teams that make that run look like they're set up really well for a few years, is it takes a lot of things going right to keep going back the way that the Astros did for so long

and the way that the Dodgers do also. Travis Sanchik had a, had a, uh, a tweet about how cheap or generous your team owner is where he looked at team revenues and then how much was spent on payroll. And um, you know, the Rays and A's are 32%, 33% Tigers, 36% Reds, 39% red socks, 40%. Those are the misers. Those are the Scrooges. The Mets spent 102%. And the Yankees were actually sort of middle of the pack

at 52%. They apparently have a $720 million revenue. So according to Saatchik's numbers, the Yankees could spend more and join the Dodgers who were second and 67% of their revenue. They spent on payroll. Why not? You see that, you say, all right. Is Brian Cashman gonna print Travis Saczak's tweet and put it on like a nice background card and present it to Hal Steinrenner and the Yankees board?

It's gonna take a stick to the pointer. So the Dodgers are spending 67%. We're here, we're 52%. We're here for 52%. We've, we've got to close this gap. Below the Dodgers and revenue spending. I thought we were the evil empire. They can't be the Death Star. We are the Death Star and Hal's over there in his

Darth Vader costume. Yes. I don't think it would be bad for baseball. Again, the numbers say that dynasties are good for baseball, for good for sports, good for interests. People are like, Oh, I know who these people are. I saw them on the biggest stage last year. I know that person, Otani, I know that person judge, you know, that's

actually really good for your sport. Would it be good for you, the Brewers fan? No, not it's, I don't know, but I'm still not a fan of. I think you and I have come to the agreement a long time ago that the luxury tax functions as one you basically have that in place that does control spending to some degree. So if you lower it even more that's worse for the players. It's not a great situation.

It's worse for the players. Yeah, it's worth thinking about with fans. I mean, I get it. I just think that when you, you can understand the mistrust in the players, parent part, because you know, 10% of the Braves revenue comes from the battery, you know? And when you see something like, Oh, like, what's that number all around baseball? And if that number is 10% and you come to a site where you go, oh, we'll do salary cab and a salary floor and all this stuff and we want 50% of the revenue.

Do you think the owner is going to be like, oh, but the batteries, let's forget for the battery you guys don't get. That's, that's not revenue that the players have anything to do with that's that's my real estate. Yeah, no, that's, that's how it goes down though. So I can understand their mistrust. And, um, I think that, uh, what I would hope is that some of the streaming situation, um, is found is figured out in a way that helps the smaller teams.

I think that's possible. I think it's possible that, you know, not focusing so much on these local TV deals and nationalizing it to some extent could lead to a little bit of revenue sharing of the local TV deal. Basically. Right. lead to a little bit of revenue sharing of the local TV deal, basically. Right. And I think that's where the smallest markets get the most, right? I think the TV deal that a team like the Brewers has compared to the Dodgers,

Yankees, so much of your payroll comes from that because it's such a firm revenue source, right? So we've seen that link for a long time. Your TV deal generally, plus your BAM money, 50 million that you get, whatever share you get from that. That's usually your number for what your owner's comfortable spending. And if you can close that gap, that could make some of the smaller markets a bit more competitive over time.

I would love to see that. There are some ominous signs though. There's some thingsous signs though. There's some things where, you know, baseball went out and got a bunch of money from Apple and, um, and you know, Amazon prime and stuff. And then ESPN came back and was like, you're not getting as much money from these streamers as we are paying you.

We'd like to renegotiate our deal. So did Manfred just shoot himself in the foot a little bit? You know, so there's some ominous signs there. And then obviously the biggest ominous sign is just like how many of the local cable stations are just shutting up shop. Right. The diamond collapse, the fallout from that. We haven't even realized all of that yet. It's something that will come up this winter. We may have to have a conversation with Evan Drellick at some point because he is the point person at the athletic covering that in great detail.

There are some teams that are going to be more impacted by others. It's awful. I wouldn't put that in the category of the most fun thing you could report on, but it's important and he does a great job with it. So we'll be covering it. We'll be talking about it at some point over the course of the next few months, but hey, now, now that the Dodgers are world series champions,

the focus shifts to 2025 fantasy baseball in full. We're going to be here throughout the rest of the fall and winter, getting you ready, looking back at some of the things we learned from 2024 as we prepare for 2025. If you'd like to join our discord, that's a great and winter getting you ready looking back at some of the things we learned from 2024 as we prepare for 2025. If you'd like to join our discord that's a great way to hang out throughout the off season you can do that with the link in the show description you can find Eno on twitter at EnoSaris you can find me at Derek VanRiper you can find the pod at rates and barrels thanks to all

of you for listening throughout the postseason throughout the regular season all the way back to last draft season. We basically don't stop. We take like a week off in November and then we just keep going. Like we didn't take any time off at all, which we both love it. So that's why we keep doing it. Yeah. This weekend, you're going to hear us, uh, from, from the Arizona fall league.

We're going to do a, uh, a broadcast from Arizona and we'll have some fun guests hopefully, and you know, then we'll be back next week and back at it. Say hi, if you're out in Arizona, but yeah, it's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels back with you on Monday. Thanks for watching!