Rates & Barrels - The Giants-Dodgers Game 5 NLDS Matchup, Houston's ALDS Dominance & Atlanta's Path to the World Series

Episode Date: October 14, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss the Game 5 matchup between the Dodgers and Giants, Houston's dominance (and the White Sox short list of flaws despite their elimination), and Atlanta's chances to advance through the NLCS against the winner of Dodgers-Giants.  Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Watch the show *Live* on weekdays at 11:30a ET/8:30a PT on YouTube and subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Subscribe to The Athletic at 50% off for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels presented by Topps. Check out Topps Project 70 celebrating 70 years of Topps baseball cards. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. It is Thursday, October 14th. We are here against all odds, against all coffee spills, against all, well, it's not a time change right now. It's just being in a hotel situations. Yes, yes. Hotel internet is always a gamble for podcasts, live shows, all of the above. But we are here, and I have the motor skills of a toddler.

As I've learned many times, I often spill coffees on my desk, and today was one of those days right before we were supposed to go live, which is very convenient. Yeah, so how's everything going? You made it. You're in Arizona. You've seen baseball. That's great.

Yes, it was fun. AFL baseball is amazing. It's so strange. They're all wearing their own uniforms. So, you know, like it seems like it's always an all-star game. There's no concept of team at all because they're all from different teams. And they frankly don't really care if they win or lose. All they want to do is homer or strike the guys out. And they're all kind of there to increase their innings,

increase their plate appearances, add to the season, maybe showcase themselves for a trade. But the big get last night was talking to Tristan Casas and then watching him launch one deep into the night. But I also enjoyed talking to Mr. Lars Newt bar and a few other guys for a story I'm doing down here. Yeah. I was a little surprised that Lars Newt bar was there since we saw him quite

a bit in the big leagues. This is one of the few that had big league experience. And there was some question of that. He would even report had the Cardinals advanced. He was on the taxi squad, I believe, and somebody like Shea Langeleers, who was supposed to be there, the catcher for

the Braves, is not reporting right now because of a little something called the NLCS. Yeah, he's a little busy. He's also on the taxi squad for the Braves there. I think he's going to try and stay ready for them and not get injured at an Arizona Fall League game while they might need him.

So we got a big Game 5 tonight, Giants-Dodgers happening, and it is the kind of game that we've seen Logan Webb do at once. I still have some doubts about whether or not he can do it twice because that game one performance is almost impossible to replicate against anyone, let alone a Dodgers lineup as good as this one, but it's going to be Logan Webb against Julio Urias. I'll put the question to you. Can Logan Webb do it again or can Logan Webb do it for four or five innings like he did in game one and turn it over to maybe Kevin Gossman and then Camilo Doval, who's rested? And of course, you've got McGee and you've got Rodgers.

Is there a path for the Giants to do it in a slightly different way than they did in game one and come out with this W? Well, as the King of Waffles, I have to be on both sides of this issue. I think just to be serious about that, like I know that it frustrates somebody like I've actually been sort of taking a task for it, but I just think there's nuance in baseball. So I'd like,

you know, I can see, I try to see both sides. And in this case, what I would see is Logan Webb actually did break out some surprises for that last game. It was the second most he'd ever thrown his change up um and he'd kind of been going away from the change up and become more of a sinker

slider uh guy you know throughout the season so this that was a wrinkle for the um for the dodgers and i think that it worked a little bit hand in hand with the strike zone that day, because if you remember, he was getting strike zone, he was getting extra strike zone off the edge of the plate. I think it was off the edge of the plate to righties. And so that allowed him to throw some backdoor change ups to play with a

wider strike zone left, left to right. That led him kind of take advantage of that changeup. Now, does he have the same strike zone tonight? Does he have the same element of surprise if he comes out there and throws a ton of changeups? I don't think so. So I don't think it'll be the same dominant performance.

I don't think it goes far. But maybe he doesn't need to. The big thing is whether or not the bats support him. If he can give up two or three runs in five or six innings and the bats actually support him, then we're going to go to a tight game that gets down to the ninth inning. Yeah, I think if you look at it from the other perspective, okay, what can the Giants do against Julio Urias?

And then if they get to Urias, at what sign of trouble do the Dodgers go to the bullpen and possibly maybe to Max Scherzer for one. I think Dave Roberts tried to downplay the likelihood of Scherzer appearing in this game. But at the same time, if the season is hanging in the balance, he's available for something, even if it's only for one inning. If it's an outing sort of like we saw from Brandon Woodruff in game four of the Milwaukee Atlanta series, that's probably at least a baseline expectation for Scherzer at some point tonight. And didn't council say like Burns and Woodruff aren't available and stuff. He said,

I don't think they'll pitch. I don't think they'll pitch is like, uh, frankly, just BS at this point. It's like, it's like those nights in college, like the Thursday nights,

you'd say, I don't think I'm going out tonight. Or I don't think I'm going to have that much to drink tonight. And then you'd wake up and you'd be like, wow, set a personal record, made some really bad choices. And now I got to go pick up the pieces. And I don't even know where I am. Yeah, exactly. I think that, yeah, I think that Scherzer is definitely on the table. I think everything's on the table. It's game five. know the other thing that i wanted to mention about webb was um you had some astute comments uh from people saying that the lefties uh the lefties that i was like well webb might have some trouble against lefties

well pretty much a seager i mean i like baby you know but um you know he's not a threat threat and um you know bellinger's been playing a little better uh but he's not the bellinger threat that he used to be so you're kind of circling seager as a lefty that might worry you and otherwise you're you're taking a sinker slider approach tonight against all the righties i think um so that might be the only wrinkle he has is going back to what he was uh and ditching the changeup a little bit more. So, you know, I,

I can see, I can see this. I think it'll be tight. I mean, I, this is really good teams. The, the,

and then the righties for the giants are going to be really important. You could cite season long numbers against lefties by the giants, but that wouldn't miss the fact that Evan Longoria missed half the season. And Chris Bryant wasn't on this team. Those are two big righties. If you think about it, the righties that they've got that should scare Urias, it's a longer list than lefties that should scare Webb, right? With Muncy out, you still have a longer list of righties with Posey, Bryant,

and Longoria, and honestly, Flores is a good at bat against lefties. Solano is a good at bat against lefties. Solano is a good at bat against lefties. So they've got a pretty good lineup in terms of depth and star power to face the lefties. Yeah, I'm looking back at the previous matchups, Urias, against the Giants this year. And they got to them once, one big game against them back in May. I think they piled up 11 hits, seven runs over five innings that day. But a lot of good starts for Maria. He's faced them five times this year, and four of those outings were,

if they weren't quality starts, they were at least very good starts. So it's a tall task. But I do think the Giants, the way they're built with those platoon pieces, they can absolutely throw something out there that could work. And I do have a little more confidence in them with all of their relievers rested too. There's not really any question about their options and they're having everybody they want to have available. As Trevor wrote in the chat for the live stream, honestly, this Giants team has shattered my expectations so many times. I don't know what's impossible anymore. It's a perfect way to sum up this team, really.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think they have so many options because their relievers are rested that they don't, you know, throw like season one season splits out the window. If they think that Jake McGee profiles better against lefties, then they can use Jake McGee as almost a lefty specialist. If there's two, I mean, you have three batter minimum minimum but if there's two lefties out of three somewhere that's when jake maybe he'll come out instead of being like he's their ninth inning guy because i think

joe ball is you know looks like the ninth inning guy yeah the confidence level in him through the roof right now and understandable given that they've had the ice water in the veins the pulse checks on him on a few occasions i said like uh they said like you go back out there for the ninth or something he said i'm ready poppy i got you and uh you know uh the funny thing is though uh you know even though he's hit 105 the big step forward for him this year was finding the slider. That was the big development hurdle that he had to overcome this year. And he's found it because if you, if you just keep throwing one Oh five, unless you're Jake McGee,

which I still don't get it. I mean, I know he's kind of explained it to me and it's about like, he kind of has, you know, a little bit of shape on the fastball. That's hard to pick up or what? Like, I'm like, dude, it's a fastball every time.

How does it work? And it somehow works. It's bizarre. One question for you longer term about Deval. Of course, I'm in that draft. It's a slow draft happening in the background with our friend Todd Zola. We're in the 27th round, I think, so it's going to end probably by the end of the weekend, maybe even by the end of the week.

Jake McGee had 31 saves this year for the Giants. Tyler Rogers had 13. DeLaval is going to have a large share of them next year, but would you start looking at DeLaval as a borderline traditional closer as we look ahead to next season or do you think it's going to be a little more of a mix and match thing kind of indefinitely in san francisco just thinking about the way gabe capler has managed that bullpen and the way that this team has been constructed in recent years the one thing that you know we haven't been able to nail down in the data is whether or not teams really do this to keep players cheap. Do the mixed bullpens to keep players cheap. Because, you know, you can say that and it makes sense and you can look anecdotally and say that it makes sense,

but it's been hard to prove that they, that they do that in the numbers. If that exists, I don't think the giants care about it. The giants have money. They want to win, you know? And I think it mixing and matching Jake McGee and Tyler Rogers in the

eighth or whoever, you know, whoever they find next year makes a lot more sense than playing Duval, you know, early. So I think, you know, Duval is going to be the closer. You know, I know that Stuff Plus, I try not to just parrot it, but Pitching Plus beats projections for relievers. I can tell you that he has excellent stuff and location, and he has a 105 pitching plus, and there's no

but his fastball is super straight issues there with Duvall. Here's a comp in the live stream from Carter. Jake McGee reminds me of Sean Doolittle from a few years ago. Lefty, pretty much all fastballs. Velo, not overpowering. Yeah, later career Doolittle, a little less overpowering.

Earlier career Doolittle was more like 95, 96, right? So it wasn't Chapman. That's kind of where McGee is. Yeah, so yeah, I think that's a pretty good comp. And then El Capitano. This is why I like playing in saves plus hold leagues. Freeze up so much brain space. I mean, I'm warming up to the idea.

I'm still not on board. I mean, holds are a great stat by themselves, and they're a little bit more finicky than saves, so you still kind of want to know who's saved. Like, the saves guys are a little bit more, in terms of usage, like the holds guys come and go faster. Yeah, they do. So you're kind of – There's still a little bit

of like the closers are better. But I think you're right. I like those leagues better too because you can focus on just finding quality relievers. I like it. I like that category more when saves still carry

a little extra weight. Again, there's flaws with both stats. We don't have to relitigate saves versus holds and combining them. Would you like a two-time saves plus one-time holds league? Yeah, 2x saves plus holds, I think, is a good balance.

Or I'll take one and a half on saves. A little extra weight just for those because that's sort of how our brain works. Well, you be quiet because everybody who runs an auction calculator is like, shut up. Because everybody who runs an auction calculator is like, shut up. Oh, everybody. I'm a developer's nightmare because all of my fun house stupid ideas that are actually like fun, creative ideas are not easy things to build from a programming perspective. Most of the time, I've worked closely enough with people that have to build tools when I have an idea to know that, yeah, I am not well-liked in those circles. So official prediction. It seems so hard to pick against the Dodgers.

It's been hard to pick against them for so long. I think they're going to go into San Francisco and break some hearts tonight. I'll take the Dodgers side of this one. A nice, tight 4-3 game, back and forth. Delivers in terms of hype and energy and fun, but ultimately, I think the Dodgers do come out on top in a close one. I'm going to go Giants.

I like the righties in the lineup. I think Logan Webb might have one more wrinkle and be able to get through this. I like that they have Gossman. I like that they're home. I do think that might matter a little bit. And my power is running out of my computer. Yay, another obstacle. But I'm going with the Giants. Also tight game. I'll have to find a way to watch it here while

in Arizona. And you're going to move with me. How exciting. How fun. Isn't this exciting? You get to see my dirty hotel room. Yay. Well, you know what? I'm glad you're giving us all the experience of what it's like to be there

since I'm not there this year. Ordinarily, we'd be in the same place sitting awkwardly at one little hotel desk trying to do a live stream. So now I feel like I am there because I've seen the tour. I've seen what the Marriott room in this instance

looks like and how similar it is to the other Marriott rooms. Now I'm on the floor. This is incredible. I hope you didn't see me in my boxers through all that. I think you managed to keep your lower half out of the shot.

A lot of training the last two years about keeping lower halves out of Zoom shots. All right. It's cold, Jerry. It's cold. Yeah. Actually, let's go to Houston for a minute. When I got here, they had no rental cars in the entire rental car structure at the Phoenix airport.

That thing's huge. They had no rental cars. It's full out completely of cars, including ones that had reservations. And there was like 150 really angry travelers in there. And I was like, I could do the Jerry Seinfeld and yell about taking reservations. You know how to take a reservation. You just don't know how to hold it.

See, but the thing is, and this is my, I mean, if you've ever worked a job in customer service or retail or whatever it is, you've been yelled at for something you had no control over and it feels terrible. So you and I are similar in that regard. We don't do stuff like that. I just left.

So what did they do? They sold the fleet during the pandemic and haven't replenished the cars? I think that, first of all, I think it's related to airlines are understaffed and um not and canceling flights so some people are going getting a car because their flight was canceled okay um that's happening i think that some people are still nervous to fly in planes um and so they're renting cars i don't know maybe there's an understaffing issue on the rental car side, too. And maybe part of it is people are tired of having crap jobs where they get yelled at and get paid really poorly. And I think that that's kind of reverberating throughout every industry right now.

And they're finding that they have to either pay better or offer some sort of incentive to make the job seem better. And frankly, I think that sort of adjustment has been overdue in American society. If you look at European society, they take the full month of August off. It's just like everyone's like, F it. It's nice outside. We're done. This podcast, it got weird as soon as you stood up and had to plug in your laptop.

Yes, we're not talking about baseball. Let's get back to baseball. Let's get back to baseball. Get to baseball, you idiots. Let's go to the Houston story for a moment just because they cruised through their series

with the White Sox. I think I'm most surprised by really is that the White Sox bullpen didn't come in and shut the door when they needed it to. I thought they had enough depth to get quality innings from that relief core. Other things went wrong too. Lynn got rocked in game one.

G Alito only went four and a third in game two. I just thought they matched up better with Houston than they actually did in the series. The White Sox, we'll talk about them probably on an off season episode. They're well positioned to make another run in 2022. I want'll talk about them probably on an off-season episode they're they're well positioned to make another run in 2022 i want to talk about though i'm sorry to go off off the runway here go ahead but i think that we're a lot of focus has been on uh the white

socks failing or the white socks uh somehow having fatal flaws or something and i and that the white socks were just a product of their division and i kind of want to push back because if you like sometimes you just gotta like i talk about like the the blink thing i don't love malcolm gladwell but the idea that like sometimes you just gotta like take have an approval like take an appraisal of a situation and and listen to your first thought about it and like look at the white socks and tell me they're a bad team like what are you talking about uh and the people like well they should have like a real second baseman and a corner outfitter. Dude, Cesar Hernandez is totally fine. If Cesar Hernandez is your worst position player, and if Cesar Hernandez, Adam Engel, your worst position players, like you're a good team. You're a good frigging team. And they're like, well, the starting pitching, they get really lucky. What are you talking about? It's like Lucas Giliot. It's a good starting rotation.

They could go into the offseason and just buy a back-end starter and try to turn Kimbrell back into a serviceable second baseman or corner outfielder. That's all they got to do. And they'll be back in it. And they don't even have to get a starter because they'll probably stretch Kopech out. So they might just try to turn Kimbrell into a cheaper reliever or something.

Yeah, we got into the White Sox a little bit on the athletic baseball show that I recorded with Keith earlier this morning. That'll go up Friday. But I think the White Sox, if they were going to make a splash in free agency, they don't need to. I mean, Marcus Simeon would be a way to just make the offense even better. You want to go from a top five, top six offense to maybe having one of the best offenses in the league. Okay. You could do that, but then fudge around with angle,

you know, you have sheets. So angle and sheets is your, is your right field situation. Like fine. Sign me up for that. Carter wants to know when the rates and barrels spin off podcast on the U S labor market is coming out.

Yeah. Uh, that's a way is to get depressed every day for 300 please. I couldn't dive into that pool every day and come out of it feeling good. My suggestion is not to go find the 300 tweet thread that started for me

talking about me finding a $50 Oreo in my Oreo pack. What? Something about stagflation and it's ridiculous. I missed that. Oreo packs would cost 50 bucks by December. Wow.

Wow. Anyway. I think the White Sox are well positioned though. I think the question is, is Tony La Russa coming back? He said, if the players would have me back, I'll be back. That was basically what he said.

They seemed it. Jose Abreu said he's in all of our corners, which is a sensual baseball thing, maybe. They seemed to go to bat for him at the end because it was one of those things that got asked of all of them. Yeah, understandably so so apparently he's coming back if they make moves i think it's relatively small and this is why i wanted to talk about houston i think it's easy to just sort of brush that everything was is a great team they're really good and i i think we we sometimes forget that they they consistently are winning. I understand the trash can scandal. We've talked about that.

We've had enough of that story. They're more than that. They always have been. There are so many things they do very well as an organization developing players and being consistently good from year to year. They've had key players leave. Losing Springer and just kind of doing it again, right? Like that,

they've Verlander got hurt. Like they've, they've had their share of injuries and departures just like any other team. And yet here they are still doing a ton of damage, not striking out and having plenty of pitching, even though you don't see a lot of their young pitchers, Forrest Whitley is sort of the exception, as highly regarded, highly ranked prospects. That says a lot about what they've been able to accomplish as an organization.

I think the one thing that really could be a problem for them is Lance McCullers, his injury. If he's going to miss some time, that puts them in a pretty difficult spot. But even still, their fallback option is Grinke. They eventually go to Grinke in game four if they don't have McCullers. And you could be so much worse off than this version of Zach Grinke having to give you maybe four or five innings in the ALCS. I mean, my recency bias says they need McCullers to beat the Sox because the Sox just seem like a juggernaut all of a sudden. But we have to remember that the Sox offense paled in comparison to the Astros offense, frankly,

during the regular season, during September. Any snapshot you want to take. The Red Sox were more like a top six, top seven type offense, and the Ast socks were more like a top six top seven type offense and the astros were like a number one uh or number two so like you know i i think uh it may i don't think it would totally swing the series uh but is there talk of him missing him i thought it was a little hopefully more preventative. He just didn't feel 100%, so we got him out of there. Yeah, just a little more of a day-to-day sort of thing.

But if that turns into an actual absence, that is one of the things that puts them in a pretty rough spot. Injury is the biggest source of chaos in a season and a postseason, I think. Yeah, I mean, I guess you would need more from Jake Odorizzi. Okay, like again, you could do so much worse than guys like Odorizzi and Grinke having to step in for someone like McCullers. Frambois Valdez

seems like the exact type of pitcher you'd want to throw in Fenway. That's from Mitch in the live stream. Yeah, I mean, lefties at Fenway, it's a tall order for them, but getting a ton of ground balls, that's one way to offset it. Peak Dallas Keuchel, I guess,

would have also been the kind of guy that could fare a lot better at Fenway than the typical lefty. And also, one thing that did come out of, I did try to defend the nerds when the Rays lost and wrote a piece about defending their approach. I kind of pointed out that the same pitching approach was taken by both teams. If you look at

when Shane McClanahan and Nate Nevaldi were dealing, they were taking out 85 pitches. We're taking dealing pitchers out earlier and earlier. Everybody's doing it. It's not just the Rays. That has spread. The thing that ended up tanking the Rays. So that has spread. The thing that ended up tanking the Rays, I think, was a little bit of a glass down injury. Maybe the Rich Hill trade was a poor one. And maybe it's a money thing because you can buy depth. If you think about it, the Red Sox had Tanner Houck and Nick Pavetta, and those guys were really good. Imagine if the Rays had an Eovaldi in sale for $40 million

or $50 million at the top of their rotation, then Baz and Rasmus and all those guys would have been in the position of how can Pavetta depth. You kind of push everybody down a rung and create depth by signing guys. The Astros don't have that problem. In terms of guys that can go more than 40 pitches. That that's what I was calling it. Like depth now in the playoffs, like bulk now in the playoffs is 40 to 80 pitches. That's how little you need to go. And the rays did run out of 48 pitchy

pitcher guys. Uh, but the Astros won't, you know, if you want to take a guy out at 80 pitches, you're going to have another guy that day that can pitch 80 pitches or 60 or 50. Yeah. The thing about the raise too that hit me this morning was just that Charlie Morton is pitching well for Atlanta. There were two places it seemed like he was willing to sign, Atlanta and Tampa Bay. It was a one-year deal, so it wasn't a long commitment. The raise decided not to make it, or they didn't want to match Atlanta's offer. I don't know the exact details, but think about

a guy that was there last year that they reasonably could have got. They run a payroll in the bottom five every year. It would have been huge. It would have made a huge difference. The hindsight is 20-20. It would have turned Rasmussen into a guy that pitches every two days at 40 pitches or something. Right, but Glasnow was healthy at that time.

That factors into your core and what you think, but it's just like if they weren't so cheap on the margins, if they went ahead and traded Snell the way that they did. I think trading Rich Hill was a bad idea. I know that his spin rate really went down after the spin rate enforcement. It was pointed out to me

and I remember this from my piece is that four-seam fastballs are affected by the sticky stuff thing more than curveballs. And that's what you saw with Rich Hill, is he was effective even after the sticky stuff enforcement. That's because, I don't know, I don't know why, but curveballs, you retain more of the spin rate, you retain more of the shape.

The real thing that got hurt was that zip, that ride on four-seam fastballs that everyone's looking for uh that's what got really hurt by the sticky stuff of course rich hill doesn't have like an amazing fastball anyway so but just back to the astros for for one second shut up about rich hill you know well no i i think this i agree this there's just no there's there's so few easy paths through this lineup. We talked about Kyle Tucker hitting seventh. This is a guy that is a borderline first-rounder in fantasy, buried in the seventh spot.

We said before, if he's on any other team, he'd hit third or fourth, probably. That just speaks to how well the offense is built. Do we have any Jake Myers news? I haven't seen anything yet. And that looked really bad like it just it looks like he couldn't throw in the game yeah i saw i'm i'm very older discomfort it's worse than elbow discomfort i think and he and he's among the many players they've had who've stepped up

and been even uh just above average regulars filling in right getting those types of guys to emerge that's sort of part of what always made some of st louis's teams pop right you have these guys that are unheralded coming up and doing good or even great things in some cases but they do it of course with that that young core and we've talked a little about jordan alvarez on this show and how great he is is jordan alvarez for you so much of the questions we discuss about him in fantasy are about the health of his knees and being previously UT only and all those kinds of things. But he doesn't walk like Juan Soto does. But just in terms of a young hitter that can do a lot of damage, does he belong closer to the Soto and Vlad conversation that most people are willing to put him?

I know those other two guys are better, and I'd rather have both of those guys long-term for a few different reasons, but do you feel like Alvarez somehow is underrated in the broader conversation, even though we in the fantasy community clearly appreciate what he can do as a hitter? I do.

He's one of my favorite people to watch, especially in BP. It's just easy, real easy power to all fields. And I think that this year's walk rate underrates him in that regard too. I think that he'll have some 12 to 15% walk rate years in the future. Because when I watch him, I think he takes good at bats. It's a little bit different than, you know, Eloy Jimenez and Luis Robert. Like I like them both a lot, but they don't take the same discipline at bats, even as a Jordan Alvarez. And you can point to walk rates and miss some of the picture there. I think, you know, Alvarez is an astro, you know, these guys grind things out. They try not to reach they you know they they try

to make contact they try to make powerful contact that's the they i think one of the underrated things about the uh the astros is their ability you know to to to turn out hitters you know i think we've been talking about these starting pitchers that they turned out for ten thousand dollars a piece um out of Latin America. But if you watch, one thing that's really interesting about the Astros too is that they all set up very similarly, especially ones that came up through their organization. But even Brantley now, look at how they place their bat against their shoulder before the pitch comes.

They all kind of, for the the most part hit their shoulder with the bat and then bring it up like two inches and then that's where their hands are um and uh so they they they've been part of this the conversation we're having out here at the arizona fall league about how um like uh i think hitter stances are homogenizing. There's been some research about ideal batting stances and ideal techniques of the plate that you don't have the Craig Councils anymore. You don't have the Julio Francos anymore. Those batting stances have become homogenized.

And I think there's sort of an opposite thing happening on the pitcher thing because all the research says that extremes are great. So now you're having more Tyler Rod rogers extreme over stream under weird change you know like everyone's trying to be as weird as possible on the mound um not necessarily mechanically but like at least in terms of of pitches they're they're creating and the hitters are all starting to look the same frankly and and some of that you can see in the Astros organization. Yeah, I think it is interesting that we're getting more consistency with the mechanics of hitters because if you have a simple timing mechanism or a simple start mechanism that just works for everybody

to get into that optimal hand position, even if you have something different about maybe the way that you have your feet or other things about the swing that can slightly vary just to kind of fit your body type and what makes you comfortable having the hands right seems like a very basic thing that could have been done a long time ago or should have been done a long time ago and it always seemed like hitting was this art where it's like just do whatever you're comfortable with and yes but there's there's an optimal path like if you think about it there's an optimal path from your hands in the set position,

the ready position to getting the bat in the zone quicker. You know what I mean? Like, so there's an optimal path. Like if I did the Craig council today and had my hands three, four inches above my head, I would be adding six inches of, of path.

You would get eaten alive by high fastballs with that. Anyway. But I think that, yeah, I think you would, yeah. Inside fastballs by high fastballs with that. I would get eaten alive anyway. Well, yeah. But I think that, yeah, I think you would, yeah, inside fastballs, high fastballs, because you'd have this long bat path. Yeah, there's just no way you're catching up to high fastballs now. And I wonder if players like that would have adjusted,

of course, in today's game, but they could do it the way they did. Yeah, this is not a critique of what came before. It's just you know i think that i think i think some things like uh the k vest have really opened people's eyes um i was talking to matt lyle a hitting coach um that was with the white socks for a while and you know i asked him are there are there truths with a capital t in hitting and he said yes um and i think that's And I think that's playing out in hitter development now. Yeah, so one more topic that I want to get to because I guess we could make a series prediction

for Red Sox Astros because it's going to start before the next time we have a show, no show on Friday. I think it's the Astros. I think it's the Astros in six, and I think it is a boatload of runs in this series. It's going to be probably one of the highest scoring series we've ever seen for an ALCS. I'm just

not going to go that far because you just gave yourself more ways to be wrong. I love that. So I'm going to be more vanilla and be like, you know, Astros in six, and it'll be a great series. How about that?

That's like the best prediction. You can't prove me wrong on that. I'm going to really enjoy watching this series. So it comes out like every game is like 2-1, 1-0. I was like, I loved the pitching in that series. Every game is 9-8. I loved how those hitters were just mashing. I don't care that those games took five hours. I enjoyed it because we saw more home runs than ever.

Astros winning four, you're ever. I enjoyed watching the dominance. Half my prediction was right. I enjoyed it. Enjoyment is not a real prediction. Not in baseball. If I laugh at this stuff, seriously, guys, this is a little stat that I had in my nerds thing.

War is the best stat for predicting, for projecting wins, for predicting wins, right? It's the best single stat. War, wins above replacement, explains 80% of the variance. That's really high. 80% of the variance in wins. If you know a team's war, you know how good they are pretty much like that's, that's an amazing one thing. Like that's how far we've come.

It predicts 6% of the variance in the post season. And it's the only thing that has like a good P value that like you would actually be like, Oh, that actually does predict post seasons. And it predicts 6% after it predicts 80% of regular season wins. So when people say that predicting the playoffs is a crapshoot, it is. Literally, that example is the best I can give you.

Even then, if you think about the regular season, if you're predicting 162 games worth of outcomes versus one series, it's just because you're making it smaller. Like it, it, yeah. Look what happens within the 162. The chaos happens within it.

I guess to like really, yeah, I guess to like really nail that comparison, you have to be like, how much would war predict just a random five game stretch? Maybe it is only 6%, but still that's, I mean,

that's the source of the, that's the source of the crapshootedness. So when you were traveling yesterday, Britt had the very unfortunate task of playing therapist for me as I mourned the end of the Brewers season. And in all of that, I didn't really wax poetic about how great I think this Atlanta team is, but it's a good Atlanta team. I think that was maybe undersold as part of our conversation yesterday, which I will take full responsibility for because it was all about me yesterday with how I felt about the Brewers. This is an Atlanta team that had a 3-1 lead in the NLCS against the Dodgers last season. And there are a lot of things about 2020 that I have completely erased from my own memory.

That was one that all three of us were like, oh yeah, that actually happened as we were reminded. Oh yeah, the Braves did win a series. They won two last year. But they were up 3-1 in the NLCS against the Dodgers. Yeah, Atlanta had Acuna that year, but the Dodgers were a different team then too. And the strengths of these two teams are still relatively the same. I think Atlanta is more dangerous than most people gave them credit for. I think I gave them proper credit. I said they matched up well with the Brewers. I said their big three could hold their own against the Brewers pitching and that that that bared itself out. But I think what makes Atlanta good in my mind is that they have the core. You know, Freeman, Albies, you have Austin Riley's kind of stepped up and been an excellent hitter helping to replace some of that loss with Acuna. But then it's the secondary guys. It is guys like Swanson.

Last year, it was Travis Darnot. He's not playing at the same level right now. It's Rosario, Jock Peterson, Adam Duvall. That trio of replacement outfielders, they're flawed players from a sabermetric perspective, but they're dangerous hitters. They can take advantage of mistakes, and that's really what you're looking for from secondary guys. If you have that core of two or three great hitters in place, and you've got four or five other guys that can absolutely do some damage, that makes you pretty dangerous when you put at least three good starters out there three great hitters in place and you've got four or five other guys that can absolutely do some damage, that makes you pretty dangerous when you put at least three good starters out there

and an A bullpen that is an above average unit. Okay, the B bullpen's a problem, fine, but how much does that even matter if your starting pitching does well and isn't overtaxing your relievers? Yeah, one problem is strikeout rate. They had, even with the replacement group in place, in September, they had the fourth worst strikeout rate in baseball, not even among the playoff teams. And so I just think that they can be pitched to. And you saw in that series that it was equal parts really good pitching and not great hitting. That's what kept it low scoring, I thought.

You could say it was Burns or Woodruff or whatever and Anderson and Morton and all them. But I do think that part of it was both offenses were fairly flawed. I think when you go up against a team that makes more contact, has a higher barrel rate, has a lower reach rate, you're going to see either the Giants or the Dodgers push them more when it comes to runs. They're going to score more runs than the Brewers did. Yes, the Brewers would have better pitching staff

probably than either of these teams. But especially if the Dodgers come out, the Dodgers can match that sort of ace-to-ace kind of feeling in the Brewers and then also add more scoring to boot. So I would say that either team that comes out of this game five tonight is a favorite against the Braves. I would agree, and I think everybody would say, well, the Dodgers would be a

bigger favorite than the Giants for the reasons that you mentioned. I think the thing that gives Atlanta a better shot against San Francisco specifically is the Giants pitching staff doesn't pile up strikeouts quite the same way the Dodgers do. Both those teams can do plenty of damage offensively. Both can just outscore

Atlanta. And I do think more balls in play against Atlanta's defense is going to, well, I'm just saying that compared to the Brewers though, it is going to put stress on a very questionable defense. Mike R defense the micro has a great piece out about how uh in may they just started shifting and never looked back um and my favorite my favorite part of the piece is not necessarily all these sort of broad shifting numbers but he points out that um dansby swanson was standing within sort of like you know five feet of second base uh for one one one player um it was like when he did the unassisted double play um and he when he was the spot he was standing in um a a brave shortstop stood in that spot for one pitch in all of 2019 um and it and then over the course of uh

of the course of i've made work made 2020 but any case in the course of this season they've done it 15 20 25 times and and it's become not only a team that shifts with a capital s but a team that does the uh micro shifting the the little three or four steps to your left and right that seems to be also, frankly, a part of the Giants' success because the Giants had great defensive numbers, but they have some flawed defensive pieces. You think about Flores, Solano, you know, and then aging guys that used to be really good,

but you'd think that they might have fallen off more on defense in Crawford and Longoria. The Braves now kind of strike me as a team that makes the most out of their defense in a similar way that the Giants do. Yeah. I think those teams are a little more similar than people previously thought.

I think that'd be a great matchup if that's what we get. I, again, mentioned before, I think the Dodgers are going to win that game, and it's going to be a Dodgers Braves matchup to close out the NL. I'm excited for it, nonetheless. Even though I'm disappointed it's not my team playing for the NL pennant, I think we are

in store for another great series. Before we go, I'm going to let everyone know, if you don't have a subscription to The Athletic, this is a great time to get one. You can get half off the first year at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. You can read all of Eno's stuff, all of Ken Rosenthal's stuff, Jason Stark's stuff, of course, all of

Britt's articles, as well as she's on the road for the postseason too. Eno, enjoy Arizona. Say hi to our friends for me and enjoy at least one extra beer. I said yesterday, I want someone to eat all the Portillo's for me and enjoy at least one extra beer. I said yesterday, I want someone to eat

all the Portillo's for me. I mean, so I don't know if you can single-handedly do all of it, but get that Portillo's going. Last night's special food of the food option of the evening was brought to us by Woody,

a listener from Canada from uh canada and he brought some canadian beer and then also um uh all dressed uh potato chips and some uh ketchup flavored potato chips so i had both of those for the first time uh all dressed was uh something around a sour cream and onion but like a like maybe i don't like a sort of a cheddar thing on top of it and the ketchup was i i liked it i like the ketchup fries i kind of feel like we need to have more of that in america yeah i'm on board with that i also saw there's some kind of like coffee bar candy thing they have in canada they have it near the border in a few places but i've never actually seen one. It was a

fun night by the fire pit. I've got a couple more before I head back to the Bay Area. That was all a preamble for thanks for listening. Thank you.