Rates & Barrels - The Yankees & Dodgers Advance to the World Series

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

Eno and DVR look back at the conclusion of the LCS matchups as the Dodgers eliminated the Mets and the Yankees eliminated the Guardians to advance to the World Series over the weekend. They also examine a few potential offseason moves for the Mets and Guardians. Rundown 4:51 The Dodgers' Lack of Innings From Starters This Postseason 8:53 Reliever Third Time Penalties Raise Questions About Heavy Reliever Usage in Playoffs 14:56 Did We Underappreciate the Tommy Edman Deal? 19:48 Looking Ahead at the Mets' Offseason Plans 28:45 An ALCS That Delivered Plenty of Excitement 40:39 Juan Soto v. Hunter Gaddis in Game 5 of the ALCS 48:27 What's On Tap for the Guardians This Winter? 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 Producer: Brian Smith Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm Dave Dufour. I'm S. And I'm Xena. We're the hosts of the NBA Daily, a new podcast from The Athletic. It's a quick 20-minute recap of the most important games and stories from around the league. It's everything you need to know about the NBA and the time it takes you to eat your breakfast. Check it out every day, Monday through Saturday on YouTube, Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, Welcome to Rates and Barrels Monday, October 21st. The field is set.

It will be Yankees and Dodgers, in the World Series. We're gonna talk about how we got there. Some pretty exciting developments, especially in the ALCS. Even though it was only a five game series, it had plenty of drama. We'll break that down, as well as the weekend happenings on the NLCS side.

Where for a moment, it looked like the Mets were gonna do their punchback thing until they were sent home for good on Sunday night by the Dodgers. We'll talk about MVPs in each series, some of the trends we've seen in this postseason. We'll say goodbye to the 2024 Mets and 2024 Guardians, officially look ahead

to what's next for those clubs in the off season. Gonna have a full preview of the Yankees Dodgers series later this week in the feed. So if this is less future focused on the World Series, that is why. Eno, how was your weekend? It was good. It was good.

Went out on the town, saw a movie, saw a little bit of music, saw some baseball, some little league baseball. Fall ball season is in full swing, so it was a good weekend. I have a question for you. Have you taken your children to the pumpkin farm at some point in their lives?

I have. I have. Okay. We usually have a school related pumpkin farm festival thingy. It's a little further away to get to a pumpkin farm where you are. It takes a little more effort to get there. For me, I just got to go about 10 minutes, 15 minutes, any direction outside the city and I'm surrounded by pumpkin farms. But there's an art to timing it, right?

As long as you go to one that has a lot of activities, I think you could even go on a busy day. I learned that this weekend. And my fear as a parent was that we'd go on a Saturday afternoon, 70 degree beautiful Saturday afternoon in October, which is rare in the Midwest. When you get them, they're amazing. And I thought the pumpkin farm's gonna be a disaster. And I was wrong, there's one very close to where I live

and it was phenomenal because they had two corn mazes, they had their tractor rides, they had an apple cannon, they had a place where you could get your pumpkins, they had food trucks, they had stuff for kids to play with, they had a beer garden. Wow. How many pumpkin farms have you been to that have an actual beer garden set up?

Yeah, so the acreage on this was impressive. The usage was phenomenal. They had a bunch of photo spaces already set up with selfie sticks. So we pulled in, I was like, oh yeah, this is kind of as busy as I thought it would be. Then we walked in and kind of went to a spot and we're like, this is amazing.

It's like we have a little corner to ourselves, even though there's a lot of people here. So awesome, this is amazing. It's like we have a little corner to ourselves, even though there's a lot of people here. So awesome, awesome experience overall. Wow. I was saying about the timing of pumpkin carving, because it was always like, you do the early one and then they're like, oh, this is nasty. I have to throw this away. It's only like October 25th.

See, you have to have the ones that you don't carve that you leave for later. Yeah. 25th. You have to have the ones that you don't carve that you leave for later. Yeah. It was more of a thing when they were younger and I could get an hour of time out of the children. Just go carve these things. Yeah. We're not at the carving stage yet, but I just wondered if the beer garden was a thing that had made its way to California or if that's really just a Wisconsin or a Midwest thing to have an actual beer garden set up

I bet you there is one now that I know that you say that I think maybe Fids and I will have to find our way to one this week. It's brilliant Hopefully next year we can do a live show at the beer garden I went to this year at the pumpkin festival But lots of ground to cover today join our discord if you haven't done so already the link for that is in the show description Let's start with the series that ended more recently, the Dodgers dispatching of the Mets in six games. That series did make it back to LA,

and it got there because the Mets offense unloaded again in game five. And one of the strange things about this series was just that the games were all pretty lopsided, and that didn't make for the most tense moments throughout the series. There was occasional drama, I mean in game six there was a chance for Jesse Winker to take one swing

and put the Mets in the lead against Evan Phillips in the sixth inning, it didn't happen. But I think for as big as a Dodgers Mets series might be in the future, this one because of the way the games flowed just didn't of the way the games flowed, just didn't land the way that it could have, even though the teams involved were loaded with entertaining players.

Yeah, I think that the sort of parade of relievers was part of it in terms of both having lopsided outcomes and maybe some type of interests interest nationally I don't know. I would say that the Dodgers who got three and two-thirds innings out of their starters on average this postseason, third smallest, third least in the playoffs, that they've used that to their advantage and of course you know that's why to some extent there are lopsided victories because you use your A bullpen and your B bullpen and that's sort of what they've done. I mean it's kind of what we saw a little bit out of the Rangers last year when they didn't have enough starters and relievers to really try to stay competitive every game and I think generally that's been the theme of this postseason is just like how difficult it is to keep a pitching staff healthy and productive this far into the season. But both teams got just

enough pitching in the games they won. And I think the big difference offensively was, you know, the Mets had a 361 OBP in this series and the Dodgers had an amazing 395, but is bigger difference when it comes to slugging 379 slugging for the Mets 459 for the Dodgers. That's 11 homers for the Dodgers five homers for the Mets. Literally you know the way into this conversation the way you talked about that Winker moment like that was the moment that kind of defined the series. Not just that moment but just that was the moment that kind of defined the series. Not just that moment, but just that was the difference. Winker, if you'd gotten the home run, there would have been more games.

There would have been more serious. You know, I mean, that was the kind of difference between the Mets and Dodgers in this one. Yeah, otherwise kind of similar, like trying to piece together starting rotation, you know, I'd say the Dodgers relievers were better than the Mets relievers. That was the thing that really surprised me, not that we expected the Dodgers bullpen to perform better, but not by that much of a gap.

I think that was something that surprised me throughout the playoffs, was that the Mets A bullpen was pretty gettable and they were known as a team that was doing damage against opposing teams bullpens too. It seemed like the level of trust that Carlos Mendoza had in a lot of the sixth, seventh inning options was pretty low. Maybe that was a fatigue situation. Maybe it was that these matchups are just more difficult.

I don't know what it was exactly, but yeah, 556 ERA from Mets relievers so far. This postseason, that's just not at all what I would have expected. It's interesting too, you put this chart together, to see that the Dodgers are getting so little from their starters, as little as the Guardians have,

and we were so concerned about the Guardians needing to have guys go deeper into their starts, even the innings the Guardians were getting were a lot better than the starting pitcher innings from the Dodgers, an ERA difference of two runs in the postseason. But the bigger question I think I have is, you look at the success of a team like the Tigers this year, and the way they did it, just keeping it afloat throughout the second half by playing really well and coming up with a strategy with their relievers that

just worked perfectly. I wonder if there's a tweak to this strategy, if you can continue down a path like this where this ends up being more of the sweet spot. And maybe the reason for it is you're not as dependent upon three or four guys staying healthy when you intend to scatter playoff innings onto six or seven different arms, right?

In the old days when you were leaning heavily on the rotation to gobble up 65 or 75% of playoff innings, you were really vulnerable if two out of those four starters were not available for the series by the end of the year. So almost in a roundabout way, by necessity, it's like they've stumbled into a strategy that has been pretty effective in an era in which pitchers are breaking at extraordinary rates

Let's put this up again real quick I just wanted to point out though that now that we know that when you see a reliever a third time It's just like a third time through the order with the starter third time in the series I just wonder if the upper breaches of this chart are actually sustainable. I mean, we're talking here about not getting even four innings. We're talking more about, you know, three and a third, three and two thirds from your starters.

That's what Cleveland, LA, and Detroit have done. That means you're getting a lot, five and two thirds out of your relievers. And I think it's really hard to navigate your way through these longer series and not allow people to see your pitchers a third time through there's your relievers a third time through the order as well as your starters when you're getting so little from your starters so I am I am interested in this the Dodgers are really pushing this but I will point

out that on the top of this list, it's Atlanta, Cleveland, and this is sorted by fewest innings by the starter. Atlanta, that was just, you know, a short series where their starters didn't go deep, but, you know, even on the deeper ones, Cleveland, LA, Detroit, Milwaukee, New York, those are all eliminated, you know? And to some part, due to what I'm talking about, because you throw Hunter Gaddis at Juan Soto for the second or third time, and you get a Juan Soto who in the post-game interview said, even when there was two strikes on him, he was like, I am all over this guy.

You know, like I can see this guy well. So I think that happened in Detroit, too, where, you know, the relievers were more effective early in the series. And we also know from separate research from baseball prospectus that every pitch reliever throws in the course of season makes him worse. So, you know, we've also seen this postseason some of the best relievers of our time get touched up for Big Homer's. Claucet was just not good, you know, and he's a dominant reliever. So, I do think it's working right now for the Dodgers, but I gave the pitching advantage to the Yankees due to the

fact that they had better bulk. And I think the longer a series goes, the better it is to have starters that can at least go four, if not five. I think getting through the heart of the order a second time is important. As quirky as it seems, we always want to avoid the heart of the order a second time, as important, as quirky as it seems, we always wanna avoid the heart of the order the third time if we can, with guys that don't have great stuff. But I think even for guys that have average stuff,

getting through the heart of the order twice reduces the reliever exposure against those elite hitters over the course of the series. I think that's sort of the sweet spot. You're right, we used to think in terms of quality starts, or at least going five, now I think it's sort of the sweet spot. You're right. We used to think in terms of quality starts or at least going five. Now I think it's four. Now let's get through the order twice, please.

Get through the number four or number five hitter a second time and then you can use your fifth best reliever against the bottom of the order. And you're not really as worried about getting torched there. And then you can play matchups more, six, seventh, eighth and ninth innings. So I do think that four foreign changes not really as worried about getting torched there. And then you can play matchups more, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth innings. So I do think that four and change

is sort of the new sweet spot for the non-Aces. If you can get through that frame, then you've done enough to give yourself a chance to win. I mean, I think there's a lot here because the Dodgers clinched with a bullpen game. Another different pattern, they used Michael Koepke off the top and a former starter, you would say, well, he's probably about as comfortable as any reliever could be starting a game. He didn't look comfortable.

He managed to work around a really wild inning to only allow one run. But that inning could have gotten away from Koepke and that could have changed the complexion of the entire game and then they were able to use Ben Kasparis and Anthony Banda for four outs each. That's like the other hack. If you could use the last two relievers in your bullpen and burn through more than an inning in a game that you're winning, you've lived a good life and or you've put together a high quality deep bullpen. And I think maybe that's what it is.

Maybe it's like we sometimes underrate how good a team sixth or seventh reliever might be. Yeah, I will point out though, as much as I've rolled out that stat that the Dodgers have 14 or 15 relievers during the regular season that had above average stuff that wasn't necessarily the case down the stretch. And, you know, Daniel Hudson was actually losing stuff as the season went on just like, you know, which makes sense, given the research I just cited from baseball prospectus. But if you're looking at relievers that in September had above average stuff for the Dodgers, you're

looking at Kopec, Vesia, Phillips, Grattarol. Is he hurt? Yeah. So if you look at healthy ones that are on the roster right now that had above average stuff in September, you're looking at Kopec's Kopeck Vesia Phillips Kasperius training that's it So brazier was average Daniel Hudson was below average Anthony band Banda was below average Brent Honeywell was well below average so

That those are the pitchers, you know Ryan Brazier right at average Daniel Hudson Anthony Banda. Those are the pitchers that I Kind of just sort of doubt that the Yankees are gonna let them off the hook. Yeah, well those are your- That'll be the difference. Absolute crush spots that you need to take advantage of if you get the opportunity. Tommy Edmond got the MVP for-

Speaking of taking advantage of your opportunities. Yeah, and I had this on the rundown, I don't know, maybe a week or so ago, we just didn't quite get to it, but I wondered if we underappreciated the Tommy Edmond trade at the time it happened because he'd been sidelined by that wrist injury all season. And it just felt like more of a lottery ticket

than it probably is. Well, then he also got hurt in the ankle on rehab. It just felt like maybe this is gonna be one of those lost years, you know, where just can't get healthy. Yeah, and even when you look at the way Tommy Edmond contributes, it's more defense first than just being kind of a close to league average player

with the stick, but that really works, especially given the problems the Dodgers were having at shortstop, right? It's hard to go trade for a shortstop in season unless it's an all glove utility guy. And they at least got the good, very good defender, great defender that's actually average with the bat. And I don't know if I appreciated that trade enough

when it happened. And I'd be saying this even if you didn't win a series MVP. I think series MVP awards are actually kind of ridiculous in some ways And I say that as someone who thinks we should have more full season awards, so I just wanted to show on the trophies around 29 plate appearances Yeah, and he had a great series and had a great great game in the clincher, too So I get it like I understand how you have to whittle it down, but the bottom line is like- In the same series, Max Muncie had a WRC+,

so it was about 100 points higher. Yes, if you had to drill down to one number, I mean, we don't like to do this, but if you had to drill down to one number to give away an MVP award for a series, would it be a cumulative win probability added? How much WPA did you have over the series? Or did you have the most win probability added in the games your team won?

Like, how would you try and slice it if you had to rely heavily on one number to determine a player's value in a best of seven situation? You know, as a fantasy guy and as a I like predictive numbers better, even when you're assessing talent, because the whole idea is how good is this player now is basically how good is this player now going forward right I mean we're less we're more interested in that than now going backwards right that's how I feel and so WPA would you know says Edmond, that was the right choice above Max Muncie and Shohei Otani. But a lot of that's just because he's coming up behind Max Muncie and Shohei Otani. The whole brilliance of what he did was he had a 13.8% strikeout rate and he didn't

walk once. So this is kind of a line of diversity thing where he's like to Oscar Hernandez, where you take a bunch of Max Muncie's and people who have more of that kind of approach on the team. And you put different kinds of players around him. And so when Max Muncie gets on base with a 41% walk rate in the championship series and Shohei Otani gets on base with a 29% walk rate and Mookie Betts gets on base with a 16% walk rate, then it's great to have a guy who has a 0% walk rate right behind them. You know, because at that point you want a hit, you want a ball and play and that's how we got 11 RBI.

That's why I got the best win probability at and that's why I'm not Complaining too much. I'm just pointing out that there were other hitters in this series for the Dodgers that were better Yeah, well, yeah, it's part of just being on a loaded team But I do think that lineup diversity part is a big reason why Tommy Edmund fits so well for the Dodgers They didn't need another superstar at shortstop. They needed a great defender who could be Competent I'm gonna push back a little bit I don't know what he was at one point he was he's right average But at least better than average now he's 29 and you know had been pushed to the outfield already Yeah, but also like not a bad defender at all at a position of need

So I think it's good me two years ago, 2022 is a plus 12 for DRS. So playing the middle. They need a center fielder as much as a shortstop in most days. So yeah, it's a great trade. And it fits that line up perfectly. And congratulations to him. 407 average, 393 OBP,

630 slugging, 11 RBI. What a great series for Tommy Urban. Should we say goodbye to the Mets and take a look at their winter for a moment? Yeah, we should. All right, so the thing about the Mets in the Steve Cohen era, and I think this is apparent in some of the folks I saw in the Discord,

there's actually a lot of optimism right now with the Mets compared to previous iterations of this club that were eliminated in the postseason where it felt like, well, that's the end of that and we're not gonna get back there again. This felt more like the beginning of a long sustained run where any free agent is in play. We've known that for the time Steve Cohen's been there.

With David Stearns at the helm in the front office, they're going to do a lot of things well that probably the Dodgers do, because look at the success they've had in Milwaukee during Stearns' time there. You can have the pitching lab, you can have those philosophies, but then you can also have massive resources on the payroll.

That changes everything, right? So we're going to talk a lot about the Yankees and Dodgers this week. I think the Mets can see themselves in both of those franchises in the not-so-distant future. That's the goal they're aspiring to. They're trying to become one of those franchises. And with a wide-open possibility as far as any player you want It's much easier to look at this team and say well, okay Well Pete Alonso is a free agent if Pete Alonso leaves the match. It's not some devastating blow. They're not gonna come back from

It's just not it'll be because they put the money on Juan Soto instead. Most likely, right? Or they'll have some reasonably smart plan to bolster the roster in some other way. And I think the more likely outcome is both. They'll keep Alonso and do the big thing. So where do you think they begin? I mean, the starting pitching was a relative weak spot already going into this season.

Kodai Senga being hurt for most of the season didn't help. And even I felt kind of bad watching him in the NLCS in the sense that I realized the decision was probably who's our eighth pitcher? Is it Adam Ottavino or Kodai Senga? The possibility of getting Senga at 80% effectiveness was enticing enough, probably because of the possibility of bulk versus a short reliever like Ottavino.

I understand how they got there. I am not at all criticizing the process. It was just sad to watch Kodai not be legit Kodai. Yeah, because we know he's good when he's healthy. That was the part that was frustrating, right? But you have Singa, you have a young guy, Brandon Sprote, took a huge step in the minors this year.

You have a ballpark that enhances stuff and plays pitcher friendly in general. So you also have in your back pocket, aside from all the money you could spend to lower a big time three-interest. And you're in New York, and you just did well in the postseason. So you are a destination where people want to go.

You could be the team that signs Corbin Burns. There's there's no reason why it couldn't be the Mets. Like that's in the cards, possibly, too. I think the difficulty is they they can they should get Corbin Burns, but they also need. Many more. The nice thing is they go from a luxury tax payroll of three fifty eight, and I don't think Maniah is opting in, so they have 160 million luxury tax right now on next year. So they could

spend $200 million next year in terms of AAV. I'm not even talking about long-term, right? In terms of AAV, I'm not even talking about long-term, right? But the thing is, in terms of what starters you want to put in their rotation right now, you have Tyler McGill and Kodai Sengan, that's it. Everybody else is a free agent. Yeah, Severino was a one-year deal. Manaya can opt out, and we assume Will opt out after the strong finish he had of the year, had a good season overall. And you could always re-up any of those guys. But you have very little in there.

I mean, you have two guys. You have this. My point is you have two guys in there. So you have to you have to be shopping not only in the top of the market, but in terms of the back of the market. Like if Merrill Kelly or Alex Cobb will take a one year deal, you're interested. You know, if Martin Perez will take a one year deal and give you kind of, maybe you think we can get another Jose Quintana type season out of Martin Perez, you know,

you're checking with your pitching coaches and your pitching team and you're saying, you know, can we coax a full season out of Michael Lorenzen? You know, can we sign Spencer Turnbull to like an injury incentive laden contract? You know, they're out to be active all the way down to, you know, Brandon Belak or whatever, you know, like they have to they have to be they have to be everywhere in this pitching market, top, middle and bottom. But the conditions are such that they the conditions are to do it. They have the money to do it.

So when you're when you're trying to bid against 10 other teams that are all trying to cling to every dollar and you have the Steve Cohen budget, you can top all those offers. You can give 14 million. One of the teams are offering 11. Right. You can do that. Or you can do the deal like they did with Manaya. You can give two years of an opt out.

That's going to be enticing to a lot of guys. So you've got a pitcher friendly environment, a team on the rise, one that actually is pretty good defensively too. So it's actually a great spot to go on a short term deal right now. So that's another little bonus for the Mets who aren't going,

we're gonna look at them in a few years and go, wow, they don't really need any help because they've built a great organization top to bottom. That's my current trajectory, my current assumption about them. But in the meantime, they can do almost anything they need to do to keep making the roster better. So they look like a team that's going to be a perennial contender. If you said, how many of the next five post-seasons are the Mets going to play in? And I set the over under at three and a half. Are you above three and a half? Are you below three and a half post seasons out of the next five years for this Mets franchise?

make me a little nervous is when you have to revamp a full pitching staff like this in free agency yes you have some guys coming up that you're excited about but you know some of them are hurt how much can you depend on them how much will they translate you're also asking for if you have to sign four starters for your for your starting rotation and you know two or three of those are going to be kind of bounce back pillow somebody you like that you think you can coke stuff out of you have to have a really good hit rate on all that you know what i mean and they did this year so maybe they can redo that but we've seen other places be like oh they have the magic if you go there you bounce back i think we felt this way about the dodgers and then and then you were like oh wait, Andrew Haney signed back with them and wasn't that great.

You know what I mean? It's hard to keep hitting every year on these bounce backs and keep being brilliant. You know what I mean? That's one thing that they've shown a little bit of, but have they shown that it's gonna be sustainable and that they're doing this year after year? I'm not sure that they've done that just yet.

And then the position player prospect clue, as much as I love Mark Viantos, Red Brady took a real step backwards. I'm not sure that Acuna is a hitter. And somebody like a Starling Marte next year is a DH for them. Jeff McNeil is older. As much as I think Lindor is a good defender, Brandon Nimmo, you know, used to be a good defender. They're all getting older. So this has a potential to not be

a great defensive team, especially with Mark Vientos' problem. So if you have Mark Vientos, who should be a first baseman or DH, and you have Starling Marte, who at this point should probably be a DH, you have Brandon Nimmo heading there. If you send spend a bunch of money on on Juan Soto, who might be heading towards the DH, there might be a point at which this is not a good defensive team. And that starts to impact their ability to get these bounce back starters. So I'm going to I'm going to take the under, but it's also and it's also a difficult division. You know, you've got other things going on in that division. All right. So, you know, it's a little less optimistic than I am by comparison on the Mets.

I'd be tempted to take the over on three and a half. I think they're gonna be a perennial playoff club. I think they have to get Juan Soto and free agency to do it, by the way, because I'm not sure Juan Soto gets out of the Bronx. I don't think Brian Cashman and Hal Steinbrenner are gonna let that happen. I want to talk about the ALCS though for a bit. I think we hit the point after the Yankees opened that two nothing lead, we wondered, is this even gonna be more than a sweep? It only went five, but the games were fun.

Like I enjoyed this series, which is not always the case for series that end this way. I think we just saw over the course of the series the very thing you were mentioning earlier, where when you start to see even the elite relievers that third time, especially for a top end lineup, that's when you're going to start to do damage. Game four was when the Yankees finally broke through

against Cade Smith, they got him, right? And Cade Smith was so good this year. I mean, the model numbers loved him. The results loved him. He was dominant all year. The eye test was great. And he was great in this up until, you know, getting one out and giving up three runs on Friday night.

Yeah. So John Carlos Stanton got him. I thought this was a pretty unusual sequence. They were trying to get him with high fastballs. And it was on a night when Smith was down about two ticks. He was averaging 94 on the fastball instead of 96. When you lose, when you lost two ticks on your fastball and that's the game plan, I feel like you need that last minute wrinkle. You need, you need some kind of plan.

And so you get to called strike. It's a swinging strike, misses high and then goes right back to the spot. I think it was over the called strike and Stanton hammered it. And I just thought, man, after after that take on the high pitch to make it one, two, maybe that was the great time to just try to bury a splitter, change the eye level, change the timing. And at least if you're going back to the fastball after that, like you've got something, you've at least tried something a little different.

He threw three straight fastballs, not three straight, three out of four fastballs were hiding away. He was going the same spot. And even if you were throwing 96, it seems aggressive to throw a good hitter the same pitch over and over again. He's going to catch up to that. Like that's just part of what Stanton does. Like you let him see it enough times,

he's going to catch up and hit it. It's even bad there because he has such a opposite field approach with a kind of a flat path. Like it doesn't seem to be, I'm checking the heat maps right now for where his slugging was this year. I guess he's got a hole high and away, but he doesn't really have a whole high middle. So you're kind of, you know what I mean? Like you're looking at a fine hole there. Like you're really

trying to thread the needle. Well, and I think if you're living in that part of the strike zone for the entire bat, I feel like maybe you're taking that hole, that blue shade, and you're neutralizing that quite a bit against yourself because he's just looking up there. You could maybe even be inching towards the plate if your catcher's not paying attention. He could be getting a little bit closer to the plate physically, so there's a lot of things he can do he has a little bit of a whole down and in so, you know

Just throwing a slider to you know down and then or throwing his splitter down and then could have Given Stanton a little bit of like oh crap. Got it on it rinse into I Definitely had some vibes late in this game. The Guardians erased a 6-2 deficit. They put up three runs in the seventh, the game four. They tied it. The inning after. And then the Yankees got class again. I was like, OK, like at that point, that that's sort of the swing again.

The pendulum were like, this isn't going to happen for the Guardians. Class A gets through that. That's when I felt it. Yeah. That's when you that's when you keep that buzz alive, but it's like, man, they got him again. And this has been such a strange postseason for Emmanuel Klausse. Eight innings, 12 hits, three earned, three homers.

Just, I don't even know how to explain it beyond the, sure, the team's got to see him on repeat a little bit and even like okay so the Kerry Carpenter got him for that homer in the DS the Tigers are in division so maybe there's a little bit of decay just from hey it's an indivision reliever we've seen a few times like maybe there's some of that too but of all the things to go wrong for Cleveland a manual class a not being nails for them in the spots where he had to be is

such a cruel twist of fate. Like to have that puncher's chance to pull that upset, that was the thing they needed to go right. And of all the things to go wrong, it was that. That doesn't make any sense. Yeah. I'm not sure that Classe was that much worse than usual. Luck is a weird word to use. It's like he didn't pitch amazingly and he gave up hits and even the XBAs on the hits are not super low. And he even gave a homer. I don't know. I feel like sometimes I tell my kids in another universe, you know, these things are different. You know, they're like, oh yeah, we know all

about the multiverse. I just feel like you could re-rack that and Klasay could throw the same pitches in different orders in slightly different locations and have been fine. I wasn't watching him like, this guy is terrible all of a sudden. And maybe Guardians fans have a sequence where they're like, no, he did something just as bad as what Cade Smith did against Giancarlo Stanton. No, I think the Cade Smith, Giancarlo Stanton,

a bat we were talking about a little while ago, that was bad process. I'm not sure there was bad process in what Clausay was trying to do. I mean the homer that Judge hit in game three, that was just a stupid Aaron Judge homer. How many guys can even do what Judge did at that pitch?

Wasn't it like three or four inches above the strike zone? I mean it was like three or four inches above the wall at its highest point. Like it was just a smoked opposite field line drive that got into the strike zone. I mean, it was like three or four inches above the wall at its highest point. It was just a smoked opposite field line drive that got into the bleachers. It was just like a stupid human trick, basically. Yeah, and you know, it is funny how we have these different perceptions of things.

So Tanner Bybee is throwing to Jan Caller-Stanton in game. Yeah, it was just game five. It was the elimination game. But Bybie had a forgotten performance, by the way. He gives them the five and two thirds of 5Ks and two earned. That's exactly what you need from Tanner Bybie in that spot to give yourself a chance. So Tanner Bybie is coming up against Giancarlo Stanton

for the third time he's seeing him, I think. And he's throwing him sliders away and change-ups, and he's not throwing him anything think. And you know he's throwing him sliders away and change-ups and he's not throwing him anything hard and he's actually gotten him to a 3-2 count. I saw some people say he hung that slider. Well and they say oh you know that's a middle middle slider. First of all I don't think that's middle middle but if you want to give that middle middle that's a middle middle slider. First of all, I don't think that's middle middle, but if you want to give that middle middle, that's fine. And then they said, oh, he missed the target by three feet. I disagree. The target was lone away and he threw it like low,

low and in the zone, right? So I would say he missed the target by about a foot, which is average. People, so people were exaggerating. Is that what you're saying? I don't know. I mean, they were, they were just saying, you know, there was, I think there was like a consensus that this was like a terrible pitch and it was all his fault and he missed

his target by three feet and it was middle middle. It was a hanging slider. And in terms of movement, it had more drop than any of the sliders that he'd thrown in that at bat and more sideways movement. So it was not a hanging slider in terms of movement. He threw it 82.6. So he was trying to throw like a curvier slider and more and less of a hard slider. But there was nothing about that. It was necessarily hanging in terms of missing his target. I think it was about average missing his target. I don't think it was bad process either.

A lot of people said put up four fingers and pitch to jazz. Well, Tom Tango looked at the numbers and he basically said that if you want to walk a guy in that position, so you're walking Giancarlo Stanton to pitch to jazz chism in that moment, you have to think that Giancarlo Stanton is 80 points of Woba better than Jazz Chisholm, right? And in terms of this year 330 for Giancarlo, in terms of the postseason 470, that's Wobas for jazz Chisholm Woba on the year was 330 and then in the

postseason 218 that we're talking about such small samples it's like you know that's why we're yelling past each other sometimes and that's why I didn't engage because I was just like okay I don't think it was the right move to walk him and go to jazz because I I think that true talent, they're very similar. They do different things, but they're very similar in terms of they're both around 330 Woba. So you would never walk a 330 Woba to get a 330 Woba to the plate with more runners on. You know what I mean? You wouldn't do that. So they weren't trying to throw him a pitch that was in the zone.

There was a mistake and Giancarlo pounced on it. I think that Bybee did a little bit of smiling afterwards. It was kind of, I read it as like, oh man, Stanton's so good. You look at the map of where those pitches were, nothing would have been a called strike up to that last pitch, nothing. He wasn't in the zone at all.

Like he had one very close pitch to change up. You got to swing a strike on that. So Bybee's like, I gave you one frig wasn't in the zone at all. Like he had one very close pitch to change up, you gotta swing a strike on that. So, Bybee's like, I gave you one friggin' pitch in the zone, it was a slider, it wasn't even a hanger, and you took it out. Yeah, if there's a process question here, I know you've been critical of Tanner Bybee's fastball as being kind of a dead zone fastball,

not necessarily being something that you can throw even effectively high in the zone without getting hammered. This is the reverse of Kate Smith, maybe you should've thrown one high fastball away. I mean, that's the only thing I'm second guessing. There's probably some reason they didn't. And the only reason I think that is because even though he mixed three different pitches

in that sequence, the slider, the change, and the curve ball, everything was within about three miles per hour. So you just didn't have anything to disrupt timing for Stanton. That's the only thing I'm looking at and going, maybe if you could do it again, you're working a high fastball into that count,

somewhere in that count. Probably after he took the slider maybe, right around pitch four, somewhere in that range, in the middle, maybe you try to just blow a high fastball up there. Tanner Bybee did not throw John Carlos Stanton a single four-seamer in that game. And the only fastballs he threw were in the first at bat were three sinkers in on his hands. Maybe he felt like he'd already used

that and it wasn't gonna work again. Yeah he was a little afraid of throwing the fastball to John Carlisle Stanton. And maybe for good reason but nevertheless. Gave up the homer on a slider then. So the thing everybody was talking about in game five was the sequence Hunter Gaddis against Juan Soto, right? I mean this has been thought about and broken down many, many times over and it was slider, slider, slider, change up, change up, slider and then he did the thing that DVR always wants is like well finally throw before seamer and he did it and Soto

hammered it and I guess the the question would be here. That's like what went wrong I think we wanted the other two guys to do yeah, and it's like this is like pitching to the Yankees is hard Nerds like what do you think of course? It's hard my god I made Brent Rooker was saying that this was like one of the best at bats he's ever seen and it was just amazing. And, you know, like I said before, Juan Soto,

you know, it's kind of amazing to go six pitches in and be in a one-two count and have been there for six pitches, basically. Just like fouling, fouling, fouling. And they asked him afterwards, what were you thinking? He said, I'm all over this guy. So I guess that's where the fouling is. He's just missing.

He feels like he can foul off anything and this guy's got to come in the zone and got to come to him and he's got him. So, you know, I think that was a kind of a cool moment because he wasn't afraid to being arrogant and sounding arrogant. And he gave us a little viewpoint of what it's like to have a plus plus approach, which is confidence,

plus this bat to ball ability to foul these off, but still the bat speed when he got a 95 mile an hour fastball to turn it around the way he did. So really just an excellent combination of eye, bat to ball, bat speed and approach I think, just really come together and Hunter Gaddis was screwed. What I wonder about too is when you do it this way, the three sliders, the two changeups back to to the slider then to the four seamer that turns

And do a home run When you start to think about that sequence? Was the fastball something that Soto was just waiting for the entire time like was he just trying to Keep everything alive. He's like once I get the fastball. I'm hammering the fastball I Think so. I think he's he's got a fastball swing on it. And as soon as he sees it'sing the fastball. I think so. I think he's got a fastball swing on it, and as soon as he sees it's not a fastball, he's kind of relaxing his hands and fouling it off.

I wonder if you could read the way he was fouling some of those pitches off too. If as a pitcher you're like, hmm, the timing on these foul balls is such that maybe, maybe there's some clue you can try to get against some hitters that works But it just doesn't work against Soto Yeah, I mean he could be toggling he could be sitting back and forth slider and fastball and filing them for different reasons because you know generally you're like

Oh if he files it this way, it's he's early on it. And so he's taking a fastball swing. He founds it This way is late on it. Meaning that was just like a protect swing, right? With two strikes, it could be some of them were protect swings. I don't remember now exactly where all the foul balls went. Yeah. The kicker here too, though, is like you get the inning from class a that you need earlier in this game, and then you've used glass. A so your other relievers have to finish it off against the

Toughest hitters in the Yankees lineup and then it breaks down against them, right? It's just it's such a miserably difficult lineup to navigate right now with a few guys running really hot And it's not just judge and Stanton and I think it's cool to see in John Carlos Stanton have some big moments on this stage because I feel like his time with the Yankees has been somewhat marred by injuries, not as bad as some people make it out to be. And in knowing that he's not the same player

he was at his peak, no one is at this age. Usually you're gonna show signs of decay in your mid-30s. He's 34 now, but I think it's weird to me that Stanton got the series MVP because I feel like Soto, if it was remotely close, Soto's game-winning homer off of Gaddis probably should have earned that trophy in one swing. And in terms of win probability added to revisit our,

the way we looked at it last time, Soto was clearly ahead of Stanton, had the most win probability added in either CS. In terms of Woba, Soto was second only to Muncie. So he had three homers, 368, 478, 895 slugging. He had a higher slugging percentage than Stanton did and obviously a higher average no BP so I think there's some of this was kind of like vibes and Just like he's not the captain like DG or anything, but it's like wanting to Give it to a guy who'd been here for a long time

You know and was a true Yankee with capital letters. I feel like I wonder if it, you know, to some extent, they're like, you know, Soto, you're going to be here again and you're going to win one. Yeah, right. Yeah. You're going to you're going to win this trophy at some other point in your career. Let's give this one to Stanton because it's probably won't happen for him again. That's fair.

I mean, I feel like he's 34, you know, like,, I don't know if he's gonna make it to the end of his contract I mean 2027 there could be a there could be a DFA for him at the very end But it's just amazing to me how hard he still hits the ball like to continue to hit the ball 120 miles an hour at 34 years old is just amazing to me Yeah, still has the the raw power just off the charts, which is a big part of what makes him so dangerous, even at this stage of his career.

That matchup, that Soto Gaddis matchup also was really only possible because of an inning extending error at second base from Brian Roquio. By Brian Roquio. That's brutal. It is brutal too because, you know, he's in there for defense. He was a good defender and

He was such a bad bat that if he's not gonna be a great defender It almost starts to question like his job for next year You know what I mean? Like it's you don't want to say that about a couple errors because he it wasn't just one You know say that about a couple errors because he it wasn't just one, you know, but it does put pressure on him to start to perform better with the bat or to prove that that was just some weird stuff that happened in the postseason. You know what I mean? And it could totally be.

But I'm just saying with a bat this bad, you need to be a great defender. And he may not be the shortstop all year for the Guardian next year, even though I don't know necessarily who's going to take the job. Right. He might be more of a utility infielder for them going forward, not because of that play, but because he's just not hitting enough to be in the regular line interaction. Well, I think the play might have something to do as the interaction between what that play means about his defense and how bad his bat has been. We did see Luke Weaver on for two innings to close out game five and we saw a few cutters so the wrinkle is in place. I think that'll be important as they use him pretty heavily I imagine in the World Series matchup against the Dodgers.

It was only a matter of time before that cutter was going to be dusted off by Luke Weaver. The big question now though, much different than our conversation about the Mets, what's on tap for the Guardians this off season? We go from the team that has basically no budget and seemingly unlimited resources to one that's been very effective for a long time despite running low payrolls because traditionally they've done a phenomenal

job developing pitching. They've done a good job finding middle infielders that have turned into superstars. That's been part of the hack for them as well. And you think about them in the context of an improving AL Central, no matter where you stand on the Tigers in 25 and the Royals in 25, they're much better today than they were a year ago and they're going to continue pushing chips in to get better for next season. So I do think the division's going to be a little bit harder again next year than it already was this year.

What do you think the moves are going to look like for the Guardians? They've got a couple guys who are in Arb 3, final arbitration season, including Josh Naylor. One thing I was thinking about with their roster was because David Fry was hurt, as we learn, and couldn't play defense, and they were platooning the DH spot, they were really kind of hamstrung. Some of the substitutions, right? Stephen Vogt did is good of a job with this roster over the course of the season,

I think, is you could ask a manager to do. Yeah, whenever you see like a pinch hitter for somebody and then somebody playing defense for that pinch hitter, you know that something like this is going on. Burning two players to pinch hit is not what you want to do, right? It's just not optimal roster construction. So Josh Naylor is a good player coming off of a very good regular season, didn't come through

with much in the postseason, unfortunately. So I think that ending is going to change the way a lot of people look at what was a career year for him at the plate. 31 homers this year, continued to show us a pretty nice barrel rate in the 8% range. Doesn't strike out a lot. Really more of a DH than a first baseman, ideally. So how do they make the pieces fit? Do you want final Arb year Josh Naylor if you're the Guardians and you operate on such a tight payroll budget and you've got Kyle Manzardo coming up as someone who looks like he's ready to take on a larger role. I mean, looked like a different player in the second half, came through with a couple of big swings in the postseason as well. It was nice to see after talking to Kyle at the Fall League last year on the pod.

So what's the main thing? What's the biggest move you could see this Guardians team actually making this winter that gives them a shot to stay atop the AL Central and make another run in 2025. I mean, I think a very Guardians move would be to trade Josh Naylor. That would fit what they've done in the past. You know, they're a team that always wants to be a year ahead of whatever the roster crunches. They're a team that will trade a prospect. I guess the Rays are a little bit more a team that'll trade a prospect, but they're a team

that won't let anything go until they have to. They're collecting assets kind of team. And Josh Naylor being a free agent after the 2012-25 season, if he leaves without them getting anything for him, I think they will think that is a loss. However, the way that I see this is they spent $140 million by the luxury texts payroll estimate on Fangraphs last year. They have 104 under contract for this year. They also just made 25 to $30 million in the postseason, you know, with that postseason run. I think it'd be a really cool idea to extend Josh Naylor because this team needs hitting and he's

one of their hitters. I know he didn't do great in the postseason but I would give him money and I don't think you know with his honestly with his body with his age with his production I don't think you're talking about anything close to like a Pete Alonso or you know, like it's not you could maybe do this for an affordable smaller number the way you just did Jose Ramirez. And I think it might make sense to do so to lock in a guy like that. And it wouldn't cost anything for 2025. But it would lock you into maybe a longer window.

And then I think what they have to do, which they have almost never done, is buy some starting pitching. And I do think that with $30 million, you could go find some starting pitching that'll take the pressure off of those relievers. And the next time you get to the postseason, I don't know that they're ever going to be a player that gets out there and drops $30 million on a free agent hitter. No, it never seems like that. It'd be a great idea for them, I think,

but I just don't think it's something that they think makes sense for them. Well, and there's a couple things that could help, but Travis Bazzana, maybe he's a very fast mover to the system. There's one potential impact back, the guy he just drafted first overall in July, like maybe by the end of 2025,

he's already contributing to your lineup, that would help. We'll see, healthy chase the lottery is still more of something I wanna see. I don't think you could even really put much of a grade on what happened to him in 2024 from a performance perspective, because he played all of, I think, 37 double A and triple A around all the foot trouble that he was dealing with. So I would probably pull a little back and say, OK, he looked pretty

darn good out of 23. I'm still I'm still excited about the lauter as long as that foot is not a massive long term problem. So you got a couple of guys that are close, that helps. I imagine we're gonna see both of those guys by the end of 2025, health permitting. And then if you add one bat, or maybe you just keep Lane Thomas. Lane Thomas is the other Arb3 guy that you could kinda see like, oh yeah, past Guardian's decisions might make you think

he'll get flipped again, get a nice postseason, kinda gives them some things they need. I could see them deciding to ride it out with Thomas for at least the first part of the year, and if they're not where they wanna be at the deadline, then maybe they trade him at the deadline or something too. I think that's part of the slightly higher variance way that the Guardians go about things.

Shane Bieber comes off the books, they already had to navigate a season without him because of injury, so that maybe covers your salary bumps for both Naylor and Thomas without even adding anything to the payroll. Yeah, they're set to where they could do very little and they lose very little and they could read rack and be a very similar team. But I just itching to help them be better, you know, just the itching to get them to

the world Series. I basically, I think that requires a little bit more in terms of some arms. If there is a bat that's kind of intriguing for you that might fit, that does do something for them, especially in lieu of our last conversation. Hasphelm Kim. Okay. That's kind of interesting. That's not a top of the market name, but great shortstop that makes contact,

gonna be a better offensive player than Brian Roquio. It's hard to do a lot more at that position in free agency. And as far as how does the bat grade out, it's been league average for the last three seasons, even a shade above for Kim. So I could see that kind of fixed their velocity. And with Rokio, if there's people nervous about the shoulder or whatever,

maybe you can just jump in there and be like, well, with Rokio, we have a pretty good backup plan. Do a two-year deal or one with a big option and see how it goes? I just can't imagine that Ha Seo Kim is gonna come off a shoulder surgery and hit the market and get five and sixty, like five and a hundred, whatever. What are you going to give the guy with the shoulder surgery? It's like labrum surgery.

Like you don't know what his power is going to be. You don't know what his bat speed is going to be. Kim just turned 29 now, so he's maybe. Yeah, he's 29. Like how long is he going to play short? And like, you know, he was never a premium bat speed guy. So, you know, I think there's enough questions where you might be able to jump in

and get a player that makes sense for your team. All right, so you're living in that bucket as far as like your most exciting possible position player ad. And then because they're a team that will trade players as they approach free agency, you have to leave that door open as a possibility for them to maybe get one or two controllable players back for someone who's a little bit closer to their walk year if Bizzana is getting closer

The other thing I would consider that's kind of interesting. Maybe is Andres Jimenez to short Yeah, I mean he had elite defensive numbers at second Yeah And there's a few teams that are in the situation like this mean the Brewers with Leah Dames is a free agent this winter Maybe Bryce Terang's a shortstop again next year, or maybe Joy Ortiz moves over. And Andres Jimenez would be in that bucket as someone you'd at least have to think about. It's a little more of a floor at the plate than we've seen from Rokio. We saw the sealing year probably back in 2022.

I don't think you're ever going to pencil a 141 WRC plus in for Andres Jimenez. But if they could just get him back to the Ha Sung Kim overall value level at the plate, that would be huge for them. I don't think that's impossible. So that might be your reason to not sign Kim, is that Jimenez could play short potentially, and you're not worried about the shoulder,

and you can do some other things at second base with Bazzana once he's ready. I mean, I think Bazzana is going to be on a fast track. People can look at the 238 average average for Bazzana, but I think they'd be missing the picture. It was a plus walk rate, a manageable strikeout rate, good power, good speed. He was 26% better than league average at his first attempt in the minor leagues at 21 in high a so I Think everything is still on track for him to be an impact player And I think you could you would be seeing some double a from him and as soon as you see double a from a player

I feel like they're right on the doorstep for base for You know the pros on the radar once that happens We've got a few great shows lined up over the course of the week if you haven't done so already join the discord the link Is in the show description we should have Brit back on Tuesday Trevor May back on Wednesday I think we're gonna try to squeeze in some kind of draft of world series players as we move through the week as well if You got some questions about this series or some other offseason long week of anticipation questions about this series or some other offseason things. It'll be a long week of anticipation. It's too many days off. We'll talk about that at some point this week as well. But if you've got questions for us, send them in the mailbag channel on the Discord

or you can email us at ratesandbarrels.gmail.com. We'll also get that question to us. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening.