Eno, DVR and Britt consider several options for the 'Best Team in Baseball' title, with just under two months before the playoffs. Plus, they discuss the White Sox as the current titleholder for 'Worst Team in Baseball' honors amidst the team's 21-game losing streak and wonder how things turned for the worse so quickly on the south side of Chicago where the future looked bright just four years ago.
Rundown
4:07 Who Is The Best Team in Baseball Right Now?
12:48 The Injury-Based Case for the Dodgers
21:13 Questions About the Yankees' Bullpen
25:24 What About the Royals?!
33:05 Eno Takes a Trip Down Narrative Street
37:16 The White Sox Are the Worst Team in Baseball
48:40 Eno's Case for the Rockies
55:58 Have the A's Escaped This Conversation?
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Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. This episode is brought to you by our good friends at NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV. I'm sure by now you've all got back into your Sunday routines, but they could be even better. With NFL Sunday Ticket and YouTube TV, you get the most live NFL games all in one place every game every Sunday, and you can even watch up to four different games at once with Multi-View, one of my favorite inventions of this decade. It's exactly what you need to catch all the action. Make your Sundays more magical. And also, YouTube TV is great. I got it this year. It's awesome. Sign up now at youtube.com/bs device and content restrictions apply. Local and national games on YouTube TV and a full Sunday ticket for out-of-market games excludes digital only games. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Tuesday, August 6th. Derek and Ryan Burino, Sarah. It's pretty early here with you today. On this episode, we try to answer the elusive question. Who is the best team in baseball? Right now. Does it matter for the postseason? Eh, not necessarily, but it's fun to argue about it. Nonetheless, we're going to dig into that. We're going to take a look at the division races, which are all really still up for grabs and discuss which ones we think are the most compelling for these final two months of the season. And we're going to flip the first question upside down and ask who is the worst team in baseball right now. With more of a future forward look. A team out of 21 game losing streak is the runaway winner as the worst team in baseball at this moment. But if we look at some of the teams that are contenders for worst team going for these next three years or so, that opens up a few more interesting possibilities from around the league. We're not going to tear the white socks apart for 20 minutes, I promise. We'll probably tear them apart for about five minutes if I had to guess how much time they're going to get on today's show. But before we get started a reminder, you can join our discord. The link is in the show description. How's it going for you on this Tuesday? Oh, it's it's going good guys. I can't complain. What's what's kind of nice about this question? I think with the who's the best team in baseball is that some years, all three of us would pick the same team, right? Like lots of years, there would be a consensus number one pick, if you will, but I think you can kind of make the case for at least three, maybe as many as four to five teams, you know, depending on what you're really looking at, what you're quantifying is the best. So I think that's pretty cool. And you know what, I was looking at the wild card braces today. And I feel like we're always like, Oh, parity, these teams don't deserve to get in. Have you guys looked at the records of these wild card teams that are fighting for it? They're there. It seemed like for for years, and this could still be the case with a lot of baseball, they were like right around 500 and we were rewarding them with a playoff spot. These teams are seven eight games above 500. The teams that are leading the wild card slots, teams that are in second often as well. So I was at least hopeful that these teams are not only trying, but they are, you know, not a we're not going to have a 500 team make the playoffs this year, maybe that shouldn't happen. Yeah, like quality seems like it's there. It didn't look that clear, maybe two months ago, but I think it's starting to crystallize a little bit. And the activity at the deadline probably helps four to five that too, right? A lot of teams trying to get better in that window over the last couple of weeks. How's your Tuesday going so far, Eno? Good. I go to see the white Sox play the A's today though. So you're gonna be there? Are you rooting for them to win or lose? Everyone loses. I post the episode after the clubhouse time ends. That'd be good for you. The funny thing about it, though, is that Tuesdays are projected always. I learned once from a front office individual that Tuesdays are the worst attendance day in baseball. And so I wonder if we're gonna hit new lows today. White Sox, but will people want to see history, even though it's like kind of sorted? Yeah, maybe you're right. It would be today is the chance for them to break the record. I think because A's fans are understandably grieving right now, I don't think they're going to take delight in the debacle that is the white Sox, the way that other fan bases might. Twitter is not the real world, but there were some A's fans talking about how wow is taking the white Sox to come into town to feel good about the days. I guess that's one way to go about it. So let's kick it off with our main question for today. Who is the best team in baseball right now? Like what criteria do you care about in this moment, Britt? What is part of your overall assessment process when you're grading baseball teams against each other? So I don't go with recency bias because I think it's unfortunate if you do it that way because teams that slid in April but are playing well now, all of a sudden look better than teams who played well for three, four months of the season and just had a rough two week patch. Over 162 teams are going to look awful, even when they're really good. That is just the way it happens. And so I look at it as overall who could win the World Series and it wouldn't surprise me at all. And there's a couple teams that wouldn't surprise me at all. But are we saying who we have yet or are we waiting? Go for it. Yeah, you can have the first one. All right. Well, I get a lot of hate on this show for being a Philly hater, but I am going to go with the Philadelphia Phillies. Coincidentally, I'll be in Philly tonight for the Zach Bryan concert, but that is not that is either here nor there. When you look at a team like them, I know they're free. They're they're on a little bit of a free fall. You know, they did win Sunday's game in Seattle against Seattle after dropping the first two and then they go and they lose against the Dodgers and what really is a big matchup for both of these teams right now, big series wise. But to me, there's just too many stars and too many good players for them to not be considered in that upper echelon to for them to not be a World Series team. We've seen Bryce Harper step up in the big moments. You look at that at rotation, you know, Nola Wheeler, these are experienced guys who have been there who have done that. Trey Turner, obviously a big part of that team as well. And then they were one of those teams who got better in the margins. You know, they made some trades with the Orioles. I mean, two trades with the Orioles, they were able to upgrade what they felt like, you know, in terms of adding Austin Hayes in terms of upgrading that bullpen, which has been a little bit of a problem. They felt like they didn't have enough high leverage guys. I think Dave Dombrowski is always aggressive. And I think he always looks at a team like that is how are we going to get them to the World Series. And to me, the Phillies playing bad baseball in early August isn't going to convince me that they're not a good team. We've seen all year than win games. They have no business winning. Eventually, the luck comes for you on the other side for a little while, but they're going to be okay. They're going to win the NL East, and they're going to make a deep playoff run. I would be surprised if none of that happens. I think they are the best team in baseball. Maybe not as we sit, they're not playing the best baseball here on August 6th. But if you look at MLB and you look at the collective, what they've done, you look at their record, I think you can make the case that they are the best, most potent, most complete team in baseball. Yes, taking the four month snapshot as opposed to the two month snapshot. I mean, they're two below 500 since June 1st. Some people would say, oh, they can't be. No, they can be. They are well built, right? They have the rotation. They've added bullpen depth year over year over year to the point where that unit that we used to laugh at is actually more of a strength now for them. And top to bottom, they do have one of the stronger lineups in the national league. Maybe it's one that's underperformed a bit because Harper at times, maybe it was dealing with that back injury earlier in the year. Turner spent some time on the ILC. I could see the Phillies nudging their way up in terms of overall production, their ninth in WRC plus on the season so far. The true talent there is probably a couple of notches better than that. So yeah, I think they've got a very strong case to be the best team in baseball. Who's your pick right now? You know, I took the Orioles and I took a little surfing around and when you're just a preface this, when you are comparing these great teams, any sort of thing that I bring up that he's not the same for other teams is not a denigration. I think they're all very good teams. I think they've just like three or four really top notch excellent teams in baseball this year. But there's only one team that showed up as top 10 in every facet of the game. And so what I did was I looked at versus lefties offense versus righties offense fielding by UCR. I looked at starting pitching and relief pitching. So I feel like that's all facets of the game. All five facets of the game. The Orioles are the only team that was top 10 in all five facets of the game. Now, of course, some of these guys are missing by a little bit like the Phillies versus righties when they're hitting are like 11th, you know, and would otherwise have I think they're very close to making it on all those levels. Also a surprise team that I maybe wouldn't guess made it on four or five of those things. Can you can you guess not? It's not the Yankees. Not the Dodgers. I think it's the Royals is the twins. The twins. Okay. The twins have a really good offense under the hood. And I forget what metric they didn't make it on. I think it might have been fielding fielding. UCR hates their fielding. And the fudging that I did if anybody was listening closely, they might have figured out the fudging. Most of the defensive stats do not have Baltimore top 10. I picked the one that did. Oh, that's why you used UCR is the same way. What was the last time so I brought up a UCR on this show? Why? It is weird. Yeah. I mean, the Orioles are a good pick though, because they got better at the trade deadline. I think Zac Eflin really makes that playoff rotation is probably Burns, Grayson Rodriguez, Zac Eflin. They also added Jackson Holiday, who looks now to be the guy that we all thought it was going to be much more confident. I think a couple of multi hit games in a row that Grant Slam over the weekend, Kobe Mayo coming up. I mean, I think he was talking about being able to see the ball longer. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Craig Kimbrell is still, I think, a little scary. That's the one part of the Orioles roster that if I'm an Orioles fan, I'm nervous about the late innings. And it's because we've seen Kimbrell, especially in his older years, start to fade late season and in the postseason. And you know, and I were joking about this the other day, like they are recreating the Phillies bullpen from a couple years ago, like they're slowly getting pieces out of that pen, which I don't know. It's it's been that wasn't our favorite Phillies bullpen. No, that was those were not the favorite pieces of the Phillies bullpen, at least. So every team has some that you can pick. But that'd be the part that I'd be most worried about as an Orioles fan. Everything else looks phenomenal. We talked about they have 12 hitters projected with WRC pluses of 100 or better. That's an amazing amount of depth to have so they can weather a couple of injuries in these final two months and still put eight or nine guys out there in the lineup at any given day. They're at least average, if not above average bats. Yeah, Gunnar Henderson's one of the stars of the game today. One thing and another thing that is a little annoying is the Dodgers were close on a lot of the metrics I looked at, but not the pitching ones. But you could see the Dodgers kind of sorting through some and like maybe putting like a riverine in their bullpen and making their bullpen better. You know, I don't see that for the Orioles. There's not like a young, I don't think Kate Povich will be that much better if they put him in the bullpen. He's not that's not what he's lacking it. It's not that's not going to be a strength. And I don't know that Trevor Rogers is going to be a great asset out of the bullpen either. So they don't really have the type of pitchers that they can put in the bullpen to solve any bullpen problem. It is going to be Kimbell Cano, Dominguez, Soto and Perez. I think that's going to be what it all comes down to. And I don't really see anybody coming, you know, enjoying that top group. So it's all about whether not those guys have command in October. You know, that's that's a big one. But when you put those to get all those guys together, it's enough of like, could I kind of be plus relievers, I would say, that it has been a top 10 pen so far. Yeah, it's not a glaring weakness. It's a relative weakness, I think for a contending team to be maybe not elite, but just okay or very good in that area for relief. Now, I'm going to make a case for the Dodgers. It's an injury based case. This is usually the consensus pick. Usually this time of year, if we do this exercise, we're like, well, it's Dodgers, they're just loaded. And they still are, but they've had major injuries this year. So baseball prospectus has an injury ledger. And there's a setting where you can look at wins above replacement player lost to injury. So I always use that setting because I want to know like, how impactful were the injuries? It's not surprising to anybody that the Dodgers and the Braves are the two teams that have lost nearly eight wins this season due to injury. In Atlanta, it's a Kunya and Strider. That's the bulk of it, right? Those guys aren't coming back. So Atlanta's lost wins above replacement are something they still have to like, make up for with other players in the roster. For the Dodgers, a lot of that comes back because Mookie Betz is nearing a return from the IL. That's a huge lift for them. Yoshinobi Yamamoto should be back in September. That will help answer a lot of their pitching questions. You can also factor in the one or two wins they may have lost with like Muncie and some other guys that are out, but it's really just the high end impact guys that I think are critical for this type of analysis. So I think they can sort out a lot of the questions we're having about the pitching right now. Yamamoto being healthy is a huge lift for them. Glass now is phenomenal. Tyler Glass now is everything we thought he could be with health. And he's been able to hold up for this season. Had that brief IEL stint with tall man back around the IL or on the All-Star breakthroughs on the IL. Nothing really to worry about there. So you have the question is Glass now Yamamoto or your one to come play off time, assuming they're both healthy. Who's the three? You've at least got good candidates to pick from. You know Emo mentioned River Ryan maybe going to the bullpen. Maybe he's their three. They traded for Jack Flaherty. If he's still pitching well maybe he's their three. If they get something out of Bueller maybe he's their three. Maybe it's Gavin Stone. The other side of it is that I like their bullpen quite a bit. Even though they don't necessarily have a capital C closer on this year's Dodger Squad between Hudson, Phillips, Copec, Vessia, Honeywell's been a great pickup for them. Gratterall's finally healthy. Trying to just win on the IL but he's pitched really well. They run seven or eight deep in the bullpen. They have more good relievers than they're going to have roster spots for them in a playoff series. So that's a really good situation for them to be in that I think gives them a bit of an edge. And then still this lineup even with the injuries is a top three lineup. So you have an elite lineup get a couple questions maybe with that three or four starter because of some injuries should be ironed up by playoff time and they've weathered it just fine because they've got very good depth right there six over five hundreds since June 1st. I don't think they're going to run away with the NL West. That's the part that's different. I think the Padres can put some pressure on them. I think the Diamondbacks are still showing us that they're legit after what they did last season. So we'll get to some of the division race stuff here in just a few minutes. But the other team that has a pretty obvious case when you start to look at some of the numbers with the Yankees that the only team in the league that outscore their opponents by a full run on a game by game basis, like a full run and run differential on a per game basis is hard to find. Yeah, I think it's funny that you bring up you know the fact that it's not that might not matter in the postseason and and that Brit brought up sort of recency bias. You know the Dodgers are 11 and 12 in the last month. Yeah with a bullpen with a ERA over like six. So clearly we're not going by a recency bias with that. Yeah. And like even the starters I think had a poor ERA in that stretch. So you know it is funny when you get when you're close to the team and I was just talking to Fabian Ardaia about this who's who covers the Dodgers for us. You know when you're close to the team I think you you see all the flaws you know you see you know Pa has you know playing poor defense in the outfield and in center field and you see that the lineup has a lot of holes in it when it's playing Pa has Hayward Enrique Hernandez you know and Taylor or you know you know any any lineup that contains three of those four. Yeah, Bijo. Yeah, Bijo when it when it had those three or four people at the bottom line of the bottom lineup looked bad. It just looked bad. And then when you're you see Bueller's rehab stints and you have to report on those you know and then you see Phillips Evan Phillips may not have been the same pitcher since he came back from injuries. So you can kind of see all those and be like I don't think I don't know about this team. But I wonder if sometimes you just have to get it get this stuff out of your system. The Astros got it out of their system early. The Yankees you know that's why I wanted to bring up when you said the Yankees didn't the Yankees look like one of the worst teams in baseball at some point. What's for like six weeks it was not like a blip which is why again you can't go like if they had a bad the Mets had a terrible start at the season right and everyone's almost kind of forgotten about that. So you it's really tough to look at the macro view of things and say the Yankees are still really good. The Phillies are still really good. The Dodgers are still really good. The Orioles really had a pretty decent dip too because when the Yankees had their dip the Orioles really squandered a chance. This is right around the all-star break to pull away. So every team and no one is immune to this. Right. Unless you go and win you know 120 games then you have one of those seasons for the ages. Right. But you're just trying to keep those you know keep those valleys small. You know you're gonna have peaks of out you're just trying to minimize the damage that you can do with some of those bad weeks. Which is why teams talk about getting out and padding the lead because then you can afford to do what the Yankees did have a bunch of you know you can do what the Dodgers did. That's what the Dodgers did. How many teams can withstand that you know. So that is why you have depth and that is why you try to you know build these wins and stack as many of them as you can. Right. That's why your teams all the time that are like we're going for the sweep like two out of three isn't good enough. You need those extra wins for when the team is struggling and can't win a game right now and you know all of the teams we mentioned have looked like that at certain periods of time. They've lost series to inferior opponents and so it makes it really tough to say well this team is the best in baseball because every team at some point time has looked pretty terrible. You just have to kind of block out that noise and look at the overall picture here. Yeah. I mean there are some good stories in LA. Gavin Luxe has been swinging the bat harder. You know you can see this in the bad speed metrics. He looks like he might be at least a league average second baseman which gives them the opportunity maybe to move bets to center or Edmund to center and bets it short. You know then you can start to put together a lineup where you're like oh I have one hole in this lineup. You know if Muncie comes back maybe I have zero holes in this lineup and you know that's a pretty exciting way to look at it. So we're stuck a little bit kind of faith casting like kind of looking at the at the at the at the rosters and being like you know let me put the right people in the right place then be healthy you know what I mean like even with me looking at the Orioles and calling them the best team. I'm not doing as much as you might have to do mental gymnastics wise with the Dodgers. I sort of that's sort of why I pick the Orioles but I am making some mental gymnastics that are not really obvious and that is I'm assuming that the that burns and Rodriguez are healthy. Well yeah yeah I mean that's the hard thing about making a projection at any point in the year is like you you're assuming the most important players are largely going to be healthy and doing but I think that's also another sort of Achilles heel for the Orioles. If one of those guys goes down they don't look as good at all. That's why they needed Eflin and I think people didn't realize how big that was because it slots everybody else back in that rotation. But if it is Eflin and one of the big two you know then they're they're probably seating you know games in even in a short series to people agreed and this was the problem last year they didn't have enough starting pitching. Yeah you know we love talking stats here at the athletic here's one that's super simple to remember discover automatically doubles the cashback you've earned on your credit card at the end of your first year with cashback match that means with discover you could turn one hundred fifty dollars cashback to three hundred dollars that's right you could put it towards some memorabilia you've had your eye on or treat yourself to a premium sports network you earn and discover doubles see terms at discover.com/credit card. There's a couple things I've noticed with the Yankees that I think we should point out. The addition of jazz chism of course is going really well so far I like what they did there I think getting one more really nice supporting player behind the likes of Judge and Soto takes away some of the they're too dependent on two guys they weren't as dependent on those two guys people made them out to me this definitely helps. The other thing I've noticed Austin Wells is having a great season behind the plate. Defensive metrics are good he's actually contributing pretty well for a bottom half of the order hitter with limited experience they've got Stanton healthy again we've kind of talked about. I also think I would take Clay Holmes over Craig Campbell in the ninth anyway. Oh they wouldn't in New York maybe but I think you might you know again yeah. Holmes is a little bit wobbly like I could see that I think the Mark Leiter Junior edition was a pretty sharp move to add him Luke Weaver's been great. It's partially because his stuff is the kind of stuff that kind of suppresses balls and play and you can see that in a really beautiful home run right for his career. He suppresses home runs really really well and that's a part of the story. You want to have a closer in New York that suppresses home runs with that ballpark but he doesn't add with it a premium strikeout rate and so I've seen a lot of the games where Holmes is falling apart and you know it's not that I can say this was an error and this was an error and so these things should all be like I watched it I watched him blow a game I think they won it but it went to extras with my son and my son was like there's no way that those runs were earned and then we looked I looked at the boss cars like no they were earned it just was like a bad play you know with another bad play and balls in play so he allows these balls in play and defense is not at all of their positions not necessarily the best foot forward so you could hit a ball out to Verdugo and you might get on base you can hit a like even jazz has been okay at third I'm not saying he's been bad but I don't think he's top half necessarily and so you know there are places you can hit that ball glabers normally a good defensive second baseman this year he's kind of lost on the field so there are places that if he allows a ball in play you know there can be a sort of comedy of errors that that pursuit that it comes after that so maybe they'd be better off with like a Ryan Hellsley that just like doesn't allow balls in play and strikes out 38% of the people that he sees but I think Holmes is an acceptable closer and in some ways fits what they've got yeah I think he's not gonna walk everybody he's not gonna give him a bit of power but you know it's not it's not he's not infallible yes by any means but we are missing another team with 67 wins which is going to probably win the central I'm waiting for Eno to rescind his I always you still think the twins overtake them because I just looked through all the stuff and the twins were the closest non you know non-contender not not like the twins were the closest to being top 10 in every facet of the game other than other than the Orioles I don't know every time I look at stats I fall in love with the twins yeah I don't know there's there's some weird stuff the numbers trick us sometimes I was just looking at the bullpen's the Yankees have the 19th ranked bullpen by K minus BB percentage but they're fourth in ERA so there's something going on there right the quality of the contact they yield probably makes a pretty big difference that the defense behind those relievers makes a big difference like there's something there's something going on there but they're not as bad as 19th they're probably not as good as 4th either the answer is probably somewhere in the middle the central the AL central continues to baffle us did a whole episode about it in May both of you were on the Royals train then and I feel like Eno is kind of drifting to where I was with the twins Brits kind of saying hey we were all wrong about the Guardians again let's just right our wrongs and take the Guardians I prepared a little case for the Royals I think the Royals are they're more interesting than people are giving them oh yes they've been pretty much the healthiest team in the league by the winds above replacement loss metric I mentioned earlier so that helps when you get through a regular season with very few impactful injuries because you can kind of play up to your ability and not have to rely as much on depth and I think depth is something we'd be worried about in Kansas City because for a few years they didn't have that system in place to backfill for injuries they have three of their starting pitchers in the top 30 in F4 we get excited about teams that do that all the time Seattle being comfortably the third best starting rotation by by war and and and within you know decimal points of Seattle and Philly right and I don't think it's all smoke and mirrors they have a legitimate ace and Cole Reagan's that you could put out there against anybody in elimination game and still feel good about your chances they added a couple of high leverage relievers the deadline which was the place on their staff that was hurting the most it's 24th ranked by war but for the season with a 4-2-90 ra there wasn't a good bullpen before but now it's got too much better pieces yeah at Hunter Harvey and Lucas Airsegg so maybe that holds up against other playoff bullpen it might not be the best among playoff teams if they get there but it's probably good enough and then they obviously have a legitimate MVP candidate in the core of their position player group with Bobby Whit Jr so you have that you had a little bit of the old guard with Sal Perez still there so it's not a team of guys that haven't been there before you got a little bit of the veteran leadership you got starting pitching got an improving bullpen you got some quality of important places in the position player group they don't strike out a lot either they're a pain like actually the royals and guardians in terms of the construction of their lineups is very similar limited power but enough to be dangerous they got some speed and they've got one super star that can just go completely bonkers and just like carry the line up at times yeah i think i i i like it i like it i'm i'm in on the royals i like i listen i i would be i think it'd be great for baseball up a team that tried this winter a small market team who spent a sizable amount of money was rewarded for that by getting one of the wild card spots so you don't have to convince me i'm into that exactly made some interesting moves at the deadline i think they sit right now they're in that wild card hunt right now yep they're right there yeah they're right there with minnesota oh this is the beautiful thing though so this lined up exactly the way i wanted to the al central division race i think is the most intriguing one to me and the thing that makes a division race interesting that isn't just like how close it is when you're looking for the final two months is how often the teams involved have to play each other down the stretch right so between the royals twins and guardians those teams still have multiple series against each other there are six games left between the royals and twins there are eight games left between the twins and guardians twins are going five against the guardians so far this year seven games left between the royals and guardians so compared to all the other division races i looked at that was as much as the contending teams will see each other as any other division race you're going to find that is what i want i love this al central race right now oh that's great that's a good good thing to know dvr because right now that they've changed the schedules we're like we used to be like oh these teams are going to play 15 more times and they'll sort it out that last week of the season it's not necessarily the case anymore so it's kind of cool that the central still has all of that i think the inks and royals meet in september but i don't think they do again outside of that so you do kind of lose that factor of like this week is our season the way they have balanced out the schedules for better or worse we should spend some time on cleveland you're right like what has been excellent for them and is still excellent for them is making contact and having one of the if not the best bullpens in baseball i mean it's like one of the top three at least anytime anyway you slice it so that's a really good metric uh and a really good plan for them but i would say that um the sort of offensive regression that we wondered if it was coming or if the park was different or what was going on um you know i got yelled at pretty hardcore for for saying that you know there might be a couple guardians that were a little lucky when it come to power because they they still hit the ball softly and and and don't barrel the ball well in the last month cleveland has the 28th offense in baseball uh they have hit 230 with a 288 on base percentage and a 365 uh slugging percentage they are still third best in strikeout rate but they have the worst isolated power in the second worst isolated power oh the third worst sorry i saw the white socks are down there and i don't count them at this point i ever can actually sword my eyes so so i can see where they are they are they are tied with houston for third um and uh that is an interesting little tidbit about houston but i think houston has suffered a little bit with injury caltucker is a dimension that that lineup needs pretty sorely um and that's what color is out for the year houston has somehow hung on and when i think maybe the worst division race i know it's really close but like it seems like nobody wants it to take it no one is playing well enough to take it some hopeless Seattle that they went and like actually got some bats and you know looks like they can hit the ball a little bit i like the rosarena trade uh but that is just a weird division where like texas should i said this to you guys yesterday on the call like i i think we stick a fork in them they're done but they're hanging around because there's nobody in this division has run away with the division uh which is just crazy i don't think it's that intriguing i think it's more a case of like can somebody get on a run here uh you know texas has so many guys that are injured on the pitching side they you know obviously shurzer is done evan carter uh now unable to follow up on what was such a cool uh campaign last year watching him really break out on the huge stage in the playoffs um that's a team that you know i think a lot of people expected to maybe not repeat in the world series but they were built to be a you know a team that was going to go to the playoffs multiple years in a row yeah between them and the dime backs i thought the rangers are a little bit better positioned to to repeat yes it just shows how the the variable of injuries right the the luck and injuries that just no matter what people can't model and account for you don't know who's going to be hurt for how long and what it's going to do to your team these are still the things we have yet to figure out and it's what makes baseball it's the such an unpredictable nature of baseball and the rangers have been hit pretty hard many teams have been hit hard we talked about the dodgers uh but you look at the rangers and they're also an old team in certain certain aspects and they just i think they're going to look back and wish that they had sold a little bit on this deadline because it was such a seller friendly deadline they could have tweaked a little bit not saying they're going to burn it to the ground when they have guys like seagr and semia on the payroll but i wonder had they you know trinity faulty and maybe just on a smute a few little tweaks if it would have set them up uh better long term i don't know that was a team that multiple executives complained about to me that they weren't sure if they were going to buy your cell until like the day before so they changed the whole landscape of you know the the deadline because they were like no we're going to actually not sell and kind of go for it because we're in it and again it's the function of the AOS i think one of the things that i think makes an intriguing uh division race and this might be funny for me stats guy mr stats guy um is narrative it's kind of kermit the frog narrative so the the one of the most compelling narratives to me is padre's daughters it's that oh for sure i'm with you on that one i i try to keep my vibes reporting to a minimum but every once in a while i turn into a vibes reporter and one of the things that you know that i believe that i cannot prove to be true that i might be wrong about uh and i have a list of those somewhere um is that it is hard as an organization to get the monkey off your back that there is this sort of you know the lol Mets thing you know it's like this you know you know when certain teams uh have a little slump you know i don't think it's like when the daughters have a slump we just pick them one of us just pick them as the best team in baseball in the middle of a slump right and it wasn't just like oh here we go again it's kind of like no they'll get out of this or whatever you know like that you you flip that script but when you're the mariners and you go through a month of scoring fewer runs than anybody else in baseball then you were definitely like here we go again so that's why even though the astros versus the mariners blacks in maybe in some sort of metrical way um and they may not neither one of them may be one of the best teams in baseball uh the astros and mariners and patras and dodgers represent to me in the patras and mariners two teams and it's funny they share um spring training facilities the patras and mariners both need to get a monkey off their back you know they both need to win the division i think the winning the division would be like that they do but didn't the patras do that didn't the patras get the monkey after back when they beat the dodgers and the playoffs years ago i would throw that out there is definitely possible because i thought the same thing but they didn't win the division that year no they haven't won the division since 2006 the padras have gone that long winning the division title yeah which is something about winning the division i know it's it doesn't it doesn't mean that much but it does put you in better situation in the post-season and you know it is it is like something like no we played all year and we were better yeah i'm with you on the vibes thing though as someone who was a beat writer for 12 years i think it is hard to quantify that stuff but listen if you were to go in the white socks clubhouse today and you knew nothing about what they were doing like and you were to take somebody from bars and put them in there yeah you would be like this team's terrible the vibes are are honestly like clubhouse vibes are a real thing and fans who have never been in there or people who haven't been on the beat might might think you're insane but there is something too adding a a bit player and all of a sudden this team is you know cute like horata para the 2019 nationals one to one the world series without that guy how why right uh the vibes sometimes you need those guys i mean jazz chisel gave the achy some great vibes yeah he played well energy up the vibe the vibe factor matters so i agree i like the vibes coming out of san diego they also have arguably we talked about the dodgers uh let's talk about the guys they could get back musgrove you darvish for nandra to tease that's a hell of a addition even if they only ever get two of the three back and if we're talking about bullpens i mean it's hard because we don't have that many metrics we have five days you know since the trade deadline or whatever um but uh that does look like a a contender for best bullpen and baseball absolutely up there and you mentioned the guardians earlier for that that title they're number one in k minus bb as a group of relievers the number one yare their number one in the whip and it's by like a pretty good margin and the ratios too that is the runaway best bullpen in the league up to this point at least podres i think stack up pretty well given all the additions let's flip it on the side for a minute you mentioned the white socks and i saw the picture of megal Vargas after the game on monday just looking so sad speaking of having existential thoughts because he was with the dodgers and not playing a lot and now he leads off and plays every day for one of the worst teams we've seen in modern baseball history so a 21 game losing streak i mean that's rarefied air in and of itself and i think the bigger question i have for each of you is how did they get this bad this quickly i mean do you remember 2020 2021 like there was there was a jeff passant tweet and i'm not saying this to to burn jeff but he listed off the core they had at the time Luis robert eloy they just got Andrew Vaughn Tim Anderson was playing really well at that time you know they had a lot of talent it was all listed off he had the years of control on there and it looked like they had a bright five-year future in front of them and we're not even through that five-year window yet and they've hit this a new sort of organizational low that i i didn't see it happening this fast i was worried about their rebuild because i think they were starting from behind already they had not shown previously that they were a great team at drafting finding and developing talent a lot of their success over the years came with bigger international free agency plays that's where they hit on hosea bereu several years ago it's where they hit on Luis robert but i had a lot of questions about okay where does this go from here it promoted chris gets we roasted them at the time my only silver lining was it's a different job than farm director so maybe he'll be better at that and i don't know it looks really bad like one year into this chris gets era it looks like they have sped to the bottom and they might stay there for a while like how long is it going to take to fix this so to parter how did they get this bad this quickly and how long is it going to take for the white socks to be at least competitive again in the al central well to me there really is no hope until there's an ownership change there they're one of the few teams that i i truly believe that um i think you talk to people there and the culture is bad the drafting and developing is bad the analytics group is very small and doesn't carry a lot of weight um you know they got fleeced you know universally people thought of the trade deadline didn't get enough air fettie uh Garrett crochet that was a nightmare of a situation didn't end up trading him and you know outside of dylan sees and who is probert i mean who was a big league player to start the season there they didn't really have a good team i mean people in spring training were saying they're going to be a hundred plus loss team so that comes as no surprise uh the hiring of gets as you said we roasted them gets goes and brings in some people from kansas city which is where he played um but was there any did we see any innovation did they bring in any thing that they said this is going to be different this time it felt like they just reshuffled the deck and expected different results when the organization has been antiquated and behind in every facet of building a big league team for the last 10 15 years so i don't think there's a lot of hope i think i don't think this is an overnight thing where they got bad they've been bad this has been building even if that core looked good under the hood it has been bad there for a very long time and again i just don't see it getting better because we know pager griffle is going to get fired any day now but we also know that chris gets is going nowhere because jerry ryan storm is nothing if not loyal to his people so what is going to change there until the guy who owns the team changes i think the answer is nothing unfortunately it's really tough i mean because i want to i want to have a little bit of grace for teams that are trying to turn around and be like it's not going to happen one year so they were only going to get worse as they sold off the last remaining pieces they had you know so this and some level was inevitable but um i'm trying to square you know issues i had i've heard about from two or three years ago with issues i've heard about this year and they sound the same you know like there's no there's no change there's like oh you know like um i've heard from multiple people over multiple years that were hired to to work there from an analytics standpoint to be like sort of progressive data people um who have you know basically been laughed at you know when you say they carry no weight like that's been that sort of thing where they've been trying to be like hey let's do this and then they have a large contingent of sort of old school coaches and old school you know people that are like you know what are you doing with this fancy stuff like get out of here like you're not useful you know basically just you know almost hazing you know so you have this sort of anti-data and anti-tech kind of hazing it's in place um and then i've even heard from people this year that their game prep numbers are not on par um and that's after they've spent a couple years trying to get them on par um like i heard a couple years ago that their minor leaguers don't even do game prep because their minor league games they don't matter well you have to practice what you do so that when you get to the you know what other organizations doing they're trying to make their minor leagues look like their major leagues in every other way seems like a good idea you know they're like most the trend in triple a right now is that you have a staff that looks almost like a major league staff in terms of number of coaches in terms of you get a project machine you try to do all the things so that like everything it looks like the major leagues so that when they get to the major leagues they're like oh yeah you're ready you're not surprised you're not using new tech you're not hearing new voices or new concepts for the first time while trying to hit better pitching or try to get better hitters out like it how this is an elusive concept to any major league organization just baffles me but then we hear from Tommy fan this year that like their numbers aren't any good you know and he's been a lot of places yeah i yeah i've heard from numerous people like that have played there recently that like the way they prepare at the big league level is is shameful and that Pedro Griffo was supposed to be like you know kind of tech friendly and data friendly and like and i think he is and i wonder how much of it is tied to that antiquated belief like you said if these guys have no say how much then can a Pedro Griffo who's low on the pecking chart you know he's not the jam he's not the owner he's not a VP he's supposed to be yeah okay but do you think on game day he should be high on the chart i don't know how much of it does he how much of a say does he get right that's what we'll never know because i had also heard that Griffo was very into analytics and data and things like that but i don't think one person alone especially in the in the dugout can change an organization do you you know we see that reminds me a little bit of um the angels um you know under who was the the general manager and the mic sosa and they'd like they were like kind of publicly anti-stats and i forget who the general manager was but um no he was a g i don't know but uh uh what's his face um really up there uh maybe he's apple or maybe he's before apple but they the now gm of the mariners the poto um depoto colander justin hollander's a gm but depoto wasn't and i'm at one point depoto left like he was just like in the middle of the season or something like he was like it was early in the season like he just was like not so you know like that's the kind of situation i think is probably at play with like some people have been brought in and they're like or even the Rockies they keep hiring a director of of of research and development and that director has now left in like april three years ago you can you can say we're going all in on analytics we hired five analytics people but as somebody was explaining to me the other day from an analytically minded organization you have to be willing to make uncomfortable decisions decisions that don't make baseball sense and you have to you also have to fire some of you've known for yes you have to make a lot of really tough personnel decisions but you also have to sit in a room and say this we know from a baseball perspective may not make sense but we have to follow the numbers we have to see where this goes we have to commit to it this way before we say hey let's not do it right um so i think that's what you're getting with the white Sox is it's so ingrained it almost doesn't matter who's gm and let's say they fired Chris gets today which we all agree isn't happening what gm wants that job right this would be the problem like i i bet on brian banister leaving before i bet on brian banister like changing right like it has to come with the okay i can come in and slash i can come in and change this organization and i don't think that you're going to see that level of autonomy as long as jerry ryan star fawns the team that's the ownership thing i can say that i think the oil's tired and turned over sixty some odd employees like in like the front office baseball like in like that a lot a lot of people left and a lot of people were angry and it was really uncomfortable yeah we're we're gonna write about the oils and just a little bit of a sneak peek is the one of the things i heard was their coaches are all young very young and that was it that was just an interesting thing to hear because that means oh you you've turned it over like you're you're trying to build a new sort of you know process from the ground up and you're willing for a lot of people yeah who lost job so i've been lifers or uh the few people that were still there that were left you know it was just an uncomfortable thing but that is the only way you make change i don't see that happening with jicago which is why i'm just not super optimistic that chris gets or anybody for that matter is going to get the job done because it is just run in such a backwards way and they are just so slow to adapt and innovate and think differently i don't know how jerry ryan star doesn't look at tampa bay and baltimore and these smaller mark cleveland and say yes say something they we want to be talking about nothing you can know nothing and still say wait a second what's going on in cleveland tampa bay baltimore let's just pluck these guys put them at our front office and see what happens right like i don't understand you don't have to really know much about anything why not try and get my delight then just say why not james click right exactly you don't have to be still out there a super savvy baseball person to say why are these teams doing well on small payrolls and small markets instead of trying to copy them let's just poach them yeah the banner says who's the worst team in baseball right now so i do have to and i and i know they're like a favorite whipping boy but i do have to make the case for the rockies here for a second because we have already we've already here brought up the rockies as an example of what's happening in chicago but at least chicago has a normal ballpark now it is funny the one thing that would help the rockies is that people go to that ballpark because it's nice yeah it's it seems like a great place to watch a game i want to go to a game there it's a cool ballpark but that ballpark also makes it hard to win because you just it's an obstacle to winning it's a thing you have to figure out if they you know and i've talked to uh to people who said that's my jewel of a job because it's the hardest job in baseball i've said i've talked to agms who are like that is the job i want i want the rockies job but they don't want the rockies job where ownership and you know whoever's been there long that's going to still be there you know some sort of leadership tells them oh yeah you'll come in you'll have autonomy just like they've told the directors of rnd yes we'll listen to you we're trying to change things here we want you here you're going to be you're going to have power you're going to we're going to give you you're going to have hiring power you're going to be able to do this and this and this and then people leave like three months later that is such a red flag it is like the biggest red flag at least brian banister stayed through the season you know i mean even if he leaves now i feel like you know he made it through the season um and at least there is new leadership there at least it's a normal park um the and at least they did something at the deadline i mean there's somebody polka stick in the rockies what did they do with the deadline what why didn't they there's no white socks though they just not to pile on or in a winnable division and have a capability to have a bigger payroll there's no reason they shouldn't be win central yeah right the white socks their ambition should be as lofty as the Mets maybe you don't have a steve cohen owner that eventually has the team with pockets quite that deep but you should be a big payroll team you're in a big market you should be trying to bully the cubs takeover market from the cubs or like the Padres do built a 120 140 150 like keep just keep building a little bit get to 150 and 160 when you have a really good team get back down to 100 when you're not you know whatever the bar is so low right now for the white socks but they should be like a flagship franchise the Rockies are a problem for all sorts of reasons we've talked about for a very long time I agree with you know if you're a baseball person who likes a challenge if you believe that you had the authority to build the organization the way you wanted to utilize data and tech the way that's essential to win an altitude I'd be like can I fire can I fire most of your coaches immediately yeah you could if you had success that would be my questions but if you had success in Colorado and you didn't want to stay long term you'd probably have your pick of the best jobs that become available later because of the lack of success people have had there historically I mean the franchise has been there since 93 they've never won a division title yeah they have zero division titles in their existence they were in one game in 2018 but they've been 17 games back or further every year in the last six seasons like they are nowhere close do you have a lifetime record for them what do you think their franchise winning percentages oh is it in the four give me the winning percentage is it like 400 Brit says 400 you know well I think they had some winning years I'm gonna go like four four sixty three okay five playoff appearances but what happens is when you look at when you look at organizational records they tend towards 500 like it's pretty sweet the thing with the that's probably one of the worst right yeah but the thing with the Rockies though is that they have to beat the Dodgers and the Padres in the central to me it's just so much more of a win double division if you just got a little the white judge just got a little bit better then she got like a little bit of a clue you could turn that thing around quick because you don't have to compete with the likes of the Dodgers the pot I guess the Diamondbacks right divisionally the central should be you should look at it as my god we could win 10 championships in a row in this division but I guess we're we're we're talking about team and organizations we're kind of interspersing them so team wise just like players on the field why talks are worse oh they're way worse way worse right now it's hard to see how much better it's going to get in the near future I like Hagan Smith their first rounder out of Arkansas I think he's gonna be an impact guy I think Noah Schultz might be the best pitching prospect in the minors who hasn't debuted yet he gets Randy Johnson cops and they look legit he actually has command as a much younger player than Randy Johnson did so you have a couple of pitchers to be excited about Montgomery it might go be fun in Montgomery's had a step back this year at triple a and that's something that's troubling is like that's your key position players that's your guy that should be like breaking down the door in the final month of the season kind of helping reenergize your fan base for next year instead I don't know if they're actually gonna do that because he's been down so much triple a the Garrett crochet thing I don't want to bury them for not trading Garrett crochet because I think that turned into an unusual situation because of workload because of wanting extension the possibility exists that crochet stays healthy for what's left of the season even with a somewhat limited workload and then gets traded in the winter because the extra 40 innings he picked up after the trade deadline give him a full season workload that gives teams more confidence in him and then you can work out whatever extension role stuff you want then right so yeah if Garrett crochet breaks in the next two months and is on the aisle for a year then you're kind of left holding the bag but that may have been a situation where what they are hoping for just wasn't coming in because of how unique that situation is yeah though based on the trades that Chris gets has made I'm not so certain that they get enough for a guy like that um so I guess that remains to be seen I also don't know why you wouldn't have traded Robert in spring training if you had Dylan cease to like why trade your like he's probably the only big big leaguer left in that lineup why you're gonna burn it burn it down to the ground right burn it down to the studs I don't know I talked to multiple people that were confounded by that um and I don't really have an answer right like why not trade him yeah the timing is bad because Robert nearly went 40-20 last year so and it was the healthiest season as a big leaguer so the spring was the time when you traded cease to trade him yeah or even even before that winter meetings like it could have could have happened and it didn't I don't know if they had some designs on hanging around or if they thought police Robert helps them sell tickets or if they thought they could rebuild it fast enough because the team options they have on him where they'd still have him 2016-27-2026-2027 they'd be good again like maybe that was part of their plan I really hope they didn't think that they were gonna be good again that quickly is it really these two teams though that have the strongest cases I mean the A's yes I there they're kind of a mess still they're slowly getting better like how much better are the A's than the Rockies and White Sox if we're kind of looking at the next three years with on-field talent they have at the organization right now the A's have a history of developing players at least they can't keep them but they have a history of developing players yeah even though they I don't they their player development is not really well regarded I think that what they do is just they know what it means to just get a lot of lottery just get a lot of lottery tickets I don't mean lottery tickets like 17 year old a-ball guys they're mostly like hey we're just gonna get a bunch of 23 year old you know guys in AAA and some of them are gonna work out and I think we're starting to see some of that happen like Lawrence Butler looks like a legit player now JJ Blue Day at least is an average regular type guy Brent Rucker looks pretty good so I know that they're not all young and they don't play player development exactly the same way as everybody else but maybe it's an ethos maybe it's an idea maybe the way that they do things is just hey we're gonna get guys we're gonna develop at the major level that's what Brent forced the day of force said the other day and he said you know we develop at the major league level so we want to get guys who are ready to play in the major leagues and then get better there and so maybe there's a case to be made for that that just being the way they do things and and I see it coming together in some of similar fashion so wait to come before where you're like you know here's one of the things that bad teams need to do and I was just looking through the red socks a little bit because remember the red socks were had a little down period and one of the conversations was what are they doing with this time are they they should they be selling should they be signing diversity should they have traded mookie bets you know these are the kind of questions that you kind of go through when you're looking at it but what the red socks did do under the hood while they were bad was a few little things that you know that makes sense now so you know Connor Wong not not not J.T. Rilmuto you know maybe not one of the top two or three catchers in the big leagues but he's their starting catcher if you look at will your abreya he came so Connor Wong was in the mookie bets trade if you look at will your abreya they got him in a trade at a deadline trade I think with Houston with for Christian Vasquez you know if you look at Nick Pavetta they got him in a trade where they gave just relievers to to fillies that the fillies are trying to revamp their bullpen you know so they got they got their number one or number two that year so they gathered some pieces for what is now a better red socks team when they were bad and I think that the A's at least do that you know what I mean they they they trade away pieces they gather pieces they get piece they get guys in and they and they acquire the white socks have had all year to waver claim to their hearts content and they then when the you know when the you know when the when the the the Paris wheel stop spinning they got Nick Sanzell it at third Nikki Lopez it's short they pick anyway they got Dominic Fletcher in a trade and even he's a little old he's he's more like an A's type player yeah he's mean 20 years instead of younger Miguel Vargas already listed by fangaraffes at DH so you know do we think that you know in these trades this and during the season with the waver claims with the opportunity that they were providing people they they gave too many games to Paul de Young why have a Paul de Young why have a Nick Sanzell these guys aren't going to be here when you're good again give younger players a shot Miguel Vargas makes more sense that's a trade deadline acquisition they're going to let him go he's not looking great right now but he has some time and they get they get to give him opportunity that's my biggest hope for somebody that might be on the next white socks good white socks team that's on the team right now I'm gonna make me sure crochet will be so um it's an interesting situation it's hard sometimes to see it though right do you think at the time that you're like oh will you rebray you that's gonna be a huge pickup for them no they traded Christian Vazquez I think on a rental deal and got will you rebray you so some of these guys that they just picked up maybe one or two of them will be good maybe vulgar is to be good and we'll be talking about how they did spend this year trying to find pieces they'll be good I think you got to just give the quick nod to high on bloom because that's such a raised trade that he made when he was still running the red socks getting will you rebray you for Christian Vazquez and you know that that group of young players the system got better one too it was like a total stuff plus play that guy had great stuff plus but wasn't putting it together it's like hey yeah let's give him another chance yeah I think that was year one of the bloom era in boston too so you know Craig Breslow in that front office they're doing a great job taking over but they also inherited a lot more than what many many new front office regimes have at their disposal he there's a situation where I want to give the last guy a little bit of credit if they win a world series or they get you they get really good I want to be like hey don't forget about high and bloom he did some other stuff a little bit like some of the john daniel's carry over in texas he was there for a lot longer so you know you had draft a lot of those guys you could oh well we were bad for a while too high on bloom was there for four years and what he left when he left was actually pretty good we are going to go you may have noticed the marlins were not part of that conversation we'll talk about that on a future episode if you'd like to get a subscription to the athletic two dollars a month gets you in the door at the athletic.com/rates and barrels find brit on twitter @brit_drollie find Eno @ Enosaris find me @darrickbinriper find the pod @rates and barrels that's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels we're back with you on Thursday at one o'clock on youtube thanks for listening [BLANK_AUDIO]
