Welcome to Rates and barrels. It's Wednesday, January 20th.

Derek Van Riper here at Ido Seris, continuing our position preview series.

First base is the position of interest today.

But first, some news.

The Toronto Blue Jays have been very active in the last 24 hours,

just in the time since Eno and I recorded our last episode.

They added Kirby Yates on a one-year deal full of incentives.

Then came in with a huge deal with George Springer, six years, $150 million.

There are some reports and rumors sort of bubbling up here midday Wednesday that Michael

Brantley might not be far behind.

So we'll see if the Brantley deal gets done during this recording or if that's a thing

that was close to happening that never happens at all.

But, you know, it's exciting to have another team getting in on the fray, especially

one in the Blue Jays who were, you know, runner-ups on a few free agents previously in this process.

It's kind of weird how this offseason seems to be

going in waves, right? It's like, it's like which team is up next? Which team is going to make

like three huge transactions in 24 hours next? You have the Padres turn. Now it's the Blue Jay's turn, I guess.

I like all the moves.

For the most part, I am planning right now to write a piece about what the Jay's do next

if this Brantley deal goes down just because I think yes I think a run saved is roughly equivalent

to a run created but you can if you're a team that scores a lot of runs you can make you can get

to more wins if you improve your run prevention and right now I would would say that the Js will have one above average bat sitting on the

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