2021 Starting Pitcher Preview, Part 1
Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball
The Athletic
4.7 • 873 Ratings
🗓️ 10 February 2021
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Eno and DVR kick off their Starting Pitcher preview series by examining the arms in the Top-30 range of Eno's pitcher rankings, before discussing the return of in-game video for 2021, and decreased chances of the Universal DH this season.
Rundown
1:21 A DH Update and the Impact on Pitchers
5:13 Shane Bieber’s Ascent to the Elite Tier
11:18 Luis Castillo Cracks Eno’s Top 5
20:26 One More Great Year From Max Scherzer?
26:25 The Case for Framber Valdez
32:13 They Really Are Eno’s Astros Now
39:34 The Zach Plesac “Problem”
45:15 Two Young Marlins that Eno is High On
48:33 Jonathan Villar to the Mets
51:48 Follow-Up: Is There Another Level Coming from Alex Verdugo?
55:39 In-Game Video is Back!
Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris
Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Rates and barrels. It's Wednesday, February 10th. |
| 0:19.0 | Derek Van Riper here with Enos Seris on this episode. It is |
| 0:23.1 | starting pitcher rankings part one. We're expecting a two episode series focusing on starting |
| 0:29.1 | pitching. We talk about starting pitching all the time, but we figured... Pitchers, baby. |
| 0:33.5 | Let's dig into those rankings. Eno had a set of rankings go up at the end of the week last week. I had some rankings go up about a week before that. Things are always moving, of course. We'll talk about some players we differ on, some players we agree on, some players we think the market is just flat out wrong about. So we're going to cover a ton of ground on this episode. We're going to get to a few mailbag questions as well. |
| 0:55.0 | In-game video is back for 2021. |
| 0:58.5 | Woo-hoo. |
| 0:59.0 | Good news for some hitters, maybe some bad news for pitchers, kind of wrapped up in there as well. |
| 1:03.9 | And we had one question come in coming out of our outfield preview that we're going to follow up on as well. |
| 1:10.3 | So, you know, I'm excited to talk about pitching. |
| 1:13.1 | I think it's our favorite thing to discuss on this show. |
| 1:17.1 | And I was digging into the ranks again before we started recording. |
| 1:22.1 | And one thing that I thought was worth talking about right off the top is, you know, |
| 1:26.5 | we have this news that, |
| 1:27.9 | at least for now, Universal DH is not coming back based on the latest round of adjustments |
| 1:34.7 | for the 2021 season. I don't think it's totally dead, but it's definitely looking more and more |
| 1:40.8 | like we won't have it in the National League, which is a pretty big turn from where we were just a few days ago. |
| 1:46.7 | Applying that the pitchers, that would give an advantage back to NL pitchers. |
| 1:52.0 | If they go back to facing the pitcher spot instead of a DH, any place where you had at least a toss up based on skills and opportunities now favors NL pitchers. Maybe even at the |
| 2:03.6 | top for some people, DeGrom versus Cole was one where if you liked Cole a little more than |
| 2:09.1 | DeGrom assuming Universal DH, this might be enough to flip DeGrom back in front. You and I, I think, |
| 2:15.3 | both have DeGrom atop our boards, but that has a pretty |
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