Welcome to Rates and barrels. It's Thursday, February 29th, happy leap day. If you are going to use the extra day for good, our thoughts are

with you. Hopefully you can find something amazing to do on this bonus day on the 2024 calendar.

We are going to focus on team previews in the AL East. In particular, we get the Blue Jays,

the rays, and the Orioles for today.

We got lots to cover.

And I'm excited about this.

And we have a relevant news-related thing that I just saw as we were prepping for the show.

We've been discussing Brady Singer a lot as someone that has a two-seamer that hasn't worked.

We've even been a little negative about the Royals and their inability to develop pitching over time.

I saw this story from Anne Rogers, covers the Royals for MLB.com. Brady Singer added two new pitches for his first spring outing. He's got a four seamer. He's got a sweeper.

And to put the gravy on top of this one, Eno, the Royals approached him with a presentation in the middle of last season about this. So proactive adjustments being made. I think it is worth noting with the change in GM, J.J. Piccolo taking over. There are other changes in the organization when that happens even if it's in internal promotion. So perhaps the royals are turning a corner and making some adjustments and looking at pitching in a way that will bear some more fruit as they try and make some adjustments for guys like Singer and others who've been inconsistent or have struggled overall in their organization.

Yeah, I think it's it's good news that they're willing to change something other than, you know,

keep working on that changeup, kid.

And I, it's interesting also that it's the four seam and sweeper because the four seam is

something that would be better for him against lefties.

And I'm hoping this comes with a package that's like, you didn't have to abandon the sinker,

just throw the sinker inside instead of outside against Ritey's and make it a, you know, a different

kind of weapon. And then the sweepers is going to be going to get more Ritey's out. I think he has

the arm slot for the sweeper, so that's good.

I don't know if he, you know, the one thing about jumping on a sweeper, maybe midseason

would have been aggressive because it's hard to command.

It's a big shape.

...