Welcome to Rates and barrels presented by Tops checkout Tops Project, 70 celebrating 70 years of Tops baseball baseball cards. Derek Riper, Inoceris, Bridgeroli, here with you on this Monday. It's Monday, October 18th. The LCS series are in full swing. We have a ton to talk about, so we're going to get right to it. Let's start with the NLCS, since that's more fresh in our minds. Atlanta coming away with a game two victory over the Dodgers taking a 2-0 series lead. Where is this coming from? How is this happening? A lot to unpack here, of course. I was wondering if part of the cost of using Max Scherzer to get the save in game five of the NLDS was not getting him to pitch quite as deep into game 2 of the NLCS as you might have liked.

But seeing how the game actually played out, I don't think that really dictated much about the outcome,

even though they clearly did get him out of that game earlier than they

ordinarily would.

Tactically speaking, probably some other things with the Dodgers pitching management

that we're going to get into.

So, you know, what was your takeaway seeing how this played out with Scherzer in game

two?

I mean, I hate to like sort of paint a narrative, like a story and a series and, you know,

paint a narrative that's larger than just what happened in that game.

But it is our job, first of all.

And second of all, I mean, I do think this is the chickens coming home to roost a little bit

on the modern day playoff pitching plans. You know what I mean?

Like what we saw, you couldn't actually probably have thrown Max longer. People were like,

well, you didn't have to take him out so early. He was already down in Velo. Like he was in the

92s on his fastball in the fifth. So that was a consequence of using him as a closer.

And then because you did that, I think there was no way to avoid using Julio Ureus,

who was also, he wasn't as down as Max, but he basically peaked at his seasonal average.

So it wasn't like, um, even one,

even a typical Eureas fastball that, that inning. So, uh, both of those decisions come from

the fact that you have decided that you're going to use guys on throw days, uh, and you're

going to power through that way. So some consequences, uh, for those decisions. Yeah. I mean, the Nationals, you employed the strategy in 2019.

...