Welcome to Rates and barrels to Wednesday, April 16th, Derek Van Riperino-Seres, Jed Lowry here with you on this episode.

We discuss Major League Baseball celebration of Jackie Robinson Day.

That went down on Tuesday. We're going to dig into player development in the sense of getting

timing right and filling your needs as an organization with young players trying to decide if they're ready,

if they can solve their problems in the big leagues. And we planned this show before we knew that

the Cubs were going to send Matt Shaw down to AAA.

Although Jed had an inkling that Matt Shaw might need a reboot when this season began.

We'll dig into that in just a little while.

We also have a trio of Young First Baseman putting together great starts to this season.

We're going to dig into how they got to this point, what kinds of changes they've made,

and try to figure out how sustainable those adjustments might be.

I feel like I've been promoted to the big leagues, Jed.

I'm wearing AirPods.

I don't have two flaps anymore.

I don't have the giant headphones I've been wearing for the last seven years. I don't know how to take that right because I feel like the double flap was my signature in the big league. So I don't know if that's a direct affront to meet or I'm happy you've stepped into the 21st century. I've never thought about the flaps until you mentioned it a couple of weeks ago. I was like yeah, you're right. It It is a single flap league. It's just the way it goes. But that's how those details go sometimes. But yeah, I do feel like I'm part of the 21st century now. I'm feeling really good. So, of course, April 15th every year is the day in which Major League Baseball honors Jackie Robinson for breaking MLB's color barrier back in 1947.

And I've used this day for the last several's color barrier back in 1947.

And I've used this day for the last several years just to read different stories to learn more about Jackie's life and his career.

I think every year there's some aspect of his life that I learned something about.

I read a great piece from Justin Tinsley of Anscape yesterday about how this year's Jackie Robinson Day has been a little bit different.

And Justin did a great job making the connection between Jackie's military service, which I had known about.

I didn't know he's court-martialed and was acquitted. I didn't realize that the timing of the executive order that integrated the armed forces was a year

after Jackie's big league debut, right? I just had never really made the connection of

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