Breakout Bats & Tough Hitter Rankings for 2025
Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball
The Athletic
4.7 • 875 Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2025
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Eno and DVR discuss a few news-related takeaways from the first weekend of spring training action including the return of Sandy Alcantara, an oblique injury for Sean Manaea, and Dustin May's push back toward a place in the Dodgers' rotation mix. Plus, they examine a few potential breakout hitters from Eno's recent story looking for bats primed to take a leap in 2025, tough rankings on the hitting side as DVR puts the final touches on his Top 300 hitters, and a few mailbag questions.
Rundown
3:03 Sandy Alcantara Is Back (and Touching 99 mph)
9:54 Sean Manaea's Oblique Strain & Growing Opportunities in Mets' Rotation
14:27 Excitement Around Tylor Megill's 2024 Adjustments
22:51 Dustin May's Return to the Mound; 2025 Outlook
25:25 Eno's Search for Breakout Hitters
41:06 Tough Hitter Rankings
51:55 Are Projections Missing on Jung Hoo Lee?
59:04 Mailbag Questions!
Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social
Follow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.social
e-mail: ratesandbarrels@gmail.com
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Check out Eno's 2025 breakout hitters story at The Athletic ($): https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6151540
Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels
Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris
Producer: Brian Smith
Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to rates and barrels. |
| 0:12.6 | It's Monday, February 24th. |
| 0:14.7 | Derek and Riper, Eno Seris, here with you on this episode. |
| 0:17.7 | We take a look at some spring training news and notes. |
| 0:20.3 | We got some injuries. |
| 0:21.5 | We got guys that are back from injuries. |
| 0:23.8 | Touching 99. |
| 0:25.1 | That's pretty fun to see in the first outing back coming off of Tommy John surgery. |
| 0:29.4 | We get some breakout hitters that Eno wrote about for the Athletic. |
| 0:32.1 | We'll talk about his process and some of the players featured in that piece during this episode. |
| 0:36.9 | We'll also take a look at some tough hitter ranks as my hitter rankings are finally getting closer to being released. |
| 0:42.4 | This week will be the week. |
| 0:43.7 | It will happen this week. |
| 0:44.8 | Guaranteed. |
| 0:46.2 | As much as I can guarantee anything in my life at this point in time. |
| 0:50.3 | I also got a few mailbag questions we're going to get to as well. |
| 0:54.9 | How'd the weekend treat you, you know? Pretty well. We had the Barf draft, the Bay Area Roto Fantasy Draft, where |
| 1:03.2 | I'm still sitting in Laura Michael's spot, rest in peace and I won it last year |
| 1:12.1 | so the pressure was on |
| 1:14.0 | for the repeat and |
| 1:15.6 | they pushed pitchers up |
| 1:18.1 | and I was annoyed |
... |
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