Welcome to Rates and barrels presented by Tops Checkout Tops Project, 70, celebrating 70 years of Tops baseball cards, Derek

Van Riper, Bridgeroli, and Chad Jennings joining us. Chad, of course, covers the Red Sox

for The Athletic, one of our two Red Sox beatwriters. So, Chad, filling in for Enosaurus as we get ready

for a Boston-Hustin ALCS, not quite the script that people imagined back when the season began.

But Chad, thank you for joining us.

Oh, it's my pleasure. I'm sure everyone's very, very happy about these two teams.

There's nothing controversial at all about either one. It's completely fine.

Yeah, public perception of both teams is extremely positive, but there's a lot to get to for this series.

And I think if you look back at how they did it, how the Red Sox eliminated the race,

a big part of it was having some pitchers come through in some really key spots.

Tanner Hauke, Nick Povetta, Eduardo Rodriguez, kind of in games two, three, and four, respectively.

I think my question about that

trio is how effective can that strategy be with those pitchers over a full seven game series

and also adjusting for what is even a more difficult offense to navigate in the Astros?

Yeah, there's no question. I mean, I was just talking with Jay Kaplan about this yesterday,

about he was saying, he said, who's going to start game two? It depends on who he uses in game

one, I mean, which is amazing that you could go into a seven-game series like this and have there

be no real set number two starter because of the way you handle the pitching staff. You know,

I mean, they have native Aldi, and at this point, that's really the only traditional true starting

pitcher they have. Otherwise, I mean, the way, like you said, the way Alex got through Tampa is,

you would have said the raise strength, right, is their pitching depth, right? They had more,

they should have had more options than the Red Sox. And Alex just sort of flipped that on its head just by using his staff the way he did.

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