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Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball

Goodbye to Hitter's Counts, the Importance of Handling Sliders & Fastball Laggards

Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball

The Athletic

Fantasy Baseball, Mlb, Baseball, Sports

4.7873 Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2022

⏱️ 64 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Eno and DVR discuss the disappearance of hitter's counts thanks to reduced fastball usage, hitters that are better equipped to take advantage of a more slider-heavy environment, struggling hitters that continue to lag in production as the end of May draws closer, and a few pitchers in need of adjustments due to poor fastballs. 


Eno's story about the loss of hitter's counts as fastball use changes: https://theathletic.com/3331525/


Rundown

-- Goodbye to Hitter's Counts

-- Hitters With Good Results Against Sliders

-- Good Against Sliders, Bad Against Fastballs?

-- Struggling Bats: What To Do?

-- Where Did Robbie Grossman's Power Go?

-- Making Sense of Nelson Cruz's 2022

-- Rebound Coming from Yasmani Grandal?

-- Making Sense of Jeffrey Springs

-- Fastball Laggards


Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris

Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper

e-mail: ratesandbarrels@theathletic.com


Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first six months: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to Rates Barrels Thursday, May 26th, Derek Van Riper here with Enoseres on this episode.

0:23.2

We will explore the piece that Eno had published at The Athletic on Thursday morning.

0:28.4

There are no longer hitters counts.

0:30.3

We'll dig into why and we'll dig into a way you might be able to take advantage of that with your fantasy teams in the immediate and long-term future.

0:37.9

We're talking about some struggling hitters who could be drops in shadow leagues, possibly

0:42.3

by lows, in some cases, try and diagnose a few more issues with guys that are struggling

0:47.0

as we move through the end of the second month of the season.

0:50.6

Among those players, not someone you would drop, but someone that we're always curious about

0:54.0

Wander Franco, kind of wondering where his power has been to the first two months of the season.

0:59.7

So lots of ground to cover today.

1:02.0

And before the show, I learned that, you know, like many people, does not peel bananas correctly.

1:08.6

So I feel, I feel an obligation to the listeners of this

1:12.5

podcast to bestow, blew my mind. The occasional nugget of life wisdom, I have very few

1:19.8

things in my life that I can pass on that I consider to be valuable knowledge to other people.

1:25.4

Like what, what I do is mostly in the useless information department.

1:29.4

But I imagine that most people listen to this podcast are like, you know, prior to today,

1:35.3

where they take a banana and they peel from the top where the stem is, where the bananas

1:39.9

connect to each other.

1:41.4

And oftentimes as you're kind of breaking that stem, you're bruising the

1:45.0

top of the banana, which is unpleasant. The banana's still edible. It's fine. It's just kind of weird to

1:49.6

bruise the banana and then eat it. And you're wasting the banana and you don't want to do that.

1:54.4

My advice, my tip is to take the banana, flip it upside down and peel it from the bottom. You will

...

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