Rethinking Reliever Evaluations & Measuring Bullpen Quality

Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball

The Athletic

Baseball, Sports

4.9 • 746 Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2025

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Eno, Trevor, and DVR discuss spring injury updates and a new potential closer entering the mix in Texas, before digging into how the conversation and analysis of relief pitchers should change with a greater emphasis on leverage index and win probability added, and other existing metrics. Plus, they look at teams effectively building bullpens in different ways, and wonder if there is a better way to measure the overall quality of a bullpen based on the different looks and pitches a group offers. Rundown 2:57 Spring Training News & Notes 13:40 A Sleeper for Saves in Texas? 19:33 Increasing the Conversation Around Leverage Index 25:25 Shutdowns & Meltdowns 31:55 Finding Ways to Appropriately Value Cade Smith Relative to Emmanuel Clase 41:11 Building a Bullpen with Varying Looks 50:19 Would a Smaller Strike Zone Reduce Pitcher Injuries? 58:20 How Much Pain Are Pitchers Throwing Through Day-to-Day? 1:05:42 Name! That! Dude! (Season Series entering 3.6.25: Trevor 1, Eno 0) Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social Follow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.social Follow Trevor on Bluesky: @[email protected] e-mail: [email protected] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris With: Trevor May Producer: Brian Smith Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Bonus: A closer video mentioned during this episode: https://www.startribune.com/volume-up-lights-down-it-s-fernando-rodney-s-awesome-entry-video/479161213 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Is anyone out there?
0:02.0	Ah, another salesperson, enduring the endless search.
0:06.0	Exhausting.
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0:11.0	Whether you're searching for new leads or strengthening existing relationships at your top accounts,
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0:19.0	Try LinkedIn Sales Navator now with a free
0:22.1	60 day trial. Go to LinkedIn.com slash solutions. That's LinkedIn.com slash solutions.
0:27.6	Terms and conditions apply. Welcome to rates and barrels.
0:42.7	It's Thursday, March 6, Derek Van Riper, you know, Sarah, Trevor May, all here with you on this episode.
0:47.4	We got some spring news and notes.
0:49.4	We got Gunner Henderson in danger of missing opening day.
0:52.5	We got an update on Luis Heel, possible early season innings caps for Sandy Alcantra.
0:58.5	So we'll talk about that, as well as a sleeper candidate for some saves in Texas, a name we've never mentioned on this podcast before, which is going to launch us into a conversation about how we analyze relievers and how teams build bullpens.
1:12.2	A lot of reliever talk on this show.
1:14.9	We haven't named that dude.
1:16.2	We got some mailbag questions at the back end of the show as well.
1:19.9	So a ton of ground to cover.
1:21.4	And one, very important housekeeping note off the top.
1:24.8	A reminder, two live episodes of rates and barrels going down at the end of this month,
1:29.7	March 27th and March 28th, Bear Bottle Brewing Company, the Bernal Heights location, 430.
1:35.1	Start.
	...

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