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Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball

Rethinking Reliever Evaluations & Measuring Bullpen Quality

Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball

The Athletic

Baseball, Sports, Mlb, Fantasy Baseball

4.7875 Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2025

⏱️ 67 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

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: @iamtrevormay@bsky.social


e-mail: ratesandbarrels@gmail.com

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


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

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Welcome to rates and barrels.

0:12.5

It's Thursday, March 6, Derek Van Riper, you know, Sarah, is Trevor May, all here with you on this episode.

0:17.2

We got some spring news and notes.

0:19.3

We got Gunner Henderson in danger of missing opening day.

0:22.5

We got an update on Luis Heel, possible early season innings caps for Sandy Alcantra.

0:28.4

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

0:38.9

analyze relievers and how teams build bullpens. A lot of reliever talk on this show. We have a

0:45.2

name that dude. We got some mailbag questions at the back end of the show as well. So a ton

0:50.4

of ground to cover. And one very important housekeeping note off the top. top a reminder two live episodes of rates and barrels going down at the end of this month march 27th and march 28th bear bottle brewing company the burnell heights location 430 start opening day is the 27th of course the giants play away So the game will be on before we start. We'll record

1:11.8

once that game is over. Really looking forward to doing that. And trying the beer that Eno

1:17.1

made last week. Can art is out. It's kind of, it's cool looking. Can art rules, man. Could you

1:24.0

imagine that being your main job? That'd be awesome. It's like stadium renderings.

1:28.5

Can art and stadium renderings.

1:30.9

It's just making you excited.

1:32.5

Ooh, the possibilities.

1:34.8

Do you have any other random art that you really enjoy?

1:39.4

Stadium renderings, beer cans, anything else?

1:43.3

Logos?

1:44.2

I like the minor league league spin-off logos.

1:47.4

Those are great.

1:48.5

Those are always great.

1:50.0

I like cereal boxes.

...

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