Welcome to Rates and barrels. It's Thursday, July 21st, Derek Van Riper, Enoseres, back here with you. Island Eno has returned to Eno at home. And it turns out Island Eno is one of our listeners' favorite characters, I guess we could say we have on this show. Yeah, shout out to our YouTube commenters. That was pretty funny.

Keeps us laughing. Keep the comments coming on YouTube. You can ask questions there. You can always email us, of course. Rates and Barrels at the athletic.com is the email address. But on this episode, we're going to take a look at some second half storyline. It's kind of a second half preview. We're going to take a look at some pitching workload concerns, lots of pitchers that really fall into that. They're obviously the young pitchers who just haven't thrown a ton of innings in the past,

complicated even further by the absence of a 2020 minor league season.

We'll talk about the older pitchers who might have been dealing with major injuries in

recent years who are pushing their workloads up.

And then some of the in-between type players,

I think Nestor Cortez kind of fits into this sweet spot of someone that hasn't been a starter for a full big league season before,

but appears to be in that role and thriving to the point where we just wonder,

what does August look like, what does September look like as those innings continue to pile up?

We'll take a look around at a bunch of different categories looking for some help for your rosters as the second half gets underway. We've got games again on Thursday, which I got to say the Wednesday after the All-Star game is a it's a lonely, lonely day if you were a baseball fan. You go to the app, you go to the TV, and you're just looking like, this is weird.

Like there's, something's missing. There's just like a part, part of me that's just gone.

I just take the whole day off, mostly because, you know, I've just come back from covering,

but also because it's a grind of a season, it's a long season. And then thirdly, because I don't really care about the SBs.

So there's not really a lot of sports on that I care about.

So, you know, it's a day to watch other things.

Watch murders on the Orient Express last night.

Yeah, what's what the murder stuff lately?

I've been watching only murders in the building. I started watching that on the flying that I was doing. Yeah, that's what the murder stuff lately? I've been watching only murders in the building.

I started watching that on the flying that I was doing. Yeah, that was fun.

It's a good show. I've enjoyed it so far. I'm through the first season. So if you are picking that up or have already watched it, no spoilers, please. I'm not a crime podcast person, but maybe on the brink of becoming one. Maybe that's an off-season

project. Maybe we'll have a Rates and Barrels murder mystery episode at some point in the

winter. Are you advocating for a murder year? No, we'll save that for the next lockout four

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