Statcast Surprises & Grouping Hitters by Swing Traits w/Joshua Rodrigues

Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball

The Athletic

Baseball, Sports

4.9 • 746 Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2025

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Eno and DVR discuss a few injuries from the long weekend including the potential for an extended absence for Alex Bregman, an opportunity for Marcelo Mayer at third base, Michael King's long-term outlook, and Tarik Skubal's Sunday morning gem in Detroit. Plus, Joshua Rodrigues joins the show to discuss how we might be able to re-think classifying hitters with the recently released swing data from Baseball Savant using a combination of swing traits.

Rundown

1:07 Alex Bregman to the IL, Marcelo Mayer Promoted

6:48 Michael King on the IL w/Shoulder Inflammation

11:26 Free Agency Outlook for King

15:29 Tarik Skubal's 'Maddux' Pulls No-Hitter Level Game Score

18:45 A Weekend Full of Statcast Goodness

24:25 Joshua Rodrigues Joins the Show!

26:09 Contact Point Heat Maps

32:37 Grouping Hitters By Three Swing Traits (Bat Speed, Attack Angle, Swing Path Tilt)

35:18 Cluster Rankings by Batted Ball Metrics

45:03 The Challenge of Making Good Bat Path Grades

54:56 Where the Money Went: Late May Edition

Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social

Follow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.social

Follow Josh on Bluesky: @jrodrigues39.bsky.social‬

e-mail: [email protected]

Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe

Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels

Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris

Producer: Brian Smith

Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper

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

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	At Betfair, we're about finding different ways to play.
0:03.2	Like with our 90-minute guarantee.
0:05.0	We've all been there.
0:06.1	The clock ticks over into 90 minutes,
0:08.1	and then a speculative cross into the box ricochets off a knee and goes in,
0:12.8	ruining your bet.
0:14.0	But with Betfair's 90-minute guarantee,
0:16.5	if your bed is winning at 90-minute or full-time, we pay out.
0:20.5	Bet-Fair, play different. I placed the match odds 90-minute. If your bet is winning at 90 minutes or full time, we pay out. BetFay.
0:21.3	Play different.
0:23.8	A place to match odds 90 market or markets with the 90 icon, sportsbook exclusive.
0:27.6	Terms and conditions apply 18 plus be gambleware.org. Welcome to Rates and Bearles.
0:45.4	May 27th.
0:47.4	Derek Van Riper, Inoceris, here with you on this episode.
0:50.6	We smush our typical Monday episode and our Tuesday episode into one thanks to the long
0:57.1	weekend. It was nice to watch little baseball and have the extra day off, but tons of baseball
1:02.0	news you should know, including a trip to the IL for Alex Bregman and for Michael King. Terrick
1:08.2	Scoobel tossed a gem on Sunday. We'll put that into some context. We'll talk about some of the where the money went this weekend, the pickups from the weekend. Who actually was added and what kind of impact will they make? And then we've got a guest coming up later on in the show. Joshua Rodriguez will join us a little bit later on as we dig further into some of the new hitting and swing
1:29.5	data that became available last week over at baseball savants a lot of ground to cover today
1:35.1	eno let's start with the news out of boston alex bregman goes on the iL with a quad
1:40.2	strain he suffered that while running the bases on friday it opens the door for Marcelo Mayer to make his big league debut.
1:47.0	He came up over the weekend. We'll get into Mayer in just a minute.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Athletic, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Athletic and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.