Welcome to Rates and Barrels Thursday, February 19th, Derek Van Riper here with Enos

Ceres as we continue our team preview series.

Three more teams on the slate for today, Eno.

We have the Seattle Mariners, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the Miami Marlins.

So a nice combination here.

A lot of good pitching on this episode.

I think it's going to be one of the main themes that we get to.

We've got three writers scheduled to join us for Friday's previews as well.

So we'll have a lot more writers on for the rest of the series since their availability starts to open up.

Now that we've gotten into that rhythm for spring training, how's it going for you on this Thursday?

Better than it is for Trevor May. How's it going for you on this Thursday? Better than it is for Trevor May.

Trevor's computer ate itself.

And so we will not have the pleasure of Trevor today.

But yeah, things are going all right.

Yeah, I think he'll be missed a lot on this episode, especially since he knows the Mariners very well, but he knows everything really well.

Always miss having his insight when we can't get him on a Thursday.

Let's get going, though, tons of stuff to cover.

We'll start with the Mariners.

This is a team that I think did a really good job of holding it together and getting a couple of nice pieces in the off season. On the hitter

side, the decision to re-sign Josh Naylor was a big one. Bringing him back was huge. He was

just a vital part of their team post-trade deadline last year. They made a trade for Brendan

Donovan, who gives them some versatility, coverage at third base to begin the season, maybe the possibility of moving him around the infield, depending on how the prospects who come up later in the year fit into the picture. Traded away a guy and Harry Ford, who was pretty blocked. That got him a reliever and Jose Ferrer making that bullpen even deeper. And of course, the strength of this team, as we know, is starting pitching. We'll talk about that in just a couple of minutes. But when you start to look at the hitter group and how the pieces actually come together, you got Cal Raleigh coming off of a season that was as good as any we've ever seen at the plate from a catcher. Julio Rodriguez, in that superstar mold, obviously part of their rule of five.

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