Welcome to rates and barrels. It's Wednesday, February 18th, Derek Van Riper, Inoceris, and Jed Lowry here with you, continuing our team preview series. Today we have the Texas Rangers, the Washington Nationals, and the Chicago White Sox on the slate. Nothing, as I mentioned in our previous episode, nothing actually links those three teams together. They just meet a set of criteria mostly in that we don't have a dedicated beat writer covering them at the athletics. So we're covering them on our own. And we're going to bring our beat writers on to cover the teams that they cover each and every day throughout the year. So we get to chop it up on some teams that we watch from time to time. And guys, we think about from a fantasy perspective. Other way of these work, we go through. We talk about playing time projections on the hitting side. We look for some underrated bats, try to figure out how the roster fits together. Talk about the pitching side, strengths and weaknesses within the rotation and bullpen. And then, of course, we look at the Pocoda win projection from baseball prospectus and grade that on the scale of too hot,

too cold or just right.

Jed, how's it going for you on this Wednesday?

Going great, guys.

Good to be back.

Thanks for having me again.

You know, everything good in your world?

Yeah, A.

Okay, except the cats are a menace, man.

They just broke the butter dish.

Just come on, dude. You're not supposed to be on the counter. I mean, what do you, what do you expect? What do you expect? I mean, have you trained the cats not to get on the counter? Yeah, I mean, yes, we squirt them with water. But we got three cats out of one litter. So we call them the Thundercats.

Oh, I like they, they're a band.

Like it's them against the world, you know, and against us increasingly.

Yes.

That tracks.

I'm slightly nervous about my upcoming trip to visit Eno in the Bay Area.

I'm a little worried.

These cats are going to terrorize me when I sleep. They weren't there last year. I managed

Sarah's farms effectively in 2025. Little, little nervous about the 2026 visit, but I'll try to

get on the cat's a good side, I guess, based on the butter dish taking a big spill today. Side note, I don't think anyone's ever made a good butter dish in the history of the world. They're always kind of messy and just, they don't. Oh, yeah. They keep stuff out of the butter most of the time, but you just, they get gross all the time. So I'm looking for a good butter dish. If you got a recommendation, hit us up on the Discord.

A lot of butter talk on big air on the Olympics on Tuesday night, by the way.

I've been enjoying the Olympics.

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