Welcome to Rates and barrels presented by Topps Checkout Topps Project, 70, celebrating 70 years of Topps baseball cards.

Derek Van Riper, Inoceris, Brit Jiroli here with you on this Thursday night slash Friday morning,

depending on when you consume this pod.

Hopefully everybody out there can enjoy something resembling a longer weekend with the holiday coming up on Monday.

I think we're all in need of a little downtime here.

But lots to talk about on today's show.

We'll check in on the playoff races with just one month to go before the postseason begins.

We will talk about the Mets who have become masters of fan engagement recently.

And we'll look at September call-ups for some possible impact players that have been called up here with roster expansion happening on Wednesday.

Let's go right after it and start with the playoff races.

Britt threw a question at us on Slack that I want to open with.

Do we want Yankees Red Sox in the AL Wildcard game?

And I think when it was thrown at me this morning, Ian Kahn said,

how about Garrett Cole versus Chris Sale in a one-game playoff?

And that got me pretty excited.

So my snap answer to your question, Britt, is, yeah, I think I do want that on the condition that it is, in fact, coal versus sale.

Yeah. Well, right now, Cole is lined up already for that wildcard game.

So, you know, if you're the Yankees and I think they kind of have resigned themselves to be in the wildcard team, they don't have to worry about trying to pitch Garrett Cole that last series down in Tampa.

It should already be decided by then, which is kind of good.

If they were closer to Tampa, they would run that kind of risk of should we pitch Garrett Cole

and try and win the division.

But then, oops, we don't have Garrett Cole for the wild card.

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