The Strike Zone is Shrinking
Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball
The Athletic
4.7 • 874 Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2025
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Eno, Trevor, and DVR discuss the strike zone, which is shrinking in 2025. They dig into why that changes have taken place and consider a few implications of that adjustment. Plus, they look at a trio of underperforming starting pitchers through the first month of the season including Zac Gallen, who may have started a turnaround Thursday against the Mets, Sandy Alcántara, and Aaron Nola.
Story from Jayson Stark, Ken Rosenthal, Eno & several writers from The Athletic MLB team ($): https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6328105
Rundown
2:32 Is The Strike Zone Really Shrinking?
4:36 Where Is The Strike Zone Getting Smaller?
13:23 Adjusting the Game to Increase Offense & Balls in Play
20:52 Walk Rates Don't Fluctuate Much
29:59 Zac Gallen: Adjustments Already Happening?
38:16 Sandy Alcántara: A Typical Post Tommy John Command Lag?
45:14 Aaron Nola: Is the Ceiling Coming Down Again?
52:00 Eno's Greatest Fear
Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social
Follow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.social
Follow Trevor on Bluesky: @iamtrevormay.bsky.social
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Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris
With: Trevor May
Producer: Brian Smith
Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Rates and Barrels. |
| 0:12.7 | It's Thursday, May 1st, Derek Van Riper, Enoceris, Trevor May, all here with you on this episode. |
| 0:19.3 | We have a big question that's been bouncing around recently. |
| 0:23.7 | Is the strike zone changing this season? |
| 0:27.5 | Eno's going to dig into that here with us in just a couple of minutes. |
| 0:30.9 | We're going to talk about a few struggling pitchers, |
| 0:32.6 | try to figure out why things did not go well for them over the course the first month of the season, |
| 0:36.8 | and try to forecast what is going to happen from this point forward. Gentlemen, quick question before we |
| 0:43.1 | get started, who's April did you have? How was your first month of the season? Do you have a comp to |
| 0:49.2 | somebody in the game right now? I feel like I had a Jorge Polanco sort of April. Kind of an amazingly |
| 0:54.8 | good month out of nowhere and everyone's just waiting for me to come crashing back to Earth. |
| 0:59.9 | But how about you guys? |
| 1:01.5 | I did not have an Aaron Judge or Jorge Polanco. It's April. I've been just trying to figure it out. |
| 1:08.9 | Maybe even like a Tommy fan April. |
| 1:12.7 | Just try to battle my way through a veteran season maybe near the end of my usefulness. |
| 1:21.0 | That's pretty bleak. |
| 1:22.4 | Pretty bleak, but interesting name pull there. |
| 1:25.3 | I'm trying to figure out where I am between, you know, Polanco and Kelnick. I'm probably just middle of the road. I think maybe I'm... Who's average? It's just having an average. You just did what they were supposed to do? Who exactly hit projections for the first month of this season? That's you? Yeah, who's just been solid? Yeah, I think that there's been a lot of good. It's been a lot of just plugging away. I think plugging away, seeing some good stuff, being like, ah, there's some adjustments I can make here. But yeah, in general, I think just I'm your league average player. Rocking a 0.6 war right now. Hey, paced it out for three and a half this season. I think that's perfectly fine place to be on the first day of May. Taylor Ward, there you go. Does it all the time. Trevor is Taylor Ward. Join our Discord with the link in the show. Description, have been done that already. And be sure to join the Six Picks Group. New session just started up here on Thursday. Not too late to jump in on that. |
| 2:19.8 | Let's get to the first topic of the day. |
| 2:21.8 | You know, is the strike zone shrinking? |
| 2:23.3 | What's going on? |
| 2:29.7 | Yeah, if you've trolled around looking for, you know, your favorite framers, |
... |
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