Tough Starting Pitcher Rankings for the Rest of 2025
Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball
The Athletic
4.7 • 874 Ratings
🗓️ 15 August 2025
⏱️ 83 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tough Starting Pitcher Rankings for the Rest of 2025Eno and DVR wish FanGraphs a Happy 20th Birthday and discuss several tough rankings from Eno's final list for the 2025 season including Logan Webb, Dylan Cease, Shohei Ohtani, and Chase Burns, along with the surprising lefties -- Andrew Abbott, Jacob Lopez, and Trevor Rogers -- as the stretch run approaches. They also look at a few intriguing names on the waiver this weekend including the recently-promoted Owen Caissie, and Nolan McLean ahead of his MLB debut against the Mariners on Saturday.Plus, Niv Shah joins the show to discuss late-season ottoneu strategy with players unlikely to be kept and how to approach trading with loans versus dropping a player in hopes of a cascading effect that puts other interesting players onto waivers, and our Senior Hot Correspondent ranks the eight Taste of the Majors hot dogs from the season so far
($) Eno's Updated Starting Pitcher Rankings: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6549810
Rundown
4:12 Updates on Ronald Acuña Jr., Pablo López & Michael King
10:30 Padres-Dodgers & Great Weekend Series On Tap
21:09 Logan Webb: A Tough Rank Up Top?
25:22 Dylan Cease's Rebound & Cade Horton's Surge
31:50 Shohei Ohtani's Workload Increasing to Win Eligibility Levels
35:55 Chase Burns' Late-Season Limitations
40:40 Owen Caissie's Promotion & Playing Time Outlook
43:49 Nolan McLean Headed to the Mets' Rotation
48:18 Forrest Whitley is Pitching Well at Triple-A
53:07 LODEM Kings as Tough Rankings Too
55:02 Talking Keeper Trade/Drop Strategy w/Niv Shah
1:09:27 Taste of the Majors: Power Rankings in Mid-August
Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social
Follow DVR on Bluesky: @DVR.bsky.social
Follow Niv on Bluesky: @ottoneu.bsky.social
e-mail: ratesandbarrels@gmail.com
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Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris
Producer: Brian Smith
Guest: Niv Shah
Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Rates and barrels. It's Friday, August 15th. |
| 0:14.0 | Derek Van Riper here with Enoceros on this episode. So we get ready for the upcoming weekend of waiver wire pickups, our senior hot dog correspondent, |
| 0:21.7 | and if Shaw drops by to talk a little auto new strategy, and to power rank the taste |
| 0:26.8 | of the majors dogs that he has had this year, your taste buds are about to go on a trip |
| 0:33.6 | without even leaving home. |
| 0:35.8 | It's fantastic. |
| 0:36.7 | If you do not subscribe to a YouTube channel, today would be a great day to do that because the video presentation of these dogs will be available later on in the show. |
| 0:46.5 | Eno has new starting pitcher rankings that have dropped. We'll talk about a few tough ranks. We'll get to some baseball news you should know and right off the top. |
| 0:53.5 | It's August 15th, which means it is Fangraph's Birthday. |
| 0:56.9 | It's FanGraft's 20th birthday, you know. |
| 0:59.8 | We are getting old. |
| 1:01.2 | FanGraphs is getting old. |
| 1:02.6 | Next year, Fangraphs is going to have a keg at their birthday party. |
| 1:07.1 | That's crazy. |
| 1:09.4 | Yeah, and there's a fun piece up there, kind of going through the memories at Fangraphs |
| 1:15.6 | and Appelman sort of telling the story of David Appelman, the founder of Fangraphs, telling |
| 1:20.5 | the story of why he created it, which was to win his fantasy league, and how he spent a |
| 1:25.0 | couple of years in his bedroom back at home after college, you know, trying |
| 1:29.9 | to make this thing work and how it really took off when he hired Dave Cameron, hired writers. |
| 1:34.4 | And it was a fun kind of trip through, troops from memories for me to read that. |
| 1:39.2 | And I would suggest that people who support Fangraphs. |
| 1:42.7 | It doesn't cost that much. |
... |
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