What Information Do Hitters Want About Opposing Pitchers?
Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball
The Athletic
4.7 • 874 Ratings
🗓️ 11 June 2025
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Eno, Jed, and DVR discuss a few injury-related news items including updates on Aaron Nola, Matt Chapman, Bryce Miller and Justin Martinez, plus a few surprises from The Athletic's (anonymous) 2025 MLB player poll. They also dig into information hitters might be interested in when preparing for a particular series, using Pete Alonso's new approach as inspiration for a theoretical matchup against the Astros.
Rundown
1:21 A Rib Cage Stress Reaction for Aaron Nola
4:15 Matt Chapman: Will See Hand Specialist This Week
10:19 The Athletic's 2025 MLB Player Poll
($): https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6406636
23:33 Managers That Players Want to Play For
30:15 What Information Do You Want About Opposing Pitchers?
37:46 A Game Plan for Pete Alonso v. Framber Valdez
47:59 Do Hitters Value Information About Usage Tendencies?
52:27 Hunter Brown and the Value of Two Very Good Fastballs
Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social
Follow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.social
e-mail: ratesandbarrels@gmail.com
Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe
Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels
Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris
With: Jed Lowrie
Producer: Brian Smith
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 Barrell. It's Wednesday, June 11th. |
| 0:14.9 | Derek Van Riper, you know Sarah's Jed Lowry here with you on this episode. |
| 0:18.6 | We got some baseball news you should know, lots of injuries |
| 0:21.3 | getting worse around the league. But we do have the Athletics player poll, the annual anonymous |
| 0:27.0 | player poll results are in, some fun results, I think, as we looked through some of those earlier |
| 0:32.7 | today. So we'll discuss that. We're going to dig into game planning for opposing pitchers. |
| 0:38.5 | There was a great story that Will Salmon wrote about Pete Alonzo and how Alonzo has changed |
| 0:42.7 | some of the things he is doing in game prep this year. |
| 0:45.7 | We started asking questions like, what do we actually want to have at our disposal if we |
| 0:50.0 | were in a position like that of Pete Alonzo right now? |
| 0:53.3 | So we're going to use Pete Alonzo versus the Astros in an Interleague series as a hypothetical breakdown. So a lot of ground to cover today, guys. If you haven't joined our Discord already, you can do that with the link in the show description. If you're watching us in YouTube, be sure to smash that like button. I will continue to say smash the like button until the end of time. I don't care how much the kids laugh at me. That is what I am here for. All right. Let's get to the news. Aaron Nola has a stress reaction in his rib cage. It could keep him sidelined until the all-star break, you know, maybe an explanation for why Aaronnola hasn't quite looked like himself, |
| 1:28.6 | but it does leave the door open for Mick Abel to continue getting some run against |
| 1:34.1 | big league hitters. Yeah, I was hoping this would be the case for the good news being like |
| 1:40.3 | Mick Abel gets the chance. He's been really exciting and it's been fun to watch him pitch. |
| 1:45.3 | I'm not hoping for that for Aeronola. |
| 1:47.9 | This is one of those lost seasons. |
| 1:49.9 | It feels like it was an ankle. |
| 1:52.8 | And then maybe he was compensating for that ankle and did something to his rip cage. |
| 1:58.9 | But it's really hard sometimes, I think, to just come back. |
| 2:03.1 | You think, oh, it's just this one injury. |
| 2:05.4 | And you're like, okay, the ankle feels good enough to get out there. |
| 2:08.1 | And then you're like, oh, wait, I did something. |
... |
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