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Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball

What to Watch in Spring Training Games, Two-Seam Fastball

Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball

The Athletic

Fantasy Baseball, Mlb, Baseball, Sports

4.7873 Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2024

⏱️ 71 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Eno, Trevor and DVR discuss an unusual day at Phillies camp, superstitious teammates, and what to look for in spring training games. Plus, they continue the deep dive pitching series with a detailed look at two-seam fastballs/sinkers, before discussing a few challenges organizations have getting coaching staffs on the same page in player development.


Rundown

1:38 A Rough Day in Phillies Camp

7:26 What to Look For in Spring Training Games

18:45 Reliever Usage in Closer Battles

26:28 'Two-Seamer' v. 'Sinker'

32:33 Good Two-Seamers & Newer Location Strategies

37:39 An Ineffective Sinker

48:35 Two-Seam Fastballs in Stuff+

50:37 Organizational Philosophy v. Individual Approaches

1:06:15 Viewer Q&A


Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris

Follow Trevor on Twitter: @IamTrevorMay

Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper

e-mail: ratesandbarrels@theathletic.com


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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Welcome to Rates and barrels. It is Friday, February 23rd. Derek and Riper, Enoceris, Trevor May here with you. We have spring games in progress. It feels so good to have baseball on the screens again. On this episode, we've got a lot of ground to cover. We're going to talk about what you should be watching for in spring games. What matters this time of year when you're watching job battles? You're looking at guys testing out new pitches. You're looking at guys trying to make swing adjustments. We'll dig into a whole bunch of that. We have another deep dive. Eno and Trevor are going to tell you everything you've ever wanted to know about the two seam fastball. So we're going to continue that series.

0:55.7

And time permitting, we're talking about what you do when there's disagreement in an

0:59.4

organization across a coaching staff.

1:01.3

I imagine that happens sometimes, given the number of people all trying to row in the same

1:07.8

direction in a major league organization.

1:10.7

Gentlemen, I want to start today with what I think is the tweet of the week.

1:14.2

This came from Matt Gelb.

1:15.6

He's the Phillies beat rider for the athletic.

1:18.2

And this is the tweet.

1:20.1

Many cell phones aren't working.

1:22.0

A bird is shit on Aaron Nola's shoulder this morning during photo day.

1:25.5

Then the entire Phillies complex lost power.

1:28.8

How do you top that? Like, that's the worst possible start you can have to a day at camp,

1:33.6

isn't it, Trevor? It depends on your perspective. If they're like, well, we can't do anything

1:38.1

today, go home. Players are like, this is a pretty good day. You know, but being a journalist, I can tell I could see how that would be very, very annoying, especially having no phones working. Was there a storm? There was a big storm, right? Was there a big storm? There was some kind of intermittent, like nationwide outage. There were places all over the place that didn't have, it didn't impact me. I was fine. But yeah,

2:04.3

it seemed to be a problem even beyond Florida. It does get worse. I mean,

2:09.5

Joe Musgrove dropped a like a weight on his toe like super early in spring training and like had like this whole year was terrible. That's worse than the bird incident, I think.

2:15.0

But as you're in the NFL picking up his kids, popping his ACL, that kind of thing.

2:19.1

Yeah, I could get worse in terms of injuries.

2:21.5

But, yeah, I mean, I'm going to be honest, we're like, oh, what else is not working?

2:24.6

No one got shit on.

2:26.3

I don't really care about that.

...

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