Who Do You Like In the AL Central?
Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball
The Athletic
4.7 • 874 Ratings
🗓️ 7 May 2024
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Eno, DVR and Britt discuss Walker Buehler's return to the Dodgers' rotation before digging into the four contenders in the AL Central to assess each team's current strengths and weaknesses. Plus, they share a few players they underestimated in the past.
Rundown
0:51 Walker Buehler Returns to the Dodgers' Rotation
4:04 Forays Into Free Agency After Two Tommy John Surgeries
10:57 Buying the Guardians' Early Uptick in Offensive Output?
21:32 Weathering Early Injuries In Minnesota
26:15 If Nothing Else, The Royals Are Interesting Again
33:11 Can the Tigers Fix Their Struggling Hitters?
45:02 Players We Were Wrong About (Exceeded Expectations)
Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris
Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper
Follow Britt on Twitter: @Britt_Ghroli
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Transcript
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| 0:51.5 | It's Octor. Welcome to Rates and barrels. It is Tuesday, May 7th, Derek and Riper, you know Sarah, |
| 0:56.0 | Britcheroli here with you on this episode. We dig into the AL Central. |
| 1:00.1 | At least the four teams that have a chance of going to the playoffs from the AL Central. |
| 1:03.9 | We'll save the White Sox conversation for later in the year. |
| 1:08.1 | Maybe after the trade deadline, we'll talk about how the early stages of their rebuild is going. |
| 1:11.3 | So a lot of Guardians, twins, royals, and tigers talk today. |
| 1:16.8 | We're going to take a look at players we were wrong about. And by that, we're going to focus on players we saw a lot who exceeded our expectations. We've got a few interesting names to share there. |
| 1:23.1 | We're going to start today, though, with the return of Walker Bueller from his second Tommy John surgery. |
| 1:28.4 | Eno, you and I were talking about his rehab assignment and how the velocity wasn't where it was |
| 1:32.9 | pre-surgery, but his first start back against the Marlins on Monday night, 94-3 to 976 on |
| 1:39.3 | his four-seamer, a 95.9 mile-per-hour average. One thing that was mentioned was that the adrenaline is not necessarily there for some guys as they go through rehab starts. |
| 1:49.0 | And maybe there's also the aspect of just feeling good, knowing that game doesn't count and just trying to get through it, just kind of getting your work in, almost like spring training in some ways. |
| 1:58.2 | So how encouraged are you just by seeing those Velo numbers from |
| 2:01.8 | Bueller in that first official start back? Pretty good. I mean, he got his fastball back to the same, |
| 2:08.0 | actually better velocity than he had in 2022 as an average in that game, 959, according to |
... |
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