Episode 55: Derek VanRiper (The Athletic), George Kirby Makes The Wrong Headlines, And The Pitching Staff Is Melting Down

00:00:00 Speaker 1: Welcome to episode number fifty five of the Marine Layer Podcast. Today we welcome on Derek Van Riper, podcast host on the Athletic Podcast Network. You hear him on The Athletic Baseball Show and Rates and Barrels. We talked a little bit about the playoff picture in the American League, look ahead to October and see where the Mariners fit in in that race. We'llso talk about George Kirby's comments after Friday's Mariners loss in Tampa Bay, and a pitching staff that seems to be melting down at the worst possible time. 00:00:29 Speaker 2: This show is brought to you by Pigatcha's Pub eighty five. That's Pagatcha's Pub eighty five in Kirkland. It's on eighty fifth Street in rose Hill, east of four oh five with some really good parking. It's also home with the best pizza in town. They've got everything you need. That got fresh food, fresh cocktails, fresh beer, and like they like to say, it is not fancy, it's not trendy, it is just good food. Again. That's Pub eighty five on eighty fifth Street in Kirkland. They've got everything you need for food, drinks and sports with twenty two TVs inside the restaurant. Say you want to go check out a Mariner's game, check out a Seahawks game, really anything you might desire. Head over to Pub eighty five and get all the food, beer, alcohol and sports you could possibly be looking for. It's the go to place in Kirkland. That's Pigatcha's Pub eighty five. And one final reminder before we start this show that if you're listening on our audio platforms Apple, Spotify, Google and Amazon, head over to YouTube too. Watch us on YouTube, hit subscribe, light, comment, and turn those notification bells on when we go live or post a show. If you're listening and watching on YouTube, check us out on the audio side too, follow us download our episodes, give us a five star review the reviews the downloads really help us out big time. They only take a couple extra seconds too. And then on social media, you can follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube shorts at marine Layer pot. 00:01:52 Speaker 3: Let's get it rolling and. 00:02:03 Speaker 1: We welcome you to this episode of the Marine Layer Podcast, part of the Just Baseball Podcast network, recording right at eleven o'clock here on Monday, September eleventh, post game of Game one of this Mariners and Angels series, Lyle and Wow, our Show Hey to Seattle campaign is off to a tough start. 00:02:27 Speaker 2: He just had to get scratched out of the lineup, didn't he. My theory on this is the Angels are conspiring against us. They saw our campaign, they saw our posts, they saw our tweets, and they decided, you know what, We're just gonna yank them right out of the lineup. Now. I will say we tried to pivot here and I did everything in my possible power to come up with a plan B on the fly, get around the ballpark, get people involved, which was channing we want show Hey every time Mike Mustakus was up. Who is the replacement DH? And was the replacement DH for show Hey here on Monday. But it didn't go exactly as plan which I didn't know how it was going to go. It was always gonna be hard if he's not in the lineup again. I tried to think of a plan B. I tried to think of a way where people could still get the chance going. But we need him in the lineup. By the time this podcast comes out, there'll be another Angels game that has already concluded. I really hope by then he is in the lineup so we can actually get these chants going, because I'll tell you what, I was not a happy camper on top of the loss here on Monday night. I was not a happy camper that We've tried to put all this effort into this campaign just for him to get scratched after originally saying, Oh, he's gonna play, so we'll see. 00:03:37 Speaker 3: And you mentioned he was not in the dugout. 00:03:40 Speaker 2: I didn't see him anywhere. 00:03:42 Speaker 3: Hmm, that's a good question. Where was he? Was he at drive Line? 00:03:47 Speaker 2: I guess that's possible. 00:03:48 Speaker 3: Maybe it was just like Drive Line. 00:03:50 Speaker 2: Maybe he was just sitting in the clubhouse for all I know, who knows. 00:03:53 Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe he wanted to watch a different game. Maybe him and Trout were hanging out. Oh, him, Trout and Rendon they were on the run a banana boat. 00:04:03 Speaker 2: Gotten. What's Anthony Rendon spewing to those. 00:04:05 Speaker 3: Two no obla in glace today? 00:04:09 Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go. I really hope what Thani plays. I mean, I like, we saw what this city can do when he's up at the plate in terms of rallying behind a chant. They did it. During All Star Week. Everybody did it during All Star Week, and that was for one at bat. If people could just do it for eight to ten at bats now here in the last two games, I mean, I think it would just be electric. But get him in the lineup. I'm begging. I'm begging somebody. I'm begging show Hey to get healthy and getting the line up here after this series. He can sit the rest of the year for all I care, but just getting the line up here on Tuesday and Wednesday. 00:04:42 Speaker 3: On top of all of that, the game wasn't much better. No, oh no, it might. 00:04:48 Speaker 2: Have been worse. Maybe my mood is worse because I spend so much time walking around the ballpark trying to promote promote this thing, and used a lot of energy on that, and then used a lot of energy on the game, in which went to extra innings and they lost miserably. So I'm sitting here using basically emergency backup power to get through this podcast and any last juice of energy that I have in me because between all that today, like I'm I'm on fumes here, especially after the loss. 00:05:19 Speaker 1: I told Lyle to drink some coffee, but he never listens to me. When I tell him to do that. So all I gotta say is this is on him. And I don't want to talk about the loss right now because I'm sure it will come up in our second storyline, which essentially highlights some of the problems that were issued today. I will note I'm pretty tired of watching the Mariners and extra innings, which, for some reason, for what has generally been a good offense this year by WRC plus by many statistics across the board, they are a good offense. Maybe not a great offense, but they're a good offense. The astounding way how they managed to just not score an extra innings and they fallen nowt to six and thirteen in extra innings. I mean, that just should not happen. You have opportunities and extra innings, and today it wasn't just extra innings. You had opportunity and the ninth inning as well. So could you give them an extra ninth inning loss for that ninth inning two bases loaded nobody out, and. 00:06:20 Speaker 2: Just we have seen that way too many times this season. How many times are they going to have the bases loaded with nobody out, especially in clutch situations, and that happens It's happened so many times. 00:06:38 Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't even know what the worst part about tonight was. To be honest, I'll throw one stat out there that is relevant to tonight before before I re reference this stat in or second storyline. The Mariners now over their last ten games, have blown a multi run lead in five of them. 00:06:58 Speaker 2: That is not good. I think the worst part is the fact they had the bases loaded with nobody out in the nine and did not score against the Angels. That's the worst part. 00:07:09 Speaker 3: I yeah, I don't get it. 00:07:11 Speaker 2: I mean it. 00:07:12 Speaker 1: Jared First came back what it was a strikeout against a lefty tough like, uh okay, right, and then the play by play went away, Oops, thank you, m will be out. 00:07:25 Speaker 2: Well, I can tell you what happened. Demo grounded out with the infield in or they it was a feelers choice forced play at home and then Dom Canzone grounded as a first base. 00:07:34 Speaker 1: Or the the now a couple of times in this game as well, which we haven't mentioned yet, where they got thrown out on the base paths and excusably again on on on routine decisions. Julio, I know you went thirty thirty for today buddy, But I'm looking at you running towards third base and looking looking like a little leaguer, and we. 00:07:56 Speaker 2: Should probably mention too. As we sit here now recording, the Mariners are out of a playoff spot. They are half a game back of Texas for the first time in weeks. They are not in the playoff picture, which that's awesome. 00:08:08 Speaker 1: Yeah, we spend all this time laughing about Texas and their bullpen and how they seem to just be falling off the moon back to Earth and out of the playoff picture. Well, look how the tables have turned it. 00:08:24 Speaker 3: It looks. 00:08:26 Speaker 1: It took one good Texas win in Toronto today to flip the script. 00:08:33 Speaker 2: We'll see how long this lasts for Texas because currently both teams are playing badly, so we'll see who figures it out first or either figure it out at all. But it's neck and neck. The Mariners had some lead in that wild card area, but not anymore. 00:08:48 Speaker 1: Let me just throw this note here before we get to our storylines. When this episode comes out, you'll have a little bit under twenty four hours to bid for those do those Saturday night Dodger Marin tickets that were we've partnered with Chasing Ace's Golf to give away three Mariner's tickets. The the charity raffle will close on Thursday, so tomorrow when this comes out, the charity raffle will close is twenty dollars to enter. You would win three tickets, really nice tickets, first level tickets. So all the proceeds of this charity raffle goes to pause dot org. So if you're interested in getting some tickets and donating to a good cause, go bid. Go to the Chasing Aces Instagram. We've partnered with them. They follow us like some of our stuff. You can go find them on Instagram, click the link in their bio and you can go bid for some really nice Dodgers Mariners tickets, and of course donate to the animals as well. Lyle was there at Barket the Park night tonight and here we are doing our part on this podcast support the wonderful animals of this world. So go to Chasing Ace's Golf Instagram, go to the link in their bio, go bid for some tickets, and hey, you might go get yourself some pretty nice seats for a pretty big game on Saturday night. Okay, let's get to our Mariners' storylines. First up, we need to address the elephant in the room, and that elephant is George Kirby. 00:10:16 Speaker 2: Yeah, where do we want to start with this? So he has a rough start against Tampa Bay. It's been a stretch of kind of bumpy outings for him. He went six and two thirds. He went back out for the seventh inning, he let up a two run home run. That was not a Yeah, not a game the Mariners won, right, They didn't win on Friday. They lost. They lost that game. I mean, yeah, they're all jumbling together now. They lost that game and afterward, I mean, you don't need us to tell you this, I'm sure you've seen it. Kirby had his postgame presser and he said, I don't think I should have been out there for the seven to be honest, and he said that he was at ninety pitches and didn't feel like he needed to go anymore. 00:11:00 Speaker 1: So he got a lot of pushback on that from a variety of now retired pitchers because now that they're retired, they have a lot more time to spend on their phone and tweeting at current players. So to name a few, I mean, Jared Weaver, do you want me to read any of these? 00:11:16 Speaker 3: Should we read them? 00:11:18 Speaker 2: You can. 00:11:21 Speaker 1: Let's pick out a good one here and like so Jared Weaver quote tweets this and says, this is why I'll never be any kind of coach in the big leagues. To be honest, I shouldn't I shouldn't have been out there. I threw ninety pitches. Question Mark, what the fuck? Embarrassing? Truly embarrassing, Grab your nuts and let's go work. 00:11:41 Speaker 2: Yeah, Jared Weaver, who threw what like eighty one miles an hour with his fastball. 00:11:46 Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think he had to worry about maintaining his velocity into the sixth and seventh inning. It was usually already gone by then. So thank you, Jared. He had a few other replies there. Mark Mulder had a few things to say, can't believe this guy made twenty seven starts this year. The things I would say would get me in trouble you, he said a lot that'll that would probably get him in trouble with a lot of people. You just go check his Twitter timeline. Roger Clement says this would not fly in the old days, although we know Roger needed a little extra to get through the seventh inning and to recover after starts as well. So oh, and also I believe he also got asked out of a He asked to get out of a World Series game one time. 00:12:24 Speaker 3: I forget which year that was, but I heard it this morning, so that that was that. 00:12:30 Speaker 1: So yeah, I think this is this is the best opportunity possible for old heads to come out and say how great they were, which is. 00:12:39 Speaker 2: Just ridiculous, by the way, because for these guys that talk about loving old school baseball, isn't George Kirby the exact type of pitcher you would love. A guy who throws a ton of strikes and commands the zone as well as anybody in the game of baseball. 00:12:55 Speaker 3: And pitches deep into games. 00:12:57 Speaker 1: He doesn't lead the Mariners at innings, but you're looking at this Mariner's rotation, it's like, Okay, who's going the deepest in any given game. 00:13:04 Speaker 3: It's George Kirby. 00:13:05 Speaker 1: That's what he does, and he's he is what I qualify as a bulldog. Now, you cannot see what George Kirby said and call yourself a bulldog. That's just absolutely not true. You cannot do that. You cannot say I'm the ace of a team. I want to be the ace of a team and come out and do that. You need to be a better liar, George Kirby, and he knows from now on he's gotta lie his ass off, no matter what he's feeling, no matter what he did on the mound, no matter what he fucked up. He needs to lie better because otherwise this just opens up a whole bag of worms. And now all the attention is on the Mariners and a team that's so focused on their culture and that, how could something like that slip out? And you question the Mariner's decisions, the manager's decisions after just another excruciating loss. Can't do that, and that sends ripples. 00:14:03 Speaker 2: It was a bad quote. I don't think anybody's defending the quote. I'm sure Kirby himself is no longer defending the quote because it was not said in the right time. It shouldn't have been said period. And if you're gonna say it at all, that's got to happen behind closed doors. So yeah, I mean, it was a bad quote. What can you say now? The thing I think I had the most issue with is not even that the I mean Okay, yes, first and foremost that the quote was said publicly, but it just seemed like he had a lack of regard for how taxed this bullpen is, especially going back to Friday, this bullpen had pitched so many games in a row without an off day, where every guy had been getting worked. You knew they were down in their bullpen. You knew that you needed your starters to go deeper into the game. He said, ninety pitches like you've got another inning in you. You've got another inning. It's unfortunate he gave up the home run, but it is not ridiculous to ask a pitcher to go back out at ninety pitches. They needed to say that. 00:15:00 Speaker 1: Bullpen ninety three pitches and facing seven, eight and nine in the order. Come on, dude, like you looked at the lineup card before you went back out. You got scouting reports and all these guys seven eight nine in the order. You're not saying, yeah, coach, I got this. 00:15:17 Speaker 2: Look. Maybe there was something he was feeling that we don't know about. Again, just physically, I mean, we don't know right just because we don't have the reports, we're not inside the clubhouse any of that stuff. But you would think that if you're the ace of a roster and you're getting into September and these are important games you need to win, you would want the ball now. He did apologize for this. He did have a postgame press or not a postgame press conference, but a pregame media session the next day where he did get in front of reporters and apologize. And hopefully this is just water under the bridge now and this gets forgotten about. But as we're sitting here talking about it again, my whole thing is, if we're sitting here knowing how tax the bullpen is, I'm sure he knows it because they go over it in the scouting report every day. They go over who's available and who's not. They go over they go over everything. So I'm sure he knows the bullpen was down, which is why again I kind of scratch my head and say that was that was an interesting time to put that quote out. And again, if you really do have a problem with it, it just has to happen behind closed doors. 00:16:19 Speaker 1: George Kirby knows his limits. He does, and I think Luke Arkins did had a really good thread online on Twitter showcasing how George Kirby has struggled when his pitch count has neared one hundred. He has allowed an eight twenty one ops this season, which is his highest of any like quadrant of pitch count from like one to twenty five, twenty six to fifty, seventy one to fifty five, and seventy six to one hundred. The latter twenty five pitches are the twenty five pitches he's the worst at, which is not surprising, but again, he knows where his limits are at, and it's not a surprise. A lot of pitchers are bad when it gets to when your pitchcout gets closer and closer to one hundred, and George Kirby, among Mariners starters is the second worst in that, behind only Brian wu So, which is kind of shocking because george pitch is deeper than anyone else, Right, that's kind of weird. Here's one thing I have to say, and we saw these quotes thrown out here that it's like and this is where I'll come in defense of George, where these same old heads are like, this is why advanced analytics are making pictures soft. And my counter to that is, no, it's not making pictures soft. It's making managers realize that their pitchers fucking suck after seventy five pitches and a third time through the lineup. That's what they realized. So, mister, whoever the fuck you are who pitched back in the two thousands, who had probably an eight ERA after the sixth inning. 00:17:44 Speaker 3: But I toughed it out. 00:17:46 Speaker 1: Now your manager would realize, yeah, dude, you're kind of shit after the sixth thinning, So you're getting pulled. 00:17:52 Speaker 3: That's what that is. Okay, that's it. That's all I have to say on that. 00:17:57 Speaker 2: So the guys on the Just Baseball Show, we're talking about this here on my on their show, which we've plugged them before. We've had Peter Apple and arm Layton on this show before. Which if you guys need or want a national baseball podcast to listen to, like I always say, you can do two things. You can listen to TJ and I do our MLB wrap rounds, and check out the Just Baseball Show, because truthfully and truly, I'm not sure there's a better baseball podcast out there for a national baseball medium than the Just Baseball Show. I would go check them out because they're awesome. They were talking about the same thing and they said, one, what you were saying is these guys that blame analytics absolutely got lit up the third time through an order. So that's first and foremost. And also like analytics, that word is the biggest crutch word in sports, Like it's become such a scapegoat word. I think that's how they phrase it, and I think they're absolutely right. It is such a scapegoat word because they say, oh, the analytics, this, the analytics that. Well, what do you actually mean when you say analytics pin something down? If you say, oh, this guy should be going back in the game because the numbers say his third time through the order, he is actually good. He shouldn't be asking to get the ball taken out of his hand. Fine, if you have actual proof and facts and hard evidence for what you're talking about and why you disagree with analytics and a certain factor of them, fine, But just saying oh, analytics, it just it ruins the game. No, No, that's you scapegoating not liking modern baseball, even though modern baseball is much more advanced and well thought out than back when you played. 00:19:32 Speaker 1: It's what that tells you as the person does not understand what they're talking about, and they need a word to generalize, so they have something to blame because if they were to actually pick out what the actual problem was, they wouldn't understand it and they wouldn't actually be able to tell it to you. 00:19:47 Speaker 3: That's the thing. 00:19:50 Speaker 2: Yeah, get educated modern pitchers. All these guys that had the need to tweet out all this stuff that really just became it felt like almost like a dunked a dunction session. To be quite honest, Like I understand if you disagree with what he said. I think most people disagree with the quote that Kirby put out. But using this whole analytics thing as a way to try to take your victory lap looks ridiculous because you look ridiculous talking about it now. 00:20:17 Speaker 1: If I'm gonna guess of guys that went up and probably said something to Kirby, whether like consoling or like hey, dude, like what the fuck was that? Like cal I think because he's obviously in charge of the pitching staff as the backstop there. But I kind of miss Marco Gonzalez and Robbie Ray in this at retrospect. You know, the veteran, like the savvy veteran, and I would say Luis, but there's like a little bit of a language barrier there, so like that's more understandable in his sense. But like a Robbie Ray or a Marco Gonzalez, like guys who are major league veterans who could walk over there and say like, hey, dude, like no, oh, like something like that. And obviously they're in the road in Tampa, so neither those guys are anywhere near that clubhouse. 00:21:07 Speaker 2: Wonder if JP said anything. He's kind of the captain of the team at this point. 00:21:11 Speaker 1: I try and think about the position players, but like they don't pitch, like you need a pitcher to go say something, or your skipper who's a former catcher himself, who which they absolutely talked like that does not Obviously I said it before. 00:21:25 Speaker 3: It's like you don't question the manager or the media. You do not do that. 00:21:29 Speaker 1: And I'm sure that was made crystal clear after those comments came out of his mouth. So but again, this is a clubhouse that's run on culture, and we're seeing crack. We've seen a crack. We saw a crack. I don't know how big that crack is with Kirby's comments, but that's not what we're used to seeing, and we hope that doesn't lead to anything else down the stretch, not a I can't say anything for certain, but you know they're in a bad stretch right now. 00:22:00 Speaker 2: I wouldn't say this is that is when Jean Segura and Dee Gordon got in that fight in twenty eighteen in the clubhouse. Yeah, I wouldn't says. I wouldn't say it's like that that twenty eighteen clubhouse culture crumbled and burned. It's not like that. But you're right that this was not a good look. 00:22:19 Speaker 1: No, the pressure is building as they fall out of a playoff spot, and there's going to be pressure on One's George Kirby to perform down the stretch before we get to our second storyline, let's hear from Betterhelp, is something interfering with your happiness or preventing you from achieving your goals, regardless if you have a clinical mental health issue like depression or anxiety, or you're just a human who lives in this world who's going through a hard time. Therapy can give you the tools to approach your life in a very different way. And that's why I'm excited to tell you about today's sponsor, better Help. Betterhelp's mission is to make therapy more affordable and more accessible, and this is an important mission because finding a therapist can be really hard, especially when you're limited to options in your area. 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Click the link inn or the description or visit betterhelp dot com slash Marine Layer Pod. 00:23:44 Speaker 4: This fall, stream your favorites and discover more with Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus together watch the highly anticipated new season of Loki and see the ghost materialize in Haunted Mansion on Disney Plus catch more frights with The Man an American Horror story Delegate on Hulu and on ESPN Plus. Get into the action with college football and NFL. All of these and more streaming now get to Disney Bundle with plans starting at nine ninety nine a month plans with ESPN Plus starting at fourteen ninety nine a month. Terms apply. See Disney Bundle dot com for details. 00:24:26 Speaker 2: Second storyline here. I hate to say it, but this rotation looks like it is running out of gas. 00:24:33 Speaker 1: Just rotation, the whole staff is out of gas. I mean, where do you want to start with this? 00:24:41 Speaker 2: I mean, I think we should start with the rotation because that's where the bulk of the problems I think lie. When you look at Brian Wu and George Kirby, those guys are now way over their career high in innings for the season. I mean, Bryce Miller and Logan Gilbert may pass their career high in innings as well. But you look at Wu. He's at seventy innings right now last year through fifty seven, which was a career high because again he didn't throw that many innings at cal Poly. He had injuries, he didn't throw that many innings in twenty twenty one because he came back from Tommy John So this is already a high an innings for him despite going on the il. And now his average fastball has gone down, it's trending the wrong direction. It's down about a mile and a half over the last month, and it's trended down in each of his last few starts. And Kirby. Kirby's nearly forty innings over his one hundred and thirty frames from last season, so he's going way over his workload too. That might be part of what we're talking about with Kirby. I know we just had this whole talk about him, but he is going way over his career high in innings. So there's been a lot asked to this rotation. 00:25:42 Speaker 1: You mentioned woos innings, you didn't even mention the innings he already threw down in double A this year before he called him up. So he you're right, way, way way over his innings limit. But I look at this on a results basis too. I mean I highlighted you look not counting then start today. I looked over this road trip. The Mariners went three and seven on this road trip. Three of those seven losses. The starters did not even give you a chance to get in the game, not even a single chance. It was Bryce Miller's last start against the Tampa Bay Rays. Five innings, five earned runs. The Mariners fell behind early and never really had the bats to get back in the game. Like that whole Tampa Bay series seemed like after the early innings they did not have really any gas to get back into it. Then Brian woo versus Cincinnati, no chance. George Kirby in Game three against the Mets. The Mariners had no chance to get back in that game because the starter never gave them the option to. And these starts really crippled the bullpen. I mean, I have the whole list of starts from this past road trip, and the Mariners in that road trip got one quality start out of that entire unit. That includes guys who have higher innings limits than those other two and haven't crossed their They're having crossed their innings thresholds. This is a group wide effort and not just a workload issue. 00:27:08 Speaker 2: So how do they fix this? 00:27:12 Speaker 1: Frost your fingers and hope things turn around the next three weeks. The thing I was complaining to you about before the show started. As we watch the Mariners blow another lead today. They got a good start out of Logan, but still want to start that Logan Gilbert went seven innings. The Mariners had to use six different relievers, six different fucking relievers today and end up still losing. There's no reinforce. Where the reinforcement's coming from at this point of the season. Are there any You don't have any starters left, like this is your group right now, So that's what makes this concerning. You don't have anyone to plug in to start. The only other guy you could have possibly started over this stretch you dfayed yesterday. 00:28:01 Speaker 3: In Lon Leuver. That's it, yeah, right. 00:28:04 Speaker 1: And then if you look at the bullpen two there is one potential reinforcement arm per Lander Burrow. He is currently on the taxi squad. He is still yet to be activated. He's still only pitched one third of an inning this year in the Big leagues, where he walked three way earlier in the season, and they still have not activated him. Despite the struggles of this bullpen unit. That's what's concerning right now because it's a tired group. There's two off days left in the year one, this Thursday one, next Thursday, and there's no other relief on the horizon. 00:28:40 Speaker 2: And Andre's munio is through a scoreless inning here on Monday, but it was a very very shaky scoreless inning where he loaded the bases. He had a full count at one point with the bases loaded, and he got out of it. But they also talked about this week that he's been battling with some minor hit stuff. I now want wonder if that's maybe what's been the cause of some of these struggles over the last few weeks, and it's catching up with him and he's trying to pitch through it. Given where he's at in the season, it would make sense because the fact he he doesn't have a slider, he doesn't have the command yet last year, it would it would be a reasonable hypothesis here to say, yeah, that that hip thing might be bugging him. 00:29:22 Speaker 1: It would be And I wonder if that if that's correlated with his workload at all, that he's been really leaned on here in August since they got rid of Seawald, and I speaking of Seawald, they. 00:29:31 Speaker 3: Did kind of I did think about it for a second. 00:29:34 Speaker 1: I was like, do they regret that now It's like, probably not because Seawald hasn't been fantastic in Arizona. But anyways, back to the current group, listen to some of these stats lyle over the over the road trip. I don't have today included which these numbers would get exponentially worse bullpen on the road trip twenty ninth in f War. The only team worse is the Texas Rangers twenty sixth and ear RA twenty sixth and walk rate twenty third, in whip thirtieth, in home run to fly ball rate thirty two percent thirty two, so one out of every three five fly balls the bullpen allowed was leaving the ballpark and they're twenty seventh in hard hit rate. 00:30:18 Speaker 3: That is a disaster. 00:30:23 Speaker 2: Yeah, the hope is these guys are just going to have to turn it around in the bullpen. And to be fair, they did a decent job trying to rest some of these guys back during a raise series because they didn't use a lot of the high leverage guys towards the end, and they did that to try to get them some time off and then hopefully the day, the off day on Thursday can kind of help them out with that too. But I think the biggest concern again, I know you seem to be talking about the bullpen here more and from the Tony your voice, it sounds like more your concerns are with the bullpen. I think mine is with the rotation, and specifically it's with two rookies, because look, if this team's going to be a playoff team, you have to rely on the idea of Luis Castillo, Logan Gilbert, and George Kirby pitching to their ability that everybody knows that they can pitch at which our front line starters, because if they don't do that, then this team's not going to the playoffs either way. The issue here is Wo and Miller, because you can't just drop every two of five games and you can't be losing back to backs when those guys pitch. Now, they did just split these guys up for that exact reason. But we talked about some of Wo's now struggles with his fastball velo going down, So I look at Bryce Miller now to look at the other side of this coin. His fastball Vilo's not going down, but the life that once had and the effectiveness that once had earlier in the year, that seems to be gone because the run value is a negative won for the season and opponents are now slugging just about four fifty against that bastball. So it's all of a sudden been very much figured out by the rest of the league. And that is what Bryce relies on more than anything. 00:31:51 Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's got no real secondary to bail himself out if he need if he can't find that pitch. But the problem is, over these next three weeks, what are they going to need three starts each out of those two right about? And you gotta help, Like if you're if you're gonna make a playoff spot and Texas starts playing, well, you're gonna need to win half of those, right That's that's a pretty tall task, man. I don't I don't know it is. They could turn it around. They absolutely could. I'm just saying there's no reinforcements right now. There are none. Can I can I pivot back to the bullpen here really quick? Because I kind of like this bouncing because like there are here's some of my concerns now with the bullpen. If you look over the thing that was most concerning over this road trip, I looked at it on like a war basis, which over a small samples not perfect. But when I tell you that the guys who had negative war on this road trip out of your bullpen were justin Topa, Gabe Spire, Andre's Munos, Taylor Sasato, does that concern you because those are your four of your five most reliable relievers right there who you need to come in and pitch well. 00:33:02 Speaker 3: And they did the opposite. 00:33:04 Speaker 1: So even if you have your three starters out there who you trust right now, Gilbert Castillo, Kirby, and you need those high leverage guys like Topa, Munos, Spire who had another terrible outing today come in after them and not perform like those are the games you want to win, right because those are the games you're structured to win with your starter and your high leverage bullpen guys aren't giving you an opportunity, not right now? 00:33:35 Speaker 2: Do you have to try and rely more on somebody like Isaiah Campbell in these leverage spots who has been actually pretty good. To be fair to Campbell, but it can't be the only guy. 00:33:45 Speaker 3: Well, Campbell came in on him and on Friday, and he was the one who came in after Kirby right on Friday. 00:33:53 Speaker 2: That sounds right. 00:33:55 Speaker 1: Ye, I was gonna say I think that I think that was him. He came in and gave up the go ahead Homer on Friday. Regardless, you're I do think he's been better, So yes, yeah, I do think they need. I need, I want. I don't see the I don't see why Perlander Burrow is not in the bullpen at this one. 00:34:10 Speaker 3: I don't. 00:34:11 Speaker 1: I don't. I don't see what you're losing at this point, just just putting them in there and giving some life someone maybe who's not as tired. 00:34:19 Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, he's not pitching every other day in the miners and the miners these guys throw one to two times a week. They manage their workloads pretty well down in the minor leagues. So yeah, it would absolutely be a fresh arm. I would love to see barrowa up now. If he can't find the plate again, then fine, you don't use him in high leverage. But just to have a little bit of life added to this bullpen would be great. With how tired some of these guys are. And here's what it's going to come down to, because you're gonna have to rely on your core bullpen arms that you've relied on all year topa Muno's fire sausato crash. These guys are going to have to catch a second win or they're gonna have to catch a final win. We should put it here in the final few weeks because that's there is no number that we can quantify to say, here's what they have to do to get better better other than you know, don't give up runs, throw strikes, command your pitches. They're gonna have to catch a second win because they're very clearly tired and taxed right now and it can't continue that way if they have playoff aspirations because they need those bullpen guys. 00:35:21 Speaker 1: Yeah, if they don't pitch better, they're not making it. It either that or it's gonna be as what we love to qualify a mid off between the Rangers' bullpen and the Mariners, the Rangers pitching staff and the Mariner's pitching staff over the seven of those final ten games of the season. And I don't think either of us really want to see that, because that just sounds like a nightmare seven game stretch of too many runs and too much stress. 00:35:49 Speaker 2: Those last ten games are gonna be just a nightmare. I already know it. I know the way we're sitting here feeling right now. I mean this is I feel like we're usually pretty upbeat on this podcast, and I think this is it's been a little bit more of a negative sided podcast, which we're usually pretty good about avoiding. Now it's not, it's not ridiculously negative, but there is a little bit more of Uh, I don't know what do you even call it? A less positive tone for sure, and there's reason for it. And I think we're starting to feel what's upcoming on the schedule. You're gonna have the Dodgers, You're gonna have then that ten game stretch against the Astros and the Rangers, and I'm not looking forward to it. 00:36:26 Speaker 1: And I don't think like this isn't the main topic of this segment. But I also don't think Scott Service is free of blame in this because he does manage the bullpen and just even with his guys being tired, I mean, even like the little details of what Justin Topa did today in the tenth inning. Yeah, it was the tenth inning where they have Scott chooses to have Justin Topa pitched to Brandon Drury instead of walking Brandon Drury with two outs and facing what's his name. 00:36:57 Speaker 2: Again, Kyrin Paris? 00:37:00 Speaker 3: Yeah, have you heard? Did you hear that guy? Before today? 00:37:04 Speaker 2: He was a prospect, so yeah, a little bit. 00:37:07 Speaker 1: Okay, I had not so Karen Parris had like a three hundred ops this year, and Scott, in summary, decided to pitch to Brandon Drury instead of walk Brandon Drury with two outs and put Paris at the plate and Topa just he was atrocious. It was right down the middle, the sweeper, right down the middle. Dury hits it over the wall. Julio ends up tying it. But again, Julio would have just won it if Topa would have gotten that third out. So maybe maybe a conversation about Scott can be no next week if we uh, or even later this week if he makes more terrible ones. I think that could be a worthwhile discussion. But the vibes are not good in summary. 00:37:50 Speaker 2: No, well, let's close it on somewhat of a positive note before we get to the interview. Julio speaking of the home run forty fourth player in the history of baseball to have a thirty thirty season, which she's twenty two years old. That guy's pretty good. Remember when this was a down year. 00:38:03 Speaker 1: Yeah, and that pitch he hit out, I mean that was at his ankles. And just the coincidence that he was he wears number forty four and into he is the forty fourth player to go thirty thirty. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool, and he's got a chance for a lot more so. That's fun. Good for Julio. 00:38:21 Speaker 2: And it was the one. It was the one year anniversary that game tying home running hit against the Braids last year. 00:38:26 Speaker 1: Congratulations to Julio a thirty thirty season. So here we are being pessimists about this playoff picture. And yet our interview this week with Derek Van Riper of The Athletic he's an executive producer and a host of The Athletic Baseball Show and Rates and Barrels was on the playoff picture. He talks about these teams all the time, not just the Mariners, he talks about the entire league. And he's a numbers guy like us. So I liked this conversation for another number of reasons. We talked about the post season, talked about matchups a little bit, structure, but then we also talked about analytics, because you know, that's our thing, Lyle analytics, So it was great. It was a great conversation with Derek and a different tone, not Mariners centric, but more baseball centric, which I liked. 00:39:18 Speaker 2: We certainly did talk about the Mariners, but it was cool. We basically did a playoff preview, which with the postseason just around the corner here, it's going to creep up faster than you think, so all of a sudden, we could turn around and all of a sudden, we're out of time to do this full playoff preview. So we thought Derek would be a perfect person to do that with. And then yeah, we do get into some of the sabermetrics stuff, which is great. I thought it was a fantastic conversation. He's incredibly knowledgeable, and I always like listening to the Athletic Baseball Show because I learn a lot listening to him. So it was cool to have Derek on with us. 00:39:48 Speaker 1: We won't keep you any longer. Let's get to our interview with Derek Van Riper. All right, we welcome on Derek Van Riper, the executive producer of podcasts at the Athletic he's also the host of the Three to zero Show, host of Rates and Barrels, and the host of DVR in Law, all part of the Athletic podcast Network. Derek, we appreciate you taking some time to join us, I will say, we do appreciate you taking some time during paternity leave. So I have two things off of that. First, congratulations. Second, was this just more of an also convenience that you get to watch a playoff race without having to worry about working too much. 00:40:28 Speaker 5: Yeah, it's actually perfect timing. So my wife and I had our first kid back in February, and fortunately the Athletic has this policy where you can split your leave into two blocks if you want to, So we decided to spend a little bit of that leave at the end of the season because some of our help our family is actually going to Italy for like a vacation of a lifetime, so we figured it'd be good time to bond when our little guy's a little bigger. And yeah, the bonus is I get to watch a lot of baseball now, and you're a Brewers fan too, and they've turned it on just in time for you to have all this time to watch him. 00:41:02 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:41:02 Speaker 5: Absolutely, They've played pretty well in the series against the Pirates, notwithstanding, that was pretty frustrating. I think everybody goes through that no matter what team you root for. If you're in a playoff race, you think you hit an easy stretch of your schedule, or even just an easy series where we're gonna sweep or at least gonna take two of three, and you drop that series, and it's so frustrating, and it makes you question everything you thought about the quality of that team because of a three game sample that went wrong. 00:41:28 Speaker 2: We've had that a million times this year, is what it feels like, which is funny because the Mariners are playing so well, but certainly during the National Series back in June, we felt like that. I would say after this Red Series, TJ. I won't speak for you, we probably felt a little bit like that, and then things kind of just turn around if you give it a few days. 00:41:43 Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly. And it's I think if you root for a franchise the Mariners certainly apply. The Brewers reply to this. If you root for a franchise that has had a lot of historical disappointment and failure, it hits harder when things start to unravel. In September. You have a lot of bad memories of things going wrong, right, Padres fans have that too. There's a handful of teams like that that are pretty good now that historically have not been good. And I think you can see the emotions in those fan bases very clearly pretty much on any given day on Twitter. Now, as a fan of an NL Central team, is there a way to keep yourself calm watching your team play this version of the wretch? Because I gotta say, lol, and I were pretty stretched out over the three days this week, and the Mariners were playing the Reds and certainly happy that they're out of Cincinnati. Now, Yeah, I mean I think it's fun because, like, it's better to watch good teams even when you're playing against them or rooting against them, right, I mean, the Reds today versus the Reds on opening Day are a completely different roster. They're exciting, you want to watch them, You seek them out instead of trying to avoid them when you're picking your early games on any given day. Right, So for me, it's just more like, let's just hit the pitching, let's just outs score them, right, you expect them to put runs on the board. Especially when you go into Great American Ballpark two. That place can be a bit of a house of horrors when they have guys that can mash and you know you're going to score six, seven, eight runs to actually beat them, right, I think that's going to be true for a long time with the core they have in place, and I'm curious to see if they have enough pitching within the organization to make it work, or if they're got to go out in free agency or possibly in trade to bolster that rotation for this next couple of seasons. 00:43:26 Speaker 3: So that's all on the NL side. 00:43:27 Speaker 1: Let's go to the AL side because I think that's where this podcast is focuses, and the American League playoff picture is starting to clear itself out a little bit and the Mariners are. 00:43:38 Speaker 3: Solidly in that mix. 00:43:39 Speaker 1: So first question to kick off this playoff discussion, Derek, is where do you see the Mariners in this American League playoff race right now? How are they shaping up versus all those other teams that they're contending with. 00:43:51 Speaker 5: I think they're legit. I mean I think one of my co hosts, brittier Oi, had them as a World Series winner. That was her bold prediction going to the season, and there was point during the first half where I think she wanted to give up on that. But part of the reason the Mariners are so dangerous is because they're deep in the rotation, they're deep in the bullpen, and they're at least good enough with that lineup to hit top level pitching. They have some star power, they have some depth. I think Jerry Depoto, as you would expect, had a great trade deadline right Trading Paul Sewald was probably a little unpopular in the clubhouse and even with the fan base, but he got a couple guys back that can help them right away in can Zone and Rojas, and I really like the way they're built. I think the thing that's really jumped off the page for me is in the second half of the season, I think they have nine or ten players who have a WRC plus above one hundred, so they're getting contributions from everyone. Julio's playing like the future MVP that we all expect them to be, and they've stopped walking guys as a starting rotation. That really just blew my mind. I was looking at it, and you expect to see low walk totals next to George Kirby's name, he's the guy when it comes to having an elite walk rate. But it was Gilbert, it was Castillo, it was even Bryce Miller, and you know, Brian Wu I think has been even better than people expect to this point as well. So I just think they're dangerous because they can outpitch a slumping offense right and they can shut down an elite offense with the pitching they have, So there's a lot of ways they can beat you. And that's the thing I'd be the most optimistic about looking at this Mariner's team down the stretch and hopefully, for your guy's sake, deep into October. 00:45:23 Speaker 2: I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit here, but is there a team in baseball that fares better in the playoffs with the rotation than the Mariners currently? 00:45:30 Speaker 3: Do you know? 00:45:33 Speaker 5: If the Rays were completely healthy, I think you could make an argument for them, But without Shane McClanahan, I don't think you can necessarily do that. I think this is probably the best one through four rotation you'd have in the playoffs right now. I think that's one of the flaws on the nlside with Atlanta. I look at Atlanta and just say this pitching is pretty hittable. They might have a historically good lineup putting runs on the board, but their starting rotation can be had relative to the other team in the field in the postseasons. I think that's a huge strength for Seattle. 00:46:03 Speaker 1: When I look at the whole playoff picture too. I mean we look at the two top teams, the top team in each league, the Orioles and the Braves, they almost have that same problem that makes you like the mariners chances a little bit more now. 00:46:16 Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean that's part of it, right In playoff baseball is just different. You'd set to get there, and part of believing you're going to actually do damage when you get there is understanding how good your roster is. The Mariners are no fluke. I think that's clear to me. It's been clear to me going back to last season, and I think they're here for the next couple of seasons too. I think the AL West is a lot more exciting than many people expected to be. I fell for the Angels this year again, second year in a row. I thought the Angels were going to be better. I thought the moves they made were actually going to at least keep them in contention. To this point in the season, and especially after the Trader then they had they were aggressive. I thought, Okay, they're going to hang around, they're going to take slim odds, they're going to push it, and they're going to play meaningful games all the way through the end of September, and yet again the Angels have fallen on their face. But you know, I think when you look at the Astros, you look at the Mariners, and you look at the Rangers, the way they're spending and the young talent they're putting around, some of the big players they brought in free agency, they seem pretty close to being perennially a much more dangerous team than we're accustomed to. So it's going to be really interesting to see how this division unfolds in the next couple of seasons. 00:47:25 Speaker 2: So, with that and the team's revolving around the Mariners, what's the story with this Rangers collapse? I mean, can you credit it all to a really bad bullpen and injuries or is there anything else you're seeing that's going on there? 00:47:37 Speaker 5: You know, I think that's a huge part of it. I think with Nathany Valdi, who just had his first start off the IL. We're always watching the radar gun. When his VLO dips, he loses effectiveness very quickly. That becomes a bit of a wild card for them. The bullpen's been I think, a relative weak spot for this Rangers team all season long. There are a couple of interesting guys that have good stuff, but they're not necessarily getting elite results. They made the trade for a old as Chapman, and the weird thing is like Cole Reagan's is really good, So yeah, it may have been a mistake, right, Chapman's a rental. Reagans could probably do all those things and more given what he's done in that Kansas City rotation. I like that they added depth to that rotation by adding both Scherzer and Jordan Montgomery. I think without that, this this fade would have happened sooner. I think the injury to audeleast Garcia could be the backbreaker for them. I think he's a really important piece of that roster and a player that I was wrong about, you know, when he started to break through a couple of years ago. I thought adeleist Garcia was the kind of player that he's the best player on a bad team, and he's not necessarily an everyday guy on a good one, And I've been very wrong about that. He's become a much more patient hitter compared to what he was in the upper levels and the miners in the early part of his big league career. Josh Young not being there as a problem. You know, they've had injuries throughout the year. Of course, they lost to gram a while back, now that they've been getting by without him for a long time, So it's a little bit of everything. But I think this team had a few small flaws that are now being exposed here in the final month. 00:49:06 Speaker 3: Can they turn it around? 00:49:08 Speaker 2: Yeah? 00:49:08 Speaker 5: I think they can. I think the thing I always wonder about for teams that are kind of trending in the longer term upward direction is what kind of response do they get in the clubhouse when things aren't going well? Right, So, you think about a team like Houston by comparison, that's a battle tested core. They've been in this situation year after year after year. So if they hit a rough patch, they lose a couple of guys to injury, you worry less about a team like Houston than you do about Texas, But I think because of the way that roster's built, because they've got some guys in Seeger and Semeon who've been around for a long time, I don't worry about them as much as they would about a completely like young core that came up together right. So the Orioles would be one of those teams that if things started to go wrong for them just before the postseason, I would have questions about how well they would actually respond to it, just because they have not been in this situation before. 00:49:59 Speaker 2: And then when you look at the Astros, they're on the polar opposite side of where the Rangers are at right now, where they're starting to surge. Is it fair to say the Astros might be back to be in the lethal Astros again? 00:50:09 Speaker 3: They sure look like it. 00:50:09 Speaker 5: I mean, I think when you look at their core anytime you have all of Jordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker, jose A l Twove and Alex Brigman healthy, they're pretty healthy in the rotation right now. You know, Verlander's not peak Verlander or the Verlander even two years ago anymore. But that was a big get for them at the deadline, bringing him back because it takes a lot of pressure off a couple of the younger guys like Hunter Brown and Christian Javier. So you go Verlander and Fromberveldez one two atop the rotation. If your mid rotation guys are on short, they're four or five deep in that bullpen with guys that throw gas that are nasty, so they can deal with five and dive starters. They can put runs on the board. There's depth in that lineup, and they don't have the injury woes that a lot of other teams are dealing with right now. So timing is everything. And I think my expectation about two weeks ago, looking at this division and how tight everything was, I kind of thought it was that the cream's going to rise, Houston's going to get it. It's not going to be as easy for them as it's been in past years, but I think they're gonna come away with the division, even though Seattle could do it right. I mean, the schedule, the Mariners' schedule sets up really well for them to have a lot of control over their own destiny over the final ten days of the season. I think that's something you always want to have when you're on the cusp of possibly winning a division title. 00:51:21 Speaker 1: In terms of all the teams that I'd least like the Mariners to face down the stretch and probably in the playoffs. At this rate, it looks like the Astros. But we look at the ten previous games they played against the Astros this season, and the Mariners, unlike any season since the Astros joined the American League West, have absolutely handled them. So do you see a distinct advantage in a matchup for either of those sides? I mean, the Mariners obviously have the pitching. They're probably a little bit healthier on the pitching side than the Astros are. They've had some injuries this season, But I'm that Astros lineup against the Mariners hasn't been all that great when they played, but I feel like that damn is gonna break next in those final three games they play. 00:51:58 Speaker 5: It's a fair thing to one about what I do think. The starting rotation is one area where I'd give the slight edge to the Mariners in those matchups. And I think the bullpens are pretty much even in terms of quality and depth to so it's good if you can go toe to toe with pitching anything can happen. I think it's that lineup that you trust a lot more for Houston. And as you guys know, the thing that's made the Astros so dangerous throughout this window for them, they do damage and they don't strike out. Right, there are always a top five offense with like a sub twenty percent strikeout rate, and those teams are so pesky. The Blue Jays had become one of those teams in recent years with the rise of that young core. I think when you face a lineup like that, there's just no easy out when you go through it. Maybe with the exception of a guy like Martin Maldonado, right, he's there because he's a fantastic defensive catcher and anything you get from as bad as a bonus. But it's one of the deeper lineups in the American League. But it's also a lineup that can do a ton of damage in the heart with that core that's healthy, those. 00:52:52 Speaker 2: Last ten games are going to be crazy. You mentioned the Mariners schedule where it is solely the Astros and it's the Rangers. I mean, we're talking about the potentially being decided right in that stretch. If everything stays according to par where it's at right now. So the fan in you worries, right, but like the baseball fan side of you, the general perspective is, you know, what a fun way for the season to end. I mean, this is what you ask for as a baseball. 00:53:15 Speaker 5: Fan, tayfe as a neutral observer of what's happening in the American League especially, I'm I'm all here for it. I love it, I mean, and it's great that those last two series are at home. That's the other thing you really like to see. If you're in the position of a Mariners fan, you just want to You want to have an opportunity to do it in front of your home crowd. You want that extra little lift you get playing in your home ballpark. So those last seven games being at home, I think is a huge, huge boost for them. 00:53:40 Speaker 1: The one team that we're really focused on in this race outside of the teams in the American League West, is the Toronto Blue Jays. They're the ones hanging around right with the Rangers, right with the Mariners, aiming for one of those last. 00:53:51 Speaker 3: Two wild card spots. How do they shape up in this race? 00:53:54 Speaker 5: You know, I think getting Bolbouschett back from another injury is huge. He's back as of this weekend. I think that's that's key for them, just because I think the J's are one of those teams where I don't like their depth. I like their their starting lineup, and I just think anytime they lose someone, they're relying on a well below average bench player to step in. So that's one thing. If you were calling the shots for the J's, you'd want to continue to add to that group and say, look, hey, if we lose Bo, we lose Vlad, we lose one of our key hitters, we're much better off than we were a year ago. The questions about this team continue to be with pitching. If you told me at the end of the season alec Manoah was going to fall apart like this, there's no way I would have believed you. I think the key thing here is just finding enough quality. Jose Barrios's bounce back has been huge. Kevin Gossman is a capital aace, So you have that. You guys have seen a ton of Useay Kakuchi. Do you trust him, like, do you believe that he is a better version of himself? I mean, the home run rate is still a little high as things are right now, and I think you're right to be cautious about buying. But if he's your four, you're probably okay. I mean, Chris Bassett's the guy that I always I always kind of forget about him, even though I know he's there, because he's just more of an innings eater to me. He's not necessarily the guy that you want pitching an elimination game, but he's someone that you need to get through a long series because he can go out there and chew up five or six innings effectively and turn it over to a pretty good bullpen. 00:55:21 Speaker 2: Right. 00:55:21 Speaker 5: So, I think the Jays I've wondered all season when vlad Junior was going to hit the way we expect him to. If he catches fire at the end of the season, you have Bobashett healthy again, you could start to look at them much like we looked at them a year ago, and then they're one of the more dangerous teams that hey, look, they didn't win their division, but they got there. And that's a lot like the script talking about with the Mariners. 00:55:43 Speaker 1: I think you say Kakuchi might be near the top of the list of pitchers we trust the least so just to peek behind the curtain of the Seattle Mariners world. 00:55:53 Speaker 5: Sure, totally understandable. 00:55:55 Speaker 2: I think the logic behind that is all credit to him, because he has had a good season this year as hole. But that just feels like the type of pitcher where you get into October and he might fall apart. 00:56:06 Speaker 5: And I think your managerial decisions on a player like that are really complicated in game right, so much is going to depend on how rested your bullpen is from previous days and how quick of a hook you want to have if things are not going well for Kakuchi in a particular matchup. But this is this is turning out to be a career year so far, right, A three sixty three ERA one twenty six quip, well above the numbers we've grown accustomed to seeing from him, and this is more like the guy than he was in his final season with the Mariners. I just think this is another reclamation project for the J's in terms of taking a guy who's had trouble with walks throughout his career and bringing him to a career high. And I wonder what the league will We'll think, you know, if Kakuchi does this again in twenty twenty four. 00:56:48 Speaker 3: How how long. 00:56:49 Speaker 5: Of a contract does he get the next time he gets free agency. We saw Robbie Ray cash in because people believed, and I think they were right to believe. And I think if you're able to take a guy like that not two to three percent points off the walk rate, that changes everything. So maybe this is an organizational skill the Jays have, or maybe it's just a flute that they had two guys do this. But I think Ray's success in Toronto gives me a little more confidence that I might have otherwise in Kakuchi. 00:57:15 Speaker 1: So Flatty starts hitting again, does the Blue Jays ceiling raise up closer to the Rays? 00:57:20 Speaker 2: In the Orioles? Are they? 00:57:21 Speaker 4: Are? 00:57:21 Speaker 1: They like because the talent on the roster purely, I mean, I feel like they match up with those teams one hundred percent if Flatty hits. But he hasn't hit this year. He's been slightly above average as a first baseman this year. So how far up does that ceiling go with the Blue Jays? 00:57:37 Speaker 5: It definitely ticks up a little bit. I mean, I think Bobashet has been their their best all round hitter so far, so he's critically important to them. Just having him back means a lot. I think you could probably say the same thing about George Springer that you're saying about Vlad Junior. Compared to our expectations, it's underperformance. Right, for a lot of players, it'd be totally acceptable or at least a decent sort of season. This is not quite the George Springer that you signed up for either. It's a one oh four WRC, plus it's a little lighter in the OBPN slug than you'd expect it to be. Alejandro Kirk is another guy that behind the plate I thought if he was gonna do anything, he would hit, and the problems to be defensively. He's improved defensively a little bit, but he's not hitting the way you'd expect. Dalton Varshow is underperformed. So I think Vlad Junior bears the brunt of it because expectations on him have been off the charts high ever since he was prospect. But it's a few other guys in this lineup that could also get going that would really kind of push them all the way back to their pre twenty twenty three expectations. 00:58:38 Speaker 2: So a million dollar question here as we've touched on basically all these teams. Now, who gets left out of the dance? 00:58:45 Speaker 5: So I think, for me it's the Rangers. I think the bullpen woes are one thing. Evaldi not looking good in that first start back is a concern. I worry that Schurezer is just not quite Sureser anymore. Andrew Hean, He's one of those guys that has had major issues with home runs throughout his career. Like you could just see the cracks starting to appear right now. And I hope for the sake of Rangers fans that I'm wrong, but I think they're the team that because they're not playing well, because they've got a few injuries, and because they have a few flaws compared to the rest of this field, I think they're the team that gets left out. 00:59:23 Speaker 3: So now we got our field. 00:59:25 Speaker 1: Is there a definitive favorite or are we believing in the Orioles enough to call them, Hey, best record in the AL, they should be the favorite. 00:59:33 Speaker 5: You know, I wouldn't. I wouldn't call them that. I know that's it's wrong in some ways, right, Like based on record, Yeah, sure they are, Like mathematically in that regard they are and they play so well on a series the series basis, I'm not sure how meaningful that actually is come October. You think it would matter, but what to see if it actually holds up. The reason I'm not sure about the Orioles is the pitching and the Felix Bautiste. The injury is the type of injury that any team can overcome. You can deal with missing your best reliever. But I think bullpen depth was a little bit of a question. That's why they went out and got Fujinami at the trade deadline. So if they run to some problems they're starting pitching, which I think is likely to happen against top level offenses in October, that bullpen, which has been worked pretty hard this year, could end up getting a little bit overexposed in October as well. So I think for me that's the thing that kind of brings the Orioles back to the pack right The record to me is not necessarily indicative of them being a clearly better team than the other teams in the AL playoff field, but it'll have the benefit of playing at home throughout the postseason, at least throughout the AL side. If they can hold on and win that division. 01:00:44 Speaker 3: Who even starts Game one for them? Is it Dean Kramer? Is he Game one? 01:00:48 Speaker 5: I think it's Kyle Bradish. I think, yeah, it's either Bradish or Grayson Rodriguez. That Grayson Rodriguez in the second half has been great. I've wondered throughout this entire season how they're going to handle keeping him fresh for the players. Clearly they're not that worried about the workload relative to last season. I think pitching workloads in general are really hard to forecast right now because there's this general desperation around the league to find enough quality innings in your organization to just make it through the regular season and to make it to the playoffs, and then to have those guys in top form when it matters most is another problem onto itself. And then that, of course, is separate from not breaking those guys by increasing year over year workloads and insignificant ways. And Rodriguez is just so complicated because they've tried to handle them with kid gloves in the minor leagues, and he's lost a lot of time to injuries. 01:01:37 Speaker 2: Anyway, Okay, I have an interesting question for you because you mentioned Felix Batista and you think teams can sustain bullpen injuries. Can they sustain that one? Because I feel like that's the extreme of that is the best reliever in baseball this year that they just lost. And the Orioles is a team when you look at the numbers, they weren't an elite offense, but they hit enough. They weren't in an elite rotation, but they pitched enough. Their bread and buttered all these games this year has been shortening the games to what was essentially seven innings. You go to Cano in the eighth, you go to Batista in the ninth, they shut it down. Fatista's out for the playoffs, especially in games where they might ask him to pitch two innings if he was healthy. Can they get past that? 01:02:13 Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think it takes something step, something different happening. It takes either your starters being as effective as they've been to this point. So it puts a ton of pressure on guys like Bradish and Grayce Rodriguez to go six and if your third best starter, whether that's Dean Kramer or somebody else they're going to turn to, is going foreign change. That's where opposing teams are going to take advantage. It's those middle relievers, right, Everybody moves up a chair to fill those higher leverage roles without Bautista and suddenly your fifth best reliever on your playoff roster is a huge week spot for a lot of teams. That's a relative week spot for the Oriels. I think it's become a bigger one because of that Bautista injury. So when you pair that with some of the issues we have with the middle and back of their rotation, especially, that's where I think it hurts the most. Generally, Yes, losing your best reliever, Okay, everyone moves up a chair, no problem. They've got questions about the quality of that middle of that rotation. 01:03:09 Speaker 1: Okay, just so we go full circle here, do you have a pick for the National League? Is anyone besides the Braves? 01:03:15 Speaker 3: It's not. 01:03:16 Speaker 5: I mean, I think Atlanta is the most complete team. The lineup is fantastic, There's there are no easy outs. They have depth. I think the biggest question for the Braves that I pointed to earlier was just that I'm not sure how much I trust the middle of their rotation. Spencer Strider and Max Fried are fantastic, free being healthy is huge for them. The time he missed earlier in the season, where we didn't know for sure if you'd come back and be himself, that was a lingering question. Maybe wonder if they needed to go out and do something at the deadlines to bolster that group. They didn't, and Freed looks great. So so far, it's working out just fine for Atlanta. You know which version of Charlie Morton shows up. He's a guy you tend to bet on in October. It's because he's been there before and he's pictually well on that stage. And then how much do you have to rely on Bryce Elder? I think the first half appeal of Bryce Elder has faded a little bit here over the last couple of months. But they've got a really deep bullpen. So that's the one start potentially in a series, in a long series where you may have to turn to your fifth and six best relievers, And I think Atlanta's bullpen depth is really good. I think you look at that bullpen compared to the Orioles, there are more guys you trust in that Braves relief core right now. 01:04:23 Speaker 2: I think it's I think it's fair to say for three people that are tuned in on analytics. When talking about Bryce Elder, that second half regression isn't exactly unexpected, right. 01:04:32 Speaker 5: No, No, because we looked at it so many times in the first half. We've got a lot of questions on the pods about it, like Bryce Elder, what's going on? Everything on his Baseball Savant page is blue? How is he doing this? And you know, and I looked at it and no, there's no, there's no explanation for this. This is this is just a guy getting pretty lucky. This is a guy with pretty ordinary stuff, ordinary skills, getting extraordinary results. And even if you don't get the full correction, you don't go down with a six for the second half of the season, You're probably not pitching to a sub three era for an entire second half, right, So, I think the skills never quite lined up. It's been a nice story for the Braves. It's been important to find somebody to chew up innings with some of the issues they've had. I mean, you feel bad for Michael Soroka, he's hurt again. I just want to see that guy healthy and back to what he was before all the Achilles injuries. Kyle Wright's been banged up all seasons, so they've definitely dealt with their share of pitching injuries, and Bryce Elder's been important to kind of get them through the season, but he's probably a guy they want to avoid as much as they can in October. That's a good, pretty good transition to what I wanted to ask you next, diving into a little bit more of the numbers of baseball. 01:05:42 Speaker 3: You're a big numbers guy. 01:05:44 Speaker 1: It shows on all the podcasts you hosts on the Athletic Podcast Network. So we've asked this question of a few of our guests. So and I'm curious to hear what you think of this. If there's a stat that casual fans should know more about and use more and swap it out for say, oh, batting average this guy, Like everyone knows what this guy's hitting when they look up at a scoreboard. What stat are you're saying now and probably over the next five years, fans should get much more accustomed with. 01:06:14 Speaker 5: I think it's WRC plus for me from an offensive perspective, I think it gives you a lot of context about performance. I mean, the casual fan is aware of all the rule changes that happen this year, I don't know if the casual fan can always anticipate how much those rule changes will change the offensive environment. I think with all the changes to the baseball in recent years, the uncertainty about which baseball we're going to have and how lively the offensive environments can be because of that, you know, we have all these variables that make the numbers that are on the back of the baseball card look different for one reason or another, and WRC plus cuts through a lot of that, right, So you can just get a relative idea of how valuable a player has been compared to a league average player in the current run environment. I think that's just a really simple it's I love that it's indexed off of one hundred. It's so easy to understand. You know, one is a twenty percent better than league average, eighty is twenty percent worse than league average. So I think for an advanced stat it does a lot of heavy lifting and just gives you a really clear and simple understanding of how effective a player has been. 01:07:22 Speaker 3: Do the Brewers use it on their broadcasts? 01:07:26 Speaker 5: You know, I think they do a little. I think it's more, I want to say, it's more on the radio side than on the TV side, I'm always messing with the settings because with with Bob Ucker still call on some of the games. He only calls games at home, so you can do the audio overlay from the radio. So this is the nerdy thing that I'm always doing, right, Like, Okay, which radio announcer is it? Home game? 01:07:46 Speaker 3: Run away game? Is yukon? 01:07:48 Speaker 5: Is Jeff levering? 01:07:49 Speaker 2: On TV? 01:07:50 Speaker 3: Like? 01:07:50 Speaker 5: They have a great crew, almost like top to bottom. It's something they've I think Brewers fans maybe like realize that they're very lucky. A lot of the backups to uk have gone on to be lead play by play announcers for other clubs over the last like twenty years. But I think I hear it once in a while. I think, geez, which broadcasts are the best at bring advanced stats? And I feel like the White Sox do a pretty good job with it. Jason Bennetti is always good about that. I know on scoreboards. It's popping up a little more often at different stadiums around the league too. They were talking on MLB Central about how the must have been the Phillies at Citizens Bang Ballpark they didn't have batting average next to the players names anymore. It's like good, like we're trending in the right direction. I mean, batting averages doesn't tell you that much, and we've got so much more information now we should actually be presenting that and encouraging people to learn more about those stats because they're much more helpful. The Mariners broadcast does a really good job of it. So Rick Rizz is a legend. He's a little older, so he's not he doesn't bring up WRC plus. He loves he's a big batting average guy. Dave Simms doesn't really bring it up either. But the best part about it, so two of the guys on the. 01:08:55 Speaker 1: Radio, Aaron Goldsmith and Gary Hill, they'll talk about WRC plus and Chan Andre are two does the pre and the post game. They'll talk about WRC plus all the time. But I think my favorite thing about how the Mariners use it on their broadcasts is on Root Sports, they will constantly cycle WRC plus stats throughout the game. It doesn't even it doesn't even matter if the announcers are talking about it right above the score bug. They will cycle a player's WRC plus since this point for the whole season, what the lineup looks like, et cetera, et cetera. And I think it's very helpful and I hope every team does that. I think every team should because at its core, I don't think it's too hard to understand era adjusted League adjusted offense boom. It's how productive, are you? 01:09:38 Speaker 3: Yeah? 01:09:38 Speaker 5: Yeah, I love it. I'm glad there are more broadcasts. They're at least willing to dabble in it. Even if you don't see it up and down all over the graphics, you at least have announcers who are introducing it to fan bases that might not really be familiar with it. 01:09:51 Speaker 2: I like the point you brought up about it's not that hard to understand, and that's the truth. It's really not for people that don't want to transition over into the new stats they're thought process behind. It seems to be along the lines of what's wrong with the old way this new stuff, like, how would you ever understand it? How would you ever figure it out? When, like you talked about, when you scale it out on a one hundred. On a one hundred scale, it's really not that hard to comprehend. Along with the fact, basically, the one liner I tell people when they say they don't want to transition over as I say, is a single as valuable as a home run? And they'll go, well no, And I'm like, well, batting average tells you it is, so, so why are you still using it? 01:10:27 Speaker 5: I mean, there's just some things people are more comfortable with, right, What do you think happens? First people stop using batting average and casual baseball conversations, or we switch to the metric system in the US metrics it takes more sense, Like the whole world uses it, right. 01:10:45 Speaker 3: That makes it? 01:10:45 Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. What about say, on like a Baseball Savant page. The Baseball Savant by the way, just updated. It looks great, fantastic. They have they have the values of of hitting, fielding, and base running, and they've they've formatted it differently. So WRC plus isn't on there. That's not an MLB stat, that's a Fangraft stat. Is there anything on Baseball Savant you would say is something useful, something that is generated by the league to present to fans to look at. 01:11:15 Speaker 5: I think barrel ray is one of the more accessible things to think about. I think the only problem I've wrought into with it is that you see it presented sometimes where it's barrels divided by batted ball events, and sometimes you see it barrels divided by played appearances. So I think just getting to a point where we agree on one of those numbers being the number we throw out there the most, I think that would be helpful. But I think you want to know who hits the ball hard, who hits the ball in the right angles for good stuff to happen, right. I think a barrel is something people can generally understand because when you see it, you kind of know you saw something good, like you either think it was a home run or it was a home run off the bat, And I think that's a good thing to quantify for people. 01:11:54 Speaker 2: Is there any advance that that you don't really love? 01:12:00 Speaker 5: You know, I don't use the x stats that much. I don't use XBAX, slug ex, wilba a ton. 01:12:06 Speaker 3: I know. 01:12:06 Speaker 5: One of the problems that Eno mentioned on our podcast back in the probably the second or third month of the season that they hadn't been recalibrated for the current run environment, So they weren't they weren't really doing the thing that they're supposed to do by giving you a sense of what production should look like relative to the actual results. So I just think there are times when those can be a little bit misleading, and they're they're made up of other things that you can look at. You can look at the ingredients. You don't need to look at the final product. And I think sometimes the ingredients of something like an X stat is actually better than the actual outcome itself. 01:12:42 Speaker 1: Derek wanted to ask you a little bit about your career before we wrap up. So, you're one of the executive producers at the Athletic for podcasts. You're on three different baseball podcasts. What do you like so much and what's so I would say important about this kind of media delivering information to the fans outside of say, the traditional media that the Athletic was built around by just writing No, you guys have a lot of spoken content, and you're going to go in a whole bunch of different directions with that. So why why is your job so cool? Why is it so important that fans should listen and digest your media that way? 01:13:16 Speaker 3: Yeah? 01:13:17 Speaker 5: I mean, I think the thing I like about my job is I get to work with a lot of different people. The newsroom at the Athletic is extremely collaborative, and I didn't know that going in. I had never think. My previous job was a fantasy sports company called Rotal Wire. There were probably twenty full time employees when I left. You know, everybody interacted all the time. That was a very collaborative environment. But going into a huge newsroom where you have over five hundred employees, you don't really know how well everyone's gonna get along or if you're gonna, you know, send Ken Rosenthal a Slack message, you don't really know if you're gonna get a response, right, And I've found that there is much less ego than you'd expect. People are always willing to help out as guests on a podcast or collaborating on writing pieces. It's something you definitely see up and down on the Athletic. You see two or three writers often working together. So I think my favorite thing about being there is just having a lot of folks willing to dig in and try to learn more too. Right, A lot of the writers we have may have broken in twenty years ago, but they still want to learn how to write about the modern game. They're not out here writing about batting average. They're trying to look at things through the lens that someone like you know, Sarah's does, and I've found that to be pretty refreshing as well. As far as podcasting goes, I just think the portability of the content is huge. I mean, I think about growing up, I liked terrestrial radio. I liked listening to AM radio for games and postgame and pregame shows and all that stuff. And I think the direction of that of that content has it's really gone. It's gone very poorly over the last twenty years, right the hot takes and the overwhelming push to make everything kind of about the NFL and whatever market you're in and less about everything else. It feels like Major League Baseball, the NBA, the NHL women's sports, everything else people generally care about as sports fans gets kind of pushed aside on a lot of the traditional radio shows. Podcasts are great because you can go out and get whatever you want, whatever you want to hear more of. You can find people who are experts in that, who are great storytellers in those spaces. And that's what I like the most about this platform and getting to be a part of the Athletics podcast network. You know, there's to me, there's still a lot of limitless potential in the types of things we can do, especially on the narrative side. We've kind of started scratching the surface of that as a company where we can we can do some of the deep storytelling that we've done on the written side of the site. We can actually do that with a four or five part series. They did Andrew luck one that was really good a while back. You know, I just I love the idea of taking ESPN's thirty for thirty concept and applying that to podcasting, so you have ability to do that. You could react. There's no set schedule. I think the worst thing about sports talk radio is they take a combination of hosts and they say you're on from one to four, you're on from one to five today. A lot of that's dead time. It's hard to have three or four hours of material every single day. And that's why those shows rely so much on callers. And it's like my pet peeve sports talk radio. Like the call quality. It's not even that the like the questions are sometimes silly, or that the you know, it's the technical aspect of how hard it is to even hear the question that drives me absolutely crazy. I feel like the podcasting you give so much more control over the final product, and I think that's what makes podcasting generally better than traditional radio. As someone who works in radio, I get it, percent get it. But I want to go back to something earlier in your answer, were. 01:16:50 Speaker 2: Sweat and bullets. 01:16:51 Speaker 5: First time you slack messaged Ken, Yeah, a little bit. I think the first time I reached out to him it was at the beginning of COVID and we were trying to put together a list of players that weren't in various camps right when camp started back up in the middle of that season. No one knew what was going on, Like it was just an absolute blindfold situation where we were checking with every beat reporter, just trying to get a sense of headcount. Who's who's here, who's not here, and if you're if you're not here, is it even a COVID related absence, or is it, you know, a visa thing or something else that's causing a player to not be around Like that was That was one of the weirdest times that I've ever been involved in sports media. I don't hopefully we'll never have a situation like that again. But Ken responded almost immediately. It was extremely helpful. Did a few shows with him, you know, after that, and he's awesome to work with. So but that's just that's been true of everybody, Every team beat writer I've talked to, every national writer I've talked to, has been just amazing. So I'm very lucky, and uh, you know, I hope the hope the band stays together as long as possible. Right, anytime you're in a big company like that, you just hope everyone can keep working together and keep making great content. 01:18:02 Speaker 2: When did you figure out that talking into a mic in some form or another was the medium of sports media that you wanted to pursue, between either talk radio or podcasting everything in that realm. 01:18:14 Speaker 5: I think in college. So I went to University Wisconsin. I was there from two thousand and two. I graduated in two thousand and six, and it was kind of in the earlier days of Around the Horn. So I was watching that kind of every day after class. And at the time there was a guy for I want to say it was the Chicago sometimes. Jay Mariotti was the Chicago reporter I think at the time, and he was brutal. I just I thought his takes were terrible. I kind of had this moment where I realized I could do that job. I could be on TV or a radio show. And it was more just the confidence of all the things that I liked as a fan, like the spreadsheets I made as a fantasy baseball player in college and in the prep I did for fantasy football leagues. I started to realize, like, I could turn this and do a job. This is this is not an impossible career. 01:19:03 Speaker 4: You know. 01:19:03 Speaker 5: I was a communication arts major, so broad studies had hands on production. I had chances to write, had some chances to even make some movies and stuff in college that just short films, nothing really good, but just good to get the experience. And I just realized that the hobby I had, I was passionate enough about that that I could actually find a way to turn that into a career. And you know, the microphone radio aspects in particular. It didn't really come around until Serious XM launched a fantasy channel back in my Rota Wire days, and we were asked as a company to be, you know, one of the flagship shows on that new channel. Two of my bosses, Jeff Erickson and Chris Liss could have just taken all the hours themselves. They were talented, they could you could have just said we're the guys and you're never getting on the air. But they actually divvied up a few of the days and said, you know, we think you'd do a good job with this. So it was really just getting an opportunity. It was right place, right time. As soon as I tried it, I was hooked on it. I just enjoyed the process of sitting down putting together a show sheet. And as much as I don't like the technical aspect of callers, I did like the interaction because we'd get a lot of people that would call in late in the late in the week for fantasy football season, you'll get a million calls on a radio show because people want to know what to do with their lineups. 01:20:19 Speaker 3: And you could see as. 01:20:21 Speaker 5: The Twitter era sort of exploded, the interaction on that platform used to be a little better than it is now. That was great too, So I just felt like it was the most interactive medium that i'd worked in. You know, you write something for a paper, or you publish something on a website, and maybe you get some comments if it's behind a paywall, you might not get that many comments at all. That was at least my experience for a little while. When I started out at rote wire, it was we were a subscription based site. We had a nice little group of subscribers. You get five or six comments, that's not really the same as, you know, getting a few hundred people that respond to something that you say, or you know, something that you put out there on the radio. So it really started with the serious XM. Opportunity. Podcasting hit just a couple of years after that, and I looked back since I've just enjoyed it. 01:21:06 Speaker 1: Derek, last question from me because you mentioned it and it showsen some of your work, especially on rates and barrels. You're a big fantasy guy, but it sounds like it's both fantasy football and fantasy baseball. What about fantasy baseball entices you so much. It's not as popular as fantasy football. If you have for some leagues like mine, you have to set your lineup every single day throughout the course of a six month season. There's a lot of games, a lot of injuries you got to keep track of if you're pitching someone to play more fantasy baseball and actually make it worth their time. 01:21:37 Speaker 3: Why should they? 01:21:38 Speaker 5: Yeah, I think the first thing I would suggest is trying to play in a weekly league instead of a daily league. When you're starting out, daily leagues are fun. I think you can have a lot more control. You get an early week injury, You're not sitting there for four or five days before you can change your lineup. Totally understand why some people don't like that. For me, if you enjoy analyzing players, it's an opportunity to prove yourself right that you see things in players you know as a scout, as an analyst, as someone who likes to crunch numbers. You have a chance to take twenty six weeks and improve that you know as much or more than the other people in your league. And I think compared to fantasy football, the rosters are bigger in almost every instance. The categorical balance of a rotistory league, where you have to find guys that can offer you something in ten or more different categories, that's a unique challenge, right. You're not just boiling it down to points where you could kind of work through it and find a four or five categories that sort of carry that scoring system. It's more like fantasy football to me, is like running a five k or a ten k, which is totally fine. That's like the distance I actually run, And I think fantasy baseball is more like running a marathon. And for me, it's just like the grind for some people is actually something I relish. I like being able to change the roster once a week. I like trying to pick players up and dig into the scrap heap and try to figure out, Hey, which guy with a five ERA through the first two months is actually gonna be good. Who's the opposite of Bryce Elder, Who's the guy that got dropped that's actually gonna make my team better? So it's this, it's like this prolonged exercise and problem solving that that really works for me. It's hard for me to pitch it to other people. It makes me think that maybe we're not playing the most the most fun version of fantasy baseball for the masses, even though the people I've grown to know from this industry over the years, we all love it, like we love this this sort of traditional twenty three player, you know, thirty round format where we're we're drafting for three or four hours and we're we're grinding free agent pickups every Sunday for a couple of hours, Like that's not necessarily for everybody. So I think the pitch for me would be try it. You might be surprised at how much you like it. Even though it looks like it's intimidating. There's a ton of great information out there, a lot of great podcasters, a lot of great analysts that you can listen to that will help you along, And I think that makes it less intimidated than it used to be. Used to be a lot less information and people didn't know where to begin. Now you've got people that are out every single day giving you the news, giving you pictures that you can pick up and stream for that day, talking about injuries, talking about roster trends. So you've got so much more to work with than you used to have. 01:24:20 Speaker 2: Well maybe that's my key to trying to join a fantasy baseball league. All of a sudden, it's funny, I haven't played in years for as big a baseball nerd as I am, but you're selling me on this whole weekly fantasy baseball thing because that's probably a lot easier to manage. 01:24:32 Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, weekly is so much better. There's some leagues that give you twice weekly lineup changes Mondays and Fridays. I like that as kind of the sweet spot because the injury situation I described earlier doesn't come back to bite you. The worst thing you can do weekly leagues, Monday lineup's lock. Someone gets hurt in Monday's game, gets six days, or you're taking a zero. That's not great. That's not a great user experience. So I do find that the twice weekly lineup change is like the absolute sweet spot. But weekly is definitely better than daily when you're starting out, just to have fewer times where you have to check in as you're getting used to it, and if you find yourself checking it daily, you're ready for a daily league. 01:25:08 Speaker 1: Here's how I do it always just when you're eating breakfast. That's when you do it every single day. It makes it easier, don't have to look at the lineup the rest of the day. It's perfect. It works out. 01:25:17 Speaker 3: Derek, We appreciate you taking some time to join us here today. 01:25:20 Speaker 1: If you want to find Derek's work, you can find it on the Athletic Baseball Show and on Rates and Barrels, all part of the Athletic Podcast Network. 01:25:27 Speaker 3: Derek, thanks so much for taking some time, Thanks for having me. 01:25:33 Speaker 2: We really enjoyed that conversation with Derek van Riper. It was awesome to have on. We really appreciate all this time, and we hope you guys got a good preview of both the ALE playoff picture and just the Major League Baseball Playoff picture of the whole, because it's really coming up like we talked about. That'll wrap up this edition of the Marine Layer Podcast. You guys know the drill. You want to listen to the full form podcast, you can do so on Apple, Spotify, Google and Amazon. If you head over, make sure to follow us, download our episodes, and leave us a five star review. The reviews and the downloads really help us out, so make sure to go do that for us. It only takes a few extra seconds, and then head over to our video side watch us on YouTube, hit subscribe, like comment, turn the notification bells on that way, you know, whenever we post a video or a show. And then on social media you can follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube shorts at Marine Layer Pod. That's TJ. I'm Lyle. As always, we thank you guys for tuning in talk to you soon.