Nick Stevens, Heath Scotland, Jordan Bannister and Steven Browne were casualties from last week's disappointing loss to Essendon, but Ratten said he was confident the Blues could bounce back.
"We've taken a different approach by taking a few players out of the team who have been regulars, but it gives us a lot of excitement with players that are hungry to come back into our team," he said.
"We were really disappointed in our second half after squandering opportunities in the back end of the second quarter. We let ourselves down, did a few things wrong and it will be good to see what our response is."
Carlton lost to Fremantle on the Gold Coast in round seven but Ratten believes his players will be much better prepared for them this time around.
"The younger guys' in their team were a bit of unknown for our players that, but now they have a good knowledge of them," he said.
"That game we overused the ball a bit in greasy conditions. We should have kicked the ball more like Fremantle did and they got some reward from the yardage they got, but we got a good lesson that day on how to play in those conditions and against Fremantle."
Sunday's game will be Jeff Garlett's first on Subiaco Oval since last year's WAFL grand final when he played with Swan Districts, and Ratten is glad to have him back in the team along with Jordan Russell, Chris Johnson, Greg Bentley and Bret Thornton.
"Bringing Jeff Garlett home is good for him to play in front of his home crowd, and his form has been really good to come from the rookie-list," he said.
"You always get that little added pressure playing in front of mum and dad, and friends, but he knows a lot of the Fremantle boys and it's a good chance for him to stake his claim back in WA."
Playing on Subiaco Oval will mean Carlton change some things, but Ratten sees the key being the run required.
"You have to be mindful of some of your forward set ups to make sure they are on the front foot to not allow them to do certain things or allow your ball use to be like it is at the MCG," he said.
"Just because of the ground size, the key is to run and that will be the interesting factor for us. We didn’t have a lot of run last week and that's the challenge for our boys."
Carlton had to shift its training run on Saturday morning from Subiaco Oval to the WACA and Ratten liked the venue.
"It's worked really well actually to come to the WACA because we just walked to the ground from the hotel and could make it very casual," he said.
"The surface is magnificent and for us to get a good run was important, it doesn’t really bother us where [we train]. We might do this here again in the future, though, because it has worked out so well."
Brendan Fevola's surgically-repaired finger looked fine in the training run and Ratten has no doubt he's ready to go.
"It's actually in a lot better shape now that he's had it done and the discomfort is out. He has a guard on it and there's no problem there," Ratten said.
