Rates & Barrels - Baseball at Rickwood Field, Team Rebound Candidate & Game Planning for Luis Gil

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

Eno, DVR and Trevor discuss historic Rickwood Field, ahead of next week's matchup between the Cardinals and Giants in Birmingham, teams with currently low playoff odds with a chance to rebound toward contention, and how they would approach hitting Yankees starter Luis Gil. Read More about the history of Rickwood Field in this SABR article from Clarence Watkins: https://sabr.org/bioproj/park/rickwood-field-birmingham/ Rundown 3:52 Rickwood Field Hosting Cardinals-Giants Next Week 8:57 Where Else Should MLB Play Regular Season Games? 10:56 Trevor's Case for the Giants to Rebound Into 2024 Contention 18:33 Eno's Case for the Pirates 23:30 DVR's Case for the Reds & Attempting to Understand Andrew Abbott 38:06 How to Hit Against Luis Gil 54:54 Listener Question: Intangible Aspects of Playing 162 Games Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Trevor on Twitter: @IamTrevorMay Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello guys, I'm Ioan Kimmolere, host of the Athletic FC podcast and I'm here to tell you about a mouth-watering summer of international football. The Copa America and European Championships kick off in mid-June and we're going to be covering both tournaments every step of the way. With the World Cup in the US just two years away, the Copa America is the US men's national teams chance to prove they can really compete with heavyweights like Brazil and Argentina, while England will be hoping to go one better than their agonising Euros final defeat last time out. So join me and the Athletics' unrivaled team of football reporters Monday to Friday as

we take you inside the biggest stories from the tournaments with more than a sprinkle of transfer talk on top as well. Just search the Athletic FC podcast wherever you get your podcasts from. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Friday June 14th, Derek the Riper, you know, Sarah, Trevor May all here with you on this episode. We take a look ahead to next week's matchup between the Cardinals and Giants being played at Rickwood Field in Birmingham. We're going to take a look at some teams that we're buying for rebounds teams that are under 25% in terms of their playoff odds as of today that we still think have a chance of turning things around and playing postseason baseball got a game plan segment today we're gonna talk about how

we would prepare to hit against Louise Heal or more specifically how we would prepare other people to hit against Louise Heal because frankly even with our game plan I don't think any one of the three of us have a chance against Luis heal We'll take a few questions from the live hive along the way Trevor, how's it going man? I saw you used your gold pass this week. That has to feel good It was a lot of fun. I got to go to a Mariners game and watch another, you know, like three runs scored total It was fun though the game

We we were in line to get in like right at first pitch and then we didn't get into like the top of the third Cuz that game blew by it was like eight o'clock on the seventh inning so but it was a great atmosphere a lot of fun and I sat next I sat right behind a Subscriber to rates and barrels really cool. That's awesome. He was, are you Tarray? I love your guys' show. So shout out, I actually didn't get his name. It happened very quickly, then he turned around and then didn't say anything for the rest of the game. But we do appreciate it.

Yeah, really appreciate it. How you doing today? I'm doing good this crazy ass week and it needs to die. I've had the children by myself and on a summer schedule which has been really tough on the podcast because I have to drop the kids off and pick them up again and all that camp stuff and my wife is home.

In fact, next week I will be a bachelor. They will be off at baseball camp and I will be all alone at home. So it'll be no problems. So you're going to take naps like we're still going to start the show a little later because you're going to sleep in. I'm going to finish the gentleman. I'm going to finish all the things that I can't watch around the kids.

Like what you got a few seasons of Letter Kenny still lined up. Yes, going to finish Letter Kenny. That was the best part about playing, watching shows I wanted to watch on the again. That was the best part about playing, watching shows I wanted to watch on the road. That was the big part. Struggling with that, too. Yeah, not enough time in the day.

When's your due date? Yeah, congratulations. And when's your due date? It's September 23rd, my birthday. Oh, nice. Which, fun fact, was actually my due date. Wow. So, yeah, what are the chances of that? It feels like he's probably gonna be born on the day.

I don't know. You'll be sharing some birthdays, that'll be fun. That's awesome, yeah, congratulations. And it looks like Brian on the Live Hive sent you the link for the London series button-up that you've been chasing. My guy. Said I was gonna buy one, couldn't find them online. They were like literally only in that store or whatever

So if you if I can order one, I'm gonna yeah hard to believe they didn't want to go all out and distribute You know onesy everywhere matching onesy that would be incredible It's an early Father's Day gift according to producer Brian that that's a good call Yeah, you should you should do that. Give yourself something like that. There you go. Yeah, absolutely. Well, if you want to connect with us beyond the stream, you can do that in the discord link for that will be in the show description at the end of this video. We are going to dig into our first topic today.

Baseball going back to Rick would feel hosting the Giants and Cardinals next week, which is really cool. Rick would feel is an amazing historic venue. It's over 100 years old. It was a home to Negro League teams, to minor league teams. It's avoided destruction at a few different turns. Willie Mays played there as a 17-year-old. I mean, the history is incredible of this park.

And I think this is one way Major League Baseball can kind of breathe life into various communities that either still have or previously had baseball over the course of a 162 game season. And for me this is kind of the polar opposite of the London series that we talked about last week where you take baseball and you bring it abroad, you bring it to a place that don't play a lot of baseball and you put it in a big stadium and that's kind of cool in its own regard but this is special, this is better.

This is the way baseball sort of meant to be elevated, even though you're putting it in some ways on a smaller platform because the stadium is literally smaller, I feel like you're elevating a place that's really important to the game's history. It led me down a whole path of American history too, which is kind of cool because for me, Birmingham has been like a

few stops on the I-20 as I'm driving from Georgia where I used to live to California. I've done that a few times and so I never thought of it as a really big city but it used to be just outside top 10 in terms of population. And what I learned was that limestone, coal, and iron ore are all found around Birmingham. And it's the only place in the world where all three are found. And that's what you need to produce steel. So in fact, it used to rival Pittsburgh and Rickwood is based on a lot of what you saw in the old field in Pittsburgh. So the designer went to Pittsburgh and checked it out and went, I think also maybe to the Polo Grounds

and then came home and built this thing in Birmingham. At the time, 600,000 people was the peak in the sort of 50s and 60s. That was when railroads were at their peak. The iron production was at his peak. That was the the heyday of Birmingham, Alabama. So that in in the heyday of Birmingham, sort of the 40s and 50s and 60s, that's when Rick Wood was hosting the Negro League World Series and Willie Mays was helping, you know, like an 18 year old Willie Mays was helping them win the Negro League World Series. So it kind of takes you back to like another time

in American history as well. That's cool. I didn't know any of that. That's actually did know Birmingham was known for steel, but I didn't know why. That's super cool. I love that. I love that this, this kind of initiative, like with the field of dreams game and outside the idea that a lot of the environment changing that much can really affect the way the baseball's played, but at the end of the day, it's supposed to be entertaining and you just deal with that. Have you seen anything about the Dimensions?

I haven't seen anything about the Dimensions, but my assumption is they're not great for the pitchers. Yeah, they're good for the other folks though. Yeah they're good for the whatever those are called hitters or whatever. So I think it's great I just can't wait till they go back to New Britain and check that that stadium out because it's a historical landmark it should be and this is a joke anyone who's been to New Britain Connecticut knows that that field should not have any baseball team on it.

Definitely not a major league team. So anyway, I think this is so super cool and I'm really excited to see how it all, like all the history in the presentation and how they do the broadcast too. I think that's gonna be really, really fun. I guess it was a minor league park. It was designed to be a minor league park

and like Dizzy Dean pitched there and it was an important stop in the Southern League, I believe. And what the the arrangement was that when they when the minor league team was out of town, the Negro League could could play in it. So they had, you know, basically full capacity most of the time. And you know, it was such that the Birmingham Black Barons were so good that the attendance was not like 100% Black. It was a pretty diverse attendance when they were going.

I mean, they were winning the Negro League World Series. Satchel Paige pitched for them. So like, it was, they were one of the best teams of the time and pretty cool to see, you know, some of the greats on both sides of the in both leagues playing that spot. That game will be played on Thursday, by the way, between the Giants and Cardinals. So less than a week from now, it led me to another question. And I know the answer from Trevor will not be New Britain, Connecticut.

But where else should baseball bring regular season games? Kind of thinking about the spirit of? Reviving history and bring baseball to places that don't necessarily have it consistently If you had any places that you think should be featured that you've played in or you've wanted to play in That should be featured in the future. I've got one spot that comes up to mind They have this one game called the Midnight Sun game. They played What's that? The game in Alaska, right? In Alaska?

Yeah, Fairbanks, Alaska. And it's called Groudon Memorial Park. They play in June where they can play till midnight without lights. So I just think that'd be kind of a cool thing to see. It'd be interesting for people to see that. And it's not necessarily a historical thing, but it is a place where they don't have a lot of baseball. So it might be kind of a cool thing.

It'd be really cool, again, from a presentation perspective, because the difficulty of getting there would make it more of a spectacle on television, too. Yeah, yeah. And I'm sure it's a small park and then just the the novelty of It being in the lights all day you have have you seen that the cosmic baseball which is like the opposite of this Yeah, they play without lights and all neon Very hard I can't imagine baseball is gonna go for that. I don't know how they're hitting the ball. Yeah

Well, they have an L screen in front of the pitcher too, because they can't react. Oh, yeah. Which is hilarious. Yeah, you'd have to. That feels like straight out of banana ball though. That's where that idea originated and sprung up from that corner of the baseball universe.

But let's kick it over to our next topic. Let's talk about low playoff odds teams that we think are going to heat up for a run. And I know who everybody picked. So I'm going to go to Trevor first because Trevor's going to make a case for the Giants. I did not expect that. When I woke up today, I did not expect Trevor to say, this is my team. This is the team that's going to get up off the mat.

They're going to hang around, maybe even be a playoff team this year. What is your case for the Giants to make a run here in the middle of the summer, Trevor? So there's a few things that I wouldn't have looked at, and one of the main, I think, characteristics is, like, I wanna see what the run differential is for the year, and they're pretty close. I think they're minus 30 or minus 20,

so it's not, they might even be pretty close to even. That's a fairly good sign, meaning you're not getting, that doesn't mean, that means one, either you're pitching or hitting isn't getting crushed, isn't the worst. So they're, they're okay. I mean, hitting there is always kind of tough. They're never going to be like the, the number one producing team in the league, but they've got some guys having pretty good years. They put the bat on the ball, Chapman's hitting pretty well, or was up until a week ago, last time I checked in depth on him. And then their bullpen's been solid. The Rogers brothers are been rock solid, Deval's thrown well. They have a lot of... And then they got Webb is being the ace and staying the ace, and he's

your number one guy, so he gets the playoff who's coming who's coming back and they have Cobb waiting in the wings or not waiting the wings but getting close and then Robbie Wray and so one of those two guys comes back and throws well and chores up the starting rotation with Hicks has had a great year and Webb's thrown really well and Snell has done absolutely nothing so all Snell needs to do is is have a solid second half too. And a team that's a game over 500 suddenly could be 10 games over 500,

which is an automatic wild card spot. Actually right now they're in the wild card. So for them to be under 20% is a little bit surprising to me because I feel like they're only gonna get more reinforcements and they can maintain some of the production they've had. They don't need everyone to get way better. They don't need their lineup to suddenly start producing a ton of runs to win more games. They don't need everyone to get way better. They don't need their lineup to suddenly start producing

a ton of runs to win more games. They just need their starting pitching to be a little bit better. And they have three very good veteran starting pitchers who have all either won a Cy Young or been very close to winning one at some point. And we need a solid season on one of them, one of them be good and then that's great

and you got three chances. So I think that that's probably gonna happen. I got Snell having a huge change going into the second half because a lot of peripheral stuff points to some small adjustments being a huge difference for him, just throwing breaking balls over the plate, for example. And as soon as he starts doing that,

we're gonna see old Blake Snell again. So, and I think that's gonna happen. I think it's gonna happen when these guys get healthy. They've got a cool in-house wild card to an Elio Dramas. Oh, and he's yeah, he's getting great. Great hitting the ball super, super hard and kind of has a little bit of that it factor, a little bit of that energy, young energy that they haven't quite had, you know. And so I've I've wanted that out of Marco Luciano.

That's that's still a possibility. I don't not sure exactly where because he did not look good at shortstop. And I'm going to have to lose that dream for him, I think maybe. But there are other places where Luciano can help. So they have some, you know, kind of in-house stuff. And then there was a big piece on the athletic. I want to see what you think of this. Trevor May trade for Mike Trout.

Whoa. What they have the money they do they have the need I don't know They can't and I'll be honest if I am a owner or a GM of a team Art Moreno is a mark for me I am I am putting him in the in the crosshairs saying I am going to I am putting him in the crosshairs saying, I am going to get you to eat half of this contract somehow and make you think that the three relief pitchers I give you for them are gonna be, because he loves relievers, I don't know why, he does. It's the only thing he wants to sign ever.

So yeah, if you can get Mike Trout, especially at like whatever's perceived as a discount, like that could be just huge. That would make me really excited. I would love for Mike Trout to go to another team. I wanna see him in meaningful baseball. I'm surprised looking at the Giants. They have got, I think, six of their regulars,

or at least semi-regulars, running WRC Pluses above 100 right now. That includes Lamont Wade Jr., who's been fantastic. He is an underrated player I think for sure 470 OBP this year. It's just ridiculous. You know mentioned Ramos Patrick Bailey's taking a step forward with the bat We know he's a great defender behind the plate, but he's adding he looks like a foundation is games for sure Yeah, he looks like a key piece for them for the next several years Conforto has been pretty good Chapman's at least provided some power and been a tick above league average,

and Mikey Stremsky's been league average as well. And then you still have Jorge Saler, who could start getting to that power more consistently. That wouldn't be a big surprise. And a few bench guys and a Tyro Estrada that could be a little bit better. So yeah, I'm starting to see it as far as like a team that's a little more plucky than they're probably given credit for with the way they're built right now. And I think Robbie Ray is a little bit of a forgotten piece on that roster since they traded for him while he was hurt.

You know, Giants fans haven't had a chance to see Robbie Ray yet and he can be an impact starter. It's almost enough to wonder what'll happen in that starting rotation when everyone's healthy because Cobb is getting close to rehab. I think Ray is on rehab. It's easy to say, well, you can option Keaton Wynn, but even if you've got Ray, Cobb, Snell, Hicks,

Harrison, and Webb, you've got six legit options. But I think with Hicks kind of leading into some territory he hasn't really gone into in terms of innings, I think you might make him sort of a bridge guy. I don't know, I know his personality and he may not be super into that, but, you know, maybe the best way for the team and for the player to continue pitching in sort of starter escrow. Like if you think like, do you think Robbie Ray is going to come out of the shoot

with, you know, ready to go six or whatever? Like I think you might say to Hicks, like you work with Cobb and Ray basically, and the three of you give us two starts every time through the order. That's right. I would keep Hicks being the one that starts though, and possibly just like, because I think like Robbie Ray, you put him in short stints, he can dial it up,

and also coming off the Tommy John, especially in the middle of the year, one thing that's gonna be, it is frustrating at times will be just like not have quite having that VELO and only having to throw an inning or two just to like start to get back in the feeling of competing and feeling like you can and those guys are like both of them are kind of just nasty kind of power type guys like they're going to be it's going to be something that matters to them. They won't feel as comfortable if the VELO is not there Hicks and Ray would actually be a great piggyback to from the a sense Of like, you know righty lefty

Sinker, you know foreseam like it would just be as a hitter you'd be like, ah crap. This is completely different It'd be a really tough adjustment I do think you look at this group and say will they have six healthy starters at any point where that's a Luxury where they're gonna have to bump someone into a long relief roll or will it just be one guy's up, someone else is down and they have enough to get through. That might be the way it kind of worked itself out as well. So yeah, I think that's a strong case for the Giants. You know, you're going to make a case for the Pirates.

I think you landed on the Pirates as your NL Central team you think is going to take a run. Well, the Pirates have a similar you landed on the Pirates as your NL Central team you think is going to take a run? Well, the Pirates have a similar run deferential, sort of minus 25. It's close to the Giants. So that doesn't say that they're necessarily primed for takeoff and they don't have as many regulars that are above league average with the bat. But Nick Gonzalez probably gives them five, uh, with McCutcheon, Joe, Cruz, and Reynolds. I think Brian Hayes will get there, uh, giving them six. The big problem for the, the Pirates, I think, is the bottom of that order. You've got too many minuses, too many kind of easy outs for the pitcher. If you look at the other aspects of this team,

they seem primed for a breakout in terms of Mitch Keller, Jared Jones, Paul Skeens, with some viable veterans in the back and Braxton Ashcraft hitting triple A, sitting 96 into the sixth inning with multiple breaking balls. They still have one more exciting name in the cupboard when it comes to the starting rotation. So I say that is a viable starting rotation. The relief core looks like it's settled down. Bednar Chapman Holderman is basically the group if they wanted to add a reliever that's not that expensive in the current marketplace. But basically,

I think they could use an outfielder. And if you can get an outfielder that's going to be above average the rest of the way you push that number to seven above average regulars. If you can platoon your way to an eighth then you just don't have as many holes in your lineup. I mean even Henry Davis could get going at some point. He's a former 1-1 pick that just underwent a swing change in the minor league. So I think there's some of the building blocks are there and the things they need, perhaps a reliever, perhaps an outfielder. Those are the easiest things to get on the trade in the trade wire. I think you'd look to the White Sox.

Do you want to go big? You had the good suggestion for going big. Yeah, Luis Robert. Yeah, I mean, that was, hey, you need someone for more than this season anyway, so if you're going to go to that trouble, get something that's going to help you beyond this year. There's an option there to play them in center field

and help you there. But the White Sox are open for business from the top of the line to the bottom of the line in terms of you could just acquire Tommy Fam. He would help, right hander helps that line up, balance out a little bit and it would be a little bit rough on Tommy because the park factors are not great for right handed power bats, but you could just go and do a smaller acquisition like that and it could be a big deal for your team.

So yeah, listener Philip says, what about Pete Alonso? That would be a huge one. I mean, that would be swinging for the fences. I love that one. Yeah, you know, with the pirates kind of building, I kind of doubt they do the Robert thing. They kind of seem to be try to be really careful as they're going. But at the same time, you know, at 32 and 36, maybe buying a player that

will be there after this year is the right idea where you're buying someone for this stretch run, but he's also going to be there next year when you're building again for the future. So this is one of those picks where it requires a little bit of faith in Cabrinha Hayes and some of those, maybe even Triolo, some of those other bats to kind of step forward and then for them to make a move. But at least I can tell the story of how it happens. That's half the battle when it comes to making a prediction like this. Can you tell yourself enough lies to believe what you want to put out there into the world?

And with the Pirates, I think they might still be in the one year away bucket unless they go big. And I can understand their reluctance to go big because they're still sort of turning the corner as an organization that's developing enough pitching to sustain a long run. It looks like they've got that group coming up kind of at double A and above.

We talked about that with Keith Law a little earlier in the week. They need position players, so if it's not now, it's probably this winter that they're making some kind of splashy move to actually get an upgrade to that position player core. But they may say, yeah, we can get more out of Hayes, we can get more out of Davis,

let's just let it ride with the younger guys that we've been hoping for for these last couple of seasons. But I like the Pirates call. I think it's a reasonable place to go and a little bit off script, right? It's not the team everyone expects to be on the rise right now either. Hello guys, I'm Ioic and Molleri, host of the Athletic FC podcast, and I'm here to tell you about a mouth-watering summer of international football. The Copa America and European Championships kick off in mid-June, and we're going to be covering both tournaments every step of the way. With the World Cup in the US just two years away, the Copa America is the US men's national

team's chance to prove they can really compete with heavyweights like Brazil and Argentina, while England will be hoping to go one better than their agonising Euros final defeat last time out. So join me and the Athletics' unrivaled team of football reporters Monday to Friday as we take you inside the biggest stories from the tournament with more than a sprinkle of transfer talk on top as well. Just search the Athletic FC podcast wherever you get your podcast from. I will submit the Reds as a team that could still make a bit of a run. I think of the three we've thrown out there, they're the only ones that have a positive run differential

right now. They've underplayed the Pythagorean record, which is not a surprise, they're two below 500, they should be a few games above based on what they've done. The interesting thing about the Reds for me is that their pitching is actually healthy and effective right now in the rotation. Like we thought they had more position players

than spots to play them, and they would score runs in bunches and if the pitching held up they'd be a wild card team. And instead they've actually had trouble scoring runs consistently. Hunter Green has traded some strikeouts for a lower home run rate, at least by results to what's happening so far, but he's getting better results. We're finally getting a version of Hunter Green where the number on the ERA line matches the indicators That's a good thing, right?

We need that from hunter green if the Reds are gonna take a step forward Nicolodolo is healthy when Nicolodolo is healthy Nicolodolo is good. That's big. So they have a 1-2, right? It's not quite as over-the-top dominant as like a Skeen's Jared Jones combo But it's a good 1-2 atop the. Where it gets weird for me is with Andrew Abbott, who's been up for about a season now, gets by with like a 92-7 fastball, doesn't really have a secondary that you look at and go, that pitch is nasty, that's how he does it.

He's a mystery. And one thing I noticed getting ready for the show is that Andrew Abbott induces a lot of very high launch angle batting balls. I define that as 35 plus degrees because once you start hitting the ball that high, nothing good happens, as you can see on the screen. There's one home run against him.

He's had 70 balls in play of 35 degrees or higher this year and I think three have turned into hits, which is not like abnormal. High fly balls are generally useless. They're just caught for outs most of the time. But only Nester Cortez gets more of them. And I think when we start to try and figure out like how exactly does Andrew Abbott get away with this with a low strikeout rate.

He missed a ton of bats in the minors doesn't look like he's going to miss anywhere near as many bats as a big leaguer. I think that's at least part of the explanation. Something happening on balls and play that might be more repeatable than people give it credit for, even if it's not the first skill or first thing we're looking at when we're trying to decide like, hey, is this guy actually good? It's still an open question. But to me, it's an explanation of how he's beating the indicators in that park by as much as he has for this first year of his career.

There is no a pitcher in baseball that's that makes me flummoxed more than Andrew Abbott. Like, I don't do not understand how he gets it. I'm looking at his extension six foot six point six is below average or right around average. His vertical movement is IVB 16 inches. It's around average given his six foot vertical release point. It's actually less than average because it doesn't have great attack angle. He doesn't have a great a bunch of wiggle to it either. It's about average there.

In fact, this is about the most average fastball in every regard except that it's a 92 8. It's actually a mile plus below average when it comes to Velo. When you look at his where he throws the pitch, his heat maps, it's down the middle. And then I watch him. I'm like, OK, this I'm going to do a deep watch here. I'm going to I'm going to figure this out. And then I watch him. I'm like, why didn't you swing at that? That was a fastball down the middle.

What are you guys doing? I start yelling at the hitters. And so the only thing I can come up with is that they must not be able to see the release point well, because if they could, they would swing at these middle middle heaters more often. And I don't know what it is. Maybe when they do end up swinging, they end up swinging at higher fastballs. And that produces those

37 degree launch angles or whatever but there's something there's something about them and I asked a bunch of Giants hitters about him and I mean I'm trying not to go there of course like you know someone who you you know makes my models look stupid and like You know makes all this like talk of like, you know, pitch movement look a little silly because he does not have great movement on any of his pitches. Of course, I could get angry at him as thinking right center things here, but there's got to be something there. I asked a bunch of hitters and they said, well, he's got pretty good command of, you know, three pitches.

And I'm like, that's you didn't not good enough. I expect to be like explanation. I can't see it, you know, but maybe they I'm like, that's, you didn't. Not good enough. I expected to be like, I can't see it, you know, but maybe they wouldn't tell me that. Yeah, they'll never admit that. I'm looking here and there's something interesting. This is just a theory. He does, so in terms of hand position, so on release, he's really behind the ball.

So he actually like is kind of, he has a release point hand position wise that would say that he would have high ride and a lot of like a 12-six curve ball with a high ride fast ball or something. That's what it would look like. And then he doesn't. So basically all of his pitches

are below average and vertical, except his fast ball's about average, like you mentioned, but his curve ball doesn't break as much as most curve balls. So people think he's gonna be a vertical guy and he's just not as vertical? Or even they think he's a vertical guy so they assume he's gonna have depth on his breaking pitches. He has no depth so they're swinging under them

and they're popping them up. Oh, they're popping up the breaking pitches. I'm looking right now on baseball's Yvonne, he's like 20% below average on his changeup depth, 10% below average on his curve ball depth, 10% below average on his curveball depth, 27% below average on his slider depth. Like these are all, his pitches just don't move very much. So like effectively he's throwing carry everything.

Yeah, okay. If that makes sense. And that would explain pop-ups. Nothing has any depth, but where he's such on, he's kind of behind the ball and it looks like he might be like spinning the ball back spinning it and he's doing the opposite. And then if you're all your secondaries have carry,

then maybe the difference in vertical movement is not as much. So maybe it's also hard to pick apart the breaking balls from the fast balls because you're like, you don't get that like, oh, this is going down. Exactly. And that would explain the middle middle is getting popped up all the time.

They think it's going to be lower than it is. All right, all right, there's something here. I'm not sure that I can program the model to include this. No, I don't want you to. Yeah, it's pretty anecdotal. I like this, I like this. This is lowdom, this is breaking the model. This is, it works.

We kind of think we have an idea why it works. We don't know how long it's going to work. We don't think anyone else should try to do what he's doing, but it works for him. And that's okay. And if you want to just say, Andrew Abbott went to Hogwarts, I don't get it. Fine. You can say that. I'll allow that. That's completely normal. I mean, none of his normal peripherals say he's good either. I mean, like 18 minus seven K minus BB is below average. Sierra thinks he's a four, six ERA guy, You know, like.

He's probably, he's gonna regress. He just is, especially where he pitches. There's just a lot of luck happening. And that can happen for two and a half months. That can happen. Like that's not too big of a. You can do it for a year. It's not two and a half months now.

It's like 183 innings so far, so. Oh yeah, oh he's done his whole career then. Okay, well. I mean. Then I got nothing. To some extent. I mean, the Babap this is is different than last year. And he struck out more people last year.

So it's it's not exactly the same, but somehow he's has a 360 array through one hundred and eighty three innings when nobody thinks he should. Yeah, I think it's weird when you look back at what he did in the minors. And just he had 30 percent strikeout rates coming through the system at every single stop with that arsenal. And I it hitters aren't as good but that's a It's a really sharp drop off in the ability to get swings and misses Getting up against top level did always get pop-ups in the minors though So that that is actually something he's been doing the pop-up king is he?

Nestor Cortez just in the NL or is Nestor's stuff just better? He just has a cutter. That's a big difference for righties. Have it lefty with a cutter is a big deal for righties. He's dip diving and dodging them out there though. He's also hanging his leg and flipping around and doing all kinds of weird stuff. He's a wiffle ball pitcher. But maybe there's deception based on what sort of what Trevor was talking about. So maybe there's more similarities than we think. Yeah, guys just don't see it very well. But beyond those three beyond Green, Lidolo and Abbott, Frankie Montas says you're three or you're four.

Let's say Montas is better than Abbott the rest of the way. Is that a big surprise given his track record in the big leagues? I wouldn't be stunned by that. They got to figure out the fifth starter spot Graham Ashcraft's down to triple A right now. I think it's Karsten Spires getting a chance right now. He was pitching really well at triple A, though. So I'm kind of curious to see where that goes. Plus, they've got Nick Martinez there for depth.

And everybody in the league is trying to figure out their first starter. I don't I don't think you point to that and say, oh, they can't make it because, you know, they don't know their first starters. I look at that bullpen and I said, OK, yeah, I never really liked you. It needs help. Alexis Diaz is struggling with walks. Lucas Sims is struggling with walks. He, since we're just dismantling the Mets

at every possible turn, how about sending Diaz to the Reds? You know, send him to Cincinnati, let him play with his brother, eat some of the money, get a prospect or two back. We saw that the Mets had an appetite to do that at the last trade deadline. So, you know, why not? Help somebody out here. Is that that unrealistic for the Reds to pay the rest of his contract? Yeah They have to eat a lot. Yeah, the Mets are gonna be like half of it at least Yeah half of it

But you would get what you get three years of Edwin Diaz for 50 million like Then it becomes like an option and then I kind of love the idea of the brothers together. Yeah, that's been working out. Look at the Rogers Brothers. Yeah, this is this is a slightly gassier version. As far as the bats go, though, there still could be that that run where Ellie de la Cruz plays an entire half the way he played the first month. That could be absurd. Oh and there's some cool stuff going under the hood for Ellie after a lot of you know maybe

he should he should stop switch hitting or whatever like he's actually looking much better as a righty this year like he's he's striking out less walking more like a lot of the process stuff is evening out and I think that's just the promise of Ellie and the idea that as an organization, we're gonna put faith in you. I was on Kansas City radio the other day and we were talking about Bobby Witt and how the new regime said, "'Bobby Witt, you're our shortstop all year.'"

They said that in the spring. Piccolo said that before anything happened. He said, "'You're our shortstop all year. "'We're not gonna take you off the position.'" And what happened? Bobby Witt struggled a little bit at the beginning of the season. People were like, oh, should he be the shortstop defensively? Offensively wasn't great. And then he had a second half for the ages where he was like a 170 WRC plus and cemented himself as one of the young

stars in this league. And I think that's what you want to do with a guy like Ellie, put him at shortstop, let him go through some bumps tell him he's there all year and I think you're you could see a second half that could be pretty awesome from him. So you get that and you have Novy Marte coming back less than two weeks from a suspension now so that's a big boost to them as far as a possible impact bat they do strike out a lot as a team right there's sixth in the league in strikeout percentage. They got to bring that down a little bit, think to be more dangerous on a consistent basis.

But I think I still believe in the core they put together in the first place. Like this was a lineup that I liked. I know there's the possibility Christian and Carnasi on strand doesn't come back. If they do lose him for the season, OK, they're down one core hitter and Matt McClain, but he was out kind of earlier than CES was. So I still think they could be at least an average. Lario signing seems like a great one. And it also reminds me a little bit of the first DJ Lamaio signing where the Yankees had

players all his positions and you said, why did they sign Jamer Condolario? Well, this is kind of why. Yeah, it's kind of quietly gone back in the right direction for Jamer after that bad start to. So I actually like quite a few things about the Reds. I think they're another formidable team. You're not saying, you know, this needs to happen. This needs to happen. Like, could they get a reliever? Yeah, sure. They did it. They did it with Sam Mo last year. You know, they could do it again. The recipe for them with so many young players that are filling up their roster that guys that they don't want to drop is somebody who's nearing needing to be put on the roster so Joe Boyle was nearing he had to get him on the 40 man like in order

to protect them they had to put him on the 40 man so why would they do they trade him for Sam all so that could be the same recipe where somebody that's approaching that roster deadline they trade them away for a reliever. Yeah, I think they'll do something at the deadline. They're good enough to make a move or two and add to the roster as well. Probably in the bullpen first. We'll see if they get anything else beyond that.

Oh, by the way, also no surprise that we all picked NL teams because there are like four teams in the NL that are above 500 and everybody else is in the mix for the wild card. You might say the pirates, you know, but yeah, they're like everybody's in the mix for the wild card. I mean, the only people who are not the mix for the wild card, like, you know, 30 wins, 30 to 33 wins is, you know, everybody, you know, 33 wins, I'd say is in it. D backs, giants, Padres, Cubs, pirates, Reds, Nationals and Braves. You know, they're all going to be fighting out with the Cardinals even.

They're all fighting it out for the wild cards. There is no clear, you know, this guy has the wild card right now. Yeah. And if the Nationals want to get crazy and bring up James Wood and do some things like that, I could try to make one of those stretch cases for them. If they don't do that, I think they kind of fade over the next couple of months, but they could be a bit of a pain for the teams that are stronger contenders at this point.

The AL side, I thought someone might try to make a case for the Rays potentially, but generally those lower odds teams, they do look like they're staying down. Boston maybe was one that you could look at Boston or Toronto Like there's a chance there. Yeah, it's always a chance every time Let's get to our game plan segment though how to hit against Luis Hilda We do have a Yankees Red Sox series this weekend, which doesn't really do much. I don't care

I don't care when the Yankees play the Red Sox I don't I don't drop everything but my TV makes sure that I know because the featured game on each rights holder. The series where they came back from 3 0 down, the Red Sox did. I lived in a neighborhood that was Dominican and there were riots because the Dominican fans were out celebrating that Manny Ramirez and the Red Sox had beat the Yankees and we were, I don't know know 20 blocks from the Bronx So there were helicopters and there was violence so yes Red Sox the Yankees can still can still bring it

Sounds like a party regionally at least Well, so Louise heels interesting for a few reasons. I mean, you've gone through it before, but are there post surgery milestones your first full year back that you're kind of dealing with as you hit various points in the season where you either worry less or you may think more about the health of your arm as you're trying to work through that first healthy season again? Because Heal is going to pile up a lot of innings coming off of Tommy John surgery this year if he sticks in this rotation and by all accounts he's a permanent fixture in this rotation because he deserves to be. A lot of it has to do with like suddenly if you

feel like your stuff is where you want it to be and you feel like confident in your stuff, worrying about the injury or being injured or if you're going to get injured again or what the injury means, it kind of just goes away. You just like, I had a surgery and it's a surgery that happened so long ago too, that if you're not feeling anything in your arm, then it's out of mind quick. For me, it was tough to get my VLO back and I was also being kind of like couldn't figure out if I was starting or leaving or whatever. I had a little bit of that the old Robotitis coming back from Tommy John a lot of guys try to clean up their

Mechanics and you you look like you're rigid and you throw you're trying to be really fine And that's not really an issue anymore much anymore either I think the young guys the the protocols and stuff you come back and you you build explosiveness earlier and faster I mean he looks really confident and and if he's confident I doubt he's even thinking about the injury at all at this point. But it will come down to how many innings can he throw? You don't want to be stupid, but he's obviously needs to be around.

He's 75 innings right now. He's still got a good chunk. Do you remember any extra fatigue near the end of your comeback season? So that was the interesting thing is like, I came back in like June. So I only played like the last three and a half months. And honestly, arm wise, I felt like I was just getting going.

So I wasn't really dealing with it, but I was also a reliever. It's a little bit different that way. And I wasn't being like, I wasn't being thrown every single day either. We weren't competing. I was on a team like he's on. And so that will change things as well.

I could be a little bit more on a schedule, but I remember feeling like I was starting to finally really get stronger. My VLO was continuing to go up. I remember the last outing was like the hardest I threw all year. So I was like, this is great. This is a great way to end.

So I think you wanna just avoid, you just wanna avoid, you gotta pay attention to how his stuff starts to diminish over time and to tell you for fatigue, because I think he's gonna feel fine in his brain. And you're just gonna have to be like, all right, yeah, you're losing a little bit of ride or your VELO has gone down a mile an hour in the last month or so. So let's start tapering it down. And they'll just probably hope that doesn't really manifest too much and that, you know,

at least in playoffs, you at least have him as a guy who can throw a couple of things out of the bullpen or something because he's got that kind of stuff too. I think we might be in a little bit of a transition moment in the big leagues where I know that teams will say things like publicly they'll say, oh, you know, we don't have an innings number in mind. We are going to be tracking all of his advanced stats. And we even have Josh Kolk, who, you know, you know from the twins have a piece that was public that was like 10 years ago

that was an injury finder. And basically what it found was if you start having an erratic release point, so like release point differential, and if you start losing the zone, the strike zone, I think that's a little bit secondary. That's like, uh-oh, I'm losing my stuff. I don't have the confidence.

I'm not, but maybe there's a, maybe it's just like you can't put it in the zone as often, maybe there's a physical component to it. But what they found was like zone, VLO, and release point that you could actually sort of track those and find fatigue and find it before injury or find injury before it happens. And so that's the sort of idea that teams are talking about.

Oh, we're just gonna track all this fatigue. We're gonna track all the secondary stuff. We're gonna track his catapult. We're gonna track all this stuff that's coming in and we'll make a decision as it comes through. But I also know that internally, when teams are discussing players like Paul Skeens and Jared Jones and Luis Hill,

and when they're trying to plan the season they have to use a number because the way you think about your season is do we have X amount of innings from our starting pitchers? How many do you think we're getting from each? When are we getting them? If we have Walker Bueller coming back and we think we only have 120 innings, when do we want those 120 innings? Do we want to soft soft launch him basically and have him in the minors and just really you know stretch out spring training so that we have Walker Bueller in October? Yes, we want to do that. When do we debut Paul Skeens if we think we only have 130 innings? So they still have to think about things in these

old school binary terms. They still have to think about things in these old school binary terms. They still have to think about how many innings do we have in this guy in some meeting. In some meeting somewhere, they put a number out. As soon as you put that number out, it lives. So, you know, 130 I think lives somewhere for Paul Skeens. That means he has 70 more innings. That's something they have to manage. And then even if

you're saying, no, well, maybe we can go past it, you have to make the case for going past it. Oh, he's still throwing 100. Nothing's going wrong. His release point's fine. You know, so like, I think with Heal, there is, there's probably a number that someone has said somewhere, they won't admit to it publicly. And I don't know what that number is, but he's got to be, you know, approaching it sometime. And so I don't know. It may not matter, but I also wonder if the league is ever going to be like, Nope, it's fine. Everything's fine. Everything looks fine in the biomechanics. We're just going to keep going. Gale crochet is in uncharted territory and on the trade block at the same time.

So you're going to see some teams say, I don't care. We're gonna trade for him and we're just gonna pitch him the rest of the season. Yeah, and I think we looked back at like 2021 as the previous high water mark for Luis Heal's innings in a season. So even if you just use that and build off of that instead of building off of the zero essentially

from the absence through four innings at Tampa or something last year. I think you usually build off of like previous highs. Yeah, you're still pretty good for another seventy five plus innings. And they've talked about using different factors for deciding when they would possibly get away from him. I'm sure closer to the All-Star break, they'll skip this turn and do a couple of things like that.

But it's been excellent so far. It's been a three pitch mix, you know, four seamer averaging ninety, a change at 91, a slider at 87. Lefties mostly just see the four seamer and the change. Righties get all three of those pitches. When you look at them by results, you don't really see any sort of weakness. You don't see one of those pitches

that hitters have been doing damage against so far, at least in terms of average and slugging against. So I'm curious, if we're in the meeting meeting this afternoon talking to Red Sox hitters, what's your game plan? You know, what are you putting out there for the hitters to try and do against Heal? Well, one thing that I did was look at different heat maps for where he throws it and where the contact rates are good. So if you look here at this at a slider heat map, this is a slider.

He throws it either, you know, off of the outside corner to righties. That's the swing strike run, or he throws one kind of middle middle and away from them. That's the kind of, you know, I need a strike right now. It's like a two slider or something, right? Well you look at the contact rates, the contact rates are not that good on the slider. Lo and away, they're terrible, it's all blue. But there's some good contact rates on sliders up. So I know that's a hanging slider.

So I'm saying wait for a hanging slider, but it's a little more nuanced. So now let's look at the changeup. He wants to throw the changeup low and in on righties, like a sinker, right? He's throwing the change up like a sinker loan and if you look at the contact rates for righty change ups again where he throws it most of the time the contact rates are not good if you even if you're right he's

trying to hit his change up low across the bottom part of the zone there where he's throwing it not good but if it's a little bit elevated, the contact rates would get better. So basically I would sit soft. I would sit soft and I would look for soft that was off the bottom part of the zone. So anything that was just a little bit above the bottom part of the zone, I would sit on it and I'd try to hit it. And he doesn't have great command of the change up. He doesn't have great command of the change up. He doesn't have great command general.

So by sitting soft, one thing that I'm doing also is putting a lot of pressure on the pitcher to get strikes. And this is a pitcher who's had 15% walk rates in the minors. This is a pitcher who's coming off a Tommy John where it doesn't always come in, doesn't always come back first. So I'm just gonna try and sit on that.

The only caveat is if you're a guy who mashes four seamers high in the zone, like then you sit hard because he'll do that. He'll throw you some high force aimers high in the zone. And if that's not something you're scared of, you know, 98 then then go hit that. But I'm considering that this is probably me. And if I'm a hitter, I'm like a sneaky smart hitter that isn't a guy that matches 98 mile an hour fastballs high in the zone.

So me, I'm sitting slider and change, and I'm just trying to see off the bottom of the zone. Like I'm not trying to see it high high, I'm just trying to see it up a little bit. So anything up and soft, that's what I'm going for. Now I would like to echo that. I think that seeing his soft stuff up, his command, you're right, it isn't great.

According to these heat maps from at least Yvonne, the clusters on his change up in fastball are much better than his sliders all over the place. He's throwing sliders up and into righties. That's probably why the Yankees have him throwing the change up more than the slider. Yeah, and he historically has thrown the change up more. He's got a better feel for it.

He throws 27% of the time the slider's 17. So there's something to that. And he throws like 30% change ups varieties. So it's like, it's very clearly like that's his team. He does it in pivot counts or like the mid counts. I just call it a pivot count. Just coined it out of nowhere. A one, one, two, one, lots of change ups.

Both sides because that's a pitch he's very comfortable in throwing. And it's a pitch he goes to for strikeouts. So I like to think about, okay, bread and butter, these two pitches, they work off each other. Do they tunnel well? Is that what makes them so hard to hit because he doesn't have an elite breaking ball,

which is kind of what you look for. I don't think they tunnel, honestly, because I've seen, from what I've watched that the change up is big movement. It doesn't tunnel with his foreseen. So I found something a little bit interesting though that might actually give the impression that it tunnels a little bit better.

So I've mentioned this, the art of pitch tunneling from the pitcherless guys to article from a few years ago, a bunch of times talking about like what's ideal for horizontal movement on a change up to tunnel with a fast years ago a bunch of times talking about what's ideal for horizontal movement on a change up to tunnel with a fastball, any fastball. And you're looking for 15 inches arm side, he's averaging over that. So he's in that range to where, at least movement wise,

because when you throw change ups and when you throw fastballs, they naturally tunnel to a certain level. It's very hard to have a crazy different release point unless you throw something like the Devon Williams change up or something That's way different of spin wise his isn't but he has the enough fade So it does move quite a bit and he's got a good depth on it

The interesting thing is where he's most comfortable throwing his four-seam fastball is up and away to a righty and what he throws his change Up is down and into a righty like just generally in the box. I don't go to the same places Yeah, so they don't go to the same places, yeah. So they don't go to the same places, but you can create with the kind of, the way his fastball works, he has this, he sometimes has this natural cut, kind of like Strider has, when he goes up and away to righties, he can get a little bit more

of that supinated cut. So he's getting this angle. So I'm like, okay, what's his horizontal approach? I'm like, how's he approaching the plate? He is way over on the third base side, so he's creating this angle from inside to a righty, up and away to a righty. So if you throw from there and throw the change up down,

now you have more, if you get that angle, going away from a righty slightly, you're getting a little bit more of a, almost like a two-plane tunnel, just a little bit. Not perfect, but just enough to where if you throw 98 and you throw 91. You basically throw the change up like it's gonna be high and away, but just enough to where if you throw 98 and you throw 91. You basically throw the change up like it's gonna be high and away,

but it has so much movement. Yeah, then it fades down to down and in. So he's created that diagonal angle with those two pitches and now you have something that's like tunneling without it being directly. The spin axis is similar. It's like 1250 for the fastball and 130 for the change. So those are spinning similarly.

That's imperceptible to a hitter for sure. It looks very similar. And there's probably a little seam shifting happening on the fore seam if it's spinning like that, or sorry, on the changeup if it's spinning like that. And if you combine those two things together, now we have the impression of a tunnel. And that would explain why he throws this changeup

at like 94 sometimes. It doesn't have a huge change in V-Low either, so he's not using that to get the misses. It's the movement. It's a power change up. And that would explain it a little bit more with that approach, because he's not super, he doesn't have crazy extension,

and he's not super low either. It's about six foot. It's about an average release height. So I was like, okay, he's not getting perceived, like the Paul Seawald perceived ride. He has real ride, and he's created this weird angle. Usually, righties don't throw from that side of the rubber. They throw from the other side

because they tend to miss off the plate, arm side, constantly. I kind of want no part of this fastball change of combo. You know, it's like, like I'm going to be swinging at the 95 and it's going to be the 91 in my balls. You know what I mean? Like it's gonna, I'm gonna think it's all over the place. Yeah, also no one else is doing this.

He's kind of by, he's like, kind of by himself as starters from a high foreseam, like hard change up as his bread and butter kind of. Yeah, maybe Edward Cabrera is somewhat similar. Maybe like Gossman, but Gossman's not throwing his heart anymore. Edward Cabrera is my comp, but by sitting slider what I could do is on two strike counts at least just maybe fight off the fastball and then I am sitting on the pitch that he

commands the worst. So yeah exactly and that's a lot of slider. So I'm seeing the soft up. He might hang a slider. He hangs sliders a lot. So if you're going to get one, go for it. I've seen him hang the change. So I've seen him hang the change.

I've seen him almost hit people in the face with the 91-mile-an-hour changeup a few times. And they think it's a fastball, probably. Yeah, it's an intense situation there. So I don't think it would be comfortable sitting in against him anyway. And then, even with my approach, how useful is that approach in the first inning

when he's probably just pumping fastballs? It would be like fight him off, try to get his pitch count up, and he tends to just throw the fastball in the same spot, up and away to righties. Even when he's trying to go up and away to lefties, he pulls them up and in. He does it all the time, so it's a natural thing for him. I think you have to have an oppo approach for his fastball, just because of where he throws it and how hard he throws it. So if you have an oppo approach to the fastball, that is another way of saying sit slider,

because then you'll be hitting the slider out front. So just pick that spot, cover one fastball spot, yeah. Yeah, he's a tough one. Yeah, we'll see how the Red Sox fare against him on Friday night in the first game of that series. Got a few questions that came in from the live high. This one came in before the show, and it came from Stinky

in our Discord. Stinky wants to know what are the intangible aspects of playing 162 games that fans don't think about regularly and how does it affect performance. An example I've been on the road for a week, I can't wait to sleep in my own bed or hang out with my partner, kids, dog, go to the grocery store because all my food went bad while I was gone. Flipside being on the road away from that and more in a team environment, could be winning a couple games early, partying in the city or losing and then being more focused on baseball.

So how does home versus away kind of impact focus and how does that fluctuate around team performance, Trevor? That's a really interesting question and there's a lot of different versions of this. Like playing in New York, for example, there's a lot that goes along with that. There's just always gonna be someone in your way when you're trying to get somewhere.

So sometimes you're just like, man, I don't wanna sit in traffic anymore. I wanna week away from traffic. I wanna week away from waiting for the elevator for 25 minutes. You guys have so many media people too. I'm a person who likes to go to retreat in my own little room sometimes,

and that place was, it's tough to get quiet anywhere at any point. So that could filter in, depends on the type of guy you are. Another thing, and especially in New York, this is an interesting thing, a lot of the guys from Latin America have extended family that live there, like a lot. This is very, very common. Sometimes a lot of Latin guys have extended family that live with them, like their parents will come live with them during the season, which makes a lot of sense, especially from Dominican Republic,

or they're trying to live over here. They live in Miami and they just, you know, you take care of your family. So you can go from having a lot of people in your house to being a little bit on your own and you're sleeping better on the road because you're, you know, the kids aren't with you, you got young children. But my wife is one of five, and so she's grown up being used to hubbub, but as soon as there's more hubbub in the house, there's more family in the house, she actually sort of perks up. Exactly, it could be inverse too. I'm like, there's too much going on. Why are there so many people in here?

Why are the dogs out there? Oh, I gotta get outta here. Yeah, so those type of things, you could either look really forward to a road trip or you could be like, ah, I really like to hang out with, you're in hometown or whatever, you just wanna be in your hometown, you're happier there.

And so that varies pretty wildly. But when you're on the road, for the most part, a lot of those responsibilities, those things, those ancillary things outside of the game kind of are over there just for now and you can focus a little bit more on what you need to do when you're back in the hotel room and you can break down your bats or something.

And you have fewer media, again, the media part, you have fewer media on the road. Yeah, there's a lot of that. Some guys like to hang out, they're the teammates more often and that's where you get to do it because you're just down the hall. So you hang out in guys' rooms more on the road and vice versa could be the road,

everyone's got families, everyone's got small children, they miss them and then that team, if you have more of those on your team, then it's the opposite. Yes, like the age, the average age of the team matters. Average age of the team can make a huge difference. We saw this a little bit with the Warriors. So the Warriors all got kids and they all got older

and like Clay was the only one who didn't. And so like, you know, there was like kind of like a little bit of a split there and Durant came in and was like, I want to party. And they were kind of like, Steph's like, I got three kids and you know, whatever, you know? So it's like not different, yeah, different lifestyles. Yeah, I think that's interesting.

Here's a thing I want to still write about someday, but you know, in the modern age, I think fewer people drink in baseball because we know more about what the impact is on sleep and recovery. We've talked about this a lot. And so that was one avenue for team building. There was one question there, part of that question that was like, you know, going out with teammates on the road. Is there less of that in today's game? Is there less of these fewer of these sort of team building exercises where you go out and get rock and sleep drunk and ride the bull or,

you know, do whatever it is. Cincinnati has the bull, you know, like the different things that people do. Are there is there less of that in today's game? Yes, there's a lot less of that, which I think overall is a great thing, because I have been frankly, that was the biggest way players need to unwind. You need to unwind when you're a professional athlete in general. And for the longest time, drinking was the way you did it, you know, in the 90s and whatever, you know, before they knew what Adderall was

and the Greenies were around and stuff. Sometimes you had to actually come down off of some operating. You had to come down, yeah. And not only that, and then the next day, if you had a hangover, you had Greenies there waiting for you. Right, you had to go back up again. So like, you could get over your hangover quicker and you could get better to play.

If you tell, hey, this will help you feel better, guys are just gonna do it, especially if it's not explicitly against rules. So for a full disclosure, it has changed now to the legalization of marijuana around the country. That will be more of the choice for the guys who would have drank.

It's now just hang out. Four or five, you just hang out in a room and just talk about the game. It's just chilling. Play some video games and smoke some pot. Play some video games, play some place video games play some cards Like we had a we were doing fall guys for like where we just all meet and then play pass the controller round and if

Every round you got in you pass the next guy So you just didn't want to be the guy who was gonna mess it up at the end and lose So like and that was that we just hang out and do that and like that's what it became I know that's funny. That's funny to think about now. But yeah, it's gotten more game. So there's still team building exercises. It's kind of morphed away from drinking. It's just way more chill and you're so right when you say we are much smarter about sleep and stuff. Guys are like, all right guys, I need to get my eight and a

half, guys take it more seriously now. I've had pitching coaches tell me about how they went and played the Cubs in the 90s and didn't go to their hotel. Every day. Yeah. Might not be optimal for performance. Like that's physically not possible anymore. Yeah. It just wouldn't survive.

Closer, guy was a closer. I'll just throw that out. He was a closer for his team at the time. It would probably end with DFA to these days. I don't know. Yeah, these days, this guy was their guy though. So we weren't gonna do anything to him. But that's a, and he told us even at the time, he was like, yeah.

He goes, it was pretty crazy then, so let me be very clear, this wasn't like a normal thing. But now, like you would be dead, like you would walk in and be like, I can't even see. Yeah. Because there was no, because there's nothing you could do. There's nothing you could do. So yeah, that's how it's changed, big way.

Thanks a lot for that question, Stinky Brian in the Live Hive says, DVR will just wear an elbow pad and turn his back for his game plan against Luis Hiel. That's exactly right. Yeah, there's a D3 program, I think Jake Mintz wrote about it, that's leaning into pitches or just accepting the hip-hop pitch. Hip-hop pitches are up huge in D1 too.

Like it's a viable strategy. There's a command aspect to that too. Turn your back, could you teach Ty France how to do that? Because he cannot turn when they throw him up and in. He's tougher than me. He's just like, ah, I'm fine. He just has to check and get hit in the hands every single time.

I'm like, dude, can you turn, please? I would be elite at bailing out and getting hit in the back with pitches. It would be something I could do very, very well. Looks like we have a DFA, Daniel Volgelbach, DFA at Addison Barger getting called up. Oh. How about that? That's right. we have a DFA, Daniel Volgebok DFA, Addison Barger getting called up. Oh!

How about that? That's right. This is a couple pods back. We talked about, Barge, this might happen. Yeah, they're shaking it up a little bit between Spencer Horwitz getting a chance now and Addison Barger coming up, Volgebok out, Kevin Beige out earlier in the week.

So they're trying their mid-season adjustments pre-deadline and then seeing where to go from there, which I I kind of like that. Try a wave for six weeks, see if it works. And if that doesn't work, try something else. So question here from Philip. Garrett Crochet seems to have completely scrapped the sweeper for a cutter versus righties. Plays in the league, generally hitting better against sweepers.

I mean, yeah, it seems like sweepers have not been as effective this year. Plays into the platoon split. He's a lefty throwing platoon, throwing big old sweepers back foot to righties. And he has a big velocity differential. So he's throwing 97. And then here comes this do do do do do like sideways frisbee and right. He's like, oh, I like that.

So I think that the cutter cutter was a tighter below band so harder to tell the difference between the cutter and the passball and yeah it was a good it was a good choice on his part yeah seems like a good idea to breaking balls that's that's also what everyone's doing too so jump shoot in the live hive thinks he's identified that former Cubs closer as Rod Beck. Bec used to be that kind of guy. I think Bec at some point like had an RV he was living out of like while he was playing. Like a bowler. That's like I can say it wasn't Rod Beck but it that's a good comp. Some other bad news here from the Cubs Ben Brown a stress reaction in his neck.

So that's a tough one because he was just getting that opportunity. This was the window for him. First one felled turn turnball last year. Turnball told me that a ligament pulled a piece of bone off of his bone in his neck. And so that that happens after stress reaction. You have stress reaction, stress fracture, and then I don't know what it is called. The pull off is the beyond stress fracture, yeah.

It's the same idea because it's the ligament and the bone interacting, and ligament can be stronger than the bone, and stress reactions are like basically the ligament pulling at the bone over and over again. Yeah, in 2016 I had a pars defect which is a stress. I had a stress fracture in a vertebrae. It's the facet joints on the side the little wings and basically the ligaments were pulling it flexing it so they they're supposed to flex into each other and it was just stuck flexed.

So every time I pitched I'd flex it flex it and it was just slowly it was slowly splitting and and it sounds like three times before we found it. I had to ask for a bone scan and we got it done and they're like, yeah, it's right there. There's like a paralyne crack and it's healed three times. Oh, it just, yeah, it sucked. And then that's why I got the thing in my arm in 2022. I was like, I've seen this movie, let's go look at it

with a bone scan and then we found it immediately. Is it something you have to fix with mechanics? Like it seems like that's something that's going to keep on happening. You're doing something. It's physiology with me. I was twisted in a way and I was in that pattern for a really long time. I added like phyllo out of nowhere in 15. How did you get out of it?

Crazy rehab and then tons of core work strength and the line of myself. Not different mechanics. You kind of mitigated it. I mitigated it through workouts and then my mechanics then changed because of how I built the body. Which, and then the Velo was sustainable after that too. So it kind of had a, this was like during the Areata,

Pilates is the best thing in the world thing too. So I was like, I'll do that. And he was right, it is the best. I think everyone should still do Pilates. Yeah, Daniel Norris definitely lived in the van. That guy was a character. I want another Daniel Norris character in the big leagues right now. Where, Daniel Norris definitely lived in a van. That guy was a character. I want another Daniel Norris character in the big leagues right now.

Where is Daniel Norris these days? He probably doesn't want anyone to know, but. Surfing. Surfing, yeah. He's in a van. He's definitely in a van still. He was in a van then, he's in a van now. I think that makes sense.

He loved that life. We are gonna wrap things up for this episode. On our way out the door, a reminder you can find us on Twitter, Trevor is at IamTrevorMay, Eno is at EnoSaris, I'm at Derek VanRyfe, but the plot is at Rates and Barrels. As I mentioned earlier, the Discord link is in the show description. If you've got a question for a future episode, drop them in there or email us, ratesandbarrels at gmail.com. Have a great weekend. We are back with you on Monday.

Thanks for listening. Hello guys, I'm Ioan Kimmolere, host of the Athletic FC podcast, and I'm here to tell you about a mouthwatering summer of international football. The Cup of America and European Championships kick off in mid-June and we're going to be covering both tournaments every step of the way. With the World Cup in the US just two years away, the Copa America is the US men's national team's chance to prove they can really compete with heavyweights like Brazil and Argentina, while England will be hoping to go one better than their agonising Euros final defeat last time out.

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