Rates & Barrels - Bobby Miller's Reset, 10 Years of Statcast & Pitching to Gunnar Henderson

Episode Date: July 11, 2024

Eno, DVR and Trevor discuss the demotion of Bobby Miller as his 2024 struggles have persisted, the Dodgers' pitching depth being tested more than expected, 10 years of Statcast, and 'new' tools that they think will be a big part of the conversation 10 years from now. Plus, they look at what happens in extended plate appearances, how they would pitch to Gunnar Henderson, and a red-hot start to the MLB career of Reds outfielder Rece Hinds. Rundown 1:18 Trevor Needs to Tell DVR Where He's Buying Cool Hats 3:52 Bobby Miller Optioned by Dodgers; Headed to Triple-A Oklahoma City 14:00 Celebrating of 10 Years of Statcast 25:04 What 'New' Tool(s) Will Be Even Better Down the Road? 39:43 What Happens During and After Extended Plate Appearances? 57:30 The Game Plan: How to Pitch to Gunnar Henderson 1:06:54 Rece Hinds' Starts His MLB Career on a Heater Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Trevor on Twitter: @IamTrevorMay Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us at 1p ET/10a PT on Thursday, July 18th for our next livestream! Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Host: Derek VanRiper With: Eno Sarris, Trevor May Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Producer: Brian Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it is Thursday, July 11th, it's Live One, Derek Van Ryper, Trevor May, you know, Saris, all here with you. On this episode we'll discuss the demotion of Bobby Miller, what is next for Miller, what kinds of adjustments will he have to make to rejoin the Dodgers rotation at some point in the second half of the season. We celebrate the 10th birthday of Statcast. Happy birthday Statcast. Hope childhood is going well for you. We'll dig into the tools that we use the most, how it's changed the way we analyze baseball and look into the future. Talk about some tools that are new or relatively new right now that we will still care about

and be even more excited about 10 years down the road. We'll take a look at what happens in extended plate appearances. What is the cost of that on the pitching side? And then we've got our game plan segment. We're gonna take a look at Gunnar Henderson. It should be easy to get Gunnar Henderson out. Come on, we could solve this in some fashion.

Let's also talk about this hat. Yeah, this is a great hat. What is going on with this hat? Why is it that color? What is this hat? Isn't it cool? I love this color. It doesn't really compliment my skin tone well, but I thought I would mix in the Expose hat. I've always liked the Expose. I know, but what's the history of this specific hat? Do you know anything about why this hat? No, it's just it's just one of those from that same place where I've got all the kind of the funky hats the ace hat And stuff I just saw it and I was like that color That's a 90s electric pastel color for me. I'm in let's let's do it and I'll never

Call like this sailor like the little yeah, what is. What is that called? Like the sailor? Like the little string? Yeah, the cord. Yeah, what is it? It's called, yeah, it's like a, I don't know what it's like a Mariners. Yeah, right. Yeah, like a, yeah, you wear boat shoes and you wear hats with this with like a ink on the front.

Yeah. I actually don't know what the style is called. If anyone knows, let us know. That is a hat, dude. I think it used to have a functional purpose before they made hats strong enough to just stay up that the weight of the crown would start to collapse. I think they used to hold things up a little bit

because hats used to be softer on top than they are now. They've changed. It's not like sewed on. You can move it around. Sometimes it does that and I don't notice, but yeah. You can put stuff up there. You can put stuff up there. You can hook things around. Sometimes it does that and I don't notice, but yeah. You can put stuff up there. You can put stuff up there. You can hook things on, pens.

Colgate color. A Sharpie, yeah. Colgate color, yeah, I love that. Dental hygiene is real, according to Jump Shoot in the Live Hive. But yes, lots to cover. I thought I had a pretty good hat. I had the Delta Beer Lab hat.

It looks like a brewer's hat, it's a little frayed, but it's definitely more in the dad hat category than the cool hat category. So I see a dad hat and I pounce. That's how we wore them at prep school. Yeah. Curved brim, you had to like, you put like a ball inside the brim

and then you put a rubber band around the ball. Rubber band it, yeah. We used to scrape the front of the bill to tear it a little bit. I had a Stanford hat that I did that too actually. Nice. For my whole childhood. Yeah, I gotta fix my hat situation.

I'm still wearing hats like it's 2002, so good for me. TBR would be a dad hat guy. Anye is right. I mean, that's my vibe right now. I do like boat shoes though too. So I have the right shoes to match Trevor's hat. Why are you laughing at me? Boat shoes are great.

This is a safe place. I can share this information. Yes they are, they are great, yes. They're wonderful. Yeah, yes. Apparently not. Apparently I'm the only one here wearing boat shoes. All right, let's talk about the Dodgers situation

with Bobby Miller. He gets optioned, he's gonna do some work with the team's instructors first and then eventually go to Oklahoma City, AAA, to begin the second half. He gets optioned, he's gonna do some work with the team's instructors first and eventually go to Oklahoma City, AAA, to begin the second half. There's not really this set timetable for him to come back to the Dodgers. And the expectations for Miller were really high. Last year pitched well as a rookie, 376 CRA, 110 whip, 119Ks and 124 in a third innings.

I think when you looked at this year's Dodgers rotation, once they acquired Glass now, signed Yamamoto, it was still, hey, Bobby Miller's the important number three starter here, and this could be as good as any Dodgers rotation we've seen in recent years, even though Clayton Kershaw's hurt and it's a bunch of new faces. This year has just not gone well for Miller. He's been hurt, still with a shoulder injury.

ERA's up over eight. The whip is at the 1.83 mark right now. I think people are asking in Discord, hey, is Bobby Miller eligible for your next Hunter Brown episode that you talked about a couple days ago? It's like, yeah, I think this qualifies now because in fantasy leagues,

people are gonna drop Bobby Miller in redraft leagues. They're not gonna wait this out because it might not be a quick sort of turnaround. So the first question here is, what has gone wrong for Bobby Miller? I mean, what do you see that might go beyond the injury that he has dealt with this year? I think it is just that, but the way it's manifested

is not been necessarily in stuff, although he has lost about a tick and a half on the fastball. It's actually been the command that's been most affected. Command numbers that are out there, even walk rate or something like location plus, they're just not that meaningful in the samples he's given us this year.

29 innings at the major levels, eight in the minors or 14 in the minors. It's just, it's not that you can say he does not have good command. I do think that there's something weird about him like more like if you if you step back further and don't just talk about this year. And that is that he has some of the best stuff in the big leagues

and has not really performed to that level. And even in the minor leagues had weird ERAs that started with four and, you know, didn't really dominate the minor leagues as much as you would expect from a guy who like sits a hundred and has like a 85 mile an hour breaking ball with great movement and then another curve ball and then a great change up. Like piece by piece, he looks like a stud on the level with glass now, but he's never really pitched like that. So it's hard for me to separate what's happening right now with the fact that I've been a little bit disappointed with him overall, given what I see as his upside.

But I've bought in some keeper leagues, I'm willing to sit this one out in places where I'm, you know, rebuilding and just want to maybe capitalize on this. It may take till next year. I can't necessarily recommend that you have to hold on to him in every league because, you know, the command just isn't there and I think it's related to the injury. I'm not sure what another stint away from the team is going to do for that. OK, so building off of some of Eno's analysis and kind of bringing up another question here, Trevor, is this a problem where Bobby Miller might be too predictable?

If you have great stuff like that and you don't get the results, like in what ways can you be underperforming or what reasons could cause that underperformance other than like shaky command or something along those lines that can be a little More common for guys have electric stuff every once in a while you run into a guy That you know passes the eye test and is impressive from everyone watching even guys hitting on deck or like get preparing for something they get up there and then they say they see something a little bit better than they thought they would or something doesn't break as sharply as they thought it would or

For whatever reason guys are on them a little bit more and these guys show up One famous example is the first guy at driveline that added all the velo casey weathers Just got through 100 101 and could not get anybody out at high And there was something about the way that he threw that made it that 101 looked like it was 94 And that's what everyone said. They're like, that doesn't look hard at all. And it's going right to my barrel. I don't know what to tell you.

And then they discovered dead zone fastballs and all kinds of stuff. Now he doesn't have movement-wise and stuff plus, like it's really good. Everything's pretty good in a vacuum. So that tells me it's just how he's using things together. And you combined sequencing predictability probably with a little bit of the injury and lack of command. It's just how he's using things together. And you combined sequencing predictability probably

with a little bit of the injury and lack of command. So the higher, more mistakes and being predictable is gonna lead to something like this. And what's keeping him kind of in that, you know, he's a big leaguer still and he should be in the big leagues is his pure stuff. But I think there's something, something's gonna click some point,

there's gonna be some pitch that he starts using in some way. I love the Hunter Brown explanation too, because Hunter had the exact same issue. And then added just a two seam sinker, that's not even that good, in a vacuum. But it just sets everything else up. And he might be one of those guys,

because he's a curve ball, hard curve ball, four seam fastball guy. And we're seeing how important it is for Reites to throw something that moves in on Reites. Either a power change up, and he has a change up. I don't think he locates it well at all. He throws it up in the zone a lot. It's got a downward movement, but doesn't move in as much.

And so that doesn't really solve that problem. So that might be something he adds. I think he might have a two seam. I just don't think he's very comfortable in throwing it. And then you add an injury on top of all this, where there's some little movement that he's afraid to make because it doesn't feel very good that could throw all my all your mechanics off and then you just get frustrated which is probably the reason it's ballooned to where it is right though I

think that if he didn't have the little injuries going on he would still be I think struggling a little bit more than last year just because he's kind of all over the place and when you lose a little bit of confidence in your pitches then you're not now now your stuff starts to diminish. So it's just a snowball that rolls downhill from there. So I hope that at least, because maybe it's not something he's, he's hurt enough to go in the IL for,

but, and he can still work on some stuff, but they can, you know, he throws once a week or whatever, and they can get him back going that way. Maybe that's the goal. The Dodgers are usually pretty on top of this stuff. So it'll be interesting to see what they do moving forward It's hard to imagine a scenario where he's not contributing something to them at the end of the season Maybe it's mid-august sometime around then we see him back

But even if they're healthier in the rotation then than they are now they could use him as a reliever a multi ending reliever For a little while and then go back to using him as a starter again next year There's a lot of ways this can work short term for Bobby Miller as he tries to make those adjustments. But the current state of this Dodgers rotation, you got Landon Nack going today and then I think the probables for the matchup against the Tigers this weekend, you've got Justin Robleski making his second big league start, James Paxton goes Saturday and potentially Ryan Yarbrough just trying to eat some innings on Sunday before they get to the break.

And they're dealing with a situation right now. Walker Bueller has no timetable for return. He's in Florida. He's away from the team working out at Cressies. So he's in a different situation. Now we're looking at guys like River Ryan. Ryan himself has been hurt a lot this year, but he is finally getting stretched out. He threw five innings Wednesday at Oklahoma City. We might be getting close to a River Ryan debut for the Dodgers as they try and patch things together in the back of this rotation. It's amazing. It kind of reminds me of, you know, maybe your typical Rays season, you know, where

you think they have a great rotation and then you look up at some point in August and you're like, who is in this rotation right now? I do think Yamada will come back. I've been a little bit skeptical that Kershaw will come back because that was a real shoulder surgery. That was one that used to be a career ender. And I've heard he's hitting 88, 89, which means he's sitting 87. So I'm still a little skeptical about Kershaw coming back and being a great starter for them. So that really leaves them with Tyler Glass now who's hurt,

you know, and, uh, on the IL right now with the back injury. So it's funny how, you know, a dominant team with what seems like a great rotation is reaching for their third or fourth best pitching prospect in July. But that's, I guess, the state of the modern game. It's the state of injury in the game today. I don't think that they do anything better or worse necessarily with injuries than other teams. But there is a little bit of like, they signed James Paxon knowing that he might not make

it through the season. They didn't, you know, they didn't book on Clayton Kershaw, you know, getting a bunch of endings from him this season. They knew that to some level, Landon Nack, they thought Emmett Sheehan was going to pitch this season. You know, they thought that some of the young guys would pitch this season. I do wonder if this puts a little fire under their butt at the trade deadline and that we might see them acquire a starting pitcher I think that almost seems like a guarantee now I wonder how many contending teams are we gonna look at just in two two and a half weeks we get to the deadline say They don't need a starting pitcher. It's gonna be one or two at most probably

The Phillies are in pretty good shape right now you with two on the IL Mariners are right Mariners are okay Phillies are in pretty good shape right now, even with two on the IL. Mariners are all right. Mariners are okay. That's about it. Otherwise. The Padres might get one, they don't, they may also just wait for some of their guys

to get healthy. State of the game, as you said before though, and that's been really frustrating. Producer Brian pointing out with the Giants get Cobb and Ray back, maybe they've actually got starters to deal away too, so. It's a good position to be in if you've got some healthy starters showing up before the deadline, you get a little excess, you might be able to swing a deal and get a lot

better, but we'll see where it goes for the Dodgers. Let's move on to the Statcast birthday party. Statcast already 10 years old. I remember when the Statcast era was new. It was like year two and year three and you'd label something like longest home run of the Statcast era and you just felt like a jerk saying it or writing it but you just you had to quantify it because there's a new way of measuring things and now that's just the way it is and it's become such a regular part of the conversation in baseball. You even hear a lot more about it on

broadcast. It's not just the nerd cast anymore. You have more commentators willing to bring Statcast elements into the game. Statcast itself changing all the time. We talked earlier this year about the bat speed metrics that are available and it's going to change some more, right? So, you know, you wrote a story with Stephen Nesbitt and Rustin Dodd this week, just looking at the big picture here, how it started and where it's going. I'm just curious, what has changed the most in your analysis over the life of Statcast? Oh, we started a podcast with a Statcast metric in the name. True.

Yeah, I mean, we've really grown alongside Statcast and I do think that it's ubiquitous now when I talk to at least young pitchers, I feel like young pitchers all speak the language of movement and and sort of statistical analysis hitters are a little bit more mixed but even you know, I've been I've been talking to a bunch of hitters about contact point and Bat speed and you know, they they know what I'm talking about too So I think you know hitters are used to their coaches being fluent in this and they're used to talking to their coaches about these things. They see it as mostly, I think, most young players see this as a way to get better. That might not be stat

cast specific, that might be sort of metrics in general. But I do think it's interesting that stats cast specifically, how that has changed the way we consume media, how it has become, you know, on every broadcast. And yet, every time I publish about it, there is definitely a contingent that's like, ah, I find this boring, I hate it, I don't like these broadcasts, I don't like it when it's in the broadcasts, I don't like it in my stories. I don't know if it's a vocal minority. I don't want to begrudge anybody their opinion on how, you know, what they like about the

game and how they want to consume it. But I do wonder if they're being left behind or if maybe they'll just get used to it at some point or if it's just a vocal minority. It's really hard in today's social media and comment section time to really get a sense of how many people feel left behind by Statcast in their broadcast. I think it's become much more digestible over time though. I think people have found a common way to explain using Statcast things that we've known or thought about baseball for a long time.

I think that's where I get so frustrated by people who hate it. It's like, okay, wait a minute. A lot of the things that we're seeing and looking at through statcasts are things that players have always wanted to do. Right? I mean, it goes all the way back as far as like Ted Williams, at least in terms of. Does a catcher want to have a good pop time? Yeah, we measure that now.

You know, does it? Do people want to run fast? We measure that now. You know? do people wanna run fast? We measure that now, you know? Yeah, I always wanted years ago, I'm like, when I hear a scout say, you know, fast bat, I'm like, okay, fast bat, like, how fast? Who really has a good fast bat, and who do you, like, who do you just say,

oh, he hits for power, he has a fast bat? Yeah, I think what has changed the most for me is being able to get a better feel for when processes are actually good, right? Not being tricked by your eyes, being able to quantify things that are actually going well, even though the results might tell you a different story. I think if you go back 10 years, I'd look at stuff like Babbip and I had to put so much more weight on Babbip because we didn't have a lot of other things that would maybe be

indicators of good or bad luck. And now I think you can see so much more in the process that you can understand, hey, this player's doing a lot of things right, but these handful of things that have gone wrong have completely skewed the results. So being able to find rebound candidates or breakout candidates, that's become easier.

Everyone has access to it, but I think that's become easier, relatively speaking, over the life of statcast. I agree fully. To be honest, I haven't been using it to analyze from a media standpoint, obviously. But when I played basketball as a kid, this isn't statcast, but this is kind of along the same way. The things we wanted to know, it's a sport all about athleticism, so you wanted to be able to measure how athletic guys were. So it was always about your acceleration speed vertical jump You know

like average distance in the three points like like we're fascinated by Steph Curry's ability to hit 28 footers and we're Fascinated by I was fascinated by Nate Robinson with a 44 inch vertical like that was incredible to me but I knew what that number was but that was never on a I had to go look that up on the internet and Now it's like the dunk contest, you can see everything. And I think that causes like, it's like that just happened. And now I can understand why it might've happened or if this guy can continue to do that. And another thing that enriches the game of baseball to take it back to Staticast was the predictability. Being able to like be so immersed into a game where you look up and you see a pattern, oh, these things could

happen or this matchup could be really interesting. And then something cool happens. Like remember the phenomenon where Tony Romo just got on a broadcast for the NFL and like people just weren't expecting him to just be like to call like 10 plays in a row. And he just was calling exactly what they were and he didn't play for the team. And they were like, Oh my God, that's amazing. When in reality, there's like three choices for every play and every situation, but he had the experience and then he was able to like, people realized they're like,

oh wow, I wish I was able to just predict things. This makes this really fun. This means I'm really into it. Like, how you feel like you're part of it. And I feel like that's what SatCast has done in a lot of ways. If you like attach yourself to it. I think a lot of people that the nostalgia of it is

the Vince Scully days, the romanticized storytelling part of things where someone is explaining, it's almost like mythological. It gets to the point where, like the Willie May's catch, for example, is the greatest over the shoulder catch ever, but like 100 guys have caught a ball like that since. But it was the timing and it was like the technology at the time and there wasn't very much footage of anything

from that time. So they caught it on video. That was a big deal. Like all of those things made it historic. And I think that with maybe the over explanation of the granular explanation, what's going on, people are like, man, just let me be romantic about it. I don't need all the facts.

I just wanna like get excited by what I'm seeing and that's enough for me. And I also understand that, but it's a business. That doesn't make money. And look around. Yeah, I totally get what you're saying. For some things, I wanna know more about it, and knowing more about it makes me enjoy it more.

And baseball happens to be one of those things. So if Marcus Simeon hits a homer off a Real Des Chapman, like it adds for me knowledge that oh Chapman has this much you know vertical break and Simeon learned how to hit the vertical break from his teammate and he's targeting the top half of the ball and vertical break is right you know like all that makes it even more impressive. It's like oh man that's supposed to be unlikely but like if you look at man. That's supposed to be unlikely, but like if you look at these trends, it's actually not as unlikely we thought.

All these are interesting, no matter which way it goes. And how it fits in, right? Like how does it fit into larger trends? How does it, oh, he'd learn this from his friend. Like there you start some storytelling. Oh, his friend told him this, you know, and like, and oh, you know, so then he told Matt Olson and Matt Olson became good at, you know,

like that's like storytelling. It's enriching the environment that I'm, So then he told Matt Olson and Matt Olson became good at, you know, like that's like storytelling. It's enriching the environment that I'm in. I'm like, I know more about it. But I also coming out of school really wanted to be a music and movie writer. And so I was studying, you know, the movie writers. I was studying the music writers.

I was doing a lot of it. I was the arts and events editor at Stanford at the the Daily and I was into it for a while but the more I went into it the less I liked movies and the less I liked music and it bothered me to the extent that I swore it off and have never really written music or movie criticism since. Because I don't want to be thinking too hard when I'm there. But art, I'm an art history minor. I love standing in front of a piece of art and seeing it just visually and viscerally and just having a moment with it. And then reading the plaque.

I think you can do both. And to some extent, if you are the one who just wants to sit there and let it wash over you and you don't want to read the plaque I think you can still do that you don't have to read my stories you don't have to read my stories and come on there and be like I didn't I didn't want to read the plaque why did I read the plaque don't tell me I'm the plaque I'm the plaque next to the thing that's all I'm trying to do is augment your experience And that's I think what the best stacast broadcasts are doing it used to be remember when it first came out

It was like every home where you had to hear the exit velocity, you know And I think there's still some broadcasts. I kind of do that. Don't do that Please don't do that because it's not meaningful on on the level where every time you need to hear it It's meaningful. Give us outliers. Hard ones and low ones, please. This was the hardest home run hit by a tiger this year, at least I wanna hear.

Or the softest. I mean, that's kind of cool too. It's like, wow, he just barely got that over. I don't really wanna hear, oh, that was 103 with a 28 degree, what does that mean? You're not giving me any context, not part of a story. Use it to tell stories. That's what I would say. It should be a complementary tool in the broadcast. The best broadcasters use that very effectively. Can you imagine watching a game where every single pitch velocity was called out by the

announcer? They don't do that. So that'd be single one but I do like it when a pitcher has been sitting 93 95 for most the start they hit 98 and the announcer calls attention to that because that sunny gray against Torrey Hunter in the in the in the playoffs yeah so it's just it's the same kind of usage just doing it for outliers as Trevor said I think Trevor's getting a Sid Bream comp here from Derek in the live hive from a look, no one, it's not because he played for the Expos, but because of a similar look. I was trying to pull up an image.

I'll try to throw it up on the site here or on the screen here in just a little bit. But I think there is a little something to that. We've got, um, kind of a forward looking question related to this. Like what's relatively new right now that we care about, that we think is going to be even better 10 years down the road. And you can use something new within Statcast if you want, or if you want to even say limb tracking,

which isn't really available at all publicly yet. Is that going to change a lot about how we analyze the game? Like where do you think we're headed going forward? I think that limb tracking is going to be really huge for players and for player development. I wonder how much it'll filter in towards broadcasts because I'd struggle with like imagining a broadcaster talking about scapular retraction angles. Yeah, I don't think that's going to be good if they do that. Back shoulder or his hip shoulder separation.

His hip shoulder separation on that fastball is in the top two percentile. Nah, I don't see it. It is the kind of thing that people in player development will care about a lot and do care about and have been caring about. And is hugely important into how the game is played right now.

I think these sort of things have been huge developmental advantages for the Twins, the Yankees, Dodgers, and, you know, I think the Astros leveraged some of this. So, you know, I think these things matter. But I wonder how much of it will come down. Now, bat speed, I think, will have its, at some point, will have its moment like, you know, exit velocity, where they're going to report bat speed on a lot of things, maybe too much at first at some point. But I do think there's something there where I think I would like to hear on a broadcast that somebody had the best bat speed in the

big leagues. I think that, I think that would add. I think that'd be interesting. I agree. It's hard because I feel like it's, I think we talked about this in our, in our outline day yesterday, just about how like everyone's trying to predict what's next for the internet, after the internet for our hugest technological advancement in history. And those things are impossible to predict

because that was such a revolutionary thing. They couldn't have predicted that before that. So the advanced metrics are kind of the revolution in baseball. And so it feels like it's just gonna be an iteration on that or like even getting more granular. And I like the stuff that they're doing

with like weather patterns and how specific that's getting within parks. But again, that's probably, it's gonna be interesting to see how teams like know that and put that in play, have a better understanding of how parks and times Of the day affect things because there's some pretty massive ones that I still think are being underutilized Like how do we what do we do? How do we change when we go to Colorado? Like there's some pretty big environmental places and Pretty much every year or two. They are upgrading

You know, there's so many different systems in for mocap and motion capture and stuff in stadiums like people are adding stuff all the time but Hawkeye is the big one everyone's using and like the frame rate on the cameras and the quality of the cameras is increasing like really quickly and they're just updated yeah again cameras so they're all 300 now so and they were 240 which 60 frames is a lot it's gonna get more specific and the ball is gonna they're gonna know exactly where the ball is in the stadium at all times we got holding it it's gonna get more specific and the ball is gonna, they're gonna know exactly where the ball is

in the stadium at all times. We've got it's holding it, it's gonna track it the whole time. And when that happens, I think some interesting stuff is gonna come from that. We might define late break. It just occurred to me while you were talking. We might be able to define late break better

because we'll have just the movement all the way across. Yeah, there's a lot of those questions I think that are like, we still have holistic explanations of things and we're gonna be able to get very, very very very specific which unfortunately is going to probably bring out some random new pitch pitch names and we're going to have to adjust to that as many people again but i don't think that's ever going to end and then the kind of the last thing i think is going to be uh interesting and something i'm really interested in is i think people are going to start taking a lot of the statistics and start to figure out how to start to

associate patterns in types of things with guys' mindsets, what's going on in their head, their intentions. I was noticing the patterns are showing up based on how guys hitting approaches are changing and it's getting pretty claring based on how pitchers, because pitchers are leaning so heavily on one pitch, every single year it's a different pitch, and so hitters are doing the same thing, but then it becomes predictable. So like scouting reports, and then therefore the broadcast

will be able to be like quantifying the clutch, for example. Guys who handle that better than others outside of just the basic stuff, I think that's gonna go a long way in terms of advanced analytics. There was something that came off of this is right right up your alley. This is it was such a great thing there. Trevor, one thing that didn't go into the story was Corey Schwartz talking about you talk about a smart base runner, right? You think that like maybe that's something you couldn't put a metric on. But in fact, smart base running is just knowing the probabilities

and reacting correctly, right? So now that we measure everything, you can say you can look at a baseball player in mid, you know, between first and second, and you can you can actually start to say, you know how good that arm is, you know, it can throw 97, 98. So you know the probability of how fast that ball can come in from the outfield to third base or to second base. So you can start to say, you know the probability of him getting an out on the base pass,

and you know, you can kind of start to look at all the different angles that that guy's thinking in his head, and you can, to some extent, start to make a list of smart base runners, you know, that are having baseball smarts. That'd be something that you wouldn't predict that a metric could really do, but if you sort of take, define all the variables around it and all the probabilities around it, the missing part

is the brain, is like the smarts. Exactly. This guy happens to put himself in best positions where he doesn't get thrown out when he could. And then, you know, I think that was in the piece was like, you can take that and we talked about the Jeter play, the Jeter, the flip, and you can start to do with AI and with these 3D visualizations that we have is, if we have a big play, I don't know if they'll be able to do this maybe in the same game, but maybe if they get to this level, you might be able to have a big play, and then you might be able to have a simulation of that same play where like maybe Tatisa's hurt and he's on the bench and so some other guys, Azokar is out there

and there's a big play and something happens and Azokar and maybe the guy's safe or something and the game's over then maybe the next day at least you could be like this is what that play would look like if Tatisa's out there because we know what Tatis's arm looks like we know what all that's like so that's kind of fun I think I don't know if you'll be able to do it so quickly you could do it during a game but I think that maybe at some point if we're talking you know ten years from now we're sitting here like that might be something that's on broadcast where it's like here's a simulation of that had he gone oh how how about like the sending the guy at third?

Yeah, good send, bad send, yep. Yeah, you hold the guy and then they simulate what would have happened if you'd sent the guy. And they can do it because they know arm strength and they know all that stuff. So that sort of stuff I think is only fun. I don't know, it's fun to sort of show me what it would have been like if, you know,

I'm sitting here yelling at the third base coach right now. He should have sent him, he should have sent him. Then they simulate it, oh, he was out, oh, all right. There is one thing that I actually, from that article, and you should read it if you haven't, but right at the beginning with a lot of guys were like, what about the Jeter play where he cuts the ball off where he wasn't supposed to and he flipped it

like you just mentioned, but we won't get those if we're always making, like that's kind of a common decision. Like if we're constantly trying to do the only fundamental play every single time, we won't get those if we're always making, like that's kind of a common decision, like if we're constantly trying to do the only fundamental play every single time, we won't get those moments. I go, yeah, of course, you gotta react to the player playing in the game, but what metrics are doing,

just getting you in position to do things, not do the thing that you practice exactly. There's still human beings out there that still gotta do it. So if you think, so whenever I explain this, I'm like, okay, let's run the exact same play 100 times with a bunch of different, like a simulation and how often is it gonna work out the way that it worked

out and it's probably not very high. Right. Just because of the things that had to happen. That would add to my enjoyment of that play. Exactly, that's the point. You already have a sense that like, We wanna tell you that it's not a high. Oh wow, that's a weird play.

It's a great play, we're not saying it's a bad player, it wasn't fundamental. You're just saying, this is actually how rare and it actually makes it even crazier. But you wouldn't teach a kid to be like, cut this off every once in a while for, you know, like you would never teach them that because overall, that's just going to be a bad habit that's going to lead to more mistakes than it working out.

That's what analytics are supposed to do. Creating that understanding. We got some live hive stuff about slides. I have no idea. I'm just that's my memory. We're just like, I've never actually seen one, but I do know like an executive that came to spring training and said, this is how you guys should be running the bases, and put cones out and told all the veterans that they had to renurn how to run the bases and train training. So, you know, it could go both ways.

That's a little bit of the pencil necks as Jeff Frankour kept referring to nerds. Pencil necks, come on. Sometimes you can take it too far. He said that over and over again. It was kind of amazing. Wasn't Frankour the guy that got convinced that someone was deaf for a month?

Let's just relax, bud. Yeah. Maybe just everybody's a pencil neck to him. Maybe not you, Frankie. Maybe not you. Wasn't Frank Kura the guy that got convinced that someone was deaf for a month? Let's just relax Maybe just everybody's a pencil neck to him Everybody's a nerd to the guy they convinced that someone was deaf for a month One of my favorite stories ever. Unreal. Slide metrics too. I mean there's there's the okay So there's a couple different things like there's ways you approach the bag There's like how like the timing of when you slide. There's the ability to swim around tags. Like there's all these very small things that those get really hard

and really granular as far as like teaching and breaking it down. Some of that is athletic ability. Some of that is practice and repetition and just learning. How are these guys going to try to tag me? How can I go into the bag, like the bag in the way where I can get around that tag? Like that's constantly changing. The hobby swim.

Yeah, but could you also optimize the slide for like, you know, being as fast as possible, but also stopping as quickly as possible? What is the optimization there in terms of, there's like VLO acceleration, de-acceleration, and you can't you you kind of want to be sliding over like you want it You don't want to lose you don't want to be zero at the bag, right? Because then you then you then you did you decelerate too much before no I would say zero behind past the bag, but not too far past the bag because then you

But if you're at zero right at the bag, then you could have been going a little faster. Maybe you have slide points where it's like, where's the optimal point to jump into your slide? I feel like guys who are quick, right? And they should be stealing good amounts of bags, but efficiency could really make them a very good base runner, even though maybe they're not as fast as the LA Daily Cruises, right?

So it's the same thing as Velo, right? It's guys who throw 92 need to be a little bit more fine. But there's a way to do it. I think there's metrically, there's probably a way to do it to where you get, you can train yourself to make yourself as efficient as possible. And then like know what a guy's normal pop time is,

know what your normal time is to get a second and make it pretty accurate. Like be like, I don't see many ways in which I beat the ball there. So I'm just not gonna run on this guy. And it's just, then you shut it down that day, but you run all over other guys. There's a lot of that right now.

Where there's just like a pop time, the batter knows, the runner knows the pop time and just knows if he can beat it or not. Or not the pop time, it's the pitcher time. They know the pitcher times and they're just like, I know if I can beat it or not. But we have seen advancement in base running recently that the Yankees spearheaded,

which is the kind of hop turn, it looks a little bit like a running start or something, but it has to do with getting your feet into position to accelerate quickly. Basically what they're, it looks almost like a running start, but it's more complicated than that. It has to do with turning their body in the right direction and getting their feet into the ground in the right way.

That's been kind of going around baseball. So if you watch, watch base dealers as they take off and there are different techniques for that turn, that first step and you know, how they get going. And some of that's been informed by, I think biometrics and biomechanics. That makes a lot of sense though, right? I think about where you're looking

and how your body is positioned when you're looking to see if the pitcher's gonna throw over versus how your body's positioned when you actually take off. So yeah, getting to that ready position as quickly as possible and efficiently as possible, that would give you a huge edge if there's a better way to do that.

It's just like, you know, if you're a sprinter, Olympics are coming up, having the optimal configuration for your start is critically important. Oh yeah, Mason Wint talked to me. They spend so much time on that, yeah. Mason Wint is a kid of sprinters, and he talked to me about how his father

would hold a pull out, and you don't want to get vertical too quick. Because you're in that drive position, when you're back is, when you're down, you're in that drive position, and that's like, you don't wanna just get up, pop up. You kind of want to go from drive up. And there's like this gradual kind of standing up and his father would hold a

pole out and he'd have to like run under it at first, uh, because he was trained, trained by sprinters. So, uh, yeah, there's, there's form. And then I talked to Carl Crawford a lot about the length of stride, like, you know, long strides can be good for being fast, but the longer your stride is, the more stress you put on your hamstrings and the more often you can get injured. So there's. Yeah. That was always Buxton saying is long strides. Yeah.

And Crawford said he like kind of worked on shortening stride a little bit because he was Carl Crawford got hurt a lot too. See, I got a nice short stride, probably because I wear boat shoes. I don't get a lot of hamstring quad strains, so. Gotta keep the shoes on. It's all about boat shoes. I'm not running in them, this is, you know, during the day when I'm walking around in my boat shoes, keeping things ready for my running.

Waddling around out there. Shuffling around. That's my secret. Been waddling my whole life. So, we're gonna take a look at something that happens on occasion. This was inspired by a sequence that I saw in a game last Saturday. It was a Dodgers-Brewers game, shocker.

I was watching the Brewers on the weekend. And we had Freddie Peralta facing Will Smith with the bases loaded in the fourth inning. It's sped up if you're watching on YouTube. It's an 11-pitch sequence. Freddie was ahead one-two in this count. And eventually, Freddie Peralta on the 11th pitch 11 pitch sequence Freddie was ahead one two in this count and eventually Freddie Peralta on the 11th pitch gets Will Smith the strikeout with a high fastball

It just got me thinking right there's only one out in this sequence Bases were still loaded two outs and Freddie Freeman steps in after that and I'm watching this game thinking this pitch count is already like Near the end like this Freddie Peralta is gonna leave this game soon. Freddy Freeman is probably the last batter he's facing, regardless of outcome. He gets Freeman out and get another tough spot. But it made me wonder what happens during and even after an extended plate appearance, because especially with the pitch clock now in place, you don't have as many ways to slow the game down after a particularly challenging plate appearance.

So Trevor, just kind of thinking about the cumulative effect of a plate appearance, like how challenging is that now in the pitch clock era versus in the pre-pitch clock era? It's definitely harder now. You know, conserving energy is a huge, it's just something you are thinking about forever since you were a kid and how long and deep in the games you can go and how many pitches you're at.

And when you are trying to, you want to be efficient up to a point. If you're a strikeout guy, yeah, you're willing to throw more pitches sometimes, but that means throwing four and a third innings. You can't be there. You're trying to get your six in and he's a strikeout guy, Freddie is definitely,

but that was an issue I ran into a lot in my career is I was willing to sacrifice 25 pitch inning if it meant a zero as opposed to trying to throw a 16 pitch inning and giving up a quick solo homer and then having a little bit quicker at ABs. Now there were days where maybe that was a little bit better situation, we had a bigger lead or whatever, but in terms of keeping me fresh,

but I would always try to throw the zero and that taxes you, especially against a team like the Dodgers, right? There's just no let up. There's no way we're like, oh, finally this guy's up. There's rarely a guy in that lineup that's like that. So if you can go and even if it ends with the strikeout of 11 pitches,

you're getting a guy on the ropes and you're putting, first of all, you're getting more pitches to see, therefore getting a higher chance of getting a mistake, the longer it goes, the more tired he's gonna be. So you're just constantly fighting and trying to get a pitch. Once you get exhausted, and then you also, once you get to pitch like seven, you're no longer doing sequencing anymore.

You're throwing what the best pitches are because you want this A-B to be over. You forgot what you even threw in the first pitch, so you're not pushing, pulling as much as you are kind of going raw stuff. And that just changes where it's just you versus him. It's hard to like fool somebody or mess up timing.

So you start to throw in weird stuff. But it can be- You're not best pitches. You're not best pitches. You're going to, I always had notes where like, this pitch is out of balance unless it's pitch nine of the AB. And he's just been falling off that pitch

that he's not supposed to hit well, which we're gonna talk about a guy in a moment where that's actually true, where I would have just completely shut his pitch down until a certain point. So that's what happens and that's what the Dodgers do so well. And that's what having talent like that is good, because not only that, they're not strikeout guys either. They grinded that a B's and they're good hitters.

And it's just a nightmare to pitch to them. Even if they can't hit a guy, a guy is absolutely dialed in. If they can put some 10-pitch ABs together, at least you can get them out in the fifth, and they'll have to go to their bullpen. And the fifth inning, the guy comes out, there's usually not enough depth in a bullpen to have the shutdown guys for the rest of the game.

You're gonna get somebody who you can probably hit around a little bit, and that's the bull. That's what they do really well. And even though he struck out, and even though that didn't work out, that's gonna pay dividends as the game goes on, because he's out earlier, even if they didn't produce any runs then.

So that's just the name of the game right there. And that was a great AB. And those were good pitches. He wasn't like missing middle and he's fouling them off. He was fouling off everything Freddie wanted to throw him. And he was throwing them where he wanted. And that's just, that's a blow to your confidence too when you're out there, like, I feel good.

I'm hitting my spots and I cannot get this guy out. Like, and Freddie's on deck. So yeah, it's like, cool. I feel good, I'm hitting my spots and I cannot get this guy out. And Freddie's on deck. It's like, cool, I feel really good because he's not missing anything that everyone else usually misses. That's not a place you wanna be. And I hated being there too. Yeah, you could see at the end of that sequence too,

after he gets the strikeout, he looks pretty tired, but he also glanced over at his dugout like, is that it? Because that could have been the exit point for him too. They could have went to the pen for that Freeman at bat if they wanted to but the mental side of that is huge And I got this chart that you know found from beyond the box score a great site That is unfortunately no longer around but it looks at the average Woba this chart is shows you average well after each pitch in the plate appearance And I think it's interesting it basically just goes up from four on to about pitch 12 it dips at pitch 13 and 14 but I think that's because

there aren't that many 13 and 14 pitch plate appearances. There's a weird sample thing that happens there especially at 16 17 18 so it is actually I wouldn't call this conclusive I mean four through 12 there's a lot of sample and part of what's going there is that on base percentage is of course going up because you've got three balls. If you're at 12 pitches without three balls, that's crazy. So, you know, so on base percentage goes up, but there is a corresponding rise in slugging percentage

that fits along with this. It's not just on base percentage. And then as the sample falls apart at the end, that is actually not, I don't know what the trend is there. I would have cut this graph off maybe at 12 or 13 because the sample really degrades after that. And I'm not sure. I think, you know, by the time you get to pitch 14 I

could see it turning back in the pitcher's favor to some extent because then by then you definitely have two strikes you know it's like you know so you know at some point you know the hitters just gonna miss one that he thought or you get a call or you know you you just dot the one that you're finally trying to dot. Hey remember too the hitter at that point is swinging every single pitch. He's got a foul on him. He's tired too. So he's tired too one that you're finally trying to dot. Hey, remember too, the hitter at that point is swinging every single pitch. He's got a foul on him. He's tired too.

So he's tired too. So you're swinging more, the longer they have beads going on, the higher percentage of the pitches are being swung at. So I wouldn't be surprised if there is actually a little downturn at the end. If that sort of 12 to 13 downturn that we saw in 12 to 13 pitch, where again, it starts to swing back towards the pitcher a little bit.

I wouldn't be surprised because, you know, how many times has a pitcher thrown 14 consecutive pitches all the time? How many times has a batter swung 14 times and won a bat? Not as often. Yeah. Yeah. So I think batters are probably optimized to swinging,

you know, five times when they get up there at most. So once it starts getting to 10 and 12, you start being like, wow, you know, like I'm actually, like think about also the home run derby and how they changed the rules this year, because, you know, batters are like, I'm not used to swinging that hard. And anybody who broke a record, you know,

didn't play as well after it because they were just gassed and they looked gassed, you know. So this is a slightly smaller version of that. I mean they're taking 40 swings, you know, we're talking about 14 or 10 or whatever, but I still do think that at some point it swings a little bit towards the pitcher where the hitters a little bit gassed and just trying to keep up. Why did, what was the pitch that ended the bat for Freddie Peralta? 98 mile an hour fastball. Think it was his fastest fastball of the entire outing too.

Which is a little bit easier for a pitcher to do, right? They could at some point be like, okay, fine, here we go. Here's one of my, here's my best fastball. Yeah, how deep can you go? I don't know, do I have my best swing in me right now? I've just swung so many times. And again, that comes from the game situation here being one where Freddie might have been like alright I'm coming out of this game soon. Let's start in doubt because I want to at least get this guy. I'm done regardless Let me just get through this

It's interesting too He seems to become someone that preserves velocity a little better than he did beginning of his career When he first came up and he was fastball Freddie it was a little better than he did at the beginning of his career. When he first came up and he was fastball Freddie, it was a little more erratic, I think, from a velocity standpoint than it has been these last couple of seasons when he's moved more into that ace level tier for a lot of folks. I would also say that just generally, this is really hard to study this effect

and things like hangover effects, because if you think about it, we did find a little bit of a Wakefield hangover effect, knuckleball hangover effect, but in order to really find that, you need to project the quality of every player after. You need to basically simulate the game and say this game didn't do as,

the hitters in this didn't do as well as I simulated them. You can't just be like, you know what I mean? You can't just like, oh. They didn't do as well. They didn't do as well. They didn't do as well. There's so well. Like there's so much noise in that. You know, you have to somehow isolate that. It's really hard to study this stuff.

I saw a different study that looked at foul balls and suggested that, you know, the number of foul balls in and at bat had no real effect on the chance of a hit. And so that kind of goes in the face of this, of this analysis from James Gentile at Beyond the Box score, but I would just say that it's really hard to study. There's a lot of variables, a lot of noise. There's fatigue from the hitter, the pitcher.

We talked about that, but there's also just how many pitch types does the pitcher have? Like wouldn't you think in a long at bat, a pitcher with five, what about Seth Lugo or Chris Bassett? The longer that goes on, the better he has an advantage, yeah. Because he's just got 14, he's got eight pitches. He could go to any one of the eight pitches. But if you're in a 14 pitch battle with Graham Ashcraft, well, you've seen his two pitches seven times.

Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's where starter versus reliever, the quality of your stuff, like all of those factors would come into play. So much stuff, yeah. But I also, I would imagine that command wanes over the course of a long play appearance. We could probably quantify that just with location plus or some kind of modeling. We'd see, oh, okay, eventually things aren't as crisp. You're not executing as well.

Because you're fatigued, like, because there's less time between pitches versus, like, I mean, are we talking about, like, there's 20 seconds between pitches, 30 seconds maybe with, like, everything that happens? And then how much time do you get between ABs? Is it much more than a minute? Not much more.

25, 30 seconds, I think? Depends on which park you're in and what team you're on. Yeah, right. Yeah, and who, when they start the clock. If the intern up there turns the clock on, if they're a stickler on it or if they're not, there's some places where they are not. They don't care at all. Maybe it's just mentally exhausting.

You're facing the same batter. You don't get any sort of wipe to be like, oh, I'm going in different, you're like, this is the same guy. I have to keep doing the same thing. It just comes down, your focus kind of wanes and then who breaks first, who wants it to be over? Like it really comes down to that sometimes

where it's like I can't even think about my approach anymore. I'm so tired and the guy pitching is like I can't even think about the target before I'm throwing because I'm just like let's just go and you're just going stuff on stuff. It really does get super simple. You turn in the little leaguers by the end. You really do and you can tell when it's swinging where the hitter's staying on his approach. He's falling off those tough pitches and the pitchers getting frustrated. Yeah, I think you can see it pretty clearly and vice versa. Peralta 98 mile-hours, yeah. You can see on his face, I'm not giving in to you and that's what you want to see. But neither one of them were and it was a great at bat, it was fun to watch. Yeah, it was a great matchup.

You had some issues with the pitch clock, Trevor, and command and so you know, I could see how not like, all the things that people teach, and you probably know more about this, but I've seen, you see a lot of the sort of breathing techniques, the big, you know, the big sort of, you know, reset, you know, maybe look at something that's not the hitter.

What are some of the things you were taught and then why did those break down during the pitch clock? How did command sort of spiral on you even though you had been taught these different ways of coping with bad spirals? That was always under the context that you could slow it down more if you needed to. So like you're-

You could walk around the mound. Yeah, ideally you didn't want to. You wanted to be, they're like have a rhythm. But if you have to get out of. Yeah, ideally you didn't want to, you wanted to be, they like have a rhythm, but if you have to get out of your rhythm, that is a strategy. And then they're like, no, it's not a strategy anymore. And then I realized how often I did that. Cause you don't like when you're not,

you don't really think about it. You're like, this is just my normal cadence. I'm just walking around the mountain. I'm just walking around the mountain and I'm slowing myself down and I'm, you know, I sweat a lot, I need to reset. And I need to, I want to throw hard too. And it turned out that like when I am put on a lot, I need to reset, and I wanna throw hard too. And it turned out that when I am put on a clock,

I had a really strong reaction to that, being rushed is something that I've always had that kinda gets me anxious. So I have that already, I'm predisposed for it, and it just was like a direct, it exacerbated the big time to where I just stopped doing the breath. I thought I didn't have time,

I just subconsciously just went, go. And I wasn't even going and lining myself up. I was just doing stuff that I was never doing before. And I was looking at the clock more because I needed to pay attention. I felt like it was always looming. And what actually helped was one in the minors, I just took a on purpose, just took a violation

and it was, didn't matter at all. I was like, oh, oh, I can just get one. Then I'll just flirt with it. And then I didn't look at the clock for the rest of the year. Not one time did't matter at all. And I was like, oh, oh, I can just get one. Then I'll just flirt with it. And then I didn't look at the clock for the rest of the year. Not one time did I look at it. David Robertson actually told me that, to do that. Or not me, he told Audovino and then Audovino told me,

he's like, I just stopped looking at it. Just stopped looking at it. Just chance it, who cares? Get them. Eventually you'll figure it out. And it was not that big of a deal. And I was like, okay. And so that was, that was the big thing.

But, but yeah, I had to train the breath to where I was doing it, like as I was like, okay. And so that was the big thing. But yeah, I had to train the breast to where I was doing it as I was getting the pitch. Saying yes and breathing. And that worked a lot. And then the one target thing was we talked about, I just adopted, I noticed the raise doing it. Shay gave me this target, we're gonna work off this target

and I'll let you know if we change it. And that way we were just immediately on the same page, the pitch was called and I didn't have to worry about any of that stuff so I could worry about lining myself up and then suddenly it wasn't an issue anymore. That and the windup. I went out of the windup again so I could step out, step back and then stop the clock. Oh, so you started using some disengagement sometimes?

Just like with nobody on it, I just started going out of the windup again. A lot of guys started doing that relievers because you could stop and like pause for a second just to gather yourself, lock everything in and go if you needed to. During the middle of your delivery. If you needed to, you could go slower if you wanted. But it was all a rhythm thing. Get on and go, get on and go. And so I just got going on this dance

that I didn't have to do as a reliever. It was the first time I had to do it. I also like that you took the violation and were like, oh, this big bad bear. I thought it would be embarrassing like a Bach. The emperor has no clothes. But he just steps out and he goes, it's one. Oh, I'm like what else is new, you know Throw in the pitch and it could have been one. Oh, yeah, or it's three two. I'm like whatever that's my best count man

No, can it be three? So Kyle Finnegan this year and Chris Bassett have seemed to have taken on your strategy a little bit Cal Finnegan has nine violations and Chris Bassett has seven There was one that was real real tough there. Oh, it didn't hurt him in a game Finnegan ended the game walked off Walked a guy in the base loaded, but I mean there was no outs and it was probably gonna end but like Yeah, I was like just can we turn it off in this specific situation just so a game can't end this way, please Kind of a crappy way to end things. I've seen Bassett do it, and Bassett is just an ornery dude.

I feel like he is just like F you clock. Like I've seen him. It's just, it's three, two, one, and then he's just, he gets it a lot of times, just barely in time. Yeah, and then he's just, he gets it a lot of times just barely in time. He just, I think he's kind of trying to, he doesn't, seven times he didn't, but he's not changing who he is.

It's about, at the end of the day, Chris Bassett, knowing him really well at this point, it's about the pitching, and he's like, I'm just not gonna let anything get me out of the pitching. And if that makes something, another obstacle that I have to be, I have to work around or whatever, then so be it. But I'm gonna keep trying to make the best pitch that I can, because I have to.

And I was like, I love that. It's just accepting. Seven extra balls for a starter over the course of a season. Reliever that could hurt a little bit more, but like, I think that's a good, just go for it and then just try to avoid it. There's gonna be a time or two where you're like,

I really just don't need a violation right now. But for the most part, if you just accept that that's the way it is, then it might happen I really just don't need a violation right now. But for the most part, if you just accept that that's the way it is, then it might happen. It just doesn't happen that often. I remember Robertson got one and he's walking in and he's hyped up because he's trying to close the game. He's like, I'm not looking at the clock.

I'm not looking at the clock. I'm not gonna look at the clock. So don't, and the guy's like, look at the, and he's like, I'm not looking at it. So don't tell me to look at it. Just, just tell me I got one and let's go. And he was like, kind of pissed. But if you were trading for Kyle Finnegan,

would you, would you like think about like, oh god, we're gonna put him in the playoffs and he's got nine It's clock violation. I mean I that would give me pause But I'm sure you could get a you could get a little information on like why he's doing that and that could be that could be remedy That's not a huge problem. Yeah, it's not he's gonna be out there back. I don't care about violations in game seven of the end Think about it maybe a little bit more. Yeah, the mentality might be just a little different in October than it is in the first half of the regular season.

Let's get to our game plan segment. Let's talk about how we should have someone pitch to Gunnar Henderson. It is very difficult because Gunnar Henderson hits pretty much everything. You know, I'm gonna throw it to you first. You brought a chart. What would you do against Gunnar Henderson?

Yeah, I'm the analytics dork. Here I am. I'm the advanced scout saying, I'm Mr. Pencil Neck. Trevor, Trevor, this is how you got a pitch to him. And you know, the first one, the chart on the left is his contact rate and there's obvious blue at the top. And you say, this guy's a low ball hitter, easy peasy.

Don't worry about it, just fill up the zone high with fastballs on him. He's got 70% contact rates up there. And then you flip over and this is always important. We've talked about this a lot on our facing on how to pitch to segments and stuff like this is you have to think about multiple things that are happening. So, you have to kind of switch what you're looking for

in terms of the analytics. Like if I just look at contact rate, it's obvious to throw him high fastballs, but if I switch over to his slugging percentage on fastballs, I see, oh God, there's a lot of red up there. So he might swing and miss more at the high fastballs, but he might also just hit and go tank. So it's not like a super safe place to live.

It's not a hole. It's not a hole like there are other people that J.J. Bladay or maybe a Cody Bellinger where they have lower contact rates in the upper half and they don't also hit for power up there, you know. This is Gunnar Henderson that probably has two swings. One little side note that's kind of interesting about this is this pattern here where there are lower contact rates high in the zone but good slugging up in the zone is true for Adley Rutchman, Colton Kouser, and Jordan Westberg along with Gunnar Henderson.

That's four players that are huge parts of that team that have developed some sort of second swing, some sort of way to attack. And I would say that even when those guys are struggling, it's a little bit about anticipation. So the one thing I would say to my pitcher is, you can throw the high fastball, but if you think he's on it, don't throw it again. You know, because he's trying to anticipate and put some sort of secondary swing that he's got.

He's got some sort of trick in his bag about how to hit that high pitch for power. And if he sees you coming a mile away, he's gonna pull out that swing and go yard. So you gotta convince him somehow that you're gonna pitch to him low. Is there another thing you can do Trevor in terms of maybe throwing a fastball

in a completely unexpected situation when you see that sort of feast famine approach for a guy with the high fastball in particular? Yeah, that was actually a great segue. Teams are doing this more and you can kind of get their philosophy. The cool thing about all the guys you just mentioned is they are all natural low ball hitters.

They cover the bottom of the zone pretty much all the way across really well with the lefties really hitting the down and in in the strike zone. So like a gyro slider down and into Henderson is probably the worst idea ever because it's not moving in the way that you need a big moving fastball to him to get to get any sort of bad swing but he had some really or sorry slider to get him

to swing a miss but what they're doing is they're like how can I get to the high fastball because everyone throws everything I now is even sinkers and cutters they're getting cutters up and in these are all kind of the same classification something harder that is the top of the zone that either moves in, moves away, or stays true, or rides. And everyone uses versions of that. So they're like, we have to be able to hit this pitch somehow. And they've created a approach where they're identifying either a pattern or a count or like mid counts. For me, I'm seeing big adjustments in mid counts, like one ones, two ones. Like hitters counts,

guys are like feeling good about throwing their fastball up as an option that they have command over. So like get these ones. And they're able to do that without losing their ability to crush every pitch that's out of it. So all of them are keeping that nitrosome where like, I never miss this pitch and I can get this pitch every once in a while.

That creates this dissonance in pitchers heads that makes them maybe make more mistakes or think they're seeing something like you were mentioning that isn't actually happening. And so I would notice that and I would try to start him with something that might be one of those high risk pitches, especially if it's be starting, leading off in anything, nobody's on base one out,

whatever, where you can avoid to give up a solo shot. Maybe I throw a first pitch gyro slider down and just get a strike one because first pitch he doesn't swing as much. So it's like, maybe I can get away with this, make him think that I think that I can get him out with that pitch and then just never throw it again. He's going to be looking for his pitch early, you'd think. Yes. So if you give him not his pitch early.

Not the one that he's crushing in the mid counts. He's like, oh, well now I'm in mid counts. If he throws that again, I'm going to crush it. Then you just don't throw it again. So either a slider or like a fastball up and in is what I would try. Even if I miss either one of those things, now he thinks that that's part of my approach

because it's the first pitch I threw. That's how you set the tone and then you just flip it. His miss misses our fastballs up and away. You can't just stay there, but you can set them up for it. And the pitchy, it's the softest from righties is changeups, obviously. And lots of soft contact. he rolls them over a lot more often, like to second base, that's his double play pitches.

And I have a good change-up. So it would be like setting him up with one of those high-risk, high-reward pitches early in a count, maybe not at the second and third no-outs, but if the situation calls for it, where I can afford to give up a double or something, maybe I'll take a chance and just get ahead of him. And then from there, it is fast balls up and away

and then using that change up. But it's just, it's like, that change up is the only pitch that I would double up on because even if he identifies it, the change, the movement and the change in speed still might get a miss hit pitch. Yeah, and he might have to go off with it. Now he's got juice that way, but he's got more juice pull.

So now it's like you're mitigating risk. And that is kind of how I would approach it, depending on how I felt that day. And then my late pitch, if I get nine, 10, 11 pitches, maybe the sweeper comes out. I avoid throwing sweepers to lefties, but he does chase it. Maybe backdoor. Backdoor is like the last, the Tanner Hauck. I try to hit Tanner Hauck him and hope it doesn't break over right into that down and in and try to get him to freeze. But like, that's not a pitch that I ever did on purpose. So I would have to be really, it'd be a dire straights to do that.

But those are just in the back pocket. I don't like to eliminate them fully because you never know. You don't want to be a two-pitched guy for too long. I like this matchup because it points out to the fact that you can't just like zone in on, you know, their perceived weakness and just attack, just attack that weakness

because they self scout and they know what they're doing. So like if you just come, high five, high five. He's like, yo, dude, I see you coming. Here we go. It becomes very easy for him. Yeah, and that's what superstars do. Like that's why he's gonna be, I think this is a projectable thing.

This is a, no, this isn't just like Gunnar Henderson going off because it's the sophomore year and he's young guys haven't figured them out. No, this is this is like sustainable. Like Bryce Harper had this too. Like this is sustainable. He does things and he adjusts. He's a slightly different guy every time you see him. That's when you know a guy's gonna be good and be good regularly, you know, health health permitting.

Right? Because like if he does have these two swings and then people are like, okay, I'll throw. Right, cause like if he does have these two swings and then people are like, okay, I'll throw the early high fastball when he's looking for something to go to the crush. Then he'll be like, okay, I'm gonna break out my high fastball swing early in counts cause I'm starting to see a lot of the early counts. Because I can do that.

I can hit that pitch, it's just when. So if you change when you throw it, I know I can hit it. So if I just change when I'm swinging, I'm gonna get ya. Right, yeah. And then if that happens, those guys are like, oh well, then he hit that one now What do I do like, you know, I mean like now they're all now now you gotta make an adjustment again Now he has a monthly, you know, he hits 380 with exactly and that's what he's doing Yeah, the past calendar year for Gunner right now sits at 279 349 561 42 homers

19 steals 134 runs and and 106 RBIs, just to round out our five by five roto categories. He's fourth in homers. Only Judge, Marcel Azuna, and Kyle Schwaber have more homers in the past calendar year than Gunnar Henderson. And it's a level of power that, I think, even if you really liked him as a player, as a prospect,

you didn't think he was a 40 plus home run guy on an annual basis. He's in the home run derby He is he's gonna ask his pitcher to give him low and in right or just like like low middle low like he'll be Like keep it close to me. He'd be close to me this bottom quarter of the zone closer I think it was really interesting just watch this because I learned a lot about Vlad Guerrero from the home run dirty Because he was like I want it high and tight Pete Pete does it too Literally Pete like does his little thing.

That is what he's doing. He's like, this is the pitch I get to. But he'll tell you, he'll be like, hey, I hear whatever. And in BP, he'd always be like, throw up and away. I can't hit that right now. So, and he just tried to take that oppo. And that's what Vick was doing. Vlad in the home run derby to his,

to his manner, I think was thrown to him. And he was like, you know, there was a one moment where he's like right here and then you realize the spot right now. Do it. Yeah. He loves just like yanking that high and tight fastball. And that's the type of hitter he is. Got one more topic to get to here before we go. Reese Hines has been going full on

Aristides Aquino on the Rockies to begin his big league career And we have this great view from behind home plate of the homer that he hit off of Tyler Kinley Earlier this week, which hey if you could give me that view more often or an option to toggle that on and off I think we've got something going on the broadcast going forward, but Reese Hines is a really interesting player because that is absurd power that he has. He brings some speed. It's a lot of swing and miss. I think we've rarely seen players with 35 plus percent K rates in the upper levels of the minors come up to the majors and have success.

It makes me wonder if Reese Hines could be a right-handed Joey Gallo because that's the first player I think of with the high strikeout rate that had a longer big league career than expected since the power was so good and because Gallo was actually a pretty good defender for a little while too So I almost wonder if Reese Hines is path to getting regular opportunities hinges on him being a Least good if not a very good defender somewhere on the field for the Reds. Yeah, I mean, it looks like he has 90 power, but, you know, just as fascinating for me, you know, maybe 90 power or 10 hit tools.

It's it's it's pretty extreme in both directions. So I agree that like things like base running and defense will become important because that's how if you look at somebody like Paul De Jong, who had like a 5% walk rate and a 35% strike, all right, why did he have the career he had? Because he could play defense while it's short, and had power. But in this case, something that was really fascinating to me was that they even had this viewpoint for us

in the first place because they went to this before the pitch came in, and I don't know if it was just happenstanceance and they were lucky but they got this tank they got this blast is absolute monster of a home run from behind the plate you got to see the pitch coming in the pitch going out. You know so Peter Peter fatty point this out to me he's a professor at Illinois and southern Illinois and also he's a chief science officer at Game Sense Sports and what they do is train hitters with sort of occlusion. They do things where like you know here's the pitch it's coming in and then they black out your glass and then you black out your view and you have to like that was a curveball as a slider try to guess you know try to guess location and

stuff like that to train hitters to make their decisions faster. So he's obsessed with that viewpoint in particular. And he pointed out that because of Traject, the newfangled hitting machine that's out there that basically every ballpark has to have that view for every pitch. So somewhere in some database, those exist for every pitch. And he was saying, and I agree with him a hundred percent, I would love to have access to that just because I think we could demonstrate deception so much better. We were just talking about Bobby Miller. We say, can hitters just see him? Is there something about seeing him? Couldn't we study that a little bit

better if we had more video from behind home plate and see, you know, can you pick up that ball quicker? You know, I know people for teams have done things where they, they define how long you can see the ball as an object before release. So sort of milliseconds before release. And it has that sort of a deception stat. We could mimic something that in the public sector if we had that viewpoint. So I guess just a plea to the powers that be, like I would like to have access. I don't know if I need to see the whole game from these seats.

I mean, it is great when you're sitting there, but I don't know if I at home needs to see every pitch like this, but I would love to have them available everywhere. The one thing about that view was interesting is because I know for a fact that there are additional cameras set up, like cinema style cameras that are trained on the hitter,

that are trained on the pitchers, so they can get those like cinematic, slow-mo. The 4K, whatever they do. So they do that. This one looked like it was actually a cameraman for the broadcast, the behind the, because he followed the ball. But there is also a camera in most places

that is just stationary and stays there. I know the Mets have one, whereas there was some of them, I have highlights where it's just that, and then the camera doesn't move, so it must have been just one that's sit there running, no one's operating it, and that's probably what they're getting.

But this guy looked like the way it was slightly, because there is a guy behind the home plate so he can get the home runs going. It was just, he happened to be there getting it there and there, he got both. But that angle does exist in a stationary way too. Maybe you, but you won't get the following of the ball. You'll just get like the swing most of the time.

That's what most of it is. To tie this back to our first segment, one thing that also didn't make it into the story was Corey Schwartz saying, and I swear to God, he said, some people are already doing this, that you can use StatCast Stats and AI in concert with your cameras to direct your cameras to look in the right places at the right times and be focused in the right places at the right

times and do the right angles at the right times. It'd be kind of amazing if this wasn't happenstance at all and this was the result of crunching the numbers in real time and being like like this is our best view right now. Dynamic camera automation is crazy if people are doing that that is crazy. That was one part of the future that will be cool also because the old heads like there's not much to say about it old-school wise it's this would just make you bet your life better. Yeah. You would just get the best angle at all times. You wouldn't miss stuff as much, yeah.

If that was the result of it, or if we got a peek into the future, or if it was just luck, and we'll see more of this luck in the future as the Staticast ads go into this dynamic camera stuff, that is part of the future as well. If Bally Sports Ohio is using AI that way, that's a better use of AI than me using AI to make birthday cakes for Statcast. These ones courtesy of Google Gemini. These actually look pretty good. Except for that word. Yeah. Also

cool laces. What lace pattern? A little bit off, bothering the hell out of me but it's all good. That's a picture. It's also ten years of Yeah, it's I think it's supposed to innovation, but you know it came up with an alien wow equivalent of the word You told AI to spell innovation that is bold that is tough. I can barely do three letter words This is our weekly a weekly moment I think those will be used sparingly, given that AI apparently has some major consequences in terms of the resources it hogs, but nevertheless.

Maybe next week we'll do Trevor May in a rope hat for the twins. Or Trevor baking an actual cake, we'll just take a picture of that. I can do that. And the seams will be right, you'll make the seams correct if you make a baseball cake. Probably not, but I'll do my best.

I didn't know I was gonna have to back up my criticism. So maybe I'll backpedal a little bit. We're gonna go on our way out the door. Reminder to get a subscription to the athletic at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. You can read that 10 years of stat cast story that Eno was a part of, plus all the other great content that we have.

As I mentioned earlier, hey, the Olympics are coming up. We're covering that among everything else going on around sports right now you can find Trevor on Twitter at I am Trevor May find Eno at EnoSarris find me at Derek the Rapper find the pod at rates and barrels shout out to the live hive for making the move with us on a Thursday we'll go live on YouTube each and every Thursday throughout the summer because hey people like long weekends and I like throwing my boat shoes on on Friday afternoon and just going for a walk so that's what I'm going to be doing. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels, back with you on Friday.