Rates & Barrels - Garrett Crochet to the Red Sox — Day 3 from the Winter Meetings in Dallas

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

Eno and DVR are joined by The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal to discuss Wednesday’s trade that sent Garrett Crochet to the Red Sox, the importance of a lower AAV in Max Fried’s deal with the Yankees, and an active Winter Meetings.Plus, they are joined by Esteban Navarro Garaiz of Zelus, Marlins Director of Pitching Bill Hezel, and former big leaguer Jed Lowrie to discuss each of their paths into baseball. Rundown 0:00 Intro Starts 13:31 Esteban Navarro Garaiz of Joins the Show 34:52 Bill Hezel Joins the Show 52:11 Jed Lowrie Joins the Show 1:07:30 Goodbye from Dallas! Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social Follow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.social e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris With: Esteban Navarro Garaiz, Bill Hezel & Jed Lowrie Producer: Brian Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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to start today's show. It's been a great winter meetings, Ken. Tons of activity. It actually has been good. Yeah. And it can always be better. But no, this was much better than some of the recent years where it was really slow. And all you asked for was a little bit of action.

Because it's interesting, and GM pointed out to me today, being here, as much as everyone hates it, baseball people and the writers, because this work can all be done not here. Right. You can get done anywhere. Being here, there is a certain momentum that happens and for instance the crochet trade, if the Yankees don't sign Freed two days ago in this building does that happen? Probably, but I don't know. The pressure mounted on the Red

Sox because of the winter meetings and all this talk and maybe that had something to do with it. You know and Juan Soto signing on Sunday night did open up the barn doors in a way. Now once you had your suitors for him, the Red Sox, all the suitors that were in there, what were the final suitors for Soto? The Red Sox had one of the best offers. The Blue Jays made a big trade. Mets and the Blue Jays. Every single one of them has been active since Soto signed with the Mets.

That's true. And when you look back on it, Derek, you make a good point. It has been a good winter meetings because you have to include the Soto signing and then Soto freed the crochet deal. Some other things that happened, the Jimenez trade yesterday was really interesting. Yeah. I'm satisfied. As much as you can ask for. So a pretty big return.

Garrett Crochet goes to the Red Sox. Kyle Teal, Braden Montgomery, Chase Medroth, and Wilkerman Gonzalez. I think Teal and Montgomery are the two headliners people are more familiar with from prospect lists. Did you get the sense that there were still several teams pushing to get a deal done for Garrett Crochet before the Red Sox finally pushed it over the finish line? Well what's interesting is that I believe it was two days ago, I lose track of the time, we reported that the Mets and Yankees were the most aggressive and at that time I heard the Red Sox were kind of not out of it but not really in it, not pushing. And it changed from what I understand last night and actually this

morning it changed in a big way. Last night the White Sox went to sleep thinking the Red Sox are not doing anything here. And then there was an exchange this morning, obviously an exchange and it got to the point where it got to. And I thought the White Sox did well, people can debate these things, we don't know with prospects anyway, but we'll see. I certainly thought the White Sox did better than they did with the Eric Fetty trade in the deadline situation. Yeah, well, Crochet is a better pitcher, but did you get a sense that there was one of these names that put them over the top?

Was it Built Around Teal and they added Montgomery or was it built around? I don't know, that's a good question. I will say this, Mydroth, that's a guy that, I don't know much That's a good question. I will say this, Maidroth, that's a guy that, I don't know much about any of these guys, but in talking to people today after the trade, he's a high floor guy. One of these guys that people think is going to be in the big leagues for 10 years, he might not be a star, but can be a quality infielder. And there's a lot of value to guys like that. So we'll see what happens. And then you have Montgomery. He is this high ceiling freakish athlete.

And Teal, there are some questions about him, but he's a catcher. He's a left-handed hitting catcher. And I forgot about this, Eno, but you know this guy. The catching instructor they just hired from the Brewers, Walker McKinven, I think is his name. He is the catching whisperer. Oh my gosh. I mean, the Brewers. He is the catching whisperer. Oh my gosh I mean the

Brewers have long been catching powerhouse. Yes so it's really interesting to see how it all came together along those lines. Yeah absolutely does this take the Red Sox out of the running for Corbin Burns? I wouldn't say that I don't know and they still should have a big money move in them, whether it's Burns or Bregman to play third base, but they are, I know they have not been successful in some of their pursuits, but they are acting like they should again. Yeah. It's frankly the way the Cubs should be acting, but haven't necessarily acted in a while now. So I would expect that, yes, they have one more big move coming and by the way, adding to

the Winter Meetings drama, the Kyle Tucker situation and the fact that he is out there, that is quite intriguing. What do you think is going on? Because Framber's name is being thrown out there too. Is it a reset or a financial thing? No, it's a financial thing. They want to cut money? It's not that, it's just that to this point,

maybe it changes with Bregman. They have not spent huge money on anyone. That's right. Remember, Springer walked, Correa walked. I believe Bregman is going to walk. I don't think Jim Crane's going 200 million, whatever it's going to take. And the same would be true for Tucker,

to a greater extent, because of the Soto contract. So it's knowing you're going to lose them. It's knowing you're going to lose them and acting proactively, which they have not done in the past because they've been so successful. So is that a reset? I guess you could call it that, you know? Or it's just making sure you don't get nothing. That's right.

Right. Because given the state of their system, it does make sense to be proactive. If you let those guys walk and you get basically the qualifying offer compensation for it, you can bottom out a little bit more. And what we talked about, or what we reported this morning, probably not gonna happen this way, but we reported that they have targeted Seya Suzuki and Isaac Paredes from the Cubs.

Now Suzuki doesn't sound like it's going to be traded. Most likely Bellinger's some other trade. But you get Paredes, and maybe you get their third base prospect, the kid they drafted last year, Cam Smith. OK, now you're doing some things, and you're still kind of staying strong at the big league level. You can redirect the money that you lose or you gain with

Bregman leaving. You can still be a competitive team in a division that's not that great. Yeah, there's a little bit of organizational turmoil in there that I think Chandler's reporting on and you know we wonder here we're a very analytically inclined podcast and we're wondering they seem to be turning away from that a little bit so you know. Well they have ever since Click was let go. There's a bit of a organizational thing going on with Houston

there at a crossroads we can say. At a crossroads. We don't know exactly which direction they'll take. The Max Free deal was very interesting to me because my initial reaction was eight years. This is a guy who's had Tommy John. He's had a forearm since the Tommy John and these forearm strains are actually, it's peer reviewed study, these are precursors to Tommy John again. So what if he gets a second Tommy John, you know, I think it's more common and we're going to get more people coming back from second Tommy Johns, but they don't always come back

right. We just saw Walker Buehler having a hard time coming back from his second one. So my initial reaction was eight years too much, you know, but there are some benefits to the, you think there's some sort of AAV massage, it was only a $27 million AAVs, is that part of the benefit for the angels? I think that's totally what it is. And it's DJ Lemahue all over again.

If you remember, DJ Lemahue signed six years, 90 million. The way I understood it at the time, he wanted 90 million. However many years you wanna do it, I want $90 million. So they said, okay, six, we'll spread it out, who cares? And it's the same thing with Freed in my view if you look at Freed and say six years to 18 the AVs and the 30s right the high 30s at that point that's what these guys are going for so I kind of believe actually I don't even believe I strongly it's an AAV play by the Yankees now I have all the same

questions about Max Freed's health that you do youV play by the Yankees. Now, I have all the same questions about Max Freeh's health that you do. I asked a Yankees person about that, and he said, what pitcher do you not have that question about? He goes, Garrett Cole. We got him a clean bill of health. He's been great. And then this year, he had the issue.

So I get it. Some guys are riskier than others. But at the same time, there's just no way to know. What about the Yankees trying to replace that offensive hole? Are they running out of options or do you think they've got lots left? I mean there's Ballinger in a trade but in terms of you know I haven't heard them linked necessarily to Bregman. They have been today. They have been today? Yes. It seems like they still have some money in their pocket jangangling in their pocket, and

a more of a need on the offensive side. Honestly, if you look at that lineup, it's not great, the bottom four at this point. There's no doubt they have an offensive need. Now, they have been also in on the Tucker talks. It would cost Louis Heal plus. Do they do that? It's Juan Soto all over again. Remember last year, they get Soto and then

he walks. You get Tucker, he might walk. It did walk pretty well. But if you keep going back there you start running out of things to trade. Right and that's the concern that they have. Louis Seal with the depth and the rotation now, maybe they could pull it off. They have command concerns with him still. Okay, but there's Bregman, there's Tucker, there's Bellinger, as you mentioned, there's Christian Walker and Pete Alonso. Walker I think is a good, I mean, either. Alonso would be a good fit actually with the righty oppo,

you know, cause he can hit that, he can, just like Stanton. Defensively they need to get better. That's right. Walker's a little bit better defensively. Much better. He's a lot better. I think that's a huge part of the appeal

with Christian Walker. You get a great defender at first base compared to Pete Alonso. I love watching Pete Alonso mash homers, but a more well-rounded player is Christian Walker at this point. It's also been fascinating, Ken, to see just the bump on pitching prices in general. The Freed, Nathan Evaldi gets three for $75. Every deal that comes in is just more than we expected.

I mean, Tim Britton's done a great job with those forecasts, and they're all just coming in a tick low. Yeah, and the one that stood out to me, actually, was Alex Cobb, one year 15 million. Alex Cobb, when he's healthy, is really good. He's not very healthy. Well, at this point, I mean, this could be his last deal. Any deal could be his last deal.

Right. It's really, they're starting to come together. It's all over. He's hurting everywhere. So the deals you mentioned at the top of the market are big. I expect burns to be really big. And then some of the deals at the bottom of the market for hitters to Conforto, the 17 million he got, people were still hearing about that one.

So it's just a hot market right now. So you know, we're obviously post COVID. So some of this is like okay we're financially stable as a sport, as a country, as a world you know like we've moved past a big crisis and so there's that. But there's also this sort of TV situation that was part of the reason we thought last year maybe the market was down a little bit you know and you know I'm starting to see numbers per win that are more like 12 and 13 million.

That would be kind of a big lurch forward, suggesting that people aren't as nervous about the TV stuff anymore. Are you talking to anybody about the TV thing? Yes. Do they think that just MLB running it has been fine, and that might be a future for these teams? The TV thing is still affecting a number of teams.

And we're talking about the money that's been spent. It's been spent by a set number of clubs. Teams that don't have that TV. Cincinnati, Minnesota. The Rangers are a TV problem. The Rangers evidently are confident that they are going to have something in play soon. You saw that. They were very deep in on Freed too.

Backloaded. So they feel there's going to be a resolution, but there are any number of teams, Cleveland's another one, where it's still a fight. And they just cut. And they just cut. So it's a situation where the haves and the have nots Are separating a little bit. Are separating a little bit, even more than they've been separated in the past.. Now whether that changes in the next couple of years as this stabilizes,

that's the question because there are agents who will tell you, now granted they're looking at from the players side, they're saying hey three to five years from now everything's gonna be fine. These guys are they know it's gonna be fine. It might not be what it was, but maybe you get revenue in other areas. So every time people cry wolf about the sports finances, as a whole, I kind of get suspicious. Individual markets, yeah, there's no doubt. But as a whole, no.

Ken, we appreciate your time and your insight today. You know, you got a lot of places to be. Still, maybe a little time to squeeze some deals in. I know people are wheeling suitcases out of here but I gotta eat for the first time. Oh yeah. We gotta let you go and get you some lunch. Don't forget regular bodily functions. Thank you for coming on. Be a human Ken. I'm trying. Well as we've done throughout the week here in Dallas we got a lot of great guests. In addition to Ken Rosenthal, who we just spoke to, we have Esteban Navarro-Garay's fantastic guest.

Joined us, he's from Zealous, telling us a lot about what he does in this space. Bill Heazel, the director of pitching for the Marlins, and former big leaguer Jen Lowry, all part of the program today. So we hope everybody enjoys those interviews. All sorts of different perspectives from all parts of the game inside and out. I really

appreciate all of them for coming on. I think that they gave us a valuable perspectives on just the way people see baseball from different angles. Absolutely it's been a great time catching up with so many people in this industry over the course of this week. With Uber Reserve, good things come to those who plan ahead. Family vacay? Reserve your ride as soon as you book your flights. To all the planners, now you can reserve your Uber ride up to 90 days in advance.

See Uber app for details. Now it is our pleasure to be joined by Esteban Navarro Garayes. He's a senior technical product manager for Zellis. Esteban, thank you for joining us. Thank you all for having me. I'm very excited to be here. That was a great pronunciation, so off

to a very strong start. Fantastic start to the day. Tell us a little bit about what Zellis does. I think a lot of our listeners are not quite familiar with the firm. Yeah, so Zellis Analytics has been around for about five years, and we help empower sort of R&D teams with data and models to make decisions. So it was

founded by Doc Fearing who initially created the R&D department for the Dodgers way back in the middle 2010s and Luke Luke Bourne, who worked for Roma in Italy and the Sacramento Kings in the NBA. So Celos grew to be about 80 employees. We worked in seven sports. So we work in basketball, hockey, football, soccer, with all the major leagues and some top teams. And it was acquired by Teamworks about three months ago.

So we are actually now a much larger company, which is very, very exciting. Awesome. And Teamworks, what does Teamworks do? Yeah, so Teamworks, the mission for Teamworks is building the operating system for sports. So running a sports organization is very complicated. You have travel logistics, nutrition,

all these keeping your athlete healthy means, measuring things, going to doctors, coordinating across a lot of different teams, inventory management, right? There's all these sorts of problems about how to efficiently run an elite sports organization and Teamwork is building products to help our partners do that. Do you find, and this might be too far in, but do you find that your

partners in baseball or in other sports are using you as a redundancy or something they use you and their own or that you kind of feel a need that you kind of are their operations. I think that some teams would be like, this is a lot of proprietary, I don't really want to have another company managing this for me. Yeah, we see both use cases. So we work with all kinds of R&D sizes and sort of maturity. Some people see us as a complement to their own internal system or as a check or say, you know,

like a blended projection between the two that's better than any of the two stand-alone products on their own, but we also have R&D teams that rely on our products for their day-to-day and their game strategy and so on. I would say one of the core principles of CELUS is transparency, so like when we work with a team we are totally clear on how we built our models and what technical decisions we made and how we got there. And part of that is just getting that understanding and buying the product that it's actually doing what we say it's doing, that it's a good model, so that people want to use it excitedly.

And then each of these is sort of bespoke to the needs of each of these teams. So like, you're not, do you have like, if you have like an internal stuff, are you giving the same stuff plus to each of the teams? So yes and no, right? Like, as a company working with multiple teams, we can't really build custom things for each team that would just not be feasible.

So a lot of our products are sort of tailored to team needs so that everyone can use them. But we also help our teams in the last mile in like how does your coach want this? Like maybe there's a particular format that they're used to or a way that they want to get the information and we certainly want our partners to be able to provide that for their staff. So we help them in that regard. But yes, mostly we try to build models that are largely applicable across all of our clients. So the user interface seems like it's critically important,

because every coach, every organization definitely wants to have different things available in different places. So is that where a large share of the resources go when you're working out each new deal with a new team? Yeah, it's actually very interesting, right? We don't interact with coaching staff at all. And so what ends up happening is this is where an internal R&D team really comes in. So what we do is try to provide them with all the tools they need to then go to their coach and tailor that to their own needs and act as that sort of like liaison between what we're doing

and how to win games tomorrow. That's another really interesting part about the Teamworks acquisition is they are very focused on that. Like, what is the interface and how do we centralize all of these things to be in a single place? And candidly, that was something we, again, because our partners built it themselves, because it's how it gets used, have

been focused at before the Teamworks acquisition asked to sell us. So the Seals Teamworks synergy is going to be really, really interesting. And it's one I'm very, very excited about. No, I had a conversation with the GM once and he asked me how long do I think if you have the state-of-the-art

operating system, we're talking about like IV in Boston I think it's IV in Boston and each of these teams has a different name for their operating system. Right, internal systems. Internal system. And he said, if we have an internal system that's state of the art, and we don't do that much to it,

how long till we're behind? And we had a group of people, and we were sort of guessing at the number. And the numbers ranged from two years to five. I think it might actually be tempting to me as a GM to be like, well, let's have a company that all they do every year is try to make it better. Maybe we don't fall behind as quickly,

because they're going to be spending all their resources on this operating system, you know, and they're going to, of course, every year, they're going to have a new version of it. They're going to upgrade. They're going to keep working on it in that way that I don't have to spend as many resources internally trying to keep up with the Joneses, you could say.

Yeah, so before going to SELS, I worked as a quantitative analyst for the Dodgers for two years. And that internal website had consistent work being done throughout and new products that are being built that needs to be displayed in player pages to aid decision making and so on. But that's the Dodgers. And they have one of the biggest

you know, the best business in the world. Right, they have an entire like software engineering department that's solely focused on building this website and making it the best it can be. So you're right that like, you know, as an external company, again we're working with the top R&D teams in the industry

and some other teams that are more lean but very powerful as well. And so we focus on solutions that work for both of those. There's teams that have the manpower that just want to customize everything to the very last detail. And for them, we provide the raw data to do it. You want your graphic in this way.

You want 2,000 simulations rather than 500 simulations, whatever. We give you the tools to do that. And then we ourselves have built these products for teams like within Cellular Baseball there's people that have worked I think in 12 different MOB front offices. So we're sort of like walking in your own shoes and that we've built it before. And so we also have a version that we've built that are our visualizations. So you can sort of work with both of these use cases. And yeah, it's been fascinating being on the other side.

So what led you to the Dodgers? What led you to a career in baseball? Where did it begin? Yeah. Whenever I don't want to vary the lead, which is I applied to a job opening and eventually got the job opening. Whenever I hear a lot of these conversations, like, it's about how people have connections or met someone in college or whatever. I grew

up in Mexico City, so I didn't have that privilege of going to high school with the guy that had the job that opened the door for me. So I think it's important to tell my story, because you can get a job in baseball by just applying. You can't get a job without sport experience for a top front office, right? You just need to focus on sort of like your technical skills. So in Mexico, I grew up a soccer fan. Baseball came in later into my life

when I was sort of learning that I like predicting stuff. And so it came more in the way of like fantasy baseball or like a little bit of betting and so on. And I started to do very well and these two things were always combined. So I went to school for mathematics just kind of not knowing what I wanted to do later and started learning that I like predicting stuff and I just didn't have I wanted to do later, and started learning that I like predicting stuff, and I just didn't have the tools to do that professionally very well. Is there something about baseball

that lends itself better? Are there more events to predict? Is there something about the one-on-one matchup, or the sort of the state? It's like a stop, start, stop, start, and stay. It's about being able to isolate events. So if you think about soccer, a lot of it is about space creation.

And it's continuous in time and with 22 players moving at the same time. Whereas in baseball, I pitch, you bat, he defends. And then each of those actions are separate. So the sort of nature of being able to separate the states means baseball is probably like 30 to 40 years ahead of other sports. In that like we can say with confidence, like you the pitcher created this value in this run scale for your team.

Whereas in basketball, someone sets a screen, someone else passes, someone clears the space for that open three-point shot. How much value to assign to each of these actors is very much an open question still in the spaces with space configurations. They tried a lot with plus minus stuff. And there's plus minus, adjusted plus minus, real plus minus, all these with or without you stuff. Are you on the court?

What's happening when you're off the court? And all of those, I think, have their flaws. Right. So Dan Serboni, who was the third co-founder of Sellos, actually has a paper called Expected Possession Value. So the basketball version is from 2014. The soccer version is from a little after that. And it's this really, really complex deep learning model

that gives you sort of like a real life ticker, like how valuable is this possession right now, given the configuration of the players? Oh, this is like a leverage index. Yes, that's kind of the, it's more like how likely are you to score from this position rather than how important this position is. Oh, this is more like when probably added,

so you can kind of get it. That's exactly right. And so that level is so much more sophisticated than say, like, a linear weights that in baseball allows it to say, a single is worth this, a double is worth this, and then all of the value goes to the batter. So that's the big difference. Yeah, yeah. That's interesting. And what sort of schooling, what are your, like what did you study? Yeah, so I went to school for mathematics in Mexico City and then as I was learning

I like predicting stuff I realized I didn't have the computational skills I needed to actually do this as a career. So I was lucky enough to win two scholarships to come to the US and do a data science master's at New York University. And it was at NYU that I started to sort of understand this was an actual industry that I could work in. So I started to apply to jobs. It's a really grueling,

pace-taking, time-consuming process. So first I tried to get an internship. I talked to maybe like 10 teams. I was a finalist for a few, but didn't get an offer. Went to work in tech for a summer. One of the teams I had talked to was the Brooklyn Nets. So we actually ended up connecting on a capstone project for them on my second year of my master's program. And then now with some US work experience and the

Nets product, I did it all over again and I applied to an opening at the Dodgers and got a quantitative analyst job. What language is it? Python? I am a Python guy, but the industry, particularly in baseball, is still very divided between Python and R. And there's strong takes on either side of the discussion. What would you tell someone who's coming up to learn?

Python. So Python is more flexible in that it allows you to do a lot of data engineering efficiently. But a lot of the traditional statistics models are still very much stronger than R. So it depends on what side of the equation do you like more. Is Python better if you're going to represent it visually afterwards?

Also very much divided opinions on this. Yeah, Python is just more flexible in that it can do more things and R is more specialized on the statistics side and the kind of models we use for baseball. Interesting. And so we've been asking people, like let me ask it this way first, which is normally we were saying, you know, when you hire, what do you look for in a person? But you know, we also have a lot of people here looking for jobs.

So what would you tell someone who's looking for a job? What are the skills that people are looking for? What are the aptitudes, the skills, but also maybe the temperaments? What are the things that baseball people look for when they hire? Yeah, it's been five years now doing hiring. Obviously, the Dodgers would get 1,000 resumes per position

or something. So you need to start to do a lot of shortcuts when you're reviewing those, because otherwise you would spend three weeks just looking at resumes. The one thing I would say, and this is sort of my advice to everyone, is the less I have to guess whether you are able to do the job or not, the easier it

is for me to move on to the next phase and just give you a conversation where we can go more in depth. So it's not even about academic credentials necessarily. It's about you showing that you care about this or that you've done it. So there's data out there already. Like you want to work in sports and data,

just do it for yourself. Like show me that you've walked a little bit. And that. Make your resume be, like make a project be your resume. Right. Your website and your port, like your project portfolio is your resume. And that way I can go see your code

or see some graphics you've created or walk through a problem you thought about. And then I can understand, well, what assumptions did you make? How did you approach it? Why did you do these sorts of things? That's the easiest way to have a conversation. The other part, and this is a bit controversial or something I feel strongly about that I

know people disagree, is the technical skills are way harder to acquire than the baseball. Like, I can teach someone what the rule five draft is, or how the arbitration system works, and so on, but not really how to do a random forest, or what that is, right? And so- I mean, that takes school.

It takes years, you know? Right. But there is all this data out there. Like, if sports data is the way in which you learn It takes years, you know. Right. But there is all this data out there. Like, if sports data is the way in which you learn all of these things, and then you get a cool data scientist job at Facebook or whatever and make a lot of money, that's a great outcome.

And so using sports to get you to sit down and learn these skills is the other thing that I encourage people to do all the time. I like that. And then once you've sorted those and you've got them down, because yes, let's say, especially at the Dodders, you've got 1,000 for one position, and you use some shortcuts to get it down to 100,

20, 50. I mean, you're still going to have a lot. You're still going to have a pretty big pile. After you've said, none of these guys said they could do Python, and I want Python in this one. And then they also have to be doing machine learning. So I got Python machine learning. I got it down to 200.

What can be the final differentiator for some of these things? Communicating technical concepts at different levels of granularity is very important. So if you're with a general audience or a coach or whatever, they care about the data insight. They don't care about how you tuned your model or what sort of difficulties you encountered to get there.

Whereas when you're talking with your R&D folks, now we actually going to get into the details of the model and why we built it and so on. And so this ability to talk to different data stakeholders and meet them where they're at is crucial. I think one of the things that I know about that, it seems like you have to be willing, like if you were saying something

that you were saying to a coach as an analyst, you have to be willing to take some shortcuts and leave some stuff out that if you were speaking to someone more technically they'd be annoyed. There might be a voice inside your head being like, oh you shouldn't say it this way, no this is not completely right, but you have to like not listen to that and you have to be like, no I have to meet this person where he's at and not bring that entire, but, but, but, but, but this, and this, and this, and this. No, sometimes you have to be like, here's a top line take

away. A little more confident, a little more simplifying. Coaches have a lot going on. They don't have the time to sit down 20 minutes and distill a result. They want to know, this guy should throw his slider more in situations where he's behind the count. And then, yes, they'll ask you, well, what happened?

Or how did you get to this? Well, we analyzed trends that are similar for this particular pitch shape in this level and situation. And it turns out this person is too predictable. Or locating too inside or whatever. That's when you actually get into the weeds. But you don't bury the lead, right?

Right, yeah. And then you go from there. You get the headline, and then people read the story. And I think probabilistic thinking sometimes will lead you to want to put too many qualifiers in every statement. Right, we're probably, as statisticians, we're trained to do that, right?

Yes, this is true in this situation. But we assume this, and we have these data limitations. And if I were to build it again, I would change this, and this is the next direction. Like, you're not trained to do that, right? And you need to learn to be like, hey, here are the two things you need to know. And if you have questions, I'm here and available.

Yeah, I mean, communication, I think, is one of those skills that is needed at every level even if you think I can do this stuff Why do I you know need to be you know able to communicate so well? It's like well You will have a manager and you'll have a team and like you'll need to work with a team And you're in this context not just like I can type away at this and that's your you're what my work That's not that's probably not good enough, especially in a baseball context, I think, where you want to foster collaboration. You want to be able to cross-pollinate.

Other things I've really seen work is, look, again, these people are really busy. There's probably something they're doing in their day that you can automate. They're doing manual charting or filtering stuff to get to something. You can automate this and save three hours of their time

for them to free them up for more important problems. And that's how you meet them, right? It's like, hey, I solved this problem you have, and I can help you do these things. And then now they'll want to listen when you want to talk about a model. What I hear between the lines is, think about your end user. Think about how this will be used,

the research you're doing. Think about who might want to see it, what they might want to look at it, how might they want it to look, even if you're just supposed to be doing the work, yeah, that's going to go to someone. So if you know that this is going to the pitching coach, know that maybe it's gonna need to be visual at some point, it needs to be very simple, maybe it's need to put out some bullet points. How is this going to end up going there? Exactly.

Well, that's exactly my job as a product manager now, is to try to understand the end user. In tech circles, it's called product discovery. How do I solve the problem that you have? I talk to our clients on the MLB side a lot to try to understand what their needs are and how we build a roadmap that gets there or do a lot of client support and so on. So that's actually the part of baseball that I've sort of specialized in and that I absolutely enjoy doing.

Well Stabon, it's been great getting to know more about what you do. I think there are so many applications even beyond inside baseball rules. People would love to streamline Some of the tasks that take them forever knowing that major leagues teams have so much information that they're trying to process That seems like such a critical part of the job. Thanks for taking time to talk to us today Yeah, thank you. I would have done this for four and a half hours Now it is our pleasure to be joined by Bill Heazel, Director of Pitching for the Marlins. Bill, welcome to the show. Thank you.

Thank you guys for having me. So just curious, what does your role encompass? We don't have a lot of directors of pitching in major league organizations right now. I mean it kind of encompasses a little bit of everything. I think the primary role is to just ensure that philosophically, culturally, training wise, everything that we're trying to do on the pitching side at the big league level is kind of implemented, executed, believed all the way down. We're just trying to make sure we're kind of vertically aligned from the top to the bottom on the pitching side of things.

So my job is to help facilitate that and make sure that that happens. Tell us a little bit about your background, how got to where you were you were with the angels last I think I forget what you was you were your pitching coordinator with the angels or no So I was the major league pitching strategist and then I was also the assistant pitching coach was there for two years the last the last Two years. Yeah, then before that Spent a large portion of time at driveline was the director pitching there and spent a large portion of time at driveline, was the director pitching there. And yeah, I was there for almost four and a half years, something like that.

Was actually hired by Sam Breened. And then prior to that, I was back in Pennsylvania, where I'm kind of from originally, and I was coaching Division III college baseball and junior college baseball there. That's a little different. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah I did I did. Yes, so I played I played two years at Lehigh University two years at East Stroudsburg University Yep. Yeah, it wasn't very good. But you know, that's okay

But yeah, and then you know started coaching Actually a couple years after I finished graduating and stuff and just kind of got lucky fell into it You know got an opportunity at a junior college, and then, yeah, just kind of went from there. How do you think that you got Kyle's or DriveLine's attention working in D3? Probably not that much tech. Yeah.

Did you have that much tech? No, none. None. None. OK. So this is like, you know, driveline's a tech driven, data driven enterprise, you know, everybody knows that. So how did you get their attention, you know, given what you were doing at the time? Yeah, so I started coaching junior college

baseball and that first year I think I did what probably any new coach does, which is just kind of you, I don don't know you implement the things that were implemented on you right like the way you were coached you just like coach your athletes and that first year was fine we guys were good but I don't I didn't feel like I got anyone like significantly do you have an example of like you know what you believe back then or yeah just like you know dry work and a lot of towel drill type you know things like like that, which are fine. We're fine.

Those were the things that I was, you know, a lot of long toss and those were kind of the things that I was brought up on or was exposed to. Some of them you still use probably? Yeah, yeah, of course. Long tosses. Of course, of course. Everyone uses that pretty much. And, yeah, we had a fine season season but you know, junior college baseball,

you know these guys are, these guys got a year or two to try to find another place to play and I just felt like man you owe it to these guys to get them better. Like they're trying to get opportunities out of here and we had some success that first year but I just felt like man I didn't really have a unique opportunity to train these guys and I just, I don't know, I don't think that they got significantly better. And then I just thought about my own career and I was a pretty good high school player. I wasn't, you know, anything fantastic, but I was upper 80s in high school and so I just assumed, well, you know, four years in college, I'm just going to, I don't know, I'm going

to be through harder. Yeah. I'm going to play in the big leagues or whatever. Yeah. And, you know, I just didn't get significantly better. And so I don't know, I just started thinking about, all right, well, maybe the way I was trained isn't the best way to train some of these guys. And so I just, I don't know, went on the Internet,

just randomly stumbled across a Hardball Times article that Kyle had written, kind of breaking down some prospects and some different players. And I was just like, man, I've not really thought about pitching in this way. And then went to the early drive line blogs and just started reading a bunch of stuff. And then, yeah, just reached out to Kyle and was just like, look, I want to try some of this stuff. What was it about the way?

What was different for you? I believe the first article I read that Kyle wrote, he had broken down some pitchers in the upcoming draft. And I think the first one was read that Kyle wrote, he had broken down some pictures in the upcoming draft and I think the first one was on was on Stroman actually and I don't know just just this this idea of like ignoring the fact that he's like, you know undersized and focusing more on just like how efficiently he moves and how he's able to create velocity from a smaller frame and that like we're you know we're overlooking the fact that like he's extremely athletic and it kind of just like came across as different from this like, you know

mentality of like he's got to be like 6'5 and these kind of like older-school beliefs or whatever and Just like somebody breaking down the delivery in a way that I've never really thought about before And then started obviously reading some of the training stuff and how they were using weighted balls and stuff. And so I just reached out to Kyle and was like, look, I'm going to try this with my junior college guys. And he was like, all right, cool. Here's how we've been rolling it out. Report back to me.

Track everything. Send it to me. Give me any questions you want. I can answer them all the time. And so we kind of exchanged some emails back and forth. And I think the first year I rolled it out, I kind of like really didn back and forth and I think the first year I rolled it out I kind of like Really didn't do a ton with it. I was a little nervous as to like I've never really implemented like this before

I never used those implements before myself But the guys just like loved it And and then the second year when we kind of took a little bit of a deeper dive and like really committed to it like I don't know guys got like significantly better guys loved it and then yeah at that point I just started using Twitter you know like everyone else kind of did at that time period and started putting out some content some stuff that I was doing with players and and at the time it wasn't really to like sell myself it was more just like I want to show off the players I'm trying to get these guys, this is a recruiting thing for me.

If I'm placing players, I'm going to get better players. If there are players that want to train in this capacity, they're going to see that we do it, and then I'm going to be able to get them. And so it kind of started like that, just putting some stuff out. And then, I don't know, I just got, you go to Pitchapalooza at the time, you just started going to all these other places, and would run into Kyle, talk to him here and there. And then went to D3 school and kind of did the same thing, implemented stuff again, posting some stuff out.

And yeah, and then just like one winter, I just got a cold email from Mike Rothwell that was just like, hey, we have a position. We'd like to talk to you about it. Awesome. Who are some of your other influences you're talking about? You're on Twitter.

That means you're reading too. So who are some of your other influences you're talking about? You're on Twitter. That means you're reading too. So who are some of your other early influences? I mean, I really dug into the hardball times at that time period. I was reading Kyle's blog quite a bit. And then started just reading and consuming everything I could, whether it was on fan graphs, like I said, hardball times. I was reading a lot of Eric Cressy's blogs at that point too. And so yeah, just trying to consume as much stuff as I could and then, yeah, just then started trying to dig into like training theory stuff, so just started reading some like Bonner Chuck stuff and yeah, it was just you know trying to upskill myself as much as possible to give my players the best chance to succeed.

Training theory is a little bit of like sort of vary the implement vary the you know that like how we acquire skills. Yeah all that stuff like this the science of training. Yeah yeah yeah. Within that I always think of staleness right doing too much of the same thing and I how do you combat? How do you build that into your things that you're teaching now? Oh, yeah. I think you can combat that in some sense by obviously progressing anything that you're doing.

So you're always challenging the player in some way. And there's some sort of periodization structure with how you're setting up your training and stuff. But I think the reality is, like, with pitching, it's just like there's a lot of repetitiveness and routine, and so I think, you know, it's important to try to keep guys engaged as much as you can, keep the focus on the goal, try to, you know, create competition, gamify as much of the stuff as you possibly can and then yeah just really make sure they understand the why about what they're doing and you know obviously

helps keep the focus centralized around that. Do you think that pitching is a really mature pitching coaching is in a really mature moment right now is there is there you know what are the differentiators now it used to be maybe knowledge and you, but the knowledge is kind of ubiquitous at this point I mean, yeah, they're how different our programs from place to place. I think there's still like a pretty big difference, but I think I Don't know the way I think about it is like the thing that's maybe the most valuable is almost like the most old-school thing Which is just like the coaches ability to communicate with the player

and develop a relationship with the player. It's like you said, every team is, knowledge is becoming more ubiquitous. Every team has tech. Similar data. Sure, sure, and so I think the big separator is your ability to communicate that information to the athlete in a way that's not just digestible,

but they can actually take action on and they can leverage that information. And then that you've built a good enough relationship with the athlete that they they trust you and they're willing to commit whatever recommendation you have. And so I think that's really where like the art and skill is. So I think that's the big separator. There's something about you know like you have this great base of knowledge as a coach and I think you know I think some young coaches want to tell you how much they know you know

and I think pitchers nowadays are have become you know more sponges they're they're more interested in the why in all of it. Not all of them, not everyone's not the same. But there's still like this tension between, I want you to know that I know what I'm talking about, but I don't necessarily need to tell you everything I know from the beginning. What do you see about that tension in coaching?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I definitely resonate with that. I feel like early on in my coaching career, I mean, that's exactly how I approach things. I wanted to do everything I could to get the player to trust me, to understand that I'm working in his best interest and I know what I'm talking about. And so, I don't know, intuitively, the first thing you think about is just like, let me just dump all of this on him.

Tell you everything Yeah, it's not the best way to do it I don't know I think you know now that I've had the opportunity to work in professional baseball for for a while and Even a driveline getting to work with some some really special people. I think what you just realize is that like I Don't know the player really cares most about That you care about him. And if you can communicate and demonstrate to the player

that you care about their career, you're really working hard to help them get better, I don't know, that to me is the single best way to create trust and start building that relationship. And then you just have to get to know the player. I think there's plenty of players where they're much more data driven, if you will, or analytically leading. And so that's your end with them.

You can talk about stuff. But then there's also somewhere the best way to build a relationship with them is to talk about their family or go golf or just... Call of duty. Yeah, yeah yeah whatever I don't know I think I don't know I've worked really hard over these last couple years to try to be able to you know understand that recognize that do both because I think a driveline sometimes or at any private facility like the athletes are kind of self-selecting in some sense to be like more analytic like that's right because you because that's why they're coming there.

With a professional organization, they're not selecting the same way. You're going to get the whole gamut of people. Yeah, I feel really fortunate to have had the opportunity now to work with a ton of different guys, veterans, all these different personalities and stuff, and so you start to get an understanding of those things. Sweet, you know it's a job fair, we've been talking about different things people are looking for when they're hiring. Communication is obviously critically important for roles that you're trying to fill.

What else moves the needle when you're interviewing people? That's a good question. I think first and foremost is that you just want a good human, a good person. I think that's probably number one. We want a good person, someone who's going to be a good teammate, regardless of what the position is. I think for me, the other one is probably just like motor. I really want people that are not just excited to do the work, but excited to be a part of our organization and do the work with us. I think that's really really important. You know

especially, you know there's a lot of work to do right? So like you, you know I really want someone that's not just excited about doing it, but is excited about doing it in our organization. And then I think the other thing that we've pushed and that we've looked for is folks that like have some, you know, are looking, are innovative but are more so looking to, in some regards thinking about, man, what could we get this thing to look like in two or three, four years? And like have some idea of like, hey, if we do these things now, it builds the foundation for us to be here four or five years from now.

And look, there's got to be a balance there, right? Because you've got a lot of work to do right away. We'll try to win baseball games and stuff. But I think having an understanding of like, man, this could be really cool in three years if we start here. So having some foresight to think about how we can be ahead three or five years from now I think is important too. The, there's, I feel like I love the answer

but there's also like in an interview environment, no one's gonna broadcast to you that they're a bad person. Yep, yep. Everyone's, the word excited is probably the biggest word in any interview word cloud of all time. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think the good thing about events like this

and just like the, you know, we say it all the time. It's just like the industry is like a pretty small world. Everybody kind of knows everybody. And so I think events like this and just like the network you build and relationships you have, it gives you a cool opportunity to where you can reach out to former colleagues, teammates, players. The interview itself is not the only thing. Yeah, yeah.

Your life is your body of work. Exactly. What you do is your resume. Exactly. So there's plenty of opportunities to get background on folks and get an idea from players, colleagues, coaches. So you get an idea of how do they work. How do they work with others? What did you like about them?

And so there's plenty of opportunities to get background. And yeah, I think that's where a lot of that, is this person a good teammate, can come from. I think just as one last question maybe, just you guys are, as an organization, are in transition, or you're really hiring hard, you know?

It's like a lot of new people in the organization. Is this gonna be in waves? It seems to be happening all at once. There's a lot of new people. How is that, what is that feeling like of sort of getting together? Like, with the Angels, it's a little bit more like joining a team. Now it's like assembling. Everyone's kind of getting together and like with the Angels a little bit more like joining a team.

Now it's like assembling, everyone's kind of coming together. Is there going to be a feeling out process of what actually, what roles people are actually doing? I mean you're going to get that certain title but you know sometimes that doesn't always mean the same thing. People will be doing different things. Is that sort of how it feels right now? Is everyone sort of figuring out what they're doing or?

No I think, I think like it's one of the things that really attracted me to the organization the most. It's just like the people that are already in place are incredible. Like our leadership group is unbelievable. But also there's like a very clear plan for how we want this thing to look. And I think it's like very intentional. And so I don't think it feels like that at all I think what it feels like to me going through the process and now being a part of the process is that it's just we're just

it's very thorough and I still have some of that startup energy right oh yeah 100% yeah of course of course definitely some of that startup energy but I think that's probably 100%. Of course, of course. Definitely some of that startup energy. But I think that's probably a better way to describe it is just thorough and we want to make sure that folks are aligned with the direction that we want to go and feel really good about joining the organization. Like I said, going back to, you know, I want them to be excited about working with us and being a part of the team, not just about excited about doing the work. Yeah And and so yeah, I think yeah, definitely have that startup energy But I think thorough is probably a better way to do to describe Marlins. Thank you

Having me so much. Yeah Where it goes? Yeah. Yeah me too. Thanks Now it is our pleasure to be joined by former big leaguer Jed Lowry. Jed, thank you so much for joining us. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Well, brings you to Dallas. Just here for the winter meetings, obviously. I'm here for the cap group, that commissioner ambassadors program. And it's obviously great to be in the same place as all the whole baseball world.

What does the cap group do? So, you know, I think we're here to just try to elevate the game, elevate the players, and bring a perspective of the former player to the commissioner's office. And I think just to keep former players that are passionate about the game still involved in the game. Awesome. And you got to baseball in Portland.

Yeah. It's a lot of rain in Portland. Yeah. Yeah. How does that affect training? I have my kids throw in. And if it's raining, they don't want to throw. There are things called roofs.

Yeah, as a hitter, I guess you had the batting cages. I don't know. It's tough on the throwers. Yeah. No, I actually think It's tougher on the throwers. Yeah, no. I actually think it's actually a pretty healthy way to be integrated into sport just in general. I think the seasons up there in particular are very aligned. Well, they're aligned with the professional seasons, right?

So when the winter comes around, you're playing basketball. In the fall, you're playing football. And did you play multiple sports? I played basketball, yeah. Basketball and baseball. All the way through my senior year of high school. Was a three year letter for basketball and four for baseball.

Point guard? Yeah, one, two. Yeah. We had a guard who was also our quarterback who we kind of traded off on ball handling. So yeah, I was a big move without the ball, come off screens, find an open shot. So yeah, but back to the baseball side,

I think that we as a game, we're starting to get to the point where kids are playing too many games and so I actually think that you know playing in you know a season and limiting the number of games and and really you know understanding that this is a developmental game and that that you know once you get to a certain threshold of games you know you're actually putting yourself at more risk of a developing bad habits and, potentially injury at a younger and younger age. So, you know, I would practice baseball, but you know, when you're taking hitting lessons or going to the batting cage or playing catch inside, it's a much less stressful environment and you're actually able to work on things where the game and when you're exposed to competition you know you're there to produce right in even at that level and I feel like

that amount of stress you know compiled too heavily at a young age can lead to a lot of burnout or blowout. We got travel ball you know we got the perfect game stuff you know it feels like you can play baseball literally around now. Yeah, and those things aren't, none of those things are inherently bad, right? Right. I mean, I think, you know, travel ball, you're going to get, you know, quality coaching, you're going to get exposure that you wouldn't otherwise get.

I just think we need to, like, recognize that the game is developmental. You know, you're talking about kids that haven't even gone through puberty. They're going to, you know, they They're gonna continue to grow physically as well. And when you're putting that amount of stress on a kid at that early of an age, it just introduces a lot of risk. So, yeah. One of the things that I'm passionate about is just trying to like, trying to like lower

the temperature a little bit on amateur sports and and baseball in particular I just I think we have you know there's a lot of anxiety that's built up amongst parents that feel you know the the FOMO right like if I if I if my kid industrial complex there's so many coaches I mean these kids eight-year-olds I have that I this coach in Palo Alto yeah and that that he has he'll have kids come in they're six year olds sometimes when they start playing tee ball and stuff like that and he says the first thing he will ask a kid when he comes in is do you already have your own hitting coach? I mean we're talking about a six-year-old. Isn't that crazy?

You don't need a hitting coach when you're six. And even you know like I'm coaching my son's little league team and and fall ball and like there's times you And there's times where I have to be conscious of that, right? Because if I'm saying something to a kid as that coach, I don't know if the parents are paying for all these expensive lessons or from a hitting coach. And I feel like I have to. Don't listen to Chad. He doesn't need you.

Exactly. Who are you talking about? But I don't want to step on toes, right? But you know what's interesting is that my personal way of dealing with that was actually to sort of remove myself and like they know what I do and that there were some coaches that talked to me and like reached out to find out what I wanted, what I knew. But I was not going to be the parent that was going to tell them all what I knew and get in the way.

And we did have a little bit of private instruction. And we had the regular coaches. And I was like, you tell them what you know. And then maybe if my son comes to me and is like, we did this. What do you think of that? I can give him my opinion. But I'm not going to be the overbearing parent that's

telling everybody what to do, especially because the main thing for me is have fun. Yes. You want them to play, you want them to have fun. Truly, have fun. Little League, it's going to get more competitive. Kids that are talented are going to elevate themselves anyway. Like you said, let them have fun, let them play with their buddies. And just, you know, like I said, none of these things we're talking about

are inherently bad. It's just, it's when that anxiety and the FOMO start to kick in and parents feel like they have to have their kids on this track in order to, you know, in order to be successful, right? And being able to produce is very different than being talented, right? And so you could have the most talented eight, nine, 10, 12 year old who eventually doesn't get to the point where he can actually produce, right? On a day to day basis.

Because he's burned out or he doesn't like it or he's hurt. Or he doesn't recognize the breaking ball or he's like can't, you know, like there's certain things on a day to day-day basis, he has a hole in his, whatever it is, a hole in his swing. So I think there's, you know, I played with far more talented players than me

throughout my career, right, and even in amateur baseball. But I knew who I was as a player, and I was able to execute on that. What do you think about teaching kids soft skills? Do you think there's a huge gap? You know, we're working on swings. We're working on pitching mechanics. Are we helping young players learn how to cope with failure?

It's a game filled with failure. We talk about the difficulty of guys eventually hitting a level where baseball finally becomes hard for them. For some guys, it's all the way in the big leagues. For other guys, it's the first time they reach A ball, right? What are we doing at the youth levels to help kids cope better along the way? Yeah, no, that's a great question.

And I can't speak from experience. I have an eight-year-old son, right? So we're just kind of getting into this world. But I think that dealing with that failure is vitally important, because eventually the game is going to get hard, right? And I've seen a lot of players... When was that moment for you?

I mean, I was never, I wasn't drafted out of high school, right? And I ended up going, I ended up playing at Stanford, but it was, the only reason I ended up at Stanford was because of a favor from a local high school coach. He happened to be the speed and agility coach at the Stanford camp. And because of that, he was allowed to bring a couple of players with him.

I happened to be one of those guys. So I wouldn't have ended up at that Stanford camp. Stanford, I wasn't on any of the other teams. But did you start all four years? I did. I did. Well, so you did. Actually, three.

I left after my junior year. But yeah, no, I mean it obviously worked out great But I guess my point is is like that's like that developmental point like my developmental aspect of the game is like So it's never that easy for you I mean it was it was never never easy to the point where everyone's like Oh, this guy is gonna be a 15 year major leaguer, right? I know like I think where were you driving? Well, I was drafted in the comp round after my junior year

You know by the Red Sox and so But by that point people are saying yes very very well No, I mean I guess if you look at my college resume like two-time all-american Pac-10 player of the year And I went 45th overall. I mean, I think anybody with that type of college resume That was a little bit more physical than myself probably goes higher. And that was always the question, I guess, from a scouting perspective was, OK, he

knows how to play the game. How strong is he? Is he big enough? Is he fast enough? And so then at high school, I was like, is he big enough and fast enough to go to college ball, let alone pro ball? And then I get there and I'm, you know, I show that I can produce at that level. And then at the draft, it's like, okay, well, is he big enough? Is he strong enough to play at pro ball? Like play

162 games, right? Like is he gonna be able to do that schedule? And so I kind of had to prove that at every level. And so, you know, it was never, you know, despite me being drafted 45th overall, like I said, I would say, given the college resume that I put together, I probably slipped to the 45th back. So, but I like I said, I knew who I was as a player and I was I was able to produce and be that guy. Well, were some of your toughest times in the big leagues. Maybe some of the injury Yeah, I mean I dealt with a lot of injuries right and you know typical baseball injuries are you know these wear and tear injuries that you know and I had a lot of these weird impacts right where

Like I slide into home and and you know catch a cleat and flip over and tear the ligament of my thumb I get taken out at second base. Second base, yeah. Yeah, I get taken out at second base and hurt my knee. I go back for a pop-up in left field and get into a collision with the outfielder and sublux my shoulder. So like, all these collision injuries that really had nothing to do with any maintenance program

or any hard work. It was just bad luck. And I think if I'm most proud of anything in my career, it's the resilience that I had to get back off the mat after all those injuries. Rehab is hard. People just don't realize. Coming back from injuries, I don't know if you played Tecmo Bowl as a kid, but players would get hurt in that game, and then they, three weeks later, come riding out of the hospital,

and there's like this happy music, and he's all better. It's like, it's not like that. It's a grueling process to get back from so many different injuries. Especially in baseball, right? Because the adrenaline that's associated with showing up every single day and playing, right? And you're so routine-oriented in this game,

and you're competing at the major level, competing against the best in the world every single night. And so when you go, I guess the analogy, you're going 100 miles an hour, and you hit a brick wall when you get hurt. You go from facing the best every single night to literally what feels like nothing. Starting over.

Yeah, exactly. So it's emotionally and mentally far more challenging than playing. Which one was the worst? Injury, which injury? I had Alex Cobb rank his surgeries for me. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

That's a good question. It did take a while. I've never thought about which one was. They were all. I mean, there's the pain of the actual injury, which was the longest rehab. Yeah. The thumb was actually hard because you're actually holding

the bat, right? And so the ligament, it's the UCL. Yeah, exactly. And so then I'm switch hitter, obviously, too. So when I came back left handed, it was actually better. But right handed, I mean, that ligament, the bat is sitting right there. And all of that force is being directed right into that repaired ligament.

That's what you tore that? Yeah, I mean you can see the scar right there and I still have pins in it. You have pins in there. Yeah, I still do because I had a, it's called a full, what was it? Almost like a Tommy John with a thumb. Yeah, literally Tommy John. Well they actually, it rolled up and so they just basically straightened it back out and reattached it.

But there was an evulsion. So the ligament actually ripped bone. This is the worst one. The ligament ripped bone off when it tore. So it completely tore off. So they had to take that bone. And that's why there's pins. They had to put it.

Oh, they took the bone out. I think they took the bone out. And then they just reattached it. So yeah, that one was that one took a while. Well we were talking a little bit about coaching we've been asking people about hiring you know the what we're asking is sort of like what you what when from people who hire for offices what do you look for but for you I think it might be interesting to come out from a little different aspect

was like you you would find coaches you know in the offseason you would have people you worked with sure what did you look for when you were evaluating a possible coach that you might work with was it knowledge was it you know what was it that you were looking for when when when you when you look for coaches yeah yeah I mean I was I guess it depend on where I was in my career right later in my career I had a pretty good idea of what I what I needed and where I was in my career, right? Later in my career I had a pretty good idea of what I needed and what I, you know, my own personal routine.

And so I was looking for somebody who, you know, could be available to throw to me and, you know, do the things that I needed to prepare myself. I wasn't looking for a lot of, you know, instruction or adjustments, right? And then from like a workout perspective you know I would you know look for somebody who had a good track record particularly with older players and I you know the guy I worked with most towards the end of my career

out of Houston had a great track record working with older players and keeping them on the field and you know I give him a shout out yeah Ben Ben Fairchild Fairchild sports in Houston he's since's still staying in touch with them. How about early on? Early on, I did some of the IMG stuff. I actually went to IMG while I was in college. I was an early adopter of a lot of the functional fitness stuff.

I figured that for me to be effective in my career, because I wasn't going to be that guy that was going to be effective in my career because I wasn't gonna be that bit You know guy that was gonna. You know wow somebody on any given night I needed to be consistent, so I I really leaned into the functional fitness stuff early on and how did that speak to you? Why did why did you fit? Why did you how did it? I mean just just that like you know just that ethos right of like having having to be consistent having to like have a You know that ethos, right, of having to be consistent, having to have a, you know, put my poof in. When you encountered it, like how did you encounter it?

Did you just start reading about these things? To be honest, I really, I respected Derek Jeter so much and I had seen that Derek Jeter was working out at this IMG Academy. And so I was like, hey, this is probably worth checking out. Yeah, I mean, that's not a bad comp for you to think about too. I mean, he's not a bad comp for you to think about too. I mean, he's not the biggest guy and you know,

you have shortstop and... Yep, yeah. So that's interesting. Yeah, exactly. So... Jed, we appreciate the time. Yeah, absolutely. And we look forward to catching up with you again soon.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks for coming. Thanks, guys. All right, you know, just a couple of news items before we go. As we mentioned with Ken at the beginning of the show, Nathan Ivaldi, three for 75 to stay stay with the Rangers kind of a big deal given their needs in the rotation right I mean Evaldi is one of those guys the quality innings tends to be high there's always that little question of whether you get

130 140 150 as opposed to 175 or 180 but I think the terms are reflective of the market as a whole and I think it just makes sense from a reunion perspective to see Yvolde back with the Rangers. It may strike some people as rich to go to 75 million for Nady Yvolde over three years but I think that's actually sort of to point out that like the price of a win across baseball is not you know 12 million dollars that would be astronomical but the price of the win in free agency can be 12 million dollars and That I think that lines up pretty well with what eval is gonna do also You know the projections right now have been 175 innings. I'm going to take the under on that pretty hard and that's going to change some of the math. But if you just sort of slot people in you say, okay, over 200 million is your ace, you know, over 100, 150 million is your two, you know, you start getting to

75 in the middle there somewhere. So I think you've all these a good kind of stable veteran they've got their upside. His name is Jake DeGrom. He's healthy. He came back at the end of 2024 showed that he still has that top shelf stuff and now it's just a question of being able to get through 30 plus starts but I think anything's possible. He's one of those guys that if he's healthy he's a contender for the Cy Young Award No, no, there's no way around that. So DeGrom, Ivaldi, Gray, Tyler Malley, Kumar, Rocker Bradford, Dane Dunning, right Jake, Jack Leiter, they have enough starting pitching right now. What's kind of fun is that you know Bradford and Dunning can be you know Dunning in particular could be somebody who's on the roster

Bradford and Dunning, Dunning in particular could be somebody who's on the roster via a multi-inning reliever that you don't have to make a roster move if you want to, if somebody's just going to skip a start or whatever, you can throw Dunning for three innings without worrying too much. Bradford is similar, both of them are not very hard throwers. I think it's a little bit easier to take a guy like that and say you're coming off your reliever sort of usage to maybe a couple more innings or something, do a spot start.

I think Leiter is somebody you treat more carefully. Leiter is someone who now starts in the minor leagues, and you want to get them on a roll, and he's someone that comes up if there's more of a long-term injury, or Kumar Rocker takes a step back or something like that. So what's nice is between the three of them you kind of have floor and ceiling. I mean I still believe in Leiter having some ceiling and I think he's still an interesting

player in all fantasy leagues. But I mean this I think. I think in all fantasy leagues. I don't know that I would draft him in a 12 team league with a short bench but he's still an interesting player in those because he might come up and he might still be able to kind of, it's not the same as Snell, but like a Snellian thing where maybe he strikes out 30% of the guys and walks 11%, 12%, and it still works.

It just comes down to the home run suppression and the hit suppression. We'll see if that's a trait that he actually has. Rangers were also active on the trade front. They acquired Jake Berger from the Marlins. And I think Berger is one of those players. You really know what you're going to get from a power perspective. He did whittle away at the K rate just a little bit, down to 25.9%. For a masher, he doesn't walk a lot, and he's a free swinger, right?

For his career, 41.3% O swing percentage. So it gives you some pause from a very long-term perspective. But for a guy who still has several years of control left, I think the Rangers did pretty well here, sending three prospects back to the Marlins, guys that are mostly further away. I look at Berger and say this is good coverage for them. Josh Young still dealing with injuries.

You know, Nathaniel Lowe over at first base could be on the move, but you've got cover at both corners and some flexibility at DH. And I think all the shuffling that this gives the Rangers actually pushes Leodi Tavares into a fourth outfielder role, right? I think you have Langford, Carter, and Adolise Garcia as your primary trio in the outfield, and then Berger's your DH unless you need them on a corner infield spot. Well, that's where the risk in this deal comes in. And I hate to be wrong again. I was wrong about Berger.

I wasn't sure that the adjustment stuck. And it seems like it stuck. The strikeout rate has maintained at a sort of more manageable level than it was when in Chicago. And I hate to be wrong again. And I have nothing against him as a player. What I'm saying is, last year he played mostly in the field. And we just, you know, they have to rely on their scouting and what they saw when he DH'd,

but we know from players that DHing is a skill. We just talked to Brent Rooker about that and I just I'm not sure he has it You know like what what maybe a strikeout rate goes back up because he's sitting You know between at bats and so that that'll be sort of somewhat fascinating to me because if they force him If he needs to be in the field to be the batter he needs then then the Nate Lowe or you know Josh Young or something I mean, I don't even know where they where they put him in so he is there to be the DH How will he DH is kind of an open question. Right. Yeah, it's a question for anyone doing that for the first time, at least as a full-time sort of play.

We got some more details. So when we found out about the Andres Jimenez trade on Tuesday, Jimenez going to the Blue Jays, we did not know why Spencer Horowitz was going back to Cleveland. Spencer Horowitz isn't staying in Cleveland. He was flipped to the Pirates for Luis Ortiz, an old favorite on this podcast. Kind of an interesting stuff sort of play potentially for the Guardians, getting another guy that's capable of possibly starting to join the back of the rotation for a player in Horowitz

who didn't seem like a great fit given that they have Josh Naylor and Kyle Manzardo already as their first base in DH options. Yeah, Luis Ortiz did not strike more batters out this year. Surprising. The ERA, you know, kind of finally sat somewhere that made more sense given at least what the Stuff Plus numbers have said. And I do to some, believe in him. But it does make me nervous when a guy has a 3.3 ERA

after two years of a 4 plus and doesn't do it with more strikeout. So I would say that late in the season, the one fun thing about Ortiz was he had a Stuff Plus increase. And both his fastball and his sinker were rating as above average pitches by Stuff Plus. He's always had that really nice power slider.

And he's kind of right now a three fastball slider guy. I don't think the change ever really worked. It's not a common package. No, but it's not a bad set of skills to go to an organization with. Yeah, and I think he's an interesting player for next year. I don't know that I would put him on a list that's like, oh, here's a guy who could turn into an ace.

I just think it's more like, it's kind of a widest range of outcomes, given the low strikeout rate, but good place to go in terms of pitching instruction and I can't say that I'm lower on him now. I think he's still a confounding player to some extent, but somebody I'm interested in next year. Someone to think about very, very late for deep leagues and now he's getting a chance in a fresh organization.

So we'll keep an eye on Luis Ortiz going into spring training. I think that's going to do it for us here in Dallas. You know, it's been a great week. Again, we had a lot of great conversations with folks. Appreciate all the guests that have stopped by throughout the week on today's episode. Esteban Navarro-Garayz, Bill Heasel, Jed Lowry, and of course, Ken Rosenthal up top.

You can give us a follow on Blue Sky. You know, it's at edoceris.bsky.social and dbr.bsky.social. Shout out to our producer, Brian Smith, for cranking out all these episodes, turning them around quickly while we're in Dallas. And thanks again for the hospitality here at the Hilton Anatol.

It's been a great week. We hope everybody enjoyed the shows. We are back with you on Monday. Exhausted. Thanks for listening.