Rates & Barrels - Making Early Adjustments & How to Pitch to Mookie Betts

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

Eno, Trevor and DVR discuss a few surprising takeaways from the criminal complaint against Shohei Ohtani's former translator Ippei Mizuhara, the difficulty of making early-season adjustments, and Henry Davis' current struggle against elevated fastballs. Plus, they introduce a new segment 'How I Would Pitch to This Guy' where Eno and Trevor share a detailed gameplan for pitching to Mookie Betts, before taking a few live questions. Rundown 1:28 Surprises From Criminal Complaint Against Ippei Mizuhara 8:07 The Difficulty of Making Early Adjustment & Henry Davis' Struggles w/High Fastballs 20:23 An At-Bat Trevor Will Never Forget 24:38 How I Would Pitch to This Guy: Mookie Betts 36:59 Looking Beyond Swinging Strikes 40:45 Guessing v. Anticipating 49:51 Are Certain Hitters More Prone to Pop-Ups? 56:24 Making Sense of Hunter Brown's Rough Day Against the Royals 1:02:35 Most Underrated Second Baseman? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Trevor on Twitter: @IamTrevorMay Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it is Friday April 12th. Derek and Ryan Barino, Sarah, Trevor May all here with you. It's been a fun week in baseball. Tons of things happening, including more details. More fun details, including a criminal complaint against Ipe Mizuhara, former translator for Shohei Otani. We're talking about some early adjustments that players have to make during the season.

And we're going to dig into a ridiculous home run that Trevor gave up that actually connects to a few other ideas we had when putting the show together. Talk about some early adjustments, when to worry, when to believe. And then we're gonna dig into a new segment, how to pitch to this guy. We're gonna focus on Mookie Betts.

It should be easy, right? Finding a game plan that works against Mookie Betts. I mean, no one's really ever done it successfully before, so why can't we figure it out? Sure has. I have figured it out, I was gonna hold onto that until the end of the show, but technically, not a huge sample size, but.

Winning the battle counts, right? Yeah, yeah. Gotta keep score somehow. If you're not in the Discord, you can join that, got a link in the show description, be sure to jump on in there. I wanted to ask you guys, and now that there's more information,

a lot more information about the story than we had even on the Thursday episode, were there any things that just jumped off the page looking at that 37 page criminal complaint against Ippet Muzahara, things that just sort of blew your mind and either simplicity of how he did what he did or any other details that were just like,

wait, that's how that went down? I feel like people failed him. You know, people in Otani's inner circle failed him. And, you know, Craig Calcatera said that, you know, obliviousness is not a crime. So, you know, you know, maybe just Otani was oblivious to this. But, you know, he trusted people in his inner circle. He trusted the angels and the angels said, oh, Ipe called you and said he was the interpreter for Okajima and he wants to be your interpreter? Sure. You know, they didn't do a background check. They didn't even call the Red Sox and be like,

Hey, was this guy actually, because the Red Sox recently came out and be like, Nope. It was never, never worked for us. Apparently at some point the financial advisors were like, Hey, we need to get into that account. Like why don't, why is there an account that we can't see into? And Ipe is like, it's private.

And they were like, okay. It was just like, Oh man. Like how did that sort of part of this is the failure of his inner circle. Like he, he should fire some people, I think. Yes. He should definitely fire some people. It turns out that Ipe was the only one who spoke Japanese and English. So I is just one of those situations where he's like,

I can say whatever I want both ways and just control the situation. And you know what that said? Like it's one of those weird things. I try to give people the benefit out as much as possible, like how things can snowball. That said, it's one of those weird things I try to give people the benefit of as much as possible, how things can snowball. You do something that you're not very proud of and then you lie once and then before you know it, six months have passed and you had 19 opportunities

to tell the truth and then you didn't and then things are much worse than they were. It literally feels like reading this that it's gonna be turned into a screenplay like the next season of Fargo. It's one of those crazy situations, like the only thing that was missing, and thank God this never happened,

but like a hostage situation happened, and then we're like, why did he get taken by a bookie or something? And we're like, that's when it becomes Fargo. So fortunately we didn't get to that point, but this is how that show starts, if anyone who's seen it, it's pretty crazy. So I was just like, this is bizarre.

The amounts of money being casually mentioned by both the bookmaker and eBay, just like they're having these normal chats about, oh yeah, sorry I'm late on that $10 million payment. And he's like, you know what, don't worry about it. We'll worry about out on business hours on Monday. Like I, I'm like, this isn't, I've seen the Sopranos. This isn't how it's supposed to go. That doesn't make any sense.

When does the knee breaking come in? Yeah, you start to wonder because there's one detail in here about November 17th, 2023, Bookmaker One messaged me Zahara stating, Hey Ippy, it's two o'clock on Friday. I don't know why you're not returning my calls. I'm here in Newport Beach and I see victim A, that's Otani, walking his dog, that's Decoy. I'm just going to go up and talk to him and ask how I can get in touch with you since you're not responding.

Please call me back immediately. It does feel like we were reaching a point in the last six months where things were getting even more out of hand. The way you were alluding to Trevor, that's a bad situation through and through. Yeah, that sounds threatening from at least, I'm going to tell him. At a minimum, it's that. At a minimum. And what we're talking about amounts of money that are unfathomable to anybody doing illegal

bookmaking. Honestly, I haven't seen those numbers thrown around in a movie. Like it's bigger numbers than I've ever seen. He lost $180 million and $140 million. So he owed $40 million. I mean, we thought it was four and a half million where he kept giving him five, he basically kept him away by giving him $500,000 payments from the big nut that he still owed him. It's like apparently still owes him like $30 million. Like it's, that's crazy.

And you're not collecting that. Yeah, that is, that is absolutely, it's astronomical. What was the average? It was like average of two, the average bet was $12,800. Yeah, it was a five figure average bet, but the range was down as low as $10.

I thought that was a typo in the report. I'm like, wait, when were you firing off $10 bets and why? The number of transactions and bets that were happening, it feels like he was like almost honestly, like doing betting as like a day trading situation. That's what it feels like, that there was dozens of them a day. Like he was at his computer watching charts

and setting up like bots. But he wasn't though. Like I think he's just a full on addict. He thought he had like an idea, but he obviously had no idea. But I don't know how you have the time. Like, is he just staying up all night and doing the, you know, or is he just like picking them?

I bet he's just picking them. Just dart boarding it, which is even just, I don't know, you know, or he's just like picking them. I bet it just picking them, just dart boarding it, which is even just, I don't know. I know, right? Like imagine how much the, how the say the conversation would be where he's like, mm, you know what? I feel good about the Eagles,

put me a hundred thousand dollars on the Eagles. Oh, but you know, how about a $10, 14 parlay? I'm feeling good about that one. On the NBA. I like UCLA soccer today against Utah. Like that, what? Yeah, right. It's even all the way down there.

It's weird, man. It's super weird. So yeah, tons of surprises. It's out there. You should read it. It's 37 pages, but the spacing of the legal document is such that it's kind of the way when you were in fourth or fifth grade and didn't want to write a paper. Maybe when you're in college, double know, double spacing, skinny margins.

It's not 37 pages. It's like eight to 10 actual pages to read. So it's not that hard to get through it. Fascinating stuff. And I think there is here's a movie. There's there's more. There's more of a book movie feel to this than I ever thought. Now that we've got more details.

But let's move on to actual baseball because that's where Shohei seems to be at this point. Baseball is hard and the difficulty of making early adjustments is on full display. We had one of our users in Discord asking about a problem that Henry Davis is having with high fastballs in particular. And this is pretty interesting stuff. I put together a little montage here. Grayson Rodriguez is going to get him twice. This is in the same matchup. Dean Kramer gets him.

Casey Meyers is going to get him next series. And it's a pretty clear pattern. Those are good fastballs, 95, 97, up in the zone or above the zone. But clearly, there's a book, right? We're seeing teams give Henry Davis good fastballs. 95, 97 up in the zone or above the zone. But clearly there's a book, right? We're seeing teams give Henry Davis more fastballs up over 60% fastball usage against him to begin the season. So you start to look at it and say, okay,

what's the drawback of Davis possibly adjusting or over-correcting trying to hit the high fastball? If he fixes that, does that leave him vulnerable to something else in the zone? Like, because it's always a game of cat and mouse, right? You've got something that's working right now and pitchers are probably going to lean on that until it stops working. Yeah, I mean, I just saw that with JJ Bleday. He had a hole at the top of the zone and this year he's making 100% contact across the top

of the zone and just really weirdly, because a hundred percent contact across the top of the zone And just really weirdly because he's a low ball hitter There are there are now blue spots on the bottom zone the way I kind of think about it something I've asked hitters is like do you have it do you have one swing or do you have like five swings? People have different answers. They want to tell me they have one swing because they're a hitter They just want to be like I have one swing but the way I kind of understand a little bit is A swing, B swing, C swing. And you have a swing where you're fighting off something. You're just trying to do enough so that they make a mistake

and go to your happy zone. I would assume that Bladay's A swing is still low in the zone. He's being pitched high in the zone and he's doing his B or C swing to fight those off. The relative quality of that B or C swing is going to determine whether or not they actually go back down low in the zone and he can actually get his A swing off. Then there also has to be a timing and anticipation component where you're like, I am ready to do my A swing on this one, you know. So you kind of want to anticipate what's going to happen on this pitch so that you get ready to do it. And I think what we're seeing with Cody Ballinger is he's kind of settled in. He used to have A and B and C and he's kind of settled in. He's just like, I'm kind of going to

do my B most of the time, especially with two strikes. I'm doing my B swing. I'm just going to always do my B swing. And that's what you get is my A swing until there's two strikes and then my B swing. And that's going to be a really simple plan I can do. I think what you see with Henry Davis, and if you look at the second montage, is he's developing a bit of a B swing that he can handle high heat. But this is what happens.

He's fouling off half of the 51 pitches. Yeah, what would a foul ball look like anyway? You just see him fighting a foul ball off to the other way. Half of his 51 pitches in the top two, three. So what he's just trying to do is muscle those pitches away. He hasn't been able to sort of turn them straight, get them into play. And a pitcher will take a foul ball, you know. So if you if you're trying to pump high fastballs to a hitter and the best he can

do is foul it off like that. Yeah, that's a that's a typical one from him. Like Trevor, you're cool with that, right? If he's like, it's a whiff or a foul. It's a whiff or a foul, yeah. But like there is a big difference in my head in most hitters' heads about difference between foul and whiff because whiff is a strikeout

and foul is the bat's continuing. And so many guys, especially right and right, and relievers, double especially, is the like get to the breaking ball whenever you can anyway. So their fastballs are show me even if they throw 97. So they're gonna throw it again, which this is gonna come up when we talk about

Mookie here in a minute. I had this conversation with Pete Alonso because he goes off and on with handling high pitches, but generally hands low much better than high. It's not about, I think, especially for a guy like Henry Davis and another guy to check out is DJ Stewart, like I mentioned that to you guys, so if you wanna check his heat maps as well, listeners,

he's another guy to watch how he's changed over the last four years, because he couldn't hit the fastballs up in the zone at all either. It's changed a little bit, but not a lot. It comes down to not technically, people tend to think, hey, I'm gonna turn this hole into a strength.

And that isn't necessarily what you wanna do, you just wanna extend the bats. I use Mickey Cabrera as my example, he did that better than anyone I ever saw, is extending the bats and being okay with getting a crappy swing off and just keeping the bat going to get the pitch

that he wants, like a pitch, them to take a chance somewhere where he's gonna have, closer to where he's gonna handle it well. And knowing what that is, and so your weaknesses are just bat extension areas and then your strengths are what you're doing your damage on. Ozzy Albee's a great example too, here's a guy, because I faced him a lot.

Up is, he struggles with it, especially from the left side of the plate. I throw him up for the first two strikes, literally. Like strike one, strike two, fast ball by, fast ball by, and then he just fouled them off after that. Like he wasn't swinging and missing for the third strike there, even though it was a hole. It was just some, but he doesn't hit it hard either.

He had a B swing, he knew you were gonna go up there. Yeah, but he never even really wanted to put it in play. The ones he did, he just popped up in the infield. So those ones, I was good, but I was like, you were missing it before, now you're not missing it at all. And so like, in my mind, I'm like, it's just not a two strike pitch, even though on the map it says he swings and misses

at it constantly overall. And so I knew that and I had to adjust. And there wasn't as many options with two strikes as it was early, if Henry can do that, where he's like, sure, I'm going to take my A swing, still probably get beat a couple of times early in the at bat, but you can't punch me out on it. That changes the complexion of how you're being approached.

You don't even have to ever get hit the ball for a hit. You just need to not be so easily gotten out that way. That's all you have to do with your weaknesses. But that Alonzo conversation, there was a little bit of like take versus fight off, right? You were asking him about actually like making contact on some of those pitches and why not take them, right? There was a little bit of that component too. And that was also like, you know,

the high fastball was being trained a lot. This was like 2021. So this is like the big, like everyone's throwing heaters up. This was the, that was the sweeper of that year. And umpires We're also getting better at calling it for a strike and not miss and like now they're kind of not calling the high strike as much Obviously on purpose because we want the ball lower in the zone with more offense I understand that but if you could get those strikes

It was just like you had it was gonna be a strike full ball in the zone You have to swing in it You still can't hit it that that those guys who that well, like guys like Pete would be like, I just can't, I can't take it. I can't get the big three on Homer on that pitch. And if he can sit there, I have to be able to foul it off until eventually he's like, man, I can't get a fastball by him. I have to throw a slider here. And then you got to not miss that. And that's what he kind of has thought. And he's gotten better and better and better at it, I think every year because of just knowing that. If you're watching Henry Davis, you're saying he's a step ahead of the

just take it strategy, right? Because like Brandon Moss, Brandon Moss was like had a similar swing where he just couldn't, he couldn't get it. He couldn't get the bat flat and he couldn't handle high and away. And he was telling me, yeah, they're just trying to go there. And I'm just trying to take most of those pitches, you know, and take them for balls. But the next step is, oh, I can at least I can spoil that. Figuring out what's what's probably going to be a strike, too.

So you're not just taking strikes. Like, you're just trying to get the pitcher to be like, huh, maybe that's not as automatic as I thought. If you can get maybe I can't punch him out on that. Exactly. If you can get that thought out of a pitcher's head, like there is no automatic in a situation spot like that when I saw something I was like I am so confident throwing it there But if that's not quite there that changes the complexity of things and the type of hitter you are

Immensely even if you statistically you haven't changed a lot on what you're hitting hard. You're just not missing it It's just not a zero sum as much. So that's, yeah, it's learning the top of the zone though. Taking is a good way to learn where that is. And that he might, he's still, you know, that's probably part of it too, where he doesn't actually know. And by the way, the top of the zone's way lower

in the minors right now and has been for two years. So it's very confusing. Guys come up and they have no idea where the high strike is. That's why some guys, young guys are struggling a little bit to what to take and what to swing at because they, it's very confusing. Guys come up and they have no idea where the high strike is. That's why some guys, young guys are struggling a little bit to what to take and what to swing at, because it's hard to tell. It really is. It's hard to figure it out. It's hard to figure it out for pitchers and hitters

right now in AAA. Where is the strike zone? How big is it? That adjustment, too, to keep in mind. That's a huge adjustment if the zones are different like that. Because Davis was having so much success throughout his time in the minors, I think a lot of people had an expectation

he'd hit the ground running in the big leagues. But if this is the hole and that's how the zone works, it sort of highlights a problem that you couldn't even exploit that problem against him in the minors potentially. And the pitching is different, so that's another variable of course as well. It's interesting because the how do we know if he's adjusted is going to be something pretty small that you're not necessarily going to see in stats.

You're going to see a lot more just by watching him on a day to day basis, right? Because it might not be statistical improvement against fastballs per se. It might not be a run of homers off of a high fastball. It might just be surviving on those pitches to get something else that he does damage on. That's the hard part, I think, for people trying to track it and say, should I keep throwing them in my lineup every week? Do I trust them to be a guy that I should go trade for right now in fantasy leagues? Those are the questions everyone wrestles with this time of year.

Is this real? Is this going to be a problem long term? The adjustments are going to be very subtle. There's a theme though that runs through today's podcast and this will come up again is just that be careful of the settings on the heat maps. If you're playing around with heat maps, think about the settings. Think about what you're looking at. Like you could be looking at Woba or slugging or called strikes or swinging strikes. Those things all have slightly different meaning and in this case you could look at a Woba

heat map and say, man he's not that good, high in this case, you could look at a Wilbur Heatmap and say, man, he's not that good, high in his own. But then if you drill down and you realize, wow, he fouled off half the pitches that are thrown here, that can't be as bad as just completely swinging missing on all these pitches. So this will come up again. But just to think about the different things that the pitcher wants to do

in certain places and the different things the hitter wants to do and what you're looking for when you're looking at a heat map. And sometimes it may be as simple as a Wobba because the pitcher thinks, well, he's just not that good up there, so I'll take the foul. But it does matter when they're trying to get

to the swing strike, the strikeout. Why doesn't Henry Davis, if he has this big hole, why doesn't he have like a 40% strikeout rate? Partially because he's fouling off those pitches and they can't punch him out up there. And he's strong low in the zone. So there may actually still be a foundation for a breakout here. Yeah, the overall K-rate's not through the roof.

It's still under 30%. So it's not like he's up there striking out 38% of the time and looks like he's going to get sent back down. It's more like, this is the way to pitch to him right now. A little easier to pitch to Henry Davis than it is to pitch to Mookie Betts, as we will get to here in just a couple of minutes. Now, we have a great highlight from Trevor and I forget how we even stumbled into this and we're just going to play this first.

We'll ask some questions along the way. This is Christian Walker. Look at that pitch. It's better with the hold. I added a hold. It was better with the hold. I added the hold because you described this play to us perfectly.

You described exactly where you threw it, how hard you threw it, what Walker did do it, and your reaction to it. Everybody had a reaction of, whoa, what just happened there? Because that's not supposed to happen on a high inside fastball like that. And pitches like that, and homers like that, make me think, yeah, you know what? If I was trying to be a major league pitcher, I would gamble on my own health trying to throw the filthiest, hardest stuff possible because pitches like that can be hit out for homers. Yeah, that is honestly one of the harder ones where it's a straight up, straightforward tip of the cap.

Like, he's like, I don't know how I did that. And you're like, I don't know how he did that. And then, you know, he just won. And that's it. And know how I did that. And you're like, I don't know how he did that. And then, you know, he just won. And that's it. And I was hot. I came up, I think, as I was talking about how Scherzer was just like, shut up, just don't throw that. Yeah, because it was only 90 miles an hour.

It was like 92 mile an hour home run. Yeah, 92.6 off the, so we've been taught, you know, at this time is 21. So like, we're like, are the balls still juice? Do we know? Like that was a conversation that was happening a lot because some stuff like that was happening, you're like, come on.

And obviously the narrative was like, no, we're not changing them. So like that was the flavor of the week. So like, I think that's why it's hot. But also how I prepare for guys, I know like he's got a spot that's just ice cold right there, right? Like, and he knows it.

Like he's like, he just tries, again, I think he's just fouling stuff off up there, but I think eventually he's like, he's gonna come up and in this time and I'm just gonna sell out. And he still got jammed. He like looked like where to go. And I flipped around, like tried to catch it too. And it just got out real fast. Definitely foul, right?

You were like, it's foul ball, right? Foul, foul. I thought it was like way foul. I thought it was like a jam shot, like off the net. And it was like, just stayed fair. I was like, this is just, he's so strong. Like he's like one of the few guys who could do that. There's also when he's rounding first, he's hot, he's so fair. I was like, this is just, he's so strong. Like he's like one of the few guys who could do that.

There's also when he's running first, he's so pumped because he's like, that was really like, I don't know how that happened. I'm pumped though, because I'd been just wearing him out there, I've been wearing him out there as well. Like every time we'd face each other. And he just, for some, he'd foul it off, but he just couldn't get to it.

And then finally got the one. So, but it's just one of those ones where you're like, well, there's two runs on the old ERA and you just couldn't get to it and then finally got the one. So, but it's just one of those ones where you're like, well, there's two runs on the old ERA and you just got to wear it. So that kind of speak a little bit to anticipation. Like, so you and him have a history. He knows his scouting report. He knows he knows he has that blue line up there and he knows that you like to go up there.

So that he just anticipated that one perfectly, right? Yeah, he's pumped. Yeah, he anticipated perfectly. He's finger guns to that kid, that's amazing. It's amazing that the kind of things they can do when you anticipate, does that mean he just, he steps in the bucket early just to like clear out? Well, you saw he just, his hands, he brought him way in.

It was in farther than even I had been throwing it. He just like, oh, that's far enough, I guess. And it kind of one hand hit it and he's just a big, big, strong dude. And he's just one, you know, he's probably one of five guys like Pete, maybe strong enough to do that judge. Probably pulled it to one of the shorter parts of the park. And then just in the ad, it's also in the perfect place. And it's in Arizona. Like there's not very many places that goes out.

I think it's literally one of like three there and Houston, not Houston, Tampa. Yeah, but Max didn't appreciate that. It's one of three parks that would go out in. Yeah, that exactly. I'm like, you know, you will go look that stuff up, but it's it's a kin to excuses. You know, I know I was like, I'm going to come around like it just it's tip the cap, man. And we ended up winning the game. But, you know, we had a three on lead.

I gave up two runs and you don't want to do that. It was an eighth inning, like, early in the year, my arm wasn't feeling great, that was right before I got hurt, so yeah, there was a lot of stuff going on, but yeah, it's one of those things. If you're as obsessed with basketball as I am, then you know there's no better time of year than the NBA playoffs.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. So we've been wondering for a while on this show, you know, what could we do with public facing information? Could we make good enough game plans to actually attack big league hitters in a way where we might get some results. And rather than start at the lower end of the player pool, we figured let's go to the top. Let's make this like a real challenge, right?

Let's build a game plan to face Mookie Betts. The way we're going to do this, Eno is going to outline his plan first, because this is stuff that anybody listening and watching can put together. I'm the advanced scout nerd. I'm the nerd. I'm the advanced scout nerd. I'm the nerd. I've got my heat maps. So clearly, clearly this-

Mr. May, I've got my heat maps. This is going to work. So what would you do? What would be your game plan? What are you going to tell your pitchers to do against Mookie? Well, the first thing I want to pull up is I want to be like, well, we got to right on right. We're going to throw them some sliders, right?

So I look at the slider contact rate. Mookie Betts, I get, oh my God, what is this? What? He's above 95% contact rate on like 90% of the zone. If you can hit like a penny off the bottom outside corner, you could get him to miss. That's the only place you can throw Mookie Betts a slideriders. I'm like, okay, well, sliders are out. What are we gonna do with the fastball? So I start looking at the fastball contact rate and oh, look, he actually does swing and miss sometimes at high heaters. So, and it's not high third of the zone, can't do that. It has to be along the black at the top of the zone.

Might not be a great place to get a called strike, but it might be a place to punch him out. Okay, so I've found four seamers high might be a way to punch him out at the end, but I still got to get there. What else can I do? Is there if I have if I don't have a four seamer, or if I if I miss a little bit or if he anticipates it, do we have a clip of what happens? Like this is a pretty good fastball at the top of the zone. And dang, yeah, that's Ryan Helsley trying to execute that high fastball. Didn't work. I'm looking right now at contact rates. If I look at, you know, if I look at home runs on contact or ISO, I might see, well, he can actually still hit those out.

Or maybe I say I don't really have a great foreseam. I have a better sinker. So I click over to the sinkers. Ooh, now I've changed what I'm looking for. I'm looking for called strikes. Where can I get a called strike? Where does he not swing? And what you can see is he does not swing at backdoor sinker. So if I think I can get a sinker to come back

ball to strike sinker on the outside corner, then he won't swing at it. Well, guess what? That's a pretty hard pitch to negotiate. Not a lot of guys were good at that pitch. You know, it's kind of like could be a ball or could be a called strike, depending on how well you execute it. And if it gets over the middle plate, it's gone.

So this is the deal is like we're looking to nibble, like maybe if I have a good two seamer, I can do a backdoor two seamer, and then maybe I can throw the high four seamer, you know, to strike them out. But the last thing, and this is not going to be on a heat map, is that if those are my two plans that I feel like, okay, these are some things I can do, then I have to do something other than that. I can't just keep trying to do these two things because he'll be like, oh, he's trying to hit me with a high four scene. I'm going to hit a homer now. And so I have to do something that's just completely different. That's not on the on the

on these maps. And so I guess my plan is the last thing I have here is his swing rates at curveballs. He knows that that's where they're supposed to be. So, I have a chance of him not swinging at a high slider. So my plan is this. I bury some curveballs in the dirt or breaking balls in the dirt that are not there at all for any reason other than for him to think, there at all for any reason other than for him to think, oh, this guy's trying to slider me like everybody else, right? But I bury it. It's not like I wanted, I don't, I just want him to think, oh, this guy's trying to do what everybody else is trying to do, throw sliders. I bury a slider in the ground and then I try to get him with either a high slider or a high fastball. Once I get him thinking it's low, I'm throwing high fastballs and high sliders

and playing off that and trying to actually get to called strike three because I don't think I'm going to get swinging strike three. I already showed you that heat map. So that's that's my plan. High fastballs and high sliders, which are, you know, not always easy to execute. I know. I know. I know, Mr. May, but try it. Try a high slide. Yeah, Trevor, you get that game plan from, how are you feeling about that game plan? I'm not feeling like those are execute, well, the high fast ball I can do, but whether or not it's executable

and what like if that's a place I wanna go, I'm pretty well acquainted with where, when I throw something, if I hit a spot where it's at and where I miss a spot, and when my game plan is to miss spots, I'm not as confident in that, which then reduces the chances of me doing it. So it'd be tough. It'd be tough.

George Kirby, I think, could do this stuff. I think he's got that. He was a guy we mentioned. I think he's just crazy. He throws knuckleballs every once in a while. He's crazy enough to like, I'll go high breaking balls because I can throw it wherever I want. But that's rare.

That kind of confidence in their command is rare. I'd say maybe Galen would do this too. But these guys are, those are a couple of the best ones. So, but for most guys, yeah, it's tough going against Mookie. But fortunately, you definitely don't have Freddie Freeman followed by Otani after that, so. Yeah, you survive, you find a way through and then that's your reward.

It's, oh, this is still very difficult to continue working through this Dodgers lineup. So what would you do? What would your plan be? Fortunately, I have my scouting report here and I know there's a lot on the screen. So real quick, what I would do, this is literally Mookie from 2023 through,

two days ago, three days ago. So I look for a pitch that is open. And for me, if you can see it far on the left here, that is the change-up. And you can see miss rate towards the bottom and chase rate at the bottom. So chase rates, there's a lot of red down there, meaning he goes with you down below the zone with right on right change-ups. Doesn't see him very often, but it is his weakest pitch in terms of action. When he hits it, it's not as hard. So I was like, oh, there's some change up, there's some change up opportunity here. Unfortunately though, there is some places he hit a mark

because he hits every pitch hard. So the Nitro is right above that. Nitro is Woba by the way. It's expected Woba, just think of it as Woba, and that's just total chances to produce a run. Is that big red spot still change ups there? In the middle? Yeah, the two there together.

Yeah, the top one. The one that's nitro expected well by the big one that has roll over. So I'm about to move on over to that. So on the left side, that is change-ups overall. So the left column, we're gonna go left to right, like we're reading. So there's a spot for a miss overall,

and that's down and in, which is exactly where I throw my change-up and wanna throw it. I wanna throw it over a strike, that's where he misses it. When I don't throw over a strike, it's below that, and he still has a chance to miss that. So I was like, that's there, that's there possibly never yet, that. So then we move over, we go over one column,

this is when I am ahead. So these are my opportunities when I am ahead, and this actually is change ups as well. So when I am ahead in the count, I have the advantage. It looks like he is even struggling in swinging a miss missing the most when you're ahead. So I'm like, okay, cool, it's a late pitch. It's a put away.

I could use a changeup for a strikeout. Like I could use it and that's big when it comes to Mookie because there's not a lot there. And there's some there that I like to see. Even the ones at the very bottom, you can see soft ground ball rate. There's three of the four he put in play down there. He also just rolled them over.

So I'm like, great, swing and miss or a possible ground ball. Would you just be tempted to just go up there and throw him three straight changeups? And I also know, this is just from experience. I know he knows, I know I have a good fastball and I throw a lot of them and then I'm gonna at least give him one at some point.

Which leads us to the middle, which is this is even and this is fastball. So like fastballs are used very, very commonly. Oh, oh, one, one, you know, even two, two, like two, two, fastball is a huge strikeout pitch for me because it's like, it's still kind of a breaking ball count and I can get, if I got a good VLO that day, I can get it by guys because I go for that.

So I throw a lot of even fastballs. So I'm like, is that an option here? The answer to that question is no. No, no, no, no. And a big red spell. And if you see, if you can tell, he guards the inner, like the middle of the plate. Like the edges, yeah, there's some blue,

but they're not misses. Like they're probably foul balls or they're probably, you know, fouled off. Takes, called strikes. Takes or something, yeah. But like if it leaks either way towards the middle plate, he crushes it. And not only does he crush it,

he crushes it every time and there's no miss. Like he has like one spot of miss, which might be one pitch in the zone, and then it's just blue. So like there's no miss and he crushes it, so I'll probably just not throw an even fastball. So let's put that out of our mind. So I'm like, cool, even fastball?

Let's stick with the changeup and even counts. And then we move over one more time and this last one is all three pitches. So from left to right, fastball, slider, change up. I understand that I could have put some titles at the top. That'll help next time we'll do that. But this is all the pitches and this is when you're behind. So I go, okay, what am I gonna do even?

What am I gonna do when I'm ahead? And then at the end, because I don't ever anticipate being behind, I look at behind. So here's behind, what am I gonna do when I'm ahead? And then at the end, because I don't ever anticipate being behind, I look at behind. So here's behind. What is open for misses when I'm behind? What can I fool him with? Look, nothing's really sliders.

No, he doesn't miss sliders when he's behind. When he's ahead, he doesn't miss fastballs when he's ahead, but he does miss changeups. So I'm like, I'm probably gonna throw all changeups when I'm either ahead and I'm even. And then when I'm like, I'm probably gonna throw all change-ups when I am either ahead and I'm even, and then when I'm behind, I'm probably still gonna throw change-ups. So it's gonna be fastball change-up him,

I'm not gonna throw a slider. Because there's just no reason to. When you look at all this, when do you, like do you have a plan for the fastball? You're like, when's the fastball? So like you said, I would have noticed fastball up top is always, I'm never gonna be like fastball down ever. Because it's just something that has never worked

for me ever. It's something I'm not confident in, it's very rare and it's usually an accident when I get a freeze. So I always think fastball's up, are they open? You mentioned earlier, he takes them early in the count if he can hit the top of the zone. So I would take shots up there hoping for a take or a foul off early in the count to get ahead.

So I might go fastball. Soon as I'm ahead though, it's gonna be change up party after that. And then C, if he comes out of his shoes and swings and misses at one, I know he's gonna be, or I don't wanna do that again. If he takes one in the zone, I'm good still. He doesn't know.

But if you see him sort of slowing down his hands and looking at you like, oh, I know what you're doing. I throw a really good one just below and he takes it. Then you gotta go back to the high fastball or just try something totally different? Probably go back to high fastball, probably in. Or if I have a really good one just below and he takes it. Then you gotta go back to the high fastball or just try something? Probably go back to high fastball, probably in. Or if I have a really good slider, like I'm like, I got really good command of the slider, which was rare.

I'll be honest, the change up always felt better. Try to hit that penny off the outside corner. Yeah, take a shot. You take one shot and there's miss off, but that's what it would have to be in like an 0-2, 1-2 situation. And that's usually the time he's taking. So you want to try to graze the edge down there. But honestly, the best case scenario, you throw an O2 slider just off the plate and he like

hits it a second. You're like, did it. We got Mookie out. So going for swings and misses was tough. But fortunately, I did strike him out half the time to face him. So no big deal. Three, two, change up. Don't worry about the soul and base. He stayed there. He stayed there. It was fine. It worked out. What strikes me about this conversation though, is that you have to look for things other than swinging strikes. Like you have to look for maybe an in-zone take,

or foul, or weak contact. And so, you know, we have this like predisposition to like maybe do we believe weak contact exists in a way that like pitchers can really take advantage of that? Because we've been optimizing for whiffs for so long that my instinct is always to sort these things for contact, right? And be like, OK, but then when you got Mookie, you're like, well, crap, he makes contact everywhere. I got to do I got to do something. So it's weak contact or intake in zone takes is like what you're kind of looking

for. Yes. Yes. And like, and Freddie Freeman too, he's the same way. And he doesn't take him to zone. So it's like, he's even hard. He's harder in different ways. But yeah, when you're a reliever and your, your game for my game was always strikeouts because that's, that's the zero value for a hitter. Like that's the maximum value as a pitcher, just in getting three outs. I understand starters are different, but for me, that's what I was hunting. I'd start there, is there a miss? When there was no miss, then it went to, what is the lowest risk of damage of like this person then beating me? Because I can't let them beat me.

So it's like, I want to dominate them, but if I can't, then I just really need them to not beat me. And that's how you go through your checks. Now, that's why the team, like the Dodgers, is so good because they have like four, five, and then at any given day, there could be guy at the back of the lineup that is this guy. They all have the opportunity to do that, the guy that beats you.

When you have three guys, four guys that you need to not beat you in a nine-person lineup, it's a very hard team. You gotta get lucky. There's gotta be some luck involved, and there's gotta be, you know, you just gotta be really, really prepared. So it's a very hard team. You gotta get lucky. There's gotta be some luck involved, and there's gotta be, you know, you just gotta be really, really prepared. So it's a great example.

Mookie's a great example because he's got the other guys that you also have to prepare the same way for in front of and behind him. It sounds like the biggest difference between an elite hitter and a good, or even an average hitter, of course, would just be their ability to anticipate what you want to do to them.

All of your game planning, they've deconstructed that. They have a plan for your plan. And that's why your plan becomes so much less effective. Also seems like the the gap. I mean, as a reliever, it's hard enough as a starter. You may have to face him three times. So you may get him once, but he's going to adjust what you did the first time. And you got to go out there and try to get him two more times.

That seems borderline impossible. He spots your your change up plan, he's like, next time up, he's like, this guy's gonna throw me a change up. Yeah, well then it might be I'm going sliders, just because I'm, now I'm not, now I'm kinda throwing that out and it's going off of experience, especially if it's later in that series,

I'm facing him again, four game series, then I might get him two sliders in a row. Now you're gonna try and play off the fact that he's thinking that you're gonna do that. So if I throw two sliders, throw him for a strike, and he's like, ah, first pitch, in a situation where it's like one out and there's nobody on or one gone first,

and he's trying to work the count, and I throw a slider first pitch for a strike, he's like, dang it. Like, then now I might be a little bit ahead of him, I'm just trying to get through the series staying ahead of him. And the next time we'll worry about how it changed next time, but this time.

And that's very much your life as a reliever. One of the things that also sticks out for me in this situation is that unlike many relievers, you had three pitches. So you had at least three ideas that you could go to in this situation. And that's really important as we look through it. You're like, what do you do, you know,

if that right on right change up doesn't work, or if he looks too comfortable against it, you know, and so we did just we just looked up real quick, like who are the best hitters, you know, in the last two years against relievers and lo and behold, Mookie's number one, you know, and I think that there's something about that. He's such a good anticipator. We I think we've denigrated in the public sphere this idea of guess-hitting. That's something people say about an older, oh, he's just guessing now, or whatever. But from what I've seen in the research, pre-release information is super

important. What that says to me is sort of educated guessing. It's like, I know the scouting report, and now I'm seeing something as delivery or something that like before the release that tells me, oh, this is the change up that I'm anticipating and now I'm ready. I'm into change up swing. You know, it's a very complicated process hitting. It's very reactive, but it's reactive. It's not just reactive like you stand up there and you have no idea what's happening.

Yeah, that's a pure guess. Like guessing in the traditional sense is like, I'm going off of nothing. But then you're narrowing down the possibilities and then you're multiple choice guessing. Right, and you're just hoping to have like a sort of a 50-50 spot where you get them to a 50-50 spot. And you're like, if it's high, it's either this or this.

And if I put my good swing on it, it's a homer or miss or whatever. Like, that's that's why the misses go up, too, because the VELO is high. So it's like you could say, all right, if it's high, it's probably a fastball. And I'm going to put my A swing on this 98 mile an hour fastball. And oh, he just threw me a high slider. Crap. And the truly great guys like the Josh haters and the Felix Batistas of the world, you couldn't be like, oh, the fastballs up, I know that Bubba and it doesn't matter like you

you made the right guess and you still missed it you sort of had that with the Kristen Walker exactly that that's when you you start to question like did the right thing it gets goes down the questioning of your your game goes down into your soul you're like am I just bad like that happens. They just get you even though there's no way they should have gotten you there. They weren't supposed to. But that just, like, that happened to me about, there was one time a year, basically,

where something happened where I'm like, he never done it up to that point, he probably will never do it again. Like it's just, it was just, it was just my turn. But it still rattles you. It still rattles you though, because you wanna be able to fix, like I wanted to be able to fix everything. I thought I wanted everything

to be an equation that I could solve and that's just not the way it is. And that was something I battled with my whole career and will continue to battle with probably for my whole life. So my brain also works that way. It can be rough. I wonder how you use this to evaluate hitters like how do you how do you see that in a hitter? How do you see that? Like, do you think you could face a kid in the minors and be like, oh, like this guy, like what would they do that you would be like, oh, this guy really has an elite sort of anticipation?

Oh, like you knew immediately with Soto. You knew, honestly, Jackson Holliday does, he has it. I think that's what they call it, like they're like elite plate discipline or elite feel or elite vision at the plate. Like that's, they have a good plan, but their ability to make that adjustment or be wrong with that guess and still continue the AB.

Like that's the good hitter to elite elite. Like that's when you see it, you're like this kid could be. That's a level that not everyone can do that Have you ever faced so lair? Yes, what's interesting to me is like I think he has a really good sense of the zone Like he knows what the zone is he does and that's gotten better and better and better over the years But I don't know that he has a great sense of spin, but I don't know I don't know how great anybody sees spin So I don't know if you remember these at bat, sometimes pitchers are just like Rolodexes,

but like, so the book for him in a long time, I think has been Breaking Balls in the Zone. Cause it looks like it's in the zone, and he's kind of like, oh, in the zone, A-swing, you know, swings over it. Is that something that you remember from Saler? Yeah, yeah, no, he's an A-swing all the time guy. There's a few of these guys, like Duvall's all the all a swing all the time guy There's a few of these guys like Duvall's an ace swing all the guy time guy

Renfro is a ace swing all the time guy CJ Crone like they're guys who are okay Taking really bad swings sometimes being wrong, but having a really good another chance But having a really good idea of the zone like that's how they adjust it They're like in order to do this though, I just gotta make sure I'm swinging at pitches that actually can be hit and just don't be wrong as much. But it's okay to have my one zone that I crush and have a hole somewhere and just make them have

to pepper that one place over and over again. And then I'll just be out, I guess, because I just naturally, for whatever reason, how I swing, just my skill set does not line up to hit that pitch But if they miss I'm gonna take advantage of it and that's why those guys have made careers So there's like a really good version of that like he's gotten really good at Working the work in the count and he's scary and he's big and he hits home runs So he's gonna get his walks to that's how he gets walked

It's not just straight plate discipline It's it comes down to and do like he builds anation, just doesn't swing as much out of the zone as you would think he would. And that's what made him the player he is now. So those guys, but that's, he knows, he's like, I need to get my A swing off and I need to make sure I do. And all those guys do it.

Sliders in the zone could be scary to people who don't feel like their breaking balls are elite. Like if your breaking ball isn't elite, then you train yourself on basically get alone away. If it's not elite by stuff, you're like, at least it has to be in that spot that makes it that makes it playable. Right. And so I guess maybe people don't train a lot to throw sliders a little bit higher where that would need to be to kind of fool so there. And then I bet you if I do a search run at right now for so there and and and Homer's on breaking balls in the zone,

he probably has some because every once in a while he can be like, okay, I got it. I know the book on me. I know you're gonna fill it up with sliders. So this time I'm gonna anticipate it. And I'm gonna hit like five homers in two weeks off of sliders in the zone. And everyone's gonna be like, crap,

we gotta come up with some new idea. Then he's gonna get his other stuff back. And that's what he hits the third pass. And then I'm gonna go back to my fastball swing, right? Or whatever, yeah. Yeah, you just scare them into thinking that it's a pitch you can't throw. But you can, it's just they made a slight,

or they just got some bad ones for it. Solerik hits the ones that stay kinda in her third, like back up a little bit, he crushes those. Like he catches those, those are big mistakes, but a lot of guys struggle with those because they're going out there with you and then they can't adjust. He's just like, his swing path doesn't really-

He can clear that. He can clear it, yeah. And he's so strong. He can get jaded, he's like Walker. He can get jammed and hit it out. And he knows that. So he'll hit that, but like you said, guys will try it a couple times.

He'll run into some not so good ones, hit three or four homers in a series or something, and then everyone's terrified of sliders, but if you go look, you're like, these were all. And then they'll fall behind until they have to throw the fastball and he's like, that? You're like, none of these were good sliders, guys. This is what I wanted all along.

The hole's still there, right? The hole's still there even if his slugging went way up in the ice or whatever. The hole is still there. It's just maybe a little bit smaller. You can still go there, don't be afraid, but that gets lost in translation sometimes. It does.

Sometimes you don't have time to show that story. lost in translation. Sometimes it does sometimes you don't time to like Show that story. So you're just like here's what he did. You're like, oh no like that that that's really common it's just there's a lot of information the interesting thing too on Henry Davis when I looked at the The the high and away hole that he had He had like a 600 slugging or something on those pitches It's because he put like two balls in play and one was a homer. Exactly. So like you have to be careful sometimes also when you're sorting these things and you're sorting these heat maps like there's a some some heat

maps, you have the option of doing raw, like raw numbers. So you can actually see how many pitches are in each one. Because if you do the heat map and it smooths it over like you're like, ooh, red, that's bad, right? But if you click over to the raw, you're like, oh, that's, he had two pitches out and he whiffed five times and he hit 26 fouls. You know, it's like, maybe that's still a good place, even though the red heat map sort of made me think

that it wasn't. That's why I always liked Wobba, because it factored in a Wox 2. Like, so there was red also where they'd take. made me think that it wasn't. That's why I always liked Woba because it factored in a Wox 2. So there was red also where they'd take. And those had bats produced him going to first. And so you're like, ooh, there's a bunch of red over here. He's like, he just doesn't swing at all.

It basically reinforced it. So I got double the information a little bit. Though when I showed it to other guys, they were like, why is all this? There's so much red outside the zone. I'm like, those aren't put in play. How do I explain this? Well, it's more of an encompassing stat though.

So I did always appreciate, like in general, it's like, if you just go to the miss and away from any of this red and those things overlap, then that's zero value. That's how you get that person to create zero value. There was a point a few years ago I was looking at trying to rank hitters. I decided to combine pop-ups and field fly balls

with strikeouts because I felt like there might have been some hitters that weren't striking out, but they were just giving us terrible plate appearances or getting a bad outcome. It's B swings. Yeah, getting a B swing and it's like, okay, well we think this guy's really good

because his K rate's low, but he's not quite as good as we think because he actually pops the ball up a little bit more than the typical player So this question kind of drives at that from Saul It says Trevor was in the 99th percentile in pop-up percentage in 2023 among pitchers at least a hundred batted ball events against What kind of hitters are prone to produce pop-ups? Is it hitters with high bat speed or is it something else? Ooh, that's really interesting. I mean, obviously bat angle, your natural bat angle, a lot of guys are low ball hitters.

Low ball hitters generally scoop when they make a mistake, they go too low, more than too high a lot of times. And when that's the case, and maybe your stuff doesn't have as much depth, I was throwing a lot of sweepers that were more side to side. Like it was another pitch that's the case, and maybe your stuff doesn't have as much depth, I was throwing a lot of sweepers that were more side to side. Like it was another pitch that kind of seeing, they wanted to see up more.

And so they added that to my fastball. So guys were like overthinking how far it was gonna drop. It was a breaking ball that wasn't having as much depth as they anticipated, cause my slider had more. So it's like- So you swing under it. So they were swinging under it a lot,

and I've always been that. And then I also throw up a lot, like even fast, changeups would go up. And so like you throw a high changeup and it kind of stays flat and it kind of floats in there. If they see fastball for a split second, it's gonna get missed or it's gonna get popped up. And that happens quite a bit too.

So I threw up fastball so much that the eye level was there that getting the depth off of that was really, really hard to do. And then the guys who threw like me also tended to get lots of pops up strider, lots of fly balls, tons and tons of fly balls. It's like a ride thing, right? It's a ride thing too. So like ride just generally is when you're trying to get the miss, they're going to swing under it. So sometimes when the ride's not quite there or they're trying to

go with you and they guess right, they still might be on it. They're still lower, still a little bit lower than they know it's gonna be and that produces a pop-up. But I was getting a lot of pop-ups in the infield and a lot of them were change-ups because guys just dive out, they're a lower hitter, they're a low ball hitter, and to make that adjustment, you gotta try to keep the hands back,

which then usually lowers the barrel. So it's like, you're like, ugh, and you just try to flick it. And when you try to flick the ball, that's when you pop it up in the infield. And then I had all of that foul territory too. Oakland's probably gonna have a bunch of guys in that, like anyone with Ryde in Oakland

is gonna have a bunch of pop-up extra too, because, well, not anymore after this year. But just because of those are called foul outs or pop-ups and they're all factored into the ability to hit the ball in the air. Still the biggest foul territory in the league, isn't it? The Coliseum, by far, by far. One thing that's a little bit weird is

if you just look at infield fly balls on fan graphs, you'll see it's like right away, you'll see it's correlated with fly ball rate. So at the very top is Esau Paredes, Dalton Varsho, Anthony Santander, Kyle Schwaber. These are all guys that are low ball hitters that, yeah, I think this is the scooping Infield fly ball they hit a lot of fly balls

And so sometimes their distribution of fly balls includes the ones that are bad You know if you're hitting the ball like 25 degrees a lot 30 degrees You're gonna hit some that are 40 and 45 and those are pop-ups. So that's part of it I think that what's hard about about pop-ups is there's another class of player that does hit pop-ups From different kinds of mishits. So Hunter Renfro is up there Carlos Santana Caprit Ruiz Jake Berger Elias Diaz Juric's and profile. I don't know. These are guys that have sub 40% fly ball rates But still have these big pop up rates.

And I, and I was thinking about like, people don't really do this, but let's say you swing down the ball and you were kind of like chopping at wood. You can still do an infield fly ball pretty quickly because you, if the ball's coming in and you just sort of chop at it, like there's a scoop infield fly ball where you're almost hitting it and it's going too far up. Sipping, but then there's also the like, I'm hitting it. I'm trying to go straight and this ball's coming like this and I just chop it. You know, there are different ways that foul balls are created and like whether or not there's a skill is something I tried to look at and somebody like a lot

of these bad ball hitters that have bad, uh, that reach a lot, chase a lot, end up the way, the only way you can make it to the big leagues and chase a ton is by making a lot of contact outside the zone at first, but also sometimes fouling balls off. So Pavel Sandoval always fouled balls off, he's a spoiler. And I do think on some level, spoiling is a skill. And I bet you that guys that chase a lot

and maybe hit pop ups are spoilers. And they'll just kind of they'll miss hit these balls, but they'll make just enough contact to stay alive. And it's almost like this Henry Davis foul ball thing. So not all pop ups are created equal. So that makes it pop ups are really interesting thing to try and study. I've tried to study a couple of times. They're not they're not obvious. It's super noisy, right? I mean, it's all over the place from...

Except on the pitching side. On the pitching side, reliably, we put pop-ups into FIP. So we thought it was reliable enough, it was something that pitchers could do often enough, and the batting average was low enough on pop-ups that like we could include that in FIP. That's why my FIP was always way lower than my ERA except for the last year, pretty much every year because I got lots of pop ups. That's part of it. On the hitting side, it's a little bit harder to nail down exactly what creates pop ups. I would just say it's, it's mishitting and it's not always a terrible mishit.

It could be something that they could iron out fairly quickly. That's why I think there's noise. You know, they could be popping it up for a little bit and then be like, oh, I'm just swinging too far under the ball or I'm chopping at wood too much or I'm swinging at the wrong pitches or whatever. So I think that is something that hitters can kind of iron out a little bit.

It's too small of a sliver to kind of focus on for the hitter. Thanks for that question, Saul. Todd Brown has a question. Hunter Brown, broken, injured, or just a blip. Obviously a rough day against the Royals yesterday. That was nine runs on 11 hits in two thirds of an inning. We've talked about it piling all of that badness onto your ratios early in the year

and how long it takes to fix that. Is there something actually wrong with Hunter Brown or was it just a really bad day against the Royals? It was a really bad day. He doesn't look sharp. I mean, he was just feeding that curve ball in and it was just getting just pummeled and he didn't make the adjustment,

but it was not sharp. He was throwing it in his zone. It was very loopy. Like, you know, it was like 80, 81, and he usually throws it like 84. So like it didn't have the sharpness. It's a major weapon that he has. You know, had some Velo but he wasn't like throwing the hardest he's ever thrown and Copman's kind of a not great for a ride. The numbers are

always down a little bit there just with the humidity. I mean I know it's a little bit cooler but it doesn't ride quite as good as other places. So yeah it just looked like a lot of stuff in the middle of zone and then some unluckiness and the Royals are kind of hot. So he just, I think it was a perfect storm. But yeah, that's a record for most hits without throwing in an inning. That's what we call a season killer. It's something that he's gonna look up and be like,

well, I wish I could just erase that one. Like at the end of the year, they're gonna be like, Hunter ran out of four one, but if you take this outing out, he is a three two. That's- I think I still believe in him. When you watch him, you're like, there's still pretty good stuff here.

Yeah. And he just doesn't look sharp, and he's young. And they're off to a slow start too. So you gotta remember, there's some pressure. I gotta be sharp now. I'm not sharp. I'm gonna get frustrated. It just makes it worse.

He's not even, I doubt he feels super comfortable and like, oh, I have a spot forever. Like, you know what I mean? Like, especially with like, Blocko came up. Yeah. And just did what he did and put some pressure on it. Like if, when someone comes back. Somebody's going down when Verlander's back. Exactly. And that's, I've had that exact situation happen and it is, there's a lot when you're young, you know, I was worried about Irvin Santana coming back, taking my job. But I got moved to the bullpen and then we saw how that worked out. So, blessing these guys.

But yeah, so there's a lot of that, probably. I don't think he's putting it out. I don't think he's putting it out. Oh God, he has Atlanta in that. It's a hold and bench. I think when someone is looking like this and the stuff is not crisp, this is what a bench is made for.

There's ceiling, there's talent. Don't use them in a matchup that tough. You probably wouldn't have used them against Atlanta anyway, even if the blow up hadn't happened yesterday because Hunter Brown isn't on that level. You did use them against the Royals. You definitely used them against the Royals and you felt good about it. So that's why the gut punch is even worse. I mean, if it's a keeper league, I'm holding on to it.

I'm holding on to a guy who was a 92 mile an hour slider and a keeper league, you know, like it just, there's, he has three breaking balls that are pretty good. fours in fastball not as good this year but It's still an okay pitch and I think that all together It's it's a good it's it's still can it still has a lot of upside and he's still a guy who's had long strengths And success so I'm keep release. I'm keeping him 15 plus. I'm keeping on my bench You know 12s and 10s. You just gotta keep moving

You know there's gonna be somebodys, you just gotta keep moving. You know, there's gonna be somebody else out there that you're gonna be excited about too, so you can move on, I guess. Jimmy offered up a way to pitch to Mookie Betts, just plunked the mascot to start the mound appearance so Mookie doesn't dig in. I mean, there is one Mookie hack.

I've got this, Bailey Ober found a hack. Look at this, look where Bailey Ober pitches him. Oh, hey, you get a called strike out there, no problem. Oh, and he got ripped too. That's the worst. You get rippered, like just, oh, if you're on a pitch six inches outside. That's tough.

Did you have a favorite umpire for how he'd punch guys out when you struck him out? It's him, it's Ripper? But my guy, my favorite guy, I've talked about this a little bit, my favorite guy just overall now is just Ben May. No relation. No relation, yeah.

But he was always really good. I don't know what there was, but he actually was behind the plate for five of my appearances last year, and I had a zero. So thank you, Ben. Hopefully it was... But you like his hot and cold masks,

like you liked where he called strikes? Just a good dude, you know? Just a good dude, great name. And every time I would walk out to the bullpen and if he was on the bases, I'd just make sure he was gonna, I'd see him at the evergarden. Oh, you said hi. Yeah, see you at Thanksgiving?

All right, see you later, man. The no relation thing, I was thinking about that with Todd Brown, I'm like, is that Hunter's uncle asking if he should drop his nephew? Is that what's happening here? There is some of that because Alex Bregman's uncle is a fantasy baseball player, Larry Schechter. He's played in TOW Wars and NFBC and labor and stuff.

It's just kind of weird. I saw them have an exchange on Twitter and Alex called him Uncle Larry and I was like, does Alex just have a really odd sense of humor? And there's like, no, they're actually related. So, hey, you never know. Sometimes you get the the family advice It's hard it would be hard to drop a family member in a fantasy league be very hard to do that

You wouldn't want to talk about that Thanksgiving my son is reading my pieces and at the end of them I'm like did you like it? Did you really though yeah, but one thing I've seen from Little League, I like demonstrative calls because if you're if you're actually scoring the game or if you're the game changer dad, like and you can't tell what it was a ball or a strike like you. You want to know if it's a ball or a strike. You know, so a nice demonstrative strike call. You're like, oh, that was a strike. I can put that in my book.

Yeah, but to wait for it doesn't have to be like Soda Popinski punching someone out of the full spin. Yeah. Or like a finishing move, a street fighter finishing move. Like you don't need that when it's children. Like that's that's one step too far. But I can understand. Yeah. Wanting a clear call would be helpful.

That would be that would be a little over the top. If it's being blogged about, there's enough crying in Little League Baseball. If you had some of that, they'd be even more crying. One last question here. This is from Schaefer on the stream. Who's the most underrated second baseman? I threw this out there because I have not thought about this question in a while. Underrated second baseman.

I mean, Cattell Marte from a what he does as a hitter perspective still feels a little underrated in the broader sense Defensively, nobody trusts them. I couldn't I couldn't shop him for the life of me in my dynasty leagues and here he is playing well again. I Would have said before this season Gleyber Torres. He's kind of fighting through it right now But I still see a guy who makes above average contact, above average patience, above average power, above average speed, kind of above average across the board. That would be kind of my answer, I think.

Maybe Polanco. I know he's not started strong, but I think in 162 games, he'll be a guy that's probably not talked about a lot, but will contribute a lot. I like the Marte call too. Like he's a guy you like, because you hear about all the young lefty sticks that all are so fast there,

and then you're like, they have Marte. You guys remember this guy, he's betting third? Like he kind of gets lost in the shuffle, which is weird, because he's like a really, really, he's a freak athlete too. Like he's an impressive player. When he's hot, he's impossible to get out. So I would say, yeah, maybe he's not talked about enough either. Live Hives buzzing Bryce Terang getting a couple from my burner accounts apparently.

I mean, I don't think so. I think Terang is a really good defensive player. I'm still not sure he's ever going to hit the ball hard enough to be an above average hitter in the big leagues. Controls the zone pretty well, at least he did as a prospect, but I don't know. I'm not seeing the long, long-term ceiling there. Andres Jimenez getting some love in here as well. Phillips, hot take here, maybe Simeon. I mean, it's the idea of Simeon just being thought of as well above average but not being thought of as elite and maybe because of what he's

done over the last three, four seasons now, maybe he has actually joined that group. Yeah, maybe we should start talking about him as elite. He is kind of mentioned in the MVP race quite a bit and had a pretty good year last year. I know he's got a stinger, but like it's a pretty good year. So yeah, maybe he should be

in that conversation a little more. It's weird, it's all these guys who are like maybe the second best hitter on their team, but you're like, but what about that guy? Like, the shortstop's better. It's second base is a premium position. If you can play defense, it's a big thing. But if you can hit, I mean, you're

going to be better than probably 20 teams have, right? Yeah, and if you get back to the 2022 levels for Andres Jimenez, if that's closer to his baseline, then he's underrated. I think it's more of a question than a certainty at this point. I think it's an interesting question because I think the whole position is underrated actually, because second base, you don't have second base prospects really in the minor leagues. It's, you know, second base is where you stick that guy.

You're like the third baseman who has a little bit enough range to handle it or the shortstop who doesn't have the arm or, you know, like if I look up baseball America's, you know, top 100, like, would there be one second baseman in their top 100? Like, it's just not a position that we hype. And so you could actually make the case that Jose Altuve is, I know he's going to the Hall of Fame and like he's a Hall of Fame guy, but like he wasn't thought of as a big prospect coming up. So he was underrated at some point in his career, you know? Simeon is a guy who like doesn't maybe have the per at bat eliteness that you have when you put him up per at bat against the other guys, but he's like elite at staying on the field

and he's above average in so many things that you're like, oh, when you do that for six hundred and fifty seven hundred played appearances every year, then it is actually elite. I remember when I voted for Bobby Braille for the Hall of Fame and there was a lot of people who didn't like that. It was a similar kind of a case to Marcus Simeon, where it's just like he posted. He was really, really good. And he posted. He was there all the time and he was good enough at a bunch of different skills that it added up. But you never thought of him at he never won an MVP. He never even got in the top three and never thought of him as the best at his position. I think Simeon will have a similar case actually. When the Hall of Fame comes around, people will say, oh, but he never won MVP or he never did this

or you know, he was never the best one of the best five players in the league. And you'd be like, yeah, but he was for like 10 years, he was like the 12th best player in the league. Yeah. If he puts four or five more seasons together, that's the kind of conversation we'll have at the end of his career. It's still still less to do a lot to get there. Aging curves matter right now for him. Durability is it's the position of undervalued players, so underrated, undervalued players. So picking one is kind of like, you can make the case for Bryson Stott. You can make a case for a lot of these second baseman, Tyra Estrada.

And like, they're often forgotten players that, you know, you just sort of find a second baseman. You just, you know, you kind of figure it out. It's like a right fielder or something where you're just like, we'll just we'll put a guy who didn't work out at first base out there or something. You know, I guess it's, it's more left field. Left field is right. Field. You want them to actually have an arm. Left field is where you sort of like stick a guy.

Well, we have to go. So thank you. Thank you to the live hive for chiming in and joining us at one o'clock Eastern. We're here each and every Friday. You can find us on Twitter. Trevor is that I am Trevor May. Eno is at EnoSaris. I'm at Derek and Riper. The pod is each and every Friday. You can find us on Twitter. Trevor is at IamTrevorMay. Eno is at EnoSaris. I'm at Derek VanRiper. The pod is at Rates and Barrels. You can join our Discord with the link in the show description.

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