Rates & Barrels - Will New Pitch Data Help Us Quantify Deception?

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

Eno, Trevor, and DVR discuss a report from ESPN's Jesse Rogers that MLB might consider a future rule requiring a six-inning minimum for starting pitchers before taking a deep dive into pitch angles and how future data in this area might make it easier to quantify deception.  Plus, they discuss a recent story that Eno wrote with Britt Ghiroli about the Orioles' success in developing hitters, and they play their first ever installment of 'Name That Dude'.  Rundown 0:57 MLB Considering a Six-Inning Minimum for Starting Pitchers? 14:57 Will Pitch Release Angle Data Help Us Quantify Deception? 23:03 Finding Ideal Horizontal Movement on Fastballs With Release Angle 37:49 What’s In the O’s Secret Sauce with Hitting Development? 44:47 Scouting for Curiosity Within Makeup 54:46 Do Players on Bad Team Get Bored? 1:03:49 Name That Dude Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Trevor on Twitter: @IAmTrevorMay e-mail: [e-mail] Related Reading Jesse Rogers' six-inning minimum (ESPN): https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/40847173/mlb-rule-changes-2024-six-inning-starting-pitcher-injuries-tommy-john Michael Rosen on pitch release angles (FanGraphs): https://blogs.fangraphs.com/its-release-angles-all-the-way-down/ Eno & Britt on the Orioles' hitting development:  https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5696854/2024/08/15/orioles-hitters-development-vertical-bat-angle/ Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us Thursday at 1p ET/10a PT for our weekly live episode with Trevor May! Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris With: Trevor May Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Thursday, August 15th. Derek the Riper, you know, Sarah's Trevor May here with you on this episode. We dig into pitch release angles as a way to possibly quantify deception. So big topic that we'll try to break down, make it more digestible for people like me, especially that's what Eno and Trevor are here to do. We're going to talk about some of the Orioles secret sauce and scouting for curiosity, the nature of being inquisitive, different things that make players more adaptable.

It might be part of that secret sauce. We'll dig into that great story that Eno wrote with Brichiroli that went up on the athletic earlier today. Got a new game called Name That Dude that we'll squeeze in at the very end of the show. And we start today with some news. It's a report from ESPN's Jesse Rogers that they may in Major League Baseball be kicking around the idea of a six inning minimum for starting pitchers because yeah, you know, let's just add more stuff that could break pitchers.

There would be some guardrails throwing a hundred pitches before you get through six. You could leave the game for that. You can leave with an injury, which would require an IELTS stint. So you can't just game the system there. Or if you give it four or more earned runs, that might be another way to leave a game early. Trevor, why? Why are we doing this? Why are we so adamant that we need a requirement like this? It's done under this guise that people only show up to watch starting pitchers and that anyone

and everyone could do this, but simply choose not to in the pursuit of, well, nastiness mostly. Honestly, it's, it's under the assumption that people only show up to watch hitters. So, uh, the, the funny thing is, uh, I, people go, uh, why, why, why do we want to increase offense? And at the end of the day, it's, they want pitchers to do worse, uh, more often. And, uh, a good way to do that is to restrict their freedom to do, to, to make, to do strategic things.

Uh, and that would be another way to do it. Now, the interesting thing is now we're, you know, we've had a long conversation about injuries and things. And, uh, for years now it's been associated with pitch count and. All kinds of different things. And now they're suddenly like, Hey, what if we increased all of those things, even though injuries are up? And that's been a conversation all year.

Let's do things that are actively working to increase injuries more to pitchers. It's a little bit of a head scratcher, but in a day the offense is still down. It has not bounced up the way that they want it to, and they're trying to, to create, you know, environments for that to happen. So, um, yeah, that that's. Interesting and, and, uh, a little bit, uh, annoying from my, from my side, just from a route, the outset, like not knowing a lot of where this came from and why they're, they're saying these things, but, um, a lot of guys haven't thrown that deep

into games. I understand the, you know, the, the concern when you're looking in the fifth and everyone has someone warming up, but, um, it seems a little bit weird to me, uh, as a way, cause you mentioned too, before we kind of in the show about like the way that the game will get longer and all this other stuff will happen. If a guy's out there laboring the third time through the order, right? So maybe you're shooting yourself on the foot there. It's just a little bit of a head scratcher, especially now. Why now? But, you know, the rules change to where you can put a rule in in 50 days. So I think that's why we hear things like this so quickly. Yeah. And I think tactically, the clear understanding of the third time to the order penalty has been realized over time as well. It's not just that you can't push pitchers through, it's that you shouldn't because the alternatives, we've talked about this on the show so many times, the relievers

you're going to bring in sometimes in the fifth inning are much more effective than the starter would be facing the same hitter a third time. So that's part of the calculation as well. So, yeah, you could take that away. But I do think you're adding a lot of base runners if you're making back end starters in particular pitch deeper into games, because those are the guys that are probably more susceptible to getting just demolished the third time through. So now you've got 17 combined runs scored on a regular basis because in the fourth and fifth and sixth innings guys are just getting clobbered and those are longer games for sure, guaranteed you're going to add time. There's like a nostalgia for like when we the starting

pitchers went further into games. We were talking off air like what is the goal? What do you want? What does baseball want? Like, what is the ideal game? What are they looking for? And so if we have this nostalgia for when the starting pitcher went deeper into games, I get it that I like starting pitchers too. Sorry, Trevor. And it's cool.

Trevor and and it's cool. But if you say, let's go back to when starting pictures went deep into games, six. So you had a chart about like how many six start six inning starts we've lost over the years. Yeah, yes. I made a simple search on that. I just look back to 2000. And if you go back to 2000, there were almost 3000 six inning starts per year

across the entire league. If you go back to last season, 2022, we were just under 2000. It's a pretty big cut. That's a big difference. But, so what you're saying is, let's go back to 2000. Let's go back to 2000 in terms of pitching. But we're going to leave hitting in this year.

And so you are you just going to assume that hitters learn nothing over the last 25 years? And I'm going to assume no, the hitters developed over the last 25 years and the hitters are nastier than they were in 2000. I don't know why people think, oh, hitters have been the same and pitchers have been the same. I think there's evolution. We're all getting better at this. Like this is a game that has existed for, you know, a hundred plus years. Like, of course we've gotten better at it, you know, like, you know, we've learned how to play it, you know, we've learned the rules, the intricacies of the

rules. We've learned player development, we learned how to coach better. I think we're always getting better. So if you're just going to take hitters from now and face pitchers from, pitchers from 2000 and make them go six innings, it's going to be, I think it's going to be disastrous. Here is the list of pitchers that don't go far into games. This is who we're going to force to go six innings. We really want Yariol Rodriguez to go six. We need Slay Chikoni to go six. James Paxton, please. I know know you can barely make five but we need you to go six randy vasquez has like a sixty are a do you really want more randy vasquez that's who's on this list can't have my data has been turned into a middle in guy because you couldn't go six so. And if you say okay you guys are good enough that you, someone else needs to pitch instead. They can go six. Who are you going to? I mean, if the, if the nationals aren't pitching DJ Hertz,

then they're pitching somebody else that you think they have somebody else that they could go, they could go six, that they're just, it's just waiting to go, or you're just going to force DJ Hertz to go six and he's going to walk eight guys. So I don't know. Like I think this is this is ill fated. And then on the other side, just the number of pitchers, number of pitchers with 50 innings and who have averaged more than 16 per start 15.

We have 15 guys who do this now. Like 15 guys to do this now. I like 15 guys who averages so I just that's such a big is so many innings that you're forcing onto the table and you're not really you're not even giving them like me if you're gonna do it do it triple a you still gonna have teams like sort of avoid it you have to do it for a while out so that teams like develop it. You might have to tell them we're going to do this in five years because teams have to develop it. They have to have the guys ready to do it. If you did it right now, it would be disastrous. I think. Yeah, you could not make this change quickly. At least if you did, you would absolutely get the worst possible

outcome on it. But if you put it four or five years down the road, that changes the way people train. It changes the way you scout. it changes the way you game plan. I think the other way to flip this is, okay, let's say you had the six inning minimum, you'd use three relievers for the last three innings, most cases. Right? So you've got it down to four pitchers per game.

We've talked about this before. Why not just allow four pitchers per nine innings and then allow more pitchers if the game goes extras and still let teams manipulate those innings across those pitchers differently. Cause then at least you're, you're shouldering the workload in a way that's more balanced. You're not just saying, all right, you got, you have to take two thirds of the innings and then we'll just chop up the rest into smaller pieces. That's a very bizarre way to codify this.

And why not take, why not try some small stuff first? The double hook. I would try the double hook and the active roster. The active roster is in the NHL. It's an NBA NFL. Every other sport has an active roster. So declare an active roster for a night. It's you're allowed to have five pitchers on it.

You know, then you can have a nice long guide. Then you are incentivized to take your starting pitchers six, but like, it's not like a rule. It's more like, oh, well, I have these five guys. What am I going to do? Yeah. I think incentivizing things works. I mean, I think we've seen this in every walk of life,

but incentivizing things always works a little bit better than rule, like making it a mandatory rule. Um, because everyone tries to work around the mandatory rules because they're usually in order to promote some sort of outcome that goes against some other part of the game, like the pitchers that goes against the pitchers. So like the people who are in charge of pitching part of their job then becomes, how do we circumnavigate this? How do we get, how do we, you know, finagle our, our system to, to work

the best within this in this way. And then that just causes a whole bunch of other things that then they react to. It's just very reactionary. Uh, it's reactionary. That's the word. Not that's just not how to, that this is not very effective. And it's been proven that the, if you make decisions like that all the time, it's just not that effective.

I like the active roster. The interesting thing for me though on that is I'm thinking back to all the time sitting in the bullpen and been like looking around like, all right, who's up today? And that's that we'd be emphasizing that it'd be sort of codified. There'd be an up and a down list. It would also suck to look around and be like, I know three of you guys aren't up every day. Like I know it. On days that you were out there and you had five guys available and three of them are

the horses. You're like, well, you know, I'm in more situations now. Like I have to pick, like I have, I have, you know, and there's, there's a little bit of a, sometimes you got to dodge a game from here to like where you're available, but you don't pitch and that's really helpful for your career. I understand the weeds now, but like there are times where I'm like, Oh, but I know I'm available and I know there's a couple situations better if I didn't, but it'd be there 80% of situations I'm going to pitch because we're, we're, we're, you know, uh, short handed, but that 20% happens. I will be very,

very thankful. And like the starting pitcher goes eight randomly that day, you know, uh, shorthanded, but that 20% happens. I will be very, very thankful. And like the starting pitcher goes eight randomly that day, you had a Jordan Lyle, right? And you're like, yes, it would be weird to codify where you're like, I am, I am literally the guy who only is going to be active if they used one of the other inactive guys yesterday, then the roles are getting weird and then like, now there's active versus inactive

and then there's gonna be a bunch of like, who do we send down, who we bring up and then there's the option stuff. It's just gonna, that's gonna be a chain reaction. It could, there could be second, second level stuff. You're right. But there could be, you know, for anything in this, it's less drastic, at least in the six.

So then the forcing the six, So I agree. I agree. There's every solution is going to have some issues probably or some. Yeah, it doesn't work well. But that is much better than making everyone throw six for sure. And if you made everyone throw five, you know, at least that lines up with getting a win. Yeah. You know, and like, you know, it's still deeper than some guys are going. And but it's not it's not as drastic.

I think, um, foolish baseball had a number that like over a third of the starts this year didn't follow this six inning rule, um, which doesn't actually make sense for me because there's only 15 guys doing it, but anyway, he has 33% because there's, there's supposedly this rule that like, oh, if you went to a hundred pitches, you could be taken out to the runs, the foreign runs too. That, that ticks the box that gets you out of there too. But, uh, this is also kind of rough on the score and the umpires are like, okay, did you, and then they have to go out there and be like, are you actually,

Oh, you're going on the IL after this. So you're actually injured. So that's why you're coming out. So, you know, is it going to lead to like more phantom I.L. stints? Yeah. Because then you can come out there and be like, man, I just gave up. And this is a big game. You know, why don't I just say, you know, I'm fatigued and they take me out for two turns and, you know, and then somebody else comes in, you know, something,

something's not right. You know, my hamstring hurts a little. You know, we're going to need we're going to need someone like Hugo from Bob's Burgers to be the inspector for legitimacy of IELTS. We need someone like that. I did not think we were going to bring up Hugo from Bob's Burgers. He comes by and he's like, he's like, well, does that hamster? And you all see a limp.

Yeah, I thought you're going to do the voice for Hugo. That would have been so I can't I can't get to that level. I'm not going to do it, you all see a limp. Yeah. I thought you were going to do the voice for Hugo. That would have been something I can't, I can't get to that level. I'm not going to do it, especially on a live one. Bob, do you know what the term meat fraud means? I don't want to create scenarios like that or we're creating more Phantom Isles stints. That's not, it's not good. Oh, but just to finish the thought, Foolish Baseball said that five innings would be 9% and that would be closer to where,

when they had the three inning rule with relievers, there was, it was like, sort of like five to 9%. It was in that level where, you know, out of bounds that, you know, so basically if you take a third of starts in baseball this year and saying, nope, that wasn't good enough, that's a lot. Yeah, that's too much of a change at once. If your goal eventually is to have a six inning minimum, you should start with five

and see how five goes and make sure that nothing else breaks. And then 10 years from now try six. And you might want to do it like two or three years, too. So you didn't like be like, oh, God. And year two injuries really went up to the roof. That was the story I didn't see coming this morning that it's been sort of taking over baseball Twitter. story I didn't see coming this morning that it's been sort of taking over baseball Twitter. David Ornstein, Phil Hay and the most stacked footballing newsroom ever assembled every Monday to Thursday as we take a deep dive into the biggest football story of the day.

Then every Friday, Adam Leventhal and our club reporters will preview the potential tactics, drama and jeopardy riding on the biggest game from that coming weekend. Check us out wherever you get your podcasts from for free. We hope you can join us for what is set to be another blockbuster, Susan. Now to our previously scheduled show. Our previously scheduled main topic, there was a great story,

great piece written by Michael Rosen at FanGraphs earlier this week, very detailed, looking at pitch release angles, and it focused a lot on Shota Imanaga and Christian Javier and their fastballs and how they are such unique pitches. This is very high-level granular stuff that I think is hard to understand for a lot of people. It's hard for me to wrap my head around. When we're talking about pitch release angles, what exactly are we talking about? You can use visuals people on YouTube, but we got a lot of people listen to the podcast version.

So what are we referring to in this instance that we haven't previously dug into on this show? I think the easiest way to think about is hand positioning. So you're talking about this angle like sort of vertically and up and down you know that's an angle and then you're talking about sort of sideways angle so it's like the way the ball is coming out in terms of angles you know this way and this way you know so you know it's way and this way, you know, so, uh, you know, it's, um, it is the way the ball is coming out of the hand. Another way of saying it would be hand position, I think, because, uh, it is

independent of your release point. So you take that release point and the release point gives you some angles as well, but we're not talking about angles to the body. We're talking about hand angles. So we're talking about release point angles in this space and this space coming out of the hand. And that's independent from release point. So what was really interesting in this piece

from Michael Rosen, I think this is the big line here. So when the pitch is released from a steeper angle, so when the pitch is aimed more downward, it generates more carry. So that's sort of think of someone's sort of ripping the seams sort of like being on top of the ball and ripping the seams and like staying on top of it and getting that carry. Think of like how you throw a beach ball when you want the beach ball to go straight up. You straight down and just rip it, you know? Same thing, hitting angle too. You want to come down on the ball, you get the best backspin. Right. And then the second sentence is when a pitcher has a flatter aim, when a pitch has a flatter aim or a release angle closer to zero degrees, it generates less carry. So try to think of throwing that beach ball and you want it to go up, but you're throwing

it straight and you're not getting that rip on it. You're not like sort of ripping down on it. You're just sort of throwing it straight. You might be able to get it to go up, but not the same way that you kind of rip down on that beach ball that goes straight up, you know? So it's about the sort of those angles. And what's so interesting about Shota and Javier is that they release from a lower sort of release point but also lower release angles and yet somehow get that

same ride, that same carry or that really plus carry. And what we may find out, Michael Rosen posits, what we may find out is in the future that there's something about their hands, their fingers, something even beyond just those angles, something biomechanically that they're doing. You know, maybe there's something they're being able to drop their elbow further so that they're like mimicking being on top of the ball, even though the angles say they're not. So he was saying that there's something there

that we don't have, that we can't explain in the public sphere that they're probably trying to figure out in the private sphere, where they have, you know, team level, they have more biomechanical data than we do. Trackman, Hawkeye, those types of technologies are actually recording this information, but it's only modeled from other data on the public side, right?

So we don't have the precise stuff that teams get to work with. So Trevor, what kind of what kind of IVB did you get? You know, I don't have your release date in front of me. So like what did you have a lower release? You were kind of lower release medium IVB. So making the most out of your lower release or what was your IVBs? I was technically like lower release height. And but for my lower release height, I actually had.

Hi, IVB. So were you like 16 or something, but lower release point. So I like lower release, but like, I think my average in like my average of twenty twenty two was like seventeen eight last year was sixteen seven. And the highest ever was like eighteen and of 2022 was like 17, eight last year was 16, seven. The highest ever was like 18 and a half was average, which was like 2021. So show time have you are getting like 20s, getting like 20 from maybe a similar release point a little bit lower release point. Maybe even Yeah, maybe even a little bit of a lower release point because they're smaller

people than me. Right. I have really long extension, which also put me closer to the plate, which also made my IBB play up. So it's, there's like combinations of all those things. So a lot of different angles there. You're talking about an angle out there. You know, a great way to think about this too, is like, I always, whenever you're

talking about a supinator versus a pronator, like that hand position is what causes those two things so like that those are connected and Being behind the ball or like you hear get on top of the ball. Everyone's heard that that's an old school saying what you're talking about with the ride on top of the ball is Uh is that effect but unfortunately if you're too much on top of the ball Then you're throwing it the angle to the plate then is lower down angle, then you're killing your ride. So it's a balanced type thing. It's like, do you have the right timing of the stuff? So what I would take, what I used to do is I had trouble getting on top fully and where I would go is I would miss underneath. So I throw underneath

the ball. That's when things would sail. And that's when I would get more horizontal because the spin axis would catch a little bit like the air would affect the ball a little bit more because it's tilted back a little bit more and the seams are a little bit different place. And when I would get more horizontal because the spin axis would catch a little bit, like the air would affect the ball a little bit more because it's tilted back a little bit more and the seams are in a little bit different place. And so I would get more run on an arm side fastball that way and that would also kill my IVB, but it would also be a foot above the strike zone. But what was your cue like to change hand position?

What was your cue to get on top of the ball? Like how did you, you just were like, I had to think on top of the ball, I had to get out in space, like what was it? I know what happened was switching my target. So like if I try to go up in a way to a righty, that would you a lot of times fix it? It's cause it would make me just have to reach out

a little bit farther, hold on the ball a little bit longer, which, you know, if you're gripping the ball really tightly too, like there's a feeling you get there. But the surefire way was throw a change up because you I couldn't I could feel when a ball when I was way underneath the change up more than I did when I had a fastball because when I play catch you're doing long toss and stuff you can get underneath the ball and it'd be okay and so you've done that a lot more where that feeling I think change up so you can't get away if you're if you're popping a

change if you're throwing changes using that's gonna straight go straight up. It's not even gonna exit the plate. Terrible right so that would get me back on. That's why I went to my change up a lot my career and if that if I was able to get that down the fastball would follow it to the back. That's really interesting. So that was a big that was a big key for me. A lot of guys have sliders that they're more on top of and they can't get on top of their fastball and they do it that way. So like it's just you're trying to like connect the feeling. But a great way to think about all this stuff, even hand position, I know we're talking about that specifically, but even arm angle, even deception, all that kind of stuff. Think about it this way for the people at home and the people watching is like, deception is what happens before we release the ball and then stuff is what happens after you release the ball. And they work together to give perceptions of what's going to ball and then stuff is what happens after you release the ball and they work together to give, uh, perceptions of what's going

to happen and then also get a hitter to react in a certain way that you want them to work. So we're talking about like deception and how hand position can affect that. It's so interesting. You said it to guys with low arm angles, but are able to stand top of the ball. Max Scherzer is a guy who could do this as well. Like he had more ride than he should have based on where his arm was when he released it. This is a guy who could do this as well. Like he had a full ride than he should have based on where his arm was when he released it.

This is a good segue. So I talked to Spencer Schwellenbach and he's got, so what you were talking about a little bit too with arm angles, what you sort of expect and deception, right? Deception is the difference between expectation and actuality, right? And so Spencer Schwellenbach has a very low release point five point four feet

So you know what he is is you know when you see him? He's a former shortstop that didn't play Didn't pitch until junior year or didn't pitch like sort of D1 level until junior year of college And so as a shortstop he was just used to kind of almost side-arming where he's just sort of he's not it's not a sidearm thing but he's out there you know and and so it's not an over the top thing it's more just sort of out there. And when hitter and this is the same thing michael givings told me michael givings used to be straight out from his body and but with like kind of his hand up right. So you know you don't want to throw two seamers to your first baseman. Right you don't want to throw something with a tremendous amount of fade to the first baseman you want to throw something that's true to the first baseman so even if you're shortstop with the arm out there you you your brain is like no man i want to throw this thing i can see to the base. I want to throw a four seamer to first base. And so what you know, with this former shortstop out there, he throws like basically a true four seam. And he has to work on this. And he the thing that he does sounds a lot like Max Scherzer. So he used to throw his four seam with the finger like in a normal spot like out here and when he did that he just threw a regular fore seam for his arm slot and it had 10 inches of

arm side run and that if you take his current uh if you take his current fastball and add five so now he's taking five inches off and the way he did it was by tucking his thumb like Max Scherzer. So Max Scherzer tucks his thumb. What that does is take takes the thumb off of the off the side here and does different things to the way the ball comes off in terms of spin and it does it changes your hand position in a way changes the release angles because when the ball when the fingers out here it's going to come out a different way, but if you take the thumb out of the way, it can come out straight, you know? So if you take Spencer Schwalenbach's Four Seamer,

and you add the five inches that he's trying to take away with this work, if you add the five inches, you get Eniel de los Santos, Chad Cool, Josiah Gray, Brian Baio, and not Brian Baio's Two Seam, it's so good, Brian Baio, and not Brian Baio's two scene, it's so good, Brian Baio's four scene. And if you take all those,

the average stuff plus of all those is like 79. And the average slugging on all those is over 600. That is not a good pitch. If you look at what Spencer Schwalbach is now, with the five inches taken away, the movement that he's got with the thumb out of the way it's channel press i don't actually say no i say it's first name. I think that's it steven colec press is the is on the on the orioles steven colec is on the padres they both have over one hundred there's their stuff plus average is around that they their slugging against average around 300. So you just subtracted 300 points of slugging, you know, off the pitch by making it something that they don't expect.

The hitter sees that arm slot and they say, oh, Anel de los Santos, got it. You know, it's out there, it's going to go sideways, it It's, you don't, the hitter won't even tell you that. That, you know, but they'll have seen De Los Santos. They'll seen cool, they have seen, and another thing is there's fewer people like him, you know, when you take those five inches off. When you add those five inches in, there's a whole bunch of guys, I've seen this guy before.

He's out there, he's got 10 inches, I know what to do. You know, but, do, you know? But so, you know, something as simple as moving your thumb on the ball can change the release angles and change the movement. And I just think this is also really fascinating because, you know, as we were able to quantify this, we can start to answer questions like,

what is changeable and what isn't? What is coachable, what isn't? And once you have that you can say instead of saying you know I think sort of 2.0 with pitchfx was oh you know this guy's curveball has a lot of spin and he doesn't throw it enough let's go get him and make him throw it more like kind of let's go get Ryan Presley and tell him to throw his curveball like twice as much BAM you know this, today's version is, hey, let's go get Alex Vesia before he tucked his thumb and then tell him to tuck his thumb

and change his release angles because everything else looks great. But if we were able to change these these hand release angles just a little bit, we could get a lot more out of him. And in fact, you know, there's been some talk that the Dodgers don't know, you know, what they're doing development wise. And I would say that some of their reliever acquisitions prove that they've been ahead of this curve in a lot of ways, because they did get Alex Vesia and tuck his thumb. They did get Evan Phillips off of waivers and and. and they and they did things with these pitchers to make them better and like they also identified oh you know Evan Phillips sweeper is a is a really good pitch they were really early on the sweeper so I think that they are they're pretty good at

what they do you know yes they've had some injuries and yes sometimes you can be like well who have they developed you can play that game with everybody? You know? I, yeah. I mean, you can make the case if you don't know how to develop guys to stay healthy, but not being successful in the big leagues. That's not right. Yeah.

I was trying to the cackle when Eno said that I'm like, some people say like, what are you talking about? Who's critical of them right now? Like in a fair sort of way, You know, River Ryan is hurt. And I think Bobby Miller's hurt. The injury thing is completely real, but Trevor, how compared to learning a new pitch, an adjustment like this, how much easier,

relatively speaking, is it to make a change like this and to get a feel for something that's different that makes an impact in this way with release angle? So the interesting thing is, and Eno was just alluding to it, like the, if you were talking about trying to get your hand like in a different position within your arm, so changing your arm slots hard. That's really hard. And then changing how your wrist is pivoting or positioning or forward or backward. If that's what

you're trying to do, that's also very hard because there's different muscles. You start recruiting different muscles. Now we're getting into like, we don't know about the implications of stuff till it happens type stuff. Like if you're using a muscle group that you haven't used before, I actually have a prime example of this. And so this is something that I found, I was trying to explain. So when I throw my splitter and coming back from my stress reaction, my humorous, I was throwing the splitter still. And I was like, I know it's probably from the splitter, but I've learned how to throw it a little bit better. So maybe, um,

maybe I can work through it and keep, keep throwing the pitch. As I was throwing it, I noticed that all of my ride was disappearing. My horizontal was increasing all this stuff, like on my fastball, like everything else was getting worse. The slider was breaking less and spinning slower. So I'm like, okay. And that wasn't pain related. It was armpat.

So I'm like, what am I doing for my splitter that is causing everything else to be messed up? And when I got back into the lay back or like composition behind here, my hand was more rigid than it's neutral. It's always been neutral like here. And then I would come in, there's the, there's the. So I was like, why am I doing that? What it was, what I was trying to do is I was trying to like,

that got me into position to get on, to split the splitter right down the middle. Cause I'm such a supinator. So like I was trying to be more in a pronated position subconsciously, cause that's how I, the splitter would work the best and throwing it in a supinated way, wasn't going to be more in a pronated position subconsciously, cause that's how I knew the splitter would work the best and throwing it in a supinated way, wasn't going to be as good.

So I tried, so I was getting a different release point, which was then recruiting all kinds of muscles in my arm, like flexors were working harder, everything was working harder, that wasn't used to doing that and that messed everything else up. And then that become comfortable. So now I got to get everything back.

So getting rid of the splitter was the best thing I did, but that was an example of that type of thing. But what they're doing now and which I love, and we talked about this a lot last year, just sitting down on the bullpen was figuring out where guys natural point was, and then figuring out which pitch grip changes and ways you can work within what they naturally do to get to see what pitches they can they can learn to throw. So like guys who are natural supernators, which there are a lot of, everyone thought there was way more like pronators because pronating has been something that you have

to have a change of. You have to pronate, you have to pronate, pronating is what we do naturally. And you pronate, it's not like you're not pronating, you're just pronating later in the, you're releasing the ball and then pronating, as opposed to releasing the ball in the middle of your pronation, that's the difference. Like everyone pronates. It's just when you're releasing it. So, which affects your hand position.

So, what we were doing as supinators, we figured out supinators, like we're picking up sweepers really easily because you had to stay inside the ball the whole time. You didn't have to, you just got around it. It was like a neck, turning your hand this way and releasing the ball on your way to turning your hand that way was more natural. And so guys were like, let me try it. And then they could throw it. You're like, see, like you naturally are, are, are positioned to do this. Some guys naturally can throw splitters

better because they're more behind the ball. I think, uh, I always, I played catch with him and played with him and I can never remember his name, but mega splitter from the rays straight over the top went to Navy. He's from New England. Gosh. That's useless. I cannot remember his name. Oliver Drake, Oliver Drake. Oh, he's totally over the top.

Yeah. Iron Mike straight over the top. But his, his release point, cause he was, wasn't supernated or pronated at all. He was literally almost 12, like when it was 12, that's unique. A lot of it's hard to do that. So he was perfectly positioned to do a splitter. And they saw that he threw one already. He didn't just didn't throw enough.

And in Minnesota, they were like, throw that because your your hand, you're naturally you are built to throw a splitter. And then he had one of the nasty splitters. I would. Yeah, I would really love you were built to throw a splitter. And then he had one of the nasty splitters. I would. Yeah. I would really love if I was working with the team to look at two things with release angles. First of all, there's been in the public sector and from Michael Rose and other and other people already some advancements and understanding

the relationship between release angles and command. That just turns out that some players have just sort of tighter release angles and that's command. You know, they're just better at sort of just keeping those release angles the same. And that might be a better way for us to study command than to sort of look at the sort of blobs or be like, do you hit the corner all the time? You know, so, you know, that's one thing. The other thing I would do is study the interaction between grips and release angles.

So like grips, release angles and like other biomechanical features, arm angles, lay back, you know, you can compensate for your release angle with the grip. Right. Exactly. What if we like, if we move the finger to if we change certain grips, what happens to certain release angles, you know, because I agree with you that some part of it, some part of it's gotta be immutable, right? Like some of those things are just like, I'm not, I've thrown thousands of pitches with my hand like this

out here, like, you know, I don't think you're gonna change me right now. Yeah. You wanna get the smallest changes to get the most effect. Yeah. And most of your nets and grip and and you want to work within people's naturally what they've done 100,000 times in their life. If you can work within those parameters, your chances they pick up that pitch quickly

and it's effective are much higher than trying to teach them something new. I think that's what we've been we've been missing with a long time for pitching. And now we're getting to the point where it's that's why it's happening so quickly. And it seems like that reduces the chances of picking up an injury compared to doing something that's less natural or less intuitive to your mechanics. Yeah. Yes. It's the ball.

The, uh, uh, just a trip down memory lane real quick. Um, we're talking about deception as the difference between sort of expected movement and actual movement. And that was something I tried to do, uh, all the way back in 2016, where I tried to just take arm slot and predict movement. And that was something I tried to do all the way back in 2016, where I tried to just take arm slot and predict movement, and then look at who was very different from that. I found that the people who were very different from that got more swinging strikes and got more pop-ups and stuff like that.

And the names on the list are really fun looking backwards. Josh Colemanter is on the list. He is your Iron Mike Oliver Drake type, where he's way, way over the top. Another couple of fun names on the list, Mike Bulsinger, David Robertson still in the league, was a leader in deception off of his sort of weirdish, cuttish, foreseam thing

that he throws. I think it probably has less sideways movement than you'd expect. It's like, it has zero sideways movement almost, and yet pretty good ride. And so that's the David Robertson. And then a couple of really interesting names at the very, right there with David Robertson, Mike Messina and Tom Glavin.

So, you know, this could be something about, uh, stuff that those guys were doing that, um, that was just deception rather than stuff. Cause I watched a lot of Tom Glavin growing up and I never thought he had any stuff. I mean, the change up was good. The change of was good, but in terms of stuff, I would have put him third behind, uh, Maddox and, uh, Smoltz back in the day. So maybe we check in on this next week. A guy that I would love you to go look at and see if you can figure out if there's deception there. Brian Wu on like his movement and stuff. I think he is higher. I thought he is high

ride. He doesn't. There's a lot of stuff that he gets results that that you would think is how his pitches movement and they don't they don't move like that. So there's something he has like a Robertson like hypermobile like very, you know what I'm talking about, very smooth and athletic, they look really athletic. He's got that too. And I think people see think something's gonna happen and then it doesn't with him and he's been by the way, he's just been ridiculous this year. He's also unique.

I think in terms of like the quality of his four seam and two seam shows up as both above average, which is pretty rare. So, but yeah, he's got something, there's something going on there and I actually wasn't able to find anything. Oh, Nick Pollock has a, has a, has a little thing. There's a, the flat a tang angle. He's good at that. Flat attack.

99th percentile. Interesting. I want to move on to this collaboration that Eno did with, with Brit. There's the flat a tang angle. He's good at that. Flat attack. 99th percentile. Interesting. I want to move on to this collaboration that Eno did with Britt. And it kind of tries to break down what's in the Orioles secret sauce as an organization? What do other people around the game

think the Orioles are doing? There's one note in here that jumped off the page to me, just that they hired 65 new people within like 18 months of Mike Elias taking over. I mean, okay, so you've completely overhauled an entire organization, a large organization with lots of people that get in the ears of players. That seems good in the sense of trying to get everyone

to row in the same direction, where so many organizations have some new hires, but they've got lifers, they've got people that have been there for decades. That would have been pain. It was a painful, painful day, you know, can imagine. And it's not something to sort of brag and boast about because it's a terrible day, but it is also how they were able to change things so quickly. I mean,

the A's I, when I studied, had the longest tenure of any organization. They're coaches at the longest tenure. They're just around forever. They don't change coaches ever. And I just found out from Grant Holmes that he'd never learned a slider when he was with the A's and yet you have the the the Orioles here now everyone's trying to copy Orioles hitting and so I basically went around and asked. Orioles hitting. And so I basically went around and asked, because when you ask an organization themselves, they're like, oh, we value the growth mindset and, you know, we're just, we're all about challenging our hitters and, you know, they say things, they don't want to tell you the real stuff. They just, they have some prepared stuff they tell you. And, um, and then, so, uh,

I asked rivals, I asked other teams, what do you think the Orioles are doing? And they're all talking about it. And then so I asked rivals, I asked other teams, what do you think the Orioles are doing? And they're all talking about it. Like it was literally the funniest things. Like they will interview an Orioles coach and even if they don't hire him, they're just asking him, what do you guys do?

Yeah. They traded for one of the organizations I talked to, they traded for an Orioles hitter and just sat him down and says, so what do you guys do? So, you know, we tried to follow those breadcrumbs and I think there's, you know, one executive in the piece really nailed it. And he said that, oh, here it is. And he said that, oh, here it is. The, it was a, an AGM of a rival team. And so we go through the different things like vertical bad angle.

And I explained what vertical bad angle is. And you know, there's some truth to that. The Orioles are really good at slugging high in the zone and lone zone, almost better than any other team at doing both things. Uh, the twins are right there with them. And, and so we go through these different things. And this is what they say, and this is relevant for our listeners too, because we've been recently debating, Derek and I have been starting a debate about the value of

maximum exit velocity as a stat. And so this speaks to, I think, the best use of maximum exit velocity, which may not actually be for fantasy people. It may be more for running a team. He says, they draft guys with present power and improve their launch angle and swing decisions. So that speaks to what we've been talking about, what is coachable and what's not, you know? And so they're saying, okay, they have some present power, we improve their ability to lift it and we improve their swing decisions. That present power is there in form of top end exit velocities, not necessarily slugging percentage.

They teach better vertical bat angle to reduce ground ball rates, and the swing decisions plus that better VBA equals power production when you already had the top-end max EVs. So you take a guy, it's almost like taking a pitcher who is sat yes touch 97 you know sits 93 you get him just sit 94 95 and then you and you figure out based on his arm slot how to improve his pitches so these hitters they're taking them and they're saying okay you've you've hit the ball 112 we love you let's see if we can get you to lift that 112 let's see if we can get you to lift that one 12. Let's see if we can help you make better swing decisions. And the way they do that is a lot of it's with these young coaches showing, throwing short box and short boxes.

You know, I'm like, I don't know, 15, 20 feet away from you. And I'm throwing as hard as I can. And I'm a young coach. And apparently these coaches started looking at their stuff metrics. Improving their vertical their angles and stuff to try and do each other so they're just there they're challenging these hitters with these young coaches that all have the same kind of mindset. Are they doing it you know just all the way through the levels they're using all the best data and take these force played analysis. all the way through the levels. They're using all the best data and tech. They use force plate analysis,

like, you know, pitchers have been using for a while. They use weighted bats, pitchers are using weighted balls. There's a lot of like correlation to what pitchers development has been like and taking it over to the hitting side. Yeah, going back to the top end velocities thing, I think it's looking for hard hit rate, looking for guys that have good hard hit rates

that don't necessarily lift the ball. It's more than just the max, it's hitting the ball hard frequently, but not always lifting it. That would be the trait I'd be looking for because I think that's something the Rays have done for a long time too. We're also looking at those guys in the big leagues. Right, right. Looking at it from the amateur side is a little bit different. I think what I would say for our fancy listeners is what I would say for our fans, the listeners is like, I value max exit velocity at the very beginning, the most. And then I value at least less over time, I may talk about it some and I need to maybe reduce how much I talk about it. But for a prospect that's

first come up, it can describe their power potential. But by the time they're in their fourth or fifth year, they may not lift it. And that may have something to do with their organization's coaching abilities or just their innate characteristics of their swing. That's where the correlation to pitching kind of falls away. Some guys can hit that top end max EV hitting, but just can't reach it in the right way.

They can't hit balls in the air like that. There's just something about their swing plane that doesn't, doesn't lift. It doesn't do that. So it becomes less meaningful over time. But if you were talking about raw clay, you know, most of the best power hitters that we have have really good exit velocity, maximum exit velocities, judges, Stanton's, you know, Soto's they're all at the top. There's a quote in here from Matt Blood.

He's the VP of player development and scouting now for the Orioles. And he says, and this is just in his words, I think they're just all good at adjustability and being able to compete against what the game is throwing at them. And then Adley Rutchman credits the organization, finding guys with good makeup.

But adjustability is problem solving and problem solving, I think, requires an ability to be curious, like to go ask questions when it's not working. Because at some point, it seems like in every single player's career, different levels, different times, you hit a wall and stuff that used to work doesn't work anymore. So how do you find people who are curious and inquisitive, Trevor? How would you scout for a trait like that, especially on the amateur side?

It's easier to get a feel for what people are like once they're inside the game, but before you even draft somebody, I feel like it's really hard to know, especially for a 17 year old high school kid, how inquisitive and how curious they are from the outside looking in. This might be a little bit,

the scope might be a little bit wide and maybe a little bit outside the box. But I currently, right now have been like, talking to, trying to figure out a curiosity level for another reason, just working on making some like movie type stuff. And I've talked to people and the first questions I've asked them is like, what are you really into? And then like, how do you learn more about these things? So I like get an idea of like what their process is for the thing that they're most passionate about.

And it might not be baseball. And that's an, so you might be able to ask a question like, what are your, like, what do you do in your free time when you're not playing? Like, so guys, for example, if a guy goes and plays golf all the time and he genuinely wants to be way better at golf, and he like practices playing golf and like researching golf and reading about golf, there is a good chance that you might be able to create or figure out parallels between that and baseball.

There's a good chance that if, if the interest is sparked, that they might, that they would spend that same amount of time on their profession, right? So that you can assume that that level of interest is also there for that. And then there's some guys who like show up to the field and they're, if you tried to ask them like, oh, what do you see about that guy? You just ask questions like, oh, that you like watching him play, why? Like you can, there's these types of questions where you can just allow them to kind of follow that thread and you can see where the thread kind of ends.

And that would be kind of a, just a conversational, like getting to know a guy. And I think that we go to baseball a little bit too fast. Like I remember talking to scouts and they were just like, you know, do you want to play professionally? Do you like, it was like, is your intention there? Or yeah, of course there's some obvious questions there. Right.

And as a player, you're probably ready to just sort of, you can fend those off pretty easily. Like, oh, yes, you want to engage somebody and get them, get them excited about something. And if you see that spark go, I would say that's something that not everyone has. You would assume they would, but they don't. And, uh, while we were, I was interviewing West Johnson, one of my ex pitching coaches a few weeks ago on the radio.

And he mentioned, we were talking to him about Skeens, who we had for a year, talking to him about Charlie Condon. Like why is he so good? And he basically said, they're two of the most curious guys I've ever met. Like they came and I would say, hey, like what are you trying to do with this? And what, how are you, what do you think is going to make you better? And they had two of the most curious guys I've ever met. Like they came and I would say, Hey, like, what are you trying to do with this? And what, how are you, what do you think is going to make you better?

And they had those very clear. They like, I think that I can do these things. Well, I'm not sure though. I would like to know maybe there's data and stuff. Cause they knew what he was specialized in and he's like, Oh, now I have something I go look. And then they had this rapport immediately. Like, I know what you're interested in.

Now, if I bring you something, you asked asked for it kind of and that now we have this Curiosity loop going which is gonna make you a better player long term if we keep going and he said that he He it's a skill that he maybe didn't notice that he was he was developing as a coach But over time the number of guys he's now had He's realizing how quickly he can like he can he can gauge he can like track. Wow, he's realizing how quickly he, he can like, he can, he can gauge. He can like track, wow, that's guys curious. I like what you're saying too, about not going to baseball so quickly because. You know, there's sort of cultural biases, I think that are at place when you talk about curiosity and you sort of expect them to ask questions almost in a college

educated manner where it's like, Oh, I really want to know about ride IVB. So I'm going to learn it this way and I'm going to look it up this way and I'm going to Google it. But you could get somebody, a high school kid who still just love video games, but you get them talking about the video games and you realize, Oh, they go on YouTube and watch run throughs, you know, Oh, they. Yeah. Or they, or they have a Twitch person they follow that like shows them this or this and they're like, Oh, they actually have some like really old school video games and it's, you know, like you start to like, Oh, okay. So this isn't just.

He just pops in front of the video game and plays whatever he actually like has some process here. And you might be able to glean some of that from a, from a kid who's younger, who just hasn't been exposed to the same learning styles as a college educated kid, or you might be able to, uh, gather, maybe they love soccer and they're from Latin America and you might be able to gather something where it's like, you know, you are kind of going past some cultural biases because I, they're,

that exists very pretty hardcore still in baseball and so you don't want to fall into this thing that like all the college-educated white kids are curious and everybody else is curious. I mean that's just not how the human population works and it would work against you but I like this idea of sort of engaging them on things other than baseball to sort of get that idea of how do you learn more about the things you love. other than baseball to sort of get that idea of how do you learn more about the things you love? I actually would think it would also maybe reveal some coping skills in some ways.

I think having interest outside of baseball would generally be a positive. I mean, because again, when you hit that failure wall, what are you gonna do? Just grind yourself through it? Or do you have a way to reset and center and come back with a fresh mind the next day because you're

able to go enjoy something else in your life. That's what John Singleton said. And not internalize every ounce of it. Coffee. Coffee? So he was like, he's like, my new thing is just like, when I get to a new tea, I need to find the best coffee in town. I was like, okay.

I mean, that's, that shows inquisitiveness. That's just curiosity. That's awesome. I honestly, I wouldn't have, I would not have clocked him for someone who'd get into coffee. I live you know I live with John Singleton for a year. Yeah because he's really really mellow. Yeah really mellow and I don't ever buy and drink coffee but you know that was that was 2011. I think from talking to him some part of it is not even just the coffee itself it's it's he wants to buy the best cafe. Like he wants to find the best place to hang out and see people and drink coffee. Like he just, it's more about the whole thing and getting out of baseball. And that was really important for him

because he, he was grinding in baseball and he needed to find a way to sort of reset. Suddenly he's in the big leagues and he's staying and it's like, maybe this is a reflection of some changes he's made and, uh, what we don't talk about singing all the day, all day, but like, I love what you said. What do you do? Just grind through it. Yeah. Yes. That is, that is the common way that most that's the generic baseline default way that, that, that, you know, old school baseball has always said, just grind through it. You'll get through it. You'll get through your slump, just keep sticking with it.

That's not actionable. I think curious people want actionable steps that are clear. And that's something that, you gotta find your way to do that. And it's funny, I think I've talked about on this show, I loved that. I got a relationship where when something was wrong, became this big, awesome problem that all these cool things

Maybe I could find out about myself And so I that's why I discovered all the things I discovered because I was having an issue The problem was when the game became easier and like you were dialed in and things were going well There wasn't any big thing to work on every single day bored. I got bored and quick towards the end of the year last year was, I just go out and do the same thing every day now. Like, yeah, it's great for your career, but like, I'm kind of bored.

It's boring. And that can be, it's a weird, that's a weird thing to realize when you're a professional athlete. But yeah, and, but when there's not anything like no injury or you feel good or there's, everything's moving kind of pretty good. And it's just maintenance at that point.

You've got to find other things that are interesting, which is probably why I have so many spreadsheets now let's track what's going on so that I can share this with somebody else later. That was my project when things were going well and, uh, you had to, I define those things, but I think that, I think that this is something, this whole concept of like curiosity and stuff. When I spoke to people, I remember talking to David Forrest before I signed and he, it's something he looked for. I, it's very clear. He saw YouTube video.

And he was like, it seems like you, this is the way your process will work. Like I feel like you're going to be successful if you have, if you struggle. And, uh, I did. And, and that's a big, huge credit to him for also looking for those things. We had that connection and it was interesting. It was the first time I've had a conversation like that with an MGM too.

So there are people out there looking for that stuff and it is developing. It is interesting. I wonder if there's a corollary here too to over coaching with kids. If you over coaching with kids, that means somebody else always has the answer, you know, and someone else is always telling you what the answer is.

And you don't spend as much time just figuring out yourself and and and looking in different directions and learning yourself. So that's something I struggle with, because I want to tell my child, you know, this is this is what you do, this is what you do. But I also wanted to figure it out. I think one of the answers is just play. Because when you're actually out in the field is when you have to figure things out for yourself.

Coming from coaching youth soccer and high school soccer, they referred to it as joy sticking. And as a coach, they tell you, don't yell directions to your players during the game. It's too late, let them problem solve. I mean, if you need to talk to them on the sideline about something, sure, that's coaching. But if you are actively giving an eight-year-old

or a 10-year-old directions on what to do in every moment, they will never learn. Then he's also listening to you and not paying attention to the ball in the game, right? Yeah, but there are a lot of coaches that do it. Tons of coaches that grew up on FIFA and PlayStation. Literally joysticking. A lot of coaches that went through that.

Uncle Ted wants to know, do players on bad teams get bored? I would expand the question. I think players on every team probably get bored, don't they, Trevor? Around now, too. They do. That's that's actually the very interesting thing. I actually did just talked about the white socks right now. When you, that team is so bad that everyone's like, they're, oh, you got, you have to avoid the losing 120 games.

You don't because it doesn't really matter. What you need to do is just be better now, or at the end of the season, then you are right now. So that next year you might have a job because no one's going to give a crap. If you're 500 next, like it just, it does not matter in the scope of things. And having constantly thinking about that stuff, you're only hurting your ability, your career. If you're not doing it, if you're like, Oh, I just want the season to be over.

That is the one thing that you have to fight against harder than anything. When you're on a team like that, I've been on 200 loss tapes. You have to, you have to be like, I need to be better in a month than I am right now. And everyone in here needs to be better. And we need to look at things in the process and not by the results. And that's why Pedro Grafal probably ended up being let go is because I think he lost that thread a little bit.

He was caught up like they were in the results and they saw that happen, in my opinion, just based on what he was saying and what I've heard people say. So like, that is the hardest thing though. It's so hard. We got us. I need to be as clear as possible.

Like it's so hard to walk into a clubhouse and be like, I'm not being selfish, but I am trying to get myself better and put myself in a position to what I do out there to contribute to wins as opposed to losses in the future. And you have to stay there and that's the big problem you got to solve. And if you're on a team like that, there's probably a lot of these big problems there is to work through, which for me, at least at the end of my career, I can't say I was like, this is the beginning. I won't act like I had all the, I didn't learn this halfway through, but towards the end, I would have been like, this is a, I got all kinds of problems to solve. I've got tons of, I got tons of stuff to focus on. I'm not bored at all, but like I, it definitely can get like, you can get

apathetic really fast and it's one of the hardest things to do, uh, that when the major leagues kind of loses it shine a little bit for you and you're not like, Oh, all the time, because it's business as usual, you gotta find a way to make it. And then there's something else about the calendar. I've I've, I'm feeling a little bit differently coming into the clubhouse. Maybe it's myself because you know, I'm, I'm playing along with this in terms of I have to write on the similar schedule. I have to, you know, I feel I live on the similar schedule, but I feel like definitely the dog days of August is like a is like a saying. And it's

like, I kind of get it because, you know, you don't get any of that. Like watching, you can't even like watch others races yet. know there's nothing really it's not like end of September we like oh I what is going on over there who's gonna win the West you know it's more just like you know man I don't even know where we going tomorrow where we bit where we yesterday you know. If you've been on the team all year, your stats are kind of hard to make them better. Yeah, it's having a tough year. It's probably going to generally be a tough year. No matter. I like turn this into a new season. Everyone's tired and there's no races and there's no line at the end of the table.

So you're like not quite to where anything's exciting and everyone's just looking around like it's a pivot point. It's like one of those things where you got to like get your second wind or your third wind for a lot of fantasy football teams being drafted right now and then yeah and then now football yeah major league clubhouses those guys like because half the players in the league were in the SEC so I was like yeah and the ban is drafted it just becomes insufferable if you don't play as much. All that stuff's happening at the same time.

Had a few questions, at least somewhat related to deception. One from Fugacious in our Discord. Was there any hitter in his career that told Trevor they had trouble seeing his pitches or a hitter he thought had trouble seeing his pitches? There's a couple guys, Eugeniouarez and Mike Napoli really struggled. They never told me that they struggled to see what I was throwing, but like just based on, I think they combined for one hit and 20 B's and like 15 strikeouts. So it's like, there's something, there's something about how I throw that is, that is tough and everyone's got these guys. And then there's guys who saw everything. I threw them. Uh, but one guy, Trevor

Plouffe actually threw me, uh, told me like in 2014, I think in a live VP, he's like, there's something about like, he goes, I look up and I see that's 93.1 or whatever, because I was still a star at the time. And he goes, and it feels like it's 96. So he goes, there's something about, I just can't get the barrel there. And he told me like, he's like, dude, it's like bowling balls. Like you're not throwing sinkers, but I don't know. There's something about it that's, that's weird. And you just don't look like Alex Meyer was also on our team.

And he goes, and he's funky in a different way, but his is easier to see more than yours is. And he's throwing five miles an hour harder than you. I was like, I don't know. And then we, at that time, we're like invisible. I throw a little more of his ball and he doesn't, he just overpowers you. And we didn't have any idea,

but like that's the one thing I really remember is because he was on the big league team too. So I was like, oh, the big league here told me that I was, I had a weird fastball. There's also a decent amount of timing deception that people can have because hitters will either maybe time off your handbrake or time off your back hand swing like they'll figure they'll figure out. And I think some hitters want to use the same thing for every pitcher, you know?

And so you may, you may also have done something different between hand break and, and, and, and getting the ball up, you know, where that timing was different. You know, a little longer probably because my, my extension was longer, uh, stuff like different. Yeah. A little longer probably because my extension was longer. Stuff like that, yeah. It's interesting, but like we were just, it's so funny to think about how we were babies and we had no idea what was going on.

Less information too though at the time. Yeah, way less, yeah. I had a question for you in terms of in terms of curious teammates. Do you have any people that you thought that people might not know or as curious as they were? I mean, my answer might be Jared Hughes, who maybe it was obvious, but he was super curious. I seem to have extended his career by two or three years by being that curious about it and now works for the angels. You know, like he's a good example, I think.

I mean, it's hard to tell what curious who, what curious guys people know about, but some of the most curious people I've ever played with, like Seth Lugo is extremely curious about pitch, specifically pitching. There's things that he does not care about at all. He loves pitching and he's, he's very, very curious about it. And, uh, he loves to discover his own stuff, honestly, to the point where he doesn't like to listen to anybody because he liked it so much, which I don't think it's a different thing.

I came around and was like, I think he just really likes coming up with this stuff on his own. But like Adam Ottavino is, me and him were two peas. Like we were just bouncing stuff constantly. But another guy who has actually shown up quite a bit and who was actively asking myself and Adam Ottav veto direct questions was, um,

actually, Otto wasn't there when he was there. Uh, Anthony Banda was, was Banda, I think it's pronounced, uh, it's changed a bunch of times. He was like, so when this happens, what, what are you thinking? When this happens, what are you looking for? Because he was trying to figure out a way to stay. He'd been told he had certain ways his pitches move, but he didn't really know how to use it. And I think we've seen that he goes to Dodgers now, they're like, hey, do this. And he's like, okay.

And he's been very, very good for them. He was a guy who I didn't anticipate because he was kind of a journeyman. We'd picked him up off waivers. He'd been on teams and he was like, I'm tired of this. I want to stick. And that was the thing. Maybe guys that guys might not surprise you like, I'm tired of this. I want to stick. Uh, and that was the thing. Um, maybe guys that guys might not surprise you like Greg Breslow.

Who knew he was going to be a GM. Um, uh, like those kinds of kind of guys, uh, a couple other, like one guy now he's with the Royals and he's, he's up and coming. I think he's going to be very, very, very good. Um, at some point is Ursa. Another guy who asked tons and tons of questions. He actually asked me to sit down with him once because he was like struggling during day games. We could not figure out why. Um, and, uh, we, we figured out some stuff and he

picked some stuff up, but he's again, he's an older guy who's like, I, I have a shorter window than other people and I need to figure out this stuff out quickly. And he hasn't been a pitcher. And some of them are not analytical. Its like Max Scherzer was like super curious but not not not like didn't always love the numbers. I think but yeah numbers on their base he was he was like it was it was a little bit of a thing that he was like actively pushing against was like I just don't want to I don't want to be the one who's ushering this in so quickly, but you know, he did have like five different reports at all kinds of numbers on them that he designed. Exactly. It's just that's the thing. He's like,

I'm open to it as long as I'm the one who sees it. He wanted to be in full control of the decisions he made. And I think it, yeah, he's pretty good going on. All of them. I got a game in mind. He's pretty good. Going to the Hall of Fame. I got a game in mind. We'll try this. We're going to try this with one player. So it's going to be whoever gets this right wins. And if no one gets it right, then I win for stumping you

both. The game for now is called Name That Dude. I'm going to give you a series of clues about a player. There's no actual limit on the number of guesses. You can be wrong as many times as you want. Here's the simple thing. After I give a clue, if Trevor jumps in with an answer, Eno gets a chance to submit another answer

before Trevor goes again. That's it. That's simple. So you can't just reel off two or three in a row and the person gets a shot. All right, your first clue and name that dude. I debuted on September 10th, 1987. That's probably not gonna do it for either one of you.

It'd be amazing if someone just named it right there. That'd be great. Okay, I made two AL All-Star teams and finished second in the Cy Young Award voting in 1995. Brad Radke. Not Brad Radke. Little too early. That's too early.

Wanna throw a guess out there yet, Trevor? All right, next clue. I also finished fourth in the MVP vote in 1995. Is this a reliever? This is largely a reliever. For my career, I finished with 321 saves. Oh, Lee Smith? Not Lee Smith.

Would you like to guess, Trevor? You said two All-Star teams? Two All-Star teams, both in the AL. Still stumped. All right. I topped 40 saves in a season four times, including in my age 38 season with the pirates. I got the stump faces going here. Where where where where pirates?

What? Ah, I don't know any pirates. All right. I've already made a bunch of guess. I don't even know if I'm allowed to guess again. Alejandro Pena, like was it, you know, he like a reliever in the 80s. Not Alejandro Pena, you may also know me as senior smoke or Joe Table. Mesa, Al something Mesa, Joe Table, Jose Mesa, Joe Mesa, Mesa, Trevor sneaks in for the win.

Jose Mesa is the mayor. Yeah. The rest of the clues I pitched for Baltimore, Cleveland, San Francisco, Seattle, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Colorado and Detroit, eight different teams got back to Philly to end his career. I remember Philly at the end. He had MVP votes. Yeah.

He had one incredible year. No, I didn't know it was 95, though. It just I Jose Mesa seems like he was at the end. He had MVP votes. Yeah. He had won incredible year. No, I didn't know it was 95 though. It just, Jose Mesa seems like he was in the 2000. Like I remember him, I don't know, like 2003, four, but I guess he was around. Fourth in the MVP voting blew my mind. The only reason he came up, I had a meeting yesterday, just a random meeting.

It wasn't just baseball people and someone said Joe Table. And I said, that can't possibly be his nickname. I looked it up and it's right there on his be-ref page. I'm like, all right, I got an idea for a segment for the show. Much, much better career than I remembered for Jose Mesa. Not quite big Christmas, but. Some beautiful nicknames in that baseball reference database.

So if you enjoyed, name that dude, let us know. If you got a better name for name that dude, I'm happy to change the name of the game too. We're gonna head out on our way out the door. Reminder, you can find Trevor on Twitter at IamTrevorMay, find Eno at EnoSaris, find me at Derek and Riper. You can join our Discord with the link

in the show description. That's one of the best ways to send questions for the show. So if you got a question for a future episode, go that route or drop us an email, ratesandbarrelsatgmail.com. That's gonna do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening and watching.

Bye!