Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1595: How Cleveland Became a Pitching Powerhouse

Episode Date: September 26, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about late-season playoff uncertainty, whether they’re happy with how the playoff field has turned out, the Cubs’ strange season, the surprising number of top prospects who’ve made their MLB debuts in 2020, and the percentage of promoted prospects who’ve skipped the upper levels of the minors. Then (20:47) they […]

I'm either behind the times or ahead of time Or maybe I'm just out of time Out of love Out of touch I got a weird feeling Way too much Out of season Out of season, out of rhyme, I'm out of time.

Hello and welcome to episode 1595 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of the ringer ben how are you i am okay how are you i'm good i wish i knew who was playing who come tuesday but otherwise i can't complain not great for you not to know but maybe good for baseball that there's still some uncertainty about that heading into the final weekend yeah we have a very important weekend slate, which, you know, this is the whole idea of expanding the postseason, I suppose. And it's been quite fun to watch the centrals spend like early playoffs pretty much the whole week. So yeah, it does make for, you know, small thorny logistical challenges for baseball writers

and editors, but people don't care about those they just want good baseball so that's uh that's what they're gonna get so that part's good so there are still a few teams whose fans are kind of on tenterhooks as we are recording at least you've got the the phillies and the giants and the brewers and a couple others that are hanging on to slim hopes at contention. Even the Angels, as we speak, have not been eliminated yet. So the dream of Mike Trout in the playoffs still alive later in the season than it has been for quite a while. Yeah. It was funny. Jay Jaffe's been tracking the state of entropy in baseball as he has wanted to do this time of year, even without the potential for tiebreaker games, as you said.

There's still been some amount of drama, and he gave a little update today so that people knew what was at stake going into the weekend. And he noted there, and I realized as I was editing, that we just really haven't talked about the Angels because there hasn't been occasion to. Their biggest news in the last week has been Andrelton Simmons' decision to opt out of the remainder of the season and obviously the postseason.

But they're not out of it totally. It will take a good deal of luck. They are not in control of their own destiny. But yeah, they're not technically done. And even the Mariners made it to Thursday before they were eliminated, right? Which is pretty good for them. So yeah, that is the upside of the 16-team giant broadcast deals but that is one of the positive effects we've talked plenty about the negative effects I think and we will continue to but it is nice that there are some surprise teams that are still in it how do you feel about the playoff field as a whole? We talked about this a bit on the

Ringer MLB show this week, but we could have had just about any field conceivably this year. And there were points in the season when it was not entirely unrealistic that the Tigers or the Orioles or teams of that ilk could sneak in. And of course, the Marlins have almost officially made it. So I kind of feel like we ended up with a pretty good mix because no really good teams, really talented teams were left out, I don't think. And that was one of the upsides of this is that you couldn't have whoever, the Dodgers or the Yankees or the Astros who ended up making it pretty close just sort of be flukily left out of the playoffs, which would have maybe made October look a little less legitimate or would have made you wonder, well, what would that team have done over a full

season? So that didn't happen. And that was why we were okay with this for 2020 alone. And then I think a lot of the teams that were sort of on the bubble or would have been on the bubble in a 10 team playoff format year they did end up making it and then you had the marlins sneak in so i guess if you had wanted the complete chaos and just hey 6d game season let's make it as unpredictable as possible that didn't really end up happening because it ended up being the teams that you probably would have expected for the most part once we knew that the playoffs were expanded. But it's a pretty good mix, I think, of super teams

that are there every year and new blood. Yeah, I agree. I think that it's a lot of fun to see teams like the White Sox and Toronto, who have kind of been in the process of rebuilding, enter the fray in a meaningful way. It's great fun to see talented and exciting teams like the Padres present. And then, like you said, I think it's been, I want to be very clear before I say what I'm about to say, that the reason itself is terrible, and I feel very badly for them. say that the reason itself is terrible and I feel very badly for them, but it is, I think, better for the sport to be able to attribute the underperformance of some teams that I think we thought would be good or at least competitive to something as normal in a baseball sense as injury rather than a fluky playoff format. So it makes sense that, say, the Nationals, who have just not been very good and lost Strasburg, are kind of on their way out. The Mets are still not technically eliminated, but, you know, they were doing this whole year without Syndergaard. normal baseball reasons that would be true in 2020 and would be true in 2019 and will be true next year for their sort of underperformance so yeah this seems like a a very good mix of of

squads i am you know one of the things that i root for in a moment like this is just that fangraph salons scattered at teams are able to watch their their squad play in october and we didn't do a perfect job of of that this year but you know it's exciting for for dave that the padres are there and for jeff that the rays are there and for carson that the blue jays are there i think they should all wear mustaches in his honor so you know, that part's exciting, albeit in a smaller way for a more niche audience. But I think this is a good, I think this is a good field. Yeah, the Fangraphs alumni, they picked good times to join the teams that they joined. Or, you know, maybe the teams did well because they joined. But there's more at work there. But I thought that like when Dave

went to join the Padres, it's like, well, this is a good time to join the Padres probably because pretty low stakes. Like if the team doesn't do well, well, the team hasn't done well for a really long time. No one really even thinks about the Padres. And if you get in on the ground floor and you're there for the rebuilding effort, well, that's the best possible time to get there, I guess. And Carson sort of bought low on the Blue Jays too. And Jeff with the Rays, I guess the Rays are always competitive. But August with the Brewers or Corinne with the Phillies, they've all sort of picked teams that were on the cusp of contention. And they get to, not that they would, take the credit and glory,

or at least enjoy the ride. Yeah, exactly. And it's odd that some of the teams that made the playoffs this year, like it's not surprising that they made it, but it's sort of surprising how they made it. Like the Astros I was just talking about, of course, they've just been suffering from so many injuries and some underperformance and backed into the playoffs. from so many injuries and some underperformance and backed into the playoffs are like the Cubs, who we haven't really talked much about, I feel like, this season on the podcast, partly because they've just sort of been comfortably in playoff position for most of the year. And, you know, like they were my pick to win that division. So the result is not shocking, but the way they did it is pretty surprising. And I think that's why we haven't talked about them. It's like they have a sub 90 WRC plus right now and you look you this week but it's sort of shocking because like a lot of the names are the same and the results are good but then you look at like chris bryant

and javi baez and the seasons that they've had and it's like wow these are not your 2016 cubs yeah it's they they arrived that they would get the kinds of seasons that they have from bryant and baez and even anthony rizzo to certain extent, although he has not had quite as surprising an underperformance or meaningful an underperformance as those two. They've never really been out of a playoff spot. They've just kind of coasted along is pretty remarkable. I know we have this running joke that we don't talk about the reds enough but you know they were out of it and now look at them look at them comfortably and in the seven spot was a rotation i would not want to see in the postseason if it were me so yeah there have been a couple

like that or like the yankees we thought were going to be this terrific behemoth and i know they've been playing better of late but things looked quite shaky for them for a while which I never expected to see and so yeah it's just been there have been a couple like that where you you look at it and you're you're pretty surprised that they've been able to to do what they have or even you know teams that I think have been in in a playoff spot more comfortably sometimes you're just reminded of the the weird confluence of guys that they have on their rosters. Like, I don't remember exactly who they were playing, but I turned on a Twins game a couple of days ago, and both Romo and Klippard were warming at the same time in the bullpen. And

I'm like, this is a very good baseball team. And they've had fine years, but it's like, these guys, these are the guys. These are some of their guys. Yeah. Yeah. I probably slighted Jason Hayward, by the way. Oh, yeah. I should mention him too because he's actually been good again. Yeah. He's had a pretty- He's hitting like he did as a rookie.

Yeah. I think that we would be remiss if we did not mention the season he's had, which is, you know, he's one of those guys where the underperformance was especially coming on the heels of that great season with St. Louis. And then he signs the big contract in Chicago. And then the year was just not what he wanted. I don't know. I enjoy a good bounce back because I don't want people to feel embarrassed in public. And he seems like a good egg.

So yeah, he's, gosh, 143 WRC+. I know. Jason Hayward, look at you. Yeah, gosh, we have been remiss in mentioning him. My apologies to the Hayward household. Who you. Yeah, gosh, we have been remiss in mentioning him. My apologies to the Hayward household. Who knew? Yeah. Yeah, and one other thing that I should mention that I'm happy about that has happened this season,

and I just wrote about it for The Ringer today, is that even though we've had this small sample season, even though there's been no minor league season, even though there were a lot of impediments to this happening. We have seen a lot of really exciting young players make their major league debuts this year. And that's been one of the few things really that looks comparable to past seasons. And I ran the numbers for this piece with help from Lucas Apostolaris of Baseball Perspectives. And of course, we had Eric Langenenhagen on an episode a while back to talk about just all of the prospect promotions that happened in august but when you compare the number of top 100 prospects that made their major league debuts this year to the typical year it's almost

indistinguishable so yeah you might have thought that well no one was able to play in AA and AAA, and there were just fewer games and innings to go around. And so you might have expected there to be a bit of a bottleneck or a backlog there. And that just hasn't happened. You know, depending on which list you use, there have been almost 30 top 100 prospects make their debut this year, which is just really right around the norm. And, you know, I looked at it by average rank and did some other math and every way you look at it, this has just been a completely normal year in terms of great young players coming up. And that's one of the only ways in which this year has been normal. I mean, it's been abnormal in every other way. And so that's been one of the positives for me that like, even though at times I haven't been invested in necessarily the race or

the results, because it's all just so easy to dismiss with how different it looks and everything else that's going on. It's kind of given us a glimpse of the next generation so a lot of these really promising players you know they came up in a very strange time and when we look back at their careers we'll always be reminded of how weird the season was when we look at the highlights with no fans in the stands and look at the stat lines and everything but it's made it a little less weird that we could keep counting on these players to come up and either excel in some cases or even if they struggle just sort of give us glimpses show flashes of the stardom to come better days ahead you know and that's partly a product i think of the fact that there was this parody and the potential for anyone to win because you did have

like the orioles calling up ryan mountcastle or the Tigers calling up Mize and Scooble it was like anyone could dream and so you would call these guys up and there were various other reasons too like if you wanted to get them any game experience the majors were kind of like the only show in town and also there were opt-outs and illnesses and injury absences and expanded rosters and all these other things that contributed to that, I think. But that's been a silver lining of this season for me. Yeah, I agree. I think that getting to see exciting young players is always, it's just encouraging to think about the future of the sport. And I think in a year like this, where the present presents so much grit and grim reality, that being able to think about the careers

that these guys might have and how they can persist and get better and continue to sort of impress and delight fans is just a really lovely thing to be able to kind of hang your hopeful hat on because there's been so little else. So it has meant a great deal, I think, to be able to kind of hang your hopeful hat on because there's been so little else so yeah it has meant it has meant a great deal i think to be able to look at those guys and sort of appreciate the the years that they've had you know and some of these rookie performances have been spectacular so it's really exciting and i'm not just saying that because the current

war leader among position players at fan graphs among rookies is kyle lewis it would be fun even if that were not the case right yeah and there is one aspect of it that has been strange which is that if you look at the upper level minor league experience of the players who have debuted this year not just the top prospects but just anyone who is promoted for the first time, it's pretty shocking to see the difference. So like in a typical year, roughly 10 to 15% of the players who make their major league debuts skip AAA for whatever reason. This year, it's been almost 50%. It's been 48%. And in a typical year, again, almost every player who makes the majors played at least in AA. And this year, it's been like 11% of the players who came up this year and obviously didn't get any minor league experience at all. And, you know, he's the first player to do that since Mike Leak in 2010. And

Leak debuted the year after he was drafted. But there's just, there is no AA or AAA this year. So if you hadn't played there before, you can't play there now. And some of these guys maybe were ready, did have incredible skills like he did. You know, he comes in pumping 101 mile per hour fastballs like he looks pretty ready, I think. But with other guys, maybe they were on taxi squads and at alternate sites and they got some seasoning there. But you do kind of wonder, like, what will the long term effects of that be? Just leapfrogging multiple levels and being thrown into the fire like that. And somewhat surprisingly, I looked at the numbers with Lucas's help, and the debut players this year have hit and pitched roughly as well as they have in recent years. Like, it's not like the first- year players this year have been terrible because of

that lack of seasoning. They seem to have handled that okay, but long-term, who knows if there's some stunting that goes on in development there just because either you didn't get that upper level experience or in many cases, of course, you just didn't play games at all this year. Yeah. I was going to ask ask i wonder if it will have any effect on teams sort of proclivity to do the pre-debut extension um yeah granted you know not all of those players indeed many of them have at least have triple a experience you know like evan white's an exception to that and his year has not gone well but i don't think that really has a lot to do with this particular season so i I just will be curious to see how, if at all, the thinking around that changes. Are these deals just such a good value

for teams that they're still going to be sort of selectively deployed or not? I guess we'll kind of have to wait and see. Yep. Of course, the top prospects who made the majors or anyone who made the majors, and there have been 205 first-year players this year, which is about 50 fewer than in the past several years. So there definitely are some guys who probably would have gotten a shot this year who did not end up getting a shot. And some of them may make it in the future. Some may not. That would be a shame. But the real victims in a baseball sense of this shortened season are the minor leaguers who did not get promoted, did not play in any games, and in many cases got released.

And one of those is our guest today, David Spear. And I've been in touch with David for a while. He's been in Cleveland's organization since 2014. He had a fair amount of success for them. He topped out at AAA. Unfortunately, he was one of the players released this spring. In May, he was let go, and he's still hoping to continue his career and is looking to catch on somewhere else. He is a left-handed pitcher and a reliever. And we wanted to have him on to talk about that experience,

but also to talk about being in that organization at that time because he really had a front row seat to, I think, what is generally regarded as the best or one of the best pitching development organizations in baseball. And, boy, we just talked about how poorly the Cubs have hit this year The only playoff team that has hit worse than the Cubs is Cleveland But it hasn't held them back because they have pitched so incredibly well And they have the the most war from pitchers the most war from starting pitchers

They have a sub three rotation era as we speak right now And a lot of that is coming after they traded kluber and bauer and clevenger and just replaced them with guys who were great from the get-go and david played with all of them and he came into the system at a time when they were really revamping their player development processes and he can tell us a little bit about what worked for those other players what worked for him and how cleveland has had that edge and how long it can last so it's a really interesting conversation and i think it's a good time to talk to him about a number of things that have been on

indeed all right so we will be back in just a moment with David Spear. Walls are closing in. They often do. I'm seeing double and triple. Does this ever happen to you? I don't have to make it rain, but it never are. If you would improve in the view. All right, we are back and we are joined by left-handed pitcher David Spear. Hello, David. Hi, guys. How's it going?

Going well. So you first came to my attention a few years ago now when you tweeted at me and Sam because you were reading the only rules it has to work on minor league bus rides, which was nice to hear and I think as Sam mentioned to you at the time you were actually number two on our list of seniors to try to sign for the Stompers not that you were ever really in our range of what we could get for that team but you were at the top of our statistical list because you had happened to be pitching the year before we ran that team with Columbia, and you had a great career at Columbia.

You were a starter. Then you get drafted by Cleveland in 2014, which took you away from the Sonoma Stompers future that you could have had. The Hall of Fame career in Sonoma. Yeah, you went on to bigger and better things. So you get to Cleveland after the draft in 2014. You're in low A, and I guess right away they move you to relief, right? So I guess I have two questions. What was that like? Did they just say, hey, we see you as a reliever and that's what you're going to do now? And just, I guess, in general, how did that system operate at the time? What did you observe when you got there?

Yeah. So it was, it was interesting because I got drafted. So I got drafted, have, I mean, I had no idea if I was going to get taken or not as a, as a senior throwing upper, upper eighties. It was, it was obviously far from guaranteed regardless of my my stats at a small d1 college but i went straight to mahoning valley like three days after i was drafted so i didn't even meet anyone with the indians front office until i mean a few of them trickled in and out of mahoning that year but i didn't really get to fully meet the the development staff until the fall when i went to good year for the instructional league. But pretty much there wasn't a whole lot of conversation about my role as the, like I said, a 27th round senior sign. It was pretty much the rotation in

Mahoning Valley was built around some of the bigger prospects. And then you just kind of filled in around that. And you just, and I think the goal was just to see who was going to sink or swim right away uh so I was I was a piggyback starter in Mahoney Valley so my I was pretty much throwing like three to four innings at a time behind another starter which I think that it was actually Kieran Lovegrove who I don't know if you're familiar with him but he's a a good friend of the of the Cespedes barbecue. But so I was coming in behind him. And I had never done anything but start in my entire career, going back to, I mean, Little League, everything. I was just a starter because that was how I played as what they call a junk baller.

So it was definitely a transition to go from starting to piggyback starting to then my first full season. I was more of like a seventh eighth inning guy so it was it was a tough to get accustomed to it first just a completely different way of playing baseball and like approaching every day but the Indians did a really good job of helping me through that like the pitch the pitching coaches the coordinators everyone just helped it was it was a lot of guys getting used to a new role so so it was a lot of talking through the mental side of relief and just understanding that it's a completely different

monster than trying to get through a lineup two to three times. So when you got to Goodyear, how sophisticated were the player development practices at the time? What information was available to you knowing what the system looked like five years later, how much had not happened at that point, sort of how primitive was it then compared to what it became later? Or was a lot of that already in place? Some of the foundation was in place and you could see that they were planning to add a lot into their analytic side of development. But when I first got there, it was definitely much less sophisticated than what I saw this year in spring training and good year. I mean, we, this year in 2020, I mean, you pretty much couldn't throw a bullpen or anything

without having some sort of, whether it was Rapsodo or an edutronic video. I mean, pretty much every throw we were taking was being monitored. Like we all had catapult tracking systems attached to our backs, like in a little and that was that was tracking every throw you made every step you took like everything was just being put on like they the amount of data they were collecting from us in a in a three-hour practice was was kind of insane to look at but when we first got there i think they they wanted to be careful especially with younger guys, like guys straight out of high school. I think it could be overwhelming to try to get some of these guys to buy into a completely analytical, like a way of looking at baseball when some of these guys have not ever seen any of these numbers before and don't know how to use them. So it was a pretty

gradual on-ramp to their process. Yeah, I was going to ask, and I guess your reading list might help us to anticipate the answer to this question, but what was your background in analytics when you were coming into the minors? Were you familiar with advanced stats? Were you sort of already a convert to that, or did you have to be persuaded? I imagine that as a college guy and as a guy coming from Columbia, they were probably salivating that you were going to be an easy convert to the cause. But I'm curious sort of what your experience of that was early on. Yeah, I was I mean, I've been a baseball nerd my entire life. So I grew up I mean, through high school, college, I was reading fan graphs, baseball

prospectus, beyond the box score, pretty much any advanced baseball writing I could get my hands on. I was just all in on it. And it just made sense to me. The whole idea of what you're seeing results-wise, batter by batter and pitch by pitch isn't always painting the full picture. So I was just always interested to see better ways to analyze how I was doing specifically, and then also just as a baseball fan to try to understand more what was happening in Major League Baseball and with my favorite players. So I was always trying to just learn more about the advanced analytics and the sabermetrics. So I was a pretty easy convert. And how did the information start to change the way that you pitched or how did the team start sort of filtering that information down to you as you were climbing the minor league levels after that first year? For me, it was a lot of trying to figure out pitch optimization.

So I was looking a lot. My slider was my was my best pitch pretty much since my senior year of college. slider was my was my best pitch pretty much since my senior year of college and for me it was I was always taught to you know you throw your off speed less than your fastball because you have to establish the fastball that's kind of the that was always the traditional way of thinking and starting with my my college pitching coach Peter Mackey who's actually the twins bullpen coach this year but he was kind of the first one to start getting me to think outside of the box with that and just said, Hey, your best pitch is your, is your slider. Why would you not throw that more than your worst pitch, which is my fastball? So, I mean, it sounds a little, a little simple, but that's, I mean, if you've grown up playing

baseball your whole life and all you've ever been taught is, is you have to establish your fastball or else your slider is going to be hittable it was a uh harder than anticipated adjustment to just buy into throwing a an off-speed pitch 50 or more percent of the time and so i think with the indians they were working on not just optimizing which pitch i threw but locations too it was looking at when i'm ahead in the count, if my slider is in the strike zone, it's a bad pitch because it gets a high chase percentage. So I should almost never throw my slider in the strike zone if I'm ahead in the count versus behind in the count, I'm trying to maybe throw one backdoor to a righty and steal a

strike. So it was a lot of just talking through just how I approach the game theory of I'm thinking one thing and the hitter's thinking another thing and just trying to understand what the hitter's anticipating too. feedback, even if it was difficult at times to get used to and to implement. But I imagine that not every pitcher that went through that system had the same reaction to it. And I'm curious how you saw the staff sort of varying their approach pitcher to pitcher if, you know, the sort of analytic concepts were either not resonating or were viewed antagonistically. How did the staff adapt to that and try to still find something that would help pitchers improve? I thought the Indians tended to do a really good job of allowing players to kind of figure out on their own how much they wanted to get into the analytics side. And so we had, I mean, pitching coach, so it was player, pitching coach, and coordinator kind of all

working together with every single player. And so the pitching coach kind of acted as a liaison between the front office, which is obviously thinking more on the analytics side, and the pitching coach who, you know, depending on which kind of pitching coach you get, some are more on the old school side and some are more transitioning towards the newer age. So, I mean, on a team full of 25 guys, everyone understood or embraced the numbers in a different way. So some guys like me were very receptive to the analytics side of baseball, and some guys wanted nothing to do with it. So I think a lot of that fell on the pitching coach to be pretty much a liaison between the front office and the

analytics department having a goal for a player. And it was the pitching coach's job in a lot of instances to take those numbers and take the ideas and turn them into something palatable for the player. So I think the Indians did a really good job, at least from the pitching side. I mean, that's what I have to work with. But they didn't push too hard on guys who didn't want to hear about the numbers. They just figured out a different way to get the same message across.

And how did that information get to you at each level? I guess as you got closer to the big leagues and also as technology and everything advanced and teams got more and more into this stuff, were there data-centric coaches at certain levels who would relay this to you? Did you start getting instant feedback after your appearances? Did that just kind of get more and more involved as your career went on? Yeah, the higher up we went, you had more.

They tried to, at least when I was going through the lower levels, they didn't want you to over in they didn't want like the paralysis by analysis they didn't want you to immediately go and look at every track man readout and look at your spin rate and all that but as I went up and I don't know whether this was due to going up in level or just as the Indians progress year by year and embrace the analytics a little more but we we started having, I mean, you were strongly encouraged either after the game or the next day, go into the video room and they have the, I mean, you have your pitch by pitch where you can watch the video.

It has your spin rate, your like the horizontal break, vertical break, everything you could get the TrackMan readout printed out. So you could see, you know, your extension for every pitch. Like the amount of data you could go and look at outing by outing was pretty incredible. And what the Indians started doing a couple of years ago was all the people working in the video room, they required them to go through some sort of sabermetric workshop where they became well-versed in just understanding all the data that was there. So they pretty much added in, like the videographer became also an analyst for each minor league team. So I thought that was a good way of just adding another person that could talk the language of it and try to help players understand what they were looking at. You mentioned sort of the fast forward to 2020 and the advancements with Rapsodo, and it sounds like you were wearing wearables. And I'm always curious what players' experience of that is. Is it disconcerting to have something on you that is so intimately aware of your

movements? Did you find that you had to sort of adjust to the experience of wearing it and then interpreting that data? Did you have any trepidation about wearables? It's sort of a frontier that I think we're going to, you know, continue to think a lot more about in the coming years and has a lot of thorny ethical questions associated with it. So I'm curious about the experience of it. Yeah, it was a little disorienting at first to think about like every single movement, every throw, like they're, they're analyzing things that I haven't even thought of. I mean, we were, we were all joking that during conditioning,

the idea of taking one of the 10 sprints a little less just kind of went off the table because they were measuring our, our, our speed on every sprint. So we kind of, we were joking about the end of taking one easy during conditioning. But in general, I mean, I think I'm not completely well-versed on the ethical side of it, but I like the idea of them being able to, if they're using it correctly, the idea, I guess, would be they could identify someone who's wearing down a bit earlier than even potentially the player could understand.

So maybe they notice, it's something I don't even notice but maybe they notice during spring training for a three-day stretch I threw I went from in playing catch I threw 90 throws my first day to and then over the span of two days if they notice I'm going like 90 throws to 70 throws to 50 throws maybe that's something they just kind of flag and see if my velocity is going down in an outing or something, maybe that's where they look and say, okay, maybe he's wearing down a bit. Let's take it easy. Let's scale back. So I think in that sense, it was like, there's a lot of upside to getting out in front of player fatigue, especially in spring training when it's so easy for guys to flame out if they're not quite ready.

So given all of this information, how did you look different this spring or how would you look different right now from the way you looked in 2015 or 2014, let's say in terms of maybe both your pitches characteristics, but also how you use them? I didn't change anything drastically year over year. It was just kind of a gradual, as I said before, just gradually leaning on my slider more and more. I cut out, I used to have a curve ball that, I mean, we looked at the, as a reliever that wasn't going long, that was going one to two innings, we looked at just the curve ball was pretty much a useless pitch because it

was just the worst version of my slider. So it was one of those things that as a starting pitcher, it might have been good to just have a pitch to throw 5 to 10 percent of the time to try to steal a strike. But that quickly, it didn't take much for me to look at that and say, you know what, you're right, I'm never throwing that pitch again. So it was a few things on the margins like that. I've started throwing a sinker. I started throwing that a couple years ago when, I mean, my foreseam was just incredibly hittable. So I needed to just make sure I threw a fastball that moved. And I know sinker is a dying pitch, and it's definitely not recommended for everyone.

But I've always been a ground ball- oriented pitcher, especially against righties. So for me, having that just something that would move and just take it off the barrel was, was kind of a survival mechanism for me because of my four seamer was not, not doing the job against righties. So that's just little ways of adapting things like that. And I changed,

I changed the grip on the sinker when it wasn't moving, when it wasn't getting, when it wasn't getting enough vertical drop, I needed to just find a way to manipulate it a little more. So I went to work with my pitching coach for like a week straight and just experimenting on grips until I finally found one that was getting what we needed. And everyone who's having success in Cleveland's rotation right now, or has had success there in the past few years, at some point was a teammate of yours in the Mariners, whether it's Bieber or Plesak or Savali or McKenzie or Karin Cech. I mean, you pitched with all of these guys and got to know these guys a bit.

That's right. I try not to take too much credit. Yeah, right. Well, so I know that you don't know maybe exactly what they were told to do and what they did differently because all of these development plans were so specific and individualized. But getting to pitch with them and talk to them every day, did you see them make certain changes or did you observe them improve? improve? I mean, were all of those guys like clearly on the track to be big leaguers all the time? Or did they surprise people around them by how much they improved and got better because of some of these changes? I guess I'm wondering, you know, how much do you think this development plan of the organization played a role in getting them to the point where they are today? Yeah, I mean, I think it's twofold. They obviously have a great ability to identify talent in the draft.

I mean, I know Tristan was a first round or a supplementary round pick, but I mean, you're talking about Bieber was I think a fourth round pick. Savalle was a third round pick. Plesak was, I don't, I think a 12th or something like that in that same draft. Karinczak was a 10th-round player.

I mean, it's incredible what they've managed to do to identify these guys. And I mean, from playing with Shane Bieber, it didn't take much time to notice that he was a cut above all of us. So that one was pretty easy to see coming. But they just do a really good job of of of just establishing a roadmap for these guys where the the development just keeps every every year these guys are just getting in a better position i remember two years ago the year that or spring training 2019 zach police act came to camp i mean bulked up like looking like he he had just worked his butt off the whole offseason

was throwing two to three miles an hour harder had developed a slider that none of us had ever seen before so they they clearly attacked what they thought was his path to the big leagues and and to his credit he followed it to a tee and and now he's an established pitcher in the big leagues. And with James Karinczak, I was in the bullpen with him for a couple of years. The big thing with him was, I mean, they didn't need to do much of anything with his pitches because they're all off the charts.

They just wanted him to hone it in a little bit and just, you know, all he has to do is throw things near the strike zone and he's going to strike out a million guys so they they just worked on mainly tunneling his pitches because he has such a sharp curveball he doesn't need it to be a glove strike or like he can throw he can tunnel his his curveball off of like a middle middle fastball and it's going to end up in the dirt and get some embarrassing swings and they've worked on just making sure if he's throwing a fastball they want it to be elevated because of just how that pitch plays guys guys will swing at it constantly above

the strike zone so just they just i don't think they they don't have a cookie cutter approach to anything they just they they draft a guy they'll bring him in they'll measure every single thing there is to measure about a play like the way player moves, the way his pitch is profiled, and then they'll just attack. They'll go after each guy a completely different way, and the end result is all these guys contributing to a playoff team this year, which has been really fun to watch. Has he always been so twitchy on the mound?

We can't let you go without asking no he's he's toned he's toned it down for the big leagues a little bit so uh i gotta say he i don't even recognize him he looks he looks shy out there compared to how he was in the minor so i'm proud of him for for toning it down and is it really encouraging as a pitcher in that organization to see those guys a get an opportunity and then succeed. And when it's someone that you've been in a bullpen with for years, like part of you is probably wishing, oh man, I wish that were me. I wish I were getting that chance. But I guess also part of you is thinking, well, they got that chance, so maybe I can. Like, I wonder what that

does just sort of for morale of the minor leaguers in general when you see guys going up through that system and flourishing that way. Yeah, I think it's, I mean, for a few of these guys that have been good friends of mine for a few years now, it's been really cool to see just how much they're contributing to a major league team. And like you said, it's impossible for part of me not to look at it and be like, Oh, like that, that could be me in a different universe. But I mean, I'm, I have this success, like I've pitched with these guys and have succeeded right alongside them. Obviously I don't quite, it's close, but I don't quite have as good of stuff as, as Karen check. I mean,

in general, it's like you said, it's encouraging to just see, they're doing exactly what they were doing in Akron with me and in Columbus in Lynchburg, and it's playing at the big league level. So there's definitely a part of me that's seeing this and being like, okay, the model that the Indians are using works. And I was on the right track and there's no reason I can't get back there. You hear a lot about the importance of consistency as you go from level to level, and you pitched at five different levels in that organization. So did you find that as you go from level to level. And you pitched at five different levels in that organization. So did you find that as you went from one place to another, that your new coaches knew everything that your old coaches knew?

Like, was there any education process or getting to know you kind of thing? Or did you feel like there was a lot of consistency in everyone knowing what you were working on and what you had done up to that point and what you were supposed to do. Yeah, I think spring training is really important for that because you have all the coaches there at the same time, seeing all the players, they're having these hours-long staff meetings before and after practice every day, I think just to get everyone on the right page going into the season. And in-season, it's definitely, I mean, as much as they can meet all day long and have all these reports on what a player's doing, what their stuff is, but for

pitching coaches, they're going to need to see you live and see how your stuff is playing against hitters to have a full grasp on what you're working on. So it's definitely a bit of an adjustment process every time you go up or down a level just just getting a comfortable again and be getting on the right page with your catcher your coach everyone around you so it's it can be it can be intimidating especially the first time going up to a new level where you feel like you're the the guy who doesn't belong and and you're just trying to to make it work so it can be very intimidating to to go up a level at first. But overall, I would say the coaches know what you're dealing with. They know what you're working on. They know

your routine. So I think they really do their best to make it an easy process. Yeah. And was there a lot of innovation when it came to training routines? I mean, weighted balls and long tossing and all of that, you mentioned like Plesak bulking up. Did you change anything about your training routine or did they do anything sort of biomechanically or conditioning wise that changed and developed as you were in that system? Yeah, I had never touched a weighted ball before I got to the Indians. And the year I got there was in 2014 was one of the first years they were starting to implement that like purely optional. And they had they had a version of like velocity camp in in extended spring training for a few guys that they had flagged as as having high potential to gain a few miles per hour with an aggressive program. So I was very in on it from the beginning.

I still use weighted balls every day in my training now. It's just, if not, like, I think it's a great way to warm up and, and obviously also a training tool to try to try to unlock some, some velocity if you're just trying to throw it as hard as you can. So overall that, that's been the biggest change to my, to my training regimen. And embracing long toss. I mean, I long tossed a good amount in college. We were encouraged to, but it's definitely been taken to another level with the Indians where they really encourage you to, as much as you can, whenever you feel like you can,

just to air it out. I mean, some of the starters will go foul line to foul line, long toss once or twice a week. That's definitely something that's not the status quo across the entire major leagues. That's kind of one of the things I was going to ask you, whether you had a sense of how different Cleveland was from every other organization when it came to some of this information or some of these practices. these practices and when players would get traded or picked up from another organization? Were they taken aback by the things that Cleveland was doing? Did you have a sense that, yeah, we're way ahead of sort of the typical team? Yeah, I think there's a top tier of pitching development organizations that are all more or less on the same plateau. And then, I mean,

we've definitely had guys come in from other organizations that look around and are kind of shocked to see the entire pitching staff throwing weighted balls before we go out and stretch. And we've had guys say that with other organizations, they would get their driveline plyo balls or their weighted balls and they'd be confiscated by the staff because they're completely banned in that organization. So it's kind of striking to hear how in 2020, there's still that big of a difference between the teams that are embracing

analytics and all that and aggressive pitching development methods and teams that seem to be a little further behind. Yeah. And when you have the guys who are in the big league rotation and are having a lot of success like Bauer did and Clevenger and Bieber and those guys have really embraced the analytical side of things and have been vocal about it, do you think that sort of sets an example that filters down? I remember asking you briefly about Bauer when I was working on the MVP machine. And, you know, you said that you weren't necessarily modeling yourself on his beliefs

or his tweeting habits, but that, you know, as a pitcher, you found some aspects of what he had been able to do inspiring. So is that the case? And do you look up to people like that and try to model yourself on at least some aspects? Yeah, I mean, I mean, I think I think separating off the field from on the field, I admire how much he's willing to push the boundaries of just things that everyone had had taken as fact. I mean, he, I saw he went out on three days rest the other day and through eight innings with, with no ill effect. I mean, it's, it's impressive to me. Like he is about as hard of a worker as anyone in the league, if not the hardest worker. And it's definitely, I mean, you see these guys come up and, and aren't afraid to take risks even as established big leaguers and are still trying to push themselves past these

boundaries to to improve so that's I mean I'm looking at that I'm like well I mean I'm sitting here as a a recently released double-a player like I've got to be doing that too if not more so it's definitely humbling to see these big leaguers and all-star pitchers going out and still not being satisfied with where they're at. Yeah. And I think you told me that maybe in another organization you wouldn't have been drafted or you wouldn't have had as long a leash as you did just because people see the radar gun readings and are not immediately impressed. And I guess what I wonder is where you come down on the nature versus nurture question and you know you've been exposed to all of these advanced practices you've seen a lot of players benefit from them how much of it does come down to just raw talent and whether you have an arm

that is suited to you know throwing in the mid 90s or whether you don't and how much of that do you feel like either you can compensate for whatever your weakness is with some of these ways of adjusting, or maybe you can actually address that weakness. I don't know whether you've made a lot of efforts to throw harder or whether those have been helpful, but I guess just having had this experience of seeing this system embrace all of this and have the success and having some of that success yourself, I guess, what do you think is possible? You know, what is disqualifying? I know you've read The MVP Machine on some of your other minor league bus rides.

Thanks for the royalties, I guess. And so, you know, that book is full of stories of like guys who went from, you know, almost out of the game to being great players. And of course, we focus on those stories. There are also a lot of stories of players who didn't make it and some of them tried some of the same things and didn't necessarily have the same raw ability that they were able to convert into production. So having played with all of these guys who have gone on to great things, do you see some separation there or do you feel like, yeah, you know, anyone can do that if you have at least the level of talent required to get into professional baseball? Yeah, I mean, I think it's one of those things that it's a complicated answer. I mean, I think that there's a baseline that you just have to have to be able to pitch

in the, in the big leagues and have success. Like I I'm kind of right at that baseline of if I threw one mile an hour slower, I I'm pretty much close to close to disqualified unless I'm dropping down sidearm or throwing a knuckleball but I think that I've watched guys come in and and put on the right weight and attack their training the right way and and come back throwing three to four miles an hour harder year year over year I think you have to have there are certain guys that just have it and you you see it as soon as they walk in. And that just makes their margin for error that much bigger than, than someone like me, who, if I, if I miss over the plate, there's a good chance I'm watching the ball hit off the,

hit off the center field fence at 110 miles an hour. So there's a lot of guys that, that are pitching more in, in just, you know, they're just working on throwing strikes with their fastballs instead of painting the corner with a fastball. So I think that having the velocity obviously makes life that much easier and you have fewer things to worry about. But I do think that, like you said,

you see these success stories from guys in the MVP machine. And while they are outliers, success stories from guys in the MVP machine and while they are outliers it's proof that that you don't have to be 21 to all of a sudden pick up five miles an hour you can you can you can still do it later in life and if you train the right way like it's definitely possible to put on to get the the velocity you need so it's it's it's interesting because I it's really tough to it gets tougher and tougher, but the harder you throw to gain more miles an hour, like getting from 80 to 85 is significantly easier than 85 to 90 and 90 to 90. It all just, it gets harder and harder each mile an hour you go

up, but guys, guys have proven that it's possible. So you had a ton of success at the lower levels. You pitched pretty well in AA too. You got just a few brief auditions at AAA, just enough to, I guess, be tantalizing and feel like you were almost there. Just enough to have a nice tiny RA in AAA. That too, but small sample size. So unfortunately, your time with Cleveland did finally come to an end this May. So, was that unexpected? How did you find out that you were going to get released? And I season, it was going to be a very different-looking minor league season without all the teams, I think it wasn't too difficult to look at it and see that as a 28-year-old free agent-to-be in AA, I was about as likely of a relief candidate as anyone. In AA, I was about as likely of a release candidate as anyone, essentially since it just made me a free agent. A few months earlier, it didn't affect any kind of playing schedule for me. But it's still tough news to get, no matter how prepared you are for it. I mean, I was watching, following along on Twitter the week of

when all these teams were announcing 30, 40 releases. And it was just one of those things where I was just kind of had my phone on high and was just kind of waiting for the call. So unfortunately, it did come, but it was done in a very professional way. And it was definitely not any ill will towards anyone with the Indians. You mentioned that you've been using the weighted balls in your own workouts. Now I'm curious, what has sort of staying in shape, presumably with the hope of playing next year looked like both in a time when it's hard to get together with guys and have access to facilities and also where you're sort of navigating that on your own for the first time

in a while? Yeah, it's been a very weird experience. I have a net that I got as soon as I got home in March. I ordered just one of these nets I would probably throw in 15 years ago when I was home, and I've been using that most days. I'll have a catcher that I'll throw a bullpen to on our high school field in Connecticut every once in a while. I mean, I'm just trying to stay in shape. And it's just a weird feeling because, like you said, I'm so used to having facilities and being around a team

and being just in a comfortable position where I can track my progress. So it's been a little different when I'm kind of on an island on my own. And there's definitely times where it's harder to, to keep that same passion, but that's, that's part of the challenge. So it's been, it's been fun to embrace it. And do you have any general thoughts on, I guess, the, the reduction of the draft and some of the contraction of the minor leagues that's happening? I guess that doesn't necessarily affect your future at this point, because if you get picked up, it'll probably be for a double A or triple A team.

And a lot of the contractions are coming at the lower levels, but you know, you were a 27th round pick and there may not be 27th round picks anymore. So if this had happened several years earlier, you are the kind of player who might not have gotten the chance that you got because of this. So I people either have several years in and enjoy that experience as, as you mostly have, I assume, or do beat the odds and make it. So it's definitely going to give fewer people chances. Yeah,

that was, that was, I mean, as a, like you said, 27th round pick, the first thing I thought of when, when you see all the contraction and I would be

shocked if the draft ever goes back to a full 40 rounds I mean it's it's I feel really bad for guys that are in my position I was in in 2014 where I got lucky enough to to be one of these guys that they they just took a chance on and like you said it's, it's been the time of my life to play professional baseball for the last five, six years. So I feel really badly for the guys that are completely deserving of that, that are doing everything they can, whether it's high school or college. And I mean, this is just by definition, guys are going to come up short that probably in a different universe are future big le leaguers that's a tough thing to to see happen i mean i guess the hope is that this new partnership with the atlantic league and i

think i just saw the american association is also yeah and the front partnering up so so i guess the hope is that these essentially turn into what short season and low a were for me. But I mean, until you see success with that, I'd have to reserve judgment. But it's tough to, you're just going to have to be that much better to get one of these coveted draft selections now. So with all of the uncertainty about everything, I mean, even the minor league season next year, I suppose, how do you look for a place to play? Are you reaching out to people? How do you kind of get on the radar when there are other players out there who got released around the same time that you did and are probably also looking to catch on somewhere else? Yeah, it's going to be, I mean, it's going to be a really competitive atmosphere for free agency

this year. So I don't know if any of us really know exactly what's going to happen and and how it's going to work or I have not been reaching out to teams quite yet I have an agent that I've been talking to and he's he's been he's always talking to teams and but I mean as far as like the last time that I caught up with him I mean teams are are not really looking to sign anyone or aren't even really thinking about it until the season ends and the version of the offseason begins. So I mean, for now, it's just a bit of wait and see. Have you had sort of like a plan B in the back of your mind for a while now? I don't know what you studied or what your alternative was going to be

when you weren't sure that you were going to get drafted. But is there something that you've always thought of as a potential baseball post-playing career? Would you be interested in some sort of coaching or front office role that would allow you to blend your experience and your knowledge of all the analytics? Or would you just do something completely different if that was a choice you had to make? just do something completely different if that was a choice you had to make? Yeah, I would definitely not be interested in the full coaching side. I don't think I could do the minor league bus rides if I'm not playing in the games. So I think that will be one of the easiest things to give up for me. But the whole idea, I'm definitely open to the idea of being in a front office. I think that it would be a really good use of my strengths and my knowledge. I haven't wanted to think too much about it because I feel like the second I start thinking about that, I'm kind of giving up on what I am really going for. But it's definitely, I mean, as a lifelong baseball fan, it would be a good way to end my career if I could then transition into something on the analytical side.

And has it been kind of an economic hardship for you? I don't know how much support you've had from your family and all of that, but we've talked a fair amount on the podcast about minor league pay and have had other people on the podcast to talk about that. minor league pay and have had other people on the podcast to talk about that and you know the experience of sort of scrimping and saving and having six roommates and all the rest of the stuff that you have to do so has that been a difficulty for you and is that something where you would like to see some changes in that area or have there been any improvements i guess just in like off the field stuff that you've seen during your career when it comes to either housing or just quality pandemic. But in general, yeah, it's tough on everyone. I would love to see some version of an across-the-board minor league pay raise. I know that some teams have stepped up and increased their team's salaries all through the minor

leagues, which is awesome to see. I mean, I can't even imagine, like a few years ago, that didn't seem like it was anywhere close to happening. So it's been nice to see some progress as far as other little, like on the margins, the Indians have done some nice improvements in the spring training. They actually had a, they, they built a full dorm right across from the Goodyear complex that almost everyone lives in. They had like a few of the older minor league guys like me and a few other guys stay at hotels just because they didn't have enough rooms built yet but it's a full facility it had a ping pong table a nice lounge area they they catered food there every night from the the indian chefs would would cook a full meal for everyone every night so they just little

things like that where guys aren't being forced to go spend their, you know, if you want to get dinner and good year, like guys might go and get a get McDonald's or get whatever, like whatever unhealthy food they choose to save money. That's an easy way where we can spend equivalent of pennies for us and vastly improve the diet of our assets. So I think it's an easy decision to make, but it's cool to see it nonetheless because that's not something that was happening a few years ago. And I guess one closing thought on player development. I wonder how sustainable you think Cleveland's edge when it comes to pitcher development is or any teams. I mean, you mentioned that you think they're sort of a top tier when it comes to pitcher development is or any teams I mean you mentioned that you think they're sort of a top tier when it comes to that and sometimes the top tier will steal people from each other like the Yankees hiring Matt Blake just recently but like a lot of teams have tried to get on board at least and at least given the idea of lip service and they've bought the rep sotos and set up the

Edgertronics and everything. But as you saw, I mean, that's a process that is not necessarily an overnight one. It takes some time to set up that whole system. But you do have pitchers going from organization to organization and coaches and front office people going from one to the other. So to the extent that there are secrets, they probably don't last all that long. So I wonder if you're a fan of Cleveland and you're saying, this is great. We can just keep developing all of these aces and then we'll trade them and get some more aces

and we'll have the best rotation forever. There are other teams that are doing the same things and embracing the same ideas. So I wonder how long you think those advantages last. Yeah. I mean, I think you saw it somewhat with the money ball era. I mean, teams caught up pretty quickly, especially teams with more money to spend on figuring this stuff out and to then use the whole idea of the money ball era of targeting these guys that have a high on base that might be undervalued. All of a sudden, if the big market teams are paying top dollar for those guys, that's not an inefficiency anymore. So I think all these edges are pretty cyclical where it

doesn't take a whole lot for the rest of the league to catch up. So I think to maintain the edge, the teams like the Indians, the Dodgers, these teams that are kind of at the top for development, they need to just keep pushing the boundaries of what they know and keep just not settling at all and try to figure out what's the next thing going to be. What can we get a leg up on? So I think that any team can catch up. Like you said, the Indians might maintain some sort of advantage for a couple years, but teams are going to catch up and are in the process of catching up.

I mean, you see like the Reds went out and got completely revamped their whole development team and look to be on the fast track to being one of these teams. So it doesn't take a whole lot to disrupt the whole advantage. So I think it'll be interesting to see what the next frontier is. Yeah. Do you think hitters can catch up or hitting instruction generally? Do you think it is catching up? I mean, it always comes later because hitting is sort of this reactive thing and pitching is not. And a lot

of the technology and quantification came earlier for pitching. I don't know whether you saw the same sort of thing filtering over into the offensive side as your career has gone on or whether you think it can ever kind of equalize or will hitters always just be behind? I think it seems, I mean, I guess it can change a lot, but it always seems like the ceiling for what you can develop from an offensive standpoint is a little more capped because like you said, I mean, pitching, you're the, like you start, like everything goes off of you.

So it's a little more controllable to look at the data there. But I mean, there's definitely things with hitting that they're starting to turn some corners on. Like I know the blast motion detector has done a good job with a lot of guys to try to get them on the right attack angle and trying to figure out the best way to elevate with power. So, I mean, it's on the right track, but I think it seems tough to visualize a world where offensive development is quite as finely tuned as pitching. All right. Well, we wish you luck in your hunt for a team. Have you considered Winter Ball or International Ball or any other places to play in the meantime? Yeah, I've considered. I'm actually getting married in november so that that's kind of taken the priority over over winter ball for me for for right now but i've looked into

the idea of of uh going to play somewhere i mean it's it's kind of a daunting task to think about in in the middle of that what's going on in the world right now to go play in a different country. But I mean, if I get advice from people and it seems like the thing to do to extend my career is to give it a try, I'm more than open to it. So I haven't really eliminated any possibilities. I'm not in a position to corner, to take anything off the table. So I'm just trying to keep playing. All right. Well, good luck with the wedding and everything else that comes after that.

And if you're listening and you're someone who works for a team and needs an arm for next season, look up David. He's on Twitter at DSpear10. And thank you very much for coming on and opening it up. Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much for the time, guys. All right, that will do it for today and for this week. Thanks, as always, for listening.

If you're looking for something else to listen to, I have a little PSA for you. Fangraphs Audio is back after about a four-month hiatus, and it has a new format. So Meg is no longer regularly hosting Fangraphs Audio. She is quite busy hosting here. But it has returned as sort of a group podcast, a staff effort. So various Fangraphs writers and other personnel will be appearing on the podcast on every episode. It should be a roughly weekly show

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Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend. enjoy the last games of the regular season and we will be back to talk about the playoffs next week these times are for everybody i read the paper For everybody I read the paper I see the news Something will give We'll give and make it better.

We're going to work it out. We're not going to lose.