Rates & Barrels - A Closer Look at Pitcher Injuries Throughout Baseball

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

Eno, DVR and Britt take a closer look at pitcher injuries that have mounted at all levels in recent years, and dissect the varying reasons behind the significant increase in major elbow and shoulder problems. Plus, they consider the fast start of the Pirates and the dismal start of the Marlins in their first installment of 'Buy, Sell, Hold' for 2024.  Rundown 1:25 The Problem Starts at Youth Levels 7:31 Incentivizing Starters with In-Game Rules to Reduce Velocity & Pitch Deeper Into Games 12:33 Justin Verlander's Thoughts on the Uptick in Injuries 17:58 Lack of Consistency Across Different Levels 21:13 Adding More Factors to a Multi-Factor Problem 26:55 Injuries Spike Early in the Season 32:11 The Benefits of Playing on Multiple Sports 36:42 Strikeout Rate Growth from the 1970-1990 20-Year Window Compared to 2004-2024 42:02 Eno's Unexpected Suggestion for a Solution 46:15 Buy, Sell, Hold: The Pirates' 9-2 Start 54:22 Buy, Sell, Hold: The Marlins' Miserable 1-10 Start Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Britt on Twitter: @Britt_Ghroli e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! Subscribe to The Athletic for just $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Tuesday, April 9th. Derek VanRyper, EnoSaris, Britt Jeruli all here with you today. In the time since we started planning this show, even from the time this morning that we started putting the graphics together for this show, another pitcher got hurt, or at least was revealed to have an elbow injury, right? That's what it's like. Pitchers, as we've learned over the years, they're hurt all the time. They're hurt at times we don't even know about. And it's reaching this point where someone has to figure this out or a group of someone. It's not going to be an easy solution, right?

This is the biggest problem in baseball. And we talked a little bit about the who, the more specific who from the weekend with Spencer Strider going down. the more specific who from the weekend with Spencer Strider going down. You look at the way the injuries are piling up in the early part of the season every year. This is a massive problem. We can't even go a day without a new pitcher landing on the shelf with an elbow injury. This time it's Nick Pivetta. It's unreal. Where do we even begin when injuries are happening this fast? Well, guys, the problem I think is that it's not a MLB problem. It's a little league youth baseball problem that by the time it,

it permeates up, we're looking at fixing the symptoms and we're not looking at fixing the disease. I think the problem is so many of these guys, let's take Kate Cavalli with the Nationals, for example, top draft pick, has yet to pitch for the Nationals, has already had Tommy John surgery, right? And we know the biggest precursor to injury is have you been injured? So these guys coming up and getting Tommy John surgery at 15, 16, Kate Cavalli, obviously a little bit older than that. But I think the problem is these year round youth showcases. The fact that it used to be that, you know,

if Eno was a really good pitcher, he was the best guy in his high school. He might've been the best guy on his little league team, high school team, whatever. Maybe he dabbled in travel. Now, if Eno's showing signs of being good in like fourth grade, Eno's on a special travel team that goes around the country.

So he doesn't just see the best guys from his high school or from his area, his county, not just the state. He's playing against guys from California and Texas and Florida. And these guys are throwing in the 90s already at the high school level. I mean, I had an executive tell me, you know, he's got a son who's playing high school and is also playing travel. If you're not throwing mid nineties, forget it. This is high school. So by the time these guys come up, they've got the wear and tear on their arms from throwing as hard as they can, as fast as they can with the spin, right? They're replicating everything going on at the big league level. And, you know, it's like the tires on a car. they're, they're getting all that tread and they're eventually going to break.

So I don't know what, I'm curious what you guys think. I don't know what baseball could do here to actually, again, mitigate the, to, they can mitigate the symptoms, but to treat the disease. I don't know if baseball can do anything. What do you guys think? I'm pretty pessimistic and I'm glad that you pointed out the VELO because I wrote today about all the different causes and VELO seems like the number one cause and yeah, so you're not going to be able to tell pitchers throw softer, you know,

and you can't even tell kids throw softer. I mean, that's I have a kid in little league and I know he, what do they talk about when they face a pitcher for the first time, when they come back to the dugout, Oh, he's throwing hard. And they might be talking 75 80 because this is powwow to little league. And I don't know if any of these, maybe one of these guys is going to go to Cooperstown for the little league, uh, you know, all stars or whatever, but like, you know, it's still whatever, but like, you know,

it's still a thing in baseball that, and like people want to blame Velo and I mean analysts and, and, and data. And I get it. I guess Velo is data and analysts will tell you velocity is good, but it is also something that's kind of ingrained in a player. You know, like the minute you stand on the mound, I think you understand, I'm trying to throw this thing as hard as I can and get that guy out because it's going to help me get that guy out.

And that's true for a 10 year old. It's true for a 30 year old. It's true for anybody that plays baseball. They know they have to throw the ball hard. And that's part, that's what you do. And on the mound, uh, at least in the modern game. So if velocity is the problem, the only thing I think we can do, and this is sort of building off your answer is try to put people in the right

position to throw hard. And that requires a really good workload monitoring mechanics, stuff like that. Um, and workload monitoring is something that's now becoming a little bit more of a thing. You know, the Cubs obviously are investing heavily in workload monitoring because they went and hired Mike Son, who is the workload guy, and you know, they are working hard on keeping their pitchers healthy. Well, do you think your little travel ball team or the Palo Alto little league has like workload monitoring in the same way. I did see a tweet from Eric Cressy that was interesting that was like just keep your

pitches below 100 innings pitched above 100 innings pitched is like a 350% increase in injury. And that kind of stuff is happening at the minor league level. I can edit the little league level. I can tell you that I'm a game changer dad. I'm the guy who's scoring the games. And the only reason we score the games as closely as we do is pitch count. If the game changer isn't working or there's something going on, there's somebody everywhere counting pitches at every level. So we are trying to think about this, but workload is different. Think about the best pitcher on the team.

He throws 90, you know, he's, he's 11 year old, 12 year old throws 90 already or throws 85, you know, and you're counting his pitches. You're that pitcher is going to pitch the next game. So whatever rule you have, he's going to pitch the max of it. Right? So if you say, Oh, you can only pitch 50 and then you have to take three days off. That's like kind of a rule, right? Well, your best pitcher, the guy who throws 85 or something is going to throw 50

pitches, take three days off and throw 50 pitches again, because everybody wants to win games, he's the best pitcher. I'm going to put them out there. Um, so, you know, these rules that might work for a lot of kids may not be sufficient for the guys who throw the hardest. And so I, you know, I don't know. I think year-round throwing is okay

because you're like a weightlifter. Like you wouldn't, you don't take like long periods of time off. Like you're always doing something, right? Yeah, I don't think, I think you periodize your training, right? You're not always throwing or lifting in my event at max volume.

You have periods where you go and you squat 40%. I know, and same thing. I think here on training is getting a bad rep here. I think again, we're looking at these tiny little symptoms and we're not looking at the actual disease. And guys, the only thing, so I was thinking like, if MLB can't solve this problem, to me, the only thing they can do is how do you get guys to throw less hard?

And you do that, I think, by incentivizing the starter to go deep in the game. So Jason Stark has floated this rule before where you lose the DH if your starter doesn't go six innings. I would take it to seven innings. Your starter got to go to seven innings. The only way these guys now who have been told throw as hard as you can two times through the order and you're coming out. The only way I think guys throw less hard is if they know you're on that mound until the eighth inning. So now instead of throwing a hundred, which again, you pointed this out, you know, guys aren't throwing harder necessarily, it's the average that's higher, right?

They're now throwing at max volume every pitch. Whereas if you watch these old-timer guys and you talk to guys like Jim Palmer, even Max Scherzer, the whole last inning Max Scherzer pitches guys, he grunts on the mound. He's emptying the tank. You don't see that anymore from this next generation. So I think if you were to say,

you have got to go, you got to get through seven innings, you're going to see guys who throw 96, 97 dial it back to 93, 94. Does that help? I think that's one of the most significant changes baseball could make. It would also help with the time of game. You know, I was watching the Mets game. I'm here in New York to do some stuff for SNI. I was watching the game last night. Yeah, there were 13 walks. Julio Tehran, you know, doesn't make it out of the fourth inning. So, you know, I think the game is better.

We can all agree when starters are going deep, the only way to force that is to tie it to something teams want, which is keeping their DH. So I'm curious again, if you guys have any opinion on this, but to me, that's the only real way to force guys to throw less hard is to say you are in there now. I just wanted to point out to anybody watching on YouTube, they can see a chart that I it's not actually in my piece today, but it's

it's reference, which just shows the difference between a pitcher's maximum and their average. And there might be a little bit something going on weird in 2004 to 2008 that's like early pitch tracking. You can see that the difference between average max is near six miles per hour in those years and then it takes a real dive in 2008 well 2008 is where things got better in pitch tracking but even since 2008. What two thousand eight is where things got better in pitch tracking but even since two thousand eight pictures used to have a four mile an hour difference between their average and max. It keeps going down every year that difference and this year it's three point two and some at some points gonna go under three the way that this chart is going so yeah they're just throwing, and it's, it's all out for as long as you can. And then they take you out and bring in a reliever who's going all out as long as they can. So I agree.

The one thing about the, um, the, uh, tying the, the, the, the, the, it's called double hook. It's tying the DH to the, to the starter. Um, is that in, in the short term at least, the players' ideas, the players' incentives will be disaligned with the teams. They'll be misaligned a little bit. Because the player will say the market rewards people

with clean ratios, with good strikeout rates, with good stuff plus. That's what the market's looking for. So I still wanna throw as hard as I can, cause I'm going to get paid on that market and the team will want somebody who goes deeper. How long does that take to work out? If it's like a year and all of a sudden somebody like Jordan Montgomery gets, you know, 150 million instead of one in 25, you know, like we're,

we're like, you know, the market really changes quickly. Then, uh, then that could be good. But if it's five years, that, that becomes a weird period of time in which the players and the teams are not aligned. But you know, uh, maybe that's overstated because the players and teams are not always aligned correctly. You know, like the, are players that players want to win. Yes, but they also want to get paid. And that's always there's always some tension

between those two things. One question I have is if Tommy John surgery generally works, if you usually come back and you usually are yourself and it ends up being tough rehab, but, you know, a year, 14, 16 months in most cases where you're not out there. It's a bump in the road. It's almost like you're playing the lottery and it seems like players at the current

rate are comfortable playing that lottery. They're comfortable taking the chance because of the reasons they get paid. Well, I've literally heard I'd rather be get to the big leagues and have TJ than not get to the big leagues. I mean, that's. Also, and as Trevor told us, Trevor May told us on a Friday, he said, if you're going to have TJ, make sure you're in the big leagues when you get it. It's when you get better surgery.

If you break down as a big leaguer, which yeah, I mean, I think to Brit's original point, I think where it begins is at the youth level. I think the actual root causes are much, much wider than that. I think the quotes from Justin Verlander were really interesting. Ari Alexander is a reporter in Houston from KPRC and he got a really good clip from Verlander that's been making the rounds of the last 24 hours and Verlander said, I think the game has changed a lot. it would be easiest to blame the pitch clock in reality everything has a little bit of

influence the biggest thing is the style of pitching has changed so much everyone is throwing as hard as they possibly can and spinning the ball as hard as they possibly can it's a double-edged sword I don't have all the answers when the ball started to change back in 2016 and started flying out it changed how I had to approach pitching. I wanted to swing and miss. I don't know how we rewind the clock.

The trickle down permeates all the way to Little League. I just hope we don't wait too long. It's a pandemic and it's going to take years to work itself out." The other part of what Verlander said, the second tweet, the ability to naturally throw hard is a large part of it. Everybody's built differently because he was asked about him and Oroldis Chapman being these guys that have stayed really healthy just by throwing hard.

Oroldis' mechanics and my mechanics are vastly different, which if you've watched these guys, they're very, very different in how they pitch. It's like the gate of a horse. You gotta find your own gate. You gotta find your own way to a baseball. If that naturally leads you to be able to naturally throw hard, great. If not, that leads you to an ends road. Wherever that is in your career,

then you go find help, but not before. And you're saying, you know, you might find in college that your stuff's not good enough. At that point, you have to decide if you're going to push it as hard as you possibly can and, and basically take that gamble. And if you're happy with where you are, right. And so is he kind of taking an argument against like going to a pitch lab or doing weighted balls as like a 10 year old or whatever? Yeah. I mean, I think I think he was saying he didn't say this, but I wonder if you'd also get him to say, well, yeah, throwing year round is good

and not throwing at your max is a huge part of making that work. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Healthy arm care and finding it. But I think the bigger part of what he's saying is if you are pitching to tech, right, if you're getting in front of a machine and adjusting for spin and making your arm do something your arm doesn't naturally want to do, that might be putting the extra strain on you. If your mechanics by natural design or just longer term repetitions don't portend spinning the ball that way. It's not that spinning the ball itself is breaking you,

it's that you are not training to get to that point. Maybe you're missing steps, maybe there's some longer route to get to the point where you can spin the ball that way that will make it less of a problem. I think that actually has some weight to it. I think that's a little bit of an interesting way to think about it that I hadn't previously thought about.

Yeah, another interesting point is this spring, I was in Tampa and Eric Chrissy, as the director of all of their, I guess health and performance and all of that. And he had a call actually with MLB later in the day because MLB as they have said in, is putting together this huge research study. And they want to hear from all of these independent thinkers about how they can fix this. And what's interesting is Eric brought up that, Max Scherzer, when he wanted to add a pitch, it took him years to add a pitch. He made sure he

built up that forearm, built up that area. And I think what we're seeing now is guys are, again, the rise of the pitching labs. Here's the step plan to add your velocity or to add this spin. And guys are just taking that or they're seeing stuff on social media and they're tinkering and they're not doing the proper things to build up the shoulder and the elbow and the ligament. And Dr. James Andrewss who pioneered Tommy John surgery actually said recently that that ligament that Tommy John ligament is not fully developed until

you're 26 years old. Yeah, I was surprised by that number. Yeah, so I think what we're seeing then is this like perfect storm of like we talked about guys in the youth guys in high school spinning the ball and you're talking about in some cases, almost a decade before that ligament is even fully mature. No wonder it's blowing out at a ridiculous rate, right? So it's just this like combination of things. I like work with these kids. I've watched them like, so my kid was in a blowout recently, wrong side.

Um, and the other guys on the mound were just throwing knuckle balls and, and, and breaking balls and like, just having fun out there. But one of the number one things that a kid does is like, was that nasty? Did that move the, the in catch or, or wherever on the mound, they're trying to make the ball move. And it's really hard to tell them not to do it. I've seen kids, I've seen the coach yell, Hey, just fastballs out there, kid, you know, and then the kid goes, uh-huh.

And then three pitches later, I don't know. Did that move? I don't know. You know? So like the, like, it's just, I think the really hardest thing is that like when you're on the mound, you want to make the ball move. You want to throw the ball hard. And it's, you can't tell someone not to do that. So yeah,

I think it's just, that's, that's when I get the most pessimistic about the problem. I was like, what? Like I'm not going to tell my kid not to throw harder. You know, I'm not going to tell him not to move the pitch. I've tried to figure out things where it's like, okay, we work on fastball command for 50 pitches and then you can throw 10 curveballs. You know, it's like, try to, try to incentivize them to like, you know, work on it. But another thing is like, just the lack of like, lack of like cohesion across, and I'm not suggesting

that MLB should take over perfect game and MLB should take over little league and MLB should be the one thing that rules them all. I'm not suggesting that, but maybe some sort of task force that that combines MLB's resources and abilities because think about it if MLB changed the way the mound looks or the way the the the the field looks then you would see that trickle down all the way down to high school and whatever you know so you know MLB obviously and because the the MLB pitchers are throwing as hard as they can or doing these pitches like yes that influences the kids so why not have some sort of task force that includes members of perfect game and includes members of MLB includes NCAA people make it sort of like a national task force on injuries Baseballs trying to do some of this they they commissioned a

Group of people to look into it And they're they're supposedly going to like, you know say something about it And they're supposedly going to like, you know, say something about it. But that doesn't include people from the places we're talking about. That doesn't necessarily include people from the travel ball or from Little League. And, you know, so they're going to make their recommendations. And then we just hope that that filters down all the way to Palo Alto Little League, you know? But doesn't that, again, support the argument that if we make it cool again for guys to go seven, eight innings, we make that cooler than striking out 10 guys in,

in four innings that these little league kids will then be like, okay, my favorite big leaguer is not throwing a hundred anymore. He's throwing in the, you know, the mid nineties because it's cool to pitch into the seventh inning. Then the team keeps the DH or whatever. I don't you have to incentivize this because it will have that trickle down effect. There is an interesting difference there between Little League and big leagues, which is in Little League command is maybe the most important thing. There's there. Nobody has command in Little League. And it's walk after walk after walk in most little league games. So, you know, in fact,

right now there is a little bit of an incentive to be, to be the coolest pitcher. Like the best pitcher I've seen this year did throw hard, but he wasn't the hardest thrower. He threw strikes. And he, that's what that blowout was. He just threw strikes. He threw strikes over and over again at a pretty decent VLO and that was the end of it. I mean, it was bad. So I'm just saying like, you know, there is little league already is sort of set up to reward people with command. It, when they get to perfect game though,

it almost doesn't matter what happens in results because it's all being tracked. So there's a little bit of a difference between Little League and Perfect Game. Perfect Game, you get to Perfect Game and you know you're playing for the scouts, you're playing in front of everybody. It's a little bit like, you know, what number, what best number can you put up there?

What spin rate number, what VLO number? That's when things get a little bit different. You know, nobody cares about your command at Perfect Game. They care about what you touched and what you sat at and what you spun. I think my conclusion here, and this has been my position for a long time, is that this is a multi-factor problem.

And I think anytime you take to Twitter or any sort of forum and you point to one part of a multi-factor problem, people come throwing stuff at your face, like telling you, no, no, you're wrong. It's this, this and this. Like, yeah, no, I understand. Like there's more than one reason a bad thing can happen.

And just because you troubleshoot one of the causes doesn't mean you completely solve the problem, but you can make it better. And that's where my beef with the pitch clock comes in because there was research done by Mike Son. Again again this was written about just a couple years ago at Sports Business Journal. Both San and his co-author Peter Kerr researched the effect of the pitch clock through a series of computer simulations and concluded that their study showed the implementation of the clock, or enforcement of existing pace of play rules, the rules have been on the

books, they were enforcing it, will increase fatigue accumulated in the forearm and elbow and could jeopardize joint stability. It's very obvious how working faster at that V-Low is going to cause more of a problem because you're sitting closer to your max and you're doing it faster. Imagine doing sprints at your hardest, but taking shorter breaks between. Imagine lifting closer to your max weight and taking less rest in between. All of those things would make you more likely to break. So taking the pitch clock, implementing it, having this rule, and then speeding it up,

that part is like the extra turn of the dial that really doesn't sit right with me. Having the pitch clock faster this year than it was last year, without taking the necessary time to look at a few seasons worth of major league data to see what happens to guys in these conditions. That's where I think major league baseball is failing. That's where they are making a mistake. That's where they need to do better. But this does fall. This is not their problem and their problem only to solve. Players need to figure

this out too, because you can't play the lottery with your career and think that that's like the right way to go forward. That's not a healthy outcome for anybody. Yeah. So in your opinion, DVR, they should change, they should get rid of the pick-up. They should at least go back to last year, keep that for multiple seasons and just see what the effects of that change are. Because multiple seasons. How did they decide to speed it up? I think we're all in agreement there.

That was a mistake. It did what they wanted to do as far as making the game shorter. Most people like that. As long as pitchers weren't breaking at an elevated rate. Great. But we only have a few years of minor league pitch clock data. I would argue that minor league pitchers are actually not the same as major league pitchers, different age, different stuff, different mounds. Every pitcher you talk to says each mound

in the big leagues is different. Of the 30 major league parks, no two mounds are the same. Right? Like that's part of the problem too. Like I think there's all these variables in pitching that make this so complex and we add more variables. Well, baseball would say that every mountain is the same. But they're not, they're objectively not.

Like that's, you can, you can measure these things. They're not. And Alex Wood had a great thread about all of the, the other things that tie into this. I agree with you guys. Listen, the people thinking the pitchcocks gonna get abolished, dream on. Like there are too many positives for the game.

But I agree with both of you in that they shouldn't have sped it up again and in fact when they did I heard from a couple guys who kind of predicted this that like you know basically I'm looking at old texts and it's like you know what you're gonna have is a rash of pitching injuries sure enough what we have is a rash of pitching injuries like it felt like they squeeze so much dead time out of the game and instead of taking that as a win and sitting back and saying, yeah, let's see how this plays out over the next couple of years, they were like, let's squeeze more dead time out of the game.

Let's make it even faster when there actually are ways to speed up the game without doing the clock like the the umpire hand check that can be between innings, the replay review system. How come fans can make that call because it's on the jumbo trial? Right, faster than the guys that are on the field. There are ways to, if MLB really cared, let's shave 10, 15 minutes off the commercial breaks.

Isn't that funny? Limit reviews, limit what can be reviewed. Yes, there are ways to make the game go faster without upping the clock. And again, this would be an unintended but welcome byproduct of having a pitcher go deep into the game. Did you guys see last night, Nestor Cortez, the Yankees?

That game was two hours and one minute. Nestor Cortez pitched into the eighth inning. Does that surprise anybody how fast the game was? It was a great pace of play because the starter went deep into the game. Like, I think that solves so many of their problems. If they have to, like you guys are right, they have to find a way to make it so that the transition isn't awkward and clunky. But to me, again, if you were looking here at just putting band-aids over bullet wounds,

which we really are, because we're not at the youth level, like you have to find things they're going to actually push that needle forward a little bit. I think that is one of them. There are ways to have everybody kind of get what they want a little bit more. Do you think pitchers like being hurt all the time? Spencer Strider, Shane Bieber was apparently devastated. He's going to be a free agent. These guys, again, you talked about playing the lottery, no one wants to blow out their arm and then be looking for a job at the end of the season. Right? That's gonna hurt you. So I don't know, like what do teams value?

Cause look at Blake Snell, always great stuff, but he's a five and dive guy. He didn't get paid either. Like there are things that need to be fixed, I think, that go well beyond that. One thing that is interesting is that the injuries spike every April. And so last year we wrote a piece about the injury, about the pitch clock and injury. And we thought like, oh, look at this big spike, you know, and we even tried to compare versus

other Aprils. And by the end of the season, actually actually last year, there was no spike in injury, you know, once you, once you took the whole season into account. And, um, so what's interesting to me is that like, we have these big spikes in April and that's why we have these conversations every April. If you actually look back and you can actually do a search for like, you know, Oh, baseball's injury problem. They're always written in April. And the reason why we have these injuries in April, I think, is that you spend all off season,

we talked with Trevor about this, you spend all off season saying, ah, what doesn't feel great? I'll just take a couple of weeks off, you know? You take a couple of weeks off, you come back, you're like, no, that feels okay, you know? But you're not throwing at game intensity. And you ramp it up and you get to game intensity,

you're like, oh, no, that's not good. You know, we gotta do something about this, you know, and that's the April problem. Then you see injury placements go down. We stop writing about it. You know, it's the guys who are healthier, largely remain healthy. And then we see another spike in August and September, which is sort of cumulative fatigue over the course of the season. Um, and so that's just, I just wanted to point out that's the kind of ebb and flow of these conversations.

Why we seem to every April talk about it more is because April is, I think the manifestation of what Derek was saying earlier is that pitchers are always hurt this degree to how much. They spend the off season saying they're not hurt. And then when they ramp it up all the way, they go, oh yeah, I can't ignore that anymore.

And so I think that speaks to, you know, when my piece today, I spoke a lot to Casey Mulholland and Mike's son. And one of the things that they kept coming back to, which actually links all the way down to to Little League and in perfect game and everywhere, was kind of off season monitoring, off season workload monitoring. And you know, when you were talking about periodizing your weightlifting, you know, that's what people need to do more of is, yes, throw all year round, but don't throw max all year round.

Like you know, like have these nice 60% bullpens in the off season, take days off, know what it means to throw 60% and how many days you need to take off after that. Know what that stressor level was, know what you threw in that bullpen and how much stress that was and so no relationships. And that's like a little bit harder to broadcast to everybody than if he throws 50 pitches, he takes three days off.

Cause it has to be a little bit more like, if he throws 50 pitches, he takes three days off. Because it has to be a little bit more like, if he throws 50 pitches and he's throwing 80, you gotta give him five days off. You know what I mean? So like there's a relationship between the stress that you're throwing and the days you get off and it's a year long thing. And I think one thing that's kind of scary

to anybody who studies this and lets these pitchers go out into the wild every November and then welcomes them back in February being like, what did you do? Oh, so you have a new pitch and three miles an hour of VLO in February? Oh, good. We pray, right? So we're part of the problem too. We're like in spring training, like, oh my God.

Who's got a new pitch? Oh, you got three miles an hour of VLO? Nice. Yeah. No, it's, it's like everyone deserves some blame. Nobody is exempt from the blame here. And if you're listening to this and you're a parent, your kid plays baseball, like I beg of you,

all the experts agree, do not specialize. Do not specialize. But have your kid play other sports, have them do other things. They are still becoming better at baseball by playing other sports. They're actually becoming less injury prone. I think that's a big part of it too. We talked about like, it's not just the perfect games. It's the fact that these guys are playing fall ball and spring ball and they're like year round going at it. And actually what, what Cressy brought up and

what I thought was an excellent point is that the youth circuit, the perfect game circuit should have a dead period where you can't sign guys where guys can't be, you know, you know, showcases. Yes. And so like there's no way guys should be throwing. He said that like they throw more than pros sometimes their season is longer. Like these guys shouldn't be throwing in November for scouts. You have to have a dead period. If there's no dead period, if there's a dead period, there's no scouts. If there's no scouts, then the, then people are like, well, why are we doing this?

Right? You have to Institute a dead period. That requires somebody telling something, somebody what to do. Perfect game makes money. Perfect game makes money. Baby showcases. Is someone going to tell them what to do? And was perfect game going to listen? No. I mean, they could, I mean, MLB to me would be the only ones that could have the power to do that. Maybe MLB should own perfect game. I mean, I don't want that to happen, but like, you know, like, but maybe then LB could just say no, we'll just turn it off.

Even if they don't, can't they say, listen, the spouts close. If we find a scout of yours at a team in November and December, that's interesting. You're gonna, you're gonna pay for it. Our scouts are not allowed to go to Perfect Game in December. Oh, so you just buy a scouting report from someone else that goes, like, come on. You can buy the data. Perfect Game sells the numbers. Yeah, you're right.

So yeah, you're right. I don't know, but like you have to, I thought that was an interesting idea when I hadn't heard. No, but like, yeah, the one thing about doing the different sports is if you're playing actual baseball year round, it's not the same as throwing your round, throwing your round. You can, like we said, periodize it up and down. You can, you can play with it.

But if you're playing your round, that's max. You are throwing your hardest. You are hitting your hardest. You were doing everything your hardest because you're playing, you're trying to win. So yeah, playing your round is a little different than, than throwing your round. win. So yeah, playing your round is a little different than, than throwing your round. Um, and yeah, and, and I, like you hear, uh, Joe Ryan talks about, you know, being a water polo player. Uh, Lucas G Lido talks about being,

doing gymnastics. Like, you know, a lot of these pros did other sports and, uh, and are kind of amazing at it. You'll see, you know, some of the Latin players will just start juggling a baseball with their feet like a soccer ball, and you'll be like, wow. And so there's different, I would say, I agree. Yeah, play different sports

because you're just working out your body in different ways. You're maxing, but you're maxing a different part of your body, and you're just becoming more athletic all year round. I asked one of the driveline guys who works with youth, what should I do with my kid to make him better? And he goes, play everything. Just play, just play everything.

Do jump throws, do basketball, do whatever, do whatever they wanna do, run a mile. Just make them more of an athlete. And that's the best thing you can do because it's more well-rounded. I totally agree. Gymnastics is underrated, by the way, especially like for little boys, my son's one and a half and he's going to be in gymnastics by like three, the body awareness, the core, the way like it's just so translatable to everything you do in no sport. They're like, Oh, you have too much core and trunk strength. That's right.

In no sport is that not helpful. So like, I don't know. I think again, if you're listening to this and your kid, even in high school, like I played three sports, I swam at Michigan state. I was a collegiate athlete and their division one. So, you know, it wasn't an Olympian, but nothing, you know, pretty good. Um, we, we were not allowed to specialize in my house. You had to play a different sport every season. And when I went to college was the first time all these other kids that I was now in college with

had done like two a days and like had been swimming year round for quite some time. And I never had any kind of injuries like with my shoulders is pretty common in swimming. And I think a lot of that was because I did softball and obviously pitching for softball is a lot better than pitching in baseball. And that was my spring sport. We did taekwondo in the summers. Like swimming was a fall sport and that was it. Like in my house. You did not, you went to another sport from there. It was only in college that it was like, okay, pick your one thing that you're going to want to do. So I, I, I, I, it's scary to me when these kids are like eight years old and these parents are like, that's it. Little Jimmy's the best kid on his little league team.

We have to put them in the showcase leagues now and now he's in a travel team. We're going somewhere every week. Like it's a little alarming. There's a silly thing though. All of the sports are bleeding into other times. So there's a, there's a kid down our street who's on my kid's little league team and he plays basketball and track. Right. I think right now, or like a week or two ago, he was doing all three at one time.

Everything's longer now, every season's longer, because if you're not working, someone else is. I had coaches that would tell me that. If you're not at practice, someone else is. Because every sports is trying to be like, no, we take this athlete. No, he's, oh, he's great, he's ours, you know? So he can play basketball eight months a year if he wants.

I think people overestimate their own ceiling by miles. Oh my God. When they are. That is a little league problem. Oh yeah. Little Jimmy's going pro. Yup. I just put something up while we were talking here because it, it struck me.

It was one of those random thoughts. I think I was out walking the dog and I thought, everyone keeps talking about how pitchers today are just throwers, they're just throwers, they're not pitchers. And I think that's a sweeping generalization and I think it's bull crap. I think it is unfair to the amount of work people put in. I think they put more work into the craft now than ever.

It doesn't mean there weren't guys in the past that didn't care as much or didn't work as hard and the old crowds like, Greg Maddux DVR. Yeah, I know. I love Greg Maddux. I grew up watching him. Greg Maddux threw 93, 94. Somebody has my comments today being like, you never cracked 90.

I'm like, he threw pretty hard. Yeah. We talked about the one funny thing about Maddux though, is that we assume coming out of high school, that dude wasn't throwing very hard. Cause he wasn't big, right? He was probably throwing 85 in high school and that was. Probably helped his health. Probably helped his health. Probably helped his health, right? Like I would, we should actually get an answer

on that. I think we have the resource to do it. So what I was looking up, I was looking up strikeout rates from starting pitchers from 1970 to 1990. Anybody that fan graphs flagged as a starter, there were 14 starting pitchers in that 20 year span with a strikeout rate of 20% or higher. I can literally name them and people are going to go, these are the best pitchers of that era. Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens, Sid Fernandez, Dwight Gooden, JR Richard, David Cohn, Ramon Martinez, Bobby Witt, Mark Langston, Jose de Leon, Sam McDowell, Eric Hansen, Mario Soto, Jose Rio. Not all the best pitchers, but a lot of people that are remembered from that era. 14, right? If you look at the last 20 years, this year going back to 2004, there are 200 starting

pitchers that have 20% strikeout rates. I am not going to list them all. That's how much strikeouts have changed from baseball some people watched growing up to what we have today. The game has changed so much. Well, why blame the analysts? It wouldn't you want to be, yes, the money and Roger Clements like, Oh, Roger Clements struck everybody out. I want to be like Roger Martinez. What was good about Pedro Martinez? Well, he struck everybody out.

Oh, maybe I should strike people out. Like it, like I don't, I just, the analyst blaming the analyst. I don't know. It's like, it's pretty obvious. Yes. It's always been your teammate pitching well, doing something. You're going to try to do it too. And it's watching on TV.

Oh yeah. Missing bats. That works. Can't get a hit. Can't get a hit if you strike out. We've pushed, we've pushed out the guys who don't throw hard though, which the other previous iterations of the game didn't. What happened?

I was just having this discussion last night, uh, in the studio. What happened to the sidearmors? They just get hit so hard. The crafty lefties. Right. We don't see those guys anymore. Because if you were doing that, let's say you're a side armor through high school. There's the three pitch, the three batter rule.

Well, some of that too. Take some of the lefties out. Yeah. Yeah. But you take, just let's say you have funky mechanics and it works. It gets you through high school ball. You're the best pitcher in your area. Where are you going to go play next level where that's going to work?

Every level you go up is a massive leap. Yeah. Is a D1 coach going to recruit you if you throw all funky? All the funky relievers are like 15th round picks, 20th round picks. They went to small schools. They were found on a backfield. It's just, their paths are so different than everybody else. Maybe that's a missed opportunity to some degree,

but also I don't think a lot of people throw that way because it's hard to do. Even if it's better for your arm, it's very hard to do. But I want to bring them back. It would be great if you had, again, the high throwers aren't going away in the bullpen, but it'd be nice to have. Imagine how difficult it would be, and this was why they were good, right? It's because they throw like again, the high throwers aren't going away in the bullpen, but like, it'd be nice to have, like imagine how difficult it would be. And this was why they were good, right? It's because they

throw like 82 and guys couldn't slow down. The ball would be moving and they like, guys couldn't not hit a ball that was at least like 90 miles an hour. We still have Tyler Rogers. We still have some guys like that. And I do think the teams that build the unique bullpens, like we talked about the Rays with the arms on the clock with the release points. Like there are some teams that do it. Tyler Rogers is a good example. The Brewers have a guy, Hobie Milner doesn't throw hard at all.

It's just, it's all funk. I mean, Ryan Thompson is like that for the D backs, former Ray. Like. There's like usually about one per pen, but you did jog something loose, which is when you were talking about why, how we pushed these guys out of the game, we've pushed these low below guys out the lefties and so on and the ground ballers and stuff. And I see that verbiage doesn't quite fit with me because I think people just look for what they want,

not so much push guys out. It's like they wanted the power pitchers. And so that's why they got it. But I also think of like, like Harvard could fill their incoming class with all 1600s on the SAT if they want. Right. Like that's, and when I hear that I'm like, Oh, that explains a little bit. If you only have 30 teams and the population of players that you can fit into those 30 teams just keeps getting bigger. We go to different places. We go to Brazil. We go, you know, like we have, we have, uh, we have, uh, places now in Africa, like where

we're trying to develop baseball players. Like we're just trying to get more and more people. There's more and more people in the world and we still only have 30 teams. So what happens is in the past, when you were trying to field 30 teams, you were like, man, I can't get 30 home run guys at every position. I can't fill it all with 1600 on the SAT because I just don't have that many. So what am I going to do? I'm going to have a 10, five homer hitter guy at shortstop that, but you should see how he feels, man. You know? And so that's what kind of the game

was that I grew up with was like, Oh, we don't, we can't have power everywhere. So we're just going to have some guys that get on base, some guys who were speedy, some guys who have gloves. Right. And now though, I think you can put a guy who can hit 20 homers at every, at least 20 homers at every position, right? I mean, that's, and so what teams have said is, well, let's do that. Cause I'd rather, I want to have 20 homers

from every position. And I want to have 20 homers with the slick fielding. And I want to have 20 homers with the guy who runs fast. And so the guy who hits five homers, there's like two of them in baseball and they don't start. You know, like so we've it's not so much we've pushed out the guy who hits five homers. It's that we've said, well, there's a power baseline to start in the major leagues. You got to be able to hit 15 to 20 homers at least. And then we'll start talking about your defense and we'll start talking

about your, your speed and all that sort of stuff. So, um, I want to put another thing out there. Expansion. I was hoping you'd go to the expansion is a surprising solution to the problem. I mean, it does at the very least offer more jobs for people to get in different ways. You know, it, it, it, in it, and it'll, it'll, it'll thin out. So think about this. People want to say that bullpens are not good these days.

I'm sorry. The fifth best reliever in the average bullpen right now could be a closer 20 years ago. And for most teams, I think that's when I look at the VELOs, when I look at what they're doing, like that's, that's how I see it. And so expansion at least will be like, man, you know, our fifth best reliever is not as good as it was a couple of years ago, cause now there's like two or four more teams, you know, grab, grabbing, gobbling up these relievers, right? So if your fifth reliever is not that good,

why would you want to switch from your starter to your fifth best reliever in the fifth inning or sixth inning? Yep. So that's a great point. Thin out the reliever squad so that you have to start the starters longer. The problem is, is the sack Oakland Vegas A's have tied up expansion in such that I was talking to a stupid stadium problem. I hate this. Right. I was talking to a source who was involved. It's just the stupid stadium problem. I hate this. Right. I was talking to sources involved in Nashville and you're looking at like 28, 29 to get a team because you have to resolve what's going on in Oakland

and make sure that that's viable. So another reason to hate John Fisher. We're not getting more teams until they figure out what's going on over there. But that's a great point. You know, what if you were to couple expansion with the starter DH rule? Would that be enough to, again, you're never going to go back in time, but would that be enough to at least make it that we're not seeing a new pitcher? Yeah. Drop everything.

I think that's my plan. If I'm the commissioner, it's expansion plus the double hook. Plus this is a really small rule and I'm not sure it's a big deal, but like make teams act, have active pitchers and non-active pitchers and maybe limit it to like five active pitchers for a game. And the, with like a bonus in case it goes to extras or something, you know, but like five active pitchers.

And the reason why it's not a big deal because it's not they'll still game it and they'll still play around with it and whatever. I know. But just making a team declare a player active or inactive will make them model fatigue better. Like to figure out who's healthy and ready to go. Yeah, we have to decide who's we have to out who's healthy and ready to go. Yeah. We have to decide who's, we have to decide who's going to pitch tonight.

How do we do it? The old school teams will still be like, so how do you feel dude? Oh, I feel good. You're in, you know, but like most teams over time will start to be like, Ooh, okay. Who's optimal tonight? Who's really green light tonight? Cause we have to choose five of you guys and that's it. Yeah, that's a great point.

And then like does it because what the problem with many relievers now is they think teams don't care about them that they can just burn these arms and there's another. Now it's you're forcing them to have that interaction where it's like, no, we need, we're sorry, dude, we care about you. You're red light tonight. Sorry. Like exactly. Exactly.

So it actually could help. I mean, remember when we thought we could only talk about this topic for like 20 minutes? We had some other stuff on the run down. Oh no. I know why we even bothered to meet. We could have filled the entire show. We did. Cause it's that important and that like nuance, right? It's just like so multifaceted when you look at kind of the calls and effective everything, but that's an interesting That I like that rule of the active and non active, you know And again, maybe we get to the point where you're starting to value guys who don't throw quite as hard But guys who are have those rubber arms, right guys

There are certain guys who can pitch three days in a row and have minimal soreness probably because they're not throwing 99 Right. So there are things MLB can do to tweak it, but we all agree that like, they can't actually fix what's going on. Yeah. I mean, throwing hard is good. Since we planned a few other topics, we're going to do a couple by cell holds.

We're not going to do as many as we planned for today, but I think we should give the Pittsburgh Pirates a bit of the airtime today. They are nine and two. They're off to a fast start again. The question is very simple for both of you. Are you buying, selling or holding the Pirates fast start? Is this different this year? Because we might remember a year ago on the 3-0 show, we talked about a Pirates team that was off to a great start through April, and it didn't turn out great for a variety of different reasons.

So why could it be different this time? Yeah, I am holding. I remember doing a story because I was suckered in hook, line and sinker by those pirates last year. I remember talking to Jim Ben Cherrington and him saying like, it's only April and me being like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And still writing this story about how the pirates were headed in the right direction. Then we all know how that turned out. I do think it's always better to win than to lose out of the gate. But the question to me is, do the pirates have enough? They're certainly in a winnable division.

Do they have enough to withstand kind of that? What happened last year was all of a sudden it was like, oh, some people were playing above their skis. Obviously, you know, losing O'Neill Cruz. Like, I think when you look at the Pirates, they have, I want to believe that this is for real, but it's like a relationship. I've been burned before.

I'm gonna sit back, wait till June or so and see what we have, but I hope they do guys. I mean, I don't know. Have you both been to Pittsburgh? Yeah. Hope into that park. Beautiful park. The fan base is just absolutely.

And this is probably why they got so much attention last year and why people like myself wrote about it. Like it was like, wow, about time. Like, is there a more maligned fan base outside of Oakland who I know has separate issues but like all the pirates like fans want is like the tiniest glimmer of hope and they will fill that ballpark and they will come roaring back right. And I think they've done some positive things signing Mitch Keller like they have kind of given fans a little bit of a reason for optimism,

but I'm curious because I'm sure, you know, dug into like the advanced stats when it comes to this team. I'm curious, like, should I be hopeful, you know, or not? I mean, I think one of the things that you look at, you look at a team and you say, Oh, who is performing at a, at a, at a level that is not possible going forward. And right now, uh, it's only really like Connor Joe,

who is like over his head. He has all these April's that are amazing. And he's through the roof. I mean, he's hitting 320 with a 440 on base percentage and like, you know, it's Connor Joe season. Everybody else is kind of just playing okay. And I don't really see like an outlier where you're like, Oh, that person is driving all of this and he's not that good.

Um, and so what I just see is like a maturation of a team where it's like, okay, now they've got Jared Jones in the lineup with Mitch Keller. So now they've got a one and a two. Um, they've got O'Neill Cruz in with Brian Reynolds and Cabrion Hayes, so they're forming a core on the offensive side. And then what they did as a team that I thought was really great in the off season is the most boring stuff ever that moved the needle for nobody. Nobody gave them a good off season grade for signing Marco Gonzalez and Martin Perez and Michael Taylor because that's snooze fest. I mean, that is just like, you did what,

but it's super important because now they can do things like move Ronzi Contreras and Luis Ortiz to the bullpen. And that's something you do when you start to leave rebuilding behind and become a real team is take those guys that are fringe starters and put them in the bullpen and say, listen, we gave you two, three years to make it as a starter. And Ronzy, you couldn't keep your fastball shape. You couldn't keep your VELO and Luis Ortiz. You could, you walk the lineup.

I'm sorry. It's time to see what you guys can do in the bullpen. What happens when you take those guys and put them in the bullpen? Your bullpen gets good, right? So now you have Martin Perez and Marco Gonzalez, who again, make nobody's excited, but they can be fine. Four fives, you know? And now you have Jared Jones and Mitch Keller one, two, you got

Paul skein still coming, you know? So like, you know, you start to be like, Oh, okay. So the good players are coming in, they're establishing themselves. And then you signed good role players to back them up in interesting ways. And so I just see this as sort of, you never know when it's going to happen, you know, with a rebuilding team, it could be a year earlier than you think. I think with the Orioles, they were kind of a little surprised at how quick it came, you know? And I,

so I see the pirates as being on that threshold where it's like, it could be this year or next year. I'd love to make some sort of prediction where it's like, you know, King of Waffles, where it's like, in the next three years, the Pirates will be a wild card team. But you know, I put them in my bold predictions. They're gonna be a wild card team.

I'm gonna stick with it. So you're buying? He's full out buying. Brit's holding. I'm holding, but not it. So you're buying full out buying Brits holding. I'm holding, but not with the pessimism of Brit, because I do think the two players that completely change. Like, so I'm holding relative to my original take on the Pirates. I think they are a team on the rise.

I think this is a big step in the right direction. I think they're still a full year away. I think there's something that happens when we are consumed in baseball. It happens in fantasy and it happens in reality, too. We see a team like the Orioles or we see a player breakout and we spend the entire next off season and season trying to retrofit. Who's the next Orioles? Not going to be one. They're not the Orioles. They're not built like the Orioles. No team is built like the Orioles right now, but the division gives them a shot. Yeah. The Orioles just have like, Oh, we haven't even brought up Mayo.

I mean, it's stupid. The lineup at Norfolk is stupid. Their AAA team could maybe beat the Marlins. It's not. And yeah, and it's like in baseball, it's actually not absurd because a lineup could be that good. And we could probably dig into that at some other point. The big difference, though, it's Cruz and Jones. The reason I wasn't buying their fast start last year was if it was gonna click for him last year, O'Neill Cruz had to be healthy

because he could be a five or six win player. Jared Jones, if you wanna be optimistic, if you wanna try to retrofit him to guy that, I know Eno's liked for a long time, we've talked about in the show for a long time. If he's their Spencer Strider, if he's the guy that comes up and it's just way better than people realize right away. Big fastball, big slider.

Yeah. Not the greatest command, but like just a big two pitch combo. And, you know, big Velo. If he's their best starter right away, even better than Keller, which is possible. Then you put those two guys together, you say that's maybe a 10-war lift over last year's roster. That's a huge difference. And then if the veterans they've added, the bullpen being better, those other factors are all there, there's your step forward.

I think there's still some questions about the bottom half of the lineup. And I do think the glue guys in the rotation are going to get hit more often than they're good. But look, it's a fun start. And I think it's more real than last year. So I think if you're a Pirates fan, you're feeling good about the long-term direction.

Ben Charington in that front office have done a good job with this rebuild, and you are probably looking at your first winning season since what, 2018? Yeah, they're 82 and 79 in 2018. This will be their first season over 500 if they can do it in 2024. Who did the organizational charting,

was that Nesbit or something that gave numbers for different organizations? The wild card era rankings? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the pirates were last I think. Yeah, time to change the narrative on that one. Trying to get some sustained success in there.

I am optimistic. I want to make that clear. I'm not pessimistic. I'm not pessimistic. But you've been burned a couple of times. You love the Tigers here before, too, right? Dude, I know. But the Tigers are good now. I know. But now I'm like, you know what? I got to wait for you to come in June.

We'll talk about the Tigers probably in a week or so. But I like what they're doing in Detroit right now. On the flip side, as great as this Pirate start has been, the Marlins start has just been brutal. They fell to one and 10 after dropping another game on Monday. Part of the reason that game, that Nestor Cortez start, was like two hours and one minute long is because this Marlins lineup is brutal right now. And you can look at it and say it's not that different than what they had at the end of

last season. They basically lost Jorge Saler and didn't replace them with another power back. They brought in Tim Anderson as a middle infield boost that they needed. But yikes. I mean, this is a team that lost a big part of its strength. It started to happen last year when Sandy Alcantara got hurt. It's gotten worse with the Yuri Perez injury. The thing that made the Marlins dangerous a year ago,

the thing that made me say, foot on the gas, go for it with what you have, was having those guys healthy. Now they're in this position where their position player core is not good enough. They're short on top end pitching and they probably have to make some moves looking to their next window while those guys rehab.

Yeah, I'm buying I think they're gonna be horrible. I don't think there's a whole lot of reprieve insight based on what they're not an ownership group that's going to be like this is unacceptable. They're just not I think losing Kim in and after the season they had was a total like balloon deflator. Peter Bendix who does terrific work was under Eric Neander in Tampa Bay is now tasked with kind of rebuilding a front office and an organization and that's going to take time. So I think we're going to be in for a rough season. So much so that Skip Schumacher, did you guys see this ask the Marlins to void his contract

option for next year? No, I didn't see that. So Skip Schumacher, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Skip Schumacher. I'd guys see this ask the Marlins to void his contract option for next year? No, I didn't see so Skip Schumacher. Yeah. Yeah. So skip Schumacher. I'd heard the writing. I've heard some things I hadn't reported but Okay, so now it's out there. Oh So he wants so obviously he wants out or he wants the ability to test the phrase Well, apparently his kid is like we were speaking about like perfect game and stuff. Apparently his kid is a stud So that should tell you something as well if the manager says you know what? is like we were speaking about like perfect game and stuff. Apparently his kid is a stud. So that should tell you something as well. If the manager says, you know what, I don't want you guys to have an option over me next year, right? Because as we know, it's such a, you got to get

off. It looks like it's a ship sinking ship. So like I am buying the Marlins as being a doormat. I don't think it, you know, obviously they're probably headed for last place, but I, I, I look at this team and you're right, the Perez injury sucked and I think they had so many things had to go right for them last year to be a playoff team right so many things and I know Kim Ng did a great job at the trade deadline and adding what they needed but there were so many things that had to break their way that a lot of it had to do with luck and And now I think what you're seeing is the injuries, plus the fact that this team just was kind of thin, like they are where they are.

They're not spending in free agency. Did they end up signing one big league free agent? They had gone for months and months without signing one. Did they end up signing one? And Tim Anderson said no first. How do you argue the opposite? I don't know how you can, you know? Even Eno who waffles, I'm very curious if there's any kind of waffling here on whether this team is, is going to

be able to turn this around. I mean, you watch last night's game and they look like they're a triple A team playing the Yankees. So I know we're off to a great start, but. I'm buying them as a bottom feeder team. I don't know if they're going to be as bad as the White Sox. I think the White Sox have even more deficiencies in their roster right now. I think this would have happened even if Kim Eng were still there. These players still would have got hurt. I don't know if the off season would have been

much different because I think that's driven more by ownership. So I look at all of this and I just think, this is another big reset and the only question is, can they reset it with all the changes they made in that front office and possibly build it up in a better way? Can they figure out hitting development in the long run in that park to offset this? I'm buying it. I'm buying them as a disappointing bad team because I

think the Yuri Perez injury was a huge one for a team that needed him out there, needed him to take that step forward and unfortunately don't have him at all this year. I think the park is an underrated thing. I know that different park factors do not have them necessarily as that terrible of a place to play baseball. Like Statcast says the overall run factor for the Marlins is 13th, so basically average. But if you go all the way over to the home run part factor, their bottom five, bottom

five place to play to hit home runs and the game is about home runs. So I think that's what Kimming was like responding to when she said we need to make more contact and went and traded for Luis Arias was like, okay, this is a decent park for offense if you don't go for homers. But the game is so, you know, slated towards homers that it's, it's a little bit of a like, can we just can we do what normal teams do in this park? Or do we have to be really weird? Hopefully Pete Bendix, I think, you know, I think the Rays have done things that have been sort of designed to win in Tampa, because Tampa itself has a weird stadium. So maybe he's like ready to do that. But it also is like, how do you do that on a developmental level? Do you say we need to make are we going to be Cleveland?

And we're gonna say we need to make contact at all costs. Don't worry about the power. Then you shoot yourself in the foot a little bit because then you could have guys that could hit for power but you're telling them, no, go the other way. Hit the ball soft, make contact. When you could develop somebody that could hit, that could hit tons of tanks, you know? So you kind of don't want to tell everybody, hey, everybody, it's all about contact.

Everybody in the minor leagues, don't worry about the power. That's weird. So he's in the minor leagues. Don't worry about the power. That's weird. So, um, so he's in a stuff in a, in a tough spot. Um, but, um, one thing we do know that is it's like a little bit easier to grow up as a pitcher there because I think of the Homer on power factor. If you, if you have park factor, if you make a mistake, it's not necessarily going to be a Homer. It could be a double, but it won't be a Homer.

Homer's changed the game, you know? So they've been really good at turning out pitchers and if they can just continue to do that and just continue to trade the right pitchers and keep their pitchers healthy, there's gonna be a way for the Marlins to succeed. I don't see it right now. I don't see it right now because the hitters that go there, they can't hit for power. You know, Luis Arias is not enough. They have right now have two, maybe three average hitters, average position players, and they have one healthy average starting pitcher. Right.

And they don't have a lot of prospects coming up to help anytime soon. That's the major area of long-term need. That's why when we talked about the teams that are in the most difficult position for the next five years, the Marlins made that cut. Historical problems spending on payroll, regardless of which ownership group it's been, I think makes this a particularly difficult place. Also factor in which division they're in right now. Look how good Atlanta is. The Mets are going to get a lot better over the next few years. The

Phillies are already good. The Nationals have a head start in terms of young talent. So that's why I feel like they're sinking to the bottom fast and it's going to take them to probably get out. And their best prospects are all pitchers. Right. Right. And they've had to make trades in the past, flipping pitchers to get young position players. They may have to do that a couple more times. It's safer. It's a lot safer to try to build around position players than to build around pitching. So I think that front office is going to be very active in these next few months and for good reason,

because it's time to retool already in Miami. Yeah, the rumor was, and there's some of it in the Dennis Lin piece with Ken Rosenthal about the Padres and the Preller interacting with the Marlins and You know possibly there being some smoke around the Luis Araya's to the Padres kind of a deal but the the The sort of conversation in Miami is like do we trade for a pitcher and try to salvage the season?

I would think that you're already got one foot in the rebuild bucket. This is a little bit more like the White Sox conversation we had, which is like, why play Robbie Grossman? Why play Josh Bell? If somebody wants Josh Bell for, for almost free, you know, give me a 17 year old in, in rookie ball. I don't care. Like, you know, like we treat also the division being good as maybe giving you a little bit of runway and being like, hey, Pete, call the owner, say,

you gotta give me three years, give me three years, and three years we're gonna start seeing some good news. Yeah, I think that's what they're gonna do. I mean, I think they've changed a lot of things there. I'm surprised they didn't keep Kim. Disappointed at how that whole thing unfolded but at least the way they're trying to build it now, it's another way it can work. I think it could have worked fine with Kim if they just promoted her and let her make

the moves that she wanted to make. We are going to go. On our way out the door, a reminder, get a subscription to The Athletic, theathletic.com, slash rates and barrels. On Twitter, you can find Britt at Britt underscore Jiroli. Find Eno at EnoSarris. Find me at Derek VanRiper. Be sure to check out Britt's A1 on Juan Soto, tracking his progression from being a fresh faced kid when he got called up with the Nats to the time he spent in San Diego to he's already been a superstar. But now he's kind of hitting that next level during his first few weeks as a member of the Yankees.

So be sure to check out that story. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Thursday. Thanks for watching!