Rates & Barrels - Aaron Civale to the Brewers, Home Run Derby Tweaks, A Derby for Pitchers & Trouble Spot Splits

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

Eno, DVR and Trevor discuss the Brewers' acquisition of Aaron Civale from the Rays, and Shane Baz's return to the Tampa Bay rotation. They also cover the tweaks to the Home Run Derby rules, and try to design an equivalent showcase for pitchers to have during All-Star Week in future years. Plus, Trevor shares a few more deep splits looking at Trouble Situations and rest for pitchers. Rundown 1:45 Aaron Civale Traded to Brewers; Changes On Tap? 13:27 Shane Baz's Progression Through Rehab Assignment & Recent Triple-A Outings 20:54 Modifications to Home Run Derby Rules 28:11 What Would a Pitcher Equivalent of the Derby Look Like? 36:02 Trouble Situations for Pitchers 40:46 Performance Around Rest 48:39 Hypermobility v. Hypomobility 1:00:19 Q&A From the Stream Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Trevor on Twitter: @IamTrevorMay Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us at 1p ET/10a PT on Thursday, July 11th for our next livestream!https://www.youtube.com/c/ratesbarrels Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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On this episode we dig into a trade that went down, Aaron Savalli headed to the Brewers, we'll talk about the impact of that move, the possible opportunity for Shane Baas now in the raise rotation as a result of Savalli's departure. We have a tweak to the home run derby. We'll talk about that, but more importantly, we are going to introduce an idea, the equivalent of a home run derby for pitchers, because pitchers have been left out of the fun for too long. So we have some ideas we've been cooking up.

We'll share those today. We're also gonna take a look at some trouble situations for pitchers, more splits based on timing of rest. Trevor's been digging deep trying to find a bunch of new stuff for us so we're going to dig into that and take a few questions along the way. Shout out to the Live High for joining us here on this Wednesday ahead of a long holiday weekend. Eno, how's it going for you today?

Good. It's crazy. Wife got called in for jury duty so the house is in disarray. How are you doing, Trevor? I'm great. in for jury duty. So no, the house is in disarray. How are you doing, Trevor? I'm great. Not at jury duty. I just had to take a U-Haul back today, but I'm not great. Always one piece, I hope. Yeah, of course. It was easy. It was I'd never done it before. So evidently getting you calls really easy. It was at a gas station. So

they're everywhere. They're everywhere. Let's get started with the trade. Aaron Savale is a brewer now, and I thought maybe I saw some news on Tuesday that Johnny Quedo had opted out of a minor league contract with the Rangers and given the brewers ongoing need for just anyone to fill spots in that rotation. I thought maybe Johnny Quedo would end up in Milwaukee,

but Aaron Savale in a somewhat minor trade, Gregory Barrios, a minor league infielder, goes back to the raise the other way. Savalli has not had the step forward in Tampa Bay or the tweaks that usually make a pitcher more effective kind of kick in during his time there. He's got a career high ERA and whip so far, which is a little bit surprising even though the strikeout and walk rates look pretty typical, home run rates running high, but he's been a guy that's struggled with the long ball in the past, and the lefties are crushing him,

286, 353, 500 against Aaron Savali so far this year. So as we start to think about what might be different as he moves to a third big league organization, what kinds of tweaks do you think the Brewers could have in mind for Aaron Savali? You know, I mean, one thing that Savali used to do with the Guardians was he kind of teased out, you know, the slider. I don't know what to call the slider. He's like every kind of breaking ball.

But the the Rays kind of made him throw more of the sweeper and the slider at first when he got there and then this year kind of lost the slider. I don't know which one I'm talking at. He has a sweeper, a slider, a curveball, and a cutter. Anyway, tweaking his breaking ball mix is is the kind of the what has been ongoing for him because he does not have good fastballs and he has to start with a cutter as his sort of bread and butter and Starting with the cutter as his bread and butter Means that I think he can fall into this thing where he's just the spin is hard to differentiate and everything just sort of becomes this big one slider thing and

I think the Guardians were very intentional about, no, don't throw this one breaking ball, because then you just, it turns into a big kind of mush, you know? And so they might go back to what the Guardians did. They might actually reduce the usage of one of his breaking balls. I think maybe they won't touch him much. I think one thing that actually ends up happening with these trades is people assume that the pitcher is going to change with the new organization and the new

organization when the pitcher joins them for the most part is like, hey, you be you. We got you because we like you, you know? And maybe two or three starts in, they'll be like, hey, well, also maybe you could try this. They don't want to be like, hey, welcome to the Brewers. We want you to could try this. They don't want to be like, hey, welcome to the Brewers. We want you to turf this pitch you love and throw this pitch you hate and welcome to Milwaukee. The Rays did not acquire Aaron Savalli from a paste eating organization in terms of pitching development. Right.

So they had a decent foundation already. So the number of tweaks they could make would be limited. Just looking at the splits before the show, Trevor, I was kinda kicking this around, could they just ditch the four seamer completely because he has a cutter and a sinker? I mean, I know multiple fastballs have a lot of value, but at a certain point,

if you're throwing something 10% of the time and it's getting crushed when you throw it, do you just nix it and say that the cutter and sinker are good enough, given all the other secondaries that Savalli can lean on? Possibly, it's weird. It's like the fastball,er are good enough, given all the other secondaries that Savalli can lean on? Possibly, it's weird. It's like the fastball, four-seam fastball, yeah, it's not been great,

and it's been his weakest pitch. And it's getting hit, it's getting hit kind of like it's always been hit. His command of it's just been a lot worse. Like he's missing, like I think he's wasting a lot more four-seam fastballs, so he's not getting the value out of the four-seam. It's always been a setup pitch for him anyways.

He's also weird, one of those weird guys who's been throwing two seam sinkers up like for less the whole time He's been up which is kind of a new thing for a lot of starting pitchers these days Especially righties like it's been that combination of setting things up with this four seam Here's the straight one that you might be able to get to up and then it's cutters and sinkers off of it and just moving them around so I Think what he's lost is a lot of that fore seam kind of that set up ability because it's a ball so much and he's got a big cluster way high, way high to where

and he's a short extension guy too. Then he's got a high arm slot. So he stays up tall, he doesn't drop down. So he doesn't get that like low approach angle vertical to give you even for guys to get the chase up there. A lot of them have that. And if you're a guy who stays high and it doesn't get the top of zone stays high guys are much less likely to chase it so once that gets kind of written off then the other pitches are a little bit easier to get to. His

cutter's not even though the command's pretty good on both sides edges of the plate it's not performing as well as it has in the past and I think this has something to do with relying heavily on the sweeper and going really, really side to side with it. That's such a race thing. Everyone does that now there. That was probably a bad move, at least just like starting to rely on that pitch because it messed up the way his pitches work together.

I think that's really what's happened because there's nothing hugely glaring other than that. Like in terms of movement, in terms of command, he's a little bit more erratic this year, but not like enough to have an ERA like this. So I think the reliance on the sweeper has probably diminished the effectiveness of his other mix and it didn't fit as well into the profile as maybe they anticipated.

So maybe he backs off that a little bit. Yeah, that's where I was trying to get at is he's such a spin guy that you can get into a big mush is like he's such a spin guy that you know, you can kind of, you can get into a big mush with him. Where I feel like he needs to be able to, like I was talking to Seth Lugo and he said that his, he was just coming off a bullpen and I said, you're throwing like eight different breaking balls now.

How do you keep them separate? And I said, he said, I just spent an hour, you know, in a bullpen and all we did was trying to keep my breaking ball separate. You know, that was the entire work of the bullpen. And so Savalli seems to strike me as that kind of player where if he is throwing a pitch that's just turning everything to mush or, you know, he's overlying it or he has this one pitch that's super sideways and everything else is like more vertical or two plane Then maybe people can just pick it out. I do see in the splits

That the sinker has a 500 slugging By lefties the cutter has a 530 slugging by lefties and the four seamer has an 1100 slugging by lefties So right now he does not have a great fastball that works against lefties and that's been I think the real downfall this year and I don't know that there's a way out other than the nice thing for him is he may face teams that haven't seen a lot of him. There aren't a ton of pitchers like Aaron Savali. Yeah getting out of the AL East probably doesn't hurt either. Kyle in the live high wants to know is the high release a bigger reason why that sweeper doesn't fit well into Savalli's arsenal?

Like I talked to Sears about that. Sears said, you know, his is within six inches. What you will find is the release point will be different when you're throwing a sweeper from a high slot. It'll be different. Your release point will be different than the other pitches. And Sears said, you know, mine's within six inches, so I think that's doable. Bryce Miller's was like 10 inches and it wasn't doable. So, you know, the question is, you know, how different are his release points? Fair question to ask. I'd like to know what's going on in New Jersey.

Dan G from the Live Hive saying I had to teach a lady from New Jersey how to pump gas. It's illegal to pump your own there. Still in 2024, you can't pump your own gas in the state of New Jersey or Oregon. What about pumping gas is not intuitive if you've never done it in your life? How would you look? Where would you make a mistake? Describe what goes wrong to me in the picking of the gas. By choosing which one?

Yeah, like, you know, the biggest one is like putting diesel. Yeah, I mean, that would be the biggest mistake that actually would but it is like you damage big and green like yeah Yeah, I guess okay choosing the wrong fuel this happened to my dad before where the pump like when he pulled it out of the thing It would like to handle wouldn't it was off and it was still spraying and he like oh And so like you have to like panic it you don't try to put it back in the thing You're like, what. And so like you have to like panic, you don't try to put it back in the thing, you're just like, what do I do right now? So you have to like go put it somewhere

where it's gonna drain, and then you have to run and get it attended. Like shut off the pump, shut off the pump. So like when it's attended, there's like an emergency shut off there and stuff so they can do that. So that's a lot what it is. It's like, you basically put it into the trash can

and go run and get it. Put it in the trash can. Yeah, exactly. Gotta watch out for that that a couple of things here with this trade The interesting thing here is that Kyle Manzaro was the player the Rays gave up at the deadline last year to get Savalli So in terms of like quality of talent, they're giving up a lot overall the net loss right now I mean Gregory Barrios might be a nice player someday But he's not a top 40 top 50 prospect like Manzardo was at the time of that trade So pretty interesting there now. Yeah, so I was useful to them

They got some use out of him and I also think that like there's that sunk cost idea, which is just hey Okay, that maybe wasn't our best trade. Let's keep going right You just have to deal with it Like it you try to get something you had pitching for a first half when you had a lot of guys hurt and you got through the first half. Maybe it would have been worse if you didn't have Savali there. That next option up may have been more of a revolving door than it was. So it happens. It is interesting that with a year left they didn't decide, oh what if he could help us in the bullpen and just bring up Shane Bawes anyway. You know, he still represents innings. It's interesting that they valued Barrios who does not have any power really and looks right now like a little bit of a

middle infielder without power. It's kind of, you know, that could be very easily kind of a utility player, but they valued that over holding onto him and trying to figure him out. You know, Savalli even has options. They maybe wanted Barrios. I don't understand. I don't know. Maybe they thought this wouldn't translate well to the bullpen. You know, and so his only value is us to a starter. We have Shane Baas ready to come in here. And once in Shane Baas, we give him a couple of weeks. He has options. And then, you know, if he's struggling or if there's another injury We have Jeffrey Springs and Drew Rasmussen coming back at some point in the next couple of months

So I think maybe they saw a crowd coming. That's one thing that Tampa does a lot is Manage the roster in months You know years, you know the 40-man like it's all sort of all sort of like they try to think ahead The Guardians will get caught sometimes with too many players and release a bunch of players. The Rays like never release players, the Rays never lose players in the Rule 5 draft. They always like know what they're doing in terms of like managing the roster down the down the road. Yeah, and I think when you think about Jeffrey Springs, who's much closer even than Rasmussen right now, I think he went three innings last Friday at AAA Durham. Those are 60 day IL guys.

You have to make room on the 40 man. You'd rather make that room choosing someone you want with a few choices as opposed to having to DFA someone and losing someone else that you might value more in the long run. So that was probably part of the calculus as well. A question for Trevor about Shane Baas, like we, people were underwhelmed by the start of his rehab work this year, just the results weren't quite there, the stuff models weren't all over him the way they were before he got hurt,

and things have been trending in the right direction over time, and for me it's not really surprising at all. Like guys are just not the same initially coming off of injury. You can't expect things to just come all the way back that first turn out. So what would you be looking for with Baz

that would make you feel confident that he has got all the way back or can still get all the way back from a stuff perspective? First of all, it comes down to if he feels good and there's no, he's not worried, he's not like protecting against anything or there's nothing in the brain going on there or nagging slow recovery, needing extra day,

stuff like that. That would be the first thing I'd look at. If he's just like, yeah, I'm 90, whatever, whatever he's throwing and I know it's a little lower, that's all normal and everyone comes back in different ways. And a lot of people get their stuff from competition and from where they're at as well. So like, I remember when I came back as a starter,

I just couldn't muster up, you know, higher VELOs than like 93 because it, I just where I was, it was just felt like I was still rehabbing and it was, I wasn't like, I had been so long since I'd been in the big league game that that was a play to factor. And I pitched with that adrenaline and I wasn't getting it until I got to the big leagues.

And that's when the VELO started to come back. So there's a little bit of that. He might be an adrenaline guy. He does throw really hard. I get that impression from when I watched him pitch. So those types of things is what I'm looking at. Just as long as he's feeling good, it just takes a little bit of time

and it takes a few times under really high level competition in order to accurately see how you're gonna respond. But everyone's different, who knows how much like he was worried about his mechanics, how much did he work on his mechanics to rehab, and how robotic is he? I remember being super robotic and I had to learn how to use my lower body again.

And so sometimes the adjustments, you had to make it a little bit bigger than you even remember doing because some of the things weren't as natural as they were 16 months ago, and you have to get on it again. So that might be the case for him. You said about robotic is huge.

I was talking to Cole Reagans and his trainer, Tyler Zambrow at Tread, about what happened when he had the two Tommy Johns in a row and he was basically rehabbing for like two, two and a half years and he said that your body makes sort of accommodations for flat ground throwing, for rehab throwing, where everyone is like let's just keep it free and easy. And nobody's like let's throw the crap out of the ball today, you know, and you don't really get that adrenaline. So you kind of the way Zombo put it is you get pushy. Like you kind of push the ball as opposed to kind of really whipping it and like putting

all your power into it. Because you're maybe afraid of the ligament and like especially if you've just had two Tommy Johns, like, oh, man, this thing's gonna go again. You get these weird flat ground adjustments that you have to get rid of when you get back on the mound and get back to being intentional. One thing that was interesting for me is that the general adage that I've gotten from research with Tommy John is just that the stuff comes back first and the command comes back second is the general rule. And so I was really interested to see Boz's vertical movement kind of oscillate from start to start in the minors. And I think now he's put together a couple of starts in the minors where he's had the regular IVB, but like, can you speak to any of that?

Were you surprised that you had missing movement on any of your pitches when you came back? It was all within, it was normal. Like it was still high, it was still good. Like so my velocity was always attached to like, so the harder I was throwing, the better those things usually were. More consistent the spin was.

And so they were just like inexplicable, like inex, you couldn't pull them apart. So they had to be together. And so I had to keep that, that was my take it with a grain of salt moment. But yeah, those were things we were definitely paying attention to and it was trending in the right direction pretty much every single time

I went out there. I also had like the, I was in AAA with like four other, all five starters when I got optioned for my last option in 18. I don't know why I did that. It was technically a real option. We were all in the 40 man. I was-

Making yourself feel better, it's okay. We were all in the 40 man and I was 28 and they were all 23. So I was like yourself feel better, it's okay. We were all in the 40 man and I was 28 and they were all 23. So I was like, you know, if I'm gonna get to the big leagues again soon, sooner rather than later, I gotta move myself to Penn. So I also had to like move to the Penn in the middle of my option and rehab.

And I also went right on the IR, or IR, IL, seven days after I came off the IL for the Tom and John, because my shoulder was shoulder inflammation. So that was frustrating as well. So I had all this other stuff going on transitioning to figure out But yeah, like the carry was the big thing for me I'm like if that's there that's one of my best and just like same thing with like depth and break on the slider and as Soon as that started to come along Then I got more trusting and confident and then the Vila started to increase as well The page for your painting the picture that research is painting makes me a little bit worried

that Baz is not gonna be a huge producer at the major league level this year. Yeah, maybe it takes this half season to sort of get everything closer to back, and then he goes through a normal off season in 2025 ends up being the year that we were hoping that 2024 could be coming off of the surgery. Question from Sam,

how much does a pitcher's landing spot mess up the next pitcher? Were there any starters you hated following because of where their landing spot happened to be? Frambers is awful. So he's a really short stride when he lands, he goes toe first. So it's like a deep, shallow, not deep like like not very wide Very deep hole. But somehow that bothers you. Yeah, he's a well he's a lefty, but he would land so I landed across He opens up a little bit for throwing his curb. So like he was kind of mine, but my he's a he's a Low extension. I'm a high extension and my feet are like twice the size of his feet So like I would go I go heel right into his hole

his feet. So like I would go, I go heel right into his hole. Or like just the edge of my heel. So it felt like I was like just getting to the lip of a cliff. So if I went slightly shorter, I'd straighten do it and it would mess me up. And in certain places, like once that hole's there, you cannot, you can't fix it. So yeah, I remember frame was specifically bad, but you know, especially I was, since when I was closing last year, like five, six pitchers through before I did. The mound's a mess by the time you got up there. But most of the time, my stride was so long

that I was beyond everyone else's holes, most of the time. And that was helpful. Like Seth Lugo never had to deal with Seth's hole, or any guys who threw before me. They always have to deal with mine though, because it gets pretty deep. The thing that comes to mind is that time that Grinky was like insistent, they fixed the mound

and then sat down on the ground next to them while they were fixing it. That's pretty ridiculous. Classic Grinky though, makes perfect sense. Let's talk about the home run Derby for a bit. There's a format tweak. Instead of having the seeded first round, seed one versus eight, all that stuff,

they're actually gonna do a thing where all eight players hit, top four advance, which is then seeded for the final two rounds. I think that makes a little bit more sense. Just let the top four home run hitters get through. So thumbs up on that, seems like a pretty good tweak. The bigger thing I think is what they're doing with the pitch limits.

There's a 40 pitch limit now in the first two rounds. So previously there was no limit. You had the three minutes on the clock, you had your timeouts, and depending on how fast your pitcher was working, you could get more swings. Now you've got a cap. If you hit that cap before time runs out, the round is over. It goes down to 27 pitches in the final. It kind of seems like a simple safeguard to also make sure

we're reducing the chances of someone messing up an oblique or a shoulder from just taking a lot of hacks in not a lot of time. So ultimately I think this is still gonna be a fun event. I think ever since they made the switch to this head-to-head format, the Derby has sort of taken off for me as something that I actually really like watching.

The old format, when you go back and see those, no good. But this new modern game, this new Derby, is actually really good. So the other tweaks are simple. You get three outs in the bonus round, no limit on the number of pitches. A 425-foot home run in the bonus round adds a fourth out. Don't know why it's 425, but that's's the magic number and then the longer homers in regulation no longer add to bonus time

But your longest homer from round one is the tiebreaker to get that top four out of the first round So thumbs up across the board on these changes for the derby the pitches are swings, right? So like you got the pitcher can be out there just you can take and it doesn't count as a pitch Yeah, I think you could still take. Good, because that would suck. One thing you were saying too is also like the group plays when this thing went forward. I mean, the one-on-one is when this thing went forward

and yet the new tweak is more, is kind of more of a round robin sort of group play at first, like there's a first round where everyone's trying to beat everyone. And one thing that we did like was that one-on-one energy of when players had their camps, they had their family run out and give them the Gatorade and they had their teammates hyping them up.

And there was a little bit of back and forth trash talking and stuff. We were gonna lose a little bit of that. Also, we're gonna have to reset all of the all of the records I'm not that I know what the records are I mean it's changed so many times that like I think that's already asterisks all over the place for the home run derby I don't think Records are not sacred in in the baseball. I don't know what they are

I know that like Julio Rodriguez and and and Vlad Guerrero may may have it or had it recently But I have no idea what they are. I know that like Julio Rodriguez and Vlad Guerrero may have it or had it recently, but I have no idea what the number is. 41 for Julio. Josh Hamilton with his year two, but it was a different format, so it didn't really like. That was the big one though, for a long time, then it changed and then no one cares about that one. Yeah, right.

Yeah. Well, I guess the thing is, no one really cares about a home run derby records. Like no one's like going to the hall of fame off their home run derby. No one's going to debate who's the best hitter of all time. Be like, oh, he hit 40 home runs in the home run derby. So it's just for fun.

So that part's good. I think the group play may lose something. One thing that I do think this will do that's important is I think the recent format what we've seen is better rounds in the first and second rounds so I think this is true and again nobody really cares about home run derby record so I apologize this is wrong but the way I remember it Julio Rodriguez's record came in the first or second round Vlad Guerrero's record came in the first or second round and both those guys did not make the finals

I think the years that they broke the record and so I think baseball was kind of like hey We'd rather have a good final Then you hit 40 home runs in the first round and be totally gassed after that which is actually kind of how I remember those derbies to like who Rodriguez being like white hot and then just Struggling to the finish line and just looking tired. So this is almost the format helping get out in front of the tendencies of the player and just being like,

we know you're gonna swing as hard as you can over and over again, we're gonna limit the amount of swings you do early. I like the run Robin. I like the run Robin because now we can see a leaderboard and as guys go longer, they just have to beat that fourth place guy. So like we're gonna get the best, you have a target,

because it's like you just run into a guy who's gonna break a record and then you're screwed even though you're the second best hitter. That and that happened to Pete Alonzo or somebody, the guys who went up against who, who are you guys, and Vlad Guerrero in those years weren't bad players either. And we're just not gonna see them at the end.

We wanna see the best guys at the end and we want them to have a path for it even if they run into a guy that's super hot. Then maybe we watch the rematch too. So it's like if they go back to back or whatever and we're like those two are the best guys and we're gonna see them at the end, that's great to know that.

And then it just goes to the camps after that. We don't need all eight camps, we just need the four camps. And I like the pitch limit too. I like this comment. Because you only have so much to deal with. Like you only, I don't know, there's parameters now that everyone, the same for everyone. It's not like, oh, I'm really good at swinging a lot

and you're not as good at resetting your swing, so now I have a huge advantage. It's like pound for pound, who hits the ball most consistently over the fence? And then we're gonna, so we're gonna get the four bests, that's the best way to do it, and then it turns into that format that we like where it's head to head with the four best,

not just, you know, a guy who beat another weak guy. Less random. Yeah, so now we're gonna get the best guys at the end, which is, I think, makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it's more weighted towards the finale, yeah, exactly. We've had a lot of great opening rounds recently. Yeah, and then the end sucks. Like Eno said, Vlad Jr., he had 91 homers

in the 2019 home Run Derby. He didn't win. That was Pete Alonso's first win that year. And of the 91, 41 I think came in one round. Yeah, it was 40 in the second round alone, which is just absurd. So yeah, I think when you look back at the history of the Derby,

Pete Alonso has the current record, 195 all-time home run record in the derby. Full home runs, nice. He's also interesting, because I think he's the most oppo home run derby winner I've ever seen. Like, there's not that many guys who are hitting center field tanks

and center oppo in the home run derby, and Pete Alonso did that. Frickin Robert tried to hit every single one out to center last year and did not work well. It is not an optimal strategy based on what we know about the dimensions of ballparks but hey he tried it so you got to give him credit for trying his own thing. So Trevor I think we get the sense that pitchers feel left out with the Home Run Derby. Eno called it nightmare fuel during our production meeting, which yeah, I mean, that seems like a kind of a traumatic thing for pictures to watch.

Like, oh, this is what I'm up against all the time. These guys, this is terrible. But what would the picture equivalent of a Home Run Derby look like? What would you want to put on display as a former pitcher as the ultimate skills showcase that would be just as entertaining as watching guys hit 450 foot home runs? I think our version of athleticism is manipulating the baseball, so why don't we have a throwing skills

competition, kind of like one year, then they have short stops fielding the ball and throwing it over and trying to hit something off like at first base or something, maybe this is Japan, I think Japan does this. And so, but the pitchers can have a version of this and I would love us to like format it or at least the vibe and the presentation be like the world championship of darts. I think that's so great, a crowd closer to you.

It's like you can do an obstacle course with targets. And then it's just guys like, and guys can do this because they do this in playing catch. It's like our version of fun. Guys would go and you play catch, you throw your pitches. And when we were kids, we would like have our dad give us targets in random places

and try to hit the targets and stuff. That's how you get better at pitching. So this is kind of like, how do you prove your prowess? I think we got some command guys in the league that would absolutely, like, it would be like the three point contest where suddenly, like in the NBA you go and you're like, dunk contest is awesome,

the guys who are the most athletic are in the game, but then Brent Barry would just show up and win three point contest, even though he was not in the All-Star game. And I think we can get guys to do that and then they can just, they don't have to, it doesn't have to be a bullpen, they can just throw nice and easy.

It could be their catch play for the day and it'd just be fun. And like seeing a George Kirby, like I said, I think the example I gave was Kirby and Galen going head to head and just like have some representatives from each league and just like go and come up with a clever way of do a point system. You know, you can throw a breaking ball and get extra points, have a money ball

and then finish with the dunk tank of Manfred. I think we threw that out there. Yeah. Yeah. With this crazy alien hand that's an AI art. We have to say that now. That is made by AI. But yes.

Both the hands look pretty terrible. I want to emphasize we do not have an image of Rob Manfred in a dunk tank. We have an AI-generated image. Cut off slack shorts. What AI thinks Rob Manfred would look like in a dunk tank. We have an AI-generated image of what AI thinks Rob Manfred would look like in a dunk tank. And I think there are aliens in the background too,

if you look really closely. There's some very oddly shaped, they look a little bit like people. That's nightmare fuel, all of it. I do think, I'm wondering if the dress pants that have been cut down to shorts, like if that could actually become a future trend though It looks like something you could order online

Fun that's good. He doesn't he's having fun. I've seen athletic directors do that at the high school level as a fundraiser They'll jump in the dumps a dunk tank and do like a booster club thing I don't know if Rob Manfred can calm down enough and not take himself too seriously for an hour and do something like that, but I'd love to see a dunk tank with Rob Manfred. But you might be able to get a teammate. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It'd be pretty funny if like teammate Oleg is up there for George Kirby.

Yeah. Yeah, or teammate. Yeah, teammates in it. Oh, they would love to do that. That'd be awesome. That'd be a lot of fun. I really think they should do something like this. My concept of exactly how we're,

you know the nine pocket, right? Everyone knows the nine pocket. The nine pocket is just a strike zone thing where it's a net that pitchers throw into and it has basically the strike zone divided into nine pockets and you know, you would just be like, I'm gonna try to throw it here, try to throw it here

and you're just trying to throw it into different pockets. So you could basically have a nine pocket up here. You don't even have to have a catcher. You can have a nine pocket up there and you could have different scores for those. But then you would have like maybe extra pockets that were just outside of the strike zone, like the slider pocket, you know?

Shadow zone. You know, and like, and have, so make it like a, you know, a 13 pocket or something, like high and away, high and in low and away, low and in. And then maybe in those pockets, not even so the pocket is already what is it? I mean, like four inches by four inches or something. It's not it's really small, but inside one of those pockets is like is the dunk tank

thing. Right. So you really have to dot the slider. Bullseye, yeah. It's like a bullseye. But not down the middle. It's not down the middle. We don't want that.

Or you could do it like Skeeball. The middle is worth the least amount of points. Yeah, the top corner is worth the most. Minus points in the middle. Yeah. Those top corners, they reward you for being bold when going up there. Because if you miss that top corner, it's a zero.

But if you're filling that top corner, you're a zero. But if you're feeling that top corner, you're dominating skee ball. You're getting that tricycle. I think it would be fun. If you can't get fans on the field, I love this idea of like the World Series of Darts, you can't get fans on the field. It's just security, they just won't do it.

But you could do some of what they did in the home run derby, which is what we're talking about, is get your teammates alongside you, because there's no danger. Like you're not throwing 90, you're not throwing 99, right? So you could actually have sort of teammates around you and maybe you do have your catcher. Maybe it's a catcher based idea that's based off of this. Let me use ABS or something.

I don't know. Yeah, exactly. Use ABS to sort of award them points. But you know, having their teammates around them, having that energy, George Kirby throws the perfect slider, hits the thing, dunks Julio Rodriguez, and all his teammates mob him, that could really capture the energy that you're looking for, I think. Kirby throws a money ball, knuckle ball

for a bunch of points. Yeah. Yeah. I was trying to think, could you make it like horse, where you alternate hitting spots on a target a certain way and then the next person has to repeat it? Oh yeah, horse. Or maybe there's like three events.

One's the pockets and then one's the horse and then one's the, cause they're like, where, yeah. And you just have like paired up guys and you just run it through a little tournament. I think that'd be awesome, man. That'd be fun. I love horse, horse is a great idea. Yeah, horse is good.

It was, there's a suggestion here to name this after Greg Maddox I was thinking just let Maddox be in it like it'd be fun to have old pictures come back and do this stuff Like why like why couldn't he? Yeah Awesome Actually, I want to see Smoltz pitch against current players just because of the tone of some of his comments over the years. I think that would be more fair.

It would be more fun to see that. Better entertainment factor. So there's a lot of ways to do it. Come on. Part of the inspiration for this was just, and we don't have video of it, but Spencer Bivens struck out, Joey Otaniotani twice in a five inning thing. And it was, you know, Spencer Bivens is like this reliever for the Giants, has this long story.

He's been forever to get to the big leagues. And, you know, people were making fun of him celebrating this. And I was like, well, why can't, why can't a pitcher have some fun, man? Like, why can't a pitcher celebrate, you know, a strikeout like a, like a pimp job on a homer? Like we don't, we don't give them as many opportunities

to kind of have that joy. So combining that with the home run derby seems like a fun idea, like some sort of pitcher competition that allows them to celebrate and have fun as well. Yeah, Spencer Bivins is a 30 year old rookie. I think most people know if you get Shohei, even once, Shohei's probably gonna get you if you see him again.

So if you get Shohei twice, you should celebrate that. And you didn't think you were gonna go five today, and you're still, the Velo's still there, and you strike him out on three straight pitches. Sad about that. Definitely, celebrate. I'd do a fist bump, dude. I mean, just the fist bump?

Yeah, fist bump. You should be excited, kid. Yeah, I know he's younger than It's kind of funny Trevor you're doing some digging for some more splits trouble situations Looking at samples of guys dealing with traffic. So I'm curious, what buckets did you create? What were you breaking things down as? I'm really interested in the super duper high, the highest leverage situations. I call it the quality trouble situations because you're either one out away from stranding everybody on the bases or you're one single away from a crooked number, or a double away from, God forbid, a crooked number,

and that's two, three, four runs in an inning. Which is just, those are what we call season killers for relievers. So if you have four of those, if you have four outings where you give up three, you're gonna have a five year array. But if you have two outings with three, and then you spread a couple one runs here, and then have a couple more zeros or one of those,

two of those trends and zeros, then you have a three and those two seasons looking pretty different, even though they're based on one or two outings. That is always happening relievers. So I am like, okay, what are the, what are the situations that give you those cricket numbers more often? And that was bases loaded. I included second base only because it's again, it's a single away, um, giving up the run versus stranding the the run just two on in general. So first and third, second and third and first and second. I tried to avoid a lot of like first base with nobody on second because that changes that there's some variables that go on with play pretty quickly. Yeah, still on base.

But it is included in there because technically a three I'm just like if it could provide a three run home run it should be in here. And then how, like what types of things are you doing in those situations? Now this is gonna limit the total number of, I guess, events, but the number of pitches is pretty robust. So I have two guys here, and I used Tanner Scott, who's a great example, because he's probably on the block here and probably gonna go somewhere else,

and then Ryan Hesley, who just got his 30th straight save. So these are really interesting. So I look at because the sample size in general, like you're not going to look at ERA because right you're already set up to give up runs. So that out isn't going to reduce an ERA very well. So you're going to have like a 10 probably because if you give up, if it happens to you once or twice, you're going to have like a 10. So the interesting thing is Helsley actually has a 3, 8, 6 in all these these situations his entire career, and 81 pitches thrown in this situation. So that's pretty solid.

Batting average against is 170. You don't give up a ton of hits. I also look at the whip. The whip's interesting to me too, because how often are you working around guys? Some guys go right after. That's a differentiator between Scott and Helsley, right? Because I can imagine Helsley and Scott

both have good strikeout rates, maybe good batting averages against, but I would guess they walk more guys. Their whips against are different. Scott walks more guys. So they walk a few more guys. So they both have one five. Tanner Scott has a one six nine and Helsley has a one five whip. Now those aren't super high, but you're more likely to pitch around a guy and not make a big pitch, but that allows you to not to give up the hits. The problem is you're adding another runner, so you're keeping yourself in that situation

in which you have to execute more pitches. So if you're not good at stranding runners, that's gonna kill you. If you are, then you might be okay. So then you're just creating more of those situations. And it was- Like does our boy, Ottavino, who we love to death, as a person, does he have a problem in this metric?

He does this year. Because of all the base runners? Yes, but last year, or sorry, in 2022, he was nails in these situations. So a lot of it comes to do with your role, sometimes those aren't your runners, right, and you're in the situation anyways, but if you're in them all the time,

the chance to give up runs more is higher as well. But guys who are closing games tend to have this kind of profile. And I found it, I look at Colossae, I don't have his screenshot here, but he was very similar as well. Low betting average, pretty good strikeout rate, but like a ton of walks, tons of walks, because he's the guy who goes 3-0, you're going first.

He'll just load the bases with two outs, because he's like, I'm not gonna give up a homer, I give a one a year, so I'm not gonna give it up, right? And that's what's so interesting to me because it's all this whole thing is is like profiling guys who in a pinch or could possibly what what number of leverage roles for a bullpen can these guys do right that's kind of the overall that's my theory that's my thesis that's the thing I'm looking into and these are the specific like these are the

heaviest weighted situations in leverage index and things like that. These are up there on the list, and so how can we isolate for those? And then we have the days of rest, which is really interesting to me, which we wanna get into another part of this too, but same thing, both of these guys,

zero days off, back to back days, that's their worst situation. Halsey is a 4-4, 4-4, and with zero days rest, and Scott has a 4-7-3, and those are their highest, from zero to five days of rest, those are their highest statistically, like they give it the most hits, they walk the most guys, and they have the highest whips.

They both have over one-four whips in both of those situations. It's interesting to think that, you know, it's Tanner Scott, like you're going to try and trade for this guy, right? And for some teams he'll be set up. So you're kind of profiling him and being like, you know, does he like, you may actually want to kind of look through the profile and be like, is he a guy that we think will do fine if we put him in with runners on?

Is this the thing we need? Yeah, because it's gonna be important. It's gonna be important immediately. Like right when he gets on the team, you gotta know whether or not he can do this effectively and if he can make that adjustment quickly. Some guys can't, some guys can't. Is he so much worse with zero days rest

that he has to be an every other day guy? Because it's a little bit easier to be an every other day guy as a closer, right? Because you're limited to only pitching when during mostly when they're in closing chances. And if they have like AJ Puck and when you're on the days it's back to back and they think it's better,

we'll just go to Puck this time, then you can avoid back to backs a little bit easier as a closer. Then if I think you're my setup guy now, I need to put you in there with traffic on, well, I looked at the traffic numbers and it looks like you can deal with the traffic, but I also maybe need to put you in on Monday and Tuesday. Yeah, now you're gonna make a distinction.

And you're right though, by the way, his best inning is the ninth and extra innings. So the very end of the game is his, where he plays the best too. So there's something to, there might be a mindset thing, it might be a bunch of different things body-wise too. But his is the longer the rest. It goes, like here's how his ERAs go based on days rest.

He has a four, seven, three with zero, then a four, seven, nine with one day, then a four, five, nine with two days, then a two, two, seven with three days, then a two, three, eight with three days, then a two, three, eight with four days, and a zero with five. So he just gets better the longer he gets to rest. And we've mentioned this before, I am the opposite.

I was zero, I was the best by far. I was like a two, oh, nine for career back to back. And then with three days rest, I had like a four, eight. And for whatever reason, that was my threshold for he's gonna get rusty if he doesn't throw. That's when I throw a bullpen. If I had three days off, I'd throw a bullpen after the game because I was like, I passed this point,

is when I start to get stiff and rusty. If I make it as, and just full disclosure, this is a conversation I had with Jeremy Heffner, he knew this stuff and he knew back to back was good. There was a year when I wasn't throwing back to back at all and I was like, why am I gonna throw him back to back? They're like, well, last year you didn't do so well. It was like my worst year at all. And I was like, why am I throwing back to back? Like, well, last year he didn't do so well. It was like my worst year doing it.

And I'm like, well, overall though, I'm pretty, feel pretty good on these days. And we changed it and I started throwing really well. So I'm like, I think I'm actually better than we're seeing and we made an adjustment. Or he communicated that to Buck and then Buck was more open because we had set that standard at the beginning of the year and I was like, hey, maybe I'm ready.

Like, give me the ball. And he's like, okay. and then we did it and things were going and I was hurt too There was like some of that too, but it was really interesting. I was like, huh who else? What's this look like for other guys and it's pretty stark and crazy different But there's there's pretty clear patterns you can see from these two kind of like buckets of stats which I thought was if I were looking for bullpen guys if I were putting a pitching staff together and Trying to like envision what the ideal version of that would look like, where I had some veteran guys with a good amount of, you know, stuff to look at, these are things I would look at.

The days of rest is interesting because you'll have like we have a friend of the pod, Dr. Mike Son with the Cubs has like a fatigue model and he'll be acute to chronic. How much you've how many times you've been warmed up, how many times you been in the game how even your pace between pitches your VELO he puts it all into a model and he basically says this is your fatigue level but there is a really unique reaction to fatigue there's a there's a unique way your body compensates for to every player has a different amount of fatigue they're used to or want. We talked about different ways your mobility can affect how fatigued you want to be. And so, I don't know, we have a chart here. The number of four outs.

No, this is the back to backs. Do you have the other one? This one, yeah. So the gray dots here are four out appearances out of the bullpen. The blue dots are back to backs and the orange dots are back to back to backs. And so what you see was a clear, you know, ascendance of the bullpen where since 1980, 1950, 1960, like the 70s, like since then, the bullpen has pitched a lot more innings. And so you see a huge rise in four out say,

at four out appearances, back to backs and back to back to backs. But recently back to back to backs are back to almost zero. There's really don't happen as much anymore. There's a real trend of going close to zero on back to back to backs. And even back to backs are starting to go down. What you do see is the four out has to come back up again.

If you're reducing the amount of back to back to backs and the amount of back to backs, then sometimes you need a guy to go five or six. You know, because that's just math. You know, like you have innings to fill. Uh, what I did look at was the number of back to backs this year. So you, you have the Cardinals and the Mets and the Rays, uh, being out in front of this.

Guardiola's we knew the Giants would be on the top of this cause they use their bullpen a lot. It's a great bullpen. And then I went and looked at how did these teams, how did these teams in the last three years, how did they do in the second half? And there wasn't a real great pattern. And I'm a little surprised by that because you'd think, oh, the teams that use the back to backs,

they get hurt or they have bad second halves. I think the problem is, a lot of different reasons for having back to backs. You could be a good team that uses the bullpen a lot. If you're a good team that uses the bullpen a lot. If you're a good team that uses the bullpen a lot, maybe you'll just get new relievers in the second half. I mean, I'm sorry to say this in front of a reliever, but like, I mean, you know how much bullpens change

over the course of a year. So if you're a good team with some depth, you'll cycle out the relievers. You could be a bad team that's using a lot of back to backs and you could maybe even trade away. Like the Marlins, if the Marlins were on the top of this list, they're using a lot of back to backs,backs and you could maybe even trade away like like the Marlins if the Marlins are on the top of This list they're using a lot of back-to-backs. They're using Scott a lot, you know Then they might actually get worse than the second half when they trade Scott away

Or maybe they don't use them in back-to-backs and you think oh, they'll be really well-rested in second half Well, I'm sorry Scott's gone. This is other guys injured and the bullpen sucks So there's just too much if you're looking at a whole bullpen, there's too much variance in who's in it, you know, and what's going on, what players, and some of what you're talking about. Some of those players are fine with a backpack, some aren't. So there's, I think there's a lot of feel in managing a bullpen, you know, that it's something you can't quite science all the way. I thought one thing that was interesting that Trevor brought up earlier in the week is just that you have the different body types like you can be hyper mobile or you can be hypo mobile and Trevor has described himself as a hypo mobile.

That's I think why you said you probably are better on the second day of a back to back because you're more loose in those situations. But how would you know which kind of purchase, like without looking at numbers by splits like this, how would you even guess? Is there a test for this? Other than like watching, can you even see visual cues on players

that you're scouting to see who's hypermobile and who's hypomobile? You can tell just about by movement patterns, like how guys' arms patterns move, how they like just literally how they warm up, how they're stretching. Like guys a little doing arm circles, you can tell how mobile they are.

And Brian Wu's the guy. How wide the arm circles are. Yeah, literally. Arm circles, like I'm not that mobile, so my arm circles are just like this. Robert Stock looked at me and goes, have you had a shoulder injury? Cause I can't really get back there.

Rob Stock, Bob Stock, what a guy. Did he have his arc wave on his head, just electrocuting himself before games? Oh, that guy needs an episode on him. He needs a documentary. He is one of the best guys ever. But he was actually a pretty mobile dude and he didn't stretch, he didn't stretch it.

Like he didn't do, he only electrocuted himself before games. If you guys don't know what an arc wave is, just go google the machine It's a little stimulator that you can put anywhere on your body and he would just progressively go through his whole body I've seen people do it's all I did interviewing a guy where it's like it's like just going like this He did nothing but that he did like his face and his arms But he didn't need to like he didn't need he could just touch his toes

He didn't need to do anything to touch his toes Oh, I cannot touch my exact like I have I have to work into it and I always have. Brian Wu was the guy we used as the hypermobile guy. You naturally can move in athletic patterns and have a good range of motion, which is good for a pitcher. We're all looking for that. The problem is there is a sweet spot. Hypermobile guys tend to go the two mobile way and hypo mobile tend to be the not mobile enough range. And so we're all trying to move towards that sweet spot.

Is repeatability a little bit a part of it? Like, I could see if you're like really, if you're hypermobile, it might be harder to, the repeatability part might be harder cause your body can move all sorts of different ways. You can actually do more patterns though. So like that's good and bad. So if you're learning something new,

you might have a, like you, you might be able to manipulate things and do things a little bit more than I could. But the chance to go past that pattern and get out of your range all the time, or like if you get tired, when I get tired I like retreat inside of my range, they retreat outside of their range, they get really too loosey-goosey.

And so they come with their own problems. But when I pitched in a game, that was my most loose, I felt like that was my best way to get fully loose. So I had endorphins going from the next day. So if I threw a night game and then a day game the next day, I had the most energy. It was almost like I'd never went away. And some guys, hypermobile guys especially,

they're sore that next day. I'm not sore yet. I'll get sore the second day because my body's taking longer to get there. Is these are just things that that we're seeing i've had lots of conversations with biomechanics people Um dean little was the head of sports science with the mets for a long time He's super interested in this concept and this was something he would talk about a lot And he could just look at you and be like you're hypermobile your hypermobile and constantly be true It's like your joints go past 180 degrees. These are usually like taylor rogers and ryan presley for example

They were there was we always joked about how they and Ryan Presley for example, they were, we always joked about how they could like look, make their arms look like they were broken, both of them. Like it's like, bleh. I can't do any of that stuff. And I'd be like, oh God, it's awful. And my arms wouldn't go even to 180 degrees. And they're like, it's cause they're hypermobile.

On my long runs, I'm more sore the second day after than the first day after. And that's just like a general idea. So that can give you an idea of like, why you're good back to back, why you're not so good. Starters we talked about throwing, they're changing between second bullpen, second day bullpen or third day bullpen,

or even throwing the day after. I love to throw. I was like, I would prefer to always throw and just be a little bit like fatigued and sore, then get tight. It was my preference. So I would throw all the time. Not taking full days off would make me stiff.

How rare are bullp pens for relievers? They're pretty, pretty rare. I think hypermobile guys throw them more often. Right, because as a reliever, you're like, I need to be ready tonight. I don't wanna throw a bull pen and not be ready tomorrow. I would prefer to go like let it eat and catch and then go out and go out in the mound.

But I, you know, I was a veteran at that point too where I was like, I know what it's gonna be. I know what I'm gonna, I know what it's gonna happen. Like it is what it is, right? And other guys are like, I know what it's gonna be. I know what it's gonna happen. It is what it is, right? And other guys are like, I know, I gotta be, you gotta learn that a little bit. So there was a, hey, you wanna get in the game? And I'm like, I'll just throw a pen

or I'll go crazy and long toss tomorrow. That was enough. This goes back to our conversation too about the starters picking which day to do their bullpen. Yeah, they were making those decisions like this. Maybe being hyper mobile or hyper mobile, you choose one or the other. And then you make adjustments that way to do their bullpen. Yeah, they were making those decisions like this. Maybe being hyper mobile or hyper mobile, you choose one or the other.

And then you make adjustments that way, and it's almost like Jake DeGrom, for example, he threw a third day hyper mobile. He would be really sore. He also threw a hundred and one every single pitch. Like a lot of these kinds of things, but like he wouldn't play catch the next day, and that was because we know by now

where those injuries come. It's because he's so mobile that he needs to do, he needs to stiffen himself up. He's like too athletic. And Brian Wu is very similar. He's had so many weird, he's like he's gotten hurt three times without going on the aisle. Could you like lift your way out of it?

Like become less mobile by putting mass on? That is what a lot of guys do. They try to like, Taylor Rogers and Tyler Duffy, two hypermobile guys, they would have to go into the weight room and do their workouts two times a week. They had to get it in. Even if it was good or not, they're like,

just move weight around just so I can stiffen up just a little bit, because if I don't do anything, I'll turn into Gumby. And I was the same way, I'd be like, I might not lift for three weeks, because I'm just naturally, I'm naturally a big strong guy, but like, if I didn't stretch, there's no way.

There's no way. So I would have an hour on the floor with a foam roller and all these machines and stuff, because that's what I need to do. They have to go work out, I need to stretch. I was thinking about this from a position player perspective a little bit too, because Royce Lewis, unfortunately got hurt again yesterday.

He's gonna have an MRI on a groin injury. And I keep wondering, like, is that, because it sounded like what Royce Lewis did is he tried to add muscle? To counteract the major bucks into him it problems. He's had the same way Buxton too. So is that is that a case of the hypermobile trying to become more stick? Because there's so many you can get hurt being in either one of these categories. You just get hurt for different reasons Yeah, and I think that has a lot to do with it. It's a stability thing. With him, because his are so freak too,

he just gets like knees buckling around weird and like buckle the same way. He'd be like step on first weird and like hammy. Or like, and that's, it's, when you're hypermobile, you're naturally pretty stable. The problem is you can't move. The other way, you can't build stability if you're super loose. And so it's all about, it comes down to stability. The problem is you can't move. The other way, you can't build stability if you're super loose.

And so it's all about, it comes down to stability. That's why you see weird stuff, like pitchers hurting their ankle throwing the ball. And like stuff that's not normal. I wonder if they learned anything from soccer training. Cause soccer seems like the sport of hypermobile. Like you'd want to be in soccer, be able to move really quickly,

like change directions really quickly, you know, like be able to move really quickly, change directions really quickly, be able to be really agile. Good combination of mobility and stability, how important that those two things are together. So maybe there are soccer workouts. One thing, and Derek, you might know a little bit about this more than I did, because my soccer career is pretty short, but there's a fair amount of running in soccer.

There's a lot of running in soccer. I mean, even for training. But yeah, it's tempo. I mean, so like we- But when you train for it, you have to go on long runs where you sprint a little bit and then you just shorten it up and whatever. We did four, like the first day of practice

was a four mile run and then we still did more work on the field. And then day two was more agility stuff and then training. Running is not popular in baseball. No, no. But I wonder if it could be something that is more useful than people consider right now.

Plyo, so plyo work and agility work is actually more common these days. Pretty popular. Yeah. So they're lower in the operations. That's like putting the cones down and kind of running around them. Yeah.

Like kind of, yeah. Doing agility type stuff. Like when you think of football, like with the little. Yeah, like you run in shuttles, Like kind of, like kind of. Doing agility types. Like when you think of like football, like with the little. Yeah, like you run in shuttles, stop and go, stop and go. They want you to do that stuff, especially position players,

because they'll do it slightly. Like I'm, guy I'm watching, like I've been watching a lot in person too, watching JP Crawford jump, running off and on the field. Like he's a guy who can run a little bit, but you can tell he's been around a little bit, and he's like very much conserving energy.

He's one of the slowest third baseman though. I mean, slowest shortstop. But like he was, when he was younger, he can run a little bit, but you can tell he's been around a little bit, and he's very much conserving energy. He's one of the slowest third baseman, though. Slowest shortstop. But when he was younger, he'd run a little bit, but you can see how he's changing and how he's using his energy, and the more you do that, the less you are used to doing that explosive run, so you just kind of stop doing it.

Mookie Betts talked about this a lot. At the beginning, because he was on purpose, he's like, I'm trying to remain, to continue focusing on being explosive because if I keep going this way, I'm just, I'm going to slow down, I'm going to slow down fast. He was talking about sprints in spring training. He even sprinted against their local newscast. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he was talking about it then. She could fly. Yeah. She was like a runner. But he, so he talked about like the importance of that stuff and there's just so many games. You're constantly like, how much energy I'm saving for the game today with my work.

That's the hardest, that's the coin flip you're doing every single day. Yeah, it's a little bit easier in football and soccer where you're like, we have one game this week. We have one game this week. So on Monday or Tuesday. And we might not even have to go to the field on Monday. Which is awesome.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Bates were like, I have to go in today or every day. I think the problem in baseball, from my chair, is that the movements are so repetitive, right? Your body gets into patterns. And I think overuse within a pattern is what causes these kind of devastating and chronic

injuries. So my brain is like, hey, maybe it is stuff like agility training, but it's also, it's running, it's like backwards running, it's doing things, making your body just move in every possible direction. It might be rock climbing, like as a way to just get your body out of the same patterns of movement

that actually makes you more loose, makes you balanced and stronger in a way that keeps you from breaking down. We've seen some successful bullpens do weird things, like there was a bullpen that was way into Frisbee, like Ultimate Frisbee, and they would play Ultimate Frisbee, and then we've definitely seen some soccer bullpens. And I would advocate for some more of that.

I mean, we know that tossing the football is, but the tossing the football is almost too close. It's direct, too similar. Yeah, it's a move at that. It's for pitching. That's almost like a weighted ball drill. Yeah, pretty much. That's not really that different.

I want you to play some soccer. But running a route and cutting and having to track the ball and stuff, that's like, you have to change position, you gotta adjust to get to the spot, and it's fun you have to change position you got to like adjust to get to the where the spot and it's fun doing athletic movement we get away from athletic movement we really do pitch especially or different athletic movements that aren't turned are the one direction in the throw not even turn the other direction on this right one side

like did you do the opposite right of of his like ball thing and how goofy he looks, imagine me, just imagine me doing it. I saw skeins do that and I thought, that's actually, that seems really smart. That seems like a better way to keep your body from being overtrained in one plane or one direction. It's important for deceleration too, because your body, whenever you're done doing

whatever you're doing, the body is trying to stop it You know like what if you're throwing a ball 90 like at some point your body has to stop your body from moving 90 We've got a little bit of room for questions from the live high one from Brian wants to know if you're gonna pull a JJ Retic Trevor you go from the pod to coaching. I have no desire to do that. I think I've been pretty clear on this I people ask me about like would would you ever wanna front office? You wanna be a special assistant and then maybe work in your GM? I'm like, any job that makes me have to sit

at a conference table and listen to the things my owner's saying, I'm out. Like just, cause as soon as I disagree, I'm just gonna be like, I can't do this. I can't sit here with Art Moreno and just be like, what's the point of this job? You be the GM dude. You just go, you go say it.

I'm not gonna say the dumb stuff you just said. So, kinda same thing, coaching, because what if you have a GM that... What about like youth coaching? Oh, youth coaching, thousand percent. Like, I just drove down the, dropping off the U-Haul, coming back, saw them setting back up,

because there's a summer camp going on over here at our local field, at our high school field, it's a really nice turf field. And there's like a party, and it's like, I wanna just go over there and just see what's going on? Just like, hey guys, want some, I have, I know stuff, but my wife made a great point, she goes, as soon as that cat's out of the bag,

this community, you are gonna be the guy that goes to everything, so just keep it under wraps until you're ready. That's actually, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't want to have too much ego, but like, you know, that's actually been a little bit of a thing for me with little league where it's like, I'm willing to give my sons all of the information they want and coaching they want. But, you know, stepping that up means there's a lot of kids involved.

I could be, I could be over at the, at the little league stadium, like every day for three hours It's four hours a day if I wanted to and I don't know like my wife wouldn't want that I don't know we want that whole life wants that no that turned into your whole life real real quick Update here from producer Brian the Shane Buz is gonna start Friday against the Rangers So that makes a lot of sense just in terms of where he was at and having that vacancy now Can't wait to see the fastball movement the fastball below want to see you want to see how he holds up how deep I mean, I think he was getting to 80 85 pitches at least in his last few starts

So should be able to go five, but yeah, I'm interested to see how it looks get the 4th of July here in the states on Thursday I went back to AI tried to generate a photo of players in a hot dog eating contest, and I specified that I wanted to see Aaron Judge, Mike Trout, Shohei Otani, and Jose Altube. And this is what it spit out on the screen. Did it combine all four of them into one face? It feels like it did. It looks like it did. It looked like it mushed all four of them into one face? It feels like it did. It looks like it did. It looked like it mushed all four of them into one face,

then made four of that person. They do have slightly different hats. At least there's two or three different hats in the picture. Some different unis in there. This is desire-looking, dude. And the hot dogs. What is going on with some of these hot dogs? It's so funny.

I don't get the, AI is not gonna save the world. Not in art. Not in art. Oh my God, the hands are bad too. Not in art. We need artists real bad. It's just funny. One of those guys doesn't even have a hand.

Yeah. It's just funny. How is he getting the... That giant flag in the left, the size of the stadium, just like in the sky. Well, that part's right actually. I mean, how big can the flag get

during some of these things? How about World Series? It's like, someday they're gonna have a flag that covers everybody in the hole and the whole thing. They're not even higher stadiums. The entire stadium like the planes will come over and drop a flag on the roof. Right. The drones will just put that over there for the top of the cover. The reason I generated that photo, though, of course, no Joey Chestnut this year in the Nathan's hot dog eating contest between hey, someone else to win for a change that's kind of cool but who in major

league baseball I don't like you I don't think Dunson the hot dogs and water it's disgusting who would win in the major leagues if there was a hot dog eating contest in the league current players I don't know if I want to touch this one you're gonna get in trouble no just like okay here's where I'm thinking. Everyone's going to say, like everyone's going to say, I should have said Volgelback. I'm not going to say Volgelback because, you know, honestly, I think people could, could, could just destroy Vogue in a,

in a competition. You should see Nemo eat. That guy's a- Right, that's what I'm saying. There's a bunch of big- There's gotta be in the sport. But I'm going to go by a guy that I would, if I asked a group of, if I could put a bunch of guys

in a locker room, like just a variety of guys from the league that are all different teams, the guy I think most likely to stand up immediately and scream at me is Rowdy Tilles. Even if he doesn't really think he could, I think he would just be like, me, I'm the best. You guys can't beat me, I'm the best. And so I would just be all in on Rowdy. I think it would be a great, it would be a spectacle

watching that. There is a mental component to being a champion hot dog eater So you definitely have to have that will to make yourself just absolutely miserable to keep going So if rowdy has that that's sort of the thing that's the differentiator that to be clear That is what I think rowdy has I think rowdy's like I If I say i'm gonna do it i'm just gonna do it now because I can't not do it. I've got, and I'm the stats guy, right? So I've got some stats. How do you have stats on this?

I didn't even put this on the rundown. The Phillies visitor clubhouse cheesesteak rankings. Oh, yeah, yeah. Individual one day record. Corey Hart's on there was seven. That's the big tall guy. He's big. You know, you could just pick Aaron Judge because he's big and tall.

That's why I put him in my A.I. monster hot dog eating contest. But the record for the individual one day record goes to infielder Adrian Sanchez, who I don't even know who that is. But all star closer Bobby Thigpen is kind of the, kind of the rotund version, I think.

Bobby Thigpen, you're going back that far? Yeah, the team one-day record was the Mets with 103 cheesesteaks in one day. Is it just the active roster or does it count anybody in the traveling? It counts anybody, because I know for a fact Dave Racconello the bullpen catcher was a huge part of that. That guy loves those things. He's got a bunch of records. He's a legend now. Racconello is seven and a half on the, he's fourth

on the individual one day and in the individual three day he's also fourth with 14 in three days. three day. He's also forth with 14 in three days. Rocky's Coast Mike Jasperson had 21 and a half. Oh my God. It's lovely. They're big too. They're not small. They are not small. These guys make them big. I think there's a couple dimensions here. There is girth but there's also height just like there's more like there's's more of you to fit the food into. But then there's also, you know, TWTW, the will to win. It's that and how you eat all the time.

Some people have high metabolisms. They eat a ton all the time. They got more room. Matt Latos is third on the four day record with 18. So it's, Corey Hart being on this list, it opens my eyes to, it's not, it's not just, you're not just looking for the rotund guys. No, you're looking for bullpen catchers.

Yeah, bullpen catchers. Marcus Handel's probably on there. An everyday player is not gonna be on this list. Of course. You can't. Marcus Handel is second in the three day with 18. I'm sure that has been talked about on the broadcast for years. You had 23 in four days. I ate 15 tacos in a day on a road trip and lived to tell the tale.

That's three meals. I could do that, I feel like. Nuggets. I wouldn't have fun, but I think I could do it too. But the nine hot dog, nine beer, that thing, nine innings, that sounds awful. How did that go? Did you do it?

No, I haven't made the attempt yet. There was a dude at a Mets game that did it in seven innings. He did, by the top of the second, he was already four deep. You know, like, dude, you're going, he's like, I don't care. And he was hurting at the end, you could tell. He's like, this is the worst moment of my life. The last two times. the worst moment My life the last two runs. He was very very not even that drunk cuz they're eating nine This guy let's just put it this guy was in shape full for this. Yeah, this is something

He this was maybe just a Tuesday for him I haven't done it yet, but I want to so I'll let you know what I do I'm sure I'm sure you're gonna make a video. Oh, it'll be it'll be yeah, it'll be a video I'll let you know when I do. I mean, I'm sure you're gonna make a video. Oh, it'll be, yeah, it'll be a video, 100%. Well, we're looking forward to that. I'm just gonna have a hamburger, I think. Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna take it easy on the fourth.

I'm gonna have like one burger and maybe a hot dog or a brat or something. Keep it under control. Yeah, I'm gonna do brats. Yeah, you're doing brats? We're gonna do brats in an outdoor movie, Independence Day, it's gonna be awesome. Yeah.

Good call. Really good call. Hope everybody out there celebrating has a great holiday. That's a, I mean, we just saw a bunch of aliens on the screen, so you're warmed up for Independence Day. But you can find us on Twitter, find Trevor at IamTrevorMay, find Eno at EnoSarris,

find me at Derek VanRyper, you can find the pot at Rates and Barrels, get a subscription to the athletic, it's two dollars a month for the first year at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. Drop us a question in our Discord, link is in the show description, or send us an email, ratesandbarrelsatgmail.com.

Have a great long weekend, we are back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening.