Rates & Barrels - How to Keep Hitters Guessing

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

Eno, Trevor and DVR consider a few ways that pitchers could keep hitters guessing more often, a question about the possibility of great command being a detriment, unusual training methods and tools, and whether it would be more surprising to see the Tigers make the playoffs -- or -- for the Braves to miss them. Plus, it's Round 3 of Name That Dude! Rundown 0:59 Using Game Theory for Pitch Sequencing? 9:18 Random Number Generating A Game Plan While Accounting for Known Useful Information 19:50 Can Great Command Be a Detriment? 31:17 What Unusual Training Methods and Tech Have You Seen? 40:39 Let’s Talk About Toe Yoga! 53:41 More Surprising: Tigers Making Playoffs - or - Braves Missing Them? 1:05:50 Name That Dude! Follow Eno @enosarris Follow Trevor @IamTrevorMay Follow DVR @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris With: Trevor May Producer: Brian Smith Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does possible sound like for your business? It's having the spend to power your scale with no preset spending limit. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it is Thursday, September 12th, Derrick and Riper, you know Seres, Trevor May here with you today on this episode. We're going to dig into some game theory applications of Pitch Sequencing thanks to a great listener

email that we receive. We'll try to figure out just how far into game theory some teams actually could go with their planning process. We're going to talk about unusual approaches in training, be that tech that is cutting edge or maybe just really old but people don't use it anymore. We're going to dig into some surprising developments in the playoff race including Atlanta sliding out of playoff position and the Tigers trying to make that late push in and time permitting we have our third installment of name that dude Let's get started today guys. Let's start with the game theory to determine pitch mix

So we get an email from one of our listeners Misha pointing back to something that happens in soccer for PKs where You have to find the ideal mix of a shooter choosing his dominant side but not choosing it all the time to give an advantage to the keeper right and there's been a paper written about this and trying to find the right sweet spot the Nash equilibrium that's the point where things are actually competitively right and this is something you can expand and then turn into like a pitch sequencing conversation too.

So the idea would be like having the perfect proportion of your strongest pitches against the pitch, the hitter you're facing to maximize your strengths, but also to apply it against their weaknesses. It's a really tough balance to find because your best pitch might be something that the hitter can crush. So you have to take that away a little bit, right? So it's always this kind of sliding scale. So just from like a broad mathematics perspective, Trevor, what's the most involved planning and processing that you know about? Are there teams using anything like game theory modeling to help determine

how much they should have pitchers throwing certain pitches? I think that there's definitely like people in analytics departments that specialize in game theory or at least have a broad interest in it. And have, it's a really common, it's kind of obvious of a thing to add to something like baseball that has as many statistics and outcomes and like sample size just

of events happening in general. Game theory makes a lot of sense to attach to a game like that. The thing is, in practice, especially when it comes to pitch sequencing, the nuance and the intangible side of things, I think that the data attached to those things kind of just shakes out a way based on very clearly specific situations happening over and over and over again. And that's just kind of the best way to do it in terms of predictive stuff in that area.

It's hard to do with any sort of certainty, but getting an underlying idea of how game theory can work and how broad trends happen is kind of, I think, how it's being put into play. The most predictive stuff, you know, it comes down to give yourself opportunities. They don't want hitters to be guess hitters. Like we don't want guys to go up there looking for a specific pitch,

meaning selling out only for that pitch and that that's how you hit, is by just going pitch to pitch and doing that. They don't want that, but they would like to give the glaring stuff to their hitters the same way that the pitchers want the glaring stuff on the hitters. When we got ready for the show, Yiner Diaz was the guy I was using and his struggles against off speed, slow changeups and splitters versus breaking balls in all counts is a natural possibility to hit it. Like, it's just clear.

It's pretty clear that his swing or whatever breaking balls are his thing, no matter how good your breaking ball is, that should give you pause because it only takes one good swing to hurt, especially reliever. So like that kind of stuff, even though you have a great slider, you have the best, you have Matt Brash's slider, right? You still might try to throw him a splitter because he's so poor. Like, so that is how you make those decisions. But then you got to factor in like guys confidence levels and they're like, whether or not they want to be a strike or not and that's just kind of very wildly so if you're trying to model things it's hard to model in confidence and like what they might even be

thinking about maybe maybe they've been just watching guys throw so many sliders lately they're just really excited about their slider I know that's something like Joe Kelly does he like it's a pitch he really likes throwing it so he throws it a bunch of games like it's very much he does that and that's just the way kind of he is and you you can't really model that, right? You can't model the difference between him and like, say, you know, or I don't even say you Darvish, because he's very similar like that, too. But guys who just want to throw their one pitch and be done with it, be good with it. It's hard to model that stuff. So I think it's only going to go to a point. But to answer

your question in a very long form, yes, it is part of it. And they're trying to find ways to do this, but I don't think they're ever going to find anything that's so far to where we can say, Hey, just do this in this part. And then you'll be good. Yeah. I think it's such a moving target. I mean, you're talking about Yarny De Dez and I'm thinking like, well, he's a young player and this is version one of him.

Right. So, you know, if he's going to be a star, then, and we don't know if he is yet, but if he is going to be a star, then at some point he's going to figure out the change up thing and he's going to have some sort of scoopy swing. And then he might fall in love with that for a while because people are thinking, Oh, the scouting report says, you know, throw them a lot of change ups. That's the glaring thing that he's got a weakness on. Then all of a sudden he's punishing change ups for a week and he's loving it because he's got the scoopy swing. He's got that going. And then you can actually get

back in there with a slider and a fastball, you know? So, you know, there's that the pitcher is a moving target and the hitter is a moving target and they're changing their philosophies and their approaches from game to game. You know, you're trying to model Joe Kelly and but it's is it Joe Kelly who's fallen in love with the slider it Joe Kelly who's fallen in love with the slider or Joe Kelly who's fallen in love with this fastball? You know what I mean? They're human beings on both sides. So it's like they have these different emotions

and adjustments that are attached to each of these things. So it's very hard to say this is, and then you have sort of different day, different arm issues where it's like, yes, normally I would throw my change up. But right now I've been throwing this like you're Trevor Bay and you're in 2022 or three when you were throwing the splitter and you're like, normally I would throw my change up, but it's a little funky right now because I've been throwing this splitter.

And you know, I don't know if that's my best pitch. So I think about, you know, guys like Cody Bellinger and how different he can be depending on what time of the year you're attacking him. And so whatever numbers you have, you know, will kind of could go out the window. And so you do have to react to what's happening in the moment, but I do love this idea

that you have to like honor your strengths enough. You have to go to your strengths enough to keep them your strengths and to keep the hitter thinking that's what's coming. I think of what I know of, you know, one team in particular was talking to me about advanced scouting for the Dodgers and they were talking that like, okay, so, you know, I'm telling my pitchers, here's what to do against Freddie Freeman. We've looked at the heat maps. We've looked at the, oh, he's blue here, do this, do this. He's great here, avoid that.

Try to throw your curve ball in the outside corner. He'll probably spit on it. If you can land it, you get some called strikes, get him to the two strike count, then you can do a little bit more. That's the whole thing, right? Well, this advanced scout said when he got into the game, it was like Freddie Freeman was sitting on the things he told his pitcher to do.

And these are not Freddie Freeman's strikes, but Freddie Freeman, so his theory is that the Dodgers scout themselves and scout their hitters and tell their hitters, listen, if I was going to pitch to you and Merrill Kelly was my guy, this is what I would tell him to do to you. You know, so that, you know, Freddie Freeman can stand up there and be like, you know, he's probably gonna throw me an outside curve to try and get an early

called strike because normally I would sit on that. But today I'm not going to sit on it because I just got told that's my scouting report against me for Merrill Kelly. So you kind of get these things where they can anticipate better. And it's not guessing you're right. day I'm not going to sit on it because I just got told that's my scouting report against me for Marrow Kelly. So you kind of get these things where they can anticipate better and it's not guessing, you're right, it's not guessing willy nilly. You don't really want them. I did make the comment that maybe pitchers should be random number generators and maybe

even hitters should be random number generators. But if you do that, then you're too random. It's too likely that you could just miss on each guess over and over again. You know, you kind of, there's contextual clues, how the guy looks, what he's throwing. There's your own clues. So you're kind of trying to be better than 50-50 guessing every time.

Yeah, and we had another question that came in from Adam asking about the random number generator approach to pitching and wondering how you could control for the variance in pitch quality or platoon advantage Just basic things that we understand Already like if you had the example he sent us was if you had a righty with four pitches and a league average slider Would you have him still throw it 25% of the time or would you? Split the distribution up differently depending on the quality of the pitches and the matchup, right? So it is a moving target for a lot of reasons. The way the Dodgers probably do scout themselves is

brilliant because then you have to use your second best or third best game plan against them and then By then you have to game plan your game plan. Yeah, your stuff's not as good. Like the best thing you could have done has been taken away. So now you're doing the second or third best thing and that for a lot of players might not be nearly as effective as getting hitters out as doing the thing that you do best or trying to exploit that biggest weakness. So it's kind of goes on forever in this endless loop because the changes I think Trevor you also mentioned Joe Musgrove running into some trouble where he was cruising in a recent outing and he became a little too dependent on his cutter. And even that sort of change, it seems like a team, an opposing lineup can pick up on it really fast where maybe your previous base pitch

for high usage was a four seamer. If you go to the cutter more often, it only takes a handful of games before teams are gonna realize, okay, it's the cutter now. So because it's the cutter instead of the four seamer, these things are all different and now we can attack them this way.

So the shelf life of an adjustment just seems like it's about as short as it's ever been in major league baseball. Yes, that's a great way of putting it. Conversation also has been like why the pitterer and the pitcher gap has kind of seemingly widened and hitting's harder. And it's like, I think pitchers just are the same way

that adjustments are being made quickly. Pitchers are also getting to their potential quicker, like just because of how quickly they can adjust. And hitters don't have that same space to get there. It's slower. And so, and that's just kind of what's happening. So it's funny you bring up Musgrove too. The interesting thing was he was dominating for the first three innings of the game, like nine up, nine down, like five, six strikeouts. So it was almost one of those things like, hey guys, what's the worst could happen here if we're wrong and we all sit on his cutter and we're wrong and then he just keeps doing what he's doing to us right now.

So it was like one of those, hey, I mean, what do we got to lose here? And then it just flipped in the best possible way to give up seven hits in like 12 pitches in a row. Some of them were good pitches, other than weren't very well located, but they also just got kind of, there was some luck involved and there was some like, Oh, like that location, that pitch me sitting on it was perfect. But what, as a pitcher you go and it's so jarring that you're like, I mean, what was I tipping?

Like it's the first thing you think because that stuff doesn't happen very often, but sometimes they just change their approach a little bit and then they get all of those outcomes the best way possible for them all together at once too. So it just seems like this crazy thing when in reality it was just the nature of you do this enough that's going to happen like once or twice in your career where you're just going to go and just be like, what just happened to me? It happened to me once too. And out of the bullpen, 10 pitches gave up like four runs and

five hits and had no clue what just happened to me. So that's the randomness. Like that's the part of it, but you just have to try to make the best decisions that you can make to avoid that from happening. And the thing about that outing, when we're talking about his last start, he did a couple things where you could tell maybe he got away, Like he started second guessing and tried some other things that he wouldn't have tried before because things were happening so quickly, which then made it worse and that's the hard part to make those adjustments, but you just kind of

like learn there's a couple of mistakes he made, but most of it was them just getting them and you got to take your cap and that sucks and no pitcher wants to do that, but that's the nature of it. And so there's no model that would have been able to predict. There's no way anyone would be able to predict that what happened to him happened the way it did. Yeah. I mean, in terms of random number generator, he's a decent, uh, example of

it, you know, from the outside, it seems, you know, it is actually really hard to, to figure out what he's throwing right now, because he's throwing a pitch that's not showing up on fan graphs or baseball savant, uh, right what he's throwing right now because he's throwing a pitch that's not showing up on fangraphs or baseball savant right now he's throwing an 86 mile an hour gyro slider that he wasn't throwing before and i think it's being picked up in the cutter so you know in the last game it says cutter 31 but that's not right it says four seam 25 it says curve ball 23%, sweeper 15%, sinker 7% and change up 5%. I mean, this is what you're talking about a little bit with like in terms of relative to strengths,

this is almost as random number generator as you can get. You know, your three best pitches, you're throwing 25% of the time, and then you're sneaking in your lesser pitches every once in a while to keep them honest. There's even a slider in there that some maybe some advanced stats scouts are catching and some aren't, you know, like because it's he's only been throwing it for two or three starts. So you know, you'd think that he would be good at this and yet the hitter still picked up.

He trusts his cutter more than his foreseeing. I don't know if it's count based or you know, and maybe they even had this idea that you said of like, well, it's not working sitting for, so I'm just going to try sitting cutter, you know? And if you sit cutter, you're sitting 88, 89, maybe it's easier to adjust to the sweeper at 83 and the, uh, and the gyro at 86, then if you're trying to sit fastball 93, 94 and adjust down to all those other things.

So being a random number gender gender is really hard. I'm also thinking of Spencer Swenbach who's like at his core, his best pitches are his fastball on a slider. His curve and his splitter are not as good. And some days he gets in there and he's like, I cannot command this splitter at all. And so he doesn't even really throw it. And it's, he's just fastball slider curve and cutter.

The other things are not as good as his fastball slider, but like he said to me, I'm not Spencer Strider. Like that fastball and slider are not good enough to be a 50-50 guy. So, you know, he's pretty close to 25, 25, 25, despite some of those pitches not being as good. So answer that question, I would say yes. If you have a league average sliders righty

and your other three pitches are better, I still throw the slider 25% of the time. Cause A, it's not a detriment, it's at least league average. And then B, they have to think, they have to honor all four pitches. If you start throwing that down to 10%, they're just never gonna prepare for it. They're never gonna care about it. They're going to be like, oops, you know,

maybe I gave up a called strike on that because I didn't I wasn't prepared for it. But I don't care about it because he really throws the other pitches 90 percent of the time. And that's what I'm going to care about. I think it's also a little easier for the game theory example to think about it with a two pitch reliever. Like Devin Williams is purely fastball change up right now. And he's actually throwing more fastballs than change ups this year. He's like 55, 45.

I was just watching him pitch against the Giants two nights ago. And it's hard in particular, I think, when you lose command of one of those pitches. If you're not landing one and then you're boxed in, you start falling behind in the count. Then you're a one pitch pitcher. Then you become a one pitch pitcher. And that's the one pitch pitcher and that's the absolute worst possible thing.

But when both of those pitches are working, I think it's easier to think about the different like lens of, oh, okay, even though the airbender is the better pitch in a vacuum, you still probably use the fastball more than you might otherwise because of how it interacts with the other pitch. Like you just, you can't rely too heavily on that amazing pitch because then the guys can sit on that airbender and actually do a little something with it. Or if you can't land it,

then you know you're getting a fastball and you run into a huge, huge problem there. So yeah, it's just a lot to think about here just in terms of different problems that pitchers are going to run into and different ways to work through them. I think the count is a big sort of factor here. And you know, we're talking about like being very predictable in counts and Musgrove maybe being more predictable with the cutter and counts.

Like if you zoom out and you say, oh, he's a perfect 25, 25, 25 guy, like this should be perfect. Yes. But is he in each count? Does he like in these situations where he needs it mid count, you know, Trevor always needs his mid count. You know, Trevor always talks on mid count, early count, you know, you know, behind the count is off is obvious. We talked about, you know, Pierce Johnson going to his elite curveball 90 percent of the time in two own to one counts and giving up a 700 slugging on it. So the count is a big way. And I was watching you Darvish pitch to Cal rally.i and on a 2-1 count, he threw a slider that

was, if you just looked at it without any sort of knowledge about what was going on, it was a slider at the bottom edge of the zone. I mean, it wasn't, maybe it could have been further outside, but it was from a righty to a lefty. So it was a pretty well put slider. It was on the black on the bottom of the zone in a two one count. And you think like 10 years ago, 15 years ago,

that would have been innovative enough for the hitter to be like, damn, I thought I was getting a fastball. But now Cal Rowley was like, it's a two one count, I'm getting a slider. And if you look at New Darvish's tendencies that actually fits He he throws his slider twice as often as his fastball and two one counts. So Cal rally sat Slider and though it was like a good pitch in the vacuum. He hit it out for a for a dinger

So it is one of those things where you want to you get comfortable you want like you've had success you want to go do things that you want to do and then Yeah, and it could have dropped that slider further down Yes, but then maybe Cal Riley would have spit on it and then it would mean three one So the count is this huge thing a lot of times people forget to adjust for it in their analysis And it's it's a huge compounding factor Yeah it's amazing to think that a guy like Darvish with so many pitches could end up falling

into a pattern that gives hitters a little bit of an advantage like that in a situation but that clearly looks like what happened in that matchup against Cal Raleigh. It's week two of the NFL season and the Athletics Podcast Network has something for every fan. On the Athletic Football Show you'll hear Robert Mays and his new co-host Derek Claussen breaking down the X's and O's each week to help you understand the league at a whole new level. Plus check out our new show Scoop City where you can catch senior NFL insider Diana Rossini and longtime NFL quarterback Chase Daniel as they break down how the league works on a week-to-week basis.

Find both of those shows wherever you listen to podcasts. We had a good question come in from discord Rambo Van Dam, who probably has the best handle in the Discord right now. Can a pitcher with great command actually be a detriment? If I'm pitching and I can put it exactly where I want it, wouldn't hitters pick up on trends more easily? If I'm pitching and I have no idea where the ball is going, neither do the batters.

So, Trevor, is there a level of command that can start to work against you a little bit, either in terms of predictability or maybe even just in terms of, I don't know, maybe falling into a pattern, thinking you can live a little more in the zone than you have to even in some cases. Like it's a strange question, but I think it's actually a really good one.

The term effectively wild is a real thing. It really is. It's all about creating doubt or confusion to the other side of you know hitters are trying to do it Bitchers and pitchers are trying to do it to hitters and that's the best situation you can be in when you throw a pitch They're not expecting like there's nothing better than hearing like a guy I think I did this with a splitter it with my splitter in 2022 before I got hurt I think I threw it to like Brandon Crawford to end the game, a split, a strikeout. And as he's, he walked back to the dugout and walked in and I heard this, uh, anecdotally later and he was just like, what the F was that?

What was it? He didn't know I had it. Like I hadn't thrown it that much and they, everyone knew about my change up. So like, when you get that comment, confidence goes up and through the roof. So that's what you're trying to do. Uh, I think that you can throw too many strikes. You can be kind of obsessed with like not walking guys. Sometimes it's like, it's not even about really commanding the book.

George Kirby, for example, is the guy we were talking about when we talked about this comp, this, this question. He throws into a nine pocket all off season. So hitting spots is the most important thing to him very clearly. And he is really important that he like leads the league with the lowest walk rate. Like he wants that. That just means he's going to be throwing that knowing that that is a priority to him. Two, one, you're going to get a strike.

Now that that questions out of your head as a hitter, that can be created an advantage when you're not worried about him expanding the zone and account where he can't afford it. He feels like he can't afford to do it because at the end of the day, he does not want to walk you. Once you understand that, it kind of tightens that, the strike zone shrinks. There are shrinks a little bit for him and you have to have the ability to be okay with walk. Like Adam Aveena talks about this, being okay with walking a guy every once in a while.

Like just be okay with throwing the white flag for a guy that you just don't feel like you can get right now channel your inner snow yeah just be okay with it be okay with okay I I would rather give a walk this guy than give up a double and pick your spots there now some people do that a little too much and that can that can hurt your long term but again it's one of those things there's no perfect way to do it. I think that guys who tend to walk really low amounts of guys,

I played with Phil Hughes when he broke the record for the ratio. I walked 16 guys in 2015, and then refused to throw one third of an inning to get 500,000 more dollars because I wanted to keep the record, which is crazy. They also tend to give up more hits just in general.

Like you don't see a guy going out there throwing 200 innings, giving up 120 hits and walking 15 guys. They'll give up homers too. Like over, like you'll see really low walk rate guys will have sometimes a higher homerun rate. So that's the trade-off. That's just what the major leagues is. That's this quality of hitter.

So, but once you get an idea of when those times are, when, when being high command is really important and then got times where you're, you're okay being like a really aggressive team. You're like, I don't have to be great. I'm going to try to get him to chase all day. I think George Kirby is going to have that moment where there's days where he's just way outside of the zone, but he's getting way more strikeouts. I think that's the next level in his evolution, just to kind of put it in

the perspective, because he is right now probably our best power guy with command in major leagues, kind of by far. You get the sense that a lot of hitters stepping in against George Kirby are, yeah, expecting what you described, pitches in and around the zone. So if he starts to live a little more outside the zone, he's probably going to get good amounts of chase, because the stuff's also good too. So yeah, that's a great example, I think, of someone that has excellent command and isn't necessarily getting the absolute best possible

result with it yet. And the Blake Snell example that you mentioned in passing is something that I tried to hammer on a little bit in the winter. I think people got really fixated, and I used to be like this too, with the walk rate. But year over year over year, Blake Snell, the number of hits he allows is always really low.

So it's like, you give something to get something, and in this case, the payoff is absolutely worth it because part of what makes Blake Snell amazing is his ability to miss bats at an elite clip. So if he's not giving up a ton of hits on top of the walks, it doesn't really matter. And I think we spend a lot less time looking at hits aloud than we do looking at walk rates. And that really skews our analysis for guys that have higher walk rates.

I also think of, you know, the Musgrove at bat against Manny Machado, where Manny Machado became the all-time leader in home runs as a padre. And he touched George Kirby. Yeah, isn't that kind of surprising? I mean, he hasn't been there like forever. He was an Oriole, you know, like, but he's hit like 160 plus, like I forget exactly what the number was

and now he's the leader. And in that at bat, George Kirby did not throw Manny Machado a pitch in the zone until he threw a high fastball and he didn't get it high enough in the zone until he threw a high fastball and he didn't get it high enough in the zone and Manny Machado, but I think Manny Machado was also sort of ready for it. He's like, this guy's not gonna walk me.

So it's a three-oh count, you know, he's been outside the zone. I don't know if it was actually three-oh, but because I think Manny Machado swung at some of the pitches outside of the zone. But it was a count where I think that, uh, that, that Kirby had to get back in there, but he also knows Kirby likes to go up, up top in the,

in the zone with the fastball. So as soon as he saw the fastball, he knew where it was going to be. And it was too, like, it wasn't high enough. So it wasn't outside the zone enough. So he could have thrown. So in other words, Kirby could have thrown no, not a single ball, too many Machado in the strike zone and struck him out. That's what he needs to do more of. It seems and also not go to the fastball so much for two

strike counts. I think he's being, he throws the fastball on two strike counts twice as much as any other pitch. These all seem like things that George Kirby can figure out on his own and adjust on his own. Like, they just have a lot of faith in that. Him adjusting the other way, like having command and then having to manipulate that command, so much better than having to learn command. So I mean, we'll take that.

But like, he's still a 3-5. But like, we all watch him pitch. Like, this guy should have a 1-9. When he's dialed in, if he's like locked in and feeling really good for an entire season He could put together a season like that because he's got a combination of power and command He'll last I young for sure he will it's just a matter of time and he is 26 This is third year and it's very clear, you know, he's talked about I've talked to him one time interviewed him one time And it is abundantly clear how important it is for him to be able to throw the ball wherever he wants.

He takes a crazy amount, like pitchers love that, but like it's the only thing he, like, everything was colored with that. And there's gonna be a, I think a little bit of a release to like, you know what, I'm gonna really lean into my wild self here and just like throw 98 one of these outings and just see that it's okay if I'm not pinpoint command or use my command to throw balls on purpose. That's the next level

for him. I just listening to him talk, he's aware. He's aware of this stuff. He's going to make that adjustment. He doesn't seem like he's lacking confidence. So it's going to be there. It's just the league's going to have to tell him to do it. And that's what's happening. I think. And he's got a good catcher with Calralli. So I think, you know, they've known, they came up together and Cal's really smart that way. And I think I have every confidence he'll get out of it, but it is interesting.

Jump shoot in a live hive. Happy Kumar Rocker day to those that celebrate. Yeah, indeed, right? Tonight's matchup is Bryce Miller against Kumar Rocker. So definitely one to tune in for. I think I saw in one of the player updates that we've only had a 72 pitch max so far in the minor league outings for Kumar Rocker.

So 80 to 85 pitches probably is where he's gonna land. He's been missing a ton of bats. Got through five innings last time out at AAA. So what is your prediction? The death ball. What's your prediction for a Kumar Rocker debut line against Trevor's Mariners tonight? Five innings, one earned run on Luke Rayleigh-Homer.

Luke Rayleigh-Homer. And like eight strikeouts. That's almost exactly the last time on a triple A. It's one run better than what you did against Vegas. All right, you buying that line, Trevor? I bet you five. It's probably five better than what you think it's Vegas. All right. You buying that line, Trevor? I bet you five. It's probably five max, right? Yeah.

Maybe I'll say seven strikeouts, but yeah, one run, three hits, a couple of singles, maybe like a Julio, an isolated Julio double or something. The fastball has a little bit of dead zone shape, but it's 98 But it's it's kind of you know He might lean into the sinker at some point in his career because it's it's got that tail on it So that's why I think a lefty might get him. It's like this Luke Rayleigh specific. I like very specific prediction calls You've delivered Luke Rayleigh is like one of the best athletes in the game? Yeah, he's got the fastest sprint speed on there. Yeah, I think he was 80th percentile or something last year.

I was really surprised when I saw that. He's got a monster too. He's six-four. He's huge. Yeah, that's crazy. I don't think people appreciate Luke Railey as much as they should. Six-four people who aren't like lean shouldn't be as fast as Luke Railey is. He's got a little hunter pence like awkward awkward, but like then you, he gets running,

you're like, there's no way he's running quick. And then you're like, oh, actually he's moving pretty good. It just looks funny. He's just big and whole, he reminds me of me. Lying back his body a little bit. A lot of shoulders kind of like, yeah, he kind of bounces around and when he runs, it's not the cleanest looking thing, but he's going,

he's moving. Hats off man, he's good. Isn't he? It's funny that the athletes that we have that have bodies that don't, that make us not appreciate how athletic they are. I think that people, I think that's hurt Freddie Freeman a little bit early on in his career

because he's a little awkward looking, you know? He's a gangly, he's a big gangly dude. Yeah. I think even playing first base also just puts you into a bucket where people assume your athleticism is limited because you're playing on the right side of the infield Joey Vato that guy was great athlete phenomenal athlete

So Trevor mentioned the nine pocket that George Kirby throws into him. It's the net with nine sections, right? Just different targets that you're trying to hit that's that's that's like one of the oldest Maybe one of the oldest drills in baseball. Right, that's pretty old school. That's probably going back at least to the 90s, maybe even earlier. But the question we wanted to throw out there today is what unusual training approaches have we seen? So you've had a ton of teammates, Trevor.

Eno's been covering the game for a while. We've seen the clips of Paul Skeens with the water tank on his back. That's kind of new and unusual. I think given how much success Paul Skeens with the water tank on his back. That's kind of new and unusual. I think given how much success Paul Skeens is having, we're probably going to see more water tanks in the near future. What goes even weirder than that? Stuff that you just looked at and were like, what are we doing?

Why are we doing this? And how could that possibly work? For me, I learned very early in my career to not take that tone on anything. I would always be like, Hey, so what is that for? Like, that would be my first question. I do that. And I've been like that since I was a kid. To be honest, my dad found these things from Tom House in the nineties, late nineties,

early two thousands. We had a big binder where I was subscribed to Tom House very early, like blog. I don't even know what it is. What were you doing then that other people found weird? Oh, well, like the resistance band. So he basically he'd be like, oh, you can buy these bands or just get to go down to ACE hardware, go down to the lows and get the surgical tubing

because it's just like on a spool, you can cut off whatever and they charge you by the foot. And it's the same stuff. It's like there's different resistances and stuff. I mean, it's not by pounds or whatever like it is now, but it was similar to that And you could like do it. So I had it tied to my door, my closet in my house. And I would do my, my nineties and my, my normal stuff that everyone, I did those till

the day I retired. Everyone still does them. They're the basic warmup stuff. And so I've always been in on that stuff. But some of the weirder things, like a lot of Japanese guys come over and they have very specific movement pattern stuff one really interesting cool thing is Watched Shintaro Fujinami where I was like, dude, how do you throw so hard all the time? Right, like he's big and he's six six and he's strong

Yeah, but like he did a lot of work in order to throw hard it's pretty clear and ton of it was like he put resistance bands under a kettlebell and Then step on the other side and put it in extension and then he'd have to keep his foot planted. So his way he would do things, he would go through his motion, he would do arm motions and stuff, but he would always have this band fully extended and then foot holding one side and a kettlebell holding the other side to keep himself anchored in the ground as hard as he could. And I was like, and so you just do a bunch of random movements while he was in that position

with them. I'm like, what is, so you're anchoring yourself down. And he's like, yeah, that's like, it's for grounding, it's for strength and the ground. I'm like, everyone should do this. That sounds a little bit like this, the Aroldis Chapman clip we've got. He's being anchored by his trainer.

His foot is very anchored in the ground, but this is after now the Fuji thing. So Fuji's feeling the anchor when he's doing everything. And then now Aroldis is adding movement and adding resistance on the upper body, lower body when he's after he's anchored. So he's like, now I'm anchored. Now let's get strong when we're moving. So it's like the second step. And Fuji did this to like, feel that, like the whole time his foot's anchored. So then he goes and does all his other stuff, his foot's just going to be anchored when he does it. And that was the point. It's to distract your brain into like doing something naturally and you got to feel what it feels like and

then move on to the next thing. Actually a great example, and I didn't actually tell you guys about this because I learned about it yesterday after we had our meeting. I reached out to Hefner, Jeremy Hefner, because I saw a video of Shamanaya. I don't know if you guys have seen Shamanaya's warmup routine he does now. Into the bullpen in before he's warming up, we'll get on one mound because there's two mounds in bullpen so you can get two guys in big league parks. They'll go on one side of the mound, the catcher being the other one. And so basically what he's doing is he's, because he throws sidewinder, his big thing is getting a sinker up

and into righties this year and he's done it really, really well and that's a big reason why he's so successful. And he needs to feel himself getting his body in position to get the ball that side of the plate because he throws low and he steps across his body and he's big and he's left handed and it's hard to do. You've got to find your release point. So he does that and then he does it the other way to feel that he can go the extreme opposite too. He wants to know that he can, his body will just do what it needs to do to do an extreme change in target.

And then he owns the target. So he goes, half called it distraction, distraction training, variation training. Yeah, it's like shocking a little bit. Like it's just make something up or make it bigger. Like just go bigger. Just like, instead of trying to like hone it, if you're like, I can't really get that target,

just make the targets massive. Tell yourself, oh, I can hit a target. And then you bring it back in. My son is getting a little bit harder, having a little bit harder time with the, he's stepped up in level in the minor leagues to the juniors now and the VELOs up. And so even the machines,

when they were doing the machines on the kids, the VELOs up on the machine. And so even the machines, when they were doing the machines on the kids, the VELO's up on the machine. And he did like a round where he only made like contact a couple times. He's really down on himself. I said, in the next one, you know, I know I keep saying to you, like you have to start early.

I was like, why don't you try one time starting so ridiculously early? Like start swinging before he even puts a ball in the machine, you know? Just like shock yourself out of what you're doing now. Like just try something super extreme that's just super ridiculous and feel how, maybe be so early, just be early, find a way to be early and then be like, okay. And that's sort of what Shamanaya is doing is like, I'm going to do this so far wrong,

almost, right? Like we do so much practice, we're on the mound, and we're trying to be fine and do these little places. He's like, no, no, I'm gonna get up here and pitch over there. That's obviously wrong. Like that's like, you wouldn't want to do that. But it, it shocks your body and being okay, this is wrong. And now this is right. and this is the difference in feeling and instead of being like what's wrong with me it's like oh I felt what wrong felt like and now it's feel it right feels like yeah yeah relief one thing I do

with kids whenever I get the opportunity to like do a pitching lesson or whatever one thing that I really love is is it's a mental distraction and I'll literally have them say when you come set you are not allowed to throw the pitch until you tell me what pitch you're throwing and where it's gonna go distraction, and I'll literally have them say, when you come set, you are not allowed to throw the pitch until you tell me what pitch you're throwing and where it's gonna go, like out loud. You have to just say it, because it feels awkward, it feels weird, it's kind of embarrassing. And it's wrong for baseball, like you would never do that.

And you shouldn't be like, ah, saying it to me. Like, something you would never do because you don't wanna give it away. But you can do it in a bullpen, and what it turns out is, kids don't know, actually adults, a lot of adults don't know that their, their brain is just running all over the place. And sometimes they're just like, Oh, this isn't moving well. And they don't have confidence that for whatever reason, it's very hard to think

something and say something else. So it's forcing you to only think about the thing, whether or not you agree with your, your bottom or not, doesn't matter. It's only thing you're thinking about. And suddenly, suddenly things start going closer to where they want to go and then you you like see that was close and then they're like oh and then confidence comes back and then we're back on it again so it's like I did that in double-a because I had trouble throwing strikes for a while that

my pitching coach I'm like you keep track on a piece of paper and I bet you all hit this many out of this many and actually led into another thing I would do after my outings, where I would go back and rate myself based on command, looking at where I threw it, because I can remember my intent. And that was all built through that. So that was just one thing I did

that I didn't even really remember. I just remembered I did, but that was something weird. And there was times during my career where I would just say out loud, that all right, we're going fastball. He knows, I know he knows, let's just, I would say it'm talking to myself. I did that one.

Hey, Brown Francis glove signed his, cause they couldn't get the, they couldn't get together on the same page. They get these as you believe it's going. The pitch clock was going and he glove signed curveball before he threw curveball because he just wanted the catcher at least to know it was coming. And buckled the glaciers cause he looked at him like,

did you just do that? I'm not going to swing when you hit me with one of these. I don't know if you're trying to deke me. I don't want to look like an idiot. So I'm going to stand here. I'm looking at him like, that just really happened. But like how Francis has been throwing. I got pretty confident. This was perfect.

It was a strike. I was talking to DL Hall and I've got a piece coming out tomorrow about all the changes that DL Hall has made. And I think it's a struggle for young pitchers. I still think that he's near the cusp. He has a lot of the things you want out of a good starting pitcher. So we were talking about how his back issues. So his lower back was bad.

So when his lower back was bad as a compensator, I mean, you know, Trevor talks about this all the time, like as a compensator, he just sort of hunched over, right? Cause he didn't want to, when you have back issues, you have lower back issues, you don't want to sit up straight. That takes effort. So he kind of was hunched over and because he was hunched over that was doing a lot. He was being more rotational instead of being straight

to the plate. And so all this stuff came out of his back. And Casey Meis was saying a similar thing. So Meis had back surgery, DL Hall got his back right. And then I was saying, well, that reminds me, I'm running a lot and I've got Achilles tendonitis. And part of it is because my ankle collapses inward. It's kind of like pronating.

And he goes, oh yeah, my ankle does that too. And he goes, I do all sorts of stuff for it. I'm like, like what? And he's like, yeah, my ankle does that too. And he goes, I do all sorts of stuff for it. I'm like, like what? And he's like, well, you sit down at a 90 degree angle on your thing and you put your feet on the ground and then you take your toes up one by one and then you roll your ankle in, you roll your ankle out. He's like, toe yoga. I had a moment where I reacted and I thought of this guy.

So you have this Austin Schultz clip. This guy's really funny. He's doing pitching drills where they're just ridiculous. You gotta look him up. I mean, he's throwing things around, falling down. He's on a medicine ball, throwing another medicine ball. I mean, it's just- I mean, some of this stuff is pretty close.

It's really close. Hopping up the steps. The last thing he did in the clip, he's hopping up the steps with a water tank on his back. And you don't even realize that he's got a ball in his hand. He gets the top step and he fires it down into a net. He actually nailed it. How many takes do you think that took to get it right? Probably one.

He played minor league baseball till last year. So the guy knows how to play. He doesn't know. He's not a pitcher, but you can tell he's too athletic to be a pitcher. But be honest, the pitcher drills are the ones I saw first and now he's got a bunch of like the catching drills ones might be the best one. Like distracting catcher he's like, all right, catch the second pitch and throw two of them. The guy catches the first one, second one hits him in the chest. He goes, I said the second one. Austin Schultz on Instagram. You got to check him out. Yeah. I'm going to show it to my kids too because he does really good like dug out stuff too. You know, it's it's good stuff.

But so when he's saying toe yoga and I tweeted about it, people were like hot toe go and taught to go again. I'm like, oh, yeah, you got to get those toes hot first. Yeah. So I had a little bit like I think that this is the reason why I want to bring this up is because I do. I think one of the reasons that I've always connected with Trevor is that we do have this curiosity and we'd want to hear about it and we're it usually doesn't come from I had a

just a little moment where I was like toe yoga. Like come on you know and I kind of like a little bit of this. But a lot of the stuff that we do now at some point looked weird. And we even have a picture. This is Robert Stock. This is actually from 2017. He's doing an arp wave with a P. That box is is zapping him with electricity to to to. Yeah, I guess while he's hanging out watching TV with his wife.

And it reminded us of the time machine. The time machine from Napoleon Dynamite. It's just a mysterious box with a cable running off it. It's attached to his shoulder. So doing little pulses on the shoulder. I get it. That's the most normal place he put it. Like he'd have it on his forehead sometimes. I played Rob Bobstock as we call him, but he liked to go by Robert.

And he, yeah, it's one of those machines he uses for recovery, uses to warm up. It's the only thing he did. He only used that box. Apparently that was like more popular at some point. You were saying that it's the same technology as the get your abs fit. You know, you put the-

Yeah, I think it's literally the same exact thing as those ab belts. So like stimulate your abs to get a six pack. But that was like popular and then went out of style, I guess to some extent replaced a little bit by the kind of the gun, the like their guns. Yeah, the gun massager that you kind of massage everything. I see that everywhere. But there is there there are some there's some trendiness to this where there's there's trends. But there's also just that things that we thought were weird, like the resistance bands, everybody

does resistance bands now, weighted balls are super ubiquitous. To like look at this and say toe yoga and roll your eyes is to miss an opportunity. I actually after I got over the like initial like toe yoga, I shook his hands and said thank you. Like I have Achilles tendonitis. I should be doing this. Like so I have a full on plan today is my yoga day. I'm going to do some toe yoga too because you know I need to make sure I don't blow out that Achilles. I'm not blowing that thing out in my 40s. That sounds terrible.

Yeah, it sounds like one of the actual worst injuries you can suffer. I've known a few people that have done that. It's not a fun rehab, very painful injury on top of that as well. But- And why would you say, oh, that's ridiculous, I wouldn't do that? Like, why, especially if you're like a near pro or pro athlete

Why wouldn't you be like yo? What are you doing? Could that help me make up make the pros just try to look for anything you can and Don't be don't don't worry about how it looks. I guess it can go it can go too far, too I don't know. Have you heard of muscle activation technique? I mean, maybe. I don't know if I've heard it called that. Well, MAT or whatever. I love Matthew Boyd.

He's really inquisitive too. And he was looking into this. He was telling me all about muscle activation technique and avocado oil because of the different smoke points and all this stuff. So some of this stuff, the science isn't and all this stuff. So some of this stuff the science isn't really there on it. You know muscle activation technique the theory is that you have these little muscles that need to be activated and so you get on the you get on the thing and they

like poke you in these little places to be like to like wake the muscle up and make it work. But it turns out that like so one thing they do is they're like look your range of motion is this. Now I'm gonna poke you in these places now your range of motion is this. Now I'm going to poke you in these places. Now your range of motion is this. And they did a peer-reviewed study where they're like, your range of motion is this. Now I'm going to slap you in the face and then look, your range of motion is this. So, but in muscle activation technique, they also have this thing called plyometrics. Plyometric exercise, I don't know if I'm getting exactly right, but it's these smaller exercises where you're like, one of them is like,

one that's like, I was supposed to put my, I was supposed to sit on the ground and like take my foot and just like basically turn it while like, but using my like, trying to use my small muscles in my groin. And so there's like these little weird small exercises you can do. And when they did peerviewed studies on that they found that the small exercises where you're getting your benefit. But if you go to a muscle

activation technique they give you a list of little small exercises to do. So I'm like if you were curious and you ended up in the wrong place which is the wrong place quote-unquote with muscle activation technique you still got the homework and you were doing the right stuff. So really trying new things is usually not a bad idea. The guy who does this really well is Francisco D'Onoa. I don't know if you need to know more about,

but like him and I were just like, I'd see a new thing and be like, hey man, you've tried this thing. He's like, no, I'll get one. And he just tried it. We tried all, yeah, we did all kinds of stuff. I cannot remember what this little bracelet thing that vibrated's like, no, I'll get one. And he just tried it. We tried all. Yeah. We did all kinds of stuff. I cannot remember what this little bracelet thing that vibrated.

Strowman's the same way. So me, him and like, we would just be like, Oh, what do you guys got now? And I'd be like, well, I'm going to put on my ankle bracelet that vibrates and it feels like a cap herring. Basically these things are, these things suck. Like they don't do anything. I know that now. Like the fight and the fight and kind of, yeah, this is like $400 for a little

price but like you're supposed to take a nap with it on and supposed to put you in deep relation I would I would fall really did you ever do it in concert with your whoop to like see if it did yeah doing something and it was it was spotty it was hard to tell what else was affecting it but it was one of those like I'll try it because you know I'm in the big leagues and then I have the money to do it and might as well. Ed Reed spent $500,000 a year staying healthy so I guess I can buy this thing if it helps.

I guess the dark side of it though is if you're like a kid, like an adult with a kid in travel ball and you're maxing out and you've spent $30,000 on gadgets and travel ball and all this stuff for your kid. And he's doing things like in the Austin Schultz drill and you're just kind of like sitting back being like, yo, how much did I pay for this session?

And what is he doing right now with that yoga ball? You gotta have a distinct reason. One last little bit I'll throw on that is, my understanding of, we mentioned I had back issues in 16 and figure those out. Something that dawned on me, but I connected this way, is your body's just a big series of compensations.

Are we work just to put this into perspective, like the tread on like a tank, like a big tread that's going back for the moving the thing forward. If that has like ungreased links in there that were caught, that tanks gonna lurch and move weird. And you're gonna be like, oh, that's how your body works. We're just a chain walking forward, a whip walking forward.

Whether you're walking, moving, throwing, whatever it is, our bodies, one part of our body moves and then the rest follows it. That's kind of how it works. And so sometimes you just bypass muscles that exist for a reason and for whatever reason, you don't use them for that. And some other muscle has taken over that.

And all of our bodies are full of these things. So in sports, they're just trying to find which one of those things do you have that you're not utilizing? And that's kind of where I think that muscle activation comes from. But then that's why the isolated movements, you're not utilizing? And that's kind of where I think that muscle activation comes from. But then that's why the isolated movements you're like, Oh, see, you don't use this muscle to move your leg and it's

supposed to you would be better if you did and you don't do it. So let's train you how to do that. That's pretty much my entire life was before games was just like, hips, it was hips because the hips affected my back and I would just I was always in back extension. That's one bit accurate. So I had to work on my core. So my core would be strong and pull me forward naturally, I I was always in back extension. That's why I'm back here. So I had to work on my core. So my core would be strong and pull me forward naturally. I didn't ever think about it.

That was part of it. And if I had just left that going, I probably would have ended up getting back surgery. That's probably what would have happened because I would have been locked up. I would have been in a weird position for a really long time and that's what happened. Casey Meyers had something where he couldn't really feel

his blocking leg that well because of like a compressed nerve or something in his back. And it's amazing. He's throwing 94 miles an hour. He can't really feel his blocking leg. And so when he got Tommy John, they were like, okay, let's do the back surgery and fix that. So he comes out of it and oh, wow, I can now get over my blocking leg. I can slam that thing down better.

I can feel it. I can get over it better. And he gets two miles an hour. Well guess what he did? He blew his hamstring on the blocking leg because he's now using it in ways and feeling it in ways that he hadn't before. And he had to kind of find a new equilibrium where he's like, oh wow, this is like a new toy.

He's like, oh, I can feel this hamstring, I can use it. And then he's like, oops, broke it. If you want a cost you absolutely nothing example of something you can do to sort of repattern a part of your body, go walk backwards. Go outside and walk a couple blocks, even part of one block backwards and feel just how different your legs and hips

and everything are. It's a really good way to change some patterns of movement. Have you seen the Tarzan guys? The Tarzan guys. They walk around on their hands and feet or they fall off floors for a whole day. Try that. If you really want it, they did backwards before

and then if you really want your body to move, like it's supposed to move, that's how we're supposed to move. There's a barefoot runner in my neighborhood that we always say what's up to each other because we're supposed to move. There's a barefoot runner in my neighborhood that we always like say what's up to each other, because we're just always running. And he his movements are so different than mine because he has to be more careful. So he's like trying to be very soft in his running.

So he has like this kind of a gate where he's like being very soft. And I've got these big shoes that I spent all this money on. So I'm like, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. You're crushing your hunk of there. Oh, is'm like, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. You're crushing concrete out there. Oh, is he running on concrete too? Oh, well, yeah. Does he do the toe shoes or just straight up barefoot? Straight up barefoot.

That's bold. It seems crazy to me. I'm like, what up, crazy dude? For a long time. Yeah, like, well, he's probably calluses now. It's probably, he's still probably developing his calluses. Like the bottom of his feet have to turn into soles of shoes.

That's, yeah. That's great. I had feet like that growing up in Jamaica. I had feet like that. I used to be able to walk on the, you know, the volcanic rock that's, Yeah. Yeah, I used to be able to walk on that no problem.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's tough. It's like walking on razor blades. Yeah, now it is too. Now I've got my little white socked on, shoes, socks and shoes feet you know

i think we talked about feet as much as you have any point in the last five years in the show today so that that uh burns off all of that quota but i had a question for you guys about the playoff picture and you know framed it this way i thought this was pretty brilliant what would be more surprising the tigers making the playoffs or the Braves missing them as things sit Thursday at the time of this recording. Atlanta's now one game out in the NL wild card race. Tigers are still three out and as I look at these teams I'm like okay well Atlanta even with all the injuries they still look like a playoff team.

The Tigers looked like maybe a playoff team in 2025 but we've talked about some of the futility in the AL wild card race. The opportunity is there. When I look at the Tigers, I think that we're gonna learn a lot about them in their next three series. They get the Orioles, the Royals,

and then the Orioles again. So a home and road with the Orioles with the Royals sandwiched in between. So if they come through that stretch, they win each of those series, they go like six and three in those nine games. This is real. If they go three and six in those nine games, then we're probably looking ahead to 2025.

But I think this is a really interesting stretch. So, Trevor, what's your what's your side? What would surprise you more Atlanta not making it or the Tigers actually finding a way into the postseason here in 2024? I mean, the Tigers making it would be the most surprising. It would really, really help me out for my preseason predictions. I would appreciate it making it would be the most surprising. It would really really help me out for my pre-season predictions. I would appreciate it if they could sneak in. But yeah, I don't think it's likely simply because this is so weird. It's like there's a lot of teams in the

playoffs and we have more spots now. But like the three teams in it, like the teams chasing need more than one team to collapse and that's on both sides. And it's kind of interesting in that way. It's hard to count the Braves out when they've won seven straight divisions. And they're not going to win the division very clearly, but, but like they still have all those players. So like they have so much experience, man, probably going to win, have sale, win the Cy Young, you just can't count that team out. So, um, I think the Tigers would be the biggest surprise for sure.

The Braves missing though, you know, you know, I think, I think I agree. That's what the numbers say too. It means three games versus one game and you know, all that. But I am surprised by how decimated this team's got. I mean, they go out and get Whitmerefield and then Whitmerefield gets hurt. You know, so right now the infield is Orlando Arcea, Gio Arcella, Kavan Bezio and Matt Olsen. I mean that's sort of where it's gotten to. The outfield is like Louriano, Solerra and Harris. Like that's none of those people, you know, Louriano and Solerra were not on this team to begin

with. So it's really sort of cobbled together. And one thing that I did notice was, I know you can always do this, especially we did this already with Judge and Soto on the Yankees and like how well the team does when their best players perform well. So you can kind of do this with any team, but Ozuna when he was going well, the team's offense was going well.

And right now he's in a bit of a slump where he's slugging 370 over the last month or so. And oh, look at that. The team slugging is now like 350 over the last month. In this case, it becomes even more of a actual thing, I think, than it does with the Yankees where it really is right now, it was Zuna and Olsen are the guys I'm most afraid of in that lineup. And maybe you can say like Harris and Saler can get it going. Loriano has been OK.

But, you know, if I'm game planning for this for this team, it's Ozuna and and and Olsen I'm worried about. If I'm game planning, you know, and the rotation has, you know, has its own injuries to the point where, you know, you don't even know who their fifth starter is right now. So, I don't know. I think they could miss it. I think they could, but I also think the Tigers getting in would still be the bigger surprise for me because even with that question about the fifth starter, it's Seale, Fried, Schwalbe, Mock, and Morton as the first four. They could get all of these back. The core around, even with the injuries, right? So yeah, you're worried mostly about Uzuna and Olsen as far as how you're gonna pitch these guys Harris

could be better the rest the way he's been below average up to this point in the season I don't think anybody really expected that Saler could go red hot anytime they still have Sean Murphy who's also underperformed this year and they've got a great bullpen there's still a lot of good pieces there even with horrible injury luck that we've discussed throughout the year but the Tigers trade away Jack Flaherty and are just kind of patching it together with guys, some guys making their first run of starts

in the big leagues and somehow have done enough. Oh, you're right. Their rotation is not in great shape either. It's way, way worse in terms of names that you would trust at the very least. They could get Reese Olsen back. He's having a nice little run through his rehab side. Right now, there's like a Tyler Madden, Brent Herter,

Kent Amite, like I don't know, there's like a patch it together in two spots of the rotation right now. Yeah, and even as they've kind of helped close this gap recently, they still have a bottom 10 lineup by WRC Plus. They've been bottom 10 all season, but even in the second half of the season

it hasn't been much better than that. So that's the other part that surprised me. I would have figured they were closer to the league average Running well in that facet and they really haven't been so I think the reality check is coming in these next three series The two against the Orioles the one against the Royals Brave schedule is pretty tough on the way out to they have four against the Dodgers Three at Cincinnati three at the Marlins not bad, but then three against the Mets and three against the Royals, so. There's one split where the Tigers offense isn't so bad. What's that? Last 30 days.

Oh, you cut it down to the last 30 days. Seventh, and well, listen, I know that's a joke, but a lot's happened in the last 30 days because Parker Meadows was in the minor leagues, you know. Trace Sweeney was not on this team, you know. And Kerry Carpenter was injured, you know. So those are three players that I think have really made this lineup a lot better since they've been included.

I think, you know, I'm starting to, I think I agree generally. I think that this is more a team that next year, I think they can easily go out and buy, you know, some pitchers in this sort of Alex Cobb variety where they they buy some fourth and fifth starters and you know, they still have Scoobble and Olsen moves up a spot and but the the lineups come together. I think Trey Sweeney, I don't know if he's this good, but he looks like a starter at

shortstop in the major leagues, you know, and Veerling is everything that, you know, that they wanted when they traded for him. And Parker Meadows looks like a starter in center field. So they're starting to look good up the middle and have some other guys and Riley Green looks like a stud, honestly. So they, I think that they've, they're really come together in a lot of ways that weren't so obvious even at the beginning of the season or last year. So just wanted to kind of highlight them as a team because so much has gone right for them. Yeah, I think it's a good point though

about some of the guys that got back from injuries and a couple of call-ups maybe making that lineup look a little bit different in this last 30 day window than in the second half of the season overall. Let's get to our third installment of Name That Dude season tally so far. Trevor 2, Eno 0, the game works like this. I provide a series of clues about a mystery player. Eno and Trevor try to identify that player, first player to guess correctly wins.

Really simple game, really fun game, kind of addictive and people can play along as they're listening and watching so We have today a position player Drafted three times drafted for the final time in the 29th round of the 2000 draft out of Seminole State College How do we not know you now I did not get that All right, I made my debut a draft of three times drafted we might drafted three times three times because of high school Junior college college. Yeah, just eligible every time so made my major league debut April 7th 2004 I

Hit 255 career home runs and made my big league debut with Atlanta. It's an important extra detail to have. Ryan Klesko? Not Ryan Klesko. Trevor, would you like to guess? No. We'll continue.

David Justice. No. So other teams I played for included the pirates, red socks, diamond backs, nationals and white socks. Adam Laroche. Yes. Yeah. Wow.

He looks funny. I was gonna say Andy Laroche. I got one. Wow. And you retired because they wouldn't let your kid in the club. Yeah, that was that was going to be the throwaway clue. And I'm Jesus. Drake LaRoche.

The only guy I ever blew a change up by guys. Yeah, yeah, there's a good one. One of my early strikeouts. How does that happen? Sitting change up and it got past. I don't know. I think it was just an emergency. Like it was like he was like determining whether or not it was too high or not.

It was just like, oh, he realized it was in the zone at some point. Yeah. It was one of those weird talk between. Yeah. Well, that happened. Live Hive's happy for you. You know, they're Perry's got your back. I didn't know he got up with the Braves. I didn't know that. When you said Braves Pirates, it clicked for me.

Yeah, the combination combination of teams in the era makes sense. But the one clue that I didn't know this about Adam LaRoche, he won a gold glove and a silver slugger in the same season back in 2012. That was kind of the good season, the really good year that was even better than I expected. Wow. I know it's Matt. Yeah. He had the really open stance. And I talked to him if that was like good for

Facing lefty so you could get two eyes on the ball I remember having that conversation with him and he was like, yeah, maybe I was thinking about something real quick Trevor You were saying that guys who's a front leg when they're in their batting stance guys whose front leg is back. I Was seeing these more so what were you saying about that? You're saying that like you knew how to pitch them or like if you saw the front leg was back there was something that you thought you could do to them. You know like front leg like open like really open stance. Open. Yeah the front leg is is not is not parallel with their you know the front leg is back like they're open. Oh I don't even I don't remember. I don't know if I'm saying the right word for back you know

what I mean like if I'm standing at at the plate, my feet are like this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, sit on the line, it's back, and they have an open stance. Yeah, I'm trying to think what I would have said. I thought you said something like maybe, maybe you actually want to bust those guys inside. Oh yeah, yeah.

Or guys who do that are way off the plate also. They act like they want you to throw them away, and they actually want you to throw them away. Oh, who did this? Great example of this, the opposite. He would be close to the plate and he would open up a little bit, Howie Kendrick. Would be like, hey, I'm really up on the plate,

throw me in. He wanted down and in, so he could take it oppo. Like he was just one of those weird, he loved that pitch, but the way he came up to plate, if you didn't know anything about him, he'd be like, oh, obviously, you run sinkers down and into this guy, because he's open and then he'd go really close.

So he'd be like, oh, open a little bit and then drift close and see but oh I can get in maybe like no I actually want you to throw it in there. That's that's what that's what yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so I've been I've been watching I've been seeing I think I've been seeing the pictures mostly when those guys are really open drifting to close They that they wanted they actually try to bust those guys inside But I've also seen guys who do that where they're open and they drift to close, like turn on those pitches inside and like even foul them, you know, like actually be able to turn on them. And a lot of times guys are just doing that

and they actually can't hit the ball away. That's a major problem. They just don't think so. Yeah, I was thinking, Yuli Gurriel I think is a guy that is pretty open but can crush the inside stuff, if I remember correctly. But I don't know if I've ever seen splits on away So he was really closed and like it looked like how is he gonna get his hands up in in and he can just crush Up in it could destroy those pitches in and it didn't it didn't look like he could it made no sense whatsoever

So he was probably Astros giving you a cue like I don't want this pitch in but actually I do and I can Hammer the crap out of it. The Astros love guys who can crush up don't want this pitch in but actually I do and I can hammer the crap out of it The Astros love guys who can crush up and in they're in their heyday. They'd like they can all do it All right Well covered a lot of ground talked a lot about feet hot toe yoga all the rage George Kirby Cy Young coming in 2025 So a lot of good stuff in here. Give us a follow on Twitter You can find Trevor at I am Trevor May find you know what you know Sarah's find me at Derek VanRiper, find Pod, Rates and Barrels. You

can join our Discord with the link in the show description. That's the best way to send us questions for a future episode. Thanks to Brian Smith for producing this one. We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening. College football is back like never before. I'm David Ubbin and I host Until Saturday, the athletics leveled up college football podcast. Three times a week you'll hear me and my cohost, fellow athletics senior writer Chris Finneany and two time national champion Damien Harris embrace the sport's new madness with you. We're also just going to have a ton of fun enjoying all the things that make college football great.

Check out the brand new one until Saturday, every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday this fall. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts.