Rates & Barrels - Interview with Driveline's Chris Langin

Episode Date: March 9, 2023

Eno interviews Chris Langin, the Director of Pitching at Driveline Baseball. They discuss whether this season’s rule changes will impact pitchers’ preparations, and they also delve into the process behind the creation of unique pitch shapes. Eno and Al then discuss some fantasy-relevant perspectives to take away from the interview. Rundown 0:46 Eno introduces his interview with Chris Langin 2:21 Chris talks about how pitchers prepare to throw at Driveline 5:52 Chris discusses Driveline’s approach to addressing the rule changes 13:35 Chris explains the process pitchers undertake to create new pitch shapes 21:30 How important is it for pitchers to create unique pitch shapes? 30:35 Chris talks about working with pitchers on command 34:47 Chris addresses some recent trends in pitchers’ arsenals 39:21 Eno and Al discuss some fantasy takeaways from the interview Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Al on Twitter: @almelchiorBB e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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a really, really special episode here for you. Eno interviewed Chris Langen of Driveline. A lot of really, really interesting stuff. Some of which maybe you wouldn't necessarily think at first glance is actionable, but you and I were just talking and there's a lot of little nuggets there that I think are going to be useful to us for thinking about certain pitchers and maybe even a little bit more broadly than that. So we'll get to that interview very shortly here. But before we do, just a little bit of background. So, you know, you were talking with Chris about really the process that a pitcher would

go through when they go to driveline. So, you know, you and I kind of joked about this on episode last week about, you know, oh, it's like driveline is like the new best shape of my life. You go to driveline and, you know, magic happens. But it's really interesting. Yeah, Danny sent me, listener Danny sent me an image of, he went to driveline with a ring with a driveline thing on it. He went to driveline with the ring. It's become a meme all of its own. But this kind of breaks it down, this interview that you did with Chris, because not only do you talk about the process, but there's some really interesting discussion about how sometimes the process doesn't work for everybody or it works in different ways for different pitchers. And I thought that was really cool um so you know he gives

us some insight basically into some organizational trends in terms of what teams are doing what and how they're treating large swaths of minor leaguers um so that i found that part uh pretty interesting and um you know the the the whole beginning of this i met him when i went and underwent the process that these pitchers undergo when they go to driveline. I did the whole weighted ball thing. I took my shirt off and did the mo-cap. I threw 59 miles an hour. Pretty, pretty amazing.

No, it's not. And we didn't quite get into pitch design. But that's where my story finishes and Chris's begins. And I hope you enjoy. And welcome back. We have today a guest I'm really excited to talk to. Chris Langan is the director of pitching at Driveline Baseball. And we met when I was up there with my shirt off, throwing in front of the mocap, and we've been talking ever since.

And I just wanted to the nice thing about talking to you guys is that you give us a window into what player development looks like at a team level. You let us sort of know what coaching looks like. A lot of times teams don't want to let us into some of this stuff, you know? So because you guys are free agents, as it were, you kind of give us a little window in. So really, thanks a lot for coming on and talking to me today, Chris. Oh, yeah. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I love when you came up and you're wearing the pulse sleeve and getting after a little bit with the velo. So yeah. Yeah. You ran me through the arm care routine.

It was really funny. I've I've been trying to train my kid who's now in in Little League. And I, you know, I tried to without the actual weighted balls, I tried to have some of the exercises to warm him up before we started throwing. And I just had a representative, Charlie Newpar, Lars Newpar's father came down from the Pitching National Pitching Association. And they're a Tom House Association. And one of the things that was really fascinating to me was this idea of warming up to throw rather than throwing to warm up. I think your weighted ball program really is that for major leaguers. But do you have any other aspects of getting ready to throw that I maybe not undergone? Like, do you actually expect them to have run or done some light lifting or anything before you even start

the arm care routine? Right. So typically the, I mean, the HP staff that we have typically is going to handle a little like pre-throw, you know what I mean? Any like warmup, getting like core body temperatures up and whatnot. And some of that may vary. I mean, look, there's going to be, it's not like the end of the world that somebody wants to do. It's cool to have some variance in how somebody warms up before they throw. You know, some guys are going to want to foam roll, et cetera. But our HP staff usually takes care of that for the most part, and that can sort of depend on guys' deficiencies and stuff,

how much mobility work they're doing. But, I mean, for the most part, at a minimum, just making sure that the core body temperature is up and stuff because, again, you're – kind of once you start doing the weighted balls and stuff, whether it's pivot picks or your first throws of the day, like you kind of said, you're kind of you don't want to go into that with your first 20 throws. Right. Your first 20 throws acting is OK.

Now throw 21 is essentially my first throw of the day. So, yeah, I mean, on the youth level, it's you show up to practice grab your glove uh get out there and start throwing you know and that was sort of a aha moment for me i was like that's a really easy thing that we can do in our practice hey run a lap you know like right right lap then pick up your glove and throw you know that that that could uh help some health outcomes and uh it's just a super simple thing so I think we're going to institute that in our practices. And maybe we'll do some of the running, they were, you know, running with your hands up and doing this while you're running and doing some oblique work while

you're running, you know, just, just trying to activate all the muscles before they before they just start throwing, you know, but, you know, you know, your uh your sort of view into the world is a little bit more of an off-season view right like you you a lot of your guys you work with in the off-season and you'll keep in touch with uh because there's things that they want to know about or they want to you know they might want to send you some data or talk to you about it but a lot of times you have to sort of let them out into the world like your babies. So I thought it was interesting to talk to you a little bit about this year, the rule changes. I know that you're not in a spring training facility

right now trying to get them ready, but I'm interested to know, like, did you guys install a pitch clock at the facility? And if you didn't, did you do a little bit of work with guys to get them ready for the pitch clock and if you didn't have that many guys that were in that situation what would you have done if you were a major league organization because we're seeing i think a difference in organizational level like there are teams that are getting that are having more

interactions than other teams like some teams were a little bit more ready for this than others so i'm fascinated sort of the idea like what would that process look like getting ready for a pitch clock season sure so i mean obviously the i think that one of the bigger things is like just saying if you've got anybody who's like you know more potential at being at fault for the pitch clock right like if you've got somebody who's towing on the line at 15 seconds or you know anything about 14 uh you know when they're not pressured to do anything that probably brings a bigger case to do that. Um, to be honest with a lot of guys that I personally had, uh, and then that driveline out as a whole, I maybe got a little luckier for, for whatever reason, I didn't have a lot of guys who were close to that 15

second mark. Um, but for, to be honest with you, uh, you know, like Sean Mania one, he's like very close to like, he was way up there. He had like a really good pace, but like, regardless of new rules, old rules, if you've got a guy like that, who's going to be on the big league roster, uh, an additional two to three ticks is just like going to be the focus regardless of any new rule changes, you know? Um, so I still think to a large degree this is actually when you let it kind of play out during these these months of the year with spring

training kind of when we let them go as odd as it sounds um and kind of let them fail in that environment a little bit uh i know that may sound like a bit odd to people it's a different environment like fundamentally a different environment you're in the training environment and that's a game environment right and i think that's the whole point of doing this in spring training i know a lot of people are upset or just like have quick opinions about it but like i i see the pitch clock is no different than like when we're designing a pitch and it's like hey we're not trying to throw the perfect first pitch like the first 15 pitches we throw in a pitch design setting, I'm not going to try to make it perfect because I want them to get some feel of like a simpler cue

and kind of go from there. Okay, and then pitch 16, now you've kind of narrowed it down to like, all right, this is what we need to do. I think that's what Major League Baseball is clearly doing with the pitch clock is like, hey, 15 seconds, let's see how it goes. Generally, there's just like immediately there's going to be what's happening right now where there's some teams that are or some players that are struggling with it.

But people are going to adapt. You know what I mean? So to answer your question, we didn't have anybody in my estimation. We did do some lives towards the end. Those guys, we did time a bit. I think that there's just some game environment stuff that's very difficult to mimic. Like you get a new ball, you want to rub it up. You got five pitches instead of three. I do think they should let the pitchers have the pitch calm, to be honest.

I think that's like, if they want to keep this thing at 15 seconds, I do think that's like one of the more crucial aspects of letting a pitcher... Yeah, I think so. Start the communication earlier yeah or right or maybe it turns into like an offensive coordinator type thing where you're you know we've got it like a coach literally beeping in i don't know but um i think there needs to be something now i think

enough guys have too many pitches that i think we might be headed towards something like that because uh now with the throws over being limited i really think that you there's a uh impetus for the uh throws over to be called from the dugout so now you're uh you're you're because you're really they're a precious resource you know and you don't want to throw over if you don't have to and so you kind of want to manage that and so we may see a little bit more control out of the dugout but uh you know there's there's these funny trends in baseball, and there's like, sometimes you just can't tell about correlation and causation. So we've looked, and over the course of the last, you know, 10 years or so,

as long as we've been able to measure it, pitchers have gotten slower. You know, the pace has gotten slower, and Velo has gone up. And so there's been a real, like, assumption that those things are and that and it makes a little bit of sense from a weightlifting standpoint that like if I'm trying to do reps at a max, like I could maybe, you know, take more time between each rep and I might be able to do more reps of my max. However, I looked at like guys who had changed pace and there was no real Velo differential. Um, and I believe we've talked about this a little bit, but like you guys don't coach guys. Like you guys are trying to coach guys to their upper ends of their Velo. Like that's, that's part of the driveline philosophy, but you don't coach guys to take longer on the mound. Like you don't tell guys to take longer on the mound like you don't tell people to go slower like you haven't that hasn't been part of the driveline ethos in the past right like that's

not part of what you guys coach no there's occasionally guys who like when we do like plyo velo where basically they're in an environment that's weight like but for reference i won't get into too much but we'll throw these different type of balls and basically throw them as hard as you can, uh, for the most part, and it changes the environment a bit. So guys, what'll happen is they take 12 seconds between pitches while they get in this drill and they take about five seconds and that's like, all right, take a second. But yeah, for the most part, uh, I think guys kind of have their natural, Hey, this is what I'm comfortable with. And obviously some of these guys are going to get nudged towards uh being a bit quicker but i look i i know some of the the research and such on like taking time uh between reps and stuff with uh i look i i'm one of those people i just don't think

this is going to make as big of an impact on those types of things i really personally don't. I figure if it would, you would see more guys who are at this upper end of pace that would be frank. Some team would call them up and yeah, some team would call them up and they'd be like, Hey, let's get this guy slowing down six seconds and see the below uptick. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So all the teams, especially the smartest teams, all of a sudden all the raids would be like you know at 25 seconds you know like right what's going on here so i think i think you're right also what aren't we seeing i don't know how much uh spring training you're watching but aren't we seeing that like a lot of hitters are uh actually getting it's like seems almost like more hitter

infractions and if it's hitter infract, it could actually be the hitters that are pushing the pitcher pace. Right. Right. Right. Right. No. Yeah. That could be.

Yeah. I think the, yeah, I would say the hitters is honestly probably the, in terms of like getting balls, things like that, or, or strikes call on them.

I think the hitter is probably the one that right now is in my estimation, looking at it, maybe making the bigger adjustment. It's just like, you just do not want to get a hitter infraction. I feel like it's just like the, you want to make the pitcher throw the ball. Yeah. I didn't want to give up a strike.

It's too hard to throw a strike, you know? So I think the hitter is penalized a lot more if they're not ready than the pitcher, you know, in my opinion, at least. Yeah. The one thing that's interesting to me about pitch design, you kind of were just talking about it, was this idea, you know, out in the public sphere, we see more of the successes, right? We see like you guys with maybe a Ronald Lopez image thing,

or the Matt Brash one was pretty cool where you're like, Hey, we're trying to teach him a cutter. Here's some like struggling with it and boom, here's the cutter. It's beautiful, you know? And so we, and we see the Ronaldo Lopez or we see some of the Mitch Keller stuff out of tread where you're like, Oh man, like they said they did this and they did it and it's awesome. You know? But you're, you,

when you're talking about like, if we had the first 16 throws, like we're not really looking for it to be perfect. What's the sort of role of failure in pitch design? And like, is it much harder than people think? I mean, I think people now think that with all the data and the tech, you just say, okay, he went to driveline and developed a cutter.

He has the cutter. It's 100% lockdown, ready to go. I mean, it doesn't work that way, right? Like pitch design is not something that's 100% science. Whoa, what are you listening to this for? Wait, who's talking? You know you're driving a 2024 Ford Escape with available Alexa built in, so you can change the music.

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frothy steamed or ice chilled milk, and topped with marbled chocolate curls. Now that's music to our ears. Available hot or iced, only at Tim's. Right. So, I mean, I think the thing where maybe it comes off as easy or it's like how did this guy develop a pitch so much quicker is we do have more data with the hawkeye implementation um obviously us in general generating our own data with cues and things that we're using to kind of try to get the ball to move

how we want to so there is a process that i think is a heck of a lot better than it was before of like is this guy a good candidate for this pitch if like whether you're going for uh you know whether you're going to max out the stuff plus of the pitch or you're going for like just core results you know what i mean like we're always shooting for results but like you at the big league level you'll get some guys who just like boy needs to get a righty out so like we're going to sell out for this shape even if it's uh you know maybe through through both righties and lefties it wouldn't perform as much as another pitch shape um so i think there's definitely an analytical layer of like all right this is a good pitch shape for this player and it makes it quicker you know um but yeah i think or what i've learned in my estimation of doing it is you want to basically

if nobody if somebody has not thrown the pitch shape before get them to exaggerate it in both directions like if they're trying to throw a sweeper make them throw something that's just massively huge right massively huge and then have them go the other way make them throw something that's like you know they get behind it too much because it just it generates feels that they then know okay that's bad that's bad that's good that's good that's bad okay now i know what the good one looks like and i think a lot of times it's kind of with this pitch clock thing too. People are, it needs to be 18 seconds. It needs to be 20. Well, just like, but let's, let's see what happens after, you know, each game and see how much those reductions, how much less people are getting penalized, you know? So it's kind of that same

trend, but trying to find the right feel in between two extremes right right um but like the grip stuff the seam orientation stuff uh that stuff is you know we didn't have that i think uh before 2020 or at least teams didn't to the level they knew like the importance of it probably wasn't known uh and now that it is it's much easier to create some of these pitch shapes uh and do it in a quicker manner um but to your point there is some go ahead good i mean are they're just like are they're just pitches that uh that you come to the plan with and they're just not gonna have that feel like they just it's just not it's just not in their in their in their toolbox it's you know i used to think of like pitchers as being sort of natural supernaters and natural pronators right and so is that just part of the thing that you come to the table with we're like oh man it looks like you're sort of a natural uh you know pronator so you know you're probably not

going to throw this uh amazing uh uh what is it probably sweepers is a sweeper hard for a pronator you know there are there's some pitches that are. Right. Right. I know there's definitely like, there's an element of like splitters with over the top guys for sidearm guys, like good luck. Like it's very difficult to get somebody who's sidearm. Right. Right. And then there's also a, if you've got a guy who's like, you know, middle and spin efficiency, or he's like, you know, let's say a pronator is a a supernator is anything below 85 if you've got a guy with 85

percent spin efficiency and you're going to try to tell him to turn over a change up you know that's you know you shouldn't even be really trying that you know what i mean so there's certain basically as you bias towards one end of the spectrum and as you're evaluating like hey how's this going you sort of have a mental clock in your head of like if we're trying to cutter this guy's two finites well uh and like the first five pitches aren't going well there's a hell of a lot more persistence with that guy to keep attacking it than the the guy who's like a little bit more pronation bias you know what i mean and then there's you're getting better at fitting the new pitch type it's not just like

you know i think in the past there was like, Oh, well you need to change it up. Right. A hundred percent. You want to be a starter? You need to change it. Yeah. Now it's like, okay, you know, you have these by like, you have these tendencies with your mechanics. And so we can, we can probably give you this instead of this, you know? Right. And the type of change up to, I feel like, you know, it it's i think everybody still wants a starter to have a change up you don't have to but the difference is is now we can kind of hey you take it on the one seam just throw it uh you

know try a a split change up and put a little pressure on these fingers and throw it normal uh so like there's basically different you know you'll get a guy who doesn't have a change up but the only change up he's been taught is to turn it over you know what i mean so like there's basically different you know you'll get a guy who doesn't have a change up but the only change up he's been taught is to turn it over you know what i mean so like effectively he's never been taught this form of a change up that fits his it fits his biases better basically right um and uh with the spin tilt and observe tilt you can also kind of see if it's a coaching fault or the athlete's fault basically the idea would be the athlete doesn't know steam orientation type stuff. The coach should, you know? Right. Right. One question I had about that was, uh, so Hawkeye has directly observed spin axis, and that was a big leap forward in our model.

And our stuff model was a big change in it when we were able to, to put in the differential between observed and inferred spin axis. So basically seam shifted wake, right? What sort of products are there out there, data products, tech products that can do that other than Hawkeye? I just talked to Rapsodo. They have a new seam orientation product in, you know, seam orientation aspects of their newest product. Is that, how do you,

how do you tackle seam shifted wake in your in your training sessions sure so i think at a i think at a core you know the the track man does now have uh the ability to do inferred and observed so now it's not like perfect on every pitch type but you can see that in the individual session obviously when you're working with big leaguers you've got the data from the season and you can see that. So that's like a, you can kind of almost go into the session having an idea of what grip they're using.

And then the, their episode is also another way to get some inferred stuff that'll get you the most amount of like inferred observed. If you have that paired with a track, man, and you know, with what we have at least. Well,

it does speak to, it does speak to this. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Oh, sorry. track man and you know with what we have at least well it does speak to it does speak to this yeah yeah sorry oh sorry so the the seam orientation stuff specifically is going to be more looking at the for us at least at the current point looking at the camera and you know kind of verifying uh you know did this guy get too far up in front of his sweeper did he get too far down is he getting the right spin efficiency the edutronic is totally important the high high res image i think so i i think that i think that's gonna pair that with what you're seeing i think i i still think too many people are maybe just due to difficulty of setup and like the you know getting the settings for for outdoors indoors i think that camera is

not used enough in in pitch designs to be honest with you even though it's been around for so long um there's this there's this interesting aspect to to stuff plus i know that stuff plus is part of the coaching process for y'all um but i've noticed that you know every time we train our stuff plus like our stuff plus is a baby because we only do have hawkeyes for three years right and in those three years we had covid we had the sticky stuff enforcement you know now we have pitched like it feels like it's been a pretty tumultuous three years and and the sticky stuff enfor. You know, now we have pitch. Like, it feels like it's been a pretty tumultuous three years. And the sticky stuff enforcement, we actually saw a change in league-wide stuff plus with the sticky stuff enforcement.

So one thing that was interesting to me is that, like, our stuff plus has improved. Our model has improved as we put more data in. But it is a kind of a living model because, you know, you want to be unique as a pitcher and uh you know unique is better and the model is pretty good at doing that but then we start chasing unique so the first few people that threw a sweeper i don't know who the og sweeper is is it kluver i don't know there's a there was like uh there had to be is it maybe yeah i mean yeah because he killed the curveball right right yeah i get your point i i think i know where you're going with this so we have like there was there was an og sweeper that in the model was really good and so that

that produced good results and now everyone's throwing a sweeper you know it's like this the sweeper is the big thing and uh the more people do the sweeper, the same thing has happened actually with vertical ride on fastballs that, you know, used to be that like 17 was good enough, I think, in terms of induced vertical break. And now you've got to chase past that because 17 is almost average. Right. And as soon as something is average, the hitters are like, OK, I just target the top half the ball.

I got it. You're a the ball. I got it. You're a vert guy. I got it. I got it. I've seen it. I see a ton of you guys now. Like everybody's a vert guy, you know? So you either have to chase vert beyond it or start doing these cut ride fastballs that people are doing, you know, or maybe we'll see the return of the sinker.

But anyway, we're always chasing unique. So what happens after you've taught everybody a sweeper? anyway we're always chasing unique so what happens when after you've taught everybody a sweeper like does the sweeper still perform the same way or are you just going to chase a new pitch type what what's the role of sort of uh it's almost the the role of like skepticism and open-mindedness like you know there might be a new pitch that we don't know about yet that that is more unique and it might not look great in our stuff models now but but you know what I mean? Like what is the, it's changing over time. Like what happens, what happens when you teach everybody a sweeper? What happens next?

Right. So I think your point is right. I'm just like constantly getting more of this data and seeing like the, the numbers I have in my head, I think is like in 2020, 15% of riding siders had more than 10 inches of sweep. And last year it was 26%, which is a massive, that's massive change. You know what I mean? It's year over year, man. That's crazy. That's just, and that was also with like a lockout. You know what I mean? So like,

you think about how many more we'll probably see this year. There's just one, I think, I'll get to your question, but I'll kind of just very briefly summarize this. The stuff model has obviously influenced people to make shape changes with far more confidence than they did previously, where you get like a spring training at most. And, you know, there's some variance. The sweeper doesn't look amazing. Like if you're scouting it, like if you're watching it, a lot of times the sweeper doesn't look amazing. You know what I mean? It looks kind of like a slower cutter or something. Right. It probably depends, too. Another thing is you might just introduce more bad sweepers you know that that's part of it too which is why the stuff model is so important is because it's like well if he throws a

gyro 88 like and there's obviously other elements like command and things like that i don't think gilbert came up gilbert came up with the with a sweeper and that was better by stuff plus than his gyro slider but he can command the gyro slider a lot better and so right you know just throws 98 with extension he's way over the top um and i think that doesn't seem like the profile that a sweeper guys right right right um so there's definitely some you know the first mover advantage if you want to call it that it's probably been lost in that but i i mean it's also just like no different than like you know people throw more sliders than they did you know 10 years ago by a decent bid that doesn't mean that you know you you you don't have the variance team to team maybe you used to or like

the ability to like just do that and be good but it doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't throw more sliders still you know nba what the interesting one to me is the nba because what basically happened is everybody shot three pointers and now everybody has to shoot threes so yeah so what happened is i what the offense is way better and what you did instead of i think everybody thought what would happen is three point percentage would go down as people took more of what they did. They just introduced different players into the league and took those old five, you know,

Andre Drummond, those types of guys just like don't have roles anymore. But to get to your question on the sweeper specifically, like hitter behavior has been much better against it. I think over the last three years, I think just better swing decisions on it is number one. You see it more. three years i think uh just better swing decisions on it is number one you see it more um i think the the stat i had was like 59 in zone swing percentage in 2020 or 2019 now that's up to 65 percent um and

they're chasing it a little bit less too so i think people are seeing the shape more um they're having having a better idea of how to hit it um now that doesn't again i still think that you know if you're a right-handed pitcher and you cannot get righties out and you have any capacity to supinate like it's just still a really good pitch if you can command it you know um so i i think i think obviously hitter behavior is the biggest thing that changes there with the sweeper and such um i don't know that you know i think we're probably going to start approaching guys are throwing this pitch and they shouldn't be.

But if you look at like the Yankees and the Mariners minor league, like numbers, like they just have every single pitcher in their org throw it. And until they decide it's bad. Right. Right. Right. And that's like, people think that's like,

I get how people can think that's, it is oversimplified, but at the same time, like this pitch. Might as well cycle through it. Might as well cycle through it. See if you can do it. Right. Right. Right.

But I don't, I don't know if that answers it enough for you, but I do think the, the other thing is just the command. I think people really underestimate, you know, you could have two really good stuff plus pitches, but if it's a sweeper and it's a big curve ball and you can't, you have 30 command. What can you throw in the zone? Right.

What are you giving that guy then? You know what I mean? You know, you got a fastball maybe, but if you're throwing a sweeper and a curve ball, guess what? Your fastball is probably not that good. It's like the trade off to the typical form is like, if you can throw those two pitches with high stuff, plus fastball is usually going to be cut a little bit and not necessarily in a good way so right and

i've seen too many uh profiles of pitchers where they have a high stuff plus pitch that they just can't throw like carlos rodon has always had a high stuff plus change up and uh he just he can't really command it so it's really can only be almost a waste pitch you know and then there's other pitchers that I've seen that only have fastball command and you just get keyhole because they're like the only thing oh it's 2-0 the only thing you can throw in the zone is the fastball you know so I'm gonna get ready for it 100 percent that and to answer on some of the pitch design stuff you're talking about there, that is where a lot of the selection bias kind of dies.

You'll have guys, I think the best example, to be honest with you, is splitters. I mean, you get an over-the-top guy, they'll throw a damn good splitter in a pitch design or a few of them. It looks great in the moving images they throw on Twitter. Right. And I mean, I've posted a few of those, but like the, the point is a lot of times you got to know what you're competing against. Like how good was the previous change up, right?

If they're just not going to have a change up, you should do that all day and see what happens, you know? But I think that's probably the splitter is probably the best example of like, there's guys who could have absurdly good stuff pluses with it, but you just don't see it even introduced into the data because they know what's going to happen you know it's just going to be too many balls um and to your point i've seen that a ton where uh i genuinely think like people look at the mlb and they look at stuff plus they look at command plus whatever you want to call it and they think well what like they don't realize that there's some pitchers that actually have way

better stuff plus potential but to your point they can't command the pitch so they don't get to throw it so their stuff plus is reduced that's an example of command actually holding back somebody's stuff plus because they can't get into contact they they don't have maybe the ability to throw these swing and miss pitches in contact inducing counts if that's what you want to call them and so they just throw average fastballs and that's not the picture they were in the showcase you know what i mean well hey hey i just got a driveline guy to talk about command uh-oh i thought you guys were just about throwing it as hard as you can you guys nobody nobody in the driveline can can put it anywhere don't you hey i tried it

a well-placed 88 mile an hour fastball can get people out hey we're trying to always set up our guys for success i mean there's definitely a component of definitely a component not a lack of you know insufficient command data i'd say to like you know give an athlete feedback in an off season we've got some intended zone stuff but i do think that's kind of new right like the intended zone right yeah is that is that just talking with them uh about like it's sort of getting an intention from them and knowing what the intention is and then and then tracking the miss like or is it or is it because you're not in a game situation the glove target is actually the exact target and then you can just go from glove to acquisition so what we'll do is i mean there's two there's one like dude has no command just set

up down the middle which a lot of guys like that to be honest i'm not i don't track the middle middle yeah right and so people are wondering what the hell is the point of that like you're just going to keep but the idea is then you can see the misdistribution yeah and i mean i'm i think the common thing is everybody go middle middle but there was one guy i worked but the idea is then you can see the misdistribution. And I mean, I'm, I think the common thing is everybody go middle, middle, but there was one guy I worked with. And I mean, I don't like revealing names and stuff,

but he missed arm side of his fastball all the time, all of the time. And the question is, do we change the mechanics? Is there something mechanically there or do we just change where we're aiming? Right. No, no,

no. That's always how I'm thinking. hundred no that's always how i'm thinking i think that's always how driveline people are thinking it's like can we just change you know it's like the jared jaggers has a good if you had like a presentation just like if you're playing darts everybody knows the like triple 20 is the best throw per se but you know you can probably average more points if you account for like your inability to command the dart. You get what I mean? And that's no different than baseball and what the Rays have kind of done. But my point on that is this guy basically, a righty lefty command with fastballs, completely different.

Splits were absurd. And I really think it was mainly because of this command difference. But he always targeted his fastball away to both handed hitters. Well, when he threw it to a righty, it would run back into the zone. Strikes are really valuable. You know, had that worked when it was lefty starting at arm side, every miss is this way. Right.

So, okay. We can yell about him pulling his torso off and all this stuff, or we can kind of do our jobs and just put them in a, in a better position. Right. Right. Right.

And so the idea is you can extrapolate that with every pitch type. And then ideally you start with the tactical, Hey, let's change the sites, et cetera. And then at the very least, you at least have something when the guy's throwing, it's maybe a bit more deliberate because you know, it's being, he knows it's being tracked and then you can kind of see how the, the miss distance changes essentially. But yeah, I, that's, that, that, that, I think it's kind of the thing that needs to kind of be configured, but I think at a minimum setting guys up for success, whether it's, Hey,

here's where we should probably put the glove and simulate like a thousand pitches and see what like the command ERA or the plate location plus would be. And then like i said earlier you just got to set guys up hey let's take 10 points of slider stuff plus off but if we throw a gyro pitch we do have a lot of stuff in our uh some of our research that says hey this pitch it's easier to get closer to your target um and if you're closer to your target your your balls are more competitive. You've got a better shot at chase. You know, we've got a, we've got a natural sense of your, of your mechanical inclinations, supination, pronation,

that sort of stuff. We have a natural sense of your command, you know, what your natural command is, you know, and given those things, we think this pitch is probably the best way to go. And all that stuff can be measured. So you can get a better sense of what the natural command is. And you can look on the electronic and actually get a sense of, you can look at their spin efficiency and get a sense of pronation, supination. So put all that together, put a plan together, coach them. I mean, I love your process.

It's really great. And, and dad at every level, what's cool is to hear you say that that you have been tracking hitter tendencies at the major league level versus some of these newer pitches like a sweeper. So you're on it in terms of, you know, what happens as these things get more popular and we, we start disseminating more of them. One last thing. I noticed that Matt brash is cutter, cutter,

sinker, slider. And I think the slider is a bit of a sweeper. So, so kind of cutter, sinker, sweeper. I also noticed that Hayden Wisniewski in the Cubs is a cutter,

sinker, sink, sweeper. Is this a kind of a new prototype for, you know, hey, none of those pitches is a change-up, but it looks like a full arsenal that, you know, you can do something against both handedness and there's command pitches in there and action pitches.

And, you know, is that the new sort of fastball slider change-up? You know, is this a new model the new sort of fastball slider change up? You know, is that, is this a new model for a complete starting pitcher in a way? Man. So I think the, I think like the basic, if you're in the minor leagues right now, like, right. Where there's just like, uh, here, like the whole point of the stuff plus thing to me is more for like these minor league guys in my estimation early on. And it's like, Hey, like,

you know, 4% of these guys, you know what I early on and it's like hey like you know four percent of these guys you know what i mean there's just like you've got like 90 of these guys who just need massive variance in their potential because they're too they're just not projected to be anything above double a you know those are the guys you can have this like pretty simplistic process of like well if they supinate we're going to sweep them and then sink them right and then if they're a pronator whatever you want to call it well they hope they better have a good foreseen profile that's that'll be vert uh downward slider like power power slider yeah right um and they might be able to turn out you know devin williams i've had a heck of a time actually like or maybe a splitter because they're

over the time. Right. Right. So that's kind of the simplistic view of why those trends are occurring so much. I think is like, it's just like fits into those. And then also against sweepers. All of our like non elite prospects,

we can sort of a couple of buckets and just be like, Hey, you're the, you're the power cutter side and you're, you know, you're the power slider side and you're the, the cutter swings sweeper side. Right, right.

And then you, you know, basically what happens as guys scale up through the system, you start to recognize, you know, you get to a threshold of it's like, all right, let's get a little more contextual, add context. And that's when you might change the sweeper to more of a gyro. And now you've got to determine what you want to do with this cutter. You know what I mean mean things like that but i think at the minor league level i think i think that's where it's more like it's just also difficult to get this stuff communicated in those those orgs like top down bottom up whatever you want to call it um so like those processes those processes are sometimes it's just easier to be simpler right. Because you have so many players in my league system. It's kind of hard sometimes to be like, we have an individualized plan. That's amazing for every single player. Oh, really? How many players?

Right. Right. Yeah. You can get too, you can get way too descriptive trying to, you know, I think when I read a lot of pitching analysis or things on like fan graphs, whatever it may be, and obviously I like reading that stuff, but I do occasionally just see some like, you know, when we go in and develop a guy, whether it's a MLB team or us, like we don't have hindsight, you know? So we're trying to do the best with like the pitch modeling,

what their command is at the time. And you end up with a lot of like, well, this guy's good because he tunnels his pitches. And it's like, well, I don't know. I don't, I don't know that I would have thought that slider was you know are you telling me i should give every single guy amir garrett slider now you know what i mean it's just like i don't i don't i don't know that it's i don't know that that's gonna there is still individuality that that shows itself especially at the the very highest level the very elite you know it's funny too because whatever they're teaching our kids

you know even uh charlie charlie Charlie Newpar had to say, yes, yes. I know that what I'm teaching you right today, you know, there's major leaguers who are not doing it, but there are major leaguers who do all sorts of different things. You know, I'm like, we can't just look at every major league and be like, oh, this guy does this. So my kids should do it that way. No, it could just be that that guy is elite and a unicorn and crazy. Like, you know, so anyway it's's it's been you've been super nice with your time and uh and uh i really appreciate that was a really fun conversation uh and i hope our listeners got some some value out of that and uh chris i hope to see you around

uh the backfields or maybe i'll i'll have to come up and see if i can blow harder than 59 yeah for sure man i appreciate it you have done this for a lot longer. I'll have to get one of those stuff plus beers too and chug those down soon. So thanks for having, thanks for coming on. Yep. All right. Well, welcome back. That was just a fantastic interview, you know, and you know, also the little bonus of you doing an impersonation

of the driveline skeptic. I am too online. I think pitching Twitter does sound like that sometimes. Yeah. And I think it was a good personification of it. I'll appreciate that. So, uh that. So there's one or two things from that interview that I just want to dig a little bit deeper you and I have talked a little about Matt Brash and how, uh, there was, there was some hype around the new cutter and his, his tweets about it. Uh, but is Matt Brash somebody that you think needs to use that pitch? Who are some other pitchers maybe who, who need a new pitch this season? And we should pay attention to whether or not they do that. Yeah. One of the things I think is super interesting about Matt Brash is, you know, one of the, the, the, the, the hashtag on the hype video, uh, was make them swing. And so the idea is, uh, he doesn't have good command of his fastball and he throws a sweeper, which is a breaking ball.

That is also not a hard to command and be big shape. And so basically batters are coming to the plate and deciding that they're going to wait and they're not going to swing and so the cutter for Matt Brash was is really important because it's a pitch he can throw in the zone that has movement that might make them think oh it's a slider or oh it's a fastball but he can command it because the movement is smaller and he can throw it in the zone now theoretically that's great that could make him a starting pitchers it is in fact the same arsenal that hayden wesneski has in terms of cutter sweeper uh cutter sweeper sinker that's the foundation of wesneski's thing and we heard

that there are teams that are just taking all their low spin efficiency fastball guys and saying, hey, try the cutter, sinker, slider, sweeper method, you know. However, we also talked just in the last interview session after Lars Neutbar took us through his training methods about the role of skepticism and open-mindedness in fantasy analysis, fantasy preparation, in life in general, really. And I think this helps us at least, not maybe in life in general, I'm maybe a little too open-minded on that side, but in fantasy, it does actually give us a really interesting way to track things, which is, A, notice the hype video on Twitter that says pitcher A has a new pitch. Great. That is a piece of information. And if you could jump into the future and know that they actually used it, then you could be actionable on it. But maybe you shouldn't draft Matt Brash as a starter until you see him throw that pitch in spring training

because to date, Matt Brash has not thrown the cutter in spring training. So there's a little bit of an actual sort of process you can undergo where you say, okay, I saw Ronaldo Lopez has a great new changeup or whatever it is on their hype video. Well, go check the spring training game log and see if he actually even through the damn pitch, because they have to have they have to have they have to believe in it in order to execute it. They have to believe in it in order to use it. And for whatever reason, Matt Brash is not quite there yet with the cutter.

Yeah, I think that this is a really important thing to raise because, you know, for example, last week we went through some really, really early spring training results, very small samples. And even as we get later into spring training, there's all kinds of reasons to distrust the numbers, players trying out different things or different level of competition or whatever. But there are certain stats that are not the typical stats that we look at that I think are indicative of things that are important. And so, you know, the number of pitches that a pitcher throws of a particular pitch, especially if it's a new pitch, that's really meaningful. And yeah,

I think that that's, you know, where the focus be, maybe more so than the top line results. I'm really fascinated, for example, with the two pitch pitcher idea. I had a piece coming out next week about Spencer Strider. We talked about that in great length. Last year, I was fascinated with the idea that Kevin Gossman could just throw a four-seam fastball on a splitter almost all the time and succeed. What we have seen last year is Gossman throw the slider more than he ever had before. We've seen this in the past with, here's another guy, Robbie Ray, Ray, you know, sort of adding the sinker to the package in order to make it make keep batters off of off of his foreseam fastball. And to me, one of the biggest names that my model never really liked that other people really do like and who throws a lot of pitches, you know, a lot of pitches uh you know a lot of pitches without throwing a third pitch is brady singer and he throws a sinker and a slider and uh last year started throwing the change up this year so far seven out of i think 47 pitches uh were change ups um and that's right there on the bar between having a third pitch and not.

And also, the model still doesn't like it. But the other thing that was good about having projections that park adjusted and stuff is that Brady Singer still gets a 3.7 ERA in the projections because it's a good park and it's a decent division for parks. And so, you know, worst case scenario, Brady Singer gives you a 3.7, 3.8 ERA with some strikeouts and you're not hurting too bad. But I don't think we're going to get a repeat of last year. Yeah, I think Brady Singer is really interesting, and he's somebody that's really intrigued me since coming up in 2020.

He's really, really good at freezing batters, even with just having the two pitches. So, I mean, do you think he really needs a third pitch, or can you just look at the results and say, well, he's got the skill that he's been able to demonstrate without that that third pitch you know just there's no reason to think that at this stage hitters could be able to adapt i uh if your two pitchers are super super dominant like spencer striders i am i have more of an ear for it because basically

Spencer Strider has a top three fastball, maybe the second first best fastball in the game, and then also a really dominant slider. And then Singer is more pretty good and pretty good, which is I want a third pretty good. You know what I mean? Like two pretty goods, I don't think does it it for me but i've also also been out on on robbie ray in the past and uh been burned this way um and so uh i will say that the the industry is divided do you know that the uh founders of baseball prospectus uh one of them was james click and he was arguing that uhers, starting pitchers only need, they didn't need three pitches. And so basically at the foundation of the beginning of one of the most venerable sites

on the internet in terms of baseball analysis, at the very beginning, they were arguing about whether or not starting pitchers needed more pitches. So this is a tale as old as time. We may not figure it out here, but at least we can tell you that you know what verify that someone is actually throwing this this jiffable pitch before you go all in the other thing I found that I found interesting what you said was he's very good at freezing people and what we heard Chris talk about was this idea that as players see a pitch type more often, their performance or their actual process against that pitch will change. And I think we've seen that a little bit

with four seam ride. And I think we're in the middle of seeing it with sweepers. And so this idea that you just said like, oh, well, he froze people really well. Is that predictive in the same way? Because we just heard that once people saw shapes more often, they started swinging more. Once they started seeing sweepers more often, they started swinging more in zone and chasing less out of zone. So Singer was good at freezing people in the zone last year. But this year, they're going to have seen the changeup more often, and they're going to have seen him more often, and neither pitch rates as a top 10 type pitch on its own.

So that's why I think there's always the value of that extra pitch where you're just like, Oh, you haven't seen this very much. Oh, Oh, Oh, he just threw a curve ball for a strike. I wasn't thinking curve ball,

even though the curve ball, you know what I mean? Yeah. So that's why, that's why I think the, like the strider proposition is so like through the roof, you know, like so,

so good that maybe it'll work. But for everybody else who lives on this planet like robbie ray yeah i'm gonna throw a sinker that's not really that good but it's another pitch kevin gossman yeah i'm gonna throw the slider it's not a very good pitch but they don't expect it you know it's like the don't expect it part that's really important so i think we heard a lot about you know just looking into uh what it's like to use Stuff Plus in your analysis, the driveline does very heavily, in player development, how that intertwines with how we should be thinking

about pitchers in fantasy, how we should be thinking about starting pitchers in general. So hopefully, even though it was kind of more of a baseball-y thing, it'll get the gears going. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a study or two that popped out of this that does actually tell us something about who we should draft this year. Yeah, yeah. Because when he made that comment about hitters being able to kind of catch on to shapes,

which makes total sense, the more that they see them and you see that Z swing percentage go up. I would love to test that out. I think that, you know, that may be a column that I do this year. And I think it's actionable too, because in the case of somebody like Singer or, you know, I can't think of anybody else off the top of my head, but somebody that you don't have to draft all that early, it becomes an interesting experiment where you could draft, let's just say, for example, singer. And if it starts to go South in April, you go to those, those granular, um, plate discipline. He's not treating people as much anymore. They're all, they're all swinging

and stuff in the zone now, you know? Oh, that's different. That doesn't sound good. The sooner you have a reason to, you know, kind of buy into the regression, you have a sell opportunity. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, interesting stuff. Yeah, I'll be certainly thinking about ways to apply it. So thank you for doing the interview. And, of course, we thank Chris for doing the interview as well. Really, really interesting stuff.

And that's going to be a wrap then for this episode. So if you want to reach us, you can find us on Twitter. Eno's at Eno Saris. I'm at Al Melchior BB. And we'll be back on Friday with another episode, everybody. So we'll see you then.

Thanks for listening.