Rates & Barrels - What to Watch in Spring Training Games, Two-Seam Fastball

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

Eno, Trevor and DVR discuss an unusual day at Phillies camp, superstitious teammates, and what to look for in spring training games. Plus, they continue the deep dive pitching series with a detailed look at two-seam fastballs/sinkers, before discussing a few challenges organizations have getting coaching staffs on the same page in player development. Rundown 1:38 A Rough Day in Phillies Camp 7:26 What to Look For in Spring Training Games 18:45 Reliever Usage in Closer Battles 26:28 'Two-Seamer' v. 'Sinker' 32:33 Good Two-Seamers & Newer Location Strategies 37:39 An Ineffective Sinker 48:35 Two-Seam Fastballs in Stuff+ 50:37 Organizational Philosophy v. Individual Approaches 1:06:15 Viewer Q&A Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Trevor on Twitter: @IamTrevorMay Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/r9u5jBvV Subscribe to The Athletic for just $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Friday, February 23rd. Derek Van Ryper, Eno Saris, Trevor May here with you. We have spring games in progress. Feels so good to have baseball on the screens again on this episode. We've got a lot of ground to cover. We're going to talk about what you should be watching for in spring games. What matters this time of year when you're watching job battles? You're looking at guys testing out new pitches. You're looking at guys trying to make swing adjustments. We'll dig into a whole bunch of that. We have another deep dive. Eno and Trevor are going to tell you everything you've ever wanted to know about the two-seam fastball.

So we're going to continue that series. And time permitting, we're going to talk about what you do when there's disagreement in an organization across a coaching staff. I imagine that happens sometimes, given the number of people all trying to row in the same direction in a major league organization. Gentlemen, I want to start today with what I think is the tweet of the week. This came from Matt Gelb. He's the Phillies beat writer for The Athletic. And this is the tweet. Many cell phones aren't working. A bird shit on Aaron Nola's shoulder this morning during photo day. Then the entire Phillies complex lost power.

How do you top that? Like that's the worst possible start you can have to a day at camp, isn't it, Trevor? It depends on your perspective. If they're like, well, we can't do anything today, go home. Players are like, this is a pretty good day. You know, but being a journalist, I can tell. I could see how that'd be very, very annoying especially having no phones working would they like was there a storm there was a big storm right was there a big storm there was some kind of intermittent like nationwide outage there were

places all over the place that didn't have it didn't impact me i was fine but uh yeah seemed to be a problem even beyond florida it does get worse. I mean, Joe Musgrove dropped a weight on his toe super early in spring training. And this whole year was terrible. That's worse than the bird incident, I think. I felt picking up his kids, popping his ACL, that kind of thing. Yeah, it could get worse in terms of injuries. But yeah, I mean, I'm going to be honest. We're like, oh, what else is not working?

No one got shit on. I'm going to be honest. We're like, oh, what else is not working? No one got shit on? I don't really care about that. Actually, to be honest, if I'm Narenola's teammates, I'm having a great day. Yeah, like Casey Schmidt's teammates are having a great day today. Yes, they are.

The group chat is filled with nut puns today. It's not great. You know, aside from the fact that the pants are basically see-through, there aren't enough of them. That's the other problem. So not enough fabric and literally not enough pairs of pants. So the pants situation keeps getting worse.

There's not enough pairs of pants now? I didn't hear that one. That one's news. Wow. Wow. Major League Baseball, everybody. They went single ply and did the math wrong and didn't make enough pairs, which is just single ply. That's outrageous. That's the only way to describe it, I think, at this point.

Did you ever have any undesirable interactions with an animal on the field? I mean, we see the highlights all the time of a squirrel or a cat or different things getting into the ballpark and the classic james paxton getting a bald eagle to land on him like that was that was a area has the has the birds did you ever did the birds ever get you i never got more i never got the birds no you know i've just played in a stadium with like 58 possums that lived in it and i never saw i've lived in the number one animals coming out of nowhere stadium in the major leagues and i didn't i didn't i to be honest i'm kind of sad i never got to i always wanted especially like a cat i would have loved if i saw a cat run on the field and they caught it and whatever i would inquire after like does someone need to adopt it because

i'm in yeah that how to get in a stadium cat would have been awesome but no i didn't even the only one i actually saw in person was the bald eagle he was he was playing against the twins i was there at the game um and i remember seeing it like what is happening so i think i was on the line when it happened so it was uh that one was crazy but he handled it i mean if a bald eagle's landing on me i am panicking and he kind of panicked a little bit but he just so like but i have to stay i have to like stay pat for the anthem, which was really funny. He just tried to get through it. That's right.

It was during the anthem. That probably helped keep him calm because he would have had the more human reaction of flailing his arms all over the place. And that situation could have gotten a lot worse. He killed it. Excellent. He was the center of attention at the time when it was landing on him, too. People probably thought that was pre-planned. Things like though ball players notoriously superstitious so of everyone you ever played with who are some of the most superstitious teammates you ever had oh i got one lamont wade

jr he's a superstitious dude um especially when it comes to cleats and socks. He's like, I'll wear one sock sometimes. He'll just change things up like that. Uncomfortable stuff to the point where you're not wearing an undershirt today, but you wear them usually. He's like, yeah, it's kind of uncomfortable. I'm like, how is that going to make me play better? But it seems to.

Maybe it's just for clearing out that mental block. But yeah, that guy changes things up or sticks with things uh stronger than anybody and another guy seth brown's pretty he's a baseball guy and uh he loves he loves like talking about all that all that kind of stuff like he'll take a shower if you're not playing as well which as you can imagine he did this a few times last year you just take a shower in your full uni and clean it all off um i don't know if you can do that anymore especially now in the spring draining unis. Cleats on, hat on, everything. Just go rinse off that game.

Wash it all off. If you need someone to do something like that, that's your guy. Wow. Yeah, you take a shower with the current unis on, they're just going to rinse off. You're just going to disintegrate probably. Maybe clog the drain.

Maybe not. Maybe actually help clear out the drain. Who knows? I'm sure there were some situations you didn't want to hear about like uh i've been wearing these underwear for like three weeks and you're like i don't know don't tell me about it yeah no not in no not in this sport either um yeah exactly where you're just constantly yeah no but yeah there are a lot of those a lot of weird ones a lot of not for not for the uh not for the podcast type of stuff for sure probably best to keep that one uh secret for people out there and keep those yeah so we're all excited about spring games and for the people

listening to this podcast that are fantasy players especially we have this tendency to want everything to mean something every game every bad every at-bat, every pitch, we want to try and draw some kind of conclusion from it, and that's just not how anything works, but certainly not how baseball works. But I wanted to start asking you, what should we be watching for closely in spring training? Because we know some guys are tinkering,

some guys are trying some completely new things out that they might not even use in the regular season. What matters as far as just stuff guys might be working on? When do we have some confidence that something we see in spring training might actually pour over into games that count? That's an interesting question, especially at the beginning, because you will see a lot of experimentation. Here's an example. There's been a lot of people talking about Strider and his curveball he's working on.

It's weird that he chose curveball, frankly. I thought he was going to try sweeper, but maybe that's not something he's very comfortable doing yet. Anyway, don't be surprised if in his two, three, and four inning outings, these first three, if you see a good number of curveballs, more than you'll probably see moving forward, just because he wants to see how it's playing against hitters. And those outings are usually the best opportunity to do it because you're throwing them to guys who are swinging at it or are usually younger or trying to make a splash and then the guys who aren't who are just seeing it like you can get away with like tinkering with it seeing how it's moving and stuff

without you know being worried about damage or whatever so you know that's an immediate you know dagger to your confidence if you're out there just giving up hard hit balls out of the way out of the wazoo. So you want to take advantage of the guys, maybe tracking a little bit more. So you'll see guys who are adding pitches doing that, I think early. And then I think the farther you get into the, to the spring, closer to 85 plus pitch mark is where we're getting close to what they're,

what they're seeing is working the best and what they're going to be using on opening day. So that progression is really interesting and pay attention if they're getting close to what they're seeing is working the best and what they're going to be using on opening day. So that progression is really interesting. And pay attention if they're getting success. So if they're throwing a new pitch and it's getting swung and missed at a lot or they're throwing a lot for strikes and they're comfortable with it, I think it's a pretty good idea to kind of start anticipating that getting thrown a little bit more and possibly being a new weapon

and that might translate. So especially a guy like Strider. Strider because he knows. He knows what he's looking for. That matters more than like what a model might spit out, right? Like, you know, I might, I might as the pitching coach

be telling you, no, man, like keep all that. The stuff plus is great on it. Like it's going to, it's going to be good. Don't worry about that blast. But like y'all are just, you're fighting for your lives

every time you're on the mound. So like, you know, if you give up a blast on a pitch that you're just trying out like it's just less likely that you're going to throw that thing in the regular season when the games matter right confidence is the last box you have to check so you can know about the the the stuff plus on it right and it just depends on the guy how quickly that translates into confidence and throwing it all the time the guys maybe the guys who've had a lot of success in the or recently or in the past past, like the ace guys, you know, the freeds of the world, uh, that kind of guy, he has a new pitch and he has some success. He's going to

throw it right away. It's the type of guy he is. You can see that by like his arsenal, how he pitches. He's he always does. He throws everything all the time. Guy like Bassett would throw a pitch. Like he'd learn it one day, throw the next day in an outing. Like the guys who throw everything, they tend to pick up pitches the fastest or be confident in them. Should we be worried about any of this? I remember you, we talked about this. You picked up the splitter

and this is the year of the splitter. But you thought that it, not necessarily that the splitter itself, I don't want to put words here. I'm sort of trying to remember our conversation. That not necessarily the splitter itself led to injury, itself, I don't want to put words, I'm sort of trying to remember our conversation, that not necessarily the splitter itself led to injury, but that like the way you were throwing it, the way that you had to get action on it, or like there's something about how you specifically interacted

with a splitter that may have led to some, you had some injury that year. Would there be something that we should look for? Like all these guys are trying splitters. Is there anybody that we'd be more worried for that, you know, or less worried about? Like, what was it specifically that about the splitter that kind of led to an injury season for you? Kind of the way that worked was I historically have a,

like my arm, arm path consistency was never an issue for me. So like, that's why my changeup has always been like, man wise or control wise, one of my better pitches, because it's so closely related to my fastball. And those two things, like the arm path, those were the same. And I just didn't get out of those slots. Like it just never it wasn't it was supernatural to me. It was just something that was I have a longer arm path, and it was just easier to repeat. And so that was never anything I had to pay attention to. It's what a lot of people do, though.

Sometimes they get wonky in their arm path, and then a splitter changed my arm path because of the way I needed it to move to get it to dive. I threw a straight change forever, so I threw a riding fastball. Those two things moved the same, too, similarly. So I wasn't trying to get movement on the changeup, and then once I started to think,

try to get movement on an off-speed pitch that isn't a breaking ball, my arm path changed. I subconsciously thought, I need to feel this. Like you're thinking middle finger or you're thinking pronate or you're thinking something. Or like the reach out, snap out. Like I'm a supernator guy who's trying to pronate it more than usual. It's so subtle. You can't feel it. It feels different, but it's not telling you're going to

get hurt if you do this until it starts to hurt and at that point it's too late so that's what happened i mean that's a bit of a risk with a new pitch right it's like 100 and that's why splitter it's like splitter's the big one and it's and it's and that's what's interesting but these guys were going to be throwing them at least a lot of the guys i saw like uh bryce miller i saw a bunch of videos of him learning it this offseason. They were doing it with a pitch design person at a drive line in November. I just picked mine up. And it was a lockout year.

So I kind of picked it up in four weeks and then just showed up. And they were like, that's great. And I was like, I'm going to throw it in games. And then that's just all there was. And Splitter's not one of those pitches. Slider, you can do that. It's kind of of a crapshoot but guys who've been throwing it a little bit longer it needs to bake a little bit longer and guys who say i've been working on it since i went home i would be a little bit more confident in them throwing it they're just starting

now and then how about um if they're like natural supinators or pronators like is do you think either is better i mean it's it's going so supinating and pronating pronating is sort of pulling down on your on your uh index finger supinating is a little bit more palm open yeah yeah so out and in supinator is in pronator is out so i always think of like d pads when i try to talk gaming uh i use my like all the arrows to explain everything i think now at this point it's it's working. But yeah, out and in. It seems like splitters are being used by people who are natural supinators because they can't pronate. And so it's a change-up that you can get dive on at least and kill the spin,

but you don't have to pronate as much. So I guess I'm happy when I see a guy like like bryce miller do it because he's a definitely a breaking ball guy seems like a supernator like you know has a really good spin efficiency i think that's the kind of guy you'd want to see it but when i see somebody like joe boyle throwing a sweeper that i i'm not as excited about because joe boyle doesn't have good command and he's not doesn't have that kind of slot that's good for the sweeper and I just don't think that that's going to take and if it does take it may be bad for him because the thing that he's going to that's going to make him work is that he has slider command he doesn't necessarily have fastball command but he has slider command

if he starts throwing a sweeper what if he loses slider command then he has no command of any pitch so some ways that new pitches fit into the microcosm of what you already have that i think is kind of important to think about i mean pitch design guys driveline tread those places they think about that yeah you know absolutely absolutely but not necessarily the a's not not necessarily the a's uh yeah but it is that's it's trending the right way but you know there's a lot of guys a good sweeper like sears and these i mean these guys they threw lots of sweepers and they get lots of horizontal movement as a staff so him trying that doesn't doesn't surprise me but yeah i agree with you too i think if he

had like a split like a split or something that maybe fades a little bit and something that just that he could just throw the same everything the same way because exactly he's not a just the curveball and the and the fastball areball are going to be his bread and butter. That's just the way it is. Thinking about yesterday's Dodgers-Padres game as a bit of an example here for a moment, Joe Musgrove comes in, doesn't record an out, gives up four runs, has a bad spring outing, a very bad spring outing from a results perspective. But just the fact that he's healthy and looks like himself right now,

I think means more than those actual results. As you see guys get occasionally blown up in spring training, what would give you an actual concern, right? Is there anything in execution that would be problematic, whether it's a guy coming off injury or someone that we think is completely healthy? What would be an actual red flag coming off of a bad spring training outing i would look at how things are moving more than even command or or execution like execution is probably the last thing that you need to worry about in your first outing in spring especially as a starter like

you're gonna have opportunities uh guys have been around it takes a little bit longer too and you go a little bit slower in the spring or in the summer or in the winter the winter is when the offseason is and then you kind of just you figure yourself out a little bit so i wouldn't worry too much about joe um he he notoriously has you know all of the pitches and is very good at commanding them and that is his uh bread and butter so as long as he's not like it's not we're seeing weird movement and he's also really struggling to get near the zone like like missing badly. Cause it's not something he does that I wouldn't, especially him. I wouldn't red flag any of that. But you know, if you're a guy with heavy carry and you have like a shoulder injury, and then you come back and your carries down like four inches, getting that back is a little bit of

question mark sometimes. So there's certain things that if you're trending towards that, that range of movement that isn't as good or is characterizing kind of a not as dominant pitches when you usually are outside of that range, that is when I would be like, okay, there's something missing or something that's not like physically maybe not moving the way that I need it to yet. Whether that's a build it back up situation or if that's a, it might be gone forever situation. Like that's kind of what you up situation or if that's a, it might be gone forever or a situation like that's, that's kind of what you look at at that point. So,

but other than that, especially him and then he didn't really get the best draw for the first outing either. So we got to give him that. Go, go play against the billion dollar team. Just first time. So that,

that wasn't a great drive. Good point to Yuki Matsui looked filthy. Splitter was working big time, and that's kind of a job battle this spring. We don't know who's going to close for this team. Maybe they'll go with a committee. Maybe it'll be Matsui. Maybe it'll be Robert Suarez.

Maybe it's someone else. But, you know, I've wondered for a long time if we can actually try and look at the matchups when guys enter games in spring training, which would change over the course of the spring, right? Early in the spring, guys leave the game. The veterans leave the game early. If you're going to try and use someone in a higher leverage spot, air quotes,

you'd bring them in earlier than you ordinarily would. Do you think there's anything behind that? Do you think there's actual meaning to that, trying to understand the intent of a team's future bullpen usage? Yeah, I wondered why Robert Suarez didn't come out in the first game. Yuhu Maitu also came early enough in the game that he would be going up against the starters. So that, I think, is important.

He's not one of the last three pitchers. The last three pitchers in that game yesterday, I didn't even recognize their names, I have to admit. So I think that they're most likely kind of minor leaguers. But at the same time, even though it was the first game, the Dodgers didn't run out the full billion-dollar lineup. You know, so you didn't have to face, you know, the very best just yet. I still tend to think that managers prefer Velo in the closer role.

And Suarez still has, you know, two or three ticks on Matsui. I think that that's going to actually matter. In the research, there has been that suggestion that new closers have more Velo than the closers they replaced. And so I think that is a spot where managers like to have Velo. Trevor managed without the 98 the last year. So I don't know what your perspective is on the closer situation did you know you were the closer in spring did was that was that like a fait accompli or did you kind of notice it over time by the way they were using you in the spring it wasn't given to me out of

spring honestly because i didn't really even close to start the year we also didn't win very many games but uh there wasn't many opportunities but i was just kind of being thrown in wherever the high leverage area was and we're just trying to get to the end uh that was kind of the goal so we had to see things develop a little bit and you know that's completely understandable like we weren't in the position to name anything at all and it just kind of happened when i came back that's when it kind of got like hey man like you know jack jackson who had been doing it before was all had also gone down. So, and Danny Jimenez. So the guy, two guys they had been using in my absence too, weren't available. So there was very

little experience out there. And at that point there wasn't that much to start with. So it just kind of fell to me. And, uh, it's funny. We had a conversation. I was like, Hey, can I get like two outings of, you know, lower lower leverage just to kind of get my feet wet again? I got one. And then the next time I visited, it was in leverage. Now you're closing. And then I was closing two days later.

And then I just, that was for the rest of the year. You mentioned experience. So that's something that from an analyst perspective, a lot of analysts say that the data doesn't necessarily suggest that experience is a big deal. But it seems like managers do care. What about in this situation, you have Suarez who has had American high leverage experience,

but not a ton of closing experience specifically. And then you have Yuki Matsui who has had closer experience, but in Japan, can you imagine being in the manager's shoes and weighing those two things? It's a good problem to have because I think they're both going to be good options at certain times. But yeah, I think that you're right with the trending towards Velo.

I think Velo is the common kind of thinking is you can just make more mistakes when you throw harder. And when you haven't seen a guy play much, pitch much, having that trust, you know, right out the gate is just tough. It's just really really tough and so they might need to see more out of matsui than they would see out of suarez because you know he had that uh year in in 22 too like so he's got a track record people have seen him and he had that incredible second half and those playoffs so that might give him the edge at the beginning it's probably he'll probably give him be given the opportunity first i would think um but it could be it could be a short leash where they just kind of swap like you know go to the eighth and go to the ninth uh because you know they're different

pitchers lefty right and uh they throw uh they're a little bit different they're pretty kind of different looks so like if you can get away with you, you can swap them back and forth. Honestly, them going back to back might make the other one better. So that might just be something they're kind of thinking about doing. Just let's use them like this and, and see how it goes. Because you don't necessarily need a guy like you don't need the hater where you're like, it's yours, and you're the one pitching and I don't have to worry about it anymore. You don't have to do that. It's not a huge deal if that's not what you what you do. But I think that's a wealth of riches right there. I think they're going to be fine either way. Yeah, I think people make too much of a deal. So you were a reliever, man. Like,

isn't the relievers life like your your butt is always clenched? Like, you're just like, you know, you're like, I'm ready, I guess. I don't know. I'm as ready as I remember going to be like, yeah, okay, today, when what? Okay, I'm in, you know in you know like that's that's the relievers life it's not like oh i'm sorry i won't come in in the seven sorry i mean for maybe an established five relievers or so they get to be able to say that but the almost every other reliever is like yeah now okay okay i'll do it yeah and some teams run their whole team like that if you're on the raise even pete like fairbanks is like nah i'm not coming in the seventh today sorry every once in a while you can do that but even him sometimes he goes in the eighth and adam closes like that happened last year even when

they were both when they were both fresh so like their matchups they're just like their matchups they know who's gonna be best against who and then you just kind of get a relationship with that phone that's not necessarily the healthiest but it is it is what it is uh that'll give you nightmares if you hear it enough trust me but you'd rather have it from your perspective is it better to be in a situation where it's optimized to just win games rather than knowing exactly when you're going to pitch like which is better for you winning is obviously the the the name of the game i mean that's why we're all there so uh you get the right group of guys where you all kind of know generally where it can be you kind of those roles kind of

shake out too the more you do it even if it's kind of like you know closer by committee you still figure out when it's your turn in that committee so like that role kind of does a bunch of lefties are coming up i've got the change up you know like they're probably going to go to me yeah it's like a flow chart. You kind of, the situation is a pattern. There was something to knowing that last year, especially the second half, I didn't have to worry about the phone ringing because I knew when it was me. Like I just knew it was me.

Like most of the time I was up and throwing before the phone rang. So that was something I never experienced. Like not having to worry about that phone anymore. I was like, whoa, this is, I like this. This is nice because you just see everyone grab their jersey or their sweatshirt ready to, like they look down and they grab it and they wait. And then I was just like, which one is it? Which one of you? And I never got to do that. I was always a little bit envious of that. So there is something to be said. That's pretty good too. Excellent. Well, let's get to our

first breakdown of this episode. We're going to look at the two-seam fastball. And it's funny because two-seamer, sinker, used interchangeably, but maybe they shouldn't be? I mean, that gets kind of confusing in and of itself. I almost feel like there's a negative connotation right now in some circles where if you say someone's got a good sinker, they're kind of like, uh. But if you say someone's got a good two-seamer, we're like, yeah you say someone's got a good two seamer. We're like, yeah, all right. Good two seamer. That's cool. What's going on here? Let's break this down. I mean, I think the sinker was just super popular for a long time. I grew up in Atlanta watching the Braves. In fact, who had the best sinkers? Greg Maddox, that sinker,

that was the peak sinker at the peak of sinker time. Leo Mazzoni was like sinkers low and away. You know, that's that's how you establish that was the ethos. And then hitters came up and said, well, if you're just going to keep throwing me sinkers away, I'm going to develop a swing path where I can hit those. And especially lefties develop this sort of, you know, I'm going to cover the outside part of the plate. I can even pull some of those pitches, or at least I can go serve that to right field, you know? And you got more of this kind of diving lefty with the body armor, you know, like some of these things, I think actually the trends, that's how it came together.

You know, you could wear more body armor, you you could get hit you could dive in a little bit um and you could you could serve that that out loan away sinker uh and for whatever reason that that trend died on the vine a little bit and so we came to the time of the four seamer you know and trevor i think was right at the beginning of that where we started to understand because of the data and the tech we understood ride better uh and we talked about in the last episode how it's not always easy to see ride well with the machines we were like okay you've got 18 ibb you got 19 this is good we like this you know this is what we're chasing now um and so it's become the time of the four seamer i wonder if you know sinkers are going to come back but you, the other thing that is true is sinkers give up more contact. They suppress the hard contact a little bit, but they give up more contact. And, you know, we had a theory called defense independent pitching, which

was that pitchers can't really control balls in play. And so if you have a pitch, the four seam that gets more strikeouts, more whiffs versus the sinker that gets fewer whiffs you're going to be like i want the pitch with the more whiffs and so baseball started chasing whiffs uh and that's why strikeouts are up and strikeout rates are up and that's why sinker usage has been down every year year over year for like 20 years yep exactly but well well said yes it's definitely once they found out how to quantify, we used to call it the invisible. There's a bunch of guys I played in the minors with, tons of guys, actually.

A guy named Julio Rodriguez is funny, who played with me. Didn't throw super hard, right-handed through high 80s, but he probably had 22 inches of ride, and we didn't know. But guys would just swing through this thing at 88 right out of the middle and double A. I'm like, I don't get that. I don't understand.

And that's what it was. It was like, and he had a little cut. So we couldn't, we just watched. That's all we had. So then they said, oh, by the way, this number turns into more swings and misses. And then the premium got put on that at the big leagues where it's a true zero value for the hitter outcome, a strikeout, as close to that as you can get because there's still drops, strike threes.

But nothing's going to happen if you strike a guy out unless you're on the TCU horn for us and win a game like that. But other than that, it's your best way to prevent runs. You're just trying to prevent runs. That's the currency we started speaking. Josh Kalk, that's a great phrase he used.

He goes, that's the currency that baseball trades in is runs. So like you're trying to prevent or you're trying to score those. That's how we, that's where Bill James came from with the, with the money ball. And then now we're finding all these different ways that each position does that. Pitching, swing and miss became the top of that list very quickly and then everyone tried to figure out how to do it you know the difference between a sinker and a two seam is mostly a sinker we think of as has two plane movement it has sink and fade whereas a two seam is more of a horizontal pitch um that may even have ride but it'll it'll what do you

call arm side movement i call it fade i think, what do you call, arm side movement. I call it fade. I think people call it fade, but like arm side movement if you're thinking about it in your head. And yeah, two seamers, you know, have come back in to some extent because I think now pitchers are realizing that they want to have multiple hard pitches. They don't want any hitter to be able to sit and say,

okay, if he throws something hard, it's the four-seamer up, and that's it. So they want to throw a cutter off that, or they want to throw a two-seam off that, so that the hitter says, oh, it's hard, it's up, it's the four-seam, crap, it was the cutter, or it was the two-seam. So almost using multiple fastballs as secondaries off of their primary fastball.

So you can have your primary four seam and have a two seam that doesn't look great by Stuff Plus or doesn't look great in the model or doesn't have the most amazing movement. But if somebody is expecting four seam and they get that two seam, they can still miss it or foul it or you get that called strike or whatever it is that you're looking for yeah you've talked about it is before i was just wanting to have basically a banana peel everything kind of looks the same come out of your hand but then it has late movement that brings it a different direction right so with a four seamer it's ride with the two seamer it might be that that run this cut on the cutter goes the other way and then there's all sorts of different shapes you have but it looks the same that's the important thing the hitter thinks it's one thing and it's not that and you see some pretty

goofy swings as a result of that i think we should talk about who has a good two seamer who does this really well in the game right now well when i think of a sinker i think of marcus strowman i just think he's got the best sinker in the game. Stuff Plus doesn't necessarily agree, but he also throws it a ton. He does well with it. Look at that thing. Bang. That's two-plane movement.

It's just like the platonic ideal of a sinker, I think. And we'll talk about this, but release points matter and stuff like that matters. But with him, that's a great sinker. Who has a great two-seamer? Chris Bassett. Chris Bassett. By run value, he does.

Pops is a plus 27 last year. That was the best in the league, kind of by a healthy margin. And his looks like a modern two-seamer to me. We got a clip of him here. This is sideways. Top of the zone and just horizontal across and away, right? That was a left-handed hitter. Bassett's a righty.

Runs all the way across the top of the zone. That's a really difficult pitch to hit. And that's just not, you go back to that Mazzoni-Maddox era in the 90s, people weren't throwing two-seamers there back then. They really weren't. Yeah, up. The two-seam up. I think that's when it comes down to it. Like like pay attention to where the catcher's setting up stroman's not going to have

a catcher set up ever uh unless he's running for him and it's just like once an outing he'll do it because he likes to be able to do everything but it's just not going to be the way he wants to do it like right there that pitch right there bass was trying to go up and in a freezy guy up in it um that was the popular thing to do oh he's trying to kind of front door him where it goes at him and then he comes in as a strike but that's a nice pitch because if you do it high like high in a way is not a bad place to miss exactly it's a good miss spot it's your plan b is still a an opportunity to at least not only that if you miss really bad and they they like it's you know they take it away or whatever it kind of still sets up your pitches because the way Bassett pitches.

So he can do that, and it doesn't really inform them much on what might come next. So that gives you a lot of room for error. It's not a throwaway pitch because you're still trying to be fine with it, but you don't have to be, which we just saw. And that's very, very much how he uses it. Lots of guys are starting to do that. Adovito actually tried to throw his sinker up and in more to like righties because that's a spot guys couldn't hit and he's you know he'll tell you he's like four seems not the most comfortable

thing in the world to throw all the time um he doesn't have a ton of rides so he's just like and it leaks over and he wants it to leak up and in so like right on right that's an opportunity for you to throw something that's fading in up and into a righty and if you can get a strike great but if they swing at it even better if they don't then you still have your big sweeper you could throw off of it so like that's that's kind of what people were thinking with that are thinking with that so guys who can do it are trying to do it more some of the sinkers with the most horizontal movement include Chris Sayles' sinker, but also we've got here Aaron Loop. Christopher Sanchez has, I think, a beautiful sinker. It also has pretty good sink. You can see the vert move here on the table that we're showing. For four-seamers, that's where you used

to see 17 and 18. So these guys with the most horizontal movement have taken the four seam and just flipped it on its side. And so you'll see these are huge sinkers that have huge horizontal movement. And by and large, they're successful. But it's not necessarily when you saw that four seam ride list, I think you saw more of the best pitchers in the game. four-seam ride list, I think you saw more of the best pitchers in the game. Whereas this one, you're seeing some relievers and a young starter who may or may not be, may or may not join those ranks. But, and the same thing happens if you do that same list by vertical movement and you try to look at the guys that have the least amount of, had trevor may you threw two sinkers you had the least amount of vertical movement the most ride on your two scene i will say neither one

of those were sinkers either so okay just mistakes one was a change up one was a change up there you go uh but if you if you do it the other way who has the most sink on their fastballs this is on their sinkers. This is where you start talking about the importance of your release point and how that interacts. Because these guys, Tyler Rogers, Adam Simber, Ryan Thompson, TJ McFarlane, Tim Hill, Yanir Cano, Tanner Houck, they're all sidearm, you know, submarine. you know, submarine. The reason they're getting sink is they're imparting almost like four seam spin, but they're so sideways that it's just, it is literally like a sideways four seamer instead, you know, and everything is just going into the ground. But that also isn't a list of the best pitchers in the baseball because, you know, to some extent hitters can see that arm slot and

expect it. So here's, we thought like, could you see it with your eyes slot and expect it so here's we thought like could you see it with your eyes here's a here's not a great one here's a sinker that stuff plus doesn't like that the results didn't like here is a a brady singer sinker brady singer sinker it's nine i don't mean to pick on anybody i'm just you we want to give examples. It's 90. It comes from like it's not over the top, so it's not unexpected movement. It's kind of like what you would expect. It's like the fastball you would expect from that arm slot. And it has a little bit of sink and a little bit of fade. It has a little bit of movement.

But you could see Chris Bassett's was like many more times the horizontal movement. And even Stroman's has like much more of that like, you know, that the horizontal movement. And even Strowman's has like met much more of that, like, you know, that, that, that like downward movement. So singers just lost in between on that one.

And I think to some extent you can see it with your eyes. This is one of those pitches you can scout a little bit better. If you can really see like plus horizontal movement or plus drop, then you can start to separate it out from, from, you know, the poor sinkers. That almost looked to me like he can start to separate it out from, from, you know, the poor sinkers. That almost looked to me like he just, he located it.

Well, just that's low and away, low and away on the old school thing. But what looked like to me from as like a very lay person, when I watch pitching, it just looked to me like the energy that should have allowed the pitch to break differently was wasted. Like there's something in there. Like you can see the movement, but it was wasted. There's something in there.

You can see the movement, but it's not useful movement. It's just wasted energy is what it looks like. That's how I would describe it. I'm sure there's a better way to describe that. No, I mean, you're talking about turning spin into movement. So some of it is, should he be turning more of a spin into movement? Should he be choking more spin? Or should he be catching the seams differently?

I think that Stroman does a good job of catching seams and getting some seam shifted wake. What you can see here, so on the right for me, yeah, for you two, against the blue, that's his sinker grip. It's a really weird sinker grip. Normally, two seamers and sinkers, you go along the two seams there, and he's almost across them like a four seam, but then he's turned it. So it's almost got cutter esque. Anyway, the reason this might work is if you can imagine where the seams are on the bottom of that ball, there's a seam that's going to collect. If he spins that sideways, there's a seam that's going to collect on the bottom and the seam that collects on the bottom creates a wake.

And that's what seam shifted wake is. So that wake on the bottom is going to pull the ball down. So he's going to spin that ball sideways, but the seam is going to collect on the bottom and it's going to put the drop on it. So the way he's spinning the ball would give him a good sideways two seamer. The way the seams collect is going to create the drop. And just so you know, the cutter is in green there. Look how similar those grips are.

I mean, he's got some sort of a weird cutter-ish grip on there. Reminds me a little bit, Zach Britton held his crazy sinker in a cutter grip. So there's certain ways that your grip can interact with your arm slot to create movement that's unexpected. And that's the name of the game. I mean, everybody wants unexpected movement as a pitcher, I think. Those two pitches also spin like from a hitter's view very close to the same way. But like you said, when I changed my change up to a seam shifted grip change up to get the arm side fade way more than I ever gotten like literally eight nine inches more on average it spins still in a supinated spinning

motion to where it looks like it's gonna cut like it you're spinning like a breaking ball and then it goes the other way and that is something that is disconcerting for a hitter to see because again you can pick up on that late and make a late adjustment. Hitters say they pick up on spin out the hand. They pick on hand position first. They don't pick a C-spin until it's way closer to them. And at that point, it's only a slight adjustment of the swing,

whether or not you swing or not. So guys, like I said, Miguel Cabrera last week is the guy who was toughest to face. That's what he did. He could make that decision really late and just like foul it off. Other guys swing a miss. And so that's when you see a seam shifted change up and a sinker, for example, uh, those two things together. That's when the misses are starting to come more, even if it's not moving as much in vacuum is because they look the same out of the hand it's another element that looks the same in his case it's the cutter and the

sinker look the same but they go different directions so that's how he gets these soft content the swinging bunts and then things that's why he gets so much of that if you want to see uh one that i'm sure is a seam shift away sinker there's a a, I think we have a clay homes clip in there. We do. Here's clay homes. Let's watch it again because now think about what his arm slot is. He's over the top. And then he throws a Stroman, right? Like it's the Stroman as sinker from a guy who has a different arm slot.

And so as a hitter, you step in and you go, okay. And you don't even, you might not say this out loud. So a hitter might say, you don't know what you're talking about. I never think about these things.

It's like your brain has these chunks, these like these motor functions. And it'll you won't even think about it, but you'll stand in against a pitcher and you'll see him and you'll see they move a certain way. And your brain is they know this. Here's a way that another way they know this is true. brain is they know this here's a way that another way they know this is true so they do gaze tracking now on on hitters and they can see what you're looking at as a hitter and what happens is the hitters picks up the ball at release and then the eyes jump ahead and catch the ball again and then when they catch the ball again they jump ahead again and catch the ball. And you know what your brain is doing when it's doing that?

It's thinking expected movement. So your brain has a function where it says, okay, this guy throwing with that kind of release. Maybe I saw a finger. Maybe I saw something. You can't say these things out loud. You can't be like, well, you know, I saw the finger. No.

What happens is your brain is just like, bang. Oh, what? Oh, okay. And then the eyes are like, okay, we expect movement to be here. you know i saw the finger no what happens is your brain is just like bang oh what oh okay and then the the eyes are like okay we expect movement to be here ah we caught it yes we're right and then we go up ahead oh we caught it right bang contact you know and so all you're trying to do as a pitcher is mess with all of that and be like come up there and be like i'm gonna be way up here and all the balls are gonna go straight into the ground or i'm gonna be way up here and all the balls are going to go straight into the ground or I'm going to be way down here and all the balls are going to go straight up into the air. Yeah, like that's that's that's sort of the science of pitching as it is now.

So Clay Holmes is kind of like the modern sinker, I guess, or the modern two seamer. That's a sinker and the modern sinkers. Clay Holmes over the top. Why did that go into the ground like that? Yeah, the seam shift. hop why did that go into the ground like that yeah the seam shift let's see he is kind of a the seam shifted darling because he started to do that and then he was the guy everyone used examples of to use that term um it's all about that's why i think a lot that's where a lot of the criticism the clock from the pitchers came from because that was also a function people

were using uh like just trying to get them to forget what just happened or trying to you know like now that wasn't there anymore so you had to do it more with the actual because you're in such a consistent cadence. You weren't able to use that. So that's that all kind of is attached that way. One also interesting thing

that maybe it's for a future episode, but I was did a little bit of research into Josh Hader and it is possible to throw a two seam that you seem shift into a ride fastball, which is wild. And that's he might be.

I haven't found another guy who can do it. But Josh Hader throws a sinker that rides has way more ride than people expect. I mean, I thought it was hand position because he told me he kind of tries to stay vertical on the hand, even though he's out there. So Michael Givens does this, too, where it's like, you know, you see the arm out there, but the hand is kind of up. And so the spin is more vertical than you expect.

But it is true. Seam-tipped awake, it does not mean it has to go down. What happens is the seam collects somewhere. So you can have seam that helps it stay up. The sweeper, the sweeper is a slider with the seam catchers on the top.

And that keeps the ball from dropping. So hitters see this, the sweeper and think that's going to drop. That's a slur. That's a slider. It's going to drop. And instead they get just horizontal movement that often they swing under it. And so I hadn't thought of that,

that hater might have a seam shifted for scene that does exist. That's have a seam shifted foreseeing. That does exist. That's a fun idea. It does exist. And I did some research. I searched for anyone else that was close. And there wasn't another person. It explains why he's been like he can just he could when he came up, he could just only throw that pitches because it looks like it's going to drop or run or something. And it is like that a little bit possibly but i i know that uh it's classified as a sinker haters is he like

throws it with the two team grip so it's like how do you how do you do this it's just naturally how he throws allows him to do that and he might be a unicorn in that uh in that distinction i don't know i don't know if guys are being taught it it's gonna be interesting to see how this year goes because i feel like more people are figuring it out. If you look at the best sinkers in the game, you got Bruisedar Gratterall, that's Velo, you know. Jordan Hicks, that's Velo. But you have Sean Higeli by Stuff Plus,

and that's because he's, you know, eight feet tall and, you know, throws a weird sinker from a weird release point up in the sky. People just don't expect to look up at a sinker like this. Sandy Alcantara, I'd say that's Velo and Good Shape, Brian Wu, and then Josh Hader right there. It says it's a sinker and it says it's one of the best in the game. Ryan Thompson is the first guy that throws one of those weird those really great vertical movement sinkers that we saw that's expected ryan thompson's the only one off that list that i said that shows up in the top 10 uh by stuff plus because it's more expected but

thompson just gets a lot a lot of sink so he kind of gets past that you know it might be expected but it's still even more than you expect you know so if you do something that's expected if you're an over-the-top guy who throws a four seam with ride then you kind of need like 18 and 19 these days you need to be to go past that expectation you need to go way up and if you're a sinker guy that throws a sinker with sink and fade on it you need to kind of be ryan thompson and throw way past that if you kind of throw brady singer then you're kind of then you you should you'd almost you just try to like get some yes here's a here's a look at it with stuff plus the interactions you can see those reds at the top are two seamers i think so the reds at the top uh this is horizontal by vertical movement

the reds at the top don't have drop those are two seamers you know those are those are those are great pitches that have a lot of horizontal that's like where the chris bassett pitches are those at the bottom there there's only three little zones there that's ryan thompson and marcus stroman in them um and i think what we're looking at jonathan loizaga he has a two seam and i think we actually have a clip of this but it's a two seam it's like it's it's a sideways thing look at that oh yeah and and good velo but like that's jonathan lewisica he's hanging out there in the like it has a little bit of ride still and and it just goes it's like a it's like a i don't know it's frisbee. It's a reverse hard frisbee. Yeah, like visually it looked more like Bassett's,

but with three more ticks on it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's a good pitch. That'll work. Every pitch, we mentioned this last year or last week, and every time we show one of these graphics, wherever that cluster of blue is usually where this is, but there's a dead zone for every single pitch.

It's just where that range is. These blue clusters in the middle. That's your singer, right? That's the singer right there. Yeah, that's the singer. He does a dead zone for every single pitch it's just where that range is these blue clusters in the middle right that's the singer right there he does a little bit of dead stone sinker yes and the more you're in that the harder you need to throw generally for both pitches so if paul skeens is in one of these buckets that's blue um that's just horizontal vertical movement the nice thing about stuff plus is it then goes and looks at Velo, right? And so, you know, it doesn't just do this and say, it's bad. So Paul Skeens, if he throws 102, the shape might not matter so much. I mean, that's something you said about Shintaro Fujinami. The shape doesn't matter that much if you're throwing that hard.

But if you can get both. Then you're Felix Batista, you're Derek Cole, you're like one of these guys. Just thinking about Brady Singer on the bad side of this, right? And how much of this could be organizational philosophy or even a case where maybe a player's arsenal and philosophy doesn't line up with the org's philosophy? What do you make of someone who continues to have a pitch like that that grades out so poorly that they just keep throwing over and over and over again? Where does the blame fall in a situation like that? They have scouting. So to some extent, they've been scouting a lot of, like Daniel Lynch, they've scouted a lot of guys who have sinkers. And either they're old school scouts that still think sinkers are the best, or they've convinced themselves we're going to be ahead of the next

curve and we're going to have all the sinker guys when everyone's looking for four seam guys either way it hasn't worked i mean location just the example we saw right like he's throwing it low if anything throw it up but it was it was at 90 i don't think you want to throw 90 up in the zone he's limited he's limited his options it's very interesting i mean who knows if they've like kind of been like this is just maybe who he is we get maybe we're trying they're trying to split or two or like finding another pitch that that can just set up if you have a great slider you can get away with that stuff so it's just he does i mean that's why he had a good season that one year so he just threw the slider more and it's a great slider but you have to have a really good command when that comes in

and especially last couple years his command of his fastball hasn't been very good he's trying to throw it down and away for righties all the time it should be in only to righties if especially if you're throwing that hard like he needs like a cutter he needs something go away that's not a slider or or something that's harder to get to that slider if that's your bread and butter if you if it's not that good but there's also a chance that like they just don't know think about this what you just said, sinkers in right in. He throws down the middle and towards low and away. So the two positions he throws to are down the middle and low and away.

And those are the two worst places. So that, I think, points to some organizational mix up. That's like your game plan is your catcher and your organization. And if that's what they're telling you to keep throwing your sinker, then there's somebody's not telling you the right thing. Exactly. But I knew of a pitcher that pitched for the Royals that worked all offseason on a sweeper.

He comes in to the team. They tell him to stop throwing the sweeper. He doesn't throw the sweeper. He has a 15 ERA in the first half. And he says, well, screw this. Just starts throwing the sweeper, does he he doesn't throw the sweeper has a 15 era in the first half and he says well screw this just starts throwing a sweeper and they don't notice and they don't they don't tell him to stop and he didn't have a great second half but he had a better second half and that speaks to me to like they don't necessarily they weren't giving great advice and they weren't

on top of what was happening because if they told him not to go sweeper and he just started throwing the sweeper again they didn't notice then what are they looking at what are they doing every day you know as coaches like what what are they looking at and so you know this person probably went to tread or driveline or somewhere had his own coaches they told him the sweeper is good you know he's you know he's texting them when he has a 15 year array and he's like, they won't tell me not to throw it. And they tell him to do just throw it.

You know, if they ask, call it a slider. So like, have you had that happen in your life where you're just like, I don't think I'm getting good advice from the coaches in my organization. I need to go outside or not really. I, to be honest, like those years that I maybe would have had that be a problem. I was hurt. And so I was, I was spared that a little bit.

And then coming back, Josh got to Minnesota. Like he changed things there. I mean that. And then, you know, half, half never was there working with him too.

So like, that was my filter that was being filled. And then me and have struck it up real quick. Cause I'm always asking, I mean, it's pretty clear that I'm curious about this stuff. So like, I actually was a little more cutting edge than the coaches sometimes.

And I would bring stuff. So after that point, after 2018, it was me bringing stuff to heaven. Like, what do you think of this? I saw this. What do you think of this? Talking to this guy, what do you think of this? And then when I went to New York, it was just, that's all we did. We just sat there and talked about it all the time.

And nobody ever told you like, what are you doing? Like this, this is wrong. Or this isn't what we believe as an organization. Or like, what is this? We had the prerequisite conversation where I was like, what do we doing like this this is wrong or this isn't what we believe as an organization or like what is this we have the prerequisite conversation where i was like what do we think of this and then we would test it and then make a decision together so like we were both part of the process from the beginning if you can just do that if like you go hey i have a plan and i'm executing my plan and i'm very bought into my plan ears perk up no matter how solid they are in their process that's what you want.

You want the player to be the one finding stuff and bringing it to you and so that everyone can get on board because it's pretty easy to, like, trust a guy when he's obviously done the research. But unfortunately, like, sometimes guys 22, we're just not going to listen to him because he's young. And I was fortunate this stuff didn't exist when I was 22, and I had been around enough when it started to become. So I had already built some equity kind of that way, some trust that way.

I had a little bit of trust built and people knew who I was. I was talking to a 19-year-old or 20-year-old in the Angels organization about like, what do you do? Everyone thinks you guys have bottom shelf, you know, coaching. They let go. He was telling me they'd let go of the two or the better coaches that they had in Dylan Axelrod. He was like, those are the two best guys we had. And I was like, well, what do you do on the other days? Like if you think you're you're you're high or low or whatever, you're pitching coach at your organization, at your level is bad.

What do you do? And he says, well, if you come in with a plan, they usually don't stop you. You know, like if you come in looking like you know what you're going to do, they're not going to tell you any different. So that's part of it. And I said, well, you still have to talk to him. So what do you do when you talk to him? And he said, oh, I just ask him about his playing days. That's more common than you think.

That's more common than you think. It's frustrating at times yeah for sure and you know i've talked to plenty of coaches they will talk about their playing days part of it some guys are literally there to be part of the team again like that's sometimes that's that's that's what's happening you know i'm empathetic to that but when a kid's young and like hungry to learn, it can be very frustrating. And they just search for it. They can find it.

I like that you were talking about there's a sort of trust level where you could bring something in. You trusted them to bring something that you weren't sure about. They trusted you to listen to you and then take it. There's a real trust factor between coaches and players. listen to you and then take it. There's a real trust factor between coaches and players. And so that's one thing that sort of occurred to me when I was reading this piece about the, the pirates,

this great piece by, by Steven Nesbitt and Ken Rosenthal, Ken Rosenthal about how, you know, so Cabrian Hayes, you know, I don't buy the entire narrative that's laid out in the, in the piece.

That's like Cabrian Hayes was bad. And then he talked to Joe Nunnally, this coach, and then he was good the piece that's like, Cabrian Hayes was bad, and then he talked to Joe Nunnally, this coach, and then he was good. Because if you actually look at Cabrian Hayes' process, he was lifting the ball already. He was doing some stuff process-wise already before he went and talked to Joe Nunnally. But I also don't buy that Joe Nunnally did nothing. I believe that their conversations probably helped Cabrian Hayes in some way. He had a better second half. And then the team let Joe Nunnally go at the end of the season. And I can kind of see their perspective a little bit because they didn't trust the team to tell them. So the big deal was Nunnally and Hayes were meeting in private and they said it was going to be a secret.

So now if I'm the GM, I'm like, why, why do you think we would, why do you think we would tell you, you couldn't go to the double a hitting coach? Why we employ him. We think he's good. If he's the voice you hear, if he's the connection you can make, we would love you to make that connection. Why do you think so? You know, if I'm meeting with Joe Nunley at the end of the year, I have to say, why did you know if i'm meeting with joe nunnally at the end of the year i have to say why did you know why did you keep this from us you know so that's one perspective but also you have to think what are we doing wrong that you felt you had to keep this from us there's something in our culture that we need to look at that you thought that and then lastly like a lot of the pirates young hitters are

coming through and striking out more than you'd expect so there's a lot of the Pirates' young hitters are coming through and striking out more than you'd expect. So there's a lot of moving parts. I don't want to say that, like, oh, Nunnally kept it a secret and made their best player better and got fired for it. Like, I want to give a little bit of room for, like, no, there's more stuff going on than that but i also it's a it's a it's a damning look and it's a it's it's not a good look for the organization that like they would fire somebody for working with one of their own players not a great look but more common you think and there's more stuff going on maybe there's you know they're very strict in their philosophy maybe maybe the hitting coach wants to be a part of the conversation some teams micromanage a little bit right they don't agree right away and

they have a little bit it becomes a headache and maybe the guy's not super receptive when he brought some of the stuff to him previously like brian maybe maybe in spring he didn't like the way like he had something like well i don't know about that and then that's the end of it yeah maybe the major league hitting coach had it was like you know what i why did you have to do that i was talking yeah what did i know do what i'm saying i'm the big one and that's i mean that's common it's very common and then when that happens once or twice you're like dude it's not that like just let me try some stuff and then you just got to go do the thing and then it kind of turns into a secret thing that's probably how it played out

but i do understand like the organization has been you can't hide these things because now we don't know what he's doing. But who knows if that's being a thing that people feel comfortable doing or if they're like, our philosophy, it's this way or the highway. And if that's the way it is, and you're afraid to have any, like come forward with any,

like maybe outside the box ideas or just to go against the grain and paint a target on your back, then I could see how it'd be very very like enticing to maybe keep it a secret like from a like a gm's perspective or a president of baseball operations perspective like you want to have uh tenants like truths that you have in this organization you're like we believe in the t-shirts you know like control the zone or like you know whatever it is throw gas you know whatever it is, throw gas, you know, whatever it is that you- Or whatever the fines are at the Washington Nationals.

I don't care how hard you throw a ball for it. That's a bad one, but that is an example of what I'm talking about. It's like, you want to like broadcast beliefs because you believe these things lead to success. And so you want to have all your coaches kind of in line. You want, because if they're all saying different stuff, then you have no idea of knowing, does our organizational philosophy even work? You kind of want everybody on the same page on the same level, though. You want to allow for growth because what you believe now, three years from now, you might be like, well, we were wrong about that or we were wrong about that or the game changed.

You want to be able to change with the game. And and each of these players, some of them are going to hear different are going to be better for different reasons you're you know need to hear different voices and so that i think is the the major tension in player development and i think a lot of teams are just like yeah so i throw my hands up and i don't care and i just get who i think are good coaches and you know and and they go to driveline they get better so why do i need to spend that much on player development this is part of why player development is not being spent a lot of money on is because they can be like, well, you can either go to driveline, get it better or talk to one of our guys and maybe just magically get better. But it's just too hard to make everyone believe the same thing and stay on top of it and keep the org going in the same direction and also leave room for nuance.

How am I supposed to do that? I can't do that. You know, it's kind of difficult. But i supposed to do that i can't do that you know it's it's it's kind of difficult but the best organizations do that like i do believe you know the the mariners taught everybody the sweeper because they were like we have a belief we believe in stuff plus and we're going to teach everybody the sweeper because stuff plus says this is a good pitch but they have enough nuance and like changeability to say okay well yeah well, yeah, Gilbert, you can't really command it. And, uh, you know, Oh, Bryce Miller, it's not really working for you. Cause everybody can see it coming. And I don't know if they're still teaching the sweeper to everybody,

but it is good sometimes to take that chance and be like, let's teach everybody something that we think is true. We were talking about the twins batters. I don't know if you ever noticed this, but the twins batters, we have this, there's this new stack called a Seager, which is just, do you swing at strikes aggressively at hittable pitches aggressively and not at unhittable pitches? So not just looking at chase, but looking at how aggressive you are in the zone. And the twins are really good at, uh, at being aggressive in the zone and being passive outside

the zone as hitters. And then when they hit the ball, they hit it hard and they hit it in the air. And this seems to be true going back like 10 years, like at least five years, like in the StatCast era. They're like one of the leaders in barrels over the whole list of five years. Like they have an ethos.

They have an idea. And it doesn't always work out the exact same way. Royce Lewis is not the same guy as Edward Julian, but they got taught some of the similar things and it helped them get better. So I think the twins are a pretty good example across the board of player development. I think they're kind of an underrated one. I agree. I watched that happen. Anyone asked me about going there, I'm like, they have a good organization that knows what they're doing and they have a philosophy and it's going to be apparent in the moment you get there. And that's pretty much all you can ask for. Right. And that's up to you from there at that point on. Yeah. You just have an idea. Yeah.

And then afterwards you can say, okay, Trevor has a different idea. Let's listen to him for a second. Yeah. Let's adjust. Let's adjust off the idea. And when you get stuck on the idea and you're not willing to adjust, you're not the people that can do that very well. Or they they for some reason, they can't think bigger. And those are the people that are the ones that are supposed to be like your mentor, that can get frustrating when you're trying to expand outside of the knowledge maybe that you're the group your organization has. So

yeah, definitely. But that's the best way to do it. Thegers raise the twins these guys they're very good at that astros and what i read in that piece with the pirates is like they're trying to get to the moment where they have an ethos they're trying to get to the place where they have a plan and so maybe it's just hard to be like well we couldn't be that open-minded right now because we haven't even gotten to the place where we have a plan and everyone knows what the plan is. You know, we're still trying to fire the bad coaches. Like how long do you need? Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I mean, yeah.

It is a question of how long that takes. It could take a long time. I mean, you have a lot of coaches you have to weed through in the minors. There's a lot of coaches. You could have a good plan or a great plan. If you don't have good players, it's only going to get you so far. Right. So then there's the scouting question too, yeah that's a huge part of it i want to get a couple

questions and i know we're running a little long let's get this one in here this one's from bob this is the other man people are firing a lot of questions in here why does it seem so hard for teams to make adjustments in season speaking mainly from an offensive standpoint you can might look at your process stats and be like well i'm still hitting the ball hard i'm just not getting lucky and then i think that one of the biggest hardest questions especially as a veteran is to say like this thing that got me here to the big leagues is this like one of those like short-term dips where i just need to keep going through this or is this like an existential crisis and i need to actually make a big adjustment? If it's a small adjustment, I think people are making those adjustments.

I think people are making small adjustments. But if you're asking for like a big adjustment, a lot of times that's going to happen in the offseason when they said, well, that was a terrible season. I'm 29 years old and I just had the worst season of my career. Now I'm going to make a swing change or I'm going to do this. I'm going to do bat speed training, whatever it is. I'm going to go add a new pitch. I'm going to go to drive. I'm going to make a swing change or I'm going to do this. I'm going to do bat speed training, whatever it is. I'm going to go add a new pitch.

I'm going to go to drive. I'm going to do weighted balls for the first time. But in season, drastic change, I think is I think and you can maybe speak to the schedule is also something that doesn't really lead

to opportunities for drastic change within a season. You have to perform. Performing becomes like we always say it doesn't matter. I was told on my relievers none of this matters until you get out there. If you this stuff doesn't translate into success out

there they only watch that no matter how much they act like you know they're keeping track of how much you run every day if you're out there throwing well it doesn't matter how much you're running every day at the end of the day none of this matters if you are if you're yeah some guys can do nothing and be successful obviously that won't last for a very long time, in my opinion, in this game. But if it is working at the time, there's simply nothing you can say. You just can't prove that it's not going to work until it doesn't. So that's what it comes down to. But I think that organizationally making adjustments, which is interesting, the adjustment part is built into your philosophy.

It's baked in. And people, the teams, which is the middle of the road, I think the middle of the road i think the middle of the road like the middle you know 15 teams that are kind of have a philosophy they tend to not have an adjustment built baked in and that's that's the problem um so they come up they have their thing they're gonna do it and then they're like it's not working for like too many guys at the same time they're like now what do we how do we win games here what can we lean on how can we adjust or is there like a new pitch that is going against our philosophy how do we make an here? What can we lean on? How can we adjust? Or is there a new pitch that is going against our philosophy? How do we make an adjustment here? The teams that don't

have that baked in are much slower in making that transition. You see certain teams adjusting quick and other teams Which teams added the sweeper quickly? That's almost a good example of how good is the player development in that organization. The Mariners, the Dodgers, the Yan in that in that organization the mariners the

dodgers the yankees they were throwing the sweepers right away it's a somewhat related question here from sean is the biggest inefficiency in player development at orgs who struggle over and over a mindset gap a process gap or a resources gap i think process and resources are the top because they're linked um you get new processes processes going, and then you need the resources to make the analysis of that process keep going. So it's like, are we willing to try this new machine or this new technology? Are we willing to try this new pitch, which is kind of a technology at the end of the day? So are we willing to put these new things that have been discovered into our philosophy and how quickly are we willing to do it? And then if it's something that everyone there isn't quite, doesn't quite know about, do

you go out, do you have people that will go out and search for that information? Would they go to the pitching conferences, your pitching coaches and learn something new? You have to pay for them to go to the pitching conferences. Yeah, exactly. Then, then, then resources come in. What resources do we have in-house and what is our ability to go get information outside of outside of that and then how willing are we to

do that some teams are really like sticklers on it being in-house and it being their idea i feel like that's just hubris but it is what it is right there are certain teams that literally like they didn't come up with it they don't want to do it which doesn't make sense if you're really trying to win but you know that's also like there's all tons of companies that do that. So like it happens, but it's really interesting. But yeah, I think it's definitely process and then resources. Sometimes you're not willing to change the process because you don't have the resources. And so you just kind of stay and you're OK with that.

I kind of view towards resources, number one, if I had to rank them. And the reason the reason I'm giving is that the resources will get you the better people. You're going to get better people if you pay better. They'll develop process. Yeah. And they're going to have a better mindset, you know, and they're going to have and they're going to have a better process. What you know, what is process a lot of times other than better data and tech? Well, that costs money. And I think that the hardest thing about resources and player development

is, you know, Kyle Bode told me this once. He said, you know, if you want to know how good you are at player development, you have to know first, this is how good the player is. You have to know that.

Well, we're okay at player evaluation, but it's not like that has no noise. It's going to have some noise. He might be better than we think or worse than we think, but we think this is how good he is. Then we're going to have some noise. These might be better than we think or worse than we think. But we think this is how good he is. Then we're going to do some stuff, you know, to this player. And then again, we have to test them at the end.

So we have to know how good that stuff is that we did to him. And then we have to test them again at the end and be like, this is how good he is. And each of those things has noise. Right. So, you know, you can the sort of the driveline take is, OK, let's test everything. We're just going to everything where they record meetings between coaches and players so that they can use AI in order to look at how good how coaches speak to players and optimize that. You know, so like they test everything and that's one way of doing it. Like they test everything.

And that's one way of doing it. But if you're not testing everything and it gets harder when you're an organization, because you can't like your aura ring idea. We were talking about this, like you're the way that you were, the stuff you were tracking that that would be really valuable to an organization. How are you sleeping? How much are you drinking? And what are you doing? When do you go to bed at night?

When do you actually sleep? All this stuff would be super important for a team to know the players may not want to give it to you and they have the right over that data in the first place they very much don't want to give it to you frankly it's a hard no for most guys that makes it difficult so a team says wow that just looks difficult you know like yeah you want to give me you want more money for what that machine are you sure it's going to work you want you want you want me to give you money to put like weird goggles on hitters so that they can like watch pitches and then tell me about how their eyes are doing and you think this is going to make us better and you need like two million

dollars for this i don't know. Just look how slow some teams are to get Hawkeye. Anything that's an expense is going to be like pulling teeth. And especially the people trying to pitch it, don't fully understand it. You're not going to get that funded. You got to have the people to get it. And there's not that many yet that truly have a deep understanding, top to bottom, of what makes the best players.

Like you said, there's noise everywhere, too. So you got to be willing to be like kind of, uh, what makes the best players as like you said, there's noise everywhere too. So you gotta be willing to be like, kind of in the, in the ballpark. That's as good as you're going to get. Right. We're pretty sure this is right. There you go. From Dan on the live stream. I agree. My boss wants to know what I'm drinking. Things are going to get weird on Monday mornings. Yeah. I mean, no one wants to give up that information. Exactly. They see us every day you got enough multiple questions in the stream trevor are you playing fantasy now i gotta ask this yesterday too i i guess i gotta though i don't know if we're trying to come up with a game that that

trevor can play along with all of us so i don't know maybe i'll just do one of the like uh just just a random make up a name and just join a random, like just, you know, open league that just, there's nothing on the line at all. I'm just like messing around. So I have something to follow along with, I guess. Maybe that's a good place to start. You got to get on our Discord, Trevor. There's tons of leagues open there.

There we go. Yeah, maybe I'll just, but the thing is it'd be cool to go anonymous. I think it'd be really fun to go anonymous. And we're like, where's this? You know, I don't even know if I'm good, but what if I am? And this guy has inside info. we're like, where's this? You know, I don't even know if I'm good, but what if I am?

And this guy has inside info. You're right. I got numbers. Speaking of the discord, our last question, which is from Yancey, longtime listener of the show. Yancey was hoping we could ask you what message you have for the 83 people that have drafted you in NFBC league so far this season.

It's the national fantasy baseball championship. 83 people have put you on a teamBC league so far this season. It's the national fantasy baseball championship. 83 people have put you on a team over the course of the winter. You should watch more YouTube. If you're a person who's on YouTube, you know that I retired and I'm getting that question a lot. Hey, are you going to come to the blue Jays? Like, like you still need somebody. I'm like, I, I do not play baseball anymore. I don't know how else to say this. Are people hitting you up for tickets?

Just like all kinds of stuff, man. Would you come out of retirement for this? I'm like, I retired in October. It was never on the table. You haven't given me a chance to miss it yet. Just let me miss it first. I'll let you know. But yeah, it's all right.

Good luck. If one of you guys win. I'll let you know. Good luck. If one of you guys win your league, let us know at the end of the year. One of the 83 wins their league. That would be awesome. That would be a good story. We'll check in on that in September. Watch more YouTube and follow Trevor on Twitter. I am Trevor May. Find Eno at EnoSaras.

Find me at DerekVanRiper. The pod is at Rates and Barrels. Join the Discord. We'll put a link in the show description. Tons of great threads going there. People trying to find leagues. People just sharing fanhood. All sorts of good stuff happening in there. Live pods in New York, March 20 and March 21, Williamsburg.

Another half brewing. Looking forward to that. It's going to be a great time. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to like this video on YouTube. Leave us a nice rating and review. Have a great weekend, everybody. We're back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening.