Talkin' Baseball (MLB Podcast) - 477 | Miguel Cabrera's Influence, Pitchers with Improved Stuff, & Expected Stats

Episode Date: April 20, 2022

Timestamps: 7:30 - Miguel Cabrera 23:45 - Pitchers That Improved Their Stuff 40:30 - Guys Who Should Catch a Break Soon   Use code 'TALKIN' for $20 off your first SeatGeek order https://seatgeek.onelink.me?rrnK/TALKIN Go to https://getroman.com/TALKIN today, and if you're prescribed, get $15 off your first month of ED treatment Get $30 OFF your first order + free shipping at https://drinktrade.com/baseball  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to talking baseball. It's the midweek episode, and we each have a topic we want to discuss. So let's do it. Let's talk some baseball. Hello and welcome to talking baseball presented to you by Seatgeek. My name is Jimmy. I got Jake sitting right next to me and Trevor Plouf coming from Hawaii. Producer BPD behind the dish.

As I said, brought to you by Seat Geek. I don't know if you guys heard Trev. I'd have seen the tweets. We announced it. Family Day. J.M. Family Day. I was getting a massage, which meant I'm alone with my thoughts. And then I usually come out with an idea.

Every time I get a massage, I just text Jake or someone and say, I thought of something new because what else am I going to do when I'm just sitting there thinking? And I said, we should have a giveaway at a stadium like every weekend and get some kids going to baseball games. So we did it. We reached out to Seatgeek, and they said, absolutely, we'll partner with you there. So not only can you get $20 off your first order at Seatkeek using the code Talking, T-A-L-K-I-N. You can also, each weekend, look to see what stadium, what city, the J-M-Family Day is taking place in.

And if you have, you know, wife, husband, a couple kids, kid and a friend, kid and a cousin, whatever, we'll hook you up. I believe they are in Atlanta this weekend. and we'll post it on all the social media, choose someone at random to send them to the game. Really happy that Seekek was able to make us help us make that happen. Also download their app, use it to buy tickets. You get $20 off your tickets at Seekek with promo code talking.

T-A-L-K-I-N. All right, we're getting more into the flow of things here as we get into like the second Monday, midweek episode. We record on Tuesdays. It goes out Wednesday, Friday. world. I feel more into the rhythm of baseball already. Jake, how are you feeling? James, Trevor, and, oh, I, B, B, B, D. I feel good, Jim. And I'll tell you what, this is another feeling that you have to feel in baseball season. The Yankees did not play last

night. And I had my moment where I was on the couch at 745, and I was like, what do I, what do I do. I brought up some games on my phone. I was like, you know what? I haven't watched Scrubs in a while. That had been my show for a long time. Like I'm at the last season and I went to log into Hulu and the login wasn't logged in. So I said, okay, well, I'm not going to click around and log into Hulu right now. So I kind of just sat on the couch aimlessly for a couple minutes and then continued to watch some baseball on my phone. So that means baseball season is back. when there's an off game and I just feel totally lost for a minute, that means we're back in it.

So I'm feeling good. Excited to yuck it up, you know, last midweek episode. We only had so many data points to talk about. And you know I'm a data guy, Trev. So I'm excited to jazz it up with you, boys. There is absolutely nothing worse than having to put in a password in your email on the television. Like we got to be better than that as a society. There's just, it's brutal.

It takes too long. You fumble around. Who even knows the remote is? I'm over that. Do I have to write password? Why don't they do a QR thing? Some places do it. There's some apps.

Is it Apple? Where Amazon, where you just hold your phone up to the QR? And if you're logged it on your phone, then you're logged in? Need it. Everyone should do that. I think Amazon at least has the, like, you go to this website, hit the thing and enter the code. We're putting on the TV. That's at least better.

and the typing. We got to figure out that whole like TV phone connection. It's just it's not there yet. You know what is there though. My skill level in all things ball related. You guys saw, you know, I've been playing a little bit of catch on the beach. You know, all the moms checking me out. Like who's that stud over there?

He can catch one behind his back. He fields ground balls with grace. You know, that's what they're saying. But last night, Jake, I told you this. Now, Jimmy and BBD, I'd be prepared to be impressed here. Very impressed. I went to a luau last night, okay? There was some traditional Hawaiian attire there,

and there was some traditional Hawaiian games. Now, one of the games, James, I think you're particularly going to be interested in this, as you are a fellow gamesman. It was two little sticks, about four inches apart, one Jake's Dorealeigh-Pecker apart. and you had a little ball like a rock and you had to roll it through so a lot of kids were trying some parents were trying to no avail and I said ask the guy like can you do this he's I can't really do this but that guy's really good so I end up playing this guy who do you think won I think you I beat him at his own game I'm just on a winning streak right now and so are you because there was a really

nice article that came out about you along with a podcast you did. Congratulations. All my business friends I know are going to be texting me because they really follow this guy. Yeah. And he wrote a nice little article on you and how did you want? How did that go? It was good, man. It was part of like Cique, yes network announced that they were working with us and it got a lot of press. And then seek geek said, hey, we want to, we want to be in that business of press release. And I said, okay, do a press release and I did a podcast for him. We got that good smell right now. Everyone wants that good smell.

And yeah, there's nothing wrong with four inches. Some say five's okay. And yeah, getting a invisible message text from Trev at 12.15 a.m. played some rolling a rock through two sticks game at a local luau. Beat him, obviously. Which brings us to the baseball. You know, that game, Trev, is called Moa. Pahis, Pahee.

Well, I mowed it down. Moapaii right there, baby. And you know what was great for me? Even Olivia was impressed. It takes a lot to impress her. And, like, I did it last night because it was, like, in front of a lot of people. I mean, the best part of my vacation so far. If anyone needs a visual of what Trev's talking about.

It's like a field goal on the ground with rock that you have to roll through the field goal. Frisbee rock. Yeah. Two of Jake's boners. If Jake was buried right underneath the surface. So Olivia was impressed by that. Yeah. Olivia was impressed by that size.

Okay. Yeah. It is pretty badass to beat a native at their native game, you know? I felt really good about myself. There's no doubt. Cool. We each have a topic that we want to bring and talk about. We have not decided on an order.

Jake, you decide on the order. What topic do you want to hear first? Do you want to tell first or do you want to hear Treves? Do you want to hear mine? Treves running hot. He got the internet hooked up. He's crispy Trev right now. He's giving off the vibe that he may have had sex in the past 48 hours.

So let's get him going. You see how much energy I have. I don't want to go into that, okay? Okay. All right, because you weren't Roman already, and that's why you didn't have sex. And all you got to do is go to get Roman.com slash talking, and you will talk with the U.S. licensed healthcare professional,

and they will help you, you know, be able to get your sticks off the ground. Too many my tides. My wiener didn't work. No, I don't put that in my body. Weir and wine only. Neither of them. Go to get Roman.com slash talking now to speak to a U.S.

license out of your professional by erectile dysfunction. Get $15 off your first treatment. Reconnect with your partner. 52% of men between the ages of Chris Rose and Chris Rose will experience some form of ED. 40 and 70. That is not nice. The ages.

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you can fix it. It's like, oh, I'm 40 and now half the people's boners don't work. They all can work. Yeah, it's true. You know,

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you get $15 off your first month of the ED treatment, make sure you're ready to have confidence in fall, confidence and control this summer and be Roman ready. Trev, I want to hear about your topic because it's got a little history tied to it. Yeah. So, you know, on these Wednesday, episodes. We all text what we want to do. Jake is doing something, whatever he's going to do. But it got me thinking about, I'm here in Hawaii. I'm loving my time. What do I love about baseball?

I love hitters. And I love beautiful, right-handed hitters. And a guy that, you know, fits that description is Miguel Cabrera, who is five hits away from 3,000. Now he eclips the 500 home run mark already. The 3,000 hit club. Like, it's, it's going to happen. He's going to be a Hall of Famer, first ballot type of guy. We know some of his accolades. We can kind of go over those, I guess. He's a two-time MVP. He did win the Triple Crown. He has won a World Series four batting titles, seven Silver Sluggers, 11 All-Star Games. I guess we don't really need to talk about how good he is. We know. I'm looking at the baseball reference page right now. And his best years were 2010. to 2016. I got a front row seat to most of those years, or all of those years, actually. And I want to talk about an article that came out in the athletic.

I want to make sure I am saying who wrote it. Oh, I have to shout this guy out. It is my guy, Steve and Jay, Nesbitt, a John Boy Media listener. and all around great columnist and writer for the athletic. And what he did was he went and talked to a bunch of guys around the league who have been around maybe, whether it's a Miggy Rojas, who I don't believe has ever played with him, but knows him from Florida. You talked to Nick Castellanos to J.D. Martinez.

It's just a bunch of guys. And it's kind of cool to see everyone kind of talk about the same thing. You know, because I got to see it up close and personal, I have some thoughts about Miggy. And sometimes, hey, maybe I worship this guy a little bit too much because I just saw all of his good years. But you really go and look around the league. And guys just, you're going to love this, Jake. He's different, is the quote in this article. He is just different.

One of the things that really the article talked about and I've experienced firsthand again was his BP. Now a lot of times when you have a guy that can hit homers like him, like I said, part of the 500 home run club, you can be a one-trick pony. Miguel Cabrera is the opposite of that. You go watch this guy take BP. He has a purpose. And he, it's,

he's the only guy I know in the big leagues. Maybe Stanton's there, maybe Shohay's there now. I don't know. He's the only guy that I, when I was in the big leagues, that people would go watch take batting practice if you're on the opposing team. And again, I thought maybe that we were the only team that did that because we played him so much, but everybody liked to go out and just kind of study what he did. And it's really cool. What he does do in BP is he just starts peppering the ball to right field.

And it's not like a filet type of thing. He's not trying to hit a ground ball to the second baseman. This mofo is hitting line drives into the right field bleachers. And he does it every single time. He is a legit machine with what he does. and he'll start going to right field, hit a few balls there, look around to see if everyone's watching, make sure everyone's seeing what he's doing,

then he goes to right center, then he goes to center, then he goes the left center, and then maybe at the end, he'll start pulling some balls down the left field line, just to show that he can do it. You know, his tutelage goes all across the league, some of the league's best hitters say they owe everything to McGee Cab. J.D. Martinez, let go by the average.

Astro studied Miguel Cabrera's swing to try to emulate it, ends up signing with the Tigers, gets to play with the Miggy, and the rest is history. He became one of the better hitters in the league for quite some time, made a ton of money, and he called it a God's wink to get put on the same team as Miguel Cabrera. I tried to learn as much as I could from him. I wish I could have got to play with him. I have talked about on the show before when you sign a guy, like a, a Poo-Huls or

you know, when you get to play with the Cabrera, it's, he's worth so much more money than what his numbers give you on the field. He is essentially, I mean, is he the best hitting coach in the world? Can we call Miguel Cabrera the best hitting coach? I think we probably can't. He's one of the best hitting coaches in the world.

And he also rakes is going to be a first ballot hall of famer. I want to say one more thing. Then we'll kind of talk to you guys about what you think and what his legacy is and your guys as I'm really curious as Yankee fans how you view him I was talking to him one day um at batting practice and he was just getting finished up and I was playing third base and I think we had Gibson on the mound and I was like hey man I'm those sinkers in I'm gonna be ready for some hot shots at me I said something stupid like that and he looked at me and he goes, if I hit the ball to third base, if I hit the ball to you, it's on accident, Poppy.

I'm never trying to hit the ball that way. So a lot of the articles about him using the opposite field and being a complete hitter. And I think a lot of people need to hear that, especially the younger kids that just kind of try to emulate and hit homers. I understand putting the ball in the air is a good thing, but you have to do it the right way. You got to learn how to hit the opposite field. Pulling the ball should come last for you. And power should come last. for you. You have to be able to hit. And Miguel Cabrera is that he's not a power hitter. This guy is just a he's just a hitter. So it's kind of my spiel on O Miguel there. But I kind of wanted to give him a shout out as he's nearing the 3,000 hit club, five away from it. It was a pleasure to watch it,

to field those accidental ground balls from him, you know, to watch him in BP, to try to take whatever I could away from him. He was always very, very gracious with that, even though he knew people were coming out there to pick his brain, to watch what he does, to try to, you know, to best him. Nobody was best in him. I think he, for me, is, you know, him and him and Poole, is the two best right-handed hitters of my generation. Beautiful, Trev. Good stuff. I, I mean, he crushed the Yankees. There was, like, a season when he, like, crushed Mariano. And, like, He was the only hitter that versus Moe as a Yanke's fan. Like it was the ultimate safety blanket.

He was the only one I remember being like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not him. Always. Because he just got him. But I had a different avenue I wanted to share with you on McGee Caps. I found the pitcher who faced him the most and never gave up a hit. I think that's a pretty cool thing to be able to say. Okay.

Chad Billingsley Whoa Old name Chad Billingsley 13 played appearances 12 at bats zero hits He does have the one walk

That's fine But The next There are three active players Who have 10 plate appearances Nine plate appearances That have never allowed a hit to Miggie Cabs, and I was like, maybe they're coming for them.

So I went into it. They're all on the same team, and they don't play Detroit. Michael Givens, Drew Smiley, and Stroman. Those three should get together in the Cubs locker room, and they should look at all the other pitchers and say, we've never given up a hit to Miguel Cabaret. Collectively, those guys have zero hits in math. 24 at-bats.

Against Mickey Cavs. Esmiel Rogers. I don't know. Esmiel Rogers and yeah, I wonder if there's something similar. Esmiel Rogers and Fernando Rodney are the only people that faced him more than five times and didn't walk him or give up a hit ever.

So they can hang their hat on that. He's an absolute stud. I'm trying to think like, okay, you mentioned those guys. What do they do? How would I approach Miguel Cabrera? I mean, most people just tried to pound him in. They know he wanted to get, you know, the ball out over the plate, drive it to right center.

The problem with that is you could do it for like one at bat or maybe two at bats, but eventually if you decide to keep doing that, he's going to make an adjustment. And the same thing, that was kind of another calling card of his was just how quickly he could make adjustments. You know, you don't play for 19 years in the show or 20 years in the show without being able to make adjustments

because the league is trying to figure you out. And there's not just one person trying to figure out. It's 29 teams trying to figure a guy like Miguel Cabrera out. So there's a lot of adjustments that need to be made. And the best hitters, you know, do it from a bat to the bat. But Miguel Cabrera could do it pitch to pitch. And that's the truth. And that is, it sounds like cliche.

Like, yeah, yeah, you could do a pitch pitch. No, like he can. He could do it. And he still can do it pitch to pitch. And not many hitters in the big leagues can say that. Like the adjustment period, take some time. You need to think about it. You have to have some really good pro preception.

But Miggie just was, he's just better, man. He's just better. Some beauty of baseball. And I think that's where any Miguel Cabrera conversation should land. A, Chad Billingsley, shout out, one time all-star some pretty good years in the show. Some beauty of baseball on that side. Dave Roberts is 11 for 22.

your Dodgers manager hit 500 off of Chad Billingsley, and yet Miggie Cabs couldn't get him. So that just shows some beauty of baseball right there. For Miggi, a couple things. I always get caught up in the stats. I had a couple tweets last year that just show how good he was. You know, from 05 to 2014, that's a 10-year span. We talk about 10-year spans too easily with some of these star-star baseball players. his in that 10 years span from 05 to 2014,

the minimum amount of hits he had in a season, and you're saying, Jake, hits, you know, that's a little dated, was a buck 80. And by the way, that season where he had 180 hits, he led Major League Baseball and home runs. For that decade, he had a 977 OPS. Now, when it comes to Mickey Cabs and Pool Hoos, I think talking baseball fans know I'm a poolhole sky.

I copied his batting stance. I was in on that. but they are like just different hitters like when you say trev Miguel Cabrera is a contact hiter that accidentally stumbled into years where he hit 44 home runs he led to MLB in the homers twice or at least the american league from what i'm looking at a lot of bold on that page he's a bold eskimo bro with you and ground into double plays you guys bond over that um for me yeah trev like i get so excited we talk about Spencer torkelson we're going to hear stories about Spencer Torkelson, 10 years from now, about how much Miguel Cabrera helped him become the

ball player he is today. That stuff jazzes me up. And I also get jazzed up because now as we start to get older, my goatee comes in full. You know, I still remember 2000 rookie Miguel Cabrera that was teammates with Jeff Conine, that was teammates with Hall of Fame or Pudge Rodriguez, whose son is now in the league, his like fourth year. He's in the Twins bullpen right now. now. Mickey Cabs played with that dude's pops. And he's still doing it. He's in the Tigers lineup. The numbers are not as flashy as they used to be. But like you said, the value of Migi Cabs is going to be passing it on to this next Tigers team. You know, the young guys we're seeing the Torkelsins, Akil Badu, when Riley Green gets the call, what he's going to be able to pass on to them is awesome.

and yeah, it's just appreciating how good. How good is your good? Miguel Cabrera is in, he's in rare air. He's in like, you know, when we start talking about inner hall, small hall, that kind of thing. Like Miguel Cabrera, when you start actually looking at all-time baseball players, he's in a very special place. So, yeah, I know Jimmy and I are half excited.

They're playing our Yanks this week, and he could make a little history. I want to be surprised if he tricks a couple of the Yankees pitchers. Garrett's been a little cocky with his pitching lately. I want to be surprised if Miguel pulls out a couple things out of the bag of tricks. I don't want to give away all the stories in the article. Go check it out. Stephen Nesbitt of the Athletic. A lot of great stories in there.

I'm going to leave you guys with this, which I think is like the tigers just need to like give this guy like five million bucks a year and say, can you come just teach our guys for a couple months throughout the year? like keep him around as much as possible. That was one of the biggest reasons I wanted to come here to learn something from Miggy. Who said that? Hobby freaking bias.

You got one of the biggest free agents to come to your organization. Yeah, you paid him a lot of money, but he wanted to come learn from Miggy. Like, it's pretty special, dude. So shout out, Miggy. It was a pleasure, man, watching him hit. And he was always nice to me. And he didn't have to be. That is nice of him.

That is nice to you. We support that. Jake and I both have topics. I'm going to go first because I'll keep my nice and short and tidy because I just, it's another article that I very much enjoyed reading, but I don't want to give the whole thing away. Also, my topic will be brought to you by trade coffee. Trade coffee sends you freshly roasted beans from 60 of the country's best craft roasters. Sorry, 61st roaster.

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Right now, trade is offering new subscribers a total of $30 off your first order plus free shipping when you go to drinktrade.com slash baseball. That's more than 40 cups of coffee for free. Get started by taking their quiz at drinktrade.com slash baseball and let trade find you a coffee you'll love. That's drinktrade.com slash baseball for $30 off. Tell me about it, Jim. Eno, Saris is a friend of ours.

Oh, Eno. Got hit by a car once. He makes sandwiches all the time. Big sandwich guy. Created his own stat, basically. stuff plus. I don't know if he created it, but I think I give him full credit.

I think he did create it. Well, he wrote an article, and he kept up to date on the stuff plus in spring training, and he wrote an article very early, and obviously all we have is early to talk about. So instead of just being silent, we're talking about early. He wrote about the five pitchers

that have improved their stuff plus. And so far this season, through one or two staff. starts because really if it's drastic, it's like, oh, that dude's slider looks different. Like Heaney, we talked about him. His slider curve is different. The most fun one is Jesus Lazzardo, because he got traded from the ace. He was supposed to be a stud and then kind of was like, okay.

And it's like an afterthought trade, kind of and all this stuff. His first start of the season, he strikes out 12 Angels hitters in I want to say it was four innings, four point one innings. Something ridiculous. I think it was less than five innings. I'm going to pull it up. I had it up. I closed the tab by accident.

Five innings. Struck out 12 Angels batters in five innings. Only gave up one run, only allowed two hits. And the dad backs it up. He is the, he is one of the pitchers whose stuff has changed drastically,

Trev, like really drastically. he's got a whole new arsenal he added uh so his sinker got faster and an inch more of run his four seamer has more ride late life and got 1.5 miles per hour faster his changeup added two inches of run and his breaking ball also got faster so everything got a little bit faster and the things that move move a little more. And it came to fruition in game one. So for him personally to be working on all that stuff and then in game one have those results, that's got to be incredibly rewarding to strike out 12 guys.

So I'm on a little bit of like, okay, Jesus Lazzardo watch. I'm going to watch us out. Another guy is Alex Cobb. Have you seen his fastball and like he's a completely new pitcher like the Gossman effect? What are they doing? Giants. I don't know, dude. Wasn't he throwing like 96 or something?

Yeah. With run. Has he ever thrown that hard? Like maybe his rookie year, like right when he came up, all that adrenaline, but are you kidding? I think it was like his first start with the Giants was like his fifth hardest throwing start of his career. Like a very long major league career for Alex Cobb. Yeah. It's sat.

It averaged 94 and a half. last year was 92. In 2018, in 2018, it was 90, 91.9. All of his pitches ticked up. His split finger ticked up from 87 to 90 curveball from 83 to 83.6. That's not much. So I like this stuff because go to this article by, you know, it's on the athletic.

It's five pitchers whose stuff has changed the most early this MLB season. And on the flip side, so McGill, also a guy that's on there who's just showed results for the Mets. I think he's pitching right now. I'm not sure I was doing. And then on the other side of it, you have some scarier ones. Bieber is down drastically.

We've talked about the spin rate stuff with him. Sunny Gray dropped his Velo dropped a lot at the end of last year, and it stayed low. And Robbie Uray was down 15 stuff plus points. still ought to get out. Interesting. I don't know what it all means. I'm not smart enough.

I know that I trust Eno. And I just think it's like an added element of like what to watch for when you watch a guy. If you just go look at, you know, his list of guys. And then Aaron Ashby was a big one. He's the biggest change in stuff. And he already had nasty stuff. Our guy, Mitch Keller, is an interesting one. We met him in Arizona.

All of his pitches got nastier. But he can't, he hasn't shown the ability to command them yet, which makes them not, it kind of levels it out. So yeah, I just, I just think that is interesting. And you guys should go read the article and look at the names. And then when you watch games, have that intro in the back of your mind. Yeah, he, he like updates his list of stuff plus for the pitchers, you know, kind of goes through different guys start the year.

So definitely give Eno follow, go check all the stuff he writes. He's my favorite baseball writer. Like, I don't think there's anybody else I'd rather read than him. I'm fascinated by all of this this sudden change for pitchers. I don't want to go too far into it because we have talked about it before with all the tech.

The seam shifted wake. I'm reading an article on drive line right now about there's no such thing as late movement. It's just an optical illusion. And now guys are trying, they're just trying to make things different. Like you just want to be a little bit different from everybody else.

If everybody's ball is moving this way, you just want your ball to move a little less that way or a little the opposite way and it just will mess everybody up. You're going to have weak contact, low barrel rates against you. Pitchers are ridiculous, dude. It's like you already control all the variables.

Now you have access to tech that can really unlock more variables, I guess. Like, what's a hitter supposed to do, man? Anyone that's hitting in today's game, anyone that is a good hitter in today's game, you need to just like appreciate what they're doing because they're living through a time in baseball where pitchers have more of an advantage than probably ever.

So hats off to you guys. I think where I would lean in that conversation, well, I'll take you on the jakey roadmap of what just happened there. How about baby, baby Jesus? He was traded for rental Starling Marte and the Oakland A's that did not. make the playoffs. And man, if the Marlins tap into him, holy smokes, because yeah, that's one of those young pitchers and arm talent

and buying in and being in the right place at the right time and when do you cut and go on a prospect. It is, you know, kind of make or break for a lot of GMs. That being said, I feel like we keep stumbling into this organizational conversation where you mentioned Alex Cobb and the Giants. We talked about it. The Giants are the 1-1 team right now at developing their major league talent in-house. Alex Cobb.

I mean, think about it. How long have you seen Alex Cobb around if you've been a baseball fan? We said hi to him a couple spring training ago. Orioles spring training. Yeah, right? Orioles taught him how to pitch. He was just twirling it at Orioles camp. And here he is now with the San Francisco Giants, a team that won 107 last year.

And he might be a massive guy on that team. which brings me back to the Florida fish. And Trev, you were tasting yourself a little bit the other day on your prediction how if there was a deepest, deep cut you could go to find a World Series team, it would be those Miami Marlins because why? They have some crazy young pitching. We need to start giving the Marlins organization some more love. Think about the young pitchers in their farm system right now,

not their farm system on the squad. Alcantara, they gave him the extension. Pablo Lopez, go look at his numbers, what Trevor Rogers did last year, Eliezer Hernandez, baby Jesus now. How about a name from yesteryear that we've kind of forgotten? Sixto Sanchez is supposed to start throwing soon again. How many organizations, we'll lean back on our Yankees a little bit, struggle to develop young pitching because it's one of the hardest things to do in the sport.

If you've got that, you can kind of go undefeated as a franchise as long as your team is willing to spend money elsewhere, Marlins. But yeah, I think as much as we've been giving the San Francisco Giants coaching staff for their MLB player development, what the Florida Marlins have been doing, Miami Marlins, with their young pitchers, they deserve a ton of credit because, I mean, to have a crop of young pitchers like that just does not happen in Major League Baseball. No, they are doing, you mentioned six-toe, he'll be back mid-summer.

And, yeah, if they do get a wild card, they get into a series where they can just chop the pitching staff down, they're one of the more scary teams. They got to find some offense. But look, they're in a position to go get offense. I pick the Brewers to win the World Series predicated on the fact that I think they're going to go get a bat during the year. So Marlins are kind of in the same position. Maybe what if the Phillies just traded Castellanos to them and ate some of the money? And they're like, sweet.

Ain't that it? Yeah, I wonder, I wonder when we ever get the real side of Jete's story. There were like rumors, but yeah, probably not, it's Jeter. I never. Yeah, maybe never. Maybe there's new documentary that's coming out. It's the last thing. Final scene.

If you're a hitter and you want to feel sick to your stomach, I'm sure most guys that are playing nowadays have all this info and kind of hear it from their peers, the pitching peers. I'm reading some of these articles about like spin axis and the Magnus effect and the seam shifted wake. It is, man, it's scary. As a hitter, it's scary to read stuff like this because you just know, this is the tip of the iceberg, dude.

Like, guys are just learning how to manipulate the ball. Like, they're making pitches up. Like, they're designing pitches. dude. Like they're designing filthy pitches and then they can learn to throw them very quickly. And what are you supposed to do as a hitter? This guy just makes up fucking pitches out of nowhere. Said something like the Yankees had the Lindsay Adler article said something like

who's head of pitch design for the Yankees. And I was like, head of pitch design. Fuck. Guy just tinkers with the settings of a pitching machine and then sees what the balls does. your arm angle and how it comes out and how it moves all of that they're learning that they're learning about that too about like the guys that have like that you know the so called ride on their fastballs a lot of them when they come from like a lower arm angle that's what helps them like a joe ryan i was reading something about him

he got he has this arm angle over here try to get in the screen instead of on top of the ball and it just has the appearance of it staying up or rising you know we know it doesn't rise but it just kind of stays up there and it's just a little bit different you know fast balls are supposed to be coming down this way and all of a sudden you see one and it just kind of like doesn't go down just as much and you're just swing under it dude like hitting is a you have to see a million balls you have to have muscle memory you know what balls are going to do and all of a sudden they're just not going to do what they're supposed to do that's not fair that's not fair sorry Sorry for laughing, but you reading a good pitching article and seeing it as like a horror movie makes me laugh inside.

It's a, it's seriously frightening. Because what are the hitters are passing around? Like you seeing this shit? We're fucked. No, they're mad. That's why guys are like, get the sticky stuff out of the game because you already have all this other stuff that you can do. You can't have all of this. Like, it really does, like make me nervous.

Like I feel nervous right now. Just thinking about what's to come. Not this year, not next year, maybe. Like, I'm talking, we're going to see level up in pitching. Like, have you seen the dude from Japan, the new. Yeah, Rokey. Averages 100 miles per hour and, like, he had 17 perfect endings in a row. Like, what are we doing?

He is going to look great in pinstripes. Yeah, and the pitch shaping, this is always a, I've got a weird brain. We all know that. Mariana Rivera and his cutter, I've had this. this comparison for life. Like I had no idea how this got into my brain. Olympic hurdlers are all the like exact same height because to be an optimal hurdler,

I think it's like six foot flat. Like to run as fast as you can and be able to jump over the hurdles, six foot is ideal. And that is Mariano Rivera, height, size, and arm angle for his cutter. It's why it's the perfect pitch. Like that in my brain has always made sense and it's a weird brain up there. Pedro Martinez, he has long-ass fingers.

Can manipulate the ball, like choke down on the change up. Like, yeah, dude, it's like Michael Phelps is built for swimming. There are some guys who are just have weird things. Aren't they just move the hurdles like two feet farther apart? And then that's the six three to six five best hurdlers in the world. Different hurdle races. And then move them a little closer. And that's the five, six to five, ten hurdle races.

So we're just making the hurdle jump distance. perfect for six foot to six one people. Anyone that's not six foot to six one male shouldn't even try to hurdle. That's some bullshit. Yeah. You can overcome some adversity. It's all right. They got weight classes in wrestling and weight classes in boxing.

But in the hurdles, you just only, it's fucking designed for six foot to six one people. I'm out on hurtling now. I don't find it impressive. You know how hitters feel. Everything is designed for pitchers. I didn't know that. I just Googled it when Jake said it. I'm so out on hurling.

I will never watch it again. Sorry, dog. So it says here that if you're six foot or six one, it's perfectly distant to take three steps before the jump. What if you have extra long eggs? Some that are close and some that are farther and then find out who the, there's a 510 guy out there or a 6, 4 guy. That's fucking way better than these 6-1 perfect hurdlers.

fucking level up and make it harder. I'm mad. I'm out on hurtling. That's a bullshit sport. I'm out. You're out. I'm out. That's crazy bullshit.

For that reason, I'm out. Jake, what do you want to talk about? I know a shark tank guy. Great stuff, fellas. Great stuff all around the board there. And by the way. We went hitter to pitching. What are you going to do?

Another name that needs to be mentioned at the end of that segment. As I mentioned, Starling Marte for Baby Jesus and Jeter. Kim Ang. uh, Kim, Aang ran that trade. And by the way, that Marlins roster

keeps looking better and better. She deserves a lot of love. Um, guys, I was gonna K-I-S, keep it simple, stupid. I wanted to get into this,

some of the Numbies. I think I saw our guy, Eno, it's a big Eno up. Let's get them on soon. Hot. Let's get them to the city. Oh,

it's city night with Eno. Fire me up. Um, I saw, him tweet out something like, hey, Kyle Tucker fans, stay calm. He's going to be all right. And I was like, whoa, is Kyle Tucker in trouble? What's going on? I want to go into some expected stats because normally, Trev, we're pretty tough on the expected stats. Me and Jim are some of the firmest believers in, hey, expected stats are for the future. The stats that happened, let's

appreciate that. If you have a three-flat ERA, But you know, the expected stats say you should have a five flat. I'm not going to penalize your threeer. That happened. It's okay. Good job. Now, going forward, am I going to be a little nervous? Yes.

And that's what expected stats are. Your Wobahs. Some of your, you know, some of the pitching stats and things like that. I was going to get into the hitters a little bit because, you know, we've got a lot. Expected Wobah. There's one for you. We've even got expected batting average and things like that. And the reason our guy, Eno, brought up Kyle Tucker,

who, by the way, again, that's a stat page you should look at. My dude has an argument to be like the best player on the Houston Astros team that everyone around the league lives in fear of. Kyle Tucker right now is hitting 114. Trev, how does it feel to look at the scoreboard and see a buck 14 up there? You just don't look at the scoreboard. Yeah. You avoid eye contact with a scoreboard until you least have a two.

Yeah, he has a top 21 in baseball, expected Wobah. He is 21 right now. Guys around him, Frankie Lindor just gave him an award for how good he's playing this year. Alex Verdugo hitting 333. Jose Ramirez is like 20 points above him. Jose Ramirez right now is hitting 457. Kyle Tucker, it's going to come around. And Eno kind of pointed that out.

So I was like, who else? It's a big Eno episode. He's kind of our guy. We trust him. Isn't that nice? So I just want to throw out a couple other names out there who the numbers. And maybe I'm talking fantasy baseball. If you're a fantasy baseball trader, if you've been on the AMP app,

listen to our guy Jolly, he's doing a fantasy show on there. We got a fantasy league in the office right now, heated. If you're looking for... What's our team name? The heated heaters? I don't think so. No, I don't think so either. It's the but-ugly...

Bud-Ugly Bandit? Something like that? Nah, I forget. That's the but-ugly boiler boys. Yeah, it sure is. It sure is. A couple other guys who's not seeing the results right now and should be seeing them soon,

according to the ex-Woba. Our guy, Jose Ibrahim, he's hitting 212 right now. He's got a crazy, crazy ex-Woba right now. Who was my other guy? I don't want to do any of the guys that are going to drop off because they're not. Don't do it. They're studs. Our favorite name to say on the show now, Luis Rubber.

He's hitting, he's in a buck-in-law. Do that again? Luis Robber. Louis-Rober. Louis-Rab. Can you roll that R for me? You know, I can't, Trev. He's hit in 194, expected Wobah of 462.

So Kyle Tucker, Louis-Rober. Yeah, mine comes out with kind of hissy at the end. I don't like that. Jesse Winker, friend of the pod. People forget that. Yeah. People forget that. He's on the interstate.

He's on I-52 right now. He's got a 408X. Oh, hoba. So, yeah, I just wanted to highlight a couple guys. And, hey, maybe you live in fantasy baseball land. Throw out your winker trade. Go get you some Louis Roba. Because those guys are doing a.

it's just so early in the season that they are not seeing the results yet. I shouldn't say guys on the other end of the spectrum. No, no, no. Don't do it. No. There's nothing worse than people as a hitter. There's nothing worse than people saying, oh, man, you look really good right now. I understand maybe guys nowadays are more receptive to expected stats.

Like, you know deep down as a hitter, you hit the ball well. your exit velo's good. Maybe you just ran into a bad shift or whatever it may be. But you still want to see the numbers, man. Like, yeah, I lined out really hard at the second baseman three times. They're like, oh, good, good, good job. Yeah, but I didn't get any hits. And I think I think you have to have that as a hitter.

You have to know that like it's coming. It's going to happen. Maybe those I got three line drives hit right at somebody today. well, that means that a blooper is going to fall tomorrow. And if you can continuously think like that, instead of just looking straight at the numbers, it's going to serve you well. All these guys are going to be fine, like you said.

Kyle Tucker is an absolute stud. Jesse Winkers is a stud. Jesse Winker is one of the more surprising baseball reference pages for me when you go and just kind of see his stats. My guy. It's eye-opening. But I am all in on Kyle Tucker. That whole Astros, it's hard to be the best player on a team that like the Astros,

that has Yordon that has a guy like, who's, does Jeremy Payne yet that just came out and replaced Correa? Like this is a- Oramy. He's a stud. Oramy? That's how you used to pronounce Jeremy before I went to the trailer. Just a reminder for anyone that didn't see it. It was last, I think it was last year, two years ago.

Maybe two years, 2020. Maybe it was two years. The Jesse Winker interview, I opened up and I went full Chris Farley on him. And I was just like, dude, you're, you're really good. Yeah, one of the funnier first questions. You're really good. Classic Jake, not a question. It wasn't a question.

It was a statement. You're good, dog. All right. I miss interviews trying to work through it. We were not, I don't think we were good at giving interviews. Welcome to the show. Our audience didn't like them. No.

They'll come back. Whether we do an interview whenever, like, Dwinker wanted to come on. Longo wanted to come on. If players asked to come on, we'll have them on. know who uh know who's playing pretty well and the numbers kind of respect it

who's that guy who co-hosts the compound in whoops uh whoops happer have yourself a day kid he's good so yeah and I again

flashing back to some of last year's episodes I remember I think later in the year when you get more of a data sample it's always that midway point people are looking for the who had the worst first half and who's going to bounce back in the second half. So maybe we'll revisit that then. And yeah, Treve, it does have to be an interesting,

an interesting thing because, like, Jesse Winker, like I think his expected batting average is 272 and he's hitting 154. I think for a guy like him, he's like, all right, I'm doing my thing. They're going to start dropping. I saw Alex Dickerson. He's currently hitting 048, and the numbers say he's, say he should be hitting 254. I think if I'm Alex Dickerson, I'm like, oh, fuck that.

This sucks. So, yeah, healthy balance. Maybe, maybe nowadays guys know that teams are actually looking at these stats and like, they can get paid off like, hey, you had a down year, but your expected stats were good. Like, they'll still, they'll like pay you for that. You know, we're going to, we're going to get this positive regression. I don't know if teams were looking at that back in my day. So you had to have real, real numbers.

Stats matter still. And that's our hashtag here. Results matter. Keep paper out of baseball and results matter. Wait, wait, hold on. Do they matter, though? Yes. Andrew Heaney got $10 million this year based on expected stuff, based on just metrics.

Like there are teams now, like the Giants, who are going to pursue guys because here's some numbers that we like, we think we can exploit these. Why didn't he get $18 million? Because he didn't have a great year. I'm talking about no results. Prior to these expected stats and data points, he wouldn't even have had a job. But also no other team in the MLB would have paid him. And that's where the expected comes in.

If it was only stats, he and he would have been a minor league invite, but because he has those. Jake and I aren't against analytics or expected stats. That's new. That's new, though, that teams are looking at that. Yeah, there's a portion of the internet that Jake and I have been fighting with forever back from like three years ago that just only care about it. We did it with you, Treve.

Like when awards come out, you can't tell me the deciding vote. If a pitcher's got a better ERA but another pitcher has better expected stats, give me the guy that had the ERA for that year. For the next year, I might want the guy with the expected stats. So I think that's the conversation. argue that like FIP against that because a lot of it is based on what your fielders do. I don't know. I hate FIP and I think it's worthless and I don't care about FIP at all.

I FIP with FIP. I'm FIP. If you were a pitcher on a horseshit defensive team, you'd care about FIPP. Sure. But as a fan. Yeah. Or like I don't care because I like pitchers who pitch to contact. Right.

But that's, you know, I think the Zach Wheeler was the great argument last year with a historically bad defense. Like what could his number? have been with a good defense. Strike guys out. That shouldn't have fallen, Zach, you're not a big strikeout guy. But I mean, it's a team.

I don't like FIPP. FIPP is for pitchers who hate their teammates and are bad teammates. Like, fuck FIP. That is the most individualistic stat in a team game you can find. Yeah, I mean, literally says independent. I know. I don't like the whole vibe of it. This is pitchers.

Yeah, I hate pitchers too. Okay. So, oh, by the way, Trimba. I figured out why pitchers kind of suck. Okay. played some blitzball, and I was sore for four days. Pitchers are sore. That's why they're miserable people.

They're always sore. No, they're not, dude. They're fine. You don't think position players are always sore? What are the catcher, bro? I mean, catchers, I mean, catchers are sick puppies. They love baseball the most. That's why they're managers.

Like, that's, yeah. Catchers should hate pitchers. They probably do once you get a little brown. Plus, dude, if you pitched all, the time. You wouldn't be sore. They get massages. Don't trust me.

You don't want to be part of that at all. Just they're bad. You're on my side. Thanks for, thanks for tuning in today, guys. Appreciate you. Trev, are you coming from Hawaii next episode on Monday or Friday?

No. No, I'll be home. All right. Cool. That's the show. You guys are the best. Shout out relievers. I have relievers are bad.

I'm only talking about Star. Yeah. Only starters. Happy 420. Jake sucks.