Talkin' Baseball (MLB Podcast) - 480 | Legit Breakouts, Designing Pitches, and Teams with Aggressive Baserunning

Episode Date: April 27, 2022

Use code TALKIN for $20 off your first SeatGeek order. https://seatgeek.onelink.me/RrnK/TALKIN Create a free Topps NFTs account at https://bit.ly/TS1BNC-JBM to make sure you’re ready to go for the 2022 Series 1 Baseball NFT Collection Thursday, April 28th at 1PM ET, exclusively on https://toppsnfts.com Go to http://getroman.com/talkin TODAY. If approved, you’ll get $10 off your first order Timestamps: 3:30 - Legit Breakouts 4:30 - Gavin Lux 13:15 - Andrew Vaughn 18:15 - Deep Cuts 19:30 - Pitching Data & Replication (with Kyle Gibson) 40:15 - Teams with Aggresive Baserunning 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. We got some topics. Base running, pitch design, breakout breakouts. Let's do it. Hello and welcome to talking baseball brought to you by seat geek. My name is Jimmy. Sitting next to me is Jake. Trevor Plouffe in California and BBD behind the dish.

As I said, this episode is brought to you by Seatkeek, as is the entire show. I went to Seekkeek today because Jake and I are going to go to a Yankees game on Thursday. I was looking at tickets. Very easy, Treb. You see the dots. Green dot. This is a good value. Yellow dot?

Eh. Red dot? No. Bad price for that seat. Makes it really easy. Click around. Find your spot. Grab it.

Enjoy the game. Don't worry. We've got the hook up. Use code talking for $20 off tickets at Seatkeek. $20 off your first. purchase with promo code talking. Make sure you click the link in the description and download the app. Code talking for $20 off your first seat geek order.

All right, it is the midweek episode. Over the course of the season, the midweek episode, sometimes we'll have a guest. Sometimes we will award the talking baseball. We'll give some pedals away. Big week next week. I think next week we're giving away the first pedals for the JM All-Star team or whatever it is called.

What do we call it? J.M. L. J.M. All J.M. Team. Very important. Sometimes we'll go over our overunders and see.

Sometimes all three of us will bring a topic we want to talk about. That's what today is. Trev, are you excited? Talk some ball? I am excited to talk some ball. I had a great baseball today with C. Rose. He kind of got me fired up and kind of stumbled into my topic today by watching a Max Fried high.

highlight and then kind of having a little discussion with him. So my topic scares me a little bit. But I'm excited to share it, I guess, because sometimes people need to be scared. I don't know. Jake, what are you doing, man? Trev, James, BPD, everyone in the chat. I was wondering, Trev got juiced up.

Then I heard Max Fried. Max Fried always brings a little more out of you. I mean, that's your guy, guy. Never mind the Braves prediction and everything last year. Max Fried gets a little, gets you a little. more Roman ready than normal. I'm doing well, man. I'm doing well.

Back in the teeth of this week. I mean, it's still, it's, it's still, I'm in the whirlwind. I think when that calendar hits May and we're giving out daisies, that's going to be a true signature moment for me, like, your team's having a bad start. Your team's having a good start. And that's where I wanted to, you guys saw I was trying to figure out how I wanted to quantify it, but like last year, you know, Vlad was kind of the breakout guy in a weird, of the year. I mean, show hey, in a way.

But even like the Tyler O'Neill, the guy that made that jump to the next level of, like, kind of all-j-M team type status. I want to see who might, who might, maybe they're not even there right now, but some of the numbers are saying they could be on their way to a special year. So, uh, went through some of that. now I'm jazzed up about some young special guys that might be on their way to, you know, nine-figure contract someday. Like, let's go.

I'm jazzed up now. Jim? Let's go right into your segment. Fire me up. Who you got? Who's breaking out? Are we, uh, is it? I just did one.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, like I just said, um, you know, going through some of the advanced stats from last year and we have the full body of work that led us to some of our guys. Trev, you mentioned this guy last episode, so I'm not even really talking about. Ty France has been on the tip of everyone's lips, you, passing. All the expected stats are there.

I'm almost already over it. Sorry, Ty, France. Actually, no, I hope he's breaking out, and I hope he's the study is. But what if I told you? I got a couple young guys, a couple deeper cuts on teams that might be a big part of this season. there is a guy who his advanced stats are off the chart. Former top prospect. A guy that's been waiting for his opportunity behind a bunch of studs.

Gavin Lux. Gavin Lux, former top five prospect, the Dodgers. Think about that, man. If Gavin Lux was on basically 90% of any other franchises, He would have been playing day in, day out for the past two, three years. Trev, you're a competitor, right? I am a competitor. Okay.

We bust out the bino board. You get that look in your eyes. Wait, hold on. I thought that was like a rhetorical question. I didn't even answer that one, okay. I liked it either way. Yeah, we got to say yes. Yeah, we got to a good result.

How was the teacher was making sure you were listening? Gavin Lux. So far this year, the results are whatever. 367 on base, a 400. plug, one homer, one triple, couple swipes, Roman swipes. The advanced stats are off the chart. I mean, the red bubbles on baseball savant are through the roof, whether you're looking at expected batting average,

expected woba, expected on base. It's red across the board, and you know I love me some speed in baseball. 97th percentile for Gavin Lux. I didn't know my guy moved like that. So that was one of those. things that jumped off the chart to me. And it felt impactful as part of this season as like, can he make the leap to be a dude?

The formula is all there. He is 24 years old still. And he's never really got... 24? We've been talking about Gavin Luxe for a few years now. He got his first kind of run last year, 102 games, results probably under what he was looking for. How many starts?

I can get there pretty quickly, I think. Let's see. 20. Nope. I've never been a math guy. What would you? 50 plus 26. I think we're in the 80 range.

Okay. So many ways to find that, and I just did a bad job of it. 93. Excuse me. So a chunk of starts, but he was moving all over. Second base, shortstop, left field. He shouldn't have to do shortstop this year. He's not playing that.

He's only been second base in left field. I'd still love it. Mostly second base. starts there for it left field. But Gavin Lux, I mean, circle it. Young guy, huge potential, great team, finally getting his full run. Like, I'm circling that with,

this could be the year we're talking about Gavin Lux. Okay. Let me tell you. Okay. You know what I'm going to say about Gavin Lux. Got a lot of this kid's baseball cards. Oh. I didn't know that.

A lot of rookie cards of Gavin Luxe. He didn't know that. A lot of rookie cards of Gavin Lux. I'm happy because you're right. You come up, you're blocked by some studs. You get a little bit of run, but you never have a chance to really establish yourself. When the time comes that you do get the opportunity,

the only thing you can do is run with it. If you want to be in that organization, now if he didn't run with it and he, you know, ends up, you know, playing spotty with the Dodgers. He'll catch on with somebody else because he has the pedigree and he is a good baseball player, but he wants to be a Dodger. And to be a Dodger, look at that.

lineup, you got to put up if you want to get any sort of playing time. That's one of the people are saying it's one of the all-time lineups. So for Gavin Lux's at 24 to go out there and run with the opportunity and do what he's been doing, I think it even means more to him because of the organization that he's in and a team that he's on. But when you get performances like this from guys, maybe you're not expecting him to go out and be an MVP, but you get a, you get a, you get a a nice solid performance like we're seeing out of Gavin Lux. I mean, that's how you win World Series. You have your guy guys, do the guy guy, guy things,

and you have a Gavin Lux step up and just be himself. And it seems like he's feeling like himself. I'm feeling comfortable now. And man, was it him that they threw in center field a little bit last year? And it was like, hey. During the playoffs? Yeah. Was it during the playoffs or was it?

He had one, I think they did start him in the playoffs. Yeah, because that was tough. Yeah, that's really tough, man. Let's look that up, actually. And again, like, think about your Gavin Lux. You're a top prospect. You're on the Dodgers. You're getting moved around.

You're an infielder by trade. And then you find yourself, what was that, BPD? Five games in center field in the playoffs. I mean, that's a really tough ask. That's a really tough asking. Maybe that's also part of what, if you're Gavin Lux, you go in the offseason, and you say, hey, screw that. I'm going to hit so well.

that I'm going to grab that second base spot or something like that. So, and I didn't realize you had his cards, Treb. That's huge. You know, I got all the young guys cards. I need to you all to step it up. I got to pay for Teddy's school. First rounder out of Kenosha. I like it.

I like Wisconsin dudes. I don't know if that means anything to you, but just good hardworking individuals out there in Wisconsin. He looks like his facial hair. He looks like Luke Voight light sometimes. Yeah. Luke Voight's little brother. Family.

Family. So, I mean, hey, Dodgers fans, you needed that good news, right? You needed another piece to that team. Genuinely, and this isn't to be rude to Gavin Lux, how many guys on the Dodgers lineup would we mention before Gavin Lux? Mookie, Freddie, Trey, Muncie, Justin Turner, Will Smith, Cody Bellinger, Chris Taylor. He's their nine-hole guy right now. He would, Gavin Lux, if he was on a lot of other teams,

he'd be one of the first two, three names out of our mouth if we're talking about a baseball team. So Gavin Lux, and you guys know I like to keep balance. I'm an AL&L guy, you know? I don't want to snob up. I think Gavin Lux hasn't swung and missed a lot of fastballs this year at all, which is good for him. Good, and if you're, he might see a lot of fastballs

because they'd rather give him to him than Mookie if he's following them in the lineup. But something to track, you know, with, with a lot of young guys sometimes if they start eating on the heater, they get a lot of the off speed, but... What's 14 divided by 56? BVD? Yep. 14, 56.

25%. That's how many times... I knew that. I said that in my head. How many times he's swung and missed it a fastball? It's actually pretty bad. Because 14 times four is 56. Boom, MathPod.

Nailed it. He's got a 7% width percentage. Oh, I'd breaking balls. I read that wrong. Okay. Wow. Good at breaking balls. Better pitch to be good at in a young career.

Look at that. I'll go more generic statistic here, one that I love to look out, especially with the young guys. And you're talking about breakouts. This is one way to have a breakout. Eight walks, eight strikeouts. Yeah.

Your fastball theory is correct. He's only seen 14 breaking balls this year. There you go. That he swung at. Feast at the bottom of that lineup. We talked a little bit about this, me and C. Rosie, you know, the indicator that a guy is going to come out of a slump. A little bit of eye test. You can kind of see how he's taking pitches. Once you start walking, you know, you might have an O for three day, but you have two walks. That's when you know things are about to happen for you because you are seeing the ball. You're tracking it. You're not just flailing at it.

So you've seen that with Bellinger. Now he has struck out a lot this year, but he just looks better. So he passes the eye test. And now looking at Gavin Lux and you're talking about his swinging miss raid and the 8-2-1, excuse me, walk to strikeout is a great indicator of. He's seeing the ball well and he'll continue. So the other guy, ALNL, I think these teams are going to be talked about a lot this year.

I think these two teams might have been stimulated. The Chicago White Sox. There is a young guy on that team, a similar profile, a young guy, top 25 prospect. You guys know I've raved about this guy a lot, so maybe this is why I leaned into this topic. The baseball savant red bubbles are there. This guy is prime for a breakout after his first full big league season.

Andrew Vaughn for the White Sox. We've talked about the second half of that lineup, Trev. I know you've got the cards. He's off to a really nice start early. 300, 364, a 939 OPS. I watched this guy a few times. I got kind of a young Josh Donaldson vibe for him. Everyone says he is a hitter's hitter.

He's 24 years old as well. I think this guy has the potential to be one of these top-tier hitters that we talk about. The opportunity is there for him, especially with the White Sox kind of getting the injury bug. a little bit. There are bats for him to have. He's going to climb up that lineup, I think. And man, I love watching him play

and the baseball savant numbers love him as well. So I think there's a good chance that this guy, he's got the supporting cast. He doesn't have to feel the weight of the team. He can get his pitches and put up a big boy season. I think there are two guys at the end of the year we could be talking about special

breakout seasons. That, Andrew Vaugh. Big boy. A little bit. He's six flat, 215 on baseball reference, so we all know what that means. 9-10-11, 225.

He looks at when he's in the box, big guy, but you're right, draft pedigree, first round, third overall out of Cal Berkeley. So not as smart as Jake and I. He's not a Stanford guy

or anything like that, but, you know, got some brains there. I do like his swing a lot. He is going to get an extended run here. Eloid, soft tissue stuff. stuff with him. So he's going to get more of a chance and he's crushing the ball right now.

Absolutely crushing the bar. And I like, I like both these guys. Lucks and Vaugham, both 24 year olds, just really doing it. Now that we've mastered Luis Robert's name, we have to master Jimenez. It's, it's, uh, alloy. Aloy. Yeah. Alloy. Like a hoi. Yeah. Chips a hoy. Alois. Alloy. Alloy.

Aloi. Alloy. So the accents on the oi. Aloi. Alloy. Alloy. Yeah. Trev, you're right.

I just, I did my baseball savant random video because it's a hilarious page to click. Me and Jimmy do that on talking Yanks PPPs before the season. Uh, 2020, he's got a little, he got a little more meat on the bone.

I think he, he was eating this off season, which I like. You know I like that. Good for him. I hope he breaks out. he's got a really consistent swing. And for a 24-year-old, I mean, I know that's really young for the big leagues,

you know, especially he's already had a full season before this. So it bodes well, just like Lux's one-to-one walk-out to strikeout ratio, the consistency of his swing bodes well for him to continue to have consistency at the plate and his numbers. And yeah, I think if there's any commenters that are trying to be snobby about it, because, you know, those guys were legit draft picks and prospects. It's still going to that next level. Like, hey, Vladdy Guerrero was the number one prospect.

He gave full two seasons, and it took time to click. You know, Tyler O'Neill was a top 50 prospect. Took him a few years to click. Young Thick Austin Riley. You know, there's like we took, talk about in baseball, there's not an instant formula where, hey, top prospect, you're good. I think these guys, they could be the ones this year. Well, shit, it's hard.

The big leagues is hard. And hitting is hard. And to do it's hard. And like when you get up there and have maybe, I don't want to say failure, but yeah, failure. Or a level of success that you're not, that used to reaching a higher level. I mean, it eats at you and you wonder why. Am I good enough? So like, you know, you have to overcome that.

confidence factor. And all the only way you can do that is to get a bat's. So, you know, if you're if these guys getting the extended run is is what they need to develop and to become bona fide major league stars. That's like what you're talking about with Vladdy takes a couple years. There's very few guys can just come in and be a guy, guy right away. And those, the ones that do that, we're talking about them every single day on this program. Right. Are those the two? Do you have a third? Those are the two.

Okay. Lux. You want a Hail Mary one? You want a little more of a deep cut? Who? I guess the two deep cuts, ALNL again, would have been Owen Miller and Connor Jell.

Those guys are. Oh, okay. Those guys are lighting up the stat page right now. Again, I'm for the real baseball fans. A guy named Connor Joe. Yeah, he's on, he's on the Rockies. He's your favorite player,

yeah, Kelsey's been hyping him hard. He's, uh, he had a, bomb yesterday or Monday night. He's the dude. He's raking right now. So those... Mr. Joe. Those are the guys that are lighting up the

actual stats, the baseball savant, not as big prospects as the other cats. But, you know, hey, maybe it's all coming together for them. Koju, as was his Twitter account. I wonder if he goes by... Co-oh-jo. There's like five-os. Co-jo.

Co-jo. But it's... Would you think there would be an E there? It's J-O-O-O-O-O-O-O. Well, you know the dog? Cojo. Cojo. I want to go next. Oh.

I have. You're up next because you are the tops and you like. Yeah. The tops world. You're all about it. You can showcase your favorite player and teams with this fan base favorite set that they have released to start the 2020-em-vose season. Series 1 Baseball N-T Collection drops on 8.

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Trev, you are the tops, and you want to talk about your favorite position on a baseball field. Yeah, it's very scary for me to talk about this. I do feel like a joke about it a lot, but I think it's a problem for baseball. I think that the technology that the pitcher is possessed right now has put them at somewhat of, I don't want to call it an unfair advantage because people are going to call me soft. but they already have the overwhelming advantage, obviously, but this is just adding another level to it. And I don't know where we go from here.

Like, where do the hitters get to catch up? And this all got sparked by a pitch I saw Max Fried throw. It was 96 an hour slider is what it looked like. He took to Freddie Freeman when he was in L.A. And I asked him, I said, did you just get around this one? Or like, what the hell was that? He said, yeah, just the sinker I pulled. and my question to him was, could you,

if you threw that pitch on accident in a bullpen session, could you have the data and try to recreate it? Or would you have the data and would you try to recreate it? And his response to me was, in the offseason, yes. During the season, we're not going to tinker too much. And that kind of blew my mind. Like you can accidentally throw a pitch or see somebody else throw a pitch and get the data on it

and do it yourself. And we're seeing this through the organizations. We're seeing the Dodgers throw. their frisbee slider. The Yankees are doing something as well, right? They're calling it the whirlie, but it's the seam shifted, whatever. And I think it's kind of the same thing.

I want to find it. It's more horizontal. Oh, the pitch? Yeah, how fast did you say it was? It's 96. I think he struck Freeman out on it. To go back to the highlights, it's like scary. Okay.

So organizations are buying into this. And I've been I read an article Micah Petriello I'm going to link this in the description wrote an article about six people who have changed their repertoire

during the season so I started reading up on that and two of our favorite guys were on are you going to watch it here we go is this the one you're talking about I think let's see

it's a 2-2 pitch oh my I said what is that pitch I think that's the one what did they label that a sinker? It was a sinker He pulls it, but it looks like a slider, right?

Look at that thing. At 96 miles an hour. Now, if he had the Etrox camera in Minnesota. That's what it was, it looks like a slider. That's gross. So people can recreate this pitch. So anyways, this article that we're going to link down here, talked about some people, two of our favorite guys are mentioned in it,

Nester Cortez and Kyle Gibson. So I texted Gibby this morning. I said, hey, here's your changes. Talk to me. about it. He sent me a thing in. And now I'm going to give him a call. He's on his way to the field right now. We're going to talk to him right now. I'm going to try to do it here, okay? Whoa. You're going to tell him he's on? He knows. Oh, wow. We're going to be able to patch him through? You should have to do speaker. I'll try. Maybe you guys might have to call him.

Hello. Gibby. Yo. How you doing? It's Jimmy. Let's see if you can hear Trev. Treve talk. What's so, Ginge? DP was All right, great. Technology worked. Technology worked. You're scaring Treb, Gibby. He's getting scared of your pitchers

and you guys doing stuff in the lab. Scared of him doing stuff in the lab, is what he said? Yeah, I got questions for you, okay? Because every day we sit up here, we look at these pitchers get better and better. I read articles about all the technology that you guys have, the pitch design labs, everything like that. I need you to either confirm

these rumors were hearing or deny them, okay? All right. Here's what sparked this whole discussion. Max Freed through a 96-mile-an-hour slider, but what really happened was he pulled a two-seamer. And it was against Freddie Freeman. After the game, I texted Max, I said, what the hell was that?

And he said, I pulled the two-seamer. And then I said, if you were in a bullpen session, and you had the data, could you recreate that? And his answer to me was during the off season, yes, but during the season, they wouldn't want to tinker with something like that. Is that true? Like, can you just go in and, like, if you throw like a nasty pitch on accident, could you go and try to recreate that? Well, I would love to say that I can recreate a 96-mile-hour slider, but I cannot. Okay, but within your velocity.

But what I have done and what I worked on this last time through was taking my slider. and turning it on its side more. And I took my slider from about negative four horizontal. So I think I had one at negative 12 yesterday. So, you know, added eight inches of left hand movement. So, yeah, I mean, if you kind of know what you're doing, yeah, you can, you can recreate a lot of things like that. You know, I'm learning so much about how the pitch actually comes out of your hand. And, you know, you look at like a Bradhand slider or the one that, like, Walker Puber and these guys are throwing that's going, you know, a big sweeper.

They're actually holding a two-seam fastball. And instead of train, tracking, like, pronating it like it would be for a two-seamer, they're, you know, coming down the straight side of the baseball. And they're just letting a rip. And that's how they're getting so much side to side. That's where everyone's going with it. Now the Dodgers and the Yankees are both going for the horizontal plane. Is that like a zag when everyone's zigging thing? Or like, why the change that way?

So for me, I did it because all of a sudden my slider was going more down, which isn't always a bad thing, right? I mean, you got like Urban Santana who had an elite down slider. And a lot of guys do it. But I also have the curbel that, you know, goes down. So I wanted it to have more separation from my curbaugh. because my curveball was having like three to four negative movement as well. So my slider was basically just dropping less and harder.

So I said, and the picture coach, Caleb was like, hey, what if we turn the slider sideways a little bit? And then, you know, if you look at the movement profile, you don't have anything right over top of the more, and up and down. You take that slider and you take it to my goal with seven or eight of side to side, and I ended up with 10 to 12 at times. So, I mean, it's definitely a thing because, you know, you know, I mean, you want pitches that are moving different, breaking different planes, different speeds, you mean different looks all the time.

And, yeah, I think about that as a hitter. You're talking about instead of having two pitches with, you know, kind of vertical movement, now you're having to battle against your curb ball that has vertical movement, your slider that goes horizontal, your sinker that goes one way, your cutter that goes the other way. You can't cover all those quadrants. You can't cover all those pitches at the same time. I understand that's coming from. Yeah, I think the other thing does for me is like, you know, everything I throw goes down. So if I can have a slider that, you know, goes left more,

you know, I think it makes the right, he's not able to just dive down as much. You know, they have to respect you going away from them. And kind of what I found yesterday was that, you know, guys were running out of bat more often on the one that was going away from them. And I don't know if it was just coming out flatter or maybe it was going left, you know, later versus sometimes, you know, gravity just takes it down a little bit sooner so that you either spit on it or, you know, fouled off a little bit easier. But, you know, kind of my hope is that, you know, righteers will run out of bat a little bit more. Is that all hand orientation?

Like, is it grip and how you release it? Is that kind of everything? So I tried to work with the grip before the Colorado game. in Colorado and they were spinning out of my hand and I was hanging a bunch of them. Also Colorado. Yeah, but it was before I got there too. It was in Philly during my bullpen. It was almost like just squibbing out of my hand.

You know what I'm saying? I mean, it wasn't even spinning outright. So what I ended up doing with my hand was instead of changing my grip, I just tried to make sure my delivery was not causing me to force the ball. downward. So kind of keeping my hand more on the side of the baseball and sticking with my old grip. But I have a tendency, especially when I'm going, you know, down on the way to Ritey's, you know, even when my sinker, I have a tendency to kind of force it down there, you know, because I don't want it running over the plate. You know, I want it sinking going down. And I think I was just, you know, kind of having a tendency to do that with my

slider now. So my slider was just naturally going down more. So what I just try to do was try to just stay on side of the a little bit and not let my relief point climb up and kind of natural that just took it from a you know a negative four to you know the negative you know 10 that I was getting yesterday I got I got two questions for you one is is Jake and I just did a whole episode on the Yankees about how they added the the two seam sweeping slider but also the last two years they've added all the starting pitchers have added cutters, which you have as well. Is that to work off the new slider?

Or is this just a separate revolution happening because the four-seam fastball is just dying? So cutter was separate for me. And for me it was, I needed to do it because I do not have the ability. Well, I probably do have the ability, but it's just not something I work on. I couldn't tell you if I have the ability or not,

but I don't have that good riding fastball force similar than most guys have. I can, I don't have good spin. You know, I can try to spin the heck out of it and I'll spin it at 2,100. That's just how I am.

Instead of trying to, you know, really create that pitch here, 20 inches of vertical, I'm going to work on a cutter that, one, protects my front hip sinker to lefties a little bit, and because that's a pitch I use for, freeze a lot. So I'm going to throw a cutter and I just need something that's going to ride into

the lefties because even my four steamer runs back. I needed something. They were leaning on my change up. I could, you know, throw into them a little bit in 2020, but they're the year. And in 2021, just talked with Lance Moore and really decided that it was something that I needed to do against lefties. And this year, I'm trying to do it more against righties, you know, pick my spots, but then also throw it to both sides of the plate because I was really one-sided of the plate with against lefties. And now I'm trying to use a lot more backdoor to lefties. And then as I pick my spots to get comfortable,

I'm trying to front hip righties as well, especially early in the count and find ways that take some pressure off the sinker a little bit so that that doesn't have to always be the pitch. So far, the numbers on the cutter are good. I don't know if you look at this stuff, but the expected batting average and slugging, it's the lowest of all your pitches this season. So that seems good.

Yep. I think it's worked out. I don't know that I, in 2021, I really kind of morphed into his own. And I think, you know, there's times where I throw it too much, you know, there's quite as much to lefties in, try to throw more four-seamers. Now, I'm facing the team for the same. Face me in the last year, which a lot of these NL teams haven't.

Nice. I got one more that we can let him go. Or do you have one, Jake? You're dying to ask? I've got a question that's a little not baseball, so I'll let you go first. All right, correct. All right. Last baseball question for us, you know we don't like to talk baseball around here. Okay, I'm very curious by the technology.

If a team said, for instance, the raise went out and signed Corey Klooper, we know that he is a guy that, you know, has the two seam or the cutter, the slider, you know, that slurve thing that he throws. Yeah. Would a team be able to like just grab him, say, like maybe he's not effective anymore? I'm not saying Corey is not effective, but a guy that's aged out of the league, maybe. Could you get him in and say, just throw your slurve in front of our cameras? We just want to see your finger pressure, your release and everything.

Yeah, but does it work? Michael King had the same release point as Klooper, and they found that out via video. So they, King watched his numbers and stuff, and now he has Klobber's same breaking ball. That's my nightmare right there. question is can you take someone Coober slur well like you have all the debt like you put Cory Cluber in a pitch lab

you put him in front of the Rhapsodo and hydrotronic cameras and you get all the numbers and you say okay these are the numbers here's the spin access here's the everything you have that now can you is it can a pitcher kind of like duplicate that if he does

have a similar arm slot and can and has a similar like VLO threshold is it easy to replicate something like that You know, some of it depends on Can a pitcher take it Can this guy on the baseball and change the axis pitch to pitch?

You know, that takes some field of what you want to do and actually do it. It's one thing if all you have to do is set the ball up in your head. It has a similar arm slot and see how it works, Cameron. They see it slow motion, how to go out and try it. Is it cool, Gibby? Is it cool for a hitter? It's not cool for a hitter, bro.

Yeah, one last question from Jake, him we'll let you go. All right. Gibby, yeah, I wish you could have seen Trev's face this whole time. It looks like he was getting delivered, like, news that he's... A bad diagnosis. Yes, he's getting a bad diagnosis from a doctor. Gibby, you know, I view the game a little differently.

I'm sure they're pitching in numbers are great and stuff. Your Phillies are often going. It's going to be a tough analysis here. People may forget you broke the Internet a little bit last year right after Halloween with your Willy Wonka costume. Do we think that comes in play for the Phil's this year? If you have a complete game shutout, or maybe if the Phil's go on a 10-game winner,

do we think we could get that during the season? So, and if we get there, then be Willie Wonka at some point. You can start the 10-game win streak if you just wear it to the field. Don't wait for the 10-game win streak. Let's, listen, I think the Phil's, we're fighting to get going right.

Game like last night is what gets you going. You know, Daggie goes first to third up, two runs already, and ends up getting it. We're ready to explode right now, man. I hope you guys are on the bandwagon, whatever it happened. I'll leave you guys behind. Speaking of exploding, did you tell Schwarber that you actually thought Angel was, you know, great back there?

You liked the big strike zone? Yeah. All the pitchers are, hell yeah, Angel. Said something like. Yeah. Yeah, he was. Yeah, he wasn't fighting for himself. but he could have done that a lot longer ago.

But, you know, you missed him on this side. You missed him on that side. You missed him up. He missed him down. He got his one more and then he went back out for more. So it was good. I need you to take Jimmy's breakdown, show it to Schwabes if he hasn't already seen it, and make sure that Jimmy didn't miss anything, okay?

All right. Thank you, Ben. Appreciate it. Thanks, Gibb. All right. Appreciate you guys. Appreciate you. Talk to you guys.

Thanks, Jimmy. Bebers. can you put that picture up again when you first put this picture out can you make sure his kids face aren't in it yeah I thought it was Enosaris yeah

either way you saw that Trevin you were Roman ready and if you look at this picture Gibby and you're not then you got to go to get Roman dot com slash talking and you know you'll talk to a you'll talk to a licensed professional but also we're talking about something else Trev if you are Roman ready

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Well, 15. Might need two swipes. Yeah, mine need a half time. Out of those work? Might need a halftime swipe. 15, that includes. you know, preheating the of. Oh, okay.

Oh, baby. Yeah, everyone's got an oven. Get Roman.com slash talking today if you approved you at $10 off. That was great. I'm glad that you had Gibby call in and chat with him. Pretty open. A little midweek flex.

You don't mind if I bring in Gibby, do you? He's, he thought of it like a second before the show started too. Gibby's just awesome. Well, I was going through this. I texted Gibby just to see, like, you know, I want, in his words, tell me what's going on with your pitches. you know, they're changed.

And he, you know, kind of gave me a little bit of background. He said, don't read too far into it. And I said, hey, that he offered to call in. Yeah. And 10 was fair for the Wonka, right? Yeah, 10's fair. You know, also, what he did, he transitioned perfectly into my segment of the show. He said, what got the feel he's going was going first to third last night,

which led, he said, led to two more runs. And I wanted to talk about taking the extra base. I wanted to just check in around the league. It's not been on my mind watching Anthony Rizzo play And how you don't need to be fast to take the extra base You just need to have a high base running IQ Which is maybe more rare than speed in baseball these days It does not seem like it's taught or around that much anymore

And it's really fun to watch Rizzo's probably the highest IQ base runner I've seen in a long time And the Yankees said they need to get faster And more aggressive on the base path So I've been checking in on the Yanks To see if they're doing better And I figured I'd check in around the league What teams are doing this more?

more. So if I want to look in at first to third, right, the team that has done that the most is actually the Cubs, the Angels. Now the Angels got a bunch of speed on their roster. It really revamped the speed. The Rangers also have speed on their roster and have gone first to third a bunch. But really, I just wanted to look at extra bases taken percentage, which is stolen bases. That's grabbing the extra base. Going first to third on a single. that's grabbing the extra base. Scoring from second on a single, that's grabbing the extra base.

So if you're a base runner and you run more, you grab more bases than the batter does on his hit, extra base taken. So we have a percentage. And I just compared each team as we stand right now to last year. The Rangers have increased 22%. Well, there were 41% of the time taking the extra base. now it's 63.

So they, and it's Simian, it's Seeger's done it a bunch. Eli White. Speedster. Every opportunity he's had to take an extra base, he has done that. Big MLB, the show speed guy, Jim. It's not a lot.

It's not a lot of opportunities, but he has done that. The Mets have also jumped a lot, and they change their personnel. They bring in Marte, Escobar, some other guys, and they jump up from 37% of time to 52% of the time.

And the giant, also huge spike. Tyro Estrada was showing up in some numbers of like, they have all these weird numbers of how many competitive runs have you had, which means you go towards like your top gear. Trey Turner's like crazy and bolts and stuff like that. And Tyro Stratto was up there. The twins, they got a little faster.

But nothing is like the Rangers. It's pretty not. So as you saw, her give me just say, he testified. This is, it's important. If you can do that, you get out of the force, you can go first and third, and you open up scoring on a sack fly. Like going first and third is a huge play in baseball,

and you don't have to be fast to do it. You just kind of be smart, be able to read the, know where the outfielers are, know their arm strength, and read the play. So the Yankees improved by 5% if anyone, if any Yankees fans are wandering. And then you can see, like, the individual leaders as well. first

on first when a single runner reaches third or scores Ahmed Rosario so that's who's been doing it for the Mets he's got five

Marcus Simeon that's who's been doing it for the Rangers he's got five Rosario Oh for Cleveland sorry sorry sorry for the Mets

it's actually really spread out Dom Smith has one McNeil had one last night yeah yep yeah and then Jose Ramirez has some as well, Juan Soto.

But just an aspect that isn't, hasn't been, doesn't get talked about, base running. And like you said, Trev, like, if you steal a base, that should go towards your OPS, if that's what we're going for these days. But just to check in, Rangers, it's grabbing a lot of bags. It's interesting because as we, you know, entered the analytical phase of baseball, I mean, that's what we're in now. There's a lot of data out there that,

It was there before. Now it's categorized, and we know how to interpret it, and we're using it much more. I think at the beginning of that, we said, well, we got to score runs. And what's the best way to score runs? Well, let's hit homers. So a lot of rosters were starting to get guys that could drive the ball. And then that got incentivized.

So you saw guys working out, getting bigger, because if you want to hit homers, you've got to be stronger. And so we saw that to the demise of some base running. And I think that once we saw all these kind of big bopper type lineups, guys, analytical guys, people in baseball, even us,

we realized, oh, the base running has gone, you know, by the wayside. And that is one of the best ways to score runs, is taking the extra base. So I think even on the defensive side,

again, when you're just going to get boppers, your defense struggles, but you're like, hey, we got a bunch of guys now that miss bats. We're throwing harder, so we don't need to prioritize.

defense, but as hitters kind of try to, you know, make the adjustment and put more balls into play, we've realized, look, we need to be defensively solid. Some of the best teams play defense. They don't just bop. And now you're seeing teams more and more take the extra base, realize that they're going to put themselves into more scoring opportunities by taking the extra base. So like in this time is a flat circle type of way, shout out Matthew McConaughey, we're back to balanced rosters. We're trying to balance everything out. We need to have our boppers. We need to have our guys that play defense to shore it up. We need the guys to take

the extra base. I think maybe we're finally getting to a point now where we're back. We're like, hey, this is your job. You need to be the speed guy to take the extra base. You need to be the home run hitter. You need to play defense. And I think that's a good thing for baseball. Hopefully we trend more towards that.

We're doing more things on the base pass because as we saw on Monday night, at the end of the game, simple stuff like taking the extra base, knowing the situation, Jeff McNeil scores on the Dom Smith grounded at first base because before the play, he knew I'm going to get a good break and I'm chugging

because that's the only thing I have to do there. If they make it out, you know, the inning is over, and he went, took a good route, scored behind him, that's win the game. Treve, I think it's something that we, a conversation we have once or twice a year, whether it's base running or defense,

and you mention how it's becoming more part of the game, it's because we're able to quantify it better. We're better able to value it. You know, the first thing that we put an emphasis on valuing was hitting and pitching, and that's still constantly evolving as we go and we're learning new things. But base running and defense is a learning process,

and we're getting better and we're learning more things, and that's why I think you're seeing teams attack it more because it is super valuable. Anyone that's watched baseball for years could tell you that. I guess the one thing I want to send to you quick, Trev, was, was there ever a spring training or new front office person that came in when you were at the twins and they actually said we're changing our base running philosophies? Or was it kind of platitudes like run hard, take the extra base?

Every spring training? Right. Yeah, kind of that. I mean, I've had, you know, a transition from Ron Gardenhire to Paul Molitor with the twins. And so same organization, new manager. Paul really wanted to emphasize taking the extra base and being aggressive. But that's not to say Garden Howard didn't value those things too. I mean, he had some of those pesky, ridiculous piranha teams that, you know,

you got guys like Ponto taking the extra base and Alexei Casilla running down the freaking line. But I think like James said, everyone wants to be aggressive on the base pass. But if you don't have the roster constructed to do that, you're not going to do it. Yeah, one other note, I want to ask Ray's fans, what's going on? They dropped a lot, and Randy Rosarania has zero percent extra base taken and has been thrown out at every base, twice at home, one set. So he's having a tough time on the base pass. Maybe it's just all oddities and rarities.

You can't really deep dive into an individual thing. I got yelled at, I got yelled at by Kevin Cash for getting thrown out of the base before. Love that. Yeah, they were the best last year. took the extra base the most. They didn't get thrown out. They didn't make a lot of outs on the base paths last year. But yeah, Randy has a ready where I just had it up.

It wasn't good. Randy's already been thrown out on the base paths four times this year. Randy. Twice at home. Zero percent extra base taken. Well, didn't he try to steal home behind? He has a pass ball, right? He has one stolen base.

maybe those don't go towards extra base taking i was wrong about that did you see that play i'm talking about say it again he was on second base and tried to go home on a pass ball oh did you see that it's pretty awesome it was either him or margot i think it was margot might have scored and then a rose ran to try to come behind him because like deekman wasn't was like behind the dish and not really paying attention and deekman got him out I dig it though.

Randy, be Randy. Be Randy. All right. Hey, thanks for tuning in. Thanks for Gibby for answering in the middle of his coffee run and chat with us. And everyone's going to be rooting for Philly's 10 wins in a row now. I'm going to call him and say 10's too much. How many 10 wins, 10 game winning strings to be getting a season, not many?

No, there's many seasons where you don't get 10. I think last year they had eight, if we could get them down to six, like back-to-back sweeps. Yeah, I was going to say sweep a homestand. Okay. I mean, you work on that, Trev. I'm going to work on it. That's a costume. Him and Eno together and that.

Guess who? We'll get Eno in one, too. He won't know it. But he will. Eno, Saras, if I had to bet on someone that has a Willie Wonk outfit and a pinch, that's my guy. That's a Tuesday afternoon for Eno. Love you, Eno.

I hope you don't think we're making funny because we love you. Yeah. We have him on soon. We'll see. All right. Hey, guys. Thank you very much. We'll be back on Friday to recap the series that were.

And now I will play the outro music.