The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Ryan Pressly on Closing: All 27 Outs Matter So I Don't Over Think It

Episode Date: September 22, 2020

Ryan Pressly on Closing: All 27 Outs Matter So I Don't Over Think It

Hey, you son of a bitch, put on some Houston sports. Stone Cold. All you have to do is ask me to play Sports Talk 790 on I-Heart Radio. Thank you very much. Now I got to go whip a man's ass. I love it when you go stomping mud holes. This is 790 Baseball Direct. Direct from the ballpark.

To your radio. Driven by Texas Direct Auto, powered by Vroom. Time is 232. I'm at Thomas show on Sports Talk 790. We are happy to be joined by the closer of your Houston Astros, who hopefully will drop the magic number down to two when the Astros beat the Mariners tonight here on 790. Let's say how to Ryan Presley joining us from the Pacific Northwest.

Ryan, I'd say how are the streets of Seattle, but you guys don't get to go anywhere, so how's the hotel room? Yeah, we're on lockdown. You don't get to really do a whole lot. It sucks, because, I mean, look, I know you guys stay in nice hotels, the food's good and whatnot. But, man, not to be able to go at least get a walk-in. I mean, stir crazy.

Is that a fair way to say it? Yeah, definitely. You don't get to do a whole lot. I'm not a big gamer like a lot of the guys on the team, so I just kind of just sit there and binge watch on Netflix or Prime Video or something. But, yeah, there's not a whole lot to do. All right. What are the two or three shows you're binge-watching right now?

Oh, man. And, you know, I just, me and the wife just got down watching Yellowstone. So I'm kind of searching right now. I've been dabbling a little bit of, I've watched the Formula One need drive to survive. I thought that was a pretty good, pretty cool little documentary. But for the most part, if anybody's got any suggestions, I'm open to them right now. Yeah, I know your wife's on Twitter. Are you on Twitter?

No, no, I don't have any of that social media stuff. That's probably a smart thing to do, to be honest with you. So if you were to write a book about this season, and obviously the ending is still not yet to be determined, how would you characterize this being a major league baseball player during a pandemic and a 60 game schedule where you are playing in front of no fans and you are traveling to other cities and playing in front of no fans and you go to hotels and you can't leave? Is there a way, if you thought about penciling some of this down and about the odyses of this year? you know we've we there's a lot of guys on a clubhouse that are saying that this season

make a great book um it's uh it's definitely if i were to describe it it's awkward because you can hear everything you can hear the conversations in other people's dugouts and like whenever somebody gets a hit you hear everything from their dugouts vice versa so it's uh it's it's very different this year but you know we miss the crowds we miss we miss the noise uh miss having everybody out there. So as soon as we can get done with this whole pandemic thing, I'm all for it. You mentioned listening to the other dugout. Now, I'm guessing if you're in your own dugout, you can hear it. But when you step on the rubber and get on the hill, can you block that stuff out or is that even a little bit of a chore right now? For the most part, you can block it out,

obviously. Like, you know, when you give up a hit, you can definitely hear it. But, you know, it goes on both sides. And nobody really gets their feelings. Some things are kind of funny that you hear from the other side. But for the most part, you block it out and just try to move forward. But you do hear some things, so it's interesting. I like you to say who it is, but you probably won't. But is there anybody that's got like bad material and maybe conversely has good material? Like you're like, that was damn funny or that was the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life?

You know, it's usually you'll just get some people from the rafters that are just random drop-ins. Garneau is pretty funny from the dugout. He's got some pretty good one-liners. You know, Springer's always got some pretty good commentary going on too. So we've got some guys that can drop some one-liners. It's always funny to hear in the dugout. Can you go to them and say, look, I'm trying to get a savior. Can you all shut up for like nine outs or three outs or whatever it has to take?

Sometimes, you know, I'll look in there and tell them to knock it off, I guess. That's not bad. Ryan Presley with us here on the Matt Thomas show. Let's retrace our steps a little bit here. You see Roberto goes down. Does Dusty have that formal conversation with you, or did you kind of just know that because you were the veteran arm, you've been in late at leverage guy for a long time with his team,

that it was your job? And do you remember what that was like, or was that just kind of an unspoken common thing of, you know what? Ryan, we need you to be the guy for us in the ninth inning of games. I think it was kind of a no I mean to answer your question no Dusty never really had a conversation with me neither did Straumie it was just more of hey you know what you need to go do to get people out and you know you got to fill a role right now and losing Osuna with a huge huge blow to us

you know he's a young guy that can relate to a lot of young guys in the pen however he's got better in status of he's probably one of the best closers in the league. And, you know, when you lose a guy like that, it's kind of hard to replace. So, you know, I had some big shoes to fill, and, you know, I'm still trying to fill those shoes. But, no, there was no really conversation or anything like that. It was just more of, you know, what you need to go do. So I just try to do as best as I can and help this team, you know, close the door. I don't mean to get all baseball on you, but your mindset, because you've been an eighth inning guy that's gotten some incredible outs in the past. And all the great

managers have always told me, you know what? Sometimes the keyest outs to get are the ones in the seventh and eighth when it's a one-run game or a tie game. It may not be the outs that you get in the ninth when you're up three. Has your mentality honestly changed that much since you've been primarily on the ninth inning guy for this team this year? Not really. You know, there's 27 outs in the game and all of them are big and they can all be big at different points in the game. So whether it be in the ninth inning or the fourth inning, you still got to get 27 of them. So for me, there's not really any overthinking it. It's just go out there, do your job, and you can do it in as less pitches as you can,

so you can be available to go again tomorrow. But no, not really. The mindset doesn't change a whole lot. What about pitch selection? Well, pitch selection is a little different. You know, you go off of – it's kind of hard for pitchers, especially bullpen guys who can't really see the game from – 370 feet away.

So, you know, we rely a lot on Maldi and how he has seen the hitters adjust throughout the game. And, you know, those guys are professional hitters as well, so they know how to make adjustments. And, you know, we have to be able to do that on the fly as well. So we rely on Maldi and Garnow back there a lot. So when they, we just trust the fingers that they put put down and just go from there. I would think no matter if you are starting a game, if you're in the sixth inning, you're the ninth inning try to close it. The biggest aggravation for a high-leverage reliever is the lead-off walk.

How have you, is it still a battle in your mind that how do you appropriately shake that off when you know that baseball adages, lead-off walk guys usually score in baseball games? How much of a chore is that to try to fight that off? Did we lose him? Yes, yes. The phones have died. Thanks again to Ryan Presley for joining us from Seattle. Astros and Mariners.

coming up in just a few minutes.