The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Could 60 Games Mean a Bad Team From Last Year Will Be Your 2020 World Series Champion? Plus Story Time with Dan Haren

Episode Date: June 26, 2020

Russillo shares his thoughts on the MLB 60-game season (1:59), before talking with former 3x MLB All-Star pitcher Dan Haren about the format of the 2020 MLB season, the ups and downs that come with being an MLB pitcher, stories from the mound and more (9:39). Finally Russillo answers some listener submitted 'Life Advice' questions (43:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

today's episode of the ryan rossillo podcast on the ringer podcast network three two today's episode of the ryan rossillo podcast on the ringer podcast network is brought to you by state farm just like sports the game of life is unpredictable talk to state farm talk to a state farm agent and get a teammate who can help you navigate the unexpected is brought to you by State Farm. Just like sports, the game of life is unpredictable. Talk to State Farm. Talk to a State Farm agent and get a teammate who can help you navigate the unexpected. Unexpected, well, not unexpected, that Avery Bradley did not want to go with the Lakers to the Orlando bubble.

Not criticizing him. Totally get it. Read more about Avery Bradley. You'll get it too. Not unexpected that they would sign J.R. Smith, but I thought it was a bit unexpected that a couple analysts said there's no real difference between Avery Bradley and J.R. Smith, but I thought it was a bit unexpected that a couple analysts said there's no real difference between Avery Bradley and J.R. Smith.

That was unexpected. Get a teammate like J.R. Smith who can help you navigate the unexpected talk to a State Farm agent today. Plan. A couple life advice emails at the end of the pod. Kyle, checking in with Kyle. How are you doing today buddy pretty good i saw our old pal mark titus last night we all had masks it was weird we took a picture with masks also weird guys go out hard no no i stayed uh for one two beers yeah tape paid

that was nice tape paid okay good good stuff all the way around because i knew i didn't want to jam up your friday because when we were texting you said you had some stuff all the way around because i knew i didn't want to jam up your friday because when we were texting you said you had some stuff to do social stuff and i was really happy for you and you know i know you're being safe because we don't want anybody anti-kyle here on the podcast but i i was i was aware of what the possibilities could be so i was like look you know we'll see what time we get this thing taped on friday this friday is usually not the day we do this but that's the day we were able to do this. Because like I said, life advice at the end.

Dan Heron is going to talk a little baseball with us for about over 30 minutes. Heron now in the front office of the Arizona Diamondbacks. We'll get him talking some stories and what to expect with baseball's return. And that's where I start, okay? Baseball's back. And you are what?

You are angry it took this long? Fair. You were indifferent because you already hated it? Or I guess that's not really indifferent if you hate the game and you don't care it's even coming back and you just made fun of it the whole time during this public display of not being able to figure out okay i get that one too but there's probably a lot of you just going to throw it on now the problem is baseball should have been back before let's say what a week before the nba gets this thing rolling and i don't know how much crossover there is between NBA and baseball fan.

I'd imagine there's probably more crossover between the NFL and the NBA fan. But who cares? Whatever. We got this thing back, and I still really like baseball. And I always thought it was going to happen. There's a specific reason why I thought it was going to finally work out, no matter what version of it we have. We're going to get to that in a little bit.

Because there was a couple of reporters that were actually saying like as is probably over it's probably doomed like okay then it's definitely coming back now because remember the rules when you're on television it sounds a lot better if you're an opinion person in sports saying it's the death of baseball and i'm now going to write the verbal obituary and it's never coming back whoa that's a good clip makes a really good video good sound bite let's play that on a radio show a little bit later today. Or you could be on the desk and say, eh, I'll probably figure it out. And that's not as exciting, but it's the accurate one. It's the where I would say it's the lane that I've been in this entire time. So let's take a close look at what we have because look out, folks. I had the internet last night and I looked up some baseball stuff.

We got 60 games, normal playoffs. Thank God. Good on that a little bit later. But what does 60 games mean? Baseball is weird. You can have bad teams put together a decent 60 games. And could a team go 40 and 20? Sure.

But I think a lot of these teams are going to be right around 500, 35 to 25. And then you're going think out think how little the the discrepancy could be look at how the playoff chase ends now in september with the advancement of you know the different kind of playoff alignments they have and i don't like some of the extra game stuff but it all has been really really exciting the last few years of what we've seen and you know more than the last five years of what we've gotten out of the baseball playoffs they're incredible incredible scenes finishes and all sorts of drama and it scares me a little bit that the product has been great in the postseason and it's not really helping the rest of the months but if you look at and i did this i look back at some of the worst teams

in baseball and they're like all over the place but all right toronto toronto at one point was 29 and 52 and then they went 22 and 20 over a 42 game stretch that's a 67 win team that played two games over 500 for 40 games um san francisco you ask all right here you go last year 26 and 38 at one point and then ended up at 55 and 53 so they they went on that massive stretch. So that's a 44-game stretch where San Francisco played 29 and 15 baseball. They were a 77 and 85 team. Baltimore, folks, I tried. The best I could find from their stretch is 14 and 13.

That was an awful, awful baseball team. Remember Seattle last year? Again, smaller sample. They started the year 13 and 2. Remember all those Seattle tweets? They were 25 and 35, and that was a bad baseball team. How about this one? Miami was 10-31 on May 15th.

Then they stretched it to 41-63. That's a bad baseball team that from Miami, that's a bad baseball team that from the middle of May to the end of July played 31 and 32 baseball. That's crazy. And then you have Detroit who was actually 18 and 20. And if you forgot how many games Detroit won last year, I don't blame you because I did too. The Tigers won 47 games and I couldn't find anything that was 30 and 30 over a 60 game stretch, but over 40, they were two games under 500. So we could have some really weird stuff.

Now you could have a Cy Young winner be six and four. You could have with the second base being occupied in extra inning games. The unintended part of that is we could just have a walk fest and all these extra inning things, but I'm not sitting here clamoring for more extra innings, even though I used to like it when I watched the games. I can also understand that basically these managers now don't even want to play them

because they'd rather not burn out there. They'd rather take the loss that day than burn out their arms for an entire week. At least that's what they tell us all the time. If somebody hits 400, no thank you. By the way, nobody's hit 350

since Josh Hamilton like 10 years ago. We've had four years over the past four years, excuse me, five hitters have hit 20 home runs over the first 60 games. So look at maybe 20 being your leading home run number. And then there's all sorts of other things, how you're going to use your roster with 30 to 28 to 26. You're going to call up different players and how you're going to use your bullpen. We're going to ask Heron about some of that stuff a little bit later, but I don't know if this is going to grow the game. Will this grow the game a shorter version? Cause I'd heard that for years. Oh,

the baseball season is just too long. And as I've said every time, why would less of something you don't like make you like it more? It doesn't make any sense. Oh, the office. Yeah. I'm referencing the office again. That shows, I don't know, 26 episodes, 23 episodes a season. Not for me. Oh, but 12 you'd lock in 12. It's your, it's your kind of humor. Like you either like it or you don't. So I don't know whatever version of this shortened season that we have that all of a sudden people are going to go, you know, I really liked this 60 game thing. It works out. Here's an idea. If 61, 62 was too long for you, pick it up after 62, pick it up after a hundred. If you love baseball in a 60game season, there's all sorts of places you can look at MLB standings.

I'll send you links, and you can find where the teams are after 100 games, and then you can start watching the last couple months. So I know people are mad about baseball. But as I said off the top, you're in a few different categories. If you're mad and you didn't like it, you were never coming back to begin with. And think how you get mad at different people in your life. If you have a friend, somebody that you want to be friends with long-term, you've probably gotten mad at them or they've gotten mad at you. And one of you got over it at some point. That's usually the way things work. Now, if you have no relationship with the person

and something made you mad, you probably got over it, or you just don't like the thing or the person long enough to kind of hold that long-term grudge. And I'm guilty of that with a couple of different things, right? And then there's some things like, say you're married and your husband and your wife has a kid with a neighbor, that's going to sting for a little bit longer. That's probably not going to be something you're going to get over immediately. But if you liked baseball and you've been mad the first few months, you're probably going to get over this whole thing. And there's one last thing that I did want to bring up. And that is how much should the winner of 2020 in baseball celebrate? First off, guys are going to celebrate. You give anybody an excuse to celebrate. A Cinco de Mayo

wasn't even a thing when I was a kid. And now people are like asking for the day off. Granted, this year wasn't as good, but maybe next year we'll get them in 2021. What will it mean for the winner? Now, my point would be, you're going to go ahead and celebrate. Now, I don't think you can do this thing where it's like, hey, you know what? Maybe just a couple of white claws. Go out early, call it early night, kind of see where the night goes. But yeah, just maybe a mango in there. But it's going to be a real easy one. I got stuff to do the next day. You're going to ease into it. Some of you would prefer some sort of muted celebration because it doesn't feel as real. And you're right. It's not going to feel as real, but it'll feel real to those guys that go through

it and win whatever version of this is. I'm not saying you have to go ahead and order a world series champion hoodie for your favorite team. But if you do, no one should give you shit. Okay, we got Dan Heron, now a pitching strategist for the front office of the Arizona Diamondbacks, 13 years in the bigs, couple all-star appearances, and he's going to join us now. My first thing once we saw the whole plan was I started digging through, as I mentioned at the open of the pod, like 60 games and how many bad teams have had decent 60 game runs.

Like that's just the way baseball works is you put together a couple of months where you're maybe playing above what you are. How different do you think this could be? And maybe just maybe having a couple of wildcard teams in there that no one would have expected. I think that's the first thing you think of is that, you know, a bad team could get in, but, um, I do think that the sense of urgency will be way different just because these games, I mean, every game is like almost worth what is equivalent to like a series. So, um, I think the sense of urgency is just going to be totally different. And I think that, you know, you can see, you know, after whatever the dog days of August and a regular season,

once you get to September and the good teams start to need, need games bad, they start winning games. And I think just from the get-go it's, I mean, it's, it's just going to be a different kind of intensity, although there's no fans, but every game is just going to be so important. So I just don't see that really happening. What I do think is that what's going to be interesting is I just feel like a lot of teams are going to land around 30 games, you know, winning 30 games. And just, I mean, we see in 162 game season how messy it gets with you know ties and tiebreakers and what could happen i just think that it thinks they get real crazy with a lot of teams tying for

wild card spots and stuff yeah we know that it's not you know anybody that's played like you have over a decade you don't there's just no football mentality you don't come in being like yeah this is you know let's get these guys like maybe maybe a big series against the rival there towards the end so that mentality be kind of interesting to see in the teams especially the ones that expect big things of themselves but you know whether it's the bullpen and how you use that how aggressive you would get with never sitting guys let's start with a bullpen and kind of stats like how different do you think it could be and maybe using a bullpen guy far off far more often than normally would because you're not worried about the six months or bullpen starters or not

giving a guy an extra day's rest even though you're worried about where everyone's arm is going to be with the lead up to this but it just feels like teams are going to have to be as you said just more aggressive with this instead of just saying hey we'll ease into it and see where we're at in august well yeah and that that plus um the rosters are going to be expanded from the get-go, so there's going to naturally be more relievers. So I think it's maybe a good time for the three batter minimum. I'm pretty sure that they're still implementing that, so that was already going to make things interesting.

And now with expanded rosters, there's only so much maneuvering you can do um with the three batter minimum so things are going to be different but oh absolutely guys are going to get you know i could see them going three or four days in a row because every game's so important but you know to some also you know you never see a guy in April of a baseball season going three out of four or four out of five days. They really try to be cautious with the arms there. But with there being no time, guys are going to be all amped up and wanting to pitch every day.

Who knows what it's going to lead to maybe this year or next year, how guys are going to feel. Inj mean, injury wise too, you know, you always see, you typically see like in spring training, a lot of pitchers pull obliques, you know, guys, position players, pull hammies. I mean, that's just natural. And I mean, with a shortened spring training and the season's just jumping real quick, I'm interested to see how many guys are going to get hurt, unfortunately. Yeah, and that's, as you said, the expanded rosters, 30 to 28 to 26.

I always felt like some of the, especially when it was, everybody's so prepared now. I mean, obviously some teams are always going to be better than others, but there was a time where I felt like the league was split a bit in how much prep certain teams did. And I always, like, I don't have any math behind this, but I felt like the teams that were real big on prep did worse against the call-up from AAA

because they just didn't see him. Like, they didn't have as much of a plan. And I don't know if there's any benefit to the roster expansion where you feel like, let's throw somebody out there that nobody's really seen. I don't know if we're going to have a Chris Shelton situation where the first month of 06 he's like barry bonds but yeah it's just it's always interesting how baseball kind of exposes you after a while and i wonder if there's an opportunity for somebody that hasn't

played that much in the bigs to put together a nice little run here because they're just not going to be exposed as they would over a normal season well i think it's yes and no so um what i do with the diamondbacks is i do a lot of advanced scouting and game planning and stuff and uh one of the most difficult times for me to to plan is september typically because you get all the minor leaguers coming up and you know you're trying to figure out what these guys have done in AAA and AA. But the good thing is now the data is so good. The information you get on these guys is so good that by the time they get called up, you already know how you're going to attack these guys. So there is outliers.

And there was that dude for the Reds last year, right-handed hitter. I forget his name. Start with an A. It's kind of a crazy name, but he hit a bunch of bombs right when he came up, and we faced him too, and I was kind of just looking to see what he was hitting, and he was hitting the same stuff he was hitting in the minor league, so I don't think he was probably getting pitched the right way.

And when the Diamondbacks went into play, we had done pretty well against him but i i just think that teams are so prepared now and i can only speak for the one that i work with is that that will be prepared for anything but definitely going to be more difficult planning for these guys because you're you're digging into minor league data which uh you know just takes a lot more time and uh so i'm not looking forward to that but um you know it's i think i'm ready i'm ready for baseball i've been sitting on my butt for three or four months now so i'm ready to go is that akino the the outfielder

yeah that's him yeah all right i looked it up he had a bunch of bombs yeah he had 19 home runs yeah because i was i was going through shelton shelton's always one of my favorites because like oh six you're like what the hell is going on and then he played 50 games the rest of his career like that was it like once once april was over i mean he's a 400 i mean i think his ops was like almost one two and you're going what so all right i want to talk about your job, as you mentioned, because I've sat with a couple guys that do what you do. And it is unbelievable. I don't even know if people truly understand. We can all look at math and numbers and say, hey, here's a hidden thing where his defensive numbers behind him means that he's more likely to come back and pitch better, but you haven't figured that.

That used to be really cool when you would first understand some of the dips numbers and that kind of stuff. But is it almost obsessive though? Cause I still feel like you have to have the right mindset to take the information that you guys find, like you'll find the hole in a hitter and then to apply it. But then understanding each pitcher, every athlete's mindset is different where it's like, look, I, I don't want to be going out there thinking about a seven-pitch sequence to every single guy for six innings. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, for me, it's almost like a video game.

And I feel like once I retired from baseball, I really missed the adrenaline. I missed the competitiveness so much. And so having this opportunity with Arizona where I'm doing a lot of advanced scouting and game planning and helping our starting pitchers along has been great for them and for me too because I feel like I'm still a part of the game. It's not just myself. We have a team of people that are

working to put together as much information as we can. And I think the benefit for me is having played for a while. Fortunately, I get the respect out of pitchers right away, and I'm able to get my point across a little bit easier than it may be for some 25-year-old kid that's super smart, but he has a tough time relating to to baseball players and and like you had kind of mentioned is a lot of it is understanding what

a what a pitcher can do and how much information a guy can take in i mean um i've played with and worked with uh zag granky for for years and years he's on the astros now but he was the funnest guy to work with because i i I mean, I, I broke down hitters. I mean, we were going through, I was filtering so much information to him that, um, I thought his head would explode, but he was able and he would get on the mound and he would do it. He would do the scatter report to a tee and he just knew exactly, um, exactly what he wanted to do with guys.

Whereas a lot of, you know, some guys, especially guys coming up through the minor leagues, it can be kind of overwhelming. So you're going to give them more of a basic game plan where you really want to, you know, focus on their strengths. But I think that pitchers take the leap when they're able to really attack a hitter's weakness, you know, not just pitch to their strengths. I can't believe you

brought up cranky because i was actually going to bring him up because i i have intel on him he's probably one of my favorite guys i've ever heard stories about and there was a you should try to try to get him on the pod sometimes there's about a zero zero zero point chance that he would ever come out no i'm not even going to waste waste the dm on that one but yeah there's two stories and they're both they're both funny like they're they're perfect cranky stories in that they were going through like so i knew somebody that was in the room and they were going through like approaches and he'd be like well why don't you guys just like you know bend a two seamer away or whatever you know i'm kind of just paraphrasing the whole thing and they were like yeah yeah okay and then there was another

hitter he's like oh what you want to do is like get it get up in your arm like 2095 he's like and then just paint away too and everybody's like looking at him going you're the only guy in the room that can do any of these things you're talking about like yes great plan and then the other grinky one was apparently he went up to another pitcher and he didn't do it to be a dick he just was like i can't believe you don't give up more home runs. And the guy was like, what? He goes, yeah, it's so easy to pick the ball. Like I could figure out when I've hit against you. He's like, I could totally figure out like exactly what you were throwing me. He's like, I'm surprised you don't get shelled. He has no filter at all. So, you know, if you don't know

him, it can come off pretty harsh. But the dude's amazing. One of my favorite stories, just in terms of my work and working with him, is that I think we were playing the Brewers, I believe it was last year, two years ago, facing Jelic, I remember. We had gone over a specific pitch that was good to him prior to two strikes. And once you got to two strikes, it turned into being a bad pitch. And we were in a huge spot of the game. And he had thrown that certain pitch a couple times earlier in the count

and got there. And the catcher had called it. And he said yes to it with two strikes, which we knew that we didn't want to do it. And he came set and he stepped off. And you could see that he was like thinking. And then he got back on the mound, the catcher called,

called that he shook and he shook to a different pitch and he ended up punching him out, which it was just, it was amazing to see like just the, what was going through his head and being able to execute the pitches. The dude is unreal. Who's the best right now? I mean,

I'm sure you probably probably not you're thinking of your own experience your own prep versus the outcome but who's the best now as far as hitting of maybe people thinking they've figured out a way to get him out and he adjusts quicker to it than anybody else there's there's there's still guys i mean guys that i just really struggle with even just to find zones i mean just i off the top of my head, you know, going through Dodger stuff, Justin Turner, which is, which is just amazing because I remember facing him when he was on the Mets and he was, he was no good. I mean,

I think he got released and ended up signing and he's turning into one of the toughest outs in baseball. I mean, talk about a guy with minimal, minimal holes. And he just kind of, he comes to mind. And, you know, going throughout the league, I mean, you can, you know, the Rockies guys, it's always tough game planning and Coors Field. And, you know, now with 10 games being played, I'm kind of seeing how those are going to play out. Are we going to get five and five?

Or I was hoping it would be more like, you know, maybe we get the seven at home and they get three on the road, something like that, you know, because, uh, Aaron Otto and Trevor story,

those guys that seem to kill us every year. So is that true? Cause I know you, I think you started to come in like people are like, wait a minute, this guy's got like a great personality when you went on one of those first Twitter, just, and it wasn't like any kind of tirade. You're just like, all right, here's some thoughts. You would look that far out to see if you had to pitch in Colorado, like you'd have pre anxiety a month out. Absolutely. Yeah.

I would plan out my next five starts. You can kind of see what the off days too. And there was ways that you could or that i i should say i shouldn't say you that i could maneuver the schedule to to miss colorado you know if there's a say if there was an off day and i was going to get pushed back a day um and it would it would make me land in colorado well if i didn't if i was able to bump forward after the off day and switch spots with some guy like three weeks out, it would line me up to miss Colorado. So, you know, I may go into the manager's office and say, hey, I don't need that extra

day that's coming up. I prefer staying on turn and going on five days. He'd say, oh, OK. I mean, you know, this was when I was real good. When I was making all-star teams, I could do that. And if he said, OK, yeah, if you're feeling good, then it would line me up to Miss Colorado. I may have done that once or twice.

So no one ever picked up on it? No. But you know what? I think it's actually a good thing for the team, though. I'm taking it for the team. You don't want me to pitch in clear steel. I'm a flyball pitcher. So really, I was doing a good thing for the team, if you think about it. That's good. Yeah, we went from selfish to

team first. That was a good transition for the team, if you think about it. That's good. Yeah, we went from selfish to team first. That was a good transition there. Do you think you would, looking back, do you think you would have been better than looking at the game the way you do now? I do. And I don't mean that, by the way, just in case. We've never talked. I don't want to think you think, look, three all-star teams.

Two top seven Cy Young finishes, which is really no one ever brings up no and you know what uh the lowest this is a uh a part of my take barstool score so sorry i don't know if that i'm crossing lines here but i'm not familiar with we're okay we're gonna uh we're making a hall of fame push for me i don't know if you've heard about it but i have the lowest era in the history of baseball at the world series but the just the minimum of four and two-thirds innings that's it um so there's that but uh no man sorry i got sidetracked no that was good that was a good campaigning uh no that's that's a great number there i don't even know if anybody's allowed to say but that's like that's like you know you're like a limited series shilling there you go no you were talking about data and you know early on in my career when i was making all-star games i i looked at nothing i just was

going on sheer skills and i you know luckily i had the stuff to get by but later in my career the data really started picking up and i started getting a good grasp for it. Really, when I was in L.A. with the Dodgers in 2014, I was learning a lot from A.J. Ellis, from Kershaw. Grinke was there. He'd be a really good pitching coach. And I was able to learn even more from a guy with the Cubs. He actually does kind of what I do with the Cubs now. So I was really able to learn and use it all.

But, you know, I needed it at the end of my career. My skills were nothing. My fastball was dipping below 88 and it was tough to get by but i was still managing to get guys out even even my last year where i was you know throwing 85 86 i know i'll never forget not just because i don't know why it was really early in my career and i'd gotten a heads up from somebody that i was close with about the a's breaking up that rotation. And I was like, why would they get rid of those guys? And they just thought Hudson ended up having more of a career, but they were kind of right on Mulder.

Like they were, they were worried about Mark's hip and they get you. And I'll never forget Derek Barton because Gammons, I think at one point described Barton is like a more patient pool host, which was like the most, like to me to this day, we're like, oh man, this guy's going to be nuts. And it was just, you know, the way we talk about prospects and everything, but was that something like, it was weird. Cause you're following up all of those studs with Oakland and you're in this great baseball city in St. Louis. Not that Oakland isn't a great baseball city too, but St. Louis is just kind of in a different level. I don't know how you felt about it at the time.

You're a West Coast guy, but that had to be kind of, look, everybody knows you get traded. We know it's pro sports. There's great things. There's struggling. There's different things that most people don't understand. But what was that like that young? Well, one of the toughest parts about being traded is just the expectations.

And at that point in my career, I was a starter in 2003 with the Cardinals. And then in 2004, I didn't do very good in 2003. And then in 2004, I pitched the majority of the year in the minor leagues, got called up as a reliever in August. And I did pretty well as a reliever. Then I got traded. So I had never really established myself as a as a major league pitcher major league starting pitcher at least uh when I got traded to the A's in 05 so um you know I was

nervous I I was nervous because I was traded for a guy like Mark Mulder and the expectations were there for me to to do well and I got off to a horrible start in 2005 with the A's. And I hit a crossroads in my career. I had a couple of good people with me with the A's. Barry Zito really helped me along because I had never – I mean, I was almost to the point where I gave up. And, you know, I wanted to go to the minor leagues because I was embarrassed. And he kind of helped me through it. And I was able to turn the 2005 year around.

And from then on, I, I, I had a pretty good amount of success. That, that bumpiness early on, but you're just, you,

you can tell from your social media stuff, like you're a really self-aware guy. You're almost self-deprecating too much. Sometimes it's like, you know, cause there's, there's times where I'll, I'll be around somebody who's really successful.

And I think like, Hey, you don't have to constantly like knock yourself down. You've done some really good things. But I I'm always envious sometimes, like with especially with basketball players, I'd be like, OK, it's great to be confident. But if you're too confident, then you're like fucking everybody else up to like it's like, look, like there's two guys that take shots before you take shots. And you don't you don't see the order of how this works. But if you go back to high school and you're really good at getting recruited, you end up at Pepperdine three years there.

You had a teammate who was a first round pick. You were a second round pick. Did you have this epiphany prior to that where it's like, whoa, I'm actually good. Like I'm going to be a pro. No, never. Really? I, I, I got to, when I was in high school, I had one goal and it was to try to get a scholarship. I just thought, I never even thought of getting drafted.

I never thought I was going to be a professional baseball player. I wanted to get a scholarship. I was so happy. I got a scholarship. And even my fresh freshman year at Pepperdine, I ended up having some success and it was only, but I never, I still never thought of myself as being drafted or drafted high and then my sophomore year i kind of came into my myself like my my body i started you know putting a little bit of weight on and throwing a little bit harder and then you know i i started seeing the realization that i might be able to get drafted and once that came

i was like okay now i just want to get drafted. If I get drafted and get that paycheck, and then I can do whatever I want the rest of my life. I get drafted. I got a decent amount of money. And still, I always had a lot of self-doubt in myself. And I think that is obviously not the greatest thing, but it also made me prepare, I think, better than a lot of people because I never wanted the work to be the issue.

So I always work really hard. I do a lot in between starts and in the offseason, I went crazy with throwing and long toss working out. So I always felt like I was preparing myself because I, you know, I had a little bit of self-doubt. So I wanted to make sure that I was doing everything I could before I step onto the mound, you know, to prepare myself for that game. Do you think the toughest year was going to Miami for you? No, the toughest, that was tough because I knew I was at the end of my career with the Dodgers, and I had signed a one-year deal with an option that I pitched enough innings to, to kick in the option.

So I was stoked that I was thinking it was going to be my last year in 2015 and I get to be home and play for the Dodgers. And then they went through a shuffling in the front office and traded me. And I threatened to retire, even though I was, I had no intentions of retiring. But how do you, can you take us through like the how does that happen where you go okay I know I don't want to but now I've got to play this out this way like take us through the timeline of threatening a fake retirement well what's crazy is that this is 2015 and I learned I'm being traded on Twitter of course um so uh you know I immediately checked

with my agent and he said yeah it's I think it's true and I I told him I I can't believe I'm gonna have to go 3,000 miles away again for my family um you know I'm gonna tell them I don't want to pitch I don't want to pitch for them I don't want to leave it's not because of them it's just because I don't want to leave home at this point in my life. And, you know, uh, so I let them know that I know maybe I've let, let a media member or two know that, um, that, you know, I just wasn't, I wasn't thinking I was ready to pitch on the East coast again, at this point in my career, it got out there and it didn't work. So, um, and I wasn't leaving that last paycheck. Yeah. The last option. I mean, we're talking what eight figures. So it wasn't like, Oh yeah.

Give it up. Oh, no chance. No way. I knew it. You know, I had pitched, I, I had been a bargain. I mean, of course I made plenty of money. I'm not saying that I had been a bargain for a good portion of my career. Um, but at the end I was expensive for what I was, what I was featuring, no doubt.

And, um, I felt like I didn't feel bad about that. I felt like I deserved it. So I wanted to take it. But going back to the first part, the toughest year was going to Washington, the Nationals, because again, cross country, my family stayed at home and I was awful that year. It was my first year where I really, really struggled. Being alone, living so far away from home, and being so shitty on TV, and I felt bad for myself, for my family watching. That was rough. Were you a good teammate?

I think I was a good teammate. I tried to pride myself in treating people the same, whether I had won 10 games in a row or lost 10 games in a row. Because I had seen how other people had, had handled themselves. Some, you know, when I was coming up, a guy like Matt Morris, Woody Williams, these guys, how they handled themselves or not. You can tell if, you know, they were on a making on a path for an all-star game

or had the worst month of their career. So I always admired that, and I wanted to treat people like they did. Yeah, I didn't have some story. I didn't have some dirt on you or anything like that. No, I know. I was wondering. Yeah, I know. Because different guys, when you're struggling, I don't know that I blame you.

The pitcher thing is always tough. It's one thing to be a hitter slump, but it's like, okay, everybody, your day's coming up and you haven't hit anybody out. It's going to be the worst feeling. Because the hitting slump thing, it's getting to the park every day. Eventually, you know you're going to get a hit, but I can't imagine the four days off in between when it's just not working out and sitting around and waiting for your next turn.

On the flip side of that, look, it is also the greatest feeling of dominating and then going home or, you know, going to grab a few drinks at the bar and then the highlights start coming up on MLB Network and it's your game and, you know, you're about, you know, three beers deep and you're kind of digging yourself on TV while, you know, the bar is watching. I have to admit that that feels pretty good. On the flip side, on the other side of is watching. I have to admit that feels pretty good. On the other side of that, if I get bombed,

I will not watch any baseball for the next couple days. No highlights. I'll root for all the other pitchers to get lit up to. Not on my team. It's always nice if I gave up six runs in three innings,

and maybe after the game I'm kind of passing through and I see another pitcher give up eight runs in two innings. It might feel a little bit better. I'm not the only one. I was always shocked how many starters could still go out the night before their start. That always blew my mind. And when I lived in Boston, I remember it's kind,

I don't want to be too, I don't know. I think I may have told the story before, but my buddies, we all lived in town and the marathon would happen. And then the red Sox would play that 11 a.m. Monday game. And I remember we were at this thing and a guy that was pitching the next day was there. And we're like, you're not even, you're not even, this isn't even a night game tomorrow and he got shelled and we were pissed and we were pissed because we were like yeah it was kind of cool this guy stopped by this thing but i mean that's 11 a.m

start and he got shelled and we couldn't believe it i just i think sometimes pitchers are almost more inclined to want to go out more because more often than not you don't have to do anything yeah so when i when i was pitching i never liked to to drink um the night before even two nights before i didn't like to drink too much especially early on in my career even in the middle of my career now toward the later part of my career i will i wouldn't say i would be going out but i did enjoy a glass or two of wine maybe. Well, yeah, you said that. I would sell it to myself.

I was just like, this is for me to relax and I want to enjoy it and just kind of mellow out, chill out. And one of my favorite things to do was, because you were talking about day game after night game. So if it was a night game and I was pitching the next day and it was a one o' you're talking about day game after night game. So if, if it was a night game and, uh, where I was pitching the next day and it was a one o'clock game the next day, pitch starting pitchers are, have the option to leave the game early. So you can, I was able to leave. I usually leave around eight o'clock. So around the third or fourth inning I would leave and I, you know, I'd go, I'd get a reservation at a nice steakhouse.

And of course I'd enjoy a glass or two of wine and those are some of my favorite nights actually because i'd end up having i'd be sitting at the bar and watching our team play all while having a you know a 10 ounce center cut filet with the you know a nice uh oaky uh cabernet there you go or a guy who really followed the team wondering if you got cut or something like why is he here yeah that's true okay let's do some rapid fire here uh you do you know how many guys you hit no no your career do you want to guess um yeah i would guess 30 67 what wow that's a lot should i double check that because now i'm worried i have it wrong i guess you're right yeah three yeah you're right i guess 13 years yeah yeah 67 my guess was low

yeah oh six your fourth year, you drilled 10 guys. The reason I bring it up, you say you only hit five to seven guys on purpose. What's the one you remember the most? Ooh. There's a couple of good ones. One may be too long of a story. No, go for it. Okay.

So it was a scorching hot day in texas uh playing the rangers the last day of the season i believe in 2010 maybe 11 not sure scorching hot the angels i was with the angels we had won the division a lot of i don't know how many years ago three or four years ago and texas won the division that year so we i pitched i don't know why I was pitching that game. I had like 235 innings going into that game, and we were in the playoffs. But Socha sent me out for 120 pitches in 120 degrees. But that's a different story. Anyway, so I'm out there.

I'm already bitter that I'm out there because it's scorching. I want to have a good – you know, I want to finish the year off good. bitter that I'm out there because it's scorching. I want to have a good, you know, I want to finish the year off good. And Texas, they start taking their guys out one by one. So they had their normal starting lineup go out there. And then after, Ron Washington would call time and take like, whatever, Vladimir Guerrero out and take, you know, Elvis Andrews, ladies and gentlemen, whatever Vladimir Guerrero out and take, you know, Elvis Andrews, ladies and gentlemen, Elvis Andrews, whatever. And he would run off the field shortstop. And this is like, so the whole game had to be delayed. Meanwhile.

So our team was pissed off and actually I think it was, it was Vladimir Guerrero. So Vladimir Guerrero comes up to bat. He's the DH they call time. Ladies and gentlemen vladimir guerrero they pull him out of the game and i we have had enough i've had enough like i we had to sit here and watch nine guys get pulled off the field uh i'm i'm already bitter so they replace them i'm not 100 sure it may have been matt train or something poor guy i'm cursing at clint hurdle in the dugout he's the bench coach that this is all bullshit and he steps up to the plate and i just drill them right between the numbers because i i had enough and i

you know what i didn't i didn't get tossed i don't know what happened the rest of the game but i do remember that that really pissed me off i don't know the other ones are just the other ones are just guys pimping homers off me which Dude, I gave up so many homers. I mean, come on. I've seen it all. You could pimp one. That's good. As long as you hit 200 homers off me, you could pimp it.

No, that makes sense. I don't know how much you know about me, but my first year in the business, I was with the O2 Trenton Thunder, calling games, sometimes also doing a lot of other stuff. But after that year, and I tell friends, I go, it's the most valuable thing I've ever done in my career, at least as far as understanding athletes, especially understanding baseball, because you guys invent ways to get pissed off about stuff. You go zero to rage over the dumbest shit that I've ever seen.

And I think that's a baseball thing. I don't think it's anything specific other than you just kind of grow up in baseball and the outside world's like, what's wrong with these guys? And I'm not even as critical as saying this is just kind of how business is done and how they've always done it. So for us to try to say that they're wrong, we may think like, like, we may think like, yeah, you can't really do. Yeah. But that's just kind of the way it works.

And it's a hard thing to explain to people, but I explained it much, or at least I understood it much better after a year in the minors. Baseball players have a lot of time on their hands. The thing about, the thing about a baseball season is it's, it's unlike any other because of the journey that you go through, you know, with, with like the accomplishment of winning a division after basically eight months of two months spring training, and then a six month grind of traveling everywhere and, and, you know, withstanding injuries and stuff, the, the feeling of winning, I mean, I'm sure it's great, you know, for other sports too, but

just the camaraderie you have and, you know, the shit you get into over that long period of time, it's just, it brings you together. So yeah get into over that long a period of time it's just it brings you together so yeah baseball players are wired a little different do you is there anybody that you owned for your career that made no sense somebody that was great and for whatever reason you got him out i think padroia yeah i think i want to say he has the most at bats off me without a hit so i want to say like over 16 or something like that no kid so not a laser show no i don't know how i always felt like he stood really far off the plate and he couldn't reach the ball if i if i was able to locate it away but but i obviously i was

locating away then yeah yeah i guess so wait until he hears this, how pissed he's going to be. He's going to ask you to come back. Yeah. Last one here. Have you ever missed a flight? Never missed a flight. Never missed a bus. Never late to the field. 13 years in baseball.

No. I wasn't late to this Zoom call either. I was 10 minutes early. You were early. Yep. That's how I roll, man. We went out. If we got dinner reservations at 6.30, I'm there at 6.25.

That's just the way I am. You could have played for Tom Coughlin. That's amazing stuff. Hey, I appreciate it, man. This is a lot of fun. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Are you down for doing a couple of life advice

emails there, Kyle? Okay. Sounds like you are. Sounds like you are. You can hit us up lifeadvicerr at gmail.com. Okay. This is from Luke. Hey fellas, with my local gym opening up again for the first time in a few months, I was reminded recently of a theory I developed a while back. Long story short, I'm convinced that every bulky meathead type, I'm talking no neck spends three plus hours in the gym every day. Well, that's overtraining, Luke. That's your first problem. Not you, but your buddies has at least one God awful tattoo visible to the public. I've moved around quite a bit, my 23 years, and I'm convinced this is a universal truth. I think tattoo sleeves are cool, but what's with the huge compass on the forearm or brock lesnar sword popping out beneath the peck on a cutoff i kind of always like that brock lesnar tattoos

you like the compass you're a big i can never do it guy sure i mean i just always i i mean you see the i have one tattoo and you fucking see what it is like it's really hard for me to pin down something that uh to put on myself so i'm just gonna stick with the one but i was you regret i mean you just got that one shining podcast tattoo any regrets no i mean no not really i have a tattoo so i am a tattoo guy now but i don't have a bunch of them so it really makes you think before the next one, though. So it'll probably be a while. I got to tell you, Kyle, I don't like your tone. I think you already sound like you're 90%.

And that's low. That's very low. This isn't about me. The tattoos are easy to make fun of, but these dudes always seem to have good-looking athletic girls with them. So my question for Ryan is whether he has one such tattoo or am I just making this up? So basically, you just called me a shithead

for about five sentences and then admitted this email was about me. Also, given my lack of success with the ladies, should I go big show grizzly bear on my tricep to boost my game and show off my 120-pound bench or go a different route i'm open to suggestions that's uh luke from south dakota haven't made it out to dakota's yet one day luke all right lot to go with there yes i do think that there's that's that's an age thing though

there's an age thing and we all know uh the guy at the gym that has that crazy fit girlfriend, and they're just workout buddies. So Luke, I'm going to tell you, that's not going to be the tattoo. If your bench is at 120, none of those girls are ever going to date you. They've got like 50,000 followers on Instagram. No one can really quite figure out why. Maybe a kid pops up in every seventh slide, but there's never a dude in it. But then if you really dig in, you're like, oh, this guy, she's dating somebody.

And this guy, he's got a startup in it. But then if you really dig in, you're like, oh, this guy's, she's dating somebody. And this guy, you know, is, is he's got a startup and some college and protein thing. So there's, there's definitely like to ever have the athletic. And I'm not even talking like, you know,

the most beautiful women out there. I'm just basically saying like, there's a specific gym culture couple and if your bench is at 120 i don't even i mean i think you already answered your own question so it's not it's just not about the tattoo it's just not um and i think there's going to be a time too i know this seems shocking because i'll admit i don't have any tattoos i see the sleeve and i see some guy's sleeves and i I'm like, that's fucking cool. And I go, you know what?

Be cool. Sometimes I go, would that be cool for me? I can dunk. Check out my Instagram. Would it be cool if I got to sleep? No, it's too late. It's too late for me. I'm not getting it now because there's going to be a moment

where dudes are going to be walking around and there's going to be guys in nursing homes with sleeves on. And I'm not talking like hospital wear. Okay. All right. All right. Final one. I think we're going to leave this guy's name out of it.

25-year-old basketball coach, college basketball coach, moved to LA for a year, now back in the Midwest coaching. Oddly enough, I went to Manhattan beach once and saw you on the beach with what I assume was your dad or my really older buddy, I guess. Um, but didn't want to bother you. Thank you for not bothering me and my dad. Although I never, because somebody comes up and says, hi, really easy to say hi. So, um, actually I shouldn't say thank you for not bothering me unless my dad and I were like super heavy into some conversation, but probably weren't. And, uh, whatever, man, shout out. Anyways. Um, I make dirt money working on my master's only because you need to advance in coaching, but also have a longtime girlfriend who wants to

take the next step and get married. I've sort of put in the time. Oh, I'm S I've sort of put the timeline of I'll keep this gig for a year. After the season ends, I need to find a breakout move to make money, move up the ranks, and probably get married. I'm not locked to anyone. Hell, I've moved to California alone, so bring it on. Okay, not totally sure what I'm even asking. I'm not sure either yet. But you're good at this stuff, and you need someone to help talk this out

because it's just bouncing stuff around in my head. Thanks, and I love the podcast. Really, this is about the girl more than it's the coaching thing. I don't know if you're good. I don't know if you have contacts. You know, I used to feel so bad when I would go to Orlando for those draft camps and I had a job that sucked. I mean, I was just flying down while I was making no money working in Boston for all those years, but I want to do it because I still wanted to be in the front office and I would watch other guys kind of go up and pitch themselves. And it was so tough. It's just really brutal. It'd be some guy, you know, he'd put on his nice polo.

He'd have, you know, basketball guys are always wearing sneakers and he'd have his maybe dockers on and he would go up and just anybody that would spend any time with you. Because if you were a coach, you were able to get into this thing. And a lot of guys that were lower level college coaches would just get access to kind of not really even watch the games. Like I would watch the games because I'd want to watch the draft stuff. But yeah, Brian Colangelo, which actually I did talk to him at that one. I don't know why that name popped up because probably because I did, it was right before they had the Bargnani pick. And I was like, Hey, how's it going? And you just, you know, you're trying to like, he's looking at you going, or do you actually think I'm going to tell you whether

or not I'm taking Bargnani? I was a little less seasoned back then kids. So I wasn't even 30. Yeah. And, uh, I'd watch other guys do it. I'm like, it's just so desperate and you, you just reek of desperation trying to network here, but that's really the only way that you can do it. So what are you going to do? Like be prideful without a job. So a lot of the college coaching stuff is, do you have access to guys that are more successful? Is there anybody that likes you? Can you keep recruiting them?

A lot of the basketball stuff or front office stuff is recruiting the relationship. You may know the game cold. You may have the greatest eye for talent. But when I first wanted to work in a front office and another GM took me out to lunch and I thought like, oh my God, this is amazing. This guy's taking me out to lunch.

Like I'm going to be working for this team in a year. And all he did was tell me how I wasn't going to work for him because he didn't really know that much about me. And he liked me and like talking with me on the phone, but he's like, and this is a bigger lesson, honestly, where if you have access to somebody that has kind of the success and something that you want to do, just because you have access to them. It doesn't guarantee you anything. And when I was younger, I would always think, oh my God, like I met this guy and he's really successful. So that means like now I'm going to get a gig out of it. I mean, I feel bad sometimes if people reach out to me or younger people at ESPN, I'm like, I can give you advice. I can tell you how to navigate through things. I can set your expectations

straight for what's real and what isn't, but I'm probably not going to ever be able to just get you a job. I just can't. I'd love to get my brother a job who makes music, and I can't get him a job right now. I can't. I've tried a couple different things, and I can't get the kid a job. So back to your original thing, when I'd gone out to lunch with that GM, he goes, what you need to do is you need to recruit people that eventually are going to be running teams or possibly even have an ownership stake. By the time, whatever age, and granted, my career went a different path, but it was really, really smart information because he had told me I recruited people that would be potential owners or I would work owners. And then eventually I got in and that guy ended up being a GM for a really long time.

So that's the part that you have to figure out what is realistic about what you think you could do. Now you may just get a really, really lucky break because that happens to a lot of us too, but you know, you don't, you're not lucky for 20 years, 30 years. So if you're really good at this, you know, somebody is going to figure out the other part where the girl is this, I've done the same stuff where I'm like, Oh, I can't be married now. And then I don't know, 20 years went by, but I can't be married now. I have to make sure all of these set. I wanted to be the absolute turnkey husband. Seriously. I looked at myself as a piece of real estate where this is fucked up, but I wanted you to be able to be handed the key, turn it and go,

he's got his shit together. He's got his money straight. He's got a career, you know, all of these things. Cause I've had friends that are like, what happened there? He's like, Oh my God. He goes, you know, I was about to marry this girl and she had 500 credit. And I'd be like, you broke up with a girl because of her credit score and be like, dude, you know anything about home mortgages and all this kind of stuff? And I'd be like, well, yeah, I guess I do. This is a long, long time ago. The point is, is if you, if you do this thing where you want all the timeline stuff to be checked off in perfect order so that the relationship has the best chance of, if she's the one, she doesn't care about any of that stuff. Like when I was explaining my approach to one of

my best friends, who's married, it's happy. He's got another kid on the way. He's awesome. And the reason his shit works is because he had said to me he's like hey are you what are you going to do man are you do you want a family like do you want to get married you want to do any of these things i was like no i want to i want to check every single box of everything i've ever wanted to do in my career i want to have everything else straight and i want everything to be like perfect he's like okay well first of all and that's none of that's going to happen i was like well i can get close to it he's like all right cool well, first of all, none of that's going to happen. I was like, well, I can get close to it. He's like, all right, cool. But wouldn't you have rather had somebody share in that with you?

That's the point, man. It's somebody that you grow with along the path. So my point to you, man, sending the email in, is if this girl is that important to you, and she feels like the one, and you don't want to lose her because don't do the thing where you talk yourself into like, oh, I'll be fine. I just love basketball. And if I don't have her, and then a month later you find out she's dating somebody from home and you lose your shit. Don't do that to yourself because I've done that. Let her be part of the timeline and trying to figure out you navigating all of this stuff.

So don't try to be turnkey. It's great in theory, but you can actually prevent yourself from building an even more stable relationship because somebody was there with you every step of the way. With that, I want everybody to have a great weekend. Please subscribe, rate, and review to the podcast. you