Ben & Woods On Demand Podcast
Smart Baseball With Eno Sarris
What kind of programs does this school have? How are the test scores? How many kids do a classroom? Homes.com, those, these are all things you ask when you're home shopping as a parent. That's why each listing on homes.com includes extensive reports on local schools, including photos, parent reviews, test scores, student teacher ratio, school rankings, and more. The information is from multiple trusted sources and curated by homes.com's dedicated in-house research team. It's also you can make the right decision for your family. Homes.com, we've done your homework. - Nice! - Nice! Today's episode is sponsored by NerdWallet Smart Money Podcast. Get your head in the financial game with smart investing and budgeting tips straight from the nerds. NerdWallet's experts will set future you up for success. With dependable, fact-based insights, no financial misinformation allowed. Learn how to save on your summer vacation. Find your next credit card or loan for a big purchase and invest in your next index fund. Make smarter decisions in 2024. Follow NerdWallet Smart Money Podcast on your favorite podcast ad. (upbeat music) - Hey, fantasy football fans. Do you want to be the owner who was doing a crime session the night before the draft? I didn't think so. You need to start your prep now. This is Faraz from Upper Hand Fantasy. Zach and I are here to get you ready for your fantasy football drafts with insights and advice from sleepers to bust, we've got you covered, and give it the upper hand on your friends. Today is the day to start getting ready for the draft. So join us and stay ahead of the competition. Follow and listen to Upper Hand Fantasy on the Free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. (upbeat music) - It's time for the super polished gift of your name, Smart Baseball Weekly segment with Eno Harris, Sarah's son of a bitch. Brought to you by Seven Mile Casino, just seven minutes from the ballpark by the Pei in Chula Vista. Here's Eno Sarah's with Ben & Woods on 97.3, The Fair. - So I'm curious about something as we welcome Eno in. - We had Kyle Higashioka in studio earlier this week. - No, two days ago. - Two days ago. - And he had a home run that night. - He did. - Now Eno talks to a lot of players. We always worry that when we talk to someone, that if they have a bad night, they're gonna associate it with us and they're gonna blame us. - Right. - Eno, do you ever worry about that? 'Cause you just talked to Logan Webb and he went out and had a really bad game yesterday for the San Francisco Giants. - Guy probably should have been focused on pitching and not showing your kid pitching cribs, you know? Let's be honest. - Yeah, no, I mean, I do think about it sometimes. One thing that I'm blessed with is, I don't go into the clubhouse after the game. And the reason I say that I'm blessed not to do that is that if they've had a bad game, they don't look across the mic at me. - Yes. - Very good point. - To Tom. - So I think to the most, for the most time, I think that they talk to so many people that they could catch, but I do wonder if I do a big piece, it's about why they've gotten better or whatever. - Yes. - And then they go through a bad stretch. The reason, though, that that is always gonna happen is that you're gonna write about the players that are playing the best. - Yeah. - And there's just natural, baseball just naturally, there's regression all the time. - They're going one way to go. - Yeah. They're terrible and then they were great. They were the best in baseball in June. You know, it's like, it's just always like that. So if you write about somebody, write when they're doing their best, because that's one of their most interesting, of course, they're gonna have some hard times after that. - It does always feel like a jinx, you know, too, because I was in here a couple of days ago and we had Tim Flannery and he told a couple hours of stories that were just brilliant about some of those old Giants teams that, you know, very well, and I asked him, you know, do you believe? And he goes, oh, yeah, I believe in this team. And I'm like, bro, me too, they deserve a shot, man. They deserve to go out and get a starter and a bullpen, maybe another bat, whatever they need, this team has really earned it. And then, you know, a couple of clunkers in a row and you could drive it into work this morning going, I wonder what we could get for Dylan Cease. You know what I mean? It's just this stupid, stupid nature of a baseball season. - Yeah, but they are a decent team. And I like that they make so much contact and I think we're really, would it hide though on offense is that they do way better when they hit power. It's a power as well. I think with it last night, they had six singles or something. - Yeah, seven hit, six singles, I think. - I think that's right. - Yeah. - And it's just hard to live like that. I know, you know, I love mud and I love the announcers, but I hear this from other people that like, you know, a hit is a hit and, you know, just get on base and you can string together hits. It's just really hard to string together hits in today's environment. You just think about the batting average now is the worst it's been since like 1968, the year of the pitcher. So you get six singles, you get zero runs for it, you know? It's like, it is pretty hard actually to string together a bunch of singles. And so, you know, that's why I think, you know, many getting right and he's looked better and the Tetis coming back, that's enough where you're like, okay, this offense is gonna hit you all. - You know, Sarah, as with us, yesterday, Eno, you and a couple of your colleagues from the Athletic posted a story about the 10th anniversary of Statcast, the birth of what has become, at least for me, an integral part of watching baseball. I mean, I can't even imagine now watching a Padres game without going and checking the exit velocity of that last hit and, you know, who's throwing hard, the speeds and velocities. How has the game changed based on this information that is now not just available to the, you know, the teams that have advanced metrics, but now everybody can go and see these numbers and they're posted right instantly online during every single game. You can follow along just like I was doing last night with the Padres Mariners game. - Yeah, for that piece, I talked to Mike Petriello who did like an alternate Statcast edition of games early on where he, you know, they broadcast with Eduardo Perez and they had David Cohen on sometimes and, you know, Jason Benetti and they would do these games where it was like more static focused. And he said, you know, that's coming back and we're gonna do something this year and I'm nervous because now every broadcast has this stuff in it. And the regular Sunday night baseball has Eduardo Perez and David Cohen and they took our producer that was producing the Statcast and they just made him the producer of the Sunday night baseball. So it's like, that's how ubiquitous it has become is that like now the guy who used to be the nerd on, you know, doing the nerd cast has to figure out how to become even nerdier. And I think that actually is a good way to kind of think about how it's changed the game. The nerdiness level has like gone through the roof. And, you know, even if someone said to me, like I don't care about this sort of stuff, I talked to Tyler Glass now and he was like, yes, I look at it, I look at the movement, I look at everything, I look at other people's stuff, I care about it, it's helped me in my career. And then James Paxton sitting right next to him said, I can look at a pitch and know if it's good. But even James Paxton knows about like naming conventions for movement, he knows about inverted vertical frets. He just, he's decided he doesn't care about it. You know what I mean? Like, so it's come to the point where everybody knows this stuff, it's everywhere. And I think the more successful players embrace it and use it to their benefit. J.D. Martinez just joined the Mets. And when he arrived, he changed the way the hitting reports were coming through from the hitting coach after a couple of weeks. And he literally brought weighted bats to the team and distributed them to other players and showed them how to use them. And so, you know, that's the kind of, there are these ambassadors that know even more than the average player and are sort of profillatizing the data, you know? - You know, it's funny thinking about J.D. Martinez, who was somebody we talked about in the off season, certainly the Padres were probably interested along with a bunch of other teams coming in. And I mean, if you're the hitting coach of the New York Mets, isn't that Eric Chavez? - Yeah. - Yeah, he's like, oh, all right. Cool, you're bringing it, you know what I mean? But then I just saw you retweeted the story we just talked about before we got you on about Walker Bueller, who's like, all right, see you guys later, I'm off to Florida to go work at Cressy Sports Performance instead of working with Mark Pryor and the Los Angeles Dodgers, who I'm assuming, have every single gizmo gadget metric that one could ever want. - Well, I think one part is that it would be, it's a little difficult, I think sometimes, to really revamp anything or work on stuff in a competitive environment. So it would have been hard for him to do it between starts with Mark Pryor right now in the Dodgers. I guess you could I.L. him, but then you technically are supposed to send him to somewhere, you know? It's rare to I.L. someone and he stays with the Dodgers. - Right. - So maybe his choice was, do I go down to Oklahoma City and work with people there, or do I go work with Air Cressy? And I think the modern players also empowered by the fact that there's all these independent labs, pitching labs now, that they have their own contractual arrangements with, and they can maybe feel some ownership over their own coaching, you know, by doing this, so they can go to dry land, they can go to tread, they can go to, they can go to Cressy, and they feel like they are getting what they want. And when I talk to people that are coaches or people in front offices about this, they struggle with it, you know, they're annoyed because they would rather the player got the coaching that they want him to get, right? They know the right coaching. And there's different approaches to how to deal with that. Some front offices do something that's kind of cool. I talked to one front office, they said, oh, we don't like, we don't love teacher man. Teacher man's the guy who's Aaron judges. - Oh, yeah, I've heard a lot about that guy, man. - Oh my God, he's so arrogant, he's so arrogant. I think he really has like one good idea, but I don't think he has every good idea, you know? And so, and it worked for a judge, doesn't mean it's gonna work for everybody else. Judges pretty unique in terms of, you know, size. - Strength, quickness, yeah. - Yeah, so, you know, so somebody was working with them and they didn't really love everything, but what they did was they had their hitting coach take teacher man's course, so they knew what teacher man was about and what he talked about. They could speak teacher man's language to this player. They invited teacher man to spring to talk to the player and to other players and just made it seem like, hey, we're cool with them. If that's what you believe and that's what you're into, like we're gonna support you in that. But when the kid went through a stretch where he was over 20 or something, he was a little more receptive to their own coach. - Makes sense, yeah. - And so, they wanted, that's the struggle right now, is like, how do I make it cool for you to go to Eric Cressy, but also, I want you to listen to Mark Pryor. That's kind of the line people are walking right now. - What kind of programs does this school have? How are the test scores? How many kids do a classroom? Homes.com, those, these are all things you ask when you're home shopping as a parent. That's why each listing on homes.com includes extensive reports on local schools, including photos, parent reviews, test scores, student teacher ratio, school rankings, and more. The information is from multiple trusted sources and curated by homes.com's dedicated in-house research team. It's also, you can make the right decision for your family. Homes.com, we've done your homework. - Nice. - Today's episode is sponsored by NerdWallet Smart Money Podcast. Get your head in the financial game with smart investing and budgeting tips straight from the nerds. NerdWallet's experts will set future you up for success. With dependable, fact-based insights, no financial misinformation allowed. Learn how to save on your summer vacation. Find your next credit card or loan for a big purchase and invest in your next index fund. Make smarter decisions in 2024. Follow NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast on your favorite podcast app. Hey, fantasy football fans. This is Zach from Upper Hand Fantasy. You don't want an embarrassing tattoo just because you lost a bet in your fantasy football league, right? If you do, I suggest I'm mermaid holding a football, but let's avoid that altogether. Bros and I are here to get you ready for your fantasy football drafts with insights and advice from sleepers to busts we've got you covered to give you the upper hand on your friends. Start your fantasy football prep now. Join us and stay ahead of the competition. Follow and listen to Upper Hand Fantasy on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Smart Baseball with Enos Saris every Thursday here with Ben and Woods. And I think when we talk about the numbers, Enos, and you've kind of mentioned this before. And so for some people, it's too much. They get overwhelmed by all the stats and they say, I just want to go by feel, but your brain fools you. If you throw a good pitch, if you throw a pitch and someone swings and misses, your brain's going to tell you, I just threw a good pitch, but you don't know that that's true. That's absolutely the matter. It may have just taken a bad swing at it for no reason whatsoever. And the numbers will actually kind of tell you which pitches are the better ones if you can take your brain out of the equation sometimes. Is that really what the statistical revolution here in baseball is about? - I think so. I mean, you know, I think the opposite is the one that's really happened even more, which is that a pitcher throws a pitch that's pretty good, but one of the first times you throw is that someone yanks out for a homer and then they never throw that pitch again. And you're like, dude, that is a pretty good pitch. And that's why it can be good to have something like stuff plus and be like, look, this curve ranks the best. Here are the cops, you know? Oh, this curve looks like this guy's curve in this guy. Those guys' curves are good, right? Like throw to him, please, you know? So there's some of that, which is, there's also some of like when a player's really struggling and you can come to them and say, hey, you know what, you're barreling the ball. Your barrel rate is on par with this guy's. Your exit losses are fine. Like you just need to chill out and like the hits will come, you know? So the numbers can do a lot of different things. They don't have to be overwhelming. They don't have to be negative. And one thing that I do think is, as a fan, you were allowed, I don't begrudge anybody their opinion about how they want to consume the sport. I understand that. And I think that the best broadcast teams, the best shows, try to really meld, you know, what is happening on the field, what has happened historically, the stories. People love stories from back in the big day. And then just sort of gently fold in some of that so that you don't necessarily have to report the exit velocity on every homer. But if somebody tonight hit the hardest hit homer of the year or ever for the Padres or something, that's when you sort of say it, you know what I mean? Like, you don't have to do it for every single one. You don't have to really shoehorn it in. These numbers are supposed to tell a story, you know? - It's interesting too. I was watching, I think it was the, something on Apple TV maybe. I can't remember what Frank Moore, Francie was on there. And he kept calling people that like stats are based on pencil necks the whole night. - Oh, those are those pencil necks. - Pencil necks that pencil necks. I'm like, all right, this is a huge broadcast featuring two great teams. Pencil neck, pencil neck, pencil neck. And I'm like, oh my God. - And he's not an old guy. I mean, he's not, he's not, you know, this isn't goose gossage here. And I'm listening to this going, all right, now I, there needs to be more of a happy medium. You know, there really does. - Yeah. - I just, I thought that was, I don't know if you had heard that yet. - Yeah, I think, I think Mud does a great, I think they do a great job. I'm looking down to a great job. And they're not, they're not the nerdiest that I've ever had. You know, one of my favorite broadcasts is John Miller. And John Miller is, he's not like a big stat guy. But I also love booshy on me. - Yes. - You know, the Cubs and he folds more stats in. You know, Jason Benetti with the white socks. So there are different ways to be great, just like there are different ways to be great as a baseball player. And that's why I like these stats because you can highlight so many different cool things about a player. - Yeah. - This guy's like one of the five fastest players in big leagues, you know, this guy. And you can do it a little bit more precision, I think than without it. And I don't know, you can also just express regret at like the way that baseball has become very sort of walking of last, you know, sort of more focused on power. And we've got three true outcomes, like that has come from analysis. But my, my, my, my retort is, you know, that's not the analyst fault. They're just trying to help their team win the game. It's not the pencil next fault. They're all, they're, they're working for teams and trying to help players get better. That's my passion is player development. You know, trying to help players get better. They're trying to help their team win. The, if you don't like where this is going, then you should, you should be pro the, the, the kind of rule changes that baseball is making. - A hundred percent. - That's the reason I'm making those rule changes is to incentivize teams to, to want the single again. - You know, enjoy your all-star break. We'll chat with you again as we get the second half started and you will always appreciate everything you've done. First half of the season was great. Thank you so much. - We'll talk to you not next week. We'll give you the week cost. - Yes. - Yeah, we cost second, the first week of the second half we'll have you back in two weeks. - All right, thanks guys. - Unless we get in the pitch. - Yeah, we'll just call you. - Keep your phone on. - Yeah, no, still might get attacked. We'll see. - You know, Sarah, smart, smart baseball brought to you by seven machusino. What kind of programs does this school have? How are the test scores? How many kids do a classroom? Homes.com, those, these are all things you ask when you're home shopping as a parent. That's why each listing on homes.com includes extensive reports on local schools, including photos, parent reviews, test scores, student teacher ratio, school rankings, and more. The information is from multiple trusted sources and curated by homes.com's dedicated in-house research team. It's also you can make the right decision for your family. Homes.com, we've done your homework. - Nice! - Today's episode is sponsored by Nerd Wallet Smart Money Podcast. Get your head in the financial game with smart investing and budgeting tips straight from the nerds. Nerd Wallet's experts will set future you up for success. With dependable, fact-based insights, no financial misinformation allowed. Learn how to save on your summer vacation. Find your next credit card or loan for a big purchase and invest in your next index fund. Make smarter decisions in 2024. Follow Nerd Wallet's Smart Money Podcast on your favorite podcast app. - Trying to figure out what to eat for dinner yet again? With nor sides and bullion as you're not so secret ingredient, you can skip the drive-through and do dinner at home. Nor taste combos provide a menu of delicious, affordable, and well-balanced meals that you can prepare in 30 minutes or less. Visit nor.com to get quick and easy recipe ideas for your home-cooked weeknight dinners. It's not fast food, but it's so good. - Hey, fantasy football fans. Do you want to be the owner who was doing a cram session the night before the draft? I didn't think so. You need to start your prep now. This is Faraz from Upper Hand Fantasy. Zach and I are here to get you ready for your fantasy football drafts with insights and advice from sleepers to bust, we've got you covered, and give it the upper hand on your friends. Today is the day to start getting ready for the draft. So join us and stay ahead of the competition. Follow and listen to Upper Hand Fantasy on the Free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.