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Derek VanRite, Briena, Sarah, Trevor, May, all here with the special shout-out to the live hive joining us on our YouTube page. On this episode, we dig into a story that Eno wrote, "How fast could a human being throw a baseball?" 106, 110, 125. There's no limit. 125. 125 is insane. We'll dig into that. We're gonna take a look back at some of our bold predictions from three months ago and see how those have aged some better than others. We got a couple teams at the fork. We'll look at the Rangers and Reds, talk about what they are likely to do as the trade deadline approaches about one month from now. And we got a game plan segment. We're gonna break down Stephen Kwan. How would you try to pitch to Stephen Kwan? It seems like it's getting more difficult with the new power that he is showing. Gentlemen, I want to start today. I got a question for Trevor, a very specific question. Trevor, where were you on the night of August 5th, 2019? Presumably playing baseball. Good, safe guess. Yes. Who were we playing on August? I have no idea. There's no way. If you off the cop knew who you were playing that day, that would have been absolutely ridiculous. You had a home game, you're playing for the twins, playing against Atlanta. And we're in the eighth inning. So I got a clip here. We're gonna take a trip down memory lane. Trevor enters the game to start the eighth inning. And we're gonna look at a situation. There's one out and a runner on first base. And then this happens towards second, out of second double play and may by innings and faces, just three men. Two unicorns, a double play and a hundred double play and a hundred. Were you like, were you like, what, do I throw a hundred? I looked, oh, I saw it was double zeros too. There's no one. I wondered if you were looking at the board after that, because there's a shot you're looking back and you're walking up. Yeah, if you're watching the game on TV, Trevor throws a hundred there. Stack cast handle at 99.8. And that was the fastest pitch you threw in a game in your career. And do you remember throwing that pitch now that you've seen it again? Like, does it kind of bring you back? Like, when you did it, did you know that was the fastest pitch you've ever thrown? I was like, check it. Was it actually a hundred or did we round up here? It was technically 90. They had according to like the in the system in the at the field, it was 99.89. The like, oh, I'm around down. But that's so that's 99.9. And then I, but I said a hundred on TV, so I'm gonna count it. I think I said after the game, I was like, I hit a hundred, I can't wait to get my plaque for throwing a hundred. It's made up an award you get. That's like a dream for anyone who throws harder. Like as soon as I hit like seven or hit like 97 or 98 in 2015, after going to the bullpen, that's the hardest I've thrown. I was like, they're a hundred in here. So it took me a while. But, uh, but I felt I was feeling really good that day. I believe I had, I went back out and had to pitch another the ninth because we were tied. Yeah. But through two innings, and then I got Freddy Freeman on like a 98 six above the zone too. So it was a good day. It was a good day. Yeah, you got the wind that day. So good things all around. Can you imagine adding, you know, six, seven more ticks or, you know, 10, 12 more ticks or almost, you know, 25 more ticks. That seems impossible today, doesn't it? Like, doesn't that seem like even the lower threshold, even just adding six more ticks to your fastball? Where would it come from? I don't know if you can do it off the mound. I don't know if you can do it without the, you know, the cropping for 45 feet before you throw it, because there's guys who've thrown like one 12, one 13 that way. I just saw a video of the guy from tread, the strength coordinator thrown 106. And there was like, what? But he obviously is the next player. But it was also like a pull down where he's like, Oh, it was a pull down. Yeah, it was just like, do whatever you need to do to get the hardest and, but to be honest, he was, it was impressive. So, you know, off the mound, I don't know. I feel like it's intent though. If you're up there and you're like, I don't care where this goes at all. And there's like no catcher maybe off a mound. And you're just throwing it in a normal. I think 105 106, a few times is is like maybe more than once. But like, I don't know how you go higher than that. Like, I just don't understand. Don't 125 like what? Yeah, you know, you wrote about this, you talked to a lot of different people. I want people to read the piece. But there's, there was a couple of different approaches. One was like sort of a purely theoretical one that was about just treating the body as different masses and then using an equation to like be like, if you were 85% efficient and taking all of the energy out of your legs up through your body, and then 85% it's the idea of the physics problem with the big ball and the small ball, like how much, how much energy can go from the big ball to the small ball, and then just having like basically treating the body as a bunch of balls that are like transferring energy all the way to the arm. Like the perfect pitch. Yeah. Yeah, I kind of like just trying to be like, what if we like the perfect pitch? What if we had a huge dude that like, you know, put a ton of force into the ground and turned that force and was very efficient at turning that force into arm, you know, arm speed and so on. And he said, this is Jimmy Buffy, who's respected bio-mechanist. He used to work for the Dodgers. Now he has this place called Reboot. So he did this physics model. It's funny. This is this is actually from the cutting from before. So it's not on the piece, actually, when I was reading it today, I was like, oh, they took that out. So when I was telling Mason Miller about this guy, Jimmy Buffy, he came up with his number 125, Mason Miller's like, oh, I don't know about that. And then a pitcher next to Mason Miller goes, that sounds like someone who's never played in the game before. And then he looks at me and goes, no offense. I was like, you know, before the no offense, I wasn't really offended. But, you know, there was a lot of, there was a lot of people in a lot of the hearts, we talked a lot of the hard story players and they, they were like 125. I don't know. I mean, this is, you're talking to John Duren and, you know, Ben Joyce, them being like, you know, Ben Joyce is throwing a 105 five. He's the, he's the closest to Chapman that there is probably. And so I, I kind of think that's maybe impossible. But there was a lot of different stuff that came up. I mean, one thing that was really interesting from Kyle Bodie was, you know, we tend to think of like optimizing mechanics right now as like taking the best of the mechanics as we know it and be like, oh, this is the way the shoulder should work. And this is the way the trunk should work. And this is the way the front foot should work. And like, if we put all this together and optimize it correctly, what could we do? Probably like 106, which is what rolled as Chapman is throwing. You know, I mean, that's a big dude who's fairly, I mean, it looks to me like it's pretty good mechanics. And he's putting a lot of force in the ground. And, you know, it looks pretty good to me. That's 106. But Kyle Bodie brought up like, what if we use AI to kind of come, like to kind of look at these, all these different movements and maybe come up with movement patterns that we haven't thought of. And there's like two reactions to that. One is like, okay, we're gonna ask the machines how we should move as people. Yeah, have you seen the machine try to move like a person? It can't. Yeah, even the ones that like take the jump shots and make the jump shots look kind of like, uh, bring, you know. So part of me is like, I don't know about that. Also, I think that, you know, some of the results will be like, you should do this thing with your body that's not possible. Like, like, like, you know, with Trevor, we've had this long, long discussion of like, the nerds coming to be like, you should throw your curve ball high and tight. You're like, uh, I can't like physically can't throw my curveball in that location. You're asking me to. So the AI will come up with some stuff that's like, no, sorry, bodies don't work like that. But, you know, maybe it would come up with some small, um, you know, differences and be like, Oh, what if you did this instead of this or, you know, at least it would come up with ideas to think about and then try to try to, to work it out. So anyway, just a, just a sort of, uh, going through the history of heart throwing and then where we are now. Um, and I tend to, I think I tend to agree with Glenn Flicic, uh, who brought up the fact that, you know, the injuries might be telling us that we're at maximum. I mean, if you look at runners and stuff, you know, you know, the, the all the kind of, uh, sprinting, you know, if you look at mile times, you know, all that sort of stuff. Yeah. Uh, what John's saying, like, that's what I was talking about with John Duren and some other guys. I was like, what if Giannis, you know, was good at baseball because we've all seen the clip of Giannis trying to play baseball. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's not natural to him. Well, then what if Giannis grew up like playing baseball and, you know, uh, and he could probably put more force in the ground, maybe even then in our oldest Chapman. So there, you know, there's at least the raw material there. And, um, so I, I, I wonder, I don't know if we'll get that though because, um, if you're Giannis in America, if you don't play basketball, you probably play football. Yeah. It's so interesting to me because it's like, what I'm hearing too is like, I think within the, within the context of the game now, maybe we're at the max. If you bred a, like, literally bred a guy to go and the only goal of his entire life was to see how hard of a pitch he could throw. That might have been Joyce, by the way. I mean, he's not bread. But if he, if this person, he was maybe like pitching a game or to a hitter, right? We're just seeing how hard he can throw a baseball. It might be possible, um, over tons and tons of ideation and figuring things out, but in the context of like going out and pitching stay healthy, like actually having to pitch you a hitter, all that kind of stuff. Like you have to think about other things, but if you get rid of all of that stuff and your training is solely for what's the hardest throw I have to throw, you know, I honestly, I'm in a good position to do this. Like, I don't have to, I mean, I would like to not get hurt. But if I don't, it's not like I'm missing out on my season or something. You know, so like, yeah, I recently retired, but like that's, it's just kind of, it's just kind of interesting. It's an interesting thing to think about. All right. So the ways to get to the ceiling are a Truman show type scenario where we create a pitcher and control his or her life to the point of just saying, this is your whole life. And this, this, the end of the TV show is you blowing out your shoulder in fantastic fashion, but throwing 125 so we can all cheer. I like this though. The one thing that, that brings true about this is that Ben Joyce has, and it has, it has a twin. And his twin tops out at 98. And it has been Joyce like, what is the difference between you and your twin? Are you like way bigger than him? He's like, no, like we're twins. And I was like, did you like, will lift more than him? He's like, no, we're, we look the same. And I was like, what about your mechanics? He's like, no, they're about the same. I was like, dude, why do you throw 104 and he tops out at 98? Like, what's the difference? He goes, all my life, all I've wanted to do is throw as hard as possible. But then all I've thought about my whole life is just throw as hard as possible. All I want to do is throw harder than everybody. And here I am, throwing harder than almost everybody in the world. Speaking of Ben Joyce, Ryan and the life I want to know is Ben Joyce, the post deadline closer for the Angels. We didn't talk about that with Sam Blum earlier in the week, but there's a few relievers that other teams might want in that pen that could get traded. And why not? Like what, why not let Ben Joyce spend two months closing out some games and just letting him get that experience? Yeah, I would, I would let him try it. I don't, I don't even need to look at any numbers. I'm just like, you've got a young guy that you've got control for a long time. He throws super hard, like, you know, let him figure it out. Yeah, so I'm here for it. Probably gonna make that move in a week or two if you want to try and stash him, because I think he's on a lot of people's lists as a second half closer, given what we know about the Angels and what we know already about Ben Joyce. But science experiments aside, at least for now, I think it's a good time to start looking at some of our bold predictions for this season. I feel like Eno is doing really well in the season long predictions department and Trevor and I are not doing as well in the season long predictions department. I probably didn't push myself too hard. I mean, like a lot of minor like, Oh, yeah, that's, that's like more reasonable than bold. Yeah, but okay. So even reasonable predictions are hard to hit on. I think your boldest prediction that is coming true to this point would be that, you know, the young Royals bats fuel a wildcard run and the Royals are exceeding a lot of people's expectations right now. So I think that's one where, you know, you could look at that and say you went out on a bit of a limb. And so far it looks like you're exactly right. So as we look at things on June 28, do you feel even better about that prediction? Or do you see the warts and have concerns that the Royals might not be able to make the necessary adjustments to sustain what they've done to the first half through the second half of the season and actually make good on your prediction? What's interesting is that, you know, some of the bats that I highlighted haven't done that well. MJ Melendez is one of them. Michael Massey's been hurt. But and Michael Garcia, like, has been doing okay, but not quite Louisa at next level, but what is really surprise has been their pitching. So I guess I would be nervous if all of my bats had hit and they were pitching like this, then I would say, oh gosh, it's only downhill from here. But I think that maybe, you know, any sort of recovery from Melendez, you know, any sort of health from from Massey, any sort of, you know, next level from Michael Garcia might be able to cover up a little bit of regression from somebody like a Seth Lugo or Brady Singer, where they score a little bit more and allow, you know, allow more runs. But generally, their strategy of supplementing some of their young pitching that was cheap with decently priced veterans like Lugo and Waka has been successful. They have found a little bit of a bullpen that works. And if they continue to play like this, they might actually supplement that bullpen at the trade deadline and increase their talent level. So I actually, I think they, I don't know if they're like, I don't know if I want to put the word favorite on there, but like they're in the mix for the wildcard and like even they can survive some aggression because not everyone has done exactly what you'd hoped. Yeah, I could see Vinny Pasquentino doing a bit more going forward to further remove that injury to me that just the fact that he's holding his own being close to a league average player coming off that that's a good start to the season in the appropriate context. You can get more from him as one of your bats that hits like a middle the order guy the rest of the way. Massey has been good around the IL time. So I think that's probably shaping up to be a hit as well, who I have a fun little stat. Pasquentino is one of the top 15 gainers in bat speed over the last month. So that could be a sort of a proxy for health or feeling good or feeling froggy. Yeah, that's a really good pull. You know, we love talking stats here at the athletic. Here's one that's super simple to remember discover automatically doubles the cashback you've earned on your credit card at the end of your first year with cashback match. That means with discover, you could turn $150 cashback to $300. That's right. You could put it towards some memorabilia you've had dry on or treat yourself to a premium sports network. You earn and discover doubles see terms at discover.com/creditcard. Trevor, we were looking at the AL central to being in the season. I think a lot of people thought the tigers were the team that would be in this position and you were among them. But like, what's gone wrong? Like, what's specifically, what were the big things that have not turned out the way you thought they would as far as propelling the tigers up into the place where the royals are right now? I thought my Zen Torkelson were going to have a bigger impact specifically Torkelson. He was kind of the anchor for me in terms of the power in the middle lineup. You know, he threw 30 plus homers last year and up not a great, not a super easy park to hit 30 plus homers in. And he was producing more and more and more towards the end. You know, we at Kerry Carper had a great year last year and things, but I just thought that like he Torkelson's the guy, especially if like young Parker Meadows takes another step forward too, right? So Ferguson kind of just not only is he struggled, he's seems to be out of whack in a way that's borderline yips. And that's concerning. And I think that's been a big reason they haven't gotten that continuity there and like the three four hole. So, but they have a lot of talent still. I mean, they're still hanging around. Everybody is. But for me, that's just the biggest thing. Because I like Jack Flaherty has done really, really well in tree schools. The, you know, the the guy or Terrick scuba. Sorry. It's leading for the Cy Young right now. So like they get those two guys that for those two predictions were actually right. It's just that the the runs. I thought they were I thought they were going to be a little bit more heavily carried by their bats. And then I also thought that maybe with a little bit of a positive trend for the tigers, like on the up and up that having played with hobby bias for two two months, he is in a mo plays off emotion a lot. And being in that kind of situation makes him better. So I thought that was a little bit more out of him too. But it hasn't really panned out that way. It's unreal. He has hit a new low, which is just I feel actually bad for him at this point. It's a 26 WRC plus through 53 games. It's a 183 209 247 line. It used to be even if the average new OBP were light, the power was there. He's at one Homer in 53 games this year. It just seems like a player that had a very flimsy approach even when he was really good. Now has even lost the core skills that made him exciting despite those flaws in the past. And that's a it's a rough outcome. I thought they'd get more from Colt Keith right away, but things are gradually trending the right way. I think we're seeing for a lot of rookie hitters, the adjustments are just taking longer. It's not a month and you're settled in. It's more like a half season or more before you start to get really comfortable. So if you're one of those teams relying on first time big leaguers, that might be part of the problem too. If your offense was built around a couple guys like that, you're probably lagging a little bit. We're seeing that from the Rangers. We'll get to a little bit later on in the show as well. And that's one of the predictions you hit on Trevor. You thought the Rangers might be a little bit of a regression candidate coming off a World Series win last year. And we'll talk about them as one of our at the fork teams today. As far as the other hits that I thought were kind of interesting, the Mariners having the best rotation in baseball. I was one of Enos predictions. And I think they look like they're either going to be there or in contention for that honor. The bigger leap was the Red Sox being a top five rotation in the American League. And that was one that I think at the time, people said, come on, they traded away Chris Sale. They've got a lot of non prospects getting opportunities. I thought the rotation was awful. Right. Do you make that after G. Alito got hurt? Yeah, that's even crazier. Okay. Yeah. But at that point, we're like, they have nobody. Yeah. And then at the beginning of the season, we looked at their schedule about a month in, right? This is going pretty well. And we thought they had a really easy schedule relatively speaking in the first month of the season. Maybe things would start to crumble on them a little bit in May and June, but they've held up. They've looked really good. And even having to test their depth even more than expected, the Red Sox are getting quality innings from a lot of places people didn't expect them to. Yeah. I mean, if you use ERA or FIP or war, almost any metric, they're in that top five. And I think that they have a comfortable enough lead. And I think there've been enough actual changes that I kind of believe it. One thing that I thought was just a, you know, I like some of the talent here better than other people do. I like Tanner Hauck. I think he can figure something out. I like Cutter Crawford. He has a lot of different, he has a great feel for Spin and a good fastball. I like Nick Pavetti. He's always been a stuff plus King. I like Brian Bay has changed up. So it was a little bit of liking those things. Then, you know, just knowing that, you know, they were changing their pitching philosophy in terms of hiring a GM from the Cubs that had been the director of pitching over there in Craig Breslow, you know, hiring Andrew Bailey away from the Giants. And what I knew from Andrew Bailey was he was a throw your best pitches more often kind of guy. And early on, he said the thing that we've talked about a little bit about fastball or jabs. And you have to like, you have to jab correctly. They're not knockout punches. They aren't something that you want to do over and over again. You want to think about when you use them. And so I'm not saying that I knew before they announced it or before they did this thing where they reduced this fastball thing, but I knew that they would change their pitch mixes. I knew that they would change their approach. And I knew that they would change some of the ways that they work on the pitching side. So all of that together has proved to have been pretty prescient. They're also last like in fastball usage in the big leagues now and throwing their best pitches more often and thriving. Some of it seems like it's communication to the organization has changed too. In addition to the philosophy, I thought there was an interesting story Jen McCaffrey wrote for the athletic maybe a month or so ago now that really broke that down. And I think that's one of the one of the harder things to understand outside looking in is who within the organization when those new hires are made can have those types of impacts. And I think Sean Doolittle as far as the Nationals go has been kind of credited for being a really important link from the analytic side to the actual on field coaching staff. And the way Mike Rizzo described that situation was they had info. They had the things they needed, but they weren't getting it to their pitchers effectively. And we talked I think briefly last week about them being one of those teams that has had a lot of guys exceeding expectations this year. And Doolittle seems to be a big part of what's different. Why is this happening now as far as trying to drill into how the same group of pitchers effectively are all shaving a half runner or run off their year eight this season. I mean, the number one complaint from analysts that I know in the game is, you know, the number one reason they leave the game and the number one reason they are upset is I'm not sure what I'm doing is getting to the field. And I think there's a lot of that energy in Houston right now. And so you've seen an exodus from that R&D department. And you've seen complaints of like that, you know, in places like Anaheim and in the past in Washington, we've left nearly definitely heard I in St. Louis, we've heard, you know, like, yeah, they're doing doing quality work here, but are they implementing it? Is anybody listening? Is it going to the right people? Are the difference makers hearing it? You know, so, you know, that was one of the reasons why we thought maybe it's possible if you just took publicly available information and ran a team to like do an okay job with it, because if you thought really heavily about how you communicated, and if you thought heavily about how you made decisions and you just made those decisions well and you communicated well using publicly available, the best of publicly available research, I think you'd be able to, you know, sync. I mean, not sync. I think you'd be able to swim with with people. I think you'd be, you know, a wildcard team. You're describing a coaching problem, I think, where you have coaches that just don't don't understand or don't want to understand or don't know how to effectively communicate things they've recently learned to players in a way that makes players better. Yes. All those. Trevor's not is like, yeah, each iteration of that, seeing it. This is the most important thing in in professional baseball organization set up right now. It's by far, and I don't think it's talked about the most. It's how well do you communicate the information that the people who are finding it to the people who can use it and where where are the breakdowns and like trust where the break because I went I was there the whole time the twins did this like changed from going from the Terry Ryan, you know, Ron Geiden, Gardenhauer, old school twins in the Metrodome way to the current Falfi, you know, that era, right? Like it's and the Josh Caulk time. There was a year where they had Josh where put on a uniform for a while to go into the dugout. Didn't work. And you and you love Josh. I love Josh. But like, the uni is not his his thing. You know, he's his sweatshirt was a little too big and it just kind of it did the opposite. It did the opposite of a thing. We wanted people to like to look at him and be like, we're all on the same page here and not have the jock, you know, dork geek thing going on, which is you know, it was and there's no other really way to say it. But that Jeremy Hefner was the one who bridged that cap and then that's when it started to go. The ex player who was also in there in the analyst department and then that that I followed him to New York because he was my guy. And so it's like how well you do like like the A's are have their own they're trying to get figured this out a little bit too. And not just on the picture side, everywhere, like every organization's trying to to find what this sweet spot is. Because you have to have a philosophy first, and then you have to communicate that philosophy. And this is how we win games. And this is how prevent runs and certain teams do that better than others. But at the end of the day, if the play, if you have a great philosophy, but the player doesn't buy in, it doesn't matter. So you have to have that kind of that's a that's an intangible skill. And it's something that I've always paid attention to. I always knew who I trusted and who I liked the most to sit there and talk to. And then I would just go to those people because it just was the easiest way to get what I needed and then put it into the game. And and frankly, I used vast majority of public public information to make my decisions. It was all like I use Savant more than I used internal platforms a lot because it was just I knew I was looking for and I couldn't find that stuff as easily because it was just like a little bit of a different thing. So it it's I've always been I've been that way too. It's also helpful that I go home and I need to hey guys, what's the password to the thing with the like I just go to a website and look it up. So it's entirely possible. You're completely right. Someone could definitely a lot of teams do use a lot of the public information. They do. So yeah, the user interface of the stuff that is in the organization might need some work because maybe those groups are understaffed. So yeah, the UI is not the focus. It's just getting all the information to having it available. It's not making it fun and easy to use. Easy, important and fun. With the Red Sox, one of the things I'd also heard is I think Haim Bloom deserves some credit for this. I mean, he's obviously if you come in and in one year, you you kind of turn things around. There was some raw clay there. You know, there was some like good players and and what I'd heard was that that Haim had like hired a lot of good people but there was a lot of sort of confusion about org chart stuff and like who reports to who and who's in charge and who's talking to whom and like, you know, I think bringing Breslow and Bailey on was like, okay, you know, they're going to be paying attention to pitching and they're going to figure out, you know, who reports to who and who who's doing what and and that's the big thing with do level two is like who, you know, you have to have someone you trust that's in that's obviously, you know, in the org chart, you know, who he reports, so you know who he is, you know what his role is. I mean, that kind of a thing. Like, if there's a nerd walking around the clubhouse, you know, people are like, who's that dude? It's every day, everywhere. There's someone who's like, who's that guy here? Who is that? And then players are like, is he a spy? Is he like a spy for the front office? There's like five new staff every year. They had five people. So so we had we had a guy, we are biomechanists with them with the A's because that was a new role. Like they didn't have it before. As him's Ethan. Great dude. I talked to him all the time. He gave me all kinds of great stuff. And nobody else talked to him because they know we were. But at the beginning, like it took four or five months of me being like, Hey, by the way, Ethan knows this stuff. Like, Oh, really? And and frankly, Ethan's like, well, it's a little bit of a new job and we're figuring out like what how much do they want me to talk directly to people. Yeah. And it also doesn't make sense if you were in new in the monkey sphere to come and be like, Hey, guys, hey, guys, hey, guys. Hey, guys, hey, guys. Yeah, you don't and you don't want to come on strong because then people just like, then now you're out. I've done that guy. Like, I need to probably talk about it. Biomechanist. Yeah. You're too much stuck. They start avoiding you. Oh, I train a room. Yeah. Monkey sphere mentions on the pod this week up to two. So that's paid the over was that one and a half was the line question from Phillip in the live hive. What's the turnaround time of a player comes to an analyst with a question one day, one week? Does the email just die some change over time, didn't it? Well, yeah, it's not usually usually do it in person. You just walk in the room and it's like, Hey, who's in here? Like, and you know, the Mets, I had two, two people that I that were usually who I went to and they were who I met when I first went there. And I was just like, Hey, what do you think of this? And then we'd like to look it up. They usually have a good idea, good way to like identify if we're that's true or not based on how do we search like they're usually pretty good at that. So like mind would be instant, especially if they had time, they're like, Oh, I'll, you know, I'm doing something in an hour. Would you come back? Like you come back after BP or something. So most of the time, it's just that day, or you just go to your pitching coach, be like, Hey, I'm wondering about the thing and then he'll find it for you. If like, he was always a guy who who liked to do that, like he liked looking at stuff up there. I wonder, but it took a little bit more time, you know, early on, right? When like you're talking about that transition time and it twins took it took a longer time. And you might have been a little bit more green and like you didn't necessarily want to ask a lot of questions that would maybe take a lot of time to answer whatever, right? Exactly. Exactly. You want to kind of keep it bite size, if you will. So but then as you learn more, then it usually start pulling on threads and you can go forever. But the great teams do it immediately. Like the Dodgers go in there, you're going to get like a report that day. I would be super happy if I was running an organization and and pitchers were asking us questions. I would feel like that's what you want sign of health. Yeah. Yeah. Because they trust you. They think they want to know your answer. They think you know something. You know, they also feel like they can ask something that maybe even is wrong or sounds stupid. And and they feel safe enough to ask it and then be like, Oh, I guess I was wrong. Or I guess that, you know, the numbers don't support it. I've had times where I walked in like, yeah, that's stupid. I'm leaving. See it. Like there's nothing there. That's complete. Yes. You're like, fine. Okay. Well, at least they didn't make you feel stupid for asking. Yeah. We're just like, no, I looked over and I'm like, all right, we'll have a good day and they're like, all right, see, and then we laugh about it and leave. You need to create the no dumb questions environment, though. I think you want to really just eliminate those barriers as an organization internally. Zach writes, this is a frustrating listen as a white Sox fan. I wish some Sox brass would listen in. They changed things up in the organization with a lot of hires. The hire that bothered everybody was promoting Chris Getz because the minor league system under his watch was not good, right? So promoting him to GM ends up being a move that as a fan. You're like, this is awful. And at the time it happened, I said, yeah, it probably is awful, but it's a different role. And if he were to put the right people in place, it's possible that they could get better despite that hire, despite the possibility of going outside the org and getting someone better. Maybe they are still going to be better off than they were in the Kenny Williams and Rick Han last 15 year window. But you bet on the prove it side because it is more of the same in terms of making the internal hire. I think you've seen some good out of J.J. Picolo, even though it's kind of the same situation where he was part of the same organization, he got elevated, he doesn't seem to kind of run things the same way as the guy that he replaced. So Getz kind of goes in there and hires Vanster, which is I think not something that his predecessors would have done maybe. Although his predecessors did try to hire Sam Mondry Kohn, who's now with the Marlins, and he was a director of R&D that they actually put in the dugout. He had been a director of R&D. They put him in the dugout as like a sort of QA coach, you know, data liaison. I don't know how well it worked. There's a lot of like, I call it an organizational inertia where it's like, you know, if they just see him as the nerd, then like, you know, it's going to be hard for him to do his work. Yeah, I think there's a longer path in a place like Chicago when you're trying to put someone like that in place. You have even more walls, more barriers to knock down on the way to getting everybody on the same because they're on our own sort of aura that he's bringing to the table. It's another organization where you can kind of tell the problem is at the actual top, right? It's much like we talked about in Anaheim earlier this week. Once you have a change at the top, you'll probably see more change throughout the organization for the better in the long run. Let's talk about the Rangers at the fork. Where is this team headed at the trade deadline? 37 and 44 entering play on Friday. It's eight games behind the Mariners in the AL West. A lot of people think that the Mariners are gettable because the Mariners aren't putting enough runs on the board. It's seven games back of a wild card spot. Only an 8% chance of making the playoffs according to fan graphs. 17.7% though, if you look at baseball for sectors is Picoda. So if your Rangers fan use Picoda, it'll make you feel a little better about things right now. I look at this team and I think the big difference is they're just not hitting like they did last year, right? They're 22nd in barrel rate, 23rd in WRC plus. They don't strike out a lot, so that's a good thing. But last year, the Rangers were tied for third in homers league wide. Only the Braves and Dodgers hit more. So they were crushing the ball last year. They have had some injuries. Josh Young's only played four games. Corey Seager wasn't himself to start the year hit that spring injury. He's kind of looking more like Corey Seager last six, eight weeks or so. Wyatt Langford, Evan Carter, both have had stints on the IL of more than 20 days. A couple of things have gone right. Most notably Josh Smith, he's been awesome. On paper, he's basically hit like Carlos Correa this year. I don't think anybody had that as a bold prediction coming into the season. So the lineup you could look at and say, okay, with health, they're at least going to be closer to league average without making any changes. The pitching. Okay, the pitching is probably better than expected by result, right? 19th in war among starters, 18th in the bullpen. That's probably a little better than I would have expected coming in despite the highest walk rate in the league. And the thing about the Rangers that we talked about back in March was a Mac Shur's is going to come back eventually. Jacob DeGrom should come back in the second half. He's throwing some bullpen sessions now. And Tyler Malley should come back too, right? So if they stay afloat in the first half, they could be a lot better in the second half, just with the pitching getting some return from injury sorts of upgrades along the way. Based on that sort of context, have they still underperformed as the defending World Series champs relative to what we all thought they would do in this first half? For me, they're going exactly like I thought they would. Honestly, if the season ended today, the AL West shakes out exactly how I predicted. So that's the one thing I have going good, but there just wasn't any news about them in the off season. I was like, why, why is there not more excitement? Because usually there is. Usually, I'm, you know, used to seeing fan base be like, let's go. We get like, we're going to, we're going to repeat and this that and the other. And it just seems like Chris, Chris Young and the family over there, like just were like, we're good. It just felt like a work good situation. We're just going to run it back out there, run it back and see, see what we get out of our guys. And, you know, like you said, Corey, Corey started slower. Simeon, though he saw like he always is he had a great year last year, him and him and a Seeker together were like in great years, top hitters in the league. And they needed to both do that in order to be the team they were last year. And they're still good. It's just not, they're not great. And a Seeker is trending that way. But you know, and then, and then the starting pitching has been about what I'm, I thought they would in the bullpen has been shaky, walking lots of guys. Leo Taveras isn't doing what he did last year. They just had a lot of guys kind of peak at the same time. And that's what you what you need. And it hasn't shaken out that way. And then losing losing young early was it was, was a blow that that they couldn't really afford. So there was just a lot riding on a lot of guys doing the same thing again. And when you go into a season like that, it pretty much never happens. And that's kind of why I saw them. I mean, they're they're so talented and they have so many good players that they weren't going to be like terrible, but then they're going to hang around. But I just I I don't know if they're a buyer or or just judging by like the way that they've been going about building the team this year, all year, I would not be surprised if they do like one little like lateral move or something and grab a reliever or just don't do anything at the deadline, because it's just not they could still sneak in like any you can sneak in 81 81. And they're probably we're still good enough to do that. And if we don't then, you know, the guys get an extra month rest so we can get going next year. And that's a terrible thing to think as a fan of a team. But like, that's not surprising at all. Like it's baseball. It's it's, you know, you can waste a lot of resources trying to go for a second one when that's not it's so hard to do. I think probably the the local TV thing was a complicating factor for spending money. So I think they was sort of like, Hey, we're going to ride a ride our coattails here and just sort of, you know, be happy. We got that championship. We have, you know, sell people on the returning the returning pitchers and, you know, for what it's worth, it's it's what's amazing to me is that they're run scored and the runs against today match up almost exactly with their run scored, their projected run scored and the projected runs allowed. And that's so weird for me because I see young coming back. I think Langford is about to go off. I mean, Langford, you're starting to see the power now. I think he's coming into it. He's healthy again. I think Evan Carter is going to be better going forward. I think Marcus Simeon and Corey Seager, who'd be better going for I even think Adoli Scarcea, who I don't really love his approach. I think he, you know, I don't think he's a below average bat with all that power he's got. So I see so many bats under reforming. I think they're going to they're all going to get it going. And then you've got the aforementioned pitchers coming back. How could they have the same runs allowed going forward, but maybe have to grow them in Scherzer and Malley on the same roster like that. Something doesn't line up for me with those projections. So I think this is a totally a stand pat team. I can't imagine that the year after and that's another thing about optics, the year after winning the World Series, you're going to trade away somebody that, especially not somebody that you have for years and years, like maybe some rentals if they if they don't get it going, some rentals rather than deadlines, some expiring contracts, maybe Scherzer because you could get a you could get maybe a pretty decent prospect for a month or two for two months of Scherzer. But and also don't know that the fan base is like, you know, like values Scherzer is like a foundational piece. Like, I don't he wasn't necessarily healthy for for a lot of their run. So, you know, I don't think that there they would be like, Oh my God, you traded away Scherzer. It's not like Bumgarner. Remember when Bumgarner at the end of the Giants 10 year, it was like, you should trade away Bumgarner. And it's like, I want to be the guy who trades away Bumgarner, the trade deadline, you know, like, I think that people will remember me badly. I don't think that's going to happen Scherzer. So I have, I think they'll hold and then at the very last moment. Maybe Scherzer, Scherzer. Right. They're sitting as far back as they are today. The chances of them getting a little closer are decent, though, for the reasons that you mentioned. I think if you you try to figure out what they would do at the deadline, it clearly is Trevor mentioned, Lioti Tavares hasn't been good. So that's the spot you'd like to upgrade. I don't know if I see them going out and giving up the young talent to go get Luis Robert. I don't think they're a team that would go get jazz chisomite. You could trade for a corner outfielder and play Evan Carter in center. I think I think that's at least in the realm of possibility in terms of his athleticism. I don't think you'd be pushing him into a spot where he's going to fail if you went that route. So maybe it's an inexpensive corner option to upgrade the outfield as a whole to play Tavares less and then a reliever or two. But I almost wonder too, if part of it with the RSN money being what it is and the opening day payroll being nearly 225 million because they've been so aggressive and free agency in recent years, if they have to try and find a team, it's willing to eat a lot of money left on contracts. Like maybe maybe the ownership group saying, Hey, look, we got our title, the TV money is a mess. So we're not going any higher than this. We can add, we can tweak and play for now. We just can't spend more money that we're spending currently. They lose a fair amount of money. I'm sorry if I made it sound like it's just a loser. They lose a fair amount of money off the payroll after this year. They lose 43 million from Scherzer, 13 million from Haney, a possible 10 million from Robertson, six from Leclerc, four from Yates, four from Lorenzo. I mean, I'm just trying to add this up here really quickly in my head. That's 20, 30, 70, they lose like, you know, like 80, 90 million off of their off of their payroll. So I think, you know, I think they're good with paying to Grom, Seager and Simeon long-term money, and then trying to just assemble around it. That seems to be their plan there. We'll see what the next couple of weeks bring, but that middle area where they're not hardsellers, but they're not aggressive buyers seems the most likely just based on all these different factors. It's like a look at a team in the NL that is in a bit of a different situation. The Reds, they're probably ahead of schedule relative to expectations 14 months ago. I mean, things were really bad. The beginning of last season in Cincinnati, they are better now, but maybe not quite where everybody was hoping coming into the year. 38 and 43 entering play today, 10 games behind the Brewers in the NL Central, only three and a half games out of a wild card spot in the NL. It's a 9.9% chance making a playoffs according to Fangraft 7.9 according to Dakota. So Dakota popular in Texas, less popular in Ohio right now. What do we think about this Reds team Trevor? I mean, you had them, I think winning the division at the beginning of the season. I think it's still possible. It's more likely they'd fall into that wild card being just based on the distance they are behind the Brewers, but a playoff team nonetheless. Do you still think that's got a shot happening despite how things have started off in the first half for them? Absolutely. For a few reasons. They've they've underperformed at the plate, which is something that I think they have a lot of room to improve in. And they have opportunities to do so. You know, McLean going down was not helpful. I had him you having a really good year. And this was more of a maybe the hot take of the of the predictions just because that's fun. And I like having hot takes. But Ladolo's been is just if he can say healthy, he is filthy. They're getting a good year of out of Abbott. I mean, like I take what Ladolo and and Hunter Green in a one, two in a wild card series. I'd take I like you have just as good as a chance of anybody. The bullpen is has been pretty good. You know, Sam Moles thrown. Well, I think he's a guy who every single year is throwing really well. No one really is talking about. And I'm a little biased there because he's a friend of mine, but they've they're right there. All they need to do is start scoring some more runs and maybe and they're in the they're in the one of the most home run friendly parks in the in the league and they're not hitting as many home runs as they should. So, you know, they could get hot. The weather warms up. You know, Marta is coming back. Say he he he provides a little bit of a spark. You know, and maybe they add a guy and and one interesting thing. Now, I don't know. I feel like the Reds have a lot of young guys that they can they can move. You know, whether it's on their team now or or a little bit out for a guy like I think like a guy like Brent Rooker goes there and he just does great. Obviously, he's controllable and he's bank controllable, but Brent Rooker and and and and Cincinnati is really interesting to me because of the way he he can hit or another guy I was thinking of and no one's talking about Colorado much, but they they rake you go get Ryan McMahon somehow move and have kind of little Mario playing first or D H and right now it's like Bartini's D H and and and like, you know, they have a D H spot they can use. He could be a big boost, especially because he comes from a hitter's friendly park to another really hitters friendly park. So, there's no reason to think that he won't do what he's doing there and he's a wizard at third. So, like he's great defensively. That would probably cost a lot to go get him, but they did that could be a huge difference for them in the middle of the lineup. So, those two were just interesting for me. I don't know how you get those done, but if they did swap hands, you know, full disclosure, I don't I'm not fully aware of everyone's top 30 prospect list. So, I don't know exactly who, you know, I'm still learning a lot of that stuff, but it's just a food for thought for those two guys. I think they would help a lot. So, one thing I noticed about the Reds is that they've got this group of prospects that are all at high A together that they're kind of in that sweet spot where they have value, they have ceiling, they're not close enough to helping your team. So, you can pretty easily talk yourself into trading some combination of Sal Stewart, Cam Collier, Hector Rodriguez, right? Because they're not helping you this year and they're probably not helping you until late next year at the absolute earliest. So, I think it's always easier to trade those kinds of prospects away as opposed to current clear cut top 50 guys that have already reached double A. So, maybe there's something there with one or a combination of those guys that gets them something back. It's weird to think about this team needing a bat, but I agree with you, even with Nulvi Marte coming off that suspension, the core is basically Ellie, Nulvi Marte, and Jonathan India, but as they are right now, the outfield is a weakness. So, yeah, whether it's Rooker or someone that could be there, another option to be there for multiple years, I think something like that makes a lot of sense. They have had TJ Friedel on the IL twice, eventually, you know, if he's back in the fold, he's a kind of key part of their lineup as well. But Jake Fraley and Will Benson are playing probably a lot more than expected, at least combined Benson especially, and they've both been below average with the bat and with the glove. So, it seems like an easy position to target. Question here is always the ownership group. Podcasts and leanies are going to spend money. They do fluctuate kind of in the 15 to 17 range league wide and payroll when they're spending, even though they dip down to that bottom five, bottom six range when they're rebuilding. So, they have room. They could actually take on some money, which gives them a little more flexibility if podcast leanies are willing to do it at the trade deadline, because there's plenty of teams that want to shed money this time of year. Yeah, I'm going to make the case for them not doing those big things and not spending any money, because that seems to be kind of what they've done in the past, at least when they sold, they sold big. But I don't know that they've, I remember them buying big at the trade deadline. So, my case is this. The outfield has been, the idea I think for them has just been, we're just going to get so crowded in the infield that will make outfielders out of infielders. And I think it's been fairly successful with Spencer Steer. And I think, you know, Jonathan India in a corner, you know, could work. And, you know, I think that Noelbi Marte and Matt McLean are the trade deadline acquisitions. Oh, no, we're playing that game again. I know, I know, with the lamest, it's the lamest thing, but you could, you can already hear the GM saying the words. And if you take Noelbi Marte and I know he didn't have a great post PED suspension, minor league stint, but let's say he finds it. And I know Matt McLean will be coming off a shoulder injury. And sometimes that really affects your power. So that's a big question, Mark. But I will also point out, and this was from the same list that I pointed out earlier, our listener Dominic, who is, what is his handle? D-O-M-I-N-I-K-K-U-L. Dominic did the biggest bat swing, bat speed gainers. India is second, and Fraley is tenth. And Fraley, with a little more power, you know, becomes excited again, freedom, a healthy freedom, becomes exciting again. So basically what I'm saying is the spaghetti is there. You throw it against the wall and somebody emerges as you are outfielders. I don't think it's going to be Benson. He strikes out too much. So I think it could be anyone of Fraley, Frito, McLean, and Noel Vimarte. I'm not saying that any of those guys are going to play in the alphabet, they could push India to the outfield, so on and so forth. I think there's enough bats here. On the pitching side, I'm really surprised by how well they've done. And I think one of the things you can do is be like, "Oh, we've been good so far, so we're going to continue being good." And I'm not, like I've also said, I've said many times, I don't understand Andrew Abbott. I do think Graham Ashcraft can be better. It's a decent group. I think I would still add a reliever. And we've talked about the Edwin Diaz idea. But, you know, the thing that comes to mind is Joe Boyle for Sam Mall. At the time, I liked a little bit better for the A's because I thought they might be getting a starting pitcher. I think the process was good for both sides. The A's needed a starting pitcher more than the reliever, and Joe Boyle offers the upside of that. And so I'm circling maybe Connor Phillips as a possible trade guy because he has the same problem as Joe Boyle in terms of really bad command. And so maybe you move Connor Phillips to the pen and find that that solves some of his command issues, slim down his repertoire, ask him to do less. Or you trade Connor Phillips for a reliever that you have on the team for more years, because that's how the Reds think. A reliever. I mean, I didn't realize how bad Connor Phillips season is going. 15 homers allowed in 57 innings at AAA working as a starter. 53 K is 50 walks, you're a 10. Whips over two. It's if you probably talk to a Reds fan, they'll probably say the same thing as a set up boy, like he's not gonna work. But if you talk to somebody else, they'll say, well, his stuff plus grades are great. If he ends up being a reliever, then I traded a reliever for a lever. You know, like if I trade Lucas Orsegg for Connor Phillips, you know, it'll be the same thing we did last year, and it won't necessarily be a bad idea. You know, Lucas Orsegg is 29 years old. Yes, you get, you have them for a bunch of years, but I'm gonna try and make a starter out of Connor Phillips. A rebuilding team can afford that. The Reds are moving fast enough where they probably can't wait on that. They have to change the role if they want to try and use Connor Phillips at some point sooner. And Carson Spires has come up and he's the opposite of Connor Phillips, where he doesn't really have the stuff, but he has command, he has big mix, and he seems like a capable five, six, somebody that can push Graham Ashcraft, somebody that can work the back of that rotation. So all right, so we're saying mid level buyer for the Reds, like they will actually push a few chips in given the state of the NL Central and the NL as a whole. I mean, they need a win streak. Yeah, they do. They can't afford to drop a few more games and then go into the deadline, like six back of a wild card spot or something and then go aggressive. I don't think they'd get the buy-in they need for that to happen, especially if it ends up adding to the payroll. All right, so we're a little bit optimistic about the Reds and what they might do on the spaghetti and see what you got. You know, how do you feel about Cincinnati chili, by the way? Do you like it? I think it's good. I haven't had it. I do like Scotland chili, but I grew up eating baloney sandwiches. Yeah, I think we grew up eating a lot of the same foods, but I've never had skyline. I've actually made Cincinnati chili at home, even though I'm not from Ohio. All I can see is Harper and dude. Yeah, there's Harper, but it takes you down now. Yeah, it's worth worth it worth the pain. All right, let's get to our game plan segment. How should we pitch to Stephen Klahn? He's got a 182 WRC plus in 53 games this season. Ever since showing up in the big leagues, it's been great at putting the ball in play. This year, 7.1% K rate only Luis Araya's better. So he's in that territory and now he's got seven homers. He's getting for power career high seven homers already playing a third of the season. So what the heck is the idea here? What do you try to do to not get beat by Stephen Klahn, especially none of these adding this power to his profile? Who wants to go first? You had it. We both have similar first slides. So why don't you show yours real quick? Yeah, yeah. So this is against my fastball and my slider. Zero swings misses all year. So not great. Not not specifically yours. Like one's like yours. Well, yeah, one's that profile. Yeah, that break the same way and that are the same below and and I believe there's like. So you'd be screwed. Yes, you can't get him out. At least two. So yeah, like, well, I'm not getting into swing and miss. That's not right. Yeah, probably. But not many people are and actually that 7.1% K rate is actually 6.7 because I just checked it. So maybe you got yours a couple days ago. It's even lower. So he doesn't miss. But he has eight home runs. One caveat to that every single homer he's hit is in the exact same spot in the zone when he hits it. That's middle into in like mid thigh. And he's pulling and he's pulled every single one and five of them are at home. And we know about the park factors in Cleveland. So take that with a grain of salt a little bit, but he's juicing balls that he can pull. And his his red his hard hit ball. If you drew a line from the up and in corner of the zone to the down and the way corner of the zone, everything is below the line that he's hit hard. He has only one extra base hit that's into a gap. Every double is down the line and every home run is pulled. So on both sides. So that leads me to believe the types of things he's trying to do. So it depends on where he what who is there people on base or is he leading off an inning or whatever. The only thing he misses is change up and it's change ups that look like they're going to go down and into him and then go below the zone. Those are the ones he chases. Yeah. All right. So I can tell the story. Look at this. Yeah, there we go. So the first one is fastballs. Those are all hundreds. If you're looking on on YouTube right now, he does not miss fastballs. There's one spot that's below 97% contact rate. It's like you got to hit a penny on the outer half. And you can't even go high outer half. You just got to go mid level outer half and you got to hit one little spot. And that's it. Otherwise he's got hundreds and 98s and 99s in contact. Then you look over the next one sliders hundreds everywhere unless you basically hit his back foot. So you can try the back foot, but don't miss it all. And then you're right. Change up is the only thing where he's got a little bit of weakness. You can even throw some in the zone as long as you dot that bottom line. You know, you got to kind of dot the black. And it can't be necessarily a change up like a typical change up that a righty would hit the throw lefty that's out over the outside corner. I think he must be able to just sort of serve those. Yeah, just just just play him into the outfield. So it has to be almost like a front door change up. You're almost throwing the change up to his inside that kind of that falls over the bottom middle of the plate. Otherwise, getting him to swing a miss is folly. I mean, you got to dot that fastball away, back foot the slider and then front door the change up. Good luck finding a pitcher that can do all three of those things. And then just flip to the power. It tells the same story you were saying the power is middle in. And so I would basically just, you know, sort of pitch him up in a way as much as possible. And of course, give up some opposite field singles in that process. If he came up with the bases loaded, that's my plan is to hit that penny high and away. And then back foot them with the slider or front door with the change up at least I'd hope that I could do one of those two things with my secondaries. You know, either have a slider where I can back foot him or a change up where I kind of throw it middle. That's that's the plan. And you can tell why it's really hard to execute. He also freezes too. He's a guy who you his strikeouts are actually a good number of freezes. So if you can throw a backdoor slider or something, if you have like a 10 or how because he's throwing his armside constantly down in the way, like if you can do that late, like a ball to strike, then you might be able to get him there. I would I would start him like up and in with a fast ball or something just like early in account with with maybe nobody on base or gone first or something just to get him like, Oh, I might be able to juice and then just get away from that. So like get him thinking because if you just live away, he's going to start giving you the opposite field. He's going to. Oh, I know you want him to think big because he's had some juices here. He's like, I can juice the ball. So you want him to think that he might get that pitch and then maybe he'll like pop up or just like freeze him for a second or something. Like maybe an up and in fastball, a back foot slider. So he's like, Oh, this guy or like living on an insider first pitch because he's not a big swing first pitch guy anyways. So like he'll be, Oh, do that again. And I'm like, I'm not going to do that again. That was actually to think you make you think that thought right there. If you're lucky, you get like a back foot swinging miss, you get a foul ball on, you know, made up and away fastball. And then you try to freeze him with a backdoor breaking ball. Yeah. And he looks at strike three. I'm a video. This is the picture that's pulling this off has stones. And reading through 70. No one's doing it. Yeah. So how come no one's doing this? I think the challenge with Kwan, and I think it's a similar challenge to Luis Araya's is when you look at what you know, what they do, like, okay, so you're willing to give up the opposite field single because you know, you're very unlikely to strike him out. You have your outfield defense play a lot more shallow for hitters like Kwan going the opposite way. Like how far in how much can you cheat in to try and take those opposite field hits away? Like basically dare him to try and beat your left field or even beat your center fielder over the top. Because when you look at where he hits the ball hard, like you guys said, it's all to the pole side. So I just wonder if that's one area where a player like Kwan or a player like Araya's, maybe they start to lose in the long run if outfield defenses continue to be more aggressive in how they play this type of player. Doesn't seem like we've seen it as much yet with them as we've seen it with other player types. That's a good point. A lot of what he does is drop it right on the line though. So if you come in, you better be playing line hard because you don't want that to trickle by you because then now you're in trouble trouble. But he has very his honestly, he has like nothing, at least against guys that that have my pitch profile, which are a lot of guys, not like literally nothing that's even being really dropped in front of the the left fielder for like a play single. It's all like really close to line and possibly a double like like he's dunking it in not not like just hitting a nice single. Araya is a little different. He can do that both sides too. He can pull the ball like that. So he's a little bit more like playing ping pong. He actually said that to me once I it's like I'm playing ping pong, which is just an outrageous thing to say as a professional hitter. But he can he can flick. I think Juan's more of a I'm going to play here and then I'm going to try to hit the ball hard here because our parks doing well here too. So like his his a little bit different. But yeah, you could you could you can incentivize him like having to think about that like not being so comfortable doing that, which might get him off his game a little bit anyway. So I'm sure there's and there are teams doing that, but I'll be honest, there's not a ton of left fielders that are like the best athlete on their team. They're out there because they can hit. So it's like, you know, I'm trying to think like if Rooker's out there, like Alvarez is out there like like, you know, it's not it doesn't matter. Really he's going to do it. So you got to pick and choose who your guy is right and just give it to him. And they're already doing it. They are moving in their up a lot of average start distance for the left fielder. Starting with the closest that the left fielder is playing. Nikki Lopez. Yep. Okay. One. Stephen Kwan, two, Luis Araya's three, Jeff McNeil, four. Those are the correct out. Those are the correct choices. Yes. There and they're starting at two 77. And the average, the sort of median out fielder is at like two 90. So that's that's 12 feet in, 12, 13 feet in. This guy's this guy's already playing. So yeah, they they're already playing him. And he's still finding a way to to dunk those hits in. Well, there's one fun fact on him too, by the way. Stephen Kwan is what we call in the game sneaky slow. It turns out he's 48th percentile in sprint speed, which is a mile an hour slower than shaling leaders. Whoa. So why? How? This guy could steal 20 bases even before the rules change. He had 19 back in 2022. I don't know. He's 21, the 27 mile, 27.1 miles an hour top speed in Shays 28. But Shays is 72nd percentile. So he's actually way faster than people think he is. I love using the status. Shays like the second fastest guy beside Ruiz on the edge, which is hilarious. Does this go back to the limitations of sprint speed though? And when it's on and when it's not, right? Like he's always sprinting out too. He loves this. He loves that he's up there. So he's like trying to actively get his speed up, which is great. And that's what I've heard complaints from some guys who are older, who still have good speed. And I've got some in my text in my inbox that are like, you know, that's that ain't crap. He's like, they tested, they tested me on the Mets. And I was the fastest. I'm like, yeah, I'm faster than Starling Marte. Okay. I just run harder. Yeah. Yeah, it kind of is that type where he just you run hard all the time. There's other guys, you know, you've seen Manny loaf it to first, you know, but sometimes he's playing hurt and he's I'm out, you know, yeah, he looks so hurt right now. By the way, Manny Machado just doesn't look right. I was watching the Padres last Friday. I texted you guys because Dylan sees through a couple changeups that actually made me angry. And it's because it's just because everything else he throws is good, right? Like, why would you do that when you can do other stuff that you could have a power seam shift to change up easy and it would be disgusting. And Nick Pollock is yelling about him having a cutter, you know, because sometimes the foreseem is not there for him. So he should he should have a cutter. So I don't, yeah, it is a little bit weird. But then again, if you have shaky command, maybe, you know, playing around with it, you don't want to, you know, the change up is just so weird. It's probably not affecting his other stuff. He says he like, flicks it and he like, he aims like in front of the plate. It's basically an ethos. It pops out of his hands in a way that I feel like hitters would just be able to recognize it. It doesn't most of them. No, I don't want that any word. They were all maybe 90 after words looks like whoa. Yeah. I mean, he's got his reasons, but I disagree with those reasons. Yeah. But they're stupid. Yeah, they seem pretty dumb to me. But hey, it's just just my opinion. We're gonna go on our way out the doors to reminder you can get a subscription to the athletic. It's a dollar a month for the first year. You can read Eno's great story from today. Plus all the other great stuff we've got all for one low price. You can find us on Twitter. Trevor is at I am Trevor May, you know, is at, you know, Sarah's I'm at Derek Ben Riper, the pod is at rates and barrels. You can join the discord. The link is in the show description. If you got a question for a future episode, drop them in there. Special shout out again to the live high for joining us on this Friday. We go live most Fridays at 1 o'clock Eastern next week. We'll go live on Wednesday at 1 o'clock Eastern because the 4th of July is in the end of the week. So adjust your calendars accordingly. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to hit the like button for this video on YouTube lose nice rating and review. That is going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We're back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
