Speaker 1: Not five miles an hour, ratting two his head, he
Speaker 1: hopped down.
Speaker 2: First with the mount Bonius face, and on the very
Speaker 2: next pitch he up in stow second fase.
Speaker 1: With gretest.
Speaker 3: He wasn't born, he had dir Yes uniform.
Speaker 4: All right, what is up you muddy be siders. We
Speaker 4: have a great show coming up for you episode forty.
Speaker 4: My friend is joining Nate Handy and the rook to
Speaker 4: talk about his brand new pitching coach job, evaluating those
Speaker 4: dumb non athlete pitchers and maybe we'll get into some
Speaker 4: good old storytelling or two. But Nate, can we welcome
Speaker 4: in my buddy, pitching coach for the University of Washington Huskies,
Speaker 4: Connor Lambert Connor, Hi, you doing.
Speaker 5: Matt, I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Nate. Thank
Speaker 5: you guys. Allow me to come on the show and
Speaker 5: talk a little ball and yeah, maybe enlighten some folks
Speaker 5: or not, you know whatever, maybe make it people a
Speaker 5: little dumber. I don't know, but I'll do my best.
Speaker 5: And that's what we do here.
Speaker 4: Con We we are just spouting nonsense left and right.
Speaker 4: Occasionally we're right, and when we're right, we call back
Speaker 4: to it all the time, and then we just ignore
Speaker 4: the times where we're wrong. That's the Nate Handy specially
Speaker 4: I learned from the best. But Nate has wanted to
Speaker 4: have you on this podcast, like since he heard about you.
Speaker 4: He's obviously, as our listeners know, a huge pitching guy.
Speaker 4: And I'll give Nate some credit. He is pretty good
Speaker 4: at evaluating guys based on just a couple of looks
Speaker 4: here and there. So he I think you and here
Speaker 4: are going to really geek out. So it's an exciting
Speaker 4: time for Nate. He can't even get a word in
Speaker 4: because he's so giddy. He's like, you guys can't see
Speaker 4: him on the pod, but he's like literally in his
Speaker 4: corner in his garage laughing because he's so excited.
Speaker 6: That is true. Like I said before we started recording,
Speaker 6: Connor like, just thank you man. I've just always wanted
Speaker 6: to talk to a stud badass pitching coach, and you're
Speaker 6: making that happen here. So thank you. Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 5: Oh Nate, you're too you're too kind. Yeah. No, it's
Speaker 5: what you just described about recruiting and seeing guys you
Speaker 5: know a couple of times and being able to evaluate.
Speaker 5: That's my job right there. That's that's what it is.
Speaker 5: So if I can shed any light, hope to I
Speaker 5: hope to be able to do that. You guys are awesome, obviously,
Speaker 5: Matt and me go way back, and Nate, you can
Speaker 5: stop using badass because I don't know about it.
Speaker 6: Well, I don't know our listeners might not agree with
Speaker 6: that here after we get going here. But congratulations on
Speaker 6: the new gig man. You've been at it for what
Speaker 6: on the job for a month now?
Speaker 5: Is that?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, a little over. Yeah, it's been it truly has
Speaker 5: felt like work from home because I'm still down here
Speaker 5: in Portland. I'm sitting in a kitchen full of boxes.
Speaker 5: We're getting ready to move up here in weeks time.
Speaker 5: I've just been kind of working out of PDX and
Speaker 5: flying to where I need to fly and seeing the
Speaker 5: guys and doing the recruiting trail. But that's we're in
Speaker 5: a quiet period now. So we had camp last week
Speaker 5: for a full week, so I was up in Seattle
Speaker 5: kind of. It's almost a little bit of commuting but
Speaker 5: being able to stay with some buddies up in Seattle,
Speaker 5: and it's been good. It's a lot of evaluation, it's
Speaker 5: a lot of meetings, it's a lot of catching up. Man,
Speaker 5: It's it's a lot of zoom calls right now. It's
Speaker 5: time period for college baseball coaches is you know, we
Speaker 5: just got the ability to start talking to the twenty
Speaker 5: twenty sixth class, which are juniors to be in high school,
Speaker 5: and so it's a lot of phone time. And then
Speaker 5: once we get into September, we can start having those
Speaker 5: that class on campus. So you're rounding out your your
Speaker 5: twenty twenty five class a little bit. You know. I
Speaker 5: think there's some different dynamics to that with transfer portal,
Speaker 5: you know, and your twenty twenty five class and that
Speaker 5: being something it's come full circle at the end of
Speaker 5: or at the at the end of May next year.
Speaker 5: And then yeah, and then the twenty sixth class. You're
Speaker 5: oping to add a few guys early right now and
Speaker 5: continue to evaluate. But I mean, it's it's a little
Speaker 5: bit of a mess. I mean, the NCAA is coming
Speaker 5: down with different roster sizes right now, what they're going
Speaker 5: to do with scholarships. You know, courts are deciding a
Speaker 5: lot of the stuff right now. I just actually read
Speaker 5: something on Yahoo our head coach done us something about
Speaker 5: not not necessary lawsuits, but just things that student athlete
Speaker 5: representatives are wanting to accept or not wanting to accept.
Speaker 5: And it's no one knows what roster sizes are going
Speaker 5: to look like. So like recruiting is truly in the
Speaker 5: dark right now, which is just different. Sorry to ramp on,
Speaker 5: but a new territory for all of us coaches and
Speaker 5: so that's it means extra conversations that last probably too
Speaker 5: long about how we're going to do this or how
Speaker 5: we're going to do that, and just kind of the
Speaker 5: nature of the beast right now.
Speaker 4: I was going to ask you about that Connor. You know,
Speaker 4: we've talked about this before, but the transfer portal didn't
Speaker 4: exist when we were playing, and that wasn't really something
Speaker 4: that was available to us. How has that changed the
Speaker 4: recruiting landscape? I mean, obviously, like coaching changes happen and
Speaker 4: then guys are going all over the place and we
Speaker 4: saw some of those dominoes led to you end up
Speaker 4: moving through it to Seattle too. How do you guys
Speaker 4: approach that as a staff that you did with the
Speaker 4: transfer portals? What are those conversations look like when somebody
Speaker 4: enters the portal to you, landing them.
Speaker 5: Hard to speak just yet about what our conversations look
Speaker 5: like for getting guys in the transfer portal. I know
Speaker 5: that we have preliminary conversations right now just about the
Speaker 5: idea of what we want to do. And I think
Speaker 5: that being older in college baseball is a smart thing,
Speaker 5: you know, whereas like you know, at the professional level,
Speaker 5: like we want old players on our roster. I mean
Speaker 5: that kind of is the deal. I mean, that's not
Speaker 5: to say we don't want freshmen to come in and
Speaker 5: develop them and do that thing. I think that's something
Speaker 5: that I really specialize in, to be honest, is taking
Speaker 5: guys that are younger and you know, really helping them
Speaker 5: mentor them through those those years. And I think that's
Speaker 5: where I had a lot of success at Portland. Transfer portal.
Speaker 5: Landscape is just all about money. It feels like nil
Speaker 5: and what can you do for me? And I get it.
Speaker 5: That's a part of it, you know. I think you
Speaker 5: feel like you can add to your roster, you know,
Speaker 5: if we have two or three spots open right now
Speaker 5: in our twenty twenty five class for let's say, what
Speaker 5: we are projecting as just a thirty four man roster,
Speaker 5: which is hard to say because who knows, but let's
Speaker 5: just use that as a baseline. We might just go, hey,
Speaker 5: we're going to punt this down the road. You know,
Speaker 5: we're going to call it good on the twenty twenty
Speaker 5: five incoming freshmen, and we're going to we're gonna just
Speaker 5: plan on that we're going to figure out two or
Speaker 5: three guys in the four thousand guys that into the
Speaker 5: transfer portal come next to May at the end of
Speaker 5: May or whatever so, and then rifling through that is
Speaker 5: just its own beast. I mean, I sat there the summer.
Speaker 5: There's you know, on the nc DOUAA website Transfer Portal.
Speaker 5: It updates daily daily, and if you are actually not
Speaker 5: paying attention to it daily, it's so easy to get behind.
Speaker 4: Like waivers Nate, like you sift them through our muddy
Speaker 4: b siders to find the guys that you like.
Speaker 5: And then on top of that, you have other websites
Speaker 5: that are uploading that data and they're now putting, you know,
Speaker 5: statistics with the It's truly like a it's a free
Speaker 5: agent pool. Yeah, it's it's interesting. Some of the websites
Speaker 5: that I was using this this summer to just kind
Speaker 5: of help me navigate all their positions, their stats. You know,
Speaker 5: kind of using the key stats that I like to
Speaker 5: look at and evaluating, you know, just raw data on
Speaker 5: these guys and figuring out who's good. The problem is
Speaker 5: everyone probably looks at the similar things and go i
Speaker 5: mean pictures they go first, like a good picture, answer
Speaker 5: to portal. It's like the hottest girl opening to go
Speaker 5: to prom, you know, so it's like everyone lines up
Speaker 5: take her to prom, and you know, hitters, position players.
Speaker 5: It's not as if the best ones don't go pretty quick,
Speaker 5: because they do. But you know, the really high profile
Speaker 5: names what's his name that went to A and M
Speaker 5: from Stanford Montgomery like that drops into the portal. I
Speaker 5: mean it's within you know, hours. To be honest, it's
Speaker 5: probably I mean, I'm not saying this happens, but it
Speaker 5: does seem like it. It's you know, he already knows
Speaker 5: where he's going before he jumps in the portal and
Speaker 5: the amount of money he's getting. So yeah, that that
Speaker 5: navigation of that thing is it's a beast. And that's
Speaker 5: why four coaches you need. I mean you literally need
Speaker 5: four or five coaches keeping up five six coaches. I mean,
Speaker 5: our operations will be on it. I mean, we'll all
Speaker 5: be on it together. It's just yeah, it's a lot,
Speaker 5: but it sounds the useful tool.
Speaker 6: It is kind of fun too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean there is like it's a lot. I
Speaker 5: mean I don't know, like, yeah, the thing is it's
Speaker 5: hard and fast decisions. It's like too, I'm all for
Speaker 5: you know, hey, I can see a guy a couple
Speaker 5: of times and there's evaluation there. I can watch him
Speaker 5: on video. And if we're not talking about the guy
Speaker 5: that just started on you know, Saturdays for Boston College,
Speaker 5: Let's say it's hard to you know, this mid major
Speaker 5: Sunday guy that is a left hander that's eighty six
Speaker 5: eighty eight. You know, he's you know, pretty good and
Speaker 5: had pretty good numbers, but does that you know, transfer
Speaker 5: over to the big ten or you know what would
Speaker 5: have been the Pac twelve Like and then you're just
Speaker 5: going in on him. But then you're hearing you know,
Speaker 5: such and such as in on him for one hundred
Speaker 5: k and il and you're going like, are you kidding me?
Speaker 5: Like this guy eighty seven miles per our left hander
Speaker 5: that didn't walk anybody and through seventy innings, like it's amazing.
Speaker 5: Stuff like that. It blows my mind in the transfer portal.
Speaker 5: Like you guys, like you're just this is where it Matt,
Speaker 5: if we did have transfer portal back in our day,
Speaker 5: like Johnny Average that throws a bunch of strikes and
Speaker 5: like has played at a power five, if he decides
Speaker 5: to jump in the portal, I got like, just you're
Speaker 5: just gonna get twenty five thousand dollars at minimum. It
Speaker 5: seems like, wow, it is weird, But I don't know,
Speaker 5: it'll maybe it'll maybe it'll come to a tipping point.
Speaker 5: I don't know, we'll see this thing is ever changing.
Speaker 5: I feel like I would have made a lot of
Speaker 5: stupid decisions if some through fifty thousand dollars at me
Speaker 5: in college. There is a massive piece of this thing
Speaker 5: that like I'm glad it wasn't around because like I've
Speaker 5: got to learn a lot about myself in callege, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean, Like as you know, like my
Speaker 5: path was not like super smooth and easy and a
Speaker 5: lot about this on just eat between you and me
Speaker 5: and on all our other buddies. But it's just like
Speaker 5: I needed that, Like some of these guys are going
Speaker 5: to really miss out on the being told you suck
Speaker 5: and like they don't ever figure it out. I don't
Speaker 5: know like I needed it, and I actually think it's
Speaker 5: the reason why I'm sitting here talking to you guys,
Speaker 5: Like I don't think i'd be doing this if I
Speaker 5: transferred and went somewhere that you know, said hey, you're
Speaker 5: really good.
Speaker 6: But anyway, kind of one of my questions because I'm
Speaker 6: I'm way more naive about the college scene the YouTube
Speaker 6: are that was just curious, Like a pitching coach and
Speaker 6: a program like yours, how just how involved they actually
Speaker 6: are in recruiting. It sounds like pretty involved, but like
Speaker 6: you get eyeballs on, like everybody that's coming in some
Speaker 6: do you have other people doing I don't know. I
Speaker 6: have no idea what that looks like. I just want
Speaker 6: to paint a little picture.
Speaker 5: A good question. Where I was at Portland, I was
Speaker 5: pitching coach and associate head coach recruiting coordinator, and I
Speaker 5: had to watch I mean I had to watch everyone
Speaker 5: coming into the program with the recruiting coordinator title on
Speaker 5: my head. At DUB my responsibility is to be the
Speaker 5: head coach of the pitchers, and so I need to
Speaker 5: get eyes on every picture that we're considering that we
Speaker 5: have an offer on that we're talking to each one needs.
Speaker 5: As far as moving forward with a guy, it is
Speaker 5: going to come through me. And so yeah, I'm not
Speaker 5: going to necessarily see everybody live that we have to
Speaker 5: go on. I mean, there's some just I mean, I
Speaker 5: just got off a zoom call with a kid that
Speaker 5: I haven't seen live, but he pitched it under Class
Speaker 5: Area Code Games, which is a pretty high profile event. Yeah,
Speaker 5: our head coach and our recruiting corner saw him, and
Speaker 5: I went and watch his video on Synergy and it
Speaker 5: looked really good, and I was like, yeah, this kid's
Speaker 5: a no brainer, Like we got to let's go off him,
Speaker 5: and so we did. But yeah, it's a good question.
Speaker 5: It's we try to find tooth combent with the pitchers,
Speaker 5: at least I do, and it's not a perfect science
Speaker 5: by any means.
Speaker 4: Yeah, do you have a pitching archetype that you're after,
Speaker 4: Like there's some measure of it where you're looking for
Speaker 4: the clay that you are good at molding. But there's
Speaker 4: all so, Okay, I saw a guy and he was
Speaker 4: a dude for three innings and everyone else is going
Speaker 4: to see that too. Is there is there some kind
Speaker 4: of archetype that you're you're looking at as you're as
Speaker 4: you're looking at high schoolers, And does that change between
Speaker 4: high schoolers versus guys you're evaluating in the transfer portal.
Speaker 5: It's a good question. Yes, I think there is. I
Speaker 5: think I think you're drawn to a certain type. I
Speaker 5: guess mine would be you know, I think it always
Speaker 5: starts with strikes for me. You know, guys, if guys
Speaker 5: can't throw strikes at the amateur level, let me say
Speaker 5: that at that high school level, they're not going to
Speaker 5: magically start throwing strikes at the college level. Like I
Speaker 5: was actually equating this when I was playing golf with
Speaker 5: the Buddy Souse. I'm not a very good golfer. I started.
Speaker 5: I picked up golf when I was like in eighth grade,
Speaker 5: let's say, and my ball striking is like it's just
Speaker 5: so hit and mess like it's it's probably like a
Speaker 5: fifty percent clip whether I hit it nice. And I
Speaker 5: was saying, you know, those guys that not necessarily pick
Speaker 5: up pitching late, just like the guys that just didn't
Speaker 5: play enough catch to targets when they were three, four, five,
Speaker 5: six years old, Like I just I think that there's
Speaker 5: something to that, and they're always playing catch up, and
Speaker 5: you can definitely, I do think that command can get better.
Speaker 5: For sure. I don't have time for it typically unless
Speaker 5: it's someone else that has made time for it, and
Speaker 5: then now I'm bringing that guy into my program who's
Speaker 5: made a leap in his command. I just don't see
Speaker 5: it happen all that often, especially not if we're recruiting
Speaker 5: high school kids. Transfer portal might be a little different.
Speaker 5: I think there's a there's a slight bit more leeway
Speaker 5: for like walks per nine for transfer portal guys. The
Speaker 5: strikeouts have to definitely be up there too. I don't
Speaker 5: think you can not have that or the whiff and
Speaker 5: the swing miss or you know, the one pitch that's
Speaker 5: an outlier. That's I'm going to add and he's going
Speaker 5: to be here for a year, you know, that's that's
Speaker 5: that was Sam Stewart what I thought we were going
Speaker 5: to get, and we got a completely different beast. But yeah,
Speaker 5: I think strike throwers that and I also I mean
Speaker 5: the firmness on the break and bal at a young
Speaker 5: age is a pretty big feather in the cap for
Speaker 5: me when I'm watching watching guys, I think is something
Speaker 5: that always the velocity is not there yet. It always
Speaker 5: kind of indicates that there's going to be more velocity
Speaker 5: guys that have the unique ability to kind of get
Speaker 5: just enough behind the baseball and still spin it and
Speaker 5: doesn't need to necessarily be this you know, high schoolers
Speaker 5: trying to get this profiled, you know, breaking pitch that
Speaker 5: moves a ton, and then they wonder why they don't
Speaker 5: throw it in the strike zone enough, And I'm like, well, yeah,
Speaker 5: the curveball with like massive movement or it's a slide.
Speaker 5: It's like they're throwing what it's like resembles a sweeper
Speaker 5: and it's got so much movement that like, no, like
Speaker 5: obviously you can't get it in the zone consistently. So
Speaker 5: I think I look for a little bit tighter breaking
Speaker 5: ball and then probably like frame wise, like just you know,
Speaker 5: I think everyone looks for a broad shouldered, you know,
Speaker 5: six two sixty three guy with presence on the mound
Speaker 5: and conducts himself the right way and you know, hustles
Speaker 5: off and you know, you know, does does things generally
Speaker 5: without I don't need a big looking me guy, but
Speaker 5: I'm not going to shy away from you know, again
Speaker 5: back to store, like he was yelling at hitters last
Speaker 5: year and you know, like after you'd strike him out,
Speaker 5: and you know, I don't that's just him. I think
Speaker 5: he's just like there's there are certain guys that are
Speaker 5: just kind of fiery, you know, And I don't think
Speaker 5: I wouldn't take that as a negative, but it's it's
Speaker 5: a good question. I'd say, your athletic pitcher that throws
Speaker 5: that's repeatable throws strikes someone that I have a really good,
Speaker 5: really high floor with and then that we can hopefully
Speaker 5: tap into a higher ceiling when they get into college
Speaker 5: with much more resources and get on the rapsodo with
Speaker 5: me or a track man and pitch design and stuff
Speaker 5: like that where you know, I feel like I have
Speaker 5: a solid background in we can talk through things and
Speaker 5: collaborate and you know, read articles and share them with
Speaker 5: each other and do that type of stuff and hone
Speaker 5: those skills. It's the stuff I like to do anyway.
Speaker 5: Well with those guys. Again, I think no one likes
Speaker 5: going to the yard and watching, you know, a bunch
Speaker 5: of eighteen to twenty two year olds throw balls and struggle,
Speaker 5: and especially if it's raining up in Seattle or whatever,
Speaker 5: miserable day at the yard, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: Like we want to suffocate letters with strikes, and then
Speaker 5: we want to do it with you know, obviously enhancing
Speaker 5: the stuff, whether that be you know, shape or what
Speaker 5: have you, strength, velocity, all those good things.
Speaker 6: It's transfer portal this day and age with pitching and
Speaker 6: all the information that is there and know how and
Speaker 6: know how to coach. There's a lot to think about there, Connor,
Speaker 6: There's a lot to navigate. But I wanted to ask you.
Speaker 6: I remember taking a course many years ago in college
Speaker 6: about teaching theory about meeting your student where they're at,
Speaker 6: seeing where they're at as opposed to showing a student
Speaker 6: where they need to go. I think, is I remember
Speaker 6: correctly how it kind of went. Maybe a bit of
Speaker 6: a multi part question here, but what do you kind
Speaker 6: of find yourself talking to your pictures about the most?
Speaker 6: Do you think? Is it like pitches and analytics, mechanics, training, routines,
Speaker 6: game plans, anything else? I don't what do you spend
Speaker 6: most of your time talking to them about? Do you think?
Speaker 5: That's a good question and a really simple one. And
Speaker 5: the one thing that I really like to do is,
Speaker 5: you know, keep a simple game pretty simple as far
Speaker 5: as when it comes to coaching, the thing that we
Speaker 5: talk most about, I would say, is what helps us
Speaker 5: win games. My systems that I like to use, the
Speaker 5: feedback that I get from the from the systems are
Speaker 5: the things that I'm going to talk to the guys
Speaker 5: about and how well we're doing those things. So we
Speaker 5: talk a lot about one one counts. We talk a
Speaker 5: lot about first fish strike, We talk a lot about
Speaker 5: our leadoff mat out, and then we talk a lot
Speaker 5: about our process and what that entails, and so you know,
Speaker 5: I've got a process chart. I also talk to them
Speaker 5: about the things that I value when I'm a value
Speaker 5: waiting you, and the things that I know helped us win.
Speaker 5: So like those three things plus our process start Like
Speaker 5: my job is to win games along with our head coach.
Speaker 5: Everything else is underneath that umbrella. In my opinion, development
Speaker 5: is obviously really high up there. Like I don't take
Speaker 5: that lightly. I also don't take lightly being a mentor
Speaker 5: to these guys. I also don't take lightly the culture
Speaker 5: piece to this. And I know it's pretty coach speaky,
Speaker 5: but you know, when I played in the last few
Speaker 5: years of my career, I felt like I got to
Speaker 5: be a part of something that was like crazy special
Speaker 5: to me, and so I try to emulate that for guys.
Speaker 5: But the number one thing we're going to talk about
Speaker 5: is like what actually helps us win games. It's really
Speaker 5: flashy to talk about mar Velo or our Again I
Speaker 5: just said our pitch design and stuff that I like
Speaker 5: to do. Like it's like it's like, you know, that's
Speaker 5: like a time for me, Like if we've got the
Speaker 5: time to do it, I definitely want to dive into
Speaker 5: it with those guys. It's a big recruiting piece for sure,
Speaker 5: Like understanding this, the development, the analytics, the pitch design,
Speaker 5: Like kids want that they hear it, they see it,
Speaker 5: they want to soak it up, and they want to
Speaker 5: know everything you know about that. But again, my job
Speaker 5: is to talk about what's going to help us win games,
Speaker 5: and so I need to make sure that we have
Speaker 5: a great understanding of when we're on the mound, what
Speaker 5: is our plan and what are the things I should
Speaker 5: be most concerned with when I'm on the mound, and
Speaker 5: not you know, anything else when we're on the mound,
Speaker 5: when we're competing, and so our compete is really important
Speaker 5: to me. When we're evalue, like I said, when we're
Speaker 5: evaluating or when we're having feedback or after action reports,
Speaker 5: whatever you want to call them, that message is really consistent.
Speaker 5: I call them our big three, the leadoff men out,
Speaker 5: the one to one wins, and the first pitch strike.
Speaker 5: And it probably gets pretty monotonous for those guys, but
Speaker 5: I want them to hear it so much, because if
Speaker 5: we are winning in those three categories, we are winning
Speaker 5: games more than a true Jerry to Poto fashion of
Speaker 5: fifty six percent. We're probably winning, you know, sixty six
Speaker 5: percent of our games if we're.
Speaker 4: Doing he that gives that gives Jerry too much credit,
Speaker 4: he said, fifty four percent. Connor, thinking about that, think
Speaker 4: about like the coaching aspect you mentioned lead a real
Speaker 4: focus on the leadoff man. Which do you dislike more
Speaker 4: as a pitching coach, the leadoff guy getting a hit
Speaker 4: or the lead off guy getting on by a walk?
Speaker 5: Oh? I mean a freebie is obviously for me the worst.
Speaker 5: I mean why is that? Well? I mean because you
Speaker 5: play your percentages right, Like if we throw the ball
Speaker 5: over the plate, I mean, if you go, if you walk,
Speaker 5: like you don't even give a better choice, you just
Speaker 5: automatically you walk them. You get a guy out. You're
Speaker 5: shooting yourself in the foot, but you least give yourself
Speaker 5: a chance. You put a ball in play, like, yeah,
Speaker 5: a guy hits it hard. I get it. But I
Speaker 5: mean we've got defenders out there, eight nine versus one.
Speaker 5: I mean that's the mentality a little bit there. So
Speaker 5: it's like, I get it. It ends up being the
Speaker 5: same result, but the mentality of it too. You give
Speaker 5: up a hit, so what we're going to give up
Speaker 5: one hit per inning? All right? But you know, I
Speaker 5: think I want my staff to feel like, you know,
Speaker 5: Freebie's are just not about not who we're about, you know,
Speaker 5: And I think that I think you can also slip
Speaker 5: into a bad place mentally you start giving up Previously,
Speaker 5: you walk your guy on a three two count. Again,
Speaker 5: I talked to our guys too. It's like, I mean,
Speaker 5: you go to let's say, you know your work account, guys,
Speaker 5: batt only is tough, whatever, some good pictures. You walk
Speaker 5: down on three two like it's not the end of
Speaker 5: the world. We're not going to sit here. And you know,
Speaker 5: but like you go, you know, two zero to start
Speaker 5: your hitter, throw a strike three to one, not close
Speaker 5: ball four, just pypelon. I mean, like, see what you
Speaker 5: can do in two to one, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: see see what they said. I mean, you have no
Speaker 5: idea what the hit is thinking in the box, Like
Speaker 5: you might think your shit's nasty, you know. So it's like,
Speaker 5: I don't know, I've always that's always been me. But
Speaker 5: I just like I can't get over you just caved in,
Speaker 5: Like you have so many opportunities to let somebody else
Speaker 5: make a play, And no matter what count you're in,
Speaker 5: I think it's just if you're if you're just like
Speaker 5: a betting man, right, like if we're in Vegas, like
Speaker 5: you're gonna put your odds on every single count on
Speaker 5: the picture, right, I mean except.
Speaker 4: And nobody want to go to Vegas though, connored And
Speaker 4: I'm just telling and tell our buddy that for his
Speaker 4: Bachford party, and nobody want to go to Vegas.
Speaker 5: I asked the question.
Speaker 4: Because on my way out here, I'm on the road
Speaker 4: for a work trip and I'm way out here. I
Speaker 4: was listening to effectively while the podcasts that have mentioned
Speaker 4: on the Pot a few times and Ben Linn, where
Speaker 4: Lindberg and Meg Rally were interviewing this high school kid
Speaker 4: who had done a research study for SABER, the Society
Speaker 4: for American Baseball Research that founded the term Saber metrics,
Speaker 4: and she found that there was one that was slightly
Speaker 4: worse than the other, but there were like some factors
Speaker 4: that went into it. And I just thought it was
Speaker 4: funny because it was an age old debate that I
Speaker 4: agreed with you for the longest time, that like giving
Speaker 4: up that free pass the walk. Sure, maybe the hitter
Speaker 4: earned that walk, but more often than that it was
Speaker 4: probably the picture gave it up.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: I think it's a little bit more in the pictures
Speaker 5: control there.
Speaker 4: And that was always worse in my mind than getting
Speaker 4: beat by the hitter on the first pitch. But it
Speaker 4: was interesting. It was an interesting study and should listen
Speaker 4: to that episode.
Speaker 5: It was really good. Well, I think there's one thing
Speaker 5: too that's like, I think it has to be canvassed
Speaker 5: over this thing. It's like, especially if we're talking like
Speaker 5: pros guys that are like varying control of the game,
Speaker 5: and like a walk to lead off an inning not
Speaker 5: as like not nearly as momental as an extra base hit,
Speaker 5: as far as giving up runs in that inning.
Speaker 4: You know, for whom in this study that was the
Speaker 4: most that's true, It was elite closers. So the guys
Speaker 4: that have been the best closers in the game over
Speaker 4: the last forty years, those guys were the ones that
Speaker 4: if they gave up a lead off walk, their outcomes
Speaker 4: were way worse, which I thought was really interesting. You'd think,
Speaker 4: maybe like your earldest Chapman's, your Mariano Rivera's your Josh haters,
Speaker 4: they give up a lead off walk, and you're like, oh, okay,
Speaker 4: but there's stuff so nasty, they're probably going to get
Speaker 4: out of it anyway. But it actually when they give
Speaker 4: up a lead off walk, maybe just their stuff is
Speaker 4: bad that day and they can't hone it back in
Speaker 4: because they're like one or two pitch pitchers and that
Speaker 4: they don't have enough to go back to, unlike the
Speaker 4: guys that Nate and I like with five pitches and
Speaker 4: know how to pitch and can if one thing isn't working,
Speaker 4: and they can dial up their sweeper if the change
Speaker 4: up isn't working. And I don't know, that's that's maybe
Speaker 4: my thought about it, but I thought that was an
Speaker 4: interesting little little nuance to the discussion.
Speaker 5: I would say to this as like when you've put
Speaker 5: your feet in those positions, like when I've stood on
Speaker 5: the mound and I'm closing a game or I've got
Speaker 5: any game, Like it feels detrimental to give up a
Speaker 5: lead off anything really like that leadoff man just guy
Speaker 5: just gets on. But then to like walk the guy,
Speaker 5: you start to second guess, like do I have my
Speaker 5: stuff today? And you could have you could absolutely have
Speaker 5: your stuff, whereas like if you're starting. I mean, this
Speaker 5: is why I think it's just important in general, because
Speaker 5: when you're starting, you cannot you can let a lead
Speaker 5: off man get on. You're like, hymn. I'm like, this
Speaker 5: is my six to fifty sixth inning, like I've been rolling.
Speaker 5: It's whatever, I'm gonna get a double play. It's like
Speaker 5: the focus factor for starters comes into play there for
Speaker 5: me and I just I try to emphasize that. But
Speaker 5: to your point, man, I think that there's something to
Speaker 5: be said, like it's it's it's a really interesting I
Speaker 5: would have thought the same thing. I would have thought
Speaker 5: it would went the other way, like hey, I'm Mario
Speaker 5: and Rivera like I'm just gonna throw twelve straight cutters
Speaker 5: and get out of the.
Speaker 6: Kinnor if you don't mind, I just wanted to back
Speaker 6: up for a minute to something you were speaking on earlier.
Speaker 6: You were talking about putting the emphasis on winning right
Speaker 6: winning right now, and that makes a ton of sense
Speaker 6: to me. In college ball, I watch a lot of
Speaker 6: minor league baseball, a lot of pros. I always find
Speaker 6: it very interesting when pitching coaches or pitchers we'll talk
Speaker 6: about sort of like pitching to development versus pitching to results.
Speaker 6: Right the down East Wood Ducks winning percentage isn't super
Speaker 6: detrimental to most people's careers and jobs right right. So
Speaker 6: I really liked watching like Kith Cavali when he you know,
Speaker 6: he comes in, he's throwing a big fastball, and then
Speaker 6: you could see him put the work in on the
Speaker 6: secondaries and he's just ultimately getting much better as a
Speaker 6: pitcher right long term, although the right now results aren't
Speaker 6: maybe as great as they once were. But my question
Speaker 6: to he is, I'm curious, on the college level, are
Speaker 6: there any other times that there's sort of like a
Speaker 6: natural conflict between I don't know, maybe the developmental course
Speaker 6: that the pitcher might have in mind for himself versus
Speaker 6: what the coach might have. Is that is that prevalent
Speaker 6: or not so much.
Speaker 5: Oh, I think that's it's something that I think. I mean,
Speaker 5: I talk about I want to back up as well too.
Speaker 5: I talk about the things that help us win. But
Speaker 5: I am not sitting there saying we have to win
Speaker 5: it like like when when win win win, Like, I mean,
Speaker 5: that's not my conversation. I would say to the group,
Speaker 5: it's talking about the things consistently that I know will
Speaker 5: help us win, and weave in, you know, things that
Speaker 5: I know we're going to help us develop. And so
Speaker 5: I think that there's a certain relationship there at the
Speaker 5: couple that coaches have to understand, and there's a certain
Speaker 5: level of patience. I'm man, I just think I'm pretty competitive,
Speaker 5: and I it probably hinders me sometimes as as a
Speaker 5: person because I you know, I'll take you know, losing
Speaker 5: to our offense in the fall personal. You know, I'll
Speaker 5: walk away yard and just like and I'll challenge the
Speaker 5: pictures and just be like and I'm not saying our
Speaker 5: offense right now because I haven't seen I haven't seen
Speaker 5: our offense. But in general it doesn't really matter. I
Speaker 5: you know, my message would be like, you know, like
Speaker 5: this is bullshit, Like you guys like these guys are
Speaker 5: going to walk all over you, like like you're the
Speaker 5: best staff on the West Coast. Who are the guys
Speaker 5: you know what I mean? And like it's literally September,
Speaker 5: you know, seventeenth. And I try to follow that up
Speaker 5: with on an individual level of like, hey man, I
Speaker 5: know we have been talking about this pitch and this
Speaker 5: this adjustment, Like I see the work there, like don't
Speaker 5: do not you know, get me wrong, Like I know
Speaker 5: you're competing. You have a really good compete out there
Speaker 5: with what you're trying to do. I didn't see bad
Speaker 5: body language. I didn't see you give up. I know
Speaker 5: you were trying to, you know, work on the things
Speaker 5: that were I think there's a certain like individual level
Speaker 5: where you have to connect with guys and they have
Speaker 5: to hear that from you, and then the overarching to
Speaker 5: the staff has to be like we are not going
Speaker 5: to succumb to anything, and we're beating everybody that's flat
Speaker 5: out what we're doing. So and I don't care if
Speaker 5: it's you know, our offense or we're facing you know,
Speaker 5: I don't know, a junior college, or it doesn't it
Speaker 5: doesn't matter, Like it's it's like to me like that
Speaker 5: piece like has to be who we are, and then
Speaker 5: I need them to know that I have the patience.
Speaker 5: I read a book. I couldn't quote which book it was,
Speaker 5: but the first thing it talks about and creating Oh
Speaker 5: it's culture code, that's what It was. A really good book.
Speaker 5: I've read it, you know, two or three times all
Speaker 5: my drives. I just listened to it. The first thing
Speaker 5: they talk about is just like creating a I know
Speaker 5: it sounds a little weird or maybe maybe a little snowflaky,
Speaker 5: but it's like creating a safe space for guys to fail.
Speaker 5: I really try to make that happen. I really try
Speaker 5: to let guys know that, like, failure is just a
Speaker 5: part of this thing, big Bigley, And I'm gonna put
Speaker 5: you in situations where I think, you know, there's more
Speaker 5: likely chance that you fail, and I'm going to give
Speaker 5: you tasks that are going to be really tough, and
Speaker 5: that's just going to be a part of your growth
Speaker 5: in general. So yeah, we don't quite have the time
Speaker 5: that you know, uh low a whatever whoever organization, you know,
Speaker 5: because if our winning percentage is four to twenty five
Speaker 5: for the next three years, like I'm going to be
Speaker 5: calling you guys to have me on the pod and
Speaker 5: just to have talk to So I think there's yeah,
Speaker 5: there's just certain urgency levels that are different. But it's
Speaker 5: just kind of an and especially you know, going back
Speaker 5: to the transfer portal, like there's less programs across the
Speaker 5: country that are willing to they want the guys that
Speaker 5: can do it right now, and they don't know they
Speaker 5: don't like I get it, like I understand it, Like
Speaker 5: I mean, you got to make the Cult World series
Speaker 5: or you're losing your job, you know, And that's what
Speaker 5: it's all. You know, powerful is like trending towards which is.
Speaker 6: I feel like that's just like an overarching cultural truth.
Speaker 6: Like I think you see that even in the pros
Speaker 6: right now. I mean, like organization like the Rays, like Okay, well,
Speaker 6: how can we get the most out of the guy,
Speaker 6: maximize the production we can get out of the guy
Speaker 6: until he becomes too expensive for us to retain or whatever.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 6: You mentioned one book Culture Code there, But one of
Speaker 6: the questions I was going to ask is if you
Speaker 6: had any favorite pitching books or books on baseball that
Speaker 6: you'd recommend.
Speaker 5: You know what, it's not even necessarily baseball books, you know,
Speaker 5: and I am just I get really passionate about the
Speaker 5: team aspect of the of the deal. I think it's
Speaker 5: one of the things that drives me about being a
Speaker 5: college coach. Get to be a part of guys's process
Speaker 5: for three four years. You get to watch them buy into,
Speaker 5: you know, a program, and so you know, I give
Speaker 5: guys and on a really micro level with my pitchers,
Speaker 5: I give them more things that like are kind of
Speaker 5: like standard, like what the standards are. So one book
Speaker 5: that I just read that I just love personally is
Speaker 5: Atomic Havocs. I have that book that I give pictures.
Speaker 5: The other one is Make Your Bed by Admiral William mccraven.
Speaker 5: And uh yeah, I started doing this. I started doing
Speaker 5: this for my first year at Portland. And it's just
Speaker 5: it's like a it's kind of I don't know, I
Speaker 5: guess I equate it to like and this by no
Speaker 5: means am I saying that I am on the level
Speaker 5: of John Wooden. But like, you know how the old
Speaker 5: adages have guys tyler shoes, like learned to tyler shoes
Speaker 5: correctly before they would go to their first practice, because
Speaker 5: you know that small habit and that small gill affects
Speaker 5: the rest of what you're doing right. And so in
Speaker 5: this book, Sorry I'm getting long winded about this book,
Speaker 5: he just talks about how making the bed, making your
Speaker 5: bed can change the world, Like it has such an
Speaker 5: effect on all the different things you do out throughout
Speaker 5: the day. And then you ultimately comes back to if
Speaker 5: you just have a shitty day, if Lesha haven't made bed,
Speaker 5: and you can start over fresh. And you know, our
Speaker 5: guys are going to have a lot of you know,
Speaker 5: as when you first get to college and as you're
Speaker 5: going through this thing, man like, you have a lot
Speaker 5: of shitty days, you know, and then you also have
Speaker 5: a lot of really good ones. And I think it
Speaker 5: stems from the type of habits that you build. And
Speaker 5: that kind of goes back to the piece of we'll
Speaker 5: talk about being a mentor to these guys and trying
Speaker 5: to help them, you know, develop good habits that are
Speaker 5: going to help them when they're not playing baseball. And
Speaker 5: you know, being elite at what you do, it doesn't
Speaker 5: doesn't necessarily need to be baseball. But you know, I
Speaker 5: think that is really high achieved, high achievement, high achievers.
Speaker 5: I try to surround them myself with with those types
Speaker 5: of guys, I think it's I mean, it shows and
Speaker 5: my friend group, and I think that's what I try
Speaker 5: to radiate to our guys, is like you can be
Speaker 5: that guy in your friend group and you can elevate
Speaker 5: your boys, and like it's small stuff like this that
Speaker 5: makes that hat. So here's an actual game plan for
Speaker 5: how to do that. And no, not every high achiever
Speaker 5: makes their bed. I get that, but something that it's
Speaker 5: just kind of a culture thing, you know, I'll shoot,
Speaker 5: I mean, as a portent, I used to have guys
Speaker 5: like send pictures of their made beds into our group chat,
Speaker 5: you know, and like guys first were kind of reluctant
Speaker 5: or just like kind of like dreading it. But then
Speaker 5: you know, shoot, I've got guys that I coached my
Speaker 5: first year in Portland still like will randomly send me
Speaker 5: a picture that are made bed and like at first half,
Speaker 5: I'm like, that's kind of sick, Like there's some real
Speaker 5: buy in there. So those are the kind of the
Speaker 5: two books. I listened to podcasts a lot, and so
Speaker 5: like one of our buddies just recently sent me one
Speaker 5: and he it was Greats and Barrels and I was like, oh,
Speaker 5: this is new, this is great. I'm going to listen
Speaker 5: to this, and so I try to soak up the
Speaker 5: information through that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, nice, you know, and DVR are pretty good, and
Speaker 4: you know at least has good good beer taste too.
Speaker 4: He's not drinking just bush light by the barrel like
Speaker 4: some people.
Speaker 6: If you're listening, you're not totally familiar. Like I was
Speaker 6: a little naive until the rook told me about you
Speaker 6: in your program at Portland. But you had you had
Speaker 6: three of your pictures drafted last year.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 6: Sam str went to Oakland in the fifth round. Nick
Speaker 6: Brink went to Miami in the seventh round, Joey Contrell
Speaker 6: went to Boston in the fifteenth round. And I don't know,
Speaker 6: maybe you even had did you have anybody sign free
Speaker 6: agent signing? I don't even know.
Speaker 5: Those are the three guys, both three guys. You know.
Speaker 6: I sit on my couch and I watch pictures and
Speaker 6: sometimes I'll get stuck and watch one religiously for years,
Speaker 6: and I just geek out and I just love watching
Speaker 6: guys developed. So I have to ask you with the
Speaker 6: front row seat of these three guys and working with
Speaker 6: them like you did, like, what was that like watching
Speaker 6: these guys develop into pros? When did you realize that
Speaker 6: they might be pros? Were there like any oh wow
Speaker 6: moments when you were working with them? I don't know.
Speaker 6: I'm just curious what that experience might have been like
Speaker 6: for you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, three unique stories, and yeah, they're all of that happens.
Speaker 5: Stewart came from. He transferred. He was at Lower Columbia
Speaker 5: Community College to his first year, first freshman year, committed
Speaker 5: to Oregon State after that, and then didn't pitch his
Speaker 5: sophomore in junior year at all, so he redshirted for
Speaker 5: two years. He got to Oregon State, really couldn't find
Speaker 5: his own had trouble, so he was always a little
Speaker 5: fringy throwing strikes, and then I think just the stage
Speaker 5: kind of overwhelmed them, and I think he had a
Speaker 5: lot to work on personally. Yeah, he kind of did
Speaker 5: that and then he felt like he kind of got
Speaker 5: the raw deal and that next year, so he decided
Speaker 5: to enter the transfer portal. And I saw him in
Speaker 5: the summer he was pitching for the Corvallis Knights. He
Speaker 5: looked like a guy that could throw, you know, high importance.
Speaker 5: Inning's out of our role playing. To be honest, he
Speaker 5: was throwing a slider at like eighty forty six and
Speaker 5: it was a gyro Ish slider, but man, he threw
Speaker 5: it with such high intent that I was thinking, like,
Speaker 5: we can get a little bit more movement out of
Speaker 5: that thing. And man, the fastball was good, but it
Speaker 5: was just armside miss and it wasn't ninety five ninety
Speaker 5: seven like it ended up being. It was more ninety
Speaker 5: one ninety three eighty nine ninety three. And he kind
Speaker 5: of just made the decision when he stepped on campus
Speaker 5: after that summer that he was going to be a friend.
Speaker 5: Like the way he went about his business self starter.
Speaker 5: I haven't mentioned that yet in talking to you guys,
Speaker 5: but that is the number one common thing I see
Speaker 5: in guys that are going to be professional baseball players.
Speaker 5: And I haven't had a ton, but they are all
Speaker 5: self starters. They show up for the yard, they do
Speaker 5: not need you to sit. I could literally say no
Speaker 5: words to them, and they are going to get a
Speaker 5: lot out of their day. And Sammy did that when
Speaker 5: he stepped on campus, let alone just a practice, and
Speaker 5: so that guy was in working, He just was working off.
Speaker 5: He was doing a ton of mound work. He came
Speaker 5: back when when I thought for Sammy, when he might
Speaker 5: really have a shot. I mean, I don't know. He
Speaker 5: came back after winter break and he was like first
Speaker 5: live outing, was just sitting ninety six, and I was
Speaker 5: like like what, like where did this come from? And
Speaker 5: like the slider's landing for strikes and now he's going
Speaker 5: like this hammer curve ball for strikes as well, and
Speaker 5: I was just like geez, So I thought, well, yeah,
Speaker 5: he's probably got a shot. Dartrell was a walk on.
Speaker 5: I wouldn't say I knew he was gonna be a
Speaker 5: pro right away, but as a freshman, he's just not scared.
Speaker 5: Like any situation, he'll just kind of what you would
Speaker 5: described as a dude, big frame, like big body, Like
Speaker 5: he has this uncanny ability to like impress me in
Speaker 5: bullpens where it's just like oh, like he came in
Speaker 5: and he's like, oh, I'm casually nighty one as a
Speaker 5: freshman in my bullpen. I was like, okay, Like that's
Speaker 5: a little different than what I thought I was getting.
Speaker 5: And then like the next summer he comes back and
Speaker 5: it's like casually ninety four in his bullpen and the following.
Speaker 5: So I was junior summer this last year, come back
Speaker 5: in September, and he's like touching ninety seven, and I'm
Speaker 5: just like, geez, guy, and he's just it's a product
Speaker 5: of his his habits and the way he works in
Speaker 5: the weight room and just who he is. I mean,
Speaker 5: he's high achiever, four point zero type student, engineer major,
Speaker 5: like the whole deal. Like the guy is just he's
Speaker 5: just a high achiever. And then Nick Brink Brink is
Speaker 5: we called him like the mechanic, you know, like he
Speaker 5: was just like he's so I guess you would say
Speaker 5: right brained. He is just like I'm going to do this,
Speaker 5: and then like his regiment's going to be I mean,
Speaker 5: he just like is unbelievably regimented. He kind of came
Speaker 5: in in high school. He threw, he had he had
Speaker 5: good command. He kind of came in his freshman year
Speaker 5: and I think he was just kind of overwhelmed a
Speaker 5: little bit, which is very unlike Nick Brink and actually
Speaker 5: ended up throwing, you know, less than twenty innings his
Speaker 5: freshman year, had troubles with just like kind of hitting
Speaker 5: guys and armside misses, and so he went off and
Speaker 5: played summer ball, and then kind of settled in. And
Speaker 5: this is like where I see, like, okay, guys that
Speaker 5: show the ability to throw you know, high level strikes
Speaker 5: in high school. They come in, they're a little overwhelmed,
Speaker 5: you know that, you know, the stage is just like
Speaker 5: slightly too big for him right now. They get into
Speaker 5: summer ball, and as they get back to, you know,
Speaker 5: being who they are, it's a pretty good predictor of
Speaker 5: like what they're going to be for the rest of
Speaker 5: their college career. And he settled in, had a really
Speaker 5: good summer, came back that sophomore year and he was
Speaker 5: starting to ramp up the vello himself. He was and
Speaker 5: this was now intil like this was like the COVID
Speaker 5: year coming off of like yeah, this was twenty twenty
Speaker 5: two or yeah, something like that, where we still had
Speaker 5: COVID rules and play. And anyway, he had a good fall.
Speaker 5: He comes back in January, has this really weird deal
Speaker 5: where he had you know, different guys have to get
Speaker 5: quarantined and he couldn't throw for a little while, and
Speaker 5: then he came back and he threw and of course
Speaker 5: in January February, I'm holding my breath, you know, for
Speaker 5: the two straight months. When it comes to injuries, trying
Speaker 5: to get jash up and stuff like that, and he
Speaker 5: blows out, he gets TJ, and you know, he it
Speaker 5: might have been the best thing for him to be honest,
Speaker 5: like that guy went, I mean, he's just like I said,
Speaker 5: he's so regimented that he came back stronger. He came
Speaker 5: back in twelve months. I mean, he he had set
Speaker 5: a goal to pitch at Texas A and M the
Speaker 5: following year, which was he said he was going to
Speaker 5: start actually, which was just like he wasn't a weekend
Speaker 5: rotation guy at that point yet. So the guy obviously
Speaker 5: believed in himself and so he did that. He came
Speaker 5: back and when he did that, and the way he
Speaker 5: looked and the way the ball's coming out of his
Speaker 5: hands so easily after TJ, and I think my AHA
Speaker 5: moment with him was just in the summer he sent
Speaker 5: me some REPSODO stuff or whatever. What if he had
Speaker 5: set it up and or I went on the profile
Speaker 5: and saw that he had you know, he was like
Speaker 5: ninety four meal point six like pretty consistently throughout his bullpen,
Speaker 5: and you know, his lower half looked like you know,
Speaker 5: he's walking on two tree trunks. You know, it's just like,
Speaker 5: my goodness, So he just kind of put it together.
Speaker 5: I mean when you're in it, when you're in it
Speaker 5: in the spring, I don't think you realized, Like I don't.
Speaker 5: I don't think I realized until about three quarters the
Speaker 5: way through, like what I was actually watching on like
Speaker 5: his consistency levels. I was like, this is this guy's
Speaker 5: a professional, Like it's it's I think it took me
Speaker 5: about three quarters away I think where I was just like,
Speaker 5: I mean, he throws a quality start every time. It
Speaker 5: does not matter, like it doesn't matter how to start,
Speaker 5: Like first thing, he can give it three runs, like
Speaker 5: he's going to go quality start, like he's going to
Speaker 5: keep it at that. So it was, Yeah, he's just
Speaker 5: a very very professional way he does his things. And yeah,
Speaker 5: Nick is a special kid. He did a good job
Speaker 5: and he's also really high achiever four point zero type students.
Speaker 6: So that's awesome.
Speaker 4: Man. Yeah, Nick Brink was my guy, and the other
Speaker 4: guys were super fun to watch and honestly all different pitchers.
Speaker 4: I'd say, I don't know if you'd say that to Connor,
Speaker 4: just like the way that you go about calling a
Speaker 4: game with them, I felt they were all pretty different.
Speaker 4: But personally I loved the way Brink approached things, which was,
Speaker 4: you know, four pitch mix. He would go right on right,
Speaker 4: change up, and then just blow fastballs by guys because
Speaker 4: they were like, what the hell is coming next. He
Speaker 4: could pitch off the plate with the slider inside to
Speaker 4: lefties with the cutter. It's I mean, he was, I thought,
Speaker 4: one of my favorite college pitchers I've ever watched. So
Speaker 4: I'm big on Brink. But the other guys were awesome too,
Speaker 4: And I thought one of the things that you did
Speaker 4: really well with the staff was that it was never
Speaker 4: cookie cutter. You were calling pitches for that specific pitcher
Speaker 4: against this specific hitter. It wasn't it's two oh, we
Speaker 4: throw fastball down the middle.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 5: I thought that was something that you did pretty well. No,
Speaker 5: And to speak to Brink, you know, it's interesting, as
Speaker 5: you know, like you said, it's right on right, it's
Speaker 5: it's it's everything you want. I mean, he's he probably
Speaker 5: like his ability, his his glove side stuff, like you know,
Speaker 5: you know a way to write. He's into lefties. I mean,
Speaker 5: he was. He was so good surgical, his ability to
Speaker 5: tunnel his I've never seen this, and I know that
Speaker 5: when he got drafted, you know, departments of every MLB
Speaker 5: team were like not in love with him. With he
Speaker 5: doesn't get a lot of ivbs on his fastball. And
Speaker 5: like the slider is again like what you said, like
Speaker 5: it's cutter is a slider. It's kind of somewhere in
Speaker 5: that between. Sometimes it's like wipe out, sometimes a little
Speaker 5: bit smaller of a mover. He's going to have to
Speaker 5: figure that out a little bit. But his change up,
Speaker 5: I mean I've never played catch with somebody where like
Speaker 5: when he throws his change up, the spin looks exactly
Speaker 5: like his fastball. Like I'm like not, like, there's no
Speaker 5: way you can tell with your eyes that that is
Speaker 5: like a change up.
Speaker 7: I was blown away, Like and then you can command
Speaker 7: that pitch too, I mean that was the other thing
Speaker 7: about him, is like he would throw that thing three
Speaker 7: oh if you let him, and he'd throw a strike
Speaker 7: with it, and he'd throw it o to and bury.
Speaker 5: It and get a chase on it.
Speaker 4: I mean, I just thought that that was such an
Speaker 4: impressive command of the pitch, no matter the count, no
Speaker 4: matter the situation.
Speaker 5: And you know what I mean, speaking of the civil
Speaker 5: ends of TJ. He threw so many change ups in
Speaker 5: his and his rehab going through TJ and his mound
Speaker 5: work early, I think it probably attributed a lot of
Speaker 5: his success, but it's I actually would look back and
Speaker 5: go like, dumb dum, why don't you call more change?
Speaker 5: Like I call like thirty percent check that. So I'm like,
Speaker 5: why don't we just call fifty percent this next? You
Speaker 5: know what I mean, Just like I don't know, he
Speaker 5: actually forced you as a pitch caller to be like
Speaker 5: on your shit like you cause, you know, I give
Speaker 5: those guys the opportunity to shake to what they want
Speaker 5: to do. I want to give them the ability to,
Speaker 5: you know, throw the convicted pitch and rarely, I mean
Speaker 5: brinkhad and shaken me off, you know, almost never. And
Speaker 5: then he wanted to go to his curveball a little
Speaker 5: bit more, and he did a really good job because
Speaker 5: every time he threw his curveball, it's just a take.
Speaker 5: It's like top of the zone curveball take. And I
Speaker 5: was just like, not ness, I wasn't just like, I
Speaker 5: wasn't a huge fan of that pitch. I was like,
Speaker 5: we're going to throw it, like seven to eight percent
Speaker 5: of the time. He probably wanted to throw it like
Speaker 5: more eighteen percent at a time and just true mix.
Speaker 5: And I think he probably I mean, he can probably
Speaker 5: be twenty five, twenty five, twenty I mean, he could
Speaker 5: do whatever he wants up there. He's actually a surgeon.
Speaker 4: One of the things that I had mentioned when I
Speaker 4: talked about Brink after the draft and saying how much
Speaker 4: I loved him, is that I wonder if a team
Speaker 4: that drafts him does try and tweak his mechanics a
Speaker 4: little bit and try and unlock some more extension, because
Speaker 4: I think that's one of the things about him with
Speaker 4: his he tries a little bit open, and he clearly
Speaker 4: has great command, but I wonder if there's another half
Speaker 4: tick of stuff in there, if he cleaned up a
Speaker 4: little bit of the command issues. And Nate remind me
Speaker 4: who popped Brink Marlins, that's a pretty good landing.
Speaker 5: Spot, I think.
Speaker 4: I mean, they have historically maybe been clown on a bit,
Speaker 4: but it's a new regime there.
Speaker 5: And and I talked about this.
Speaker 4: At the trade deadline, they acquired some what we thought
Speaker 4: were pretty interesting piece is in trade this uh this deadline,
Speaker 4: and I think some of their some of their players
Speaker 4: have taken some steps forward and development too, so m'd
Speaker 4: be a good place for him.
Speaker 6: Nice. I'm kind of I haven't been fortunate enough to
Speaker 6: watch any of these guys yet, but I'm I'm looking
Speaker 6: forward to it. Man, when they when they hit pro ball,
Speaker 6: I've I've been I've been watching seeing if they might
Speaker 6: be hitting a ball or whatever. Yeah, I will definitely
Speaker 6: be turning them on. But I wanted to ask you
Speaker 6: you got anything like, uh, I don't know, maybe any
Speaker 6: uh little towels for someone like me watching that. Uh,
Speaker 6: maybe one of these guys is feeling it pretty good
Speaker 6: today to look.
Speaker 5: For like when you're watching a picture.
Speaker 6: Watching one of these three.
Speaker 5: Guys, Oh one of these three guys.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, Like were there ever times like pretty early on,
Speaker 6: You're like, all right, this guy's on it.
Speaker 5: There's laying his curveball like it's it's like he's gonna
Speaker 5: have it. He's gonna have an outing if he's he's
Speaker 5: dropping curveballs early in the outing. Now, Like I know
Speaker 5: how Samy liked to work. He really liked to keep
Speaker 5: the game playing pretty simple early. So it's like, hey,
Speaker 5: if we're going fastball, slider, let's do that for the
Speaker 5: first six seven batters, Like, let's not get too crazy.
Speaker 5: I don't know if that'll be how it's going to be,
Speaker 5: you know, with the athletics. But we actually talked about
Speaker 5: that a little bit after his third outing, because I mean,
Speaker 5: I kind of was just going into any pitch, anytime mentality.
Speaker 5: He was like, Hey, I feel like I'm just taking
Speaker 5: on too much. And so I would be like whatever
Speaker 5: I watched in the pen, if he was layding curveballs,
Speaker 5: I was like, all right, we're going fastball curveball until
Speaker 5: I mean we're in a spot where we actually have
Speaker 5: to go something else. But I think truly it's a curveball.
Speaker 5: I mean like, and I don't know if I have
Speaker 5: this very small sample size on this, because Samy threw
Speaker 5: on Saturdays for US or on Sundays for US, and
Speaker 5: they were always afternoon games except for two outings that
Speaker 5: he had, and I think there's something to be said
Speaker 5: about Sammy starting in night games might be I mean,
Speaker 5: his splits at night. He had an outing in San
Speaker 5: Diego State and an outing against Gonzaga, and he his
Speaker 5: k rate was now granted, San Diego State was young
Speaker 5: and Gonzaga was at the end of the rope in
Speaker 5: the tournament and so, but his stuff looked just filthy
Speaker 5: at night. I don't know there's something to it. Brink.
Speaker 5: Brink doesn't give you anything. He associates on the mount
Speaker 5: like he's like he just looks like a a serial killer,
Speaker 5: just like absolutely going to work so a robot in
Speaker 5: his big old specs. I love it. But Frank's not
Speaker 5: going to give you anything, which is great. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's the guy you want to roll out on Friday.
Speaker 5: Brink will give you something towards the end of his
Speaker 5: outing if it's a big pitch and he'll give you
Speaker 5: a big, fiery let's go. But he's not going to
Speaker 5: give you He's not going to be it. But if you're,
Speaker 5: if you're paying attention, like the movement on his slider
Speaker 5: I think is pretty telling early Like if he's moving
Speaker 5: that thing how he wants, then he's he's going to
Speaker 5: have that early success. It's as it always seemed like,
Speaker 5: if you know, if you got to Brink like like
Speaker 5: you do with starters, like got to him early, you
Speaker 5: know he gave up some I mean his home run
Speaker 5: like the amount of home runs he gave up this
Speaker 5: year was I felt like a little bit unlucky considering,
Speaker 5: I mean the stuff and all the other stats. So
Speaker 5: he gave us some home runs early on, some like
Speaker 5: backed up sliders that just didn't move right. And so
Speaker 5: but if he's got that thing going pretty early, I
Speaker 5: think it's, uh, it could be a pretty good outing.
Speaker 5: And Joey, Joey is probably of the three gotten the most.
Speaker 5: I'm most curious about what does with him because he
Speaker 5: is a massive pronator of the baseball. He's going to
Speaker 5: get so much fun. He loves to pitch the throw
Speaker 5: the fastball in like he is just going to run
Speaker 5: it in on your hands. And I'm really curious what
Speaker 5: they do with his secondary pitches because I mean, it
Speaker 5: started to get to the point and in his last
Speaker 5: year and the last those last year outings where were
Speaker 5: running like seventy percent fastballs just because he could go
Speaker 5: in and in and in and he just have a
Speaker 5: ton of success and then like drop it like a
Speaker 5: he was kind of throwing. He was kind of throwing
Speaker 5: a sweepy slider, which I don't think is necessarily the
Speaker 5: right thing for him, but it's like what he could repeat.
Speaker 5: It felt like and then the change up was the
Speaker 5: pitch and the change up just he just needed more
Speaker 5: time with it, and he was kind of throwing a
Speaker 5: little bit of a split change. He's not going to
Speaker 5: be a splitter type guy, obviously. I don't know if
Speaker 5: that's obvious, sorry, but it's he's going to be. I
Speaker 5: think once he gets that going, he's gonna man, it
Speaker 5: could be really really good. He's also he also dabbled
Speaker 5: with forceeam and I'm sure Boston will do that with him,
Speaker 5: where he's throwing for seam up and away running that
Speaker 5: two seam. I think. I think that's and I do
Speaker 5: think that if anyone throws a hundred out of this group,
Speaker 5: it's going to be Joey Gartral, even though Sammy is
Speaker 5: probably the closest right now, Like Joey's got a real shot.
Speaker 5: I mean, the kid is so big, like six '
Speaker 5: four and built like an ox, so it's like six
Speaker 5: ' five maybe. So Joey's the most interesting on that
Speaker 5: as far as that question goes, like because I'm still
Speaker 5: probably I don't know. He's he's a competitor, so's he's
Speaker 5: interesting one.
Speaker 6: That's awesome, Thanks for that's that's fun inside thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I got to ask you this too, Connor. It's probably
Speaker 6: a classic pitching question, pitching coach question at least, but
Speaker 6: I always find the answer is super is super interesting.
Speaker 6: But how do you define what's the starting pitcher and
Speaker 6: what's the relief pitcher? What RAITs do you think one
Speaker 6: needs to have that the other doesn't have, or vice versa.
Speaker 6: I know that's probably big and loaded, but.
Speaker 4: Well, and for Connor, Connor has experienced doing both. You know,
Speaker 4: he started for us on some weekend games in college,
Speaker 4: was a consistent midweek performer for us as a starter,
Speaker 4: and then ended his career in the back of our bullpen,
Speaker 4: pitching important innings down the stretch. So having done both
Speaker 4: and obviously closed in summer ball too, so you've you've
Speaker 4: kind of worn multiple hats, and maybe from your experience
Speaker 4: on the mound and then coaching guys who have made
Speaker 4: some of that transition, how do you think about that.
Speaker 6: Kind of This is a big question for us in
Speaker 6: Dungeons and Dragons baseball. You know, we're speculating on guys
Speaker 6: starters are more valuable to us. So it's it's talked
Speaker 6: about often. I've heard some answers that I think I
Speaker 6: kind of like some things that I think. I agree
Speaker 6: with some that so much, but it was just curious
Speaker 6: what your thoughts were.
Speaker 5: For me, it's probably the stuff that you guys can't
Speaker 5: see like that probably doesn't help you a lot. But
Speaker 5: I think guys separate themselves. They have an area to themselves,
Speaker 5: like the way they walk around, the way they get
Speaker 5: their business done. I described as being a self starter.
Speaker 5: I guess a little bit more in depth. I mean Sammy,
Speaker 5: like I said, the good example we have, great example
Speaker 5: is like Stir walking on campus. Sounds like he's a reliever.
Speaker 5: He throws, he's high, like he's max intent, like he
Speaker 5: you know, he throws a razor blade slider lands this
Speaker 5: curve ball every once in a while, but it doesn't
Speaker 5: quite throw en off strikes. So get him in there,
Speaker 5: and if he's not feeling it, then we're going to
Speaker 5: get him out. And I think, like the thing that
Speaker 5: I learned from that is that like Sammy was really
Speaker 5: like he is, the way he prepared his catch play.
Speaker 5: His strength. He wasn't He's not like the biggest guy,
Speaker 5: but his ability to his endurance, his arm endurance was
Speaker 5: probably the reason why he was able to It's not
Speaker 5: like he was dropping off and like throwing ninety six
Speaker 5: in the first, throwing ninety one in the fourth. He
Speaker 5: was just still throwing ninety six. And to me, it
Speaker 5: was like he needed to be right around sixty percent
Speaker 5: strikes with his fastball. He needed to be just above
Speaker 5: that with it with one of his Well, for Sammy,
Speaker 5: it probably need to be above that with both of
Speaker 5: his breaking balls. But I don't think that you necessarily
Speaker 5: at the college level have to be a three pitch guy,
Speaker 5: four pitch guy. Whatever. Obviously, if you have just a
Speaker 5: really above average college level stuff, and especially if one
Speaker 5: of the pitches is like elite college level stuff, like
Speaker 5: you can really ride that against college level hitters. But
Speaker 5: like in Sammy case, like I mean, he he had
Speaker 5: three I would probably call them the league college level pitches,
Speaker 5: but it came down to his ability to like land
Speaker 5: those for strikes, and so like I paid attention more
Speaker 5: to like I mean I could, I wish I could
Speaker 5: show you, but like it's like you could literally look
Speaker 5: at Sammy's oud and go, like, oh, those two breaking
Speaker 5: balls for strikes. That was a good outer, Like he
Speaker 5: was marginal right there, that was probably an out and
Speaker 5: he didn't go more than five innings, you know, And
Speaker 5: so I mean I think we I mean, I think
Speaker 5: we ran top three in quality starts in the nation
Speaker 5: last year. So it's like, yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 5: I talk a lot about that. So like, to me,
Speaker 5: like the ability to get to that quality start to
Speaker 5: me is like, yes, of a marker, And I tell
Speaker 5: our starters like that is your job. You can give
Speaker 5: up your three runs whatever. But I need like the
Speaker 5: more we can shorten the game at the college level.
Speaker 5: I mean, because at least in my time at Portland,
Speaker 5: and you know, I mean, I think it's anywhere. It's
Speaker 5: like you've got two, three, four guys that you really trust,
Speaker 5: you know that you're like and like, who knows if
Speaker 5: you just came off playing a Tuesday game and he
Speaker 5: thirty five bitches help you win this against you know,
Speaker 5: whatever school. And so that quality start piece is pretty
Speaker 5: hard marker for me too.
Speaker 6: It's like, thank you, Connor, thank you for that. I
Speaker 6: like to in my way talk about pictures horsepower or
Speaker 6: leaf thereof, and the rook likes to make fun of
Speaker 6: me for it. Just thank you, thank you for that validation, Connor.
Speaker 5: I appreciate that, Like we called Brink the I mean
Speaker 5: we call Brink the Mechanic. We also called him the stallion.
Speaker 5: I mean the guy was like and our horse pen there.
Speaker 5: So yeah, well of needs horsepower.
Speaker 4: Guys just got tapped to get called up to the
Speaker 4: bigs and he's feeling good about it. Cave and Dana
Speaker 4: for the Angels, who Nate's been on since he was
Speaker 4: drafted as a high school kid. Which is unusual for
Speaker 4: Nate to be this into a high school pitcher, especially
Speaker 4: one that throws pretty hard. You know, we tend to
Speaker 4: work in the you know, guys that maybe don't look
Speaker 4: traditionally as impressive. But the thing that Dana has done
Speaker 4: really well this year is show that he can go
Speaker 4: deep into starts and it's not necessarily on the back
Speaker 4: of gaudy strikeout totals or anything. It's he's a pitcher
Speaker 4: and he gets his stuff done. So I've given Nate
Speaker 4: a hard time and said it's more of a merry
Speaker 4: go round pony, but he's been really impressive for a twenty.
Speaker 6: Year old to real cut.
Speaker 4: And then and then hey, he's getting called up, so
Speaker 4: you know, we'll see what he's got in the show.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the ability to go through a lineup three times?
Speaker 5: Is I mean, I was just listening to those guys
Speaker 5: on Rates and Barrels talk about it. It's just like,
Speaker 5: I mean, they were talking about some rule that the
Speaker 5: potential is going to be changed.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's I was actually about to segue into that
Speaker 6: question Connor. So the MLB is talking about making some
Speaker 6: sort of minimum for starters that they got to go
Speaker 6: six and there's stipulations and whatever, right, And this coincides
Speaker 6: with me just kind of digging around on some like
Speaker 6: I don't know, inducing soft contact efficiently, little nerdy dives
Speaker 6: I've been doing. But I'm curious how much you you
Speaker 6: might talk about pitching to contact sort of topics things.
Speaker 6: You know, there's a big motivation to strike everybody out,
Speaker 6: but you know that could possibly be more physically draining
Speaker 6: for you. I mean you, I was just looking today.
Speaker 6: I think the average played appearance in the major leagues
Speaker 6: where a strikeout is like almost six pitches, whereas inducing
Speaker 6: weak contact is like three and a half pitches, right,
Speaker 6: So you're just literally working harder to strike guys out.
Speaker 6: But yeah, I just I was just curious your thoughts
Speaker 6: on like pitching the contact sort of things. And if
Speaker 6: this rule change did take place, I don't know whenever
Speaker 6: it does three or four years later, do you think
Speaker 6: that trickles down and changes your jobs?
Speaker 5: To your first question.
Speaker 6: I know, I asked like seven questions at a time.
Speaker 5: Yes, we talk a lot about trying to be efficient,
Speaker 5: and I think that goes like hand in hand, like
Speaker 5: as like talking about you know, quality starts, but like
Speaker 5: three pitch, like we with I talked about our systems,
Speaker 5: and one of those systems is our process chart, which
Speaker 5: already alluded to and speaking to those things consistently, so
Speaker 5: like three pitches are less outs, like being like, hey,
Speaker 5: you get rewarded for like that's a good thing, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean, Like you know obviously and two
Speaker 5: three innings aren't always controlling a lot of this, you know,
Speaker 5: me and me and Matt have actually talked about this
Speaker 5: fair amount, like a true process chart at my level,
Speaker 5: and like it's not really like a true true process right,
Speaker 5: Like I'm talking about getting outs and like you could
Speaker 5: throw a bad pitch and get an out and that's
Speaker 5: not a good process, but like you know, it's a
Speaker 5: good outgun. But yeah, the efficiency thing is to me
Speaker 5: is like you know, throwing one of first two pitches
Speaker 5: for strikes, like getting ball in play. I talk about
Speaker 5: a lot. To be honest, I rarely talk about strikeouts.
Speaker 5: I track the stuff that helps us get there for sure,
Speaker 5: and the things that we definitely talk about that put
Speaker 5: us in position to get strikeouts. They kind of again
Speaker 5: have a relationship and they kind of go hand and hand.
Speaker 5: The more two strikes you put yourself in like, the
Speaker 5: more strikeouts you're gonna you're gonna get and as a staff,
Speaker 5: but it's not the end all be all, and truthfully,
Speaker 5: within this process chart, I mean stir one up against this.
Speaker 5: Really in his very first outing in San die State,
Speaker 5: he struck out thirteen, went five innings, walked one or two,
Speaker 5: gave up no runs, and like two hits and it
Speaker 5: was a very middling processed chart game. You know, it
Speaker 5: was like not rewarding him at all for absolutely, I
Speaker 5: mean that's he dominated, right, He just like no one
Speaker 5: was hitting stuff. But he was at his pitch count
Speaker 5: before six innings, which is like, hey, Bud, like you're
Speaker 5: throwing on Saturdays the Sundays, like our bullpen spent. We
Speaker 5: need you to go into the seventh or we need
Speaker 5: you to get in the sixth of the very minimum.
Speaker 5: I just think it's good baseball at the end of
Speaker 5: the day. Like chasing strikeouts too hard, you know, I
Speaker 5: think it can leak into my pitch calling, and if
Speaker 5: I start doing that, like I start to become really
Speaker 5: inefficient with with what I'm doing, and I think it
Speaker 5: sends the wrong signal. I just I want to put
Speaker 5: our guys in positions on the mound to attack weaknesses
Speaker 5: if we can of the hitter and hopefully they're they're
Speaker 5: end cap in you know, putting the ball on the
Speaker 5: ground or easy flyball or whatever it is. So that's
Speaker 5: definitely like what we talk about for sure, what I
Speaker 5: will talk about. But I would say, like it it's
Speaker 5: hard because there's a relationship piece of this. You need strikeouts,
Speaker 5: Like this is like you have to have strikeouts. You
Speaker 5: have to have strikeouts there. You want to be a
Speaker 5: good staff, you can't not strike guys out at least,
Speaker 5: you know, at least a strikeout for inning at the minimum.
Speaker 5: You got to be better than that too. So I
Speaker 5: think we just really celebrate when we have those really
Speaker 5: efficient innings and talk about that, like, hey, that's a
Speaker 5: big time inning. He maybe got a strike out in it.
Speaker 5: Maybe you didn't, but like you threw thirteen pitches or
Speaker 5: less than that inning, that's massive. The more we can
Speaker 5: get to those, the more we're going to be you know,
Speaker 5: we're going to be pretty good. So and the second
Speaker 5: part of that question, after I just rambled on right there,
Speaker 5: was I.
Speaker 6: Asked if you if you thought that if such a
Speaker 6: little change would change your job at all. But you
Speaker 6: may have kind of answered that.
Speaker 5: College baseball seems really slow to adapt what MLB does. Man,
Speaker 5: I don't know, honestly, I don't know. I'll stick at it.
Speaker 5: I don't know. But if they did that, I mean,
Speaker 5: it's just hard because these guys aren't professionals at what
Speaker 5: they do. So how can you expect holding the standard
Speaker 5: of what professionals are doing in that type of rule change.
Speaker 6: So my thought on that was, like I was wondering
Speaker 6: if it was I think it's kind of maybe a
Speaker 6: roundabout way a Major League Baseball trying to curb some
Speaker 6: injury stuff is counterintuitive that as it may sound, making
Speaker 6: a guy go longer, velocity and spin and all these
Speaker 6: like max pitches are what make millions of dollars and
Speaker 6: may very well lead to guys inability to go deep.
Speaker 6: So perhaps maybe lack of a better term, pitchability, guys
Speaker 6: guys who can go length. Maybe that will motivate the
Speaker 6: teams to reward them monetarily and thus maybe changed the
Speaker 6: whole process for aspiring professional pitchers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so coach coach Lambert here. One of the things
Speaker 4: that he has demonstrated in this conversation and in his
Speaker 4: career is he's a humble guy. But you know, I
Speaker 4: know him, and he's really competitive, and he really cares
Speaker 4: about making his teams better.
Speaker 5: And so I'm going to brag on you a little
Speaker 5: bit here.
Speaker 4: Connor, he took over I would say, you know, no
Speaker 4: offense to the pilots. A pretty middling pitching staff in
Speaker 4: the West Coast Conference hadn't had a lot of success,
Speaker 4: especially on the mound. And then Connor, over the course
Speaker 4: of his seven years at the helm of the pitching staff,
Speaker 4: that pitching staff like it is wild to track and
Speaker 4: these are all like public numbers you can go look up,
Speaker 4: but Connor every single year improved the staff's fit, fielding,
Speaker 4: independent pitching, which meant the strikeouts went up every year.
Speaker 4: And did you have a record number of strikeouts each
Speaker 4: of the last four seasons for the pilots.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we broke the school record at.
Speaker 4: The school record, that's what I mean, like years yeah, right,
Speaker 4: and and six out of seven years. And I think
Speaker 4: there was just like one dip in like twenty nineteen
Speaker 4: or something, but it was like it was like eighteen
Speaker 4: was better than seventeen, and on and on and on
Speaker 4: and until this year. Top three in the nation in
Speaker 4: quality starts. So it doesn't happen if your pitchers aren't succeeding.
Speaker 4: Just the improvements in run prevention, in batting average allowed,
Speaker 4: walks allowed went down every year. I mean, the guy
Speaker 4: with unheralded pitching staffs casts off from the other rotations.
Speaker 4: I had scouts in the stands this year, you University
Speaker 4: of Portland tell me that this staff that Connor had
Speaker 4: assembled was bar none the best in the entire Pacific
Speaker 4: Northwest region, like the region that these scouts covered. And
Speaker 4: I think that's a testament to the things that Connor's
Speaker 4: talking about, focusing on process, trying to learn what makes
Speaker 4: you successful, and then keeping it simple, because you can't
Speaker 4: be thinking about a million things when you're trying to
Speaker 4: do one of the hardest things in the world. Throw
Speaker 4: throw a little ball into a little little spot. So,
Speaker 4: I mean, Connor is clearly really really good at this
Speaker 4: and you know, personally as his buddy and as a
Speaker 4: seven year Portland Pilots fan, I'm stoked to see him ascend.
Speaker 5: Up the level.
Speaker 4: And Nowtown Huskies, I'm a huge Husky fan.
Speaker 6: Now, yeah, I'm I'm converted. Well pause up, that's what
Speaker 6: that would be good. Sorry, I'm I'm new. I'm trying, Guys,
Speaker 6: I'm trying.
Speaker 5: Thanks Matt, that was too kind. And yes, man, you
Speaker 5: know what the number that I just probably geek out
Speaker 5: on a little bit too much is that, like our
Speaker 5: process number has gotten better and better year over year, and.
Speaker 4: Like that, I think those things are related, right like that, Yeah,
Speaker 4: you're you're you're focusing on different outcomes maybe than our
Speaker 4: traditional but they helped the pitchers focus on the actual
Speaker 4: process pieces.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: It's one level removed from the gaudy outcome of getting
Speaker 4: that strikeout, but it helps them get there. And I
Speaker 4: think that you see that the guys that have bought
Speaker 4: into the program, the guys that became leaders of the
Speaker 4: staff and then and then other coaches, right, you hired
Speaker 4: some of the team and they bought into it and
Speaker 4: built that that culture at University of Portland, and frankly,
Speaker 4: I'm pumped to see the Huskies build that same culture
Speaker 4: and go take it to all those dummies and the
Speaker 4: Big ten.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you guys have I'm having a blast. So
Speaker 5: this is I'm having a good time talking baseball. I mean,
Speaker 5: give give an open a mic for me.
Speaker 6: I love it. Like Matt and I have had some
Speaker 6: had some marathons and I'm like, dude, we got to stop.
Speaker 6: It's going to take me a whole day to edit
Speaker 6: all this and actually make a podcast.
Speaker 5: I feel like a question for me would be like,
Speaker 5: what do you what kind of numbers do you guys
Speaker 5: look at that are like your what do you feel
Speaker 5: like are your best predictors of success? Like raw data
Speaker 5: or specific analytics on a picture? I know what I like,
Speaker 5: but I'm curious you guys are You guys are in
Speaker 5: the weeds a little bit for sure, and so I'm curious.
Speaker 6: I'm probably pretty rudimentary and I don't really look at
Speaker 6: a lot of numbers Connor. I just video. That's what
Speaker 6: I like to watch. Now. Don't get me wrong, I'm
Speaker 6: not naive to some totally naive to some stuff. I
Speaker 6: am completely naive to some I have a little I
Speaker 6: have a little tool that comes up that spits out
Speaker 6: like lines from the day in the minor leagues, and
Speaker 6: I'll kind of like mark certain things that I like.
Speaker 6: But I just use that as kind of a menu. Okay,
Speaker 6: who do I want to turn on and watch? Then
Speaker 6: you know, I'll dig around on fangrass, look at a
Speaker 6: percentages and maybe some trends and things like that. But
Speaker 6: I'm really just I'm really just an eyeball guy, and
Speaker 6: I get that that misses a lot of things, but
Speaker 6: I also think it can catch things that spreadsheets take
Speaker 6: a while to catch up to. And I really like
Speaker 6: watching the Like I said, prior to the development of
Speaker 6: a guy, what's this guy working on? What's his what's
Speaker 6: his plan? What is he trying to achieve this outing?
Speaker 6: What what's he trying to achieve with this pitch? And
Speaker 6: what is he doing it well or not? And you know,
Speaker 6: for me with pros, I like to lean towards the
Speaker 6: I want to find the good picture, man, and as
Speaker 6: blurry as that might be, Like certain kind of athleticism,
Speaker 6: I like to joke around about like the Mussina Index
Speaker 6: like their ability to come up with pitches because a
Speaker 6: lot of the times stuff can jump, especially when you
Speaker 6: become a pro and stuff. So I like to look
Speaker 6: for the other things the pitch plus models do their
Speaker 6: things and that information come up. But yeah, I just
Speaker 6: like watching guys kind of.
Speaker 5: Really hands in the dirt. Well, Muddy probably more of
Speaker 5: a spreadsheet socialists, you know.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, that's nice to have ma because he's way
Speaker 6: nerdier like that.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, I'm definitely the dork of the podcast.
Speaker 4: And you know, I like, as you know, to learn
Speaker 4: and read and see what I can do.
Speaker 5: And I've definitely spent a lot.
Speaker 4: Of time trying to learn from my own process and
Speaker 4: trying to evaluate guys. And there's there's two things. As
Speaker 4: I'm a pretty competitive person too, and in our game
Speaker 4: that we're trying to play in Dynasty Baseball, we're trying to,
Speaker 4: you know, constantly trade our prospects for the currently productive
Speaker 4: big leader so that we win money in our leagues
Speaker 4: and bragging rights and all of that good stuff. But
Speaker 4: that's increasingly harder and harder to do because everybody has
Speaker 4: the same tools to evaluate guys, and there's lots of
Speaker 4: really smart public analysts out there. And one of the
Speaker 4: things that has been fun with Nate and me is
Speaker 4: giving yourself added constraints, so saying not just I'm going
Speaker 4: to look at all the top guys and argue about
Speaker 4: who's better Emmanuel Rodriguez or Walker Jenkins, for example. I
Speaker 4: have opinions about those things, but that's not really where
Speaker 4: we play. What we're trying to do is find the
Speaker 4: guys that maybe are unheralded, and for me, a lot
Speaker 4: of times that does mean looking at the basic rudimentary stats.
Speaker 4: At this point in the sabermetric era, of like K
Speaker 4: minus bb rate because it's the thing that stabilizes well,
Speaker 4: it predicts performance well. I also love ground balls. I
Speaker 4: think that those generally tend to portend good things for
Speaker 4: hitters or for pictures. I also like weird pitchers, like
Speaker 4: finding those profiles that don't look like the rest of
Speaker 4: the bell curve right. Like you know, we used to
Speaker 4: talk in college about we're facing Johnny right hander today
Speaker 4: and he's eighty eight to ninety two with the straightfor
Speaker 4: seam fastball, and it's eighty to eighty four slider, and
Speaker 4: then he has a show me change up Johnny right hander. Like,
Speaker 4: how many of those guys did we see? I don't
Speaker 4: even remember their names because they all blended together. And
Speaker 4: then you see a guy that has some funk, that
Speaker 4: has like a different arm slot, that is coming at
Speaker 4: you with a cutter and a slider and a sweeper
Speaker 4: and those are three separate pitches, but to your eye,
Speaker 4: they all look the same out of the hand, and
Speaker 4: those guys can be a lot more challenging. And you know,
Speaker 4: so some of my favorite guys that I've kind of
Speaker 4: unearthed in the combination of looking at the stats and
Speaker 4: then watching him pitch, is guys where it's like that
Speaker 4: guy is doing something different and he's getting results, but
Speaker 4: it's showing up in a way that is totally different
Speaker 4: to a lot of the other guys out there. Like
Speaker 4: one of the guys that Nate and I have talked
Speaker 4: about is this starting pitcher for Toronto for the Blue Jays,
Speaker 4: and we saw him just very briefly in Hillsborough last year,
Speaker 4: like one video inning, but he had shown some interesting
Speaker 4: stuff in his stats. And lazarro Estrada just has had
Speaker 4: an awesome year this year, and he was like nobody
Speaker 4: wanted him even in our super super deep dynasty leagues. No,
Speaker 4: he wanted him, but because he was old for the level.
Speaker 4: He'd been bad before. But I thought he was doing
Speaker 4: like something weird. And then you watch him and you're like,
Speaker 4: he has this enormous curveball, like one of the biggest
Speaker 4: that I've ever seen, and it looks just like his
Speaker 4: super high ride fastball. He just couldn't really throw it
Speaker 4: for strikes. But he was like a pitch or two
Speaker 4: away from finding stitching all of those things together, and
Speaker 4: he probably hasn't fully done that yet. But the thing
Speaker 4: that I get the most joy of isn't just finding like, oh,
Speaker 4: my stats say this guy is interesting. It's pairing that
Speaker 4: with how weird.
Speaker 5: Is this guy? Right? How different is this guy?
Speaker 4: And I just think that that's like a fruitful way
Speaker 4: to find those hidden gems.
Speaker 6: And like you were saying, kind of I like efficiency.
Speaker 6: I like looking at guys getting outs quickly, whether it's
Speaker 6: strikeouts or contact. And it's a little tricky, like we
Speaker 6: were talking about before, there's kind of like, well I
Speaker 6: refer to like kind of plastic arms versus like, you know,
Speaker 6: stuff made out of metal with this guy, and I
Speaker 6: try to think, like next eight years, who do I
Speaker 6: want to put money on, like can adapt and a
Speaker 6: Justice game once he gets to the real point of
Speaker 6: development in the majors, you know, and that might be
Speaker 6: that might be a fool's errand I don't know, but
Speaker 6: that's what I try to geek out on.
Speaker 5: No, it's it's it's interesting because it's just kind of
Speaker 5: relates a little bit to the recruiting piece on transfer portal.
Speaker 5: And I mean, we we have a program called Synergy
Speaker 5: that you know, we have a data database of every
Speaker 5: single college pitcher in the entire country from the D
Speaker 5: three level to junior college and D one And you
Speaker 5: can sit there and watch guys populate on the transfer
Speaker 5: portal and then go into the Synergy and look at
Speaker 5: them and look at them different angles and see what
Speaker 5: the stuff says. You can obviously go look at the numbers.
Speaker 5: That's that's kind of the easy part, like to what
Speaker 5: you guys are saying, and sometimes that tells the story, right,
Speaker 5: and but like sometimes it's the different weird release angle.
Speaker 5: It's the you know, the low release with the high
Speaker 5: high ride fastball. It's the deception. It's you know, you
Speaker 5: do kind of have to put your hands in the
Speaker 5: dirt you wanna unearth, you know, somebody that maybe didn't
Speaker 5: you know, and even even more true at the college level,
Speaker 5: where it's like he was a freshman last year in
Speaker 5: Collegehere he is even a sophomore who threw minimal innings
Speaker 5: as freshman year, Like can this kid explode? And am
Speaker 5: I like because you're one to two of those guys
Speaker 5: on your staff away from having massive year, because you
Speaker 5: probably already have a few guys like that on your staff,
Speaker 5: and so you're now bringing a couple of those guys in.
Speaker 5: Now you've got seven, eight, nine guys that you're like,
Speaker 5: this guy is a little bit different from the next
Speaker 5: to speak to what Matt was saying and how we
Speaker 5: did it with different types of looks. I am a
Speaker 5: big fan of not giving a hit or the same
Speaker 5: look from like what our starter was doing. Like I
Speaker 5: almost strictly bring in somebody that is way different from
Speaker 5: the guy that they just saw three of bathroom and like,
Speaker 5: whether that's just how his fastball moves to you know,
Speaker 5: it's not always just like left handed right handed, but
Speaker 5: like if this guy's running, you know, a ride fastball
Speaker 5: with a sharp slider, like I'm going to probably bring
Speaker 5: in my guy that's got a little bit more of
Speaker 5: a change up and he's running more of a two
Speaker 5: seem just to to give a different movement profile. Collecting
Speaker 5: those types of guys here you guys talk about that's actually,
Speaker 5: i mean, really interesting. You guys obviously collect them on
Speaker 5: death charts and stuff like that, and so there's actually
Speaker 5: a piece of what I feel like I'm doing and
Speaker 5: trying to capture like that a little bit on rosters kind.
Speaker 6: Of there's I don't know, perhaps millions of reasons pictures
Speaker 6: are better than hitters, but of one of my favorite
Speaker 6: reasons is, I don't know, maybe this is a bit romantic,
Speaker 6: but the hope like a picture can ascend sort of
Speaker 6: out of nowhere, can can make a tweak here there,
Speaker 6: finding you whatever it might be, and just become so
Speaker 6: much better, so much quicker than a stupid dumb hitter.
Speaker 6: So I'm curious, I'm curious what maybe one of or
Speaker 6: a couple of your favorite reasons pictures are better than
Speaker 6: hitters might be.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think my number one thing is that
Speaker 5: you know, you win so much more as a picture,
Speaker 5: and like I'm just I'm just all about that life,
Speaker 5: Like I want to win. Yeah, Like you just fail
Speaker 5: so much as a hitter, and so it's just.
Speaker 6: Like it's like your hater doesn't do anything for you.
Speaker 5: I mean, like the game is hard. The game's hard
Speaker 5: for everybody. Now imagine like being a hitter and like
Speaker 5: then you gotta go field, and let's say you suck
Speaker 5: at that too, So it's.
Speaker 6: Just like.
Speaker 5: Go quit, you know, man, it's a it's a good question.
Speaker 5: I don't know, Like I think the bullpen banter is elite.
Speaker 5: There's nothing better than that. Absolutely, just like bullshitting with
Speaker 5: your guys for seven innings and then going in the
Speaker 5: game and having a massive effect on you know, and
Speaker 5: like you've just been chill the whole game, and the
Speaker 5: hitters had to like focus for you know, one hundred pitches.
Speaker 5: And you know, me and Matt played in the north
Speaker 5: Woods League together and I got to do We did
Speaker 5: for two summers and I got to do pretty much
Speaker 5: every role in my two summers out there, and I
Speaker 5: get to be a starting pitcher. I got to be
Speaker 5: a closer, And being a closer was like the coolest
Speaker 5: job there ever. Was Like you just like come in
Speaker 5: with the games and then like your your success is
Speaker 5: predicate it on like three outs when it's hardest for
Speaker 5: the hitters to hit anyway because you you've got all
Speaker 5: the stuff and pressure is all on them. And then
Speaker 5: like you just win, and like everyone's like slapping you
Speaker 5: on the button. Like the meanwhile, the hitter that had
Speaker 5: you know, like you know, a couple of knocks and
Speaker 5: had a decent game but didn't really have like a
Speaker 5: true effect, like they're feeling good about themselves, but like,
Speaker 5: good job, buddy, do it again tomorrow. And then you
Speaker 5: know it's like, oh, we got to save.
Speaker 6: Man. I went to school Lacrosse, Wisconsin.
Speaker 5: Oh nice. Yeah, we were in Saint cloub Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: Lcross is sweet.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was fun.
Speaker 5: Across Sweet the other day Mackerel.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Connor, you said you did a little bit of
Speaker 4: everything in our time in the Northwoods League, and we
Speaker 4: tried really hard.
Speaker 5: To make that actually happen. We tried really hard.
Speaker 4: Oh Man, our very last game in the Northwoods League,
Speaker 4: we were playing for this coach who did not like
Speaker 4: us very much, mostly me, I think he didn't like
Speaker 4: but he did not think we were all that fun,
Speaker 4: and we were very fun mate as you know, we
Speaker 4: were very fun. He was This was the worst season
Speaker 4: that the franchise had had, and we blamed this coach
Speaker 4: like he wasn't very good, and you know, some of
Speaker 4: it was the roster was a little bit thinner than
Speaker 4: we'd had in previous years, but he I don't think
Speaker 4: did a very good job getting the most out of
Speaker 4: the team either. And we were on a bit of
Speaker 4: a run at the end of the season.
Speaker 5: We've been playing.
Speaker 4: Pretty well, but we were well out of playoffs. We
Speaker 4: weren't gonna make the playoffs, and so the boys were
Speaker 4: just having a great time, like the first time I
Speaker 4: ever really played golf. We would play golf every day
Speaker 4: and go to Buffalo Wild Wings after every game, and
Speaker 4: it was it was quite the life, I tell you what.
Speaker 5: Like it was pretty fun.
Speaker 4: But we come to the last game and our pitchers
Speaker 4: had been asking if they can hit and no, fun
Speaker 4: head coach guy was like, no way, you guys.
Speaker 5: Definitely cannot do that.
Speaker 4: We were like, no, I think we're gonna We're gonna
Speaker 4: find a way to do this, and we're it's the
Speaker 4: last game in the season. We are one game behind
Speaker 4: the worst record that our franchise had ever had, and
Speaker 4: our owner was like a really proud guy, and he
Speaker 4: had been pissed all year, thinking that weird, this is
Speaker 4: gonna be the worst season in history, and we're like,
Speaker 4: don't care, Like we're not going to playoffs. This is
Speaker 4: in college, this is summer Bowl. Connor and I hats
Speaker 4: this plan that we're gonna get one of our teammates
Speaker 4: to distract our head coach. And Connor, who's you know,
Speaker 4: been with the team for two full years, fan favorite,
Speaker 4: like everybody loves him, been our closer. We're gonna get
Speaker 4: him in that bat and I'm going to walk out
Speaker 4: on deck circle and pretend, but Connor's actually getting ready.
Speaker 4: He's got the gloves on, wearing somebody else's helmet, borrowed
Speaker 4: one of my bats, and he's hiding up the ramp
Speaker 4: up to our our locker room so that the coach
Speaker 4: can't see. And so we enlist our giant ass first
Speaker 4: basement to like go stand in front of our head
Speaker 4: coach and block him off so he can't see. I
Speaker 4: get announced to go out to bat, and then I
Speaker 4: like turn wave up to the press box and then
Speaker 4: point to Connor and I walk off and they announced Connor,
Speaker 4: and so Connor comes out and he's like they've announced him.
Speaker 4: He's he's up there ready to go, and our first
Speaker 4: basement at this point had put our head coach like
Speaker 4: in a bear hug and was like carrying him around
Speaker 4: like trying to joke with him. And he hears this
Speaker 4: and he lipped. He lost it on us. He goes
Speaker 4: running out to the umpire demands that Connor get back
Speaker 4: in the duck out waves at the press box to
Speaker 4: re announce me, which is illegal. You can't put me
Speaker 4: back in the game. I'm already I'm already out of
Speaker 4: the game. But it was because we were it was
Speaker 4: tied or we were down on maybe I think we
Speaker 4: were down one at the time.
Speaker 5: We do yeah, yeah. I was like, Corror is going to.
Speaker 4: Get a hit and win this game for us.
Speaker 5: I cannot believe Matt talked into all this.
Speaker 6: So you didn't get to take me at that game.
Speaker 5: I mean, I was like, dude, I should get it
Speaker 5: about but you know, it does have of course, he
Speaker 5: gets all the way back to our head coach back
Speaker 5: back and it's like what are you doing? And I
Speaker 5: was like, I don't.
Speaker 6: Know, played the game, man? How long had it been
Speaker 6: since you had like a real competitive at that At that.
Speaker 5: Point, oh, three and a half years.
Speaker 6: Nice.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I was not prepared.
Speaker 6: I think you were going yard. I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 5: I mean I was pretty in high school hitter, Like
Speaker 5: I think, I don't think I would have struck out,
Speaker 5: but like there's decent chance would have broken bat.
Speaker 4: The last game of the season. I wasn't gonna use
Speaker 4: that bad again.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Nice. What about macado, Dude, I love McAdoo.
Speaker 5: I think he's going to be a He was so
Speaker 5: interesting when we faced him. I was just like, he
Speaker 5: doesn't really swing and miss and he gets to barrel
Speaker 5: but he's like raw and then he's fast and it's like, man,
Speaker 5: if someone can just like mold that clay a little bit, Like,
Speaker 5: I think he's gonna be like a real guy. Yeah,
Speaker 5: he's a he's that's a that's a good pull. Like
Speaker 5: that's a good one. Like I think he's Yeah. I
Speaker 5: love McAdoo. Be this Like, I'm right on these guys
Speaker 5: all the time, but there is something different, like when
Speaker 5: you're like you just you can just like almost feel it,
Speaker 5: like some of these guys that step in the box.
Speaker 5: I'm just like, man, that's that's different. That's hard to
Speaker 5: call pitchers too. He doesn't just like you drop lighters
Speaker 5: on the outer half and chase. You know, it really
Speaker 5: comes down and as you guys know, is like he
Speaker 5: doesn't chased a lot. He hitches. He hits pitches in
Speaker 5: the zone hard, and he's really athletic. Not super shocking.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, did you scout or know anything about Will Simpson?
Speaker 5: Yeah? He man, he absolutely torched the pilots, Like backside,
Speaker 5: he was definitely that guy. Like, if you got him
Speaker 5: in his first bat, he did seem to have not
Speaker 5: a great day. But if he just puts some sort
Speaker 5: of quality ab in his first bat, like, he tended
Speaker 5: to have a pretty good day. I was actually talking
Speaker 5: with one of our coaches that was there, well, he
Speaker 5: was there, and he was like and confirm if he
Speaker 5: got a if you put together a couple a quality
Speaker 5: about early, he might have himself at four for four day.
Speaker 5: But he you know, he paid a little bit too
Speaker 5: much in college. That's why I think, because the power
Speaker 5: is pretty ridiculous. Like, I don't know how he's doing
Speaker 5: pretty well? Is any I think he just made a job.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's a double A and he's striking out at
Speaker 4: about twenty five percent clip, which is okay with the
Speaker 4: power he's got, but you know, he's a right, right
Speaker 4: first baseman. So the line he has to walk is
Speaker 4: pretty tough. But right now I'd say he's walking it
Speaker 4: well and he is.
Speaker 5: The only interesting thing was this is like he looks
Speaker 5: the part. You know, it's always like, well, like why
Speaker 5: why didn't he should have gone a year earlier? Because
Speaker 5: and then he went and had another really good year,
Speaker 5: And I was like, why did no one pull the
Speaker 5: trigger on that? But I again, I don't want to
Speaker 5: put myself in their shoes. They got a hard they
Speaker 5: got a hard job. So but yeah, I think he's solid.
Speaker 5: I wouldn't have a take on whether he's a professional
Speaker 5: hitter or not, but like, it does seem like he
Speaker 5: probably thinks a little too much of the Like I
Speaker 5: just I feel like I could outguess him, you know,
Speaker 5: thinking back to his abats, Yeah, some of his reactions
Speaker 5: I could see that kind of yeah, some of his
Speaker 5: reactions to like.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well hey Connor Man again, huge treat Thank you
Speaker 6: for sharing your time with us and chatting it was awesome.
Speaker 5: Appreciate you, buddy.
Speaker 6: Probably my favorite, my favorite podcast that I've ever done.
Speaker 6: No offense Brook, but Uh yeah man, good luck. Thanks down.
Speaker 6: Let's go Huskies this year. We'll let Chicago Farmer take
Speaker 6: this out and be well.
Speaker 5: Lady. Guys appreciate you. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Ninety five miles an hour riding to his head. You
Speaker 1: hoped down the.
Speaker 2: First with the lump bone ass face, and on the
Speaker 2: very next pitch he up and stove second face.
Speaker 3: With gretest speed. He wasn't born. He had the dird
Speaker 3: yes uniforn