June 6, 2024 • 54 mins
In this episode of 'The Book of Joe Podcast', Joe Maddon and Tom Verducci look at the upcoming Dodgers-Yankees series. Where are the two teams now and what's to come the rest of the season? Joe weighs in on what's happening with Jorge Lopez and the Mets, plus one of the biggest regrets of his career. Tom asks if the bunt is still a strategic play in baseball.
The Book of Joe Podcast is a production of iHeart Radio.
#fsr
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
The Book of Joe podcast is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey Darren, welcome back. You have found The Book of
Joe with me, Tom Berducci, and of course Joe Madden. Joe,
I'm not sure if you looked ahead to the schedule
(00:26):
for this weekend, but there's a very interesting series in
the Bronx. The Los Angeles Dodgers are playing the New
York Yankees. It's their third trip regular season trip is
for the Dodgers too, Yankee Stadium. And what's interesting to me, Joe,
is that we started this year talking of course about
the Dodgers with the addition of Shoeotani and the top
(00:48):
of their lineup with three MVPs, Mookie Betts, Shoeyotani, Freddie Freeman,
they've been really, really good. But as we sit here
entering early June, the top of the Yankees lineup has
outplayed them. Anthony Volpi, Wan Soto and Aaron Judge. I
want your take on the top three of those lineups
(01:12):
and which one you would have, because statistically right now,
the Yankees have an edge.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, I mean, both really good.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Obviously, the expectations are so high for the Dodgers, and
they're high for the Yankees, but not as high as
normal based on what they.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Had done last year.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
So I just think there's more motivation out of the
shoot for the Yankees right now than there had been
for the Dodgers.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
In a sense. Show has kind of lived up to it.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
The other guy's been playing well, obviously, but Show he's
the guy that's really been the shining light. And then
vault Ba, to me, is the guy that really deserves
a lot of credit here because he did change his swing.
When I saw him last ye didn't quite understand why
he was so highly touted offensively. I know he had
some home runs, but he did not like the swing
at all. Now I watch him, it's completely different player.
(01:57):
Even photographs of him indicate a more confident young man.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
And that's it.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
I mean, I really think he and everybody's the Oh
the guys are great, But I love what Volpi's doing
and he does it on defense too, So I think
the Yankees a little bit more interior motivation going on
at the beginning of the season.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
The Dodgers will catch up.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
The Dodgers are going to get like, really tore it
at some point, and by the end of the season,
the record should be relatively the same, I would think.
But from the beginning of the year listen, and I
wasn't on this. I'm not saying I was, but I'm
just looking at it now. I think that the Yankees
really took the heart what had happened last year. I
love the way Cash defended his brood during the offseason.
(02:37):
He didn't back down. He stuck to his guns, as
they say, and I think he incorporated or infused a
group with a lot of confidence knowing that their leader,
their boss, has their back. So there's all that stuff
going on. But again, it's gonna be an interesting series,
but I think the Yankees a little bit more going
on regarding they had to do it as opposed to
the Dodgers really have to do.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
It right now.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah, I'm glad you brought up Vulpi because I wanted
to talk to you about that trans information that he
went through. Like you, I watched him last year and
I thought that swing is not going to play, and
it really didn't. The Yankees were in a phase throughout
their system in which they were really emphasizing getting the
ball in the air to the poll side. And of
course we all know how important home runs are in
(03:21):
today's game, and that's what you want. But when you're
trying to teach everybody to do that, you write it
to cases like Anthony Volpi five nine, one hundred and
eighty pounds really good athletes. Got a lot of speed.
That should not be his game, and you saw it
last year. There's way too much going on with his swing,
a lot of head movement, a lot of uphill in
(03:42):
that swing. He could not hit fastballs at the top
of his own hit one twenty five on fastballs elevated
inside fastballs, couldn't get to them one ninety five, and
that made him susceptible to breaking pitches. And I think
he had so much head movement in his swing that
he wasn't tracking breaking pitches, made poor decisions on breaking pitches.
(04:03):
He hit won forty eight against breaking pitches.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Joe.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
That's a lot of holes in somebody's swing. If you
can't hit the breaking stuff and you can't get on
top of high fastballs, there's just too many ways to
get you out. So to his credit, he completely remade
his swing and he's playing what I know you'd like
this phrase, Joe, he's playing nineteen eighties baseball. At the
plate right. He is embracing ground balls. His ground ball
(04:30):
rate is up from forty one to fifty two percent.
That's at a time when a lot of people, antic
people in the game will say ground balls are bad.
Don't hit the ball on the ground. He's hitting the
other ball the other way. He's gone from twenty three
percent opposite field hitting the thirty two percent. That's a
big jump. He's putting the ball in play. He's cut
down his strikeout rate from twenty eight percent to twenty
(04:51):
one percent. He's cut his pole percentage. This is really
interesting to me, Joe. He's cut his poll rate from
twenty one percent. My brother, from twenty six percent. I'll
get this right, give me one more shot. He's cut
his poll rate from forty seven percent to twenty five percent.
That's by far the biggest decline in baseball. I mean,
(05:14):
those are big, big changes to me, Joe. The Yankees
didn't have a leadoff hitter unless Bulky Volpi made these changes.
I mean, they talked about dj Lemayhew. I don't think
he's at the point in his career where you really
want him leading off, and it really sets the traffic
up for Soto and judge. To have a guy who's
now getting on base putting the ball on the ground,
(05:35):
you know he can score from first base on the
kind of a gapper. A leadoff hitter gets on base
thirty five percent of the time with speed. I think
Anthony Volpi has been the difference maker on this team.
So I'm curious, Joe, if, in the course of your
long career here and how much you know about hitting,
what he has done. Is that extraordinary for you? For
someone to do this at the major league level after
(05:57):
a rookie season, especially.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
It would be if he had not ever done it before.
I'd be curious about that. What was he like before
the Yankee hitting instructors try to get him to pull
the ball lifted in the air. What did he look
like prior to that? Was some of this already built in?
Was his high school coach onto it? I don't even
know if you went to college or not, wherever he
was before that they asked him to do the lift
(06:21):
and pull and separate kind of a thing.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
What did he look like now?
Speaker 3 (06:24):
If he had some of that in his history, you know,
you could relatively easily. I'd say, get back to it.
If you've never done it before. Then it becomes a
little bit more difficult. Then it really requires a great athlete.
Part of it is great being a great athlete. Part
of it is I really want to do this, and
how important it is to me and my career and
the team. You move it forward knowing that I have
(06:45):
to make these adjustments and all that stuff would be
pertinent and very very important. So I don't know, I'd
like to know what his history is, just to go
in there and start using the other side. I'm not
saying it's impossible. I mean, I've done that with a
lot of guys, and everything you described right there was
what you do when you try to become a better hitter.
You let the speed of the ball dictate where you
(07:08):
hit it. You don't try to pull everything. You open
up the opposite side of the fields. You make it
more difficult to pitch to you, you're able to cover
a wide variety of pitches. You cut down on your chase.
Everything you described right there that he's done in the
case he should have become a better hitter.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
But the ability of the fact.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
That what he's doing and he's done it so appears
to be easily or seamlessly. I'd be curious if he
had that in and before all this took place.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, and just to throw some numbers at you, now
you know what Volpi has done. Top three in the
Yankees lineup have forty four homers one hundred and twenty
five RBIs top of the Dodgers' lineup, thirty home runs
one oh five RBIs slugging percentage the top three for
the Yankees five sixty seven bets, so Tony Freeman five thirty.
(07:54):
That's an edge, maybe not a huge edge, but a
clear edge for New York over Los Angeles. And if
you look at some of the overall metrics, the Yankees
have the are starting pitching staff, they have the better bullpen.
I think the Dodgers are a better base running team
and Dodgers are a better defensive team, but when you
look at defense at offense, I'm sorry, the Yankees right
(08:18):
now are a better team than Dodgers. I'm not sure
if it's going to be that way in October, Joe,
but right now, I mean, the Yankees are just absolutely flying,
and they were clicking on all cylinders.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Like you said, Volpi setting the table, not judge, has
become Judge again, So it was pretty much carried it
all the way through. And you know they're going to
go through a bad moment, there's no question about it,
Whereas I think the Dodgers are going to go through
a really good moment. So I mean, I would say
by the middle the season, towards August, you're going to
see a lot of similarities in the numbers between both teams.
(08:50):
One's going to ascend a little bit, maybe one's going
to come back to the to the Median a little bit,
but overall they're going to be this good for the
rest of the year, be a very interesting World Series
if it ever got to that point. But I it's
just early in a sense. With the Dodgers, Like I said,
I think that they gosh, when they got show, everybody
(09:13):
started penciling them in for the for becoming another dynasty
kind of a situation. They've had one World Series and
that was in the twenty twenty season. They haven't really
won a World Series in a regular season for a
long time, so they're really hungry for that. I believe
this is going to be really neck and neck all year.
Both teams are going to play well. Like you said,
the difference maker for me, obviously is the Yankee pitching
(09:34):
staff and what they're doing there.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
They've been outstanding.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Their bullpen's been outstanding also, so that to me is
the biggest difference maker I would think record wise right now,
so that the Yankee pitching has really held up more
than the Dodgers have, which is kind of unusual. You'd
normally expect all of that out of the Dodgers staff
all the time.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, and as you mentioned, the Yankees pitching has been
outstanding and they only have the Cy Young Winner coming
back to the team pretty soon. Garrett Coles was making
rehab starts, so it's a solid team. They've had other
than pretty good luck with injuries this year. Running the
same guys out there, it's been, like I said, they're
absolutely flying right now. Let me ask you about Juan Soto.
(10:13):
I'm not surprised he's doing this well. He really wanted
to play in New York. I think he's the most
predictable performer in baseball when it comes to his command
of the strike zone, how flat his swing is, the
fact that he posts and loves the game so much.
Not surprised at all he's doing this well. What's surprising
to me, Joe is how teams continue to challenge him
(10:34):
with high fastballs. I don't get it. Fifteen of his
seventeen home runs this year have been on fastballs middle
and up. He has not hit a home run. This
is amazing to me. He's not hit a fastball down
in the zone for a home run in a calendar
year since June of last year. I'm gonna give you
his slugging percentage based on fastballs in the zone. Top
(10:58):
of the zone it's over one thousand, ten fifty four.
Middle of the zone it's over this. It's over one thousand,
eleven twenty eight. The bottom third of the zone slugging
percentage is three thirteen. Well, why do people think I'm
gonna get my fastball by him? Or is it just
a matter of making mistakes to this guy because he
(11:20):
does not miss the elevated fastball.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Well, you mentioned the flatness of his swing, correct, Yeah,
oh yeah, and that's see that's I don't I don't
get it either, although it must be a large sample
size situation, meaning that if in fact, people were beating
him over the last year or so elevated I don't
know the answer to that question. But if they had
the Scotten reports going to indicate that's where you want
to go until it actually catches up.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Yeah, he's never he's never been beaten upstairs ever. Remember
before the World Series in nineteen Kevin long then the
hitting coach to the Nationals, telling me that he's going
to hit a home run off Garrett Cole. He predicted it,
and I said, that's Garrett Cole. He's got the best
four seam ride in baseball. He said, I don't care.
No one can throw a force seeing fastball past one.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
So but then it makes no sense.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
And of course he hit a home run in the
World Series in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Well, it makes no sense. I mean back to the
other point, flat swing. Anytime from a pitching perspective, you're
facing I was, we were facing a hitter with the
flat swing. I like breaking ball underneath that guy a lot.
It's hard for a hitter, whether he's right or left handed,
to do anything with the pitch down, down and in
when your swing's extremely flat.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Longo was kind of like that rockleball. Delly was like that, And.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Of course you're talking about Sodo being like that. So
it'd always identify flat swingers, and those are the ones
that you can get underneath starts, you know, strike ball
kind of a pitch. Again, I don't have privy to
all the information looking at the zones and the hot
zones whatever for all these particular hitters and especially Sodo
right now, but I'd be curious because flat swingers like
(12:54):
Tino Martinez could anybody's high fastball, but you wanted to
get underneath Tino back in the nineties because the swing
was so flat from the left side. Historically, left handed
hitters had more of that upper cut kind of a
thing growing up if you're a left thended hitter or
you were teaching lefties. All the coaches managers Whitey Herzog
wanted his left handed hitters to pull the hole between
(13:15):
first and second base. Came to instructional leagues and really
wanted me to work more on left handed hitters, all
of them to be able to do that and hit
that hole. Darren Nurstadt, one of the best elevated fastball
hitters I've seen in the nineties into early two thousands,
was getting beat underneath because of the flat swing. Then
he made the adjustment to get to the ball underneath
(13:36):
then he lost his ability to really handle the elevated fastball.
So you're making these kind of adjustments, be careful with
you what you're wishing for looking for, because sometimes you
could adjust from your strength and to cover a weakness,
and all of a sudden, the strengths no longer your strength.
And I've seen that happen too. So just a long
story short, I would just say flat swingers in general,
(13:56):
I do like the ability to get underneath them. Underneath
would be like right handed pitcher to their back foot
and vice versa. That's underneath and when you could get
to that particular spot, they could be very beneficial. Now
you're talking about Soto, he doesn't chase a whole lot,
so that that works his benefit too, So you're right.
I mean, I'd have to study it more deeply. The
(14:18):
fact that he's handling large, elevated fastballs for a long
period of time and he keep wanting to go there.
It could just be the you know, the proliferation in general,
people wanting to throw elevated fastballs not realizing that this
guy can catch up to it. Longo was like that.
When Longo was younger, Longo could kill anybody's elevated fastball,
even Jason Heyward, Jason Hayward, big elevated fastball, if there
(14:40):
was an elevated fastball guy, regardless if he was struggling
or not, I knew Jayward was going to get on
that pitch. So and he's another flat swinger. So these
are the kind of things.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
That you look at.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
I look at, and I tried to pay more attention
to that as we moving forward, as I'm watching one
of the Yankee.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Games, Well, let me ask you about facing this New
York lineup right now. If you're the Dodgers this weekend
going to the Yankee stadium, you know you've got vaulting
leading off. You mentioned he's he's much tougher out puts
the ball in play. He also runs very well, so
you want to try to keep him off the bases. Obviously,
when you have big sluggers, you want to try to
face them with some room for error, which means no traffic.
(15:16):
But Volpi is changing that dynamic. You've got Soto you mentioned,
doesn't Chase, He's got tremendous power. He's gonna make you
throw a lot of pitches. And then you've got judge
who right now and he's always been patient and you
know that, Joe. Right now, Judge is just so on
time that when he clicks the baseball, it's going out.
(15:37):
You know, he's not hitting singles. Everything's an extra base
hit when he makes contact. Listen, there's a lot more
on behind those guys. But give me a sense, Joe,
when you prepare for New York, when they're when they're
clicking like this, what the message is to your pitchers.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Yeah, I mean you really try to identify as well
as you can. There's going to be somebody that's among
those top three guys. Of course, of course you want
to keep Bope up the base off base.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
That's number one thing. That'd be the number one fact
to me.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
I know Sodo's great, Judge is great, whatever, but it's
to me, I think this guy's stirring the whole thing
right now.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
It's the number one.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
You want to keep both you off base. I don't
know what that means in regards. You got to challenge him,
as you an early swinger, where are the weaknesses with him?
But number one, I would preach about keeping that young
man off base, and then the next two guys. Man,
you know, you just got to you got to try
to get him out within the zone. And if you're
not able to do that, I mean, it might be
wise just to move to the next guy. Don't give
(16:32):
in in a bad count, you just don't give in.
You keep trying to make your good pitch. Of course,
if there there's people on base, there's a lot of traffic,
it could change your thought process because you got to
get somebody out. But you got to get guys like
this out within the strike zone. You got to get
ahead in account as often as possible, and you got
to take him out of the of the bat otherwise
(16:52):
they will absolutely alive. I think Stanton, you know what
he's doing right now, is a big part of that too.
And then Verdugos stepping up. I know Riz is down
a little bit right now, but overall, there's there's more
within this lineup, I think than the Dodger lineup. When
you look into the latter part of the Dodge lineup,
they've had a lot of struggles with I don't know,
from five on down, six on down, there's not a
(17:13):
whole lot of stuff.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Going on there.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
So even with the Yankees, they have this greater ability
up and down through nine to make you think a
little bit so fullpait strike one, try to keep them
off base as much as you possibly can. The other guys,
you know, you got to get them out in the
strike zone and then he's keep making your pitch. But
sometimes a walk isn't so bad after you get past
those three guys. I know the other guys below, I've
(17:37):
been playing pretty well, but I would still rather take
my chances there.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
So that's it.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
I mean, that's maybe not be very clear, but going
into it, this is the kind of conversations you would
have and you would reiterate it during the course of
the game from your like a Mike Borsello to your catcher,
and when you have the conversations in between innings is different.
People are coming up to hit us to remind him
about these little things. But for me, keep Folpi off
base would be the number one thing I'd want to do.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yeah, it's amazing, and I agree with you, Joe, I
really do, because Volpi is a guy and again a
difference maker in that team. Last year hit two oh
three and had a two to eighty three on base percentage.
He was not a tough out last year and now
here he is and you and I are both talking
about Anthony Volpi as the key to attacking the Yankees' lineup.
(18:24):
And I think it's true because I agree a walk
is not a bad play when it comes to Soto
and Judge, but it's it's not a really good play
if Volpi's already on base, and then you're inviting a
real big, crooked number, which is what the Yankees are
doing these days. We will take a quick break here,
and I'm really interested to get Joe's take on when
a major leaguer loses his job, completely loses his job
(18:48):
because of something he did on the field. We'll talk
about that next on the Book of Joe. Welcome back
to the Book of Joe and Joe. We didn't talk
(19:09):
last week about Jorge Lopez of the New York Mets.
He had a frustrating moment on the field arguing a
called or not called check swing with umpire Ramon de
Jesus the third base. You know, it's been a rough
year for him. He lost as cool, he popped off,
got ejected, and on his way off, you know, untucked
(19:29):
his shirt and then flipped his glove over the netting
and into the stands and after that, we all know
what happened. He was not apologetic or it did not
regret what he did. In interviews not only with the
media after the game, but with his manager Carlos Mendoza
and with President of Baseball Operations David Stearns, the Mets
(19:52):
defatum right there, basically said you're gone. And Joe. I
think he could have survived the reactionary moment on the
field there, but he could not survive his attitude after
the game. And remember he's out of the game, the
game goes on. You know, there's actually a team meeting
in the clubhouse, not essentially about that, but the way
the Mets have been struggling. So there was sort of
(20:15):
a cooling down period. But he did not cool down
and was not regretful about what he did, and that's
why the Mets dfade him. I thought it was severe.
I really did, Joe. I mean, we found out if
you hadn't known before. And this has been true for
the last couple of years. He has some issues at home.
He has a son that's fighting in illness. He did
go on the il last year within Minnesota to try
(20:38):
to get right in terms of some mental health issues
that he was dealing with, So you know, he's a
human being, he's like anybody else, and there's no doubt
that some of those things came into play, and he
alluded to that later on in one of his social
media posts. But I'm interested in your take. I mean,
you got a player who you know, You've seen guys
frustrate on the field, they lash out. But then he
(20:58):
didn't walk it back and he didn't own his behavior
on the field, and now is is essentially out of
a job.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Yeah, I didn't let me know. It was a tough
one to watch. I watched the video. I commented about
it yesterday on the MLB Network. And first of all,
I don't know the kids, so that's always difficult. You know,
you hear all this stuff. I know we're hearing all
this stuff. It seems to be well documented. But then again,
I don't know the young man in that part makes
it difficult because you really need to know the person
(21:26):
you're dealing with, and I don't know the exact history.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
You just describe that.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
I didn't realize this mental illness component of it. I
didn't know about his son, all these different factors. Regardless
of all that, for me, number one. This is my opinion,
game over. He's in my office immediately, immediately, there's not
me talking to the media. That's not me talking to
anybody else's coaches, whatever. It's me talking to him and
really getting down to the crux of what just happened
(21:49):
out there, letting him know my feelings, and with that,
the conversation would be what's going to happen next? Obviously,
and when you do speak with the media, how is
this going to go. What are we going to talk about?
What are you going to say? He needed to be
coached a little bit right there. It was just a
very emotional moment. And if he's been through this before
with them, you know that. So if you let him
out there like he was, and I saw that interview,
(22:12):
he doesn't speak that great of English, I mean, and
then he gets emotional, you're going to speak even less well.
So that part to me, how it was interpreted, I
don't think he meant it that way. I really believe
he said he would have done it again.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
I think he would have argued with the umpire again.
This is my opinion.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I don't think he would throw his glove again. I
don't think he'd rip his uniform off again, So there's
a lot left to be translated here. I would like
to if he's going to do another interviewer, did another interviewer?
Did that interview be front of the locker room? Yeah,
he should have asked for somebody to be there with
him that spoke English and could interpret for him, because
that that was emotional second language. Not very good at
(22:49):
it from what I saw. And again, if all this
stuff is in the background, it shoul it should have
been monitored more closely.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
By the group, by the team, I think.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
So in situations like that, my first response as a managers,
I want him in my office. I want to go
over this right now, what happened out there, Let's talk
about this and figure it out from there. And then
I don't know, if there's like a track record of
really negative behavior that's been going on that you've spoken
to him about before, I can understand getting rid of him,
I get it. But if there had not been, and
(23:19):
this is just reaction, and you're doing this in order
to set a tone for the rest of the group
based on the fact that the team's not playing well,
that's something else completely too. So when I heard all this,
this is how my mind works. This is all the
stuff that I had thought about. But I'll tell you honestly,
quite frankly, we would I would always get the guy
in my room and I have to talk before anybody,
(23:41):
including myself, would talk publicly about it because I didn't
know exactly what was going on before I made any
kind of statement.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
That's a really, really fascinating take Joe and what I
had not heard before. Now we don't know what the
conversation was like with Carlos Mendoza and David Stearns, but
I like the idea essentially coaching up the player, that
you handle that in private, prepare him for what's coming now.
Hory Lopez has basically throughout his career, had chosen to
(24:11):
do his postgame interviews in English. You know, it's always
a player's prerogative. We respect whatever decision they make. Teams
do have interpreters available. It's part of the basic agreement.
They must be available, so if the player wants the interpreter,
there always is one that he can use to his avail.
Lopez has just has not, so you know that player decision.
(24:32):
I don't think that him not speaking with an interpreter
through an interpreter to me, it's not on the club.
It's his choice, and good on him. That's something. As
I said, it's not new for him. But the more
important point you make there, Joe is getting ahead of it,
and it looked like he was to borrow your phrase
kind of coached afterward, because the next day he came
(24:53):
out with a statement that was just beautiful and that
would have ended everything if that was released postgame or
he read those words postgame in which he did take
accountability and basically said, Hey, I need some time here
to get my professional and personal life in order so
I can get back there on the mound and continue
to be a contributor of Major League Baseball. All the
(25:13):
right things that were said at that point, you know,
a little late in terms of waiting the firestorm and
his release that happened. So it's an interesting point that
you can sit down with a guy and anticipate what's
coming next, especially in New York with the level of
media and the amount of media there, you know it's
going to be a big issue. Kind of headed off
(25:34):
before I got in front of the cameras. I guess
is what you're saying.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah, I've done that everywhere I have been, and you know,
when that situation can arise, and even for me, I'll
come off the field hot sometimes. And we've talked about
this before, and you know, Rick Vaughan was my guy
down in immedia, guy down in Tampa Bay. And r
V would come in because he knew, he knew I
wasn't going to settle down. He knew a pretty good
chance of saying something stupid.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
He knew that.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
So we'd come in there and he'd give me that
arm folded arm thing with his notebook between his arms,
and just give me that stare. And finally I would understand, Okay, okay,
I gotta I gotta walk this back a little bit, right,
And he said yeah. And then I said, but I
still got to be Jack Ryan Er. I still got
to tell them what I think, right, Yeah, of course
you do. Okay, we go, we go through the whole
(26:19):
situation that way. But when I got emotional, and believe me,
it happened often. It didn't happen once. What happened often,
and there's a very good chance you're going to say
something you would regret under those circumstances. So at RV,
I had Peter Chase in Chicago. Peter was outstanding also,
and Adam Chatskow and Anaheim too. Adam was wonderful. So
all these guys are a wonderful resource in these emotional moments,
(26:45):
because you know what it's like. Even your house come in,
whatever bothered you. They might have a bad cold. You
just things aren't processing well.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Uh, it's the.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Tidbit of bad news. Like you're talking about a guy
with the sun. That's that's not so well. I don't
even know exactly what the problem is, but that's got
to be lingering constantly. So emotional moments get in front
of it, and you need somebody a calmer head than
your own in order to bring you back down. Start
breathing a little bit. Let's get a little rational about this.
(27:16):
And yes, still going to tell you the truth. I'm
still gonna mention the truth, whatever that might be, but
in a more adjustable way than going out there and
really being crude and rude about the whole thing, and
then again again saying something, saying something then that if
he had a night sleep on it, he would never
have said the next morning.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Yeah, and I do think he's going to pitch again
Joey's his stuff is still really good. Maybe he goes
back to Baltimore. He did have a lot of success
before they traded him to Minnesota. But I think, obviously,
as he pointed out himself, get things settled and straightened
in his life, and there's clearly more baseball left in him.
It's just unusual for me, Joe, to see a guy
(27:56):
lose his job over something like that. Listen. I once
saw Dave Righetti on the mound take the baseball and
Exhibition State in Toronto, after giving up a home run,
take the new ball and heave it over the right
field fence. We saw Trevor Bauer take a baseball throw
it into the fountains in center field in Kansas City.
I saw Rob Dibble losing a game to the New
(28:17):
York Mets, literally rip the jersey off himself and chuck
it in the stands. I saw Bobby Oheita and Turn
Wendel for the New York Mets flip their gloves into
the stands. Nothing happened in terms of a guy losing
his job, And again, I understand the situations after the
incident are different here in this case, but it's disappointing
(28:38):
to me that it rose to that level where a
guy lost a job. I'm not sure if you've seen
anything like that, Joe.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
I know that I was in a situation with Jose
gee and years ago with the Angels, and I was
almost like Jose's personal valet on a nightly basis. But
it was a situation in a game when he had
been I guess, right, what is warned about situations and
then still when had and he fired a helmet once
and it was really, it was really, really not good.
(29:08):
And so afterwards we did we let him go and
we suspended him, I think for a week at the
end of the season, really really late in the year
we suspended and I'm pretty certain he never came back
after that. Jose was another guy that was wonderful guy.
I mean when he was calm and everything was groovy
and stuff. Loved him, very entertaining. I said him as
(29:29):
ground balls of it, the guy the best arm I've
ever seen in my life, best arm, and he throw
the ball back in from third bases and outfielder. We
had a really good relationship, but there was certain things
that happened that year that we had addressed and Eventually
it led to this particular moment when we just had
no other options, so we let him go, and it
was end of the season and we did make the playoffs,
I think within that next week. So I've seen it
(29:50):
in a sense, And when this happened, I thought about
that immediately. But I was privy to all the information,
all the stuff that had been going on back then
with Jose and actually I was there. I'd go out
with the guy at night, we used to hang out
a little bit, so I was very much aware of
all that, and it really I liked them. I liked
them a lot, and I felt this felt he felt
the same way about me. But when you've gone through
(30:12):
these moments and you again, for lack of a better term,
warned or teld people listen, you can't do that here,
and they continue to do that here, then you have
no choice. So again, I don't know all of this,
but I do know. I just think I would have
liked to have seen him just one on one with
the manager and probably a coach in the office, although
(30:34):
Mendoza does speak Spanish obviously well, but it's always good
to have one other guy in the office to validate everything.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
That's been said.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
It's not not a situation you worried about getting beaten up,
just you just want one other set of ears in
there to be able to hear and listen to what
had been going on, so that everything could be corroborated.
And at the end of the day, it was a
fair and honest conversation.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
I actually had forgotten about the jose Gian episode. And yeah,
he as you know, he was a real good hitter
for your team. He was driving in runs for you
teams going to the postseason and when that happened that
you're sitting down this guy and you're right, he did
not come back for the postseason. It did make me
think that it wasn't just a one off, that there
must have been something preceding that to have such a
(31:17):
harsh penalty. But Joe, I got to admit what I
first thought about with a guy losing his job, and
it's in the book of Joe Is Jay Lewis, you
have to tell that story. We talk about someone losing
their job over something in this case done. I don't
know if it was done before, but done once. You
(31:40):
have to tell a story. It's a great one.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
Yeah, this is not one of my better moments as
a minor league manager Puri, Illinois, and a young outfielder
by name of Jay Lewis out of Oklahoma was on
the team. Nice player, JJS pop, nice player, creak, great guy.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Anyway, I had my pitchy coach at that.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
Time, really O Monteagudo, since passed away in a traffic accident.
But MONI had a very good ear to the ground,
and he let me know that Van Halen was coming
to town and that they're talking it up and we're
on the street. Was that Jay was going to call
in sick on that particular day and he's going to
attend the concert. So I had that in advance, and
(32:19):
of course here comes a day, and of course here
it happens, and Jay's not not coming. He's he calls
in Richard's Aleski was my trainer, and I calls it
sick and that he can't make it tonight because he's ill.
And so okay, here we go ahead to put the
wheels in motion at that point. Okay, Jay, stay home,
don't worry about it, make sure you get better, all
(32:40):
that kind of good stuff. So I think I don't know.
Game time might have been what seven o'clock whatever. They
just say seven o'clock. And I said, Richard, call him
at seven. Call at seven o'clock and make sure Seebe's there,
Seebe's all that kind of stuff. And he calls him
and there's no answer. And of course there's no answer.
He's at the concert. We didn't have cell phones back then.
(33:00):
That would have helped him a lot. So I said, okay,
let's just really make sure. He could have been sick.
He could have said he was out getting medicine whatever.
So I said, go over to his house, go to
his apartment whatever that was, and make sure that he's
not there.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
So he goes and knocks on the door real loudly. Whatever.
No answer comes back.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Richard and his little Boston accent tells me Jay's not there.
So I said, okay, good, we expected all that. So
here comes the next day ball park. Jay walks in
and he rings in my office, sent him down and said, hey,
how you feeling oh much better today?
Speaker 2 (33:32):
I'm good and I'm good today. I'm ready to go.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
He says, come on, man, don't insult my intelligence. You
weren't sick yesterday went to the van. No, I didn't.
I didn't go to the Van Halen concert. I was ill, Yes,
I said, I sent Richard. We called you said, Richard
to your apartment. You weren't there. Come on, man, don't
And I got to use the phrase, I said, don't
insult my intelligence. Come on, Jay, just tell me, just
tell me. How was the concert? And he said, the
(33:56):
best one I've ever been.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
And I see that's where I should have I should
have done the right thing, which would have been fine.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Twenty five bucks. Giggled a little bit. He said, don't
ever do that again.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
But I'm just a twenty seven year old manager, and
I call in, I'm all in sense, like an idiot,
and ends up getting released because of that, which I
think is totally wrong. And I'd love to tell Jayda.
We've talked about that in the book. I'd love to
just see Jy and Tom. I was I screwed up.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
I was wrong.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Shouldn't have happened that way. My fault, but that's how
it came down. And because he told me the truth,
which is another thing with your kids. If your kids
tell you the truth, you can't get angry like you
just got accepted in some kind of a punishment.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
But not that.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
So that's one of my most unproud moments as a
minor league manager. It was the releasing of Jay Lewis
for attending a Van Halen concert, the best concert he
ever attended to miss a minor league baseball game.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
I love that story. And if you're out there, Jay Lewis,
or you're out there and you know Jay Lewis, get
in touch with us. You know, we were lucky enough
to track down Kenny Grant, that's right, and had him
as a guest show. Kenny Grant was a young player
who Joe one of your early releases, get I guess
where you had to tell a player that's the end
of the line. You know, we have to release you.
(35:12):
And all these years later we were able to track
Kenny down and get his version and what it meant
to him. So, Jay Lewis, if you're out there, track
us down, love to have you on the show. Or
if you know where Jay is. I wonder what he's
up to these days.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Jay Bird. I don't know Jay Bird. I Jay Bird
could talk a little bit. I'm sure he's doing something.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Well.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
Fun guy, just a fun guy, free spirited guy from Oklahoma. Jay,
if you're listening to anybody like you said, I'm sorry,
give me an opportunity to say it. If it not
in person, at least be a conversation like this.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Hopefully we hear from Jay and we will definitely get
him on. We're going to take a quick break, and
this happens a lot. It seems like these days the
art of bunting and where has it gone? And should
we bring it back? I'll ask Joe Madden about then
as a strategic play in today's game. Right after this, well, Joe,
(36:20):
I mentioned the bunt and before we get to that,
I just have to thank a lot of people at
Penn State. Over the weekend, I was fortunate enough to
receive the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Penn State University. And
it's a really, really big deal, especially when you think
about a school like Penn State. There are seven hundred
(36:41):
and seventy five thousand living alumni and they give out
a handful of these awards. It was a spectacular ceremony,
black tie affair. I was humbled when I got the
call from the president of the school about the award,
and even more so being in that room and just
hearing all the other the winners and the administrators, and
(37:05):
it got me thinking, Joe, and I like your take
on this that you know, the people that mold us
generally other than our parents, of course, are educators. And
you think about if you drew up a list of
you know, a handful of the people who most influenced
you even to this day as adults and professionals. We'll
assume your parents are involved in that, but taking them out,
(37:27):
you got to have an educator or a coach on
your list. And what I said when I accepted this award,
I was lucky enough to even go to Penn State,
and then I got the two things that every young
person really needs. And I had passion. Don't get me wrong.
I wanted to be a writer. Knew I wanted to
be a writer. I had the passion. But that alone
isn't isn't it. You need help, and what you need
(37:49):
is encouragement and opportunity. Encouragement and opportunity, and that's what
we owe everybody who comes behind us. And I had
boatloads of that at Penn State. So listen. I know
you're a Lafayet guy, Joe, probably it was even before that.
But when we think about those who shape us. And again,
outside of our parents, who should be the biggest influences
(38:11):
everybody has to have for me a teacher and or
a coach on that list of course.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
And well, congratulations, man, that's awesome. I didn't realize that.
Well done. Yeah, I mean it's in our book, the
Book of Joe. We talked a lot about the mentors
and the leaders that came before us, or who did
shape or mold this.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
Man. I go all the way back. I mean I
could go chronologically with the different.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Influences that I've had, and it started on ball fields
or in gymnasiums. Of course, your parents, my aunts and uncles.
I had a wonderful support team here in Hazleton, big family,
both sides. Mom and Dad had ten plus brothers and sisters.
And then all the offshoot the Italian Polish neighborhoods.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
I was related to everybody in town. So there's a
lot of influence there. There's a lot of discipline there too,
brother don't get out of line, because they were all
they were all permitted to met out this plan in
a way that sometimes it actually hurt. So don't screw up,
you know, because these people were there, and they were
there to defend the honor of your mom and your dad.
(39:12):
Beyond that, coaches wise, I could go back gosh, the
ones that really poly Binomo. I'm talking baseball coach Ed
Morgan here in town. A lot of teaching going on
with both of those guys, physically and mentally. I mejored
football coaches Richie and Ci. Adam Siminski, my high school
football coach, made me tough. There's no question this man
(39:34):
made me tough. You had to be tough to play
for Adam Siminski. Collegiately, it would talk about coach Bob Root,
one of the most influential coaches I've ever had. Is
keep moving it up the line til you get to professionally,
Bob Clear, Babbaloo. The Chevelle's parked in the garage right
behind me, right now with bob Aloo and blazon on
the back Babbaloo. I thought I knew everything until Baba
(39:54):
Lou showed up. Then I realized they knew nothing. He
took me to another level as a minor league coach
and then of course as a major league coach, where
like you and I are, the conversations we have they're
rooted in conversations I had with Bob Aloo years ago
in locker rooms on fields, loud discussions, not just you know,
nice nice little things, loud discussions Coach Bob rut if
(40:17):
I called to play because I was able to call
my old plays that Coach.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
Root concluded was the right thing to do.
Speaker 3 (40:24):
My God, I was beaming from ear to ear that
I both pleased Coach Root and did something that coach
would have done. Also as a manager, Gene Mak, I've
talked about him white he heardsag. I've been really lucky
with all the people that have brought me to this
particular point. Having said all that, and I know that
a lot of the people in the game right now
(40:45):
have had a long and illustrious way to get to
where they're at. But to me that I'm still concerned
that some don't have the same mentorship regarding the game,
talking baseball specifically right now, because in the minor leagues.
When I was in the minor leagues, it was a
lot of former Major leaguers, not necessarily players, but maybe
career minor league usually coaches that were there to influence
(41:06):
you and pass the game along to you and That's
one of my bigger concerns right now, because you hear
all the different things that are going on in the game,
and there's all these complaints. Part of it is I
think that the thing hasn't just been passed along. It's
not being passed along properly now and into the future.
And that's my concern. There's a lot of folks being
given opportunity that have not gone through all the steps necessary,
(41:27):
I think, to get to the point where actually I've
earned the right to be whatever. So I was very
fortunate that all these people help put me together so
that night right now, I could be on this conversation
with Tommy in the morning once a week, and we
do not rehearse this in advance at all. Ever, he
doesn't even tell me the questions he's going to be
asking me, ever, But the basis, the basics, and the
(41:51):
base that has been established by all these people I
just mentioned and many many more permits me to talk
to Tommy in a next temporaneous way because I've learned
my stuff based on years of doing it, combined with
great professors, mentors, teachers, all these people. So I'd like
to see more of that occur so that anybody could
(42:13):
talk a variety that I'm talking baseball and a variety
of different subjects within our game based on all the
contact I had before I'm having this conversation with here
this morning. That to me, I think is missing. And
that's a big concern for me, because.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
Again, then you don't really know.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
You think you know things, but you don't really know
stuff because you haven't done your dissertation in front of
all these people. To argue in front of Bob Cleared,
argue in front of Geen Mak, to argue in front
of Whitey Herzog, Damn, that's not easy to do well.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
I like your point about mentorship in baseball, and I
think it's dead on. And I've seen some teams now
maybe zagback the other way in terms of coaching staff
and having a better blend of experience and knowledge. I mean,
I always say there's a big difference between knowledge and wisdom,
(43:07):
and wisdom comes with experience, and I think a team
like the New York Yankees have done a better job
in terms of balancing out their coaching staff. We're talking
about at the major league level, but I think it's
important at the minor league level. As well. I understand
it is tougher to get some of the veteran or
the former players to go down and work the minor leagues.
I get that. But in the rush to hire these
(43:28):
people out of colleges and pitching labs and hitting labs
who have been just been produced on the new information,
which is great, don't get me wrong, you still need
to balance that out with experience. And that kind of
brings me to this perfectly, to the sacrifice bunch, Joe,
And I know in today's game it really is devalued.
(43:49):
It probably was overvalued before. And I get all that,
but I'll give you another situation. Last night, and I'm
doing a game. It's the Giants at the Diamondbacks. It's
a tie game. Eighth inning, Giants get their leadoff guy
on base. Number nine hitter is now up again. It's
two to two in the eighth inning. Leadoff guy gets
on base. You're on the road, number nine hitter, who's
(44:11):
been up literally the major leagues for four days. Trenton Brooks,
left handed hitter, right handed pitcher on the mound. I'm
thinking you've got a bunt here. You've got the top
of the order behind him. One run can win this game?
Here two two eighth inning Trenton Brooks and I think
he bunted maybe once in the minor leagues. And that's
another issue. We're not teaching these guys how to do that.
(44:34):
Swings away and what does he do? Double play, double
play absolutely end of the rally. Diamondbacks win ninth inning
on a walkoff home run. I mean, if you can't
bunt in the eighth inning of a tie game with
your number nine hitter who's been in the big leagues
for four days, when are you going to bunt? And again,
(44:57):
I'm not arguing that everybody should be bunting and we
should go back to John McGraw and no offense gene
walk but that has to be a weapon to win
a close game at some point. And besides that, the
bunt is so rare. I've seen somebody teams poorly defend
the bunt. Now, Joe, I don't know if you've got
any pushback from you know, your front offices when you
(45:17):
did call for bunts or talk about bunts. But again,
I'm not arguing to go back to the nineteen seventies
and or Jay Bell for Jim Leland bunding in the
first ending every night. But I do think it has
to be a weapon in a game where that batting
average now is two forty, the fourth lowest in the
history of the game.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
Yes, I wrote down as you were describing a situation,
but can that fellow bunt And you just said he
only bunted once into minor leagues, there's a perfect example.
He might have been a three ye old hitter or
four hole hitter in the minor leagues, and when you're that,
you never they never take the moment to think that
possibly there's going to be a moment where you're not
a three or four place hitter. You're going to be
in a different part of the lineup where it might
(45:56):
you might be called on to bunt. The context is perfect,
right there, eighth hitter number nine coming up, one two, coming.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Up after that tie ball game late.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
But I would almost bet you said he was placed
for the Giants, right You said it was a Giant.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Yeah, yeah, he came from a different organization before, even
in the minor leagues for eight years. Okay, bedas dudes
been a high on base percentage guy, not a lot
of power, But you're right, they're just not asking these
guys to drop a bunt and they just don't work
on it.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
Well, that's a yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
It gives you flow the game, right.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
Because just because you okay, bunt, Oh it's easy, why
don't you just think it's not that easy to do,
especially when these guys are throwing that hard, and if
they're throwing elevated fastballs, and if a guy's not really
done it with any proficiency before, it's not easy to
It's very hard to do. Actually, it's probably easier to
actually swing and move the ball than it is to
bunt a ballfare and move the runner unless you've worked
(46:50):
on it. So, yes, I'm a big believer in that. Gosh,
it's gotten so far away from that. I remember in
the what was it my early the last couple of
years in instructional leagues, probably the late early nineties. I
used to tell my number two hitter at that time,
if the leadoff hitter gets on with nobody out by
(47:12):
the time you get back to the dugout, this is
all I explained it to him. He has to be
at second base. I don't care how that happens. If
you feel like you could hit this ball in the
hole between first and second, go ahead. If this picture
is really tough, you're not seeing him, Well, fine, go
ahead and bunt, bunt for a hit.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Whatever you want to do.
Speaker 3 (47:26):
But by the time you get back to the bench,
the guy's got to be on second base with one out.
And I said that a lot of times. So my
nine hole hitters and number eight gets on base. By
the time you get back to the bench, he's got
to be on second base somehow. So I didn't tell
him it had to be a sacrifice spunt. I wanted
them to be proficient at bunny for hit also, which
is really sometimes easier to bunt scrifice in a sacrifice
(47:51):
sacrificial way by bunny for hit as opposed to squaring around.
Guys get confused with their techniques. So whatever you do,
better do that. So, yes, we had bunny for everybody.
I mean, I want Timmy Samon to bunt. You know
they would screw around, put their buns down, But you
know you're not gonna do that. You're not gonna have
Barrett Anderson bunt. You're not gonna have Edmunds bunt. But
even in today's game, with all that, when the shifting
(48:13):
came on board, yeah, some of the big lefties. You
wanted Tom learn how to bunt for a hit, to
just try to get these guys out of the shift
and soften it up a little bit, give them a
better field to look at. So all this stuff needs
to be nurtured in the minor leagues. But you're right,
the argument comes from the analytical department, whereas you don't
want to miss this opportunity to put a ball in
(48:33):
the gapper over the wall, and they don't care if
it's the number nine hitter.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
They don't.
Speaker 3 (48:37):
I'm telling you they don't. They still think there's an
advantage to swinging the bat right there. So not a
surprise the number one, number two that they did that
they didn't do a number to the surprise. Not a
surprise that the guy's really rarely bunted. So if you're
the manager, you go through these mental gymnastics, like if
I ask him the bunt, he's gonna foil two pitches off.
Then they put him in a two strike hole because
(48:58):
he can't get it down. I'm telling you, you know
you you'll even you'll take a shot at the first
pitch right put the bunt sign on. The guy squares
around horribly looks like crap, and then of course you're
not going to put it on for the second pitch.
This goes to the minor leagues. That goes to what
you consider important or not. And if you consider it important,
you're going to have somebody be able to teach this
(49:19):
on the minor league level. And it's easy to identify
within your lineups in every minor league city or in
an instructional league, who really needs to learn how to
do this because if then when they do get to
the big leagues, they may be called on to do
this and it's too late to try to teach them there.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Yeah, you hit on a lot of good points, Joe.
My question would be if it were emphasized, then again,
we're not asking the Tim Salmons of the world to bunt, right.
You know, guys at the top, guys at the bottom
should know how to bunt at least have it in
their arsenal. Is that a teachable skill? Can you take
those kind of players and work on it and make
it a priority and give a guy at least as
(49:57):
a manager an option to bunt with certain players if
it's emphasized.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
Totally, Absolutely, there's wonderful drills to do that, Dick Mcloth
and you used to be with the Dodgers for one
hundred years.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
Outfield Bunny instructor.
Speaker 3 (50:07):
Dick had some great trills, including hula hoops out in
front of home plate, stuff like that. Visual I would
challenge guys. I would challenge them mentally. They would put
on a decent funt and I would say, look, I'm
challenging you.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
I would put a cone down like a traffic cone.
Speaker 3 (50:23):
I challenge you to bunt this next pitch and hit
that cone, and they would because their focus is so good.
You do this often enough and you really let these
guys know how important it is, they'll get it done. Furthermore,
you're never going to get compensated for sacrifice bus But
somehow everybody from the top on down's got to make
sure that the player that you're asking to do this
(50:44):
knows that it's important and it's not going to go
unrewarded in a sense. So, yes, all of this stuff
can be taught. There's drills to do it. There's technique. Absolutely,
sacrifice spunk. They closer to the plate, move up in
the box more balls are in fair territory as an example,
But for a hit, yes, bat moves first, You get
the bat out front move first, create the angle base
(51:05):
a foul ball. There's all these different thoughts, and if
you did, like anything else, what if the old line
was that if you did something for twenty one consecutive days.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
You could retrain a habit. I would do that.
Speaker 3 (51:16):
I would have guys whould say, listen, we're gonna do
this twenty one consecutive days. Okay, boring, I know that,
but I believe i'd After twenty one consecutive days of
doing this, you're gonna have a pretty decent idea of
the technique, what the feels like where you're supposed to
set up in the box. Your first move is going
to look like Adam Kennedy bunting left handed. A lot
of guys do it right now. But you have to
(51:37):
pick up your stride foot, your front foot as though
you're going to hit, in order to not alert the
third basement. So a lot of times left handed hitters
would just leave the front foot down and they would
cross over with their back foot, although not all, but
the third baseman would just read the front foot not
lifting up, and all of a sudden, you can charge
as hard as he wants because he knows knew it
was going to be a butt. Stuff like that would
(51:58):
be part of this class on bunting. So I did
teach bunning a lot love teaching bunny a lot Bunny
for hit as a weapon. It could start a rally,
get somebody out of a funk, changes the defense, who
was the corner infielders in, gives you more opportunity to
drive the ball by them.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
There's so many things.
Speaker 3 (52:16):
Going on there that's not You're not gonna hit home
run every time. These guys at number nine hit it
was gonna get maybe ten home runs all year. So
you're gonna bet on a home run right now one
if ten, as opposed to putting a runner in scoring
position that could score in a bunch of different ways.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
This is where I lose my faith in all.
Speaker 3 (52:33):
These other arguments the analytical world, because it's not true.
It's not baseball. It doesn't happen that way. And that's
why all these numbers that you're describing the funk that
the game is in offensive because people don't do anything
except try to hit home runs.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
Yeah, the last time I checked, the Detroit Tigers did
not have a bunt hit or a sacrifice.
Speaker 2 (52:53):
Hit there you go.
Speaker 1 (52:54):
I mean that's just crazy at all. Hey, as usual, Joe,
we covered a lot of ground on this episode, so
I can out wait to see what you've chosen to
take us to the finish line tonight.
Speaker 3 (53:09):
Well it's uh, I guess it's in there, wil going
in there somewhere, but it's from an Anonymous. Anonymous is
a pretty popular contributor.
Speaker 1 (53:16):
He gets quoted a lot.
Speaker 2 (53:17):
Anonymous he does Anonymous does.
Speaker 3 (53:19):
Patience is when you're supposed to get mad, but you
choose to understand just looking about what's going on around me,
and it's I'm talking to myself right now. You know,
you get you get, you get the slow burn going
on because you think you're right. You think you're right,
you think you're right, but and this whatever's saying there,
whatever they believe in, is you're you're not buying into it,
So you get the slow burn going on.
Speaker 2 (53:40):
Uh, not good.
Speaker 3 (53:41):
So be patient when you're supposed to get mad, and
then you just choose to understand and take it in
and listen.
Speaker 2 (53:47):
You know. The low Piz situation kind.
Speaker 3 (53:49):
Of motivated this for me, and I didn't even know
you're going to go there today, but based on what
happened with him, that's what made me choose patience today.
Speaker 2 (53:58):
As the quote, and I thought this one was very
sure mean.
Speaker 3 (54:01):
So you're supposed to get mad, all right, but maybe
if you just take a little more time to understand,
you might come to a better conclusion. That was the
genesis for today.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
As usual, well said, enjoy it, Joe. We'll see you
next time on the Book.
Speaker 2 (54:15):
Of Joe, see your brother, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (54:30):
The Book of Joe podcast is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
The Book of Joe podcast is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey Darren, welcome back. You have found The Book of
Joe with me, Tom Berducci, and of course Joe Madden. Joe,
I'm not sure if you looked ahead to the schedule
(00:26):
for this weekend, but there's a very interesting series in
the Bronx. The Los Angeles Dodgers are playing the New
York Yankees. It's their third trip regular season trip is
for the Dodgers too, Yankee Stadium. And what's interesting to me, Joe,
is that we started this year talking of course about
the Dodgers with the addition of Shoeotani and the top
(00:48):
of their lineup with three MVPs, Mookie Betts, Shoeyotani, Freddie Freeman,
they've been really, really good. But as we sit here
entering early June, the top of the Yankees lineup has
outplayed them. Anthony Volpi, Wan Soto and Aaron Judge. I
want your take on the top three of those lineups
(01:12):
and which one you would have, because statistically right now,
the Yankees have an edge.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, I mean, both really good.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Obviously, the expectations are so high for the Dodgers, and
they're high for the Yankees, but not as high as
normal based on what they.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Had done last year.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
So I just think there's more motivation out of the
shoot for the Yankees right now than there had been
for the Dodgers.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
In a sense. Show has kind of lived up to it.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
The other guy's been playing well, obviously, but Show he's
the guy that's really been the shining light. And then
vault Ba, to me, is the guy that really deserves
a lot of credit here because he did change his swing.
When I saw him last ye didn't quite understand why
he was so highly touted offensively. I know he had
some home runs, but he did not like the swing
at all. Now I watch him, it's completely different player.
(01:57):
Even photographs of him indicate a more confident young man.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
And that's it.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
I mean, I really think he and everybody's the Oh
the guys are great, But I love what Volpi's doing
and he does it on defense too, So I think
the Yankees a little bit more interior motivation going on
at the beginning of the season.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
The Dodgers will catch up.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
The Dodgers are going to get like, really tore it
at some point, and by the end of the season,
the record should be relatively the same, I would think.
But from the beginning of the year listen, and I
wasn't on this. I'm not saying I was, but I'm
just looking at it now. I think that the Yankees
really took the heart what had happened last year. I
love the way Cash defended his brood during the offseason.
(02:37):
He didn't back down. He stuck to his guns, as
they say, and I think he incorporated or infused a
group with a lot of confidence knowing that their leader,
their boss, has their back. So there's all that stuff
going on. But again, it's gonna be an interesting series,
but I think the Yankees a little bit more going
on regarding they had to do it as opposed to
the Dodgers really have to do.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
It right now.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah, I'm glad you brought up Vulpi because I wanted
to talk to you about that trans information that he
went through. Like you, I watched him last year and
I thought that swing is not going to play, and
it really didn't. The Yankees were in a phase throughout
their system in which they were really emphasizing getting the
ball in the air to the poll side. And of
course we all know how important home runs are in
(03:21):
today's game, and that's what you want. But when you're
trying to teach everybody to do that, you write it
to cases like Anthony Volpi five nine, one hundred and
eighty pounds really good athletes. Got a lot of speed.
That should not be his game, and you saw it
last year. There's way too much going on with his swing,
a lot of head movement, a lot of uphill in
(03:42):
that swing. He could not hit fastballs at the top
of his own hit one twenty five on fastballs elevated
inside fastballs, couldn't get to them one ninety five, and
that made him susceptible to breaking pitches. And I think
he had so much head movement in his swing that
he wasn't tracking breaking pitches, made poor decisions on breaking pitches.
(04:03):
He hit won forty eight against breaking pitches.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Joe.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
That's a lot of holes in somebody's swing. If you
can't hit the breaking stuff and you can't get on
top of high fastballs, there's just too many ways to
get you out. So to his credit, he completely remade
his swing and he's playing what I know you'd like
this phrase, Joe, he's playing nineteen eighties baseball. At the
plate right. He is embracing ground balls. His ground ball
(04:30):
rate is up from forty one to fifty two percent.
That's at a time when a lot of people, antic
people in the game will say ground balls are bad.
Don't hit the ball on the ground. He's hitting the
other ball the other way. He's gone from twenty three
percent opposite field hitting the thirty two percent. That's a
big jump. He's putting the ball in play. He's cut
down his strikeout rate from twenty eight percent to twenty
(04:51):
one percent. He's cut his pole percentage. This is really
interesting to me, Joe. He's cut his poll rate from
twenty one percent. My brother, from twenty six percent. I'll
get this right, give me one more shot. He's cut
his poll rate from forty seven percent to twenty five percent.
That's by far the biggest decline in baseball. I mean,
(05:14):
those are big, big changes to me, Joe. The Yankees
didn't have a leadoff hitter unless Bulky Volpi made these changes.
I mean, they talked about dj Lemayhew. I don't think
he's at the point in his career where you really
want him leading off, and it really sets the traffic
up for Soto and judge. To have a guy who's
now getting on base putting the ball on the ground,
(05:35):
you know he can score from first base on the
kind of a gapper. A leadoff hitter gets on base
thirty five percent of the time with speed. I think
Anthony Volpi has been the difference maker on this team.
So I'm curious, Joe, if, in the course of your
long career here and how much you know about hitting,
what he has done. Is that extraordinary for you? For
someone to do this at the major league level after
(05:57):
a rookie season, especially.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
It would be if he had not ever done it before.
I'd be curious about that. What was he like before
the Yankee hitting instructors try to get him to pull
the ball lifted in the air. What did he look
like prior to that? Was some of this already built in?
Was his high school coach onto it? I don't even
know if you went to college or not, wherever he
was before that they asked him to do the lift
(06:21):
and pull and separate kind of a thing.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
What did he look like now?
Speaker 3 (06:24):
If he had some of that in his history, you know,
you could relatively easily. I'd say, get back to it.
If you've never done it before. Then it becomes a
little bit more difficult. Then it really requires a great athlete.
Part of it is great being a great athlete. Part
of it is I really want to do this, and
how important it is to me and my career and
the team. You move it forward knowing that I have
(06:45):
to make these adjustments and all that stuff would be
pertinent and very very important. So I don't know, I'd
like to know what his history is, just to go
in there and start using the other side. I'm not
saying it's impossible. I mean, I've done that with a
lot of guys, and everything you described right there was
what you do when you try to become a better hitter.
You let the speed of the ball dictate where you
(07:08):
hit it. You don't try to pull everything. You open
up the opposite side of the fields. You make it
more difficult to pitch to you, you're able to cover
a wide variety of pitches. You cut down on your chase.
Everything you described right there that he's done in the
case he should have become a better hitter.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
But the ability of the fact.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
That what he's doing and he's done it so appears
to be easily or seamlessly. I'd be curious if he
had that in and before all this took place.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, and just to throw some numbers at you, now
you know what Volpi has done. Top three in the
Yankees lineup have forty four homers one hundred and twenty
five RBIs top of the Dodgers' lineup, thirty home runs
one oh five RBIs slugging percentage the top three for
the Yankees five sixty seven bets, so Tony Freeman five thirty.
(07:54):
That's an edge, maybe not a huge edge, but a
clear edge for New York over Los Angeles. And if
you look at some of the overall metrics, the Yankees
have the are starting pitching staff, they have the better bullpen.
I think the Dodgers are a better base running team
and Dodgers are a better defensive team, but when you
look at defense at offense, I'm sorry, the Yankees right
(08:18):
now are a better team than Dodgers. I'm not sure
if it's going to be that way in October, Joe,
but right now, I mean, the Yankees are just absolutely flying,
and they were clicking on all cylinders.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Like you said, Volpi setting the table, not judge, has
become Judge again, So it was pretty much carried it
all the way through. And you know they're going to
go through a bad moment, there's no question about it,
Whereas I think the Dodgers are going to go through
a really good moment. So I mean, I would say
by the middle the season, towards August, you're going to
see a lot of similarities in the numbers between both teams.
(08:50):
One's going to ascend a little bit, maybe one's going
to come back to the to the Median a little bit,
but overall they're going to be this good for the
rest of the year, be a very interesting World Series
if it ever got to that point. But I it's
just early in a sense. With the Dodgers, Like I said,
I think that they gosh, when they got show, everybody
(09:13):
started penciling them in for the for becoming another dynasty
kind of a situation. They've had one World Series and
that was in the twenty twenty season. They haven't really
won a World Series in a regular season for a
long time, so they're really hungry for that. I believe
this is going to be really neck and neck all year.
Both teams are going to play well. Like you said,
the difference maker for me, obviously is the Yankee pitching
(09:34):
staff and what they're doing there.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
They've been outstanding.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Their bullpen's been outstanding also, so that to me is
the biggest difference maker I would think record wise right now,
so that the Yankee pitching has really held up more
than the Dodgers have, which is kind of unusual. You'd
normally expect all of that out of the Dodgers staff
all the time.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, and as you mentioned, the Yankees pitching has been
outstanding and they only have the Cy Young Winner coming
back to the team pretty soon. Garrett Coles was making
rehab starts, so it's a solid team. They've had other
than pretty good luck with injuries this year. Running the
same guys out there, it's been, like I said, they're
absolutely flying right now. Let me ask you about Juan Soto.
(10:13):
I'm not surprised he's doing this well. He really wanted
to play in New York. I think he's the most
predictable performer in baseball when it comes to his command
of the strike zone, how flat his swing is, the
fact that he posts and loves the game so much.
Not surprised at all he's doing this well. What's surprising
to me, Joe is how teams continue to challenge him
(10:34):
with high fastballs. I don't get it. Fifteen of his
seventeen home runs this year have been on fastballs middle
and up. He has not hit a home run. This
is amazing to me. He's not hit a fastball down
in the zone for a home run in a calendar
year since June of last year. I'm gonna give you
his slugging percentage based on fastballs in the zone. Top
(10:58):
of the zone it's over one thousand, ten fifty four.
Middle of the zone it's over this. It's over one thousand,
eleven twenty eight. The bottom third of the zone slugging
percentage is three thirteen. Well, why do people think I'm
gonna get my fastball by him? Or is it just
a matter of making mistakes to this guy because he
(11:20):
does not miss the elevated fastball.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Well, you mentioned the flatness of his swing, correct, Yeah,
oh yeah, and that's see that's I don't I don't
get it either, although it must be a large sample
size situation, meaning that if in fact, people were beating
him over the last year or so elevated I don't
know the answer to that question. But if they had
the Scotten reports going to indicate that's where you want
to go until it actually catches up.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Yeah, he's never he's never been beaten upstairs ever. Remember
before the World Series in nineteen Kevin long then the
hitting coach to the Nationals, telling me that he's going
to hit a home run off Garrett Cole. He predicted it,
and I said, that's Garrett Cole. He's got the best
four seam ride in baseball. He said, I don't care.
No one can throw a force seeing fastball past one.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
So but then it makes no sense.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
And of course he hit a home run in the
World Series in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Well, it makes no sense. I mean back to the
other point, flat swing. Anytime from a pitching perspective, you're
facing I was, we were facing a hitter with the
flat swing. I like breaking ball underneath that guy a lot.
It's hard for a hitter, whether he's right or left handed,
to do anything with the pitch down, down and in
when your swing's extremely flat.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Longo was kind of like that rockleball. Delly was like that, And.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Of course you're talking about Sodo being like that. So
it'd always identify flat swingers, and those are the ones
that you can get underneath starts, you know, strike ball
kind of a pitch. Again, I don't have privy to
all the information looking at the zones and the hot
zones whatever for all these particular hitters and especially Sodo
right now, but I'd be curious because flat swingers like
(12:54):
Tino Martinez could anybody's high fastball, but you wanted to
get underneath Tino back in the nineties because the swing
was so flat from the left side. Historically, left handed
hitters had more of that upper cut kind of a
thing growing up if you're a left thended hitter or
you were teaching lefties. All the coaches managers Whitey Herzog
wanted his left handed hitters to pull the hole between
(13:15):
first and second base. Came to instructional leagues and really
wanted me to work more on left handed hitters, all
of them to be able to do that and hit
that hole. Darren Nurstadt, one of the best elevated fastball
hitters I've seen in the nineties into early two thousands,
was getting beat underneath because of the flat swing. Then
he made the adjustment to get to the ball underneath
(13:36):
then he lost his ability to really handle the elevated fastball.
So you're making these kind of adjustments, be careful with
you what you're wishing for looking for, because sometimes you
could adjust from your strength and to cover a weakness,
and all of a sudden, the strengths no longer your strength.
And I've seen that happen too. So just a long
story short, I would just say flat swingers in general,
(13:56):
I do like the ability to get underneath them. Underneath
would be like right handed pitcher to their back foot
and vice versa. That's underneath and when you could get
to that particular spot, they could be very beneficial. Now
you're talking about Soto, he doesn't chase a whole lot,
so that that works his benefit too, So you're right.
I mean, I'd have to study it more deeply. The
(14:18):
fact that he's handling large, elevated fastballs for a long
period of time and he keep wanting to go there.
It could just be the you know, the proliferation in general,
people wanting to throw elevated fastballs not realizing that this
guy can catch up to it. Longo was like that.
When Longo was younger, Longo could kill anybody's elevated fastball,
even Jason Heyward, Jason Hayward, big elevated fastball, if there
(14:40):
was an elevated fastball guy, regardless if he was struggling
or not, I knew Jayward was going to get on
that pitch. So and he's another flat swinger. So these
are the kind of things.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
That you look at.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
I look at, and I tried to pay more attention
to that as we moving forward, as I'm watching one
of the Yankee.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Games, Well, let me ask you about facing this New
York lineup right now. If you're the Dodgers this weekend
going to the Yankee stadium, you know you've got vaulting
leading off. You mentioned he's he's much tougher out puts
the ball in play. He also runs very well, so
you want to try to keep him off the bases. Obviously,
when you have big sluggers, you want to try to
face them with some room for error, which means no traffic.
(15:16):
But Volpi is changing that dynamic. You've got Soto you mentioned,
doesn't Chase, He's got tremendous power. He's gonna make you
throw a lot of pitches. And then you've got judge
who right now and he's always been patient and you
know that, Joe. Right now, Judge is just so on
time that when he clicks the baseball, it's going out.
(15:37):
You know, he's not hitting singles. Everything's an extra base
hit when he makes contact. Listen, there's a lot more
on behind those guys. But give me a sense, Joe,
when you prepare for New York, when they're when they're
clicking like this, what the message is to your pitchers.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Yeah, I mean you really try to identify as well
as you can. There's going to be somebody that's among
those top three guys. Of course, of course you want
to keep Bope up the base off base.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
That's number one thing. That'd be the number one fact
to me.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
I know Sodo's great, Judge is great, whatever, but it's
to me, I think this guy's stirring the whole thing
right now.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
It's the number one.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
You want to keep both you off base. I don't
know what that means in regards. You got to challenge him,
as you an early swinger, where are the weaknesses with him?
But number one, I would preach about keeping that young
man off base, and then the next two guys. Man,
you know, you just got to you got to try
to get him out within the zone. And if you're
not able to do that, I mean, it might be
wise just to move to the next guy. Don't give
(16:32):
in in a bad count, you just don't give in.
You keep trying to make your good pitch. Of course,
if there there's people on base, there's a lot of traffic,
it could change your thought process because you got to
get somebody out. But you got to get guys like
this out within the strike zone. You got to get
ahead in account as often as possible, and you got
to take him out of the of the bat otherwise
(16:52):
they will absolutely alive. I think Stanton, you know what
he's doing right now, is a big part of that too.
And then Verdugos stepping up. I know Riz is down
a little bit right now, but overall, there's there's more
within this lineup, I think than the Dodger lineup. When
you look into the latter part of the Dodge lineup,
they've had a lot of struggles with I don't know,
from five on down, six on down, there's not a
(17:13):
whole lot of stuff.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Going on there.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
So even with the Yankees, they have this greater ability
up and down through nine to make you think a
little bit so fullpait strike one, try to keep them
off base as much as you possibly can. The other guys,
you know, you got to get them out in the
strike zone and then he's keep making your pitch. But
sometimes a walk isn't so bad after you get past
those three guys. I know the other guys below, I've
(17:37):
been playing pretty well, but I would still rather take
my chances there.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
So that's it.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
I mean, that's maybe not be very clear, but going
into it, this is the kind of conversations you would
have and you would reiterate it during the course of
the game from your like a Mike Borsello to your catcher,
and when you have the conversations in between innings is different.
People are coming up to hit us to remind him
about these little things. But for me, keep Folpi off
base would be the number one thing I'd want to do.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yeah, it's amazing, and I agree with you, Joe, I
really do, because Volpi is a guy and again a
difference maker in that team. Last year hit two oh
three and had a two to eighty three on base percentage.
He was not a tough out last year and now
here he is and you and I are both talking
about Anthony Volpi as the key to attacking the Yankees' lineup.
(18:24):
And I think it's true because I agree a walk
is not a bad play when it comes to Soto
and Judge, but it's it's not a really good play
if Volpi's already on base, and then you're inviting a
real big, crooked number, which is what the Yankees are
doing these days. We will take a quick break here,
and I'm really interested to get Joe's take on when
a major leaguer loses his job, completely loses his job
(18:48):
because of something he did on the field. We'll talk
about that next on the Book of Joe. Welcome back
to the Book of Joe and Joe. We didn't talk
(19:09):
last week about Jorge Lopez of the New York Mets.
He had a frustrating moment on the field arguing a
called or not called check swing with umpire Ramon de
Jesus the third base. You know, it's been a rough
year for him. He lost as cool, he popped off,
got ejected, and on his way off, you know, untucked
(19:29):
his shirt and then flipped his glove over the netting
and into the stands and after that, we all know
what happened. He was not apologetic or it did not
regret what he did. In interviews not only with the
media after the game, but with his manager Carlos Mendoza
and with President of Baseball Operations David Stearns, the Mets
(19:52):
defatum right there, basically said you're gone. And Joe. I
think he could have survived the reactionary moment on the
field there, but he could not survive his attitude after
the game. And remember he's out of the game, the
game goes on. You know, there's actually a team meeting
in the clubhouse, not essentially about that, but the way
the Mets have been struggling. So there was sort of
(20:15):
a cooling down period. But he did not cool down
and was not regretful about what he did, and that's
why the Mets dfade him. I thought it was severe.
I really did, Joe. I mean, we found out if
you hadn't known before. And this has been true for
the last couple of years. He has some issues at home.
He has a son that's fighting in illness. He did
go on the il last year within Minnesota to try
(20:38):
to get right in terms of some mental health issues
that he was dealing with, So you know, he's a
human being, he's like anybody else, and there's no doubt
that some of those things came into play, and he
alluded to that later on in one of his social
media posts. But I'm interested in your take. I mean,
you got a player who you know, You've seen guys
frustrate on the field, they lash out. But then he
(20:58):
didn't walk it back and he didn't own his behavior
on the field, and now is is essentially out of
a job.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Yeah, I didn't let me know. It was a tough
one to watch. I watched the video. I commented about
it yesterday on the MLB Network. And first of all,
I don't know the kids, so that's always difficult. You know,
you hear all this stuff. I know we're hearing all
this stuff. It seems to be well documented. But then again,
I don't know the young man in that part makes
it difficult because you really need to know the person
(21:26):
you're dealing with, and I don't know the exact history.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
You just describe that.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
I didn't realize this mental illness component of it. I
didn't know about his son, all these different factors. Regardless
of all that, for me, number one. This is my opinion,
game over. He's in my office immediately, immediately, there's not
me talking to the media. That's not me talking to
anybody else's coaches, whatever. It's me talking to him and
really getting down to the crux of what just happened
(21:49):
out there, letting him know my feelings, and with that,
the conversation would be what's going to happen next? Obviously,
and when you do speak with the media, how is
this going to go. What are we going to talk about?
What are you going to say? He needed to be
coached a little bit right there. It was just a
very emotional moment. And if he's been through this before
with them, you know that. So if you let him
out there like he was, and I saw that interview,
(22:12):
he doesn't speak that great of English, I mean, and
then he gets emotional, you're going to speak even less well.
So that part to me, how it was interpreted, I
don't think he meant it that way. I really believe
he said he would have done it again.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
I think he would have argued with the umpire again.
This is my opinion.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I don't think he would throw his glove again. I
don't think he'd rip his uniform off again, So there's
a lot left to be translated here. I would like
to if he's going to do another interviewer, did another interviewer?
Did that interview be front of the locker room? Yeah,
he should have asked for somebody to be there with
him that spoke English and could interpret for him, because
that that was emotional second language. Not very good at
(22:49):
it from what I saw. And again, if all this
stuff is in the background, it shoul it should have
been monitored more closely.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
By the group, by the team, I think.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
So in situations like that, my first response as a managers,
I want him in my office. I want to go
over this right now, what happened out there, Let's talk
about this and figure it out from there. And then
I don't know, if there's like a track record of
really negative behavior that's been going on that you've spoken
to him about before, I can understand getting rid of him,
I get it. But if there had not been, and
(23:19):
this is just reaction, and you're doing this in order
to set a tone for the rest of the group
based on the fact that the team's not playing well,
that's something else completely too. So when I heard all this,
this is how my mind works. This is all the
stuff that I had thought about. But I'll tell you honestly,
quite frankly, we would I would always get the guy
in my room and I have to talk before anybody,
(23:41):
including myself, would talk publicly about it because I didn't
know exactly what was going on before I made any
kind of statement.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
That's a really, really fascinating take Joe and what I
had not heard before. Now we don't know what the
conversation was like with Carlos Mendoza and David Stearns, but
I like the idea essentially coaching up the player, that
you handle that in private, prepare him for what's coming now.
Hory Lopez has basically throughout his career, had chosen to
(24:11):
do his postgame interviews in English. You know, it's always
a player's prerogative. We respect whatever decision they make. Teams
do have interpreters available. It's part of the basic agreement.
They must be available, so if the player wants the interpreter,
there always is one that he can use to his avail.
Lopez has just has not, so you know that player decision.
(24:32):
I don't think that him not speaking with an interpreter
through an interpreter to me, it's not on the club.
It's his choice, and good on him. That's something. As
I said, it's not new for him. But the more
important point you make there, Joe is getting ahead of it,
and it looked like he was to borrow your phrase
kind of coached afterward, because the next day he came
(24:53):
out with a statement that was just beautiful and that
would have ended everything if that was released postgame or
he read those words postgame in which he did take
accountability and basically said, Hey, I need some time here
to get my professional and personal life in order so
I can get back there on the mound and continue
to be a contributor of Major League Baseball. All the
(25:13):
right things that were said at that point, you know,
a little late in terms of waiting the firestorm and
his release that happened. So it's an interesting point that
you can sit down with a guy and anticipate what's
coming next, especially in New York with the level of
media and the amount of media there, you know it's
going to be a big issue. Kind of headed off
(25:34):
before I got in front of the cameras. I guess
is what you're saying.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah, I've done that everywhere I have been, and you know,
when that situation can arise, and even for me, I'll
come off the field hot sometimes. And we've talked about
this before, and you know, Rick Vaughan was my guy
down in immedia, guy down in Tampa Bay. And r
V would come in because he knew, he knew I
wasn't going to settle down. He knew a pretty good
chance of saying something stupid.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
He knew that.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
So we'd come in there and he'd give me that
arm folded arm thing with his notebook between his arms,
and just give me that stare. And finally I would understand, Okay, okay,
I gotta I gotta walk this back a little bit, right,
And he said yeah. And then I said, but I
still got to be Jack Ryan Er. I still got
to tell them what I think, right, Yeah, of course
you do. Okay, we go, we go through the whole
(26:19):
situation that way. But when I got emotional, and believe me,
it happened often. It didn't happen once. What happened often,
and there's a very good chance you're going to say
something you would regret under those circumstances. So at RV,
I had Peter Chase in Chicago. Peter was outstanding also,
and Adam Chatskow and Anaheim too. Adam was wonderful. So
all these guys are a wonderful resource in these emotional moments,
(26:45):
because you know what it's like. Even your house come in,
whatever bothered you. They might have a bad cold. You
just things aren't processing well.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Uh, it's the.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Tidbit of bad news. Like you're talking about a guy
with the sun. That's that's not so well. I don't
even know exactly what the problem is, but that's got
to be lingering constantly. So emotional moments get in front
of it, and you need somebody a calmer head than
your own in order to bring you back down. Start
breathing a little bit. Let's get a little rational about this.
(27:16):
And yes, still going to tell you the truth. I'm
still gonna mention the truth, whatever that might be, but
in a more adjustable way than going out there and
really being crude and rude about the whole thing, and
then again again saying something, saying something then that if
he had a night sleep on it, he would never
have said the next morning.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Yeah, and I do think he's going to pitch again
Joey's his stuff is still really good. Maybe he goes
back to Baltimore. He did have a lot of success
before they traded him to Minnesota. But I think, obviously,
as he pointed out himself, get things settled and straightened
in his life, and there's clearly more baseball left in him.
It's just unusual for me, Joe, to see a guy
(27:56):
lose his job over something like that. Listen. I once
saw Dave Righetti on the mound take the baseball and
Exhibition State in Toronto, after giving up a home run,
take the new ball and heave it over the right
field fence. We saw Trevor Bauer take a baseball throw
it into the fountains in center field in Kansas City.
I saw Rob Dibble losing a game to the New
(28:17):
York Mets, literally rip the jersey off himself and chuck
it in the stands. I saw Bobby Oheita and Turn
Wendel for the New York Mets flip their gloves into
the stands. Nothing happened in terms of a guy losing
his job, And again, I understand the situations after the
incident are different here in this case, but it's disappointing
(28:38):
to me that it rose to that level where a
guy lost a job. I'm not sure if you've seen
anything like that, Joe.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
I know that I was in a situation with Jose
gee and years ago with the Angels, and I was
almost like Jose's personal valet on a nightly basis. But
it was a situation in a game when he had
been I guess, right, what is warned about situations and
then still when had and he fired a helmet once
and it was really, it was really, really not good.
(29:08):
And so afterwards we did we let him go and
we suspended him, I think for a week at the
end of the season, really really late in the year
we suspended and I'm pretty certain he never came back
after that. Jose was another guy that was wonderful guy.
I mean when he was calm and everything was groovy
and stuff. Loved him, very entertaining. I said him as
(29:29):
ground balls of it, the guy the best arm I've
ever seen in my life, best arm, and he throw
the ball back in from third bases and outfielder. We
had a really good relationship, but there was certain things
that happened that year that we had addressed and Eventually
it led to this particular moment when we just had
no other options, so we let him go, and it
was end of the season and we did make the playoffs,
I think within that next week. So I've seen it
(29:50):
in a sense, And when this happened, I thought about
that immediately. But I was privy to all the information,
all the stuff that had been going on back then
with Jose and actually I was there. I'd go out
with the guy at night, we used to hang out
a little bit, so I was very much aware of
all that, and it really I liked them. I liked
them a lot, and I felt this felt he felt
the same way about me. But when you've gone through
(30:12):
these moments and you again, for lack of a better term,
warned or teld people listen, you can't do that here,
and they continue to do that here, then you have
no choice. So again, I don't know all of this,
but I do know. I just think I would have
liked to have seen him just one on one with
the manager and probably a coach in the office, although
(30:34):
Mendoza does speak Spanish obviously well, but it's always good
to have one other guy in the office to validate everything.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
That's been said.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
It's not not a situation you worried about getting beaten up,
just you just want one other set of ears in
there to be able to hear and listen to what
had been going on, so that everything could be corroborated.
And at the end of the day, it was a
fair and honest conversation.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
I actually had forgotten about the jose Gian episode. And yeah,
he as you know, he was a real good hitter
for your team. He was driving in runs for you
teams going to the postseason and when that happened that
you're sitting down this guy and you're right, he did
not come back for the postseason. It did make me
think that it wasn't just a one off, that there
must have been something preceding that to have such a
(31:17):
harsh penalty. But Joe, I got to admit what I
first thought about with a guy losing his job, and
it's in the book of Joe Is Jay Lewis, you
have to tell that story. We talk about someone losing
their job over something in this case done. I don't
know if it was done before, but done once. You
(31:40):
have to tell a story. It's a great one.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
Yeah, this is not one of my better moments as
a minor league manager Puri, Illinois, and a young outfielder
by name of Jay Lewis out of Oklahoma was on
the team. Nice player, JJS pop, nice player, creak, great guy.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Anyway, I had my pitchy coach at that.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
Time, really O Monteagudo, since passed away in a traffic accident.
But MONI had a very good ear to the ground,
and he let me know that Van Halen was coming
to town and that they're talking it up and we're
on the street. Was that Jay was going to call
in sick on that particular day and he's going to
attend the concert. So I had that in advance, and
(32:19):
of course here comes a day, and of course here
it happens, and Jay's not not coming. He's he calls
in Richard's Aleski was my trainer, and I calls it
sick and that he can't make it tonight because he's ill.
And so okay, here we go ahead to put the
wheels in motion at that point. Okay, Jay, stay home,
don't worry about it, make sure you get better, all
(32:40):
that kind of good stuff. So I think I don't know.
Game time might have been what seven o'clock whatever. They
just say seven o'clock. And I said, Richard, call him
at seven. Call at seven o'clock and make sure Seebe's there,
Seebe's all that kind of stuff. And he calls him
and there's no answer. And of course there's no answer.
He's at the concert. We didn't have cell phones back then.
(33:00):
That would have helped him a lot. So I said, okay,
let's just really make sure. He could have been sick.
He could have said he was out getting medicine whatever.
So I said, go over to his house, go to
his apartment whatever that was, and make sure that he's
not there.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
So he goes and knocks on the door real loudly. Whatever.
No answer comes back.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Richard and his little Boston accent tells me Jay's not there.
So I said, okay, good, we expected all that. So
here comes the next day ball park. Jay walks in
and he rings in my office, sent him down and said, hey,
how you feeling oh much better today?
Speaker 2 (33:32):
I'm good and I'm good today. I'm ready to go.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
He says, come on, man, don't insult my intelligence. You
weren't sick yesterday went to the van. No, I didn't.
I didn't go to the Van Halen concert. I was ill, Yes,
I said, I sent Richard. We called you said, Richard
to your apartment. You weren't there. Come on, man, don't
And I got to use the phrase, I said, don't
insult my intelligence. Come on, Jay, just tell me, just
tell me. How was the concert? And he said, the
(33:56):
best one I've ever been.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
And I see that's where I should have I should
have done the right thing, which would have been fine.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Twenty five bucks. Giggled a little bit. He said, don't
ever do that again.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
But I'm just a twenty seven year old manager, and
I call in, I'm all in sense, like an idiot,
and ends up getting released because of that, which I
think is totally wrong. And I'd love to tell Jayda.
We've talked about that in the book. I'd love to
just see Jy and Tom. I was I screwed up.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
I was wrong.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Shouldn't have happened that way. My fault, but that's how
it came down. And because he told me the truth,
which is another thing with your kids. If your kids
tell you the truth, you can't get angry like you
just got accepted in some kind of a punishment.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
But not that.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
So that's one of my most unproud moments as a
minor league manager. It was the releasing of Jay Lewis
for attending a Van Halen concert, the best concert he
ever attended to miss a minor league baseball game.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
I love that story. And if you're out there, Jay Lewis,
or you're out there and you know Jay Lewis, get
in touch with us. You know, we were lucky enough
to track down Kenny Grant, that's right, and had him
as a guest show. Kenny Grant was a young player
who Joe one of your early releases, get I guess
where you had to tell a player that's the end
of the line. You know, we have to release you.
(35:12):
And all these years later we were able to track
Kenny down and get his version and what it meant
to him. So, Jay Lewis, if you're out there, track
us down, love to have you on the show. Or
if you know where Jay is. I wonder what he's
up to these days.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Jay Bird. I don't know Jay Bird. I Jay Bird
could talk a little bit. I'm sure he's doing something.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Well.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
Fun guy, just a fun guy, free spirited guy from Oklahoma. Jay,
if you're listening to anybody like you said, I'm sorry,
give me an opportunity to say it. If it not
in person, at least be a conversation like this.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Hopefully we hear from Jay and we will definitely get
him on. We're going to take a quick break, and
this happens a lot. It seems like these days the
art of bunting and where has it gone? And should
we bring it back? I'll ask Joe Madden about then
as a strategic play in today's game. Right after this, well, Joe,
(36:20):
I mentioned the bunt and before we get to that,
I just have to thank a lot of people at
Penn State. Over the weekend, I was fortunate enough to
receive the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Penn State University. And
it's a really, really big deal, especially when you think
about a school like Penn State. There are seven hundred
(36:41):
and seventy five thousand living alumni and they give out
a handful of these awards. It was a spectacular ceremony,
black tie affair. I was humbled when I got the
call from the president of the school about the award,
and even more so being in that room and just
hearing all the other the winners and the administrators, and
(37:05):
it got me thinking, Joe, and I like your take
on this that you know, the people that mold us
generally other than our parents, of course, are educators. And
you think about if you drew up a list of
you know, a handful of the people who most influenced
you even to this day as adults and professionals. We'll
assume your parents are involved in that, but taking them out,
(37:27):
you got to have an educator or a coach on
your list. And what I said when I accepted this award,
I was lucky enough to even go to Penn State,
and then I got the two things that every young
person really needs. And I had passion. Don't get me wrong.
I wanted to be a writer. Knew I wanted to
be a writer. I had the passion. But that alone
isn't isn't it. You need help, and what you need
(37:49):
is encouragement and opportunity. Encouragement and opportunity, and that's what
we owe everybody who comes behind us. And I had
boatloads of that at Penn State. So listen. I know
you're a Lafayet guy, Joe, probably it was even before that.
But when we think about those who shape us. And again,
outside of our parents, who should be the biggest influences
(38:11):
everybody has to have for me a teacher and or
a coach on that list of course.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
And well, congratulations, man, that's awesome. I didn't realize that.
Well done. Yeah, I mean it's in our book, the
Book of Joe. We talked a lot about the mentors
and the leaders that came before us, or who did
shape or mold this.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
Man. I go all the way back. I mean I
could go chronologically with the different.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Influences that I've had, and it started on ball fields
or in gymnasiums. Of course, your parents, my aunts and uncles.
I had a wonderful support team here in Hazleton, big family,
both sides. Mom and Dad had ten plus brothers and sisters.
And then all the offshoot the Italian Polish neighborhoods.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
I was related to everybody in town. So there's a
lot of influence there. There's a lot of discipline there too,
brother don't get out of line, because they were all
they were all permitted to met out this plan in
a way that sometimes it actually hurt. So don't screw up,
you know, because these people were there, and they were
there to defend the honor of your mom and your dad.
(39:12):
Beyond that, coaches wise, I could go back gosh, the
ones that really poly Binomo. I'm talking baseball coach Ed
Morgan here in town. A lot of teaching going on
with both of those guys, physically and mentally. I mejored
football coaches Richie and Ci. Adam Siminski, my high school
football coach, made me tough. There's no question this man
(39:34):
made me tough. You had to be tough to play
for Adam Siminski. Collegiately, it would talk about coach Bob Root,
one of the most influential coaches I've ever had. Is
keep moving it up the line til you get to professionally,
Bob Clear, Babbaloo. The Chevelle's parked in the garage right
behind me, right now with bob Aloo and blazon on
the back Babbaloo. I thought I knew everything until Baba
(39:54):
Lou showed up. Then I realized they knew nothing. He
took me to another level as a minor league coach
and then of course as a major league coach, where
like you and I are, the conversations we have they're
rooted in conversations I had with Bob Aloo years ago
in locker rooms on fields, loud discussions, not just you know,
nice nice little things, loud discussions Coach Bob rut if
(40:17):
I called to play because I was able to call
my old plays that Coach.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
Root concluded was the right thing to do.
Speaker 3 (40:24):
My God, I was beaming from ear to ear that
I both pleased Coach Root and did something that coach
would have done. Also as a manager, Gene Mak, I've
talked about him white he heardsag. I've been really lucky
with all the people that have brought me to this
particular point. Having said all that, and I know that
a lot of the people in the game right now
(40:45):
have had a long and illustrious way to get to
where they're at. But to me that I'm still concerned
that some don't have the same mentorship regarding the game,
talking baseball specifically right now, because in the minor leagues.
When I was in the minor leagues, it was a
lot of former Major leaguers, not necessarily players, but maybe
career minor league usually coaches that were there to influence
(41:06):
you and pass the game along to you and That's
one of my bigger concerns right now, because you hear
all the different things that are going on in the game,
and there's all these complaints. Part of it is I
think that the thing hasn't just been passed along. It's
not being passed along properly now and into the future.
And that's my concern. There's a lot of folks being
given opportunity that have not gone through all the steps necessary,
(41:27):
I think, to get to the point where actually I've
earned the right to be whatever. So I was very
fortunate that all these people help put me together so
that night right now, I could be on this conversation
with Tommy in the morning once a week, and we
do not rehearse this in advance at all. Ever, he
doesn't even tell me the questions he's going to be
asking me, ever, But the basis, the basics, and the
(41:51):
base that has been established by all these people I
just mentioned and many many more permits me to talk
to Tommy in a next temporaneous way because I've learned
my stuff based on years of doing it, combined with
great professors, mentors, teachers, all these people. So I'd like
to see more of that occur so that anybody could
(42:13):
talk a variety that I'm talking baseball and a variety
of different subjects within our game based on all the
contact I had before I'm having this conversation with here
this morning. That to me, I think is missing. And
that's a big concern for me, because.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
Again, then you don't really know.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
You think you know things, but you don't really know
stuff because you haven't done your dissertation in front of
all these people. To argue in front of Bob Cleared,
argue in front of Geen Mak, to argue in front
of Whitey Herzog, Damn, that's not easy to do well.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
I like your point about mentorship in baseball, and I
think it's dead on. And I've seen some teams now
maybe zagback the other way in terms of coaching staff
and having a better blend of experience and knowledge. I mean,
I always say there's a big difference between knowledge and wisdom,
(43:07):
and wisdom comes with experience, and I think a team
like the New York Yankees have done a better job
in terms of balancing out their coaching staff. We're talking
about at the major league level, but I think it's
important at the minor league level. As well. I understand
it is tougher to get some of the veteran or
the former players to go down and work the minor leagues.
I get that. But in the rush to hire these
(43:28):
people out of colleges and pitching labs and hitting labs
who have been just been produced on the new information,
which is great, don't get me wrong, you still need
to balance that out with experience. And that kind of
brings me to this perfectly, to the sacrifice bunch, Joe,
And I know in today's game it really is devalued.
(43:49):
It probably was overvalued before. And I get all that,
but I'll give you another situation. Last night, and I'm
doing a game. It's the Giants at the Diamondbacks. It's
a tie game. Eighth inning, Giants get their leadoff guy
on base. Number nine hitter is now up again. It's
two to two in the eighth inning. Leadoff guy gets
on base. You're on the road, number nine hitter, who's
(44:11):
been up literally the major leagues for four days. Trenton Brooks,
left handed hitter, right handed pitcher on the mound. I'm
thinking you've got a bunt here. You've got the top
of the order behind him. One run can win this game?
Here two two eighth inning Trenton Brooks and I think
he bunted maybe once in the minor leagues. And that's
another issue. We're not teaching these guys how to do that.
(44:34):
Swings away and what does he do? Double play, double
play absolutely end of the rally. Diamondbacks win ninth inning
on a walkoff home run. I mean, if you can't
bunt in the eighth inning of a tie game with
your number nine hitter who's been in the big leagues
for four days, when are you going to bunt? And again,
(44:57):
I'm not arguing that everybody should be bunting and we
should go back to John McGraw and no offense gene
walk but that has to be a weapon to win
a close game at some point. And besides that, the
bunt is so rare. I've seen somebody teams poorly defend
the bunt. Now, Joe, I don't know if you've got
any pushback from you know, your front offices when you
(45:17):
did call for bunts or talk about bunts. But again,
I'm not arguing to go back to the nineteen seventies
and or Jay Bell for Jim Leland bunding in the
first ending every night. But I do think it has
to be a weapon in a game where that batting
average now is two forty, the fourth lowest in the
history of the game.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
Yes, I wrote down as you were describing a situation,
but can that fellow bunt And you just said he
only bunted once into minor leagues, there's a perfect example.
He might have been a three ye old hitter or
four hole hitter in the minor leagues, and when you're that,
you never they never take the moment to think that
possibly there's going to be a moment where you're not
a three or four place hitter. You're going to be
in a different part of the lineup where it might
(45:56):
you might be called on to bunt. The context is perfect,
right there, eighth hitter number nine coming up, one two, coming.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Up after that tie ball game late.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
But I would almost bet you said he was placed
for the Giants, right You said it was a Giant.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Yeah, yeah, he came from a different organization before, even
in the minor leagues for eight years. Okay, bedas dudes
been a high on base percentage guy, not a lot
of power, But you're right, they're just not asking these
guys to drop a bunt and they just don't work
on it.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
Well, that's a yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
It gives you flow the game, right.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
Because just because you okay, bunt, Oh it's easy, why
don't you just think it's not that easy to do,
especially when these guys are throwing that hard, and if
they're throwing elevated fastballs, and if a guy's not really
done it with any proficiency before, it's not easy to
It's very hard to do. Actually, it's probably easier to
actually swing and move the ball than it is to
bunt a ballfare and move the runner unless you've worked
(46:50):
on it. So, yes, I'm a big believer in that. Gosh,
it's gotten so far away from that. I remember in
the what was it my early the last couple of
years in instructional leagues, probably the late early nineties. I
used to tell my number two hitter at that time,
if the leadoff hitter gets on with nobody out by
(47:12):
the time you get back to the dugout, this is
all I explained it to him. He has to be
at second base. I don't care how that happens. If
you feel like you could hit this ball in the
hole between first and second, go ahead. If this picture
is really tough, you're not seeing him, Well, fine, go
ahead and bunt, bunt for a hit.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Whatever you want to do.
Speaker 3 (47:26):
But by the time you get back to the bench,
the guy's got to be on second base with one out.
And I said that a lot of times. So my
nine hole hitters and number eight gets on base. By
the time you get back to the bench, he's got
to be on second base somehow. So I didn't tell
him it had to be a sacrifice spunt. I wanted
them to be proficient at bunny for hit also, which
is really sometimes easier to bunt scrifice in a sacrifice
(47:51):
sacrificial way by bunny for hit as opposed to squaring around.
Guys get confused with their techniques. So whatever you do,
better do that. So, yes, we had bunny for everybody.
I mean, I want Timmy Samon to bunt. You know
they would screw around, put their buns down, But you
know you're not gonna do that. You're not gonna have
Barrett Anderson bunt. You're not gonna have Edmunds bunt. But
even in today's game, with all that, when the shifting
(48:13):
came on board, yeah, some of the big lefties. You
wanted Tom learn how to bunt for a hit, to
just try to get these guys out of the shift
and soften it up a little bit, give them a
better field to look at. So all this stuff needs
to be nurtured in the minor leagues. But you're right,
the argument comes from the analytical department, whereas you don't
want to miss this opportunity to put a ball in
(48:33):
the gapper over the wall, and they don't care if
it's the number nine hitter.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
They don't.
Speaker 3 (48:37):
I'm telling you they don't. They still think there's an
advantage to swinging the bat right there. So not a
surprise the number one, number two that they did that
they didn't do a number to the surprise. Not a
surprise that the guy's really rarely bunted. So if you're
the manager, you go through these mental gymnastics, like if
I ask him the bunt, he's gonna foil two pitches off.
Then they put him in a two strike hole because
(48:58):
he can't get it down. I'm telling you, you know
you you'll even you'll take a shot at the first
pitch right put the bunt sign on. The guy squares
around horribly looks like crap, and then of course you're
not going to put it on for the second pitch.
This goes to the minor leagues. That goes to what
you consider important or not. And if you consider it important,
you're going to have somebody be able to teach this
(49:19):
on the minor league level. And it's easy to identify
within your lineups in every minor league city or in
an instructional league, who really needs to learn how to
do this because if then when they do get to
the big leagues, they may be called on to do
this and it's too late to try to teach them there.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Yeah, you hit on a lot of good points, Joe.
My question would be if it were emphasized, then again,
we're not asking the Tim Salmons of the world to bunt, right.
You know, guys at the top, guys at the bottom
should know how to bunt at least have it in
their arsenal. Is that a teachable skill? Can you take
those kind of players and work on it and make
it a priority and give a guy at least as
(49:57):
a manager an option to bunt with certain players if
it's emphasized.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
Totally, Absolutely, there's wonderful drills to do that, Dick Mcloth
and you used to be with the Dodgers for one
hundred years.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
Outfield Bunny instructor.
Speaker 3 (50:07):
Dick had some great trills, including hula hoops out in
front of home plate, stuff like that. Visual I would
challenge guys. I would challenge them mentally. They would put
on a decent funt and I would say, look, I'm
challenging you.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
I would put a cone down like a traffic cone.
Speaker 3 (50:23):
I challenge you to bunt this next pitch and hit
that cone, and they would because their focus is so good.
You do this often enough and you really let these
guys know how important it is, they'll get it done. Furthermore,
you're never going to get compensated for sacrifice bus But
somehow everybody from the top on down's got to make
sure that the player that you're asking to do this
(50:44):
knows that it's important and it's not going to go
unrewarded in a sense. So, yes, all of this stuff
can be taught. There's drills to do it. There's technique. Absolutely,
sacrifice spunk. They closer to the plate, move up in
the box more balls are in fair territory as an example,
But for a hit, yes, bat moves first, You get
the bat out front move first, create the angle base
(51:05):
a foul ball. There's all these different thoughts, and if
you did, like anything else, what if the old line
was that if you did something for twenty one consecutive days.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
You could retrain a habit. I would do that.
Speaker 3 (51:16):
I would have guys whould say, listen, we're gonna do
this twenty one consecutive days. Okay, boring, I know that,
but I believe i'd After twenty one consecutive days of
doing this, you're gonna have a pretty decent idea of
the technique, what the feels like where you're supposed to
set up in the box. Your first move is going
to look like Adam Kennedy bunting left handed. A lot
of guys do it right now. But you have to
(51:37):
pick up your stride foot, your front foot as though
you're going to hit, in order to not alert the
third basement. So a lot of times left handed hitters
would just leave the front foot down and they would
cross over with their back foot, although not all, but
the third baseman would just read the front foot not
lifting up, and all of a sudden, you can charge
as hard as he wants because he knows knew it
was going to be a butt. Stuff like that would
(51:58):
be part of this class on bunting. So I did
teach bunning a lot love teaching bunny a lot Bunny
for hit as a weapon. It could start a rally,
get somebody out of a funk, changes the defense, who
was the corner infielders in, gives you more opportunity to
drive the ball by them.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
There's so many things.
Speaker 3 (52:16):
Going on there that's not You're not gonna hit home
run every time. These guys at number nine hit it
was gonna get maybe ten home runs all year. So
you're gonna bet on a home run right now one
if ten, as opposed to putting a runner in scoring
position that could score in a bunch of different ways.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
This is where I lose my faith in all.
Speaker 3 (52:33):
These other arguments the analytical world, because it's not true.
It's not baseball. It doesn't happen that way. And that's
why all these numbers that you're describing the funk that
the game is in offensive because people don't do anything
except try to hit home runs.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
Yeah, the last time I checked, the Detroit Tigers did
not have a bunt hit or a sacrifice.
Speaker 2 (52:53):
Hit there you go.
Speaker 1 (52:54):
I mean that's just crazy at all. Hey, as usual, Joe,
we covered a lot of ground on this episode, so
I can out wait to see what you've chosen to
take us to the finish line tonight.
Speaker 3 (53:09):
Well it's uh, I guess it's in there, wil going
in there somewhere, but it's from an Anonymous. Anonymous is
a pretty popular contributor.
Speaker 1 (53:16):
He gets quoted a lot.
Speaker 2 (53:17):
Anonymous he does Anonymous does.
Speaker 3 (53:19):
Patience is when you're supposed to get mad, but you
choose to understand just looking about what's going on around me,
and it's I'm talking to myself right now. You know,
you get you get, you get the slow burn going
on because you think you're right. You think you're right,
you think you're right, but and this whatever's saying there,
whatever they believe in, is you're you're not buying into it,
So you get the slow burn going on.
Speaker 2 (53:40):
Uh, not good.
Speaker 3 (53:41):
So be patient when you're supposed to get mad, and
then you just choose to understand and take it in
and listen.
Speaker 2 (53:47):
You know. The low Piz situation kind.
Speaker 3 (53:49):
Of motivated this for me, and I didn't even know
you're going to go there today, but based on what
happened with him, that's what made me choose patience today.
Speaker 2 (53:58):
As the quote, and I thought this one was very
sure mean.
Speaker 3 (54:01):
So you're supposed to get mad, all right, but maybe
if you just take a little more time to understand,
you might come to a better conclusion. That was the
genesis for today.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
As usual, well said, enjoy it, Joe. We'll see you
next time on the Book.
Speaker 2 (54:15):
Of Joe, see your brother, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (54:30):
The Book of Joe podcast is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com