November 24, 2025 • 30 mins
Baseball has changed a lot since its start, and not everyone is a fan of how the games are run. People have their own takes and compare the game to the games of the past, so why not do the same!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Old school versus new school. Anyone who's been on the
internet or just at a baseball game and listen or
listen to one on TV has probably heard someone who
played or or enjoyed baseball a lot in the early
two thousands and nineties eighty seventies complaining or complaining. It's
not the right word. I want to retract that word,
(00:31):
not complaining being critical or skeptical of the way that
players are developed and this year, these years, and whether
or not it is a good thing or bad thing,
and for many it's much much worse now than it
was then. So I want to be very clear here.
(00:55):
I am not here to crap on or try to
bury or throw shade at people who feel a certain
way about the way the game is played or players
are developed or anything in between. Okay, it's usually not
what people are saying, it's just how they're saying. What
I take issue with a lot of times comes down
(01:17):
to this certainty that whatever you know is the correct thing,
or your opinion is the right opinion, and that is
just almost always not true. It's very nuanced. There's nuance,
and there's reasons for the things that are happening, and
it's hard to you know, it's a chicken egg situation.
(01:40):
It's hard to figure out why things are the way
they are unless you discuss them. And I have five
big arguments that I've seen recently, and I just want
to say thank you to Twitter for all your help
on establishing what these things are so that I can
get into them. But full disclosure, and there's gonna be
a second disclaimer here. We're going to move on. This
came this idea, or basically, maybe the straw that broke
(02:02):
the camel's back, if you will, came from a tweet
from the gentleman on the left, Kurt Okay. I am
not going to comment on or give any opinion on
the mirror of myriad other things this gentleman has had happen, Okay,
and the things that he has done. This has nothing
to do with that. It just has to do with
(02:23):
this specific tweet and the way that it is worded
that lines up with a lot of other tweets also
worded similarly to this. So we're going to talk about
the tweet that I'm gonna get into the points, you know,
draw your own conclusions. I'm not going to go in
depth on anything else that is that is a different thing,
(02:44):
and I'm I'm that's not what I'm interested in. So, okay,
this is the tweet in question, all right, today it's
this is So what he's doing is he's talking about
pitching mechanics. So the first one that comes down to
is life mechanically, which I've been talking about a lot lately,
especially with the Trevor thos Cheese project, which if you
(03:06):
go check that out on my YouTube channel, I did
a pretty in depth breakdown of what I'm doing wrong
mechanically to not be able to get velocity. Okay, so
like if you're interested in that stuff, it's over there.
I think I did a pretty good job of it.
That made a lot of things that really aren't discussed
in the mainstream because they're just kind of boring and
very technical, maybe a little bit more successful accessible. So
(03:30):
I want to talk a little bit about this today.
It's standing tall versus extension. That means standing up tall
and reaching way out when you release the ball. It's
basically how far you are off the rubber when you
release it. And the case he is making is one
is extremely stressful and the other is not. Those two
that is not a true statement. He is making an
(03:51):
argument based on what he felt. You're going to notice
a pattern here. There's a lot of things that he
knows from his own experience, but he does very little
thinking about possibly anyone else having another experience and maybe
being physically different than him. So there's gonna be a
lot of that. Okay, one is extremely stressful. There's literally
been testing and there isn't a lot of scientific data
(04:15):
backing that up. Okay, someone has made these guys believe
the effort whip is the best way to max velocity.
It by definition, is the best way to increase velocity.
So that argument is also incorrect. Whip. The word whip
is how you produce from velocity, and when he was
throwing hard, he was also whipping. Now, I think he's
(04:36):
talking about the mindset where you're trying to do, which
I'll give credit where credits you there. If that is like,
if you're thinking whip like that might not produce, you
might not be producing more whip by thinking about it
and trying to. If that's the case, then yes, extension
and finish generate max Baxman and velocity max extension does
(05:00):
not correlate directly with velocity. Ask mister Jezus Lzardo, who
has some of the shortest extension in the major leagues
and throws ninety seven to ninety nine miles and our
more extension does not directly correlate with more velocity, thank
you very much. And you can command the fastball when
(05:21):
you extend more. Again, there's no link between those things either.
One thing that everything in this tweet has to do
with is they're all things that he did when he pitched. Okay,
so this is the crux of the matter. This is
the old school versus the new school kind of approach
to an argument. If you approach an argument as if
(05:42):
there is no argument, that that is something I take
exception with. And so that's why this is coming up today. Okay,
the new way is why pitchers no longer command the
fastball inside the zone. Incorrect. They do command the fastball
inside the strike zone. They can throw strikes, but they
can't repeat fastball location between a six to eight inch box.
(06:03):
If they could, Paul Skins would strike punch out four
hundred no. No. And also this was in reply to
a tweet that was breaking down his mechanics versus Paul Skins,
who just won the cy Young and had in two seasons.
Has had two seasons, both of which are better than
(06:24):
any season the Kirk Chill he ever had. Kirschling is
a great pitcher. He's probably should be a Hall of
Famer on pitching, but we know what else is going
on there. So but to criticize Paul Skeans of all people,
for command is incredible to me because he's got some
of the best command in the major leagues and he
throws one hundred miles an hour and that's proven. Okay,
(06:46):
so there's a lot going on here. We can I
can go point by point by point, but it's the
point is these people can't do this thing. Yes they can,
Yes they can, Yes they can. None of that's true.
So let me be very clear here. So let's just
get into the points because this brings up a lot
of them, and I have five of them that we
can go through point by point, which I will probably
refer back to this a lot. But there's a lot
(07:06):
going on here. But at the end of the day,
kids that are seeing this week, guys out there that
are learning to pitch, Kurt has you would look up
to him because he was very successful in the major
leagues much more successful than me, and I would be
a guy who watched him throw the bloody sock was
a great moment in my childhood, right like I would
if I were fourteen, I would take all of this
(07:28):
as fact, as rules of nature, and they aren't rules
of nature. You don't have to do a lot of
the same things. You might not be able to do
them effectively. And if you're constantly chasing that, that's when
guys are not getting It's about each person's independent and
you've got to be able to teach based on what
you know about the guy. You can't just say do
(07:49):
what I did all of the time. I had a
lot of coaches that did that, and they weren't very
good at coaching. So I will put it that way,
all right, Moving on, This is art, This is the
This kind of encapsulates that whole argument. Okay, this is
a common old school or the fan of old school
baseball mechanics are taught wrong these days, they're always getting hurt.
(08:10):
Let me just talk about this piece by piece. Okay,
one using the word wrong automatically disqualifies a lot. Okay,
there's no such thing as wrong, because some things work
for guys and not others, and they just get lucky
and they don't get hurt. But when you throw a baseball,
(08:34):
the amount of force you're armed is generating is structurally
more than your UCL is supposed to theoretically be able
to take. So the rizon in Tommy John is because
that force that's traveling through that and basically just bypassing,
it's going so quickly that it's not giving them enough stress.
Like if it goes fast enough, it's okay, But if
(08:58):
you just like tested it over and over again in
a vacuum, it would blow pretty quickly. So we're not
actually supposed to be throwing baseballs at ninety even, let
alone one hundred miles an hour. So there is some
truth to throwing harder gets you hurt, Like, there's a
lot of truth to that. The second part of this
is guys are always getting hurt, Absolutely true. I agree
(09:18):
with that guys are getting hurt a lot, and that
is directly correlated with maximum velocity happening more often. You're
just throwing harder more often, and so it's kind of
a catch twenty two in that your mechanics get smoother,
it allows you to throw harder, more often, which then
increases that force that's already above the threshold on your
(09:40):
elbow over and over again. So the chances, no matter
what you do, the chances that you blow out are higher.
So throwing harder means because we figured out how to
produce velocity in a safe way, you're just risking injury
more because baseball, you're not supposed to throw a baseball
this way, like we're not supposed to do this. Our
(10:01):
elbow is not built to so you can only improve
it to a certain level. Right. It's very interesting in
that way, But this is generally true because guys are
throwing harder. And but we've always chased velocity, by the way,
I just want to be very clear. When I was
twelve and the year two thousand and one, we were
chasing velossity. In nineteen ninety five, when they had soccer guns,
(10:23):
they were chasing glossity. They just didn't know how to
do it effectively. Now we do. That's the big change. Okay,
So guys are always getting hurt, Yes, that is true,
but that is why mostly why, And once you know
how to be a very good version of yourself and
knowing that your elbow is already being put into that
stressful position whether or not you're throwing eighty six or
(10:45):
ninety eight. You know, you're like, yes, it's more likely,
but that's worth it for the benefit of the rewards
that you get for being that elite. The difference between
those two guys is a bigger difference in reward than
it is in increase in getting hurt. Hal Hendricks, of
all people, got Tommy John. He hasn't thrown a ninety
(11:06):
mile on our fastball in ten years, and he got
Tommy John surgery. Now correct me if I'm wrong. I'm
fairly certain Jamie Morier got Tommy John at least once
in his career.
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Speaker 1 (12:26):
And that guy couldn't break an egg. He was the
first guy to tell you that. So there's just a
level of diminishing returns at some point, right, So let
me just say that that doesn't mean that how things
are being or like becoming the most efficient version of
a picture is wrong. It just carries more risk, and
(12:48):
that risk is being built into the game. Now we
can have that argument whether or not we should be
risking it. But we're human beings, and when you're competitive
and you see the opportunity to be better than somebody,
you're going to take that opportunity. You are everyone would
have And I'm going to say this, if Kurt knew
how to throw harder, he would have tried it. Now.
I don't know if he would have tried the whole time,
but if he was like, oh, if someone was like, hey, man,
(13:09):
I can help you throw ninety eight miles an hour,
you think it'd be like, nah, I don't want to
get Tommy John. No, he would try to throw ninety
eight miles an hour. He just didn't. So you know,
it's like, I hate it when we're blaming all these
guys trying to throw harder because that's how you compete. Now,
it's just the sad fact of the matter. I don't
know how to I don't know how to explain that.
(13:30):
Even more so, this is actually really interesting because fan or,
a guy that we've talked about on the show before,
reply to that tweet, and I think this is very,
very funny. This is a tweet from Bob Stock Now,
(13:52):
Robert Stop, we've talked about him before. Oops, there it is,
he said, Walter Johnson threw five five nine hundred innings
compared to shillings thirty two hundred, doing everything wrong according
to him, And he threw like that, didn't even follow
through through sidearm, had no extension, but he never got hurt. Okay.
(14:14):
And then Kurt replied to that and said, well, if
I threw seventy eight, I would have thrown six thousand innings,
where the point completely woofed over his head, and Bob's
Rob's like, Robert's like, yeah, that's our point. They throw
harder on you. That's why they get hurt, Not because
your mechanics are better, because they throw harder than you.
Guys are getting harder. It's hurt more because they throw harder.
(14:36):
That's that's why. It's not because the mechanics are messed up.
It's because they throw harder. Their mechanics might be better
that a lot of them to throw harder, but that
is why they get hurt more. So. Very nice Robert X,
teammate of mine, funny dude. I like him a lot,
like him a lot. He's a good guy. Okay, let's
move it back, let's get back in here, all right,
(14:57):
next point point number two or argument number two, moving
on form mechanics, no one can command the strike zone anymore.
Ha ha. Nope. So this is a big difference between
the nineties. We're gonna use the nineties and two thousands, right,
We're gonna use those eras because some of the characters
(15:18):
or the people that comment on these things very like,
feeling very strongly about it, played in those eras or
were big fans. Then commanding the strike zone means something
completely different. So we hear about Greg Maddox all the time,
the professor still even with the strike zone the way
it was, which I'm going to talk about in a second,
he was one of the greatest pictures of all time,
(15:41):
and he knew what was going, he knew the environment,
he knew what he had to work with, and he
played those cards like a master poker player. So I'm
not taking anything away from him, and he would tell you,
just like everybody else, it was a different time in
that you could use the psychology of the umpire to
change what the strike zone meant when that happened, and
(16:02):
Pitcher's meaning you can expand off if you're hitting the
edge in the beginning of the game. You might be
able to expand four inches either way now because you've
been hitting the edge so much and you get the
benefit of the doubt. When hitters see that happening, they
then have to start swinging at four inches off the plate,
which is very hard to hit effectively. So now the
chase rate's going up. So just because a pitch was
(16:24):
called four inches off the plate, doesn't mean it's actually
in the strike zone, right, it's just called a strike.
Now you can't do that at all, So you actually
have to throw the ball in the box a lot
more now. Of course there's a ton there's biases. Of course,
some guys like miss one side of the plate some umpires,
but they're not you're not playing a game with the
(16:44):
umpire where you're getting them to change. They just have
that thing they can't see very well. You can exploit
that a little bit, but you can't like play the
mind games anymore. Like they just won't go with you
because they are are Their jobs depend on this now
more than they were then. So you have to get
people out literally in that box more often. Now you
have to throw actually in the box to get more swings.
(17:07):
Now you can't when you can't go four inches off
the plate. Hitters aren't gonna swing because they know it's
not gonna be called. They know that you're they're not
gonna go with you. So if they don't go with you,
why would they swing at it? So suddenly there's less chasing.
If there's less chasing, that means you're going to be
in the strike zone more. Okay, let me just that
that's different right now. I understand command in a nutshell
(17:32):
is the ability to continue to move those inches off
the plate. But I want a counterpoint. Paul Sken's had
a phenomenal location plus this year. He was one oh
seven location plus, which is well above average. Okay. Yoshi
Yamamoto in his last four appearances in the in the
playoffs this year had a point two paint. If you
(17:52):
don't know what paint is, it is a measurement based
on inches from the edge of the zone on average
of your pitches. Okay, A positive number is in the
strike zone, a negative number is out of the strike zone.
Yoshi had a point two. He was a fifth of
an inch from the edge of the strike zone on
average for four appearances. That is perfect, like you, That
(18:19):
means the ball is touching the edge on average for
hundreds of pitches. That is perfect command perfect, like you
you don't want you don't want anything higher or lower
than point two. Point two is as perfect as it
could be. That's half of the ball. So I was like, Wow,
that's incredible. And he did it in twenty twenty five.
(18:41):
And that's why he was so effective. He was using
those tunnels and hitting the edges so much that he
was absolutely incredible. Left got people can do it. They
do it all the time. There's lots of guys. Aaron
Nola has great command, Zach Wheeler has great command, and
these guys can run it up there to ninety eight.
So they're both getting the velocity and they are commanding
the zone. To say that the zone is not being
(19:02):
commanded very well is just not true. But I would
say the focus on the command itself without worrying about
the velocity at all. That there's a point there, and
I agree with that. Okay, So there's certain players, young
players come up, they have no command at all. They're
throwing it all over the place. But that could also
be explained the fact that guys are coming up way
(19:24):
faster than they were. I spent five years in the
minor leagues. Guys are spending like a year and a
half out of high school. Now the best ones anyways,
guys are the best stuff. So there is a shorter
development time and that's COVID. Everything's affected by COVID. But
the COVID season made you have to blow guys through
through the system. It makes sense, Okay, I hope some
of that made sense. Number three, pitchers should pitch the
(19:47):
contact and let their defense work more. I will say
this as a general theme that should you should be
comfortable going to that mindset. Every player should feel comfortable
doing that. Like you should be like, Okay, I can't
get out myself out of money situations here, so I
(20:08):
need to use my help. Right. Obviously you want to
you're not trying. You don't Wanting people to hit the
ball hard is like odd. But there's a few things
that were happening that made this make more sense. Okay.
The reason this was so easy to uh to commit
to when one, you have the expand the strike zone,
(20:34):
so you're like, let's let's let's pitch to contact. As
you're throwing four inches off the plate and trying to
get into swing it pitches it can't hit hard, okay,
so that that is much easier to do. When you
can expand the strike zone, you can't do it as much.
So you know that if you're in the strike zone now,
the chances that it's hit harder go up. Also, the
(20:55):
ball is being hit harder, much harder on average now
than it was then. Right, there's much more damage happening,
much more double striples and home runs way more, way,
way more so. Back then it was harder to get strikeouts,
but now it's harder to not give up home runs.
(21:16):
So it's a trade off, just like everything is. It's
just the trade off has changed, and that's why pitching
has adjusted to fit into that trade off, just like
hitting has adjusted to fit and do the pitcher's trade off.
Like that's the pictures engaged, the hitters react. So therefore,
when the pitchers change, the hitters then change. That is
how it's always been. That's how it is now as well,
(21:37):
and that's how it was then too. But the environment
was different. Secondly, there were things called punch and judies
in every single lineup, okay, so you could count on
(21:58):
there were guys in every lineup that you could be like,
I can throw this right down the middle and he's
probably gonna hit at most of double. Every lineup had
him eight nine seven eight nine. Hitters were that way
pitchers were hitting. You had a guy in a lineup
that you would be like, you cannot hit a home
or off me. That doesn't exist anymore. That's gone. There's
no more Gary d Sarcina is in the league. If
(22:21):
you don't know who Gary Dias Sarcina is, he used
to be one of my first base coach with the Mets. Awesome, dude,
love you, love you, Gary. I know you watch the show.
He's the He has the most at bats in his
career without being intentionally walked, at like five thousand, and
he never hit more than six homers in a year.
If you can't hit more than six homers a year
and play every single day, you're not gonna be the
(22:42):
big leagues very long because someone's gonna come along they
can hit with more power and do more damage and
take your job. Like it's just they don't want that.
Though he never struck out, he also was just not
striking out and just hitting ground balls to the ground
to the infielders all the time. That's not more valuable
putting that and putting that in, putting the ball in play,
but never it never creating any runs, and you're just
(23:03):
standing on first all the time, like it's just like walking,
like they're they're just that's just not as helpful for
winning games as it people think seem to think of this.
So that actually leads me to the fourth point. Okay,
hitters were better pre stack cast because batting averages were
higher and strikeouts were lower. Everything that I just said, right,
we were worried about hitting. If you were you were
(23:23):
going up there and you were confident a guy was
just going to hit a single, you're more likely to
let them hit it. That entire dynamic is gone. There.
There are very few hitters outside of the Louis Riases
of the world where you can go up and say
you don't have very much juice. I'm not afraid of
you having a bunch of juice, or you hitting in
(23:45):
a bunch of guys, even when guys in scoring position,
You're like, the most that's gonna happen right now is
going to be one run is going to score. And
so you make that risk reward decision based on the
guy in the plate, and then if the teams that
weren't as good had more than one of these guys, truly,
these guys, three of these guys, guys that just didn't
have much pop or of the ability to do much damage.
(24:05):
And so if you had a nasty pitch, you would
just say, hey, man, ground out, I'm good with it.
That just isn't part of the game anymore. It just
isn't because everyone can hit the ball out of the park.
You want context. In twenty nineteen, the homer year, the
juice ball year, there was over sixty seven hundred home runs.
(24:26):
In nineteen ninety eight, during the home run race between
Maguire and Sosa, there were fifty one hundred homers. There
was sixteen hundred less homers in the steroid era. So like, yes,
there are more strikeouts, Yes, batting average goes down, but
the hits are much more damage. So as a pitcher
(24:48):
you have to avoid damage. And to avoid damage, guys
who are going for damage tend to swing and miss more,
and so then you go for swing a miss because
that's the weakness. Now, the weakness used to be little
slappy stuff, so you would play into that. That's not
the weakness anymore. The weaknesses swing a miss, So that's
being exploited by pitchers. That's why it has changed. Hitters
(25:09):
aren't better. Just like the argument that like Mickey Mantle
could not hit pitching. Now, yeah, if you took him
from his eras plopped him into a big league game
right away, he would be blown away. But give him
a month to adjust. Let if you let these guys
make adjustments and figure it out. They're the greatest players
of all time. They figured it out, then there's a
probably pretty good chance they figured it out. Now they
(25:30):
would they give them the same equipment, give them the
same opportunities for a length of time, they would probably
figure it out. That's the way I always thought about it.
So I think those arguments are silly because yes, of
course they it's things they've never seen before. Like you know,
give a cave man a cell phone and watch his
head explode. You know, it's the same. It's the same concepts.
So that was a big part of it, and that's
(25:52):
why that happens now it's just different. So a lot
of the times these are based in reality, Like there
were less strikeouts and there were higher batting average. That
could be better. It could be a better brand of basement.
You could like that type of baseball better, right, you could.
I under I totally. I'm so empathetic to the fact that, like,
I liked it better when it was that dynamic. But
(26:13):
to rail and complain and get mad at analytics people
or the nerds or whatever for making it this way,
it was just inefficient. Back then. They didn't know things.
Now we know things, and that's how progress works. Sorry,
it has to happen, but guess what, it always is coming,
(26:34):
no matter what you think. So it's not the player's fault.
It's not the guy's fault for becoming the way they
are and trying to optimize the way they are because
that's the way the game's played. So it's like, it's
just about nuance. It's just about Yes, I understand that
you like the gameplay, but unfortunately it's not how it's
played anymore. You can't do the things you did back
then because of the environment. And then the last one,
(26:56):
and I just want to hit this real quick because
I think they're a big part. And this is going
to switch the argument a little bit, because I would
like to talk a little bit about when old school
thinking works better when it actually is more valuable. In
my opinion, the one knee down catching Messine method is
making catcher defense worse statistically very little difference. The ability
(27:19):
to block the ball for many guys is actually easier
that way. This is anecdotes from many a catcher. They're like,
I used to squat my knees feel better. I feel
like I can catch more games and that trade off
is worth it for you for three or four less
wild pitches in a year. Now. Where that actually falls
apart is when instead of one hundred and sixty two games,
(27:41):
you have a three game series in a playoff series.
Then it just looks really bad when these things don't
go well, if you are putting yourself in a position
to not play defense as well. But guys are throwing
more people out this way, the receiving is better, which
affects way more plays then throwing and blocking does. But
(28:02):
I understand optics don't look good and that is a
thing that should matter, So that is valid. And also
in the playoffs, if you get a little bit of
an advantage where you can block the ball a little
bit better, that might be a good trade off to
make in that situation. The same way that the three
outcome thing, or being a guy who is so used
to juicing the ball that he can't remember how to slap,
(28:26):
can't remember how to bunt, can't remember how to hit
and run. If you can't remember how to do those
things at all, your value in the playoffs goes The
situations in which you are valuable goes way down. And
so I would argue that the playoffs in the regular season,
the way the game is played, the type of team
(28:46):
is seeing success in the playoffs tends to do more
of the old school little fundamental things like the little
not high value to running. Scoring a run, but maybe
preventing a little extra run that isn't represented in statistics
is more valuable in the postseason. And that's why I
would like to see a little bit more of that.
But the guys that can do both, the guys that
can be one way during the season and then re
(29:08):
implement some of the things during the postseason. Maybe do
it a little bit in the in the regular season,
then do it more in the postseason. If you're able
to do that, if your team's able to do that,
you have a better chance of going deep in my opinion,
and I think that's but I do think there is
some basis, but I think it's it's base. It's more
important in the postseason than it is in the regular
(29:29):
season because, frankly, and I'm gonna say it and I
know this is going to sound good, the regular season
mostly doesn't matter very much. Day to day really doesn't,
really really doesn't. It's just trying to get you there,
and you've got to be able to do those people
in deal. Wait
Old school versus new school. Anyone who's been on the
internet or just at a baseball game and listen or
listen to one on TV has probably heard someone who
played or or enjoyed baseball a lot in the early
two thousands and nineties eighty seventies complaining or complaining. It's
not the right word. I want to retract that word,
(00:31):
not complaining being critical or skeptical of the way that
players are developed and this year, these years, and whether
or not it is a good thing or bad thing,
and for many it's much much worse now than it
was then. So I want to be very clear here.
(00:55):
I am not here to crap on or try to
bury or throw shade at people who feel a certain
way about the way the game is played or players
are developed or anything in between. Okay, it's usually not
what people are saying, it's just how they're saying. What
I take issue with a lot of times comes down
(01:17):
to this certainty that whatever you know is the correct thing,
or your opinion is the right opinion, and that is
just almost always not true. It's very nuanced. There's nuance,
and there's reasons for the things that are happening, and
it's hard to you know, it's a chicken egg situation.
(01:40):
It's hard to figure out why things are the way
they are unless you discuss them. And I have five
big arguments that I've seen recently, and I just want
to say thank you to Twitter for all your help
on establishing what these things are so that I can
get into them. But full disclosure, and there's gonna be
a second disclaimer here. We're going to move on. This
came this idea, or basically, maybe the straw that broke
(02:02):
the camel's back, if you will, came from a tweet
from the gentleman on the left, Kurt Okay. I am
not going to comment on or give any opinion on
the mirror of myriad other things this gentleman has had happen, Okay,
and the things that he has done. This has nothing
to do with that. It just has to do with
(02:23):
this specific tweet and the way that it is worded
that lines up with a lot of other tweets also
worded similarly to this. So we're going to talk about
the tweet that I'm gonna get into the points, you know,
draw your own conclusions. I'm not going to go in
depth on anything else that is that is a different thing,
(02:44):
and I'm I'm that's not what I'm interested in. So, okay,
this is the tweet in question, all right, today it's
this is So what he's doing is he's talking about
pitching mechanics. So the first one that comes down to
is life mechanically, which I've been talking about a lot lately,
especially with the Trevor thos Cheese project, which if you
(03:06):
go check that out on my YouTube channel, I did
a pretty in depth breakdown of what I'm doing wrong
mechanically to not be able to get velocity. Okay, so
like if you're interested in that stuff, it's over there.
I think I did a pretty good job of it.
That made a lot of things that really aren't discussed
in the mainstream because they're just kind of boring and
very technical, maybe a little bit more successful accessible. So
(03:30):
I want to talk a little bit about this today.
It's standing tall versus extension. That means standing up tall
and reaching way out when you release the ball. It's
basically how far you are off the rubber when you
release it. And the case he is making is one
is extremely stressful and the other is not. Those two
that is not a true statement. He is making an
(03:51):
argument based on what he felt. You're going to notice
a pattern here. There's a lot of things that he
knows from his own experience, but he does very little
thinking about possibly anyone else having another experience and maybe
being physically different than him. So there's gonna be a
lot of that. Okay, one is extremely stressful. There's literally
been testing and there isn't a lot of scientific data
(04:15):
backing that up. Okay, someone has made these guys believe
the effort whip is the best way to max velocity.
It by definition, is the best way to increase velocity.
So that argument is also incorrect. Whip. The word whip
is how you produce from velocity, and when he was
throwing hard, he was also whipping. Now, I think he's
(04:36):
talking about the mindset where you're trying to do, which
I'll give credit where credits you there. If that is like,
if you're thinking whip like that might not produce, you
might not be producing more whip by thinking about it
and trying to. If that's the case, then yes, extension
and finish generate max Baxman and velocity max extension does
(05:00):
not correlate directly with velocity. Ask mister Jezus Lzardo, who
has some of the shortest extension in the major leagues
and throws ninety seven to ninety nine miles and our
more extension does not directly correlate with more velocity, thank
you very much. And you can command the fastball when
(05:21):
you extend more. Again, there's no link between those things either.
One thing that everything in this tweet has to do
with is they're all things that he did when he pitched. Okay,
so this is the crux of the matter. This is
the old school versus the new school kind of approach
to an argument. If you approach an argument as if
(05:42):
there is no argument, that that is something I take
exception with. And so that's why this is coming up today. Okay,
the new way is why pitchers no longer command the
fastball inside the zone. Incorrect. They do command the fastball
inside the strike zone. They can throw strikes, but they
can't repeat fastball location between a six to eight inch box.
(06:03):
If they could, Paul Skins would strike punch out four
hundred no. No. And also this was in reply to
a tweet that was breaking down his mechanics versus Paul Skins,
who just won the cy Young and had in two seasons.
Has had two seasons, both of which are better than
(06:24):
any season the Kirk Chill he ever had. Kirschling is
a great pitcher. He's probably should be a Hall of
Famer on pitching, but we know what else is going
on there. So but to criticize Paul Skeans of all people,
for command is incredible to me because he's got some
of the best command in the major leagues and he
throws one hundred miles an hour and that's proven. Okay,
(06:46):
so there's a lot going on here. We can I
can go point by point by point, but it's the
point is these people can't do this thing. Yes they can,
Yes they can, Yes they can. None of that's true.
So let me be very clear here. So let's just
get into the points because this brings up a lot
of them, and I have five of them that we
can go through point by point, which I will probably
refer back to this a lot. But there's a lot
(07:06):
going on here. But at the end of the day,
kids that are seeing this week, guys out there that
are learning to pitch, Kurt has you would look up
to him because he was very successful in the major
leagues much more successful than me, and I would be
a guy who watched him throw the bloody sock was
a great moment in my childhood, right like I would
if I were fourteen, I would take all of this
(07:28):
as fact, as rules of nature, and they aren't rules
of nature. You don't have to do a lot of
the same things. You might not be able to do
them effectively. And if you're constantly chasing that, that's when
guys are not getting It's about each person's independent and
you've got to be able to teach based on what
you know about the guy. You can't just say do
(07:49):
what I did all of the time. I had a
lot of coaches that did that, and they weren't very
good at coaching. So I will put it that way,
all right, Moving on, This is art, This is the
This kind of encapsulates that whole argument. Okay, this is
a common old school or the fan of old school
baseball mechanics are taught wrong these days, they're always getting hurt.
(08:10):
Let me just talk about this piece by piece. Okay,
one using the word wrong automatically disqualifies a lot. Okay,
there's no such thing as wrong, because some things work
for guys and not others, and they just get lucky
and they don't get hurt. But when you throw a baseball,
(08:34):
the amount of force you're armed is generating is structurally
more than your UCL is supposed to theoretically be able
to take. So the rizon in Tommy John is because
that force that's traveling through that and basically just bypassing,
it's going so quickly that it's not giving them enough stress.
Like if it goes fast enough, it's okay, But if
(08:58):
you just like tested it over and over again in
a vacuum, it would blow pretty quickly. So we're not
actually supposed to be throwing baseballs at ninety even, let
alone one hundred miles an hour. So there is some
truth to throwing harder gets you hurt, Like, there's a
lot of truth to that. The second part of this
is guys are always getting hurt, Absolutely true. I agree
(09:18):
with that guys are getting hurt a lot, and that
is directly correlated with maximum velocity happening more often. You're
just throwing harder more often, and so it's kind of
a catch twenty two in that your mechanics get smoother,
it allows you to throw harder, more often, which then
increases that force that's already above the threshold on your
(09:40):
elbow over and over again. So the chances, no matter
what you do, the chances that you blow out are higher.
So throwing harder means because we figured out how to
produce velocity in a safe way, you're just risking injury
more because baseball, you're not supposed to throw a baseball
this way, like we're not supposed to do this. Our
(10:01):
elbow is not built to so you can only improve
it to a certain level. Right. It's very interesting in
that way, But this is generally true because guys are
throwing harder. And but we've always chased velocity, by the way,
I just want to be very clear. When I was
twelve and the year two thousand and one, we were
chasing velossity. In nineteen ninety five, when they had soccer guns,
(10:23):
they were chasing glossity. They just didn't know how to
do it effectively. Now we do. That's the big change. Okay,
So guys are always getting hurt, Yes, that is true,
but that is why mostly why, And once you know
how to be a very good version of yourself and
knowing that your elbow is already being put into that
stressful position whether or not you're throwing eighty six or
(10:45):
ninety eight. You know, you're like, yes, it's more likely,
but that's worth it for the benefit of the rewards
that you get for being that elite. The difference between
those two guys is a bigger difference in reward than
it is in increase in getting hurt. Hal Hendricks, of
all people, got Tommy John. He hasn't thrown a ninety
(11:06):
mile on our fastball in ten years, and he got
Tommy John surgery. Now correct me if I'm wrong. I'm
fairly certain Jamie Morier got Tommy John at least once
in his career.
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Speaker 1 (12:26):
And that guy couldn't break an egg. He was the
first guy to tell you that. So there's just a
level of diminishing returns at some point, right, So let
me just say that that doesn't mean that how things
are being or like becoming the most efficient version of
a picture is wrong. It just carries more risk, and
(12:48):
that risk is being built into the game. Now we
can have that argument whether or not we should be
risking it. But we're human beings, and when you're competitive
and you see the opportunity to be better than somebody,
you're going to take that opportunity. You are everyone would
have And I'm going to say this, if Kurt knew
how to throw harder, he would have tried it. Now.
I don't know if he would have tried the whole time,
but if he was like, oh, if someone was like, hey, man,
(13:09):
I can help you throw ninety eight miles an hour,
you think it'd be like, nah, I don't want to
get Tommy John. No, he would try to throw ninety
eight miles an hour. He just didn't. So you know,
it's like, I hate it when we're blaming all these
guys trying to throw harder because that's how you compete. Now,
it's just the sad fact of the matter. I don't
know how to I don't know how to explain that.
(13:30):
Even more so, this is actually really interesting because fan or,
a guy that we've talked about on the show before,
reply to that tweet, and I think this is very,
very funny. This is a tweet from Bob Stock Now,
(13:52):
Robert Stop, we've talked about him before. Oops, there it is,
he said, Walter Johnson threw five five nine hundred innings
compared to shillings thirty two hundred, doing everything wrong according
to him, And he threw like that, didn't even follow
through through sidearm, had no extension, but he never got hurt. Okay.
(14:14):
And then Kurt replied to that and said, well, if
I threw seventy eight, I would have thrown six thousand innings,
where the point completely woofed over his head, and Bob's
Rob's like, Robert's like, yeah, that's our point. They throw
harder on you. That's why they get hurt, Not because
your mechanics are better, because they throw harder than you.
Guys are getting harder. It's hurt more because they throw harder.
(14:36):
That's that's why. It's not because the mechanics are messed up.
It's because they throw harder. Their mechanics might be better
that a lot of them to throw harder, but that
is why they get hurt more. So. Very nice Robert X,
teammate of mine, funny dude. I like him a lot,
like him a lot. He's a good guy. Okay, let's
move it back, let's get back in here, all right,
(14:57):
next point point number two or argument number two, moving
on form mechanics, no one can command the strike zone anymore.
Ha ha. Nope. So this is a big difference between
the nineties. We're gonna use the nineties and two thousands, right,
We're gonna use those eras because some of the characters
(15:18):
or the people that comment on these things very like,
feeling very strongly about it, played in those eras or
were big fans. Then commanding the strike zone means something
completely different. So we hear about Greg Maddox all the time,
the professor still even with the strike zone the way
it was, which I'm going to talk about in a second,
he was one of the greatest pictures of all time,
(15:41):
and he knew what was going, he knew the environment,
he knew what he had to work with, and he
played those cards like a master poker player. So I'm
not taking anything away from him, and he would tell you,
just like everybody else, it was a different time in
that you could use the psychology of the umpire to
change what the strike zone meant when that happened, and
(16:02):
Pitcher's meaning you can expand off if you're hitting the
edge in the beginning of the game. You might be
able to expand four inches either way now because you've
been hitting the edge so much and you get the
benefit of the doubt. When hitters see that happening, they
then have to start swinging at four inches off the plate,
which is very hard to hit effectively. So now the
chase rate's going up. So just because a pitch was
(16:24):
called four inches off the plate, doesn't mean it's actually
in the strike zone, right, it's just called a strike.
Now you can't do that at all, So you actually
have to throw the ball in the box a lot
more now. Of course there's a ton there's biases. Of course,
some guys like miss one side of the plate some umpires,
but they're not you're not playing a game with the
(16:44):
umpire where you're getting them to change. They just have
that thing they can't see very well. You can exploit
that a little bit, but you can't like play the
mind games anymore. Like they just won't go with you
because they are are Their jobs depend on this now
more than they were then. So you have to get
people out literally in that box more often. Now you
have to throw actually in the box to get more swings.
(17:07):
Now you can't when you can't go four inches off
the plate. Hitters aren't gonna swing because they know it's
not gonna be called. They know that you're they're not
gonna go with you. So if they don't go with you,
why would they swing at it? So suddenly there's less chasing.
If there's less chasing, that means you're going to be
in the strike zone more. Okay, let me just that
that's different right now. I understand command in a nutshell
(17:32):
is the ability to continue to move those inches off
the plate. But I want a counterpoint. Paul Sken's had
a phenomenal location plus this year. He was one oh
seven location plus, which is well above average. Okay. Yoshi
Yamamoto in his last four appearances in the in the
playoffs this year had a point two paint. If you
(17:52):
don't know what paint is, it is a measurement based
on inches from the edge of the zone on average
of your pitches. Okay, A positive number is in the
strike zone, a negative number is out of the strike zone.
Yoshi had a point two. He was a fifth of
an inch from the edge of the strike zone on
average for four appearances. That is perfect, like you, That
(18:19):
means the ball is touching the edge on average for
hundreds of pitches. That is perfect command perfect, like you
you don't want you don't want anything higher or lower
than point two. Point two is as perfect as it
could be. That's half of the ball. So I was like, Wow,
that's incredible. And he did it in twenty twenty five.
(18:41):
And that's why he was so effective. He was using
those tunnels and hitting the edges so much that he
was absolutely incredible. Left got people can do it. They
do it all the time. There's lots of guys. Aaron
Nola has great command, Zach Wheeler has great command, and
these guys can run it up there to ninety eight.
So they're both getting the velocity and they are commanding
the zone. To say that the zone is not being
(19:02):
commanded very well is just not true. But I would
say the focus on the command itself without worrying about
the velocity at all. That there's a point there, and
I agree with that. Okay, So there's certain players, young
players come up, they have no command at all. They're
throwing it all over the place. But that could also
be explained the fact that guys are coming up way
(19:24):
faster than they were. I spent five years in the
minor leagues. Guys are spending like a year and a
half out of high school. Now the best ones anyways,
guys are the best stuff. So there is a shorter
development time and that's COVID. Everything's affected by COVID. But
the COVID season made you have to blow guys through
through the system. It makes sense, Okay, I hope some
of that made sense. Number three, pitchers should pitch the
(19:47):
contact and let their defense work more. I will say
this as a general theme that should you should be
comfortable going to that mindset. Every player should feel comfortable
doing that. Like you should be like, Okay, I can't
get out myself out of money situations here, so I
(20:08):
need to use my help. Right. Obviously you want to
you're not trying. You don't Wanting people to hit the
ball hard is like odd. But there's a few things
that were happening that made this make more sense. Okay.
The reason this was so easy to uh to commit
to when one, you have the expand the strike zone,
(20:34):
so you're like, let's let's let's pitch to contact. As
you're throwing four inches off the plate and trying to
get into swing it pitches it can't hit hard, okay,
so that that is much easier to do. When you
can expand the strike zone, you can't do it as much.
So you know that if you're in the strike zone now,
the chances that it's hit harder go up. Also, the
(20:55):
ball is being hit harder, much harder on average now
than it was then. Right, there's much more damage happening,
much more double striples and home runs way more, way,
way more so. Back then it was harder to get strikeouts,
but now it's harder to not give up home runs.
(21:16):
So it's a trade off, just like everything is. It's
just the trade off has changed, and that's why pitching
has adjusted to fit into that trade off, just like
hitting has adjusted to fit and do the pitcher's trade off.
Like that's the pictures engaged, the hitters react. So therefore,
when the pitchers change, the hitters then change. That is
how it's always been. That's how it is now as well,
(21:37):
and that's how it was then too. But the environment
was different. Secondly, there were things called punch and judies
in every single lineup, okay, so you could count on
(21:58):
there were guys in every lineup that you could be like,
I can throw this right down the middle and he's
probably gonna hit at most of double. Every lineup had
him eight nine seven eight nine. Hitters were that way
pitchers were hitting. You had a guy in a lineup
that you would be like, you cannot hit a home
or off me. That doesn't exist anymore. That's gone. There's
no more Gary d Sarcina is in the league. If
(22:21):
you don't know who Gary Dias Sarcina is, he used
to be one of my first base coach with the Mets. Awesome, dude,
love you, love you, Gary. I know you watch the show.
He's the He has the most at bats in his
career without being intentionally walked, at like five thousand, and
he never hit more than six homers in a year.
If you can't hit more than six homers a year
and play every single day, you're not gonna be the
(22:42):
big leagues very long because someone's gonna come along they
can hit with more power and do more damage and
take your job. Like it's just they don't want that.
Though he never struck out, he also was just not
striking out and just hitting ground balls to the ground
to the infielders all the time. That's not more valuable
putting that and putting that in, putting the ball in play,
but never it never creating any runs, and you're just
(23:03):
standing on first all the time, like it's just like walking,
like they're they're just that's just not as helpful for
winning games as it people think seem to think of this.
So that actually leads me to the fourth point. Okay,
hitters were better pre stack cast because batting averages were
higher and strikeouts were lower. Everything that I just said, right,
we were worried about hitting. If you were you were
(23:23):
going up there and you were confident a guy was
just going to hit a single, you're more likely to
let them hit it. That entire dynamic is gone. There.
There are very few hitters outside of the Louis Riases
of the world where you can go up and say
you don't have very much juice. I'm not afraid of
you having a bunch of juice, or you hitting in
(23:45):
a bunch of guys, even when guys in scoring position,
You're like, the most that's gonna happen right now is
going to be one run is going to score. And
so you make that risk reward decision based on the
guy in the plate, and then if the teams that
weren't as good had more than one of these guys, truly,
these guys, three of these guys, guys that just didn't
have much pop or of the ability to do much damage.
(24:05):
And so if you had a nasty pitch, you would
just say, hey, man, ground out, I'm good with it.
That just isn't part of the game anymore. It just
isn't because everyone can hit the ball out of the park.
You want context. In twenty nineteen, the homer year, the
juice ball year, there was over sixty seven hundred home runs.
(24:26):
In nineteen ninety eight, during the home run race between
Maguire and Sosa, there were fifty one hundred homers. There
was sixteen hundred less homers in the steroid era. So like, yes,
there are more strikeouts, Yes, batting average goes down, but
the hits are much more damage. So as a pitcher
(24:48):
you have to avoid damage. And to avoid damage, guys
who are going for damage tend to swing and miss more,
and so then you go for swing a miss because
that's the weakness. Now, the weakness used to be little
slappy stuff, so you would play into that. That's not
the weakness anymore. The weaknesses swing a miss, So that's
being exploited by pitchers. That's why it has changed. Hitters
(25:09):
aren't better. Just like the argument that like Mickey Mantle
could not hit pitching. Now, yeah, if you took him
from his eras plopped him into a big league game
right away, he would be blown away. But give him
a month to adjust. Let if you let these guys
make adjustments and figure it out. They're the greatest players
of all time. They figured it out, then there's a
probably pretty good chance they figured it out. Now they
(25:30):
would they give them the same equipment, give them the
same opportunities for a length of time, they would probably
figure it out. That's the way I always thought about it.
So I think those arguments are silly because yes, of
course they it's things they've never seen before. Like you know,
give a cave man a cell phone and watch his
head explode. You know, it's the same. It's the same concepts.
So that was a big part of it, and that's
(25:52):
why that happens now it's just different. So a lot
of the times these are based in reality, Like there
were less strikeouts and there were higher batting average. That
could be better. It could be a better brand of basement.
You could like that type of baseball better, right, you could.
I under I totally. I'm so empathetic to the fact that, like,
I liked it better when it was that dynamic. But
(26:13):
to rail and complain and get mad at analytics people
or the nerds or whatever for making it this way,
it was just inefficient. Back then. They didn't know things.
Now we know things, and that's how progress works. Sorry,
it has to happen, but guess what, it always is coming,
(26:34):
no matter what you think. So it's not the player's fault.
It's not the guy's fault for becoming the way they
are and trying to optimize the way they are because
that's the way the game's played. So it's like, it's
just about nuance. It's just about Yes, I understand that
you like the gameplay, but unfortunately it's not how it's
played anymore. You can't do the things you did back
then because of the environment. And then the last one,
(26:56):
and I just want to hit this real quick because
I think they're a big part. And this is going
to switch the argument a little bit, because I would
like to talk a little bit about when old school
thinking works better when it actually is more valuable. In
my opinion, the one knee down catching Messine method is
making catcher defense worse statistically very little difference. The ability
(27:19):
to block the ball for many guys is actually easier
that way. This is anecdotes from many a catcher. They're like,
I used to squat my knees feel better. I feel
like I can catch more games and that trade off
is worth it for you for three or four less
wild pitches in a year. Now. Where that actually falls
apart is when instead of one hundred and sixty two games,
(27:41):
you have a three game series in a playoff series.
Then it just looks really bad when these things don't
go well, if you are putting yourself in a position
to not play defense as well. But guys are throwing
more people out this way, the receiving is better, which
affects way more plays then throwing and blocking does. But
(28:02):
I understand optics don't look good and that is a
thing that should matter, So that is valid. And also
in the playoffs, if you get a little bit of
an advantage where you can block the ball a little
bit better, that might be a good trade off to
make in that situation. The same way that the three
outcome thing, or being a guy who is so used
to juicing the ball that he can't remember how to slap,
(28:26):
can't remember how to bunt, can't remember how to hit
and run. If you can't remember how to do those
things at all, your value in the playoffs goes The
situations in which you are valuable goes way down. And
so I would argue that the playoffs in the regular season,
the way the game is played, the type of team
(28:46):
is seeing success in the playoffs tends to do more
of the old school little fundamental things like the little
not high value to running. Scoring a run, but maybe
preventing a little extra run that isn't represented in statistics
is more valuable in the postseason. And that's why I
would like to see a little bit more of that.
But the guys that can do both, the guys that
can be one way during the season and then re
(29:08):
implement some of the things during the postseason. Maybe do
it a little bit in the in the regular season,
then do it more in the postseason. If you're able
to do that, if your team's able to do that,
you have a better chance of going deep in my opinion,
and I think that's but I do think there is
some basis, but I think it's it's base. It's more
important in the postseason than it is in the regular
(29:29):
season because, frankly, and I'm gonna say it and I
know this is going to sound good, the regular season
mostly doesn't matter very much. Day to day really doesn't,
really really doesn't. It's just trying to get you there,
and you've got to be able to do those people
in deal. Wait
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