00:00but i had a question about the garrett crochet 85 pitch outing who decided that 85 pitches was the
00:06out and why and lastly why didn't that get conveyed to garrett crochet before the start
00:15um so that he could have understood maybe pitched a little bit differently knowing he only had 85
00:19pitches that day yeah so i would say that's a an organizational decision um and and i'm happy to
00:28to take that one on uh and you know we collect a lot of information about um you know about our
00:34our players especially our pitchers in between starts some of that is objective some of it is
00:38subjective and you know we're trying like like all decisions we're trying to balance the short-term
00:43and long-term interest of of the team and uh you know we felt like it made sense based on some of
00:49the workload that he had amassed going into that start to keep him a little bit shorter uh you know
00:56i don't know that there's a magic number somewhere between 80 and 90 is kind of where
01:00we landed and then you know i think um kind of in respecting the competitive nature of garrett and
01:07the game um you know i've i've seen it go both ways where it could be helpful to say hey you know we're
01:12going to keep you a little bit short um i've also uh seen that backfire and you know we decided it was
01:17best to you know have garrett prepare as as usual um you know and approach the game in the way that he
01:23had his previous starts given how successful they've been and um you know if garrett is frustrated
01:28because he's he was taken by by surprise we we understand that we're also able to to talk through
01:32it and i think that you know ultimately he both understood and um and agreed that that uh you know
01:39if this situation arose again that uh understanding what his pitch count was going to be was not something
01:44that he was looking for but so that's not core's decision then so that's the organization has
01:48analytics they present to him and say hey this is why we should be at this point tonight
01:54uh it's a conversation yeah um you know and uh as it relates to to health um you know i i think it
02:03makes sense to to leverage all of the resources and expertise in the organization and um you know
02:09alice and i have conversations around game strategy every single day and you know when we see things
02:14differently we sit down and have productive conversations about it and um you know and ultimately
02:18make a decision but it's not just a conversation if you say to him this is why we have to be at 85
02:23pitches then he gets out after 85 pitches right i mean that's not it's not like he said how many
02:28pitches should we have for him tonight you present information to the manager saying this is why we
02:33should pull him at 85 pitches tonight uh right right so right we would we would sit down and say hey this
02:41is kind of what the workload has looked like heading into this this is what you know some of the
02:45the information that we have says uh you know we we need to we're going to need to try to monitor the
02:51workload is it tonight is it next time let's grab the the medical group um and then we reach a decision
02:56together craig how do you balance or especially in the close games that you lost and you guys lost a lot
03:03of them balancing going with your gut and just your baseball experience versus the analytics and maybe
03:12saying all right well we can't bring chapman in for one more inning or maybe so we have to go with
03:18another direction like how do you balance that because i feel like in baseball you know maybe times
03:24when it's close games you guys should use your gut more than the analytics
03:29yeah i think any answer to that is going to be imperfect you try to synthesize all of that
03:37information in real time and often you don't have all of the information um you know what we try to do
03:44is just kind of talk about like the decision making framework right hey we knew that the best matchup
03:51we think is uh you know it's kind of predicted by some projection model is this here's here's why it didn't
03:58make sense to do that whether it was uh you know a reliever is tired or we felt like there was an
04:05opposing strategy that might um you know that might conflict with that or the starter that we had in the
04:11game um you know is is throwing really well and that's not captured so it's not about you know never
04:18defying what um you know what the analytics says i think it's just about being consistent in how you make
04:24a decision and if we're going to rely on our gut regularly um then we should be tracking those
04:30decisions and making sure that we're getting them right more than the alternatives and if we're going
04:34to follow the analytics all of the time then we also need to be tracking that and making sure that
04:38we're getting it right um you know more more often than not and i think where we get in trouble is when
04:43you you know when you can when you think that um you know you might know something that uh that a model
04:49doesn't and you don't or you assume that a model does know something that it doesn't and so i think
04:54understanding what the inputs are and understanding what the blind spots are is how you make the best
04:58decisions what did the analytics say about how many times a team can be walked off in a single season
05:06this is uh yeah this stretch that we are in is highly improbable unfortunately um it doesn't really
05:11matter right like and you know baseball is the game that we do this all the time we look at
05:16our underlying metrics and we try to find the silver lining and we say you know our based on
05:20our run differential our expected record is we should be two or three games over 500 the reality
05:25is we don't get to go back and win the games that we've lost though so you know we have to put ourselves
05:30in a position by doing all of those things that we talked about i'll call every chance we have
05:35i guess i just with the analytics stuff i just asked this and i'm not asking this to be um a dink
05:41what is the role of alex cora why is he paid seven million dollars a year if he's just
05:46presented with information and enacts that as the as the on-field manager during the game
05:53uh so i would say that that's not uh exclusively the role i think that was you know probably
05:59distilled down too simply i think it's to synthesize in real time the information that
06:04he's seeing along with uh the objective information and all of the preparation um and i also think you
06:11know one of if not the most difficult job that a manager has and and you know alex could certainly
06:16speak to this better than i can is managing um the personalities and the needs of 26 guys
06:22in a clubhouse and a staff of 10 to 15 coaches um you know but this isn't about telling alex to you
06:30know stick to a script uh without deviating at all this is about having productive conversations to put
06:36the team in the best position to win as often as we possibly can all right well hang in there yep
06:42toes on the grass yeah late in games especially for the third if you see that tomorrow night uh
06:48know that it was this call that maybe uh maybe throw an extra inning bunt on the road out there
06:54every once in a while maybe despite the analytics yeah no that's when i you know when i talk about um
07:01you know maybe doing some things a little bit differently than we we normally would uh you
07:05know while the offense isn't scoring runs the way that we'd like um you know i think all of those
07:10types of creative solutions need to be options for us they're on the table yeah all right craig thank you
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