00:00There seems to be an issue that you're kind of like dealing with right now.
00:04Obviously, fans are interested, reporters are interested.
00:07I try not to ask like like multi-pronged question, but what would why aren't Jonah Tong and Brandon Sprout here?
00:16And what would it take to to to get one or the other here?
00:19What do you have to see from either your current club need or their abilities to get them here?
00:25Yeah, clearly we haven't gotten the length from our starters as a whole that we would like.
00:34And we certainly recognize that.
00:37I think I think.
00:40For part of the year, that narrative was actually overblown, but recently it hasn't been.
00:47I think when our when our starters were giving us five innings pretty consistently in this day and age,
00:55with the way bullpens are constructed, with the way we manage our bullpen pretty actively from a roster perspective,
01:02that's actually highly functional.
01:04If we're getting five good innings a night or averaging five good innings a night and we could turn over a bullpen,
01:11we had a lot of success with that early in the year.
01:14More recently, I think I think the narrative has has actually been accurate where we haven't got enough length.
01:20And when there is, you know, too often cases where Mendy has to go and get a starter without completing five.
01:32If that happens too often, it does begin to tax your bullpen.
01:35It creates really challenging, really challenging situations to manage through the game.
01:42You know, I think I think everyone would like to do better there, including our starting pitchers.
01:50And we're certainly aware of it. So we're continuing to evaluate it.
01:53And I would call this situation fluid.
01:56I think we're taking everything turn by turn at this point in terms of what our starting rotation looks like.
02:02We are aware that we need to be better in this spot.
02:06There's no question. I think we have seen signs of getting better over the last couple turns to the rotation.
02:14Other than one hiccup, David Peterson has given us length.
02:17Clay Holmes last time gave us length and has been better of late.
02:22And I think he's made some adjustments that are going to allow him to be better going forward.
02:26Clearly, Nolan McClain has come up and given us some quality starts.
02:32And then Kodai and Sean have been a little inconsistent.
02:36And we probably need to see a little bit more consistency there in terms of in terms of at least getting us through five.
02:42If we can count on getting through five most times, we've got a roster construction that can handle that.
02:47And certainly Mendy is very adept at managing the back half of games.
02:53But we've got to get there.
02:55And I think it is a fair critique that we haven't done that consistently enough, particularly over the last month.
03:02Well, the pitching was very up and now down at the major league level.
03:07At the minor league level, it's been spectacular.
03:09The guys of whoever is developing these guys is doing a great job down there.
03:14McClain was doing great and he's called up.
03:16But Tong is doing the best of anybody in the minor leagues, not only on your team, on any team.
03:21He's got 179 strikeouts in 113 innings.
03:25I mean, what are the chances we are going to see him this year and pretty soon?
03:31Look, I'm not going to rule anything out.
03:33We haven't made any firm decisions yet on what our rotation looks like going forward,
03:42what starting pitchers could be involved in that, what pitchers could go to the bullpen.
03:47As I said, we're going to take this turn by turn.
03:49We do have guys with track records in our rotation.
03:54And I do think that is important for us to note.
04:01But we need to do it.
04:03And certainly over the last month, we haven't gotten the consistent, I'd say, quantity out of our starters that we would like.
04:14David, you've mentioned rotation a few times, but Sprout went to the bullpen in his last time around.
04:23It didn't go very well, at least statistically.
04:25I don't know if the underlying stuff was any different.
04:27You could tell us.
04:29At some point, when you're in a race to get in and then a race, you know, in the postseason, where this becomes some level of tournament baseball,
04:38could part of this decision with Tong and or Sprout be simply, starting September 1st, are they one or two of our 14 best pitchers?
04:48Should they be here to help us in some form, whether it's at a starter or something else, or does it disrupt development too much?
04:56Yeah, so I think that's a very fair question, starting with the Sprout situation.
05:01That was not a shift to the bullpen, and I think it may have gotten misinterpreted too much.
05:06If you look at how we've handled our AAA starters throughout the year, periodically, we do ask them to pitch in back of an opener,
05:13because that is something that at times we do in the big leagues.
05:17We did it with Tidwell when he was up earlier.
05:21And also, we never know what role we're going to need someone in.
05:25And so, having these starters with the experience of not running out onto the field with their team at the first inning, there's some value to that.
05:35So, this was pre-scheduled for Brandon.
05:37I know it made a lot of noise, but this had been coming.
05:41He was going to pitch behind an opener because it was his turn to do it.
05:45So, to your second part of your question, you know, once you get into these latter stages of the year in September, certainly into the playoffs, how do you structure a staff?
05:56And, yeah, the priority is who are our 14 best pitchers and how do we structure a major league pitching staff that allows us to get outs at all parts of the game?
06:09And so, at previous points in my career, we have used top starter prospects out of the pen.
06:19It's at times worked pretty well, not necessarily committing to doing that here, but we'd be foolish not to consider it.
