00:00All right, today's game, Kurt, these guys go five and two-thirds, if that.
00:04You've got these things called openers now, two and two-thirds.
00:08I mean, nobody's coming out and taking the ball out of your hands,
00:12five and two-thirds in a game in your time.
00:15That ain't happening.
00:17In today's game, how would you have adjusted to that?
00:21I wouldn't have.
00:23I was raised with a very different mentality, but let me be clear.
00:27It's not their fault.
00:28It's the game's fault.
00:30Number one, pitching is so broken as to be hard to watch because the game,
00:38there are, I would argue, less than 20 true pitchers in the big leagues.
00:44There's a couple hundred throwers.
00:48I mean, it's a craft.
00:50It's an art.
00:52And, you know, when you go, you know, the Picasso of our profession was Maddox.
01:00And you don't see the Maddoxes anymore because, and listen, I'm not a, oh, my God,
01:06the Ivy Leaguers are ruining baseball, poo-poo.
01:09I mean, I think there's some, a lot of, I like a lot of the metrics.
01:13I like the ability to, to, to calculate spin rate, to understand breaking balls.
01:18And if I'm coaching, that's helpful.
01:21Um, but the hunt for velocity is destroyed pitching and physically is ruining the pitchers.
01:27Uh, you know, I, I, I've said, uh, and it's funny to watch fans get defensive.
01:32I'm not, I'm not ever commenting on a personal level when I talk about pitchers and things
01:37like that.
01:38I'm commenting on a, on a, on someone who's done the craft and understands it.
01:41I look at a guy like Bubba Chandler for the pirates.
01:44And I made a comment.
01:45He had an outing in spring training where he couldn't find the strike zone.
01:49And he, you know, he went like two thirds of an inning, walk five, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
01:52And my comment was Bubba Chandler could show up five days from now with that same exact
01:56stuff and throw four no hit innings.
01:59And it's exactly what he did.
02:01And people were like, Oh, quit hating.
02:03It's early in spring training.
02:04Well, bad mechanics don't have a, a, an expiration date or a, a, a set in.
02:10Did they just present?
02:11And these guys, the hard throwing what it's again, it's understandable, but I want to tell
02:16you something.
02:17Um, it's understandable because velocity gets you drafted.
02:21It's almost always gotten you drafted, but when teams are drafting, I know teams literally
02:26will go into the draft, never having seen players, they draft because the metrics tell
02:32them otherwise.
02:34And the thing that blew me away, I've talked to a couple of general managers about this
02:39in depth as I scout for the draft and teams look for advice about pitching and stuff.
02:46And I've been, and I, I, I think I was ignorant on my part.
02:50Initially, I, I kept trying to explain to these guys, the game pitching's broken, pitching's
02:54broken.
02:55Here's why, blah, blah, blah.
02:57And the response I got was breathtaking, but actually incredibly revealing.
03:01Two of them said to me, I know it's broke, but I'm being paid to win.
03:07So I don't have the time to fix it.
03:09So I'm going to use what I have with the time that I have to try and win the, and
03:14recognizing
03:14these throwers.
03:16I talked to a general manager who acquired, I think four or five young minor league pitchers
03:20over a trading deadline.
03:22And he said, I told my baseball people, don't plan on three or four of those guys ever see
03:27in the big leagues.
03:28They know they're going to get hurt before that.
03:31And my, my response is, why don't you change the mechanics?
03:34We don't have the time to change the mechanics.
03:36So what we do is our max effort guys in the minor leagues, we put them on pitch counts.
03:41The guys with better mechanics who don't max effort, we let them go longer.
03:44Instead of fixing it, they just use, utilize the asset to maximize the value with disregard
03:51or no regard to length of tenure.
03:54Well, you know what?
03:55He's going to be gone in a couple of years anyway.
03:58So, you know, it's how they did.
04:02It's, it's, it's a very, um, like, like cold system from, from a personality perspective.
04:10Well, you know, he's going to, he's a max effort guy.
04:12He's going to break, but we're going to use them as long as we can ride him as hard as
04:15we can.
04:16And when he breaks, he breaks.
