00:00Bobby, am I right when I say this, that today the game,
00:03especially in the pitching side of it, it's more about velocity than innings.
00:07Back in the day, you wanted guys to go seven and two-thirds.
00:11Now, it's about like these openers now, and it's more about bullpen.
00:15It's more about velocity.
00:16Is that good for the game in your opinion?
00:22Well, you know, I don't mind pitchers getting better,
00:25and I think that, you know, Tom House, who is one of my coaches
00:29and one of the leaders who now teaches quarterbacks to throw
00:34as well as pitchers to throw, you know, tried to figure out
00:38how do you throw, you know, biomechanically correct.
00:44And finally, the whole world has caught up with his knowledge
00:47on the pitching side.
00:49The hitting side has been left behind because there's been so many other ideas.
00:55Instead of just following the laws of physics and figuring out
00:59what it takes to swing the bat properly, you have all these voodoo doctors
01:05out there teaching guys to do this and to do that, and it's very confusing.
01:09But I think the hitting could catch up, but you really have to shrink
01:15that strike zone a little.
01:16You can't have, you know, the ball off the plate at 100 miles an hour
01:21and on the knees and expect the hitter to do anything with it
01:26other than take or swing and miss at it.
01:28It's just too difficult to do in that fraction of a second
01:33that it takes to hit.
01:36Gary Sheffield was on a couple weeks ago, Bobby,
01:38and we were talking to him about players today just – it's like not a big deal
01:43for guys to have three or four strikeouts in a game.
01:45It's just not – a guy could have 175 strikeouts, and no one thinks twice
01:50about it.
01:51It's hit or miss now in baseball.
01:53Do you like that aspect and where the game has gone to now?
01:57I mean, when you played, that used to be the walk of shame.
02:00Now no one cares about it any longer.
02:04Yeah, yeah.
02:07I get that.
02:08And it bugs me when a guy takes a fastball down the middle with two strikes
02:12because he was looking for the off-speed pitch or whatever reason he has.
02:18You know, I tried and I took a guy right out of college back when I was
02:23managing the Rangers in the mid-'80s, and his name was Petey and Caviglia.
02:27And he struck out a lot.
02:29He had a lot of home runs.
02:30He was the Golden Spikes Player of the Century, as a matter of fact,
02:34out of Oklahoma State.
02:36And my preach to the press and everyone was, well, he strikes out,
02:41but it's only one out.
02:42You know, he's not hitting into a double play.
02:44And if he has a chance of giving me four bases, I like it.
02:47And then I was considered an idiot for having that thought.
02:52And now that thought is mainstream, you know, that it's okay to swing and miss
02:57as long as you're trying to do damage.
02:59I think that hitters are going to get to that point where it's a happy medium.
03:04Now, Dan, we used to have a situation when, okay, we'll put the ball in play,
03:10but we're going to take our best rip when it's a fastball count, when it's 2-0
03:15and 3-1, and that pitcher has to throw me a fastball because it's a fastball count,
03:21and then you can swing for the fences.
03:23Well, there's no longer a fastball count.
03:26So that has changed that hitting philosophy dramatically, I believe,
03:33because, you know, a 2-0 breaking ball is just as common as a 2-0 fastball.
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