- 17 hours ago
The Nationals have a day game today looking to go back over .500 - Grant Paulsen joins The Junkies to look at their strong season so far!
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00:00you're good i have a better chance with bands like all american rejects and that
00:04genre than i do the cakes wheelhouse of like the 80s rock and metal okay all right i i can
00:12i can
00:13understand that it might be some genres that he's okay he's also much younger than us what year were
00:18you born in 88 i mean why would he know the early 80s heavy metal songs i'm not killing him
00:25for not
00:25knowing those things i just know that it's it's a blind spot yeah well to be clear though cakes is
00:31not at fault here i don't know anything so if you play the biggest smashes in the history of the
00:38world the biggest bands of all time yeah i won't know those either right yeah all right fair enough
00:44hey grant before we get into the gnats and that's primarily why we have you on i want your opinion
00:50and we kicked this around earlier not going to lead the witness russell wilson hall of famer or no
00:58i think russell wilson is i mean look if i was voting no but i think he gets in the
01:05pro football
01:06hall of fame is gigantic i feel like everybody gets in so my hall of fame would be tiny but
01:12yeah i think
01:12you win a championship legacy with the numbers of this era you're going to rate very highly in a
01:18bunch of passing statistics so i say yes he will get into the hall also jp points out uh you
01:24know
01:24the pro bowl's been diminished you know you get guys whatever you know gus ferrata he got in one
01:29year um but 10 over you know at one point it did mean something that's a decent amount i think
01:36he was
01:36at certain times thought of as a top five quarterback you definitely didn't want to face him right never
01:42i think he maybe got one mvp vote in his career he was never like the guy in the national
01:48football
01:48league but he was upper echelon and a top 10 for sure for several years i think that gets into
01:55the
01:55conversation i also feel like even though it's not how i operate you gotta probably win a title and
02:00have some hardware and have the rings that puts you over the top where a guy like philip rivers to
02:05me would be more deserving of the hall of fame and may not get in yeah we could go on
02:11and on
02:11these stupid hall of fame debates all right what all right the gnats have shocked everybody i don't
02:16know where were you at the beginning of the year jason went over the number was 64 and a half
02:21um he
02:22went over the number he did not anticipate them uh just hovering around 500 game or two above 500 a
02:29third of the way in and look i mean the bottom might fall out but i'd probably bet against it
02:35i think
02:35they're going to be pretty competitive it's a tough squad sometimes when you start a season out well
02:40it kind of it can kind of just carry you and i feel like that's what's happening with this team
02:45well so the old accident baseball is basically when you get to june and it's really memorial day
02:52weekend but that came a little earlier this year but that final weekend in may that's what and what
02:58you're seeing you can start to think is more authentic because it's the the benchmark is one third
03:04of the year and it feels like outliers things that are going to flame out you know playing above or
03:10below where you're supposed to kind of evens out and the old mike rizzo back of the baseball card
03:16theory starts to take hold now do i think they're going to finish over 500 no do i think they'll
03:22be
03:22within a game of the wild card that would be shocking but here's what's interesting i was talking
03:27to charlie slows about this yesterday he had a conversation with tony glenn jr of the padres when he was
03:33in
03:33town who obviously does a lot of their radio work for odyssey and tony's point was we're deep enough
03:40into the year where it doesn't matter if you think they can sustain this or if i think they're good
03:45enough to do this once you get this deep in the clubhouse you start to think this is who you
03:49are
03:50and if they start to think exactly well look we've got 12 more runs than anybody else in baseball we're
03:55sixth in home runs right now we're top five in team ops right now this is just what we're going
04:00to be
04:00that's a dangerous thing and you're starting to see that i really believe that it's one of the
04:05youngest teams that we've seen in baseball offensively in years they haven't had a single
04:09guy over 27 get a plate appearance guys i mean that's astounding and and sometimes you're too
04:16young to know better so i think they're really starting to feel themselves and think that they
04:20are legit grant i mentioned a couple times that i listened to your interview with the hitting coach
04:25and i wanted you to kind of elaborate on this it strikes me that they are doing all the little
04:32things to gain edges on the margins and that's making them a better team how are they doing that
04:39there's no doubt about that jp i mean first things first we talk a lot about ownership investment right
04:45and i've beat the drum as much or as loud as anybody that they haven't spent enough money on players
04:49for a
04:50long time but this off season what they did do finally was invest in front office in an idea and
04:57in a philosophy that they hadn't before which is deeper dives into research and development analytics
05:04and technology so i think one of the big easy ways to point this out is these trajectoire machines
05:09that they now have at the big league level at nats park which they never had until this year
05:15they also have one in west palm beach at spring training and for the guys that are at that facility
05:19year-round and they have one at triple a rochester so i was talking recently on imorales who's a former
05:25top 50 pick who's hitting 330 with a 1000 ops and has been one of the best players in the
05:30minors this
05:31year at triple a and i was asking him about this unbelievable season he's having that's kind of
05:35come out of nowhere and he single-handedly kind of chalked up to his preparation via this technology
05:42which allows them to input velocity spin exact pitch movement into a machine so that they can
05:52then take batting practice essentially off of the pitcher they're going to face that day so if they
05:57want to get 20 at bats off of eric bickle before they face him at 6 45 with the exact
06:02velocities and
06:03shapes of every one of his pitches which you know because of the uh ball tracking data that we have
06:09they can now do that every team in baseball just about could have done that before this year the
06:13nats weren't able to so little things like that that they've never invested in that they have now
06:18the meetings that they're having with players they've never had before i ran one of these meetings by
06:23a veteran player who was here years ago and they were like well that's ridiculous like with a winning
06:28team with a bunch of veterans you couldn't do that that's the old way of thinking that was the old
06:32guard that's how they felt around here for a long time and they had good players and they won a
06:36lot
06:36but with this young group james wood doesn't mind sitting down every six weeks with butera and
06:41caboni and all the r&d guys and all the coaches in a meeting in blake's office to go over
06:47a report
06:47card like a student that's what they do and these guys are better prepared they're getting more
06:53detailed information from a pitching standpoint from a hitting standpoint than they've ever gotten
06:58before and it's working and by the way it shouldn't surprise people this has worked for a long time in
07:03tampa bay and milwaukee and cleveland and a lot of places this is not new it's just new to dc
07:09grant can you explain both the offensive and defensive transformation of k bear ruiz now baseball cakes is
07:16going to be honest here i did not know what this stat meant or what it even means wrc plus
07:23numbers you
07:24can fill me in on this apparently yeah he was well under the league average mark of 100 the last
07:29two
07:29seasons and now he's like at 109 plus in that metric so baseball cakes know that you have about
07:35as many walks as he does to uh i'm unaware of his walk numbers but i want grant to explain
07:41wrc plus numbers and why uh there's been such an improvement there weighted runs created plus okay
07:48so this is kind of a catch-me-all metric that takes a lot of um variables and levels playing
07:56fields
07:56based on dimensions and where you're playing my metric of choice is like ops plus but they do
08:01similar things which is you mentioned comparing it to 100 which is average so the league average player
08:08is 100 if you're below that say you're at 78 means you're 22 percent below league average in his case
08:15if you're a 124 you're 24 percent above league average it's a metric for basically run creativity the
08:22whole point of scoring right and how you contribute to your team doing that uh what caber ruiz is doing
08:28has been unbelievable he's hitting 370 since the start of may which we're going on just over a full
08:34month now he just had the best month of his career uh they're using him in really ideal situations
08:39you know in the past when a guy's gotten pretty hot they've written him so in this case you could
08:44say
08:45well they're essentially platooning or a kind of time sharing k barrett ruiz even though he's a
08:50a switch hitter so he could theoretically play every day and for several years that's what
08:55happened they'd kind of run him into the ground and by the second half the season or he'd go through
08:59these stretches where he's fatigued if you look at may as an example where he was hitting 360 with
09:04an ops over a thousand he still only played in i think it was like 16 of their 29 games
09:10over the last
09:1131 days or something and that tells you that they're continuing to give him the day off and get
09:17millison there to spell him they're not like basically going to the well they're keeping him
09:22fresh they're using him in the situations where he can thrive they're they're hitting him against
09:26the pitchers where he's gonna have the most success it's not just right left left right with a switch
09:31hitter like him but it's also what type of pitch makeup do they have what kind of spin are they
09:35using
09:36what types of breaking balls is he hitting well if these are all going into these decisions
09:40and again it doesn't feel like rocket science that no different than in any profession if you got a
09:46guy that does four things well and then you really try to focus on making sure he's playing
09:51during those situations they're going to perform better what's more amazing to me about kbert is
09:56the defense because he went from sixth percentile and fourth percentile in his framing metrics and his
10:04defensive metrics to the 83rd percentile right now in one season and he has been maybe the worst
10:10defensive catcher collectively over like a four or five year period and he's been terrific this year
10:16with one year with a new staff and a new catching coach bobby wilson so to me that's way more
10:22stunning
10:22and startling i didn't think that was possible i'd given up on him um he's one of the big revelations
10:28i would say jacob young who had five home runs in his career in three years before this year as
10:32five
10:32homers in 15 games as eight total now hitting the ball in the air which was the focus all off
10:37season
10:38that's astounding like those are some of the really obvious tells of how different things are and
10:44that the coaching's working talking to grant paulson of course you listen to grant and danny
10:49at two o'clock right here on 106 seven the fan all right i'm going to give you a magic
10:54wand grant
10:55if you could fix either the defense the bullpen or the starting pitching with this team
11:02what would you do starting pitching and it fixed itself to some extent in may it was much better
11:09because two guys who had been dreadful in april zach littell who was getting hit around and giving
11:14up a home run every time uh you you got out of your seat at a baseball game to go
11:19you know get a
11:20snack or something for your kids he was fantastic he had a two three five era the other guy who
11:25got
11:25rocked in in april was miles michaelis at an era up over seven he had a sub three earn run
11:31average as
11:31well so those guys have given them a much better chance foster griffins had a couple of rough outings
11:36over the last few weeks but mostly has been fairly consistent he and kate cavalli have eras
11:41you know in the upper threes this season which that means you've been competitive and solid
11:46but i think starting pitching as we saw in the last iteration that was always the priority for
11:51mike rizzo even with an organization like the nats now in a paradigm where you're not asking for
11:55seven eight innings at a time you don't need your guys to be horses if you can get five or
11:59six
12:00competitive innings if you go four and change and get me to the bullpen with a lead with this lineup
12:04they're going to win a lot of games now their defense is terrible jp i just don't think there's
12:09a fix because they don't really have a ton of quality defensive players and the other thing
12:14that nobody talks about is they're playing a lot of guys out of position so like luis garcia was a
12:18really bad defensive second baseman he's playing first base for the first time in his career they've
12:22got a guy named curtis mead this australian guy who was a former top prospect with the rays by way
12:27of
12:27the white socks and a couple other teams who's been outstanding for them he's playing third base in the
12:32the most extensive capacity we've seen him do that he's actually done it pretty well but when you
12:37look around you know james wood wasn't left now he's in right dalen lyle wasn't right now he's in
12:41left it's a lot of guys that are kind of learning spots at the major league level that haven't always
12:46done it and so when you take in some cases average or worse defenders like garcia like uh you know
12:54chaparro is playing some first for them or any of these other guys they're trotting out there
12:58and then you play them at a spot they haven't played very much i mean they can put in all
13:02the
13:02pregame work they want to they're not built to be a really good defensive team they got two what i
13:06would call plus defenders and that's jacob young and center and not see nunez at second but i do think
13:12there's more potential for the bullpen for the rotation to be more consistent and we saw that start
13:17to come around last month grant you guys had the parade which was awesome uh when they got above 500
13:23is there any chance you've ever been able to break screech and hear him talk i've never heard
13:29screech speak i've tried many times my normal bit with screech so danny i don't know if you guys know
13:35this danny doesn't like to have any fun so when screech is around oh no fun he wasn't there for
13:43your
13:43parade that was uh toby and he was like all in dressed like a major league baseball prospect
13:49if danny's no fun danny toby's tons of fun okay so but but i will say this i felt bad
13:55because danny
13:56i think would have wanted to be at the parade it was very on brand that he wasn't able to
14:00make it
14:00and walk down the street with screech but whenever screeches around i do this bit on air where i get
14:05screech to come over and he like takes his beak and and tries to bite the top of danny's head
14:10i'm sure danny loves it so he gets so angry like legitimately furious he yells at screech which
14:17seems like a lot yeah his new bit is because i always get pictures of him and screech together
14:20that he'll actually make uh he'll use one of his fingers to make an inappropriate gesture
14:24so i can't take any pictures so uh it was actually better maybe that he wasn't at the parade so
14:29that's
14:30screech and i could get some quality time to get well maybe he can show up with you at the
14:33tarps off
14:34section at nats park when when are we going to have the boys from the grant and danny show
14:38tarps off waving their shirts over their head at that cut them up season let's go let's go jeeps
14:44thank god for everyone at nats park i will not be joining i don't even want a wife to see
14:48me with
14:48my car my wife my poor wife every now and then has to stumble into that and regret every decision
14:55she's ever made so we'll leave nats park's tarps off section to the uh the 17 year old with
15:00little body fat got it well yeah maybe uh i mean danny plays pickleball three hours a day maybe he
15:04could get out there or we've got uh ben strober on our show now who works out like nine times
15:09a day
15:09sure does he be our representative funny bad he could go as prox i didn't know he did that i
15:13know
15:14he's a big workout guy yeah jeeps thanks for joining us man we appreciate it always talk to you soon
15:18good stuff buddy thank you all right thanks fellas we'll see you that's tarps on grant paulson not
15:24tarps off grant paulson co-host of grant and danny here on 106.7 the fan coming up at
15:298 45 we will talk about the fallout from the miles garrett trade from the browns to the rams
15:34with daryl writer host of 92.3 the fan in cleveland that's coming up at 8 45 here on the
15:41junks
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