00:00So, there's another interesting story that is percolating this year more than others, and I'm going to walk people through
00:06this a little bit because this was surprising for me to see, but now that I understand what's really going
00:11on around the game, I think that we're about to see a significant trend and something to change.
00:16So, I'm going to start off with telling you this story about Aaron Judge, who certainly has missed a significant
00:22amount of time, and Tom, when a player misses a month, or two months, or even three months, the expectation
00:29is that player is going to go and go to the minor leagues, and they're going to get minor league
00:34at-bats, whether it's for three days, five days, seven days.
00:37I mean, look, after all, Roman Anthony is doing this right now with the Boston Red Sox, and so is
00:42Trevor Story.
00:43Aaron Judge says he's not going to do it.
00:45If you have noticed, Juan Soto, who's missed a lot of time, did not do it, and they're not really
00:52telling you the reason why.
00:54Tom, the reason why is that most teams, probably even the Red Sox in Major League Baseball, now have these
00:59new machines.
01:00They're called traject machines, and what these machines do is simulate, and you literally are facing, front and facing, in
01:09a batter's box, every pitcher in Major League Baseball, they put the ball in, and the ball comes out exactly
01:15like the pitcher throws it.
01:16Now, is this exactly live at-bats?
01:19Certainly not.
01:20But, Tom, this may be closer and better to even facing minor league pitching.
01:26Several teams have these machines.
01:28They're, you know, $300,000, $400,000 a piece.
01:31A lot of these teams have them, several of them, by the way.
01:34And that's what's going on here, is that the players are like, put me in front of, you know, Jacob
01:39Mizorowski, pull up the video, put the ball in the machine.
01:42I'm facing the Miz.
01:44Why do I need to go down to AAA and face somebody who I'm not even going to face?
01:49And, Tom, that's what's going on.
01:51Players don't need to go down to rehab, most of them, anymore.
01:54Right, and I would also say that this, you know, could just come down to where the player is in
01:59their career path.
02:01You know, if younger players, they want to tell them to go down and they want to get them in,
02:04you know, some minor league games,
02:05they want to get them there for, you know, three or five games or whatever, I can understand.
02:09Star players, if they don't want to go down to the minor leagues and they want to, you know, use
02:12this technology or use an alternate path instead of taking,
02:15I have no issue with that.
02:16We just want to see the results on the field because I know people are going to look back and
02:20say, oh, after his IELTS did,
02:22he was one of 30 in his first 30 at-bats.
02:25Like, oh, he should have done a minor league stint to see some live pitching.
02:28It's like, we need to have more data on the players coming back in both scenarios for me to really
02:33have a side on this.
