Cade Povich details how Trevor May helped his pregame routine

00:00:02
Speaker 1: And the afore mentioned Kate Povitch joining us now, we appreciate it very much. This is a man who should be tired because he has logged the third most innings on Baltimore's staff. Yet he's a young gun, so maybe he's not tired or I don't know. Kate. Thank you for being with us. Appreciate the time Trevor really wanted you on the show. How's it going right?

00:00:23
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for having me on.

00:00:27
Speaker 1: Teammate.

00:00:28
Speaker 3: I gotta preface this by saying, mister Kevin Brown up in the booth has been keeping me up to date on your your game preparation methods, which we'll get into in just a moment. But first thing I wanted to ask you. I want to ask you about a teammate, Trevor Rodgers, and the things that he has been doing this year, because I don't think people understand how good Trevor Rodgers has been this year. He's got one hundred innings and he is a fellow lefty. So what, if anything, have you been able to learn by just watching Trevor Rodgers throw the ball?

00:01:05
Speaker 2: I think if you just watch kind of last year when we first got him and the struggles that he went through, and then you know, spending these this offseason trying to get back to the all star caliber pitcher that he was starting in TRIPAA, and then coming up to make a start in Boston just absolutely shoving. I think he was the additional man for a doubleheader. So he went back down for take a couple more weeks and then came up and it has just been on a roll ever since. And it's like, even even the outings that you think he might be getting into a little bit of trouble, he just finds a way to work out of it. And for a guy to have been able to see kind of last year what his year was like, and see the offseason and even the beginning of this season, it's been remarkable seeing how he's turned things around, how he's kind of refound himself. I think he talks about confidence being a big thing, uh him getting that back. I mean, I've been able to learn a lot from him just in that aspect alone.

00:02:10
Speaker 4: All Right, Yeah, I left, He's got to stick together. You guys are you guys are always off on your own island. I don't I don't understand it, but I gotta I gotta ask about my favorite position on the field, Samuel Basil, How is it for you being here all year and then you bring in a rookie catcher and then you also had to bring in another Like you guys have gone through a couple of catchers this year, with Gary going down, with Adleie going down? How hard is it? And I'm not gonna ask about Luke Jackson'm gonna ask about the fact that I'm not Luke Jackson. Is it Luke Jackson I'm forgetting? Is that Alex Jackson? Alex Jackson? I was saying a picture and I've had to apologize Alex for me. But with Samuel Bassio, you have so much, so much like prospect status all around him. As a pitcher, y'all could honestly probably care less about how he hits and that's his like name tag, that's his that's his calling card when he gets to the big leagues. How hard of a transition has it been for him? And how hard of a transition is it for you as a pitcher, knowing what you need to do, but then have to get it across to Samuel Bossaio as your catcher for nine innings?

00:03:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, honestly, I think for him, it really hasn't been that much of an adjustment, you know, I think for especially for his age, he's very smart. You know, our our pitching staff, our pitching coaches have all worked with him a great amount on you know, trying to catch him up to speed with how certain guys might set up different situations. But like yesterday, it was was the first time I had him behind the plate for me, and you know, asking questions in the meeting about you know, how we should approach different guys, adjusting set up to certain pitches, if you know, bouncing my curve ball early, adjusting kind of the starting spot for that in order to get it to land in the zone. You know, the bat's definitely there, the bats special, but you know, the way he's able to catch and learn kind of on the fly, I'm sure it's pretty difficult a bunch of a bunch of guys you haven't seen behind the plate. Uh, you know, I'm sure he got some of us a little bit in spring training, but you know, to be in Triple A for for half the year and then come up here and be able to adjust and catch guys, he hasn't had a lot of experience catching yet. Uh, it's it's really cool, been really special to see just how he's developed from from that aspect.

00:04:45
Speaker 3: Okay, talking about preparing for games, and this is really what I wanted to get into, And now I'm realizing I had a photo of the types of things that you started doing recently in the last month or so or maybe a little bit over a month to prepare for games. You get ready to face a lineup keys for you, which obviously communicating these to to Sam and and to uh to Tadley behind the plate is probably part of that. But take us through a little bit of of what that preparation or what changes you've made in that preparation and how it helps you.

00:05:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, for me it was I think early on it's difficult trying to figure out, you know, how to how to game plan. Uh, for yourself, I think it's easy to kind of look at a lot of different things. You know, you try to look at where can I go to get swing and miss, where can I go to get chase? Where can you know maybe maybe a guy watching the pitch at a certain location more often than not, uh, And in a sense for some guys, that can be a lot of information to try and hold for a whole whole lineup For me, I I think I found myself getting a little mixed up between certain guys.

00:06:01
Speaker 4: You know.

00:06:02
Speaker 2: I would prepare and and then I would kind of be in the middle of one guy and be thinking on the mound, all right, was this the pitch that I needed to throw him? Or is this a different guy? And so that led me to kind of what I'm doing now. I think I watched it might have been a short or a video that you had on YouTube talking about Baseball Savant's new swing path and kind of how you can see the average swing path of a guy, and I've really just kind of gone off of that. It's easy for me to remember if a guy has a steeper swing or a flatter swing, And that's honestly been kind of a cheap for me as far as remembering, you know, if I need to go above the zone on a guy, or if I need to go breaking balls more away more inside. So I thank you for that. That definitely helped me out a lot.

00:07:02
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Do you feel good about that, Trevor? Look at you shaping the young minds.

00:07:06
Speaker 3: I definitely have nothing to do with while we got hen on here. Definitely didn't know that at all.

00:07:13
Speaker 2: Mark and my little little excess on the zone.

00:07:17
Speaker 3: I love it, man, I'm glad I get out.

00:07:19
Speaker 1: Okay, let me ask you this. You make your first opening day roster this year with the Baltimore Orioles. As I mentioned at the top of the interview, you've logged a lot of innings. How has Kade Povich grown over the course of this season? Has it been a massive, you know, Bell curve in terms of growth. What do you look back at now and it would have told yourself on opening Day that you've learned over the course of the season as we sit here on September nineteenth.

00:07:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the biggest thing is really just to take kind of each moment and stride. I think for me personally, it was a lot of trying to maybe do too much early on, whether that be last year the start of this year. And you know, I think when you narrow it down to kind of the simple things that the best guys do is get ahead, get to do strikes, and then try and get onto the next hitter as soon as possible after that, I think that that helps out pictures a lot. I think you see batting averages, and you know a lot of stuff goes in the pitcher's favor when you're able to get ahead, and then it also helps the offense a lot. You know, when you're able to go out and have a quickening and you know, get the bats back in the dugout and kind of get on a roll. That's that's kind of a big thing in order to try and to to obviously help help yourself out, but help your teammates out as well on the on the hitting side. So I think I've done a lot better of slowing things down and not trying to, you know, necessarily be somebody I'm not. I think that's also something that's very easy. You can struggle and then try and look for answers by trying to be somebody else because you think what you're doing is not working. But I think taking a step back and just remembering what got you here has kind of helped me out a lot.

00:09:11
Speaker 4: More recently, you guys as a team playing spoiler? Are you guys playing spoiler? Down the stretchy? You got five more games? I think with the Yankees are six more games? Do you talk about that? Yeah?

00:09:24
Speaker 2: I mean we know where we're at and so we're just trying to win as many games as possible down the stretch and the race is close, so trying to see if we can, you know, maybe make things interesting in that aspect.

00:09:41
Speaker 1: Kate, we appreciate it.

00:09:42
Speaker 4: Best of luck.

00:09:43
Speaker 1: You are a big leader, my friend, making that opening day roster for the Baltimore Orioles, and it's only going to get better from here. Just keep paying attention to Trevor May and you will be fine. Thanks for taking the time to be with us on foul Territory.

00:09:56
Speaker 3: Have a good day.

00:09:58
Speaker 2: Thank you. I appreciate you all having me have your wont