Bat speed facts/myths + Braves Manager search update

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what he said.

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Speaker 2: That's what he said.

00:00:03
Speaker 1: That's what he said.

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Speaker 2: That's what he said. Okay, we have great articles out there on the Blue Jays and their superstar hitting coach David Popkins. He's gotten a lot of attention, and he actually spent a lot of time with the Dodgers. At first, he was trying to make it. He didn't make it. Ends up hired by the Dodgers as a player coach because they didn't have any coach spots. And Robert ben Skoyak, who's been involved with the Dodgers for a long time now, called him and he was like, Hey, what are you doing. He's like, oh, the Phillies are going to hire me for a job within their minor league system. He's like, Nope, you're coming to us. So he stopped that and he got him. He's like, this guy special eventually moves on to hitting coach of the Twins. Now he's with the Blue Jays. Great story, and the guys love him, and they said the adjustments they're making are so much quicker these days. But what I want to focus on here, Kratz with you first, because then you're going to jump during the segment, at some point is bat speed. Bat speed is now measurable. We have statistics for that that came out. I believe last year for the first time, the Blue Jays were able to increase their bat speed. And I want to add one thing to the mix here from Brent Rooker because it's a big topic of conversation and Rooker is one of the smartest brains in the sport. And he tweeted about this, and of course it got a ton of love. He was tweeting about the fact that the concept is not new. He said, the fact that the idea of quote, swinging the bat faster is better is considered new age analytical thinking is insane. Gaining speed, power, force production has been beneficial for every athlete and every sport since the beginning of time. Pitchers who throw harder have higher ceilings. Golfers who swing the club faster have higher ceilings. Running back to run faster have higher ceilings, basketball players who jump higher have higher ceilings, etc. Does it mean that those who are bigger, faster, stronger will automatically be better?

00:01:47
Speaker 1: Of course not.

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Speaker 2: Skill, mental makeup, competitive edge prep and a thousand other things all play a massive part, and overall success. But the fact that being more physically explosive and producing more force gives you a greater chance for success has always will always be true. Crats your thoughts.

00:02:05
Speaker 1: Thank you Brent for saying exactly what everybody was thinking. And in no way am I trying to be like, get off my lawn, old guy. But this is information that I think you could look at it. I think you look at it and say, Okay, the extremes from last year, not this year. The extremes were John Carlos, Stanton, Luisa Rise. You're gonna say, Gee has a faster back. Everybody else is in the middle. There. The difference is these numbers are so close. And when you're talking about like increasing your bat speed, that's what everybody wants to do. You'd hear it every year in August. Minor leagues, big leagues. I'm gonna go. You go up to the training You'll go up to the strength guy. You're like, hey, I want to cut some weight, get stronger, get faster, and be more flexible. Well yeah, duh, that's the whole point. You want to push yourself to the limit. I remember Mike Zanin was hurt when I went over to the race, and he went in on one of their first like biometric like room things that they were doing, and he hit off the tee and he was hurt. So he was like he was able to swing. I forget would even he hurt, But obviously he was swinging, so it wasn't anything crazy. But he started using like smaller bats, He started using lighter bats to test the bat speed. So with bat speed, with increased bat speed, there are negatives. John Carlos Stanton has had last year. The fastest bat speed this year was O'Neil Cruz. Those guys swing a miss a lot. Why did they swing a miss a lot? Because they have fast bat speed, they should be able to get to everything. Yes, but the bat stays in the zone a lot shorter amount of time, even if it's the same path as Luisa Rives stays in the zone. So do you just blindly increase your bat speed. No, you do it methodically and understanding what that extra bat speed does. Do I have to stay to right center instead of trying to drive the ball to center? Do I have to I'm a pool hitter. Adding more bat speed for a guy like East Soak parades might not be it because he always gets to the balls inside, he always extends on the balls away. So just increasing bat speed doesn't make you a better hitter, but it is one of the compartments of it. And I think it's a way that analytically, guys that never played can't see that, but they can say, hey, this is something, this is a trend that works. But they also shouldn't only evaluate guys on the fact that, Okay, if I have a seventy four mount Our batspeed and Todd has a seventy three mount Our bat speed, well aer Krafts must be a better player. You look at the baseball guards and Todd's trophy case. That will tell you that's not the case.

00:04:51
Speaker 3: I want to make a point here too, when we're talking about bat speed, so people understand it's not like so I'm in my stan's not here the bat speed. It's when they're about to get on impact. So it's it's a little shorter. If you can see, it's there on impact like a tennis player when they hit it. That's the impact. It's not starting from right here when you're about to swing. It's the impact right when you're about to meet the baseball. And I think That's what people got to understand too. As a hitter. If people are thinking about this and reading it and understanding it and going through it, they're like, oh my god, he must start his swing so hard as the swings. No, the power comes from about a foot from the connection and the whip through the zone and everything takes care of it, the bat speed, the pitcher speed, the direction of the baseball, where you're hitting the baseball. And I you know, I do lessons for kids and talk to kids all the time. I tell them, just swing as hard as you can. Let's see what happens. And we go through a drill to see how hard they can and they're they're swinging from their shoulder and their back hip. I said, now go slow to the ball and try and swing as hard as you can rate before your impacting the ball. And you see a bigger difference. Yeah. I think Brett ruckerd was really good at explanations. And I think you know, when we're talking about this, this is something that you know has been going on forever. In my opinion, bats batsby how do we gain more bats? Bid was the impact right before you hit the baseball, And if you can master that you're gonna hit the ball a lot harder.

00:06:19
Speaker 2: I have a follow up, Is it helpful that you have numbers? I think back to our conversation with Shane Bieber yesterday Kratz and he's like, yeah, we kind of joke around about how we're looking at the iPad and we're checking out the numbers and we try not to make it everything, but because it is nice to sometimes be like, oh, I felt felt good on that one and then checked the numbers, and he's like, yeah, vertical break good or spin rate on that one good.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, It's it's so important you have numbers because we're talking about fine, fine, I had it. I had it pulled up here, I have to I'm gonna pull it up again. I have I have all of this year's numbers. I'm sorry, last year's numbers I haven't pulled up right now. John Carlos Stanton has eighty one point two mile an hour average batspeed. That's not his peak, that's just his average. Okay, then you start. Then you go down to number fifty in the league, you're talking Willie Domas still above average seventy three point six. When we go down to below average, you're talking about guys like Logan o'happy friend of the Show, Bo Naylor, Pete Crow Armstrong all at seventy point six. So you're talking about a three mile an hour difference in bat speed average. Seems like a lot, but it's a very fine minute amount. So how do you make your swing the most powerful and the most consistent? And I think that's where we miss some of these when people say analytics, these numbers are awesome. I need to know that if I you know, there was one point in my career where you could have probably ground sawdust out of the handle on my back because I would hold it so hard. And the more you just let that thing relax in your hands, the faster your bat speed's gonna be. Now that's what I was told. If I had the numbers and said, okay, I'm gonna give you the most like I'm holding this handle so hard, swing and then you see it in a number and you go, oh wait, I held that real loose in my hands, and I had better bat speed. Now all of a sudden, you can work from there and you're not like wondering, well I swung light that time? I held it light, but I still swung a miss because the game's hard. The game is hard, but knowing that you can go from there, it's a jumping off point to say, Okay, this makes me a better player because my bat speed's better, But what are the issues that come with it?

00:08:48
Speaker 2: It's good stuff. Do you feel the same way where if it was available you would take a little peak?

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Speaker 3: Yes? No, I mean I'm I'm the old school guy. Man. I'm just I was seeing and hit it. You're but that's the thing. But that's kind of what helped me. But at the same time, maybe I should have done a little bit more. I I always thought when I saw it, like I too much information, Scott. I was just my brain. I'm like, nah, I'm too fried already to even think about anything else besides seeing a fastball and hitting it and reacting you off speed them. If you look at the back of my baseball card is going to show you the power numbers and everything else. I was really bad at hitting off speed pitches, and I think maybe with a little bit of help, yeah, maybe I could have instead of sitting fastball the whole time, could have been ready for an off speed pitch and took a chance. But it's just something that I couldn't really get off of. So yeah, thanks for that. That makes me feel better seeing those things on there. Yes, I was. I was that guy Craty knew it too, fastballs in, sliders away and what if the pitcher made a mistake. I was getting to him that.

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Speaker 2: That, Yeah, you made him pay, don't miss. But my question is it's one thing in a game. Would you use this at all, MVP? Would you use this in the off season just to take a peek and see what it's looking like and see if that changes things for you? Because I get what you're saying in game, and we have examples. I mean, most of the league is like this, let's use tray a Savage. He's starting Game one. He was asked about how he uses information and he said, I'm old school and he's young. I mean, he's one of the youngest starters ever in the postseason in the World Series, I think second youngest ever to start game one. But he said he can't do any of that thinking during the game. He's like, I'm at my best when I'm blacked out. I'm just feeling. That doesn't mean he doesn't use any of that at other times on his pen day or in the off season, right, I mean, my guess is that he used information to get to where he's at. He didn't even have a splitter when he first got to school. So there are ads made, There were pitch tweaks, there were mechanical tweaks, and data and video cameras. All of that is very helpful for this stuff. So that's my question to you. If you're playing right now and it's the off season, and I'm like, hey, that's be the thing you want to just like, do your swings, do your thing. Let's just see what it's where it's at and track it all off season.

00:11:20
Speaker 1: Well, we didn't have it.

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Speaker 2: We didn't have it, so it didn't matter, right, You're right, But would you have would you have taken a peak? Like if I'm if I'm here, right, I mean you're training here at home and I'm with you, and I'm like, yeah, yo, I'm going to bring the bat speed machines whatever or whatever the heck they use to measure it, right, the stack cast machine. Do you want to? You want it there so you can just see it's looking.

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Speaker 3: I think I would have loved seeing it. What I've done with it, I don't know, you know what I mean, I would buy Hey, listen, you know these are the percentages in the zone where your hands need to be this and that. I had really good hitting coaches and they didn't really want to change anything. The couple of things they wanted to change where I'm making contact with the all and staying on a flat plane when I swung. That doesn't necessarily mean I was swinging flat, but it kept my mind thinking that it was coming down to the ball and getting back spin on it. But every one of my swings was not like that. But my mindset in VP was down to it long through. It just down to it long through, get that back spinn and go. And any numbers or metrics or videos that were around, if any they knew that, you know one, it wasn't really going to help me because my swing was unique as it was. I had an arm bar. It's tough to get away from that if that arm is not coming through and bending as it's coming through for the motion of your swing. So for me, I would have loved to see it, but at the same time, it would have probably been more information in my head what I really didn't need to know.

00:12:46
Speaker 2: That's good info.

00:12:47
Speaker 1: Right there.

00:12:48
Speaker 2: That's why we have this show, or part of the reason why. So hope you enjoyed it. If you have any other questions about what Todd father or krat said, I'll try and check it out at some point. Grandma Cauley joining us right now now. Fantastic job always covering the Atlanta Braves. Grant. Great to have you on the show and back again. This is a little earlier than anticipated because of course we'll get into some Braves moves, but we did want to give you a quick phone call. We were like, hey, what should we do for our one non World series segment. I'm like, who's going to be the next manager of the Atlanta Braves? So I just wanted to start there with you, Grant. What's the latest? This story has barely gotten any national coverage because it's World Series time.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's a really good question, I think in a lot of ways, because there was so much continuity for the Braves for so long. You track it back to nineteen ninety The Braves have had three managers since Bobby Cox stepped out of the GM role and back into the dugout. You had him for better than two decades. You had Freddy Gonzalez for a few years, and you had Brian Snitker for nearly a decade. This is just, I won't say uncharted territory for the Braves, but it's obviously going to be different. So I've been curious, you know, what attention would be given to somebody who's already on staff, whether that was a Walt Weiss or an Eddie Perez. I think those have been I mean, obviously Walt is man before. Eddie's been a managerial prospect for a while and does some work in the Winter League, and I think could be a manager one day. But then there's just that case to be made for do you want a different voice, do you want a younger voice? Do you want somebody outside the organization who can just bring something different in and see if that's something that could kind of spark a club that has gone through the last couple of years a lot of injuries, obviously, but there's been some lack of performance that really bit them offensively the past couple of years as well. So I say all of that to say, I'm not sure that there's a really clear answer. I think we've heard candidates from David Ross to Mark de Rosa and others who have big league experience. John Gibbons when he exited the Mets job, obviously, I think that got attention because he managed under Anthopolis in Toronto. But I don't know if there's a clear front runner right now. I'm sure that the Braves, as they always do, are moving silently and having all the conversations they want to so that they can break the news themselves. But it's a lot of conjecture and a lot of different directions that could go.

00:14:54
Speaker 1: I guess, but isn't there a Braves archetype like when you say, okay, Raves manager, can they go outside of the of the what you just said Freddie Gonzalez, Bobby Cox, you know, snit and say okay this organization needs this. If there's anybody that understands people, it's a it's Alexanthopolis. But is the Braves as an organization able to go away from that archetype of the older manager that's experienced and now this roster his experience. They just need a little prodding. Yeah, I think so.

00:15:36
Speaker 4: I mean, it's really kind of hard to handicap it because if you want to track it back to twenty sixteen, when Freddy Gonzalez was let go, Brian Snitker was only meant to come in there and just keep the ship, you know, afloat. Basically, they were going to reassess everything, and I think by the end of twenty seventeen there were some rumblings that, hey, you know, we're going to go a whole new direction in twenty eighteen, and then the Braves did. Because their general manager was let go, they had to go through a whole bunch of turmoil behind the scenes, and Alex Anthopolis came in and said, look, I just want to get to know this guy. So they built a relationship over time, and this I think represents really Alex's first opportunity to kind of look at it through his lens for what he wants and what he values in the manager, and I think Brian Snicker embodied a lot of those qualities. But they were kind of thrown together at least to start with. They just built a great partnership. So I think with that in mind, there's really no impetus to just keep its status quo or keep it with somebody who was under the Bobby Coxs coaching tree. But on the flip side of that coin, I'll also tell you that's a pretty good coaching tree. So if you do get somebody from there, I think it will still bring that continuity and that voice that the Braves are looking for. I think they just really have this unique chance for the first time in a while to really just assess what is it we need. What do some of these candidates have to offer, Whether that's a first time manager, which would be interesting and not necessarily what I expect, or if it's somebody who's just kind of younger in their managerial career who could stick around for a long time and maybe build himself into the next long line of continuity that the Braves have at the managerial spot.

00:17:07
Speaker 2: We're talking to Grant McCauley, who's a great follow on Twitter at Grant McCauley, and you can hear him on ninety two nine in the game down there in atl and also his weekly from the Diamond Show, which I've been on, which is great. My next one for you, Grant, of any of the names that you heard clearly that we're getting a list now or down at this point, was there one that you were surprised didn't make it as somewhat of a finalist.

00:17:30
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:17:31
Speaker 4: Well, the big thing with Alex was I think that his goal was he told us this at his end of season media availability, which went for nearly ninety minutes, and it was, if I have my way, you guys will never know who we talk to, You'll never know who our finalists were, and we'll just announce who our new manager is and we'll move forward. And to his credit, haven't heard a lot about, you know, anybody coming in and being confirmed to have managed or excuse me, to have interviewed for the managerial job. So the names that I've heard are not altogether. You know, any price is whether it's the David Rosses or the Mark Durosis. George Lombard, who was a Braves farmhand for a long time, has been a coach in the major leagues for quite a while as well. Brian Flaherty's name has been thrown around. Obviously, we saw, you know, San Francisco win a completely different direction to hire a coach from the University of Tennessee, and that was a name that I think David O'Brien of the athletic throughout there as well as a managerial prospect. But you know, Alex kind of I don't know, tongue in cheek, maybe laughed at the speculation. But then again, I think that there was still that open door possibility of one more year Brian Snitker, so maybe they weren't that far down the road of making a list. Make of that what you will. I do think that the Braves have obviously had some conversations to this point, and I think they'd like to get this thing done so you can have it in place, so that you can go into your winter with this the kind of you know, things that are set up, because it's not like the Braves need to do a ton of roster moves, but there are some important decisions to make. And I'm also fascinated to see how they round out the coaching staff. Who stays, who goes, maybe not just in twenty twenty six, but moving forward under a new manager. Who are they going to look to keep around? From that standpoint, so if they want to make changes there, would it behoove them to do that earlier in the winter so that they're able to snap up some candidates or guys that they like in that regard, All.

00:19:12
Speaker 3: Right, managers of don Way. Finally, when they finalized that let's get back to the team a little bit. Is there a name or two under the radar, names prospects wise, that you're going to be looking forward to make a boom or an impact on this Braves team as they move forward into next year.

00:19:29
Speaker 4: Yeah, the Braves farm system is not what it was seven or eight years ago, Todd, but that doesn't mean that it still can't produce players that can definitely impact the Braves at the big league level. We saw it a couple of years ago when Michael Harris and Spencer Strider both exploded onto the scene at the exact same time. We just saw it this past year with Drake Baldwin, who pushed his way into the catching situation for the Braves and I think should win the National League Rookie of the Year. We saw Herston Waldrip late in the season who I would put on that short list of guys I expect to really have that opportunity to show out for the Braves next year and help them in an area in which they were absolutely decimated in twenty twenty five. It was injuries to the starting staff. I have never seen an entire opening day rotation end up on the sixty day il at the same time, and the Braves somehow managed to check that box. This year is one of the many things that went wrong. So Waldrip's a guy I'm looking at really closely. There are some other arms that I think they could look to push through the system, but will they arrive next year? The cam Kamenetties of the world, Jared Richie's been really impressive. They've got some really good arms. Position player wise, it's a little bit light, but if you're looking at positions that the Braves need to fill, I think Short stops that spot and we can talk about that a little bit. Their hope is that Hasan Kim, who was able to come in and kind of get an orientation for a month, will decide that he likes Atlanta enough to maybe stick around for at least twenty twenty six.

00:20:49
Speaker 2: Grant good stuff, Thank you for stopping by for a quick chit chat. And as soon as the World Series over, obviously we'll dive back in. Braves fans right now sitting on the sideline, probably rooting again. It's the Dodgers, right Is that the sentiment down.

00:21:03
Speaker 4: There probably fair to say, I don't know that there's really any way to just root for the leagues anymore. I don't know if that's even a thing or ever was a thing in Major League Baseball, but yeah, probably never rooting for the Dodgers around these parts.

00:21:15
Speaker 2: Yep, that makes sense.

00:21:16
Speaker 3: Should we ask him? No, real quick, what what do you think the series is going to be?

00:21:20
Speaker 1: Oh?

00:21:20
Speaker 2: You got a prediction?

00:21:21
Speaker 3: In prediction ten seconds.

00:21:23
Speaker 4: I'll tell you seven games is what I want. I think Toronto has the best chance of really giving the Dodgers a test, So I'll go Toronto in seven games.

00:21:34
Speaker 2: Oh okay, real quick, got the buzzer. Actually, just thought of this. Braves fans do they like when Freddie thrives there?

00:21:39
Speaker 3: Like?

00:21:39
Speaker 2: Is it a bittersweet root for him last year when he was ridiculous in the World Series?

00:21:44
Speaker 4: It's probably bittersweet. But if you know Freddy Freeman, if you've had a chance to get to know him the way that Braves fans had, I understand that the separation it was what it was. But he as a person is easy to root for, and I'll always want to see Freddy have success. That may sound kind of counter to saying that you never root for the Dodgers around here, but on a personal level, I'll always kind of look at Freddy as a guy that I just want to see the best things for him.

00:22:07
Speaker 2: I'm with you, and you're a good dude, so that makes sense. Grant, You're the man. Thank you for joining us, enjoying this series, and thanks for stopping by.

00:22:14
Speaker 1: Dude, you got it. Thanks guys,