Pitching Ninja is back on FT

00:00:03
Speaker 1: Hey, Pitching Ninja. Rob Friedman back with us on FT and make sure you check out his book. We'll talk more about that coming up in a moment here too.

00:00:10
Speaker 2: Rob.

00:00:11
Speaker 1: It's great to have you back on the show, dude.

00:00:12
Speaker 2: Good to see you.

00:00:13
Speaker 1: Happy Friday. And also, I'm just gonna start with the headliner show. Hey, o Tani, do you think he has a chance to win the cy Young Award based on how many.

00:00:21
Speaker 3: Starts he's going to get?

00:00:23
Speaker 1: Because stuff lies. If he's looking like this, this is maybe the best I've ever seen him.

00:00:28
Speaker 2: Do you agree? Yeah?

00:00:29
Speaker 3: I mean you nailed it. I think it's gonna come down to number of starts.

00:00:32
Speaker 4: He gets because it's not only about being nasty, it's about how many times you're nasty and how much you've carried for your team. So I've you innings pitched is probably the gating thing for him. He's gonna need to make all his starts and hopefully go deep in them. But stuff wise, absolutely like it's best I've seen him.

00:00:50
Speaker 2: Let me ask you this.

00:00:51
Speaker 5: I got Paul Skeins on the other line. He's curious about that comment. There, so battle between neck and neck man, what do you think the big you know, no Wheeler. I mean there's an opportunity there for both of them to battle down neck and neck. Do you think there's a big opportunity and it'd be great for baseball to see this happen.

00:01:09
Speaker 3: I think this is the year.

00:01:10
Speaker 4: You know, interesting, Paul Skeen's like looked up to show Hey when he was coming up too, So it makes it really cool. Yeah, Like Paul Skeen's is the best picture you know in the in the n L. Definitely command wise, innings wise, but stuff wise, Show Hayes up there with him, I mean, show hay throws harder and his stuff, you know, his stuff is filthy and they're both incredible competitors. So yeah, I mean this might be his year if he's going to attack it because it looks like a you know, two horse race. Yamamoto could get in there too, right, so we have a few but yeah, I would say, uh, show Hey's gonna gonna have to make some starts.

00:01:53
Speaker 6: Rob, good to see you man, How you doing I haven't heard Yeah doing good man doing good?

00:01:57
Speaker 1: Happy to be here.

00:01:59
Speaker 6: Well, I want to get into Mason Miller a little bit. I don't know if I'm jumping the gun but I just I consider him talk Mason Miller all day. I played with him in Oakland now Sacramento. A is obviously just a good kid all the way around and not such an awesome story. You know what you're talking about a two horse race between show Hay and uh and Skens. What does Mason got to do to get his his name in that loote as well?

00:02:23
Speaker 4: Dude, I love, like talk about the most dominant pitcher on earth. We're talking about the other other guys. It's nasty whatever nobody wants to hit against Mason Miller. I think he needs those two guys to falter. You need a non clear starting pitcher as a you know.

00:02:37
Speaker 3: No one, no one can dominate.

00:02:39
Speaker 4: And then he keeps doing around what he's doing, and then he can get his name in the conversation and again keep making those appearances.

00:02:46
Speaker 3: His stuff is so ridiculous.

00:02:48
Speaker 4: He like incredibly mature dude too, Like I'm you know, I met him when he was young, interviewed him when he was young, and he still was like really you know, had his stuff together. Love watching him ful and absolutely a beast.

00:03:03
Speaker 6: I love seeing the edge like you know, like you said, he's a good kid, and he speaks well like I think he's married to his high school sweetheart.

00:03:10
Speaker 1: Like he's just an all around good kid.

00:03:12
Speaker 6: I like this, like he's running out to like a corn song and he's like got some you know, like some kind of some f you to him a little bit on some of these saves that he's getting. I'm loving that. I think some of that's coming from I don't know if he was guaranteed the closer position, you know, I think they were going to kind of platoon it and he's just gone out and said, no, I'm the closer. But anyways, what I want to ask you about him is is if you go back in time in some of these generations and maybe in like the sixties, and someone watched Bob Gibson and you're just like, oh my gosh, like is this what baseball is going to become? And you fast forward to Nolan Ryan, like, oh my gosh, like is this eventually whatever picture's gonna look? Like I was gonna ask, is is Mason Miller what the future of every picture is? Or is he even like above a normal anomaly? Like he's just a unicorn of sorts.

00:03:54
Speaker 4: So the cool thing is when he made his debut, I literally said, I've seen the future and his name is Bason Miller because his stuff, even in his first outing, his first appearance was like mind blowing throwing one zero two, which is nasty, nasty stuff. I think it's a little bit of both. Like, obviously velo's important in the game. There wouldn't be guys standing behind the backstop with guns if it wasn't.

00:04:17
Speaker 3: It's not the be all and end all.

00:04:18
Speaker 4: Obviously, pitch abilities important, stuff's important, commands important, makeups important.

00:04:22
Speaker 3: He happens to.

00:04:23
Speaker 4: Have all of that, so he is what every pitcher, certainly every closer aspires to be.

00:04:29
Speaker 3: But I think you're also seeing guys go back to.

00:04:32
Speaker 4: What worked back in the day, where they're breaking out multiple pitches. And I talk about this this in my book Unhittable is like there's a drive for velocity, but you can only go so far because redlining bodies means that people break. And now we're looking at different ways to solve the same problem. VLO works because hitters have a short time to make a decision, and if you have enough pitches and you can tunnel them, hitters also have a short time making a decision. So either one works and maybe more pitches is healthier.

00:05:03
Speaker 5: I would agree totally with you there. I want to I want to listen. We could talk about Miller whole time, because he's absolutely nasty. I would love to see him start and throw that beast for nine innings.

00:05:14
Speaker 2: I think that'd be incredible.

00:05:15
Speaker 5: I know back in the day when I was in Triple A with the world as Chapman, we tried that with him. Took about three hours to get five innings, and we said, all right, we'll put him in the bullpen. Ultimately, that's part of the game. Jose Soriano absolute phenomenal pitcher. You know, a lot of people didn't see it coming. A lot of people did point to four e r right now through six starts, talk.

00:05:37
Speaker 2: About him in the way he throws.

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Speaker 5: Could you see this guy eventually, you know, the Angels beering off and not doing well, not only being one of the best pitchers, maybe even close to a cy Young, but maybe trade bait two as well.

00:05:49
Speaker 4: Absolutely so, he reminds me he's a little bit of a horse. He loves pitching innings, he loves staying in games. He made a little adjustment where he stands on the rubber. That's the biggest thing I can see is like what he changed this year as well as where he's kind of locating his pitches. He's much better at locating his pitches this year and working in more for seamers, which makes his sinker more effective as well as all of his other pitches. Dude is fantastic to watch. I've been on him for the last couple of years and I've been like on my YouTube show constantly saying this guy is an ace, this guy is an ace, and now he's finally turned into it. I didn't expect a point twenty four eraas, but he's got all. He's the real deal.

00:06:31
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00:07:33
Speaker 6: Man, I want to get into some vlow talk about a stat that I saw that just means I don't belong in this game anymore. That average writy starter is throwing ninety five point four miles an hour to start the season this year. I don't even know if I have a question. I just wanted to put that out there, like where does it stop? Is that going to keep trickling up as it has over the last ten fifteen years, or you know, is there's just no more Joe blow writing. I mean, that's at ninety five point four average starting right handed pitcher velocity.

00:08:05
Speaker 4: It is absolutely amazing, And part of it comes from like back in the day, we used to say, oh, we can't take teach velo, so we're gonna have to draft guys and then other guys we're gonna have to teach the pitch. Then we learned through these facilities that came up. You know, you can teach filo and you can get some of these guys that had been throwing all that hard to throw hard. So you will see it continue to tick up. But there's got to be a natural breaking point. Again, like we put guns on people, they're going to try to compete for the highest number. It's just a competitive athlete type of thing. If we put numbers on spin rate, they're going to try to spin it the most. Everybody's gonna want to be Nolan McLain. We don't have numbers great numbers on command. If they had that, you might see that be valued more. Sometimes analytics is a self fulfilling prophecy where we value what we can measure, and if we can't measure it, we don't value it.

00:08:55
Speaker 3: Like mental game.

00:08:56
Speaker 4: Mental game is very important, but we don't value it because we can't measure it. So I think you're going to keep seeing the vila go up until the human body breaks. And that's just natural competitiveness. And I don't know is that good for the game or not.

00:09:11
Speaker 2: I don't want to be a hitter.

00:09:12
Speaker 5: That's why I'm not playing. No, but listen, the movements of the baseballs are incredible. And talk about movements a guy like Noel McClain, his sweeper frisbee thing, I don't even know what you call it.

00:09:25
Speaker 2: It's out of this world.

00:09:26
Speaker 5: I want to talk about his repertoire, his fastball, well, he faced Fyron Bucks in the other day. First about he threw five or six two seamers that ran up and in and he swung half swung at two of them to strike out. Talk about the movement on him and how hard he is to hit right now, it just seems like it's every which way in angle that you know, he talks to the baseball.

00:09:50
Speaker 2: I need up, down, inside out. How does he do it? So?

00:09:53
Speaker 4: I talk about a lot of players and a lot of pitchers that I like. He is my favorite pitcher to watch because when you watch him throw, you may never see any ball ever move like that. Again, both sides of the plate, he can go armside and glove side up and down. Smart pitcher competitive throws hard, but that's not really even as you know he throws he tops out like ninety nine, and everybody's like whatever.

00:10:18
Speaker 3: His stuff is eye popping.

00:10:21
Speaker 4: It's like they're his pitches are teleporting one way or another. And I talked to him about his grips are not necessarily unique. He grips the ball hard, just he's got it. Whatever it is, grip strength, the ability to spin a baseball. This dude was born with it. We you know, that's one of those things we can't teach all that much. We can teach a little bit. You want to get guys like Noelan McLain on your team, just so much fun to watch and so nasty.

00:10:49
Speaker 6: Rob how about you know they always kind of say hitting is is is catching up to pitching, you know as far as like the pitchers start throwing fastballs up, so the hitters all start to train to hit the fast balls up. And then the big twelve six curve ball is kind of out of the game and now the splitter's making this comeback. What are you seeing? You know, you got guys that you know, like like McLean that we're just talking about throwing like this unicorn stuff. I don't know if there is like one thing that a hitter can say, I gotta I gotta focus on the heater up or I got to start tracking this splitter or sinkers making a comeback. You know, it feels to me like pitching is quite a bit ahead of hitting at this point. How do you see that playing out of the next couple of years as hitters try to adjust to where pitching is.

00:11:30
Speaker 4: I think I think pitching will always lead the way because pitchers are basically gone offense. You have the baseball, you're a control of it, you can put it where you want to, and you know how to attack a hitter. You have his heat maps and everything, so you're always going to be able to be in control. The hitter's a counterpuncher. That being said, I think new trends now you're seeing multiple types of fastballs. Guys are like, you can't just have a good four seamer. You've got to be able to throw a two seamer so they can't sit on one or the other. And then maybe a cutter like Cam Schlitzer, where you have three different types of fastballs and just throw them down the middle. I hope they go where they want to go. You know, splitters are obviously huge. We have kick changes now that kind of act like splitters slash circle changes. We're able to design so many different pitches. And again, this is one thing I go over my book because I wanted to show everybody like where pitching was and where it is today, and how much harder it is for hitters today.

00:12:21
Speaker 3: It is absolutely absurd.

00:12:23
Speaker 4: We can design pitches just to defeat certain hitters, almost in a lab like pitchers are lab.

00:12:29
Speaker 3: Rats and we're just designing them to do what we want.

00:12:31
Speaker 2: Them to do. It's absolutely incredible.

00:12:35
Speaker 5: And I you know, the kids I teach today and I'm sitting there, I'm like, you, guys don't have the slightest clue you think these kids, you know, they're trying to throw curveballs circle change on my first off. Your hands aren't begg enough. Just throw fastball and die up and you'll be fine.

00:12:49
Speaker 2: I want to go to a new pitcher that just came in JR. Ritchie.

00:12:52
Speaker 5: Ultimately, you come up to the big leagues, you either get your first abat or your first pitch of the year, or ever first pitch home run and then boom, your life comes doing that. It seems like I said it before. He looks stocky, looked like he was under control. Talk a little bit about him and how you know his performance can help these Braves ultimately.

00:13:13
Speaker 2: Win the NL East. I mean, another good pitcher coming.

00:13:15
Speaker 4: In absolutely and dude as a hitter, that sound cool, right? You got to let him have the free before pitch parent. So mean, I thought that was awesome, and I thought what was even more awesome is how he reacted to that, because you up two solo shots.

00:13:31
Speaker 3: Pitch great.

00:13:32
Speaker 4: I thought his change up looked really good, his curveball looked great, and his poise look great. Like to be tested in that first outing, you're just shoved in there and you do that, like really impressive stuff by JR.

00:13:44
Speaker 3: Ritchie and yeah.

00:13:46
Speaker 4: Like so to me, looking at the Braves before the season started, I was like, if they can survive until they get Strider and Schwellenbach and you know Waldrop and you know the Smith Schauvre back, then they're gonna be tough to beat. They're not only so viving, they're thriving with these guys. So I mean, I'd worry if I were in the NL, e's compared, you know, compete against them.

00:14:08
Speaker 5: Let's let's go to the Al East with the with the Yankees. Here, they are playing excellent baseball. It seems like the Ebbs and Flows are really either really good or really bad. They're going on a nice streak here six games. They got two dogs that are waiting to come back pitching wise, Garrett Cole and oh my god, I'm drawing Carlos Rodan. Yea, what is what is gonna happen here? When you know, I think Carlos is gonna be first? Well, actually I don't know. We'll see how that hamstring is whoever it is, Who's who's the odd.

00:14:39
Speaker 2: Man out here? Or what's gonna happen odd men?

00:14:42
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I have no idea. All I know is you're gonna want those guys in your rotation. Two old school dogs that you're gonna want out there, and that is absolutely an advantage for them. They also have like, you know, tons of arms that they haven't even scratched the surface of bringing up or contributing, so so yeah, I mean, they could be very dangerous. And the emergence of Schlittler I think makes this rotation so tough, like he also has just ice water in his veins. And you had him learning alongside again Cole and Rodan and watching the way they go about their business. It could only be good for all these guys.

00:15:20
Speaker 6: How about same division, Rob Garrett Crochet off to a little bit of a tough start by his standards. What do you seem from him?

00:15:27
Speaker 4: Yeah that you know, I heard you talking about Garrett Crochet and I've had the same problem. Like I thought he might be tipping pitches. I went and did overlays of his mechanics. I couldn't find anything about tipping pitches. It looked to me some of his locations were off and he was getting you know, slaughtered in those situations, and that some like he threw some good pitches that got hit and I don't know if that was luck. You know, That's what made me think he might be tipping, is there were good pitches that usually are getting outs that were getting.

00:15:55
Speaker 3: Hits or it's just luck.

00:15:57
Speaker 4: Like you get beat by luck sometimes and people put things together and all of a sudden you have a bad outing. I'd still wait and see his stuff looks good. I mean it was down a tick. Vlo wise but nothing like. It didn't make me think he was anything other than Garrett Crochet, and we all know what he can do when he's on. I'm nervous because i'd like to see him have, you know, put together a couple of good starts now.

00:16:20
Speaker 3: But I think he's got it back in him.

00:16:22
Speaker 2: Okay.

00:16:23
Speaker 1: The consensus question from the crowd to finish up here is they wanted to know anyone else. I guess it's kind of in the Crochet category that you've been watching so far this year, where you're either really concerned with the trends or someone you're they're looking for someone who I mean, as the crowd put it, talk about someone who sucks. That's what they said. So I was like, okay, and there's two directions you can go. One is this person's not pitching well and I'm worried about his indicators and what his performance looks like and his stuff. Or I'm watching someone and I'm like, eh, it looks like they just had some bad at ball luck or something that was off that can be corrected.

00:16:59
Speaker 4: See the bat Crochet was the one who jumped out of me like that's the one I would love to talk about.

00:17:04
Speaker 3: And I think he's you know, he's fixable.

00:17:07
Speaker 4: I'm trying to think if there's anybody else that's jumped out of me.

00:17:09
Speaker 3: On that side. I don't know me. Uh, I mean Webby.

00:17:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good one.

00:17:19
Speaker 1: Log, So let me let me ask you about him. I know he rebounded a little bit yesterday. I think it was seven innings, three runs. Do you think with someone like that who is so great at locating that abs might hurt him in the long run because you can't get away with a little bit of dancing outside of the zone and kind of messing with the ump I don't want to say messing with the umpire, but he knows who the ump is and what he can get, and you're not going to get that same advantage. It's not like he doesn't have other tricks up his sleeve, but that is one that he just did so well for so many years, kind of just tiptoe in the line getting someone to either chase or to get that pitch out of the zone for a strike.

00:18:00
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:18:00
Speaker 3: I think that that's a great point.

00:18:02
Speaker 4: I think the same thing lest so, Chris Basset's another guy that comes to mind who I thought would thrive with with the abs system because he throws some pitches that get some wicked break and could clip the top.

00:18:10
Speaker 3: Of the zone with some slow curves or something.

00:18:14
Speaker 4: It can be like, I think the umpires are definitely more disciplined now and not giving anything because they don't want to look like a fool in front of a stadium when something's challenged, and they you know, they're competitive too. They want to look good.

00:18:24
Speaker 3: So I I think it can have something to do with it. I don't.

00:18:29
Speaker 4: I think we're gonna need more more of a sample set on that because I saw good stuff out of web. I thought his pitch movement looked good yesterday, especially great location on rushing.

00:18:42
Speaker 3: Too soon.

00:18:44
Speaker 4: No, not at all, mistake, right, he clearly didn't know anything about that.

00:18:52
Speaker 1: No, he was completely unaware, right, ross unaware total what was going on that everyone else had seen on social media.

00:19:00
Speaker 3: Nobody talked about that in the clubhouse ever.

00:19:03
Speaker 1: Because yeah, and he's not a veteran that could place the baseball wherever he wants and send a message, right, Yes, So.

00:19:10
Speaker 4: His location was pretty good on that one, So I think he can locate when he wants.

00:19:14
Speaker 2: That's true. I like it well.

00:19:16
Speaker 1: On the way out here, Rob We appreciate you. Yet another plug for the book, just to let everyone know. Obviously they can get it wherever they want, but just to give people a little shout out on what they're missing if they don't read it.

00:19:29
Speaker 4: If they don't read it, they're going to keep wondering what's going on in today's game and why pitching looks so freaking nasty. If they do get it, they're going to learn and learn the people behind it that it's not just lifers in baseball. A lot of these guys came from the outside and kind of changed how we view the game or how we teach the game. So if you want to learn about pitching by my book.

00:19:49
Speaker 2: There you go.

00:19:50
Speaker 1: That's the best little twenty second pitch that you could put together.

00:19:53
Speaker 3: I love it.

00:19:54
Speaker 1: Good stuff, Rob, Great to see you again. Appreciate you. We'll catch you soon.

00:19:57
Speaker 4: Okay, absolutely, thanks for having me on fe