Latest / The Layback Podcast / Will Carroll, Author of Under the Knife (Ep. 56)

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Will Carroll, Author of Under the Knife (Ep. 56) · The Layback Podcast

0:00
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Layback podcast.
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Joining us today is another celebrity in the baseball injury
0:06
world. I got I got the already.
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You are a celebrity as far as I'm concerned with everything
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you've done. Dude, you have a Wikipedia page.
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You're you're a celebrity, so that that counts enough.
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So burying the lead a little bit as we go back and forth.
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This is maybe an old pal from the Kovid Times, Will Carroll.
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When Will and I first met, he was an assistant coach at
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University of Indianapolis on his way to D2 prowess.
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He was competing with the big dogs there.
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Sadly, COVID took that away from them, but Indies made their way
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back and they've competed at the national level the past two
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years. I know that's not as much what
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Will is doing now, but Will? You may know him formally as the
0:49
injury expert on Twitter. He seems to be on a little bit
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of a hiatus there. Maybe we'll poke and prod him
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for some more info. But he does run
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theundertheknife.substack.com which is an awesome blog news
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outlet. Everything.
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I'm probably butchering it, but really anything you could ever
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want in Sporting News will offers you his take on there as
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well as a bunch of sources that he's got.
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So it's not just opinion based, it's really good stuff.
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So will I've I've jabbered on enough about this intro.
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I'm going to kick it over to you, ask you to pick up the
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pieces for me and just say anything else that I made the.
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Process. No, no, I think he nailed it,
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you know, under the knife. I've been doing that for this is
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the 23rd year here as we record this on opening day.
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It's weird to have a Thursday opening day, but hey, I'll take
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baseball any day. Yeah, this is the 23rd year.
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It started out as a, an e-mail newsletter back in 2002.
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The next year, Baseball Prospectus picked it up and I
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was part of that with Joe Sheehan and Nate Silver.
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You know, it was great. We actually got the the the
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originals together last year at Sabre Analytics.
2:04
That was pretty awesome, especially since remote
2:07
companies weren't a thing back in 2003, but they were for us.
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I mean, it was all over the place and it was great to be
2:13
able to see those guys and moderate it.
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I wasn't an original, but I was early.
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So I've been doing this for a while.
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And when you get nearly 1/4 century of injuries and trends
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and seeing things, it does give perspective.
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And you know, I've seen turnover.
2:30
I've seen guys who came into the game who have retired.
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I saw Prince Fielder's son hitting the other day.
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And I was like, I remember when Prince Fielder was the son.
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You get Darren Baker going from getting run over at home plate
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to being a player on the Nationals.
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And those are always the ones that kind of make you feel old.
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But it's also really cool to see that generational changeover, to
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see the kids you saw a couple years ago.
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Yeah, there, there's high school kid last year, Max Clark.
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I was drafted by the Tigers, and I'd seen him play as a sophomore
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in high school. Local kid here in Indianapolis
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to seeing those kind of progressions are one of the
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great things about baseball, I think.
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And you said it yourself, you're joining us here on opening day.
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You mentioned some of the amazing things you've witnessed
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thus far in your career. And we can go so many different
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ways with this conversation today, but really I want to tap
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into the moniker that you've answered to for so long, the
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injury expert with it being opening day, let.
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Me. Tell the quick story.
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Yeah, please do. Why are you an injury expert?
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You're not a doctor. And I'm like, I'm not a doctor.
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I've never said I was a doctor. But injury expert came because
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Will Carroll was taken on Twitter.
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That's literally why. And the guy who has it, I wish
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Elon keeps saying he's going to dump these things.
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And I'm not on Twitter or X or anything anymore, but it was
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literally something I thought of.
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It was there were two or three that were already taken when I
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got on there. And I was like, can we do injury
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expert? Sure.
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I was like, yeah, that'll be good.
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There was literally no more thought on it than under the
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knife. I never thought of under the
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knife. I thought of it one day and it
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became a title and it's stuck. So I guess that one was at least
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good interaction. It was just because Will Carroll
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was taken. Maybe it's one of those things
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where you selected a title unintentionally or not, and is
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that possibly what thrusted you into where you are now?
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Obviously it's been a lot of work, it's a lot of care time,
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hours, conversations. But is anybody really an expert?
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Probably not, but. You have certainly.
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Done the work to put yourself in that category.
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Yeah, that's, that's one of the things I saw some somebody the
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other day who was quoted as a bacon expert and I was like, you
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know what, I want to be a bacon expert.
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That would be the thing to be an expert at.
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But we have kind of, there was a book a couple years ago, The
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Death of Expertise. And it's true, people do not
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trust experts. They want to Google.
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Everything in my opinion, counts as much as somebody else's,
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which is not true. I have great respect for experts
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and the people in the field. And I've always said what I do
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is I work as a translator. Jim Andrews does not have time
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to come out and explain an injury to you.
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He's going into surgery. The athletic trainers aren't
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allowed to, unfortunately, and they should be.
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So I've had great sources over the years that tell me things
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and I translated. You don't want to know the
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insurance and outs of what is a biologic injection these days.
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What's going into it? If somebody says here's
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something, cortisone injections, How many times have we heard
5:39
about pitchers having a cortisone injection in your
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shoulder? Pitchers having a cortisone,
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They haven't used cortisone for years.
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It's just come to be this kind of generic term.
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So now we're moving to biologic. Is it PRP, is it aspirated stem
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cells? Most people don't care.
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They just want to know when the pitcher is going to be back.
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Is he going to be back? Why isn't he having surgery?
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Well, because waiting six weeks might make it so that Jared
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Jones doesn't miss a year. There's a lot of situations.
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But anyway, I've worked as a translator.
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The thing I always tell people is that anybody can go out and
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write about baseball or football or any of the other things I've
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written about over the years. You can come back tomorrow from
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the first day. When I first sent my newsletter
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out in 2002, I sent it to three friends.
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One of them was Jim Callas, who's now with MLB.
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At the time he was with Baseball America.
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We were in a fantasy league together.
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It's amazing how many people have fantasy league have gone on
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to like jobs in baseball and around baseball.
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But I basically asked him. I was like, hey, here's 6
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injuries I wrote about. Is this anything?
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And he's like, I don't know, send me one tomorrow.
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And that's the thing, anybody can do it once.
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Anybody can have a good take a couple times.
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Can you do it day after day after day after month after
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month after year after year? And that's honestly the greatest
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thing about my work is that I don't have to think about it.
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I don't have to come up with ideas.
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Somebody's going to be hurt tomorrow and I'm going to write
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about it. And so I don't have to put a
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whole lot of original thought into it.
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I just have to work. I have to get the right
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information as best I can from the best sources.
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I've got to convince people to violate HIPAA everyday and tell
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me things. And that's what I do.
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And I try to explain it to people in a way that's
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interesting and engaging and maybe a little bit educational,
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though this whole Jared Jones thing has me depressed.
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It just has me depressed, Adam. Yeah, I'd love to maybe use
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Jared Jones as the first example that we can dive in on.
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So maybe talk us through the process.
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Of course, never reveal your sources, would never ask you to
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do that. But let's talk about maybe how
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you go from gaining the information that you gained to
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working it through your own internal translator, so people
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on my side of the computer can digest that information, make
8:00
inferences, or have conversations at the coffee
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table or the water cooler. Yeah, actually, I'm going to
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pull up something on my computer, so I make sure that I
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quote it accurately. There are two things.
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First, I'm, I'm very disappointed that we got great
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young pitchers like Jared that are still getting hurt.
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Tommy John, Tommy John, Tommy John.
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We've got better ways to do it. I know you've put in a ton of
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work on this with Flexpro. The fact is we are not any
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better at preventing these injuries than we were 25 years
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ago. We are seeing more and more of
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these surgeries at younger and younger ages.
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So we're bad. What we're doing does not work.
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Nothing we have done over the last 25 years has made this any
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better. So I'm sad about that.
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Second, of the things I've done, I've literally had T-shirts made
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years ago that says a sprain is a tick.
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People still, despite all my effort, do not understand what a
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sprain is. So let me quote Pirates senior
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director of sports medicine TomTom Chick.
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And there's a there's a problem with with baseball's stupid
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titles. Tom Chick confirmed Wednesday
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that Jones has received multiple opinions confirming a UCL sprain
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in his right elbow. Tom Chick added that imaging
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didn't reveal any ligament damage and Jones will not
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require surgery. OK, here's the thing, Adam, I, I
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know you see it. You cannot have a sprain without
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it being ligament damage. That is the very definition.
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I hope Todd didn't say this. I haven't been able to get in
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touch with him. But it, it's one of those things
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where people say, I'm glad it's not broken, it's just a
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fracture. Well, that that's dumb.
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It's not a, it's not torn, it's just a sprain.
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No, but I mean, there are degrees of this and yeah, we can
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talk about all the the technicalities of it, but any
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ligament damage is a sprain. So any sprain is ligament
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damage. I'm sad that nobody has figured
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this out and I've got to keep explaining this.
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So one of the things, I think it was Peter King that taught me
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this. One of the frustrations you have
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is you got to explain things over and over again.
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I've got to explain a sprain a million times.
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What's a sprained ankle? Why does ACL take nine months to
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come back from? I don't know who's reading it.
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I've got my subscribers. But when I was at Sports
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Illustrated or ESPN, it could be anybody.
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That might be the first time. And if I don't treat them with
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respect, they're not going to read me again.
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So I have to explain it. Not simply.
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I can't be condescending to the people that have read me a
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million times. I've been doing this for a
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while, so I guess I'm OK at it. But you've got to explain it at
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both levels. You got to not insult the new
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people by going over their head. You can't be condescending and
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people that know this stuff, you've got to just explain it.
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So with Jones, I mean, it's disappointing in a lot of ways.
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Hopefully, hopefully that mild grade one UCL sprain will heal
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with the biologic agents they've hit him with, that the rest will
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help and that we can get him back on the field.
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If nothing else, hey, some of that rehab will happen here in
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Indianapolis. And you, you even mentioned the
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rest, right? So the symptoms can go away with
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rest, but it's not that. It's not that the structure as a
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whole is really going through this crazy healing process just
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because he's rested. The ligament and the musculature
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are two different things, right? Ligament and tendon are not the
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same. But what we know, if we're
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dealing with anything on the muscular tendon side, rest is
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not ultimately solving the problem.
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Right? Rest.
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Rest can let the swelling go away.
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You're not going to have symptoms.
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So then when he picks up the ball for the first time to throw
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again, he might not have pain, but it's down the line where the
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issue may persist. I know.
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Yeah, I doing. The same thing, you're going to
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keep getting the same results. So obviously something he's done
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has created too much force on his UCLI think when you talk
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about you mentioned musculoskeletal anything
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muscular or tendon is strain as T everything ligament sprain as
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Pi. Don't know why the English
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language has them so close. It's really annoying because
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people just screw it up. It's a typo, I get typos.
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I'm not that pedantic or try not to be.
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But you're right. What we forget, and one of the
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things I've really fought against these people say
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pitching the throwing motion isn't natural.
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It's purely natural goes all the way back to monkeys throwing
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rocks. Animals throw things.
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Our ancient ancestors threw rocks at rabbits.
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There was actually, I forget the guy's name, the the piece was
12:39
called the Throwing Madonna. And this person forget exactly
12:43
what his background was, was saying how the calculations the
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mind has to make to throw a rock on a running rabbit to lead it,
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to throw it hard enough to hurt the rabbit.
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You know, you're doing all those calculations without realizing
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it. The same way that basketball
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players, Steph Curry doesn't have to stop and think about I
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need to put this much force at this much arc, but he's doing
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it. You can break it down to the
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kind of math and spatial calculations that that the NBA
13:11
does. But throwing may have led in the
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throwing Madonna's thesis to speech.
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If if we didn't throw, maybe we wouldn't speak and maybe we
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wouldn't be communicating like this.
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But throwing is natural and high velocity, high effort, 100 times
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a game. That's not natural.
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And then trying to do it five days later.
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Rest would not necessarily heal every sprain, especially a
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rupture. But if you don't have any
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treatment at all and you have a muscle strain, it's going to
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heal up. Maybe not well, but it'll it'll,
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it'll heal. It just won't be quick.
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And that's what we care about 99% of times.
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When I get a question from somebody who isn't super into
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the injuries, all they want to know is when is my favorite
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player going to be back? When is my my team star going to
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be back on the field, the pitch, the floor, wherever That's all
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they care about. It's like, I want to see my guy
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playing the game again. When is that going to happen?
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Well, you're not just going to sit down and wait.
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That's why we've got all these doctors.
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That's why we got the trainers. That's why we've got things like
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Flexpro and everything else that helps people get better,
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stronger, rehab faster. Those are the kind of things
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that people don't get because they don't see it.
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Nobody's been able to really tell those stories.
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I understand why medical privacy exists, but the fact that the
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athletic trainers and the doctors can't tell the stories
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in most case. We've seen situations where they
14:43
do the Kansas City Chiefs, they get out there and they'll tell
14:46
the whole thing. They'll tell you.
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I remember it was a defensive lineman had a back injury and
14:51
they came out there and they're like, this is when he heard it.
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We sent him to a doctor. He had an injection, didn't
14:57
work. We sent him to another doctor to
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check, decided to have surgery. He decided to go to another
15:01
surgeon to have it checked and they broke the whole thing down
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and they said he had this, it's going to be 6 weeks, he's going
15:08
to have to go through this kind of rehab boom.
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And he came back. It went exactly like that.
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Why? I mean, it was pretty rope.
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It wasn't anything complicated, but they trusted their fans.
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They're like, hey, you invest in US.
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You buy the tickets, you watch, you buy the jerseys, you're
15:25
crazy about it. We're going to tell you what
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your favorite player or you know, if your favorite player is
15:30
offensive lineman, what is going on?
15:32
They did that with Patrick Mahomes going into the Super
15:34
Bowl a couple years ago when he had the high ankle sprain.
15:37
I remember him sitting there and Andy Reid, who is not a medical
15:41
professional, gave a pretty darn good explanation of why the high
15:45
ankle sprain was so tough for Patrick.
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He was able to overcome it because of his training, because
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that guy is just pure chaos with a with a funny voice, but he
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actually trains for those kind of things.
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But also the fact that high ankle sprained, they trust him.
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Even going into the biggest game when they actually lost, they
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trust him. And I think every team should be
16:05
like that. So do you think transferring
16:08
this back to the baseball world where literally everything is
16:11
under wraps, if you find out a dude has a busted fingernail,
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it's like hot tip information. So like do you think?
16:23
Which is really disabled. It, well, yes, it certainly can
16:26
be. Do you think the baseball world
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could actually benefit from getting this information out
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there? Whether it's holding people
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accountable to an extent or I don't even know.
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I want to keep it open-ended. I don't really want to put
16:39
thoughts in your head on this. No, no, I think please do yes,
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AI think it's a good story 90% of the time.
16:46
Stefania Bell did a great story on Alex Smith after he had that
16:49
devastating leg injury. That was one of the worst
16:52
football injuries I can remember, and he came back from
16:55
it. He's very well spoken.
16:57
His family was very supportive. They were good.
17:01
She told a great story around it.
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I think. I think it's still available on
17:05
ESPN. Absolutely phenomenal.
17:07
Those kind of stories. We don't know what rehabs are
17:11
like. What have these people gone
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through? It's difficult.
17:14
It's behind the scenes. You're away from your team.
17:17
You don't know if you're ever going to play again, even if
17:19
it's something minor. Those thoughts go into your
17:22
head. Most of these guys think they're
17:23
invincible until they're not. Why is Cal Ripken such a great
17:28
story? Because you managed to avoid
17:29
those little injuries for that long and played at such a high
17:33
level. So yeah, I think these would be
17:35
great stories. Second, I think again, you have
17:38
to trust your fans. They're investing in you.
17:41
You should give pay them back in wins.
17:44
That'd be nice, a great experience.
17:46
I think if teams are going to be bad, they ought to at least be
17:48
interesting. And I think that's baseball's
17:50
problem. And then the other is, is in
17:52
trust. Let them in.
17:55
Everybody loves to watch the behind the scenes stuff.
17:57
There's the Netflix thing coming up on the Red Sox that I think
18:01
it's going to be really good. I've heard from some of the
18:03
people and they're like, I can't believe I said that on tape.
18:06
Everybody watches Hard Knocks or did used to be really
18:09
interesting, but all those behind the scenes, we'd love to
18:11
see the behind the scenes stuff. A couple years ago, I got to go
18:14
see Steph Curry warm up. And you know, a lot of people
18:17
have seen this. It's a really regimented thing.
18:20
He goes to certain spots and make certain shots, but he keeps
18:24
backing up and you're just watching this and you're like,
18:26
he's taken seemingly a million shots.
18:29
It's got to be a couple 100 and he is not missing very many of
18:34
them. But he's doing these very
18:36
specific things in a very specific way.
18:38
He's done it before every game he's ever played, I guess at
18:41
least something similar. And I'm watching him take shots
18:45
from half court like it's nothing.
18:47
I have taken many half court shots.
18:49
They are me. Just Chuck it it up and hope it.
18:53
No, this guy's shot doesn't look that significantly different.
18:57
It's not like he's having to take great effort.
19:00
It was normal. It was natural for him.
19:05
It was it was just one of the most amazing things.
19:07
And I kept thinking people would watch this, people would pay for
19:12
this, People do. So I think all those behind the
19:15
scenes stories, if we could tell, especially after the fact,
19:20
some of these stories, I mean, I try to tell them in real time.
19:24
I talked to a lot of sources. I get behind the scenes
19:27
information and I can't give that away, so I have to hide it.
19:31
Like with Jared, I've talked to several people with the pirates.
19:34
I sort of know what's going on. I haven't been able to confirm
19:37
exactly which doctor he went to for that third opinion.
19:41
I just tried to translate that out and tell that story as best
19:44
I can. I think the teams, especially in
19:47
day and age where every team has a website, every team has an
19:50
Instagram or TikTok or whatever, you could tell those stories in
19:53
great, respectful ways. You might have to wait until
19:57
they're back. Sarah Jones is coming back.
19:59
He'll say May 1st. He's got his start.
20:02
Boom, that the day before. Show the story of all the rehab,
20:06
show all the people behind the scenes that had to work with
20:08
him. Show what hard work went into it
20:11
just to come back from a simple injury.
20:13
What was the injury? Why did he miss a month, two
20:16
months? Whatever it ends up being, I
20:18
think that fans would eat it up. Why don't we tell it?
20:22
Because, because we never have. Because medical privacy.
20:25
I'm saying you do it on everything.
20:26
But there are some really, really interesting stories out
20:29
there. And maybe the other side, I'd
20:31
love if you could comment on maybe the potential cons or what
20:35
people think could go wrong. Do you think it's just the fear
20:39
of showing the failure? Yeah, that's The thing is
20:43
failure. Failure is part of the drama of
20:47
it. Somebody's got to lose a Super
20:49
Bowl and you don't put out a special about that team usually,
20:53
even though I think it's more interesting.
20:54
I mean, think how many teams have said that loss really
20:57
pushed us forward? You should learn more from the
21:00
losses than you do from the winds.
21:02
People say it all the time. Yeah.
21:04
So I think it would be interesting.
21:06
Some people don't come back from injury at the same.
21:09
So Larry, Tommy John, people say guys come back faster.
21:13
They don't, not often. I mean, if if an average pitcher
21:18
who is healthy took a year off and just did work on his arm
21:21
rather than going out and pitching, he'd probably throw
21:23
faster the next year too, because he's not doing the
21:26
destructive activities on the other side there.
21:28
People say, oh, he's never going to be the same.
21:30
He had Tommy Johnson, which which is it, buddy?
21:32
Is he going to come back faster? Is he not going to come back at
21:34
all? 90% of major leaguers are going
21:36
to come back, even from the second one.
21:38
Heck, we had guys who had four and they came back.
21:41
So, yeah, I think the fear of failure, yeah, I, I think these
21:46
players think they're, they're, they're weak in that moment, but
21:50
I, I don't think they are. I think they're human.
21:52
And and that's, that's what we want to see.
21:55
I don't really think there's a con.
21:57
I don't think there's a con in real time.
22:00
If you wanted to say I'm not going to do it until they're
22:02
back. Fine.
22:04
Offseason content, maybe what happened in the training room
22:07
this year. I, I don't get why they don't
22:09
tell at least the good stories. All stories know they open up
22:14
somebody's ankles kind of boring, but there there are
22:17
really great stories and really interesting stories, especially
22:22
one of the here's something that's come in over the last 10
22:25
years. Not really and and and more
22:29
notice is gambling injuries move the lock and they have for years
22:34
now. It's just everywhere on your
22:36
phone. Understanding those we're going
22:39
to see some sort of non system that we have, especially in the
22:43
collegiate game gambling. We've already seen scandals,
22:46
people functionally shaving points and making bets in game
22:50
with with coaches telling them that his pitcher is not coming
22:54
in. So the game might run up, which
22:57
is stupid. They're going to get caught, but
22:58
we're going to get those kind of things.
23:00
If you knew that Paul Schemes wasn't going to pitch for LSU,
23:03
that changes everything about that game.
23:05
And it could be something as simple as Paul Schemes
23:07
girlfriend was talking to somebody at the cafeteria and
23:12
said Paul's back is sore, OK, that's going to leak.
23:16
There's going to be a gambler somewhere that pays for that
23:18
information. And if we just told the stories,
23:21
people would understand it better.
23:23
I think it's an interesting perspective because I don't live
23:26
on the entertainment world by any means, and I know what you
23:30
do. It's got that twinge of
23:33
entertainment to it to an extent, because you're providing
23:37
valuable information that real fans care about.
23:42
As you said earlier, when's my favorite player coming back?
23:45
Yeah, those people want to know the real information.
23:48
But part of what makes Under the Knife so fantastic in a sense,
23:53
and why you've been able to do it for 23 years, is because of
23:56
the entertainment piece to it, not just the educational.
24:00
Component, yeah. I mean, nobody, nobody wants to.
24:03
I don't want to do a dry documentary.
24:06
You've got to have some some drama to it.
24:08
Jared Jones is hurt. He has a sprain.
24:10
He will be out for this long, according to this doctor.
24:13
Done. He was that.
24:14
That does not work for anybody. There are no, I don't think
24:18
that's true. There are transaction sites out
24:20
there. RotoWire does a great job,
24:22
Rotoworld does a great job. You can just go and read the the
24:25
transaction feed on MLB.com and NFL has something like it.
24:29
But there's value to that. Getting ready to write
24:32
tomorrow's under the knife. And I always kind of do it a
24:34
little bit ahead of time. And there one of the things was
24:36
there are 1,000,000 moves of people being officially placed
24:39
on the injured list today. I'm not going to list them all
24:42
out. It's just not what I do.
24:44
There are plenty of places to go see that there's value in it.
24:46
And there's people that want to know why did this guy go on the
24:49
15 day? Why did this guy go on the 60
24:51
day? And there's tricks to it.
24:53
Recently, Clayton Kershaw, who is coming back from a couple
24:57
surgeries plus shoulder surgery a year ago, nobody thought he
25:00
was going to be ready at the start of the season.
25:02
The word was from the Dodgers that they were hoping he was
25:05
going to be ready in May. They're not 100% sure on that
25:08
from what I can tell, but they were thinking mid-May we'll
25:12
start seeing come back. So he's building, he's throwing,
25:15
he is throwing, he's well, he's pitching.
25:17
Big difference there. But he wasn't going to come
25:19
back. When they put him on the 15 day,
25:21
there was some, there was a piece of information there.
25:23
Did they really think he might come back before those 60 days?
25:28
And the answer was probably not. But they didn't need the roster
25:33
spot. And so that was interesting to
25:34
me because OK, if you don't need to move him, you're not bringing
25:38
this guy up. So you start looking at some of
25:41
the decisions behind the scenes. How do they feel about this
25:45
player? They don't need the roster spot.
25:47
That guy's going back at Oklahoma, so they don't love
25:50
what he's done, even though the stats look pretty good.
25:53
Are they going to make another move?
25:54
When they made another move, boom, Kershaw went on the 60, I
25:58
think it was two days later. And I was like, look, that's
26:00
exactly what I told you was happening, and this is exactly
26:03
what happened quicker than I would have expected.
26:05
But those kind of things can be interesting.
26:06
I think even when it comes to trade discussions, this team's
26:11
talking about this guy. They exchanged names, nothing.
26:13
That's still really valuable information because now you're
26:17
seeing who's valued. You always see the the Mets
26:20
won't trade this guy or the Marlins won't trade that guy, or
26:24
they offered this guy. Even when it doesn't come to
26:27
pass. It's really interesting and
26:30
seeing how people value things. And that's why Peter Gammons of
26:34
the world, the the Buster old knees of the world, who who get
26:37
that kind of insider information is super, super valuable and so
26:42
much more difficult than people think.
26:44
I mean, whether it's Adam Schefter or Wassnerowski or
26:47
shams and other sports, that information is so hard to get
26:52
for the first. You got to get somebody to trust
26:54
you enough to tell you something, and they don't just
26:57
tell you because they like you 90% of the time.
27:00
Didn't make the movie, but in Moneyball, the book, there's a
27:03
whole chapter about Peter Gammons in the trade deadline
27:06
and it was basically he was an information clearing house.
27:09
What that guy tell you, I'm sure he wasn't telling names, but he
27:12
was like, well, you know, there's a trade over here.
27:14
So now Billy Bean knew about that and he could call this and
27:18
could have turned into a three-way deal.
27:20
It's been a while since I picked that up.
27:22
So Michael Lewis a couple weeks ago, it's slum.
27:24
He was great. He needs to write another
27:26
baseball book. He should.
27:29
It is a really interesting concept of where do you get
27:34
information? How do you get information?
27:37
What are the teams tell us? There was the, the Hard Knocks.
27:40
We talked about that earlier where the, the, the general
27:42
manager was like, we're not gonna resign Saquon Barkley.
27:45
Oops. We saw that.
27:47
Maybe that's why they don't tell it.
27:48
Cuz you're gonna make mistakes. You're gonna, you're gonna screw
27:51
up. God knows I have.
27:52
So I think all of the information, all that behind the
27:56
scenes stuff come full circle. I think, I think it's so
27:59
dramatic, it's so entertaining if somebody doesn't enjoy
28:02
reading. When I go on radio, a lot of the
28:04
times somebody called me a very intelligent Grim Reaper.
28:08
I love that because they do. When when I come on the radio,
28:11
it's because somebody got hurt and they need me to explain it.
28:15
And so you don't want me to go, yeah, everybody's like, hey,
28:19
it's great to have you. No, it sucks to have you on, and
28:21
it does. So I get that.
28:23
But not everything is bad. And I think understanding is
28:27
better. Maybe that should be my tagline.
28:28
Understanding is better, Context is everything.
28:31
I think that's a really valuable point.
28:33
And I think about a lot of the conversations that I have with
28:36
individual athletes about diagnosis that they have.
28:40
I granted, I'm not playing translator to the world.
28:42
I'm playing translator to a select group of individuals that
28:46
are trying to get a feel for their diagnosis and what rehab
28:50
might look like for them or different decisions that they
28:53
can make. And oftentimes it is just
28:56
providing the education for these are your options, these
29:01
are the expected timelines. And this is the work that it may
29:05
require from you or the places that might be valuable to search
29:09
For more information. So I definitely hear what you're
29:12
saying. I can identify with that Grim
29:15
Reaper commerce state or Grim Reaper terminology to a certain
29:19
extent because the nature of what we're doing with Flexpro
29:24
Grip, even those who take on Flex Pro Grip for what they
29:29
would say is performance or prevention, they have probably
29:34
had something going on in their past, whether it's forearm or
29:38
elbow. At least 95% of them.
29:41
Maybe we have 5% of individuals that are like, oh, this is
29:44
really cool. It makes a lot of sense to me.
29:46
I want to get on board, but the other 19 out of 20, they might
29:51
not discuss it, but four years ago they had a flexor strain.
29:55
They're not sure if they fully overcome it because they're
29:59
still throwing the same 92 mph that they threw when they were
30:03
getting recruited as a junior in high school, and it's never
30:06
really been the same since. I think it's fun for me to have
30:11
this conversation with somebody that's doing it on a larger
30:14
scale environment and sending it out to the masses rather than
30:18
me. I'm doing it on the phone every
30:20
day or on Zoom every day. But I want to shift a little bit
30:23
here. Since you recently spent time at
30:26
both Sloan and Saber and some very unique information came out
30:30
of both of those, I wonder if you can guess the one that I'm
30:33
going to attack first or when I say attack more.
30:36
Bring up for you is the fun one in the baseball world.
30:40
Over the past couple days has been Glenn Fleissig's proposal
30:46
to move to a six ounce ball and what that could potentially do.
30:51
Now there's been. Research done for years, whether
30:55
it's Driveline baseball out of Kent, WA or any other, that a
31:01
six ounce ball, because it is heavier, is less elbow torque
31:05
and higher elbow torques have been shown intrapersonally to
31:10
result in greater injury risk. But not only did Glenn Fleisig
31:15
proposed the six ounce ball, but also a potential increase in
31:20
ball size by 5%. Now I've got some hot takes
31:25
myself on that that I'd be willing to share on the ball
31:28
size, but the research is sound that a heavier ball results in a
31:32
reduction of elbow vagus torque. So I'd love to just given this
31:37
background, pass it over to you, hear your initial thoughts of
31:41
being in the audience when when this presentation took place and
31:45
maybe conversations that you've had since then what what the
31:49
media or the baseball world may be saying.
31:52
Yeah, I'll be honest, I did not. I was not at that presentation
31:55
early, but I spoke to Glenn. I've known Glenn for years.
31:58
I think the world of Glenn, He was on MLB Network.
32:01
I'm leading with it in tomorrow's Under the Knife.
32:04
So let me go all Full disclosure here.
32:06
I've known Glenn for years. I consider him a friend.
32:09
I've known Kyle Body at Driveline for years.
32:12
He came, he flew all the way to Indianapolis to learn a pitch
32:15
and I've respected his work. Don't always agree with him.
32:18
Same as Glenn, if you're a friend, I probably don't agree
32:20
with you on something, but Kyle's done so much work and so
32:23
much research. He's got the Open Body Mechanics
32:26
project, which I think is phenomenal.
32:28
I also worked at a company called Modus.
32:31
Motus invented what is now called the Pulse at Driveline,
32:34
which Kyle's company uses and sells, which measures valgus
32:39
torque. So I understand this.
32:41
I I've been doing this for years.
32:43
I don't question any of Glenn's findings.
32:46
I know Glenn is a meticulous researcher.
32:50
Talking to some people inside the industry, they criticized
32:54
why it took so long to do his research.
32:55
It's because he's an academic. There are certain procedures you
32:58
have to follow. And yes, there's tons of bio
33:00
mechanics labs now. But I remember when it was
33:03
basically him and Arnell, that was it.
33:05
That was a test. Now there are bio mechanics labs
33:08
virtually everywhere. You can do it with your phone.
33:10
That was another company I work for.
33:11
But it's one of those things where there is a ton of data out
33:15
there. Think somewhere in Kyle's data
33:19
we would know more about that 6 oz ball because he uses those,
33:25
those weighted balls, those plow balls.
33:27
So I think we're going to know more.
33:28
My question is, there's no question that it does decrease
33:34
the valgus torque, but does it increase other forces when we're
33:39
talking about the theoretical workload?
33:41
Does a heavier ball put more workload even with less valgus
33:46
torque? Yes, quite possibly.
33:49
I don't know that for a fact, but if you do 80 pitches, 100
33:54
pitches, 120 pitches, some guys are out there throwing hundreds,
33:58
203 hundred times per day. If you're doing long toss, which
34:03
is I'll get in an argument with a bunch of people, it's
34:05
different mechanics than you're throwing when you're using
34:08
different muscles. If you're doing that, you're
34:10
doing it wrong. Whole different discussion.
34:12
I think there's ways to look at this.
34:15
I certainly don't disagree with Glenn's research that there's
34:18
less torque. I don't know that less torque is
34:20
better. There's also this side, I don't
34:23
want to get into the ball size thing because I think that just
34:26
becomes aerodynamics and that's not my area.
34:29
I think that affects the hitting side a lot more.
34:32
Is the ball going to go as far? Does that mean the ball is going
34:34
to be in play? What does it mean for short
34:37
stops if they're throwing a heavier or bigger ball, you
34:40
know, third baseman, is it going to be easier to hit?
34:43
Is it going to be easier to barrel up?
34:45
Those are questions I don't have any answers for.
34:48
I would bet Kyle does because I bet somebody is hit against some
34:51
of those six ounce balls. I'm intrigued by the concept.
34:54
I like the people are asking interesting questions.
34:58
Don't know that I love it. I I think pitchers would adjust.
35:02
A couple years ago, another one that Glenn research was moving
35:05
the mound back and I thought this, this is going to suck.
35:10
My initial reaction that was this is going to suck and I
35:12
don't think it's going to solve anything.
35:15
We quickly found out moving it back a foot isn't going to solve
35:18
it anything. They're just going to throw
35:19
hard. It might be an apparent 100
35:22
rather than 102, but more kids are throwing 100 now than ever
35:27
before. It used to be there'd be one kid
35:29
every year who threw 99 and you'd find him in the cornfield
35:33
in Kansas and he'd never go anywhere.
35:36
Be some kid that grew 6 inches and God awful Texas and and he
35:40
had drafted and never do anything.
35:42
He wasn't really a pitcher. He was a thrower.
35:44
Moving the mountain back did nothing and and more because you
35:49
had this coincidental change of pitch design where these guys
35:55
are learning how to tilt the ball and grip it in just the
35:57
right way and spin it in such a way that it moves 22 inches.
36:02
Now it's got another foot to move.
36:03
So now it's 26 inches. It's these monster sweepers,
36:06
it's these kick changes. It's it's all these different
36:09
pitches. They're moving in ways that, Oh
36:12
my God, nobody would have hit this Babe Ruth would have hit
36:15
125. No, it's one of those situations
36:18
where maybe moving the mountain back might help a little bit,
36:22
but it's all these other coincidental confounding
36:25
variables that made it completely worthless.
36:28
I think with a six ounce ball, we're just going to adjust.
36:30
I think we're just going to throw harder.
36:32
And if somebody's throwing a six ounce ball harder, he's going to
36:36
raise the torque. Are they going to have to change
36:37
their mechanics if it's bigger, What does that do?
36:40
And when they took away sticky stuff a couple years ago, it
36:44
screwed everybody up. So I think a bigger ball might
36:46
cause more flexor issues, which might help you.
36:49
One of those things where there's so many factors that I
36:52
don't, I can't say this is good, this is bad.
36:54
I think we should maybe try it. I think we should certainly get
36:57
Kyle to dig into his data and tell us what he sees.
37:00
The downside is they're going to test it on some poor Atlantic
37:02
League kid who's just trying to make it back to the abiliated
37:05
ball. But hey, let's, let's, let's
37:07
experiment. Let's do a lot of experiments.
37:09
I would love for baseball to just go crazy and spend a lot of
37:13
money on research and do a lot of crazy experiments and see if
37:16
it works. Because if nothing else, I'm
37:19
going to see some crazy game. Nobody does Harlem Globetrotter
37:22
stuff on the NBA, but everybody loves a good slam dunk still.
37:26
So I think we should make baseball more fun.
37:28
I said this before, I get why teams lose, but they should at
37:32
least be interesting. If you're going to suck, do it
37:37
in a fashion that I want to watch.
37:40
If you're the White Sox, find some kid that's going to steal
37:42
100 bases. If you're going to just give me
37:46
something interesting, don't go out there with some boring team
37:50
doing the same boring things and be worse than everybody and
37:52
expect me to pay for it. I'm just not going to do it.
37:55
And again, this goes back to trust Philadelphia 76ers.
37:59
Their whole slogan was Trust the Process.
38:01
And yeah, maybe it didn't completely work out, but they
38:04
certainly got better. We've seen it in Houston, we've
38:07
seen it in Baltimore. We're going to see it in Miami.
38:09
Trust the process. Explain.
38:11
Why do we suck now? Because we don't want to suck in
38:13
five years. We've sucked the last five
38:16
years. I don't want to suck in the next
38:18
5 years. So I've got to suck worse now.
38:21
Tell me that and at least make it interesting.
38:24
There's a few things there that I want to get into.
38:26
One would be, I'm going to throw it out there and leave it where
38:30
it is before this becomes a football fandom podcast, But
38:34
I've said that for years about the New Orleans Saints.
38:37
The Saints are terrible, will continue to be terrible.
38:40
But the Saints, my beloved Saints, could have put Taysom
38:45
Hill at quarterback and done something different than anybody
38:48
else in the league has seen for the past however many years.
38:52
And with the mediocrity of that division, maybe they could have
38:56
gone ten and seven and gone to the playoffs.
39:00
Not saying they could have won anything, but I wanted that for
39:03
years with Taysom Hill and Jameis Winston or whoever else,
39:07
these dynamic quarterbacks that they had instead of just trying
39:10
to be miserable with with an average.
39:13
Now again I I'm going to leave the football where it is because
39:16
I know that's not why. You're right, but you're exactly
39:19
right because I didn't think Jason Hill was the right one.
39:23
I've never bought him as a quarterback.
39:26
Again, this is football thing. There was a kind of quirky
39:30
offensive system called the A 12 which had two quarterbacks.
39:34
I thought that could work. I still think that could work.
39:36
But when Tim Tebow came into the league, I thought he could be
39:39
sort of a full back slash quarterback.
39:43
You would have a throwing quarterback and a running
39:45
quarterback, and obviously you would have to mix it up a little
39:48
bit just so you didn't know exactly what was coming.
39:50
Yeah, do something different. Do something entertaining.
39:53
He'll might have been entertaining, but I I would
39:55
rather see this. You know what was entertaining
39:57
when they had really good linebackers and crushed
39:59
everybody. That might be a plan.
40:01
For sure. No, no getting back on topic
40:04
because I would do my best to do that at at least a little bit,
40:07
although I'm usually the one that gets it off topic anyways.
40:10
So I wanted to hit you with a couple of the hot takes that I
40:14
had coming off of the six ounce idea or the introduction to it.
40:19
And you hit on one of them for sure.
40:21
That I think an increase in ball size would lead us right down
40:26
the same path that Tyler Glass now announced to the world when
40:30
he had a flexor strain and ultimately had to get a repair
40:34
and TJ and everything he went through himself with the
40:37
forearm. Issues.
40:38
Which is although the larger ball might not be able to be
40:43
thrown as hard, I tend to think that it will have an increased
40:47
demand of the flexor pronator mass, requiring more effort to
40:52
go into every individual pitch. Much as Glass now stated, with
40:56
the lack of sticky stuff to create the same spin or same
41:00
movement, he needed to grip significantly harder, which then
41:04
leads to faster fatigue which then results in either an
41:08
exposed UCL. Much of what you were saying
41:11
earlier, which fatigue is either going to lead to that or just a
41:15
flexor injury in itself, which usually is the precursor to the
41:19
ligamentous injury of what we know is Tommy John.
41:22
Now the other side of the six ounce ball, which you all also
41:27
started to tap into a bit, although all the research that's
41:31
been done so far would show a six ounce ball results in less
41:35
torque on the UCL or on the elbow as a whole rather than
41:39
specifically the UCL. I should get my words right if
41:42
I'm talking about these things. But what we don't know yet is
41:47
the impulse or how long the elbow is exposed to that torque.
41:52
And I believe this is where where you are starting to go.
41:55
And I think it'd be a very interesting piece in the
41:58
research. Although it is a less total
42:01
torque, I'd be curious how long that instance of torque may be
42:08
and is that going to result in something way down the line?
42:11
Because right now, in a vacuum, it seems like a very logical
42:16
experiment. At a minimum, as you said, is it
42:19
worth experimenting with? I think so, probably.
42:25
I feel bad for the league that has to take it on to an extent
42:28
just because it is different and new and people are going to
42:31
experience things that they've never experienced before.
42:34
But also we are toying with the impulse idea, which we have not
42:38
messed around with ever. And I don't know if that's going
42:42
to be an acute issue, a chronic issue, or if it will be an issue
42:46
whatsoever. Without having seen Glenn's full
42:48
research or ask the question, or seen if he's explained that in
42:52
his talk, I did watch a talk he did Sunday for the American
42:57
Baseball Biomechanical Society. I was on that one too.
43:00
Yeah, I don't remember him explaining anything about the
43:04
impulse. If you if you were watching it,
43:06
I didn't miss it. No.
43:08
Yeah, when we talk about torque, we're usually talking about peak
43:11
torque. A peak torque is peak.
43:14
It's, it's a fast motion. So I don't think that's going to
43:18
change. I think the level is going to
43:20
change. I don't think the time is going
43:21
to change. I think the interesting part is
43:25
if you've got a heavier ball, is there going to be more or less
43:29
lay back to bring it right back to the podcast?
43:32
Is there going to be the same sort of timing?
43:35
Did it change the sequencing? Is it putting more of a muscular
43:39
load on there? You talked about where is the
43:41
UCL exposed? We've already seen that
43:43
sequencing is changing in regard to spin rate.
43:47
We've seen more and more LAP strains over the last five years
43:50
and it is directly time to spin rate because if you're trying to
43:54
yank that thing down and get heavy spin on it, especially
43:58
without sticky stuff, the lat is going to be exposed every single
44:02
time. It's going to have to overload
44:04
and if especially if it's out of sequence.
44:06
So my guess is the peak is going to be lower, that the impulse
44:11
isn't going to be significantly different because it's
44:13
functionally the same motion. There's going to be a lot of
44:17
changes to it, but if you watched Paul Skeens throw a 5 oz
44:21
ball and Paul Skeens throw a six ounce ball, you're not really
44:24
going to be able to tell which is which just from visual.
44:27
You will from a radar gun. Maybe you're you're certainly
44:30
going to see it on a track man. So I I think it'll change
44:34
things, but I don't think that would be the problem.
44:37
Mine is going to be more on the fatigue side.
44:39
Does it save the UCL more but tear up the flexor?
44:43
Maybe I, I'm curious where there's, there's always going to
44:47
be some weak link in the kinetic chain.
44:49
And I think if we're unloading one, it's loading something else
44:55
and I don't know where it is yet.
44:57
Knowing Glenn, I would say the Doctor Fleisig already has a
45:01
pretty good answer to that. There's no question the research
45:04
is being done. I'm not saying any of this to
45:08
lead into the fact that I think Glenn is leaving something on
45:13
the table or missing something. We would not be in the position
45:16
we're in as an industry without the work that he and his team
45:20
has done at ASMI. And even going beyond ASMI, the
45:24
research that they've inspired elsewhere, Flexpro Grip wouldn't
45:28
exist if it wasn't for the research that ASMI and Glenn
45:32
have done. So I'm.
45:34
It's foundational, it's absolutely foundational.
45:36
And there's there's things we talk about.
45:40
Would we have thought of this had he not done that?
45:44
And he's been doing this since I think he said 1987 when I was
45:47
talking to him last week. Yeah, that's a long time.
45:50
And he's done great, great work. I mean, this is the Einstein of
45:55
the field. They're obviously criticism, I
45:58
think the largest criticism I have not of this study, but
46:03
there's not more of these. Why is baseball not funding
46:06
multi multi facility studies to fix this problem everybody
46:12
talked about? We have to fix the injury
46:14
epidemic. OK, where's the money we've got
46:16
to do these studies and I know they don't all have to be
46:20
academic studies. I was talking to one guy who
46:22
runs a pitching facility, has done a ton of really good
46:25
research and he's like why isn't this being done everywhere?
46:29
Why don't we talk about this system or that system?
46:31
He was more critical of the study that then I felt
46:35
comfortable with. But yet why isn't baseball doing
46:38
more? Why isn't baseball just in
46:41
general doing more? Somebody needs to take really
46:45
take this issue seriously. I mean, somebody asked whether
46:49
Glenn was doing this just to increase offense.
46:51
And I was like, no, Glenn's a researcher.
46:53
Glenn and I going into this with bad intentions.
46:56
He's going into this to answer a question just like any good
47:00
academic researcher is. I've got a question, I've got a
47:02
study. I'm going to tell you what the
47:04
results are. And that's his results.
47:07
That said, do do I think this is the greatest thing ever?
47:10
No. I think Glenn's done a lot
47:12
better work. But I, I think it's an
47:14
interesting question. I think he came to an
47:16
interesting answer. I do think somebody's going to
47:18
try it out and I'm curious to see it.
47:20
But God, baseball's just got to do better at this.
47:24
Football had a concussion problem, a multibillion dollar
47:28
concussion problem, one that put them in a bit of an existential
47:31
crisis. So what do they do?
47:32
They put $50 million, which is nothing to the NFL.
47:36
They put $50 million into making helmets better.
47:39
They said if you can make a helmet that is this good, we
47:43
will give you tons of money. And they did that and the
47:44
company went bankrupt anyway. But they show that they were
47:47
willing to do research and put it out there.
47:50
Let's come up with some sort of X prize where give me a solution
47:55
that reduces Tommy John surgery by 10%.
47:58
We will give you $10 million. Good.
48:01
Be really tough to prove, but let's do it.
48:03
If I had $10 million, I'd do that right now.
48:07
Well, hopefully I'm going to say something mildly confident,
48:12
maybe bordering on something a little beyond that, but
48:16
hopefully I can take you up on that in a year or two if we do
48:20
what we think we can do. So I've I've got my fingers
48:22
crossed and my my mind to it that.
48:25
Wasn't an offer. I don't have $10 million.
48:26
I have that. Sounded like an offer.
48:28
I'm gonna listen back and. Try to collect it, buddy.
48:30
Yeah, you know exactly. You guys have been doing
48:34
basically that for years. And think of how much faster you
48:37
could move if baseball had funded research really early on.
48:42
That's exactly, yeah, that's exactly the kind of thing they
48:46
could do. There's probably more Adams and
48:47
Darrell's out there that have good ideas, and they just don't
48:51
know how to do it. Maybe we give them assistance
48:53
on, you know, making things. I saw at Sloan there was a girl
48:58
who was also in the pitch competition and she had created
49:02
a personalized water bottle. The personalization was it read
49:07
sweat information through a sweat sensor and then it put the
49:09
right electrolytes into your water bottle.
49:12
She was 16 and had come up with this thing and I'm like, holy
49:16
crap. When I was 16 I couldn't even
49:18
talk to 16 year old girls, let alone come up with an idea like
49:20
this. But I talked to her and I was
49:22
like, have you come up with this idea?
49:24
And she was talking about how she was a soccer player and she
49:27
read about hydration. She was taking it more
49:30
seriously. And she came with the idea.
49:31
And her school had these 3D printer.
49:33
I was like, what school has 3D printers?
49:35
But imagine some sort of maker space that baseball could put.
49:40
Yeah, in a ballpark and say, hey, let's try some ideas.
49:44
We should support this, come up with new ideas and better ideas.
49:48
And I think baseball should do a lot more for building parks.
49:52
They did the Field of Dreams game a couple years ago, and I
49:54
thought that was great. I thought it was going to be
49:56
awesome for a couple years and then it was going to be the slam
49:59
dunk contest of baseball. I think they should find new
50:02
places when they did the Negro League game.
50:05
Awesome, absolutely great idea. Let's do that again somewhere
50:09
else. Let's build one of these parks
50:11
up. I want to see this this is my
50:14
pitch. I want to see baseball go to
50:17
some inner city Little League park and play on their field in
50:22
exactly the condition that it's in.
50:24
And then basically overnight do one of those crazy extreme
50:29
makeover things where suddenly we turn into the best ballpark
50:32
in the country and they play the second game there.
50:35
And we we see the difference and we leave it in a better place.
50:38
Because some of these parks, even, you know, nice suburban
50:41
parks are pretty crappy. Some of these travel parks are
50:45
pretty amazing. But let's build up some parks.
50:48
Let's help make every team. Let's have kids baseball day
50:52
where every team goes and plays at some kids park in the
50:56
neighborhood and builds it up. That'd be awesome.
51:00
Kid Inventor Day. Hey kids, fix Tommy John
51:02
surgery. Probably one of them has a good
51:04
idea. Let's find that kid.
51:05
I don't hate it because I'm already picturing some of the
51:08
ballparks that I've played out over the years and how awesome
51:11
it would be to see that home team city, that team play in one
51:15
of those parks. It would be incredible.
51:17
But with the few minutes that we have left, I know I told you off
51:21
air, I wanted to give you some time to talk about what you do
51:24
with intangibles. So we we've talked all about the
51:27
injury world and I just think this is really interesting
51:31
project and it's probably not something you get to talk enough
51:35
about given the other things that you're doing all the time.
51:38
So please take a couple minutes. You talked a little bit of
51:41
coaching, which was just sort of an experiment for me because,
51:45
yeah, I've been doing the writing and the explaining
51:47
injuries on radio and TV and print for years.
51:51
But like you, part of the issue for me as I was like, I keep
51:55
writing about these things and nothing's happening.
51:59
And back in 2014, 1314, I saw Modus, Joe Nolan showed me what
52:07
they were doing. I met with them, him and and Ben
52:11
Hanson and Ryan Gales, great guys.
52:14
And I believed in that product. People crushed me for saying
52:17
here's a sleeve that can save baseball.
52:18
I still think that was true. I think done right, it's still
52:22
got a ton of value here a decade later.
52:24
And what drive one's doing with Pulse is pretty awesome.
52:28
So that kind of led me into, hey, can I help?
52:31
Can I tell this story? And I work with them, work with
52:34
another company called Pro Play AI, which was doing bio
52:36
mechanics from the phone. And, and it's been part of the
52:39
journey. I've had a couple other
52:41
companies I've worked with and now I'm with intangible.
52:43
And intangible at its heart is a psychological test that tells
52:47
you whether or not your clutch, are you going to come up big in
52:51
that big moment or are you going to fold?
52:54
We've all seen players like this, guys who are super and
52:57
then that big moment comes and they don't come through.
53:00
If we could predict that, how valuable is it?
53:03
You know, if you're going into the draft and you know this kid
53:06
is fast or he throws 97 or he hits the ball at 106, that's all
53:12
great, but we don't know whether he's going to be a high leverage
53:16
guy. So the psychologist and the
53:18
founder of Intangible came up with this idea and they they've
53:21
proven it out. It's 14 times more predictive
53:24
than the Wunderlich test, which is the gold standard and not a
53:27
great test for what it's attempting to measure.
53:30
So I'm working with Intangible. We have this test.
53:33
It's in multiple sports now, including baseball.
53:35
We've worked with some great baseball teams and proven this
53:38
out. We're doing a lot of stuff in
53:39
softball. The softball stuff is extremely
53:42
exciting. We're working with Alliance
53:44
Softball over there and getting ready to hard launch that next
53:47
month. But this test exists, it works,
53:50
and I'm excited to be a part of it.
53:52
Awesome. It sounds like a really cool
53:54
opportunity. And I know we are running short
53:57
on time, so I do want to ask more questions.
54:00
Maybe I can see one more. Yeah, of course.
54:03
Do you think that intangible would then be scalable to a
54:07
certain extent to something that involves, I guess, education in
54:14
a sense or return to play? Because there's so much of the
54:19
mental component that goes into our sport, in the sports that we
54:23
love, and beyond just assessment, I'm curious if
54:27
there's also a teaching element that you think it can become.
54:31
I do and I don't want to get too far ahead of the research, but
54:34
one of the things we're seeing is that people score lower after
54:37
an injury. We've seen people drop because
54:39
they do lose that confidence, they're not as immersed in the
54:42
sport, people that are away from it.
54:44
We had one girl who was a top recruit in softball had been out
54:48
with with a knee injury and she has scored significantly lower
54:52
than we would have expected. We're going to retest her and
54:55
the rest of her team. We think now that she's come
54:57
back that she's playing again. It will come up.
54:59
Something as simple as that. The other is that, you know,
55:02
there are a lot of mental strength coaches out there, a
55:04
lot of really good ones, probably a lot of really bad
55:06
ones. They're a sports psychologist.
55:08
If your son or daughter needs help with hitting, you go to a
55:11
hitting coach if you can. And then there's a result.
55:14
If, if I'm paying the prices you have to pay these hitting
55:16
coaches these days, they better hit better.
55:20
If I take him to a pitching coach, they better pitch better.
55:22
But if I take him to a sports psychologist, how do I know
55:25
whether they're better? Well, probably if they hit or
55:27
pitch better, but that's not a great measure.
55:30
So we think we might end up being kind of a radar gun for
55:33
the brain in that way. It is those are those
55:36
interventions working. Is the work they're doing with
55:39
that coach showing positive increases?
55:42
We've seen that pitchers that get more confident that just you
55:48
have one team where the coaches were just talking to the players
55:51
differently, making sure that they felt good because there was
55:54
a lot of pitchers have a lot of fear based.
55:56
I don't want to throw a bad pitch.
55:57
I don't want to disappoint my teammates.
55:59
I don't want to give up that big hit.
56:01
And if you're thinking that way, the poor self talk.
56:03
We we know this, but kids do it anyway.
56:07
So how can we get around this? How can we improve it?
56:09
So we think with intangible, we can finally measure it.
56:12
You know, if you can't measure it, I don't need a radar to gun.
56:16
Tell me whether somebody's fast. The difference between 97 and
56:19
99, I can't see. And if it's important to me, you
56:23
need to measure it. With anything.
56:25
If it's important, you need to measure it.
56:27
This was something I frankly hadn't thought was measurable.
56:32
When Dan Connerty, the founder, showed it to me, showed me the
56:37
research convinced me that this works.
56:39
I was like, OK, I'm in. This is this is intriguing to
56:41
me. This is something unusual I
56:45
think could really help a lot of people because let's face it,
56:49
there is a mental health crisis. Now if we can just have a
56:52
discussion about that, about mental strength, about
56:54
resilience. One of the things I often say
56:56
about this is you remember that old NCAA commercial where
57:01
they're like 95% of our athletes are going pro and something
57:04
other than sports. I I think mental strength and
57:07
resilience in the ability to deal with pressure.
57:10
That's a life skill. That's not a sports skill.
57:12
We're going to see it in sports, but if somebody is a clutch guy,
57:16
Derek Jeter, you know, Derek Jeter probably going to be good
57:19
at anything. If he'd gone and been an
57:20
insurance salesman, he'd probably be a really good
57:22
insurance salesman. So I do think it's transferable
57:26
and that's one of the things I'm really excited about, especially
57:28
with with female sports, with women's sports, the growth we're
57:32
seeing there, softball, women's basketball.
57:35
I live in Indianapolis, so we have Caitlin Clark Mania.
57:37
Last year at Halloween All we saw Taylor Swift, Caitlin Clark
57:42
and that was even most of the boys.
57:44
Well, I appreciate you running through that and giving us a few
57:48
extra minutes there before I do officially let you go again.
57:52
How can everybody keep in touch with what you're doing and
57:55
follow along? Yeah, the easy way is under the
57:58
knife.substack.com. The $5.00 a month.
58:02
I usually say it's less than a cup of coffee, but you know,
58:05
it's kind of cliche. But I think it's a valuable,
58:09
it's a good price. It's the lowest price I can
58:11
actually put it on sub stack. I want as many people to read
58:14
this as possible. I do some free stuff.
58:17
If you sign up, even if you don't subscribe, you get one or
58:20
two guys a day, the occasional free information.
58:23
And then if you're interested in intangible, it's intangible
58:26
NTANGIBL, e.co, so you can check that out as well.
58:31
Perfect Will, thanks a ton for your time today.
58:34
Looking forward to continued conversations and following
58:38
under the knife throughout the season.
58:40
I know you're going to be hitting us with a ton,
58:42
especially with opening day being today.
58:44
I'm sure this next week is going to be crazy with information.
58:47
Well, good luck. Good luck the the rest of the
58:51
season a the odds be ever in your favor in a certain extent,
58:57
I suppose. Yeah, we'll we'll use The Hunger
59:00
Games tagline there. But will this was awesome.
59:03
Really appreciate it and to all. The.
59:06
Thanks for laying back with us.