Latest / The Growth Project / Episode 343: The Art and Science of Pitching with Paul Davis

Transcript

Episode 343: The Art and Science of Pitching with Paul Davis · The Growth Project

• 0:00
  You.
• 0:03
  Hey everybody, welcome back or welcome to The Growth Project, a podcast by Angelos. My name is Corey Schaefer and I am excited for this episode. You are going to hear from Paul Davis, the director of pitching development for the Atlanta Braves. Some of the themes that we're going to hit here over the course of our conversation,
• 0:23
  just Paul's pivot from
• 0:25
  his,
• 0:26
  professional life and in one pathway.
• 0:28
  He was headed down to getting into professional baseball. We'll talk a little bit about his, philosophy towards pitching development, how to blend the art and science of coaching and of pitching. And we'll talk a little bit about what it takes to develop young talent, raw talent, into a championship big league pitcher. And we'll end with a little conversation around the the future of pitching development.
• 0:51
  So, Paul's a wealth of knowledge, great guy. And I think you guys will will hear a lot, that you can apply to your own life here in the episode. So, enjoy the episode. Here's Paul Davis of the Atlanta Braves.
• 1:04
  All right. Paula, thanks for joining me, man. And looking forward to the conversation.
• 1:08
  Let's go ahead and just dive right in. So I guess what I, what I'm interested in as a starting point is just, your path from essentially playing, right? You're playing career as a pitcher yourself, once upon a time. Is that correct?
• 1:22
  Yep.
• 1:22
  And then the transition into coaching. Was there some sort of a defining moment or an influence from, you know, a coach in your life that kind of sparked that transition? Or was coaching just always something you knew you wanted to do? I think in the back of my mind, I probably always wanted to do it.
• 1:42
  Probably because I'm I'm very much a strategic thinker and and playing games. I, I've always I grew up playing games and whatever it was, and I was a good athlete. You know, in a small town kind of sense.
• 2:01
  And so I, I just gravitated to to thinking about, you know, strategically how to how to win games.
• 2:08
  And then, I was very fortunate that I had a really good basketball coach. Who came in my senior year of high school, and he, he ended up being a Hall of Fame coach in the state of Florida. He'd already had a Hall of Fame career in Indiana basketball. But I look back and and, you know, even though I was very, you know, I just I didn't have much understanding of a basket ball, but I look back at, a lot of the things that I did learn from him.
• 2:41
  I had a really good junior college, baseball coach that I went to a Division one school. My freshman year wasn't the right place. I went to a junior college. And, a lot of things that I've ended up doing in coaching, just, you know, my overarching philosophy. And, you know, how I kind of view baseball came from him.
• 3:04
  So I was I was very fortunate. And then, you know, I, when I was in college, I probably thought, hey, I want to try and play professional baseball. And if that doesn't work, then, you know, I'll try and coach, my path detoured a little bit from that, ended up right. You and I had a lot of shoulder problems as a pitcher, and, so that that kind of drove me later, with some things.
• 3:33
  But I did coach some, like, summer high school stuff. And this is, you know, I graduated from high from college in 1985. So long time ago.
• 3:44
  But I worked in the business world, in the insurance and investing business for five, six, seven years or so, and, coached some younger kids, kind of the nascent travel ball days.
• 3:59
  Coached 11 to 14 year olds for a few years. And then I got an opportunity to to be a college, a small college, a little nice school head coach and did that for five years, then went back to school, got my, master's degree, was working on a Ph.D. in leadership and, and then taught in college for a few years, still kind of keeping my hand in coaching, coaching younger kids and then 2020, late 2012, got hired by the Cardinals.
• 4:34
  So 2013 was my first season in professional baseball.
• 4:38
  Okay. And you've been, you know, in various roles since then. I know you had a decent little stint with the Cardinals some time with the Mariners. Yeah. And how what year did you start with the Braves?
• 4:50
  2020. So this is my sixth year.
• 4:52
  I spent six with the Cardinals, one with the Mariners, and, now six with the Braves. Okay, so I want to pick up there anyway, so I'm glad we got that. You know, to this point, you know, for our listeners who might not know, just tell us a little bit about your role. So the director of pitching development for the Atlanta Braves, what are you doing on a day to day basis?
• 5:13
  So I'm overseeing all of our minor league pitchers and and coaches, communicating with the front office, primarily, my my direct, boss, Ben Sestanovich, who's assistant general manager and oversees player development, communicating with pitching coaches. And, and, you know, some of our analysts, guys who are providing support on different things. And so, you know, once a guy gets into the organization, you have somewhat of a, a longer term plan, for that pitcher.
• 5:53
  And there's so many things that that we we can know now, about, you know, velocity, how that works in the major leagues. Okay, here's how he throws, you know, here's where his arm slot is. So a certain type of slider may work best, or he already has a really good change up, or he has a good splitter.
• 6:19
  You know, we have some with most guys. We have some information about, what their command, their ability to throw strikes looked like, as an amateur and so you start formulating a plan. Well, to get this guy to turn him into a major league pitcher, here's what we're going to have to do. You know, here's where his strengths are.
• 6:43
  Here's where his weaknesses are. It's almost like doing, I mean, I do, basically a mini Swot analysis, if you will, you know, just and we'll have conversations and I'm communicating with, with my, assistant, who's our his title is pitching coordinator, almost daily that, both of us are kind of looking at, you know, this morning I already looked at game reports from last night, and I'd already kind of followed the games to see.
• 7:17
  Okay, our starters, we had several guys who are priority guys, if you will. That started. And what did their games look like? How did they do? And so it's just, you know, kind of a 30,000ft view in some ways. But then it's down on the ground with that guy. And and then I travel to each of our affiliates, typically I try to I'm trying to make them shorter stays at this point.
• 7:49
  Our coaches, I think we're very fortunate that our pitching coaches are really good. Several of them have been with us for, multiple years now. So they understand what are what and what my philosophy has been on. You know, what we need to do. So, that's that's kind of what my role entails now. There's great. That's great.
• 8:13
  And I want to I want to get into different elements of wood. You talked about. So you just mentioned there, what are some of the core principles or philosophies that kind of guide how you develop pitchers? And again, we'll talk more about this as we go to. But I think it's really important. Like you're not just trying to make a pitcher in Single-A better.
• 8:30
  You're trying to develop him into a major League Baseball pitcher. Like that's a really important distinction here. But what are some of the core principles that you try to live by? Well, I would even add, I didn't say this, but. And we we make no bones about this when guys enter the organization. And two weeks ago, we, we, had guys that that came to the complex, newly drafted, newly signed guys.
• 8:57
  we tell them we're trying to develop you into a championship pitcher because the Atlanta Braves are trying to win a World Series again. That's that's our goal. And there's even a difference between a championship pitcher versus the everyday run of the mill major league pitcher. So that's that's our overarching thing. And so the philosophy is really there is some game theory involved because, as I like to express to our, to our pitchers everything, you know, things haven't changed in baseball for 150 years.
• 9:39
  Okay? It's still three strikes. You're out four balls, you take a walk. Hitters are trying to to hit the ball hard, do damage, or try to score runs. The strike zone is the key driver of that. And the strike zone has changed in Major League Baseball. Primarily because of technology, that when a fan watches a game and you see that box that they can superimpose on the TV screen, umpires are being graded.
• 10:11
  They've been graded for the last ten or so years. And so, you know, just like in the NFL, you see replays and the ball, the nose, the ball has to cross the line. In Major League Baseball, umpires are getting much better that a pitch has to actually be a strike for them to call it a strike. And so that really informs what do we need to do?
• 10:35
  We we know that if you start off in at bat with an oh one count, with strike one, versus if you throw a ball and it starts one zero, there is a huge difference in, the outcome that one of the hitters probably going to perform several hundred points better of Ops and vice versa. One one if we can get the count to one and two versus, two and one, there's a massive difference.
• 11:05
  There's a massive difference in strikeout rate, one and two versus two and one and walk rate. And so, we, we will evaluate pitchers really on three things. It's their walked rate, their strikeout rate. And you could call it contact. Whether they produce ground balls or, you know, our guys doing a lot of damage, a lot of slug against them.
• 11:31
  And so, you know, we're very upfront with guys that this is what we're trying to to drive and, you know, and then you can take some of these numbers and you can look at at the team level in the major leagues. And the teams that become championship teams are performing very well on these metrics. So macro and micro levels, it adds up.
• 11:58
  So how many players, across all levels are you sort of working with or are under your sort of supervision over the course of a season? And how do you keep tabs on all of them? I know you mentioned you wake up and you're just looking through probably game reports and box scores, to a degree, like like I might be right looking at the guys that I work with.
• 12:20
  So yeah. How many players though, and what's the communicate and like, and how often are you checking in with these guys. So it's roughly 100. And we, we have a team in the Dominican that these are the youngest players in the organization, kids who come from primarily the Caribbean International. They can sign a contract when they're 16 years old.
• 12:46
  So then they go to the Dominican Republic. And every team has what we call an academy there. It's essentially a dorm. And these guys, they live there and they play baseball for seven, eight months out of the year. And so we have around 20 pitchers there. Then you have a rookie league team that will play at your spring training complex.
• 13:12
  Whether it's Florida, Arizona, and we'll have probably, you know, 15 ish or so pitchers that are there. And then you may have always you're going to have a group of six, ten, 12 pitchers that are injured. And so they're rehabbing and they're there at the complex. And then, in a ball or two, a ball teams in August in Rome, they'll have anywhere from 15 to 17 pitchers.
• 13:40
  And then Double-A will usually be around 15. And then Triple-A is going to be insane. So yeah, it's 100, give or take. And you know, I've got I've got my spreadsheet that, here's where everybody is and, you know, kind of keeping track of performance. We also like every team. We have an internal database. This this is one thing that has changed dramatically with technology that every team has, you know, an army of web developers and, you know, data systems, people who can create a system that takes all of this information because it's all it's all linked up.
• 14:29
  And so, every night you know, the the numbers from the box score go in and, and even on a granular level, when, when they throw a pitch, so we have systems and cameras in the stadiums that capture the movement, the velocity, the, the outcome of pitches, the location where they are, cameras that are, capturing how they're how they're moving from multiple angles so I can go in and I can pull up this video, and look at various things that the, you know, we're trying to, to work on, and then as far as with the, with the pitchers, you know, certainly.
• 15:15
  And guys know this, that there is somewhat of a pecking order. The higher your drafted, the more of a priority you would typically be. And so, you know, those those guys I and most of our guys, you know, I, I try to tend to give them some space, if you will. You know, I'll text guys occasionally that, you know, whether it's, you know, trying to just give them good feedback or check in.
• 15:49
  How you doing? Great outing, you know, or here's you know, we I just saw them. Hey, we were working on this. You're making strides in this etc.. A lot of a lot of it is checking in with our coaches who are with guys on a daily basis. You know, they're they're playing six games a week and traveling throughout the southeast.
• 16:13
  And I'm just going in a, you know, circle, around the system. And so, so more, more of my communication is with the, the coaches and, and even some of our support guys who they have access, they can see these things and I can check in with them. You know, I can't it would be impossible to to keep track and to really, really dig down on 100 plus guys.
• 16:45
  I know a lot. Certainly, I know every guy. And you know what? Again? What? Their strengths. Weaknesses. What are we trying to improve? All of that. But I have to have a tremendous amount of support to to do what I do. Yeah. And I mean, the that's kind of what I was going to hit on here next, at least briefly.
• 17:05
  I mean, this is not just like you and the athlete himself. This is the pitching coach and coordinators, potentially strength coaches or. And a medical people involved. Analysts, front office, sort of everybody involved is not just this, you know, this two way street between you and the player. Right. Like there's a team behind, all of this.
• 17:29
  So how do you keep everybody on the same page about the, the path, the developmental path of that player? Well, I, I would look back when I first got here with the Braves that, you know, having, having a background in organizational psychology and, and leadership. One of the things that when I got a chance to, to talk to the guys who interviewed me then and in my class to the vice president, and I said, my vision for a role like I'm in is to and with a major league team.
• 18:09
  And I hadn't really had this opportunity yet, but to to create a learning organization where we're constantly, you know, as a group, we're, we're trying to to get better and, and to learn that there are a lot of things that that, as I mentioned in baseball that provide this opportunity now. And we've evolved, since I've been here in six years.
• 18:37
  We've done some good things and, and we've gotten a lot of pitchers to the major leagues. And we won a World Series in 2021. We're still continuing to learn things. The game evolves. And, you know, the outsider may not see how some of these things have evolved, but but they have. And so, you know, we have we have to constantly try to evolve with the game.
• 19:12
  Some of it is maybe in some ways, you know, make, make our own little evolutions.
• 19:18
  But yeah, back to those guiding principles. The game. Three strikes, four balls, two strikes. That has not changed. And so here's here's how we're going to approach this. And and so I've had, you know, a lot of support from our front office, from the people I report to about.
• 19:42
  Yes. This is this is basically our overarching philosophy. You know, I could you know, I can sum it up really, you know, the two small sentences we're trying to make hitters swing and make hitters miss. That's that's what we're trying to do. And again, we can drill down and we can. There's tentacles to that. But in a nutshell, we're trying to make it swing the bat.
• 20:09
  And when they do swing we want them to miss. Okay. So and you've touched on this a couple different times but pitching development today. You've got the advanced analytics. You've got biomechanics technology. All this stuff is involved. How do you balance all of that science with sort of the art of coaching. The psychology, the human side of the game.
• 20:31
  is a really key element. And and I think, you know, sometimes it can be overlooked because again, we have all this information and, you know, if there wasn't a name attached to it, I could go into our system and. I could see, okay, here's here's the pitch movement, here's what the fastball does, okay. The changeup. Oh, if we if we tweak this, you know, and we can make the changeup do this, we know it's going to get x percent more swing and miss.
• 21:12
  And at times you have to really remember that we're not we're not playing a video game that there are real people with real problems, frailties, confidence, lack of confidence that are behind that. And playing, playing sports at the elite level that they're playing at is really difficult. And I'll make it a point, anytime we, we have new guys.
• 21:48
  You know, I said to these 17 new, new pitchers that we had, I never played professional baseball. I had the same dream. I wanted to play professional baseball. And I was like, you know, every other guy who's probably, you know, playing in the high school and college that, you know, you if you love the game, you, you watch a major league game, you want to you want to be one of those guys.
• 22:13
  But I wasn't I wasn't good enough. So, you know, I really I try to keep that in mind. These these guys are really good. And we're asking them and I said many jokingly at times, you know, tell them what I'm asking them to do. It's like trying to ask them to climb Mount Everest. There's just there's only a few people that are going to reach the peak and and it's fraught with danger.
• 22:42
  Some people, you know, aren't going to make it because they just they have to tap out, you know, it's too difficult. So, you know, I, I try to keep that in mind as to just how difficult it is without, you know, even excluding the other things that, yes, that are real people. All of these guys are 18 to 25, eight, 30 year old guys who have the same things that they're dealing with that, that any other 18 to 32 year old male would deal with, with relationships and family and, you know, culture and just, you know, a lot of there can be distractions, you know, if you will, you know,
• 23:37
  not how many 18 to 32 year olds perform their job under the microscope of social media, national television, you know, you perform well or not? Well, and it's on Sportscenter tomorrow morning. Right? That's that's a lot of stress. Yeah.
• 24:03
  you know, a lot of these guys also, they're extremely competitive. And, you know, this is what they want to do.
• 24:12
  But everybody else, the other side, you know, the hitters and the other teams, they're competitive also. You know, I you know, I tell guys, you know, to try to be realistic, I think this is this is one of the things that, I, you know, I'm curious to to get your take on this too, and I don't, I don't remember if we've talked about this or not, but I will tell guys, hey, you just need to be a nine and seven pitcher, okay?
• 24:41
  If you're not seven in the major leagues, and if every guy on our team was nine and seven, we win 90 games and we're going to be in the playoffs. And you know, we've done this really well at the major league level. And you know now we're seeing this year for whatever reasons it's really really hard to do.
• 25:04
  Yeah that that that line between winning and losing the line between the nine and 791 team, seven and 970 win team is really fine. And so, you know, my job, you know, and a lot of the things we talked about with guys that they don't get to face, Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts, you know, Linda or Alonzo Harper.
• 25:35
  Schwarber or they don't get to face those guys until they actually face them. So we can prepare them as best as possible when they're in the minor leagues and hopefully they get to Triple-A. But even there, they're not going to face those guys. And those games, you know, they're not on they're not on the ESPN Sunday night Game of the week or Sportscenter.
• 26:02
  So that's, you know, that's a whole new level. Yeah. Of things they have to deal with.
• 26:08
  So for all the pitchers then that you've worked with just over time and this goes across I guess you know, your career at this point. What do you feel like are some of the separating factors from the ones who who thrive and who will get there and not just get there, but as you said, maybe be a championship caliber pitcher.
• 26:27
  And the ones who who struggle, maybe despite the fact that, like, man, they've got some nasty stuff and the metrics are there, they can throw the ball hard, this and that, but they can't quite all seem to put it together consistently. What are some of the separators? Well, I think competitiveness is a really big separator. And. That's one I, I would throw this into.
• 26:58
  The if you were to look at values circumflex. Okay. Some of so, Schwartz okay. In the work that he did on values and, and, you know, or you look at McClelland, you know, power values, achievement values, the level that, that some of the guys that get to the peak, their competitiveness is just off the charts and, and I, you know, I, I think you have to differentiate that it's not just a maniacal, unhealthy need to win, but when you're playing at a level like that where everyone is so good and the stakes are so high, you also have to be very self-aware and and understand, okay, what do I need to
• 27:56
  do to make some adjustments? Or, you know, I didn't win today, okay. Why didn't I win? Sometimes you didn't win in the major leagues when you were great. You you did everything you could. You performed at an unbelievably high level. But the hitters just, you know, 1 or 2 pitches or you made a great pitch. Brings to mind that Spencer gave up, a home run to Rafael Devers.
• 28:30
  Yeah.
• 28:30
  two weeks ago. Yeah. The the ball was six inches off the ground. It was a breaking ball that he reached out with one arm and hits the ball that six inches off the ground and hits it into the seats there. There's nothing you can do about that.
• 28:51
  And that's like a that's just the tip of the Catholic.
• 28:54
  Exactly. You're the best in the world of what you do to. Right. And sometimes you're going to win out. Right. And that's, that's one of the things that I think the best guys
• 29:06
  they're able to understand that also. And not let it, you know, you hear all the time about, well, closers have to have a short memory.
• 29:17
  I think the best players in Major League Baseball, a lot of them will have to have a short memory because you're just you're just not going to win all the time. It's it's the same as I love golf, I love to play golf, I watch golf. You could go out and shoot. In fact, you know, in the British Open, some players, you know, we're just alluding to this, that Scheffler is on a different level that you have, guys.
• 29:48
  You know, Rory is Rory McIlroy is unbelievable. But yet here's this other guy who's playing at an even higher level. And, and I think that that that happens at the, the elite, the pinnacle of sport, whatever you are. And you have to be willing to accept that, but the flip side is sometimes you have to be willing to understand, you know, okay, this is a short time and I'm going to have to get better.
• 30:24
  And and you do that and and you've got to really, you know, those guys. One other thing I think is they have an extremely high level of focus, whether it's the work that they do to prepare to recover, but also, you know, it's it's that ability when they're performing to, you know, completely lock in. And for lack of a better term, they're in the zone.
• 30:56
  They're they're able to get in the zone at an extremely high level.
• 31:02
  I'm not sure if it's coachable, teachable. I do to an extent. I do think there are some things, you know, that we know about attention and how to train attention. But there's other factors involved, you know, and you've worked with a lot of guys who have performed at really high levels.
• 31:25
  And, you know, I'm curious your thoughts on that too. Yeah. I mean, I, I certainly think that you can, I mean, part of me feels like, hey, I wouldn't have a job if we didn't feel like we could train that focus and improve it and get it better. I you mentioned Spencer, and, you know, he's a good example of a guy who, when I first met him, was pretty stubborn.
• 31:48
  Kind of thought he had it all figured out. And he's a smart dude and analytical, and in some ways he did. But what he couldn't grasp was he could be really focused. And then the second something went wrong or went against him, how quickly he would lose that focus like he had the inability, as you described early on, to almost resist and not accept the fact that, like, hey, you threw a good pitch in it, it it still got hit.
• 32:15
  You know, that's just a part of the game. You got that poor result would now impact his ability to just be focused on executing the next pitch, for example, and then how quickly things could spiral. And you see that a lot even even still, in Major League Baseball, I see that every day. I feel like. Right, right.
• 32:33
  And that is, I will say when I was, a young college, coach, I was exposed to Ken Revisar,
• 32:44
  in Ken's book, and I used his book, you know, heads up baseball and the mantra, you know, one pitch at a time. And I still use that all the time that, you know, we we will do exercises with pitchers and a side session, especially with a lot of our younger guys where, you know, they'll throw a pitch and I make them step off the mound.
• 33:08
  Now you get back on, okay, it's that pitches over. You got to execute this pitch and
• 33:15
  that is something that guys have to be able to do. Yeah. And I think the best the best guys are able to do that and stay in the moment, make one pitch at a time. Right. So it's like the the results of the K of the game cannot, negatively impact, let's say that competitiveness that you said needs to be there.
• 33:39
  It can't necessarily make you want to dig your heels in and just try harder and sort of overdo things in your world. Like now you're trying too hard to throw the ball by the guy. You're trying to make your stuff nastier than it needs to be. You know what I mean? So it's almost like they double down on the yeah, it is, but it's like, that's not the answer.
• 33:59
  You just need to stay level. You need to stay consistent. You know, you treat the next pitch just like the last one. You don't have to do anything more. So yeah, all of that stuff I would assume is involved in this process and what you're trying to to get these guys to develop over the, the time you have with them.
• 34:17
  Right. And then by the time they get to the major leagues, you hope it's it's all there for them, you know.
• 34:23
  there's still things that, you know, once again once when they get to the major leagues. Okay. Now it's a different level of hitter that, that they're facing. Yeah. And and so they're, they're going to have to make some adjustments and learn again I think that's where trying to stay in the moment one pitch at a time.
• 34:48
  And just execute each pitch. And and there's a big element of, of trust. You know, that they have to trust, themselves. Trust that they're, they're good enough. Their stuff is good enough. Trust that. Yes, if I make this pitch, the results will will happen. And, you know, it's not a sometimes, as you just alluded to, you know, you make a good pitch and it gets hit.
• 35:21
  But if you if you make those good pitches often enough, the results are going to be in your favor. Yeah. And that's, that's a big thing that I try to I try to get guys to understand is, you know, this isn't if you throw it here, oh, the hitter is absolutely going to miss it. No, that won't happen.
• 35:43
  But more often than not, you know. Yeah. And, and I do one of the things I really try to do a lot of, and, you know, we try to do this throughout the system is we want we want to, emphasize guys strengths and develop those strengths. I'm a huge believer. I was exposed to the, you know, Gallup Strengthsfinder and did a lot of positive psychology work when I was a grad student.
• 36:13
  And, you know, focusing on strengths, what people do. Well and let's. Yeah. And sometimes and it's really about talent. Everyone and and I stress this to guys. Everyone that walks in the door to to you know they sign a contract with the Atlanta Braves. They're an elite talent. You know they're they're way over on the bell curve. But now we're trying to take that talent and hone it into a strength so that they can become, you know, even more elite and and get farther out on the bell curve, which is really difficult,
• 36:55
  we kind of touched on this in the, in the, in the opening.
• 36:58
  But in my observation and I've been working with guys now for a number of years, you know, one of the challenges of somebody in your role is to get these young players, okay, as you describe most of them, especially really early guys, so fresh out of high school, fresh out of college, to buy into changes and changes that are about their long term growth.
• 37:21
  Like it's not about necessarily today or the next month or two, but we're talking about maybe years down the line, to make them just better, to make them more well-rounded, to turn them into, as you said, a championship caliber Major League Baseball pitcher. That sometimes comes at the sacrifice of what feels good for players, where they feel confident or where they've always felt confident.
• 37:47
  So there's sometimes some resistance. There's the digging in of the heels. So can you talk a little bit about like how do you navigate those situations? How do you get players on board to buy in?
• 37:57
  I have to be 100% honest with you guys. And, and again, I tell our guys from the moment they walk in the door, the first conversation that I had, first meeting I had with our new pitchers, and I do this in spring training, and I remind guys that. And, you know, I use the the Mount Everest analogy.
• 38:22
  You know, I'm I'm their guide, that if you are going to climb Mount Everest, would you want a guide? Who's who's going to be you? Who's going to say, oh yeah, go ahead. Go over here. Yeah. It's okay. And they have no idea. They're just you just making it up. When you know one wrong step and you could follow your death.
• 38:44
  So I'm, I'm going to be fully honest with guys that here's, here's why we think you need to make this change. And, and, and also, you know, in that there's elements of trust, okay. The development of trust has to go into this. Some guys, when they walk in the door, will trust me implicitly because I'm the director of pitching for the Atlanta Braves.
• 39:14
  Some guys that trust is going to take time to develop. I'm going to have to show them that I know and we know what we're talking about. But so so I try to start out by, you know, letting guys understand that, you know, when myself or my assistant, Bo Henning, when we when we ask you, when we come to you with, with changes.
• 39:40
  This isn't on a whim. You know, we have a we have a a vast number of resources, technology and people, a lot of smart people that that can help us. And so, you know, we're doing it with the interest of and again, we are very explicit. Our goal is to help you become a championship pitcher. You know, your your dream.
• 40:09
  Your dream is to be a major league pitcher and to be that guy holding up a trophy and dousing your teammates with champagne.
• 40:19
  I want to help you reach that dream. So, you know, I, I try to approach it from that perspective. But it really it really is about trying to develop that trust. And at times, like in any relationship and and again, you know, I'm not with them on a daily basis. You know, they know, okay, I'm, I'm the director of pitching.
• 40:46
  And then, you know, I show up and, you know, they they will know that, you know, something. And sometimes it may be that, you know, we have to get on a call like this with guys and say, okay, here's, here's what we've, what we've never just, you know, we need to try and make an adjustment. But it is it is a process.
• 41:04
  It's a continual process of trying to develop trust. Maintain that trust and and get guys understand that, you know, it's a it's a partnership. You know, I want the best for them throughout their career. And, and also, this is very explicit that they don't have an unlimited amount of time to try to reach this goal. You know, that to become a major league player, this is something, you know, probably it's in your, you know, in your 20s, if you're if you have an opportunity to continue to pitch and play after age 30, that's fantastic.
• 41:53
  There just there aren't that many guys that get to do that. And so we have a limited amount of time to help you achieve your dream, right? Have you? Paul? I'm just curious, has there ever, ever been a scenario in your career where a pitcher was resistant? They kind of dug their heels in? Maybe not the the entire scope of what you're asking them to do, but on particular things and then they still make it like they kind of ignore the guide at times.
• 42:26
  And they're they still climb Everest.
• 42:28
  Yeah. There's there's certain things. And again, sometimes, you know, there's nuance to it, like, you know, if you have a pitcher who's in Triple-A and he's on the 40, he's on the 40 man roster, he's been optioned, young guy. You know, there are there are things that we can look at and say, okay, for you to really be the best version of you.
• 42:56
  We really think that you need to throw this pitch or you need to throw it harder, or you need to make it break more, or, you know, we've got to do a better job in, throwing first pitch strikes. Some of these things. And here's how we think you can do that. And and this is one of the things that we deal with that look, it's yeah, it's 20, 25.
• 43:23
  People can find all kinds of information, information out there, from various sources that may, may conflict with what we think. And so there there are times where we just have to say, okay, again, in the interest of this relationship that we have and we need to have and that's that's where, you know, I alluded earlier at times, I have to understand, I need to give this guy some space and sometimes, you know, we know and there's certain, you know, sometimes mostly younger guys I think.
• 44:04
  But. You need to let them fail. It's no different than parenting. You need to give your kids, you know, when your kids become. And I have two sons that are about to be 34 and 29, and when they were in high school and college, there's things that, you know, they would do that you know, as an adult, you'd kind of look at and think, this may not turn out all that well, but they're going to have to do it.
• 44:41
  And you hope that they learn from it.
• 44:44
  And so I, you know, I tend to I tend to view coaching and leading and I, you know, there's, there's plenty of, of, research books, articles, etc. that have compared parenting, you know, is leading and, and I, I, I use that, you know, I do look at a lot of these guys as if, you know, they were my son.
• 45:12
  Okay. What what would I do? And so and just my, my nature is I'm not going to I'm not going to try and beat guys over the head with things. But yeah, there's, there's times where you'd like, you know, or we, we can envision that. Hey, if this guy could do this, man, he would be better.
• 45:32
  But it's just not possible. And that's where I think also, it gets to the art and the science that all the information, the science can, can point to. This is really what he should do. But yet they're not video game avatars or robots. And we we have to we have to give guys time to make some mistakes and learn on their own and and mature, for lack of a better word.
• 46:08
  Yeah. No, I, I mean, it makes a ton of sense and especially you compare it to, to parenting. And you know, I always say some, some listeners here will laugh when they hear me say this, but like, you can kind of explain anything in a two by two framework. And so if you balance like the demands with the support that's about right is like, hey, here's some things that we really think, are going to help you, that we'd really like to see you do like those are the demands, but you got to balance it with support.
• 46:35
  And there are going to be times when there's give and take in either direction. So, yeah, that stuff is pretty fascinating. Paul, I got one more question here for you. And this is I'm just curious to to get your thoughts on this, the future of pitching and pitching development. Where do you see it going in the next 5 or 10 years?
• 46:52
  And I guess what I'm asking, there's probably going to be some, let's say, some old school like baseball purists here. Are we is the pendulum ever going to swing back in a direction, especially now, like, I think modern day baseball. And you see plenty of this. You hear this talked about a ton, but arm injuries, chasing velocity and metrics and analytics and all that kind of stuff.
• 47:15
  Is the pendulum ever going to swing back? Are we going to get old school, 1980s, 1990s, you know, pitching ever again where it's just deception and movement and it's not so much just about velocity. Are we going to get starting pitching back to go in, you know, seven, eight, nine innings, on a regular basis. Just just give me some thoughts on that.
• 47:36
  Oh okay. So Army open up a Kate worms there. Oh yeah.
• 47:41
  I tend to view myself as a baseball historian. I've loved the game. I, you know, have plenty of time in the off seasons to look at some of these things. Pitchers have always been hurt, okay? They always have. Before Doctor Jobe came up with Tommy John surgery, if you tore your UCL, in which, you know, most likely a whole lot of guys did tear their UCL.
• 48:07
  We didn't have MRI machines to to be able to see it, but plenty of guys hurt their elbow. They hurt their shoulder. Their career probably was just over. Okay. Or, you know, some of them could reinvent themselves from a hard thrower into, you know, a crafty guy. And as far as throwing hard, just watch a video of Bob feller, Nolan Ryan, Sam McDowell.
• 48:40
  Okay, Vida Blue and telling me that that these guys were not trying to throw hard. Yeah, because they were right. Now, the strike zone, as I mentioned, the game has not changed as far as three balls or so, three strikes, four balls. And what, what, you know, hitters are swinging, a wooden bat, trying to hit around baseball.
• 49:05
  But the strike zone has changed. I have I have videos on my phone that I show people all the time, whether it's Jim Palmer facing Willie Stargell in the 1971 World Series, and Palmer throws a pitch that six inches off the plate and it's called the strike. You know, Greg Maddux throwing pitches to Eddie Perez that are six inches off the plate called a strike.
• 49:30
  So when pitchers could get pitches that were called a strike that far off the plate, you could throw what I would call your B fastball. Yeah. Okay. Now, when the strike zone is pretty much the width of the plate, let's call it 18in plate 17. But you know, pitch can neck and edge or whatever. By definition, I have to throw the ball closer to the center of the strike zone.
• 50:00
  So if I'm going to have to throw it closer to the center of the strike zone where hitters do the most damage and they always have and they always will, I have to throw my a fastball more often. Okay? Or it's almost like now in the game, you know, 30 years ago, whatever. 40 years ago, if the count was two and zero.
• 50:23
  Okay, I got to throw it closer to the center. So I got to I mean, I was this is one of the things that I was taught two and zero, three and one. You better throw your best fastball. Okay. Essentially that's what the count is for pitchers all the time. Okay. So I, I think pitchers will continue, you know, to throw hard because the strike zone is we're not going back.
• 50:49
  I don't see it. I don't know how we'd widen home plate. The strike zone is not going to. It's not going back to that massive zone. And you would see, you know, in those areas. Now, as far as pitchers, starting pitchers, you know, going into the seventh and eighth all the time, I don't think you'll, you'll see that, simply because, you know, we have information as far as and this is just how the game works.
• 51:23
  If I face you for the first time in a game, I probably have the upper hand. Okay. But now once you see me, okay, you gain a little more information, you know, and on a given day, like, okay, what my fastball is doing, how hard it is you know, what are the lighting conditions, all these things. Right. What am I breaking pitchers doing by the time I faced you the third time, you have as a hitter much more information.
• 51:53
  Yeah. The fourth time to tip you towards the hitter. Exactly. Yeah. Now, the great pitchers those guys didn't have as big of a separation, the great pitchers of history. And you can look this information up, there, you know, the third time they faced a guy, there was not a tremendous difference with the average major league starter that third time.
• 52:21
  The hitters have much more of an advantage. Okay. And teams know this. And now roster rules have changed in the 1974 Oakland days. Okay. It was their third World Series in a row. They used 11 pitchers the whole season. Caught 11. That's not going to happen again okay. And basically nine of them were the ones that pitched. I'm pretty sure the Braves have used 12 starters this year.
• 52:50
  Just starters. So. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So now will there be some things that can change? I think we will continue to get better. I, I personally believe that, you know, there are some things in how we train pitchers, and physically some things that we could do that could improve, health, longevity, recovery, etc.. That may be closer to what, you know, old school looks like.
• 53:29
  But it is it is that blend of, of art and science and, you know, I think some of it is simply there's, there is a psychology to it. It's just like when the, the four minute mile barrier was broken. Okay. Everybody knew now. Oh, wow. You can run faster than, than four minutes than a year or 220 other people.
• 53:57
  Yeah. And I think some of that has happened with velocity that okay. Once a couple guys you know 95 used to be oh my gosh. Wow. This guy you know he threw 95. Well then that barrier was broken. Now you know a hundred. And it's no different than a lot of sports. You know again whether it's golf, swimming, tennis or whatever, whatever it is, you know, the 100, I was just I just read an article the other day about in the 100m, the number of teenagers now that are breaking, 10s and 100m, it's just falling by the wayside.
• 54:37
  Yeah, yeah. So I think, you know, again, it's just a blend of art and science and, you know, I understanding that, yes, we have a lot of technology, but it's still humans that are playing the game. And when the rules change slightly it changes the task. And that's how I look at it. Yeah. Well I appreciate it, Paul.
• 55:02
  I just wanted to get your thoughts on that guy who obviously has been around and knows a lot about the game. So, look, I'll let you get out of here, man. But but thanks so much for your time. Some great insights. I appreciate the conversation. I think our listeners are going to be able to take a lot from the conversation, especially, our listeners who are baseball fans, I'm sure will eat this up.
• 55:22
  So again, Paul, appreciate you, man. Thanks for your time today. Well, thank you, Corey. I enjoyed doing it.