Episode 19: Chris Langin (Driveline Baseball) And Previewing Mariners' Relievers

00:00:00 Speaker 1: Welcome to episode number nineteen of the Marine Layer Podcast with TJ. Matthewson and Lyle Goldsteen. On today's pod, we're joined by Chris Langon, the director of pitching at drive Line Baseball. Chris joins us to talk about a couple of Mariners that spent their off seasons with drive Line, A couple of Mariner pitchers to be more specific. That highlights this episode our bullpen preview. We'll talk about those guys with Chris. We'll talk about the rest of the Mariners bullpen after we finish finish up talking with Chris Langen, we'll answer another listener question, and we'll close out the show with Speak your Mind. Let's get it rolling, and we welcome you into this episode of the Marine Layer Podcast. Here on Monday, March thirteenth, the World Baseball Classic is going on. I've been so happy getting to watch the competitive baseball. It's not spring training, it's real competitive baseball on my screen here over the last couple of weeks. And I just need to say, man, it is fucking electric. I don't know how else to describe it. I mean, fucking electric. 00:01:13 Speaker 2: Those are a little different than the words you were using just the other day when the US lost to Mexico, and I think you called them frauds. 00:01:20 Speaker 1: Pretend they said losers. I'm just all I have to say is the US should not be losing by near double digits on their home turf. Please look at the US's roster and tell me they they should be losing to Mexico by ten runs. 00:01:36 Speaker 2: You can't do that, right, Yeah, the first four guys in that lineup are basically surefire Hall of famers Bets, Trout, Goldschmidt, Aernato. And then you've got the rest of the lineup that's just a bunch of studs too. And I know they're pitching isn't great, But yeah, they probably should have gone four to OHO in this pool play, although I would bet they still end up going three and one. 00:01:57 Speaker 1: They're talented enough where they will they'll escape this pool. The fact remains, I think when you're watching the US compared to all the other countries, the US is treating it. I saw it put perfectly on Twitter as like a country club atmosphere, and the rest are playing like like the it's the World Baseball Classic and like it means a ton to bring home this championship. To your country. Look look how electric those games are in Miami. I mean, holy crap, Venezuela, the Dominican, and Puerto Rico are Just the amount of emotion they're showing in a mid March baseball game is unbelievable. Unbelievable. And when you watch the US, it's well, they were essentially playing on the road in their home ballpark against Mexico. 00:02:46 Speaker 2: Yeah, those fans were Team Mexico filled up that stadium. And Okay, to be fair, it's not like the US is playing a team with no big leaguers. I know they're better than Mexico, but Mexico still has real players on that team, Alex Verdugo, Rowdy Talaz, Alex Thomas, like, there's real major leaguers on that team. But the US still should have won. But you're right, the US and it's fans have not lived up to the hype of the other fan bases that have just builled up stadiums for this Classic, because I mean compared to even compared to soccer, Like there were US fans at the World Cup this past World Cup and they were into it, but here for the World Baseball Classic. Yeah, you're right, it does just kind of feel like a secondary event to them. 00:03:32 Speaker 1: And I don't want to say it's for the players too. Mike Trout love to say, I missed it last time and I've regretted it ever since. And I'm here, I'm out there playing right. It's you just yet to see the sort of same emotional level as the other team, So that I think is going to be the difference. I mean, let's go across the pond, go to Japan. Look at look at all the fans, all the in all the players for Team Japan when they're playing show Hey, O, Tana, you Darvish and a couple of those other guys. I mean, man, it is just it is awesome there to watch that team play, and it's just on such a different level than the US. And I have another gripe about the US besides the caring aspect and the fans. I mean, no offense to Mark de Rosa, but I just don't really want to hear about him complaining about his pitchers when everyone else plays under the exact same rules. For pictures, he came out today and was said, oh, I can't use these guys on back to back days. They can only throw so many pitches out to take them out after Wanning. 00:04:35 Speaker 3: I'm like everyone else is doing that too, Like, yeah, he probably is upset that guys like Jacob de Grom didn't want to pitch, Max Free didn't want to pitch the top American arms are more worried about the regular season, and. 00:04:50 Speaker 2: That's perfectly reasonable. So maybe he's kind of projecting because the reality is he realizes some of these other rosters have way better rotations than he does, and that's what's hampering Team USA right now. But still, you're right, everybody's playing under the same rules. I can't tell Mark de Rosa, you know, I can't fix the fact that you have an inferior rotation and that there were American pitchers that just didn't want to participate in this tournament. But yeah, like the rules are the rules, Just play by them. 00:05:20 Speaker 1: Is it like significantly inferior? 00:05:23 Speaker 2: I mean yeah, like I mean, is it? 00:05:26 Speaker 1: I mean maybe it's Japan's but. 00:05:29 Speaker 2: Everyone else to Team I don't know. Colombia, of course, they have the better rotation. But you know, the US has the best crop of talent of baseball players in the world, even though some other countries the d are Japan Venezuela also produced really good players, and your your number one starter is Adam Wainwright, who's like forty years old and he had a great career, but like that should be your number one starter. 00:05:54 Speaker 1: Okay. I will say having pure talent on the mount has been everything. I mean, Sandy got lit up his first time when they play in Venezuela. So it's not like it's not apples to apples. 00:06:07 Speaker 2: That's true, but you're right that the actual aspect of the energy probably does play some factor. I mean, have you seen this Team Venezuela or the guys for Team Venezuela. I mean they are jumping out of their seats over the dugout, railing onto the field for every run that's scored, even when they were up a bunch of runs, like it means a lot to them. In the US, Yeah, we just haven't seen it. 00:06:29 Speaker 1: We'll see it as this World Baseball Classic goes on. I do think it's like very on brand America for how this this tournament is treated, because the rest of the country seem to be playing for the pride of their homeland and then America is playing, is playing the American effort towards The World Baseball Classic is for pure financial game, which I think is just funny and so so on brand America and literally every facet of American life. Regardless it's been, it's been a really, really fun time getting to watch the World Baseball Classic. I didn't realize how much I missed it. I don't remember it really being this electric when it was on back in twenty seventeen. Maybe Fox has just juiced up all the crowd mics to make it sound a lot better. But I've been a huge fan of what the World Baseball Classic has brought here in March, as we get ready for the regular season. Another thing that's going to help us get ready for the regular season is here. In this episode, we're going to take a look at the Mariners' bullpen and preview that group but a twenty twenty three season. Can they have a different look and be elite for a third consecutive season. We have some numbers that we'll want to touch on here after our interview with Chris Langen. Chris is the director of pitching at Drive Line. He helped out a couple of Mariners in the big league bullpen, Matt Brash and Matt Festa along with one minor leaguer in the Mariners organization, Riley O'Brien, that he said he wants to touch on, and we'll touch on with him briefly here in our interview with him, but a couple a few guys that spent their off seasons with drive Line and will be a big part of the Mariner's bullpen at some time this year. Chris is a very, very smart dude. We think we know baseball number as well. Well. I went online and I read an article he wrote on drive line dot com about pitch shaping, and my brain legitimately hurt. It was hurting yesterday when I was looking when I was looking at up and I texted Lyle and Nile was like, yeah, same thing. We have not talked to Chris yet as of recording this intro, but I'm sure he's going to do a great job of explaining it when we get to our interview with Chris Langen. So let's do that. Let's go listen, let's go here our interview with Chris Langen. We welcome on Chris lang In, the director of pitching at Driveline to the Marine Layer podcast. Chris has been the director of drive Line now director of pitching at drive Line, Chris Now, for how many years months? 00:08:53 Speaker 4: Actually, I've been there. I've been the director of pitching here for about four or five months. Our previous director, Bill Heazel, he's actually got the assistant pitching coach job at the Angels. But I've been at drive Line for about three and a half years. 00:09:05 Speaker 1: So you've got some really big shoes to fill. 00:09:08 Speaker 4: Yeah, you could say so. I mean that's kind of the underlying thing is, you know, we've had quite a few people who've been directors here who have gone on to some pretty cool things. So I definitely consider myself pretty fortunate to kind of be where I'm at right now. 00:09:21 Speaker 1: It sounds like from from now we're starting this you know, this recording here on this on this Monday night that you are. I thought personally that this is like the busiest time of year for you just thinking about it, because every you're located in Arizona. Drive Line right has has places in Arizona and in Kent as well. So I thought, well, with everyone you know in Arizona at once, that increases your demand tenfold. But it sounds like it's the opposite. 00:09:49 Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, there's a there's definitely a component of like guys adjusting back to their teams and like making sure all the pitch shapes are good and generally communicating with them. The biggest difference is like you've got a little bit of freedom to kind of respond when you want, not saying we like ghost guys or anything, but when you're in the off season, guys were training at the facility remotely, etc. You have to be there, you know, right when their time is for their whull pen. So that like three to four months stretch is generally our busiest time of the year with the Pro Bowl guys, and then we get into the summer for our full staff we get quite a few college guys. So those are kind of the two big time times of the year, so to speak. And I told you guys a little bit earlier. Today was a little bit of an outlier. It was pretty busy today. But yeah, no, that's generally how it goes. 00:10:35 Speaker 1: I know from my time around some of the Oregon State kids here in Corvallis. That's where I'm located here around Oregon State. That's my day job essentially covering them. I know they're big fans of you as well, So I'll lead you to this with off of that basis. For our listeners who might not know who drive Line is, could you give the spark nosed version of what drive Line is and what drive Line strives to achieve. 00:11:02 Speaker 4: Sure, So, I mean mainly it's just really it's just baseball development in general. It's you know, initially pitching and then over the past about five six years we've added hitting. So really kind of to be frank, just the leaders and data driven training in the private sector for those things. So generally our biggest concern goal, especially on the skill side of things, is just like adding value to guys' careers, whether it's in high school, We've got a youth academy, college, and then obviously minor league's MLB. So that's our basically, all of our time, all of our thought processes is going to developing better players in general, with kind of data at the forefront of that process. 00:11:44 Speaker 2: So for you, when you start to search for a job in the field, when you're kind of getting out of college and figuring out what you might want to do, I mean, how do you even find this place? Like how did you end up a drive Line and then off that how did you work your way up to the position you're now in, which is the director of pitching. 00:12:01 Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean you find it generally by throwing slow when you played, because you're constantly a little bit depressed from your fastball velocity's about eighty four. So you find yourself googling it and I, how do I throw harder? How do I throw harder? Google that enough times? When I was in college, then eventually came across drive line, probably like freshman years, like twenty sixteen, so it was kind of before I would say it was like really getting to the forefront of things, Like they didn't have really MLB guys at the time, so I kind of lucked into the timing there where I was learning some of the things they were doing without even being employed here. So I got somewhat of a jump before it became super well regarded or known, so to speak. And then basically, yeah, that was a bad player. But I really really really loved baseball, and the way kind of to stay in the sport was naturally coaching. I coached junior college for a bit about actually just like three months, and then really to a degree, you get somewhat lucky a spot opens up. Drivel had a bunch of pitching coaches go to pro Ball. One year they had did his coach a certification. I went up to Seattle to do that. While I was there, I annoyed a bunch of people asked how I could get a job there, and really the rest is history. And then I mean, really it's just you know, kind of seeing that opportunity and knowing, hey, in most lifetimes, if I don't get that shot, with my background of throwing eighty five, you're not necessarily going to be people's first choice to you know, make much money coaching baseball per se. That's you know, pretty difficult to provide for a family in general coaching. So kind of saw that, saw it as a really good fortune, really good luck, and ran with it. And it's kind of the main gist of it. 00:13:42 Speaker 1: I think, did drive line only get you up to eighty five? 00:13:46 Speaker 4: I got it the so I got up the eighty nine. So I always wanted to throw ninety really bad. Last time I threw, though it was eighty nine, I tore my acl, I had some I had some other injuries and such. I wouldn't consider myself, you know, the most prowess of genetics per se. But I was at the point I was, I was really willing to do anything to kind of send it for some velocity. Uh, just you know, I had like a tendy ari my freshman year. Sophomore year, things started going a bit better, throwing a bit harder at a shot, maybe to play a Division one low moment major if I didn't get injured. But for the most part, I was, you know, if I was going to care that much about baseball, put that much time into it, I figure, let's let's send it and see what happens. 00:14:30 Speaker 2: So how have you learned as much as you have? Because in doing some prep for this interview, I mean TJ and I are pretty big baseball fans, and we consider ourselves baseball nerds, and we're into all the baseball analytics, especially on the offensive side of things. But we're reading some of your articles in terms of what you know about pitching and how you guys evaluate pitching, and like, my head's spin it out of control. So I'm just wondering, like, like, how in the world did you learn as much as you have getting up to this point. 00:14:58 Speaker 4: Sure, I mean, part of us probably a little bit of a lack of other opportunities to do fun things, you know, and I don't find too many things that enjoyable besides baseball. When I grew up, I wasn't like the not like unattractive. I wouldn't say, but I wasn't. It wasn't like on a Friday night, I'd have all these girls, you know, at my disposalver Sae. So naturally, the things that I thought were entertaining were studying baseball, learning it. And then you know, I really grew up with just a dad, so sports were probably even too a certain I never had the I never really had a woman in my life to be like, hey this, you know, these sports things probably aren't the big picture here, so kind of leaned into that even more. And then once I got to drive line, Honestly, you just have so many resources, You meet so many people. I mean, you're just your your entire job in life revolves around it. So naturally, you know, you kind of start to filter into learning a bunch of stuff about that, and then if you ask me about just about any other topic, I'm super unqualified to talk about it. So that's kind of a kind of the trade off there. 00:15:58 Speaker 1: I think for what that's the statement you just put out. I think that qualifies for all three of us. I'll just I'm not generalize and say that. 00:16:05 Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's last about both months have been on a little bit of a redemption, you know, trying to change the course per se. 00:16:11 Speaker 1: But no for sure, Yeah absolutely, So let's just get into like I just want to now sort of get into the drive Lines philosophy of pitching. I guess from if you could generalize it for us, like what what do like besides like drive line is trying to get people better? But with the pitching philosophy at drive Line, like like where where do you guys start? Like where where does it all start? When you're when you're looking at a pitcher to say, hey, like we need to get this guy better. Here's here's what we're going to start and do. 00:16:43 Speaker 4: Sure, I mean I think it's really reverse engineering, like how do you get out? Like in general, and what is like a true predicted process for getting out? So like the basic things that you know, if you're a fan and starting to get analytics or whatever, is like you're not gonna you know, if somebody has a low or high babbit just to like batting average and balls and play. You kind of learned to be a little bit susceptible to putting too much care into that per se. So generally what you kind of find is, like most of the dame is striking out guys and avoiding walks. So you're really looking at how do we get more of those good outcomes? Right, And you really instead of bringing in human bias and declaring a ton of like, oh, I know exactly what this guy needs to do, he needs to throw this, he needs to do this, you kind of use some models we'd we use like a stuff model, a command model, et cetera, and kind of figure out how can we make this athlete better? And again, the biggest thing is just like using data to confirm that. So like if you gain a tick of fastball veloss y, we have an idea of like how valuable that is for next year's era on average, And you know, pitchings vary, especially if you're a reliever. It's very hard to predict. So we try to use sort of those more predictive stats that are less noisy, make that the main thing, and then from there right right, if pitchings like stuff command let's just say those are the two main things. Guys. A lot of stuff is just throwing hard, so we're trying to improve their mechanics. We're looking at with our biomechclab, what are some of the correlations that guys like if you influence this one motion and the throw, how much does that generally affect velocity? You figure out get a reading on what each picture is in those categories and kind of like come to a conclusion like here's how we should best spend our time to get some more of those better outcomes. And really the main driver in all this is that you're using data and that's kind of your main process. Doesn't mean you don't introduce some of these qualitated things, especially at the big league level when you get a bigger sample and guys are you know, constantly facing one another. But that's the main thing I think is how do we get better outcomes? And then driving our intention of getting those outcomes to just what the data says. 00:18:51 Speaker 2: How do you guys start to develop some of the philosophies that you guys really preach over time And the one I've always kind of had the question on is I know, drive line's always been big on the idea of if you have a certain pitch that's your best pitch, just throw it, like even if it's not your fastball, just throw it often. And now you see that implemented in the big leagues way more. I know, you guys have always been a big proponent of that. How much data did you guys have to collect over time to realize this really works? 00:19:20 Speaker 4: So, I mean it's kind of something that everybody figures out a bench. I mean if you look at like I think basketball is always a good example, Like if you look at how many guys are shooting three pointers now, like an NBA relative now, So like really what happens is that more people, in my opinion, get introduced to the game with a different background. So instead of you know, having a higher proportion of the guys in the game maybe being more like influential through just like credibility of having played, you get a few more of these guys in the front office who think a little bit different Differently. Moneyball is probably like the first example of that, and that's kind of their new process. And then the teams that were ahead of that early basically you could just say throw your slider more and like you were, you had like a pretty good margin on the rest of the league at that time. Well, that's kind of essentially gotten introduced to every team at this point. Some follow it obviously much more than others, but really I think it's just like, hey, sports you can kind of use, especially in baseball where there isn't quite as much context like the pitcher and the hitter. Really you don't It doesn't matter who's in right field that much. It doesn't matter who's on deck really that much, you know, whereas in football you're trying to control for how good the offensive line is for the running back, things like that. So I think a lot of it is just more people in the game who are looking at these things to try to get better outcomes, and as a result, that's what is kind of the deficiency at the time, and that's how they kind of come to the conclusion of throwing your best pitch more often, throwing more sliders, not just throwing a fastball because it's you know, like too one count and you feel like throwing an off speed pitch is a challenging the. 00:20:51 Speaker 1: Guy, which pitcher is the best example of this for the general fan to look at and say, oh, well, duh. 00:21:01 Speaker 4: I mean Matt Whistler. I mean that's you did say, general fans, that probably wasn't the best example of the use of Mattwitzer's like ninety percent sliders. Mccoler. I think the mccolder's example back in when the Astros, you know, the mid twenty tens, twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, those years, he he had a game where he threw his curveball like twenty five straight times in the playoffs. So that's like another good example I think of just guys leaning into those pitches. Really, honestly the best one for what you had, general audience, if you look at Showyotani, look at his Look at his four sing fastball usage at the beginning of twenty twenty one compared to like the last two games of twenty twenty two. He in his first inning in twenty twenty one, it's really sad. I have this memorize. He threw twelve forcing fastballs in the first inning, and he was in this game he was throwing like one hundred, like averaging ninety eight or something. In his last two games of the year combined, he threw like eight total fourcing fastballs in those games. So that's probably the best example of he just started ripping a bunch and a bunch of you thing sliders. The general thought is like, and it is true to some degree. I'm not like discrediting this entirely, but if you're struggling with walks, throw your contact inducing pitches more, and I think it's generally like kind of correct. But for show, I really just rint more sliders. And to be frank, if you look at where the catcher's glove is he's throwing them. Basically his heat map is just all blue in the entire zone, whereas this spoor seamer it's not like that. So he has to be a little bit more careful with where he throws it. And sometimes I can actually leave the guys to be a nitpicky and missing the zone more often. 00:22:33 Speaker 1: What okay, just I'm gonna base it off of what how you just answered that last question? How you begin it? What? What is the stat that you're most embarrassed that you have memorized if your memory is that good? 00:22:44 Speaker 4: Oh gosh, man, I don't know. There's there's probably just like too many. It's one of those things like if you if you bring something up, it'll like come to me. But if I have to like literally think of it and pull it out of the box, it probably doesn't go as good. Gosh, I don't know, maybe I set myself up there, but the fact that I know that one specifically probably probably isn't the best. I mean, I know, like Sonny Gray has like sixty I think it's like sixty four, Like hip Shot Sinkers the Lefties with two strikes over the last two years. That's probably something I shouldn't have memorized. Next guy's like forty seven. So there's some very niche things going through my head at times. And I've always been one for numbers, so I don't know i've been I might just see the world that way naturally. 00:23:28 Speaker 1: So let's think about this regarding to numbers. And this is gonna this will this is gonna help us for what this episode of the podcast is gonna be. And we're gonna be previewing the Mariner's bullpen and reliever specifically. And I don't think any stat really helps out a pitcher more than has come on recently than stuff. Plus I know you guys at drive Line will use it general. I don't know if there's different versions exactly because I'm still trying to learn it and understand the stat a little bit, but if you could explain it, how do you guys measure like how is stuff measured? And then how do you how do you quantify it in this number? 00:24:05 Speaker 4: Sure, so the idea the plus scale would basically be that one hundred is like a league average pitch then just the best way to start with this, but like a one hundreds of league average pitch. So if you ever look at like a stuff plus scale, the idea would be that if you're an eighty or twenty percent below the league average, if you're on twenty, that pitch is going to rate twenty percent above the league average. I mean stuff plus. Really, now, people are gonna have different methods of like how they go about getting the calculation, but what you're basically trying to control for then people can have alternative versions of this, but like is how good is this pitch? If like command is agnostic and like not involved at all, and really the biggest thing, really what it's trying to say is nasty? How nasty is the pitch? And some most most teams like filter by pitch type. So fastballs obviously do not lower the run environment typically as well as like a sider. So a fastball, it's like a one to ten isn't necessarily going to predicted success as if a pitcher through a one hundred stuff plus sider at the same rate makes sense. But basically you're looking at how nasty is the pitch, and then the way you get that calculation is really derived from like looking at similar pitches and just like crossing out the command aspects of it, and really the biggest there's a couple of things. One of the biggest things is that it stabilizes very quickly. So like in a spring training game, the guy throws two outings, you probably have a pretty good whatever he throws in that game is probably actually like a pretty good like big signal there that like this is probably who this guy is now to some degree, whereas command can take a little bit longer the sample size needed there. So it's one of those things that stuff really just stabilizes quicker. And then when you're in the off season right and you're trying to determine what is a good pitch for this guy to throw, you can use that stuff plus number to kind of determine what shape you want to go after, and instead of having to wait for feedback from hitters on whether or not you should go through with throwing this pitch, you can really show the athlete like, hey, we're being proud ballistic at the end of the day, but like, if you throw this shape at the exact same command as the current shape you throw, you should have better results over the course of the year with you know, takering with this script and getting you know, three inches a sweep at the cost of you know, half a mile an hour of blocks year or something. So that's kind of stuff plus in a nutshell, I suppose. 00:26:19 Speaker 2: That's a pretty good segue here into a couple of these Mariners relievers, because a guy that obviously ranks very very well in terms of stuff plus is Matt Brash, who's been seen in some Twitter videos working out a drive line this off season and working on some stuff. We heard you in an interview earlier this offseason talking about Matt Brash a slider, and I heard you say in terms of movement and velocity, you said that might be the best pitch in the history of baseball. I'm sitting here thinking, I mean, like Mariano Rivera's cutter, Dwight Gooden's fastball or slider. But you were very, very definitive about no, like it's brash and it sounds like you really believe that. 00:26:57 Speaker 4: Yeah, And a couple of people tell me how was Stephen A Smith when they heard it. I mean, if you're like involved again, if you're like daily life so to speak, is like looking at stuff plus numbers, like it's really not that crazy of a statement, like you can like, don't get me wrong, it's not like I wouldn't say it's like Steph Curry with three point shooting right like he's if somebody says to anybody but Steph Curry or just like come on, man, like that's not that's not a thing, you know what I mean. So like I'm not saying he's like, you know, sway like he's right here in the next size guys here. But I can tell you right now that slider to kind of summarize it quickly, it's basically thrown when he was out of the bullpen. It basically was thrown out a league average hutter velocity, Like that's how Hardy threw it. Forever's league average hutter moves two and a half inches. His slider moved fifteen inches, so he uh, he is doing things with that baseball that are just absolutely unheard of. And in terms of like how nasty that pitch is, like that's if you see that thing, You're just like, how in the world is this possible? You know what I mean? And I literally like, yeah, one hundred percent believe it. If you look at like the stuff costs of that pitch, it is very difficult to say with certainty like, oh, that pitch is better than that now in terms of results, like, uh, you know, Dylan ces has better slider results than that bratch, Like that's that's just a fact currently. But uh, there's other components of getting results that aren't just associated with the stuff. So if we built it for stuff like and you gave everybody in Theory League average command, like I would, I would I take my bratch as slider over anybody's, you know what I mean. So that's kind of the kind of the idea there, And. 00:28:35 Speaker 1: Like the mechanics of it. I remember I was listening to some interview did it and it was something it's is it his middle finger that makes it special? He's got like a long middle finger. That's like he can just rip it. 00:28:46 Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I probably didn't do him any favors by bringing that one up. I think he gets caught. He gets asked about it like all of the time now, So but yeah, I mean if you look at how he like, but I gotta I have like a tweet of it up. But if you look at like how he he hooks the baseball, it just doesn't look natural. It doesn't like if you've tried to put your fingers on the ball like that, you would not be able to do it, you know what I mean. So I think basically he can hook the ball, and he can basically create tension into that baseball and apply force for an incredibly long time and still basically throw the throw the thing at a cutter velocity but still get in front of the ball, get the sweep on it, and have the movement as well. But generally, yeah, the middle finger thing is pretty wild. And then also he's just like really good at superinating or getting around the baseball. Some guys are really good at like turning over a ball. Some guys are better at getting here. This is where you typically see the guys get breaking balls, they sup and ate pretty well. He biases a bit towards that, and then when you also add in the middle finger, you know, you get arguably the best pitch in terms of stuff that we've ever seen. 00:29:57 Speaker 2: You can correct me if I quote this wrong, But with that slider, it seemed like the approach opposing teams and opposing hitters started to take toward it. And I thought, I saw you talk about something along these lines. Is I mean, this is almost impossible to hit. Our best chance against the thing is to basically, if we see spin, just don't swing right. 00:30:18 Speaker 4: Yeah, So like that's a that probably is even a bigger thing in the context of Brash, right, because like the idea and I'll just we'll just say, like as a starter in twenty twenty two for reference, the idea is like he's got you know, ninety six a four seamer, and then he's got these two kind of discussing breaking balls. Well, if he spins himself out of a pitcher's count early and you can sit on that one pitch shape, it's ninety six. But really the movement of it wasn't absurd, and what you tend to see is one with sweepers and bigger depth breaking balls. Hitters just generally don't swing us often because they don't really those pitches don't start in the zone per se. So everybody a whoay talks about how those which is sometimes aren't chased as much higher. But but really the thing is they just aren't swung at as often as some of the like shorter breaking balls, because they kind of deviate from the fastball a bit. And then there's also, to be frank the component of like you said, if the pitch is n' nasty enough, like hitters are going to swing at things they think they can hit, you know, so there's probably there's a lot of times, you know, he kind of puts one right in the chase spot as a starter, but it's so difficult to hit you actually don't get the chase and it's the ball, you know. So the main idea is those pitch shapes are also generally more difficult to command. It's just a lot of movement to project into zone. They also aren't swung at as much. And then as a starter, you know, if you're ninety eight out of the pen, you're generally going to be ninety six as a starter. You got to go through the order a few more times, so that stuff then also plays plays down a hair compared to the bullpen. And then the role is just a little bit different, Like when you come in as a reliever, walks don't necessarily hurt you as much. The game is better. The game has like a smaller amount of time to be played, so you see more pitchers going after preventing any amount of runs at all, Whereas when you're throwing, you know, five six innings, you're kind of trying to contain walks and do some of those things. So yeah, no, the ideas with those bigger breaking balls, they're generally not going to do swings as much. And if you have somebody who's walking, guys throwing those pitches and that's like the primary pitches they throw. And if you look at his usage, he was like third highest in the league with breaking balls. And then the funny the funny one to me is like the average pitcher in that group that was like top ten, their pitches move on average, like I want to say, like nine inches, right, and he was third in this ranking has moved nineteen So like the guys who were the guys who were honestly in that ranking board able to throw it that opted. They were throwing shorter types of sliders that were a little bit easier to command and put in the zone you know, one to zero and get a swing, et cetera. 00:32:53 Speaker 1: And are these guys with like subpar off speed stuff who who are essentially just lobbing it over for a strike upposed to brash who's really chasing that strikeout? 00:33:03 Speaker 4: So so I'd say in that grouping of those ten, what the typically is, it's a lot of guys who are throwing like firmer sliders like that. They're throwing the like the more gyro or outsider they might there might be like a little bit of sweep on there. But the idea is that the in a sense I'm oversimplifying this, but the closer you are to like your fastball's movement generally, the more swings you're going to get in general. And then we've like and we literally have this known on average, like when a pitcher puts less movement on the ball, they tend to like actually hit their intended target or command the ball better as well. So the idea there would be, if you're throwing thirty five forty sliders, but it is a little bit of a smaller shape. It is a more realistic pitch to throw that often given the count state of the game, you're not always throwing into oh one counts, are always starting to two counts. You're throwing in you know, one oh type of counts. And if you don't want to fastball, you better be able to get that pitch over over the course of a season. 00:34:06 Speaker 1: So I'm thinking, just off the top of my head, if we're thinking in terms of effectiveness, that's sort of like the difference between a Matt Brash throwing fastball slider and an Edwin Diaz throwing fastball slider. Is that an unfair comparison? 00:34:18 Speaker 4: So yeah, I mean I think Dias is fastball. I think it's just like the it's just a lot different than than that's like what it's a little bit harder, his command's a little bit better, and then he actually has like a bit lower of a release height, and then when you throw legit one hundred miles an hour like on average. To your point too, that that type of slider that he throws, which really isn't gonna be eye popping. It's more of like a gyro. It almost is like right in between a like gyro slider and more of a cutter. It's gonna be easier to throw in a one to one type of count and progress the count accordingly versus kind of like if you throw a bigger pitch shape there, well, hell, you already throw one hundred miles an hour, Like you don't necessarily have to fool the hitter a ton. You can almost just like it almost is there's the equivalent of like hitting a five hundred foot home run just like all right, pitted like four twenty instead and still gotten like wonder on the board. So I'd say kind of what you're saying there is probably correct. 00:35:20 Speaker 2: So how does Matt Brash start to find a way to command the slider a little bit better? Because I know one of the areas that he has to improve on as his career goes on is commanding his pitches a little bit better, and I would assume one of those being that slider. 00:35:33 Speaker 4: So if you look at as a reliever one he just like there's a couple of things right, Like if you're throwing harder as a reliever, you're in you don't have to worry about going through the order multiple times. And then the other thing is just like the game environment is a lot different. The game is generally, you know, you're trying to just get a strike out, you're trying to do some of these things. Hitters tend to swing more thurners on scoring position, so that there's some of these things going on. The biggest thing it didn't really get talked about that much, but obviously when you come out of the pen, you're going to throw your slider harder. But he actually did tighten up the shape a little bit. He went basically when he was starting, i want to say, he was like eighty five with the slider and it had depth, so it was like negative four vertical and about like sixteen seventeen horizontal. When he came out of the pen, he put like four ticks on the thing, and it was actually a little bit more tighter. So he went from like negative four and like this sixteen inch sweep to basically it was like positive one in thirteen. So if the plate seventeen inches right, you're going to get basically if you just throw right down the middle. In theory, that pitch should look you know, a bit easier to maintain and stay on the plate, and then to a certain guy did think he got a few more. He used to like spike some of those sliders at times well with the movement profile being a bit less depthy, he basically would just like occasionally miss up in the zone and basically anything in the strike zone for him with that pitch is going to be a positive outcome. So you'd rather basically see a higher proportion of your misses end up in the zone. And I think with how firm that sider was, it got there just a little bit quicker, didn't move quite as much, and then obviously there's some component over leaving that that just helps the pitch in general. But that was I think probably one of the starts of it. And again he's at the point of diminishing returns with the sider that you know, whether it's ninety with ten inches of sweep, eighty six and fifteen, like, you're pretty much just pressing the top of the league regardless of what you're throwing there. 00:37:26 Speaker 1: And that was the slider I think we saw yesterday. I don't know if you saw any of his highlights when he's closing out for Team Canada. I mean he's sitting ninety one, he's got like three thousand RPMs on that thing. I thought it was his cutter, which I'm about to ask you about. But I see him throw that yesterday for Team Canada. I le generally thought it was his cutter, and I had to go on savant and look, I'm like, well, no, cutters don't spin three thousand RPMs usually, So I mean, it's it's a it's a crazy. 00:37:51 Speaker 4: Pitch, right, Yeah, that's kind of going to be in that pitch. That's firmer at ninety right, that sider, especially out of the bullpen, that's gonna be just a little bit easier, I think, to kind of keep on the play, throw at middle and progress counts, et cetera. So no, I'm a huge fan and believer of him continuing to do that. But yet here the angle also isn't the best. I don't think, Like, but when you see a pitch that fast, just like assume it's a cutter, you know what I mean. Like the broadcast guy for sure thought it was a cutter. I think it was still moving almost like a foot on average. So I mean, you just don't you just don't see that pitch. You just do not see ninety mint on our pitches that move afoot. Man, It's absolutely wild. 00:38:31 Speaker 1: Where does the cutter come into play with all of this? 00:38:35 Speaker 4: So it really comes into play with like inducing action inducing swings and then again kind of being that middle ground to a certain degree to to protect his fastball. Like, if anything, the fastball is probably the one pitch that it's like, hey, he can't necessarily just throw this right down the middle to every hitter in the league. So I think that's really the main thing of the cutter is, especially as a starting pitcher, you're trying to progress, You're trying to get guys to swing at more of your bigger breaking balls, et cetera. And then also to be frank like, I mean we ran it, like the cutter grades out better than his four seamer, and like once he has the comfort for it, i'd expect maybe introduced a bit more. There's also the reality like, look if this dude throws ninety one miles and now one ninety one mile an hour sliders out of the bullpen with ten inches a sweep, and he just like does what he did yesterday against Great Britain, Like he doesn't have to throw it, you know what I mean? Like that, that's there is some truth in that. I do think in terms of as a starter, I think it's pretty tough to ask a guy to throw two huge breaking balls a non elite fastball when you would factor into the velocity loss that generally comes with starting most started. I mean, Logan Gilbert's probably one of the better examples of this, Like, if you have a the best way to start without exceptional command is to have a really good four seam fastball, because that pitch will get whiffs in the zone, it'll get whips out of the zone. You can use oh oh, he's a two to oh, you can use O two like you can just continue to use that pitch when you're a guy who has to like spin stuff more often. There's just like a game flow with the counts that if you do not have the capability put in the zone enough and induce some chases, et cetera, you kind of then are forced to throw a ninety six mile on hour fastball or whatever with not great movement in a three to one count, or the hitter sits there and says, spin the slider. Let's see if you can land it and if it moves this much, it might be a pretty you know, it's a pretty logical gamble for him to just like let it go and see if them hardholds the ball. 00:40:36 Speaker 2: I guess the last question I have on Brash, and you alluded to it for just a minute there is if he continues to develop this cutter in your mind, could you see him eventually working his way back into a starter's role. 00:40:49 Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that's kind of the That's kind of one of the biggest points of it in general. You just don't like the only you just don't see that type of Marsenal as the starting pitcher. Like what he what he went in there with. He has a sweeping sider and then he had like a he still like the knuckle curve. But really in terms of like use case, like those two pitches kind of were used for the same reason, Like they both got a the curveball a bit more would get like a bit more takes in the zone. But they were both like bigger shaped pitches that essentially were more like swing and miss breaking balls and pitches that either get takes in the strike zone because of how they enter them or have to be like commanded fairly well off the plane. So the idea I think was basically and he never failed with it as he was, you know, a minor league relief or minor league starter. I'm not sure that I would have, like if I was in you know, the their coach or shoes, et cetera. Like I probably just been like, Galla's just rolled this thing out there. It's the slider's absurd. He's if he can throw at sixty percent of the time like manson the coolers or whatever, as a starter, let's let it roll. But I think that the fastball just the the profile of it. It just needed their contact inducing pitch in there. And I think really that's the biggest thing for him to have success as a starter in my estimation, is to have that pitch. 00:42:11 Speaker 2: Well, I was hoping we could transition a little bit here to Matt Festa as well, another guy that's worked out at drive Line for a part of this offseason. He's a guy that what can he do to kind of improve his stuff and effectiveness in the bold thing, because you know, he's a guy that generates a lot of swing and this too, but how does he continue to build on that? 00:42:31 Speaker 4: Sure yeah, and the guy, the guy who works with just to shine as a Brandon man, he's a pitching trainer here as well, so I want to make sure he gets his due diligence. But I mean, for one, he I believe I had some like hilosophy loss throughout the season. I think he has like ninety two and a half. But your point, he still got a kind of swing and misses like he has. Really. You know, if you're not super enamored with pitch metrics and stuff, you may it's doesn't jump out at the page, but it's forcing fastball is kind of wild, like it's thrown from an absurdly low slot and has like almost close to league average carry on it, which is like a very valuable pitcher. You throw it up in the zone, so he does, to your point, get a ton of whips despite throwing like ninety two ninety three miles an hour. So the first off, can we get him to you know, ninety three plus ninety four plus sitting on average philossity to be Frank is just always one of those things, as simple as it sounds, if you can get more of it, it's the simplest way to improve as a picture picture for a lot of guys. The other thing is he did add a cutter, and I think he spurred a little bit with a splitter. Notxure if that'll show up, but the idea is if you look at his minor league numbers, it's even a bit more pronounced. He can't throw his sweeper quite as much. To the left handed hitnors. That pitch tends to be a bit of a both tu an issue, Like it dominates right on right, we throw it right on left. It kind of has a pretty decent penalty. Guys just do not swing it, miss swing and miss at it as much. So he threw a few more fast most lefties, and really throughout his career he's had like somewhat of like a contact quality problem when he faces lefties, and probably more so just like doesn't strike out as many. So adding the cutter there as another pitch for left handards was probably the other big thing. But I mean, for the most part, improve the fastball loss you get as closed to ninety four on averaging as possible, and then have the cutter draft basically another weapon against left these I think against Riety's like you just shoved that sweeper and kind of surprise him up in the zone with a pretty absurd approach angle fastball. It really is just like throwing a little bit harder to improve his overall talent and then for that left side of the plate having another option to go do with that cutter. 00:44:30 Speaker 1: It's kind of fascinating. I didn't realize his fastball he's one of the better fastballs on the Mariners despite having a lower velocity on that pitch. And I don't know how if you could sort of scale this for us, but I'm just peeking at the stuff plus numbers for his fastball versus his slider. His fastball is at about a one zh eight, but like you said, since fastballs don't really or prevent or dampen the run environment, they're not usually scale this high opposed to a slider a sweeper, like you said, that's about one twenty eight. So I mean that's both really like it's pretty plus on both. 00:45:01 Speaker 2: Of those, right. 00:45:03 Speaker 4: Yeah, His his slider is honestly pretty darn absurd too, Like if he when he's uh, I'm gonna watched him in spring a little bit like he was throwing some like eighty five at fifteen and you know, I think he was up to ninety four, maybe touch the five with his four seemer. Yeah, the fastball is just like you just do not see that. You just do not see somebody able to generate that carry from that low of an arm slot very often. And honestly, if you look at it's kind of one of the if you look at like any minor league stuff with the Mariners, you can just like there's like two things stand out, and generally, honestly, you can tell a little bit more about a team's pitch model or approach based off the minor league data. They love guys with low armslots, and they love sweeping sliders, and like he's probably like the best example of what the Mariners I've kind of tried to find to develop throughout the years. And if you look in the bullpen, I mean, you've got brash, you've got festival, you've got sea walls. So they tend to have a lot of those types of guys. 00:46:03 Speaker 1: Penn Murphy too, same slot, and he his the the numbers love him. I did, I mean, we're researching for this episode. I didn't. I did not realize how much stuff plus loves that loves that low arm squat in the and and a true, true sweeping slider. Yeah, so that would be good to see for for Matt Brash for the season of how he develops. Is he ever going to be like a guy with really true three three pitches or is he going to be like, hey, I can get this fastball to good enough or that that left? Uh when there's a left up there the plate. You said the sweeper might be a little bit of an issue. It's like, well, my fastball is like, is it can get to a point where it's that good where I won't need. 00:46:43 Speaker 4: Festa? 00:46:45 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, sorry you said I think you said Brash to. 00:46:48 Speaker 1: I think, oh, sorry, Festa, Sorry, I'm getting my work fixed up to I think. 00:46:52 Speaker 4: I think. I mean he's he's implementing the cutter in the WBC right now, So I think he's definitely already like a three pitch guy, like and now he's gonna be I would a mad nuggin. I'm not like, sometimes it's odd for me to even do these things because it's like that's is probably the best guy to ask for this, But I'd almost be certain, like you're gonna see when a rioty is up there the cutter is thrown, you know, at a ridiculously low rate versus when I left he's up there. That's gonna be kind of when it comes into play, you know what I mean. So he's he's gonna be to the left left handers, he's gonna have like a true three picture Smiths out of the bullpen varieties like it. Just you know, he may occasionally throw it in a certain counter dis sertinator, but the slider is just so absurd to a right handed hitter that I don't imagine it'll come out. The cutter will come out too much against those guys. 00:47:41 Speaker 1: I have one Logan Gilbert question. I know this is a reliever episode, but but I have to ask it. Because Logan worked with you guys this offseason. Why should Mariner fans be excited to watch Logan Gilbert slider or sorry slider splitter. 00:47:57 Speaker 4: Uh, it's nasty, I mean it's it's it's extremely extremely nasty pitch. The other thing too, from talking to Logan and just like looking at some of the numbers on his change up, is he basically never had much feel for the changeup command wise, it was like an okay pitch stuff wise, it would get some it would get like swing and miss when guys swung at it, but it really didn't get much chase because it wasn't commanded the idea, right, It's like, you can have a nasty pitch, but like, guys aren't going to swing at it if it's not that close to the strike zone. And while he did, like when people swung at it, gain some amount of swing and miss, it just missed too often for it to be really that valuable to pitch for him, you know. So that's the end of the day. That is the pitch you're competing against. And I'm Tony right now, there's definitely some amount of like, hey, let's see how command progresses with it naturally, but I've seen the date on it in spring training. The pitch is very very good in terms of like stuff. Plus it's got a very good drop from his four seemer. Really, he's just like the perfect candidate for that pitch because of his arm slow, he is like straight over the top and generally those are the guys that you kind of can give splitters to and get some of the better results of the pit shape. And then like with the change up, it just looked like in talking to him and such like, there's a point like when he first came up, he was on like sixteen miles an hour slower than his fastball. You could like see him slowing down his body, so it was never a pitch he could entirely like turn over like Devin Williams style, and he didn't really have he did. I don't want to get too nerdy, but like he didn't really have some of the components that would allow for you could throw like a change up grip and get like late movement on it. He just had to kind of widen the fingers, get some form of a split there from over the top. And probably the biggest thing if you have Logan, his favorite thing about it is you can kind of just turn his brain off and let the grip do the work and kind of send it just like a fastball. And we know, we know he lets throwing fastballs, so that's always a good. 00:49:50 Speaker 2: Thing, does it. I'll just follow up with one last question, based off with TJ just asked, does it actually have the same shape as code I saying as ghost fork, because that's been some of the comparison that people have thrown out on there on Twitter. 00:50:05 Speaker 4: Gosh, I don't. I honestly don't have memorize or code. I is like horizontal break is on a sports seamer or sorry, on his splitter. I mean, to be frank, most of the spitch's values and just like getting depth on it. So you're just like trying to you don't really I mean, yeah, he's like a little bit of faid. You don't want its necessarily cut. But for the most part, you're just trying to get the vertical break as low as possible. And like he's getting you know, ninetieth plus percentile like drop off of his sporting fastball. So again, when we talk about like stuff plus, we're talking about something that stabilizes quickly. He's got that, Like he's got that part of the equation down. How close can he get to call it? But I mean, hell, you just call forty command, like forty great command, just like a bit below the gaverage command if he can get it there, or if it's just a pitch that like he throws an advantage counts, Like I really think that's that's the answer for a bit more whips, a bit more strikeouts. But I think in terms of the stuff plus, like he's kind of got that down even in this short spring training sample. So a big credit to him to be Frank Todo because he came in and he did the assessment with us and we kept in touch a bit. But he really committed to developing the command and continuing to master the consistency of the shape by himself with his own training. So I do want to make sure it's known that, like he really deserves a lot of the most of the credit. 00:51:26 Speaker 1: Here, Chris, I'm gonna give you an opportunity here to you mentioned it to me that you wanted to give a shout out to Riley O'Brien, a guy who went to high school just up the road from me at Shorewood High School. I attended Ballard acquired from the acquired by the Mariners from the Reds on April twenty second of last year, just over a year ago, and he spent the off season with you guys as well. 00:51:48 Speaker 4: Yeah, no, Riley, if you look at his second half of the year, like his velocity and some of his stuff numbers, they really went up. He kind of changed some things, dropped his a bit, actually started throwing a sinker instead of a four seemer. So he was already making some changes that were beneficial during the second half of last season eer and some of those things don't look great, but if you filter for like how he looked once he made some of these changes, tell us kind of a different story. And then I mean, I want to say, his last game in spring training, he was pumping ninety six five on average. He's another guy with a big, sweeping sider. I've imagined the Marriers and he went on waivers for the Reds as they saw that sider and they said, we're going to acquire this. And that's that's a pitch that moves basically what twenty inches about eighty two miles for eighty two eighty four. I've seen him get up to eighty six. And then he's also another guy who's getting a cutter introduced in the arsenal, throwing it during spring training. So he's a guy I really think relievers are always tend to be a bit variant. They're difficult to predict. But that's a stuff. Wise, that's a big league arm and the command is not like brutal, like it's not this isn't some guy who's going out there and like hasn't been able to get outs at all or like has no feel for where the ball is going, Like he doesn't need especially if he since ninety six plus, he really doesn't need that much more to be a guy who's like constantly in the big leagues. And he really did a tonne of work working with Brandon as well, Brandon man up in Seattle in that location. He's a guy I think, I really do think you'll see him at some point up with the Mariners. 00:53:33 Speaker 2: This has all been really interesting. So I mean, really, all the time you've given us in these forty five minutes breaking down all these pitchers, I mean I've learned a ton. I'm sure TJ has too, But to pick the brain of somebody who knows probably more pitching than just about anybody you can find out there, I mean, I've found this super interesting. So I mean we appreciated a ton. 00:53:51 Speaker 4: No, I appreciate it. Yeah, there's like there's like probably like fifteen hundred humans in the world I can probably like really do Oh, that guy's like kind of cool. Then if you filter me for any other conversation that doesn't have to do with this, uh, sports, baseball, et cetera, probably don't have much much to me. You know what I mean. It's not the best, not the best conversation ever for small talk or whatever, but no, I appreciate and obviously it's a it's a passion, and I'm beyond fortunate to be able to say I do this for a job, So I appreciate you. Guys. 00:54:20 Speaker 1: Who's someone who you've like met your match with, knowledgewise, Daniel coyn. 00:54:27 Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know if you daniel'coyne probably this is one of the most influential people in in drive lines history. Like it. He's kind of like we basically had Eric Jaggers, Rob Hill. I'll get some context with these people are Bill Heazel Sambrien though those four guys are all directors of pitching. Rob's with the Dodgers, Sam Brien's with the Yankees. Uh, Bill's actually assistant pitching Goach with the Angels, and then Eric Jaggers he's with the Mets, is their director of pitching. And Dan o'coyne is like an R and D guy, he's with the Phillies. Now, Uh, that guy has meant a lot to drive Line in a lot of these people's intelligence and then they tell you that as well. I'll say it very clearly here, that guy to a certain degree, if you guys do consider me smarter or whatever like, that's that's always the guy I'm going to point to and say, hey, that was one of the more lucky run ins I ever had in life. And you know, when when you talk to people, they never necessarily know that you're a you know, a byproduct of somebody else's time they put into you. And for most of my relationship with Dan, I didn't have necessarily any unique knowledge to give to him, so obviously been built up a bit at this point. But he's a guy who, you know, without him and his influence and obviously drive line being able to come here and then get that relationship that that's probably who I owe most of any success or any positive comment I have about me too. 00:55:53 Speaker 1: Well, I really appreciate you taking some time out of your evening to chat with us today. I've we've we've learned a ton if listeners. If you want to go throw harder, go find Chris. He's got you. You'll be throwing ninety in no time. Chris Langen, we really appreciate you joining the show today. 00:56:10 Speaker 4: Yeah, no, prom thank you, guys again for having me. I really appreciate. 00:56:15 Speaker 1: Another fantastic interview, that time with Chris Langen of Drive Line Baseball. Always good stuff there. But let's continue with the rest of this episode and the remainder of our bullpen preview here as we count down the weeks getting closer and closer to opening day for the twenty twenty three season, and for this episode, of course, it is the bullpen preview, and we're going to get to the rest of the guys we have not touched on yet. Well, let's lead it off with the guy who I think slam dunk, we think best reliever in this bullpen entering the twenty twenty three season, and not even really arguably, I think we set the expectation for Munos Andres Munos for this twenty twenty three season as a top five reliever in baseball yet again like he was like last year. 00:57:02 Speaker 2: That's what I have here in my notes. I said best reliever hands down on the Mariners roster, top five reliever in all of baseball, and if you want to dig even deeper into it, I put his Baseball Savant page literally looks like a tall glass of kool aid. I mean, this guy's page is bright red. And what I mean by that is every single category that Savant measures with those bubbles, he basically excels in all of them. 00:57:30 Speaker 1: It's amazing how the scou is essentially a throw in it. Really it really, it really makes you chuckle of how projectable some of these guys are and when those projectabilities really hit. Man, it's awesome. 00:57:41 Speaker 4: That dude he is. 00:57:43 Speaker 1: He is everything the Mariners could have imagined as a replacement to Edwin Diaz. He's literally Edwin Diaz light I put it a bit, a bit of a younger, chunkier version of Edwin Diaz, but the same profile as a reliever. And it's it's just been it's been awesome that they've been able to find this guy in their system and turn him into something so great. 00:58:06 Speaker 2: His basic numbers say enough. I mean, he put up a two forty nine ERA last year, but his advanced numbers probably say even more. I mean expected ERA of one point eighty four, ERA plus of one forty nine, so he was forty nine percent above league average as a reliever last year. So he throws one hundred and three miles an hour. He has a slider, that's absolutely ridiculous, and he profiles at the top of the league in all these categories between fastball v low and swing and miss with Ray everything. I mean it, it truly is unbelievable how good this guy's been for a guy that was the third or fourth piece in that Austin Nola trade. 00:58:46 Speaker 1: What's amazing is that his fastball, despite being thrown at one hundred and three miles an hour, grades out on a pretty averageish scale when you look at stuff Plus, which we talk about with Chris Langen, but we're also going to talk about here. You know, Sarah's has his version two. There's a version on fangraphs. Not quite sure whose version it is. I think it's Eno Sarahs's stuff Plus, not totally sure. I know the different ways, there's some different ways of measuring measuring it. But in summary, stuff plus is just right. It just measures how good your pitches are on a pure raw basis. So the Andres Muno is fastball despite being one hundred and threes, just about an average pitch. But man, that slider in terms of results, lyle is I mean, it's behind Edwin Diaz and Dylan Cees. I mean that's what we're talking about of how good that pitch is. 00:59:39 Speaker 4: It is. 00:59:40 Speaker 1: It is an unbelievable pitch, and he's looking to add another pitch this year that he toiled with a little bit in the minors. I think he toiled around a bit with a two seamer in the miners, and we've seen some video of him tossing it around on the backfields. 00:59:54 Speaker 2: Could you even imagine him with a third pitch that's even half as effective as that slider. 01:00:02 Speaker 1: He didn't, he doesn't need it, but I would be I'd be down. It would be even funnier if he had another pitch pitch that caused whiffs when he's really in when he's really in a rut, he'll completely throw his fastball out and he will just go slider, slider, slider, slider, slider until the guy's just standing there spinning like a top because he can't he can't make contact with it. So if you were to come up with another pitch like that, a two seamer, it's just like man just trying to like maybe shatter some bats, get some weak contact, which is fine for a reliever, and you throw as hard as he does. Eventually a guy's gonna run into your four seam fastball and barrel it up pretty well. It's a little bit harder to do that with a two seamer. 01:00:42 Speaker 2: That's what he's been doing to Dylan Moore on the backfields. I mean, he's been tested out this two seamer, and we've seen multiple videos of Dylan Moore breaking bats as he starts to get them at bats to work back in from his injury, and Munoz just keeps tying them up with these two seamers and it's led to a bunch of broken wood. But yeah, so if he could add that third pitch, I mean, game over. 01:01:04 Speaker 1: Do we have any cause to concern with that foot injury that he had towards the end of last year. 01:01:10 Speaker 2: I mean, I guess there's always cause for concern, you know, foot injuries, especially because it's the foot he lands on when he winds up. Sure, we'll have to see how he looks, but he's had a lot of time this offseason to recover from it. I think they're just trying to work him back slowly to not rush him. I would assume once he's put back into games, he should basically be ready to go. 01:01:30 Speaker 1: Yeah, I would hope. So too. They cannot. I know, this bullpen group is deep and it's put together pretty well as we fleshed out here so far, but they don't want to lose him with injury. He was remarkably healthy as a twenty three year old last year, despite how hard he throws, the amount of torque he puts on his arm, there were no issues at all with Andres Munoz last year. He maybe ran a little bit of gas in the playoffs because they're relying on him a little bit too much, which could probably speaks to how they felt about the depth of the towards the end of last season. But they can't have I mean, he's he is the most important cog in this bullpen. He is the you know, the fire extinguisher back there. I mean, any high leverage situation, he's gonna be your guy here this twenty twenty three season. And we mentioned it at the top. I mean, I think anything outside of a top five reliever season across all of Major League Baseball as a disappointment for Andres Munos. 01:02:27 Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I mean that's how good he was in twenty twenty two. We didn't even give the exact numbers on his slider, and we can do that real quick as we wrap up this part of the segment about Munno's I mean, his run value against his slider was minus twenty negative twenty against the slider. You talked about it. There were plenty of times where he would throw nothing but sliders because he just said, Okay, nobody's gonna hit this. We saw it a little bit in the playoffs, to be honest, where he was just going way more sliders than fastballs. It's funny he throws one hundred and three, but like you said, that pitch is almost just to change speeds, which is funny pitch for the sole purpose of being, you know, something to mix a different pitch in. It's one hundred and three miles an hour. But that slider, you said, it's one of the three to five best sliders in all baseball, and there's no reason it shouldn't continue this year if he's healthy. 01:03:16 Speaker 1: No none at all, and it grades out stuff. Plus does really like his slider for how it shaped last year. It's the second best slider on the team behind well, you could probably guess who. 01:03:30 Speaker 2: I would say that's probably Matt Brash. Yes, his slider is half decent. Let's put it that way. Half decent is Chris kind of detailed for US opponents. As we wrap this up, hit one sixty four against Andres Munoz a slider last year that should say just about all it needs to say this guy, We've said it a million times. Now in the segment, we'll say it one more time. That slider is absolutely ridiculous. Another guy that has a good slider, Paul Seawaald. He's the second guy that will break down in this segment, And just to kind of preview it, we're gonna do full breakdowns on Munno's and Seawald here because there are two of the three main options out of that bullpen along with Brash, and then we're just gonna keep it kind of flowing in a little bit shorter for the rest of the guys and make just a couple of key points. But Paul Seawald last season two sixty seven, ERA two six four XCRA three eighty eight FIP a whip of seventy six and sixty five appearances. It's funny, TJ. He was more effective in twenty twenty two than he wasn't twenty twenty one by the numbers, But his two seasons were totally different in terms of the results he. 01:04:33 Speaker 1: Got last season. In the twenty twenty one season, it was all about strikeouts, and I mean his fastball was so good despite only being thrown about ninety three miles an Hour's first season with the Mariners, it was all that fastball, and he struck out nearly fifteen guys per nine. Last year it was about limiting hard contact. I'm not sure which Paul sea will I like better. Honestly, both were remarkably effective. But there were times last year were Paul seawalts coming into the game and you know, the ball is not even leaving the infield. There's like three months in a row last I think the middle three months of last year, where you send Paul Seewald out there the ball literally is not leaving the infield. That's how confident you were in his ability to get limit hard contact and get outs. 01:05:22 Speaker 2: His ground ball rate last year was just under thirty one percent, and that was the second highest rate of his career dating all the way back to twenty seventeen. Yeah, in twenty twenty one, this guy was striking out fourteen and a half batters. In terms of this k per nine rate. It was all about the strikeouts, Yeah, but he transitioned away from it. I've never been able to pinpoint exactly why that is and how it drastically changed so much. 01:05:46 Speaker 1: I I just don't know sustainability. He did get hit harder as a result of it. He gave up, you know, he got hit like he got barreled quite a bit more with with that approach. 01:06:00 Speaker 4: You know. 01:06:01 Speaker 1: I like what his approach became. I thought it was a little more sustainable, even if he kind of faded a bit down the stretch. I think he really just ran out of gas down those stretch run of the season last year. And his location also slipped a lot, which didn't help him a lot. But when he does locate, I mean, he's really hard to hit, and that's really all you can ask for. 01:06:21 Speaker 2: Oh, he's incredibly hard to hit. He does it from both sides of the plate too. I mean, the Mariners most likely will not have a lefty in this bullpen to start the year for the second season in a row. But it's now been proven in today's day and age of baseball, you don't necessarily need need a guy throwing baseballs out of his left hand, if you have relievers that can get lefties out. I mean we saw that with Eric Swanson last year. He had reverse splits, but both Munno's and Paul Seawal have the reverse splitz too. Now, Seawall's good against everybody, but lefties hit just one sixty seven against them, the ops just five eighty nine against him, and they just don't hit the ball that hard against him for the most part. Now a little bit harder than they did in twenty one because again there was more contact made. But it's not like they're hitting them all around the yard either. 01:07:08 Speaker 1: No, and in the the hitting down the yard, around the yard thing for SeaWorld really was just like a last month thing. Wasn't wasn't an all season thing, which is is something to be confident about. You know what gives me confidence in Paul Seawald, lou besides the fact that he he's not look, he doesn't didn't overall for the season locate well, he was actually one point below average in terms of in terms of location. So to compliment to our listeners, as I'm going to explain the stat I mentioned stuff plus which measures measures the pel pure unadulterated stuff coming out of the the right or left hand of a pitcher in terms of velocity and a bunch of different other factors. Location plus rates how he locates relative to the league average and puts it on a one hundred scale. His location plus was one point under league average. Not not great, so slightly below average in terms of placing pitches where he wants them. However, do you know low he is the best pure stuff plus on the team, the entire team. Paul Seawall as the best. 01:08:15 Speaker 2: I would have always guessed it was somebody like Brash, maybe Muno's, maybe Luis Castillo, but no, it's not. It's Paul Seawall. 01:08:22 Speaker 1: That gives you a little bit more room for error. So when you're pitching out of the bullpen, if your stuff is that good relative to who you're throwing it too at the plate, I mean, it just gives you more confidence. You're like, well, he's old, he doesn't throw very hard. Well, the results are speak very well in the metrics. Really like his stuff. 01:08:44 Speaker 2: It is remarkable what the Mariners have done with him, because this guy's career was basically over before putting on a Mariner's jersey, But all of a sudden he comes to Seattle, the Mariners tell him, Look, you've kind of been a ground ball pitcher most of your career. Our data shows that if you throw way more sliders, and if you throw your fastball up in the zone compared to down in the zone, you can be way more effective. In the last two years, Paul Seawal has been one of the better relievers in baseball, and it's been just an unbelievable turnaround in the guy's career. 01:09:16 Speaker 1: If we look back to his met stays, let's see here, we'll expind a little. Wait, really, you're right, did not throw his sweeper as much you can just see from Let's look at his last full season in New York in twenty nineteen. He threw his sweeper, which is also a slider, eighteen percent of the time. His first season with the Mariners forty one percent. Throw your best pitches, please, that's all we ask. 01:09:44 Speaker 2: And drive Line enforces that a ton. Now. I don't know if Seawal's worked to drive line a bunch or not, but that is now a theory that is very much implemented in baseball. That doesn't matter if your best pitch isn't your fastball, your best pitch is an off speed pitch or a breaking ball. Throw it more. It gets guys out, which is pretty cool, and Seawal does a lot of that. Now I have to say this, Paul Seawald has started to kind of project downward toward the end of the year. Two seasons in a row, he has shown signs of fatigue two seasons in a row. I think the Mariners have to do a little bit of a better job managing his workload throughout the course of a season. I think they've got to find some way to implement more rest days, not enter him in so many high leverage situations like they did in twenty one and twenty two. Not never, of course, he's going to be one of the one of the relievers you depend on the most on this team, maybe the third most behind Brash and Munos. But you can't have them tail spinning at the worst time of the year in the playoffs, because that kind of happened in twenty twenty two. It happened a little bit in twenty twenty one toward the end of the year too, So I just hope this season they can find some ways to get them some extra off days. 01:10:56 Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll see I think the biggest thing you mentioned there is the the not so high leverage. So we'll see Mariner's played less one run games this year. Maybe Jared Kelne keeps hitting and they score a lot more runs and play in a lot less one run games. That's not something they'll have to worry about, and it can be a little bit of a little bit of lower stress. But it could also be on Paul too. I you know, he he appeared in quite a few games last year, but so overall he appeared in sixty five games, which is a pretty normal amount for a reliever. So you could say, hey, Paul, maybe prepare yourself a little bit better towards the end of the season. I don't know. He's also on the other side of thirty now, so that it's the youthful energy might might not necessarily be there anymore for Paul Seawald. I'm still very confident in Paul Seawald's ability to be successful in the Mariners bullpen. And hey, there's one key cog across successful post twenty twenty Mariners bullpens. It's that man right there. It is Paul Seawald. He he's the glue that holds it all together throughout all of it. 01:11:58 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the guys who were effective in the BA for the Mariners from twenty twenty one to twenty twenty two kind of totally changed between the two seasons. But the one key, the one consistent point, the one consistent guy in that bullpen's Paul Seawald. 01:12:13 Speaker 1: And we trust in Paul Seawall for the twenty twenty three season. Okay, let's get onto our next relievers, and here's what we're gonna do for the rest of the Mariners bullpen. So this does not drag on too long because we could obviously spend fifteen minutes on each one of these relievers if we really wanted to, but we don't. We're gonna pick one thing that stands out to us from the rest of the Mariners bullpen about what we're coming about, what we're excited about, or what we're concerned about looking at the twenty twenty three Mariners season. So next up is Diego Castillo. I get. My one thing for me is that I just want him to locate better. That's really his biggest thing. When I'm looking at Diego for the twenty twenty three season, he's got a plus out pitch. His slider fares very well run value wise, stuff plus wise, it's favor, but he just doesn't locate it. That's the issue. So if Diego wants to be a little bit more successful, a little bit more consistent, and maybe have a bigger role in this Mariner's bullpen in twenty twenty three, it's going to be the fact that he needs to throw his pitches for strikes, and they need to be quality strikes as well. There were just times last year where he would lapse and the balls would get crossed, or he would walk a ton of guys, or there are times when he would be one on and he would be, you know, one of the three best relievers in the Mariners bullpen and a guy you could rely on to shut down the other team. 01:13:34 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's all valid. And look, he allows a lot of traffic on the base on the base pads a lot of the time, which if I had one gripe with them, it's this guy is infuriating to watch when he's got runners on base, because it's not like he knows runners are on base, right, but he pitches that nobody's on base. He takes his time getting to the plate, he's not checking the runner like guys run left and right on him as if it's as if he'd like doesn't care that there's guys on base, and he gives up all these free bags because guys steal on him left and right. So yeah, the controlling the strike zone and controlling the base runners has to come down in twenty twenty three or has to get a little bit better from Kissio side, but quickly. The one thing that I would say I really like about him, at least looking back to last year, he had that one really bad month of May, his ERA was over fifteen. Honestly, the rest of his season was pretty good. One eight six ERA in April, one five era in June, one four era in July, zero era in August. I mean, for most of the year, this guy was really good. He's just had a He just had one really bad blow up month in May that kind of tanked his RA and his fit for a lot of. 01:14:44 Speaker 1: The year in a bad outing against the Braves. 01:14:48 Speaker 2: And that. Yeah, and his September ERA was over five. So yeah, he had hills and valley throughout his season. But again, if you can just control the zone a little better, and please just every now and then step off the mound and acknowledge that there's a runner on base. 01:15:02 Speaker 1: Yeah, these new rules do do these news rules benefit him so he doesn't have to worry about throwing over to first. 01:15:09 Speaker 2: I honestly don't know, Like, I don't know if now he's going to use that to his advantage where it's like, Okay, I can step off a couple of times, or if he's just gonna be like, yeah, I'll just throw it. I'm not gonna look over. I hope that's not the case, because again, he could be really good, but he's just got to control base runners better one can. Yeah. 01:15:28 Speaker 1: I was gonna say here, I think I already said my concern, but I want to back it up with a number stuff. Plus I'm gonna go back into it again. Does not like his sinker, which he throws to compliment his slider. Hates his sinker. Rates it as a seventy nine. That's twenty one percent below the league average for a sinker. So your second pitch, that's why that command is so important. 01:15:53 Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll see how he fares this year. Hopefully he fares well, but a guy who fared really well. Last year Penn Murphy first season in the big league's late round draft pick, when he was taken out of college, all of a sudden in his late twenties, he comes up and he's one of the key pieces in this Mariners bullpen. He was almost another Paul Seawall. I'll let you go first, TJ. What do you like best about Penn Murphy or what are you concerned about? 01:16:18 Speaker 4: I like how. 01:16:18 Speaker 1: Unique he is. He manages to be effective with a fastball that has a run value of minus eight while throwing it with milling velocity, all because of the unique angle it's at and the unique angle he throws it from, and it just like in the location of it. He does a marvelous job. And he's like he's crimely underrated his avant page. It's not Andre's Munio's level, but it's like a pretty decent kool Aid color. I would say, like, in terms of everything you want to see from a pitcher, look at average eggs and velocity, hard hit rate, contact, a lot, expected era and contact, a loud expected batting average, expected slugging percentage, barrel rate, strikeout rate, walk rate, everything a good reliever has. He does very very well despite not having them. The velocity, the stuff is still just as good. 01:17:17 Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're putting it lightly with his velocity. I mean, this guy barely touches ninety miles an hour, but he's proving that it doesn't matter because for all the reasons you just listed, he misses bats, he gets strikeouts, and he's a really good reliever. I think he covered his basketball pretty well. So I'll take the other side of this here and say what I really like about Pen Murphy is his second pitch. His slider run value of minus eight. Hitters just hit one twenty five against it last year. So a guy with two pitches which is the norm, and the bullpen, they're both really good pitches. 01:17:52 Speaker 1: What's really incredible for how good these pitches are. I mean, this is this is the story of pitching development at its finest the major league level for the Mariners. This guy, Penn Murphy, didn't even prevent runs really in the minors. He was not very good at the art of preventing runs in the miners, and yet at the major league level he does it spectacularly. And that's a hat tip to the Mariners organization of developing this guy at this level to be that effective. How about Lyle a guy that we don't really know of that much and we're expecting, we're excited to see on television a little bit more. Spring trainings aren't on TV. Spring training's not on TV once the regular season starts. And that's Trevor Gott the guy that signed who was formerly a Brewer, signed as a free agent this offseason, coming off the season with the Brewers with a four to one four ERA. An interesting guy, Lyle. What do you like about him so much? 01:18:52 Speaker 2: Well, Jerry Depoto really raved about him when they signed him. He seemed to really like his peripherals. He seems to believe he can be a valuable reliever in this bullpen. His cutter stands out. I mean, it's probably been his best pitch since he added it. He's only had it a couple seasons. But in twenty twenty, talking about run value again negative two on that cutter. In twenty twenty, run value was negative five and twenty twenty two. So another guy that again like hasn't had that pitch all that long. As we're seeing so many of these mariners, starters and relievers develop new pitches as of late well, Got's had it a little bit longer than one off season. He's proven it to be a really effective pitch. And again, like his basic numbers don't allow you four fourteen ERA, four forty five FIP last year. But he has every reason to prove that he's an effective reliever because he has the tools for it. He's just got to go out and do it. 01:19:42 Speaker 4: Now. 01:19:44 Speaker 1: The thing I like Trivor God is he's almost like a Paul seawalled clone, right, he has like a similar release point. He's got a similarly effective fastball that rates well with run value as well, so that's like, that's a very quality thing. And he has two off speed pitches with plus vertical with plus movement from Savant the way they track it with plus movement, which as reliever you really really like. So I like that when looking ahead for Trevor Gott, and his expected ERA was under three, which is promising. And also his quality of contact he allowed was also very, very very good. So I like to see that in what I'm looking forward to for Trevor Gott for this twenty twenty three season. 01:20:31 Speaker 2: Okay, final reliever in this bullpen. I guess he's not really a reliever, but he's going to be pitching out of a bullpen again for the Mariners. Chris Flexen Marco Gonzalez likely going to be the fifth starter over him. Flexen profiles more in the bullpen, so of the things he brings. What do you like about Flexen? 01:20:49 Speaker 1: Do you know how good his slider is? His slider is incredible. It is actually a really really, really really good pitch, a pitch he introduced midway through last year and it ends up being the fourth best slider on the team. Wow. If you're asking me what I like, I like Chris Flexen's slider a lot. I think I think this actually makes him much more of a bullpen piece than people think. To be honest, I mean, what do we talk about? What do we talk about with Chris langan of what the Mariners like? I mean, they love like these these sliders and they love you know, he's not really the fastball profile, I guess, but the pure slider profile. The fact he has a plus plus pitch out of the bullpen that he literally just picked up is something I love the fact that he can add that to the Mariner's bullpen. 01:21:42 Speaker 2: Did you know that hitters slugged fifty eight against the slider last year. 01:21:48 Speaker 1: That's pretty incredible. I have a better stat for you. Did you know in one hundred and eighty three pitches, which is a minuscule amount over the course of an entire season, his slider had negative nine run value. 01:22:00 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, we can see exactly why of those two starters between Flexen and Marco Gonzalez, why they put Flexen in the bullpen, because none of Marco's stuff really profiles for him to pitch in relief. Flexen he can get away with it. And if you want to transition to something that I like about Flexen, if we're gonna get away from his slider, it's got a good change up too. In fact, is change up for the most part of his career has been his most effective pitch. I mean, look just back at twenty twenty one, talk about the negative run value on a slider. You get a negative nine run value on that change up just two years ago. So he has pitches that can play in this bullpen. 01:22:39 Speaker 1: Who's gon trade for him? 01:22:44 Speaker 2: Who's gonna see Yeah, I gotta be honest with you, I'm not really sure I want to see flex and get traded And the reason I say that is because the Mariners have just been desperately, desperately searching for depth like this forever since the Poto took over the Reins just before twenty sixteen. So you have those five starters, and you have Flexen, and you have some of the minor league guys. I don't know. I like having that depth because if there's an injury, you can plug Flexen right in. 01:23:14 Speaker 1: I think you would have to be blown away. I think Jerry thinks along the lines as you. I think you know you're probably looking at it more impact bat right, That's probably what you would want, which you're not gonna get an impact back for Chris Flexen. But if somebody makes you an offer too sweet to refuse, you're not gonna You're not just gonna say no. But I do get the premise of where you're coming at. I just I think it's incredible that one half season of one pitch essentially makes Chris Flexen incredibly valuable to the Mariners and untreadable because if he didn't have the slider, would we be sitting here saying he needs to be in the bullpen and staying on this roster. 01:23:48 Speaker 2: Probably not. 01:23:50 Speaker 1: I mean, where does he is he on the same level as Marco without that pitch, because I mean that's what for some of the way he pitched last year. I mean it was not too different from Marco. 01:24:04 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true. So they would be on more even tears if he didn't have that slider. And look, I agree if they got some ridiculous offer for Chris Flexen for a real impact that, yeah, you make the trade, but if it's gonna be it will give you a bench piece with some speed and some half decent defense in exchange for Chris Flexen, a guy who the team who would try to trade for him would have every implication and intention of plugging into their rotation. No, I have no interest to trade him, and. 01:24:32 Speaker 1: The Mariners already have will project to have three of those guys on the bench already. 01:24:37 Speaker 2: So exactly, thank you. So Chris Flexen pitching out of the bullpen is essentially the last guy in the long reliever. I am totally okay with As we kind of wrap this up, this Mariner's bullpen. Man, it's looking good for twenty twenty three. It was great in twenty twenty one, it was great in twenty twenty two. It is hard to keep the sustainability in that bullpen, but they've got the arms to do it. So we're gonna sit back and watch the thing unfold in twenty twenty three. Okay, let's get to our listener question this week. And I think it's kind of a fun question. So we prepared for this before the start of the show. I want to get the name right of who sent it in. It was a question from Jude Wilburn, so shout out to him for the question. He said, would love to see an AL team's tier list, contenders, playoff teams, playoff hopefuls, and the gutter or something along those lines. So, TJ, you and I ranked our tiers for American League teams. We did not tell each other how we ranked them before the show started. I'll throw it to you first. How are you ranking these AL teams in terms of tiers? 01:25:39 Speaker 1: Should I go tiers first or tiers and teams go tiers and teams? Okay? Cool? So lol, and I I think went through a different thought process of how we're ranking this teams. I wanted to have a little bit more fun with it. So let's just start off with the top tier at the fuck off tier, which is the Astros, because they can just just fuck off, all right. They're they're alone at the top in the American League. I don't think anyone really is necessarily that close to them right now, even despite losing the likes of a of a Justin Verlander. Okay, my next tier is hates the Astros, which is the Yankees, Mariners, and Blue Jays. I think the upside talent on those teams, the pitching depth of the Mariners, the Yankees, they were, you know, pretty good last year. This signed Rodin. I know he's hurt, but there's just more upside there when you have Colon Rodin on the rotation, you have Aaron Judge in your lineup. The Blue Jays talent across the board for really the most part. So that's the tier I put that in. The next tier below that is slightly below that, slightly below what well slightly below everyone else, and that is the Guardians and the Rays where it's just little caps, mostly because they're they don't necessarily spend a whole lot of money. A little bit more on the mediocre side is my next tier Orioles, White Sox, Twins, Angels, Rangers. I think the Oriols could come back down to earth a little bit. I still don't believe in they're pitching at all. They made little, no effort to upgrade their pitching staff over the offseason. And there's not I mean, besides Grayson Rodriguez, not a totally loaded high like high upside minor league pitching organization. Off the top of my head, I don't believe, and especially not in the big leagues. There's just not There's that upside is not there for the Orioles. And then the other teams I think self explanatory White Sox, Twins, Angels, Rangers. Fully mediocre is the Red Sox, Royals, and Tigers, teams that seem stuck in whatever perpetuity they're in. My final tier is Vegas Baby, and the a's are all alone in the Vegas Baby tier. 01:27:51 Speaker 2: I give you an A on that list, and I give you an A plus for the names of the tiers. You did a good job with that one, Okay, So my list it's not that different from yours. I think my first three tiers were exactly the same. My first tier is Powerhouse. I put Astros even after losing Verlander. I said, if the Yankees didn't already have all these injuries piling up. With the addition of Rodin, maybe I would have thought about putting them in that top tier, but with the injuries, I said no. Then I have the contenders category Yankees, Mariners, Blue Jays. Again, they can all compete for an Ale Pennant, but they're not as good as the Astros playoff teams, Guardians, Rays. They should get into the postseason. I don't really think their World Series contenders, although to be fair to the Rays, they did have a lot of injuries last year. I guess we'll see noise makers. I said, Rangers and Orioles, they could fight for a wildcard spot. Just not good enough is my next tier. I have the Twins, White Sox, Angels, and Red Sox. So we differ a little bit on these tiers. Where I lumped those four teams together, I think he had the Red Sox a little bit lower, and I basically said, with those teams, they all have some really talented pieces of their roster, but as a collective unit, it's just not good enough to sustain over a full year or really get into the postseason. Rebuilding Tigers and Royals look there's reason to be interested in those guys. They have young pieces that are exciting. They are rebuilding, but they're gonna be well below five hundred and like you my final tier, which I titled absolute disgrace to the game of baseball, the Oakland. 01:29:19 Speaker 1: A's at least they have a good stadium. 01:29:23 Speaker 2: Oh, great stadium with letters falling off the roof. You've got like six inches of space to walk down the aisle. You know, three thousand fans a night at the game. Incredible. 01:29:33 Speaker 1: You were asking about content ideas for this podcast. We should take a group trip to. 01:29:39 Speaker 2: O dot Co before it closes. Oh, that would be great, and we just and we just film for everybody. Oh so here's here's us standing outside the stadium. Oh, but you're not allowed in until like an hour before the game because they like don't have enough workers to let people in any earlier. 01:29:53 Speaker 1: It should be where we're one of us were sitting at our seats, and one of us is sitting in one of the many empty seats like a cross the aisle, and the person's just sort of sitting there and there's music playing in the background and the seat breaks. 01:30:08 Speaker 2: Oh, that's going directly on all our social media accounts. But that was our listener question for the week. I just want to say this before we wrap this part up again. If you guys have listener questions for us, please like, dm them to us on Instagram, on Twitter, email us like. We want to take all your questions, so if you've got some, send them. 01:30:27 Speaker 1: We'll do one a week. No pressure. It's if it's a good question, you'll get featured, we promise. All right, let's close out the show with speak your Mind, Speak. 01:30:37 Speaker 4: Your mind spot. 01:30:42 Speaker 1: That would be unwise. 01:30:44 Speaker 2: What is necessary is never unwise. 01:30:48 Speaker 1: All right lyle, what is on your mind today? 01:30:52 Speaker 2: I've just been thinking about this over the last couple of weeks. I didn't talk about this on the last show because I was talking about Anthony Richardson. But like a week and a half ago, I was broadcasting a SEATTLEU basketball game, and I don't know if I told you about this part. So I learned when I got to the arena that the guy who was supposed to be my analyst and do color commentary got sick and couldn't make it, so they didn't have anybody to fill him, or they didn't have anybody to fill in as a replacement. So I'm sitting there doing a TV basketball game on my own, and I'll tell you what, as anybody who knows anything about broadcasting or has ever called a game TV basketball is not meant to do by yourself. I mean it was. It fell borderline impossible to get through the game. I did the best I could. But you're supposed to have somebody to balance ideas off and tee up for some analysis and work off that. There is no rhythm or flow in any way whatsoever trying to do a TV basketball game on your own. You're doing it on radio alone. You can do it because you talk a lot more and you fill most of the time. Man on TV, that was like, that was like nothing I've ever experienced. 01:32:00 Speaker 1: I think you should have just broken out dual personalities. Yeah yeahow man, what a shot? What a shot? The creation in the corner, the step back ability over the stretched out hand. I mean, this is shot creation you just don't see at this level. 01:32:16 Speaker 2: I'd have to change my voice a few times. Maybe I can. Maybe I'll have to send Jeff pats On a DM or an email saying, hey, like, how long did it take you to work on that? Elmo voice and learn a second voice, and I'm just sitting there with the headset doing two different voices. 01:32:30 Speaker 1: Yeah, you can pull like a gollum. 01:32:33 Speaker 2: Gollum. 01:32:33 Speaker 1: I might not know that from Lord of the Rings. 01:32:35 Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw those. I saw one or two of those movies a long time ago and don't remember that much of it, so I might not know the reference. 01:32:42 Speaker 1: It's disappointing. I know it does take a lot of your time. I'll give you that break. It's like nine hours. It's nine hours to get through the trilogy of movies, So I think I can give you a break there. But yeah, TV basketball difficult, mostly because the analyst is supposed to, like you said, talk about eighty percent end of the time, and you're like, no analysts, no analyst, my speak your mind. Also basketball related, I'd just like to congratulate the sun Devils of Arizona State for making it back to the ASU Invitational for the third time in five seasons. AKA Dayton, Ohio. 01:33:22 Speaker 2: What a city. 01:33:25 Speaker 1: There's so much connection here. The fact there's two ASU alums on this podcast. You spent all of last summer in Dayton working for the Dayton Dragons, and Arizona State basketball should honestly buy a practice facility in Dayton because they're going there more often than not when they make the tournament. 01:33:41 Speaker 2: Yeah, somebody joked, oh, Bobby Hurley should buy a house there or a time share there. It's like you think Bobby Hurley wants to leave Tempe or Scottsdale, Arizona to go to Dayton. Like, unless you're playing the games there, what in the world are you. 01:33:54 Speaker 1: Doing making the first four? Because they're very, very good at the odds of making the first four are actually incredible. In a sport of three hundred and fifty eight teams, you need to be one of For Bobby Hurley's sake, you need to be what one of four teams that makes the first four of so he would be eliminated from being the sixteen seeds to make it, so he would need to be either the twelve seed play in or the eleven seed play in at the first four. And somehow, some miraculous way, three times in the last five years they have managed to land in Dayton in this very niche, niche spot of the NCAA tournament. And I think it's absolutely fascinating. 01:34:43 Speaker 2: Yeah, And do we have much confidence in them to get out of Dayton. I've got my hesitancies. 01:34:49 Speaker 1: As our own friends said, Nevada sucks. 01:34:52 Speaker 2: So maybe, yeah, except the entire reason as is even in the tournament and on their way to date right now, is because of the luck and miracle of a sixty foot buzzer beater against Arizona. Like that ball doesn't go in. They're not in the tournament. 01:35:08 Speaker 1: No dog, Dayton willed that ball into the bucket. It really is calling. 01:35:15 Speaker 2: Maybe ASU generates them business and they just beg for the sun devils to be there or something. I don't know. Yeah, it's ridiculous that they're back. 01:35:22 Speaker 1: Maybe are there a lot of Starbucks there? Like so there's a lot of ASU online as well. 01:35:28 Speaker 2: I guess that could be. I didn't notice that many Starbucks, although I refuse to drink Starbucks. 01:35:32 Speaker 1: US constant frequenter of Starbucks. 01:35:36 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, right, yeah. I guess we'll see how it goes. I mean, look, ASU got in. We'll at least get to watch them once, and I guess we'll hope for the best. But back in Dayton. They are back in day so am I okay? I think that just about wraps up this episode of the Marine Layer podcast, You guys know the drill. If you want to listen to the full podcast, you can do so on Apple, Spotify, Amazon or Google. You want to watch us on video, full video podcast is on YouTube. If you want to follow us on social media, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube shorts at Marine Layer Pod For TJ Matthewson, this is Lyle Goldstein. As always, we thank you guys for tuning in. We'll talk to you next week.