Automatic Balls & Strikes review so far in Spring Training & World Baseball Classic Preview - Ep. 650 - 3.2.26

And we're finally here with spring training, though it is underway. Real meaningful baseball is truly about to begin with the WBC on the verge of beginning. We have a lot to look at this week, including how ABS has impacted spring training. And we have to look at how WBC is playing out. And will we get a moment as good as trout versus Zotani this time around? You know what? We actually might.

Now, obviously, I think the big news is going to be with the WBC and all that's coming up. think for a lot of fans, we're really looking forward to it this time around. Basically, everybody that we want to be participating is participating for the most part, with the exception of a couple of guys who are in a lot of cases hurt anyway, or would probably be pretty limited if they did go and participate. And we're getting to see how ABS is turning out in spring training right now, which has been pretty interesting so far. Yeah, I've watched,

I I watched my first spring training game over the weekend, I listened to the first game that was played last week on the radio. It was really fun to hear baseball just on the radio. And in looking at it, there were some calls that were challenged in the game between the Mets and the Nationals. And in the first three innings, I think there were three different challenges, all of which were the player was upheld because the umpire missed the call.

by two times less than a half an inch. And the other time I think it was point seven inches. Right, which tells you about the margin of error these poor umpires are working with here. And we don't have the box. So that's another big difference. Right. And I think watching it on TV without the box, quickly get used to it. Yeah. will forget that the box is there within 10 games of the season. I wonder, by the way, just in the WBC, because we don't have ABS, will they use the box?

in the WBC. I'm sure major leagues would prefer them not to, but I don't know if they won't. But, you know, it is interesting and we were talking with a guy who does that, a friend of mine, an online friend through Substack, who is the radio voice, I believe, for the Albuquerque isotopes, Josh Suchan, and he was writing about something about how the umpires, when he watched it in AAA last year, they adapted pretty quickly. You know, like, okay, they got something called the ball.

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that they thought was a strike and so all of sudden they started changing their strike zones. ability to recalibrate based off of that is pretty. Embarrassing right? Right. a certain degree and you're not you know look you try as Ron Darling said in the telecast he goes you try looking at a 97 mile an hour fastball and calling it whether it was a quarter of an inch in or out. And I thought that was something that was interesting that they talked about that was higher velocity pitchers.

are less likely to be called strikes. The faster the pitch goes, the harder the umpire has to He's flinching! Right, and he's got less time to try judge and react to the thing. So, you know, the challenge system is going to, it looks like it's working. It doesn't take too long. They do it in about, I'd say, 10 to 15 seconds.

So that's not onerous or anything like that on it. Right, right. know, you're never delaying the game for any kind of significant period of time. And I see the pitchers aren't really being able to call because the pitcher always thinks it's a strike. Right, right. I notice that they've immediately realized, OK, wait, we can't let the pitchers have their ability to challenge us because they'll just challenge it all of the time and just waste them. And the catchers, I think, lean that way too, because I saw a catcher call where he thought it was a strike.

and they called it a ball and you know, like, okay, well the catcher blew the challenge there. Right, yeah, there was a Mets catcher that called it and it wasn't close. Yeah, it wasn't close. So I think, you we're gonna watch it more during the end of spring training games because...

It's interesting what's going to happen in spring training the next couple of weeks because as you mentioned, you know, so many teams, I the Mets have 17 players, right? Other teams have 15 like the Royals. You're talking about a lot in a lot of cases, the best players and guys that would be playing a significant amount of these later season spring training or later spring training games as they get ramped up and ready for the season. They're all going to the WBC, which means

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this year with a really new interesting rule that the major league clubs are going to get way more time to work developmentally with guys. And I thought it was interesting watching the Mets broadcast today. We learned there's a new rule in spring training this year that allows a pitcher. He could start an inning, come out and then come back in at the start of the next inning. So it's like, okay, you could have a pitcher have a terrible run, get him out of there to protect the number of pitches he has.

and then bring them back in with a fresh sheet, which is like, OK, I think that makes sense in spring training when you're actually trying to get looks at guys. Right. You're trying to get guys their work in too. And you're right. You're getting a lot of guys who are going to get an extended look in the spring training where they wouldn't normally. mean, normally, your big time players, if they play in spring training games at all, they get to it, bats.

and they get him out of the game after the second at bat for the most part. So now those lot of those guys are going to be playing in the WBC. So you're going to have the guy who's below him getting two, maybe three at bats, maybe more in a game. And so don't be surprised, especially this spring training, if there's somebody that comes out of the spring training with a goofy stat line that you're going be like, Whoa, look at this guy. You got to remember they're they're playing not basically none of the a lot of the not regular major league guys are going to be there. You're really down a large number of players, especially pitchers.

So you're not gonna be facing the regular pitchers you're facing in spring training. You're gonna be facing other guys that are working on stuff and trying to make rosters. I'm sitting here thinking, can I think of a player like who in spring training history who came out of spring training who was unheralded or not known at all and then.

started hitting a spring training and never stopped for his whole career. I can't think of anybody that it doesn't work. It doesn't work that way. One, because a lot of times guys, as much as we talk about how pitchers are working on stuff in spring training, we saw claim Holmes was working on stuff that I our rookie Sasaki is working on a brand new pitch. Batters are working on stuff, too. And when we talk about batters on working and stuff, sometimes that means taking it at bat where you're not really trying to get a hit in the traditional way.

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You might be spending an entire bat working on trying to make sure to iron out guarding the outside of the plate and drive the ball to right field. And so you might not swing and be ready for a pitch on the inside part of the plate that you would turn on and swing in the regular season. And I've seen a couple of the while I'm watching the Mets on the Mets so far. I think it was Carson Benj and AJ Ewing. What they did was they extended it bats by, you know, fouling off some tough pitches.

Maybe, you know, working the count deep in the count and to your point, whether they got ahead or made it, the fact is that they battled the process was right. Showing that they understand how to play the game. And obviously, while we are crazy baseball fans, we are not such crazy baseball fans that we're going to watch spring training games of other teams. No, no, definitely not. And there's no like broadcast. Like it's hard to find these things. I'm just saying that would require a level of dedication that is almost inhuman. So.

and in ABS- Or you're being paid. You mentioned that the harder pitches are difficult to call. And then some pitchers are basically are high ball pitchers who didn't get calls last year that may benefit from ABS because the pitch actually is a strike. just like-

traditionally didn't get called for. Louis Severino and Yamamoto throws high in the zone and doesn't always get the calls. There's a bunch of pitchers like And then I think that also speaks to a lot of the things that umpires traditionally have done that are gonna get challenged. Umpires traditionally expanded the strike zone on three and and now you're not gonna get a lot of those expanders. It's gonna be just like any other pitch. Right. So that's a huge difference right? So the umpires because they're humans.

Right, you know, it's three and and all kind of guy throws a pitch. if you know, it basically at least show the shape of the strike zone if the umpire mentally, you know, is calling a three pitch versus if it's a two pitch and they're not the same shape, right? Because the zone gets expanded on three and yeah, that's a strike, you know, swing a bat, baby. Right. Because we'd all rather see him swing the bat, but the ABS doesn't call you. Yes, is indifferent towards that. So that's going to be a real adjustment. And some pitchers are going to find out that, hey, that's a strike.

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Right, like if I throw it there, that's a tough place to hit the ball. know, and another pitch, the batter's gonna go, that's a ball? Okay, I don't have to swing at that pitch, I've always swung I've always had to swing at that pitch. Right, so it changes the mental gymnastics and it's gonna take a while for this to shake out.

And I will say this again because I keep saying it and nobody likes hearing it I guess is that I think ultimately we end up with ABS all the time. It's coming. mean, you know, the challenge system is cute and the umpires get to call the strikes and stuff like that, but you know, come on, if we can get it right every time, why not? wouldn't we? We're right. So yeah, I think it's going to be very interesting to see after a month or two of ABS how the umpires have adjusted and their scores went up as Josh Chuson was saying in his note.

in AAA once they put ABS in isn't that interesting? Right. So they got better. Right. Which is because they understand what the parameters are and it's hard. It's difficult. So well, let's talk about the WBC. World Baseball Classic begins on think March 5th, 5th, technically the fifth. Right. Because it's starting in Asia. So right. Right. So we have four pools of four teams. We have 16 teams competing.

All across the world. We've got games going on from Puerto Rico to Texas to Japan and in here and Florida. So you've got two sites here in the US and then you've got two international sites. Most of the groups when you look at them, they're not going to be terribly exciting. The United States is in group B. If we want to go through that group first, they're sharing group B with Mexico, Italy, Great Britain and Brazil, a group that should be a

pretty neat and tidy affair for the US. US Mexico game is probably the one to circle on your calendar in the pool play. So you play everybody one time in your pool. Right. And then so that is pool B. Pool A is Puerto Rico, Cuba, Canada, Panama and Colombia. That's an interesting little pool that could be a more exciting pool than you might possibly think. and Colombia and Jose Quintana and I think who's Teheran, Julio Teheran is pitching for

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Columbia and then they both are the number one and two winningest pitchers in Colombian baseball history. Which is really cool. There you go. yeah. And I think that, they're they're they're basically the teams to watch out in that one. Right. Pool C starting first over in Asia is Japan, Australia, Korea, Czechia and Chinese Taipei, which, you know, again, that sort of is a Japan and Korea should come out of that cleanly. they play each other. And so.

You know, know those two teams don't like each other. We're just stupid. That's what you say when you do that. And I guess there's a whole rivalry between Czechia and Japan in that they played each other in the WC and Japan beat the heck out of him. But I guess Newt Barr was struck out by this Czechia pitcher. A bunch of the Japanese players were dumb. So they kind of had respect for Czechia.

So they've been trying to help the Czechia program in Japan. it's sort of like friendly. They try to uplift kind of a thing. And then the final group in Pool D is Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, the Netherlands, Israel and Nicaragua. Right. And our own Mark Vientos here on the Mets is playing for Nicaragua. But I would be.

I'm lying if I said I could name any other players on the Nicaraguan unfortunately, I think for those teams they are going to fall to Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. Yes, Venezuela has got a stack team and obviously so does the Dominican Republic even without. So those are our groups. Obviously the winner of each group will get out and then the second place team gets out and then they will meet in the playoff bracket. You play each of the other teams in your group once.

And, know, it's been pretty interesting so far. Japan has won the most world baseball classics, having won three of them winning in 2006, beating Cuba, winning in 2009, beating South Korea and then winning again. Last time we had this in twenty twenty three where they beat the US. That one ended in a great drama with Shohei Otani pitching to Mike Trout.

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They're not quite be the same anticipated matchup this time around if we got it. No, I and they're not teammates. So I went and I took a little bit of a look to say, OK, so what would happen if within the pool if teams played and they played each other and you so you have a couple of matches that could be interesting.

I don't know that they actually play because the US doesn't play Venezuela in pool play but if they did Bryce Harper then could face Jose Alvarado his teammate or Jose Luzardo or his new teammate Jesus Luzardo same with Kyle Schwab Schwerberg and do that so but they get they have to get through the pool play in order for that to happen

Well, I guess the U.S. does play Italy in round one. So Aaron Nola is going to pitch for Italy and his teammate, obviously, Bryce Harper or Schwerber, he could face them. So that could be a little bit. If the Dominican Republic advances, they could play the United States later on. We could get a battle of Paul Skeen's versus O'Neill Cruz. Yeah. And just I guess if your guys facing another guy in your team, just what you really want as a fan of your team is nobody gets hurt. Right. Right. Yeah. I'm pretty sure Noah McClain and Clay Holmes don't want to have any issues when they're facing one soda.

or Mark Vienta's God forbid you hit the guy. Right something like that is what I was thinking that would be horrible and Seth Lugo the Royals pitcher who I was picking one player like who sort of made his reputation or changed his reputation as a result of playing in the WBC it would be Seth Lugo who for Puerto Rico I guess it was in 17 was lights out in the world baseball classic in a way that surprised me maybe him

and everybody, and it sort of changed his level of pitching and his trajectory. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He became, you know, a guy who's had a pretty darn good career now. And Bobby Witt Jr. didn't play in the last WBC very much. I think he got barely got it about, but he's going to play in this way. And obviously the big headlining news for the U.S. is we're going to have Tarek Scoobel and Paul Skeen's pitching for Team U.S. They are obviously limited because you actually have a pitch count depending on your round that you're in. You could only throw 65 pitches in a game in the first round.

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80 in the quarterfinal and then 95 in that final round though. I don't think any team is letting their pitcher get to 95. And it was Scoobal who came out and said he was only going to do a pitch one start in pool play. Which is kind of weird to be on the team and saying, okay, I'm gonna, he gave his reasons after and it has to do with development. I get all that kind of stuff, but you're on a team and all that. think that's something I could, by the way, if we win and I help you, I'm done.

So I think that's little in fact I wanted to ask you this question So, you know we watch the Olympics and we watch the US men's hockey team and the US women's hockey team both win gold Medders Does that change the level of fan enthusiasm for the US to win the WBC? Cuz we're kind of on a roll right now I don't think so in that because it's not like there's it's not like there's some kind of extensive crossover fan population between hockey and baseball

where all those fans that were just cheering for a patriotic victory in the Olympics are now going to turn around and cheer for one in the world baseball classic. I think obviously we would all like Team USA to win. We worry about their pitching depth once we get past pool play, especially if we don't get a starts from a lot of their elite pitchers. But I also imagine every other team is going to be dealing with issues like this. know, teams are not going to necessarily want their best players. And that's going to be an issue for Team Japan.

is that last time around, Shohei was the only pitcher that was in the US. Now their entire starting pitching rotation is in the US. Those guys aren't going to be able to throw innings as freely like they were able to last time. And if the US gets deep in the tournament and is playing Japan, which they seem to do almost every WBC, Will Smith of the Dodgers, the catcher of the World Series champions and the hero of game seven, is going to face another hero of game seven, Yamamoto of the Dodgers. And that would be interesting because he's his catcher.

And it is interesting because you know when you're looking at this list you you you immediately had to cross out almost about half the teams because 13 out of the 30 teams don't have a player on team USA which is kind of wild to think about and I guess I'll be I won't be necessarily following all the teams on the guys in the Mets that are playing for other countries but at least you know on the US team there's a few I will be paying attention anytime I am watching a game or a highlight and I see one of them right at least you know in the US right there and Kelly Franco is going to Houston to

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cover the games actually these coming for great britain believe it or not which is kinda cool and you know these games will be played in not in the middle of the night as you're gonna try to watch the games in asia right right that is the nice thing that at least for two of the pools you're gonna be able to watch them quite easily if the games are on netflix correct fox sports yes fs one and fs two and you know you basically you look at the the camaraderie that comes out of these these players

have come to really love to play in this thing, and it's every three years, which is about the right cadence for this kind of an event. And I wonder if the WBC has sort of replaced, and Kelly made reference to this once, the All-Star game in its level of excitement that's a non-Major League game.

And the way I think it certainly replaced the prestige. Yes. Yes. And that because the All-Star game used to be such a prestige thing, except because the game itself doesn't matter and the guys don't really try. Nobody really. They don't try in the same way. The guys try in this. is these are matter. The games matter. These are legit baseball games that they are trying to win. So that's what makes it so exciting. Yeah. And you basically are. And I think you made this point in our last podcast that these guys got to come out of the gate and we watched Clay Holmes.

Mestaday pitch four innings, something like 60 pitches or something like that, because he's trying to get stretched out because he's on the U.S. team. And and so he needs to be ready to hopefully go deeper in the games now. And these guys are going to have to come out like a house of fire and pitch hard in the WBC. What happens to them in August? Right. Right. We've seen this effect, guys, in the past at this WBC ramp up does affect them with hitters. It doesn't affect. They have a weird arc.

where they get tired earlier in the season, so they start off better, but then they fall off earlier because then all of the sudden they get to August and the long season feels like it's been even longer because you essentially started playing a month earlier. I don't know if you put this down in here, but I like this. the 306 WBC players affiliated with Major League teams, 190 are on 40-man rosters.

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which is interesting that there's that many that aren't. But I got to think about it for a lot of them, especially these smaller countries that are out there. Like how many guys from Czechia and like these smaller like Great Britain, how many of those guys are necessarily playing for a major league roster right now? And you can, you know, basically, if you're not going to be on the US team and, know, your grandmother was, you know, British, you have a chance to be on the British team. know, how many how many guys on Team Israel are playing in the major leagues right now? Probably three.

Yeah, something like that. think, you know, they may have played Major League Baseball. And same for even Korea and team Korea and team Japan. A lot of those guys on Team Australia. There's not going to be a ton of major leaguers on those rosters. So another another matchup I kind of like to see would be if the US played Venezuela, if US played Venezuela in the next round is Ranger Suarez. And he is the newest Red Sox pitcher pitching against Roman Anthony.

And that could be because they had never been teammates before, really. Right. So they face each other before they are actually playing together. Exactly. So that I think that's going to be interesting. And I'm looking for a big season for Roman Anthony this year. So are the Red Sox, obviously. Yeah. And I think, you know, the I remember the WC games, they go fast.

But they're not necessarily any shorter. I don't think nobody just feels like they feel like they go by really quickly for what? just go in and out because as you mentioned, you know, they're limited in the pitches and they got a lot of arms to throw out there and there's some pretty you the US team is loaded. But so is Venezuela. Like we said, for the most part, you've got your favorites to win each group. And but then when you get past those, it's like, OK, who's going to win the whole thing? It's really tough to say, because especially when you're only playing these one game playoffs.

It you could just have a bad game and lose. Yeah. Yeah. And if you if you if you get upset and pool play, you know, you know, it can be a tough climb up to get back to get you. You could really. The U.S. loses the wrong game and pool play. It could have a large knock on effect because all of a sudden that first match up in the bracket stage is way harder than we would have liked it to be because there's a big difference between playing the first seed out a lot of these groups and playing the second seed out of these. But I want to say it's.

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Maybe I'll say it. It's unlikely to happen because here's how it could happen is a pitcher goes out and dominates for nine innings, except that can't happen. Right. Right. You kind of need to have a game where the team like that. You need that to happen. right. They slug the ball around. Right. And you have to you have to be stymied for six innings and give up a bunch of runs in those six innings. And even then, that requires the team to get that because let's say the Mets, the Mets, Team USA goes out and blows that first game against Mexico and they

But then Mexico has to then not drop any of the other games because that could very easily happen at the to make that upset stand up. And that's the other hard part about it is sometimes even though these teams lose that one game and it ends up not mattering in the end. And I think you have to look at what happens score wise, particularly after the sixth inning. Because, know, while the pitchers are good, you know, there's a limited amount of sort of.

reliever top quality believers and closers and all that kind of stuff to go around and we see that sometimes where all of a sudden games just get out of control late where teams all of a sudden start pouring on runs because that one good pitcher they have comes out and then it's a whole bunch of guys are praying can get him out it's you know it's a hard thing to predict if you had to pick who's going to get through and who will be in the final you know because there's so many good teams I think the easiest is to pick team Japan and team the US I think they're the best two teams that are out there right now in terms of just the overall collection of players they have

I guess anything else would then kind of be an upset right if if the Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic made it all the way down DR has won right they won before they certainly could win again so I think it's you know it's kind of interesting to see you know can they basically hold their seating all the way through right right that's gonna be does port Dino does Puerto Rico does the u.s. to Japan does the Dominican Republic do they all hold those number one seeds the entire way and then after the WC come then it goes I think for two weeks altogether

The players basically come back for, I don't even know if it's a week. About 10 days. Is it that much? It's 10 days. The games in the US start on the 6th and then the final is on the 17th. Okay. And opening day is like the 27th. 10 days later. Yeah. Yeah. So basically you come back, you get a game or two in with your team, maybe if you're coming back from that and then. then regular season is here. Let's go. Baseball, March baseball.