Speaker 1: I'm your host, Katie will Hear with a very special guest.
Speaker 1: Super excited about this episode. It's something I've been wanting
Speaker 1: to do for a while. Cardinals assistant general manager Rob
Speaker 1: Stortfolio joins the show.
Speaker 2: Surf.
Speaker 1: Welcome, longtime listener, hopefully first time partaker, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like the old Francesca Collins first, first time,
Speaker 3: long time. Yes, I appreciate you having me, so be
Speaker 3: It'll be fun. Glad to talk with you and then
Speaker 3: all the listeners, so beget I hope.
Speaker 2: So pressures on me to deliver some good questions here.
Speaker 1: I think when we look at this twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: transition season, the main focus was on player development, and
Speaker 1: while you were brought in after the twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: season to kind of oversee what him and Bloom would
Speaker 1: like to do with the minor league system. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is something that's going to impact both the minor
Speaker 1: league and major league teams.
Speaker 2: And levels for multiple seasons.
Speaker 1: That's just kind of the nature of where the organization
Speaker 1: is trending. I think we'll just go right into it.
Speaker 1: For Cardinals fans, who most of them, the wide majority,
Speaker 1: have not had to experience an era like this, or
Speaker 1: a transition season or a revamping of a payer development system.
Speaker 1: What can you tell fans about what the minor league
Speaker 1: system currently looks like so that they can understand the
Speaker 1: changes that have been made over the last year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's there's a lot of layers to that question, right,
Speaker 3: you know. I think the one of the big things
Speaker 3: is is it takes time and patience. And you know,
Speaker 3: I think one of the things for me as a
Speaker 3: as a new guy coming over here, going all the
Speaker 3: way back to my own interview, is like, there's a
Speaker 3: lot of pieces of this organization that's worked well for
Speaker 3: a long time, and all those banners that are flying
Speaker 3: around Bush Stadium, like, that's not by luck. And so
Speaker 3: I think as a new person and with all the
Speaker 3: new people that came in here, it was like really
Speaker 3: trying to understand what are those things that have worked
Speaker 3: really well for a long time. And that's not just performance, right,
Speaker 3: That can be values, can be ways in which the
Speaker 3: game has been taught being great at base running, defense, offense,
Speaker 3: not really taking concessions in any one area, the cardinal way,
Speaker 3: which as a as a new guy, has been really
Speaker 3: fun to just try and learn what that actually means
Speaker 3: to every person that's here, and so it takes patience
Speaker 3: because you need to uncover what those things are. You
Speaker 3: have a lot of new people bringing other ideas into
Speaker 3: the organization, and now like the whole system is learning,
Speaker 3: both players and staff. Okay, like, what's the new version
Speaker 3: of this of this Cardinal's way call it that we
Speaker 3: want to really scale and hopefully produce a lot of
Speaker 3: great outcomes over time. And and you know it kind
Speaker 3: of goes to like, especially with young players, just developments
Speaker 3: not linear. You don't always see immediate results of what
Speaker 3: you did yesterday. You're kind of like a farmer that's planting,
Speaker 3: watering crops and doing that well over a long period
Speaker 3: of time and always asking yourself, like in the middle
Speaker 3: of that, is this process working? Are there things we
Speaker 3: need to adjust? Are there holes that we're missing? Who
Speaker 3: from the outside can come in and help us think
Speaker 3: about this problem better. But it does take a little
Speaker 3: bit of time. And that's not because things were so
Speaker 3: far away from being good. Like, there's a lot of
Speaker 3: players that were products of this minor league system that
Speaker 3: have impacted the major leagues this year, which is awesome.
Speaker 3: And now it's just trying to continue to make those
Speaker 3: guys even better that have debuted and put other great
Speaker 3: pieces around that, both with staff and player acquisition streams.
Speaker 1: So that was the main focal focus point of when
Speaker 1: you were first hired, and you worked with him about
Speaker 1: expanding the staff first of the entire farm system as
Speaker 1: a whole, added more coordinators, added more positions, and then
Speaker 1: you both work to modernize technology. And both of those
Speaker 1: phrases sound a little vague, especially to a fan base
Speaker 1: that hasn't really had to really see the modernization of
Speaker 1: a farm system. Can you expand on why adding both
Speaker 1: staff and technology was important before you've been started the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five season.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean we can start with the staff. I
Speaker 3: mean I think, like, really, you're only as good as
Speaker 3: your team. And the analogy I like to make is
Speaker 3: because you know, this resonates I think with a lot
Speaker 3: of people, especially anybody that has kids, is every person
Speaker 3: wants to put their kids in the best school possible.
Speaker 3: So how do you know if a school's great? Well
Speaker 3: you look at well, if it's a high school, what
Speaker 3: college do they send people to? What average sat at
Speaker 3: or act scores? The does the school produce? And so
Speaker 3: there's measurables right for that with a minor league baseball
Speaker 3: system of how well is this group continuously producing major
Speaker 3: league players that are winning major league players, not just
Speaker 3: guys that get there, but stay there and help a
Speaker 3: team actually achieve results at the big league level. And
Speaker 3: so in order to have really good outputs, like the
Speaker 3: best schools on Earth hire the best teachers and they
Speaker 3: have the best curriculum, and that's how they scale their
Speaker 3: product to every student. And it's really no different for
Speaker 3: a baseball organization. It's you have to have a math chair,
Speaker 3: you have to have an English chair, you have to
Speaker 3: have multiple people in all of the spaces that impact
Speaker 3: players getting to the big leagues and then staying there
Speaker 3: and hopefully being winning players for a long time. You
Speaker 3: need that same approach in the minor league so that
Speaker 3: there's great communication between the big leagues and the minor
Speaker 3: leagues and everybody's kind of reading off the same sheet
Speaker 3: of music. They're solving for the same outcomes they're aligned towards.
Speaker 3: When that TRIAA player walks into the major leagues for
Speaker 3: the first time, that coaching staff knows that and had
Speaker 3: input on the things that that player was coached towards
Speaker 3: so that it's a seamless transition, or as seamless as
Speaker 3: it can be given some of the factors that these
Speaker 3: guys go through, you know, emotionally and just being in
Speaker 3: a new physical location. So we really tried to attack
Speaker 3: that off of you know, that's a really broad analogy,
Speaker 3: but I think it's maybe something that the average person
Speaker 3: can can resonate with because it's the same way that
Speaker 3: you would try and in place your child in the
Speaker 3: best school possible, and you just want those curriculums to
Speaker 3: be really good and the people that are leading them
Speaker 3: to be really skilled and great leaders and influencers of
Speaker 3: both players and staff that when that coordinator is not there,
Speaker 3: the actual programming and the curriculum is really sound, and
Speaker 3: the players understand it, and the coaches of the affiliate
Speaker 3: understand it, and they know exactly what they need to
Speaker 3: do to carry that action out.
Speaker 4: And if we do that.
Speaker 3: Every friggin day, it's monotonous. But if we win the
Speaker 3: one to five o'clock period with our process and how
Speaker 3: we're working on those skills, then the game is just
Speaker 3: a barometer of how well our work is translating. And so,
Speaker 3: you know, that was really the whole thought, and I'd
Speaker 3: spend a lot of years in Cleveland kind of helping
Speaker 3: lead like the hiring process over there. So for me,
Speaker 3: it was a cool opportunity to really action a lot
Speaker 3: of the names that I had either hired in the
Speaker 3: or interviewed in the past and not hired in Cleveland
Speaker 3: and had an opportunity to bring over here to Saint Louis.
Speaker 3: So I'm pretty excited about the group that we've got.
Speaker 3: We've got more to come in the upcoming off season,
Speaker 3: which would be really fun. Even though it's a lot
Speaker 3: of laborious work, but it's it's really important to get
Speaker 3: those people in.
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Speaker 1: And I think something that you have talked about saying,
Speaker 1: that Jim has talked about or alluded to in his
Speaker 1: end of season press conference last year, is the ability
Speaker 1: where you're not necessarily losing the cardinal way. There's many
Speaker 1: many things that this organization has done well. I mean
Speaker 1: they were pioneers in player development. When you're adding new coordinators,
Speaker 1: you're adding new staff members, you're adding new technology. The
Speaker 1: goal isn't to just replace the what was already here
Speaker 1: in the cardinal system, it's to expand it, right, And
Speaker 1: when you're telling that, how to do that with bringing
Speaker 1: in a new group of people but keeping a majority
Speaker 1: of the same because it really hasn't been that much
Speaker 1: turnover in terms of people leading positions. Why is that
Speaker 1: important to have a balance of the tradition of this
Speaker 1: organization and also modernizing it so you're not completely losing
Speaker 1: the identity of the franchise, You're just kind of making
Speaker 1: it better.
Speaker 3: That's it, And you nailed the dynamic right there. And
Speaker 3: the first thing we challenged myself any new person is
Speaker 3: like to really spend time on, like what are the
Speaker 3: parts of this organization that people that have been here
Speaker 3: for a long time would take a bullet for and
Speaker 3: things that are producing results, like really have an actual
Speaker 3: understanding of what those things are.
Speaker 4: Those were some, honestly the most.
Speaker 3: Fun conversations during the off season was really once we
Speaker 3: kind of finished that first wave of hiring, was then
Speaker 3: getting all those new people with the people that have
Speaker 3: been here for a long time, including the major league staff,
Speaker 3: into We did a lot of it virtually but in
Speaker 3: the same virtual room, to like ask the hard questions
Speaker 3: of who do we want to be about like what
Speaker 3: are the values that have been here for forever that
Speaker 3: we feel really strongly about, and then how have other
Speaker 3: people from new places thought about that same challenge, whether
Speaker 3: it's infield development or hitting development, Like what are some
Speaker 3: other like the diversity of thought piece of that to
Speaker 3: then ultimately just and we'll continue to stress test what
Speaker 3: we believe in and make sure that it's producing results.
Speaker 3: And we feel really good about that process. So that
Speaker 3: that was the way that we started that. I'm sure
Speaker 3: there's probably one hundred ways that we could do that
Speaker 3: better and hopefully, you know, this time of year is
Speaker 3: always a great time year where we're asking staff for
Speaker 3: feedback and like what does year two's worth of growth
Speaker 3: look like for all of us? And that'll be a
Speaker 3: huge part of it. But you're exactly right, it's the
Speaker 3: what are the parts of this organization? I spoke to
Speaker 3: the banners that are flying around Bush Stadium, like, that's
Speaker 3: not by luck. That's because this word, like the word
Speaker 3: you said, was a pioneer in a lot of different
Speaker 3: ways with the way they thought about the draft, player development,
Speaker 3: having a minor league system of great teaching, and let's
Speaker 3: never lose track of any of that and let's find
Speaker 3: new ways on the margins to even make that better.
Speaker 1: All right, So, player development around baseball is a vague term,
Speaker 1: and most it's usually kind of relegated to the minor
Speaker 1: league system or prospects because that is where you're essentially
Speaker 1: developing players. But for the case of the Cardinals, at
Speaker 1: least this season and probably for the next couple of
Speaker 1: years going forward, player development is going to take place
Speaker 1: across the board, at both the minor league levels and
Speaker 1: the major league level. We spent an entire season this
Speaker 1: year talking about transition, runway, use your favorite buzzword, and
Speaker 1: the primary emphasis of these buzzwords were to emphasize that
Speaker 1: players are going to develop at the major league level
Speaker 1: this year.
Speaker 2: For years, that was not the case. In Saint Louis.
Speaker 1: You were either a major league player and you are
Speaker 1: ready to contribute to a postseason run, or you were back.
Speaker 2: To Triple A.
Speaker 1: But this is not a phenom that's necessarily specific to
Speaker 1: just the Cardinals. You're seeing this across major League baseball,
Speaker 1: depending on team market size and payroll. Your specialty surf
Speaker 1: is player development. Why is this important across the board?
Speaker 3: Well, first off, specialty is probably a strong word, but
Speaker 3: I'll take it. Yeah, I think the first part's mindset.
Speaker 3: And I think that's one of the things that I've
Speaker 3: really enjoyed working with Ali and his staff, Like goes
Speaker 3: all the way back to the second I showed up
Speaker 3: and had you know, he was part of my own
Speaker 3: interview process and we got into the weeds, the weeds
Speaker 3: on this and whether it's player combos, right, whether it's
Speaker 3: like Nado or Donnie or really any of our players
Speaker 3: guys that have had success at the major league level,
Speaker 3: the second you stop getting better, whether it's baseball, whether
Speaker 3: it's sudoku puzzles, whether it's ping pong in the basement,
Speaker 3: Like it really just doesn't matter when you stop getting
Speaker 3: better at a thing, like especially in our world of
Speaker 3: sports where we're we're performing at the highest level in
Speaker 3: high competitive environments, Like when you stop developing, you're in trouble.
Speaker 3: And I think that just mindset wise, is like we
Speaker 3: have a lot of players that already think that way,
Speaker 3: which is phenomenal, and now like scaling that across the
Speaker 3: entire organization I think is hopefully something that can be
Speaker 3: a competitive advantage for us and especially you know, if
Speaker 3: you spoke to like the market right of there are
Speaker 3: teams that the bigger market teams like, they'll go out
Speaker 3: and pay for players that the entire industry knows is
Speaker 3: really good, and that's certainly a way of doing it.
Speaker 3: And the other way for teams that maybe don't have
Speaker 3: that same luxury is what are you doing with your
Speaker 3: own players every year to not necessarily reinvent.
Speaker 4: Who they are, but really ensure that their.
Speaker 3: Superpowers are never lost and the things on the margins
Speaker 3: that will help them take the next step forward are
Speaker 3: intentionally getting better, not just hoping by luck, but having
Speaker 3: a real process. Whether it's a guy that has won
Speaker 3: five MVPs in the big leagues or a guy that's
Speaker 3: played five games in rookie ball. Kind of the overall
Speaker 3: framework of the ideology is the same. It's just a
Speaker 3: different strategy and set of tactics on how you bring
Speaker 3: that to life and the types of things that you're
Speaker 3: focusing on for each player.
Speaker 4: But I do think this.
Speaker 3: Mindset is really important for just this organization, especially the
Speaker 3: types of players and kind of the we've seen this
Speaker 3: with some of the younger guys this year, and making
Speaker 3: sure that we're never wasting a day for those guys
Speaker 3: that continuously get better. When your best players own that mindset,
Speaker 3: it really just becomes the fabric of how your organization
Speaker 3: goes about its business.
Speaker 2: And you can see that. Even I thought Nolan Arnotta
Speaker 2: was a great example here.
Speaker 1: He's one of the best defensive third basemen of all
Speaker 1: time and he's out there every day trying to take
Speaker 1: extra reps and get better. Brendan Donovan has really emerged
Speaker 1: as a winning kind of player, has that kind of
Speaker 1: grittiness that fans saw in the twenty tens when the
Speaker 1: Cardinals were in their last legitimate true run. You can
Speaker 1: kind of see this now with the way that players
Speaker 1: have stepped forward, whether it's Mason Win solidifying himself defensively
Speaker 1: as shortstop, Alec Burlison.
Speaker 2: As an all around hitter, of Von Herrera as a
Speaker 2: true bat.
Speaker 1: These are going to take times for some of these
Speaker 1: young players to really develop into their careers, but you
Speaker 1: do see this. I mean, I think Burlison is a
Speaker 1: great example here in terms of someone who was challenged
Speaker 1: to become better defensively because they needed him to. You
Speaker 1: know what you have in Burlison as a bat, high
Speaker 1: contact rate, He can put a lot of balls in play,
Speaker 1: he needed to refine his approach a little bit so
Speaker 1: he wasn't getting out as much, and he did. But
Speaker 1: in order for him to stick, he had to be
Speaker 1: better defensively and he did that and it took some time,
Speaker 1: but he was able to develop in games and now
Speaker 1: he's an all around better player. Is that kind of
Speaker 1: the example that you're looking at when you evaluate these
Speaker 1: guys at the major league level?
Speaker 4: That's it?
Speaker 3: And then you ask yourself that question year over year,
Speaker 3: and it's like, Okay, Burley, what a great season this
Speaker 3: was for you? You talked about the approach stuff, you know,
Speaker 3: digg into some of the the behind the scenes numbers
Speaker 3: there and his chase rates and just the amount of
Speaker 3: times that he's getting himself in more favorable, more favorable
Speaker 3: counts to do it. He do to do what he
Speaker 3: does best with hitting the ball hard frequently. That's there,
Speaker 3: and that is directly tied to some of the ways
Speaker 3: that he challenged himself to train. And you know, Burley
Speaker 3: and Brownie and all those guys like his teammates that
Speaker 3: helped that process deserve a ton of credit for being
Speaker 3: willing to get their hands dirty in season and just
Speaker 3: like you know, we talked about that mindset and mentality
Speaker 3: of just the whole organization always thinking that way is
Speaker 3: is really important. But he's such a great example, like
Speaker 3: the work that he's done with JJ and the outfield
Speaker 3: to really elevate his game to be like not just
Speaker 3: a guy that has to play the corner outfield, but
Speaker 3: somebody that you're excited about playing the corner outfield. And now, like,
Speaker 3: what's the next step for that of being you know,
Speaker 3: wherever he is in terms of the excuse me, the
Speaker 3: metrics of a corner outfielder, Like what's the even better
Speaker 3: version of that?
Speaker 4: How can we tie.
Speaker 3: That to how he prepares in the senc nutrition space,
Speaker 3: Like all those things matter, and I think his willingness
Speaker 3: to attack those things in season in like a very
Speaker 3: interesting transition year speaks a lot to the type of
Speaker 3: mindset that you want your best players to have.
Speaker 1: And I think when you're looking at the Cardinals fan base,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're a very loyal fan base, as you know,
Speaker 1: and they really know their baseball. So when you're able
Speaker 1: to see a player in real time like Burleston adjust
Speaker 1: and adapt, like that's tangible evidence that they can see,
Speaker 1: they may not realize it in real time. I know
Speaker 1: sometimes I don't either. Where you look up and after
Speaker 1: a month you say, wow, this player has really expedited
Speaker 1: his growth or has really made these adjustments, because when
Speaker 1: you're playing every like a game a day for almost
Speaker 1: two hundred days, including spring training, it can be hard
Speaker 1: to really see that on a day to day basis.
Speaker 1: But listen to your point as an example, Herrera offensively
Speaker 1: as an example.
Speaker 2: We can go down the list. Kyle Lahey, Mike McGreevey.
Speaker 4: Yea.
Speaker 2: In terms of the minor.
Speaker 1: League system though, something that isn't as a parent or
Speaker 1: easy to access as the major league team on TV
Speaker 1: every day, what changes can fans expect to see because
Speaker 1: we have made whether it's the organization or media, we
Speaker 1: made such a big idea about the revamping of the
Speaker 1: Cardinals minor league system, and there hasn't really been a
Speaker 1: lot of clarity as to what exactly these fans can
Speaker 1: look like other than adding staff members and adding technology.
Speaker 1: What can you point to fans where they can look
Speaker 1: and identify and see, Okay, this is different and here's
Speaker 1: why it's being done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question, and it's in some ways
Speaker 3: it's a hard question. To have like a real black
Speaker 3: and white answer to because you know, I said this
Speaker 3: comment earlier of like, developments never linear, and there's no
Speaker 3: better example of that than minor league baseball, where you're
Speaker 3: working with a bunch of eighteen twenty one year olds
Speaker 3: and not only are they developing as human beings and adults,
Speaker 3: but you're asking them to develop skills and knowing that
Speaker 3: those skills take time to see real change towards. But
Speaker 3: I think there's a whole bunch of things behind the scenes, right,
Speaker 3: a process. You talked about technology, right, Like that's such
Speaker 3: a broad thing, but there's real specificity to like.
Speaker 4: Examples of that.
Speaker 3: So I think everybody knows, like major league stadiums they
Speaker 3: have hawkeye technology, and that allows you to do so
Speaker 3: many things in terms of performance. Can be a lagging indicator,
Speaker 3: like you talked about sometimes you have to actually wait
Speaker 3: a month for to have a big enough sample size
Speaker 3: or just enough confidence that.
Speaker 4: Okay, this change was real.
Speaker 3: And some of this technology allows you to really like
Speaker 3: shrink the amount of time that you need to feel
Speaker 3: confident that a change is happening. And a change is
Speaker 3: happens there's guesswork there, right, It's a hypothesis. We think
Speaker 3: if this player does this movement differently, that it'll allow
Speaker 3: them to perform better in this way. But if you
Speaker 3: do that for a long enough time and you mess
Speaker 3: up a lot of them like I have, you can
Speaker 3: figure out which ones have some proof of the putting
Speaker 3: to it. And so you know, I think hawkeye is
Speaker 3: like an example of something that we are expanding to
Speaker 3: all levels of our minor leagues, and you kind of
Speaker 3: work backwards from here. Are things that we know, like
Speaker 3: evidence based approach. We know that these things work at
Speaker 3: the highest level in the big leagues, and now how
Speaker 3: do we bring that to a player that's in a
Speaker 3: ball And you might not see that player in a
Speaker 3: ball necessarily throw harder that next month, but we are
Speaker 3: then able to connect things about how they move and
Speaker 3: their delivery, how we build a great like throwing program
Speaker 3: and plyocare routine. Same thing for a hit or we
Speaker 3: can see the speeds that they create with their bat
Speaker 3: and the angles which they're back like by way of
Speaker 3: how their body moves works through the zone, and we
Speaker 3: can see if that's what great major league hitters do
Speaker 3: or don't do, and then we can help that player
Speaker 3: in the immediacy, So it really allows you to shrink
Speaker 3: the amount of time that you need to wait for
Speaker 3: performance to stabilize or you don't get tripped up by Okay,
Speaker 3: well this guy was an A ball All Stars. That
Speaker 3: actually mean he's going to be a major league All Star?
Speaker 3: Definitely not. There's players that are really good in the
Speaker 3: minor leagues that just don't have the skills to even
Speaker 3: get to the big league. So it really allows you
Speaker 3: to like isolate the skills that major leaguers have. And
Speaker 3: then there's a bunch of things around that of like
Speaker 3: being winning baseball mentality and running the bases and knowing
Speaker 3: game awareness and all those things like on the margins, Yes,
Speaker 3: but it allows us to have it allows us to
Speaker 3: miss less of those big rock skills that major leaguers
Speaker 3: just have more.
Speaker 4: Times than minor leaguers have.
Speaker 3: So that hopefully is a little bit of like a
Speaker 3: window into that answer, but it's really complicated, and ultimately
Speaker 3: you're just trying to have the most evidence based process
Speaker 3: that you possibly can have and use a bunch of
Speaker 3: people that are experts and information that give you as
Speaker 3: much data as possible to just make great decisions to
Speaker 3: help our players.
Speaker 1: All right, No, we have just a couple of minutes
Speaker 1: left because you are a very busy man and have
Speaker 1: lots of things to do. We've had a lot of
Speaker 1: discourse about JJ Wetherholt this season, obviously for rifle reasons.
Speaker 1: He just I think has really seized an opportunity this
Speaker 1: year and we'll come into spring training next year as
Speaker 1: someone with a lot of eyes on him. And then
Speaker 1: you look at someone like Quinn Matthews, who came into
Speaker 1: spring this year with a lot of eyes on him
Speaker 1: after a stellar season in twenty twenty four. As fans,
Speaker 1: all they really want to know is like one of
Speaker 1: these guys going to be at the majors and one
Speaker 1: of they can to impact this club and just how well.
Speaker 1: And that I understand because I want to know that too.
Speaker 1: But the priority for these guys especially, you'll throw on
Speaker 1: someone like a Liam Doyle and I know to co
Speaker 1: Rob we had Tommy John but up until that he
Speaker 1: was very much a.
Speaker 2: Part of this group. For a young core that should
Speaker 2: impact the major league level, how important is it, surf
Speaker 2: to really make sure that they are ready to be
Speaker 2: promoted to the majors and ready to contribute rather than
Speaker 2: just rush them up out of need or maybe a
Speaker 2: desire to see them at the big league level.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a it's a great question, and it's this
Speaker 3: is a hard question when, like people ask all the time,
Speaker 3: it's like, well, why isn't this player promoted. It's there's
Speaker 3: so much that goes into it. It's always not just
Speaker 3: the well what's their box score, what's their stat line?
Speaker 3: Like I think, first off, the gap between the major
Speaker 3: leagues in Triple A has probably never been wider. And
Speaker 3: some of that's just like straight out of the player's control, right,
Speaker 3: Like there's over the last couple of years, like the
Speaker 3: minor league shrunk, you know, there's less total players that
Speaker 3: you have, So as a result of that, players have
Speaker 3: really moved faster. And so when you have the opportunities
Speaker 3: to expose these guys to to just do everything that
Speaker 3: they would be asked to do in the big leagues
Speaker 3: before they get there. I've always thought of it as like,
Speaker 3: you know, you're the farm director's job is to ensure
Speaker 3: that we're not asking a player to do something for
Speaker 3: the first time in the big leagues, and we spend
Speaker 3: so much time like Larry Day and his crew, that's
Speaker 3: really managing the day to day. They're spending hours trying
Speaker 3: to answer that question, and that's one of the fun
Speaker 3: parts of it. But it you know, makes it less
Speaker 3: black and white. But if you have that mentality to
Speaker 3: everything right, it's like how they go about their pregame routine,
Speaker 3: how they're studying film. You look at like a guy
Speaker 3: like Jimmy Crooks that comes up to the big leagues.
Speaker 3: And by the way, catching is really hard to do,
Speaker 3: much less harder to do when you're a rookie and
Speaker 3: you don't have relationships with all of the pictures that
Speaker 3: you're catching or and so how we tried to use
Speaker 3: the clock with him this year in the mind and
Speaker 3: in his time in TRIAA to here's exactly what they're
Speaker 3: going to ask from you in a pregame meeting with
Speaker 3: your staff, and let's really make sure that not only
Speaker 3: can you run that play well, but that you understand
Speaker 3: the why behind that.
Speaker 4: And we coached.
Speaker 3: Jimmy pretty hard on that, and it goes all the
Speaker 3: way back to like April May, and to his credit,
Speaker 3: he leaned into that even though and he probably thought
Speaker 3: we weren't very nice about coaching him pretty directly, but
Speaker 3: hopefully he now feels like, you know what, those guys
Speaker 3: were kind of a holes back then, but they set
Speaker 3: me up for walking into that first pregame meeting and
Speaker 3: having the skills that I need to excel. And so
Speaker 3: it's a hard question to answer, like when is a
Speaker 3: player ready? But ultimately the performance on field matters and
Speaker 3: the process around that, who they are as a teammate,
Speaker 3: how they go about their business from a preparation standpoint,
Speaker 3: how they go about reflecting the next day from whether
Speaker 3: they had results or not, and how well are they
Speaker 3: learning and responding to that. All of those things really matter.
Speaker 3: And you know, there's not a it's not a math equation.
Speaker 3: There's not one right answer if when a player is
Speaker 3: right or ready or when he is not ready. But
Speaker 3: if you really have a way to try and uncover
Speaker 3: the answers to those series of items, at least in
Speaker 3: my experience, you feel more confident about when that answer
Speaker 3: is is yes.
Speaker 1: That's such a good point about Jimmy Crooks in his
Speaker 1: short time in the majors. Olie Marble has praised his professionalism, how.
Speaker 2: He comes in and he leads the meetings.
Speaker 1: To your point, he has less than thirty days of
Speaker 1: major league service time, and here he is with you know,
Speaker 1: a couple veterans on that pitching staff, and he's able
Speaker 1: to identify exactly what the game plan should be. And
Speaker 1: he's able to say something that really impressed Ben Johnson
Speaker 1: down in Triple A was you know, they'd come up
Speaker 1: with the scouting report and Jimmy would say, I, actually
Speaker 1: I disagree and here's why. And he's not afraid to
Speaker 1: have that discourse. That's the kind of player that you
Speaker 1: need at the major league level because, yeah, he's coming up,
Speaker 1: he's young, he's a rookie. There are things he's going
Speaker 1: to learn on his own. But being able to have
Speaker 1: that skill set for preparation and that confidence to know, hey,
Speaker 1: this is a different level. I still have things to learn,
Speaker 1: but this is my job and I know this that
Speaker 1: is going to be key in bringing winning players and
Speaker 1: sparking them.
Speaker 2: Through this rebuild.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 1: Well, so all right, Surf, I know you've got a
Speaker 1: ton of things going on. I want to thank you
Speaker 1: so much for making time to do this. I think
Speaker 1: hopefully fans can take a lot away from this. We'll
Speaker 1: be seeing you and hearing you a lot more once
Speaker 1: this season comes to an end.
Speaker 2: Just nine more. Well, I guess when this episode airs,
Speaker 2: a week.
Speaker 1: Of games left, anything that you want to communicate to
Speaker 1: fans that they don't know or where they can become
Speaker 1: more familiar.
Speaker 2: With your work and what you guys are doing down
Speaker 2: in the minor leagues.
Speaker 3: Well, I appreciate you having me on first off, and
Speaker 3: maybe apologies in advance if it's true, he said of
Speaker 3: people having to hear my voice more freely. So, but no,
Speaker 3: I appreciate you you having me on anytime we can
Speaker 3: speak to just the work that you don't see, the
Speaker 3: necessary the immediate results of tomorrow is always really fun
Speaker 3: to to top through and that's why I enjoy doing
Speaker 3: these is as much as I can with with not
Speaker 3: you yourself, but you know the rest of the group
Speaker 3: that's really doing a great job covering all the things
Speaker 3: major league development, minor league development. It's all in an
Speaker 3: effort to try and help us have future success. So
Speaker 3: appreciating what you do to to cover all that