Speaker 1: Coach joining this right now. Bobby Miranda on the show
Speaker 1: for the first time and you can catch them on
Speaker 1: ESPN lot's College Baseball analysis. Tons of experience in the
Speaker 1: D one game coach. Great to have you on the show,
Speaker 1: first of all, and we're gonna do like some sections here,
Speaker 1: we'll get to some coaching questions, but I do want
Speaker 1: to start with MLB in the World Series and some
Speaker 1: of what we have communicated about off the show. So
Speaker 1: how you doing. Great to have you on, and why
Speaker 1: don't you introduce to the world some of the math
Speaker 1: that you use to analyze the game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, first off, hats on backwards.
Speaker 3: Come on, I'm old school as they come, So no
Speaker 3: problem there whatsoever.
Speaker 2: It got yelled at a lot about that.
Speaker 3: Now I got to cover one thing really quick with
Speaker 3: aj born and bred white Sox fan from shown, Yes,
Speaker 3: m Nordhagen, Bart Johnson, Yeah, Kenny Henderson, Chet Lemon, Juice,
Speaker 3: you know, all the guys.
Speaker 2: So nice, big time.
Speaker 4: So just you know, it's about damn time we got
Speaker 4: more white Sox fans. We always have these clubs people
Speaker 4: on here. It's about time we got some white Sox
Speaker 4: level on the show.
Speaker 3: Things are looking at and then the next thing I
Speaker 3: just want to mention I was gonna say. The next
Speaker 3: thing is, hey, I'm old school metrics, stats, all this
Speaker 3: analytics stuff. I get it. It's not robots playing the game.
Speaker 3: It's humans. It's about toughness. It's about you know, just
Speaker 3: executing and being overlooked. That's what the Jays are all about,
Speaker 3: I think so far kind of being underestimated and overlooked.
Speaker 2: But what we're going to talk about is marrying the two.
Speaker 3: You know, everyone talks about OPS, you know, offensively, and
Speaker 3: then the last year or so they're starting to talk
Speaker 3: about OPS aloud on the defensive side, maybe individually by pitchers.
Speaker 3: We want to marry both defense and offense and show
Speaker 3: that differential. And it's been just fascinating to see at
Speaker 3: the college game the last three years and now at
Speaker 3: the MLB level in the playoffs right now. You know,
Speaker 3: if the Dodgers win, it will be eleven of twelve
Speaker 3: where the OPS differential is correct. Offense first defense, the
Speaker 3: difference between those two, how you do if the Blue
Speaker 3: Jays win, we'll talk about why here in a set.
Speaker 3: So that's kind of in a nutshell.
Speaker 2: I want to see what you.
Speaker 1: Guys call Okay, so dive in deeper here, So tell me,
Speaker 1: tell me about OPS differential and how it's playing out
Speaker 1: in the current postseason. And then also you can mention
Speaker 1: how it has played out in college baseball right now.
Speaker 1: And I've forgotten real granular for people obviously if you're
Speaker 1: watching the show regularly, Yeah, you know on base plus
Speaker 1: slugging percentage, And this is not adjusted, right, This is
Speaker 1: just the plain old on base plus slugging percentage, both
Speaker 1: in terms of offense and in terms of run prevention, right.
Speaker 3: And it's one sixty two, So the inventory matters more
Speaker 3: head to head is more accurate. So what I've looked
Speaker 3: at in the college game, you look at the SEC.
Speaker 3: So in the SEC the last three years, LSU national
Speaker 3: champions in twenty five, Tennessee twenty four, LSU twenty three,
Speaker 3: they're all one or two in the SEC and OPS differential,
Speaker 3: they win a national championship. In the big leagues twenty two,
Speaker 3: the Astros, twenty three, the Rangers, twenty four of the
Speaker 3: Dodgers all top four, one, two and four in the
Speaker 3: big leagues in OPS differential.
Speaker 2: So not just like how.
Speaker 3: Much we slug, it's what we do on both sides
Speaker 3: of the ball from a defensive standpoint, and what you're
Speaker 3: thinking about there. You're like, well, that's just all about pitching,
Speaker 3: and this is for you Eric and AJ. It's about
Speaker 3: the catching too. I think that's where the Blue Jays.
Speaker 3: It's kind of underrated what Kirk does. The way he receives,
Speaker 3: he's I think he's number two in the league in
Speaker 3: receiving by stat cast blocking he's number one.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It just doesn't give up nineties. He doesn't get people
Speaker 3: in scoring position. And then it's the defensive athletes. Started
Speaker 3: sharing this with some of these coaches, you know, I
Speaker 3: called j Johnson at LSU, Oak at Virginia, Mississippi State,
Speaker 3: slash Link Charit at Florida State. I started throwing this
Speaker 3: stuff out there and they're like, wow, man, this is cool.
Speaker 3: You know, wait a second, this has to do with
Speaker 3: our athletes. So if you have like Freddie Freeman on
Speaker 3: the corner, you have Kirk behind the plate, you have
Speaker 3: many Machada at third or maybe Clement who's a UVA
Speaker 3: player at third, and then you got guys in the
Speaker 3: outfield that are deers running around. You're taking away slug
Speaker 3: and so when you take away slug that's the secret sauce,
Speaker 3: and I feel that's what's happened with the Blue Jays.
Speaker 3: Think about it. You've added Schurezer, You've added Bieber. That's
Speaker 3: two say young pitchers, and then a prodigy, you know that,
Speaker 3: Rocky Savage.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: See you add those three guys. Basically at the end
Speaker 3: of the season, it's a totally different story. They go
Speaker 3: from you know, eighth in the league in OPS differential
Speaker 3: and now they're, you know, getting ready to be one
Speaker 3: game away from a possible championship against the number two
Speaker 3: ranked OPS differential team, the Dodgers. And the other thing
Speaker 3: that I would say is that the Blue Jays took
Speaker 3: out the number one OPS differential the only one that
Speaker 3: was messed up in the playoffs with this, and that
Speaker 3: was the Yankees.
Speaker 2: Yankees were number one of the big leagues in this
Speaker 2: in this metric.
Speaker 3: They wipe them out and then you see a championship
Speaker 3: after that happened in college when LSU wiped out Wake
Speaker 3: Forrest in twenty twenty three. That was Paul Skin's Red
Speaker 3: Louder game in Omaha, and boom, LSU goes on to
Speaker 3: win the national championship. Same thing last year, LSU wiped
Speaker 3: out Arkansas, number one in the country. In this differential boom,
Speaker 3: LSU goes on to win the national championship. So you
Speaker 3: take off the king, and then these teams have a
Speaker 3: tendency to go get hot and make a statement.
Speaker 5: How small is too small a sample size? Cause in
Speaker 5: college I mean I think, really the big you're really
Speaker 5: going to small?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the big league, the big league stuff is small.
Speaker 3: Because I just started doing it. I called True Media,
Speaker 3: I call her guy the ESPNA, said hey, can you
Speaker 3: give me the playoff teams? And he did, and I
Speaker 3: kept texting Scott.
Speaker 2: I was like, this is crazy.
Speaker 3: We were one hundred percent in the wild card and
Speaker 3: then you know one, you know, one messed up in
Speaker 3: the next round, the divisional round, you know, then one
Speaker 3: hundred percent and then just kept going. In college baseball,
Speaker 3: it's all series. It's not just the game, it's the series.
Speaker 3: So the Super Regionals have been like thirteen of sixteen
Speaker 3: in twenty three and twenty four as far as being accurate,
Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean, it's a small sample size as
Speaker 3: far as years, but the accuracy has been almost at
Speaker 3: ninety percent as far as series winners.
Speaker 5: That's pretty good.
Speaker 4: David's wait, it's more telling than run differential because Scott
Speaker 4: loves run differential.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't run differential. Run to Scott loves like
Speaker 3: Scott text me, it's lazy. It's lazy.
Speaker 2: Scott loves it. He loves it. I don't.
Speaker 4: I just find it funny to make you angry when
Speaker 4: I say that you like it.
Speaker 1: So it's a lazy stat it is. But so this
Speaker 1: is less lazy.
Speaker 4: This is less lazy, and it's it's interesting that this
Speaker 4: is so. Why don't team just build it? Why doesn't
Speaker 4: every team build their program around this? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Why don't they? Yeah, build your build. I guarantee your
Speaker 2: front offices.
Speaker 3: And I think Vegas is doing this right now to
Speaker 3: create odds or something. But I called all these guys,
Speaker 3: Jay Johnson, Brian O'Connor, Slosh Link, Jared Sully, uh, you know,
Speaker 3: just everybody, and they're like, Tony, I'll give you a
Speaker 3: funny Tony story. So Tony's going into a regional at Clemson.
Speaker 3: This is three years ago, and I said, Tony, I
Speaker 3: said that you're gonna win the regional. You know, and
Speaker 3: I love those guys at Clemson, but you will win
Speaker 3: the regional because of this, you know, when I'm throwing
Speaker 3: the numbers out of him. He goes and shows it
Speaker 3: to his staff and texts me back and goes. He goes,
Speaker 3: I don't know what you're talking about, but he goes,
Speaker 3: I showed it to everybody. It made us confident that
Speaker 3: we were highed in this than they were, and sure
Speaker 3: enough that it played out. Brian O'Connor was playing duke
Speaker 3: two years ago to go to Omaha on a Super
Speaker 3: and Brian was really into this. And Brian goes, hey,
Speaker 3: we lost the first game, but if you're right, this
Speaker 3: will play out. I watched the game on TV on
Speaker 3: a Monday. They went to game three in a Super.
Speaker 3: Twenty minutes after the game. He shoots me a text.
Speaker 3: He goes, ops differential, Man, It's there's something to this.
Speaker 3: It played out because they lost the first game, that
Speaker 3: won the next two, and it's.
Speaker 2: All about traffic creating traffic. It's old school.
Speaker 3: There's nothing about this that is like launchangle or all
Speaker 3: this other bs.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
Speaker 3: It's this is old school baseball. Do you take your walk,
Speaker 3: do you make contact? You know, do you get on base?
Speaker 3: Do you slug? And do you prevent that stuff on
Speaker 3: the defensive side. And I feel like for years and
Speaker 3: I didn't do this as a coach. I just came
Speaker 3: up with this after I got into broadcasting. I said,
Speaker 3: I got to know these teams better. How can I
Speaker 3: do it? Looked at the twenty two Old Miss team
Speaker 3: that they won the national championship and they were zeroed
Speaker 3: out in the SEC. When you're zero, okay, that means
Speaker 3: you're going to Vegas as like a slot machine. You're
Speaker 3: giving up what you get offensively, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2: All right? So I said, how did you make that run, Mike?
Speaker 3: And he goes, we just eliminated all of our pitchers
Speaker 3: that we're getting it done.
Speaker 2: We threw four or five guys total, made a.
Speaker 3: Run to the national championship and they were slugging number
Speaker 3: one in the country that year. They were giving up
Speaker 3: slug too. Eliminated that and started winning at a high level.
Speaker 3: And this is what like, all these teams are doing
Speaker 3: pretty much at a ninety percent clip.
Speaker 5: When you mentioned all those names, one of the names
Speaker 5: you mentioned was Tony Vattello. Yes, this transition, what's his
Speaker 5: transition going to be like to the big leagues? And
Speaker 5: is he the is he the new poster child. Because
Speaker 5: of this doesn't work, all college coaches cooked. If this
Speaker 5: does work, we're going to see an influx like the
Speaker 5: minor league solve. Everybody that makes a good PowerPoint presentation
Speaker 5: all of a sudden becomes a minor league coordinator of
Speaker 5: a position.
Speaker 2: So correct, Where's Tony at with this? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I agree with you, Eric, I mean, and I've heard
Speaker 3: you guys talk about this already, and it is. It
Speaker 3: is fascinating, right, He's the pioneer. But the guy that
Speaker 3: I trust is Buster. And I heard you say this
Speaker 3: a few like a week ago or whatever. You know,
Speaker 3: we recruited Buster out of high school to go to
Speaker 3: Georgia Tech when I was there off from full ride.
Speaker 3: He turns down with the Florida State. What an unbelievable kid,
Speaker 3: unbelievable person, super smart. This guy knows what he's doing.
Speaker 3: I trust him. Tony, on the other hand, I will
Speaker 3: tell you straight up. You know he rubbed some people
Speaker 3: the wrong way at times. Whatever with me. I've known
Speaker 3: since he was twenty three out on the road, and
Speaker 3: I absolutely love the guy. He has been super consistent
Speaker 3: since he was twenty three. You know, I was a
Speaker 3: Power five coach for a long time in the ACC.
Speaker 3: Then I went to be a mid major head coach.
Speaker 3: Still treated me the same no matter what uniform I
Speaker 3: was wearing. His team came to Western Carolina and played
Speaker 3: us in Kullowey, which a lot of guys will not
Speaker 3: do at that level. I just feel like he's a
Speaker 3: guy that people can get behind, and he's a guys guy.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's in there in the fight with you.
Speaker 3: How that translates to one sixty two. I've never played
Speaker 3: in the big leagues. You guys have that's going to
Speaker 3: be the thing. But my boy, Murph, I think is
Speaker 3: the reason this is happening. I think Murph broke that
Speaker 3: glass ceiling. You know, obviously he was in the minor
Speaker 3: leagues for a while, he bench coached all that stuff,
Speaker 3: but he his foundation was a college coach. And I
Speaker 3: feel like there's a lot of guys out there if
Speaker 3: this does work, that could be quality candidates to do.
Speaker 3: You know, the copycat league will go after it, right
Speaker 3: because you know, like a.
Speaker 2: Tim Corbin or someone like that.
Speaker 3: You know, Slash at Texas, Jay Johnson at LSU would
Speaker 3: be stand Danny Hall from back. You know, he's a retired,
Speaker 3: but boy, you know these are quality, quality basement baseball men.
Speaker 4: Well, so you can't hire Slash because he might leave
Speaker 4: in the middle and say, wait no, you might have
Speaker 4: done that a timer soon for maybe for Texas A
Speaker 4: and M fans and TCU fans. But I'm just I mean,
Speaker 4: he's had a history of not You can't.
Speaker 2: Really do that in the big leagues, for sure. You
Speaker 2: can't just them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can't really just do that.
Speaker 1: Well, a lot of pressure on Tony. If it works,
Speaker 1: if the league, we'll have Tony Vytello's. If it doesn't,
Speaker 1: we might never see it again.
Speaker 2: Sure, coach MO.
Speaker 1: Great to have you on, man, Thanks for the time,
Speaker 1: Thanks for telling everyone how much. Now I got to
Speaker 1: look for this pythagora and theorem, which it's not.
Speaker 2: You can't find it.
Speaker 3: That's the thing that you know, I wanted on every
Speaker 3: stat sheet at the end of the sheet that ought
Speaker 3: to have OPS allowed by that picture and ops allowed
Speaker 3: by the staff, and then OPS obviously is on the
Speaker 3: offensive side, and then the differential ought to be there.
Speaker 3: We ought to know that differential of hey, where are
Speaker 3: these teams live? I mean, just one more thing, aj
Speaker 3: Our White Sox had the worst differential. Let me find it.
Speaker 3: Our White Sox last year.
Speaker 5: I mean the worst.
Speaker 4: Wait, twenty or twenty four, that was twenty four. And
Speaker 4: by the way, they also lost the most games of
Speaker 4: all time, so I mean that's a big examples. Right,
Speaker 4: here's the difference there are ops difference offices.
Speaker 5: How many games they lost last.
Speaker 3: Year, That's right, it's amazing the wins and losses, how
Speaker 3: they match up to ops on the on the allowed side,
Speaker 3: that secret sauce, and how that difference is the standings.
Speaker 2: We're not even talking about wins and losses in college
Speaker 2: and in the big leagues. It's crazy.
Speaker 3: And so for that not to be out there, and
Speaker 3: even I'm embarrassed and saw all these other coaches they've
Speaker 3: never even heard of it.
Speaker 2: When I started talking to them about it.
Speaker 3: I'm talking about the top guys in college and we're
Speaker 3: all sitting there like, why weren't we thinking about this
Speaker 3: all along?
Speaker 2: And it's just it's like the forest through the trees,
Speaker 2: it's right there in.
Speaker 3: Front of our face, and uh, I mean, it's pretty
Speaker 3: obvious what's going on.
Speaker 1: So anyways, your parential trash lazy coach Moller the man,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining us. Great to have you on.
Speaker 2: Thank you rock Man, You guys crush it.