A.J. Hinch

Yeah, so I think spring can lead you down a couple different paths.

One is the statistical stuff kind of has to be put on the back burner.

I don't look at stat sheets.

I don't know what guys are hitting.

I don't know, you know, production-wise, it's so random who you're facing and what you're doing.

I do value...

the process that are created, the routines, are you getting a good pitch to hit, are you throwing strikes, are you using all of your pitches, and that generally will lead to good performance over time.

So you have to keep spring training in proper context, which is not like the season where the scoreboard numbers tell like a deeper story.

The spring can be influenced by a lot of random things, and you've got to pay attention to that as you start to form your team.

Well, pitching, for sure, it's changed a ton, because you can now throw pitches that you can get a quality score.

on with indifferent to the hitter right we used to think that every time that the ball was hit hard that it was a poor pitch or every time that a guy got a swing and miss that it was a great pitch and now you can talk yourself into either any combo based on all the metrics that we can go get and then and then what the best the pitcher's best pitch is if it's the vert is it the horizontal is it

some metric that we can gauge on the quality of his stuff compared to himself as opposed to compared in the competition.

It's a slippery slope because not everything can be measured and yet the game is trending towards valuing that almost equally to the actual performance on the field.

I just think his overall preparedness.

You know, I mean, as a 21-year-old who hasn't played above AA, you know, there are certain things in the game that I wanted to pay attention to.

It can be his timing in games.

in his pre-pitch.

It can be the angles in which he goes to attack the ball to put himself in a good throwing position.

It might be how he conducts at bats against guys that he's only seen on TV.

He's handled that with a ton of maturity and so his preparedness to go out and compete against anybody, whether he's facing an A-ball kid or whether he's facing an established major leaguer, that's the next step for him to be comfortable with possibly being a big leaguer.