Joe Maddon

That's a learned skill right there.

I'll give you an example.

James Shields.

Remember Shields?

He loved James Shields.

Nobody was tougher than James.

Yeah, exactly.

So he was going, you know, kind of into the sixth, seventh inning.

And I was pulling him sometimes.

He was really upset with me.

And I pointed out to him, listen, I'm watching your number of pitches thrown.

And when you get to 108 a lot of times, I don't know why, but that, I remember it from, I don't know how many years ago, but that was like the Waterloo number.

All of a sudden after 108, I'd see different things happening and it wasn't so good.

So that was on my mind.

If you want to go more deeply in the game, be more pitch efficient before you get to that point, you're going to have more left in the tank late.

And like you're talking about, not trying to strike out everybody.

Let's elicit weak contact.

Let's locate the ball well.

But the mindset is to spin the ball, spin it at the top, all these, you know, the sweeping kind of pitches that they want to develop, which is basically a slur.

So if we could just teach guys to go the third time through the batting order by having something, not only left in the tank, but maybe another pitch,