Kevin Barker

Force them to hit the ball the other way.

If they beat you the other way by hitting homers, you tip your hat to them.

But how many people can do that consistently?

It's very hard to do.

And him locating down and away, him being able now to front hip like I just mentioned, and that fine line at the top of the zone, which he hasn't been great at, but you can tell he's been making a little bit of an effort to get it up there, which is a really good freeze pitch.

It's a good pitch to set up the breaking ball.

So...

He's a pitcher first.

Yeah.

Just like the conversation that he had after the game.

It seems like he's not thinking about the injury.

He's more thinking about now I can execute.

I can get to my extension.

I can set my secondary stuff up the way I want.

All of a sudden, he's a big deal, Jeff, you know, with what Max is not doing.

You know, I hope I try not to be rude with Max.

You know, yesterday we talked about this.

I think John's done a very good job of setting it up to where if Max has another bad start, we probably won't see another Max start.

I think he's set it up well enough now that he's given him that little window of going through his IL stint, coming back, getting the one start.

And now it's kind of go time.