Mick Abel

Really?

Yeah.

Never expected to go to the Phillies.

Nobody really worked us out.

The way it worked is we would go throw in a facility and if guys were able to go see a guy, they would go watch.

But we had a pro day in January before COVID had come about.

The area scout was Zach Friedman at that time.

I still talked to him to the stage, chit chat and everything, but I didn't really, I didn't really talk to them much after that.

Like, I'm pretty sure I had a meeting with like cross checkers and Friedman, but that had to have been very early in COVID and there was nothing after that, so.

It is wild to think about, because 18-year-old, sitting all these crazy expectations, like, oh, I'm gonna be on the fast track, like this and that.

It had put me in a space where I was so focused on the results of every outing and trying to play GM and trying to move myself up the ladder as I go.

And I'm like, dude, I've got a 4.5 ERA with 30 walks and 40 punch outs.

That's not going to work.

And so at one point down the line, I looked myself in the mirror and was able to hash that out.

But yeah, it was...

That's how we were wired.

I feel like with my generation of guys, we were so wired in that grind mindset.

I put in the work and I'm getting there, but there's little things that are kind of behind that work and the intentionality just with that work that I didn't understand at that point.

I thought I was doing, but I really wasn't doing.

And there's little things that I felt like I was doing.