Mike Petriello

I'm doing great, and thank you for not DFA-ing me from your show this morning, Blake.

Yeah, I think overall it's not super surprising.

Like obviously last year's season raised expectations to an almost unsustainable level, right?

Like there are a lot of good things we saw in 2025 that you thought could continue, but I never expected George Springer to be that guy exactly again.

And most of what's happened this year has been, you know, I guess about the stars not really stepping up.

Like Kirk's been hurt, not his fault.

Barger's been hurt, not his fault.

But a lot of it too is just Vladdy looks like a guy and not the guy.

And I think that's kind of hard to wrap your head around.

To some extent, he's been doing this his whole career.

And then to some extent, you have guys like Ernie Clement and Dalton Marcia who just aren't playing great defense in the way they have been in the past, which is kind of weird.

So it's been a

very unusual season in ways both expected and not so far.

yeah uh thanks for the reminder on that piece because i totally forgot i wrote that and i can't believe that was three years ago so you know there's two things happening here to some extent we're always going to be frustrated that he's not the 55 homer guy we want him to be right because of the skill and heritage and the uh the elite bat speed next velocity we've seen him go on these runs before right and it's just it's clear he's not going to be that guy regularly and we have just have to accept that on the other hand he has three home runs right now and we're in the middle of june

And there's a lot of concerning things under the hood, not like the hard hit, the bat speed, that's all great.

But it's like the barrel rain, the barrel is the perfect combination of exit loss and launch angle has been cut in half.

You know, like that's not like, oh, where are the home runs?

Well, there are the home runs.

That is why you're not seeing the home runs.

And going back to the skill we know he has, like he's got the flat bat path and he's going to make contact.