Robert Ford

I think in his return, you saw some rust for sure, but I think the quality of stuff was still there.

The velocity was where it typically is with his pitches, so a lot to be excited about with Hunter Brown for the Astros.

When Hunter's good, it really is about that fastball.

When he turned his career around a couple of years ago is when he started throwing that two-seamer to complement his four-seamer.

He throws that two-seamer into righties.

That was something that he didn't really have, something to get inside on right-handed hitters, and that's really opened everything up.

you know, the four seamer plays, he can throw it up her nineties.

He'll tell you he's never thrown a hundred, but he's got it up to 99.9.

So that's pretty darn close.

Gives you an idea of, you know, how good, how hard he throws that fastball.

And then I also think, you know, I mean, the, the, the slider cutter that he has is a really good pitch.

The curve ball is excellent.

His changeups gotten a lot better.

So, I mean, he, he has all the weapons that you need when it comes to velocity and stuff.

in this day and age to get through a lineup two or three times.

Yeah, I think one thing that definitely has helped was the fact that the bullpen was already starting to turn the corner by the time Hader came back at the beginning of the month.

So it wasn't a situation where it was like,

Hayter was expected to be the savior and expected to fix everything.

Things were already trending in the right direction even before he came back.

But obviously, as you mentioned, having Hayter back and having that back-end guy, that great closer, it makes all the difference because everybody else kind of gets to step back a little bit into different roles, and it just makes the bullpen stronger.