Simon Mathews

Yeah, absolutely.

Um, so, uh, I don't know how much you guys know about my relationship with Sean, but we go back.

He trained with me when I worked at a facility called push performance in Arizona.

Um, and he and I have stayed in touch over the years, um,

And he's become just like a great pitching friend of mine, you know, in the industry, right?

It's been really cool to see him transition into coaching.

And it feels like every single conversation I have with him, he's like,

learned exponentially more and increased his skill set.

So that's been awesome.

So when I found out that the Nats were reaching out to potentially interview me, he was my first call.

I kind of wanted to know where he stood, but also what his feeling was around everything that was going on.

And he had a lot of really great things to say about Paul and Blake and

And Blake and I didn't know each other before this process, but I had heard some really spectacular things about Paul from people I trust deeply in the industry.

And yeah, so that was kind of how it came about.

And then, you know, to have an expectation going in of people you've heard a lot of great things about and then to have them really deliver and go above and beyond kind of what my expectations were made me really excited about it.

Uh, I got released from playing, um, about 15 minutes after they canceled spring training and in 2020, uh, I joked that I was the angels first call.

Um, and, uh,

You know, that was just a weird time and a weird year.

And a lot of people experienced that in a lot of very different ways.

And I had to pay rent.