Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What adjustments did Robert Stock make to become desirable to the Mets?
Yeah, there should be some passion. This doesn't have to be boring.
First off, like, how did this come about?
Uh, I mean the, the season ends and my agent tells me on the first day that your team start reaching out to players, which is five days after the last game of the world series. And he says, you know, such and such teams have reached out to me so far. Uh, we're not, you know, they're not extending, um, offers just yet.
They want to see you pitched down in the Dominican first and, uh, it'll go from there. And so I, I threw a couple of games down there and, uh, was clearly healthy and feeling good. And, um, some offers go on the table. You send them like, well, this team offered me this. Can you match it or go better? And then, you know, that's how it works.
Oh my goodness. But like, this is...
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Chapter 2: How did Robert Stock's journey lead to multiple teams showing interest?
What a great accomplishment. A, not only to get signed, but have multiple teams, not have to go through an entire, like you said, it sounds like you were ready to go through Dominican League and say, hey, at the end of it, because obviously off-season drags out more than ever now, particularly a lot of times for pitchers who are signing minor league deals or whatever it is.
But were you surprised by that? You're doing something right is what I'm saying.
Yeah.
I wasn't surprised because when I was with the Red Sox this past year, what a great organization for presenting the players with the information that they need to be able to evaluate their performance and know how they're doing. I pitched a couple innings in the big leagues, which did not go well.
But I had done so well in my performance in the minor leagues, which was obviously 99% of what I did last year, that I felt that teams would see that and think that there was some promise there. And that's what happened.
I remember when we talked after you signed the deal with Red Sox, this time let's go back to a year. Now we're going to do the year ago thing. You were pitching in the Mexican League. You had pitched in the Mexican League regular season and then you were sticking around to pitch in the Mexican Winter League right around now, right? Correct? Yes, exactly.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Robert Stock face in the Dominican League?
I don't know when it was we had talked about this, you dropping down, becoming a almost a completely different picture by dropping down almost below three quarters. I think what was that right around now? When was that?
Yeah, so in the summer league, I had started to do it like a hybrid kind of versus right-handed hitters. I would drop lower versus left-handed hitters. I would be normally over the top. And then in the winter, in my second game, I gave up a home run to a lefty. I'm like, you know what? I'm doing it all sidearm. This is no fun. So in the winter is when I actually began full-time sidearm.
And then I took that into... this last season with the Red Sox, and the whole year, every single pitch was sidearm, and we experimented with all sorts of different pitches, pitch shapes, sides of the rubber, pitch sequences, just which pitches to use against which batters.
The whole year was an experiment, and it was changing the entire time, and it still is continuing to experiment and get better, but I'm excited for next year to put it all together.
Chapter 4: How did pitching mechanics change impact Robert Stock's performance?
I mean... If you just said that phrase, the whole year was an experiment, we could do a 10-hour podcast on that, especially this day and age, right? Yeah. This is what it's become. Well, I should say this is what it's become for the smart guys who understand there's tools and there's analytics and there's resources to allow you to try to find the best version of yourself
at that point of your life. Am I phrasing that right?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, basically what they have nowadays is like your pitching stuff can get graded. And what's nice is in the past, you used to have to say, hey, I'm going to try a new grip on a pitch. It's going to take me a month of throwing it versus hitters to see if I think it's going to be any good or not, because you can't just rely on one game. You could get unlucky, right? Yeah.
But now with the computers and stuff, you can say, well, other people have thrown pitches just like this one and they historically do pretty well or maybe not. So it can give you a better idea of how to be effective sooner.
Chapter 5: What experimental strategies did Robert Stock employ throughout the season?
And the best example of that are these guys that get to the major leagues
in one season and they're already really good well that's because they've been working on the things that will make them good based on computer grades and stuff since the moment they got signed they were probably working on it even in college these days right you saw um trey is savage in the in the world series bb a poster boy yeah i mean there's there's that i'm glad you mentioned that like it's a great take and there's another great conversation is that we know this that guys reestablish is sort of the the guy at
on the billboard right now because of what he did in the world series. But there was a lot of other guys ready to roll, you know, guy that you caught in the early Peyton, totally. You know, you had the guy from the Mets, you know, all those guys from the Mets who came up and we're going to be counted on if they made the post season Schlittler in with the Yankees, you know, it's,
This is a dynamic where everyone's like, well, there's an acceptance of the front office to do this just because maybe people think they just need to win now. But to your point, no, because they're more advanced because of exactly what you're saying, right?
Yeah, they can be working on what makes a good major league pitch. It's pretty well known. There's still a couple of gray areas for guys that are ultra deceptive. But for the most part, it's just saying, if you can get your ball to move like this, if you can throw it out of this slot from this side of the mound, it's going to work in the major leagues.
So when we're in rookie ball, we don't need to be working on the things to get rookie ball hitters out. We're working on the things to get major league hitters out. And so when a player... is displaying that they're throwing a bunch of strikes with major league caliber pitches.
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Chapter 6: How does pitching from different sides of the rubber affect performance?
They can just breeze through from A ball up to the big leagues, up to the World Series in one season. And it makes complete sense because of all the information that we have these days.
So I want to go through, go back to when you said all last year was an experiment. Because I love power ranking. I love a good power ranking. All right. I'm going to ask you top three things that you experimented last year. that may be like when you came into the year that you say that you, that you weren't experimenting with. So is that, is that a fair question?
Sure. Sure. Yeah. So, so the first thing is just a change of variations as a right-handed pitcher. You're always going to struggle against left-handed headers for the, for the most part. Um,
Chapter 7: What role does analytics play in modern pitching strategies?
And that gets exacerbated the lower your arm slot is. Actually, the higher your arm slot, you will be more neutral, if not even better against lefties. And then the lower you drop it, it tips in favor. You're going to dominate righties and struggle against lefties. And so you need some sort of pitch to neutralize that. And a changeup is like the most obvious one.
And so all year long, I was throwing different grips on changeups, different slots, different speeds. And ultimately, I settled on... I just can't do it. Just scrap the change-up overall.
Hey, at least you tried. Yeah, yeah. So did you try the kick change?
Yeah, I can throw all the variations. I can get it to move well, but it's just really difficult for me to throw them in the strike zone, right?
Chapter 8: What future developments does Robert Stock anticipate in his pitching career?
So you can go into a lab and you can create the world's nastiest pitch, but unless you can reliably throw it over and over again in the zone, it's useless to you.
Well, before you get to the top two, it reminds me of we had Justin Willard on last week or a couple weeks ago, who was obviously in the Red Sox organization and now the pitching coach for your New York Mets. And he talked about how... The goal is not just to have the pitches, but to have good enough pitches. So to have your third pitch be good enough to get back to your best pitch.
So I think that a lot of people viewed it before as, well, you're just going to have something to show them differently. No, it has to be good enough to actually get back to your other pitch. So that's, I think, what you're talking about. So why have a bad changeup? Why have a changeup if it's not that pitch that's going to be good enough to actually get back to your best pitch?
Right. And there's certain, you know, when you plan on using the pitch, like early in the count, late in the count, behind in the count, ahead in the count, that all factors into it. And for me, this changeup was always going to be a like behind in the count, get to even in the count pitch. And for that, like when the batter is ahead in the count, they're so unlikely to chase pitches.
They know that they're in the driver's seat. And so you have to be able to throw this pitch in the zone and have it be balanced. you know, successful. And, uh, whereas when you get to two strikes, the batters are there on the backseat, they're defensive, they might chase more often.
Uh, and so how you, how you throw a pitch in the zone changes according to the count and how you want to use the pitch and everything. So the changeup was just not working for me, even though on paper, it should be great.
Well, again, good for you for trying. Good for you for acknowledging. What would be number two?
What side of the rubber I throw pitches from. So, you know, basically I go as extreme as if I'm throwing on the first base side of the rubber, my toe is just touching the rubber. You know, my heel is completely off the rubber towards the first base bag.
And so throwing pitches from that side, and then I'll swap over to third base side where my heel is just barely nicking the rubber, my toe being off towards the third base side. And by getting such extreme angles, you can just be more effective basically. The reason that most pitchers don't mess around with such extreme angles is because it makes it more difficult potentially to throw a strike.
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