Baseball Isn’t Boring
Lessons From The 2025 Season, With Red Sox Hitting Coach Pete Fatse
15 Oct 2025
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
2-0 over the Blue Jays.
Chapter 2: What insights can we gain from the 2025 World Series teams?
What can we learn from these teams who are advancing all the way to the World Series? Is there anything hitting-wise? I don't know. We talked a lot about making contact. We talked a lot about... hitting home runs. We talked a lot about putting the ball in play when it counts the most. I don't know. I mean, this is what we're trying to figure out. How do you construct a team?
What is the best way to construct a team? What is the secret sauce when it comes to making it to the World Series and ultimately winning the World Series? Well, we're finding out. Again, these series are not over. The World Series is yet to be determined just because you have two 2-0 series heading back to the teams, to the homes of the teams that are up 2-0, that doesn't mean anything.
Because you know what?
Chapter 3: How do we construct a winning baseball team today?
The Blue Jays are resilient. The Brewers, they're resilient. It's not over. Not over by a long shot.
Chapter 4: What is the secret to winning the World Series?
But while we're trying to figure this out, let's try to figure this out. Let's try to figure out what's what when it comes to this day and age of baseball, what makes these teams tick, and what has been the trend and things that we can learn over the course of 2025. And that's why we turn... to a guy who knows what's what.
When it comes to this, it was in the belly of the beast, and that is the hitting coach of the Boston Red Sox, Pete Fatsy.
He returns the podcast, and it's a great conversation I had with him, not only because it gets into the meat and potatoes and the details of the Red Sox 2025 season, the Devers stuff, the Bregman stuff, the Roman Anthony stuff, all of that, but also the bigger picture about why – happened in terms of the world of baseball and offenses and hitting?
Are we starting to see a shift in terms of trying just to mash the ball out of the park all the time and desperately make good contact? I mentioned Scott Harris in this podcast. I mentioned Scott Harris, Detroit Tigers GM, talking about really coming out and saying, hey, listen, we've got to make better contact. Our best month offensively was in June when we did make good contact.
We've got to make good contact. Which, by the way, Alex Bregman, remember, Detroit, now that he's going to opt out, John Heyman with that report, Alex Bregman's going to opt out to nobody's surprise. But let's not forget the Tigers, they were the chief competitor for the Red Sox when it came to getting Bregman.
offer him a six-year deal, turns it down, but maybe they loop back and still seems like a pretty good fit for the Detroit Tire. Perfect fit for a team with a ton of young stars coming up and also a team, as we said, trying to make good contact. Well, Bregman's name comes up in this podcast a few different times.
Also, we talk a lot about just the landscape of hitting in this world of baseball and also the landscape of being a hitting coach in this world of baseball. It is the most complicated time maybe ever to be a hitting coach.
But I think Pete Fatsy, as I tell him, and I'm not just telling him just because he was on the podcast, I think he's got a really, really good demeanor and perspective and approach to handling this day and age of being a hitting coach in the world of Major League Baseball. All right. Well, anyway, you guys decide. Remember, app BB isn't boring. App BB isn't boring.
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Chapter 5: How has hitting philosophy evolved in modern baseball?
Well, I mean, yeah, it's wild. You don't realize how tired you are until – you have a minute to just kind of collect yourself and it feels like your mind, your body, like your entire nervous system just shuts down for a few days. You know, it's like, you just, you don't realize that how, I mean, the season is so long.
It's so grueling, you know, add the kind of the pressures of playing in October and, you know, pushing for a division through September and, Um, kind of just navigating that you don't realize how exhausted you are because you just keep putting your head down and go. Um, so it's the first couple of days really are, it's, it's kind of just trying to get back into a normal routine.
I mean, even things like when you, you know, just obviously exercise is important to me, trying to get back into a normal routine with my exercise regimen, because I'm used to going to the field a certain time, starting my video process a certain time. So it's just kind of getting back into, into the groove of like everyday life. And it, it does, it takes a couple of days to slow down.
Your bench press suffer? No, we're still good there. All right. That's the ultimate test. The minute the season ends, you do max bench press just to make sure that you're still on target.
Yes, exactly.
All right. Okay. Reach full muscle capacity. All you can do is maintain. That's good. All right. So now let's get to the beaten potatoes. Here's a big, broad question.
Yep.
You've gone through multiple years as Major League Hitting coach. Every year in life, we all evolve, we all change, and everything else. You've had a few days now. You look back at 2025. What did you learn that maybe you didn't know when 2024 ended?
I know that's a big question, but I think it's an interesting one considering how much baseball is changing and particularly how much hitting is changing.
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Chapter 6: What challenges do hitting coaches face in today's game?
And he said, our best month hitting-wise was June. We were one of the best offices in baseball, and that was our best month of making contact. Now, this is a big conversation in baseball, and I've been trying to dig down on playoff teams, and I always like the Blue Jays obviously make more contact than anybody, but all of that. But in regards to what you dealt with, I looked at it this way.
I thought you guys, and you please, please, please tell me if I'm full of hooey. I don't even know how to spell who we play, right? But I felt like you guys got progressively better at making contact. And I know that Devers thing changes their dynamic. But for me, people were trying to figure out why you were losing a lot of one-run games.
And I'm not saying this was the only reason, but I don't think it helped. And I think you got progressively better at making contact and putting the ball in play as the year went on. And that, I think, helped with runners in scoring position. That helped with close games and everything else. But again, that's my 30,000-foot view. You tell me. What is your perspective of that?
Yeah, I guess zooming out, right, to the first part of what you talked about, I think we're at a point in the game where the stuff, I mean, stuff keeps getting better. Everything's VLO driven, shape driven.
So, I mean, you have 94 to 96 on a nightly basis going two different directions, plus a secondary, at least one, you know, above average secondary and an additional, you know, strike steal option, like a curveball, you know, and it's, I think the thing that I'm seeing more than ever is the emphasis on precision is probably the best way to put it, right?
Like, and that's something we talk a lot about with our guys. I think obviously like the big punch speed is important, but precision, I think if you can maximize precision, you have a chance to hit the ball consistently hard. And one of the things that we did all season long was hit the ball, hit the ball hard.
We tried to maximize keeping the ball in a line, help us put in position to keep the line moving, you know, as an offense and, And I think that kind of, to your point, manifests itself throughout the season. I mean, we saw the progress or the progressions with runners in scoring position, just the punch outs in general going down throughout the throughout the season.
But I think that's a testament to the guys buying in and understanding how hard it is to hit in the big leagues. And no doubt there's a time and place where guys are looking to take their shots, but you can't afford to be long either.
I think, um, you know, the guys that made the most adjustments throughout the year, you just, you can kind of look at the progressions, whether that's simplifying an element of their approach or their swing, but just trying to be as precise as they can, especially when they're, you know, when they're in the box and if the situation dictates it, being able to downshift and execute, um,
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Chapter 7: How do players adapt to adversity during a season?
Hitting the ball hard is still important. Getting on base is still important. Making contact, the quality of your contact is still important. Those things have been around for a hundred years, but we just have a better idea of how to measure those things and areas that we can potentially attack to solve problems. And that's what that group's done really well.
Well said. I actually, I can consume. No, I can consume that. No, no, it's not long-winded. Honestly, like I'm sort of digesting those words because I want to learn about it, right? It's like, you know, this isn't, I don't want to be old man yelling at clouds. like saying, hey, how dare you swing so hard and swing straight up?
Like, you have to make, like, it's, and I think a big part of it is, and I'll come back to sort of what I said about you, is that I think that you're obviously going to get players in who have their way of doing things, right? And so it's not like, no, no, no, here, come on in. Do the Red Sox way of doing things. That can't happen, and I don't think it does happen. So that's my point.
Yeah, and I also think, too, it depends on where players are at within their careers, too. Our job in the big league level, like I said, we're fortunate that we have some really talented, homegrown players that have experienced development a certain way. When we acquire a guy, like a Bregman or years ago, as an example, Trevor Story comes in.
you know, I think where we start is again, identifying the objective opportunities for a player to be better, right? Like this is what makes you really good. And that's why you're here. And you have to know that because you're gonna have to lean into it when the game gets tough, but there's always this opportunity to raise your floor and, and,
that's where we spend a lot of time and effort in the background, working on identifying those things. Where do we want to start? And then ultimately, how do we want to create kind of checks and balances throughout the season? And I just think that process is the most important part because at the end of the day, like player performances, it can be volatile, right?
We all know that the game can be volatile, but if you have processes in place to help you manage it, it makes it easier to kind of stomach when things aren't, you know, maybe going the way you'd like, but you have indicators that it's going to turn. So I think that's been probably the biggest, like I said, impact that we've, I guess, shift that we've seen in the last couple of years.
So the last thing is, I want to know what you think the question or what do you think the evolution is next, right? You know, for instance, the trajectory machine, right? That just became a big part of baseball. It seemed like an aberration. I think that you guys were the only team to have it in the minor leagues, right?
like a year ago or something yeah and obviously now everyone's investing in it they actually ran out of them that was the one thing that i found fascinating that derrick falvey told me like they they couldn't make them fast enough yeah yeah right um and i think i asked you uh amongst the hugs and the tears of the last game i was still fascinated hey did you use a trajectory yeah
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