Show #481: Matt from the OFR Farm Report

You're listening to Atlanta Baseball Talk, your weekly podcast for all things Atlanta Braves. Welcome to Atlanta Baseball Talk, show number 481. Today is Wednesday, September 9, 2020, and my name is Steve. No hammy and curt tonight. Before we start, folks, please help out the show by telling your friends, sharing links and writing reviews. All right, folks, tonight is another in our series of midweek shows we'll

be doing where we're talking to our favorite Braves podcasters and bloggers before we ride off into the sunset. And tonight, we welcome Matt Kretsberg from OutfieldFlyRule.com and one of the cohosts of the OFR Farm Report podcast. But first, a quick break. All right, Matt, welcome to the show. How you doing tonight? Thanks for having me. How are y'all doing tonight? Yeah, yeah. Real good. So Matt,

we'll get to the Braves and the Farm System a little bit later. But I want to begin with how you guys got started. I discovered you on Twitter. I don't remember when, but it's been a while now. And if folks do not follow Matt on Twitter, you're really a great, great Twitter follow. So will you start with how you got started in all this and end

up with how OFR began? I'm not real familiar with how OFR began, but my part of it was really great. I think it was that now I believe it's Chris Jurevis and Brent Blackwell with the founders of that particular site. Oh, I see. I figured, sorry. I figured you and Andy had just started that. So okay. They were the founders of the blog itself. Now, starts

and stops over the year with trying to do a podcast, but something things would come up real life would get the way and they'd do a couple episodes here and there. But the podcast feed was still out there. So I'm trying to backtracking a bit. I started writing early in 2018. I just put a Word document with, like, I'll try some baseball writing and see how

that works. I just put a screenshot of a Word document included all my Twitter feed. And just to see what kind of reaction or any kind of comments people would make about it. Within, I say a couple of hours I had about eight different people, DM me. So hey, come right for us. Because apparently people are really start for us. They're content. So they want stuff

on their site. So when that happened, I started looking around the different sites. And as far as I don't feel fly rules concerned, I've been, I've really get interactions with people on there in the past with Chris Jurevis, Brent Blackwell. Andy and I had had a number of conversations. And at the time, Bill and short of platinum, some burrow fame was writing for them as well.

So I was like, well, I'll go hang out with these guys and do some writing. And it's kind of taken off since then. At first, I did just kind of general baseball writing, but then I kind of fell into writing about prospects after a while because, like, in Andy's case, he, he's located in Georgia and he could frequently go to run brave games, goes to an

occasion of when that gains. And once a year, he'd make pro pilgrimage up to Danville, the city's Danville games. And meanwhile, I'm located in Central Mississippi, where I'm about 20 minutes from Trust Mark Park. And I was about to, like, the Mississippi brave games a number of times per season. So it kind of worked out where Andy and I kind of overlap enough to where we

had most of the farm system covered from us being able to go to game between having all these teams under umbrella. So that's how I fell into the prospect writing part of it. So I've been doing that for some of my third season of doing that now. And then at the beginning of the 2019 seasons, when Andy and I decided to start doing a podcast periodically,

it turned out to be a great opportunity to be able to do a lot of things. And then we started to a weekly endeavor and it's gone really well. So we try, we try to keep things pretty short. So we know there's a number of other podcasts out there. We don't want to go hour and a half, two hours per episode. We try to keep things

in a pretty quick 30, 45 minutes. So we don't take up all of everybody's day. So I think that's a pretty good sweet spot for us. Now it's been a little tougher to come up with content this season with minor leagues not playing at all, but there's been enough coming up to where we've been able to go weekly. Now that the major league season has finally

got underway and there's occasional bit of news from the minor league camps. And we've also been tracking as well how the minor leagues are going forward. Well, it's kind of neat. I was listening to, and it was your most recent show. How you're sort of talking about the major league team, but through the lens of the prospects. You know, I haven't been listening since the very

beginning. I don't know how much you were doing that. It was probably much more farm system. Focus when there was, you know, the farm system to talk about in games to talk about. But yeah, I mean, it's really, it's really good stuff. So, I mean, so you've been writing about the farm system. You said since about 2018 and doing the podcast since 2019. I mean, were

you just as a fan? You know, that knowledgeable about the farm system even before you were writing and talking about it? Well, minor league baseball has always been a big thing for me because I was, um, born in Louisiana. I've lived there most of my life. And at the time I lived where, uh, in the city with a double 18. So I spent most of my

childhood and teenage years going to baseball games a lot. Um, in fact, when I was born, there, I was born literally three minutes from Atlanta, Bray, minor league baseball game because at the time, there's a team called the Shreveport Braves. And it was their double eight franchise at the time. This is a day where they had likes a dusty baker and Darrell Evans playing for them.

So I've always been kind of tied to my minor league baseball. And as I grew up, they went through several different major league affiliations there. For a while there, there were Pittsburgh Pirates farm team. And then later on down the line for a long time, they were same Francisco Giants affiliate where I get to see a life of chilly Davis, Matt notes. Um, I got to

see a competitive competitive teams like a Darrell strawberry comes through when he was playing for the Jackson Met. So I've always been involved in a minor league baseball for a long time. Um, that case as a double A and then moved away for a while. Then my job at Transformy to Mississippi. And why I got to Mississippi was coincidentally, when they were starting to build a

trust mark for the bridge to move their double A franchise there. So they got there about the same time I did. And I've been attending games there ever since. How is that park? Oh, it's a nice park and they kept it up today. Uh, it helps when the Atlanta breaks actually fully own the team. So if there's any improvements, they need to be laid out there.

Uh, they take on the improvements, the capital improvements themselves. So they keep the park very up today. I took a tour of it several years ago. And when you go underneath the park, there's all kinds of really nice batting facilities, not the things you would typically see, especially when this park is built 15 years ago for a minor league franchise. In fact, the way I understand

it was when the Atlanta breaks came through for exhibition a number of years ago that Bobby Cox got a look at the facilities. And there were some things that they had a trust mark park that they didn't have at the materally park. It turned or filled at the time. And he's like, if they're going to have this, I want to talk to how well they treat

the players here and how important it is for their development. That's awesome. Do you know what any of those things were? I had to do with the batting cages. And I'm not sure exactly what all the technical parts of it that were in mouth is. But apparently they were really important. So you guys are relatively new to the podcast community in terms of, you know, providing

content or creating content. How have you found being part of that? Like, you know, and the blogging community and interacting with fans. And I know you guys were talking about, you know, catching hell on Twitter last week about, you know, the trade deadline and the bullpen management and stuff. How have you found the community in general? So there's kind of a part of what we do

have a lot here in took motion or something like that I like to work with like in the case of the Pl pret abi podcast with Doc Herbert, Dylan Short. We're really tight with them. In fact, Dylan does the intro for our show and Doc Herbert spent on heap a couple of times every day. I think we had him one, a couple years ago. For the

draft, it's because he's much more immersed in the amateur draft and we are. So I think we got a subject matter expert in our hands. Let's get him on and talk to him about, what's going on. Which we tried, we tried out to talk the way we originally came up with the podcast. It was more a more going to be a supplement because when we were

writing it out, we came up with an article comes out every Sunday during the minor league baseball season. It's called the Sunday Farmer port where we basically recap each affiliate for the course of the week. And it's a pretty long piece of text a lot of time to put together. And what we did was just kind of use the podcast as a way to build upon

that where we talk about things where we ordinarily would kind of build a podcast on what we showed in the article and kind of have some back and forth discussion about it. And that went really well for us last season. But kind of this season is where we kind of had to change things up a bit where we just got more to, like you said, talking

about the minor league teams and the players as they apply to the major league level. What little news we get out of the alternate training site and so on. Right. So let's move on to the to the current team. And I don't want to rehash the whole non-event that was the trade deadline. But you guys brought up something really interesting. I thought in your last podcast

that I want to talk to you about here. You had talked about the Braves farm system. Right. We know that, you know, the, you know, mate, sorry MLB calm came out with its, you know, the pipeline site came out with its new ranking and the Braves had dropped to number 15 is the dropped in other places. And you guys talked about how the farm system now

is kind of top heavy. And that really may have impacted how amphopolis navigated the trade deadline and led to moves he didn't make. Really. Will you talk about that for a minute? Yeah. And that MLB pipeline ranking, you mentioned the Braves are ranked number 15 on there. And if you think any of the rankings from the past a couple of years, the Braves are usually a

top five. And you start seeing a little bit of us slippage here in the last couple of rankings. We had some of the sites that say baseball America or pipeline or some of the other ones may have the start slipping to say seven or eight. Start seeing a little bit there as a graduation happen. And that's what a lot of it is. Like as some of

these prospects graduate like how right graduated this season. Austin Riley graduated last season. They're no longer considered prospects once they hit up. Some certain number of gain played or innings pitch. Sure service time. More of that. Yeah. You're saving more of that over the next few weeks. I believe Bryce Wilson's on about a week from graduating off the prospect list. And wascar. You know, it's not

too far behind hill. And the ones at the very top there. I mean, like Allison, Thoppel, I said people were asking in trades for Ian Anderson, Christian Pache and Drew Waters. Those aren't the guys they want to trade. And then one of the ones you get past those three for the top three or four in the brace farm system. The system drops pretty quickly after that.

There's some really good prospects. I'd say Cobb baller, William Contreras, Jay Langleyers, Jaseel Della Cruz. There's some good prospect lift in there. But apparently on other teams shopping list, they want to shop at the very top of it. Now one thing that's really hurt the brace of the last couple of seasons was the dearly departed John Coppola. Issues that caused the brace to be shut out

of the international free agent market for the last few years. It's really hurt the death of the system. Right. And likely some players that were lost. I believe 13 players that were lost. Some of them would have been in this top 30 as well. So and there's going to be some slippage. And once the next handful of people graduate, I mean, the gradual slip probably about

mid way down the ranking. But it's for the reason you want them to be slipping that it's been graduations and the teams winning. You don't want to be in a position. Let's say like the Washington Nationals were the team not doing very well. And their system is ranked dead last. You want to rebuild, but you have no where to rebuild from. Right. Right. Exactly. So, so

let's continue on to the starting rotation, Matt. Right. Because I want the show from this point forward of his depressing as we can be. So post game Tuesday night. Kyle Wright said, quote, I know I'm close. Do you see that? Like what did what did you like or not like about his start Tuesday night and his prospects? So to speak going forward. It's almost like he

had to do some kind of retrain himself a little bit. He's pitching from a different side of the rubber. He's pitching it slightly differently. It's the same pitch mix. But it's about that fastball in the slider. And unfortunately his secondaries have been really caught up to any of that. But it's the second time of the rotation that's getting him every time and seems like something changes

for him. I don't know if it's in his head now that it seems like the first time to the line. It's not so bad. But last night, we were talking to some other folks about it saying, okay, well, he was the best of poignia this out yesterday that he was called up one day short of having his option count for the season. So if they'd left

him in the minor leagues for one more or less down the alternate training site for one more day, his option would have counted for this season. So I believe he's going to be with the team for the duration of the season. So if he'll get probably about three more starts. And hopefully we'll have after that, we'll have more of a clear picture of what kind of

product he's going to be going into the 2021 season. Yeah. It seemed to me toward the end of his appearance last night that one he started to miss a lot on his arm side, like, you know, really inside on right hand of batters. And he was forcing some stuff like his last few pitches were just nowhere close to where he was wanting to throw. And I

wonder if at some point, you know, he starts to have trouble and then just, I don't know, gets in his head and screws up his mechanics. And maybe that's part of the problem. Yeah. And it's kind of a different thing. What do you say from Ian Anderson in his, I mean, Ian Anderson's made three starts now, but he seems to have a maturity beyond his years.

Yeah. Now he kind of fell apart for him in his third start that he had on Monday, where I think once he. Builded a ground ball and airmailed or the first base that kind of shook him up a little bit. A couple of missed calls from the home play empire and it kind of got his head a little bit, but I think he's strong enough to

where it's going to be. I think he'll use the learning experience. I'll come back from his next start and he won't use it as a negative influence on him. I think he'll use it as a building block and help him out as he builds his ability to pitch during his brother in his career. Yeah. So Matt, play GM and forget about Fulti and Hamles for a

second. Is there another guy on the 40 man, whether it be guys we've seen before, Tookie, you know, Wilson, Wigel or guys that we haven't seen in Delacruz or Davidson or any of those guys, do you think makes sense to give a few starts before the end of September to see if there is lightning in a bottle there for the playoffs? It seems like in the

case of Tucker Davidson that I mean, a number of people have been calling to for him to get a look at this and because he's on the 40 man roster. But it seems like that he has a pitch that's not quite this pitch arsenal is not quite where it needs to be. In fact, I think, believe Alex and Thopolis was quoted the other day saying he's

behind the other guys as far as being able to be ready to pitch in the Major League. And they probably just don't want. I mean, I'm very part of it too. They don't want to burn any of his service time during this goofy sort of season. So I think they're going to try to hold off on him until 2021. But I think you're probably your best

shot left of the players down the alternate training side would be Sean Loekum. He's had some success in the Major League at least. There's something there. So I think they might give him a couple of starts here before the end of season because I think if it gets to the first round of playoffs with the best of three, I think you can get by on that

with a greed Anderson and possibly even Hamilton, even if it's only for, let's say, three innings and you can kind of bullpinned after that. But start getting to get the next round. We start getting to the best of seven. That's where it gets me more difficult because in a series like that, you have to have a fourth starter. Johnny, I had so written Newcombe off in

the starting role that I didn't even include him in that list. I mean, I guess I've come to the position that he is just miscast as a starter and is better suited as a, as a reliever. Do you not agree with that? I do agree with that. But I think in this case, you got to have somebody to take. Because I don't, I don't. Tommy Malone

getting a playoff start and Robbie Irland. Should be getting any more regular starts, but they just don't have any other body. But even if Newcombe does come back and make some kind of start, they may look at him as a two or three innings option to open up a game and then that could turn over to the bull pin after that. Just need somebody to get

through that first time through the lineup and let's say Tyler Mattick or Grant, they take over because they've done really good job this season. But you just can't go to him in the second inning. If you can call off on those guys until, let's say, the fourth or fifth inning, things get a lot easier, especially when you get to the back into that grace bull pin.

Seems like the team has lost faith in Tookie as a starter. Do you think that's fair? I think that's very fair. The controller command has always been an issue for him. Now when I saw here in Mississippi, he had a really good tenure here at Mississippi. I mean, he went on half a season without allowing a home run. He wasn't walking anywhere near as many people,

but it seems like that command control absolutely just left him at the major league level. And I'm kind of wondering at some point if they just don't try to repackage him as a reliever, high leverage reliever with that fastball and curveball where he would need to get worried about a third pitch or a fourth pitch that he could just get by on those two if he

could locate that fastball. Well, it was amazing that one, that, you know, the start that he had early in the season where he was just dazzling. He had all the command and control he needed and wanted. I mean, he was just like almost flawless and could not get it back. Yeah, and it just seems like that form. It'd be easy. Either completely on or he's completely

off. He doesn't have any like five innings to run. It's always two and a third inning seven runs or he's pitching six or seven really solid. Sharp outings, but I don't understand why that get. But it seems like he just gets these high pitch counts. And when the game gets away from them, I think that the pressure bears down on him. And I think just things

just goes south on him very quickly. All right, folks, that is the show. Big thanks to Matt and make sure you follow both he and Andy on Twitter. Andy Harris is at K26DP and Matt's at Braves, Matt C subscribe to the OFR Farm Report and read their stuff at outfieldflyrool.com. And remember, you can always find us at Speaker iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play and Spotify as well

as AtlantaBaseballTalk.com. And be sure to follow us on Twitter at ATLBaseballTalk and to like us on Facebook. Thanks again for listening and go Braves. Thanks for listening to AtlantaBaseballTalk. Your weekly podcast for all things at Atlanta Braves. To find new shows, to post in our forum or to send a comment, please visit us at AtlantaBaseballTalk.com.