Facing an Ace, Volume One: Justin Verlander

Hello, everybody welcome into another edition of the Lab Episodes 1-2-3. Thanks for joining us as always on the audio side. Apple Google Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts or a course on YouTube, the lab Episodes 1-2-3. Click on Podcast page. Please go ahead and subscribe and watch the show, watch previous episodes, mechanical breakdowns. It's all there. The previous 122 episodes so subscribe to our YouTube page

and of course follow us on social media at Jim Tara and at Epstein Hitting. Easy enough. Our topic today episode 123 facing an ace. Not ace. None other than pre-agent picture, right-hander, Justin Ferrand-Lander, who seemingly can pitch in every other game of the World Series. Except for what? Game 5 of the 2022 World Series. Outside of that he can't pitch in the World Series but he

is a great pitcher. I'm going to discuss putting together a plan. Ep's going to be the hitting coach today putting together a plan to face an ace. By the way speaking of Ep, let's bring in the fella. The professional evaluator, successful business owner, former coach, friend and co-host, J. Kempstie. Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving to you. Hope you had a nice time with your family and your

dog. I did. I did. But I gotta tell you though, thanksgiving food and I told Cassie this on cross-functionality so subscribe to that show as well. Thanksgiving food sucks. You could be one of my kids. What a...so turkey. I have the dark meat. I don't like the white meat. Turkey, even the dark meat is dry. Like nobody or somebody tweeted this on Twitter. It was a

great point. They tweeted this on Thanksgiving night. Nobody actually orders a turkey when they go out for like a celebration. I'm going out on a date. I don't take a nice restaurant and say hey, you know what? Waiter or waitress, sir? I'll have the turkey. Nobody. Nobody ever orders turkey. Why? Because turkey sucks. So does stuffing. So does cranberry sauce. You know the only good things

about Thanksgiving food. I'll tell you right now. Cookies, cherry pie. That's it. Pumpkin pie sucks too. Who wants to eat a bunch of mush in your mouth? Seriously, think about that. You're eating mush. Pumpkin pie is...it's mush. You've put a lot of time. A lot of time and thought into this. I never...I never was driving the other day. Give it to the tradition. It's about the

tradition. Breaking bread with the Native Americans. That's what Thanksgiving is all about. Native Americans, when they broke bread, they never had turkey. I don't know where this came from. They're driving the other day. I passed to Starbucks and they had...I hear commercials for the pumpkin spice. He was hearing that all fall. There's nothing good about pumpkin spice coffee either. Nothing good about pumpkin pie. There's nothing

really that great about turkey. Thanksgiving is great. It's a great holiday. Not a big turkey guy. Okay, rant over. I wish you would stop ranting like this. I know. I actually like turkey, but it has to be...you have to have a...you have to have like a really good thermometer. Yes. Like a barbecue. So I like smoked turkey. I was going to say you bought it. I

like barbecue restaurants. Turkey is one of my favorite things because they season it up really well. I think when you cook that whole bird, there's just not a lot of...I mean you can brine it and get some flavor. Did you have a brine turkey? That helps. I have no idea what that was. Okay, so you gotta have a brine turkey. You soak it in like a

brine, salt, spices and it soaks into it. So it doesn't dry out. You definitely need that. But maybe next year we'll do a spatch-cocked turkey. Yep, that's next on my list. Where you like filet the turkey in half and cook it. So it cooks evenly and doesn't dry out. How did you learn that? Where did you learn that recipe from? Well, I was in Northern Nevada

over Thanksgiving, visiting the in-laws and some of their friends who are big hunters and they eat a lot of elk and they eat a lot of wild turkey and they eat a lot of deer and whatnot. So they were telling me about it. That's how they cook their turkeys on the smoker. And they said, it's great. So then I looked it up and it's like a

total thing. Yeah. Okay. We'll do an episode on it. What is it called? We're just called Rage-Cock-Turkey? Spatch-cock. Spatch-cock. Cocked or cock? Spatch-cock-Turkey. I don't know. One of the two. All right, I'm going to Google that after the show. Episode 123 today. By the way, I was last week we touched on showcase players. Right? We touched on how players now being made into showcase, showcase players.

And I was this week. I was perusing the internet, the old worldwide web. And I was looking at some perfect game stuff. And I have all these metrics. Right? And we're going to break down with some of those metrics, mean future episodes because a lot of people, younger players, parents don't really understand what those metrics from blast motion, diamond kinetics, what all of that means. This

is the catalyst of showcase players and why they're being made into such in 2022, going into 2023. I remember a few years ago, I was sitting across and talking with Mark Shapiro, who's the president of the Toronto Blue Jays. Now think for context purposes, money ball with that rear camera shot, Billy Bean talking to Mark Shapiro, that just flipped me out with Billy Bean or Alop

Brad Pitt. And there you go. You've got that conversation. And you've got a picture in your head now. And I was talking with Mark and he was telling me about his son a little bit and how his son is entering his teenage years. He wants to play baseball and continue on. And he marked literally said to me, I just hope I can get him to college

coach and really have kind of a backdoor away in. If he's talented enough to play professional baseball and Mark Shapiro doesn't even know if his son will play professional baseball. So there's a lesson in there that while we're making these showcase players, everybody thinks they can be and their parents think they can be professional baseball players. It's a very hard thing. There's a big difference between

playing major league baseball, playing professional baseball and trying to get to college, and play college baseball. But right now we're really going to be playing baseball. We're kind of stuck in the middle ground. We're trying to figure out, okay, how do we make baseball players based off this data rather than the other way around? Let's make the baseball players. And then let's look at their data

and how we can best apply that data to the drills that they're working on. Well, that's that's the process. There's just data is easy now. It's easy to set up. I received an email from one of the players that I that I work with and see all the time. It says, Hey, come down to yada yada. Perfect game is going to put a K vest on

you and take all your metrics with a, you know, an exit velocity where they're using a track man and then we'll post it to our website and it's free. But it costs you know whatever $40 a month to be listed on the website, you know, to show and then you can track your progress. Well, again, now we're looking at data without implementation. What what what does

that mean? Oh, I hit the ball. And this kid is, you know, he's 14 years old. So there's 14 year old kids that are six foot two and there's 14 year old kids that are five foot two and 110 pounds. How do you rank them at the same level? And that's essentially what they're doing. So somebody told me don't ever go to a showcase until you're

showcasable unless you're big and strong and fast and then don't go post your numbers because that's all it is. It's just a college good saying, Oh, this person throws really hard at this age. Okay, I think I'll go out and see them. You know, it's they're not going on those numbers. Now the proper way to use all that is what we do at at Epstein hitting

and what we do at the lab. And that's why it's called the lab Epstein hitting podcast. But we. But we take. We take that information not from some random person that we never see or train. But people that we trade and we use that information and then we go through it. If you have a KVS report, you have to go through that with a player or

or your coach. That's knowledgeable on the information probably for 30 to 40 minutes to understand what the heck is my body doing and what areas can I improve upon that. It doesn't just say, Oh, your hip moves this fast. Your shoulder moves this fast. Your arm is that doesn't do anybody any good. Oh, you're in sequence or you're not. It's, well, that doesn't do anybody any

good. It's how do we, you know, get your X factor stretch better. You know, we could see some of that on video. But are we keeping our hands back at launch? Are we? Launching properly? Are we launching our upper body too soon? So these are all things that you can't just get the information and splotted out on a web page and think you're going to get

better. You have to utilize that information. And that's what the professional organizations do and a lot of college programs do. But for for the professional people, we're just trying to get a number. Okay, where are you right now? What do you do? Well, what don't you do? Well, okay, it's not going to we're not going to sign someone because they have a crazy number on a

blast report. Okay, that's the farthest thing. In fact, I've seen them. We've had international players with crazy numbers with. I'm trying to think of a number like some kind of acceleration numbers that show up on blast, which I hardly ever use. Well, also, you know, we've said it before on the show about how Latin American players amateurs, they're very upper body centric when they're hitting their

hands are lightning fastest white when they get into professional baseball. They're lightning fast. You see a lot too with Latin American short stops. They've got great hands. So they can go into the hole into the short stop hole backhand. Set their feet and throw where you look at American players amateur players, especially at the high school level. And I see this all the time. This is

why they take the crow hops. They want to show off the arm strain. I see that they just they backhand and then their footwork gets out of sequence. They shuffle their feet and they try to throw as hard as they can. Latin American players very upper body centric now to the flip side of that. They're lower. Their body isn't as developed as say an American type

player. So the metric is going to be a little bit different as it comes to Latin American players. And of course, American born amateurs. Yeah. And some of them are some of them are similar. You know, but but yeah, they're there. They're 10 years old. They're swinging wood bats. They're swinging drop threes. Maybe there's a drop five somewhere on the island, but probably not. You know,

they're not swinging drop tens. So they are building hand strength at a much, much younger. But you know, getting back to those numbers, it's not that number is not going to get you signed or drafted. Okay. It's going to tell you what kind of athlete you are. It's going to tell you recruit or what kind of athlete are. I mean way back when I don't know.

Maybe this was 15 years ago. Maybe it was 25 years ago. I don't remember. It wasn't 25 years ago. It was after I was done playing. But Gary Ward. So at the time I believe he was at New Mexico state. So this would have been late 90s or early 2000s. Maybe and he said we were not going to recruit anybody that doesn't hit a ball 90

miles an hour off. That was their benchmark. You can't play. And that's what they said. You can't play college baseball unless you can hit 90. So if they did a camper showcase camp or something like that. That was their baseline. You look at that number now with college players. It's probably closer to 100 miles an hour. Yeah. Because you can cheat it. You can try to

swing as hard as you can. And you can almost crow hop. Sometimes you see these guys taking these incredibly huge strides and huge hand loads just so they can get a ball to go 100 miles an hour. And then you can get a ball to go 100 miles an hour off a tee. But none of that relates to the game. So again, it's like anything else.

It's like scouting. It's like player development. How do you use those metrics? The metrics themselves. The technology itself does not make you a better player. How you utilize it and how your coaches help you interpret that and then put you in the correct positions or the correct plans to get better. That's where technology helps. Whether it's a blast motion sensor or a KVAS or a hit

tracks. Well, college coaches though, this is on you because college coaches, they look for a certain number and then high school coaches because they don't know any better. No parrot things and they'll retweet things about what they're high school kids and their athletes are doing at showcases based off those numbers. And now all the sun here we are creating pressure and the parents don't know any

better. Sorry, no offense, but parents don't know any better. So then they're telling their kids, hey, you have to hit this certain number. Hey, you have to hit this certain number and quite frankly, I don't blame them because parents are trying to get their kids scholarships. They're trying to pay less money for college, which has, I mean, the rate of college and you know, it's gotten

ridiculous. So I'm not inditing parents here. I'm indicting more so college coaches saying, hey, they need to hit a certain metric and high school coaches following that and telling their kids, hey, you guys have to hit this certain metric. If you want to play at the next level, don't forget the GPA. You know, nobody ever talks about that anymore, by the way. The GPA is still,

I sound like an old boomer right now. The GPA is still very important. Through all of this, you're going to probably get the majority of you out there are going to get more academic money than you are athletic way. Probably 90% of you that are listening. No doubt about it. You get a high. 90% of the people just went away. So there goes 90% of our

audience because you just spoiled something for them. No, it's, it's true. You know, big Epstein, the dream killer. If it want more. But no, if you're a baseball or softball player, you got 11.7 scholarships split amongst 30 people or more, sometimes on a baseball roster, it doesn't add up, right? You know, some, and your pitchers, your, your really big ones are going to get more of

that. So it's not like we're splitting that in half. A lot of people are on 30%. But you could go out and get a, I mean, I couldn't, but some people can go out and get a 30 on an ACT and that might be worth $10 or $15,000 a year, you know, towards their towards their tuition. So, you know, I'm going to get a 30% of

the money. Yes, study, invest $1,000 in your ACT prep classes. You know, go to one less showcase and, and, and do your ACT prep because that's going to get you a lot of money on the back end, even if you don't play sports. Yeah. We're well rounded podcast here. We are episode 123. By the way, for again, to today's topic facing an ace Justin Verlander coming

up with a plan of how to hit Justin Verlander. Not a lot of people know how to do that. Rightfully so, say young word winner will get that in just a second. I have to tell you about Cody Ballinger last week. We touched on him. And in a couple of weeks, we're going to be doing an episode of mechanical breakdown series of Cody Ballinger now. The

title of the episode is going to instead of breaking down his swing. It's going to be called fixing Cody Ballinger. Epini are going to fix Cody Ballinger who I had a, I have a feeling. I don't know. It's just me. I don't know. Maybe it's just me. I hate to say it more times than not. No, I don't know. I, I will say, I will say

this though about Cody Ballinger. I feel that he is going to be the next Shorber. Non-tendered come back, fix things, have a great year. And then he's going to, he's going to parlay that into a big time contract. He's more athletic than Shorber to. So, yeah, he knows. But one year pillow type deal, one year pillow contract, you may have a bounce back. That's just my

feeling on Cody Ballinger. Now, and when we do that episode in a couple of weeks, and we fix him, if he follows our advice, he's on his way. Well, the nice part is we get 10% of his, his big contract after. That's right. That's very, very helpful. Yeah. No, I would say Cody judge Shorber. Shorber's just, you know, no, quick. He's so strong. Like I bet

that guy could, the Belinger, Belinger's wire he's strong and he's very quick and the bat whips through the zone. He's more wippy though. Shorber's just like his body turns fast and his barrel is just quick. Okay. Belinger's got a lot more moving parts. We'll save. All right. Longer levers, longer moving parts. He just has to get those things under control. He'll be great again. He's obviously

got our hand coordination. You know, he just needs to give himself a chance. He just makes, makes life a little bit difficult for himself. So, but we'll break that down when we get to it. He's going to have a big year. His back is against the law. He's going to have a big year no matter what. I really think that. All right. Follow us on social

media at Jim Tara at Epstein hitting. Let's get into today's topic episode 123 facing an ace that ace being Justin Verlander before we break down his repertoire. Justin Verlander. Let's just say this. How often as a coach, let's put you in the position of a hitting coach. How often do you have hitters meetings with your guys? Every few days, first before the first game of the

series, or is it every day, it varies throughout organization, organization and collegiate program to collegiate program. It's usually every game day. So you want to you want to prep these guys on what they're going to be facing and then possibly facing coming. Show them what that pitch has been like recently, you know, not necessarily last year, or you want to show current videos, maybe the last

time you face them. So ideally, you want to have those hitters, hitters meetings daily based on the starter they're going to see. It's not. You know, it used to be so crucial because you'd see a guy three or four times a game. And now you're saying, okay, we're prepping for a couple of times to the lineup. And then we got a prep. You might see this

guy or you might see this guy coming out. So it's a lot more difficult. And college, it's a little easier because you know, you're, you're. Three starters, you have your three weekend starters and then you have your your left handed dudes that come out of the pen and then you have a closer for the most part. So in conference play like for the SEC. It's just

these are the five guys you're going to face. You know, they don't usually roll out random dudes in the SEC weekend series that they would midweek, you know, unless it was a blowout of some kind. So that's a little bit easier to prepare, you know, as a coach, you're preparing, you know, three or four days in advance for those hitters meetings. Friday Saturday Sunday. So, you

know, sometimes you'll have just one on one meetings with guys just to, hey, how you feeling? What's going on? You know, you swing feel okay as your timing feel just to get an idea of what's going through their mind. And a lot of times that will help the process of of creating a game plan for that player. If they feel like, I don't I feel rushed,

for instance, well, Jesus, now we're facing Verlanders throw a 96. He's thrown at the top of the zone. You're going to get totally exploited if you're feeling rushed. So let's work on rhythm a little bit. Let's see if we can slow things down a little bit. Let's see if we can, you know, maybe we'll crank up the machine to 96, 97 at the top of the

zone. So you can see pitch. You don't have to hit them. But let's see if we can get our our stride going really early before that ball comes out and then track that pitch over and over again. So there's all different things you can do. And it player or a number one, you have to know the player and you have to be comfortable with the player

and the player. You have to have that that honest relationship. How do you feel? You know, what what's going through your mind right now? How can I help you? You know, not this is what you need to do. If to be successful, it has to be a two way street. You have to earn the trust of your players. And the only way to earn the trust

is to present the information in a positive easily easily understandable way. And then all of a sudden they're like, wow, this guy really knows what he's talking about. Like that's exactly what happened today. Okay. And now I'm on board. And that's what you hope spring training. You know, if you're a new hitting coach, come there to an organization. It's really about you know, learning the player

and earning trust and and setting yourself up for for a good season where where players are all working together with their coaching staff. So with Justin Verlander, for example, we're going to get we're using him today facing an ace volume one. We'll call it Justin Verlander. How do you open up that meeting? How do you start that meeting that hitters meeting knowing that the guy on

the mound you're facing that night is a say young word winner. You never would mention that. You would say, okay, this is who we have. Okay. These are the pitches that he throws. He has a tendency to do, you know, early early in the bat, maybe flip a couple breaking balls over. And then he'll try to finish hard late, you know, up in the zone. Whatever

the strategy is for for Verlander against your team. Because that's different than against a different team. If he's facing the blue jays hitters versus facing the Rockies hitters. It might be different. Maybe the blue jays are better breaking ball hitters and the Rockies are better fastball hitters. So he's going to have a different approach too. So you have to figure that out as well. But when

you're facing an ace, you know, it gets back to, you know, you have a couple different options as a player. Okay. For Landers pitch in today, my hamstring hurts. I'm just going to go ahead and take the day off. So that's option number one. You can. It's, you know, my dad said that you can't get to two strikes. If you have a guy that puts you

away and again, pitchers aren't throwing. Why do we need to get the pitch count up for Verlander because he's going to throw five innings. He's going to throw five innings anyway, whether he throws 65 pitches or 100 pitches. He's going to throw his five innings. And then they're going to, you know, bring in a fresh arm. So, you know, getting the whole pitch count up. It's

okay. Where how does he usually throw me? I'm going to try to tunnel that pitch. I'm going to try to tunnel that fastball. I'm going to. He's got a riding fastball, a forcing fastball up in the zone. I'm going to think about swinging two inches over the high fastball. I'm going to get one early in the count. Okay. That's that's my strategy for this. Now the

tough part about Verlander is this breaking ball comes out of the same window. Some guys can, you know, how early can I tell that's a fastball versus a breaking ball. Well, when they're coming out of the same window, it's pretty tough. Right. Like that's that's why some pitchers are really, really good. So you have to have that approach. And some guys can take that pitch. And

maybe some guys are going to look for breaking balls early in the count. Okay. He's going to flip me a fastball or a curve ball or a slider. Right. He's going to throw me a get me over. He always does. I'm going to sit on that until I have two strikes. Okay. No. Sorry. And the, let me get to the repertoire here. Yeah. I'm the images

for further context. Because I do have a question about. Well, a point, I guess about his slider and curveball. So his repertoire of Verlander fastball 95 to 90. This according to baseball. So Vom. 95 to 97 throws a 51%. So he throws the fastball the most slider 87 to 89 28% curveball. 78 to 81 19% change up 85 to 86 to 2%. Okay. I'll get to

the curveball and slider in just a moment. Because there isn't much of a difference between the two when you watch it with your eyes and you look at some of the data. But with the fastball 95 to 97 to hitters, it rides up. We talked about this before. But from the pitcher standpoint, Justin Verlanders point of view, it's just staying on plane with his arm slot

and his release point. It's got a high spin rate and that fastball for the most part where he is successful. It is when he leaves that fastball or pinpoints it up in the zone. Yeah. And so again, he's going to be different with some people is going to throw more sliders to some people who's going to throw. He might throw a curveball more, you know, get

me over. If he's got to get me over, it's probably going to be a curveball versus a slider. Does he bury the slider with lefties? I don't know if he's that kind of guy. I think lefties he puts away with his high fastball. He tries to get belt high, tries to get belly button high to lefties, which typically drop the barrel a little bit more. They

can drop the bad head more. So he's going to exploit them. So plus you look at those numbers. Right. So you told me what 50 51% and then he splits his other. You know, so change up that much. Right. So the change up 2%. So how would you approach that? You kind of know guys. Hey, I'm throwing. I'm going to change up. Yep. Yeah. He's going

to throw that what four times a game, three times a game. So I'm not worried about the change up, but I am worried about. You know, those percentages might be way different from righties to lefties. So you have to, you have to break, break those down as well. Like, okay, lefties. Maybe he throws 62% fastballs or more. And then he throws low. So definitely break that

out or try to break it down into power hitting lefties versus. Middle in field lefties, you know, or speed lefties, something like that. So you can whittle those numbers down to figure out. How does he really throw people like me? Or if you've been in the league a long time, right, then you go back and look at your last 20 of that's against this guy. Okay.

Now, hitting's hard because pictures are doing the same thing. Well, last time I faced him because they have their pictures meetings. Right. This guy got me on this pitch. Okay. Right. I didn't have six. I said, here, and now you may have a whole other plan. So the key is, you know, figure out what pitch you're going to get early in the count that you that

you can hit. Once you get to two straight. And this is stuff that Ted Williams told my dad, like, if you're facing an ace, a guy that can put you away with two strikes, try not to get to two strikes. It's very difficult to strike out with less than two strikes. Okay. So, you know, look for a pitch early in the count. Don't be as fine.

Okay. I'm not going to sit. Maybe, you know, middle in. I'm not going to sit. I'm going to sit. You know, ball two or ball three to me. I'm going to open up the plate a little bit and maybe the counts want to know or maybe it's own. But instead of just looking for, you know, a perfect pitch that I would sit on in that count.

Maybe I'm going to open it up and cover two thirds of the plate instead of just one third of the plate. You know, something like that. So that's typically the way to get to get to guys is to get them early in the count. If you can, based on your plan that you put together in the pitch that you're going to play, you're looking for and

some guys can't get on top of that high fastball. And if that's the case, you got to really tunnel down, down, down, down, down. And sometimes that works. And he'll leave a fastball lower in the zone. The problem with that is if you start to breaking ball at your, at your thighs curve ball thrown out of that same window or that same arm slot, you're going

to probably chase that in the dirt. Okay. If you're looking up a little bit to stay on top and he throws a curve ball up, you at least have a chance to hit a hanger. Okay. But that's, that's the part that that's a little bit tougher. That's why he's successful because he can start that breaking ball. That looks like a strike because of the same window

and boom. It ends up at your foot. So, you know, it's been said before that Major League hitters, they can hit a bullet. You know, and that's coming at them in the strike zone. So his fastball, while it's great and it's above average at this point, right? 95 to 97. It's great that a 40, the guy who's turning 40 can still, throw that hard. Yeah. Test

him to his work ethic, of course. But the fastball, you can almost eliminate that because you can, you don't have to worry about it as much. Right? That's not the pitch that if you're Major League hitter should get you out. Now I'm looking at the curve bone slider. You've talked about it before right there just a couple of minutes ago. The curve ball slider, his slider

87 89 curve ball 70 to 81. They both have similar shape to them. Both break on two planes and have pretty good depth. Actually, put more than pretty good above average depth, especially with the slider. It's a lot tighter. But the spin, what's interesting, the spin rate, there's only a 42 different differential in spin rate. So the curve ball at our 24, 2423. So 2423 RPMs.

And the slider 2465 RPMs. So I mean, he tunnels them and he's on point with his curve ball and slider. It's going to be a long day for hitters. Yeah. What's amazing is there are 10 miles an hour different. And he's still hitting the same amount of spin. Yeah. Yeah. Which is pretty, pretty impressive. Yeah. So you're right. The breaking balls make him because they're two

different breaking balls. Right. They do have different shapes. I mean, they're moving the same direction. But 10 miles an hour harder is going to be more on a horizontal plane. That's why it's considered a slider. They categorize it as a slider. That's what makes him tough is that he has three different pitches that are all 8 to 10 miles an hour different in velocity. Okay. What

fools us is hitters. It's not break. It's speed. When we get fooled at speed. Right. It's we're sitting on a fastball and we get a change up. We're sitting on a fastball. We're swinging a breaking ball. We're out. We're out in front. Speed is is what. And that's what he does so well is he changes speed. Even though he's throwing 95 miles an hour. When he's

throwing a 78 mile an hour curve ball. And he throws that for strike one and then he throws that for strike two. And then boom, here comes the 98 95 96 mile an hour fastball at your letters. That thing looks like it's 105 miles an hour because of that. You know, we're talking, you know, 18 miles an hour different speed. That's what makes guys tough. It's

his mix that makes him tough. So that's why you have to take something early in the count. You have to take pitches out. Right. Of that mix because you can you don't have two strikes. Why would I look for everything? So if you could figure out what you want to do and stick to that plan. And maybe it doesn't work your first time up. And that's

okay. How many hits does Verlander give up the first time through the lineup? Not very many. We use it as a learning experience. Right. We're using it in hopes that boom. I can get him my next about after he walks a guy or after we get a bloop somewhere. You're not going to get four line drives off of Verlander and one any. Okay. You're hoping to

put a couple balls in play. Maybe get a you know, you get chipped. Jam to hit one off the end. You scratch through a hit and then boom, we barrel something up and hit it to run Homer. Okay. Great. Now we now we we had our chance off Verlander and we made the most of it. But you're not going to sit there unless he doesn't have

his good stuff. Right. Which guys have their good stuff. You know, every couple starts. They don't have their great stuff every start. But if you can get them. And essentially you're plotting for that attack. You're plotting every pitch. When am I going to win this battle? When is he going to make him a mistake? Right. I'm sitting on this. I'm sitting on this. Boom. I got

it. And I hit it hard. That's why mechanics are important. Because if you have bad mechanics and you finally get your pitch and you miss it. Oh, man, I worked my tail off. Yeah. With my free game meeting with my approach plan. And now all of a sudden I missed the pitch. He gave me and I couldn't won the game for my team. So that's why

mechanics and swing plane are so important. Is is when we do anticipate correctly off these guys that are just you delete pitch. And we do put our swing off and our timing is good. We got to make sure our barrels on the right spot. So how do you how do you formulate a plan and go through these meetings based off previous failures and previous successes off.

Say again facing an ace Justin Verlander. Yeah. So if if I've determined that early in the count. I'm going to sit on fastballs. Okay. So I'm going to prep. I'm going to visualize. I'm going to close my eyes. I'm going to see Justin Verlander. Maybe I pull up videos. Maybe somebody in the hitting department. Has put together my last five at bats. And so you're seeing

Justin Verlander. And of those last five at bats. They've taken all the fastballs out and they've cut them down and says, this is what it looks like. You know, on video of him throwing you those fastballs, right. Maybe it's a behind home plate view. Maybe it's behind the picture view. It doesn't matter what it is. But you're sitting there and you're watching it and you're visualizing.

When do I start moving right you can watch a video be like, I'm going to practice my rhythm here. Then we say, okay. So let's dial up that fastball. He releases the ball from 62 inches off of the ground. You know, 18 inches to the right of the center of the rubber wherever is release point is you slide the machine there. You crank up a, you

know, maybe if you have spin rate accessibility and you're batting cage, you can totally mimic that that exact bitch. But you know, maybe you just crank that thing up to a 95 mile an hour fastball with with a four degree drop trajectory or a three to five. And you just sit there and see them and then you start staying on top of that pitch, staying on

top of that pitch, staying on top of that pitch. Okay. And then you get your work done and then you go to your fielding and you eat something, you get your uniform on, maybe do a little bit more visualization. And then we're ready to rock and roll man. It's game time. Yeah. It's fun. Yeah. I mean, it's a process. And some guys can do that and

some guys can think their way through it. And then some guys say, Hey, coach, what are we doing today? And we say, okay, I've done the thinking for you. We're going to take some swings off this machine off this pitch. I want you to look forward. Boom. Let's, let's get to work. All right. Any questions? Good stuff today. At any questions email us, stream of podcast

21 at gmail.com. Sure. We'll do another one of these down the line facing an ace episode 123. Please subscribe to the show. By the way, leave a review Apple Google Spotify or the lab Epstein hitting podcast YouTube page to watch the show next week. Very simple topic. Two strike hitting. Oh boy. Two strike hitting. So many strikeouts nowadays across baseball, high school, college pro. We're going

to talk about two strike hitting next so many. Now for the Astros, they did a pretty damn good job in the world series. And they squeaked and I saw somebody. It was a funny tweet, but it was like. It had to do with your Thanksgiving and you know, hitting moving a runner over or hitting a ground ball to second base. And it said in theory. You

know, really good in reality. It's like pumpkin pie or whatever. You were saying. But I thought about there were two or three hits that the Astros had that were back breaking hits. That went between with two strikes, that maldenado hit one of them that were just little base hits between first and second that either kept an in and going or scored a run. Right. And it

really is part of the game. You can't just give in all the time or you can't give up all the time. You can't just swing for broke. You know, sometimes, you're going to have to do with a break. Maybe one out of 25 times with two strikes, you hit a home run. Awesome. But can we at least put the ball and play a little more? Can

we cut down on strikeouts? Can we move runners? And we'll see if that works. Now sometimes you're big and slow and hitting a ground ball with two strikes is bad. You might as well try to hit a double and score a runner from first base instead of hitting into a double play. That's different. But for everyone in there, it's okay to put the ball and play

with two strikes. Yes. So we'll talk about that next week. Two strike hitting. That'll be episode three. So 120. Four. What do you got coming up at the lab? We got our college stuff going on. We have our meetings with all the people that did our KVAS reports. So now they're meeting with their instructors. So Matt and Kenny will do meetings with all their all their

players going through that. And we're gearing up for season time. Right. Now is the time to get big and bigger and stronger and eating right and moving fast. And then we're working on mechanical stuff right now and then come January. We'll start taking that in. We're going to have more velocity and more breaking balls with all of our training. By the way, we talked about offseason

prep plans offensively last week. So go back and listen, subscribe. We would greatly appreciate it. Thank you for listening today. Anything else? We done? Good. You want to talk more about how you hate Thanksgiving food? No, I'm going to I like Thanksgiving food. Sometimes. Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm not in your boat. There's a couple of us in the family that like it. Two out of

five in my immediate family. My mom always made a nice Thanksgiving. Yeah. And my dad always smokes a turkey. And usually under cooks. So we might die, but it's never dry. Right. Right. Yeah. That's sometimes that's the sack of rice you make. Sometimes. All right. Episode one 24 next week. Thank you for listening. And we will talk to you then.