Overrated/Underrated, Part Four

some comments from YouTube we're gonna get to today overrated underrated part four Let me bring in professionally value-writers successful business owner former coach Brendan Goholtz don't engage No, they're not watching the walkie-browers tap today the organization that he works for was Jake Epstein Let's go on. Let's go. It's spring training halftime because it's spring training. They have the the net in the back though. Yeah, I

have to hats the net I don't think you have the net hat I do yeah, how you do? Oh, you do yeah Yeah, so this is the sunburned hat for those of you that have shaved heads you do not want to wear this hat Mm-hmm during your spring training when you're out in this out in the sun all day There's been some some vicious burns out

there the poor guys got a Sunblock underneath their hat but it is very lightweight and comfortable. Yeah, very stylish. Yeah, absorbs the sweat well too The old hats you know the old hats that they would sweat and they would stink and they would just it was disgusting The white lines would just keep creeping up the hat Yeah, what how long the hat was you know part

of that player's season now they now it's a new hat every week South Freelich mustache overrated underrated Mustache for team Italy playing for team Italy. It's just having a great. He's having a great March. Yeah, but Mitchell by the way both of those guys back-to-back first round picks for the Brewers Garrett Mitchell's hitting balls 800 feet the other way He's a left-handed batter hitting it the

other way and then South Freelich's just hitting it all over the place in the world It was in the world baseball classic Italy has been eliminated Freelich Mitchell 2024 that's what I say. I don't know. Yeah, that's true. It should be very excited That's what they're saying in Milwaukee those fans would love to have those guys part of the everyday lineup and producing not just part

of the everyday lineup but there those guys are coming along really well and I'm glad I remembered this because we were talking about Torkelson I believe a week ago or two weeks ago and I saw him randomly my dad was over last night for dinner and we turned on you know a spring training replay game It was just kind of on in the background Torkelson hit

an opposite field home run and his swing was much flatter than it was in previous years so I'm wondering if he I mean he just kind of took this pitch that was outside and up and he stayed on the back top of it and he hit like a blind drive home run to right field and it looked like he hardly swung so I was checking the

flags as the ball was going over there was no wind either and I thought you know maybe it was blowing out and it was a it was beautiful so Watch out Spent from Torkelson looks like he's make trying to make some kind of adjustment that's showing up in games and if that happens his consistency is going to go up greatly He's hitting everything hard to this

spring is he that was the first time about his exit yeah everybody's talking about his exit velocity this spring and what he's doing with some of the advanced metrics and everything else well maybe that's what it is I just thought you're right and said wow that that looks different in a good way so I'm glad that he's doing well after making maybe a small adjustment by

the way we did a mechanical breakdown on Spencer Torkelson mechanical breakdown series is one of our first ones back in 2020 after he was drafted number one overall out of Arizona State so go back in the archives check that out it's on YouTube as well we've done who else have we done we've done pretty much everybody it feels like at this point right have we done

Machado we've done Machado I don't know if we don't I'd love to do Machado though he's one of my favorite swing I don't know you're right I don't know if we did we did a trade turner who hit a home run trade turner but the next week episode 135 that'll be a gold edition that'll be a lot of fun now Derek Jeter overrated underrated I'm not

going to get into that today because I think there's a real gray area there there's a lot of in a lot of ways he was underrated in many ways but a couple of other ways though he was a little bit overrated we'll get to that next week though trade turner you mentioned though hit that home run on Saturday night in the World Baseball Classic we can

do an overrated underrated whether or not the World Baseball Classic is overrated or underrated I thought it was overrated when it first started years ago yeah and I thought coming into this year I said I'm not going I wouldn't watch it if it was played in my backyard yeah but I'm gonna tell you I've tuned in I'm starting to buy into the hype and if baseball

did something correct here I'm talking about the people who put together the World Baseball Classic not major league baseball they scheduled at a perfect time they used up a perfect the perfect month perfect scheduling real estate to get people interested people they're interest very high in base ball right now for spring training right and again people have talked about well maybe what if they played this

after the World Series in November nobody would care they probably wouldn't get 500,000 viewers because everybody's infatuated with college football and the NFL the NBA starting the NHL of course a little bit to an extent so this is a perfect time to have the World Baseball Classic I'm gonna tell you I thought it was overrated at first I think now though with what how this tournament

has turned out and the results and the passion from these players I think it's underrated I do have a theory as to why I want to just hear what you if you think it's overrated or underrated or not I do have a theory I'll get to in a second why I think players enjoyed a lot more I think I'm with you I used to think it

was underrated I'm sorry I used to think it was overrated when it first started but the last year or so maybe two you start to see the passion of the other countries that you normally don't see and the fact that you normally don't see and the fact that you're in the fact that you have a huge Latin American influence in Miami they're playing you know that

as well as the Dominican Puerto Rico they're playing it in Miami you have these fans it's almost like a soccer match it's almost like a World Cup match energy to these games which I think baseball needs and even the US team is they're having fun I mean somebody wrote I think this was trade turners biggest hit of his career I'm not sure I would go with

that he does have a World Series if I'm not mistaken with the national celebrating like it was one of his biggest hits he was celebrating but that's just the energy that it's you're right like it I'm not gonna say I came out of nowhere but it is really fun and then I believe I read something that did Japan play was it Korea Japan play and there

were like it was like 60% of the households in Japan watched the game I think 62 million people oh it was a 60 yeah it was an insane amount it was like larger than the World Series game right it's all the same thing you did 59 million the most World Series ever gotten is 59 million viewers yeah Japan got 62 million yeah yeah it's just it's

a it's a it's awesome is all I'm saying it it's great for the game it's great for the the players I mean I I watch guys you know and they're they're turning hard who was it the other day did they have an inside the park home run and I'm like don't blow out of hamstring you know it was lendoor it was lendoor yeah during the next

that's the last thing the next needed was lendoor blow a hammy trying to go from and he I mean he turned it on you watch a guy you don't see somebody in spring training hitting the bases that heart you just you wouldn't see that but it's bringing out to play for their country and to play with probably guys they grew up with and and there's brothers

I mean it's so sad what happened to Diaz you know but it's playing with his brother on the same national team it's really cool I think Diaz's knee was gonna blow out anyway if he's if it's blowing out jumping around it was gonna blow out at some point the next good point yeah you know the next couple weeks doing conditioning or lifting or whatever so that

that is what it is but yeah no I I would say that it's almost underrated at this point the World Baseball you know I my theory with players why they enjoy this so much we're hearing more and more interviews of of people asking the media asking players hey do you enjoy would you rather win a world series or would you rather win the World Baseball Classic

and a lot of players are down the middle of my theory to this and I said it's a couple of years ago actually on this show after the 2021 All-Star game I noticed something very very different how the players play in that All-Star game I'm noticing something very very different with how they play in their energy that they bring with the World Baseball Classic and my

theory and I'm not trying to dump on analytics here but my theory is that there's less analytics less game planning and you're allowing the athletes just be themselves you're laughing but you know it's true I mean listen look at Mark look at the United States Manager Mark Jim Florentine Dorosa you think he's going by all these game plans he's letting these guys play right I mean

think about it he's allowing these players and their talents to take over and that's exactly what's happening and I think that whether the players know it or not it's infusing a lot of energy into these games and it's making them really fun to watch. Jim you're a sharp guy and that may be one of the smartest things you've ever said. I don't know about that. No

I'm serious I haven't thought about that one I know that. I said it two years ago though the All-Star game when it was in Colorado I'm watching these players in Colorado two years ago flying around and athleticism is off the charts and then a week later they're back to normal regular season play and everybody's just stiff and taking pictures down the middle and doing all that

fun stuff. I don't know Jim that might be a good tweet you throw out there might get some traction that's. You watch Trey Turner's home run last night Saturday night or no two pitch you got he got it right down the middle. He did yeah that's a nice. Right down the middle right. I think I'm just saying I could be wrong probably I think though that

if that was a major league regular season game. Because he was thinking so much because there's so much data and so much game planning involved. He would have taken that pitch right down the middle for straight three but he wasn't thinking about it. Yeah. He let his natural talent take over and that thing traveled 500 feet. Yeah well it's it's fun. Same. You know. Sometimes sometimes

information clogs the the receptors right in the brain and it dreddle in and you start thinking instead of enjoying and I do think that's what you're talking about and the All-Star game and they got you know guys doing interviews in the middle pit between pitches and but it's a fun atmosphere and I do I feel like the World Baseball Classic is a fun atmosphere. It's not

a tense stressful playoff game you know where you can you could cut the tension with it's like you're right guys are going out and having fun and if they win great if they lose there with their buddies and they're having a good time and putting on a show for the fans so. Yeah it would be really interesting to dive in and see what kind of analytics

are being used in the World Baseball Classic. That would be a really good case study. Just tell I don't think though I think we might be on different on different pages here I don't think that there's stress involved. With the well I think there is stress involved and there's I shouldn't say stress tension involved with the World Baseball Classic but guys aren't getting overloaded with all

this information and they're just going out and playing so they can handle that stress. Yeah. Let me make sense. Yeah. No I just they're getting over their country. I don't know what kind of payout there is I haven't read anything on that and how the the pay works if it's just a total revenue share based on all the TV you know money based on all the

TV. That comes in or if it's not a total type it could be if you win you get to a certain pool or yeah. Yeah if you if you like golf if you if you get a certain if you're first place you get a certain. Yeah. I don't know something. Yeah. Interesting. Good work. So I guess it's underrated the World Baseball Classic. Yeah it's underrated still.

Still. Oh you said some a couple of weeks ago I got to ask you we're doing overrated underrated today part four. Get back to that in just a second we have a couple of YouTube comments I want to get to here. Oh yeah I'll just get to this real quick one. So I'm going to ask you if you want to go on Roger where on YouTube

on the lab Epstein Ditty Podcast YouTube page he commented we were talking about again the pitch clock for the 18th week in a row last week. I it's made I made a promise to myself this week we are not we are not talking about the pitch clock I'm not asking you if the pitch clock is overrated or underrated although I should ask you what your father

thinks about that but I promise myself I would not ask about the pitch clock and big mic by the way said he'd love to do a podcast one day so I'll have to give him a break. I'm going to go in for you one day. Yeah that's a good idea maybe we'll do that. I'm not going to go and I'm going to have to go set

up the computer. I'm going to have to go do everything. He's telling me to come over your house set up the laptop or whatever you set up the camera and about a big bottle boom. There you go. Good idea. Very easy. Now he's actually very computer literate at 80 years old he's still got it. Yeah. Okay Roger where on YouTube. Yeah. About talking about about the

pitch clock because this discussing the MLB pitch clock was a clip from last week. Easy fix. Better stay in the box. I agree but with seasoned veterans it's not that easy because they've been trained for so long a certain way and I understand that they have to adjust and they will because they're the best in the world to do this but it's not as easy as

people think. There was even the rule in college we had to have one foot in the box. Yeah I hate that. Yeah. And it's like okay well you still have one foot out of the box and then they're going to do that eight second deal where oh he's got a foot out of the box he's not set his eyes aren't on the picture. Yeah. La bla

bla so I don't I don't think anything works I think we weren't going to talk about it but I think I think you have your 15 seconds. And the I don't care what the batter does right I mean I get it if the batter is out of the box but I would say you have your 15 seconds and the picture can. Pretty much throw anytime once

it gets to whatever seven seconds he can throw a pitch. If the hitters you know in the box or whatever I don't know if there's a right way or wrong way but the whole eyes need to be on the picture I don't know I think that's up to the hitter to decide whether or not he wants to hit it. All right next week I promise we're

not talking about the pitch clock. We did a little bit this week sorry. I blame I blame our listener comment there. I blame. I blame. He. Mr. Wear brought up right. Yeah. We didn't bring it up. Yeah. You know we can do is we could put like a shot collar on him and if like a like for an invisible fence for a dog or shot collar

on us right or that would probably be better if we start getting off topic that we just right that's like that would be like our extra producer. Yeah tell us instead of telling us that our ears telling us that that's right. Stay on top. Say something else about the hitters forget now. Oh I want to announce or this isn't about hitters. I want the announcers just

stop saying that's the first disengagement or just say just go back to the regular way of saying how he called time and then if if there's if the disengagement comes into play or if there's too many disengagement and it causes a ball or a strike then you could say that but just say time asked for and granted by you know Phil Coussey the best time. Game.

And the hitter actually put she was a right-handed hitter. She put her left hand and called time to the pitcher. Yup she didn't put her back handback she just went to the pitcher and said time. Hey. Hold up. It was back your backyard softball. She was the smallest girl on the field and commanded the most respect with that one move. Yeah that's very big. Your boss

move. Yeah it was. You know you're taught when you're younger to turn out of the way of a pitch instead of trying to catch it if it's coming at you if you're a kid and you catch parents are going to get mad at me here. If you catch that pitch that's coming at you and it's preventing it from hitting you that's kind of boss too. That

is just throw it down. It's something like Toronto would do from Major League. Yeah it's been it's happened before right. I remember the one was it Matt Noakes or somebody got hit by Roger Clemens. And he caught it like in his armpit. Yeah. I think it may have been Matt Noakes. Did they cross paths and then Matt Noakes to or whoever it was it was a

left hand here. Took a couple steps to first base and then pulled it out of his armpit and fired it back as hard as he could. Clemens and Clemens just caught it like it was nothing. I was like. Yeah. Not only did you like drill the guy but then you made him look like he had a weak arm. Well this was in the 90s too. Now

we're talking about hitters getting hit by pitches. Mike Mathini got hit in the face and he spit a bunch of teeth out I think it was and then he just ran down to first like it was nothing. The 90s was a different decade man. There is a different breed back then. steroids run and ramp it. He got hit. You know what? I'm going to look at

it right now and I'm sorry for the pause here. First thing by the way comes up on my YouTube YouTube.com. Dre turner's Grand Slam. Yeah. Don't tell me. Don't tell me that World Baseball Classic. I should be telling myself this. Don't tell me the World Baseball Classic isn't something that people are really enjoying and is a lot fun. I'll say I had a good buddy of

mine here in Colorado was at the Games in Arizona. You know, one of the US Games in Arizona and he had his sons there and he's taking pictures. You know, they had really good seats right behind the dugout kind of. He's taking pictures. It's like. He's running around in bats and Ken Griffey Jr. and I mean, to see all of these guys playing in the same

place. That's pretty cool for a fan. Well, Ken Griffey Jr. hitting in the batting cage. These wings still looks the same. But it doesn't. He talked about this many on many episodes. Here's the video I'm watching by the way and you can't see it. I'm sorry. But yeah, the I'm going to try to describe it here. The thingy right handed batter. He's up. Right. The fastball

rides high and in. It looks to be right in the center of the face, but hits him in the mouth and he just stands there with his hands on his hips. And he literally start. He's playing for the Brewers. He literally starts walking across the plate and spits out a bunch of blood and teeth. So if you're interested, if you want to watch that video, I

suggest going to YouTube and just search mic. Methini hit in the face. Yeah, Ken Griffey Jr. was hitting in the batting cage though. It's amazing. We it's amazing how his swing is the same. But then again, it's not really all that amazing because you talked about this before. You're swing from when you were in high school to college to pro. See when you're retired, religion change.

I guess. I guess the pillars of those of that swing and what makes you a really good hitter doesn't change all that much. You can make adjustments. But they're sort of absolutes that you do that make you that great hitter like 10 Griffey Jr. Yeah. And swing just looks the same. Yeah, I mean, it's his style. He probably had that style. He was 12, you know,

his elbow and his rhythm. And then it was in great. And our minds watching him play, you know, for all those years. And then he shows up with gray and his beard and, you know, wiggles the same way he used to had his hat on backwards and, you know, weighs a little bit more now. But it was the same guy. I don't know. I remember my

dad telling me that they were taking BP with the senators. And I don't know what year was probably 69. And you know, guys are hitting balls and Williams who's old at that time. My dad said he was probably in his, I mean, he was 50s maybe, or at least 50s. And he's like, this is how you do a boys. And he got in there. And he

hit some balls. And my dad's like, it looked like Ted Williams. But it didn't sound like Ted. When he hit the ball, there was just these weak, you know, top spin, line drives into right center field. And my dad said at that point, he says, never take a swing for players younger than you. When you're teaching somebody and telling them what to do and you're old,

do not swing for them. Because they were going to lose respect in you. So I wonder what those balls looked like off the bat with King Griffey Jr. I don't know. They haven't on video though. And all the players were gathered around the batting cage watching. That tells you something right there. Our other YouTube comment. This is from Randy Pol on YouTube, the lab Bipson getting

podcasting comment on last week's episode, another great episode I play in the over 50 league in Colorado Springs. I might I my own best coach and my swing is much better than when I played at Dirty High School here. In the Springs. So nobody really knows where Dirty High School is in Colorado Springs. But oh, okay. And he finishes off the science of hitting you do.

Okay. Well, you know, you're Mr. Cal your fucking. Yeah. Sorry. The science of hitting taught me. Is there still a minor league team in Colorado Colorado Springs? Yeah, they moved the 18 there. It's the vibes now. I believe the vibes. They're called the vibes. That's such a millennial. No doubt about it. If you look up there, look up their mascot, it's like a. It's like the

jumbo shrimp in Jacksonville. Yeah. No, it's like a toasted marshmallow. It's like a small guy holding a peace sign. All right. It's kind of cool. Yeah. It's not bad. They probably have a lot of the brewers used to be there. The brewers used to be at the Springs. They probably have a lot of easy marketing theme and promotional nights. They do. Yeah. The science of hitting

is from Randy. The science of hitting taught me to hit in 1971. Well, that's good. I think maybe our podcast is making you Randy your own best coach. Thank you for the comment though. Do appreciate that. Thanks for the listens in the comments. Everybody. Yeah. Emails your questions. Jimbo podcast 21 at. Gmail.com. Yeah. Or you can call us at. Jimbo podcast 21. You can call that

number. Well, you can't. We'll call you back. Send us a number. Maybe you can like Microsoft teams it or something. I used that for the first time the other day. I'm out of Microsoft guy, but I have an online chat. You're a chat GPT guy. Yeah, that's me. No, I had one of my one of my long time students is in the online academy lives down

in in Georgia. And so going through his high school is a really good high school player. Freshman playing varsity kind of going through that. You know, varsity baseball in Georgia is like Florida. You know, they pretty good. It's it's better than most states. And you know, he's a 15 year old kid and there's 18 and 19 year olds on his team. And, you know, sometimes we

try to do a little bit too much to stress ourselves out. So we were going through. It was kind of like a zoom meeting, but we use Microsoft teams to kind of talk through some of his at bats and it was great. It was really cool. So Microsoft teams. Yeah. Good job. Yeah. Didn't you have another thing happen this week that tested your test. It did.

It did. It made you wonder. No, it did not test my existence. But we could talk. I thought we had a underrated, overrated on that. Did we? Yeah. Well, it was on. Oh, we did. We did. All right. We'll get that. I'll bring it up. That's good show planning. I'll run the show, Jim. No problem. I'm just going to say you should you you are running

the show today. I need that that collar would have come in handy. You know, that'd be right there. I have to ask you something by the way. You said, you made a comment like, I don't know, five weeks ago or something. I don't remember any episodes ago. But you said something interesting that I never heard of before. I want to ask you about it. And you

need to expound on it. Is it expound? Do people say expound? Expand or expound? Yeah. Right. A combo swing plane. You mentioned that you kind of slipped it in without much of an, which is fine. No big deal without an explanation though. And I've never heard it before. And I got very intrigued. So let's go over that. What is a combo swing plane? What's the definition

of that? And what hitters that you can think of off the top of your head actually have that combo swing plane? Well, a combo swing plane. There's two planes to the swing. And sometimes people talk about different planes. And you don't really know which one you're talking about. So there's a plane that is correlated to the pitch trajectory. As it relates to the ground. So the

pitch dropping from the pitchers hand to the catchers mid is on a plane. Of say negative 10 degrees. Okay. Coming down. But then you also have a plane of your swing. That goes around your body. Right. I mean, we rotates and our hand path is somewhat circular rotational. So our barrel path is circular. Okay. It's not a straight line. You can't take a straight line and

rotate at some point. If you're a right handed batter, your barrel moves to the left. Or if you're a left handed batter, it moves to the right. So you swing off of the plane if you're out in front. So making sure we line up both would be your combo swing plane. Making sure you talk about the guys. I can't think of his name right now. But

he's he's it's the farm, whatever. In Vegas, that guy. And he has he's the big scissor guy right where he has these things kind of slip as you hit, which which is kind of, you know, like that's what I'm talking about. What it is what it is, right. That's his trading tool. But the idea that he's preaching is is good. You know, his idea of getting

your barrel to make sure that it doesn't pull off. It doesn't over rotate. By making sure your body doesn't over rotate is is making sure you're staying on point. Your barrel is moving maybe towards the opposite field a little bit more, which I do a lot. With my players, we do a lot of that. We don't, you know, we're we're in a more stable base working

on that. But it's the idea is the same. So making sure that we're both I guess that's the best way to put the direction of our barrel path, not pulling off. And then the barrel path not dropping underneath the pitch plane or going down too much to the pitch plane. We have to make sure that both of those are consistent. And if they are then we

maximize our barrels. We maximize not just being on point, but not hitting off the end. I have a lot of players that their swing plane matches the pitch point really well, but they always hit the ball off the end of the bat. They just for some reason, their hands go to the pole side a little bit too quick, or they don't extend at the right time.

And so matching those two guys up is really, really important for not only consistency and making contact, but then maximizing the exit velocity as well by hitting the barrel. I'm speaking for myself here. Overrated underrated the scissors. Oh, completely overrated. Completely overrated. I think it happens. Of course, it happens naturally. It's not. I mean, it's happened for since they've been playing the game, you know, forcing

that move versus teaching the move. You know, it's not an absolute. That's for sure to each their own. No, I'm speaking for myself. The people who teach it though, make it an absolute based off their science. But it's not an absolute. It's not. Sorry. Okay. That's why you're the best in the business, Jim. I'm speaking for myself here. Jake is not speaking. Right now for the

on this topic. I'm speaking for myself on the lab. I'm speaking right now at this moment. I love that. I have a little bit of everybody. You love a little bit of everybody. I don't. I always find something that I can take. Doesn't mean I'll agree with everyone. It doesn't mean that I'll, but I'll listen to everyone. And I will say there's usually something that makes

me better. That I can take away listening to other people. Even is. I mean, that the farm board is a very drastic, right? And that's a very drastic move. Just like the. What's his real name? Richard teacher, man, his, his move is a very drastic move. But there are parts of those drastic moves that I really like. I can't. Maybe it works for their players. I

have to, I have to kind of take hitting. He's a pretty instruction has turned into professional wrestling. We've got the farm board. That's like their little group. Right? What do you call that wrestling when they have like a group of wrestlers? They're like in one. That's their group. And then you've got the teacher teacher. What's his face? And he has his, you know, moniker. Yeah. It's

it's really. Remember mean Jean. No mean Jean had to be before your time. No, I remember mean Jean. He was the guy. One time where who was it? That's one of the wrestlers was yellow. He was yelling at mean Jean. And in his announcer voice, he goes, don't you yell at me? And mean Jean had a mean mustache. He did. Yeah. He's very. Me. Jean was

in good shape. He would. He could have easily become a wrestler. Who was. Was it. Did Andre was it Andre the giant that that put his hands around his neck or something and choked him or, you know, maybe. That's a big hand. If you want to see something interesting. My cousin sent me this. It was Andre the giant. Holding like a beer can. Hold on. It

would have it would have looked like we're holding not even the small soda kids anymore. It'd be like us holding one of those old things that used to hold film. His his hand size. 16 inches Andre the giant. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So he's grabbing mean Jean's neck. That's not good for mean Jean. Right. I want to see. I want to see. Never mind. Move on. Overrated.

I'm tired. These fucking hitting. Do you watch Ted Lasso at all? A little bit. It just reminds me of one of the guys Roy Kent. He doesn't like to blow the whistle. So he just yells whistle whistle to get people's attention. That's kind of like the shot color idea. Oh, a stance doctor Steve too. He's got a he's got a nickname as well. He does. He's

got a stance doctor. Dan's Doctor Steve. Yeah. He'd be in the main event. That's so it's really gotten off track. Um. You're Steve. Dan's Doctor Steve. Um, okay. Overrated. Let's get to it. Here we go. Um, we've done the World Baseball Classic. We've done South Felix mustache. Um, very underrated. Ladies got to love that mustache. And, um, by the way, free. I was like, I didn't

know that was an Italian name. What about South? Sal is very Italian. Yeah. He's that is that is. I that's your right. He doesn't even need a last name. He really doesn't need a last name to play. It's like you. It's like you. Just. Yeah. Just here comes you know, Sal to the plate. That's it. All right. Let's we go across functionality. We talked to Cassie

and I technology. Gizmo's and gadgets when it comes to hitting. Yeah. So I'm gonna give you some technology here. I want to see what you think. If it's overrated or underrated, here we go. I think I know the answer to this. Blast motion technology overrated or underrated. I don't know Jim. These are really hard questions. All right. Um, diving. They overrated underrated. It depends how you

use it. So, okay. Blast motion for a parent and a kid. Or instructor. For instructor. The right instructor. It would be underrated. All right. Yeah. What about diving genetics? I don't know. I like blast blast was easy to use. It's set up quick. I never had any issues with it. I tried diving kinetics. I think back before it got rebranded and it was a glitched out

on me. So I just stopped using them. They weren't good. Also, I want to add context to this. This equipment is a lot. And Cassie and I talked about this. It's a lot of money. But we're taking the money out of it. If you hadn't if you had an unlimited budget to get all of this. This equipment. All these pieces of equipment to use. That's when

we that's how why that's the context we're talking about when we say overrated underrated. All right. Here's a good one. Oculus virtual reality. I love the virtual reality. Overrated underrated. Overrated. Really? Okay. Why? I read a study on this that it really doesn't help with pitch tracking. Three to mention like the live. Meaning it's not the same as watching an actual object of actual size coming

at you. Okay. Now, in terms of timing and rhythm, I think it could be very, very beneficial. We've tried it. We use the heck out of it. And I think it's pretty cool. But everybody loses interest. So for that sense, I would say it's it's overrated because it doesn't people didn't want to use it. I thought it was a pretty good idea. But I couldn't get

players to do it after a couple weeks. All right. K vest overrated underrated. Probably all of that. There's no gray area here. Well, no, I mean, there's a lot of different. There's K vest. Any kind of 3D kinematic sequencing, right? Or not? We're not talking about because there's K vest. There's 40 motion. There's now you can do AI stuff with just video that shows kinematic sequencing.

So are we grouping all kinematic sequencing kind of sensors? Yeah. They're just dead. So I guess we are. Yeah. So I would say for the most part aside from what I'm going to talk about overrated. Really? Yeah. But you mostly use K vest though. I do. Yeah. But it doesn't matter which one. You're you're looking at the results. And you think it's overrated because you have

had an experience with a student that was using K vest that really didn't. Right. I'm going to say it's overrated because if you're good, it doesn't matter. If you hit the ball really well, I don't really care what your K vest sequencing is. Okay. There are big leaguers that are in sequence and there are big leaguers that are out of sequence. There are hitters. There's that

are big and strong and don't produce any bat speed. And then there's small people that produce a ton of bat speed. And when you make these changes, for instance, I've made a separation change between torque torque angles. Right. So your upper body is closed more. Your lower body is opened more. It's not a drastic. It's not going to make you if you're hitting the ball 80

miles an hour. And I increase your torque angle by 10. 10 degrees or your separation angle or your X factor or your king or whatever you want to call it three dimensionally. Your exit velocity might go up two miles an hour. Okay. So we're not talking like from 80 to 82. We're not talking about massive gains when we see this. However, I have a player that

I'm working with now. And he's strong. He's pretty big. He's a hundred and seventy five hundred eighty pounds. He can put up a little bit of weight. You know, he's stronger than other people, other players that I work with. But he hits the ball 18 miles an hour less than some of them. And he's like, a Vlad or a trader trader. Yeah. So, you know, it's

more of like a turn swing. And he was taught that, like by a guy, you have the last couple of years before I got to, it's not a bad swing. Like he, but the barrel never releases. So I'm like, Hey, I want to put the K vest on you. Okay. Which is going to tell us where you're missing out. Like where you're either not an athlete

in your muscle fibers don't fire fast enough. Right. Some people do. Some people are freaks and they jump higher and they run faster and they, they see pitches better and they can react earlier. So what's, where's the disc? Is there a physical disc? So I put them on the K vest and essentially his left arm and his torso move at the same speed. Okay. So he

never stacks his kinematic sequencing from his shoulder rotation to his arms. He was never taught to use his arms or hands. Okay. So when you look at guys that are real wippy. Or handsy like Hank Aaron. Okay. Hank Aaron was like 165 pounds, 170 pounds. And he's swing a big ol' bat and he just flipped that barrel out there all the time. And he centered it

and it had speed. So why can a player that stronger not do that? Well, he's not getting the energy to his bat head. So the K vest in that instance is telling me as an instructor where we can make gains. Okay. I will tell you how hard that is to make that gain. I've been doing this a really long time and I've studied a lot and

I've worked with a lot of players. And I feel like I'm a pretty decent coach for communication and information. And this is going to be very difficult for me to get to. It really is. It's not going to be easy because I saw the disconnect without using the K vest. Like, okay, you need to like your arms and hands don't do anything. So how can we

like get you to release the barrel? So I'm doing some directional stuff we've been doing trying to take his rotation out of it with his chest. But it's going to take us a long time. It's going to be a really cool case study over the summer. It's not something I can do during the high school season, unfortunately. So it's going to be a month, you know,

three to four month project. But it'll be really interesting if we can add 10% to his to his batski if we can go from 80 to 88. That would be really, really cool. So we'll have to revisit this later in the summer and see if it can happen because he's a pretty good athlete. We will revisit this. And everything you said there, as always, brilliant. It's

very complicated information that the K vest is telling you. I agree. And I want to say this about the K vest. This is why I think it's overrated because everybody likes to on Twitter, the professional wrestling part of hitting on Twitter. Right. There are K vest people. There are a lot of K vest people. I respect that. That's fun. Right. Maybe I'm just. I want to

go to an app to really understand what the K vest truly does. I'm more like you a blast motion guy. I do like some virtual reality. But maybe that's just the kid in me. I don't know. Yeah. Maybe I just refused to grow up. But at the same time with K vest, there's one thing that the K vest people, really the technology people in general don't

ever mention. And you mentioned it in there. It's getting stronger. It's getting in the weight room. Yeah. It's doing exercises. Whether that be bench press, squat, lift, landmine press, which is actually better for your shoulders if you're a baseball player than the bench press. It's doing those types of exercises and trying to get as strong as you possibly can and gaining as much weight. Good weight

as you possibly can. I follow this scout on Twitter. And he always makes that point about how if you want to gain weight, this is what you do. If you want to get stronger, get in the weight room. Because that to me, Trump's all technology. I don't care what your kinematic sequencing is when it comes to the K vest, if you're hitting the ball 400 feet,

if you have the proper bat quickness, if you have the absolutes that we've talked about before, if you're strong enough to hit the ball 400 feet, if you're strong enough to play at the next level. At the end of the day, the kinematic sequencing with K vest, no disrespect. It doesn't matter because you've got the absolutes. And on top of the absolutes, you have the strength

and you have the weight to play at the next level. You've got the body to play at the next level to where you're not going to get hurt and you're actually going to go out there and play game. And you're going to be a reliable player to play games on the field. Yeah, it's hard because the K vest is, I mean, if you put a K

vest on, trade turner, you're like, okay, good job. But everybody's kinematic sequencing in baseball, it's not always one, two, three, four. Okay. And one, two, three, four means the hips reach maximum speed first. Then they start to accelerate. Then the torso reaches maximum speed. Second, then it starts to accelerate. Arm reaches maximum speed third and then the hand. Okay. So that's your, your sequence. But there

are a ton of major ligers that are one, three, two, four, meaning their hips reach max, their hips reach maximum speed first. That has to be everybody. Okay. Their hips reach maximum. But then there are reaches maximum speed. Second. And then their torso is third, which is considered out of sequencing. And if you just took it into context, then you would cut that person, right? And

then you put the K vest on a, on a Dominican that was 14 years old and it wasn't one, two, three, four. And you didn't have the right people. You just went by the manual. You'd be like, Oh, well, we're not going to sign this kid. And that's the furthest thing from the good example here of this. And I want to bring this guy up. Jeremy

Pania. We think people are talking about what his K vest numbers are. You know the only thing they're talking about or they have been talking about the last what year or so with Jeremy Pania. How big he's gotten. How much stronger he is big. Yeah. The biggest short stops physically in all we're talking about Derek Jeter next week. Jared. Jared Jeter. Apparently physically was a rail.

He was skinny compared to Jeremy Pania. Right. Now Jeter is was. No. As a stand up player than Jeremy Pania. I'm not comparing the two as players because it's not fair to do. Jeremy Pania is very early in his career. But what are people not talking about his blast motion his K vest. I love blast motion. Yeah. It's true. Nobody's talking about his metrics. They're talking

about how much stronger he's gotten. How much bigger he's gotten. How reliable he is. His absolute set the plate. That's all people talk about with Jeremy Pania. Yeah. Performance. And Ken technology help with performance. Ken the K vest. So I did the K vest at Texas Tech with Texas Exx softball. Right. And it just tells me what's where are deficiencies. Okay. And then we can work

on those deficiencies. Now usually I can see those deficiencies on video just because I used K vest side by side. I was video for so long that I can kind of see. Okay. That's going to look at this. So we used it with those players. There was one girl. We strapped on the. I'm sorry. I opened up the box for K vest. She was a transfer

student. Transfer player from a West Coast. National Powerhouse School. Okay. I'll just leave it at that. And she's like, Oh, God, I hate that thing. And I was like, wow, you've used the K vest before. And she said. She used it like every day in practice. And because I wasn't in sequence, it was just like, they were just hammering me. You got to do this. You

got to do this. And it just got in my head that I couldn't react to pitches anymore because I was thinking about my body parts all. You know, all the time. So sometimes you overdo something that can be a good thing. And, and that's a bummer. And this girl can hit. But she was out of sequence. And I saw that. And I said, Okay, we'll try

from these drills and these drills on the side. To help with that number versus strap this thing on every day and make you're, you know, doing this. So you have to be careful every athlete's different too. Alright, some people don't respond to technology and some people do. Overrated underrated wrapping it up here. Get a couple of more and we'll get to them really quick. Your batting

stance. How you set up overrated underrated. I think it's overrated. It's overrated. Yeah. Has to be comfortable. I don't care what it is. Alright. A couple of statistical overrated underrated opportunities here. RBI overrated underrated. RBI is not RBI. Don't say RBI. He has 18 RBI. Fucking assholes. But it's always runs. Runs bad it in. Not runs bad it is. It's not. It's. The S and RBI

is attached to the runs. The R. Oh, it's okay. Well, then it's okay. It's not 18 run bad it in. If people say that. I'm telling you right now you sound like a fucking idiot. You're off. Don't stay that. I'm not talking to you. What we're talking about RBI. Yeah. Over. RUNs created plus overrated underrated. RBI is I love. I asked. No, I asked for a

different one because you ruined it because you said RBI. Alright. Alright, is it overrated underrated? Go ahead underrated. Alright. They're still ruined. Rated runs created. Some people say it's overrated. But they're also the same. I know they do RBI. I know they do. Weighted runs created plus overrated underrated. I'll go with overrated. It seems to be a little bit big. It's too much. It's talked about

too much. But I do think it's important. Weighted runs created to me is overrated. Weighted runs created plus is like plus. Is that based on that? That's what the stadium and the weather and the wind. Yes. Okay. Extranious factors will call them. Yeah. Involved and that's the statistic. Yes. Alright, final one here. Overrated underrated. I have more. What's that? I have a couple more we're going

to talk about. Okay. Because obviously you missed it when you're making your notes. I did whistle whistle hitting against a firm front side overrated underrated. Oh. A rod didn't hit against a firm front side mind you. Yeah, he did. No, he did not. Sure he did. Not always. Contact. Look at contact. So I'll say that it's overrated. But the majority of the time that front legs

got to come back. Because that accelerates your hip. Your front hip snaps back and around. Not your back hip, but your front hip will rotate back and around. He's not exactly completely firm. He always bent it after. I will say that. It was always very bent after. I'm going to say it's an absolute though. The front the front knee has to be straight and hold on.

Not at contact, by the way. So it's usually in the power of the in the extension position. So maybe, you know, if it's normal video say 60 to 120 frames per second. It's usually two frames. One to two frames after they make contact. With the bat that front leg usually straightens out. So I would call that an absolute. I don't know if it's overrated or underrated,

but. Okay, but the title of the show is over it. So it's great that it's an absolute. But it's overrated or underrated. That's the question. That's the main question. Contact or during the swing. If it's at contact totally overrated, it should not be straight at contact overrated. If it has to straighten through contact. Underrated. That's just right now. You're right. You're Jake down the middle. Get

out running for the mayor of Denver. Jake down the middle. Yeah. I would like to talk about. Yeah. What were the other? Do you have any more technology? Because I like hit tracks hit tracks and rap so though. I think those are those are technologies that are. I do believe they're underrated for the most part because it can tell us so much about the battered ball

is the key. So the reason I don't care about blast is because I don't really care how fast the barrel is moving. So many people are like, oh, I swing the bat so hard. But if you never hit the barrel, if you never hit the sweet spot, if you're. If your barrel's not on plane with the pitch or combo. Cumbot plane action. Then it doesn't matter.

Like what is the end result? What is the ball doing? I'm a huge. What is the trajectory of that? How high or how lower are we hitting it? And the clusters. If we take 60 swings today and we take 60 swings tomorrow and we end up taking 300 swings this week. When you hit the ball to this part of the field on these pitches, what is

your ball flight typically? Are you hitting it too high there? Are you hitting it too low to the pole side? Like that information to me is so very important. And then with the rap so that you can see the ball. So the spin is so crucially important. When I hit a ball to the right field, what is the spin direction? What is the spin rate? When

I hit it to the pole side, what is it? Is it hooking or can I get a little more backspin on that? I think those numbers are really crucially important. And I'll tell you why when I was in. Oh, well, this isn't the only reason why. But when I was I went from Cal State, Follerton to buteman, TAN, to play pro ball, right? A week after

the draft or five days after the. The draft and I played this was. So I played with a metal bat a pretty much more potent metal bat than today's metal bat than today's baby poor, but not as crazy as it got about five years later. But still a metal bat where I didn't really have to use my hands much. I could I was a big guy.

I just kind of rotated and I found a barrel and I would hit home runs. Why get the pro ball? And I'm taking BP and usually I'll hit. I don't know. I hit a lot of balls over the fence and BP and I'm hitting the fence like in BP. I'm hitting the ball off the ball. I'm hitting the warning track. I'm hitting. I'm like, what the,

are these balls bad? Is the wood? Am I swinging crappy wood? Whatever. Both of those were probably the case. But still. So my Venezuela, we probably have talked about this, but I'll never forget Monzi. Okay. I don't remember his first name, but Monzone was his last name and he was Venezuelan and he's in any English. And he got me to pretty much do a drill right

in use my legs at all. And I just kind of used my forearms and wrists. I was just going to kind of do in a, I call it the loose hands drill, right? It's part of my program now. And I did that and he would do it every day before I would step into the turtle to take BP on the field. Right. We would hit into

a net behind home plate. I would do it. Kind of rapid fire. And it just made me feel barrel release, like using my hands. And then all of a sudden I started to match that up with my stride. So my foot would I stride my foot would hit the ground. And then I would just think about that hand action that he was teaching me. And the

ball started going 30 to 40 feet further. 30 to 40 feet, maybe even more than that. What the heck? Like how did that happen? I didn't get any stronger. I didn't have, I wasn't rotating faster. I wasn't using my legs more. I was using the weakest muscles in my body to release the bad head. My fingers, wrists and forearms. And what it essentially was doing was

all the energy I was building through my kinematic sequence of rotating my legs. My hips and my shoulders. I was finally releasing that energy at the right time. I don't think my bat speed was much harder. But the ball flight was different. And the spin was different. I was getting backspin more instead of hook spin or side spin to the pole side. And all of a

sudden I started to hit easier home runs. If I were to have that and used a metal bat in college, I may have actually made some money, you know, coming out of the draft till they figured out I couldn't play defense. But that's a different story altogether. So I don't know where we're going to be. That people run in used to run into that a lot

with metal bats. The metal bat. Yeah. The bats. They gave you this illusion because the sweet spot was so big that I don't want to say, I don't want to miss. Yeah, guys were hitting 30. Maybe you were stronger than what you were. And you by you and you're doing doing it wrong. Right. You're the metal bat was allowing you to use you to your point.

The weaker muscles in your body to hit the ball a long way. Yeah. You're a vice versa. Like in my case, all I had to do was turn and just kind of turn to the ball and catch it. But yeah, there were a lot of guys rolled with linear hitting, right? There were a lot of guys that that didn't rotate much. They were just kind of

finding a barrel. So, yeah, but getting back to the technology. That's why the ball flight. The rap so to and they're expensive. Yeah. The track man is 28 grand or something. They're in the hit tracks is 20 grand. The rap so does leads to expensive expensive of the bunch. But they're not going to be a lot of money. They really do give you good information. Alrighty.

Well, good stuff today overrated, underrated part. Quattro. Very good. That was a good one. That was good underrated overrated. Net will do another one later on sometime down the line. Next week, mechanical breakdown series, a gold edition. We're doing Derek Jeter breaking down the swing of a legend in that of Derek. It's cool. His will make so much sense. Like we all know Derek Jeter and

he was big and tall. But why did he hit it's right field? That's what we're going to cover. That would be a lot of fun. Alright, be sure to subscribe. Apple Google Spotify. Leave a review. Email a stream of podcasts 21 and Gmail.com. Follow us on social media at Jim Tara at Epstein hitting. And what I forget YouTube. The lab Epstein hitting podcast YouTube page. Come

find us get better. Yeah. Alright, we will talk to you next week. Everybody take care. Have a great.