Former Mets’ area scouting supervisor Jon Updike believes in paying it forward.

As a former 28th-round pick by the Seattle Mariners in the 1993 MLB Draft, Updike reflects fondly on the scout, John Ramey, who took the chance on him as a reliever and offered Updike all he could ask for: an opportunity.

After his professional playing career was over, in which he spent time with the Mariners, Milwaukee Brewers and Texas Rangers organizations, Updike transitioned into a college baseball coach in Florida. The connections and relationships Updike built in Florida led him back to professional baseball, where the New York Mets hired him as their area scouting supervisor in North and Central Florida in 2014.

Updike’s new career offered him the chance to afford opportunities to young players, just as Ramey had done more than two decades prior for him.

The life of a scout includes logging a ton of miles on the road while traveling from game to game, building relationships with coaches, players and families, and doing extensive scouting work on why a particular player should merit an organization to sign him.

While scouting can often be a thankless job, remaining in the background while the talent they scouted and signed hopes to see their dreams imagined, Updike’s name was often mentioned throughout the 2019 season.

That’s because one of the players he signed back in 2016 burst onto the scene, surpassing Aaron Judge for the single-season rookie home run record while becoming the sixth Met to win Rookie of the Year: Pete Alonso.

Part of Updike’s job as a scout was to not only identify tools and projections but also assess a player’s work ethic and makeup. Those traits stood out for Updike when he was scouting Alonso, as he saw a player that not only had the talent but also the composure to handle the large media market that is New York.

In last year’s draft, Updike was responsible for signing Matt Allan out of Seminole High School in Sanford, Florida, in the third round. The right-handed pitcher was considered to be a potential first-round talent on many draft boards, but fell with concerns of his asking price along with his commitment to the University of Florida.

The Mets restructured their draft and were able to save money from their draft pool by signing college seniors in rounds four through ten for below-slot bonuses to help meet Allan’s demands.

This past November, SNY’s Andy Martino reported that Updike left the organization to begin his next chapter as President of Digital Scouting and Player Development Solutions for BaseballCloud, a software company that offers technical, data-driven solutions for players and clubs.

BaseballCloud digests in-game metrics from multiple technologies and accessories and is then presented in a way that’s easy to understand in order to track progress and areas for a player to work on.

BaseballCloud was designed for players and coaches as an easy-to-read development tool that allows users to store and track their data and progress. That tracking of progress is what Updike refers to as player mapping. The analysis BaseballCloud provides allows players and coaches to view their data with 3D visualizations and graphics that are easy to grasp and utilize for a player’s development.

The hope is that BaseballCloud allows for more impact on the development of amateur players, getting them more accustomed to the data and metrics while consistently tracking their progress using their revolutionary software.

Updike’s new occupation incorporates his extensive scouting background with analytics to provide custom visualization tools that transform how data is used at the amateur levels.

While he’s no longer affiliated with a specific Major League organization, Updike now has the chance to impact even more young athletes hoping for the chance to one day make it professionally.

He hopes the software will help propel amateur players to reach even more of their potentials while providing them with all he could ask for in his own professional playing career, and what he afforded to many players in the Mets organization: an opportunity.

I had the privilege of speaking with Updike this past December, where he talked about his life as a scout and new role with BaseballCloud. This interview has been split into two parts given its length.

MMO: Can you talk about BaseballCloud and your role with the company?

Updike: I’m the president of Digital Scouting and Player Development Solutions. What that really means is we’re basically a software company; we digest the in-game capture, which would be at the professional level Trackman, FlightScope and Yakkertech. We’re working right now with Hawkeye and the accessory technologies like bat sensors, biometric sensors and camera vision.

We’re the people that can blend the technology, and we’re working at creating solutions to what the tech or the metrics means from a player development and player identification value standpoint.

MMO: Your background is in scouting, and fans have long heard about the old guard vs. new guard when it comes to baseball decisions. Have you been interested in and utilized analytics in your work for some time now?

Updike: Yeah. I have a playing background, and I’ve kind of touched on everything as a player and coach. It’s part of our game in scouting and player acquisition.

I think sometimes the narrative and impression of our game is every major league club has an analytics and R&D department. But there are 30 clubs, and there’s still a first-place and last-place club. Just because you have it doesn’t mean it’s going to make you good. You have to understand the information, digest it, understand just not how to apply it but how to use it to get players better.

We’re the largest provider of software solutions to Division I programs. I come from a scouting standpoint and understand where they’re at from a player’s standpoint because we were scouting the players. But what are the universities doing from a technology standpoint? Major League Baseball uses the technology first in an evaluative process so that you can value and evaluate the player. But it’s also from a player acquisition standpoint; it’s financial. That’s why a lot of technology exists, so they can make better financial decisions.

That’s not the main goal at the collegiate level. The main goal is to develop better players. It’s also a smaller group of players that they have to deal with, so you’re able to grow a player to your coaching and technological philosophy over a four-year period, which is a really unique study.

We have some schools that we partnered with, and it’s amazing. I’m a scout, so I like to group things and I’m a maker of lists. It’s like the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria. There are clubs that are on the first boat, and the advantage of being there is you get off and you’ve got the lay of the land. You get to pick what you want, and you’re the leader. But along with that comes the risk of errors.

The majority, and what we’re seeing in professional baseball, is that second group. They’re going to adapt, and we’re seeing it with a lot of the hirings on the player development end. It’s not that they want pushback or they don’t want to do it, but it’s got to be a good financial decision, but secondary to that is they don’t want to be wrong.

The truth is we’re still in the third inning. The machines are incredible, but they’re adapting in proving accuracy issues. There are questions to what a lot of the information means, because now we’re going from game metrics to biometrics, and quite honestly, we’re not doctors. With the new technology, it’s going to be this plethora of information, and once again, how are you going to use it? Is it going to be evaluative? Or is it going to be used for developmental purposes?

Our main goal is to aid in steering it toward development and maximizing that aspect of it. But the same thing, as technology becomes more affordable and there are more machines out there to gather information on players, our job and our software at BaseballCloud digests it all. What we’re able to do is track a player, not just for a singular at-bat, but track a player over time.

We see a time where a seven-year-old goes and buys his first bat because there’ll be swing sensors in every bat probably within the next three years. The player registers, and from the time he’s seven, every league and tournament he plays in, all of that info that we’re able to capture on that player feeds into one place. It creates the story of that player and allows for interaction, which for us, is a unique approach for growth. It’s the mapping of the player and their story.

MMO: How did you become a scout with the Mets?

Updike: I was a junior college coach in Florida, and junior college baseball in Florida is the best in the country. They have tremendous players, and a lot of the programs have produced many major league players as most Division I schools or more.

I had several major league players: Dee Gordon, Mike Clevinger and Brett Oberholtzer. We had tremendous players that we were able to work with.

For me and my playing career, I ended up playing at a junior college in Florida, and it was a wonderful route to go. There are a lot of networks that we have at that level because you’re dealing a tremendous amount with professional clubs and also dealing with universities. It was just a natural fit.

The opportunity came from the Mets, and I had seen a million kids, and you’re on the road a lot traveling and scouting. It’s a lot of sacrifice from that standpoint, and I needed to be at a point where my kids were old enough for me to be able to be away. The Mets were wonderful in the area that I had, and I did get home every night. And that meant a lot. So we decided to go that route.

MMO: You signed Pete Alonso back in 2016. Can you talk about what you saw from Alonso early on, and just the overall process of scouting him?

Updike: Pete’s a tremendous story. At the end of the day, from a scouting perspective, our job is to scout and evaluate tools. With Pete, he has an eighty tool. When we scout amateur players, the first thing we’re looking at are tools. He has a double plus tool with power.

You identify tools, and everybody understood that the kid could hit the ball a country mile, but what type of individual is this going to be? What type of work ethic does he have? How easily is he going to be able to adapt? Specifically, in our case, where the Mets have to take into consideration that this kid’s going to play on the largest stage in the world and in one of the craziest media markets. Is he going to be able to handle it?

Throughout the history of the Mets organization, there have been some guys who haven’t been able to handle it. That’s where the makeup aspect becomes so important. And even for us in the scouting process, obviously, we have checks and balances of how we identify the players. At the end of the day, we have to be the experts in the industry on that player to pull the trigger and make those kinds of commitments for a player that’s taken in that spot. Matt Allan kind of shadows that as well.

Matthew Allan/Photo by Ed Delany, MMO

MMO: Can you talk about scouting and eventually signing Matt Allan? With Allan being advised by Scott Boras, and with leverage of going to school if he didn’t get his target bonus, why were you so sure Allan was going to sign?

Updike: He moved from California to Florida and came on the scene. Guys who play in Florida have the highest density of talent in the country. From Tampa to Orlando up to Jacksonville, that’s what my job was: to understand everything that happened in that area.

With Matt, he’s a tremendous athlete. As he progressed, there’s something that you see that grabs your attention.

Once again, it takes a village to acquire a player. A good friend of mine and former Met, John Hendricks, was a pitching coach at Wake Forest and had a relationship with this kid. John had a relationship with him because he worked with USA Baseball and was able to be in the dugout with him as a pitching coach, and we would share information.

I was able to spend time with Matt and express to him not just that you’re a good kid and we’re scouting you and some of the base things. It was really pitching the idea of what we were capable of doing from the development of pitchers, our history of it, guys we have at the big league level and the players that we’ve acquired through the draft and the minors that are superseding expectations.

This is what pitchers will be in the future from the high school perspective. There wasn’t a deep development or a lot of projection with it; he already had full understanding. He was our level of comparison; we’re not scouting the pitchers from Division I programs, the top guys in the country. I look at their work ethic, their plan, their mapping; I always think of it as player mapping. Where they’re at, where they’re going to get to, how they’re going to get there. What’s the route that they can take to the big leagues, and what are the challenges that they’re going to face?

A lot of things that have to be introduced, such as arm care, nutrition, throwing patterns, workloads that they have. This kid is a machine. He was on a level beyond where a lot of the college pitchers were as far as self-awareness and ability to work. Quite honestly, because of that quality plan and dedication, he was ahead of the college kids and some professional pitchers as far as awareness and commitment to the plan.

With Matt, and obviously with Orlando being such a high-density area, a kid that grows up in Central Florida, a better player will have exposure to guys that have won Cy Young Awards and being able to work out with them. The place that Matt’s working out right now, you’re in there, and there’s the Mariners’ top pitching prospect working out with him. You have roughly 15 professional pitchers that roll in at nine in the morning and are grinding it out, getting their offseason work in.

It’s a mindset and he has it. That was the thing that was super appealing to me. A kid that has that level of commitment that early in his life and can express his plan, not eye-washed but truly that you can tell this kid lives this.

From a pitching standpoint, the draft in professional baseball offers protection. It offers some financial protection. Many don’t realize that we pay for their college education, all of it. Even with me going back to the nineties, it’s how I got my education. I got done playing, and now what the hell am I going to do? Well, part of my signing bonus was college. It allowed me to be a college coach and a scout and continue my life. It wasn’t you’re out of the minor leagues two years now, you need to go hang the drywall. The perception is not the reality.

When you really think about it at the college level, the NCAA only allows 11.7 scholarships at the Power Five schools. Every kid that plays college baseball is paying to play college baseball; there are no free rides. If you throw a baseball for a living, you’re going to have an injury at some point. Professional baseball offers better protection for those guys, and Matt realizes that.

My belief is that not a lot of things really have to line up. He has that type of talent, work ethic and stuff to be an impact player. With that kind of player, it’s also appealing because you’re seeing now under the new models of finances in the way baseball is, it provides multiple paydays. We’re seeing great examples of that where guys are getting a quarter of billion-dollar contracts. There’s your appeal. I want to get there because I’m capable of doing this.

Matt is an elite talent that somewhere down the road could put himself in that position. It’s not just, Hey, I want to be a pro player. Matt has the goal of wanting to be the best pitcher on the planet. And maybe he’s not going to come out and state things like that, but you can tell through their presence, work and ability. That’s what set me off.

You can tell. You do this long enough, you can tell through their eyes. Are you excited, or are you scared? This kid’s excited.

Follow Jon Updike on Twitter, @Updikej33

Learn more about BaseballCloud here. Part Two of this interview will be available later this week.

The post MMO Exclusive: Former Mets Scout Jon Updike Talks Alonso, Allan appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Photo by Ed Delany, MMO

Spending sixteen years in the Major Leagues playing for some of the smartest coaches and managers, being teammates with dozens of All-Stars and Hall of Fame players and playing a position in catcher – which tends to translate into having a strong baseball acumen – Chad Kreuter has a ton of knowledge to share.

Since being drafted in the fifth round of the 1985 Major League Draft by the Texas Rangers, Kreuter, 55, made sure he absorbed as much knowledge and information as he could.

A student of the game, Kreuter’s belief was that he could never have enough tutelage, as it would be something that could either enhance his game or something to steer clear of.

After playing for seven different organizations, primarily as a backup catcher from 1988 to 2003, Kreuter has taken what he’s learned over his career to aid the next wave of talent who are trying to turn their dreams into a reality.

Since 2017, the former switch-hitting catcher has been the manager of the Mets’ Class A Advanced team, the St. Lucie Mets. Bringing prior managerial experience from stops with the Modesto Nuts (the former Class A Advanced team of the Colorado Rockies) and four years as head coach at USC, Kreuter has been entrusted with helping to shape the young prospects in the Mets organization.

From Tyler Bashlor to Jeff McNeil to Pete Alonso, Kreuter has seen several of his former players move up the minor league rungs to reach their ultimate goal of playing in the majors.

In his first season at the helm of St. Lucie in 2017, Kreuter had two current Mets stars on his roster in McNeil and Alonso. Listening to Kreuter speak about his two former players is akin to listening to a proud father rave about his sons. Kreuter offers honest assessments of what the pair needed to work on to better accentuate their strengths on the field during his time with them.

Player development is crucial, and so too is having a manager that understands how to relate to players and teach them the proper fundamentals and baseball IQ. Having the patience and realization that not all players progress at the same time, and understanding that what works for some players doesn’t for all is something a minor league manager must balance when handling prospects with various skill-sets.

Kreuter takes pride in his ability to impart his baseball wisdom on the next generation of players and takes his responsibility of playing a role in their development seriously.

Kreuter’s professional career, which spanned nearly two decades when you include the minor leagues, gave him plenty of time to develop a wealth of knowledge and instruction to assist young players.

For his career, Kreuter appeared in 944 big league games, posting a slash line of .237/.335/.357 with a career caught stealing rate of 36 percent, ranking in the top-five of caught stealing five different times (1992-94, ’97, ’00).

His career was nearly derailed after a brutal home plate collision with Johnny Damon in July 1996, in which he broke his left shoulder. Just a few days after the collision, Kreuter suffered internal bleeding caused by stomach lacerations, putting his shoulder surgery on hold. The doctors told Kreuter that the odds were extremely low that he’d ever be able to play baseball again, though he knew this was not going to be the way his career was going to end.

Working tirelessly in rehab, including incorporating his own routine like water workouts, Kreuter made it back to the majors the following year, signing with the Chicago White Sox in the offseason. He went on to appear in 493 games from 1997-03, which seemed nearly impossible given the doctor’s initial prognosis after his injury.

Kreuter brings that strong will and ingenuity to his work as manager for St. Lucie. The 2020 season will be his fourth year as manager, and he hopes that the experience will help him rise through the ranks with the ultimate goal of one day managing in the majors.

I had the privilege of speaking with Kreuter in early November, where we discussed his lengthy career, working back from a near career-ending injury and his thoughts on some of the players he’s managed with St. Lucie.

MMO: Who were some of your favorite players growing up?

Kreuter: I studied the catchers. I grew up in the Bay Area, and I would go to the Giants and A’s games. I’d go wherever I could get to on the weekends whenever they were playing.

I used to go early and walk in with the players and watch batting practice and all of that. Early on, I remember watching Gene Tenace. I’d watch all the catchers that came through, like Johnny Bench when he’d come and play the Giants, along with Carlton Fisk and Bob Boone.

As I started understanding more parts of the game, I really liked watching George Brett and Robin Yount, and then I got to play with and against those guys when I broke into the big leagues.

Mainly, I learned the game by watching the catchers because that’s what I was. I wanted to know how they moved and how they caught the ball. I copied that and made it my own.

I really never had a catching coach, just myself watching and mimicking the different guys and styles I saw.

Photo by Ed Delany, MMO

MMO: At what point during your youth and development did you start primarily catching?

Kreuter: I started catching when I was around eight-years-old. I remember one of my first Little League games they rolled out the catcher’s gear, and the coach asked, “Who wants to catch? It’s one of the quickest ways to the big leagues.”

I said, ‘I’ll do it.’ So, that’s how it started.

I really never played anything else. I did play shortstop, pitched and played some third base here and there. But I was good behind the plate. I could always throw guys out, was always quick and could always block the balls. It was just a natural fit for me.

MMO: Did you have any notion that the Texas Rangers were looking to draft you prior to the 1985 MLB Draft?

Kreuter: Not at all. Back then, there was no social media. You knew scouts were watching, and I really thought the Cubs were going to draft me because those were the guys who talked with me the most. But I had no clue that the Rangers were even around or who the Rangers’ scouts were at the time.

It ended up being a scout who just passed away recently, John Young. He’s the one who drafted me and got me with the Rangers.

MMO: You had a breakout year in 1993 with the Detroit Tigers, setting career highs in games (119), home runs (15), RBI (51) & OPS+ (130). Was there anything physically or mechanically that you changed or altered to have such great success that season?

Kreuter: I think it was a matter of getting an opportunity to play and watching guys hit at the big league level. When I signed as a pro player in 1985, I was a right-handed hitter; I was not a switch-hitter. I was a right-handed hitter with a bad downward plane swing. When I got to the big leagues, I had my lunch handed to me by all the righties.

As I got into pro ball, I could make a lot of good contact, but it was hard ground balls; it wasn’t the line drives or the fly balls that you’re seeing today. I certainly was strong enough to hit some home runs, but I had a bad swing path. It took a while to change.

Then, about a year and a half into my pro ball experience, I was messing around in the cage hitting left-handed, and the front office said they wanted me to start doing that. I actually started switch-hitting in High-A in Salem, Virginia, in 1986 and I did it until I got to the big leagues. I did so in the ’87 season, ’88 season in Double-A, and then I got called to the big leagues.

I made the big league team in ’89, and got sent back down. They turned me back around to just right-handed, and so I went that rest of the year, and the following one, all right-handed.

I went down to winter ball, and the manager there was Tom Gamboa, who used to be with the Mets and other clubs. And he said, “You have a great left-handed swing. I think that you should continue [switch-hitting] because if you’re a switch-hitting catcher, it’s going to open more doors for you.”

So I went back to hitting left-handed.

After my ’91 season, I became a free agent, and that’s when the Rangers called up Pudge [Rodriguez] right in the middle of the season.

I got sent down; I actually went to Triple-A and was playing every day and doing well. I was then told I was going to be on the bench as a backup; I was kind of getting pushed out. I asked if I could go to Double-A to play every day, and I knew they didn’t have a catcher there that was an everyday guy. So I went down and played every day in Double-A. Right after the season was over, the Tigers signed me and made the big league club in ’92.

MMO: I didn’t realize you started switch-hitting so late into your career. That certainly seems like a rarity in the game.

Kreuter: It was a rarity, and I think I was a good enough athlete that I was able to do it. The unfortunate thing for me was after I got hurt in ’96, when I got run over by Johnny Damon at home plate, I broke my left shoulder and I was never supposed to play again because of the injury. I didn’t have the strength or the explosive quickness from either side of the plate to have any offensive numbers at that point anymore.

I changed swings again and really concentrated on putting the bat head on the ball, being a tough out and not being a guy to try and drive it because I didn’t have much power at that time.

MMO: You mentioned your injury from 1996, and July 19 must be a date that’s always ingrained in your mind because of it. Can you talk a bit about the injury and your ensuing complications from it?

Kreuter: There were a lot of complications. I broke the glenoid and the scapula. The glenoid is the joint in the shoulder, and the scapula is in the back of the shoulder. Those were broken like a pane of glass. I think the glenoid was in three pieces and the scapula was in over fifty pieces that were visible. I have two six-inch plates, seven one-inch screws and nine staples that are still in my shoulder and muscle that put everything back together. The doctors called me Humpty Dumpty! [Laughs.]

The scary part of it was I got hurt on a Friday night in Chicago, and the team immediately tried to best assess where I could be served by surgery and see what they could do. They sent me to L.A., and when I went out there, I was feeling terrible.

On Saturday night and Sunday, I wasn’t in the hospital, but I went in the hospital for all kinds of tests, and they had me stay at a hotel at night. Monday morning, I woke up, and I just felt terrible. My wife called the doctor and told them I was pale and not feeling good. I tried to get in the shower, thinking that I would feel better getting in there. The next thing I knew, I woke up in an operating room.

What happened was I had lost a third of my blood supply into my stomach, and I was bleeding internally. Nobody had caught that on Saturday and Sunday, so I lost a third of my blood supply, and my body was in its last gasp of trying to survive. It put me into convulsions, and I was in the shower at the time. I fell out of the shower and got wedged between the shower and was flopping around like a trout on the floor. I pulled the shower curtain down, and my wife was actually on the phone with the doctors at the time it happened and was able to call 9-1-1.

The ambulance was driving by the hotel at the time, so they were up to me within two or three minutes, she said. They were able to get tubes down my throat; apparently, they weren’t even able to get a pulse.

I was almost done at that point in time. I was rushed in, and they attended to the wounds that I had and had to cauterize down in my esophagus because I was bleeding into my stomach.

MMO: It’s pretty incredible that after such a terrible injury and a terrifying medical scare you were able to make it back to the big leagues.

Kreuter: Yeah. After I came to, I had lost so much blood they couldn’t do the surgery. They were supposed to do the surgery on Tuesday, and this was Monday. They canceled the surgery and told me they had to get me blood, and I had to build some of my own blood.

My wife donated blood, my brother-in-law and father-in-law donated; they all had the same blood type. I got enough blood, and then I got some plasma, and by the next Tuesday or Wednesday, I had surgery. It gave the doctors a better window and game plan because they were able to consult around the country on how they were going to do it and what they were going to try to do. Then they went in and tackled the surgery.

Initially, they didn’t want to do any surgery; it was just basically hang with ’em. And that wasn’t an option for me. I’m not that type of guy that’s just sit around and do nothing. I’m not that guy; I don’t want to be that guy. At least let’s go down trying. If we’re going to crash and burn, let’s try. They asked me if I was sure, and I told them I wanted them to go in and try and do it, and if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. If it works, it’s going to be God’s hand in there.

When I came out of surgery, they told me it went well, but we’ll have to see. They said my rehab was now going to be the key to this whole thing. I did my rehab outside the box the whole time; I’m an outside-the-box thinker. I don’t conform really well to a whole lot of things. They basically tied my arm to my chest and said, “Don’t move for the next six weeks.”

To me, that didn’t make any sense because I looked down at my arm and I looked down at my wrist, and I’m already atrophied; it looked like I had a young girl’s arm after I came out of surgery.

I knew that I had to do something. When I got discharged from the hospital – it took about a week to get discharged – I had my wife stop at Home Depot on the way home, and I bought all types of supplies. She was like, “What are you doing?”

I told her I had a plan.

When I got home, I had to be propped up to sleep because there was no lying down. I had a tube in the back of my shoulder that was draining. What I ended up doing was putting a pulley up to my ceiling and figured out a way where I could strap something to my wrist and pull my arm up and down just to get some movement while I sat and watched TV.

From there, it went to doing water workouts where my wife would put duct tape and cellophane on my back to cover up the eight-inch incision and the tube that was coming out of my back so no water could get in there. I’d try to put my arm up as high as I could because, out of the water, I was paralyzed; there was no movement.

But in the water I could manipulate some movement with using the floats and the buoyancy of the water. I did that every single day, and I was in the water for eight to ten hours, plus I was doing some rehab with a physical therapist that was basically stretching to try and break up scar tissue. There was nothing I could do physically initially other than just start stretching and trying to break up scar tissue around the breaks. I progressed to just doing pull stuff underwater.

I got hurt on July 19, and by December 24, I had the White Sox come and see my workout, and they signed me that night for the next season. That was my Christmas present to myself. I was able to get myself in good enough physical condition to trick everybody, let’s put it that way. [Laughs.]

MMO: So, without the surgery, there was no way of you getting back into the game? And even then the doctors didn’t like your chances?

Kreuter: Yes. That was the only option, and it was a long shot at best. They said it was like a 99 to one long shot to be able to have any movement. But see, they didn’t count on me doing anything underwater. The first couple of times I went back to the doctor for checkups, every seven days I would have to go back, they’d ask me where my brace was, and where’s all the stuff we gave you? I told them I threw it away, and they’d chew me out. They’d give me a new one, and as I walked out the door of the hospital I’d throw it away again. I let my arm hang and it hurt; it hurt like hell.

What I learned was how far I could push my body and how your body responds to stuff like that. I figured if I could bounce back from that, I could do anything. And that’s kind of how I am. I was going to push through it and I was going to grind through it, and if it didn’t work, it didn’t work. But at least I tried.

I wasn’t going to give anything less than 100 percent and then hang my hat on it when it was all said and done.

MMO: Wow! You essentially saved your career with all the extra rehab work you put in. That’s an incredible story of perseverance!

Kreuter: Yeah, it really was. I willed my way back and I was a smart enough player. But I’m going to tell you: I shouldn’t have played in the big leagues at that point in time. I was not skilled enough to play in the big leagues. I was not strong enough; I wasn’t physically capable of being a guy who could be an everyday guy or potentially an everyday guy.

I would catch balls, and it was painful. I’d have to wince, and nobody knew I was wincing. If someone came and slapped me on the back of the shoulder, I mean, I would basically buckle to my knees. That’s how much pain there was for the first year or so.

When they opened up the back of my shoulder, picture curtains in a hotel room, you pull back the curtains. That’s what they did to all of my muscles; they pulled those muscles back and separated them so they could get into the scapula and put the pieces back together. And all of those muscles sat there pinned back for six-plus hours.

Lost all their blood, lost all their size, and then they put them back, and they were just a wreck. It takes forever for those things to build back. You could actually walk behind me and you could touch the screws; you could see where the screws were initially because there was no muscle. It was just bone and skin.

After about a two-year period, I started getting some development back, and it started growing back. It was just grinding away. I used to be a scratch golfer; I haven’t played much golf since because it wasn’t time to play golf. It was time to lift and create some strength in my shoulder on an everyday basis. It was spending six to eight hours a day developing my shoulders.

The good thing was I did it on my right side too, and I had a great arm before I got hurt. My arm was even better after I got hurt! The scapula is directly related to the strength of throwing, so when I did all the scapula exercises to get the movement back, I did it on the right side and it helped me get stronger and throw better.

MMO: That’s right, you had a terrific throwing arm. You finished in the top-5 in caught stealing percentage five times in your career (1992, 93, 94, 97, 2000). Were there certain drills you worked on for arm strength and exchange?

Kreuter: Everything has changed; film has changed everything. Even though we had film, it wasn’t accessible. You couldn’t view it the same way you can now and break it down in slow motion and see little key things. Or go into a 3-D motion lab and see actual movement where the kinetic link is broken.

It was a lot of feel, and I played a lot of long toss, a lot of catch. I learned to do that initially as a caddie to Nolan Ryan in 1989, when I was a rookie. I was his catcher, and my assignment basically was, Nolan wants to go play catch? Go play catch. When he’s ready to throw a bullpen, go throw a bullpen. When he wants to lift, go lift with him.

He would go out to ungodly distances and throw, and my arm would fall off the first couple of weeks. As I was getting in better shape, I understood how to play catch and what he was doing. That’s how he played. He was so far ahead of the game that way it was amazing.

Photo by Ed Delany, MMO

MMO: You brought up Nolan Ryan as someone who was an early influence. Throughout your 16-year Major League career, were there one or two pitchers who you felt you had the best rapport with?

Kreuter: I had a great rapport with Nolan. He was very complimentary; I felt like he didn’t shake me off much. We went over game plans.

One of my mentors early on was Charlie Hough. He was a knuckleball pitcher obviously, but he could prepare you.

One of the things we’d do on the road was I’d meet him for breakfast every day, and I was the backup catcher, but he prepared me. We’d pull out the lineup as we’re going into New York to face the Yankees, and you’re going to face Don Mattingly, Dave Winfield and all the different guys on the team. How are you going to pitch them with Nolan?

And then he asked, How are you going to pitch them with Kevin Brown? Jeff Russell? Paul Kilgus? All the different guys that we had, and so he taught me that you don’t pitch everybody the same. It’s not cookie-cutter; it’s all about angles. Guys hit angles; guys hit different pitchers, and that’s why you see certain guys rake against some guys and they can’t hit other guys. He taught me that and said you have to learn these things.

When I caught Nolan, it was one of those things where we tried to get Nolan’s best stuff, and if he didn’t match up, then we would pitch around certain guys. Nolan would do that, and so it was fun. I had a great learning experience there with Charlie and Nolan. It was really fun.

MMO: At what point did you realize that you wanted to get into coaching/managing?

Kreuter: When I was with the Dodgers in 2000-02, Davey Johnson and Jim Tracy were my managers, and Jim Riggleman was the bench coach there. I think at that point in time it was you’re getting up there in age, and I was hoping to play until I was 42. I was done at 38. The uniform was taken away from me at 38.

In hindsight, I probably should’ve tried to play a couple more years, but I was at the point where I needed to be with my kids and my family, and that was outweighing the grind of getting on the flights and all of that.

I think at that point I was starting to see that there was a career after playing, and this is what it can be [managing]. I didn’t necessarily pursue it to pro-ball right away. When I was done after the 2003 season, I took 2004 off, and then I went to USC and helped out my father-in-law, Mike Gillespie, who was the head coach there. I went over to help him as a volunteer assistant. After one year, there the Rockies courted me to go manage, and I turned them down umpteen times before they finally convinced me to come over there.

When I was managing in Modesto, USC fired my father-in-law and offered me the job. I didn’t want to take it. With the Rockies, we had talked about working myself up the managing chain, and they had talked about trying to promote me and trying to do stuff within that organization.

But my father-in-law convinced me. He called me and told me I needed to take this job. He told me it would be a great job, that it was twenty years for him and it could be twenty years for me, and that my kids could go there. And he’s a Trojan; he went to school there. I was thinking about my kids and family and I did it.

In hindsight, it wasn’t a good move. I was there for four years, and I hadn’t gotten my full recruiting classes in. I had probably too good of an eye on some of the guys because I committed guys like Mike Moustakas, Giancarlo Stanton – who was Mike at the time – and Tim Beckham. A ton of guys that were going through and I lost in the Draft. At that point in time, the Draft was kind of a free for all. Those guys could get drafted in the fifth or sixth rounds and still be offered big money.

I was losing guys late. I almost got Moustakas; he signed in the umpteenth hour. Stanton was a late sign. I had a lot of fun, but by the time I got fired, it was because the athletic director, Mike Garrett, got fired, and they brought in a new athletic director who wanted his own new guys. I understood that. I felt like I needed to get my class in, and in that incoming class, I had Joc Pederson moving into his dorm the day I got fired, along with Shawon Dunston’s son, and a couple of other guys in that caliber. They were moving into their dorms and ended up signing the next day with their teams because I got fired. And obviously, you’ve seen Joc and what he’s done.

There was a whole group of guys, and we figured it out, and we just didn’t get those guys into the classes. Then it took a little bit to get back into pro ball after that, because once I jumped from the pro side to the college side, I think everyone thought, What’s to stop him from doing it again? But I learned my lesson. I don’t want any part of that college ball anymore.

The way I looked at it was, I’m more pro-development rather than win now at the cost of the kids, which is kind of what college baseball is. It’s win at all costs and not so much develop the guys and let them develop. Their mindset is let them develop in pro ball. But I’m the opposite; I was like, I’m going to develop them here, and if I have to take my lumps for a year with a guy because we’re revamping his swing or fixing his mound mechanics, that’s all right. I’m not going to get him up there and blow out an arm trying to just let him throw hard.

MMO: It’s interesting, I interviewed Dennis Cook for Mets Merized, and he was coaching in the Cape Cod League a few years back. He mentioned how many of the players didn’t have routines before starts. He was in shock that so many players from big schools weren’t being properly prepared on the development side.

Kreuter: I get it. As a coach, your job hinges on 17-18-19-20-year-old players. You’ve got to get them in lockstep and in line, and they’ve got to do what you want them to do, and can’t deviate off it. There’s a lot of cookie cutting with guys. And I find that hard to do; everyone is an individual and going to develop at different times.

It’s the same thing here in St. Lucie. I’ve got Hansel Moreno; he’s going to develop at a different time than Andres Gimenez. Even though they’re both extremely talented, their timeline and when they’re going to develop is totally different. We can’t force Hansel to develop right now. Sure, we’d love him to develop right now, but you can’t force him to do that.

It takes a little bit of time, and when his time arrives and he figures it out, it’s going to be, oh yeah, oh wow! But can you wait until he’s 26? I don’t know. Is it win now, or is somebody else going to come and replace him?

Talent is amazing, but you have to be able to put the talent together and you have to be able to have some patience with the talent. And other times you push the talent a little bit more. You push a Pete Alonso because he’s showing that he can do this and he can push through it with not all the right movements and all the fluidity of being a great fielder, but doing things he’ll be capable of.

You drive him through the system and look what he does. The best thing the Mets did this year was put him in the big leagues and not start him in Triple-A. That sparked him to have a great year. If they would’ve started him in Triple-A, he probably wouldn’t have had that type of year. His confidence would’ve been a little bit lower, dejected a little bit. But that decision was a great one to do it.

MMO: You brought up Pete Alonso, who you managed in 2017. What did you see from Alonso early on, and what kind of work did you put in him with that year?

Kreuter: He was a train-wreck in some areas, and he was an amazing talent in others. My job as a manager, along with all the other coaches, is to eliminate those weaknesses and then to start accentuating those strengths. He was not mentally ready for pro ball at that point in time, and that was part of his demise early on as a player. And I say that because he wasn’t ready for the grind, and he wasn’t realistic in how he was trying to approach the game.

He was trying to do too much, and when you try to do too much in this game, it becomes overwhelming for the player. And so what we tried to do was break it down, take one at-bat at a time, and don’t give away at-bats. We revamped his swing a little bit and gave him a plan; he didn’t have much of a plan on an every pitch-to-pitch basis.

It started from the time he got to the clubhouse, walked into the cage, and took his swings in the cage. He didn’t have a plan doing that; he didn’t have a plan when he went out for batting practice, and he didn’t have a plan when he got into the game. All of his plans were more of an unrealistic one of how he was going to go about his business.

It was pulling in the reigns, slowing it down, and saying, Hey, here’s how we’re going to do it. You’re going to be fine, but let us not be in such a hurry to get things done. Understand how we’re going to put your swing path and make more contact. Understand that we’re going to create a plan so you don’t give away pitches. Understand that we’re going to have this plan where you don’t give away pitches, plus you don’t give away at-bats.

It just kept building and building and building. You saw his first 100-150 at-bats were not very good, and then his next 200 or so were amazing! He went from us to Double-A and kept it going and obviously started out the next year even better. He was able to take the plan that we gave him and take those little tweaks and make them his, implement them on an everyday basis and believe in them.

He bought in, and that’s the biggest thing for guys is to buy in.

MMO: I spoke with Alonso at the end of the 2017 season for the site, and he spoke highly of both you and Luis Natera on helping him develop a plan and get out of the early slide he was in after coming back from an injury. He spoke about a contact drill and some tee work you guys did with him.

Kreuter: Yes, and that’s exactly what we did. A Hall of Famer and a should-be Hall of Famer taught it to me when I was in Seattle in Edgar Martinez and Alex Rodriguez. Edgar showed me some drills, and Alex was already doing them and talked about it.

Edgar is one of the top right-handed hitters ever, I mean, he was amazing as a right-handed hitter. I’ve always been a student of the game; I wanted to learn. I learned from shortstops, outfielders, first basemen, catchers, pitchers and the coaches around me. I was always soaking up anything I could, and when Edgar spoke, it was like, this is something important and I need to remember. It’s either something that could help me or I can help somebody down the line with.

When I saw Peter’s swing and what he was doing, we talked about the approach, and the way I teach is I’m a hodgepodge of everything that’s been thrown at me, good and bad. You take the good stuff and you keep it, and the bad stuff you try not to repeat it. I’ve tried to take a lot of stuff from guys like Kirk Gibson, Alan Trammell, Sparky Anderson, Lou Piniella and all the different guys that I was with throughout the years and roll it up into something that could help somebody.

Some days you have to speak a certain way to one player, but you say the same thing a little bit different to another player so he can understand it. It’s communication, and you have to learn to communicate with guys like Pete and make it real so that they buy in and believe in what they’re doing.

The belief system in baseball when you fail seven out of ten times and you’re still really good, people don’t understand that failure just grates on your psyche. And if you’re failing seven out of ten times in a regular job or asking a girl out, you’re beside yourself; you’re without a job. In baseball, that’s what’s so weird: you have the best hitters in the game doubting themselves at times because they’re in that rut of running through eight times without a hit or twelve times without a hit. And all of a sudden, here comes four in a row! That changes everything. Those times that you don’t get the hits really weigh on you.

Photo by Ed Delany, MMO

MMO: You also got to manage Jeff McNeil in your first season in St Lucie. I read an article that said one game he collected two hits, but was still upset and in a bad mood after the game, so you gave him an Angry Orchard so it would “sweeten him up a bit.” Could you tell early on what kind of competitor McNeil was?

Kreuter: He is the ultimate competitor and trash talker. He’s taking BP, and he’s saying that’s a double, that’s a single, that’s a triple. He’s telling you every time what it’s going to be, and he’s going to trash talk before he gets in his first at-bat and saying I’m going to hit a home run here. And you’ve got to love it as a coach and as a manager. I love that spirit and fight that hey, I’m not going to give up.

But for him, he was a little too salty at times and a little too bitter where I thought it was going to affect him long term. I’ve gone through the slumps; I set a hit-less record when I was with Kansas City in ’99. I was going from hitting great and all of a sudden I hit the skids, and then I wasn’t so great. So, I understand failure, and I understand how it can make you bitter and salty.

I had him in my office lots of times or talking to him at his locker, and it was just a matter of trying to say, Let’s see the big picture here. You didn’t get any hits, but you hit the ball hard. That’s a win-win situation there. The pitcher knows you beat him, and his mother knows you beat him because you smoked the ball. It just happened to go right to the right fielder or was caught at the wall. That’s the way you have to go at guys like him, and then you take away the bite or the sting of not getting the hit.

I was so proud and happy for him last year and what he did when he got called up and how he hit. And then you see what he did this year, and it’s just amazing; it’s like one of your children. After they play for you, I’m just rooting for these guys because they’re part of your family. In our clubhouse, we create a family; we try to create and I try to create a bond that’s with those guys that is going to transcend beyond the game for years to come.

MMO: It must be so rewarding to see the guys that you had come through go on and have such success as they have.

Kreuter: It is, and I understand that most of the guys that come through our clubhouse are not going to play a day in the big leagues. But they have to go about their business the same way as guys like Alonso, McNeil, [Tyler] Bashlor and the guys that have gotten their opportunities have. They have to believe in themselves the same exact way.

What we try to create is, if they don’t make it, it goes back to my injury and that type of mentality; they have nothing to be ashamed of when it’s all said and done. There’s no pointing fingers, nothing to say except I did my best. I was given my opportunity; I either didn’t do it, I wasn’t good enough, or that guy was better than me, and he’s going to be given that opportunity. There are no excuses, and that’s the way we handle our business.

MMO: And how did you come to secure the job as the St. Lucie Mets manager prior to the 2017 season?

Kreuter: In 2016, I interviewed for pitching coach at Brooklyn, which was a dual role as the field coordinator for extended spring and the pitching coach. And within my background, I feel comfortable being a pitching coach. Obviously, being a catcher, I was in tune with all of our pitchers and sat there and could like a parrot mimic what our pitching coaches say. I knew if they were talking to Joe Magrane what to say to Joe Magrane as opposed to Chuck Finley. I knew what to say to those guys based on the pitching coaches spoke to them and what they said. So I feel very comfortable.

I interviewed for that, and the group that was there thought I’d serve better as a manager. They said, “We think you’d be a manager. We’re looking for a guy that would be long-term in this position.”

I was passed over on it, and I thought too bad and moved on. The next year, I get a call from Ian Levin, and they offered me the job. In that prior interview, Ian was in on that, and it brought me to that manager position that I’m in now.

MMO: As a minor league manager, how do you handle player development and winning games while knowing there will be constant movement of players throughout the course of a season?

Kreuter: It’s changed. My first two years here, you’re just developing; you’re not trying to win any games. If you win, that’s great; that’s because you’ve got pretty good players. But there wasn’t much strategy involved; you’re not hit and running, bunting or doing things that are conducive to winning.

This last year, with our new front office, things changed. We were allowed to bunt, hit and run, run and hit, match up a little bit more with the pitching in the in-game management. Just as long as that wasn’t abused on the pitching part, which we basically had guys available on a daily basis. If you pitched tonight, you can’t pitch tomorrow. So we have to manage those guys. We were able to say I want this guy or Blake Taylor coming in to face the lefties here in the eighth. So he’d come in to face the lefties, where before I had to throw certain guys in certain roles throughout the game, and you weren’t necessarily allowed to match up like that.

For us this year, at one point we were 16 or 17 games over .500, and we were a team that I think our top average was .270; we didn’t have a whole bunch of guys hitting over .300 or a whole bunch of home runs. We were scrappy. If we had a man on first and second and no outs, we bunted. We put them second and third, and we emphasized driving the ball in with second and third with the infield back/infield in, hitting the fly ball whatever it is. And we capitalized on that.

We pitched really well, and so we were able to move a lot of guys. I think we ended up moving about 17 guys to Double-A throughout the year. But I know at the end of the year Binghamton’s whole starting lineup was St. Lucie’s starting lineup. But it was fun to see.

We had a losing streak at the end of the year, and we were running on fumes at the point in time. We were able to hold our heads above water and put together a great second half. And we kept sending guys like [Quinn] Brodey, [Luis] Carpio, [Jeremy] Vasquez and all the guys we sent to Double-A, and all the pitchers we sent up there. It was fun; it was really fun.

MMO: Are there certain players Met fans should be looking out for in the system?

Kreuter: I think Moreno is one. You start looking at our roster at the different guys that we had, and I’m thinking Jeremy Vasquez is probably not a guy that’s on the radar to be their prospect, but I’m pretty sure he’s a guy that’s going to start knocking on the door. He’s like the little engine that could; he puts the bat head on the ball, and he keeps on driving balls and moving forward.

David Thompson was a big one that came through here. Ali Sanchez as a catcher. Quinn Brodey, we’re hoping that Quinn does a lot of good things. Luis Carpio showed some promise here. Patrick Mazeika came through here and had a great year, struggled a little bit in Double-A, but he’s very serviceable as a catcher now and a left-handed hitter. There are a lot of different guys that you think about.

Kevin Smith, the left-hander, I like Kevin a lot. I like Blake Taylor a lot, too. Tony Dibrell had struggles when he left us, but there’s something in there. I love Gimenez, I think that he’s a talent and he’s pretty special. If he doesn’t arrive this year, then it will be there in 2021. But he’s pretty special.

MMO: Are you returning to manage St. Lucie in 2020?

Kreuter: I am.

MMO:  You played Rick Peterson in Moneyball, and I also read that you trained Chris Pratt in helping him play Scott Hatteberg for the film. Can you talk a little about the work you did with Pratt, and getting to work on the film overall?

Kreuter: I started out on that film doing the tryouts at USC. They wanted to do the tryouts when I was the head coach at USC, and we started out doing that. Then they asked me to kind of be the baseball technician or baseball adviser. We went to Long Beach and filmed down there for a spring training scene. That day, it started out as come in and check out the locker room to see if it looks like Oakland’s locker room. See if this is what their spring training locker room would look like. I went in and I’m in full uniform because I’ve been hitting fungoes and throwing batting practice while they’re filming.

I go in the locker room and Brad Pitt’s in there; the guy playing Ron Washington was there [Brent Jennings] and Philip Seymour Hoffman. And Bennett Miller, the director, says to me, “Have you ever watched a scene?”

I told him no, and he told me to sit over there and come meet Brad and Philip, and sit in the room and watch.

They filmed the scene, and after it was all said and done, I was walking out and Bennett asked where I was going. He told me I was going to be in the scene! I’m like, uh, no. [Laughs.] He told me I was going to be in the scene and to go grab one of my coaches, and he was going to put us in the scene so it was going to become more organic. I went back into the scene, and they ended up filming it where they’re talking about different players and strategy and stuff with Brad Pitt. They did it for about six hours!

After that, we filmed the baseball stuff on the field. I thought it was all said and done, and I got a call a few days later, and they said Brad wanted to know if I could come to Oakland and film there. I went to Oakland and filmed from 6 AM to 6 PM during a week when Oakland was out of town. I basically set up all of the scenes and made sure everything looked right with all of the baseball players.

A lot of the guys we hired ended up being former minor league players that were done. The guy that looked like David Justice was actually right-handed, so we had to get him to look right when he went for the ball left-handed in the corner, and then they’d cut away when he actually threw the ball.

With Chris Pratt, I started out teaching him at USC, and then my son Cade, who was at USC at the time, started doing more of the lessons with Chris; teaching him how to hit, hitting him ground balls every day and hitting left-handed because Chris didn’t hit lefty. Cade worked with him exclusively in trying to teach him how to hit left-handed, and all of the swings that he took were actual swings.

It ended up being a long-term project because Brad asked for me. It went from being on the field to into the studio, and all the different scenes that were written for Brad, he’d come to me and ask, “Does this sound right? Is that a run and hit or a hit and run? How do you say all the different lines?”

I helped out with all that different stuff and really made sure it was baseball quality, which was fun. Plus, I got to play a couple of parts where I was actually in the movie.

It was rewarding. I was nervous at first because, obviously, with Brad Pitt and Philip Seymour Hoffman, they are huge movie stars, and now I’m with them. And especially in that first scene, I was like, What am I even going to say here? But I knew that baseball timeline of what they were talking about, and I knew the players.

Philip was great because he would just throw stuff out there and say, “Hey Rick, what do you have on this guy? What do you got on [Jason] Giambi?”

I would fill in what I knew about Giambi. And Brad would ad-lib from there, and they’d cut and he’d use the same thing I would say in his next scene. It was basically so those guys could have a conversation that looked real.

The fun thing is, I knew Billy Beane, and I was able to consult Billy on a lot of things, and call him up on set and tell him they’re doing this on set. Are you okay with this? And he’d say, “Ask them not to do that, or let’s do this.” We were able to get feedback right away on different things.

MMO: Thank you so much for your time, Chad. It was great picking your brain and for you to share so many great anecdotes from your career.

Kreuter: My pleasure. Take care.

Follow Chad Kreuter on Twitter, @ChadKreuter.

The post MMO Exclusive: Chad Kreuter, Manager of the St. Lucie Mets appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

The Durham Bulls were dealing with a lot of shit.

Prized pitching prospect Nuke LaLoosh was struggling with his command, dealing with jammed eyelids and his father was watching in the stands.

The first baseman’s glove was cursed thanks to his girlfriend.

And no one on the team knew what to get Jimmy and Millie for a wedding present.

Fortunately for the Bulls, pitching coach Larry Hockett was there to offer his sage advice on at least one of the conundrums the team was facing.

“Okay, well, uh… candlesticks always make a nice gift, and uh, maybe you could find out where she’s registered and maybe a place-setting or maybe a silverware pattern. Okay, let’s get two! Go get ’em.”

While the above scenario is one of fiction, most baseball and film fans will no doubt remember this specific interaction verbatim. The two-and-a-half minute meeting on the mound scene from one of the greatest baseball films of all time, Bull Durham, is a favorite and iconic one for most.

The beauty of this scene is that even though the players are dealing with a multitude of issues, Hockett is able to break the tension by offering his wedding gift suggestion while simultaneously shifting back into classic baseball cliché by telling his players, “Okay, let’s get two!”

The indelible, ad-libbed candlesticks line celebrates its thirtieth anniversary this year, as the film was released in theaters on June 15, 1988. Actor, comedian and writer Robert Wuhl landed the part of “yes-man” pitching coach Larry Hockett, even after a rocky audition.

As Wuhl explains it, director Ron Shelton told him it was the single worst audition he had ever seen; however, he hired him immediately. Wuhl’s portrayal of Hockett brought color and comic relief to the life of the minor leagues, helping him land the role.

The veteran actor has amassed quite the career, working as a joke writer for the late, great Rodney Dangerfield, appearing in such films as Good Morning Vietnam, Batman, and Cobb, and created, co-executive produced and starred in the hit HBO comedy series, Arliss. 

Though for Wuhl, Bull Durham holds a particularly special place in his heart as the Union, New Jersey native grew up and still is a big baseball fan.

I learned that firsthand.

After our interview on Bull Durham’s thirtieth anniversary concluded, we spent the next forty-minutes discussing an assortment of topics ranging from the Mets to the Yankees to analytics in baseball.

Wuhl’s portrayal of the lighthearted pitching coach is still revered and lauded by audiences for his wit and comic relief. The effervescent actor is forever grateful for the fans who continue to hold Bull Durham in such high regard, and rightly so. For it was the fan’s reaction during early focus groups that helped keep the mound visit scene in the film, as audiences voted it as either their first or second favorite part of the movie.

Fans not only continue to exalt the highest-rated baseball film of all-time per Rotten Tomatoes (97 percent), but they forever have several viable gift options to choose from when attending a wedding.

All thanks to Larry Hockett.

I had the privilege of speaking with Wuhl in early July, where we discussed why Bull Durham is so beloved by audiences, his personal list of top baseball films, and of course, the candlesticks scene.

MMO: It’s been thirty years since Bull Durham was released in theaters. Why do you think the film did and still does resonate with fans?

Wuhl: Well, there’s a difference because it’s not just with fans. It’s a movie that people who aren’t baseball fans like.

It’s a really terrific piece of prose, a great piece of writing, and the three leads are impeccable. I just saw it again, and Tim [Robbins], Susan [Sarandon] and Kevin [Costner] are just great.

MMO: I heard you say in a prior interview that you bombed your audition with director Ron Shelton. He even commented that it was the worst audition he had seen.

What happened during the audition, and ultimately, how did you land the role of Larry Hockett?

Wuhl: To get the quote completely correct, Ron said, “It was the worst audition I’ve ever seen. Hire him immediately!” That’s the quote, that’s what he said.

The character wasn’t on the page that much; I don’t think Larry Hockett has ten lines in the whole script. I had spoken to my acting guru at the time, the late, great Bruno Kirby, about the character and of the pitching coach in the minor leagues.

Bruno said something so bright, he said, “It seems to me that the pitching coach’s future depends upon the manager’s future.” If the manager moves up, the pitching coach would move up, which is the way it used to be in baseball. So I realized, okay, I am pretty much his ‘yes’ man. I’m a sounding board, but whatever the manager wants, I’m doing. Whatever he said, I just parroted.

I went into the audition, and if the skipper said something, I just said something; I just seconded everything. I was pretty much all over the place, and also my dad had played ball, so I knew all the baseball talk like hum-babe, hum-babe, no batter here. I threw everything against the kitchen sink.

MMO: The meeting on the mound when you come out and tell the players about a good wedding gift is an iconic scene. I’ve read that the original line from the script was, “Okay, I thought there was a problem.” Can you talk about where the candlesticks line came from, and the reaction you received from it?

Wuhl: A week before we started shooting, I had a friend who was getting married, and I called my wife and I asked her what we were going to get them for a wedding present. She remarked, “Candlesticks always make a nice gift. Or find out where she’s registered and maybe a place-setting or silverware pattern.”

We start shooting about a week later, and that scene was shot at night, and it was very cold. In a lot of scenes, you’ll see the breath on the mound; you’ll see breath coming out of people on the mound because it was that cold out.

We were on the last shot of the evening, and by this time I had developed a rapport with Ron [Shelton], and he knew I was a comic and a writer. It was the last shot, so we shot the scene as written, and I said, ‘I thought there was a problem.’ Then Ron said, “Okay, it’s the last shot. Robert, say whatever you want to say now.”

The setup remained completely the same which was Nuke’s father was in the stands, the first baseman’s girlfriend put a curse on his glove, and we don’t know what to get Millie and Jimmy for a wedding present; we’re dealing with a lot of shit. And I said, ‘Well, candlesticks always make a nice gift, or find out where she’s registered and maybe a place-setting or maybe a silverware pattern. Okay, let’s get two.’ Which is the key to the whole thing because he’s back into cliché baseball.

We shot it, and the brilliance of it was watching everyone’s reaction because they don’t react, nobody cracks up, and Kevin and Tim are brilliant in it.

The next night we would watch the previous day’s dailies. It comes up as the last scene of the dailies, and you’ve got to remember a lot of the cast and crew weren’t there to see it because it was the last shot and everyone had gone home. Everybody broke up [laughing], and I thought, Well, that’s great, but I’m never going to see this again.

Ron invites me to one of the first previews, and it’s in the movie, and the whole place cracks up. I was shocked because I know a lot of directors who would have said, yes, that was funny. Yes, it was in character, and it works, but I didn’t write it and it’s not staying in my movie.

Ron was the complete opposite; Ron welcomed improvisation. The movies I succeeded in are with people like Ron Shelton, Barry Levinson and Tim Burton; they ask for input.

The most important thing about that is the studio wanted the entire scene cut, from the start of Nuke throwing and his dad in the stands. They said the scene didn’t move the plot. Ron said, “What plot? There is no plot in this movie. It’s about a bunch of people; this is the plot. This is what they talk about.’

They said it doesn’t move the story; you’ve got to move the story. And the only reason that scene stayed in the movie is because after these previews they have focus groups, and you fill out these questionnaires, and they ask what is your favorite scene in the movie. It was always, always, number one or number two; that’s the only reason it stayed in the movie.

MMO: Was there a lot of creative room for improv or ad-lib during the shoot?

Wuhl: I’d say it’s 95 percent script. When I hear this improv thing, most improv sucks. [Laughs.] I’ve got to tell you. This happened to be a button on a joke, and the scene worked.

I’ll give you an example: The famous When Harry Met Sally orgasm scene. That scene works. Billy [Crystal] on the spot, after shooting, came up with the line and cut to Rob Reiner’s mom saying, “I’ll have what she’s having.”

That was not written, it’s a button. That’s not improvising a scene; that’s work and that’s writing. A button, you came up with a better tag, that’s all. I came up with a tag that worked, the scene was brilliant.

MMO: So when you show up to weddings, are couples upset if you don’t bring candlesticks or a place setting?

Wuhl: I never have to think about a wedding gift, that’s for sure.

MMO: Do you have a favorite line or scene from the film?

Wuhl: Candlesticks only because it became so popular. I just saw it again, and one that jumps out on me was when I said, “Looks like a convention out there, pretty soon they’re going to call the role.” That was probably too smart for Larry Hockett to say. When I think about it, I say that’s probably too hip a line for this guy to say but people surprise you.

MMO: Was the convention line in the script?

Wuhl: No, that was an ad-lib. I didn’t have many lines in the movie.

MMO: But you have the iconic lines in the film, like the lollygaggers scene.

Wuhl: Lollygaggers is in the script except it was broken up. I think it was all given to skip, and he and I broke it up because he and I became very good friends and would hang out a lot together. When we would do stuff, we became a comedy team.

I’m not sure I had the punch line of lollygaggers, I seem to remember that I didn’t. He gave that to me but that was in the script.

MMO: Kevin Costner is synonymous with baseball movies. Is he as good as advertised as an athlete?

Wuhl: Yeah he’s a good athlete, he’s a very good athlete. You’ve got to remember that he had to learn to switch-hit; he’s a natural right-handed hitter. Whereas Tim, you could question his motion. You can’t question Costner from the left-hand side; he had to learn to do that.

MMO: What are some of your favorite baseball films?

Wuhl: Bang the Drum Slowly and a movie about ten years ago called Sugar are terrific movies. The reason most sports movies fail, and Ron and I share this opinion, is they’re told from the point of view of the fan. The fan only cares about one thing: Did the team win or lose?

They don’t care about anything else like how they got there. Ron said, “I don’t know what the fan was thinking, I was a ballplayer. I knew what the guy at second base was thinking, and he’s thinking I’m trying to keep my job.”

The biggest mistake is when it comes down to the big game, and Ron said, “There are no big games. In baseball you have a big game every day. It’s routine.”

In movies, it’s always the big game, and if you think of it, Bull Durham, Bang the Drum Slowly and Sugar don’t come down to the big game. None of them do. Eight Men Out doesn’t come down to the big game; it’s about something they did, but it doesn’t come down to is the team going to win or lose. Even Pride of the Yankees, as hokey as it is, doesn’t come down to the big game; it’s a good Hollywood movie.

The original Bad News Bears, which I think is an underrated movie, has a big game but they lose. They come back and they play, but they lose, but that’s not the point. The best sports movies don’t come down to the big game, I don’t think.

Field of Dreams has no big game, but I’ve got a problem with that film. I’ve got a problem with one part of it. When James Earl Jones comes to give his big speech at the end and he goes into, “Ray, baseball reminds us of all that was once good about America.” And I say, ‘Wait a minute, good about America? You couldn’t play until 1947! Every one of those Field of Dreams players is white coming out of there.’ Nobody ever picks up on this! I’ve got friends who are smart people, and they go, “Wow, I never thought of that.” And I go, ‘Well, you know, I did.’

That throws me out of the movie a little with that scene. It’s good about fathers and sons, that’s what it’s about. It’s nice and everything, but that scene goes a little far, especially coming from James Earl Jones. In the book, it was J.D. Salinger as the character; it’s not Terrence Mann. But of course, J.D. Salinger wasn’t going to get permission, so they made up someone else.

Everybody loves The Natural, but it’s very different from the book. Even though that comes down to a big game, in the book he fails. My problem with The Natural is on a different level. You’re going to have the home run? Okay, it’s rah-rah; it’s a Hollywood movie. My problem with The Natural is he’s a young, single guy who picks up a girl, and they go up to the room and they have sex, I suppose. She shoots him and jumps out of the window. Why is he hiding for twenty years? What did he do? It’s like, wait a minute, I’m missing a big part in this that is taking me emotionally out of this movie. He did nothing wrong; why is he hiding? What’s the big deal if he is discovered? Who cares?

He strikes out in the book but hits the home run in the film. If you think about baseball, everything is built upon failure, most of it. If you fail seven out of ten times, you’re hitting .300. The three most important pieces of literature I would argue about baseball are Casey at the Bat, Take Me Out to the Ballgame and The Natural. And all end in failure. The Mighty Case has struck out; one, two, three strikes you’re out, and the guys strikes out [in The Natural]. Baseball embraces that more than anything else because it was a longer narrative; the season is a much longer narrative. It’s like a great novel.

If you go to a younger generation, they’ll say Moneyball. Moneyball’s a good movie; it’s wrong, it’s total bullshit. That movie would have you believe, and so would that book for that matter, that the Oakland A’s won because of Ricardo Rincon and Scott Hatteberg.

MMO: While totally discounting Barry Zito, Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson.

Wuhl: Yeah, yeah! It’s like, Atlanta won because of Mark Lemke and Otis Nixon and leaving out [Greg] Maddux, [John] Smoltz, and [Tom] Glavine.

That’s what Moneyball did; they never mention those three guys. It’s a good movie and Aaron Sorkin is one of our greatest writers, and they have some really good scenes in there. It’s also very long, it’s about two hours and twenty minutes.

MMO: I know you’re a big baseball fan. I’m curious, what’s your take on the Mets this season, and what they need to do to improve moving forward?

Wuhl: I personally am a big believer that the fish stinks from the head down. I think they have a problem at the top. Unless you have a guy who is the greatest brain trust around you, which he does not have, and he allows them to do their job, which he does not do, with the exception of Sandy [Alderson].

You talk about a narrative? They give off this narrative of how [Bernie] Madoff has crippled this team. What year is Madoff already? How many years are you going to blame Madoff? You’re in the biggest market in the country; don’t tell me that your payroll can’t be $200 million.

Baseball teams are a monopoly. For what you bought it for, let’s say you sign Manny Machado to a ten-year deal – which I would not do. Let’s say you pay him $30 million a year, your team value when you go to sell this team or you can borrow against has gone up to $2 billion! Each year it’s going to go up another five percent, so that’s $100 million more per year, and you’re making money. So you’re going to tell me that the $30 million is going to break your bankroll? Don’t hand me that shit.

MMO: I can’t thank you enough for some time today, Robert. It was great to reminisce about one of the greatest baseball films of all time with you.

Wuhl: My pleasure. Thank you.

Follow Robert Wuhl on Twitter, @RobertWuhl

The post MMO Exclusive: Actor Robert Wuhl Discusses 30th Anniversary of “Bull Durham” appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Photo by Press Democrat

Eric Byrnes has never shied away from a challenge.

Whether it was learning to control his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as a youth, revitalizing his career with the Arizona Diamondbacks after being released by the Baltimore Orioles after the ’05 season, or training for and completing the Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run in under 24 hours, the competitor in him never quits.

Byrnes, 42, has posted quite the résumé over not just his professional baseball career but throughout his post-retirement life as well. The right-handed-hitting outfielder spent eleven seasons in the majors with five different organizations, posting a slash of .258/.320/.439, with 109 homers and 129 stolen bases.

His best statistical season occurred in his second year with Arizona in ’07, when the club won their division for the first time since ’02 and made it to the NLCS to battle the Colorado Rockies for the pennant. Byrnes hit 21 home runs, stole 50 bases and posted a .353 on-base percentage in a career-best 160 games played.

He’s one of only eleven different players in major league history to hit at least 20 homers and steal 50 bags in a season, joining the likes of Rickey Henderson, Barry Bonds and Joe Morgan.

The exuberant California-native also has TV host, analyst, endurance sports athlete, and author to add to his impressive career accomplishments. His debut book, The F*It List: Life Lessons from a Human Crash Test Dummy, shares life stories and events that helped shape and propel Byrnes throughout his prosperous career.

The book balances Byrnes’ own personal anecdotes with inspiring messages on how to strive for the best in oneself, and not let outside distractions damage one’s morale. Throughout the quick-read chapters, Byrnes does an exemplary job of helping to motivate, promote energy and push readers to continue to put the hard work in for whatever dream they’re vying for.

A mantra Byrnes repeatedly used in our lengthy phone conversation was, You get out what you put in. That message rings true throughout his book, as Byrnes details how important the entire process of challenging and putting in the time and effort to live one’s most authentic life truly is.

Prior to the release of his book this year, Byrnes was the subject and executive producer of the award-winning documentary, Diamond to the Rough. The feature follows Byrnes from the baseball diamond to the trails of the 2016 Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run, the oldest 100-mile trail race in the country. The goal is to finish under 24 hours, which would earn the participant the coveted silver Western States belt. Byrnes accomplished the feat, finishing in under 23 hours and describing the competition as, “Living a lifetime in a day.”

The buoyancy and diligence Byrnes has for every challenge that’s thrown his way keeps him motivated to continue to strive and attempt new feats. His affable demeanor and commitment to his various crafts highlight how putting in the time and work can lead to such a fun payoff in the end.

I had the privilege of speaking with Byrnes in mid-May, where we discussed his upbringing and how sports helped with his ADHD, the Moneyball A’s and what he’s most proud of from his career.

MMO: Who were some of your sports idols growing up as a kid?

Byrnes: I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I would say I had three heroes. The first one was Joe Montana, the second was Will Clark and the third was John McEnroe. I was a huge tennis player when I was a kid.

MMO: Who introduced you to the game of baseball?

Byrnes: You know what’s funny? I had a neighbor of mine that came over to my house and was the best pitcher in Little League; he was about four years older. He used to take tennis balls and fire them at me against the garage, and he really was the one who kind of taught me how to play.

My dad was a fourth-degree black belt in Kenpo Karate, and he was a sensei. He taught karate, but he had never played baseball in his life, so I learned from my neighbor, and it kind of grew from there. I played one year of tee-ball when I was eight, and then I got drafted into the majors when I was nine. I think I was the only nine-year-old in the league, and it was pretty tough at that point because I was competing against a lot of ten- and eleven-year-olds. I was playing three innings a game and swatting flys in the outfield. When I was ten, I was playing the whole game and at third base, and by the time I was eleven and twelve, I was at shortstop, and I kind of developed.

My biggest thing is for any kid out there to play multiple sports, because I think it was my tennis that ultimately helped me develop as a baseball player. Seeing the velocity on a tennis serve is really good for hand-eye coordination and agility. And obviously, the same thing with karate, just being able to move and flow.

I think that’s one of the things you have to be careful about is specializing in a sport at too young of an age because there’s risk of peaking too early. I think that’s huge, and the other thing is you’re not completely developing as a total all-around athlete if you just focus on one sport.

My encouragement to any kid out there is to make sure, at the very least, that you’re participating in two different sports.

MMO: In chapter eight of your book, you talk about growing up with ADHD and how sports were a great outlet for you. How important were sports in helping you manage your ADHD, and what more do you think can be done to help kids who are dealing with ADD or ADHD get more active and involved in sports?

Byrnes: I think the biggest thing is I realized at a young age that activity is what made me feel better. They’ve now proven through brain scans that the entire frontal lobe gets fired up just with something as minimal as five to ten minutes of physical activity before they sit down in a class. We’re trying to treat this entire generation with drugs at an early age, thinking that’s the answer. And then we have nine-year-olds dependent on heavy, heavy, heavy milligrams of Adderall. I met a girl in college who was prescribed 40 milligrams of Adderall! The reason why, she said, was, “Oh yeah, I started taking it when I was young.”

It’s not the answer.

What people have to remember is that physical exercise does the exact same thing, and yet we’re shoving these drugs down their throats. In my opinion, it’s not fair to the kids. Ninety-seven percent of physical education is out of public schools; everyday physical education. Sixty-five to seventy percent of all kids do not partake in youth after-school activity programs. I couldn’t believe that number! A lot of this is done in underserved communities, and so it’s unfortunate because either they’re hanging out on the streets or spending time behind the screens and not doing anything.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned as an adult, is we, as adults, need to be active. What do you think kids need to do? You’ve got to give them something to do, and if we’re not giving these kids activities, we’re depriving them. So what I’ve seen is we’ve completely deprived them of what they deserve, and that’s a chance to get outside and play.

MMO: You attended UCLA and absolutely excelled. Among all-time players at UCLA, you rank first in at-bats, runs, hits, and doubles, and second in RBI. How would you describe your time at UCLA, and how it groomed you for the major leagues?

Byrnes: It was cool, man. I went in there, and I wasn’t a big recruit. We had the number one recruiting class in the country, so there were like five guys basically on that freshmen class that was ahead of me.

I sat for the first four inter-squad games, and I put my feet up on the bench and put my hat down over my eyes. It was kind of my silent protest. The head coach walked over, and he’s like, “Hey Eric, did you see the last pitch?”

And I was like, ‘Nope, sorry I missed that one.’

He goes, “Okay, start running.”

That was the beginning of the fourth inter-squad game that we had played, and I was the only guy on both teams that hadn’t gotten into play yet. I started running, and I ran for three hours and didn’t stop. Afterward, he told me to see him in his office, and he asked me why I wasn’t paying attention. I told him, ‘Look, I sat through three games, and I got tired of watching baseball. I didn’t come here to watch baseball; I came here to play.’

He said, “I plan on red-shirting you.”

I told him, ‘If you plan on red-shirting me, I don’t plan on going to school here. I came here to play baseball. If that’s the case, I’ll leave.’

He put me in the starting lineup the next day; it was another inter-squad game, and I was leading off and playing right field. And before he said, “All right, we’ll see what you can do.”

I hit the first ball off the top of the right-center field wall, and then basically after that I never looked back. I started every game but one or two my entire career there and ended up having a pretty good run.

Like anything, when you get your opportunity, you have to take advantage of it.

MMO: You were drafted twice before (1994, 1997) by the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros before signing with the Oakland Athletics after they drafted you in the eighth-round in 1998. What made you forgo your professional career in ’94 and ’97 before eventually agreeing with the A’s in the ’98 MLB Draft?

Byrnes: In ’94, I was drafted out of high school, and I really didn’t know what was going on; everything kind of happened so fast. The option was sign with the Dodgers and go to Billings, Montana, or go to UCLA. At that point, I don’t think it was really much of a choice.

I remember a number in my mind of what it would take for me to sign that I considered life-changing. It’s funny because I think back to what that number was and I think about what life is now, and you have a total different perspective of money when you’re younger and also when you don’t have it.

I would recommend – unless you’re a first-round draft pick – for everybody to go to college and get that experience. Not just for baseball but for life, because I think overall, my experience at college at how to be a good roommate and teammate and how to focus the schedule [was good]. The entire F*It List came from college; the idea and concept of structuring one activity to the other, which allowed me to focus and what not.

That was huge; that was a monumental time in my life. It’s funny because all the guys participated, and each day we got – it was a pissing contest of four dudes – to see who could get the most shit done in a day. That’s where I basically ripped the title of the book off of, what we were doing and what we were creating. And it has a lot of double connotation because I think part of it is an actual list of shit to get done: wake up, cold shower, weight training, art and history discussion group, civil war history class, lunch at Sandbags, one-hundred swings before practice, practice, one-hundred swings after practice, Maloney’s pint night, tutor session, etc.

That really helped me in structuring my activities and following them, but you also have to have the ability to say f*** it, and that’s the second meaning. If you want to get something done, just do it. We don’t always feel like doing this stuff, and sometimes we just have to move. It’s like, do I feel like taking a cold shower every day? Hell no. But guess what? I know what it does for my immune system. I know how it makes me feel, the endorphins and dopamine that it releases, you just do it.

Then there’s a third element of it where it’s basically [that] we all deal with shit in our lives and stuff that can be a tragic event. Someone telling you no, not getting into school, not getting a job, whatever it is. The bottom line is a lot of this stuff is outside of our control, and in order to move on and move forward with our lives, we have no choice but to say f*** it.

That’s kind of where the title of the book came from. The whole thing kind of really started in college, and I’m thankful for that experience.

MMO: You were a rookie in 2002, the famous Moneyball season. What are your lasting memories from that year, including winning twenty-straight games?

Byrnes: We were a group of guys that genuinely rooted for one another. We had a real college atmosphere; it was amazing to see how each and every guy had each other’s backs. You don’t see that at the big league level, you see it in college and high school, but when you get to professional baseball it’s a different world.

You’ve got 25 individuals out there trying to make a living for themselves, and it’s their livelihood. They’re really out there, quote on quote, fighting for their families. What’s great is that when you do things, not for yourself, and you do things for other people and you really want the best for the other guys on the team, those are the best teams that I played on.

The ’02 A’s were it, and I was the guy that got pinch-hit for Scott Hatteberg, and that’s one of my proudest moments. If you go back and look at the movie at the real-life footage, you’ll see me jumping on the back of, I think, Billy Koch and just going nuts at home plate. Here I was, I just got pinch-hit for, yet I’m celebrating like I was the guy that hit the home run.

I always tell people that was probably one of my most proud moments in my big league career, just to be able to look back on that time and know that I wasn’t thinking about me. I didn’t care I got pinch-hit for; the only thing I cared about was winning the game.

MMO: What’s your view on the film and how accurate did you find the depiction?

Byrnes: There was some stuff in there that was very Hollywood, but there was some stuff that was pretty accurate. I mean, we weren’t paying for sodas out of the soda machine.

Obviously, the large reason for our success that year was the pitching of [Barry] Zito, [Tim] Hudson, and [Mark] Mulder. But also a guy by the name of Cory Lidle, who pitched for the Yankees a little bit and passed away in a plane accident in Manhattan. That was awful. Cory was lights out for us during that stretch, he was actually, I think, our best pitcher.

I think that got overlooked, and the funny thing about Moneyball was it wasn’t about the pitching, but Moneyball was basically [about] trying to find value in players where other teams did not see their value. I think one big message of Moneyball is that sometimes you need to think outside the box; you need to stay ahead of the curve in thinking of how you measure the value of these guys.

MMO: In 2007 with Arizona, you stole 50 bases, slugged 21 homers and posted a .353 OBP. In major league history, you are one of just 11 players to post a season of at least 50 stolen bases and 20 home runs. What about that ’07 season did everything seem to come together for you, including playing in a career-high 160 games?

Byrnes: I said f*** it. Basically, I got traded to Colorado, sucked in Colorado. Got traded to Baltimore, sucked in Baltimore, and got released. I didn’t think I was going to have a job. I signed with Arizona for one year, and thought it was just going to be one year. It was ’06 when I said, ‘F*** it, I’ve got nothing to lose.’ I think I was 30-years-old, and I was looking at it like, All right, this is it.

Baseball is a real fickle game. To go out and have two shitty years in a row is the kiss of death. The way I looked at it was I had nothing to lose. I had been in Oakland my whole career, and all I cared about was an opportunity to play. And having the chance to go to Arizona and get that opportunity, I was so grateful just to be able to run out there on a daily basis. I was grateful to the Diamondbacks, grateful to Bob Melvin – my manager – that gave me a chance.

I ended up hitting 26 homers, stole 25 bases, and really just revitalized my career and allowed me to go into ’07 really comfortable, man. Mathew, you go into a situation where you know the people believe in you; it’s comforting, and I think that was the only year in my entire career where I knew that these dudes believed in me. I was able to go out there and just play freely and not have a grander vision of just myself, too, because we had a great group. Real similar to the ’02 team with the Oakland A’s, the ’07 Diamondbacks team made it to the NLCS.

It was just a great group of guys that all hung out on and off the field together and got along really well, so that was cool to be a part of.

MMO: At what point during your career did you realize you wanted to be involved with broadcasting at some point?

Byrnes: About ’05 when I got released. I think my first job offer was from ESPN. I went in and did some games with ESPN Radio, and they told me they hoped I get picked up, but if I didn’t, they’d love to have me. I really took broadcasting seriously. In life, you get out what you put in, so I went in there and I did five games in a row for five hours a night. I was on with Freddie Coleman, John Seibel, and Doug Gottlieb. It would rotate each night, but three consummate professionals that really taught me about the game of radio.

Once I sort of went through that crash test grind, I was like, Man, I want to do this. I had a passion for it. I had a passion for it not just talking about baseball but all sports. In Arizona, I actually got a TV show that kind of morphed. I did something for FOX Sports Net Arizona, and then they offered to have this camera do one show a month of basically the camera following me off the field. It was really the introduction, in my opinion, to the social media craze. What social media has brought us – which is great – is behind-the-scenes access to what these guys do. Whether it’s an athlete, entertainer, or it can just be your best friend on a behind-the-scenes look of what he’s doing that day.

It was called The Eric Byrnes Show, a behind-the-scenes look into my life, and not only my life; I always included my teammates. It was pretty revolutionary at the time, and I still think it is. It’s funny, because I was just out there, and I don’t think there’s been another dude that’s had his own TV show when he played.

I was grateful for that. It was pretty sweet, and it also allowed me to seamlessly make the transition, I think, into broadcasting after I was done playing.

MMO: Upon your retirement, you got heavily involved with triathlons. In 2016, you completed the Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run, where you were the subject and executive producer on the award-winning documentary, Diamond to the Rough. Can you talk about when you first discovered your love for endurance running, the documentary, and the process it took?

Byrnes: Basically, I got done and got challenged by three junior high school friends of mine. I mean, I had not been done playing baseball for more than a few weeks. I was playing slow-pitch beer league softball and playing a lot of golf and was surfing every day. I ran into some friends who said they were going down to do a triathlon down in Pacific Row, like the Pebble Beach area. And I said, ‘I’ll show up.’

I got my beach cruiser bike, my surfing wet suit, and board shorts; I had no idea what I was getting into. I almost drowned in the water, and I was getting passed by fifteen-year-old girls on the bike; it was embarrassing. I ended up finishing the run and got my ass kicked, but I told each of my friends that it was one of the coolest experiences of my life. Thank you very much, but that’s the last time you’re going to f****** beat me.

I went out the next day, and I went all in. I knew it was something I wanted to get into. I knew I wanted to get into it almost as a kid because I used to watch the Ironman with my dad every year. I remember one of my earliest memories is Julie Moss collapsing at the finish line; I think it was 1982. That’s one of my earliest childhood memories, and I was always fascinated in what would push somebody to go that hard for that long to drive themselves to the point of not being able to put one foot in front of the other.

Once I started training and I did a couple more races, I was like, Man, I really need some help in the water, and just learning how to swim and get the technique down. I ran into a triathlon coach named Frank Sole. I actually called him up. I was looking for a swim coach at Lifetime Fitness down in Arizona, and I said, ‘Hey man, I need some help in the water. I’ve done a couple of triathlons.’ He said he was actually a triathlon coach too, and I’m like, Oh sweet!

Frank and I hit it off; he’s a New Yorker. I’ve always gotten along with New Yorkers because they don’t bullshit; everyone’s pretty straightforward. Frank had remembered me when I played baseball; he was either a big Mets or Yankees fan. He would ask me what I want to do with this, and I told him that I want to do an Ironman. I was thinking four or five years down the road, and Frank said, “I’ll have you ready to do an Ironman in eleven months in if you’re willing to commit.” I’m like, You’re kidding, right? I said, ‘All right, let’s f****** do this!’

Eleven months later, I did my first Ironman. Since that point, and in the process of training, my dad passed away unexpectedly, just out of nowhere. It was a real transitional time in my life, and it was probably the most, if not the most, emotional thing I’ve done in my life to that point in crossing the finish line. I just felt my dad was right next to me and it really helped me cope with the loss and it allowed me to just clear my mind and have conversations with him on the long rides and training for it.

I fell in love with the sport, and I’ve done eleven Ironman’s now and slowly transitioned to the ultramarathon world in the process. The idea was to try to do this 100-mile race that I’ve been infatuated with for a while called the Western States. Once I got the endurance and I was doing Ironman, I started learning more about Western States. On my dad’s 40^th birthday is when he became a fourth-degree black belt, and so it was kind of like my version of the fourth-degree black belt in the endurance world was finishing the Western States 100. And ideally finishing it in under 24-hours, which gets you the silver belt buckle.

I went through the process, which was long, arduous and grueling, and I just trained my ass off for it. You get out what you put in, and I managed it really well. My family was unbelievable and was my support team. I could not one-hundred percent have done it without them. Twenty-two hours and change later, I ended up crossing the finish line.

It’s funny; people talk about living a lifetime in a day, that’s what they had described it to me as. And I’m like, That could not have been more perfect. It’s exactly what it was, and you deal with the emotions of a lifetime in a day. Since then, I’ve continued to do more ultra runs and whatnot, and recently I did this golf thing with twelve hours of golf and somehow found my way to break the world record for most golf holes played in 12 hours, which is a pretty cool feat.

But it all stems from the running and being willing to put in the miles and the time. I don’t think any of that’s possible unless you have the full support of your family and you have them on board with the adventures that the endurance world provides for you.

MMO: I was recently on your website, and read one of your blog entries, which is also in Chapter 60 from the F*It List. It was the story of how Kirk Gibson signed a bat for you, and inscribed the following, “I X V = R.” I recently interviewed Bob Tewksbury, who’s the Giants mental skills coach, who talks a lot about visualization. Can you talk a little about that interaction and what I X V=R means?

Byrnes: Image times vividness equals reality. Kirk Gibson had signed a bat for me, and I had no idea was it was. It took me two days to find out, but he finally let me know what it was. The more vividly you can imagine something, the more likely it is to become your reality. I really just kind of marinated on that, and when I got my opportunity in baseball, I just kept repeating that to myself, ‘IXV=R, IXV=R.’

I think I  came in for Jermaine Dye, and I was able to get a couple of hits and really I give that phrase and Gibson a lot of credit for the success that I was able to have. Especially right then because I went on a twenty-two game hitting streak, and this was right after the IXV=R. I think the model of success in any industry is consistency, and that was what I was able to do is just each day I was visualizing and seeing it and being it.

Really, the transition into triathlons and then into ultramarathons and then into breaking this world record, it’s all intertwined, man. It’s all the same shit. It’s being able to see yourself doing it and believing that it could happen.

Again, it starts with the work, but if you put the work in and you’re able to visualize and believe it can happen, and don’t be negatively swayed by outside influences, I’m one of those believers that anything’s possible.

MMO: When you look back over your career, what are you most proud of?

Byrnes: It’s not what I did. Not a single home run, a single hit, a single diving catch, a single stolen base that I could point back to and say, ‘I’m proud of that.’

It’s not what I did, but it’s how I did it. And I say that in the sense that I went out there each and every single time and I laid my balls on the line, simple as that. I gave baseball everything I f****** had, dude. Everything.

I’m proud of that on and off the field.

The games are only what the fans see, [because] off the field I was obsessed. I was obsessed with being the best baseball player I could be, and I’m just proud of the fact that people talk about they might mail in at at-bat or mail in a day; I didn’t do it. I can’t necessarily say I maximized my potential because I think maybe there was a more proficient way I could’ve gotten stuff done. Regardless, my production or lack of production, it was never from lack of effort.

I gave it everything I had.

MMO: Thanks for your time today, Eric. It was great to speak with you and catch up on your career.

Byrnes: My pleasure, Mathew. Thanks for reaching out.

Follow Eric on Twitter, @byrnes22

Visit Eric’s website, https://www.ericbyrnes.com/

Purchase his book, The F*It List: Life Lessons from a Human Crash Test Dummy, here.

The post MMO Exclusive: Former Outfielder and Current MLB Network Analyst, Eric Byrnes appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

When Sandy Alderson was hired by the Mets as their new GM in 2010 there was a flurry of conjecture about what sort of effect he would have on the team. Words like “Moneyball with money” were being thrown around by Paul DePodesta and J.P. Ricciardi, and everyone started speculating about what exactly this new version of moneyball would look like. Would it be high OBP guys like in Oakland? Would it be right-handed pitchers with durability profiles? Would it be defense up the middle and power from unlikely sources? Would it be outfielders with allergies to cat dander?

Since that time, most of us have settled into the realization that Alderson and his brain brigade didn’t really unveil anything unique in their approach to player acquisition. With the exception of a tendency towards high schoolers with good eyes at the plate (an eye for an eye!), there was little to satiate the masses who were waiting impatiently for Moneyball 2.0. It never materialized.

What I think many of us failed to appreciate, however, was that exploiting market inefficiencies was nothing new in MLB. Ever since the 90’s when Oakland managed to piece together a winning amalgamate from overlooked and undervalued spare parts, teams all across the league hired numbers-crunchers in an attempt to find other players possessing favorable and overlooked competitive adaptations. Funny thing is that with the exception of OBP, not much else had been overlooked … Oh sure, some teams went after character guys while others tried to secure command and control pitching while still other teams went for power arms, but that had all been done before in the hundred-plus year history of the game.

But there was definitely something different at work with these guys. Sandy DePo and Ricciardi are not the sort to sit back and follow tried and true paradigms. They were advertised as innovators and the more I observed their often secretive machinations (especially on the part of DePodesta who I imagine still lives in his underground numbers bunker deep beneath Citi Field, coming out every few days to test new Frisbee designs and shake hands with his children), the more I felt they were up to something, I was certain of it.

I don’t think DePo would have been coy and evasive early on when questioned about what sort of organizational innovations he had in store if he wasn’t actually hiding something. He openly stated that he wouldn’t share his angle even if he had one … but the way he said it made me wonder.

Now I’m a words guy, language is my thing … I pride myself on my ability to read between the lines and derive whatever hidden connotation an inconspicuous comment may yield. The phrase that stood out for me when Collins first hit the scene was “muscle memory.” I swear that first spring I remember at least 4 or 5 players using the term “muscle memory” during interviews. That smacked heavily of an organizational initiative, a mantra.

At the same time Sandy Alderson was spouting loquacious on his desire to streamline the organization from top to bottom with an emphasis on adapting every level to a uniform set of principles. A complete overhaul of our player development program.

Lots of GM’s try to leave their mark by establishing a distinct organizational ethos … nothing new about that right? Only Sandy Alderson and his minions referred to this organizational cohesion as if it were the thing. Almost as if cohesion of purpose across levels was in fact their angle, as if it was the innovation that would somehow create that elusive “unfair advantage.” No, it couldn’t be, I thought. How boring would that be? The organizational stuff is simply a byproduct of Sandy’s military days. He knows how important uniformity and cohesion are for any successful organization … there had to be something else.

But as the years progressed this mantra persisted, and the minors saw a distinct resurgence with more wins from more of our minor league affiliates, fueled by the persistent drone of the same principles across every level. Muscle memory over and over and over.

Then there were the drafts … one high school player after another. Over and over the Mets drafted teenagers who were years and years away.

When you put all this together I think what you have is something akin to our
“new moneyball.” The Mets have designed what they feel is a system that will take raw youngsters with the right physical and intellectual temperaments and graduate them successfully to the majors by means of immersion in a uniform set of principles that they believe will give them a competitive advantage. Those principles of course involve getting on base, plate discipline, attacking the zone, all invoked with thousands of hours of mind numbing repetition.

Now it is certainly true that with younger players you have greater control over whatever developmental trajectory they happen to be on. Older players are what they are, they don’t have much time to put it all together before their bodies hit their physical prime years of 27, 28, and 29 (and for some reason 31) … With a high school player you have 8 to 10 years to make sure they get the reps they need before they hit their physical prime … which comes out to right around 10,000 hours of “practice.” With college players you have about half that time.

And that’s where the innovation comes in. The notion that talent isn’t some magical gift bestowed upon us by the gods or heredity, that given comparable physical attributes the more “talented” individual is almost always the one with the most hours of practice.

As Malcolm Gladwell in his groundbreaking book Outliers pointed out, the 10,000 hour rule is the single greatest predictor of “elite” performance, whether it’s playing a violin or striking out major league batters. On the Mets, “muscle memory” has become a catch phrase for expert status, and it takes 10,000 hours of practice (around 10 years) to achieve elite performance levels. It is a remarkable predictor with the highest levels of performance coming at right around the 10,000 hour mark across a wide variety of disciplines.

What Alderson and his assistants are attempting is a shift away from a scouting/talent paradigm to a tools/development paradigm … and Brandon Nimmo is their poster child. Now I’m not saying they’re actively seeking out blank-slate 18-year olds with solid physical attributes and little else. Naturally you’re going to draft the more talented player when available. But I think what’s interesting is the notion that the Mets might be inclined to draft a raw but physically gifted younger player over a perhaps more “talented” older player because by acquiring the younger player they control the trajectory and the progress, while “talent” at lower levels doesn’t always translate to higher levels.

The approach reminds me a little of the rifle range in boot camp. Our instructors loved guys who’d never fired a weapon because although they were raw, they didn’t have any bad habits, they were able to train us the correct way. I’d never touched a firearm in my life yet I shot high expert my very first try. Similarly this Met front office believes they are more likely to succeed by promoting a system that will produce elite performers from the scratch of raw physical aptitude rather than relying on occasionally finding the lightning in a bottle that is what we sometimes describe as “a natural.”

In the end the proof is in the pudding as they say, and the first batch of this particular confection will hit the stage late next summer barring some cataclysmic barrage of injuries or misfortune. It will be immensely interesting to see whether it was all worth the wait.

The post Talent vs. Development: Are Mets Exploiting A New Market Inefficiency? appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

I’m a sucker for all the catchy internet sports stuff.  Whether it’s a chat or an article that starts with a number (“14 Things the Mets Must Do To Become Respectable”) and I’m all over them.

Another popular thing is surveys.  I don’t know how to put a real survey up online, but here’s the one I would run here at MMO if I had the computer “skill set” to do so.

Select all that apply.

JEFF WILPON

o Not so bad. Well intentioned, gets bad rap.

o Bad owner, got AAA team exiled to Las Vegas.

o Nepotism pure and simple.

o Where do I sign up for the lynch mob?

FRED WILPON

o Old now, not worth complaining about.

o Bernie Madoff’s buddy – that says a lot

o Driving force for Citi (aka Debits) Field

o More interested in real estate deals than in having a representative baseball team payroll.

SAUL KATZ

o Don’t know him, so won’t mix in.

o Heard he’d like to sell so I kind of like him.

o Katz, Katz… Hmm, does he own a Jewish deli?

o Related to Fred and Jeff so how good could he be?

SANDY ALDERSON

o Has made some shrewd moves for prospects.

o His 4 year plan to create a “sustainable” winner has worked out about as well as it did for the Soviet Union.

o Hired and continues to support Terry Collins which speaks volumes.

o Mets likely hired the wrong Moneyball guy.

TERRY COLLINS

o Managers don’t make that much difference.  Besides, he looks the part.

o For a former director of player development it seems he has to be dragged kicking and screaming to play the kids.

o Destroys one relief pitcher and then moves on to destroy the next in line.

o Seems to use Jerry Manuel’s leftover Ouija board in making up lineups and in-game strategies.

DAVID WRIGHT

o Still like him, but liked him a lot better back when he could hit.

o Never met a double play he couldn’t hit into.

o He’s the captain, but those are the guys who go down with the ship.

o He makes how many millions of dollars a year??????

MATT HARVEY

o Superstar pitcher albeit with a big mouth.

o Love the pitching. The controversial stuff – not so much.

o Always nice to see at Rangers hockey games.

o Should listen to crack medical staff and not throw hard til 2015.  Because with their track record… well, you know…

JAKE deGROM

o Rookie stud pitcher with super-cool hair.

o Rookie stud pitcher – how about a trim?

o A Mets pitcher who can hit: ding, ding, ding!

o A Mets pitcher who can field: ding, ding, ding, ding!!!

The post Di-JEST: A Mets Popularity Survey appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

We keep hearing the word “plan” tossed around this winter. Nobody knows what the plan is, as it seems to change from day-to-day and week-to-week. As legendary hockey coach Herb Brooks would say, this Mets off-season has looked a lot like “two monkeys trying to hump a football.”

The only “plan,” as I see it, is to keep the Mets fans thinking there is a plan so that they continue to buy tickets and merchandise. However, there are no plans to build a winning team with bottom of the barrel players. Telling the fan base they are using “moneyball” tactics to find undervalued players has been nothing but a well-developed con.

What the Mets call undervalued players, everyone else calls crap. There is a reason why these players are still available in January and February. Are we to believe that every other team ignored these players, with all the advanced statistics out there today? Give me a break already.

The truth is, moneyball doesn’t exist anymore. We are seeing the players and agents getting wiser and demanding more money for their “undervalued” skills. If you can tell me what is undervalued about a career .235 hitter, then please do. I would love to hear all about it.

The funny thing is, the portion of the fan base that loves the Chris Young signing for his power and defense are the same fans that spoke against the Mets pursuing Justin Upton by marginalizing his power numbers as a result of hitting in Arizona last year. Yet all of Young’s big power years came when he played in Arizona.

So the Mets sign Chris Young and his career averages are a about 18 homeruns per year and a batting average of .235, to go along with solid defense. I’m pretty sure Matt den Dekker could put up similar offensive numbers, play better defense, and do it for about $7 million less…moneyball, huh?

Undervalued players are becoming more and more overvalued due to supply and demand, yet they continue to toss around sensationalized words like “moneyball” to keep the fan base at ease with them signing crappy players because they refuse to spend money.

Why do they do it? To keep us buying tickets and merchandise, that’s why.

Can you win without spending boat loads of money?

Sure you can. But that’s if your core of players is solid, and everything still has to come together. Let’s not forget, we were told this was supposed to be the winter of the big free agency shopping spree.

At this point, the only way the Mets can become competitive would be for them to mortgage the future by trading away the majority of their top tier prospects for impact players. The problem is that is a risky proposition—very risky.

What if they do that, and still don’t win? Then they are worse off than when they started, so I doubt the Mets are going to do that.

Is there a difference between the Kansas City Royals and the New York Mets at this point?

There is, actually.

The Royals organization doesn’t mess around with the fan-bases’ heads and get them to believe that spending is in the future…or winning is on the way. They set clear expectations, so the fan base has no reason to be outraged.

People question why Mets’ fans feel entitled to something? As if we are crazy to think the way we do.

Well, had the organization not set such high expectations, I don’t think there would be as much of a buzz as there is right now. For three long and agonizing years, the organization said that 2014 would be the year that everything gets turned around. And now, it seems like that is not going to happen.

To be honest, I think there was a plan. I think this team believed that Ike Davis and Lucas Duda were going to turn into legit core players on the team, and then they were only going to have to add a couple of small pieces this winter in order to get competitive again.

Unfortunately, the plan backfired. Davis and Duda can be packaged together and probably only gain a couple of marginal prospects in return, and Matt Harvey’s injury was the proverbial cherry on the top of their plan backfiring.

Rather than the organization step to the plate and let us know that things are not working out as planned, they continue to spoon feed us manure.

Even though fans will look at this plan as a failure, Sandy Alderson will ultimately get his contract extended, as he is the perfect GM for the Wilpon’s new strategy. Alderson will not swayed by public opinion or what fans think. He was brought in to save the Wilpon’s money, not build a winning team. They wanted a guy that would not cave to the fans’ outcries of spending money.

Before Alderson, Omar Minaya brought us wins, but the Wilpon’s thought he spent foolishly and burdened the organization with bad contracts. Now they have switched to the opposite direction and have a GM in place that seems perfectly happy spending little money. We probably need to be somewhere in-between.

Enter 2015.

The past few years Mets fans have been able to joke and say things like “we’re thankful we aren’t Pirates fans.” It’s sure getting harder and harder to find things to be thankful for as Mets fans these days, isn’t it?

The post The Clock Is Ticking On Sandy Alderson’s Plan For The Mets appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Why not take a shot?

I’m not talking about making Sizemore the main signing this off-season, I’m talking about taking a shot on a player that could be had relatively cheap, and potentially be this year’s version of Marlon Byrd.

The Mets seem comfortable going with Juan Lagares in center field in 2014, which is good, because the Mets could slot Sizemore in left field, and not put the added strain of playing center on his knees. 

I’m not convinced Eric Young Jr. should be handed the starting left field job and be the leadoff hitter in 2014, so why not bring in Sizemore and have him compete for a corner outfield spot—especially after seeing EYJR’s salary is going to triple this season.

The Mets probably won’t be in a position to bring in two big bats for the outfield, and unless they flip a couple of players to gain a second big bat, Sizemore could be a nice, low-risk, high-reward signing this winter. 

Original Post – 10/16/12

This is not breaking news – the Mets are in need of a lead off hitter and outfielders as we move towards the 2013 season. Some people may be ready to close the door on Grady Sizemore‘s career, but there is still value there. We are still talking about a player that was on his way to super stardom before some injuries side tracked his career.

After missing the entire 2012 season, Sizemore should be fully healed, rested, and ready to finish what he started a few seasons ago. There isn’t a team in a better position to take a risk on Sizemore than the New York Mets.

Many people will scoff at my last statement and argue that the reward isn’t worth the risk in Sizemore’s case. They will argue he’s too injury prone. Seriously…who cares at this point? Beggars can’t be choosers. With the outlook of the Mets outfield in 2013, adding Sizemore would bring Mets fans a glimmer of hope, and add another player with superstar potential to help David Wright out (pending him re-upping with the team).

The bottom line is the Mets are going to have to take some risks if they want to be able to get competitive again, and fast. The Mets are a Moneyball team now, right? Well, if my memory serves me correctly, one of the main story lines in Moneyball was that they went after a player in Scott Hatteberg, who other teams were avoiding due to injury risk, because they saw value there. Even Billy Beane, lord Moneyball himself, understood that there has to be some sort of risk involved if you are ever going to achieve greatness.

Signing Sizemore on the cheap screams Moneyball.

It’s time for the Mets to start taking a some calculated risks. Sizemore may be a risk, but oh the reward the Mets would receive for taking that risk if Sizemore is even 2/3 the player he was in 2008. Cleveland seems ready to finally part ways with Sizemore who is a free-agent this off-season. MLBTradeRumors.com reported in August that two scouts said that Sizemore is worth signing if there isn’t much guaranteed money at stake. Hopefully one of those scouts was from the New York Mets.

The post MMO Flashback: Grady Sizemore Is Still Out There – A Risk The Mets Should Take? appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

That post by Rubin sparked this conversation on MMO.

First, I think the phrase “moneyball” players is a little silly. Essentially what Adam is asking is, where are the undervalued players signed to reasonable deals that are outperforming their contract?

That’s the issue Rubin had when he said “It sure would be nice to have a few more Lyle Overbay types.”

That got me thinking, since today is clearly Marlon Byrd appreciation day at MMO – lets talk a deeper look at not just Byrd’s season to date, but also the other corner OF’s the Mets could have signed as a free agent. Oh, and just for fun – I added Lyle Overbay.

Seems to me, the Mets could have done a lot worse not only in terms of player production but in contracts offered?

Sure, Byrd is just one example and every GM has his plus moves and minus moves and we can debate forever every single transaction ever made.

The truth is, guys like Byrd, Jeremy Hefner, LaTroy Hawkins and David Aardsma are four examples on this roster of the type of undervalued move the Mets are capable of making.

I’m no moneyball expert (if there is such a thing as somebody who reads a book well?), but I believe Marlon Byrd is the “moneyball player” you’re looking for Mr. Rubin.

Perhaps we can call him, Moneyball Marlon?

The post So Where Are All Those Moneyball Players…Take 2? appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Back in November, the Mets announced they had signed a right-handed relief pitcher named Greg Burke to a minor league deal with an invitation to spring training. When I heard of the signing, it reminded me of the scene at the beginning of the movie Major League where the Cleveland fans are all giving their take on roster moves the team made, and the guy in the diner asks “Mitchell Freidman?” In similar fashion, after the signing was announced, Mets fans asked “Greg Burke?”

Who’s Greg Burke???

Burke is an easy guy to point out on the field because he has a very distinct motion. You see, Burke is a side-winder. Side-arm pitching is somewhat of a lost art, similar to the knuckle ball. When you find a guy who is effective, he can wreak havoc on a lineup. The problem with side-winders is, and the reason why most pitchers avoid style of delivery, because you immediately turn yourself into a righty/lefty specialist. A right-handed side-winder, as Burke is, would be incredibly difficult for a right-handed batter to face.

The motion looks weird, the ball comes from a completely different angle, and it just makes the hitter feel very uncomfortable in the batter’s box. However, for a left-handed hitter, it would almost work to their advantage to face a righty side-winder. They would have more time to see the pitch coming across and out of the side-winders hand. A left-handed hitter would feel much more comfortable batting against a right-handed side-winder than a right-handed hitter would. So Burke, like many pitchers trying to stay in the show, have mastered a lost art. He is out of options, and hopefully becoming a side-winding righty specialist will keep him in the show for one more year.

Another movie I am immediately reminded of when seeing Burke, is Moneyball. In Moneyball, an overweight Jonas Hill who we are supposed to believe is representing Paul DePodesta, is virtually obsessed with Chad Bradford, a sidewinding pitcher that Hill’s character believes can be the most effective reliever in their pen.

I’m not so sure DePodesta thinks Burke will be the most effective reliever in the bullpen for the Mets, that is if he makes the team out of camp, but he definitely has the ability to get right-handed hitters out. While I’m not a big believer in bullpen specialists, I think that Burke could provide some decent value with his deceptive pitching style. For at least one go around, the hitters will be very confused when they face Burke, and as long as you get him out of the game before the hitters can adjust, he can be effective.

In 2012, Burke was with the Baltimore Orioles, and split time between AA and AAA. He pitched a total of 64 innings and had a miniscule 1.53 ERA. That is promising. He was named an organizational All-Star by MiLB.com in 2012.

It’s yet to be seen if Burke sticks with the big league club after camp breaks, but he definitely has something the Mets are in need of—the ability to get guys out. Burke is a true underdog, having a brief stint with the Padres back in 2009, but spending most of his career riding buses and staying in motels playing the minor leagues. Everyone loves an underdog story. He has shown the ability to get right-handed hitters out, and hopefully he does enough to earn a spot on the 2013 Mets. Everyone here at MMO will be rooting for him.

The post Who is Greg Burke? appeared first on Metsmerized Online.