📅 Published on: 2024-12-26 21:50:49
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how’s it going Yankee fans welcome back to Fireside Yankees with Alex and Ryan hope everybody had a fantastic holiday season love cheer and success for the 20125 year ahead and back at it we are Ryan and I talking about the Yankees and if you’re new to the channel make sure to go check us out on Apple Spotify and of course on YouTube Five Stars always appreciated on the podcast channels but my friends little bit slow right now for the Yankees definitely after the Paul gold Schmid signing it’s been a little bit quiet we don’t really know what they’re going to do at second base or third base just yet you know Ryan and I have talked about every single opportunity option Under the Sun so far but today you want to take a little bit of a gander at one of the players already on this team and one of the players we recently acquired um so I’m pretty excited to dive into Fernando Cruz who is a bullpen piece that we just got and guys this is this is this guy’s no joke this this is a player that you know a little bit underrated I think that he’s been struggling over the last couple years but this is someone who has ridiculous uh swing and Miss potential 99th percentile in whiff rate 99th percentile in strikeout rate I’m pretty excited to see how things continue to progress of course we got him in the deal uh that included Jose Travino so you know we got Alex uh was Alex Rodriguez the catcher Alex Jackson sorry I think it’s Alex Jackson the catcher then of course Fernando Cruz so this is a pretty interesting Prospect you know you talk about the Yankees talk about Matt blade and the pitching coach that he is what he does for this organization in terms of turning nobody’s into somebody’s fernan crw buddy welcome to being somebody because you just you were just discovered by the wizard so you know Ryan tell me about Fernando Cruz what he brings to the table and why you think he could be the next gem discovered by Matt Blake yeah so first and foremost hope everybody had a happy holidays whether it was I believe the first night of Han last night I think Quanza started either today or yesterday and then Christmas was yesterday as well so whatever holiday you celebr hope you guys had a great day or or great days ahead um and you know in the case of Fernando crw you know if we’re talking about the giftgiving season uh if you’re Fernando Cruz the best gift you might have gotten this year is uh chance play for the New York Yankees work with Matt Blake and Sam Breen because as you mentioned these guys are excellent what they do with pitching development and you know as he enters the final year of his uh before arbitration pitching well this year is really important for Cruz if he wants to make you know millions and millions of dollars he’s an older guy when he hits fre likely won’t get a multi-year deal uh his arbitration numbers are going to be extremely important for his ability to make money in his major league career uh and his splitter is the money-making pitch here his splitter is one of the best pitches in the world uh it had a 162 Stuff Plus that this past season that has the best Stuff Plus score on any splitter in baseball it’s one of the best off speed pitches in baseball so that expands our uh you know our range of pitches into changeups Splitters Fork balls you know it’s up there with Devin Williams Airbender a pitcher’s now on the Yankees kodai senga ghost fork and Cruz I mean he Splitters up there with all those pitches so this past season he had a 149 slugging percentage and a 116 average against on that splitter with a 59.3% whiff rate now his four seam fast ball got crushed 513 slug 295 average 374 wiba but I don’t consider this pitch to be the problem pitch in his Arsenal his fast Ball’s clearly there to established the top of the strike zone uh and set up that nasty splitter in my opinion it’s his cutter his cutter was a real problem pitch for him this past season it had a 740 slugging percentage and a 333 average allowed that’s a 504 woba that’s higher than Aaron judge’s woba and it’s a higher slugging percentage than Aaron judge’s sling percentage from this past season so batters on average were better than Aaron judge against his cutter it’s a pitch he’s got to cut out of his Arsenal almost entirely or completely rework the pitch I think he could bring back into the fold is his slider which he threw sparingly in 20 23 only threw it 51 times but it had a 175 woba and a 45.5% whiff rate it has good vertical drop and decent horizontal movement I wonder if that again is a pitch he can bring back into the mix for seam location is something you could also see the yanes try to improve they have done a really good job with fastball location consistently in their careers uh in their career uh in their tenure with Blake and uh Sam Breen his fast ball is located in the kind of the upper middle part of the Zone I wonder if the Yankees try to have a a Elevate his fast ball more up in the zone or B attack a side of the Zone a little bit more whether it’s the inside corner the righties um the inside corner lefties which is outside charries uh so you know there are different ways location wise that you can Tinker with this Arsenal uh again that splitter is one of the best pitch in the sport he gets a ton of swings and misses over the last three years he which is you know he debuted in 2022 uh he’s sixth in strikeout rate so we’re talking about a guy who misses bats at an elite clip I got the 116 Stuff Plus Elite stuff plus scores Elite pitch quality scores this is the kind of guy who usually ends up being an elite reliever at the major league level again it just seems to be down to command and also the ballpark and the defense in uh his career he has a 375 ER away from uh Cincinnati and he has an RA north of five at home Cincinnati’s a very run-friendly ballpark it explains why he has you know a 1.39 or 1.31 home runs per nine at home and a 0.63 on the road uh and the defense behind them the Reds have consistently run out below average defenses again I know that people are going to site that the Yankees have a terrible defense that they’re so bad defensively haha Aaron dropped Aaron judge dropped the ball in center field whatever let’s talk about the facts let’s talk about data here the reds are one of the worst defensive teams in the sport they do not have a lot of above aage defense anywhere Eli De La Cruz is likely their best defensive infielder and even then he is a inconsistent defensive Fielder uh the Reds were third worst in defensive run saved last year at -30 uh the Yankees were at plus 31 so there’s a 61 run difference there in terms of uh Fielding run value which uh takes into account uh the situation right if you make an error and it lets a runner get to first but then the next guy strikes out it’s not nearly as impactful as those erors where and we’ve seen some guys like gabber Torres right it’s like one era leads to a big inning right an era that leads to uh two guy scoring the guy that reaches getting around the base and scoring think are we second best in Fielding run last year at plus 36 the Reds 23 that was the sixth worth Mark worst Mark in the league and then framing wise too stealing strikes stealing strikes is important right you know if you can get a a catcher who can steal strikes who can uh put their pitcher in a position where they’re at an advantage in account being up 01 in account as a pitcher versus being behind 10 in account is a massive difference the Reds 18th in framing runs the Yankees second at 20.1 just a smidge worse than the uh San Francisco Giants so better defense better Ballpark and of course some better usage of his pitches maybe fewer Cutters more sliders uh that I think could all uh kind of result in him being a really good relever for the Yankees next uh next year and again fixing some of their strikeout issues yeah you know interesting you mentioned the slider now you talked about it briefly but this is a pitch that you know he has not used a lot in the past and he only threw his slider he actually didn’t throw it at all in 2024 and 2023 he threw it 51 times in that small small sample it was only 4.6% of his pitch usage a lot of 125 batting average and a 125 slugging rate I there might be something there with the slider you know there might be more to extract and maybe uh Matt Blake decides to include that pitch now the four seam fast ball is obviously not a good pitch it is one of those pitches that allowing 295 batting average 513 slug in rate um it just doesn’t get the movement and the the command isn’t there but like you said the split finger fast ball that is a uh Elite pitch that is one of the best in the world when it comes to the effectiveness of it I wonder if he becomes this like split finger slider type of pitcher and kind of use that tunneling concept uh you know if he has some sort of Gyro movement and you know kind of goes vertically I don’t know we’ll we’ll see what happens but this is a picture that you just look at the this is kind of what we hoped anel de los Santos would be you know what I mean when we saw his stuff like oh wait a second like he gets tons of whiffs tons of Misses he just could not command like he could not command any of his pitches Fernando Cruz has just tremendous command over that splitter specifically so if he can improve on some of his other stuff and and the Yankees are one of the best teams and the Reds certainly aren’t known for this but the Yankees are one of the best teams when it comes to uh knowing how to regrip reposition your hand on a ball to maximize the spin rates and command and location so they’re going to get this guy in the map black school of thought and train of baseball and and pitching and he’s going to improve one way or another we just don’t know where they’re going to apply the magic are they going to expand upon his fast ball are they going to add a slider to it are they going to try to you know I mean look Ryan looking at his for seamer I don’t know why you just don’t say screw it unless just go Sinker with it you know like why why even throw a for seamer if you’re going to allow at 300 batting average you might as well throw a a sinker and if you’re going to allow a high batting average you might as well put it on the ground right you might as well get the ball to be on the ground if you’re going to allow contact on your fast ball you know what do you think they do there with his fast ball because that could be something they do tweak that’s a great question you know can they get him to pronate and and get armide movement now there are a couple of indications that he may struggle with that one of those being his splitter his splitter doesn’t get a lot of arms side movement maybe that’s an indication he doesn’t naturally pronate well pronation uh rotating your wrist inward for those who are uh unaware and that inward movement typically creates Sinker change up uh splitter kind of action although again in this case not someone who throws splitter uh trying to pronate his wrist and he probably just stra down um superation uh is the um excuse It’s the uh opposite of that so we’re talking like the ability to when you throw your wrists rotate outwards sweepers Cutters uh those pitch with big horizontal movement that’s where you’re going to see those kinds of uh guys with that kind of arm action do well but just because you’re a superator or you throw the ball like this or you naturally your wrist rotates inward doesn’t mean it’s impossible to throw a sinker if you do you know doesn’t mean it’s impossible to throw a certain type of pitch it just makes it a little harder maybe you have to get a little more creative um and you know we’ve seen uh Cruz Tinker with a sinker yes that rhyme was on purpose uh and something that is important to know Alex is that when you throw a cutter and when you throw a for seamer if you throw a sinker you have three different fast balls even if those three fast balls are pretty meh by throwing three fast balls you should have some success with those pitches because they naturally tunnel off each other very well in fact a pitcher who does this very well is an old friend Luis srino last year added a cutter and a sinker and was able to throw a mediocre for team fastball cuz that’s what it is now uh a decent enough Sinker and a decent enough cutter and get good results keeping the ball on the ground with those pitches the Mets have done that with him uh they acquired Montas because he can do that as well throw three different fast balls um the Yankees you know with Garrett Cole he developed the sinkers so he could throw three different fast balls fast ball diversification pitch diversification movement diversification whatever you want to classify it as changing up looks if you want to get a little less technical uh that’s important and Alex I do think there’s a lot of Merit to the point that even if Cruz cannot naturally generate a lot of armide run or generate a lot of SN having a mediocre Sinker may be better for him than as you mentioned having an awful cutter right it may do his cutter well even to have a third fast ball in the mix and of course we’re just trying to figure out ways to get to two strikes with Cruz the goal is for for Cruz to try to get more consistently to two strikes or even just get ahead in the count he’s not getting to two strikes enough he’s you know in a situation where he’s throwing his fast ball early or his cutter early and batters are teeing off of him so how can he get them to how can he get to two strikes how can he get to a count where you can throw a splitter and get the strike out that’s the goal the Yankees are going to have to try to reach here again a sinker could help absolutely because if your first pitch swinging you hit a ball off your hands and it’s and out like that’s great um and if you look at some of his splits you know I think he’s worse against lefties and righties which maybe indicates that you know the Sinker won’t help in those situations but I disagree I think a two seamer can help I think a sinker two seam like I think those help against lefties too you can freeze them you can get ahead you can throw strikes maybe the cutter is the wrong weapon for lefties you know there are a lot of different ways he needs to go about this but expanding his Arsenal would certainly be a strong start um and again you know maybe it’s a command related issue uh but as you mentioned you know if he can keep the ball on the ground a little more that that would Bode very well I mean look last year had a 30.1% line drive rate he allowed line drives almost at the same rate which he allowed ground balls right and ground balls some of them are like well like low syncing liners like for example if it’s 8 degrees off the ground hit 100 miles an hour right it may hit the ground at the lip of the infield but that’s going for a hit sometimes or pretty often that’s going for a hit even though it’s classified as a ground bow um he’s got to manage laun chank a little better why are batter generating so many line drives he’s going to have to figure that out so a sinker definitely helps um again you know kind of to simplify if he could add a sinker or not he’s thrown one before it doesn’t have to be a great one it could be pretty mediocre it just has to be different enough from his fast BS cutter um and everything kind of like if you look at a movement plot horizontally everything kind of is within each other pretty well like how do I explain this his the mo the pitch that moves the most to the arm side is his for SE at 6.8 inches of arm side movement his cutter moves 4.4 in uh glove side like there’s not a lot of horizontal separation here like it’s not great to know that for batters they only have to worry about up down not nor like East West that’s another way where a sinker could help it’s why I recommend the slider because it can give him something that moves a little bit more away I wonder if he can throw a sweeper I don’t think he can but like I wonder you have to wonder he throws a you know he has again if he doesn’t if you can’t move it this way into righties can you move it away from them if he can’t move it into left if you can’t move it away from righties then can you move it into righties like you have to answer those questions Matt Blake s Breen they’re the best in the business at that great at pitch design great all that stuff the question I have for you Alex is you know when you’re looking at Fernando crw and you look at his ER last year like how much do you trust him out of the gate like what is where is where is he going to rank in this Bullpen for you because I think that’s another question that’s really difficult that Aaron Bo’s going to have to answer and he’s going have to answer it like without much sample size to work off of he’s goingon to have to answer based on spring training outings yeah the way I look at it a player like this is you and just like anyone in the Yankee rotation you earn your role you know what I mean like these these guys earn the role of being a high leverage player Luke Weaver was not high leverage going into the season he sure as hell was when it came down to in the postseason cuz he proved it over the course of the year uh Fernando Cruz I’m using him as a setup man I’m using him as a mid like kind of seventh inning guy eighth inning guy get you know through one inning low leverage type stuff to build his confidence um you know you look at his stats in 2023 he’s pitched 66 Innings then in 66.2 in 2024 he had a 491 ER in 23 but he had 345x ER so he got a little unlucky a lot of times um he expected Ra was Far lower even last year 486 ER expected 3.97 erra so you know this is a guy and by the way you know Ryan talk about strikeouts man this guy had almost 15 strikeouts per nine last year when he’s not striking out batters he’s giving up hits so how can you turn those hits into ground balls how can you turn those hits into outs that aren’t uh put in play all the time so you know at least put into play in a in a hard in a in a contact way a damage way that’s where I think they have to redefine his pitch mix a bit maintain that splitter but some times introducing a slider like a sweeper to the mix uh increases the probability of injury because when you’re throwing a sweeper and it’s not a good one and it’s not refined and it’s not developed you’re exposing yourself to a significant amount of pressure on your elbow and I think that that’s something the Yankees probably don’t want to do I’d probably opt for more like reintroduce that Sinker um try to locate it a bit better and I bet you he has a lot more results uh at least more positive results than throwing his for team more frequently or his cter more frequently so you know that splitter is his strikeout pitch you know you don’t need like usually uh pitchers use Cutters as a strikeout pitch you don’t need the cutter like you’re know you’re not using the cutter as a strikeout pitch in this instance you’re using a splitter so I don’t know if they tweak his fast ball maybe they want they want him to grip it slightly differently maybe change his um his delivery on Fast balls I mean you probably wouldn’t do that because obviously then you’d be able to tip pitches you want to be S the same every time but you know there are ways that he can tweak things to improve his fast ball I’m curious what Matt Blake is going to do this is a guy I see as more of a setup man um for the time being a guy that they can trust with a specific pitch against specific batters I wonder if they play the splits game with him a little bit more intensely uh during the earlier to Mid portions of the season if he starts to pick up pace if he starts to show those expected erra results become a reality he’s going to work his way into a high lever situation pretty quickly um this is a guy that has just really nice stuff but this whole Bullpen I mean Ryan talk about getting Devon Williams Fernando Cruz like that’s a great pairing you get Deon Williams who’s a proven Superstar closer like he’s a lock down close the damn door type closer and then you have Fernando Cruz who’s like your project we thought the Yankees may be going out and getting a bunch of projects to develop not a Devin Williams so we love the fact that they went after that big time closer and then they got a project like Fernando crw who can be like maybe he ends up like a Luke Weaver like bouncing into this really important role and finding his Groove and redefining his career is 34 years old so he is a little bit older but you know the gas is still there there’s still gas left in the tank and you know Ryan looking at this Bullpen right now I I’d imagine you probably agree this is is a better unit than it was last year Devin Williams is substantially better than Klay Holmes Tommy Canley yeah losing him sucks but you still have Luke Weaver and now you have the best version of Luke Weaver and he could also come back the best part is the Yankees can go and look at the market and go Hill Canley like who we want back how many of these guys we want back that’s the beauty of it Alex right like they’re not done it’s December it’s you know I think a lot of people I see a lot of like all right like this is what we’re doing at second like you don’t know what we’re doing at second you don’t know what we’re doing at first you don’t know what we’re doing you know what I mean so uh you know as it pertains though to what you mentioned and what you’re talking about uh about the bullpen and where they are right now yeah they’re severely they’re significantly better uh than where they were um last year and one metric I wanted to look at because I find it super interesting you know the the the pitch that’s kind of never been in Vogue is the splitter or the change up to righties that’s never really been in Vogue the Yankees threw a healthy dose of change ups and Splitters uh to right-handed batters I looked at change UPS specifically because going throw a lot of Splitters which kind of skews that stat like strowman and lighter Jr are the only splitter guys or last year were the only splitter guys now they have another one in Cruz yanes were second behind the Minnesota Twins in right-handed change UPS to right-handed batters 246 woba 255 expected weight on base average a 33.3% whiff rate the league does pretty well when they throw right-handed change UPS to right-handed batters and the case is started to be obviously the case is very similar for a splitter which move similarly to change UPS um not that they’re not different in certain regards but they are pretty different right you know they’re I mean they’re pretty similar they’re they’re pretty normal pitches like you look at all that stuff Splitters and change UPS they all kind of have similar cues and all that um the Yankees may be a team that can get that right change up shape they have a lot of like straight drop change UPS those kinds of pitches that play really well to righties and if they can throw a lot of those change UPS to righties um it’s a unique look righties don’t see change UPS from righties that’s partially why it does so well I’m not saying n should start doubling and tripling their usage of change UPS to righties um but if you do show that pitch and you establish a part of the plate that hitters right-handed hitters aren’t used to seeing you’re going to get a lot of ugly swings you’re going to get a lot of ground balls you’re going to get a lot of chases you’re going to get a lot of swings and misses down the Zone you’re going to get a lot of CHA you know you’re going to get a lot of good results and the Yankees want to get swings they want to get swings out of Zone you want to get swings and misses you want to keep the ball on the ground the Y need to find ways to create whiff again because while they were very good at keeping the ball on the ground they were not very good at missing bats last year as a bullpen last year’s Bullpen struck out 12 23.9% of batter of the Batters they faced this past year that was the 12th best Mark in baseball if you look at strikeout to walk percentage they were dead on average 14.8% what is the most predictive metric when it comes to next season erra it’s strikeout to walk percentage so the Yankees have retooled the bullpen that they may be believed over overperformed what they should have done granted their ability to suppress damage contact by keeping the ball on the ground is great but it’s not like the Yankees had the best home run suppression in baseball a 1.01 home runs per nine is 16th in baseball that is right around average so they were right around average in home run suppression right around average at striking guys out and they were uh you know right around average at not walking people in fact they had the 11th highest walk rate as a bullpen that’s not a great combination Alex I think that that’s why we had so many issues with the bullpen for most of the year it’s not that they didn’t have talent it’s not that they didn’t have guys with good stuff it’s not that they didn’t have guys with upside it’s that they had a lot of guys who didn’t do the three things you want a pitch to do very well limit walks strike guys out don’t give up home runs theke have acquired a a surplus of guys this winter who do that very well I know Cruz allowed more home runs this year uh but in his care you know in his career away from C uh Cincinnati doesn’t allow home runs Deon Williams great home run suppressor Luke Weaver remaining here I know he gives up some home runs but the strikeout to walk rates are Elite uh you mentioned uh you know poent we mentioned bringing back Tim Hill maybe or Tommy kley in Hill’s case you’re going to get either an elite damage suppressor who throw from the left-handed side um you know in lighter’s case you know people forget Mark ligher Jr last year was Elite in terms of his strikeout rate this is kind of crazy I wasn’t aware of this Mark Le Jr had the the 12th highest strikeout rate in baseball this this past year and if you look at over the past two seasons like the best strikeout pitchers in the game it’s uh you know I’m going to just put the qualifiers at around uh 80 Innings because I need I want Williams to be on this leaderboard um number one is Devin Williams number four is fernandoo Cruz and Mark Le Jr is 18th on this list the have three of the 20 best strikeout relievers in the game in their very Bullpen and they have Weaver in there who his strikeout numbers can be in the top 10 top 50 range you going to get you have guys who Miss bats you have guys who can punch tickets that’s huge for this group that’s huge for this group moving forward that’s going to help them in high leverage how many times we sit here and say there is not enough power pitching in that Bullpen there’s not enough swing and Miss how comfortable did you feel when a ground ball was hit off of clay Holmes right the Yankees the Yankees solution to not having Juan SoDo and I wrote about this this morning I was talking about Hassan Kim it isn’t going to be trying to be a better version of what the 2024 Yankees were you can’t do that what you can do is change how you try to win games and alter that strategy and then build towards that strategy it’s not like home runs weren’t available pet Alonzo is available thosar Hernandez is available both those guys would probably cost about as much as Bellinger and freed do why didn’t the Yankees go after them Alonzo might get a two-year deal Hernandez is looking for a three-year deal it wasn’t the length of deal the Yankees gave eight years to Max freed Alex I think it has a lot to do with them wanting to be better defensively better on the pitching side and better on the base paths we talked about this with goldi like gold Schmid’s slow yes but he’s a much better base runner than a lot of the Yankees are like he’s he would be one of the best base runners on the Yankees he was at like negative 0.5 I looked at this crazy stat you know I talked about like the Yankees were the worst base second worst base running team in the stat cast ERA this past Yankees team according to fangraph’s base running metric which is BSR is the worst base running Yankees team since in integration in 1947 and guess who the second worst Yankee base running team was in that metric Alex you want to take a guess second worst team so this one is the by far the worst since 1947 who’s the second worst guess take a guess just pull out of here you can say any any team last year’s team the 2023 team yes was the second worst base running team so the Yankees of ran their two worst base running teams since integration think about that guys that can’t that that doesn’t work when you don’t have juano Aon judge it doesn’t right and honestly let’s be real here I looked at like you know run differential expected when loss record this past team’s expected win lost record was worse than 2017 2018 2019 and 2022 so does the style work I’m not particularly sure it would work if thei had more payroll to work with to surround stto and judge with more talent but if they’re going to try to make this shift into we’re going to be better at pitching defense all that stuff yeah you need to go get a guy like Fernando Cruz who punches tickets you need to go get guys who don’t walk a lot of guys and strike out a lot of batters that stuff is sticky that stuff maintains year to year right just walking out and throwing out a good RA is great but I was watching this video it’s from an Matt’s baseball great friend of mine the correlation between ra and for relievers in the previous year versus the following year is like the r squared is 0.001 if anyone here is taking High School statistics you know that uh an r squared of 0.1 is nothing like it means it’s completely insignificant you got to throw out erra you got to ignore that five ER for Cruz got to pay attention to what matters that’s strikeouts that’s home run prevention that’s being able to just punch tickets and Miss bats Alex this team’s going to be different from last year’s team hopefully it’s different in a way that you know wins the more ball games yeah we we hope that to be the case we hope that to be a situation where the Yankees can find you know obviously the infielders the last piece of the puzzle here but from a pitching perspective much better than last year I’m adding Max free to the situation I wrote yesterday about rodon I think that he could have a big bounceback season um so you know I think we’ll do a whole breakdown on Carlos rodon where he stands and why he could be much better in the third year of that six-year contract he signed a couple years back and Max Freed’s a massive improvement over Nester over clark Schmidt over Luis he any of those guys aside from gar Cole so you know the bullpen got better the pitching got better the defense got better um you know no one’s talking about Jason Dominguez I think we have to do a big breakdown uh Ryan about Jason Dominguez soon because people are sleeping on this man 21 years years old like people are are writing him off and saying well it’s not enough guys this guy’s a kid man he’s literally a kid who’s never gotten consistent action in the MLB he played 18 games last year and it was like or this past season it was sporadic so you know we need to see a little bit more consistency and Brian Cashman said a best he wants to see him get his shot and I do too so I’m excited to see how things progress over the next couple weeks we’ got you guys covered doing more player bra breakdowns but uh Fernando Cruz is interesting this is this is a really uh exciting player who profiles perfect Al to be a Yankee and to be quite honest we don’t have a player that throws a splitter like this so it’s another weapon they can deploy out of the bullpen uh which is pretty exciting it’s Peak it’s it’s a lot of really good individual pitches again you talk about Weaver’s change up Williams’s change up uh Cruz’s splitter right Mark Le Jor splitter is among the El right Weaver’s fastball too I mean we’re talking about out Lisa Sinker outlier pitches that grade out extremely well Jake cousins Slide the C slider of course Hamilton slider like we’re talking about pitchers who have individual pitch that’s slambo it’s Unique it’s Unique it’s different it’s hard to replicate it’s hard to train for it’s hard to train your eye for in game speed the Yankees have a very unique different lots of swing and Miss Bullpen it’s exactly what they need if they’re going to win ball games next year if they’re going to try to win the World Series they need to miss bats I’m glad they got Cruz I love trino I love trino way more I think than most Yankee fans did uh but let’s be honest Alex when you can trade a backup catcher with one year of control for a guy with four years of control and tons of upside offensively I know we talk I know everyone’s like Alex Jackson sucks I get it too remember Jose Trina was just a a crappy backup catcher who couldn’t hit until he came over to the Yankees just saying that’s all I’m going to say not saying Jackson become a stutter or anything but is he a capable backup catcher probably right like maybe I don’t know and they’ll they’ll find someone if they need to Ben rice can catch a scar can catch they’ve got catchers they’ve got a million catchers yeah I’m excited to see how things progress here I mean we made some really nice creative moves and I think really benefit our weaker points but guys always happy to hear your thoughts down below I know this is kind of a deep dive into a random Bullpen are but sometimes people like these kind of episodes so hopefully you enjoyed it make sure to like And subscribe as always and we’ll catch you guys on the next Fireside Yankees [Music] 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