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00:00just now. He, of course, joined Dan Dickerson for that yesterday. Bobby, how tense, how tense
00:05were you in the ninth inning? We've been talking about this with the listeners. What was it like
00:08for you? I was less than comfortable, Doug. But, you know, I've been less than comfortable for the
00:16majority of the last two months. But these guys are unbelievable. They find a way to make pitches
00:20and make plays in the tightest situations. And they did it again last night. Yeah, I heard right
00:26at the intro of the broadcast, you were talking about the umpiring and how important a role
00:31they're going to play in this game and in this series. Because if you were speaking specifically
00:35about Valdez, if he's able to get that low strike, it could be a long day for the Tigers. And he
00:41wasn't getting that low strike. And it wasn't such a long day. Well, it was pivotal for him
00:48because he dominates the bottom of the zone. And then with that sinker and with his sinker,
00:53you've got to see it up. And if it starts mid-high or lower, you need to let it go.
00:57Not easier said than done. And it's really easy when you're sitting in the broadcast booth. But
01:01that's the attack plan you have to have. If Tony Randazzo was going to give him that
01:05a ball, two balls down, he's just going to start it down there and pound the zone all day. And
01:09it's going to be a boatload of ground balls, but he didn't. And fortunately it forced him to come
01:13up in the zone. He did that. And the Tigers had really good approaches all day long on getting
01:17that ball up, getting it, the right-handed hitters, getting it close to him because his ball runs a
01:22lot away from right-handed hitters as well. They got it up. They got it close to them and allowed
01:26for that run to take over. And they stayed in the middle of the field and it was a real treat
01:29to watch. The other thing you guys talked about in the pregame and absolutely happened was
01:34getting runners on the base pass, creating havoc that way, putting pressure on the Astros and
01:40having a patient approach at the plate. It's exactly what happened. The Tigers didn't go one,
01:44two, three at the entire game. I mean, is that something that they had told you before the game?
01:49We're going to work counts and we're going to get guys on base. I don't think it's much as much as
01:54having a approach of working count, having a quality at bat to be getting the first pitch in
01:58the zone you want and firing on it. I think the definition of a quality at bat is a little bit
02:03nebulous, but you kind of know it when you see it. And so those guys, and this has really been
02:08the genesis of this team. As soon as they made the move to bring all the young guys up, you see
02:14over time, the quality at bat just really increase and just more of them each and every game. And
02:19then as far as running the bases go, again, that's what these guys have done during this same
02:24stretch. They have run the bases, two base advances that they're at the top of the league, going first
02:28to third, top of the league. So, I mean, it was just getting guys on and creating traffic. Robert
02:32Valdez does such a good job of keeping guys off the bases that he doesn't deal with a boatload
02:36of traffic out there. And so you want to get him in a zone that he's not comfortable in. And
02:41unfortunately for the Tigers, it worked out. In this series, I mean, it feels like you can't find
02:48two teams that are further apart from each other when in terms of experience in the post-season.
02:52Houston's got boatloads of it. The Tigers have none of it other than like Matt Vierling. Because
02:58it's only a three-game series, does it actually play to the advantage of the Tigers because they
03:02can't get caught up on all this? It's so quick. It could be done so quickly that really relying on,
03:08oh, having a game seven experience, it doesn't even come into play.
03:12Scott, that's a fair point. I think it has more to do with the makeup of the guys on this team.
03:16I don't think they care. I genuinely don't. I don't like the take, while it may be true that
03:24these guys are young, they're inexperienced, and so they don't know any better. These guys know.
03:30They're not dumb. They read all the stuff. They see all the stuff. They got buddies back home
03:33that are saying, hey, dude, look what you guys are doing. You're not supposed to be here. Well,
03:36I got news for you. They do. They don't care. They are supposed to be here. They earned this trip.
03:41They believe in it. They believe in each other. And you guys have all been around teams that
03:46once that rock of belief starts rolling downhill, man, watch out.
03:50So Bobby Scales joining us here on 97.1 The Ticket. I want to lean on two things,
03:54two positions you've held in your career post-player and maybe bring some insight into
03:59what the Tigers have done. I want to start when you were with the Angels. You were the director
04:03of player development. What can you say about player development right now because they are
04:09taking guys whose ERAs are in the sevens in the minor leagues and they're below three in the
04:15majors. How does that happen? Well, so there's a couple pieces. Number one, the belief that any
04:22player can get better to the last that they're playing, regardless of what the age they are.
04:25You have to believe that if you operate in the player development space, you have to believe
04:28that if you're a major league coach, especially in today's game, where today's game is much younger
04:32than it's ever been. You're getting guys who are not far along in their career. You're getting
04:37them at the major league level a lot earlier. So the idea that more development has to happen
04:42at the major league level, that's not just the Tigers. That's everywhere in the big leagues.
04:48I think the second piece to that is that the staff has done such a good job of figuring out,
04:56okay, and when I say staff, I'm talking collective staff from the major league staff, Chris Fetter,
05:02down to Gabe Rivas, who's the director of pitching, all the way down to minor leagues.
05:06Let's get guys, let's figure out what they're good at and make that a superpower.
05:10And sometimes the reason some of those minor league ERAs aren't very good is because you can
05:16go out there and you're working on a specific thing. You're working on a specific pitch. You're
05:19working on a specific objective in that outing. You might get whacked. So you might see a guy with
05:24a seven. You may see a guy with a six and a half ERA in AAA. Ty Madden's numbers down in AAA were
05:30not good, but they were working on something that's going to give him an opportunity to be
05:33good at the major league level. And if you look at the back half of the year in AAA,
05:38he was very good and he was very effective. And that's because he changed the arsenal up a little
05:42bit and changed a couple of grips on his pitching that's made all the difference in the world. So
05:46you kind of have to throw out, to a certain degree, minor league numbers without context,
05:50without proper context being given to them. Second thing is after you worked in player
05:55development, we were on the field with the Pirates as an assistant fielding coordinator,
06:00which brings me to where Spencer Torkelson was with two outs in the ninth inning. He was in the
06:04perfect place. And sometimes that's luck and sometimes it's by design. As a guy who worked
06:10in fielding, was it by design or was it just, hey, one of those baseball things?
06:16Well, I think it's a little bit of both. I mean, you do your best. I mean, the team of analysts
06:20behind the scenes that are working in the clubhouse that no one ever sees, those guys
06:24are unbelievable at taking the high level data, really high level data, just throwing it down
06:31and presenting Joey Coro and George Lombard and the rest of the guys who are primarily
06:37responsible for the fielding, for the positioning of the infield and outfield,
06:43putting them in an area where you believe they're going to hit the ball to you. And sure,
06:48Torkel's standing right there, but there's also some baseball guys that said, here, just go as
06:52well. So, you know, but the Tigers take a lot of pride in that. They've been very good at that
06:59over the course of the last few years, having their guys closer to where the ball is hit than
07:03most teams. They're at the top, certainly in the top 10, I think in the top five of that
07:08as well. And so, yeah, there's a little bit of both. I mean, some dumb luck never hurts the
07:12cause either. Let's just be honest. Out of necessity, the Tigers pitching staff,
07:17they've had to cobble things together with basically a, maybe even a two and a half man
07:22rotation for like the last six or seven weeks of the season here. It's worked out tremendously
07:28well. The Tigers have the best earned run average since August 1st in Major League Baseball. And
07:31obviously their record is the best in baseball since August 11th. Is this sustainable for the
07:36future? Are other teams going to try to emulate what the Tigers have done? Is this the evolution
07:41of baseball with, you know, with pitch counts and everything else that you're just going to
07:45go with the staff in a different way than what's been traditional with five starters?
07:50I would say not two and a half for sure. I think you can do this maybe once or two times through
07:54the rotation. I definitely think that you want at least four or five starters that you know,
08:00you wake up in the morning, we're going to write these guys down and they're going to get the ball
08:03pitch one. That's the idea. You know, right after the trade, you know, Jack Flurry was sent to Los
08:09Angeles. And then shortly thereafter, Reese Olsen went down. And so you really only had
08:13school in Montero in the rotation at that point. So the question is, okay, how can we get creative
08:18here and how can we deploy our assets in a way that's going to give us the best opportunity to
08:23navigate this game? And this was the answer. You've seen this done in short stints prior with,
08:29you know, with teams like Oakland, with teams like Tampa and other teams have tried this too.
08:32The opener is not a new concept. I think the opener in volume like this, just quite frankly,
08:38out of absolute necessity and there's some strategic advantage too, but out of necessity
08:44is something that I don't know that this is sustainable long-term over the course of 162
08:49games. I don't believe this is sustainable, but in a short stint, which, you know, six weeks may
08:54seem like a long time, but it's a short stint in the grand scheme of a baseball season. Clearly it's
08:59work. So you guys were talking about how you guys were on top of what the Tigers were going to have
09:04to do to beat Fran Barvalda as yesterday. What about today? What are things we should be looking
09:09for today? Well, interestingly enough, Hunter Brown, Wayne State kid and shout out to Wayne
09:14State. Shout out to our friend coach, Ryan Kelly over there running a great program.
09:19He's, he's similar. He's different. He's similar. He's going to do, obviously he's right-handed,
09:23but he has a very different arm angle than former Valdez, former Valdez was low three quarters.
09:27The ball kind of ran more than it actually sank, but Hunter Brown since, since about mid season,
09:32actually since a little bit before the All-Star break, they gave him back his two-seam fastball.
09:37He throws from a very high arm angle. And the problem he was having with his four-seam fastball
09:42was just getting absolutely tattooed all over the yard. And they had to do something to figure out
09:46a way to get him some, some get the ball on the ground for one thing, and also create some more
09:50swing and miss. Well, they gave him back his two-seam fastball. Hadn't thrown a two-seam
09:54fastball since he was at Wayne State. They took it away from him in the minor leagues
09:58and they told him to go four-seam overhand curve ball. And now he's back to more sinker,
10:03sinker cutter and curve ball. And it's been, it's been devastating. So the task is to get
10:09him kind of in the middle of the zone. He'll throw that four-seam fastball at the top of the
10:12zone, but also he'll drive that, that two-seamer down at the bottom too. So you have to make sure
10:17you get a, a pitch to hit in the zone you're looking for. And right, and left-handed hitters,
10:22again, get it close to them so that you can account for the sink that's moving away from them.
10:26So your windows have to change a little bit, but the task at hand is a little, is somewhat similar.
10:32You're going to see a very left-hand heavy lineup, facing a right-handed pitcher is,
10:36you know, different from the lineup that you saw yesterday with Valdez being left-handed as well.
10:40You know, it seems like it's a running joke with broadcast crews when a foul ball comes
10:44back to the booth and the color analyst will say, Oh, I got your back. Don't worry about it.
10:48But it never happens. You protected Dan Dickerson a couple of weeks ago. Like it was, you were,
10:53you were, you know, part of the secret service. I mean,
10:56Like my job depended on it.
10:58Exactly. Yes. I mean, that ball came in hot, my man.
11:03Look at the end of the day, you know, talking to Ron Colangelo, when they decided to bring me on,
11:07he said, Oh yeah, you're, you're, you know, you got to call the game, bring your insights,
11:10but your main that's one, a one is to protect Dan Dickerson. So, you know,
11:15I take that very seriously. Uh, no, in all seriousness, I, I really try and
11:21if you would go back and look at it, I was kind of just getting out of the way. And I honest to God,
11:25my hand just went up. I just went up and the ball stuck to my left hand. And so yeah,
11:31I played it off. Like I knew exactly what I was doing, but that's more,
11:34that was more than just straight reaction.
11:37It was awesome. And I bet you got more comments on that than maybe anything you said all season long.
11:42The funny part is I go down to the clubhouse the next day for, you know,
11:45the standard media stuff. And like torque came up to me, McKinstry came up to me, uh, uh,
11:51Tyler Holton came up and I was like, dang, man, I didn't expect all this.
11:55Hey, great job, Bobby. We'll be listening today. I know a lot of people be listening
11:59with these afternoon games and hopefully we got a series with Cleveland to preview as well.
12:04I hope you're right. I like the Tigers chances. The guys are playing well and they're up for it.
12:08Bobby scales from the Tiger radio network. Joining us here on Carson Anderson on 97, one.