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Welcome back to sequence. This episode is brought to you by DraftKings. I'm your host, Trevor Plouffe, and back for at bat number two, the main man from Phil's Poles, Phil Hughes. What's up, dude? What's going on, buddy? We got a different Phil Hughes. Now this is veteran Phil Hughes for a bat number two. You can see the facial hair because you're not a Yankee anymore. That's right. Five years later. The flow is, you had the flow back then. The flow is looking good. This is, I mean, is this your career year, 2014? I mean, so there's the year I made the All-Star game, which is always special to me, but I had a kind of a bad fall off second half. But I would say, you know, one single year is a total. Yeah, this would have been it, 2014. My first year, actually with the twins. Yeah. And I was lucky enough to be out there pretty much every day with you. And I do remember this game. We're in Fenway. And as you can see, you're still in the game 102 pitches. Boston's leading two to one. And you got the big boy but can you preface this a bat a little bit for us? Yeah. So I don't know exactly what happened prior to this other than we were just watching and there was some ball off the wall and I think Pedroi got thrown out at second or something like that because it was, indeed, a double not a homer. So there's a man on third, two outs. David Ortiz is coming up and Napoli's on deck. And yeah, you can just, you can roll it and we can go from there. There he is. So yeah, 102 pitches. Andy comes out to the mound. Rick Anderson, awesome dude. Suzuki behind the plate. Yeah, Suzuki behind the plate. And he's saying, um, so, so Gardi wants me to intentionally walk Ortiz. And what's he saying to you? So he says, he says, why if you, if you go back, you'll see it. So he said intentionally why I say, I got this guy. You said, I got this guy. Yeah. No way I got this guy. Let me have him. And Andy's like, Oh, shit, I got to go back to the dugout and tell Gardi that you told him no. So he's basically saying like, like you better come at him. Don't miss over the plate. And I love this because, and this is so mindset there. It didn't happen. Yeah. What's funny is, right. So Napoli just owned me and I'm sure they were just going by the book and they're like, ooh, lefty versus righty. We'd rather have the right hander up and I'm thinking like, no way dude, like, let me get Ortiz. I'd felt really good about my bats against him. Not only in this game, but back in Minnesota, I think just a few weeks prior to this. And so I really, I really wanted this at bat and I didn't want to face Napoli. So I told, you know, I told Andy to let me have Ortiz and he's like, all right. And yeah, we'll see what happens. All right. So I kind of look when I think about it, I think your, the pitch mix that you have plays well against lefties. Are your splits like really bad? Are they like, are they my splits? My splits were, my splits were really good against lefties and poor against righties. That's kind of how your pitch mix works. I mean, we just, if you watch the last video, you saw the bat against Tomei and I feel like that's kind of, that plays for a lot of lefties swing. So right, right. So you were on the, they asked you to, I always said, hell no, because I'm thinking like, dude, if I have to face Napoli, like we're going to be in a hole that we can't come back from at two to one. So all right. There he is. Me. That's the guy you wanted to face. Okay. That's the one I wanted to face and hard in. That's what I wanted to do. Hold on. Run second right there. He's swinging pretty much, pretty much 92 right down the middle. But look at right here. Yeah. He was, he was geared for it. That's, that's what I had done to him the whole night so far. I mean, that's middle and it's not 96, 97, you know, that's 92, but I was just going right after him because I did not want to face the guy on deck and I wanted this this ending to be over right here. So it looked like he was right where Kurt's glove was set up. Maybe for like the cutter and then you kind of blew a foreseamer right by him right there. Yeah. So you see, he's definitely cheating in at this point. But we go back in there again because I want to get a hard fastball under his hands. And I miss up again. You know, I don't get it in there. I miss up and away and all you can do is spell it off. But we talked about this on the last episode too. It's like, I was so aggressive and so just coming right after him that I felt like that different, like that tick of whatever it was just made the difference in, you know, me dictating how the setback was going to go. You were walking off the mound right there after those two pitches and you're exuding exactly what you're saying. Like you're just putting it out there. You look like you're in control. This is 104 pitches in. You look great. Yeah. Well, I mean, and that's like the thing that I would express to like any, you know, kind of younger players watching or whatever is like your, your mound presence, your, your body language can mean so much in the game, not only from, you know, the way people perceive you, but also to the, you know, to the hitter. So, and this was, this was an app out where I felt very confident. And I pretty much, I mean, I missed right down the middle and like belt belly button away to a guy that normally takes advantage of mistakes like that. But I was going right after him. I will say that in facing you, you do have, I don't want to call it a hitch, but a little hiccup in timing. It's not like a smooth delivery where you kind of really get on it and you're like everybody else. There's a little hitch there and I remember facing you and sometimes if you're not the pitter is not in sync with that you can be just that bit off on your pitches and it almost looks like David, although he's faced you a bunch. So he's got, he's, he knows that already. Yeah, no, he's, yeah, I'd face him a ton up to this point, a ton. Yeah, I had a, I had a good game plan for him and you know, I don't know if he was almost a little frustrated that he was missing these pitches. Yeah, but you know, I knew that I wanted this guy to be my last out and we'll see. Let's see how it goes. Two heaters, two heaters, two fast balls that were meant to be in that miss kind of middle and middle up. And at this point, I think I'd go right to it. If I'm not mistaken, straight back to it. No, I think we go. I think we go back to our cutter. Okay. Oh, I like that pitch right there because you see his hips open twice there. Yeah. He's cheating. He's cheating in and this was a pitch that we had gotten him out on a couple of times prior to this. And I just really wanted to execute one here. Just, you know, the last thing you want to do on 02 is just pull it a little bit and it's over the middle of the plate. But this is like one where if I have to make a pitch in a game right here at 100, my 105th pitch of the night, like I got to execute this one. You know what I mean? You throw out the other 100, whatever, like this is the one that you need to execute in a big moment in Fenway. I think it's what Saturday night, you know, this is, this is the pitch. So and because he is opening up like that, if you start that pitch off the plate and bring it back, it's going to look like a million miles away to him. Right. And there's really no keeping in mind, keeping mind. This is a sequence sequence that we had, we had done to him a lot. So he was, I think he was conscious of it, but you can only look for two things, you know, you can't, you can't, you know, you can't be like, okay, well, he might come in, he might also go away. I got to be aware of both of those without, you know, because he was a cheater, you know, he's a guy that's going to, he's going to look for a pitch in account and, and open up on it and try to drive the ball. So he does, he does have holes in his swing. If you, you know, we're one step ahead of him. So all right, let's see, baby. Kurt setting up away off the plate. Yeah. He wants it way away. He doesn't want a mistake. And it was just about perfect. You know, he's opening up, flares a little fly ball on the left. Willingham was, you know, kind of having some, some issues out there. But yeah, you'll see. Yeah. So basically I wanted this to be just a, you know, I mean, that's just exactly where it needs to be. Exactly where you want it. I mean, you see where Kurt said, it wasn't like a give up pitch where it was just off the plate. It wasn't cold. It was just, you know, executed to the outer, outer corner and got out of a inning gives a chance in the, in the ninth, but, um, and what's funny about this, and I don't think they show it on camera is Gardy's up on the top stat as I'm walking off the mat. Oh, Doge. Oh, nice. Hey, look at the glove. Oh, that was nasty. All right. I was looking for a, um, a slow mo, but they didn't have it, but go ahead. Gardy's on the top step. So Gardy's on the top step. And literally he's doing this. Basically like, basically like saying big balls, like he was, he was fired up about that because he wanted me to walk on tees. And it wasn't because I like was some, you know, stubborn idiot. Like I just really liked my chances a lot more against Ortiz than, than abling that situation. But, um, yeah, that was, uh, that was a pretty, pretty crucial, turning point in that game. Unfortunately, we didn't score any runs in the ninth. So I got, I got saddled with the, uh, complete game loss there, but, you know, there's the way that those, those things can go sometimes, you know, we've had a few pictures on here now and almost every single one of them, if not every single one talks about like that conviction thing, like, like believing in the pitch and just like caring about that and the execution of it and like really not caring who's in the box, not caring about this or that. It's like, I'm going to execute my pitch and if I do, you're out. So we do have the young guys watching. That is something that we try to tell them, like this is the attitude that you have to have. Yeah. Confidence, conviction in your pitches. You know, I would say if you did a study on guys that were, you know, confident in what they were doing, same talent, you know, whatever the case may be, um, a person that's, you know, confident in their bullpen sessions is going to execute. I would say 20, 30% more pitches and someone that doesn't feel good about what they're doing or doesn't think it's right, doesn't think it's the right grip. And it's probably true for hitters too. I mean, if you're, you know, tweaking something with your, you know, with your swing or you're trying something new that's uncomfortable, if you believe in it, you're probably going to have a lot more success than if you're skeptical or this is crap. Like, I don't think this is going to work, you know, whatever it is. Absolutely. There's very few things that in this game that you can say like 100% you have to do this. Like there's a million ways to do different things. You're, you're set up, you know, everything about your swing for you on the hill, there's a ton of things, but the one thing that is 100% it's, is that confidence level. That's what's, that's the separator. You see it all the times in the minor leagues, guys that have this stuff, but they don't have that confidence or they can't bounce back. I mean, they don't, they don't end up panning out the way they should. So all of you to talk about that. And again, I appreciate you coming on. Everybody go follow and subscribe to Phil's polls. It's on Twitter, it's on IG, it's on YouTube, like, subscribe, all that good stuff. Phil, thank you, man. I appreciate it coming on. Of course, anytime.