 This breakdown's got three different parts to it, and they're all awesome. I'm excited to be making this one. Hopefully you guys enjoy it. First part is just an epic at bat with two outs, Cranky versus Maldonado. This breakdown's brought to you by DraftKings. It starts out with a ball. Once this count gets to 3-2, there's a fast ball right down the middle from Cranky to even it out, one and one. Now there's two runners on. There's two outs. Cranky's throwing a lot of pitches. Kind of says yes, then no. And then Maldi's taking his breath to older guys in the game. 1-1 pitch. Wants that for a strike. Doesn't get it. Correctly called. I think that one was outside. Maldi's like, OK, open my eyes. Trying to really focus his eyes. Cranky's got the ball. The 2-1. Even more outside. So now it's 3-1. Cranky's taking his time walking off the mound. And fouled away. The banana watches it go. Full count. And here's where we get just a full-on battle of whose time is it? Who owns the clock? Cranky's taking his time looking around. Salvi's going to come out and put a play on. Like, hey, hey, hey, you guys there and there. And he's like, who are you talking to? Two runners on? OK. If you walk him, Al Tubei comes up with the bases loaded. He's kind of getting bored on deck and iced out. And this is an interesting pickoff move by Cranky because he does the inside move, which you do, to throw to second. But he has no intentions of picking off the lead runner, Brantley. His head spins all the way to first. He's trying to see if the trail runner isn't paying attention. But the trail runner was paying attention. And Brantley knows it. And he's like, hey, good job. And Cranky points at his first baseman. Like, yeah, we tried. And then Brantley laughs at Cranky. And Cranky looks at him. And he laughs at him. And they're like, huh, you know, we tried. Still haven't thrown the 3-2 pitch. Maldi's been waiting patiently. Focuses his eyes by looking at his bat. Focuses them again. OK, he's ready to hit. Steps in. Cranky's not looking at him. Blue says, hey, you got to look at him. Those are the new rules. You guys both got to be looking at each other. You got to make eye contact. Cranky's like, OK. Still haven't thrown the first 3-2 pitch. But here it comes. Failed away. Banana watches it go. It's going to remain 3-2. Maldi's going to go for a little bit of a walk. Collect himself. The runners are on the move. So they got to go back to the bases. Cranky gets on the mound, wipes the sweat from his brow. Maldi's in the stance, doing his little wiggle. Salvi's like, come on, come on, come on, come on. Here we go. Here we go. The next 3-2 pitch, what's going to happen? Big moment. Foul back. Banana unpeels himself so we can see it go. And we're going to do it again. We're going to take our time. Cranky's going to wait it out. He's going to stand on the mound. Maldonado's going to catch his breath. He's hanging out. Salvi's like, wait, wait, are you OK? No, he wasn't ready. It's 7. He wasn't going to be ready. Oh, man. And the umpire's like, well, dude, you called time now. It counts as an official, like you're one time. You might as well go talk to him and figure some stuff out. So Salvi's going to go walk to him. And Cranky's going to be like, oh, both feet weren't in the box. We had them. And if you look at the replay, when Maldonado sees him stand up and then he hears Cranky say, he's not ready, look at Maldonado place that foot in the box. He's like, oh, shit, look at him place this left foot in the box. Nope. Oh, shit. Yeah, he was right. Kind of wasn't in the box. So Cranky was hoping he was going to get Auto Strike 3 there. Timing game. Anyway, they meet on the mound. Want to do this, want to do that. Let's throw up strike. Good job. Here we go. Go team. Take my time. I'm going to take my time once that clock starts. It's my world. It's my game. You're on my time. Maldonado? OK, here we go. 3-2 pitch. What's he going to throw? Just looking at his glove. And we're at 14 seconds. 13, 12, 11, 10. Here's the pitch. Strike 3. Oh. Called a ball. Cranky slow walks all the way to the mound. What's he going to say to the ump? Hey, you missed that? Hey, wake up. He says, pitching from the wind up. Wind up. Yep. And that's all he said. No harsh words. No yelling. No wake up. No, you missed it. I'm just like, oh my god, I thought he was going to get mad at me. And this is what Cranky said after the game. He said that that's what he said, basically. Did you say to the umpire after that question? Same thing I do every time. There's a guy on third base that pitch from the wind up. And you have to let him know. So I was mad for like two seconds. And then it's just focused on getting the next guy out. So I went back and found a ton of games where there was a runner on third base and he decided to go the wind up. And he's right. Look, that pass ball. Runner gets to third. He tells the home play dump. Full wind up. Full wind up. Yep. Another one I found walks him, which sends the runner from second to third. Hey, wind up. The catcher thought he was coming out to talk to him. He says, no, no, no, no. Wind up. Pitching from the wind up. Yep. Umpire says, OK, he tells the rest of the umps. Wind up. Wind up. That's the signal. Another game. Sackfly sends the runner to third. Cranky was on his way to cover third. So he just tells that umpire. Hey, pitch him from the wind up. He says, OK, wind up. Wind up. So yeah, everybody wanted Cranky to be slow walking and start shit talking. Umpire, in this situation, he held his tongue. And he just let him know, hey, I'm pitching from the wind up. All right, the next part of this breakdown is pitch framing. And while Salvi did not the best job here, which umpire shouldn't depend on the catcher's glove and their movements, but they do. It happens. And catchers are either good at manipulating that or bad. And Salvi didn't do a good job. So first, I'm going to show you a little bit of the art of stealing strikes. I did a video on this a while back in like 2020. But watch the catcher. This catcher is going to give the pitcher his target. Aim at my glove, OK? And then he's going to drop his glove completely. So the umpire has no frame of reference and there's nothing blocking him. And then as the pitch comes, he's just going to grab it and straight up. And then he's not going to hold the glove there to act like he's framing it. That's the new thing. Watch him. It's so cool. All the movement is up and gone. Oh, and I should say, these examples are all sliders with 40 inches of drop and crossed the plate at the same spot on the axis. I put it all in. There's only been like 10 of them. These were some of the ones that were called strikes. This one's my favorite over in Seattle. Look at this. Ooh, soft hands. Barely even gives a target. Some pitchers don't need it. But as soon as that ball, he lets the ball travel to him and then up. No other movement. OK, now here are catchers that are giving big targets to their pitcher. Like really big and then they're going to drop down. No target. And then straight up. That's really nice. No wasted movement. No freezing. No holding. Here's JT. Boom, up, down to his knees. Umpire's got a clear view of the ball. And all the umpsies is up. There's no reference to be like he had to go reach down and get it. Now you look at Perez. And he gives the target. And then he comes down. He comes instantly back up, then down again, and then the freeze. It's kind of like just an old school catcher trying the new thing, but not really understanding what the new thing is. It's also a very hard skill. When you look at him side by side, watch this. So he's got the target there. He goes down. He touches the dirt. He's back up. We're not even, gloves not even fully up on the other side. And then he reaches on the right, reaches for it. Glove goes down, then glove goes up, and then he's hanging around. Gloves are down. Salby's is back up. Salby's is now coming down, while the other one only, only comes up. It's very cool. It's a very cool one done right. It's an art. It really is. Look at this. See how quick Salby just touches. It's like he's just going through the most touches the ground, back up. And the umpire isn't getting that view that the whole point of this is to give him a view without the glove, without the context of, oh, that ball was below the glove. But because Salby brings the glove back up right away and then stabs it, that's what the umpire has, where on the left side, the hand only ever comes up. Might pause for a quick second to catch it, but it's just really smooth. And here you go, another comparison. Down, the other just up. Anyway, Altuve did come up with the bases loaded. He grounded out to third to escape the inning, and that ended Granky's night. And he did not yell at that umpire, although maybe he wanted to. But he did not. Just told him, going from the wind up. Thank you to DraftKings for sponsoring this breakdown. And thank you to you guys for watching the breakdowns. And thank you to everyone that subscribes to the channel. And thank you to everyone else that doesn't subscribe to the channel, but's pondering it.