 Welcome to another installment of Yes, We're Here, Meredith Maroccovitz alongside Yankees pitching coach Matt Blake. Matt, first and foremost, how are you? How's your family? Doing well, just trying to settle into this new normal, if you will, up here in Cleveland, or just outside of Cleveland Fairview Park at our house here. So just trying to get acclimated to a new routine and try and stay in touch with all the guys as best as we can. Is it difficult to stay in touch with everyone and try to keep somebody on some type of a program? Yeah, I think the staying in touch parts, kind of like a traditional offseason in the sense of, everybody's in different locations, just trying to stay in touch with their text, phone call, centralized document that we've kind of built out to kind of follow what guys are doing, but then the programming part's a little different because it's just usually we work from the end in mind being either spring training or the season and then kind of build a program from there, but we're kind of working with a lot of unknowns currently, so that's a little bit of the challenge. With no start date to Circle, like you said, what do you tell the pitchers as far as how much they should be doing right now? Yeah, I think that's where we get to a little bit of the individualized programming and kind of assess what they have available to them, whether they're in a warm weather state or cold weather state, they have access to a field or a facility or they're just in their home basement or trying to figure out what they have available and then try and give them a sense of volume control, intensity control throughout the week and kind of try and wave that up and down so that they get some level of stress on their body but not too much, so it's kind of a delicate balance given that we don't really know what we're shooting for right now. Are there guys that don't have the ability to throw it all right now based on the conditions? So we haven't run into that yet. Pretty much everybody has something they can do whether they've got some people around them to throw it, they've got a facility to throw at. I haven't really run into anyone that can't do something to prepare themselves so we're fortunate in that sense. Now we spoke a lot during spring training about some of the advancements with the technology. I know some guys really took to that. Have they set up their cameras at home and are you looking at stuff from that perspective or is it more kind of rudimentary right now? Yeah, right now it's a little rudimentary. We're definitely staying in touch as far as what they should be doing from if they're working on something in particular or we're staying in touch on that whether it's their delivery or a breaking ball or something of that sort. But we haven't got to the point where we're using any of the high-speed cameras or anything. I know Britt will have that available to him at his house so he's fortunate in that way. And then Otto and those guys up in New York will have some access to technology and then from there we'll kind of piecemeal it together. How odd has this all been for you? This is uncharted territory for pretty much everyone involved here with what's unfolded. But for you personally a big new job excited to get the season started and now the pause button has been pushed. Yeah, I would say first and foremost obviously weird in the sense that it's just a crazy scenario that obviously none of us have seen before. And then when you factor in, this is your first year as a major league pitching coach and all of a sudden the script's been thrown out. I think loosely joking with Booney the other day is that at least it takes the experience equation away from everybody else. So we're on a level playing field so you can have a silver lining in that way but yeah it is definitely a little strange. How often do you interact with Boone and interact with the front office during this time? Yeah, Booney and I probably stay in touch every day or every other day if you have phone call texts, what have you, just updates from guys and he's been playing catch with Garrett so he's been giving me feedback on what it looks like and I'm giving him tips on how to catch it better and so he doesn't hurt his palm playing catch with him. But then the front office kind of checks in here there and it kind of gives us an opportunity to connect with some other guys in the office and in the scouting department and the player development so I think right now everybody's looking for a sense of connection and a little bit of normalcy so even just reaching back out to some of the guys from Cleveland just to kind of just stay in touch with baseball people and try and centralize your thoughts around what's going on. You mentioned Garrett Cole and from a starting pitcher perspective, how much time do you think these guys will need to get stretched out again once things are underway? I think that's the million dollar question right now. I think depending on what they have available to them and at home and their ability to throw ballpins, potentially face hitters, I think that minimum for me would be three weeks. If you go below that, you really put a lot of guys at risk of hurting themselves. I think three weeks we can do something manageable and Boonee and I are kicking around some different schedules. If you could get four, I think we'd feel a lot better about that but obviously we'll kind of answer the bell when it comes. I think everybody will be excited to get going but I do think that three weeks is kind of a window where we can take that first seven to 10 days. It's kind of that danger zone if you will where we can kind of assess where guys are at, have them throw a bullpen, give them a chance to get to a live BP for us our own guys and then see how the stress is kind of responding for each guy and go from there. I think at that point we have a pretty good window of two weeks to face other teams. Do you think roster composition to start the season is gonna have to be a little bit different because some of these pitchers may not be completely ready and are you concerned that there could be more injuries this year because of the stop and start nature of what's happened? Yeah, I think both of those are real possibilities of expanding the roster. I just don't see a scenario where you have your starters ready to go, 85 pitches, 90 pitches out of the gate. So with them being condensed and potentially limited off days, you obviously would need to open it up to some extent. I think we've kicked around 15 pitchers would be a nice starting point for the conversation and obviously you'd start to test your depth early in the season in that way, but I think we feel good about that on our end. And then the injury side is definitely a real concern for a lot of people because spring training is always the time of year where you're nervous about guys ramping up too quick and you don't really see it as much on the pro side where you kind of have a pretty smooth ramp up and then guys just go, you see it more on the amateur side in high school and college where they're changing seasons, whether it's fall to the winter and then ramp up to the spring or guys go on to showcases. So we've got a little bit of experience of kind of navigating some uncertain waters in that way, but I do think there's a real concern of guys ramping up a higher intensity than they're prepared for. So that's where the communication is so important right now. One guy that looked like he was gonna miss the first couple of months of the season was James Paxton. He did start his throwing program. How is that progressing? And do you have any idea when he could be ready? Should there be baseball soon? Yeah, actually we feel really good about James. The fortunate part when things kind of slowed down we got a chance to stay around Tampa a little bit longer is that he had started his throwing program and we got to kind of watch him go through the early phases of it. And it's a little different than normal arm injury where guys are kind of feeling that way through some of the early phases of the throwing program. Obviously he had the back surgery and the arm was not an issue. So he actually came out of the gates in a really good spot with his throwing program. So before the stoppage we were targeting kind of that mid-May timeline for him to be around five innings. So outside of that I think we've kind of slowed the tempo down just a little bit given traveling back to Wisconsin and things of that nature. But I would say given what we're at I would think that he was likely ready for the season whenever it starts. Seems like there are a lot of moving parts on your end trying to fit that jigsaw puzzle together and make sure guys are continuing to train in some capacity. Aside from that, what have you been doing to pass the time? Yeah, so outside of checking in with the guys and staying in the loop with everything that's going on we've been obviously the same as everyone else kind of figuring out the depths of Netflix and HBO on demand, things of that nature. So learned to really value walking the dog, things like that. And to note, we are first in the American League East and Miami will be the show franchise. So we've got that going for us. There you go. That's something I guess. I heard you've been doing or you had done some home improvements too. It looks like a great backdrop behind you. So actually behind us is a shiplap wall that my girlfriend and I did last fall. So she's actually the handy one. I just kind of end up being basically her support system. So we've got a nice setup in the garage our power tools that she kind of leads the way and luckily my dad's handy. So we refer to him for a lot of our questions. But yeah, it's one project after another around here. So glad that she leads the charge there. And what's next on Netflix? I know people are starting to run out of shows to watch already. Yeah, we're on Ozark season three right now. And I think we're all heavily anticipating the Jordan documentary that's gonna come out of the Bulls documentary in mid April. So we're all happy to see that coming April 19th. And was there anything that you made sure you had at your home before yourself quarantined? Well, we definitely got a round of athletic greens which is a drink that we all were taking to kind of stay healthy during Tampa, during the end of that. And other than that, it's been pretty loose around here just trying to stay calm with everything that's going on and stay in touch with people and try and stay busy for the most part. Do you have a message, Matt, for Yankee's fans that realize this is bigger than baseball but they still miss their Yankee's baseball? I think we're all feeling the same things they are. I think everyone was really excited for the season. And this being my first kind of feeling the excitement of GMS and in Tampa and feeling the support they were giving us. I know this is a little bit of a pause for things bigger than baseball, but we're anticipating coming back this year and giving them something to root for and some positive light in their lives. So hopefully we can get to that point and gives us something to look forward to. Well, hopefully we are back soon. Fans want it, you guys want it, we want it, but most of all, we want everybody to be safe and be healthy if they can be. Matt, thanks for the time. All right, thanks, Meredith.