 Welcome to Intentional Walk. I'm Jack Curry. I'm on one of the backfields at Yankee Spring Training and very shortly Yankee pitchers will assemble on the mound and they will have pitchers fielding practice. It's called PFPs There will be a coach who will hit a ground ball to them. They'll field it. They'll throw it to first The coaches might also roll the baseball along the first or third base line to simulate a bunt They'll throw that to first base. If you mess up during the drill you get back in line And you have to do it all over again. This is a daily drill that is done in spring training But when the season starts it basically vanishes and that's always been a pet peeve of mine Why would you not continue to do these drills during the season? When the NBA season starts do basketball players Stop shooting free throws. No, they shoot free throws every day I've asked several pitchers and coaches about this over the year Some of them say that the repetitiveness of spring training is supposed to carry over into the season But how often do we watch a major league game where a pitcher goes to field of baseball? And then treats that baseball like a hand grenade and just throws it over the first baseman's head or skips at the first base I think if teams incorporated PFPs into the season we'd see a more polished sharper Defense from a pitcher I reached out to Jim Abbott today the former major league pitcher pitched for the Yankees He was a one-handed pitcher who probably had to do more work to field of ground ball than any pitcher in major league history And I asked him why don't teams do more PFPs during the season? He said I was never on a team that focused on PFPs during the season as I just said said once the spring was over We didn't really talk about that. He thought it was a great idea He said hey pitchers need to do something anyway. I know it was tongue-in-cheek. I think Abbott is right I think that team should do more PFPs during the season I think that would help pitchers be better defensive players be that extra in-fielder on the field Greg Maddox believed that when he was pitching he should be able to get three outs by himself as a fielder I think everybody should try and be another Greg Maddox So today's song we're gonna go with a song from a band called Bleachers a little sports connection There for you and it's called I want to get better because we should all want to get better Especially pitchers who have to field baseballs during the season. We'll see you soon