 What's up everybody? Welcome back to Sequence. I'm your host Trevor Ploof. Today we have a very special guest on back for a bat number two, Stephen. Vote. What's up Steve? Thanks for joining us. Oh, this is awesome. I'm having a blast just talking ball going down there. Best. I love it, man. So we're going to do a little something different this time. We just went over your bat walkoff single ALDS 2013. It was awesome. You shared a ton of insight in your hitting mentality, but we got a few requests for this and we're going to go now from behind the plate, that mentality, from a catcher's standpoint, because I really think that you guys have obviously the best view in the game of pitchers, but also you have this learned and trained ability to see things that other people don't. In our last debate you talked about seeing Porcelos shoulder fly open and let you take an 0-1 fastball that sets you up for success. Why? I mean, what goes into that? Like, is it just repetition and seeing it? Is it knowing every single pitcher? How do you approach this kind of, I don't know, way you call a game? I think, well, I mean, this is so evolved and we don't have enough time to get into it, but a lot of it is experience and a lot of it is making mistakes and learning from your mistakes and not making those same ones again. Remembering sequences that don't work. Remembering things that maybe, I don't know, I know what I'm trying to say, but to me now we have the analytical guys giving us great information. The pitching coaches are smart. The hitting obviously the pitchers know what they want to do and then we study. I study a lot and to me, if I could tell young catchers something to really do is every time you play catch with someone, every time you catch a bullpen, pay attention to their body as they throw because you're going to start to see little things. You're going to start to see the guys who bring their arm down low, so they're going to have a tendency to push the ball. Guys that come up high, they're going to have a tendency to be late or yank. Just start to pay attention to body language every time you're catching and those are the things that are going to propel you forward because all of those little tendencies, a lot of times if there's a pitcher I've caught a lot, I could tell you before they even really start coming down the hill whether or not they're going to be on time for their pitch. That's what it takes to read a ball whether you need to block it or not. There's no time for anything. It's that repetition, but also you guys can start now no matter how old you are paying attention to pitchers body language when they're throwing and it's going to tell you a lot about what the pitch will do. In the same way, when I'm not playing, I'm locked into the game. I'm having conversations here left and right. I'm talking to my teammates and as you know, we can be talking about anything from baseball to kids to cars to what you had for breakfast. We talk about everything during the game, but that doesn't mean I take my eyes off the action. I'm always watching because I want to see if a hitter is pulling off his front side if he's late because as a catcher, I'm one foul tip away from playing that day. I always have to be ready to go in and call the game. I need to know what we've been doing. I pay really close attention to every pitch. That's also reading swings and knowing what hitters tendencies are. There's never a time you can stop learning. You've got to keep watching and keep learning this game. I love catchers. It's one of my favorite positions. I'll say probably shortstop, center field catcher. I love the guys up the middle of Diamond. One of the reasons I love the catching position is for what you just said. You guys are the biggest students of the game because you still have to work on your offense, but a catcher's bread and butter is the way he handles a pitching staff. Maybe it's changing a little bit now in the modern game, but if pitchers don't like throwing to a guy, you're not going to stick around. One question before we get into this. What do you think makes someone good to throw to? What makes someone a guy that pitchers want to throw to? I mean, you kind of touched on it already. You have to have trust and I know there's been times in my career where I haven't been good enough and I know the pitchers didn't trust me as much as other times and that breaks your heart more than anything. What I mean by that is not knowing if you're confident in what you're calling and you're prepared for the game that you're going to call, they want to throw to you. They want to know that they can bounce their breaking ball and you're going to block it. They want to know that when it gets hairy out there that you're going to stay calm and that you know where you're at. Like I said, I've never, I've not been perfect with this. I've never pretended to be perfect, but that's something that I really feel over the last three to four years. I've really gotten better at and that's, I've dedicated myself to that. And so for me, I always tell the pitchers this, I'm like, you're going to throw to catchers that are a thousand times better than me, but no one's going to love you more. That's your job. That's such a, that's such a Steven vocal right there. But it's the truth. It's, there's so many guys that are better than me behind the plate, but like when I'm there, I'm present and I'm there for the pitcher. I'm prepared. I know I've done my homework and I know that my pitcher, I'm going to put, I'm going to do my best to put them in a position to succeed. And so for me, that's what it is. It's understanding how to call a game, understanding what your pitchers are. You got to get to know your pitchers. But game calling and leadership are the number one things that you could do as a catcher. And then the X's and O's, those take care of themselves. You have to work that as we talk about all the time, Trevor, like physical work is never something you should brag about. I don't need to post that I'm in the weight room. I don't need to post that I'm walking. Like you should be doing those things. There's no, it's learning the other things, learning the mental, the mental toughness, learning how to call a game, learning what pitchers are trying to do to get you out. Those are the things that we need to put the extra work in. To me, weight room, hitting, fielding, those aren't extra work. That's our work. Yes. That we should be doing. And so to me, like work ethic comes from the little things, not from the things that the boxes we should be checking every day anyway. That's my, that's my own little tangent. But, you know, I went and taught to my high school. So any Crespi kids out there that are watching this, you know, I said this, I said, this was earlier this year. I said, all those things you guys are thinking about is extra work. That's not extra work. That's the work. Yeah. Like if you want to do anything, if you want to play at the next level, you got to put the work in. It's not just go to practice and go to the game. That's not going to get it done. It's, it's extra for an infielder, extra ground balls, take as many as you can. You don't have to be in the cage of time, but get your butt in the cage a little bit extra. Like go work on these things and don't consider it extra work. It is just the work. You're right. And I think we take 100 swings a day for four in the game. We take 100 ground balls a day for five or six in the game. Maybe. Maybe. I, I work on blocking every day for the five or six balls I need to block. I throw down in between innings nine times in case two guys steal. Like I, all of everything we do is for that one rep. Yes. The one, one rep. So anyway, I know we got a little bit off subject, but that's for me catching is you got to be selfless. You is not about you. And it's just like, you know, someone tell me one time when you're a catcher, when you do something well, it's we, when you do something wrong, it's I and that is 100% truth because as a catcher, you're only as good as your pitcher that night. And you be hurting right along with them if they have a bad outing. You're the best. Let's, let's get into this. I'm going to let you taste yourself real quick before we go into what we're going to show. So you said you double switched in like the fifth. I see now that you're already two for two. This is your first game as a San Francisco giant. Correct. Yes. So this is May of 2019. I missed all of 2018 with a shoulder injury. So this was my first game back playing in the big league since the last game of the season in 2017. So this has been a year and a half wondering if I'd ever make it back. I got called up from spent April of 2019 and AAA and got called up May 1st. And this was my first game back. I double switched in. We were down eight nothing in the fifth. And yeah, I had a double, I think the double in the sixth, I singled in the eighth. And then coming up here in the ninth with two outs and nobody on facing Ricell and Glacius, who's absolutely punched my ticket, my whole career. And so I'm like, I'm not waiting around. I'm not letting him get to the change-up or slider. I'm hacking. Unlike our last at bat. Yes. We're going in hacking here. I've seen this guy before. I know what he has. And I have not had much of any success off of him. So here, if he's going to give me a fastball, I know it's a foreseamer. I'm not waiting around. This is going to be a quick one, folks. But man, but just the emotions of coming back. Yeah, I could watch this all day. But I just I love the body language in this whole thing. You know, if you look at Barnhart, you look at Glacius, like it, you know, it's just the body language says it all. Like, we have so many emotions. Look at that. Just put a beautiful spot right there. And you are feeling it. Oh, I'm on cloud nine. Tucker's back there. Oh, not having a good time. No, because he's he's probably played the whole game. He's seen it. He's wondered. They're like, oh, man, okay, I know this has not been a good game, but we're one out of way. We've got this thing. Here we go. And then he's also thinking, we got extras now. I got to catch more. Yeah. No, we never think like that. Okay, so we get this little taste yourself video. So you tie the game up, obviously an amazing game already. But we're going from the catcher's perspective now. So I got to take us to the end of the game. But I'll let you. Yeah, I don't mind watching that. But I mean, just the while you're while you're getting to the next clip like that, that game was so special. I grew up a Giants fan. I'd come back at 34 years old from a my second shoulder surgery and just to come back and we have this comeback victory like this and to contribute to it. And my whole family had flown in, you know, my wife, three kids, they were all there right there. And it was, it was so awesome. I'm smiling, man. If you see me, I just like, I love it. All right, all right. Set this up a little bit for us 1211. You guys took the lead. This is now the bottom 11th. We got Will Smith on the mound to I faced as a starter in Kansas City, nasty stuff. But one of those guys that went to the bullpen really found his calling. You're behind the dish here. What do you got? Yeah. Well, so obviously, Longo Longoria, you know, go ahead, Homer in the top of the 11th and Geter. And it was just one of those things that you're like, All right, now we got, in my opinion, one of the top four or five closers, if not higher than that in the game right now, Will Smith, and he's got shut down stuff. So I caught it maybe once during spring training, and I hadn't been up for a month. So I remember hit what he has. And I remember what he likes to do. But you know, he came out and got two quick outs on, as I see here, seven pitches. And now you got probably the biggest threat right handed that the Reds have to hit a homer and swore a Uanio Suarez. And but Will's game is, you know, fastballs to the arm side and then sliders back foot. And when he's on, it doesn't matter how good of a hitter you are. His slider, even catching sometimes looks like a fastball. And, you know, that's the thing is anytime you throw a good back foot slider, as you know, Trevla, it looks like a fastball. That's the whole reason we chase it. But he's so good at painting that fastball arm side that you can't tell what he's going to do. And every slider he throws looks like a fastball. So, you know, you obviously small, small ballpark in Cincinnati, you don't want to, you want to make sure you keep everything down here, because anything that people can elevate is going to probably leave the yard, especially with somebody with Suarez power. Yeah, we talked last about flipping off speed up there produces flyballs. We know that since he is a part that if you hit a flyball and it has a chance to go out. So the guy like Will Smith, who has an incredible fastball that doesn't, I'm sure, I don't know the numbers, I'm sure the homerun percentage on it is, or the flyball percentage even is pretty low. Like he's a ground ball guy, strikeout guy. So are you just like, dude, throw the one down and let's rock or like? Well, for me, we got to get to the slider. So to me, it's in a ballpark like sincey, I'm not a fan of like a get me over breaking ball like you're talking about. So to me, it's two choices. If he's a, you know, if he's going to be super aggressive here, let's go first pitch slider, we'll get him to chase it down. Or let's go fastball down and away. And so those are the two, those are the two options that you go with. There's no, in my opinion, there's no flipping an OO breaking ball. But you know, then again, Will Smith has different stuff. And he might, he probably knows something that I don't, that's something he wants to do in that situation. But for me, I'm suggesting either slider back foot or fastball away. And like you said, Suarez is a threat. Yes. And he can leap and he can leave anywhere in the ballpark. It's not poll only, I mean, he's got elite power like 50 homers last year. So pretty good. All right, let's let's go here. I want to see where you set up. Yeah. First pitch. See, see what we got. I believe we're going to fat. Yeah, where you're set up right there. You are just down in that lower quadrant open. Are you saying this is your target started here that it get out? So for me, I, every pitch is different with where they aim. So where I'm putting my glove is where I want the ball. So that's up to them to start it wherever they, you know, I know some guys look at the right knee there. Some guys would look at if they throw a little sinker, they might look at my left shoulder. They might be looking at, you know, the heel of the glove, all that. I want to make sure that I'm putting my glove with my target right where I want the ball. And it's pretty crazy how often, like when I look at these highlights, because obviously we don't have the box there, but I love when I see, oh, my glove is actually on the bottom. That's cool. Yeah. I didn't even think about that. You're like, you're, you're set up exactly where you want to be set up. Exactly. And so I like to look at that and be like, wow, that's pretty cool. You know, because I'm a geek. So you're not a geek a little bit, a little bit. All right, here we go. Let's see if you can hit this spot. So there, I mean, obviously get away with a little bit. So that tells me that tells me he was looking breaking ball or he wasn't really, he might have been taken all the way. I don't think he's taken all the way, but he's definitely not looking for a fastball up and out over. Because that's, in my opinion, a little bit of a mistake up in the zone. That's a pitch that Suarez could get extended on. But obviously get away with it. That's half the battle on baseballs. You know, still a very good pitch, but not where we wanted it. I'm thinking as a hitter here, you know, he knows what Will does with his ball. That's not the zone you're looking at. No, I mean, you'd like it if you could, if you said, okay, I'll, I'm going to cheat to this zone. He's going to throw it here, but he doesn't throw the ball up there that often. So you're really not looking there. I think that might have caught him by surprise. For sure. Because he's a little late too. If you watch the way you watch him when he's coming, watch his body language is, I don't feel like his foot is down in time to hit this heater where it's up in the zone like this. I could be wrong. But to me, that's a little bit, maybe a tick late. And maybe I'm just nitpicking and overreading it, which is also what we do as catchers. So now here you go, you're looking back to see where you set up here. Now we're going back to the slider here. And I think to me, once you get ahead of one, now it's all right. You had your shot at the fastball. Now you're going to get a steady dose of Will Smith sliders. So again, here you are set up right outside the K zone. I don't know how accurate that is, but you are putting the glove exactly where you want that ball. Just off the plate inside because you want a swing and miss or you want him to expand the zone out of the strike zone a little bit. So you want to be sent it, right? As a strike. I want to present as a strike, but I also want my picture to see where I set up. This is where you're going to hit it. You're going to miss here. You're not going to miss over the plate. If I set up on the plate here and then he misses a little bit armside, that ball's right in the money hole for Suarez. So I got to give him a good tunnel to where he feels like, even if he misses it a little bit armside, it's still going to end up on the corner. When we're in an 0-1 count, we want to expand the zone a little bit with it. On the slider that he throws, is that his tendency to miss armside with it? Him, no. But obviously every pitcher, I want to make sure that when we're setting up, I give them the idea that we're not going to miss over the white part of the plate. So much of pitching is knowing where they can miss and where they want their miss to be. And so for me, I try to give them that with the target. Here we go. And that's just filthy. It's filthy because it comes out like a heater. Yes, that looks exactly like the heater that he just threw kind of up and away. And then it just dive bombs below the zone. And that's just, that's not fair. See if I can get it out of the hands and then where it ends up. I'm going to try. Okay. So to me, that's maybe that's already starting to break a little bit. But if you look at that trajectory, that's going straight to that outside corner. And then as it goes, he's firing like he sees fastball out there. And then all of a sudden it's gone below the zone. And that moves so much. Yeah. And so now after you read that swing, obviously, you see how much he missed that slider by. And that wasn't even one of Will's best ones. Like that's, that's a very good slider, but it's, it's kind of a mislocation in a way, because it's over the middle. We wanted it down and in. So now we're set up perfectly. Will's going to make the adjustment. I gave probably gave him a little extra tap towards the inside corner. I'm going to give him a little more room in there than I did the time before, but now I'm up. I'm ready to block because it's two strikes. So if it's in the dirt, now I need to be ready to block pitch before I didn't. And now I know he's going to throw that nasty one. And it's right here. You call this pitch. You're like, it's game over. Like, you know, in your mind, like Will's Will's so good at and he missed that one before a little bit. So he's going to make it. He's going to make his correction. Yep. He's going to make his correction. And now this is the patented Will Smith slider that has broken so many hearts. I love that you say that. Like I call this pitch. I know it's game over. After those two pitches, take the fastball swing like that at the slider, not even a best one, not even an A slider. But you know that Will's going to not throw two of those back to back. He's going to throw an A slider here. Yeah. And this, this one, I remember this one. It's, yeah, this is a fastball down and down and in until it's not. Got him. And what a signature win for the Giants. Yeah. Yeah. So like I said, it's, it's so much fun to watch. I love when we do like doing this to hitters is so much fun unless I'm the one hitting. And it's, but these guys are, these pictures are just so good. And the fact that you know the game's over, it's, and then he, he gave me the ball right after that and just he was a Tommy John guy and his words were, he goes, Hey man, this ball is for you. Welcome back. I know what it takes to come back. Glad to have you here. Excited. Just, you know, I just, man, my teammates were so awesome. I mean, I love my teammates. You know that you're one of them. And these guys treated me, they, you know, Eric Kratz was on the team at the time and he spent the year before Milwaukee. He saw me rehabbing and he gave this huge speech to the whole clubhouse after this game about me. And I just, I just started tearing up, man, because this, the love that we have for each other goes beyond the game. It goes beyond competing together. And there's just such this level of respect of the brotherhood and it's, it's crazy. I don't want to go too far into this, but in the climate they were in with baseball negotiating right now, a lot of people look past the personal stuff. They see ball players that say you guys are making a ton of money to play a kid's game. What they don't see is the struggle, man. Like it took a lot for you to get to this position. You spent a lot of time in the minor leagues grinding it out. You put the work in. Nothing was given to you. Not one thing. This is the stuff that I love. Here in the Kratz, you do that for you after the game. That's incredible, man. Yeah, I think for me, where we are right now with our game is, to me, it's just sad. You know, I'm not going to get into what's going on the whole lot, but I'm sad. We all, we want to be playing and unfortunately there's some other things going on right now that just are out of our control. And you know, this is, this is something that I've fought my whole life to get here and I've worked and I've put in those extra work. I've put in that other stuff and now I'm at home and I'm waiting and I'm still putting, still putting the extra work. You should not be at home. I mean, you need to, you're a baseball guy. Yes, I'm not good. I'm not good unless I'm, well, I'm good, but I'm not good. I love who I am when I get to do what I love most and I think that's most humans. When we get to do what we love most, we're better people. And you know, that being said, I've enjoyed the time at home with the family. This has been so incredible to get this little chance to watch my kids grow up every day without traveling. And I'm ready to go. My wife's arm is killing her. She needs to stop playing long time. We need to, we need to get this ball rolling. We will. I know we're going to be playing ball this year. We can't wait to see you. I just appreciate you giving the time, dude. Yeah, Trevor, this was awesome. It was good catching up with you and a lot of fun. All right, thanks, Steve.