He hails from Cumberland but is known as the sage pitching coach and guru for the Hall of Fame arms of the Atlanta Braves. Always happy to discuss Maddux and Glavine and Smoltz and Cox but more apt to share his “analytics” of how to keep pitchers healthy and on the mound every fifth day. Listen and learn like we always do with the great Leo Mazzone.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Leo Mazzone, Hall of Fame, Baltimore Orioles, pitching coach, baseball analytics, arm injuries, pitching philosophy, minor league development, pitching mechanics, spin rate, pitch clock, baseball history, Maryland crab cakes, baseball legends, pitching staff.
SPEAKERS
Leo Mazzone, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T am 1570 tasks of Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. We’re trying to get through this baseball trading deadline. I’m trying to find other things to talk about. But everyone is talking baseball around here, and I thought of an old friend. I haven’t had him on in a couple of years, certainly not during the Zoom era. But Leo mazonio and I go way back to me trying to figure out Braves pitching before everybody went to the Hall of Fame. 30 years ago, I used to see Leo out on the road. And Leo is a Marylander, even though he claims South Carolina and Georgia as his homeland. But and with the all star game in Atlanta and the battery and all of that, I had reached Leo before the all star break. I said, Hey, you want to come on? He said, I’m going to the all star to the All Star break next week in Atlanta. I’m like, let’s get you on afterwards. So Leo, welcome. I guess you consider Baltimore sort of home, maybe a little bit outside of Cumberland, right,
Leo Mazzone 00:51
right? Yeah, absolutely. I do. You know that’s where I grew up, and had a great time growing up and close to Cumberland, Maryland, and that’s where I learned all my baseball as a youngster, and it played a big part in my signing with the Giants out of high school and starting my professional career, which lasted 42 years.
Nestor Aparicio 01:10
Leo, I gotta tell you, man, I’m sponsored by the Maryland lottery, and I, you know, we do these crab cake tours, and I’m off the road for a couple weeks here, and we’re doing our 27th anniversary next month. They had a huge lottery winner in a town called Lona coning, which I know. So they had a big, big winner. And we, I talked about that with John, because it was the biggest winner in state history. I buy, like, literally, accidentally, not on purpose, but I’ve explored the state because of crab cakes, and I did a little fly fishing out on that, that part of the world, a place called Luke and Williamsport, way out there on the water with Dan Rogers couple years ago. And I drove through Lona coning, and as I drove through, my wife was actually driving, and I’m looking around at the big cliff, and I’m looking down and there’s lefty Grove Park around turn the car, yeah, yeah,
Leo Mazzone 01:58
oh yeah. You go, you come in. There’s a sign, and it says, home of lefty grove. There’s
Nestor Aparicio 02:02
a beautiful little park, and it’s almost like a wiffle ball park for like kids, and it just sits there on this in this former coal mining community at the edge. What a beautiful part of the world you grew up in. I don’t think I’ve ever told you that, because I didn’t know that the last time I saw you, because I’ve been driving out there to Deep Creek and swallow falls, and just all of that part of the state. And you’re like, it’s a baseball cradle. I’m like, I drove past lefty Grove Park 20 minutes from your house, and I’m like, Yeah, I guess, how did baseball find you out there is, I mean, Orioles, obviously, maybe pirates, a little bit.
Leo Mazzone 02:36
That’s San Francisco, of all, of all teams. And what I was doing. I was pitching in the penmar League, and we had a first baseman that signed with the Giants, Judy, Judy Perry, and I said, Judy you. And I was like 16, playing with men. That’s how I really learned how to play the game. And he signed with the giants, and he he became a bird dog, as they called him in. And I said, as great a player as you are, how come you didn’t make it? He said, Well, he sees that. I had two guys in front of me, William McCovey and Orlando Cepeda. I said, Well, I can I get it then, you know, but, and he got chick Genovese in, the scout from the giants to watch me pitch, and I signed a couple days later. So that’s how that all started. But you know, if, when you getting back to loniconi, it’s lefty Grove, you go into Cumberland, it was Sam Perla and Bob Robertson, and then you go into western port and says the home of Leo Mazzoni. So you know, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a pretty good group to have
Nestor Aparicio 03:41
out of that real small area. Now, you had some flooding out there in your homeland a couple weeks ago, right? Yeah,
Leo Mazzone 03:46
oh, man, it was a mess, floods, floods, everything else. You
Nestor Aparicio 03:50
know, I actually fished in Western Port. It’s crazy that you’re from there, that I, I parked my car at the McDonald’s right there and walked up the way and waded into the water and put my on a rock and had waders on, and was just, you know, I was trying to be like lefty Cray, you know. I mean, I was trying to figure it all out as a kid. I mean, you had that Tom Sawyer thing going on out there, man,
Leo Mazzone 04:09
right? Well, you know, it was wonderful place when I was a kid. You know, the paper mills were going strong in the coal mines. It’s not that anymore. It’s gone. It’s, uh, you could, you could drive your car on the sidewalk and not hit anybody, because there’s, there’s nobody around, and all the people that I the parents that I grew up with, and they was in charge, really, of course, they’re all gone. They’re all all the fellow the guys came back from World War Two, and they helped expand the little leagues so that more kids could play. And that’s how it all started. But it’s all gone. And all the industry, the West vaco Paper Company, which my dad worked at for 42 years, that finally shut down. That put the end of all you of Luke Piedmont and
Nestor Aparicio 04:52
Western Port, yeah. Dan Rogers explained all that history to me as I was out there, and how you have the mills had sort of polluted some of the water. And. Fish changed, and you know, rainbow trout, which we grabbed out of the water. Leo Mazon is here. He’s here to talk pitching, but I wanted to talk a little Maryland, just because a lot of people don’t know that about you. They remember your five minutes here in Baltimore, and your time here as a pitching coach, and the legend of you, but the baseball part of you do. You marvel when you go to an all star game, even all these years later that you were pretty good, you could pitch a little bit, but then seeing what you what a Maddox and a Glavin and like the guys that you worked with and the Chipper Jones is the greatest of great players, even guys that did it pretty good play minor league ball, whatever, maybe got a cup of coffee, but to just see that sort of excellence over your lifetime. Still marvel at that.
Leo Mazzone 05:41
Oh, absolutely I do. I mean, when I was down there this week, I’m sitting at a table with a pitcher named Raleigh fingers, and Raleigh fingers and I are signing autographs and and I’m looking over at him going, you know, I don’t know if I fit in with right should be next to him. Maybe, you know, or when we were in Cooperstown, I’ve signed autographs in Cooperstown because it was Braves related. And, heck, I was with Johnny Bench and Ernie Banks and and Lasorda and Whitey Ford. And I’m just sitting there understanding that all my childhood dreams came true, you know, a different way, in a different Yeah, I saw Eddie Murray, and I said, Hey, Eddie, how you doing? He told me to go blank myself. And I said, What are you still upset about the 95 World Series? He goes, Yeah. He said, Leo. He said, I told our hitters, Braves, pitchers are going to go down and away for strike one, then you’re never going to see another strike, so don’t swing. He said, We swung. Well, I
Nestor Aparicio 06:37
was at all of those games in 1995 and with the memories coming back when you go to Atlanta at this point in your life, make a little money. Sign small autographs, make people smile, take pictures, whatever see people. Give me a vibe of that, because let’s let’s be honest. And 95 launching pads, circle stadium, Fulton County. Then that you know Muhammad Ali. And then you move into sort of a weird kind of a stadium for a minute. They sort of fixed it up a little bit. Then they move it out the vibe of Atlanta baseball during your I mean, it’s, it’s changed three different times now, and yet that all star game kind of goes off without a hitch, and it feels like the Braves are still the kings of the south, as far as a baseball thing, and what they’ve managed to do financially, there is sort of the envy of what, what we would love to do in downtown Baltimore, which we sort of maybe missed out on in the early 90s with Camden Yards. Well,
Leo Mazzone 07:32
you know the evolution of the launching pad, when they said we could never have pitching there, we dispelled that. And then then moving into Turner Field. We thought it was a beautiful stadium, beautiful ballpark and and we had a great time there, too. But at truest Park, the surrounding area now at truest Park, it’s like a city. They’re only they have their own city, all the restaurants, all the bars, all everything, apartments, hotels, you could actually go there to enjoy that a ball game without going inside the stadium. That’s how nice it is. It’s called the battery. So, matter of fact, Monday night, I’m going down to to speak to a group at the Omni Hotel on behalf of the Atlanta Braves. And then on Friday, I go down again, back to Atlanta to speak to a group for at a luncheon for the Atlanta Braves so and then I was put in this past year, I was put in the state of Georgia Hall of Fame, and I’m in the Atlanta Braves Hall of Fame, and I’m in the city of Atlanta Hall of Fame. So the state of Georgia has been real good to me well, but when you
Nestor Aparicio 08:33
go down there, it’s a different experience. What I’m saying is like Memorial Stadium for me as a kid, it ain’t there anymore. It’s why, thank God for that. And they’re playing ball down there, and they’re doing things in that space, but it is a different experience to go back like it’s a it’s the next thing for them. And the Braves have made that move as a franchise very, very deftly, you know, to keep all of your legends alive, really, oh, absolutely.
Leo Mazzone 08:55
You know, you’re speaking of Baltimore. When I grew up, I loved the Baltimore Colts, you know, and my hero is Johnny Unitas. Matter of fact, I saw Johnny Unitas at a spring training game in West Palm Beach, and I looked up in the stands. I went, Man, is that Johnny Unitas? And it was in between innings, I took a ball and asked him to sign a baseball for me, and he goes, I’d love to and I saw my one of my favorite balls is Johnny Unitas on a baseball, and when they moved out of Baltimore in 84 I tell you what, I was sick to my stomach. Sick to my stomach. I could have shot anybody that was moving them out, or at least give the trucks a flat tire, because that’s I our family. Just love the Baltimore Colts.
Nestor Aparicio 09:36
Well, I mean, and for going to the All Star game this week. How do you feel about derbies and the competition and the swing off at the I mean, I was in Milwaukee when Bud Selig did this. I don’t know if you were there. You might have been there too that day, but the all star game, Ray Fauci and Pete Rose, my dad always hated, you know, Pete Rose because of that, and just said, it’s an exhibition. Game. I tell you 10 to 20 of them. I think you were a part of them. I think I talked to you on the field before, after games in that era, the competitive nature of it, what it is, what it’s supposed to be. You’re in the heart of it right now. Are they getting it right? Major League Baseball, the All Star game,
Leo Mazzone 10:14
yeah, it’s right. But let me tell you something. When you’re in that dugout for all star games, it’s competitive. I mean, you know, the first thing they say, you know, you used to have your meeting with the National League Commissioner, the American League Commissioner. I mean, they’re presidents of each league. And they say, Hey, look, we gotta win this game that, you know. And so, you know, I remember Barry Bonds coming up to me one time. He said, Leo. He said, I got again. I got a decision to make. I said, What’s that barrier? He goes, Well, if we have a runner on second base, he said, Should I just try to drive? Should I drive in the first one for the National League, or try to hit a home run? I said, well, first time up, try to get us to lead, then second time up, go ahead. He He drove in the first run from second base on a single to right center, and was on first base looking at me. And then there was, you know, things like that that went on in the All Star game. All Star games. You know, I was there when crook Randy Johnson almost threw that ball over crook’s head.
Nestor Aparicio 11:12
And that was here in Baltimore, Leo, Baltimore,
Leo Mazzone 11:14
and yeah. And once LA, sorta was coaching third, and somebody flew hit it almost hit him with a bat. The bat the bat jumped out, hit his hands and almost took him out. So, but, yeah, listen, in baseball, like I had a hard time with a starting pitcher for the American League being miked, and then, you know, talking to the fans while he’s trying to pitch. And and I thought, well, this, you know this, and that’s the first time he gave up three runs in one ending in his career, but all the jibber jabbing instead of playing the game, I personally loved watching the game. I just turned the volume down, you know? I just didn’t want to listen to all the chatter and what the players were saying and this and that home run derby, to me is, I didn’t go to it. I mean, I went to, I remember we had Home Run Derby in 2000 and Turner Field. And once the Home Run Derby started, the coaching staff left, because it just goes on and on and on. You’re swinging for the fences, and it’s, it’s nice for the fans, but it doesn’t do anything for me. The home the swing off. I didn’t even know that that was going to happen. To be honest with you, I didn’t either. I mean, and I went, you know, Bobby Cox told me the hardest games that he’s ever had to manage is the all star game, because you want to do right by the players. You want to try to win the game, and you want to try to get everybody in, as many guys as you can so I think the swing off takes the pressure off everybody, as far as running out of players. So I, I thought it went over extremely well. The swing off for extra innings. I personally don’t think it’s an exhibition game. I think it’s for real and but yeah, to see all you know. But as time goes by, you think more of the previous all star games than you do the one that’s that’s going on right now. You know, memories of tremendous games and tremendous all star games. You know, watching Jim Palmer, or watching Whitey Ford, or, you know, I knew, I know to this day, that Whitey Ford could not get Willie Mays out in an all star game. Used to drive me nuts. But over the years, you know, being a part of of those all star games was absolutely awesome. I think the the evolution of sport now, you know, they’re, you know, that’s the way it is, and that’s what you’re going to see. You’re going to see more entertainment. And, you know, a lot of more going on than just actually playing an all star game. And I think it’s also lost. The mystery is gone. I’m sure you understand the mystery of the American League, against the National League, American League umpires and National League umpires, you know, and without with interplay, that’s interleague play, that’s all gone. And the only way
Nestor Aparicio 13:58
I could see Jim Palmer face Mike Schmidt or Pete Rose was to do an all star game or make it to the World Series. So Leo Mazzoni is here. We’re Geez in, like old guys from last century, he is the legendary pitching coach, a Marylander. I always point that out, and always and Atlanta brave and All right, so you spent your time here in Baltimore a long time ago. We talked about it. Angelo’s has since left us. Since you and I got together, and there’s a new owner here’s already made his own bobble head, which you know, that kind of speaks for itself. Teams in last place, attendance is down. Lots and lots of manager got fired. General Manager fired the manager on a Saturday morning Leo and hid from the media for three and a half days and reemerged in Milwaukee on Tuesday night. I mean, as a media member, as someone that you always had accountability. Bobby Cox, John sure host another great Baltimore, and not just the Maryland or housing guy, um, there was always accountability in that era, whether even Baltimore, Sid Thrift, or whether it was, you know, Davey Johnson, whoever it was, answering questions and. The game is played. I mean, from what I understand, because they threw me out of the media a long time ago, Leo, from what I understand, that managers don’t even make the lineups right? So like, the lineups are consortium, it’s stat based. It’s analytics stuff that I certainly don’t recognize in that way. But when the output happens that all of your pitchers are getting hurt, they’ve shut Grayson Rodriguez down again this weekend that they’re doing something wrong, Leo, and I don’t know what it is, and I’m not calling you to scream about it, but their last place again, and it sucks, because the last two years it’s been fun around here.
Leo Mazzone 15:34
Oh, absolutely I think, I think the way baseball handles pitching staffs in general now is absolutely brutal. For example. Can you imagine making a starting rotation making 531 starts in a row from 91 to 93 and missing one start? Okay. Can you imagine, with Bobby Cox and me together for almost 15 years, that our starting rotations made 140 of average, 140 the 160 game scheduled starts. So people don’t want to listen to how we did it. And I try to explain it to everybody that we didn’t care how hard somebody threw. What we cared about was touch on the ball, change in speeds, fastball command. But we did it by doing it off of a mound of 60 feet, six inches, going downhill to a catcher and doing it twice in between starts. So that way, if you try to throw as hard as you can in between starts, which I understand a lot of guys do now, you’re nuts. You’re crazy. In between is to try to build up for your next start. And the bottom line is, is that you can do it more often and practice your pitches on the mound and get some touch on the ball if you’re on the mound, everybody said, Well, we throw flat footed throwing. You know what? Flat foot throwing does nothing. Flat footed throwing you play catch in the outfield before you go up on the in a bullpen to throw. Had a pitching coach tell me, well, when they get on the mound to throw in the in their practice sessions, he said they have a tendency to throw too hard. And I said, Well, that’s what the hell they pay you for, is to regulate the effort. And when I got the job in 90, not June of 90, Bobby had big meetings in in Atlanta at the stadium, and I, I’d had a reputation of wherever I was in the minor leagues, our pitching staffs didn’t break down. So then, when Bobby wanted to figure out who’s going to start running the get in charge of the pitching in the farm system, you know, I gave I stood up and told my my how, what I want to do, which I had been doing anyway, because Hank Aaron was my boss. He said, You take care of the pictures. That’s why I hired you. And so I had no directive from anybody on how to do it. I didn’t want any directive from anybody on how to do it. So anyway, what put the icing on the cake was Hank Aaron stood up and said, All I can tell you, Bobby is that wherever Leo goes, his pitching staffs don’t break down. And one pitching coach said, Well, you know, he hasn’t thrown a lot. He said, they’ll have a tendency. And he said, I don’t think they’ll have anything left in August. I said, Well, what do you do? And he goes, Well, on the day that you have one to mound, or that extra day that you have going to mound. We play catch in the outfield. I went, what tell me the difference? He goes, Well, the difference is they go the bullpen, they’re going to have a tendency to throw too hard. And that’s what I told him. That’s what the hell they pay you for to regulate the effort. So we did that constantly. We constantly worked on being sneaky, quick as opposed to overpowering. Cuz if sneaky, if you turn if here’s what pitchers resort to adversity in the game, they resort to superpower and super control. When you resort to superpower, you start going all over the place. You raise the risk of damage in your arm. Super control means you’re trying to paint, and that means you’re behind an account. So you add all those up, and I try to bring that to a pitcher’s attention, so that when you do go out to the mound, you go you, when you’re talking to the pitcher out on the mound, you always ask them, what’s your most important pitch? And they’ll say, Well, fastball and your most important pitch is your next one. And that’s what we used to try to talk about all the time, you know, you can’t call time out and bring if you walked a guy or whatever and you’re ticked off with yourself. So, you know. And I’m not going to go out there and say, Look, you gotta throw strikes. He’s going to look at you go, you know, no, no kid. And so I say, don’t give in to the strike zone. And let’s, let’s concentrate on the next most important pitch being your next pitch, then we’ll have damage control in the inning. Won’t be any crooked numbers up there. We can give up one four times in the game, and we’re proud. We’re going to win that game. You know, we’re we’re right there. But anyway, things like that, the approach being that learning how to learning what your pitches do, and we’re the. Fault comes in the big leagues now is in the minor leagues, they are the greatest teacher a pitcher has is innings pitched, and they’re taking it away from all those kids in the minor leagues. You know, they’re hell. They’re starting rotations to me in the big leagues. Now, let me ask you a question, and I get very passionate about this. I’m watching the Yankees and the Braves last night right now. Hey, you had three or four days off for the all star break, right? And the Yankees had a bullpen day. How in the hell can you have a bullpen day when you’ve had three or four days off for the all star break and then you don’t have a regular starter to start? How’s that happen?
Nestor Aparicio 20:41
Well, something tells them, in their analytics that this is the way they want to set it up or something. Yeah,
Leo Mazzone 20:46
and, and I never heard of, we’re going to have a bullpen day till I retired. To me, that’s an absolute joke. I
Nestor Aparicio 20:54
never heard of load management in the NHL or the NBA, either. Leo, I can’t, you know, I don’t my my dad worked at the steel mill and never took a scratch, as he called it, which I didn’t realize that was a horse racing term. I mean, it is. My dad wasn’t a horse race again. My dad would always say, I never scratch. And then I’m like, oh, it’s like a horse scratching. My dad never scratched. I don’t know. I mean, I cover Cal Ripken here for 15 years. So, yeah, I’m with you.
Leo Mazzone 21:19
You know? I mean, you can’t coach scared, and you gotta let him get on the mound to learn how to pitch. Also, I do not believe you should develop a reliever in the minor leagues. In the minor leagues, like the great relievers that we had, you know, I mean, Kent mercker, he was started in minor league, Steve Bedrosian, guys like that, they they started the minor leagues, personally. Aaa, halfway through. Aaa, you would say, as the triple A manager and pitching coach, not the front office people, the manager and pitching coach of the triple A team, who do you think could be a possible closer and check out his rebound? So we would do that for a little while with the guy we thought. And then if he worked, you know, you’d bring him up. But, you know, I’m, I’m not checking with an analytical guy to see how a guy should pitch, or how it or this or that. You know, if you have to do that, then, oh, you’re being as a coach, as a yes man. That’s all they are. Is yes men. And when I had two great bosses, Hank, Aaron and Bobby Cox, and the two things they told he told me the exact same thing. Hank says, there’s your pictures, you take care of them. Bobby Cox, when I got there, he goes, Leo, there’s your pictures. Get to know every single one of them. Spend all your time with them, and you take care of them. And so I had the, thank God I had the leeway. Nobody was going to come downstairs from the front office and say, Well, you know, he’s, he’s kidding, he’s throwing a lot of innings. I had one time in Baltimore where Eric Bedard, he had two great years while we were there, and, you know, the front office guy came down and said, Leo. He said, you know, Bedard is going to pitch over 50 innings more than he did the previous year. I said, Wouldn’t that great? That means he’s pitching Good. Well, you gotta be careful. I said, Look, whoever came up with that number is full of, you know what? Never met Nolan Ryan, yeah. I mean, come on. You know Maddox glavis. I mean all our guys,
Nestor Aparicio 23:15
Palmer. I mean every you can’t talk to Palmer without him. And you know saying how broken all of this is too. Yeah, I
Leo Mazzone 23:21
know. And you know what Maddox used to tell me? He says, Leo, he says, You’re only 100% before your first start, so the next, the rest of the year, you’re not 100% but that mean you can’t pitch. And the other thing is, is that anything that happens with a pitcher now is they, they’re shut down. I mean, they’re just everybody look or how about this one? Oh, he’s getting a lot of innings. We’re going to give it. We’re going to skip him a couple starts, you know, give him a breather, go down to go down to the wire to pennant race. Well, that’s the worst thing you can do. Pictures, get on a routine. And the way our pitcher stayed healthy is whatever we did in spring training, we were doing in October getting ready for a World Series game or the playoffs. Nothing changed in between.
Nestor Aparicio 24:10
Well, that’s what I was going to ask you, because I don’t want to be interrupted. But you said, in that first meeting, you stood up to Hank Aaron and said, This is the way I’ve done it. My pitchers don’t get hurt from that minute till the end of your career to now, how much has your philosophy changed? I mean, as regard to what, what did you learn along the way? Just to maybe tweak things a little bit, because it sounds like your philosophy about mound versus brown never change. You still believe that, 50 years later, a because and you’re allowed to believe whatever you want, because your work. You know what I mean? Like, you know, I can’t even argue with you, but I’m wondering along the way, did did you have any philosophical, even little bit of change, because something Tom house was doing, or something somebody else was doing, you
Leo Mazzone 24:55
know, what was that? What I was doing, was this, we were going, we were learning. How to somebody, if you threw an inside change up, right? Oh, you can’t throw an inside change up well. Over the evolution, over, over my career with the guys, we found out that you could, you know, for example, Glavin threw an inside change up to Jeff Bagwell by mistake. Bagwell almost fell down trying to hit it. So Glavin come in and sits down to me next to the dugout, and he goes, Leo. He said, you see that? I said, Yeah. He goes, maybe I should start throwing some inside change ups. I said, go ahead. You think it’ll work? He said, Yeah. I said, go ahead. Well, Maddie has come around the corner, and he said, Tommy, go ahead. He said, If they hit it, all they can do is hit, pull it, foul. Okay, so now the next inning he’s throwing inside change up. So Bobby Cox comes to me and says, Leo, was that a change up? And I said, Yeah. He goes, was Javier Lopez sitting up inside? I said, Yeah. He goes, isn’t that kind of dangerous? I said, Glavin said they can’t hit that pitch. He goes, Okay, that and, you know, stuff like that and but different approaches. Man,
Nestor Aparicio 26:04
it’s interesting that when Bobby would question you, or when Greg and Greg Maddux or COVID are questioning, you were small to me. I guess you’re listening to it. They were smart guys, right? You probably had some some philosophical differences along the way, for sure,
Leo Mazzone 26:16
right? If I had to, I use the tools that were available to me. For example, samosie had a hard time throwing his change up, so I taught I was going to teach him a split. This was after he’s already good, but he had more trouble with left handed hitters. So what I do? Bruce Suter lived in Atlanta, so I called Bruce and told me to meet him for lunch. And I said, Give me everything you know about the split, because I’m going to get ready to teach it to Smoltz, and if smalls, he picked it up, and it became a huge weapon for him. But I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to talk to Don Sutton, who was doing the Sutton says, You want me to come down and look at some pictures in a bullpen? I said, Absolutely. And he goes, me. I said, you won 320 some games. You were never on a disabled list for your entire career. Why would I not take you’d have thought I gave, you know, he won the lottery. Jim Palmer, Jim, what do you see? Can, you know, give me some ideas on this guy or this guy or this guy? You know, you gotta take advantage of those tools. And nobody does that anymore. Well, all they do is they look at numbers and they look at percentages and do all that sort of thing. So, you know, as I evolved the approach with our pitchers did not change. For example, when the big three were going, we still won. You know, you had Russ Ortiz, you had Mike Hampton, you had John Thompson, you had Jarrett, right, John Burke. I mean, you had these guys that they kept on winning, and when, and a couple of them, they were told, we’re done. They get on the programs that we had and they had, they got big Jarret got a big contract with the Yankees after he’s with us, and burka got one with the Red Sox after both of them said they were washed up. So that’s because we simplified the game. We looked at the pitchers and went, we got two pitches going, we’re going to win. We got three pitches going, we’re going to throw a shutout. We get narrowed down to one, we’re going to lose. And I ain’t buying what I see on TV, where this guy throws six or seven pitches, and I ain’t buying it. Oh, he’s throwing a sweeper. Give me a break, you know? It’s an off speed curve ball for crying out loud, you know, and the terminology that they’re using, that’s why I have to turn the volume down and actually watch the game.
Nestor Aparicio 28:27
Leo Mazzoni is here, and look, I can go all, I love baseball and you love baseball, Lee, and you love baseball. Yeah, I love baseball, you know, baseball, spin rate and analytical terms and things like that. And I want to give a plug to my buddy, John Miller, not the broadcaster, the writer who wrote this book on Earl Weaver and which everyone it’s on my it’s on my summer. If I get to the beach two weeks from now, I’m taking it with me. But everybody’s talked about philosophically how there were Analytics in your day, and they were average that, you know, like my dad got bought the sporting news because he thought of himself as a mathematician who wanted to figure out angles, and really taught me division and math, and you know, how to do an era and dividing by nine, and you know, all of that through baseball, right? Yeah, so we all did, right? I’m as of who we are, right, but that to have the math part of this, my dad would love the math part of it, he might not like the strategy and the ball, like all of the weirdness of it, and the manager’s not managing. I know Earl wouldn’t like that, Bobby. Nobody liked that. But there are some parts of the science of this that I would think you would be taking seriously if you were there, and part of it is rotation of the ball and things that Earl Weaver couldn’t quantify in regard to on base percentage, but he knew it was important. And I knew, when I had strata Matic cards, that a walk was as good as a hit, but, but That’s old school terminology in the modern vernacular, they have science and cameras, and I always think of sitting in Tony gwynn’s little office out of Jack Murphy. Statement. Look closet he had with the video camera. You know, I’m talking about like that was technology. Then how would you employ some of this, not the jibber jabber on TV, but I would think they could bring you something that would tell you about spin rate, or about angles, that would help you be a better pitching coach,
Leo Mazzone 30:18
right? Well, number one, spin rate, okay? The greatest pitching coach in the history of baseball was Johnny sain. Johnny sain was, he was my guru. What did Johnny saying? Have he had the spinner and he had a ball on a tool, and he said, Come here, Leo, and he would spin him. He was putting aerodynamic. He was a pilot, so he was putting aerodynamics to the spins of a baseball on how they would move. So when I hear that, I go, wait, wait, wait, somebody was way ahead of their time, right before you hear all this, and he’s and he told me, he showed me the backspin on a four seam fastball. Over the top spin on a two seam fastball, it’s the spins on breaking balls, smaller breaking balls, control, breaking balls, takeout. Breaking balls, the spins on the change up.
Nestor Aparicio 31:07
I’m thinking like a guy like Ted Williams would know that and had the vision to see the seams, which is how he hit 400 same thing, probably with Gwen. I mean, he’s super human dudes, right?
Leo Mazzone 31:15
And Barry Bonds too. That’s what Barry Bonds. His dad told me that he could read the spin coming out of a pitcher’s hand faster than anybody. But anyway, so now, when I’m sitting there watching pitchers spin pitches, what I want to see I didn’t use how fast it was going. What I would say is the faster the ball, the the ball spins, the the better it breaks, not how hard you throw it. Okay. The other one was, if I saw a break a fastball and he threw the fat and it cut, and they’d say, Oh, that’s a cutter. I said, Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Did you try to cut it? No. Well, if you didn’t try to cut it, do you know when it’s going to cut? No. Well, then if you don’t know when it’s going to cut, that’s only going to be a 5050, pitch. You know. Half the time it’s going to cut over the middle and it’s gone, you know. So I looked for consistency. You find out what caused the cut, or what causes something to move, or what causes something that you want to go straight, you know? But those are the spins that you read. And as soon as you see, for example, if you see Tom glavine’s change up, right, and it spins the same all the time, all the time. Maddox is two seam fats the spin, it never deviates, doesn’t doesn’t tilt, doesn’t it spins are the same all the time. So we talk about spin, the consistency of the spin on a particular pitch. I never use the term spin rate, because I just thought, if the boss he has a good spin on the ball, it’s going to break and and the bottom line is this, you if they learn how to spin the ball and not throw it so damn hard, then they lower the risk of arm injury, and how do you acquire that? You make the full circle back to the mound and practice it at 60 feet six inches, going downhill to a catcher. So that’s when you take care of spins. That’s when you took care of all this stuff. And Bobby used to look out before a baseball game say, Where the hell is all the pitchers we don’t have nobody chat about they’re all in the bullpen with me. We’re we’re all just because so and so’s day is it to throw. They can be up there with me. And we’re all putting input, you know, and having this conversation on anything from location to movement to change of speeds. We used to say you get a hitter out five ways, stuff, movement, changes speeds, location and motion, all five play a part, and some of those are going to be different between the individuals as what their strength is, but the location has to be for everybody. That has to be for everybody. And I think in you know, Maddox used to tell me he says velocity Leo is about fourth on my list. It’s movement, location, change of speeds, velocity. So in other words, teaching pitchers how to do that, you cannot do that by throwing a damn weighted ball up against a wall. You can’t do it by pulling all these bands and doing all this stuff, if you don’t go out on the mound and practice it, and then not most pitchers, they don’t do that anymore. Well, we’re in football training
Nestor Aparicio 34:27
camp, and they don’t hit anymore. And, like, literally, and then you wonder why they can’t tackle in week one. They’re not even employing their their craft, you know, like, literally, is here he tackles baseball better than anybody. Last thing for you, because, I mean, I could go into the Orioles and into Tommy John. There’s so many lanes I go into, like trading deadline and all that pitch clock. And, you know, Ray Miller was my guy early on. I knew him better than I knew you it was, you know, work fast, you know, change speeds, throw strikes. You know what I mean, like he had three things. You. Had five things, right and late, great Ray Miller and but the pitch clock. His first credo was, work fast, you know, like, get the ball back. Don’t let the pitcher you got the ball get on the hill, get him in the box. But the clock sort of works against the pitcher, although it can work against human rain delays, who, you know, get get free, you know, three strikes for the pitcher if they can’t get in the box. But how has that? I mean, games move fast in your era, my era, Jim Palmer, they got the ball made. They did it because Ray Miller told him to do it. I never saw Maddox out there, you know, cleaning his spikes. He’s like, Get get the box. I’m gonna kick your ass, you know.
Leo Mazzone 35:38
Yeah, we always said upbeat tempo. Upbeat tempo. Pick up the tempo. Pick up the tempo. That means we’re either picking up the tempo in between pitches, or we’re picking up the tempo from start to finish when we unload a pitch. So that was a constant. And I did hear which clock wouldn’t have scared you. I mean, right, no, right. No pitch. You know, I didn’t. Hell, I used to cheat on pitch counts Anyway, before they put them on the board. But no, somebody said earlier. Basically, somebody said, Well, pitch clock’s going to cause, cause pitchers to to maybe hurt their arm because they don’t have enough recovery time in between pitches that one to make me throw up. That has nothing the pitch has nothing to do with any type of arm injury. And great pitching coaches like Ray Miller, who is a good friend of mine, you know, upbeat tempo. Upbeat tempo work fast. You know, that’s always been there. Now, I think the pitch clock works for some guys that are a human rain delay. You know, because we’re we’re screaming throw the ball because the morning newspaper is going to be here before you ever get done this game. So you’re always pushing upbeat tempos. But there’s nothing wrong with the pitch clock. I mean, nothing wrong with that at all. I don’t think it has any doing anything, be honest with you, except maybe some pitcher that’s slow has to speed his things up, and that’s that should help him, not hurt him.
Nestor Aparicio 37:05
Leo Zoni is always a great resource. I’m let’s get back out on the lake down there and catch a fish. It’s 100 degrees. Well, you’re happy here. Talk baseball. Do you have anything on the Orioles and the failure of what’s happened here this year, and the weight of new ownership, and just it really was going well. I was so going so well. Last May, I said to my wife, and I’m 56 years old, Leo, I’ve been through all of it back to like Palmer Vida blue Quay are 7374 is where I kind of came into the movie. After my cousin came here in 66 and won the World Series, I said to my wife, this might be the best team I’ve ever seen them have. When they had rushman, Henderson, westburg, all these guys are coming up cows and was hitting the ball, they had Bradish coming back into the rotation off kind of a Cy Young year Rodriguez was the up and coming, whether it was going to be a storm Davis or whether it was going to be a Jim Palmer, who knows, but he was going to be something. And then the Corbin burns thing last year. They had him here all last year, so he was one, he
Leo Mazzone 38:04
was one of my favorite pitches pitchers to watch last year. And when they lost him, I think that took a big chunk out of their story. You
Nestor Aparicio 38:11
don’t replace them. Roger Clemens of the modern era, right? I mean, that kind of that, that horse in the front, and they are, they’re a mess right now. I mean, got the manager fired all of that. Do you have anything on the Orioles for me? Well,
Leo Mazzone 38:24
I think you just, you just told the story right there, starting pitching. I mean, if you look at you look at Baltimore, you’re naming a chance to have a very good rotation to having you don’t know who you have. You really don’t know who you have. And I think, I think they’re, I think they’re going to finish the season over 500 I think that I like their lineup. I still do, and I like their ball club, but I don’t, I don’t think they’re pitching is very good at all, to be perfectly honest with you. But I, I got the, I think you could say that to 50% of the major league teams and but when you when you don’t keep a guy like Burns, who, who? In other words, you have that guy that you know, you know, you’re probably not going to have a lot of losing streaks, you know, and you know. And let me and let me tell you this, the the thinking behind that for me is this, when we signed Maddox in 93 All right, we had a chance to sign bonds or Maddox because Ted Turner said we had one big bullet to shoot. They asked me, and I said, who you think I’m going to pick? I’m a pitching coach, you know. But Bobby Cox had the final say, and it was split in the room. Bobby said, All I can tell you is, if we signed Greg Maddux with the rotation that we have in place, we’ll never have a losing streak. So when you look at pitching, and you look at a guy like burns, and you look at you think, you know, it didn’t add a add a starter here or there, and you’ve got four guys that you can run out there and count on. That’s what, that’s when you’re going to win. And that the Orioles with that ball club that they have in place now, if they had that, they’d be winning. They
Nestor Aparicio 39:58
deserve better pay. Watching, really at this point, you know, so the fans. Leo Mazzoni is here. I always love having you on. I’m sorry I was a bit tardy. Professor, it’s always good to see. What are you doing? I think charitably you’re doing, you’re always doing good stuff, man, I
Leo Mazzone 40:13
know you. Yeah, no. I mean, you know, we have a dog shelter that we take care of in Atlanta, furry friends Foundation, my wife and I, and we just, and we, we adopt, you know, it’s an adoption place, so, yeah, we, we, you know, we have, we just have an affinity for that. We love, we love our dogs and stuff like that. So, but I, you know, and my, my sons have all grown and got a grandson in Maryland, My son’s a detective in Cumberland. Then I have a son that’s working in Ohio in the mines, and he has have two granddaughters with him, but he’s not in the mines. He’s in the front office in Salem, Ohio. And then I have my son, Chris, is down the road in coaching teenage baseball and doing well as a full time job, and he’s doing well, living in Akron, Georgia, right outside of Atlanta. And there’s another thing we can do, a whole new show on what’s that? Gravel ball, the pitchers, young pitchers, are getting their arms ruined. Travel ball because they’re being told if they don’t hit a certain number on a radar gun, they don’t make a club. And that’s from 12 years old, up to 1812. To 18 pitch and and then, if you’re pitching almost year round, once baseball season’s over, a youngster should play another sport. And there’s nothing wrong with throwing a baseball year round, except now they’re throwing them competitively, almost year round, and 12 year old arms can’t take that. And the way pictures are handled. I’ve spoke to coaches and everybody about this, about taking care of your kids arm, you know. And all they talk about is, oh, he hit. He hit 82 you know, as he’s 14 years old, 13 years old. Who cares? Can he throw a strike? What’s what’s great about throwing 82 for ball four when you’re a kid in the big leagues, who cares if you throw 100 miles an hour for ball four or you’re all over the place, that’s why their pitch counts are up, or all over the damn place. And my feeling is this, you should not the pitcher on this thing of starters and relievers. They should not call them pitchers anymore. You just call everybody starting throwers and relief throwers, cuz that’s what you see, with the exception of a few guys like a Burns who pitch, but most of them all throwers, and that’s why you have so many arm injuries. That’s but that’s being taught from 12 years of age on
Nestor Aparicio 42:47
up, industry standard. I mean, you know, I hear it, and it’s like all of your wisdom is is nonsense. It’s crazy. Leo Mazzoni is here. If Robin Stein Rubenstein called me, I call you. I just would, because I I know you’d love to help fix the Orioles. So we all
Leo Mazzone 43:05
would, not only not to be down there in a dugout, but as an advisor, is what a senior advisor, or something like that, is what I enjoy. I do that a little bit, but not, not officially.
Nestor Aparicio 43:17
Well, don’t fish so much or move so far out of it, that you lose your passion and that you don’t share your wisdom. So I appreciate you waking up early on the weekend and sharing some wisdom with me. Get back to your wife, get out of the lake. It’s always good to visit with you. Thank you, Leo. You’re a great
Leo Mazzone 43:31
guest man. Anytime you keep me on anytime. I love talking baseball with you. The wisdom
Nestor Aparicio 43:36
of Leo Mazzoni, a Marylander by birth, and you know, I guess a South Carolina. And my mother was from Abbeville, South Carolina. You and I’ve talked about that, I went down to Greenville. I think I hit you and I hit kowitz, because his kids all go to Clemson. And I’m like, Hey, man, send me someplace in Greenville. I loved Greenville. Well, I went to Greenville, I said to my wife, I’m like, Hey, this is a nice place, and it’s 20 minutes from where my mom grew up, you know. So I know you’re not far away from there.
Leo Mazzone 44:02
What voted one of the 10th best places to live in the United States now, and Clemson’s right down the street, all right?
Nestor Aparicio 44:07
Well, I’m gonna meet you in Greenville for a beer and some proper fried green tomatoes with tomato. I need some pimento on but I want some you
Leo Mazzone 44:15
can’t get crab cakes like you can in Maryland. I don’t care where you go around. I know a
Nestor Aparicio 44:19
little bit about that, so I can work on that. Leo Mazzoni, always a pleasure to have him on. Hey, if you need to find me, I’m doing a Maryland crab cake tour beginning in August. It’s our 27th anniversary, featuring my 27 favorite things to eat. We’re doing about eight shows all over town, getting great guests, like we had last week on having Dan Rodricks and Cal out. We had such good times this past week on the crab cake tour, you’ll be hearing that along with Luke from training camp. Yes, it’s football season. I’m Nestor. We are W, N, S, D, am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We never stop talking Baltimore. Positive. You.
