Dodgers Prospects: A Chat With Newly Promoted Right-Handed Pitcher, Ben Casparius.

Intro this is tim rogers from dodgers 2080 in dodgers nation i'm here at rancho cucamonga with right-handed starting pitcher ben casparias um he is uh uh 2021 drafty and this is his first uh full season of professional ball and so i just wanted to talk real quick about your season so far first of all welcome thank you for having me i appreciate it all right so your season so far um other than we're gonna ignore your first outing because everything else has been absolutely brilliant um just in may all right we have um 21.2 innings pitch 30 k's only eight hits that's elite folks that's a one one three batting average against you pull that you're doing something right and then the whip was like 0.74 is that right for me holy smokes overall for the season 29.2 innings pitched 43 k's and only 15 hits wow so just thoughts so far in your season and how how it's how are you feeling so far yeah i mean obviously this is my first professional season so it's it's a little bit different from college and just you know the travel ball circuit growing up but um it's been a lot of fun and i think most importantly like i've learned a lot about myself a lot of myself as a pitcher and just really like what works for me and what doesn't work for me every day in and out excellent so to kind of dig a little deeper into into you a bit about your your past and how you became a professional Growing Up um what are some things that you did maybe growing up that either your parents had you do or that you did that you think really benefited you to become to put you in the place where you are today i think the most beneficial thing and not that i was forced to play sports or anything but i was a well-rounded athlete i played soccer baseball basketball football pretty much up until my junior year or junior of high school when i stopped playing basketball and just started focusing on baseball but just to be able to be outside um form relationships with people on and off the field with different sports i think that's what like really kind of just grew me to be who i am today and just understand the fact that it's a team sport and the relationships that you do build obviously help on and off the field so yeah i you know the baseball community Draft Day no matter how long you're in it it's still a very small community you never know what person's there that you're trying to impress or and or that you just don't know is there and you impress them and then they go oh like maybe some scout that was watching you exactly and said let's draft this guy yeah um so speaking of drafting so you were drafted almost a year ago uh it was there was a june draft was it or july july and you were drafted in the fifth round um what are some thoughts just kind of going back and reliving that that memory it was a stressful day i mean i didn't necessarily know where i was going i did have a very strong feeling i was gonna get picked on the second day um we just didn't know whether it would be the third round second round eighth round ninth tenth round but um i'm really i'm just really happy i landed with the dodgers it's an unbelievable organization i've made such big strides since becoming a professional and when i got that call it was really special with my family oh just curious who who calls you when Who called you when when they make the when they make the pick so my my agent call it it was kind of interesting because i was on the phone with another team i had to hang up on that team and my agent called me i think they were i think the dodgers had about like 40 seconds left on the clock or something and they he called me and was like they're gonna take you right here and it was pretty interesting because i remember i remember asking my dad like hey should i call that team back and i ended up just not and we heard my name called and it was really it was really surreal i remember it like it was yesterday i think i probably will for the rest of my life but um it was just the start of to something new and you know it's been a really fun almost year now so yeah well like i think a lot of uh especially Being drafted by the Dodgers pitchers i think they they really benefit by being drafted by an organization like the dodgers there's some organizations you probably know of them because you probably had your agent or your advisor at the time yeah was uh was probably going ah you don't want to get drafted by x so of course then you you you started last season you what did you just play in arizona did you play here at all i came out here for the last week and a half of the season so i think i made three appearances in that last home stretch and that was really i threw 100 innings at school so i know my build up was a little bit different than some of the other guys in the class but i really benefited from you know getting to getting to glendale putting in some new work making some adjustments that i really had i had never even really thought of just because of the resources i had it wasn't available to me um and it was probably that month and a half or two and including instructs after the end of the season was was really just an unbelievable time to just focus on myself selfishly and just work on pitch design and i was throwing bullpens tuesdays and fridays and i just saw myself getting a little bit better every single day and that was that was really really cool for me yeah i mean the the term pitch design is Pitch Design really that's something that's very new when you think about like really within the last five years maybe even less that you started even hearing the terms um and i got a feeling someone in the dodge organization invented it but or or the guys that uh what's that that uh oh the pitching place uh i can't remember the name yeah one of those places yeah yeah yeah oh yeah the arm guy or whatever his name and then so again you had now your first Spring Training real spring training was this year because you don't have it when you're drafted in july so tell me a little bit about those experiences maybe some of the coaches maybe even by name that maybe made some uh impacts on you i mean the thing about i think that's special about the dodgers organization is i have a relationship with at least 25 staff members which is almost overwhelming but it's not because there's so many there's if i'm working on something with a pitching coordinator the strength coordinator that i'm working with closely also knows that so everything is correlated everybody knows what's going on the communication is very very good um and you know from there it made my my life a lot easier obviously there's 150-ish guys running around you know a pretty small condensed area so for me to be able to like branch out to other coaches and and coordinators and just people that have that have power within the organization and have seen people go from the bottom to the top it's really cool because everybody has a different input and it's important to listen to everybody you know you don't you don't necessarily need to take into every er into account everything that people tell you but to be open-minded and to be willing to learn that's where i made the most strides in spring training for sure yeah i i mean i i Working With The Dodgers would suggest just based on talking to a lot of you different guys the the dodgers value people that are open-minded about these things and if you're not you're it's really not an organization for you might as well go to some organization that's not going to exactly and i think part of it too honestly was just you have to have trust in the people you're working with and you know maybe it would have been a different situation if i came in and and things were like digressing i've been in programs where i've gotten worse i've been in programs where i've gotten really good really quickly but the minute i got to see uh to to camelback i was making unbelievable adjustments really quickly and it was because for the first time i was really focusing on those adjustments too i wasn't focusing on competing at the time i was just focusing on you know getting myself right getting my body right starting doing movements that were correlating to what i was working on in the mounds and just putting the trust into those p into those people that are willing to you know work with you too is that's the biggest difference for sure or like the biggest the biggest aspect to it yeah and it Working On Pitching seems that um even in in the in the minor leagues here and sometimes you might even see in the majors like in in certain situations where maybe a pitcher or a hitter is struggling in something but it's not really you know their numbers don't look good but maybe it's because they're working on something yeah and it seems like now is the time to do that instead of absolutely yeah i mean i think every single start i've had this year um me and darren are our pitching coach we've had a different goal every every game whether it's you know let's try to implement the cutter to lefties a little bit more inside let's try to you know let's use the fastball a little bit more with two strikes let's be in the zone early on in the game with off speed to be able to expand off of that it's just little stuff every game and he's willing to challenge me every time i go out there because at the end of the day it's it's about progression and development and if i can the more tunnels i can create on the mound the more opportunity i'm gonna have to get people out and make it a little bit easier myself yeah Hard Hit Graph it's very it so those are kind of those deep deep dive type things but if you look at um there was a tweet out by mike petriello that talked about um it showed a graph of hard hit balls off of pitchers and it's a very slow progression until the end and then it dropped off the cliff with the dodgers the hard hit off them is it's much different yeah and so you can you can see that the work is there and and this is you know what ben's going through he's living it and so that the context is hopefully a little less because those those boys can hit hard um so you know we um talked a little bit about some things you've already been doing but what are some like is there specific one or two things you go man this is the thing that's really helped me step it up this year i just like i said before i think it's just the the trust in the relationships that i've had with our coaching coaching staff and coaches our players and everybody i'm surrounded by is a professional baseball player so for the majority of the time just how the layout is i'm with pitchers so we're constantly talking about you know this really worked for me i started doing this stretch or this drill and this treatment and you know i'm having good feedback with that i think that's you know i love this team because everybody's very open with what works for them and willing to share that information so it's interesting like i and i'm living with i'm living with a kid from taiwan who barely speaks any english and then i'm living with a first-rounder from alabama who was playing in high school last year where i was i'm on my second college and i'm 23 years old so it's just a different look from you know all over the world really all over the country and just in just everybody's in a different spot and it's cool to see kind of the progression that everybody makes yeah that's Whats Next really good insight on on how this all works yes and you know i i'm expecting that you're not going to finish this season here i'm expecting you to go to great lakes and i'm assuming it's going to be the same type thing it's just it's just a different different group of people with the same vision absolutely um so what are some things that that you're trying to improve maybe get get a little bit better at i think just my routine in general um and i think obviously we talked about that first start a little bit i um it was you know it's hard to differentiate we went through spring training it was about i got there early i came out a little bit early in early february late or late january and for that entire time i was throwing off the mound but it wasn't competitive it was just more pitch design and getting my arm acclimated to you know 160 game season and when i got out here i just i i felt like the first couple starts i had i wasn't i needed to get myself back into game mode rather than you know working on stuff out there on the game mound where i need to do that you know every other day and then when i get out there it's just i gotta let everything else take care of itself and that's where we really hammered down on routine we really hammered down on my prep before the game after the game you know getting myself to come down a little bit and breathe and i just felt that maturity aspect coming coming really quickly in the last month or so and just really finding like a good groove with with what i'm doing two days out three days out you know the day after and then obviously on game day i have a pretty strict routine now right so yesterday Yesterday you you threw five innings no hits um how many pitches did you throw do you remember i think it was 68 okay maybe 69. i remember i remember i was in the 60s so i think it was high 60s which was i was happy about just because of the fur i know that first setting i probably threw in the maybe the low 20s so i was able to bounce back a little bit and you know get five get put five for us yeah well that's i mean in it the the uh Walkup Song if you go look if you look up ben casparias on milb and look at the game logs you're going to see just a nice trend and it's it's a really good trend to see um and so you know it's uh it's exciting to watch you know pitchers and players like ben that you know come here and are learning and are growing and we're looking forward to you know maybe seeing you at dodger stadium someday and if you are at dodger stadium someday what would be your walk up song that's a really good question you put me on the spot um probably uh probably kick-start my heart oh my god yeah i walked out to one of their songs last year and it was it was a good year so i i don't think yeah i don't think i would change a thing honestly that's a that's a good one right yeah they're getting everybody yeah yeah so it's good energy but um i think that would be that would probably be the go-to if i had to choose good calling i like that yeah that's that's that's one of my favorite motleys yeah it's younger it's older than you are yeah it is it is well cool well i really appreciate you taking the time um let the fans get to know you a bit yeah and uh we will see you out uh probably another what four or five days yeah i'll be i think we're looking for wednesday start next wednesday where are you guys at i think we're i think we're it's not like el snow where it's uh uh san bernardino no it's empire oh inland empire so that is san bernardino okay very close so for you southern californians they'll be playing the 66ers which is the angels affiliate yeah so really cool all right thank you very much i appreciate it i appreciate it that was great thank you