Atlanta Braves or New York Mets, Houston Astros and Kyle Tucker Update & more with John Smoltz

all right I am pumped to be joined as we are every single week by the Hall of Famer John Smoltz John how we doing this week doing great good week little vacation got the week off for uh probably the last time for the next two months as we head into the postseason it's go time it is absolutely go time right now for a lot of teams across the league but I want to start this week by asking you about what we're seeing on the national league side of think specifically with some NL teams but I don't think either of them are going to win the division but my question is the Mets have now won six games in a row as we're currently speaking they're just a half game back from the injury plagued Atlanta Braves I mean who gets in if you had to if you had to pick right now who gets in between the Atlanta Braves and the New York Mets who you saying well it's definitely going to come down to the Philadelphia Phillies uh because the Mets have to play the Phillies seven times so the Braves are going to be huge Philly fans for the first time all year and and I think the Mets are getting ready to go through a pretty good Gauntlet I think of their schedule but they have been playing great baseball getting outstanding pitching and their offense has woken up so it's going to go right down to the end I don't see it being anything other than the last week of the season it's definitely going to be in play so the the Mets have the advantage just because they're healthier and they're playing really good baseball the Braves are pulling off you know they're pulling off minor Miracles and how they're doing it of course s just keeps doing his thing uh it's going to be fun uh but it's going to be a grind the whole way of the month of September you know if the if the Braves do end up getting in we are most likely going to get a reverse scenario from what we've seen the last couple of years where the Braves have the buy and they're just waiting on the NL wild card team to get in then they end up playing the Phillies and the Phillies take them out uh when they're playing for their lives we could very well get a switch of that and the Phillies are going to be waiting for the wild card team and it could be the Braves and the Braves are coming in high so that would be that would be interesting and maybe some payback the Braves could get yeah and again now I think we're in our third year of this new format we've got to see how the teams address or change with the rest um because teams who have had the rest and the best two records with the exception of Houston have not gone to the World Series and won it so I think this is going to be an interesting year if the reverse happens if Philadelphia has the rest and if the Braves come in having e uh won a series or playing them out of the G gate because I think the Phillies are still in play for the two best records going to be it's going to be interesting to watch well it's not as we all expected with the Braves but who knew you wouldn't want to run into a rotation with Chris S Ronaldo Lopez Max freed schwell and Box's been good Charlie Morton in the playoffs the Braves have found a way to piece together a damn good baseball team and pitching rotation that nobody expected they sure have and again when you're looking at the beginning of the year and you're talking about s and Lopez's performances and you would have penciled in those you would say Surefire postseason possible World Series chance yeah it would be a shame if they don't get there with those performances now we all know the Braves are going to be great next year because they're going to get healthy but to get those kind of performances it would be fun if you're a Braves fan to see them at least get to the playoffs to see what that rotation can do yeah as you mentioned on the American League side of things really the only team that's figured out the buy and how to get to the World Series through it with the Astros John Kyle Tucker has been out for over three months and the Astros continued to call it a bone bruise yeah it's just a it's just a shin contusion it's it's a really bad bone bruise and it turns out now that he's on the cusp of returning that they finally announced that there was a fracture and that he finally also said yep that was right there there was a fracture and I just kind of want to talk through the point of that like why why would they withhold that information why wouldn't they just come out and say yeah you know you guys are right he's GNA miss a good bit of time with a shin with a with a br with a broken bone in his shin instead of just trying to pull a fast one over everybody's eyes and say just a bad bone bruise which nobody believed at a certain point yeah I don't know the whole makeup whether it had something to do with um the roster and what they could do and what they couldn't do um or maybe they really believed it at the time that they thought you know he would be back in a shorter period of time there was somebody else that's it's coming to my mind that I can't remember had a scenario situation that was the same and end up being a fracture and so might have been a fracture in the back I think it was jacobe Ellsbury with the Boston Red Sox where the same thing kind of play out and then they finally revealed actually he has a fracture in his back which you know at that point the rumors of jacobe Ellsbury were going in the wrong direction and it clarified a few things so uh I don't know that I know back in our day we never wanted to get information to other teams about our pitching injuries so if we had an elbow elbow injury it became a growing injury just so nobody could have an advantage thinking that we couldn't do XYZ when we got on the M okay so that is there a is there anything in place now or back then that is something that could be done you could not use specifically but somebody could come out with a a strained UCL and it's well we don't that's a tough injury for a pitcher we're gonna say it's a groin that was something that would often happen I think there were times where you play on defense to make sure that nobody can exploit like I I know for me personally when I was struggling with my elbow the last thing I was going to tell the reporters was I could not throw back-to-back sliders because what that would have done to the offense that I was facing given them some Intel that they didn't need to have um when you go on the ilil uh I don't think there's anything in place that says you have to dissect the injury to a te um because now we've known in base fall that there are the fake injury I rest periods yeah so there's always ways to take advantage of certain things um this might be a fluke this might actually be something that they really believed and then for whatever reason it came out that it was definitely a fracture but um regardless it it they've missed a great player for a long time and hopefully they're going to get him back let me ask you this about what what you just said when it comes to pitcher injuries not necessarily being disclosed you'd go on the I or you would announce at something different did that have a factor at all like let's say let's use you for instance let's say you had something bothering you with your arm and that didn't come out but if it were to come time where you need to discuss a contract perhaps with a different team would they know about that or would that would that other team at the time have also believed okay John was John was on the iil with a groin injury his arm is fine or would they be able to die dive a little deeper and see what it was yeah they could dive a little deeper I mean the biggest thing is we've seen with the rule changes when the pitcher I went to 10 days and they had to change it they were seeing evidence that pitchers were resting and coming back and making their starts to control Innings and I think for the trickiness of this new age kind of like to your point when you go to arbitration they tell you to take the IL sance but then it could could work against you you're like hey you missed you missed 40 days this year and you you want to go but wait a minute so it's a little tricky um I don't think it happens as much today as it did when the rules first came out where they were taking advantage of of resting pitchers so I don't think it's as as evident today because they changed it back to 15 I believe yeah it's almost like you needed the team to to write on a piece of paper can you write it down that you want me to go on the iil please H there's a lot of things that players have found out the hard way in arbitration that didn't exactly go along with the Kool-Aid they were drinking yeah absolutely uh John lastly I I sparked up a conversation online over the last few days when kind of inadvertently when I was talking about Shi pushing for 5050 and you know obviously it's very cool what he's doing but if there's anybody giving any push back to it uh specifically Mets fans right now because they want Lindor to win MVP which is understandable but the the conversation becomes well stolen bases are so much easier in this day and age you can steal more bases 5050 ain't what it used to be which is well one nobody's ever done that but 4040 isn't what it used to be and my answer is that that might be true 4040 might be easier because of the stolen bases but it's never been harder right now to hit home runs you have pitchers throwing 103 104 miles an hour with spin rate through the roof and that did lead to a conversation of well is it really harder to hit homers right now and I just wanted to get your opinion on it you called the game of baseball now and played uh back in the the 90s so what do you think is it harder to hit homers right now well I love the the question because my answer is going to be maybe not as uh simplistic there is the obvious pitching is hard it's hard to hit pitching right but there's a ton more mistakes that have been made out of pitch than ever before and if you have a one plane swing or you're trying to hit homers you're going to run into a ton of mistakes because guys don't pitch to location so that's going to be the difference they're going to be the elite guys that hit a bunch of mistakes and they're right down the middle and so that part of hitting home runs is probably better than ever but the push back would be then the relievers and the stuff is harder than ever to hit so it's really kind of a wash um back in the day when when guys typically hit 30 and 40 home runs pitchers were different they didn't have the Velocity but they had the command and I remember when Chris Davis with Baltimore was doing his thing and hitting like a buck 80 but you know 40 home runs we did uh we did an overlay of all the pitches that he had hit for home runs that one year and it was inside of a coffee can riddle there weren't any above the Zone below the Zone in or out and so my point is like when you're going to teach this style of pitching you got to you're going to have the you're going to have the good and the bad and the bad is you're going to give up a lot of home runs because you're going to leave a lot of pitches in the middle of the plate um now when you talk about 5050 I can honestly say that if he does it this year then it'll never be done again so that makes the statement it's actually harder to do if somebody breaks that barrier you would think that more people would um I just don't think we'll ever see it again yeah I I tend to agree with you there uh love that I I do I I love that answer because what a lot of people start doing was pointing to data and going back to you know 1996 and saying well this is the amount of home runs then and really I I think it it involves a bit more deeper of a conversation like you and I just had because if you start looking at the data that there were two less teams in the early 90s than there are now there wasn't a DH in the national league and there is now a guy that's just going out there to try and hit homers so you know you can't exactly point at data to to say one way or another here so I completely agree with your answer John this is a fun one man thank you so much for joining me my pleasure look forward to next week all right see you then all right just wanted to thank John again for joining us as he does every single week here on fliping bats which is always really really cool to be honest and what I thought it was a great conversation this week especially the the conversation about homers really good point you know like pitcher stuff is definitely much better but their misses are down the middle or or much worse so that that does add an interesting caveat to the conversation and and whether or not it's harder um and the injury thing I thought was fascinating as well you really can't get away as much anymore if a pitcher has an injury uh imagine being able to say yeah it's not his arm it's not his arm it's his it's his groin which is just comical to think about but uh again appreciate for joining us as always appreciate every single one of you for listening please make sure you hit that follow subscribe button wherever you're listening uh rate it five stars if you want you can watch every single thing we do on our YouTube channel flip and bats pod YouTube channel uh and we're on all social media fliping bats pot everywhere so really appreciate you all and until next week my friends remember uh enjoy the weekend of baseball we'll be back on Tuesday and remember find your bat and flip it peace