We are in the city of brotherly love, and I'm joined right now by a man that considers me a little brother, maybe a big brother, and that is Dodger reliever Blake Trining. Great to see you, brother.
Good to see it's it's moderately good to see you today.
Hey, I saw you just come back from this new revamped bullpen in Philadelphia. They got the slunting glass doors. What do you think about that situation?
It's great, but don't don't fool yourself. The only reason we got it is because I think there's some type of rule where if you upgrade one, there has to be competitive balance. Yeah, we can't be sitting in the elements as they But thank you Philadelphia for taking care of that. So it's nice. They did a good job.
I heard, with the reputation of a city that booeds Santa Claus, it was a little distracting to have the fans here that close to the visiting bullpen.
Fans are fans. I mean, there's places just as bad, if not worse at times, you know, like for the percentages and population that filled the entitlement to say whatever they want because they bought it, you know, like that's fine. I mean we're professionals. We get paid to make sure we can block it out. So you know, that was only the handful of people across the league that want to be ignorant and do stupid stuff that weren't being ejected.
So tread lightly, you know, like if you come to the bullpen, We've got guys that have a quick trigger. It's not me. I'm not going to tell you who it is, so, but there are quick triggers down there.
Blake Trening is our guest as the Dodgers and Phillies are getting set for first pitch. Blake, here's something I've never asked you before. How do you continue to get better with age? Because it feels like you're not only maintaining, but you're getting better every year.
Was that a mild backhanded compliment? Blake? With as old as you are, can you teach an old dog new tricks? You know? The reason I'm even in this game still is by the grace of God, and I've been very blessed with good people around me to try to, you know, learn me some new stuff. And uh, you know, for what it's worth, Trevor Bauer helped me with my sweeper back in twenty one and spring training Connor mc guinnis and Mark and Bard. They all helped me stay locked
in on certain cues with my pitches. So my success is a culmination of plenty of good people around me keeping me dialed in. We are about as good as those who are around us. You know, if I was on my own, you know, you always think, like, man, if I was somewhere else, could I repeat what I'm doing? Maybe,
if that's what God wants me to do. But I like to think that the people here have really helped bless my career, and hopefully I've been able to bless you know, the organization on the backside of it too. But you know, learning new pitches certainly helps lengthen your career, and you know, I like to think that I'm doing something right, and maybe the Lord has favor over my
career too. It's to me, it's evident, and it's it's no, no, no, more obvious than the fact that I'm here for another two years of the Dodgers.
Yes, that news was broken by a TV reporter in Houston somewhere. Blake Uh as far as that sweeper goes, you're a great person to ask this, can you define what a sweeper is because us mere mortals hear these different terms of pitches and don't really understand. Is it just another name for a slider or is it a unique shape of a pitch.
I think it's more or less. You're you're clipping it higher rate with lateral spin to get it to turn. So if you were to put it more north and south, it'd be a curveball. But since it's east and west, the idea is that you're you're catching the teams just
right to get a lateral curveball. And that's why you don't really see him higher than truthfully, like a big sweeper, you don't really see bigger than like, you know, sixteen to twenty and then uh lateral uh, and then you know the vlo I. There might be a couple of guys and there's a lot of talented arms out there, but most most sweepers are you know, no harder than eighty eight, and that's pretty that's pretty elite to get. Usually when it's that hard, you get you're flirting around
like ten to fourteen lateral. When it's a little bit slower, you have time for it to catch more and you know, you can get more more lateral with it. But yeah, it's just it's just a lateral curveball.
Okay, good to know. See I was confused. We're all confused about the sweeper.
And I would have never known to describe it as that, and unless I had talked with Connor mcguinnis and he kind of worked it that way, because I you know, I'm not a big fan of reinventing different terms. I mean, people have thrown lateral sliders for a long time. The idea now that it's a new pitch is just that we've got more information. We've got ken of tracks, we've got mocap, we've got all these things that can teach guys how to throw these pitches at a quicker turnaround
instead of learning it for years. That now the whole league can learn to throw them. And so you know, the next pitch, who knows what it is. Maybe it's the kick change, maybe it's something else like I don't know, which is another weird term to me. We've got a ghost fork or kick change, a splinker, which is just a split fastball that sinks, and I you know, we can call it and have fun with it and it's it's good for fans, but at the end of the day that a lot of the pitches are still the same,
but old timers never really called them new pitches. There's I asked my slider, ask my curveball. It's my singcrols, my splitter. So yeah, there's a we'll see with the next new pitches in baseball.
All right, Thank you Blake Trenon, who's been very kind with his time, and he seems to be a big brother to some of these younger relievers. Your catch partner today, Ben casparis, how much are you mentoring him?
I will only mentor as much as they allow me or want me to. I'm not going to force any of my stuff on anyone. I think it's hard to try to press who you are on someone else. Leading by examples, the biggest thing, he might get something from me, he might get something from Tanner or Kirby or Vesia Banda, whoever. I mean, it's just you.
You.
You're gonna have to pick and choose what version of yourself you want to be out there as a competitor, as a as a guy who prepares, as a guy who executes, and how to stay healthy there's so many factors in being successful in this game. And you know the guys who stay around for a while or fortunate enough to have the right information and hold on to the right information throughout the course of their career to
linking out. You know, the innings they pitch and you know, is this is this where he's supposed to be long term? I like to think so is this? Uh? Is his body going to stay healthy? Is his preparation gonna get dialed in? And you know, like every he's doing a
lot of great things right now. And for being a young guy, he's one of the more polished arms I've seen come up as a rookie, with the amount of pitches he has that are plus probably that I can think of, maybe only Luke Trevino is about the only guy that I could think of that came up with three plus polished pitches as a rookie, and then he's one of them.
He's very lucky to have Blake Trenton in his life and as his catch partner. Blake always loved catching up with you. It's always fun and let's do it again soon.
And and one last note is Dave's my favorite interview to doing baseball,