ESPN's Jeff Passan wrote an extensive article about Alex Bregman's acclimation with the Boston Red Sox. For Seth Payne and Sean Pendergast, it hurts to read.
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00:00So this Alex Bregman article that Jeff Passan wrote, a long article about Alex Bregman's
00:05acclimation to Boston that I wish wasn't so long because it did make me miss Bregman,
00:11this article. So we'll get to kind of the damning part for the Astros, or at least
00:18perceived as damning yesterday when it dropped. But the overall tone of the article, Seth,
00:22outside of the part where it talks about Bregman becoming basically 2019 Bregman all over again
00:27as a hitter, was they interviewed a bunch of the young guys on the Astros. And I think it was
00:33Marcelo Meyer who said, he went up to Bregman and said, hey bro, can we marinate and talk baseball
00:39with you? And Bregman really liked that, the whole idea of marinating in the clubhouse, just chilling
00:44and talking ball every day, man. And the effect he's had on these young guys. The same thing he
00:50did with, I think it was the Zenzo last year that would sit down with Bregman. Nerd out.
00:55Yeah. Bregman's like an old man with a long
00:59white beard. Talk to people who come visit him on top of his mountain. And Passan,
01:05Passan couldn't have gushed more about how well-regarded Bregman is around the league as being
01:09one of the smartest minds in baseball and all of that. Really, this is really a hit piece on the
01:14Astros is what it was. They didn't even, without even mentioning really the Astros as much at all
01:19other than Bregman's tenure there. This was a hit piece on the Astros, damn it. Bregman has
01:24cultivated a reputation as perhaps the smartest baseball mind in the game, a combination of
01:30film hound, analytics dork, eagle-eyed scout, and pure knower of ball.
01:36Oh, God. I want to barf. No, I hate knower of ball. I hate knower. I hate knower as a,
01:43as a, you know, as a, as a description of somebody. I'm a knower of things. Shut up.
01:47That's not a word. Pure knower of ball. Gleaned from a wildly successful big league career.
01:52As Meyer put it in his unique verbiage, hey, bro, do you just want to marinate in the clubhouse and
01:58talk shop? End quote.
02:00And Bregman was like, sure, fella. I'd love to. I'll do that anytime. Bregman said it reminded him
02:05of him when he was a youngster and he just wanted to sit in the clubhouse for four hours after games
02:09talking about baseball. I remember, remember Lance McCuller, McCuller is telling a story about
02:14Bregman early on, where on the, on the flights after games, he would just have his head glued
02:20on to either his tablet or the screen in front of him watching whatever was being broadcast,
02:25like watching baseball constantly. He's just a 100% junkie.
02:29Yep. 100% junkie. Now to get to the part where, where this, this was what was making its way around
02:36the internet yesterday, which people started pointing fingers at.
02:39Alex and Ron and Troy Snitker, the two hitting coaches for the Astros. The, the deal that Bregman
02:47got $40 million a year was a big deal, probably bigger than somebody whose numbers Bregman has
02:53put up the last few years should have gotten right. Like for people that opened a lot of eyes. Wow.
02:57Even though just a short-term deal where Bregman's got some outs and things like that,
03:0140 million a year pops, but Bregman and the Red Sox both believe that he could, this is passing
03:06talking now, could get himself back to the version of himself from 2018 and 2019. And I think we need
03:11to remind people like 2019 Bregman was a, a, like an otherworldly hitter. He's a 40 home run guy,
03:18OPS of over a thousand. If you don't remember that, I get it because we'd been, we'd been through
03:23a lot since then as Astros fans. That's been a long time. That's six years ago. Um, Bregman,
03:28but so, so the, um, the Red Sox believe they could get back, get Bregman back to that point.
03:35That's when Boston's hitting machine went to work. Red Sox coaches already had put together a
03:41presentation to explain how and why he needed to fix his swing. Over time, Bregman had developed
03:47almost imperceptible bad habits. Timing of loading his hands was too late and too fast. Moving his hands
03:53as the ball left, the pitcher's hand left invulnerable. Did Bregman didn't possess the sort of bat velocity
03:58to make up for that. Bregman said, quote, after all those successful years, I was like,
04:02I want to be better. I want to be better. I want to be better. So I started trying to change things
04:06and improve, improve, improve instead of doing what made me who I am and just refining what I
04:12was already doing at the time. End quote. They go on to talk about how the Red Sox hitting coaches
04:17got Bregman into the cage, which is his favorite dude. Just win in the cage every day.
04:24Don't worry about the results in the game. Just win in the cage.
04:27Get back to basics and focus on the process. And lo and behold, he's a top three MVP candidate in
04:33the American League right now. If I'm going to give the Astros hitting coaches a break here,
04:36the only thing I might say is that, look, sometimes when you hear the same message from
04:40a coach, especially kids whose father is their coach time after time after time,
04:45that it starts to lose its import and its impact. And likewise, as a coach, when you're working with
04:51the same player all the time, you kind of develop blind spots for that player. So sometimes just by
04:57putting a new set of eyeballs on a guy that that can make the difference. I'm not here to whether
05:03I'm not here to litigate whether a Cintron and Snicker need to be replaced or fired. I think for me,
05:08the biggest takeaway after reading this article is, man, of all the guys that you could have bent on and
05:15gone outside of your possibly like to it in terms of being a GM or an owner of all the potential free agents.
05:22This is the guy. Like, this is the guy. And frankly, Carlos Beltran, if it were not for the trash can
05:30scandal, Carlos Beltran was that guy that helped the Astros get to World Series caliber because he
05:35was the guy in the clubhouse that was like a coach that could work with guys, teach them how to do
05:41things differently and more professionally. That's a part of it that really stings is that, man,
05:45if you really wanted to retain some of that soul of the championship era Astros, Bregman might have
05:51been the most vital guy of guys that were, you know, Bregman was a young guy when all that was
05:56going on, but now he's become that Carlos Beltran. Yeah, he's actually an all-star, you know, like
06:03Beltran got here at the end and that's all he was there for pretty much was to do what you're
06:07talking about. Bregman's got, you know, Bregman's still only 30, 31 years old and he's got an OPS
06:12of 1,100. Guy just hit his 11th home run last night. He's got 11 home runs where a quarter of
06:16the way through the season. He's on pace to have a 2019 season again. You know, he's back to being
06:21an OPS over a thousand guy. And this is in the time of the calendar year where normally he was
06:26having to play catch up from, you know, like he's, he wasn't doing stuff like this remotely close
06:31until June the last few years. And now he's doing it. This art, I'm telling you, this article
06:36hurt to read as a, as it really was. It was because it wasn't, it was a, it was a, it was
06:41a really great indication of everything that people value in Bregman above and beyond the
06:45box score. And, and, and now also because of the actual, it wasn't the personal batting
06:52coach or anything. I keep seeing a lot of people on social media say, Hey, you guys are overblowing
06:56this because these guys all have their own personal batting. He, he is specifically crediting
07:01the Red Sox batting coaches with change it, with identifying flaws in his process and helping him
07:09fix them. And now he's just, he's, he's playing like a perennial all-star. Yeah. And to me, like
07:14reading this article, like that, the hitting part, the hitting part to me was less frustrating than
07:20the clubhouse part because, because this team is just missing juice right now. And I'm not talking
07:25because their OPS is 15th in baseball. I'm talking, they, they miss some kind of sizzle
07:31on this. Well, we got, yeah, we talked about it yesterday where it was the, the personality
07:35and the energy and just the entire vibe, even before the Astros were a world was just different
07:42than what you have now in 2015 and 2016, there was a, there was a spunk to that team. That's
07:49just different than what it is now. It's a boring baseball team. Yep. Yep. It's annoying
07:53me. Yep. Um, all right. So, uh, it's a good article though. I would say, I mean, unless you
07:57want to have your feelings hurt, the last ad on this thing, and then we'll get over to the Texan
08:01schedule, um, is that I do wonder if at some point, uh, Jim Crane is going to have to bend on his
08:08policies about not doing these opt out deals, you know, not, not swimming in the, in the end of the
08:13pool that other teams swim in when it comes to bringing these guys. Cause it's starting to dry up.
08:17It's you're starting to get to a stage where you can just can't let guys like this keep walking
08:21anymore. The Red Sox deal is not a deal that would have broken the Astros. You know, it was,
08:25it was, it was that it wasn't a 10 year, you know, the 300 million guaranteed contract or anything
08:32like that. They could have, they could have done the Astros deal or the, the Red Sox deal. Um,
08:37you know, by the time, by the time Bregman made his decision, then it probably, it wasn't feasible,
08:44but if they had offered it up front, I don't know. I don't know if Bregman would have accepted
08:47it upfront because it was just, it got down to an auction variety. He wanted to wait and
08:53see what all his options were. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and I, I guess I'm, I'm giving Crane
08:57a little bit of latitude right now and that they've got a lot of dead money there with a
09:01Bray you and Montero, but, but, but that dead money is there because you and Jeff Bagwell and
09:07the non GM, you know, triumvirate there, Reggie Jackson are the ones who gave a Bray you and
09:12Montero those contracts, you know? So you put yourself in that spot.
09:15I know that now, uh, this is interesting from Jim Crane's perspective, when he sits down
09:21and he's thinking, well, I didn't want to pay for last year's version of Bregman. Uh, but
09:26I would totally have paid for this year's version of Bregman. Yeah. And then you look at the coaching
09:30staff and you look back to the article and then you look to the coaching staff. Amen.
09:35That's it's, uh, it's like, it's impossible to ignore it. Yep.