The Book of Joe podcast is a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Darreon Welcome Back.

It is the Book of Joe Podcast with me, Tom Berducci and without Joe Madden.

This time Joe's away for the holidays.

Wishing him and all of you a very happy new year, a great twenty twenty six.

What I wanted to do first of all is wish a very happy birthday to a baseball legend and even more importantly a good friend, mister Sandy Kofax.

Yeah, unbelievably, Sandy Kofax, forever young, is turning ninety years old.

I know that's hard to believe.

He looks great, and every time I go to Dodger Stadium in the postseason, I look forward to seeing Sandy Kofax down there and his seat field level by home plate.

Sandy Kofas have always been fascinated by him.

Just the integrity, humility, and the conviction of Sandy Kofax.

Besides obviously one of the great left handed pitchers of all time, Sandy Kofax was known as the left arm of God.

And at this time of year, we talk a lot about the Hall of Fame, and my hall of fame ballot is in the mail on its way to Cooperstown.

Those ballots will be announced.

The results of that will be announced in January.

Sandy Kofax, to me, is one of these inner circle Hall of famers where you don't have to look at the numbers.

He defined baseball in that era, and when you look at the stretch that he did have, it defines greatness in probably a more of a brief period of time because of his arm injury than anybody wanted to see.

I mean, check this out.

From nineteen sixty one, nineteen sixty three to nineteen sixty six, you're talking about a four year period, Sandy Kofax averaged two hundred ninety eight innings a season with a one point eighty six er.

Let me say that again, over a four year period, he averaged just about three hundred innings per year with a sub to er.

I mean, that is crazy.

I know it was a depressed hitting environment back then in the sixties, but my goodness.

He also, by the way, you talk about big game pitchers career era in the postseason zero point nine to five.

That is the lowest of the more than two hundred pitchers who have started at least five postseason games.

The greatness of the man was even greater in the biggest moments.

That is a testament to a true champion.

But yeah, think about how his career began too.

And I love this story because remember he was signed at a Brooklyn in nineteen fifty five, a bonus baby had to be carried on the major league.

Was really just a hard thrower who had no idea where the ball was going.

And it was pretty much that sort of pitcher with some peaks and valleys for the first five or six years of his career.

And then it was a spring training game in nineteen sixty one.

The Dodgers back then trained at Dodgers Town in Vero Beach, still my favorite spring training destination of all time.

By the way, they were playing an away game in Orlando, so the split squad game, so the staff stayed behind.

So Sandy Kofax is going to pitch in Orlando and the staff is not there that day, so there's no pressure from the pitching coach, the manager, you know, trying to perform and make yourself look good in front of the brass.

He gets on a plane.

It was a short flight to Orlando and Larry Sherry is his catcher and says, let's try something different today.

Let's just throttle back.

Because Kofax was a max effort kind of guy, and Larry Sherry just advised him's throttle back on it and see what happens.

And Sandy Kofax used the term famously.

I took the grunt out of my fastball, basically not trying to throw the ball as hard as he could.

He was supposed to go five innings, but the pitcher behind him in the sequence mapped out for that game missed the flight.

So now Sandy has to go seven innings, so there's even more of incentive for him to throttle back on this fastball.

Well, he throws seven no hit innings.

I mean, first of all, the idea of somebody throwing seven innings in spring training, you can tell it was a different era.

But as Sandy Kofax said, I came back a different pitcher than I left, and that began his years of dominance of Major League baseball.

I mean, he had three years in a row where he won, or three out of four years where he won the Major League Baseball Triple Crown, not the League Triple Crown.

The Major League Triple Crown.

It's just fascinating to me that it can happen that quickly.

Of course, this is before technology, before somebody found another pitch through the use of high speed cameras or changing their grip on getting a different kind of spin access on their breaking ball.

This was all just old school.

Hey, let's try something different today.

So happy birthday, Sandy Kofax, ninety years old.

And they also wanted to point out something that I'm not sure if you caught this.

Sports Illustrated announced their end of the Year awards and the Major League Baseball Breakout Player of the Year is cal Raley with the Seattle Mariners.

This is another story I love because, again, you talk about someone who you think of as being a superstar player, like a Sandy Kofax, but it's the journey to get there that made their story so fascinating.

Most players you see, certainly hitting sixty home runs.

I mean it's plug and play, man.

You see these guys coming a mile away.

The greatness is obvious at an early age.

Not so the case with cal Raley.

And when I talked to him for a story I did on SI for winning this award is the breakout player of the year.

He was so proud of the fact that it did not come easy for him because he knows all the hard work that he put in.

I mean, this is a guy who in the minor leagues, he bought himself a small machine to fire tennis balls at him to learn how to block the ball better behind the plate as a catcher.

You know, all the years and pitches he had from his dad.

It was a college coach in North Carolina in the batting cage, just time after time, trying to really hone his stroke from both sides of the plate, which, by the way, he's a natural switch hitter.

I know you've never heard of such a thing, but I asked cal if he was natural ready or left.

He actually said neither, And it is true.

As soon as he could stand, his dad put one of those big red plastic bats in his hand and had him hit from both sides of the plate, just literally flipping balls from just almost a foot away from him and switching his hands around and changing the grip to bat as a switch hitter.

As soon as he could stand.

It's the only thing he's ever known.

And what his dad, Todd told me was that he never wanted his kids to think they had a quote unquote weaker side of the plate.

And it's true.

You look at the breakout year that cal Raley had and he just smashed the ball from the right hand side.

He's there's really no platoon split with cal Raley.

Definitely a platoon neutral in terms of power.

And getting back to his story, I didn't realize all the things he had gone through to get to the major leagues.

First of all, as a middle school kid, he was cut for the baseball team.

I mean, how many guys had sixty home runs were cut from the middle school team growing up.

By the way, he was also cut from the basketball team that year.

Yeah, I mean, you talk about a blow to somebody.

And this is a kid who loved baseball.

He's in a cage all his time, all the time with his dad.

Yeah, he was young trying out for the team.

But my goodness, what a blow for a young kid who just dreams of being a baseball player.

So he gets to high school, he starts playing.

He's the catcher on the team, and check this out, he's such a poor hitter that the coach used the DH for him, not for the pitcher.

You know, in high school you can use a DH for any position on the field.

They DHD for cal Rawley in high school.

Crazy right, Then, as he sort of gets bigger and matures, becomes a decent player, he wants to play D one college baseball.

Why not?

And a bunch of college coaches are telling him, you'll never be a D one player.

You're nothing but a D three player.

I mean, you talk about something that he has worn as a chip on his shoulders since he goes to Florida State.

And you know, he had a thumb injury, so he didn't play his summer before his junior year, which is going into his draft year, and he had kind of a season that was affected by the thumb and finger injury as a sophomore.

So some of the scouts who are high or on cal Ray began to cool on him.

And that was the year the Seattle Mariners started an analytic system where they ranked players in the draft according to an algorithm essentially, and they had cal Raley in that draft class rated at number three hundred and seventy nine.

Now they wound up taking him in the third round, which is still kind of crazy when you think about a guy hitting sixty home runs, and by the way, they had Logan Gilbert in the first round.

You talk about a real good draft.

That's franchise changing.

But cal Raley has worn all those things proudly.

And by the way, when he got to the major leagues, they didn't think he could hit right handed, and they had him platooning with a guy named Tom Murphy.

Decent player, but you look back on it now and you're like, cal Rawley wasn't even an everyday player when he first got to the major leagues.

So here he is in twenty twenty five, sixty home runs, the first catcher in baseball history with sixty home runs, the only switch hitter in base history with sixty home runs, the second youngest player to hit sixty home runs.

Only Roger Marris back in nineteen sixty one was younger.

And you think about his ascension to sixty.

You know, in the auto industry they like to measure acceleration by how fast you go from zero to sixty.

Well, Cal's acceleration to sixty off the charts great.

Thirty four home runs in twenty twenty four, and then he throws out sixty the next year, There's only one player to get the sixty home runs who got there faster year to year, and that was Sammy Sosa back in nineteen ninety eight, who increased his home runs from thirty six to sixty six.

And make that what you will.

So I think of Sandy Colefax and I think of cal Raley at this time of year and how we liked to to find greatness.

When I look at these Hall of Fame ballots in my hand all the time, and it sometimes it's the ones that you don't see coming.

Cal Raley is the first person who was drafted, who is not drafted in the first round, to hit sixty home runs.

I think that's an honor that he wears very proudly.

Journey is certainly not over for him.

It'd be fascinating to see what he does in his bounce back season because that was just a dream season for cal Raley.

I'm not saying he can't do it again, but it is difficult for something like that to happen as well as it did for him.

Staying healthy, catching more innings than any catcher in the American League, and throwing up sixty home runs.

That is the story of Kofax and Raleigh not too dissimilar when it comes to their path too greatness.

Let's see if Cal is starting a streak of greatness the way Kofax did in the middle sixties.

Hey, we're going to take a quick break here on the Book of Joe in this abbreviated edition.

But I wanted to talk about something that you've noticed, I'm sure watching any Major League Baseball games, especially in the postseason.

What is going on with velocity in the major leagues?

It keeps going up, we know that, but can it keep going up?

Have we reached the point of human ceiling when it comes to how hard pitchers can throw?

I got some numbers for you that might surprise you based on the twenty twenty five season looking back on velocity, and we'll do that Ray after this on the Book of Joe.

Welcome back to the Book of Joe.

The Joe Less edition of the Book of Joe.

Joe is a way for the holidays and happy New Year, Joe Madden and all of you.

I mentioned velocity, and if you watch the postseason, you saw just the arms coming out of the bullpen for both teams and even the starting rotations with Toronto and the La Dodgers in the postseason.

Man, you too need to throw hard.

And I realized we talk about this a lot here the Book of Joe, that velocity is going down in terms of how much it's used, but it's going up in terms of raw numbers.

Pitchers are throwing harder than ever, and yet they're throwing fewer fastballs than ever.

So I decided to put some numbers on this, looking at the twenty twenty five season, looking only at the four seam fastball, no sinkers, two seamers.

This is the traditional backbone of baseball, the bedrock of pitching, the four seam fastball, that old country hardball pitch that you know when you were growing up and everybody taught you you need to establish your fastball and work off of that.

And the four seam fastball is that pitch.

In twenty twenty five, four seam fastball average was ninety four point five miles per hour.

I mean that it's gone up literally every year now for the past five years, and it has not dropped for the past eighteen years.

So eighteen straight years the average forcing velocity at worst has stayed the same and has gone up otherwise every year for eighteen straight years.

So how far has it come up?

Well, if you go back to two thousand and eight started this eighteen year run since we've had these kind of measurements, it was ninety one point nine back in two thousand and eight, So we've gone from ninety one point nine to ninety four point five for the average fastball.

And back in two thousand and eight, the batting average on the four seen fastball was two seventy eight and the slugging four point fifty one.

Well, last year twenty twenty five down to two forty nine and the slugging down to four thirty three.

So in throwing fewer of these four seamers, but it increased velocity because we're down to about thirty two percent, one out of every three pitches.

Now you're seeing the foreseen fastball at a higher velot being harder to hit.

Now, what I also wanted to do is tell you how much harder it becomes to hit a fastball the harder that it's thrown.

So I looked at the twenty twenty five numbers and they broke them down according to pockets of velocities, starting with ninety again fourteen fastballs.

From ninety to ninety three miles per hour, the batting average was two seventy three.

Now the middle nineties, ninety four to ninety six, you had a couple of ticks on your fastball, it goes from two seventy three down the two forty five.

Now here's the incentive for a pitcher.

If you can get your fastball to ninety seven and above, it goes down to two eighteen.

I mean, that's a huge difference.

So again, the average fastball is between ninety four and ninety five.

So those middle ninety velocities, the batting average is two forty five.

If you're below that, it goes up to two seventy three.

If you're above that, it's two eighty.

It's a one.

It's no wonder why we say everybody is chasing velocity, and what we're seeing also now is an increase at the much higher end of the velocity scale.

Looking at pitches at one hundred miles per hour.

Remember back in the day when guys threw a hundred and you were like, oh my goodness.

I remember when a rold As Chapman got to the big leagues and he was warming up for his first major league game in Cincinnati, and people literally ran to the bullpen to watch him warm up.

I mean it was like Barnum Circus had come to town.

People had to see this thing that they heard about, that this guy threw harder than everybody else, and just to watch him warm up.

People were running there to see how fast the rold Is Chapman can throw a fastball.

Well, now literally every team has a rolled as Chapman.

You know, the novelty of throwing one hundred has worn off, the effectiveness though not.

In twenty twenty five, there was a record number of pitches thrown at one hundred miles an hour or more, two thousand, nine hundred and seventy three.

It was the first time in Major League Baseball history that there were more one hundred mile an hour pitches than there were games played.

Think about that, more hundred mile an hour pitches then games played in the major leagues in twenty twenty five.

How far have we come?

Well, going back even just say six years twenty nineteen, there were six hundred and twenty pitches clocked at one hundred miles an hour.

So we've gone from six hundred and twenty in twenty nineteen to almost three thousand in twenty twenty five.

The number of one hundred mile an hour pitches has more than quadrupled in just six years.

And if you want to go farther back, in ancient times, two thousand and eight there were one hundred and ninety five pitches thrown at one hundred miles an hour, So we've got for one ninety five to almost three thousand in eighteen years.

What's interesting to me, though, is that as these pitches become more common, and again they're not extremely common, it's still just a small percentage of the basketball is being thrown, but hitters are seeing more of them.

The batting average against pitches one hundred miles an hour more actually is going up a little bit.

Last year twenty twenty five, the batting average on pitches one hundred plus was one ninety.

Now, among the eighteen years we've tracked these numbers, that is the seventh highest batting average on pitches one hundred miles an hour or more, so essentially middle of the pack results kind of average.

So hitters are adjusted the more they see pitches at one hundred miles an hour more, I mean I don't know about you, but these are the things I find fascinating that you know, we definitely are able to teach velocity now, you know a generation to go.

I'm talking only twenty years ago.

If you saw someone with a good arm, you would say, hey, they were blessed with a good arm.

Now you see someone with a great arm, and you can say they were blessed with a good arm, but they learned how to throw harder.

We definitely can teach velocity.

We know that it's been proven their systems.

People are paying a lot of money onto the amateur market to get their kids to throw ninety so that a college coach will actually look at them.

You know, we can talk for another day about some of the risks associated with that, because you're talking about kids with growth plates that are still open and the bodies just physically are not equipped to handle the torque that throwing ninety miles an hour puts on an entire body, but especially at the shoulder at the elbow.

So there definitely is a risk associated with it.

But yes, you can train to throw harder.

Now, can you take somebody off the street who has no athletic ability at all and have him thrown ninety No, it doesn't work like that, but you can have them enter a training program and under the right sort of supervision, add velocity, and that's what is driving the amateur market.

There's no question about that.

So once again velocity in the major leagues, unforeseen fastballs.

It's gone up for a fifth straight year.

I don't know how much farther it can go, you know.

I remember talking to Glenn Fleisik, who's one of the biomechanics in Alabama at the institute there, and that's been studying biomechanics for years and years, and he told me years ago they took a cadaver and they stretched the shoulder muscles and they put some torque on it and see how far it could go.

And basically he came up with the idea that the human arm is really at the end of the envelope when it comes to how much stress it can take in throwing.

His does these guys throw?

So will you see a guy throwing consistently one hundred and ten one hundred and twenty miles an hour?

Is that where we're heading?

I don't think so.

But I think where we're heading is a world where every staff has two or three guys that can throw one hundred miles an hour.

Just the universe of elite throwers will continue to grow and that will continue to bring the velocity up.

But once again, we're talking about an era where they're throwing fewer of those fastballs because we've learned so much more about spin and shaping pitches that the coin of the realm now is not so much velocity as driving the amateur market, but in the major leagues, it's about how well and how often you can spin a baseball.

Welcome back to the Book of Joe, the Joe Less edition of the Book of Joe.

So, you know, moving on to one of the topic, a little bit of news.

Traditionally, by the way, one of the quieter periods of Major League Baseball off season between Christmas and New Year's there was some news that the Oakland Athletics signed Tyler Soderstrom to a contract extension of seven years and eighty six million dollars.

Now they're building something there in Oakland.

Of course, they're going to Las Vegas in a couple of years, and this is what they had in mind.

With revenues coming in from a planned ballpark, they can now extend some people as they have for Brent Rooker and Lawrence Butler.

Maybe Nick Kurtz Jacob Wilson might be next.

But they've got the makings of a nice team here, especially offensively, and Tyler Soderstrom is a big part of that.

I thought it was a really good extension for him.

You're talking about a guy who I know.

You talk about that ballpark in Sacramento as being a hitter friendly park.

It definitely is, but his splits were pretty neutral when it comes to home and road.

I love the way that in August and September after hitting it, you know, kind of typical young players.

Valley middle of the season came back August in September his slash line three twenty seven batty average, three point eighty seven on base and a five thirty three slug that's in forty eight games the last two months of the season.

So that definitely plays.

So I love the fact that the A's are locking up these guys.

A good core of young offensive hitters certainly need to add to the again the pitching arsenal that they do have.

But keep your eye on in Oakland.

Don't think they're sorry.

That's my bad.

That's a dollar fine.

By the way, keep your eye on the Athletics, who are gonna make some noise in that division.

Not quite sure if they're ready to win yet, but it's a team that can come quickly.

I would not rule them out as just being a factor in the playoff race in twenty twenty six as we look ahead.

Last piece I wanted to bring up on quote unquote news is Alex Bregman and his situation.

To me, he's he and Kyle Tucker a the two and Cody Bellinger the best free agent still out there.

The market developing slowly for the top of the market for the offensive players.

Bregman's an interesting case because he's got a good market.

Remember he walked out of a deal with Boston where he had two years and about fifty nine million dollars left on his contract, so he's going to do better than that.

Of course, in terms of length, it wouldn't surprise me if Alex Bregman wants a six or seven year deal.

Last year, the Tigers offered him a six year deal at one hundred and seventy one zero point five million dollars.

He took the shorter term with Boston, the higher AAV and the chance to go back out there in the market as he's doing right now.

I still think Alex Bregman is going to have a good market out there.

Listen, he did have a quad strain last season.

He missed seven weeks with that injury.

He did slump at the end of the season.

He is entering his age thirty two season, so I can see and he's not a big guy where there's some trepidation on some teams in terms of where this contract is going in terms of length.

But you know, I see a market when you've got four teams involved, four really good teams, the playoff contenders, the Blue Jays, the Cubs, the d Backs, and the Tigers.

To win the bidding, you're probably gonna have to go to a level that maybe you're not initially comfortable with.

I think that's gonna take time, though.

I think if you're looking at Alex Bregman's signing, it's probably a little bit later more so than it is sooner.

But you know, Bregman, Tucker Bellinger, those are the keys.

As I look as we turn to January and how this offseason is playing out.

Now, it's going to be a case like a Bryce Harper where teams are already in spring training when the deal gets done.

Probably not, but I do think those guys will get wrapped up before spring training, maybe even before the month of January is out.

And speaking of January, I tease this at the top or it's the season when we talk a lot about the Hall of Fame and the voting results are coming out in the month of January.

Of course, Carlos Beltron is the one who had the most support coming back.

Carlos Beltron Andrew Jones on the ballot this year looking to see if they can get in.

It's going to be really close for both of them.

I can tell you that in the past I have voted for Carlos Beltront.

Not in his first year.

Of course, he's associated with that twenty seventeen sign stealing scandal in Houston, and not just associated with it, by the way, a guy who has called the Godfather because he was so involved with it, kind of spearyheading it as one of the true veterans on that team who did have a lot of sway in that clubhouse.

So certainly don't want to minimize his role in that scandal.

I'd still love to hear him take a little more ownership of what he did.

He initially pretty much denied doing it, and you know it cost him his job as manager the New York Mets.

So I still think he needs to be forthcoming about it.

Listen, we all move on, right.

We know what happened.

It's been very well detailed and kind of like some of the steroid guys, man just come out and take ownership of it.

And I do think at one point that he will or should, But I do think he'll probably get over that seventy five percent threshold and get it.

It's not a deep ballot.

You're not going to see any first time ballot guys get in this year.

Probably looking at Beltron and Jones getting in and Jones again not a slam dunk at all.

It's an interesting case with Andrew Jones had a great run early in his twenties and then fell off a cliff, basically didn't take care of himself.

There's a domestic violence incident that a lot of voters look at and say, well, I don't know if I could really check that box next to his name.

And I understand he was a fabulous defender in center field, and a big part of his case is what he did in center field.

But a big part of his case also means you have to believe in defensive metrics.

You have to believe, according to the metrics, that Andrew Jones was twice as good in center field as Willie Mays.

That's what the metrics tell people.

And I'm sorry, I'm not buying it.

You know, I saw Andrew Jones play.

Was he great?

Absolutely?

You know, so was Tory Hunter.

So is Jim Edwins, So was Devon White.

You know those are elite fly checkers, fly chasers.

But are you telling me that he was twice the center fielder as Willie Mays.

Sorry, not buying it.

So anybody who was looking at war and making a case for Andrew Jones, especially based on his defensive war sorry, you know, if you want to use it as a rule of thumb as an idea of how good somebody was, okay, yeah, fine, same with gold gloves.

Are you know the empirical data, No, it shows you that he's twenty year after what his peers thought of him.

But as comparing one player to another as empirical data, no, stop it don't use that.

So that's the Hall of Fame vote coming up in January.

I always look forward to that.

It's always controversial, but that's a good thing, you know, don't run away from it.

They're tough decisions to make, you know.

I'm making them for I don't know more than thirty years, and it's never easy, but it is a privilege and I never take it lightly.

So a lot to look forward to in twenty twenty six.

But what I wanted to do here is as Joe always does in these podcasts, with some words of wisdom, and for me, you know, I want to go back to something that cal Rawley told me as we were having our conversation.

And you know, he was the one who really brought up a lot of the kind of disrespects, if you will, that he had growing up, the ability that he had to just push it aside and push through and keep going and make himself into a sixty home run hitter.

It's a very instructive story to me, not because he hit sixty home runs, but because it didn't stop him.

And what he told me is and I want to end on this, and in Joe Madden's style, here is closing with words of wisdom.

I asked him about the fact that, you know, college coaches especially were telling him that, you know, you're not going to be a d one catcher, which is all he wanted to do.

And here's what he told me.

I guess a lot of people, a few coaches of mine, were telling me there were limits to what I could do.

And you don't forget those things.

Those are the kind of things that drive you.

I mean, you don't tell anybody what their limits are.

You let a kid dream and you give them as much as you can.

You want those kids to go out there worrd.

Yeah.

I remember having those conversations and seeing them right on the writing on the wall.

Those are tough things to swallow, but you learn to use those as fuel.

I just love that coming from a guy like cal Rawley in the year that he had, he didn't forget those things.

It drove him.

You know, I tell people all the time that when it comes to young people in sports and journalism and music, it doesn't matter what a kid is pursuing.

There are two things that we as adults are obligated to provide them, and that those are opportunity and encouragement, opportunity and encouragement.

Give them the opportunity, make yourself available to coach a little league team, to give instruction.

But then the encouragement is just as important because as we all know, baseball is a game built on failures.

But you know it's so is life, and you know, not everybody is great out of the box, and having encouragement along with opportunity is super important.

So you know, I'm really happy that cal Raley brought this up in the year that should be celebrated.

He went back to a time that probably wasn't so easy for him, and it would have been easy for him to say, well, you know, I guess I'm gonna have to maybe pick another sport or pick another interest.

But good for him that he had the passion to get through this.

And as he said, you let a kid dream and you give them as much as you can.

Man those good words to live by as we turned the corner on twenty twenty six.

So thank you, cal Raleigh.

Thank you to all the listeners here on the Book of Joe podcast.

Twenty twenty five has been an unbelievable year, capped off by one of the greatest postseasons.

Certainly one of the greatest World series of all time, certainly that I have seen in person.

Look forward to twenty twenty six, a lot coming up, World Baseball Classic, other great year of baseball coming up, and another great year of the Book of Joe.

And we will see you next time on the Book of Joe and hopefully with our good buddy Joe Madden back in the saddle, see you next time.

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