Hey, we've got Dodgers catcher Ben Rotbet back on the show.

Ben.

Great to have you back on and wow, things have changed since we last spoke.

How is it to be black?

And significant time for the Dodgers?

Now?

What's life like?

Yeah?

How's it going, guys?

Thanks for having me.

Life's been fast.

Yeah, it's been a long year.

Started off kind of a disappointing year.

Got you a fade and uh was resetting in Triple A, got traded for was grateful for that opportunity and now here we are?

What is that?

I went through it plenty of times, didn't play good, got fired, sent down a triple A.

Did you feel like there was a chance for you to go back to the big leagues, let alone in another organization or you like you said you went to reset?

Was it physical?

Was it mental?

Was it?

I don't know.

I think I kind of just got lost and uh, kind of the player I was.

I was really excited going to the year, had a good offseason.

Kind of in spring, I was working some swing stuff out and I kind of said to myself, you sometimes got to get worse to get better, and I definitely got worse trying to get better.

And I never got comfortable, so it was kind of a battle not playing all the time and then really trying to like grind out at bats.

I thought I did my job catching, but I just wasn't being productive on the offensive side, wasn't getting on base, I was swinging a lot of balls, so kind of just went down to triple A.

And yeah, getting deffaide really really hurt.

I love those guys with the rays.

But at the end of the day, it was good for me.

I got that bats I needed, got to work on some swing stuff without a lot of kind of the pressure of trying to really win each game.

And I wasn't really thinking about where I could have gone or whatever.

I was just trying to get better each day, honestly, So just trying to like let the things shake out as they would.

Does it keep you from making another swing change again, because sometimes this is what you have to learn.

I mean, you're still only twenty seven, right, Yeah.

I turned twenty eight in a couple of days here, so I'll roll with twenty seven for a little bit, but it doesn't keep me from it.

I just think I just really need to be convicted.

Convicted, and what I'm doing kind of got back to what I was doing last year, and I think I'm in a decent I'm in a spot where I can compete, and that's where I want to do.

I mean, I'm not going to go out and bang all these homewors back and forth.

I want to compete.

I want to roll the lineup over.

I want to get on base.

I want to be a hard out.

So I think I'm back to doing that.

Now.

What was your reaction when you heard about the news that Will Smith was going to miss significant time.

Yeah, it's never like I couldn't really get excited.

I was grateful for the opportunity.

But Will, you can't replace what Will does on this team.

I've said the multiple times.

Will is the anchor to the staff.

He's the anchor to this lineup.

He means so much of the Guyston clubhouse day and day out.

He's the He's the heartbeat of this clubhouse and a really quiet, confident presence.

So I mean it's it's a huge blow for the team, but I mean I'm just trying to kind of bridge the gap and do the best I can doing my job here.

So everybody says you can't trade a catcher at the trade deadline because they can't step in, learn a new staff, all that stuff.

I've done it, I've lived it.

I understand what you have to go through.

But I also never joined a team that had a Yamamoto a glass now a Blake Snell to just start it out.

How much when you got there did you have to get to know those guys, get to know what they had.

Did you listen to the organization?

Did you say, you know what, I'm actually going to go out and catch a bunch of no hit innings, so I'll take care of this.

How much was that like hit the ground running and you got to figure it out on your own.

It was running, It was really running.

There's no better kind of experience than being kind of getting the experience and in the games.

So I think I think the first like twelve days, I caught eleven of the games, either off the bench or starting, So I definitely got first in experience.

And then you being traded, you know, like you got to do your hit, You got to do your research.

I mean, I'm going with the guys trying to talk, get a feel for what they even have.

I'm on my iPad looking at their pitch plops.

I'm looking at their percentages.

I'm just trying to get a feel of what the ball even does out of their hand.

So my first couple of days, I'm just trying to catch as many bullpens as possible.

I definitely missed a couple of hitters meetings just catching bullpens for the bullpen guys, catching the starters, and then ended up catching a lot of the starters in the first couple weeks.

Definitely had to hit here and there, but it's going to happen, and then just trying to learn from those and just really talk to the guys that get a feel for them.

And trust doesn't Trust is definitely not built quickly.

It's still probably honestly isn't there with all the guys.

But just showing up doing the most you can, showing that you care and really doing your background for them, it goes.

It goes a long way.

What's it like to catch some of these pictures.

I mean, I know the Dodgers have dealt with injuries, and hey, I mean the whole league's dealing with it, and the talent within, you know, the rotation especially is insane.

There's essentially at least four, if not five, number one starters in there.

So what's it like to catch that group?

Yeah, I don't.

I don't take it for granted.

It's it's can't miss stuff.

I mean, the last thing I want to do is devate from these guys's strengths in the mound.

Their stuff is too good to shy away from being in the zone and looking at hitters weaknesses, just doing the best I can to give them the opportunity to just fill it up and use their stuff to their to their potential.

I mean, every day we really have a chance to throw up five, six, seven quality innings.

So it's been a lot of a lot of fun that, honestly, I really haven't reflected too much about.

It's it's been really fast, and it's it's awesome and more than anything, I mean, they're they're all superstars, but they're they're awesome humans.

So I mean, really, I'm really grateful to be in the pigeon I am right now.

Ben, you went from the Rays in Tampa to the Mega Rays in LA.

What's what's the major difference?

Are they run the same or they handled the same, Because, as I've said for years, the Dodgers of the Rays on Superpowers, right, because they kind of a lot of the same stuff.

But is there a difference?

Are they similar?

Uh?

Yeah, there's some similarities here and there.

I mean, I think the biggest similarity, I mean, Glassnow's here, so glass now has just pure stuff and he's trying to fill it up.

But here and there there's people with a lot of pitch ability.

Snell can move it around.

Yamamoto is like a video game.

But I mean, yeah, everyone has really plus stuff raised like throwing their good stuff from the zone.

And I think anywhere, especially here, if you have good stuff, I mean, you do not want to shy away from it, and you want to you want to fill this stuff out.

So yeah, there's some similarities.

I mean there's some things that they do differently, but I won't get too much into that.

All right, Is there anything that you brought from any of your previous stops?

Minnesota?

Not so much, But Aja asked about the Rays and the Dodgers.

You're also on the Yankees, like the the proprietary information that they have.

Have you been able to go come to the Dodgers and go hey when we when I was here, this was something obviously you don't need to get in specifics because they think it's all tricks and treats between the two.

Is there something that they were like, oh for real, Okay.

I wouldn't say anything in particular, but myself just kind of be with a couple of different organizations.

I've just started to learn more about myself as in kind of like, wow, I was really bad here, Let's let's be proactive about this.

I felt good here, I was doing this, or our staff was really rolling in this way.

This lineup usually kind of trends in this direction as overall.

One through nine, we played Baltimore, so it's kind of I played in that division for a while going up against those guys, So yeah, mo motives start for me.

The first one I caught when he threw went really really late in that game.

I felt pretty comfortable against that lineup in that ballpark.

And then a lot of stuff, like you say, raise, a lot of stuff that they simplified there is definitely applicable to like any rotation or staff kind of in a pinch, Yankees, I learned a lot about myself kind of playing in a bigger space like that and how to try and handle it and play with kind of bigger guys.

So I'm just trying not to do too much in that kind of role piece.

So I feel like I've kind of took bits and pieces from every place and trying to like apply to my game.

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Been a little sarcasm here, But the Dodgers were supposed to win one hundred and eighty games in the regular season and right now they're at eighty eight.

They're going to be in the playoffs.

They should win the division.

Are you surprised that the record isn't even better given the talent that you're playing around?

And do you think that the way they prepare for the postseason has anything to do with the record maybe not being insanely good?

No, I'm not going to get into it too much.

I mean, you guys know I haven't been here long.

What I see is it's been a long season of injuries for a lot of the guys, so that definitely plays into it.

But I mean, everyone wants to get hot at the right time, and I think we're doing that, and I'm just looking for the postseason.

Who's the one guy.

Who's the one guy when you came over that you've been more impressed with than anybody else.

Not just pictures.

Obviously, Dodgers have this mystique.

You play with Judge.

Judge has this mystique.

Was there somebody when you were coming over and you got called up?

You were like, I didn't think he was quite like that, And now I see him, You're like, whoa, he is the real deal or way different than what you had thought.

I can't I can't pinpoint one guy.

I mean every guy kind of sit back and we'll just watch in the cage, and everyone just is so strict to their routine that it's really really impressive.

From the pitching staff, everyone's really on it.

Kershaw is day and day out going through it.

It's really impressive.

Yamamoto is in the weight room all day and kind of has his routine that's been really impressive.

Glass snow gets after it, Snell gets after it in the cage.

Mookie is really fun to watch.

Freddy really has his routine down.

I don't see show Hay much just because he's always either throwing or he's hitting before the game.

So that's one person that that obviously is it's show Hey.

But I want to do more of sitting back and really watching him work.

I think he is hitting before the game, so I'm I don't I'm not really in the cage at the same time, But I mean a lot.

There is a lot of good stuff that happens in and out of the clubhouse that I really try and just take note of throughout the day.

Hey, what advice do you have for rookie catcher Dalton Rushing who enters the scene here and also has to, you know, suddenly do a lot.

Yeah.

I've been talking to Rush the past week with kind of the will stuff coming on, and it's just I've never been in the postseason.

This is Rushing's first year.

Kind of just that is all hands on deck.

I mean, there's no excuse to the postseason.

There's no distractions, and that you know, this is this is probably gonna bet us anchor and the staff for the for the first part for sure, and that we got to do our best to anchor this staff.

All emotions from the hitting and all that goes out the window.

We got to do our best to channel everything towards the pitching staff.

Obviously we're gonna be in the box and compete in our ass off, but we gotta we got to do our best to keep the rotation hot and be on the same page as the bullpen, so no distractions and yeah, just that kind of stuff.

Explain that Kershall moment to us from the field.

We saw it on TV the crowd, you know, the ovation.

You haven't been there all million years that he's been there.

But explain what that was like in the dugout leading up to that game and all that stuff that we that we don't see on camera.

Yeah, I think I think it really kind of started on his interview.

All of us were in the room and you could really see the emotion coming out, and when he started talking about his family and like what the team meant to him, you could really kind of start to like relate things in your own life of like important people, important times in your life, and just kind of like you say, eighteen years and it's it's a long time, but you start relating eighteen years to kind of what happens in eighteen years.

I kind of viewed eighteen years as like, man, that's like being born in my hometown, going to middle school, high school, and then like graduating, getting drafted, So like that's that whole phase in my life that all this important stuff has happened.

And that whole phase he's kind of gone through at Dodger Stadium, being in Dodger like raising a family.

That really hit home for me.

I haven't been here a long time, but I think everybody can relate to like how much like family important people mean their lives.

And like I said, like I kind of related to eighteen years to like, holy crap, like that's all this time that I spent like growing up as a child and becoming who I am before I kind of like left home.

So I was like, Wow, that's that's a lot.

And on the field, like you guys saw it, it was really cool.

The stadium was filled that day and he kind of gave it back to the fans.

I mean, they kind of got a taste of kind of what he was feeling, and it was really really cool to see everyone come out and applaud him for all the years here.

Yeah, I didn't, I didn't really have much words for it.

It was really cool to see in person.

Ben, you mentioned you haven't been in the postseason yet.

Have you started talking to people about what it's like to be in the postseason.

Have you talked to the veteran guys Freddie and Mookie and some of these guys that have been in the postseason for years and years and know everything kind of been through all the wars and all the battles.

Do you sit down and talk to them a little bit before you guys played that first game, or you're just gonna you and you and Rushing just gonna sit down and live it together for the first time.

Honestly, I really haven't thought about asking guys yet.

I've been pretty focused.

I'm kind of like winning each day.

We're trying to clinch the division here, so I really haven't gotten past that.

And it's so it's definitely something I'm going to talk to the older guys and kind of expectations and what going into that, how to kind of navigate through some of the emotions that go through it.

But I was around a little bit when the Yankees were in the postseason, so I got a little taste of kind of like over there.

I also talk to a lot of the guys I go through there, so I know kind of emotionally kind of the locals go through and just how much you want to stay focused and keep it all on the field and off the field, how you can get distracted and how how everything plays into it.

But I think it's definitely something.

When we get a couple more days in that I'll be sitting down and trying to get a better feel for everything.

Hey, Ben, last one for you.

So today the rules Committee is meeting to discuss the ABS challenge system.

It's definitely going to get approved.

Maybe we'll break the news during the show.

Your thoughts on what to expect with that next year.

It's different, it's different.

It kind of takes no it takes complaints out of it from each side.

It's definitely gonna be a big change.

I know from my position.

We'll see how it goes and how they're valued catchers here and there.

I liked it hitting catching.

It can be frustrating because you want to get rewarded for pitch locations and all this stuff that kind of plays into it throughout the history of the game.

But yeah, we'll see how it rolls out.

I bet people are gonna be unhappy to meet people that are gonna be happy.

I think it's just all situational.

When a when a big call kind of comes down to ABS, it can be frustrating, but it can also be fun here and they're kind of getting some some feedback and on umpires, So I'm not sure what to expect.

I had it in triple A, and it can it can drag on, but it's also it's way, it's the actual zone.

So you had in triple A.

Did you have the challenge or you had every pitch?

We had the challenge, which I think is better than every pitch.

So, like you, you're doing your best for the margins as a catcher, and you can challenge catching, you can challenge hitting.

I've looked stupid challenging catching, and I've looked stupid challenging hitting.

So there's definitely some things that go into it.

You want to save your challenges and be smart about them for big situations.

But yeah, it's it's it'll be a really big change and we'll see how it all plays out.

Is that is this gonna take away some of your value as a great receiver or is there still like some good value on the edges because you don't just have unlimited challenges.

I think it'll take away some value, but at the same time, it'll definitely make the margins a lot valued a lot more.

I think blocking will be definitely valued more.

I think throwing will be valued more game calling, but the big chunk of kind of staying a lot of strikes probably will decrease a little bit.

But it's the margins that come into play with the abs and on the edges.

So and also probably just understanding the strikes down as a hitter and what to challenge, what not to challenge.

It changed a lot with the height of batters, so that's one thing that's difficult.

The zone can change with the size of the hitter, so it's definitely going to be you understanding the strikes and as a whole.

Great breakdown of it.

Yeah, I'm excited from a fan perspective, just to you know, ad a bad call.

Hey, ight, for fans, it's got to be fun and you see it on the big scoreboard, it can be kind of funny.

Actually, yeah, exactly, bring an entertainment component to our game.

I'm into it.

Ben, great, thank you for joining us.

Great combo and good luck man.

We'll be watching awesome thing you guys.

I appreciate it.