Matt Pauley on our Opening Day roster- h4

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Testing season is right around the corner,

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I'm Brian, I work at U.D. Healthcare.

So Brian, why do you care?

I care because I don't want to leave anybody behinds.

I oversee one of the biggest resource center in United Healthcare.

I see people walked in in my office every day, just like my parents.

They have no idea about the healthcare.

I feel like they are my uncles, aunties.

I treat these people like family.

I'm Brian, and I'm committed to care.

Yay.

Who is it?

I hate this so much.

I like this song.

I don't like this song.

It's a wonderful song.

It's whining.

I like whining music.

It's a wonderful song.

Plus, they're such nice guys.

Oh yeah.

They're so humble and down to earth.

And never, they're not arrogant or anything like that.

They don't compare themselves to the Beatles or anything like that.

It is so funny that they are so incredibly aggro and vicious.

And then they're like,

T-A-D-A-N-O.

They're like, we're rock stars.

Like, not.

Are you really?

It does not match.

They're like horrible attitudes.

Yeah, show me all the rock stars that sounded like that.

Don't get me wrong.

They're successful.

Obviously, they're doing something right.

But I don't like it.

Hi, Matt Pauly.

Hi, Kevin Wheeler.

Dave will be back in a second.

By the way, guys, just so you know,

obviously, Matt, you were over at the ballpark already today.

I was talking about some stuff

on Redbird Rush Hour coming up.

But how many open days is this now since you've been back?

Okay, so I came in the middle of 22.

Am I back?

I mean, back in St. Louis.

Right, 23, 24.

Let's me have fourth.

Fourth, right?

Yeah.

Nice.

And I mean, growing up,

you went and went every year.

Yeah, it was me and my mom.

My dad doesn't really like cold weather.

So, I went to dozens and dozens and dozens of all games out of school.

Oh, yeah.

Of course, I got cold.

I didn't too when I was a kid.

That was cool.

That was a lot better than that.

Every single year.

And even once I got done with high school,

when I would come back from college,

I started working at my early baseball.

The minor league season would always start after the major league season.

So, I'd come back.

I didn't miss a Cardinals opening day with my mom

until I think I got to Milwaukee.

Wow.

Yeah.

So, you got a long stretch.

Yeah, it was pretty impressive.

So, what would you say?

You've seen 25?

At least.

Yeah.

Damn.

That's pretty good.

I think this tomorrow will be my 20th.

Okay.

That's good.

Every year since 2007,

because I came in late 06.

And it was funny because I remember

the first one I was at,

and obviously the first one I covered was 2007.

So, it's after a World Series.

Right, which is amazing.

And I was like, I'm downtown.

It's Marty Grau basically, right?

I mean, I was blown away by everything,

the celebration on the field and all of that.

And I knew that the Cardinals had a reputation

for doing opening day right.

Like, I knew that as a baseball guy.

But I'd never experienced it.

And I thought, wow,

this, they must have really blown it up

because they won the World Series.

It's amazing.

And then come back for 2008.

Like, wow, it's the same thing.

Yeah.

It's the same every year.

It's a big deal.

So, what my mom would do is like,

because I wanted to be down here first thing.

You know, Peppa, just starting 8, 9, 10 o'clock in the morning.

My mom would get like a day room at a hotel

in downtown St. Louis.

And I would just be running around going to all these things.

And she's just chilling with you.

Yeah, she's just chilling.

And then by the time it's just about, you know,

time to get to the ballpark, I'd go over and grab her

and we'd make our way into the ballpark and watch the game.

That was, that was just Dave.

I was just telling us about how opening day was a thing

for him and his mom when he was a kid.

And he's probably been to 25 opening days.

Yeah, every year was me and my mom

going to opening day together.

Such a great memory.

What was your earliest age?

Your first opening day?

Oh, man.

Um, I don't know.

Maybe like 12 or something.

Like pretty young.

Yeah, like it was just, it was a thing.

So you run around by yourself?

Yeah, wow.

Could you imagine that like, I don't, I'm, I'm a father of two children.

I would not let them do that.

Not even a 12th?

Not no.

No, that's why we grew up in the greatest generation

because we got to do all that stuff

and we kept our kids from doing it, you know, uh, I don't.

I mean, opening day, there's probably no safer day

in downtown St. Louis than opening day.

So I don't know, I, I don't know what age my, my oldest daughter is seven.

I don't know what age I'd be like, yeah, I got to downtown

say a little us an opening day and just have added and we'll see in four hours.

I don't know how old she would have to be, but I don't think 21.

Well, you got bigger worries than ball games.

Yes, no, in college, you got spring break.

You got because as you well know, having a grown-up daughter.

And as you will know, one of these days, it doesn't matter.

If I'm a hundred and she's 60, she's still my baby.

I'm still worried about her.

But now that she's 21, I sort of

exhaled a little bit.

Yeah, really.

Yeah.

No, there is a point when you realize, all right, they can handle things.

Yeah.

Whether I think that's whether it's a son or a daughter,

you just get to, once you get to that point, you're like,

all right, they're trustworthy.

They make good decisions.

They're grown.

Doesn't mean nothing can go wrong, but you're reducing the odds

every one of those things you check off.

Yeah, yeah.

Whereas here I am with a 70-year-old in a first place.

Oh, yeah, you're just getting started, buddy.

It's like the things I hear about,

you like you puff your chest out a little bit when you hear about things that

happen with school, like other kids, even teachers, like we've got a situation.

And it's just like, you don't want to find other battles.

You don't know when to attack and when to hold back.

Yeah, and my initial reaction is always like,

go, go, go, go.

And then have to, like we had a situation yesterday,

and I need to write an email to a teacher.

But it's like, okay, I've given it a day.

So the knives will be down a little bit.

Yeah, yeah.

What I found parenting Nick was super easy.

And to the point that when we were pregnant with Phoebe,

I said to Maureen, verbatim, you're so lucky to have me,

because I'm such an amazing father.

And she's like, okay, all right, no way to jinx yourself.

And Phoebe was so different.

Maybe because she's different or girls, I don't know.

But once she got older,

and we started kind of talking about her, I bring him like,

yeah, I need to apologize for this.

And she's like, didn't even clock it.

She said, what bothered me was that?

And I'm like, what?

That was one of my final, like you just,

you never know what you're doing right and wrong.

I will never be able to say anything close like that to my wife,

because every year I leave her with two children for four,

four, four weeks while I am in Florida.

And she has to do with that.

What is that like?

Describe coming home after being gone for a few weeks.

It's first, those four, I love being down in Florida

doing the baseball stuff.

Like this is 100% of it with personal life.

It's terrible.

Being away from your family for four whole weeks is terrible.

I miss my wife, I miss my daughters.

I'm thankful for FaceTime, but it's terrible.

Getting, so like this year, our youngest

will be two here in about a month when I got home.

And she'd see me every night on FaceTime and everything.

I got the dad as and everything, but I get home

and she's like really skittish around me and very shy.

And then she went into like a sleep progression

where for about a full week, week and a half,

we could not leave the room until she fell asleep.

She would just start screaming.

So me being gone for a month affected her

in a pretty significant emotional way.

Which makes you feel like a horrible dad.

Just horrible.

So yeah, it's, but every person's job has different things.

And I'm really, really blessed in what I get to do.

But yeah, there's that part of it and stuff.

Like for example, when Dan Bon Jingo was the assistant deputy FBI director,

he had to stay sometime until six p.m.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah, he did it when it was dark out.

Yes.

Yes, that's why he quit.

So man, podcast game is better.

Yes, yeah, it really is for sure.

So, Matt Polly, as the season begins,

what are some of the story lines?

And that could be a player.

It could be, you know, other kinds of things.

What are some of the story lines you're going to be paying close attention to?

A few things.

JJ Weatherhold just his, and that's, that's the easy one.

So that's why I went, we don't have to talk a lot about that.

Like JJ Weatherhold is just evolution.

The Cardinals are going all in on this.

We're going to be a really hard team to play.

We're going to get the details right.

We're going to do all the small things, right?

And it's not actually going to happen because that's,

that's where they've planted their flag going into this year.

But I was in Springfield two nights ago,

and I asked Oliver Marmel, very specifically,

you've talked so much about this,

be wanting this to be your identity.

Do you feel like that developed over the last six weeks?

And he said, oh, yeah.

Yeah, that's the, that's the best thing I feel

about about coming out of spring.

I'm paraphrasing, but it was in the, you know, in that area.

So he has said that.

Now, let's see if that happens.

And if that happens and some other things fall in line as well,

Pichini's respectable, I got, you know, Nolan Gorman kind of looks

the way he looked in spring training, JJ Weatherhold is all right.

All of a sudden, they become a much more respectable team.

And maybe just maybe the absolute ceiling is they're kind of in a spot

like where the Cincinnati Reds were in last year,

where they're hanging around in the periphery.

Maybe something happens.

So, but I just, yeah, I'm really curious to see

if the way they describe who they want to be actually happens.

One of the things I find most interesting here locally,

being so tight with you guys is when I hear you disagree with the club.

And for example, lately we've had Velasquez not making the roster

and it won't be certainly starting on opening day.

And I think you guys disagree with that.

I disagree with that.

And what I find so fascinating is, where's the difference?

What are those, and I know they know more than we do

because they are literally running the team

and we're just reporting on the team and analyzing the team.

But I'm fascinated by that, like,

how often does it happen that they tell you their rationale

and you understand it and you go, yeah, just don't know.

All the time, yeah, all the time.

I think one thing, and this is not, when I say this conservative,

I don't mean politically, I just mean like most executives and teams

and professional sports will always take the most conservative option

in front of them.

The least risky, the least bold most of the time.

And I think that's what that is.

What they did is, you know, one way to look at it would be the path

of least resistance, right?

Don't take any risk of losing anybody.

You know, they have boxed themselves in, for example,

on having three catchers.

Well, once you've done that, you've now limited your options.

But they're just, most teams operate at a very conservative level

especially early in the year, where most of us,

we're more apt to think this would be better.

This would be more fun.

This would be more creative.

So that's where that difference is most of the time.

It's frustrating as well because some fans,

I understand where they're coming from.

I'm not angry.

If I'm the person making the decision,

Nelson Velasquez is on my opening day roster.

Why they didn't do it?

There's, it makes sense.

I totally understand the pathway that they're taking.

So I'm not angry about it.

I just would have done it in a slightly different way.

But I, a lot of times I say, okay,

what's the worst case scenario?

And can I live with the worst case scenario?

So the worst case scenario in this exact situation

is what Velasquez did in spring isn't real.

And he's terrible and you have to get rid of him.

And to put him on the roster,

you deffayed Jose Firmin and he got claimed.

So you're a month into the season and you no longer have Jose Firmin

and you no longer have Nelson Velasquez in the organization.

That's your worst case scenario.

For me, I think you can do yourself out of that.

If that's your worst case scenario.

Well, you could do it easier though.

You could just put Pozo in AAA.

Okay, but I think they made the move with Velasquez

because they, it came down to Velasquez or for me.

They didn't want to lose for me.

Worst case scenario, you lose Jose Firmin.

You can go find Jose Firmin somewhere.

So that's how I look at it.

How would you, I know they may play the same position.

But how would you compare and contrast Victor Scott the second

with, uh, Nate, uh, with church?

You want to go? You want me to go?

Scott's a better defender, but church is a good defender.

Scott's, I think Scott has a whole lot more offensive upside than, uh,

up sides the wrong word.

He's a better, he's a better hitter right now.

He's a different profile of hitter as well.

I think I don't think there's going to be that much of a difference from them

defensively.

And I believe a lot more in church from an offensive standpoint.

He's going to run into some home runs.

He could be what?

He's 1215.

I mean, if he plays every day,

if it was, it was, it was basically like Brendan Donovan type of action.

Yeah, yeah.

Like I'm again, not necessarily as consistent with that type of offense,

where it's double digit home runs, but probably not 20.

And it's a good batting average, good on base percentage,

some doubles, you know, things like that.

And I'm not sure.

I mean, I know that Scott is faster than church.

Like he's got elite elite speed.

Like he's literally one of the two or three fastest people in baseball.

Church is not that.

I'm not sure he's a better defender all around.

He has good arm strength, Victor Scott,

but he doesn't throw particularly while he's not super accurate.

He made more circus churches.

Well, I mean, no, he makes, he makes tough catches look easy.

He gets to everything.

And if he barely gets to it,

it probably means a guy like church doesn't get there.

Although church is a guy that gets good jumps,

take good route, just like Victor Scott.

The chasing of flyballs is an edge to Scott.

Throwings probably a little on the church side,

but the throwing side of being an outfielder is probably more what,

which is like 25% 20% of your real work.

Your most of your work is chasing down the ball and keep making sure it doesn't fall.

Last question.

Got to talk about Jordan Walker.

If he continues the way he's been playing,

if there's not a market improvement,

do you, does he have the whole season runway?

I don't think so.

Maybe I'm wrong on this because I thought there was actually a scenario

where maybe he doesn't even make the club out of spring.

And I don't think that was ever on the table.

They always wanted him to stick around with the big league club.

But no, I think if, I think it's just absolutely terrible,

the leash runs out at some point.

I'm not sure how long that takes.

It's probably a little bit longer than some people would like,

but I don't think this is just an unlimited because he has one option left.

And they, I think they deliberately did not use that option last year

when they could have sent him down late in the season.

He has one option left.

It would not shock me to see him at AAA at some point this year if he doesn't come out of it.

Yeah, if, if he's even

within hailing distance of league average, he's going to play.

And that, that would be the right thing.

If he gets to the point though where he is just getting buried,

where no success, it's just failure after failure after failure,

I think they'll be forced into making a decision,

which would mean sending him to Memphis night, sending him away.

Yeah.

And then you hope that that reset would, I don't know,

kickstart something into the offseason or maybe you end up

trading him, you know, at 20, 30% of his value because he's not been good.

But at that point, you know, you're a reclamation project.

You're no longer a prospect.

Yeah.

You know, he's not old by any means.

He's young enough.

I mean, think about it.

Like we're talking about Velasquez.

He's 27 and has never established himself as a major leagueer.

Jordan Walker still only in his age 24 season.

So there's time for that to still happen.

But if it looks like last year where you're like 30, 40% below league average,

I don't know how long they can do that.

I bet that that'd be no more than a month or two.

Walker's one year older than weather old.

Yeah.

I forget that.

But that's a call it.

Right.

That's the thing is that, you know, that's a college guy versus a high school guy.

And a lot of the problems here with Walker started in the previous regime.

When, let's just be honest, man, they just waited too long to get started on these changes.

They should have been doing them when he's in a ball.

But their choice was to, quote, let him get comfortable and have some success.

Well, that success reinforced bad habits because then you don't want to change.

And now we're at a point where you're going into your fourth season.

And you haven't been able to make the changes.

But it seems like he's finally bought in.

Well, I'm not sure he had in the past.

Interesting.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

Whether you love true crime or comedy, celebrity interviews or news,

you call the shots on what's in your podcast Q.

And guess what?

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Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates,

price and coverage match limited by state law.

Testing season is right around the corner.

And this is when confidence really matters.

When kids take time to review key concepts and strengthen their skills before assessments,

it can make all the difference.

IXL helps reinforce what they're learning right now,

so they walk into every test feeling prepared,

capable and confident.

IXL is an award-winning online learning platform

that helps kids truly understand what they're learning,

whether they're building math confidence,

strengthening reading and writing skills,

or reviewing science concepts.

Designed for students from pre-K through 12th grade,

IXL delivers personalized interactive practice

that adapts to your child's level and pace.

It's an easy, effective way to support learning

as the school year heads into its final stretch.

Studies show kids who use IXL score higher on tests,

proven in all 50 states.

IXL is used in 96 of the top 100 school districts in the US.

Make an impact on your child's learning.

Get IXL now.

And listeners can get an exclusive 20% off IXL membership

when they sign up today at IXLLearning.com slash audio.

Visit IXLLearning.com slash audio

to get the most effective learning program out there

at the best price.

I'm Spencer and I work at United Healthcare.

Suspenser, why do you care?

I care because my daughter, Adeline, has special needs.

I am motivated by Adeline who inspires me every day.

I am driven to help families like mine navigate the healthcare system.

I'm so blessed to lead an amazing team at United Healthcare

focusing on the member experience and making that better.

I'm Spencer and I'm committed to care.

Welcome back DG as couple minutes here in this segment, Wheels.

What happened to the 300 batting average hitter?

How much lower are the averages now than they were?

Say like in the modern but old school 70s baseball?

You go 70s, I mean, there have been times in the past

where the league batting average was around where it is now.

It's the lowest now.

But the answer to the question is pretty easy.

The 300 hitters going away because hitters have never had to face what hitters now face.

Which is, so as an example, back in Stan Museo's day, he would play,

or he can even go to 80s and talk about Jack Clark or whoever.

They didn't face as many different pitchers.

So when Ted Williams hit 400, last guy to hit 400,

he faced 74 pitchers that year.

The average hitter now faces over 300 pitchers in the season.

That's hard.

And you know, you don't get to know them.

You don't get to see them.

And each team has now eight relievers on every day available every day.

And they cycle through those.

So they might use 12 or 15 or whatever throughout the course of the year.

And a lot of them are specifically there to get you out.

They do something that you don't do well.

If you're a lefty, it's a lefty coming in throwing 98.

And that's one of the biggest changes.

And when pitch, you know, with pitchers,

they throw maximum effort all the time where they didn't use to.

So there's no let up.

You're getting nine innings of guys giving you everything they've got every inning.

You throw in, they know, just in the general increases in velocity and stuff.

It's just harder to get hits.

What a great answer.

Wow.

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I'm Spencer and I work at United Healthcare.

Suspenser, why do you care?

I care because my daughter Adeline has special needs.

I am motivated by Adeline who inspires me every day.

I am driven to help families like mine navigate the healthcare system.

I'm so blessed to lead an amazing team at United Healthcare focusing on

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I'm Spencer and I'm committed to care.

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