Soren Petro played the full-length interview with Brian Bannister that was first played on Rany's 810 WHB radio program Thursday night. This version has a few more minutes of Banny's commentary on resurrecting his career as a MLB-caliber pitcher. 

Find it here: http://www.810whb.com/podcasts.
You can't see it, but it's in the list for "The Program" (the first show listed).  Just click on the podcast for Kevin Hartman or "2 Minute Drill" and a new window will open.
Then you'll be able to see their full list, which includes "Brian Bannister Talks Pitching."

The added parts focus on his history with throwing the cutter--learning it from watching Mariano Rivera, successfully throwing it in the New York Mets system, abandoning it, and then bringing it back this year after getting shelled in Spring Training and his first AAA start (hitting "rock bottom," as he describes it).  Still utterly compelling and refreshing to hear (for the second time).

By the way, here are the box scores from his AAA outings this season.

First start--prior to re-tooling his arsenal:

Box Score

Ugly Play-by-Play

Second start--after "selling out" to the new plan:

Box Score

Play-by-play Recap....notice the improved amount of ground balls

Third start--pulled after two innings due to call-up

Play-by-play....6 outs--5 GB, 1 K

Box Score

By the way, I loooooooooooove the completely unintentional--yet completely hilarious quasi-jab he takes at Dayton's much maligned way of indentifying "talent."

"it's not what you see out there"........"it's numbers behind numbers"

I'm not that familiar with all of the Pitch F/X data, but I thought I should head over there and check it out after Banny's comments. I was interested in a few of the statements he made. In the interview, he mentions replacing his 4-seam ("extreme fly ball pitch") with his cutter...which he said acts like Derek Lowe/Chien-Ming Wang's fastball and has "about four inches of vertical rise."  I went to Pitch F/X to see how accurate those comparisons were.

Bannister cutter  "Average V(ertical)-Break"--2009 starts (in chronological order):
7.25, 6.28, 7.76, 6.52, 8.41, 5.72, 7.05, 5.43, 8.79, 7.07, 5.64, 4.95, 7.48, 5.83, 6.82, 7.80, 7.01, 7.24

...hmmm that does not appear to be "about four inches of vertical rise."  More like six or seven inches. Am I missing something?  The more I looked at these individual pitching logs, it looks to me like perhaps the Pitch F/X lasers were confusing his cutter with his slider. In some of these games it was saying Banny threw over 50 sliders and less than 10 cutters, which doesn't seem right....especially when it was saying his slider was moving in on right-handed batters (a negative H-Break), which would be the opposite break a slider should have (Juan Cruz's cutter has like 7 inches of break away from a righty).

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I logged on to 810's website today to listen to their reaction to last night's bullpen collapse (again) and Trey Hillman-san's post-game semi-meltdown ("You guys are grilling me on every point in the game!").  Before I listened to Soren's podcast I tuned in to Rany's radio show tonight. 

They played a clip of Brian Bannister after last night's game where he talked about how he's re-made himself into a solid pitcher again. The more and more he talked, the more I realized that he may very well be the smartest guy in the organization---and the most qualified to run this team. Seriously.  Listen to his interview and forget the context of him being a player. Doesn't he sound like a smart GM/Front office type?

Basically what he said is that he's used the Pitch F/X data now available online to track/study his pitches and their break. He basically scrapped last year's plan of trying to throw more 4-seamers in an effort to get more strikeouts after last year's disaster of a season, mainly because the results weren't there...and he was giving up too many fly balls.

Instead he's gone to primarily throwing a cutter (which "baseball men" had said a righty can't throw as his primary pitch as a starter) and the "power change" he learned from RamRam and James Shields. He says these pitches have more downward break...and even though there isn't that classic speed differential between fastball & changeup that you normally see (he's only got a 2-3 mph difference on them), the movement on them is what's allowing him to get a lot more groundballs than in the past.  He references Derek Lowe and Brandon Webb's pitches as being similar to some of the break he's got on his pitches now.

He even mentions his FIP this year being much better, whereas in his 2007 the insane BABIP kept his ERA down, but left his FIP lacking.  He also mentions how he knows the game from an offensive standpoint and where it's headed with regard to OBP, etc....

Honestly, it's refreshing to see a guy take statistics/analysis to help himself become a better pitcher, while not being afraid to scrap last year's plan when it was obviously not producing results.  (Insert Dayton's "trust the process" joke here).  I shouldn't have been stunned listening to the Banny interview since we've known he's a smart guy who is into sabermetrics, but everything this guy was saying was just gold Jerry....GOLD! 

Anyone else crafting up a "Banny for GM" paperbag to wear to the game---complete with replica Trey moustache?

Listen to the Banny interview on 810whb.com  Go to Podcasts....and it's at the bottom under "additional programming" for 7/23/09.  Trust me........it's a must listen.

**Banny's interview comes on at about the 33:00 or 34:00 minute mark.......the first half hour is railing on Hillman's use of the bullpen this weekend.  

http://www.810whb.com/podcasts

Kansas City Royals Baseball: Distracting ourselves from the current regime through Baseball Reference!

While it would certainly be appropriate to post another FanShot demonstrating the nitwit-like tendencies of the current Kansas City Royals, I thought it may be a good time to call for the changeup--instead offering up another installment of "This Day in Royals History."  Once again, all credit goes to Baseball Reference....and once again, I'll provide you with a soundtrack to accompany the randomly selected box score I'm featuring (courtesy of YouTube & Yahoo! Music).

This time I just happened to click on 1988, so we'll be taking a long look at July 20, 1988--a mere score (plus one year) from today. My Yahoo!* Music player is currently set for 1980's country hits, which just seems like the perfect background for a hot, summer afternoon in 1988. Our first track features a man who I last saw on NBC's Celebrity Apprentice (the only time I watched the show). He seemed like a jerk on the show, but this is a classic:

*(what's with exclamation? has anyone ever used the word yahoo without being excited?)

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Kansas City Royals Baseball--When the present is seemingly insufferable, look back at the glorious past! 

A week or so ago, Will asked for suggestions on how to improve this site. While a lot of that discussion was great, it got quickly buried by the fury of the YPJ trade. But one of the suggestions mentioned was to do a "This Day in Royals History." Since I didn't have enough baseball tonight (five hours at the ballpark for team pictures & a doubleheader--we got the sweep!),  I figured I'd jump in and try one to kick off the post-ASB portion of the 2009 schedule.*

*Editor's note: To get the full effect of this glance back into KC history, it is paramount to find your music outlet of choice and play some tunes from the said time frame. For example, while researching my 1999 KC Royals information I'm rocking out to Yahoo's 1990's Alternative Rock Station--currently featuring Cake's vastly underrated "Rock'n'Roll Lifestyle."

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In Part One and Part Two of my series of conspiracy theories for why the Kansas City Royals have seen their "magical" 2009 season tank right before their eyes, I examined how Trey Hillman's moustache is the root of all issues with the team's performance. Trey's friends in Japan are aware of this fact, however their urgent message to Trey informing him of his facial hair folly was intercepted via the enemy in Washington's FCC offices (jealous to have a team worse than the Natinals), having received assistance from Seattle's Grass Creek conspirators.

Royals Review's attempt to save the Royals' season by delivering the news to the Treydaddy went awry in Toronto when our messenger, devil_fingers, came down with an emergency appendix operation the day of the game. Kansas City struck back against Washington by drafting noted Nationals hater, Aaron Crow, but the DC/Seattle faction countered by wiping out Ryan Lefebvre and forcing Royals fans to be subjected to Bob Davis.

Our latest installment of Conspiracy Theory Rock! examines the latest developments in this ever-growing MLB conspiracy that has seen the Royals season slowly and painfully circle down the drain of ineptitude.

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