Hello and welcome to the In The Pen podcast, a podcast about relievers part of the pitcherless podcast network.

My name is Jake Crumpler, and as always, I'm joined by pitcherless bullpen expert, Rick Graham.

Rick, we've had a few days off because of the All-Star Week, but how have you been enjoying the festivities with the All-Star game,

the Futures Game, the Home Run Derby, the All-Star Game?

Did I start with the All-Star Games?

You said the All-Star game.

I missed something.

The draft.

There we go.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's been a world win, I guess, week.

Feels like there's a lot of stuff crammed into three days, but, yeah, I think, you know, outside of the, I'm always a big fan of the draft.

That's, you know, something I am like one of those nerds i guess who enjoys like just was sitting there and

watching the picks come in even like day two and three i was sitting there my computer at work

like seeing um what was going on so um what was your take on the uh the homerun derby though i i think

it was i think the new changes i like the new but it did feel, it did feel a little bit

long, but, you know, I'm not going to complain about the length because that, the ending was

great. I mean, there was a couple great series in there as well. Yeah, I sort of like the,

the new format. I think it definitely brought like a new breath of life and mixed the past two formats together pretty nicely.

Right.

We still got the like timed ones and then we also got that per swing and it also takes away

a lot of the stuff people were complaining about in regards to hitter swinging before a ball land.

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