Hello and welcome to the Pirates Fan Forum here on DK. Pittsburgh Sports Podcast Network.

I'm your host Gary Morgan.

I mean, as always, my good friend Jim Stam.

What is happening?

Hey, listen, Clinton Hurdle said something today. I don't know if you guys saw it, but he said that good pitching beats good hitting all the time and at every level.

And I have a feeling we're going to talk some pitching today. So just thought I'd throw that out there and see what you guys thought, even our guest.

That's right.

So returning to the show from the Ohio Baseball Science Academy, Eric Minchall, he was a former coach with the Bitsberg Pirates.

You may remember that from previous visits here.

Welcome back.

Eric, how you doing, man? Doing great. Thanks for having me back on. I always enjoy it. Our conversations always, and end up in a really cool place. So I'm really happy to be back here in the middle of winter and freezing our butts off, getting ready for spring training to start. Well, you are like a science nerd getting a chance to talk to Neil DeGrasse Tyson,

you know, Tyson deGras and pick his brain a little bit about supernovas. I love having the

scientific angle of everything with pitching, but I want to start with something a little more silly.

How many guys are coming in asking you to teach them a splinker?

It's starting to happen now. Yeah, we've got, it's funny because it's mostly our college guys,

but the high school guys are starting too. And that's the power of social media.

You know, they see it, they want to try it. And one of our pitchers who was just in over the winter, he said University of Maine,

he really has it now, like out of nowhere.

It's pretty good.

I was like, that's impressive.

Like, we were shocked when he started throwing it. So it's becoming a thing, and it's a really good pitch.

It's a really good pitch.

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