MLB.com: You have your sort of offseason triangle of Texas, California and Seattle. Texas is home now?

TB: “That’s my residence, but I own a house now up in Seattle as well. But, I left my home address as Texas. My parents are in California. I generally spend about a week or a week and a half in California after the season, about a week and a half or two weeks around Christmas and about a week before Spring Training. So, I end up spending about a month every offseason in California, a couple weeks in Texas and the majority of it up in Seattle.”

MLB.com: How did the MLB Network opportunity come up for you?

TB: “So, they reached out to my agency about having some players on during the postseason, to see if there was any players at Wasserman that had any interest. At the same time, I was sharing my new five-year plan with Wasserman and so they thought, ‘Oh, this is a perfect opportunity. We’ll get you on MLB Network. People will get to see you in a different way.’ It was just good timing.”

MLB.com: If you were nervous, you didn’t look it. You sounded polished and prepared. How much did you enjoy that opportunity?

TB: “Yeah, it was a fun experience. Everyone was very accommodating and very kind to me. It was a very easy process on my end, because of those guys made it easy and walked me through everything. Once the show was actually going live, I felt very well-prepared and very comfortable with what was going on.”

MLB.com: You’re someone who really enjoys seeing the process behind things. Was that the case again here, getting to see how a show like that is put together behind the scenes?

TB: “Yeah, the behind the scenes, that’s always the stuff I’m most interested in. Like, sitting in the video room and watching, like, ‘OK, this tape is going to be played and here’s how we decide what tapes we’re going to make. Here’s how the tapes are made. And then here’s how the commentary goes over them.’ Like, being restricted to that minute-long segment or whatever and having to hit a certain couple key points, it’s interesting how that plays together. And then just all the on-screen graphics. I’ve been doing that stuff for years just internally. But, to see how they do it and their process and workflows and all that stuff was very interesting. I enjoyed that part of it. And then all the work that goes into seeing four guys B.S.’ing on stage. There’s two to three times that many people in the actual room, in the studio, moving the jibs around, the lights, the cameras, the steady cams, all that different stuff. Everyone’s mic’d up, talking to each other. It’s pretty interesting.”

MLB.com: Being interviewed is one thing. It’s much different to be on camera, live, being conversational and knowing how to balance when to speak and staying within time restraints.

TB: “Yeah, definitely. One of the most impressive things to me was seeing [Greg] Amsinger… They’d be in his ear counting down like, ’10, 9, 8…’ until break. And he would have to choose his words and what he was going to say and the cadence of everything to end right on break, basically. But, I never sensed that there was a break in cadence. It just sounded like he just came to the end of his sentence at the perfect time, every single time, which was super impressive. That’s stuff you don’t see at home. It’s like, ‘Oh, well, they broke whenever he stopped talking.’ No, there’s a break and he has to stop talking at a specific point. That was super interesting. And then, there was a lot going on. During the segment, there’s people talking to you like, ‘Hey, in 10 seconds, we’re going to show this tape on this and that.’ It was pretty interesting.”

MLB.com: Was there one aspect of the experience that you enjoyed the most? You certainly looked right at home talking about pitch design with Brian Kenny.

TB: “Yeah, that was fun. Any of the segments where it was just kind of going back and forth and talking about baseball. The Mookie Betts-Altuve home run segment that we got to do — kind of there on the wall, where we got to do some demonstration and whatnot — was really fun. Obviously, the pitch design stuff, that’s my realm. So, that was a good one as well.”

MLB.com: You’ve discussed in the past that one goal is to make some of these things — pitch design, tunneling, spin rates, as examples — a normal part of what fans consume and understand. Was it nice to be able to reach a wider audience while talking about those types of things?

TB: “I said it in a segment in regards to tunneling, that tunneling has kind of become part of the baseball lexicon. Not that everyone understands exactly what it means, but the term and the concept is out there and pretty well understood among people in the industry now. Whereas, two or three years ago, that was not the case. So, seeing these things kind of come to light, I mean, this is one of my passions about playing baseball, is changing the industry and moving it forward. Embracing technology, embracing player development. And a lot of these concepts are very key to the player development on the pitching side. So, it’s been cool to see that evolution. And how that’s been really accelerating over the past couple years. And I think getting on MLB Network and discussing it and trying to lay it out in a way that’s not too technical, but has enough of the technicality that the casual fan can be like, ‘Oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. If everything starts off middle and then goes different ways, then that’s got to be hard to hit.’ Instead of talking about how many inches it moves and why and the speed differentials and all that different stuff that really brings the concept to life, but getting in front of a national audience — for my brand, personally — but then also just for the state of the industry and the understanding of casual fans, so they can understand broadcasts and what’s going on a little bit better. Hopefully, that brings some more enjoyment to the game and more interest.”

MLB.com: Whether it’s tunneling or launch angle or whatever it is, these things have always existed. It’s just there are terms for them now.

TB: “And we can measure them.”

MLB.com: Right. You had one exchange with Brian Kenny where he said pitchers of past generations had to rely on their inner computer, where you have actual computers. But, you said the inner computer is still just as important during games. It’s just that you have more resources for all the time you spend off the mound…

TB: “Yeah. I was listening to a podcast with Elon Musk the other day and he said, ‘We’re already basically superhuman. We’re already like these cyborgs, because we have our cell phone with us. And our cell phone is a supercomputer. We can Google anything at any point.’ It really rang true with me, because we have so much information at our fingertips at all points. I can go down to the video room and not only access what I did against this guy last at-bat, but I can access what I did against him three years ago and what he did against a pitcher similar to me two months ago, in the span of two minutes in-between innings so I can be more prepared that when I get on the mound I can execute this way or that way. I can see him drifting in the box. I can see his approach. All this different stuff. We’ve got iPads in the dugout where you can look up heatmaps. You can load whatever you want for information. It’s combining the inner computer with the actual computer. Relative to 30 years ago, we’re cyborgs in that way.”

MLB.com: Not even 30 years. Even a decade ago, some players were still keeping written notes on pitchers or hitters. Now, there’s no need for such a thing…

TB: “Yeah, the book is just stored in the cloud somewhere and you can pull it up on your phone, you can pull it off your computer or an iPad. It’s everywhere.”

MLB.com: Does it surprise you that MLB Network wanted to have you on the show? And, now that you’ve had a taste of it, is this something you could see yourself doing down the road?

TB: “It doesn’t surprise me, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t take it as a compliment. I recognize that there’s many players they could’ve had on, so I’m appreciative that they thought I have some value to add in that way. Can I see myself doing it down the road? Yeah, I could see myself doing it here or there. I don’t think I’d ever be on the show nightly. I think there are other things in life that I’m looking forward to doing. I want to do some traveling and then I want to run my development college program. I have business interests that I’m sure I’ll be tied up with off the field. So, I guess I’d want to be involved with it here or there as a guest analyst maybe during postseasons or something like that, but I’m not sure I’d want to do it in a full-time role.”

MLB.com: What is the college development program you’ve thought about? Is this something where you thought certain things were lacking when you were at that level, or is it just that there are more resources available now to tailor towards collegiate athletes?

TB: “I don’t think it was necessarily lacking when I was there, because the information wasn’t really out there yet. Technology wasn’t being used in the same way. Statcast and Trackman didn’t exist. Rapsodo didn’t exist. High-speed cameras didn’t exist. It was cost prohibitive. You had to go get a Phantom camera and rent it. You could rent it for $10,000 a day or you could try to buy one for $200,000 or something, which obviously isn’t possible. And then it only shot at 1,000 frames a second. And it’s crazy that you say ‘only 1,000 frames a second’ now, but I’ve been using the Edgertronic camera — 1,500 or 2,000 frames a second — for five or six years now. I definitely wouldn’t say there was anything lacking when I was in college. I just don’t think the industry had really moved and the technology had really evolved in a way that allowed for there to be more resources. The goal, though, would be to coach like a mid-level D-I school and go after third-tier recruits. The first-tier high school recruits are going to sign in the Draft. The second-tier are going to fill out the Vanderbilts, the UCLAs, the Oregon States, those types of programs. We’d be looking at kids that have a tool. Maybe they have really good command. Maybe they spin a breaking ball really well, but they don’t throw very hard. Maybe they throw hard, but they have nothing else. Maybe they have really good bat speed, but bad hand-eye coordination — whatever the case is. We’d look for guys with one good tool, bring them in, red-shirt them their first year. So, they would have a full year and a half on campus to develop skills. So, let’s just take an example of a guy that spins a breaking ball well, has good feel for a breaking ball, but doesn’t throw very hard. So, he’s 85 with a good breaking ball. Bring him in, a year and a half or pure velocity development. You’d have him competing against the other three or four pitchers that you brought in in that class that are all red-shirting. Once a week, they have mound velocity sessions where they’re actually competing against your active team, competing against each other. So, you create these hyper-competitive athletes and then you give them the tools and the resources to help develop the other skills that they need. So, ideally, this guy you bring in — 85 with a good breaking ball — after a year and a half, when he’s ready to start his red-shirt freshman year, when the season starts, he’s 88–90 with a good breaking ball and a brass set of balls. And then, by the time he’s a Draft-eligible sophomore, he’s 91–93 with a power breaking ball, a developing third pitch and he knows how to get guys out and best utilize his stuff. That’s kind of the track that I would want to run and just run a complete development program and trust that the development of the athletes, of the assets, would produce wins on the field, as well as Draft prospects.”

MLB.com: This is just conceptual for later on in your career?

TB: “Right now, it’s all conceptual. It’s something I would want to do down the line. I would be open to doing a consulting gig like this. My dad and I have talked about it for a long time — ever since I was in college, really, and fresh out of college. In 2011, once I signed. There was some stuff that clearly worked at the college level that I was doing that I didn’t see anybody else doing. But, I think right now Driveline is doing a lot of the consulting at the college level and they do a very good job of it. So, I don’t have any interest in trying to compete with them on that front. But, yeah, down the road, I think I would enjoy running a college like that.”

MLB.com: You mentioned having a five-year plan. Can you give some details on that?

TB: “So, my five-year plan starting in 2014 was to be on the Body Issue by 2019. I think I’m in a good spot for that…”

MLB.com: Oh man.

TB: (laughs) “If that actually happens… I’m pretty sure it’s going to, but I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high in case it doesn’t. But, if that actually happens, I’m going to plaster that picture everywhere. But, my new five-year plan is to be, basically, be the face of MLB international, to be the most internationally recognizable and well-known baseball player brand. Hopefully, domestic as well, but definitely international. I want to start growing my reach. Obviously, over in Japan, Yu Darvish is this huge superstar, right? But, Yu Darvish in America isn’t as big of a superstar as he is in Japan. Over here, Francisco Lindor is huge in America and in Puerto Rico, but he doesn’t have really the reach in Japan or over in Asia or in those areas. So, I just want to be well-known and respected in Asia and in Latin America and in Europe and Australia — all over the world — as a baseball player and a brand. There are zero baseball players on ESPN’s top 100 most famous or most followed athletes. Meanwhile, there’s two cricket players and a badminton player. That’s ridiculous. Baseball is one of the biggest sports in the biggest country on Earth and we don’t have any baseball players. You can go down the line. Who’s the most famous basketball player?”

MLB.com: LeBron.

TB: “Right. Who’s the most famous golfer?”

MLB.com: Tiger.

TB: Right. Most famous football player?

MLB.com: Tom Brady.

TB: Brady, right? And who’s the most famous baseball player?

MLB.com: Right now? Aaron Judge, maybe? It should be Mike Trout.

TB: “Right? Why is there a question mark there? It should be Trout, but is it? It could be Francisco Lindor. I don’t know. That’s a problem, right? That’s the problem and one of the things I’m trying to address with my production company and one thing I’m trying to address personally. I’d like to be the face or baseball and starting to grow that reach internationally is going to big. The world is a big place. If you can tap into these markets as a brand, I think there’s a lot of benefit that can come from that both from MLB’s side and from my side, personally.”

MLB.com: So, what’s your plan for extending your reach around the globe?

TB: “That was actually part of my meeting with MLB while I was in New York. I have a lot of ideas for what I want to do here domestically and then a lot of ideas. Really, the fun ones are the international ones. Making trips to these countries in the offseason. Doing clinics. Doing shows. Doing appearances. Doing stuff like that. I think there’s a lot of crossover there with creating a show. One of the ideas I had was to basically go to Japan completely unannounced with an interpreter and my camera crew and show up to different baseball institutions around the country, whether it’s a Little League practice, 10 year olds practicing on a field. Show up, ‘Hey, can I practice with you guys? Can you teach me how to play?’ Show up to where they make the gloves maybe and tell them to teach me about gloves. Hopefully, the idea is they’d have no idea who I am and then the reveal would happen over the course of the show. Turn it into like an eight-part series of half-hour episodes of me in Japan or China or Puerto Rico or the Dominican or whatever. I’d bring a bunch of equipment and give it out to the kids, hopefully have my logo on it to help establish my brand over there. And then run those shows here domestically, so it gets exposure domestically, but then also generates interest in international markets. That’s good for MLB’s brand. That’s one of the ideas that I had. As part of that, it would be doing clinics, game shows, learning about the cultures, learning about languages and all kinds of different stuff. That would be enriching for me as a person, too. So, I think there’s a lot of crossover and would benefit a lot of people. By 2024, I want to be the first baseball player on the most followed list that ESPN puts out.”

MLB.com: I thought for sure you’d be wearing a tie with your “Bauer Outage” logo all over it while on set…

TB: (laughs) “Don’t think I didn’t have that idea. Let me tell you what happened. I was leaving Cleveland and I thought to myself, ‘OK, is there any chance that I need my suit?’ I’m thinking, I’m going to go to California and do athletic assessments. I’m going to Houston and will maybe lift and hang out at home. There’s no chance. There’s nothing I would do in these next two weeks that would need a suit. So, I sent it in my truck to Seattle. So then, I’m on a plane to Dallas Sunday night and I get the e-mail from my agency saying, ‘Hey, MLB Network says it’d be great to have you on. They’re going to pay for your flights out there. What do you say?’ Yeah, sure. Then, it was like, ‘The only thing they ask if that you bring two suits.’ I was like, ‘Well, shoot.’ So, here I am, I’m flying to Dallas. It’s a night flight. Everything’s closed. I get in, I have a meeting at three o’clock on Monday and then a flight immediately after that to Houston. When I’m in Houston, I have an assessment and I’ve got to get on another flight, so I’m going to have zero time in Houston. So, I woke up and Men’s Warehouse was the only place I could find that was close enough to where I was staying and could do same-day tailoring. So, I went in to Men’s Warehouse. They opened at 11, so I had three hours to go in there and pick out a couple suits. I couldn’t get any tailoring done with the shirts. Couldn’t do anything to the jackets, so I just had to pick suits based on what kind of fit off the rack. And then they were able to tailor the pants, which was nice. So, at least my pants were somewhat the right length, and then I had to buy shirts and buy ties and the whole deal. That’s the reason I didn’t have my logo on my tie. Trust me. I would’ve loved it. I wanted it. I’m going to get that made as soon as possible. It was just a massive rush.”

MLB.com: And then your suits were getting criticized on social media…

TB: “Yeah. The shirt, I didn’t have time to try it on. They took my measurements and grabbed them off the shelf. I just figured they got the right size. My shirt was massive. It was like a balloon on me. I put it on and it was like, ‘This is terrible.’ I could do nothing. I don’t know. Whatever.” (laughs)

MLB.com: Will you try to convince any teammates to join you at Driveline this offseason? Mike Clevinger or Shane Bieber come to mind…

TB: “Clev’s at a point where I don’t see Clev benefitting from coming up to Driveline and training. His stuff is good enough. His idea of what he’s doing, his process, his mix, his mechanics, he’s done a tremendous amount of work over the past two years on all that stuff. And he’s been able to accomplish a lot in-season, which is extremely hard to do. So, his biggest thing next year is going to be understanding how to minimize the big innings. That kind of burned him early in the year and I think he did a lot better at that during the second half of the season, so i think he’ll carry that over. And then, just maintaining physical ability, making sure he maintains his velocity, maintains his mechanics, maintains his health. Those things are, comparatively, very easy to do. Changing mechanics and adding a pitch or whatever are very difficult things compared to just maintaining what you have. So, I think Clev’s in a very good spot. I would expect him to be, for sure, a top 10 pitcher in the league next year like he was this year, and most likely, probably, top five. So, him, specifically, I’m not worried about. He’s going to be just fine. Guys like Shane, I think Shane has tremendous potential. And I think there’s ways to expedite him getting to that threshold — that potential. And I’ve talked to him about some of those things. He made a couple adjustments at the end of the year. He didn’t really have time to see how they played out over the course of a month or two months or three months, but I think those are going to be beneficial for him. And then, if he can increase the depth on his changeup, I think he’d have a really powerful repertoire. And then, it would be about how he uses it and understanding what hitters are doing and stuff that you can’t really pick up in the offseason. That’s one of the reasons I’ve talked to him about meeting up with him and helping him with that and working through it together. We’re both kind of trying to develop that same pitch. I’m working on my changeup this offseason, so I thought it’d be a good pairing to kind of do that together. So, while I was in California, I invited him down for the pitch design session. We weren’t able to connect on that day, but at some point, once he starts throwing again and starts ramping up and stuff like that, I’ll make sure I connect with him and try to help him out with that. And then Neil, I was going to meet up with Neil up at Driveline, but he was there the weekend that I was in California doing all my assessments and all that stuff and everything got sped up. So, I’m going to go out to Nashville in the next couple weeks and see him and his training facility. A couple of the guys that I used to train with up at Driveline now kind of run that training facility, so it’d be good to connect with them. But, I’m working with Neil on his overhand breaking ball, his 12–6 curveball, which obviously is my specialty. So, I feel like I have value that I can add to him there. I talked to Jon Edwards a little bit. We exchanged information. I’m not sure exactly what his timeline is — I haven’t connected with him yet. But, I know he has a facility that he runs in his hometown, so he’s got plenty of resources there. So, when we connect, we’ll kind of get together and throw some ideas back and forth and see what he’s looking to work on and stuff. Those are the main ones.”

MLB.com: The pitch design session with your dad… You said that took 12 hours last year? What about this time?

TB: “Yeah, it was a 12-hour process last year. This time, it was four, but we had to go find special lighting to satisfy a software that I’m trying to have developed to help out that algorithm. So, it took a little while to find the right lighting. But, the actual session was like four hours.”

MLB.com: You said your goal this offseason is to focus on the changeup again and I believe you mentioned at the end of the year that you also want to fine-tune your fastballs?

TB: “Yep. I think that I would benefit from about two more inches of separation — lateral movement — between my two-seam and my four-seam. I think my four-seam ran like four and a half inches on average, five inches, something like that, this year. I’d like to shrink that down, get it under four, three and a half, three or four, something like that. And then, add another inch of lateral movement on the two-seam, which is for sure possible, it’s just this year I didn’t have the ball aligned perfectly to generate that laminar flow. It was still good, but a slight tweak here or there, five degrees on the axis, would make a big difference. So, that stuff is a lot easier to accomplish, because it’s fine-tuning. You’re not trying to develop something new. The changeup is going to be the most difficult thing, because I’ve never been able to truly side-spin a ball. So, I’m having to teach myself how to do that and fiddle with the grips enough that allows me to do it out of something that’s comfortable. Just that whole process will take a lot of figuring out.”

MLB.com: You worked on the changeup last offseason, too. So, is this a continuation of that process or a new style of pitch?

TB: “It’s a continuation of it. Last year, I made some progress on it and got to a point where I could do it reliably at like 80–90 percent effort, but as soon as I would ramp up to 100 percent, it would change. And, at that point, before I really figured out how to do it at high-intent, that was when the slider really started coming along, so I just sunk my teeth into the slider. And then the changeup kind of got put on the backburner, but a lot of that research and that time that I spent on it last offseason will come in handy this offseason. So, I’m starting from a place that’s further along, the changeup now, than what I did last offseason. So, my pitch design session, I had multiple pitches that I was actually able to achieve the axis and the results I’m looking for fairly reliably. By that I mean over the course of three or four consecutive pitches, I was able to achieve the same result. Not at a high-intent, but I think that I’ll be able to do that at high-intent, especially because I know that that’s going to be an issue this year, so I’ll be able to attack it from basically the start of November. That’s when I’ll be throwing off a mound again, so I’ll have an extra two or three months with that realization in mind, that I can solve that last 10 percent of effort and really lock it down.”

MLB.com: This may sound like a basic question, but can you explain what you mean by a true side spin?

TB: “So, imagine just a truly polar axis, that the axis run north pole to south pole, and the ball is just spinning around three-to-nine on a clock face.”

MLB.com: Is the goal to mimic the two-seam movement, but at a lower velo?

TB: “So, my changeup actually did mimic my two-seam movement this year. But, the problem is it didn’t have enough depth. So, if you have a truly polar axis with dead side spin, there’s no component of lift there. So, you’ll get zero lift and then you’ll get maximum horizontal movement, which sounds like the exact same thing I was going for last year with my slider — just opposite. So, I’m trying to mirror my slider. My changeup will be thrown harder, but I’m trying to mirror the movement profile of the slider. So, I have the slider that starts middle and runs off glove side. I want to be able to start another pitch middle and have it run off arm side, so I can throw righties can’t start sitting on it, just leaning out over and swinging at my slider. Because, they’ll see two offspeed pitches that start at the exact same place and end up just off the plate on completely opposite sides.”

MLB.com: That sounds like a nightmare for hitters…

TB: “Yeah. With enough depth on the changeup to get below a lefty’s barrel. This year, I would get a lot of foul balls on lefties. They’d barely nick it and it’d go right into the plate and bounce foul. Next year, if I have four or five inches of depth on that, those are all swing and misses. It really helps drive pitch count down and strikeouts go up and you can end at-bats quicker. So, yeah, if I can just mimic my slider profile, if I can mirror that with the changeup at 86, that would be a massively successful offseason.”

MLB.com: Back in 2016, your two-seamer was your primary fastball. You’ve used that pitch less and less over the past two years, while leaning more on the four-seamer as your main fastball. What’s driven that change?

TB: (laughs) “Well, in 2014 and ’15, two-seam sinkers were actually good league-wise. And then the league just decided they had enough of sinker-slider guys and they were going to optimize to hit balls at the bottom of the zone in the air. And then, all of a sudden, it took like two years, and the two-seam just became bad league-wide. The pitch itself is the same, but the league has adjusted to hit that movement.”

MLB.com: So, this was a direct result of the air-ball revolution?

TB: “Mm hm. Baseball’s cyclical. So, for a while it was the cutter. For a while, it was the sinker. Then, it was the splitter. All this different stuff, right? But, at some point, hitters get tired of getting out with this pitch, and enough people in the league are doing it, that they optimize to hit it. Then, you’ll see the next cycle come in. I was just right at the end of the sinker cycle. And so, I developed this pitch, because it was good in the league and I needed it in my arsenal. And then the league started hitting it. So, now, I use it in a very specific way and it plays really well off my slider. Like, if righties don’t swing at my slider, because it’s just off the plate. I just throw a backdoor two-seam, and they take it, because it has that opposite movement. The two-seam runs nine inches. The slider runs nine inches the opposite way. I can start the two-seam off the plate, it looks like a ball, looks like it’s going to run further away, and then it runs back. I can start the slider on the plate, it looks like it’s going to be over the middle and then it runs off. I call it kind of criss-crossing. So, I can play that game on the outside, on the glove side of the plate. But, if I start using two-seams too much, then I start hitting a lot of barrels, and that’s not what I want to do. So, I use it up and in to lefties as a freeze pitch to keep them off the cutter and the slider running in on them, and I use it backdoor to righties as a freeze pitch. And, occasionally, I’ll throw one just in to a righty to get a ground ball or something, but that might be once a game, maybe once every two or three games, because the four-seam is just a much better play in the league right now.”

MLB.com: It will be interesting to see what the next cycle is after more pitchers make this kind of adjustment…

TB: “The next big wave you’re going to see, and you’re starting to see it, is the four-seam and overhand curveball combination. The high-spin four-seam at the top and the high-spin curveball below the zone. So, you get above and below the barrel. But, I think that these waves are going to come a little bit quicker now that we have all the technology and all the ways of measuring pitch metrics and all that different stuff. The league adjusted to hit two-seams like a year after we got Trackman. I don’t think that that’s necessarily a coincidence. I think there’s a lot of smart people that are like, ‘Oh, two-seams are used a ton and hitters suck at hitting them, so let’s teach our hitters to hit two-seams and they’ll be better.’ And it happened very quickly. It’s definitely still going to happen. I just think the frequency at which the league adjusts will be a lot shorter.”

MLB.com: How much has that played into how you’ve gone about building your pitch arsenal? If the league adjusts, you have enough pitches to try to counteract it. If you’re a pitcher that doesn’t have the pitch that is now the most-effective pitch, you’d be stuck.

TB: “Yep. Why do you think I’ve built my repertoire this way? Yeah, guys like Otero — and I’m not picking on Otero at all…”

MLB.com: No, but he’s an example of a sinker-based pitcher whose home run rate spiked last season, while everything else — all the other numbers — stayed relatively the same compared to his career rates…

TB: “Because the hitters have optimized to be able to do that. So, he’s going to have to come up with… perhaps it’s throwing sinkers at the top of zone. He’s going to have to find a way to get around the league optimizing to be able to hit the sinker at the bottom of the zone for power.”

MLB.com: I’m not sure what you want to say on this topic, but it’s known now that an Astros employee was ejected from the camera well next to your dugout during Game 3 of the ALDS. MLB issued a statement that this staffer — also removed from a similar location in Boston in the ALCS — was making sure the other teams were not stealing signs and the league declared the matter closed. There have been reports of other teams — not only the Astros — using other tactics to either steal signs or guard against it. Do you have any thoughts on what can be done to help address this issue?

TB: “Yeah, that’s a tough one, because if that’s the thing that got seen, that’s probably just the tip of the iceberg. So, who knows? There’s all the rumors out there. It’s fairly well-known what’s going on in that organization among people that are in the clubhouses and in the front offices and stuff like that. People leave organizations and they tell their buddy this and the buddy knows someone else who whispers that. And information spreads. It’s just really tough to solve, because who knows where the information is being gathered and who’s seeing it and how on all kinds of different stuff. If people want to cheat, there’s always going to be a way to cheat. We’ve seen it with drug testing. There’s always a new drug and then testing catches up to the latest science and people keep getting busted. You see it on the organizational side, too. Like, ‘Oh, well, we could do this. No one’s watching, so might as well. No one will know.’ And then it extends and one thing turns into another thing. A hitter says, ‘Oh, if he can pick up the signs on what the pitcher is doing, let me know. I hit better when I know what’s coming.’ OK, well, instead of just having the guy at second try to pick signs while he’s on base, why don’t we have someone in the clubhouse looking at signs and trying to decipher them? We have a camera. Well, if we’re going to do that, let’s do this, too, and let’s do that, and then it gets out of hand. But no one knows it’s going on until there’s enough rumblings about it that something gets done. So, there’s no real easy answer. I think the best answer is, when you find the first instance of it that’s concrete, you just punish the [expletive] out of them to send a message to everyone else that there’s a consequence, and maybe they’ll think twice about doing things and they’ll run things on the up and up. Once you catch a hotbed of it, I think you have to make the penalty severe enough that it sends a message to the rest of the people that maybe deters them from doing it.”

MLB.com: After the loss to Houston, Clevinger said you guys had your “backs against the wall analytically” in the series. What was your take on that?

TB: “It would be unfair and disingenuous for me to not talk about how good the Astros actually are with their analytics department. Their analytics department is ridiculously good. They’ve solved… like, Trackman data. They know exactly what’s going to be good against the league. They know exactly how to shape individual pitchers’ Trackman data, so that when they come up, their arsenal is optimized. They’ve figured all this stuff out and are far and away ahead of other teams. They’ve figured out on the hitting side, they can tell, because of how they shape their pitchers, they’ve naturally thought, ‘Well, how do hitters hit this?’ And they train their hitters in different ways than anybody else I’ve heard of, except for guys that have been training outside of professional baseball in private hitting instructions. Like, J.D. Martinez, when he was with Detroit, a lot of the Detroit hitters were working with a guy named Robert Van Scoyoc, who does a lot of different stuff, and Craig Wallenbrock. So, that information is out there in the private circles, but the Astros are very good — probably the most evolved team — at teaching this in professional baseball.”

MLB.com: Still, everyone expected that to be a much closer series…

TB: “If you look at the talent on the field. If you go position by position, the talent on the field is similar, it’s equal. You can say the Astros have a little edge here and the Indians have a little edge there. It’s just hard to decide. There’s no clear talent gap. You saw it against the Red Sox. That was a tight series, but the Red Sox talent and our talent is not that dissimilar.”

MLB.com: We can talk about analytics, or the person caught in the camera well, but Houston just flat-out beat you guys. Do you view those things as the reason you guys lost?

TB: “No, not at all. They wiped the floor with us on the field. I mean, we got six hits the first two games. It’s hard to win when you score six runs in three games. We’re not going to win that series regardless. We’re not throwing three straight shutouts against that team — regardless of what information they have. They’re too good for that. We didn’t hit. We didn’t play great in any facet of the game. Carlos and Clev shoved as starters and then we couldn’t hold whatever slim leads that we had in the bullpen. A lot of that was on me. So, we just got out-played. They had more heart than we did, I think, and were better prepared and were more aggressive. They reminded me of our team in 2016. It was like every time we took the field, we were going to kick someone’s ass. There was a different level of intensity and fire in that team than there was in our team. Whatever information, whatever they were doing, that’s not the reason we lost. It just made it more of an uphill battle for us. Look, I don’t think anyone would disagree with the fact that they out-played us, the fact that they had more fire, that they had more energy and more heart. It’s a sad reality. That’s not saying anything about our team and our teammates. It’s just the level that those guys were on. It’s something that we need to be better about next year, and something that I’m going to put a big emphasis on being better about — bringing the intensity each game. I do think our division hurt us a little bit, given that we weren’t pressed all year. We never went through the fire to figure out when we face adversity, what’s our response as a team? How much fire do we have and where are we really at? But, that’s not an excuse. That’s just to say we need to be better as players and as a leadership group on the team — the guys that have been there a long time — at holding people accountable to that level of intensity, that level of play, that level of energy throughout the whole season. So, that’s something that we’re going to get better at.”

MLB.com: Your guys could lose a considerable amount of players in free agency this winter. What’re your thoughts on how the team might look next year? No matter what happens in the offseason, you’ll probably again be the favorites in the division, but you obviously don’t want a repeat of this year…

TB: “I think that we have a ton of talent coming back. It would be interesting to see if we put a slightly worse — and by ‘worse,’ I mean, on paper worse. Like, you might not have Brantley and Brantley is a multiple-time All-Star. So, basically, anyone who replaces Brantley in left field is going to be ‘worse’ on paper, right? So, I don’t want it to get misconstrued that the players are worse. Unproven, perhaps, is a better word. You’re probably going to lose Miller and Allen and pretty anyone you put in that role is going to be worse on paper or less proven, especially given our financial constraints. So, it will be interesting to see if, on paper, if we have a worse team next year that gets pushed a little bit more by the division, if we might be more prepared to go further in October. I think it was Kip that said it, he said that the 2016 team was our worst team, but it went the furthest. And I wonder if sometimes it’s almost better to be a little closer in competition level in the division you’re in. You’d rather be a hot team with a lot of character and a lot of heart and a lot of fight than someone who just ran away with it and was just waiting. So, I think next year we have a tremendous core coming back. Obviously, winning and losing starts on the mound and I think that, obviously, returning the starting rotation [helps]. Hopefully we get Danny Salazar and Cody Anderson back from injury, hopefully Nick Goody as well. I think we have some pieces in the bullpen that can — with a couple tweaks here and there — can be very, very valuable. So, I think we have a really good core there and then obviously our entire infield is coming back. The catching core. So, I think there’s a lot o room for excitement there. I think there’s a lot of talent in the room, regardless of whether any moves are made in the offseason or not. Hopefully, Naquin and Zimmer can come back and be healthy. Greg Allen played well. We’re hoping Leonys Martin makes a full recovery and is healthy and can be on the field. We obviously know he wants to be out there, too. So, I think there’s a lot of pieces. You look around and you can say, ‘Naquin was a first-rounder. Zimmer was a first-rounder.’ There’s talent there and who knows what it’s really going to produce on a full-time basis? So, yeah, even with the way this year went, and the amount of talent and character that we’re going to be losing, I think there’s a lot of room for excitement and hope for next season.”

— JB