Kopps and Optitz on Pitching Ninja + DVH Thoughts

Opitz and Kopps start around 9 minutes in, but Pitching Ninja's shows are always good so better to watch the entire thing.

Separately, DVH's year-end update had some pretty interesting points. If you haven't watched, cliff notes:

- The recruiting, signing, and transfer processes are going to be a mad dash since the MLB moved the draft back to July for no apparent reason (MLB says to keep it around the AS game to garner more attention... MLB HQ aren't good at their jobs, honestly)

- Covered in the other thread, but Pallette doesn't look to need TJ, so should be good to go by fall

- Based on what we have coming back (my thoughts), our weekend rotation of Pallette, Wiggins, and Noland should be the best rotation we've had in a while, especially if Noland keeps the ball down and moving like he did near the EOY... DVH hinted at potentially Tole working into the rotation

- Core should be solid with Wallace, Moore, Welch, Leach, Webb, Slavens (likely), and then a lot of talented freshman and underclassmen

- Bullpen stacked with arms but we'll see how it plays out

The most interesting to me was at the end. Probably the final 5-6 minutes when he was talking about being motivated and his family. Some of his lines about "not having the same guilt" for missing his daughters events now that they're older were interesting. His oldest is 27 and youngest is 23 and engaged. If you rewind the clock, when we really started recruiting at an insane level was right around 2016-2017, which would be when his youngest got out of the house.

Now that's not a knock on DVH, nor is it attributing our success level only to that as there are many factors. Vitello had picked up recruiting quite a bit in the years before that when he was here. Arkansas' in-state talent started to really pick up around the same time too. As with everything, reasons are always pie charts with various factors, even though human nature LOVES to think of things as binary. But it is interesting that all of these factors, as well as several others I'm not mentioning, somewhat come together at once.