Earlier this month, a survey of several Padres pitchers produced a few furrowed brows and momentary pauses. The advent of the major-league pitch clock has made PitchCom use even more pervasive than it was last season, the first in which catchers could electronically relay signs to their batterymates. A little more than a year in, did San Diego’s hurlers recognize whose voice they were hearing through their earpieces?
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“I think it’s just an automated voice,” Nick Martinez said.
“I thought it was just, like, a Siri voice,” Ryan Weathers said.
“Like a Google Maps voice,” Martinez clarified. “Very clear and very articulated. But it’s a dude.”
The voice indeed belongs to a man — albeit a very real and present one. Since 2022, every Padres pitcher has had the option of navigating games with the piped-in recommendations of catcher Austin Nola, who frequently goes to the PitchCom device attached to his right shinguard.
Maybe it’s the technology that imparts an auditory resemblance to artificial intelligence. (Last season and before this one, Nola recorded himself uttering an array of pitch types and locations. Game planning and coaching assistant Peter Summerville then programmed his voice into the team’s PitchCom devices.) Maybe Nola has a future in voiceover work. Or maybe rote repetition has dulled the senses.
“I didn’t even know it was Nola’s voice until somebody told me,” reliever Steven Wilson said.
“Now I don’t even notice it,” Nola said. “I don’t even recognize it.”
With one particular pitcher, however, there is no room for mistaken identity. Since spring training, Padres closer Josh Hader has been the lone member of the staff to operate with a distinctly familiar voice ringing in his ears: his own.
Consider it a form of electronically aided reinforcement.
“It’s self-talk for whatever you’re going to do,” Hader said. “If you keep telling yourself what you’re going to do, your mind is going to tell your body that’s what you’re going to do. Whether you do it or not, I mean, that’s after the fact. But when you only have that one thought on what you got to do, you’re not putting thoughts elsewhere and losing focus on what the goal is.”
Focus hasn’t appeared to be an issue in Hader’s career. In the pre-PitchCom days, he already practiced mental visualization while on the mound. Execution hasn’t tended to be a problem, either. Hader owns four All-Star berths, a 2.64 career ERA and the highest lifetime strikeout rate ever among qualifying relievers.
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But, like everyone else in the game, Hader has made adjustments with the arrival of the pitch clock. And, like everyone else, he has sought a new equilibrium.
He seems to have found one via a technological shortcut. For most pitchers, a catcher presses a button on his PitchCom device for the desired pitch type, then holds that button down for the intended location. In the offseason, Hader learned that PitchCom could be programmed so that each button immediately and simultaneously spits out both a pitch type and a location. All he needed were the requisite audio recordings.
So he opened the Voice Memos app on his iPhone and cycled through each of his three pitches (fastball, slider, changeup) along with a variety of possible targets. Now, Hader still leaves the majority of the pitch-calling to his catchers, even as he operates at the command — and with the comfort — of his own voice.
“Previously, before I did this, I would tell myself in my head, like, ‘Fastball up and in.’ Just so for mindset, I’d know what I got to execute,” Hader said. “Being able to do that for the PitchCom now instead of me actually saying it, having myself telling me, it’s just pumping the execution thoughts and knowing, ‘This is all you got to do. Fastball up and in. Boom, boom.’ It’s just more of a mental thing and making sure that you’re locked in.”
Disembodied voices and all, Hader early this season has embodied the definition of being locked in. Through 12 innings, he has conceded one run on four hits and collected 17 strikeouts. He leads the majors with nine saves, having converted every opportunity. According to Statcast, he resides in the top 1 percent of the league in opponents’ expected batting average, expected slugging average, hard-hit percentage and expected ERA. The tracking technology says he has yet to give up a single “Barrel.”
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“He lives locked in,” Padres manager Bob Melvin said.
Hader has achieved pristine results while throwing — and still learning to deploy — a harder, tighter slider he acquired over the winter. (Hitters are 0-for-5 with three strikeouts in at-bats that end with the lefty’s new slider.) He has slashed his median time between pitches from 22.1 seconds last season to 15.8 seconds this season. He has embraced the use of PitchCom while accepting the realities of the pitch clock. Instead of repeatedly shaking off the catcher and wasting precious seconds, he can simply press a button on a device attached to his belt. (Pitchers, now equipped with their own PitchCom remotes, this year gained the ability to call their own pitches.)
“It’s not bad,” Hader said. “I mean, I think the (15-second clock with) runners off is a little short, right? … I don’t have any hate on it or anything like that, but I do think there are some times where you may need a little bit extra time to just slow the game down.
“But overall, it’s nice because there’s not much thinking to it. It’s just you go with what your gut says on what pitch you want to throw and you just attack the zone.”
The Padres, last summer, learned about Hader’s capacity to adjust. He landed in San Diego as a blockbuster trade acquisition and a pitcher mired in a slump. It soon turned into one of the worst stretches by a big-league reliever in recent memory. Then Hader found his way back to effectiveness, acting on the recommendations of pitching coach Ruben Niebla and bullpen coach Ben Fritz, two instructors he was just getting to know. In the postseason, he was more effective than ever.
This spring, Padres catchers weren’t surprised when they learned Hader had elected to use his own voice for PitchCom. To them, it was an elite performer making yet another adjustment and evolving with the times.
“We all got our little cues,” Luis Campusano said.
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“For some people, it helps to have their own voice for their visualization of where they want their pitch to go,” said Nola, who later acknowledged he had yet to hear of another pitcher doing the same thing.
Hader, approached recently about his PitchCom usage, hadn’t either. He pointed out that most pitchers, especially ones with larger repertoires, can’t access all their desired pitch locations without having to hold down a button. (Each device has nine pitch-related buttons, and settings can be tweaked to fit different pitchers. “For mine,” Hader said, “you just press the button and it tells you the location and the pitch.”) As far as he knew, his specially tailored PitchCom mode was unique. He hadn’t heard that former Padres catcher Austin Hedges, while with Cleveland last year, installed brief but colorful PitchCom messages to inspire his pitchers.
“It’s not really any motivation or anything like that,” Hader said of feeding in his own voice. “It’s just telling yourself what you need to execute. I mean, you’re just telling yourself multiple times now with the PitchCom because you’re hearing yourself.”
For now, all other Padres pitchers hear Nola’s voice through PitchCom, whether they know it or not. Almost all of them seem content with that standard. “I feel comfortable with it because that voice is familiar to me,” said Yu Darvish, who has known since last season it belongs to Nola. “When I hear that, I feel more relaxed.” Darvish added, pointing to his head: “I feel like he’s here.”
Some members of the staff effectively shrugged when presented with the idea of using their own voice. Pitching is already difficult enough. Pitching with the pressure of a clock is even tougher. “I’m not thinking about it,” Wilson chuckled to an inquisitive reporter. “To me, it could be your voice for all I care.”
Still others suggested they would be open to following Hader’s lead. “I might play around with that, see what I get,” Martinez said. “See if I like it.”
Then again, few pitchers wield a repertoire as streamlined and as scintillating as Hader’s. Virtually no one can imitate the closer who so far has been the most automatic contributor on an offensively disappointing team.
The Padres (13-13) must hit more, yes. And for an ambitious franchise to meet stratospheric expectations, Hader must maintain the historic excellence that has defined his career. In this new era of the pitch clock and PitchCom, the self-talk will continue.
(Top photo: Rick Scuteri / USA Today)
