The Brushback Baseball Podcast Tyler Rahmatulla & David Klein

We are finally back! Tyler welcomed a new baby boy at the end of May forcing TBBP to take a couple months off. But we are back in action and MLB is too (almost). In this episode, we recap some of what has happened while we were gone and what baseball is going to look like during the 60 game season.

Steve Rodriguez has quite the baseball resume... See below from Stanford Baseball's bio on Stevie:

"Steve Rodriguez enters the 2020 season in his first season as a Stanford assistant coach after spending the previous three seasons with UCLA as the Director of Baseball Operations. A student-athlete for the Bruins from 2009-11, Rodriguez played six seasons as a member of the Arizona Diamondback and Atlanta Braves organizations (2011-16).

A native of Lomita, California, Rodriguez played 147 games at catcher with UCLA, making 137 starts across three seasons. He finished with a career .215 batting average with 10 home runs and 64 RBI while serving as catcher for future first-round picks in the Major League Baseball draft Gerrit Cole and Trevor Bauer. During his three seasons, the Bruins pitching staff owned a 3.33 earned-run average with over 1,700 strikeouts. In 2010, Rodriguez was a member of the United States Collegiate National team.

Rodriguez was selected in the 15th round of the of the 2011 MLB amateur draft by the Arizona Diamondbacks and made it to as high as Double-A with both the Diamondbacks and the Braves. He hit .221 in his professional career with four home runs and 79 RBIs. Rodriguez had one of his best seasons in 2014 when he was promoted to Double-A Mobile and hit .267 with a .352 slugging percentage and scored 11 runs in 60 games for the BayBears."

Thanks for watching and listening!!

Please like and subscribe for more content like this!!
*Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brushback_baseball_podcast
*Listen on Simplecast: https://the-brushback-baseball-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes
*Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-step-brothers-baseball-podcast/id1495557153
*Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1vgY95Jt26aR2QRU0K1vo2

Tyler and David discuss some of the latest news around MLB including the punishment (or lack there of) to Alex Cora and the Red Sox, and MLB's plan to resume play. We also share and discuss our All-Time team, here is the roster breakdown:

- Starting 9
- 1 Bench Infielder
- 1 Bench Outfielder
- 5 Starting Pitchers
- 4 Relief Pitchers
- 1 Closer

Thanks for watching and listening!!

Please like and subscribe for more content like this!!
*Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brushback_baseball_podcast
*Listen on Simplecast: https://the-brushback-baseball-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes
*Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-step-brothers-baseball-podcast/id1495557153
*Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1vgY95Jt26aR2QRU0K1vo2

In this episode, Tyler and David sit down with Billie Plunk who is married to former Big League veteran Eric Plunk. Billie and Eric have been together since they were only 17 years old throughout the whole journey from the Minor Leagues, Major Leagues, and life after baseball. Being a spouse of a professional athlete gets overlooked quite a bit, yet it's such a challenging position. Billie offers great insight from this unique perspective!

Thanks for watching and listening!!

Please like and subscribe for more content like this!!
*Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brushback_baseball_podcast
*Listen on Simplecast: https://the-brushback-baseball-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes
*Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-step-brothers-baseball-podcast/id1495557153
*Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1vgY95Jt26aR2QRU0K1vo2

In this weeks episode, we sat down with Tyler's cousin-in-law Casey Pauli. Though Casey was born in Iowa, he graduated out of Scottsdale, Arizona's Saguaro High School. He was an awesome middle infielder who earned a scholarship to Kirkwood Community College (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) where he was Second Team All-Region in 2004. Casey eventually transferred to Wartburg College (Waverly, Iowa) where he earned Third Team All-ABCA Region honors in 2006 & First Team All-ABCA Region honors in 2007.

Upon graduating from Wartburg, Casey started his coaching career at both of his alma mater's: spending 1 year as assistant coach at Wartburg and 5 years as assistant coach at Kirkwood. Most recently, Casey spent the last 4 seasons as an assistant coach at Prairie High School in Cedar Rapids.

He also met his wife Cari (formerly Cari Kinzenbaw) at Kirkwood and the two transferred to Wartburg together. Cari was also a decorated softball player as well: at Wartburg, she was and Academic All American and First team All-ABCA Region in 2006. Cari's father, Fritz Kinzenbaw, was long time owner of the Red Top baseball team of the semi-pro: Iowa Valley League. Casey (and Tyler) both played for the "Toppers" in the summer.

Just recently, Casey became an owner of a DBAT baseball facility located in Marion, Iowa. They opened doors in early February 2020 and have about 21,000 sq. ft. of turf and 15 batting cages. If you're in the area and are interested, please go check them out!!

We've finally been called up to the Big Leagues (...well, that is in terms of video podcasting). In this episode, we sit down and talk with New York Yankees catcher: Kyle Higashioka. "Higgy" gives us some insight into how he battled through the Minor Leagues for 9 years and welcomed change in order to make it to the Major Leagues. He discusses his debut, his first MLB homerun, his swing change, what it was like to catch Mariano Rivera, and much more....

Thanks for watching and listening!!

Please like and subscribe for more content like this!!
*Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC68A4FBydeLLvOkjjqwC11w/
*Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brushback_baseball_podcast
*Listen on Simplecast: https://the-brushback-baseball-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes
*Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-step-brothers-baseball-podcast/id1495557153
*Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1vgY95Jt26aR2QRU0K1vo2