Dodgers Pregame interview Max Muncy on football, swing adjustment, & hand injury 8/12/22

All right, Max, we are here in Kansas City. It's kind of fun when you're at a new, it feels like kind of a new place, doesn't it? Yeah, it's always fun when you play these interleague matchups. You know, it's not places that we go to very often. And, you know, for me, the last time I was here was 15 or 16, I'm not sure. And I don't know when the last time a lot of these guys were here. So it's, it's always fun when you go to a new place. It's just, you know, you get to take insights. And, you know, for guys that have been here, it's probably been several years also. So, you know, it's just, it's a nice change of pace. Obviously we've been seeing things get going offensively for you. But before we dive into kind of where you're at there, every time, not every time, but often when your name comes up, it talks, we talk about how just such an athlete you are. And we are across the street from Arrowhead Stadium right now. Is there any thought of you playing football? I know you played when you were younger, but like, if you were to do that, what position would you be? So when I played, I was, I was a linebacker. I switched between middle and outside linebacker. I had a lot of fun with it, but that was at a time when I was really starting to take off in baseball. And, you know, I suffered some injuries and the injuries that happened didn't happen during football season. You know, it was just one of those things where, you know, in growing up in Texas, you always play spring football and that's during baseball season. And so the majority of time I was getting hurt was during spring football and not even in the, you know, regular season. So I was missing out on baseball and it was kind of like, I know I can go somewhere in baseball. I don't know about football. I don't know if I have the size to go anywhere in football. So, you know, that was kind of where that decision came in to just stick with baseball. I miss football a lot. It was a lot of fun. You know, my mentality plays well in football, but, you know, I just, I don't, at the end of the day, I don't know if I would have had the size to continue in football. It is still kind of cool though, when you pull up here and you see Arrowhead on one side and then here at Kauffman Stadium. So, but we're, baseball is working and you're really good at it. So let's not get to that. So when you look at where you've just been offensively, I know you told us a few things mechanically have changed, but is there one thing specific that you point to that's allowing you to help get those results right now? It's just being able to get my body downhill. You know, get my shoulders downhill. The whole year I've been working uphill and a lot of that is, you know, kind of stems from my elbow issue. It's just the elbow got healthy and it got strong. And what made it feel comfortable was just putting it in a slot that was not the correct slot for my swing. And it took me a while to realize that. And we tried to fix it. We were trying to fix it in certain ways. And my body just didn't want to cooperate just because of, you know, what was feeling natural to that elbow. And so we had to make some radical adjustments and we started that in Colorado, you know, doing a step back. And that's something that I've never done before. It's a lot of movement for my swing, but it's allowed my body to get to the correct spot. And it's allowing my elbow to work the way it's supposed to work. And, you know, we've been seeing the results of that. Where did that idea of the step back, where did that come from? You know, it was me and the hitting coaches. We were in the cage one day and we were just kind of, we were almost throwing our hands up, kind of like, man, we just can't figure this out. And so we started just trying a bunch of different radical things. And, you know, this one felt pretty good. And we said, yeah, why don't we just, why don't we just try this? You know, let's just go out there. If it doesn't work, I can't really be in any worse of a spot than what I was in. So let's just give it a shot and see what happens. And we, you know, we looked at the film and we didn't really care about the results. We just cared about like, what did it look like? And my swing looked like my swing. And we kind of just stuck with that. And, you know, the next day we say, let's just continue it. And so each day was just, hey, let's continue it. Let's continue it. And now we're where we're at right now. And so it's just something we're going to keep doing because it feels good. Would you say it also feels natural right now? No, it doesn't feel, the swing feels natural. What I'm doing doesn't feel natural though. But that was also another thought was, if I'm in the batter's box doing something that doesn't feel comfortable, then maybe what, maybe my natural swing will have a chance to come out because I'm worried about other things. I like that. So the other day in the game, we saw a ball kind of come up pretty high on you. Got your wrist and your hand, I guess, probably more. You had an X-ray, things were all negative. You are now back in the lineup today. At what point did you realize that you were kind of just good to go? It was just keeping an eye on it. You know, when it happened, I didn't realize it was my hand at first because my hand went numb immediately. It ricocheted off my hand and then my chest and chin. And I was kind of like, you know, I was rubbing my chest. And so everyone's like, oh, is your chest all right? I was like, well, it's my hand. And they're like, your hand? And I was like, yeah, well, my hand went numb at first. And so I couldn't feel anything. And then, you know, after several moments, I just felt a bunch of tingling. And now I look down and my hand was about three times the size of the normal, you know, what it normally looks like. And I couldn't close it, couldn't squeeze the bat. And so, you know, that was a little bit of an issue. And then we were just, well, let's keep an eye on it. We got x-rays. I didn't think it was broken. It was just the hand swelled up and I couldn't move it. The next day, the swelling went down. And then, you know, after that, it was back to normal. So now it's just, you know, just keep at it. Back to normal and back out there playing third base today. What would you say is just when you guys are facing an interleague team, so not a team you see very often, well, not often at all, what's a focus for tonight to help you guys keep this win streak alive? We just gotta focus on what we do. You know, we say it all the time. It doesn't matter who we're playing. If we go out there and we take care of what we need to take care of and we play the game that we have, play the inning, the pitch, you know, we're gonna put ourselves in a good chance to win and we feel really good about that. So, you know, we're gonna go over the pitchers and see what they got. And, you know, we're just gonna try to take it one pitch at a time and just focus on that. Well, Max, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you.