At tonight’s Meet The Coaches event, Ryan Martin and Andrew Della Piana sat down with Cal Poly RHP Laif Palmer about being a part of the Falmouth community, playing under Jarrod Saltalamacchia, and much more!
The Falmouth Commodores are one of ten teams playing in the Cape Cod Baseball League (CCBL), The premier amateur baseball league in the nation since 1885!
This is a fun event so far. Got Leif with us. Leif, I want to start about start about your time here in Fmouth. I know you’ve only been here for a couple weeks. How it’s been so far? Yeah, I mean, so far it’s been a great time. Um, I have super super nice host family. Um, and the team’s great. We have a lot of fun. Um, you know, good group of guys. So, it’s it’s been great so far. Le, we just heard so much about host families, the importance in this league. How about a shout out to the host family? Who’s your host family? Who are you living with? What that’s experience been like so far? Yeah, I’m with uh their names are Steve and Pat. Um, they’re super into Falmouth. Um, they’re really involved with the Commodores. Um, and they’re super nice. They cook us dinner every night. Um, it’s great. Great hospitality for them. What’s What’s the best meal you’ve had so far? They made this chicken parm the other night. That’s good. It was delicious. Are you a big Italian food guy? I might be now. Yeah. We just heard from Steve as well. He was mentioning if you have to buy 18 more eggs again, he’s going to go crazy. I guess that’s what the house is like. I do make a lot of eggs. Yeah, I make four eggs every morning. I just running through them. Make a whole lot of omelets or just scrambled scrambled eggs. All right, that works well. Joined by Lelay Palmer during meet the coaches event here at St. Barnabas Church. Le again this night introducing the new coaching staff to the community. What’s been your impression so far of being coached by Jared Salultakia and Todd Carol as a pitching coach? Yeah, it’s been great. It’s uh it’s kind of like a lot of the guys are saying it’s like a minor league feel where we get, you know, best of the best players come around from everywhere and we all get thrown into a locker room and we just go play, you know, and um Salty and TC they, you know, they just kind of guide us. They don’t give us um crazy advice because they know that we’re good. So, they just make sure we’re good mentally. Um and then we just go out there and play. And there’s been plenty of Oregon State guys here before. How does that kind of change your mentality going into maybe what your expectations were of the Cape Cod Baseball League coming in? Yeah, so Gavin Turley and Travis Bazan are two guys that I played with and they both played for Falman. I’m sure you guys know him pretty well. Um that Travis guy was pretty good, too. Yeah. Yeah, he’s he’s all right. He’s pretty good. Um yeah, so obviously Oregon State, I learned a lot from the two of them. Even though I’m a pitcher and they were hitters, like I would face them all the time and it was great to like talk to them and hear their feedback. And you know, I remember talking to Gavin before I came out here to Falmouth and he said just great things and you know how much fun he had out here and it’s just a great experience overall. You know, there’s the baseball which is obviously good, but outside of that it’s also there’s a lot of great stuff out here. Whether it’s through conversations with guys like Gavin or just the overall perception of the Cape Cod Baseball League, how has that initial expectation kind of been met or been different since you got here? Yeah, I guess I didn’t really know what to expect uh before I came out here. Um, I’d say, you know, it’s it’s definitely a little bit less, it’s less intense than I thought it would be, but in a good way. Um, like I said, they kind of just let us go out there and play, which I think makes us play better. And, you know, it’s it’s fun to just be in a bullpen with, you know, a bunch of other guys who are kind of, you know, on similar levels with each other. And, you know, we all talk and we learn from each other. Um like the other day I was talking with u Zach Johnston about you know change up grips stuff like that like I think that’s part of the experience that’s huge just learning from other people you know other pitchers that you know go to different places that are across the country and you know I can talk to them and pick up some few things from them and they can learn some stuff from me. It’s all fun. Yeah. How do you feel like you can now take that insight as you work into Calpali a new school for you? Yeah. now that I I mean it’s great to have this experience, you know, um because Calpali um you know I’m not gonna be playing a lot of these East Coast players. So it’s exciting. It’s fun to be able to you know face these guys over the summer and you know kind of see how I stack up against them and then I can take that into Calpali and you know hope my goal is to go earn a starting spot there. Um you know I think I’m learning a lot here but it’s going to help me with that. Yeahff last call for raffle tickets here at St. Barnabas. Couple more questions though for com pitcher Le Palmer. Le Palmer. Leif, we’ve talked to some players. Some knew Saltaki would be here getting to Felmouth. Others were just signing up for the Cape Cod Baseball League and then had him come by. Uh your experience about getting into this league. What was it like? Uh and finally becoming a commoner after the regionals. Yeah. Um I got set up with Falmouth probably I was one I was one of the later guys. I know a lot of guys signed with them in the fall like pretty early on. Um I ended up signing with Falmouth uh in like late May. Um, you know, and I heard I’d heard good things about Salty. You know, obviously with him being an ex big league catcher. Yeah, look who we got too. Homer’s here. Homer. Yeah. How you doing, Homer? What’s up, Homer? Mascot of Commodores. Go ahead, Le. Anyways, um um yeah, so I heard a lot of good things about Salty with him being an ex big league catcher, you know, world champion. That got me excited to come here because you know being a pitcher it’s nice to have a catcher as your head coach and you know he sees a lot of things out of pitchers that you know sometimes that we might not even realize. Um you know and then I got in the transfer portal as well and you know that kind of shook things up for me. I wasn’t able to get out here as early as I thought and you know Salty before I even met him you know he was giving me calls and you know telling me it’s okay. I can get out here whenever I whenever I can. And you know, he was even reaching out to some schools for me, which is really cool. You’re wearing the the Rockies hat. Colorado native. I am. So, growing up a baseball fan, you remember Saltakia from any of those Red Sox teams or You don’t remember the 07 World Series, right? You might have been a little too young for that. Okay. But I do remember hearing his name and seeing him play. Yeah. Which is pretty cool. Then it’s like, you know, I walk into the locker room and there he is, you know. and working with different catchers as well kind of makes this league a little bit more neat unique too with even in any summer ball you do. But how has that been working with him and trying to work with different catchers as well as you you do go to a new school? Yeah, it’s it’s cool just being around different catchers. Um you know like uh Bear Harrison, he’s at Texas A&M and he catches a lot of uh super high level arms. Um, so it’s cool being able to just be like, “Hey, like I’m going to throw a bullpen to him and, you know, let’s see what he has to say about, you know, how some of my pitches might be moving and um, you know, and it’s it’s it’s interesting at first as a pitcher, you know, when you’re throwing to a catcher that you’ve never thrown to before. Uh, there’s always kind of a learning curve. There’s an adjustment. Um, so that’s something you have to get used to. But I mean, all these guys are so good that, you know, I throw three pitches and they’re ready for it, you know. Yeah. Got to say, you’re going to have to get used to that. also going to have to get used to signing some autographs which I think is next up for you. That’s Commodore’s pitcher Le Palmer, the newest Calpolly Mustang spending some time with us during meet the coaches event at St. Barnabas Church. Leif, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you guys. Thanks Le. We’ll be right back after
