Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1086: A Podcast With Precedent

Episode Date: July 20, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about why so many moves are being made in advance of the trade deadline, the Yankees-White Sox trade, the J.D. Martinez deal, and Yoan Moncada’s promotion, then follow up on previous topics including All-Star Game revisions, Matt Holliday’s odd slide, the Salina Stockade, strange batting stances, and unusual fields […]

You're in buyer's hands, you can't really lose Just the dough you spend and all the pain you use It's from the start It's from the start Oh, that's so not the way The effort and art comes from the heart Place its blood red and it's from the start. Hello and welcome to episode 1086 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangrass presented by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangrass. Hello. Hello. There's so much news. How are we supposed to talk about all this news? We have emails to get to. Don't these teams know we have pressing, non-time-sensitive emails to answer? I don't even know how we have time to do a podcast because we need to be writing about said news. But that's for after the podcast and after the chat. Right.

So we will get to emails shortly, but maybe a brief rundown of the news, which I will probably break down in greater detail on my other baseball podcast if you're in the market for that. late given that we've already seen the Quintana trade. We've seen JD Martinez going to the Diamondbacks. We've seen the Yankees pull off a three-player acquisition of David Robertson, Todd Frazier, and Tommy Canely. Is there a consistent theme here? Because usually GMs will wait until the last second often to see if they can get the best deal or decide whether they're buyers or sellers. So is it just that there are so many teams that are in close races that the fear is that A, there won't be that many sellers and so you have to act when someone's available and B, these teams need these better players for every single game they can get them because it might make a difference to have an extra two or three Jose Quintana starts, for instance? Yeah, I guess in a sense, it's silly to wait until the actual deadline day, because when you

are trading players, you might as well get an extra week or two or three of said players. So of course, there's some sort of negotiating strategy if you just hold out into the last possible minute. But last year, for example, we saw the Phillies got kind of screwed with Jeremy Hellickson because they waited a little too long. And then because of matters that were out of their control, they just couldn't consummate an offer to get rid of him. So I think it just makes things more difficult to wait until deadline day. And while that isn't really an explanation for why teams suddenly aren't waiting until deadline day, because I think we all remember deadline days being a lot more active and there being fewer trades in advance. I don't know. It seems like it's more optimal to just kind of agree

to trades now. I'm going to guess maybe teams are just more willing to make a deal and not trying to negotiate the other team's pants off. Just playing, I guess, metaphorical hardball around the literal hardball. So I don't know why teams would wait until deadline day if they can find a good deal. I think it's certainly a cloudy, a muddied landscape of potential buyers and sellers, but a team like the White Sox pretty clearly was going to be a seller. From their perspective, they had every reason to move some pitchers as soon as they could. I'm sure that Canely accepted these are some players that they would have liked to deal last winter, but they just weren't really able to come to an agreement. So you were talking about pitchers i think it makes some

sense to deal sooner just because you know the risk and when you were dealing someone like jd martinez well there just isn't really a market for players like jd martinez which is weird but it turns out the contending teams this year are all really good at hitting. So Dave Cameron just wrote an article on Fangraphs about how there is not a clear fit for J.D. Martinez outside of Arizona among the contending teams. And I don't know how to argue that. Yeah. And maybe it's that. Maybe it's a tendency not to overpay for rentals the way that we have seen teams do in the past. A lot of these players who are changing teams are under team control for future years, including the two bullpen guys the Yankees got, including Quintana. Not the case for Frazier,

not the case for Martinez, and maybe the returns in those deals were a little lighter than people expected as a result. But obviously, these teams get a lot better. They improve real weak points. These were already good teams, the Diamondbacks and the Yankees, but Diamondbacks get a big I don't know whether this is as good as the Batances-Miller-Chapman bullpen that they had for half of last season, but it's pretty close because they still have Batances and Chapman, who is not getting quite as many whiffs as he has in the past this year, but still really good, obviously. And then now they have Canely and Robertson and some pretty good middle inning guys too. So it's like almost everyone they're going to use now in relief is really effective. So that's pretty scary. They lost Michael Pineda, of course, and maybe they'll still add a starter.

I don't know. But one way to compensate for the loss of a starter is to add a bunch of good bullpen guys. And they have certainly done that. So these are all players that were very predictable as trade chips and teams that were pretty predictable as sellers. And the spots that these guys have gone to are all spots where they were sorely needed. So other than the timing, which is surprisingly early, this deadline is working out in a very logical way. I have three favorite angles on the Yankees and White Sox trade the timing, which is surprisingly early, this deadline is working out in a very logical way. I have three favorite angles on the Yankees and White Sox trade.

One, I like that the Yankees basically stomped all over the Red Sox because the Red Sox would have been interested in the exact same three players the Yankees picked up. Yes, exactly. Everybody needs bullpen help and the Red Sox need a third baseman more than anyone. And the Yankees got a third baseman who they might use as a first baseman. So just kind of gloating. That one is good. I love what the Yankees got a third baseman who they might use as a first baseman so just kind of gloating that one is good I love what the Yankees have done to their bullpen I'm kind of big on Tommy Canley this year I've been monitoring him from the beginning

because he had such an unbelievable April and he's been fun to watch and I also had missed but I like that there was an article in the middle of May you might have seen this by now the former Tommy Canley teammate Latroy Hawkins he now works on the Twins broadcast. And he said that Canley was, quote, one of the worst teammates I've ever had in my life. So I don't know what to make of that. Maybe Canley is kind of a prick. He's a professional baseball player. So there's a reasonably high probability that he is kind of a prick. There's a massive age difference between Canley and Hawkins. So, you know, they're just at different points in their life. And they would have been as well when they were teammates in, I'm going to guess that must have been Colorado. So I can't really speak to what Canley's like as a teammate. The one person

who has, I guess, is Hawkins, and he did not speak of him well. Although the White Sox were quick to come to Canley's defense in the middle of May, which made sense given that Canley was still on the White Sox, and they probably didn't want to let a Twins broadcaster cause some sort of clubhouse nightmare. And so on top of the moves that have actually been made, we've got the Orioles seemingly getting approval to make moves with guys like Britton or anyone else in the bullpen. So that means that more moves probably forthcoming. We've got Carlos Correa, who has the Mike Trout injury now, unfortunately, which is sad. We get Trout back, and then the player I picked to be the second most valuable player in the league after Trout is now out for roughly the same amount of time.

Obviously, the Astros have an incredibly historically deep lineup, so I don't know that they'll even miss a beat while korea's gone as long as he's back in at full strength by the playoffs but it's been a busy week in baseball just uh the the korea injury is good news for trout because now it clears the way for him to just move up into number one in position player war by the end of the year just uh one more one more domino that's fallen but the the bad news is that it increases the probability that we will not be able to write an article at the end of the year about how the Astros did in fact have a historically dominant lineup because they will now perform worse, which is a bummer because there is

nothing more valuable than an article idea. Yeah, that's right. And the White Sox promoting Johan Moncada now just because their farm system is just too full to contain him, I guess. They just need a spot down there because they have so many prospects, including another maybe top 50-ish guy that they got from the Yankees, according to Baseball America's evaluation. So lots of action. Anything else you want to say about any of those moves or rumored moves before we move on? No, I guess it was a neat coincidence. Yesterday, I wrote about Tommy Canely with no inkling that he was about to be moved. And it was toward the end of the day, and we sort of have a publishing schedule around a fan graph.

And I was writing late in the day, and I thought, they probably want me to schedule this for the morning. But I don't know, this is the time of year, you never really know when something's going to get traded. And I'm just going to put this on the website now. Tommy Kinley had not been tagged on MLB Trade Rumors, which obsessively tags every player who's linked in any rumor, no matter how non-revelatory they are. Yes. Tommy Kinley had not been on MLB Trade Rumors since May of 2016.

There was no public hint that Kinley was about to go anywhere. But of course, objectively, he made sense as a trade chip, as a cost-controlled pop-up reliever on a bad team. And boom, all of a sudden, there he goes. He's probably the most valuable player the Yankees got in that package. And I look forward to writing about their bullpen a little later today because it looks so good. Although, like you mentioned, Chapman has been worse and Betances has not thrown strikes at all. Yeah. All right. So let's get to some follow ups first before we get to new questions so we got a lot of responses to our discussion about the all-star game and what if anything should be done to change the format and a lot of people

mentioned the nhl all-star game precedent of sort of testing out rule changes in this environment, which would be fun, but I'm not sure it's workable really in baseball. I think, I don't know that there's a clear comparison you can make, like the NHL's three-on-three format. I don't know what that would be in baseball. I think in one of your emails, you suggested like five-man infield, four-man outfield kind of thing. But that doesn't make as much sense really as three on three on a permanent full game basis. And whenever, you know, you have to convince people to do something for just one game, it's not easy. And a lot of people propose that you could just test out new rules.

Like the Atlantic League, for instance, has just been a kind of testing ground for new rules, pace of play stuff, things that teams could do to speed up games. But that's on a full season basis. And I just have to imagine it would be a tough sell to say to a bunch of veteran major league stars, hey, congrats on your great first half. Now relearn the rules of baseball for this one exhibition game that just seems tough right like i think they just want to take their victory lap and have a nice day in the sun and not have to like you know come up with a bunch of new rules for

how to play baseball so i just imagine that being a tough sell, although it would be fun for spectators, I think. But another person proposed that maybe the KBO, the Korean Baseball League, is a good precedent here. And someone forwarded us a Say Hey Baseball blog post from Mina Dunn, who was writing about the KBO All-star game so she says fans have often pointed to the nhl's skills competition as something mlb could integrate into its own all-star festivities and the kbo provides a blueprint in particular there's the perfect pitcher competition and the perfect hitter competition there's no perfect bunting competition yet but i believe that if we keep insisting upon justice we will get there as a people the perfect pitching competition involves pitchers attempting to hit as many bats as possible, which, okay, doesn't sound optimal, but the bats are batterless, and it would give Aroldis Chapman something to be good at again. Ooh, that's a sick burn on Aroldis Chapman there. There's even something for DH Haters Club members out there. Relief pitcher, the Kia Tigers' Yoon Dong Kim cleaned up at the perfect hitter

competition. The event features hitters trying to hit balls off a tee to hit targets scattered across the field. Tee work is maybe the last thing you want to watch your favorite players do, but throw a countdown clock in there, maybe some teams, and I'm in. The KBO also has its own home run derby called the Home Run Race, which is split up into two days, effectively combating the fatigue that MLB players experience in later rounds, etc, etc. So those both sound fun. I would watch both of those. I don't know if they are better than a game in the long term, but certainly as a one time thing, I would be into it. Agreed. I don't know if players would be interested in having the home run derby split up over two days. I think they'd just as soon be

done with it. And maybe you could just kind of shorten it so that they become less fatigued. But as we've already talked about, something like the Perfect Pitcher Competition and the Perfect Batter Competition would be great. I think it's absolutely delightful that they're referred to as the Perfect Pitcher and Perfect Batter Competitions

because, you know, there's a little more to pitching and batting than aiming. But nevertheless, what more do you need than an idea and some high level professional precedent so do it man fred i know you're listening to this because you are not a busy man the all-star break is over what do you have to worry about trades i guess you have to approve trades but you know when you come around to listening to this podcast i'm sure we are the first people to come up with this idea absolutely certain no one's ever come up with a skills competition so

just just do it just do it You know what? Even keep the game Just do it Yeah, thanks to Brandon for forwarding that KBO info And then another follow-up from Matt This is about the Matt Holliday base running play That we talked about on the last episode Where he, instead of running into the double play

Ran back to first base from first base, essentially And tried to break up a double play or stay out of a tag or something. Who knows what he was doing? Anyway, Matt says, your discussion of Matt Holiday's non-interference play on Saturday night suggested that it was an unprecedented play, which is, of course, a challenge to anyone steeped in baseball history. And that is always the case. There is always a precedent. Anyway, it reminded me and my friends of a fairly famous play from Game 7 of the 1960 World Series That tends to get overshadowed by the even more famous events of that game Namely, Mickey Mantle's dive back to first base in the top of the ninth inning

To set the stage, the Pirates led a seesaw battle by 9-8 And the Yankees had Gil McDougald on third base and Mantle on first in the top of the ninth with one out Yogi Berra pulled a hard grounder on the first baseline, and Rocky Nelson, the Pirates' first baseman, fielded the ball and stepped on first base. Mantle, who had not moved much from where he had taken his lead, had no chance of making it to second base and instead dove back into first, evading Nelson's tag. Mantle was entitled to the base since the force was off, and while this was happening, McDougald scored the tying run without a play.

It was all for naught from the Yankees' perspective because Bill Mazeroski homered in the bottom of the ninth. From Mazeroski's perspective, it was just as well that Nelson didn't tag Mantle or throw home to catch McDougald. And he links to a recent New York Times article with some pictures of the play, which were discovered. There was video discovered of this play 50 years after the event. And Matt says, so perhaps Matt Holliday thought back to his famous predecessor and making the split second decision to try to go back to first, not realizing that the situation was different in the 2017 game. First base had not been tagged.

I'm sure this would be news to Matt Holliday as well as to us. But it is a good precedent. Thank you, Matt. I can't tell. Whenever somebody tells us about something that happened in baseball history, there's a gauge in my brain that it's sort of like a humiliation gauge of like, what level humiliated should I be for not already knowing about this? You know, like I don't know that much about baseball from 1960, but I don't know. This feels like maybe one of this is like a six, maybe a five out of 10. Like maybe I should have known about this before.

I could be being too hard on myself because obviously, you know, about the Masarowski home run and all that stuff. But I don't know. How highly do you consider it embarrassing that you didn't already know about one of the more famous, I guess, clever base running plays in Major League history in a game seven of the World Series? Yeah, I don't feel too bad about this one just because, as Matt says, it was so overshadowed by the way that game ended. If you're going to preserve one fact about that game, it would not

be Mickey Mantle's base running play. So yeah, we've had some egregious oversights in our surveys of baseball's history in the past, but I think this one I don't feel too bad about. We only got one person writing in about it, which usually if we miss something obvious, we get more than that. So that's a decent indicator. I guess, imagine if the Alex Gordon potential inside the park home run in game seven of the 2014 World Series happened, except it was a tie game, then the game ended under some other terms, then no one would be writing about the Alex Gordon potential inside the park home run, which turned out to be like the topic of the month, if not the year. And I don't know, maybe that would be the best recent post precedent. Recent example of a base running play in a similar

situation. I don't even remember, I guess what happened in that God, the Red Sox Cardinals World Series game, what was Alan Craig was involved at third base, and there was a weird slide. There's been too much baseball since then, but that was controversial. And now I remember pretty much zero details aside from the two teams in the World Series were involved in a controversial play. Well, it's lost. Right. We also got a question or a suggestion from a listener named Brett. This was also related to the All-Star Game, and he said, put the All-Star Game in Omaha every year. He says, I don't live in Omaha. It doesn't

even have to be Omaha, but I think having the All-Star Game in some AAA city or like a high A city, if they could ever get stadium and accommodation infrastructure in place in the middle of the country would add some atmosphere. One of my favorite things about Hall of Fame weekend is just how many baseball players, writers, coaches And fans descend on Cooperstown It's just great ambiance and I think there's a certain Electricity in town Omaha feels that way during the College World Series

And I think there are lots of cities like that That would love to be the 20 year home of the All-Star game or something This wouldn't necessarily make the game itself more entertaining But I think it would provide some excitement for the locals And allow for some of the same baseball Pilgrimages people take to Cooperstown. Plus, there'd be this odd mix of hometown favorites rather than rooting for the home team guys. People might root for Omaha Storm Chasers alums, old College World Series favorites,

Nebraska or Creighton alums. Not that there are that many of those guys from Nebraska, etc. I just think the vibe of the All-Star game always being in the same city would be cool. Be curious to hear your thoughts. And I do see some appeal there, but obviously there are good reasons why it's done the way it's done. You have a Major League City with a Major League Stadium. You don't have to do a whole lot of special preparation for this or have guys have a tough time getting there on a short all-star break and I think that and plus this is intended to be a showcase event for fairly new stadiums you get a new ballpark you get an all-star game a few years after that usually so

I don't know I see the appeal it would be cool if there were just some small town that somewhat randomly had the all-star game every year. And that was just a local tradition. And there was local character and all of that. But I don't know that that outweighs all of the benefits of doing it in a big league city. Pop-up skills competitions. You have all the players to stand on a city, right? Just already a pre-planned city.

You need like accommodations and all that stuff. Then let's say you have the home run derby coming up. You kidnap all eight competitors. You put them in a van. That van drives somewhere into town. It's unannounced, and they just go to a city block, just an empty, vacant city block. Then you just start tossing baseballs their way and seeing what they do with them. It doesn't really matter where the fences are, right?

As long as it's even for everybody, it doesn't really matter. They just pop up. I don't know. Maybe it's like competition as long as it's even for everybody it doesn't really matter and they just pop up i don't know maybe it's like 11 at night it's when like dave chappelle would just do unannounced comedy sets in cities like in plazas without any knowing and it would just spread on social media so someone would be like oh my god i'm here at like 35th and maple and justin boar is swinging a baseball bat and people would be like who is that there's like well also miguel sano and aaron judge are there and they would be oh my god we're gonna come out and watch these sluggers in the dark here at 35th of May. I don't know. Maybe players wouldn't respond well to being kidnapped, but I guess you don't have to tell

them. Yeah, sure. Also, one follow-up on our most recent episode, 1085, when we talked to Mike McIntyre about that crazy Winnipeg Gold Eyes game in the American Association, where an opposing pitcher came in in extra innings, a right-handed pitcher, two days after his last start and pitched left-handed. So on short rest, but not really. I mentioned his name, Matt Sergei. I hope it's Sergei. Apologies if it's Sergei or something. He has a backstory. He's been in the Indy Leagues for a while. He's 27. He was actually signed by the A's last season, so he was briefly in their system. Now he's back in the Indy Leagues. And he has been working on this throwing left-handed thing for quite a while now.

There's a new story about him in the Kansas City Star. There's a story from last year that Eric Stevens sent us on Twitter from MinorLeagueBaseball.com. And here's him in that story from last year. Quote, I don't even really know that the A's are aware of it to the extent of how much I do it, that is throwing left-handed. I do know that on is throwing left-handed, I do know that on my first day, Stockton manager Rick Magnante walked over and watched me and said, are we aware that you do that? I said, no, I don't think so. So until this game, he had thrown exclusively right-handed in games, but he says he started throwing left-handed or practicing left-handed in high school when he had a non-serious injury that still prevented him from

playing in sports. He says during PE, I would just go to the baseball field and throw left-handed in high school when he had a non-serious injury that still prevented him from playing in sports. He says, during PE, I would just go to the baseball field and throw left-handed against a wall. I taught myself how to go through the correct mechanics lefty, and I would just do that every day for hours and hours. It grew from there. After a million times repeating it, it got to the point where I could throw strikes. Eh, not so much. Not in this first attempt anyway. And the velocity was picking up, and I was getting a feel for off speed pitches then he got hurt again and he says i was doing everything left-handed when things got a little dark and i had the game taken away from me when things are so bad i still have this he's done it in winter leagues he says from the left side i tried to just make it a reflection of what i was doing from a righty standpoint i built a mound and i would throw 50 pitches righty

and 50 lefty i would tape it and i could okay, the left side is a little different in this way. And I'd make adjustments until I was doing it the same way. And in the X-Rating game we talked about just recently on Saturday, he was throwing left-handed with the right fielder while the game was going on, which was sort of sending a signal to his manager that he was available to do this if needed. Now, the problem with this plan is that his fastball left-handed topped out at 76, nearly 20 miles per hour slower than his right-handed fastball, so that's a problem. And we were wondering why after the first two walks he didn't just switch and throw right-handed. This Kansas City star sort of has an answer for that. So when they decided to intentionally walk the next batter after that sacrifice bunt so that they would load the bases, he threw the first pitch with his left hand, and the story says didn't feel comfortable.

Then he wanted to throw the next three as a right-hander, but he couldn't do that because there's the Pat Vendetti rule that says that you have to complete an at-bat throwing with only one arm. So he had started left-handed, he had to finish left-handed, and the next pitch went wild. And that was the end of the game. But he says it was on his bucket list to get into a game and pitch left-handed. And now he does have a statistical record as a left-handed pitcher. He did record an out from that sacrifice bond. So that's the story. It wasn't just a completely random thing.

And one other weird field submission I wanted to mention. This comes from Tyler. He says, after listening to y'all talk about weird fields, I remembered a field I played at during high school during summer league in Gaiman, Oklahoma. Their Babe Ruth field sloped up pretty gently, a very gradual incline, enough to see, but not enough to affect play. The slope turned into a seven to eight foot high hill right before the wall, which stood on top of the hill. And that hill was very steep, but wasn't very wide. So the chances of a ball getting stuck at the top were slim, but the ball could very easily get stuck in the numerous prickly pear, yucca, and bushes that covered the hill. That cacti covered hill stretched from center field to right field. The rule, as we

were told, was that any visible ball was in play, but those that disappeared into a bush or cactus were out of play. It was definitely a strange feature and struck us all as really dangerous since you could be running toward the hill and fall into the cacti if you weren't careful. So we already talked about the field in Texas that had like the actual limestone cliff in center field and i don't know if there's anything that's more dangerous than having a rocky cliff in the outfield that you could run into headfirst but i don't know if there's anything more petrifying than a field of cacti that you could run into at full speed in the outfield because i mean i get like the limestone cliff could kill you but the cacti could like deal you a lot of pain and agony and it would just kind of like

be in your head i think so while i don't think a field should probably have a limestone cliff or cacti hot take i think i would less rather deal with the cacti because in my head i think oh i could probably still make a catch pretty close to that cactus and everything would be okay. Whereas the cliff, I just know like, all right, I'm going to keep my distance. And if the ball goes off the cliff or above it, so be it. But the cactus would make me think maybe, maybe I can get a little close. And then you just, then you're trying to play baseball close to a field of cacti. And that's, yeah, that's incredibly irresponsible. And I love that it existed. Yeah. I can't find a picture right now as I Google. Right. I love these weird fields, but I mean, in some of these cases,

maybe try a little landscaping. I don't know, like maybe get rid of the cactus or build a ballpark in a place where there aren't as many cacti. I don't know. There's got to be some solution here or maybe a little landscaping on the slope and the incline just to level things out a little bit. I guess that's additional expense. But on the other hand, you save the expense of medical bills later. So I don't know. Why? You don't even have to pay for the landscaping. He said that the slope is not that wide. Just put the fence in front of the cacti and that's it. You're completely done. Because what you have then is, okay, the fence is a little too close close maybe there's going to be like an extra five or ten home runs during the

season and it's going to be a little too hitter friendly but the alternative is you have cacti in play how is this even a discussion that you have to have you just you put the fence in front of the hazard and then it's not a hazard anymore because nobody's going over the fence so this is just completely irresponsible and i love it. All right. And last follow-up, after we talked about strange batting stances and whether they're as common now as they used to be, we asked for some submissions. We got a bunch. We have mentioned a few on previous episodes, but some additional ones. Cody wrote in to nominate Rymel Tapia's two-strike stance, which you dug up photographic evidence of.

Tapia's two strike stance, which you dug up photographic evidence of, and it's just sort of an extreme crouch, it looks like, relative to his regular stance. So that's cool because we don't tend to see a ton of count specific stances. Like guys will maybe choke up a little or look for different pitches or take less aggressive swings or something, but you don't usually see guys totally change the way they stand based on the count. So that's cool. I like that little quirk. We got a couple of Denard Spann submissions and Denard Spann looks, I guess, stranger from the side. We got this from Zachary and also from Matt and we have pictures and basically he just points his front foot almost directly back to the catcher like it looks almost painful to point it at this extreme angle and so he has been asked

about why he does this and he says one question i get a lot is about my batting stance my front right foot is turned so far inward that my heel is almost facing the pitcher's mound. I do that because my body instinctively wants to pull the ball instead of staying squared up. So I turn my foot to keep my front hip from flying open. That's my thinking anyway. I'm always tinkering with my swing. I didn't have a lot of coaching growing up. I'd go to the batting cage and critique myself. I'd try a bunch of things until something felt right. When I was really little, I imitated Darryl Strawberry. I had a VHS tape of him with his high leg kick. He'd kind of drop his hands as his leg came up. I'd do that with my little plastic bat and my little plastic ball. So yeah, I wonder if

this slows him at all coming out of the box or whether by the time he finishes his follow-through, his foot looks like everyone else's, but this is pretty extreme and notable. And a few more names I just wanted to mention. We got a list of strange batting stances from a listener named Chris, and he just sent a long list here. Ryan Braun has the golf style high bat, Jung Ho Gong, whom we might never see again batting, I don't know, but he has a delayed foot plant. He's also mentioned Victor Martinez's forward lean, Carlos Gomez's bat waggle, Travis Darnot, who holds the bat far from his chest. Hunter Pence, we've mentioned, is just Hunter Pence, and Nomar Mazzara, he says, is sort of Hunter Pence-y. Chris Young, open stance like

Oduble Herreras, he mentioned Denard Spann also. And Mike Morse also has that golf-style high bat. And then Anthony Rizzo, of course, as some people wrote in to point out, not the strangest stance necessarily, but the strangest place to put his stance in that he is extremely close to the plate and looks like his elbow is almost in the strike zone. So those are some good ones. And he has a few honorable mentions in here too. Jason Kipnis, whom we mentioned, Melky, Zimmerman, and Stephen Drews, Goldsmiths, Brandon Phillips, et cetera. So they're still out there. I don't know if they are objectively as strange as they once were or not. But if you look hard enough, you definitely see some guys with extremely non standard stances. While you were talking, I got up and I try

simulated the Denard span stance just in my office. And I can say it's not quite as painful as it looks like in uh okay in the picture so he's got that working for him i guess he probably wouldn't do it if it were painful but i wanted to go back real quick to uh the first name you mentioned rimel tapia yeah because uh when we got that email as a listener linked an article that was written about tapia stance in the middle of march and within the article these are just some quick excerpts uh tapia quote when i get low i feel comfortable he said I am in there and ready to hit. It is something that I do.

And later in the article, it says he didn't get much guidance on a stance while growing up in San Pedro de Macorís. Macorís. Macorís, the Dominican Republic. As he played, however, he discovered that the lower he crashed, the more productive he was at the plate. Okay, that's great. It's great that he has a unique two-strike stance. We so often hear players get kind of cagey when it comes to discussing their two strike approaches because everybody has something but

tapia is just open because i guess you can't really hide the fact that he's getting almost as low as possible but if he feels like he's so productive from the crouch why wait why not always crouch so that one i haven't quite figured out but you know maybe he feels like it gives him better contact it's probably just something he came up with to try to shrink his own zone i don't know how umpires would actually respond to a zone that gets smaller as in a bat wears on because i don't want to use this word but i'm going to feels unprecedented as a stance uh prove me wrong listeners but i don't know if an umpire would still sort of mentally hold on to the original strike zone or if he would actually adjust the zone but in any case we have tapia with

a truly i i wouldn't say he looks bizarre in his two strike stance you can tell he's crouching quite low but it is just a marked difference you can see between pictures and i don't know maybe instead of his two strike stance being coached away, maybe it will spread and become his all strike stance. Yeah, that would be a fun article that no one would click on. Rhymel Tapia's strike zone before and with two strikes. Yeah. So right there, right there, you know, this is a writer. That's one of those articles.

You don't put the player name in the headline. You know better than that. Yeah, right. know this is a writer that's one of those articles you don't put the player name in the headline you know better than that yeah right so yeah well it seems like the common element here with these strange stances is people who grew up without a lot of coaching and just kind of experimented and did whatever felt right and that could be a possible reason why if we're seeing fewer strange stances that would be why because there just is a better quality of coaching now and kids playing baseball year round and the showcase circuit and all the kind of amateur professionalism almost. So that would be a possible source of fewer strange stances. that is a response to a recent episode. Aaron says, after listening to Glenn Healy's discussion

of his pitcher similarity research in episode 1082, I got to thinking about how this research could impact the optimal pitching rotation, construction, or deployment of the bullpen. I'm not sure if you have any of the research, but I have a few interesting, I think, thoughts. Could we look at the OPS plus of a team when they face two similar pitchers on consecutive days compared to the mean? Suppose in a few years, Matt Harvey and Shelby Miller ended up on the same team, and somehow we're still looking the same as each other. Would you want to keep them as far from each other in the rotation because of similarities, just like you try not to stack your dominant lefties in the rotation for consecutive starts Or look at the effectiveness of a reliever When coming in after a similar or dissimilar pitcher Does avoiding the third time through the lineup for a mediocre pitcher Outweigh bringing in a fresh pitcher that looks exactly the same Or getting even more exotic

Look at framing statistics or error percentage of the umpires When a wildly different pitcher comes in Those are all pretty interesting ideas Yeah, I'm going to guess Russell Carton has probably done some research On what happens when you have a bunch of pitcher comes in. Those are all pretty interesting ideas. Yeah, I'm going to guess Russell Carden has probably done some research on what happens when you have a bunch of lefties in a row, because that's something that has been talked about often, especially with recent versions of the Dodgers.

There was some pretty fun, decently compelling research a few years ago that would look at pitchers who did or did not come after R.A. Dickey in a game, and that seemed to identify some sort of effect where pitchers were better, therefore batters were worse when someone who was not R.A. Dickey was pitching. And what that seemed to suggest was that there was some value in having a very different pitching style because, of course, there were no other knuckleballers with whom Dickey shared a roster.

And so based on that, if you want to extrapolate probably irresponsibly far, And so based on that, if you want to extrapolate probably irresponsibly far, I think there is probably an effect from having very dissimilar pitchers go back to back, whether it's on subsequent days or just subsequent innings. I would think that the effect is pretty small, so small that we haven't really picked up on it in any meaningful way aside from Dickey. But I've had this hunch for a few years that one of the explanations for the Orioles' bullpen dominance is that they've had so many weird arm angles and pitching styles, and it's just this mishmash of sidearmers and three-quarters and unique sinkers. And I don't know, it's just a bizarre-looking bullpen, and I have suspected that there's been a small benefit from their side that just having all these very different styles come together has made it more challenging for hitters to hit them. I think it's subtle, but it's probably there. And while the pitcher similarity calculations leave out matters of delivery or deception or stuff like that, it would definitely at least be a useful starting point.

Yeah, Russell did do an article on this in 2013. It's called You Gotta Keep Him Separated. got to keep them separated. He looked at handedness, power finess-ness, and ground ball fly ball distributions to try to group similar pitchers. And he looked at what happens when they come after each other or don't. And he couldn't find any difference or evidence that it matters. But as you say, it's possible that this method just wasn't sensitive enough to pick up the difference because it probably wouldn't be an enormous difference. It would probably be small and it would depend on things maybe like how your pitches move or what you throw or your windup or all these kinds of things that can't necessarily be captured by your results or even your handedness.

So yeah, I would not be at all surprised if there were some difference. And you mentioned the different looks in the Orioles bullpen. I know that Jerry DiPoto has stated that he actually tries to assemble a bullpen that gives you a different looks and different arm angles and that he thinks there is some advantage to bringing in those guys one after another. I don't know whether he has done research or had his stat people do research and has actual proof of that or whether he just believes it from his own experience, but it's possible. And all else being equal, I would probably take the people who pitch differently back to back, but it's probably more of a tiebreaker than anything else. But hopefully that's something that we will see more research on down the road. Agreed. All right. David says, two years ago, you wrote, he's speaking to you here, wrote a fun piece about how Anthony Rendon was above average in practically every category and could have been an MVP candidate if not for his horrible start.

This year, he's doing it defense, you get three guys. Rendon, who, when he wrote this email, was at 4.9 war, which is number one in the league. Mookie Betts at 4.4, and Brett Gardner at 2.2. If you additionally require an above-average BABIP, you're down to Jess Rendon, who would be the NL War MVP if the season ended today, edging out Jose Altuve and Max Scherzer by two-tenths of a win. Well, Altuve's in the AL for one thing, but would he be the most balanced MVP of all time? Has there ever been an MVP who is above average at everything? I love balanced players, so I think this is very cool. I don't know that we have an answer for that question exactly, but I agree that balance is cool. It doesn't necessarily make you more valuable than an

unbalanced player who is contributing greatly in one or two ways, but it is something that tends to make players underrated because it's just easier to notice when someone is the best in baseball at one thing or two things than it is to notice when someone is above average at all things. Right. Over the last few years, as much as Mike Trout has been sort of the king of wins above replacement and being good across the board, he's also been the best hitter in baseball, so it's not too hard to notice how good Mike Trout is. Rendon strikes me as sort of a National League equivalent of Mookie Betts, who is a little bit underrated,

although less so because he gets to play in Boston and he's just so good at everything. But I didn't do all the research for this email because it would have taken a lot of time, but I did notice that even just last year, Chris Bryant, nearly perfectly balanced, struck out just a little bit too often to be above average there. But it looked like just eyeballing it 2013 MVP Andrew McCutcheon

seemed to be above average across the board. So that would be a very balanced player from recent history. And he was worth something like eight or nine wins in that season that has not kept up his defense has gone away. But yep, I also love Rendon. And what I additionally love is not only does this email supply the idea for an article, but it's an article I've even already written before. So it would be really easy to just write it again being like, hey, look, this is happening another time. And I think article he was referring to is something I wrote last September. So I don't know, it's been like nine months. It's probably we can revisit it. We can do it again. Okay. Yeah, I agree that Rendon remains underrated

maybe because of Bryce Harper's presence or Scherzer's or I don't know what, but there's some high profile players on his team and he might very well be the best of them when he is healthy as he is. So yeah, Anthony Rendon, really good. And Murphy. Murphy, so good. Yeah, Murphy too. Man, Nationals. good baseball team yeah give us that segment stat segment yeah okay so we got an email from listener tyler one of several tylers i guess who emailed in over the past week and tyler was referring to a game he was watching recently in which marwin gonzalez was bad but the rest of the astros were good and he he sent an email asking who has made the most outs in a baseball game.

And this is a little bit tricky to measure using the play index, which is, of course, the best tool to use because it doesn't have a direct out search. But Tyler was saying, for example, if somebody grabbed it into a double play, then that would count as two outs instead of just one. So I went in and sort of ran some simple math. I can't guarantee that all of my numbers are accurate, but the best I could do is what I'm going to talk about now. So I looked throughout baseball history going back as far as the play index would allow

me to, searching for the hitters who made the most outs in the game. There's been a small handful of players who have made 10 outs in a baseball game. 10 outs in a baseball game. Just going to, you know, there's 27 usually in a nine game 10 outs in a baseball game just going to you know there's there's 27 usually in a nine in the game but there was a game in 1984 on may 8th where uh julio cruz and uh cecil cooper both made 10 outs in the same game and i thought that in that game vance law was a third player who made 10 outs however when i looked at the play-by-play he actually reached on a fielder's choice which does not show up in the box score so he actually reached on a fielder's choice, which does not show up in the box score. So because he reached on a fielder's choice,

that means he did not make an out. So Vance Law actually just responsible for nine outs in that game. However, there have been several other players who have made 10 outs in a game, but that is not the top of the list. So we have in a 1972, Danny Thompson playing for Minnesota, he made 10 outs in a game, but he also committed an error in the field. And so I decided that kind of counts. So that could push him up to 11. That's 11 outs that Danny Thompson could have been responsible for in that game. Still, okay, that's not it.

1945, we have a game. George Kell playing for Philadelphia. George Kell batted 10 times. This is a game, by the way, that ended in a tie, one to one. So fun for everybody. George Kell came up. He batted 10 times. He only struck out once, but he went 0 for 10, grounded into a double play.

George Kell, 11 outs in the game. That's still not the winner. We are going back to May 1st, 1920. And just to prove to people that i'm not completely oblivious about baseball history i did some googling so now i know more about baseball history we're going to a game may 1st 1920 a game between the brooklyn robins and the boston braves you might not be surprised to learn that the game in which a player made more outs than anyone also happens to have been the longest game in major league history this is a game that went 26 innings and it ended in a 1-1

tie 26 innings they played 1-1 tie one runs were on top of the fifth next run scored on the bottom of the sixth the game lasted three hours and 50 minutes. Just for some perspective, the most recent Red Sox game lasted four hours and 59 minutes. That went 15 innings. Last weekend, the Red Sox played a game against the Yankees that went 16 innings. That game lasted five hours and 50 minutes. However, you don't have to go back very far. July 4th, holiday. Red Sox played a nine inning game against the Rangers that lasted three hours and 56 minutes. A nine-inning game against the Texas Rangers lasted more time than the longest baseball game

in Major League history. Think about that, Red Sox fans, as you evaluate the decisions you made. Fun facts about this game. Dave Schoenfeld has a whole article about this game. Written in May of 2013, Schoenfeld writes about the article about this game written in May of 2013. Schoenfeld writes about the day the pitchers went 26 innings because what I haven't mentioned is that the Brooklyn Robins started Leon Cador. Leon Cador threw 26 innings in the game.

For the Boston Braves, Joe Esker started the game. He threw 26 innings in the game through a wild pitch. David Schoenfeld has a whole article about this game from May 2013. It includes a fun little anecdote. I'll just read. The game started at 3 p.m. at Braves Field in Boston and lasted until 6.50 when umpire Bill McCormick called it despite pleas from the players to go one more inning so they could say they played three full games. Yeah, it was also the first day of daylight savings. So if the game had been played a day earlier it would have been called a well before the 26th inning so anyway i've now talked to you about the longest game ever but i should at least talk about the player who brought my attention to this game it's charlie pick charlie pick was the starting second baseman for the boston braves he

was batting second in the lineup uh this is 1920, a year in which Charlie Pick, it was the final year of his career, but he actually wound up with a 101 OPS+. So in his brief major league career, this is the season in which he was an above average hitter. However, in this game, Charlie Pick went 0-4-11. There is no play by play for this game. So I can't swear to you that he didn't reach on a fielder's choice or something like that. But at least from the box score, it looks like Charlie Pick went an ordinary 0-4-11 in the game with a strikeout. But the reason, the separator from Charlie Pick and George Kell, who 25 years later made 11 outs in another baseball game, the separator is that Charlie Pick in the same game in which he went 0-4-11 also committed two errors in the game, which therefore you could say that Charlie Pick in one game was responsible for 13 outs or out like plays, which is unbelievable. Obviously, he played essentially three baseball games in one, but nevertheless, Charlie Pick seems to be unofficial maker of history., wow Okay, question from Mike Listening to the most recent episode

Regarding the Jose Quintana trade And the White Sox bounty of useful trade pieces That got me thinking about teams That have been about 500-ish And can't win their division or clinch a playoff spot Have there been teams that have had Similar success in the past? Any current teams that should consider replicating

What the Sox are trying? One team that comes to mind is the Mariners. And you had an example of a team like this, right, that wasn't way out of it, but acted in this way. Yeah, I only really had one example. And whenever I think about this, I always think about the 2014 Kansas City Royals, who at the trade deadline were only only just barely above 500 i believe that earlier in the season they were well below 500 and they started to make a run but they were not in first place they were behind first place they were just barely an above average baseball team but they decided to try to go for it and of course they nearly tied game seven of the world series on that alex and gordon near inside the park home run that we talked about earlier so the royals

were the best example i could come up with and kind of the only example i could come up with i think when when major league baseball expanded its playoff pool to fold in new wild cards it seemed anecdotally at least to me like teams were acting in a way where all they needed to do was be good enough to make the playoffs and then let the chips fall as they may now it feels a little more like teams are trying to get the most good that they can, treating the playoffs like they're a little less random. And this is all anecdotal. I haven't talked to anyone, but I don't know. Have you gotten the similar sense? Yeah, I think so. I mean, we are kind of in a spot this year where we do have a lot of teams that are just kind of okay though, right? Like, I mean, in the AL wildcard race particularly, there are a lot of teams in that 500 region, a few games below, a few games above. White Sox weren't one of them. They're well below 500 and I think a very clear seller. But there are a lot of teams like that and the Mariners are one of them, as Mike is saying. So I don't know. I think teams are maybe thinking a little

bit more about how to build a postseason team when maybe until recently there wasn't such a thing or there wasn't to the same extent because teams didn't seem to change their pitcher usage as dramatically in October as they have in the last couple of years. And now that that's the case, it seems as if there is something to the idea of building up your bullpen or just getting three great starters or something like that. And in theory, even if we don't have the numbers really that can back it up from past postseasons, just because the schedule hasn't been the same and teams haven't been using their pitchers in this way, you would think now that that would be an advantage. Yep. All right. Question from Daniel. After Quintana's great start

for the Cubs, his first start for the Cubs, I got to thinking about how players feel. I'm wondering if Quintana was excited to stay in the same city and play for an exciting young contending ball club. And I wonder if that made him feel more confident and dialed in and led to his excellent performance. Do we see performance bonuses from players who get traded to contending teams or a penalty from going to a losing ball club? Furthermore, the real question I have is over how baseball players feel. I know that when I'm at work and I'm sad or mad or frustrated, my work suffers. The same happens when my future is uncertain and I'm left wondering if I have a position or if I'll have to move on. Granted, I still get my work done, but it certainly sees a loss of production during tough times when I'm stressed. Could we make the same assumption about baseball players? Do teams

do any sort of clinical psychology to keep the players happy or at least not sad? Any merit to keeping your employees happy and seeing an increase in production? Well, yeah, teams want to keep their players as happy as possible. I think this is sort of one of the explanations for why Joe Maddon is what he is. On the other hand, how many times have we heard a player talk about, after he has a really good game, we see this a lot with pitchers, where we had a few years ago, Yordana Ventura turned in an excellent start. There was Edinson Volquez who turned in an excellent start shortly after a deep personal tragedy or something like

that. And then you'll get your quotes in the picture will always say, well, obviously, it's in the back of my head, but I was able to put it out of my mind and just focus on the game. And the default answer to so many questions like this that I feel bad for coming back to, but I do think it's absolutely true is that Major League Baseball ends up being selective for players who are able to sort of put distractions out of their head. And it's selective in a way that your average employer isn't, because you generally aren't having to selective for players who are able to sort of put distractions out of their head and it's selective in a way that your average employer isn't because you generally aren't having to go through several different levels of your profession to prove yourself capable of keeping distractions out

of mind and focusing on the field but ultimately it's a results-based game and if you are able to maintain consistent results through whatever you are experiencing in your personal life, then you will be able to make the major leagues. And so you end up with these almost psychotically focused baseball players who have probably quite unnatural mental processes relative to the overall population. But through whatever means, they're able to keep these distractions mostly to the side. I think it would be silly to suggest that they aren't aware of them or that they don't feel them but i would i would guess that if anything if you evaluated players who were traded good players who were traded around the deadline you would probably actually see them get a little worse after the trades but then that would just be regression to the mean

because you have good players who are getting traded and good players are more likely to be overachieving so you know maybe if you compare them to their projections, you would see an improvement or at least not a decline. But that sounds like a lot of work and I'm not going to do it. Yeah. And as you mentioned, in response to this question, you often see players who don't want to discuss contracts during seasons. So they'll set a kind of arbitrary cutoff day at the end of spring training or something, which might be partially a negotiating tactic, but also might be because they don't want to have to think and talk about those things during the season when they've got other things to worry about. And definitely you'll hear players sometimes say it's a distraction if they're the subject of a lot of rumors.

But other times they will just say something about how you just have to accept that it's not under your control and take it one day at a time, etc., etc. And, you know, I'm sure part of that is just something to say to reporters and part of it is actually true. I'm sure that there is some distraction here when it comes to these players. But I will say that the degree of uncertainty here, or at least the implications, are not necessarily the same as they are for most of us, right? Like for most of us, if we're worried about our jobs or are we going to have to move or something, that's incredibly disruptive and scary. And for a baseball player, just talking about changing teams, not that it's not extremely disruptive because it is. If you have kids in a family, you have to uproot them and they have to go to new schools and you have to find a place to live. And, you know, you get some assistance with that from the teams, but you

still have to do a lot and it's a big change, but you're not in danger of like being on the street or having to go on unemployment or anything like that. And I don't, you know, every everyone's problems are kind of relative to their own station in life. And people who are well off will worry about things just as much as people who are not because they just get used to that. And I think maybe it feels the same way to them, even if it's not actually the same in any objective way. So these players are making many millions of dollars and they can afford to live anywhere. And they are in many cases set for life no matter what happens in the short term. So that probably has to take the edge off a little bit, but I would assume that yes, this can be a

distraction. It can affect certain players at certain times, certainly off the field tragedy can and occasionally you will hear that someone was, who knows, going through a tough divorce or lost a family member or something and that will be cited as an explanation for poor performance. So in some cases, these players really are able to just compartmentalize all of this and perform the same. In other cases, they are not. They are not completely robots. So it is worth keeping in mind. And you have to go.

You have a chat to fill in for. I will just mention we've plugged our Pitch Talks event coming up on Monday, August 7th in Brooklyn at the Bell House a couple times. But we are no longer the only people appearing at that event. So if you weren't sold on getting a ticket just for us, there have now been a bunch of other writers added to the bill who I guess will be our opening act Or acts and it's Dave Cameron Who will be there it's a bunch of people From Deadspin Hannah Kaiser Tom Lay Lindsay Adler Anthony Decomo The Mets MLB.com beat writer Will be there too Jay Jaffe Who has his new book the Cooperstown Casebook Coming out next week so Lots of writers should be a

Fun evening and it only costs 15 bucks So go to Ticketfly.com And search for Pitch Talks and it's the first result. So we hope to see a lot of you there. I wonder how many people listened to the entire end to this entire podcast, got to the end and thought, you know, I wasn't convinced to go to this event because of the podcast people that I'm listening to for an hour. I want to go because of Dave and JJ Abbey. Yeah, well, they are perfectly capable of hosting an event on their own. So it's just a bonus. So we will leave it there. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going

to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have already pledged their support include Tim Sullentrop, Joram Botner, Aaron Hartman, Sean P. Montana, and Andrew Patrick. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. As mentioned, Michael and I will have an episode of the Ringer MLB show up breaking down some of this news in greater detail. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for Effectively Wild editing assistance. And please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming.

Replenish our mailbag via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. And we will be back to talk to you all soon. And though you say you may love me never, you will You know I've never lied, you'll never be denied My love, you live in my mind's eye Come around and see me Come around and see me Come around and see me. Come around and see me. Come around and see me.