Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1101: Comings and Goins

Episode Date: August 25, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Rich Hill’s heartbreaking no-hit bid and the new and not-improved Carter Capps, follow up on Albert Pujols and player nicknames, and answer listener emails about what constitutes a “journeyman,” Ryan Braun and the Hall of Fame, Ryan Goins’ new type of small-sample success, what would happen if teams […]

You see, Clevenger is kind of what they call effectively wild. Seems like he's kind of losing that fastball up in the zone. So you think as a hitter, see the ball, see the ball, see the ball down and then he comes with that big washout changeup where

it starts down and just runs away in the dirt kind of effectively wild right now. See where he goes up or down with the change up. That clip you just heard was Johnny Combs, also known as Ghani Jones, saying Effectively Wild twice on an Essendon broadcast seems relevant to the interests of our audience. And the sound you are hearing now is episode 1101 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer back in New York, and still in Portland is Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs.

Hello. Hello. I can picture where you're podcasting now, because I've slept in that room and I've podcasted where you're podcasting and you can picture where I'm podcasting now because we've been in each other's dwellings. So this just feels so much more personal now. I feel like I have a mental image of everything that's happening. I feel like we leveled up and I guess we'll see if I become sick since there's a chance that you might have infected this very same room. Yeah, I hope you swapped it with something before you put it right next to your head.

I did not do that. Yeah, there could be some germs on there. Okay. Well, hopefully they died in the last couple of days. Anyway, I am home now, but it was a pleasure staying with you and experiencing Portland and its traffic. So I'm glad we got to do that. And now we're back to the regular routine. traffic so i'm glad we got to do that and uh now we're back to the regular routine so we have an email show to get to but i suppose we are duty bound to talk about rich hill before we get to

that because i don't know if you saw the facebook group as that game was going on and in the aftermath of that game but it was like a complete meltdown it was there must have been 50 different threads started it was like more action than when the World Series is happening and people are posting stuff because everyone's watching the same game. I think it was just assumed that every Effectively Wild listener would be watching or reacting to Rich Hill's bid for a perfect game and then a no-hitter. He, of course, lost 1-0 on a walk-off homer by Josh Harrison. He became the first pitcher ever to lose a perfect game in the ninth on an error, and then also the first pitcher ever to lose a no-hitter on a walk-off home run. So it was fun to watch. He was brilliant, but then it was devastating and sad and

extremely Rich Hill and extremely effectively wild. Yeah, I feel like we need to fly Sam back up here so we can just have his take on the Rich hill game i guess we don't need to fly him up here but whatever now we all know each other it's all intimate yeah i uh i had occasion to have a uh one more person who was visiting from out of town and uh and last night was the one occasion to uh to get together to see him and so ordinarily if i'm out and i uh i miss the baseball goings on it come home and it takes about 10 minutes or so to kind of get caught up on what i missed over the course of a few hours but i came home and booted up twitter and i'm one of those people who follows sufficiently few people that i can catch up on every single tweet that i have missed and i uh i

looked at my phone and i noticed there's a lot of scrolling there's a lot of scrolling up on the uh on the right hand bar, something must have happened. And ordinarily, you know, ever since, let's say Inauguration Day, when that kind of thing happens, I figure, okay, well, then something political has happened. But no, this was somehow worse and more dramatic.

I don't have anything. I was trying to think of something that's sort of significant or insightful or unique to say about the game, but I was going over the Wikipedia page for Harvey Had haddix which is something we'll we'll get into later because of course stat segment is obliged obligated to be related to this game but there's a little anecdote that uh quote after the game haddix harvey haddix if anybody doesn't know uh had a similar albeit even more impressive game that he threw 12 perfect innings and then lost in the 13th

inning. It's considered by many to be the best pitching performance in Major League history. We will talk about that in greater detail, but there is an anecdote in here. After the game, Haddix received many letters of congratulations and support, as well as one from a Texas A&M fraternity, which read in its entirety on university stationery, Dear Harvey, tough shit shit that's it and uh harvey responded it made me mad recounted haddix until i realized they were right that's exactly what it was and i imagine that rich hill feels much the same way jerry krasnick had an article he put up about how rich hill moved on almost immediately rich hill incidentally also apparently

had never heard of the harvey haddixix game until he more or less lived it. So Rich Hill, tough shit. But, you know, you have some incredible stories to tell. Something tells me this will not be the last singular performance of Rich Hill's career. Yeah, if you era adjust and context adjust the Rich Hill start, I would have to think that it's more impressive or maybe more unlikely at least than the Haddix start. Like Haddix going 12 innings in 1959, that's impressive, but that sort of thing happened then. And Rich Hill going into the 10th inning is just extremely improbable. And just a Dodgers pitcher period pitching that deep into a game is extremely improbable.

And of course he was able to do that because as a Twitter user who tweeted at me last night pointed out, he threw a Maddox as well as a Haddox and he threw 99 pitches, which is amazing given how deep he went into that game. He was just extremely efficient throughout. And we've seen Hale, of course, get removed from bids for historic games before because he had thrown lots of pitches and he's Rich Hill and he's got blisters and other injury issues. And that didn't even really become an issue in this game because his pitch count was very, very frugal, very reasonable throughout, even though he went into the 10th. So that was pretty amazing. So that was pretty amazing. And yeah, since we talked about Rich Hill having issues at the beginning of the season and how his curveball had become less effective, he's, I'm going to guess, been like the best pitcher in baseball or just about since then. He turned things around instantly and just has been his peak Rich Hill self again. So that is nice to see yeah I uh I'm just looking over his game log and when there was one game this season after which Rich Hill's era stood north of five and that happened on June 15th Rich Hill threw four innings against the Indians he uh he struck out four but he allowed

eight hits seven runs he beamed two guys his era after that game stood at 5.14 that was eight starts into the season in that game rich hill through four innings and through 105 pitches and last night rich hill through nine plus innings and through 99 pitches you wonder you know even if he had gotten through the the 10th inning unscathed of course there was still going to be at least an 11th inning the dodgers had not yet scored a run so you wonder how quickly he might have been able to finish the 10th and whether he would have been given an opportunity to begin the 11th depending on you know maybe more likely if the dodgers had scored a run in the 11th less likely well i guess i don't know i don't know which one would be more likely or less likely in theory if the dodgers had scored you go to kenley jansen but

then who really cares you know in that case the dodgers aren't playing for anything anymore they're probably already have a playoff position locked up i I don't know. So one recalls that, of course, Rich Hill earlier, was it just last season that he was removed from a perfect game bid after seven innings or something because he was being protected. So, you know, it's just it's just another chapter in the Rich Hill book, which is I don't we don't need to go over again how it's one of the most improbable books. But I guess it's it's nice to have one of these little reminders in the way that, you know, Mike Trout doesn't really have games like this. He doesn't have a chance to have games like this.

So it's easier to take Mike Trout for granted. But this is just one of those instances where Rich Hill thrusts himself before everyone's eyes and makes himself impossible to take for granted, if only for a day. Yeah, Mike Trout did have a heck of a throw last night, though. He gunned a guy down at home plate from center field. It was maybe the rarest kind of Mike Trout highlight. It's not usually like Mike Trout makes an incredible throw, although as you have documented, his arm has gotten better as he's gone deeper into his career. He isn't really the type of guy who makes the highlight real throw in most cases, but

he did that last night. So well done, Mike Trout. And speaking of Harvey Haddix, Joe wrote to us to say that Harvey Haddix is an example of a player who has a nickname that referred to another player. I was going to bring that up. Yeah. So he was a left-handed pitcher and he was known as the kitten for his resemblance to Harry the cat. I'm going to guess Brasheen, a left-hander on the Cardinals staff when Haddix was a rookie.

So, yeah, that's kind of like the Bill Hands, Don Larson, Froggy Little Froggy nickname. And good one. Yeah. And we also got one more submission, a player whose nickname is based on in this case another player's nickname this is from charles he said listening to the responses you got to the question of nicknames based on other players names reminded me that i had an example don stanhouse was a pitcher in the 70s who became a closer for the baltimore orioles he had big hair a bushy mustache and a colorful personality that led to him earning the nickname Stan the Man Unusual. Play on Stan the Man Usual.

Stan House walked more batters than he struck out, which made Earl Weaver smoke a lot during his appearances. He went on to sign a disastrous free agent contract with the Dodgers and flamed out after a season. You can see why the nickname suited him. So good submissions. Yeah, that's Don Stan House. And for anyone curious, there has not in baseball history been a stan don house yeah so you wrote a carter caps post that was extremely sad

well so i think that there would be mixed mixed reviews but also i i don't know it's sad for for you and it's sad for myself and it's sad for those who have been enthralled by carter caps's unusual success but i think that there are also a lot of people who are pleased to see this happen who knows how permanent or ephemeral this is but i think there are a lot of people who didn't want carter caps to be able to do it i think that those people might be pleased to have caps rendered ineffective not because he his delivery was made to be illegal or anything, but just to kind of get him out of the spotlight. Because I think that there has been that,

there's always, with anything like this, there's always that slippery slope fear. That's always the one real fear that people have, is that if you can have one Carter Caps, why wouldn't there be 500 of them? And of course, what we've seen is that there has still been one, one Carter Caps. And even now there's one Carter Caps which is zero carter caps but i certainly am disappointed i i

have all spring long i was really excited to see caps come back because i like things that are stupidly extreme that's that's i guess it's a little like being a drug addict where i just need baseball to get more and more insane for me to get my fix, you know? And Carter Capps suited that, and I wanted to see how much more he could do. And he has one strikeout. He has one strikeout in the major leagues this season. Just to repeat, I guess, the lead of the article, because I couldn't believe it when I confirmed that it was true. In 2015, just out of a sample of pitchers who threw 100 pitches. It's a small number of pitches, but whatever.

100 is a big number, right? So in 2015, there were more than 600 pitchers in baseball who threw at least 100 pitches. Out of those pitchers, Carter Capps had the highest rate of swings and misses. Not a surprise. He was unhittable. He had the highest rate of swings and misses by a very, very healthy margin. He beat Aroldis Chapman by like six percentage points. And funny enough the

the pitcher in second place in 2015 behind carter caps was jordan malden the other leap or jump guy yeah so fast forward carter caps missed all of 2016 because of tommy john surgery we get to 2017 carter caps has pitched in the majors for a couple weeks this month in san diego and this year there have been more than 600 pitchers again who have who have thrown more than 100 pitches. And Carter Capps has the lowest rate of swings and misses. So very fun, very fun fact, but also very also arguably for me and maybe for you the least possible fun fact. But that's Carter Capps. He did finally strike out Colton Wong on a fastball that measured at 94 miles per hour, which is for Carter Capps, not good. Yeah. And the interesting thing, which you pointed out in your article, was that they didn't actually make Carter Capps' delivery

illegal. They said that he had to, what, keep the back foot in contact with the ground, like he couldn't literally hop. And so he can keep, you know, doing the spring forward that he was doing before. And you noted even that he's getting the same extension, right? Although maybe in different ways than he was in the past. But you showed via screenshot that he is not getting as big a leap. And it seems like even though they didn't say like you can't do the hop, you can't do anything like Carter Capps is doing. There's just so much scrutiny on him now. And it has to be in the back of his head or even the middle or the front of his head at this point in every delivery. And so constantly having to think about that and knowing that the opposing team and the managers or the umpires are certainly monitoring you to see if you slip up and do an illegal delivery, I mean, that has to affect him. And so as you pointed out, maybe it's a good sign because physically he could still be capable of throwing as hard as he

had before. And this big velocity drop that he's had this year might just be a mechanical thing, but also it's really hard to imagine how he could be as uninhibited in throwing the way that he used to now that he knows that everyone is watching and if they catch him they can penalize him for it yeah it's it's just a theory at this point and you know for anyone who's coming back from so much missed time you figure the mechanics are going to be a little rusty we see that right now for example andrew haney has been a little inconsistent in his return from tommy john surgery with the angels but no one's talking about andrew haney because he's not a freak carter caps iss is a freak. He still is a freak. He still throws in a way that no one else does in the

major leagues. But there was another clip during one of Capps' recent appearances. I didn't include it in the post, but the camera zoomed in on his back foot. And you can see a very clear drag line in the mound, which is the kind of thing that you couldn't have seen quite so visibly in 2015 so caps clearly has worked to drag his back foot deeper so that it's less arguable whether he's maintained contact with the mound and it seems like as i'm sure anyone understands when you're trying to analyze pitcher mechanics it's always sort of looking at a small sample of pitches and assuming that's the way that it always is because i can't look at every single pitch carter caps has thrown this season that would be impossible so you just kind of have to assume that the mechanics are mostly consistent and it definitely looks like he is

dragging his his back foot deeper so to speak it looks like he is covering less distance with his back foot which makes it weird because according to statcast if it's reliable he's getting the exact same amount of extension this year as he did in 2015. But it looks like his back foot is moving less, which just means that that distance is being made up somewhere else, which is weird. He's got some weird alignment problems in his delivery where it just it looks like everything right now is just kind of messed up where to the untrained eye, you can say, well, he had a weird delivery in 2015. And now it's a bizarre delivery again in 2017. But there are differences and and it just seems like he is it's it's in his head and i don't know how it couldn't be in his head and it's not necessarily baseball's fault carter caps sort

of brought this upon himself where it was if you're going to throw like that you have to know that people are going to pay attention to you for it and as a pitcher you just can't you can't spend your time worrying about what your back foot is doing it's sort of it's as a pitcher you just can't you can't spend your time worrying about what your back foot is doing it's sort of it's the foot that is just sort of along for the ride for your ordinary pitcher it's there and you stand on it and then and it just does whatever it does but for caps he's trying to get to the point where it's all just muscle memory and he can just throw without having to worry about it but it's august 24th now he last pitched on august 22nd and from the looks of things it's it's either in his head or the wrong muscle memory has been cemented into his brain so i'm hoping for a big 2018 i don't know how many other people are hoping

for a big 2018 carter caps is still there still pretty young he's healthy now and i think he's still capable of throwing really hard but but for now, yeah, he's definitely not producing. And when Carter Capps isn't producing, then it's harder to sell him as a pitcher worth reading about. All right. I have one more follow-up about a topic we recently answered an email about. This is from James. And he says, according to the BelieveLandBall war calculator, that's at BelieveLandBall.com, war calculator. That's at believelandball.com. A player who batted 600 times as a DH and never hit the ball with a 000 slash 000 slash 000 slash line would be a negative 13.7 war player.

At this rate, it would take about seven and a quarter seasons for Albert Pujols to burn off the hundred or so wins he has generated in his career so far. While obviously Pujols won't be that bad for the rest of his career, it's impressive that he's been so good since 2001 that he could just stand motionless at the plate from now until about 2025 and end up still at replacement level for his career. So yeah, we had done an estimate, but this is perhaps a more precise estimate. Although of course he will not be that bad. Although by the end of this contract,

he might be getting pretty close. So if you combined literally hitless everyday player DH Albert Pujols with ordinary full season for Mike Trout, you wouldn't get all the way back to zero, but you'd get like shockingly close. Mike Trout is nearly so good that he could compensate for a literally hitless designated hitter. Yeah.

Pretty good. Yeah. It's pretty funny. If anyone out there has ever wondered how bad you would be or like what your war would be, that's a good place to start. Negative 13 point whatever it was. That's you. That's you, effectively wild listener. All right.

Emails? Yes. Okay. Evan says, I've got another vocabulary question. I saw this tweet from Sports Illustrated claiming that Justin Turner is a former journeyman, and I immediately bumped on that. For me, a journeyman is someone who bounces around from team to team, maybe not Octavio Dottel status, but someone like Aaron Hill, four teams in three years, or Danny Valencia, seven teams in eight years. Justin Turner, drafted by the Reds, traded to the Orioles, played 17 games total for Baltimore, then four in your journey since you're at the disposal of the big league club would that extend to

anything pre-arb to conclude justin turner to me is not a journeyman what say you okay let's see so turner belonged previous to the dodgers you belong to three major league organizations over the span of what was that eight years basically so yeah that that doesn't meet the criteria i would have i can see i don't know how much you uh you would consider minor league like uh promotions or demotions or or sort of trips between triple a and the majors because technically those are journeys but that doesn't really count i don't know i feel like you would want maybe he just misses the mark. For me, maybe four organizations might put it over the top. I get what the writer in this case means because Turner had the feel of a journeyman.

Like if he hadn't broken out in 2014, he was probably going to become a journeyman. On the path to it, right. He was on a journey toward becoming a journeyman. So if Turner had waited maybe one more season to break out, then I think he would have become a journeyman. But for me, I'm going to put it at four organizations. And let's say four organizations before 30. Yeah. Yeah.

Like I would say that Jose Bautista was a journeyman before his breakout because I think he played for four organizations in a year. Is that right? I think he did. He was in the Orioles, the Rays, the Royals, and the Pirate System in one year. So I think that alone qualifies you to be a journeyman. I would say named later, that type and a throw in. I would say that that has some bearing on whether you're a journeyman or not, but I think it's probably mostly major league history if you're talking about a major leaguer. And yeah, I guess for there's probably some mathematical formula we could come up with for like organizations divided by years or something like that that would approximate this?

Because I don't think you can just say it's four organizations because what if you played for 20 years or something? Maybe you wouldn't be a journeyman in that case. But probably for most players in typical career length, especially if someone who is changing organizations that much, four is a decent rule of thumb. But yeah, there's got to be a lot of journeying there. It can't just be two or three journeys. especially if someone who is changing organizations that much for is a decent rule of thumb. But yeah, there's got to be a lot of journeying there.

It can't just be two or three journeys. Yeah, just to reflect on this, because I hadn't realized quite how complex it was. So Jose Batista was drafted by the Pirates in the 20th round in 2000. So fast forward in the 2003 Rule 5 draft. So looking ahead to 2004, Jose Batista was selected by the orioles from the pirates now oftentimes you will have a player selected in the rule 5 draft just returned to his original organization after a short period of time because the team that took him realized whoops no we shouldn't participate in the rule 5 draft at all it's terrible but in this case anyway batista was selected by the orioles from the pirates he would time, end up back with the Pirates, but not that quickly.

He was drafted on December 15th, 2003, taken by the Orioles from the Pirates. In early June of the next year, he was selected off waivers by the Devil Rays from the Orioles. Later that month, he was purchased by the Royals from the Devil Rays. The next month, he was traded by the Royals to the Mets for Justin Huber. And then the same day, I guess, he was traded. Wait. So, okay, hold on. Orioles, Devil Rays, Royals, Pirates.

But he also belonged to the Mets. Jose Batista was on five teams in 2004. He just never appeared with the Mets. Incredible. So, he was traded by the Mets with Matt Peterson, parentheses, minors, and Ty. Wigginton, parentheses, fat to the Pirates for Chris Benson and Jeff Kepinger. So Jose Batista, we have added we have added to his organizational total in 2004 by 25 percent. I don't know. I don't know. Was this I guess we'd have to go back in time to see exactly what this was. Maybe it was a three team trade that's just broken out, kind of likeik smith on the mariners for a couple of hours this past uh january but then anyway jose batista ends up back on the pirates at the end

of july this is a trade deadline move in 2004 and then of course he was traded in august 2008 by the pirates to the blue jays for a player named later that player was robinson diaz so the pirates lost jose batista twice you could say and just for fun for fun, you brought up Jose Batista as a journeyman after we Votto is a future Hall of Famer, I too believe he is. It got me thinking about a player about the same age who started around the same time, Ryan Braun. I'm a Brewers fan. Take the PED issue Braun had out of it for a moment. Looking at their numbers and career accomplishments, MVPs, All-Star Games, Silver Sluggers, etc. It seems they are very close.

By war, Votto is ahead of Braun. Looking at everything else, they are close or Braun is ahead. So does Braun deserve some Hall of Fame discussion? Assuming he plays another five to eight seasons and stays fairly healthy, his career numbers are going to look mighty good. Your thoughts? And my thoughts are no. I don't think so.

I think if there was a question about vato which there was and we were both on the pro vato as a hall of famer bandwagon i think braun is on the other end of that barrier there and obviously the pd issue is probably not going to be taken out of it by the voters so that is relevant but even on a purely performance basis, he's at like 40 fangraphs war, 45 baseball reference war. He turns 34 later this year. Assuming he plays another five to eight seasons and stays fairly healthy is a big assumption because he has not been staying healthy and has not been all that productive in recent seasons. So it's not like Votto where he is this age,

but essentially as good as he's ever been. So you project a graceful decline for Bron. You can't really do that. So I don't think Bron would have that great a case as we see it today, even without the PED stuff. Yep. Okay. All right. Question from Curtis.

I just wanted to point out how ridiculous Ryan Gowen's season has been for those who are not closely following the Jays. Remember your Ryan Gowen's post? I don't really. So, okay. There's a couple of things about that. One, whoops. But also, two, if you're like starved for traffic and you're just in like a traffic slump, but you just really want to show your editor that you can you can get people to read your just

write about any blue jay it doesn't matter just any single one of them and if it's like somewhat even the least bit counterintuitive you kind of want to like have it be a celebratory blue jays piece but i mean just anything write about justin smoke write about ezekiel freaking carrera it doesn't matter you will get your traffic blue Jays fans will eat that shit up. They are all over the place. And it's not even our country, but they're out there. Wow.

Blue Jays fans, big internet presence. Thank you, Blue Jays fans. You're very nice. I'll keep that in mind. Yeah, the Ryan Goins post was about how he had learned patience, right? And he was walking a bunch, which at the time was true.

And not swinging or being selective or whatever, that's one of those things that tends to mean something in small sample, but not in that case, I guess. So Ryan Goins was not in the middle of some sort of breakout, but Curtis is emailing about him because he is also doing something different and interesting this year. And continuing with Curtis's email now, he has always been a glove first backup middle infielder and will likely continue to be for the remainder of his career. However, being the backup to Troy Tulewitzki and Devin Travis means that we as Jays fans have gotten a regular dose of Ryan Goins over the past couple of seasons.

This year, he is having an odd year where he is hitting increasingly well when the situation calls for better hits. Let me explain. This is about a week old. This is through August 17th. Ryan Goins, WRC+, that's Weighted Runs Created Plus, where 100 is average and higher is better, lower is worse. So with nobody on base, Ryan Goins is at 14. Very bad. With runners on base, 107. Not bad at all. With runners in scoring position, 156. Excellent. With runners in scoring position and two outs, 169. And with the bases loaded, 411.

And Curtis says, is there anything to this? How often do players have this dramatic of splits between situations? And second question, I guess, is one that would require some research that we haven't done. But is there anything to this? I would have to say no but curtis says p.s he just had another hit with runners in scoring position in two outs today against the cubs while i was looking this up yeah no the answer is no he's terrible but he's had a uh i guess you could say clutch if you uh if you look at the the fan graphs measure of clutch which would

take this kind of thing into account ryan goans at the plate would be expected to be uh i don't know how best to put this i guess a win and a half below average as a hitter during his playing time because he's you know bad but uh because of how he's actually hit and the situations in which he's hit he's actually been more like one half win below average as a hitter which is still bad but you know not not that bad the splits i usually look at aside from if i'm going to look at any situational splits then i look at sort of the the low medium high leverage splits which i like and if you do that goings in low leverage situations this year has a 35 wrc plus which is bad medium leverage he's at 79 still bad but less bad high

leverage 64 so it's not as if he's been necessarily responding to increasing leverage, but still fun split. It's the kind of thing that you can look at and try to convince yourself that Ryan Goins is not a bad hitter, but he is. He's a very bad hitter. I made a mistake. Don't make the same mistake that I did. I'm just looking over some of his career splits. Let's see if this is accurate.

So I am looking over every... Okay, perfect. So going back to when Goins came into the majors, I have I am using the fan graph splits tool on his page to look at every single month that he's had in which he's batted at least 50 times. That's just to give me some kind of good sample. I wrote my article, my whoa, look at what Ryan Goins is doing article on September 2nd, 2015.

So that was clearly in response to Ryan Goins' August of 2015. Yeah. And by the way, you were not the only one. There was like a rash of Ryan Goins articles at the time that I just Googled Jay's journal. What change has triggered Ryan Goins? September 2015. Nationalpost.com. September 3rd, 2015.

How Toronto Blue Jays batting coach Brooke Jacoby helped transform Ryan Goins into a productive hitter. And there's all this stuff about how he made swing changes and mechanical differences and he's a new man, which it's so easy always to come up with those things to match some small sample performance. And sometimes it is real and sometimes it's ryan goins yeah totally deceptive and you know what i don't regret writing it but there's there's a truth to these things where i did a similar thing early this season i wrote a post that was sort of positive about taylor modder and i believe at the time there was evidence to suggest look taylor modder has become pretty good and ryan goins at the time had become pretty good in uh in august 2015 he was

a legitimately good hitter. But the thing with players like this is often that they can make a little change that makes them temporarily better. And then the pitchers figure out what change they made. And then they go back to being Taylor Motter or Ryan Goins. The thing with Motter is he was trying to pull everything on the inner half. He was trying to be Brian Dozer. So pitchers figured, well, he's a worse version of Brian Dozer. So let's just not throw him inside pitches anymore.

And that was it. And with Ryan Goins, he was taking all these pitches. And pitches realized, well,'s a worse version of brian dozer so let's just not throw him inside pitches anymore and and that was it and with ryan goins he was taking all these pitches and pitches realized well wait a second this is ryan goins we can just throw him strikes so then they started doing that so i've looked at uh using the splits tool there are one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen months in ryan goins's major league career that he's batted at least 50 times. 13 months. So I wrote my article after his August 2015. That has been his best career offensive month. He had a WRC plus of 151. Very good. That's an outstanding WRC plus. That's Jose Batista territory. So keep that in mind. 13 months, 151 W wrc plus his second best offensive month happened to be the next month september 2015 wrc plus of 90 and his third best career offensive month wrc plus of 76

i'm just going to read these down in order 151 best month 90 76 73 65 this is oh god and then 76, 73, 65. This is, oh God. And then it drops down to 44. Look, this is not a good hitter we're talking about. This is a very bad major league hitter. Great that he's defensive and he's sharing a roster, I think, still with Darwin Barney. So I hope that they hang out

and have meals together because they're similar in more than one way. Ryan Goins, bad hitter, had fun. Anyone can have a good month. Yeah. And I would say that as a reader of yours, I would rather have you identify some of these that turn out to be false positives than I would have you identify none of them because some of them turn out to be true. And obviously, you always caveat appropriately. You're not going to post and say Ryan Goins is an all-star now. You're just going to say maybe he's doing something different.

It could be interesting. Maybe it will last. Who knows? And as someone who is trying to learn about baseball or as people who are interested for fantasy reasons or whatever, I think it's probably better to have someone like you pointing out these small sample changes just so that we are ahead of the curve when it comes to recognizing the real ones and occasionally you get unreal ones but that's not so bad it's uh important to remember also that sometimes they can look real but are not real so

anyway and i mean the the change change that Goins made was real. It's just that the change couldn't stick, which is it's always one of those difficult things to write about. If you write an article that talks about how Ryan Goins has had a really good month, people might interpret that as you saying, well, Ryan Goins is now a good hitter. Well, he didn't fix himself permanently. He just did something to make himself better, which is still interesting. It's just I don't know. I guess it's interesting in a way that it's more fleeting. It's more temporary and people are less likely to be interested in it.

If you say Ryan Goins has temporarily fixed himself in the headline, that's not going to get very many clicks. But I'll point out this year that Ryan Goins bad hitter also apparently playing shortstop according to defensive run saved and ultimate zone running below average defensive shortstop. So rough year, Ryan Goins. Good thing about your situational hitting. Yeah. All right. Luke says, how different would baseball be if teams played all of their games against the team at once? Meaning if the Cubs had to play all 18 games against the Cardinals in a row before playing all of their games against

a different team, how would the results be different? I think we might've answered this years ago, but many things have changed since then. And I'd say from a spectator perspective, it would be less interesting to play in the same team for like three weeks in a row without any different opponent. That would be bad. But what about from a competitive and pennant race perspective? What do you think? Oh, God. Just so.

I know it's not true, but I feel like every time I look at the scoreboard, the Cubs are playing the Reds. And like, that's just. Can you imagine? I get like, you're a Cubs fan. Great. You love winning. It's fun to win.

Cubs go. Cubs go. Whatever. But like, if you just have to play 19 games in a row against the reds like nobody wants nobody there's nobody nobody who wants that and then you'd have some sort of like Coors Field adjustment where you go to play a real baseball team and your hitters all of a sudden you're like whoa pitchers what are we supposed to do here are we supposed to hit like I don't know I don't know why Luke Weaver just came to mind but like a real a real major league pitcher what are you supposed

to do so then it just makes the Cubs worse okay so you want from an on-field or a strategic standpoint I guess then I don't know maybe it's probably not the most important thing that comes to mind but you could have the schedules I think would become more unbalanced like if you had I don't know if the Indians played all their games against the White Sox in April and then if the Twins or Royals played all the games against the White Sox in September then those are very very different White Sox teams that you're looking at. And so schedules become more unbalanced. That's the first thing that comes to mind for me. What about for you?

I would think that maybe there would be some tendency for underdogs to be favored in this scenario relative to what we have now. Just because there'd be a chance that you could catch a team at the right time. Like maybe you're playing the Cubs or whatever. The worst team is playing the better team at a time when the better team is a worse team for whatever reason. They have players on the DL or, or, you know, something like that, probably that. And in that case, you would get to bunch all your games against that team when it is something less than its usual self whereas if you're playing them in several series over the course of a season you're probably going to get more of a representative view of that team and that would be bad for the inferior team so probably not a huge effect but I would guess that this would slightly favor worse

teams just because randomly, just by chance, they could happen to be in the right place at the right time. I think additionally, it seems like probably not a huge factor. I think it would be worse for attendance because fans would just get tired of coming out to see the same teams over and over. I think fans on some level want things to be kept fresh. But also, I think from the player and on and on field perspective you would probably end up with more brawls because i think there would just be more time for teams to develop grudges and then

even the kind of like short-term grudge that might go away a day or two later if you see the same team over and over and over again then those things can develop they'll build so you would have more hit by pitches you would have more. So you would have more hit by pitches, you would have more ejections, you would have more suspensions, because everyone would just get sick of one another. Yeah. And I wonder whether teams would get more efficient at exploiting players weaknesses, because the way things work now, you have advanced scouts, sometimes not every team actually sends people around anymore, but you're video scouting or stat scouting at the very least. And, you know, maybe you're paying attention to a team for the previous series or something, or you're just not spending as much time on a team when you're seeing them for three games at a time, perhaps. And you're worried about the previous opponent and the subsequent opponent than you would if you knew that, okay, the next three weeks we are playing these guys. So we have to devote all of our

advanced scouting resources to figuring out what the weaknesses of this team are and exploiting them. And so I would think that being able to concentrate on one team at a time like that, a lot of the advanced scouting stuff is probably automated reports at this point, but still, I would think that there'd be more attention devoted to a specific team's tendencies, and not that that would favor any one particular team, unless one particular team was just great at that kind of scouting. But maybe we would see guys get exposed more quickly when they actually had some exploitable weakness. right stat segment sure this is going to be inspired by the rich hill game or i guess we're not going to call it the josh harrison game it's the rich hill game and so in the the fallout from the rich hill game a lot of people have been

talking about the harvey haddix game it is only natural we've already addressed that on this podcast haddix 12 perfect innings lost it in the 13th inning and lost so as is probably standard i went to the baseball reference play index to look up the highest ever game scores for a pitcher who lost it's a pretty easy thing to do and now you had uh you had mentioned earlier that it would be nice if you could era adjust or opponent adjust or just sort of contextually adjust game score. But game score itself doesn't do that. Whatever, we're going to live with it. So Rich Hill finished with a game score of 91. That's a very good game score. His line, if you read it, it doesn't really really give him credit for pitching into the 10th. It just says nine innings, one hit, one run, no walks, 10 strikeouts, one home run. And of course, there was the error. So Rich Hill got

the loss in a game he started he had a game score of 91 now that actually has him tied for 54th place of all time now this is one of the reasons that game score isn't great for situations like this is because of course pitcher usage used to be very different in game score is reliant in large part upon innings pitched in a game so if you look at the games above rich hill you see a lot of very long starts and the highest ever game score for a pitcher loss is 118 this belongs to art neff and in 1918 on the first day of august art neff was pitching for the boston braves he went 21 innings he allowed 12 hits two runs five walks eight walks, eight strikeouts. He lost a game.

The Boston Braves lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates 2-0. Pirates always seeming to spoil these games. The winning pitcher in this game was Wilbur Cooper, who threw five and two-thirds innings of shutout relief. I don't know exactly what happened in this game. I don't care because this is so long ago that it just, it feels like it's a different baseball. And if you look at the top three,

you've got Art Neff losing a game in 1918 with a game score of 118 you've got babe adams in second place in 1914 losing a game with a game score of 117 and then lefty williams who was a lefty in 1918 losing with a game score of 109 those games are all so old that to me they just they don't really count so in fourth place and uh not surprisingly, you have the Harvey Haddix game. So in 1959, May 26, Harvey Haddix, his final line reads 12 and two thirds innings, one hit, one run. It was unearned, a walk, eight strikeouts. So Harvey Haddix, a game score of 107 in his loss.

So in theory, at least for what I would consider modern baseball, that game is the winner because it's the biggest loser. And so it makes sense that Harvey Haddix would show up. But I don't know if you know this. I think it's pretty well known, but I had kind of forgotten the Harvey Haddix game. And the results come with a little bit of an asterisk. Do you know what I'm referring to? No. OK, so I will explain what happened here.

So Haddix had his perfect game going into the 13th inning. And I will just now read from Wikipedia. A fielding error by third baseman Don Hoke ended the perfect game in the bottom of the 13th with the leadoff batter for Milwaukee, Felix Montilla, reaching first base. Montilla later advanced to second on a sacrifice bunt by Eddie Matthews, which was followed by an intentional walk to Hank Aaron. Joe Adcock then hit an apparent home run, ending the no-hitter in the game. However, in the confusion, Aaron left the base paths and was passed by Adcock for the second out, and the Braves won 2-0. Eventually, the hit was changed from a home run to a double by a ruling from National League president Warren Giles.

Only Mantia's run counted for a score of 1-0, but the Pirates and Haddix still lost. So, because of a base-running mistake, because of all the pirates and haddix still lost so because of a base running mistake because of all the confusion and celebration of the game harvey haddix lost one nothing by official ruling instead of three to nothing so there's really no reason why haddix should uh get credit for these circumstances unless i guess you could say that it was sort of a long con and he only wanted to give up home runs in situations where he knew the home run hitter would get confused uh which of course is not really one of those true talents or uh three true outcomes that would be like the 118th true talent uh hitter true outcome if you want to go there so harvey haddix uh finished with a game score of 107 however if you sort of uh i didn't

calculate what his game score would have been otherwise but it would have been lower so harvey haddix then would get bumped down because in 1965 pitcher named jim maloney lost a game with a game score of 106 so if you knock haddix down he only surpasses maloney by one point and if you give that home run to uh joe adcock if you give the home run to joe adcock instead of the double, and Hanex's game score would fall below Maloney's. And so in that case, maybe people would be talking about the Jim Maloney game. June 14th, 1965, Jim Maloney ends up 11 innings, two hits, one run, one walk, 18 strikeouts,

one home run game score of 106. Jim Maloney in that game. Why don't I just read from the maloney uh no hitters subsection on wikipedia notice i said no hitters that's plural maloney pitched two games in which he gave up no hits through nine innings in 1965 while going on to win 20 games that year his first hit list nine inning performance in 1965 was on june 14th against the new york mets this is the game in question the game lasted through 10 scoreless innings with Maloney striking out 18 batters while issuing one walk.

But Johnny Lewis led off with a home run in the 11th inning and Maloney lost the game one to nothing. At the time, that game was officially recognized as a no-hitter. The rules were later changed to omit no-hit games that were broken up in extra innings. So on that day, Maloney had issued a walk

somewhere along the line. So Maloney wasn't perfect through 10 innings but he was throwing a no-hitter but the Reds had no runs of their own they couldn't score against Frank Larry or Larry Bernath Bernath Bernarth you know I'm sure Mark Simon's gonna correct me on this one so I'm not gonna look it up so Jim Maloney was throwing a no-hitter through 10 innings but he lost it in the top of the 11th because Johnny Lewis hit a lead-off home run in that same inning Roy McMillan eventually singled and then he was erased on a Jesse Gonder double play so the Reds went down they could not score on the bottom of the 11th and so Maloney lost one to nothing so later that season Maloney would throw a no-hitter on August 19th also requiring 10 innings so Maloney would throw a no hitter on August 19th, also requiring 10 innings.

So Maloney, two 10 inning no hit performances in the same season. And then he threw another no hitter on April 30th, 1969, where he beat the Astros 10 to nothing. He had 13 strikeouts in that game. Again, according to Wikipedia, ironically, the next day, Don Wilson of the Astros returned the favor to the Reds, pitching his second career no hitter in a four nothing Astros victory. That's already weird. But Jim Maloney, interesting. You don't think of someone generating 18 strikeouts in a game in 1965. But I know I hadn't heard of Jim Maloney before. And again, I'm kind of a baseball historical idiot. So that's my fault. But

I went digging. I looked up Jim Maloney's I I just sorted all of Jim Maloney's starts by greatest game score, just looking for his best performances of all time. And his top two performances, neither one of them was one of his official no-hitters. His first official no-hitter shows up here in fifth place, and his second official no-hitter shows up here tied for third place. His highest career game score is the game we were talking about that he lost one to nothing where he had a no hitter through 10 and then lost it in the 11th his second highest career game score was also a game he lost one to nothing where he went 11 innings allowed three hits no runs what wait a second okay he didn't lose his team loss that's what i meant to say so uh anyway jim maloney his

best two career games ever. His team lost one to nothing. Very frustrating for Jim Maloney, but he did at least throw two, arguably three career no hitters. So not too bad. And if not for Harvey Haddix and Joe Adcock and Hank Aaron and some official scoring decisions, the Harvey Haddix game would not be remembered perhaps as much as the Jim Maloney game. All right.

And for anyone wondering, Rich Hill's game score was 91. That is the fourth highest this season after Edinson Volquez's no hitter, which was 95 and two 92s, a Corey Kluber shutout from June and an Urban Santana shutout from April. So... Oh, you know what? I'm going to interrupt you right here because I just noticed maybe this isn't relevant, but maybe it is. Jim Maloney, still alive. File that one away. 77 years old. Lives in Fresno, California. Glad to hear it. All right. Well, we have a no hitter related question that's been in the hopper for a while. And if we don't

answer it now, we never will. So Samuel says, imagine a pitcher good enough to start in a major league rotation whose only goal is to throw a no-hitter in the majors. Assume that no pitching coach or team will try to intervene in his pitching style. All they will do is take him out of the rotation if he isn't pitching well enough to help them win games. What can he reasonably do in order to maximize his chances? I assume he would throw a ton of off-speed pitches. Those are more effective out of the zone, and so an approach like that would probably lead to more walks, but also more strikeouts and fewer hits. He might throw all his fastballs very high, which might lead to more home runs, but fewer hits overall. Would he throw out

of the zone as much as possible? Could he also max out his effort, reasoning that his improved chances when he does start more than makes up for the starts he loses to injury? The thing is, I can totally argue the opposite. Should he throw as many strikes as possible, as low as possible, to just accumulate weak contact and hope to have a game where they all find fielders in order to maximize his chances of getting deep enough into a game without a hit? Should he change in his approach partway through when he has a no-hitter through four or five? Going to the next level, should he try to get non-tendered by his first team and then float around signing one year deals for the worst teams in baseball where he will have the longest leash? Okay. So the idea here is that a pitcher only exists so that he can try to get a no hitter. And what can he do? Okay.

So I think he would be a normal pitcher. I think every single pitcher goes out there in every start, not specifically thinking I want to throw a no hitteritter, but the goal is always, don't allow hits, right? So the goal for every pitcher in every game is, I don't want to allow a hit. No pitcher goes out there thinking, I want this guy to get a hit so I can get the next guy. No, that's dumb. And you can't just work out of the zone because your pitch count matters and you're going to get yanked. Every single pitcher in every single plate appearance, aside from intentional walks, the goal is to get the best possible result and so i

think that the answer would be nothing changes now maybe the the roster management and going to different teams that would be some sort of factor but just on a pitch to pitch basis i think nothing changes yeah and i don't think pitching to contact would be a good idea a you're giving up contact and that is what turns into hits and b i don't think it even makes you that much more efficient if at all because you are giving up more hits and when those go for hits then you have to throw more pitches i guess that wouldn't matter so much this guy because as soon as he gives up one hit he is done for the day as far as he's concerned so i would say that trying to miss bats would make you efficient in that if you pull it off, you'll

get lots of outs and you won't have hits. So yeah, I would say just be your best self. Basically, that is probably the best idea in the long run. So it's not very exciting, but this is a terrible idea. So what does the pitcher do when he allows his first hit? Does he remove himself from the game? I mean, he should. Well, if his only goal is to get no hitters, then on the one hand, he'd want to save his strength and save his arm. On the other hand, he probably wouldn't continue to be employed

if he just stopped pitching after he allowed his first hit. So he'd probably have to make a good faith effort, I guess, and keep going. See, the situation demands that he just pitch like a normal pitcher. Yeah. All right. Matt says, something I noticed while doing some late night browsing of random MLB stats, no player in baseball history has had a season in which he's posted 40 home runs and had fewer than 90 runs batted in. According to my inexperienced play indexing, 90 runs batted in is the least for any player in a 40-homer season, with that honor being shared by 2015 Mike Trout, 2003 Barry Bonds, and 1994 Ken Griffey Jr.

There are different reasons for those. One is a strike season, one is Mike Trout on a terrible team, and one is Barry Bonds walking constantly. But yes, so he goes on to say Joey Gallo, when he wrote this email, has 25 home runs and 47 runs batted in. Updated stats. This was a while ago. He now has 35 home runs and 65 runs batted in. He's played in 91 of the Rangers 101 games so far. So we'll call it an even 90%. These are the outdated numbers. Again, I'm no mathematician, but assuming he plays in 90% of the Rangers' final 51 games, he's on pace for 38 home runs. Well, he's going to beat that. And just 71 runs batted in,

he's going to beat that too. Also of note that no player has posted fewer than 80 runs batted in in a 35-plus home run season. So anyway, clearly he's on pace for a lot more home runs than that now. And I would guess what's a 65 runs batted in through this point in the season? Is he still on pace for 90 or fewer runs batted in? Well, there's a problem. He just had a concussion, so that's not going to help. So he's on the problem. Yeah, that's going to be a problem for maybe for a little while.

I ran a quick little query related to this but i uh i looked using the play index again looked at all-time qualified seasons so what is it five to two at bats or something and i looked for qualified hitters all time whose home run total was greater than half their rbi total or if you want to put that another way their rbi total was no more than two times their home run total so this uh this doesn't have the 80 or 90 rbi thresholds but there are six seasons there are six seasons that count first one happening in 2001 barry bonds 73 home runs 137 rbi that is a relatively low rbi total for that number of home runs the next season barry bonds 2003 45 home runs 90 rbi curtis granderson just last season 30 home runs. The next season, Barry Bonds, 2003, 45 home runs, 90 RBI. Curtis Granderson, just last season, 30 home runs, 59 RBI. And then we have three players from this

season actively going. We have Eric Thames, 27 homers, 52 RBI. We have Scott Schebler, 24 homers, 47 RBI. And Joey Gallo, as mentioned, 35 home runs, 65 RBI. So just based on this tiny sample, this never used to happen. This is only happening basically now slash Barry Bonds asterisk. So Granis and Thames, Schebler and Gallo. Gallo is, I guess, the greatest current home run hitter of the bunch. Again, Bonds asterisk. But I don't know. I don't know what this means.

Aside from there are too many home runs everywhere and then not enough other stuff. And so when you have more home runs and fewer hits and non-home runs, then yeah, you're going to get emptier home runs. And so that's the best explanation I can come up with. Yeah. And Matt also mentions another possible Gallo stat. No player in baseball history has hit 35 homers and had a batting average under 200, which he is dangerously close to doing.

He's at 205 right now with 35 homers and had a batting average under 200, which he is dangerously close to doing. He's at 205 right now with 35 homers already. So his actual question, which you sort of just answered, is it's crazy to me that Gallo can still be valuable on pace for three plus war at both Fangraffs and B-Ref. He's actually basically already there, 2.9 war at Fangraffs, despite striking out a ton and not doing much with the bat other than hitting home runs. Granted, he's been slightly above average at third base and serviceable at first. He's also been a good base runner, as we've mentioned, or in that he doesn't hit into double plays. But with fly balls and three true outcomes being the craze, might we see more players

putting up numbers like Gao in the future? Or is he a unique player with a special ability to hit home runs who just hasn't harnessed an ability to do much else with the bat and as you're saying this is the most gallo-like era of major league history but no one is really quite like gallo gallo is at the most extreme example of that so i guess you could say that we're going to see more players like gallo or players who are more like Gallo, but no one is exactly capturing what he is doing because he's striking out 37.1% of the time so far. And that is extremely difficult to do and still be useful. And he's done it because of the base running, because of the

fielding and because he's walking a lot and because he has incredible power 355 isolated power which is amazing it's partly ballpark but not that much if you've seen him hit so he just has this unique combination of skills that i don't know that anyone has exactly in the way and to the degree that he does right there are players who are similar you've got kyle schwarber you've got chris davis you've got chris davis you've got miguel sono of course is maybe the closest comparison to gallo in terms of just how often they swing and miss but also the raw power player who i didn't expect to really work as a comparison but what the hell keon broxton he's in there he's striking out just as much as joey gallo he's a different kind of athlete different set of skills

but yeah this is an era where Gallo is absurd in the amount of power he's been able to hit for. But his general profile, he's got some company this season in that there are currently 17 players with strikeout rates of at least 30%, which is insane.

But yeah, it makes Gallo's 37%. It just seem kind of normal or acceptable clearly he's he's around that threshold where joey gallo can work and the fact that he's he was good and then bad and now he's he's good again that suggests only good things for rangers team that was needing some good things to happen from gallo profar and mazara this season if they wanted to have a better long term outlook profar has been nothing he will uh be on a different team next season and ma mazar has been just okay but gallo has worked and that was a a very big question for the team and given his defensive flexibility he's a better athlete than people give him credit for joy gallo he works he's a major league baseball player he's a he's a pretty good major league

baseball player and i wouldn't say that he's uh the most unique player of all time or completely unprecedented but he is he's out there he is i don't know more than three standard deviations from the mean if i had to put it that way, which I didn't, but it's done now. Yeah. When he was in the minors in 2014, I wrote a piece about him for Grantland and I called him the most interesting man in the minors because I was fascinated by whether he would make this really unprecedented profile work. And so far he is. So I don't think he's the most interesting man in the majors, but he is among the most interesting men in the so far he is so i don't think he's the most interesting man in the majors but he is among the most interesting men in the majors because he is actually doing this and

it wasn't clear at all a few years ago whether he would be able to do enough good stuff to make up for the bad stuff but so far he has so it's been fun all right this is a kind of a weird stat thing that was pointed out by listener Scott. I was goofing around on baseball reference, as is my custom. Seems to be the custom of a lot of our listeners. And notice that the Red Sox have four guys in the top 10 of intentional walks. Ben Intendi, Ramirez, Betts, and Moreland, which led me to notice that they are leading the AL in intentional walks by like a lot.

Their 40 intentional walks are 14 more than the Rays at number two, and they get a free pass once every 122 plate appearances, while the rest of the league is at 276. It's not entirely a product of their recent hot streak because they had 26 intentional walks by the end of June, although they're on pace for 13 in August, which would be their best month. This is not an imposing lineup. They have an OPS plus of just 95 and their last in the AL in home runs. Why on earth are they getting so many free passes? I wish I were to look this up in advance.

Maybe it's because previous to Rafael Devers, the third baseman was always batting next. Yeah, that could be. Would be one. I don't know. I can try to look this up. They have drawn, well, only one of their intentional walks has come to the eight hole hitter. So it's not like this is all happening in interleague play where they had the pitcher up next. They have had their fourth place batter intentionally walked 11 times, which is a lot.

Yeah. So, yeah, I would have to go into this to see where the walks have been coming from it's almost interesting enough to write a post about but i'm not gonna do it you know that's the instagrams it's possible maybe next week maybe next week next monday maybe expect an instagram post on the red sox international walks but yeah that's that's a that's a good question and i'm just gonna keep talking so that i can delay until maybe uh maybe ben lindbergh comes up with an idea to help explain why this happened i don't have a lot to say i would say that they were expected to be an imposing lineup right it's it's a surprise that they are last in the al in home runs obviously they were expected

to take some sort of hit losing david ort and how good David Ortiz was last year. But I think they were still expected to be the best hitting team in the league or maybe after the Astros, the best hitting team in the league are certainly up there. And I don't think anyone thought they would be as powerless as they have been. So maybe it's partly that pitchers have just been treating them with respect because of their previous performance. treating them with respect because of their previous performance. But yeah, I mean, it's been a pretty deep lineup, or at least it was expected to be one, where it wasn't like you would just walk a certain guy very obviously to get to another guy.

So it is perplexing. I don't know whether there's some kind of ballpark effect here, whether it has anything to do with the teams and the pitchers that they've faced, but it is a weird one that they are leading by that much. So I am now kind of hoping that you do an Instagram post and figure out what the answer is. Well, let's see. 22 of them have happened with runners on second and third. 12 of them have happened with a runner on second. Five have happened with just a runner on third. So of course, they're all trying to set something up, but then that's not too unusual. Every intentional walk is trying to set something up, even if what you're trying to set up is no longer pitching to Barry Bonds.

But if we just look at, I don't know, the most recent one. So a few days ago, Sonny Gray intentionally walked Rafael Devers in the third inning. What the hell? What is this happening? Well, let's dig into this one. So, OK, we're looking at just the other day. So case study here. Yankees Red Sox were the third inning for some stupid reason.

It's the bottom of the third. The Red Sox are up two to nothing. There is a yeah, I don't get this. OK, so Mookie Betts is out. Benintendi then out. So with two outs, Hanley Ramirez doubles. And then Sonny Gray intentionally walked Rafael Devers to face Xander Bogarts. And then Devers was picked off.

So there you go. Although, OK, hold on. This, I would need to go into this. So the according to baseball reference, it reads pitch one ball, pitch two ball, pitch three ball, pitch four ball, parentheses pitcher went to mouth. So I don't know.

I don't know what to do with that. Maybe that happened. Maybe that didn't. I don't know. I'm not going to look into it. So if we go to the previous one, we go to the eighth inning on August 19thth david robertson intentionally walked mitch moreland and in that game so we're in the eighth inning mitch moreland was intentionally walked by david robertson with

runners on second and third to face zander bogarts center bogarts struck out swinging okay so that was to set up a a righty righty situation with I believe Bogarts is still slumping. So with the Yankees ahead by one, David Robertson preferred to face Bogarts over Moreland. So that's just a platoon kind of thing. And there were already two runners in scoring position. So you can kind of you can kind of get it. Mike Leak in the fifth inning on August 15th intentionally walked Rafael Devers with runners on second and third and one out. So that was probably just setting up a double play or it's just somebody else. So yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the pattern is. It could just be kind of one of those coincidences. But now I'm most interested in that walk on August 20th. I need to know if Sonny Gray actually went to his mouth. So I'm just going to do a little click in here for a few minutes. Well, if you want to look that up,

I have one that I think I can actually answer. And probably I'd be doing most of the talking anyway. So this will work out well. Great. I've been meaning to answer this for a while. We actually alluded to this question during our live episode with Fernando Perez, but never actually answered the question. So this is from Corey who says, I recently reread David Foster Wallace's great essay, How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart, where he points out that one reason it's hard to write a good sports memoir is that while fans want to know what it's like to experience dramatic moments or accomplish impressive feats, part of being a successful player is being able to block out these narrative

considerations in order to focus on one's craft and staying in the zone. So the kind of thing the audience wants to hear about is exactly the thing the player isn't well equipped to talk about. The same seems true about non-revelatory post-game interviews. Playing baseball well and reflecting on baseball well are different skills, although some players have both. My question is whether this phenomenon affects the way you interact with players when researching an article or conducting an interview on the podcast. Are there some topics you find that players tend to have more to say about or some ways of asking questions that tend to prompt them to reflect? How do the strategies differ for different kinds of sports writers, e.g. beat writers versus analysts? How much do you follow up when a question doesn't seem to land?

And I would say that in my experience with doing player interviews, you can tell almost immediately whether you're going to get good answers or not. Like if I do a phone interview for a podcast or something, you could just tell like whether the player is really engaged, whether he wants to participate in this interview or whether he just wants to get it over with, which frankly, I can't really blame him for if that's the attitude, but you can sense right away, like, you know, is he going to give the stock response or is he actually going to give it some thought and say something original so if you get the former and it's just cliche after cliche there's just not a whole lot you can do i don't think to snap out of that cycle but just in general i mean you can tell like if a beat writer is just writing a game story or something often they will just go in with kind

of the pre-written narrative and they will just want the quote that they can slot into their story and, you know, prove that they were there and justify their reporting. And so they kind of ask the leading question that is meant often there is a response that I have in mind or even that I want, but I don't want to just put words in the player's mouth. So I'll try to leave it somewhat open-ended and hopefully I'm generally curious about what the response will be. And obviously you're more likely to get a good answer if you're talking about some subject that reflects well on the player. If it's, you know, why are you so bad at baseball? You're probably not going to get that great an answer. And I think most players appreciate when you do some research, when you come in prepared, when it sounds like you know what

you're talking about and you're not just kind of BSing or saying something off the top of your head. And it's probably more common now for beat writers to have the stats at their fingertips and be familiar with sabermetrics and all of that than it once was. I think when I first started doing this, it was still pretty unusual for that to be the case. And so it would sort of set me apart in a way if I came in with interesting stats that the players had never heard before. Might just make me sound like a nerd, but might also pique their interest a little bit and make it harder for them to give the standard response because it wasn't the standard question. So, you know, I try to do research. If it's something the player

has clearly been asked a million times before and has answered the same way, I'll try to not ask that question or ask it in a different way. But there's not always an easy answer. There's not always a way to get the player to open up, particularly if it's just in the clubhouse 10 minutes before the game or before batting practice or something and they're in a rush and everyone's around. It's not really that conducive to getting deep, profound, thoughtful answers.

So try to be unpredictable. Try to talk to the player who is not getting asked the most questions and maybe has things to say that have not already been said. But that's generally my story. And when a question doesn't land, I'll follow up a little bit. But if it becomes clear that I'm just not going to get an answer to that question, you just have to give up and go on. Sonny Gray did not go to his mouth. False alarm. He was facing Devers, and he threw three pitches to him. They all missed inside, and then Devers just dropped his bat and went to first.

So the Yankees just decided not to try to throw Devers at 3-0. They just put him on. No mouth involved. I am looking at a screenshot of Rafael Devers having reached first base on this walk. And the bottom line, Chiron brought to you by the original twisted tea hard iced tea says historic and dash devvers well i guess we haven't really solved the mystery of the red socks intentional walks but if you have a theory please write in and maybe jeff will figure it out i can tell you it's not it's not so unusual i just looked at american league teams from 2012 on

just whatever uh looking at split seasons and the 2013 red sox and the 2014 tigers lead the way with 51 intentional walks drawn as american league teams 2012 tigers drew 46 2012 rangers drew 44 so the red sox this year do lead with 40 intentional walks drawn and we'll see where they finish but this is not this is not unprecedented and last year the team that led the american league and intentional walks drawn was red sox at 34 so i don't know how many of those went to david ortiz so there could be something there i see a lot of the red sox up and down this list but it looks like their their number this year is a borderline fun fact yeah okay yeah not a this is this is right on the edge of being one of those lists that's worth writing

about, you know? So yeah, that's, that's maybe Instagram's material. All right. Let's stop talking. I hope you have enjoyed my germs. Well, they have not yet taken effect. I think the incubation period is probably longer than one podcast episode, although this was an especially long one.

All right. I hope that your health continues to be good. Thank you. And by the way, in case anyone was wondering where our, what would we pay Rich Hill number stands right now? I don't have a number at the moment, although it's a lot higher than the number I gave earlier this season when he was in his slump. But Sam tweeted his number either during or immediately after the game last night, four years, 84 million. Sam is always a little higher on hill than I have been. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have already

pledged their support include Matthew Hanses, Luis Torres, Ben Rao, Will Hayward, and Matthew Bensley. 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 please keep your questions and comments coming replenish our mailbag via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the patreon messaging system if you're looking for something else to listen to michael bauman and i have a new episode of the ringer mlb show up we also talked about rich hill and we talked about the single season home run record and we also interviewed russell car, frequent Effectively Wild guest, about how teams are innovating when it comes to playing positions and defensive alignments. Russell, as always, was a good guest.

Thanks to Dylan Higgins for Effectively Wild editing assistance. We will be back to talk to you very soon. You and me, chasing paper, getting nowhere, on our way back home. We're on our way home. We're on our way home We're on our way home We're going home