Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1102: The Miami Stantons

Episode Date: August 26, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan discuss the hot start of Phillies rookie Rhys Hoskins, the recent improvement of Byron Buxton, the position-player-pitching of White Sox minor leaguer Grant Massey, the Marlins’ Stanton-driven surge to .500 (and beyond), the Tigers-Yankees brawl, picking on umpires, and Michael Conforto’s injury as the latest symptom of the sad state […]

Another day in the lives of those who would guide us through It follows perhaps that we should find them examples too But there I cannot think for less For I'm a terrible Hello and welcome to episode 1102 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by Fangraphs, but most importantly by our Patreon supporters. I am Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs, joined as usual by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello, how are you? Hi, yeah, I haven't missed one yet since you started. How is your cold? I know you came to visit Portland with a cold. I think that it has

been successfully given to somebody else. Yeah, I pretty much left it there. Yeah, I think that's right. I think Jesse is coming down with it now. I don't know whether anyone where you are has also. I hope not, but my bad. To be determined. What a great first impression. Okay, so you asked right before we started to record

whether we should talk about Rhys Hoskins because he is, as one example, he is the currently most searched player on the Fangraphs, but as a better and more relatable example he's good he's gotten off to a hot start and and many people are talking i just wanted to mention so reese hoskins has very very good numbers he's got almost as many walks as strikeouts he has a wrc plus of 191 and most importantly he's already homered eight times in 50 games 64 plate appearances so i like reese hoskins a lot of people like reese h most importantly he's already homered eight times in 50 games 64 played appearances so

i like reese oskins a lot of people like reese oskins he's one of the few bright spots in what's been a difficult philly season but i don't intentionally want to throw cold water on anyone i don't want to rain on anyone's parade but let me just list off he's he's hit eight home runs here are his opposing pitchers here's the good. I'm going to start with Dan Straley. He's good. You know, he's, well, he's, he's fine. Dan Straley, home run. Other seven, Ty Black.

I wish we didn't run into this. Ty Block, Ty Black, Ty, that guy. Him, Travis Wood, Justin Nicolino, Kyle Crick, Kyle McGrath, and Craig Stammen. Those are, those are definitely eight pitchers. Three of them pitch for the Padres. Three of them, I believe, pitch for the Marlins. Only Dan Straley among that group is good. So with baseball, we usually don't talk much about quality of competition because it balances out pretty quick.

But it doesn't really balance out over 64 plate appearances. And Rhys Hoskins has been promoted from AAA all the way to AAA. Right. Yeah. And he was good in AAA, to be fair. So that's part of the hype that he has recently been getting, at least on, as Carson says, the electronic pages of Fangraphs. But I think that differentiates him from the type of person who comes up and has a couple of good weeks, but did not have the track record of doing so.

And so that makes it very questionable. He seems like a good player and one of those guys who has a certain skill set that works well and maybe leads to you being underrated and not being that high on prospect lists and all of that. So it's nice that something has gotten right for the Phillies. So we're enjoying Reese Hoskinskins too but it is a very small sample so far agreed i think the the thing that is uh has gotten me excited if anything can get me excited about the phillies it's that over the past two and a half months or so down in triple a you might remember the jp crawford very good prospect got off to a terrible start of the

season but over his past 269 plate appearances let's use that as the best possible cutoff he's at 286 379 526 lots of walks not too many strikeouts plenty of home runs jp crawford is turning it around and you figure if you've got hoskins crawford aaron altair aaron nola in the majors next year well that's four that's four players that's and you know cesar hernandez is something so it's not it's not all a lost cause. And this feels like this could be one of those rebuilds that starts to turn around in a hurry as some players start to establish themselves as major league caliber. But they're coming out of it is the point.

They're gradually coming out of it. And they won't have to look forward to a 2018 season where one of their best hitters has been Daniel Nava. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, JP Crawford has had the Byron Buxton type turnaround that you also recently wrote about, which I'm rooting for because Buxton is fun just as a great defender who doesn't hit a whole lot, but as a great defender who does hit,

he'd be even more fun. So that is kind of happening. And as you pointed out, it's a whole twins wide improvement in plate discipline, which is maybe one of those instances of a coach making a real difference. I don't know. It's a very sudden improvement on their part as the new regime and new coaches have come in. So that's been an exception to the typical coaches. We can't really tell what they do or do they do anything or they get scapegoated when something goes wrong. But in this case, a lot of things are going right and particularly for Buxton. Yeah, I think one of the problems that we have when we try to evaluate coaches

is that I think we tend to think of helpful things or detrimental things as being helpful or detrimental across the board but what it can probably happen and what probably does happen with coaches is that their their coaching methods work better for certain players than others and so you could have a hitting coach who's who's really good for for the center fielder except he doesn't really click with the second baseman and then if you look for a some sort of team-wide distribution of results then they're just going to be all over the map.

And so in that case, I don't know, maybe that's the coach's fault. I don't know whose fault that would be. I don't know how much you can really expect coaching to make a difference at the major league level anyway, but twins, interesting. Buxton is a difficult one to write about because just like with, we've talked before about how when the Cubs have started to win, we just assumed they're just going to keep winning, you know, because we think the Cubs are so good that they meet our preconceived notions. And Buxton is coming from a position of having been a top prospect, of course. And so I know that I'm not immune to the bias of just looking for reasons to think he's getting good now, because I really want him to be good. I was playing through some the stat cast catch probability leaderboard for

this year, because I don't think many people have looked at that yet and i was averaging out all the math and trying to see who has made the most catches relative to the general league average and uh it's byron buxton he's he's number one and he's number one with a bullet he is way out there he's caught something like i don't know 22 23 more fly balls roughly than you'd expect the average defender to make and he's he's done this as a as a center fielder so he's playing a premium position. His base running is very good, which is not a surprise. He's basically as fast as Billy Hamilton based on the information we have.

And now he's starting to make contact. And when you put that all together, I mean, I guess a light hitting Byron Buxton, but like a decent hitting Byron Buxton can be, I guess, Ender Enciarte, but like with Billy Hamilton style speed so maybe a better example would be Billy Hamilton except you know better as a hitter so a better offensive Billy Hamilton would be sort of the upside here which doesn't even address the fact that Buxton

could hit for power so I gone back and forth when he was making so little contact I really like to see young players make contact because if you don't make contact you got to have joey gallo power and only joey gallo and a few other players have that buxton doesn't but when he starts to make contact then you look at the league now you look at how the ball is flying you don't need you just need to make adequate contact for the ball to leave the yard all of a sudden if buxton is something like a league average hitter then he is a legitimate star player and i know that there are some eye rolls on twitter which is the only crowd that i am exposed to in my daily life because apparently i wrote about buxton being

good the same day that aaron gleeman did and i'm sure that we've all fallen for this before buxton had i wrote my buxton piece this spring we've all been there yeah and buxton had a really good september last year but the difference between recent Buxton and September Buxton from last year is that that Buxton still struck out a bunch. This Buxton right now, not doing it. So anyway, he probably still sucks, but something to watch. Could be fun. So I want to mention a player I first heard of about an hour ago, courtesy of a Facebook

group member, listener Graham Stewart. And it's Grant Massey. I guess he's listed as a shortstop second baseman and third baseman in the White Sox system. He is 25 years old. He was a 26th round draftee in 2015, and he seems to be doing the two-way player thing. He's in A ball this year for the second consecutive year. He was actually in high A for a time last year. He's back in A-ball. And he made his pitching debut on August 5th. And since then, he has gotten into 23 games. So I think he has maybe full-time converted in the middle of a season, possibly.

Yeah, August 5th, according to Graham and according to some tweets I saw, was his pitching debut, I think. And somehow he has already pitched 23 times. So he's been pitching a lot this month, unless I'm misreading something. It doesn't. But he was hitting decently this season. hitting decently this season. He played 60 games at shortstop and he was hitting 293, 363, 400, which I guess this is his age 24 season. He's 25 now. It's a ball. That's not super impressive, but he was at least hitting fairly well by the standards of the league and playing shortstop. And then all of a sudden he seems to be a full-time pitcher or just about. And he has a 2.18 ERA, although he has barely struck out more batters than he has walked. And he just hasn't struck out many people at all. But I am just trying to figure

out what is going on with this line here. I tried to look for stories very briefly and didn't see anything. He's not a big prospect. He's not on the White Sox top 30. Of course, the White Sox top 30 is full of like eight of the best, hundred best prospects in baseball, something like that. So it's tough to crack the White Sox top 30, but he's not on there on MLB.com. He wasn't a big prospect. I don't know if he's doing both now because we don't have game logs on baseball reference for 8-ball. So it's a little tougher to tell what he has been doing lately. So I think that this is a mistake.

If you look at baseball references stats, then yeah, it has 23 pitching appearances, 33 innings since August 5th, which is like Scott Proctor kind of usage. But if you go through his game log he's actually only pitched twice he's uh he's he pitched on august 5th three innings yeah long outings though right yeah yeah 11th through 13th innings of a game and then on august 24th three more innings 9th through 11th could be a situation where uh where maybe the roster was short this is a ball you know the things happen i opened up the box scores for these games but i don't want to read them because I don't care. It looks like Grant, and if you go to the Kannapolis A-ball team website, it confirms that he is thrown in two games. He's thrown six innings.

So it looks like it is just some sort of weird, otherwise inexplicable baseball reference mistake. But if you haven't looked at the game log, maybe you already have, so maybe you know the answer. So he's playing for Kannapolis. Do you know the Kannapolis mascot? No, I don't. I didn't. It's the Intimidators. Oh, OK.

It's unusual because I've never heard it. But you figure you're coming up with a team name. And what is the mascot supposed to do? They're all supposed to be mean and scary. They're supposed to intimidate. And they thought, well, why beat around the bush? We're just going to intimidate you with our shortstops pitching three innings at a time and not very well. Yeah. It's a little unusual to make your pitching debut and go that many innings, right? I would think. And it doesn't look like he even pitched in college based on his baseball cube page. So good job, great Massey eating up

those innings. I guess not as many innings as it initially appeared, but still a lot of innings based on your background. Yep. That's Grant Massey. He's hitting fairly well this season, I guess. But as a part-time player, look, it looks like Grant Massey, he recently turned 25 years old. He's down an A-ball, 26th round pick. He's probably not going to move very fast. No, probably not. But hey, at least he's getting some pitching experience. So along the same lines as baseball things that we hadn't heard of, you've got Grant Massey, a two-way player who it turns out really isn't a two-way player. But there is a team,

there is a team that is playing 500 baseball that i don't know if you know that this team is playing 500 baseball so i'm going to read down a list i'm going to read down the national league wildcard standings arizona domo backs they have wildcard position one colorado rockies they're in wildcard position two they are three and a half games above the brewers who are around they're five games ahead of the cardinals and they're only five and a half games above the marlins who have according to these standings and all the standings i've looked at the marlins do have 63 wins and 63 losses the miami marlins are playing 500 baseball and it's taken me completely by surprise because i wrote them off three months ago like everybody else yeah so on august 10th something caught my eye i still follow john hayman i'm one of those people on twitter and

and he tweets out his uh his inside baseball articles pretty often and he puts in keywords when he tweets them out because he wants people to pay attention to the things that he's writing about which i totally get so this is going to be something from august 10th there's an article posted on august 10th by john hayman i'm going to scroll down there's one of his bullet points midway through the article bullet point the most shocking thing of the week was fan graphs putting the marlins playoff chances at 2.5 percent normally their numbers make sense but miami was 10 games out in the wild card and even more in the national league east computer malfunction and hayman retweeted this article again the next day saying what's up with fan graphs that article went up august 10th and on augustth, when Heyman probably started drafting this article,

the Marlins were 53 and 59. And since then, they've won 10 of 14. And they've pulled themselves all the way up to 63 and 63. Now their playoff odds currently sit at 9.6%. They've gotten better. They've quadrupled. So what was up with Finkress? I don't know. When Heyman tweeted that, I did look at the odds. I thought this looks a little weird. But I think that the Marlins have this little hidden advantage of they have a really soft schedule from here on out because they get to play the National League East, which generally is bad. And so teams that they're competing against in the wildcard race, I don't think anyone thinks that the Rockies are dominant. And you know, the playoff odds don't really love the Brewers and the Cardinals are only okay I don't know if it was some sort of like weird very small scale computer error a couple weeks ago with the Marlins but I guess reality has validated it because the Marlins there was some chance the Marlins would get back in the hunt and the Marlins have kind of gotten back in the hunt they only have what 36 games to play so they still have a lot of ground to make up but they've made up a lot of ground already.

The Miami Marlins, whose pitching staff includes, I don't know, are in the playoff hunt. Okay, we're going to play a game. We're going to play a game. Okay. I want you to name as many Marlins pitchers who have started a game this season. And I'm going to tell you, there have been 11 of them.

So I've already told you some of the names. There was a little hint earlier when I was reading off names from Rhys Hoskins. So 11 Marlins starting pitchers, name them as best you can. Well, so I know Edinson Volquez threw a no-hitter. Yep, he's not disabled. This is out of the air. You mentioned Dan Straley. Yeah, that's true. He's a Marlin. I know that you are a fan or have been a

fan of adam conley that's three he's not very good uh it's getting a little harder now oh uh wayne chen is on that team yeah he started five times but he's on the disabled list okay seven more is is tom kohler on the marlin still he's not anymore but he was that's okay that's five he was recently traded to the blue jays i believe all right you know what i'm happy with five i'm gonna rest there yeah okay i think of those pictures only straley is active you've got jose urania that's uh yeah okay that's that's there's uh there's vance worley he just pitched yesterday vance worley he's's around. He started 10 times. Bad team, but good team.

Justin Nicolino, the low strikeout wonderkind. Jeff Locke. Wow. Yeah. Someone named Chris O'Grady has started six times. You could probably tell me that's someone who converted from football like a week ago. And Odrissemer Despagne. He's around.

Whatever. That's a lot of syllables, but i think i nailed most of them and that's a i think that that should be 11 i don't think that i bypassed anyone so 11 marlins starters their current rotation that is their last five starting pitchers just to uh take a glance at how things look it has been worley, Nicolino, Urania, Straley and Conley this team this team is apparently kicking ass and I don't know how they began the year with Danny Echeverria he's gone they traded him Dee Gordon was playing some but he's gone JT Riddle who's someone I had never heard of took over at shortstop but then he got hurt for the season and so Miguel Rojas has taken over he is their current everyday shortstop Derek Dietrich is playing third base every day because Martin Prado is done for the

year the first base lately has been handled by catcher JT Real Muto because Justin Boer is on the disabled list Tomas Talese has also been playing a first base half the time and the only reason I know Tomas Talese is in the past he's measured as one of the worst framing catchers on record so this team man this team is not good but they're on fire and they're in the hunt and i don't know how but no that's the marlins and i kind of i kind of want them to do it now i want them to make it yeah that is i did not expect that. I'm not used to like NL playoff uncertainty because the NL playoffs have just seemed predetermined now for months. And yeah, I was not aware. And if you had told me who was on the Marlins, to the extent that I didn't know that already, I would have been even more surprised to hear this so yeah i i wonder if this has been run scoring that they have managed to outdo this lousy sounding rotation or whether they've just been winning a lot of one run games or having a bunch of clutch hitting or or what but it's wow it's john carlos stanton yeah that's it's probably a big chunk of it yeah i haven't looked at the numbers, but second half, Giancarlo Stanton has hit 305.

This is Giancarlo Stanton, and his WRC Plus is 203 because he's hit 21 home runs. He has nearly as many second half home runs. His first half home runs, he is doing everything. It is all Giancarlo Stanton. His second half isolated power is 504. Unbelievable. So the Marlins, of course, they have some good opponents. They have the Nationals six times left over the remainder of the season and that's going to be tough but at the same time the

nationals don't have a whole lot to play for but they also have a series against the padres they have a four game series against the phillies and then a three game series against the phillies they have it looks like seven or eight more games against the braves they get whatever the hell is left of the mets and maybe crucially there is a stretch toward the end of September. The Marlins have backed back series, unfortunately, for them on the road. Three against Arizona, three against Colorado. Could be interesting as the Marlins vie against literally all odds, except for those publisher fan graphs, to make the playoffs.

Yeah, Stanton is leading the majors in win probability added in the second half. So there you go. This is unbelievable. What a bad team that is doing it. Okay. Well, I guess we're kind of duty bound to at least address the physical histrionics from yesterday's Tigers-Yankees game. I think that there's not really anything getting past it. Because ordinarily, we'll talk about there being one bench clearing incident

this game had four bench clearing incidents yeah and i don't know have you did you look it up at all were you watching did you read anything about watching i've i'm peripherally aware but i didn't do a deep dive on the footage yeah and i didn't either which is gonna make this easy because we can just not talk about it a whole lot but it it kind of started, I think this was mostly self-contained to this one day. And Gary Sanchez hit a long home run. He's been doing a lot of that. He hit four in that series, I think. Yeah, there you go. And in his next time up, Michael Fulmer hit him with a pitch, which looks admittedly suspicious. And it's not like the tigers are not playing for anything really so what did fulmer have to lose so sanchez was hit in the fifth inning so that kind of got some people's attention sanchez looked out to the mound fulmer immediately responded on the mound by like jumping

and turning around and then shaking his hand because oh by the way michael fulmer has recently felt numbness in his hand so that's uh that's one clue that great cover story at the very least but yeah so it's a case where you can if you know the history you know fulmer has had hand numbness bad thing to experience as a pitcher bad thing to experience as any person to be honest but sure worse than most uh but also fulmer's immediate body language of oh i wish i didn't do that because fulmer probably knew at that instant this isn't going to play well this looks suspicious and so we move on and things are mostly fine and the yankees have the lead when sanchez is hip and then the tigers take the lead and it's it's six to three and then we go to the bottom of the sixth inning and maybe maybe the yankees were just biding their

time maybe they wanted to wait until a certain Miguel Cabrera came up but actually no they weren't doing that because Miguel Cabrera batted in the bottom of the fifth so never mind they missed that opportunity to throw at or around Miguel Cabrera but we go to the bottom of the sixth after Fulmer hit Sanchez there were no warnings issued but in the sixth inning Tommy Canely was pitching he struck out Mikey Matuk and he struck out Justin Upton this is every Tommy Canely appearance also incidentally to close out the bottom of it he struck out Mikey Matuk and he struck out Justin Upton this is every Tommy Canley appearance also incidentally to close out the bottom of it he struck out Ian Kinzer so Canley at this point three batters yeah three strikeouts all swinging he's great the at-bat began with Tommy Canley

facing Miguel Cabrera the at-bat officially ended with a roll this Chapman facing Dixon Machado which is a lot of fun because Canley comes in and with two outs nobody on Tigers up by three is his first pitch is a fastball that sails behind the upper body of Miguel Cabrera. That looks bad. Canley was tossed, which immediately got Joe Girardi upset and ejected because there were no warnings given. But the umpire was just trying to read the room. So Canley's gone.

One pitch in. And Aroldis Chapman comes in. But as Chapman is standing there on the mound, Miguel Cabrera has a disagreement with the Yankees catcher. Which one is he? He's Austin Romine. So Austin Romine is the Yankees catcher. He says something and Cabrera says something.

Who knows who says what first? And then they have a little shovey poo and then it turns into something worse. And so Cabrera tries to throw some punches. It looks like he missed. Romine tackled Cabrera. The bench is clear. Chapman's just kind of out there thinking, this one I didn't start. Yeah, Cabrera immediately goes into full boxer mode.

He was like the old timey, just putting his dukes up. He was ready. And he shoved Romain. So Romain takes off the mask, and then Cabrera gives him a shove, which gives Cabrera the advantage. He immediately can shove and then get ready to throw a punch because at that point he has taken command of the situation however his punches were bad they missed and Romain actually tackled Cabrera and then there was something that was kind of hidden in there Gary Sanchez comes screeching

out of the Yankee dugout and he like sucker punches I believe he's in there sucker punching Miguel Cabrera or something he gets one punch i had to look for a replay this morning maybe i got this wrong but sanchez kind of threw a punch at a guy who was already on the ground that's hidden in the melee sanchez wasn't ejected or anything but it's there some tigers saw it and this led to a disagreement among the tigers where victor martinez was kind of seen hanging out buddy buddy with gary sanchez while justin verlander and nicholas castellanos were like no don't be buddy buddy with him he punched our mvp in the head or at least our past mvp so there's disagreements all over the place so tommy canley throws a ball to miguel cabrera but aroldis chapman ultimately allows a single to dixon machado so good for machado machado steals second base because whatever why not everyone can steal against

Geraldo Chapman I guess so maybe that's going to be it right no that's not going to be it we left out David Robertson sprinting in from that's right the most moment of this entire that was the that initial that was the Romain Cabrera boxing match that led to Robertson sprinting in which I like to see because often when you get these brawls, they're less like real brawls than this one was. And guys are just milling around and the bullpens just trot in dutifully, but there is no haste at all to their arrival. And they're just kind of jogging in like almost meeting in the middle of the two bullpens

and there's no urgency to it. It's just purely eyewash. It's just for show. And in this case, Robertson was like, hey, they might need me. I need to be there. They need me. I'm going to get there as fast as I possibly can. So good for David Robertson to break the bullpen brawler stereotype. Yeah. I had forgotten which incident it was that Robertson came sprinting out. I had a mental note to mention it, and I just missed it completely. I mean, you've got, what, three or four Yankees bullpen people who are like 50 yards behind them. There's probably even more off screen.

And Robertson is dead. It's like the freeze against some random Braves fan. He's just like totally lapping them all. Maybe it was just the camera angle, but it looked like his upper body was like angled back, like his legs were just kind of out of control, just sprinting him forward. His brain's like, I don't know, but I guess we're doing this. So Robertson goes in. Anyway, things, I don't know, kind of settled down, I guess.

We go to the top of the seventh and the Yankees tie the game. And then we move on down to the bottom of the seventh. And this is when things light up again, because Dylan Batances, who has walked 13 batters per nine innings probably this season don't look it up I'm close to true he comes in and leading off the bottom of the seventh Patances gets a first pitch strike in against James McCann and then he throws a second pitch strike to his head and McCann goes down Patances is tossed because you can't throw a fastball at somebody's head Patances probably in fact I'll say he almost certainly did not intend to hit McCann. His first pitch was nowhere close. His first pitch was a strike. And it takes a real kind of villain

to set someone up with a strike before you try to hit him in the head. That's distasteful. Batances doesn't have that kind of background. I know Jeff Passan wrote an article where he talked about the improbability of this happening. But you know, Batances is not throwing a lot of strikes. He's one of the worst strike throwers in baseball. he was trying to throw an inside fastball to james mccann rode up got him in the head i'm not gonna say maybe there was a part of the dances that was interested in the idea of hitting mccann somewhere but that wasn't that wasn't supposed to happen thankfully mccann seems to be okay being batances is right up there with hand numbness as like a good excuse for hitting someone by accident. Yeah, strong agree.

Where I know that Betancis doesn't have a history of a whole lot of hit by pitches. But oh, by this year, he does have seven, which is a career high. Seven and 47. He's hitting a lot of dudes, Del Betancis. And McCann was unfortunately one of them. So that happens. The next batter, David robertson hits john hicks in an oh and two count robertson not ejected because you know oh and two count and at some

point also you're just going to run out of yankees players but it's interesting so at this point you have the umpire making judgment calls trying to read intent which of course they always do but you've got dylan batances lighting up james mccann's brain stem and then he's out but then david robinson immediately hits john hicks and he's fine i think that that was just kind of like one of those eye roll moments but the tigers take the lead in the inning to go up nine to six and then we go to the top of the eighth and the game i guess the game doesn't end but the uh the the brawls end with one out i guess alex Alex Wilson didn't much feel like hitting Chase Headley was going to be very significant.

So he decided to let Chase Headley make an out. And then he drilled Todd Frazier, who I don't know, maybe he just hates Todd Frazier from his days with the White Sox or something. But Alex Wilson hit Todd Frazier. Bench is clear. One more time. I don't remember where it was that Brett Gardner was kind of doing the hold me back thing. And then CeCe Zabathie was laughing about it.

He was a great, terrible day for baseball but the the one refreshing thing about Alex Wilson is he's like yeah I meant to hit him yeah there's not enough of that so that's how it ended Gary Sanchez I think some people think that Sanchez was the biggest villain in all of this because he threw a couple punches while he was not really the center of attention threw a punch at Miguel Cabrera and then uh 15 seconds later he tried to throw a punch at somebody else. I don't know who it was. You can look at this and think, okay, what happened? Fulmer, you can excuse, probably didn't mean to hit the guy.

Tommy Canely probably did mean to throw behind Miguel Cabrera, but then Cabrera kind of had a delayed reaction where he decided to go after Austin Romine and for anyone who hasn't already heard about this Austin Romine Yankees catcher on the Tigers roster Andrew Romine his brother also involved in the brawl hilarious I don't know what the loyalties are in that situation where you have brothers on opposite sides then you have the Tigers fighting amongst themselves because one of their players didn't see the player he was friends with punching the other players on his own team it's just it's a big ugly complicated mess i don't know who's going to get the biggest suspension people have said that it should be sanchez for

throwing his punches probably won't be batances you wonder if alex wilson is going to get the longest possible suspension out of everyone just because he admitted that he was trying to hit a guy even though you want that honesty in a case like this, because it's so obvious. And maybe the weirdest thing about the game is that Jose Iglesias went three for three with two after bases. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I'm always conflicted about these things because on the one hand, fighting is stupid and there

probably shouldn't be fighting in baseball. But if you are going to fight, at least like put some effort into it, I guess. Maybe those are conflicting opinions. I'm not sure. But it's just it's tiresome when they're wasting our time and they're not actually angry at each other. At least in this case, there was genuine emotion. And it wasn't just one of those things where they're all standing around posturing and

being macho. And this was genuine aggression here, which should be discouraged. But I mean, people still watch UFC and boxing and stuff. So there is some primal instinct inside us that this appeals to as an entertainment. And so this was, I guess, the biggest brawl of the year, at least unless you count like the Manny Machado craziness earlier this year, that was more of an isolated thing with a single player versus one team. This was a whole team versus a team, including David Robertson.

Yeah. Satisfying brawl. Yankees still in a pretty good position. They're three and a half. Well, I guess they're four games clear of the nearest non wildcard team, so they can afford a few suspensions and and they'll be okay incidentally in case you haven't paid attention here's the race for the second wildcard twins royals uh twins have it royals angels mariners a half game back all of

them rangers one game back rays and orioles three games back and the blue jays are lingering at five so the five-way tie situation is still a possibility but in any case yankees will face suspensions for them it will matter tigers will face suspensions for them it will not matter but good brawl good series of brawls stupid but whatever most of the things that happen on a baseball field are stupid the very act of watching baseball and caring about it so deeply is stupid so whatever lean into the stupid it's all stupid and everyone's okay stupid plus time equals cherished as you said last week yeah this this actually this gave me the occasion to go look at Miguel Cabrera's stats which I hadn't done recently and boy yeah I do not look like

Miguel Cabrera's stats this is disconcerting to see Miguel Cabrera with a below average slash line I think and I'm not entirely sure, but I think the last time I checked on Baseball Savant, they have that expected D'Obba statistic based on the stat cast inputs. And I think Cabrera by that measure still rates as a pretty good, pretty dangerous hitter, but you know, his body's going to start to fail him. And just like with Albert Pujols, when all you know is what pitches to swing at and how to swing, but your body doesn't really let you do things like it used to, then that's kind of what declining is, right?

Yeah, well, maybe you can be a boxer. So one of the things that's come out of the Tigers-Yankees game is that maybe the biggest problem was the umpires because the umpires didn't issue any warning after Fulmer hit Sanchez. And then things kind of got out of control from there. Canley was ejected. There was a warning that made Joe Girardi upset and everything kind of spiraled out of control.

So this is a game, another game where there is a lot of blame that is being handed out to the guys in blue who are actually, I believe the guys in black. So that one, that's a, that's an expression that should probably change, but it's been, it's been umpire week. I guess you could say there was a, the umpire protest earlier this week where joe west and angel hernia i think a handful of umpires went out wearing white wristbands yes as a silent protest well at least what they referred to as a silent protest while speaking about it yes while speaking about a silent protest against the what they uh say to be increasing verbal attacks from players

and so maybe this is going to be contrarian but but I would like to propose to you an idea. And I would like to gauge whether or not you agree with it that I think that umpires might be, I don't know if tragic is the right word, but they might be baseball's hidden sympathetic characters, just kind of in general. There were articles and I was reading Jeff Patton, I was reading a number of articles that were kind of making fun of the umpires for their protests and it i get it's it's silly it's silly to see the umpires wearing white wristbands never mind the the symbolism of wearing the white wristband but also at like a time like this when there are so many greater protests in america like the timing it's not great i get that however i i can understand that the umpires feel like perhaps they are increasingly grieved.

And I know that people have very strong opinions about Joe West. I know that people have very strong opinions about C.B. Buckner and Angel Hernandez and the Angel Hernandez lawsuit and everything. And everyone has their least favorite umpires and nobody, nobody, not nobody that you talk to has a favorite umpire. It doesn't exist. But do umpires ever get their stories told? I feel like they are always the opposition in any

sort of commentary because you've got from the fan perspective you care about your team and your players from the writer perspective you're writing about teams and players you're mostly talking to players you're very seldom talking to umpires writers aren't really connected to the umpire world and and the umpires are just kind of always there presented as the villains. But if you think about the pressure that they face all the time, they don't get to speak their side of the story almost ever. When they do, there's a natural inclination to take the side of the players because we just always side with the players in these things because we like the players. We watch baseball for the players. So umpires are kind of treated unfairly on that basis.

They only ever get attention when they get things wrong on the field. And they have to worry about their very jobs because you've got instant replay, which has taken over so much of the game. And it's all their calls are getting reviewed now on the field. And now you have all this chatter about the automated strike zone. Umpires have to be feeling it from all sides and they don't get any sympathy for it and so i like it it makes sense that they can sort of be on edge they act like they're on tilt and they're just throwing players out of games and and they're expressing their frustration and they're trying to band together in protest because i know that they they get paid well and

they're unionized they get their some of them get hundreds of thousands of dollars a year as their salary and they only work what seven months maybe eight if you work the playoffs and spring training but it's got to be terrible it's got to be terrible to be a major league umpire and nobody cares nobody wants to hear the umpires out and give them any sort of the benefit of the doubt for how difficult it must be to go out there every day and feel like everybody hates you. It's like being a dentist. Yeah, I mean, it's always been terrible, I guess. If anything, it would be less terrible now. I don't know whether the fact that we have replay and that these umpires calls are subject to review. On the one hand, it kind of is embarrassing, right? It exposes their mistakes. Now, many of those mistakes are

understandable and anyone else in the world would make the same mistakes. But still, most people don't have a job where when you make a decision or you do something immediately, everything you did is questioned by everyone watching at home and everyone in your office. And then, you know, they pull up a replay of you making that dumb decision and then you have to be the one to hear, nope, that was wrong. And then you have to admit you were wrong. I mean, it's, you know, that's not a fun occupation and it never has been. I don't know whether it's easier now because of that, like you don't get as many arguments anymore with managers, I guess, because there are things that you can't argue because you just challenge and there's no point in arguing. So on the one hand, maybe there's less outright aggression.

On the other hand, there's just more being embarrassed. And I mean, maybe you don't look at it as being embarrassed, but it is kind of an embarrassing situation. And in the past, of course, there was no objective record before replay. Fans were certainly convinced that they were right and you were wrong and you were trying to screw them over, but no one could point to the video and say, yep, here's you early days of baseball, so that's not the case anymore. They're, I think, more protected from angry rooters and there's safety on the field and off the field. say, you guys have it easy. Why are you doing a protest? We went through harder things than you have to go through. But it's still a pretty thankless job and has a lot of elements that almost every other job does not have. So I can totally understand why they would be on edge when everyone is always on edge with them. There's just no getting around that other than robots, perhaps, who will not get mad at anyone. And it's hard to get mad at a robot. So maybe that will happen at some point. But as long as you have human umpires, you're

going to have other humans who are mad at those umpires. And those human umpires are going to be mad at other people. Yeah, it's not unique to baseball. People hate umpires or referees. And every sport, we're just kind of raised that way, really. But if you look at it just in the baseball context, because it's the only thing that I really know you've got players are making more money than ever whether they are benefiting enough from the increase in baseball revenues i don't know that's for somebody else to analyze but the average salary is skyrocketed the average salary now is what it's over three million dollars i think so it's it's something silly so there is more money in baseball than ever before there is therefore more at stake for baseball players than ever before.

There's just more for them to gain or for them to lose. I don't have any historical tracking of umpire salaries, but I cannot imagine that umpires are really benefiting to the same degree from the increase in revenues because why would they? Nobody is paying attention to baseball because of the umpires. I get that, but you've got umpires who are dealing with players who have more at stake and the umpires just every year they are having their authority further eroded. So whether it's a matter of being embarrassed or maybe some umpires like having instant

replay at the end of the day, it just means that their responsibilities are reduced. Their role is reduced. And that's not going to make anybody feel good. And of course course what feels most central to umpires is that they're in charge of the the ball strike zone and that could go away at any moment well i guess not hit not at any moment but it's there it's looming and it feels inevitable i would imagine it's kind of like working at a machine shop 50 or 60 years ago and you think well i don't know i've heard about these computers we're probably going to be fine

but just gonna keep coming to work at 7 30 and hoping hoping that the job doesn't go away but you know at some point you feel like the job could go away and i imagine that you don't get a whole lot of good sleep as an umpire and so while while i don't i don't like angel hernandez i have issues with umpires myself and and I think that there are certainly some somewhat ugly personalities among the crew it feels like it's almost it it feels too easy and it feels like there's not enough there's not enough of people trying to understand the position that umpires have been put on but because it just ends up as Angel Hernandez jokes CB Buckner jokes and hashtag ump show and these people are facing a whole lot of stress and their job is impossible to do right all the time it's almost impossible to do right most of the time which they accomplish i think

these conversations often end up with with people acknowledging that yeah uh the umpires in the major leagues are great and that's something that is important to understand the umpires in the major leagues are great and as the best example of how that's true look at the triple a umpires who come up and try to call the strike zone they're terrible it doesn't work it's bad this is one of the reasons why the there's so little shuffling among the major league umpire population it's because they are the best for the most part there are some bad ones of course but i don't know i uh i guess i just want the idea out there that the umpires might be the biggest cast of sympathetic characters in Major League Baseball today and nobody cares about it. Wow. That's a position that not many people share. I think that the umpires are the most sympathetic. Yeah, because it's just the nature of their...

Well, who else is? Just no one is going to like them because everyone has felt that their team, and thus by extension them, because people identify very closely with the team that they root for, has been screwed by umpires in general or umpires in specific at some point in the past. And so you stew over those mistakes. And maybe they're not as common now because those mistakes get overturned, but you still have ball strike calls and there are, of course, incorrect ball strike calls and everyone remembers when those calls go against them. And I don't know if people remember when those calls are in their favor, but even when they remember calls in their favor, it's still an example of the umpire not doing his job perfectly.

So that doesn't reflect well on him either. And of course, you don't remember the routine calls, which are right almost all the time. But, you know, it's the presumption is, well, of course, the call should be right. That's what the umpire is there for. So no one awards any points to the umpire for getting a call right, even though it is a very difficult job and it's not something that most people could do or any people could do any better than they are doing it. And, you know, at the same time, you have people criticizing the way the Empires are doing their jobs and also suggesting that the Empire should not be doing the job, that we could, you know, replace them with machines with no one wants to hear about their job. So yeah, I totally understand. And a lot of them still respond inappropriately and should perhaps be censured for that more than they are. But the vast majority of them

are good at their jobs, and it's just a really difficult job. Let's just say there's a lot of people right now who should be censured for a lot of things and they don't really seem to happen i get like there's there's the what weeks ago jerry davis throwing out adrian beltray for his like yeah that's that's come on like lighten up and on the other hand like what are you supposed you can't move the on deck circle and and as we discussed like you need the umpire to to eject him for that to really rise to the moment so anyway i guess at the major league level i don't see another cast of sympathetic characters now if you want to if you want to get into the minor leagues and talk about people who are down there who are just

riding buses all the time or they don't get paid very much money i i'm open to the conversation but at least at the major league level, there are no sympathetic characters. Otherwise, you've got players who make millions of dollars. They're all great. They get treated very well all the time. Everyone is living a great life except for the umpires.

That's my conclusion. Everybody in baseball has a great life except for the umpires. Except for the Mets and Michael Conforto, which is one last thing I wanted to mention. This was like just the most fitting capper Except for the umpires. 83-86, 558 with 27 homers. He's a great hitter. And, you know, there was a lot of controversy about, well, he's not playing enough and the Mets are burying him and so on and so forth. And he has gotten that playing time and he's done really well with it. And as pitcher after pitcher after pitcher has gotten hurt, and most recently it was Wheeler done for the year and Steven Metz is

having surgery now, it's just a litany of terrible news. And then Michael Conforto just swings. That's all he did was swing. He swung and missed. And that is just the most Metz type of injury. I always think it's just like the most depressing kind of baseball injury is just when the player just does something totally routine. Like it's not some freakish collision. It's not even just like tearing a muscle or something. It's just like

throwing a pitch and you break your elbow or something like that's just the most off-putting, just disconcerting injury and just swinging a bat, something Michael Conforto has done thousands and thousands of times. This time, for whatever reason, he has a torn posterior capsule in his left shoulder, might need surgery, and yet another Met goes down. So this is, I don't know, I think I've talked about this, I guess, on my other podcast that I always feel like Mets fans are overly fatalistic and that, you know, if you compare the Mets franchises suffering to other franchises maybe the Mets moan about how much that they have suffered or Mets fans moan about how much they've

suffered relative to those other teams but man this has been a very depressing season for the Mets it feels appropriate I know the season isn't over but I guess we're to the point where as a Mets fan you could have said well I guess you could say the point where as a Mets fan, you could have said, well, I guess you could say we shouldn't have been building around all of these pitches because pitchers get hurt and they get hurt all the time and there's nothing you can do. And that's just one of the downsides. Should have rebuilt like the Cubs

instead of rebuilding around pitching. But how appropriate in a way, just in that darkly Mets way, and I don't want to act like the Mets are all particular and why not every team gets hurt, but the Mets have earned the reputation and their season is going to end with their best, most electrifying young player, all particular and whatnot every team gets hurt but the the mets have earned the reputation and their season is going to end with their best most electrifying young player god something might happen to ahmed rosario i have no idea there's still five more weeks in the season their best

breakout young player he's a position player should be safe he's just out there he just does the usual thing he just takes a swing and now not only is he done for the year but he has a torn something in his shoulder and it's just going to be in the back of everyone's mind what is this going to do to his future is his swing going to be ruined forever and nobody knows so don't build around pitching slash don't build around people who swing slash don't be the Mets just sounds horrible. I am. Yeah, it's I'm sorry. Mets fans, you do deserve. Maybe you are the cast of the second most sympathetic characters.

Yes, feel free to wallow. So we will end there. You've got a chat to get to. We will talk again next week. Before we finish a few developments from between the time Jeff and I talked and the time I'm posting this podcast. A, Reese Hoskins homered again. That's number nine. B, MLB released the suspensions from the Tigers-Yankees brawl. Seven games to Miguel Cabrera. That's the biggest suspension, evidently because he started it. Only four games for Gary Sanchez, despite the sucker punching. Four games also for Alex Wilson for intentionally

throwing at Todd Frazier and admitting it and also, I guess, reigniting the hostilities after things had settled down. Two games for Austin Romine, one game for Brad Ausmus, seemingly because of what Alex Wilson did. Bunch of people were fined, but no suspensions for Fulmer or Batances. So evidently MLB bought their claims of innocence, as I think did we. And C, John Carlos Stanton homered twice in the first three innings of the Marlins-Padres game. As I record this, he has driven in all three of the Marlins' runs, and they have a slim lead, again, entirely because of Stanton. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild.

Five listeners who have already pledged their support include A.J. Schreier, Ryan Johnson, Dominique Banfield, Alex Kapuscinskas, and Aidan Jackson-Evans. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild, and you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. You can contact me and Jeff via email at podcast.bandcrafts.com or by messaging us through Patreon. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance.

We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we'll be back soon. Here come the kingfish Oh, the kingfish Friend of the working land Here come the kingfish. Here come the kingfish. The kingfish gonna save this land.