Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1200: The Small-Sample Sampler

Episode Date: April 6, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about a James Paxton eagle attack (and an earlier condor attack), a successful Jon Lester bounce pass, a play that proves that some players don’t know the rules about tagging up, Shohei Ohtani’s rest schedule, and a heartwarming moment involving Mike Trout, then do another edition of Gabe Kapler […]

Point out the bounce! What's behind the thief? Point out the bounce! What's behind the thief? Point out the bounce! What's behind the thief? What's behind the thief? Point out the bounce!

What's behind the thief? Point out the bounce! Hello and welcome to episode 1200 of the-0-0 of the Mexico Wild. Nice round number episode. This is a baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters by Baseball. I am Jeff Sullivan of Baseball, joined as always by Ben Lindberg of Baseball. Sometimes other things. How are you? I'm good. I don't really speak on behalf of Baseball, but I'm happy to be here.

Yeah, it's a multiple of five ending a week and a multiple of three, which I guess is more relevant to this way that the podcast is scheduled these days. But yeah, nice, nice round number. Yeah. And a nice multiple of 1200 as well. Yeah, I haven't had one of those before. We said on our last show that milestones don't matter anymore, right? So we're not even paying attention. I mean, in theory, this means that I've done 200 episodes, which would give me 20% of the SAM output. But on the other hand, I've also missed several. So, you know, we're just kind of disabled this stint. My service time is still at 200. Yes, right. It's like the Dodgers sort of schedule. We put you on the 10-day DL,

you go to Patagonia, and then you come back feeling refreshed. Would you consider me the Rich Hill of this podcast? I don't know. That would probably mean that you're the best. So I don't know if I'll concede that. So what are we talking about today? Speaking of the best, James Paxton was attacked by a bald eagle. Oh, yeah. I saw that.

I don't really have words. I don't think that there's any sort of conversation that one could have about this incident that would be any better than the incident itself. But definitely a large bird that came after, I wouldn't say attacked, I guess, James Paxton, but most certainly did land on him while paxton was warming up for his start i would assume that everyone listening to this has already seen pictures and video it's been everywhere that a bald eagle landed on the mariners one canadian player but i guess to uh paxton's not credit good fortune the eagle landed on his right shoulder, non-throwing shoulder.

So even if he lost all of his ligaments and connective things in there, then he was still going to be able to throw 97 miles per hour. He handled it very well. I thought he didn't seem very flustered. He ended up pitching very well. So good job by him. I would encourage anyone out there. There's a minor league hockey team in Bakersfield California called the Condors Bakersfield Condors and I don't know if they do this before every game but there's video clip of

at least one game in which they thought it would be a great idea to have a live Condor come out before the game started I think it's one of those national anthem things same idea that's what the twins did with the bald eagle and they brought out out a condor. This is on YouTube. And the condor didn't take kindly to his surroundings, and he more or less lost his condor mind. And he started losing it in center ice, and he sort of made a beeline over for one of the team benches, which was occupied by a team. And he just started pacing back and forth up the bench.

And, you know, condor is a predator, bird of prey, and a very large wingspan. And I'm impressed by large birds, personally. I like to look at them, but I think they're all characterized by sort of a resting bitch face situation. They never really look pleasant. So the team, you know,

these are young minor league hockey players. They weren't exactly thrilled by the prospect of having a Condor on their bench. And I would imagine, I'm going to guess, that that just as the twins probably won't have another bald eagle for a game the condors probably will keep their condor somewhere else mariners lost so if it were one of those things where if they won it would probably become the tradition baseball players are superstitious so get attacked by an eagle every day and until something goes wrong but didn't work out in their favor.

Was there anything else? Was there anything else worth talking about before we talk about baseball in a different way? Yeah, I got a bunch of stuff. Well, we've got a couple follow-ups to things that we've talked about in the past. So first of all, John Lester threw out a runner. Oh, yes, of course. He did it in a fashion that we discussed. Oh, yes, of course. infield dirt and gets it to the base that way. And so he was pitching against the Brewers on Thursday and the Brewers, of course, steal lots of bases. They stole the most bases.

They've been pretty aggressive against everyone, but also against John Lester. And that held true here. So Ryan Braun got on base with two outs in the first inning. He immediately stole second base and then he greedy, and he tried to steal third, and he did it like, I mean, Lester was still holding the ball. It was just, you know, no respect for Lester's ability to pick off or throw out a runner at all. Lester was just standing there on the mound, and Bron just starts, like, strolling to third, basically. He just very, you know, not trying to hide it. He's just walking to third base.

And then eventually he started running. Anyway, Lester did the bounce pass and he got him. And it was the last out of the inning. And he stared him down as he walked off the mound. And Bron was kind of laughing. And it was a fun moment. So bounce pass. I don't know if it's been used before, but one for one.

I love this one because braun had just stolen second base pretty easily uh shortly before that off john lester but what i liked about this is that ryan braun tried to steal third base in exactly the manner that we've been asking baseball players to try to steal against john lester so this is interesting because of the bounce pass but it's also interesting because of the bold approach that ryan brian took don't know if this is something, I mean, we all took great interest in John Lester's pickoff problems. And I wonder if this is just sort of like percolating up. pickoffs bounce pass aside and you have just this amount of coverage that has said just run just run against him and just don't worry about the pickoffs and you just haven't really seen it until now where ryan braun is just like i'm going to advance against my better judgment but maybe with my better judgment and just take off so he was i mean it was two outs and he was already in

scoring position so on the one hand bad time to try to steal. On the other hand, if you think that you can always get away with it, always a good time to steal. Yeah. So it was pleasing to see. Of course it did backfire, but I wonder if this is something

where like the Brewers had some sort of team meeting. I don't know if they had it before the game, before the season, probably would make more sense before the game where the coaches would just talk to the players and be like, just go. Just don't even pretend like there's not even a ball. Just run.

Just run or walk. And I know that after Lester threw, I shouldn't even say threw, brought out, bounced, brought out, I guess. I know he did the stare down, which L has done I think every time all three times or whatever he's picked somebody off as I understand he gets to take offense he gets to say like look what I just did but first of all you can't intimidate with a stare when you bounce a pass to third base so John Lester should probably just kind of stare at his shoes and walk back to the dog out because you know but I also like that that Ryan Braun was just smiling about the whole thing.

You know, it would have been really easy if you get thrown out trying to steal third with two outs. No point to doing that. John Lester does not throw a lot of wild pitches. But I like that he was just having a good time about it. He wasn't pissed off because he thought, yeah, let's see how far I can push it. Whoop, too far. Yeah, and maybe it was a team meeting because he wasn't worried about being chastised

or something if all the brewers had been told to do this. So, yeah, but, I mean, this was vintage Lester. because he wasn't worried about being chastised or something if all the Brewers had been told to do this. So, yeah, but, I mean, this was vintage Lester. He still has this hang-up about throwing, and yet he's fine, and occasionally he even catches someone. But regardless, he allowed, like, four base runners in the game, and the Brewers got shut out. So John Lester, just throughout this whole saga, has been good enough at pitching that being bad at throwing to bases just really hasn't mattered all that much.

And I admire him for that. It's going to be a sad decline phase for John Lester when he starts allowing more base runners, if that ever happens. That's true. Talk about an incentive to never get bad as a pitcher. So another thing we had, as often happens after this podcast, we talk about some strange hypothetical and then it actually comes into play in the game. So on Wednesday in Toronto, the White Sox were playing the Blue Jays and this was in the fifth inning. It ended up being a really long replay review. The play was, I think, initially ruled an out. So Granderson went up to try to catch this ball, didn't, but made contact with the ball and then like fell on the warning track and caught the ball on the way down. And so initially it seemed like he had made the catch, but then replay showed that it

had hit the wall. So it wasn't a catch. Anyway, the relevant part of this is that, of course, the bases were loaded. There was a runner on third, and we talked on episode 1089 about what would happen could you, if you're an outfielder, just juggle a ball. So instead of catching it, if you have, say, a runner on third who could tag up, just juggle the ball. Just kind of bounce it with your glove and just bounce it all the way into the infield, essentially, and just prevent the guy from tagging up, maybe getting out. And no, you can't do that. There is a rule against that for good reason.

Someone else has thought of this, so you can't do that. The rule is that the runner can go as soon as a fielder makes contact with the ball. So it doesn't matter if the outfielder catches the ball. You can tag as soon as it touches him or his glove, any part of him. But what happened here is that the runner starts going, but then it looks like Granderson catches the ball on his way down. And so the runner goes back to the base. But it looks like the runner was thinking that he wouldn't be able to tag on this because Granderson ended up catching the ball.

And this was the thing we talked about on the initial episode, whether this would be a viable strategy. And the thing is that, no, you can't juggle and just, you know, prevent the runner from tagging up. But we speculated about maybe major leaguers don't know that maybe base runners aren't aware of that rule and you could fool them and they would go back to the base if you just juggled it and we got a couple emails from people saying no that wouldn't happen everyone knows that rule you learned it in little league which i don't know if that's true because we weren't entirely sure when we first

got that question anyway a few other people wrote into us to say that maybe this is an example of a runner not knowing that rule in practice and a third base coach not knowing that rule in practice because it does look like he went back to the base when he thought that the ball was caught, even though Granderson had already touched it and thus he could leave. This is solid evidence that the runner was Wellington Castillo, by the way, if we want to single him out by name for not knowing this rule, but it does appear that Castillo and the third base coach were not aware of the rule that allows you to tag up as soon as a fielder makes contact with the ball, and I'm guessing

that they are not the only runner and third-pace coach who maybe don't know this rule. In theory, at least other outfielders should try this. Just the element of surprise here, you might actually save a run that otherwise would have scored. So I think it is a sound strategy. Try the juggle. There's nothing to lose. I think that Chris Davis has been trying the juggle for years of his entire career, and he almost has it down to a science. Very difficult thing to do, but I would I guess it's always fun to find out

who is an effectively wild listener and therefore also fun to find out who is not. So, Wellington Castillo, we're going to get to you eventually. Yeah. Well, what else you got? There's a story already on MLB.com about how the Angels are refusing the temptation to use him more. They're sticking to their preseason plan, which is to give him lots of rest to mimic the starting schedule he had in Japan.

So he gets an extra off day between starts. He only DHs two or three times between starts. And already, of course, there's pressure on them to use him more. They're getting asked all the time about using him more because he's been really good lately. So I'm curious about, A, do you think they could actually stick to this schedule that they drew up if he continues to be good, given their other alternatives at DH and just what a sensation he is or could be. And B, I'm wondering which Otani you look forward to seeing more right now.

So like Sunday, he's starting against the A's. He'll be pitching. But then presumably after Sunday, he'll be DHing a couple times. And I'm wondering which version of Otani, the hitter or the pitcher, you are currently most excited to see well that's kind of more of a question of what I like to watch in baseball and I'm a pitching guy I'm more of a pitching guy than a hitting guy and I like that I think pitching is sort of more reflective of how good you are quicker than hitting is yeah I mean as

as an example right now well no I don't have a good example I'm looking at the leaderboards but surprisingly the leaderboards have sort of already figured themselves out except the mic tried isn't at the top so a bad example that i didn't bring up but i'm more excited to watch itani as a pitcher than as a hitter i like watching him as a hitter but i want to see if he can get the slider down i want to see if he can be like a number one or even a number 0.5 if that makes any sense better than an ace, you know, the way that you do. So I do think it's funny timing that after we talked about Otani's first home run

in the last podcast, he immediately hit another home run that was arguably even more impressive considering the identity of the opponent. So that's great. I like his flair for the dramatic, but it's funny because one week ago, the Angels were answering questions about, are you going to send Otani to the minors?

Like, is he, are you sure he's ready? Is he ever going to hit? And now, a week later, like five or six games later, they're having to fend off questions about whether they're going to use him too much. So maybe, maybe you shouldn't overreact and make a plan for Shohei Otani based on a handful of plate appearances or innings. We can already assume they're not going to overuse him as a starting pitcher because he had the six-man rotation. He's got the elbow thing, and that's easier to stick to a plan with a pitcher. But as a hitter, I can see how maybe an injury would start to force their hand. But as a hitter, I mean, I can see how maybe an injury would start to force their hand.

But they have known what they were going to get into for however many years they've been pursuing Shohei Ohtani. They know how this has worked. So I can't imagine they would do anything that isn't at least without his strong approval. And even there, you have a plan. You go into it. He's going to DH like half the time and you stick to it. Should be fine. I still want to watch him as a pitcher. He's throwing 100 and nasty splitter and all the rest of it. So definitely I want to see that. And when he's starting, you get to see more Otani. He's just on the screen more than he would be as a hitter.

You have to just sit and wait and watch Mike Trout until Otani comes over again. So that can be a pain. But I think I just want to know more. I want to keep gathering data, even though it takes longer. We get four or five looks at Otani every day that he hits, and we get to find out whether he's going to be a viable offensive player. So for me, at least, I guess I'm currently looking forward to watching him hit more. But both.

We don't have to choose. That's the great thing about him. I have a unrelated baseball question for you based on a number. I'm going to give you two players. Players are Joey Gallo and Billy Hamilton. All right. Okay. Which one of those players currently has a contact rate of 59%?

Well, I'm going to guess that it's oddly Hamilton. It's both. They both have the same contact rate. Billy Hamilton and Joey Gallo, the two, I would say, most dissimilar hitters in baseball, tied with the same terrible, terrible contact rate.

Although not only is it early, but just for fun, Ian Happ, contact rate of 50%. He is missed with half of his swings. Ian Happ is off to a... How many more? Do we need more indications about how spring training is stupid? Spring training is stupid. Don't believe in spring training. Based on Ian Happ is off to a... How many more? Do we need more indications about how spring training is stupid? Spring training is stupid.

Don't believe in spring training based on Ian Happ and Shohei Ohtani. Yeah. Speaking of the Angels, I just sent you a little clip. It's a GIF or a video from Twitter. And it's... You know, there's some plays in baseball

that we see over and over again, and they're kind of maudlin and sentimental and they're trying to play on your heartstrings and I'm cynical and over it but I am a total mark for the video of like a young kid meeting a star player in an unexpected situation and just being totally flabbergasted like he just met God or something. And especially when that involves Mike Trout, because I think that's how we feel about Mike Trout, at least sort of statistically speaking. So I just sent you this clip to what happened this week. There was a kid in the dugout who evidently won some sort of contest on social media to sit in the dugout before a game.

And so he's just sitting there in an empty dugout, and along comes Mike Trout. And the kid's reaction, like if he were trying to sell this as a heartwarming moment, he couldn't have done any better than he actually did. But it seems to be totally heartfelt and genuine. So like his jaw literally drops. His mouth is hanging open this entire time that he's in close contact with Mike Trout. You see Trout sign a baseball for him, and so he has his back to the camera. You see the kid, and the kid just looks over at, I don't know, whoever was filming this

and just does like open mouth, just shock smile. Then Trout gives him a bat and the kid does the face again and he's putting his face in his hands and he's doing a little dance. It's great. I like this sort of thing when you have the encounter with the star player who kind of interacts with the fan, the kid in some unexpected way. And this reaction, I mean, this kind of encapsulates what Mike Trout means to all of us. I'm going to guess that Mike Trout went over and gave him like Nolan Fontana's bat just to be like, make sure he doesn't get to use this. But what I like about, I mean, obviously the whole thing is,

is heartwarming, but what I, what I like about it is that the very end Trout signals for the kid to come over toward the bat rack. Trout just kind of hands him a bat and then just leaves down the tunnel to go do whatever it is that he's supposed to do before the game. He just hands him the bat, gives him zero instruction, and walks away. He's just like, here, take this. Get out of here, kid.

Which, I get it. Trout had already taken time out of his routine to go meet with the kid and hang out with him, give him a signature and a bat and everything. But still, it's just kind of like, all right, here's a gesture. I don't want to say anything more to you. Please leave. You now have a weapon. Have fun in this crowded arena.

There was a few weeks ago, maybe a few months ago, I was watching a hockey game. And before the game, there was a young child, similar aged probably, young boy who had a sign sitting in one of the front rows of this hockey game. During pregame warmup, it was a sign that was about some specific player. And the camera caught the player over near his own bench look at the kid with the sign and then the player waved and gave a thumbs up. And to my knowledge, that was the full extent of it.

The player looked at the kid who had the sign, waved to get his attention, and gave a thumbs up, and that was it. There was no further, there was no speech exchange, there was no, like, exchange of a puck or a stick. And then the thing went viral of, like, look at this classy hockey player. Hockey players are always the best, always taking time out for the kids. Like, he didn't do anything. If a thumbs up is the bar that we hold our, like, I don't want me to disparage athletes who don't need to do any of this, but I could give a thumbs up to anyone, and sometimes I do. They don't even notice, but that doesn't go viral.

You just go around giving thumbs up? Well, so I've told – I know that you don't understand driving, but when I am driving and I get mad, I try to restrain any sort of rage, and so instead of flipping people off or swearing, I give them a thumbs up. But I know what it means. It's like a sarcastic thumbs up. Can you see sarcasm in a gesture? I don't know. I guess definitely not. The thumb is sincere, but the expression is telling. All right. Last thing I was going to do, I don't know whether you were going to do this, but Gabe Kapler criticism watch just our new regular segment on the show. So the Phillies doing OK. They have two wins now. That's good. And maybe that took some of the heat off of Kapler. But that has not stopped the breathless criticism of his performance over the team's first six games. So one relevant data point here,

according to an ESPN report, Kapler was, quote, booed resoundingly by the Phillies home fans when he was introduced prior to the home opener, and then was booed, doesn't say resoundingly, but was booed again when he removed starter Nick Pavetta from that game after five and two-thirds innings. Pavetta had not given up a run, although he had thrown 97 pitches. Anyway, the Phillies actually did win a game where Kapler took out a starter, and they, I think, didn't allow a run the rest of the way. So funny how that works sometimes. Then there was also Nick Williams, who has been kind of on the short end of the playing time distribution so far. He's grousing about that. He says, quote, I guess the computers are making the lineup.

I don't know. I don't get any of it, but what can I do? I'm not going to complain about it because I have zero power. I'm just letting it ride. So Nick Williams, not thrilled about his playing time. And when it's a computer making the lineup, it's easy to criticize as opposed to just your manager. I guess Nick Williams is sort of implying here that Kapler is, you know, having his strings pulled or that he's either managing by the book, the book being stats, or he's just, you know,

being told what to do by the front office or something. Anyway, he's not happy about it. In a recent John Heyman column about the Phillies, after they were 1-4, oh, the horror, there was an anonymous Phillies player quote that said, we'll be okay, ellipsis, we just need the manager to get out of the way. So we are already in the stage of anonymous player quotes complaining about Gabe Kapler. And someone asked Jake Arrieta about what would happen

if Kapler tried to pull him early. And Arrieta was fairly diplomatic, but he said he would plead his case and try to stay in the game. And so he wants to get those extra 20 pitches. I wonder whether Kapler will defer at all to Arrieta and his contract and his accomplishments and it was what would have been a double play ball and they only got one out because there was no one to take the relay throw. There was a more notable case where I think it was Williams who was actually in the game, was playing very shallow in right field. And there was a ball hit over his head and runs were scored and the Phillies lost. And Kapler defended the positioning as saying it's optimal over the long run and they got hurt this time. And, you know, he said some business speak sort of stuff about it was a windy day apparently, and so that may have blown the ball over his head. Anyway, he said to depend on the wind to push the ball around there was not what we were optimizing for.

We're optimizing to take away the ball in front of us, and we're not thinking about getting beat by slug power or extra bases in those situations, et cetera, et cetera. So and then there was a stat in the Athletic article about how the Phillies had had three hits against them that the shift allowed, which was the most in the majors through, you know, five games or whatever. So we don't know whether the Phillies are shifting well or poorly or whether they've just kind of had some bad luck go against them, but merely adding to Gabe Kepler's troubles. Anyway, that's the last like two days in Gabe Kepler criticism watch. God. And at this point, I mean, because Gabe Kepler is a story, it's self-sustaining, right? It's just going to snowball. People are going to look for things to

talk about, which is exactly the problem with being a new manager in a market like philadelphia now i don't know if aaron boone has faced this sort of criticism but aaron boone doesn't really have to do a whole lot his lineup is amazing and his pitching staff is amazing and now in uh i'm not too concerned about capler being booed in his home opener because john carlos stanton got booed his home opener fans are stupid and what i do think is interesting i don't know if it's right or wrong and i think everyone understands it i and probably ben as well are inclined to give someone like capler the benefit of the doubt here and just give him more time but so the play that i know buster only tweeted about it it was ahmed rozario who hit a triple over nick williams i think it was nick williams

in right field when he was playing very shallow okay so last year almed rozario was bad but anyway when teams faced him their right fielders were on average around 280 to 290 feet away from home plate according to statcast which has this handy leaderboard which i never ever ever use so the uh the phillies actually did play him the shallowest but that they were 277 feet away on average the right fielder williams was 245 here 245 i was gonna say that rosario's faced only two opponents so far this season the cardinals have played him at a distance of 281 feet and the phillies 258 so clearly something happening there now what's interesting is that omid rosario is not good so i sort of understand playing shallow,

but I was looking at his spray chart. I wouldn't play him that shallow, especially with someone like Nick Williams, who, first of all, if Nick Williams said in his quote, quote, I have no power, that would be one reason not to play him. But of course, Nick Williams is a toolsy guy,

but he doesn't really take walks or make a lot of contact. And he's, even though he's quite fast, he seems like he's quite fast he seems like he's pretty terrible at defense so nick williams has not really done a whole lot to i don't know what's the word ingratiate himself to the phillies gabe capler and i i would look at him and think he's sort of the the weak link at least while michael franco is hitting well because you know you've got scott carey who can play everywhere but this isn't a referendum on Nick Williams this is about Gabe Kapler and I would think that yeah he badly needs a clean series just an eventless

with the word being uneventful either one you know what it means series were just not he I don't know if he has to look conventional but you just can't get burned I don't care if teams are getting hits through shifts that happens to everyone teams also take hits away and on balance the shift doesn't seem to really do very much that's not where gabe capler is weird or different that's just like getting mad at him for something that people got mad at managers for doing six years ago so that's boring focus on the other stuff the stuff that is weird like if he's handling pitchers differently at least in the nick p Pavetta shutout game, he didn't go to Hobie Milner. Poor Hobie. All right.

What did you want to talk about? Well, I thought we would do a little bit of around the league and just talk about, I calculated looking at the Fangraphs playoff odds, never too early to talk about the playoff odds. I looked at the biggest differences between where we are now and where we were before the season so i thought that i would get your temperature on what uh what would be meaningful starts or what would be false starts or just things that you don't really care about so okay starting at the top i guess the arizona diamondbacks have gotten off to a good start they've opened up a gap over the dodgers already they are currently projected to win three and a half more games than they were literally a week ago their playoff odds have nearly doubled they're up 18 percentage points all the way up to 42 percent

do you find that there is significance in the diamondback start or is it early well both i guess right i mean yes it's early yes i haven't adjusted my thoughts on how good the Diamondbacks are in any significant way. But also, yes, they have played better than we thought they were and would thus far. time but you know you bank those wins and blah blah blah and so you played the same way that you were expected to play from that day forward but you already played yeah i know that there is a stance that like well maybe we are over focusing on playoff odds because we have them always we can always look and of course they're going to go up and down just from day to day and week to week and maybe we're making too much of it. And maybe it's like teams have hot streaks and cold streaks, and we're just focusing on a team that had a hot streak or something.

And so, yeah, they'll look better than they actually are. But I think in general I'm of the opinion that if a team plays over its head for a while, it doesn't mean that they're going to play under their head then after that to make up for that. It's the old gambler's fallacy. So I think if a team is hot for a while and improves their playoff odds, then we expect them to be basically who they were for the rest of the season, but they have already made it more likely that they will outplay their full season projections. So if they're a team like that, that you kind of project to be right on the bubble of the playoff race, then I mean, it's going to be like one week's worth of games that decides the wildcard slots. We don't know if it will be the last week or the first

week or just, you know, seven days sprinkled throughout the season. But one week's worth of results certainly can change whether one of those teams makes the play in game or doesn't. At this point last season, the Diamondbacks had the best record in baseball. Look at that. They were six and two. Other good records are in the league. The Diamondbacks had a good record. The Cubs had a good record. The Twins had a good record.

These were all meaningful. The Reds had a good record. That sucks. The Orioles had a good record. That's too bad. The Braves and the Blue Jays were terrible. The Mariners were two and six. So what I do like, I understand why people sort of fall into the gambler's fallacy in sports because you do sort of get this tug of war kind of situation where a team might be playing over its head. Maybe it lets off the gas a little bit and goes through a slump. Or maybe a team is slumping and it just decides to break out because they're just too frustrated. And they let all their anger out on their next opponent.

I don't know how this actually works. But you do see, certainly when you analyze individual players, you see that seasons are not stable. They don't follow a projection. They do kind of have wild swings unless you're mike trout but especially if you're ryan rayburn who incidentally i should say is out of a job so so much for that yeah but what i do find interesting not only have the diamondbacks opened up like a real gap over the dodgers who have not looked very good but i just wrote the other day about patrick cor who's doing something fun, something very simple to understand, but Patrick Corbin who is arguably the weak link

in the Diamondbacks pitching staff has taken a page out of the book of Rich Hill or Lance McCullers or whoever one of those pitchers you want to talk about, and he's decided, I have a good slider. I don't have a good anything else. I'm just going to throw my slider all the time and see how that goes. And so far, how it's gone is he's struck out 20 out of 48 batters. He dominated the Dodgers. He's throwing the slider like 52 or 53% of the time. He's mixing up speeds on it, which is all to say, I don't know exactly what's going to happen to Patrick Corbin, but I like what he's doing and if he's a player who I think has gotten better than what he was projected for and the Diamondbacks have already weathered a week or so of Steven Sousa's absence this is looking pretty good for them so I would uh I would say that there is a

fair amount of signal here and the Diamondbacks were maybe already underrated when they were projected because they were so good last season and they're great if not particularly deep but i uh i like it it's so weird that it took so long for pitchers who have really great pitches to throw those pitches it's so i mean it's like you would think that that would have been part of the game from the very beginning it's like a band that has a great single or something just refused to play it and played all their deep, you know, B-sides and album cuts or something because they thought that you had to do that. I mean, it's just, how could you, I don't know, I don't even have the words for it, but to think that,

like, I understand that we all thought that, yes, you need to have a breaking ball play off a fastball, you need the change of speeds. You need that element of surprise and deception. But if you had just like a really nasty, filthy breaking ball to think, man, I'm getting great results on this thing. Every time I throw it, no one can hit it and they're all swinging through it. But I better not throw it that much. I don't know. It's just – and to have all your coaches and you know front office people endorse that or even instruct you to do things that way it's kind of amazing it seems like people should

have figured that out before we went to see radiohead uh last year when they came to portland for the first time in like 20 years and they had a wonderful set and then their their final song of their encore was creep which surprised uh my fiance is a huge Radiohead fan, and she was surprised because Tom York has basically sworn off the song, hates it. You know, like, there's long lists of bands who have just kind of resent their big hits and don't want to play the hits anymore. So maybe, yeah, I saw Lou Reed in concert, and he was notorious for not, but, you know, like a new band, Patrick Corbin is not Radiohead, or lou reed he is i don't know the band that has one album out and they're gonna flog that single yeah well you know maybe maybe we'll turn around

one day and clayton kershaw is gonna be like i don't really want to do the curveball thing anymore i just it's played out everyone's seen it everyone's heard it it's not interesting anymore i've done everything that i can with it no one's gonna do like an acoustic cover of my curveball so he's just gonna figure it and do something else. Yeah, I agree with you. And I think it's reflective of how ingrained fastball culture is and has always been, which I sort of get. It's so simple.

You grow up. It's the first thing you learn to throw. You learn to throw it before you even know what you're doing. You throw ball hard. It's fastball. You'd think that you would have the best control and command of it. But it turns out, here's a hint for any of you pitch pitchers out there hitters like fastballs they try to hit them hard they try to hit everything but they really like fastballs they go up and they look for a fastball

it is wild to be at this point and have pitchers suddenly realizing like oh i don't i don't have to yeah so i wonder i mean corbin in retrospect was a really obvious pick to do this because his slider really was so much better than his other pitches so i'd uh we should do a little tour around the league and see who else should just throw their good pitch all the time so moving on uh here's a fun one angels the angels are projected to win three more games than they were before the season their playoff odds have gone from 27% to 40%. Of course, they are nowhere close to as good as the Astros. They never will be.

I don't care if the Astros all get the flu and have to forfeit three weeks of baseball games. They are still better than the Angels. That's a long flu. Anyway, the Angels have started this well. Obviously, this is going to come down to a certain amount to Shohei Otani. I don't know how much his projection has changed, but now we seen him i've seen him pitch we've seen him hit we've already talked about him on this podcast we will have already talked about him on probably every

podcast of this season and all subsequent seasons but how much has your opinion of the angels changed based on their start and based on shohei otani's start? Well, again, not a whole lot, but I will say that in the preseason predictions post that I was compelled to do, the group post at the Ringer, we had to choose surprise teams and flop teams, and I had a harder time than usual doing that because, as we've talked about, the good teams are really good this year, and I couldn't come up with a good reason

why any of them actually wouldn't be good other than just randomness or injuries or whatever. And so I couldn't really come up with great candidates. I did my best and I picked the Angels for flop team, not because I think they're going to be disastrous or anything, but just because I thought there was a pretty good chance that they would miss the playoffs. And if they did, coming off the offseason of Kinsler and Cozart and Otani and Upton and just all the moves they made and all the hype and excitement about Angels baseball this year, that would kind of qualify as a flop, or at least people would see it as a disappointment. So that's why I picked them there. But I also wrote that I really hoped that that wouldn't be true. And I wanted to be wrong about that, because the Angels are fun. So I, you know, in that they're a good story, and I enjoy watching

them, and I want to watch them in the playoffs this year, and actually have Mike Trout get there, and have Otani in the playoffs, etc. I'm glad, but, you know, I don't really have thoughts on them that I didn't a week ago, other than I guess Garrett Richards got through a start and didn't hurt himself. So two starts even. So that's good news. Okay, so let's go to the other end then. We have the Dodgers. They are down 2.6 wins from early projection.

Their playoff odds are down from 94% to 86%. So, you know, still really high. They're still the Dodgers. They're still great. Justin Turner is going to be swinging a bat soon. but not only have the dodgers lost ground to the diamondbacks but of course among however many questions they have i've got a full list of 359 pitchers who have thrown pitches between 2017 and 2018 and i've looked at all their changes in velocity as i noted to you before that we recording the podcast, the biggest fastball gainer so far, Brewers utility player Hernan Perez, up 8.3 miles per hour.

Way to go, Hernan Perez. Must be working out at driveline baseball. But at the far end, Brett Cecil is down 4.8 miles per hour. He's unsurprisingly on the disabled list, getting his shoulder checked out. There are some other pitchers who weren't very good down there. But in fifth place, Kenley Jansen is down almost three miles per hour on his fastball. Now I know that's his fastball, not his cutter. I didn't think about that, but it's all down.

You already know Kenley Jansen's velocity is down. He's had a rough start. There is a clip. I think Daniel Brim posted it on Twitter first. But anyway, they just saw Kenley Jansen in the dugout rubbing his shoulder mysteriously. He's been defensive in interviews. He hasn't want to talk about anything. He says he's fine.

But then his manager said, oh, I think it's mechanical. And then Kenley Jansen said, no, my mechanics are fine. So I don't really know what to do with it. But you take Kenley Jansen away, or at least you knock him down a level. And he's one of the invincible closers. So if he's not invincible, it does make the Dodgers seem more vulnerable. So how worried are you about Kenley Jansen away, or at least you knock him down a level, and he's one of the invincible closers. So if he's not invincible, it does make the Dodgers seem more vulnerable. So how worried are you about Kenley Jansen and therefore the Dodgers at large? Kind of worried about Kenley Jansen, I suppose.

He has in past seasons, I was looking at his 2016 velocity chart at Brooks Baseball, and his velocity was down significantly at the beginning of that season and then ramped up throughout the year, which is kind of the trend for a lot of pitchers. So not – I don't know what DEFCON level I'm at, but not the worst one, but not the best one either. And, yeah, I mean the weird thing about the Dodgers so far is that they have the third worst offense in baseball after the Royals and the Rays, which is odd. And, you know, yeah, Turner is missing, but they're obviously better than that. Anyway, it's a week. I'm saying that a lot. And last year, the Dodgers won 104 games. And in the midst of that, went through a period where

they were the worst team in baseball for a couple of weeks, right? So it happens. Maybe they're just getting that out of the way early this year but yeah obviously if you lose one of your core pieces now Kenley Jensen as great as he is is still only a reliever and a closer and you know maybe you just bring up Walker Bueller and he's a Kenley Jensen replacement or you know not quite as good but good so even if they lost him I mean even if he had a season-ending injury today I would still expect them to win the division so my my panic level is is pretty tempered Clayton Kershaw is down 1.2 miles per hour on his fastball Alex Wood is down 1.8 miles per hour on his fastball.

I don't know what's up with Quinta Maeda. Oh, he's up. Good for him. Way to go, Quinta Maeda. But Rich Hill, he's basically the same. He's not up or down. But you've got Wood, you've got Kershaw, you've got Jansen. Something to watch. It's interesting because it was a year ago that we were observing that pretty much every Cubs pitcher was throwing softer,

which would have been easy to trace to the fact that they had just won the World Series and they were playing not only a month of extra baseball, but also a month of extra high intensity baseball, shorter offseason. So maybe it's not a coincidence that the Dodgers are down where they are. Now, I haven't looked at the Astros, but I will point out, you know who's throwing even harder now charlie martin he's he's up yeah another mile per hour he's up at 96 miles per hour on his average fastball charlie martin nothing is impossible no so all right well we already sort of talked about this one but about a week ago and two weeks ago and three weeks ago and four weeks ago i think a lot of people were starting to pick

the phillies as a dark horse wildcard team right right? They signed Jake Arrieta and they had this young core. Things were coming together. Their win projection is down three wins. Their playoff odds were never good to begin with, so whatever. But the Phillies are second lowest on this list of difference in projected wins now versus before the season. So given what, I mean, I don't think we've really seen that much from the Phillies performance-wise, right, to change our opinion. But clearly there's a talking point. Has your perspective on the Phillies' dark horse potential this season changed at all just based on all this conversation about the man who is technically in charge of them?

Maybe. I mean, I don't know. I think a lot of things had to go right for them to actually be good this year. And one of those things is you need them to kind of, you know, play over their heads, at least as far as the projections were concerned. And so the longer they don't do that, the more unlikely it becomes that they will gain that ground that they would need over the rest of the season. So just the fact that they're two and four or whatever is not great. But I think that the Kapler stuff, eh, I don't know. I mean, if it becomes a storyline that we follow throughout the season,

and if there is more grumbling and anonymous kind of barbs and Heyman columns, then maybe that affects things. Like, you know, there's some potential, obviously, that it goes full Matt Williams, and that can be bad. I think the odds of that are still fairly low, and I think there are probably ways in which Gabe Kapler makes the Phillies better in ways that other managers don't. And of course, we knew coming into the season that Kapler was going to be different and that it would probably be kind of controversial at times so no I don't think much about my opinion about the Phillies has changed okay last one because I gotta go I'll let you go but the uh the Padres

they're at the bottom of the list no one expected the Padres to be good they've been the actual word for what they've been is terrible there are one and-6. They are not alone at 1-6. The Rays are also 1-6. But the Rays have had to play the Red Sox and the Yankees exclusively, so a little bit of forgiveness there. The Padres are not the Rays. The Padres are awful. They are down 3.4 wins.

They are down at a current projection of 68.5, which is starting to put them closer and closer to the Miami Marlins for the worst projection in baseball. So neither one of us ever thought the Padres would make the playoffs, but is your opinion of the Padres now any lower than it was before the year? Well, this is the first time I've thought about the Padres this season. So my opinion of them is lower than it was when we started this podcast because I couldn't have told you what the Padres record was in 2018 prior to five minutes ago. So now I'm appalled.

And boy, the Padres are bad. And that's about all I have to say about the Padres. Yeah, they're not great. They're expectedly, unsurprisingly, not great. Yeah, I can take this one. My opinion of the Padres has gotten worse. I know it's only been a week, but I think it's been a pretty damaging week. First of all, Eric Hosmer still waiting on that first home run, but I don't care about that.

Padres haven't really hit. I don't really care about that. But what has troubled me, so first of all, Denelson Lemaitre is on the disabled list. They say that he's got an elbow problem but that he's going to be okay but i don't know the longer this drags on i have this idea in the back of my head to write a post about the initial word uh for pitchers who have sustained a major injury that ends up knocking them out for a season and i am anecdotally i think that there's a pattern of oh mri shows no structural, and then probably there's structural damage.

So even though Denelson Lemaitre could be on the way back, I just can't help but think that he's not. So he's their most interesting pitcher, and if he doesn't come back, that's a problem because that means the best pitcher is Clayton Richard. That's a problem. Yes. I've been interested in Brian Mitchell, but I have this other theory that I'm a big fan of analyzing like best and worst games you can have as a pitcher because I think that there can be signal. Like if you have a pitcher who goes, I don't know, seven innings and gets 12 strikeouts, no walks. I think that's the kind of game that by itself can tell you a lot about how good the pitcher is. Yeah, right. Signature significance or whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. That sounds like an academic word for it yes bill james called it that i think yeah thanks bill you should get a job in baseball brian mitchell i i've been interested in him converting back i guess to starting padre's basically bought him by absorbing chase headley's contract chase headley incidentally currently the season hitless but anyway brian mitchell's first start went five innings he'll had eight hits five runs i don't care about that so innings he had eight hits five runs i

don't care about that so much but he had three walks and zero strikeouts and when i see something like that i think oh that's a that's the side of a guy who's not good at what he's doing so i can't i still am sort of interested in brian mitchell but now my opinion of him is a lot lower than it was before i've been interested in tyson r's bounce back potential, but in his first start, he had three walks and two strikeouts, and that's not good. Brad Hand is missing everything, and he's supposed to be their best reliever. I'm interested in Kazuhisa Makeda and Adam Simper

and this weird bullpen that the Padres have, but Hand is supposed to be the star, and he's allowed eight runs in four innings, which is too many runs in too few innings. His command isn't there. His velocity isn't there. So worried about Lemaitre, worried about Hand, eight runs in four innings, which is too many runs in too few innings. His command isn't there. His velocity isn't there. So worried about Lemaitre, worried about Hand, worried about Mitchell,

worried about Ross. This team can't pitch. It's a really bad pitching staff, and it's not getting any better. Lemaitre was the one I was really excited about, and I'm not convinced he's going to start a game all season long. So my opinion of the Padres is that at this point, they might be the worst team in baseball. All right. Padres fans, panic.

We're giving you permission. Huh. By the way, Ichiro's WRC Plus right now is one. One. That's not great. All right. So we will leave it there. You will go do a chat at Fingraphs.

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comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. That will do it for today. That will do it for this week. Have a wonderful weekend and we will talk to you all next week. You best get on someone else While you're doing it Keep that juice to yourself Hearts and heads Hearts and heads Lost time is not found again