Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1207: The 21-Topic Podcast

Episode Date: April 24, 2018

In an unwitting tribute to Brandon Belt’s 21-pitch plate appearance, Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about approximately 21 topics, including the Mariners’ awkward, self-imposed Ichiro situation, Dee Gordon’s outfield conversion, Franchy Cordero, the ineptitude of the Reds, Mike Trout leveling up (again), Sean Manaea’s no-hitter and the increasing frequency of near no-hitters, two more […]

21, as strong as I can be, I know what freedom means to me. And I can't give a reason why I should ever want to die. I've got no cause to be afraid or fear that life will ever fade. What fear that life will ever face Cause as I watch the rising sun I know that we have just begun Hello and welcome to episode 1207 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello! Hi Ben! reporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of VanGrafts. Hello. Hi, Ben.

So last episode, we talked about how pitches per plate appearance are up this year. And I think that Brandon Belt may have moved that average all by himself on Sunday. We got many emails and tweets and Facebook comments about this. The Facebook group was monitoring the belt and Jaime Feria at bat in real time as he went up to 21 pitches. That is 16 foul balls, 11 foul balls in a row. That was something to watch. It ended in kind of anticlimactic fashion in that it was just a regular fly out to right field. You hope after all of that buildup that there will be a strike out or a hit or something, but we got a fly out. It was fun to watch and it was kind of impressive that Fria was able to throw that many strikes or very close to strikes in a row, I thought, on a full count, especially when you watch it kind of, you know, in the succession,

the quick succession of pitches one after the other, a lot of pretty good pitches in that sequence. Okay, so from a writer's perspective, I heard about this, I wasn't watching it live, but I heard about this and I thought, all right, I feel like I'm obligated to write about this. This seems like it's the kind of thing that people would say, it's right up my alley. But, you know, when you're writing an article that's about one specific plate appearance, the usual template is, well, I'm going to make a GIF of every pitch, and I'm going to walk through and issue commentary. And no, you can't do that. No one would do it.

It's far too many, by like 12 at least. So then I sort of dreaded it, and then I logged into Slack, and I saw, oh, Meg's going to write about it. Great. Wipe my hands clean. I don't have to do this at all. But anyway, less important, or I don't know, that's just a little writer insight. But I was thinking about it. I was thinking that too, actually, because this felt like the sort of thing that I would have written about a few years ago.

And if I were still at Baseball Perspectives, I would have done an unfiltered post on it, that little quick blog post. I felt like I didn't have to do it this time because everyone was on it already. It wasn't like one of these niche little things that you and I might do because it's nerdy and maybe no one else noticed and it's sort of fun. This was everywhere. And I don't know whether that's because it was actually historic. The previous record since 1988, which is when we have pitch-by-pitch data going back to, was 1998, very appropriately, Bartol Cologne struck out Ricky Gutierrez on 20 pitches. That was the previous record, and Cologne still around, of course.

And so I don't know whether it was that this was actually a record or whether there's just so many people blogging and tweeting and monitoring baseball and producing baseball content now that there's just no need for someone else to add to the list because someone will be on it. which we mention on this podcast sometimes. And I was curious. I asked him what the record for pitches in a scoreless inning is because Faria threw 49 pitches in that inning and somehow did not allow a run, which is pretty amazing. And when I DMed him to ask, he was already querying this. He was already looking at it. We got like three emails from people at the same time asking us what the previous record for this was.

So I don't know. I feel like I am obsolete and everyone notices these things anyway. By the way, Dan did look that up and he found that the record is Scott Leinbrink, of all people, got 52 pitch scoreless inning. That was, I i believe in 2010 so it has happened before fria is pretty close up there at 49 pitches but there have been a few again since 88 line brink and then danny kolb and mike venifro in 2001 had a 51 pitch inning for the rangers fernando valenzuela in 1989 had a 50 pitch scoreless inning and then kurt schilling also had a 49 in 2005 for the red sox so i don't know data is everywhere and uh we are obsolete yeah uh that's sort of uh that's something that you're

going to notice as you do this longer and longer that it's harder to find those little niche things that stand out to us because as soon as you find find those little niche things that stand out to us. Because as soon as you find a few niche genres that stand out to us and then people enjoy them, well, then more people are going to start looking for them. So we need some real baseball deep cuts here. Yeah. I used to do a blog post series at BP every week about the longest played appearances that week. I don't know if people enjoyed it. I don't know if that was popular at all. I stopped doing that pretty quickly because it was just 20 GIFs in every post and it got tiresome. But I have always enjoyed the long plate appearance because it's just fun from a strategic perspective to see what the pitcher does because you kind of have to show the hitter everything you have to try to get him out. I think one of my favorite things about Maria's top of the first inning is that

it's not just that he threw 49 pitches in a scoreless inning. It's that even if you take away the belt a bit, 28 pitches is a lot for a scoreless inning. He faced six batters. They all went to two strike counts. The shortest plate appearance was four pitches, but it was like 4-4-6-7-7-21. Maria threw 71 pitches in his first Major League start, and he went five in-21. Maria threw 71 pitches in his first major league start, and he went five innings, and he threw 77 pitches in his second major league start,

and he went two innings. He only allowed two runs. But as far as the belt at bat itself goes, and I, much like you, thought I was going to write about it. Glad to not be writing about it. Moment has passed. Whatever. But whenever you look at a long at bat,

I think the inclination is to say, oh, what a great at bat. And from like an entertainment perspective, I guess, it is a long at-bat, I think the inclination is to say, oh, what a great at-bat. And from like an entertainment perspective, I guess, it is a great at-bat. It's certainly extraordinary because it is the longest at-bat on record, 31 years at least. But is it? Is it a great? Like, I think when you have something like this, it reflects well on Berea that he was able to throw so many pitches around the zone, like you said, because he uh he didn't walk belt would have been very easy to do get tired 21 which is a lot but is it it's not a

great at bat for brandon belt because at some point you'd think he would walk or put the ball in play it's not it's not as bad at that because you know he drove up the pitch count but it's not this isn't a baseball event where somebody did something that required incredible talent this was just like everyone keeps doing something that's just a little bit not perfect and then finally brandon belt hit a ball pretty hard and was out so like nobody really wins in the end it just happened and it took forever yeah i mean i guess it's impressive in the sense the contact rate is down a lot relative to where it used to be, right? So just to make any kind of contact with pitches is sort of impressive in a sense.

But, yeah, I mean, I think Russell Carlton did some research a long time ago back at the old site Statspeak about what happens in a long plate appearance when a hitter is fouling off pitch after pitch. when a hitter is fouling off pitch after pitch. And he found that there is an advantage that the hitter gets, which makes some sense if you're seeing everything the pitcher has and you're seeing his delivery over and over again. Maybe you get used to it. So there is some tendency as those foul balls pile up that with each swing the hitter's expectation gets better and hitters tend to do better.

And obviously we can't look at previous 21 pitch plate appearances and see what's happened because we don't have any on record. But in theory, Belt should have been getting an advantage with each pitch he saw there possibly, and he still ended up flying out. There were a couple pitches that might have been ball four if he had taken it. Maybe you sort of get in a mindset where you're just swinging at everything because it's just habit at that point. And then there were a couple that i'm sure he would have liked another chance at and you know were kind of meatballs that he just didn't hit fair so you know i think it's impressive in a sense it's it's impressive just because there's a fatigue component

that comes in i don't know whether it's worse for the pitcher or the hitter, but probably has to be affecting both of them. Anyway, I enjoyed it. Speaking of fatigue component, there was a no-hitter over the weekend, but before that, there was a near no-hitter, sort of, on Friday night. Tyson Ross, who is in the major leagues, by the way, and doing pretty pretty all right he threw 127 pitches against the talent backs a game the podgers ultimately won uh this is a game that i first noticed not because tyson ross is doing so well but because francie cordero hit a ball nearly 500 feet francie cordero is uh the love of my life i'm sorry to my fiancee but uh so far this season there have so francie cordero missed a lot of time already this year because of some sort of injury, oblique or hamstring or I don't know.

But this year, there have been five batters who have hit multiple balls at least 115 miles per hour. Nelson Cruz has two. Aaron Judge, Franchi Cordero, and Joey Gallo have three. Giancarlo Santin has five. He's not struggling. But Franchi Cordero, fastest Padre, hardest hitting Padre, also in a sense responsible for the no-hitter ending, but also Tyson Ross was never going to finish that no-hitter. Let's talk about that for a little bit. Yeah, first of all, I'm happy for you that Franchi is working out so well because it's like when you're in a relationship and you think that you found the one and this is going to work out and then it all comes crashing down, but then you do find the one and you're even happier. I kind of feel like that

with you and Byron Buxton and Franchi Cordero. Cordero is... Keon. Keon. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Keon. Byron is actually good. Keon, I don't know. But yeah, that's kind of how I feel. Franchi is everything that you were hoping that Keon would be, and maybe will be someday. But yeah, as you were saying, I get that there is pressure on the Padres, on Andy Green here, because the Padres are, of course, the franchise that has never had a no-hitter. And so that was causing a lot of interest and intrigue here. At the same time, he was—do you have his pitch count entering the eighth?

I am about to. Yeah, he was—do you have his pitch count entering the eighth? I am about to. Yeah, it was already pretty high. And this is, again, Tyson Ross we're talking about, who has had, what, multiple serious surgeries and injuries and lots of missed time. And it is really—to push him is pushing it. So it was, you know, really taking his health into a gamble here. So do you have that yet? Yeah. So I opened up my MLB at Bad App, and then it had the little no-hitter overlay or whatever

at the bar and showed me after seven innings. And I was like, oh, what's going on in this game? Padres are throwing a no-hitter? That's not possible. But then I opened it up, and it was Tyson Ross, who was no-hitting the Diamondbacks after seven innings and 101 pitches. So at that point's like okay combined no hitter nobody cares no not a combined attempted no hitter Tyson Ross came back out and he walked the first batter who's Nick Ahmed not a good player to walk yeah then he went to 3-2 right on the next guy then he then he went to 3-2 on

Avila then he went to a 3-1 count on Devin Marrero. And finally, Christian Walker, on a 2-0 count, hit a ball to Franchi Cordero that was given, I think, a 99% catch probability, which does not seem to accurately reflect reality. The ball was over Cordero's head a little bit. It was more difficult than that, but catchable ball. It went down for double. Ross was immediately replaced, and Brad Hand came in,

and more baseball happened after that that nobody really cared about red hand got the win sorry tyson but i mean you look at that inning first batter walk second batter full count third batter three one count fourth batter two oh count like tyson there was there was no chance tyson ross finished that but it puts andy green in a really difficult position where, I mean, because the Padres have never had a no-hitter, I sort of, I almost get it. But this is Tyson Ross. If this is Clayton Richard, let him throw 200 pitches. Who actually cares if Clayton Richard is out there doing that? But you'd think Tyson Ross is, I don't know, more valuable and vulnerable.

Now, credit to Tyson Ross. It looks like he's back ish from uh his his big thing was thoracic outlet syndrome right that's the surgery he had and i think there have been something like 10 or 11 pitchers in major league history who have had that surgery and like four of them were in camp with the padres this spring and matt harvey's another and yeah harvey the starting pitcher we talked about last time, now a relief pitcher. Yes. Matt Harvey, I am a starting pitcher.

No longer. Sorry, Matt. Your quote is outdated. But thoracic outlet syndrome, I mean, this would be a worthwhile topic of its own if we were talking to a surgeon because it's a real mixed bag of results. It's not you're doomed and it's not you're great like Tommy John surgery. It's sort of somewhere in the middle where there have been successes like Chris Young came back and did pretty well. Tyson Ross is on the way back. There are other examples that are just sipping my mind.

I think Scott didn't Scott Feldman have it or something like that. I know Jared's also Lamarcki, I think, had it as a catcher. But yeah, there are better examples, but also some ended careers. Right. I wonder what Green's endgame was. I mean, was he going to go the full Edwin Jackson-style no-hitter attempt here and have him throw 140-something, 150 pitches if he had somehow gotten through the eighth? Would he have pushed him back out there? I mean, in a way, it's even more heartbreaking to have him go eight and not go all the way. So if you're, I guess you,

maybe you leave him out for the eighth because Hey, who knows? Maybe he has a, an eight pitch inning or something, and then you could bring him back. I guess it's worth a shot. At least if you've, if you've decided that he could go, I don't know, one 15 or something. I mean, he ended up going more than that, but if you've, if you've decided that he has that ceiling, that it's a chance at history, it's maybe meaningful for the franchise. How many fun moments will the Padres have this season that don't involve Frenchie Cordero? So maybe you just

decide you'll let him go a little longer than usual. But I don't know. It's risky. And you'd really have to have everything go right. It's almost like once you walk the first guy, it's not going to happen. You're not going to get that quick inning, so why even persist? Right. There's a somewhat simple counterfactual here. So Christian Walker, he hit his double, his quote-unquote double, with two outs. And so if that ball is caught, then Ross is at 127 pitches after eight innings, and then he's got David Peralta, Gerard Dyson, and Paul Goldschmidt coming up in the ninth inning of at least a one-nothing game. So, I mean, at that point, 127 pitches.

I'm not sure Tyson Ross has ever thrown that many pitches in his career even before he got hurt. I could check. I'm not. But that's a lot of pitches. So, I mean, you were looking at, realistically, a minimum of like 140 pitch no hitter and i know that from a padres perspective you'd like to have a no hitter did they hit for the cycle because they also didn't have one of those i feel like they did i think so right i think so yeah but you know you know who cares about the cycle not anyone right so i get that there's you know you want to shed that label, but is it that important?

I don't know. I mean, we've seen what has—well, I think there's a perception that a single game like that can break a pitcher, and there are certainly times throughout history when it has. I know that the Johan Santana no-hitter has that reputation, and I don't think that's actually accurate. Santana no-hitter has that reputation, and I don't think that's actually accurate. As far as I recall, and I haven't looked specifically, but I feel like Santana was actually pretty good in the immediate aftermath of that no-hitter and then tanked. And I don't know, maybe there was some delayed effect or something, but it wasn't like you could trace it to that very day. Obviously, there have been instances throughout history where a pitcher was just pushed really hard and ended up not being the same guy after that. But it looks like Tyson Ross's previous high in 2014, he threw a 120 pitch complete game shutout. And I believe that is his

career high prior to that point. Now his career high is what happened just recently so so it's uh i don't know that you can point to that many starts that say that that start broke that guy and he was never the same but certainly with someone like russ it is riskier than usual now i don't know if we can actually monitor these things very well from the outside but i will say that tyson ross's release point didn't drop over the course of the game, and he actually threw his hardest pitch of the game in the eighth inning. So I'm sure that was just pure adrenaline, but he was still throwing his normal velocity in the seventh and eighth.

But, you know, can't go forever. So I don't know. I don't know what the endgame was. I sort of wish that the ball were caught. I mean, also, just from a pro-Franchi Cordero perspective, that's not how I wanted that game to go. But I am a little, I don't know, morbidly curious what would have happened with Ross, but it's also for Ross's sake and the future of his career. I know that I'm overly conservative with pitchers, but I'm glad that the ball dropped and that the Padres still won, and maybe next time, Clayton Richard can just go out there and last forever. Now I know he's got his own complicated health history, but whatever.

It's just, there's less area for Clayton Richard to go from here. His career is winding down. Yeah. So I was just looking at Santana's game log from 2012. That's when he pitched his no-hitter. He actually pitched back-to-back complete game shutouts, which I did not recall. On May 26th, he threw one against the Padres, of course, and then on June 1st against the Cardinals, he threw his no-hitter. So the immediate aftermath of that, the next two starts were not so good. He went five in both of them, gave up six runs, and then four runs. But then he went six and gave up no runs. He went six and gave up two runs. He went six and gave up two runs. He went eight and gave up zero runs. So he had a couple lousy starts and then three good to great starts after that no hitter.

And then he tanked. Then he gave up seven runs in four and two thirds, six runs in five innings, six runs in three innings, eight runs in a third, six runs in five innings, and that was his career. So I don't know. Maybe it had something to do with the no-hitter. He threw 134 pitches in his, and of course he was surgically reconstructed himself, but it wasn't like that very day. He was never the same after. He actually did have a few good starts after that. So I don't know that the neat narrative makes perfect sense. But I want to talk about no-hitters in general, I think, just because this also fits in with something we were talking about last time.

We were talking about more pitches per plate appearance, more strikeouts, more hits by pitch, more hit by pitches. I never know which to say. But we've seen that trend, it seems like, this year. And actually before Minaya finished off his no-hitter against the Red Sox of all teams on Saturday, I was getting a few emails and tweets from people asking whether there had been more no-hitter attempts or near no-hitters this year. I guess every start is technically a no-hitter attempt. But a few people emailed me and said it seems like there have been more no-hitters through six, that sort of thing, and Tyson Ross was one, and Minaya actually did

it, and then on Sunday, there was another one, Johnny Cueto, who's been great this year, I think had one through six or into the six or something. I don't know. I don't have the numbers, but it certainly makes sense, right, that there would be more near no-hitters just because of the way that the league has gone run environment-wise. I mean, as we were saying last time, we're now in this high-strikeout, low-hit era. As Joe Sheehan first drew my attention to, this looks very likely to be the first calendar month in Major League history with more strikeouts than hits. Right now, through Sunday's games, we are at 5,562 strikeouts and only 5,174 hits. So it kind of looks like we're going to get there, more strikeouts than hits. And so given that there are more strikeouts, there's less

contact, there are fewer hits, you would expect more near no-hitters. Now, maybe not more no-hitters because starters are getting pulled earlier. They're not going as deep into games. Managers don't want them to, and they're not conditioned to. So it makes sense that there wouldn't necessarily be more no-hitters, but more guys taking no-hitters into the fifth, into the sixth, that sort of thing. There's every reason for that to be more common, I guess. So the fact that Minaya did it, I mean, I think generally in the history of this podcast, we've been very impressed by perfect games, not so impressed by no-hitters just because there is such an element of fluke and luck to them. And usually there's some amazing defensive play that saves it. In Minaya's case, there was a not amazing defensive play that was ruled an error instead of a hit. I think it probably was a legitimate error, but it was, you know,

sort of an easy play that Marcus Simeon was going back on and the ball popped out of his glove. And then there was the other play where Andrew Benintendi was initially ruled safe on an infield hit and then replay review showed that he had been out of the baseline and he was called out so in an earlier era maybe that wouldn't have been a no-hitter because that play wouldn't have been reviewed so there were a couple close calls there but still impressive in the sense that that was the red sox and we were talking very recently about how amazing the red sox have been this season particularly offensively yep there is a tweet from buster only i don't maybe you missed it over the weekend but related to this from elias slash at slangs on sports there have

been 12 no hit bids through at least six innings this season including mania's no hitter on saturday there were five such bids all of april last season there were 24 no hit bids of at least six innings all of last season so we are halfway to last year's total in not even the last week of april so far okay well there that's an answer so yeah i mean what mania did i think is still impressive he's been great this season and uh we were i think sort of higher on the a's than the average person coming into the spring. Minaya wasn't the main reason for that, but Minaya has been pretty good. And just to have a complete game start of any kind against the Red Sox right now is impressive.

So no hitters, not maybe the most impressive accomplishment, particularly in this run environment, but just pitching a complete game at this point is a rarity and doing it against the Red Sox is extra impressive. Little random Franchi Cordero shout-out because I was checking. The big problem with Franchi is that he swings and misses a lot. Last season as a rookie, he had a contact rate of just 59%.

That's Gallo-esque. So far this season, 73%. Franchi Cordero getting better, except at preserving no hitters. Yeah. So something else we talked about before the season that looks like it's now coming to a head. When Ichiro signed, I think we talked about how we're kind of conflicted about this. And you especially as a former, mostly former Mariners fan, just happy to see Ichiro getting a job. Nice to see Ichiro back in Seattle.

getting a job. Nice to see Itro back in Seattle, but sort of dreading the inevitability of Itro being bad and then the team having to think about releasing him. He doesn't seem like the sort of guy who's going to walk away willingly. And so I know that many Mariners fans are kind of annoyed right now because Itro is hitting 250 with nothing else, essentially. 250, he's also slugging 250 and has a sub-300 on base percentage. That is a 56 WRC+. There are only 38 plate appearances, but there's not much reason to expect Ichiro to be great at this point. In 2015, he had an identical 56 WRC+, all season, in 153 games. So this might just be more or less who each row is and I know that Guillermo Heredia was sent down when what someone came off the DL this weekend and Heredia

had options and just based purely on a talent or performance basis you might expect each row to be the one going the odd man out but it it was Heredia who had options and, of course, does not have the history and the legacy and maybe the jersey sales of Ichiro. So how do you think this is going to play out? The Mariners are in a wildcard race. They need wins. This is not the ideal team, really, for a veteran to come back and just be bad and take a victory lap if you can call it a victory lap but they kind of need to maximize every roster spot and right now each row not helping them so much yeah guillermo heredia is not a great player but he's useful he puts

that on the ball he's a good outfield a good defensive outfielder at every position he walks he doesn't strike out he's he's perfectly he's a good fourth outfielder i think and he's 27 he's whatever he's he's got plenty of upside each or a very little upside and it was pretty much it was not completely inevitable but it was easy to see the team ending up at a place where they would have to make a decision and this is what was what struck me is so weird from the start is that each row was signed because the the mariners had a roster opening because ben gamble strained his oblique ben gamble did not tear his acl he was not out for the Mariners had a roster opening because Ben Gamble strained his oblique. Ben Gamble did not tear his ACL. He was not out for the season.

He had a month-long injury. And so what I didn't understand from the beginning is why the team set themselves up for an extremely awkward situation for a routine short-term injury replacement. And it just didn't add up because Gamble was going to come back. Gamble was going to be the starter. It was unlikely Itro was going to come out of the gate batting 450. So the team forced itself into a situation. Now, I don't think that they expected to be here on April 23rd with Itro being so bad and having misplayed enough balls in the outfield that I think the tide has turned. And, you know, I think that the upside and the great celebration happened on opening day for the home opener. And then since then, I don't think anyone's been particularly super jazzed to see Yitro in the lineup. I know Twitter is not representative of the average baseball fan and all that. But every time Yitro's in there and Heredia isn't, people are like, where's Heredia? It's just like Pucci.

If Pucci's off screen. So having Heredia sent, I know the team has offered an explanation that the team has a bunch of righties coming up that they're going to face and rather have Yttero on the roster than the right-handed batting Heredia for the next little stretch. And then they'll figure something out later on. But this has happened because I think the team knows that they need to lose Yttero, but they just can't. They don't know how to do it so while i don't think this is going to be something catastrophic that tanks this season it's just a very uncomfortable circumstance that was spectacularly easy to see coming this was an inevitability for the most part the team was going to have to come

to terms with what to do with each row unless i don't know if the hope is like Heredia would just get injured too, or what they thought was going to happen. Maybe Mitch Hanager will take another pitch to the face. God bless him, or something's going to happen to... Who's in right field? I already forgot. This is embarrassing. Uh-huh.

I really should have been paying closer attention. The Mariners' right fielder, of course, is Mitch Hanager and is Dee Gordon in center field. That's what tripped me up. Oh, sure, yeah. Because the Mariners have fielder, of course, is Mitch Hanegar and it's Dee Gordon in center field. That's what tripped me up. Oh, sure, yeah. Because the Mariners have a second base in center field. And it's good. Anyway, the team can survive and move on after, like, it'll be a few weird days if and when they drop Itro.

But, like, Itro is not the type, it seems like, if we all read the Wright Thompson feature article. He's probably not going to walk away of his own volition like Ken Griffey Jr. did and retire midseason. He wants to play another six years. Well, Mariners, you put yourselves in this situation, and there's just no easy way out of this. And so they can demote Heredia, but that makes people very upset because he's better. Yeah, I thought we'd be talking about this in June or something, maybe,

and we're talking about it already. So I wonder, I mean, Ichiro has some pride in his performance. Like if he acknowledges that he's not good anymore, part of his wanting to play until 50, I mean, maybe part of that is just that he feels like he can still do it. And he was good a couple of years ago. And last year he kind of contributed in a pinch hitting role. And he obviously keeps himself in shape and trains really hard.

So maybe he has kind of talked himself into still deserving a roster spot, still being a good player. And the longer he is not a good player, I wonder whether he is sort of self-delusional in the sense that many athletes are and have to be or whether eventually he won't want to play until he's 50 because he doesn't want to hit 200 if if he thinks that that's what he's going to do but maybe he's just not wired ever to think that he's a 200 hitter or whatever you want to say at this point. So it'll be interesting to see. I mean, if you come at this from Ituro's perspective, last season he hit 148 in April and he hit 195 in May.

And then he hit 273, 321, 346, and 268. I mean, these are all very small samples. He was essentially a pinch hitter the whole time. But Ituro started slow and then he got going. So if you're Ituro, you're looking at yourself this season and thinking i don't feel any different i can just get going and you know maybe he's right he is he wrote suzuki after all he deserves some amount of benefit of the doubt but guillermo heredia has been consistently fine for the three i mean parts of three seasons he's been in the major league so while this is just an awkward conversation about a fourth outfielder on a possible wild card team so like the the impact here is not enormous

when you invite a future hall of famer back to your team in the twilight of his career you can't sidestep the fact that you will have to deal with this so yes good luck jerry depoto and everyone else the mariners have always had really good PR and marketing and they are going to need them for the next few weeks. That's right. Yeah, you mentioned Dee Gordon. I was actually going to bring him up A, because he was the subject of a fun highlight that I'm sure everyone has

seen of Dee Gordon in a foot race to the first base bag with Bartolo Colon, which Bartolo won. And of course, he only has, what, two-thirds the distance to cover, and he looked somewhat winded afterward, but he did get over there pretty quickly. It's what everyone always says about Colon, that he is actually an excellent athlete, even though he's not built the same way as many other athletes. He can field his position surprisingly well and

get up to speed and obviously has a lot of momentum once he gets going. So he did beat D. Gordon over there, and that was fun. But I wanted to ask you, I don't know how much Mariners baseball you've actually watched, but do you have any thoughts on the D. Gordon experiment so far? Because it seems like it's going pretty well generally, right? I mean, he's hitting fine. He's hitting pretty well by Dee Gordon standards. And defensively, that was the big question. Could he move from second base to center field? DRS and UZR think he's been below average there, but it's, you know, 166 innings, so who knows what to make of that. Probably better to trust the stat cast based outs above average metric in such a small sample. And according to that, he is basically a net average outfielder.

So he has, I guess, been expected to catch 83% of the balls that have gone his way, and he has actually caught 84% of them. So he is basically just par for a center fielder so far which if he is actually that then that's uh that's a win yeah with a zero outs above average according to stack he's tied with matt kemp but anyway yeah i think i have not watched the mariners every single day but it certainly seems as if d gordon has been perfectly fine. He's looked like a natural center fielder. So you look at his numbers and he's being compared to, you know, long-term proven good center fielders.

And he's been adequate. He hasn't been a problem. I think there was one or two catches where it seemed like communication was an issue, but that should be the least surprising for someone who's new to the position. There are little nuances that take a little more time to develop. But what has already happened has been what you'd expect to be the hardest point of the transition to a yeah a new position in the field and he's been i would say i agree with the outs above average here he's been perfectly fine he's been average he's uncorked a few pretty good throws i think maybe that was spring training so i don't remember when the highlights took place it doesn't

really matter it all counts but he's been fine i would think that he is probably a zero to plus five defensive center fielder which is quite good so to whatever extent there was concern about gordon in the outfield it is seems like it's working out he is looked like a natural and now the mariners just have to think about the pitching because the pitching is a bigger problem easier to forecast and they are currently last in the american league in uh pitching wins above replacement they are at 0.2 they are behind the royals the white socks and the angels however in front of the marlins and the reds i don't know if we're going to talk about the reds so i would just like to give a quick temporaneous i guess shout out to the reds for being the one of two teams with a below replacement pitching staff, according to Fangraphs, and the only team with a below replacement group of position players, according to Fangraphs.

The Reds are 3-18, winless in the post-Brian Price era, which means I don't know if Jim Riggleman will need his own interim manager, but he should consider it. Yeah, it's pretty bleak over there. manager, but he should consider it. Yeah, it's pretty bleak over there. So I don't really have a Shohei Otani update for today other than he hit cleanup on Sunday. So that was exciting. But the side benefit of my watching so much Otani this year is that I'm also watching even more Mike Trout than before. And Mike Trout is amazing. And we mentioned last week that he had briefly topped the baseball reference wins above replacement leaderboard, which we often refer to as the moment when stats symbolize something and are meaningful. And I think he dipped off that for a day or two. Now he's back. reference and fangrass wins above replacement leaderboards now with a little separation between him and the next guy mike trout with uh four tenths of a win separation at baseball reference

and two tenths of a win over uh dd gregorius of course at fangrass and mike trout just i mean he is leading the majors with nine home runs he is excellent at everything This is a Mike Trout update But it's really not an update Because he just continues to be amazing But obviously it's super early He's had 101 plate appearances Not too much to make of this But it is nice to see

Because last year He was off to the best start of his career And it felt like maybe we were watching A career year Or at least an offensive career year for Mike Trout. And then, of course, he got hurt and he missed six weeks, and that sort of robbed us of the chance to see how high he could go and kind of messed up that fun fact about him having the highest war ever through his age season.

I think because he missed that time, Ty Cobb is slightly ahead of him through age 26 or whatever. But Trout now, you know, it's a small sample, but he is hitting better than he ever has in a full season before. He is continuing not to strike out a whole lot and he is hitting for a ton of power obviously and he's got the 300 400 600 slash line going right now he is even still in a few bases his defensive ratings if anything are better I don't know whether it's possible to get better at defense at his point in his career but maybe that's happening too I don't know know. It's just been fun to watch. It still surprises me somehow. We've been seeing this for several seasons now,

but just the ease with which he leapfrogs every other player in baseball every single year is just constantly amazes me. How can you be this much better than everyone for this long? So Trout is facing a career high rate of fastballs and basically just hard pitches combining fastballs and cutters because i and what is really unusual here maybe i'll have to write this up but mike trout is seeing uh the highest zone rate of his career he's got the lowest out of zone swing rate of his career he's got the highest in zone swing rate of his career and he's got the highest contact rate

of his career so you are a pitcher you're facing mike trout he's not going to chase you out of the zone but if you pitch him in the zone he's going to hit the crap out of the ball because he's the best player in baseball there's just look there's never been a good way to pitch to mike trap but now there's extra no good way to pitch to mike trout he's become he was baseball perfect in that there is no you couldn't really create a better baseball player and he's made himself better. So that's delightful relative to his career in zone swing rate. His current rate is seven percentage points higher relative to his career out of zone swing rate.

His current rate is seven percentage points lower, which means if you, I like to take the difference of a, of in zone minus out of zone swing rate, just as a little measure of discipline, which means he's better than his career. trout's career by 14 percentage points which is enormous in terms of his improved discipline so of course his contact rate is up he's not swinging at balls yeah so mike trout better than ever was already better than anyone else mike trout we are so sorry for focusing

on shohei otani you've deserved it the entire time. We feel like we cheated on you. We wanted to see what else was out there. What else is out there is pretty good, but you were the best. You were the best. Yep, still the best. And remember last month on an email episode, we answered that question about the value of experience and what would happen if you could transport Mike Trout's experienced brain into Mike Trout's rookie body? Would he actually be better than he was? I think the answer is yes, because Mike Trout's experienced brain into Mike Trout's rookie body. Would he actually be better than he was? I think the answer is yes, because Mike Trout now has phenomenal plate discipline along with everything else, and it's made him an even better hitter.

That's something that's presumably come with pitch recognition and experience. So at this point, let's see. Defensively, he is now at two outs above average. Last year, he was negative three. The year before that, he was negative two. So he's been below average, at least for a center fielder, according to that metric over the last couple of years. And that's been one of the things that has held back his war ratings somewhat. Like he got to double digits in his first two seasons. And since then at Fangraphs, at least he's been more in the eight to nine range. And partly that's

because of base running and defense. And so that seems to have maybe prevented him from reaching the same heights of war, even as his offense has improved improved but I don't know if he is being positioned better or has somehow improved at defense in some way and can actually get that part of his game back up to where it was maybe in his rookie year or close to it then if he keeps hitting like this I mean we could see him you know he's currently on pace I for what, 13 war or something like that. So maybe he gets back up to double digits at least. And we have to talk again about whether this is Mike Trout's best season, because that's the thing that has been so fun. Like you can make a case for a few different Mike Trout seasons as the best Mike Trout season. And he keeps adjusting and evolving. And we've

both written a lot about that. And so he looks like a different guy every season. He still gets to eight or nine or 10 wins, but he does it in a different way. Sometimes he steals a lot. Sometimes he barely steals at all. Sometimes he hits a ton of homers and has a bunch of strikeouts. Sometimes he doesn't. He just somehow gets to the same place, but by taking a different path every time and so maybe now he is taking the best path of all and he's currently 29th in sprint speed so last year he was 30th whatever nothing no real story there but mike trout still fast uh in terms of defensive positioning his average depth right now is uh 325 feet last season he was 323. So nothing meaningful there. So who knows what's going on? But, you know, he's Mike Trout. He's perfect. So he's just being perfect.

That's how he's spending his time. Yep. We got a tweet, the both of us, that was printed to Kyle Schwarber. People will remember that he lost a bunch of weight. And we've gotten questions about what that could mean for his defense and his mobility and all that stuff. And Kyle Schwarber in the early going has hit pretty well. His sprint speed last season as a big boy was 26.9,

whatever the unit is, feet per second or something, miles per hour. What is it? 620 hits. Feet per second. Feet per second, yeah. Feet per second, yeah. 26.9 units. So that was Schwarber last year.

This year he's lost a bunch of weight. So his sprint speed is 26.8 units. Kyle Schwarber, not faster. No. So a couple other things. We're now in the time of year when many good prospects get called up because, A, they have developed just enough to come up right after teams get an extra year of control over them. So this week we've got Gleyber Torres debuted for the Yankees. Walker Buehler is debuting on Monday for the Dodgers. That may be a short stint. He may be

back down and then up again later. Anyway, this is the time of year when that sort of thing happens, so that's always fun that we actually get to see the best and most exciting baseball players come up. Too bad we don't get to see them from opening day in some cases. We also have seen a couple unwritten rules flare-ups over the weekend, and one of them is just so dumb that I don't even want to talk about it, really. It's the Justin Verlander-Tim Anderson one, where I guess Anderson stole a base when he was, what, down 5-0, and the hitter was up 3-0, and so Verlander wasn't paying any attention to Tim Anderson, and, whatever, and Verlander was upset. He criticized him trying to steal there, and he criticized the way that he celebrated his success.

And so that's silly. That's just the usual unwritten rules stupidity that we often talk about here, where players are trying to win or trying to do something good and another player is mad about it. But a more interesting unwritten rules thing happened also this weekend between the Rockies and the Cubs. And I don't know whether you saw this. It's a very entertaining video, which I will send to you right now just in case you want to watch it now. But essentially, DJ LeMayhew, who is off to a good start for the Rockies, he was on second base. Javi Baez, who is off to a good start for the Cubs, he was playing shortstop. And Baez somehow got the idea that LeMayhew was trying to steal signs from second.

And so he tries to block LeMayhew's body with his own body before every pitch so that LeMahieu cannot continue to steal signs. So before every pitch, Baez would just dart in, stand in front of LeMahieu like he's trying to cover the open man or something, then dart back to the standard shortstop position after the pitcher starts going into his motion. And so LeMahieu was mad and he was, you know, professing his innocence and saying he wasn't trying to steal signs and what are you doing? Why are you blocking me? Eventually it became a thing and the umpire told Baez to knock it off. I don't know if there's any actual rule against this. Someone emailed us about it and I was emailing back and forth. It's sort of like the Eddie Stanky rule that came into

effect after Eddie Stanky, the long ago infielder, did like jumping jacks in the batter's line of vision to distract him. And so that then became a rule that the fielder can't stand in the batter's line of vision and distract him. I don't know if there's any equivalent rule about the fielder standing in front of the runner, but there is a clause. I think it's like 801c that the umpire is just able to sort of rule on anything that isn't already in the rules. So I guess an umpire could say knock it off, even if there is no specific rule against this. It was very silly. And I thought it was funny because the Rockies have their own system of preventing sign stealing, which Travis Sochik wrote about on Fangraphs on Monday. They have this whole thing where their catchers have like wrist pads with these indecipherable codes and

numbers that stand for certain things. And so they use that and they believe it's like this uncrackable system of, you know, putting plays on and signs and that sort of thing. And so maybe they don't need to worry about this anymore, but the Cubs don't have that sort of system. And so they're still, like every other team, paranoid about someone stealing their signs. And this was one of the sillier manifestations of that fear i don't so i didn't see the justin verlaine one because i don't look i think this is a an important interesting enough baseball weekend that that one just didn't

come up with my feed and also who that's stupid just who cares let somebody steal it anyway but the bias one i i get that it's ridiculous to be standing in front of someone. I've just been watching the video on my screen now for like five minutes. And I understand it's, I don't know, it's against the best interest of the game or something. I don't know. Maybe it's just one of those things where the umpire thinks this looks too silly to allow. And so he just steps in and says, no, go back to your position. But why not allow this?

Because if you are a shorts up or a second baseman who's trying to do this to a runner it puts you in a worse position it's so in a sense that there could be a cost to you and your team for you trying to do that so even though it's like i know it's it's silly to allow and it looks ridiculous but really it's the it's the infielder who looks weird doing it yeah he's trying to prevent sign stealing which is fine because sign stealing takes place we know that we there's still i'm not sure there's actually evidence that it uh that it's useful because we can't actually study it because we never know when signs are stolen but right i don't know why this shouldn't be allowed i accept them unless you

want to argue that it could be distracting for the hitter and therefore puts him at a greater injury risk, I guess, because maybe. But if the guy isn't flailing his arms and if he's just trying to block a view, that should be fine. You could essentially say that he's just playing shallow. He's expecting a push bunt or something absurd. But I would not have stepped in, and I think the Cubs were right to protest. I had the sound off when I was looking at this tweet video that you sent me, but it seems like the Rockies announcers were a little bit salty about what was taking place, which why?

Just knock it off. I mean, maybe they were salty because they were losing 6-0. Yeah, I mean, the whole sign-stealing kerfuffles have always confused me because it has always happened. It probably always will happen. Everyone's doing it or trying to do it. And if you're getting your sign stolen, then improve your signs. I don't know. It's just it seems like it's fair game.

If they're out there and you can steal them, then go ahead. And I get why other players would then try to intimidate other teams into not stealing them by making it an unwritten rules thing. But anyway, I don't know who this would benefit more. If anything, I would think it would probably help the team because it's got to be tough for the shortstop to get back into position and be ready for the pitch and, you know, be as prepared as he would be otherwise if he's like darting in front of the fielder and then blocking him and mirroring his movements like it's an old Marx Brothers routine or something. And then going back to his position, it seems like you would just not be quite as prepared for the pitch as you would be otherwise. So I don't know. It's silly. It's probably not something that we'll see catch on, but I don't know if there's any reason to outlaw it either. So let's see.

Leaving that behind, let's just do a quick little checkup on last year's breakout first baseman. Let's just see how this is going. So I think there were three of them that stand out to me. It's Yonder Alonzo, Justin Smoak, and Logan Morrison. That sound right to you? Yeah. So right now, Yonder Alonzo, WRC Plus, 96. He's hitting ground balls again so no early

indications no logan morrison has baseball's lowest wins above replacement at negative 0.6 he has a wrc plus of eight so logan morrison starting very poorly justin smoke wrc plus of 109 doing the best still not great looks like breakout first baseman, early indications, not something to believe in. And you can sort of understand maybe why the market acted as it did. So it's only been a combined almost three months for all of these players. So who knows what's going to happen. But based on what we have seen so far, nope, launch angle changes can be fleeting. Yeah, which is kind of interesting.

You'd think if your swing changes or your approach changes in a way that works and you would want to keep doing that. I don't know whether it's that they have just stopped doing what they were doing that was working or whether pitchers have countered what they were doing. But yeah, that kind of change evidently not permanent. And one or two other things before we wrap up here. I did want to just mention briefly there was a bad fun fact that was said on ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball broadcast. Evidently, I wasn't watching. I didn't hear it. But it was tweeted out by Dodgers writer Daniel Brim. So it was evidently, and this was about the Dodgers,

Daniel Brim. So it was evidently, and this was about the Dodgers, ESPN says that they are the first team in the wildcard era to lose World Series Game 7 and play the first 19 games under 500 the next year. That's the fun fact. How do you rate that one? That's a three. I also saw similar to that a little bit, the Red Sox had the highest winning percentage for a team entering a game in which they were no hit. I don't care about that very much. I get it's interesting, but for the fact that it's so early that winning percentages are just all over the place. So that one for me would be like a four or a five. A little better than the Dodgers one, but both of them are just... There are so many fun facts.

Why choose bad ones? There's better ways to do this. Yes. I think there have been only seven World Series Game 7s period in the wildcard era. So you're talking about seven teams, and then you're talking about 19 games into the first, into the following season, which is obviously very well not arbitrary they chose it because the Dodgers were 19 games into the season I guess but sort of a a meaningless sample so that's uh that's a silly one you're right I was wrong not that's not a three that's a one and a half that's a winner or two I think yeah probably all right and then I think the last thing I had on my list here you wrote about Josh Hader recently, and we haven't

really talked about him on the podcast, but he got a two-inning save on Sunday, I believe. Did give up a run, but struck out a few guys, and that two-inning save, or at least the two-inning outing, has been sort of a regular thing for him this year. He has now had five two-inning outings in, what, 10 total games, I think he has pitched so far. And he is at 14 two-thirds total innings in his, well, only nine appearances? Is it nine appearances? Maybe it's, yeah. Okay. So he's had more than half of his appearances so far have been two-inning outings. And now part of this maybe is the fact that the Brewers are down a closer, and so they're having to fill in a bit those innings. But also, maybe he is the new, as we discussed recently, Andrew Miller-type reliever, or Chris Davinsky-type,

or whatever you want to call it. You wrote about him recently. What should we know about Josh Hader? So here's the sound that I make every time i see josh hater pitch that's uh that's the that's the josh hater viewing sound so what i like about so the brewers are down cory knievel they've been down cory knievel pretty much all season he was a he's a very good closer he'll be good when he's back but the brewers still lead all bullpens in wins above replacement. They have a 2-6-4 combined ERA. They're striking out, I don't know what the rate is, a lot. The rate is a lot of strikeouts. It's 30%.

So 30% strikeout rate, very good for a bullpen behind only the Yankees. And a lot of this is Josh Hader. It's also Matt Albers, Jeremy Jeffress, and some other guy whose name is Jacob Barnes. He's the one I'm forgetting. But mostly this is about Josh Hader. And so what Josh Hader has done between last year and this year last year he had i think it was essentially baseball's most unhittable fastball and what i liked about hater and what i like about every pitcher is that hater last season

if i say a 68 contact rate i think people know enough to know that's low that's good for a pitcher to have josh hater had a 68 contact rate last year in the strike zone which is sensational that is i like that as a sign of dominance so even though hater was more or less a one pitch pitcher he came up pitching out of the bullpen last season and he was really really hard to hit and somewhere around the middle of august he sort of figured out how to throw strikes which is good for a pitcher to do and so between last year and this year he has figured out a slider and his slider is good so now he still has that really hard to hit fastball but he also has this slider that's gotten harder and sharper he's controlling it really well so his his contact rate is 59 overall his in-zone contact rate is even

lower he's throwing a whole bunch of strikes i think it's like two-thirds of his pitches are strikes or something and this is a guy who in the minor leagues walked like five batters per nine innings he got into some walk trouble as a starter so now he's up i think the the one sort of potential downside is this muddies whether or not josh hater is going to be stretched back out as a starter but this is an era of course where bullpens are more important starters are throwing less than ever and hater is clearly getting a lot of value out of the role that he occupies where he is throwing multiple innings at a time and just shutting down rallies so yeah if you just say josh hater is now andrew miller does anyone think

andrew miller should be stretched back out to start no because he's one of the five most valuable relievers in baseball so right josh hater i have seen enough to say that he is and will continue to be dominant until or unless he becomes injured which well he is, he's a pitcher and he's 24 years old, so he's going to get hurt at some point. Something is going to happen to him, but he's got one of those really weird, funky, deceptive crossfire deliveries. He's a big, lanky lefty, so he's all arms and elbows and a weird release point, and he's just so good.

Don't sleep on Josh Hader because even though he's not technically the Brewers' short or long-term closer, he is amazing amazing and he is a counter argument to the idea that strikeouts are bad for baseball because he is really fun to watch you know who's also still good Aaron Judge no no need to worry about Aaron Judge having some giant regression he is basically hitting exactly as well as he hit for the first few months last year when he was such a sensation. He has a 192 WRC+. He's another guy who is striking out a little less and chasing a little less, although he's not making that much more contact on a per swing basis. But Aaron Judge, still really amazingly awesome. So I had, I guess, a slightly bigger question about Aaron Judge than I would have

about someone who didn't quite come out of nowhere to the extent that he did he's like one of the all-time out of nowhere guys I think with that season last year he is very much keeping it up so I could do without the updates after every home run he hits about how he is the fastest ever to 61 career homers the fastest ever to whatever homer he just how he is the fastest ever to 61 career homers, the fastest ever to whatever homer he just hit. He is the fastest ever. We get it. I get the point. But it just kind of highlights how good he continues to be.

Yeah, I think after last year, how often he was striking out in the playoffs that some people got this idea in their head that, oh, the league has figured him out. And he's not going to be very good anymore. And he did come out of nowhere. So flash in the pan yeah so if he finishes with a so last year he wound up with a 173 wrc plus and if he does that again that's unbelievable but also it is going to come as a bigger surprise than it should given that he literally just did that over an entire full season and he's clearly he is elite level talent at baseball's most valuable skill, which is hitting home runs. So he does not need to make great contact to hit home runs, but also he makes a lot

of great contact and his contact rate is not horribly low. He's not Russell Branion. He's like Giancarlo Stanton. So Aaron Judge has a great chance, given the way that he started, he has a great chance of being amazing again and somehow catching a lot of people by surprise by doing that, which is kind of weird. He's the opposite of Mike Trout. Yeah.

All right. Should we stop talking? Yeah, sure. Okay. We didn't talk about a couple of scary things that happened this weekend. On our last episode, Jeff and I were talking about how hit by pitches are up

and how that's potentially dangerous. While Chris Bryant got hit in the face with a baseball this weekend, he is evidently okay. He's not showing any concussion symptoms, so that's good. Even scarier, Danny Farquhar, who pitched for the White Sox on Friday, came out of the game and then had a ruptured brain aneurysm on the bench. That is obviously a life-threatening condition. He is stable but critical right now. We wish him well. Hope he gets back to baseball. But of course, just hope he is healthy and happy and okay. So that will do it for this episode.

I probably shouldn't have put the most depressing part of this podcast right before my pitch for Patreon. But hey, you can support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild and pledging some small monthly amount. Thank you. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming. We will likely do an email episode next time. So send us your emails at podcast at fangraphs.com. Or if you're a Patreon supporter, you can use the Patreon messaging system. And we will be back to talk to you very soon. Outro Music Nothing matters, nothing matters, oh yeah