Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1237: Bedtime for Trout

Episode Date: June 29, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Jose Alvarado, Shohei Ohtani‘s power and possible return as a hitter, Shane Bieber‘s velocity, the minor-league breakouts of Chris Paddack and Colin Poche, FanGraphs readers vs. average fans, Brandon Nimmo‘s latest HBP antics, the Mets’ recent struggles and Mets-fan fatalism, the recoveries of the Reds and Wilmer Font, […]

Having some fun on the 101 Got the top rolled back on my Cadillac Got no radio and nowhere to go Feels like summertime when you got Nothing on your mind Hello and welcome to episode 1237 of Effectively Wild, Nothing on your mind? We can't talk about all of it, but is there anything from the last week that you wanted to touch on specifically? I have a few things, but anything in your mind? Well, it'll inspire the stat blast that's coming up, but of course, Jose Alvarado did play first base, so I derived great delight from that.

And so the stat blast eventually turns into, I guess, like a Travis Wood fun fact. But in any case, I've looked up how often pitchers also played other positions during the game. That's fun. What else do we have? I mean, there's the discouraging Mike Trout is injured and a designated hitter news. There's the further discouraging kind of Shohei Otani probably not going to pitch, but maybe hit. I don't know if that's good or bad. Yeah, I don't know if that was discouraging. It wasn't really encouraging either. But the idea

that Billy Eplish said on an interview, I think on MLB Network Radio, that he is going to come back to hit this year, at least it sounds like, and that he would be hitting already if it weren't for their desire to have him pitch at some point. So it sounds like we'll see Otani at some point this season. Nothing guaranteed. But I didn't take it as negative news beyond the negative news that we'd already gotten. Yeah, I guess if we only get half of Otani, he's already two times anybody else. So in a sense, we're just left with one Shohei Otani. That's just basic algebra, right?

Yeah, there was a fun story at Deadspin by Avery Yang about Otani's BP sessions and how they're just legendary and everyone is talking odd tones about how they've never seen baseballs hit farther than Otani has hit them. He's hitting balls like 600 feet or something close to it in batting practice. I will link to it. Go check it out. But Otani is still fun as a hitter. So even if he comes back as a one-way player, which wouldn't be nearly as fun, it's still something. It's better than but Otani is still fun as a hitter so even if he comes back as a one-way player which wouldn't be nearly as fun it's still something it's better than no Tani here's here's what I don't understand I under like I know Shohei Otani is strong he hits the ball fast or hard whatever

you prefer but like he has he does share a roster constantly with Mike Trout he has briefly shared a roster with Jabari Blash. There's Daniel Palka on the White Sox. More importantly, there's Aaron Judge and John Carlos Stanton on the same team. Are these people really not hitting the ball further than Shohei Otani in batting practice? I used to hear the Mariners used to drool about Carlos Peguero's batting practice sessions, which was the only batting of his that you could drool over, unless you're an opposing pitcher.

And that one made sense because you figure, well, the ball's not moving. He can hit the ball really hard. It's going to go places. Makes plenty of sense. Otani is strong. I get it. But look, I haven't read the article you're linking, but do we really think he's hitting the ball further than anyone's ever seen?

Do we really? I think this just plays into this living myth that, I mean, even the reality is already convincing enough. I don't need to believe in these lies. Yeah. I mean, we heard on our interview last year with Dennis Sarfatti that Otani has the best power that Sarfatti has ever seen. So that's something. And he certainly has hit some long home runs. I mean, Trout hit some long home runs too, but he's not really known for hitting long home runs. He hits efficient home runs and he hits lots of home runs, but they're not really setting any distance or exit

speed records. So it's conceivable that Otani is hitting the ball farther when he does hit it far, even though he's not hitting it far quite as often as Trout. Let's see. Is there anything else to note, Tony? I don't know. We'll probably come back to that. So we had talked recently, I think, about Shane Bieber for some reason, right? Yes, the new Josh Tomlin. Yeah, the new Josh Tomlin. So Bieber has been good. He's made four major league starts. Three of them have been good. He's got four walks and 27 strikeouts. Those four walks probably double his minor league total for his career.

But I was reminded of, do you know the name Chris Paddock? Maybe you used to know the name Chris Paddock. Yeah, I don't remember who it's associated with. That's fine. You don't have to. He was, I think he was the Padres return for the Marlins for Fernando Rodney. Remember when the Marlins acquired

Fernando Rodney? They thought they were going places. So I'm just going to scroll down here and confirm. Fernando Rodney traded by the Padres to the Marlins for Chris Paddock in June of 2016. Okay, so whatever. Forget about that. That was a silly move for the Marlins to make. But Chris Paddock, he had Tommy John surgery.

Now, this is what Paddock did in 2016 as a starting pitcher before he got hurt. Over nine starts, he had five walks and 71 strikeouts. So he's back. He's with Lake Elsinore. This is like a high elevation Cal League minor league team. I know it's just high A ball. But anyway, nine starts this season, 46.1 innings. Remember those numbers, 46.1.

Four walks, 79 strikeouts. Chris Paddock is working on a, what is this, a strikeout minus walk rate, if that means anything to anybody, of 43%, which I think puts him around like a roll. Of 43%, which I think puts him around like a roll. Anyway, Chris Paddock is not going to debut this season for the Padres. Coming back from Tommy John's earlier, he's going to be on a pitch count and all that stuff. I would look for him next year. But for everyone who is excited about Shane Bieber and based on Fangraph's search traffic that is most of America, just know that there is going to be some sort of weird

equivalent coming up next season for the Padres. So if you love those tiny walk rate, high strikeout guys in the minors who don't have blow you away stuff, Paddock is the next guy. And incidentally, I did want to say, because when you read about a guy like Bieber, who's control ahead of stuff and whatever in the minor leagues everyone will say about a guy like Shane Bieber oh you know he doesn't he doesn't blow you away with the stuff his fastball gets up to like 94 miles per hour he throws hard are we just yeah do we not care about a guy who sits 92 94 anymore is that finesse in 2018 anyway pretty much is right i mean what is uh average for a right-handed

starter it's probably like what 93 or something around there i guess you can quickly find out i can tell you the league average maybe not for a right-handed starter but for any starter this year the uh league average starter fastball is at 92.3 so shane bieber is right about there that's not finesse average stuff is not finesse right yeah no if you if you're average then i think you have to be below average speed to qualify as finesse so maybe he's being wronged anyway i'm sure that fangraphs search traffic does not mirror most of america unfortunately wish it did would probably be good for our podcast but uh here are here are the top six names top six names right now as i look at this uh being searched on fangraphs it's uh it's

2018 zach efflin shane bieber max muncie shinsu chu mike trout jimmy yacobonus one of these players is not like the others yeah, I'm guessing that most of America would be saying who to most of those names Including Mike Trout's name probably, sadly So let's see, very quickly, Zach Cozart tore his labrum Bad news for the Angels, more bad news for the Angels Archie Bradley did his best to top Adrian Hauser With a George Brett-style pants-pooping story. That was entertaining.

Brandon Nimmo got called back again on another hit-by-pitch, which I know that you're tracking very closely. And I think he was also hit-by-pitch legitimately, what, two other times in that same game? At least two. I think it was three. Let me just confirm. I think he was hit three, but the one didn't count oh yeah no you're right yeah so he's evidently crowding the plate in an extreme fashion and not making much of an attempt at all to get out of the way and nimmo in june the month of june you know every the mets are dreadful so we can just kind of lean into that but you know brandon nimmo the guy with the uh the unbelievable eye in the month of June seven walks 36 strikeouts so I don't know what's going on with Brandon Nimmo I think overall he's he's still hit fine in June but there is uh there's something there just uh

the message here being if you like the Mets don't get attached to uh what's the word anything anything it will uh it will all let you down. The Mets at 32-46 are a game and a half ahead of the Marlins, who in spring training were, according to people who talked to John Heyman, the worst baseball team they had ever seen before in their entire professional lives. Yeah, if you like the Mets, don't like the Mets. Try not to like the Mets. Usually I have a take that I've had on the Ringer MLB show before about how Mets fans are overly fatalistic and have kind of an inflated

sense of their own suffering. I mean, you look at the Mets and I know that they've had many things go wrong and the Madoff scandal and all the injuries and lots of examples of ineptitude and mismanagement. And Lindsay Adler was talking about that a bit on the most recent episode. But comparing to teams that have had extended droughts from the playoffs that haven't ever won a World Series or haven't for decades, the Mets are just not in that class. They were in the World Series a few years ago, and then they were in the wildcard game a couple years ago, and they've won multiple pennants in the past 20 years. The Mariners haven't ever won one. I know things have gone south since then, but anyway, I have taken abuse for that take before.

But yeah, things are ugly for them right now. And of course, Sandy Alderson had his cancer recur, and we hope that he turns out to be okay. But right now the Mets are being run by, I guess, a trio of executives. And they're talking about trading Sindergaard and DeGrom. And it's not a good situation. No. And I was thinking about terrible teams. Remember when the Reds were 3-18 the season? Yes.

Yeah, actually. Well, I was going to bring this up because I felt like we should talk about two teams and or players who were terrible early in the season, which we talked about, but we've not given them their due for not being terrible lately. One, the Reds, and two, your favorite, Wilmer Font, who has also kind of resurrected his season. So start with whatever you're going to say about the Reds. I mean, I don't have a whole lot to say about the Reds, but one of my favorite things to do every season is just kind of take a look at what's happened since the end of April, since everything that happens in April gets overinflated for its significance. Now, in April, for example, the Orioles and Royals were terrible. And since the end of April, what's happened is that the Orioles and Royals have remained terrible. So that's not surprising.

The Orioles are 17 and 40 since what I did was I selected the date where the Reds fell to their lowest point which was 3 and 18 they had just replaced their manager so since then the Reds have actually gone 31 and 28 they have pulled themselves up now that start ruined them there's no recovering from that they're still in last place by a good margin catching up to the Pirates but since that date the reds have actually been better than the cardinals they've been better than the phillies better than the rockies they've been better than the uh angels and the twins and the blue jays and all these other teams so the reds have done an admirable job of picking themselves up under jim wriggleman but uh if you are looking for a new team that's been dreadful ever since

then the mets have gone 18 and 40 eight games worse than any other team in the national league so the uh the mets had the hot the mets and reds have been on opposite streaks here right sort of like the the blue jays hot start build up hope collapse in improbable fashion so i know the report now is that the the mets will have to quote consider offers for deGrom and Syndergaard at the deadline, which is one of those things you say to the media that doesn't mean anything. But nevertheless, what a weird thing to have to say after the first month the Mets had. Yeah, there was some point like through 12 games or something where the Mets had the best record in baseball and the Reds had the worst record in baseball. And now they have crossed as each goes in the opposite direction. Speaking of strange trajectories, Wilmer Font, one of your preseason favorites,

his ERAs now with the three teams that he has played for this year. Dodgers in 10-1-3 innings, 11.32 ERA. Athletics in 6-2-3 in innings 14.5 era raise in 22 innings 1.64 era i'm not sure looking at his numbers that he is actually good or that much better but he has stopped allowing home runs like every other inning so that's good yeah the uh he of the three teams, the three stat-heady teams that he's played for this year, you could say that he has his worst peripherals with the Rays.

He also has his best ERA by like 10 times. He'll had five home runs in six games with the Dodgers, five and four games with the A's, only two in eight with the Rays. He has earned the coveted, there's a little blurb here from Roto-Wire. Rays manager Kevin Cash said Font will start Friday's game against the Astros

and has earned the right to a permanent spot in the Tampa Bay rotation, Mark Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reports. Wilmer Font has earned the coveted starter label for the Rays, even though for the Rays, the starter label doesn't really mean anything. Now, I don't know what to make of Wilmer Fontmer font actually i would like to see better numbers across the board but i think that he needs a little of a extended luck to make up for it i'm not gonna blame him for all the home runs he allowed that's just that's just unfortunate and it sent him to three separate homes this year alone it's june three homes in three months. But anyway, I think that

it's probably not a coincidence that he wound up on the A's after the Dodgers dropped him. Probably not a coincidence he went to the Rays after the A's dropped him. He was going to find a place, and I am happy for the Rays, but at the same time, I know I've mentioned this before, the Rays have

a current Pythagorean record of 40-39. They have a current basethagorean record of 40 and 39. They have a current base runs record of 44 and 35. The Mariners have a current base runs record of 43 and 38. Worse than the Rays, the Mariners are in fact 10 games up on the Rays in the hunt for the wild card. The Mariners are up on the A's now, the second team behind the Mariners looking at the wild card. So it's not the Angels anymore. They've dropped out of the mix because of their entire team being injured.

But if it weren't for, I'm just going to call it luck, or I guess clutch hitting, the Mariners and the Rays and the A's would be fighting over this wild card bid that is instead seemingly a Mariners lock. So in one sense, I'm happy about that. It's about time for the Mariners to make the playoffs. In another sense, how frustrating to be the Rays and or the A's to be looking at this and thinking that this is just an absurdity, because if they were actually in the hunt, we'd be having a very different conversation about the off seasons that they put together. Yeah.

And how many teams, I wonder, are looking at the Indians and envying their situation too? Because I wrote about this for The Ringer this week. The Indians are the sole non-terrible team in the AL Central, which to this point in the season is the worst division in baseball history, or at least going back to the beginning of the divisional era in 1969. I had the numbers in the article if you're interested, but essentially AL Central teams have been outscored by an average of 1.2 runs per game against non-AL Central opponents. That is really, really bad. That would be the worst ever for a division combined. And their strength of schedule is only getting harder from here on out now of course a lot of those teams every team in the division except the tigers has underplayed its projections

and underplayed its even mid-season updated projections and as you wrote at fangraphs this year trust the mid-season projections they still tell you more than in-season record, even at this point in the season. So if you are a Nationals fan or a Dodgers fan or a Cubs fan or anyone whose team was favored and has perhaps underperformed in some sense, odds are still pretty good that those teams are going to be on top at the end of the year. But the Indians just haven't really played all that well looking at all of their underlying numbers. And they've kind of been propped up by the division. So they've got more wins against the Tigers, Royals, and White Sox combined than they do against every other team in baseball collectively.

And they have a sub-500 record outside the division. Now, those are fairly small samples, so I don't want to make too much of it. But the point is that there are a lot of teams that are as good as or better than the Indians, or at least better than they've played thus far this year, who would probably be in playoff position if they were in the AL Central, and they're not. And this is a scenario I think we talked about before this season, right? We talked about trading divisions and if teams could do that, if they could swap and say, hey, you can be in the AL Central this year and I'll take the AL East because I'm not going to win anything anyway, what that would be worth. This is that inaction. the most often dreadful division. So in a sense, it restores them to their previous standing. The AL East historically has been a very strong division, and it's not a surprise they have the Yankees and the Red Sox battling there.

But yeah, it's fun to go back and have that, think about that division conversation again, because what if you could do it mid-season? Like right now the A's are seven games behind the Mariners for the wildcard. That's a big gap to make up in 81 games remaining. What would the A's have to trade to the Indians who, as I think about it, Indians not at all incentivized to change divisions here. They like it exactly where they are.

But if you could trade with, I don't know, the Twins who are looking to reload, but they've had a very disappointing season. You don't want to trade with like the Royals because you want to beat up on the Royals, so you have to trade with, I guess, the best team other than the Indians in that division, which would be the Twins. What would the A's have to trade to the Twins to have the advantage of playing the Tigers, White Sox, and Royals a little extra down the stretch? I don't really know, but if that's a couple of wins,

that's the same price you'd pay for a rental starting pitcher. Yeah. Well, we could probably figure out roughly what it would be worth, right, by looking at the Fangraph's playoff odds page and the projected strength of schedule. So right now for the rest of the season, Indians have the easiest projected strength of schedule. Twins, I think, are either second easiest or right around there. I guess the Nationals are up there too. So twins have a 483 winning percentage strength of schedule. So the teams that they are projected to play over the rest of the season have a 483 projected winning percentage. And then the A's are at 516.

So that's a pretty significant difference, right? So 516 minus 483, that is 33 points of winning percentage, which if we just say 81 games and the Twins, I guess, actually have more games remaining because they had a bunch canceled or postponed early in the season. But that is like between two and three maybe three ish wins so that's something that's uh i guess you'd give up as much for that as you'd give up for a two to three win player or not even a two to three win player like a four to six win player who would be worth two to three wins over half a season yeah so we can actually do this so fangraph says two uh two projections pages, one that accounts for remaining schedule and one that doesn't. So when you account for, if I'm just

writing this math on the fly, when you account for remaining schedule, the Twins get a 1.6 win benefit between now and the end of the season. That's 1.6 wins from their schedule alone. Meanwhile, for the A's, when you fold in their schedule, they're at negative 1.2 wins. So their schedule is going to cost them 1.2 wins according to these estimates over the remainder of the season. So yeah, that comes right out to 2.8 or basically three wins over half of the season. That's like, I don't know, the Johnny Cueto trade or something from a few years ago that the Royals made. You look at the Twins schedule now, and as I look at this, they have unfortunately 10 games remaining against the Indians.

Those are the hard ones. They have eight more against the White Sox. They have 13 more against the Tigers. And they have 16 more against the Royals. So, yeah, if you're the A's, you want that. You want that something terrible so that you can maybe try to catch up to the Mariners, whose schedule is uh is pretty pretty difficult it's uh one of the toughest uh that's left if you're the twins you don't care anymore because the twins are like I don't know 13 games or something behind the Mariners in the wildcard hunt so that's over if you're the A's that'd be a big trade to make I wonder yeah is

there a rule that says you can't do this? Probably. I would think this is something that was thought of at some point. It seems like something that might have happened in the early days of baseball that is just not allowed anymore. But another factor that this isn't even considering is that those teams in the AL Central

are likely to get worse talent-wise over the rest of the season because we're a month away from the trade deadline. And if anything, they will be shedding players. So they will probably be even easier opponents to face in the second half of the season. So yeah, put it at three wins or something. That is pretty significant. I realize I didn't even account for the fact that if the A's traded places with the Twins,

not only would they be trying to catch up with the Mariners, but of course they're barely behind the Indians. So then the Indians would be incentivized to keep the A's out of the division. So then I wonder if the Indians would have to trade something to the Twins to make sure that they don't swap, but then the Tigers could swap. They should be able to do this. I know that it would ruin everything, but they should be able to do this. I know that it would ruin everything, but they should be able to do this. Yeah, divisional musical chairs. One quick follow-up on Shane Bieber and his fastball velocity. So I did find on Baseball Savant that the average right-handed starter this year,

his average four-seamer has been 93.0 miles per hour, exactly 93. And Bieber is at 92.6 with his fastball. So technically, I guess he qualifies as finesse, below average velocity. So everyone below average is finesse. 49% of all pitchers are finesse pitchers. If they have finesse, there are guys who don't throw hard and can't command it either. And those guys are bad. So yeah.

Speaking also of guys who have had a lot of homes this year and in their careers generally, Wilmer Font has nothing on Edwin Jackson, who is back in the big leagues and has now pitched for the A's. And the A's are his 13th major league team. So he has now tied Octavio Dottel for the all-time record. And I believe he's four years younger than Dottel was when Dottel pitched for his 13th team, although he's also probably worse than Dottel was in their respective roles. But Edwin Jackson still hanging around somehow and one of the oddest career paths you will ever see.

And I am rooting for him to get that 14th team. No guarantee because I'm not sure that many teams want Edwin Jackson pitching for them right now. But he's got time to hang around and find number 14 somehow, somewhere. And he came up and he had his emergency start with the A's, which was good. He had no walks. He had seven strikeouts. Now I know it wasn't the strongest opponent, but when you look at Edwin Jackson, and right now he's still 34 years old, which is not so old.

His fastball is 94 miles per hour still. Edwin Jackson still has the stuff that he had. Yeah. Above average variety starter. Edwin Jackson has the same stuff he had when he was like the flame-throwing electric rookie when he was in his 20s with the Dodgers. His fastball is just as hard, if not harder. His slider is harder.

He has a cutter now that's, by the way, 92 miles per hour. His curveball is still there. His changeup is harder than it ever was. I don't know. Look, there are obviously things that are wrong with Edwin Jackson. You don't make it to 13 teams if you're great. You also don't make it to 13 teams if you're terrible. So Edwin Jackson has something going for him.

And you could say, since he's still 34 years old, which older than me, but I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt here. Call him young. He's still young enough to salvage. You just make one mechanical tweak. You could look at him and say he could have another 10 years. Yeah. All right. One last thing I wanted to say before we get to emails.

I wrote about this for The Ringer on Friday, so you can go check that out. to reshape baseball and change everything and possibly even save the current free agent system, which seems to be broken and is causing lots of labor unrest. It is not looking so hot right now. Really, relative to what it was when we all started getting hyped up about it, it is just kind of a shadow of its former self. Still good players and intriguing players, but it's just not what it was. And I went back and I read Jeff Passan's article from December 2015, and he kind of got this anticipation rolling. He said, or at least his headline said, why the incredible class of 2018 will change MLB as we know it. class of 2018 will change MLB as we know it. And I just don't think it will anymore because you look at the names in this class and virtually everyone who is mentioned in Jeff's article from a few years ago just doesn't command the kind of contract now that he might have then.

It's like almost everyone in this article. And so, you know, there are guys who have tailed off a bit. There are guys who have completely collapsed. I'll just cite this or I'll read some of what Jeff wrote here. And of course, I should say, first of all, that Jose Fernandez was expected to be in this class. And so, you know, that story obviously goes beyond baseball and reminds us how fleeting life is as well as how fleeting on-field performance is. But even aside from Fernandez, you had Bryce Harper and Josh Donaldson, who were the reigning MVPs at the time that Jeff wrote that article. Still players who will get contracts and good contracts this winter but not quite where they were then I think Donaldson obviously has had a very poorly timed injury year he had the shoulder

issue he wasn't hitting then he hurt his calf he just had a setback and he's out for a while longer he's going to be 33 in December I believe Harper is having kind of a strange, not that great season. He had another one of those seasons in 2016. And last year he was good, but he also got hurt. And then even since his 2015 season, which to this point is his only like superstar level season, you wrote and Rob Arthur wrote after the fact that in a sense, it wasn't quite as impressive as it seemed on the surface because his results kind of outstripped what he should have done based on his batted balls. So I don't know. You can't call Harper disappointing, I don't think, except that people expected him to be the best player ever. But he is still 26 and will get lots of money, but

maybe not quite as much as it looked like he made a few years ago. Then there was Dallas Keuchel, who was a reigning Cy Young Award winner and over the past few years has been more of a mid-rotation starter who gets hurt now and then. We've talked about Kershaw ad nauseum. Obviously, we don't know whether he will opt out, but with all the injuries and the diminished stuff, if he does opt out it it won't be for the kind of money that he might have gotten once and david price jason hayward other opt out guys we've talked about as hypotheticals and you know neither of them is what he was in the past maybe price could consider opting out but he's not going to get an enormous deal at this point and you just go down the list. Now, Machado, still obviously a really good player.

I don't know if he's quite turned into what we all thought and hoped he might yet, but he still could, even though he doesn't really seem to be a good shortstop anymore. You know, he'll get lots of money, but maybe, again, hasn't really helped his stock since 2015. Then you go down the list. It's Andrew McCutcheon, Adam Jones, Michael Brantley, kind of having a resurgence, Craig Kimbrell. But then there are just a lot of names on this list that you wouldn't even, I mean, Glenn Perkins is in this article. He's retired now.

Carter Capps might as well be. Andrew Miller has been hurt. And it goes on and on. Dee Gordon, Hunter Pence, Adrian Gonzalez. These are not players anyone really wants anymore. And then even guys like Brian Dozier and Yasmany Grandal having down years. Charlie Blackman and Gene Segura signed extensions. So they're off the market and AJ Pollock has been hurt so it's just not at all what it looked like it would be and there are very few guys maybe with the exception of I don't know Patrick Corbin who really look a lot better now than they did then it was interesting to think about where this market was going to go but you just can't even then I get why this was an appealing angle but you can't forecast a free agent, I get why this was an appealing angle, but you can't forecast a free agent market.

And I know it's easy to say now after the fact because we know all these players have disappointed. The Blue Jays maybe won't even be able to trade Josh Donaldson now for anything this season. I know that this is partly after the fact, but even then, it was so hasty because you're looking years ahead of yourself and baseball players get better or collapse just all the time right all the time yeah i have a graph in my article if you want to go

check it out it's like the the percentage of four war players in a given year who repeat as four war players in the next year and two years after and three years after that line trends down really really quickly. And that's not even like superstar. That's like, you know, all star-ish level. If you're at that level, there's a really good chance that you're not going to be at that level the next year, let alone two or three years in the future. Let's put it this way. You could say on the one hand, when you identify some really, really good future free agents, you're saying, I am looking at the best players in baseball but

if you want to look at it from more of a statistical perspective you could say i have chosen all of these extreme baseball players and whenever you have extreme data points there are a lot of forces that are pulling them back to average or even below that depending on your perspective and so so many of these players for one reason or another whether it's performance or health or aging or all of them they have have gotten worse. They've regressed back to the average. And now, I don't know what you do with, like, you look at Bryce Harper and, in a sense, this season

is just like a batting average on balls in play thing, and he should be better than this. But also in May and June, his approach has just gotten a lot worse. In April, he walked twice as much as he struck out and things have just gone sideways since then. He's had a bad June.

People talk about, even Kevin Long, his sitting coach, just talked about how, oh, you know, he's just doing that thing where he's pulling off the ball and he's not getting the pitches away like he used to. But, you know, Harper just does this sometimes. Well, that matters because only once, only once based on the service numbers has he been really consistent. And I don't know what season Harper needed to have in order to guarantee himself like a $400 million contract. But it's not this season.

So he's going to need a wild second half. Manny Machado has had a rough June. He just got booed by his own fans for not running out a double play ball the other day. Now, this is Baltimore. I would imagine that most of what anyone is doing is booing if they're not there to cheer on the opponent. I understand if you're Machado, it's probably difficult to motivate yourself to the same degree every day for a team like this.

But, you know, has Machado ever been considered like the shining light in a clubhouse? Is he like the greatest influence? It gets complicated. But the point here is that never forecast a free agent class more than, I don't know, three months in advance because things change. And I know that you need stuff to write about, but it's just a bad idea. Yeah, and well, I guess we're slightly more than three months away from this free agent class, so who knows what will happen. Maybe Donaldson will come back and Harper will be great and everyone will be amazing down the stretch, Kershaw, and this will look different by the end of the year, but probably won't look like it used to. And it's kind of unfortunate, A, because it would have been fun to see that happen, but also because with all the concerns

now about baseball's free agent structure just not working anymore the way that it used to, I think last winter people were saying, well, this is a weak free agent class just not working anymore the way that it used to. I think last winter, people were saying, well, this is a weak free agent class, and next year it will be better, and maybe the numbers will look a little more like they used to. And now, not so much. It doesn't look like this is going to be a panacea of any sort. I have one more thing to talk about before we get to emails, which I know means we we're gonna barely get to any emails but i had mentioned uh chris paddock and i mentioned his minor league numbers so you remember in february the rays made that big three-team steven souza trade sent players all over the place so the rays got anthony bonda which he looked good but then he got hurt they did also

get a guy i don't know if you've read about this guy yet. Colin, I think it's Poach. Have you heard about Colin Poach or Poachay? I don't believe so. Just going to go with Poach. Okay, Colin Poach. He's just a 24-year-old lefty reliever who does not throw very hard. So, you know, right there, whatever. His baseball reference photograph is a picture of him on the Hillsborough Hops,

a local minor league affiliate here who were in the very low minors. It was the fifth-round draft pick by the Orioles in 2012, and then the Diamondbacks took him in the 14th round in 2016. Anyway, long story short, Colin Poche has thrown 41.1 innings this season, and he struck out 53% of his opponents. He's barely walked anyone. His strikeout minus walk rate is by far the best in the minor leagues for everyone with at least 30 innings thrown. His ERA is 0.65.

His FIP is better than that. He's been pitching in AA and AAA. He's been in AAA with the Durham Bulls. He's even made a couple little two-inning starts for the Durham Bulls, the Rays affiliate. Maybe not a coincidence. Maybe he could be up to be one of their openers down the stretch. But Colin Poche, I'll probably have to write about him because the numbers are so extraordinary. I can't put it off any longer before he gets discovered by other people.

But this year, against lefties, his own handedness, he's allowed a 435. OPS against righties, opposite handedness, it's 334, and I've looked at video of him before, I don't get it, I know people say he's deceptive, like there's something, you can't pick up the ball, I don't know why, I have absolutely no idea why, in the minors, like the video isn't as great as you want it to be anyway, so maybe, maybe there's more and better video since he got up to triple a i haven't checked but there's just just know that there's something about this guy that makes it really really hard for the batters to see the ball because this is not a fluke last year in advanced a ball he struck

out 37 of his opponents and in regular a ball he struck out 47 of his opponents he strikes out batters all the time, doesn't issue when he walks. I think, well, he's not a ground ball guy, but whatever. That doesn't really matter when nobody hits the ball in play. He's given up three professional home runs, one over the last year and a half. Something

about Colin Poche is tremendously difficult to understand. I am going to try to understand it because he could be the next big thing for the Tampa Bay Rays. Maybe he'll open for Wilmer Font or maybe vice versa. I can always count on you to discover these guys before anyone outside their own organization notices. And that is actually a perfect segue into an email question, which is about one of these guys whom I believe you wrote about before he became known for being one of these guys.

So this is from Nick, who says, Jonathan Holder, how? This year was supposed to be all about Robertson, Chapman, Green, Canely, and Batonsis. Here comes Holder, who hasn't given up an earned run since April 21st. That's 26 plus innings. He doesn't flash plus speed like the other guys and doesn't seem to have any plus pitch. So how is he doing this? Small sample, generic bullpen guy

who is a flash in the pan. What gives? Well, Jonathan Holder has been, he's a, what's a good name here? He's been Colin Poche in the past. Yeah. In the minor leagues. I must've written about him after 2016

because he went through high A and double A and triple A and he was absolutely dominant in 2016 in the minor leagues. Came up, did not have a great cup of coffee in the majors, eight games that were mediocre, but he was absolutely dominant in 2016. He struck out something like 45% of his opponents, barely any walks. So he was already dominant. Now he's

come up to the major leagues and he's throwing as hard as he did in 2016. He's still getting his fastball around 93 miles per hour, but he's turned basically a cutter into a slower slider. He's moved away from throwing a curveball and he's replaced it with a changeup. So he's made a few tweaks to his repertoire. But basically, Jonathan Holder in the past against advanced competition was already dominant. And so with the Yankees, now he's just also turning into someone who looks dominant. I will point out that last year in the majors and this year in the majors, his strikeouts and walks almost identical. He was a pretty good reliever last season who gave up maybe one or two too many home runs but his uh his peripherals last year and this year more or less

the same so i wouldn't even say that this is a surprise yeah all right next question from michael i've been tracking brandon nimmo's status for a while okay daily and he only just technically qualified for the leaderboards today this was june 21st. He was tops in the NL in WRC Plus, behind only Betts and Trout at that point. Michael says, curious as to your thoughts on whether this is still a meaningful distinction, qualifying, which is 3.1 plate appearances per team game. Obviously, we need something to filter out guys with 40 plate appearances, but once we get to late June, you're losing guys like Nimmo, who was part-time to start the season, or early injury guys that have plenty of plate appearances but not quote-unquote enough. There were MLB and team-released graphics put out

yesterday for things like OPS leaders that omitted Nimmo, but I feel like a more casual fan would have preferred to know Nimmo's right up there and doesn't really care that it's 100 fewer plate appearances. Especially when we have counting stats like war that assess value and take into account playing time. Do we really need such a high bar for qualifying? Well, no, we don't. And this is, I think, what? I don't know if you have, but Sam has written about this before, how qualified hitters and pitchers are reducing in number. Yeah, particularly pitchers.

Yeah. Pitchers aren't throwing as many innings but also position players mostly they're not out there trying to play every day or even almost every day so i mean i don't i don't think i very often use the qualifier threshold when i'm writing i just use something that's consistent maybe if it's early in the season i'll say 100 plate appearances or later i'll say 250 it kind of depends on the number that you're you're looking the number that you're looking at because if you're looking at like swing rate than you want, you can be happy with a smaller sample.

If you're looking at something like WRC+, you probably want a bigger sample. But yeah, I know that I don't really use the qualified threshold very often and I don't think that you do either. I use it occasionally. I do try to go for some actual number of plate appearances that isn't entirely arbitrary, but it's always somewhat arbitrary. I mean, we need something, we need some kind of cutoff, and I don't mind having a standard one that we all know what it means,

even if it is kind of arbitrary. So I wouldn't want to do away with it entirely. I could see maybe lowering it slightly. And, you know, you should just be wary of who is missing from the list. And if you're kind of trying to dig deeper, there are probably better things to use. But I don't know, for things like batting titles or whatever, I mean, there's a historical standard that I think is somewhat valuable just to keep it consistent even though now so few pitchers actually qualify and so that is kind of a problem when you're trying to judge them against past pitchers but it also shows the change in the game so that has some value too so i think we need something for qualifying but uh I don't pay that close attention to the specific number.

No. Yep. All right. Question from Steve in Houston, who says as an Astros fan, I got excited when double a player, Randy says are broke the double a record for longest hitting streak, which is now 41 and counting as of their all-star break.

The hitting numbers for this corner infielder look strong, 354, 390, 547. But Cesar, who is a Dominican signee, just reached AA in his sixth year in the minors. He broke the record set by Bobby Trevino, who had a 37-game hitting streak back in 1969 for the El Paso Sun Kings, whose Major League career covered 40 at-bats, a 225 average, and.1 war. If the name seems familiar, you're probably thinking of his brother, Alex Trevino. And I'll be honest, I wasn't thinking of either Trevino. And Randy Cesar did not make a Fangraphs list of top Astros prospects last spring, so is a hitting streak any indication

that he could turn into something bigger than he is now? I knew nothing about Randy Cesar, so I asked Eric Langenhagen, who is one of the people responsible for those Fangraph's prospect rankings, and Eric says, potential corner bench guy, pull heavy power, fringe glove at third base, pull heavy power, fringe glove at third base, aggro approach, sporting like a 450 BABIP or something close to it. And that is true. He has a 435 BABIP. So it's never a bad thing to have a hitting streak and it's never a bad thing to have a 41 game hitting streak, but I don't think it means that he is suddenly more than a fringy prospect now. Yeah, I would agree with that. Although I'll point out that because he is with the Astros, there is maybe something to be said about the Astros player development and how they are.

According to some people I've talked to who are in baseball, the Astros seem like they're just like light years ahead of everyone else in terms of making their players good. There's a guy, Josh James, who is an Astros prospect in AAA right now. And I think, I don't know exactly, I'm just eyeballing it, but Josh James, he was a 34th round pick. Now, he was the first pick of the 34th round in 2014. So, you know, relative to those other 34th rounders, he was something. But he was the 1006th draft pick in 2014 he's a 6-3 brighty and

what he's doing in triple a right now is he's got a 3-2-0 era and he's striking out 36 percent of his opponents with not a whole lot of walks he was just as dominant double a josh james has come out of nowhere to throw really hard with a full repertoire and he's striking out everybody so he is a good example of the astros player development he's like i don't know they're like 30th best prospect and he's better than almost every pitching prospect that you could find around baseball so the astros are doing something i don't know if that applies to randy cesar but it's at least something when a 23 year old hitter has come out of nowhere to have the best offensive half season of his career, could mean something,

because with the Astros, it could always mean something. All right. Stat blessed. Stat blessed. They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS+. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways.

Here's to Deistopost. So you have one. I do, but give me your Waxahachie swap stats first. Okay, well first I'll tell you. I was sorting some minor league numbers because I'm intrigued by Colin Poche. And I know it's kind of cliche to go over minor league names, but I've seen a name unlike any name I've seen before.

So I'm just going to say this name. I don't know anything about him or her, probably him. Minor league player, 22 years old, 38.2 innings pitched, Franklin Van Gerp. Okay. That's all I got. old, 38.2 innings pitched, Franklin Van Gerp. Okay. That's all I got. So, okay. Stat blast.

Jose Alvarado for the Rays played first base the other day for one batter. This is a somewhat classic Waxahachie swap. I don't think the Waxahachie swap requires a player to go to the outfield. There's just any other position, right? Temporarily. Yeah. It's usually the outfield because you can stick someone out there and probably not have a ball hit to him, but yeah. Yeah, right. That's the thinking. So the Rays had Jose Alvarado. He was brought on to close.

Alvarado's left-handed. And to start the ninth of a 1-0 game, he walked Bryce Harper. Then he was sent to first base for one batter while slider machine Chaz Rowe, that's a Jeff Sullivan find, believe in that slider. Chaz Rowe came in to strike out Anthony Rendon Alvarado came back to the mound from first base to face two more lefties now they both singled against Alvarado he was removed Alvarado was brought in to face three lefties he retired exactly none of them anyway Jose Alvarado played first base that was intriguing and using the baseball reference play index it's possible to search when pitchers have played other positions in the same game.

So I did that. And when I did that, I was reminded that Brian Mitchell played a whole inning at first base last year for the Yankees in the 10th inning because the Yankees were shorthanded. It was extras. They didn't have any available relievers. Brian Mitchell dropped a foul pop-up almost immediately. It was great. Anyway, so I was curious. Pitchers playing other positions in the

same game. Catcher. And so I searched for not only pitchers who play this position, but pitchers who pitched and played another position in the same game. Catcher never happened. No pitcher has ever also caught in the same game. Maybe not a surprise. There have been 20 games where a pitcher played first base, most recently just the other day. There have been three games where a pitcher played second base, most recently 1970. One game where a pitcher played shortstop Bill Perdica in 1922. Ten games where a pitcher played third base, most recently 1971. 23 games where a pitcher played left field, most recently Brian Dunsing and Steve Ciszek a couple weeks ago for the Cubs. Most recently, Brian Dunsing and Steve Ciszek a couple weeks ago for the Cubs.

Seven games where a pitcher played center field. 16 games where a pitcher played right field. Tony Sipp did that in 2014. Pitcher has never also been the DH because I'm pretty sure that's not allowed. There have been 536 times a pitcher has pinch hit and then come into pitch. Travis Wood was the most recent one to do that in 2016. And 114 times pitcher has entered as a pinch runner and then taken over to pitch. Travis Wood was the most recent one to do that in 2016, and 114 times pitcher has entered as a pinch runner and then taken over to pitch. Most recently, Travis Wood in 2015. So that's what I got. I have not looked up the circumstances of why, say, Bill Perdica pitched

and played shortstop in 1922. I would think that back then maybe someone like died of influenza. Perhaps I can look that up. There's also, I believe it's Bill Shantz. Is that the right name? Bobby Shantz. I don't know exactly what it was. There is a Bill Shantz. Yeah, there was.

I don't know exactly what it was in 1958 that allowed Bobby Shantz to play center field. I think it was the last game of the season, but he never played a non-pitcher position again in his career, so there's something to explore there. But in any case, that is the position-by-position rundown. We have had 39 appearances of a pitcher playing the corner outfield, 20 at first base. I think the intuition is that you'd rather have a pitcher in the corner outfield. Maybe you can keep the ball away from them, but I don't know. First base, if you have a righty at the plate, maybe the first baseman isn't going to get too many opportunities. Something to think about in this era of the shifts. Yeah, and pitchers should be capable of catching a throw from an infielder. Maybe they're

not going to be out there scooping, but they can play catch. They do it every day. I've seen it. scooping, but they can play catch. They do it every day. I've seen it. So you'd think that now teams don't trust them even to catch pop-ups, which in theory they should be capable of doing too. But anyway, it was fun to see and Alvarado seemed to be enjoying it. So I applaud the race for doing strange things. Agreed. All right. And my stat blast is inspired by listener Matthew, who says, Danny Santana's recent promotion. Remember Danny Santana? He is with the Braves now. So Matthew says his promotion led me to his baseball reference page and his year by year war totals. He had an excellent rookie year with 3.9 wins above replacement. But unfortunately, he has since given almost all of it back in negative war. Four years later, his career war is just 0.2. So my question is, how unprecedented is this? Has a player ever been worth four war his rookie year and then finished his career with negative war? My guess would be a pitcher would be more likely because they're more volatile.

So does that make Santana's case even more impressive? Sad, but impressive. more volatile. So does that make Santana's case even more impressive? Sad, but impressive. So this was another stat blast listener email answered by Dan Hirsch of the Baseball Gauge, who is essentially the unofficial sponsor of the stat blast at this point. So I asked him for two things. I asked him for the highest rookie war for a player who eventually retired with a career negative war and just the highest single season war period for a player who eventually finished with a negative career war. So the highest rookie war for a career negative guy, Bob Gilkes, 1887, three war, and he was eventually worth negative 1.1. Now you know the name Bob Gilkes. We can move on.

The modern person who is next on this list is Alex Cintron. Remember Alex Cintron? 2003, he was worth 2.7 war and he ultimately finished at negative 2.2. So he really gave a lot of it back. So then just scanning down the list, you've got a guy who came up during World War Two. Makes sense. Nineteen forty four. Charlie Shands. And then you have another modern guy, Reed Brignac. Two thousand ten. He was worth two and a half or

and he is now at negative point five or. And then you got Dick Drott 1957 wayne simpson 1970 coco laboy 1969 and uh some other people you've never heard of and then on the list of the highest single season war ever and this is again guys with career negative war cito gaston in 1970 was worth 5.1 wins above replacement, and he ultimately retired with negative.8. Good Lord. Yeah, he went down quickly. Then you've got Bob Barr, 1890, 4.8 war. Carl Drews, 1952, 4.2 war. Johnny Babich, 1940, 4 war.

Bill Bailey, 1909. Gene Dale, 1915. Tricky Nich 1940, four war. Bill Bailey, 1909. Gene Dale, 1915. Tricky Nichols, 1877. George Wright, 1983. And Max Suzuki, 2000. He was worth 3.2 war. And he, well, he finished with zero war. So I guess he wasn't technically a negative guy.

And then Hal Gregg, 1945, with three. So that's it. It is not a very distinguished list. But we know now that if Danny Santana does get to negative territory, and I hope for his sake he doesn't, but if he does, he will be by far the best rookie season for a guy with a negative war career. And he'll be pretty high even on the all-time single season leaderboard. So something to watch with Danny Santana, I suppose. And all thanks to a rookie season backup of 4.05. I think we knew that was a mirage at the moment. Yes, I think we did. All right. Speaking of other stats I didn't know, we got a Peter Moylan question. Haven't

been thinking a whole lot about Peter Moylan, but Sivan says, I noticed that last year, Peter Moylan pitched 59 and a third innings and in a league leading 79 games. Despite this, his win loss record was zero and zero. What's the record for most innings or games pitched in a season without a single decision? I know we're not supposed to care about pitching wins and losses, but this is a weird chance event that's still, I think, pretty fun. And he adds also, and maybe this is in fact more interesting, Peter Moylan is quietly the oldest player in the National League. If nobody older appears in the NL this year, seeing as his birthday is in December, he'll be the first oldest player ever in either league under 40 since Ron Fairley was 39 in 1978.

You have to go back to the 19th century to find a league without someone who was at least 38. So that's kind of interesting. I guess it makes Bartol Colon even more of an outlier, but baseball is kind of getting younger, or at least the production is concentrated among younger players. So Peter Moylan, the oldest player in the National League, I definitely didn't know that. But as for the question, most games without a decision, Peter Moylan last year was second on that list, and first is kind of as you would expect, I suppose, Randy Choate. In 2012, he pitched in 80 games, so one more than Moylan, and he did not have a decision. And if you go by innings pitched, Moylan is fourth on that all-time list with 59 and a third innings without a decision. The leaders there, Larry Anderson with the 1982 Mariners. He got to 79 and two thirds innings without one.

Then Anthony Bass in 2015 and Rick Bauer in 2003. So Peter Moylan. Didn't expect to be talking about Peter Moylan on the podcast today, probably. Definitely had no idea. It was the oldest one. No. I guess, how often do you ever think about breaking things up by league?

Anyway, I never really do that. And then I run into the trouble when I'm talking about the best pitcher in baseball. I want to say he's the best pitcher in the league, but the league is both the umbrella term and the subset term. So it just gets weird and complicated. Writer complaints.

Yeah. All right. Jacob says, with how much talk there's been about the DH and specifically Pitcher hitting on the podcast in recent weeks A friend and I have been having a specific Debate let's say there's a situation Where it's the ninth inning with the bases loaded

And two outs would you rather Have a pitcher batting or a Position player pitching Some quick stats To help out pitcher batting Line as of June 24th when This email was sent, they had a 279 OPS and position players pitching through that same date. They had an 8.66 ERA and they had held position players to a 983 OPS. OPS. So basically, hitters had hit like Freddie Freeman against position player pitchers. So which would you rather have or which would you rather not have, I guess, is the better question. Incidentally, the National League's best hitting team for pitchers so far,

the Philadelphia Phillies with a team at WRC plus of two, number two. Okay, so pitcher hitting or position player pitching. Pitch pitching pitcher hitting you are likely to make an out 82 85 percent of the time yeah position player pitching you're likely to get the out i'll take the position player pitching yeah i think i guess i'd go with that too. Yeah, I guess I would. I mean, either situation is extremely undesirable. It's, you're kind of in trouble either way, but I think you're right. Cause I don't know. I mean, I guess you get lucky either way, but at least with a position player pitcher, you can just kind of get a ball hit at someone. I guess with a pitcher hitter, you can have a ball not hit at someone, I guess with a pitcher-hitter, you can have a ball not

hit at someone, but you have to actually hit the ball, which for a lot of pitchers is a problem. Yeah. So on the one hand, we know that when we look, the numbers don't help so much because when position players are pitching, generally it's a low leverage situation and the opponents aren't trying very hard. So that's one consideration. But on the other hand, when pitchers are at the plate the opposing pitcher kind of lets up a little bit and also pitchers never face like closers so just the idea of like craig kimbrell facing like zach efflin yeah it's not i'll take yeah i definitely take the position player no question anymore it's absolutely the same time. I watch a few games a day, including the team I follow, and very rarely do I turn on the sound to listen to the commentators talk. I usually listen to

music or will be watching other things at the same time, but I'm pretty sure I'm one of the only people who does this. Ironically, I plan on going into baseball broadcasting and journalism. I'm currently a high school senior. Just wanted to know about how you two do it, since I know you also watch a good amount. And I don't know about you, but I'm kind of in the Carson Sestouli school when it comes to this, which is that I miss the commentary when it's not there, even if I'm not necessarily paying that close attention to what's being said. It's still kind of a cue. It's still, I mean, often I am doing other things. I'm, you know, second screening or third screening or doing some work or talking to someone. And so having the commentary helps me pay attention to what is going on, even if I don't have my eyes on the screen all the time.

And I can look at a game and understand what's going on, but still having someone tell me this is the count and here's what just happened even if it's on the screen on the chiron i still find it helpful to have that soundtrack yeah i agree with that i never really listened to the announcers for the words that they're saying but it's just kind of like a white noise it's like i sleep now every night with a fan that's on in the room even if it's cold doesn't really matter but when the fan isn't on, it's harder to fall asleep. So I know that there's like a whole cottage industry on Twitter of just making fun of things that the announcers say. And I get it. I've moved past that. I think that was very fire Joe Morgan, like 15 years.

Can we still make fire Joe Morgan references? Yes, we can always make this. Just the other day, I made a choose your own adventure reference. And I don't know how many more generations are going to be able to get that. Anyway, I don't listen to announcers very closely, very often, and I certainly don't like to be critical of them because it's a very difficult job. But yeah, I can't, just like having the park overlay on MLB TV, it doesn't do it for me. Something is definitely missing. All right, we've got maybe three more.

If we go two minutes each, we can do this thing. So Kyle says, what if pitchers had some kind of amnesia? So this is kind of following up on our question from last week about what if pitchers just couldn't tell which hitter was in the batter's box. What if pitchers had some kind of amnesia where they couldn't remember any previous plate appearances or the pitch they just threw? How would it affect their arsenals? Would they only throw fastballs? Would it eliminate the effects of tunneling? Assuming they didn't just throw fastballs, would they be even better because they'd have no discernible pattern and be less predictable? Assume that catchers and managers and coaches would have the same affliction or not be calling pitches. because pitchers would want to default to their fastballs.

I think that if you know you've thrown fastballs recently, you might be more inclined to throw something else. So I think that there would be more fastballs. You definitely wouldn't have the same, like, fastball. You wouldn't have the same tunneling. You wouldn't have the same changing eye levels and all that stuff. So it would be a problem, but probably the biggest problem for the team's trainers because they're not trained in neurology i don't think

but this would be of grave concern i think that you would you'd have to believe there was something poisoning the the water because if so many people are afflicted someone would have to notice at some point right yeah it's like the guy from memento except he's pitching and he, I guess, is not tattooing himself or writing on himself to say what pitch he just threw. And I think that, I mean, if you know that you're forgetting, you don't forget that you're forgetting, then you wouldn't just throw fastballs because you'd know that you'd want to vary things up a bit. And so I think you would still vary your pitch selection, probably not in an optimal way, although maybe sometimes in an unpredictable way that would benefit you. But also, you know what the count is,

presumably, because you can still see and you can look at the scoreboard. So count dictates your pitch selection to a certain extent. So you're probably still going to have the guy throwing more breaking balls when he's got two strikes or something like that. So it might not be that different. And maybe there would be some element of surprise that comes in here. We get the question about randomizing your pitch selection often, but this is not that. So I think he would be worse, but maybe less worse than one would expect. That's fair.

Okay. And then we've got one from Sean I've been thinking about the conversations teams are having About players' self-care Like proper rest, nutrition, relaxation, etc As a way to ensure their players Are at peak performance on the field What if, as these ideas continue to be explored

Mike Trout completely and totally Buys into the importance of a proper sleep cycle And decides that he has a strict bedtime Of 10 o'clock p.m. local time. In order to do this, Trout states that he needs to be off the field by nine o'clock at night. How much does this affect Trout's value? Obviously, afternoon games wouldn't be an issue, and presumably there might be some sort of effect where Trout's performance is better when he is on the field, but you wouldn't have Trout for some incredibly high leverage innings, and he'd be almost a non-factor in the playoffs. I hate to tell you about this, Sean, but he's almost a non-factor in the playoffs right now. How much

do you think this changes Trout's value and perception? Very significantly. Maybe like 50 years down the road, you'd look back and think that he was just being progressive and doing the most to preserve his own health and valuing his longevity over everything else. But I mean, I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but what percentage of his games start at 7 o'clock local time on the West Coast? I mean, games start at 7 o'clock no matter where you are, for the most part, unless you're playing a matinee. So I don't know, what is that, 80%, 85% of all games?'re playing a matinee so i don't know what is that 80 85 of all games maybe even more than that i don't know you're excluding sundays but he's basically good through the sixth inning or so and then he's gone yeah and i don't know where he lives relative to the stadium so he has transit time he has to take into consideration he also need like some unwind time because he's probably not going to be able to fall right asleep as soon as he gets

to bed he's got a shower he's got a floss that's two minutes you got to brush your teeth he's probably if he's this careful about his sleeping habits he's probably careful about flossing and brushing his teeth he does it for at least the two sauna care minutes it always recommends so mike trout he's leaving the ballpark by i don't know nine at the latest in order to get home probably like 8 30 which with current paces of games means he's in like the middle of the second inning that he's going home. So this would be very, very bad news for the Angels. And he'd still lead the team in wins above replacement. He probably would.

Yeah. And I guess the one caveat is that if he needs to be home and in bed by 10 o'clock West Coast time, then maybe he's still good if they're in a different time zone. I don't know whether he's taking that into account or not, but if he wants to stay on a consistent sleep cycle, then maybe it's okay if he's playing a seven o'clock game on the East Coast and it's a four o'clock start time Pacific time zone. Maybe, maybe you get around it that way. But yeah, this is, this is a problem. All right.

Last question. This is from Mitch. On the Fox broadcast of a recent Yankees-Mets game, Didi Gregorius was described as quote unquote, climbing into the batter's box. How different would baseball be if the chalk lines defining the batter's box were raised by a few inches? What if the batter's box were raised by a few inches so guys would have to go down a step as they ran to first? So the batter's box is basically a platform in this scenario. because players would be less willing to stand on the raised lines if they were out of the box.

So, you know, hitters aren't supposed to be out of the box when they're swinging or bunting. You'll often see this with bunts. Some swings, some stances. So if the lines are raised, that would increase the discomfort of doing so. So maybe that would be good. If they were raised, what was it?

You could run. You'd have a slightly downhill angle to first base if the whole platform were raised. Yeah. You'd have a lot more people tripping, I think, tripping and falling out of the box. So that's bad for health, but great for jiffing. Climbing into the batter's box, where would that even come from? I think I've heard that, right? I've definitely heard it, but as I think about it, it's ridiculous.

It is strange. It is pretty strange. Yeah, you'd also, I mean, no one could slide into home plate, right? If you did, you'd just stub your toe on the Battersbox platform border. So that would be an issue, I guess. You'd have fewer runs scored because, yeah, you'd have guys tripping and stubbing their toes and pulling things. So more injuries. Can't really think of an advantage to this. Now, if the catcher's box is not elevated, I don't know whether the catcher's box also would be.

But if you had the catcher at a different eye level than the batter or different foot level, that would also be weird. And maybe would make it hard to receive high pitches. So that's a problem. Then you've got the umpire. If he's not elevated also, then he's probably going to have a harder time judging the strike zone. He's going to be blocked in some sense on pitches that are in the strike zone. I can't think of an advantage to this scenario.

Yeah, neither can I. All right. So we will end there so that will do it for today and for this week you can support the podcast on patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild the following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount james m gannon michael edler michael deprima evan cleave and zachary levine thanks to all of them. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild, and you can rate and review and

subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes or your podcatcher of choice. Thanks to Dylan Higgins, as always, for his editing assistance. And please keep your questions and comments coming for me and Jeff via email at podcastoffangrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system. We hope you have a wonderful weekend. We may have a slightly unusual schedule with the holiday next week, but hey, we had an unusual schedule this week too. We'll get our three episodes in. We always do. So we will talk to each other. Hold on to each other. Hold on to each other. Hold on to each other. Hold on to each other.

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