Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1251: A Giant of the Game

Episode Date: August 2, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about a hiking analogy, the Nationals jettisoning relievers Brandon Kintzler and Shawn Kelley, and the no-longer-so-unhittable Justin Miller, then answer listener emails about Joey Gallo’s zero sac flies, Andrew Romine, red lights, and 3-0 swings, the ideal baseball height, the value of a roster spot, where to draw the […]

Truthfully, truthfully, I don't understand why the red light's turning on again. Just cause you look up doesn't mean it's gotta rain. The red light's turning on again. It could take a hundred years, it could take a thousand. Don't waste a lifetime waiting in vain You know I used to feel unlucky Now I just feel strange Hello and welcome to episode 1251 of Effectively Wild,

a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lundberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello, Jeff. How did you sleep? Did you sleep? Are you happy to have the trade deadline over i slept very little it was an exciting day but i'm not that

unhappy to have it over we have no trades to talk about right now so it feels a lot more laid back than it did yesterday when it felt like we had an insurmountable task ahead of us although i guess we surmounted it it is it's like a pretty dramatic come down after i know the trades can still happen but like things generally don't happen in like early august and the justin verlander trade last year was sort of the exception for this time of year you'd be looking for more like lance lynn type moves or yeah or boring stuff like that so it's just you have this this build up of course there were the hand and simba trade and the machado trade and there were other trades that happened well in advance of the deadline,

but you're cresting the mountain, right? And then you get to the summit, and then the summit push, and then you get to the deadline, or realistically half an hour after the deadline, and then you do your ready, so that takes you another few hours after the deadline, and then it's over. And then you start going down, which is, I can tell you from experience, not as easy as you think it would be. But there's a, I don't know how to keep this analogy going, but I guess you don't get the scenery of looking up at the mountain.

It's not so beautiful. Look, the point is that August sucks. That's what I'm trying to get at here. Can you throw a boat in there, some nautical analogy, just to make it more apt? Because that always works. A few years ago, I was on a hike in the Columbia River Gorge. That's east of Portland, Oregon. And we were on the Washington side of the Columbia River.

And we were probably about 1,000 or 2,000 feet above the river itself. So we're that much plus a few more hundred above sea level. And we're on a hike. And we're up on the hills near the upper slopes, and we turn a corner, and we're in some shrubs. There's some tall grass. There's some oak trees. This is in the rain shadow part of the gorge, so it's not very lush.

And I look to my right, and about 100 yards away, there was a small boat. There was just a small boat. It was sitting there. It did not seem to be attached to a trailer or property. There was just a boat. Now, in the distant history of the Columbia River Gorge, there was a great flood. These were the Missoula floods. They came from an ice dam breaking in what is present-day Montana.

There was a very dramatic natural flood. This was recurring over several thousand years, and it formed the gorge itself as these floods scraped the earth away and made their way toward the ocean. So either there was a boat that was just up there for no reason, or human history is actually far longer in its expanse than we have given it credit for. And this boat was some sort of archaeological discovery that I did not properly appreciate at the time. Well, I myself am going to be in Missoula, Montana in just a couple days. So I'll keep an eye out for any weirdly placed boats. Warn me if any ice dams start breaking because the flood put Portland under like 500 feet of water. All right.

So we are going to answer some emails, but the Nationals made some news or some news was made about the Nationals that we didn't get to talk about. So they traded Brandon Kintzler. We did talk about that. We didn't talk about why because we didn't know why. But there was a report that surfaced today from Barry Svrluga in the Washington Post, and he says that that had to do with the Nationals believing that Kintzler was the source for Jeff Passan's story about the dysfunction in the Nationals clubhouse. And Kintzler has denied it. He says he's never talked to Jeff Passan. Obviously, Jeff's not going to say who his source is and shouldn't.

But apparently, the Nationals believe that Kintzler was spreading rumors about their clubhouse disharmony. And so they shipped him out. And then now they have designated Sean Kelly for assignment because Sean Kelly in the blowout game that we were talking about in our previous episode, he was called on to pitch in a mop-up role. And apparently wasn't thrilled about it. And he gave up a homer. And then he threw his glove on the mound kind of petulantly. And he admitted that he acted like a baby. But apparently that did not save him. And I guess he was glaring into the dugout too.

And so that has come back to bite him. So Nationals down two pretty good relievers now, I guess, because of things that those relievers did or were believed to have done. So that's kind of interesting. Yeah, I actually hadn't read or seen the Kinsler story because I have tried to shut off baseball for just a few hours while I had the opportunity. Also, I was asleep. You were not. You just don't do that. You were kind of like a bat, I guess.

Well, even bats sleep just in a weird way. Anyway, I didn't know that about Kinsler. I wonder if you were to trace some of these stories, if relievers are the members of the team who get to stew the most. I mean, they're already removed from the clubhouse or from the dugout for a lot of the time. They just have a lot of time to themselves to sit and think and just let things fester. I might be making too much of this. And who knows if, you know, even if Brandon Kintzler were, say, the source of this information to Jeff Pastner, which we don't really know.

Now, the Nationals have conducted their own investigation, I guess. Got to punish them leakers. But even if Kintzler were the source of the information, that doesn't mean that Kintzler was the only reason for the information being accurate. It doesn't mean that, oh, Brandon Kintzler's gone, so now the clubhouse discord has resolved itself because it was all just this one bad apple,

maybe two bad apples with Sean Kelly. But you wonder, if he had behaved petulantly on any other day, would he have been cut? And I don't know, but now there's a lot of focus on the Nationals as they try to patch things together. Why winning 25-4, that's a pretty good patch job. It only counts for the one win, but still, that was pretty dramatic. count for the one win, but still, that was pretty dramatic. But yeah, no, it's surprising to see a team make moves like that, and it makes it a little more interesting. And I don't know if that means the clubhouse is going to be better now, but I don't know. In a distant, objective observer way, it's more interesting to see teams making moves for reasons other than just wins and losses.

Yeah, and every other team has been acquiring relievers via trade. I think that I sorted the baseball prospectus playoff odds, the top teams by playoff odds, and the top 14, the Nationals are 14th in playoff odds right now. They and the Red Sox, who are first, are the only ones in that group who did not acquire a reliever via trade in July. So acquiring relievers via trade, we talked about it yesterday. That is all the rage right now because of how relievers are used in the postseason. So Red Sox bucking that trend, although they were evidently attempting to acquire Calvin Herrera from the Nationals. era from the nationals but nationals not only not trading for relievers but trading them away or releasing them because of uh off the field incidents or perceived incidents so definitely zigging where everyone else is zacking i think it's been a while since we did our uh justin

miller update so just to just to do this the nationals reliever uh we were talking about justin miller because through his first eight games this season he had 10.2 innings pitched and 21 strikeouts with zero walks so let's just let's go back june 15th would be the next game so since since that was all true he's gone 21.1 innings with 21 strikeouts and 11 walks five home runs in the array of five and a half he's been justin miller again but that was fun. But it turns out, when you do the investigation, you're like, I wonder what changed. The answer was nothing. Nothing changed.

Justin Miller is back in the majors, and he's mediocre. Yeah, that was what was mystifying about it at the time, is that we couldn't really come up with a reason why he was suddenly so dominant. So that probably should have and probably did make us somewhat more skeptical. So it didn't last. If you're a reader and you're curious about a player, I think a handy rule of thumb,

I don't think you or I is particularly enthusiastic about writing articles that say, here's why this guy isn't actually good because those are just unsatisfying. They make people mad and they're kind of almost mean in intention, even if not directly. So we don't – I didn't write any articles, and you didn't write any articles.

They were like, here's why Justin Miller isn't this good, because that's just – who's that for? But if you're a reader and you're curious about a player who's really successful and you don't see an article about him, take that maybe, maybe as a hint. Right. Like when last year you refused to write about, who was it? Jason Vargas. That's right.

Jason Vargas. Yes. All right. Let's enter some emails. So Joseph, Patreon supporter, says, Evan Grant just pointed out that Joey Gallo has never had a sacrifice fly, at least according to baseball reference. We all trust baseball reference on that, I think. While seemingly impossible, there has to be a stat

blast lurking about a fly ball power hitter who hasn't had a sack fly in more than a thousand career plate appearances. Explanations, dumb luck, plus lots of strikeouts. So this is odd, I think. It's somewhat odd. Joey Gallo has, what, almost 1,100 career plate appearances and has never had a sack fly. Now, obviously, he is one of the highest strikeout hitters in baseball or has been. So that's part of it. He just doesn't put a whole lot of balls in play. And then some of the balls he puts in play are home runs. So they're not going to be sack flies. But he does hit a lot lot of balls in play and then Some of the balls he puts in play are home runs So they're not going to be sack flies

But he does hit a lot of fly balls So you still would expect him To have hit a sack fly At some point he has had Let's see 59 Opportunities it looks like to hit A sack fly in his career he has come up With a runner on third and less than

Two outs 59 times And he's done very well in those situations. He has an 885 OPS, which is a 129 TOPS+. So it's relative to his own performance in other situations. So he's been very good. He just hasn't happened to hit a sack fly. So do you, without looking, or maybe you already looked, so runner on third base, less than two outs. In those situations, do you think Joey Gallo has been better, worse, or exactly league average over his career?

In terms of scoring the runner, I'll say better, I guess, because he's hit well. Apparently, according to Baseball Reference, on average, about 51% of the time the batter will score the runner from third with less than two outs. Joey Gallo is at 32%. He is 19 out of 59, which is surprising given what you just said. Yeah, yeah. So I looked up on the batting streak finder on the play index at Baseball Reference. I looked up longest streaks with zero sack flies and at least one plate appearance so this is streaks of games and this is for non-pitchers so joey gallo has the eighth longest streak of games with at least one plate appearance and no sack flies to start a career so that is a stat that I have shared I don't know whether that's a good stat or not

But there are seven guys who have had longer streaks of games At least without one And most of those guys had more plate appearances in their streaks as well So I don't know, make of that what you will Jose Uribe went 343 games to start his career without a sack fly. And he had 1076 plate appearances in that span. And John Shelby, 1093. Steve Sachs, 303 games, 1258 plate appearances. So it has happened. I don't know. It might just be a random thing. Now, I was talking to someone, I don't a random thing now i uh i was talking to someone i

don't remember exactly who it was i was talking to someone very recently who said that he had heard that this season this is now unrelated to a gala but we're moving on we're doing some stat stuff he had heard that nathan jovaldi has not allowed a ground ball to third base do you think i'm checking now do you think that's true or do you think that's not true i think that's not true it is it's not true he is he has allowed several grand balls at third base i'd love to know the origin of that fake fun fact someone someone just decided to come up with a fake news fact about nathan avalby and grounders maybe there was some kind of game of telephone and someone misheard

something along the way it's weird right he's allowed apparently this season 15 ground balls or bunt ground balls to third base five hits this isn't this is not interesting but yeah I would also love I need to figure out who I was talking to so that I can ask for where they got that because what I was excited to hear it because I thought this is dumb and weird but no it's it's just it's just wrong it's a lie yeah all right i'm gonna read this one this is not actually a question it is sort of an answer so we were talking on a recent episode about the slowest pitches thrown for strikes and we were saying that we couldn't even really determine that because they're just data errors and it's hard to tell what were the real pitches and what were not. But we were musing about what the slowest pitch you could possibly throw and make it a strike is.

And so we got an answer to that question from Andrew Domignani. I hope I'm pronouncing your name right. I have pronounced it right in the past, but can't remember how I pronounced it correctly. He has written for the Heartball Times in the past He is the one who checked up on our question About whether it is advantageous to bounce a throw As an infielder on the way to first base So he wrote an article about that So now he is looking into

How slow can you throw a pitch in theory And still have it be a strike So he says Assuming the ball is thrown from a high release point, 7 feet, with a lot of extension, 7.4 feet, that leaves the front edge of home plate 51.7 feet away, and I'll assume the bottom of the strike zone is 1.5 feet from the ground. Assuming the ball needs to at least graze this very forward lower edge of the zone

to have a chance to be called a strike, and assuming normal aerodynamics of lift and drag with drag coefficient higher at lower speeds as is generally accepted and assuming the spin rate is proportional to the release speed as is normal for a fastball etc etc he has attached plots of very complicated physical things that i can't even describe. And his answer is that given these assumptions, the slowest possible strike is a bit less than 27.5 miles per hour. Any slower than that, and there's no angle that makes a trajectory that will reach that point.

So in theory, 27.5 miles per hour, you could throw a strike. I want to see someone try it. Jose Reyes might have attempted it on Tuesday. Yeah, didn't go well. Yeah. All right. Well, now we know. And I hope that someone takes this as a challenge. Even if it's not someone in an actual game, just go do it on a mound somewhere and film yourself and send it to us. We do have a quote here. And now this is back related to Sean Kelly. According to Mike Rizzo, quote, you're either in or you're in the way. He was in the way.

So Sean Kelly dropped after being mad. I don't know if there was more that went into it. But now when the Nationals were up, it was a 25 to 1, and then Kelly allowed the home run. So on the one hand, you'd think maybe a pitcher would have fun. Like somebody has to pitch, right? You have to complete the game. And I can't imagine how you have to complete the game and i can't imagine i

can't imagine how it feels to be the manager and figure out that one of at least one of your players is upset because you're winning a game by 24 runs like that's that's an absurdity right there but then i wonder would that be an appropriate time to use a position player to pitch like he's not going to allow 24 runs probably sean ke Kelly I'm sure it was just kind of checked out so would that be better because you don't annoy a reliever or would it be worse because then you're kind of maybe showing up your opponent I don't really know what you're supposed to do here but Sean Kelly should clearly have stopped being a child yes well there could be an unwritten rule against that I could could see someone taking offense, but I think that the walls have been broken down when it comes to position player pitchers at this point, so live with it. Why does Andrew Romine have a red light on a 3-0 pitch against Garrett Cole?

I understand why under conventional logic It's because he is a terrible hitter and he has a better chance as a broomstick than he does as a swinger But on a 3-0 count against Garrett Cole, everybody knows he's getting a fastball right down the pipe Isn't that in some sense an ideal time to swing? It's the best prediction he has about the pitch he is about to get. So if he makes contact, it's likely to be the best type of contact he could make. If he whiffs or fouls, it's no worse than not swinging at all. And maybe more important, if he swings 3-0 every now and then, won't that make it somewhat more likely that one day when he doesn't swing, someone tries an

off-speed pitch out of the zone on him? So the stat I would cite here is that this year, Major League batters have swung at 10.9% of 3-0 pitches that they have seen, which is the highest rate in the 20 seasons that are searchable via Baseball Savant. So as recently as 2010, it was 5.5%, and it was, I think, even lower than that the year before that. So it's basically doubled in several years. So hitters are increasingly coming to the conclusion, or teams are, that guys should swing on 3-0 at least more often than they used to. more often than they used to. And I think they used to swing on 3-0 more often, like at the height of, you know, the PD era or whatever you want to call that previous high home run era. So that's part of it is just that when you're getting good results on balls in play, you have more incentive

to swing. But also I think teams are realizing this more and more, except that I don't know if it actually applies to Andrew Romine. Andrew Romine has batted 44 times with the count 3-0. He has swung zero times in his career. When Andrew Romine has come up in his career after getting ahead 3-0, he's batted 278 but his on-base percentage is 698 because he's drawn 25 walks. That's 25 walks out of 44 opportunities. Andrew Romine is very bad and swinging is hard garrett cole would throw a fastball you don't know where the fastball is going to be

and garrett cole is is very good and and let me also say this let's say that you want an andrew romine to swing a few times in three now just to throw off the pitcher make him throw an off speed no team in baseball is paying attention to andrew romine's three and oh swing tendencies it's just never happened he's it wouldn't even cross anybody's mind they'd be like he's getting a fastball because he sucks so from clearly every team's perspective and from i'm sure andrew romine's perspective deep down he thinks i'm up three and oh the chances of a pitcher throwing three consecutive strikes if I don't swing are low because pitchers, as you and I have talked about a million times, pitchers are not actually that good at throwing

strikes. Now, I don't actually know the outcome of this Romain plate appearance question. He probably made an out on account of he is bad. But still, you take your chances with the balls more than you take your chances with the swing. I think Andrew Romain should probably never swing again. Right. Well, this reminds me of a stat that Dan Hirsch tweeted just the other day,

which is that Mike Trout hasn't swung at a 3-0 pitch since September 2016, and that is 83 consecutive 3-0 counts without swinging. I don't know if that's still up to date. That was a few days ago. But Mike Trout has gone close to two years without swinging at a 3-0 pitch, and he is the best hitter in baseball. So it's not just Andrew Romine. Sometimes it's just a personal preference. But if you're Mike Trout, probably you should swing at a 3-0 pitch every now and then, I would think, because you're Mike Trout and you've got a pretty good chance of getting on base and doing damage, more damage than a walk would do if you do swing. swing the next season he faced 19 he didn't swing the next season 27 he didn't swing next season 39 he didn't swing next season 34 he didn't swing next season this is in 2016 he faced 43 and 0 pitches he swung once i remember i believe august fagerstrom wrote an article about this i don't

remember what happened which means i'm going to find out right now but matt carpenter at least was playing some sort of weird little decoy game with the pitchers because you can understand maybe teams would be aware of what matt carpenter is doing in three and oh counts maybe and uh this is similar to when i remember last season clayton kershaw finally threw a curveball when he was uh behind in the count in the playoffs just trying to take a team by surprise jd martinez swung and hit a home run on that pitch. So, you know, things don't always go according to plan. But looking at Matt Carpenter here, I am still running.

This is live play index searching. This is very exciting for everyone. When Matt Carpenter, what was it, 2016? When he swung, he hit a home run. Look at that. October 2nd, Matt Carpenter in a 3-0 count, swung for the first time. 3-0 count. First time in hundreds of opportunities against Antonio Bastardo.

The Cardinals are down 2-1 in the sixth inning. Carpenter came up with two 1-2 outs. He swung and he hit a home run. The Cardinals took the lead. That's fantastic. End of the season. That's just perfect. So looking at Trout, I can understand if you're

Trout, you figure the pitcher is going to be careful because you're Mike Trout. So he probably hasn't seen that many fastballs still in three and oh counts. This is speculation on my part, but Bryce Harper this season has been in the most three and oh counts. That's 50. He swung seven times. Joey Votto has swung nine times. Justin Boer has not swung yet. Nick Markakis has not swung yet. Jason Kipnis has not swung yet. And Michael Conforto, other players.

So the trout is not alone, but the leader right now in 3-0 swings is Jan-Hervis Solarte. Well, I didn't expect that, but 12 out of 23. All right, then. All right. Question from CJ, Patreon supporter, Well I didn't expect that but 12 out of 23 Alright then Alright question From CJ

Patreon supporter and the listener who I believe brought us the vroom vroom guy Let's see what he has now He says what is the Ideal height for a baseball player I don't mean who's better Between Jose Altuve and Aaron Judge I mean like 2 feet

10 feet 40 40 feet? Baseball was obviously developed with normal human proportions in mind, but is that the limit? Would a 15-foot player be able to generate enough effortless power to make up for his enormous strike zone? Would a 400-foot player's base running be enough to offset that a slide into second would probably kill 2,700 people in the left field stands? Another way to ask this, what would be the best height for Mike Trout to be, assuming all his skills remained intact? Ideal? Oh, man. So wait, was this hitters or pitchers or just in general? I guess just in general. I was thinking of it as a hitter

oriented question, but it could go either way. If you're a pitcher, the ideal height is 60 feet or something. You can just basically put the ball in the catcher's glove and there's there's nothing anyone can do yeah you don't even have to throw that hard so yeah the ideal height for a pitcher would would be extremely tall because you would get everybody out and there's nothing that they could you could basically you'd pitch and you all would scrape the batter's face you would be you wouldn't be allowed you couldn't right yeah i think i think it's the same right because if you are a literal giant then how could anyone you either want to be lilliputian or brobdingnagian right you want to be huge or tiny are you showing off

well i read my gulliver's travels but either way no one can throw you a strike right if you are tiny it's like eddie goodell but even more so right you're you're ant-man no one can throw you a strike and if you are gigantic then your strike zone is gonna be way high off the ground so the only way to throw a pitch in your strike zone would be to like lob it on a super high arcing trajectory and if you're tall enough maybe you can't even get it up there and of course if you make contact and i don't know if your bat is proportional to your size like are you just holding a little toothpick bat i guess maybe you are right because there are rules about bat size,

but not human size. So maybe you would still just have to hold on to like a little toothpick size bat. That could be a problem. But if you're big enough, I don't know if it actually matters. Is it any? How would, okay, you have, you have someone who's two feet tall, and you have someone who's 12 feet tall. Now these are, these are human miracles. But there's, I would imagine there's nowhere in the rulebook that baseball can't discriminate against person size. I'm guessing here. Maybe there's an Eddie Goodell rule, but you would know better than I would. I don't think so.

I don't think so either because teams wouldn't do this. But what, of course, this podcast presupposes is what if a team did do this? And if you just had a butt like a two foot tall designated hitter he'd walk every single time right and yeah because it would be so like the strike zone would would be genuinely minuscule and i don't know what we're just kind of walking around like there are not a lot of two feet tall people in the world they're not uh able the ones that exist and of, there are children, but you need the person to be able to work.

There are employment rules for Major League Baseball. But if you can find somebody who's just very small, everyone would hate you, even though you could say, maybe we're being progressive by giving this person an opportunity they never would have gotten. But you would have to draft a rule, right?

Like if this person were in good enough health and he was able to get in the box and he had an OBP of like, I don't know, 975 or something absurd, of course he'd never swing. Yeah, I don't. Baseball would have to do something, but how could they possibly pass a rule? They would have to just grandfather this person in, I guess, because you would not be able to allow this, but you also can't discriminate. Right. Yeah. I mean, Eddie Goodell was banned and rendered inactive. I think that the commissioner at the time, Happy Chandler, just said it was like making a mockery of the game. And that was that. And I guess no one has tested that since. I don't know if there's an official rule on the books. I don't believe so. And I think you would probably run into the Americans with Disabilities Act. I don't think you could prevent a person from playing a game, I don't think. So you could do it. I'm pretty sure that you could get away with it. You could launch a legal challenge if the commissioner tried to stop you, I wonder. So I think still that being a giant might be even more advantageous because, I mean, you wouldn't have to run, right? You could just touch all the bases without moving. So that is another advantage. Just cover that ground in a single stride. If you have to play defense, you've got great range

because you can also cover everything. So I think being an enormous person would probably be advantageous. And actually, the thing that made me think of this and that I think also inspired CJ's question, did you see the tweet that Eduardo Escobar sent out? Yeah. So I will link to this if you haven't seen it, but he sent out a thank you letter. Some people take out the full page ad in the paper. And I don't know, for all I know, maybe he did that too, but he sent out a tweet and he said, thank you, Minnesota. And he thanked everyone. And then he had this picture of him And then he had this picture of him like in a tuxedo, but also like hundreds of feet tall and looming over Target Field with his hands up with a rainbow. I believe I saw someone in our Facebook group say that he created this image. I was wondering, like, did Eduardo Escobar open up Photoshop and make a picture of giant him looming over

target field? Apparently someone in our Facebook group made it and sent it to him in an Instagram comment like a year ago. And I guess Eduardo Escobar liked it so much that he just held on to it until now, just in case he ever had to say thank you, Minnesota. So that's what made me think of it. He is giant and it looks like he would be probably pretty good at baseball. I do wonder how many baseball players actually Photoshop or, in this case, MS Paint, but I don't really know.

By the way, I can go back, and if you're curious at all, Mike Trout, if you look at baseball reference, the last two years, he's had 83 and 0 counts, and he hasn't swung. But I just realized baseball reference reference is including Automatic intentional walks Which is a complication If you go to Baseball Savant He's had just 47 3-0 counts The last year and a half now he also of course Has not swung but just something to keep in mind With the intentional walks baseball reference does not filter

That out even though there technically are no pitches Alright Question from Matthew Who is a Patreon supporter And the same question actually was asked by a listener, Scott. This is in reference to a Mike Petriello tweet that I think has since been about how the Dodgers, in addition to trading for, I don't know, Dozier or maybe it was Machado at that point, had also acquired extra roster spots. And so they were going to play with 28 roster spots for the rest of the season and the Twins were going to play with 22 or something. It was a joke, obviously, but I think people took it seriously because I guess Mike works for Major League Baseball and they figured he might know. So anyway, the question from Matthew is, if roster spots were actually tradable commodities, what kind of value would teams place on them? What type of team would trade or trade for such spots?

And Scott asked something similar. And Scott asked something similar. He said, how many wins is an extra roster spot to a contending team over two months of the season? Although I will note that it's not even really two months of the season, right? It's like one month of the season at this point, because in September, the Rays would absolutely trade for another roster spot because they would just allow them to use more pitchers, more relievers. So I think without question, the Rays would seek more of these out and they would just keep everyone up at the major league level. Now that would cost them some money, I guess, but they'll deal with it. It's a league of minimum stuff. In terms of value, just off the top of my head, I would think we're looking at a small amount, right? Because this is not going to be an elite player it's just something that would give you an advantage around the margin so maybe a little

more rest for relievers or a little more of an opportunity to pinch hit with a better player but already teams kind of have their best 25 players for the most part in the majors so you're not getting a great player get a little more rest and I'll say maybe it's worth like between one and three wins, but if you think I'm wrong, then tell me why. Well, I've been asked before by listeners and readers what Shohei Otani is worth because he is both a hitter and a pitcher, or, you know, if he were a full two-way player all the time, what would saving that roster spot be worth? And I don't really know how to calculate that, but I know that Tom Tango, maybe among others, has made an attempt to and has concluded that it's not worth very much at all, like maybe less than a win probably,

just because I guess for most teams, you're just not going to have that useful a player in that spot like now teams have the 10 day dl and they're shuffling relievers to triple a and back and forth again and usually your 26th man is just not going to be that good and is not going to be used all that much like you know they're probably teams that would benefit from say having a pinch hitter on the bench now that benches have gotten so small because bullpens have gotten so big. But then how good is that pinch hitter actually going to be? And how often are you actually going to prefer having him pinch hit, possibly with a pinch hit penalty, instead of your starter? So I don't know that there is that much of an advantage for most teams. But if you are a team like the dodgers who do have a lot

of depth and have a lot of multi-position guys and mix and match i guess in those cases it might be more valuable so it is kind of a team by team question but regardless i don't think it's that big a deal yeah i would agree with that you know what we should before we move on we should just because we we talked about this briefly in the previous podcast, but we kind of glossed over the Diamondbacks. We mentioned them toward the end, and then we talked about the relievers, and they added Eduardo Escobar and his gigantic self looming over baseball stadiums. I don't know how he fits in the clubhouse.

But I will point out that after results on Tuesday, the Diamondbacks are in first place in the NL West. They have overtaken the Dodgers by a half game the Rockies also won so right now the Dodgers are kind of in third place although they're tied with the Rockies and they're beyond the Diamondbacks but to the Diamondbacks credit they are right there it's still hard to see them actually winning the division because the Dodgers are so loaded but it's something that is happening and meanwhile in the American League the A's have closed within one game Again of the Mariners so that's everything Is tightening up anyway we can go back To weird questions

Alright let's take a question from Aaron Another Patreon supporter and he says I've been inspired by some recent conversations About the value of consistency Even if that consistency is mediocre I wondered how bad a pitcher could be If he were consistently bad And still be useful so I'm giving it a crack.

I was highly entertained by the listener who coined the name Vroom Vroom, so I will name my guy too. Let's call him The Civ. The Civ can be used for up to one inning per game, and he will always give up exactly one run in that inning. Under normal circumstances, a pitcher who gives up a run in an inning isn't staying in the big leagues long, but if he could be counted on to just give up one run in any inning, he could be incredibly valuable in two or three run save situations. Could this player make a big league roster? And if so, how many runs would a team need to be leading by to deploy the sieve in the seventh or eighth inning of a game? If you think that most closers will succeed in a two-run save spot at a rate that

would make the Civ unfit for a roster spot, how could his spot on the team be saved if he could be deployed for any number of innings? Then teams could guarantee a win any time they build a lead that exceeds the number of remaining innings. Given that teams often win games when they have sizable leads, how many wins do you think the Civ is worth? I presume traditional war standards won't play here since he will obviously be below replacement level by those standards. He would not make the major leagues. There's no way, right? Because his minor league numbers would show an ERA where it runs a lot per nine of nine.

He would be awful. And no team would ever believe this is a real skill for so long. And then they'd bump him up. skill for so long and and then they'd bump him up and they'd like at some point someone would dig into the minor league numbers and be like you know what's weird about this guy but it's so far-fetched it's like he's an apparition right it's like you're trying to make someone believe in poltergeists and you his he would have by far the worst numbers of anyone ever in the minor leagues to make it to the majors and then he'd come up and he'd continue to allow runs so he'd be used in these really low leverage roles if ever and again he's not making it to the major leagues no i mean he's not gonna get there unless

i don't know like if he were seen as a prospect and he just got a long enough leash like if he were in rookie ball or something and he pitched 20 times and they just kept running him out there just because, I don't know, maybe he looks good. I don't know. Does he look good or does he look bad? We don't know. When does this start? Is he like this in Little League all the way through? That's a good question.

I don't know i mean if you knew that this was the way that the sieve worked and you counted on it for whatever reason then would he be valuable and useful yeah you you would be able to he would be like the mop-up man and he would never like he would you would save like a i don't know one or pick up a few extra wins a season of games that you already are likely to win but you know there's still value in making sure that you actually win those games so he would be of modest value he could even be the guy who's closing the world series for god's sake he could be the last pitcher on the mound you just have a two-run lead going into the ninth inning and boom there's a go here comes here comes mr sieve or whatever his name is john john sieve and he he comes in and he closes it out so he would be valuable

but the hardest part of this aside from why is this happening is getting teams to believe that this is happening so yeah i am extremely skeptical he would ever make the majors but if he did he would be one of the more valuable pitchers on the staff i think at least one of the maybe the most valve belt reliever. Yeah. All right. here's today's step last. So you have given me warning that you might have a short one. Yeah, well, I can do mine first, I guess. So this one came to us from listener Jay Keith in Los Angeles. He is also a patreon supporter this was uh six days ago or so but he said on today's angels broadcast one announcer he thinks it was victor rojas remarked

that with catcher francisco arcia making his major league debut the angels have now used 51 i think he said players this season with 10 of them making their MLB debuts. That's crazy, said the other announcer. That was the extent of the discussion. So how crazy is this? What numbers or stories can you provide that put this in perspective? So the claim was that the Angels had used 51 players this season and that 10 of them had made their major league debuts. Now, we did a stat blast not too long ago about the most players used on a team on a roster in a single season. And I looked up,

there have been 99 teams with more than 51 players used. But of course, this was said in July, and there's still expanded September rosters ahead of us. The most players ever used by a team is 64 by the very injury-wracked 2014 Rangers. So 51 is not historic or anything yet. I guess it could be potentially, but not there yet. But the question about 10 of them making their Major League debuts, I did not know the answer to that. So I went to, I guess, unofficial sponsor of StatBlast, Dan Hirsch of the Baseball Gauge, asked him to look this up. And this is not very notable as it turns out. So this was again about six days ago, but at the time the Angels were tied for the league lead for debuts in 2018, not even tied for the MLB lead, just the AL lead.

So at that time, the Padres had had 10 debuts this season, the Mets had had 10 debuts this season, and then the Orioles had also had nine debuts this season. That will climb. Yes, it probably already has. So that is not really that extraordinary. Now, the all-time top 100 list, which, as usual, dominated by dead ball era teams. We've been through this. Whenever you talk about weird team construction, it's always like the Federal League or some 19th century team or early baseball. Things were weird in early baseball. But the 2015 Yankees actually had the

most debuts by any recent team. 18. 18 debuts by the 2015 Yankees. I would not have expected a Yankees team to lead this list in recent years. But I guess it kind of makes sense, given that a lot of those players were probably the players who are good now. And the Yankees had a successful youth movement. So that's how it came about. Now, Dan went above and beyond, and he answered a question that I had not asked, which is how many teams have gone an entire season

without having a single Player make his major league debut For that team it turns out That 34 teams in major League history have not had A single guy make a debut And the last most recent On that list was the

2004 Reds did not have A single major league debut on That team so that is The answer pretty good I was 2004 Reds did not have a single major league debut on that team. So that is the answer. Pretty good. I was just ready. You can run the search on baseball reference as well. And in 1912, the Detroit Tigers had 27 players make their major league debut, which is a lot.

That's the second most. 27 is the number. First place, the 1915 Philadelphia Athletics, 35. 35. 35 debuts that team, of course, when they won 99 games and lost the world series rumors of them throwing the world series in 1914 the following year they won 43 games most of their best players were sold or left for the i believe federal league connie mack was not willing to match offers anyway that's a lot of debuts in 1915 i have a short stat blast of my own this is similar mike petriella wrote an article not too long ago at mlb.com about how debuts in 1915. I have a short stat blast of my own.

This is similar. Mike Petriella wrote an article not too long ago at MLB.com about how American League shortstops were hitting so well. I could just, let's forget the American League qualifier and just go with Major League shortstops, Major League shortstops as the qualifier. So this is a good old-fashioned TLPS Plus stat blast segment. This TLPS Plus, for anyone who doesn't remember, compares performance against the overall league split. So, for example, in 1925, Major League Shortstop's had a TOPS plus of 80.

That means they hit about 80% as well as the league average overall. 100, of course, is average. Better than 100 is better than average so short stops this season have a t ops plus of 102 they have been better than average the only other time in history short stops have been better than average was 1947 when they also had a t ops plus of 102 so when you look at this let's just go back five years or something in 2013 i'm just going to read these numbers in order starting in i don't know 2013 91 this is tops plus 91 94 91 96 96 102 short stops are having their best offensive season in like what is that 70 years basically and

the season is of course not over but there are a lot of very good shortstops. I think we already knew we were in something of a shortstop golden era, at least offensively and probably all around because they're all amazing. But this is just further confirmation. It's not just American League shortstops. Everybody is doing well. Shortstops above league average. Yeah, I bet if you just put this question to people, they would have thought, well, it was probably the time when A-Rod was around and Nomar and Jeter and Tejada. But that wasn't even like the previous high, let alone the all-time high, right? I mean, it was good, but not that great, really.

Yeah, no, the short stops have been comfortably around 90 or 95 for quite a while. But now, just now, they are taking taking off and i haven't checked in on catchers that's another kind of specialty position but catchers this season oh they're okay they're they're bad so that's normal yes all right well this is something that you brought up just recently so this is a question from dunagan who says jeff pearlman wrote an article at the athletic about how bad a season chris davis is having he took an article at The Athletic about how bad a season Chris Davis is having. He took some heat in the comments section about how the article may have been mean-spirited. My question is, hypothetically, how bad would Chris Davis have to be, or we can just say

any player have to be, before journalists stop writing about him completely? At some point, he would be so bad there'd probably be an increase in how many people write about him. But at a certain point it would be too ugly. Would it happen at a 100 batting average, a 50 batting average, negative 10 war? As a writer, how do you balance doing your job versus not kicking a player while he's down? Okay, so we're talking like journalists, not blogs, right? Because blogs would just, they would feast on a player who's batting like 075. Yes, I guess so. I mean, everyone would mention it, right? I don't know what the journalist and blog difference these

days even is, but I don't know, professional versus amateur, should we say? I don't know. Yeah. I mean, did people ever stop writing about, which was the, adam dunn in 2011 when he batted 159 people were writing about adam dunn all the way through to the end people were writing about chris tillman last few years through to his end so i don't i i think there's a sweet spot where a player is very bad but still playing where hmm no i don't think i don't think there's a lower boundary i think of if somebody goes up there and he's allowed he's just awful era of nine and he's not only giving up one run per inning or if you're batting oh 50 or something i don't think i don't think you would

get to a point where no one writes because every writing so much of of being a writer is about finding the opportunity to write about something other people aren't covering. And you wouldn't be able to look past it. Every time you sort the leaderboards, you'd be like, oh, right, I should talk to this guy and try to figure out what's going on. The player wouldn't want to talk, probably, but you would still, you'd have to write about it. You would have to write about the worst season in baseball history. Yeah. I mean, I think the tone with which you would approach it would change, hopefully, or the way that you write it. Like, you know, if it's just a slump for a while and it's bad, but it's not historic or anything, you might just write about the slump and say this guy's been slumping and that's fine but at a certain point it reaches a level where you start to almost be

more interested in like how the guy feels than how he plays like how are you holding up is this a psychological thing you kind of want to get in his head and you know help him or figure out what sort of angst this is causing so at a point, you wouldn't just do like a, you know, here are all the stats about how bad this guy is, because that would seem kind of mean spirited and kicking him when he's down. So you would want to, you know, approach it with more compassion and nuance and hopefully access. Yeah, I will point out that when Chris Davis, the Orioles Chris Davis was benched for a week and a half on June 11th, I will point out that when Chris Davis, the Orioles' Chris Davis, was benched for a week and a half on June 11th,

his OPS at that time was 454. That's very bad. Since then, it's 705. He's making progress. Still not good. Still not what you're looking for, but that's an improvement for just the month of July. His OPS is 695, which is basically the same.

He's not having rousing success, but he's at least starting to look like a Major League Baseball player again. So good for Chris Davis. And, you know, the other version of this is Cole Calhoun, right? Yes, he's doing great. Yeah, he had a terrible first two months of the season. He disappeared. He was hurt. And on May 31st, cole calhoun had an ops

of 374 yes he he had a three wr wrc plus three yeah and over the past month and a half his ops is 1.018 he's been one of the best haters in baseball what a dumb sport this is yep all right bill says can you explain why defenses sometimes make changes to the shift or their defensive positioning with two strikes in particular why a third baseman who is initially playing where the shortstop would play will swap positions in the shift with the shortstop who is initially playing roughly where the second baseman would play okay so hold on let me walk through this again third baseman is covering the bunt before there are two strikes because the third baseman is most familiar with covering the bunt and then you assume the bunt is taken away when there are two strikes not always true but mostly it's true unless it's like

branded belt or whoever the other person i wrote about is who uh put down the two strike bunt so then at that point, you already are moving the person away from covering for the bunt. So you have this overshift, third baseman goes away. So then the shortstop, I think is just kind of covering his normal position, his normal ground. So that would be my explanation. Yeah. And I think part of it is just that the direction that batters tend to hit the ball may change with two strikes because guys approach changes or, you know, some do at least. So teams may have count specific spray charts and positioning instructions. So, you know, stand here for this guy or don't stand here for this guy when he has

two strikes on. So sometimes you will see them move around. And I know it was suggested, I think, will see them move around and i know it was suggested i think by dan fox maybe recently that one reason why it looked like shifts were plateauing or even decreasing last season i think they've increased since but we thought that maybe we had reached peak shift and yeah i think one reason it was proposed that it only looked like that because the stats were showing shifts on balls in play basically like on the outcome of the at bat and by that time teams may have stopped shifting so they may have shifted earlier in the plate appearance but then stopped shifted or stopped shifting or shifted differently later in the plate appearance so that may have been skewing things although i guess now that we

have stat casts in theory that should account for that kind of thing and you should be able to see when a team is shifting or not whenever you want to look at at the count that sounds about right i was always troubled by having shift data that only was on balls in play by the way this is a throwaway number but because i was curious i wanted to look up the batters with the most strikeouts after getting ahead 3-0 this season. It's Nick Marcakis. He leads the league with five. And the leader, since we have this information, was Jim Tomey in 1997, Bobby Abreu in 2001, and Paul Goldschmidt in 2015 with eight. Eight strikeouts after getting ahead 3-0. This means nothing, but now you know.

All right. Let's do one more because you've got a chat to get to. So this one is also from Dunagan. I'm not checking the last names to make sure it is the same Dunagan, but I'm guessing it's the same Dunagan. So Dunagan says, with the Yankees adding to their already stacked bullpen by trading for Zach Britton, I'm wondering at what point it no longer makes sense to pay market price for relievers at the deadline. I assume the value of adding one good reliever to the bullpen decreases as the skill level of the current bullpen goes up. Britain will likely see fewer innings with the

Yankees since their bullpen is already crowded with good relievers compared to if he would have gone to a different contender. Because of this, he will likely add less value to the Yankees and therefore is worth less to them than a team with a weaker pen, etc., etc. You get the point. Is there a point where a team reaches diminishing returns for relievers, and are the Yankees at that point? Yeah, I think the Yankees are right around that point, right? They would be the Yankees or maybe the Astros, who are just so loaded with pitchers that, as you know, there's only so much medium and high leverage to go around. And now you could say, if you're making a move at the deadline, you're also, it's an insurance policy in case somebody gets hurt or becomes ineffective over

the next two months. So right now, it's not like there's harm in having too many good pitchers because someone is probably going to get hurt or start to suck. But when you're going into the playoffs, there's just, there's only so many pitchers you can use in in spots that matter so you maybe you if you have like a seventh really good reliever maybe you can find him one or two high leverage innings but other than that he's mostly going to be playing in in roles of lesser importance and at that point no it's just not adding that that much to your

team so i don't know exactly where the line is but I have to think the Yankees are around it, which might help explain why they traded Adam Warren. Yeah, that's true. Although I wonder, once you get to the playoffs, and obviously they're looking forward to the playoffs, I mean, no team really has had enough relievers to actually do the bullpen game that everyone on the internet has proposed for years, game after game. So in theory, you could do that, right? You could just collect, you know, eight dominant relievers, and you actually kind of could to the bullpen game every single day if you wanted to. Now, maybe they're diminishing returns because, you know, you have Severino, and Severino's really

good, and he's got to pitch sometimes and I don't know maybe Sabathia is good enough that you want him pitching every now and then but if you could get eight dominant setup men or closer type late inning arms in theory that would still make you better right because you could have each of them go in inning in every single playoff game basically what with all the off days so you could do that yeah okay That's fair. That's convincing. I don't know what you do with your starting rotation at that point, but you... Yeah. Yeah. In terms of how the practical application, I think the Yankees are around that point. But you know, you look at the Astros last season, they had what I thought was a really good bullpen,

then they got to the playoffs and they barely wanted to touch it. They were using Brad Peacock and stuff like that out of the bullpen so things happen but yeah you you can have too many good pitchers yeah and maybe they're diminishing returns in that there's probably another team that needs that guy more than you do like even if you could do the full bullpen game that team would also have the option to do that but would probably need that guy more in a conventional strategy so you know he might not be worth as much to you as he is to someone else. Agreed. All right. That will do it. I'm actually going to answer one more here because I already answered it via email. So this question is from Arjun, who says that on

July 7th, the Diamondbacks defeated the Padres 20 to 5. Although that's an uncommon score, what was more interesting to me was that the Diamondbacks outscored the Padres in all but two innings, the fifth, which was scoreless, and the ninth, in which they didn't bat. My question is this, how common is it for a team to beat the opposing team in every single inning of a game? And related question that we just got from Bobby, he says he's watching highlights of that Nats-Mets blowout, and in addition to piling on a ridiculous number of runs, the Nats scored in six of the Nats scored in six of the eight innings in which they batted as a Cubs fan I vaguely remember them losing a game

in the 90s in which one of their rivals managed to score in every inning and hearing that it was a pretty rare thing I've kept half an eye open for such games ever since and haven't seen any though I could have missed a lot of them was it actually the Cubs who had that happen to them or am I remembering it wrong how rare is it for a team to score a run in every inning in which they bat? Is it unassisted triple play rare, perfect game rare, no hitter rare? And is it more or less likely in the true outcomes era we're watching now? So these are obviously related questions. So Bobby and Arjun, it has happened 19 times in baseball history, 19 times a team has scored in every inning of a game. And you do remember right, Bobby, this happened to the Cubs. It was the Rockies at Wrigley Field, May 5th, 1999. The

Rockies beat the Cubs 13 to 6, and they scored in every inning of that game. There have been 23 perfect games in Major League history and 19 times that a team has scored in every inning of a game. So yeah, it is pretty much perfect game rare. There have been 15 unassisted triple plays. So it's actually right in the middle. It's right between those two. It is slightly less rare than the unassisted triple play, slightly more rare than the perfect game. I don't know if the true outcomes matter all that much, but obviously the scoring environment matters. So if it's a high scoring environment, it's more likely to happen. And in fact, it has happened more often lately.

So this actually happened twice in 2016 alone. The Brewers and the White Sox did it. Happened once in 2014. The Tigers did it. But still pretty rare. And as for Arjun's question about whether a team has ever outscored its opponent in every inning of a game, no, that has not happened. So 19 teams have scored in every inning of a game, but no team has ever outscored its opponent in every inning of a game. No, that has not happened. So 19 teams have scored in every inning of a game, but no team has ever outscored its opponent in every inning. The closest

anyone has come, September 13th, 1964, the Cardinals beat the Cubs 15 to 2, and they outscored them in eight innings and tied with one run in the last inning. So pretty close. Okay, so that will really do it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. And five listeners who have done so already include the following, Daniel Moorhead, Tyler Duncan, Nathan Baird, Drew Whalen, and Zubaz.

Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or any other platform, just about any other platform. If we're not on a platform and you want us to be, let me know. Unless it's Spotify, because I've tried multiple times and it seems like we're still not there. Keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcastfangraphs.com

or via the Patreon messaging system. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And we will be back with one more episode this week. Keep swinging Keep swinging Keep swinging Keep swinging Keep swinging