Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1261: How Luck is Bailing Out Baseball

Episode Date: August 25, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the returns of Mike Trout and Willians Astudillo, Astudillo’s new hobby, Jose Ramirez‘s power/speed combo, the NL Rookie of the Year race between Ronald Acuna, Juan Soto, Harrison Bader, and Brian Anderson, the decreasing incidence of stolen bases and sacrifice bunts, the Angels’ active offseason in retrospect, the […]

Welcome back home Welcome back home Welcome back home Welcome back home Welcome back home Welcome back home Hello and welcome to episode 1261 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. To conclude through that, haven't done the introduction in a while, I'm Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs, joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello, Ben. How are you? Flawless.

I'm doing well. Thank you. Yeah, just killing it. We're recording this late on a Friday too, so I would have every excuse to be checked out. But how could I be checked out when Bobby Wilson is on the disabled list of the Minnesota Twins, meaning coming back up from AAA, Williams has to do, and he will presumably get the catch at some point. Because the Twins only have one of them. And it's Mitch Garver. So going to see some amount of Williams-Estadillo here. I don't know how long Bobby Wilson is going to be out with a sprained ankle.

You know, I have nothing against Bobby Wilson. But maybe he would enjoy getting a head start on his offseason. Yeah, condolences to Bobby Wilson. Sorry it had to come at someone's expense. But we are happy to have Estadio back in the big leagues. Did you see the tweet that I tweeted yesterday about Astadio? With him holding a crossbow? Or some sort of... maybe it wasn't a crossbow, it could have been one of those composite bows. Yes. I initially tweeted that it was a crossbow because all bows look the same to me. I am not a bow connoisseur, but our editor, Dylan Higgins, pointed out on Twitter editing my tweets that it is probably not a crossbow. It is probably a regular bow or a compound bow.

Compound bow. Yeah. This is just an image that someone tweeted at me from the ballpark. Astadio yesterday was with the Rochester Red Wings in AAA, and he was standing, it looks like, in the bullpen with maybe a member of the AAA staff just shooting this compound bow at a target that we cannot see in the image. It could be human, hopefully is not, hopefully is an inanimate object. But I don't know the context surrounding this tweet, which I think I like it better that way. I tried to find out a little bit, like, why is Williams Estadio standing in the bullpen shooting a very intimidating looking compound bow, but I do not know, and I kind of don't want to know. So Estadio now plays every position, including compound bow. It's possible that the target was the photographer, which is why you didn't get an after shot.

But maybe, I don't know, maybe it's some sort of like resistance exercise. Maybe it helps him stretch his forearms. He's a stocky dude. Might be a little more difficult for him to get that flexibility in his arms. I don't know. I don't know why he had a bow. But I can imagine that as long as he's holding it, no one's going to look him askew askance askance askance yeah yeah i think you would use a resistance band or something for that instead of a deadly weapon but i don't know maybe it was just what he had on hand oh i'm sorry your highness this is the minor leagues you guys access to rubber bands

yeah pretty much so it just so happens that what's lying around is a compound bow. Yeah, well, maybe that image just bullied the big league staff into promoting him again. There was just an implied threat there that he was coming for them with a compound bow. So he is back in the big leagues, and guess what? Guess who else is back in the big leagues?

Another man who enjoys a bit of bow hunting, our old friend Mike Trout, is also returning to the big leagues on the same day as williams has to do this is like a national holiday for this podcast and last i checked trout had been surpassed maybe unsurprisingly but he had been surpassed in major league fan graphs war he'd been surpassed actually by two players it's jose ramirez and mookie betts ramirez is up by six tenths of a win. Mookie Betts is up by one tenth of a win. Do you think there's five weeks left in the regular season? Is Mike Trout going to finish at number one? Will he pass Jose Ramirez and Mookie Betts? I think he probably will.

I mean, there's a possibility that he'll be rusty and so he will play at something below his typical level for a little while. So maybe that makes it more likely that those other guys end up there. And plus those other two guys are really good, too. They're not like Flukes who just scrambled by him because he wasn't there. They're also excellent at baseball. But I never bet against Mike Trout to end up at the top of the world leaderboard. Yeah, I don't know at what point I will stop being surprised by Jose Ramirez. I mean, he's sitting at 8.2 wins above replacement at this point.

And, you know, he was already good last season. He was at 6.7. And the year before that, he was at 4.8. But it's important to understand the year before that, he was at 0.5. I know we just take this for granted. There have been enough articles written about how Jose Ramirez has ascended to become a superstar. But still, I don't have any sort of objective measure of this.

Anecdotally,ally i guess based on the zero indians fans i ever encounter in real life it seems like francisco lindor gets more of the attention slash the indians get almost no attention regardless but jose ramirez really really amazing he is aaron judge good while being a completely different baseball player in almost good while being a completely different baseball player in almost every way. Yeah, I was rooting for him to pull off the leading the AL in stolen bases and home runs, which would be a really cool accomplishment, but it's going to be tough for him to do that. He was doing it for a while.

Right now, he is tied for the league lead with Whit Merrifield, who led the league last year. They both have 28 stolen bases, but he has now been surpassed in home runs by both Chris Davis and JD Martinez. And I don't know if he can pass them, but he's also probably not going to get a 40-40 season because no one really steals bases anymore. So that's unfortunate. But still, the power-speed combo is pretty impressive.

Do you lament the gradual decline, dramatic decline of the stolen base? I don't know. It depends on your perspective. But do you lament the gradual decline dramatic decline of the stolen base i don't know it depends on your perspective but do you do you wish yeah there is the there is an onion headline today that paraphrased was what was it baseball analysts figure out the statistic for exactly how much joy they've drained from the game and now i know it's not just stat heads who have caused the decline of the stolen base it's a lot of other things like for example it's not just stat heads who have caused the decline of the stolen base. It's a lot of other things. Like, for example, it's hard to get on base in the first place right now. But do you, does the stolen base make baseball more exciting for you? Are you sad that it's been going away?

Because it does feel weird to have a league almost leader right now with 28 of them. Yeah. Yeah, I think it does make me sad. I like stolen bases. I mean, it makes sense that we know that it only benefits you to steal a base if you can do it a certain percentage of the time. And lots of players who tried to do it couldn't do that and now have realized that they can't and thought better of it. So I get it. But I think it does make baseball more exciting when there's a better chance that the guy could go on any pitch.

And the play itself is pretty exciting. Tag plays are exciting. So I think, yeah, it's probably worse for baseball from a spectator perspective that there are fewer steals. Yeah. So I'm just looking over the yearly league leaders for stolen bases because I kind of forget forget i've just been alive and monitoring sort of the sabermetric year and you know last year d gordon did steal 60 bases i don't know what was like a good era for steals i mean i know that you can go back to the vince coleman ricky henderson years but i mean even just going back to the 90s before i think people were decrying that baseball was dead you look at i don't know 1996 was baseball dead in 1996 it was coming back kimmy lofton sold 75 bases every year since the 19th century so yeah baseball has been doing some

remarkable things considering it's been dead for i don't know 120 years or something but you know no one no one has surpassed i don't know 80 when's who's the last player to steal even 80 bases in a season? It looks like, unless I am misreading this going way too quick, it looks like it would be Ricky Henderson and Vince Coleman in 1988, but since then we've seen a few 70s. Jose Reyes stole 78 in 2007, and just keep that number in mind. Right now the league leader is Trey turner with 32 that's just over half as many as d gordon stole last season i agree with you it's fun to see runners on the move it's also fun because when more runners are on the move then it's fun to see how pitchers try to protect against that it's a it's sort of a fun subtle thing to analyze but on the other hand mike trout when he was a

rookie stole 49 bases and what we've come to understand is that stealing the bases also seems to be a great way to get your hand injured. Yeah. There's just more to the equation than steals and cut steals. And it's not just about the break-even rate because, of course, the pro stolen base argument is, well, there could be throwing errors so that you can advance more bases. But the anti-stolen base argument is it will knock you out for six weeks or longer if you tear a ucl in your thumb so in this cold sabermetric era the stolen base does appear to be going away but it would be nice to have it come back i miss steals more than i miss bunts yeah and i will say it is something of a cyclical thing just eyeballing the previous

leaderboards we're at 0.5 stolen bases per game on average right now, and that would be the fewest since 1972, it looks like. So that's unfortunate. And in 1972, the on-base percentage was even lower than it is now. So the attempt rate may have been even higher than it is now. So that's kind of a bummer, but you can't just say, well, baseball always used to be better because there were more steals, because that wasn't the case for decades at a time. There were not a lot of steals at all in the 60s. In the 50s, no one stole bases. Even in the late 40s, no one really stole bases. So there were big swaths of baseball history that some people will label the golden era of baseball when no one was stealing bases even compared to today. So

it is the kind of thing that ebbs and flows throughout the years, and maybe it will come back at some point. I don't know if it will come back because you need an environment that favors it and you need players who are willing to take that risk. Now, I guess it's possible that as players continue to get more athletic, they will be faster on the whole, and therefore they will cover the distance between bases even faster and have a higher success rate and be incentivized to go. On the other hand, you have pitchers who are throwing harder and harder, and catcher arms are maybe getting better on the whole, or maybe not, because catcher throwing is kind of de-emphasized now relative to other catcher skills. So anyway, I don't know whether

the conditions will create a stolen base resurgence at some point, but it's not out of the question. All right. You wonder, as long as the league continues to get younger with players being prized for their athleticism, then if right now we have the lowest average batter age in Major League Baseball since, I don't know, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, 1980. Now, the average batter right now is 28.2 years old. So it's not like we're looking at dramatic differences here. but if the league gets younger as the league looks for younger more athletic players and also importantly cheaper players then you know speed declines from the time that you debut in the major leagues so maybe younger players are going to want to steal more and as long as i guess we're going to talk about

trends that are dying can you believe looking at sacrifice bunts in 2011 there were 0.34 sacrifice bunts per game 0.34 that was only seven years ago this season it's half of that it's 0.17 sacrifice bunts a game i didn't realize how quickly this dropped off because it held steady for a long time around a third of a bunt per game and it's just it's just died which again i already said it don't miss that at all yeah it's totally fallen off the table i wrote something about that a couple years ago for 538 that the decrease in sacrifices had really accelerated and has continued to plummet and that's interesting because sabermetricians have been writing about sacrifices being overrated or not making

sense for decades at this point and it's been kind of common wisdom at places like baseball prospectus now going back 20 years and yet even though people like us were saying that and there were even people in front offices who were thinking that going back years, it wasn't really reflected on the field at all. Like the sacrifice rate in, yeah, 2011, as you're saying, was exactly the same as 1996 and exactly the same as 1984. Like it hadn't changed at all. And I don't know, maybe there were more pitchers sacrificing and fewer position players sacrificing. I don't know.

But it hadn't been a dramatic difference. And it's just in the last five years or so that that's happened. And I think that's a reflection of the fact that that sabermetric mindset has really made the transition from the front office to the dugout. to the dugout and you have gms who are exercising greater control over in-game decisions both directly and by hiring proxies who kind of think the same way they do so that has been a very rapid recent evolution agreed so i don't know what other trends there are that are worth looking at we've already talked before about how errors are going down even as a rate of balls in play because that's presumably a score thing could also just be a a better defense thing but it is fun as we if you're going to talk about stolen bases and you're going to talk about bunts you might as well talk about

triples and somewhat promisingly i guess triples haven't greater triples are still there they were looking at about a sixth of a triple per game right now which is basically where it's been for a while a very small decline there. I don't know how much longer can we talk about these rates before we move on to something else. One second. Let's move on. So I did want to bring up one thing before we get to the topic. This is not a listener email show, but this is inspired by a listener email from Patreon supporter Alex Levy, who says, by a listener email from Patreon supporter Alex Levy,

who says, Does Harrison Bader have any chance at winning the NL Rookie of the Year award? Fangrass currently has him at 2.7 wins above replacement, tied with Ronald Acuna, and 0.2 wins ahead of Juan Soto. How large of a gap would there need to be between Bader and either Soto or Acuna for you to be confident that he would win the award? One win, two wins. Does it hurt Bader that a lot of his value comes from base running and defense, which he's really good at? And we haven't talked about Harrison Bader at all this season. We have talked about

Acuna and Soto plenty, and I think that probably reflects how the NL Rookie of the Year voting will go. I'm not that concerned about who actually wins the award or not, but I am kind of interested in the philosophical discussion of who should win the award because this is along the lines of the old Trout Cabrera debate, I suppose, where you have Acuna and Soto who have been kind of equivalent hitters so far this year, I would say Acuna has maybe done it in a more flashy way and that he's hit lots of homers and Soto has showcased really incredible plate discipline for his age. And Michael Bowman just wrote something for the ringer comparing and contrasting those two and trying to predict which of them would be better in the long run. in the long run, but they both had great offensive seasons. And meanwhile, Bader has been a good hitter, an above average hitter, but has really excelled on the bases and on defense. And then I know there's poor Brian Anderson, who you bring up at every opportunity because no one else will.

He is on the Marlins. And I mean, it's not only that he's on the Marlins, but it's like Brian Anderson again, another one. I've already had trouble remembering which Brian Anderson was which, and now we have another Brian Anderson to deal with. It's kind of an imposition on all of us, really. But he's pretty good, too. And he's also, I guess, more of an offensive guy than a defensive guy, but he's also played more games than everyone else we're talking about. So he's kind of in that region. And so you have Acuna and Soto who've played about 80 games, and then you have Bader who's played more than 100, and Anderson who's played 128, and they're all kind of in the same region and they all have cases. But the Bader versus Acuna-Soto discussion specifically, what would you say about that? Because usually we would say that if your case is largely based on defense, it's maybe less reliable because we can't evaluate defense as well as we can evaluate offense. But Bader just really does seem to be a super relative defender. Right. Now there is how we would vote and there's how the field is going to vote.

And there's always a difference in the field. If anything, it has also evolved over time. We talk about this with every single award. Now, if you look at Fangraff's version of war, Harrison Bader gets credit for being plus six runs in the field as an outfielder. That is based on ultimate zone writing. That's what Fangraff's war is based on for position players. those of you who know or those of you who don't know there's another fielding metric that is i think as good no better no worse that's defensive run saved so i said that

by ultimate zone running harrison bader is at plus six runs as an outfielder mostly center fielder according to defensive run safety is plus 22 runs and if you look at the stat cast metrics, he's also very, very good by those. So when you look at this game. Yeah, he's actually at the top of that leaderboard. The stat cast outs above average leaderboard as we speak. He is tied with Billy Hamilton at plus 18. And he has increased the catch percentage of the typical play by 10% just by being him. I mean, he is really kind of dominating that leaderboard,

and that leaderboard you would think maybe is more telling in small samples. It's just range-based, so it doesn't have anything to do with your arm, but it is probably more reliable in smallish samples than DRS and UCR. Right. So not only do you have this uh this evidence that Harrison Bader is already a really good player at Fangraphs but if you look at baseball reference he's been worth 3.8 wins above replacement that is uh remember at Fangraphs he was at 2.7 now I'm searching on the fly to just confirm but Ronald Acuna right now is at 3.1, and Juan Soto right now is at 2.0. Juan Soto, not so much of a defender. Soto, pure hitter.

He's a passable corner outfielder. Ronald Acuna, a very good hitter. Could play center field. Harrison Bader plays the crap out of center field. He's just extremely good. So I do not think Harrison Bader is going to win. In fact, I wonder. Obviously obviously when we're talking about this, there are still five weeks left, so who knows how it's going to go.

But I wonder if Harrison Bader is even going to finish in the top three because, and here's why, I think it's going to come down to Acuna and Soto for one and two, and then the voters are going to want to give credit to Brian Anderson, good old Brian Anderson, for playing almost every day all season long because I think voters are going to want to reward credit to Brian Anderson, good old Brian Anderson for playing almost every day all season long because I think of others who want to reward playing time. I could be making this up because I could still have an embarrassingly

anachronistic that work here. Illusion of the voting pool. I don't know who's going to be voting for the rookie of the year this year, but Harrison Bader, man, he deserves the attention that I have not given him this year. I don't know who's, I know Mike Petriello, I think, wrote about him a week or two ago on his defensive numbers.

But boy, he talked about the reason that the Cardinals are surging and why they've been able to be successful without Dexter Fowler doing anything. Because Harrison Bader is a very good player who, in the minor leagues, was considered a possible tweener who might not play good enough defense to stick and play every day who even knows but here we are yeah that always comes up in the rookie of the year debate do you want the guy who came up and was just a phenom for half a season or do you want the guy who wasn't as great on a per game basis but he was there all year he was like a legitimate major leaguer all season long. And war, in theory, at least, puts those guys on the same playing field and equalizes it all. And if it's all about value, then it shouldn't really matter. But then there's another conversation that

always comes up with Rookie of the Year, which is, do you want to give an edge to the player that you think will be the better player in the long run? Because, you know, do you want to give an edge to the player that you think will be the better player in the long run? Because, you know, do you want to look back and think, oh, well, the Bob Hamlin of this season won the award? Is that cheapening the award in some way? Do you want to have the guy who's most likely to go on to have a great Hall of Fame career be the guy who wins it? And if you're talking in that sense, then you have Brian Anderson, who's 25, and Bader, who's 24. And then, of course, you have Acuna, who's 21, and Soto, who is 19. Those guys are much more likely to go on to be legendary baseball players.

Now, if they do, and we look back in 20 years and say, Juan Soto and Acuna didn't win the Rookie of the Year award. It was Brian Anderson or Harrison Bader. I mean, no one cares, really. It's just kind of a curiosity. It doesn't subtract anything from the luster of Acuna and Soto, ultimately. So it doesn't matter so much. But that is a consideration, I think, for some voters. How do you want your pick to look in history when you look back with hindsight? Yeah, I think that's true. I'm looking over the recent rookies of the year and just trying to find some precedent for a more defense first player beating out more of a hitter. So I'm

just going to read back some of the most recent position player rookies of the year. Tell me when you hear really good defense more than offense. Cody belliger aaron judge cory seager chris bryant carlos correa jose abreu will myers mike trout bryce harper uh buster posey chris coglin oh sure there's a weird one evan longoria giovanni soto there's a rookie only a decade ago my goodness ryan broad dustin pedroia hanley ramirez ryan howard bobbyrosby, Jason Bay, Angel Barroa. Well, okay, that's 2003. So that's going back far enough. There were good defenders in there. I mean, Trout, Longoria, but they were great all around players. Yeah. So I, I can't think of a great example here. I mean, there was, what was it? Correa Lindor or something in 2015, but they both

hit well. Lindor, better defender, but I don't know. I can't find much reason to believe that Bader is going to win this. Certainly, if you listen to any of the conversation from the media, it's down to Soto and Acuna. I got a question in my chat on Friday whether Acuna has now passed Soto because Soto has been in a minor slump, whereas Acuna has been hitting home runs every day. He's been either hitting home runs or getting hit by pitches. so it sure seems like Bader is going to finish a distant third

maybe a distant fourth I would be interested it would please me to see him do better assuming the numbers remain similar to where they are now and it would please me very much if Bader somehow won because it does seem like there's a strong argument to be made he's been the best of the rookies but I just I can't I can count on it, but I guess I should probably write about Harrison Bader next week. All right then. So you have a headstart on your week. Yeah. So let's see, was there anything else that you wanted to talk about before we got to the other thing we're going to talk about? Nope. Okay. Well, I guess let's talk about the standings. I don't know how best to introduce this because I didn't really think about it,

but we were trying to think of the right thing to talk about, and I guess this dovetails pretty well. I had a post that I published at Fangraphs on Friday that was about the Dodgers, and the Dodgers right now are on the outside of the playoff picture looking in. At this speaking, I believe they are four and a half games out of the National League West. They are also three or three and a half or something out of the second National League wildcard. The Dodgers, of course,

supposed to be one of the super teams this year. And the whole problem for the Dodgers, it's been, you could say, that's been several different players. Maybe you want to blame the manager, but realistically and analytically, the problem with the Dodgers is they have been unclutched. I've read about the Mariners.

The Mariners are currently, according to a clutch measure that Fangraphs publishes, the mariners are on track to be the most clutch team on record that covers about 45 years that's how far back the data goes the dodgers are on track to be one of the least clutch teams in 45 years there there is always a most clutch team and a least clutch team in any season but right now the mariners and dodgers both look extreme and if you focus on the dodgers individually then the difference between what their record is and what their record would be if they were just normal just an average team in clutch situations is nine wins they would be in first place they would be they would have a comfortable lead in fact over

the diamondbacks and the rockies so this is a good reason to talk about not just the dodgers but the standings overall and and how surprising they seem to be the the nationals have been subtracting they just suffered another difficult loss to the phillies so it looks like the nationals aren't going to make the playoffs the dodgers are in a whale of hurt a whale of hurt a world of hurt a whale of trouble i don't know the dodgers are in trouble right now and so it And so it's worth talking about how the standings look versus how the standings could, it seems like, pretty easily look if there just weren't so much, I don't know what else to call it, but let's just go with random noise in the numbers because the underlying numbers this year and the actual numbers tell a different story about the pennant races that we have. Yeah, yeah, that is fascinating to me because it was such a big part of the conversation

heading into this season. And we talked about it at the time. And I like to think we were right about it at the time. But there was a lot of fear that hope and faith was gone from baseball and you had these seven or six or whatever it was super teams and those super teams had all been in the playoffs last year and they'd all brought back most of their good players and they were projected to be great again and then meanwhile you had a lot of teams that were tanking or rebuilding or tank building or whatever you want to call it and the prevailing wisdom it seemed like was that well there just aren't going to be any competitive races this year. And I think we looked at this in a couple of ways.

I remember writing about it for The Ringer. But one way was I showed that we hadn't really had less competitive races in any previous season leading up to this one. So there are a few ways you can assess the competitiveness of races, but there is a good one that I like called the Hope and Faith Index, which just kind of measures how far each team that is not in the playoffs is from the nearest playoff spot. And by that metric, things have just gotten more and more competitive. Of course, when you have 10 playoff teams, there's going to be less of a distance between the typical non-playoff team and the closest playoff spot. So that's part of it. But even just looking at the

four wildcard era, the previous recent seasons had been really competitive, just as competitive as the earlier four wildcard seasons. So there hadn't been any sign heading into this year that races were worse, really. And even last year, when I think the favorites pretty much did all win their divisions, there were still surprise teams. There were still the Twins coming back from a hundred loss season to be a playoff team for the first time that that had ever happened. And there were the Rockies and the Diamondbacks both winning wild cards. And there were the Yankees, who aren't really your typical underdog team, but they were still a surprise team getting within one win of the World Series.

So there were still unlikely and unusual outcomes, and my hope was that there would be again. And then on top of that, I think we thought, well, this may be a super team era, and it may be a temporary time when there's a big separation between the good teams and the bad teams. But that's just a cyclical thing too. And that will pass. And pretty soon some of those rebuilding teams will be good again. And some of the super teams won't be so good. And then it'll just look like it typically does. So I don't think either of us was worried in an existential way for the

sport. Just, you know, I think that the Astros and the Cubs showed that, yeah, you can do this tanking rebuilding thing and you can end up winning the World Series. And so maybe that inspired some similar attempts. But when you have a whole lot of teams trying to do that at the same time, it won't work out well for all of them. And so sooner or later, this won't be quite so appealing. So that was our thought. And yet I still kind of worried that maybe this season, even if it wasn't a sign of lasting damage, this season might be pretty predictable by the standards of previous seasons. And you could say that it has been if you look at the luck and timing adjusted standings. But of course, those are not the ones that count. And so as it is, we now have eight of the 10 playoff spots very much up for grabs with five weeks of the season left to go right so i know years ago i used to look at baseball prospectus's third order wins now i just look at fangraphs's base runs because it's easy and it's on fangraphs so i get to talk about it and promote

my own company and the company that provides this podcast so yeah the orioles of 52 games out of first place so i was looking at the base run standings so i think we all have a pretty good sense of what the actual standings look like i don't need to go through them also you don't want me to read off 30 numbers but i have i've i've gone to the trouble of arranging what the standings would look like if we just had the base runs wins and losses for every single team so here are the the six division leaders right now. The Red Sox, the Indians, the Astros, the Braves, the Cubs, and the Dodgers. Of all of those teams, there would be, I would say, two, two and a half close races. The Red Sox would have comfortable

lead on the Yankees. The Indians would have an enormous lead on the Twins. The Astros would have a very comfortable lead on the A's. But moving to the the National League the Braves would be up only two and a half games on the Nationals the Cubs would be up one game on the Cardinals and the Dodgers would be up four and a half games on the Diamondbacks now those are the division leaders according to base runs and the wildcard teams in the American League would have the Yankees as wildcard one and the A's as wildcard two with the only team really uh having a shot being the tampa bay rays who are just about tied with the athletics incidentally as we are talking right now the rays are beating the red sox eight to two so while no one's been paying attention the rays have

the same record as the dodgers the same actual record as the dodgers and they're now up to a plus 24 run differential anyway talked about the rays enough so the they're now up to a plus 24 run differential. Anyway, we've talked about the Rays enough. So the AL wildcard would be a race between three teams, the Yankees, the A's, and the Rays. The A's, incidentally, would be four games back of the Yankees. So A's and Rays, neck and neck. And in the National League, of course, all those three divisions are close, but also the wildcard teams would be Cardinals, and the Cardinals are a half game up on the Diamondbacks,

the Diamondbacks being seven up on the Rockies, but being only one and a half up on the Nationals. And then the Phillies are a little further back there, and the Brewers, who I forgot to mention, being three back of the Diamondbacks. So they would be still in. The National League would be almost entirely up for grabs. The Rockies are the only team there that looks worse but then they'd be replaced in the race by the Nationals. So base runs, according to base runs, there's not very much that would be

quite surprising. I think coming into the year, we knew the Red Sox, Yankees, Indians, and Astros would be very good. And according to base runs and also according to actual runs, those teams have been very good. It was the second wild card that was somewhat up for grabs. And this year, the A's or A's would deserve it,

even though I think coming in we expected maybe the Angels or the Twins. In the National League, Dodgers, according to base runs, should be first place as expected. The Cubs should be first place as expected. It's the Nationals who have been a modest disappointment, but less the Nationals being disappointing because according to base runs, they should be 70 and 58. It's more that the Braves have overachieved.

They've dramatically overachieved preseason expectations before the year. I have these numbers in another page, but before this season, the Braves were expected to win I think 73 games according to fan graphs not very many they were well below the Nationals and they were below even the Phillies so the Braves have had a huge year it's not just Ronald Acuna it's also Mike Fulton-Avitz and it's just they have come on strong Dick Marcakis for god's sake we could just list off Braves this whole time if we wanted to the Braves have have arrived early, but again, you look at base runs and the story of the season looks pretty damn similar to what we all expected. But of

course, the actual story of the season is that there are teams in trouble that we did not expect to be in trouble. So from an entertainment perspective, what are we better off in and what are we worse off in? So if we had the luck-adjusted standings, the Rockies would be out of it more or less, right? So the NL West race would be less interesting because the Rockies would be trailing the Diamondbacks by a lot and the Diamondbacks would be trailing the Dodgers. And so that would kind of look like we had expected coming into the season. So in that sense, the actual outcome is more exciting than things, quote unquote, should be. But on the other end, you have the Nationals, as you said, who in theory should be better than they have been. So if they were playing up to their expectations, I guess the

National League East race wouldn't really be that much better, right? Because the Nationals would be close to the Braves, but the Phillies would be behind by a bit. So as of now, you still have a pretty good race in that division. It's just the Phillies instead of the Nationals. Yeah. So there, I think from the perspective of if I can speak for a lot of people or at least try to i think there is value in just having what feels like treasure teams and with the dodgers potentially on the outside and the nationals potentially on the outside that's that's pretty dramatic because that's that's 40 of the national league playoff pool that is different so even if you have the cubs get in there as expected and even though i know the cardinals missed the playoffs the last couple seasons uh they still it feels like the cardinals

are supposed to be in the playoffs every year you know but but still having the dodgers and nationals on the outside looking in just opens the door for for newer teams and in the american league it's exciting to have the a's in the mix even though i guess the second wild card is going to go to someone who felt fresh and also dramatically worse than all the other teams in in the hunt so i don't know the al not too different and if you want to replace the a's with the rays then it's basically the same idea same kind of team same terrible ballpark you pick but uh yeah i think the national league is is more fun as it is even though again from the perspective of someone who is an analyst and has kind of a stake in the game, when things like this happen, it does make us look a little silly,

because you and I have talked so often about how the Dodgers look like they're the team that's positioned, or at least one of the two teams, I guess, one of the three teams, I don't know, positioned best to just be great now and forever those being i guess the dodgers the yankees and and the astros or the other one and so for the dodgers to be underachieving and for the nationals to be underachieving again it is hard for us to explain away because people aren't satisfied by saying well it's just noise or it's unclutched performance but i mean that's that's where we are and we just have to come to terms with the fact that even though it feels like it's impossible, 162 games does not always tell the most accurate

story. Yeah. And the Mariners being as good as they are by actual record, that has made the season more entertaining. I think they may very well, they probably will end up on the outside looking in, but they have made it at least nominally a three-team race in the AL West and having them in the wildcard race, as opposed to the Rays, who have been there a lot weird fluky Mariners season, even if it comes at the expense of a really good Rays season. have, because we have the Rockies in the race, we have the Mariners in the race, and some of the teams that would be in better positions in the theoretical standings are teams that, I don't want to say that we're sick of them, but we've seen an awful lot of them lately. So the weird randomness of baseball has, I think, helped the sport this season avoid that fate that people were worried about coming into this year. Yeah, I would agree with that. And yeah, even though it seems like the Mariners are unlikely to finish, there's a lot to be written about the turn of the tables in the American League wildcard race.

Maybe there's not. I don't know how many more times that has to be talked about, how good the A's have gotten. But incidentally, I will still point out, as mentioned earlier, the Mariners are still on pace to be the most clutch team on record. So their base runs record, just if you take timing and luck away, the Mariners would be 62 and 66. That's not very good.

But here is some fun stuff. I haven't talked about tops plus on this podcast in a very long time so it's coming back so uh i looked up using the baseball reference play index i looked up tops plus for teams in high leverage situations this is as hitters so teams lineups in high leverage situations tops plus for anyone who needs a reminder is a comparison of a player or team's performance in a given split relative to their overall performance. So for example, the Mariners lineup in high leverage situations this year have a TOPS plus of 129, implying

in high leverage situations, they have been 29% better than they have been overall. You might be wondering, how does that rank in baseball history? On record, that would be one point away from the highest of all time. 1966 Kansas City Athletics finished with a T-OPS plus in high leverage situations of 130. The Mariners are tied with the 1969 Braves and the 1971 Kansas City Royals at 129. So the Mariners, even despite everything, even despite them slumping, have been one of the most clutch hitting teams of all time.

And when you put that in reverse order, I've already told you the Mariners have been clutch and the Dodgers have been unclutch. I'm just giving you some more context. The Dodgers, in high leverage situations, have a TOPS plus of 71, which is the worst baseball has seen since 1953. When the New York giants finished at 63, those giants were terrible in high leverage situations. And I should also note that those giants were just terrible. They were 70 and 84, not a great baseball team,

especially when the game was on the line, but just clutch performance is just one of those things that there's i i feel like i look at these numbers every i don't know every two years because there's always got to be some conversation about clutch and i've never found any meaningful link ever with like first half to second half or year to year clutch but i feel like it's one of those things i just need to write about constantly just to just drill home the point and by the way i'm gonna do it again i'm soliciting a spreadsheet from from sean doll and our fan graphs but there's never i've never found any sort of compelling link there's any meaningful relationship between like first and second half clutch or first year and second year clutch so it's just one of those things that

happens but it has to be that is is, it is clutch performance, timing, clutch performance and injuries are the two things that can sink a really good team. I think more than clubhouse chemistry. You know, we saw last year's Mets and last year's Giants who were supposed to run away with the two NL wildcard slots. They were abused by injury and their seasons came apart. And then right now we're seeing the Dodgers and two lesser Santa Nationals who have been unclutched, lesser clutch, and they are out of the playoff picture right now. So this is, I guess it's sort of a silver lining for teams that aren't as good

because you can be the Mariners and you can say, well, we're actually going to hang around with the Astros, just provided we are one of the best clutch hitting teams that baseball has ever seen before in its entire history. Yeah, I wouldn't want to eradicate this randomness from baseball. I mean, as you're saying, yes, it can make us all look somewhat silly in retrospect when we think of how confident we were that certain things would or wouldn't happen and then they don't happen at all. But of course, if they always did happen or not happen, then we'd all probably be pretty bored by baseball. And I think we all want the weird Mariners season every now and then, even if it screws with our understanding of what actually

makes teams good. Part of our understanding is that there is just this weird randomness that's built into baseball. And I think that is more of a feature than a bug for the most part. So I kind of like that. Where would the Angels be in our hypothetical base runs world? Certainly ahead of the Mariners, but probably not within striking distance. The Angels would be 65 and 63, which I think is basically the record they actually have. They would be three games ahead of the Mariners, but they would be eight games behind the A's, and they would be, what's this math? 16 and a half behind the Astros and the AL West.

So the A's would be the second wildcard, and the Angels would be eight games out. Yeah, I was thinking about that. I guess that is sort of the reverse of their real record, their 63 and 65 as we speak. But this came up when I was on MLB Now earlier this week, and we were kind of tossing around the idea of that middle-tier team like the A's and maybe to some extent the Rays and the Pirates,

the team that was this past winter kind of not in the super team camp and not in the terrible team camp, just in the middle, and maybe either did things or didn't do things to try to take advantage of that position that they shared with only a few other teams. And so we were kind of congratulating the A's on being one of those teams and staying in it and the fact that the A's never being one of those teams and staying in it. And the fact that the A's never really tank, they never really strip it down. They always kind of hang

around. They've been bad at times. Certainly they finished in last place, I think three consecutive years, but it didn't seem like that was really a product of the intentional tank that we've been talking about. So we were celebrating those teams for doing those things. But then I brought up the Angels because the Angels were also in that group. And I think they earned a lot of praise this past winter for buying and adding to their team and trying to take advantage of that situation. And it hasn't worked out for them. But when I said that, Joel Sherman asked me, do you think they made a mistake? Do you think they shouldn't have done what they did? And I

said, no, I think they probably should have. It just hasn't worked out. But that is kind of the outcome that can also happen if you are in that group and you decide to try to push in your chips a little bit. If you're the Angels, it just hasn't worked out for various reasons. Right. I think that the Angels did it. The Angels were in, I don't know, a somewhat similar situation as the Mariners when Jerry DiPoto came in, in that they had, now, of course, the Mariners didn't have a Mike Trout or a Shohei Otani, might not have even had an Angelton Simmons,

but the Angels did not have a whole lot of a farm system yet. There wasn't a whole lot for them. They didn't have a lot of flexibility. There wasn't a whole lot for them to do in terms of making an impact move aside from just being lucky enough to end up with Otani in the first place. And so they were doing as much as they could to get short-term acquisitions. I know they also got Zach Kozart. And if you had Kozart performing well, if Otani were healthy,

if Cole Calhoun didn't mysteriously just be the worst player in the world for two months, you can see how the Angels could have been the ace. It was really easy to see. And the Angels did so little to actually hurt themselves in the long term in order to push forward and go Getty and Kinsler or what have you. But it just wasn't enough that they came together. The front office knew coming into the year that the pitching staff was probable even to end up riddled by injuries. And that's exactly what has happened.

There's just not a whole lot that you can do. But I don't think that the Angels really hurt their long-term standing at all by trying to get better last offseason. And it just didn't work out. But you remember, the A's came in with the baseball's lowest opening day payroll. at all by trying to get better last offseason, and it just didn't work out. But remember, the A's came in with the baseball's lowest opening day payroll, and here they are threatening the Astros. So yeah, I think that the Angels did things right, and they are now in position where they can't really tear down because they know the clock is ticking and they need to try to win while Mike Trout is under contract.

There are two more years of that after this one. Yeah, the Zach Cozart contract kind of looks like a mistake in retrospect. Now he wasn't playing well and then he got hurt. But yeah, they didn't really lose a lot from their long-term outlook because they didn't really have much of a farm system to begin with and didn't have many prospects to squander. And when you have Mike Trout, I mean, that just raises the baseline of your team to such an extent that you almost have to try. It would be really hard to imagine having Mike Trout and also being in a situation where the right move was to just tear down around him.

So if you have him and you know you have him only for a couple more years, then you have to try to pad the rest of the roster with at least competent players. And I thought they had done that finally coming into this year. And a lot of things went wrong and everything went right for the Mariners and the A's are great and the Astros are great as we all thought. And so tough situation for them it really when we look back at this like unless they manage to turn things around in the next year or two that Trout is still under contract it will I think look like just one of the all-time wastes of an

all-time talent just the fact that they have had Trout cost-controlled for many of these years as the best player ever to begin a career, and his postseason experience is limited to one playoff round. I mean, that is pretty sad. I think there was an article Sam wrote at Baseball Perspectives a few years ago just showing, like, if you transplanted Trout onto every other team, how they would have done. And basically, like, every other team would have done better at some point than the Angels have managed to do with him. Like just having him really should get you to the playoffs at some point more than one brief time. So I hope that he makes it back there with them, because otherwise you'll just kind of

wonder what might have been if he had started his career somewhere else or at some other time. What do you think feels worse so mike trout he's i mean he's only 26 freaking years old or has he turned to nope he's 27 he turned 27 in early august we talked about that so mike trout has played three playoff games and he went one for 12 that was a home run but the angels got swept mike trout three playoff games mike trout one for 12 felix shenanda zero playoff games and he went one for 12 that was a home run but the angels got swept mike trout three playoff games mike trout one for 12 felix hernandez zero playoff games never quite the peak of mike trout but you know about as good as a starting pitcher could be so what feels worse having been to the playoffs once and just being like wait what that was it or having never been to the playoffs

and it looks like again this year not going to the playoffs and it looks like, again, this year, not going to the playoffs. Is it better to have lusted briefly after and lost or never to have even seen a mate? Well, in Felix's case, we're talking about 14 years. So I think that makes it worse, probably. that makes it worse probably like Felix at his peak I guess was not quite the player that Trout has been at his peak which has just been his whole career basically so I think probably not being able to surround Mike Trout with a playoff roster is worse from a roster construction perspective than not being able to surround Felix with a team that could get him to October but just the length of time that he was good and didn't make the playoffs I think is maybe

unique in the current era where there are so many playoff spots to go around yeah and I wasn't like I don't I don't know how the season is going to play out, but right now, at least if you look at the runs against the version of war, Felix Hernandez is at negative 1.1. And if you figure Felix, even if he were mediocre, maybe he'd be at 1.0. So you could say Felix has cost the Mariners maybe something like two, even three wins relative to what a team might have expected from his rotation spot. So now I don't know if the Mariners are going to end up two or three games outside of playoff position. Maybe. Maybe they'll even make the playoffs. How do we know what's going to happen?

The Cardinals were dead five weeks ago. So who knows what could happen with the Mariners. But this could very well end up being, and we've talked about this sort of, but this could end up being the season where Felix Hernandez indirectly cost the mariners a chance to go to the playoffs so yeah that is a whole other way to feel terrible about yes that would be a big bummer too all right are we finished with this topic uh we are is provided you have something else to talk about for about 10 or 15 minutes well just one brief thing that i meant to mention, not that I want to end the episode on an even more down note, but I am probably going to. So I wanted to shout out the

article that Mark Krig wrote for The Athletic. He's been doing a lot of really good stuff lately. He just wrote a sort of blow-by-blow behind-the-scenes account of David Wright's day, behind the scenes account of David Wright's day, essentially, just chronicling how much pain Wright is in as he tries to make it back to the big leagues and tries to stay on the field. And it's really kind of incredible. I will link to it on the show page and in the Facebook group. Everyone should go check it out. But it is an emotionally painful read, but also almost a physically painful reading experience, just sort of sympathetic pain. I will just read here. This is from the third paragraph here. First of all, Wright has had, let's see, within the past 26 months, a period in which, of course,

he has not played for the major league Mets. He has had surgery on his neck and his shoulder and his back. Those are pretty important body parts. He has had other injuries even before that. So here is what Krig writes. A good day means dull pain, the kind that can be worked around with the help of a consistent workout routine. A bad day means sharp pain, the kind that can be negotiated with, though only with a lot of time and effort. that can be negotiated with, though only with a lot of time and effort. Then there are the most agonizing days when his battered body refuses to cooperate on one of these mornings, right awakened, only to realize that he could not move.

And it gets kind of more depressing from there. And it's amazing. I guess it's admirable and noble that he has kept trying to make it back, not that there would be anything dishonorable or ignoble about deciding that he wanted to call it a career. He is hoping that he gets called up when rosters expand this September. And I mean, I hope he does too. I don't know if he has earned it purely on a performance basis. He's only gotten back into, I don't know, I think maybe eight games or so in high A,

and his timing has looked pretty off, hasn't had a lot of success. But, you know, the Mets don't really have a whole lot to lose here. I don't know what their 40-man looks like right now, but people were talking about whether Tim Tebow would be up when rosters expand, and, of course, his season-ending injury ended that conversation. But I think David Wright maybe doesn't really have a better case to be a big leaguer right now talent-wise than Tim Tebow does but sentimentally he certainly does and he's still the captain of

the Mets and it sort of sounds like if he doesn't make it back and maybe even if he does he will stop torturing himself and putting himself through this because just reading this article and the prognosis and the setbacks and everything he's had to go through, it sounds extremely unlikely that he could ever come back in a regular role and be anything like he was before or contribute in any way really but I hope that he does make it back and it's really you know it's kind of amazing it's like the desire that he has to be back in the big leagues despite having made lots and lots of money and having been a star for more than a decade and having most of a hall of fame career he just really really wants to play when from this article it sounds like the least pleasant thing he could possibly be doing is putting himself through this i guess it's i guess it's a goal i uh i suppose it's something for him to to work toward it's just some sort of potential light at the end of the

tunnel now i know that prince fielder had to call it a career because of his own injuries and debilitating pain so there are there are two ways do this, and as you mentioned, if David Wright doesn't make it back, it sounds like that could be it. But for now, I mean, I guess it's just you need something to motivate you, and you know, if you are on the Mets 40-man roster, you can at least imagine an opening where you figure

at least they could probably put me back on, and I could have some sort of uplifting moment, because nobody wants to call it quits while on the rehab trail. You want to at least try to get that magical standing ovation, some sort of uplifting moment because nobody wants to call it quits while on the rehab trail. You want to at least try to get that magical standing ovation, some sort of plate appearance, maybe even a hit, maybe even a home run. I don't know. Probably not a stolen base. But, you know, this is a year in which Matt Holliday is back in the major leagues, apparently.

I thought he was on television about a month ago, so I don't know what's happening there. And if Matt Holliday can make it back, getting a standing ovation in Colorado gets David Wright something to play for. It's so... I understand why it happens, but the way that we're programmed, we have to basically discard the things that used to be important but are no longer relevant. We just have to move on.

If we're going to beat baseball fans, we have to move on and pay attention to whoever is relevant now. David Wright is no longer relevant to the 2018 New York Mets or the 2019 New York Mets. And so as a fan, you just kind of think, well, that's sad, but I don't have the capacity to think about David Wright too much right now because I want the team to be moving on to bigger and better things.

And you're thinking about Noah Syndergaard and Jacob deGrom and Jeff McNeil, whoever that is, but he swings a lot. He's had a good rookie campaign so far. But I guess the other thing is that if david wright is able to come back then it gives it gives fans those in attendance and those at home also an opportunity to just kind of think about him again and come to terms with the fact that this could be the last time that you see him in uniform or maybe more realistically just on the field swinging a bat maybe making a defensive play so in that in the way that when you reach a landmark,

it gives people an opportunity to appreciate your accomplishment, even though the round number itself might be insignificant. Just having David Wright back on the field gives people an opportunity to think about David Wright as a Met one more time, which is something that I think we would all love to see. Yeah, I mean, in terms of tragic stories, this one doesn't really rate compared to many of the sad stories in the world right now. This is a baseball player who will have made about $200 million by the time his career is over. And of course, he was worth every penny,

worth more than every penny to the Mets. If you go by Fangrass's dollar values, he was worth more than $300 million to the Mets over the course of by Fangrass's dollar values, he was worth more than $300 million to the Mets over the course of his career. Certainly, many people have far more severe disabilities than David Wright does. His is a baseball disability. It prevents him from playing baseball at his previous high level, but does not prevent him from having a happy life and making a living in other ways and enjoying his family and all of that. It seems like this is not, you know, anything life-threatening. It's just career-threatening, this one career. And yet it is still sad by baseball standards because you don't really read

this kind of thing that often. This is like in the Johnny Venters-type territory, where it's just hard to imagine putting yourself through that many Tommy John surgeries. Again, nothing life-threatening, but still sort of inspiring and still something that induces sympathy, although Wright says that he does not want people to pity him. He is not soliciting sympathy. But when you read this article, it almost reminds you of reading about the last days of Lou Gehrig's career or something. Again, not that it's akin to that. It's not life-threatening. But in terms of how it is affecting his performance on a baseball field, it sounds sort of similar because activities that he used to perform routinely and think nothing of, he now just can't do anymore. Like he can't really throw with much strength anymore because something with the back injury, there's a pinched nerve in his shoulder

and he just can't throw the same way. And so he's tried to compensate by getting rid of the ball more quickly and just getting loose. Like even before he gets into a game, just getting to the point where he can get in the uniform and take batting practice takes him hours of exercises and efforts to loosen up. And every now and then he will sort of flash some semblance of the previous David Wright, but those glimpses are kind of few and far between.

And in that sense, it's sad because it reminds you of aging and mortality and all the things that we try to forget about when we watch baseball but i do still hope for the best for him and hope he makes it back and that he finds happiness with whatever the next phase of his life is and if this inspires other players who are going through similar challenges then that's great and for those concerned about baseball reminding you of your mortality, know that Clay Buchholz has one of the best ERAs in all of Major League Baseball. Edwin Jackson is in a Major League rotation. He also has a good ERA.

And Johnny Venters, in 11 appearances with the Braves this year, has allowed zero runs, and he's picked up a save. He's up to two saves this year. His fastball is back around 94 miles per hour. Johnny Venters is back. Clay Buchholz is back. Edwin Jackson is back. Clay Buchholz is back. Edwin Jackson is back. Bartolo Colon is still pitching.

Nobody ever dies. Yeah, I saw a tweet from Andrew Simon of MLB.com. This was a day or so ago, so maybe it's slightly out of date, but he said, Since July 30th, the fearsome foursome of Edwin Jackson, Trevor Cahill, Mike Fiers, and Brett Anderson has made 15 starts for the A's. The result, 93 innings pitched and a 1.26 ERA. So that's happening. I don't understand it, but it's happening. Meanwhile, Chris Archer has an ERA of 4.41. Clay Buckles has a better ERA than Clayton Kershaw. None of these things are being said to suggest that these pitchers are better than Chris Archer or Clayton Kershaw, but in the same way that clutch performances in large part dictated the weird-ass standings that we're looking at every single day,

weird things happen that cause runs or prevent runs. Edwin Jackson and the rest of the A's have been preventing runs. It's not all Matt Chapman most of it is probably Matt Chapman and Ramon Laureano but outside of that rotations that you would never believe could pitch a contender to the playoffs could pitch a contender to the playoffs weird season I look forward to seeing another five weeks of it yeah this is by the way the first anniversary of the Rich Hill game the August 23, 2017 game where Rich Hill tried to pitch a perfect game and ended up losing one, nothing and pitched into the 10th inning. And there was

the walk-off and it was sad. And he is back on the mound for the Dodgers and it's players weekend. I don't really care about that many of the players weekend nicknames. Most of them are sort of what you would expect and not all that clever, but Rich Hill's Dick Mountain. weekend i don't really care about that many of the players weekend nicknames most of them are sort of what you would expect and not all that clever but rich hill's dick mountain players weekend nickname that is i think clearly the best in the entire league dick mountain amazing yeah you can't pass uh you can't surpass dick mountain although i understand that somebody did tweet at us recently that there was a road sign for a town that seems to be known as Rich Hill. So Rich Hill does have at least one place, probably several dozen places named after him, but probably far fewer named Dick Mountain. All right, so we will end there. As you surely

know by now, you can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild, signing up and pledging some small monthly amount to keep us going. Following five listeners have already done so. Stefan Sanderson, Massimiliano Pitana, Mitch M, Luke Weatherstone, and Justin McLean. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. I know it's still August, but people in there are already organizing a secret Santa for this winter with Effectively Wild themed gifts. Sounds like it'll be fun. You can also rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms, and we hope you will. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance, and please keep your questions and

comments coming for me and Jeff via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. So have a wonderful rest of your weekend and we will be back on Monday. I think we've got a pretty good guest lined up. So we will talk to you then. mountain is first Then there is no mountain, then there is first days of mountain. Then there is no mountain, there is only love.