Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1269: Best in the Business

Episode Date: September 13, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the unlikely championship season of the Northwest League’s Eugene Emeralds, Jacob deGrom‘s latest hard-luck loss, and maintaining perspective about the Phillies’ late-season swoon, then answer listener emails about an MLB ballpark sleepover, whether making ballparks bigger would counter the three true outcomes, Chris Davis’s strikeouts vs. batting average […]

Pitch is high. Here's a rookie we've never seen. His name is Williams. Not William with an M. Williams, plural, with an N. His last name is Astudio. He is a catcher, a chunky right-hand hitter. Pitch is high. And the count, 2-0. When you look at him, you know he can hit for power. I mean, he looks like an offensive guard. Not as tall, but that kind of build. He is a, let's see

how big he is. Five, wow. He looks at two. Five-nine, which means he's five-seven and weighs 225. He's a husky sort. He's a chunky young'un. You never loved a thing that came all the way through time and space to take you away and out of this place.

You're an emerald in the sky. You light up the night by blinking your eyes. I'll cry and I'll cry if you're lying Hello and welcome to episode 1269 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello! Let's talk about the Northwest League Championship. Wow, we are on the same wavelength. I was just going to start exactly that way. Why would we start with the Northwest League Championship? Because this is effectively wild, and what else would we start with?

Not an actual big baseball story. The Eugene Emeralds are an affiliate of the Cubs. The Spokane Indians are an affiliate of, I don't know, somebody else. And they were playing in the championship. It's already weird that Eugene advanced the the championship, because let me tell you something about the Northwest League. The Eugene Emeralds finished with a record of 31-45, which was the worst. It was the worst record of the eight teams.

Worst record in the league. The best record belonged to Portland Area's own Hillsborough Hops, the Salem Cosmo Volcanoes, who hosted us for the Eclipse event last year. They finished 36-40. That's a very Giants affiliate kind of record, I think. burrow hops the salem cosmo volcanoes who hosted us for the eclipse event last year they finished 36 and 40 that's a very giants affiliate kind of record i think anyway so eugene worst record in the league remember that hey uh i don't know exactly i haven't done the research to figure out exactly how it was they qualified for the playoffs is this one of those half season things yeah it's a split season this is a ball so it's a split season

and there was one team hillsborough that was really good and so they won by a ton and there are two divisions in this league and two halves and so the emeralds won the wild card in the second half so they came in second basically way behind the first place team but that was enough to qualify you just had to at least come in second in one of the divisions place team but that was enough to qualify you just had to at least come in second in one of the divisions in one of the halves and they did that great okay so the the hemorrhoids qualified for the playoffs in the second half and uh when they made the playoffs of course they had to face the best team because they were wildcard they faced hillsborough and they beat them they beat them twice yeah hillsborough back to back and as i understand it there's a rivalry here these two teams have played each other three

playoffs in a row i think and the emeralds actually won the championship two years ago when they were a good team and they actually won more games than they lost so this is a little bit different but there is a rivalry here and they just rolled right over the best team in the league after being the worst team in the league. They didn't win. I don't think they won. I saw a stat. They either didn't win two games in a row all season, or they didn't win more than two games in a row all season. That's for sure.

And they just won five games in a row in the playoffs. Yeah. They won all of their playoff games. They did not have a three-game winning streak. they wound up with a five game winning streak so they they swept hillsborough in a best of three i guess so they they move on to the championship where they face in a best of five spokane the one game one three to two they won game two four to zero and they won game three three to two this is a game of of such import that if you go to the eugene emerald's official website and you look at the latest news section on the right the top headline is about game two they have not

updated the website to reflect that the eugene emerald's never won the championship the league the latest headline is a great pitching backs early offense in game two win headline could have been written by a computer maybe it was, what's most important is in the bottom of the ninth, Spokane was leading Eugene 2-1. Spokane trying to keep their season alive. And I'll just read the play log here. What better way to describe how this all happened. Jonathan Sierra singles in a ground ball.

Grant Fennell flies out. Fernando Kelly singles on a ground ball. Then Jonathan Perlazza comes in as a pinch hitter. He grounds into a force out. So there's runners on the corners with two outs and Eugene trailing by a run. Jonathan Perlazza steals second base.

Jake Slaughter hit by a pitch. Andy Weber walks. Game is tied. And with Nelson Velasquez batting, Jonathan Perlazza scores on a balk. Jake Slaughter advances to third on a buck. Andy Weber advances to second on a buck. A walk-off buck because the pitcher dropped the ball. Eugene won the championship on a walk-off buck. Yeah, so great. When I saw that, I thought,

really? You called a buck in a walk-off situation in a championship-deciding game? I thought, in a walk-off situation, in a championship deciding game, I thought that can't be, you should have just given it to him. I mean, Bucs are so often silly and subjective. And then I watched the clip and I do not blame the umpire at all for calling this Buc. Have you watched the Buc? I couldn't, when I was looking at this last night, I actually couldn't find a video of anything except for the celebration. I did not see the Bach itself. Okay, well, I have seen the Bach and I will share the Bach with you. I just sent you a link to a GIF of the Bach which I

will link to for everyone's pleasure and this was about as clear cut a Bach as I've ever seen. I'm not sure that I have seen a Bach that looked quite like this. I don't know what happened. It was like he almost fell but but didn't fall, but just sort of stumbled or paused like halfway through his delivery. I mean, it was very, very clearly a Bok, and there's just no way that the umpire

couldn't have called it. I'm sure he didn't want to call a Bok in this situation, but it was just the most clear-cut Bok you could imagine. call a bach in this situation but it was just the most clear-cut bach you could imagine at the very least they've sent this thing to extra innings class a delivers he balked he balked and the emeralds win the championship on a bach the bad news m's are the champions of the northwest league and how else would it end but a walk to tie it, a balk to win it, and that's it. He stumbled and darn near fell over dropping the ball. The Emeralds are mobbing each other at home plate. They have won the championship in the oddest way you will ever, ever see.

An all-star closer just dropped the ball on the mound to balk off for the championship the weirdest thing you'll ever see but the bad commences and they hug the batter it appears to be the batter who it no wait no game winning run it's the game winning run that they crowd around they crowd the runner who scores by default i don't know yeah they should have hugged the pitcher who balked because he was the one who did it. But yeah, that's an incredible ending to a very strange season. Apparently they were calling themselves the Bad News M's. The Emeralds just nicknamed themselves that. And I love this story and I hope someone makes a movie of it. I don't think that will happen. but I don't think that will happen. There's a moment. So the pitcher, I don't want to name the pitchers.

You can look it up, but also I just feel bad. Oh, man. So the pitcher, oh, God. I just noticed in the side clip, if you watch, okay, everyone should look up the video, but there's a few angles here. You see the normal camera angle from center field, and then you have like a side view that's looking at the batter and the catcher,

and then you have a view from behind the plate. the side view you just you see the batter he like starts his leg kick and then the play ends and the catcher just buries his head in his hands which is just heartbreaking what a horrible way to lose but if you look at the the center fielder angle you see the pitcher like clearly stumble off the mound not through a pitch and then briefly for about a half a second he raises his arms up as if to say what you're gonna call that like i i interpret it not as like oh i'm so mad at myself but just like come on come on it's the championship the bases are loaded but then right then he seems to quickly come to the realization that there has never been a cleaver buck this is cleaver's day and uh i i do wonder in this situation how

much could a pitcher get away with as a buck before yeah to test the umpires gotta be more leeway in this situation than usual right you wouldn't do it with like bob davidson who called the buck right on us right now but like otherwise i i feel like yeah yeah, there's some leniency here. But this is just, I'm so sad for the catcher. He doesn't even move. This is too bad. I'm glad we were both tickled by the story of the Eugene Emeralds. Is anything going on in Major League Baseball? Nothing this interesting.

Oh, my God. I'm watching from the behind the batter angle, and the catcher is still there squatting with his head in his hands as the players start to mob the game-winning run around. I came into this really excited to talk about a walk-off buck, and now I'm just bummed out. Yeah, the first reply to the tweet on this GIF says, Have watched this about 42 times, and this last time saw the catcher's reaction Now I can't stop seeing it So yeah Wow

Major League Baseball Jacob deGrom didn't win again Oh yeah that's a good one Our lead story for the day Jacob deGrom did not win His most recent start He did set a Major League record With his 26th straight start of what is it

three runs or fewer and six innings or something or just three runs or fewer period i don't remember what the stat is it's something pretty impressive but the upshot is that he is still stuck on eight wins and he is now up to 8.7 wins above replacement so he now maybe even has a cushion like if he has a good start and wins he might still have more than nine wins above replacement so there's uh i think probably a one win cushion built in here so i think he's gonna get there i mean we're in mid-september he's gonna do it his era and losses is now he lost the game he didn't just get a no decision he got the loss and again the mets lost to the marlins he allowed two runs in seven innings to the marlins and he lost and so his era in losses

has dropped from 2.73 to 2.71 2.71 jacob de gr. It was funny when he was 8. I shouldn't say funny. I'm sorry, Mets fans. I'm sorry, Jacob deGrom. It was funny when he was 8 and 8. It is so much funnier to me now that he's below 500. It just makes such a difference to have him 8 and 9 with the best ERA, the best ERA in Major League Baseball by like a good amount.

If he finishes with more war than wins, we will be in a race to write the article that gets the most traffic. And there's going to be more here than for Kyle Freeland. I can assure you that would. Yeah. Yeah. The stat is 26 consecutive starts of three or fewer runs, no innings minimum required there. He breaks the record held by Leslie King Cole, a 108-year-old Major League record, and now he cannot win more than 11 games unless, I don't know, they suddenly start putting him in the bullpen in every game to try to get him more wins but 11 wins would be the fewest by any Cy Young winner in an uninterrupted season so if he does win the Cy Young award he will be making history in that respect but he does still have some competition there but I don't know I

still kind of feel like the more ridiculous his record is the more likely it is that he wins the award because it's just gotten to the point where it's almost a farce and you can't hold him responsible for not winning more games. So you just kind of have to give him to him as a consolation prize. If you can't win an actual game, at least you can win an award for being the best pitcher in the league. Jacob deGrom has a 1.71 ERA, eight wins. Lance Lynn has a 5.01 ERA. He's got nine wins. Luis Castillo, nine wins, 4.66 ERA. Lucas Giolito has been maybe the worst pitcher who's made regular turns in baseball

for a terrible baseball team. He's got a 5.76 ERA. Ten wins, Lucas Giolito. I mean, I'm scrolling up here. It's going to get worse. Zach Godley, 4.67 ERA in a newly neutral ballpark. 14 wins. Oh, and by the way, Ryan Yarbrough has 14 wins,

and no one even knows what he looks like in the world. And he's been out there. He's 14-5 as a non-starting pitcher for an anonymous baseball team. And he's got almost twice as many wins as Jacob deGrom, who has the lowest ERA in Major League Baseball. And this isn't even one of those situations where it's like, yeah, he's got a low ERA, but he's given up a bunch of unearned runs and those can't do. Seven, just seven unearned runs, which is a totally normal amount of unearned runs to have allowed, especially in front of a terrible defense like the Mets have had all season long.

David Robertson has eight wins and he's thrown like four innings. It's, this is juris familia, eight wins. Thanks. This is juris familia. Eight wins. Wow. Well, our plan for this episode was to answer listener emails. Should we do that or is there anything else that we need to talk about first? I guess, I don't know, it seems like the races are resolving themselves in some cases here. We could do a quick standings check. The Phillies are now six and a half behind the Braves as we speak.

So they barely control their own destiny as the saying goes. They do have seven head-to-head games with Atlanta coming up in the last 10 or so days of the season. And controlling your own destiny is sort of a silly saying because you don't really have control over whether you win those games.

You still have to play the other team, and the other team in this case is better than the Phillies. So technically they could sweep all those games and be in a good spot. But by the time that series actually starts, they may no longer even be in that position because they seem to be falling pretty fast, which is unfortunate. And I've seen a lot of Phillies fans on Twitter at least kind of complaining about how the wheels have fallen off and this is a lost season and it's a failure and there are so many questions heading into next year. And I think that the season has not been a failure or a lost season. I think it's been an encouraging season in a lot of ways. And the Phillies were not really expected to be the best team in this division

just yet. Neither were the Braves, to be fair. Both of these teams are sort of ahead of schedule. But I think this is probably a matchup that we will be seeing for the next five or 10 years. This is just the first time that these two are going head to head. the next five or ten years. This is just the first time that these two are going head-to-head. Right. I think it's important to understand that the Phillies have arrived. They've been good, and they've arrived sort of ahead of schedule. And I think it becomes frustrating if you're a Phillies fan. I think it's frustrating because you look at your team, and they're 74-70, and the wheels have fallen off lately. They've gone, what is it, like 5-15 or something in the last 20 games. It's been bad. But you look up up and you have a team in the Braves who have also arrived early

and they're in first place. Now they're comfortably in first place. And I think you look around and you think, well, why haven't we done that? But if you look at also, like, I don't know, the White Sox, and you think, oh, right, sometimes a rebuild goes far, far worse than it has for us, then I don't think that you can be too disappointed. It's fine to feel bad because, you know, the Phillies were in first place very, very recently. I think it was what, at the start of August.

In fact, as recently as August 11th, the Phillies were a game up in the National League East. And then since then they have plummeted out of the hunt. It just got swept by the Nationals at a double header. But remember, this is a team that's going to have a lot of payroll space. They're going to get a lot better in the offseason. Maybe they'll sign Manny Machado. Maybe they'll sign Bryce Harper. Maybe they'll sign them both.

Maybe they'll sign them all. Maybe they'll just sign every free agent and become an unbelievable juggernaut. But the Phillies are going to be okay. It's been a frustrating season. I would like to point out the Phillies' defense, it's worst in the major leagues by defensive run saved. And it's at like negative 115 or something. And here's an alignment that the Phillies had for game one yesterday.

Reese Hoskins, as usual, was playing left field. He's terrible. Justin Boer was playing first base. He's not very athletic. Carlos Santana got the start at third base, which he's apparently done multiple times lately, as Dribble Cabrera got the start at shortstop, and Nick Williams started in right field. This was quietly one of the worst single-game defenses I think I've ever seen a team play, and the idea was to punch up the offense. You know, you sacrifice defense for offense. Teams have done that. And the Phillies scored one run with five hits off the Washington Nationals, who started Eric Fetty.

So it didn't really work out for the Phillies. And I'm sure people are probably mad at Gabe Kapler for that. Yeah. Remember in spring training when the Phillies were experimenting with alternating corner outfielders? Just depending on the batter, that never happened in the season I don't think maybe they just decided that they don't have any good fielders so it just isn't even worth rotating anyone anywhere but that just hasn't happened I think I spoke to someone with the Phillies at some point this season and they just said sort of that they were still considering

it but there are costs to consider as well, just potentially embarrassing the player by having him move from one field to another in the middle of a game, which is just saying, we think you're worse than this other guy, which is technically something you're saying to every fielder, except, I don't know, the shortstop or the center fielder, the most difficult or premium positions. If you're having someone play a position other than that, you're saying you're not as good as this guy. But that's maybe more of a naked example of saying, we don't think you're as good as this other guy. So run

across the field and stand there because we don't want the ball to be hit to you. So I don't think that that has happened, but I don't think that that would have saved the phillies from having a very poor defensive season they just don't have the personnel yeah right it's and it's kind of weird too to me that nick williams is such a bad defensive outfielder because he's also an incredibly fast and toolsy athlete and so this is one of those cases where you you look at sort of the uh the traits that a player possess, and outfield defense is not the same as just sorting in order of sprint speed. Nick Williams, he's kind of a, he's a rough defender for as fast as he runs. There's something else about game one of the Phillies-Nationals doubleheader I will just point out. Because September baseball is stupid, this is a sequence from the top of the fifth

stretching into the top of the sixth. Here are five consecutive matchups, five consecutive batter-pitcher matchups five consecutive batter pitcher matchups nationals versus phillies eric fetty versus nick pivetta adam eaton versus luis avulan trey turner versus luis garcia bryce harper versus adam morgan and anthony rendon versus hector naris five batters five pitchers september is stupid yeah all right shall we move on to emails? I guess. Okay. This is a weird one from Jacob. He says, I have a question regarding ballparks around Major League Baseball. Do you think you could hide in the stadium after a game overnight? If so, where would you hide and how would you do it? What ballpark would be the best or worst place to get it done? I feel like Wrigley would be the worst. I'm curious to hear your answers. Are we aiding and abetting some sort of crime by answering this? It's a hypothetical. It's a purely theoretical scenario here, so I would say no.

But if one were to try to do this, do you think one would succeed? Well, okay, so how is it determined that you are unsuccessful? Just if you're seen? Yeah, I guess if you're caught by the grounds crew or the ushers, the stadium staff, and they force you to leave. I mean, to qualify for having stayed overnight, I guess you have to be there when the stadium is shut down and they turn the lights off and everyone goes home and you're still there.

Okay, so the first thing that obviously comes to mind is that you hide in a bathroom stall, when the stadium is shut down and they turn the lights off and everyone goes home and you're still there. Okay, well, so what? The first thing that obviously comes to mind is that you hide in like a bathroom stall and then you get found by whoever comes in to clean the bathroom. But then you could always... Now, listen, I don't know how many more times I have to say on the podcast I'm not encouraging murder, but if you are seen in the bathroom by one person who's armed with cleaning supplies, then you could render such a person incapable of reporting you to whoever might be the proper authority.

So that is one option for you. Now, if you are... It could be non-lethal, definitely. Yeah, sure. Maybe you can practice the sleeper hold, which is something that I believe existed in 1992 when I was growing up and watching cartoons. I don't think that it exists, but it might.

I might just be very bad at it. I tried on my brother several times. But if you don't want to hide in a bathroom stall, then let's see, what you could, hmm. There are going to be people who are everywhere. There's a thorough cleaning process that takes place after a game is over. I've never observed the cleaning process,

but you could probably, I mean, realistically, if you just lie down, like, you go to the upper, upper deck. You go somewhere where people very rarely sit and you just kind of lie down behind some seats. It's unlikely you're going to be spotted. And even if you see somebody coming, you just quietly alternate rows. You can shimmy. Right. You can just Metal Gear Solid sort of scenario where you're just avoiding the line of sight.

I think that would be doable. I mean, they do have people come through and comb the stands and clean up garbage. And so if you are garbage and you're there, then they might clean you up. But I think you would be able to avoid it. I don't know. I doubt that the people cleaning a ballpark at one in the morning or whatever are that attentive or are checking every single nook and cranny ballparks are big in fact you know if you really wanted to pull this off you become part of the cleaning crew oh and then you are yeah look at that and then you're like i'm gonna go clean the upper deck and then you lie down you're no one's probably checking you out at that time of morning.

They're just like, all right. Joe goes in there. He does his scouting. He picks up some cups. And then he goes home. But maybe you don't want to go home. Right. The long con.

Yeah. And it can't be that hard to get one of those jobs. So, yeah, if you really want to do it, that's one way to do it, I would say. But I bet you could get away with this, and I bet it's happened. I don't know. Did Night at the Museum happen, or was that just a movie? How did they do it in Night at the Museum? I don't know.

But museum, probably even harder to do this than a ballpark, and it's been done, at least in a major motion picture. So I think it could happen. I don't know why you would want to necessarily. It seems like a pretty boring place to be overnight, an empty ballpark. I mean, an empty ballpark can be kind of a cool sight, just having been an intern and having been a writer who has been on deadline and stayed late to finish stories at playoff games, for instance. I've been in stadiums when they are almost empty, and it is kind of a cool sight because it's not one that you usually get to see, just empty big league ballpark.

But that's kind of it, and you see it, and you say, this is kind of cool, and I don't know that you would really want to spend a night there or what you would do if you did. Everyone who's listening to this and has been to a Marlins game is like, I don't get what the big deal is. We get one of these every day. Right, exactly. All right. listening to this and has been to a marlins game is like i don't get what the big deal is we get one of these every day right exactly all right well if anyone has any stories about their exploits staying overnight at a ballpark feel free to write in and let us know how you did it please don't do this i think we have to do it but if you have done it then there's no harm in telling us about it because it's in the past. All right. Question from Michelle. She says, I recently read this article. She links to the article about a way to counter the three true outcomes rise in baseball.

They suggested that making the ballparks larger would counter much of the rise. It might also make it easier to sneak in overnight. Let's bring back our dear pal, the eccentric billionaire. He or she has really worked up about baseball, reads this article, and decides to single-handedly fund the expansion of the playing fields for all 30 teams. What would this new brand of baseball look like? Would it really decrease strikeout and walk rates? Clearly, home run rates would go down. So just big playing field. What does it do to three true outcomes? How big of a playing field are we talking about? Like,

can Giancarlo Stanton still hit home runs or can like no one hit home runs? Well, it's up to you, whatever you need to do to affect the rate. So it can be big. I mean, at a certain point, it's going to be so big that it will be a terrible spectator experience. But if you only care about the three true outcomes rate, I guess you can do what you want. Well, if it's big enough, then you eliminate the third outcome right there. If no one can ever hit the ball out. Well, you still have inside the parkers. But I guess inside the park home runs, I don't know if they would even count for three true outcomes because the whole point of three true outcomes is that it's like slow, boring baseball that doesn't involve base running and fielding.

And that's not the case for inside the park homers. Yeah. Also, incidentally, the three true outcome rate this year league-wide, it is up, but it's like barely up. It's really not moving that fast. So as you and I have talked about before, for everyone who's panicking about how baseball is completely different, it's really not moving that fast so for as you and i have talked about before for everyone who's panicking about how baseball is completely different it's really not it's really quite similar to what it was five ten years ago people just anyway so yeah so the the bigger that you make the field the more space there is then the more you're likely to increase like babbitt the more you're going to increase doubles and triples and singles just because there's so much

more space you're going to incentivize people to make more contact. Now, depending on how far away the fences are, because the home run is still the most valuable thing you can do, one thing that could happen is that teams would want to search for more powerful players, more people like Chris Carter, Joey Gallo, these these actual three true outcome players because all of a sudden those become the only guys who can actually hit the ball out daniel pulka for god's sake with the white talks might be more well known if he was one of far fewer players who could hit a home run if you make if you push the fences far away all of a sudden jose ramirez doesn't have power anymore or jose altuve doesn't have power anymore alex bregman doesn't have power anymore because these guys can't really hit the ball 450 feet. They just don't do it.

So in a way, you could actually end up with the reverse where teams are looking for power so bad that they give up contact entirely because they need that really, really good power. So at first, I think you would see a movement toward contact hitting, but then I'm not convinced it would actually stay that way. What do you think? Yeah, I think if the dimensions are large enough that it's really hard to hit home runs, unless you are Stanton or someone like that, then you'd see players not trying to hit

home runs. And then you'd see less swinging for the fences because the fences are so far away. You'd want to prioritize contact because there's just so much field area that just putting the ball in play is very valuable. So you'd have more contact-oriented swings, and you'd have fewer homers, and you'd have fewer strikeouts because of the contact. I don't know what would happen with walks exactly but probably there would be fewer would there be fewer walks because probably there'd be fewer walks right because you wouldn't want to put people on base if the babbip is really high and you're just getting base hit after base hit so i think this probably would work i am open to the argument that it would and there's only so many like high exit velocity players to go around so it would and there's only so many like high exit velocity

players to go around so uh that would like it's not like every team could go get chris carter and joey gallo and daniel polka and francie cordero and etc kian broxton so you'd also have teams would be shifting in just the same way that they they currently do they would be moving their defenders around so i'm not sure babbitt would change that much now it would of course go up just because there's so much more space and if you hit a ball over a guy's head then you're going to have a probably a triple or a home run inside the park right there but the players are still going to be like you're still going to have the same number of hits on the infield you're going to have a similar number of hits like within the outfielder's range because it's not like you're you're making the defender stationary at their traditional positioning so i i think the the first level response is that yeah

this would reduce three true outcomes considerably as you disincentivize power but then i think that there would be at least some teams who would go in the other direction. Yeah. All right. Question from Mike. A question hit me tonight looking at the MLB leaderboards. Oriole Chris Davis is currently hitting an abysmal 173 with 168 strikeouts. This was a while ago, so those numbers are no longer up to date. Now, Chrisis is hitting 175 with 178 strikeouts that's not good so the question is has anyone with at least 100 to 150 at bats ever had more strikeouts than their batting average in 1991 rob deer hit 179 with 175 strikeouts. Could Crush be having a historic season? So Chris Davis is doing this, right? He has now 445 at bats, and he has more strikeouts, 178 strikeouts, 175 batting average. And there are two guys who have done this and who

have done it in more at-bats than Chris Davis. And it's probably not a surprise who these two guys are. It's Adam Dunn. Of course, it's Adam Dunn. In 2012, Adam Dunn had 539 at-bats, and he struck out 222 times while batting.204. And then, of course, there was Mark Reynolds in 2010, who had 499 at-bats and struck out 211 times with a.198 batting average. So Chris Davis is not alone in this club, although he is by far the worst member of this club in that adam dunn in 2012 was actually a pretty good hitter and mark reynolds in 2010 was not a terrible hitter and chris davis is a truly terrible hitter this year so there's that our current update chris davis

right now according to fangraphs is at negative 2.7 wins above replacement negative 2.7 that is of course quite terrible now i don't know how this happened but there is a in 1978 there's a player named pat rocket rockette i don't know there's two t's i don't know how it's pronounced pat rocket batted only 157 times but he had a ws plus of negative 11 and he had a war of negative 2.7 himself but in like a third of the playing time as chris davis already has so pat rocket low-key worst season ever slash imaginable that's really quite dreadful but anyway the actual the worst war uh for position player on record belongs to 1933. Jim Levy, playing for the Browns, he played in 141 games.

He had a war of negative four. In terms of contemporary baseball, I guess, 1977, Jerry Royster, future manager, war of negative 3.8. And 1985, George Wright for the Rangers, war of negative 3.2. But Chris Davis is now sneaking up on 2011 Adam Dunn. That's who preceded 2012 Adam Dunn, who you just discussed. Chris Davis sneaking up on 2011 Adam Dunn and 2002 Nephew Perez, finished with wars of negative 2.9. And in 1997, Jose Guillen, negative 3.1.

So Chris Davis is playing for something for something yeah playing to avoid something well i don't know he's catching up all right do you have a step list i do i uh okay yeah it's also a little ballparky Take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS+. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to Daystop Last. So did you read a recent Sports Illustrated article? I forget what the title of the regular feature is. But anyway, it was led by Tom Verducci talking about something he dubbed the mystery of flushing. I did not see that.

So it is essentially about how for the last several years, the Mets have been a terrible team hitting at home. about how for the last several years the Mets have been a terrible team hitting at home. And one of the things that was identified is that the Mets have a very, very low BAPIP at home. And I can tell you this is true. Since 2012, when the Mets most dramatically had changed the dimensions of their ballpark, the Mets at home have a BAPIP, that's a batting average on balls in play, of 273, easily the lowest mark in Major League Baseball. But on the road, they've been at 302, which is perfectly normal. They've scored, like, more than 400 more runs on the road than they've scored at home.

Now, what Verducci's angle was is that the Mets are trying to figure this out, why they haven't been able to hit at home, and I don't know. I don't know what happened in the production of this article because it completely ignored the idea of looking at how the Mets pitchers have done. And it turns out, this won't surprise you, the Mets opponents have also been a lot worse at Citi Field. And it's because Citi Field is a hard place to hit. And I can tell you that- We talked about that recently, right? Like the exit speed difference, right? Yeah. There's a big one. Yeah. Yeah, and I'm going to mention that again because I'm just going to double up on my stat blast here.

So over the past seven years, so going back to 2012, Citi Field has reduced run scoring relative to Mets games away from Citi Field. It's reduced run scoring by 14%, which actually the uh the biggest effect in uh for any ballpark in baseball it uh it's just below safeco field which is still down there it's reduced runs by 13 18 d park has reduced runs by 12 so when they changed the fences in city field they did so to make home runs more common to make home runs easier to hit. And that has been successful. It's a nearly neutral home run ballpark at this point. But what is interesting is indeed, if you combine the Mets performance and the performance of Mets opponents,

obviously it shouldn't surprise you that the most BABIP friendly ballpark is Colorado. It's a big field. The second most BABIP friendly ballpark is Fenway Park. Of course, it's got that big wall that turns home runs into not home runs but the mets city field has reduced batting average on balls in play by eight percent easily the uh easily the lowest mark in baseball for any ballpark so if you look at the home road difference courage field has increased BABIP relative to games on the road by 38 points. Fenway Park up 25 points. Texas Globe Life Stadium, I think that's what it's called, Globe Life Park,

I don't know, it's up 15 points. Citi Field has reduced batting average on balls in play by 25 points, which is more than twice the next biggest ballpark adjustment, which is Seattle. So indeed, this calls to mind the whole exit velocity thing. So I talked about this on a more recent StatBlast talking about Chase Field because of the humidor that they installed there. And because of the humidor in Chase Field, the ballpark no longer provides like an exit velocity boost. The difference between Diamondbacks home games and Diamondbacks road games is now basically neutral. So in 2015, maybe I've already done this exactly for the stat blast. I don't know. I don't care.

But looking at the home versus road exit velocity difference, in 2015, Citi Field had the second greatest exit velocity suppression. In 2016, it ranked with the greatest suppression 2017, the greatest suppression 2018, the second greatest. And so if you just look at the last four years, Citi Field has reduced exit velocity the most of any ballpark. So when I first saw that, I thought, well, this is probably some sort of weird recording glitch in the data. Maybe it's just poorly calibrated, but it would seem to correlate pretty well with what else has been going on at city field you just people have not been able to

hit as well so i broke this down by i batted balls and in terms of babbep suppression the mets city field has the the greatest hit suppression on ground balls for any ballpark and it also has the greatest expression on fly balls and line balls for any ballpark, and it also has the greatest hit suppression on fly balls and line drives for any ballpark, which is interesting. So I don't know exactly what's going on at Citi Field, but this is not just a Mets hitter problem. This is an all-hitters problem. All hitters matter.

So I don't know how or what they're going to figure out. I don't know if the balls are too humid, I guess, and heavy and wet. It plays at sea level. But, you know, looking at the same park factors, I don't know why it would be too markedly different from, say, Yankee Stadium, which has reduced BABIP by only four points, which is totally neutral. So I don't know what's going on in Queens. But I can also tell you this much, just because we're looking at the window between 2012 and the present day, just in terms of home field advantage, and this is a fun one, just looking at the winning percentage difference between home games and road games, the Padres

are actually at the top of this list. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing, but they have a winning percentage difference of 121 points. That is, they've won a lot more games at home. That's normal. The median is like an increase of about 70 points the mets are the only team the only team in baseball who have a worse winning percentage at home than on the road they're worse by two points home winning percentage of 43 on the road 485 mariners next to worst but i don't know i don't know how to explain that clearly the mets have something to figure out but city field it's it seems to be not just a Mets problem, but an everybody problem. And I don't know what's going on with the baseballs, but that is the first place that I would look.

Very perplexing. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, it could be something with the batter's eye, possibly. I don't know if that has changed. I had speculated in our previous discussion about, you know, maybe the hitters changing their approach because of dimensions and previous difficulties hitting home runs there, but this seems like a big change and a change that's happening to visiting hitters too, so that seems sort of unlikely, but that is an intriguing intriguing mystery it is also interesting if you look at fangraphs which has park factors city field happens to have the highest park factor for increasing infield flies i don't know why that is or what that could mean i don't think it has a whole bunch of foul territory oakland does not rate as highly as you would think so there's just something about city

field where batters are not making the contact that they usually want to make. All right. To be continued. Question from Joe, who says, in a recent broadcast, Cubs broadcast, Len Casper said that Javi Baez creates chaos in a play where the ball was overthrown to third as he was trying to take an extra base, and he subsequently scored on the error. Len and JD often say that Javi forces defenses to make mistakes when he's on the bases, and it's a commonly held belief among Cubs fans, myself included. My first question is, is this true? How much can Javi's aggressiveness really cause opposing players to make errors versus them just randomly happening to make more errors when he's on the

bases? Second, if it's true, has anyone tried to measure it? Is there a forced error stat? How would someone tell the difference between a forced and unforced error? How much value could this conceivably add? I believe in it, I just don't really know how you'd go about quantifying it. So fortunately for us, Craig Edwards addressed this in a post for Fangraphs last week, so I will link to that for anyone who's interested. But he looked at all of Baez's plays this year, and he documented that Baez has this year, well, I don't want to say created or forced, but his times on base have coincided with more than the usual number of errors. So it's not necessarily inaccurate to say that he has created errors. It's

potentially true. Although Craig also noted that it was not true last year. So if this is a skill, it's not the most consistent skill. But if it is, then it's worth something. I mean, just getting, I forget what Craig said it was, like he had advanced an extra five bases or something this year because of these errors. So, you know, it's worth a few runs potentially. But I don't know that I believe that it's a thing because, I mean, in theory it could be a thing. He's not like the fastest runner in baseball, but he's fast and maybe he's aggressive and maybe guys know he's aggressive and maybe he picks certain spots to run where other runners wouldn't and you could conceive of that being something that a player would have the ability to do right

so uh javier baez has when there's been a hit and he's been on base he has taken the extra base 63 percent of the time, which I'm not going to go through a leaderboard, but that's high. That's higher than the usual, but he's also been successful on steals a pretty average amount of time. And Javier Baez, according to baseball reference, currently ranks near the top of the leaderboard in terms of outs on the bases. He's not number one. That's Cameron Mabin, for some reason, who's made 11 outs on the bases, including five at home. That's a lot of outs at home. But Javier Baez has made seven outs on the bases, not counting steals. I don't know exactly how or where those were made. That's something you'd have to go through the play log. But I think it's one of

those situations where you can say, matter of factly, I think Javier Baez is like the most aggressive player in baseball, just like across the board. He is aggressive everywhere and he takes a lot of chances. But of course, when things are going more poorly, then you're going to remember the times that he runs into outs because that's the whole thing about taking chances, right? safe and always saying like i'm on the right side of the break-even rate which is totally how these players think then you're saying i'm going to push it even though win expectancy says that i maybe shouldn't take this chance and so then you you try to move up and you're more willing to take a chance and when you see a few overthrows when things are going well then you're going to say yeah this player creates chaos versus when things are not going quite so well when a player runs

into a couple apps in a row then you say well this player is being versus when things are not going quite so well. When a player runs into a couple outs in a row, then you say, well, this player is being reckless. He's being stupid. So if Baez weren't hitting as well as he is or if the Cubs weren't in first place like they are, then this would just have a very different interpretation, I think. So it's true. Javier Baez is very aggressive. But much like you, I'm skeptical that this reflects any sort of actual skill as opposed to there's not a whole lot of players who do this. And we can remember when it goes right for us.

Yeah. actual skill as opposed to there's not a whole lot of players who do this and we can remember when it goes right for us yeah and he's a high profile player on a high profile team and he already gets a lot of credit for another sort of obscure skill namely tagging and i guess also sliding so maybe there's some tendency to want to think that he's great at all of these little obscure skills but it's possible. I mean, one thing that we don't talk about all that often is the ability to reach on errors, which is not quite the same as forcing errors the way that Baez has, but that is a skill that is not really accounted for, at least by some stats and traditional stats, and it's not just like a magic ability. It tends to be right-handed hitters who pull the ball a lot to the left side of the field, and guys who hit ground balls, and guys who are fast. And Javi Baez is a fast right-handed hitter who hits lots of balls on the ground, so he's someone who might also fit that profile, but that's sort of a skill.

So if you want to count that as forcing errors, reaching on errors, it's not quite the same, but it's maybe correlated. Yeah, I agree with that. All right. Question from Hunter, who says, the Rockies announcers just said that Stu Cole is the best in the business when it comes to holding or sending runners as a third base coach. That is Stu Cole, the Rockies third base coach, not a household name necessarily. While I'm sure they don't have any way to back this up, could the data show this to possibly be true? How much value does a great third base coach add? What's the maximum value that a third base coach could add? Also for fun, if a third base coach

were terrible, how much would that hurt the team? Obviously, players wouldn't always listen, but I could see a terrible third base coach taking wins away. Well, I don't have numbers at my immediate disposal to talk about whether or not Stu Cole is,

in fact, the best in the business. This is one of those questions that really gets to the analytical writing sweet spot of requires a ton of effort and has zero payoff because no one would read it. Not only is it a post about third base coaches, it's a post about the Rockies third base coach, so double whammy. You're basically just trying to get us fired by even trying to answer this question on the podcast. So a third base coach is basically, we were just talking about break-even rates.

A third base coach is basically there to know the break-even rates of plays he's making on the fly. And he's supposed to just make the right calls. Now, of course, the third base coach can't do anything if a player stumbles or if a throw is offline. But this is, again, I guess this is actually interesting in that we're talking about Stu Cole because someone referring to a third base coach made a positive remark. Because in the past, I've always thought of base coaches as people you only think about when something goes wrong. So credit to the Rockies, I guess, for saying something good about someone whose job

is usually taken for granted and only noticed when something goes right. How would you begin to evaluate the value of a third base coach in any sort of way that doesn't break down individual plays that would cause me to quit? Well, yeah, that's sort of what you need to do. I remember Russell Carlton wrote something about third base coaches for baseball prospectus like eight years ago. I can link to that for people who are interested, but he has the break-even rates in there. And then he looked at certain situations like no outs, runner on third, fly ball to the outfield. And he looked at how often the runner was safe when he tried for home, and he found that at that point, at least, the runner was safe 96.2% of the time, 75 for 78. That was in the 2009 season when there were no outs and a runner on third and a fly ball to the outfield, which Russell suggested seems like a good thing that you'd be safe 96% of the time, but is actually probably a bad thing and a sign that third base coaches are being too conservative

and are not sending runners often enough because you're probably going to have a better chance than that in many of the cases where you don't actually get sent. So he was saying that it might be better if instead of a third base coach, you just had like a windmill or, you know, I don't know, one of those like sock things that you stick outside the car dealership that just waves its arms all the time. If you had one of those that just waved every player home, you might actually be better off just kind of leaving it to the player's judgment than having too quick a hold sign. I don't know whether that has changed at all. I'd be interested to see whether teams have optimized third base

coaching and stop and send decisions at all in the eight years since then. But obviously you could do this with greater precision with StatCast if you had access to the raw data and you could look at every play and you can factor in the arm strength of the fielders and how deep the fielders are. I mean, you can't do it in real time, obviously, but you could do it retroactively and evaluate the guy's decisions. So if you wanted to get really granular about it, you probably could now with the data that's available. Let's try this. League-wide, when there's been a single with a runner on second, the runner on second has scored about 58% of the time.

So that's our benchmark. For the Rockies, they've scored 64% of the time. So far, so good. Now, granted that the Rockies outfield is bigger, maybe outfielders are playing deeper, so maybe the runners just have more of an advantage. I don't know. Maybe the Rockies are also faster than the average team.

I don't know. But also, league-wide, when you've had a runner on first base and there's been a double, the runner on first has scored 42% of the time. And then for the Rockies, it comes out to 47% of the time. Okay, so far, so good. Looks like some sort of incremental value. However, I'll note the Rockies have, as a team, made 18 outs at home. They've also made 18 outs running the bases at third.

Combined, those happen to be the most in Major League Baseball for any team ahead of, I guess, it looks like the Cardinals with 31. Now, I don't know what that means. This is all very, very simplistic. But, for example, the Rockies have made 36 base running outs at third and home. The Giants have made 12. Now, sure, you could rightly argue that the Giants haven't had any base runners to begin with, and you're not wrong because the Giants are bad and the Rockies are not as bad. But let's say that the evidence suggests a mixed bag and i am not in the least

bit convinced when the rockies home broadcasters say that a player who's employed by the home baseball team is the best in the business because i would love i would love to have a list of all the people the different broadcasts say are the best in the business it's just it's just like team saying we got a great group of guys, or my personal current favorite, no one works harder than this guy. There's a lot of people who seem to be tied for the best work ethic in Major League Baseball. Yeah, that is kind of curious, isn't it? Yeah, I doubt that the Rockies broadcasters have watched a whole lot of tape and broken

down the numbers on every other third base coach in the league. Doesn't seem like the best use of their time. So, yeah, probably not a ton of bases for that statement. But in theory, I would think that there's probably a lot more cost to having a bad third base coach than there's a benefit to having a good third base coach. there's a benefit to having a good third base coach. Like I'm guessing that most of the third base coaches are clustered pretty closely together when it comes to deciding whether to send someone or not. So I doubt that if you do have the best third base coach in the league,

he's that much better than the second best or the 10th best. But if you have the worst, then maybe. If you have a really bad third base coach, then I think you could do some damage to a team. Now, I don't know. If you did just have someone who always put up the stop sign or just always said send or even just did the opposite of what he should do in every situation, at some point, the runners are just going to ignore that guy and are just going to do what they want. runners are just going to ignore that guy and are just going to do what they want. And there's probably some percentage of plays on which runners already do what they want because they don't have time to look or they're going too fast to stop or they think they know better or whatever. So the impact would probably be minimized, especially once the team realized that they had

the worst third base coach in the business and just didn't want to make a change for whatever reason. But I could see that costing, I don't know, I mean, something in the order of wins, not just runs over the course of a season. Yeah, I agree. It's a little like pitch framing, you know, where the norm now is to be good and if you actually have a quite a bad pitch ramer it's going to look worse than ever but again this is third base coach effort if i worked for a team and the executive was like hey can you spend a few weeks researching base coaches i would again i would i think i would just quit yeah all right last question because you've got a chat to get to. Ryan wants to know our opinions on

clutchness. And he says his understanding of the theory of clutchness is that clutch is performing well in high leverage situations and is something that a player can be over the course of a game or a season or even potentially multiple seasons, but that it's not a skill that players can have and maintain over the course of an entire career. That is, if a player has a long streak of clutch performance, it is more of a string of luck than it is skill attributable to the player. And he wants to know, assuming that that's generally correct, how long would a player have to maintain one of these clutch streaks for you to question this theory and be willing to say that the player simply has the clutch gene or doesn't?

And the reason that he asks is because Dansby Swanson has been a very divisive player among the Braves fan base, he says, not just because of his defense, but he's been statistically clutch as a hitter in each of the last two seasons. In 2016 and 17, he has a WRC plus of 45 and 60, respectively. In low leverage situations, In high leverage situations, he's at 134 and 110. Maybe he meant 2017 and 18. I don't know. But he says that's a big swing, especially when you consider that the average player hits worse in high leverage situations than low ones, probably having to do with dominant relievers for high leverage at bats. So is he clutch enough over his two seasons or whatever to say that he's clutch

or how long would he need to keep doing this for someone to say that he is actually clutch no no i don't think that he's quite no okay so looking over the past three calendar years is a fangraphs thing the the leader in their version of clutch is yonder alonzo i guess why not that's not interesting freddie galvis second to melky cabrera is third that's weird and then if you uh if you flip it around if you look at the the bottom of the list then the least clutch player in baseball by a considerable margin has been this is always a popular one chris bryant has been the least clutch player in baseball least clutch hitter in baseball over the past three years, followed by Edwin Encarnacion, Giancarlo San, Brian Dozer, Corey Dickerson, and one Mike Trout.

I think that I haven't examined it. I think there is actually a somewhat close relationship between if the better the hitter you are, for some reason, it seems to show that you have a worse clutch. And maybe that's just because the better hitter you are, the closer attention teams are paying to you. Maybe they're bringing in their best reliever to face you. You know, people probably aren't bringing their best reliever to face Freddie Galvis in a clutch situation. It's just less important.

But if I can just check something real quick, one of the most clutch hitters by this measure over the past three years has been Adrian Beltre. Adrian Beltre, over his career, has been one of the least clutch hitters of all time at least on record so this is just an example of even though adrian beltré had years and years and years of record suggesting he was not that clutch he's just kind of lately turned it around i don't think anything has changed about adrian beltré's persona it's just a thing that happened i think there there are certain qualities as a hitter that could make you more vulnerable maybe it's a you have a big platoon split or maybe we've we've demonstrated that there's some sort of general relationship

between making contact and and being clutch i think that the more you strike out the more you can be exposed by really good relievers but it would take me so many years to believe in some sort of clutch skill because i've i just the the arguments for why it would exist psychologically are just unconvincing to me completely well we've both written about josh reddick right and his track record of not being clutch because he is extreme he is now on his 10th consecutive season of having a negative clutch score, according to Fangraphs. Just barely. He is as close to even as he's been since his rookie season. He's just barely under zero right now, but he is currently in line to extend his streak to 10 seasons without ever being clutch.

And yet, even with Josh Reddick, i don't know that i'm necessarily willing to say that he is actually unclutched because it just takes a really long time for that sort of thing to be meaningful and you know like a career length basically like too long to do anything about it like once it becomes statistically reliable at all the the player's ready to retire. Like it takes that long, according to the analysis that I've seen. So Densby Swanson is nowhere near the point where you would say that he is clutch or unclutch or whatever. It's just not enough time.

But that doesn't mean that there aren't players who are a bit more clutch than other players, even in the big leagues, even though you figure that the really unclutched guys get filtered out as they climb the minor league ladder. There are probably some guys who are slightly better than other guys, and maybe in the future there will be heart rate monitors or something that you'll be able to tell in real time some sort of physiological response that would predict that performance. But as of now, we are just sort of stuck with maybe being able to look at an entire career and say, oh, well, he was a little clutch. But there's really no useful way to apply that information that I'm aware of with what we have now.

If I could throw out there, just looking over the past 10 years, that's felt like a decent amount of time. Josh Reddick is a second worst clutch score for all qualified hitters in baseball, and the worst, John Carlos Stanton, by about a win over more played appearances, but just something to keep an eye on. John Carlos Stanton having a very unclutched season again, and for his career in high leverage situations, he's got a WRC plus of 115 versus 145 in other situations.

What does it mean? I don't know. That's what we just talked about. Yeah. Well, you've just given Yankees fans another reason to boo when he strikes out in a high leverage situation. All right. You've got to go do a chat and I'm going to go read Carson Sestouli's post about who would be the home run leader in space.

Subhead. It's not important Yeah Alright couple last minute notes here Meant to mention this earlier Jeff and I on yesterday's episode Talked about whether the laces of a glove Are part of a tag

So if the laces touch you are you out We were talking about this because there was a close play That was reviewed and it looked like Maybe the laces were touching the guy. Well, we were not aware that a couple of years ago, this changed for the 2016 season as a result of replay review. And it actually mattering whether the laces come into contact with the runner. MLB changed the rules so that glove laces are no longer good enough for a tag. So our hypothetical about whether you could have really long whip length laces on your glove and just tag people from afar, no, you cannot do that.

Then the other thing, today's Astadio update. I was going to tell you about a play where Williams Astadio and Giancarlo Stanton had a sort of jump ball, and I will link to this play because it's kind of cool. It's from earlier this week. Astadio is catching, Stanton's at the plate, Stanton fouls the ball into the ground, it bounces up. And then giant Giancarlo Stanton, not so giant, at least vertically, Williams-Astadio are just standing there waiting for the ball to come down. And you can probably guess who gets the ball. Stanton reaches up and grabs it. Astadio stands there looking a little miffed. Paul Molitor is laughing in the Twins dugout. Twins pitcher is laughing too. I will link to the video. It's kind of cute.

But it has since been surpassed by an even better Williams-Estadillo video. And this is from Wednesday. Another Twins-Yankees game. Williams-Estadillo singled. And then he came around to score on a double from first. And it's just the most beautiful highlight. Just Williams motoring around the base paths. This absolute unit making great time.

His helmet flies off, his hair is blowing behind him, flawless flow. It's great in gif form, it's great in still image form. One of the greatest gifs of the season. I will definitely link to it. You have to see this play. This is one for two tonight, and the pitch, a swing and a line drive, left center field, deep in the gap, that ball drifting, Hicks dives, and misses the ball. Austin Neal loses the helmet and the prettiest hair in baseball is heading home. He's going to score three nothing twins. We have loved Williams for a while, but he has totally surpassed our expectations this season, both from a performance perspective and from a spectator perspective.

You can, of course, support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already done so. Dino Champlone, Virgil O'Neill, Matthew Eli, Patrick Eschenfeldt, and Greg Danchik. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to effectively wild on itunes and many other podcast platforms you can replenish our mailbag email me and jeff at podcast at fangraphs.com or message us through the patreon messaging system if you're in the patreon supporters

club thanks to dylan higgins for his editing assistance and as always we will be back with our third episode of the week very soon. Talk to you then. Will it be your next episode? I guess so. Those that have doubt, wanted a head clout. What they mad about must be a cash route. MC Swiss, they stand from their last spout. And I bet soon as they hear this, they spaz out. They show me love when I come through.

Know any club that I come to. I hear that microphone check one, two And they know what I wanna do Flow forever They show me love when I come through Yo, any club that I come to I hear that microphone check one, two And they know what I wanna do

Flow forever