Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1314: What We Missed in 2018 (NL Edition)

Episode Date: December 27, 2018

In the second of two themed episodes, Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan review one aspect of each National League team’s year that they overlooked on earlier episodes, touching on stories involving the Baby Braves, Charlie Culberson, and Dansby Swanson, Brent Suter vs. Corey Kluber, Jack Flaherty vs. Walker Buehler, Willson Contreras‘s wedding, Archie Bradley, Yasiel […]

I never let him go, baby don't expect me to I can't stop when my whole world's exploding Look in the mirror and see the heat of something new Why don't we do it, just do it once again Just go for it Just go for it a second time Just go for the second time. Just go for it. Hello and welcome to episode 1314 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. Hey Ben. How was your Christmas? Good. How was yours? Not bad. I've been traveling a bunch, and right now, I apologize if there's any background noise. That is the noise of the party that is going on that I just removed myself from to creep up to the attic to record a baseball podcast the day after Christmas. We were going through some old family photo albums. I'm down here with my fiancée. We're at my parents' house in California.

And in one of the photo albums, I grew up for a few years in New Orleans. And there was a picture of me sitting alone in a parked car because Mardi Gras was too loud and I didn't want to go to it. Yeah. I mean, that's like I can hear the merrymaking going on downstairs. And part of me feels like I should be there. And part of me feels like, hey, this is giving me an excuse not to be there. So that's... This is introvert time, even though I guess this is also being extroverted. Yeah, right. We are performing in a sense here. So we last time did a quick spin through the American League. We picked out one thing that we had not talked about about every American League team this year, and we rectified

that oversight. So this is part two. This is the National League. So we're going to go through every National League team, and we have solicited some suggestions from the listeners of things that we didn't talk about and should talk about. So here we go. Alphabetical order again, starting with the Atlanta Braves. And I think this one was suggested by Luke, and he said we should talk about the baby Braves, the fact that the Braves were extremely young, or at least some Braves were extremely young, which people probably know that it was a fairly young team, except for a few veterans here and there, like Brandon McCarthy, who we had on recently. But they had a bunch of extraordinarily

young guys. So I am quoting here from a Richard Justice article at MLB.com from August. He wrote, they're the fifth team in 30 years to have multiple position players, 21 or younger, play at least 70 games. That was, of course, Ronald Acuna and Ozzie Albies. They're the second team in the live ball era to have four pitchers, 21 or younger, make starts. Five of MLB's six youngest players, at least as of late August in 2018, were Braves, including three 20-year-old pitchers who combined to make seven starts. That's Bryce Wilson, Colby Allard, and Mike Soroka. So they had a lot of extremely young guys. And Albies had played at that point, Albies and Acuna. I think they both ended up playing 100 games, right?

Acuna got there. And that made the Braves the third team in the last 30 years to have multiple position players that young on the field for that many games. So they were really young. They were also good, which is impressive because this article also mentions that the last team to have four 21 or younger pitchers and two position players that age play 50 games

were the 1952 Pirates. That's the year before Johnny O'Brien and Eddie O'Brien showed up. And that was one of the worst teams of all time, which is impressive that the Braves won their division while doing this. Yeah, you would expect there to be some sort of inverse correlation, inverse relationship here, where you have teams that are quite bad, and so they therefore think, well, let's just bring up the kids, I guess, see how we do in the second half.

But there was a sense that before this past season began, we would talk about whether the Braves should go get a third baseman or something. And the conversation was, well, you know, it's not the Braves' time. It's still a little too early, you know? And then they arrived early. They're not the first team to do so, but this is the team that clearly had waves of talent, one of the top farm systems in baseball. Some would say the top farm system in baseball coming into the year.

And they decided, well, let's just put them in the majors and and let that happen not all of them of course but a lot of young pitchers and of course Acuna and Albies along with Freeman sort of carried the offense and Marquecos was in there too I guess the elder statesman but nevertheless there is a little bit of a sense of looking staring into the baseball future here where of course the Braves were very young they had some very young players but in theory as players become more specialized and just better the younger that they will be up in the majors sooner you can only mess with service time for so long until a player like Ronald Cooney is just ready to come up so there's a limit it's not like we're in 20 years we're going to have major league baseball where everybody is a teenager because that's not going to happen but i'd feel like we're going to see a

lot more kids and uh the one soto hakuna and and albies mold and so in that sense the braves are a trendsetter or at least a trend fitter yeah it's definitely a younger person's game these days i have something about that in my book about how the average debut age actually hasn't fallen, which you would think it would have. And I go into a whole thing about why that is, so I will not get into that here. But certainly the production is more concentrated among young players these days than it has been for quite a while. I wanted to mention that this was almost my Braves topic but didn't quite qualify. Just the Swanberson, are you aware of the Swanberson? It was Charlie Culberson and Dansby Swanson. Culberson was backing up Swanson, although I

guess he ended up being even better probably than Swanson was, but they look exactly the same. And so they just eventually got the name Swanberson and there are mashups of like their two faces, like half of Culberson's face and half of Swanson's face and you can barely tell that it's two different faces kind of incredible and Charlie Culberson by the way was 21st in all of baseball I think in clutch this year he was extremely clutch he was just kind of the throw-in in that big trade with McCarthy and Kemp and kind of the salary dump and he ended up being the most productive player in that deal. I think he led the Braves in clutch, but most interesting of all,

he just looked exactly like Dansby Swanson. It's kind of low key. People have joked about how like Brian McCann and Evan Gaddis and a few other astros all kind of looked the same, but definitely low key that Swanson Culbertson was above loki the swantham culbertson was above that it is amazing charlie culbertson having been that throw in just kind of a minor league journeyman utility guy and he wound up ranking above nick marcakis in win probability added he ranked well above ozzy albies above tyler flowers kurt suzuki he was behind only freeman camargo and hakuna on the team in win probability added so the Braves got their money's worth with a player who was just kind of like you said the throw-in that

nobody thought anything of at the time of the deal yep Milwaukee Brewers so this one a tough to come up with a Brewers topic because we talked about them a ton this year but I think a couple people pointed this out it is notable I think that Brewers, we all know that they had that home run in the playoffs where Woodruff hit the home run off Clayton Kershaw in game one of the NLCS, which was incredible and one of the best, most memorable moments of the playoffs. That was not the first time that a Brewers pitcher had homered off of an ace that happened with Brent Suter. Brent Suter actually homered off of Corey Kluber. And that's pretty impressive. Did Brent Suter, I feel like Brent Suter also maybe got a hit in the playoffs too in that series. The Brewers had some surprising

hitting. Well, Brent Suter had Tommy John surgery, so he probably didn't hit a home run. It was not Suter that I was thinking of. Yeah, no, I don't know who I was thinking of. But Brent Suter, actually, he hit decently well. I guess when you hit a home run, very few pitchers actually do that. So one home run can prop up your batting line. But 32 plate appearances. He managed a 669 OPS.

Not terrible. He slugged 346 in large part thanks to that home run. He also did have a double, but I would guess that that was probably the only home run that Corey Kluber allowed to a pitcher this year, although he's obviously not facing pitchers all that often. I'm looking at Brent Suter, who's already just interesting because he throws so slow, but he's good, but he had Tommy John surgery. There's a whole lesson in there about how hard you can throw, but still hurt your elbow. But also Brent Suter for his career, he's batt but he had tommy john surgery there's a whole lesson in there about how hard you can throw but still hurt your elbow but also brent suiter for his career he's batted 55 times

and i haven't done any research here but so the the league average player the league average player swings at the first pitch 29 is about the league average first pitch swing rate that's not in the zone that's just overall so about 29 first pitch swing rate. The league leader is usually, I don't know, let's call him like Carlos Gomez, who's around 45%. Anyway, Brent Suter, again, he's only batted 55 times, but he's gone after the first pitch 60% of the time. And his home run off of Corey Kluber was at the first pitch. He was leading off an inning. So if you're Kluber, you go up there on the mound, you figure I'm facing Brent Suter. He's leading off.

I'm just going to put something over the plate. And Suter got it. He got it good. I think one of the downsides of pitchers hitting home runs is that it makes fans think, oh, actually, I could do this. When what it should remind you of is that all baseball players are extraordinary at all things in baseball. Even the ones who suck at it are still far, far better than you. Unless you are a baseball player listening to this, in which case you are extraordinary.

Yeah, I think it was maybe Wade Miley that I was thinking of because he had two hits in the NLCS. So Brewers pitchers were having a good series at the plate. All right, next team. This suggestion comes from Chris. There were a couple of pitchers duels down the stretch between Jack Flaherty and Walker Buehler. So this is the Cardinals topic here. We will have a separate Dodgers topic,

but Jack Flaherty, I think, is a pitcher we probably just didn't talk about much this year and could stand to talk about for a few minutes more. But on August 22nd and September 14th, Flaherty and Buehler matched up against each other both times, and they combined to throw 27 innings and allow two earned runs. And those guys were obviously the top two pitchers in the NL Rookie of the Year voting. They were third and fifth overall. And that was, I think, a really exciting matchup. We had a question from a Patreon listener recently who was asking us if you could go back and watch some regular season games.

What would be some good regular season games to tide you over, get you through the winter? And I didn't have that many immediate suggestions because all the games just blend together in my mind. But if you did want to go back and watch some good pitching duels, I think Flaherty maybe got the best of one of them and Buehler got the best of the other. But those are two of the most exciting pitchers in the National League. And they faced off twice and they pitched really well when every game mattered because both of those teams were very much in the playoff race and they were scrapping for every win at that point. So Buehler, we've talked about plenty. Everyone knows about Buehler, but Flaherty was much more under the

radar. It's amazing because in the National League Rookie of the Year voting, from a very early point in time, it was just Acuna and Soto. That's all that anybody talked about. And then, of course, with his second half, which was clearly ronald lacuna won almost unanimously he got 27 to 30 first place votes he got 27 of the votes soto got two walker buehler got one but as much as you'd think maybe based on the conclusion that it was just all lacuna and soto and they were they were killing it like walker buehler jack flaherty were great they were extremely good jack flaherty threw 151 innings and he struck out 182 batters. He, by some measures, had better peripherals than Walker Buehler, who came in third. And Walker Buehler was, if anything, treated as the Dodgers' ace come playoff time. Their ace! Like, he was their

stopper in the playoffs. And then Harrison Bader was also a rookie. Anyway, this is separating ourselves from the point, but Buehler and Flaherty were so good, and yet they were all but forgotten and ignored when it came time for the Rookie of the Year. Everything was just separating ourselves from the point but Buehler and Flaherty were so good and yet they were all but forgotten and ignored when it came time for the rookie of the year everything was just assumed to be Acuna and Soto and while they were very good this is using baseball reference war because that's the the table I'm looking at Ronald Acuna finished at 4.1 Juan Soto finished at 3.0 and Walker Buehler finished at 3.5 so just right there like walker buehler is right there with the top two and then jack flaherty of course deserved probably better results than he wound up

with anyway two very very good rookies but because of the way that the rookie of the year voting usually goes people i think have the attention span to talk about two players at a time that's why in the american league it was all otani and then Yankees fans getting furious that Andujar didn't win, even though, if anything, Torres was better than Andujar was. So anyway, and then, of course, there's the Joey Wendell conversation. I don't know if we ever talked about Joey Wendell at all, but that could have been the Rays section of this podcast. But anyway, I've now gone away from Buehler and Flaherty. They were good. All right.

Chicago Cubs. This one I thought would be particularly relevant to you right now. Wilson Contreras, as Matt, listener Matt, told us, had to cancel and reschedule his wedding twice because of the terrible April weather. As you will recall, this was a record April for rainouts. It was truly terrible weather. And the Cubs were one of the teams that suffered and had to take a couple supposed-to-be-off days to make up games that had been postponed. And Wilson Contreras evidently was supposed to get married on the first of those days and then postpone to the second of those days and then had to postpone to a third day.

So he got married, I guess this was the first week of May is when he ended up doing it. And he hadn't told everyone, which I guess is nice of him. He's a good clubhouse guy. He wasn't walking around whining about his wedding getting canceled twice because of the weather. And his teammates and Joe Madden and everyone, I think, were impressed that he had just silently borne that burden and his fiance and wife probably bore the brunt of it. So as someone who is currently planning a wedding yourself, I can imagine that you would sympathize with poor Wilson Contreras, although why would you schedule your wedding for-season, I guess, if you're a baseball player? Yeah, that's a little like man bitten by a pet snake kind of headline where I don't want to assume that.

I don't know a lot of the backstory here. I'm sure Wilson Contreras and his fiance had reasons for selecting the dates that they did. But I feel like if you have one day off of work already, the circumstances are not such that you think this is the time. I got to just hurry in, put a suit on, get the vows done and said, sign the document and then go back to work the next day. That's not very romantic. Now, I know baseball players have such constricted schedules that maybe they didn't want to wait another seven months or maybe they didn't want to move it up by a few months. But if you are in baseball, I guess this is one of the complications. But certainly, at least, at least plan for a summer off day because it's April. This was an unusually bad April, but it's April.

If any month is going to have bad weather, it's going to be that one. Anyway, congratulations to Wilson Contreras and his wife on handling, in a sense, three wedding preps, even if two of them were truncated. That's a lot of stress. I wonder if you could have your version of heaven where you get every question answered. It would be interesting to know with infinite repetitions what Wilson Contreras' numbers look like in the intermediate period of time between when he thought he would be getting

married and when he did get married, and then after that that because i would like to know the percentage of performance increase or decrease as a consequence yeah and i don't know what his wedding was i mean for all i know they just went down to city hall or something so if that's what they were planning to do then it's not as much of a production but if this was like a hundreds of people showing up and they had to reschedule twice then that is a problem so that really kind of changes how terrible this was like hundreds of people showing up and they had to reschedule twice, then that is a problem. So that really kind of changes how terrible this was for him. Maybe the fact that he didn't make that big deal of it. I mean, I don't know.

No one really takes like wedding leave, right? I mean, people take paternity leave. People take bereavement leave. People don't tend to take like nuptials leave because you can choose when you get married. But Wilson Contreras could not, at least for a few weeks. All right. Next one, Arizona Diamondbacks. This is a topic that probably like more people emailed and tweeted us about than anything else that we didn't talk about this year.

It's Archie Bradley pooping himself. It's Archie Bradley pooping himself. Now, we didn't talk about this, I think, largely because Meg Rowley was just all over this was warming up to go in a game. I'm quoting here, I knew I had the next hitter. I knew he was on deck. The at-bat was kind of taking a little bit. As a bullpen guy in these big situations, I call them nervous peas where I don't have to pee a lot, but I know I have to pee before I go in the game. I can't believe I'm telling you this. So it's a two-two count and I'm like, man, I have to pee. I have to go pee. So I run in our bathroom real quick. I'm ready to go. I'm trying to pee. And I actually expletive my pants. Like right before I'm about to go in the game, I poot my pants. I'm like, oh my gosh, I know I'm a pitch away from going in the game. So I'm scrambling to clean myself up. I get it cleaned up the best I can, button my pants up,

and our bullpen coach, Mike Fetters, makes it even better that Mike Fetters is involved in the story, says, hey, you're in the game. So I'm jogging into the game to pitch with poop in my pants, essentially. And he said it was the most uncomfortable he has ever been on the mound. And Meg did a whole investigation to try to figure out when exactly this occurred it's interesting from the standpoint that from our standpoint of course this being a baseball podcast that deals with the news we we want to talk about the things that are important but at

this moment in time this came to light because of another podcast i'm not going to say rival podcast but just another baseball podcast so it wasn't't our story. And also because Meg did such a good job, unless we were to have Meg come on the podcast to talk about Archie Bradley pooping himself secondhand. I think I remember at the time thinking it would be weird to essentially just like do what another podcast did, except with an author instead of Archie Bradley himself. So I,

at least at that point I made a conscious decision to just kind of steer us away from it. But it clearly was a missed opportunity to talk about at least one baseball player having pooped himself and being open about it. And you figure, what percentage of baseball players would have to do this before you would average one person going public with it?

It's like when you see one ant in the kitchen. There's clearly a lot more ants in the wall so just kind of whatever the symptoms were the awkward shuffle just like watch Archie Bradley in those video clips go back and read Meg's article and then next year when it comes to be baseball time just kind of examine how the players are moving around and you can start to conclude maybe not like conclusively but you could start to infer, I think maybe this guy might have pooped himself before he came into the baseball game. Yeah. And I think there was a Deadspin investigation of this too. Both Deadspin and Meg concluded that it was May 5th. May 5th fit all the hallmarks of the outing that Archie Bradley was describing here. And Archie Bradley,

while pitching with some amount of poop in his pants, he worked an inning and a third of solid pitching, didn't give up a run, didn't give up a hit. So it didn't really affect him. And that's something we always marvel about baseball players. They're puking on the mound, they're puking in the dugout between innings, and somehow they're pitching well and they're just doing all these things that most of us would not be able to get out of bed and they're out there getting out major league hitters and you would expect that having poop in your pants might affect your mechanics. I don't know. I've never really experienced this firsthand, but obviously an uncomfortable situation and he managed to transcend it. I would hope that if you pooped yourself, you would get out of bed.

Yeah, I would hope so too. All right, next one. This is the Dodgers topic here. This was suggested by Timothy. And this one, I mean, I talked with Zach Krim about Yasiel Puig being traded away from the Dodgers to Cincinnati last week. And it's strange not to have Puig on the Dodgers. Cincinnati last week, and it's strange not to have Puig on the Dodgers, but the upside here for Yasiel Puig is that he was burglarized four times over the last, like, 18 months in Los Angeles, and I would have to hope that the burglars will not follow him to Cincinnati or that he will be in a safer neighborhood or will take some precautions. I mean, I don't know how much he lost in these burglaries. So I don't know if he lost anything priceless and that meant a lot to him or not.

But the fact that he was burglarized four times in a very short span, I don't know how this happens. Like you would have to assume that this was not random, that he was targeted. And in fact, in one of these times, I know he was burglarized, I think the first time during game seven of the World Series in November 2017, when you could assume that Yasiel Puig was not home at that time. Very smart. Then I think it happened again in September. It happened again in, I think, at least once in September. It just kept happening four times.

And he's not like in a super elite rich person neighborhood as far as I understand it. He's in the San Fernando Valley. He wasn't like in a gated community or something with security, but it wasn't like a bad neighborhood. So I don't know if this was like an inside job or people who knew puig or what but four times in a short span of time that is uh that's a lot the first burglary came at previous residence in sherman oaks california during march of 2017 when he was at spring training about 170 000 worth of jewelry was stolen on that occasion then his home was burglarized during game seven of the World Series in November. He was also robbed twice in September of this year.

So yeah, not a whole lot is known about those other burglaries, but that's a lot of bad luck. I don't remember. Did I recount the story on this podcast of when I was robbed while upstairs? I don't think you did. Did that not come up? No, you told me about it, but not everyone else. Maybe I wasn't supposed to because it makes me look like an asshole, but anyway.

Last year, I worked from home and in the old place where we lived, I was on the second story and I would work in an office with the door open. And with the door open, the door is at the top of the stairs, then down the stairs. That led right to the front door of the townhouse. not a whole lot of opportunity for things to be going on downstairs without my knowledge we had some creaky floorboards it was an old building but i

was also upstairs and you know i have have some morning coffee so i need to need to do my business after that and i'm just sitting in the restroom this is around nine o'clock in the morning on a weekday my fiancee by this point has already left she's biked to work by this point. And so I am just in the bathroom. And because I was home alone, I just leave the door open. You know, I like to explore the space, kind of feel like I have more room than I actually have. Why close the door? What kind of society are we living in when we're home alone? So I'm up there and the door is open. And, you know, I'm in a situation where I can't necessarily just rush to the next room if I have to, but I'm up there and I hear a door slam

downstairs. And I think, oh, what an interesting window pattern must have been created in the house. Maybe my fiance didn't close the door all the way and then it blew open and then blew shut. It happens sometimes when you have windows open, you know how houses are. So I don't really. I've never lived in one. Okay. Well, this is what houses are like sometimes. Wind patterns develop inside.

Incidentally, I was in the bathroom in the airport the other day in Portland, and it was windy. It wasn't like air conditioning. There was wind. It was a really weird sensation. Anyway, I'm upstairs, and I hear a door slam. I think, oh, that's weird. I'll go check it out in 30 seconds when I'm done up here. So 30 seconds later, I go downstairs and I see that the front door is closed.

That's the door I heard slam. But the back door is open. And I think, well, that's curious. And I noticed that there was a small pile. I don't know how to say pile of cash without sounding like I'm flaunting my wealth. But if it makes any difference, it's wealth i no longer possess there had been a small pile of cash because the people had paid me back for gas money for this whole thing so i had you know probably about a hundred dollars in cash that was sitting on a liquor cabinet and it was gone and i noticed it immediately but everything else was fine My fiance's expensive camera equipment was just sitting there out.

There was all of our like hiking and expensive trekking and mountaineering stuff because we had recently returned from a trip was just kind of out. And my wallet was still sitting there on top of the liquor cabinet, but the money was gone. So somebody, in short, had entered the house while i was in the house and successfully robbed us without being sighted and i was never more than like 15 feet away from where this person was so i don't know if this person had a lucky guess that like that no one was gonna know or maybe they thought i wasn't home i don't know how they knew the door was open but yeah he just came right in took money and left and and that was it and so i i did call the police because that's what you're supposed to do and submit an officer came over sometime later and he was like i told the officer like look i

didn't get any sort of description this is in a neighborhood where there can be a lot of houseless people etc drug users and it was just a quick score but after you know the officer takes a statement whatever i know that there's nothing i can do i'm not like demanding and get the money back whatever like merry christmas to that person but after after a little i don't know interview was over the i just i returned to to my business i i went to work and i looked out the back window and i swear for like the next hour and a half the officer was just behind her building just like looking for clues just like like poking in bushes and like looking like craning his neck and it's like is he just trying not to go back to work or like what is he looking for there are no clues to be found but i guess so or very bad police work for whoever

needed him next anyway there was no resolution nobody no good Samaritan ever returned with my wad of gas money. But that was the story. If that had happened twice or three times, perhaps, I mean, maybe even after the first time, did you take precautions? Did you, for instance, lock your door after that? Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I, I mean, Puig has three burglaries and then another one happens. You would think at some point

Like he's making good money You could get some cameras Or a fence or a security person I mean I don't know what he did or didn't do But you just think Maybe once you'd figure Oh it's just a random thing it won't happen again But twice, three times

Seems like, I don't know, move I guess he did move and that didn't help But now he's moved to Cincinnati So maybe in Cincinnati three times? It seems like, I don't know, move. I guess he did move and that didn't help. But now he's moved to Cincinnati. So maybe in Cincinnati he'll be safe. I hope so. All right. San Francisco Giants. So Steven wanted us to talk about the season that Derek Rodriguez had. Derek Rodriguez is, of course, the son of Pudge Rodriguez Rodriguez and he is newly a pitcher fairly newly a pitcher right he was converted from a position what a few years ago I think and

so he kind of came out of nowhere and he's what 26 is that right in that region and he had at least superficially a very impressive season and I guess the question is how real that season is and whether it can be sustained,

because it's pretty cool if a son of a Hall of Famer is also good and plays a different position. I mean, Pudge had a great arm as well, but Dirk Rodriguez pitched 118 in the third innings. He made 19 starts, 21 games, and he had a 2.81 era which is very impressive even in san francisco but there are some i guess quibbles you can have with the rest of his stat line yeah right if you if you just want to take the cold analytical view of this you look at derrick rodriguez and say okay he had an area minus of 72 which is amazing and he had an ERA minus of 72, which is amazing. And he had an XFIT minus of 112, which is a lot worse.

That is 40 points worse. And so you can just say, well, you know, he didn't strike out that many batters. He didn't walk a very small number of batters. He got, it seems, very lucky with his home runs and all that stuff. And you conclude, well, looks like this was a fluky low ERA, and we're not going to hear any more of it. But then you kind of miss the entire story of here's a guy who's the son of a Hall of Famer, and he's also only been pitching for like five years, and he has real stuff.

He throws his fastball into the 90s, and he has five pitches, all of which he throws at least once every nine pitches. And, you know, you look at his numbers, and he throws enough strikes. He gets swings out of the zone. He doesn't allow a ton of contact, and all the ingredients are there, but you have to sort of force yourself to understand that this goes beyond just the numbers, because of course the ERA is a fluke, but it's still such a neat story

that you can have a guy come up with his pedigree and then do what he did to post one of the lowest ERAs in Major League Baseball for anyone who threw as many innings as he did. But I remember having watched enough of the Mariners in just god-awful seasons that you look for any kind of bright spot, which is not to say that Derek Rodriguez isn't a real bright spot, but I think it was 2008 with the Mariners,

just one of the worst seasons you can imagine. And I remember down the stretch thinking, well, the season's been bad, but at least as the silver lining, we have Roy Corcoran. Do you remember Roy Corcoran and what that was about? I know the name because I have ancestors named Corcoran, but that's probably the only reason. In 2008, Roy Corcoran would have been 28 years old and he pitched for the Mariners, and he threw 72.2 innings. He had a low three-year ERA. And the thing about Roy Corcoran that I remember liking back then is he got like 70% ground

balls. And this is like early Sabermetrics. Everybody loved ground balls because ground balls can't turn into home runs, all that stuff. Roy Corcoran had 39 strikeouts in 72 innings, 39 strikeouts, and 36 walks. He was bad. The next season, his ERA doubled, and he never pitched in the majors again. But in 2008, I thought, this season was so bad, but at least Roy Corcoran was there,

and he's going to be a part of the core moving forward. So at least the Giants season had something better than Roy Corcoran in 2008. He had a lovely accent. Roy Corcoran did. Being from, I believe, the Deep South? I should, you know, if I cared more, I would confirm that. But in any case, Derek Rodriguez, more interesting than Roy Corcoran, at least as a baseball player.

Also wanted to give a quick salute to Gorky Hernandez of the San Francisco Giants, who he's an outfielder. He had zero home runs in 2017 in 348 plate appearances. I believe he had the most plate appearances of any homer-less player. And in 2018, he hit 15 homers, which for the Giants is a lot. He actually trailed Evan Longoria by one for the team lead. Gorky Cernan, as I just happened to be sorting a leaderboard the other day for the book, looking at increases from 2017 to 2018 in barrels per batted ball event, that is basically just balls that are hit really hard

per batted ball event, and the increase from 2017 to 2018, it goes Mookie Betts, Xander Bogarts, event and the increase from 2017 to 2018, it goes Mookie Betts, Xander Bogarts, Gorky Hernandez, who is also in the top 20 in terms of, I think, hard hit rate increase over those years as well. I think he was hurt. I think he maybe had a hamate issue in 2017 and that just completely sapped his power. And this year it came all the way back, even more than it ever had before. And the Giants actually did out Homer the Marlins this year, so they were not last in Homers. I know the Marlins got rid of that home run sculpture, which sort of sucks, but they had already traded everyone who hit Homers anyway, so they never got to use it.

But something strange going on with the ball and with AT&T Park. Grant wrote about it in 2017. I think that AT&T Park is like the only place that's been immune to the home run rise. And it's not just the fact that the Giants don't have home run hitters. It's also the visiting players. There's just no home runs hit in that park. Anyway, Gorky Hernandez managed to hit some, so good for him. And his, I believe his career high in a home run total for a season previous to that, as

I look at it, was 10. Looks like he never hit more than 10 home runs combined in major minor leagues. And the funny thing about the past two years for Gorky Stornandis, he was a semi-regular player for the Giants. And again, he went from 0 to 15 home runs. And his weighted all-base average

went up by 4 points. He went from 288 to 292. And he was rewarded for his big breakout season with the giants for was he i don't remember if he was non-tendered but uh he was signed with the red socks a minor league contract in the middle of december so corkis hernandez not convincing to the rest of media league baseball yeah all right thanks to steven for suggesting derrick rodriguez and zach for suggesting corkis hernandez and also thanks to michelle for suggesting Derek Rodriguez and Zach for suggesting Gorky's Hernandez. And also thanks to Michelle for suggesting Archie Bradley pooping himself and to Timothy for burglaries of Puig. All right.

So the Marlins example here, this is from Patrick. And his comment suggested that this would be common knowledge, that we would all know this. Personally, I had no idea about this. So Wei and Chen's home road splits this year marlin starter way in chen yeah okay so he made 13 starts at home 13 starts on the road his home starts in miami 1.62 era quite good he struck out 8.5 per nine he He had a strikeout to walk ratio over three when he was on the road away from Miami. Also 13 starts, 9.27 ERA. And also worst peripherals as well. Just if you go by the whip too, he was a 0.94 whip. That's walks and hits over innings pitched at home and then 1.9 on the road. So this is really extreme. In fact,

it is almost the most extreme. So I searched for, I used the trusty play index here, I searched 1925 to 2018 requiring seasons of at least 120 innings pitched, and I looked for TOPS+, your old favorite, at home. So basically lower is good. Lower means that you were better relative to your overall line. So Wei and Chen had a 43 TOPS+, at home, and that is tied with Eddie Fisher in 1964 for the very with Eddie Fisher in 1964 for the very lowest TOPS+. So this was basically for a pitcher who threw 120 innings using that stat. This was the most extreme home road split in a single season ever. This was wild. Oh, my God.

I saw this on the sheet. So maybe this gives away a little bit. Not a ton of preparation goes into this particular podcast before we actually start to talk about whatever we're talking about. But I know there was something similar recently when Trevor Cahill signed with the Angels. So this season, Trevor Cahill pitched with the A's. He threw 63 in some innings at home and 46 innings on the road.

And he had an ERA at home of 1.84 and he had an era on the road of 6.41 that's a lot worse and i would see some tweets to the effective like oh the angel signed trevor cahill but wow look at that home road split what what is going to happen to trevor cahill when he gets away from oakland and what's amazing at least to me is that it's 2018 now and it doesn't matter. Like you don't think, at least from an analytical perspective, you don't think, if you look at someone's career, sure, then it matters. You look at JT Real Mudo for his career or Brandon Belt or something for his career. You look at players who've spent their whole life in a hitter or pitcher friendly environment, you think, okay, of course this matters but like a single year blip like this it's one it's like the perfect the perfect number trap where if you are broadcasting

a game you might actually be better off from an informational perspective you might be better off not saying anything than pointing it out because when you hear a split like that as someone who's just open to baseball numbers you think oh my god he must not be able to pitch away from home. And it doesn't mean that, but it is clearly just right there in the numbers. Wayne Chen, my goodness. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, 2017, he was hurt most of the year, but 2016, he pitched most of the year and he had a 5.49 ERA at home and a 4.48 ERA on the road.

This is not like something that is true of him every year, but I think when it gets to this level where it is literally the biggest split ever, I think you could say that's worth noting just as long as you're careful not to make it sound as if he is incapable of pitching away. But yeah, that is really something. Do you remember by chance, since we're talking about Wei and Chen, do you remember what contract he signed with the Marlins? I don't. I remember it was pretty big, right? But I don't remember the specifics. You want to take a guess? Oh man, was it like four years or so, roughly? Keep going. And gosh, I want to say like 50 million or something. Try on five years, $80 million. And I am virtually certain, allow me to confirm,

Wei Ying Chen turned down a qualifying offer, which means the Marlins also gave up draft pick compensation to get Wei Ying Chen, who's fine. When he pitched for the Orioles, he was fine. He was durable. That should tell you something about durability. And then he went to the Orioles, he was fine. He was durable. That should tell you something about durability. And then he went to the Marlins and, you know, his first season,

he looked like Dwayne Jen, but with the worst defense behind him. So he had the same peripherals as ever, but a few more balls found the ground. He didn't get so many outs with runners on base. Five years, $80 million. And we wonder why teams aren't spending as much as they used to in the free agent market. I know. That's the thing. You look back at contracts that were signed just a few years ago. They're still active contracts. And you think, that happened?

How did that happen? And I mean, that's how we ended up in this situation. It never really made sense. A lot of those contracts never really made sense. But that was just the way that business was done in baseball for decades and decades because teams just weren't conscious of the aging curve and they weren't as good at developing their own players. And it was just, you know, they didn't realize they were paying for past performance. Now, all of a sudden they've realized that and they're not handing out those contracts.

And that is bad news for the players who now have to figure out how to get paid earlier in their careers. But yeah, you look at those contracts just from a few years ago and it's like a different game entirely. We may have mentioned his name once for being good, but we really never got into it. He was, of course, very overshadowed, as he should have been, by Jacob deGrom, who was the best pitcher in baseball. But Zach Wheeler, in the second half, ranked 11th among all pitchers in Fangraph's War. He was really fantastic. 11 starts, 75 innings, and a 1.68 ERA. That is a Jacob deGromian ERA in the second half. And I don't know exactly when it started because like at the beginning of the year, Wheeler was almost written off. He was like an afterthought. He was initially supposed to be like one of the young homegrown Mets pitchers who were just going to fill the rotation with aces, but then

he got hurt a bunch and then suddenly no one was really expecting great things out of zach wheeler anymore and then he started delivering great things yeah you kind of forget like you remember back in the day there was de graham and there was syndergaard and and there was wheeler and there was matts and i guess there were probably others as well there was the whole just salman was supposed to be a thing because he threw harder at one time and you know sethugo was, I guess he became more stat cast interesting more recently. But Wheeler was like the big get. They got him for a color spell run.

And then you just, like you said, people practice so little impatience with young pitchers who, I guess it's kind of get worse, right? Because if you have a young pitcher who has good stuff, but he hasn't quite gotten good yet, then fans are patient with those guys forever. But when a pitcher is useful and then kind of declines or steps back a little bit, then you just think, well, okay, we're moving on to the next thing. But Zach Wheeler in the second half, it wasn't just ERA.

He had a 2-5-3 FIP. He caught his walk rate almost in half from the first half of the season. He just started throwing a lot more strikes and it's it's fun and it's it's a good reminder that if you're the Mets and I think Brody Van Wagenen understands this they're just not as far away as it seems like they are just based on all the injuries and and the weird roster building and just the uh the chaos of being the Mets I mean they do have, bottom five management in all of Major League Baseball. We know that for a fact. But, like, looking at the Mets, they are good.

There's a lot of talent on the roster, even without the first half or first three quarters of the season of UNSS. But as you look at Wheeler and this past season, it looks like he just stopped throwing his sinker. He was just all four seam and slider curveball and splitter and it worked great he started throwing a lot of strikes so that's really encouraging the Mets are they're not far they're just not far all right Washington Nationals the suggestion comes

from Mark and this is one I didn't remember at all and which is funny and sort of sad in retrospect so this is a story from spring training, late February. Dave Martinez, rookie manager of the Nationals, he brought in camels to Nationals camp in Florida as a symbolic thing, like they're going to get over the hump, get it? So we're bringing camels to spring training. It's like one of those Joe Madden style, like bring animals to the clubhouse and everyone will relax and then we'll be better at baseball. And that was the idea here. And I think it was a trio, a trio of camels. And ESPN said four-legged visual aids to help players launch a journey aimed at getting over the franchise's playoff hump. And there's some stories from coaches in here and players and talking

about, oh, it was so fun. And it's great to have the camp loose. And this was such a clever idea. And we all bonded over it. And well, it didn't work. It didn't even get them to the hump. They were not even up to the hump this year. They didn't have to worry about getting over it because they fell well short of the playoffs at all. There's a Ryan Zimmerman quote in here. I don't know if it's so much as embrace it, but just not worry about it because so much has been made about it. First baseman Ryan Zimmerman said, it's fair for people to write about it, but making the playoffs every year, winning divisions every year to me is already over the hump. used to lose 90 games every year people forget that and then of course the nationals didn't make the playoffs now when you you look at this in retrospect you can say okay we're we're gonna

get over the hump but what you what's another thing that you associate camels with kind of like drought like conditions like a desert and you think of course the championship drought etc so it's a it's a bad look in hindsight but i think whatever you do anything weird it ends up being a bad look in hindsight so i i would like to give dave martinez credit i think anything that you get to do with weird wild animals just expose people to other wildlife maybe it'll make them more conscious of who we share the planet with but meanwhile it's a bad look now yeah nationals didn't make the playoffs but maybe some nationals donated to wildlife conservation didn't make the playoffs but maybe some nationals donated to wildlife conservation or something i don't know maybe some good came out

of this somewhere but yeah the the team was having their daily circle of trust meeting on the turf infield and first base coach tim bogar and third base coach bob henley rode camels onto the field i thought it was a great idea said bogar henley repeatedly yelled hump day while atop a camel All right. Well, I doubt that will happen in 2019 National Spring Training. What animal should they bring this time? What can they have to get over the not making the playoffs hump? All right. Next one is the San Diego Padres. the playoff sump. All right, next one is the San Diego Padres, and this comes from Dan, who suggests that we talk about the fact that the Padres somehow had the fifth best bullpen in the past two decades based on Fangraff's War. Actually, we don't need to limit it to the past two decades.

They had the sixth best bullpen ever, or at least in the modern era, according to Fangraphs War, or they were tied with the 2017 Indians with 8.7 war. Now, granted, there are more innings going to bullpens in general these days, and so the number one bullpen of all time is the 2018 Yankees. And then after that, you get the 2003 Dodgers. That's the Eric Gagne Cy Young year. Then you get the 2017 Yankees. Then you get the 89 Blue Jays. Then you get the 2017 Indians. And then you get the 2018 Padres. And I would not have guessed this.

Now, the Padres had 635 bullpen innings, which sounds like a lot of bullpen innings, right? I think so. That's part of it. It's just bulk innings. They, you know, they had Brian Mitchell making starts for very brief periods of time and then they would call in relievers. So that is part of it.

But still, you have to be good in those innings to be the tied for fifth best bullpen of all time by Fangraph's War. So who was responsible for that? I mean, Brad Hand was there. Adam Simber was there. Those guys were traded middle of the year. But who else was contributing for that? I mean, Brad Hand was there. Adam Simber was there. Those guys were traded middle of the year.

But who else was contributing to this? What I love about the Padres, and I kind of noticed this during the year, of course, they had like the freaks, like Makita was in the bullpen. And, you know, that was hit or miss. But in the first half of the season, the Padres by Fangraff's war had the fourth most valuable bullpen

in baseball this year, the first half. And it was during the Alistair break, I believe, or right around there, that they traded Brad Hand and Adam Simber, two of their best, most valuable relievers. And after that, from the second half on, the Padres had by far the number one bullpen in baseball above the Astros, the Yankees, the A's, Brewers. It was just so, so good. And so if you look in the first half, the Padres' two most valuable relievers, I believe, were actually Craig Stammen and Kirby Yates.

And so, again, down the stretch, two of their most valuable relievers were Craig Stammen and Kirby Yates. But also in the second half, Jose Castillo came out of nowhere, and he was super good. Robert Stock was super good. Phil Maton, really good. Matt Strom, really good. This is just such a deep bullpen. I remember thinking during the second half of the season,

I noticed how good the Padres' bullpen was and how hard everybody threw. And I thought, you know, this just, it's not quite to where I want it to be for like an article because who cares about a bad team's bullpen in the second half, you know, because things are so volatile. But there was a time in the Padres' more recent, I know heyday where they just had this this way I'm looking I'm looking at for example at 2010 San Diego Padres and this team yeah I was gonna bring this up too like the the Bud Black late Kevin Towers years they just managed to find good relievers every year yeah this was the Padres in in 2010 had just going on down this list,

Heath Bell, Luke Gregerson, Edward Mejica, Mike Adams, Joe Thatcher, Tim Stauffer, Ryan Webb made an appearance, Ernesto Freire. Freire, by the way, that year had an ERA of 1.71. That bullpen was unbelievably good with not a very good starting rotation. I'm looking now for the bullpen final numbers. Thepen that year had an era of 281 now I know granted this is in the old alignment of of Petco Park before I I think I think there's in the old alignment of Petco Park before it was made a little more hitter friendly but they were just so good at finding and churning out effective relievers it was it was that time in San Diego where you would say oh any pitcher should go to San Diego and he'll be better as if

we don't understand park effects. But they really were extraordinary. And Mike Adams is actually maybe one of the shutdown relievers who we just kind of forget because his career was ruined by injuries. But for a stretch there, Mike Adams was absolutely sensational. He pitched 217 innings with the Padres back then. He had a 1-6-6 ERA. And then I think he wound up signing a contract with the Phillies that went off the rails because of injuries.

But anyway, the Padres and relievers, not just a thing from 10 years ago. It's happening again. And it's one of the reasons why the Padres might be in the mix for Corey Kluber, according to a rumor I saw the day after Christmas. Yeah, although you probably never want to base your decisions on how good your bullpen was last year, because who knows if it will continue to be that good. These things just kind of come out of nowhere. It's nice if it comes together when you're a winning team otherwise, and you already have your core in place when you're the 2018 Padres.

It's just sort of weird, and it doesn't really help you all that much. But that can be one of the most frustrating things for fans, just a bad bullpen. So in that sense, if you're going to have a bad baseball team, at least have a good bullpen. So when you do get a lead every now and then, you don't have to blow it. All right, Phillies. This comes from Todd. He wants us to talk about the enigmatic Jorge Alfaro. Alfaro, kind of a perplexing player. He kind of has a little bit of

Gary Sanchez disease in that he has a reputation for not being able to catch baseballs, but when he does catch them, he's good at framing and receiving them. And particularly this year, he actually worked on that very hard with Craig Driver, who is the Phillies' first-year catching coach. And he was, I think, other than Tony Walters, who is a converted infielder, he had the biggest year-to-year improvement in framing on a rate basis. So he got very good at framing. I think he had the fifth most framing runs saved this year, according to Baseball Perspectives. And then on the offensive side, he hits the ball ball hard but doesn't really make contact so it's kind of like this mix of skills and things that he's very good at and things that he's not so good

at and he's what 25 and he was a prospect forever i think he was like on top 100 list for four years five years he was just coming for a really long time and now he's here and he's still unfinished i guess but promising in certain ways yeah i don't know what you what you're supposed to do with a guy who had 18 walks a third of which were intentional so let's try this again this past season jorge alfaro walked 12 times and struck out 138 times It's just an unbelievably bad peripherals. And so again, you can look at, he swung at almost 50% of the pitches out of the zone. He made contact with 60% of his swings.

So just like dreadful play discipline numbers, absolutely dreadful. And yet he had a WRC plus of 96, which is for a catcher is great. And like you said said he was able to improve at framing he hits the devil out of the ball when he hits it he he has a career Mabip of 405 which is dumb because he's barely put the ball in play half the time that he's actually come to the plate so like it takes a while for these samples to normalize but there are a few players

who I hope make it work more than Jorge Alfaro just because it would be such a different model. I know that Adam Jones had really unusual walk-in strikeout numbers during his heyday. And even Javier Baez now is a little extraordinary. Or someone like Mike Zanino. But Mike Zanino was like if Jorge Alfaro got disciplined. That is the more polished version of Jorge Alfaro. And so I just hope to see somebody make it work with just numbers this awful because they're just so bad. And yet the overall package is exciting. But I think because of the discipline, I don't think

anybody looks at the Phillies right now and thinks, oh, Ed Ketcher, that team has a strength. Yeah, I did hear from Phillilly's people this year that he also really dedicated himself to preparing for games defensively, not just framing wise, but in terms of scouting and working with pitchers and that he got much better at game calling and handling pitchers. Hard to see that in the numbers, but that's what they think. So the defensive part is there mostly. But yeah, got to work on on not striking out quite so much or walking more or something. All right, Pirates. This suggestion comes from Molly.

She wants us to talk about Trevor Williams. And Trevor Williams, I think, sort of falls into the Derek Rodriguez camp. Sort of the same story, I think. Now, if you want to talk about low second half ERAs, Trevor Williams, 12 starts in the second half, 71 and two thirds innings, 1.38 ERA in the second half. So Trevor Williams started the year well, and then all of a sudden started just getting shelled and was terrible for a while, and then just entirely stopped allowing runs in the second half but it's the same sort of situation where the era which is impressive even if you look at it on

a full season basis doesn't really match the other peripherals there yeah what what i actually love about trevor williams's weird season his his strikeouts first half to second half like didn't really change that much his walks didn't really change that much. His walks didn't really change that much. His BABIP, actually, even though his ERA plummeted, his BABIP in the first half was 261, and in the second half it was 262. It wasn't that clear hallmark of, oh, this guy just got bad at ball luck. Basically, he didn't allow home runs, and he didn't allow many hits with men on base in the second half. But what is really interesting about Trevor Williams, I'm going to say really interesting, what I mean to say is common, but anyway, with Trevor Williams is that this season he faced about as many righties as lefties. He is a right-handed pitcher.

But even despite facing similar, yeah, he faced 351 lefties and he faced 350 righties, almost identical, right? And he walked an almost identical number of hitters. 27 lefties, 28 righties. He struck out 46 lefties and 80 righties. That is a strikeout rate of 13% against lefties and 23% against righties. And I know that talking about percentages is really not that interesting on a podcast, but Trevor Williams just has a big platoon split. He is very, very good against righties. He is a legitimately good starting pitcher

against right-handed batters. But against lefties, he is like any other righty with a sinker and a slider, more vulnerable. But I am biased in Trevor Williams' favor because he has a podcast, and I think we all have to kind of stick together. I think I appreciate his sense of humor. I think his perspective is valuable.

And, you know, if you look at his career so far, he's thrown 333 innings in the major leagues, and he's been a better-than-average overall pitcher. Good peripherals, or pretty good peripherals. Right, yeah, that's what I was going to say. Like, we can pick nits, and we can find reasons why he's maybe not quite as good as his ERA would suggest, but on the whole, he's been an above average starting pitcher the last couple of years, even according to Fangraph's war, which pays attention to all that peripheral stuff. So that is probably more than was expected for him. So that's nice. All right. We have to talk about

the Cincinnati Reds now. There were some commenters who suggested that we skip over the Reds entirely because that is a bit that we do on this podcast, not talking about the Reds. And what could be funnier than ignoring the Reds in a segment about things that we ignored in 2018? But I feel bad. They've been through so much. So let's talk about Jesse Winker. This was suggested by Ryan, who wants us to talk about the fact that essentially the poor man's Joey Votto is also a teammate of Joey Votto's. And if you look, minimum 300 plate appearances this year, there were just five guys who walked more often than they struck out. And Joey Votto, 1.07 walk-to-strikeout ratio. Jesse Winker, 1.07 walk-to-strikeout ratio. Jesse Winker, 1.07 walk-to-strikeout ratio.

So they tied for fourth in walk-to-strikeout ratio, two of the five guys, along with Jose Ramirez, Carlos Santana, and Alex Bregman, who actually managed to walk more than they struck out. Now, there's a lot more than that to Joey Votto that Jesse Winker probably lacks, but still, that's kind of cool. Winker is, he kind of falls a little bit in, I guess, what do you want to call it, the

Max Kepler category of players who seem like they are bound to do incredible things, but they haven't yet. Now, you could argue that Jesse Winker, just by having more walks than strikeouts, that is pretty incredible, but he used to hit a lot of balls in the ground. He still hasn't really developed his power, but he has a good swing. He feels like one of the safest young hitters in baseball. He's 25 years old now. Granted, he's now currently coming off major shoulder surgery,

so that makes him a little bit less safe. But I have unfortunately just gotten to the point now where I think, wow, Jesse Winker is like a really really talented hitter he's coming off an expected wobba that's as good as his regular wobba so like he's clearly a good hitter but boy his defense sucks and i just really wish that it wasn't so bad because he's he's not a fast runner even for somebody so young he's like in the 25th percentile and according to stat cast outs above average he was a bad defender best past season according to uzr he was a bad defender according to defensive run saved he was one of the worst defenders in the outfield he's just such a problem in the

outfield that i wish that the reds had some sort of solution and and maybe they can make him better because he is so young and again if you want to talk about similarities between perhaps jesse winker and joey vato as joey vato light i will point out that in the year 2016 joey vato went from plus 6 to negative 14 defensive run save as a first baseman in the very next year he was back up at positive 11. So Joey Votto turned it around later in his career as a defensive first baseman. So maybe Jesse Winker can follow in those footsteps and turn into at least a league average defensive outfielder, in which case the Reds will have a very, very seemingly very good player on their hands. Yeah. All right. Last team of the 30 is the Colorado Rockies.

We talked quite a bit about the Rockies, probably through the detriment of our download stats this year, but they were an interesting team, whether it was how subpar their offense was or how good their pitching was, just a homegrown rotation. Really impressive that the Rockies were able to do that. We did not talk about a player that listener Alex suggests we talk about DJ Johnson. DJ Johnson is a right-handed relief pitcher who came up for the Rockies in September. He pitched in only seven games and then got into a playoff game too. So he made himself a pretty important part of the Rockies bullpen in a very short time. And DJ Johnson, we can just consider him a stand-in

for like the hundreds of relievers we don't talk about, each of whom has an interesting story, some more interesting than most. And DJ Johnson's is among the more interesting. So he was an undrafted free agent. The Rays signed in 2010. So he's 29 years old now. He was in the minors for six years.

He played for four different organizations. He went to the independent leagues twice. He had a bunch of injuries. He worked in a lumberyard in Portsmouth, Ohio in the fall of 2016. He was just working manual labor and finding time for workouts and didn't know that he was going to be back in baseball at all. It's just one of those stories. And we don't talk about that many like human interest stories just because there are so many of them. And there are just so many players in baseball, period, especially relievers now.

I mean, it's more than we can do to know all their names at any one time, let alone their whole backstories. But almost everyone who gets to the majors had to make some sort of sacrifice and has some interesting route that they took there. And DJ Johnson really took an unusual one to get to the Rockies in 2018. In 2017, DJ Johnson was in his age 27 season as a professional baseball player. Now, there are 27-year- olds who play in the minor leagues we we know about them he was a 27 year old reliever in double a and yeah he had a strikeout to walk ratio that was just barely above two so he was he was like a a completely pedestrian and he he had done this the season before again in in double a with with the angels so in 2015 he was in double a with the twins 2016 double a with the angels 2017 double a with the

rockies and he was completely uninspiring uninteresting just from just from a statistical i don't know 10 000 foot perspective you would look at what dj johnson did in 2017 and think eh he had a low e-array but who really? And so this season, you would think 27-year-old relief pitcher, struggling, like not pitching great in AA, what is keeping him going? It's clearly not like he's profiting off some massive signing bonus and he's just playing out the string. He comes back in his age 28 season. He's bumped up to AAA.

This is the first time he's ever seen AAA in his life. He wound up getting into 50 games with the Rockies AAA affiliate. And he strikes out more than a third of his opponents. That's the strikeouts per nine of almost 14. And he trims his walks. So he goes from being this just

nothing, this boring nothing reliever, pitching for Hartford, Connecticut, which you can't really feel much further from like Denver, Colorado in the United States. And he's nothing. He's forgettable. You'd think the team wouldn't even necessarily keep him like around as team property. But he stayed around and his contract was selected by the Rockies this season. He got to the major leagues and, you know, it doesn't really mean anything,

but in the major leagues, he did strike out nine of 27 batters, so he got some strikeouts. But, like, his strikeout rate almost literally doubled. His strikeout minus walk rate in 2017 was 10%. This past year in AAA, it was 29%. He had one of the best relief seasons in the upper minor leagues. Out of, as far as I'm concerned, nowhere. So,

I don't know what. It's not like he changed organizations. It's not like, you know, the Rays saw something in DJ Johnson and they grabbed him off waivers and they taught him how to throw a fastball up or something. The Rockies, or DJ Johnson on his own, just did something and he pitched in the playoffs.

That's unbelievable. Also, his average fastball is 94 miles per hour. They just have these guys everywhere. Yep. Another interesting thing I didn't mention about DJ Johnson, he didn't pitch a single game in college at Western Oregon. He played first base because he had an elbow strain and control issues. So they wanted him to play first base.

He had one pitching outing in fall ball and hurt his elbow, and that was that. Just started showing up with a bat, played first base. And then after college, I'm reading from the Denver Post here, he caught the attention of a Tampa Bay scout while making a guest appearance for a high school all-star team in its annual exhibition against the Salem Kaiser Volcanoes, the Giants' short season Class A team. So he didn't pitch at all in college. Then he makes an exhibition appearance for a high school team against the Giants' low A team, and a Rays scout signed him. So then he gets a $1,000 signing bonus, and then they cut him by the following spring, and he went to Indy Ball. So, man, what a weird story.

And he did bat, I will say, DJ Johnson, hearkening back to his first base ace. He batted three times for the Hartford Yard Yards in 2017, three plate appearances. He walked, he struck out, and he doubled. So DJ Johnson still got a little bit of the stick. Cool. All right, so we have done it. We've completed this exercise, all 30 teams.

This was fun. I hope to do it again in the future. I learned some things. Hopefully you all did too. And we will be back with Sam Miller on our next episode. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already pledged their support. Joseph P., Anthony Sheff, David Bloom, Nathan Connor, and Ben Hickson. Thanks to all of you. Got some Christmas money burning a hole in your pocket and you want to throw some our way.

Every contribution is appreciated. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance on this holiday week. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming. We will get to them next week. You can email us at podcastfangraphs.com or you can message us through the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. So that will do it.

We'll be back with one more episode this week and this year. Talk to you soon. We did it all. We'd do it again in a heartbeat. You gotta go the distance right to the end. the end We took it all away And in a heartbeat We did it all

And we'd do it again We did it all And we'd do it again We did it all And we'd do it again