Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1380: Baseball is Better, but Also Worse

Episode Date: May 25, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about snow in Colorado, the Rockies and the decline of Kyle Freeland, and the new-look Lucas Giolito and the White Sox rebuild, then discuss the state of the standings and the number of teams out of contention, touching on how the bad teams got that way, the impact of […]

The snow slows them down, if just for a day. But here comes the sun, those toxic old rays. Trains start to move, bears start to ring. Bears start to ring The seasons we had Don't mean anything Hello and welcome to episode 1380 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg.

Hello. You got snowed on this week. Oh my gosh. Tell me about that. So this is a thing that is not just a personal anecdote. I was in Colorado for some family stuff. My cousin graduated from high school, so good job, Maddie. Good luck at the University of Oregon. And it's May. You know, we know it's May. We're experiencing. It's late May. And we knew it might be a bit cold. You know, weather in Colorado can be kind of persnickety and unpredictable. And so I looked at the forecast and thought, I will bring a warmer coat than I need.

But I did not anticipate that it would snow eight inches overnight. That was not flurries. And that was not like snow and then it melts quickly. That was like standing snow, very deep, not at all late May looking amount of snowfall. Right. And so I just wondered how do the Rockies not, I should look at this because they probably, it's probably one of those things that balances out for teams that don't have domes, you know, either because they have snow earlier because they have rain late in the season because it's September or whatever. But I just don't understand why we

put a baseball team in Denver. They play baseball on the moon and it snows in May. Yeah, I really like Denver. I feel like that's a place I'd probably like living. And snowing in late May only confirms my feelings on that because I really like snow. Snowing year-round basically at this point, that sounds pretty good to me. But it's not great for baseball teams probably. No, or for outdoor graduations for that matter. I think that generally they can be quite dry in Colorado, and so they appreciate the moisture. And I think if it had fallen on any other day as a family, we would have been all for it. But it was tricky.

I think the Rockies were out of town. They were not playing in Denver. So it did not impact their gameplay at all. But I just thought, you know, it's hard to clear out snow, for instance, from bleachers that can accommodate the graduating class of Douglas County High School. And so I can only imagine how tricky snow removal from Coors must be. I know this is like a thing that teams deal with and do, but it just seems kind of nightmarish. So, you know, sorry, Rockies. It's a weird place you play. We asked you to do this impossible thing and you do it mostly pretty well, even if pitching is really hard. So there

you go. Yeah. Speaking of pitching in Colorado being hard, I was looking at how Kyla Freeland was doing, not doing great, which disappoints me because one of my favorite stories really last season was the Rockies homegrown rotation and the fact that they were getting all their starts from guys they brought up, which was really impressive to build that kind of rotation at course and to have that sort of success. And Kyle Freeland was sort of leading the charge. He was really valuable, at least in terms of just runs allowed or not allowed. And he was someone who sort of fascinated me and Jeff. And we talked about a few times and actually had Freeland on the podcast to talk to him because he didn't really have the typical skill set of someone who

would be as successful as he was. And he was really excellent last season, but Jeff and I were wondering, can he sustain this? Because he was kind of like a great command guy, like soft contact guy. And you never really know how much of that is luck and how much of it is skill, or if it is skill, can you sustain that skill? Because it's really tricky to do. And man, Or if it is skill, can you sustain that skill? Because it's really tricky to do. And man, so far this season, it argues for difficult to sustain because he's got a 6 ERA and a FIP close to that. And even when you cores adjust it, it's not pretty.

And he was so great at cores last year. I remember writing about him. I think he had like maybe the best cores season ever, at least pitching specifically in Denver. He was actually better when he was pitching in Denver, which was just weird. Yeah, very strange. And that just he has not kept that up this year. And I don't know what's going on with him exactly, except that he's walking more guys and he's giving up tons of dingers. So many. Yeah, which, you know, Colorado pitcher, like you'd think they'd give up lots of dingers but he was not doing that before and he was limiting hits like he had a fairly low

babbitt but now he has an even lower babbitt so yeah maybe he is getting lucky in certain ways or maybe it's just that he's allowing so many homers that there aren't any possum play i don't know what's going on but it's sort of disappointing that he's not keeping that up yeah it's a i mean there are definitely guys this year where sort of across the board we're seeing, you know, diminished sort of performance from a lot of pitchers, and some of it we can look at and say, well, like the ball seems to be different.

And of course you're giving up a couple more dingers because like the ball's going a lot farther. But then there's Kyle Freeland, and you're like, oh, so this is more than that. Because you don't go from having a.76 home run per nine to a.206 home run per nine and be able to attribute all of that to the ball. And then that in combination, like you said, with the walk increase is just killer. Like he's walking a guy more per nine than he was last year. He's striking out slightly more guys, but not by a whole lot.

And I guess on a rate basis, it's actually lower. So yeah, buddy, it's not the best. And the little fantasy profile blurb on his Fangraphs page that was written before the season says he's perhaps the poster boy of regression. So called it, I guess. But I wish I hadn't called it because I really enjoyed what he was doing last year. And I like to have like one or two of those guys who

don't fit the profile of the typical strikeout type ace. And so then there's this whole conversation about like, is he actually good or is he getting lucky? And is he a soft contact guy? It's like the old, I don't know, Matt Cain kind of conversation where for a while he would just defy his peripherals. And then in the end, usually you stop defying them and it comes back to bite you. But I was hoping Freeland could sustain that for a while and maybe he'll get his form back at some point. But that whole Rockies rotation, like Marquez has been good. But beyond that, it's just not great like john gray's having another one of those seasons where some of his peripherals are really impressive but

the actual runs and runs allowed results are not and maybe he's just gonna be that type of guy yeah yeah he and freeland last year were like two of the most perplexing pitchers like in opposite directions like one of them seemed like he should be better than that and one of them seemed like he should be worse than that and i enjoyed that and i just enjoyed just how successful a pitching and defense team the rockies were despite those conditions and yeah that's it's tough to keep up yeah and it i think that the it just it just seems so silly of course that they would be a team that was led led by their pitching because it's just it's just a goofy thing and you keep expecting you know you keep expecting it to be this huge like heavy hitting offense and for the second year in a row i guess it's probably been a

little bit longer than that even like the the team is not hitting particularly well and now the pitching is regressing so then you understand why the Rockies are, you know, as of today in what, oh, they're nine games back. They're under.500. My grandparents in Colorado are very disappointed. They're sad about it. But, yeah, you know, if the pitching's not going to be good, they need to be mustering more than an 83 WRC plus as a team. Jeez, that just, how is that? They have Nolan Arenado though. And they play in

Coors. You had an article at the Heartball Times this week, right? About the Rockies hangover effect. What was the conclusion there? Because that's always been a subject that's fascinated me. Yeah. And we can link to this in the post for this so folks can check it out. You know, the Coors effect that everybody knows about is that there's, you know, because of the altitude, the ball goes farther. And then because of the park dimensions, you tend to have a lot of, you know, how much store we can really put into the idea that hitters are going to suffer when they move away from course or the hangover effect. And he found that, you know, there are other parks that actually do have that have sort of similar effects to cores. It is not a singular phenomenon that that goes there. You know, he noted, especially that Petco Park can have sort of an odd effect on its hitters.

Citi Field can sometimes do the same. And so it is something that he did note kind of needs greater study and larger samples, but that Coors is not singular in that effect, but that it is sort of outsized compared to many other parks, although not all by its lonesome. So I guess that's good. But yeah, it's a weird, it's just weird. It's a weird place. Yeah, I think Coors Field is a thing that people have been saying

requires further investigation for like 20 years at this point. So at least it's an endless source of content. So there's that. Well, and we do have the pleasure now of it not being the only field in baseball that has a humidor. So we can get a little bit of cross comparison there where I think we were lacking it before that. But yeah, it's an odd place. It is a beautiful ballpark.

I enjoy Coors Field. Winter Wonderland in late May. Yeah, if you get the opportunity to go, it is quite nice. Although they will tell you now, people should know this, that certain herbs are legal in the state of Colorado for recreational consumption that are not illegal in other places. And you are not allowed to smoke marijuana in the ring of seats that is actually a mile high. That is not part of the terms of use and they will yell at you. And they did that on Twitter to someone. So you should all just know that you can't smoke pot in the purple seats, even though i'm sure that the instagram pictures would make you quite famous and popular you probably wouldn't

get to go back to course field anytime soon so don't do that uh but yeah go and observe the the effective that weird that weird ballpark on its hitters and the poor pitchers who have to pitch there marquez is good though yeah yeah he is marquez is Marquez is arguably better than he was even Just last year so There is a bright spot but that team has been It's been disappointing I mean they weren't projected to be Especially amazing but

Well I did want to talk about A bizarro free win someone who's Made the opposite kind of conversion here And has gone from being very bad to being Very good and that is Lucas Giolito Yeah who is having a really exciting season so he is coming off a complete game shut out of the astros of all teams yeah in which he allowed four hits in one walk and struck out nine that was really impressive but his whole season has been really impressive and his strikeout rate is way way up he is walking fewer guys he's

giving up a lot fewer homers and he's also maybe getting a little fortunate in some ways but all of his numbers look really strong and that is coming off of perhaps the worst season by any starting pitcher last year so it's strange because if you were to tell a person from 2015 or something that this is what Lucas Giolito was doing in 2019, they would say, sure, of course, that's what he is projected to do. But if you were to say the same to a person of 2018, they would say that is not what I expect Lucas Giolito to do because that's not what he's doing now. And I know that he is a player who really vexed Jeff last season because it looked for a while that giolito was putting things together and i think in spring training

he had maybe added velocity and changed his mechanics and looked really promising for a while and then the season started and everything was terrible but this year he has made more changes and this time they've actually paid off and he's been one of the better starting pitchers in baseball yeah devin fink wrote about this for us at fan graphs earlier in the week when i was in the snow and it seems like part of this is just properly diagnosing what pitches are effective to which handedness of hitter so i hope that i'm going to remember this right i was buried under snow it feels like a long time ago, but my, my remembrance of that article was that he has started throwing his slider to righties with a much greater frequency as an out pitch and that he is throwing his change up to lefties with much greater frequency

because the, the fastball isn't as, isn't an especially effective out pitch for him and that it has yielded very positive results. So, you you know it's one of those things where hitters will have an opportunity to adjust to his adjustment certainly and it's still the early going but it does look quite promising compared to where he's been where it's sort of mired in this like you should be a lot better than you are buddy but you're but you're not so good for yeah good for him and he's also made some mechanical changes i think he went back to talk to his high school coach and went back to some of the things that had

helped him at that time and so his velocity is up at least relative to last season by quite a bit he's averaging 94.3 which is pretty good and that's good too because he was like a flamethrower as a prospect and then a lot of that speed went away.

And now at least some of it has come back. So that's good. And I don't know if it's safe to say that things are looking up for the White Sox across the board. But there are some positive developments there because I remember the team preview episode for the White Sox this year. We did that one, right, with James Fagan? Yes, we did. year. We did that one, right, with James Fagan? Yes, we did. And that kind of was a negative note because it was like, why can't they make all these prospects be good at baseball? Yep. And now I guess some of them are being better at baseball. So maybe things are looking up. It's

funny how like a rebuild can look like it's really running off the rails and it can go from, well, this is so promising. They have all this young talent to, oh no, this young talent isn't panning out to a couple of those guys right the ship and suddenly things look up again. Yeah. I think that, you know, when you think about the improvement that they've seen and the value they've gotten out of Moncada so far, and then Tim Anderson is just having this incredible season and, you know, is also just establishing himself as like one of the cooler guys in baseball, right? Like a player that fans can really get excited about and is super invested in the community and is taking advocacy seriously.

So I think that you're right that the perception I have of that team is not that they are especially good, right? Like they are still 10 games out of first place in the Central and under 500, but no one was expecting them to be good. So these are the kinds of marginal improvements that you want to see as a fan to then feel positive about what the future might bring, especially when some of their injured arms are able to come back and throw. So yeah, it's not like it's a good season, but it is a promising season, I think would maybe be the way that I think about them. And that's better than nothing.

Because like you said, that preview pod with James was quite grim. And my poor roommate is a White Sox fan, and she listened to it. And she's like, I didn't feel better about my team at all. And I was like, well, that wasn't what we were trying to do. But I'm sorry that you're sad. That's why guys like Giolito will get chances for years Not that he was close to running out of rope But he was such a highly touted prospect

That when you have those skills at some point Other guys never have those skills at any point And you don't necessarily need those skills to be a productive player The book that you received this week And are about to dive into, that's all about how some players are making more of themselves than anyone ever thought.

But someone like Giolito, who had that raw talent to be one of the top prospects of baseball, he's always going to get a longer look down the road because it's always seductive to think, well, if he could just tweak something and get back to whatever was working before, it just seems like it should be easier to go back to something you've already done than

to do something you've never done, although that is also possible at times. So it's nice that he has really corrected course and has put himself back on the map for positive reasons. So good job, Giolito. Yeah, he's done a good job. He is not a member of the Mets he's done a good job he is not a member of the mets who have done a poor job do you have the experience of when you're having to travel in a way that keeps you away from baseball feeling very disoriented upon your return because it feels like everything has

changed very much so so so like i have just accepted and i'm i could disabuse myself of this ignorance right i could look into it but i've decided i'm just not going to i will never know why todd frazier and adam eaton are fighting and why they don't like each other i don't know i just missed it i don't understand this natalie portman moby story either so there it's not just baseball but you you're away for a couple of days and and you're you're just you have no idea what's happened i missed i missed a i i'm pretty sure i'm pretty sure based on what i saw of twitter the time i checked twitter while i was with my family that i missed a good uh chris paddock start i love good chris paddock starts and i didn't get to see a single frame so it's very disorienting and no one should ever take vacation and we should all just work

forever and i'm going to say that and then appleman's going to call me and be like meg you really can't take vacation. Yeah. Well, at least you can go back and watch Chris Paddock. I don't know that you need to go back and catch up on the Fraser Eaton feud. I don't understand. I think it stems from the Drake LaRoche saga, which remains one of the weirdest stories in modern baseball history. But there was some beef that developed was that season story linked to the chris sale thing were those part of the same story i know it was the same season right

right same group of guys same weirdness pervading that clubhouse at that particular time so how do we not talk about the chris sale thing every day yeah how do we not talk about the fact that chris sale cut up a bunch of jerseys with scissors because he didn't want to wear the ones with the wide collars? Why is that not something we talk about every day? We should get up every single day and think about climate change and be bummed out. And then to recover, think about how Chris Sale cut up jerseys with scissors because he didn't like them and wanted his friend's kid

to be able to hang out in the clubhouse. I don't know if those things are actually linked and someone will tell me and I don't care. I want them to be part of the same story and I don't remember. And so it's our podcast. It's all part of the same thing now. That's what we've decided.

Well, at least we've talked about it today. So we can make a resolution. We'll talk about it tomorrow and then we'll just take it day by day. Six innings, one run. It was earned. Seven strikeouts, five hits. Good job, Chris. Not bad.

All right. What's on your mind? I'm thinking about whether we like the current version of baseball we're watching. I think this is our topic for today because we were thinking about what we wanted to chat about. And I was struck by a couple of pieces that have come out at Baseball Perspectives over the last couple of weeks, one of which came out today by Rob Arthur where he was talking about the worst teams are getting worse and more quickly. the worst teams are getting worse and more quickly. Right.

So he looked at, he used the baseball perspective playoff odds as figured by Pakoda and looked at how quickly teams are dropping out of contention and the effect that might have on our experience of baseball. So he, you know, and he noted that several of these teams had pretty low chances of making, making the playoffs, let alone making the world series or winning the world series, uh, when the season started. So it's not as if every single one of these teams was in contention, right? Like the Marlins exist, but they are still arriving at what are effectively 0% chances of making the postseason quite a bit earlier than they would have even as recently as 2015. He noted that these non-contenders, I think he said that the long odds they faced in 2015

have grown three times more insurmountable this year. So even though they were very long odds, they are just really out of it. And so I was thinking about that. And then I was also thinking about a thing that Rob Mains wrote a couple of weeks ago about how comebacks are just way less common than they used to be. And so I thought we could talk about those two things and sort of whether we're a fan of the version of baseball that we're watching right now because it does seem that some things are shifting around and it's not just home runs yep we have had this stratified league for the last few years and increasingly so where you have some super teams that are really great and seem almost like locks at the start of the season and then you have teams

that you can really rule out at the start of the season. And that's always been the case for some teams, of course, but it seems a little more pervasive currently. And we can talk about why that is. But of course, there are still teams that are expected to be good that end up not being good, like the Nationals, for instance, who are on a two-year run of being that team right now. And I actually like to talk a little bit about the Nationals. But you have, say, Cleveland, who I thought would probably still win that division, even though they didn't do anything to increase their odds of doing so this past winter. But they have had a lot of things go against them, and the Twins have had everything go right. And so now the Twins are up there. But yes, on the whole, Rob showed through the same point in the season, whether you look at the date or the number of games, the playoff odds of the teams that are at the bottom of the league are a lot lower than they have been in the past. And that's not a good thing, I don't think. I don't know that it's a disastrous thing, but it's not great to have teams that seem out of it in May. That's not really a positive development for those fan bases. And as Rob notes, we're down about, I think he said, what, 500 fans per game relative to last year at the same point, which could have something to do with that. single competitive effects from weather from just prices from you know some of the the bad parts of

going to games from the competing entertainment options out there from the fact that it's fun to sit on your couch and watch a game these days it's it's hard exactly to identify what is causing that but it can't be helping that there are teams that are really out of the race at this early point be helping that there are teams that are really out of the race at this early point. Right. And I think that what you want to do is with any entertainment product, just because of how much there is that we can watch that isn't even baseball, right? There are so many things that we can use to occupy sort of our evening hours when we don't have to be working that what the game really needs to think about is reducing the number of excuses that someone can put in front of going to a baseball game. Because once you start layering

them, I don't think we have to tease them out to really figure out what's what. I think they have a compounding effect on one another. It's like you have a team that isn't very good, like say the Mariners. Let's say that you're a fan of the Seattle Mariners. You're like, this team isn't very good. And then you think about how the traffic to get there is bad. Well, the team can't do anything about that, but that's the thing that people think about. And then you think about how you get there and you're going to pay, you know, $9 for a beer and you're going to pay $12 for a hot dog and you're going to pay $45 for an ice cream or whatever it is. And the tickets to get in are, you know,

maybe they're being priced in a way that's a little bit competitive by the team because they want you to show up, but a lot of teams don't do that. And so you have to pay the ticket price to get in. And then maybe instead of being a fan of the Mariners, you're a fan of a team that plays in a place where it's cold and rainy or snowing. And so you are just stacking up reasons one on top of another to not go to the game, which doesn't mean that you're not necessarily engaged with baseball, but you just have this very cozy, less expensive option of engaging with the

sport you like at home. And that's if you don't mind watching a contest that isn't competitive, where you just might decide to do something entirely different with your baseball viewing time. And so I think it is a concerning, it is a concerning thing because you have, I was talking about this with a friend earlier today, you know, you have teams that I think are starting to shift around some of the strategy they have in terms of how they deal with these sort of big leads that develop early. And I'm not surprised that comebacks are less common than they used to be, which was Rob Maines' conclusion. We just got a bunch of Robs on this podcast today. Because why are you going to throw a guy in a non-competitive situation? You have a big bullpen. You're just going to throw whatever

dude's job it is to be the sad sack that comes in when your team is behind. I think that there is a possibility that like in the last three years of his professional career, cause I'm pretty sure he's in the Mexican league now, but Vidal Nuno never pitched with a lead or even just like a one run deficit. I think that guy only ever came in when there were like five runs of difference between him and the team he was throwing against. And so you have people who are just sort of incentivized to not engage with the sport, whether they're in the ballpark or at home, because it just doesn't feel competitive at either the macro or micro level a lot of the time. And I wonder, I think we looked at this, you sent me a little chart about how it feels like there

are a lot of blowouts this year. Like we're looking at football scores more often than I expected or than we have seen in the past. So it's just it doesn't feel competitive on a number of different levels, which I think is a problem. Yeah, there are a lot of blowouts these days. This is a little lower the percentage of blowouts per game played, which I think you defined as what six six runs or more than six runs? Yeah, six or more.

So yeah, so it's kind of close to a high point right now. And it turns out that that just correlates really well with scoring. So I looked at the correlation between runs per game and the percentage of games that are blowouts by that definition, and it is 0.82. So that's a very strong relationship when you have more scoring you have more blowout games which i guess makes sense so that's part of it and i don't know that that's anything about the stylistic way that baseball works now or it's just the ball the ball is uh is blowing up and so you get, and so you get scoring, and so you get blowouts.

And then the comeback thing is a little surprising to me. I don't know how much to make of that because that has bounced around a bit in recent years, as indicated by Rob's article. But it looks like there's some slight trend maybe toward, I don't know, fewer comebacks over the past several years which could be the case it could be just you know position players getting into games and pitching when games are out of hand or having those mop-up guys not putting good guys in high leverage or low leverage situations as you said or it could be other factors I don't know but I think probably the more concerning trend is just the teams that are totally out of it because that's something that affects every single game where even if it's a close game and a competitive game, you know that in the long run, it doesn't matter because there are no stakes to the season because this team is I think it's very tempting just to say, well, it's tanking and it's teams that are doing what the Astros and the Cubs did, and they're following that lead and they're not trying to win. And there's some of that, but it's also when you look at the teams that are at the bottom

of the league that are kind of out of it right now, it's sort of a mixed bag. And in some cases, it's teams that have tried, like, you know, look at the worst teams in baseball right now Like your fourth and fifth place teams I mean, just going division by division You've got, in the West, you've got the Mariners Who I think it's fair to say that they sort of did a teardown this past winter They prefer the term step back Step back, yes, well they have certainly stepped back

And you have the Angels who they've tried, I would say. The Angels have tried to win and they just haven't. So that's not really, they're not in a position where they are trying to lose in the short term to win in the long run. I think they're trying to win and it's just not working out. Then in the central, you have the Tigers and the Royals who are sort of in the same boat, which is that they were good teams and then they stopped being good and before they weren't worth anything anymore. So those seem like sort of just old school down too, right? Like they were good. They won lots of games for several years and then they got super terrible. And now they're in a rebuild, but it's not like they

entered one prematurely. And I mean, I guess if they had signed some free agents or something, they would be better than 15 and 35. And so they've decided not to do that. But I just, I don't know, you look up and down or the giants for instance are in the kind of royals tigers like we were good and then we held on to our players for a long time and then they got old and not good and that happened to the team or like the reds they tried the reds tried to be better they tried to invest in their team and that didn't work and then you got the marlins who are you know the marlins they're just sort invest in their team and that didn't work and then you got the marlins who are you know the marlins they're just sort of in their own singular situation then you got the nationals

who are 19 and 31 right now yeah and their team that i picked to win the second wild cards this year and i don't know why they're 19 and 31 so it's like you look down the list and it sort of doesn't fit like a really simple narrative at least to my mind it's like a bunch of teams that are bad right now but for different reasons and that's why i so i think that um you know everyone's mileage kind of varies in terms of how much of the fretting from the commissioner's office they have tolerance for right like his concern over you know shifting or pace of play or what have you, I think that it sometimes strikes people as kind of fussy. Or if we want to maybe be a little more

generous to that critique and, you know, put some actual good explanation around it, it strikes people as sort of putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable and focusing on things that are sort of small and nitpicky, whereas they could be focused on, you know, bigger sort of structural changes to the game that might impact the way that we experience it. And I have sympathy for that argument. But I do think that places like this are where you see the value of really paying close attention to little things, because they can compound in ways that we don't necessarily expect and interact with one another in ways that we don't necessarily expect and interact with one another in ways that we don't necessarily expect. And then at the end of it, it's not that any one of those problems is really what's doing in your experience of baseball, but collectively it does make you kind of pause and say like, is this the version of the game I want to be watching? Is this the way I want to be

engaging with the sport? Is the expense of it and the time worth what I'm seeing? And when you have this mix of teams that are so far out of it so early, and the best you're hoping for as a fan if you're going to the ballpark is that they're playing a better team that you're not rooting for because it's not your team. It does sort of leave you in the spot where you're like, well, maybe I'll just check in on the, well, no one's going to check in on the Marlins in a couple of years because they're still the Marlins, but maybe I'll check in on the Giants when they're further along

or the Reds when this rebuild is going better or I'll wait for the White Sox even though they're not, by any means, in the worst position of any of the teams that we you know that we're looking at here i'll wait until their arms are healthy and back from tommy john and then it's all coming together but in the meantime like do i need to really be invested in this and that doesn't even like engage with like the aesthetic version of the game that we're looking at right now where it's like, I don't, even when the teams I like best are on the right side of a blowout, I don't especially enjoy that. Like it gets boring. It takes the tension out of it. And if teams can't come back in those situations, the same way that they

maybe did in the past, there's no, you're just sitting there knowing what the outcome is going to be. And then it becomes, is the path that the team gets, takes to get there sufficiently interesting to keep me engaged? And I think for a lot of people that the answer to that might start to shift. And so it makes me nervous. Yeah. So, I mean, we're at like 21% of games this year have been blowouts by this definition, which would be like 510 games or something over the

Course of a season and if you look Back at oh I don't know 2014 or Something when the ball wasn't so Hopped up right then it was like 16.5% Of games were blowouts By the same definition which

Is like 400 games so i mean you're talking about like an extra 110 games or so a season that are blowouts as opposed to non-blowouts and i don't know it's it's not an enormous difference but it seems noticeable you noticed it so yeah i guess it's it can't be ignored And I don't know how much of past is that the rebuild or the tank or whatever you want to call it isn't less entertaining in the long run because you can get good again faster. And even if you're bad, if it seems like there's a plan and that you can point to a year when you'll get good again, and maybe you can follow your prospects that are really fun to watch, that's a way to experience a team that can also be entertaining.

And there's something to be said for that compared to trying to sustain a window that really is already closed and you're just trying to tell yourself that there's still a sliver open and if we just sign this guy or that guy, we can keep it going. But really, you just dig yourself a deeper hole and then it's longer until you actually get good again. So we've seen many teams that fall into that bucket where they're not truly terrible. They're not the Orioles or the Marlins. And so on a game-to-game level, maybe their contests are more exciting.

But on a season-to-season level, maybe not so much because they're not really in it. Like they're kind of maybe on the periphery of a race from time to time, but you never really get the feeling that they're the favorite. And to have that stretch on for years and years, sometimes it is better to just sort of rip the bandaid off and say, we'll be terrible and then we'll get good again if you can pull that off i have not rooted for a team that i felt well that's not true i have felt confident in some mariners teams since 2001 i've been wrong every time but i do like the idea of us encouraging fans and baseball observers to find interesting stuff in something that isn't a team being dominant and winning. I think that there is a lot to be said for how we appreciate and what we allow ourselves to appreciate about baseball when we open up the possibility for that. And I do think that just like as people that are rooting for a losing sports team for a long time can be psychologically valuable. But I might experience baseball as a way to be sad in a low stakes way.

So that might be a weird Meg thing. But I do think that there's value in saying, you know, it doesn't have to be about making the postseason. But I think you're right that having the feeling and having that feeling be something that is not just I'm a fan and I always think my team's going to be good, but is I'm a smart fan. I'm an informed fan. I read fan graphs. I read baseball prospectus.

I know how stats work. And I can say in a way that isn't just I like this team best and so I hope it works out, but I like this team best. And also they've done these great things to be competitive. I think that when you're able to mean it does it does alter the course of your season now there are plenty of teams where their fans get to mean it in the beginning and then it doesn't work out like i'm sure there are a lot of nationals fans sitting around being like i can't believe we're doing this again like this is a good this is a much better team on paper than the results would suggest i can't believe that they are you know in a division that we all thought was going to be very competitive and i guess you

know on an average basis they are doing better in that respect than a lot of other divisions because the the most that a team is out is the reds at seven and a half games and um you know how are the marlins closer to the top of the nl east than the Royals are to the top of the AL Central? How are the Orioles – I mean, that makes sense, actually. The Orioles and the Marlins are just equally very bad teams. But Nationals fans are sitting around being like, hey, what the heck, man? We're 19-31, we're 10 games out.

And so that can still be disappointing, but I think there's a lot to be said for on opening day. You can feel it right you're like yeah this is our we don't know if it's our year but we would not be looked at in a funny way no one would give us a pitying glance if we were to walk into a bar and say it's our year they'd be like yeah you're the nationals that could work i mean it's never worked for you specifically in the past but it theoretically is possible and it doesn't sound ludicrous it sounds like a thing that is realistic and you know it may be quite a problem when so few fans can say something like

that even though i do think that people should be more comfortable rooting for losing teams and feeling sad because you appreciate all kinds of weird little stuff when you have to find something that isn't winning to appreciate yeah well so speaking of the two teams that we thought would be good coming into the season that thus far have not been, there are two teams that are down 50% in their playoff odds since the start of the year, and that is the Nationals. And they're down 52.5% right now. Cleveland is down 50.3%. They're down 70% in division odds, and the Nationals are down about 38% in division odds. So I know what's going on in the Central because you have the Twins who are just firing on all cylinders, and they've just been legitimately good. The underlying performance is as good as the record, which is rivaling the Astros for the best of baseball.

And they've had, I think, good success on the pitching staff. They have incorporated some new ideas and new data, new technology to try to develop pitchers better. And I guess the poster boy for resurgence or guys who are good for the first time would be Martin Perez. But there are also other guys who have taken steps forward. You know, Byron Buxton is back to being a very productive player and really some of their other young players, Jorge Polanco and Kepler has not taken a huge leap, but he's

been solid. And so that team is just pretty strong top to bottom. And then you have Cleveland, which they came into the year depending on some stars. They had this stars and scrubs type roster and all their stars were stars last year. And that worked out pretty well for them. But this year it has not at all. And Jose Ramirez has been a mess and they just haven't gotten, obviously Kluber's been hurt. Bauer has not been as effective. They haven't gotten as much out of the guys that they really needed to get something out of. And because the rest of their roster was just left untended all

winter, and they just sort of figured, well, we can count on great seasons again from all these guys. And that's not really happening. Even like Lindor missed some time and has been fine but not eight win Lindor from last year so when you're dependent on like six guys being good and then those six guys get hurt or are less effective Clevenger too then you're in a lot of trouble and they didn't build in that depth that teams like the Rays have or the Yankees or the Dodgers and they've been able to survive some of their top guys getting hurt, and Cleveland just has not. But the Nationals are kind of a more difficult question to unravel exactly what has gone wrong there.

I don't understand it. I don't understand it. I think I continue to find it amusing that just to return to to cleveland for a moment that you know what we thought was really going to drive them we we knew the top of the rotation would be good and we thought it would be you know lindor and ramirez and despite all the injuries the pitching has actually still been quite it has been fine you know it's like not terrible in at least in terms of its al rankings but that offense is just really putrid although it did allow jjaffee to write the best fan graphs headline of the season so far indians drop cargo retained baggage from offseason so he did a good job on that and i did not get in his way one little bit but the nationals are just very strange. I mean, there's been some injury, right?

Yeah. So that's some of it. But it is not been – it's just a weird – it's just a really very odd team because they have this terrible leaky bullpen, so that hasn't helped. But the starting pitching has still been good. Man, this bullpen. Yeah. Oof.

Yeah. Oof-da. After Doolittle little there's just not a whole lot there yeah it's just a sea of suck their bullpen is uh by war 27th they have a bullpen era of 702 and a bullpen fip of 522 so that seems pretty bad uh the yankees have the best bullpen in baseball that's not surprising although them right behind them astros too so like the the bullpen has just been really terrible and they aren't one of those teams that you can accuse of not trying to improve in in the offseason despite the fact that they have you know they let harper go they had this great dynamic outfield and they brought in patrick corbin and their starters have been very, very good.

So I guess in that respect, the Nationals are in sort of an enviable position in that they are able to perhaps identify some areas for really rapid improvement, theoretically, although that offense has not produced particularly well. But they're so far out of it at this point that you wonder, what are they going to do? I wonder if the Nationals would be well-positioned to sort of do what Jared DiPoto did last year, which was that he jump-started his trade deadline acquisition stuff by getting new dudes in June, May or June. So maybe they should be getting to it. But yeah, that bullpen is a real problem. That's very, very poor.

it it's it's often defense and that can go in the other direction too where you don't understand quite why a team's so good and it's oh well they're just recording lots of outs on balls and play that helps a lot right and it kind of it's a little harder to notice because we don't look at those stats quite as often and the stats aren't quite as telling but yeah that's part of it and then the bullpen if one part of your team is going to be disproportionately bad a bullpen can really sink your season if it's as bad as the Nationals have been because that's a lot of high leverage outings and big decreases in win probability. And I don't know what to tell them because at this point, it's not that they haven't tried to build a bullpen. Like they've turned over this group like a couple times at this point. A lot of times.

And no matter what they do, it's just it's a new group of guys but it's the same sort of results so that's pretty frustrating for them right and you know they did make some they made some moves in that bullpen wow austin williams just that that 0.1 inning was really bad for him you know they brought in tony sip so that seemed like it could be a fun promising thing because sip has had moments of being quite effective but yeah outside of do little it's been it's just been atrocious helixson's been quite bad uh you know dan jennings has been quite bad tanner rainy's been quite bad so you you just have this group that isn't um able to hold any sort of a lead late and you couple that as

you said with just like really atrocious defense you're like well it has to feel terrible to be a nationals fan i can say that because i am still sort of a fan of a very bad team that also has a really terrible defense so i know what that pain is like but it is an odd it is an odd thing that they should be so bad and in a year where they are still getting you know very good contributions from scherzer and strasburg and it's been good year after year year after year he is one of those guys where i don't know that we can credibly say he's underappreciated because we all say hey remember how we should appreciate anthony rendon more we say that a lot but sometimes people feel that he is still underappreciated

because we probably just don't talk about him enough. But when your second best position player after Anthony Rendon is Howie Kendrick, you might be in a bad spot. You know, Juan Soto's bat has been good. The defense has been kind of wonky, but he's on the national, so that's not super surprising. And then Adam Eaton has been fine. Not really. He's mostly mostly fighting with todd frazier that's what i learned while i was on vacation yeah yeah and it's not like you can point to it and say oh they rue the day that they didn't

offer price harper more money because like price harper's not doing so hot either you put price harper in this outfield and i mean soto's been better than he has Robles has not been great but but Robles and Eaton have been not total abysses and Bryce Harper has not been what people want him to be either so it would help to have Harper on that team but it wouldn't help nearly enough to get them out of this hole so I don't know mean, people talk about the Mets and the trials that they've been through and they have, but the Nationals, I feel like the Nationals, I mean, certainly this season, things are worse there. And I guess they've had more heartbreak in a way in that they've gotten closer and then failed, whereas the Mets haven't always gotten there.

Although, you know, they've been to a world series fairly recently but recently yeah I don't know it's just uh it's sort of a sad thing for the Nationals because they've had like probably the best team in baseball over the last several years that has not made more of that and has not won a playoff series so that is unfortunate i wrote the nationals essay for the bp annual this year and i of course had to decide when i was writing it if i thought that bryce harper was going to resign or not and i said no and i ended up being right about that but here's the thing i was wrong about i was like it's a new day in dc it has not been a new day at all it is an interesting sort of exercise in how the PR plays between those two franchises, because we make fun of the Mets a lot. And they they've earned that ire, right? They they present themselves publicly in such a way that you just feel like you guys are kind of goofuses and should be criticized but you do get the sense that there must be some sort of very real dysfunction at play

within the nationals organization we talk about it some but it has not risen to nearly the sort of level that the mets has and i wonder if just a big part of that is the willingness to spend and how how forgiving we are willing to be and i don't say that say this like we should be a different way i think that it's a perfectly good way to evaluate a franchise that we are willing to forgive quite a bit because they are making an investment in the team that suggests that they would like to win very badly. Whereas the Mets are sort of a, you know, average-ish size payroll, but they're in New York. And so they really ought to be spending much more and they have a pretty good TV deal. So it is a funny thing to watch the way that those two franchises are playing out

because both of them have managers that are coming under fire, perhaps unfairly, perhaps a little fairly, but not to the extent that they are. And they're both underperforming relative to where we maybe expected them to be before the season starts. But I don't think that we are feeling – it doesn't seem that the collective experience of the Nationals is anything akin to what it is for the Mets, even though they're doing quite a bit worse. Yeah.

The Mets are only a game under 500. That's all. I know. They just did well after everyone was lamenting their latest things going wrong. It is when you lose to the Marlins. When you get swept by the marlins you sit around and you're like what am i doing who am i yeah yeah that was right after we were talking about how the marlins might be historically terrible and then they've won what five in a row

six in a row yeah so even the marlins are capable of making a run right which is odd but yeah i mean we didn't even talk about this before but like looking at some of the records of these teams that are toward the bottom of their divisions like the reds are in last place but the reds still have outscored their opponents by like 25 runs or something yeah which uh that should lead to better results and then the pirates, are over 500, but they've been outscored by more than 40 runs. So you have to wonder why those teams are not in different places, but they just are because baseball is weird. So sometimes the results are predictable, but the way that we get there is not. Because the Pirates, they were the team that I think earned the most justified ire for not investing in their team.

And their results thus far have probably been better than they deserve based on how hard they tried to win. And that may be just because they are outplaying their expected record right now. So sometimes these things correct themselves as the season goes on, but not always. But it is so funny. You bring up those Pirates and those Reds because they are on opposite ends of what we would expect their Pythags to be. So the Pirates are outperforming their Pythag by six games, which leads baseball, and the Reds are underperforming theirs by five, which is the back-end leader.

I never know the right way to say that as an an aside, that's not the point of this, but I never know. They're leading. They're not. They're in the very back. You know what I'm trying to say. And the Reds do a little better by base runs and the Pirates are not outperforming

quite as much from a base runs record perspective as they are by their Pythag. But yes, they are both over and underperforming relative to what we would expect. And so it is, you're right. There's like, I bet your experience on a daily basis of watching the Reds has to be very frustrating because you must have a sense even day to day that things are not shaking out quite the way that you would necessarily expect them to. And you really ought to be able to watch more wins and then you can't. phillies are outperforming i'm going to give a small fangraphs alum update

which is that i was very sassy in the beginning of the season about how fangraphs was just crushing baseball because all of the fangraphs alums were well not all of them but many of them worked for first place teams and at this moment it's just corinne corinne is our our lone division leader still standing because the phillies are a game and a half up on the braves although i guess you know jeff is only two games out of first so he's doing okay but the yankees are good again so it's really a problem for him sorry jeff yeah he doesn't listen to the podcast so he's really a problem for him sorry Jeff yeah he doesn't listen to the podcast so he's never gonna hear me be sad for him he's just gonna have to know it right what did uh Devin Fink also wrote a couple pieces this week about where we are in the season and

Memorial Day as a checkpoint and a milestone I know that you were traveling for much of the week and perhaps not editing those pieces I wasn't so I would love to hear what's in them. Yeah, okay. Well, I was going to ask you about that. Sorry, Devin. Yeah, you've got a long weekend to catch up on what you didn't see when you were snowed in. Yep. I was getting snowed on at a graduation and then yesterday i did something else oh no yeah well i uh i can just summarize quickly because he he summarized quickly when he wrote about this and and you know he was looking at sort of should you check the standings before memorial day should you check the standings at memorial day does it actually mean anything and I think as Jeff has written repeatedly in the past there is still just a lot of noise at this point in the season and the best thing to do is always to

look at the projections which are even if you look at the preseason projections they're more telling than what's happened season to date but if you look at the projections that are updated for this season and also take into account what you expected coming into the year, then that tends to be the most predictive thing, like really far into the season. So even though we are at that mile marker where historically people have said, okay, you can start to pay attention now, in many cases, it's still too early to pay attention. And I think that's probably true for some of the teams that are leading or not leading right now. But on the other hand, when I look at the teams that are in first place, for instance,

there doesn't look like there's going to be a whole lot of turnover between now and the end of the season, but you never know. Right. I could see that the way that you summarized that argument makes me think that devon did a very good job writing it and that dylan did a terrific job editing it and it's just so reassuring to hear both those things even though i had no doubts at all that it would be true uh yeah doing a great job at my job uh it's fine i could see i could see that brewers team may be sneaking up on the Cubs, although it's looking increasingly unlikely, although that pitching still makes me a little bit nervous.

But yeah, I think that when you look at the leaders of each of these divisions, you maybe see the NL Central and potentially the NL East doing a little swappity-do, and perhaps the Rays catch fire again and overtake the yankees or like you know we finally get to the breaking point with yankees depth and someone else gets hurt and then they they struggle but it does not feel as if there is likely to be a terrific amount of movement here even among the some of the like teams that are really young and fun that we drafted highly in our fun teams draft you know the dodgers are probably going to win the NL West. I don't think the Padres are going to catch them.

I think the Padres don't think the Padres are going to catch them, right? I think they're pretty realistic about their odds. And if Cleveland was unwilling to do what they needed to, to really shore up the central in the offseason, you know, it seems unlikely this far out that they're going to necessarily make big moves at deadline so it does sort of take the wind out of your sails because things are feel very settled even though we've had some early surprises with teams that have not performed as well as we expected like cleveland and dc and so it's just kind of a it's kind of a bummer yeah i mean the red socks have worked themselves back into the race after starting terribly. So the Red Sox being good was not something that would have surprised or excited anyone entering the season, but because they started so poorly now that they have restored their place in the standings, I think that's something to watch where they're five and a half games back, and that is not at all insurmountable.

But yeah, otherwise, you look around and, you know, I don't know, it feels like Cleveland's kind of brought this onto themselves by not being more active. But on the other hand, so much has gone wrong for them. And so much has gone right for Minnesota that if Cleveland had signed a free agent or two, that probably wouldn't make up the eight-game deficit that they are dealing with right now. Maybe they narrow that over the course of the season and it would be enough to help them come back. But it's very possible that even if they had invested more, things just would have gone so wrong that they wouldn't have ended up making it anyway. So I don't know. that they wouldn't have ended up making it anyway. So I don't know.

Sometimes seasons just really run so far off the rails that nothing you could have done to prepare would really help you. On the other hand, you have the Yankees who everything has gone wrong for them, and yet they're still in first place. Yeah, I do like, in terms of the experience I have of baseball, I like very much that the Twins are legitimately good, right? They are, it's really very wild where they sit relative to the other very good teams in baseball. Man, good for you, twins.

You're doing great. Happy for you. So it's nice that it isn't, that they are legitimately good sort of in themselves rather than it just being a matter of sort of predictable bad luck befalling Cleveland. themselves rather than it just being a matter of sort of predictable bad luck befalling Cleveland. And I guess this makes the wild cards potentially more interesting, right? Because you still have competitive wild card races. So it isn't as if all hope is lost there, but it does. Man, I don't know. I just wish more of them were better. I just wish more of them were better. We're going to Cleveland for an All-Star game.

Who's excited about that? I mean, I'm excited. I've never been to Cleveland. I'm going to learn about it. I found myself consuming this season more through player seasons than team seasons, I would say. And also league-wide trends, I suppose. But when I think of the things that have excited me this season, I mean, the Twins have been exciting, but for the most part,

it's been a lot of predictable placements. And then I get excited by, you know, Cody Bellinger's season or Christian Jelic's season or Joey Gallo's season. That's kind of been what's drawing me in more so than what any particular team is doing. And I don't know if that's the typical way for me or whether usually I appreciate things more through a team-centric lens, the sort of clumping of end of year division games. And Noah, Noah, I can't answer your question, but we're going to reference it. So here you go. Was noting that the 19 of the final 22 games that the Twins have this year are against division opponents. And that can be very exciting if you have more teams that are competitive. And I kind of like that the schedule ends up being sort of balanced in that way where you have a bunch of division games at the beginning and at the end, and then you get to see hopefully competitive, exciting division races. But I don't know that we're just more likely to experience the fun stuff in baseball through individual players, which, you know, that's fine. You see a lot more of the league that way, right? You get to enjoy a lot of different kinds of baseball that way. So I think that in that sense,

it can be quite enjoyable, but it doesn't have the same, you go from appreciating tension to appreciating superlatives. And that that's fun but it is a different experience of baseball than having that like really fraught tense race although i guess you know if the if the red sox continue to sort of mend themselves and the race stay competitive that that that al east race will be uh fraught and competitive and with one more team than we thought so that's good and you imagine that the central that nl central i should say uh will be will be tight and the the very top of the nl east could be but half of the divisions in baseball are likely to be like very far out of reach pretty quickly here so that seems bad yep not great but uh yeah i mean if you look back

at baseball history there's always been some element of that and right obviously early baseball history you had teams that really weren't competing and never were trying to compete and and teams that were like syndicate teams that were owned by the same person and would transfer players from one to the other and i mean that's going back a ways. But obviously, you have always had teams that weren't really trying or just weren't competent enough to make a run. And I think if anything, we have more parity than we did decades ago, but maybe a little less parity than we had five years ago or something like that. So are better but also worse things are better but also worse mike trout officially the most valuable player in the american league excellent so that's good although cody bellinger man cody bellinger so we get to appreciate cody bellinger that part's good this is not me discovering that cody bellinger is good in case anyone is worried i'm doing like a leaderboard moment no i knew i knew that but But man, Cody Bellinger, really good.

Josh Bell hit another baseball into the river. He just does that on a daily basis. So great. Trout being at the top of the leaderboard, like he's done that in a very quiet way. Very quiet. It's not been a season where he's not really leading in anything, right? He's just having this weird, extremely ultimate plate discipline year where he's walking way more than he's striking out and he's kind of he's not hitting better he's not really hitting worse either it's just a different sort of season where he's not hitting for a ton

of power because he's just walking constantly and uh yeah i mean if you have a 460 ish on base percentage as he did last year and does again it doesn't really matter what else you're doing that's that gets you most of the way there well and i think what i'm appreciating about him is that i mean he's not so far ahead of george springer and joey gallo and isn't it fun that the names that we have right behind mike trout are a little different than they've been in the last couple years i like it when there's some variety there. I'm more comfortable when Mike Trout's the best player in baseball, but it's nice when it can, you know, can kind of move around.

You have different guys. But yeah, he's, you know, he's just having a very Troutian, pretty good at everything kind of year. Joey Gallo is still walking almost 20% of the time. Yeah. Nom, nom, nom, nom. yeah delicious so excited about joey gallo but yeah me too mike trout 175 wrc plus just behind him on the leaderboard daniel vogelbeck 171 yeah our large adult son we're so proud of him more home runs than mike trout great year everything's great all. Has this podcast run its course? We've talked. We found things

to talk about. And we found things to be excited about in the end. We were worried that we would just be very glum by the end of it. And we have found a way to be happy and it is through Mike Trout. Yep. Mike Trout saves the day again. Thank you, Mike Trout. All right. Well, have a nice long weekend

and talk to you next week. Sounds good. One quick update on something sam and i talked about last time sam proposed that if a manager makes a challenge and the replay is not able to refute what he challenged the call stands but he still loses his challenge and sam and i suggested that maybe if the replay is not conclusive can't overturn the call but maybe you shouldn't cost the team its challenge either and according to some discourse in our facebook group that is the case in cricket daniel jocelyn one of our listeners and facebook group members posted in there that cricket already essentially uses that system when they do a replay review the call is upheld overturned or umpires call meaning it could have gone either way so we're just going to go with what the umpire said and if it's umpires

call then the challenging team keeps their review So that's exactly what we suggested that baseball do. Evidently, cricket has also solved the briefly losing contact with a bag during a slide problem that baseball has still not tackled. So perhaps there's a lot to learn from one of baseball's forebears. Cricket can still teach us something. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up for Patreon and pledged some small monthly amount to keep the podcast going. Mike Livingston, Tim, Julia Turner, Aaron Hartman, and Brandon Castro. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively

Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Please keep your questions for me and Meg coming via email at podcastoffangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. You can pre-order my book, The MVP Machine, which comes out in about 10 days.

My goodness, Meg will be reading it this weekend. You can be reading it very soon. If you pre pre-order it you will qualify for some extras bonus chapter a conversation between me and travis and more so please place your pre-orders and send some confirmation that you did to the mvp machine at gmail.com and we will bestow some bonuses upon you when the book comes out on june 4th we'll also be doing an event in person at Foley's, the bar on 33rd Street in Manhattan, on the release date, June 4th. Travis and I will both be there.

We'll be signing books, reading from the books, hobnobbing and chatting. So we hope you'll show up to Foley's at 6.30. We'll be there all evening on June 4th. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, a long weekend, and we will be back to talk to you next week. The Mother Always Groves Too bad The fire Got trouble