Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1407: How Much is That Wild Card in the Window?

Episode Date: July 23, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about a bat in front of home plate that deflected a ball, the José Ramírez resurgence, the base stealer in a Statcast ad, an Andrelton Simmons shift that wasn’t, the Atlantic League, a viral Oliver Drake pitch, and a misguided (and unguided) bunt by Fernando Tatís, Jr., then discuss […]

I said illusion, he never lets go. Oh, I remember, I feel it in my bones. It makes no difference, it keeps my spirits high. I'm gonna rise up, hey, hey, boy, and I had a figure Good morning and welcome to episode 1407 of Effectively Wild, the baseball podcast from Fangraphs.com, brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller of ESPN, along with Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello, Ben. Hello. A ball hit the bat, a throw, a throw hit the bat. Yeah, tell us about it. This was a, well well everybody already saw it uh

this was the this was the moment when leading sports center yeah this was the moment when bat dropping kind of moved into the mainstream charlie blackman had a hit he dropped the bat he did not in it did not to me look like he dropped the bat strategically. What happened is he dropped it right on the line as he left the batter's box, and it rolled out. This bat actually rolled into place. And when the throw came home, there was no play at home. But when the throw came home, it bounced right in front of the bat. And then while coming up over the bat, it clipped the bat and bounced high over Gary Sanchez's head and behind him. James Paxton sprinted over to field it, backing up, and no runners advanced because of the nature of the play in question.

There was no tangible outcome to this ball hitting a bat, but the ball definitely hit the bat. come to this ball hitting a bat uh but the ball definitely hit the bat um got many retweets etc and just goes to show that sometimes the ball hits the bat so you should not be doing the defense's work of clearing obstacles for them that's all this is that's that's all this is is when you throw the bat out of play as a hitter you are doing the defense's work for them. Don't do that. If you can, leave the bat right out there. And I think that I saw that Paul O'Neill, who was calling the game, said he had never seen this happen before. You have probably watched almost as many bat drops as Paul O'Neill in your day. And have you ever, you've never seen something quite like this before either?

Well, no, wait. So when I wrote the original article, I went looking for any proof that this had ever happened. And I found some reference to, I think a Randy Wynn throw or maybe a Randy Wynn bat drop being hit. There was a collision between ball and bat and it led to an extra base.

Now, I don't have the video of that. And all I have is one sentence in one game story. And so it's hard to know what to make extra base. Now, I don't have the video of that. And all I have is one sentence in one game story. And so it's hard to know what to make of that. But there was some evidence that in history, it has existed that a game has been affected by bat placement. But then in spring, this spring, Dansby Swanson, I think it Dropped the bat And the throw home Hit the bat and That was a thing at the time So now we've seen it twice this year

Justifies all the hours That you spent watching Bat drop highlights That was an article that I liked writing But I would say that it has become Maybe my favorite article It Gives me oh there i'm watching the dansby swanson one the dansby swanson one was great because this was right he left the

bat right in front of the plate six feet in front of the plate right where you want to do it and he he tossed it there he actually tossed it there and he tossed it there i think i don't know why we're talking about dansby swanson now but he tossed it yeah oh this is beautiful it almost looks like he tossed it there to keep the catcher from running out to field the ball because this was a slow chopper to the pitcher but the catcher wasn't going to field the ball but he actually like swanson held it out and then tossed it he dropped it it was perfect and so then the throw from the pitcher came home hit the bat run scored only spring training though this is real life. Yeah.

Okay. Important update. And another update on something that we talked about. It was June 17th when we did our episode on the mystery of Jose Ramirez and whether he was still good. Yeah. Well. He is good. Looks like he's still good.

Yeah. So on Sunday, he hit a go-ahead homer in a game that Cleveland won by one run. Important homer. Of course, Cleveland has been probably the hottest team in baseball. I think they won seven games during that 10-game homestand. Let's see, they are 28-11 since June 4th, which is the best winning percentage in the majors over that stretch. And a big part of that has been the resurgence of Jose Ramirez, who since we talked about him on that episode, 110 plate appearances, he has hit 304, 345, 588 with six homers. That is a 137 WRC plus, which is not much lower than where he was in each of the past two seasons. And I forget what we said he would be worth war wise over the rest of the season, but he has already been worth one win above replacement since that might have been the way that Chris Sale had been so bad and then immediately become so good and how hard it is to explain a pitcher. Well, how hard it is to anticipate a pitcher as good as Sale being as bad as he was. And in the immediate aftermath of that, he had a 7.59 era over four starts yeah right and cleveland's three back in minnesota now so that is very much open it is

division although i was surprised to see that the playoff odds had not moved as much as i expected i mean cleveland is i mean they've made up what, like seven, eight games. And yet Minnesota is still 82% likely to win that division. And it is because, well, partly because the projections think that Minnesota is a good team. But also Minnesota has a much different strength of schedule, which you, you always sometimes some standings will list strength of schedule. And I never even look at that because it's always so inconsequential it seems to me I mean maybe if you get down to the final two weeks

of the season but usually you're there's not a big difference between teams strength of schedule especially when you're talking about a division race but Minnesota's strength of schedule the rest of the way their opponents have a 468 winning percentage and cleveland's are a 497 winning percentage which is a significant difference and i i don't i haven't looked at why that is but presumably it's the games that they're playing outside the division somehow uh stack up in minnesota's favor so they're still strangely way up in the playoff odds but uh yes you can feel the panic in Minnesota tweeters yeah All right well I don't have any other

Banter I should mention that okay At the end of this episode I will be Talking to Hunter Pence for 20 some minutes I spoke to him This weekend because there is a documentary About Hunter Pence that came Out about how he reinvented His swing and he went to the

Dominican Winter League to test it out and then he caught on with the Rangers on a minor league contract and of course has had an all-star season. And for those who have read The MVP Machine, he worked with the coach Doug Latta, who I went to see and wrote about working with in that book, who had also worked with Justin Turner and Mookie Betts and Marlon Bird and others. So I talked to Pence about that process of reinventing his swing and how players all over baseball are doing this sort of thing and what exactly he changed and how hard that was for him to do. So I think that was fun. Love Hunter Pence. Great guy. Yeah, I do too. All right. So a few things here. You know that StatCast AWS

commercial that you see? I don't know if you see it on your fancy. Yeah, I do. Yeah. Okay. People are going to wonder why I'm calling your MLB TV subscription fancy. We'll just leave it unexplained. It's not even fancy anymore. It's not fancy anymore.

So you also see the AWS commercial where the runner steals and you see the steal metrics on screen. Do you know who that is stealing? No, I'm never really paying attention. Yeah, me neither. I started paying attention because I got really annoyed that one of the first shots of that commercial, which is about stealing a base shows a batter running down a baseline that has a white chalk line. It's he's clearly running to first base. And there are a bunch of numbers on screen about steal percentage. And got annoyed by that not that annoyed but i so then i watched the commercial more closely and i

wondered who the runner is and the runner is anton richardson do you remember him no no you wouldn't uh anton richardson he was a briefly a pinch runner and right fielder in the major leagues he is famous besides this commercial he is famous for being the runner who scored on Derek Jeter's walk-off single to end his home career he had a pinch run and he scored so he's the guy sliding in at home but this is a commercial that first aired last postseason and so it's you know it was made in 2018 and it is now airing constantly in 2019 and to get a picture of a i mean this is an an ad basically for mlb i mean it's not it's for amazon web services but this is an ad like about an MLB product. And to get baseball footage, they had to go back to 2014

and get a stolen base by Anton Richardson, which I assume there's a very good reason for why they had to do that. But the procurement of MLB stock footage continues to be a very strange and complicated process that apparently even comes up if you're making a commercial about the league's own digital media. Yeah, that is curious. Yeah.

So Anton Richardson, I wonder if they had to get somebody who was not active because if they had somebody who was active, then it might have seemed like they were endorsing the product. I don't know. I don't know either. Some kind of players association consideration. Not sure. Yeah. Anyway, so this took place on September 16th, 2014. Other players who appear in it are Brandon Gomes,

Nick Franklin, and James Loney. Names from the past. All right. Let's see. I had, do you remember a few years ago, I wrote an article about the next frontier of weird defensive positioning? Yes. Oh, I know what you're going to mention, I think. You do?

Yeah. Okay. One of the ideas that I had was that if you have a definite bunt situation and you have, say, Andrelton Simmons as your shortstop yes maybe haven't played third base for that for that and so a couple days ago d gordon was up for the mariners and uh there was a runner on first and it's always a bunch situation when d gordon is up but there was a runner on first and i think nobody out and they expected bunt and the broadcast showed the defense and they had the you know how they sometimes show the position of the players now that like the position is kind of like floating in the air so that you can see where who everybody is and where they are and so they had shortstop at third base and third base at

shortstop and tim livingston sent me this and i was very excited uh but then i re-watched the play and it was just a glitch on the broadcast they didn't actually do this, even though it wasn't really that. In fact, on the next play, Dee Gordon bunted and David Fletcher ran in and made a nice play. Okay. Well, that's too bad. Yeah. Tim sent it to me too, and I was also excited. Yeah. All right. So that didn't even need to be mentioned. Let's see. The Atlantic League, we've talked about reaching first on a wild pitch and you guys on Friday's show I think mentioned that it appears to be scored a walk and we had a listener from the Atlantic League who emailed us to let us know that in fact it was it is now a walk but originally it

was a fielder's choice it was going to be a fielder's choice which then you could really see for darren ford and anybody else then you've got a real incentives problem because to go to first you are now you're helping your team but you are hurting your own stats because a fielder's choice counts as an out and does not help your on base percentage and i don't even know why what fielder's choice feels like you just picked something out of the hat. There's no real logic to why you, there's no choice being made, is there? No, not really. And it's not, yeah, it doesn't make any sense.

It's like batter's choice. It's batter's choice, but all things are, I mean, that's like calling a stolen base a batter's choice, which I guess you could. But anyway, I think it's good that they got rid of that. That would have been a really bad way to, I think, do this. You want to give the batter some positive credit for the thing he's doing. And a walk seems like it makes sense to me. It is you're reaching first on the pitcher's wildness.

In fact, I don't think that we should call base on balls. I don't think walk and base on balls should be synonymous. I think a base on balls should be reaching first base on a fourth ball. And a walk should be a base on ball or a hit by pitch or now this. Yeah. Okay. I like that. Although I guess in this case, you don't get to walk there.

So maybe now that maybe that can't be a walk. True. Anyway, so the way that they score this in the Atlantic League is they call it a walk, and then they assign automatic balls for the remaining balls. So it essentially creates the extra balls. One other thing about the Atlantic League is that their calendar, if you go looking for games, their calendar has Sunday last in the week, which I just think is the right way to do

it. Nobody does that. But of course, obviously, obviously, Sunday is the last day of a week. It is absurd to call the last day of a week and the first day of a week. That's stupid. Nobody thinks of a week that way. It's time to quit splitting Saturday and Sunday on a calendar. And the Atlantic League doesn't. They put them together at the end of the week appropriately. Yeah, I think I agree with that. I do have one more thing to mention, I guess. Our friend of the show, Oliver Drake, went viral this weekend with a pitch that he threw against the White Sox.

And there was a lot of speculation about what this pitch was. MLB's account tweeted it. Neil deGrasse Tyson was tweeting about how it broke the laws of physics. And people were speculating about what this pitch was. Did you see it? I mean, it's definitely a strange looking pitch, but I know that you were away. So I don't know if you caught this, but he's a right-handed pitcher. And a lot of people said it looks like it's a left-handed pitcher's slider coming out of a right-handed pitcher's hand. So people were wondering what exactly this pitch was and was it a screwball and did it look so weird because no one throws screwballs anymore?

Okay, I'm just going to say I'm watching it and I don't quite get the virality. Yeah, well, so I asked Jeff about this. I think I can say this. I'm not asking you about anything secret. I said, what was that pitch? And he said he thought it was a fairly ordinary splitter for Oliver Drake. And he sent me a few clips of similar splitters from that same game that Drake threw. They're all the same outing and they all look like basically the same pitch, except that one of them is the viral one where he gets the swing and miss and it's the last out of the inning and he walks off the mound. And then the other one I think is a ball or he doesn't get the K. And so it doesn't look nearly as impressive. And so I think that's like one of them is just inside and low and the catcher doesn't even catch it and it pops out of the glove and it just doesn't look that special really. And I think a lot of the virality of a pitch, yeah, it's the pitch's movement certainly, but I think a lot of it is also what the hitter does. It's almost like catcher framing or something. Like you're more likely to get the

strike if the catcher catches it in a certain way even though that has no effect on where the pitch actually crossed the plate it's sort of the same i think when we're watching gifs on twitter and we see a pitch it's like our perception of how incredible that pitch was is influenced by how the catcher catches it how the hitter swings at it. And in this case, the hitter just looks completely fooled. He swings late. He misses by a mile. And it's a strikeout, and they walk off the field triumphantly. And so everyone goes, what in the world was that?

I've never seen a pitch like that. I mean, it was a good pitch. And it does have, I guess, unusual movement or kind of. But he threw a bunch of those pitches in that game. And I guess he always throws this pitch and he's been pretty effective this year, but he hasn't really gone viral. And so as Jeff was saying, I think it's probably just the camera angle, the batter's reaction, all these things sort of combined to make more of it than it actually was yeah i like pitch gifs generally but to uh if i ever really want to engage with the pettiest part of my personality what i'll do is i'll go watch pitch gif tweets and then click uh many of which are just like standard pitches like oh that's a fastball or oh that's a mistake that the batter swung and missed on and then i will go read all the replies and of these tweets that have like 17 000 faves and just shake my head at the replies yeah but every now and then there will be one that

says like that wasn't that great yeah but yeah i've done that too. All right. I got one more. Fernando Tatis Jr. on Saturday bunted, tried to lay down a sacrifice bunt in the ninth inning. Did you see this play? No. Do you know any of the background of this play? No.

All right, good. This could probably be a whole topic. Maybe it will be, but I doubt it. So it was 6-5. There was a runner on first base. The Padres were trailing. Craig Kimbrell was in. He had walked Will Myers to lead off the inning, or at least Will Myers was on first base. It's possible Will Myers pinch ran, but he had walked the leadoff batter and Tatis comes up. The middle of the order was coming up after him. One run game, struggling Kimbrel. So Tatis squares around on the first pitch and it's a 97 mile an hour fastball outside and he takes it for a ball. So now Tatis is up in

the count. He looks down to his third base coach. He then gets back in the box and the second pitch is a 97 mile an hour fastball inside and Tatis bunts it and pops out to the third baseman. And this was a, this was all, I mean, you know, this is one of those bunt situations where you, you're kind of like thinking, why are they bunting there? Let the pitcher get into more trouble. He's wild. He's hard to bunt. You have a great hitter coming up. And certainly once it's a 1-0 count, now the batter's in control and so on and so forth, all these things. But the more interesting thing is that Andy Green said after the game that they had not told Tatis to bunt, that he was bunting on his own, which we've talked about

before. It is strangely common, strange to us, it seems strange to us, strangely common in the major leagues for batters to call their own sacrifices. And Cleveland is, I think, famous for this, right? This is when it came up last that we talked about it because they had more position players bunting than any team in the American League. And we thought, well, that's a strange thing from Terry Francona, noted stat head manager, although I don't know if he would like to be known as a noted stat head manager. But it turns out that Francona doesn't call those bun bunts he just lets them do what they want to do and they bunt a lot they sacrifice bunt a lot i think this came up with the ned yost royals as well in 2014 and 2015 and this feels this is all very strange right like we we thought at the time

this was very strange it remains very strange uh and what remains especially strange what seems especially strange to me here is that we saw tatis look down to the third base coach yeah so like you could very you don't even have to anticipate this after he attempts to bunt the first time you could give him a sign that says don't bunt it feels very weird that there is a bunt sign but that there is apparently not a don't bunt sign and that there is not even a don't bunt command like you would not i don't know do they ever would they ever tell you don't bunt or so when we were um with the stompers uh at one point i i remember talking to phelan about signs on three o counts does he give a take sign on three o count and he said no they don't these guys don't need signs they know what they're doing up there they

know the right they know the situation they know the right thing to do and so i would notice then for the rest of the year that uh i didn't even know our signs but i would notice the rest of the year that that you'd hear on three o counts counts especially, but also on 2-0 counts, or even if a guy went up after a four-pitch walk, what you would hear is, be smart up there. You'd hear like a lot of that, be smart up there. And that's kind of a compliment to your teammate that you trust him to be smart up there. But it does feel a little odd that this is a sport where there are signs there are there are commands given you do sometimes get told you you know throw a pickoff attempt to first or throw a pitch out or lay down a sacrifice bunt but that in other cases they just

leave it up to you to make the right decision and it's especially interesting when you're talking about a 20 year old who is incredibly good at baseball who is probably maybe your best player in it but but is 20 and hasn't been in this situation the majors a lot and you would think in that case you would be especially proactive about saying what we're not doing here is bunting yeah or maybe it's just that he has been so good that you almost forget that he's 20 and treat him like he's a more mature player who's not doing a lot of these things for the first time so maybe you're not as proactive as you should be just because it seems like you almost don't have to coach him in other areas and then here's this one time where he shows his lack of experience and his youth and then you realize oh right he's 20 even though he's already probably the best player on the team and one of the best players in baseball so yeah i agree that's probably a case where they

should have told him not to do that particularly after he attempted to do it the first time yeah i think especially after he attempted it you could imagine not thinking this was going to be an issue, maybe. It's still probably worth thinking that it might be an issue. If there's a lesson that we learned from the Cleveland conversation, I think it's that ballplayers think that it's the right time to bunt. In a lot of ways, there's no real downside to bunting. If you lay down a bunt, then you get a lot of attaboys

when you go back to the dugout uh i mean the downside is you don't get to hit a dinger which you probably want to do but like it looks selfless it it's a way to to make your teammates slap you on the back and feel like you're a team player and so like i would imagine that francisco lindor was bunting more than terry francona wanted him to, because there's like different incentives at play for each of those two players, two people. So, but anyway, with Tatis, you could imagine the first time thinking, oh, wow, whoa, that was surprising. That came out of nowhere. But the second time you'd think you'd take action and he was not, it did not appear he wasn't bunting for a hit he showed early uh he obviously showed multiple

times but he showed early he has bunted for a hit this year and he showed very late in that case so anyway it's an interesting dustin palminter wrote about this exact play in his sacrifice bunt newsletter which is a great newsletter about the padres and he I think shows very well like uh what sort of what a strange thing it is that we expect uh ball players to in certain cases just not be coached it's a sport where there's just not a lot of coaching in games there's more I mean it probably would have seemed maybe weird 15 years ago to tell outfielders every every move that they're you know every step that they were supposed to take left and right before a pitch and that's now very normal and i imagine that this letting batters choose when to bunt situation will also probably be gone

in five years yeah or maybe batters just won't even think to bunt because they'll be brought up in this era where no one really bunts so there there won't be that same mentality of, I mean, I guess you'd still get the attaboys at this point, but it's much rarer for this to happen in what used to be standard sacrifice bunting situations. Now they're often not, and sacrifice bunting just becomes rarer and rarer every year. Fewer players really work at it, I think, probably because it's less prized. And so maybe they just won't even really think to do it at a certain point because it'll be such a rarity. It just won't be part of the ballplayer mentality.

Yeah. On the other hand, the 20-year-old just did this. Yeah, that's true. I also just noticed that the newsletter that i mentioned from dustin palmatier is the sacrifice bunt newsletter so dustin is not doing his part to to uh to squash this craze i wonder if ad i bet you the number of attaboys you get has not changed yeah i bet that i bet you get as many attaboys in 2019 as you got in 1965, even though the sense of the value of that bunt has largely shifted. It's still selfless, or it's seen as selfless.

Yeah. All right. Well, anything else, Ben? Nope. Okay. I wanted to talk about the wildcard race a little bit. And specifically, I want to talk about the wildcard race a little bit and specifically i want to talk about the wild card what the wild card is or very early probably in the first dozen or i don't know first few dozen

shows of this maybe in the first one for all i know we talked about what the wild card is the wild card at that point was brand new not the wild card the second wild card was brand new and it was no longer an automatic playoff spot and i remember having conversations about whether it counted as making the playoffs if you were the wild card but lost in the first game and if it would be seen as a successful season if you lost in the wild card game and if teams would invest in wild card spots, knowing that there was only a 50% chance that they would survive the wildcard game and that they would be weakened if they did so. And if this would change the incentives

for teams during the season when they're maybe eight games out of the division, but only one game out of the wildcard. In previous eras, that situation would be, you definitely would be a buyer. You would be interested in upgrading because you wanted to get that playoff spot and win the World Series. But knowing that the wild card is now a less rewarding position because you have to, you know, survive that game, would teams still invest in it? And so this was like 2012 and we thought, oh, it'd be

interesting to see how teams kind of price in the value or how they value that spot. And it is now seven years later. And I think that after I hang up, I'm going to look into this topic and write about it. But in the meantime, I have not. So I'm just curious to know what your sense is. We've now lived with the second wild card for seven years. What is the second wild card? Is it good? Is it a playoff position? Is it something that you invest in? And there are a lot of teams. This is going to be a very interesting trade deadline as you and Meg talked about, as many people have talked about, because there are so many teams that are in it technically, but also because there are so many teams that are in it, technically, but also because there are so many teams that are in the wildcard specifically.

So you have the Yankees are basically certain to win their division. There's really no competition there. The Astros are certain to win their division. There's really no competition there. The Dodgers are certain to win their division. There's no competition there. And then you have like 17 or 18 teams of whom three are going to win divisions. And really, like we kind of probably even know most of those three teams they're all pretty set and the rest are all

fighting for wild card spots and so they have to figure out whether they they care about this position the Giants have been the team that I think a lot of people are talking about because for them it's a decision of whether or not to sell, whether or not to punt the season entirely when they have now clawed their way back into the wildcard race. But like if you look at, for instance, the Phillies, the Phillies have on Fangraph's playoff odds, a 1% chance of winning the division,

but a 21% chance of winning the wildcard. The A's have a 1% chance of winning the division, but a 29% chance of winning the wildcard. The Rays and a 1% chance of winning the division, but a 29% chance of winning the wildcard. The Rays and the Red Sox are both at 2% for the division and about 50% to win the wildcard. And all these teams have to figure out what, and the Diamondbacks and Giants, by the way, are at 0% to win the division, but 15 and 6% to win the wildcard. And so all these teams have to figure out whether the wildcard is something to chase, whether in this specific instance, whether it is worth chasing a playoff

spot among so many teams among such a crowded field, but then also if the reward is, is worth investing a lot in or investing a little in or investing nothing in or in perhaps in the Giants case, running away from entirely. So then that goes back to the original question, which is, is it your sense in the seven years of watching this that teams are willing to spend to win a wildcard? Well, I don't remember what I said seven years ago, but I think I probably said that I do consider it making the playoffs or a spot in the playoffs because I think that way now. Obviously, it's essentially like half of that because you've got a roughly 50-50 shot depending on the team and the year of advancing to the

Division Series, but I still think of it as something to covet, something to try to obtain, and something that makes your season more successful, more fulfilling than it would be if you had the same record but you did not win a wildcard and get to play in that single wildcard game. Even though it may just be one game, even though it may not even be a home game and it's almost over before you even realize it's starting, it's not great, but it's something. It's better than the alternative. So my sense of whether teams actually act that way, I really don't know. I couldn't tell you. I guess they probably act as if it's something desirable but not as desirable as a division spot but i haven't done the research as you haven't yet and maybe you will and we'll see whether teams that are in the running for wild cards are more likely to make big moves they shouldn't be well but right well you could make the case that i mean look this is

the question is it's very hard to figure all of this stuff out about what you prioritize what you value what causes you happiness so you can think about there being sort of three or four reward tiers for a team that has tried to make themselves good and has gotten kind of good. One is you are in a pennant race and there is a lot. I think there is a lot to be said for simply being in a pennant race, even if you lose on the last day of the season, which is obviously going to be crushing in the moment, but all losses to end the season are going to be crushing in the moment. But to,

to be in a pennant race, to have all base, but to have 162 games that count or 161 days that count or 160 that you're looking forward to is like a real reward to your fans and probably does a lot. I would imagine does a lot for your revenue and for your whole sense of purpose. And so that's tier one is being in a pennant race. Tier two is, is making the playoffs and getting to hoist a banner and say, we, we made it to the playoffs. We got into the post season. We're in this tournament with like the season starts a new in October and we're in that

new season. And arguably tier three, a separate tier might be making the real postseason, which would be the one after the wildcard, because you're not really starting a new postseason from scratch in the wildcard game. Maybe you are, maybe you're not. Maybe that's a play in game or maybe it's part of the postseason. That's part of the philosophical argument here. But anyway, getting into the tournament and then tier four or tier three is winning the World Series and getting to have a parade and saying we did not fail this year. Like there was no point of failure. We made it to the

end without failure. And obviously each of each of those is better than the tier below it. It's about how much do you want to invest in it and how much do you chase after it. But you said that wildcard teams should not necessarily spend as much on chasing a wildcard as a division. But if you think about the loss of not being in the postseason, of dropping down a tier, of coming up short,

maybe you would figure that the gap, that the drop-off from tier two to tier one is bigger than the drop-off from tier one to tier two or from any of the other tiers, if that makes sense. Like a wildcard team has to kind of be desperate, like they're backed into a corner. And so in a sense, maybe it does make more sense to spend more because you really want to get to that tier that you find most rewarding, the tier two of making the postseason tournament. Yeah, that's true. And if you're looking at it from a financial perspective, as of course teams are, then you want to make sure that you're giving your fans a reason to buy tickets and tune into your games over the last couple months of the

regular season. And there's probably little difference there, whether you're going for a division title or a wildcard spot. As long as you're in contention, as long as you're in that pennant race, as you said, then people have incentive to come watch you. In fact, they may have more incentive to come watch a team that's in the wildcard race than they do, say, the Dodgers, who have it locked up already, essentially. So if you want to maximize attendance and interest over those two months, even if you're not getting the payoff of the guaranteed playoff round and the higher odds of having multiple playoff rounds, which can be financially rewarding for a team too, you're still getting those two months of juicing attendance and interest

because there is something to play for and because you have shown that you care about that thing and you value that thing and you're sending the message to your fans that they should care about that thing because you have traded prospects or whatever for established players. You've brought in someone to compel fans to watch your team and support the team that you are supporting. So I think there's something to be said for that. That's probably the most valuable thing of all, just giving your fans a reason to watch and be invested in the team for every day of the regular season. Yeah. The case for, let's say we divide teams into two buckets, the division teams and

then the wildcard teams. The case for the division teams spending more is that they're much more likely to win the World Series and that you should hoard your resources to accomplish your ultimate goal. And then the case for the wildcard bucket actually spending more is that there's a much greater chance of real failure, of being a loser, of missing the playoffs entirely, of falling out of it, of giving your fans a discouraging season, and that you should hoard your resources to avoid kind of that worst case scenario. And I wonder if this is something that divides people in personalities. I am not ambitious. I am risk averse. I mean, I really, really, really want to avoid all the worst case scenarios for my life. And I put a lot of effort and energy into avoiding

worst case scenarios. And I know other people who put a lot of effort and energy into accomplishing truly great things. Like they want to, they want to win the Pulitzer. It would never occur to me to want to win the Pulitzer, not in a million years. I don't have that, that in me. I really though want to, you know, not go, not go bankrupt. And like the things that you do for each of those are a lot of it, it looks the same, but when you choose to make your move or when you choose where you choose to spend your resources has a lot to do with whether you're risk averse or whether you're ambitious and so the wildcard team uh has to be risk averse they have to they

have to spend i mean i don't know the the giants for Giants, for instance, like you say, the Giants, like you say, like you and Meg said a few days ago, the Giants are not probably going to win the World Series. They probably know they are not going to win the World Series. And not trading Madison Bumgarner or even more radically trading for, you know, I don't know, Marcus Stroman or something is not going to make them a World Series contender.

In fact, at Fangraphs right now, they have a 100th, wait, 1000th chance, a 1.1% chance of winning the World Series. So they're one in a thousand to win the World Series right now. They're in fact only 5.8% chance to win the world series right now they are in fact only 5.8 chance to win the wild card and so a logical way of looking at their team would be to say this is not their year it was never their year and they have no reason to think that they're going to be able to deliver that final reward for their fans but on the other hand the giants are 50 and 50 and right now i can tell you like right now their fans are having a lot of fun like

this has been they're playing really well they're playing really well that this season that nobody thought was going to be worth paying attention to in july is suddenly worth paying attention to in july and that's a lot of fun like you could make the case that that is really the best thing that they could do for their fan base is to give them baseball that mattered in July and August and maybe September. And so even though they're not going to win the World Series, even though they're probably not going to win the wild card, just as a kind of symbolic act, or not even symbolic, like as a purposeful act to give their fans and to give their team a sense of of a reason for existing beyond playing out the schedule of the you know the actual contenders this year has i think real value and so i could i could see thinking well that's the time to spend your money like when you're you know when you when

you gotta get you gotta you gotta get a leg up on something you gotta like get your getting your life together yeah well it can depend on where the team is and its competitive cycle like joe sheehan in his newsletter just wrote something about how even though the padres and the rockies are they have identical records right now they are obviously in the same place in the standings they have basically the same underlying metrics they've kind of gotten here in more or less the same way in the regular season. But the Rockies are kind of a more mature team and their core is ready to win right now. And he argues that they should be buying. They should be trying to supplement the homegrown players who they have built up and are kind of the foundation of this team.

who they have built up and are kind of the foundation of this team, whereas the Padres are kind of this up-and-coming team that are just now respectable for the first time in a while, and there's less urgency, less pressure for them to be buying now because you figure that they will probably be in this position of contending at least for a wild card for, who knows, the next decade or something with this young team that they've put together so that can be a lot of it too i don't know whether with the giants you say that well they're more in the rockies camp or an even more extreme version of the rockies because this is probably their last chance this is the last time when with this core of players they could even conceivably be contending and so they should supplement this core so that they can give it one last run. On the other hand, you have to think of the future, and you want the valley between the peaks not to be a very wide one. You want them to get back to contention sometime soon, and so you would want them to make the most of the talent that's on their current roster if they're not good enough to win this year then you want them to trade some pieces away so that they can get good again more quickly so it depends basically on how you got there if you're the phillies let's say they went on this winter spending spree this is the year they're supposed

to be really getting good they They bought the biggest free agent and they got fans really interested and excited and attendance is up and they're only half a game back. So they should be buying. It's partly just what you think of the wild card, but it's also partly a very franchise specific and dependent kind of thing, just based on where that team is and where it will be.

Yes, that is absolutely correct it if you are a team that has well i mean yeah that i was gonna say if you're a team that won the world series last year which is the red sox then it's gonna be different for you than if you're a team like the mariners that hasn't made the playoffs in forever not that the mariners are probably gonna win the wild card, but, but even that, like that's a, that I tried to give you a very simplistic pair right there. And even then I'm still like, well, okay, so what, how is it different for the Red Sox? What would they think about winning the wildcard? Would it be rewarding because they're competitive again,

it'll be their fourth straight playoff appearance. It's part of this kind of like semi-dynastic, I mean, not dynynastic but semi-dynastic run of success of always being good if you're the red socks i mean i think i you could you can make the case that if you're the red socks you've won a bunch of world three or four four world series this century already is that four four yeah four world series this century the you're you you're going to be good next year probably you've been good for a few years. Probably you don't need to, there's probably not a big difference between winning the wildcard and winning the like ALCS. Like both are just continuation of a well-run franchise that

always gives you a good product. Or is it the opposite? Is it like, can you believe the drop off from World Series to merely a wildcard contender? What what a disaster it feels like momentum is against them it feels like all that they built up last year is dissipated so even what was supposed to be a very simple choice is i actually have a kind of a hard with that but that's i think probably you're right each team is thinking about that on their own the other factor is that a lot of this probably does depend on what division you're in when the second wild card was was created at the time we'd had we'd gone through a fairly long period of of non-dominant teams of no super teams um and in fact let's see i have i did a little research here

in the five years before the second wild card the average division winner won 93.8 games. Only three teams in those five years, so 30 champions, only three of those 30 had won as many as 98 games. And so you never really felt like, oh, but we're in the division that you can't win. Baseball wasn't in that position. And then in the next five years can't win. Like they weren't, baseball wasn't in that position. And then in the next five years, it stayed pretty much the same. 94 wins on average for the division and only four of the 30 teams had won 98 games.

And then in the last three years, however, it has taken an average of, well, okay, three years, including this year. So this is including this year based on the projected win totals for the projected division champs at Fangraph. So this is a little speculative, but as of right now, if this year goes as expected, in the past three years, the average division winner, the average division winner will have 98.2 wins, which is more than four and a half wins more than the average had in the five years before the second wildcard. And of the last 18 division

winners, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, half won at least 98 games or will have won if these projected playoff odds go as expected. And so you could make, you can kind of tell yourself all you want about what you value and how you're going to go about that. But at a certain point, if you're in a division that has 103 win team every year, one option is to try to build 104 win team. And maybe a more realistic option is to think a little bit more about what you value and say, I am just going to be happy with the wild card and accept that like I got put in a tough division. And so I think that that has changed the calculus a little bit this year. And that's one of the reasons there's so many teams in the wild card race probably. But if you're looking at your division and it's going to, these are the projected win totals for the divisions this year. AL East, 102. AL Central, 97. AL West, 102. NL East, 93.

NL Central, 88. And NL West, 103. So that's three divisions where, you know, there's 12 teams that are basically, it's unrealistic. Nobody goes out and builds a 103-win team by design. It's just too hard to do. And like the teams that are facing the Yankees, the Astros, and the Dodgers right now are in a sort of a historically unlucky situation

where there's these incredible teams that are able to put a 103-win product on the field year in, year out for what seems like a fairly extended period of time. Yeah, and so you're saying that that makes the wildcard more appealing because it's the only prize available. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Okay.

That makes some sense to me. Yeah. All right. Well, I don't know what else there is to say about this. All right. Well, then that would lead one to believe that this will be a pretty busy deadline, right? Because that's what I wrote about and what I talked to you about, I think, before you went away was what this deadline would look like, because

that's an interesting question, because it's the first deadline that's a unified deadline. There's no post-July 31st trading. And so that, one would think, would make the trade activity more compressed, condensed. We'd see more trades made this month. There have been some trades, but it hasn't been notably a lot. But of course, we're not right up to the end of it when most of the action happens. But in that article, I was saying that, yes, you would think there'd be more trades because of that compression. But also this year, we've got the situation where the division winners are really good. They're better than usual. Their odds of winning the division are higher than they usually are. And then the wildcard teams should be incentivized to pursue and try to win the wildcard, as we're saying. But there are just only a handful of teams that are not even in the running for the wildcard.

So you might need some teams that are in the running, like the Giants, for instance, to decide to be sellers anyway, or the Rangers, for instance, who I will talk to Hunter Pence about in a moment. But you'd need some of those teams to take the long view and say, we're not going to win this, even though if you glanced at the standings, you'd think that we might have a decent shot. So you're saying that we should see a lot of activity by teams that could win the wild card because winning the wild card is something that teams should aspire to but on the other hand with this particular group of teams and how few teams are actually in it there just don't seem to be that many teams that they could plunder yeah to get better and especially because this season has gone so predictably in a lot of ways that the

teams that are bad already knew they were going to be bad and right and and are pre-plundered what you really need to have a great trade deadline is like two or three teams that were competitors contenders in april that have completely collapsed but still have good players yeah and there isn't really that yeah i i think though that you're probably right that there should be more teams interested in buying. I don't know. I'm not sure. more willing to buy against their interests or maybe against, I mean, it's not against their interest, but surprise you by being a buyer than they usually are to surprise you by being a seller. So, you know, because there's no August waiver trade deadline this year, I looked at all the playoff odds that have changed dramatically from the end of July to the

end of August over the past six years to see which teams had gone from basically being a contender to not or to being not a contender to being in that month and identified those. And then I looked to see, well, how did their posture change? Were these teams that were not trading for players in July, but were trading for them in August or vice versa? And what surprised me is Were these teams that were not trading for players in July, but were trading for them in August or vice versa? And what surprised me is that the teams that more or less collapsed did not really trade players off in August, even as the collapse happened. And the teams that started out quite bad and became contenders were also not trading in July when it appeared that they were quite bad. You do, it seems like you have to really fall almost all the way out of it before you concede mid-season. And so right now there's just not a lot of teams. I think there's a lot of teams that

we can look at and say, well, they're not going anywhere this year. And, you know, you could maybe say that about the Padres and the Rockies. They don't even have good records, really. But there's enough chance that I think they fall in that sort of ambiguous zone that is going to make them not want to sell off a bunch of parts because, A, maybe it's hard to admit that to yourself, and, B, maybe because it's a terrible thing to signal to your fans. But then you are going to have a lot of teams in that ambiguous zone who will,

it's not a lot, but some who will convince themselves that this is it. This is the time to go get Cole Hamels, even though everybody thinks that you're not really a contender. It's a reference specifically to the Rangers of 2015, not to the team that might try to get Cole Hamels this year, which is no team because the Cubs aren't going to give him up. So yeah, I think that it will be, if I had to guess, I would guess that this would be a

lot, a trade deadline with a lot of rumors about a very small number of teams and that potentially we could see very high prices for a few very valuable pieces. And I think that it could, like, I don't know. I don't know who the Mets go into this thinking that they're going to trade. could like, I don't know. I don't know who the Mets go into this thinking that they're going to trade. But if the prices are, if there's a lot of teams trying to acquire players to trade for players, then maybe the Mets add five more names to that list of players who are available. Yeah. Zach Wheeler getting hurt kind of threw a wrench into that at that time. But yeah. Well, only for Zach Wheeler.

Well, I mean, for the for the mets he was one of the more appealing players that they had yeah but now it makes it even easier to say trade everybody else true and wheeler's supposed to be back at the end of this week although it's the mets so we'll see dustin palmatier in the newsletter you mentioned his sacrifice bunt newsletter he looked at that last week also to see about the changes in playoff odds between July 31st and August 31st. He said last year for most teams last season, the playoff percentage from July 31st to August 31st hardly budged. The Red Sox, for instance, sat at 100% at the end of each month and played only to secure a division crown down the stretch.

On the other end of the spectrum, the Padres were stuck at 0% for most of the season, not necessarily mathematically eliminated, but eliminated all along in any semi-realistic scenario. But more than a quarter of the league saw their chances move in either direction by at least 10 percentage points. This year, with an even more crowded playoff race, that number could conceivably grow. And right this year, those teams that would move that will more crowded playoff race, that number could conceivably grow. And right this year, those teams that would move, that will see their playoff odds plummet or rise significantly from July 31st to August 31st, will not have the opportunity to act because of that. And of course, teams that suffer some injuries after July 31st, they won't be able to trade

for players to plug those holes the way that they could have in the past. So there were moves that were made in August because of those things that will not be made now. And I don't know whether teams are more likely to say, well, we will probably be one of these teams that will see our odds move in one direction or another in that month, or whether they'll just sit on their hands because they don't want to overcommit in one direction or another in that month, or whether they'll just sit on their

hands because they don't want to overcommit in one direction or another, or whether there'll be more antsy to do something because they feel like it's their last chance. And even if they don't know as much as they used to know by the end of August, well, they've got to do something. This is their only opportunity to do something significant. So I don't know which way it'll work out, but it's a weird year, and it's also the first year with this format. So I don't know that we can conclude that much about the format itself

because this year's standings are sort of wonky. Yeah, there's nine days left. You could imagine that if the Nationals and Brewers, for instance, each win their next five games, you could imagine that there's a half dozen nl teams that in the next nine days could go from teams that we're kind of talking about on the on the fringe to easy easy you know easy sellers this deadline all right so we will leave it there and i will be right back with hunter pence with Hunter Pence. The swing is in my hands now. Sometimes I think the power is better than a hard put.

Sometimes I think the power is better than anything. I am joined now by four-time All-star and current Rangers upfielder and DH and now star of the documentary on Fox Sports, The Pence Method, Hunter Pence. Hey, Hunter, how's it going? Hey, Ben, what's going on? It's going well, man. Thanks for having me. Yeah, well, thanks for being here and congrats on the success this season. I enjoyed the documentary and having worked a little bit myself with the coach that you worked with to reinvent your swing i'm curious when you decided or when you realized that you needed to do this that it wasn't just a matter of of waiting or getting healthy but that you actually needed to make some

mechanical changes yeah i mean um i think my last season was kind of uh basically a whack in the side of the head or or you could say it's just a wake-up call. I got off to a slow start. I had a decent spring, but things just worked out where I lost my starting job. Obviously, I just didn't play well enough to help the team win and to be an impact player that I wanted to be. And I kind of saw Mack Williamson had made this change. And I'd heard that Justin Turner used this guy turned his career around. And when I was watching Max swing from the year before to this year, I was just really impressed with how powerful it was, how long he was through the zone. I was like, man, that just looks so good. And I, I would talk to him about it and I couldn't even understand what he was

talking about. So I think it was then and towards the end of the year, I was like, you know what? I still want to play baseball. I don't think that this is it. Let's see if I can learn this thing. And I had no idea where it would go, if I would make a team, if I would be able to figure it out. But I just made the decision then. So you connect with Doug Glada. You go to his hitting facility in LA, the ball yard.

What did he tell you? What was the lesson? What was the main objective? Well, you know, he kind of, he's been coaching a lot of guys like, and a lot of people I think have been working with him without really saying it or being as open. I don't know if they're like trying to hide secrets or don't want to tell because, you know, some teams are kind of, you know, sensitive about who you're working with and only working with their coach uh you know it's who knows what their reasoning is but anyway so he's done a lot of this and we started just slowly

he started slowly explaining to me kind of his thoughts and you know i had asked him i was like look i want to come in as many days as you could be here and we ended up doing seven days a week for like an hour and a half in the morning uh every now and then we only got six days in depending on what happened with schedules and stuff and we would just be you know hit for 15 minutes look at video talk try this try this try this and uh we did that probably for a month and a half and uh and it was like just slowly developed i slowly start to learn this whole new swing path. When I worked with him, you know, I'm obviously not a professional player, so I didn't maybe have as much to unlearn as you did and relearn.

I didn't have those habits. And for me, I could sense, I think, that he was making me better really in that first session. I wonder how long it took for you to come to that realization. Well, I had an idea of the theory and it definitely felt extremely awkward. And even some of his, you know, the ways that he wants to weight in your legs and a lot of strange things was completely different. We had to like, he had to come up with drills to like train my body to do it. And as I did those drills, then I like almost

couldn't do it my old way anymore. So it's kind of weird how the body works as you get going. But yeah, it really was, for me, kind of a slow process. Like I was doing all right with it, but there's a certain level of expectation and it took a lot of failing and a lot of adjusting and, you know, a lot of tweaking throughout the whole time. And you're known, I would say, for having sort of an unconventional swing, or at least that's the appearance. So did that complicate what he was able to tell you? Or is that just sort of an aesthetic thing where maybe the swing looks a little different, but fundamentally, it's more or less the same as most swings? Yes, I definitely think that it made it harder for me because there's like a couple things that he wants you to potentially do that I can't really do.

And I kept trying to do them and trying to do them. And it kept getting in my way just with the way that my body fires and the way my body functions. For instance, like he really wants your hands low and the bat to be tilted in a certain way. And I can't really fire from there. And I didn't actually find this out until I got back from Winter Ball. And I knew that, because when I went to Winter Ball, I, you know, I did okay, but I knew that I needed, I wanted to be, I wanted a better feel. And so when I got back, I started making more adjustments.

I was like, let's try, let's see if I can do this in a different way. Like you're saying most of your same stuff, but like I started moving my hands higher. And what ended up happening is when I got my hands higher and flattened my bat out, I was able to make the move way better. So yeah, I kind of had to switch it up a little bit from his way, but I'm still taking his main approach. And I know that other guys who've reinvented their swing, there's kind of a data and technology component to it where they're tracking their launch angle, their exit velocity.

They're getting that feedback. They're using swing sensors, that sort of thing. But Doug's approach is, I guess, a little more low tech. Was there anything that you used to get some objective sense of whether you were improving or was it mostly going by feel? We had some of those things that we tested out on certain days. But we kind of realized that we know better than like we don't need the machine to tell us whether we hit the ball good you can just kind of tell you know so it's fun there's a lot of fun tools with that and but it

kind of also sometimes gets in the way like you start swinging harder than you want to swing and you lose focus on on the main principles and and like kind of the foundation when you have those things. But they can help in certain areas, and I definitely do think that they're really fun tools to work with. But we use them some, but not too much. So at what point were you confident that this was going to work? Because you said you're still tinkering after winter ball. So was it spring training when it really clicked and you recognized that you were all the way back? I would say, yeah, when I got to spring, because of that two weeks that I came back from the winter ball and I worked with Doug and got

really more open-minded and starting to try to adjust it to my swing. And after having all of those at bats and a lot of failures and some successes, but mainly a lot of failures, when I got to spring and I made those adjustments, everything, yeah, it started to click in spring training. And I was like, this is why I did all of it. And there was definitely a long, dark period where I wasn't sure, you know, but I knew I was like, I'm all in on this. So it's got to work.

And honestly, there was an interview I had at one point where they told me about JD Martinez, where he went to Venezuela and it didn't really feel good for him, but he didn't feel good until spring training. And this was when I was like maybe two weeks in and was kind of having some of those, like a little bit deflated, a little bit down on it because I wasn't succeeding right away. And when I heard that, I was like, all right, just keep trying, keep searching. And sure enough, it worked out almost the exact same way. By the time I got to spring, I felt incredibly confident and really good with it. Did you talk to anyone else, I guess, other than Williamson who went through this process, Turner or Martinez or someone else?

You know what? There's guys going into Doug like every single day. So there's a lot of people there that are working on that and trying to learn that stuff. And there's coaches, like college coaches, like tons of people are always like Doug's becoming really popular. So he's booked all day. But really, even Mac, I only got to see him for maybe like a couple days. It was really fun whenever he came, though, because just hearing, you know, his thoughts on everything and watching him work was awesome. And Doug's been doing this. He's had these philosophies and he's had his facility for years and didn't really break into working with big leaguers until Marlon Byrd started working with him several years ago.

Why do you think it is that it seems like players are so receptive to input from independent coaches, people with new ideas these days? It really seems like there's more openness to, I guess, questioning what you've been taught and what you've been doing than there used to be. Well, I think when you see the people that have made the change and you see the success they're having and you can kind of like, it just, it looks different the way the ball is coming off their bat, their barrels in the zone a long time. And so when you see that, I would say as a competitor, if you're looking to get better or to grow, it can be intriguing. Now, does it work for everyone? I'm not sure, but there's definitely been cases where players have gone from, you know, being not that great, like holding on to the big

leagues to elite superstars. And I think, you know, for me, it's like, I want to grow. I want to learn and I want to be the best I can be. And, you know, I'm definitely glad I made the decision to go and try it out. You are hitting now about as well as you did in your best seasons. And I wonder whether you wish that you had worked with Doug or made these mechanical changes earlier in your career. Would you have been even better? Or was it a case of you didn't really need to make these adjustments until what you were doing before stopped working as well oh my gosh i i believe if i would have known this when i was younger it would have been really really good for me especially yeah because there's no way like i'm

i'm as you know when i was younger my my athleticism my strength my flexibility and speed and all that was just on a different level. And I still do, like I said, I still do feel strong and fast, but it's just, uh, yeah, knowing my swing is such a powerful tool coming up to bat every single time. And for most of my career, I would say that I was literally just, I'm going to see the ball and hit it. And I'm going to try to, it was all feel. I didn't really know my swing. I just was competing with athleticism. And, you know, I worked extremely hard on getting as strong as I could, as fast as I could. And then I just hit a whole bunch.

I never really had, like, dialed in mechanics on exactly what I want my swing to do on every pitch and the angle they're throwing at and lining all that up. So it's just like I'm seeing baseball in a totally different way than I ever have before. And I actually asked Doug about the changes that you had made months ago, and he was saying that it was maybe partly the evolution of pitching since the beginning of your career that these days there's so much velocity, there's so much breaking balls, there's pitches high in the zone. I mean, it just seems like pitching is better and harder these days. And so was that part of it? Have you noticed that you've kind

of had to make these moves to counter the things that pitchers have done going back to 13 years when you were breaking into the big leagues? Yes. Pitching, I feel like, I don't necessarily have the stats, but it does feel like velocity is getting up higher every year. Obviously, there was the invention of the cutter, I guess, became a whole thing for a while. So there's just like, yeah, the pitching science has evolved. There's all this driveline stuff. Pitchers are throwing harder.

They have spin rate. They're attacking the top of the zone. But now swinging is somewhat catching up a little bit. There's even the debate that the balls are are different so um who knows but yeah the pitchers it feels like they're throwing a lot harder and uh you have to really maximize your your time and have people with the rangers or elsewhere in the league having seen your success have they kind of picked your brain about the changes you made have you imparted any of these lessons to any other players?

I think it's something you got to be very careful with just because like you can't really, like I said, it took me like a whole couple of months in the off season to make the adjustment and it doesn't just happen overnight. So I can't just be like, hey, start swinging this way because you're going to really mess someone up if they don't like, because there's so much, there's a lot to it more than just one thing or one conversation uh it's a whole body training

you know transition that you like i feel like if you're going to do it you need to go spend a whole off season uh kind of similar to what i did like if you try to change it during the season you're going to get confused lost and tangled up but i mean still talk, you know, like just having the knowledge, I can still try to like understand the way their barrels come into the zone and try to discuss certain things like that. How do you maintain the changes that you made as the season's going on? You know, the off season's kind of when you do the big project and the big overhaul, but then how do you make sure that you're sort of staying where you want to be from day to day? but then how do you make sure that you're sort of staying where you want to be from day to day?

Well, you know, there's Luis Ortiz, our hitting coach, is really familiar with all of the same stuff. And it's been, you know, him and Berge and Krabbe are all like really amazing at it. And so we have lots of drills that we can do daily to try to make sure. And I understand the feel and I'm always like kind of fine tuning because even with baseball, even with this, it's like your body's adjusting a little bit every day and you got to you know reline it up so it's still and especially with getting hurt and missing three weeks um you know right now I'm still trying to completely get everything back in line and working the right way and I'm feeling better as as uh you know this was my third game back and uh you know all of that's you know starting to to come together again. So it's still an everyday, you got to work on it.

It's not like once you have it, you have it forever. Is there any conflict between the teachings of Doug and what the Rangers hitting coaches advise? Or with a veteran like you, do they just kind of defer to what you want to do? And obviously it's working. No, there's no conflict. They love Doug. They're very similar.

Our hitting staff here with the Rangers is absolutely phenomenal. And they are on board and kind of like to teach a very similar thing. And this team, it's not just you kind of on the comeback trail here. There are other guys who signed minor league contracts, you know, Danny Santana and Logan Forsyth, and they're having good years. And then you've got guys like Mike Miner who've been through all sorts of issues and they're doing great. Lance Lynn's having a career year. It must be fun to not only be kind of back to full strength yourself, but everyone around you is a lot of guys who weren't expected to have the seasons they're having. And the team as a whole, really, a lot of people wrote off, but has been more successful than I think people saw coming. Yeah, no, it's been a lot of fun. And honestly, the preparation of all these guys on a daily basis, our staff has put so much work into every game for us.

It really is just an amazing environment, and I think you've got to give a lot of credit, obviously, to each of the players for the work they put in and the performance, but also to Woodward, to Woody, JD, and the staff. I don't think people realize how much they give us every advantage we can and how much work they put in. It's really incredible. And as the trade deadline approaches and some rumors swirl,

are you doing a good job of kind of filtering that and putting that out of your mind and focusing on the games? Yeah, I would say I'm very calm and at ease with everything. And, you know, I understand the business. At this time of the year, everyone likes at ease with everything. I understand the business at this time of the year. Everyone likes to talk about everything. It's a wonderful soap opera, and it's an exciting time. As a baseball fan, it's one of the fun things to see. Even as a player and with a family and connections to cities and stuff,

it definitely can be emotionally crazy, but it's always fun as a fan to watch and see the players go to where they're going and the teams that aren't in it, the excitement of the young prospects that they get. I understand the nature of the business at this point, and I'm very happy being with the Rangers and understand that if all the teams, they do what they got to do, it's best for them in the now and in the future. Just looking forward to playing every day with them. coming up? I mean, is player development improving? Is coaching improving so that guys won't have to reinvent themselves when they're 35, 36, because they'll have already learned these things? Oh, there's no, there's not even a question that there's way better

instruction and way better information out there. Almost like kids today are almost like too much information around where they have to balance that out. But there was no YouTube when I was coming up. There was no MLB Network. So I think this dates me quite a bit. There was no iPads. Even when I was in the big leagues, there was no iPads. So there's just so much information out there. And you can get the, you know, if you really want to learn,

you can search and find whatever it is you need from the greatest minds of baseball. And I just remember we were on our own. We just had to figure everything out. So it's really incredible, all the training and all of that. The young kids are coming up way more prepared and really, really good at the game of baseball. And it's going to be an exciting future for the game as well because of that. And I know that's something that Doug is concerned about. You know, there are just so many instructors out there. There are so many people on Twitter, you know, people who are kind of claiming to be able

to reinvent people and some of them can, but others are sort of selling snake oil and it's hard to know, I guess, who knows what they're talking about. So what would be your advice to a kid who's coming up now in terms of finding the right people to listen to just because there's so much information out there? Trust what feels right and, you know, keep an open mind. But, you know, and if something doesn't feel right, don't be afraid to walk away and try something else. But I do think you got to keep an open mind and, you know, let the results kind of be a map, not like happy or sad, but a map to like, does this feel right? Am I going in the right direction? And I think it's just like anything, the more you practice and prepare and reevaluate, I think you'll be fine. And your wife, Alexis, was obviously a big part of the documentary too. She went to the Dominican with you. She was very supportive.

Do you think that she was skeptical at all throughout that process when you said, you know, I'm going to reinvent what has worked for me before? Or did she fully believe that it was going to work out the way it has? I don't think either of us really knew at all where it was going. But we were like, you know what, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. You know, you only get to play baseball until, you know, there's a small window. And we knew we didn't know if we were even going to make a team. And honestly, she was extremely supportive, but it took a big toll on her.

She was stressed. She was worried. She didn't know where we were. Like, it's hard on the wives because she didn't know if we were going to play, if we were going to Japan, Korea, Mexico, you know, how we were going to get housing and move our life around.

So it was definitely, she is, I owe her so many, so much gratitude and thanks for supporting and dealing with all of that. And, you know, she just is kind of just that amazing support system. And she put up with it and dealt with it. And, you know, I'm very lucky that she helped me out in that way.

And did MLB or Fox approach you about doing this documentary? or was it something that you wanted to do to kind of just to document this process and maybe help other players who are going through something similar? Yeah, Uninterrupted and we've had like, we've always loved Uninterrupted and we've kind of been working together for a while and they were like, they would tell me throughout the years like, hey, we would like to do something with you. And I was like, and in our our communication i never really had anything and whenever i decided

i was going to do this i let them know and i was like hey this would maybe be a cool story and kind of just told them what i was doing and they they were like yes we're in nobody wanted to buy it so they were like they backed it and they came and filmed it and presented it and then fox loved it and so they sold it to fox and that's kind of how it happened so uh they and filmed it and presented it, and then Fox loved it, and so they sold it to Fox, and that's kind of how it happened. So they believed in it, and fortunately, things worked out. And making the All-Star team for the first time in five years, that must have been very fulfilling and satisfying to have gone through what you went through, and not just to get back to the big leagues and keep a spot there,

but being in the All-Star team for the first time in a while, that must have really been satisfying. It was a tremendously rewarding experience. I'm just so overjoyed and happy. I love the game of baseball, and to be honored in that way, it meant the world to Alexis, to me, to our family, and to represent the Rangers, my home state. It's just, you know, I wish I could have played, but it was still just, you know, it feels like a year of a lifetime. And I couldn't, you know, I just feel very fortunate and very happy. And I do think that it's really cool to put this message out. I'm so glad that this show is coming out and that you see kind of, you know, the evolution of going from A to B. And I hope that this story could maybe inspire

any kid or anyone doing anything that, you know, if you just take one step at a time, not, you know, with faith in what you love to do, good things can happen. All right. Well, it's been a lot of fun to see your success and I wish you continued success. Thanks for coming on. Ben, thank you so much for having me, man. I appreciate you. All right. Good talking to you, Hunter. Thank you. All right. Take care, Ben. Okay. Thanks to Hunter and thanks to all of you for listening. There's a quick scene toward the end of that documentary, The Pence Method, where Pence and his wife are in a car driving and his agents on speakerphone giving him the news that they've worked out this minor league deal with

Texas. And the agent said it's almost done, but he just insisted at the last moment that there be some awards clauses in there, that Pence have a bonus built in for winning the Comeback Player of the Year award. I gotta say, he's a leading candidate for that right now. Assuming he stays in the AL all year, I don't know who could be a better candidate. I guess Lucas Giolito, maybe? But he's so young and he's not coming off an injury. Anyway, Pence may have the inside track there. And I wonder if he would have gotten the shot to make good again, if not for the previous successes of players like Turner and Martinez. Teams kind of

perk up when they hear that someone is working with one of these coaches who's had success in the past or has made some major alterations to his swing. You definitely don't want to be the next team that cuts JD Martinez loose because he's telling you he's a different hitter and you're saying, no, you're not. You at least want to give the guy a look. By the way, last week, Meg and I talked about the next potential destination for Edwin Jackson. We were trying to matchmake him. We were trying to make him a mariner. Well, he rejoined the Tigers on a minor league deal, which is probably a smart move for Edwin Jackson because the Tigers have been pretty terrible lately.

It's probably one of the teams that is likeliest to use Edwin Jackson for the rest of this year. And maybe he has some fond memories of being there because his lone all-star season came in Detroit in 2009. That was by far his best season by war as well. But unfortunately for us, since he has already played for the Tigers, he cannot add to his tally of 14 teams with this stop. So mixed news there.

If you want to learn more about the coach who helped transform Hunter Pence and some of the other transformations that are going on around baseball these days, you can buy my book, The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players. If you like it, please leave a positive review on Amazon and Goodreads. It helps us out. You can also support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild, signing up to pledge some small monthly amount, and getting yourself access to some perks for our Patreon supporters. Five listeners who have already pledged their support include

Thomas, Molly McCullough, Tim Rawlings, Patrick Houlihan, and James Morris. Thanks to all of you. coming via email at podcastoffangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance, and we will be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. I am a master.