Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1413: The Bullpen Jeep

Episode Date: August 5, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the non-running Royals and Terrance Gore, the Diamondbacks’ stolen-base success rate and Zack Godley’s disastrous season, the Phillies’ roster crunch, Sam’s recurring nightmare, a Roman Quinn fun fact, and the outfield exploits of Vince Velasquez, whether the 40-man roster should be bigger, what Velasquez has in common with […]

Just like a call, you're pleasing to behold. I call you Jaguar, but I may be so bold. Cause you're my babe. Yes, you're my love. Oh, girl, I'm just a jeepster for your love. Oh girl, I'm just a jeepster for your love Ben. Hello. I was listening to an episode of this show the other day from some months ago, and this was the episode when the Royals' plans to steal 9 million bases first came up. Yeah. This was in reference to Whit Merrifield saying, we've got some players who could surprise you. Right.

And then there was also talk that Terrence Gore might steal 70 bases. And I think I remember this right. I think maybe it was suggested that the Royals could steal 250, which would have been, you know, a lot. And of course, we talked about this before the season, why you were thinking the Royals might be fun. And we also talked about how you had turned on the Royals because they were not fun, that they were not stealing that many bases,

or they were stealing a lot, but not enough to be fun. Well, Ben, I don't know if you've been paying attention but the royals have simply quit stealing bases at all yeah not and not at all uh they they for instance have one this month but they had 12 in july which is only one more than the median they have as i said one in the first four days of august And so there are now some things about the Royals base stealing that I guess need to be updated. One is they might not lead the league in stolen bases by the end of this year. They're only now eight ahead of Texas. They have 92. Texas has 84 after Sunday. They are on pace for 132. If they in fact lead the league with 132, it would be

the 30th most by a team this decade. And it would be the fewest for a major league team leader in any season this decade, about 50 fewer than the Brewers had three years ago. And it seems really conceivable that they could actually fall behind the Rangers because Mondesi is injured right now. Terrence Gore is gone. Well, you're jumping ahead. But yeah, it's true. So it seems like in July,

they sent Terrence Gore down in July. They just were not using him very much. And so they sent him down and then they benched Billy Hamilton, basically. Billy Hamilton had more or less been playing regularly up to that point. And then since July 4th, he's only started six games. So in a month, he's only started six games. And then so Mondesi's injured.

Hamilton is benched. Gore is in the minors. And Whit Merrifield only has... Gore's with the Yankees now, the minors. Oh, is he? He's with the Yankees. Ah, okay. You know, I actually saw when I went to his page, I saw him in a Yankees now in the minors is he he's with the yankees ah okay i i you know i actually saw when i went to his page i saw him in a yankees hat uh and i thought i don't remember him being on

the yankees but like ever but you know he's been on a bunch of he's been on multiple teams and so i just figured that was deal yeah they picked him up to be their playoff to be their player well you know i just don't know if it's going to work out for them because Terrence Gore did not steal 70 bases. He only stole 13 when he was with the Royals. He was caught five times, which more than doubled his career total. Up to that point, 13 out of 18 is not that great. Whit Merrifield only has 16, which is down from 45 last year. And he is now, I think, within one caught stealing of his total last year. Billy Hamilton only has 17, which is down from 34 last year and down from high 50s for most of his career. And not only that, but of their basically they have 10 regulars and six of them have either zero or one stolen base.

So it was it was definitely not a teamwide thing that they were running a lot. They had four players who seemed like they might run a lot, and Mondesi did, but hasn't been healthy all the way. And everybody else has had big drop-offs. Now, Gore did, when he was with the Royals, Gore did when he was with the Royals. He was their sixth, I think, best hitter out of the 17 players who have at least 50 plate appearances. He got 58 plate appearances for the minor league free agent draft with a 92 OPS+.

92 OPS+, sixth best OPS plus on the team. Second best on base percentage on the team, which is wild. Let's see. He's got a 522 ops and triple a for the yankees so that's a great no but that's a small sample ben i prefer the bigger sample of the 58 major league plate appearances that yes uh tells us everything we need to know about the player let's see they have the diamondbacks i don't know if you knew this the diamondbacks are 62 for 69 stealing bases so the royals have 30 more steals but have been caught 24 more times so they're the royals are only basically league average for stolen base success rates so that was i am just uh pointing out that it has become an entirely disappointing storyline, not just a letdown, but a dud. I would say an outright dud.

Yeah, I think that's fair. That is accurate. And I think Craig Edwards wrote about Gore and why his stolen base numbers were bad when the Yankees traded for Gore. And he showed the five caught stealings. And there isn't actually like a straight caught stealing in the bunch. He was picked off a few times, which obviously is bad, but is more about his leaning too much. He was just too aggressive than it was his speed. Then there was that other play where Hamilton and he were both thrown out on the same play, which is kind of incredible.

Hamilton and he were both thrown out on the same play, which is kind of incredible. In that one, Hamilton was picked off, and then I think Gore got caught in a rundown on that same play. And then there was another one where Gore just slipped and sort of fell between first and second, and so he was thrown out. So none of his five caught stealings is just like a regular one where the catcher and the pitcher just kind of threw it to home and beat him to second base but obviously the result is the same he was out so not particularly impressive no love terrence gore terrence gore in 2014 terrence gore in 2015 one of my favorite baseball players

of the decade but is it over i mean so look, 17 stolen bases wasn't caught in rookie ball, but still 17 for 17. 2012, 36 for 38. 2013, 68 for 76. Very good. 2014, which included a perfect five for five in the majors. He was 47 for 54. 2015, 42 for 44. 42 for 44 42 for 44 very good 2016 55 for 62 so still very good 2017 21 for 24 okay

that's still good but not that many 2018 21 for 26 and this year 14 for 19 he uh he has he has like you said not made it on base all that much well actually he has a 379 on base percentage in triple a so he's made it on base quite a bit he has seven walks uh and he only has one seal so 14 for 19 are we i don't know are we living a 2014 dream way too long maybe so but it's still totally possible that he could have some dave roberts october moment this playoffs or some future playoffs i don't know that his speed has declined maybe like hamilton he has turned out to be not quite as great a base runner as we had hoped despite his speed but he could still have that signature moment or i guess he's had signature

moments but another one all it takes is one big stolen base at the right time and obviously the yankees still value him enough to pick him up as that pinch runner so that's something yeah i don't doubt that he could steal the base that he could be a pinch runner but he felt like like i i mean i remember like he was just pure he was tweet juice back in 2015 like you could just like you could you could do terrence gore tweets for like the entire postseason because he was he was the he was he was poochie he was base running poochie uh you just couldn't wait for Gore to come on. Felt like he was cheating somehow. He was so fast.

And yeah, I don't know. I don't know what I get from kicking Terrence Gore. I'm supposed to be talking about my feelings here. And my feelings are that I feel a sense of loss. That's all. Well, he came on effectively wild. So he's still- Did he really?

Yeah, you should listen. I know you don't like guests. What did you talk about? Well, he mentioned that he doesn't like running, which could have something to do with his lack of success with stealing. But yeah, that was just last December. Jeff and I talked to Terrence Gore. You should check that one out.

He was a good guest. Mm-hmm. Okay. By the way, you mentioned the diamondbacks and their success rate this year they are 62 for 69 in stolen bases this year tony wolf wrote about this for fangraphs last month and at the time they had an 89.1 success rate they have raised that now to 89.6, and that would be, according to this post, the highest stolen base success rate in the live ball era. Of course, they've not been prolific, so they are picking their spots here, and it's kind of different from, I think, the top team on the list was the 2007 Phillies. Let's see, so they

stole 138 bases and were caught stealing only 19 times. That's an 87.9% success rate, but that's still a lot more steals than the Diamondbacks this year are going to end up with. Yes, although the Diamondbacks are ninth in the majors in total steals. So for their league, they are quite prolific. Yeah, very efficient, though, and so that's sort of impressive. By the way, since we're talking about the Diamondbacks, I noticed that Zach Godley was designated for assignment, which I guess I hadn't been paying particularly close attention to Zach Godley, but that sort of took me by surprise because he's coming off a couple of very strong seasons, and he is not having one now. No, I got him in the automated is he good game and i i knew it yeah i knew that he was not good yeah recently good though but boy not so good now yeah i mean one year though really he had one year yeah two he was he was good for a couple years there one very good one but all right

we can debate we can debate terms by the way when said, I don't know if you knew this about the Diamondbacks base running, you did know it. I did, yeah. That's impressive. I read fan graphs. Yeah. All right. There's a lot to read. Yeah, that's true.

All right. What else? What else is there we can talk about? Well, we should talk about the wild ending to the Phillies-White Sox game on Friday. What a game. That was something. Did you watch it, though? No, I didn't watch it.

I didn't know these things were happening. I think I might have been in bed. It was late. It was the 15th inning or 14th and 15th. It went 15 before the White Sox won. So what brought this to everyone's attention, I mean, there's a whole backstory to how this happened. So the Phillies had, I think, there's a whole backstory to how this happened. So the Phillies

had, I think, seven relievers on the IL, and they also had Hector Neris on the suspended list. So they were playing with a man down. They had 24 active players at that point. And they're also going through this thing right now where they have, I think, three starters who are converting to relief just on the fly, Nick Pavetta and Zach Eflin and Ranger Suarez. So it's a very strange situation. They were sort of shorthanded. And in retrospect, because they were so shorthanded, perhaps they should have had Vincent Velasquez not throw his bullpen session that day. He had pitched on Wednesday. He's a starter, of course, and so he threw his bullpen on that day. He had pitched on Wednesday. He's a starter, of course, and so he threw his bullpen on Friday.

And so he was not available to pitch in that game, but that was maybe to the Phillies' detriment, but to all of our benefits because we got to see Vince Velasquez play the outfield. And Velasquez has come to our attention. He's been mentioned on the show before for his defensive prowess when he made the play I think it was last summer last June maybe when he was pitching and he was struck by a liner in his right forearm and of course he is a right-handed pitcher so he dove and he made a left-handed throw to first base. It was very acrobatic and ambidextrous and impressive. And that's, I think, when we all learned that, oh, Vince Velasquez is a very athletic pitcher because he made that play.

pitchers because efflin right efflin was in the game and he had pitched two innings and then he said his triceps were sore so he was pulled and then who came in that position player picture roman quinn came in right roman quinn came in specifically because the the pitcher that he wanted to go to in that moment was ranger suarez yes ranger suarez couldn't get loose couldn't get loose he had he had pitched the day before right and has never pitched back to back exactly and just couldn't get loose i mean just imagine like that is that is like you were talking about your you guys were talking about your recurring nightmares one of my recurring nightmares is that i have sort of like squatted down or bent over to pick something up and my thighs will no longer lift me up like i'm just stuck there i cannot get my thighs strong enough to stand back up and that is what ranger suarez basically had he had the dream where you can't

get loose yeah no matter how hard you try no matter how much you throw it just doesn't loosen yeah do you what happened to that dream did you just wake up then or are you eventually yeah a cold sweat just you're squatting and that's it yeah yeah okay you get that one a lot so quinn came in and quinn had already homered and stolen two bases in the game. So can we just pause? Yes. Didn't we do a segment earlier this year about how Pablo Sandoval had been the first player ever to homer, steal, and pitch in the same game? And then Quinn just goes and jumps all over that fun fact the thing that I

have always said about uh the the distinction between a fun fact and a record is that you pursue a record you know what the record is before you go for it and then you go for it like we're watching the record chase whereas a fun fact you just sort everything that happened after the fact and go well look at this fun thing that happened or like, look at how I can put these two numbers next to each other. And one of them looks crazy. And the Pablo Sandoval thing is the very definition of a fun fact. I mean, come on. Homer, steal and pitch in the same game. Nobody's charting that except when it happened, Roman Quinn said, I got that. And he stole two. Yep. He set the record he set the homer steel and pitch record so he came in and he threw a scoreless 14th i think and it was a scoreless 14th because vince velasquez was

in left field and he threw a strike and he threw out who is it jose abreu i believe at home plate and it was a very athletic looking play this was the first time velasquez had played outfield since he was 14 in the junior olympics wait hang on it's been a while hang on what okay i think so yeah well that is definitely not what i read okay what did you read because what i read is more fun and also different than that. So what I read is Matt Gelb's game story in The Athletic, which is very rare that I think that you retweet a day-old game story. But I thought this game story was a triumph across the board. And it has this paragraph in it. Velazquez played center field as a left-handed thrower

during his junior year of high school. Yeah. So that's obviously after 14, unless he's ambidextrous and also Doogie Howser. So junior year of high school as a left-handed thrower. So maybe that is the last time he played outfield as a right-hander. Apparently as a junior, he had a bone spur in his right elbow that restricted him from pitching.

So he just threw left-handed for a year and played center field for his high school. Yeah. Well, I'm reading the story on nj.com just threw left-handed for a year and played center field for his high school. Yeah. Well, huh. I'm reading the story on nj.com and it quotes Velasquez saying, the last time I played outfield, I think, when I was in junior Olympics when I was 14. So I don't know. Two conflicting sources here. Uniform number, maybe? His number was 14. Well, I don't know.

Anyway, maybe he just forgot how old he was when he was in the Junior Olympics. That sounds pretty young to be in the Junior Olympics, right? I don't know anything about the Junior Olympics. Maybe these are the same event. Anyway, it had been a while since he had played outfield, and he hadn't done so professionally. You know, I'm really starting to think we might have a prestige situation here where there are two Vince Velasquez's, one of whom is left-handed, and they can't get their story straight. Yeah, it's all adding up.

So anyway, Velasquez had just noticed that there was no one on the bench. I think that Andrew Knapp was on the bench, and he pinch hit in the 11th, the backup catcher. So he was just watching, and he put his spikes on, and he took a couple swings, and he pinch hit in the 11th the backup catcher so he was just watching and he put his spikes on and he took a couple swings and he was ready and then he went into pinch run actually and then he played the field and yeah he made this great throw to get a breu and that kept the game tied sent it into the 15th then he also made another play in the 15th that it appeared that he had thrown out a runner again at home plate, but there was a long replay review and I didn't actually watch the replays,

but I read that even some of the replays seemed to show that he had gotten him out. But anyway, the guy was safe and that was the winning run, but he came very close to nailing another runner. And of course, he also made a diving play, which was pretty impressive. I saw the stat from David Adler of MLB.com, who said it had a 15% catch probability. According to StatCast, he said it was the first five-star catch by a Phillies outfielder this season, which if that's true, I don't know if that reflects poorly on the rest of the Phillies outfield or what. It wasn't like if you had seen it and not known it was a pitcher playing outfield for the first time since he was 14 and or 17, it would have been nice, but not like, wow, that was the best play of the season. But it was pretty impressive. So two defensive innings in left field, and he threw out a runner at home, nearly threw out another runner at home, and then made arguably one of the best catches any Phillies outfielder has made this season. And there's that thing baseball players say about how the ball will find you. You know, if you don't want the ball to be hit to you, then that's when it will be hit to you. That's obviously not true. It's not any more likely to be hit to you whether you want it to be or not. But in this case, the Phillies put Velasquez in left field because they didn't want it to be hit to him. Left fielders can go innings games at a time

with no ball hit to them. That's the position with the fewest fielding opportunities. And yet in two innings here, Velasquez had to field two hits and make throws to the plate and then also make a challenging catch even though the Phillies were trying to hide him there then again Gabe Kapler said after the game Vince is one of our best outfielders now he might be one of our best all-around players he's a freaky athlete we talk a lot about the position player pitcher but in this case the position player pitcher was overshadowed easily by the fielder pitcher or I guess another position player pitcher was overshadowed easily by the fielder pitcher, or I guess another position player pitcher, but a position player who is a pitcher. I don't know what to call that. I guess there's probably not enough scarcity for this to make sense, but you would have to imagine

that there are a number of pitchers who would be very good defensive outfielders if they were to play it every so often they have they have the arms they're i mean all of these players are almost entirely are extremely good athletes and uh most of them have some experience playing in the field in their life before they became professionals and i mean it doesn't seem like it would i don't know maybe it would doesn't seem like it would take that much out of you to play outfield every so often. And it would be fun. Now, it would be fun. Maybe they don't think it's fun.

And also, maybe it would take a lot out of you. And also, like I said, maybe there's not enough scarcity. So it probably doesn't make sense. But you could imagine that there's a world 10 or 15 years from now where there's a lot more Michael Lorenz and maybe Vince Velasque who are uh playing outfield as well as pitching yeah I don't know I hope so this was this was fun I mean they they have the arms right like how sure if you can run a little bit I don't know how much an arm I don't know what the range is. What is an arm? And so, okay, I actually saw this not long ago. Where did I see this? Well, the worst arms are like minus seven, minus eight. And so if you

figure the best runs in a year, I don't remember where I read that. I just read an article about some terrible throwing outfielder. And that was, that was what the person had said. And so let's say the best throwing arms are also plus seven plus eight so if you had a extremely noodle armed outfielder who was you know costing you quite a bit with his arm then could he would a pitcher be 15 runs worse on all the other stuff probably so yeah probably yeah i think this throw the the one that got the runner, I think was 94.7 miles per hour. Yeah, with no technique, you know, with no training. I mean, his average fastball is 94.9 off a mound.

And so you'd figure he could throw harder than that with a crow hop from the outfield if he practiced this. But of course, he hadn't done it since he was some unspecified age or two specified ages that were a long time ago so yeah but it looked like he was charging and got rid of it fairly quickly i mean he looked like an outfielder on on those plays i'd say for the most part not just a pitcher looking good for a pitcher but like an outfielder more or less. So one thing about this game that has broader implications, and it relates to something else that I saw over the weekend too. So I'll just merge these two things. The Phillies, one of the problems that the Phillies have right now is that they don't

get to use their entire 40-man roster because they have so many guys on the 60-man injured list, IL. roster because they have so many guys on the 60-man injured list, IL. And so to quote Matt's piece, the club has begun to prune from its 40-man roster depth because it has run out of players to transfer to the 60-day IL. Adding players to the active roster who are not on the 40-man will present a challenge. The Phillies will attempt to survive the next four weeks before rosters expand in September with a patchwork solution. to survive the next four weeks before rosters expand in September with a patchwork solution.

Meanwhile, there was a Greg Johns had a tweet over the weekend that said, with 50 games remaining and September call-ups, Mariners appear destined to blow by the MLB record for most players used in a season. And here we have the leaders, 20, the record is 64 players, and the Mariners, as of yesterday or two days ago, if you're listening to this, had already used 61. And the top eight all-time are all listed here, and they're all in the last six years. The Mariners have the record for pitchers used, right? From 2017, I believe. Yeah. yeah yeah so uh so all of the all of the most used most players used all time are within not just within the last 20 or 30 years but within the last six years and and really within the last like three four years uh in particular it's accelerated and so it raises the question of whether a 40 man

roster is still enough roster if the mariners are you i mean the point of a 40 man is like you want to well i the the real point of a 40 man basically is that if you're not going to use a player the thinking is that that player should be available to the rest of the league so that he can get a job somewhere so obviously not if you're you know a draftee who's working his way up the minors, but if you're a, if you're kind of a major league quality player or a veteran, or you've been around a long time or, or even a double or triple a quality player, and you don't want teams to be able to stash a lot of you around for backup debt and then not use you, they would rather you be kind of free. There's like restrictions on

how much they can keep players like that around. And so it makes it easier for those players to get work in positions where they're going to play. So 40-man roster, a sort of simplistic way of thinking about it is, you know, if 40 is, you know, a team's going to need 40 players. And if they're, they're not going to use you, then they, they probably don't need to have you on the 40 man roster and maybe you can go find a job somewhere else. But the Mariners have used 61 players and it's not because they're, I mean, it's not for like a sinister reason, right? Is it? It's just that they have churned through a lot of players. They like to give lots of players looks. They have had some needs, some injuries. They've made some trades. They have needed more than 40 this year. Now, of course, not like they have been able to move some of those

players off the 40 man, because when you trade them out of your organization, for instance, they're no longer on your 40 man. So it's not like the Mariners have necessarily run out of room, but it just goes to the point that like the way that modern baseball is played these days a franchise does not plan to use only 40 players over the course of the season they plan to use more than that and so maybe maybe and and the phillies not only plan to use more than that but they actually ran out of spots they've actually not they do not have enough spots to currently field a full major league team in the 15th inning of a baseball game and so i guess then my question is should they just expand the 40 man roster to 45 what's the downside there well i don't

like this roster churn particularly right because a lot of teams are doing it just to get fresh arms on the roster at all times and probably the phillies would have liked to do that so they didn't have to do what they did and i think that's had the effect that gerald schiffman has written about this a few times at baseball prospectus a it means that there are just more minimum salary earners on on the major league roster at any given time just because it's these AAA guys who just get called up and shuffled back down. And that's kind of a tough position for those guys to be in. And I think MLB has taken steps to curtail that, right, because they've increased the option period length and also the minimum IL stint length for 2020. So it went down to, what, 10 days for pitchers, and now it's going back up to 15 days to try to put a damper

on this behavior that teams are doing. And I think Gerald has shown that it is mostly pitchers who have been shuffled like this, but also hitters to a lesser extent that's also been on the increase. And he wrote about what this would do, what the new rule would do for pitchers. And I think he found that it would probably help with that churn and that maybe hitters that would still be going on because I don't think the rule applies to them. I'll link to his writing on this subject. But I think that's a tough position for those players to be in coming up and going down. And also, I think just from a spectator standpoint, it's hard to know who these guys are and to form any kind of connection with them because they're there one day and they're gone

the next. And it's nice, I guess, that more guys get to be big leaguers and they get to have that moment where their AAA manager calls them in and plays some prank on them and tells them they're going to the big leagues. And that's nice. Their dreams come true. But I think on the whole,

I don't love that teams are using so many players. And I think maybe if they just... We're now at this point where teams are expecting to get more and more innings out of their relievers, but they're also protecting their relievers by not throwing them for multiple innings for the most part. And now not even using them like back to back to back days the way that they used to. That is now getting increasingly rare. And maybe that's good. Maybe it's protecting them.

But I don't know that we know that that's good maybe it's protecting them but i don't know that we know that that's the case so i don't love what this does just from a following the sport standpoint yeah i i basically agree with all that although i think that the types of the types of players that are called up that you don't like get a charge out of seeing are replacing players who are also players that you don't get a charge out of seeing. So I don't think that the entertainment value is necessarily all that affected by swapping out the 22nd to 25th spots in the roster. But you're otherwise right that the idea of making it a little too painless for teams to churn players up and down has real effects on players earnings as well as on their quality

of life do you when you interviewed oliver drake i wonder um if you have a sense from that interview of whether so oliver drake i assume the reason that he changes teams every three weeks is because he is the guy that gets kicked off the 40 man and every time he gets gets kicked off a 40 man, he basically is exposed to the rest of the league. If it were easier to keep him on a 40 man, then presumably the team that signed him because they kind of liked him would like to keep him for a little while longer. And so I wonder if he would think that it is that what the 40 man does to protect players like him has has become a little bit of a curse in the modern era because now yes he gets chances to go to other organizations but at the expense of having like just this whirlwind

of constantly being changed from organization to organization never getting to stay in an organization because they don't have room on the 40-man form. And maybe if there was a 43-man, they would, and he would get to sort of settle in and be where he is. Yeah. I think I asked him whether there were any rule changes he'd like to see as a result of his experience. And I think he said that he hadn't really thought about that too much. He hadn't had time to think about it because he was on a new team every week. So he didn't have any strong opinions about that at the time. And fortunately for him and his wife, who seemed like had suffered maybe more than he had from all of these moves, he has been in one place this season. But yeah, it's tough for players like that. So one thing that is nice for the

players potentially about a larger 40-man roster is that you get paid more if you're a minor leaguer and you're on the 40 man roster. And so you, you get, uh, you get significantly more if you're a triple a player and you're on the 40 man. So that's one nice thing about it anyway. So, all right, fine. Yeah. You're probably right. I haven't thought this through. If I think of what I was going to say, I'll come back to it out of nowhere while you're talking about some other topic. All right. Well, before we move on completely from Velasquez, I have one or two things that are related

to that. So Jeremy Frank at MLB Random Stats tweeted this. After that game, there was an effectively wild connection to that Vince Velasquez appearance. He found that, and I'm quoting here, Vince Velasquez is the first pitcher with an outfield assist Since Ned Garver in 1950 Oh my goodness get out of here Excluding two way players and pitchers Who were previously outfielders

In the majors So yeah effectively wild legend Former guest our old pal the late Ned Garver Was the last pitcher with an outfield assist. This was May 17th, 1950. And I looked up a couple newspaper accounts of this game and everyone agreed at the time that it was indeed a wild game. While you pull up that thing, Ben, I believe that the best thing to do is that anytime you get called up to the majors, you should get major league salary for like two weeks after your option down.

Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Or six weeks. It's not my money. I've found it. This is from the Scranton Tribune on May 18th, 1950. This is from the UPI account. 38 players got into a so-called major League Baseball game here today in St. Louis as the New York Yankees outlasted the St. Louis Browns 11-9 in a 3-hour and 11-minute marathon. Marathon. Yuck. 3 hours and 11 minutes. Can you imagine?

I hate those. Oh my goodness. Who would want to watch baseball for that long? Each team used 19 players, including five pitchers per club who issued a total of 16 bases on balls can you imagine five pitchers per club what a world the browns roster became so bare that pitcher ned garver had to go to left field for the ninth inning and he surprised everyone in the park by throwing out a runner attempting to score. The 38 participants tied the American League record and came within one of the Dodgers'

cards total on May 5, 1940. So I have another account here from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Same day. It probably is just as well that the Browns have an open date today. It will give them and the scorekeepers time to recover from the nightmare of a ballgame that was played in broad daylight. Lou Adami, the official scorekeeper's official helper, wondered about the press box at Sportsman's Park after the deed was done yesterday, wondering whether he had lost a time at bat or two, but he had not. had lost a time at bat or two, but he had not. It mattered not that the Browns made the most hits and the most runs they have managed this season. Despite a valiant comeback effort, they remained

without a victory to show for seven home games, and they lost for the ninth time in 10, but they made a battle of it, even if Zach Taylor did have to send a pitcher in to play left field. Ned Garver served in that capacity in the ninth inning, and his throw nailed a Yankee at the plate. It was actually Allie Reynolds, a Yankees pitcher, who he threw out at home plate. He was in the game as a pinch runner, so it was a pretty wild game. And I have a picture here from that newspaper account

of Allie Reynolds sliding into home plate and being out, which I will post in the Facebook group. So that was the last time it happened. sliding into home plate and being out, which I will post in the Facebook group. So that was the last time it happened. It had been quite a while and wish we had known about that. When we spoke to Ned could have asked him about that game too. I don't get it though. What it's an 11 to nine game,

right? It didn't go to extra innings and none of these accounts mentions like, did a bunch of guys get injured? Right. So Ned, Ned, it's Ned entered as a pinch runner. innings and none of these accounts mentions like did a bunch of guys get injured right so ned ned it's ned entered as a pinch runner the previous inning uh-huh and so you would think that he pinch ran for the catcher because the catcher sherm lawler got hurt and uh that doesn't seem like anybody's fault yeah but if they just had him pinch run for the catcher, that would be weird, and it would make you think that the Browns were just messing around or something.

But yeah, you have to assume that Sherm Lawler, who, I don't know, he didn't represent the tying run or anything like that. I don't get this. That feels overwritten. Well, it was a 3-hour, 11-minute game. Everyone was probably exhausted at that point. They had to replace all the starters.

I don't know. It is kind of strange. They used five pitchers, so I guess each team used five pitchers, right? So everyone was wild, 16 walks total. So they had to make a bunch of pitching changes. But it's not clear from these game accounts it's either overwritten or underwritten because they probably should have explained a little bit more why they were using so many players or whether people were

shorthanded or what anyway i kind of wanted more info from that but i did come across something even better in this newspaper people People say one reason they miss newspapers is that if you don't have the physical paper in your hand, you don't see certain stories because you're only reading what you're interested in reading, whereas if you have a newspaper in your hand, you just see whatever happens to be on the same page. I don't know whether that's true. Anyone who's gotten caught in a Wikipedia rabbit hole, I think it's still very possible to find things that you weren't expecting to find on the internet. But this happened to me when I was looking up this account. And in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, next column over on the same day, May 18th, 1950,

just a short item here, Jeep service from bullpen in Cleveland. Everyone knows about bullpen carts. Maybe you know about bullpen cars, but the precursor to both of them was the bullpen in Cleveland. Everyone knows about bullpen carts. Maybe you know about bullpen cars, but the precursor to both of them was the bullpen jeep, so a bit of background here. In 1950, the average game, at least according to the data we have at Baseball Reference, was 2 hours and 21 minutes, just interminable. The average 9-inning game was 2 hours and 19 minutes, and it's understandable that that seemed like a long time, because as recently as 1946, just four years earlier, the average 9-inning game had been shorter than 2 hours, an hour and 56 minutes. So that was the norm for years, according to this data, which gets more scant as time goes back,

but the average game was 2 hours, a little less than 2 hours. Suddenly it jumped up, and in part this was happening because the walk game was two hours, a little less than two hours. Suddenly it jumped up, and in part this was happening because the walk rate was extremely high. So the walk rate in 1949 was 4.04 per game. That is the highest walk rate in history. 1950 was 4.02, so essentially the same. So that Ned Garver game was kind of emblematic of what was going on at the time. I don't know exactly why this was, but I did find a 2016 ESPN article by your colleague David Schoenfield who says that once offense picked up in the 1920s, pitchers had to start throwing hard all the time.

It became popular to use the big windmill windup, see Bob Feller in action. The theory, I guess, that it added more power. Of course, that delivery entailed a lot of moving parts, perhaps not coincidentally, Feller and pitchers of his era were pretty wild. So maybe it's because pitchers were using the big windup delivery to get more speed to counteract hitters swinging for the fences. I don't know. That's a theory. Could have just been home run aversion. For whatever reason, the walk rate was higher than it had ever been before and has ever been since.

And people in baseball were not happy. So I'm going to read you an AP article here from Whatever reason, the walk rate was higher than it had ever been before and has ever been since. And people in baseball were not happy. So I'm going to read you an AP article here from May of 1950. No remedy seen for drawn out games. Presidents of the two major leagues agreed with Hank Greenberg Wednesday that baseball games are running too long, but said they knew of no official remedy. The reason games are so slow is that present day pitchers are wild and throw a lot of balls, said the National League's Ford Frick. We can't legislate against that. Will Herridge, head man of the American League, said in Chicago, the shortening of games is mainly up to the pitchers and players themselves. Both executives acknowledge that Greenberg's speed-up program has merit and that there is definite need of a return to the two-hour ball game.

Greenberg, general manager of the Cleveland Indians, suggested a four-point speed-up plan. Number one, umpires should urge players to hustle to positions between innings. Number two, the pitcher should be required to wait in the on-deck circle instead of the dugout for his time at bat. Number three, some better method, probably mechanical, should be found to speed the relief pitcher's trip from bullpen to mound. More on that in a moment. Number four, the pitcher should go to the mound immediately when his side is retired. Herridge said that as for point number one, umpires have always been directed to keep the pace going, but they can't hurry all players whose first reaction is to ask, where's the fire? This all sounds familiar to those of you who have seen MLB try to implement pace of play rules in recent

years. Herridge added that the American League had tried a couple of years ago to make a pitcher stay on deck at his batting turn, but managers complained and the rule was rescinded. The other points, he said, are purely for club or manager supervision. This article mentions that Billy Evans put in a speed-up program while president of the Southern Association a few years ago that cut games from about two and a half hours to an hour and 45 minutes. He forced pitchers to be ready to bat and pitch

at their turns with no dilly-dallying. Players had to run, not walk, in changing fields. But Evans, now general manager of the Detroit Tigers, agrees with Frick this isn't the answer. It's the eight and ten walks a game that account for those two-hour-plus games, Evans said. And as Frick said, who's going to make a pitcher hurry up

when that's his bread and butter? Most of the bullpens are out in center field. How are we going to get relief pitchers in? By Jeeps? Well, yes, that is exactly how, or at least so said Hank Greenberg. So United Press, May 18, 1950, Greenberg Jeeps hurlers into action. Greenberg introduced the time saver as the Cleveland Indians lost to the Philadelphia Athletics 7-5 last night. Four pitchers used Hank's version of the magic carpet. First little Marino Pieretti was whisked out of the bullpen in the bright red Jeep to rush to Bob Feller's rescue. When the once great fireballer was KO'd for the fourth straight time, Bobby Shantz, Carl Scheib, and Jesse Flores also got free rides before the evening was over. Greenberg said it was part of his campaign to speed up games, etc. etc. There was no doubt in the minds

of the 12,471 fans that the firemen reached the mound faster, but the big difficulty was that things slowed down as usual after they got there and the game dragged on for 2 hours and 11 minutes. I think that's actually wrong because the baseball reference box score has it at 2 hours and 11 minutes. I think that's actually wrong because the baseball reference box score has it at two hours and 41 minutes, which makes more sense. I found a picture of a player resting his hand on the bullpen Jeep. It's actually Pierretti who was climbing out of the bullpen Jeep, I think with the inaugural game here. So I will post that in the usual places too, if anyone is interested in looking at this. So I found a 1959 Montreal Gazette reference to this that said that it was Bill Veck

who used to replace relief pitchers by Jeep. But I believe that is incorrect because Bill Veck sold the team in November 1949. So he was replaced by Greenberg. So unless it was an idea that Bill Veck had mentioned or something and it got implemented after he sold the team, it was not actually a Bill Veck idea. It was a Hank Greenberg idea. But this was happening for a while. So I found from June 21st, 1950, another item. This is from the circleville herald circleville ohio indians jeep breaks down

although the cleveland indians lost last night's game with the new york yankees the contest provided some laughs for the 52 000 fans the bullpen jeep which brings relief pitchers into the mound ran out of gas and al benton had to walk in from the pen in the seventh inning. A few other relief pitchers pushed the bright red vehicle back off the track. How much gas could it be using? It ran out of gas between the bullpen and the warning track. I don't understand. It's like over an entire year, it might go 12 miles. Right.

So someone had one job to keep the bullpen jeep fueled and if he had if it had a full tank like when they implemented this for the first time which was in may so somehow it ran out of gas between may and june i mean were they using i guess if they were making a lot of pitching changes, but even so. And wouldn't you see like when you're in the bullpen, maybe it's one of those situations where like the meter's on empty and you just figure, well, it's not really empty. I could keep going and I only have to get from the bullpen to the mound. It's not that far. So did it speed that game up, Ben?

I don't think so. No. The pitchers had to come and manually push the bullpen jeep off the warning track. More like bullpen sheep. Oh, yeah. So this went on for a while. That breakdown on the warning track did not end the tenure of the bullpen jeep. I found a picture from August of 1950 that's captioned,

Youngsters in outfield stands give the driver of the Cleveland Indians bullpen car August of 1950 that's captioned, I'll post this picture too. It's just a bunch of kids in the stands with a low fence just pelting this poor bullpen Jeep driver with paper cups, which you can see flying at him. And he's ducking his head and looking to the side as he's driving the bullpen Jeep, I with paper cups, which you can see flying at him, and he's ducking his head and looking to the side as he's driving the bullpen jeep, I believe without a passenger. Running out of gas did not kill the bullpen jeep, neither did kids pelting the bullpen jeep driver with paper cups. It continued into 1951, and that's when the bullpen car came in. This was

June of 1951, the White Sox got in on the act. The White Sox management introduced an innovation to make relief pitchers happier, an automobile to bring hurlers from the bullpen to the plate. Chuck Comiskey added the pious hope that the first free ride would be a Yankee. And one of the New York newsmen made a remark too. Chicago, he said, is going bush, just like Cleveland. Marv Rotblat was the first pitcher to ride in the new relief wagon. The entire Yankee bench stood at attention with their hats off as the vehicle went by on the way back to the bullpen at the start of the eighth inning. There's an excellent picture of this too. Shy Sox bullpen car draws a real Bronx cheer. I will post that as well. Now in July of 1951,

Cleveland was still using the bullpen Jeep and the Yankees were refusing to use it. So this is from United Press, July 12th. Fussy Yanks get deluxe service. Never let it be said that the Cleveland Indians aren't proper hosts. Earlier this season, when New York pitchers refused services of the tribe's bullpen jeep, Yankees manager Casey Stengel jokingly explained it was because my boys are used to Cadillacs. Today, the Indians announced they had rented a new Caddy convertible to oblige Stengel's pampered athletes for this week's three

game series. And then the next day, the UP followed up on this story to say that the Yanks don't use bullpen Cadillac, even though it was there. The car was idle because Yankees pitcher Allie Reynolds pitched a no-hitter. So joke's on you, Cleveland. You get a bullpen Cadillac for the pampered Yankees and they throw a no-hitter so they don't have to make a pitching change. And the White Sox thought this was so funny, the bullpen Cadillac, that the next week, reading from the AP here, the Chicago White Sox tonight had a big black Cadillac supplied by a funeral home to service New York Yankees pitchers in the distant centerfield bullpen. Manager Casey Stengel of the Yanks had a quick comeback for the gag, which developed after the Yankees previously declined to use the bullpen station wagon available to haul in relief pitchers. You know they had a snappy Cadillac convertible

at Cleveland last week as a rib too, cracked Stengel. That was the night we didn't happen to need a relief pitcher. Allie Reynolds pitched no-hitter. Allie Reynolds started again in that bullpen Cadillac game in Chicago, but he did not throw an 0-hitter that time. He was replaced in the ninth by reliever Stubby Overmeyer. He refused to use the Cadillac. He walked in from the bullpen, but the AP says the big black limousine, however, slowly tore the field at the same time. On its rear was a sign, Yankees pitchers. And Stengel told this story himself in February 1953 at the Seattle Sports Scribes Banquet. This was reported in the Vancouver province.

Stengel had a magnificent tale to tell concerning the new bullpen Jeep FAD that has startled the majors. The sports writers said Casey with an indulgent grin are hollering about the game being too slow. Speed it up, they're hollering. Speed it up. So I still send my pitchers out there from the bullpen, strolling out all slow and nonchalant, taking off their sweaters real easy, and the poor guys on the other club stand there watching, whoever it is, Reynolds or Rashy maybe, and they're shaking in their boots.

Then over in Cleveland, Hank Greenberg gets a Jeep for old Satchel Paige for special bullpen delivery. In roars old Satch, and us Yankees stand along the route, thumbs out like hitchhikers watching him go by. Well, on a bad day in Cleveland, that Jeep kept whizzing by like this, and Casey jabbed a bony thumb into the ozone in rapid staccato fashion. Over in Chicago, Frankie Lane, he also buys a Jeep for the Sox,

and finally one of the writers comes to me and says, Aw, come on now, Casey. Why don't you cooperate with this speed up like Mr. Lane and Mr. Greenberg? So I say, listen, son, Jeeps are OK for those other guys, but the Yankees don't ride in nothing but Cadillacs. Mr. Lane hears this, and next day down in the Yankees bullpen is a nice shiny Cadillac. But I fool everybody. I got a system. I start Allie Reynolds and he throws a no-hitter. And so we don't need that new Cadillac. They took it out of the bullpen and never brought it back. Figured it was a jinx.

So Stengel kind of conflated Cleveland and Chicago there because Reynolds had thrown the no-hitter against the Indians, not against the White Sox. But no matter, that is the saga of the bullpen Jeep, which led to the bullpen car. I think the a's started using the bullpen car themselves in 1955 but by then the white socks had stopped using theirs because fans were throwing trash at it and then the bullpen cart came in in the 60s so maybe we should bring back the bullpen jeep but maybe not not environmentally friendly okay they ran out of gas on the warning track i uh i i the other day came across a uh no i didn't come across the reds tweeted it hall of famer ed roush on this date in history 1920

hall of famer ed roush is ejected for taking a nap in center field during a game against the giants he falls asleep while manager pat moran argues with the umpires and is ejected for holding up play when he does not wake up. And this is a different sort of a thing, but it seems it's the same sort of thing where he's ejected for slowing the game down. But the cure seems like it would slow the game down even more because you're not going to get him off the field without him waking up. And then once he wakes up, it would save time to just say, okay, now play center field.

You're already out there. Right. Yeah. This is why baseball games get so long. Every fix adds a minute and a half. Yeah. Yeah. It's a problem.

They ran out of gas. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe back then Jeeps were different. They probably didn't get great gas mileage, but still, they used them in the war. I would think they could use them as a bullpen Jeep. Anyway. My turn?

Yeah. Okay. All right. Let's see. What do I got? I'm reading- Can you match the bullpen Jeep that ran out of gas? I can't, but I'm reading Bigfella, the Babe Ruth biography by Jane Levy. And it's, of course, incredible, as you would expect. It's very good. And one of the themes or one of the on the ghost writers the the industry of ghost writers

who told the stories of athletes in the athlete's voice but basically made it all up like the athlete it's not like the athlete was like sitting down with them for two hours like for instance babe ruth in 19 like a lot of what we know about babe ruth or a lot of like the story of babe ruth's early life the origin of that story is a like 15 part I think serial that ran in newspapers many many many many thousands of words written in 1920 and the guy who who wrote that had this is like you know theoretically this is all like from Babe Ruth telling his story and uh the guy who wrote it had 15 minutes with babe ruth according to this book and just like i mean a lot of this stuff is just basically like a lot of things from that time are

completely made up like babe ruth is lying about himself writers are lying about babe ruth writers are lying about babe ruth lying about babe ruth there's just so much lying going on it's like the birth of the um the advertising age and the and the pr age and uh and even like even by our standards like it is just shocking the lack of ethic that were involved at the time so this though is probably my favorite of these so this is talking about a early radio station pittsburgh radio station hdka which also broadcasts the first national election returns and the first major league baseball game with harold arlen at the mic a month earlier when the yankees were in town for an exhibition game against the pirates arlen had provided ruth with a prepared script so already okay already we're doing an interview and you're giving the subject

a script that he is going to read his answers from a script that you wrote for him all right but fine whatever that's just par for the course arlen had provided ruth with a prepared script for what was probably his first radio interview but ruth meant went mute when the microphone went live so arlen grabbed the script and read yeah this is babe ruth while ruth just that voice, while Ruth leaned against a wall smoking a cigar, for days afterward, Ruth received kudos on his smooth delivery. That's how dishonest everything was. appreciate how if Babe Ruth's entire career was a hoax, as some have argued, you can see the sort of framework for how they could have gotten away with it. I don't quite know how they doctored 19 or whatever seasons of baseball stats and eyewitnesses.

I mean, I do feel like he did play baseball. Like, I have very little doubt that he played baseball and he probably played it pretty well. he did play baseball like i i have very little doubt that he played baseball and he probably played it pretty well but i mean this like just at one point they there's a there's a this is not really a supporting point but at one point uh for some reason the subject comes up of how few home runs were hit in like uh 1918 and uh jane levy a person, an economist who notes that you were more likely to have known, personally known one of the people who died on the Titanic than you were to have seen a major league home run at that point. So like hardly anybody was even like, this was about

there not being many home runs. But you know, you had you basically had two ways of knowing about baseball, you could be there in person, and you could see it. But, you know, you basically had two ways of knowing about baseball. You could be there in person and you could see it. But as we know, everybody's checking their phone, you know, during the game anyway. Like nobody even watches the game when you're there. Or you could read the account by a bunch of liars who were just lying to you, like throughout the decade. It's wild.

It is wild, like how the story of babe ruth got told at the time so anyway just bringing that up yeah kdka right the radio station kdk uh kdka what did i say yeah hdk oh yeah oh yeah that was just that was a lie kdk yeah uh all right so let's see the babe ruth radio show thing The Phillies game Aaron Sanchez Yeah I've been planning to bring that up So Aaron Sanchez Meg and I talked about him

You and I talked about him When we did our trade deadline round up And I wrote about him Everyone wrote about him Who did not write about Aaron Sanchez And whether he would be unlocked After being traded to the Astros. People were writing about him.

As a possible player. Who could be unlocked by a trade. Even before he was traded. Joe Sheehan wrote in his newsletter. That some team would probably trade for Aaron Sanchez. And have him throw different pitches. And then he'd be great anyway. Wait did Joe say specifically which pitches.

He would throw. He said he'd throw his curve. Wait, did Joe say specifically which pitches he would throw? He said he'd throw his curveball more. And it's kind of, I mean, the obvious, right? Because he was a sinker baller and he was throwing lots of sinkers and he had a good curveball and he was throwing it about 22% of the time. We can talk about what he threw in his first start for the Astros, but the upshot of it was that everyone in the world was predicting that, oh, Aaron Sanchez, he's going to go from Toronto to Houston,

and Houston's going to have the meeting with him that they have with all their pitchers, Verlander and Cole and Morton and Presley and on and on, and he's going to change his pitch selection, his pitching approach, and he will be great. And it took him one start to seemingly make good on that. The Astros combined no-hitter as a collaborative no-no or a co-no. What do you think about co-no? I like collaborative no-hitter.

Yeah, but not the co-no part. I kind of like the co-no part. Anyway, combined no-hitter, collaborative no-hitter. We could call it co-no even if it's a combined no-hitter collaborative no-hitter we could call it cono even if it's a combined no-hitter so maybe we should go with that anyway that happened and wait a minute no that's exactly why you should not go with it the fact that you can abbreviate it and then no one knows what the root is anymore means that you can't abbreviate it like the whole point of an abbreviation is like like you're you're eliminating unnecessary letters that are that have been proven not to be necessary to get the point across. But in this case, you need more letters to explain. So I'm sorry, Ben, but we're going to have to not go Kono.

Well, but I've never heard collaborative no-hitter before. Everyone calls it a combined no-hitter. Yeah, no, we just stick with that. Yeah, so Pat Hughes is confusing things here with collaborative but otherwise if you heard kono you would know that it stood for for combined anyway so sanchez he threw six innings and uh joe biagini who came over with him in that trade also threw a no-hit inning in that game and will harris and chris davinsky through the other two innings. So everyone has acclaimed this as the Astros' latest miracle work here. And so I saw people citing the rate that Sanchez threw his curveball in this game.

And what, he threw 30% curveballs, I think. Which is a career high. It is a career high. But barely. 27%. I think 27% the previous start yes and 29 point something percent in two may outings for the blue jays this year so what you're saying is that it is probably not those three curveballs that eliminated nine hits probably not that that transformed him from

a six era pitcher to a no hitter throwing pitcher, he did also throw a bunch of four-seamers instead of sinkers, right? Is that right? Brooks does not have that. Well, according to Brooks, no, Brooks does not have that. I am reading from Mike XC says recap here from CBS Sports, and I guess he is probably citing the StatCast pitch classifications here from Baseball Savant, but he has it at curveball was 22.1% average with the Blue Jays and 28.4% in this start for the Astros. And then the four-seam fastball, it had him at 21.3% with the Blue Jays, 34.7% with the Astros, 37% was the sinker in Toronto, and that went down

to 17.9% with the Astros in this start. So according to these pitch classifications, his four-seam fastball usage went up considerably, his sinker usage went down considerably, his curveball usage was slightly up. According to Brooks Baseball, he didn't throw any four-seamers, right, in this game. So there seems to be a disagreement here about the pitch classifications. And I don't know. Typically, I trust Brooks Baseball. And it is not unheard of for him to throw no four-seamers or virtually no four seamers in a game sometimes he does sometimes he doesn't yeah and also mike is arguing here that sanchez pitched up in the zone with his four seamer he did and well whatever it was but he did what you'd think his two seamer was the highest

average okay two seam location in a start in his career other than like a couple where he had like three pitches okay which makes you think maybe some of them maybe it was four seamers so i don't know typically you tend to throw your sinker lower in your four seamer up right so well i looked at i actually specifically looked at stat cast two seamers. So these were what stat cast, not Brooks, called two seamers. And they had the highest average location for his two seamer in a start in his career, other than, like I said, minimum pitch anomalies. Okay. So it's hard to tell whether this is confirmation bias because we were all primed for Sanchez

to be the new breakout guy. bias because we were all primed for Sanchez to be the new breakout guy. According to StatCast classifications, there is evidence that he has made a very typical Astro style transformation here. He has the very high spin curve. He threw it a little bit more, not a ton more, but a little bit more. And maybe he threw more four-seamers and threw those four-seamers high. He at least threw whatever fastball he was throwing abnormally high. So it's not like he completely transformed himself, like he walked out there with a new pitch or something, but he was throwing arguably his best pitch more often than he has thrown it before, and he was throwing his fastballs higher than he's thrown them before. And maybe he changed the type of fastball he's throwing. So if you had to guess

what is Aaron Sanchez going to look like as an Astro, it would be basically what happened in this outing. And probably more outings and a bigger sample will give us more confidence on these pitch classifications. And for all I know, Harry sometimes revisits those things and changes them at Brooks. So maybe that'll happen. But obviously we need more than one start, one six-inning no-hit start to say that Aaron Sanchez is a new man. But it is striking that this keeps happening and that it could conceivably keep happening after we're all onto it, like a long time after we're all onto it. I mean, when Garrett Cole was traded from Pittsburgh to Houston, people were writing then, oh, he's going to stop throwing his sinker so much and he's going to throw this high spin curveball and he's going to get more strikeouts. And lo and behold, that's exactly what happened. And then it happened with other guys and it happened with Ryan Presley. And

so everyone predicted and it was obvious that, of course, it would happen with Aaron Sanchez. And maybe it's happening with Aaron Sanchez. And it's kind of amazing that it could keep happening long after everyone's onto it, after people wrote articles, after I wrote about it in my book, after everyone was blogging and tweeting that this was going to happen, that it could still happen in that environment. Because it's one thing if the Astros are just the first to this, and they were the pioneers of getting players to change things, and they were better at it than everyone, and they gave better presentations and were better at communicating these insights to players fine but how long does that advantage last after everyone realizes you have that advantage

apparently pretty long do you think that it would be easier if you're a pitcher who's got any ra of six do you think it'd be easier to hear okay no seriously you've got to change and this is what you've got to change from the organization that you've been with for eight years and that you that you know and you trust but also like i don't know there's a lot of there's probably some some baggage there's a sense that i don't know you've maybe you feel i don't know maybe you feel ashamed maybe you feel know, maybe you feel ashamed. Maybe you feel bashful. Maybe you feel like they've let you down. Maybe you feel all sorts of different things. But on the other hand, you know them really well and they paid for your, you know, your taxi when you got drafted and they flew you out to Arizona or Dunedin, I guess.

Or do you think it'd be easier to hear it from a new organization that you don't know at all that there are a bunch of strangers who dress a little bit different than your old bosses did and who you're only going to be with for two or three months, but who do have the luxury of saying of being able to say like with no kind of like preexisting relationship. Hey, look, buddy, you're here because your ERA is six and this might be last chance before you hit free agency, and we're going to make you a lot of money. Yeah, I think the latter. And Sanchez is not a rental. He's going to be there in future seasons too. Yeah, one more here. Free agent 2021, so that's after 2020. Okay.

But, I mean, he would be a non-tender candidate in theory. Right, yeah. So I think that it's easier to hear it. I mean, A, it's easier to hear it when you have a 6ERA because you know something has to change. Whatever you're currently doing is not working so well. So that's part of it. But also I think the change of scenery to go to a new organization, you probably want to please those people because you have no history with them and they have taken a chance on you and given up something to get you. And you don't want to walk in there and say, I have all the answers, especially when you have a 6ERA. And when it's

the Astros, who are the best team in baseball probably and won a World Series and have been in the playoffs and everyone else on that staff has bought in and you've seen all these guys go to the Astros and make changes and get better and what are you going to be the guy who says no I don't need to change or learn anything no you're not going to be because you're on the same staff as Verlander and Cole and all these much more accomplished pitchers who have been receptive to that new information. So I think it's definitely easier for the Astros to acquire Sanchez and get him to change things than it would be for the Blue Jays to do that. That said, I don't think you could give the Blue

Jays a pass for not changing those things if those things should have been changed. And it's very strange because, okay, the Blue Jays do not have a new pitching coach. Their pitching coach has been there for some time. I think he's in his seventh season with the team, something like that. But they do have a new manager who was hired from the Rays organization. They have a bench coach who was hired away from the Astros, Dave Hudgens. Of course, he was a hidden coach from 2015 to 2018, but he was around. He was at coaches meetings. He was familiar with these concepts. You'd think that he would bring Astros style coaching and thinking to the Blue Jays. And so it's very odd. And, you know, I think it's partly on the coaches sometimes, maybe sometimes it's on the front office for not holding the coaches accountable.

But it's very odd that this could keep happening because, I mean, we've had email hypotheticals about trading with the Astros. And like if the Astros want to trade for one of your players, then should you not trade him because, you know, the Astros know something and they're going to change something and that guy's going to be better? Should you at least hold out for a bigger return because you know that this guy's going to be better should you at least hold out for a bigger return because you know that this guy's going to be better with the Astros. And we talked about the Mets reportedly being afraid to trade with the Astros and other teams because they don't want to be embarrassed when one of their players goes to that team and performs better than he has with the Mets.

And it's just, I mean, at this this point especially after the Presley trade where that was a case where it seemed like what happened with Presley may have helped drive the Twins coaching and managerial turnover this past offseason because I think according to some quotes and reports the Twins front office was maybe aware that Presley would be better if he made these changes. Granted, it's easy to say that in retrospect, but they did say that and they had some trouble communicating that to him or to the coaching staff. And so they hired a whole new coaching staff that seems to be more proactive when it comes to passing information along to players. And yet this is still happening. along the players and yet this is still happening conceivably it seems like this could have been happening with the blue jays where this guy should have been told these things and the astros come

calling and you know what the astros are going to do and you just can't do it yourself for whatever reason yeah uh for what it's worth uh sanchez was already throwing more curveballs this year than he ever had in his career so and you know i don't know it's hard to say but his his fastballs were a little higher than they had been in most years so maybe they had tried this and of course i mean also like like you noted it's one start and like for instance sanchez in his previous three starts had uh allowed a 4abbitt, which is the very opposite of no hitters. But besides that, in 16 innings, he struck out 20. He walked one.

He only allowed one home run. He had 68% strikes. And if those 19 mostly singles were kind of bloops, then maybe you'd look at it a little closer and go, oh, whoa, look. The Blue Jays did fix him just in time.

So it's hard to say that the Blue Jays have been definitely smoked here. But, yeah, I mean, what are you going to do? Like, what are you going to do? Like, at a certain point, you just got to, like, let the good team do the thing they do. You can't do it. Like, execution's hard. Yeah, or do the thing the good team do the thing they do you can't do it like execution's hard yeah or do the thing the good team is doing i mean i think yeah i don't know i don't know how

much i i don't know like we don't know it is true this always looks bad it always looks bad and it's gonna look worse every time now that uh now that we have a narrative going for it and it's not good right it's not good to do that to have to have people when you trade a guy with a 6.07 era and everybody goes oh they just got snookered like oh watch them this is gonna cost them their job uh that's a pretty bad sign and then when he throws six innings of a then that's like really really bad for you so i don't know who knows i can't speak to this i will um i will say that like one of the things that this is not a defense the blue jays anymore i wasn't trying to defend the blue jays but one of the things that one of the things that happens in

a relationship one of the things that uh you get really good at when that happens in a relationship, one of the things that you get really good at when you're in a relationship for a long time, be it with an employer or with your parents or with a friend or with a significant other, is that you learn how to say no. You learn what you can get away with, how far you can push, how far you can say no before and there's going to be consequences.

You learn that they're going to forgive you in a lot of ways. And so in a way, I wonder how many players there are out there. And I'm not saying Sanchez is one of those, but just knowing that, I wonder how many players there are out there who have been with their organization for 11 years and have never really, like 29 teams can see it. They can all see, oh, oh, we just made this tweak. But they know how to say no to their employers. They know how to not do the annoying hard thing

that they don't really believe is going to work anyway. And unless they're backed into a corner somehow, maybe they never will. You wonder how much potential is left out there. Right. Well, I think one thing the Astros do better than probably any other organization is that they just don't put up with that. I think they're kind of ruthless, at least when it comes to coaches also have a relationship with their team and they learn when they can say no. And I think when coaches said no to the Astros, the Astros said goodbye. We will hire someone else

who will not say no and hopefully will not want to say no, but regardless will not say no. And I think that is really their advantage. Maybe I, you know, I'm sure their R&D department is as good as anyone's, but lots of teams have good R&D departments and people upstairs who can analyze these things and say that pitcher X should throw pitch X, Y more often. That was too many numbers and letters. But I think that sort of insight a lot of teams have, but the Astros still seem to be the best or among the

best when it comes to actually translating that insight, because I think they're just more aggressive about getting everyone on board one way or another and having this whole mindset that everyone buys into. And if you don't, you're gone. So I don't know what else you can do other than hiring Astros coaches, which the Blue Jays have already done. You can hire Astros personnel, which the Orioles did. You can try to model yourself on them. But it's really you're giving up a lot when, you know, Ross Atkins is bragging about 42 years of team control. And meanwhile, the guy who is on your team right now, you're not getting as much out of him as you could be. So we'll see. I mean, for all we know, Sanchez will be lousy the rest of the season and it'll an incremental change and not so much that you would think oh he was a six era guy and now he's a zero era guy but it it supports i think to some extent

what we were all thinking and maybe because we were all thinking it we are too quick to pronounce victory for the astros here an embarrassment for the blue Blue Jays, but we'll see. It doesn't look great after a first start. It looks as bad after a first start as it probably could. Just for the record, his spin rate did not change, so he was not a sunscreen

spin whatever transition guy. Maybe he was already using sunscreen, as almost everybody does. Sure. Or maybe they, maybe they wait until the third start now because they think that we'll quit watching by then.

But for what it's worth, he did not jump, which I, what did you get? You found that only like basically only Garrett called it. Is that what you found? Yeah. Travis wrote about this more,

but I think like the, the top teams like the Astros and the Dodgers and Yankees, those teams have just increased spin rate significantly over the last few years, but I think mostly from personnel changes more so than guys they already had increasing dramatically. So Cole did leap up more than you'd expect but it wasn't the norm like presley didn't change after he was traded to the astros although i think he had been caught on camera using something spraying something but it didn't really change after he was traded there so it's not the norm i wouldn't say all right um oh that's a loud Yeah, might be a bullpen Jeep.

All right. Well, Ben, I just want to say I'm sorry about bullpen cheap. I'm sorry. Okay, I accept your apology. I have more things that I'd like to banter about, but the research that I needed, the assistance that I needed, didn't come in in time. So I'm looking forward to Wednesday.

I have at least one, maybe two things that I'm excited to continue bantering about. Okay. Is that all we got? I think so. All right. All right. Stick with me here for a moment

because as it turns out, that's not all I've got. I've got one more thing for you here, and this is something else that I stumbled across during my newspapers.com archive search for bullpen cheap. So Sam was apologizing for his bullpen jeep joke. Here's something I came across in the Montreal Gazette, August 7th, 1950. This is in the notes of a column called the Broadway Bugle, which was syndicated in other papers. It says, Ted Berkelman notes that the driver of the Indians bullpen jeep throws out the clutch, whereas the relief pitchers he brings

in from the bullpen throw in the clutch. Oof, just as bad as bullpen cheap, right? So I'm wondering, who is this Ted Berkelman who's not introduced and he's just making jokes about the bullpen cheap? So I searched for Ted Berkelman and I found 1,382 references on newspapers.com to Ted Berkelman. I don't know what Ted Berkelman did in his day job, in his life, but I do know this. He was a prolific writer into newspapers. So he would write letters to the editor, he would submit things to columnists, and he appeared over the course of decades, hundreds, more than a thousand times in various papers, mostly New York papers. And he would send in all sorts of stuff.

He'd send in jokes, he'd send in trivia questions and answers, he'd send in other attempts at witty wordplay, he'd just sometimes write straight up letters or corrections. So the first Ted Berkelman submission I could find was in the New York Daily News in March 1939. Here's an early example of his work. Ted Berkelman says he knows an actor so conceited he's suffering from height phobia. He gets dizzy looking on the rest of the profession. Eh? So Ted, from what I can tell from perusing all of his many submissions, he liked boxing, he liked movies, he loved baseball, and in the 50s he would just write these straight up one-liners. So the principal change that has come over the fight business, says Ted Berkelman, is that years ago a boxer would get a steak on his eye, whereas now he's lucky to get his eye on a steak.

Ho ho. Now some of his jokes don't hold up that well. Either they're things that we wouldn't joke about today, or they're just pop culture references that you kind of have to do some digging to understand now. But I'm going to read you his submissions here from the 1950s in the same genre as the bullpen jeep clutch joke so here we go ted berkelman wonders why bill veck didn't try to justify his use of eddie goodell with the browns on the grounds that might makes right get it might m-i-t-e because it's eddie goodell here's another ted berkelman thinks the yanks must have a wealth of pitching when they can get a morgan to replace a ford get it because they had pitchers named morgan Ford, like JP Morgan, Henry Ford. All right. Is Ted Berkelman the punster justified in

stating, just because catchers Yogi Berra and Roy Campanella were selected for top honors by the baseball writers recently, that the most valuable player awards have gone into the hands of receivers? Not sure that's even really a joke. If Ted Williams ever becomes captain of the Red Sox, inquires Ted Berkelman, would they refer to the Boston's big wheel as the hubcap? Oh goodness. Here's another. In view of Bill Veck's obvious insistence on being behind the scenes manager of his St. Louis Browns, Ted Berkelman suggests that henceforth they be called the Marionettes because their manager was Marty Marion. Oh man, I think Meg would love Ted Berkelman. Here's one.

Ted Berkelman thinks that the Yanks, in bringing up Ford to help Lopat with the Southpaw pitching, were influenced by the Proverbs that two Eds are better than one. Oh, okay. Will someone inform Ted Berkelman, who asked the question in the first place, if the Yanks will win the bunting through Phil Rizzuto's bunting? Goodness. Okay. Not too many more here.

With so many shutouts in the major leagues, asks Ted Berkelman, can we assume that Ford Frick, ardent devotee of the opera, is more conscious of the figure O than of Figaro? Oh boy. So I wonder just how long did Ted Berkelman keep going? The answer was a long time. So he was living in Queens Village, New York in the 1950s. By the 60s, he's in the Bronx. So here's the Daily News, 1968. The Bronx's Ted Berkelman asks, As far as Major League Baseball is concerned, what did R. Nixon and S. Agnew have in common? The answer, also supplied by the Bronx's Ted Berkelman, is that both were catchers for the Boston Red Sox.

Samuel Agnew from 1916 to 1918 and Russ Nixon from 1960 to 1965. Good one, Ted. Thought it was about politics, turned out to be about baseball. Sometimes he'd just send in signs he saw that were funny. So in 1967, Ted Berkelman reports he just passed through a town so small it had the words, Welcome to, and you are now leaving, on the same sign.

He'd just send in jokes sometimes. Pop, did the stork really bring me? and you are now leaving, on the same sign. You just send in jokes sometimes. Pop, did the stork really bring me? Well, son, let's put it this way. The bird who delivered you sure as hell had a big bill. You know, as in medical bill. Now here he is in the Allentown, Pennsylvania morning call during the 1970s gasoline crisis. Ted Berkelman complains about gas prices. I had no trouble getting a dollar's worth, but the attendant charged me a nickel for the paper cup to carry it home in. Ho ho! I should be adding ba-dum-bums here. In 1978, he sent in a list of ballplayers whose nicknames might be found on almost any Christmas dinner table.

Candy Lachance, Pie Trainer, Turkey Donlon, Soup Campbell, you get the point. Now, Ted was still submitting letters and corrections and jokes into the 1990s. So here he is in the Daily News more than 55 years after his first submission. This is November 1994. By now he's living in Freehold, New Jersey. People don't realize there's one more thing to be thankful for on Thanksgiving Day. If the Pilgrims had settled in the Midwest, we'd be stuffing ourselves with buffalo meat. Can you imagine? Just a few days later, he wrote in to suggest that Mario Cuomo should be the new commissioner of baseball. We got Bud Selig instead.

And that was, I believe, the last submission by Ted Berkelman, because the last entry I could find for him, sadly, in the Asbury Park Press, Asbury Park, New Jersey, December 20th, 1994, the obituaries, Theodore V. Berkelman, 83 years old, Howell Township. So if he was 83 in 1994, that means he was 27, 28 when he first started submitting these things. I don't know what else he did, but I'm going to say this was his life's work. And not many people who read that obituary may have known it, but the country had lost a man of letters, a punster and jokester through whom we can trace most of 20th century American popular culture. And I found a joke he made in the 1950s, 1951. It was listed in a Wish I Said That section. For TV comedians, prosperity is just around the corny, Ted Berkelman.

And that was the case for Ted, too. I hope he was prosperous, but corny he certainly was. And Ted, you've been gone for 25 years, but your jokes are still being read and appreciated. That will do it for today. Thank you for listening. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild, signing up to pledge some small monthly amount, help keep the podcast going, get yourself access to some perks. Following five listeners have already pledged their support. Adam Morrison, Brian Boger, Molly McCullough, Stephen Caver, and Ryan Giles. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild,

and you can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. You can contact me and Meg and Sam via email at podcastwithfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. If you want to read more about how the Astros optimize players, you can do so in my book, The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players. If you read it and you like it, please leave us a positive review on Amazon and Goodreads. It helps us out. We will be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. One day, the funeral was quiet, but all the same, he's much better off where he is now. Rest in peace, Danny.

Rest in peace, Danny.