Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1414: Follow the Leader

Episode Date: August 8, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Mike Trout’s 28th birthday, the stats he’s led the league in, and the stats he still might lead the league in for the first time, the Mets’ recent hot streak and the way in which their season has been both tumultuous and predictable, Max Muncy and a cycle/walk-off […]

Play the turntable, see the hair, soon enough it's everywhere. Get it over with and just confirm. It just might hurt. It just might hurt. You've seen the ashes, the calm, and the fun The wait now is over, you're stuck in the mud Hello and welcome to episode 1414 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. With me is Sam Miller of ESPN. Hello, Sam.

Hey, bud. It is Mike Trout's 28th birthday. Happy birthday, Mike Trout. I wrote about him for his birthday, and I picked up an exercise that you and I conducted in, what was it, episode 961. So some time ago, we did a little mini Mike Trout draft, and we picked statistical categories that he had not yet led the league in that we were projecting that he might one day lead the league in. And since we did that, I think that episode was about three years ago, he has picked up another couple categories or he's about to. So intentional walks, he is currently leading for what would be the third time. And home runs,

he has 38 dingers right now, which is six more than his closest competitor in the American League. So unless he gets hurt or improbably slumps, there's a pretty good chance that he's going to get his first home run title this year. So I wrote about that for The Ringer, about his ability to lead the league in a wide variety of categories, because we talk all the time about his war, and that is worth talking about. It's very handy to have that holistic number that lets us link to a single leaderboard to say, hey, he's the best ever through this age, and I hope that we can continue to do that. But I think it's also fun to dig deep into the components of war or just the standard stats, because we've talked before about whether we would appreciate Mike Trout as much as we do if we did not have war to give us that number.

And I think we probably would, because he has led the league in a whole lot of things and a lot of times. and a lot of times, and I compared how he stacks up historically to other players in his ability to lead the league, not just in a few categories a lot of times, but a lot of categories at least a few times. And I think that's a special thing about him, like the fact that he can lead the league in stolen bases and intentional walks or stolen bases and RBIs or something like that. Just the back of the baseball card stats. But I think he's just as impressive if you look at him like that. And I wonder whether you think he can cross off any more categories because he's running out of things that he has not let the league in.

Well, there's basically four more on the standard back of the baseball card. Those four are hits doubles triples and batting average and so uh just looking at these here i don't remember what i what i predicted last time i think i do remember what i predicted i think at the time because i think i wrote probably a lot more briefly than you just wrote but i think i wrote about this concept at espn at the time too and probably just, I think it was a couple paragraphs in a larger piece if I remember right. But I thought that he was going to win a batting title. I thought that his next thing was likely going to be batting title. And so anyway, of those four though, so he's led the league in

everything else on the back of a baseball card and pretty much every good category on a baseball reference page. Yeah, except for playing time. Yeah, playing time. They did draft those. So games, plate appearances. Yeah, boy, the games is doable. He doesn't take many days off, although I think maybe slightly more now, but not really.

He hardly ever takes a day off unless something has happened. But plate appearances and at bats are tough just because of his ballpark. It's not a high offense ballpark. And so that's tricky, even if he is batting second, even if it is the American League. It's a little tricky. You want to say something about that before I move on to the big four? Well, I think it would help if the Angels put a better lineup around him. Then he would get more trips to the big four? Well, I think it would help if the Angels put a better lineup around him, then he would get more trips to the plate. And also, he'd probably take fewer days off. I mean,

he doesn't take many days off, but every now and then he'll have a little nagging injury, like he had a calf thing a couple of weeks ago, right? And he sat out, I don't know, a few games. And sometimes when he'll have one of those,'ll be like one of those well if it were the playoffs i'd be playing but you know it's july or whatever so if the angels were in a pennant race if it looked like they actually had to win games then maybe he would play through some nagging little things that now he takes a few days off because of, I don't know whether that's a good thing or not, but if he actually had to win games more so than the Angels have for the past few years, then maybe he'd be even more incentivized to stay in the lineup. So I think he could get one of those. All it takes is one very healthy year where he doesn't get hurt, which, you know, he's had 259 game seasons. He's had 257 game

seasons. If he has another of those and, you know, gets a little lucky and the Angels are good, then he could certainly pick off one of those. I don't know if I'd bet on it, but it's not unlikely. Yeah, I think that he could certainly pick off games. Plate appearances, I appearances, it's such a disadvantage playing in Anaheim. He did almost do it, though, that one time. In, what was it, 2013, I think he finished eight played appearances behind Dustin Pedroia

for the AL lead. Same Paul Park. I think in that year, he occasionally hit lead off, but he also hit third much more often than he does now, where he's just in the second spot every day. So it could do it. Yeah. Only one angel since 1980.

Only one angel has done it. That was Darren Erstad in 2000. So one has done it, but only one has done it. I don't know if that supports or hurts my case. but only one has done it. I don't know if that supports or hurts my case. I didn't realize this, but the American League has had a 162-game player every year this decade except for 2011.

So anyway, though, playing time, sure. Maybe he will. That's not what I'm excited about, but maybe he will. All right, so of the big four, he's got batting average. He has finished as high as second, and he finished fourth last year. Doubles, he has finished as high as second, and he finished fourth last year. Doubles, he has finished as high as sixth. Triples, he has finished as high as third twice and as high as second once.

And hits, he has finished as high as fourth. Hits came fairly early in his career before he was such a prolific walker. Triples came earlier in his career when he was both a faster and also probably a little bit more aggressive base runner and so you'd have to say those are both challenges for him at this stage in his career you i would not bet on him winning hits uh or triples again he only has one triple this year for instance doubles which is the one that he has not the one that he has come the furthest from. He has never gotten in the top five. But doubles are just so fluky.

Doubles doesn't tell you all that much about a hitter. And it certainly wouldn't be surprising to see him suddenly put up 46 doubles in a season, even though he hasn't done it. And then batting average is the one that, I mean, batting, I was just looking at the National league batting titles of this decade and like basically there are a lot of rockies there's also you know pretty much like one guy that you might have said in advance or maybe two guys that you would have said in advance were contenders it batting average uh is usually someone who's a 280 career hitter who suddenly

has a big year and what uh mike trout has not won a batting title even though he is a 306 hitter even though he is you know relative to his league's batting average you know the like fairly elite batting average guy yeah he really is he's like his projection according to i don't know combination of steamer and zips i think is 300 he's like one of five or six true talent 300 hitters according to the projections and he's a staple of the top 10 and usually the top five in the american league batting average race so all it would take is like one kind of fluky babbapier but he's right there every year so yeah i think he could do that and in fact this comes up whenever i'm doing the hall of famers he's passed because you're usually comparing him to you're i'm usually writing about somebody who

played in like 1904 and had like a 485 career batting average and you're like well what does that mean compared to mike trout and so then you go look at the plus stats at fan graphs and uh mike trout has a uh batting average plus of of 120 which is let's see here which is like 30th all time so relative to his peers he is the 30th best batting average hitter of all time yeah like willie keeler famous we willie keeler was a 124 and wade boggs was a 124 and jose altube is a 123 and so trout is right there miguel cabrera 120 uh george sizzler 119 i could go on and on he is an elite batting average guy as well and also in this case that his career development where he now walks 120 130 times a year helps him because it increases

the chances that he will have a Babbitt spike because his official at-bats, not his played appearances, but his official at-bats are lower than a lot of the people he's competing against. And so it does make sense that he would be able to not just repeat his traditional 300 to 315 batting average, but to have a spike because he's like last year, for instance, he only batted 471 times in official at bats. The year before, he actually only batted 402 times. He didn't play

all that much. And it's a lot easier to have a flukishly high batting average if you have fewer official at bats. So it basically comes down to batting average, which I think his talent level is there. He is probably the favorite to win the batting title or maybe to finish second every year or doubles, which is kind of a chaotic stat that any qualified major leaguer who's good at hitting could win at any given time. So I will say that I will rank these batting average most likely, doubles second most likely. Boy, I guess I'll say triples third most likely, but it's a real step down and it hits fourth most likely. Yeah, I don't see say Triples third most likely But it's a real step down And it hits fourth most likely Yeah, I don't see how he could get the hits at this point

Unless he goes back to being a more aggressive hitter again Which I guess he could at some point Although it seems like guys get more selective And walk more as they age typically But he's always fluctuated from season to season And Angel Stadium is a tough place For doubles and triples, too, for right-handed hitters. I think for both-handed hitters, according to the Fangraphs Park Factors, it's not a bad place for right-handed home run hitters, but not so good for doubles and triples. And I don't know if he's slowed down significantly in the five years or so since he was hitting 39 doubles and nine triples, which were his

totals in both of those categories two years in a row back then. But maybe he has, or at least he will in the future. And maybe he's just playing it more conservative when it comes to taking the extra base. And I don't know, he's hitting all the homers. Maybe some of the balls that used to be doubles are now going over the fence because he's stronger and because the ball is juiced. And yeah, I don't know, maybe doubles, but hard to imagine him doing that. I don't know how much this factors into his double sets.

I have not looked at the splits, but a couple of years ago, Angel Stadium changed its home run boundary in right center field and made it easier to hit a home run to right center field and harder to hit a double or a triple to right center field. And so that probably hurts too. That coincides with a drop in his doubles rate, but it's hard to know how much of that is, if any of that is that versus like his more, his changing style and his, you know, slightly different playing time. Right.

All right. So I'll link to the article. Y'all check it out. You'll probably like it if you enjoy our talking about Mike Trout. Suffice it to say for now that he has led the league in a lot of things. There aren't a lot of guys

who have led the league in more things. And it's not just that he's led the league in a lot of things, but it's the things he's led the league in. Like if you're a power hitter, if you're, you know, someone, if you're like a Ted Williams type or something, I mean, Ted's led the league in. Like if you're a power hitter, if you're, you know, someone, if you're like a Ted Williams type or something, I mean, Ted Williams led the league in even more things. But if you're someone who hits for power and walks, like you can lead in a lot of things.

You can lead in walks, you can lead on base and slugging and OPS and all that stuff, home runs and RBIs and all those things kind of go together. But a lot of Trout's league leading accomplishments do not typically go together. You don't typically get someone who can lead the league in steals and then also lead the league in intentional walks or RBIs or home runs. guys who have done more and particularly by his age because guys at the top of this leaderboard do tend to pick off a category or two after trout's age it is mostly guys who played in like eight team leagues when it was easier to lead the league and of course the caliber of play was lower too so to do this when baseball players are better than ever in 15 team leagues, it is really impressive. So I think he stacks up. He's like 90th all-time in career war, or at least he was yesterday, and then he homered again. So who knows?

Maybe he's 89th or something now. But he's also 70th all-time in the black ink test, Bill James' black ink test. time in the black ink test bill james's black ink test so in a way he's like more impressive if you just look at his tendency to lead the league in back of the baseball card stats which is kind of interesting because usually we say like you need war to appreciate trout because he does all these other things now the black ink test that's you know limited categories so maybe we do still need War to tell us that He's been one of the best base runners in Baseball since he came up and he's

Played center field and he's played it well And he does all these other things so Of course we still need war and war Tells us something about Mike Trout but All the individual things that he Leads the league in also tell us something So yeah what I'm looking at is 34th among hitters in black ink,

but only 129th among hitters in gray ink, which, uh, right. That's just a matter of playing time. And no, exactly. It just goes to show you can't possibly like,

like one is a matter of longevity and it just goes to show how short Trout's career has been relative to other hall of famers. Uh, but when it comes to being the very best in the world, he is a constant. Right. Yeah. Gray ink, for those who don't know, that's finishing in the top 10 in categories, whereas black ink is leading the league. Ed Delahanty. Yeah. Yeah. He was up there, too. All right. Okay. Mike Trout.

Yeah. I should also maybe mention we didn't include hit-by-p by pitches as a category in this discussion, although I did in my article. Trout's never been a big hit by pitch guy, but he's actually having a career year in hit by pitches. He's been hit 12 times this year, most in any single season. He trails Shinsu Chu for the AL lead by only two hit by pitches. So he could conceivably claim that category this year, which is odd because I thought he had actually been pitched away more often this season but nonetheless lots of plunking anything you want to talk about let's see here the other day max muncie had a walk-off double and uh this was flagged for me because muncie was furiously running toward third at the time that the winning run scored and you don't get to see, it's hard to see,

the video clip does not show whether he actually made it to third. It looked, you would think the timing of it would suggest that he would have made it to third, but when the camera cuts to him, he has been mobbed by his teammates, and he was only credited with a double. And so this suggests, this is circumstantial evidence that suggests that Max Muncy was trying for the ultra rare and usually pointless walk-off triple, but that his teammates actually thwarted him by charging out to celebrate with him on the field. In other words, if the Dodgers dugout had been on the first base side, for instance, instead of the third base side, Muncy might well have gotten his triple, which ordinarily walk-off triples are on their own, a strange phenomenon that I've written about. But in this case, Muncy was a triple short of the cycle. And so this triple would have actually gotten in the cycle. He said after the game, he seemed to be expressing interest in having gotten that triple.

said after the game it's he seemed to be expressing interest in having gotten that triple now i again i do not know whether he actually made it to third base or not it seems weird to me that given the timing of this play it seems weird to me that there would have been enough dodgers on the field or any dodgers on the field in time to to get there because to do that they would have basically had to have been charging out to the field before the run well before the run crossed the plate and it was a close play at home however i asked our scorekeeper friend to assess this and assume that he did touch third base and say whether he thought that it would be scored a triple or double and going to third on the throw because he was only credited with a double. So basically one of two things happened. Either Muncy didn't touch third base, never got there,

or he was given double going to third on the throw. And my view of this is that it maybe should have arguably been double going to third on the throw. Kyle Seeger, the runner scoring, We have this great camera shot for these purposes that shows Seager rounding third base. And he's taken about seven steps past third base, six steps past third base, as Muncy is getting to second base. So Seager is well ahead of Muncy's pace

on a, you know, like base by base level. And just as it shows Muncy reaching second, right? Well, he's actually, he's a step short and the Padres second baseman relay thrower is, is already throwing home. And so to me, it's very unlikely that he would have like, if the throw had gone to third Muncy, I think would have been out by like 60 feet, not 60 feet, maybe 16 feet. So I could see the case for not giving him credit for the triple here. But that's why I asked the official scorer who looked at this, looked at the screen grabs, looked at all the data, all the necessary data, and tells me if he actually got to third, I would likely have ruled this a triple. Obviously,

they have to play for the out at the plate, but I don't think he is going only on the throw. I would have given him a triple, and I believe that would be consistent with my scoring peers. So I will try to figure out conclusively whether he touched third base or not. But if he did not touch third base, then we can say that this might be the first time ever

that teammates rushing onto the field have cost a teammate a cycle. That they actually like ran out and tackled him short of third base and cost him a cycle. That, in my opinion, in my opinion, deserves to be mentioned on the official Wikipedia page of hitting for the cycle. Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay. That's good. We got an email, and this is an email show, about cycles, which normally we don't talk a whole lot about cycles, but this kind of piqued my interest. And it was from Tim, who wanted to know when the best era for cycles would be. And I didn't do research, and we probably could and should do research about this, but he said, I was thinking

about when the best era to hit a cycle would be. Like, there are a lot of homers nowadays, but not a lot of hits or triples, singles certainly. So I thought the early 1900s would be ripe for cycles because of all the triples, except they didn't hit many home runs back then. I was surprised to find out the record for cycles in an MLB season is a tie for first with 2009 and 1933 with eight each. Neither are in my mind's wheelhouse for cycles. So is there a way to find out which decade or era would statistically be the most primed for cycles ever, even if that decade did not have the most cycles? And the 30s sounds like a likely cycle time because the batting average was higher than it's ever been. And you had guys hitting home runs by that point.

And I would think there were still weird ballpark configurations where you could get triples. So that sounds like a good cycle time. Not a lot of strikeouts, obviously. So 30 and 31 were the all-time peak doubles years and 32 and uh like you say triples were still uh very high they were not quite as high as they had been in the early 19 teens uh but they were very high and and like you're right like home runs were were also pretty uh they they had they had come on they were like you know quadruple what they were for instance in the late 19th century right 1930 is the the highest point for yeah for well

yeah and for for hits per game at least post 19th century and in fact let's see 1930 is the highest year ever for doubles the highest post 1921 year ever for triples and really higher than most years, almost all years before 19 and then the highest home run year before fairly recently. And because the leagues on base percentage was 356, you were likely to bat a lot of times in a game. In fact, that was the highest. Did you? I think you just said this, the highest scoring year ever. So you were likely to get, you know, five, maybe six at-bats in a lot of games. So 1930 is a great year,

except that there were only 16 teams and they were only playing 154 game schedules. And so there's, you know, roughly half as many games as there are today or in any other year. So I've not put a lot of thought into this or done any math whatsoever, but it seems to me that the answer would probably be a combination of two simple factors. One is how many games are played, and the other is the year where the rarest of the

four phenomenon at the time was the most common. So whether that was home runs in the early years or triples in the later years, whichever year the rare event was the most common. And yeah, on a rate basis, you'd have to go with that era, right? Because as Tim is saying, like there were eight cycles in 2009 and 1933, but there were a lot fewer games played in 1933. Certainly. On a rate basis, without a doubt.

On a rate basis, I think there's no question about it. In 1930, where the rarest event was the triple and it was more common than, you know, home runs or triples have been in many of the years since then. So, yeah, that was a big time for her. And yet it wasn't a big time for cycling. Yeah, well, there were three cycles that year, but yeah. All right, so I meant to mention one more thing, which is the Mets. And everyone's talking about the Mets right now because they are 12-1 in their last 13 games.

They've won five straight. They've kind of put themselves back in wildcard contention. And you would think, just if you sort of superficially followed the Mets season, that they've had the most up-and-down season. They're certainly up there, right, because they started the season as a contender. They had made these win-now moves over the winter. There was some optimism. The NL East was seen as this four-team race, and the Mets were in the thick of that. Then they didn't start off so well. By the time you get to the trade deadline, everyone's talking about them

as sellers. They were significantly below 500. Then they played okay, and they decided not to sell and instead traded for Marcus Stroman, and now suddenly they're unbeatable. And so what a wild ride it has been for Mets fans this year. till now woken up and checked the the current standings and playoff odds you'd say yep the Mets are exactly who we thought they would be because the preseason projections at Fangraphs the Mets were projected to win 83.6 games of course they go to a decimal point there today they are projected to win 83.8 games their playoff odds have changed from 39.6% preseason to 37.3% right now. I may have gotten the win totals reversed there. The point is that their projected win total for the end of the season and their playoff odds as of today have almost not budged.

I guess at the beginning of the year, they had a better chance of winning the division, whereas now it's all wildcard odds. But still, you'd think that nothing had changed. And so I don't know whether the lesson to this is not to follow baseball in a horse race kind of way. I mean, you have to if you're a fan of the team, you're watching it day by day. But you should probably keep in mind what we thought teams were going to be as jeff used to write all the time the preseason projections are very telling even late into the season and so with the mets you've had all this upheaval because there's constant drama and ownership and brody and calloway and it looked like calloway was on the

verge of being fired at one point and and he got the vote of confidence. And then there was the Callaway and the Jason Vargas and the clubhouse spat and the apology for that and reports that Callaway is having his pitching moves dictated by Van Wagenen and Van Wagenen's having his moves dictated by the Wilpons. And it's just a mess, and it's been, you know, up and down constantly. And yet the Mets are right where at least the projections thought they would be at this point. So I don't know what that means, whether we should just not overreact to every rough stretch and every 12 and one stretch and keep in mind that teams go through hot times and cold times but the underlying talent is either there or it's not or or what but i think it is uh it's kind of an interesting observation because you'd think that the mets have been all over the place but from another perspective they have been one of the most predictable teams in baseball well yeah

along with 28 other teams this year they have been one of the most predictable teams in baseball. Well, yeah, along with 28 other teams this year, they have been one of the most predictable teams in baseball. Everybody is exactly where we thought they would be. Yeah, well, the Tigers are even worse, but yeah. Yeah, no, going into the season, there was a lot of hope that the NL East would be really exciting because there were four teams that seemed, you know, quite good. And then the NL Central seemed like it could be really exciting because there were four teams that seemed you know quite good and then the nl central seemed like it could be really interesting because there were five teams that seemed quite kind of exactly the same like sort of uh between 79 and 85 wins and the east turned out to be a lot harder because in fact all four of those teams were all kind of good. But anytime you have four

teams that are pretty good, you know, one of them is going to have a little bit of a breakout and overperform or, um, or just get better or have a bunch of their players do better than you projected. And, uh, that's the big difference between the East and the Central is one team, uh, ran away with it kind of. And so the Mets, while they are exactly what they projected to be your fear in a sense in that division was that you would be what you projected to be because you know that you know that if if all four teams project to win 86 games for instance you do not want to win 86 games you don't even want to win 87 you just know that probably one's going to win 94 one's going to win 80 and then two are going to win like you know 85 that probably one's going to win 94 one's going to win 80 and then two are

going to win like you know 85 or 86 87 through randomness alone through randomness alone exactly or through ronald acuna alone and so so the bad news for the mets is that this went pretty much exactly how you would have expected and that wasn't going to be good enough so i mean if they win the wild card and they win the wild card game and then they win the division and then they win the championship series and then they win the world series then of course that would be really good yes um so anyway it's just to say that the met season yes like you say it has been disappointing and also encouraging in ways that were predictable and also unpredictable right incredibly tumultuous and and incredibly predictable.

You could basically say the same thing about the Nationals, and you could basically say the same thing about the Phillies, though. The Nationals were out of it entirely for two months. Nobody was talking about them. I remember writing in some weekend preview thing that I almost felt bashful saying it, but I still thought the Nationals could get back in this thing. And I almost felt bashful saying it, but I still thought the Nationals could get back in this thing. And I thought, do I?

Like I thought that two weeks ago, but do I still? And like they did. They came back. And so they also went through that period of everything falling down around them and recrimations? Recrimation? Is that a word? Oh. The making of such accusations.rimination yeah yeah yeah yeah right yeah okay let me try that again okay or don't i don't care i'm not embarrassed

i said it you guys i said reclamation the word is recrimination and then i thought through it and then i had to go to a a worldwide web of knowledge in order to figure this out. So that happened. Anyway, the Nationals did that. And then, you know, the Phillies have at times been going through it too. It seems like just in the last month, there have been times where you're watching a Phillies game. And it seems like it is just nothing but like dispiritedness and a sense that everything has gone wrong and they have fallen you know enough games out of it where you

think well they're really long shots and they have a negative run differential and you can point to various things that have been disappointing but they're a game and a half ahead of the Mets and they're only a game behind the first is this right they're only a game behind the first. Is this right? They're only a game behind the first wildcard spot right now. They have the second wildcard spot, if I'm not mistaken. Who can tell anymore? So the Phillies, the Mets, the Nationals have all gone through this same process. And honestly, the Cubs at times have and the Cardinals did. And now the Brewers maybe are, I mean, the Reds are going to win it all, right?

Going by run differential, maybe they should be. They're plus 37 right now. That's better than the Giants who are ahead of them. That's better than the Brewers who are ahead of them. That's better than the Phillies who are ahead of them. That's better than the Mets and also the Cardinals who are ahead of them. All right. So let's talk about something that we did not talk about at the trade deadline but i was thinking about and i've still been thinking about and i was thinking about it while you and meg were also talking about the trade deadline and and baseball prospectus writers roundtabled about this very concept and everything so all right you have let's say you have and and an email all since this is an email show, why don't I just use an email for the pig, which is, this is a question from T who says, basically, in a perfectly mediocre league, how many games

back do you sell? So there's a longer buildup to this. But if you're looking at the wildcard odds right now, you'll see that a team that is one game back but has a strong projection has higher playoff odds than a team that is one game back but has a very projection, has higher playoff odds than a team that is one game back, but has a very weak projection. Like, for instance, the Giants are seen as a poor team, and so they have slim playoff odds.

The Diamondbacks, for a while, were seen as a strong team because of their run differential and at various playoff odds sites. They had very good playoff odds, even though they and the Giants were basically tied. And my question is, how late in the season or how much do you care about the projections of team quality? Like I know if you're a team that's five games out of the wildcard and there are nine teams in front of you, your playoff odds are going to stink and you should probably take that somewhat seriously. But if you're a team that is one game out of the wildcard and your playoff

odds stink just because you project to be not a very good team, how seriously should you take that? And I will tell you in advance that my answer at this stage in the season, I believe, is not at all. I think that once you get to this point in the season, well, let me take it to the extreme. If you were in the final weekend of the season and you were tied with like, say, the Astros, and you had some opportunity to upgrade your team and the Astros had some opportunity to upgrade their team. To me, both of those teams should treat the situation as essentially identical. It's only three games. It's small sample world. Anything could happen. And you shouldn't really pay too much attention to whether you're

actually good because you are actually there in the race in the final three games of the season. My belief is that 60 games left is about that point. It's essentially where I would consider small sample world to take over. Anything can happen. Chase the dream. Don't really worry about if the projections say you're bad. Just roll with it. You're there. You're in it. You're in the arena. And so do you disagree with that? Well, if you're looking at updated projections, like projections that take into account how you've played in the current season, as well as what you were expected to do coming into the season, there's probably no point at which that doesn't matter at all. Maybe like if it's the final weekend, sure. Although even if it were the final weekend,

if I were putting odds on what would happen, I would still take into account. I mean, in the playoffs, we do that, right? In the playoffs, when we're talking about a five-game series or a seven-game series, we still look at team quality it doesn't determine who wins all the time but you'd still take the team that you think is better is favored right oh if i'm betting on them yes yes i'm talking more from a team perspective uh how seriously they should take their spot in the in the playoffs okay in the playoff hunt. Yeah, right. So if you're very much in the thick of it at the trade deadline, and if you're like five games back or something, there are a bunch of teams ahead of you, then that I'm still going to be taking into account what I think the odds are

of can I actually come back. But if you're like leading in the wildcard race and you have worse underlying numbers and worse projections than teams that are a game behind you or something, I think I would probably still act just about the same way. Maybe I wouldn't like trade my top prospect for a two-month rental or something, but maybe I wouldn't do that anyway,

even if I think I'm favored to win just because it doesn't matter so much. So yeah, because at a certain point, A, you have fans and you're obligated to your fans and you want your fans to come to the park and tune in to watch your games and be excited and keep paying attention to the team late into the season. And those fans mostly are not looking at the playoff odds. And even if they were, they probably wouldn't believe what the playoff odds say because your team is right there in the middle of the pennant race. So they would expect you to add or not subtract.

Not that you should always do what your fans want you to do. That's probably not the best way to run a team, although I guess there's a wisdom of crowds aspect to it. But your fans are always going to want you to go for it. And sometimes it's smarter not to go for it. But I think in that situation, yeah, like aren't we talking about the Giants essentially? Are we talking about the Giants? We're talking about the Giants or we're talking about maybe we're talking about the Phillies. The Phillies are at the moment the Phillies are a good team to use this hypothetical on

because like at Fangraph's playoff odds, the Phillies are a game and a half ahead of the Mets, which seems like they're even more in it than the Mets. But because the Fangraph's projections like the Mets so much more, the Mets are basically twice as likely to make the playoffs and nine times more likely to win the World Series than the Phillies. And I don't know. Look, I don't know if this question even matters as anything because we're past the trade deadline and it's so abstract. Who even knows what exactly I'm talking about? What actions am I talking about that they should or shouldn't be doing? I don't know. be doing. I don't know. But it feels to me like if you were like, for instance, I don't know, again, very abstract, very like non-concrete. Don't know if any of this matters. But if you asked me as a Mets fan, how invested are you in this playoff race? Or if you asked me as a Phillies fan, how invested are you in this playoff race? I don't think at this point in the season, I would go have to look at the playoff odds to answer that.

I think I would go look at the standings to answer that. Yeah, I agree with that. So and maybe it depends how you got there, too, because if you're the Giants and everyone had written you off and then you go on this incredible hot streak and suddenly you're great. Then maybe that builds even more excitement than if you've just sort of been shuffling along and you've never really been good and you've never given your fans much confidence. You've never looked like a great team that could actually win in the playoffs, whether that's misleading or not. If you've never had that hot streak where it looks like, oh, we're just firing on all cylinders and no one can beat us right now, put us in the playoffs and we'll just steamroll everyone for a couple of weeks. Then maybe fans are just kind of like, eh, this team doesn't have what it takes, you know, and why invest in this team that hasn't shown that it has that capacity. Whereas if you were written off and then you surge back into the race and you're so excited, you're winning every game, then I think fans maybe are more attached to that team. And I guess you're also, you know, in the back of your mind, we didn't even expect

this team to be good. So we're playing with house money here and maybe we should just let this ride and not get fooled by it. But I think there's an excitement surrounding a team like the Giants when they went on their run and the run that the Mets are on right now, especially coming off of what they were before, what we thought they were, which was just totally out of it. It's like, hey, we thought we were done, and now we're not done. So let's make something of this opportunity we've been given. Yeah.

All right. Okay. So I've got some other emails lined up here. Anything else? Yeah. If you don't mind, I have a non-email that is email-like that I would love to bring up if we're running short. You want me to do it right now?

Yeah, go ahead. All right. Let me, so this this is this is actually a tweet that was not directed at us i am simply taking it and uh and raising it uh it's a tweet from shauna she who says hot take i think baseball would be a lot more entertaining if you took out the rule that the base runner can't stray from the base paths during a rundown the entire field's fair game heck just turned the entire stadium into one big game of baseball hide and seek and i think that this is at the extreme even at the extreme i think yes definitely that feels

to me a very logical place for baseball the sport to be, like given its origins as a game of tag. However, even in a much more moderate, very, very moderate suggestion, I wonder how much you think it would help boost offense, boost the sort of favorable kind of offense, the sort of offense that people seem to want more, the more active dynamic kind of offense and change the game in a positive way.

If you were just to, say, extend the distance a base runner could deviate from his path from, say, three feet to like six feet, and you could just make it much easier for a base runner to deviate, not necessarily, because because i mean obviously in the extreme version of it then you'd have the consequences would likely be plays that would take 40 or 45 minutes which i'm fine with like i think that's okay like as i put it in an email to someone on a similar topic if baseball were basically like a constant version of security guards trying to tackle a streaker cool with me but but that's a different game entirely but just within like five or six feet where you make it so that tags are not to

be taken for granted that rundowns are not to be seen as um as easy to complete from the defense and where there is a little bit of sort of chaos in the base running. I feel like, I'll stop there. Well, yeah, I often feel disappointed when there's a rundown and it's going on for a little while. And of course, that's great. And everyone wants the rundown to continue. And you're rooting for the base runner to just be able to run a little farther. And it's kind of a bummer when he leaves the baseline

because you want to see that continue on the other hand if you extend it too much then you ruin what makes the rundown special because I think the fact that we don't get super long rundowns all that often because it's

difficult to sustain because there are only so many places you can go and you can't deviate that much. So I think that makes us appreciate it even more when someone actually is able to elude the tag or make a fancy slide or someone drops the ball and it just keeps going. So you risk taking away how impressive it is when you widen the area that the base runner is allowed to explore. On the other hand, maybe a little bit wider just so you could see more acrobatic evasions. I think that might be more entertaining.

I wouldn't actually just want the guy to take off for the right field corner and run circles around, though it would be kind of entertaining. Well, especially with two runners on base. If you've got two games of tag going on three games of tag going on all in the outfield at once incredible but yeah again like some people want baseball to look like it looks fine yes unreasonable yeah but that's what they want so yeah it would be fun though if you had a sunday league or something like that and you could do whatever you wanted and you were not tied to the to the tradition and culture of baseball, it would actually be fun to make that a house rule.

Uh huh. OK, so, yeah, I'd be fine with a little bit wider just to just to extend, not just the pickle. I feel like, so one of the reasons that people like triples is that the tension of the play lasts a long time. You know, the ball is put in play and you don't know what the outcome is going to be for like 12 seconds. You've got like, how, how's the ball going to bounce in the corner? Is the fielder going to feel it? Well, is he going to make a good throw? Is the runner even going to attempt the triple? If he does, is ball going to bounce in the corner? Is the fielder going to feel it well? Is he going to make a good throw? Is the runner even going to attempt the triple? If he does, is he going to beat the throw? If he beats the throw, is he going to stay on the bag? If he doesn't beat the throw, is the tag going to be put on him in time? And there's this tension that lasts 12 seconds.

We like, I think, extended plays where there is a tension. And a lot of baseball plays, there isn't much tension. You know, a fly ball to left field it's not it might take five seconds for that ball to land but it's not five seconds of tension it's one second of tension it's contact second camera angle okay that plays over wait for it to land and in my opinion i mean i've this is my contention for why home run highlights are boring but i it's somewhat a little bit of an issue with the home run itself too, which is that it's the biggest play that can happen in a game. And yet

it's usually it's only like one or two seconds of tension. And then, you know, when you wait for the ball to land, you're happy it did land, you cheer, but you know, it's slow trot around the bases. And there's really only one or two seconds of actual tension. Triples and inside the park home runs, though, are the opposite, and they're fantastic for just that reason. And as it is now, most plays, most base running plays, a lot of base running plays, don't really have that tension. Because if you're beat, you're beat. There's nothing you can really do about it. You know, sometimes you see a good swim tag or sometimes, you know, you can hope for the fielder

to make an error or something like that. But if you're beat, you're beat. And you kind of like, you watch the conclusion of the play, but you're emotionally like, you know, not on the edge of your seat anymore. And if you had a situation where it was actually very, potentially very, a lot easier, at least significantly easier to avoid tags by going out of the baseline, by veering in sort of a little bit more extreme and runner-friendly ways,

then the, every play involving a tag, every play that wasn't a force play would carry that uncertainty a little bit more toward the conclusion. And so you just have, I think what I'm saying is that not only would the rundowns be fun, but I feel like every tag play would be incrementally more fun because there just would be more uncertainty about the process of tagging a runaround. Okay. Yeah. Makes sense to me. All right.

So we'll do it. Stat blast. All right. Stat Okay. Yeah. Makes sense to me. Alright. So we'll do it. Statblast? Alright. Statblast. Yeah. I got a couple. You want to just play the song like two or three times in a row? Or? I don't want to overexpose it. Okay. They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA

minus or OBS plus and then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to day-stub-lust. You want to do the walk-off one? I have the walk-off question up. Yeah, I'll do the walk-off one. Okay. I do think I have two.

Maybe I don't have any. We'll see. All right. Should I read the walk-off question? Yeah, read it for me. Okay. Kyle says, I saw that tonight's Dodgers victory was their ninth this season,

which is the most in the league. However, the network phrased it as MLB best ninth walk-off. This made me curious. Does leading the league in walk-off wins say anything about the quality of the team? Is the highest count of walk-off wins the best? Or is it better to have a low number of walk-offs? Or is it optimal to be just average? Yeah, great question because we have to be careful with the

the language that we use and and mlb best might be the wrong word mlb most is is is undeniable but if it's not actually a good if it's not a good quality i think about this in this context of left on bait runners left on base which is uh broadcasters love to talk about how many runners the team left on base and if you lose the game then you'll often see well they left nine on base as though that's a really terrible thing but if you look at it the team that leaves the most runners on base in a game wins slightly more than the team that leaves the fewer runners on base which makes sense because a lot of times a run scoring act also leaves runners on base. And so you wouldn't necessarily say that, like, for instance, I don't know if this is true, but if you were to say,

well, the Astros have left a major league worst 700 runners on base this year, you wouldn't say that. It's not worst. They've left the MLB most, but it's not worse. There's no value judgment on that fact. So I looked at how many walk-offs, how many walk-off victories every team in every year has had going back to 2000. I also have walk-off losses. And so to just the simplest answer is that there is a correlation between walk-off victories and overall record. It is a weak, I don't know if this is the right word. I never know how strongly to describe correlations. Do you have that problem? Yeah. I want to have a little index card that I laminate and put by my desk that has examples of things that are each strength correlation that are intuitive. So, but I don't know what those are, but like, so for instance, I don't know, temperature and air conditioning usage would be a very high one, right?

Like that maybe in a, in a city, the correlation between air temperature and air conditioning use might be like 0.9, but then like neighborhood median income and number of pieces of Halloween candy given might only be like a 0.6 or something like that. And I want to have like a row of those for every 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5 so that I know exactly what 0.21 is. But anyway, the correlation between walks and walk-offs and, and, and season wins is 0.21,

which feels real, but not, not huge to me. Pretty weak, pretty weak, but also not. And then the correlation between walk-off losses and record is 0.23. So basically the same.

And, you know, obviously a walk-off win is, is a win. If you're right. If you know, the team won, then they're probably going to be more likely to have more wins. And so how much of that are we capturing? So I took, what I did is I took all of these teams. I took their win total in all games minus walk-offs. So if you had, if say you went six and 10 in walk-offs so if you had if say you went six and ten in walk-offs and then that's 146 other games

say you had a 500 winning percentage then that's you know 73 wins and then of those 16 walk-offs instead of you going six and ten i'm just going to give you 500 record in those so i'm going to i'm going to neutralize the effect of the walk-offs on your overall record. I'm going to treat all walk-offs as half wins, regardless of whether you won them or lost them. So the very best walk-off teams, the teams that I think were in the top 50 in this century for walk-off victories were otherwise 83 win teams. So if they had gone 500 in walk-offs in all walk-offs, they would have been 83 win teams and the worst were 79 win teams. So that does suggest that a team that has a lot of walk-offs is in fact better than a team that doesn't have a lot of walk-offs.

So walk-offs are an indication of team quality, not massively, but a small, small, small signifier, right? Yep. And if you look at walk-offs allowed, the best teams by walk-offs allowed, so the teams with the fewest walk-offs allowed would have been 85 win teams. And so that's a bigger difference. So that maybe makes a little sense because your ability to win a walk-off is kind of, well, you don't have like a designated walk-off hitter. You just have to hope that whoever you send up there at the time is going to do well and hit a home run or hit a base hit.

But you do have like a whole category of your team is your bullpen theoretically, the ability to avoid a walk-off victory. Well, I guess, though, the thing is, though, well, once you get into extra innings, the ability to win a walk-off victory and the ability to avoid a walk-off victory are essentially the same, other than the fact that you can only do them at home or on the road.

And so it's not the same in an individual game because you can only walk off a victory or lose a walk-off victory. You cannot do both in the same game. You cannot do either in the same game, if that makes sense. But anyway, my point is that a bullpen is a big part of your team and it is tasked with preventing walk-off victories. And so a team with a good bullpen, a team that has a bullpen that avoids walk-off victories, would benefit from that quality maybe slightly more throughout the rest of the year. And so the best teams for not allowing walk-offs are 85-win teams. And so you could say, I think you could say that the Dodgers have an MLB best nine walk-offs, but I think it would be even more true to say that

whatever team it is i maybe it's the white socks i don't remember that this year has the mlb best only whatever walk-offs allow right yeah right okay this reminds me of one run games records and one run games which obviously a lot of walk-offs are one run wins or losses losses, but there is, I think, a slight correlation, even though we say that it's fluky, and often it is, and when a team has some incredible one-run record, then it's usually luck and not repeated, but there is some slight tendency, I think, for good teams to have better records in one-run games, like even teams that are good in other games also. So it's not completely random. To put this in perspective, the team in this

century with the fewest walk-off losses is the 2012 Baltimore Orioles. They had none. They did not allow a single walk-off loss. And you remember the 2012 Baltimore Orioles. They were a surprisingly good team whose success was more than anything else due to its surprisingly awesome bullpen. They had an incredible bullpen that year, extremely successful. And sure enough, they not only had no walk-off losses, but they were also a very good team. The team with the second fewest walk-off losses, though, was the 2001 Baltimore Orioles. They only allowed one.

And they were a terrible team with a bad bullpen. So there's a little bit of just like, this is the way that a walk-off happens is somewhat fluky. Last year's twins, uh, had the most walk-off losses by any team this century. And they were otherwise a 500 team, a little bit, a little bit better than 500 team. And we see that this year's team, which is mostly the same roster, is very good. So that wasn't, it wasn't prohibitive. It was a negative thing, obviously. It's a negative event for one thing, and it's also a somewhat negative indicator for their team's talent.

But it's a small part of it. It's not a huge thing. One last thing is that this year's Baltimore Orioles have no walk-off victories. They are the only team this century, the first team since the 1995 Expos, who played a slightly shortened season, and before that, the 1978 Cardinals, so that they could be the first team in a full season since 1978 to have zero walk-off victories. since 1978 to have zero walk-off victories. Okay, then.

They just don't have a lot of victories, period. But yeah, I'm remembering what Rob Maines wrote at Baseball Perspectives in 2016. He said the correlation between one-run game winning percentage and non-one-run game winning percentage is 0.28. Oh, okay. Yeah, the correlation between one-run game winning percentage and 500 is pretty close to zero. So while it's not great, non-one-run game winning percentage is a better predictor of one-run game performance than 500. So yeah, 0.28, that is very close to what you found for walk-offs. All right, can I do a second stat cast? Yes okay this email comes from sean pain who says this

afternoon during the braves nationals game with the bases loaded and one out and mike soroka up with ronald acuna on deck soroka swung away and hit into a double play to end the inning it seems obvious that soroka should have just stood at the plate in that situation but is it so clear cut what are the odds of a double play versus no double play? Or better yet, of Soroka actually driving in a run or multiple runs? What are the odds of Acuna driving in a run or multiple runs with two outs? Assuming Soroka probably would have struck out if he just stood there. How often has this situation happened in baseball history? Bases loaded, one out, pitch drop, any hits into a double play? I'm going to answer this, but first I'm going to note that I am not doing any extra adjustments for the quality of Acuna on deck. Acuna is probably, he is certainly better than

the average leadoff hitter. And I have not even bothered to look at Soroka to see if he is a particularly good or bad hitting pitcher, nor did I look at the pitcher to see if he is particularly wild or not. So I will just answer it thusly. There have been 635 plate appearances since I believe 2008, in which a pitcher was batting with the bases loaded and one out. Those pitchers actually hit a surprisingly strong 181, 210, 226. In those plate appearances, they walk 4% of the time, and they also hit into a lot of double plays. So in those 635 plate appearances, 102 times they hit into double plays, 102 times like fools, they swung the bat and ended the inning and left the good hitter standing on deck. But 102 out of

635 is of course not the most common outcome they had about as many hits they had four home runs two triples nine doubles they drove in a lot of runs so to look at this in an official way though i looked at the run expectancy change for each of the actions that could happen so if you look at the run expectancy of a strikeout, it's negative 0.8 runs per plate appearance. So if the pitcher did nothing and struck out 95% of the time, in those 95% of plate appearances, he would cost his team negative 0.8 runs per plate appearance relative to an average hitter. Whereas a walk, which he would do in the other 5% of times, we're assuming, is an additional run to the run expectancy.

And so average that out, 95% strikeouts, 5% walks, then the expectancy of not swinging the bat at all is about negative 0.7. And so that's really bad. But of course, pitchers hitting are really bad. But if we look at the actual run expectancies of those 635 plate appearances, where these pitchers were presumably swinging away and sometimes grounding into double plays, their run expectancy overall is only about 0.35 runs per plate appearance. So they're about half as destructive by swinging the bat as they would be if they didn't swing the bat.

And so it's it's not even close. You absolutely should swing the bat. Could you make the case that with two strikes that maybe you would change? Maybe. I don't know if like if you were down or two. I don't know. I can maybe see that. If like if you were down 0-2, I don't know.

I can maybe see that. But overall, a pitcher does much more damage to his team by not swinging in that situation than he does by swinging in that situation. A double play is twice as damaging as a strikeout. That is true. But benefit of a hit is greater than the detriment of a strikeout of a double play. And there are a lot of hits. There are also, meanwhile And there are a lot of hits. There are also, meanwhile, there are sacrifice flies.

There are fielder's choices. There are all sorts of different things that come into play that benefit the offense in slight ways. And also, for what it's worth, there are a fair number of runners reaching on airs. It seems like when you have the bases loaded and one out defenses get a little sloppier and so there's a lot of good things that can happen if they put the bat on the ball so i i think you just yeah but let him hit away okay yeah maybe that changes with the kunya coming up i don't know but probably not if the difference is

that large yeah so i mean a one in six chance of a double play. Yeah, and you figure about a one in six chance of a hit or a walk or maybe even slightly better than that. Okay, can we close with one more last one? Sure. Tim from Toronto says, with all the talk of pace of play, I had a thought the other day on a way to cut down time.

Players constantly call for time any chance they can. So what if baseball were more like basketball? Timeouts could be limited to only five per game or even to zero. Insert your number here. I wonder how this would impact strategy, if at all. I think that the place that I think this would be most interesting, and this is kind of bringing it back to the question. I don't think you should be allowed to call time to to stand up i i think that it would be fun to watch the sort of twister esque body movement required sometimes to hold the bag while you stand up and so i'm going to

say besides the i don't know if there's any real effect on pace of play from calling. Well, there is a little bit, but but it's I would say it's fairly minimal at this point now that a lot of that has already been legislated out. But just from an entertainment perspective, I want to see sliding diving base runners have to get up off the base without without getting tagged out. I want to see it every time yeah okay well unless that leads to more replay reviews of whether the fielder tagged them as they were trying to stand up that would be pretty boring probably true although i i my preferred fix for replay reviews is that you don't get to have a uh a guy in a with a tv telling you uh when to challenge i want to see managers have to challenge using their their bare eyes and so i could solve both of those things with uh okay with a couple of anyway uh so uh so i'm gonna say i i like that when else do people call time out people call time out to you know to the pitcher doesn't have to call time out so the pitcher doesn't ever have to call time out unless it's for a mound visit. And those are already limited.

And I mean, obviously, the Atlantic League is trying to do away with them entirely. But as it is, sure, we're already talking about that. Is six the right number? Is seven? Is four? Is one? Fine. We're already talking about that.

But then we have hitters getting out of the box. Yep. And is that it? Is that runners giving their padding to somebody when they're safe at second on a double? where the hitter's in the batter's box. I mean, there are rules against that now anyway, and umpires maybe are lenient, more lenient than they could be when it comes to just guys who are already standing in the batter's box

and the pitcher takes too long and the hitter's trying to reset or psych out the pitcher or whatever, and he just puts his hand up as the pitcher's ready to pitch and the umpire says, sure, and then the whole thing happens again. Yeah. That could probably happen less, and that'd be fine, but I don't know that that would change strategy, really.

How much do you think that the batter needs that timeout? I mean, they prefer it, obviously, but yeah. Preferred, obviously. But yeah, I think that, so just to put aside the ones where, you know, pitch is thrown, batter, you know, kind of like takes a minute, puts one foot out of the batter's box or goes to the corner of the batter's box and, you know, does a little adjustment. I feel like we've gotten to a place where that's pretty good. Like the long, you know, rambling, ambling around and taking off your gloves and putting them on and taking 40 seconds.

That's pretty much gone. And I feel like batters are pretty responsive to the pace of the game these days. I no longer have any issue with the between pitch delay of a batter. So I'm happy to put those aside and say that that's not a problem. But the pitcher is taking too long. Batter calls timeout while the pitcher is already set. On the one hand, if you did not give the batter the right to do that, then the pitcher would take longer. The pitcher knows that at a certain point it is to his advantage to stand there.

Unless you put in a pitch clock or umpires start to really enforce that. Unless you put in a pitch clock, but with a runner on base, you can't realistically in a pitch clock but with a runner on base you can't have you can't realistically have a pitch clock so i don't i feel like you would have to figure out a way to then you'd have to have two rules you'd have to have two new rules because you'd otherwise the pitchers would take advantage of it but i do think that there's no reason that the batter should be allowed to call timeout once the pitcher is set to me once the pitcher is set the ball should be allowed to call timeout once the pitcher is set. To me, once the pitcher is set, the ball should be presumed to be live, and you shouldn't be able to call timeout. It's just that I don't know what to do about the benefit

and the obvious next adjustment that pitchers would make to me having that rule. Yeah, that's, I guess, one way strategy could change, as Tim is asking, is just pitchers would doddle more, and they would maybe vary up the time it takes them to get rid of the ball. And we've seen, you know, like Johnny Cueto or someone will hold the ball for a long time and then he'll quick pitch and that sort of thing seems to get batters off their balance a little bit, or at least that's the idea behind it. But there aren't that many times I think when timeouts would change the complexion

of play all that much other than just you'd have to be more vigilant. There would be more tension. Maybe that's good for spectators. Maybe it's draining for players, but you just have to remember standing up off the base or something that you actually have to stand on the base. Other than that, I don't know that there's a way to game this really okay i feel like every time i do a stat cast i feel a little bashful a few minutes later because i think wow i just threw a bunch of numbers and nobody could follow my thought process and uh it must have been terrible for everybody so i just i feel like i then i feel a little pressure to just sum up again so can i just sum up again sure right. If the pitcher is batting with the bases loaded and one out,

it will be very tempting to say he should not swing and let the leadoff hitter come up and drive runners in, but he should swing. And if a team has a lot of walk-offs, it isn't proof that there's anything magical about them or exceptional about them, but it is a positive indicator of their overall team quality, and you should celebrate it.

Mm-hmm. Okay. By the the way Mike Trout just quote tweeted Someone wishing him a happy 28th birthday It was the MLB PA I think And he said appreciate it Two exclamation points And a thumbs up emoji No spaces between

The it and the exclamation Points so we haven't Kept up really on Mike Trout's Twitter punctuation but Don't know what this means whether he's Gotten a new phone or whether Just as he's changed at The plate and in the field and on the

Bases he has changed on Twitter And he has realized that we don't Need an extra space in between words and the exclamation points that follow them yeah i have not been paying attention to this but yet it looks like this has been true for at least a couple of months uh-huh maybe maybe a few years it's just constantly improving getting more efficient by the year, not wasting that character anymore. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right.

So we will end there. Okay. Thanks for listening, everyone. After we finished recording, the Mets beat the Marlins. That's their sixth consecutive victory and their 13th in their last 14 games. So the hot streak continues. As Dershian pointed out, though, in his newsletter, Mets have mostly been beating up on bad teams during this run, like the Marlins, which is, of course, how you end up winning 13 out of 14. It certainly helps. And they're about to embark on a long stretch of their schedule where they're just going up against a gauntlet of good teams.

So that may slow their roll a little bit. But this has been fun. And regardless of how this season turns out, their roster for next season looks pretty promising. I should also note, relevant to today's episode, the Dodgers won in a walk-off after we spoke. So that is their MLB most 10th walk-off on the season. And I suppose now I can say with some confidence their MLB best 10th walk-off on the season. You can support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild and signing up to pledge some small monthly amount. Help keep the podcast going. Thank you. 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.

Keep your questions and comments for me and Sam and Meg coming via podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. 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 tell the world. Leave a positive review on Amazon and Goodreads. It helps us out. We'll be back with one more episode this week, so we will talk to you then. I'll walk it off Like you're a poor I'm a carry

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