Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1575: Rookies of the Year

Episode Date: August 8, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a bad fun fact on a baseball broadcast, a case of copycat pitching involving Jake Diekman and Chaz Roe, how MLB may amend eligibility for the Rookie of the Year award in 2021, a Wade LeBlanc balk and why balks remain mystifying and debatable, plus a Stat Blast […]

It's easy living in the house of your dreams Wall to wall with every trophy you don't need All the players say the damnedest things Making time for the camera 16 minutes can bring Hands tied, put them up in the air And load it down like you probably don't care The whole world is starting to share In the sense, all the senseless events happen here

Yeah, it's great to be here again When the saints all sing along I hope the party's better than now Hello and welcome to episode 1575 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing okay. How are you? I wish that we would stop getting positive COVID test results.

Well, ever, to be clear. Ever is the preference. They are never good news, nor are they welcome. But on Fridays, this is a very... That's how we seem to be Fridays. Yeah Fridays this is a very seem to be Fridays yeah this is a minor quibble I totally understand and totally unimportant in the grand scheme of things but it's just they seem to fall on Fridays and then they make me very nervous about the future of the sport for a while yeah it's just something you can think about all weekend. Yeah. Well, I have a extremely unfun fun fact that I wanted to relay here about a team that has suffered more than

its fair share of positive tests. And this was something that was tweeted by Yahoo's Hannah Kaiser, who spotted it on a Marlins broadcast on Thursday. And I still can't believe that this was actually aired. So this is one of those like keys to the game thing that comes up a little sponsored box on the broadcast and not that I'm ever expecting great insight in those things usually they boil down to score more runs than

the other team more or less but this one says not your father's Marlins and then it says Tuesday started an all-sun outfield so all names ending in S-O-N. Dickerson Harrison and Brinson

so that alone is questionable right I mean you kind of have to ask well is that actually uncommon it's not uncommon to have a name end in sun at all so to have all three outfielders with names ending in sun well okay if you tell me that it doesn't happen ever and this is the first time it's

happened in a very long time fine i'll allow it the the baseline is pretty low for a keys to the game fun fact then there's another little bullet point and it says first team to do so since the 2019 marlins okay who had brian anderson louis brinson and curtis granderson so the 2020 marlins are the first team to do this since the 2019 marlins and also i mean like look i have been told that it would be good for me to be less pedantic like as a human being and that i'd be more fun at parties but as we've discussed on this show recently what parties are any of us going to so i'm going to just point out the thing the thing that i think we're all thinking which apart from the marlin specific bits of this fun fact not being fun every outfield is an all-sun outfield every every

single one every day every day at least among major league baseball obviously it is not all sons who play baseball as a sport writ large but in terms of major league outfields all sons every day right it's not just the blue jays they're all sons of someone. Yeah, I saw a friend of the podcast, Greg Goldstein, commenting on how the Blue Jays are really the team with the notable all-sun bits of the lineup anyhow. So this isn't even the most fun sun lineup. Granted, not all of those guys play in the outfield. I just want to know the thought process or the production process here.

And I've been on the other side of this. I used to work at Bloomberg Sports for a while and I would have to come up with fun facts about each player for a broadcast and you'd have to do it every day and it would get tedious and you'd have the same ones every day. And some of them were just kind of borderline because you had to have something. And the Marlins have a lot of new players right now. So I sympathize with people who are producing Marlins broadcasts because it's like, hey, who are these guys all of a sudden? But so someone must have had the idea and just noticed, hey, Monty Harrison's here now. We have an all S.O.N. name ending outfield. I wonder if that's something. And then what did you know? Did they ask Elias to check on this? Did a P.A. look into this or something? Whoever it is reports back and says, sorry, got to tell you, last year's team did the same thing, unfortunately.

And the producer says, gut it. Or go away. Yeah, I imagine that at a certain point, if you are the Marlins, you look at your circumstances in 2020 and you say, any game played is a miracle. Any alignment we put up is notable. Everything else is gravy. And so we're playing weirdly with house money, even though the house may not have much money at all. weirdly with house money even though the house may not have much money at all right so i've got a few bits of banter here and then we will be bringing on fan graphs lead prospect analyst eric longenhagen for a discussion about prospect promotions all the big name guys who've made their

debuts this year louis robert joe adele nate pearson and some of the other slightly less sung prospects but also promising players, and also guys from last season who've debuted and have impressed Eric in some way. And we'll talk about Shane Bieber and why prospect people missed on him, how he got so good despite not being a top-ranking prospect, plus just a general conversation about how teams are handling promoting prospects this season and how Eric is trying to do his job under these difficult circumstances for prospect evaluators. So just a couple things. First, I wanted to mention a really good story by David Adler on MLB.com. And this was about Jake Diekman, who learned a pitch

from Chaz Rowe, but without actually asking him for it or talking to him, this is just a very 2020 story of how pitching works now and how information spreads. So A's lefty Jake Diekman saw a tweet by the pitching ninja Rob Friedman on Twitter, and it was a Chaz Rowe slider. Chaz Rowe is a frequent star of Rob's tweets because he has this unbelievable slider that looks like no one else's. And so Jake Diekman saw this and most of us, you know, our jaws drop and we just sort of salivate when we see this pitch. But Jake Diekman is a pitcher. And so he figured maybe I could throw this thing. Maybe I could learn from this. And so he asked or tweeted at Rob Friedman to ask, do you have a picture of the grip that Chaz Rowe uses to

throw this pitch? And he did. He has a collection of grip images. And so he shared the grip with Jake Diekman. And Diekman, I think, had messed around with a slider like this before, but he had forgotten how he gripped it and he didn't know exactly how Rowe gripped it. So he saw this screenshot after seeing the GIF, and he learned it. He brought it into a game. He tried it out himself, and suddenly he was basically throwing Chaz Rowe's slider. He's a lefty and Rowe is a righty, but it's kind of the mirror image type slider, and he just doubled his slider slider movement horizontally overnight just throwing this new pitch with this new grip that he saw in a screenshot and now he throws from the extreme

first base side of the rubber and he has this sweeping chasro slider coming out of a left hand and suddenly he looks unhittable and we'll see how it goes. But already the movement is clearly dramatically exponentially enhanced here. And it's because he saw something on Twitter and got a picture of it. And I thought that was just a great example of a modern version of a story that dates back to the beginning of baseball because this has always happened. Like pitchers pick up pitches from each other and they say, hey, can you show me that grip? And there are famous examples of this, like Roy Halladay's cutter coming from Mariano Rivera, for instance. But this is just such a 2020 version of this that you might just see a gif and ask for a screenshot, and then suddenly someone's throwing it and he's way better now, potentially.

I also appreciate that this was one of the things I drafted as something that I would miss, right? The story of like the guy who has a comeback and part of that is because he's met or worked together really and that that he just had the initiative to try to change a thing and saw something he thought would work for him that's so cool yeah it is really cool and that's like how information spreads among players these days i think in a freer way than it used to where you might pick something up from a teammate or a coach but now people are seeing things all the time they're reading things on fangraphs about someone is doing. They're diving into the data themselves. They're seeing it on Twitter and these things spread and they learn from each other and they just get even better than they've been before. So cool story. I will link to it. Go check out the details and the quotes. Another thing, follow up to something Sam and I talked about yesterday.

We had a listener, Hiroshi, who asked what MLB would do about the qualifications for Rookie of the Year award eligibility in this short season. actually exceed your rookie eligibility. And say if the season were shortened or you just were so great in a small sample, you could potentially compete for that award and still technically be eligible for it in 2021. And Sam came up with a recommendation of lowering the bar for exceeding your rookie eligibility in this short season and sort of prorated it. I think he said 20 innings and 60-something at-bats maybe. But this is a conversation that apparently is happening at the highest levels of Major League Baseball. And Jason Stark just wrote about this at The Athletic. I will link to that article too. But Elias has been talking about it. MLB has been talking about it. It's unlikely that someone could win in back-to-back years, but it's not impossible.

And Jason talked to Jack O'Connell at the BBWA about this. And Jack said that usually when he calls someone to let them know that they have won the Rookie of the Year award, he says it's special because you can only win it once. Unlike the other awards MVP, Cy Young, you could win as many times as you deserve. But Rookie of the Year award, that's only one time, except that it might not be. And so he sounds inclined to come up with something to do here. It sounds like there are a few different approaches that they have discussed. One is that they could just not do anything and players could get the Rookie of the Year award in theory twice. And as Sam mentioned on our episode, Greg Jeffries in 88 and 89, he did get Rookie of the Year award votes in both of those seasons. So could happen.

Another is lowering the days of service that you would need. So this season is like 37% the length of a normal season. So you could lower the service time stays on the roster before September because rosters used to expand to 40 people after September 1st, and that's no longer the case. So they could get rid of that. They could just say you can't win twice. So if you win, you're just ineligible, which is something that I mentioned on the episode. So you could say finish second and win the next year. But if you win, you can't win again. So there are various solutions here. And Sam came up with his suggestion, and it sounds like this will be discussed. And Jason writes, regardless, this case is now in the hands of

MLB's baseball operations department, where a number of people from statisticians and historians to former players are expected to weigh in. In case you can't stand the suspense, you should know they're expected to sort through these options and come to some sort of conclusion soon. So, yeah, when we get one of these off-the-wall questions from listeners, very often it's something that has actually been considered. So this is being discussed right now and we shall see. I think my preference would be this is very selfish. I'm going to admit in advance how selfish this is, although it might not be selfish because it could result in people, you know, getting two bites at the apple and isn't that fun for others? I'd like us to let people win it twice. I think that potentiality is good.

I think that potential also exists for it to just be really weird and for the the guy who makes sense to vote for to be fluky and strange and i think that it would be a nice reminder to people who might interact with the voters i might end up being one of them if if we just uh if we looked around and we're like look you just vote for the weirdness and then next year all of those cats they can get another run potentially i think i support that but also i don't know for sure i mean i don't know if I'll get a vote at all for anything this year, let alone that it'll be a rookie of the year vote. So maybe I don't care. Yeah, it's hardly the strangest thing that would come out of this season this season is at every possible turn. I mean, figuratively embrace, not literally embrace. I think we should monitor our embraces quite closely and carefully,

but I think that we should invite the strange because then if we are consistent in our strangeness, the odds that we do a good job of looking back and remembering that and then allowing each other and players and teams a little bit of grace about what ended up happening this year from a baseball perspective just are higher. And that can only be to everyone's benefit because when we forget about oddity, we sometimes get persnickety and that's the worst. So there you go.

Yeah. Well, speaking of the strange and oddity, I have just sent you a link to a tweet by David Adler, actually the author of the Chaz Rowe, Jake Diekman article that I just referenced. And this is a tweet I will also link to on the show page so you can all check it out. But this is. What? Yeah. This is a pitch that was delivered by the Orioles' Wade LeBlanc on Thursday. And Wade LeBlanc has thrown a lot of pitches in his life.

He is a veteran, and yet even a veteran can sometimes have things go very wrong. So Wade LeBlanc balked. It was called a balk, and I don't know exactly how to describe what he did there. It was a little like a Johnny Cueto shimmy hokey pokey type thing where he started to deliver and then he stopped and then he looked like maybe he was going to throw to first base, but he didn't throw to first base. There was a runner on second, not on first, and maybe he was going to try to look back at the runner on second, but then he sort of fell off to the first base side of the mound and also delivered the pitch. And it ended up in, I don't know, like the left-handed batter's box and just bounced back to the backstop. So it's one of the more awkward major league pitches that you've probably seen. It looks like a 50 cent ceremonial first pitch or something.

percent ceremonial first pitch or something i can't stop watching this i think i might watch this the rest of the day i think my favorite part of this clip which we will as you said share is how the umpire has his mask off and is calling the bach before the baseball gets to the batter's box like he is yeah he is signaling you have boxed before the bach is even complete because i think there are multiple box in this. Box is one of those words where if you say it a bunch of times in a row, you start convincing yourself that it's not actually worth. Yes. So that's a different thought. But this is hilarious.

Oh, Wade LeBlanc. I own a Wade LeBlanc jersey, which is a conversation for another day. His players. How many other days are we going to talk about Wade LeBlanc? His players weekend jersey when he was with the Mariners said Franchi, and I just thought it was charming. So I bought it because, you know, I don't have children. So what else am I spending money on? Wow, this is like several Bachs in one Bach. This is Bach Prime?

That's the interesting thing. So a lot of people in the replies said exactly that. prime that's the interesting thing so a lot of people in the replies said exactly that and the caption in the tweet by adler says see if you can spot the balk jokingly because it seems so easy to spot the balk and this tweet has like a thousand retweets right now and hundreds of quote tweets and hundreds of replies and the replies are really interesting some say you know this is like four different balks there's so many balk box, unbelievable amount of box. Others said, well, is it actually a box? And they weren't totally sure it's a box. And this is the great thing about box, of course, as we've talked about before, as Sam has written about, no one really knows what a box is. I mean, we might have some idea. We might think we know it when we see it, but most people don't know the rules because there are 13 ways that you can balk, I believe. Such balks. Some of them are sort of obscure and some of them are just kind of hard to parse in the first place.

And so when people say balk instinctively, it's usually just because something looked weird, right? And it's, you know, that didn't look like a pitch should look. And so that must have been a balk. And often that is the case, but not always. And so you do have people whose initial reaction was this was a balk seven different ways. But then you also have people who are seemingly somewhat well-informed who are arguing that they're not even sure it's a balk at all, technically, by the rules. And so I was looking at the discussion in our Facebook group about this, and there are people on both sides of that debate. And one person mentioned, as you said, that the umpire just

does kind of almost immediately seem to signal the Bach just because it looks so weird. Although someone else pointed out that maybe it wasn't just that maybe it was that the umpire was kind of coming out of the crouch because he was anticipating a pickoff attempt and so it was that more so than just instinctively calling the bach i don't know but there are a couple comments i want to read here. So our listener Brent says, honestly, as bad as this looks, I cannot find the balk, and I'm studying the rule and the video to find it. I'd be happy to be corrected, not by question begging, but an actual clarification of what happened. Then there was another listener named Wes who's in there, and he is an umpire himself at some level. I don't

know where, but he says, while it's a really ugly move, like Brent, I'm not sure I see a balk. In the following, the numbers are section numbers from the balk rule 6.02a. The two most frequent balks are beginning a delivery and failing to complete it, not stepping more toward the base you're throwing to than any other base. These don't apply because the pitcher actually made a continuous delivery. Ugly, yes, but no stops. And it appears to me that the pitcher stepped more toward home than toward first, which is debatable.

I don't know. He says there are a few others that are worth considering. Fainting a throw to first or third base. Fainting or throwing to an unoccupied base, except for the purpose of making a play, which could be in effect here since there's no one actually on first he says delivering a pitch while not facing the batter which is potentially something here i mean he's kind of facing the batter but not in the regular way touching the ground with the free foot during the delivery these don't apply because the

pitcher actually delivered a pitch so the two faint clauses don't apply because the pitcher actually delivered a pitch, so the two faint clauses don't apply. He came around to face the batter before he delivered the pitch, and the last because he didn't touch his free foot to the ground. The other eight balk rules do not apply. Neither are the other three actions by other players that cause a pitcher to be charged with a balk. So there's this good discussion going on and it just to me reinforces how impossible it is to actually identify a box or explain why a box is a box like I think this is a box I think it should

be a box but I am not 100% sure even though this looks on the surface like the most obvious example of a box you could think of and if you asked me which rule it violates, and if you wanted me to say why exactly did the umpire call it a buck, I couldn't tell you exactly which of those rules he definitely said was the one that he violated.

And one last piece of information here. I emailed former MLB umpire Dale Scott, who has been on the podcast before, and I sent him that GIF, and I asked him for his thoughts, and he said, How screwed up is this? The most obvious thing to me is his step toward first, then delivery home. He's also herky-jerky in his delivery, but that doesn't necessarily mean a balk has occurred. mean a balk has occurred. And then I asked him if the rule that it violates was, and this is from the rulebook, the pitcher while touching his plate faints a throw to third or first base and fails to complete the throw. And Dale said that may be the correct ruling, faking or not throwing to first while stepping to the base. I don't have a rulebook in front of me. I don't know the exact wording. All I know is that you have to step toward home to throw a pitch. He obviously didn't do that.

When a bach occurs, there are times it can be more than one illegal act. So again, I think it's a bach, but that this is the most obvious bach you could draw up seemingly. And yet there are well-informed people who are arguing in good faith that this might not be a bach at all. It just really drives home how hard it is to figure out how balks work this calls to mind one of my favorite mariners commercials of all time where because there's like a you know there was a rash of balk calls at a time and uh and so the mariners did a commercial where they were like doing a charity telethon and the thing that they were selling was a Bach, and it just rolls through the full rule to the studio audience, and no one seems to want to buy one, and it was very funny,

and I'm going to send it to you now so that you might share it with our Facebook friends, because it cracked me up. This isn't working so well, Gil. Folks, this is a genuine Major League Bach. Should I read the balk rule again? Joel, I don't think that'll help. What do you got there, Jeremy? It's my new Edgar Martinez statue.

Cool. Can I see? And if you order the balk now, it will include this Mariners Miracle Statue. Mariners Baseball. What a show one by Budweiser from 2002. It's a bunch of dudes in a bar and they all just instinctively yell at a screen that they're watching. Oh, that's a box. That's a box. And then a woman who's at the bar asks one of these guys who's been the most vocal about it being a Bach. What is a Bach exactly or why is it a Bach? And he just sort of stammers because he doesn't actually know.

So it's just that's very accurate. That is every Bach that I've ever seen is, oh, that's a Bach. Why is it a Bach? I don't know. It looked weird. Hey, that's a Bach. Oh, it's a huge Bach. You've got to call that Bach. Ridiculous Bach. Oh, it's a huge balk.

You gotta call that balk. Ridiculous balk. Ever seen a more blatant balk? You mongers balk. Textbook balk. Come on. See, blind, that's such a balk. What exactly is a balk? A balk, that's when the pitcher on the mound is...

There's a guy in first base and you have no idea what it is i don't know i think that we have maybe discussed this previously i continue to be flabbergasted that calling for a buck is not a more deeply ingrained bit of fan behavior because no one knows. And I think that it is a thing that I would not be surprised if pitchers, especially pitchers, I mean, Wade LeBlanc is a bad example of this because his delivery, this particular pitch notwithstanding, is fairly conventional. But I would imagine that pitchers who have slightly unconventional deliveries

are very conscious of the possibility of a balk and are doing work every second that they're at work to not commit that error and give a guy a base. So I am surprised that opposing fans, home fans, trying to throw an opposing pitcher off his game don't scream, balk, balk. Because even if on any given pitch an umpire is unlikely to listen to the rabble, yelling a word that stops sounding like a word once you've said it more than three times, you know, a pitcher, it might get in his head, you know, and he might be thinking, oh, maybe they're seeing something. Maybe they're seeing something I'm not seeing.

And then he would do a balk. And then you'd never stop hearing it from those home fans. They'd call a balk every time. They'd all get sent home and be banned from baseball. But that one game, there would be a lot of really funky balks in the balk score. In the balk score. Balk score. I didn't even mean to do it, but it just stopped sounding like a word.

Yeah. Bok score. Bok score. I didn't even mean to do it, but it just stopped sounding like a word. Yeah. Of course, the great John Boyce of SB Nation has written his own version of the bok rules several years ago, which are great, and I will link to those. I will just read the first few of them. He wrote, bok are so complicated.

If you sat me down and asked me to write out to the best of my understanding the Major League Baseball rulebook, the section for bok would look something like this. Bok rules, important. One, you can't the section for balks would look something like this. Balk rules, important. One, you can't just be up there and just doing a balk like that. One A, a balk is when you... One B, okay, well, listen, a balk is when you balk the... One C, let me start over. One C, A, the pitcher is not allowed to do a motion to the batter that prohibits the batter from doing, you know, just trying to hit the ball.

You can't do that. And it just continues from there. That's pretty much it. That's fantastic. Yeah. That's fantastic. All right. I have one last thing to get to here.

It is a stat blast. And this is a new stat blast song cover by listener listener Zach Nolik who made a chiptune version of the song. Okay, this question comes from Tony from Busan, South Korea, via New York and San Francisco. He says, recently I was watching my city's team, Busan Lotte Giants, play at SK Incheon Wyverns. And in the top of the fourth, Lotte sent eight batters to the plate without getting a hit. The at-bats went, reached on error, hit by pitch, walk, walk, run scores, walk, run scores, short outfield pop-up, infield foul out, and walk, run scores. Then the 9th batter and 10th batter singled before the 11th batter flew out to end the inning. It made me wonder, in an MLB game, what's the most batters

to have come to bat in an inning without a hit. I would like to know both the most batters to bat consecutively in an inning without a hit being recorded, that is, there was eventually a hit, and two, the most batters to come to bat in an inning without a hit being recorded, so the inning ends without a hit ever happening. MLB only works. No need to play index KBO, NPB, and so on.

Thank you, Tony, because I don't think I could do that. And I couldn't actually play index this, but I did email our listener, Adam Ott, who has a handy-dandy RetroSheet database that goes back to 1918 and the skills to query it. And Adam came up with the answer here. So I'll put the whole spreadsheet he sent online. I'll link to it on the show page. Keep in mind that some games are missing play-by-play when you go back as far as

1918, but I'll give you the top answers to each question here. For the first question, which is basically the most consecutive batters to come to the plate at the start of an inning without a hit, so the inning can have a hit eventually, but the question is what's the latest in an inning that the first hit has occurred? How many batters came up before that hit happened? The answer is 10, and that has happened twice. So first time it happened was the 1962 Mets, the hapless expansion Mets. You might expect that they were the pitching team, but they were not. This was on June 29, 1962. In the top of the first inning, they were playing the Dodgers, and Dodger starter Joe Moeller went walk, fly ball, walk, walk, walk.

So the first run scores there. Quick hook, Ron Paranoski comes in to replace Joe Moeller, so that was the end of his day. Then Paranoski issues a walk, another run scores, another walk, another run scores. Then there's a strikeout looking, then another walk, and another run scores. And then there's a single, so that scores more runs but breaks the streak. And then there was yet another pitching change. Phil Ortega came in, and he got a pop fly to end the streak. And then there was yet another pitching change. Phil Ortega came in and he got a

pop fly to end the inning. So six runs scored in that inning, one hit, zero errors, two left on base. So just like that, top of the first inning, Mets up six with one hit in that inning. The other time this happened was much more recent, September 5th, 2008. It was Orioles and A's, and this was in the top of the eighth inning. At this point, the A's are batting. They're ahead 3-2. The Orioles' Brian Bass is pitching. He goes walk, hit by pitch.

The runner steals third base. Then there's another walk. Then there's another walk. A run scores. Cam Micolio comes in, and he walks another guy. Then he walks another guy. Two more runs scored. Strikeout.

Walk. Yet another run scored. Randor Beard comes in to replace Cam Micolio. He gets a fly ball. Then there's a home run by Rajai Davis that breaks the streak, and then a fly ball to end the inning. So that's eight runs. eight runs on one hit. No errors, no runners left on base.

The A's entered that inning up 3-2, and they exited it up 11-2. So that's a nightmare inning. So both of those cases, you had two pitching changes, tons of runs scored, one hit. You had two pitching changes Tons of runs scored One hit Now the other question is How many batters have come to the plate In an inning without a hit

So there can't be a hit at any point And the answer is 11 And this happened with your Seattle Mariners Playing the New York Yankees On April 27th 1994 Top of the third inning.

Oh, no. Here's the sequence. This is Dave Fleming is pitching for the Mariners. It's a scoreless game at that point. Pat Kelly leads off. It goes pop fly, fly ball. So two outs. We're almost out of the inning.

Then we go walk, walk, walk, walk. Two runs have scored. Jeff Nelson comes in and replaces Dave Fleming. Hit by pitch. Walk, walk, walk. Three more runs have scored. And a ground out finally to get out of the inning. So it's five runs on no hits, no errors.

And three left on base. Yankees up 5-0 on the Mariners, and they would eventually win 12-2. So, yeah, you can score five runs and send 11 batters to the plate without ever having a hit. I'm trying to decide what would elicit the strongest and most convicted most convicted oh come on man is it if the only hit in the inning is a home run after all that you've endured all that and you're like oh maybe we'll maybe he'll fly out and then and then davis hits a home run and you just go oh come on man or or is it you've you've gotten two outs you've gotten to the state that you're in where you have to make a pitching change because of walks and then the first thing that the new pitcher the the new your savior the guy who has come in to finally

get that last out and put you out of your misery plunks a guy i think the plunking would elicit the stronger i'm saying oh come on man because this is a family podcast and i would not want to say the words that i would actually say in that instance which i think would be very dirty um but i i think that plunking the guy would elicit the stronger reaction because you just you sit there and you're like, it's going to be okay. Like that was a disaster. But disasters happen. Pitching is hard.

He didn't have it that day. Maybe that guy's hurt. We have two outs. We just need one. You just need one measly out. You just need one. And then he plunks a guy. I think you would.

You might quit being a baseball fan. long as a guy i think you would you might quit being a baseball fan i think that actually that was what imperiled baseball in seattle more than any stadium concerns or payroll or anything like that i think that that almost turned the tide away from mariners baseball yeah did this inning make john boyce's documentary about the mariners i don't recall i'll have to go back and check but if not you might have to do an addendum on this inning. Yeah, you might need, John might need a dedicated episode to that one because that, I do not have any memory of that inning of baseball occurring. But I would like to think that tiny child Meg confronted with that inning knowing what

it meant would have sworn loudly perhaps for the first time yeah your first curse word ever uttered was on that occasion yeah all right well that's all I got so unless you have anything else that you want to get to we can take a quick break and be back with Eric Langenhgan to talk prospects i shall not delay the prospect segment i do not believe in service time manipulation okay from 30 000 feet above the ocean flying high in the sky 30 000 fans showing their devotion hear them scream and cry We'll see you next time. At the blue and weird, we've arrived At the blue and weird, we've arrived At the blue and weird, we've arrived

Okay, we are joined now once again by Fangraph's lead prospect analyst, Eric Langenhagen, who's going to give us the skinny on how some teams have handled prospects this year and some of the big-name guys that we've already seen debut. Hello, Eric. Hey, how's it going? Okay. So first question, when I was back at BP, there were prospect people there who didn't really follow players all that closely. Once they made the majors, it was like they paid incredibly close attention to everything they did until they got there.

And then it was just like, all right, on to the next prospect. And then it was just like, all right, on to the next prospect. And I understood that because, A, I don't know how all of you kind of keep track of all of the players that you have to keep track of. But also, it kind of perplexed me because it was like, hey, we've been building up to this and waiting to see what this guy does. And now that he finally made it, we're just kind of shifting to the next person in the line. So I don't know if you're kind of in that camp by choice or by necessity, and I don't know how that's changed this year, because obviously you have no minor leagues to pay attention to. But how closely do you follow players once they debut, and do you learn a lot about them after that point, whether because we have better data about them or because there's better competition? Yeah, it certainly is balanced differently this year with the lack of minor leagues. I'm watching a lot more NBA basketball this late in the summer than I ever have before

because it exists, and also a lot of the big league stuff. I tend to follow them after they debut just because I like watching big league baseball and also because I think it's instructive to see how the holes and the traits that sort of support, like the support beams of each individual prospect's profile, how they hold up under the major league stress test. I think it's pretty important to see how these guys do, at least follow it closely statistically. So yeah, it's definitely more than normal that I'm watching big league baseball.

I'm not out at an AZL game every night or traveling to high school showcase stuff this time of year like I typically would be, even though some of that stuff is going on. But yeah, I think it's... What was the second half of your question? Yeah, it's definitely been more big league stuff. Do you learn? Yeah. Is there like a continuing education after a player gets promoted? Because then you suddenly have data that maybe you didn't have, or you just get to see them prove themselves or fail against higher competition than you had before? is just fact-checking myself too. Like I've got all these spin rates and exit velocities on the board. And to some degree, I'm trusting my sources to provide me with accurate data because they're not just going to show me like their entire systems worth of data. They're not going to

send me an entire like spreadsheet of the minor leagues. So to some degree, I'm like just checking to make sure that that stuff is correct by following stuff that's coming through on like Baseball Savant. So I think it's very instructive. This is ultimately the level at which the guys need to play and what you're evaluating them to do. And so, yeah, I think it's consistent with following them through the minors that you should continue to do so for the big league stuff. I understand a desire for, you know, a prospect writer to sort of separate themselves from doing that. It is kind of like you're,

you're setting a boat adrift almost like you're, you've sort of, or baked something like it's just sort of done. And I'm not as apt to change my evaluations sort of once the guys are, are here, I've sort of sink or swim with what I've written about them so far for the most part. But I do think it's really instructive for the work going forward to see what you goofed and were right about and why. I'm curious if in this early going, there are any teams that have surprised you either in who among their prospect pools they've opted to

promote or how they've sequenced those promotions? Because there are a number of teams we've seen be very mindful of when prospects are going to accrue a full year's service and they don't want to start those clocks early. But have there been any teams that have either done that in a surprising way based on when the service time clock will start or how competitive the team is? Yeah. So obviously the two primary reasons that a team would seem motivated to promote someone are because that guy's 40-man timeline has arrived. He needed to be added the off-season prior. He's quote-unquote ready for the big leagues. And so here he comes. And then the other one is what we've seen with the White Sox do

with some of their guys who don't necessarily need to be up right away. Cody Heyer, Luis Robert, who they signed the extension to. Some of the Padres guys, definitely. It's where the situation where the front office needs to start competing, start to show that some of this prospect fruit is going to, is ripe and that the stuff that has existed in the public sphere as commentary is true and that a competitive team is on the horizon. So there's that. And then you've got sort of the oddball teams like the Royals, right? The Royals had no real reason, no real motivation to promote Brady Singer and Chris Bubich. And yet they did it, right? They just decided that they were ready and that those two guys, and theoretically any of the

other ones who they think are, just merit promotion on just in and of themselves for no other external reason. And so that sort of stuff has not surprised me. I think it deserves praise, frankly. Like basically since the Luke Heimlich commentary debacle, I think a lot of the stuff that the Royals have talked about around basically labor relations as it relates to scouting and player service time has been really positive. and I think that that front office probably has some leash. It is the front office that gave them a world championship and built a competitive team largely off of a farm system that was built via the draft and largely through the Zach Granke trade back in the day and now they're doing it again, right?

Like we're starting to see some of the guys that they've picked. So you have that and then perhaps this year more than ever, certainly concentrated in a short window of time, you have the teams dealing with weird COVID outbreaks and a rash of injuries that may or may not be caused by the brief lead up to the season that is just creating injuries at an abnormal rate. And then a bunch of their prospects are coming up. So that's like Houston, what I anticipate will be Miami here soon, if that already hasn't happened. And then perhaps, you know, Philly and maybe St. Louis coming up. So it's a pretty interesting time to be following prospects because they sort of exist behind a curtain at the moment until we see them in the

big leagues. And what's happening at the off-site camps and if these guys are changing at all like we really can't know until we see them but it has been interesting to see who's been more willing to give those guys an opportunity than others yeah we're recording this after news that the Cardinals have additional positive tests they're up to 16 now nine of players, and the entire Cardinals Cubs weekend series has been postponed. Fortunately, we haven't seen outbreaks on non-Marlins or Cardinals teams, but there is still a lot of uncertainty about the future of the season. And we got an email the other day from listener Eric Hartman who said,

is it fair to surmise that teams are more optimistic than many of us seem to be about the league making it further through the current season? Because we've seen top prospects like Nick Madrigal and Joe Adele called up since the multiple team outbreaks. Even though the extra year of service threshold has passed, I think if a team thought the season was close to being done, they'd hold them down through next year to play the service time games again for next year, pushing free agency back to 2027. So is that something that you think is a sign of optimism on the part of the teams? Or is it just there's just no way to hold down guys who are ready for that long, especially because there are no minor league games going on? I think you could consider it part of the decision making. Certainly, I think folks who are in charge of pulling the report on the service time clock of

top prospects like Madrigal and Adele certainly have a better idea of how likely MLB is to push through even the most rampant of COVID outbreaks than we do. So I think that's certainly part of it. And then I also think that there are definitely other driving forces, right? Like I mentioned before with the White Sox, it's time for them to start winning. I think that's a big deal. I think the same is probably true of the Angels. I think that front office knows that they kind of need to put up pretty soon. And then also I think some of it has to do with player relations, right? Like if you're running the White Sox and your plan is to have Nick Madrigal around

for the next half decade plus at the very least, then you don't want to start off an early part of your relationship with him on a sour note that has to do with you holding him down longer than is necessary. Same goes with Adele. So yeah, I think that there are a lot of different factors influencing who is coming up right now. And that one of them is, I don't know if I'd call it optimism as much as pragmatism about how willing MLB is to kind of break through this brick wall, like throw a bunch of bodies at these big league roster situations. I was on the phone with someone last night who told me that the Marlins have 58 players

on their 40 man right now. You know, that's just a, it's a bizarre, unprecedented situation that we're dealing with. And while I think people are trying to apply as much forward thinking logic to it as they can, I think that emotion and a desire for normalcy and an adherence to what otherwise would be considered normal motivations is still driving people's decision-making to some degree as well. So you mentioned that there are players who will change your mind occasionally once they make the majors, and obviously there are players who surprise prospect evaluators all the time.

So before we get into some of the new promotions, I want to ask about the trajectory of Shane Bieber, which really fascinates me because he has turned into one of the very best pitchers in baseball since the start of last season. He is fifth in Fangraph's pitching war. And of course, the top of that list is Jacob deGrom. And he's another guy who was sort of similar in that he wasn't really

on top prospect lists, and then he became the best pitcher in baseball. So how does that happen, I guess, either typically or with Bieber specifically? Not that Bieber was totally out of nowhere. I mean, he was a fourth-round pick out of UC Santa Barbara, but he was never really a top 100 guy. I think the year he debuted, 2018, you had him fifth on your Cleveland list. And the year before that, he wasn't ranked. He was just an honorable mention guy. So is it that you missed something and everyone else missed something? Or is it just that he got better in a totally unpredictable way? Yeah, I think, again, it's a combination of things. There was definitely,

to some degree, Kylie and I, whoever, the prospect writing folks in general are culpable for underrating him or underestimating him, some combination of him and the Cleveland player development. And then some of it is just, some of it is pitchers are frustratingly unpredictable as prospects. And then some of it is definitely just because Bieber has – Bieber's unique and special in that he's got elite command. And some of it too is how we're deriving information from scouting sources too. I was talking to someone about Bieber recently and sort of about his trajectory, right? Like I saw Bieber in college and I thought it was interesting. Like you're talking about sort of the background of how we arrived here. And the context in which you're seeing and talking about and evaluating all prospects is really important to the way you line them up, or at least to the way I line them up. really important to the way you line them up, or at least to the way I line them up. And I thought it was interesting that they were talking about Tyler Molle and Bieber on the broadcast this week as the two of them matched up. I think one of the broadcasters mentioned that had Molle ended up at UC Santa Barbara, then perhaps Shane Bieber either would not have or

would not have made the team right away because he sort of walked on right away. But anyway, the first I know of anyone seeing and recognizing Bieber as interesting was in high school at like a lesser sort of travel ball tournament. He ended up pitching as part of UC Santa Barbara's rotation during NCAA regionals, I think the next year. Dylan Tate was the highlight of that pitching staff that year. And then it really wasn't until the following year when he had an expanded role and just threw a ton of strikes that he even had an agent at that point. He first had an advisor sometime during his sophomore year. He didn't strike out a lot of batters at UCSB. He was a Friday night starter in a loaded Southern California area where if you're an area scout, this sort of speaks to the flaws of scouting in general here, is if you're an area

scout in Southern California and it's a Friday night, you're just much more likely to be at UCLA or USC or just anywhere near Los Angeles than you are to make the trek out to Santa Barbara. Like it's just your job as a scout to be as efficient as possible and see as many players and the high priority players. And so some of it probably could have been detected through data. Perhaps we as an industry underrate amateur command. Although it's not like Thomas Eshelman has really become anything spectacular. And you could argue the situation for him as an amateur was pretty similar at Fullerton, smaller school in a loaded

area, Friday night guy, elite strike throwing numbers. Some of it is Bieber's personality, like a chip on your shoulder type guy who has just helped make himself into this. Even adding a pitch this off season coming into the year. It's just a confluence of so many things. The guy I was talking to yesterday about Bieber told me that he has athleticism in his fingertips, which I think is a brilliant way of describing a thing that is so hard to see and evaluate. And I think some of it too is he's been around the right group of people, like being around Corey Kluber, who is the consummate

veteran, cool, calm, collected type. Being around Trevor Bauer initially, who is the info nerd. Being around Mike Clevenger, who is like the swagger, charisma on mound sort of weirdness and presence type. And being the sort of person who seems to draw from what's around him is Bieber. So I think it's a lot of different stuff. He is no doubt an incredible front of the line starting pitcher at this point. I think Kylie and I wrote in his blurb at the time that if we were going to put an eight on anyone's command in the minors, that it was going to be Bieber. We didn't do it. We should have done it. And yeah, he's certainly exceeded everyone's expectations. There are a lot of reasons why he wasn't. And there are good reasons why he wasn't as highly regarded as he should have been.

And some of it is that this stuff just happened late. And some of it is that this stuff is just unpredictable. We definitely fell short as an industry at predicting what this guy was going to be. And some of it just has to do with the environment that he's been put in. If another team had drafted Bieber, a team that is, or has been objectively worse at developing pitching over the last half decade or so. Maybe we're not talking about him in this way. I think it's a lot of different stuff, I think, that's contributed to this, but he's a monster now and it's a lot of fun to watch. Not that we have to crown anyone the next Bieber to be, but I'm curious if there are any guys outside of your top 100 who have struck you in the early going here. He's not a pitcher,

obviously, but Jake Cronenworth has sort of stood out for the Padres. You can talk about him if you want, but if there are other guys who have sort of made you raise your eyebrows and wonder if you ought not to be thinking about where they'll rank in next year's top 100, this is the time. Yeah, you know, whether it's about them being on the 100 or just sort of asserting themselves as core role players on competitive teams, right? Like the 100 is basically dictated by what sort of annual war I anticipate these guys are going to generate. And so yeah, Cronenworth is definitely one where he just has this weird ethereal baseball

skill. The fact that he's made a handful of spectacular plays at first base on a big league field after having played there for like a week, that's just not a thing that we can anticipate unless you really want to lean into the, this guy just seems to be good at all the baseball things. He just has this guy to do stuff and he's good at it, which has been the case with Cronenworth since he was in college. And we haven't gotten to see him pitch yet, given the fact that the rosters are expanded. I don't think we will this year. There are just other guys who can do that now.

But yeah, Cronenworth is definitely one of those guys where he makes me wonder if I do want to start listening to, if there's an overwhelming amount of people in baseball who are like, this guy is just a good quote unquote baseball player, right? Like that type of, that type of phraseology that starts to surround guys like this, baseball feel and instincts and gamer type stuff. This seems to be one of those guys who just succeeds at whatever you ask him to do. So Cronenworth is definitely one of those guys. And then you have the other, the weirdo types, right? Like Christian Javier's fastball and his delivery just seem to be deceptive to hitters in ways that are inexplicable. They're hard to see visually from the scouting section. Hitters just look super duper uncomfortable against him. There are lots of

reasons not to stick a guy like that on your 100. Javier was just outside the 100. He was sixth on the Astros list. He's a half grade behind the top 100. So like really strong, but we've seen guys dominate with one pitch before. So yeah, Christian Javier is another one where it could go the way of Freddy Peralta, where he frustrates you with lack of command, even though you know that for reasons beyond just the velocity, that this fastball is really unique and impactful. So he might be one of those guys who has been underrated. And then Cody Hoyer, who I mentioned with the White Sox before, he's another guy who I've, I think, been high on relative to the industry since I saw him during his first

pro instructional league. I had a strong relief grade on him coming into the year, 40 plus, which is like basically a setup man type of grade in the traditional sense, someone who has a chance to work high leverage innings. He was a velocity with tail, two seam type movement and plus change up guy for me. And now watching his big league outings, that slider is better. That slider is better now than it was a year ago, certainly a year and a half ago. And now we're talking about a three-pitch guy with a mid to upper 90s fastball that has monster tail. He might have two-plus pitches. Beyond that, now we're talking about someone

who's maybe a lockdown, back-of-the-bullpen type guy. And so maybe that is the sort of guy who's on the tail end of the top 100. That's not all that different than Braylon Marquez in the Cubs system, who's also sort of got that slinger lower delivery. He's got two-seam action on his fastball. James Karinchak's the other relief-only type guy who I've got on the top 100. His stuff works in a more traditional sense with that power vertical movement, like the Nick Anderson type of action and split between the way his,

his fastball and his breaking ball work. I'm just more comfortable stuffing that type of guy now because I just have more confidence in that type of fastball missing bats anymore. But yeah, so these are, these are some of the guys who I think are, are really asserting themselves as perhaps being underrated on the, or at least are showing traits in a way that is more measurable now that we have more data that might indicate

that they should have been somewhere on the top 100 last year, or maybe deserve to move there on some sort of like weird mid-season update, if you want to call it that. So I want to ask about some of the really big name guys who've debuted, the single-digit guys on the top 100, Luis Robert, Joe Adele, Nate Pearson, either what you've seen of them so far and what people should be paying attention to as they make adjustments, the league tries to adjust to them. What are they still working on? What are they still refining?

And Robert is really fascinating, and Craig Edwards had a good breakdown of him at fan crafts this week where he just pointed out that obviously the the tools are not loud they're just deafening i mean he hits the ball so hard he runs so fast he's so good at defense he clearly has just all the skills to be an incredible player but as craig pointed out he is swinging at everything and swinging through a lot of things. And he did have a four strikeout game on Thursday. He's walked a little bit more in August than he did in July, but it would be tough even for Javi Baez to succeed at this level of swinging and plate discipline. So can he make that adjustment? Can he make that correction this season? Or is that going to be more of a long-term prospect and he might struggle in the short term? Yeah, I think as far as it pertains to

Robert, that you nailed it, Craig nailed it. I think it's a drum I've been beating for a while now where his chase rates in the minors were concerning. Not from in a sense that he wasn't a good prospect. I mean, I ranked him where I ranked him, but that there would have to probably be some amount of adjustment at some point. And I think that we're at the point where the pitching in the league is going to start to adjust to him. I watched some of the back half of that White Sox Brewers game yesterday. And yeah, Freddy Peralta just chucked fastballs up above the zone past him. He was just not discerning at all. And that's sort of been his MO throughout his time in the minors. Whether or not he can make those adjustments, I don't know.

It is just one of those things that we have to see it when we see it. He's so talented that I have every confidence that regardless of whether or not he's a five or 6% walk rate guy who strikes out at 30% of the time, it's going to be frustrating. It might limit his output, but I still think he's going to be a really good big leaguer, even if those adjustments don't get made. And I think that risk is sort of baked into where I ranked him. I think that is a little bit less so with Adele, who, you know, last fall league for me, he was sort of an adventure defensively in the outfield. The little bit I've seen of him in the big leagues this week, it's been the same. He had a miscommunication

with Trout, or maybe there was a lack of communication between the two of them on a ball in the gap that fell in between the two of them. There was a play down the right field line that he probably should have made that he just looks sort of awkward and lacking confidence in making sort of wide-eyed. Some of that stuff is going to have to change. His swing is still very, very noisy, Adele's. He just has so much natural raw power. I wonder if that stuff will be taken down a little bit if they simplify his footwork and some of what's happening with how his hands set up pre-swing. There's just an awful lot of movement there. I wonder if eventually that'll sort of be quieted down. The Angels are not shy about tweaking guys' swings in the minors, at least. I don't know

what they're going to do here. I think there's certainly some, there's something to be said for just letting guys air things out on their own free of coaching for a while, just so that maybe they're more inclined to make adjustments because they've failed enough to be more open to that sort of thing. And then Pearson, Pearson, I haven't watched an entire start yet. He looks fine from what I've seen. Like he's throwing about as hard as he did in a starting role last year. Certainly not as hard as he was at peak in the fall league in a shorter relief type role. But ultimately, while I think it's unrealistic to expect any of these

guys, regardless of what their physical skills are like, to just come up right away and be incredible. It's pretty rare for that sort of thing to happen. And I think a lot of good players come up and the gap between what they've seen in the minors, especially guys who haven't spent an extended stretch at AAA, to come up and be exposed to the best pitching that they've ever seen in their whole lives is just so difficult. Like big league pitching is so amazing and is better now than certainly at any point of the 10 years

I've been doing this. I think the talent level of the big leagues is just better now than when I was a young fan and just starting out at this job in some sense. And so I think it's absolutely going to take an adjustment for all three of those guys, especially the hitters, and especially given the context of our looks at those hitters, where they had months and months without seeing live pitching, whereas the pitchers could throw bullpens in this and that and sort of maintain some level of sharpness while the hitters just certainly have not been able to. So to come up and ask Joe Adele to go from seeing his teammates at the campsite for a couple weeks to seeing big league pitching, that's tough. So I expect there but also in the bullpen is sort of creaky. The death was not what it was coming into the year, and they've had injuries subsequent to that.

So I'm curious who else from the campsite you expect we might see from them soon. I know that Forrest Whitley's had some injury setbacks, so it's not clear what, if any, you see is going to be to them this year. But who else might end up throwing some innings of either relief or in the rotation for or piggybacking off of one another or what like the injuries have really ravaged what they have at the big league level. I mentioned Christian Javier. I think Enoli Paredes is the other name that comes to mind very quickly who I really love like ultra athletic monster stuff, almost certainly a reliever, but has experience going multiple innings. Brandon Bailey, who kicked back from Baltimore, was a rule five guy.

He's another pitch design marvel whose stuff is quite good. And I think that at the very least, he fits in a multi-inning relief role pretty cleanly. Carlos Sanabria, not quite as athletic as Javier or Enoli Paredes, but also has, you know, monster, well-designed stuff. It's these types of guys. Blake Taylor, who they got from the Mets in a trade this offseason, he's thrown more strikes than I anticipated. Basically on the Astros list, I had Taylor in a spot where he's like an up-down reliever, someone whose option years get used pretty heavily.

But he's thrown a lot of strikes this year and was actually better last year than he had been throughout his career too. And the small sample size caveats that I applied to him when I did the Astros list are sort of starting to drift away. So I think he's going to be an integral part of that bullpen going forward. But yeah, like between replacing Verlander and Cole and now Roberto Osuna and Chris Davinsky and Sionel Perez, who once upon a time was on the periphery of the hundred and Jose Urquidy, both of those guys are out for undisclosed reasons. That's a lot of guys. Forrest Whitley being dinged at the campsite and just having a

really hard time getting off the ground now for a couple of years in a row is really, really frustrating. So some of the other guys who aren't on the 40 man yet are like johanse torres who is also in that 40 plus sort of late inning relief type bucket for me when i saw him last year in the fall league he was 94 to 97 touching nine and was throwing like 60 percent sliders though he wasn't throwing quite as hard in the summer camp tune-ups that i saw he's not on the 40 man yet sean dubin luis garcia brett conine these are all good relief prospects who just aren't on the 40 man yet and i think it's kind of telling that they've gone out of their way to like acquire chase the young and stuff i think that those guys might be in line for

big league duty before some of the the players who aren't on the 40 man yet. So it's going to be interesting to see how they piece it together. This is the type of scenario that you think an org like this would be suited to handle. But they just had an unusual string of bad luck as it pertains to pitcher injuries here. And they are sort of going to have to band-aid this stuff together. And then Francis Marte is suspended, right? They've had like two or three guys suspended now too. Kent Emanuel was just suspended the other day. He was a guy who's leaned heavy into like being a sinker baller over the last couple of years, turned himself into sort of an interesting

prospect after he was overworked at North Carolina. So yeah, it's a weird spot. We'll see how some of these guys perform. But Paredes is the guy who along with Javier, I think, have the best chance of being the cream of this crop. And then at the other end of the competitive spectrum, and you've made some mention of this year, but you have the weird Marlins who were not playing for a while and now have a strange six and one record and 58 guys on their 40 man as a result of their COVID IL stints. And they just sent Guzman to the alternatives training site and they recalled Humberto Mejia. So I'm curious how you think they're going to balance this because on the one hand,

I don't think anyone looks at this Marlins team or at least the Marlins team that we came into the season with and thought this is the next good core. We had an understanding that those guys were still on their way. But do you think we're going to see them on their way sooner now? Because Miami has had weird, both bad luck in terms of the COVID outbreak, but also a surprisingly strong start given their seven game sample. Yeah. I think it puts them in a weird spot, right? In a normal year, if you're the Marlins and you've got Corey Dickerson and Jesus Aguilar and Matt Joyce and Jonathan Villar, you're like, hey, we want some of these guys to bounce back or just perform at some level and then flip these guys at the deadline. Like surely someone will want a lefty power bat at the deadline and we can trade Matt Joyce for something or Corey Dickerson for something. And that seems less likely now that you can't scout the offsite camps.

So realistically, they're not going to know what they're getting back, right? Not as well as they would in a typical year. Francisco Cervelli, same thing. Catching inventory around baseball is pretty scarce. If a guy like that is healthy and performing even just a little bit, he's got value on the open market. But what that means this year is totally different. So if you're the Marlins and you're suddenly competitive, do you roll with this group of vets? Do you promote some of your young kids who you think are just the best, among your best 30 or 28 now, I guess, guys, whether that's Edward Cabrera or Sixto Sanchez? Do you pull the ripcord on their service time clocks because

it's time to compete and just try and see? I think there's an argument that you should do that. I think it fires up your young guys when you do that. I think it builds trust between the players in the organization, which I think can be valuable even in a financial sense. Like if Ozzie Albies and Ronald Acuna didn't like the Braves front office, do you think they would assign their extensions? Like I submit that they would not. So I think there's an argument to do it. I think there's an argument against it if you're really taking a cold sort of pragmatic approach to the long-term trajectory of your franchise, especially this franchise, which is still trying to get some financial traction, clearly,

that this ownership group based on the way they furloughed their scouts is pretty leveraged, right? So it's a complex situation made more weird by COVID. I would be inclined to do it. I think that there's value beyond just whatever extra year of service time you're gaining by not doing it. I wouldn't want to expose those young guys to COVID. I think you'd have to, you know, at this point, I hope that we are pretty sure that it has been expunged from the big league clubhouse and that the Sixto and Guzman and Cabrera and man, hell Braxton Garrett, even Max Meyer. Like if you're going to, if you're going to do it, it would be an all time baseball story for a team like this to come out of nowhere and just be competitive,

period. Not necessarily really win a whole thing, but just be competitive and make the playoffs and give your young players that type of experience in that, well, in something sort of like a playoff environment. Obviously, it's not going to be like going into Dodger Stadium where people are loud in September and October, but I think there's something to be said for it. So I would like to see it, but again, I really don't have a way of knowing how Sixto and Edward Cabrera and Brax Garrett look at the campsite. Like I can't sit here and tell you honestly that those guys are shoving and would get big league hitters out. I really don't know. And if I were to contact someone with the Marlins and ask them,

they're not going to tell me if they're not. This is one of those problems that as a media member who covers prospects this season, that there's just no way of me dealing with. Have you guys heard of anyone getting hurt at the campsites? I haven't. I'd be shocked if no one had at this point, but there's no reason or obligation for teams to really tell us. Just like they're not

going to tell me if 6-0's Velo is down five miles an hour. I just don't know. So that's a caveat here as well. Yeah, I was going to ask you. I mean, obviously most of the intelligence that you gather is from folks who are generally seeing players or from looks that you're getting live yourself. And it's not just media members who are restricted from the alternate sites. It's hard for team personnel to access the site. Sometimes team personnel have trouble accessing their own team's alternate sites. So how is this affecting the way that you're sort of sourcing information and trying to wade through stuff? Are you just relying on what you were able to see early in the year and then guys are coming up and they're suddenly on MLB TV? with someone yesterday who's like, yeah, the Phillies AAA service electric in Lehigh Valley,

where I grew up is broadcasting the Phillies offsite games, or they were until music fest is going on in Bethlehem this week. So proof to everybody, but they're going to broadcast that all week. I was looking at the schedule today to see if I could watch some Phillies offsite games at Coca-Cola park in Allentown. But I think aside from a few of the exceptions where teams are, for whatever reason, making some of the video public, perhaps there's some background data sharing going on that I don't yet know about, which is a thing that happened on the amateur side before it was banned over the last offseason where, you know, I'll show you mine if you show me yours type of situation with Hawkeye or Trackman data. But yeah, it's sort of an unsolvable problem for me at this point. It's really unfortunate. This is like a beacon to the BBWA like, hey, could use your help here. There was some gnashing of teeth over loss of locker room access at the onset of this thing, which I totally understand.

But my beat at the current moment is basically locked out in its entirety. So could use some support from my baseball writing brothers and sisters at this point. I'd like to find a way to go to see some baseball, please, in a safe, responsible way, which I don't think I can do on the amateur side right now. Those events are crawling with children and parents. I'd like to watch baseball in a library-type setting all the time. I can do so at the campsites right now and in a socially distant, safe way. If it weren't for these rules, I'd really like to do that. I'd hop in my car and drive all around the damn place right now if I could, but I can't. So yeah, it's a bad situation for me. I don't feel useful or any sort of self-worth. Appelman called me a few days ago and was like, hey,

let's go, dude. But yeah, I don't have anything to do other than watch basketball and baseball, which I like doing, but yeah, I'd like to go see some of these guys, please. I really don't have a way of doing it. Yeah. I'm sure you'll have a great time doing your prospect rankings next spring and over the off season, having not seen these guys and no minor league games, that'll just be a joy. I'm sure. So good luck with that whole process. I wanted to ask about some of the other ranked guys who've debuted, guys who are in your top 120 on the board. And we don't have to talk about all these guys, but if there are any of them who've made some sort of impression on you, or you think people should be looking out for something in particular, would be interested in

hearing. Obviously, there's Nick Matricall with the White Sox, who we've talked about a ton, and he's hurt right now. But there's Tyler Stevenson with the Reds. There's the Diamondbacks' Dalton Varshow and the Braves' William Contreras and the Mets' Andres Jimenez. Chris Buich on the Royals, we mentioned briefly. Luis Patino on the Padres just came up. Spencer Howard on the Phillies, and Evan White on the Mariners, who has struggled thus far. So I don't know if there are any names there that you want to just kind of give a PSA or think that they have some pivotal thing going on in the next month or two. TJ Antone with the Reds, who's throwing harder now than he was last year. Sort of like a kitchen sink righty whose velo is up a tick and is now, you know, Kyle Bode running the pitching show in Cincinnati.

That entire staff is going to be interesting to watch. And I think Antone is one of those guys. So there's that. You mentioned Chris Bubich. Bubich is on, yeah, the top 100. His curveball looks better to me now than it did as a prospect. He was a fastball playability and plus changeup guy for me. I thought that was enough to stick him on the 100, but that breaking ball looks better now too. So that's relevant. The Braves catching situation I know has changed because Darnot and Flowers were both on the IL. And then Alex Jackson and Contreras both came up for a brief amount of time.

I don't know if we're going to see either of those guys again. But if we do, I'm still all in on Contreras as a good everyday catcher. The game did appear too fast for him. The stuff was just sort of too much for him to handle offensively while he was also handling a big league staff. That's just a lot to ask of someone who's only 22, basically the age of a college senior to come up and be the everyday big league catcher. That's really difficult. But long-term, I'm still in on him in a big way. I just wouldn't expect a whole lot from him this season,

even if he was given the opportunity. Tom Hatch with the Blue Jays is a guy who I stuffed pretty good on their off-season list. He added a cutter in the middle of last year, I think shortly before the Blue Jays acquired him. That seems to be pretty relevant. His command has been better than I anticipated it would be when he was an amateur at Oklahoma State. He actually dueled with Bieber in the College World Series. It was a good game. So yeah,

Tom Hatch is definitely a stock-up guy as well. Let's see who else. Yeah, Madrigal's shoulders separated. Who knows what that's going to be like? I haven't watched any Nick Neidert starts with Miami yet, but that is another one of those Kyle Hendricks type guys where he only really throws like 89, but he's got a plus plus change up and he commands everything. And those type of guys tend to outpace the prospect's projections. So watch him. You mentioned Tyler Stevenson. Stevenson's got like a contact oriented approach, even though he's built like an outside linebacker and his huge raw power. I think he had like the second most raw power of anyone in the fall league last year behind Adele. His approach is just geared for contact right now. So watching to see how his

swing develops will be interesting to see if some of that power can come. We saw Aristides Aquino and some of these Reds hitters make relevant adjustments at the big league level. So perhaps he is the next guy. Then you have the tooled up Rangers, Leote Taveras and Anderson Tejeda. Taveras especially never really performed in the minors. So to watch those two guys get an opportunity to play every day is going to be interesting. Dalton Varshow, what he will do in Arizona is going to be fascinating because he can catch and play the outfield. And I think him caddying for like David Peralta and Steven Vogt and allowing some of the older guys in Arizona to take a breather or DH or

whatever is going to be useful for them. I know that that club got off to a slow start and Bumgarner's velo is down. He generally just does not look very good, but I still kind of like them to compete. Evan White's struggles, I just chalk up to it being it's been two weeks and it's big league pitching. It's really hard. I'm not really worried about him long-term.

And then I guess the other interesting guy is like Chadwick Trump, who had pretty big exit velos last year in a really small sample of the minor leagues. And a lot of that came against young competition because he was rehabbing. And I just wasn't confident enough to stick him on the Giants list in any capacity. But he does seem to have pretty serious power. And he's going to get an opportunity to play in San Francisco.

I really don't think that they should promote Joey Bart yet. Come on, folks. We just lived through Mike Zanino. And he's going to get an opportunity to play in San Francisco. I really don't think that they should promote Joey Bart yet. Come on, folks. We just lived through Mike Zanino. The profile is very, very similar where this guy is ready defensively. He's got huge power and just strikes out a lot. And I don't want to push that. Like I said, it's almost a Zanino to a tee just in the 10,000-foot view of the profile. And so I think that San Francisco was right to slow play that one. And so I think they should give Trump every day at

bats and see if they can make an asset out of him. So he's one of those guys I'm interested to watch as well. Somewhere in the Bay Area, there's a Giants version of Meg whose entire trajectory in life is going to be different because the Giants don't mess up Joey Bart's development. That's neither here nor there. I am curious, you mentioned many of the ways in which the access to the alternate sites is a problem for media members and also for teams, but I'm curious how you think that's going to shape teams' behavior at the deadline because we still have a trade deadline and it'll be in three weeks, which feels ridiculous. because we still have a trade deadline, and it'll be in three weeks, which feels ridiculous. And there are teams that, had this been a normal year, we might have expected to be active, potentially active with some big names, and now are limited not only in terms of the

players who are immediately available for trade, it has to be guys in the player pool, but also guys who they've had recent and relevant looks at. So what is your sense of how teams might handle the prospect side of the deadline? Are we just going to see a lot of players to be named later, or how do you think they'll go about that? Yeah, I think it's going to be a lot of players to be named later. There might be maybe an unusual ratio of young big leaguers will get moved in exchange for other pieces. The expanded rosters definitely give an opportunity for more. You can just calculate it. It's like 150 more guys to be seen during the course of the year at the big league level than what typically be.

So perhaps there will be that. Certainly at this point, there hasn't been any team by team behavior that would indicate players are being promoted to the big leagues specifically to be showcased for trade. I do think, like you mentioned, Meg, that we're going to see a lot of players to be named later. It would seem to be sort of a loophole that MLB either intentionally left open or inadvertently did not close as they set the roster rules for this year that they did not specify that players to be named later could not be a thing the timeline by which the deals that have already been consummated that have involved players to be named later must be completed to me was was put as like just before the 40-man deadline in the fall. So it seems like in the event that teams

anticipate there be a fall instructional league or fall league or just any sort of environment in which their pro side of scouting can see players, if they anticipate that that will happen, then I would think that most trades will involve players to be named later, and teams will hope to assess those players in the coming months. But I can't see, considering that teams clearly showed varying amounts of comfort in drafting players who they had not seen for several months, I think the same will just apply to pro ball. And I bet everyone has screen recordings of the preseason scrimmages and intra squads that occurred in which a lot of relevant prospects played. And I'm sure that everyone's got video and data from spring training and perhaps are

behind the scenes exchanging video and data from the campsites. But barring that, I think we're just going to see an overwhelming amount of deals involve players to be named later. And lastly, your purview does not just involve guys who are recently debuting, but also guys who are still prospect eligible who may have debuted last year. So I'm curious if anyone in that sort of player population who is getting regular big league time now is standing out as either particularly impressive or particularly worrisome, even in the small sample that we've been blessed with so far. Well, you know, like I think at this point, if you said, hey, pick a Blue Jay, I'd take Bo Bichette instead of Vlad. So there's that. What has happened to Vlad physically is not like

the worst of my fears, but definitely when you looked at, and you know, it's like with Zion Williamson too, you look at these guys and you're just like, man, what is this body going to look like at 25? And Vlad is probably trending towards the bottom end of those projections where it's like first base DH only, and he still hasn't learned to lift the ball consistently. And like, when is this going to come together? Whereas Bo is like lean and mean in better shape now than he was his high school, or at least when I saw him and looks like he's going to stay at shortstop

and hit like 50 doubles every year. Like, so that has definitely changed, you know, Trent Grisham, the way he's come out hitting early this year has been impressive. I still don't consider him a center fielder, but I think there's enough stick there that even if you stick him in a corner, he's still going to be a good everyday player. So there's that.

Who else? You know, Kyle Lewis is sort of in that same, like, this guy's going to strike out a bunch and play a corner bucket. But the fact that he's getting to his power is really encouraging. He was also on the outside looking in of the top 100 because he was a 24, 25-year-old who was striking out like 30% of the time at AA. And I still think that he's going to be a high variance big leaguer year to year, but he's been really good objectively. And then you've got these guys who are kind of moving around and playing all over the place and facilitating, like I mentioned with Dalton Varshow, facilitating the rest of the roster, being flexibility, like Luis Rangifo with Anaheim. Man, he's good and can just play everywhere. And David Fletcher too. David Fletcher is incredible. Gosh, who else? I'm trying

to think of Michael Brasso with tampa another guy who plays everywhere which facilitates like yandi diaz and yoshi suits to go in ways that if there weren't one or two guys on the roster who could do that it would be harder to roster multiple guys who really don't play good defense or sort of landlocked at these corner positions. So yeah. And then I'm still just like dying to see healthy AJ puck. And we're only just starting to see like Jesus Lizardo every fifth day and what Sean Murphy can do. And like you say, Kikuchi is throwing harder and all of these things. So like Gavin Lux, can he throw the ball to first base accurately, please? Still waiting on that stuff.

Karen Chak, who I mentioned before, who I think is just an unbelievable believer right now. So all these guys from last year, I'm glad that we're getting to see them for an extended period of time. I'm still, and the other COVID guys who I'm hoping we see soon, or injury guys, are like Darwins and Hernandez with Boston, who I think should get an opportunity to play. Another guy who might be an elite reliever as soon as he's allowed to do so every day. Dustin May looks pretty good.

So yeah, it's a good time to be interested in watching young big leaguers. I think this group of young guys has been a lot of fun and just reinforcing that I like my job and that, that I get to, like, I'm glad I get to do this. It's, um, it's a really, I think the future of our game is in good hands. Yeah. Miguel Castro with the Orioles has also looked good. It's six games. So, you know, I don't know, but he's 25 and people have expected things out of him for a while and it looks like maybe he's kind of getting those things

together so if anyone gets traded perhaps he will be a guy in that camp but alright well we wish you well doing your job and appeasing Appleman and doing prospect rankings in this environment and all the rest and of course

we encourage everyone to go pick up Future Value, Eric's book with Kylie, and follow Eric on Twitter at LonginHagen. And I'm sure we will speak to you soon. Thanks, Eric. Thanks for having me, guys. Okay, one quick note on our last episode, I mentioned that Rob Arthur was working on an article for Baseball Perspectives about the ball and how it's behaving this season. That article is up, and I will link to it on the show page. Essentially, Rob found that the drag on the ball has increased relative to last season, and it's now roughly equivalent to what it was in 2018. So to refresh your memory, the 2018 home run rate was lower than the 2017 home run rate and

certainly lower than the 2019 home run rate. The drag on the ball was lower in those years too. Of course, we don't know why the drag has increased. MLB claims that they haven't actually done anything to the ball. Could be a number of things, but they don't know exactly why the drag decreased in the first place, so it's hard to say why it's increased. But that does seem to be partly responsible for why the home run rate has fallen and why offense overall is down. Of course, we can't predict if that will continue, and the home run rate is still high in a historical sense. Also, I meant to wish a happy birthday to Mike Trout at the beginning of the episode, and I forgot. So happy 29th, Mr. Trout. I wish you an excellent end to your 20s. Okay, that will do it for today and for this week. Thank you, as always, for listening. And thanks to those of you who have supported the

podcast on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Kyle Lewis, probably not the Kyle Lewis Eric just mentioned. Tyler Bradley, Bill Batterman, Tom Ahn, and John Marsh. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg and Sam coming via email at podcast at famcrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan higgins for

his editing assistance we hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you early next week stand with your hands in your pockets and stare at the smudge on a newspaper sky and ask it to rain a new name for everything