Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1579: Our Favorite Small-Sample Seasons So Far

Episode Date: August 18, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about MLB’s BABIP bouncing back from its unusually low early level, the Tigers calling up a trio of top prospects in an attempted playoff push, and Cardinals rookie Roel Ramirez’s unprecedented debut, then answer a listener email with a Stat Blast about the longest regular-season and postseason team vs. […]

🎵 Hello and welcome to episode 1579 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing okay. How are you? I am overly warm. Why why is that because it's hot in seattle for seattle it was 96 yesterday wow so i feel like that's that's legitimately warm yeah it is quite temperate where i am in new york it's 68 degrees right now oh goodness yeah we had we had lovely weather here for a while and then it was hot and now it'll go away and it'll be fine but i am warm you know when you when you're like warm and so

you're quick to agitation yeah i feel a little like that but it's nice to talk to you so i think i'll pull out of it okay i'll try not to irritate you try to stay on your good side here well given the exercise we're gonna embark on i am nervous that I will find you quite vexing. Okay. All right. Yeah, we are going to do a little draft or draft lit later in this episode. Just a few things before we get to that.

One, the Babbitt mystery of 2020 has taken another turn. I'm really not sure what to make of this whole thing. So I wrote a week ago about the fact that we seem to have an unusually low BABIP early in the season. And even over a fairly small sample, it was still unusually low. I looked at all of the earlier season starting samples of equivalent length, and it was the lowest of any sample of that length going back to the early 1990s. It was very strange because typically we don't see a lot of fluctuation in BABIP. And Sam and I talked about some explanations for why that might be the case, and then I expanded on it in my writing. And naturally, in the week since that article was published,

In the week since that article was published, the BABIP is 308, or at least it was before Monday's games. It looks like it's a little low right now as we record on Monday evening. But it seems like BABIP has not only regressed to the mean, but maybe been a little higher than usual. So obviously when we talked about it and I wrote about it, I allowed for the possibility that it was just some sort of fluke or maybe that hitters were just off their game and that they would get back on their game and that things would start to look more normal. But that is kind of a hazard whenever you write or talk about something that is an extreme. It's always likely to bounce back toward the norm. And that seems to have happened immediately. So whatever was happening has not been happening since we talked about that. Yeah, you wrote about it.

Dan Zimborski is going to be writing about it later this week. And I think his initial reaction when he saw your piece was, oh, no. And then a couple of days passed and he's like, wait, what? Yeah. So, yeah, it is quite the speed with which it shifted i guess is unsurprising given how compressed everything is this year but for it to fluctuate so dramatically was yeah it was quite something yeah yeah there were a few articles about it i think you know saris wrote something about it not specifically about the babbit but

more just about the low offense which was largely related to the babbit and when i wrote about it i got an email from joe sheehan saying can't you just write about video games all the time because he had been planning to write about that so it was on people's minds and people were tweeting about it and then suddenly it seems to have just mysteriously disappeared so i guess that's good if you like hits and singles we've actually seen some of them lately and so the theory is about well maybe it's team shifting more maybe it's fielders performing better without fans in the stands i don't know i mean it's certainly still low on the season so maybe there's still something going on there maybe this has been a week that has been fluky in the

other direction and it'll just go back to being low again who knows at this point but i wanted to just update everyone that that effect has not persisted since that conversation yeah weird yep so we also have big tigers news right the tigers did the thing that we were all talking about whether they should do which is calling up a bunch of top prospects. And unfortunately for them, they've done it at a point where they seem to have fallen off a cliff all of a sudden too. So as we speak, they are attempting to avert a six-game losing streak, but it's not looking great at the moment.

So I believe their record has fallen below 500. Is that right? Yep, that's right. Yeah. So the hot start with them has not quite persisted over that week either. So all the things that we were talking about happening have the opposite of those things have happened, but they have reinforcements. So they called up Casey Mize. They called up Tarek Skubal. They called up Isaac Paredes. So three of their top prospects, not Matt Manning, but two of the trio of pitchers that everyone was clamoring to see now on the Major League roster.

So that's exciting at least. Yeah, they're 9 and 10 now. They're down to the White Sox in their effort today. But look, you know that my perspective on prospects is that when you think that they are ready to play baseball at the major league level, that you should let them do that because it's nice for them and it's fun for your fans. And the whole thing is about, you know, just like winning. That's what it's about. It's about winning. And so I like it on those terms, just on its own. And I also like the idea idea that someone that a team that is not really

planning to have contended this year finds themselves with enough of enough margin that they could just say yeah let's see what they can do let's see what the let's see what these uh young pitchers can can really get up to and despite their good start they do need some help i mean matt boyd has not pitched particularly well, I don't believe. So it's just very exciting. And I think that in a year where things are generally dire in non-baseball terms and were assumed to be dire for the Tigers in baseball terms going into the season, to afford your fans something to be excited about is good. And to give prospects who are ready the opportunity to own their skills at the major league level when they're ready to do so is also good. So I say good job, Tigers.

Yeah. And if the wind starts to come out of the sails a little bit, then maybe calling on the cavalry helps a little. Whether it's with morale or just because those pitchers and players are pretty talented. So if your prospects start to flag a little, then, well, call up your prospects. So different meaning of prospects. And Manning might be next. There was a comment, I think, by Alavila who said that he needs a little more time. He's working on control and command, mechanical tweaks, etc. But he might be up there sometime soon so at the very least even if the tigers playoff hopes fall apart a little bit you get the consolation of knowing that they went for it to some degree they tried it they pulled out all the stops and also you get to see the next generation of tigers which is always nice so even if it doesn't really come together this year, you get a sneak peek of what it will look like, hopefully, when it does come together. So that's pretty fun regardless. Yeah. And I think that, you know,

Mines has been the headliner for a long time, and that makes good sense given sort of his pedigree. But I think that the Scoogle will impress people. I know that when Eric wrote about him for the Tigers list, and I mean, before that for the top 100, that he received feedback from evaluators that people should perhaps think about him as being right up in the same tier as Mizen Manning. So I think that he will be a fun, he'll be a fun thing. And he's kind of a fun story. You know, he, he came out of Seattle University, which has had big leaguers, but is not like a powerhouse from a college perspective. So that will be a fun thing too.

In other prospect promotion news that did not go so well, I wanted to talk just for a minute about Roel Ramirez. Should we? He had a memorable major league debut, and not the way that he would have wanted. Sam and I spoke recently about the disastrous start to a start that Derek Holland had where he gave up four home runs in the first inning. Not all consecutively. Three of them were consecutive.

Well, Cardinals rookie Roel Ramirez gave up four home runs, and they were consecutive, which is a first. There have been nine Major League debuts that involved a pitcher giving up four home runs, but this was the first time that a pitcher had given up four home runs consecutively in his debut. He came in on Sunday in the bottom of the fifth, and the White Sox were ahead 1-0. So he comes in in relief of Dakota Hudson, strikes out Luis Robert. So far, so good. And then it went single, single. Now, I watched both of those singles, and they were both pretty weakly hit ground balls. One was sort of through the shift or in the area where the shift wasn't. Another was a hit and run. And if the second baseman had been playing straight up, he might have had it. So that was just little bleeders that weren't really his fault. Then one of those

runners was caught stealing, which helps him out a little. Okay, suddenly he just has one out to go to get through this debut inning. Then he gives up a walk. He throws a wild pitch. And then home run to Yohan Mankata. Home run to Yasmany Grandal. Home run to Jose Apreu. And home run to Aloy Jimenez. Back to back to back to back.

All pretty hard hit. They did not really get cheated. And then Seth Elledge comes in to replace Roel Ramirez and Seth Elledge also making his major league debut in this game. And if I were Roel Ramirez, I don't know that I would wish ill on Seth Elledge at that point, but I kind of would want him to at least struggle a little bit just to show like, hey, it's hard to make your major league debut. So that almost takes the pressure off of me a little bit. Instead, Elledge comes in, gets a strikeout to get out of the inning, then gets through another hitless inning, then yet another hitless inning in which he struck out all three batters he faced. So he got through two and a third with no damage done at all in his major league debut and if i were miras i would just

be thinking come on man like just yeah show that this is difficult like make me look a little bit better in retrospect but no that didn't happen ben do you follow the twitter account and will be home run i do not is that the one that that shows the stat cast graphic for every home run? It does not. It's just a counter of home runs. So it'll give you the player and the team and how many they've hit total and then a brief description of the home run that they hit, like solo or two run and if they've hit multiple in that day.

And, you know, it's pretty quick, but there can be a bit of a lag. And I thought that, like, someone had gone to the bathroom and then had come back and was like, oh, I've got to catch up on the home runs in this White Sox game. That was not accurate, Ben. I felt very bad for him, and I know we have to talk about it, and I think it's fine for us to do so, and we aren't being mean about the way we're talking about it,

but we should never bring it up again. Yeah. I mean, we didn't have to. No, but like, it's not, it's noteworthy.

It's, it's unusual. I mean, I guess the good news is that it is unusual to have one's debut go this way. Yes. Unprecedented even. Right. unprecedented even right but oh oh oh boy um yeah it's just that feeling that tug of like oh yeah one would hope that he will go on to have a long successful major league career and i don't know if he'll get to the point where he will look back and laugh at this exactly it might just be so traumatic that you

just never get to the point where you laugh about it. But he's 25 years old. He is a prospect. I think he was 22 on Eric's preseason Cardinals list. And there are going to be a bunch of Cardinals making their Major League debut. And I guess if you have to do it, maybe do it in this season when no one's really going to remember Roel Ramirez's Major League debut. If you have to do it, maybe do it in this season when no one's really going to remember Roel Ramirez's major league debut. If you're thinking about what do I recall from the 2020 Cardinals season, it'll probably be the fact that there almost wasn't a 2020 Cardinals season, that they were off forever and then they played doubleheaders every day for weeks. So that might kind of overshadow it. So there's a lot going on. Maybe that distracts from a poor debut and it doesn't get worse than that so i guess if he has a good mindset about all of

this he might just say well it's all uphill from here right yeah so let's hope that he has that perspective but probably pretty tough to have that type of perspective when you finally get there. You want to just go to bed that night feeling like, I did it. My dream came true. I accomplished my lifelong mission. And maybe there's some small part of him that can think that, but it's probably a very small part that you could kind of put this into perspective and say, well, I had a really terrible day, but hey, I made it, and so few people ever get to make it, and I set my sights on making the majors, and I did it. I didn't do it the way I wanted to do it, but I did it.

I have a baseball reference page now with a really unsightly ERA, but at least I have one with a major league tab, so I hope that some part of him took solace in that, but that would show a lot of maturity, I think, to take the long view after you get tattooed like that. Yeah. We would not think any less of him if he needed a day. If he needed a day with his favorite food and a nice call from someone he cares about, who cares about him, to say the right thing that people who care about you can say to make you feel better after the day has passed. And you're looking to have the sting taken out, right?

You've sat with the sting gnarly. All right, let's move on. But yeah, he'll get another shot. Yeah, better days ahead. Can't be anything but better days ahead, I would think. Good Lord. I have a stat blast for you before we get to our topic today. And this is related to the Tigers topic that we were just talking about. So we got an email from Patreon supporter Chris Hannell, who said Cleveland just won against Detroit today. And on the Twins broadcast, Dick Bremmer said it was their 20th consecutive victory against them. That was on Sunday.

And Chris continues, so the big question, what's the longest win streak one team has against another? And since I'm a Twins fan and a glutton for punishment, what's the longest team versus team win streak counting only postseason games? team versus team win streak counting only postseason games. So you can sit and stew on that for a moment, and I will play yet another StatBlast song cover that came in just this week from Robert Au of Baseball Prospectus. You will perhaps recognize it. It is sort of a mashup of the StatBlast song and another song that you may remember well, but in a minor key. Thank you. Okay, so after Chris sent in this question and I outsourced it to official StatPlus source,

one of many, Adam Ott, our faithful listener who is very skilled with his RetroSheet database. Adam actually clued me into the fact that Andrew Simon of MLB.com did an article on this very topic and got very similar results to Andrew's. So I'll link to that too. You can check it out there, but I will also put Adam's spreadsheet online and he looked up the postseason streaks in addition to the regular season streaks. So as Chris noted, Cleveland and Detroit are now up to 20 consecutive games with Cleveland beating Detroit. And in fact, they could get up to 23 soon because these two teams play each other again in the coming weekend. So if Cleveland were to sweep Detroit again, they could get to 23, and that would tie the all-time record.

So if we keep it to modern era, if we keep it to 1901 forward, because Adam was able to go all the way back to 1870, I think, or 1871, and he sent the streaks from more recent years. But if you do go back to 1883 to 1884, the Providence Grays had a 27-game streak against the Detroit Wolverines. So now you know that the Detroit Wolverines were a team and that they could not beat the Providence Grays for 27 consecutive games. So maybe it's just a Detroit team thing. But if we stick with more modern times, the record is 23, and that is the Orioles over the Kansas City Royals, 1969 to 1970. The Royals just could not beat the Orioles. Then you have to go back to 1903. From 1903 to

1904, the Red Sox beat up the Senators 22 times in a row. And 1927, the 27 Yankees beat up the Browns 21 times in a row. Those are the only teams ahead of the current streak of 20 for Cleveland and Detroit. Now, if you look at the top names on this list, it's almost all other than the one at the top, the 1969 to 70 streak. It's almost all early baseball. It's all like pre-war teams, which sort of makes sense because there were a lot of teams that just were not trying in those days. And you had a lot of really terrible teams that were terrible almost every year for very long stretches and just were not really competing even more so than today's tanking teams. And so you had teams like the Yankees and teams like the Browns,

and there was often quite a mismatch there. So you see a lot of these streaks were from those early years. And so the other teams with 20, the Pirates over the Reds 20 straight times in 1937 and 1938, and the Cardinals over the Phillies 20 times from 1927 to 1928. Then you have the 1938 Yankees over the Athletics 19 times, and then the 1909 Cubs over the Boston Braves 19 straight times. So again, it's all long time ago streaks. And really the only more recent one here, you have the active streak. This one is actually still active. The Yankees over the Orioles 17 straight times in 2008 and 2009. Anyway, that's more streaks than you probably wanted to know. So I don't tend to subscribe to like supernatural causes for things, Ben. That's not my default. I know that's probably not surprising. I think that if it got to 20, I might say that it means something more than just your team being both not as good and likely somewhat unlucky right because like in 20 games even a bad team is gonna beat a better

team you would think you think at least one time certainly against the odds right wouldn't yes right you'd think at least one time so i think if it got to double digits i'd start to think my first instinct would be that someone was throwing the games. And then after 15, I'd start to assume that maybe I had been cursed, like I had been unkind to another person and a witch wanted to teach me a lesson about humility or something like that. So I wouldn't really because that would be very silly of me. But I do wonder for a couple of those guys probably have to be somewhat superstitious. And I wonder if they think that something's afoot because it just seems impossible. Yeah.

At a certain point, you would wonder whether a team starts to be psyched out or whether there's some sort of mental block there. But I don't know. psyched out or whether there's some sort of mental block there. But I don't know. I guess if you take enough teams and enough seasons and all those possible trials for this to happen and good teams versus terrible teams, it would happen some number of times. But yes, if you were on the receiving end of that, it would probably be hard to maintain that perspective.

I was going to say that even some of the terrible Mariners teams that you have watched have not been on the receiving end of this type of dominance, but there was a 15-game streak, the Astros over the Mariners, that was just snapped this season, actually. That's true. Yeah, but that's as long as it's gotten. And even the really good Mariners teams have not had a longer streak in the other direction. See, the funny thing is I don't really remember the Mariners losing that much. Or I should rather, I should say,

I'm surprised it didn't last longer in an indifferent way on my part. Because I could definitely see myself looking up and being like, wait, what? Did I lose time on that one? Yeah, right. yeah right yeah i mean you could just forget that it happened because it's over the course of a couple seasons maybe and it's not like you're playing all of the games consecutively so right yeah i think that that helps you to feel as if it is is a bit different if you lost 15 in a row,

well, first you'd be like, why am I playing all of my games against my division opponent right now? That seems silly. But yeah, when they're spaced over a season or two, then you're like, oh, okay, that's fine. It is easier to forget than like Chris Davis's extended rung of being bad because you presumably have other wins sprinkled in there but i think for

diehard fans you probably sit there and you're like you kind of dread those games i would imagine you sit there at home you're like i'm gonna do this again yeah i mean if you were a tigers fan last year you probably had that feeling about every game but yeah i wonder we should we should find a representative tigers fan and ask which kind of disappointment they noticed more. Did this disappointment stand out from the rest of the disappointments or did all the losses sort of blend together at a certain point? But you would maybe notice it more against a division rival because you're playing more games against that team. And so it would happen over the course of a season or two, as opposed to stretching over several years where you're playing a team sporadically and you might not even notice. about being hitless against Doc Ellis and having the most hit bats or most played appearances against any one pitcher without getting a hit in history. And he wasn't even aware of it or hadn't been aware of it before, I think, his son told him. And it was just because he knew that he'd had kind of a tough time with Ellis and that he didn't necessarily look forward to facing him.

But he just didn't even remember that he had never gotten a hit against him because it was over a stretch of several years and you face a lot of guys and maybe you forget what you did or didn't do so i could see how that might apply on a team level too i think you'd think you're cursed maybe and because chris asked about the postseason streaks of team against team ineptitude the yankees twins streak is actually the longest so 13 consecutive winless games for the twins against the yankees from october 6 2004 to october 7th 2019 and that's a 15 year stretch but obviously twins fans are well aware of that as are Yankees fans because when you get knocked out of the playoffs repeatedly by the same team when they are just this impenetrable barrier that you cannot get over as you try to advance in the playoffs

that has a way of sticking with you and the top of this list is mostly recent teams, as you would expect, because there are just more teams in the playoffs these days and more playoff games. So it's easier to rack up one of these longer streaks. But that Twins-Yankees streak topped the 11-game streak. The Red Sox beat the Angels 11 straight times. So that one was from 1986 to 2008. So, you know, maybe that's not quite as noticeable. Then you had the Yankees over the Rangers 10 straight times from 96 through 2010.

And the A's over the Red Sox 10 straight times from 88 through 2003. Those are the only ones in double digits. Wow. Wow. Yeah. I think the problem is that you get to that point and it's one thing to lose and feel embarrassed like that privately. But once the stretch gets long enough that like people at MLB.com are writing articles

about it, now other people start to become participants in your embarrassment. Yes. And that's much worse like you know we've all done doofy stuff in the privacy of our own homes and then been like oh i'm so glad no one was around to see that and then once you've lost 20 in a row and then the postseason's even worse because everybody's watching those games that's not a nice thing to point out to twins fans you already know how it feels yes yeah we did a podcast about that last year yeah yeah i mean there's got to be like a two times or three times postseason multiplier for this kind of thing just in terms of how much it bothers you like must bother you when it's a division opponent and so in the standings if you're counting the division race

that counts double but in the playoffs it counts even more because that team keeps sending you home time after time. So that is incredibly frustrating. Oh, boy. All right. Let's do our little draft or topic or whatever we're calling it. So I thought it might be fun to just shout out some of the small sample seasons that we have enjoyed, especially thus far, because we're now more than a third of the way through the season. And that's even assuming that they play all of the games. So we're more than a third of the way through the scheduled season. So we should appreciate what we are seeing while we're seeing it. So I know that I have been looking at the leaderboards and having my attention drawn to certain seasons more than others.

And some guys I've been checking on day to day because I have some interest in seeing what they do. And I figured this would be a good time to just sort of pick some seasons that we've enjoyed for whatever reason. Guys who've been really good could be guys who've been really bad. I don't know who you're going to draft. Could be guys who've just done something surprising for whatever reason. So I guess you can start if you have an aim ready and maybe we'll choose six or seven or we'll see how it goes. Sure. Okay. So my first pick is going to be eric cosmer's launch angle yes which has shifted quite dramatically i think my notes are right here so it's now sitting at 17.5 degrees and it's been two degrees and negative 1.5 degrees in the past two years and you know this is like this is a very small this is a very small sample even among the small samples that we are looking at this is a

quite small one so going into today Hosmer had only had 42 plate appearances but I watched I watched a little you know I've watched a fair amount of Padres, and I've noticed this about Hosmer. And his swing doesn't look that different to me, but I think that he is taking a slightly different approach based on his heat maps. And it would seem to indicate that he's attacking different pitches than he was. And it's, again, it's such a small sample. And I think that we have a tendency to over over enlist hitters into the fly ball revolution without really knowing you know if that's actually what's at work if it's an intentional

mechanical change there is an intentional approach change that's taking place i think cosmo's track record with sabermetric concepts and sort of that sort of feedback is checkered. Yes. So I hope that we see some reporting around this because I'd like to hear from him about what it is he's doing and what he thinks he's doing and what kind of led to whatever it is that he's doing. Or he might just say, I don't know, I'm just going up there and swinging, which would be interesting too. Yeah. It would be a different kind of interesting, but it would be interesting also.

interesting too yeah it would be a different kind of interesting but it would be interesting also so i think that that padres team is quite fun and in all likelihood if they advance to the postseason it's going to be because the young guys did really well but one thing that would certainly help them is if eric cosmer was not only not a liability but was an actual asset to their lineup and in those 42 plate appearances he has a 161 wrc plus so yeah that's that's new yeah it really is yeah his uh his ground ball rate if we want to just use old-fashioned batted ball stats down from 56 which is extremely high although not his highest right to 31.4 percent That would be a very large drop. And he's been the poster boy for this for years now, just when you look at hitters and try to say,

oh, this guy, he's a candidate for a swing change or for the five-ball revolution. And it's not always that simple, of course, but he has been an obvious candidate just because he hits the ball hard, but he hits it really down in the ground. Really down in the ground. Yeah, just one of the lowest launch angles, one of the highest ground ball rates. And you just want to be like, Eric, just elevate.

You do a lot of things well. You hit the ball hard. That's half the battle or maybe more. Just don't hit it down as much as you do. And I think there have been times when he sounded somewhat receptive to that and other times he sounded dismissive of that. about Hosmer's attempt to reinvent himself or revive himself and didn't get into that many specifics. But as Andy wrote it, Padres bench coach Bobby Dickerson had a heart-to-heart conversation with him in spring training and was just like, what kind of hitter do you want to be? You know, you're 30 now. Do you want to decline or do you want to really take hold of your career here? And it sounds like for whatever reason that resonated with Hosmer. And I don't know exactly what specific changes he's made.

If any, as you said, maybe it's more about pitch selection. But yeah, I mean, he's coming off two seasons where he was a below average hitter at first base. And I know the defensive stats are always more down on him than the defensive reputation but he's been a sub replacement level player for two seasons now according to fangraphs war and he's had seasons like that in the past but he's kind of alternated those bad years with pretty good pretty promising years He'll go from like replacement level to three or four wins. And you think, oh, suddenly he's figured it out. And then he unfigures it out. So maybe having two years where he really had not figured it out, just sort of put a spark into him. Or maybe it's just seeing all the great young talent come up around him and wanting to be part of that or being motivated by that. Who knows? But yeah, it's pretty exciting to see. And it's a small sample. We'll be saying that a lot, or maybe we'll just stipulate it so we don't have to keep saying it. But I think even for him, it's in this largest sample is probably pretty unusual. In fact, I Googled earlier and I saw

a couple posts elsewhere from like three days into the season that were like Eric Hosmer is elevating. Maybe just because like we're all looking for this, but also because it's just odd. It's unusual to see him even like have days where he's hitting a bunch of fly balls. So seems like something's up. Yeah, well, and it's interesting too because there's like a mix of other stuff going on. Like his BABIP is super low compared to his career average, and he's striking out a lot less. And so there's just there's a cool mix of stuff going on about Eric Hosmer. Yeah, I think he looks like a young Dane Cook. You will never be able to see it. I'm really sorry. What are you picking, Ben? I'm really sorry. What are you picking, Ben?

I think I will take Carlos Santana for my first pick. Yeah, Carlos Santana just has one of the great small sample slash lines right now. As we speak, he is at 179, 415, 254, which somehow translates to a 106 WRC+. which somehow translates to a 106 WRC+. So he has been an above average hitter despite a sub 200 batting average and pretty much no power. He has one home run in 94 plate appearances. And yet he's still been a pretty valuable bat. And the reason for that is that he has walked nearly 30% of the time. All the dang time.

Yeah. And not new for him to walk a lot. He's long been a patient hitter who takes walks, and that's been a big part of his value. But consistently, his walk rate has been in the roughly 13% to 17% range. And this year, it's been about double that. And Ben Clemens wrote about this the other day. And based on his findings, it doesn't seem like Santana has done anything dramatically different. And Ben seemed to find that maybe pitchers just haven't been throwing in the zone for whatever reason on certain counts. And he's just been smart enough to lay off and take those pitches. But at this point, you know, I don't know if he's been too passive and whether he should have swung at certain pitches that he hasn't swung at and he might have more power or whether he is actually taking the optimal approach here. because I watched him in a game the other day. Maybe it was the Sunday night baseball game,

and the announcers came into the game talking about how he was trying all these walks, and he was way above everyone else on the walk leaderboard. And then he walked like two or three more times in that game, and it was just like he would stand there, and they'd just keep throwing balls, and then he would just track down to first base. It just seemed like an automatic thing like boy why doesn't everyone do this why don't you all just stand up there and take pitches until eventually you're on base doesn't really work like that but for carl santana this year it pretty much

has yeah i really will be curious to see how long this lasts i mean again we could we could put that caveat on everything yeah that we're drafting in this draft but yeah ben's findings other ben's findings were very interesting because you you normally ascribe this sort of thing to you know a meaningful shift in approach and he's just doing what he's always done and it's just not being pitched all that optimally. And that's amazing. Yeah. And I think Ben found that this was the highest walk rate stretch of his career, right? Even though he's had a pretty long career, it was still abnormal for him, which doesn't mean he's doing anything differently.

But you can still say that over a stretch of this length, it's weird to see even someone who walks as often as he does walk this much. So right now, at least coming into Monday, he had 27 walks and no one else had more than 20, even though there were other hitters who had more games, more plate appearances, no one was in his neighborhood in walks. So I kind of hope that that really strange slash line can persist. I mean, I'm sure that he would rather get some hits and maybe some extra base hits too, but it also just goes to show you how far OBP goes. Like you can not have a high batting average. You can even not hit for power for a while and still be a valuable hitter if you're getting on base 40%

of the time or more that really just kind of makes up for a lot of other sins yeah well I I am gonna go in a dramatically different direction than that just a very different sort of strange line and with my second pick I'm going to draft Jay Bruce's batting line. This will feel, I imagine, somewhat familiar to folks who listened to me sort of marvel at Jay Bruce's line last year. I feel like I did that. So right now, Jay Bruce is hitting 227, 277, 591. Okay, yeah. And again, 47 play appearances, but all of that combines to a 125 WRC+. He has a 212 Babip and a 364 ISO, 90 average exit velocity.

I just, strange and imbalanced lines like this are delightful and fascinating. And so we salute them. And this is a different constitution of that than the one you just cited. But Jay Bruce, there was a while last year where I think all Jay Bruce had hit was singles and home runs. And that was great. And this isn't quite as dramatic as that, but it is also great. He has, he's just, does Jay Bruce actually have two triples this year? That's almost as weird as everything else.

I'm worried our stats are broken. I think that they're right. But see, this is strange. He's hit two singles, three doubles, two triples, and three home runs. That's how you get that line. It's great. Jay Bruce, you should never change. Please don't.

Yeah, that just goes to show you why batting average has kind of historically been overrated. Who needs it? You can have a really lousy batting average, and if you walk all the time or just hit a bunch of weird triples, you'll be just fine. Yeah, if you have a bunch of extra base hits, it's fine. It works out just fine. So yeah, Jay Bruce. Okay, well, I am going to take with my second pick Probably a pretty obvious one But Daniel Bard

Just the fact that Daniel Bard has a Major League stat line at all Is fun and notable So there's that And there's also the fact that he's been good Not only did he make it back After a seven year odyssey And injuries and yips and extreme control problems in the minor leagues. He is now back with the Rockies as a reliever, and he has been excellent.

His ERA is not fantastic. It's fine, but his peripherals are really strong, and he has walked one batter in 11 innings, which is just really extraordinary. I mean, extraordinary for anyone, but if you look at Daniel Bard's minor league stat lines over the last several seasons, you will see some extremely unsightly numbers in the walk rate column. In fact, there are some that go to like four digits. I mean, there's some that are like 243.0 walks per nine, which is obviously in a short stint, but usually you don't see that many numbers in the walks per nine column. It is generally only two numbers or one number and then a decimal point and then another number. And in his case, there are three numbers before the decimal point in multiple stat lines.

So he had really terrible time throwing strikes. And not only has he made it back, but he seems to have conquered that problem for now. And he got a save, his first save since 2011 which was much celebrated and he's on this team that has been unexpectedly exciting the Rockies off to a pretty good start playoff favorites at this point and they kind of cast adrift their high paid free agent bullpen that didn't deliver and in its place one of the people they have throwing quality innings for them right now is Daniel Bard so certainly one of the feel-good stories of the season and it's really feel-good just that he's there at all but the fact that he has been as good as he's been it's in a

similar genre as Tyler Matzik with the Braves who also made it back five years after his last major league appearance and also has been really fantastic but Bard was away longer was even further away from being back and he has really justified the the Rockies faith in him so that's been fun yeah and it's like those kinds of performances on their own, fun. The Rockies bullpen being kind of good. Lightfinger pitching being kind of good. Fun. Combine them.

Lots of fun. Yeah. So, endorse. I endorse it. Okay. Well, mine's a little bit of a cheat because it's very much a not small sample. All right. So, you can tell me if you'll allow this.

Okay. much a not small sample all right so you can tell me if you'll allow this okay and this has been true for a minute but it's just this wouldn't be an effectively wild draft if we didn't do this i'm drafting mike trout's placement on the career war leaderboards oh okay he is on the second page of them for position players at FanRefs, and that's delightful. He hit another home run while we were recording, so good for Mike Trout. Mike Trout, at this moment in time, and this will update,

it looks like our live stats are a little delayed. That's weird. Has 74.3 wins. Jay Jaffe has already written this year about how he is just Hall of Fame certified. He could stop playing today both in terms of his wins and also his time in the majors. He would be a qualified Hall of Fame candidate

and it's a little bit of a cheat because it's a lot more than a small sample. But those 82 plate appearances helped Ben because he's recruited almost a whole win this year. We're not yet in normal times for any number of reasons, not the least of which is that he is not leading the war leader boards. Get it together, guys. We check that data just to bump up Trout by a few runs. That would be nice.

But, yeah, that's dragging him down. But the other numbers have been very Trout-like. And I'll allow it, A, because I'm always in favor of talking about Trout on this podcast, but also because the idea of the draft is that we're talking about small sample seasons that we've enjoyed. And my Trout season is always on the short list of seasons that I'm enjoying because it's always really good yeah if we wanted to make this a fairer version of of a pick then I could say I have enjoyed his season since he and his wife welcomed their baby boy yeah because a lot of people want to make a lot of Trout's dad strength

I think it's the same and I I mean that as a compliment he seems very much himself a lot of people want to make a lot of Trout's dad strength. I think it's the same. And I mean that as a compliment. He seems very much himself. A lot of people change dramatically after they have kids, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. You don't know. I don't know Mike Trout, so I'm just saying he's hitting the ball in the same way that he always has.

Ben, have we talked about the propensity of teams to congratulate their players about the birth of their children? Have we talked about that on this podcast? I don't think so, no. Will you allow me a quick aside here? Sure. So it's very nice. It's a nice thing to be like,

hey, it's cool that you and your spouse welcomed a child into the world and that everyone's healthy. That's good. We want people to have kids if they want them and to be healthy when they are born. But I always find it very weird when the tweet's like, hey, congrats,

because it's like at the end of the day, this is an employee. And you're like, hey, congrats on the successful sex, you guys. So I find that funny. Yeah, it is a little bit like that. I mean, when we have a ringer baby, when someone at the ringer has a baby, there's a Slack channel where those things get posted and they're congratulations it's not a public thing really but then mike trout is more of a public figure more famous figure than we are at the ringer so maybe that makes sense but yeah i mean you

congratulate your co-workers i guess it's just that baseball players are very visible and uh and you know i'm sure that someone in the twitter replies to every one of those tweets shows up to say congrats on the sex so yeah yeah i believe that that is true i suspect that that is true and it's a nice thing but the angels tweeted about their kid being born and mocked up a baseball reference page for him and i'm sure that if mike trout's son is like i to play baseball, that he might be very good at it. But maybe he wants to be an artist. You don't know angels.

Let him live his life. He's a little baby. You don't have to put your expectations on him. Anyway, we can get back to the draft. But it's very hot here, and I am a little distracted. Yeah, this is a show where we've talked about the future war expectations of Clayton Kershaw's infant or whatever. So maybe we're not the ones to talk, but I agree that we should not put pressure on young Beckham Trout.

Beckham, right. Bat, right? Yes, right. It's Beckham Aaron Trout. Oh, boy. You should follow his passions, whatever they turn out to be. He should follow his passions, whatever they turn out to be. And just as we were talking about this, I got a tweet from loyal listener at BraveStats who said,

I've heard Ben Lindbergh discuss how Clayton Kershaw has lowered his career ERA with every season he's played. I think that streak was finally snapped, but it was a very long one. And I thought he might like this one. Since tonight puts 2020 back on track, Mike Trout has increased his career OPS plus with every season he's played. So I hadn't thought of that, but I guess that makes sense because he started in 2011 with that sub 100 OPS plus in his initial call up. And then he had some four Trout lower OPS pluses that he has improved upon. So yeah, he keeps getting better. And that's another thing to enjoy about this year's trout season is that his O-swing percentage is lower than any of his previous seasons. Maybe he's had stretches this long with chase rates that low, but he just

gets more and more selective every year. So whether he's getting stronger or not, I don't know. But he just seems to get better and better at picking pitches to swing at. So he is just the best and always gets better. entered the season as someone whose stats I was very much looking forward to, and he has justified that hype. He right now has a 52.4% strikeout rate, and that would challenge the reliever record. Now, obviously, he's not going to get enough innings to really make that meaningful. But the record in a real reliever season is Aroldis Chapman's 52.5% in 2014. And that is basically what Karen Chak has done so far this season. I would not be surprised if he could be better than that. He's just a lot of fun to watch too.

And he just has that herky-jerky delivery and he's just all in your face and I think Terry Francona calls him Gronk or Baseball Gronk because there's definitely a physical resemblance to Rob Gronkowski and so I was just really eager to see how high his strikeout rate would go whether he could translate that unbelievable K rate from last year in the minors to the majors. And he pretty much has. And he entered the season with the second highest projected strikeout rate of any pitcher after Josh Hader. And he has really delivered on that thus far. I think he has the highest, or maybe there are some guys with fewer innings who have more, but if we do like, let's see, minimum 10 innings pitched, I don't know if he's even had that many he has.

So if you set the minimum at 10 innings pitched, he is on top at 52.4, and then the next guy is Liam Hendricks at 39.5. So there's a big gap between Karen Jack and the second place guy with as many innings. Karen Chak and the second place guy with as many innings so he's just a strikeout fiend strikeout prodigy and I really enjoy watching him both on a statistical level and on an aesthetic level yeah yeah I have nothing to add all right what am I taking this has moved a little bit and again our life stats are down so I apologize this will be out of date even before we're done recording the podcast but i'm recording i'm drafting rather nelson cruz's 420 babbitt okay yeah because that's weird yeah nelson cruz nelson cruz has 420 babbitt you guys that's that's very strange that exceeds his career average by a considerable margin. He has a 420 BABIP, but he has, well, going into the day,

he had six home runs and now he has seven. So it's not like he's not thumping. He has a 620 slugging. Yeah. He has a 620 slugging and a 420 BABIP. That's weird. Delightful. Yeah.

And he tends to have a fairly high BABIP because he just hits the ball so hard. Yes. It has fluctuated. So it was like 351 in 2019 and 264 with the Mariners in 2018. That's a very large jump from abnormally low to abnormally high. But he has been capable of high BABIPs. But yeah, 420, that's extremely unsustainably high. But pretty fun when you couple that with the power that he always has he just uh just gets better with age i mean

he's 40 now you're not supposed to hit this well when you're 40 especially in this era so i don't know how he's doing it but it is pretty impressive well and i think one of the things i've always appreciated about him is that he is not you know the the thump has been there but he is not limited to that right like he can he can work a good at bat he does not just hit for power it's not like he's running batting averages in the 300s very often or anything like that but like he'll take a he'll take a walk it's not just it's not just the runs. And so then there's this year where he has literally a 420 Babbitt. And a 620 slugging. Yeah.

Who has the highest Babbitt right now? Is it Charlie Blackman? Let's see. Yeah, looks like it is. Yeah, that seems right. Charlie Blackman has a 493 Babbitt. I guess, should I just take Charlie Blackman while we're on the subject? Do it.

Maybe that's kind of a norm core pick to take the guy who's batting 446 or was entering the day. But look, it's fun. I mean, we don't even have to have the asterisk caveat discussion because I think pretty much everyone stands in roughly the same place there whether you think you need a literal asterisk or not I think everyone recognizes what this season is and that hitting 400 is not like Ted Williams hitting 400 we all get it we all can look at at bat totals but it's still fun to see a guy hitting 446 after roughly 100 plate appearances. That's a lot of fun. And again, if you pair good surprising player with good surprising team, that just makes it exponentially more fun.

And it's definitely something like I'm looking at day to day. Hey, what did Charlie Blackman do today? And you're entering the part of the season where it's still unlikely that he ends up at 400, but it's certainly not inconceivable. He is 0 for 3 as we speak on the day, so he's down to a lowly 430. So, you know, another 0 for, and we might not get a chance to talk about this anymore. So enjoy it while it lasts. But it's really fun to see a guy just like hitting 500 as he was, because if you do that really over any stretch, even if it's 20 games or fewer than 20 games, especially at the start of the season so that your average is just that and it's not weighed down by whatever you did before that. that and it's not weighed down by whatever you did before that it's especially fun just to see those really eye-popping numbers and he's a guy who is a fairly high average hitter like he hit 314 last year he hit 331 a couple years before that and yes of course that's somewhat cores enhanced but his zips rest of season projection is like 3.30 entering Monday. So it's not out of the realm of possibility.

It's unlikely, but hey, it's been fun while it's lasted. Yeah. And he's just so distinctive looking. Yes, that too. Can I tell another story? Sure. And then I'll stop telling stories. No, please.

So a couple of years ago, Fangraphs did a trip to Denver. We did like a staff trip to Denver and a reader meetup and whatnot. And we went to a Rockies game because, you know, of course we did. And after the Rockies game, we were all sitting in the bar at the hotel, which was quite near to Coors Field. And who should walk in but Charlie Blackman. And you know what? He's pretty right. He's very recognizable.

Yeah. That's one where you're confident you're like you're charlie blackman yes sometimes you look at a baseball player and i'm like please put a hat on but no charlie blackman very obvious and uh and craig edwards saw him and went hey charlie and then it became clear that craig had no plan and uh this is a nice story about craig and charlie goes hey man And then he kept walking. And it was lovely because, you know, he wasn't fussy about it. And Craig wasn't fussy about it because Craig's never been fussy about anything. And it was just kind of one of those moments where you realize that running into famous people in public

is generally going to be a moment where you know the first thing you're going to say, but not the second thing. Yeah. Yeah. That's the problem. There are a lot of celebrities whom I like a lot and I admire and respect, but don't really have any desire to meet them because I have no plan. And what am I going to say? Hey, I like you.

I mean, you know, a million people have told them that. A million people have said hello or can I take a picture? Can I have your autograph, et cetera? So I would feel a lot of pressure to come up with the question that this person has never been asked or the comment they've never heard. And really, I'd just rather not. But you're telling me Charlie Blackman didn't recognize Craig Edwards? That's the big surprise here. The Rockies had lost, so maybe his mind was somewhere else. I'm sure he'd recognize his byline. That's the thing. You've got to get headshots at fan graphs to go with those bylines.

Yeah, that's true. That's probably true. Yeah. All right. Okay. I am going to now vacillate wildly from my Mike Trout pick to something that is happening this very day, Ben. Well, first of all, I will say that Nelson Cruz has hit another home run since we were

talking. So he is now up to eight. Wow, okay. I am drafting sort of two combinations of players in the current Mariners-Dodgers game. I am first drafting the Seegers, the brothers Seeger, who are facing off. Despite the fact that the Dodgers and Mariners have played each other while both have been in the majors prior to now, have played each other while both have been in the majors prior to now this is the first time that they are both healthy and on the field at the same time is my understanding so that's fun they have both hit a home run in this game seekers was a three-run bomb kyle's was a solo shot the mariners

are winning ever so slightly in the third so that's the first one is that i'm just drafting the two of them in a game together and more broader slightly broader i am drafting the combined efforts of the mariner kyle's both seager and lewis because ben mariners are rough business to watch i don't know i don't know how much if any mariners baseball you'll watch this year. Yeah. You know what? That's making good choices for your own mental health. There are only so many hours in a day, and I know you stretch how many there are because you never sleep.

But it's been bad. It's not a good baseball team. There are some exciting things about it, but the bullpen in particular, quite poor. The pitching generally not the best. But the two Kyles, the two Kyles doing great. Kyle Seeger has a 133 WRC plus. Kyle Lewis, this is more exciting to the future of the Mariners, a 147 WRC plus. That's great. Kyle Lewis is running an unsustainably high at B high babbit but that is a problem for another day

because that's not the part of his stat line that i'm choosing to draft they have uh let's see combined for seven home runs and they're just generally playing quite well and seem to like kind of sit next to each other in the dugout every now and again like kyle the junior is learning from kyle the senior and it's nice it's a little transfer of hey you're one of the good position players on the Mariners tell me what that's like not a lot of people I can talk to about it yeah that's a good one I just got

a message from friend of the show John Chenier who has been watching a lot of Mariners baseball because he works for the Mariners and he just told me that the Mariners radio guys have been going on for a few minutes about friend of the show, Johnny O'Brien, two-time guest of the show, Johnny O'Brien, the great old player, because there is a Seattle University pitcher in the game. pitching or at least he's in the majors i don't know if he was pitching at that moment but he is the first major leaguer since the twins johnny and eddie o'brien to have come out of seattle university so it's been quite a while between debuts of seattle university major leaguers but

that's nice always in favor of johnny o'brien getting your time yeah sure okay this would be my fifth pick i believe i will take dylan bundy for my fifth pick so dylan bundy has been excellent so far through his first four starts of the season as tony wolf ably documented at fangraphs this week and of course i'm always a sucker for a prospect who makes good years after he was supposed to make good so dylan bundy was uh really just like a top top prospect he was according to baseball america the number two prospect in the game going into 2013 he was a top 50 ranked prospect for like four years. And he came up in 2012 and then just almost immediately got hurt and was gone for years and years and came back in somewhat diminished form and had injuries and came back not throwing as hard and sort of struggled to adjust to diminished stuff. So over the past couple of years, he actually pitched pretty full seasons for the Orioles,

which was a victory in itself that he stayed healthy, but he was not great. He was pretty middling in those years, maybe average-ish last year. And this year he has gone to the Angels and he has looked ace-like in his first four starts and always fun to see someone succeed at this point. And, you know, he's still 27 years old. He came up in his age 19 year, which seems like forever ago, but he's still pretty young. And we'll see if this is something meaningful. But as Tony wrote, he seems to have changed his repertoire a bit. He's backed off that fastball, which is slower than it once was and was not very effective over the last couple of years.

He's just throwing more breaking balls, throwing more sliders. He's got a pretty good slider. He's throwing that more. He is kind of pitching backwards a little bit and getting more first pitch strikes with breaking balls. So that's been fun to see. And I think a lot of people are likening him to Jake Arrieta and sort of saying LOL Orioles because we've seen pitchers go from the Orioles to other teams and get good before. I wouldn't really expect that same thing to apply to the modern Orioles because they have been taken over by ex-Astros people. And if there's anything that the Astros front office was good at, it was making pitchers

better, figuring out how to optimize pitchers. So you would think that they would be pretty skilled at that too. And as mentioned on our Orioles preview episode, the Orioles minor league pitchers had the highest strikeout rate increase of any organizations last year. So I would think that they were capable of telling Dylan Bundy what to do. But who knows? Maybe that message didn't get to him. Maybe he just wasn't ready to embrace it yet. Maybe he figured, I'm 26. I can still pitch the way I came up pitching, the way that made me a major leaguer and a top prospect, and just wasn't ready for it yet.

So you never know, going to a new team, new voices, maybe you're more receptive to that message than you would have been. And thus far, it's really paid off. Yeah, I mean, like, I feel like we're somewhat encroaching on the territory of Michael Bauman because I feel like these are the kinds of guys he likes. This is like the Lance Lynn of 2020. Bauman thinks that Lance Lynn was always great. I guess that's true. He does think that.

Lance Lynn is good again still. He is really good. Yeah, Lance Lynn crushing it. Yep. Lance Lynn sporting a look. That He is really good. Yeah, Lance Lynn crushing it. Yep. Lance Lynn sporting a look. That beard is quite full. Yeah. It's quite a full beard.

Everything's pretty full about Lance Lynn's look. I wasn't going to say that part, but it's not untrue. I think Lance Lynn thought the odds that we would play baseball in 2020 were fairly long. Let's put it that way. But he's pitching great. Pitching great. But yeah, it's always fun when guys randomly succeed. And gosh, if there's any pitching staff that needs a starter to be surprisingly good,

it's like, oh, I think the Angels dialed that up pretty nicely. You could still use a Ross Tripling, but who are we to criticize? All right. Who you got? Okay. Ben, I'm taking a thing that i hate oh okay but i find interesting i hate it because i don't want to talk about it so we're going to talk about it on the podcast no i don't care for the discourse around it and i don't really like hearing from

this player very often but i think it is interesting because there's an open question about what is causing it i am drafting what you're talking about yeah i'm gonna draft trevor bauer's strikeout right yep yep so you have to knock down the innings pitched to get this on the leaderboard because i don't think he's on pace to qualify just yet but he's struck out 46.4 percent of hitters he's probably doctoring the ball yeah he's also has a different pitch mix than he has in prior seasons and so i am very interested in the role that some kind of substance plays in this. Like, I think it is interesting and important to baseball to have a better handle on this. I thought your and Sam's discussion of this was good. Clearly, there are teams that have been more effective at getting high spin fastballs,

especially up in the zone, and Bauer's been quite vocal about how they might be doing that. And now we have several instances in his own career where he might have been conducting an experiment of some kind or trying to prove a point. And I don't really care about any of that part, but I think that there's sort of an important practical question about how you do this that I find interesting. And I think there is also an

important sort of like theory of baseball question for us to answer. Like, what do we want pitching to be and look like and mean at the major league level? How much intervention are we comfortable with? Who gets to decide how much intervention they're comfortable with like is this something that should be purely the domain of pitchers as long as everyone's on the same page does the opinion of hitters matter here because as you guys noted and as we know like there are hitters who will say it's fine because then you're not going to beam me with a fastball because you have a better handle on it but i just think it's an interesting conversation that i wish literally anyone else was at the center of yeah i'm quite tired of talking about trevor bauer dan wrote about this for us and i think appropriately decided to just sort of caveat the doctoring the ball part and set it aside because we can't know absent other reporting.

And he really is pitching differently this year, right? Like he's basically eliminated his changeup, which he never threw a lot, but is now throwing very little. He's throwing his four-seamer a lot more of the time. He's throwing the cutter more. So like there are changes. Curveball's going less often also. So like there are changes to the repertoire, and also there's this yeah there's this other thing so i'm i hate it but i am drafting it because i think it

is a really interesting and worthwhile conversation that reveals stuff about how baseball works and how we want it to work and what we think is important and what we want to be the sole sort of native talent of the pitcher versus what we're comfortable letting him kind of monkey with beyond that and like i said i really wish anyone else were at the center of it but it is a very dramatic change and one that i think is is worth noting and i can't decide if bauer is getting exactly what he wants or will end up kind of ruining the day that he's brought attention to this because the shift is so dramatic. And again, it's only 19 and change innings,

but the shift is so dramatic that people are going to notice. Yeah, people have noticed. People noticed before the season started. I wondered whether he would continue to do that after it had been pointed out in a number of places. And he has. So yeah, I also am sort of mesmerized by that. And I have talked about it and written about it.

So I won't rehash all of that. But I agree with you. I would assume that what he wants is attention as that usually seems to be what he wants and and he's getting it and uh also he seems with this specific issue to want to draw attention to it because he wants it to go away because he doesn't want there to be an uneven playing field when it comes to the sticky stuff, that he wants it just to be made legal for some standard substance to be available to all pitchers. That seems to be his preferred choice just because it seems pretty impossible to eradicate it entirely. And I don't know whether this ongoing demonstration, you would think that this just brings attention to the issue,

you would think that this just brings attention to the issue, raises awareness of it, shows the possible effect in a way that we couldn't quantify before we could quantify spin rates. So the whole thing is pretty fascinating to me. And I have wondered what is going on at MLB and what they're thinking about this because they have made noise about cracking down on this. And I can't think of a more suspicious case than bowers so if you really want to make an example of anyone then he would seem to be the guy so i don't know whether behind the scenes there has been any sort of warning or or discussion of that but i would be quite curious about it yeah me too all right I'm gonna take Clayton

Kershaw just because he's throwing harder again and it's fun to see him sort of reverse that decline in fastball speed that we've been seeing for a few years now so he is averaging about 92 with this fastball he has gotten it up to 94, and we have not seen him with numbers like that since 2017. And obviously he was effective with an even slower fastball. I'm not saying he couldn't get it done with slower stuff, but the fact that he has better stuff now after dedicating himself to higher fastball speeds, going to driveline, doing whatever he did there, it seems to have paid off. And that's great, not only because maybe he'll be a little bit better now and he has been good through his first three starts, except for a really seemingly unlucky home run per fly ball

rate. Like half of his fly balls have left the park. That's not great, but he has had good other numbers and the stuff is there. And that's good because maybe it just gives him a longer lease on his career and on his sort of extended post-peak compiling pretty good numbers period. I was just kind of worried that he would have a Felix type progression. And sorry to bring, bring that up. It just makes me sad that that's like the thing we point to. And we're like, Oh, you know how this guy sucks.

I know, but at least we don't have to say a Kershaw type progression, maybe because he has turned that around a little bit and you know, he's not back to Pete Kershaw, but if he gets another year or two, because let's say that he gets a couple miles per hour back now and then that decline starts again, it still takes a year or two to get back down to where he was. So that extends his period of possible effectiveness, which means more people get to see and appreciate Clayton Kershaw, and I'm all for that. Yeah, for sure. You want the end to feel dignified, right? Like there is just a nice, easy transition where someone's going to feel good about when he decides he's ready to retire,

we'll do a tour and everyone will kind of have their moment in their ballpark. Like I think Kershaw's a player who absolutely qualifies for that sort of treatment, and it'll be nice. It's nice to be able to say goodbye to people and players who have meant a lot to you in that way. All right. Well, do you have any last ones you want to mention before we stop? I have a couple.

I considered taking, maybe I am taking for my final pick here mike yastrzemski just because he seems to be a swing change guy and i don't know the specifics of his swing change but he has spoken about it in vague terms and said that he didn't want to be a slap hitter anymore and he started working on swing changes and making some changes to his mechanical setup and swinging at better pitches and all of that. And, you know, he's 29 years old, and he made his major league debut last year, and he was surprisingly good last year. He was one of the nice storylines of that Giants season, which was not full of exciting storylines. And I think there was a lot of expectation that he would probably regress, maybe perhaps be some sort of one-year wonder. And instead, he seems to have applied himself and changed some things. And thus far, it has paid off to the point where, as I look at the leaderboard right now, he is leading the Matrix in war. So not sure if that could continue, but he's been really impressive and if he is the latest

to make another Justin Turner-esque career resurgence late in the game that would be pretty exciting I haven't heard if he's worked with Doug Latta or any of the other specialty swing coaches but I would not be surprised if that came out, especially because now he's teammates with Hunter Pence who did that himself. So, yeah, I always like to see someone who is unsung succeed at a fairly late point in his career for a breakout. That's a really good one. Some of mine are mean. Okay.

Like, here's a weird thing. Edwin Encarnacion's average exit velo is the sixth lowest in baseball. That's surprising. That's surprising. That's just kind of weird. Like that doesn't mean anything really necessarily but like I think he's been dinged up a little bit so you know probably doesn't mean anything but that's a little strange because he normally

hits the snot out of the ball. Let's see what other stuff was interesting to me. Bryce Harper has a 212 WRC+. Yeah, that's like his MVP year range. It's better than that, yeah. Better. So that's cool.

There are a lot of really mean things you could say about the Phillies bullpen, but we will refrain from doing that because it seems quite unkind. How do we feel about drafting playoff odds? Is that allowed? Yeah, sure. I'd like to draft the gap in the Orioles playoff odds from opening day to today. Okay. I think that it's, you know, it's just a strange thing afforded to us by the very odd season that we are embarking on and the expanded playoff field. but like their odds were hovering around a little under two percent on july 25th and they're up to 27 percent wow today what were

they when the season started one percent or or lower yeah i think so this is a little tricky to tell right because the playoff format changed on right and. Right, and so I want to, oh, here we go. This is a better way to do it. Oh, look at, you know, it's tricky, except that it's not because David and Sean are wizards and they just put it in here handily labeled because they're quite smart. So in the old format, their odds were 0.2%. This was in the preseason. Their odds under the new format were 1.4%,

and their odds entering today were 27%. Well, yeah, that's pretty good. So I'm drafting the change in the Orioles' playoff odds because that's far nicer than talking about the Phillies' bullpen. Yeah. All right. Well, we didn't draft Fernando Tatis Jr. or Luis Robert, but I think that's because we've just talked about them so much.

Everyone knows that we are riveted by them and are studying certain aspects of their season. And Luis Robert's quest to swing more than anyone else and still be good, which has not gone so well for him lately, but I'm interested to see if he can adapt and evolve. Interested to see if he can adapt and evolve. And then Fernando Tatis Jr.'s really opposite trend where he has become much more selective and has been even better. That's been fun, too. But again, those guys are at the top of everyone's list, I think. Ben, I have two things to tell you.

The first of which is that Fernando Tatis Jr. has homered again tonight. Of course. So now he has 10. So that's one thing that i will tell you and then the other thing is that per bill plunkett the seager brothers are the first brothers on different teams to homer in the same game since felipe crespo and caesar crespo did it on june 7th 2001 okay moderately fun fact moderately fun fact all right we can end there Alright I'm going to go stick my face in the freezer Well quick post game updates here The Tigers did indeed drop that game to the White Sox

Lost their 6th in a row And fell to 9-11 The only runs the Tigers scored in that game Were driven in by brand new Tiger Isaac Paredes Charlie Blackman singled in his last at bat to boost his batting average back up to.437. And Fernando Tatis Jr., who homered once

while we were recording this episode, homered again after we finished recording it. He hit his major league leading 11th on the season, and it was a grand slam on a 3-0 count, up by seven runs in the eighth inning. Unwritten rules apocalypse. Rangers manager Chris Woodward said, there's a lot of unwritten rules that are constantly being challenged in today's game.

I didn't like it personally. You're up by seven in the eighth inning. It's typically not a good time to swing 3-0. It's kind of the way we were all raised in the game. But like I said, the norms are being challenged on a daily basis. So just because I don't like it doesn't mean it's not right. Padres manager Jace Tingler called it a learning opportunity because Tatis evidently had the take sign and swung anyway. Tatis said, I was locked in on the game just trying to produce for my team. That was on me.

I didn't look to my third base coach. I was just trying to take a good pitch and put my barrel on it, which he did. You could see Eric Hosmer appear to give him a stern talking to in the dugout after he got back. If you're wondering, the website Baseball Savant has records going back to 2008, and in that time there have been four Grand Slams hit on 3-0 counts, but none since May of 2014 when Alexi Ramirez hit a 3-0 Grand Slam off of Brandon McCarthy. 2014 when Alexi Ramirez hit a 3-0 Grand Slam off of Brandon McCarthy. The other 3-0 Grand Slammers are Evan Gattis and Alex Gordon in 2013 and Hideki Matsui in 2010. In three of those cases, the game was tied or the batting team was behind when the Grand Slam was hit. When Gattis hit his, his team was up 3-0. I can't at this second go back even further. We do have

pitch-by-pitch data dating back to 1988. Could check to see if there have been any 3-0 Grand Slams during that time with the batting team up by as much and as late in the game, but it could be a first in that period because a lot of batters don't swing on 3-0. Since 2008, batters have swung at 3-0 pitches with the bases loaded only 6.9% of the time. When they do, they usually don't hit grand slams, so there aren't a lot of those. And of course, because of those unwritten rules, it's a lot less likely to happen with a big difference in score. So hey, it's not great to miss signs, regardless of the score or the situation.

But the only real reason to give Tatis a take sign in that situation is to avoid running up the score or the situation. But the only real reason to give Tatis a take sign in that situation is to avoid running up the score on the Rangers. And frankly, as a fan, as a spectator, I'm much more interested in seeing Tatis swing away than I am in sparing the Rangers' feelings. It's sort of silly to tell players that they shouldn't play as hard and try to do their best just because their team is winning. It's the big leagues. These are big boys. They can take it, and I'm against anything that would prevent us from seeing Tatis hit bombs. It just comes down to whether you want to see the most entertaining players do the most entertaining things and express themselves, or you want to see less entertainment, less athleticism, fewer highlights, because tradition dictates that certain things aren't supposed to happen at certain times.

From the fans' perspective, at least, seems like a pretty easy choice. So this is just another example of Tatis being maybe the most watchable player in baseball and doing things that we don't typically see. That will do it for today. Thank you very much as always for listening. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. 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. Francis Higgins, Andrew Leahy, Enrique Wallace, Luke Wye, and David

Baltmanis. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. You can rate, review, and 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.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. We will likely answer some emails next time. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And we will be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then.

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