Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1687: Not Bad, Vlad

Episode Date: April 29, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan’s morbid press conference comment, the continued excellence of Byron Buxton, Mike Trout, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., an early-season dip in infield shifting and an interesting disparity in defensive disparity between the Padres and Dodgers, and Rob Manfred’s comment about sports betting and the pace […]

I'll try to be on time, April 29th, everything is fine, April 29th, I'll try to be on time, April. Hello. Did you see San Francisco 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan's response when someone asked him whether Jimmy Garoppolo would be on the 49ers roster on Sunday? I sure did, and it made me think of Sam. Me too. This is extremely Sam, extremely effectively wild response. So Shanahan said, I can't guarantee that anybody in the world will be alive Sunday. So I can't guarantee who will be on our roster on Sunday.

And you know what? He's right. He can't guarantee it. Although generally when people ask these questions, I think this is sort of presupposed, right? Generally baked into the question that, no, we can't predict if any of us will actually be alive at any point in the future. But provided that we are, will Jimmy Grappolo be on your roster? That's sort of the unstated premise of the question. But hey, he took it literally here. And I applaud making us all remember our mortality at a moment when we were not expecting to. So if baseball is a distraction from the slog to rigor mortis, then this press conference was not.

This press conference reminded us of that slog. There is context around the Niners and some of the trades that they have made and the particular sort of set of quarterbacks who may or may not be available to them in this draft that I'm sure inspired a great deal of speculation. And he is probably quite tired of hearing about it. But yes, it did make me laugh very hard. I guess it is kind of nice that we just assume everyone will be whole and well and rosterable by the time decisions like this get made. But yes, it did make me think of Sam and laugh pretty hard. Yeah. I guess I don't hope that this catches on because when reporters are trying to do their job and say when players will be available, it's helpful to be able to disclose that. But if

you're getting asked repeatedly and you can't or won't say for whatever reason, then you might as well have a little bit of fun with it. I don't know if this was fun. This was extremely morbid, but it was fun for us. I think you might as well mix it up instead of just saying no comment again. Yeah. In general, I feel as if we have all been reminded of our own mortality probably enough in the last 12 months, but yeah, it did give me a little bit of a chuckle. Yeah. So I was looking at the top of the world leaderboard as you were doing the other day, and I did take out the qualified only just so I could include Byron Buxton. I don't know if he would be included now or not, but Byron Buxton is now atop that leaderboard by a fair amount after his five for five day on Wednesday, which included a stolen base and a home run and an infield hit. Another one of these routine grounders that is a hit.

And his sprint speed on this infield single was 31.6 feet per second. Again, the elite threshold as defined by MLB is 30 feet per second. So this was way higher than elite. This is about as fast as anyone ever is on a baseball field. And I don't know if it's just anecdotal or not, but it just, it seems like there have been more routine grounders that have just been beaten out unexpectedly. It's like 90 feet is not enough anymore when Acuna and Buxton and all of these incredible athletes are playing so I mean Buxton who is now leading everyone

with 2.3 war and shows off his power and his unsurpassed speed in the same game it's just really kind of incredible and I know things have not been going well for the twins on the whole though they went well on Wednesday but I just hope that we can somehow

see a full season of this because he's leading with eight homers, right? And yet also he is beating out routine grounders. So that's a lot of fun. Yeah, I was asked about this in my chat today, and I had forgotten that they were playing a day game. And so I did not look at life stats. And I was asked, what you know so what are the odds of him winning mvp and i talked about mike trout and you know how buxton is behind him and that changed in the course of my chat yeah yeah but yeah it's i think that when we think about what makes mike trout so amazing and i am not about to compare on like sort of a pure skill

person from pure skill perspective, Buxton and Trout. So everyone relax. But when we think about part of what makes him so compelling and also just so dominant is that he is seemingly good at everything. And, you know, that has actually fallen a little bit, right? Like his defense is not what it was and what have you. But we're like, he can, you know, he can run the bases and he can hit and he hits for power and for average and he has this incredibly discerning batting eye. The pitch recognition is just really incredible.

it is unlikely for him to have like a 500 iso for the rest of the season like that seems that seems like a thing that's probably not gonna hold up and i i imagine that his you know his slugging will not sit at 938 for the duration and you know there are any number of things that we might look at in his profile right now and and think come back to earth a little bit but i i think that if he is healthy he is an incredibly talented player and in some ways is like a faster and and certainly more um defensively adept version at the the guy that we hold up as being so incredible and so while i think that mike trout is the best player in baseball and everyone can relax like it is very fun to see guys sort of make a legitimate run at challenging him and even if we expect that, you know, they might fall off a little bit as the season progresses. And you know, there are parts of

Mike Trout's current batting line that we can expect to sort of taper a bit too. So I don't mean to say that he will, he will maintain a 564 BABIP and Buxton will will flag like that's not what I'm saying. But it is just you know know it's really nice when there's like legitimate competition there and then it's it's also fun when the the gap starts to widen and you're like all right it's my job so i just am enjoying this so much and you're right it's been a rough early go for for twins fans and um they're so accustomed to seeing buxton hurt that i hope that things turn around for them. I expect that team will end up being pretty good because I think they're a pretty good team, but it is nice that they at least get to watch a healthy and productive Buxton at this moment in time, even if I'm sure they wish

that it was resulting in more consistent wins. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of Trout, as we often are, Mike Petriello pointed out the other day that he is having the best calendar month of his career by WRC Plus or probably most offensive metrics. And I'm sort of on the edge of my seat here seeing whether he will sustain that through a couple more days through the end of April. He has a 273 WRC plus and a 556 weighted on base average this month in 80 plate appearances. And those would be the highest of any calendar month in his career, which is pretty impressive. As Mike pointed out, he has had spans of this number of games or plate appearances that were this good or better. So he has a 1353 OPS as we speak on Wednesday afternoon. And he has had, according to the new span finder tool on baseball reference, where you can look up, say, what was a hitter's hottest 19 game 80 plate appearance

stretch or minimum 80 plate appearance stretch. And he has had four spans that were actually hotter than this one in, let's see, April to May 2018. And then his hottest ever was late April to late May in 2017. And he had a 1419 OPS in his hottest stretch of 19 games or 80-plus play appearances, but he could climb at least to the top of the calendar month leaderboard. And given what he has done to this point in his career, if he is still having best-evers at this point, then that's pretty good. So, yeah, as much as we talk about the new people on the block, Mike Trout remains better than any of them, probably. Yeah, but can we talk about Vladimir Guerrero Jr. for a second? Yes, we can.

He hit three home runs yesterday. Yes, he did. Two of those came against Max Scherzer. Ben, I don't know if you know this, but Max Scherzer is thought to be pretty good. Yeah, yeah. And his dad never did that. Never hit three homers in a game. Fun fact. I think that any time you have a son or, you know, brothers, it requires a bit more. It requires a bit more work for brothers because, I don't know, it just does. It just requires more work for brothers than it does for a father and son. Perhaps because there have been more brothers who I can think of than fathers and sons, although there have been fathers and sons who have been major leaguers.

But I think that any, you know, the younger surpasses the older older facts are fun facts i think they're almost always fun facts i know that's a bold thing to say given the critical eye with which we typically evaluate fun facts but i think that they're i think they're pretty much all fun facts yeah i mean i was thinking about the comparison between the two because vlad jr just looks like the uh as you say as eric long and higgins, messianic bats that we have been waiting for. So he's slugging 693 now. He's walked more often than he struck out. That's the thing.

If you were creating a player, you'd probably prefer Vlad Jr.'s offensive skill set to Vlad Sr.'s. I mean, as great as Vlad Sr. was, and it's like totally premature to say that Junior is going to have a better career, but like the tools, the skills offensively, at least you're starting from a place of plate discipline that Vlad Sr. never possessed. it was wonderful to see him succeed while swinging at everything and being a great bad ball hitter. But the fact is that he was not selective at all. And the data that we have on him from the latter years of his career after pitch tracking came in, like his chase rate, the percentage of swings outside the strike zone that he swung at from 2008 to 2011, strike zone that he swung at from 2008 to 2011, he went 44.3%, 44.1%, 44.3%, 44.6%. I am guessing that would not have differed much if we had that data for his early career. Although, I don't know, there's BIS pitch tracking data from 2002 on. And in those years, at least, it was in the 30s. It was lower.

That could be just because of the way that they classified those things. Or maybe he was more selective. It would be sort of surprising if he were significantly more selective as a young hitter. We tend to think of selectivity as something that improves as a player ages. But I don't know. maybe he was really flailing when he was losing it a little in his latter years there. But that's who he was as a hitter. And Vlad Jr., meanwhile, this year, he's at 18.1% as a chase rate.

That is wildly lower. That's like less than half the rate of what his dad was toward the end of his career. And even in the last couple of years, like as a rookie, he was 28.9%. Last year he was 23.2%. So he seems to be improving in that respect. So definitely not something he learned from Vlad Sr., but that just kind of gives him a baseline of like,

he is going to walk as often as he strikes out, especially if he keeps hitting for this sort of power. And the achievements that they have had to the same age, like Vlad Jr. debuted younger than Vlad Sr. And if you look at Vlad Sr.'s stats through his age 22 season, and he debuted in his age 21 season, through the age 22 season he played 99 games 381 appearances and had a 109 wrc plus and then vlad jr of course he debuted younger through his age 22 season which i guess is his current one but he just barely he just turned 22 like a month ago. And his career stats now, he has a 120 WRC plus and he's already played 205 games, 850 plate appearances. So like the breakout was not instant, but when you remember how young he was, it was like an accomplishment even to make it to the majors when the Blue Jays finally promoted him. And yeah, maybe he did still have some things to work on, but it's come together pretty quickly. Yeah, I think that it's always interesting to sort of see how non-prospect people, and by that I mean, you know, just like casual fans who are going to be excited about their favorite team, but aren't necessarily tracking

the ins and outs of their minor league system and not that you have to be like a prospect town to have heard of vladimir guerrero jr because he was the top prospect in baseball so he was a guy who we thought we had a good kind of sense of and he came you know with all sorts of expectations around how good he was going to hit and how well he was going to hit immediately but i do think it's pretty easy to forget, you know, just how big a deal it is to be competent or league average at the age that he was at all. And I don't know, I feel like we're going to look back on this, assuming that his trajectory sort of continues upward, perhaps not as, you know, with as steep a slope as it has right now compared to what he did in 2020 or 2019 but that we'll look back and

be like oh right like we were kind of all or not all but many of us were kind of silly about fretting over vlad because he was 21 and like barely 21 and i don't know it's just it's very exciting and i think that that the encouraging thing that you can kind of point to here is that like it is clear you know what is helping to fuel the the progress that he's had he always hit the ball hard um although his his average exit velo is up but you know i think the shift that you've seen in the launch angle and the subsequent drop in ground balls it's like oh right like if you hit the ball hard in the air and you're glad and you hit it as hard as you do it tends to go pretty well so yeah that was the thing with him the last couple years he was just pounding the ball into the ground yeah and so his launch angles have gone from 6.7 in his rookie year to 4.6 last year to

10.9 this year and average launch angle not necessarily the best way to look at these things but still that does you know show you some change there. And he is faster too. He's speedier. His sprint speed is up to average-ish. He's in the 48th percentile now. And that's a lot better than where he was even last year. He was 17th percentile. So it does seem like the weight loss, getting in shape the way that he did over the winter, probably related to that. Don't know if it's related to the offensive breakout, because I think that was probably coming anyway. But if he can stay in this condition, and it helps him play the field sometimes and, you know, just rack up value that way, like, he's not going to be his dad out there in the outfield, although Vlad's defensive ratings are not actually great if you go back and look at them. He had the great arm, of course, but doesn't have really great advanced defensive stats now that we have those. So really, his greatness was mostly about the bat too. And if anything, it seems like Vlad Jr., I mean, is putting pretty high expectations on him to compare him to a Hall of Famer who happens to be his father.

But he's probably used to those comparisons by now. And, you know, I'm just saying it's like a different shape of production. But if you had to, like, choose a skill set to build around, you'd probably go with Vlad Jr.'s. And that's saying something, given how good his dad was. I wonder if there are any psychologists who do research on children of parents who excel in their field, who then choose to go into that same field, and kind of what they're thinking about that. Because it's not an uncommon thing, and it's not uncommon in other industries besides baseball. In fact, probably much more common in other industries

because the barrier to entry is lower because it's easier to be a good attorney than a good baseball player. But I do kind of wonder about that, and they seem to have a very nice relationship. And it is also cool in the modern era to have like you know his dad is like tweeting about his son and he's clearly so proud of him and so i don't i don't mean to suggest any stormy dysfunction between the guerreras that's that's not what i'm getting at but it is kind of an interesting thing because the stakes are

high and you know who you're gonna get comped to and it isn't just going to be your peers, it's also going to be your parent. And when you have a parent like Vladimir Guerrero Sr., that's quite a bar to clear. And I can imagine that it could do a number on you in terms of how you feel about your own performance, sort of separate from how good that performance objectively is. And so it's always an interesting move to me when I was at Goldman, like the CEO's son was in my analyst class. And you were like, why though? First of all, why?

Because I imagine that you have the resources to go do really anything else besides work 70 hours a week. But it's just, you know, it's like, how are you ever going to strike out on your own enough to really feel like you've done something that's yours? And clearly people do. So I don't mean to say that you can't, you know, kind of go into the family business, but I'd like to hear more about that. Yeah.

Yeah. Me too. Yeah. There was a Steinbrenner family member who was in the intern class when I was interning for the Yankees. So yeah, this sort of thing, not uncommon. No. So I wanted to bring up something about shifting because we're all talking about the fact that the league is batting 232, which is quite low. Quite low. Yeah. And the results on balls in play, part of it is just that there have not been as many balls in play, but even the balls in play, batters are hitting 283 on balls in play now, which is also extremely low.

And I don't know how much to make of it because last year at the start of the year, BABIP was very low and I wrote about it and talked about it at the time. I wrote about it and talked about it at the time, and then it came up over the course of the season. And so I wasn't sure whether to chalk that up to just weirdness with summer camp and the 60-game season and all of that. And BABIP does tend to be a little lower than usual in April just in general, but 283 to this point in the season is very low. And you could attribute that to shifting and defensive positioning in part, and maybe you should. But I noticed that shifts have been actually a little less common this year than last year, which is pretty interesting because it's been kind of just a every season. And the last few, the increases have been pretty big. So like 2017, it was 12.4% of pitches the shift was on, like the full overshift. And then 2018, it went up to 17.7. And 2019, it went up to 26.2. And 2020, it went up to 34.6, which was a very big increase. And it was like, man, we've been talking about shifts getting more and more common for years, and yet this leap is one

of the largest. And so I was curious to see whether that would continue this year. How high could it go? And thus far, at least, it's actually declined a bit. So we've gone from 34.6% of pitches last year to 33% of pitches this year, which is not a big drop, obviously, but any drop is notable. But when you break this down by batter handedness, it gets even more interesting. So if you look at left handed batters, they have actually been shifted more often again this season for the umpteenth time. So like shifts on lefties, 2018, 29.2%, 2019, 41.5%. Last year, 49.9%. Basically, every other pitch had a shift on with a left-handed batter up. And this year, that has climbed again slightly to 52.6. So with a lefty at the plate, more than half of pitches, the shift is on the full overshift. So that's the default now. Basically, the shift is the default and the so-called standard alignment is the uncommon one. And this doesn't even include the strategic shifts as MLB calls them, which is just like a partial shift sort of.

So left-handed shifts up again. However, right-handed shifts are down. And that is what is driving the overall decrease here. So shifts on right-handed batters have always been less common, but they have been increasingly common. And last year, they got up to 22.9's a bad idea to shift on right-handed batters. And yet teams keep doing it. And one of the most fascinating contrasts, which Justin Choi brought up for Fangraphs this week in a good piece, is that there is a big difference between teams, whether they shift against righties or not. And it's kind of confounding. So as Justin noted, like the Padres and the Dodgers, everyone's

favorite rivalry, these two great teams going head to head. And it seems like the Padres have modeled themselves on the Dodgers in some ways. And yet the Dodgers are just defying all of the public research and shifting 58.5% of the time against right-handed batters, which is like they're on an island by themselves. The next highest are the Astros at 33.5, and the Padres are dead last down at the bottom 0.8% of pitches against right-handed batters the Padres have shifted on. They hadn't done it a single time until this week, and they've done it a few times this week.

The Dodgers are shifting basically almost at the same rate against righties that they are against lefties, and yet the Padres, who are shifting exactly the same rate against lefties, it's 60.8% of the time against lefties. And yet the Padres who are shifting exactly the same rate against lefties, it's a, you know, 60.8% of the time against lefties for the Dodgers, 60.7% of the time for the Padres. And yet there's this enormous disparity when it comes to shifting against righties. And it makes you think, it makes you wonder, because like we're in this era where it seems like a lot of front offices evaluate things in a similar way. yet this is one area where there are just dramatic differences like some teams are doing it most of the time some teams are almost never doing it well and it's interesting that it's a team that you know it's when we talk about sort of the gold standard of front offices

from an r&d perspective like the Dodgers are easily one of the first, what, two teams that you list when you do that. You know, it's like them and the Yankees. Those are the ones that we hold up and say, yeah, they're most teams and soon hopefully Colorado. So all teams have, you know, a good analytic sense. But even within that, there is a spectrum and LA is on one end of that continuum and has been for a long, long time. And so, you know, when we talked about this with Russell, I think that one of the questions that I asked him and something that has continued to kind of confound me is that I don't want to doubt public research because I think that public research can be really good and smart. And I think that Russell's research is really good and smart. And I don't think that you want to take orthodoxy sort of at face value because then you get stagnation. And we've spent the last 15 years trying to be skeptical of orthodoxy. But you do sit there and say, well, they have a lot of data that we don't have access to, and they're really smart. So surely they must be seeing something. And then you do get this kind of conflicting signal

from the rest of the league where there is variation in terms of how much they're doing this stuff. And, you know, it's not like they're slouches in San Diego either. So yeah, it is kind of confounding. I think the thing that I find promising, and I hope that it is something that say, I don't know if Rob Manfred pays attention to

when he's assessing this stuff is that there is variation, right? And that there is, when you look at it from a league-wide perspective, a kind of a reduction here. And it suggests that front offices are continuing to optimize the strategy of shifting. Now, that might not end up allaying his concerns, right, if what they do is shift more smartly and so we end up with the shift being more effective in aggregate because you aren't getting sort of the downside of shifting against right-handed batters but you are shifting more aggressively against lefties maybe that doesn't actually inspire him to leave the shift alone but to simply crack down on it more harshly but

i do think that like we have said for a long time that the shift is going to kind of sort itself out as teams think about, you know, just how optimal strategy it is and how as, you know, batters potentially adjust to it. And I think the fact that this is still clearly an open question and that it is something that is not settled means that it should be given time to get sorted because we don't seem to have a really conclusive answer, especially when you have smart teams like LA that are like, no, we're going to shift against everybody. We're going to shift against the righties and the lefties.

Shifts for all. So I think that we should let it sort out even if at the end of it, Manfred might look around and be like, oh, no, they've gotten smarter. And so it is worse. Yeah, I know. That's the thing. It's like up until now, according to research from Russell Carlton, the shift just hasn't really been a net positive for defenses, at least in recent years. And seemingly most of the reason is because teams are shifting too often against righties.

So it works against lefties, but then not working against righties undoes the defensive advantage there. So yes, if teams learn that lesson and stop shifting so much against righties, then they might shift less often overall, but the shift might be more effective. And that might be what we're seeing here, except for the Dodgers, the outlier Dodgers, and I can't figure it out. And the reason why it doesn't work so well against righties, I guess I'll just read from an article I wrote about this last October. So the most glaring problem with shifting against righties is the huge hole it creates on the right side. When the shift is on against a lefty, the lone fielder on the left side

of second can stand somewhere in the vicinity of the standard shortstop position, not too far from the second base bag. There's still plenty of unguarded territory, but at least the solitary fielder can take up position in the highest traffic lane for opposite field grounders. When the shift is on against a righty, though, the lone fielder on the right side of second is the first baseman, who has to stay close enough to the baseline to get back to the bag for force outs and sometimes to hold the runner. That leaves an even wider swatch of primes real estate for hitters vacant. What's more, the throw to first is more difficult for fielders on the left side of second and weak armed second baseman may have trouble firing to first while

moving to their right in distant territory. And so what you tend to see is that unlike lefties who tend to strike out more often when the shift is on, righties actually put the ball in play more often when the shift is on because I guess they see that huge hole and they want to take advantage of it. And so on the whole, the shift does suppress Babbitt, but it also seems to come with these associated effects where pitchers are maybe less able to throw strikes or less willing or likely to throw to certain parts of the strike zone. And so they end up walking more batters and that benefits the offense too. But anyway, all of this research from Russell Carlton, from Russell Eason, from Tom Tango points very strongly to this not working. And yet there are the Dodgers who you would really think would know better than anyone. And when I talked to an executive from a non-Dodgers team last year when I was working on this piece, he said,

the amount the Dodgers shift is very tough to justify, but also I think they do everything about as well as can be done. So the fact that the Dodgers are this aggressive in shifting leads me to believe they've got info we don't, which is really interesting because like what info could it be? I mean, they all have StatCast info. got info, we don't, which is really interesting because like what info could it be? I mean, they all have StatCast info, like they could be analyzing that data in different ways, but it's not even like there's that clear a trend toward like, oh, the ultra analytic teams are shifting against righties and the more traditional teams are not or vice versa.

Like, yes, there are some teams that you think of as sort of stat head teams toward the top of the list. It's like Dodgers, Astros, then it goes A's, Marlins, Tampa Bay, but then it's like the Royals. I mean, yes, you've got your Dodgers and Astros and Rays at the top of that list, but also like at the bottom of the list you have like Milwaukee like the Brewers are are shifting fourth least frequently against righties and Milwaukee's like lots of former Rays people running those teams or former Astros people running that team so it's like you know Cleveland is is toward the bottom like there's no clear

trend here and yet there's such a big difference that it's like either the dodgers are actively hurting themselves with the strategy or they know something no one else does or i guess like i don't know if a difference in personnel could actually make the difference like right it's the composition of your infield or your pitching staff like are the batted ball tendencies or the defensive tendencies so pronounced that it might actually make a lot of sense for one team and not for others? Maybe, but I don't know. It's odd when you have most of the league, it seems like, is maybe reacting to the recent research that says this is a bad idea, but then you have the

Dodgers saying, nope, actually, it's a great idea and we're going to keep doing it. And this is why we should let it continue to play out so that we can see what's what. Yeah, I agree. So since you brought up Rob Manfred, I guess there's one more thing that we could talk about when it comes to Manfred. So there was some kind of conference that was held by Sportico, which is a company that covers the business of sports. And so there was a public speaking appearance for Rob Manfred and other commissioners. And so this was an excerpt from that event that was tweeted by Bill Shakin of the LA Times. And he says, attributing this to Rob Manfred, sports betting is a massive opportunity for fan engagement. And he said, Adam Silver, NBA commissioner, told him, Manfred, to stop talking about pace of game because baseball's pace of game is perfect for sports betting, meaning wagering between pitches and innings. I didn't see this event, so I don't know exactly what the context was or what tone this was said in. So I don't know if Manfred's point was that, oh, he's going

to stop saying this now because Adam Silver told him to, or whether he was celebrating himself for still saying it and still advocating for shortening the time between pitches, even though it might be in baseball's best interest financially not to. So I don't know what the takeaway for Manfred was here, what point he was trying to make, but it's still interesting in a number of ways. I think that he said this and that other commissioners are giving Manfred pointers on what to say or not to say about his sport. I'm breathing. I'm sighing heavily. I am distraught. I don't want to care about sports betting. Here's the good reason for me to be a bit sort of taken aback by this quote. I guess there are two. The first of which is,

I think that even enthusiastic bettors would acknowledge that there might be some ethical quandaries to sort out between a league being intimately involved with betting on its sports, right? There's some stuff that you got to be mindful of if you're going to dip your toe or more than dip your toe into that. And we want to ensure the integrity, the competitive integrity of the sport. And you need to make sure that you're sort of, the incentives are aligned such that winning the contest honestly is what's considered most important. And then any sort of revenue that can be derived from gambling is ancillary to that consideration. So that's a potentially sticky wicket. And I think that we're well served to be kind of nervous and skeptical about it, even if it ends up being

totally fine, because you want to make sure that you don't get yourself in a position where there can be some kind of fixing scandal, because that can undermine the integrity of the sport for years years and years and years right and so i think being really nervous about it is the right sort of default because then hopefully you're approaching it with a lot of care and consideration and you're making sure that there are strict firewalls between the sort of betting arm of things and teams and players and managers etc so i think that there's that part of it that's like really important. And that's a good reason. And the other good reason is that like gambling can be a really destructive force in people's

lives. And sometimes it's fine and fun and you waste 20 bucks and you're like, yeah, whatever. You know, but it can really do a number on people's lives. And I think having some amount of trepidation about sort of opening the floodgates to that is reasonable. I think it's okay to be nervous about that. So those are the good reasons. The bad reason is that I don't care about it and it's not how I engage the sport. And I'm going to have to know so much about it. Yes. I am also personally not interested in it. And I don't know exactly why that is. I'm interested in sports or baseball, at least.

I'm interested in analytics, but not really interested in trying to make money off of it. Yeah, it doesn't grab me. No, I guess I'm just less animated by making money in general than I am by making stuff, making some kind of content that people will enjoy. Do not cancel your Patreon subscriptions because I said I was less animated by making money. Still interested to a certain extent. In our last two episodes, I have said, I don't care about discourse and you said, I don't care about money. So our Patreon funded podcast is going great. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, not something I'm personally interested in.

And I don't care if other people are, if they enjoy it responsibly to the point that it doesn't get in my way. I think that's why people get cranky about it, because it's not cordoned off. It's not like, oh, if you care about betting, you can go here to get your betting stuff. It's sort of seeping into mainstream coverage to the point where you can't avoid it. And I don't mind a certain level of that, I guess. But if it's really in your face, then it's just're able to do so responsibly. And it does seem as if these

industries sort of work with the basis that they know that some small percentage of people are not going to be able to control themselves. And so that kind of calls the whole enterprise into question. I agree with you. If it is just recreational and in moderation, then sure, whatever. People spend money and waste money in all sorts of ways. As long as it's not hurting anyone or hurting yourself, then fine. But in many cases with gambling, it is hurting people. And so I don't know to what extent the leagues and these entities are responsible for ensuring that that doesn't happen, especially when it seems like a large part of the business is based on exploiting the whales, as they're called.

So yeah, I think it is jarring to see MLB go from being anti-gambling and no, we would never, and this is illegal, and we can't, and you are prohibited, to having- An official gaming partner? Yeah. Maybe multiple, and hosting a show called MLB Better's Eye or something presented by BetMGM that's on the MLB homepage. It's a rapid about face and it's not just MLB, it's all the leagues. And of course it is because it's a goldmine that's just sitting there. So I don't expect them not to tap into that really. But this quote is interesting because it is true that baseball does seem to be pretty well positioned to take advantage of this in that if you're doing prop bets and you're just going pitch by pitch, like there are a lot of pitches, like there are a lot of events in baseball games that one could wager on and that you actually have time to wager on. And in general, like I want people to be more interested in baseball. And so I have mixed

feelings about this. Like if people are coming to baseball to bet on it, and then also they turn out to like baseball and they're baseball fans, like that's cool. That'd be nice. And Sam talks about how when you care about something, there's kind of a critical mass of cultural attention to something where you want to feel like other people are paying attention to this too, and it matters and it's important. And so if people are paying attention to baseball, even if it's for betting-related reasons, then, well, hey, at least we won't get as many stories about baseball dying because at least we're paying attention to baseball in some way. On the other hand, if it is purely for moneymaking purposes or if it interferes with the game on the field, that's the thing that this quote hints at. And, you know, I don't know whether Manfred was saying he's going to resist this pressure. And even if he was saying that, will he actually be able to? Just because it will make you wonder, right? Like you'll just have to have that in the back of your mind. Like, why don't we have a pitch clock yet? Is it because players don't want it and MLB hasn't imposed it yet and there

just isn't the collective will? Or is this in the back of the league's mind that hey maybe it's actually not a bug it's a feature for us financially if these games take forever well and i think there's that part of it and then there's also the the part of it that's just kind of like potentially embarrassing for rob manfred which is that another sports commissioner had to be like no don't don't mess about with your game because if you leave it alone, I mean, and you're right to say that we don't know if this really means leave it alone, right? This might mean optimize it for gambling,

which isn't necessarily leaving it alone at all. It might result in its own set of changes that we're going to sit and huff about and be mad that there's discourse. And so there's that part of it. But also it's like, do you really need Adam Silver to tell you the game is good like there's good stuff here i don't know there's part of it that i try not to give too much weight to because i think there's this like

there's this ongoing conversation among fans and we've perhaps talked about this before about like rob manfred hates baseball or he loves baseball and it's like i don't know i don't know that i will ever be able to satisfactorily know what Rob Manfred feels in his heart about the game of baseball. And I don't know that loving it the way that a fan does is necessarily quite what you want from a commissioner because I think that there is a critical eye that needs to be applied to the game.

And we tend to get kind of stuck in stuff we love and not want to change it too much. And there is a balance to be struck between letting the game stagnate and respecting it for the institution that it is and kind of keeping the stuff that made us like it in the first place. And I think that that balancing act is really difficult and doesn't necessarily require you to like be a fanatic. It might require you to be an appreciator um and someone who kind of takes your stewardship of it seriously but i don't know that the the love hate conversation is particularly productive but i think that we keep getting instances and examples

of him just not having a great feel for like what people like about the sport and i don't like this part of it like the the ability to sit there and like do prop bets pitch by pitch is like i can't think of anything further away from the way that i experience the game but it is the way that someone experiences the game and it seems like an obvious one it's like you really needed like the basketball guy to be like hey rob you know how you know your sport i do yeah so like that part of it is sort of disconcerting to me also and i think that we are not naive to think we are not so naive that we think that like the money consideration is ever very far away from the decisions that baseball as a mlb as a as a corporate entity makes like that's clearly a driving motivator for them and

a driving force in their decision making but i don't know that i need to be reminded of it quite so often yeah so that's the other part where it's like i don't know maybe what what you could have said to adam silver rub is like and also we get two more innings of mike trout if we keep games nine innings long like isn't that great because mike trout's awesome right like there could have been that rejoinder and it's just i understand this is being delivered to a very particular audience right so I don't want to make too much of it just like I don't want to make too much of the love-hate discourse and I don't want to make too much of people liking something in the game that isn't particularly compelling to me but it does leave you with just sort of an uneasy feeling

because we're about to go into a moment where we're defining and deciding what's important to us about baseball. And, um, it's gonna, you know, have significant repercussions for the people who watch it and play it and work in it. And I wish that I felt better about the, the person who sort of spearheading one side of that negotiation and conversation because I don't always like what I hear from him. So that's the part of it that makes me a little, it gives me a yeesh. And then I have to sigh heavily into the microphone and make Dylan just really happy.

Yeah, he addressed this in an article in The Athletic last year where he said, what I do take exception to, people routinely write about how I feel about the game. They have no idea how I feel about the game. The fact that I don't wear an I love baseball tattoo on my forehead doesn't mean that I don't love the game. I actually do. I've devoted the vast majority of my career to it. And I believe that. I do believe that he's devoted most of his career to baseball. He probably likes baseball on some level, but I think the fact that he has that reputation is because of the way he talks about it. And not that he has to be rah-rah, everything is perfect. But you do, if you are the commissioner, want to advertise the sport and make

it sound like something that people would want to watch. And all too often with him, he either just like talks about the revenue or something just kind of, you know, cold and economical and not something that makes you feel very romantic about baseball. Or he talks about the problems. And as we have said, like he should be thinking about the problems. That's part of his job. Yeah. But, you know, also like consider the PR aspect of it. And you are trying to sell your sport, sell your product to a certain extent. And he just doesn't do a great job of that. But yes, I think the fact that

he is aggressively trying to shorten games, I guess, you know, if he has the zombie runner rule and seven inning games, then I guess there are fewer opportunities for between pitch wagers, Yes, there are fewer opportunities for between pitch wagers, right? But I do wish that he would just try to shorten the games in terms of time between pitches instead of shortening the games by just lopping off innings. And that came up again this week because the Pioneer League is experimenting this season with having no extra innings at all. And games just end with home run derbies after nine innings, which I would hate if it were in MLB. I don't really care in the Pioneer League, which is a partner league of MLB,

but it's indie ball. They don't have a lot of money. They don't have a ton of fans. They don't have a lot of players to spare. If they want to end games earlier, I don't really mind that. And they said that it had nothing to do with MLB, that they came up with this idea and implemented it on their own. I don't know. But as long as that stays in the minors or in IndieBall, I don't care. But it just kind of added to this drumbeat of trying to shorten games in various ways. And so I just hope that this pressure toward maybe more time being better for gambling purposes will not work against any efforts to try to cut down on that time for watchability purposes and just aesthetic reasons.

So those things are sort of intention and given just how much money is at stake here, that is something that we should probably keep in mind. Right. And you sit there and you say, well, maybe the effect of this is that it makes the zombie runner and the seven inning double header thing, maybe this puts that firmly in the bucket of stuff that we just entertained during the pandemic because we wouldn't want to cut out two innings worth of action when someone can be betting on like, people bet on like if it's a ball or a strike. I don't want to know the answer to that. I know I have to know the answer soon, but I don't have to know it right now. So I don't want to know. But, you know, maybe in some respects this serves a couple of time that could be cut out of the game to incentivize better action.

And so it might end up just leaving the game the same. And maybe that's okay. But like you said, I don't necessarily want this to be the reason that we're doing anything. And there are going to be times when it might serve to keep the game in some form that we find compelling. But there might be just as many where we're like, do we really need to let people bet on how many times the guy's going to un-Velcro his batting gloves? I assume you can't bet on that right probably not if we could get into like weird effectively wild email show type hypotheticals if we could bet on that strange stuff happening maybe that would get me hooked but i don't know

i'm gonna have to know and people are probably wondering well meg why do you have to know and it's like because i helped to run a baseball. And if this stuff is going to be instrumental to the, you know, the business model of the sport and the way that we think about rules and competition, then it's not that I'm just going to have to know about it. I'm going to have to know a lot about it. And I could be spending that time on anything else, any other baseball thing. I could go learn other baseball stuff. And that's not a good reason for us to not do something because that affects a very small percent of the population, and most of our listeners don't care about that part of it.

And I acknowledge that, but I do think that there are other more defensible reasons that we can put up apart from just inconveniencing me that are more compelling. So I'm going to advocate for those publicly while privately just not wanting to learn about lines, prop bets. I don't want to know about that. Plus, if we have more of this stuff, you know how many more winter meetings we're going to have to have in Vegas? It's going to be so many. True. Yeah. I smelled like a cigarette for like a week after that. I didn't smoke a single one. I didn't smoke any.

It's in the air. It got in my hair. It smelled like cigarettes. People gambling at 8 in the morning smoking a cigarette and drinking a whiskey sour and you're just like, this is America. I don't know if we should feel good about it, but here we all are.

Anyway. That's a bleak vision of baseball's future. But on that note. ADM whiskey sours, yeah. Probably not the best. So let's close with a stat blast, but we're going to have some help this time, some in-person assistance. So anyone who has been listening to the show for a while has heard the name Adam Ott. Adam is a longtime listener who has also done a lot of research assistance for

the podcast and done a lot of stat blasts for us or supplied the data for them at least. And fortunately for him, unfortunately for us, Adam has a new job with a major league team that will preclude him from assisting with future stat blasts, although it is quite exciting and relevant to our audience. So we are going to bring on Adam for a first and last appearance, or at least last for a while, and he will deliver a stat blast of his choosing. So without further ado, let's let Adam make his podcast debut. We are joined now for the first time by frequent StatBlast consultant, Adam Ott, who is about to be a former frequent StatBlast consultant and a brand new data scientist in the R&D department of Cleveland. Hello, Adam. Welcome and congratulations.

Hello. Thank you. It's good to be here. And thank you for your help over the months, maybe years at this point. You have helped with many a StatBlast, although this will be the first time that you are delivering one. So listeners of Effectively Wild know you as frequent StatBlast consultant, Adam Ott, but you have a life outside of StatBlasts. That is just one of the many things that you do. So now that this is our first time actually talking as opposed to corresponding, tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from and what you've studied and how you got to this point.

Yeah. So I've spent the last five years or so studying statistics at BYU in Utah. I spent most of my life in Utah. I was born in Baltimore and moved to Boston when I was young and then moved to Utah when I was about six years old and I've lived here ever since. And I guess the nice thing about being from Utah is baseball isn't super big in Utah. There isn't a local team besides AAA, the Salt Lake Bees. So baseball kind of became my thing growing up, and math was kind of my other thing. So I just kind of combined the two when I went off to college and decided to study statistics and hopefully break into some baseball team eventually, which

I'm lucky to get the chance to do now. And one of the questions that we often get sometimes offline is for folks who are kind of in your position, who are interested in the game and have statistical acumen and are good math sorts, how they can go about getting a job in a front office. So I wonder if you could tell our listeners, you don't have to reveal any secret sauce. I don't know that you have any secret sauce to reveal just yet, but what the process was like for you, both from an interview perspective and then how long it took you to go from kind of submitting a resume to knowing that you had an offer. Yeah. So I think one of the things that I did was I just followed all the kind of the job

listings on, on fan graphs and things would pop up, pop up on Twitter every once in a while. And I would just apply when I saw them. I kind of had a working resume of things that I've done, baseball projects that I've done. And I just used those to try and get my foot in the door when I applied. And sometimes I didn't hear back. But luckily I got to hear back from Cleveland

and went through their process. And yeah, it was a good experience for sure. And I wish I could say that they heard about you on Effectively Wild because you were a frequent StatBlast consultant. But as I understand it, that probably was not why, but who knows, maybe it helped. I'm sure you didn't need the help. But what sort of skills did you cultivate to get to this point? Because usually when I send you requests for assistance with the stat blast, I'm not really taxing your abilities. I'm just asking you to do pretty basic SQL queries with your RetroSheet database. And I know that you have the capacity to do more advanced modeling with more advanced programs. So how did you learn all that stuff and what are the valuable skills

to pick up if you're hoping to work in baseball operations? Yeah. So through school, I've learned a couple of different programming languages. I've used mostly R, the programming language, as well as SQL. And you can only learn, I guess, so much through school. So it helps to do side projects and be interested in things that have data available. And luckily, baseball does have a lot of data available online. So I learned kind of the basics in school.

And then just through doing different baseball projects, I got better and better at R programming. I do think it was helpful to download a retrofit database to work with StatCast data as well, to work with StatCast data as well, just because the basic data manipulation type skills that you can get through working with different databases is, I think it's a key in developing models and more kind of advanced models. And have you found a particular interest or set of interests within the game

for your own research projects? I know that we task you with stuff that is monumentally important to the Effectively Wild listener, but is perhaps less pertinent to the way that a front office would operate or some of the questions that they would ask. Is there something that you're hoping to answer as you go on to the team side and get access to more data? Yeah, it's a good question. One of the things that I did in school was I created a kind of a clustering model to group baseball players together by their kind of batted ball tendencies, launch angle, exit velocity type stuff. And I think with the types of things that teams are having access to with the hockey technology and different player

movement type things. I think it would be interesting to incorporate that into kind of my clustering of different baseball players and grouping different players together. How did you initially get hooked on baseball? Because you mentioned there wasn't that much baseball locally. So what piqued your interest? So I was just kind of the baseball kid growing up. My mom taught me kind of how to read box scores when I was young. And she read Moneyball to me when that came out. So I guess just kind of like a typical... Wow. Was that like bedtime reading, bedtime story, Moneyball?

Yeah. Yeah. I was like 10 years old and she read it to me so she could edit out some of the swears. But yeah, Kevin Euclid at the time was my favorite player. So when he got a shout out in the book, I was super excited. And so I don't know, baseball just was kind of my thing growing up. So I wonder what she said for my redacted doesn't work in the playoffs. My stuff doesn't work in the playoffs. She might have had to come up with something creative on the fly. Yeah. And do you have a sense of what you're going to be doing for Cleveland? models. Their R&D group works, some with player development, some with acquisition. I'm not exactly sure what types of projects I'll be working on, but some sort of fitting statistical models with

the data that they have. Yeah, it seems like people who get baseball jobs never know exactly what they're going to be doing. It's just a leap of faith, something that uses my skills. So yeah, and how did you start listening to us? Because the way that you became frequent StatPlus consultant, Adam Ott, is that I noticed that you were in the Facebook group often responding to listeners' questions in there, and you were doing so with some real rigor, and it was clear that you had a RetroChic database and some ability to use it. And so then I started asking you for help from time to time. So my first episode that I listened to, I downloaded an episode. I was looking for baseball podcasts to listen to on a long flight that I was going on. And it was a John Jaso interview episode. And I was kind of hooked after that. I was going on a trip with my brother and he was actually a listener before me. So when he found out that I was listening, he told me there was a Facebook group.

And when I saw there were questions in the Facebook group, I thought I could answer a couple and kind of went from there. And this is maybe an unfair question. It kind of puts you on the spot because you have to think back on all the many, many SAPLASks that you've assisted with. But I'm curious if there were any that really stumped you, maybe one that didn't end up making it to air because the query ended up being a little too circuitous for us to really make use of? I think the one that I spent the longest time on was the very first one. It was about the curse of Barry Bonds and how the Giants had a different left fielder for 12 consecutive years. Oh, yeah. I think they extended that streak this year.

They had a different opening day left fielder again. Yeah, they extended theirs to 14, and the Padres actually also extended theirs to 16. So the Padres tied the all-time lead for most unique center fielders in a row. So yeah, I don't think there were any that I couldn't get an answer to, but there are some that definitely took longer than others to try and figure out how to query the information

that I needed to find. Yeah, I don't think I ever stumped you. So did you have a backup plan in school? Was it baseball or bust? Or did you have something else that you would want to do or were planning to do if baseball didn't work out immediately? I thought about going into just like healthcare research. I like doing that, but I didn't enjoy it as much as my baseball research. So I'm glad

that I got a chance to work in baseball because it seems a little bit more enjoyable to me. But yeah, with statistics, it's nice because there's a lot of different things you can end up doing if you don't get your number one choice, I guess. All right. Well take it away. You have a stat blast for us? Yes. So while thinking about doing a stat blast of my choice, I thought about what could be an interesting problem that a listener might ask, because I'm not great at coming up with questions on my own sometimes. inning rule that sometimes isn't the most beloved rule by people with a runner on second. And I thought, well, who would be the best pitcher to have in that situation? Basically, you want a pitcher that allows no runs when given a situation with a runner on second with nobody out. So I

looked up in the RetroSheet database, all the situations where there's a runner on second and nobody out and I filtered down to pitchers that had at least 30 such situations and then found their success rate of allowing zero runs and the number one pitcher in this situation the pitcher that you want to put on the mound in the 10th inning or 11th inning of an extra inning game in 2020 or 2021 is Mariano Rivera that checks out so maybe not the most helpful to tell someone that if you if you have a pitcher to put in them on the mound that you want them to be Mariano Rivera but he has been it had been in uh 48 such situations with a runner on second, nobody

out in his career, and he allowed zero runs in 29 of those situations, so that's 60.4%. The next best was Tom Phoebus. Oh, okay. Not quite as big a name. Yeah. And then he had allowed zero runs in 60% of those situations, followed by Fred Brining in 59.5%, followed by Aroldis Chapman. Interesting. So was there an error effect here?

Did you see that a lot of the top ones tended to come from a certain time, or was it pretty well distributed? I didn't notice a particular error effect. I didn't look for an error effect of the top names. A lot of the names are names I don't recognize. So, I mean, that could be because baseball history is long and they're distributed equally across, or it could be that it's harder to not allow runs to score in this current run scoring environment. But so, yeah, I didn't notice anything big there.

Yeah. Glancing at the list. Interesting mix of old and new starter and reliever. After Chapman, you've got Danny Frisella, Peter Monroe, Jeff Geary, Dick Kelly. But then you've got Satchel Paige at number nine, Sandy Koufax at 11, Herb Score at 14, Clayton Kershaw at 20, Jose Valverde, 23, Francisco Rodriguez, 32. Mark Pryor, 37. Definitely remembering some guys as I look at this list. You'll have to let Cleveland know that they should target

Mariano Rivera as an acquisition for any extra innings. Well, his son is a baseball player. He stopped playing baseball, but he's at least younger, although I don't imagine that his cutters are quite as good least younger, although I don't imagine that his cutters are quite as good.

Yeah, hopefully I'm not getting in trouble by sharing that Mariano Rivera is the best. Giving away trade secrets already. Yeah, I don't know what we'll do without you. I have a network of people that I outsource some of these research questions to, but you have probably been the most prolific over the past year plus. So it's going to be tough to soldier on without you unless we can get help from Adam Mott or some anonymous person going forward, but we won't get you in trouble with your new bosses. So you'll have your hands full with them, I'm sure.

Yeah, I'm sure another person with a RetroSuite database will email you and make their skills available. Yeah, right. Now that they know it's such a pathway to front office success, even though that had probably nothing to do with it. It should make recruiting easier, though. We shouldn't undersell it. It's always useful to apply your skills in a baseball setting to be able to demonstrate that you can. So you shouldn't undersell the stat things up and often do it quite quickly, but also that you were able to communicate your answers very clearly and tell me what the caveats were. If you weren't able to check something because of the database, then you told me about that.

And sometimes you went above and beyond and I asked for one thing and then you sent me two other related things and were always able to provide the data and everything. So that's the sort of skill set that I think teams are probably looking for, not just people who are able to get the answer, which is pretty important, but then also to communicate the answer and think about it in kind of a critical way. You know, sometimes there were probably times where I sent you something and then it wasn't just me asking for a very specific, detailed query, but you kind of had to figure out how to translate it into a query that you could actually plug in and get an answer. So hopefully that was useful practice, even though the questions that you'll probably be working on as of next week will be more complex than the ones that we tended to ask. Oh, yeah. I think I'm grateful that I got the chance to solve these stat blasts because they're

good use of analytical thinking and they're just fun to think about. So thank you. Yeah. Well, thank you. I have a quick one here that I'll share that I spared you from just because I figured you probably had your hands full in your last week before your new job. But we got a question from listener Mitchell who said, After Liam Hendricks gave up a game-tying homer and then the White Sox walked it off in the ninth,

I came up with a name for this occurrence. Henceforth, when a pitcher blows a save and gets the win in the same game, I will call it a stupid win. Which pitcher has the most stupid wins of all time? And this probably would have been an easy one for you, Adam, but I asked Kenny Jacklin at Baseball Reference about this one. You can't play index or stat head this one. You can look up games with a win. You can look up games with a blown save, but you cannot currently look up games with both a win and a blown save. It has to be either or. But Kenny looked this up for me and sort of similar to your stat blast answer, Adam, this one also has a brand name and a hall of fame closer,

and it's Goose Gossage. Goose Gossage has the most stupid wins of all time With 27 games in which he blew a save And then ended up winning the game You would expect that it would probably be a pretty good pitcher Who was in those situations a lot Had a lot of save opportunities And stayed in and got the win So Goose Gossage with 27 And then another Hall of Famer, Raleigh Fingers

With 26 Then it goes John Franco, Roberto Hernandez Sparky Lyle, Kent Toccolvi, Rick Aguilera, John Hiller, former Effectively Wild guest, Johnny Murphy, and Lee Smith is the only other one with 20 or more. And then

Dave Righetti and Mariano Rivera and Francisco Rodriguez tied with 19. And if you're wondering about active leaders, we have Tyler Clippard and Kenley Jansen tied for the active lead with eight, with Craig Kimbrell and Will Smith and Craig Stammen and Pedro Stroop and Tony Watson behind them at seven, and then a bunch of guys with six, including Roldis Chapman. So thanks to Mitchell for the question and to Kenny for the research. And Adam, we wish you well with your forthcoming career.

And hopefully we can stay in touch even if it's not to ask for StatBlast assistance. And I'm glad that Cleveland is putting a little bit of those Francisco Lindor savings towards paying your salary. So good luck with your next chapter. And I'm glad your dream came true here. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me and for reaching out. And have you looked into housing and everything? Have you moved already? Have you lived outside of Utah before? I've lived besides Baltimore and Boston. I lived in Argentina for a little bit. So I learned Spanish, which should hopefully help a little bit in the front

office. But I haven't lived outside of Utah for a while. And I've got a place to move. I'm not moving until June. So I'm working remote until then. And they're out of the office anyway for now. Right. So I'll move in June once my wife, who's a middle school teacher, finishes her school year. Uh-huh. Cool. All right. Well, thanks again for all the help today and in the past many episodes. Thank you. Oh, and one last thing. If someone wants to follow in your footsteps and is listening, are there any free resources, online resources, articles you would recommend that they should start with if they're not in school and still able to take classes in this sort of thing? database was a blog post by Bill Petty. And he's got a great R package for a lot of things baseball, the baseball R package. So I would recommend looking into that. I can find the blog post and send it to you so you can link to it. But yeah, I think just following people on social media that do baseball research is super helpful as well. And those would be kind of the resources

that I would look to. Cool. All right. I will link to that. And I guess I will also link to the data from your stat blast today. And I will thank you again for the third time, I think. Thanks, Adam. Yeah, thanks, Adam. Good luck with your move. Thank you. All right, that will do it for today. Thanks, as always, for listening. Mike Tr trout went one for four on wednesday with a single endangering his attempt at having the best calendar month of his career he's still doing it but it's very close his wrc plus is down to 262 just ahead of the 260 he posted in july of 2015 so the angels have one more game in april on friday it will all come down to that day however the upside of him going 1-4 with a single, as many people pointed out after the game on Wednesday, is that he now has a 420 batting

average through 69 at-bats. The internet predictably thought that was very nice. Also, Jacob deGrom pitched, and he pitched well. As usual, he allowed one run on three hits over six innings with nine strikeouts and one walk against the Red Sox, but as so often seems to happen, he got no run support and the Mets lost 1-0 to the Red Sox. But I was amused by DeGrom's post-game quote after pitching a game that most pitchers would be quite pleased with. DeGrom said, kind of displeased with my mechanics. I was flying open, everything seemed to be flat, just wasn't able to make pitches when I needed to. So when he can't make pitches and everything is flat, he allows one run on three hits over six innings. I wish everyone's bad days could all be so good. By the way, you can follow Adam on Twitter at AdamOtt20,

though odds are he will not be tweeting much now that he's heading behind the Cleveland curtain. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon 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. Brody, CJ Labasse, Julie, Loco Sports, and Patrick Montori. 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 subscribe to effectively wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcast

of fan crafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system. If you are a supporter, we will likely get to emails next time. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And we will be back with another episode before the end of the week. Talk to you then. Though Adam was a friend of mine I did not know him long

And when I stood myself beside him I never thought I was that strong Still it seems he stopped his singing In the middle of his song. Well, I'm not the one to say I know, but I'm hoping he was wrong.