Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2056: Just-Noticeable Defense

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley discuss listener responses to their banter about surprising Statcast throwing speeds, then (12:42) discuss Nick Ahmed’s unsung great glovework, the A’s turning out to be (slightly) less historically terrible than they initially seemed, the AL West race, and how the Rangers missing the playoffs would reinforce conflicting narratives about baseball. […]

Their wacky hypotheticals are perfectively styled And their stat blast queries are detectively compiled They're not a Jerry and baseball legend selectively dialed But their spiciest takes are still respectfully mild More than 2,000 episodes retrospectively filed. And at each new one, we still collectively smile. That's Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2056 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters and also from FanCrafts. Did I say that in the opposite order that I normally do? Yes.

But the important thing is that I said both things and also that I introduced myself because I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer and you are Meg Raleigh of FanCrafts. Hello, Meg. Hello. Lomax. Hello. This is the second straight episode where one of us has sort of circled the runway and eventually landing the plane after being in a bit of a holding pattern. Yeah. I mean, look, I am on vacation. You are dealing with the lingering effects of COVID and voice and all sorts of stuff. So the important thing is that we land the plane. Honestly, it's impressive that we're landing the plane. I think everyone should clap for us and be pleased that we're here. Or is it unimpressive because this is episode 2056?

So you'd think like we've put in enough flight time at this point that you'd think we would probably have the intro down. But every now and then, I've said this before, but when you think about it, when you're in the middle of that pattern, when you just go into effectively wild intro mode, okay, I've done this 2,000 times, so I can surely do it again without incident. And then suddenly you look up or look down in the middle of your intro and you forget what order you say everything. But, hey, we got there in the end. And now we're going to get to the actual episodes after talking about the intro to the episode. So I have some feedback from listeners about a banter topic from last time when I kind of complained or we commiserated about how hard it is to distinguish an impressive throw per stat cast. It just doesn't seem like the eye test always matches the stat cast stats, particularly when it comes to throws. And we mentioned a few factors why that would be the

case. The fact that you're seeing throws over a longer distance and maybe it's the angle, it's coming toward the camera in many cases. But some listeners had some other explanations here. So Dennis suggested, I think this was overlooked in the convo about the highlight value of fast throws on defense. Unlike home runs, they always land in the same spot, i.e. in the glove of the fielder. When a home run is hit 120 miles per hour, it's immediately evident because it generally goes farther into the stands than a homer hit at 90 miles per hour. When a ball is thrown at 100 miles per hour, it has a definite endpoint in the same place as the ball thrown 75 miles per hour in the hands

of the baseman or catcher. And someone else chimed in to say, yeah, I don't think many people can actually tell if a ball is 110 or 120 miles per hour off the bat. We just see the trajectory. And that's the impressive part. So what do you make of that explanation? I think that there is definitely something to that, that that might be contributing to the sense we have of these things. I just generally think that we are not able to gauge,

you know, like these folks are saying, like the actual speed. And so we are reliant on other visual or auditory cues and there's something about like the sound and the like the big arc and you get the you know you get the reaction of the people in the crowd and sometimes like the way that they are able to corral or not a ball impacts your impression of it. Like sometimes, you know, they'll come away doing the like handshaky thing like, you know, I got to or like they get it in a beer and they're like, I got it in a beer.

So, yeah, I think there's I think there's something to that. Yeah, I think there's truth to that, particularly for infield throws. If you're just fielding it and throwing to the first baseman, there's only so much variation in the distance and the destination. But with an outfield throw, there is significant variation there. It's not so much where the ball ends up as where it starts. If you're throwing from really deep in the outfield, you can tell that that's different, even if it ends up in the same place as a shallow throw. that's different even if it ends up in the same place as a shallow throw even if you're both throwing to the catcher if you're throwing to the catcher from the warning track or something really

far away then it's obvious that that's different and and some throws even if they're going to the same destination some of them won't make it on the fly they'll bounce so they'll have to be cut off or the trajectory is different. It's like an arcing, looping kind of throw as opposed to just a real line drive type of throw. I think we can distinguish that kind of thing. So I think on outfield throws, this is less applicable than infield throws. Because an infield throw, I guess part of it depends on how you field it and which way your body is moving and leaning and which way your momentum is taking you or if you're very deep in the hole when you make the throw. So, yeah. I think another reason why hard throws aren't always as impressive as hard hits is that a great throw often prevents what we want to see,

which is a close play at home or at a base. On a hard hit ball, we get to see the result, which is usually a long home run, and we have visual confirmation that what we saw and heard when the ball was hit was as impressive as it seemed. On a hard throw, sometimes all that happens is that the runner decides not to go, and the throw comes into home or a base and that's it. The throw plays that we tend to remember are ones where the fielder makes the throw and you can see that the ball and the runner are on a collision path. There is uncertainty. Will the throw be in time? Will it be on target? So the

catcher or third baseman will have the chance to tag the runner out. And that's what makes those sorts of plays exciting and memorable. Since Brenton Doyle's throw prevented the runner from trying to score, it wasn't nearly as exciting as it would have been if the runner had tried to score and ended up being thrown out on a bang-bang play that was the result of the throw being so hard as well as being on target. the other day, which I sort of disputed that it was an infield throw because it was a relay throw that he made from the outfield, even though he was an infielder. But in that case, it really mattered that he threw that hard and he got Corbin Carroll at the plate and it was an exciting play and you needed every miles per hour, every mile per hour to get Carroll on that play. Whereas, yeah, often the thing with a guy with a good arm in the outfield is that people don't run on them or a catcher for that matter. It's that dissuading the runner from going value, the deterrence value that is maybe as important as the actually cutting down a runner value. So that's true.

I guess the outcome of a great throw, a stat cast standout throw, is often less exciting than a stat cast standout hit. Although, as I mentioned last time, there are just some grounders to second or short that are absolutely blistered, right? And they turn into outs or double plays. But you can still kind of tell that if it's hit that hard, if Stanton or Judge or someone crushes a ball off the bat, Stanton or Judge or someone crushes a ball off the bat. Yeah. You can kind of, maybe you can tell because you're seeing the swing and a lot of exit speed for a batter ball is your swing speed, your bat speed, right? So we're able to gauge that. I guess that goes for arm speed on a throw as well, but maybe it's more obvious with bat speed.

as well but maybe it's more obvious with bat speed well and i wonder if part of it is just that like and you can't have to say something really revolutionary ben like you know brace yourself you can't hit a home run without a ball being pitched to you but i think that there is something about the home run being once the ball exits the bat like we perceive that as one guy doing a thing on his own. Whereas, you know, really impressive, really zippy throws from fielders are dependent on the other end being executed also, right? And so maybe part of what we're perceiving as it being sort of underwhelming is just that we are mentally apportioning some amount of credit, even if it's a small amount, even if the throw, you know, is a great throw from the outfield right on the line, gets the guy direct to the glove, like takes the glove into the runner, whatever. We are still like, well, he had to catch it. And so sometimes a part of our brain is like, well, you know, like, well, he had to catch it. And so some tiny part of our brain is like, well, you know, he didn't do it all on his own. And that's a silly thing

for us to be concerned about because of course he didn't. That's not how fielding works generally. But I wonder if that's part of it too, that we want an individualism to be present that is really silly and probably says something about us as Americans, you know? Yeah, I guess that's true. And you could sort of say... Thank you, that's generous. Maybe. I'm musing, I'm reflecting. This is so profound. I need a moment to digest this cultural criticism of yours. Yes. You know, the profundity is just knocking you over, really. But that's probably true of pitches, too, because the catcher's got to catch it. And also how impressive we deem a pitch to be has a lot to do with the result of the pitch.

And the result of the pitch is influenced by the catcher and the umpire and the batter, right? So if a pitch has nasty movement, but the batter doesn't swing at it then you say oh that's just a ball right he didn't get him to chase whereas if the batter chases so then you say oh wow what a nasty pitch yeah so it depends on the hitter obviously the hitter is more likely to chase if it's a nasty pitch but it depends on the hitter's proclivity to chase as well and the location and everything else and it is true that if you took the score bug away, and obviously we didn't used to have score bugs, but if you took away the velocity that's flashed on every pitch these days, you could tell certainly fastball breaking ball, fastball off speed just by the movement more so than the speed, but it would be pretty tough to distinguish between a fast fastball and a merely average fastball, which is also very fast. Yeah, I think that you lose precision, your senses sort of lose precision after you've exceeded a certain threshold of velocity. You know, I think you you can tell you might be able to tell the difference

between 90 and 95 if only because of the reaction of the other people involved but like the fastest fastball can you tell i guess maybe maybe the way that the battery reacts to it lets you know like oh you know when they do that like lean back and they make the face i wonder how much of that is performative on their part where they're like no no, like it was really fast. Like, of course I didn't offer at it. It was really fast. Let me make this face. You're probably not like processing that in real time, but I wonder about it sometimes. Yeah. There's that psychological concept of just noticeable difference, which is like how much can something change such that we actually notice that it changed. And it depends on what the phenomenon you're talking about is and how sensitive your senses are.

But there has to be some minimum threshold that it is actually different enough for us to notice. And I guess a lot of our senses are kind of calibrated to pick up on differences because it was an evolutionary advantage to be able to sense motion and detect when a predator was coming at you or to be able to hear that. But we can't detect every difference. And when you're talking about a 95 mile per hour fastball versus 100, if we didn't have the flames up in the score bug, and I guess some score bugs, maybe you're still doing the flames at 95. Although as we've chronicled, some of them have upped the minimum for flames, which was overdue. But

if we didn't have the flames, then we might not know that that was a real flamethrower. Yeah. I mean, I just don't know that it makes a big difference to your ability to escape a cheetah. Mm-hmm. I wanted to talk about defense for a second, actually, because... I thought you were going to say, I wanted to talk about defense for a second, actually, because— I thought you were going to say, I wanted to talk about cheetahs for a second. I was going to be like, wow, we're going in a weird direction. That would have been quite a coincidence or a masterful segue if I had somehow related this to cheetahs. But no, I want to talk about Nick Ahmed. He's a real cheetah out there at the shortstop position. That's what everyone says about Nick Ahmed. Isn't that what they say? That's not what they're saying on Sports Talk Radio down here, I tell you that.

No, it's not what the Diamondbacks are saying effectively by designating him for assignment. But I just wanted to say, because he has been designated for assignment and maybe his time as a Diamondback is over and everyone has moved on to the new hotness because he's being designated for assignment because Jordan Lawler is getting promoted. Top prospects, top five prospect in the game, fifth, according to Fangraph. So we got to get Eric Long and Hagen back on here already to tell us about the new sexy prospects who have arrived. But it's out with the old and with the new and the cycle of baseball athletic life. with the new and the cycle of baseball athletic life. But I did just want to give a salute to Nick Ahmed for a second because, man, he was great at defense, right?

That was the only reason he had as long a career with the Diamondbacks as he did. But still, it bears noting, I think, just how extraordinary it was because I feel like it was less flashy or less attention getting than a lot of defensive standouts. Like his first full season was 2015. He made his major league debut 2014. But if we start with 2015, he was eighth in defensive runs saved from 2015 through the present. And the guys ahead of him, I would say, are better known, more celebrated for their defense. And granted, better known, more celebrated probably for their all-around games as well. But top of the list defensive run saved, Kevin Kiermaier, Andrelton Simmons, Mookie Betts,

Nolan Arnauto, Matt Chapman, Austin Hedges, Lorenzo Cain, then Nick Ahmed. Those first seven guys probably would come up. They would come to your mind if you were trying to think of defensive standouts over that era. Not sure that non-Diamondbacks fans would conjure the name Nick Ahmed immediately. If you go by stat cast, then he stands out even more. So the stat cast defensive metrics start in 2016. So this doesn't cover his whole career,

but if you go by outs above average, only Francisco Lindor has been better than Nick Ahmed over that period. If you go by fielding run value, then only Lindor and Kiermaier have been better. So really, he was elite. And not only that, but he had fewer chances and defensive innings and opportunities

than a lot of those guys ahead of him, too. So if you had given him exactly the same playing time, he might be even higher on those leaderboards. And yet, I can't really summon to my mind standout individual Nick Ahmed plays. Yeah. Maybe, I'm sure Diamondbacks fans can, and you've certainly seen more of the Diamondbacks lately as your adopted second team.

But I can't really think of like, what's the quintessential trademark Nick Ahmed play, right? Like, when you think of Kevin Kiermaier, you can probably remember some Kevin Kiermaier catches or if you think of Nolan Arnauto, then of course you think of him like laying out and going into foul territory and making incredible throws and falling over the railing and onto the tarp

and same with Matt Chapman, right? And Nick Ahmed, I just, I'm probably just underrating and slighting him here. And maybe it's just the fact that the Diamondbacks haven't been that great generally for most of Nick Ahmed's time with the team. So he hasn't had a whole lot of high profile playoff opportunities to show off his glove. But I guess it probably also has to do with the fact that he just wasn't an all-around star because he didn't hit very well. So that's probably part of it, too.

Yeah, I remember when we adjusted the formulation of war at Fanagraphs to include OA for the range component. He was one of the players who, and was well rated prior to that but like he was one of the players whose war increased upward most dramatically because like oa loves nick on like loves nick ahmed like oa is very sad today sending him flowers yeah it's i think it's a combination of the things you you described, like particularly the fact that there haven't been a ton of opportunities for him in October to showcase his skill. But yeah, he's he is one of the like more anonymous, really good defenders. And, you know, the fact that he was still playing that position well is arguably why even in, you know, part time duty, he was getting the time that he was still playing that position well is arguably why, even in part-time duty, he was getting the time that he was.

But yeah, I wonder if the guys I heard on Sports Talk Radio yesterday who were being so mean about Nick Ahmed feel badly about that today. I wonder. They were being pretty mean, Ben. It's tough to watch a guy have a 51 WRC plus when you're fighting for a playoff spot. It has been tough to watch. He has a 7 WRC plus versus left-handed pitching this year. That feels cursed, you know? That feels like monkey paw induced or something.

But yeah, it's been pretty bad. But he has had moments. I think that there is something, Noble is probably too strong, but we should remember these guys when they do really good defensive work at one of the game's hardest positions, often for teams that were unremarkable to very bad,

which has described a lot of the D-backs teams that Ahmed has played for. Those are careers worth saying something about, even if they come with a career line that is not really of everyday caliber and a career 73 WRC plus. So yeah, Nick Ahmed, we salute you. And he won a couple of gold gloves and he won some fielding Bible awards. So he was recognized, but there's still just a halo effect kind of when it comes to offense. It used to be that how you hit played a big part in whether you won a gold glove because your name just came to mind when it was just all coaches voting on those things. It was like if you were a star, then people remembered you. And if they remembered some standout play that you made, they were more likely to have your name come to mind when they spent 10 seconds probably putting the names down for those awards. And so I think that's been documented that that has decreased now as there's more of a statistical component to fielding awards, that now those things are divorced a little bit. Your offensive

performance doesn't really affect your defensive rating as much, which is as it should be. But really, if you're in the lineup, and the only reason that he's played as much as he has this year, and I guess over the past few years, despite not hitting very well, is that his glove is so great. So we tend to discount guys who don't hit as well.

But really, if it's someone who doesn't hit and is still playing consistently, then it's got to be because of the glove, right? And so we should give them even more attention. I guess if it's a catcher, we do, probably. I was just about to say, how much time have we spent talking about Martin Maldonado on the podcast? Right, yeah, right. Martin Maldonado or Jeff Mathis in his day or Austin Hedges now. Right. And and with catchers, it goes back to Sherry Nichols, Nichols' law of catcher defense about how your defensive reputation as a catcher is inversely proportional to your offensive ability. So in catchers, or for catchers specifically, if you couldn't hit,

then everyone assumes that you must be a great glove guy, which is generally true, probably not true in every case. And so you're celebrated as a catch-and-throw guy, and your bat is kind of discounted a little bit. You're known as a defensive savant, and that can be a lot of catchers historically at least have said, like, I considered that my primary job, right? Like anything I do at the plate as opposed to behind the plate is gravy,

which, you know, you can still be bad enough at hitting that it doesn't really make up for how great your glove is. Martin Maldonado seems like an example of that, although the Astros would seem to believe that he's not, that he is worth playing. And you'd think that the Astros would know. But, yeah, we should celebrate the guys who you look at their bat and you're like, how is this guy in the lineup every day? It's like, oh, he must be a great glove guy. Yeah. And then sometimes, historically, the stats would match the reputation and sometimes not. And then sometimes historically the stats would match the reputation and sometimes not.

And in Nick Ahmed's case, the stats definitely match the reputation or outstripped the reputation, in fact. Yeah, I agree. It's probably also that if he is such a great range guy, then that leads to possibly fewer spectacular plays. Right. Right. were spectacular plays, right? There are still, no matter how great your range is, there's still going to be some plays at the outer edge of your range that you're going to have to dive for, leap for. But if you're making all the tough plays look routine, then you're not going to get on the highlights because it's just like, oh, that didn't even look special. He got such a great jump and he made up so much ground that you couldn't even tell that it was such a hard play. So maybe it's the ultimate compliment that I can't really think of

that many specific Nick Ahmed defensive highlights because maybe he made all the highlights look routine. Maybe that's his legacy. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, big glove to fill for Jordan Lawler. I guess not big bat to fill, but big glove to fill. One of those little tiny bats that they feel comfortable giving away. That wasn't kind of me. I take it back. Nick Ahmed, be well. You're like the sports radio people.

I know. This is what happens when you listen to them. It warps you, man. I was just like, you guys are being really nasty about Nick Ahmed. I'm like, you're right. He cannot hit and certainly cannot hit lefties. But also like, guys, relax. Like, geez, Louise.

I went like this. Geez, Louise. And then they were like, you know, the Diamondbacks, they're such an analytically driven organization. And I was like, are they? And I don't mean that like they aren't. I just like don't know that I've thought about them in those terms one way or the other. They're like they, you know, they love their numbers until they just disagree with them. And then they they don't do what the numbers say. And I was like, huh, maybe I need to like listen to you guys more to get your sense of this team.

But then they were so mean about Nick on it. Anyway. I wanted to mention a team that a lot of people have been mean about this year, although in justifiable fashion much of the time. The Oakland A's, just because we haven't talked about them a lot after most of the sell the team stuff died down. It certainly seems like John Fisher, sadly, not interested in selling the team. But the A's are still terrible, but they have not been quite as terrible. And this was called to my attention because the 1962 Mets record is safe now, right? So it's been clear that it was safe for a while, but now it is officially safe that they will

retain the worst record, right? Their record of 120 losses, at least, will not be broken because the A's won their 43rd game of the season. And this brought to mind that back in May, I think it was, we talked about where the A's would end up because Dan Siborski wrote about that for Fangraphs and Tom Tango blogged about it. And they looked at the projections and the record of truly terrible teams. And there weren't really teams that had started out as terribly as the A's did, certainly not many of them. But the projections and just looking at the past precedents suggested that the A's would end up with something like 53 or 54 wins. And at the time, that seemed almost inconceivable that they could end up being that close to respectable. Like if you say a replacement level team is 48 wins, that they

could be better than that. Seemed tough to believe, but here they are. They're truly terrible, but they're 43 and 97. And the Royals, by the way, are 44 and 97. So there's really no separation between the two now. So we praised Cole Reagans yesterday. So I guess now we've got to have the Royals take their lumps too. They're quite bad and they are racing to the bottom with the A's now. I mean, I guess there's a race for who's going to have the most advantageous draft odds here because it's not clear which team

will actually have the worst record. But the A's, if you look at the Fangraph's playoff odds page now in their projected end of season win total, 52. Right now, that is, again, projecting them to be better over the rest of the season than they've been thus far. They have a 307 winning percentage now. The projections say that they will finish with a 415 winning percentage the rest of the way, even with a pretty tough strength of schedule, it looks like. So they might not end up there, but it looks like they're going to break 50, probably. They're going to end up around there. And when we talked about this back in May, I'm pretty sure I said, I recognize that the primacy of the projections that they're typically right and that you can get yourself into trouble when you start saying, yeah, it's been true every other

time, but not this time, right? It's like the arrested development quote about how like this time it will be different, the Tobias quote, right? So generally I defer to the projections, but I took the under, I'm pretty sure I haven't gone back to listen, but I took the under. I thought this team is so extraordinarily bad that I think it's an outlier even among these outlyingly bad teams. safe bet. But they have at least gotten off of those historic paces, which just reminds you of the old maxim that it is a long season, right? We were all talking about how the Tampa Bay Rays couldn't lose a game to start the season and the Ocones couldn't buy a win. I guess they still refuse to buy wins. But I was going to say like that part of the critique remains, I think, quite solid. Yeah, they sometimes stumble into wins against

ownership's will. But they're going to end up probably not being that extraordinary by the standards of truly terrible teams. Like, you know, the 2003 Tigers,

people have been writing retrospectives because it's the 20th anniversary of that team. 43 and 119. I mean, the A's already have 43 wins. Right. terrible and all the Las Vegas nonsense and ownership and the protests and everything, they might just kind of blend in with the pack of terrible teams instead of seeing like one of one. Yeah. And I've gone back and forth on this idea as the season has progressed because like on the one hand, I think that John Fisher should have to wear this season forever. And like, you know, a lot of this season and what is the most all of the seeming indifference to the impact that

this is having on his existing fan base and like that stuff manifests on the field in some ways but is also adjacent to it and others and so like you're like i want them to be historically bad if only so that we 10 years from now we're like man you remember that season that 2023 season for the a's and then we talk about it in those like kind of tones you know like the really embarrassed for him tones but he seems shame proof so that's concerning as a social development he also seems completely oblivious now maybe that's an act partly Maybe he doesn't want to let on, you know, don't put in the papers that I got mad. But it seems like he doesn't really know, like, who's on the team, you know, when he does an interview, which rarely happens. But it seems like when he recently did, like, it was scripted and he had to write himself notes to remind himself, like, who his employees are,, like the most prominent of his employees, the major leaguers, like maybe he's just so checked out. I don't know how he could fail to notice just like people constantly saying sell the team and chanting sell the team and having a whole campaign to make him sell the team. But if he's that divorced from the day-to-day reality

of the team, then maybe it kind of washes over him like the duck's back because he's just so unaware of what's happening. But maybe that's letting him off the hook. Well, I mean, but I think that there's something to that because like, there's precedent this year for owners being booed like to their face and seemingly being upset about it. And he has to, like you said, like, you can't, if you're within shouting distance of the Coliseum, you have to know that people are pissed, right? So, just to finish my thought, like, I wanted there to be infamy here.

And, you know, I think the behavior is bad enough that there probably will be a fair dose of infamy, regardless of how he is sort of positioning himself right now. But given that he does seem to have an elastic relationship with shame, like, then maybe I do want them to win some games because, you know, ain't none of this the fault of the guys who are currently on Oakland's roster, right? Like this isn't, they didn't do anything wrong. I mean, they've done a lot wrong, but like not on purpose. You know, they are in a terrible situation and are, you know, seemingly trying every day to do something that might make their fans feel a positive kinship with the team. And so if the owner is going to be somewhat shame proof, then yeah, let, let them, let them have a couple wins because the, those guys,

you know, they deserve that and their fans do too. And I think that we can let them like enjoy that and have it be very separate from Fisher at this point, because he is very separate from them at this point, you know, by his own, by virtue of his own actions. So that's where I've landed on it. I think it's really tricky when these kinds of seasons roll around and they become mostly about their symbolic value. You know, that can be kind of an indifferent, that symbolic value is sort of indifferent to who it hurts. And some of the people it is likely to, I didn't do anything wrong.

So, it's all the team, John, you know, so that we can stop having these little conversations. Yeah, they are still on pace possibly to have the worst run differential of any quote-unquote modern team. But only nerds care about that, Ben. Right, I know. But we do care a lot, right? We do. You have the 1932 Red Sox at negative 345 in a 154-game season, of course.

The A's are at negative 300. Oh, Lord alive. So they could or are quite likely to end up below that. And I guess that's one way in which they've distinguished themselves because the Tigers, now the Tigers ended up with a truly terrible run differential too in 2003. They were negative 337. So that's very close to the worst, but their Pythagorean record was 49 and 113. So they ended up at 43, right? So I guess to be that bad, usually you are even worse than your run differential says you should be.

You've probably been really bad and also unlucky. Whereas the A's are just bad. It doesn't seem like they're really unlucky. Like their Pythag, they quote unquote should have 42 wins and they have 43. So it's not like they're under playing their performance or something like their performance is saying, no, they are exactly this bad. So that's probably one way in which they stand out a little bit, right? So yeah, I guess their base runs record, it says they're three games worse than they deserve to be based on base runs, but it's not a notable underperformance. They're 19 and 26 in one run games, which is probably about what you'd expect. One run games aren't completely random.

They're largely random, but not entirely. And they are a very bad team. So you'd expect them to be a little worse than 500 in those games. So yeah, they have not bad lucked into this. But again, they've been decent-ish lately. Maybe decent is going a bit too far. But in the second half, they have a 375 winning percentage compared to 272 in the first half. And by that, I mean post and pre-All-Star break. That's how Baseball Reference divides it. And in September, winning team, 4-2. July, 8-15. August, 9-18.

It's a far cry from April, 5-23. May, 6-23. And I guess you're always bound to regress to the mean. You're always likely to with any extreme performance on either end of the spectrum, partly because you're probably getting unlucky, but also because if you're doing that badly, you're probably going to make some changes and those changes almost can't make you worse than you've been right because if your players collectively have been sub replacement level then even if you can go get replacement level guys you'll be better than you've been which in theory shouldn't be that hard so they've cycled through a lot of players and sometimes

very often that's a sign of a bad team. The more players you use, that's probably bad because it means you've had a lot of injuries or you've been dissatisfied with your players and you've wanted to replace them all, which is certainly true for the A's. And if you're way out of it, obviously, they could have been a case of, well, they'll probably get even worse later in the season because they'll trade their players at the deadline. But they had so few players left to trade, right? And they've gotten rid of some guys, but no one who was really great for them. So just by sort of sifting through the wreckage, they've kind of come up with some players

who were better than the players that they started the season with. And by promoting some prospects here and there, it's just, it's hard for anything to be anything other than uphill from there when you start that low. So that's how you end up being really bad, but in some respects, not as bad as you seemed initially. Congrats to the 22-3 A's for maybe not even being the worst team in baseball by the time it's all said and done. Congratulations. It could have been worse.

Yeah, exactly. They should print up those T-shirts, too. And the last thing I wanted to say before maybe we can answer a few emails, staying with the AL West but the top of the AL West. So the Rangers just had a pretty disastrous series, right? Oh, my. I am, you know, here I was. I was getting ready to make all of my I'm so stressed sounds. Yeah.

But I'm not even a Rangers fan, so. Yeah, they just got swept by the Astros and the Astros tattooed them. Yeah, they got swept by the Astros. They got trounced. They got banged up. Yeah, this was, I mean, there are sweeps and there are sweeps. This was a house sweep. It is sweep.

This was, I know the Astros are always taunting people, breaking out the brooms. But this is one case where that would be defensible because what they hit 16 homers, which I think was like the second most ever in a three game series. which I think was like the second most ever in a three-game series. And they had five-plus homers in each game, which I think had been done before, but maybe not surpassed to do it three games in a row. So they totally tattooed them. And this has really hurt the Rangers' playoff odds and division odds.

I think they entered that three-game set with something like a 20% chance to win the division, according to Fangraphs, and they're now down to five or below five. And that is kind of disappointing because that was shaping up to be a fun three-team race, and it still could be. Zach Kram wrote about this for The Ringer. They're within striking distance, even though I think the tiebreaker doesn't favor them either. Well, OK, but but Ben, here's the thing about what you just said. It's like, yeah, OK, sure. Right now here we can say that because we are recording on Thursday before games have started and they are they are a half game out of the third wildcard. They are out of a playoff position as it stands. But they also have six games against Seattle in the final week.

Oh, yeah. Very much in the wildcard race still. They are in the week in the final. Ben, I am so nervous. I am. Yeah, you should be nervous, but I guess being nervous is better than what Rangers fans are feeling now, which is probably depressed, dejected.

It probably is something around there. I mean, to your point, so if we look at their odds on Sunday the 3rd, right, so the day before that series had kicked off, you are right to say that we had their playoff odds, their overall playoff odds at 67%, their division odds 19.2 with the the balance of those win division odds split pretty evenly between the mariners and astros with the mariners having an ever so slight edge

but like not a distinguishable edge not a meaningful edge like a tiny you know and now yeah they're at 4 4.4 for the Rangers. And, you know, the Mariners losing three in a row gave a good hit to their win division odds also. Lest people think that I'm being a homer, although I'm so stressed. Although that's been true even when the Mariners have been good. So, it's not a reliable indicator, you know. But yeah, things are looking kind of grim for those rangers and i said to myself yesterday are they really gonna miss the playoffs and like you know their playoff odds 51.9 percent as we sit here recording so like not not a shoe-in but like not out of it by any means you know only like you know

the blue jays are at 61.2 and you might imagine that those two will jostle for the remaining odds you know they're gonna fight over the last spot unless um seattle goes into a tailspin in which case we might have a different kind of three-way race than the AL West one. But, you know, Texas has, they have an off day today. They get to recharge against those. It could be worse, but are still pretty bad A's. And then they have, you know, the first of their important series this month, which is a four-game set in Toronto, going to prove to be pretty important. And then, like I said, to end things, they have a three-game set

at home against Seattle, and then a three-game set at Seattle. Oh, excuse me, it's a four-game set. I apologize. Four-game set because they have one stupid day of the regular season in October, which is why I have to put a little asterisk every time I say, oh, they're not going to play October baseball.

And then people think, well, you're going to play one day of October baseball. Lots of head-to-head matchups down the stretch in the AL West, which is fun. Thank you, schedule makers. But yeah, they maxed out somewhere around a 90% playoff probability, just eyeballing a fan graph I'm looking at right now.

And so to be basically a coin flip, that is quite a comedown. But it's like we talked about when the Diamondbacks were slumping horribly, and then after that they got hot again, and then they got incredibly cold again. It's been quite a mercurial season for those Diamondbacks. a mercurial season for those Diamondbacks. But with the Rangers, they started so hot, and then it looked like they were close to locks at least to win a wild card, and now that is very much in doubt.

So if they do end up out of the playoff picture, that would be quite disappointing, even though at the start of the season, it would not have been surprising, right? I didn't pick them to be a playoff team. I didn't think they would. Like, where they are right now probably would have sounded about right to me or, if anything, would have been slightly above my expectations because their lineup especially exceeded expectations early in the year. Just everyone was hitting,

even players I hadn't expected to hit. That hasn't quite been the case so much lately, although the pitching has kind of cratered recently, too. And obviously they've had injuries. You know, they've barely had DeGrom at all this season. And then Josh Young got hurt and Ivaldi was hurt and just came back and got knocked around in his first start back. And the bullpen has been a big issue all season. But part of me is pulling for them. Not that I'm rooting against anyone else in particular, certainly not rooting against Seattle.

You can root against them. It's fine. But I'm not, though. I'm just saying, you don't have to like them on my camera. It's like I know it's sort of a zero-sum game when it comes to rooting for teams to make the playoffs. If someone makes it, someone has to not make it. But if I can kind of root in a general, diffused way for one team without rooting against another team, even though Team A's success would have to come at Team B's expense, team, even though Team A's success would have to come at Team B's expense. I am sort of generally rooting for the Rangers just because they really got aggressive and they really went for it. It was

kind of audacious the way that they did it and seemed like they were trying to sort of skip some steps. You know, usually when you go from out of it to contention, there is a phase where you're breaking in some homegrown players and you're structuring your roster around them. And the Rangers sort of tried to bypass that by spending a lot and going out and importing a middle infield, which for the most part has worked out quite well, and then importing a starting rotation. And then even at the deadline this year, when they needed reinforcements, they went out and arguably won the deadline, right? They were very aggressive then too. They recognized their needs and they went and got more guys. And if all of that amounts to nothing, at least for this season, you could certainly look at it as, oh, this was progress, right? And next year is the year when it will all come together. But it would be deflating if it does fall apart enough for them to make the playoffs. And then when you lump that in with the other big spending teams this year that have been more disastrous and bigger disappointments when obviously you mentioned the Mets and the Padres. And funnily enough, I guess the Mets, I don't know where they'll end up in terms of 2023 payroll because they offloaded so much of it in the end, but still up there, obviously. who have just poked their head back up over 500 for the moment as we speak. So that's nice. I know everyone was worried about their streak of not having losing seasons ending.

They're making a run at 500 or above, but obviously a disappointing season for them. And then the Padres. The Padres and the Mets would be the big ones. And I guess you could kind of lump the Angels in there maybe to some extent. But you had all these teams that really went for it and tried and high payroll, but it's lower than it was. Like they took the foot off the pedal a little bit, which, as it turns out, has been totally fine because they were even better than they had to be before. And I guess are even better than they have to be, at least in the NL West now, even not totally breaking the bank. But I think that will be one of the stories of the season. If all of those teams come up short, then certainly when you look back, like I wrote about that and talked about that at midseason, that there was an abnormally low correlation between payroll and results. went for it or quote unquote won the offseason and then definitively didn't win the season season, then that would be, I don't know, would that be bad? Would it be good? Would it be,

it would certainly be noteworthy one way or the other. I mean, I think that it is the part, as much as I, from a personal like fan rooting interest perspective would like the Mariners to win the West. And I'm sort of indifferent to how the wild card falls after that. Like I, I do fear the, the deluge of takes if all of the big spending teams from this off season end up, you know, flaming out to various degrees. Now, Texas, I don't know that we would describe it as quite as catastrophic and again they're half a they're half a game out of the third wild card spot so you know we might a couple weeks from now be like those rangers they could still be really dangerous in the postseason

and then we'll feel very silly for having fretted about this but for now i do fret a little you know and like we don't know what's going on with Adolis Garcia who had to leave yesterday's game. Like that knee injury looks like it could be quite bad, although I don't think we've gotten confirmation from the team about its severity, at least at time of recording. So, you know, it seems not great over there. I think a kind of tricky season to sort of diagnose and assess retroactively because to your point, like, it did feel like they were kind of skipping some steps in a way that we applauded because it felt like they were setting themselves up to be to the Padres, it felt very similar to San Diego going out and getting Machado before they were really ready to have a fully operational postseason team because it seemed clear that when they were ready for a fully operational postseason team,

there wouldn't be a Manny Machado in the offing and free agency. You've got to get that guy when he's available, and Texas took a similar approach with Seager and Semien, who I gotta say, they are still faltering. It is not good over there, but those two guys are just so good.

Been spending a lot of time just really appreciating watching Marcus Semien hit and how strong and fast his hands and wrists are. Wow. And ambush and stuff. I love a hitter who ambushes early in the count.

I've decided that this is one of my it's not my only, it's not like my preferred aesthetic in an exclusive way, but it is one of my favorite batter aesthetics when you're like that guy might just like hit a home run on first pitch it's an ambush guy you know and see you can be aggressive early in the county anyway that's not the point

that's true it's like hey uh don't beat about the bush you know yeah just get to it yeah yeah we want to see you swing you know that's that's what we're here for right yeah but so anyway like i think that when a team decides these are just the guys we want and when we are ready to be a good team, we're going to be really happy that we have them. It can make assessing seasons like this kind of tricky because if you look at our projections for Texas over the course of the season, if you look at what Zips looked like right after the DeGrom signing, I think when Dan wrote up that transaction, he noted like Zips was still skeptical of Texas as a postseason team because it still saw them as having some holes. And I think that we have seen the places where stuff isn't quite fully ready all the way. But it sure feels like they're on the precipice of that and they have a good farm system.

I think we aren't quite as enthusiastic about Evan Carter as some outlets are, but it sounds like Evan Carter might be making his way to the majors soon if this Garcia injury proves to be a big deal, which unfortunately it might be. So, you know, they have internal reinforcements. And as we saw based on their activity at the deadline, like the capacity to muster prospects in service of acquiring big leaguers who they think can help them. So even if that doesn't work out this season, like I think it is a good blueprint for putting a team together. I don't know. I don't know if we'll be able to really look back and say like, oh, they disappointed. I think that they flashed really bright, really early in a way that people were kind of surprised by. bring it all the way back having exited the cul-de-sac on Simeon's hitting and come back to the main road I do worry that it will get lumped in with those other big spending teams in a way

that you know people used to say well just don't do that and you know this this offseason is going to be strange because like with the exception of Otani and I guess some of the international players who might come over, there aren't obvious really big contract guys. And so we're going to have to be vigilant as a commentariat about being like, this isn't, you know, teams spending less this year isn't necessarily them reacting to the San Diego's and the New York's and the Texas's. It might just be that like, you're not going to give $300 million to Matt Chapman. You know, you're not going to give, gosh, who are even the other free agents spent? We're going to have to find 50 of them we like. That's, you know, that's wild. Maybe not. Maybe you should reduce the list to account for the caliber of the class, right? And we can take the same approach to the free agent rankings that we do to team lists and

just be like, however many of them you like. But see, I say that and then we're going to end up with 200 guys on the list. You know, Ben's going to be like, I'm writing up all these relievers. Yeah. No, it is striking just how dominated the free agent class is going to be by Asian players, right? Yeah. Obviously, Otani, Yamamoto, we talked about last time, and then Jungho Lee from Korea. And then also it was just announced that Shota Imanaga from the Bay Stars in Japan is going to be posted this offseason as well. So, yeah, like a lot of the most exciting free agents in a not very exciting class are

coming from Asia, which speaks to the quality of baseball in that part of the world, obviously, but also to the caliber of the MLB free agents, which is not great. But, yeah, I could see it that way where the conclusion people will draw is, well, doesn't make sense to spend. So this gives us an excuse not to, even if over this winter, this might actually be a winter when it makes sense not to or it's hard to even if you wanted to. But that's one conclusion you could draw. Another conclusion you could draw is, well, in baseball, you can't buy championships and there's competitive balance and there are surprises. And that is something I do appreciate about baseball. And that was something I didn't care for about the response to the Padres spending and the Mets spending, because when

people, ownership people, front office people, maybe some fans too, were throwing up their hands and saying, they're just breaking the scale here. They're just buying a championship. What happens if you get other Steve Coens and they just start spending this much money and blowing everyone out of the water? And A, I don't know that there's any great danger of that happening in a widespread way. But B, this shows that it is far from a guarantee of anything because that's how baseball works. Now, yes, if you're the Yankees, then you can have some institutional advantages in the fact that you run the highest or close to the highest payroll almost every year. And that is going to enable you to be not a bad team for 30 plus years. Obviously, it doesn't buy you a championship in the Yankees case either. So to the extent that it corrects that kind of narrative about money having everything to do with winning, it's a really it's a weird kind of like it's hard for those two

narratives to exist at the same time, because it's like on the one hand, you have reluctance to spend. And then when someone does spend, it's like, oh, they're just buying a championship. Well, it's like, if you think you could buy a championship, then wouldn't you want to spend? But I guess it's just equal opportunity, like whatever is happening. If you're not spending, then you could say, oh, well, look at Team X that didn't spend. Why should we do it? Whereas if Team X is spending, then you could say, oh, they're just breaking the economic model of baseball and this is bad for the sport.

So either way, you can sort of spin it to your advantage if you're an owner, I suppose. But that is something that I appreciate about baseball, that it does take spending, but it does also take some smarts or luck or talent or whatever, right? Like, there is something to be said, I think, for the satisfaction of building the way that most teams build, which is, you know, gradually, slowly, but surely, like, bringing guys through your system, acquiring young talent. Like, that can be very fun for fans. Hopefully, it doesn't mean that you've had an Orioles tanking period preceding that. But even if you've had sort of a subpar period, even if it's like the Cubs, let's say, who are maybe out of their rebuild, like they're going to be a playoff team, it certainly looks like. And they had only a couple down years, right, which I think was sort of shorter than was forecasted or in a short span of time. I think in some ways that is more satisfying than we just went and got the best free agents, but either way is viable. And I would like to

see a bit of both. So, and I, I guess both approaches have backfired to some extent this season, depending on the team. Yeah. I think, I think that that is all fair, Ben. I don't have anything to add. I have a couple emails that we can save some more for tomorrow, too. But here's one that I wanted to get to because I've seen a few people discuss this. So this question comes from Ramses, who says, Right now, Mookie Betts is 30 years old with 58 career fan graphs war in the middle of a potentially 9 to 10 war season. in the middle of a potentially 9-10 war season. Is it possible he will catch and pass 32-year-old Mike Trout's 85 career war?

What with all the injuries Trout has had the last five years. P.S. This is why when people compare career trajectories, we can assume some players will become the best ever. Pujols stalled at 100 war for years. Griffey could barely add anything after his injuries in Cincy, and Miguel Cabrera, one of the greatest hitters, has been losing war over the last few years. So, yeah, Mookie catching up to Trout.

It's still a pretty sizable gap to make up. It's more plausible than it once was, which is nice that Mookie's doing so well and sad that Trout is not doing so well that he has allowed Mookie to close the gap a bit. Oh, I feel so happy and so sad at the same time, Ben. I'm a complicated melange of emotion here. emotion here. I do think it will remain challenging for him, but I would say maybe more than... So one of the things about Mike Trout that really was solidified for me this season is like, we are very strongly, firmly in the, this guy is now injury prone, right? That got firmed up and calcified for me in a way that I had been able to, perhaps in defiance of evidence,

had managed to mentally resist prior to now. But now I think we got to stare the devil down, you know, and this is what we are being presented with. So I think of Trout now as an injury prone player. And that maybe alters your understanding comes to Betts is a positive thing. So we're going to lean into that because contemplating Mike Trout versatility makes me feel happy. And do I think that that will be enough on its own to bolster him and have him pass Mike Trout in terms of career war? I don't know. But, like, that's a fun club to have in your bag. that's a fun club to have in your bag and to have seen it like you know have seen the proof of concept at the big league level to such a degree this year i think is is a cool wrinkle to consider here because trout we are probably at the point where like we are about to see him shift to a corner you know i imagine that corner trout is in our like really near future yeah and i don't know how long mookie bets you know soon to be 31 year old will be able to like bop around and

be a reasonable second middle infielder let's call it let's lump in the second base in the shortstop together i don't know like i don't know but it seems like he's got in the second base and the shortstop together. I don't know. Like, I don't know. But it seems like he's got, in a way that I am surprised by for a player who has been in the big leagues as long as he has, has been so good, and is about to be 31. It feels like his avenues to continued value are opening up, right? Like a flower, you know? And there are all of these pathways. Like a flower, you know, and there are all of these pathways. And again, I don't know how long any of those paths go, but it does feel like there are more of them and that they are sort of blossoming in a way that is a delightful sort of surprise for a guy as established and not so old, but he's going to be 31 in a month. Whereas Trout's avenues, pathways, has a 173 wrc plus it is only the second season of his career where he has posted a wrc plus even above like 150 right he had that great 2018 obviously but like he good hitter but like he has not historically been this good of a hitter so you have that that you have to factor in and what will the defense

look like long term and will he you know retain good base running values not big stolen base guy at this point of his career but still a good base runner um at least by bsr so like you know there's stuff in there where you you wonder what it's going to look like long term and again we don't know quite what the defensive mix will be for him does he just go back to the outfield on a more regular basis next season if you know the dodgers have infielders that are healthy and who they're confident in you know like there's stuff here that might that might hem in some of those pathways I'm so excited about. But I don't know, it's it feels like more of a question now than it has in quite a while and not just for reasons that make you feel deeply sad. So that's something. I hope it doesn't happen, not because I'm rooting against Mookie, but because in order for it to

happen, I think Trout would really have to stall out, right? Yeah, it feels like he would almost have to be done soon, you know? Close to it, yeah. I would like them to continue to flourish together, right? And for Trout to maintain his lead because they've both been great. But if it were to happen, so I did look up some stats here just to get a sense. So first of all, when you say Mookie is 30 and Trout is 32, that makes it sound like a bigger gap than it actually is.

Because as you just noted, Mookie will be 31 in a month and Trout turned 32 a month ago. So they're actually only 14 months exactly apart. Whereas you might think from 32 versus 30 that it would be a lot more than that. Yes. So there's that. There's also the fact that, okay, so it's a 27 war difference. I mean, that's a lot. That's three more of these Mookie seasons.

And that's just to even the gap, right? That's just to pull even. the gap, right? That's just to pull even. And having three more seasons like that in your 30s, that's tough to do, right? So to get some guide here, I looked up all the batters who had wars higher than Mookie through their age 30 seasons. So that is a sample of 31 guys. So leading the list is Ty Cobb and just ahead of Mookie, probably passed by Mookie by the end of the season, Lou Bedreau. I looked at all of those guys and I just looked to see how much war they had from their age 31 season on. So just what's the average or the median expectation if you've been that good?

I mean, these are players who were even better through the same point in their career than Mookie. I guess this actually inflates his chances, if anything, because if I wanted to be really fair, I'd probably take some players who were above Mookie and take some players who were below Mookie and get sort of a baseline expectation. All these guys had been better than Mookie through the same point. And so you would just knowing that alone, expect them to we don't know how many war he will end up with. So excluding him, it's 35 war. That's the average that those guys produced or the median is 33. So that's saying

the typical guy who's been at least as good as, if not better than Mookie through the same point, barely closes the gap that exists right now. So that's suggesting that if Trout doesn't add another iota of war, then Mookie would have to have like an average career of these all-timers just to pull even. And granted, in that sample, you have some guys who, Granted, in that sample, you have some guys who, you know, Ted Williams missed some time in the Korean War and Archie Vaughn just decided to quit for a few years because he was mad at Leo DeRocher. I guess, you know, shoeless Joe Jackson, of course, didn't get any war after that age because he got banned from baseball. So if Mookie Betts does not get caught throwing games, then that will not happen to him. On the other hand, you have some PD guys, you know, you have your A-Rods and you have your Barry Bonses on there who are maybe pulling up the average unnaturally. If you just toss Shoeless

Joe out of the sample, say it ain't so, that only adds one win above replacement to those averages. So then it goes up to 36 war average or 34 war median. So that just gives you a sense like it's it's really hard. I mean, it's unusual for to have like a Griffey or an Andrew Jones who barely added anything, you know, three or four war after that point, but Pujols added 11 wore, and Jimmy Fox added 18 wore. Granted, he had his issues as well, but, you know, Johnny Bench,

11 wore. Okay, he's a catcher. Ron Santo, 11 wore. Of course, he had diabetes. I mean, you know, there are issues here that might or might not apply to Mookie, but you never know. You wouldn't have thought that Griffey would tail off like that. And you wouldn't think that Mookie would either. But that's the whole point. You don't really know. You didn't think Trout would.

Yeah. You got to factor in the downside too. Right. Like Trout, just as you were saying, it seems like Mookie could or should age well that he has the skill set to, you would have said that about Trout at one time. One hundred percent. I mean, he did a lot of things well. He hit for average. He hit for power. He was and remains extremely selective and patient and super fast and, you know,

not as great a defender as Mookie maybe, but held down center field. Yeah. So, yeah, you would have said, oh, he'll age well. And then all of a sudden he stopped aging well because he kept getting hurt. This is the first season when even when he was healthy, he didn't play that well. Although, again, relative to Trout, he was still a three-war player in 82 games. So not bad. Most players would happily sign up for that. But yeah, it's not a great trajectory. And I think part of being injury

prone, it's not just about the injuries you sustain, but it's how long it takes you to come back from them. I feel like I'm quoting Rocky Balboa here. So it's like, you know, not how many hits you take, but whether you get up again after them. Right. And that seems to be an issue with Trout, too, where he'll have a calf strain. OK, it's not that unusual to get a calf strain, but it's unusual to take as long to come back from it as he did. Or it's not unusual to have a hemate issue. And maybe that's kind of a freak thing.

But then it just takes him a long time to come back from these things right and plus he has the chronic back issue that maybe can be managed but it's not going to get easier to manage back issues as he gets older so right yeah that's sort of sad but what i'm saying is I still think it's highly unlikely that Mookie will overtake Trout, but it's certainly conceivable in a way that it wasn't a few years ago. Which is, I guess, both a awakening that clues you into how bad it's been for Trout lately relative to his previous performance, but also is a testament to how great his previous performance was. Yes. The trajectory can level off like it has and that he can still have close to an insuperable lead

provided he gets on the field at all in the coming seasons. I'm back to feeling mostly sad, Ben. Yeah, sorry. It's okay. One way in which he continues to age well, he's still as fast as ever, really, or at least as fast since we've been able to measure these things. He's in the 96th percentile in sprint speed this season with a 29.5 foot per second average, which is faster than 2016. Like, basically as fast or faster

than any other season on record stack-ass-wise. So he's not really lost a step, at least when he's really going for it on the bases. He's still as fast as ever. So that makes me think

that at least some of the physical skills are intact there. If he could just stay healthy, that is the perennial refrain. Yeah, and I'm, you know, bummed. I don't want. That is the perennial refrain. Yeah. And I'm, you know, bummed. I don't want it to be a perennial refrain.

You know, I don't want it to be a perennial refrain for anyone. You know, I'm not like offering the baseball gods a swap here or anything like that. But it just, it does stink. It really stinks. Yeah. All right. Here is a question from Matt, Patreon supporter, who says, prefacing this question with the fact that it's suffering heavily from recency bias,

but as a Cubs fan, I'm pretty happy at the moment. How much homegrown pitching does a team have to produce before we consider them good at it, so to speak? In the last years, the Cubs have been probably the worst at producing homegrown pitching. Pretty bad, yeah. He didn't specify how many years there, but some number of years. And it probably cost them more success when they had their good core. But this year, we've had Justin Steele become Cy Young, considered. Jordan Wicks has just come up and gotten three wins out of three. Javier Asad is turning into a reliable starter over the

past few months. Plus, Albert Alzoli is edging closer to being a full-time closer, it seems. Are the Cubs now good at pitching development? We've heard often about the Dodgers and the Guardians being great at this and at keeping them competitive. So wondering if the Cubs can be considered here too. I think I brought this up briefly when we were talking to Eric recently, and I mentioned Wicks and things looking up for the Cubs from a pitcher development standpoint, but they looked down for quite a while. Oh, boy, yeah. Looking up is a long way from being great at it, but it's progress for sure. but it's it's progress for sure it's definitely progress i think i'm hesitant to say yeah like they're yeah they're definitely there i think that for me like if i were wanting to construct the most optimistic read of this i might point to like someone like steel more than i would

wix because i think that one of the things that like really good dev organizations do on the pitching side in particular is they help later round picks maximize and improve. Right. And, you know, steel was a fifth rounder. So it wasn't like,

you know, it's not like he's like a 20th round guy or anything like that, but he's not a first rounder. Like, I'm pretty sure, wasn't Jordan Wicks a first round pick? Yeah, 21st overall. Look at that. And so, I think that having continued sort of sustained success with guys taken later in the draft is often a really good sign. I think having a good track record of being able to help guys from other organizations who come into your orbit improve in ways that maybe their original drafting or signing org wasn't able to do is a good sign. And so, you know, I think that being able to establish that track record takes a little while and certainly more than what we've seen from Chicago.

But this is like what they've gotten so far is like a positive. These are positive indicators. I don't know if they're quite there, but they seem like they're on their way in a way that is nice, especially lately. Like maybe some of the veal you've seen out of was nesky has been good so like you know there's some guys who are you know was nesky's numbers aren't especially superlative but like you know if they can if they can help some of these guys like start to really go you know and develop bigger stuff or develop new pitches or adjust a profile and a repertoire that they came into an organization with. And now you've given them a new pitch or you've adjusted their grip.

And all of a sudden, wow, they're like a slider monster or whatever. You know, I'm making up a guy. But if you can help them, if you can make up a guy, you know, that is a thing that you can point to and say, hey, like they've gotten something figured out here. I think that the good news is that the issues that Chicago was dealing with were pretty readily identifiable. Like you could point to the ways that they had fallen behind in terms of what they were prioritizing from a drafting perspective, sort of the depth that they were doing. So they could be on an upward trajectory. Like it doesn't, you know, it's amazing how quickly this stuff can start to turn around.

Often it just takes hiring a couple of folks from a place that knows what they're doing. That can help a lot, really jumpstart things for you. So that's, you know, that can be a move in a positive direction too. So I would feel excited, but not cocky. How about that? Is that the medium ground that we can tread with them? You know, it's like, oh, there's some positive indicators here. Like, maybe they can, you know, they can move. They can move. So much of assessing whether a team is good or bad at player development is results-oriented just by necessity. Yes. Because there's only so much we can see from the outside.

Yes. And as data-driven, tech-driven player development has been all the rage, there's been an article, if not a book, written about every team. Yeah. a book written about every team, right? When it, you know, maybe, I don't know, there's probably a Rockies version of this article, but every other organization, you can find something that's like, oh, we invested in all these Repsodos and Idrotronics and we have a pitching lab now.

Even the Cubs before they had any success, right? It was like, hey, we have a Cubs pitching lab now. And granted, maybe it takes some time for that to pay dividends, but it certainly didn't pay dividends immediately. So every team is at least paying lip service to that idea. And it can be tough to tell from afar whether they're just paying it lip service or whether they've really embraced it. And if they've embraced it, are they actually implementing it well? There's just a difference between buying the stuff or even hiring someone to staff certain positions and actually being

good at that. And it's tough to tell as a fan or a reporter, someone who's not following that team on an everyday basis, or even if you are, to know, oh, we're good at this now. So in some sense, the proof is in the pudding, and you do just have to wait a while. And it's funny how just a few successes or failures can completely change the narrative, right? Yeah, totally. I mean, this email, we're only talking about a handful of guys here when it comes to the Cubs, and it's like, oh, did that change everything?

And like over a handful of starts in some instances, right? Right, yeah. It comes to the Cubs and it's like, oh, did that change everything? And like over a handful of starts in some instances, right? Right. Yeah. So it's hard to say, I guess, is my takeaway. And I think part of it also, it's funny how quickly it can change. Like a few guys come along and suddenly, oh, I guess we're good at this. Now, like a lot of the results is not attributable to the the team sometimes you just get good players who come along and it's not necessarily a developmental success which i

guess is what you were saying with yeah sometimes a high draft pick is just really good you know credit to you for making the pick but you didn't have to do that much right right it's like mike trout okay great job angels making that pick. But did Mike Trout turn out to be so great because of the angels development? Probably not, right? I mean, probably he would have been great anywhere that had given him a chance. You never know. But I think a lot of it is we attribute to the organization's processes what actually is attributable to the player.

It's always a bit of both. But with some guys, it's just the player. With some guys, it's largely the organization. So I feel like you need more than a few guys. It's amazing how quickly the mood can change when it comes to those things, too, because, you know, people were very recently talking about how the Yankees can't develop a hitter, you know, since Aaron Judge or I guess Gleyber Torres, and he wasn't even solely developed by them. And then all of a sudden, the Yankees have five rookies in their lineup. And it's like,

oh, Jason Dominguez is here and Austin Wells and Emerson Pereira and all these guys, who knows how good they'll all be. But it's exciting at least that they graduated them, that they're giving it a chance. So I think you have to pump the brakes a bit and you do have to wait for the larger sample. And that's why we talk about teams like the Dodgers and the Astros and the Guardians and the Rays who have done it over a longer period of time. And you can start to do studies looking at, well, where did they draft? And how good were the players that they actually got out of that? Did they overperform their expected production based on their draft position? You can do more complex studies like that to see if they actually exceeded expectations.

Although that can be dangerous, too, because if you wait for a big sample of several seasons, and it can take a while for these improvements to manifest, because if you're working with guys just out of high school or even college, it's going to take a few years or several years for them to establish themselves. So a lot of this happens on a time delay. But if you say, I'm going to need several seasons to see who's good and who's not, by the end of that time, it might not actually be true anymore because other teams might have caught up or they might have poached people from those organizations who were responsible for that success. Obviously,

when a team has a lot of player development success, other teams take notice and say, maybe we should hire the people who seem to be responsible for that. So by the time you develop the reputation of, yeah, this is a strength of ours, maybe it's not anymore. And maybe other teams have caught up, but you have to wait. It's like, how do you judge scouts? You need to wait for a while to see, you know, the guys that they were high on and the guys that they were low on and what actually worked out. Sometimes you just need to wait, which can be frustrating. It can be a really frustrating, thorny issue. I think it's part of the reason that at times teams struggle to assess themselves, right? So you got to separate a lot of wheat from chaff, as it were. And I think seeing progress over a really long period of time is useful to that project. I think being in a position where you have a lot of different sort of avenues of player acquisition and you see improvement across all of them is a good way to gain some confidence in it being true. I think being able to help guys adjust sort of mid-flight,

not literally mid-flight of the pitch, but like as the season is going on, helping them to make adjustments where necessary to improve performance is important. You just need a lot of data to feel confident. And then, you know, it really does come down to these guys being able to execute. So yeah, it's a tricky bit of business. And you're right. Like I, I don't say this to like impugn any of the people who've written those stories, but you get these stories about like, here's our pitching lab. And like the team wants to tell you that for a reason. And it is really hard to know what's, what is going to end up being real versus bluster. And, you know, especially with pitching, you're always

working against the reality that a lot of these guys are going to get hurt. And then what do you do? Like, how do you assess things then? It is quite a... Yeah. And is that a developmental problem or is it just bad luck? Who knows? Yeah. I guess it's important to document when a team even changes its messaging surrounding those things, if it's been behind the pack to the point that it was clearly not even investing in those resources or making an effort. And then it switches from that to actually belated we were getting on board here. Yeah. That's a form of progress. But again, it's necessary but not sufficient, as I sometimes say. And the other thing is that sometimes player development success stories these days have nothing or little to do with the organization.

Sometimes, yeah, it's the player, either their own initiative, right? They're studying the data themselves or they're employing a private coach. Or in so many cases, they're going to driveline or tread athletics or some driveline-like facility. And in many cases, the organization was maybe aware or kept apprised of those things and sometimes is a more active participant in actually determining a developmental plan. But sometimes it's like I go to this facility over the off-season and they told me to do these drills and they said I should add this pitch. And the team just said, OK, go ahead.

You know, and that's that. So then do you give credit to the organization? You could give credit to them for not standing in the way, but it's hard to give them credit for actually driving that change. credit for actually driving that change. So even if a team has had developmental successes, it's hard to apportion the credit among the player, the team, and maybe some independent facility or private coach. So it's complicated. It's a tricky thing. It's a soup. Finding the individual spice notes can be really challenging. That's a cooking reference. I don't know if that one resonates for you, Ben. I got it.

All right. And here's one that is perhaps not quite as complicated or multilayered, but a very important question as well. This comes from Mike, Patreon supporter, who says, A real effectively wild shower thought. You are appointed chief base officer for a team, and everything's been going great this year with the larger bases, until you misplace one. Luckily, you still have one of the smaller 2022 bases in storage.

Where do you put it to try and blend in? Oh. First base has the most action, but it's often action running past the bag. Third base will have the fewest runners, but all of them will have just passed two larger bases. Second base plays undergo extra scrutiny. So if you want this to be under the radar, you don't want someone to detect that you've moved back to smaller bases. Where do you put the smaller base? I love our listeners so much. I mean, isn't the obvious answer to this that you don't think small i mean think small but think small in a big way you have to replace all the bags

because it's the it's the relative size that is going to give the game away i would submit the following that if what you're worried about is on field notice that second base is really what you want, because you're right to say that the bag that is probably bearing the most frequent scrutiny, you know, it's during a field demonstration and watched a lot of people taking pictures of the second base bag and thought to myself, what reference do you have in frame that would indicate to someone that this is differently sized than it was before? I think you don't notice. Now, I will say this. Depending on where the press box is, you will notice because you know they had the they had the big bags at salt river they had them during fall league last year and uh i was up in the salt river field press box and i was like that that base does look obviously bigger to me like it looks like a bigger bag it looks like it is grown in size so i think from an aerial vantage, that difference would be particularly stark if you have the first and third base bag in your view to be like, that one's smaller, isn't it?

Doesn't that one look smaller to you? It looks a little bit smaller. I think that might be the old bag. Now, I submit the following, Ben. If all three are the old bag, no one would know. I mean, like maybe the umps at this point would be like, yeah. And maybe some player would be like, is this bag smaller? Like, is it smaller? But I think it would take long enough that you could order a new big base and the next game even

maybe be like, I don't know what you're talking about. All these bags are, these are regulation bags. You know, these are, I don't know that anyone's going out there and measuring. You know, I think they assume that you are using regulation equipment. They measure like, you know, they have the little mold like stencils for like the, for the batter's box. You know, they do the very careful down the line chalking for the lines. But like, I think you just put the bags out there and cause I bet that the,

I bet that, I don't know if this is the technical term, the anchor, you know, cause they have like a little hole and they put it in there so it doesn't move around. I bet that those are the same size. I bet bet it's the same if it's different then you might be in trouble because if someone's sliding in like to second and then the bag jostles because

the smaller bags have smaller anchors they'd be like what's going on with this and then they might be like this is a smaller bag that i but I also think you'd have some amount of plausible deniability, except you wouldn't be able to produce a bigger base, and then you'd be in trouble. Like you could say, oh, I made a mistake. Oh, my gosh, I can't find a third. But there are multiple, I'm here to tell you, like they have many bases because they swap them out, you know,

in the later innings. They put new ones out there. Yeah. I'm just now realizing. You're like, yeah, all of that is definitely real. When I said that Jordan Lawler had a big glove to fill replacing Nick Ahmed, that we're definitely going to get questions about if you just had a bigger glove. Did Nick Ahmed just have a bigger glove?

Was that why he's good at defense? No, that's not what I'm saying. Sometimes we will get a question like that from someone listening midstream. They just can't wait until the end of the episode to send the question, and then we will cover that thing. And then we get a follow-up that's like, oh, yeah, you got it. Which, hey, I don't mind. It means you're an active listener.

You're so eager to write in that you jumped the gun a little bit. That's fine. So as for the bigger base, let's say that you only have one leftover base. It's the spirit of the question. So you can't replace them all with 2022 bases. So you do have to pick one and you can't order a replacement in time. There's just no recourse here. It's the only thing you can do. It's got to be third base, right? You think third and not second? Yeah, I think so because third, you're getting less traffic over there.

Yeah, just the decreased amount of scrutiny relative to the other bags. That's defensible. Fewer runners and also fewer plays that you're gonna really scrutinize at third right because you're not getting the bang bang plays at first force outs and you're not getting the double play pivot and and as many stolen bases at third as you are at second so many more replays and just like gotta watch that over and over frame by frame. You're getting it first base and second base, then third base. And there are just fewer runners over there who could potentially notice this.

Plus, third basemen are often playing off the bag. Right. Even more so than the other basemen. So they might not and they don't have to run over there to cover quite as often. So I think fielders and runners alike, you're just less likely to notice over there. It's just it's not going to come into play as often. So I think you got to go with third base. That's fair. I just think that you would be able to escape notice more often than you'd expect.

Would that be enough times that you would get away with it i don't know but like i think you really have to have them next to each other to notice the difference you know as i as my bit of artistic photography indicated like you didn't tell you get to bags next to each other and you're taking the pictures you're like oh that is a bigger bag but otherwise you're kind of like, is it a bigger bag? Don't know. Yeah. Yeah.

It would be tougher to pick up on a TV probably than for the players on the field and the umpires. And especially if you've got just one that's not like the others and you have that frame of reference on the fields. If you're a base runner and you go from one size base to the next size base. If you're a base runner and you go from one size base to the next size base, or if you're a middle infielder and you're running past the other bag on your way off the field, that kind of thing. It's a very important question, though. I'm glad it was asked and I'm glad we answered it. Do you feel confident you would notice? I don't think I, I don't know if I would notice.

On TV, from the press box, on field level? Yes. Any of the above all three no i do not feel confident yeah no yeah the greater the proximity to the field the more confidence i would feel but but still no regardless no i don't know that they're making us scouts based on our answers here. All right. Let's wrap up with the future blast, which comes to us from the year 2056 and from Rick Wilber, an award-winning writer, editor, and college professor who has been described as the dean of science fiction baseball. Rick writes, in 2056, baseball fans were entertained by a full global season of enhanced players dominating most facets of the game. But it was interesting to see that while everything seemed to be happening faster, the equality of the enhancements seemed to level out for the most part. I should probably bring people up to speed if they missed the past Future Blast.

First of all, you can find all the Future Blasts linked from the show page. the past Future Blast. First of all, you can find all the Future Blasts linked from the show page. But also, we talked last time about the fact that we now have FDA-approved tissue regeneration procedures that are working very well now. So you can get faster, stronger, more limber with these ligament and tendon replacements. So that is what Rick is writing about here. Yes, the runner coming home from third on the sacrifice fly was faster than he or she had been before the enhancement,

but the right fielder who caught the fly ball and rocketed a strike from deep right to home plate was enhanced too. And so the ball and the runner arrived at about the same time, just as they might have pre-enhancement. This equalization of improvement held true for most aspects of the game. The exception to that, the thinking went, would be at the plate, where batter's swings might be faster. There were a lot of broken bats in 2056. But whose visual acuity was, at the start of the season, still the normal professional ballplayers 2013,

and for some, an amazing 29.2, did that need to be improved to match the pitcher's increased velocity? With 100 miles per hour, the new benchmark for a good fastball. It turned out that laser eye surgery to reach the theoretical limit of 28 wasn't necessary after all. As researchers had discovered back in the 1990s, visual acuity was just one of the three main visual components for great hitting or defensive play. Depth perception was equally important, and contrast sensitivity was a factor as well. Hitters and fielders adjusted without further laser work on their eyes, and by July of 2056, batting averages had come back to the long-established mean of about 2050. averages had come back to the long-established mean of about 2050. It's true that some fans who were still encountering the game through be-there technology went through a kind of whiplash trying

to keep up with the enhanced speed of things, but for fans in the ballpark and through live streams of the games, it all looked great and attendance and viewership numbers returned to their usual level after a surge of the curious in the early part of the season. I guess that is more or less how things have worked up until this point, right? That we have gotten more or less the different aspects of the game kind of keeping pace with each other in sort of a serendipitous way. Not entirely, obviously, but people always talk about, oh, it's so miraculous, 60 feet, 6 inches, and 90 feet and all of that. And how could it still work after lo these many years when everyone's faster and stronger?

And those things have evened out to some extent, right? Like you do still see a lot of bang-bang plays. You do still see a lot of bang-bang plays. Guys running down the line faster maybe than ever before, but also guys being better at fielding and more agile and throwing harder, even though we can't tell the difference with how hard their throws are. Maybe some things have not quite equalized, like strikeout rates rising continuously because pitchers just keep getting better in some respects, not solely

because of speed. But yeah, those things probably have held up better than one would have expected, I guess, right? Like, I don't know if it's miraculous or the fact that they arrived at those dimensions through trial and error initially, but they have held up fairly well given that the Major League Baseball player of today looks like a completely different form of person than the Major League Baseball player of 1893 or whatever when the pitching distance changed to that distance. It is semi-surprising that things have not been thrown more out of whack than they have. Yeah. that things have not been thrown more out of whack than they have. Which is what Sam wrote about back when Billy Hamilton was breaking in. He was sort of speculating about,

will Billy Hamilton just be so fast that it does break baseball? Like 90 feet won't be enough or whatever it is now with the bigger bases. Assuming you're not trying to slip in any smaller ones, that the distance is a little slighter. But no, no one has come along who was such an outlier that they were uncatchable or unthrowoutable or unhittable, right? It still largely works for most players, which is kind of nice. Yeah.

All right, that will do it for today. And by the way, Adelice Garcia did go on the I.L. with a right patellar tendon strain and Evan Carter was indeed promoted. And hey, you may have noticed we had a new intro theme today. This one was courtesy of listener Josh Bussman, who I believe is an associate professor of music. So he knows what he's doing. And what he did was write us an effectively wild intro and outro theme, which you can do, too, if you're musically inclined by sending it to us at podcast at pangraphs.com. You can also support the podcast in another important way by funding us on Patreon.

Just go to patreon.com slash effectively wild, as have the following five listeners who've already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free and get themselves access to some perks. Shane Allen, Tyler Barnett, Jeff Silver, Jeff Roberts, and Frasier May. Thanks to all of you. I just got screeners for the Frasier reboot. That has nothing to do with Frasier May, but it made me think of it. Meg and I are big Frasier fans, and we are apprehensive, but I will see it soon. And if you become a Patreon supporter of Effectively Wild, you can get access to a whole bunch of fun perks, including the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, discounts on merch and ad-free Fangraphs memberships, and so much more, patreon.com slash effectivelywild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. Anyone and everyone can contact us and send us your questions and comments via email at podcast at fan graphs dot com. You can join our Facebook group at Facebook dot com slash group slash effectively wild.

You can rate, review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EW pod and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at our slash effectively wild. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with one more episode before the end of the week, which means that we will talk to you soon. Baseball is a simulation It's all just one big math equation You're all about these stats we've compiled Because you listen to Effectively Wild

With Ben Lindberg and Meg Rowley. Come for the ball, banter's free. Baseball is a simulation. It's all just one big conversation. Effectively wild.