Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2218: How the Tigers Got Gr-r-reat

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and FanGraphs’ Dan Szymborski banter about Ben’s timing in respect to Declan Cronin’s homerless streak, the perils of podcasts, predictions, and regression to the mean, the White Sox cutting payroll and their projections for the rest of this season, next season, and beyond, Gerrit Cole’s ignominious intentional walk, Alex Cora’s seeming admission that […]

A baseball podcast, analytics and stats With Ben and Meg, from Fangraphs Effectively wild Effectively wild Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Van Graaff's presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, not joined today by Meg Valley, who is still on vacation, filling in for her, delightfully for me, is Dan Zaborski, senior writer for FanGraph's, creator of Zips, projection expert.

Hello, Dan. Hey Ben, delightful. That doesn't sound like me. There's a Dan Zaborski in Michigan, who's a mechanic, I believe. You might be talking about him. Have you two interacted? No, because you see, I don't know what I would do in, I believe, you might be talking about him. Have you two interacted? No, because you see, I don't know what I would do in that situation because it

might be like a Highlander thing and there can only be one Dan Zemborski and I had to do something horrible and that's not good for my non-incarceration. So I steer clear of that. You could commiserate over people misspelling Zemborski. I had people misspelling Dan. I get called Dave a lot. Really? Yeah. How do you spell some Borsky but not Dan? Even at ESPN I got called Dave a lot. I even had a few articles that were by Dave's and Borsky. I'm like guys you got my last name. Don't know what my first name is. I'm good at spelling some Borsky if I do say so

myself. I'm good at spelling Mark Zepchinsky, not good at saying it apparently, but Mark Zepchinsky I could spell. And I attribute it to having a history teacher in grammar school named Paul Shklesky. And it was one of those with lots of sounds that don't sound like it was. Yeah.

And I got used to that and got adept at spelling that. And now I can handle the deceptive Symborski Zepchinsky sort of sounds but I think I'm an outlier in that respect. Zemborski is not actually all that bad compared to a lot of Polish names. It helps that I probably don't pronounce it the proper Polish way because no one in my family has spoken Polish in about 120 years. So I have my pronunciation, which uses a hard Z. And since that's how it's

pronounced in MLB the show, it's, it's, it's made that pronunciation the official one. I've kind of ruined it for any Zaborski who's getting it pronounced correctly. Well, I think you should talk to the mechanic. Maybe he has a projection system for how long the cars will last or something, and you'll find out that you have even more in common than you knew. So speaking of predictions and things coming to pass, I know you're familiar with this feeling we're sort of famous slash infamous here at Effectively Wild

for talking about things, either far-fetched things, and then immediately those far-fetched things happen right after we talk about them. Or we talk about a player or a team who is either slumping or really hot and then immediately after that their fortunes reverse. And this is a gesture standard regression to the mean. It's the SI cover jinx, it's the Madden cover jinx, it's the effectively wild jinx, although we take pains to point out that it's not always a jinx. Sometimes we resuscitate seasons for people. But that's not what happened last week when I talked to Declan Cronin, Miami Marlins reliever and alum of my high school, Regis, making his second appearance on the podcast and the

first appearance by a Regian in the major leagues, which has endeared him to me. And then I find out he's a seemingly a great guy, certainly a great guy to talk to. And I had him on partly to talk about the fact that he had not allowed a home run all season long, as Leo Morgenstern wrote about recently for Fangrass. And Leo wrote about that and Declan continued not to allow a home run after that post. So Leo didn't jinx him to allow a homerun after that post. So Leo didn't jinx him into allowing a homer. And I was wary of bringing it up even. And I asked Declan, are you superstitious?

Is it okay if I talk about this on the podcast? Are you going to be mad at me if you subsequently give up a homer? Will I be blamed? I sort of pre-registered and pre-absolved myself and Declan pre-absolved me in the event that disaster struck and did it ever. In fact, his very next appearance, now this was Thursday that we talked and then he didn't get into a game until Sunday, not only his next appearance but his next batter faced. And Cronin this season has been quite the ground ball artist. Throws tons of ground balls.

That heavy sink. Nice breaking pitch. He's had a nice year. This one though hit well out toward left center field and for the second time today James Wood hits a home run. He gave up his first home run of the season or at least his first major league home run of the season because as he noted, he did allow one in AAA. And I think this is a new high slash low for the effectively wild jinx tendency. He had faced hundreds of batters in the bigs this season without allowing a home run.

As soon as we speak, boom, home run. I feel partly responsible, even though he already said I wasn't. Well, one of the problems with doing projections is since I do so many projections, I am inevitably going to say horrible things about someone or way too promising things, and it will collapse into disaster one way

or the other if you look at like the 95 percentile projections. Most players have a pretty darn good 95th percentile projection. Jamer Candelaria, who has not been good this year, his 95th percentile slugging percentage was 626, which sounds absolutely crazy if someone would go into the season with that, but that's the 5%, the 95th percentile, which means that over the course of a season, projecting 2,000 hitters,

there are going to be a hundred hitters that will make me look that stupid in the majors or the minors. So every year that that happens during the season preseason, like this season, I wrote a very negative piece about the Cardinals. And then they immediately went on a winning streak and people naturally would let me know on Twitter because I clearly needed to know that at all opportunities. A few years ago,

I wrote a piece about the Tiger's bullpen where I said it was like a combination of all the characters you disliked in TV and movies, that it was that horrible. I described it as Andy Bernard from The Office and Neelix from Deep Space Nine and Councilman Jam from Parks and Rec and Scrappy Doo and all of them destroying every bit of joy in the universe. And then they were sixth in the league in FIP by the end of the season, seventh in ERA, I believe. So that didn't go well at all.

So anytime you make any kind of statement that implies something about the future, you will regret it a lot. Well, that's why I try not to for the most part, but you kind of have to doing what you do. I can't say, oh, I don't know. I mean, you can, you can just say, well, Zip said that, I didn't, which sometimes you do draw that distinction and you make clear that this is a Dan Szymborski prediction, not a

computer prediction, even though you are perhaps part computer at this point. But I guess those TV characters you mentioned, they're characters you like to dislike, at least Councilman Jam. Everyone loves to hate Councilman Jam. So maybe you could have said the same thing about the 2022 Tiger's Bullpen. Maybe, but I didn't love to hate Neelix. I just didn't want to see Neelix. Well, I asked Leo to update the stats on Declan Cronin's homer avoidance before he ran into me on Effectively Wild and also James Wood of the Nationals who finally did take him deep and Leo told me that he went 65 innings before giving up his first home run this season. The last relievers to do that were Wade Davis and Calvin Herrera, both Royals in 2014, probably

a team that defied some predictions of yours, I would imagine, neither gave up a home run all season. However, Cronin had already faced more batters, 281, before giving up the homer to Wood than Davis did in 2014, 279. Herrera faced 285 batters that season. If Cronin had faced just five more batters, if he had avoided coming on effectively wild for another week or two maybe, it would have been the longest streak to start the season in terms of batters faced since Peter Moiland of the Braves in 2009. And of course those seasons lower home run rates than this season so it was even more impressive.

Leo did note if you include starting pitchers it's not as fun a fact since Sunny Gray started the season with a 66 and two thirds inning homerless streak just last year, though only 274 batters faced. The funny thing is, I was not watching this game because it was a mid-September game between the Nationals and the Marowans, so I was unaware that Declan Cronin had given up this home run, and it was not a cheapie. So at least you can console yourself with that. That it wasn't really bad luck. He just got tagged here. It was Wood's second Homer of the game. It was sort of a hang in slider on a one-one count that would hit 108 miles per hour and 426 feet. And Stack has said it would have been out of all 30 parks. So

he did not get cheated. But I found out that Declan Cronin had allowed this first home round of the season because he texted me. And the text he sent was, quote, it's not your fault, but literally the next batter I faced, bomb emoji. At least he didn't blame you. Random texts I get inside baseball are always the most amusing. I remember that I found out about the Rockies signing Ian Desmond some years ago, not from

the news report that they signed him, but from an unnamed agent who texted me to laugh about it to me. Like, you're going to love this, Zborsky. But you see, I, when things like this happen, you see, you can blame yourself, but it's even better to blame reality. I used to blame Carson, but he's not with us at FanGraphs anymore. So now, you know, reality seems a lot more volatile than the projections do, which makes you think which one is the reality.

I'm just tickled by the idea that there was a major leaguer almost certainly thinking about his Effectively Wild podcast appearance on the mound immediately after allowing a home run. I did not confirm that, but I've got to think given the post-game text that that was running through his mind in the moments immediately after giving that home run. So I've never been on a big league field myself, but I have at least been thought about on a big league field. It would make a good thriller. You could show him Cronin being really nice to you on the phone,

and you could see him agitated and sweating and just looking around. He's not sleeping. He's got tremors. He's got to stop Ben Lindbergh. I think we're still friends. It seems like that. Or at least he's pretending to be nice to me still. Well, he's got more home runs he allows. Yeah, right. It may depend on how he finishes the season.

See, right now his home run per nine is still like 0.1. Right. When it starts to get to 0.5, that's when friendships are tested. Yes. I guess I should say I've been on a big league field. I just have not played on one. And I imagine that you received some texts about Eric Hosmer's contract too, when that was signed. I did. And thankfully, that is the one that hasn't come back

to haunt me because I probably wrote the most about that than any contract I hated ever. Because if he had been a know, been a superstar with the Padres, some people would have never let me get off the hook for that one. Well, it's an occupational hazard. It just goes with this gig. Obviously, our attention is drawn and our readers and listeners' attention is drawn to the outliers and the unusual surprising performances. And those are the ones that are most subject to regression and the plexig. And those are the ones that are most subjects to regression

in the plexiglass principle and coming back to earth. So it comes with the territory. And we'll see if I put a hex on the Detroit Tigers the way I did Declan, because speaking of over-performing Tigers bullpens, the 2024 Tigers bullpen has been nails lately, and it is driving them to a pretty surprising pennant race. They're still in this thing as we speak.

And I had to call up Jason Benetti, the legend, the TV voice of the Tigers. Cause I told myself before Monday's game, if the Tigers win again, I'm going to ask Jason to come on the podcast to talk about that. And then Bobby Witt Jr. hit a grand slam against them and it wasn't looking great. And I thought, do I still want to ask him? I don't know. And then the Tigers came back because they keep coming back. And then of course I had to talk to Jason. So he will be on the end of this episode and he is a delight as always. And I guess to pivot to some banter before I bring Jason in here, maybe we could talk about the White Sox for a second, Jason's former employer, which we will also discuss.

So there was a report and it was a Bob Nightingale report. So take that for what it's worth, though he certainly does seem to have a pipeline to Chicago White Sox related news, but Nightingale in an item in a recent column pointed to a decline in payroll next year for the White Sox after quote, sustaining substantial losses in revenue this year. And I guess it's not surprising perhaps that they would lose revenue, at least in an operating

income sense, given that they are one of the worst teams of all time. And perhaps also surprising to people is that they haven't run that low a payroll this year, at least by the standards of the worst team of all time. You would think that, well, gosh, they must have really cheaped out and maybe they did to some degree, but they're smack in the middle of the pack, payroll wise, which I suppose makes their results even worse in some sense. They actually have the highest payroll in the American League Central this year, about $149 million. A lot of that is money made by players who are no longer on the team. And not much of it was going to very productive players because they didn't have a whole lot

of those, but they have about 35 million in payroll commitments thus far for 2025 and that'll go up, but they're not going to make up the difference between that and this year's tab. Maybe given the ownership of that team, it's also not a great surprise that they're not planning to invest big in this roster for next year, but that just made me wonder. I mean, I think a lot of people looked at this and said, well, how low can they go? Gosh, they've been the worst team of all time potentially and now they're going to slash spending. Does that mean they will be even worse? Well, not necessarily because of what we were just talking about. The extreme outlier performances

tend to go back in the other direction a little bit, but I did wonder, I don't know whether you've looked at the preliminary projections for next year or what you think about the outlook for them last year, the even stingier spending White Sox. And I guess like long term is this bottoming out? I mean, it almost has to be bottoming. It's bottoming out for basically any team in the modern era, but does this mean that there are many more years of darkness ahead of them? Or given that they have arguably the best farm system in baseball, do you foresee some relatively quick recovery from this nadir? I do not project a relatively quick recovery. I did some prelim projections for next year for another piece a couple weeks ago. I don't think the White

Sox have have changed their outlook very much over those last two weeks, so I don't think it's that big a deal and the Zibs very preliminary projection was 48 and 114. That's replacement level exactly, right? It's a terrific improvement. Yes, but it's one of the worst. I think it is the worst projection if that holds up in the offseason and I think there's a chance that will because that projection Includes only players that are in the system While the White Sox don't really have big losses and some other teams that are they're in contention with do

So it's gonna be a pretty terrible team But they're probably not this bad because what I always try to get to tell people when they're excited about the greatest teams or depressed about the worst teams is that the greatest teams are generally good and lucky. And the worst teams are generally terrible and unlucky. A team that wins 110 games is far more likely to be a 105 win team that had good fortune than a 115 win team that got poor for poor fortune.

It's just the way it is. I mean, the White Sox have had pretty much nothing go their way. Even Crochet, who is really, really good for a lot of the season, they've had to reduce his innings. He's not really winning games for them anymore. His ERA for the season is now near four, I believe, although part of that is that the defense is terrible. But they do have a good farm system, but the problem is I don't know if they know what to do with that farm system, other than just say, okay, the players are up, we'll play them. And I think that's as deep as they go because that's kind of what they did before they had a good farm system to

develop some players their solution was just to put them on the team and hope everything else just worked out. Their forays into free agency were extremely disappointing they never pushed when they should have and then they invested in the wrong players at the wrong time and I don't know that given ownership and And the current front office that that's going to change You could give me the best farm equipment the most arable land that ever existed and I am NOT going to grow good crops I don't know how I mean I tried to grow strawberries once and it was a disaster I

I actually thought one of the weeds was the strawberries and I was watering it. I didn't get any strawberries, but that's where the white socks are. They have interesting players on the farm system. I have zero confidence that they can convert those players into major leaguers and build a team around them. I think that this team is, you know, in the worst position of any organization in baseball. I think the Rockies are in far better straights than them. And people know how I feel about the Rockies.

It's the first time that you've said someone was better off than the Rockies potentially. It's funny because I have at various points done check-ins on the White Sox projected record this year, and I have consistently taken the under on those and have been vindicated by that. And I know that in the past, if you take extremely terrible teams in the aggregate, their projections are generally right and they do rebound to some semblance of competence and respectability, but the White Sox have

not and I know also that they have been unfortunate seemingly that their actual record is 10 games worse than their base runs record. And yet I look today currently at the Fangrass playoff odds as we speak, which I guess is part Zips and part Steamer, and the rest of season projection, essentially the true talent projection for the White Sox right now is 422, and that's winning percentage. And it's consistently been over 400. Even if you take their base runs record, they've been more like a 300 winning percentage team. And so it has made me wonder what would a team have to do to actually project. To be roughly as terrible as the white Sox have been because the projections

have just consistently forecasted a rebound. And I know what you said that you have to be both bad and unlucky to be this unsuccessful. And the analyst Mattan Kay had a thread earlier this month about how even if you took a true talent replacement level team and simulated thousands, hundreds of thousands of times, it's extraordinarily unlikely that a team would end up with as few wins as the White Sox have. And yet, I guess just watching them, I have never felt the hope that they could even achieve a 400 winning percentage over any stretch Well, the tricky thing is that I don't do the the fan graphs

Standing projections. I don't I'm not involved in zips is used but I don't have any Input on that so it's I don't really have a great deal of insight into it I could tell you what zip says and at last check zips saw the White Sox as a true talent 307 team. Okay. All right. Which is a lot less. Yeah. So, I know that record is taken into consideration and home versus road. So, I can't say how much that is sometimes because of that the rest of season winning percentages can look kind of odd at this time

of the season. Like the Orioles have like a 500 projection but that's because they're projected to have this like the second best opponents the rest of the way. The White Sox are bad and they're really you know, I always say though, if you're going to be bad, be the best at it. Because everyone remembers the 1962 Mets. That team is legend. I mean players on that team who would not be remembered otherwise are remembered because of that. Marvelous Marv Thornberry.

I don't think that he would have the same, you know, memory about him if he wasn't part of those 1962 Mets. I mean, gentlemen Jim Hickman, I mean, he had his moments, but he'll always be remembered as one of the best players on the 1962 Mets. I think that there's something to be said for being great at being awful, and I don't think it's going to work in this case, but for most organizations Losing 120 games is more likely to result in change to the organization than losing say

95 games. Yeah. Well, maybe not this organization Yeah, and speaking of that worst of all time watch the won't watch I Have thought that yes if they surpass the 1962 Mets loss record for a modern era team, no respect, disrespect, I don't know which it would be to the 1899 Cleveland Spiders. But if they do that, which still seems likely at this point, I think there has to be a distinction drawn between that, just having the most losses and having the worst winning percentage. And that they may still avoid. So that's the 1916 Philadelphia A's

and they had a 235 winning percentage. And so basically the White Sox, as we speak here, they're 36 and 115. I think they can only win two more games the rest of the season if they want to have a worse winning percentage Than those A's who were playing a shorter season and that is well within their powers I think not to win more than two games even though they have just won three in a row as we speak

So how about that? They are regressing to the mean maybe as we talk right now. They've won three games in a row Yeah, isn't that impressive for most teams, but I believe that's the first time they've won multiple games in a row since June. Mm hmm. I was going from memory. I might be a big fat liar if that's the case. I mean, that's terrible. But here on the plus side or the minus side, depending on how

you take it, is that teams are much, talent is much more distributed around the league than it was in the days with those horrible teams. So, and you know, there was no free agency there realistically. I mean, players who were released were free agents essentially, but no one else was. So it was easier to be a terrible team than it is now. You almost have to try to be a terrible team now to be this bad. So I think that the White Sox get some bonus points there for being, for badness below league replacement

or something like that. Because like the Cleveland Spiders, of course, they cheated. They had an owner who owned two teams and transferred the players to the non- team and that's that's cheating and right The white Sox are bad with the benefit of being able to sign players and free agency Yes that Chris gets quote from the other day for which he took a lot of flack for being pretty frank I suppose about not only how bad the white Sox were but how bad they themselves

Expected to be. I guess that sort of speaks to what we were saying because he said he would have been a little surprised if he had been informed coming into the season that the Sox would potentially set the loss record. And then he went on to say, now, if you would have told me prior to the year that we would have ended up with over a hundred losses,

105, 110, I wouldn't have been as surprised. But this is the cards that we've been dealt at this point. You try to make the best of it. And I think it's an opportunity to embrace the situation that we're in. Of course, as a lot of people pointed out, he has had a hand in dealing those cards. So that's obviously partly ownership's responsibility as well.

But to say that, oh yeah, we wouldn't have been surprised by losing 100 or 105 or 110, but 120, well, that would have surprised us, which I guess is sort of what we were saying about. Well, you have to be terrible and also unlucky. Although to concede that you would not have been surprised to be merely a really bad team and not historically terrible. Well, that doesn't speak well of your organizational goals, I suppose.

Yeah, I mean, what it comes down to is if you wouldn't be surprised that your team would lose 100 games, then why did you do some of the things you did? Like, why would you acquire like Nicky Lopez and like half the mediocre short stops in baseball? Why would you trade for Dominic Fletcher if you expected to lose 100 games?

If it wasn't surprising, why would you, you know, why would you bring in Tommy Fam? I mean, these are questions that I would ask. A lot of what they did suggest that they thought they'd be like a 500 team, because they did 500 team things. I guess you could say it's for flipping at the deadline purposes potentially. But yeah, I mean, if you're going into the season expecting to be that bad,

then something has already gone horribly wrong. Even if Gets was not the only one engineering that situation. Now, I should say I can't resist to how can you not be pedantic about baseball point because I mentioned that the 1916 Philadelphia A's have the worst winning percentage in the modern era, 235, but they went 36, 117 and one. So they had one tie and for winning percentage purposes that was and is calculated the same as if they had gone 36 and 117. So that is

a 235 winning percentage. But if you say that, well, they played 154 games, not 153, and they still won 36 of them. So really they won 36 out of 154, not 36 out of 153, in which case the actual winning percentage, the percentage of games they played that they won, not the percentage of games they played that they won, not the percentage of games where there was a one or lost decision was 234, not 235.

So maybe that should be the number to beat, in which case I think the White Sox maybe are allowed only one more wind in order to not surpass that team. But that's my little pedantic rant about winning percentages. But ties are terrible and ties are morally wrong. When there is a tie, both teams should be considered losers. A tie should be a loss for both teams. The balance in the record be damned.

Well, for winning percentage purposes, I suppose that would be the same, but I have been on record as saying I'd prefer ties to Zombie Runner, though I would far prefer just playing the games the way that we used to. And how could I not make that point when we have the coiner of the term Zombie Runner on the podcast today?

I hate that I have coined something I hate somehow. Yeah, well, we've taken that term and run with it and helped popularize it and I think it is the most apt. I wonder how my mom feels. She also named something she doesn't like that much. No. Oh, well, let's talk about better players and teams for just a moment here. Maybe let's see. Let's move, I guess, to the Yankees for a second from the team with the worst record to I guess the team with the best record at least in the league and the Yankees have been the subject of a couple of controversies that occurred in the same game really.

So first there was a intentional walk that Garrett Cole issued to Raphael Devers that I think was correctly called cowardly. to Raphael Devers that I think was correctly called cowardly. And you could say that any intentional walk is cowardly in some sense. This one was rare in that Cole called for this one himself. Now his struggles against Devers have been well documented and in fact Cole has name checked Devers as the hitter that he's had a really tough time with and he's given up eight home runs to him, and no one has hit him as hard in the power department, at least, as Devers, and Devers has hit Cole

as hard as anyone too, which is pretty impressive given that Cole is quite a good pitcher, though Devers is quite a good hitter. But Cole, in this case, just decided to put Devers on with no one on base and one out in the third inning. And you don't see that every day. And apparently there was some amount of miscommunication because the Yankees had talked with Cole about, well, maybe we would be more likely to walk him than we would be kind of buying into the batter versus pitcher history here, despite

the still smallish sample, but clearly Cole is well aware of the difficulty that he's had against Evers. So they had talked about, well, maybe we'd be more likely to issue a walk than we would be for someone else or even someone else of equivalent performance overall. And Cole maybe took that a little too far and decided to take it upon himself to issue the free pass and signaled for it and put the four fingers up. And then the Red Sox ended up scoring three runs in that inning. The Yankees had taken the lead earlier in the inning, and then the Red Sox ultimately won seven to one, but Devers stole second and then there was subsequent

damage and everything unraveled. And Cole said, clearly that was a mistake. I think that I bought into the plan going into it, but afterward it was the wrong move. And Boone said my preference would have been let's attack him. But obviously I didn't communicate that well enough. I think Garrett was a little indecisive out there and rolled with it. And Austin Wells, Yankees catcher, was himself caught off guard. He was not in that pregame conversation about maybe we should walk this guy. And so there was clearly some kind of communication breakdown here. What we have is a failure to communicate. And that came back to Bite the Yankees. And that, I mean, we've seen Aaron

Judge get that kind of treatment as recently as this season, but it is very rare for even a Bonds judge type hitter to be walked in that situation with one out that early in the game with a lead. That is pretty extraordinary. And so it felt cosmically just, I think, that that came back to Bitecold. I think part of the problem is these automatic intentional walks that they're allowed these days. I think that they should have to throw those four pictures because it would be an additional kind of a walk of shame

to walk. Like you want to walk into this situation? Okay, well you're going to do all the pomp and circumstance. Everyone's going to have to watch as you slowly walk him. You're going to have to look wells in the eyes. You're going to have to look devils in the eyes. And so you know what you've done and how you lost the situation Yeah, I think I think that kind of shame is is missing when you could just intentionally walk like imagine if in the ninth inning You could just say because now if you forfeit you get like what it's like 13 nothing loss if you forfeit the game I imagine you just say oh, well, it's the last batter of the game We'll just count it as a hit and then another out and everyone can go home.

I think you should have to play every batter. Well, I think the problem with that, and by the way, I should mention it was the fourth inning. Not that that makes it any better. The Yankees had taken the lead in the bottom of the third, and then that intentional pass was issued in the top of the fourth. The problem is that usually it is called from the bench and then you're from the bench and then

you're punishing the pitcher and rubbing the pitcher's nose in something that they didn't decide to do. But in this particular case, I think if it is pitcher initiated, then yes, they should have to wallow in the shame of that. And I have talked about this recently. I've just become more anti-IBB as the years have gone on and kind of wish there were a way around it. And we've discussed some potential alternatives because of course you're always going to get pitchers pitching around hitters in situations where they don't want to face the guy and you don't want to just have unintentional intentional walks.

But there are some mechanisms you could institute. And fortunately, we've seen fewer intentional walks as the years have gone by because teams realized that it's not a good idea for the most part. But Garrett Cole, I guess, did not realize that in this particular situation. And Debra seemed as confused as anyone. So I think everyone was confused and it just felt like,

yeah, they kind of deserve to lose after that moment. You know, that just just that was bad. From the data, intentional walks are like the thing in which protection actually exists. The idea of players hitting better behind a really good hitter. I just want to say most because it's possible I've missed something, but everything I've ever seen on the subject has indicated, yeah, it doesn't actually matter. Except for one thing, intentional walks. When there's a huge difference between

the two batters, and you do see a lot of intentional walks, you of course saw this a lot in the National League when there's still, when was the picture hitting, because you'd look at the intentional walk leaders every year, you'd see like the best sluggers, and then some random catchers that hit eight would have like, you know, 15 intentional walks. But generally speaking, I just don't like intentional walks. I don't think it would be practical, but like a Ball a certain amount out of the strike zone is a ball for the next batter or something. I don't know. These are crazy Ridiculous ideas that I haven't really thought of more than the last 25 seconds But I don't like to take you to walks because one of the nice things about baseball is That there is no running out the clock you have to face the other team and I think you should have to face

The best on the other team. And I think you should have to face the best on the other team. I mean, baseball has all these unwritten rules, all these, you know, the manhood rules about things that have to be done. Well, you know, facing the best players on the other team, that's part of that, I would think. Yeah. And we've talked about various proposals. Yes, you could start the next batter with some advantage in the count. Or if you throw four consecutive balls, then there's a penalty. You have to throw a strike at some point.

So there are ideas out there that I think could work. But for four consecutive balls and you had to have you have to wear a cap that's covered in Strauss logos. Well, everyone has to do that to some extent now. All of them. Just all. Full. You can't even see the logo.

There's no logo. It just says Strauss like 50 times on the cap. Well, I guess justice was served here one way or another. And the other thing, and you know, usually an intentional walk won't burn you because of course most plate appearances end in outs. So usually you are gonna get away with it and Patrick Dubuque documented that at baseball prospectus but it is usually not the net EV move or plus EV move

as I suppose they say. And mostly teams have realized that expected value that is. But the other controversy that came of this game is that Cole had hit Devers in their first matchup, three innings earlier. And the Red Sox took that to be intentional, perhaps thinking, well, he wants no part of facing Devers, which I guess that case might be bolstered by the fact that the next time you just put him on base a different way. So I guess that could potentially be two solutions to avoiding Devers and the Yankees denied that and I don't know how clear it was

that that was intentional. But the Red Sox wanted to retaliate or at least had some desire to and asked after the game if he considered the situation a closed case. Cora said, yeah, it was closed yesterday, like around the sixth inning. So, you know, we had our chance. It didn't happen. We have to move on. So I guess there's some plausible deniability here, or maybe more like implausible deniability, because I think we all know what he was referring to

there. Brian Bayo faced Aaron Judge and through the first pitch that he saw behind him, and then threw a subsequent pitch way inside too, and didn't hit Judge, but it sure seemed like he had attempted to. And take this for what it's worth as well, but the New York Post reported that MLB isn't looking into Alex Cora's comments that suggested that the Red Sox threw it at Aaron Judge on purpose, whatever looking into means. And you do rarely these days hear a manager admit it even that much, right?

You will say it got away from a guy or whatever, and you rarely hear them just flat out admit, yeah, essentially we were throwing at that guy. And that's interesting given all the conversation that's been going on around baseball and on this podcast lately about hit by pitches and the danger they pose and whether there should be some rules against them that are harsher than the ones we have. And here you have Cora coming out and saying, yeah, pretty much we were intending to do that. Now we all know that that happens and maybe it happens less than it used to, but it does. And I think in that climate of concern about hit by pitches, maybe it's even more flagrant to own up to it that way. And so I wonder whether there will be any punishment,

probably not that harsh a punishment if the president is any guide. But it does seem to me like if you're just going to say it, then you do have to pay some sort of price for that. Yeah, at the very least stupidity is just to admit it. If me and you were at a bar and a knife goes into the wall next to you and I hint that I might have thrown the knife at you, I think you would have reason to be a little upset with me. Like, well, I didn't, like Ben, I didn't say I hit the knife. I just said, I

could have been holding it and then it slipped out of my hand and it went by you because I was mad at you. I mean, not that that would have happened. I, I mean, it comes down to baseball needs to take, you know, hit by pitches and plunking batters intentionally seriously because baseball gains nothing from batters getting hit by pitch. It's not really part of even baseball's lore. Like football is always hard to unwind because tackling players hard is, you know, a part

of the game and unfortunately it leads to a lot of concussions. Yeah. But there's no reason to do that in baseball. You get nothing for that. Right. I mean, there are old school types and former players who will just talk romantically about, oh, you know, back in the day, oh, they've you used to knock them down and buzz them and, you know, eye for an eye kind of retaliation. And players today are too soft, you know, that whole refrain that you thankfully don't hear so much anymore.

But there's a little bit of that legend burnishing of, oh, he'd stare you down and he'd hit you, even though it's often surrounding someone like Bob Gibson who didn't actually hit many batters. All those people who say that are people whose careers weren't sidelined horribly by like a concussion from getting plunked. I mean, it wasn't an intentional action. But if Tony Kniigliara was alive today, I doubt he would wax nostalgia about the time he was hit in the eye.

It's not a good part of baseball. All you will do is lose players. And I don't think you gain anything from it even. So there's not even that kind of situation where it's part of the game. It's not really. And most of the stories about, you know, plunking as you say, intentionally are way overblown. I mean, you look at AL versus NL hit by picture rates when the DH versus the non-DH and they weren't really that different. So there was no real protecting player. It's just kind of an excuse to being a jerk.

And I don't think that's necessarily what you wanna push. And I know that this Bayo pitch to judge it, it was quote unquote the right way, I guess you're supposed to approach that, which is not up in the head, keep it low. It was kind of behind his calves or shins maybe. So you're not going to probably do career threatening damage or life threatening damage there. I know. However, pitchers just aren't that accurate. I mean, as demonstrated by the fact that Brian Baio

trying to throw an Aaron judge, not a small target could not hit him. Right. And so if you're aiming a judge and you miss him, then who's to say that if you are aiming at some part of judge that is not dangerous theoretically, that you couldn't hit him in some part that is because you missed and you were already aiming way inside. Right. So I don't know that command is pinpoint enough to say that where you could precision target a player. There have been 1300 wild pitches this year. I imagine some of those were balls not going

where pitchers wanted them to go. Okay. Wanted to just mention the specific proposal that we had talked about most recently for disincentivizing intentional walks. A listener named Jeremy wrote in to talk about how his rec softball league does it, which is if the pitcher walks a bat around four straight pitches, the batter can decline the walk until they see at least one strike. Or if a pitcher walks a bat around four straight pitches, the team has the option of either allowing the walk

or sending the on deck hitter to first while the at bat hitter gets a fresh at bat. So there's some creative solutions that I think might get around the problem that pitchers are always going to pitch around batters. They don't want to face probably better solutions than I would, because most of my solutions involve shame. Like you have to wear the jester cap.

You have to be in the stockade. You have to play for the white socks. Okay. The giants, we talked about Matt Chapman's extension and I think we may have said, well, what does this portend for the direction of this franchise? So there's been some scuttlebutt about his Farhan Zayde's job in danger. Well, how do you square that with the fact that they let him hand out this long-term extension to Matt Chapman?

Well, it turns out that maybe he didn't, or at least it was a collaborative effort as reported by Andrew Baggerly at the Athletic. And I quote, according to sources, the Giants executive board led by Buster Posey became so frustrated by the lack of immediate progress between Zide and agent Scott Boris after talks began in August that the ownership group took action. Sources say, Buster Posey personally dealt with Chapman to hammer out the basic structure of the contract, which includes a full no trade provision one of the

sticking points that Cidy had not included in the team's initial proposal and Cidy had a quote perhaps face-saving perhaps not I viewed myself in ownership working in total sync This was a priority to get done I'd expect them to be heavily involved in a deal of this magnitude and they were. And for anyone who's wondering why is some former franchise legend taking part in the negotiations here, it's because he's not just a former franchise legend, he is a minority owner of the team, Posey that is. He occupies one of six seats on the board of directors. And so he has a say in the running of the franchise and some people are reading the tea leaves here and saying, well, gosh, if they kind of did an end around here with both Zide and Boris and Posey just worked this out with Chapman himself, what does this mean

for Zide's odds of retaining control of this baseball operations group? And he did get a three-year extension last October, but obviously after yet another year of mediocrity on the Giants part, and the ongoing failure to land free agents that were their top targets, and some of the ways that the deals didn't work out this year, though obviously the Chapman deal worked out spectacularly well for the Giants, and the Snell contract came around eventually. Do you think that Zide has reached the end of his rope? I don't think necessarily speaking. When you look at major league GMs,

they're not really, in an organization, there's no real, they don't have the power that they might have had 30 years ago. I think that generally speaking, the organization is involved in all decisions, especially major ones at least like this. I don't think there's any situation where a GM can sign a 150 million dollar player against the wishes of ownership or vice versa. So I don't think that's that big a deal. I think he might feel uncomfortable simply because the Giants have not have not met expectations

at all. They hope to have not met expectations at all. They hope to have a better team this year. They look to be in the race for a good chunk of the season. They've fallen below 500. They're safely out of it. Their season's over pretty much for all intents and purposes. So he does have to feel the hot seat there. And in the end, it's not really a bad contract, at least if Zips is correct. I was a little uneasy about it when I, my first inclination just because of his age, but Zips projected it was right on target. And really the trade value thing, the no trade clause, if it's a situation where the giants want to trade him, he's probably not going to be tradable anyway.

And at the end of the day, if you want to trade a guy, you can always discuss another accommodation with them. So no trade clauses are always, usually you can work around the one way or the other. So I don't necessarily think this is a big deal. He's, if Zayde should be worried about his employment status and he probably should be simply because of the giants. I don't think it's any worse than a week ago. You know, maybe they were playing good GM, bad GM. Works for cops and in TV shows at least. Yeah, and Ken Rosenthal reported earlier this month that Cydie still could be safe. Giants owner Greg Johnson is not one for disruption, especially since there's been an attendance increase. So who knows? It is something that would make me wary, I guess, when you have a former player who's beloved for what he did for that team taking more of a hands

on role that can work well, but of course not every former player turns out to be a great executive. And you see, for instance, the Astros, they've had all that uncertainty with who's running that team and Jeff Bagwell playing a bigger role and sounding old school, which is not really how the Astros built this modern dynasty that they have here. And who knows what type of executive Posey would be. He cited his experience against Chapman. He said, I was such a big fan of his when I played against him

and getting to watch him this season, I'm even more of a fan. You know, you kind of wonder, well, does that bias you in some way? Does that color your perception? Of course, you only have personal experience against a star player for only so long after you retire. And then that's not really relevant anymore. But we are seeing this shift as I've written back to former player GMs and po-bos, which sometimes works out well and sometimes you get the white sox. And Chris gets his case so far and who knows? And sometimes it's sad because you get a great player and then they sort of besmirch their reputation somewhat with front office

meddling post career when it turns out that that's not really in their skill set. So it takes a lot to be a successful executive in baseball these days. And I'm not saying that having some of that firsthand on-field experience is not helpful or knowing the clubhouse dynamics and appreciating that someone is a hard worker and all of that. But of course, if that's all you're bringing to the table, then you may be behind the eight ball a bit when you're competing against people who may have that experience and also some of the analytics stuff. Should Jeff Bagwell's ears be burning right now? Maybe, yes.

It feels like there was a very Jeff Bagwell, like, we're not saying it's Jeff Bagwell, but... Speaking of the Giants, they did have one triumph recently, which is that Elliott Ramos finally delivered the first splash hit by a right-handed hitter in Giants history. And I guess officially the splash hits are the ones hit by Giants players only. So there have been 105 now splash hits at Oracle Park in more than 2000 games, though there are also 61 hits into McCovey Cove home runs that have been hit by opposing players, so all told, I suppose there have been 166 homers that have landed in the water there, and this is the first one by a righty. And this is something people have been talking about for years and tracking, and Sam Miller wrote about it extensively earlier this season

and also since the Ramos Homer and Mike Kruco on the Giants broadcast has talked about Ramos' potential to be the first. Does it surprise you at all that this hadn't happened yet and that when it finally did, it was Elliot Ramos who produced the first? It's not so surprising that it hasn't happened simply because once it hasn't happened simply because

once it doesn't happen for so long, then you less expect it to happen. I am surprised that Rama. It was Ramos. I actually would have thought of the current team that Chapman would have been the most likely if he had hit one in the opposite way simply because he does have really good power at times. I think that's one of those things where playing MLB the show colors your opinion, because I never hit that deeply with a right-handed hitter

in playing at Oracle Park. Now, you don't actually get to see if they splash, but you can kind of tell if they do. Sam did a deep dive, no pun intended, and he found that it should be plausible. This was a couple of months ago, cause he was looking at lefty splash hits and trying to replicate trajectories hit by righties,

not at Oracle and to say, well, can a righty hit a ball in this spot on this line essentially? And he found that at least some varieties of splash hits should conceivably be doable for righties and that it wouldn't even necessarily take getting all of it to do it. And that is kinda what happened with Ramos. First of all, Ramos is a good power hitter. I wouldn't say he's an elite one.

He is 80th percentile this year in max exit velocity. He's in the eighties or nineties when it comes to average exit velocity, hard hit rate, barrel rate, all of that. So he is a very good power hitter, but it's not like it took Aaron Judge or John Carlos Stanton to do it. It's Elliott Ramos. And by giant standards, I suppose he is an elite power hitter because they just haven't had many. And so you look at the righty hitters, I mean,

I guess Jorge Saler was supposed to be the big power hope for them this year, speaking of recent signings and he didn't last the season with them. So you're talking about Hunter Pence and Pat Burrell and Posey himself and Darren Ruff. I mean, you know, you quickly go down the list and it's not really extraordinary hitters. But even so, like Ramos didn't get all of this one. And Sam wrote, it was neither totally perfect. It wasn't right down the right field line, nor did it have to be since it went 394 feet, a good 20 feet past the minimum required

to get to the water. In a sense, Ramos showed how easy it should be. I'm confident Ramos could have done that without the wind in his favor. So you'd think all the visiting players that have played there and the Giants compromised power-wise though they've been, that this could have happened thus far.

Because it wasn't like such an extraordinary batted ball that you say, oh, I can see why that had never happened before. I mean, of course, that's all accurate. But you also have to take into consideration when you're doing work with trajectories from park to park that taking a trajectory from one park and moving it to another park doesn't quite work super well as people would like to think. I mean you talk about Oracle and

when I ran it numbers a few years ago Oracle Park on average has the coldest game time temperatures in baseball of any team so you could argue that they're always playing in April there and that's always going to have an effect on the home run distance in the park. And that's something that a trajectory based approach won't necessarily catch. I have to kind of think since the park's been open so long and it's taken so long. That's good evidence in itself. Right. I mean, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Yeah. And Sam mentioned it's not necessarily one to one. And then there are also backspin and extra carry considerations. And you'd think maybe if anything, that could actually help a righty. But yes, I guess the data that we have suggests that actually it's not easy to do. And it has to satisfy certain conditions that are maybe harder to do than you'd think.

And I like when feats are done by players who aren't superstars. Aaron Judge has a lot of accomplishments, and it's not as much fun if he's the first player to do that. It's fun that, you know, Johnny Vandermeer is the two consecutive no-hitter guy, not Roger Clemens or Sandy Koufax. It's fun that Mark Whitten has the most RBI's in a double header. It's going to be something that he will possibly be remembered for, maybe, at least in San Francisco.

And that kind of thing, I dig. Another California team had some news this season, and that is the Angels and Mike Trout, whom we occasionally remember still exists these days on this podcast. In this case, we remembered because the subject of his future position came up. So, he's yet again on the mend, on the comeback trail, says he's feeling better. We've heard that refrain before. We hope it sticks this time. And one thing that might make it stick is if he stops playing centerfields,

which has been, again, discussed, forecasted for some time, but he's been resistant to that in the past. And now it sounds like he is increasingly open to it. So he said, I think there's definitely going to be some conversations in the off season. It's reality. I know I have a certain amount of years on my deal and I knew when I signed my contract, I'd eventually move to a corner, but is it next year? I don't know,

but we'll have conversations. He was asked about DHing. He said, I think everything's on the table. Ultimately, my goal is to be in that batter's box in the field every single day. Whether that's moving to a corner or DHing more, I'll leave it up to the front office to come up with a plan. Where I'm at and what's happened the last few years. I'm definitely going to try to explore every option that can keep me out there. So on the one hand, it is sad to hear him concede this because of course he's never going to reach the incredible heights that he did as a young player if he's dh-ing or even playing a corner, but it would be nice just to see him on the field. And if that furthers that goal, it seems like this is inevitable.

It seems like it's wise. He just has been unable to stay on the field. You got to do something different if what you've been trying has been failing over and over. Yeah, I mean, through the last four seasons, he's failed to play in 100 games. That's a problematic injury history. And he's no longer the young phenom. He just turned 33 last month, I think. That injury record over time is just going to get worse because that's what happens as you get older. If I hurt myself when I was 25, there was a reason I hurt myself. I'm 46 now

I woke up this morning and my ankle hurt I had done nothing on my ankle because that's what aging is like And he moves around and a lot more Impactfully than I do the best case scenario for him as a player is playing center field, but I rather have 120 Games of him at DH like Eric Davis in the second half of his career, and get him playing, than having him play 30 games and have the Los Angeles Angels play a far worse Plan B, whatever that is.

I mean, he'll still hit some milestones and he has a better chance at DH. He has a better chance at 500 home runs at 3000 hits. All that stuff that people still at least care about. I think if I were the brutal dictator of the angels, I would say UDH. And he has not hit well as a DH to this point in his career. He has a 745 OPS, which is a 56 T OPS plus as a DH and that's 352 plate appearances. But we know from research Russell Carlton has done that it seems like that DH penalty, it does subside if you're a full-time DH, you get used to the routine. So that might

help him. And also if he just embraces the role as opposed to feeling like it's been imposed upon him. And even if he were to DH, that's no guarantee that he could stay on the field because it's not as if all of his injuries have been him going back on balls and center and crashing into the wall. Right. I mean, a lot of them have been almost routine and some sort of inexplicable, like the meniscus tears, seemingly he didn't even know how they happened. He just kind of felt them getting increasingly sore and then figured up something's wrong here,

but he wasn't really sure how it happened. Maybe just jogging off the field. I guess you do less jogging as a DH, but still some amount or, you know, his calf strain coming when he's running the bases or the ham mate when he's hitting. A lot of these injuries are not directly related to playing centerfield. You just have to speculate. Well, maybe it's a wear and tear. It's just a total load that you're trying to manage. And perhaps if he's running less out in center and on his feet, less than hopefully he'll just be healthier.

There's a certain amount of crossing your fingers and wish casting there, but you got to try something different at this point. We could do something about the defensive injuries. There's not really much you could do about the other injuries. We can't insist that he walk very slowly and he's stored in a medically induced coma between games. I don't think that is allowed under the current collective bargaining agreement.

And he probably would object to that more than playing DH. Like the encasement in Carbonite. I don't think that's a thing in reality. And I'm pretty sure it isn't a thing, but I don't think that would work. But I mean, you have to get them on the field. And it's not a perfect option, but it's probably what the angels have access to, essentially, in reality.

Yeah, the hibernation sickness alone, the carbonite penalty, the hangover from the carbonite. You'd have to do it on off days. I'm not really sure. I haven't worked out the whole logistics behind this imaginary technology. Yeah. We got an interesting email last month from a listener named

Josh, who said, I know you requested and got a response about Mike Trout's genomics. We did do that. But before we send in spies to take his DNA, how about an old-fashioned inquisition with either his trainer and or the Angels training staff? Are you aware of any reporting done over the last five years that inquires about the changes

to his exercise and fitness that have or have not happened? TLDR, an aging big guy with lower body injuries should very likely drop some weight. I'm saying Mike Trout needs to stop training like a linebacker. No one aged better than Tom Brady, and though he and his trainer did some creepy branding stuff later on, building long, lean muscles and specifically trying to move the body away from mass is what kept him in the league so long. Has Mike Trout not gotten this message from his people? Do the Angels just defer to his personal trainer?

Has anyone asked him to show up to camp at 210 instead of 235 or 240? Trout and I have the same frame, though I have 10 years on him. Sure enough, after age 27, being 230 and swole was not in my knees' best interests. Can someone please get Mike a Pilates reformer? So I don't know whether Josh's experience is instructive here. I haven't seen much specific reporting about his training routine or how it's changed if at all. I'm perfectly willing to believe that the angels aren't doing something as well as they should be doing it. And it's true that Mike Trout has always trained heavy and he's always pushing tires and, and carrying big weights around.

And he was even talking just this week about how he was starting to be able to lift heavier again, and that his knee was supporting that. So I wonder, I mean, he's built like a linebacker, probably whatever he does. I mean, he's not probably Tom Brady and also Tom Brady is an extreme outlier and who knows how replicable that sort of longevity is. But I guess it's worth a conversation, at least while he's having conversations about everything else. And I couldn't find any reporting about him being a yoga or Pilates guy.

And sometimes with players who have trouble staying on the field, they kind of ping pong back and forth. They go from I'm going to put on weight to be more durable. And then the next spring, it's I dropped weight and I got more flexible. And, you know, sometimes one works and then the other works or neither works. And who knows? Right. But I guess again, in the vein of, of well what he's doing now isn't currently working Maybe maybe it's worth trying something else. Yeah, I'm not sure that I'm the expert on

advisedly losing weight So I probably shouldn't comment on that but I saw a documentary once with this boxer named Rocky Balboa He was in the wilderness lifting logs and all sorts of things and he defeated Ivan Drago, the Soviet boxer. So clearly, I think that kind of physical activity can be beneficial because again, that's how Rocky Balboa won and how America won the Cold War because Rocky told everyone that it has to change and it caused, you know, Perestroika and Glasnost and the disbanding of the Soviet Union. So one could say that making him train less

would be immoral. Yes, well, if I can change and you can change, everybody can change, including Mike Trout. I did find a 2018 Men's Journal article that said Trout likes to work out at night and his routine includes a lot of core work, tire pushes, dumbbell presses, planks, pull-ups and pull-downs, as well as rows and full body exercises. Quote, core strength and keeping my abs strong is big for me, said Trout. I keep my routine mostly the same. I always say if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Well, it's broke, I think at this point.

I don't know whether the workout routine is, but Mike Trout's body, unfortunately, is something to keep in mind. Okay, from glass nose to glass now, how about that transition? I did wanna ask you briefly about the Dodger's rotation because it's looking thin and a new Dodger is dropping by the day. And Ken Rosenthal just wrote about this with the headline at the

Athletic, the Dodgers can't blame awful run of starting pitcher injuries solely on misfortune. And we talked about this recently, I crunched some numbers and looked at the Tommy John incidences among Dodgers pitchers and I found that they have had a lot of pitchers who have had Tommy John at some point, but they haven't had a really extraordinary number of pitchers have Tommy John while they are Dodgers. It's just that they get a lot of former Tommy John guys and maybe they bet on their ability to keep them healthy or at least they have the financial wherewithal to go get injury risk guys

and feel like maybe they can weather that. But they do end up in this situation, seemingly year after year, which was kind of captured by an August tweet by Patrick Dougherty of NBC Sports, who wrote, every March, colon, man, the Dodgers have too many starting pitchers. Every October 11th, man, the Dodgers have too many starting pitchers every October 11th.

Man, the Dodgers who are down two to one to the five seed in the NLDS are probably done if they can't get at least two innings from Joe Kelly tonight. Well, Joe Kelly is on the IL along with the rest of the Dodgers staff right now, basically a major league pitching staff's worth of pitchers injured. And so I guess it's a testament to the Dodgers depth that they still have some pitchers and even some good ones, but it is not really the rotation that they drew up. So, Glassnow having sproinged and having an elbow sprain,

he seemingly is done for the year. He joins on the IL, Tony Gonsolin, Clayton Kershaw, who may return if the Dodgers make it to the NLDS, but he's done for the regular season 2. Dustin May, who of course this time did not suffer a pitching or arm related injury. River Ryan, Emmett Sheehan, Gavin Stone. So it's like the replacements for the replacements are getting hurt at this point. And they do have Yoshinobu Yamamoto back and you know

He's gone four innings in each of his starts after his return But they've been effective four innings and they have Jack Flaherty So that's a strong top two and then they have Walker Bueller who had a pretty good last start with a lot of walks Still but he's been quite shaky in his return from TJ Then they have Bobby Miller who's just been getting knocked around all year, somewhat surprisingly, and Landon Nack, I guess that's their five, but on Roster Resource right now, they have more starters on the IL than they do in their rotation. So what do you think

this portends for their postseason fortunes? And also, what, if anything, does this say about their picture development? Well, first of all, I just want to say, I don't believe you intended to talk about the Dodgers. I thought you saw the segue opportunity and took and took advantage of it. Second, I do think some of this is by design simply because I am of the belief that the Dodgers have looked at pictures who are available in free agency

and have a really good health record, like Kyle Gibson are just not that exciting, and they've prioritized getting pictures that have high upside and hoping that they have enough of them healthy at any given point that they'll have five or six starters handy. I think when you look at how they've run, that's pretty much what they've done.

I think if they would not have brought back Clayton Kirchhoff once again, if they were that concerned about inning eating. I think this is a team that places no priority on inning eating. A team like that in contention does not, you know, go after James Paxton before last, before the season started. I think that some of it is by design that they could get all

these guys that have high upside. You get five of them in the rotation healthy at a time. That's a really good rotation. Like any five of these guys being healthy is a really good rotation. The problem is they don't really have five of them at any given time. I think the problem that that runs into is those times when you've guessed wrong and you don't have as many of those guys healthy at the same time as you hoped just from from probability. I think I would say calculated risk that they take

with their rotation. And I think, yeah, it looks really thin right now, but I kind of say that every year, then it just kind of mostly works out. Yeah, well, I don't know if the Dodgers fans would agree that it always works out. It works out in the regular season, certainly, but at a certain point, yeah, you want to have your aces healthy when October rolls around. And I'm sure that they would have said to themselves,

yeah, we'll sign up for 130 innings from Tyler Glass now, as long as he is available in October and look, they've needed his fine pitching to pitch them into contention and to the top of the NL West. Cause that hasn't been a cinch either in part, cause of all the injuries they've suffered. So he had a career high in the regular season, 134 innings, and that would have been fine

if he could add to that total in October, but he can't. And that's a problem. And that's a risk that yes, you knew going in with someone like Tyler Glass now. So look, I guess it could be worse if they have Yamamoto and if they have Flaherty, which looks like a pretty crucial trade that they made now, that's a decent top two. And then you just kind of hope that you can fill in the rest of it. It's just more tenuous than you would have thought given the depth that they started

this season with, even factoring in that there was going to be attrition, of course. And it's funny because like, yeah, I think that has been the model that you go for. You had a Twitter thread about this over the off season, right? That teams, contending teams are prioritizing per inning effectiveness more so than bulk, even whatever we call bulk by modern standards. Some teams have had some success with the innings eaters types. I mean, that hasn't been what has sunk the Cardinals really this year, that they went all in on innings eaters.

And then, you know, you've got guys like the Mets we talked about recently have a bunch of reclamation projects and they mostly have stayed healthy and have helped them out. But the Dodgers, they do just keep dropping like flies. And Friedman spoke about this earlier this month and he did acknowledge that they are at least going to try to figure out what is happening here, if anything. And it's much like with trout, you know, things are going wrong. Maybe you do things a little bit differently. So he said that the Dodgers will spend time investigating and re-imagining this winter when it comes to their pitching development and protocols, quote,

it's been a really challenging year on that front and something that we're going to need to spend a lot of time on this winter to really dig in on. From when we onboard a pitcher, when we draft or trade for him through the development path at the major league level, obviously it's a problem in the industry and the injuries that are happening to us, we feel injuries that are happening to other teams,

we don't feel as much, it doesn't quite hit home the same way. And so we're gonna do everything we can to put ourselves in the best position going forward. And as I said recently, even if the Tommy John totals don't really leap off the page, you might think that a team that is kind of on the cutting edge of pitching development, if all the pitching development trends are pointing toward more injuries and the most spin and max effort and top view all the time.

Well, you'd think that the team that is on the, I guess, literal bleeding edge of those trends might potentially be more prone to injuries. I mean, the Dodgers have had a lot of hard throwers and we know that hard throwers are more liable to break. So you could say that there's some sort of connection there, but I don't know that the best thing to do in response is to say, well, we don't want guys with good stuff anymore.

Now I wish there were a happy medium where we could bring back and prioritize durability also, right? But it was like last June, Baseball America reported that the hardest throwing pitching staff in baseball belonged to the Dodgers AA affiliate, not even to a major league team. And four of that team's six starters have since undergone major arm surgery. So that is liable to happen. Springs will occur. I don't know if there's any magic key to alleviating that. I think that perhaps if baseball made changes somehow to make throwing hard not as effective, I don't know what that would even be, then you prioritize something else. But right now, I mean, it's hard to say to say we're going to teach pictures to not be quite as good

so they stay healthier. And that's a really hard trade off for a team. Yeah. And I don't think anyone's really questioning do the Dodgers have a lot of pitching injuries, but just in case you are, I did get some data from Derek Rhodes at Baseball Prospectus via Rob Maynes and Derek's data goes back to 2018. This year the Dodgers are first in pitcher IL Stint, first in pitcher Days Missed, first in pitcher Games Missed,

first as in the most. Last year they were third in pitcher IL Stint and first in Days and Games Missed. first as in the most. Last year, they were third in Pitcher Aylstance and first in Days in Games Mist. 2022, second in Aylstance, fourth in Days in Games Mist. 2021, fourth in all three. 2020's data sort of screwed up because of COVID. 2019, they were 17th in all three. And then 2018, they were first in all three.

So if you add it all up, since 2018, excluding 2020, Dodgers are first in days and games missed by pitchers with a lead of more than a thousand in each. The Rays are second in both categories. Dodgers are also first in pitcher Ielston's ahead of the Diamondbacks and then the Rays. The fewest in all three categories, by the way, the Guardians, who have been Guardians of their pitchers health. Lastly, I did want to just salute someone who has succeeded lately without being an especially hard thrower, roughly average VELO by modern standards. And that's Bowden Francis of the Blue Jays, who has been up and down this year.

He's had multiple stints in the minors. He started the season really rough as sort of a swing man in the majors league bullpen. And since his most recent return from AAA, which was in late July, he has by some metrics at least been one of the best pitchers in baseball. I guess it depends. If you go by fan graphs war, which is based on FIP, then since July 29th, he is merely the 31st most valuable pitcher in baseball. If you do the custom flavor of Van Graaff's war

that is based on runs allowed per nine, so more similar to the baseball reference brand of war, then he's been the third most valuable pitcher over that span behind only Chris Sale and Frambo Valdes. I said recently that I thought Lawrence Butler had to be having one of the best post-demotion in-season hitting turnarounds. Well, Francis has to be having one of the best post demotion in season hitting turnarounds. Well, Francis has to be having one of the best post demotion in

season pitching turnarounds and he's done it by changing his pitch selection and coming up with new pitches on the fly and prioritizing some and deprioritizing others. And so I always wonder with a guy like that, how quickly something like Zips or some stuff based model can react to those changes where you think, oh, he's actually a different pitcher than he was. And yes, maybe this is also sort of unsustainable. There was one of those kind of convoluted, but also fun, fun facts.

This was tweeted by codify the other day, every ALNL pitcher in history to pitch at least 48 innings and allow no more than 27 base runners in any span of seven starts Bowden Francis his last seven starts and that's the whole list and yes that's kind of convoluted and made in such a way that Bowden Francis is the only pitcher on that list but still he's had a bunch of no hit bids like he's been extremely hard to hit and it's been pretty impressive. So how quickly can a projection or should a projection or even our own personal projections subjectively adjust to something like that?

Well, for what Zips did it actually absolutely hate him coming into the season. Uh, Zips had him in Toronto with a 431 ERA projected. That's a 100 ERA plus. So it was essentially seeing him as a swingy, league average-ish picture. So that's not so bad. I think, I mean, when you look at him, and it's only been this run that he's had this year,

that's made me confident that his name is Bowden Francis, not the other way around. Because I keep typing and I think, is he related to Jim Bowden? No, no, that's his first name. But now he's had such a good run that's like, yeah, I know his name. His last name is Francis.

Yes. The family just got it backwards. But he has a very good control picture. He was in the minors. And sometimes those control pictures, when they go on a run, can be really good. I do think he probably has less of a margin for error than a lot of other guys,

because he's making a lot out of his stuff, but his stuff still isn't amazing or anything. I mean, he's not gonna blow anyone away. He might say healthy, maybe Dodgers could have used him. Oh, definitely. You just have to kind of enjoy the run, I guess. And I mean, you don't want to count on him as being an ace or anything,

but he doesn't have like a freaky low home run rate that that's helped him in the in the majors. So but he's had good control. He's pitched well. He has good command. He's using what he has super well. So, yeah, you know, I'm not going to say that Zip is going to be necessarily super bullish on him, but I enjoy watching him. Yeah. So maybe it's not quite a Cole Regan's, Tarek Scoobel style breakout from late last year

where everyone was saying, oh, watch out for these guys this year. And that's been borne out by the results. But it's also not Davis Schneider from late last year. He certainly raised his outlook quite a lot. I mean, going from up and down, you know, fringy major leaguer to AL pitcher of the month in August. And that's coincided with his throwing the splitter a lot more, which was his fourth pitch back in April and then also introducing this sinker. So it's given him a different look and it's giving hitters fits.

I mean, perhaps what makes me most optimistic is that he has that off-speed pitch because a lot of times some of these control righties, they'll have pretty good splits and Lefties will crush them, but this year lefties aren't aren't hitting haven't hit him at all in the majors So I think that's probably a good sign that his off-speed stuff is good enough to fight against those Against the platoon split. So I'm optimistic there. Well, that's why it's important to have projections that update based on what we see.

And I know you're probably also working on your post-season roster specific projections, which I'm sure we'll be surfacing at Fan Craft sometime soon. And that's why you need to project the Dodger's success in post-season, not based on Tower Glass now being really good for them this year, but based on who's actually on their roster.

So, see, projections break from day one. Everything is broken like a weekend of the season. So and then certain times during the year, I have to repair everything. And we're not even talking about Mike Trout's knees. Okay. Well, we have just talked about Jack Flaherty and how important a part he's playing on the Dodgers. He's no longer playing a part on the Detroit Tigers, but maybe they don't need him because they're doing fine just without him. And I'm a space nerd, so I've read a

lot about the late heavy bombardment, which is a disputed theory that about 4 billion years ago, there was a disproportionate uptick in asteroid and comet collisions with the inner planets of the solar system, maybe because the giant planets' orbits were migrating and that threw everything else out of whack and thus the Earth remained molten longer, which may have delayed signs of life. Where is he going with this? You're wondering. Well, the Detroit Tigers are showing delayed signs of life after conducting a late heavy bombardment of their own, of the rest of the league. Did that analogy land like all those comments? Maybe, maybe not. But the great TV voice of the Tigers, Jason Benetti always brings life to

broadcasts and he'll bring life to this podcast when we return. Dan, thank you for filling in. Always a pleasure. Happy projecting and may all of your predictions come true. Always fun to be on and I'm glad I didn't have to answer an astrophysics question because I was getting a little scared. Who took the fewest games a hit for the cycle? How many teams had a player named Michael? Which big league player has the best team life hacks? What would baseball look like if everyone had Jepax?

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Today. Today. Today. Today. Today. Today. Today. Tigers did, trade away a few good players to other contenders in exchange for some minor leaguers, then simply play better with the big leaguers they already had. Sounds simple. To explain this strategy, we're joined now by a friend of the show and parasocial fantasy friend of millions of television viewers, a multi-sport broadcasting star, and the TV voice of the improbably victorious Tigers, Jason Benetti.

Pete Slauson Parasocial fantasy friend. I want that on a business card, Ben. Ben Tate That's what you want to cultivate as a broadcaster, right? You're in people's living rooms or wherever people watch TV these days and you want them to welcome you in and feel like you're a friend, even if they don't know you and you don't know them. Before I knew the word parasocials definition, I didn't see those instances nearly as much. And then I learned a parasocial and what it means.

And I was like, oh yeah, that happens. That's fun. Yep. Well, also fun is Tiger's baseball. And I'm reminded of the business plan of the underpants gnomes on that episode of South Park. Number one, collect underpants. Number two, question mark. Number three, profit. In the Tigers case, number one was ship out Jack Flaherty, Mark Kana, Carson Kelly, and Andrew Chaffin. And number three is post the best record in the American league from that point

on. Number two might still be a question mark for many people. So why don't you unravel this mystery for us? How have the Tigers seemingly improved despite subtracting from their roster? Have you ever ridden Space Mountain at Disney? You know, you get on the car and you have no idea what you're about to do because it's dark in there. And there are all these- Great trepidation, by the way. I know when I was more of an adult than I should have been the first time I rode Space Mountain. But you get in and you're like, man, I wish I could just see it. I wish I could have any understanding of what's about to happen. And that's how I feel over the last three weeks is like we're riding Space Mountain because we have no idea where the twists and turns are going to go.

The only thing you know is that it's a roller coaster and it generally is going to surprise you. Now I think the foundational facts that have allowed the Tigers to do this are number one, generally this team over the past bunch of years has been great at cultivating pitching, specifically bullpen arms for trade deadline deals. That has been very lucrative for them with the Wilsons, with Gregory Soto, among others. That has been pretty lucrative. So they've been able to cultivate bullpen arms.

So I think they feel like they can backfill there, though it's not always easy. I think the Flaherty deal and then the very shortly behind that injury to Reece Olsen, right? So Reece got hurt in a start on the 20th of July and then Flaherty got dealt at the deadline. I think, you know, it's the necessity is the mother of invention sort of thing, the desperation turns into invention. And I think that led to the ability of Scott Harris and A.J. Hinge to go ahead and go full out,

opener, bulk guy, and just be really creative. And I think in baseball, you need a reason to do that. And then I also think like young position players infuse some version of energy into the whole racket. And, you know, one of the moments that I think the belief started to build was that day in Williamsport. I think when the Tigers came back against the Yankees in a stage that really in a lot of ways was made for the Yankees. That's not to decry anybody who put it together because the Tigers were very willing participants and the Tigers were there as well, but I do think that's kind of like a Yankee stage in some regard

and knowing how teams get selected and things like that. Then the Tigers come back and they win that. They sweep the White Sox after a tough series at Wrigley. And I do think a lot of that was the young talent and the young energy. And there's a full, they don't know what they don't know sort of thing going on right now. But I do think the way this has happened is that it's part of the reason that I ended up in Detroit

in the first place is why I decided once they were willing to have me that this was a place that I wanted to be is because I believe from the depths of my heart that the Tigers have one of the smartest managers in all of baseball and one of the smartest front offices in all of baseball. And I think their problem solving ability, whether it be the macro level of the opener situation or bullpen arms and how to solve some of that, or the micro level of like, Kate Armontero has got a curve ball now and it's really pretty good in his last handful of starts or adding a sinker or whatever it might be that has

led to pitch design success, I think the Tigers on both a macro and micro level are really dedicated to actual improvement, not just baseball eye wash. Well, we started with South Park and Space Mountain, but we eventually made it to actual baseball. So hopefully this is all becoming clear to people now. And just to give the Tigers full credit, I suppose they had started to play well prior to the trade deadline, which maybe made their decisions then slightly more difficult. If you go back to the beginning of July, they're 40 and 27 since then. So take us back to the deadline, July 30th, they were five games under 500 at the time and something like

seven and a half out in the wild card race. Did you get the sense that it was at all difficult internally for them to decide to sell? And was there any blowback about that from Tigers fans? I think the blowback was for the haul on the Jack Flaherty thing. That's what generally, you know, the like the Joey Loper-Fido, you say Kikuchi thing was right in front of everybody. And so the question Scott Harris fielded were about the haul for Jack Flaherty more than the selling.

I think the one thing Tigers fans didn't want overwhelmingly was trading Tarek Schubel. And from what I've heard, that wasn't close to happening. And there's a reason. It's because in part he's homegrown, but in part because he's a robot. He's the bionic left-hander and you want that on your team. And the hall probably wasn't what, you know, you're going to feel the calls, right? So, but I do think like Tigers fans understood and didn't love it, but they understood like going for it was a fringe thought at that point.

And so I don't think it was anything but the hall for Flaherty. That's where all the questions were living. And so you think about the questions that were asked at that moment and nothing had to do with, well, like, what if you, what if you could make a run here? There was a road trip to Atlanta and Houston where the Tigers looked overmatched. It was a one in five road trip to Atlanta and Houston back in June, early June I want to say. And you know, at that point you're like, well, we can see the positives, but I just don't know if it's going to be this year, especially in an improved division. So I don't think the questions were anything about challenging for, it was a pipe dream.

It really was a pipe dream at that point to go ahead and make the playoffs. And the odds suggested that, and it's still less likely than it is likely that the Tigers will make the playoffs. But what we've ended up with is this like, Andy Dirksen and I talked about it early in the telecast last night. It's more fun to be the underdog.

Like they make movies about underdogs. They don't make movies about like, yeah, the expected hero wins. It doesn't really do it for the senses. So it's ended up with a team that completely out of the blue has done this. And it's really, really been a great time.

Yeah. And you got to evaluate the process, not just the results. And based on what they knew at the time, I thought they acted sensibly when we did our deadline recap here. I think we applauded them for holding on to Scoobel, but I don't think we denigrated anything else they did, or at least in terms of the decision to sell some guys. Now Flaherty has continued to pitch well in LA and boy, do the Dodgers need him. Do you think that given everything that has happened since the Tigers would want

that one back or is there some sort of butterfly effect sliding doors aspect to this where you don't want to mess with anything that happened because you don't want anything else to change? We've known each other for a while and I think you would consider me after the stat cash shows and everything and the way I talk about No-Hitters is a pretty like pragmatic person, but I do believe in the butterfly effect. I do think that like if you don't make that deal and you like really are trying to go for it and there's that level of tension that if we don't make it then who knows what happens and Then Jack's contract is hanging around there plus

The Tigers got their current starting shortstop in that deal and I know Trey Sweeney doesn't play every day And he came out of the game like halfway through last night But he's been good and he's been an infusion of young talent. And I just like, I just don't think it goes the same way. If you're really trying to it's like staring at your phone, it's not going to ring is how I feel. And I know that's stupid for somebody who's like, I can't control no hitters. So I'm going to say no hitter. But the way I feel is like if you don't if you don't make those deals, you probably end up kind of 500-ing your way

to the finish line. Since you have to go into the Tigers clubhouse every day, I will spare you from saying something like this, but I suppose it hasn't hurt that Javier Baez suffered a season-ending injury and has been out of the lineup and has been replaced by Sweeney. I mean, it has hurt Baez,

but perhaps not the Tigers' fortunes, although that's not the only thing that is going on here. I think since August 1st, I just looked at the splits, their 12th in position player war and 13th in starting pitcher war. And so you wonder, okay, how does one of the best records in baseball come out of that? Well, their first in bullpen war, and perhaps relatedly, their 10 and five in one run games. Most recently that wild back and forth affair against the Royals on Monday. That's partly bullpen success. It's partly luck. Bullpen success itself is maybe partly fluky and impossible to

predict, but that is a big boost when your bullpen just goes on an incredible run for a couple of months and whether or not you're getting a ton of leads or large leads, you're just holding on to the ones that you have. Yeah. And I do think part of that, Ben, is, and I don't know if the Ted talk would be great if this were the headline, but I do think there's something to be said for, make sure that everybody on the roster knows exactly where they have value. And if there's one headline of what A.J. Hinche does, it's that.

Andy Ibanez knows that he's gonna play against left-handed pitchers, and he knows that he's probably not gonna play against right-handed pitchers. Jason Foley knows that against right-handers, a battery of right-handers, he's more likely to get the ninth inning than if it's a battery of really strong left handers.

Kerry Carpenter knows that sometimes he's going to get pinch hit for, but against a righty that's going to give him a cookie of a high fastball, he's going to play and he's going to be expected to produce. And Zach McKinstry, who hit a patch where he didn't play more than like two games in two weeks, knows that when he's needed to play specific positions and to come in in the sixth inning, like there's red ink all over my score book every night, every night. And I do think the fact that nobody's calcifying on the bench leads to this team atmosphere. And in a total, you know, business sense makes more sense than not. There are managers who would look at Andy Ibanez and say,

I can't have a guy who's WRC plusing 18 against right-handers. AJ Hinch is like, you know what? He kills lefties. I want him on my team. I do think that there's a subset of managers that would be like the values just not there. And I credit AJ and I credit Scott Harris and Jeff Greenberg, like the whole organization

is dedicated to finding what your guys are actually good at. And you and I have been around baseball enough to know that there is too much of a shortage of that. It's like, yeah, this guy stinks. This guy's a donkey. Like this guy just doesn't very good. And I think that part of the reason the Tigers have done this is because each player has a place. And you mentioned the necessity, mother of invention. The opener has been a strategy

that has kind of been on the wane league wide in recent years. And when the Rays first introduced it and then popularized it, it was out of necessity for them too. They had a bunch of injuries, they just didn't really have much of a starting rotation. And this is what they decided to do to compensate for that. And I guess the Tigers, it's sort of the same situation, but it's worked so well that you wonder like they have the fewest innings from starting pitchers since the trade deadline or since August 1st by kind of a lot actually, right? And you have to have the bullpen guys and the bulk guys who can handle that increased workload. But does that suggest that this should make a comeback or that more teams should be doing this or is it only a break glass in case of emergency sort of strategy?

I think if you can siphon through the ego of it, more teams should do it. I pitched to AJ Hinch one day in the dugout that I think we should call the bulk reliever who's actually a starting pitcher. So, you know, those numbers of like innings by starting pitchers, they're gonna be way low, but you're still getting like five innings from Brandt Herter, who was part of that near no hitter the other night. And I pitched to AJ Hinch that we should start calling the bulk guy the sixth man, because in the NBA,

that guy off the bench who's instant scoring that you know is better than the second line for the other team, you want them playing against their second team. He might blend in with all the starters and not give you the 10 points in three minutes, but against their second line, he's the best player and it's not even close. And when you bring in the bulk guy to face seven, eight and nine and give them a little confidence, a shot goes in in NBA parlance, right? First shot goes in, oh, I can make everything. I think that's happened in a big way with guys like Brand Herder, Brian Sammons, Ty

Madden, the guys that have been bulk guys and starters for this team. I do think that the NBA does it all the time. You want the best matchup. So like in baseball, it's it's it is currently in case of emergency break glass, but like it's all ego driven. And I get it too. Like if somebody said, Hey, Jason, you haven't had very good first innings recently. So we're going to have somebody come in and do the starting lineups and the starting

pitcher. And then you can come in in the second inning and start doing the play-by-play. I'd be like, the hell are you talking about? That is the worst thing I have ever heard. But if for some reason I was bad in the first inning, I'm just not organized enough, or I'm all over the place, or I get really nervous, and it made me better to be in the second inning first,

and I became like a world class announcer because of that. I think I'd warm up to it. But it but it's ego. It's ego. I want to be in the chair at the start of the game because like I want to own the game. So I get it. And I'm not saying starters are wrong. But I do think fully logically that's it's a great idea. Now, like, should we board planes with first class going first to clog the aisles with our, like, ritzy ginger ale demanding selves? No, because it's nonsense. The back of the plane should board first, get everybody on, and it would be much faster. But we as a society decide to block out

40 minutes so the the rich can put their luggage in first and thumb their nose at everybody else. So like, you know, it happens all the time in our society. Doesn't mean it's right. Wow. Plane boarding and embarking and disembarking, very divisive subject that you have just introduced here. I guess sometimes broadcasters sometimes used to change

chairs at different points in the game, or I was listening to your podcast partner, Dan Dickerson, talk about how his initial Tigers broadcast was just Ernie Harwell saying, you got an inning without any warning. So that was sort of an open or bulk guy situation, except that he didn't even know he was gonna be the bulk guy, or I guess the one inning guy at least. and it worked out for him many decades later.

So Kevin Brown, friend of the program, Kevin Brown of the Orioles and I, when my last season in Syracuse in AAA before he took over, I would do the first three innings on TV. Then he'd come over from the radio booth and do the middle three on TV. And then we went and I went and did radio. So we've done it in game, but I guess I was the opener. Well, AJ Hinch was a catcher. And so when you were just talking about pitching to AJ Hinch, I was thinking, are they resorting to Jason Benetti pitching? Is that how dire the situation has gotten? Not quite.

50 cent would pitch before I did. But you might have the highest name recognition in the Tigers bullpen if you were to join it because on Monday night, someone in our Patreon Discord group who, as someone who not only listens to this podcast but supports it financially, is probably by default in an upper percentile of baseball awareness, posted a screenshot of the Tigers pitching staff and simply wrote, who are these people? And Tarek Schubel, Kent Damaeda, maybe Casey Mize aside, I understand that sentiment.

So if there is a member, if there are multiple members of this Tigers bullpen or rotation to the extent that we can even separate those two who have contributed to the success who you think people should know nationally that there's something here that you're going to want to know this name, who might that be? Yeah, I mean, Tyler Holton is my first answer. Do we know Tyler Holton and the Patreon Discord group? Well, we do now that he's the most recent guest on Have a Seat with Jason Benedy and Dan Dickerson. Okay, I like it. So Tyler Holton, start, close, everything in the middle, like A to Z, whatever you need, and he is a chronic pitch adder. So like, this is the first offseason, and I want to say three off seasons that he didn't add a pitch

He can go east west north south. He is doomed to lefties and righties I think he is the most interesting bullpen arm in baseball that people don't know And it's because he just he's such he talked about in the podcast and if you have a podcast you are required to promote it He was like man I'm such a visual learner and I think visual learners in the pitch design era just have a leg up and he just sees Swings and what hitters are doing balance-wise and he is he's highly fascinating But he's such a weapon in that he gets lefties and righties both out Shelby Miller has insane splits this year. He has been death to left-handers and really has struggled getting righties out

He's a right hander like AJ Hinch has the weirdest weapons It's like he shows up and you're like, is that a catapult or a slingshot? Like what is that? And you're like is that a catapult or a slingshot like what is that? And that's the whole bullpen and Foley's got the bowling ball sinker and Brennan Hanofi who's come up has a hard sinker As well, he's been a big-time ground ball theater guy Sean Gunther has gotten guys from both sides out. It's it's really kind of maddening That's not a joke about Ty, but like they value a dazzling array of stuff and the Tigers bullpen has a dazzling array of stuff. I'm also tickled by Tyler Holtons origin story with the Tigers, which I think I've talked

about before, which is that they had Andrew Chaffin and then early in 2023 he signed as a free agent with the Diamondbacks. Two days later, the Tigers selected Holton off waivers from the Diamondbacks. Holton then out pitched Chafin that season. So the Tigers got the better of that. And then Chafin came back and they still had Holton and now Chafin's gone again. And they still have Holton. So I guess the moral of the story is you want to have Tyler Holton. Yeah.

And as close as Andrew Chafin's farm is to Detroit in Ohio, maybe we'll have Andrew Chafin again. So you mentioned it's by the odds still being more likely that the Tigers miss the playoffs than they make it. Now, as we speak here on Tuesday afternoon, before Tuesday's game, the Fangrass playoff odds give the Tigers just an 18% chance to make the playoffs. If you go by the season to date version of the playoff odds, which no less essentially just know what your records are and where you are in the standings and don't actually project anything, then you can add 10 percentage points to that and it's

more like 28%. Now you have had a front row seat or at least a broadcast booth seat to this Tiger's success in this semi-miraculous run. So is it hard for you to say, yes, 18% is correct because that's what the numbers say? Or are you just instinctively saying it has to be higher than that? You ever go to the grocery store to shop and you haven't eaten in like nine hours? You're like, man, that looks good, that looks good. I definitely want that frozen Salisbury steak.

Like totally I will eat sour cream and chive pita chips. Absolutely. You're like, no, man. And then you get home and you eat for a little while. You're like, what am I doing? I think this team feels like their chance of making the playoffs like 110%. And watching it, like, last night was the perfect, a Monday night as we're sitting here.

I don't know when it's gonna air. I can't believe I just did that to your podcast. Time shift at Panetti, let's go. Yeah, you're an industry pro. Yeah, well, you would think so. So I, you know, watching that game Monday night, the Tigers are trailing big, Bobby Wood Jr. hits a grand slam. Minnesota is leading Cleveland and it looks like there's kind of no end in sight to what Minnesota is going to do over that game. And then Kyle Manzardo homers for Cleveland at the same time as, or they win the game at the same time as Matt Vierling gives the Tigers the lead for good, it turns out. And I don't know, like it feels a little team of destiny-ish, but that said, like the Royals and Orioles are heavy resistance,

even though the Tigers so far as we sit here have gone three and one in that rough stretch. So I feel like this team is going to win every night until they don't. Now the Thursday scuba loss with the Rockies, you certainly hope that doesn't come back to bite you because that was one that the Tigers were as big of a favorite in that game as they had been in like six years or something. And so we all know weird things can happen in baseball. However, I do feel like this team has something really special. Plus, that last home stand with Tampa Bay and the White Sox is really tantalizing to say what if five and one happened? If they miss out and you could say, well, it's a victory of sorts to even be in contention here in mid September, given how the season started and given how the deadline went.

I don't know that Tigers fans will console themselves that way if they don't end up making it, but that would be the broader perspective you could have. But then the question is, could they build on that heading into next year? Now part of what has fueled their contention here is that seemingly no one else in the American League wants to make the playoffs. You have the Twins and the Orioles and the Royals and everyone else is just running on fumes here to get across the finish line, whereas the Tigers keep winning. And I suppose that could bode well for next year in the AL Central since it's not exactly the AL East over there even though it's been much more successful this year. Those teams, some of them you say okay they're beatable. And the Tigers have Scouble who's having the Cyung season, they have Riley Green who's become a star. And then I think the question has been, what's the rest of the core?

How will that shape up? Will the people who you expected to take that leap do that Spencer Torkelson, for example, who starts out slow and then gets sent down and I know he had a good babbit boosted August and has slumped a little bit in September. So who are the other pieces of that core and can the Tigers build on this? And given how they have finished this season, do you think they will be spenders this off season? Will they go into it looking not to tear down as they did at the deadline, but to build up?

Yeah, I think part of the question is like, where do you put free agents? You know, I think anybody looking would say, hey, you know, they've always had success in going to find a bullpen arm or two that they can either flip or use that came out of nowhere. I think like the Michael Lorenz and Jack Flaherty train probably leads to another starting pitcher that they can say, here's how we help fix this. Right. So I think that's possible. I just, I don't know where you put offensive free agents. And I also think like starting rotation wise, Jackson Jobe has come up to AAA. I don't know if he starts this season with the Tigers next year, but like,

he's in AAA for a reason. And, you know, we've seen a lot of young talent come through pitching wise so far this year. So I, it's a hard one. It's a hard one to see where the off season goes because Scott Harris said it in spring training this year. Like we want to get all these young at bats so we can work out the kinks and then use those guys

in the future as they grow and develop, right? So, you know, you traded for Trey Sweeney, you have Colt Keith at second base, like Torque, if he can put up the numbers that you want, you know, at first base, awesome. Parker Meadows, Riley Green, Matt Vierling, Jace Young, they like the bat a lot, like the defense is, is coming, they hope. Dylan Dingler came up from AAA, They like the way he calls again. I don't know where you put offensive free agents. And I don't think they're, I don't think they ever

want to have a DH that's just a DH. I think if they did, it would have been somebody like JD Martinez. And so I feel like they like the flexibility of the roster. And so I, I, I would speculate that if you're going to gonna spend it would be on the pitching side at least right now. But I don't know the answer to that. And I you know, it's funny. I don't want to sound like a front office member who starts talking about like value and pieces and things like that. But I, I legitimately couple people have asked me something like that over the last week. And I'm like, let me just be in a trance for a little while

and enjoy what this is. Like, I don't want to be dismissive, but where I am right now is like, I want to go to the ballpark and see what ridiculous stuff happens tonight. Tiger's fans, they've been through it because it looked like they were turning the corner, as we sometimes say on this podcast.

In 2021, they finished third in the division and then things head south again and they executed the rare mid-rebelled reset where they essentially started over with a new administration. And so now it looks like, okay, they're rounding into form again, but Tiger's fans have been burned before. So I just lived it. I just lived it in the AL Central. So I get it. I just, what I would say is I think this one has different underpinnings than the last one in Detroit and the one that I just existed in as well elsewhere in the AL Central. I just think foundationally there are a lot of really good tenants that everybody here

holds to. And I think development with a capital D has been such a key for this team that I don't think that just disappears. You know, like I don't, I just don't think pitch design and success in pitch design disappears. I don't. Well, lastly, since you alluded to an unspecified other AL Central team, I sound like AJ. AJ says like in that other place that I was. Well, like Mark McGuire at a congressional hearing, you're not here to talk about the past, but like Kerry Bradshaw, I couldn't help but wonder whether it has crossed your

mind. Now I'm sure given your history, you feel for White Sox fans watching or perhaps not watching the product that they've put on the field this year. Have you thought about the fact that if things had gone a little differently, you might not be calling this exciting race and can the Tigers get back in it? You might be calling, can the White Sox avoid losing more games than any other team in the modern era? So two questions for you, Ben, before we go. So two questions for you, Ben, before we go. One, if Vin Scully were doing this year's White Sox in the social media era, what do you think people would have said about Vin Scully if he was positive about what was going on there?

Yeah, you can't be, right? And he was not a homer. I mean, that was famously his thing, right? That he was instructed to just celebrate Ra Ra, the home team, and he said, that's not what people want. So that is still very much not what people want. Yeah, agreed. I just think it would be a really, really, really difficult situation.

And the other question that I was gonna ask is, have you ever seen Joseph in the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat? Sure, yes. So, you know, there's that song at the end where like, Joseph's doing very well for himself, right? Like he and Pharaoh are best friends and everything's great. And then they're like,

how did famine hit the family Joseph left behind? Right? That's how I feel. Because there are there are a lot of good people over there. And I feel for everybody who's existing in that because it is, it is very difficult to exist and be a full person when nothing's going right. Even if it's not your fault, it's very difficult to be a full person. And so there are a lot of people over there that I do feel for. And it's really, really hard. I also like there are a couple players over there with the White Sox.

And I've run into some former White Sox in my Tigers travel this year who are really happy because they've they've not been a part of something that has been really, really difficult. I feel for the people who have careers ahead of them that are being dragged down by a situation that is really untenable. And it can ease the pain somewhat if you have that broadcaster in the booth, your parasocial fantasy friend, who can accompany you and commiserate with you. And thus, I'm sure it has only accentuated the pain of this season that it is not eased by the presence of Jason Benetti, not

to slight your replacements, but I think it would be more tolerable. Perhaps if you got to tune in and listen to you, at least there's only one Jason Benetti and you thank goodness for that. And the Tiger fans are getting to, I mean, you got to leave some air time for other broadcasters. One Jason Benetti is quite enough when it comes to hogging the mic, every conceivable sport. So multiple Jason Benetti. You put everyone else out of business. There's at least one team who has said the phrase, one Jason Benetti is quite enough. That team shall remain unspecified too. So to close, fans in Chicago were spoiled with you on TV and Len Casper on radio and

now fans in Detroit are spoiled with you on TV and Dan Dickerson on radio, and also you two together on podcasts. And as you said, you got to promote your podcast, whatever you're doing once you have one, because it's not enough for you to call every sport on every network. You have to compete with us podcasters too. You can't even let us have that. This one medium where we can curse if we want to. Meg always tells me to take more time off. So here I am. If I'm telling you to take more time off, then you know you have a problem. But you don't.

You have a podcast, which is Have a Seat with Jason Benetti and Dan Dickerson. And look, I guess it's only once every two weeks because you guys have some other commitments and you are on the air virtually every other day calling a game of some sort, but the podcast has been a pleasure too. It's through MLB.com and it's a delight to get you two guys together instead of on separate broadcasts. So tell us a little bit about the pod for those who haven't heard it. Thank you. No, it's been awesome. Dan and I are like, we're Oscar and Felix a little bit. Like, Dan loves structure, I love freeform, and we are a really fun pair, I think, in

that regard. But like, I will say, without the podcast, I wouldn't have known exactly how likable this Tigers team is. And there's just, there are a lot of details that have come through the podcast. And you know, like asking some questions with free time and no constraints with the ability to just kind of throw it out there and see what happens. Like we asked Jake Rogers earlier this year, we were talking about framing and I was like, do you think catchers have like felonious pasts or like just sort of a penchant for stealing?

And he told this amazing story of how he walked out of a toy store when he was like six with M&Ms that he just accidentally stole. He took them off the shelf. His mom had no idea. The thing went off. He put them in his mom's purse. And like, she, they thought she stole the M&Ms. Or like, you know, how it happened was I think like, she pulled them out when they got home.

But there was some, that was the crux of the story, is he just stole M&Ms from a toy store. And I was like, man, you guys really do do that stuff. It's crazy. So we've had some really fun conversations. Thank you for mentioning it. But you know, I'm just glad to be back on Effectively Wild. I think last time I was on we were talking about Michael Schur and Bill Walton, the late great Bill Walton. You're pandering to me with that framing anecdote there, although you're adding fuel to the fire.

Cause whenever Meg and I rhapsodize about framing, we get some responses from people who think it's cheating and it's immoral and it's against the rules and it's unethical and now you have confirmed that all catchers are larcenists at heart. Yes. They could have been, where in the world is Carmen Sandiego villains? Well, the podcast is a pleasure. You mentioned no constraints. Given the average runtime, it's slightly more constrained than Effectively Wild, but then what isn't, I suppose. But you get many more hours of talking in the course of a typical week on the air as it is. And selfishly,

I hope that you get to keep calling baseball games beyond this month. If the tigers somehow complete this Cinderella run, though, I suppose if they don't, it's not as if your off season starts early. You don't have an off season. You just do other stuff in other places. So we can't avoid you. America's panelists. Yeah, right. We can't avoid you whatever we do, but why would we want to?

It is always a pleasure to listen to you and to have you on the show. Thank you, Jason. Ben, thanks. Well, I may have jinxed one ex-white sock in Declan Cronin, but I didn't jinx Jason or the Tigers. Or if I did, it didn't go into effect immediately. Detroit won again. The Tigers beat Kansas City 3-1 in 10 innings.

So they gained ground on the Royals and also the Mariners who lost, but they did not gain ground on the Twins who won. Still they stayed hot, and in the 6th inning, Jason returned the favor from our interview and promoted my podcast. What a guy. Just sit up down the middle and use your, uh, you know, effectively wild is what we call that. It's a great podcast and a great strategy. What a guy. Maybe someday I'll do a podcast with him. We'll call it Ben Eddy.

Guy named Ben Eddy is an honorary Ben. We could get Ben Clemens in the mix. We'd be the best super group of Ben since folds, Queller and Lee. By the way, that comment Jason made at the end of our conversation about my sports commentary, he was referring to my stint as one of the panelists on Slate's sports podcast, Hang Up and Listen during this transitional time for that even longer running than Effectively Wild podcast. I have often appeared on Hang Up and Listen as a guest to talk about baseball, but I've been on a couple of full episodes lately. So if you ever wanted to

hear me talk not just about baseball or video games and nerd culture, as I do on the Ringerverse podcast, but also about football, basketball, soccer, and golf. Check out Hang Up and Listen, a podcast I've long loved. As you might expect, I did a lot of prep for those pods. Oh, and hey, in case you were wondering, the White Sox lost. So for now, we can stop talking about them regressing to the mean, and we can regress to being mean

if it qualifies as mean to talk about their win-loss record. And when your record's that bad, maybe it does. Two bits of news after Dan and I spoke. One, it was reported that although MLP spoke with Alex Cora about his comments, no suspension is forthcoming. Two, the San Francisco Chronicle released a report that characterized the Chapman negotiations differently from the athletic. I quote, those familiar with the Chapman negotiations said while Posey played a role in the talks, as expected, it was not to the extent described in a story

by the athletic over the weekend, and that the structure of the deal was consummated by Zidey and Scott Boris. According to Boris, any report that suggests that Farhan and I did not negotiate the financial package is inaccurate. The story says that Zidey was hospitalized twice in recent weeks with an undisclosed ailment, but that he conducted business as usual, that the deal got done in two weeks, and that Chapman communicated directly with Pozzi because Zidie couldn't legally speak with the player during the negotiation. However, the Chronicle did report that Zidie's contract is confirmed only for next season, not 2026, and it says that Zidie does appear to be on the hot seat or the wobbly chair, as we say

here. Ownership is frustrated with the direction and performance of the team and is taking a hard look at Zydie. You can take a hard look at supporting Effectively Wild, a great podcast according to Jason Benetti, by going to Patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. As have the following five listeners who have 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. Alex, Clifford Rice, Carrie Pucco, Tim Pirinboom, and Bob Timmerman, thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, discounts on merch and ad-free fan crafts, memberships, autographed books, personalized

messages, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro, and outro themes to podcasts at fancrafts.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild.

You can find the Effectively Wild sub-edit at r slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show page at FanGraphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats that we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. I'll be back with another episode

a little later this week. Talk to you then. Effectively wild. It's war with a smile. Effectively wild. It's the good stuff. It's baseball nerd stuff. We hope you'll stick around for a while. Ow.