Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 882: Scherzer’s Dominance, Described and Dissected

Episode Date: May 12, 2016

Ben and Sam talk to FanGraphs writer August Fagerstrom about the mechanics and significance of Max Scherzer’s 20-strikeout start.

Well, she called me up on the telephone, said, come on over, honey, I'm all alone. I said, baby, you're mighty sweet, but I'm in bed with aching feet. This went on for a couple of days, but I couldn't stay away. So I walked one, two, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, Drag 15 to 4, I'm ready to sag. Get to the top, I'm too tired to rock. Hello and welcome to episode 882 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives presented by our Patreon supporters and Playindex at BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello, Sam. Howdy. So last night I was signing books and dazzling DC audiences. And while I was doing that,

Max Scherzer was having a pretty good night, I guess, also. And I sort of was surprised that anyone showed up to my book event because it seemed like a pretty big draw. It was Bryce Harper MVP bobblehead night, and it was Scherzer versus Zimmerman, and it was Miguel Cabrera's return to third base, and all of those things seemed like better attractions than me talking to people for a little while. And so the first thing I said when I got on stage was, sorry that you guys couldn't get Nats tickets, but I didn't even realize at the time how much they would come to regret that decision. come to regret that decision because Max Scherzer threw a 20 strikeout game and was wonderful and overpowering and from what I hear fun to watch but I didn't get to watch any of it I didn't even get to follow any of it in real time and so we wanted to talk to someone who has written about that start twice already since it happened and has watched every pitch and has broken it down and is just generally an excellent baseball writer,

August Fagerstrom of Fangraphs. Hey, August. Hi, thank you for having me on. And also, I'm sure that everyone at Nationals Park missed a really good book signing. Yeah, I'm sure they really regret that. So you were not watching this live either, right? You had to catch up also? Correct. I got a Slack message in the eighth inning when I believe he had 18 strikeouts as a, hey, that might be something to look out for. So I watched the ninth and then I put on a pot of coffee and I watched the first through the eighth after that. So, Sam, you were, I assume, watching it live, right? So what was the live Scherzer experience like? Well, have you ever seen a pitcher strike out a batter?

From time to time. It was like that a lot. I don't know. I mean, I'm curious. I'd rather hear August because August had to come up with a feeling. I mean, to me, it was like just really fun counting. Like it was a really exciting accounting exercise. Like, you know, just constantly updating the pitch count in your mind, the percentage that he needed. And by the time

you finish the math, there'd be another strikeout and five more pitches. And so you'd get to do the math again. And that's a, I guess that really puts in perspective what I do. And so he went into the ninth with a chance, right? He had 18 going into the ninth And so the thing that we have talked about many times on this podcast And hoped to see was a possibility at that point And you were tweeting the coming up lineup And their strikeout percentages And sort of trying to break down the odds

How confident were you at that point that he could pull it off? Well, the thing about a 20 strikeout game Or a 21 strikeout game that is so different than a no hitter is that once you have a no hitter going, or particularly a perfect game going, there's just not that much you can do to really tilt the odds. Your goal is the same for the 27th batter as it is for every batter you've ever faced in your entire life, which is just to get the out, hope it goes at somebody, you know, hope you throw it in the strike zone and it's tough to hit. But you can sort of change your style a little bit with a strikeout game.

You can pitch for the strikeout. And so I was sort of trying to figure out what I thought the odds were. I always sort of feel like once you get past the sixth or seventh inning of any of these milestone starts, the odds start going way up. And I don't know if that's supported by the evidence, but it always feels like, like, don't you feel like no hitters that go eight, for instance, get broken up a lot less than, you know, the percentage of innings that there are normally a hit in? that there are normally a hit in. Yeah, I did do an article once about how the strike zone seems to get bigger in the ninth inning when a pitcher is going for a no-hitter, as if the umpire is sort of trying to make it happen.

Yeah, and maybe even the hitter. The hitter is obviously not trying to make it happen intentionally, but maybe by trying not to make it happen, he is in fact helping make it happen. I'm not sure if that's, that is, it's almost certainly an illusion, but I, you know, once you get past the sixth or seventh of this, it feels like the momentum really picks up. When I start, I think I feel like I start noticing potential 20 strikeout games much earlier than the pitcher does, and so there's, if you're nine through three even, or well, nine through three is awfully rare, but if you're, say, 10 or 11 through 4, those starts seem to fizzle out pretty reliably.

And a lot of times you look up in the 8th and he's got 14. But this, it didn't feel, like I would have probably taken 1 in 3 odds after the 7th. I don't know. So August, as you mentioned, as you were writing this, Scherzer has had more than his fair share of really dominant memorable starts is this even in your mind the best Max Scherzer start no I mean I don't he what struck out 17 in a no-hitter without a walk I mean that that kind of has to be the best one but I don't know there's there's something about that number 20 that like I think he even said this after the game where I think he he described it as sexy where it's just like yeah 17 strikeouts no hits no walks but he struck out 20 like that's that's

the that's that's the thing that's the cool thing so it's I don't know I there's something that's maybe more memorable about that start than the 17 strikeout no hitter no walk game but I mean that that almost like can't be topped. Like, you basically have to be Kerry Wood to top that. So I want to ask you why Max Scherzer? Because if you think about it, the king of the one game superstar up to, you know, the end of the 60s was Sandy Koufax, which made sense. He was the best pitcher of his generation and, you know, arguably the best peak in history up to that point. There might have been, you might make the case that for those four years, there's never been, you know, there had never been a better pitcher.

And then, and then he, he retired and, and then Nolan Ryan was the king of the one start masterpiece. And that made sense too. He was almost impossible to hit. He threw so much harder than everybody else. threw so much harder than everybody else. And he had this ability to throw 100 more pitches in every start than anybody else, which, you know, made it so that he could throw 175 pitch no hitters and not seem to tire at the end. And Max Scherzer is not the guy that you would pick for this kind of, I mean, maybe for this start, he's reasonably likely. But, you know, as you guys have, I think, I think you guys have

alluded to it in this show. I'm not sure, but that's the problem with illusions. Sometimes they just pass right by you. But Scherzer over the last, you know, year and a half, he's got essentially three games where he was one batter away from a perfect game. He has the two highest game scores in the majors in that time. He's one point from his game score in one of his no-hitters from having the top three in all of baseball in that time. And the 20 strikeout game is not even one of those three. And it is its own sort of kind of brilliance. And by that standard is the greatest of that type of start. Scherzer is not the best pitcher in baseball. You know, if Clayton Kershaw were the guy doing this, you'd go, oh, well, of course he's the best pitcher in baseball. He's also not the guy that you think of as having the very best stuff in baseball. And if you were to talk about, you know, the ceiling on a guy's stuff in a start, maybe it is Scherzer. But I don't think anybody would have answered that a year and a half ago.

And I'm not sure that anybody could really articulate why it would be the case now. You probably would name, I don't know, maybe five or six guys before him. You know, Fernandez and Strasburg and Syndergaard and, you know, Darvish when he's healthy. And so I am curious to know, August, why is Max Scherzer the guy? I'm pretty curious to know that too, because I thought that over the last, you know, 12 hours or so that like, why, why isn't Clayton Kershaw doing this? I mean, Scherzer is really good, but he's not the best. I think that a part of it, well, for one, I think a lot of it has to do with his fastball, which I focused a lot on in my post that like he, um, my favorite

thing about watching him pitch is that, uh, is the same reason why everyone likes to watch Bartolo Colon pitch just in terms of his pitching and that he just throws fastballs in the middle of the plate no one can do anything with it but the way that Colon does it's obviously a lot different in the way that Scherzer does it and Scherzer has like led baseball over the last year or two in just throwing fastballs down the middle and he's also led baseball and throwing fastballs down the middle and having people swing and miss at them. And there's something about that way of pitching that kind of just, it kind of makes it make sense where if the fastball is just really on one night and he's maybe facing a team that doesn't hit fastballs well, like some guys to have a game

the way that Scherzer just had a game, or at least close to the way that Scherzer just had a game, have to have the fastball and the slider and the command to the edges of the zone working. Whereas Scherzer can just have a game like that by just throwing fastballs down the middle, which is probably the easiest thing for a pitcher to do. And so that kind of just makes it, it's like, well, if I have my fastball, I'll start on the middle and no one will hit it. That seems like it would make it a little easier. And then I also wonder how much of him being a fly ball pitcher has to do with it because fly balls as long as they stay in the park go for hits less often than ground balls you're much more likely to have a ground ball kind of just scoop

through a hole in the infield than you are to have a high fly ball drop in between outfielders and so I wonder if maybe I mean I'm sure that part of this is just like happenstance, right? That Scherzer has just had some things fall his way. And that's why he has, you know, that he is seemingly always chasing a no hitter. Whereas Clayton Kershaw, who's obviously the better pitcher, is not. Although he's a fly ball pitcher too. So I don't know.

But yeah, I mean, I think that that might have something to do with it too. That if he's just blowing fastballs by people and then just getting a bunch of fly balls that stay in the park, that maybe that makes him a little more likely to, you know, kind of dance around the luck that often will ruin a good game or the pursuit of a no hitter. So did he do anything different last night from what he usually does? Or was it just the standard Scherzer working better than it usually does no it was definitely a little different uh and it was funny too because there was there was a certain point in the broadcast where they brought on that on-field guy who usually says something of very little importance and I actually thought that it was a pretty revealing quote Scherzer as I think Ken Rosenthal wrote about today, was really bad in his last start. He gave up like seven runs to the Cubs, gave up four homers. And he said that his pitch mix was

too predictable. It wasn't a mechanics thing. It wasn't a stuff thing that he just felt like the Cubs knew him better than he knew himself, that they kind of just knew what was coming. And so he said that he wanted to mix up his pitch selection a little bit more in this game, which is a funny or maybe even ironic quote quote because he relied on just his fastball and his slider more than he has in a long time. He threw, I think, 99 of his 119 pitches were either fastballs or sliders. It was basically all he threw. And he's a five-pitch guy, so he doesn't usually do that.

So I don't know if he came into the game thinking that he'd use all of his pitches and then he ended up just doing this because, I mean, I guess part of it would be it's a very right-handed heavy Tigers lineup, or maybe he just felt like that was working. Or if this, in fact, was him being less predictable because he doesn't pitch this way. And so maybe that was his way of, I mean, it was a different look. And so I guess if you want to be less predictable, what you do is you give the opposition a different look. Whereas that quote might on the surface be interpreted as I'm going to use all of my pitches and use them differently. Maybe his way of being less predictable was just always throw fastballs and sliders and they

won't be expecting that. And I also noticed that, and I think that I gift five sequences, I guess four at bats in my post and I think three of them started out with a breaking ball and those were not the only three strikeout sequences where he started off a hitter with a front door breaking ball before expanding the zone with a fastball on the outside or up high I don't know how often Scherzer does that but it's sort of an unconventional way to pitch I'd imagine that he probably did that more last night than he usually does. So I would guess that probably those are the ways that, you know, that that quote kind of ties into what he was doing differently last night, that he probably had all these right-handed bats that sit on fastballs a little

off balance with the slider early. And he was also throwing the slider late just lots of fastballs and for anyone who hasn't heard them can you remind us of the fun facts about his strike rate and just how many strikes he threw in those pitches yeah so he threw uh 96 strikes in 119 pitches which is the most strikes of of any pitcher in the expansion era with less than 120 pitches. And so it was 80.6% strikes, which is the fifth highest of any pitcher with at least 100 pitches in the expansion era. It was Roger Clemens, David Wells, somebody else. Somebody else did that too. But yeah, fifth highest strike percentage of all time since 1961, which I almost found that. I mean, obviously 20 strikeouts is insane, but when I watched the 20 strikeouts, it's very cool. And then when I saw

the tweet that said he threw 96 strikes, 11 pitches I think I exclaimed like that that kind of took me off guard more than the fact that he threw 20 strikeouts like just hearing that he he only threw 23 balls like that's he threw a complete game that doesn't make any sense yeah so in the midst of all this dominance Jose Iglesias hit a home run how did that happen uh I don't know it's a really good question. It was also, it wasn't even a hittable pitch. It was, I think there was also someone joking on the Slack channel that like Jeff Sullivan is deemed to write a post about that home run, because if not for that coming in a 20 strikeout game where we already wrote a couple of posts

about it, there might be a third one coming that it's absolutely a pitch that just in a normal game Jeff Sullivan would have been like oh that's a cool home run I'm gonna write about that it was a fastball way inside it was to start an inning was early in the game it kind of like Scherzer had just struck out I think it was his last like five outs were all strikeouts and in the second inning the Nationals broadcasters, you know, remarked something to the effect of the same thing that you hear whenever any ace strikes out the side in the first. Like, oh, this might be a game to watch. He's really got his stuff tonight.

And then he came out and gave up a first pitch home run on an impossible pitch in the third. And it kind of like dialed it back a little bit until he struck out the side immediately after that. I wonder if a start like this 20 strikeout start makes it more likely that you're going to give up home runs. Just because the batter has to the batters probably start guessing a lot more, especially early in counts. And, you know, he was able I assume he was just really sitting on a fastball and telling himself, just take a huge swing at a fastball. And if it had been a slider, he probably would have looked incredibly foolish.

And the way that the fastball really tailed in on him, it just sort of came right in on his bat. You don't really get the feeling that Jose Iglesias demonstrated some innate skill on that swing. This fastball just moved like 15 inches right at the barrel of his bat yeah and that was right and that's the other thing too is that you know when you bleed off the third with a homer like that you might want to dial it back but also right it's not like he made a terrible pitch he made a pretty bad pitch to jay martinez to lead off the ninth that got hit for a homer too but yeah it wasn't a bad pitch and there probably is something in the fact that i mean he was throwing a lot of fastballs. So, yeah, I would imagine that Iglesias probably was just sitting fastball.

But he probably wasn't sitting fastball where he hit it. It was probably a bad swing. And Martinez hit a, what, a first pitch slider? Is that right? Slider, yeah, right over the middle. And was it first pitch? Yeah, it was. It was the first pitch that I watched Max Scherzer throw last night.

I turned on the game when I knew that he had 18 strikeouts. And the very first thing that he did was throw a really bad slider that a really good hitter hit a really far distance. I was not impressed. I don't know what it means that the 520 strikeout games are all zero walk games. I don't know whether that means that all those pitchers were incredibly locked in on those days or whether it just means that you don't get the chance to throw 20 strikeouts if you are walking guys and you're throwing that many pitches yeah i didn't know what to think of that either i play indexed it last night to just kind of look at what the other lines looked like and i kind of had to like rub my eyes for a second to be like wait because i've i was all ready to like tweet out you know or put in my article first 20 strikeout

no walk game ever i was like oh no no none of them no no one walked anyone yeah i don't know i it probably has to do with pitch count right i mean because strikeouts are already something that i mean that's part of the reason why we haven't seen this is that in order to strike people out you need to throw a minimum of three pitches and often much more than that and so already being a strikeout pitcher lends you to throwing a lot of pitches. And then of course, walks would do the same too. So, you know, the guys who have three walks and 16 strikeouts just don't get to do 20 probably. Did you have a favorite pitch, a nastiest pitch, or a just weakest batter reaction? Yeah, it's the last two gifts in my post,

in the fourth inning fourth inning the second at bat against Miguel Cabrera there's a it was a first pitch curveball which he only threw five curveballs the whole game and it was just you know one of those it was I think it was the first pitch of the inning and just one of those things where the batter just has no reaction because as soon as the pitch leaves his hand and it's a curveball they're just like oh well I wasn't expecting that so I guess this pitch is over for me. And he just kind of takes the curveball. And then the next pitch is my second favorite pitch.

It's a fastball in on the hands, one of those ones that kind of plays off the curveball perfectly. And it's kind of just on that same plane that the curve was on. And he takes a horrible swing at it. He kind of just like it's this half check swing, half trying to get out of the way almost, and he just kind of like shoots it down the first baseline. And I mean, the best part of the at-bat, it's not even the pitches. It's the Miguel Cabrera.

It's the fact that like this is not, well, I was going to say Jose Iglesias, but he took him deep. So, you know, I mean, it's not James McCann. It's the best hitter over the last 10 years, over the last very long time. And he just looks so bad. He looks so bad in his first at-bat. He looks so bad in the first two pitches of the next at-bat. And then he just throws him just that insane 97-mile-an-hour fastball up in the zone.

That one that looks like it's even harder than 97, like the pitch, like some of those gifts that people made of Noah Syndergaard in his first couple starts, where it looks like they were artificially enhanced to make the ball travel to the plate faster than it did, where it's just like, no, that's not how it happened. And he just, I mean, he sat down Miguel Cabrera in back-to-back at-bats on three pitches each time. And you just, you don't see that too often. And the way that he did it particularly in the second at-back at-bats on three pitches each time. And you don't see that too often. And the way that he did it particularly in the second at-bat was pretty striking to me. The funny thing is that your last gift, the Miguel Cabrera fastball strikeout,

is almost exactly the same pitch as the Iglesias home run. He missed his target by the entire diagonal length of the strike zone and threw this hard-tailing fastball up and in. And Cabrera was like a good 45 seconds behind it I also like uh the Miguel Cabrera reaction anytime that he strikes out uh is typically like he kind of looks at the pitcher and gives him the like oh you got me this time but I'll I'll back. And again, he usually is back too. But I liked the times that Scherzer struck him out in this game. He kind of just walked back to the dugout. There was no, like, I'm going to get you next time.

It was like, wow, I don't know how I'm going to hit that. That was really good. So imagine that you would watch this game, A, out of order, and B, you only saw the pitches. So you didn't know what the counts were. You didn't have any announcers, and B, you only saw the pitches. So you didn't know what the counts were. You didn't have any announcers telling you anything. You just saw the pitches. I will give you the hitter. The hitter is going to be in your view. So watching this game, what line would you predict that that pitcher would have had? Oh, man. Well, certainly not the one he had. I'd probably say eight innings just because no one throws complete games anymore

and so i i've seen all the pitches so i know that he that he threw 119 pitches right or no yeah okay uh yeah i'd probably say eight innings i would have i would not have guessed that many walks because that was one of the things that really stuck out to me about this game is that like in almost every one of those gifts the catcher barely moves his glove like his command was so good uh i'd probably say like eight innings one walk 15 strikeouts do you want hits four hits where does scherzer rank on your leaderboard of fun to watch pitchers see that's the thing is that like guys like like jose Fernandez or even like Corey Kluber, their pitches move so much. Like it really boils down to, do you like movement or do you just like overpowering dominance? Because it's, it's, it's, it's two totally different kinds of pitcher. I kind of think that I'm, I'm more, more partial to the Fernandez Kluber model,

these guys that throw pitches that move unlike anything that I've ever seen. But also when, I mean, when a guy like Scherzer is locked in last night, it really is something to behold when, I mean, these are the best hitters in the world. It's a good lineup too. That's one of the most remarkable things is that he didn't do this against the Braves. Like he did this against the Tigers. They've got a lot of really good hitters and he did it by just throwing pitches down the middle. So I guess just on any given game, I'd probably take the Kershaw, Fernandez, Kluber, Bendy pitch guy.

But if you're telling me that this guy is completely locked in, it's a lot of fun to watch the here comes a fastball, it's going to be down the middle, hit it, and then the best pitchers in the world can't hit it. I'm sorry, the best pitchers in the world. So I'm happy that there was a 20 strikeout game. It's been a while. I like them. Good for everybody. But I really want a 21 strikeout game. Watching this game, watching the way that Scherzer did it, as well as watching the reaction to it, the way that the manager handled it, the level of excitement that it seemed to produce or not

produce relative to other milestones, and so on, all the other factors. Is there anything that we can learn about the likelihood of me seeing 21 sometime soon? Well, I guess there's the fact that he came one out away. I mean, that is pretty encouraging for that. Well, technically, all 20 strikeout pitchers do. They just do it out of order. I suppose that's true. And also, all is four, though. There's that too. But I don't know, because I kept thinking last night of how many managers in baseball, besides Dusty Baker, would have let Max Scherzer go out there? I think that because he had thrown, I think, I mean, he was well over 100.

I think he was 106 going into the ninth. I could be off, but it was over 100. And, I mean, we saw last year Corey Kluber was in the exact same spot. He had 18, and he had thrown something like 105, 110 pitches going out into the ninth, and he didn't go out to the ninth because Terry Francona didn't let him. pitches going out into the ninth and he didn't go out to the ninth because Terry Francona didn't let him. And so I, I kind of thought that last night, uh, the fact that he was given the opportunity to, to get numbers 19 and 20 said a lot about Dusty Baker. And I, I'm, I'm really not sure how

many, it was a close game too. I'm not sure how many other managers would have let him do it. And that's one of the things that I wrote in my post is that, you know, even though strikeouts are going up, pitcher limitations are going up, too. And that's just what kind of makes this, I think, so unlikely is that it's so hard to do it, to strike out 20 batters now a day with, you know, an acceptable number of pitches. So I don't really know if that answers your question or not, but I mean, I guess it's got to be encouraging, right? I mean, it hadn't happened in more than a decade and it happened again and it almost broke the record. So yeah,

I mean, I guess that's pretty encouraging, right? It feels like one of the keys, I mean, one of the keys is obviously that it's really hard to do it and the fewer pitches that pitchers throw the harder it gets to do it but also it just seems like historically it hasn't been seen as as prestigious or exciting or worth going for as a no-hitter and yet watching it last night it feels like it got i maybe i'm wrong i don't know how to i don't know how to measure this but and maybe I'm skewing the sample by being aware of myself, but felt like there was more excitement about this or at least as much excitement about this, as much coverage, as much discussion, as much tension in the moment itself, as much celebration after the fact as a no-hitter.

And I don't know. It seems like if a big part of getting to 20 or 21 or 26 or whatever is having a manager and a pitcher and everybody else care about it. Cause it does take effort. It's kind of like, you know, Cal Ripken's record. You have to, you have to deliberately try to go for this in some sense, just because the limitations on pitcher pitch counts are otherwise restrictive just as they are for no hitters, but as managers are willing to overlook for no hitters. Yeah. And he even said after the game, Scherzer did, that he became aware of how many strikeouts

he had after the eighth, that someone told him that he had 18. And I mean, after the game, he was very clear about the fact that he thought 20 was a very cool thing. The camera was on him in the post-game handshake teammate celebration line. And in between woos and yeah babies, he just kept saying 20 punches, 20 punches. Exactly. He was really fired up about the fact that he got 20. I'm not sure that every pitcher would be that way. I think there would be, like, for instance, if Corey Kluber would have struck out 20 last year, he would not

have mentioned it. He would have shaken everyone's hand in the line. He might have cracked a smile. He would not have been yelling 20 punches. He probably would have brushed it aside after the game. And so this was definitely a guy who once he knew that he had 18, I would imagine he probably, if there was any question of him going out in the ninth, he probably would have lobbied for it. You could tell that he really wanted it. You could tell, like you were saying earlier, Sam, that like, that he was going for it. You know, you can't like, you can't really go for a no hitter. Like you were saying, you just want to keep going, just keep getting guys out. You could tell in the ninth inning that he wanted to strike

everyone out. I mean, more so than he did before, it looked like. And yeah, I mean, he was really fired up about that number. So yeah, you could tell that it was a special thing to him to kind of be in that pretty elite company. So, all right, I have a question for both of you. How many pitchers who are currently pitching professionally in the minors or the majors will strike out 20 before they retire? And will any of those pitchers strike out 21? I'll say three and I'll say no. Wow. So wait, so, okay. I was, I think could or will? Will. Zero? I think I'm going to say zero.

We went a long time without seeing it. Yeah, I'm going to say right, yeah, zero. All right, I'll say three and yes. Okay. I wonder what the average length of time a team gets a seven-year contract free agent at his peak for Is after signing the contract Like the Red Sox just signed David Price And already, you know, the most recent

Post up at Fangraphs right now is about How David Price is maybe Somewhat diminished, you know, still really good But maybe not quite peak David Price And the Nationals at least have gotten Peak Scherzer now for, you know A year plus if they get At least two seasons of peak Scherzer That's only you know, a year plus. If they get at least two seasons of peak Scherzer,

that's only two-sevenths of the contract, but that's still probably sort of what you're hoping for when you sign a pitcher who's over 30 to a seven-year deal. You're sort of just hoping to get that prime guy for, you know, a couple years and then hope that the decline won't be too steep after that. But really, they have gotten a totally undiminished matchers or thus far into this country yeah and uh what three or four of the most just dominant exciting games that you could possibly uh hope for yeah that too who are your guys three which names did you have in your head oh i definitely don't have names i'm just i'm going i'm just going numbers i mean i i figure there's a field going numbers. I mean, I figure there's... The field. Yeah, exactly, the field.

I figure there's probably, I don't know, 16 guys who could conceivably do it if you gave them 10,000 starts. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I can't even tell whether it's getting easier or harder to do this. I guess it's getting easier. I think that it is a fluke that we went this long without 20. easier. I think that it is a fluke that we went this long without 20. And if I actually would, I considered saying that I think it'll happen again this year, but I don't really have any way of knowing what the chances are. And so it was, would have been a dumb hot take with no reason to say it. So I said it just now. Anyway, that's how you slip a hot take in. By the way, today I heard Buster Olney on some like sports talk radio station.

And when he was leaving, the host said, there you go, Buster Olney, the king of the hot takes. And he said it as, which first of all, no, that's like, I mean, thank goodness that is not Buster Olney. But I love that the guy was totally saying it sincerely as a compliment. It's what I said about Ken Rosenthal on MLB Network a couple weeks ago. Yeah. I was kidding. And then you apologized for the slander. Yeah.

All right. Well, we will link to August's posts if you want to watch some GIFs or just read August. He's great. You can also find him on Twitter at AugustFG underscore. Thank you, August. Thank you, Ben and Sam. All right. So that is it for today.

You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Today's five Patreon supporters, whom I am obligated to thank, but also very happy to thank, are Craig Cunningham, Mark Gunther, Jonathan Rivas, Daniel Goldstein, and Tom Evans. Thank you. Our book, The Only Rules It Has Goldstein, and Tom Evans. Thank you. Our book, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work, is a New York Times bestseller, or is about to be when the list comes out shortly. That is thanks to many of you who bought the book in its first week.

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