Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1078: Bring on the Banter

Episode Date: July 1, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan do an all-banter episode about Takuya Nakashima, Dustin Fowler, the latest on home runs and the baseball, an Aaron Judge intentional walk, too many Tylers, the significance of baseball’s lowest-ever average Leverage Index, the Reds’ still-disastrous pitching staff, and more. Audio intro: Otis Redding, "Just One More Day" Audio outro: Elliott Smith, […]

I can't forget those lovely days, but this is the price I'm about to pay. Ooh, I want another good day, Lord. You can let me have just one more day. Ooh, I need one more day, Lord. Oh, I need one more day, oh And I will do anything that you want me to do, oh Hello and welcome to episode 1078 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by Fangraphs and most importantly by our Patreon supporters who are numerous and enthusiastic. Hi, I'm Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs, joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello, Ben, how are you?

Hello, doing all right. That's great. Is there anything that you would like to discuss before, well, I shouldn't even say before the show. Is there anything you'd like to discuss? Yeah, a few things. And I think one no one has been asking for, but I'm going to do it anyway. It's an update on Takuya Nakashima, who very quickly became one of our favorite players in the world

when I wrote about him and we talked about him and devoted an entire podcast to him, really, this spring or spring training. And he was the guy, for those of you who don't recall or weren't listening at the time, he's the Japanese player who has never hit a home run and sacrificed bunts like crazy and fouls balls off like crazy and just seemingly could foul balls off at will. And so he would stand up there and foul the ball off 12 times and then walk or not do anything. He wasn't really all that good, but he somehow

managed to keep doing this with seemingly zero power. He never really pulled a fly ball or anything. So I just checked in on him because Daniel Brim tweeted a video of Nakashima at me, and he described it as, look at Nakashima with the almost power. And that was correct. Nakashima hit a ball that was almost at the warning track it was almost warning track power and it was in right center i would say but almost a right field pulled fly ball so impressive that he did that and so i went to look at the rest of his stats and that was where the impressiveness ended because I believe he missed some time with a knee injury,

but in 50 games and 185 plate appearances, according to Baseball Reference, he is batting 166, 220, 185, which is a 405 OPS. He does still have 17 sack bunts, which is second in NPB, but he has been pretty terrible. And the saddest part is that according to friend of the podcast, Kazuda Yamazaki, he is only up to 193 foul balls on the season and he was aiming for 800 this year so he is not going to make it and i am disappointed and saddened by nakashima's season it's just not his year well he's either not going to make it or

this is going to be an unbelievable stretch run of just constant constant foul balls yes in theory in theory you never know if he's going to get to 800 until his final at-bat is over. Yeah, that's true. He does have a 27 WRC plus, according to Delta Graphs, and that's at the halfway point of the season. So not so great. He is having a Bill Bergen year. So I thought I would fill everyone in on that. Hoping for the best for Takuya Nakashima. Other thing I thought I'd bring up,

well, I guess we could just acknowledge Dustin Fowler. Were you going to bring up Dustin Fowler? Yeah, I was going to. And also real quick, unrelated to Dustin Fowler, but you mentioned to Bill Bergen here. I don't know if you noticed, but if you wanted a more contemporary update, do you know what LCD's Escobar is,

I guess maybe more accurately not doing this season? Have you seen this? I looked fairly recently, I think, because I was checking to see if he was still leading off which he is not mercifully that finally stopped but uh what are his numbers today i don't know okay so if you sort by wrc plus among all qualified players aaron judge is a massive lead over everyone he's at 200 joey vato's at 163 that is a gigantic gap that mike trot will help to close

And at the bottom there are some good players Who have been bad the bottom five actually Includes this is in WS plus bottom five Includes Alex Gordon Rudnett Adore Carlos Gonzalez and Byron Buxton which is kind of crazy But LCD's Escobar is the very Worst he's batted 311 Times he's hit a home run

So kudos his WS plus Is 32 it's And he's on a hot streak. Unbelievable. Anyway, Dustin Fowler. Yeah, he was on my list of things to break up. I will let you go ahead and explain what happened. Yeah, I don't have that much to say about it, but he is a rookie outfielder for the Yankees, had just been called up and made his major league debut on Thursday. And in the very first inning of his major league debut, he went after a fly ball, a foul ball that just went into the stands. And he crashed into the stands at close to full speed, sort of at knee level, a low fence. Most of you have already seen this, so I don't know why I'm describing it in great detail.

But he hurt himself. He hurt himself badly. Brett Gardner said it's one of the worst things I've seen on a baseball field. It was pretty unsightly if you look at it in slow motion, but it is an open rupture of the patellar tendon. That open really makes it sound 10 times more unpleasant, not that rupture sounds pleasant on its own. So he is going to have immediate season-ending surgery. So he played less than an inning in the field, had not gotten in at bat yet, and that stinks. I guess it's still better than never making the majors, and he's obviously a young guy, and hopefully he will be back after his surgery, and he will not be one of those historical curiosities who just got into, like, an inning and never played again. And Hoke pointed out that Fowler's debut came on June 29th, as did Moonlight Graham's debut on June 29th, 1905. Uncomfortable coincidence, but let's hope that history will not repeat itself in Fowler's case. It was a nice story. It is now a sad story for the time being. That one is horribly depressing.

It's a little reminiscent of last year on July 31st. The White Sox traded Zach Duke to the Cardinals for an outfielder, a center fielder named Charlie Tilson. And Charlie Tilson made his major league debut on August 2nd. Unlike Fowler, Tilson did get to bat. He batted twice, got a hit. So good for him. Then he sustained an injury. I don't remember exactly what the injury was, but he sustained a season-ending injury, cost him the final two months of the year.

It was an excellent opportunity for him to try to make an impression with the team and uh yeah and then it looks like i i didn't follow up but this february tilson sustained another injury that has continued to keep him out of action a foot injury he's been in a walking boot so he still has not played i don't think he has not played since august 2nd of 2016 and you figure for a young, non-top prospect, you couldn't ask for a better team to try to carve out a job with than the current Adam Eaton-less Chicago White Sox. So it's a real missed opportunity for Telson, not that it's his fault. So it's bad to be a baseball player. Yeah, sometimes.

Emotionally difficult. Okay, so that's Val. You got anything else? Yeah, well, the other thing I was going to bring up, it's just another home run point and baseball point. And maybe people are getting tired of hearing about this, although judging by the number of radio producers wanting me to talk about it, it doesn't seem as if that's the case. But the latest thing I was watching last night, Rob Arthur was on SportsCenter talking about this and did a very good job, I thought. And that, I think, is representative, emblematic of the level of interest. And on Thursday, Bob Nightingale had a piece in the

USA Today where he talked to a ton of pitchers and came away with lots of juicy, juiced ball quotes and a lot of pitchers saying fairly definitive statements about the ball being different. It's David Price, 100%. He says, we have all talked about it. Dan Worthen, Mets pitching coach, is saying it's the balls. They're throwing harder with it, but they're getting less movement. So they're just hanging there, which is consistent with the idea that the starting and ending speed of pitches has decreased dramatically recently. And that historically has been very closely associated with the home run per fly

ball rate. So that lends further support to that. Anyway, the litany of pitchers goes on and on. Brad Ziegler is talking about it. And I think maybe my favorite quote was Chris Archer, who in this article says, I'm staying away from my candid thoughts, but I know this for a fact. Triple-A balls travel 30 less feet than the major league ball with the same exit velocity and launch angle. It's wound differently in the minor leagues, which has an effect on your breaking ball, the movement of your fastball with how the ball carries off the bat. Bellinger, he didn't showcase this kind of power in the minor leagues because a fly ball to the warning track is now a homer. So those were pretty candid thoughts, I think. Pretty comprehensive thoughts. So anyway, it goes on and on. And Nightingale presents a couple of hitter quotes also. Not nearly as many. Maybe he just didn't talk to as many. But hitters,

it seems, are not as convinced that the ball is juiced as he would expect. So that kind of casts doubt on whether we can trust pitchers, but the chorus of comments is getting louder and louder by the day here, it seems. And I just kind of wonder what the end game of this will be because in previous eras, it was very possible for this speculation to go on and on and no actual evidence to be provided beyond maybe a few quotes from players. And if you go back to like 1987, the rabbit ball year when home runs went way up and everyone suspected that it was the ball and then prest, the next year, home runs were way down as if the ball may have just changed back and reverted to what it had been before. But no one could really offer any great evidence other than saying, look at all

these homers, because I don't know that there even was an independent baseball testing facility then. I don't know what kind of testing Rawlings did at the time, but the lab that I used and that Mitchell Lichtman used to test baseballs was established in 2003. So I don't know if there was any kind of facility like that. Obviously, all the data that we have at our disposal now would have seemed like science fiction at the time. The idea that we would be looking at the drag on individual pitches on their way to the plate and being able to extrapolate from that was decades away and almost inconceivable. And so all this data on launch angle and spin rate and everything we have now, it kind of hit home to me how much the field of baseball analytics has advanced,

even just since the late 90s or 2000 when everyone was talking about the ball. And of course, there were other things going on during that time, although I don't think that rules out the idea that the ball could have been involved at that time too. But there was just no recourse, really. If you were a writer and you were interested in it, I don't know what you could have done. And now there are just so many different things you can do and so many adjustments that can be made that I wonder whether MLB will just keep putting out the same canned statement about how they test the balls and they're within the legal limits and all of that or not.

I mean, they could certainly keep doing that. And no one has proved and I'm not even suggesting really that there was any kind of intentional element to the ball being altered. And so they don't necessarily have to say anything or do anything, but when writers are bringing this incredibly granular level of detail to all these articles about it, the non-comments or the canned comments sort of, I don't know, seem insubstantial or insufficient. You want MLB to at least maybe release the results of the testing that I saw or maybe do some extra testing or revisit the testing or something. Again, I don't think it really matters that home runs are up, and I don't mind that home runs are up. But just based on the number of requests and the level of

interest that I'm getting, that Rob is getting, it seems like everyone just loves sinking their teeth into this thing. So I wonder how it will all play out. This is sort of an age of existence where it's harder than ever to hide from the truth. But in some sense, the truth is also less important than it's ever been. And that speaks to more than just our current baseball conversation landscape. And I guess with the stuff that we do, the truth does seem to matter. Because if it didn't, then I don't know how we would compel ourselves to wake up in the morning and still right but i don't know to what extent i guess even now we can't say definitively okay it's the ball

but we have a pretty damn good idea that it's the ball at least the ball explains the balls played apart yeah yeah it's it's a major function of the home run increase and every single time that anyone has reached out to major league baseball for a statement it's been the same we test balls regularly and everything is within the standard ranges etc and it's been pointed out enough times more than enough times that the standard range allow for dramatic differences in how the baseballs play even though technically one ball at one end of the allowed range would be just as legal as a ball at the other end. What's the calculated difference?

Something like 49 feet of distance. Is that exactly right? Let's pretend that's exactly right. I think it's 49 point something, but yes. Excellent. And then here's Chris Archer. I don't know where he got his numbers. I don't know.

Maybe he just made it up out of nowhere, but I'm going to guess that he didn't just make it up out of nowhere but i'm gonna guess that he didn't just make it up out of nowhere talking about how the average ball and the minors maybe just triple a goes 30 fewer feet with the same bet i'd be curious to know if maybe he has gotten his hands on some data and i could be wrong but don't many minor league ballparks still use hit fx data as opposed to sack ass track man data that you see in the major leagues? Yes, I think so. Now, I believe, I've never played with hit effects data. You have a long time ago? Yeah, we used it with the Stompers. Okay, so I think, well, I know for a fact that the two systems report different velocities for the same batted balls.

So what would it take if you had, I don't know, a 95 mile per hour batted ball in the majors and then you had a 95 mile per hour batted ball in the minors and the one in the minors flew less distance, then that would imply that it's over-reporting the batted ball. It could imply that it's over-reporting the batted ball. It could also imply that the ball is different.

You know, that's the other one. But anyway, there's a consideration there. I don't know how much this matters, but I'm looking at a year-by by year rookie pitcher performance in the major leagues. And by ERA minus this year's rookies are actually the worst they've been in about 20 years, but you know, small differences. But one thing that's interesting is that since 2011 in the major leagues, among all pitchers, we've of course seen a pretty dramatic increase in strikeouts and no real change in walks so the strikeout minus walk rate has increased for major

league pitchers but for rookie pitchers it stayed almost exactly the same it's always hung right around 10 10 and a half 11 percent strikeout rate has not grown rookie pitchers have continued to strike out 20 percent of major league batters, and they have continued to walk about eight or nine, mostly 9% of major league batters. I don't know what that means. It would be most interesting, I guess, to analyze. I don't need to go into the history of minor league equivalencies, but basically to see how minor league pitchers have been adjusting to the major leagues relative to how they used to adjust to the major leagues i know you've looked at like the home run rate in the minors and how that's tracked with the major league home run rate which

incidentally at least in 2016 it was not anymore yeah it was interesting you say that it's back up this year but now i'm yeah drifting from the point but i would like to see an analysis of how minor league pitchers are done transitioning to the majors seeing if there's something to the idea that it's just harder to grip the ball or get the movement i understand that pitchers could complain about the ball going further i understand that a smaller ball or lower seams would in fact affect the break and then pitchers can be sensitive to that but i feel like because the contact is still lower than ever strikeouts are still higher than ever i feel like pitchers are mostly doing a fine job of missing bats and it just happens to be that the balls that are hit are going further than

they used to okay okay that's it's more home run stuff okay so i don't know if you are aware of aaron judge stuff two things happened with aaron judge last night in a game against the what was it white socks or even hardly even has the game okay so two things we'll focus on the last plate appearance first because this is just pertinent to, I guess, it's sort of a follow-up to an email question we got recently. And it was a 4-3 White Sox lead in the top of the ninth. David Robertson was pitching to Aaron Judge with a man on first and two out. So potential last at-bat of the game slash potential go-ahead at-bat for the Yankees.

So Robertson worked to a 2-2 count. I should say Aaron Judge worked a 2-2 count, I guess. I guess they both worked. I mean, that's their jobs. And on 2-2, David Robertson threw a fastball that, according to the game day window, was almost exactly down the middle. That's a bad fastball throw. And incidentally, it was the second pitch of the at-bat that Robertson threw exactly down the middle. That's a bad fastball throw. And incidentally, it was the second pitch of the at-bat

that Robertson threw exactly down the middle. Judge swung through the first one. And on the second one, he fouled it straight back. So what an answer might say that Judge just missed. He's right on it. And on the next pitch, he struck out flailing in a curveball in the dirt. Judge was no better for the experience and the yankees lost the game but more interesting than that certainly is you might be surprised by this because i only just learned about this this morning because it turns out i'm a bad baseball writer in the seventh inning dan jennings came in to pitch for the white socks with one out and nobody on ronald torres had granted out to start the inning brett gardner struck out swinging so there were two outs nobody on and then dan jennings intentionally walked aaron judge to face dd gregorius so aaron judge drew the two out nobody

on intentional walk sign of respect now of course there's a righty lefty consideration here jennings is apparently a southpaw i've never cared about that before and i probably never will again but this is the circumstance where i looked it up to confirm dan jennings throws with his left hand aaron judge bats from the well i guess actually the left box but he stands right i don't know how to explain that it's stupid anyway judge bases empty intentional walk that is the third bases empty intentional walk of this season according to the play index which surprised me i didn't know that there were others however on may 31st andrew mccutcheon drew one off tj mcfarland and according to at least the play index that went strike ball ball ball and then ball parentheses pitcher went to mouth so i don't know uh may 7th anthony rizzo drew a bases empty intentional walk-off chase and shreve that went strike ball ball ball ball

parentheses pitcher went to mouth so i don't know what happens with pitchers going to their mouths I don't know why that seems like there has been a spike in that behavior based on a sample of these two intentional walks it could very easily be that the play-by-play is just confused and that's not what happened but it sure looks like Rizzo and McCutcheon were actually pitched to and then the pitcher fell behind on the count and decided let's not throw a meatball. So those are bases empty intentional walks that deserve asterisks. Going to last year, David Ortiz drew a bases empty intentional walk off Edwin Diaz, but that started with some regular balls. Corey Dickerson drew a bases empty intentional walk off Nick Vincent, but that count was 3-1. So Vincent clearly had tried to retire him.

Nelson Cruz, same thing. I'm just going back here one by one. Andrew McCutcheon, it looks like, has the most recent bases empty intentional walk that was just a straight-up intentional walk, and that was on July 11th, so nearly one year ago. McCutcheon in the bottom of the 11th of a 4-4 game was intentionally walked by Miguel Sokolovic with two outs in the 11th inning. I'm going to guess again without knowing this for sure Sokolovic probably throws with his

left hand because that's the only circumstance in which that makes any sense and well no let me take that back because the next batter was Diolos Guerra who's a pitcher. So that's probably why Andrew McCutcheon was intentionally walked. again, kind of an asterisk there. So why don't we go back? We go to May 27th of 2014. Here we go. Here is maybe, maybe the most recent one of these. Mark Reynolds.

Well, that looks stupid. Okay, well, let's see what this is all about. Bottom of the 10th inning, May 27th, 2014. TJ McFarland, who, oh no, does he throw with his left? He sounds like a lefty, right? Yes. Yeah, he is a lefty. Perfect.

TJ McFarland, the probably lefty specialist facing Mark Reynolds, bottom of the 10th. And why was Reynolds in the 10th? This is always fun when you're doing this. Because the next batter was Giovanni Gallardo. Okay, hold on. It's all fallen in place. And oh, by the way, Giovanni Gallardo. Okay, hold on. It's all fallen in place. And oh, by the way, Giovanni Gallardo hit a walk-off double and McFarlane got the loss.

Gallardo actually pinch hit for Francisco Rodriguez in that game. That is a hell of a game. You probably talked about that on Effective Wild three years ago. Well, crap. Okay, well then we're going back because that's another asterisk. We've got Chris Davis through the previous one, but that was a three-in-one count.

Still going, still going. Albert Pujols, here we go. Let's check out April 21st, 2013. Phil Koch, bottom 12, tie game. Phil Koch lefty, of course. Albert Pujols, at that point, still considered one of the most dangerous hitters in the world. 12th inning.

Okay, what do we got? Phil Koch, Albert Pujols, bottom of the 12th. Koch had struck out Peter Borges. He got Mike Trout to hit a fly out to deep center field. So I just mentally give Trout credit for basically winning the game, even though he didn't. Okay, Koch chose to intentionally walk Albert Pujols with two outs and nobody on so he could face Josh Hamilton. And Josh Hamilton struck out swinging on three pitches.

So that would be the most recent such intentional walk albert boo holes phil coke april 21st 2013 was josh hamilton even considered bad that must have been 2013 was that during the time when he would swing at anything and everything i mean this is april 2013 and the year before hamilton was with the rangers and he had a 930 OPS so Hamilton at this point this was pre everyone understanding that Hamilton sucked so you still get the the intentional walk because Koch didn't want to face a righty so that he could face a lefty with a man on I get that and Pujols is not likely to run very well but still bold maneuver not a whole lot of people who were intentionally walking guys to get to Josh Hamilton at that stage in his career.

So teams or at least one team are treating Aaron Judge with the respect that they most recently accorded to Albert Pujols. So that's pretty impressive. And that falls in line with an article at MLB.com I was just reading, which is a player survey of who should be in the home run derby. And I was kind of curious about which players the players wanted to see in this, and Aaron Judge leads with 11 votes over Giancarlo Stanton at 10, and then the next highest is Joey Gallo at 3. So everyone wants to see Judge and Stanton in the Home Run Derby. Makes a lot of sense, although On this list there were Let's see four five six

Thirteen active players Receiving votes in this Fairly small sample I assume Survey and those results Included Mike Zanino Scott Shebbler Scott Shebbler You were allowed to vote

For teammates so I'm guessing That that was a teammate of Scott You were allowed to vote for teammates So I'm guessing that that was a Teammate of Scott Shebbler Or possibly Scott Shebbler casting a vote For himself So Shebbler and Zunino Tied Mike Trout And Miguel Sano

With one vote apiece Ichiro got two votes People still want to see Ichiro in the Home Run Derby I know Jeff Passon just wrote an article about that I haven't read yet. I was actually going to plan to talk about All-Star festivities and such next Friday so we can plan ahead. We can

talk about how the All-Star game is stupid and how everything could be changed. You have a week to stew on that. But yeah, I was I've always been sort of curious how players felt about the Ichiro Home Run Derby thing. Obviously, it still hasn't happened, and Itro has been reluctant to allow it to happen. But I couldn't tell if that was one of those things that only the fans wanted, if players would think that it was a sign of disrespect or what. But I'm glad to see him get two votes, although I would have been gladder to see him get the most.

Although, I guess in an Aaron Judge world, that would be ridiculous. Yes. Okay, well, let's just keep going all right there's an article written by tyler keppner that was published on thursday i don't know if you saw this in the uh don't think so and i don't know where's the headline headline by tyler keppner headline goes tyler's at the plate and on the mound and in the field ellipsis it's an article about all the tylers there are a lot of tylers yeah yeah lots of tylers and also kyle's it turns out but tylers lots of tylers in baseball it tracks with

the increased popularity among the general american population in the name tyler the yankees on tuesday called up two different tylers wade and webb which is yep that means there are now 30 players who according to tyler kepp, 30 players who have gone by Tyler or Ty who've appeared in a major league game in the last year and a half. So that is an all-time high. I believe he said in this article that the first Tyler in the major leagues

showed up in 1993. So there have been a lot of Tylers. One of the good anecdotes from this article, we can't claim Ty Cobb, whose given name was Tyrus, even though Pete Rose named a son Tyler in Cobb's honor. Whoops, that was dumb.

Pioneer was Tyler Green, the first player who went by Tyler to reach the major leagues for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1993. He pitched in an All-Star game, and Tyler Clippard has done so twice. So in response to this article, which incidentally, I think even without the data before Tyler Kepner wrote this article in the first place, we all had a sense. There have been a lot of Tylers. Yes. Tylersers and Taylors it's kind of out of control but in response to an article that was in response to that article Tacoma Rainier's AAA broadcaster Mike Curdo noted fun little anecdote Rainier's reliever Gene Maci calls every white guy on the team Tyler he's right a good percentage of the time so that is a lovely anecdote about gene machi although it's one of those things where if gene machi were a white guy and he was calling every latin player on the team

carlos or one then all of a sudden people would be like this is calling some clubhouse discord but it's funny when it goes the other direction i guess so gene machi still fun human i guess all i know about him is this and that gif of him farting, but nevertheless. Yes. I will now cross that off the list and let's see. There is or was a topic, but you wanted to banter a little bit about leverage index. Yeah, I think so. I read your post about that and I figured we could spitball on it for a few minutes before we get to your topic. I figured we could spitball on it for a few minutes before we get to your topic. And so your most recent writing, you found that the average leverage index in Major League Baseball this year is lower than it's ever been, or at least lower than it's ever been in the years for which we have that data.

And that is curious and interesting. And that is curious and interesting. And for those who don't know, leverage index is just sort of a proxy for how important or exciting or pressure-packed a situation is. If it's late in the game and it's close, it's a high leverage situation. If it's a blowout or whatever, it's a low leverage situation. situation. So you found that on the whole, Major League Baseball games have been lower leverage and thus, in theory, less exciting than ever before. And you also found some differences in the typical margin of victory, right? And the percentage of games that are going to extra innings. And there are wider margins of victory and fewer games going to extra innings and there are wider margins of victory and fewer games going to extra innings, which is consistent with the idea that these games are less competitive and less

exciting for some reason. And I guess we shouldn't exaggerate the magnitude of the effect because the fluctuations in this from year to year are very small. And even now at its low point, it's not so different from the typical year. I don't know whether it's something you would notice if you didn't look at the numbers or not, but I assume something inspired you to look. Did you suspect or were you just browsing desperately? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, this was, so I, i uh based on my sort of weekly quota the last article that i write in a given week comes on thursday afternoon that's something that i usually try to publish a schedule ahead for friday morning and by thursday afternoon i have gone through my entire list of possible topics for the week and then some i am scraping the bottom of the

barrel sometimes there's breaking news or something does occur to me other times it is desperate leaderboard scrambling which is what this one came out of i don't know what compelled me to look at this in the first place but i oh right i was curious to see uh also included in the post was which teams have played with the highest and lowest average leverage this season and then also since 1974 which is as far back as we have data. And I was basically thinking, well, this could be a fun little post about which teams have played the most and the least interesting baseball so far this season by one measure. Whatever, quick throwaway wasn't supposed to mean very much, but that got me curious. Well, where have these teams ranked among all teams since 1974?

among all teams since 1974. And when I did that, I noticed that all the teams from this or many of the teams from this year have had historically low leverage indices, which that that may be curious, well, has the league leverage shifted, and then it turned out it has, and it's gotten lower and lower for reasons I can't quite explain. And we can talk about that in a minute. But this is one of those posts, probably where you see applied, you think, okay, this is a definite trend, something is going on, but I don't know how to interpret it in a way that would make people care about it because I don't even know if I care about it more beyond it just being like a weird statistical fun fact, you know? Yeah.

Like the baseball isn't actually, I don't think any less interesting than it's ever been because there's so much more than just the average leverage index and you still right kind of this is taking into account only single games individual games and so if there's more parity in the league for instance it it wouldn't take that into account it doesn't factor in pennant races or anything like that right so there are a lot of considerations and you can talk about my favorite player is coming up or my favorite player is pitching or even though this game isn't all that close we're still fighting for a wild card spot or we're playing a rival so there are things that matter the stakes of any individual game are contingent on so much more than just score and

base out state leverage alone but as a further little nugget you had asked if it was possible to examine leverage by inning. And while that would be possible, it's not possible for me to do on extremely short notice. So I did not do that. But I could at least split league average leverage index by starters and relievers, which was not hard to do. So it gives sort of a proxy of, I don't know, whatever you want to say.

It gives you a proxy of everything. It gives you a proxy of when this is happening. And well, maybe not by coincidence, this year starters and relievers have their lowest ever average leverage on record. Now for starting pitchers on a per plate appearance basis, I don't even know if it's worth saying numbers out loud, but I'm going to do it anyway.

Starting pitchers are at an average leverage index this year of 0.96. And the median from the entire window of time that we have is 0.99 it's a very slight difference but whatever it's there it is the lowest and for relievers it's a little more stark over the entire window of time examined relievers have had a median leverage index of 1.06 and this, they are at 0.98. That is more substantially down from the previous low leverage index. So starting pitchers are throwing the least stressful innings that they've thrown.

And relief pitchers also are throwing the least stressful relief innings that they've ever thrown. So whenever you see a trend in baseball, then it's one thing to observe it. And then it's quite another to try to explain it. I don't have yet much of an explanation only because I don't know how these things really work on the granular scale. But there have been some comments already to the post that are of interest to me. This is one of those situations where I just kind of wait for someone like Tango Tiger or mgl to chime in and actually set the record straight because they know this stuff so much better than i do but some comments have pointed out that maybe the the leverage index calculations stay the same i believe

year to year situations have a given leverage and that's that but it's possible that what this isn't capturing is that this year uh to tie all of our banter together, given the increase in home runs, it's possible that situations feel more stressful now than they would have a few years ago, just because it's more likely that a ball could leave the yard. And that's probably true. In fact, I could say that is true. There's no probably about it. So yeah, being down by three late in the game or something is less hopeless than it would have been a few years ago because you are so much more likely to hit a home run. So yeah, that seems to be a fairly compelling explanation to me. And there is, at least as far as explaining the trend goes, there is the hypothesis that's been put out there that relievers are just better than ever. And so they're getting themselves into fewer jams, permitting fewer rallies, if you will.

They are, in theory, just doing better to close out games, which means they're putting fewer people on base. They're not opening the doors often for a comeback, which would mean lower leverage situations. I don't know how much that helps explain the decline in the number of one-run games that have been played. There's a decline, seemingly a subtle decline, in the number of extra inning games that are played. So it could have something to do with the top relievers, but it's always a little trickier to investigate that on the league-wide scale. And when I have glanced at it before, I couldn't find anything that was too strongly suggestive. For example, in this very era, we were talking about how every reliever is dominant and every team has a bunch of dominant relievers the nationals can't seem to find a

single one they just had another meltdown on thursday against the cubs just when it seemed like maybe the bullpen was kind of getting itself a little straightened out i regret all of the positive articles i've written about lake trinan in the past that is not a good look for me but mostly it's not a good look for like trinan and really this podcast is just an exercise in beating around the bush and what we should really be doing is trying to get the nationals open because other teams make it look so easy yes like the angels for instance yeah i think that that's a good explanation for for what this could be it could just be the the run environment and the weird all or nothing type baseball. And I asked Russell Carlton

about it earlier. He speculated that maybe teams could be doing a better job of recognizing a low leverage situation when they're in one and taking the optimal response to it. So you wrote, for instance, recently that this is the age of position players pitching. And part of that, it seems like, is teams recognizing when they're really out of a game and not wanting to waste their pitchers in that game. So it's possible that teams are just doing a better job of putting in their best pitchers when it's a crucial situation and keeping leads close. And then if games are already a little bit out of hand, then you put in bad pitchers or position players to pitch

and they get even less competitive. And maybe that could change things. I don't know if that would change things dramatically in one year, but maybe it's contributing to it. So that's a possible explanation too. By the way, Russell is writing a book he just announced today. So good for him. I am looking forward to that coming next year.

So we'll probably hear more compelling theories about this, but it was a worthwhile observation. So I'm glad we brought it up. And now we have nine minutes until you have to chat. So I don't know if you want to do an abbreviated version of what your topic was going to be. The hell with the topic. It wasn't that great a topic. We can come back to the topic another day. So we can just do a little bit of additional banter, I guess, because I was just checking to confirm something and it is indeed still true. So we can talk about the Cincinnati Reds instead, because here's why. We have mentioned before, and I've written before, and you've probably also written before, that last season, the Cincinnati Reds had the worst pitching staff in baseball. According to Fangraphs, they had a war of negative 0.5.

In second to last place, the Angels were all the way up at plus 5.9. Big difference there. Reds, terrible. We all know the Reds pitching staff was terrible, got better down the stretch, but still first ever below replacement level pitching staff on record. It's been about halfway through this season. It's not exactly halfway through this season. The Reds have played 78 games as of this recording. The Reds are the only team in baseball with a below replacement level pitching staff. Their current pitching staff war is at negative 0.4, second worst, a tie between the Twins and the Mariners, 2.1, kill me now.

But nevertheless, the Reds have not done it for a season and a half, basically. They have three games to try to get this over zero, which is totally doable for almost any other pitching staff, maybe not theirs. They have three games to try to get this back to or over zero, unless they want it to be said that they have gone a season and a half. They have followed up maybe the most astonishing pitching staff performance of all time with something that has not regressed positively in the least it's just as bad even though we've all written kind of encouraging things about rossie la glacias and michael lorenzen i have written about wandy peralta who

had a stretch where he was interesting ariel hernandez is a guy they have who's interesting they have brandon finnegan but he's been hurt have Brandon Finnegan, but he's been hurt. They have Homer Bailey, but he's been hurt. And then he's run an ERA over 40. I didn't make that up. They've had Cody Reed, who's been just awful. They've had Anthony Disclifani, who's been hurt, so he hasn't been able to pitch.

They should, in theory, have a better pitching staff than this. But the fact that they have not had any positive regression from the worst pitching performance of all time is unbelievable to me. It's unbelievable. They're still below zero. They give up so many home runs. Yeah, that is pretty amazing. You wouldn't think that they would keep that up.

And early in the year, they were looking better, right? Like they had Amir Garrett pitching pretty well, and the bullpen was looking pretty good. And then evidently, that has not continued. So, I mean, it makes sense that the worst ever pitching staff last year would still be a bad pitching staff this year. But to be worst ever two years in a row, is impressive or the opposite of that. The Reds in April were 25th in baseball. Whatever. No big deal.

1.5 wins above replacement. That makes sense for a bad team. The Reds in May, 30th in baseball at negative 0.7 wins above replacement. That's bad. Obviously, you don't want to be in last place, but there were at least two other teams also below zero in May. Those teams being the braves and the twins well june chickens have come home to roost or whatever the expression is the reds

again 30th they're at negative 0.9 wins above replacement for the month if anything they are turning downward the orioles and the mariners have also been below zero now we i don't know if we ever made mention of the fact that the orioles did tie that all-time record their pitching staff for consecutive games allowing at least five runs, which was unbelievable. I was really hoping that they would get to 21, but alas, who was it who blew it? Was it Kevin Gosman or was it, I don't know, Dylan Bundy?

I can't stand when... Just go all the way. Don't tie the record. Just go all the way. Okay, this is now only tangentially related to to that but as long as we're sort of on the subject the other day the angels won a game technically on a walk-off strikeout now also i guess technically not on a walk-off strikeout but the final batting event of the angels victory was an angel strikeout and according to baseball reference only the eighth time that has ever

happened on record i remember watching the last time it happened on september 29th 2010 the mariners lost to the rangers on a dan cortez strikeout of whoever was batting for the rangers i think it was nelson cruz wasn't it was nelson cruz and then yeah then the winning run scored all the way from first base hilarious so in 2003 the detroit tigers also won on a walk-off strikeout it was september 27th 2003 and the Tigers were facing the Twins, and it was the bottom of the ninth, and Jesse Orozco got Ramon Santiago out. Just going to name check some Tigers here. Jesse Orozco retired Ramon Santiago, and then he walked Alex Sanchez,

which is a thing I didn't think had ever happened. Alex Sanchez then subsequently stole second base and third base, and then Warrenren morris struck out against jesse roscoe but the ball got away from whoever the twins catcher was at that point as far as i'm concerned every twin schedule ever has been ryan domit and warren morris reached and alex santos scored and the tigers won on a walk-off strikeout and that was part of that 2003 tigers surge where they won five of their final six games, including two in walk-off fashion. And they tied the all-time record for losses in a season.

They tied it. Just go all the way. Just set the record. Always take it too far. It's no fun when you just tie. You're already going to be humiliated. We all remember the 2003 Tigers as being horrible. We all remember that.

It's not so much remember. We all experienced the Orioles pitching staff being horrible. Just be the most horrible. Just own it Bartolo Colon will pitch in the big leagues again. And he'll maybe be picked up by the Reds. Maybe they could use a Bartolo Colon. But probably more likely the Mets or who knows, maybe the Orioles. All these teams could probably use a Bartolo Colon. So hopefully he's not done yet. But we will celebrate him and memorialize him whenever the time comes. But it's premature to declare his tenure over. All right. So that will be it for this week.

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