Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1087: Survey Says You Suck

Episode Date: July 21, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the Mariners’ and Marlins’ David Phelps trade, Sam Dyson’s bounceback, an eight-strikeout game, the Salina Stockade, Matt Davidson and Jeff Mathis, the first post-All Star Game weeks of Mike Trout and the Cubs, and early trade-deadline activity, then examine the results of a FiveThirtyEight survey about the most- […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1087 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I am Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs, joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello. Hello. How are you? Doing okay. I'm struck today by the fact that we have the exact same words when we do the introduction. And I don't have anywhere to go from that. Do you have anything that you would like to discuss pre?

I mean, whatever. This is essentially going to be a banter episode anyway. Who are we kidding? But do you have initial banter, I should say? I've got a few things. Since I brought up the David Phelps trade on the Ringer podcast, but only for 30 seconds and purely as an excuse to play the Jerry DePoto trade song. So do you have something substantive to say about David Phelps since you wrote a post about him?

Yeah. One thing that I loved was that I could go to bed with the knowledge that it looked like there was a trade about to be completed, which meant that I knew what I was going to be writing about when I woke up, which is nice. It's always convenient. So one substantive thing, good for me and my writing stress. But that it's i don't know i i think i might i'm biased in that i find almost every trade interesting i came really close to writing a full post the other day about the rays picking up jazz row and then not even putting him on their 40-man roster because i see i see the value there and i i swear to god i still think he's going to be a good reliever for them down the stretch. Chess Rose, the author of one of the best gifts ever, right?

Or, you know, maybe not the author. He didn't create the gift, but the subject of one of the best gifts ever. Yeah, that crazy frisbee slider that he throws. It's a really good pitch. And he was pretty good last year with the Braves when they had him throw it like all of the time. And it's not the first guy to be a reliever who just basically throw a slider all the time and see how it works but he was good and he would have been in the majors this year if not for an injury now granted injury anyway this isn't about jazz row this is about david phelps so

you really really want to get that jazz row content out there some one way or another i'm just saying he's he's gonna be a good reliever he throws a lot of sliders and it's good battles don't know what to do they don't swing and win at the strike they do swing as a ball he's good he's gonna be on the 40-man roster pretty soon solution to the raised bullpen problems kind of david phelps he's legitimately interesting in a way even beyond even beyond if like chas rowe i think we can all agree he's like a 9 out of 10 interesting factor david phelps is like at least a 33 so he is interesting firstly because he was really good last year and uh not a lot of people noticed because nobody noticed the team that he played for but he was a legitimately excellent reliever

and he gained about three miles per hour on all of his pitches which is a good way to become better nobody seemed to have told 2017 giovanni gaiardo but phelps at least picked up on it so he uh he was throwing harder and he was pretty good this This year, his numbers are a little worse, but he's throwing all the same stuff. So whatever. It looks like he's just a fine, pretty good addition to the bullpen behind Edwin Diaz and Nick Vincent and the Mariners bullpen could use the help. But what is extra interesting to me, at least about David Phelps, is that last year, I don't know why it happened.

I didn't care to go back and examine why. But in August of 2016, when the Marlins were bad, I think, they gave David Phelps five starts. He's been a swingman before. He started with the Marlins. He started with the Yankees. He's also relieved for all those teams, but they gave him five starts. Three of those times, he got up to 90 or 95 pitches, and he threw the same stuff. His fastball was barely any slower, and his other pitches were barely any slower. So I wonder, it's a small sample, and we don't know what that means in terms of Phelps maybe getting stretched out, but I wonder if for

2018, because he's got one more year of team control, I wonder if the Mariners are looking at him as a potential starter because Carlos Carrasco is a guy who went to the bullpen and started doing better and then the Indians moved him out of the bullpen and he just kept doing what he was doing as a reliever, but as a starter. uh i wonder if this was jerry depoto's way of addressing an immediate need and that the mariners bullpen is bad and potentially shoring up a rotation weakness for next year because it looks like they are going to need it they won't have drew smiley they very probably won't have hisashi iwakuma next year so there's not a whole lot beyond beyond James Paxton and what's left of Felix Hernandez and et cetera. Yeah. I think Phelps is legitimately interesting and not only because I was happy to

give him one of the two posts I have to write every day. Yeah. Before the season, Phelps was one of those guys who people, including me, were pinpointing as a possible Andrew Miller type reliever who would be going multiple innings and coming in at different times and closing and not closing. I don't know. I haven't looked to see how closely his usage ended up resembling that model or whether he settled into a pretty conventional role. I can tell you that he has basically thrown an inning a game. He has been extremely conventional and the Marlins, I think, structured their bullpen in that way. They had a bunch of pretty conventional, well, I guess kind of atypical, but they had a bunch of relievers, which then allowed them to use their bullpen in a conventional

way because they didn't have to stretch someone out. But Phelps has still thrown a lot. So even though he hasn't thrown more than one inning in a game very often, he has still thrown a lot of innings in a lot of games. So kudos to him, I guess. The Marlins got four prospects. The Mariners had four prospects before this trade happened. So funny thing about that. No, the Mariners had four people they paid and were young and wore Mariner related jerseys. Yeah. There were tweets I saw before this trade was consummated about the Marlins looking askance at the Mariners system, which is kind of an insult because the Marlins system isn't really anything to speak about either. So is this just one of those things where you don't like any one guy, so you just take a bunch of

guys like the fantasy baseball trades I used to propose when I played fantasy and I just tried to unload all the garbage I didn't want from my bench onto people for someone good. Yeah, pretty much. Jared Apota's made a bunch of these moves. He's made a bunch of like pulling depth from the lower, lower levels of the system to pick up guys for one or two years at the upper levels or on the major league roster. So when you don't have anyone good in your system, then you do. Every system does does have if not good players young players who might become good every single system quantity young players exactly so what the marlins got they got this guy brian hernandez who uh he's the most highly rated of that's damning

with faint praise but he is at least a young athletic outfielder. Now, sure, the Mariners could give a lot of money to any baseball playing young Latin American and put him in center field and say, look, he's very athletic and he could develop into something. I don't know if he's going to be good. Nobody knows if he's going to be good, but he's something I think they paid him something like 1.8 million as a bonus a few years ago. So, you know, who knows? And then they gave up three pitchers, one of whom gets a bunch of strikeouts, but never throw strikes. Another one throws a bunch of strikes but doesn't get strikeouts so that's a fun little mishmash and then there's another one who's just kind of splits the middle is boring but is a starter i mean when you take four and they're all fringe guys they

would be nowhere on any good prospect list but you take four who knows honestly just who knows you just need one of them to crack the major leagues for a little while and say, look, it worked. But I don't know. It's so hard to write about a trade like this because I don't know what to say aside from who knows about the young guys. But they're not worthless, but they sure feel worthless. Worthless, you know? Yeah, right. Well, from one former Marlins reliever to another, Sam Dyson. I wanted to bring up Sam Dyson because Evan posted in the Facebook group showing the partial season stat lines of Sam Dyson from his Fangraphs page. He has now pitched almost an equal number of innings with the Rangers and the Giants, and he has had dramatically different results. And you wrote something about Sam Dyson, oh, about a month and a half ago, maybe not even. And you said it's anyone's guess what Sam Dyson has left. And it looks like the answer is something. Yeah. So you're the fastest baseball savant I've ever seen, so I'm sure you're already looking up whether his stuff has changed in some way or maybe fastest Brooks baseballer I've ever seen also. But just based on the results now, obviously most of this is the home run per fly ball rate, which varies dramatically for many pitchers.

And in these samples of 16 and two thirds innings with the Rangers, 16 and one third innings with the Giants. And his home run per fly ball rate with the Rangers was 37.5 percent. More than a third of the fly balls he allowed became home runs with the Giants. It is zero percent. Now, that may have something to do with going from Texas to San Francisco. That helps, certainly. But a lot of it is just randomness. And maybe part of it is just not throwing as many balls down the middle of the plate.

We haven't really looked at this in detail. But probably a lot of it is randomness. But he's also striking out a lot more guys. He's also walking a lot fewer guys. He has just been better. And even his defense independent stats look good or respectable or a whole heck of a lot better than they did with Texas so early season storyline Sam Dyson who did as much as anyone I guess to put the Rangers in the position they are now where they're still

considering selling in that he had a really historic run of blowing games and it was sad and people wondered what was going on and was it mental and was it physical and anyway it looks like Sam Dyson has straightened himself out to a certain extent at least. Yep never really was missing stuff these are always tricky people to write about because the numbers were as bad as anyone's numbers I've ever seen in my life when he was pitching with the Rangers there I mean he had like twice as many walks as strikeouts and that wasn't even his big problem which is absurd when you think about it in those terms but you know he was still throwing hard his stuff still looked kind of similar and so it's not a shock to see him back on track looking almost exactly like he did

a year ago and as far as anything he's doing differently well new pitch it turns out he's uh ever since he went to the Giants he's unveiled a cutter sort of a he's had differently well new pitch it turns out he's uh ever since he went to the giants he's unveiled a cutter sort of a he's had a slider for a while but he's been throwing this cutter that if i am interpreting this brooks baseball graphic correctly he actually debuted this spring and he kind of shelved it he threw it a little bit in spring training then he shelved it didn't throw it as a ranger went to san francisco new pitch gave him something else to throw and his numbers are back on track so it would be fun now i don't think dyson has been good enough to compel anyone but in theory the giants could now turn around and try to trade

him for something and just pick up a lost player and flip him turn him into something and this is one of those change of scenery trades maybe where it's like just last year remember when carlos gomez got dumped because he was horrible? He was about as bad as you could imagine any player being. And then he went to Texas and he went to Texas. Yeah. Absolutely no explanation for that. Yeah. I've gotten requests from readers, listeners to do a study on change of scenery guys. And is it a real thing? And can you identify who they are and what their commonalities are? And it's a really hard research to do. Like, how do you even define a change of scenery guy? They're guys changing

teams all the time. I don't know how to do that study exactly, but I'm sure that consistent with what we were talking about in the most recent email episode, which is that players do have feelings and emotions and can be affected by their surroundings in certain ways. So clearly it makes sense that there would be certain players who would benefit from a change of scenery. And it's not just the scenery. It's not like, hey, the view is nicer in this city than it was in that city. It's also all the other things. It could be the manager.

It could be the coaches. It could be the teammates. It could be the media. Who knows? So there are many factors that can change and some of them might matter. I think there are baseball players that we could both name that seem like they don't have feelings, but I think that we've seen enough on the international stage to know that Sam Dyson is not among them. He is most certainly a pitcher

who feels, and now in San Francisco, who might be feeling a little bit differently. One other thing I wanted to mention, because it has to do with your stat segment from the most recent email episode. I feel almost bad bringing this up, but evidently not bad enough not to. So you did your stat segment about players who made the most outs in a single game. And it seems like 11 is the major league record that you could dig up. And just a week ago in an A-ball game, the Lexington Legends, the Class A affiliate of the Kansas City Royals, one of their players, Khalil Lee, struck out eight times in a game. And he also made 10 outs in that game. It was a 21-inning game, I believe. So that's part of it. But according to a tweet from someone who works for the Royals

and is not giving very good PR to his player, but tweeted that Khalil Lee set a new all-time pro baseball record with his eighth strikeout to end the 21st inning. The first ever player with two golden sombreros in one game. Wow. That is unfortunate. You could at least sell the golden sombrero you know what's interesting is Khalil Lee this year 806 OPS he's been actually a good hitter for Lexington just not on this night eight strike that is uh what was the what was the name of of that Red Sox player you wrote about we got an email yeah Shaq Thompson Shaq Thompson yeah Shaq Thompson. Yeah, Shaq Thompson

was a football player, a highly touted football player, and the Red Sox signed him, and just looking at his stats, I guess it's okay to bring up now because he has left this behind and he went back to football. But yeah, as an 18-year-old in

2012, this was in the Rookie League, he got into 13 games. He had 47 plate appearances. He struck out in 37 of those 47 plate appearances, which is just. And he also walked eight times. So did he even put the ball in play? Like ever? So he's got 45.

That's two. That's two balls in play like ever he so that's he's got 45 that's two four two balls in play yeah two balls in play in 47 plate appearances which is really something he did not have a hit yeah but he did drive in a run and he stole a base and got caught stealing which is pretty efficient of him to fill all of those columns in the the stat line despite never really getting on base. So good for him. He scored three runs too on those eight walks. So yeah, that is one of the craziest lines you'll ever see. And he was just incredibly raw and very talented and athletic, but just hadn't played baseball much and it showed. So yeah, that is not quite the case with Khalil Lee, but it was on this one day.

You might know how to confirm the major league record for strikeouts in a game is six. That's been done eight times. Jeff Jenkins most recently in 2004, although Matt Davidson and Oduble Herrera have both gotten to five this season. So it seems like with strikeouts up, it should be inevitable that we will shortly get another six. And then it seems like we will shortly get our first ever seven assuming nothing about baseball dramatically changes yeah yeah right yeah that is that is sensational i don't know how i missed out on that yeah since you mentioned matt davidson i feel like i owe him an apology i know there's a lot of overlap between my baseball podcast audiences and on the most recent episode of the ringer podcast michael and i were debating best looking third baseman in chicago because joan mancada has now

joined chris bryant both good looking guys we didn't even mention matt davidson and i've already gotten multiple tweets pointing out what an oversight this was and certainly was he's a good looking guy sorry matt davidson okay i, I have no idea what Matt Davidson looks like. So if you just give me one second. Neither did I really, but now I do and I'm impressed. Yeah. All right. It's a little more hair flare than I was expecting. Yeah. Okay. Good for Matt Davidson. Good for him getting an opportunity. And you might remember that for a time this year, he had the highest batting average in Chicago White Sox franchise history. Yeah.

At whatever it was. Yeah. Yeah. Good tweet, by the way, by you with the Jeff Mathis, Zach Greinke WRC Plus comparison. Oh, my goodness. I could not believe my luck when I actually. Now, in fairness, Zach Greinke's career WRC Plus has now dropped one point. Since that, he has dropped from 52 to 51. However, Jeff Mathis, holding steady at 49. Combine the two, you get a league average of 100. Congratulations. And as somebody pointed out to me in response to that tweet, the odds are probably at least 50-50 that Zach Greinke knows that his WRC Plus is higher than

Jeff Mathis. Yeah, you'd think so. Yeah, definitely. He takes so much pride in his hitting and he reads fan graphs. So you'd think, yeah. Okay. Do you have anything else? Nope. Okay. Let's see. Two quick things, I think.

One, All-Star Break. Mike Trout was 2.2 wins above replacement behind Aaron Judge. All-Star Break. You might remember that as being a very distant one week ago. Mike Trout has played five games since. So All-Star Break break margin 2.2 wins above replacement. Current margin 1.6 wins above replacement. Here comes Mike Trout. He's gained three-tenths of a win. Aaron Judge has lost three-tenths of a win. I think Judge, last I

checked, has one hit since the all-star break. Now granted, he also had four bases rudely taken away from him in spectacular fashion,, you know, it all counts. So Mike Trout has already erased nearly 30% of the gap between him and the guy we thought might be as good as Mike Trout. And it's taken him less than one week to do so. Pretty spectacular for Mike Trout. Who has had a better week after the All-Star break? Mike Trout relative to Aaron Judge or the Cubs relative to the Brewers? Oh, yeah. So it sure feels like the National League Central is over uh I know I know the Brewers are

still in first place and that's the whole reason that you want to build the buffer but boy is that starting to conform to expectations in a hurry yeah of course the Cubs were playing some pretty bad teams but still yeah and it's it's partially confirmation bias of course as we have acknowledged we've all been waiting for that comeback to happen for so long that the second it looks like it is we all say yep okay it's over who knows maybe it's not maybe they'll run into some better teams and things will diverge again but yeah it's not looking great right now relative to how it was looking 10 days ago maybe the real fun is going to be that we're going to end up with a three-team race. Maybe the Brewers are going to improve and then the Pirates are going to hang around too.

They're not going to trade McCutcheon, not going to trade, I don't know, Tony Watson or whatever they're thinking of doing, not going to trade Garrett Cole. Maybe it's going to be like the last division race or maybe now that the Twins are getting Jaime Garcia, maybe they're somehow going to keep up with the vastly superior Cleveland Indians, who's to say? But it's so hard not to get ahead of yourself because at the vastly superior Cleveland Indians, who's to say, but it's so hard not to get ahead of yourself because at the end of the day, it is July 20th and the Brewers are in first place, but it's been a bad week, man. Yep. Yeah. All right. What else you got?

So as somebody tweeted or emailed, I don't remember. I think you saw this. The Salina Stockade, who we recently discussed in our, I think it was our Monday podcast. The Salina Stockade, the travel team in the American Association, the late substitute for the defunct Laredo Lemurs. Such a late substitute, in fact, that if you go to American Association,

is it even.com? I should... AmericanAssociationBaseball.com is the actual URL. If you go there and then you hover over the teams pull down and you yes drop your cursor to uh the salina stockade you get americanassociationbaseball.com slash teams slash laredo so all kinds of respect being given to the stockade but yeah hold your horses the salina stock Stockade, who were 6-49, they lost the next game after our podcast, have won two in a row. They defeated the Sioux City Explorers on whatever day it was.

That was the day on which this game was played. That looks like it was Tuesday. The Stockade won the game 4-3, knocking the Explorers down to 500 and improving the Stockade up to, oh dear, I don't even want to. Well, 125, which is a quarter of the way to 500. And then the Stockade won again, and they won in more convincing fashion. They beat Sioux City eight to three and another nine in the game. So two wins in a row for the Stockade. A couple of things I've noticed from the box scores, because they do have pretty detailed box scores on this american association baseball.com website they have apparently there's a link to spray charts are you kidding wow okay so there's a lot of information here point streak

yeah nine inning games salina uh sioux city on tuesday ordinary four to three game nothing nothing too unusual but the game lasted three hours into eight minutes so there's something going on in the american association where game length might be out of control the attendance is listed at a healthy 1262 but also if you look at the box score it's not just a box score it's very detailed and then you scroll down you see total batter's face for the pitchers that's not unusual but you also see pitches and strikes so that gets a little more detailed and then you keep scrolling and you get a play-by-play including pitch-by-pitch details so for example ninth inning i'll just someone's pitching to qb meyer pj francisco you know i don't it doesn't matter here's the point

here's what the play-by-play reads it doesn't just read qb meyer put out it reads called strike ball qb meyer put out six to three so shorts up to first base for out number one jimmy heck comes up next swinging strike ball foul put out fly out to left field and so on i don't i haven't checked every single box score of the season because i'm not insane but i have looked at two box scores because solana has won two games in a row and they both have this pitch by pitch information this is at least as good information as we're getting from the actual minor leagues right now. Yep. Who is tracking this?

Well, is this the point streak interface? Is that what you're looking at? I don't know. I should probably send you a link. That's what we had with the Stompers in 2015, and I wouldn't vouch for the quality of the data being at the level of minor league data, but at least the type of data is there. Yeah, this is point streak. So there's just a stringer like in the Pacific Association. It was usually like a high school kid who would come and operate this interface during the game. And the data was pretty dodgy, but it was there

in some form. And we had John Chenier, our official stat keeper of the Sonoma Stoppers, who then joined Baseball Perspectives and now joined the Mariners and is working in their front office. And he was helping us correct that data. So yeah, this is Point Streak and it's in a lot of lower level leagues, which is pretty cool that this is out there. I should have remembered that. Also, now a third thing that I just noticed from this box score link that I just sent you. So Celina beat Sioux City on Wednesday. That doesn't matter.

But there's a player I noticed in the Sioux City lineup that you might also notice if you look at it. He's batting seventh in the lineup. Josh Vitters. Yeah. Yeah. A 27-year-old, nearly 28-year-old Josh Vitters. First round pick of the Cubs in 2007. D's batting seventh in the lineup. Josh Fitters, yeah. Yeah. A 27-year-old, nearly 28-year-old Josh Fitters, first round pick of the Cubs in 2007, drafted third overall. Josh Fitters, let's see, as recently as before 2010, he was a top 100 at Baseball America prospect. This year in the American Association, which is where he's playing, Josh Fitters is playing in

the American Association. He's batted 182 times and he's batting 185 and his OPS is 474. Josh Vitters having a rough go of it. Yeah, I actually read a profile of him back in June. Tommy Birch wrote about Vitters for the Des Moines Register. It was a good story because there were like quotes from scouts saying that he still has the sweet swing that he had then. He was known for having like the nicest, aesthetically pleasing swing, even though the results ultimately weren't there. So he still looks like he has the skills, but his production just has not at all been there.

So, yeah. But, yeah, I have some updates on the Salinas Stockade myself. First, I can't say for sure, but there is a decent to very good chance that I will be seeing the Salina Stockade with my own eyes in just one week's time, roughly. They are returning to Salina, Kansas for one of their two series in Salina all year. And I have made tentative plans to attend. I'm going to see Salina. So I have not made my reservations yet, but I have priced airfare and looked at hotels. I'm at that stage, so can't guarantee it, but I think there's

a very good chance that I will be spending a few days in Salina, Kansas very soon. Okay. So please explain yourself. Well, I was serious when I said that this would make a good story and that I wanted to write about it. I want to write about it. So I'm going to write about the Salinas stockade. And I asked Hans Van Sleuten of Baseball Reference to send me a list of the worst ever pro records for a team. And they are in the running for a team that has played this many games. Now, there are teams that went like 0-11 in 1872 or whatever. And then they all died? Well, yes, subsequently they did. And then there's like the Brooklyn Atlantics went 2-42 in 1875. So there are some ones like that. But among teams that have played as many games as the Stockade have or will play, the only real competition here are the 2011 Carlsbad Bats, who went 7-57. And they were also a Pecos League team, although they didn't have the excuse of being a Pecos League team that was promoted to the American Association. So they were just bad in their own league.

For all I know, they were a semi-pro team that was promoted to the Pecos League. I don't know what their story is, but they were bad. So that's the main competition here for Celina. And I've picked up a few tidbits about Celina and well, I guess I'll save them for the story though. So I talked to the guy who put together their team and they have been getting interest from other writers, not just me. So got to get there before someone scoops me on the stockade. So I'm going to head to Salina, Kansas, it looks like. And I've already heard from an Effectively Wild listener who lives 15 minutes from Salina and has offered his hospitality. So we have ears everywhere. Well, if you find that you'd like to have J.D. Drody on a podcast,

just let me know. That's actually part of why I'm going so urgently is that he is re-retiring. The manager who has such an interesting backstory is, I guess, I haven't talked to him yet, so I don't know why. Maybe he's just had enough of the season, but he is retiring or at least not managing the team anymore after August 1st or so. So his last series, it looks like, will be this one in Salina. So got to get there if I want to see the authentic J.D. Jody 2017 Salina stockade. This is outstanding. I don't know if you're going... This is probably the kind of article that's either going to get 50 views or 500,000 and I haven't decided, but I cannot wait. Yes, I'm hoping for the latter, but we'll see.

It depends on the execution. Well, I guess, I mean, we could just transition to having a Salinas Stockade podcast for the rest of the summer. I don't know. I know the trade deadline is coming up, but whatever. We've done our David Phelps. What else is going to happen? I know.

That was my editor's only concern. She loves the idea. She said, go, but you're also going to be watching the Salina Stockade on trade deadline day. I said, I'll do my best to do both of those things. I mean, and in fairness, the league is helping you out because all the trades are happening now. I know, right?

I'm wondering if it's just going to be a slow deadline or whether it's just an incredibly active deadline that is spread out over a week or 10 days. So we'll see. Yeah, I guess there's probably something to be written about why all these trades are happening so early. And that's one of those things that you could canvas and people in the industry be like, what's the deal? And they'll be like, it's a fluke. And you'll be like, OK, that's the article. Right. It does. It does seem like there's a lot more happening and i know not

all the trades have been big but i went back to last year and there was i think only one major trade of any real consequence before like july 25th wasn't there one like a month early last year like maybe it was the year before like the mariners traded for mark trumbo in june which was early and the last gasp by a dying administration but i mean this would be easy enough to check so i'm just gonna tell you how easy it would be to check using my words i thought i remembered like a starter being traded in june or late june or the first days of july this could could be aantom memory. Let's set a threshold of, I don't know, I'll start looking at June 1st. So we've got, oh, James Shields was traded in June,

but he was terrible at that point. So he was traded, though, for Fernando Tatis, an actual player. We've got a Kelly Johnson trade on June 8th, but nobody cares. Chris Coughlin was traded on June 9th, and I guess Chris Coughlin cared. Chris Taylor, there we go, June 19th.

Didn't know that was going to be a big deal, but whoops. That's a problematic move, Jared Apoto. You could really use one of those. Chris Taylor moved on June 19th for Zach Lee. Wade LeBlanc was traded to the Mariners on June 22nd. So in retrospect, within the span of two weeks, the Mariners had to go get Wade LeBlanc and Zach Lee. Probably didn't speak too well to their situation.

Osvaldo Garcia. Of course, they make a trade every two weeks, right? Yeah, I'm actually, I have to filter the Mariners out of this web page. I'm just going to make my computer overheat. We've got, okay, June 30th, Braves traded Dion Toscano and Bud Norris for garbage. So the Dodgers, Fernando Rodney was traded on june 30th so that's kind of that's kind of the trade is closing traded in for a good minor league player who subsequently had dom and john surgery aaron hill traded july 7th eric joe no i'm not gonna nope

okay so july 9th we've got brad zie. Starts to matter. That's the Basabi trade where wasn't there the idea that they traded for the wrong Basabi? Oh, yeah. I vaguely remember this story. Diamondbacks traded Brad Ziegler to the Red Sox for Jose Almonte and Luis Alejandro Basabi. But I think if memory serves, and I'm not going to double check, but I think there were two Basabis and then people made fun of the Diamondbacks because they got the wrong one. Oh, okay. Drew Palmer straight july 14th that's yeah that's first big actual trade yeah i think that's what i was thinking of yeah and then after that you've got like i don't know does if the mike montgomery trade july 20th 20th you are now on the same page

as me and then the the chapman trade happened on july 25th and everything started to go so things picked up with a week to go and we're still a week and a half out and who knows what potential there is for a bunch more trades we are going to see sunny gray go somewhere i'm sure but i thought of that i don't know all right we've got one last thing to talk about right yeah i guess and this is good because this is not so much we can really get out of this but uh you linked me just pre-podcast to an article from 538 by harry enton and the headline reads america has spoken the yankees are the worst now the yankees actually one of the better baseball teams but this is an article entirely about fan feelings i guess

how how teams are perceived and there was a study that they commissioned of just under a thousand baseball fans nationwide i did not have time to go into all the details. I don't even know if the details were made available, but they studied the responses from roughly a thousand baseball fans that were pretty, I'm going to assume, representatively dispersed. And they just polled them on how they feel about baseball teams. And so as you can glean just from the headline, the Yankees are still the most hated baseball team in the league, at least according to the people who responded to thiskees are still the most hated baseball team in the league at least according to the people who responded to this poll but also the most loved also the most loved they were the team with the highest share of the favorite team responses but also by far

the team with the highest share of the least favorite or least liked team fairly unsurprising the Blue Jays came out last in most liked team because I'm pretty sure this is a poll of American. Well, I guess United States Americans. Yeah. More. No, still not surprisingly. So the Blue Jays got less than one percent of the vote for favorite team. So that's fewer than, I guess, nine people selected the Blue Jays. But then the Marlins and the rays very unsurprising last place among teams who play in the united states and they're tied with the washington nationals in the nation's capital nobody seems to care about the nationals it's

a pretty unsurprising list if you read up from the bottom yeah i don't know the rangers are maybe score a little higher than i would have expected since they still seem like they're kind of I don't know not under the radar but you never really walk around and expect to see a bunch of Texas Rangers hats when you're traveling somewhere yeah I think what stood out to me about well on the favorite team list you go Yankees Red Sox Cubs sure and the Cubs also show up as the most net favorable team subtracting the dislikes from the likes. But I think what surprised me is that number four on the list of favorite teams is the Braves, tied with the Cubs at 8%. And that sort of surprises me. I guess it shows the power of the fact that they were broadcast nationally for almost 45 years, right?

TBS Braves baseball from 1973 to 2007. And so they were always on wherever you were. And so there are generations of kids who grew up and watched Braves baseball and maybe became Braves fans because of that. And also maybe they kind of have a region to themselves more than most teams do. These results, Harry Enten, who wrote the article, my former colleague at FiveThirtyEight, they break it down by region as well, northeast, south, midwest, and west. And the Braves have a very large share of favorite team in the south,

just because there aren't a whole lot of close competitors there. So that's probably part of it, but it is kind of interesting because they've been off TBS now for a decade and they are not good right now, but they are still evidently one of the most common favorite teams, at least in the country. And I think it helps to explain why if you go into any chat or comment section, it seems like a third of all the people who are in there seem to be people who like the Braves. So the Braves Twitter is known to be predictable. I'm not gonna.

I'm not gonna. Okay, so this is a, I'm sure Ben can link this article for everyone's perusal in the Facebook page, but it's further broken down. As Ben mentioned, there was a breakdown of favorite teams by region. It's, you know, nothing too surprising. There was a breakdown of favorite teams by region. It's, you know, nothing too surprising.

Of course, in the Northeast, it's kind of a dogfight between the Yankees and the Red Sox. And the Phillies are up there, but they've fallen on harder times. So who's to say? Braves, of course, unsurprisingly, the most popular team in the South. The Cubs dominating the Midwest. And then you get out West and you have the Giants, Dodgers, Rivalries up there. But the Mariners still holding tight. A decent third place,

even though they've been less successful than the Diamondbacks or the Angels, who are by this measure half as liked as the Mariners are. You have the Rockies, who I guess kind of count, and then the pity of the poor Padres and the Athletics, who are just barely more popular out West than the Boston Red Sox, who are liked by the opposite coastal elites. So if you scroll down, go to a different section, I think maybe maybe the biggest takeaway from this article was the net favorability table. Yeah, I don't know. I think it's probably the most interesting one. It's also the one that lends itself to identifying the outliers, which is our favorite activity. So poll respondents were assigned 10 teams, I believe is the method and they were assigned those teams randomly and they were told to decide whether or not they viewed the team favorably or if they cared about

the team at all. So the Chicago Cubs had a plus 53% net favorability rating, which means that 53% more people looked upon the Cubs favorably than unfavorably. And that is better than the second place St. Louis Cardinals, which I did not expect. That is definitely the thing that jumped out at me first here. Yeah, the Cardinals with a net favorability rating of plus 31, 50% favorable, 19% unfavorable. That is pretty surprising. And I don't know what the margins of error here are. The samples aren't that huge.

But still, it seems as if the Cardinals are broadly popular. And, I mean, we know, I think, that they're popular in their region, certainly. Although, oddly, they're only the third most common favorite team in the Midwest region, the Cubs and the Tigers, both a little bit ahead of them there. So this does surprise me because there is that widespread perception that there's been a big Cardinals backlash because they've won a lot and they've been good and best fans of baseball and all of that. And it's hard to say exactly what the origin of that reputation is,

but it certainly is a reputation. And yet it would appear that that is not the case on a national level. I don't know if that's more that we just survive in a social media bubble, or us left wing liberals always ignoring what's going on in the heartland. Something else that was not that didn't so much have attention called to it. So the table was interesting, because the Cubs had by far the highest net favorability and the Yankees were the only team to have a net negative favorability rating. I don't know exactly why that is. I guess people just kind of generally like baseball teams more than they don't know exactly why that is. I guess people just kind of generally like baseball teams more than they don't, and that's fine. Yeah, I guess it's like baseball is a regional sport, right? So no one really dislikes other teams unless they happen

to be your team's rival. So I guess if you like the team, I don't know, I guess everyone just feels kind of okay about any baseball team that is not one that they have to root against because it's the top rival or something. Like the Colorado Rockies are the, what, sixth team on this list or fifth team on the net favorability list, which is, I mean, I don't know what to think of that. I don't know what to think of that. I wouldn't have thought that there was a great positive sentiment toward the Rockies nationally, but also wouldn't have thought And so the Yankees, the Yankees had the highest rate of respondents who expressed some form of caring. 92% of people had either a positive or negative view of the Yankees. The team in second place in terms of getting the strongest response was pretty unsurprisingly the Boston Red Sox at 84%. And then there are the Chicago Cubs, 81%. Not surprising. Those are very popular, well-known teams. Also not surprising are the teams at the bottom. 57% of people had an opinion

about the Rays, which I guess that's fine. Fittingly, tied with the Oakland A's, 57% as well. Nobody really has a strong opinion about either team. However, as you identified, Colorado Rockies, the lowest. 55 percent of people had something to say about the rockies and i i would assume that this is not so much people having a a strong positive feeling about the rockies as it is just like well sure yeah they're harmless right right yeah who cares yeah right yeah like if you're a rockies fan you like them and if you're not a rockies fan, you're indifferent probably. What reason would anyone have to not, like, why would you actually dislike the Rockies?

Well, I guess if you're on one of the teams that lost to them in 2007, maybe. Like if you're the Phillies or diamondbacks or something and and they beat you on the way to the world series so maybe that but yeah otherwise i can't think of a great reason not to like the rockies yep but you've observed this before with fangraphs audience right which is not representative of the larger baseball audience and And yet in this case, maybe it is, right? You've observed some apathy on behalf of Rockies readers of fan graphs or the lack thereof. Yeah, we can't find them. We don't know where they are. Somehow, somehow 6% more people had something to say about the San Diego Padres than the Colorado Rockies. I don't believe it.

How does that happen? I don't know. Hopefully, How does that happen? I don't know. Hopefully, the Rockies are changing that to some degree this season. But yeah, it's maybe just the time zone. They're kind of in the middle time zone wise, and they have a long, undistinguished history for people who don't obsess about park effects. So that could be part of it. I find it amusing.

So the Yankees, of course, are at the bottom with a negativeability net favorability rating the phillies are second to last at plus four then you find the marlins at only plus six thirty three percent of people said yeah sure and 27 people said no and i can't imagine that has anything to do with the marlins themselves it just has to be people who have some vague understanding of what jeffrey loria Yeah. And that was just like the avatar in the poll. They just decided, well, I certainly don't remember ever having a feeling about the Marlins as a baseball team. No. Yeah.

They're probably the most closely identified with their owner at this point. And that's not good in this case. And the Marlins show up. Also, the next table in the article is people were asked, who is your most hated team? Just to single one team out of the Yankees, very unsurprisingly, finished in first place. 27% of all respondents identified the Yankees as their least favorite team. Very weirdly, now as I look at it, the Diamondbacks are tied for third. I didn't know 5% of people would say, hate the arizona diamondbacks yeah that is really strange because yankees red sox dodgers diamondbacks cubs nationals marlins i i don't know what to make of that other than maybe this is a small sample rearing its head here on this one i yeah possibly because these are pretty small differences but yeah i can't can't think of any reason why you would be that upset about the Diamondbacks.

And I take some solace, I guess, in the fact that the team listed in last place. So I think actually in last place, and then it's just all rounded to the same 1%. The Seattle Mariners apparently are the team that people least identified as their least favorite because, of course, they've been horrible. They have the longest postseason. Yeah, exactly. They have the longest active postseason drought, right? Yeah, and the Royals are right after them who had the longest drought before them. And so then the Rockies. Yeah. So not making the playoffs for a really long time is evidently a good way to get fans not to hate you. Yeah. This is the kind of stuff that I wish that we had rolling. Like if

we had this information for every year over some historical period of time, that would be great. I would love to analyze the trends because one of the things I wanted to ask instead of just basically reading the article out loud on the podcast, which is essentially what we've done, and I know we're about out of time, but how much longer do you think the Yankees will remain the most hated team in baseball, given that the things that I think made them the most hated, and justifiably so, 10, 15, 20 years ago, no longer hold true. They still have so many resources, but they don't outspend every team in baseball anymore. They're not winning every World Series. And of course, they're the most widespread brand that you see.

They're very popular. It's New York City, for God's sake. But is that enough for the Yankees to remain the most hated? Or is this going to gradually fade away in the same way that the Braves fandom will now that they're not on everyone's television? Yeah, I mean, probably a lot of this is still some holdover from when the Yankees were a dynasty and they were winning the World Series every year. And that's within recent memory and that's not going to be repeated. It's a lot harder to do that now. I mean, it was hard to do then, but it's basically impossible to do now with the number of teams you have in the playoffs and parity and competitive balance and all of that.

So yeah, you'd think maybe this would fade a little bit, but on the other hand, they're always going to have either the highest or second highest payroll. They're going to be in the playoffs just about every year, most likely. And when we did the Yankees preview this year, that was the thing we talked to Jared Diamond about, as I recall, is that these Yankees seem less hateable than in the past. And partially that's because they haven't been good for a while. And partially it's because they're kind of building from within and they have likable players. And that was before Aaron Judge became a phenomenon. So yeah, evidently that hasn't really been reflected in their numbers. I guess it takes time for wounds to heal and for love to fade, I guess, is one takeaway from this. If the Braves are still super popular a decade after they left TBS, then I think probably after a century of Yankee domination, it would take quite a while for that ill will to fade also. So I would expect the Yankees to remain the most hated team, if maybe not quite as hated. And that was another

question we had coming into this year was, would there be a big Cubs backlash? And the Cubs are most favorable ratings here. And the question was like, if they look like they're going to be a dynasty, everyone loved the story last year. If they start winning World Series every year or making the playoffs every year, will the joy of the Cubs' success wear off? And to this point, of course, that has not been a problem for the Cubs this year because they've been behind the Brewers for most of the year. is another reason why you would want this as a longitudinal study where you could look at it every year just so you could say like when you win the world series like is that a net positive for your favorability because the country gets to see you play and maybe it's a good story and you entertain them or is it a net negative when does it become a net negative because everyone's sick of seeing you so it would be interesting to know when the inflection points are there yeah maybe maybe of some relevance there is so the the same number of people identified the

cubs and the red sox as their favorite teams that's eight percent of all people said i love the red sox the most or i love the cubs the most the cubs of course again had the highest net favorability rating but the red sox still in fourth but the red sox were at plus 28 percent against the cubs plus 53 and if you scroll down 10 percent of people said that the red sox still in fourth but the red sox were at plus 28 percent against the cubs plus 53 and if you scroll down 10 percent of people said that the red sox were the most hated team as opposed to four percent for the cubs the red sox kind of similar to the cubs except about a decade or more further ahead in snapping that whole losing streak and losing the underdog status and becoming something of a baseball menace and so you can still see that a

lot of people like the Red Sox because they're sort of the the regional icon over there and in their dogfight with the Yankees for fanhood but you can definitely see that the Red Sox have become less popular over time at least if I'm interpreting this correctly in a way that one might expect the Cubs to also do assuming that they actually win the division this year and then carry on forward as we think that they will but I guess the Brewers still have a one game lead. And so for now, I think my number one takeaway is maybe I don't hate the Diamondbacks enough. I guess not. All right. Well, we'll leave people with that. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have already pledged their support include Dylan

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