Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1090: What a Bummer

Episode Date: July 29, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about humorless umpires and the on-deck circle, Michael Blazek and disaster starts, the MLB promotion of Aaron Bummer (and the nickname “Bummer” in baseball), the Brewers, Jaime Garcia and the Twins, the latest Mariners-Rays trade, Adrian Beltre’s book-worthy career, and David Price’s arm issues. Audio intro: Love, "Bummer in the […]

When we're walking along, honey, hand in hand, I'm thinking of your mama when you're thinking of another man. But you can go ahead if you want to, cause I ain't got no papers on you. No, I don't. I ain't got no papers on myself. Hello and welcome to episode 1090 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. Hi, I'm Jeff Sullivan. Fangraphs joined, as always, by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello, Ben. Hi. I was trying something new. I was trying for Effectively Wild, not Effectively Wild. I

thought I was maybe over-enunciating. Yeah, you're taking feedback from the fans. That's right. I listen to the people and I incorporate it into my production. Apparently, you're a problem for people who listen to podcasts at like two times speed. I think your speech pattern is pretty quick. It has never occurred to me to do that. Do you listen to podcasts like that? I listen to podcasts at like 1.1 with the silences cut out.

So it speeds it up very slightly, but you couldn't even necessarily tell that it is faster than real time speed. Once it starts getting up to like 1.5 or something, I just have trouble comprehending what's going on or internalizing the information. Maybe it's something that you get used to after a while, and it certainly helps you plow through the podcast backlog. So I understand why people do it, But yeah, I've never become conditioned to quite that speed. I feel like you would lose some of what's intended to be conveyed by speech patterns. Sometimes there are dramatic pauses inserted for a reason. It just skipped right over. But do people, I don't know how many people you've met that listen to podcasts like this, but do they express shock and astonishment at what your

voice is actually like? Yeah, sometimes I hear that. Yeah, it's usually I'm the slower speaker. So people wish that there could be like custom speeds where they could listen to you at a slower speed and boost me, I think. But yeah, people have told me that I don't look anything like I sound like that. I get a lot. So, yeah. Okay. So, do you have anything in the way of banter?

Because I have a list of what looks like about 11 different things to talk about. All right. Yeah, this is a tough time because this is our last podcast before the trade deadline, most likely, or the last one that will be published before the trade deadline. So, we could do a bunch of trade speculation, but it would be instantly out of date and irrelevant. But maybe we'll do some. I don't know what you have in store. Maybe that's one of your 11 things. But I guess we could briefly talk about a couple notable things from the last couple of days, like Adrian Beltre's on deck circle moving. And I just wanted to say a word in praise of humorless umpires, because they are the people who make these moments happen, right? Like with, with apologies to Dale Scott, umpires are the straight men of baseball, right? They just kind of come in and they enforce the rules. And every now and then you see him crack a smile at something but often they are the ones who are enabling this kind of viral moment where a player does something humorous because in ordering

adrian beltre to stand in the on deck circle in this instance jerry davis i don't know why he picked this moment to tell beltre to do that obviously players are very often maybe even more often than not, not standing in the on-deck circle because they want to get a better view of the pitcher or whatever their reasons are. So this is clearly not enforced. I don't know why Davis decided to enforce it this time. Maybe Beltre was farther over than usual. If anyone has earned a little leeway with where he stands, it's probably Adrian Beltre. But anyway, not only did Davis make this order to Beltre to stand in the on-deck circle, but then when Adrian Beltre

did one of the funniest things of the season and one of the funniest things of a very funny career, and while making eye contact with Jerry Davis, dragged the on-deck circle over to where Beltre had been standing and then stood in it. Davis was not amused by this at all. And so he ejected Beltre before he even got up to the plate there. And that really created the humor of the moment. Like if he hadn't ordered Beltre to stand in the on-deck circle, we never get this moment. If he had seen the humor in what Beltre did and broken down and laughed along with the rest of us, it probably still would have been funny, but maybe not quite as funny as the fact that Beltre was then punished forre. He's great. He's a Hall of Famer. But this humorous aspect to him and him becoming a social media star in the later stages of his career is just one of the best baseball developments. We could spend the entire episode probably talking about

the on-deck circle or as it's apparently supposed to be referred to the next batter's box, according to a tweet I saw yesterday. And we shouldn't spend the entire episode on this but nobody nobody actually my girlfriend asked me last night to estimate what percentage of major league players actually stand on the on deck circle and I had to guess like one percent I think there might be like one guy on every team that everyone else just thinks is like a weirdo for actually standing there and I think the the main reason that people don't stand there at least as they publicly express it is that they don't want to get hit by foul balls. And it puts you in a dangerous area. That was at least the reason that Beltre brought up for why he didn't want to stand in the circle. He's been hit before. So we wanted to move to a more extreme angle.

The pitcher, I forgot his name. He was a pitcher I'd never heard of, who was on the mound, said that it wasn't his idea. He didn't even notice that Beltre was standing further away than usual. And I'm not sure Beltre was standing further away than usual, but pitcher didn't care. I think usually it's the pitcher who, if anyone would want this to be enforced. And for the record, there's not even really much of a rule to be enforced in the first place, but it seems like it should be up to the pitcher. And if the pitcher doesn't care, then nobody should care. I can't imagine what was going through Jerry Davis's head when he thought now, now is the right time to call attention to this. It didn't seem to serve any purpose. So I don't know what was going through Jerry Davis's head when he thought that now, now is the time to enforce this non-rule. But yeah, it's just a weird

thing that you have to the side of every hitter and every game. And when's the last time that anyone ever paid attention to what was happening on deck? How does Adrian Beltre manage to make even that something that raises our interest? And put it where people actually stand. It's like this aspirational circle where you're supposed to stand, but no one ever does. And no one thinks that you should. It's like the coaches boxes, right? Like the third base coaches box. The third base coach is never in the box. I don't, I mean, should we just move the box to where they actually stand? Is it just that people don't want to be boxed in that wherever you put the box or the circle, they'll move somewhere else because they don't want to be constrained? I don't know what it is, but it's sort of silly to have this designated standing area on the field where no one actually stands. My understanding is the on-deck circle used to be, as I think most everything on the field was, it was designated by chalk or some sort of outline on the ground, which, okay, that makes it a little easier, but players don't want to stand there because they don't want to get hit. But also on-deck circles now are made of rubber. They're like thick rubber mats and players don't like to stand on them because they're wearing cleats and cleats on rubber is an uncomfortable experience for everyone involved.

So players are actively repelled from standing on the circle. So I think no matter where you move it, players aren't going to want to stand on it. It would be as if you covered the bullpen mounds in, I don't know, oil, and then expected relievers to use the bullpen mounds still? Well, they wouldn't, because they'd get oil all over themselves, so they would probably just relieve somewhere else.

So unless they, if they got rid of the rubber mats and turned the on-deck circle or next batter's box into just a chalked feature on the ground, maybe you'd get a little more participation. But otherwise, just stop caring. But I do agree with your initial point that if not for the umpires, then we wouldn't have these moments. We had some more umpiring festivities just yesterday in Toronto. I don't know.

That's probably crossed your radar. Maybe it didn't. Yeah. I saw that everyone was ejected very, very quickly. Yeah, it was fun to read in the ESPN play-by-play of box score. It just said Blue Jays catcher Martin ejected for arguing balls and strikes. Blue Jays pitcher Marcus Stroman ejected for arguing balls and strikes. Blue Jays manager John Gibbons ejected for arguing balls and strikes.

He was all there laid out in a sequence. I believe Gibbons actually got ejected first, and then Stroman was having some issues with walks as he's had his last few starts. But through pitch, walked a guy, seemed to express frustration presumably with himself, as pitchers are want to do when they make a mistake. And it was a ball. So we threw a ball and I think it was a full count and the batter walked and Stroman said, ah, words. And the umpire immediately tossed, God god what was the sequence i believe he tossed stroman first and then martin got up and turned around and said i don't even

know if he had time to say the entire first word that he was going to say in protest before he too was ejected and it was all very casual uh again i forget which umpire was involved in this i don't care this any umpire could be a stand-in for this. But I don't know if I've ever seen two people ejected for separate incidences, but so quickly back-to-back. Yeah. I guess it made for a good—it's been a good week for umpire gifs, or umpire-related gifs, I guess. Yeah. So you're not taking the fan feedback about how you pronounce gifs into mind? Why would you bring—we're not starting that. Yeah. So you're not taking the fan feedback about how you pronounce GIFs into mind? We're not starting that. Okay. Do you have anything else?

Well, were you going to bring up Michael Blazek? Sure was. He's on the list. Michael Blazek. I had to make sure it's Blazek and not Blazek. So, okay. Do you want to get started or should I get started? Well, you can do it, I guess. We can be kind and gentle because the nationals were not to him yeah okay well so we can we can put this uh we can put this one way first career major league start for michael blazek not major league debut no at least but first career major league start he is uh pitching for the now second place surprise milwaukeeers, pitching against one of the best teams in baseball, the Washington Nationals. And in fewer than three innings, Blazik found a way to allow six home runs.

I believe he became the ninth pitcher in baseball history to allow six home runs in a game. Nobody has ever allowed more than that. Blazik became the first to allow that many home runs in as few innings as he threw. In the same game, Blazic had a quote where, of course, he was not thrilled with himself and his effort, although he did say that he, quote, I felt like I made some decent pitches, but they were just locked in on everything, said a Brewer starter, Michael Blazic. I threw all the different pitches I have, and they were hitting everything. It was tough. So Blazic very much committed to the perspective that actually he was throwing just fine, but the Nationals just happened to have a historic offensive outburst. But among the things that Blazic did bring up that he was quite upset about was that in the inning where he allowed back-to-back-to-back-to-back

home runs, hit by Brian Goodwin, Wilmer Defoe, somehow Bryce Harper and Ryan Zimmerman. Blazic then two batters later allowed a home run to Anthony Rendon. But in that inning where he allowed five home runs in the span of six batters face seven batters in the inning he was quite upset because he walked Max Scherzer to lead off which of course should be unforgivable and in the game Max Scherzer actually went one for one with two walks he had a infield single and he he walked twice he is uh he's not the first pitcher to walk twice this season, I checked. Ty Black actually had a game not too long ago where he walked three times, which I was completely unaware of, but congratulations to Ty Black. But yeah, Michael Blazic had one of the worst starts in Major League history.

I think we both looked up the worst ever game scores. He wasn't close, but then you end up with these old-ass eras interrupting temporary stats. He actually wasn't anywhere close, right? Because someone tweeted at both of us yesterday to ask and said that he had like a negative 17 game score. Maybe that's the MLB version of game score, which I think is maybe different from the baseball reference version now. Anyway, according to baseball reference, his game score was only 14, which is not all that bad at all. I don't know if, well, could it be that, A, he did get through two and a third and he only walked one guy and he struck out four. And obviously a lot of those home runs were solo because he was giving them up consecutively.

So does that make sense? I haven't walked through the game score calculation myself. I'm just looking at his game log on Baseball Reference. But yeah, when you do the play index search to look for the worst game scores of all time, he is nowhere close to the worst, which I don't know if there's some miscalculation here. But when you look at the worst, it's like guys who gave up like 17 runs and he did not do that. So I guess that puts it all in perspective. Yeah. Worst game score in history as recorded by the play index belongs to George Leclerc from August 16th, 1914. George Leclerc worked a heroic eight innings and he allowed a less heroic 21 runs to score he walked eight

without striking out anybody there was one unearned run so to his credit defense let him down hod lisenby comes in a second worst game score oh did i say george leclaire's game score was negative 56 so this makes for one of those fun lists because the uh the next name is uh separated by a substantial amount so worst game score negative 56 second worst game score negative 35 that's a fun gap that's a blazic sized gap hod lisenby also threw eight innings allowed 17 runs of which three were unearned howard emke is there with a game score of negative 34 there are some good names on this list but i think my current favorite is tied for 13th place

or 12th place i guess throwing six innings allowing 14 runs hiney miney which is just fantastic colby lewis does show up on this list you might remember i had forgotten colby lewis looks to be the worst kind of recent start certainly from the last 10 15 years colby lewis july 10th 2014 pitching for the Rangers against the Angels a game the Rangers lost 15-6 Lewis threw 2.1 innings and he allowed 13 hits 13 runs no walks one strikeout one home run two unearned runs Mike Oquist is in here he uh about 20 years ago 1998 August 3rd he started a game the Yankees beat the A's 14-1 Oquist allowed 14 runs in five innings so it seems like what kept Blazic away from this list is that he was pulled mercifully

before things could get really deep because everybody on this list seems to have allowed at least like a dozen runs in a game. And I would say that would be inconceivable for someone to allow. But I guess Colby Lewis did allow 13. A.J aj burnett is here having allowed 12 bill travers in 1977 second game of a double header that's terrible he allowed 14 my goodness edison volquez also shows up here yeah i feel like they should bring me in as a counselor to pitchers who give up several home runs in a game and i'll just like bring in my my charts and my graphs about the juice ball and i will show them that the core is higher and the seam height is lower and don't worry about it. It's not just you. It's happening to everyone. Have you seen the home run rate lately? And I'll make them feel better about themselves. I should get me on the

phone with Michael Blazek and I'll tell him he's just part of a larger trend. This is beyond his control. Sort of like a sports psychologist role, but a little more polarizing. Yeah, that too. Yeah, there are going to be clubhouse civil wars as the pitchers start to get a little louder because this isn't stopping. Although I did check the home run rate in July has not gone up. I kind of expected it to as the summer wore on, but I think things have peaked so far in either May or June. I don't remember which one it was, but July, not there yet. Although thanks to Michael Blazek, it's getting closer. Yep. All right. That's all I had. That's all I had on Blazek for sure. Just going to cross that out and we can move on. Just a real quick player promoted yesterday to the major leagues who I'd never heard of before, but I can't ignore

Aaron Bummer. Aaron Bummer is a member of the Chicago White Sox. I'm sure he's been hearing things for his entire life, never mind his career. It's a funny name. He's just going to have a jersey with Bummer and a number on the back of it, which I love. My previous, I guess, G-rated favorite name that I wanted to see on a jersey, haven't seen in the major leagues. In the last round of the 2011 amateur draft, the oakland athletics selected a right-handed pitcher named travis pitcher i absolutely loved the idea of the a's drafting travis pitcher he never got out a rookie ball he had a year i have close to five so travis pitcher hasn't made it yet probably not going to make it but i would love a shirzy with pitcher on the back but also a shirzy with bummer on the back i i feel like this is the sales here. If the White Sox make this available in any forum, which they should, because I'm sure Aaron

Bummer would embrace it. He's lived with his name. It's not like he's necessarily a Bummer. And if anything, his promotion isn't anti-Bummer, but it is definitely a jersey of a bad team with Bummer on the back. And I did a little search on baseball reference as you do i did a search for bummer because i was curious and aaron bummer is of course as you might have been able to guess the only player who shows up with the actual name of bummer but then it gets weird see in 1920 there was a player named roy grimes austin roy grimes nickname bummer In 1920 to 1926, there was a player named Ray Grimes given Oscar Ray Grimes, nickname Bummer. Roy Grimes, 1920, Bummer. Ray Grimes, 1920, Bummer.

So that's weird. Made me curious, a little confused. So I decided to take a little spin over to the Society for American Baseball Research, which, of course, has very detailed biographies of, honestly, probably both of us, too. They just have biographies of everyone who's vaguely related to baseball. Turns out Ray Grimes and Roy Grimes were twins. They were twin brothers, both born in Burgholz, Ohio, in 1893. I'm not going to go into a whole bunch of detail. Of course, Ray Grimes had the longer major league career, but both Ray and Roy played a bunch of organized professional baseball. They played often at lower levels. So they had a third brother,

a younger brother named Clarence. So that's Roy, Ray, and Clarence Grimes. I will read quickly from a section referring to some professional moves. Roy made a move to join Bridgeport where he worked under brother Ray and alongside a third brother, Kenneth. sorry forget Clarence there's Kenneth so we've got Roy Ray and Kenneth the third Grimes played at least one game at second base but after Roy joined the team he moved to the outfield and played both left and right the box score for the August 12th game shows Roy at second base batting cleanup Ray at first base and batting fifth and Kenneth in left field the batting seventh Ridgeport New Haven three to nothing both Ken and Ray doubled Roy was hit by a pitch and stole the base both roy and ray took part in one double play ken also played for bridgeport in 1920 i don't need to read the rest of that

sentence so three grimes brothers including two twins who played for the same team in the same game and what i really wanted to bring up from this section was uh i will read this one paragraph again this is from saber.org with so many grimes's grimes's grimes whatever with so many grimes's in the league and the two of them twins it's perhaps not surprising that there was an anecdote or two bill lee of the hartford current wrote that in 1918 when ray was with hartford and roy was with bridgeport the manager of the bridgeport team spent some time in the lobby of a hotel running over the signs with a Grimes. The problem was that he was giving all of the signs to the Grimes who played shortstop for Hartford, not the one who played for his own team. So fantastic. Not a whole

lot else that's delightful in the story. There was a rumor at one point that the Giants acquired the wrong Grimes. Quote, a story circulated at the time that Roy Grimes was purchased by the Giants said they made a mistake and signed the wrong Grimesimes but the Giants didn't need help at first base and they did it second so they no doubt got the Grimes they were after somebody tweeted at me somebody actually brought this to my attention the other day on Twitter and relayed the I guess false anecdote that the Giants acquired the wrong Grimes which would have been funny because they're twins but no they weren't that backward this isn't like the Phillies leaving Domingo Santana off of their protected prospect list. So yeah, the Grimes is the only other bummers. Also, there's no explanation for the nickname

referring to Ray here. A paragraph concludes somehow somewhere along the line, he picked up the nickname bummer. Well, okay, there you go. Somehow somewhere. Well, the dictionary does list a second definition of bummer, North American, a loafer or vagrant. So maybe they were lazy. Maybe they moved around a lot. One of those things. It's probably not a compliment. It does not seem like a compliment.

No. Yeah. Okay. So the only thing I have left for banter is we're going back to current real baseball talk. Because as we talked about michael blazek and the brewers lost they have lost a lot lately the brewers are currently as of this speaking one and a half games out of first place the national league central they've fallen behind the cubs which we all kind of expected we've talked about that already how as soon as things

start to correct themselves when the situation had gone so contrary to expectations that you just let your head get ahead of yourself and you figure that things are now normal. So I think we are both now mentally counting the Brewers out, even though they are still within striking distance there. They have really given up a lot of ground. They've given up like seven games in the last week and a half or something. Yeah, as bad as the previous few weeks had been good for them, it's been rough. Yeah. So the Brewers are not alone entirely, though. Of course, they've had it worse than anyone lately. But one of the fun current trade deadline stories circulating is that the Twins are

looking to sell. And so as you might recall, as being Ben or a listener, the Twins picked up Jaime Garcia the other day. It took a little time for them to do it. They Twins picked up Jaime Garcia the other day. It took a little time for them to do it. They had some differences in opinion with the Braves. I think the Twins were trying to send a prospect, Nick Birdie, to the Braves in exchange for Garcia, but the Braves didn't like Birdie's medicals, so they had to go back to the negotiating board and pick somebody else who cares how they did it. A different player was traded, went to the Braves. The Twins picked

up rental Jaime Garcia, which made sense. He was a cheap, affordable one-year rental starter. Twins need as many starters as they can get. So they agreed to get Garcia from the Braves and it was all well and good. And now the Twins are reportedly shopping Jaime Garcia, who is supposed to make his Twins debut, I believe, today. And who knows if he's actually going to be traded. The last I saw there, just fielding calls and, you know, he's only in so much demand. He's not really a guy you want starting for you in the playoffs. But it's funny because of how quickly it's happened. But if you look at the numbers, it makes good sense that the Twins situation has changed.

How did the playoff odds change between? Yeah, I didn't pull up the odds, but I can tell you that when the Twins were first strongly linked, when it looked like they had an agreement just to get Garcia for birdie, the Twins were a game and a half out of the division and one game out of the wild card. So no one's idea of a favorite, but they were close. Definitely in the mix. Why not do it? The Twins are currently six games out of the division and four games out of the wild card.

And it's been like four days since they started trying to acquire garcia so the situation has gotten a hell of a lot worse really really quickly so in a sense it's a bad look for the twins to want to flip garcia who in an interview said that he was thrilled to join the twins playoff chase whoops but i can't i hope he had fun it's uh This playoff chase has involved a whole lot of losing, like 100% losing since Garcia arrived. But it does make sense in that it sucks for the Twins. I don't think anyone ever really bought them as a playoff team, but their situation has gotten dramatically worse

in a very brief amount of time. And while you issue whatever response you're going to issue, I'm going to pull up how their playoff odds have actually changed because now I'm curious. Please let me know. I hope he does get traded just because it would be a funny story that we can retell in the future. But yeah, I mean, at this time of year, we always hear teams say like, oh, well, this week will determine what we do. And it sounds crazy that a week could determine whether you are going to be a buyer or seller, which seems like this massive decision that should either be clear one way or the other.

And yet, often when we're talking about the playoff race, we're talking about odds fluctuations that actually are meaningful. If you lose five games in a row, if you win five games in a row, if your division rivals or wildcard rivals go on a run or go on a slump, it really does affect things. And I mean, I don't know how often it actually really changes what you think about the course of your franchise and like your long term plans, but it could certainly affect how you approach this last three months of the season. And if you're just going to stand pat and hope for the best or try to get what you can. So have I vamped enough for you to look at the playoff odds change? You nailed it. So July 22nd, the Twins playoff odds hit a relative maxima at 17%. Still not great, but they were close to the Royals.

They are currently sitting at 6%. So they've lost nearly two thirds of their chance of of making the playoffs depending on how you want to interpret it one of the problems i guess they've run into a few problems where the indians are playing better and the royals just can't lose so it's not just about the twins distance from a playoff position but also the number of teams in between them and said playoff position and they have just sunk so i don't know it looks like the twins are supposed to face the a's in a game that nobody will watch tonight at 7 to 5 p.m pacific time garcia against daniel gossett where would you put the odds that jaime garcia actually starts this game for the twins at this

recording i would say 70 yeah i'll put it at like 70 75 75%. I figured Garcia could move, but I doubt he's anyone's top priority. So why not? Just the only downside there is, well, if you are a team that wants Jaime Garcia and you let him get another start, that's one fewer start he can make for you. So whatever. We'll see. We have a trade. We have a breaking news trade. Yeah.

And guess who made it? Not that surprising. You can sing the song if you want to. I'll leave that to Michael. But yes, Jerry DiPoto has made another trade. This seems like a weird one on the face of it because it's between the Mariners and the Rays, who are both wildcard contenders in the American League, and the M's have traded Steve Ciszek to the Rays for Erasmo Ramirez. What do we make of this?

I don't know what to make of this. Okay, wellasmo Ramirez. What do we make of this? I don't know what to make of this. Okay, well, let's see. What do we got? Ciszek is in his last year of team control. He is a funky right-handed reliever. Erasmo Ramirez has another two and a half years of team control. So he's one of those control pitchers that the Mariners have badly wanted. The problem is that he's not very good, but he's not terrible. He's very small, and maybe most memorably, he's already been a Mariner, and the Mariners got frustrated with him and sent him to Tampa Bay in another trade, and it looks like maybe he's kind of worn out his welcome there. He's fine. I don't want to suggest that he's a bad pitcher, but neither he nor Ciszek seems to be anything particularly great but Ciszek I think is probably still murder

on right-handed hitters as he's been for most of his life and Ramirez is just another swing man as the Mariners tried to recover from having lost Drew Smiley and essentially Hisashi Ibukuma in what was supposed to be a competitive season so I don't think there's anything too sexy to analyze here except that this is just another trade of Gary DePoto trying to acquire a cost-controlled, extremely mediocre potential starting pitcher? Yeah. And the Rays have been busy. They haven't done anything all that exciting either, but they have been making some moves. So they have Lucas Duda now.

They have Steve Ciszek now. They have what you wanted to write about, Chaz Rowe. Chaz Rowe! Yeah. Your favorite. So the Rays are reloading in a Rays kind of way, I guess. Yeah. I think that's a fair way to put it.

They also, like, what? They added Trevor Pluff, which who cares? And they added, I don't know, some other veteran a few weeks ago. I don't remember who it was, but the Rays have added a bunch of short-term assets, but without really giving much of anything up, I think Erasmo Ramirez is the steepest price they've paid so far as they try to overhaul their entire bullpen. I wrote a very short thing about Lucas Duda on Fangraphs yesterday, just after the trade happened, because we're on trade coverage and whatnot. Put up, I don't know, 600 words about, okay,

here's Lucas Duda. He's a slugger. He's got his warts and he's got his pluses, whatever, going to the race. And somebody left a comment that said that, well, Jeff, you really mailed it in on this one. But as I thought about it, it's like, how could you not? You can't sex up like, oh, the Rays traded nothing to get Lucas Duda for two months. There's nothing you can do with that. It was a struggle for me because I looked at it and I thought, how could I make this readable? But sometimes there's no winning a battle. You have a topic you think, I just need to get this done because there's no traffic here.

There's no reason. This is just a fart in the wind. But something had to be written and the Rays got a good-ish hitter against right-handed pitchers. And that's it. There's nothing sexy about it, but the Rays got a good-ish hitter against right-handed pitchers, and that's it. There's nothing sexy about it, but the Rays are very much alive in the wild-card race. They are close. They have Kevin Kiermaier coming back, and in three minor league appearances

so far in AAA, Chaz Rowe has faced 11 batters and struck out six of them. So lights-out reliever. I'm not saying that he's as good as Craig Kimbrell. You tried to spice up your Echeverria trade reaction when the Rays acquired him, and he has hit 259, 274, 296 in 84 played appearances for the Rays so far. Tried to sell him as a guy who could hit better, and he's hit so much worse. So, you know, eyes on Echeverria. I was saying there were reports coming out yesterday that the

rays were interested in potentially trading brad miller or tim beckham because of the the newfound depth and they have echeveria but it seems like well maybe just get rid of echeveria because it turns out he's bad not that i want to close the book on him quite yet but it's not it's not working out like they probably imagined that it would ah gosh i don don't know. I feel like there's probably just more trade stuff we can keep talking about. Like there's what the Mariners are apparently going hard after Sonny Gray, even though I'm not sure they have the assets to actually do anything there. And I don't know, there was another name that was on the tip of my tongue, but I've forgotten it now. So instead, I guess for now we can just move into the thing that the Friday topic that again, we have about 10 minutes to discuss.

And I wanted to do this. You brought up the Adrian Beltre on deck circle hilarity. And I was thinking about that. There's no, there's no better way to put this, but I was thinking about that in the shower the other day. And for some reason I had gone to bed and I was thinking about books. I have never really had a strong desire to write a book. You and Sam have, in a sense, both motivated me to write a book and also done the opposite of that because you wrote an excellent baseball book, but you took the best topic. So there's nothing left. Yeah, there are no good baseball topics left to be explored that are in any way superior to the one that you already wrote up.

You did an excellent job of it. So congratulations. You have destroyed all motivation for anybody else to write a baseball book. But I was thinking about, OK, if I were to write a baseball book and let's say I wanted to write a baseball book about a current baseball player, which baseball player in Major League Baseball today best lends himself to what would be a successful and engaging book. And as you might be able to guess, the name that I came up with was Adrian Beltre. I think that when Adrian Beltre's career is over, I'm not actually going to do it. But I feel like if I were a respected journalist who had a history of writing books, I would get in touch with Adrian Beltre's people, which are probably just Adrian Beltre having sock puppets in both of his hands and them representing him as his agents. But I feel like I would want to spend time with Adrian Beltre, get to know him and write a biography

of Adrian Beltre's professional baseball career, because I'm not sure this is a point for us to discuss, but I'm not sure that there's a player I'd personally rather read about. And I'm not sure there's a player who's had more go on than Adrian Beltre has from the start of his career, given that there was a time when he nearly died from an appendectomy and all of the stuff that he's been through. I don't know if it's you kind of need videos or image representations of Beltre throughout his career. So I don't know what you can do with that in like a book format. I don't know if you can have like Kindle books that have videos and GIFs in them, because otherwise it's just like an extremely long form article that no one's going

to read all the way through. But Beltre would be the name at the top of my list as I think about a player who would best lend himself to an engaging book. Yeah, I think I'm probably going to be writing about Adrian Beltre sometime very soon. And I don't know exactly what I'm going to be writing about Adrian Beltre sometime very soon. And I don't know exactly what I'm going to be writing about, but I am fascinated by how the perception of Adrian Beltre has changed so completely in the last several years, where he was seen as a guy who was disappointing, who failed to recapture the magic of his 2004 Dodgers season. Then he went to the Mariners and he wasn't hitting 48 homers again. And so people thought that it was a bad signing. And obviously he has just become better in that he has just been unbelievable after the age of 30.

He's been maybe a more consistently good hitter, certainly, than he had been to that point in his career, which is unusual. And I think we have all kind of caught up to how good Adrian Beltre was all along because he really was. Like, not only did he arrive in the majors super early, but even when his bat was not all that great and not all that consistent, his bat was not all that great and not all that consistent, he was consistently valuable just because he is maybe the best third baseman of all time, fielding-wise, or certainly in the top, I don't know, two. So our defensive metrics and appreciation of defensive metrics have caught up with how good he was all along. Our appreciation of park factors and how he was playing in parks that were difficult for him have caught up to how good he was all along. And so now it's just a slam dunk consensus. It's not even like he needs the 3,000th hit or the 500th homer or any of these traditional milestones to cement his case. I think everyone agrees that he is a deserving Hall of Famer,

but that wasn't the case when he was 30. That wasn't the case when he was, I don't know, I think in my article, I might try to pinpoint exactly when that became the case, when we all realized that Adrian Beltre was a Hall of Famer, both because we just got smarter about how good he had been, and because he just hasn't aged. And if anything, has gotten better with age, which has continued this season so it is a fascinating career and he's been a valuable player for three different teams I mean you know over the long term obviously he had a great season with the Red Sox too so yeah just a fascinating career and when you add all the other stuff about him becoming a clubhouse mentor and leader later in his career and just all the incredibly shareable stuff that he does on the field, whether it's with Andrus or with not wanting his head touched or with falling to one knee as he swings or with moving the on-deck circle, whatever it is.

He is, I guess, kind of like the reigning,igning I don't know is he like the most beloved player like you you have like Bartolo Colon still you have Ichiro still hanging around in that role of elder statesman slash most accomplished player in Ichiro's case but Beltre is definitely the heir apparent to those guys if he's not already at the top of the list I think there's a strong sentiment out there that Ichro has been overrated for the bulk of his career. And of course, I disagree with that. I think Itro has been a wizard, but there is still a lot of Itro pushback that's out there. So as much as I think a lot of people do find Itro to be a lovable and unique specimen, I don't think that the adoration there is quite

so widespread and unanimous. With Bartolo Cologne, I know it's there, but I feel like for a lot of people, it kind of comes from a cruel place where it's like, huh, look at the big fat guy, which whatever people still like him. But I think that there's it's a it's a little more it's a little meaner on some deeper base level. And with Beltre, I think that it's just genuine. I don't know. I'm sure I'm sure there are people out there who just can't stand Adrian Beltre. And of course, when you play for a team like the Red Sox or when you've been in a contending team the Rangers for so long people on contending teams tend to make enemies because they are good and you want your team to defeat the contending team so that I'm sure there are people who don't like Adrian Beltre out there however I don't know I feel like he's I can't think of someone who is more widely adored.

And this is coming from, again, that sort of social media bubble where everyone on Twitter loves Adrian Beltre because he does things that are so eminently tweetable. I don't know how people's parents feel about Adrian Beltre. They actually probably don't know who Adrian Beltre is. So that's fine. Parents, you're missing out. I was pulling up some numbers because one of the things so remarkable about Adrian Beltre is of course how he's performed as he's gotten older he signed sort of that pillow contract after his Mariners tent and and it was an open question how much

Beltre was going to be able to do with his talent and since turning 30 Adrian Beltre according to baseball reference has the 19th highest so yeah essentially looking for a highest post 30 wins above replacement right and for position players according to baseball reference he ranks in 19th highest. So essentially looking for highest post 30 wins above replacement. And for position players, according to baseball reference, he ranks in 19th place. Just barely behind Ozzie Smith and Charlie Geringer and Eddie Collins, Luke Appling, etc. So Beltre there is at 51 wins above replacement where only eight players have cleared 60. So Beltre looks good on baseball reference. He looks a little worse on fan graphs. This would be a defensive thing. But he's still in 28th place all time for post 30 wins but replacement again

just among position players but it's a good list the two names behind him are kagya stremski and willie stargill two names in front of him are frank robinson and bob johnson there's jim edmunds jimper jones wade bogs like martinez etc this is a list of almost well it is a list of exclusively great players because of course i searched for players who were great so that's kind of a selection bias right there if you want to say but people have so many anecdotes about things that adrian beltre has done like when he was recovering from appendix surgery that didn't go very well when he was a teenager he was playing third base with a colostomy bag under his uniform and you just go back to the beginning and when you

say that you're probably going to write about ad Beltre soon, it stresses me out a little bit because it's almost overwhelming because I don't know how you write about Adrian Beltre without trying to include everything. And there's just so much. That's why I think he lends himself to an incredible book, because if you're going to write one page on Beltre, you're probably going to want to write 250. Yeah, right. Well, I will read the Adrian Beltre story as told to Jeff Sullivan or whatever you end up calling it. Yeah, you should do that. Someone's got to do it. It's probably not going to be called the Adrian Beltre story, but I don't know if testicular torsion really has a ring to it that people are looking for. Yeah. I'll give you the rights. If you want to co-author, then we can just claim it here on the

air and then we can just deter everybody else. But well, I don't know. I don't know if Beltre is the kind of guy who would want a biographer kind of following him around, but I don't know. Yeah. It's at this point, it's also one clear whether you even would need to follow someone around given how many Beltre stories are already out there and in the public sphere, you could just kind of accumulate, do the aggregation thing and then slap a book together without adrian beltré even knowing about it take that adrian beltré wrote a book about you didn't even know about it put your picture right in the front thank you getty images i don't know is who of course there i'm sure there are books that can be written about any one of those players who has a non-traditional beginning

or they came from the indie leagues or maybe they had to go through a bunch of surgeries like even what johnny venters could have a book written about him because i think he's had tommy john surgery like five times or something absurd it's like maybe at some point maybe at some point you the message sinks in but you know he's got what some people would describe as courage so there's there's a book there there any number of great stories could be written about. Every single one of these players is exceptional and extraordinary. And even the players in the lower minors or even in Indie Ball, as you know, there's a book to be written about Josh Vitters or, you know, the Salina,

whatever they name it, the stockade, the Salina stockade. You'll be documenting them shortly. But, yeah, I don't know. I still have thought about it for a good amount of of time and Beltre remains at the top of my list. Can you think of anyone who might have a more compelling story? Series of stories, I guess. Yeah.

I mean, other than maybe Ichiro, just because Ichiro's hilarious and wise and because he played in Japan and he has been amazing in the majors in a completely different way from anyone else. And he seems to just go about baseball in a different way from most players. So he's been like an international celebrity in a way that most players have not. So an Ichiro book like with Ichiro's full participation or just Ichiro writing a book would be great, I think. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. There are probably lots of like inspiring off the field stories that I'm not even aware

of or just am not thinking of at this moment. But combination of personality and career and baseball story, it is very hard to top Beltre at this point. I guess the last thing we should mention on this podcast before it ends and just ending the Beltre segment right there is something I forgot to mention earlier. David Price is hurt again. Yeah, not just his feelings. Not just his feelings, but also his elbow,

which is arguably more important than his feelings. So the American League is being overturned. Overturned? No, that sounds like there's some sort of mutiny. I don't know. Things are changing in the American League. David Price, of course, missed the beginning of the year with an elbow problem and then he didn't have surgery. Then he worked his way back. But it turns out he was diagnosed with a partial tear, right? Yes. Yeah. Partial tear of the UCL. Those don't heal by themselves. They, if anything, tend to do the opposite of that. David Price's elbow seems like it's done the opposite of that. So while I don't think I have anything clever to say about David Price right now, the reality is that when pitchers are diagnosed with elbow

problems, they tend to not get better until there is pretty significant intervention. And if you look at the Red Sox and you take away David Price, things are getting interesting again. Yeah. I mean, there are exceptions to that. Of course, Masahiro Tanaka continues to pitch and now is pitching pretty well on his partially torn UCL for years now after everyone said at the time, just get the surgery because you'll have to get the surgery. Well, maybe he won't have to get the surgery.

I don't know. But you see guys maybe come back after longer periods of rest than Price had and PRP injections and all these other therapies that people are trying. So it's not an ironclad rule, but certainly when you see a guy miss time with an arm issue, that is the greatest risk factor when it comes to predicting who will have arm issues in the future. And yeah, Price has been pretty good, okay, since he came back and started pitching in 11 starts, but not like old Price, not even like 2016 Price. So it seems as if his control has been off relative to most recent years in his career, and he's just not quite the same guy. So not great to have him pitching at less

than full strength, probably even worse not to have him pitching at all. And yeah, I mean, I kind of thought that the Red Sox were going to run away with it there when they finally pulled ahead of the Yankees, as had been anticipated. But as we speak now, they're only half a game ahead of them, and it's just never really come together for them the way that I think a lot of people thought it would in the spring. So I don't know if they still have moves to make. I don't know if this shakes up the trade market for the top starters available with just days remaining and with Darvish and Gray and people like that being shopped already. I don't know whether the Red Sox enter that discussion in a way that they wouldn't have if price had been healthy, but it should be a fairly exciting conclusion, I guess, to this starter sweepstakes. And we'll probably talk about that next time we talk, I guess, about how it actually happened. But the Darvish conundrum, as Dave

Cameron wrote in a post for Fangraphs, is a compelling one. So I'm curious to see how that plays out. This would be when the Yankees step in and trade for the players that the Red Sox want again, which would be funny. As has been mentioned, the Red Sox currently in the lead of the American League East by a half game. But according to base runs, which is a Fangraphs metric that they have up, that essentially tries to measure what a team's record ought to be if you strip away luck Which you know you know how these things work The Red Sox by their base runs

Record should be 54 and 49 And the Yankees should be 62 and 38 so pretty strong Argument there for the Yankees to continue To build pretty strong evidence that the Yankees have Actually been better than the Red Sox and now the Red Sox could be down their second best starter So things to pay attention to as we End this podcast. All right. We will talk next week.

You can support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have already pledged their support include Andy Carl, Brett Kedkar, Brett O'Neill, Will Cohane, and Mick Reinhardt. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. Now it's 6,250 members. If you're not one of them, you're missing out. You can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. And you can email me and Jeff at podcast at fancrafts.com or message us through Patreon if you're a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance.

We will be back next week. We'll talk about the trade deadline. I'll be in Salina, Kansas, seeing the Stockade, who are now 9 and 55. Talk to you then. Sometimes I feel like I'm a ghost Changing into street clothes in a tent I just want the summer to end Summer to end