Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1103: The Wildest Card

Episode Date: August 30, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the AL wild card race, whether the Dodgers are doing anything wrong by using the 10-day DL liberally, then answer listener emails about packaging Pujols with Trout, Gio Gonzalez’s league-leading (but also not league-leading) WAR, the pitfalls of Statcast for pitchers, Steven Souza and home-run imbalance by handedness, […]

🎵 Wild, wild, wild Wild, wild Hello and welcome to episode 1103 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Hello, Ben. You know, the AL Wildcard standings page never ceases to surprise me. There's a different team. I don't expect to be there every time I open this page. And I seem to look at it every day or two. The Twins have a wildcard spot now? Yeah, they've had it for several days. The Orioles are a game and a half back. I thought we were done with these teams. I had mentally put these teams in the nice first half, but let's move on portion of my brain. And they're back. I don't know. I had mentally checked out on some of these

teams. The Mariners are two games back. They've never been very far away, I guess. It looked like the Rays were dropping out of it, but now they're back in it. There is just, I don't know what to expect from day to day. It's a constant shock to me whenever I go to this page. So last week I wrote a not very good article about the best lineups among contending teams for ESPN. And then just Monday night, I wrote, I guess, a follow-up not very good article for ESPN about the best contending team rotations. And as part of that, I did define who's a contending team and who's not a contending team. So I just set a cutoff at like five games out of a playoff position whatever it was just a ranking

article you don't need to hurry out to read it but in that article i had to i had to look at the rotations of every team somewhat closely uh for for my own they're bad if you look at the american wildcard race all of those rotations are bad and now the rays have like it's maybe it's maybe fine because chris archer is good and then there's like, there's talent behind him, even if like Alex Cobb isn't as good as you think he should be. But the Twins rotation is bad. The Angels rotation though is bad. But then you look at the Orioles and that's bad. And the Mariners are so bad. And then Texas and the Royals, they're bad. The Royals, Danny Duffy's on the disabled list. He just, I just saw he got charged with a DUI. i mean he's his injury doesn't seem to be bad one he'll be back soon i don't know maybe the rangers rotation everyone talks about how the twins sold at the deadline and then stayed in the race the rangers traded you darvish and they're in the race the royals haven't scored a run since we last recorded a podcast and they're still in the race it's this this crop is they're not they're not bad teams but it's bad nobody we've talked before about whether i think it's good or bad that one of these teams will make

the playoffs and i think it's good just because whatever playoff chaos and everything and someone yeah someone needs to be the fifth team but like none of these none of these are playoff teams all of them are extremely average the angels don't oh my god have you do you know okay we played the marlins game marlins game we played the marlins game name the angels rotation name the last five angels starting pitchers if you can oh my goodness uh i'm giving i'm going to give you a hint none of them are mark langston is haney in the rotation yeah that, that's one. He started yesterday. Okay.

Is Skaggs back? Yeah, he started on Saturday. That's two. All right. 40% of the way there. Okay, that's pretty good. Okay, I'm going to give you a hint. One of them is the brother of a reliever who nobody talks about.

Brother of a reliever who nobody talks about. Yeah, it's an anti-hint kind of. Yeah, no, I don't know. That makes me less likely to get the answer, I think. Well, you know Evan Scribner? You know how no one talks about Evan Scribner? He's got a brother. He's in the major leagues.

His name is Troy. He's starting for the Angels. Wow, I did not know that. Yeah, who did? The other Angels, the Shoemakers hurt. Ramirez hurt. Yep, hurt yep recently hurt yeah right garrett richards obviously still hurt um alex meyer still hurt right still hurt setback okay um who else we got well okay here's here's the one who you do know but forgot ricky nalasco he's around he's a wow it feels like he should be on the Twins or the Marlins or someone we've talked about recently. Well, last I checked, he leads the league in home runs allowed.

So he's kind of doing his thing. And there's one more. And it's not Jesse Chavez because he was demoted to the bullpen because he's bad. And so bad, he can't crack this rotation. There's one more. You've probably never even seen these letters in order. Parker Bridwell. Parker Bridwell. That sounds like a made-up name. Yeah, it does, doesn't it? there's one more you've probably never even seen these letters in order parker bridwell parker bridwell that sounds like a made-up name yeah it does doesn't it it's not his middle name is alan

he's a real person he's on twitter you could talk to him uh to confirm that he's real and uh yeah this year he's uh he's started 13 games for the angels he has a 2.89 era and numbers that suggest he doesn't deserve it but there you go he's holding it down for the angels that is their five-man rotation and it's not good but you know what it doesn't matter because they're all bad rotations yeah they really are it's just a battle to the top of the bottom with these teams it's just man and every single day i look forward to finding out who has a wild card spot tomorrow because it will somehow not be any one of these teams that we just talked about. I don't know how that's possible, but yeah, Tigers could get back in this thing. Maybe the Blue Jays. I don't know. All right. So I think we're going to do a few emails later in the show.

I do want to bring up an article that Rob Arthur wrote at FiveThirtyEight, and he took a look at the Dodgers and the new DL rules. And this is something I looked at maybe a month or so into the season and knew that it would have to require another look later in the year. But Rob just kind of pointed out the numbers about how the short-term DL stint rate is up, which makes sense because the short-term DL stint now is 10 days, not 15. And so you would expect teams to be more liberal with putting players on the DL, even if they're not trying to game the system somehow or make up fake injuries to rest pitchers, that sort of thing. There would just be injuries that aren't so serious that you would put a person on the DL4 for 10 days, but not bother to put them on the DL4 for 15 days. Anyway, he showed that the rate of long-term injuries, as evidenced by the 60-day DL stints, hasn't really increased significantly or not nearly as much as the short-term DL increase,

but he highlighted the Dodgers, as a lot of people have, because the Dodgers have had all kinds of starting pitcher shenanigans over the past few years. They have managed to have rotations that are at once very effective and also include a lot of different pitchers, which are usually two things that don't go together. Usually if you have to start a ton of pitchers, it's a bad sign. It means that a lot of your guys are getting hurt or they're just bad and you're trying to find replacements. And that's usually a very negative indicator. But for the

Dodgers, it has not been because they have just been cycling guys in and out of that rotation, sometimes hurt, sometimes not. They certainly did target pitchers with long injury histories for the last few years, so some of those guys just genuinely were injured. But now the contention seems to be that they are gaming the system, exploiting the system with this 10-day DL and putting guys on when they aren't really hurt and replacing them with relievers so that they can just give guys a blow basically and add a bullpen arm while they're resting for a start. So I'm curious what you make of this, whether you think this is a problem, whether they are bending the rules, or whether this is a good thing.

Maybe it's not a bad thing that these pitchers are getting rest, or at the very least, at least they're not doing anything that another team couldn't do because everyone is playing under the same rules yeah i haven't decided because for the same reason that you just said every team could conceivably do this now not every team has the wealth of alternatives that the dodgers do so that's sort of the thing that yes and just the wealth period yeah also also just the wealth i don't want to too closely link the two but if you look at in rob arthur's article he has his plot that shows short term DL stints and also long term DL stints as defined by the 60 day disabled list. And even with the short term DL stints going up significantly

this year, there has been no market decrease in long term DL assignments or trends. So it's it's too hasty now to conclude that well, at least by using the short-term disabled list, then we are avoiding major injuries because there's not yet much evidence that that's true. We've seen the Dodgers have their own significant injuries, which Arthur points out in his article, that I believe they also have led the league in long-term disabled list stints in the pitching staff the last few years. So if I'm not getting that incorrect, then that's still there. So it's not like the Dodgers are managing to avoid those serious injuries so i am kind of stuck it's bad in that it's i guess kind of contrary to the spirit of the roster or something and rob manfred

what there's a link in this article where rob manfred says that he's concerned that some teams are manipulating the disabled list like of course they're manipulating that they've been doing this for decades don't be naive. This has always happened. On the other side of it, while this is something that teams, especially the Dodgers, are trying to exploit, it also means that there are effectively more major league opportunities, which is good because it means there are more players who are getting major league salaries, if only for brief stints.

So in terms of the opening the player pool up to as many players as possible, then I like this, but I can understand why someone would be annoyed by it. And I can understand why an owner might be like, why am I paying so much money to players who are on the disabled list? Because owners really don't like doing that. Right. And given that players have lost a share of the overall revenue, it seems like not a bad thing that they could claw back a little bit of it in this way. It was something I think that the players pushed for in the collective bargaining agreement, probably for this reason or also just because maybe it keeps guys healthier in the long run. I don't know whether it actually does or not, but in theory it could.

But yeah, it's not really a bad thing. I guess it benefits the Dodgers because they have constructed their team in such a way that they can take advantage of this more than another team could. And that is to their credit, I suppose. And also just a product of the fact that they can afford to do that, which most teams can't. So I guess you could give them partial credit for it and partial just this is the rich getting richer kind of thing. But it's not a bad thing in theory, at least if you can put a guy on the DL for a start or two, have him rest and then not get hurt later on. And we don't know yet whether that will be the case, but there's at least a possibility

that that would be the case or there's just less incentive to pitch through pain or try to compel a pitcher to pitch through pain just because you can put them on the DL and he'll be back sooner. It was the same kind of thinking that went into the seven-day concussion DL where it was let's give teams and players an option

where they can go in the DL for these head injuries that might clear up in that span of time, and then they won't feel the pressure to play through it because their team would be shorthanded without them. So I don't mind it, and I'm not really sure if this is just an area where teams can be smart or construct their rosters to take advantage of this. I'm not sure I dislike it. I guess I might be annoyed if I were someone who was rooting against the Dodgers and wasn't able to take advantage of it to the same extent, but that's about as far as it goes for me currently. Yeah, it's nothing that I think... I don't think that the state of the Dodgers pitching staff

is anything that another team couldn't mimic. The Dodgers don't have a pitching staff that's full of aces and really expensive number one starting pitchers. I think that maybe you can give the Dodgers some credit for understanding that they could manipulate the disabled list. It's not something that they just started doing this season. It's only that this season they've had the 10 day disabled list instead of the 15, but they were manipulating it before. And in theory, teams could have high level starting pitchers with options and then major league pitchers who are injury prone. The Dodgers are not the only team that could have signed Rich Hill or Brandon McCarthy or Scott Casimir, I guess, if you want to include him. And Kenta Maeda was out there with his really weird deal.

The Dodgers have taken a chance. Clayton Kershaw aside, even though I guess he's also been hurt, they've taken chances on injury prone pitchers, those pitchers tend to be available and this is just something the Dodgers have deliberately sought out maybe because it complements their high level depth as well but other teams could do this if they wanted and this seems like one of those things where Andrew Friedman and company kind of looked ahead and thought we can use this and they they got a little ahead of the rest of the league but I imagine that the rest of the league will catch up. Yeah, I guess the one thing that they did that maybe other teams couldn't do

was they took on all the risk of those guys with long injury histories. And at times over the past few seasons, I'm sure they've been spending more on injured starters than most teams do on their healthy starters, just like when they had McCarthy on the DL and Kershaw on the DL and Brad Anderson on the DL and all these guys who were making decent money and not contributing anything at all for long stretches of the season.

And they still had the depth to assemble a decent rotation, a much better rotation than the rotations we started this episode talking about. So that's something that I guess most teams couldn't do. But then again, I suppose that is why they felt free to pursue that strategy of stockpiling injured arms because they felt like maybe those guys were undervalued just because other organizations couldn't afford to take on the risk. And I don't know whether they actually showed that they have any ability to prevent injuries. There was a lot of buzz about whether the Dodgers maybe had figured out how to prevent injuries or target guys who weren't going to get injured again. And there was something in the arm about how they were stockpiling these cutting-edge injury researchers.

And it would be hard to tell from the outside if they were making a difference in that area. And it would be hard to tell from the outside if they were making a difference in that area. But it's not something that you can really tell just because they keep leading the league in DL stints and DL days every year, which is partially a product of just how they built their roster. So it's hard to separate that from injuries and say whether they've been good at preventing injuries or treating injuries or not. Yep. All right. You had one other quick follow-up, I think? I guess I have a few things as I look at this. So one, we received this follow-up from, I don't know, 700 listeners, something like

that. We talked very briefly last week about the minor league Kannapolis Intimidators, and we talked for a segment of that time about how Intimidators was a funny but sort of generic team nickname because mascots are always there to try to intimidate the opposition so yeah the intimidators are not just named because the team was like we want an intimidating mascot oh we got one uh it's named after dale earnhardt the famed nascar racing legend who purchased a share in the team's ownership back in uh 2000 i believe it was and so they named they renamed

the team from i the the bull weevils is i believe what it used to be which is not intimidating but in honor of the area's textile history anyway we don't need to talk about textiles and bull wheels this is about dale earnhardt purchased a share in the team they named the team after him and uh in keeping with the recent themes on this podcast this is a nickname that is named after somebody else uh somebody else's nickname so this isn't exactly like babe ruth's legs but this is uh this is a team named after a person who had his own nickname yes our lack of nascar knowledge was exposed sorry everyone yeah also more baseball and nascar overlap i guess than i expected although if you

know anything about nascar i would probably begin with dale earnhardt so there's that yes okay so quickly as well on fan graphs we just had there were some weird base running statistic errors this season and we finally well we somebody else finally got them corrected last night and so we have accurate numbers on the site now the rays are no longer the best base running team in baseball that's whatever you can look at those numbers whenever you want but here are the six worst base runners in baseball this season base running value these are the six most negative base running values i'm going to put them a little out of order because the most surprising name i will but last is dribble cabrera okay fine he's got leg injuries

he's the worst miguel cabrera kendrys morales victor martinez matt camp yossi opuig yossi opuig is down there at negative 7.1 base running runs i could go in depth but uh i'll probably just use that for an article probably today because ever the desperate writer so yossi opuig bad base runner and the last little bit of banter which we have already alluded to the royals have not scored a run since Thursday. Yeah. They just lost to the Rays 12 to nothing on Monday. So I'm looking at the MLB.com recap by Jeffrey Flanagan and Bill Chastain.

Quote, the Royals, who lost their fifth straight, now have been shut out in 43 straight innings, the longest such streak in Major League Baseball since the mound was lowered after 1968. The previous mark was 42 by both the 1983 Phillies and the 1985 Astros. The 79 Phillies were blanked in 39 innings. The all-time mark is 48 innings by the 1968 Cubs and the 1906 A's. The Royals also became the first team since the 1992 Cubs to be shut out in four straight games. I don't have anything else to say. I'm going to try to because when this podcast is over i will also be writing about this but oh my god oh my god 43 straight innings no

runs i get it they faced the indians over the weekend hard to score runs against the indians 43 straight innings of no runs and they're still in the wild card race it's unbelievable didn't the royals go all of april without scoring a run wasn't that how they started the season yeah well april was full circle their their worst offensive month in history i think i also had a read about that yeah turns out there's all these uh as soon as you want to say hey you know what the royals aren't good then they do that thing where they just start winning a bunch but like there's uh they're really, and they shouldn't be good. But at least now, now at least Royals fans could agree

because I can't imagine. I've watched a lot of bad offenses. Never watched, obviously. I've never watched 43 consecutive shutout innings. And I watched a team get perfect gamed by Philip Humber. Yeah, that's right. They could really use Joey Votto, I guess, to go 0-for-0 with five walks

And see 43 pitches Yeah, all the players we talked about in our last episode Are still the players everyone else is talking about now Which is kind of unusual Usually these things change very quickly But we talked about Rhys Hoskins And we talked about Stanton And we talked about Byron Buxton we talked about Stanton and we talked about

Byron Buxton and they all had big weekends and hit more home runs. So that's fun. I wrote about Stanton. Finally, you wrote about the Marlins. Anyway, we've covered that ground. We don't need to repeat ourselves, I suppose. I did come up with some stats about how Stanton really is carrying the Marlins and has accounted for like 40% of the team's war since his crazy hot streak started, which is like way more than any player on any other contending team accounted for during that period. And he's had one of the hottest hot streaks of this length ever. He's like the, I think, 11th or 12th hottest hitter ever, or at least since 1950, using the metric that I've used in the past to assess hot streaks by Bryce Harper and Gary Sanchez. So very hot, as everyone knows and can tell just by looking at the box score.

There have been some discussions about how much the high home run rate discounts what Stanton is doing, and it does somewhat. That is part of the reason why his streak doesn't show up even higher on the all-time hot streak leaderboards. It's partially just the run scoring environment and the high home run rate this year. It's also partly that he doesn't walk that much and hasn't really gotten on base a ton during this stretch relative to some of the other hottest streaks ever. But I don't know how many home runs you would subtract from his total with the old ball. Like we had a listener named Philip Cooper who looked into this and concluded that maybe something like seven home runs are within 10 feet of going over the fence or not going over the fence this year. And if you look on HitTracker online, Stanton is leading the majors in no doubt home runs,

but he also has the second most just enough home runs, which is like home runs that barely scraped over the fence. So obviously he would not have 50 in a different home run rate environment, but it's really impressive that he does have 50 because these last couple years have been characterized by no one getting out to a gigantic home run lead and as we speak he has a 13 home run lead which is insane and if he finished the season that way which he probably won't but if he, it would be the largest gap between the home run king and the runner up since 1965 when Willie Mays beat out Willie McCovey by 13 home runs. And before that, you have to go back to Jimmy Fox in 1933, beat out Babe Ruth by 14 home runs. So that kind of gap

doesn't happen very often. And Stanton is putting that kind of distance between him and Judge, who seems to be hurt now, or anyone else who is up there, even in this era when it's really leveled the playing field and guys who don't have a ton of power are hitting for power. And other than Stanton, guys who do have a ton of power aren't really challenging any single season records. And in this run and home run environment, the Royals haven't scored for 43 consecutive innings. That's right. All right, let's do a few emails. This one comes from CJ. It's an Angels question. I don't know if it's from CJ Krohn. No, this is from Parker Bridwell.

This feels like a question that must have been asked by now, but I can't remember it. So here we go. How much more tradable does Trout become if he's packaged with pool holes and the entirety of his contract? I don't know if we've answered this in an email. I know I've seen tweets or Facebook group comments about this question too. So basically, could you trade for Trout if you agreed to take on pool holes or how does the value balance out there? Okay, well, let's see. I haven't run the math, but I can probably do it while I just talk here over nothing. So Trout's got, what he's got, let's just forget about 2017. Let's say it's over. So Trout is due $33.25 million in each of the next three seasons. So that's basically $100 million for Trout. And

if I just do a little bit of a little bit of handy math here over here on a fangrafts page that people aren't really privy to, then I can see that if you... Yeah, the secret contract fangrafts page. Yeah, secret page. I'm so intrigued by this page. I don't think I even know where to find it. I'll send you a link. It's only moderately useful. So where's Trout's baseline? This is telling me 8.3 war. Let's just bump it up to 8.5, whatever. Okay. So I'm looking at roughly a little over $100 million, $100 million of surplus value for Mike Trout over the three remaining years of his contract. That's $100 million of surplus value. Here's where it gets bad. So Albert Pujols, he's going to be due $27 million in 2018, and then $28 million in 2019, and then $29. I don't like having these numbers that are just barely off. That's confusing to me. So Pujols is due from 2018 on. Oh, this is

convenient. Okay. Okay. So the number I arrived at for Mike Trout was exactly $114 million of surplus value. If you figure Albert Pujols is basically a replacement level player now, beginning in 2018, he's due another $114 million over his contract, which would be a negative $114 million surplus value for Pujols. So these are all estimates, of course, and this is just kind of treating things as simply as possible, if surplus value is ever simple as possible but what that would suggest is that albert pujols would just about exactly counteract the mike trout positive value such that you could trade mike trout and albert pujols for nothing

that'd be a fun trade what it what it just trade mike trout and albert pools to team x just just say just say dodgers to dodgers for nothing yeah and it's technically at least by that by that analysis it it works out now of course surplus value means something different to different teams because not every team is dealing with the same amount of resources again Again, Dodgers. So that's not a trade that the Angels would actually make, but there is a statistical basis for it. Unbelievable. That will be, there is, I guess that's an article I feel like we write every offseason, but it's going to happen again. Just going to go on the list. Yeah. Lots of real world reasons why that wouldn't happen, unfortunately, but it would be fun. It would be a good little baseball econ class For that to be the case

Alright this one I think Took me by as much surprise As my latest look at the AL wildcard standings This is from Tanner Who says John Heyman just tweeted that Gio Gonzalez Is leading the NL in pitcher war And I thought that sounds impossible

So I looked it up at Fangraphs And he's 9 ninth at 2.9 war. However, on baseball reference, he's indeed first at 6.7 war. I see that Fangraphs has pitching war lower across the board when compared to B-Ref. Is that true? I don't know if that's true. They have the same replacement level, right? It's just, it's different for different guys, different systems. But why is Gio Gonzalez so different at the two places? I understand the calculations are different, and I apologize for not knowing the specific differences between them, but this seems like a large gulf between the two. It definitely does.

Okay, so this one is actually easy to handle, and it's for reasons that anyone who understands the two different war calculations can probably already guess. So this year compared to last year, Gio Gonzalez has an almost identical strikeout rate. His walk rate is a little bit worse and he's allowed, his home rate is a tiny bit lower. So Gio Gonzalez, if you just look at his overall results outside of the runs he's allowed, his overall results are almost exactly the same. So he's the same pitcher, which is what you'd expect.

He's Gio Gonzalez. He's not going to change at this point he's 31 yeah sure whatever he's 31 years old he's not going to change except his era has gone from four and a half to two and a half so he's if you are familiar at all with the the era minus metric on fan graphs which is like era plus except just annoyingly reversed he's cut his era minus literally in half from 109 to 55 so instead of being nine percent worse than average now he's 45 better than average and here is why last season when geo gonzalez pitched with the bases empty he allowed a 240 batting average i don't know why i'm using batting average but here we are 240 batting average with men on base 280 with men in scoring position 320 this season when when Gio Gonzalez is pitched with the bases empty,

he's allowed a batting average of 237, same as last year, with men on base, 147, and with men in scoring position, 135. Gio Gonzalez this season has just not allowed hits with people on base, not because he's been pitching any better. His strikeout and walk numbers are actually worse in those situations. He just hasn't allowed hits. If you know batting average on balls in play this year with men on base 171, you can analyze this. You can go over how much better he's pitching with men on base and now he's getting weak contact and whatnot. It doesn't matter. It's not real. He's not this good. This is just Jason Vargas happening in the National League with a different sort of regression coming. Gio Gonzalez, not this good, but congratulations to him. I mean, he's technically earned this low ERA.

I was as surprised as you are, and you were as surprised as the reader was. And John Heyman. Well, who knows how surprised John Heyman was. But yeah, this is a thing that's... I guess I never really addressed the question, which was that Baseball Reference calculates its pitcher war based mostly on runs allowed and on Fangraphs it's about the peripherals and the expected

runs allowed. So that's the big difference on Fangraphs it's about FIP and on Baseball Reference it's about ERA. That's the oversimplification, but that is why one of those sites loves GeoGonzalez this year. Yep, and each approach has its virtues and it depends what you're trying to do, really. If you're trying to figure out maybe how a guy is going to pitch from

now on, maybe it'd be more likely to look at the fangrass war. If you want to just look at retrospective value, maybe you'd look at baseball reference. That's not really a perfect way to separate the two because you could say that Gio Gonzalez hasn't totally earned that, that maybe luck has played a big part in his run prevention or maybe the defense has. So there are complicating factors with both metrics, but yeah, that is the difference. And that is surprising that Gio Gonzalez is that high. And I guess that has helped make up for the Nationals having their entire team hurt at various times this year and still being on pace for, I think, 98 wins. So good for them.

I would like to take a moment just to interrupt you real quick. I'm going to read to you Jason Vargas' month-by-month ERAs, okay? Oh, I know you're going to enjoy this. I mean, look, I just want to make clear. I actually have liked Jason Vargas for a while. I just didn't want to write about how he's good because he's not. Okay, anyway. So these will be in order. So April through August. Jason Vargas, month by month.

The array is he's pitched plenty in every month. 1.40, 3.12, 1.98, 7.23, 7.11. Jason Vargas, he has regressed hard. Can you do Irvin Santana too? Oh, 7.11. Jason Vargas, he has regressed hard. Can you do Irvin Santana too? Oh, yeah. Because I feel like he's another one. That's a good one. Speaking of twins rotation.

And yeah, there's an article on Fangraphs recently by Craig Edwards that I think confirmed what we would have already thought or that previous research has shown, but showed it clearly that there just isn't nearly as much consistency in the results on balls in play that pitchers allow compared to hitters. And that's even when looking at stat cast stats and exit velocity and all of that. So there has been this temptation when a guy has a low BABIP and also seems to have allowed soft contact over that period. We now have the tools to prove that. And so it's very tempting to look at it and say, yeah, he has a 220 BABIP, but he has also allowed soft contact. So he has done something to deserve the low BABIP.

And that might be true, but that still doesn't make it any more sustainable necessarily than we would have said when we didn't have those tools at our disposal and we were just looking at plain old BABIP. Someone might be able to allow soft contact, whether by chance or through skill even, for some period of time and just not be able to continue doing that. So that I think was the case with someone like Urban Santana, possibly with Jason Vargas too, guys like that who just are able to maintain low BABIPs for a while and then not anymore. So you can get tripped up easily now that we have another level of detail we can look at. Anyway, give me Urban Santana's month by month ERAs. Okay. So this is actually kind of a bell curve so april through august 0.77 lols 2.57 6.03 4.68 2.73 coming back down this month he's got his season's best peripherals as to the previous point i think it's important and you're absolutely correct you figure we've known for i don't know 10 15 years that like for pitchers home run rate fluctuates a

bunch that it's a very volatile statistic that's not a controversial viewpoint at this point we've seen it just this year with like well jason vargas is one example or asahiro tanaka going in the other direction so we've known we've known as a fact that home run rate is volatile the tricky thing what trips people up is that now we have all these extra tools to be able to analyze the balls that are hit and play, or I guess in this case, balls not hit and play. So you can say, oh, well, yeah, he's giving up home runs. But I mean, they're like, they're legit home runs. These aren't wall scrapers. But that's not what it was ever about. It's not about pitchers giving up wall scrapers or or flies to the track. It's that even just home run contact is volatile. So you can say, sure, all of those home runs that a pitcher allows are well hit. Of course, it's well hit. It's a home run. Home runs are selected for baseballs that have been destroyed. But it doesn't mean that it's not a fluky statistic.

So it's really difficult. It's tempting. You think, OK, I have this data point. And now, look, I have this supporting data point that goes along with it. But it's not a separate analysis. You're just taking a different approach to look at the exact same thing. So it just means that both of them are fluky. So that's all.

I've basically just confirmed what you just said. Stat segment. Stat segment. OK, so last week, two weeks ago, a month ago, I don't know. We got an email from Richard and Richard was asking a question about Stephen Sousa, which is the first, I think, for the podcast just in general. And he was observing. I'm not going to read the entire email, but he was just observing that Steven Souza has hit a whole bunch of home runs against right-handed pitchers. Steven Souza bats

right-handed. And he hit his first home run against a lefty on August 19th when he and the rest of the league went deep against Mariners lefty Ariel Miranda. So it was interesting, according to Richard, that Steven Souza had hit so many more home runs against same-handed pitchers and took so long to hit a home run against an opposite-handed pitcher. Now, he was curious, what's the biggest difference in this stat all time? And also, who has hit the most home runs against same-handed pitchers without hitting a home run against an opposite-handed pitcher. Now, you can probably deduce as the listener that this is going to end up being selective for right-handed hitters because there are just so many more righties than lefties. So nothing too weird there. But I couldn't figure out a convenient way to do the analysis myself. It was going to take too long. And so I thought, oh, maybe I will send an email

to Hans van Sluten of Baseball Reference. and then Ben did it instead. Ben emailed Hans van Sluten because Ben is more of a forward thinker and I was procrastinating so thank you Ben and thank you Hans for the information that I received. So I guess we'll begin by looking at the biggest difference. So the players with the biggest difference between home runs against same-handed pitchers and opposite-handed pitchers. So the biggest difference ever, according to the baseball reference splits, is 42. And that was established by Sammy Sosa in 1998. Unsurprisingly, Mark McGuire, 1998, the third biggest difference.

And Alex Rodriguez is there in second at 41. So maybe that's interesting. Maybe it's not. I don't know. Sammy Sosa hit a bunch of home runs. He faced mostly right-handed pitchers. That's of what you're you're going to see adrian belchery is up there his 2004 season he had 42 homers against righties and six against lefties ralph kiner is up there a few times even above belchery and i don't know the most recent season

up here is uh 2010 jose batista 38 more homers against righties than lefties. So that's fun, but it's also, I think maybe a little more fun to look at the players who have the most home runs against same-handed pitchers and none against opposite-handed pitchers because I'm a big fan of zeros. And looking at the list that was forwarded by Hanson Sluton,

the name in first is Harland Clift from 1937. And if you research Harland Clift, I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. It's not Harland, it's Harland Clift from 1937. And if you research Harland Clift, I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. It's not Harland. It's Harland with an O, but he's dead. So I guess maybe it doesn't matter that much. But the split shows that he had 22 home runs against righties and zero against lefties. So in theory, that is the leader of the split. And Clift, he had the misfortune of playing for terrible baseball teams for a little over a decade, but he was a very good third baseman. He walked.

He played good defense. He hit for power. He is an underrated player. Here's the problem with this split. This is 1937, and the split shows a difference of 22 home runs. However, that season, he hit 29 home runs. So there is an incomplete split, which is not too surprising since this is going back 80 years.

So there's just incomplete information i guess even the big mac couldn't uncover all of the data for harland clift fun fact about harland clift if you look at his uh his baseball reference page he has a nickname it's lifted uh under full name harland benton clift it has nickname darky darky not a very appropriate nickname but i will now read from the saber.org page for Harland Clift. According to Bill James in his historical baseball abstract, Clift was given the nickname Darkie by teammate Alan Strange, also a rookie who thought Clift's first name was Harlem, the moniker with its racial overtones stuck. Although the rookie was so reluctant to talk

that he did not correct anyone who thought his name was Harland rather than Harland. Okay. Well, that explanation doesn't make it much better. Nope. So Alan Strange, kind of racist and stupid. I don't know. So if you move past Harland Clift, he might be the guy in first place. But this goes back so far. We can't really trust the splits. There is a guy in second place, which is effectively first place. There's a guy in second place, which is effectively first place. 1993, Jeff Kent, 21 home runs against right-handed pitchers,

zero home runs against left-handed pitchers. And I think one of my favorite things about Jeff Kent's career statistics, and I don't have a lot because I don't spend a lot of time looking at them, but just for fun, as long as we're talking about Jeff Kent's platoon splits. Jeff Kent, right-handed hitter, career, 855 OPS against righties. However, against lefties, he had a career OPS of 855. Jeff Kent, totally even, except in 1993. So pre-Giant breakout, I guess. 21 homers against righties and zero homers against lefties.

I think that's all I got. That's Jeff Kent. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you, Hans. All right. Question from Jacob, who says 30 to 3 save situation. And he links to the box score of the game that Grant just did a retrospective on, the

30 to 3 Rangers-Orioles game that just had its 10th anniversary. Baseball references saying that Wes Littleton got the save somehow. Jacob says, I'm looking at it right now. It's almost valid. Game was only 5 to 3 after the fifth, but he came in in the bottom of the seventh when it was 14-3 after the nine-run sixth. Is there a rule somewhere that says you always get a save if you get X number of outs without giving up the lead? Or did Littleton somehow inherit eight runners? Or is this an error in baseball references scoring?

If number one is right, is this objectively a worse, i.e. easier, lamer save situation than if you come in up four to one with two outs in the ninth and no one on? Yeah, there's a rule. And I don't know how well this is known. So I'm just going to read from the Wikipedia page for saves because that's where I do most of my research. In baseball statistics, the term save is used to indicate the successful maintenance of a lead by a relief pitcher, usually the closer until the end of the game.

A save is a statistic credited to the relief pitcher as set forth in Rule 10.19 of the Official Rules of Major League Baseball. That rule states that the official scorer shall credit a pitcher with a save when such pitcher meets all four of the following conditions. 1. He's the finishing pitcher in a game won by his team. Yes, Littleton was that guy. 2. He is not the winning pitcher. Correct. Littleton was not the not the winning pitcher three he is credited with at least one third of an inning pitched yes we know that and four he satisfies one of the following conditions he enters the game with a lead of no more than three runs and pitches for at least one inning no two he enters the game regardless of the count with the potential tying run either on base at bat or on deck no last condition he pitches for at least three innings ding ding ding wes littleton threw three innings

in a game his team won 30 to 3 i'm trying a query that i think could be illuminating i was curious if i could search the baseball reference play index for all-time saves but with the lowest win probability added and what i'm looking at is well this is making a sense how people have saves with negative win probabilities added well i guess now we have a stat segment i found a game 1933 high bell is credited with a save in a game in which he had a negative 0.268 win probability added so i'm just to dig into this one a little bit. I don't know how you get a save in a game you win in the bottom of the ninth. The hell was going on with saves back then? This was before saves were a thing.

So this would be like retroactively applied saves based on current saves rules. But still. I'm just going to go ahead and ignore this game because that's definitely not valid so let's move on to 2004 scott shields let's see what scott shields got up to this is a game that the angels beat the tigers 10 to 4 so okay and shields came in in the bottom of the seventh inning okay so what do we got here going into the bottom of the seventh it is five nothing angels so scott shields comes in with two outs and the base is loaded he replaces john lackey and scott shields is facing brandon inge and immediately gives up a grand slam okay so you shouldn't do that when you're when you're relieving and then let's see so shields keeps pitching clean bottom

of the eighth clean bottom of the ninth but yeah okay so maybe this is the wrong career to run because shields did get a save because he inherited a save situation but he also finished with a negative 1.88 win probability added so in that sense that's maybe the worst save of all time but not the silliest the silliest is definitely west littleton i will i will stand by that i agree all. All right. Question from Lee. This question is more than two years old, but hey, I just unearthed it from my email. You never know. You'll never know if I might answer an old question. This one is, as a Jeopardy fan, I have thought about the dominance of Ken Jennings and how it would have been unfair if we never got to see him play.

I sometimes think about how if the last game of his streak, the game he lost, had simply been the first game of his streak, he would have never won a game, and we would never know how great he was. Of course, he had as close to a 100% chance of winning a game of Jeopardy as anyone, but all it would have taken is for the one game he couldn't win to be the first game in his series for us to have completely missed out on his greatness. In the past, say, 50 years, how much greatness do you think we've missed out on in baseball without ever knowing it? I don't mean players like Mark Pryor, who we knew were capable of greatness but had poor luck. I mean how many people were never even identified as having top 1% talent. These would be people whose athletic ability was never identified at a young age, got very unlucky during their high school careers,

or just opted to pursue careers other than baseball, or perhaps people from countries that don't get scouted. We are now closer than ever to identifying every person with the talent to be a major leaguer, but I wonder how many people had the talent to be top-tier Hall of Famers, Bonzes, Ruths, Maddoxes, Kofaxes, but were never found. And I guess we can just exclude people from countries that don't play baseball because obviously they would have people if they grew up in a different place at a different time. But there's no point in, I mean, we could just assume, I suppose, that they have the same innate talent to play baseball as anyone in a country that does play baseball and they just never try. I guess we're talking about people in the States or in countries where baseball is popular.

And maybe the most common everyone, had major league ability and was getting scouted and had offers to play for teams, but just decided that he couldn't do it because he had to support his family and he got married very young and circumstances conspired against him. So that kind of thing is probably pretty common in other countries where baseball can be an escape, a way to elevate yourself financially, but also can be something that people might not necessarily be able to devote a lot of time to because they have to support themselves and their families. So that probably happens to a lesser extent in the States, but it's not unheard of. And certainly people have chosen other sports over baseball thinking that maybe the payoff would

come more quickly. But this question, more than that, or more than the Ken Jennings scenario, it probably doesn't happen very often in baseball that someone gets called up and has a terrible start or something and just never gets a chance again because of that terrible start. I mean, that may have happened at points in baseball history, but probably wouldn't happen today because I think teams are too smart to make that kind of judgment based on a single game. So I don't know how many people, I guess it boils down to just don't want to play baseball at a high level even though they could or they just never get discovered. is seven and a half billion or something like that now and i would think that many billions of people are of young athletic age and only a small fraction of those people will be even exposed to sort of the the scouting system whether because they're not growing up in north america or central america or whatnot there are just so many reasons and by focusing on baseball i mean you could turn

it around and say how many of how how much like I don't know, organist talent has been missed because of all these people who are pursuing other things with their lives instead of just committing to playing the organ for seven decades. Because, you know, I'll tell you what, the organ playing aging curve is probably smooth and it's a lot smoother than like pitching, especially for the Dodgers. So you miss a lot by just focusing on baseball because there's any number of things that people can do with their lives and most of them decide to do something else i would think that in terms of players who actually got a chance at baseball and then didn't get enough of one i bet baseball has missed out on a good number of like jamie moyers or i guess jamie's moyer jamie's moyer is how we'll pluralize this by just someone comes up and then he's not very good and he doesn't have the stuff so the team just gets rid of him and he doesn't get the opportunity because baseball teams will always side with stuff over results until there are enough results to be convincing so i think that

there have probably been a good number of moyers or if you prefer even like dallas keichels who just didn't get the chance to try to swim so i mean that's that would be part of it i don't think that i i'm unconvinced that baseball has failed to identify like a real hall of famer at least among people who have been able to play baseball so the question is is mostly how many people don't end up in baseball and the answer is most it's most people and there's a lot of talent there's so much raw athletic skill that's out there and and the people who play other sports or never actually pursue sports. But I don't know, you have to get started with baseball so early if you want to be great at it. Lorenzo Cain aside that I'm not sure how we're supposed to think of like, I don't know, a 24 year old from the Congo who has all the athletic skill in the world but had never heard

of baseball in his life. Is that greatness missed? I'm not sure how to answer that question. Right, yeah. I mean, the difference between baseball and Oregon, I guess, is that baseball is much more lucrative if you make it to the highest level. It might be a lot less lucrative, I guess, if you don't. But between that and kind of the status that you get, like if you're a great baseball player, I mean, at any level, it gives you a certain status among your peers. And, you know, I guess the idea would be that if you are really good at baseball,

and most people probably at least have some opportunity to figure out whether they would be good at baseball, they throw a ball at some point, someone sees them throw a ball, they have some sense of their own athleticism. And so there's a payoff waiting at the end that would induce people to keep playing. And if you're really good at something, maybe you don't want to stop. But I don't know. Just the fact that you're good at something doesn't necessarily mean that you enjoy it or that you want to pursue it more than anything else in the world. So I would have to think that there are people who had the talent to be great baseball players who just decided not to because that wasn't their thing. I mean,

I don't know. Like if you are the best player in your area in little league or whatever, and then you're the best player in your area in high school, I mean, at that point, you're probably not going to stop, I guess, because you're close enough that it's part of your identity and you can see the payoff and it's so close that you can almost plan on it and it's worth pursuing. But before that point, maybe you just never get into Little League because it doesn't look like something you would enjoy. But if you were to pursue it, you would actually be great at it. There have to be some people like that. And I have really no idea how to put a number on how many of them there are.

But I would think it's not unheard of. Okay, so you said that baseball is more lucrative than being an organist. So let me just... Okay, so I'm at the American Guild of Organists, the AGO. Okay, interesting. Under the header salary guidelines, we regret to inform you that the salary guidelines have been permanently taken down from our website and are no longer available from the guild in any form. We can no longer distribute them to members, clergy, or anyone else. Subheader, why are the salary guidelines and model contract provisions no longer available

on the AGO website? We've removed these documents from our website to comply with the requirements of our settlement agreement with the FTC. Chapters must do the same. For that matter, if you as a member have an old copy of the AGO's salary guidelines, you must not use that document in salary negotiations. You should destroy it. Wow. What happened with the AGO and the FTC? Okay, let's just look over at the payscale.com. Not a sponsor of the podcast.

Maybe it could be. Payscale. Subtitle, human capital. Church organist salary. Church organists in the United States tend to be well-versed in their field, and more than four-fifths have more than 10 years of experience. That makes sense. Average salary is expected to be around $19,000 per year,

but may range from $12,000 to $104,000 per year. What? My God. Okay, well, if you think that you're Major League caliber, you should go after that Major League salary. If you think you're like fringe Major League caliber, play the organ, man or woman. Male church organists are just a bit more common

among those who completed the questionnaire than female ones, with male workers composing 58% of the field. Job satisfaction is high, and work is enjoyable for most church organists. This sounds great. Medical and dental coverage is claimed by around 1 in 10, well, that's worse, and fewer than 1 in 20 earn vision coverage. This report is based on answers to Payscale's salary questionnaire. So, yeah, just something to think about.

$19,000 a year, you're getting minor league baseball player money. And then you can apparently get up to $104,000 per year if you're playing for, I don't know, Joel Osteen, which comes with its own negative side effects. Yes. If we have any organists in the audience, I'm sure we must. This is your moment. Email us, organists. Tell us what you make.

Yeah. Last question. This is from a Michael. So I was listening to a podcast about the Bruce Willis movie Unbreakable and the scene where he uses a car accident to create a fake injury to stop playing football got me thinking if he had played, he could have had a career with zero injuries and unparalleled arm strength. But what if he decided he didn't want to end up dissected in a lab somewhere when it became obvious he had superpowers? And what if we have baseball players

who do have this or are doing this? I don't we do but it's a hypothetical my initial thought would be a player like barry bonds what if he could legitimately slow down time to help him be such an amazing hitter that was a another effectively wild email right the hitter who has like a split second of foreknowledge on a play and we decided he'd be amazing. As discussed in similar questions, people would notice that he hit 1,000 and slugged 4,000. So he decided to use this just enough to be probably the greatest hitter ever. Or someone like Cal Ripken Jr.

who had Logan-like regeneration, but made up enough small injuries to not get noticed. Who do you think is most likely to have secret superpowers currently in the major leagues? First thought was Mike Trout because Mike Trout. But then I thought maybe it rolled as Chapman. What if he secretly has super elastic Mr. Fantastic style left arm that enables the extra speed on his pitches

so that he can quickly extend faster than even super slow-mo can reveal to release pitches slightly closer to the batter? And what would the reaction be if one of these players accidentally slipped up one day? A ban to the player, others coming out with their powers and starting a new league, societal upheaval to such an extent that baseball is finished. So, all right, let's go with the mutant theory. There is a mutant, just a genetic mutation in baseball. Who is it most likely to be? Well, I guess if you look at the skills, the raw skills, the thing that stands out, i guess the most standard deviations would have to be chapman's velocity right because we've got people who are

the fastest players are as fast as one another that's buxton and hamilton we've got judge hits the ball the same as john carlo stanton contact ability whatever nobody cares throwing the ball hurt even though there are very hard throwing pitchers i guess i don't think anyone still no one can throw the ball as hard as chapman can i think he can still get it up to 105 if he wants to sometimes so even though he's weirdly hittable this year he's still the most like a mutant in that regard i guess in terms of like avoiding injury i don't really know i always used to think that the closest thing to a superhero was randy johnson because he just threw every inning in baseball if you actually go back to his baseball reference page he uh he threw every

inning he threw 24 000 innings in the year 2001 it's tempting to say if you wanted to go i don't know a deep cut you would say that chris sale kind of just because people have been predicting he would break down forever but he's like weirdly extremely durable even though it seems like he should just fall apart with every pitch but i don't know and maybe sales like cutting up the uniforms and stuff is just a distraction when he thinks that he's getting too much attention for his pitching he's like i gotta be weird and like vaguely confrontational so that people don't want to cut open my arm but i don't know i guess if i were a superhero eventually i would die i don't want to cut open my arm but i don't know i guess if i were a superhero eventually i would die i don't know do superheroes die you watch more of the movies than i do some of them do

yeah okay well then who really cares if you get dissected when you're dead or is the fear that you'd get dissected when you're alive because that would be bad for a lot of people i think yeah it would be a persecution scenario like a an x-men style thing where they'd have to form their own league and play against each other because society shunned them. Well, I think that this is the real problem with the Dodgers because the Dodgers could identify the superhero, get the superhero, and then fake DL stints so that he'd ask so as not to arouse suspicion. Yes. All right. Let's end there. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild.

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