Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1109: Still Streaking

Episode Date: September 13, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan revisit their banter about ups and downs and Joe Mauer, then talk about (and talk about talking about) baseball’s long-lasting streaks, their takeaways from the Indians’ and Dodgers’ recent results, who’s actually on the White Sox, which playoff teams are likely to ride their bullpens hardest this October, the pitching […]

Do I have to do this all over again? Did not do it right the first time? Do I have to do this all over again? How many times do I have to make this fun? Hello and welcome to episode 1109 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. That was a very enthusiastic and emphatic beginning.

I know. Unusual. It really was. It does not at all match up with my actual enthusiasm, as we'll talk about in a few minutes. But a couple follow-ups I wanted to get to before we discuss the sort of topic for today. One about the up-down debate that we had on a recent episode, up the line and down the line, and which one is right, if either. And I thought there was a pretty good organizing philosophy about when you use up and when you use down that was sent in by a listener named Kevin. He says, chiming in on the up the line versus down the line debate from episode 1107,

listening to that episode, I realized my tendency is to use down the line when the action is moving in the desired direction and up the line when it's moving against the desired direction. A batter rips a double down the line and gets down the line well because that's where he wants to be going, while an offline throw pulls the catcher up the line because the catcher wants to stay at the plate, but is being taken away from that position. Why I have adopted that tendency and not the opposite, I don't know. Maybe it's a with gravity versus against gravity thing, or maybe it's in my head in terms of upstream versus downstream, but that's the terminology I use and wanted to offer my two cents. And that kind of works, right? As a way to decide when you use one and when you use the other.

Yeah, I guess as I think about it, I'm having trouble remembering all that many instances of up the line, but I guess if you use it, oh God, we're just getting right back into it again, because you can run, I guess if you were talking about a guy running to first really fast, we're doing this all over again, that most people will still say down the line, you can run i guess if you were talking about a guy running to first really fast we're doing this all over again that most people will still say down the line you can say up the line which would run contrary to this organizing principle however if we were to use this as an organizing principle moving forward i am all about it i will adopt this into my current i don't know how haven't i ever write these words but i will i will use this until or unless i forget to use this yes yeah i like this one and we got a sort of similar response from a listener named jay who says essentially i

think the direction is dynamic depending on the situation i treat down as the direction the runner or ball is heading if the runner is heading to first he's heading down the line and that rule stays consistent if there's a runner on third and the batter hits a single, for a brief moment, both runners are running down their respective baselines, even though they're running in opposite directions on the diamond. The same goes for throws and batted balls. A line drive is always down the right field line, traveling down toward its destination relative to the starting point of home plate. A throw toward the third base side of home is up the line relative to the destination of home plate. There's another usage of down that speaks to this idea too, with which anyone who played a little league is likely familiar.

Between innings when the catcher tosses the final warm-up throw to second base, he's throwing down to second. I think applying that rule, wherein a runner or ball is always starting uphill and moving downhill, if forced to retreat then, they head back up the line to their original base makes the most sense. So, yeah, that seems reasonable. Is that consistent with what we were just saying, I think? Sure. Maybe? Yeah.

Yeah. Let's say yes. I think people will believe us if we say yes. When did Effectively Wild become sort of the official contemporary baseball dictionary? I don't know. I think definitely in the Jeff Sullivan era, I think. Yeah. Is this what happens like behind the scenes with dictionaries? Do they just have these raging debates and then people write in? There must be a dictionary podcast.

Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. And Jay also noted, and some other listeners noted, this is not purely a baseball source of confusion, right? In English, you can say that you are up for doing something or down for doing something, and it means the same thing. And Jay also noted that this is not purely a baseball thing in sports. He says other sports have problems with this as well. In football, when a quarterback looks to throw a deep pass, he's throwing the ball downfield. It's even in the rules with ineligible men downfield penalties. But if that same quarterback is scrambling and trying to find

a receiver down the field, he's doing a good job of keeping his eyes upfield. So I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if that's consistent with either of the explanations we just used, but I like that. If you're going in the direction you're supposed to be going, it's down, used but i like that if you're you're going in the direction you're supposed to be going it's down which i think is a change from my initial position about up being the way that you run to first base anyway let's just adopt that as the official position of effectively wild just to simplify our lives then you you run into consistency issues with everything going downhill or uphill where downhill can imply that things are going worse or they're about to get much easier whereas uphill can be things are about to get more difficult or you're about to peak

and then it's only gotten more complicated as i've gotten older and developed kind of worse hiking knees where i realized sometimes uphill is better than downhill so even the connotations that are implied by uphill or downhill don't really mean the same thing anymore so maybe the problem here is not with baseball or with sports, but with how we interpret English. But I guess at the end of the day, as long as people understand what you mean, you can just say someone is running down or up. Someone is running along a line. And as long as you know that there is a runner going in one direction. Thankfully, we know runners mostly go in one direction unless they're Josh Harrison stuck between faces.

Then the meaning is conveyed, but it's sloppy. Or Matt Holiday trying to dive back into first on a double play opportunity. So we got another follow-up from Nathan about our discussion of Joe Maurer as a Hall of Fame candidate. And he says, it seems as if the consensus in our discussion was that if he plays a few more years and racks up two to three wins a year, he's a Hall of Famer because of how he stacks up against other catchers in the Hall of Fame in all time. This got me wondering why you were making comparisons to catchers and not first basemen.

From 2005, Maurer's first full season, to 2011, he was exclusively a catcher. He also DH'd, but he did that throughout his career, so it doesn't seem significant. From 2011 to 2013, he split significant time between catcher and first base. And then from 2013 until now, and presumably the rest of his career, he's been exclusively a first baseman. So if he plays three more years while remaining at first base, that'll leave him with six years exclusively at catcher, three years of splitting catching in first base, and seven years of exclusively playing first base. Wouldn't he be more of a first baseman than a catcher at that point and that is a pretty good point yeah it is a good point and for that reason

Maurer shouldn't be compared against someone like Yachty or Molina who's only ever going to catch at the same time though very few players are able to catch for as long as Maurer did and he was pretty good at catching so if you're his peer pool you I guess would sort of have to blend between catchers and first baseman where one of those positions has a very high bar forward Hall of Fame induction and the other one has a pretty low bar. So it's not fair to compare him to people who exclusively caught. However, the fact that he did catch for so many years does sufficiently separate him from the pool of first baseman who could never dream of doing anything like that.

Unless, I guess, they're playing the last game of the season in the low minor leagues right so as we were just saying before we started recording it feels like we're sort of stuck in a loop it's like groundhog day every day in baseball right now because the two biggest stories are the dodgers losing and the indians winning and that happens every day and has happened every day for weeks now. And both of these streaks, particularly the Indians, which as we speak, is up to 19 games, Dodgers at 11 and what, 16 out of 17 or something. So we're now going back like three weeks or so of these teams doing what they're doing. And that's long enough that it became notable a while ago. And so we've

all sort of said our piece about these things, but we have to keep saying our pieces because it keeps happening every day. So we kind of touched on both of these developments, I think, on a previous episode. And I did a whole episode of the Ringer MLB show. We talked to Annie McCullough about the Dodgers. We talked to Jordan Bastion of the Indians. But it's just the story that keeps on giving or requiring or just demanding our attention in some way. And it seems as if every article on Fangraphs right now is an Indians-related article or maybe a Dodgers-related article. Anyway, I don't know if there's that much more to say, because each day, obviously, it gets more of interest and notable and historic. But each day is really just one additional baseball game from the day before.

And we know that one additional baseball game doesn't really teach us a whole lot about teams. So it's hard to keep coming up with original things to say about these teams, even though they both are pretty fascinating stories if you have not talked about them before. So it's hard to know exactly where to go with this, but I feel obligated to discuss it in some way. Right. It feels suffocating as I sit here and I try to think about stuff to write. It's hard not to just want to write about the Indians and the Dodgers. And maybe if I could twist things around since this all began, or at least since the Dodgers slump began. So we're going back to August 25th, which I think is the last time the Dodgers well second to last time penultimate time the Dodgers won a baseball game and since then we're looking at two and a

half weeks of baseball two and a half weeks of baseball the Indians have gained 15 and a half games on the Dodgers but okay that sounds that whatever, that's twisting things like, yeah, go Indians, Dodgers are screwed. But the Dodgers still hold a four-game lead over the Indians in the regular season standings. So you could overreact to the last two and a half weeks if you want, but if you are a Dodgers fan or somebody who just doesn't really care for the Indians or who likes to be counter-narrative, I know you're out there, internet, this is still, what a season for the Dodgers where they're going to handicap they could spot the Indians 15 and a half games in less than three weeks and they still have what I would consider a fairly safe lead in the standings the Dodgers playoff odds of course haven't wavered at all the Indians playoff odds were already great this is interesting Grant Brisby wrote an article the other day about how having unmarried the all-star game from world series home field advantage has made this the best record in baseball conversation a little more interesting which is true to whatever extent you care about that last game of the world series it is just it's always interesting to know who's going to have the best record anyway

but i mean what a year for the dodgers where they could almost literally just be asleep for the entirety of september and it just doesn't matter. It's concerning when you have Clayton Kershaw whose velocity is down and Alex Wood whose velocity is down and people suddenly are having trouble hitting. But as I think we all know, players go through hot streaks and slumps all season long, etc. Etc. Cliches. What a winning streak is or what a losing streak is, is when too many of those slumps or hot streaks overlap.

I guess there's no such thing as too many hot streaks overlapping. That's just really good baseball. But you know, the Indians are going to the record books. I don't really care that they can beat the Detroit Tigers right now. It doesn't really mean anything to me. It is a little more interesting that the Dodgers are having trouble beating literally anyone. But yeah, I don't know how much it would take to convince me that the Dodgers are actually bad. But it's going to take more than this, which speaks to the strength of the Dodgers in the first place, I guess. Yeah. And their division lead as we speak is still nine games with what, like 18 to go or something, which is very safe. Certainly you would say it's, I mean, no one would even be talking about that as

something that's remotely in danger if they weren't losing every single day. But even though they are, and even though a lot of this poor performance on their part coincided with the Diamondbacks winning every day, that lead is still pretty solid. And yeah, I mean, that is why this is so fascinating. I think it would be of interest if any contending team had a stretch like this. But to go from five months of clearly being the best team in baseball and perhaps one of the best teams ever and to go from that to playing like at least the worst team in baseball for what is now not a very short stretch is is crazy and there are a lot of reasons

and theories and explanations for it and partly it is a product of the fact that they had that giant lead and they have been able to take it easy with some guys and give Corey Seager time off and not work various pitchers all that hard. So some of it is just that they put themselves in a position where it was okay if they lost a lot on the way to the playoffs, although obviously they did not expect or intend to lose this much. So you mentioned Kershaw, you mentioned Wood. Is there anything else that is concerning about this Dodgers stretch from your perspective? I'm looking at, I know there's been a lot of,

I don't know why there's been so much focus on Curtis Granderson. Seems like a weird person to lay so much blame upon. But I'm just pulling up some numbers because as long as we're going to be throwing stuff around, I can say that since Curtis Granderson played his first game with the Dodgers, they've gone six and 18. However, since former Mets teammate Jay Bruce went to the Indians and played his first game, they've gone 28 and five. So maybe this is why the Mets couldn't really ever emerge they had Bruce's winning ways and Granderson's losing ways blended into the same roster just didn't really do anything but as far as the Dodgers are concerned I just can't bring myself to care about

it's it's mind-blowing of course that this is happening just because there's no good reason for this to be happening but as I look at the team I just don't I don't care. It's going to take so much more for me to believe that this team isn't good because at the end of the day, this team still has the best record in baseball. And I have spent way too much time trying to be smart about baseball that I just can't bring myself to assume that one of the worst two and a half week stretches that's ever existed actually means more than one of the best five month stretches that's ever existed actually means more than one of the best five month stretches that's ever existed so i just i can't i can't do it and i know that that probably means that you and i are on the same page here what i can say is that around the trade deadline

i wrote some article about how the dodgers didn't really need you darvish and i thought that that was just going to be like a vanity move if anything else and it was just going to give them some embarrassment of riches well uh credit to thegers. They might have been able to forecast something that they were about to experience. Kershaw is still good, but there is at least one question, maybe two. I'll say there are two questions about Clayton Kershaw. There are countless questions about Alex Wood, who's had a very good season, but it's gotten worse. Rich Hill is not the model of consistency. So Hugh Darvish, even though I know his ERA with the Dodgers is over five five i don't care because he's still doing everything that you darvish has always done he's good dodgers made a good decision to get him i will gladly concede they did i wouldn't

say need you darvish but they did well to get him they anticipated that they might run into some trouble this is said trouble and because they have him i am less concerned about their starting rotation moving forward and there's the usual stuff about the bullpen but when you get the end with Kenley Jansen in the playoffs, you don't really need a whole lot more. Yeah. And I mean, I guess there are some concerns about Darvish too, right? In that he hasn't pitched well and missed a start and had that disastrous start right before they acquired him and hadn't been pitching very well before they acquired him.

So there was already some question about how good he actually was and was he an ace or was he not an ace or was he even more of a mid-rotation guy based on how he had pitched over the previous month or so leading up to the trade deadline and his performance hasn't been super reassuring as a dodger but you know i i don't know if that's one of the most concerning things that has happened to them during this stretch. But I guess it's the whole pitching staff. There's some concerns about every starter, seemingly, which has, I guess, been the case for the Dodgers going back a couple seasons now, and it hasn't really hurt them overall.

Yeah. And you look at this team and, you know, Kenley Jansen's there in the bullpen. He's good. Brandon Morrow, by the way, is out there being awesome. They traded for Tony Singrani, who's been good. They traded for Tony Watson, who's been good. They do have like a real bullpen here. And of course, when you get to playoff time, you can limit it to, I don't know exactly what they're going to do, but you know, Kershaw, Hill and Darvish are going to be in there. So whether you have Alex Wood as your fourth starter, he's been great overall, or Kenta Maeda or Hyunjin Ryu is pitching better. They have so many options

that it feels like a lot of this slump has fallen on the shoulders of pitchers who are unlikely to see much in the way of important innings in the playoffs anyway. Now, granted, the offense hasn't hit, but this is still an offense that ranks third overall in OPS, second in OBP. And I just I don't care. I don't care. You're not going to convince me that this lineup of players is actually bad. You can convince me that Chris Taylor has played over his head. I will.

I will concede that. But Corey Seager, if he can just get healthy, then he's going to make a big difference. And then Seager is really good. Turner's really good. You can just kind of count on getting decent performance from other players it's not a lineup that's been built on like super record there's no trout really in the lineup but corey seager is kind of not a bad approximation i guess if you're looking for someone who's below trout's level and get them back they're gonna be fine yep and i know that obviously the

fans are some segment of the fan base is panicking and it has been difficult to watch, I guess, especially the 11th loss, which didn't end until like, what, five in the morning Eastern time because of delays. Adding delays to injury. But yeah, I don't know. injury but yeah I don't know I mean I guess it totally changes the storyline of the Dodgers heading into the playoffs because it seemed inevitable that if anything they were going to be overrated heading into the playoffs because it looked like they were going to be coming off one of the best regular seasons of all time and there is maybe still some misconception about the odds that a great regular season team has in the playoffs. And so I was all ready to be kind of downplaying the Dodgers odds, even though they looked really

good there. Like it seemed like their World Series odds were up around, I don't know, one in five or something, which is good because there are 10 teams in the playoffs. But now I think if anything, people will be underrating the Dodgers potentially heading into the playoffs, depending on how the last few weeks of the season play out, obviously. But if they limp into the playoffs, we'll see lots of citations of Jay Jaffe's article about how if you end on a September slump, it doesn't matter in the playoffs, which probably someone should update at this point. But I think, yeah, it has changed the story. It looked like we were going to have to be reminding people that baseball's playoffs are weird and wonky, and even a historically great team has only this great a chance to actually win the playoffs or win the World Series. And now it looks like we will be

perhaps reminding people of something different, which is that, hey, the Dodgers are actually pretty good and five months tells you more than one month and that sort of thing. So I don't know. Andy, when we talked to him, seemed to think that maybe it has reached the point where it could affect the team's confidence, that kind of thing.

And there's no way for us really to weigh in on whether that's the case or not. I don't know if there's any benefit to feeling like you're unbeatable and then feeling like you're completely beatable and whether there's some sort of demoralizing effect there that carries over. That's not really the realm of questions we can answer. But I think just based on the talent, at least, I still think it's pretty tough to be that concerned. I suspect. So first of all, the Dodgers do have another, what is it, 18 games left in the season.

And so if they win, I don't know, even eight of those, then I think we can just kind of forget about this. Then they'll finish with 100 wins. That'll be great. But I also suspect that at least from a player perspective, something does kind of change when the calendar flips, so to speak, and you get to the playoffs where i think that it probably does feel like a blank slate or a new slate new opportunity where you think okay a regular season was a completely different season doesn't matter anymore everyone starts from the same position and you will uh as a player if the dodgers did this going into the playoffs if they were 1 and 15 or whatever they've done 1 and 16 going directly into the playoffs i can understand that that would it's not an easy

thing that to just forget about because you would know as a player hey it feels like it's been a while since we won a game but i do suspect that when the playoffs begin players just kind of have a mental reset and while we're here quick shout out to the 2001 seattle mariners proof that doing what the 2001 seattle mariners did was incredibly difficult. The worst month, the worst month that the Mariners had that year, they went 18-9. That's winning two-thirds of their games. Here are their winning percentages by month. 800, 741, 667, 667, 690, 714.

And then they went 5-1 in October before they went I guess much worse than that in the rest of October the important parts of October but good for that team who didn't hit their slump until well I guess you could say the worst possible time to have it right yeah all right and so as for the Indians there's just a litany of fun facts about their dominance during this stretch and they've outscored their opponents by 100 runs in these 19 games, which is crazy. And the pitching has been incredible, not just during this stretch, but all season, which you actually just wrote about. So what is the update on the historicness of the Indian staff, which we kind of touched on, but you explored in greater depth?

Yeah. So I wrote yesterday, or I guess I'll just say Monday, I put up a post that included all the numbers through Sunday night when the Indians had won 18 games in a row. And they were, I'm not going to say on pace for, but I looked at all pitching staffs in Major League history since 1900, which feels like, well, first of all, it feels like way too far back to go because who cares what happened in 1900. But also whenever i set a cut off at like 1950 people complain that i'm excluding all of the original baseball teams so i don't know i don't care i'm not that passionate

about this stuff you guys should know better than that but i looked at all pitching staffs as measured by just fangraphs war which i know is not perfect but whatever just deal with it and i went back to 1900 and i looked at every team pitching staff ever individual seasons and i calculated war per 162 games for obvious reasons wanted everyone over a common denominator and the indians were on track to have the greatest team pitching staff war ever by a margin of something like a win and i don't know exactly what they did yesterday but i can tell you pretty quick the indians yesterday had the highest team pitching staff war in baseball so they added even more they added another four tenths of a win so the indians at this point they have so little season left to play they don't need to be elite the rest of the way to finish

with the highest team pitching war of all time if you look and said it pitching war on the basis of runs actually allowed which is a different metric that fangraphs makes available then they're still in the top 10 of all time i think yesterday they ranked ninth when i look and as a final glance if you combine the two different war metrics and blend them 50 50 or i guess y 50 50 reduce that to a common denominator one to one then if you take a blend of the two wars and you put that over a per 162 game schedule the indians again back to number one so by only those measures that is the only measure that i looked at only three measures i guess that i

looked at by just that the indians look like they could have arguably the greatest pitching staff in a regular season in baseball history. That elicited some negativity in the comments, something, something about underrating baseball history, all that nonsense about how maybe war isn't well designed to capture how baseball used to be played. And you know what? I don't care because at the end of the day, the pitching staffs in 1913 are a lot worse than pitching staffs now anyway. So if you assume that baseball is the best version of baseball that it's ever been, yeah, you know what? I don't care.

People like to give the Braves from the 90s a lot of credit. Indians, arguably better. The entirety of the argument is wins above replacement. If you have a problem with the conclusion, you have a problem with the stat. If you have a problem with the stat, that's fine. I don't care. Yeah. No, I mean, and during this stretch, I think I saw Jordan Bastion tweet something.

I mean, and during this stretch, I think I saw Jordan Bastion tweet something. It's basically like the whole rotation has pitched like Pete Kershaw or something, which is how you win this many games in a row. And not only that, but just like improbable people on the team have played well. As Dave Cameron just wrote, it's like Yandy Diaz and Jan Gomes and Roberto Perez and Mike Clevenger and Joe Smith. I mean, some of these guys are okay, but they have been really dominant in unexpected ways during this stretch. And even Urshela, guys like that. I mean, it's basically just everyone playing well. And yeah, I mean, now they're playing the Tigers. And so they totally beat up on the Tigers on Monday 11-0. and the Tigers are just in a pretty sorry state right now. So they probably have the worst pitching staff in baseball,

I'm guessing, post Verlander and with Michael Fulmer out. So this is not a difficult assignment, and I guess at this point, with two games to go and considering their opponents, they have to be what, like at least 50-50 or something to set the AL mark and get to 21 in a row. Some of you, by the time you're hearing this, may already know whether they have done that or failed to do that, but it seems like their odds of doing it are fairly good. And of course, if they do it, then we'll all have to come up with another way to write and talk about them about two days from now. So it's going to be even more difficult. I wonder, you might be under a little more editorial pressure because you kind of have to write about the big topics. At least I can be cushioned by Dave Cameron and Travis Soschick,

and Travis is already sort of on the Indians beat anyway which makes this convenient and Dave has to have his articles go up as well so I think that Dave Dave's current tack is alternating between hey the Indians are really good and the Dodgers suck and then those that's been his content for the last little while plus one yeah he's post so I get a little bit of cushioning also I just looked at the numbers I can tell you right now that the Indians of course still have 18 games left to play but their pitching staff already ranks seventh highest war ever. They are two wins away from the 1996 Braves, who are in first place. The Braves at 29.5 wins above replacement and these Indians at 27.5 wins above replacement. They need to gain just 2.1 wins above replacement in their last 18 games.

gain just 2.1 wins above replacement in their last 18 games that would put them on a pace for a roughly 18.9 war season which is fine but uh neither good nor bad so if the indians pitch fine neither good nor bad the rest of the way they would stand as the highest war ever which is uh pretty cool also those braves the 1996 braves first place ever 1997 Braves, third place ever The 1999 Braves, sixth place ever And the 1998 Braves, tenth place ever Braves, they were good I don't know if you knew that Those Braves could pitch Yeah, so I guess the question for me then is

If the Indians have this historically great pitching staff Do you think that the playoff usage of that pitching staff Will differ completely from what we saw from them last year? Because what they did last year seemed like it was precedent setting, and it will be very fascinating to see how teams use their bullpens this postseason, whether every team tries to do what Terry Francona did last year. But of course, as Francona has said, as a lot of people have said, they did that partly because they had to do that because they were missing a lot of pitchers. They had injured

people. And so they compensated for those weaknesses by stretching their relievers, which they could do. And now they have this incredible starting rotation, which is mostly healthy, I guess, with the possible exception of Danny Salazar. And Andrew Miller has been hurt and his durability is somewhat in question. So I am curious to see, A, do other teams adopt the 2016 Indians postseason approach? And B, do the 2017 Indians abandon the 2016 Indians playoff approach? Yeah, I think because now Miller is the big question mark. And I guess you could say the Danny Salazar is generally a question mark. But you figure the Indians are not obviously going to limit the innings from Corey Kluber.

They're unlikely to limit the innings from Carlos Carrasco is really good. And Trevor Bauer's caught fire. So I would imagine that Bauer will at least be given a chance to get through the order third time in the playoffs. But, you know, they will probably watch him a little closer. And then after that, I don't know whether it's Salazar or Clevenger or even Josh Tomlin or even old Ryan Merritt. If he comes back, depending on who their option ends up being for the fourth spot, then, you know, you could see a lot of mixing and matching. They have enough options there that they don't need to stretch anybody out too much.

I don't think that they're going to need to do the Corey Kluber on three days rest over and over and over this time around. But so in that sense, I think that this playoff pitching staff is going to look a lot more normal. But you know, you don't you don't really know until you see it. And for all I know, this playoff pitching staff could last all of three games before it's eliminated because, you know, baseball is going to do what it does pretty often. But yeah, I think that the Indians not because they want to move away from last year's usage so much, but I think that just because of the wealth of options they have, it's going to look pretty ordinary in the playoffs. I think my current, well, I'm not going to say my favorite fun fact, but among my favorite fun

facts about these Indians is that their pitching staff has only one pitcher who has been worth negative war. That's Sean Armstrong this year. His war is negative 0.1. That's it. That is the only negative war they have given innings to this season. So they just have so much depth everywhere. And this is a team that is currently pitching without Andrew Miller and Boone Logan is down and all that stuff. So the bullpen right now is a little thinner than I think they thought it was going to

be, but it doesn't matter. a little thinner than I think they thought it was going to be, but it doesn't matter. It's really like the anti-Reds, or at least the anti-2016 Reds, where every pitcher was below replacement level. Speaking of which, how are the Reds doing in the replacement level? They're doing better. They're at 2.6.

They're all the way up at 2.6. And you mentioned that the Tigers might have the worst pitching staff since they made some moves. I'm going to, I don't know, raise the ante here and say the White Sox. Quintana was traded at the deadline, right? Or right around the deadline. Okay, so why don't we just have a little look-see at how the White Sox have done ever since the All-Star break. So second half, second half pitching staffs. White Sox team ARA 5.30.

That's bad. Not the worst in baseball, but the second worst team war in baseball since the All-Star break. Oakland Athletics 1.9. The worst pitching staff since the All-Star break. Chicago White Sox negative 1.6. They have been atrocious. And if you're curious whether it's the starters or the relievers who share the blame, yes,

the White Sox starters worst in baseball since the All-Star break. But the bullpen has been the worst in baseball since the All-Star break. Bullpen, you could say, has been worse. Somehow the rotation has a higher strikeout rate than the bullpen. So that's what happens when you trade literally everybody in the bullpen who's worth much of anything. And I guess as a fun little side effect, you remember that this year the a's were supposed to be a team built with like an interesting young pitching staff and maybe maybe they would be able to hit enough well so i mentioned in the second half the a's have had the second worst pitching in all of baseball yet at the same time

by hitting by wrc plus the a's have been the best team uh the best hitting team since the elster break so who knows what's going on in oakland if they could just have both things firing at the same time then they would have a team with only bad defense but not that much going right with oakland but the white socks pitching staff is absolutely terrible can you okay let's play this game again name as many white socks pitchers as you can name oh my goodness uh all right well carl sardone still on the white socks he's injured but sure yeah it counts i'm gonna need gonna need it all right let's see we got still in the White Sox. He's injured, but sure. Yeah. It counts. I'm going to need it. All right.

Let's see. We got still in the White Sox. I'll take 40-man roster, but active would be nice. James Shields, still in the White Sox, right? Absolutely. I don't know how or why, but he's there. Yeah. Right.

We bantered about one. Oh, we talked about Mike Pelfrey, right? I think. I don't think I've ever talked about Mike Pelfrey before in my life, but he is there. Yeah, I noted that because that seemed emblematic of how they were doing. Yeah. Gosh, their whole bullpen is just, well, they still have, no, I was going to say they still have Anthony Swarczak, but they don't, right?

No. No. Yeah. No. Yeah. Geez. Oh, well, they promoted Reynaldo Lopez, so he's around. So, so far, I've noticed... Gialito? Gialito is...

Okay, so, so far, you have named exclusively starting pitchers for the Chicago White Sox. I'm looking at their September relievers. You have mentioned not a... Oh, well, okay. You did mention mike pelfrey who has relieved once in september that is one out of 14 gosh name name some white ox relievers please is zach putnam still on the team i believe he's disabled yeah well okay let me take that back i don't think he's disabled but I think he's on the disabled list. Right, yes.

Gosh, I don't know who is in the White Sox bullpen. They traded the whole bullpen. Okay, let's do this. Gregory Infante. He leads the team in relief appearances in September with, who cares, Aaron Bummer. There's one you might have been able to get, Aaron Bummer. Yes, should have known Aaron Bummer. Jake Petrica.

I feel like I could be pronouncing that wrong because it's probably supposed to be Petrica. As long as we're doing Eastern European, but we're not dylan covey jace fry okay danny farquhar chris beck al albuquerque carson fulmer juan mania chris volstad derrick holland mike pelfrey rob brantley 14 white socks relievers one of those being a catcher i guess so yeah whatever oh and that reminds me of those names okay that reminds me. I know some of those names. Okay, that reminds me. So we haven't mentioned J.D. Davis. Oh, yeah.

Not a White Sox player, but definitely a third baseman. However, there's a twist. Michael Babin's a big fan, so we talked about him briefly. But yeah, he's got good stuff. Yeah, I haven't run the numbers to see where he ranks up. But J.D. Davis,ro's rookie third baseman slash first baseman slash pitcher has pitched twice in blowouts nothing particularly interesting there whatever position players will pitch when the game is out of hand but jd davis has not only thrown the ball over 90 miles per hour he uh he pitched in college i believe but he's faced seven batters

in the major leagues as a pitcher as a pitcher third baseman as a pitcher and he struck out three of them and he didn't just strike out like three September call-ups who played for the White Sox or something. He struck out Marcus Simeon, Shinsu Chu, and Chris Davis. Which Chris Davis? It doesn't matter. They're both the same. He struck out one of them. You could probably glean from the Marcus Simeon fact which Chris Davis it was. But J.D. Davis, third baseman, three strikeouts as a position player.

That's really, that is outstanding. In fact, while you talk, I'm going to look something up. Okay. White Sox relievers. We talked about him because he is too good to do this regularly, I think, unfortunately. Like, I guess, fortunately for him. But he's probably too promising a position player to just become a two-way player, although that would be fun, and he seems better equipped to do that than most position player pitchers. But maybe it will at least develop into a semi-regular role, which we have seen with some guys like Chris Jimenez and, I don't know, the Dodgers' old backup catcher, Drew Butera.

the Dodgers old backup catcher, Drew Butera. So I guess he could end up in that kind of role where he is more than moonlighting, but not doing it on a full-time or even regularly part-time basis. I got there. Christian Bethencourt. So I looked at position players or non-pitchers who have recorded at least three strikeouts. So nothing really extreme here. Christian Bethencourt shows up, but he doesn't count because they try to make him a pitcher. By the way, he's terrible, but whatever. Going from there there drew butera does have four strikeouts out of 16 batters faced that's incredibly good for a non-pitcher so butera one walk four strikeouts 16 batters faced he looks quite good jd davis three out of seven as mentioned and then after that you have to scroll pretty far down paul yanish has struck

out three out of 17 batters faced and I'm scrolling. I'm scrolling. Oh, here we go. We have Skip Schumacher, three strikeouts out of 21 batters faced and Jason Lane. Nope, Jason Lane doesn't count. He tried to pitch. Still scrolling. Rick Ankeel, we've decided he does not count. And we end up, well, this is enough scrolling. Dave McCarty, four strikeouts out of 14 batters face or JD Davis not unprecedented but really really interesting and if he is able to pitch more we can see his numbers go up and I believe that if I'm not mistaken JD Davis has the unusual distinction of having been a position player pitching in September he made an appearance on September 9th in the first game of a doubleheader so you know that could have been

part of it but when uh when I wrote earlier this year about how it seemed like there were more position players pitching than usual And then I extrapolated out to six months People very appropriately pointed out that, well, you should probably just extrapolate to five months Because there's really no good reason for a position player to pitch in September Well, tell that to the Houston Astros who pitched J.D. Davis on September 9th First game of a doubleheader, they were losing 11-1 J.DD. Davis threw two thirds of an inning, allowed a hit, a walk and struck out two betters. All right. Last thing, since we just talked about how the Indians may not need to do the 2016 Indians thing again, which team do you think is best positioned to do that,

to do the bullpen game kind of approach to the playoffs this year. Well, let's see who's in position to go to the playoffs. Yeah. I mean, I guess the Yankees, right? We've talked about, you've written about their bullpen and how deep it is and the rotation is not their strength. So if you were going to do that, I mean, their relievers don't necessarily have the histories of Andrew Miller, haven't been conditioned to pitch in weird ways or be stretched out. It's not really something Joe Girardi has shown a lot of inclination for. But in terms of pulling starters early, at least just because you can, they seem like good candidates. Yeah, I think the Yankees are good candidates. The Astros are

an interesting candidate to me. Ever since they traded for verlander there that is a guy that i think a team could or would trust to just throw almost as many innings as you put on his shoulders and then after after verlander on the astros rotation there are a lot of question marks maybe fewer about dallas keitel so they they could maybe be in sort of a pseudo indians position where verlander would be their equivalent of kluber keitel gives him kind of a leg up. But then when you look behind them, you have this Morton, Peacock, McCullers, McHugh quadrumverate. Well, the foursome of Morton, Peacock, McCullers, and McHugh, all of whom are perfectly good, but not really super reliable on a day-to-day basis. The numbers are good. But again, you just don't know how much you can trust them or push them,

especially when you get into the season's seventh month. I know that recently the Astros have had some bullpen problems. They haven't pitched very well. They haven't played very well, just kind of full stop. But I like the depth that they have in the bullpen. And I think that you could see sort of a maybe some piggyback starting going on where I don't know, you probably don't want Morton facing a lineup a third time in the playoffs, but you probably don't want Peacock or McCullers or McHugh facing a lineup a third time in the playoffs. So there are going to be a lot of interesting options for the Astros when you get past the first and second rotation spots in the playoffs. And then you can go into the bullpen and you know that you have Ken Giles is going to be really good closing it out. Christopher Davinsky has not had quite the season that we all wrote about him maybe having in April, but he's still quite good. There is still talent in that bullpen, even if you don't think that Klippert or Liriano were any good, which that's a perfectly reasonable question. So the Astros, I think, are in position to have an interesting playoff pitcher usage

pattern just kind of going down here by record. So we talked about the Indians. The Nationals look pretty ordinary. They're certainly not going to want to overuse their bullpen. No. Did the Astros. Dodgers, they look like they're starting pitcher heavy Dodgers. They look like they're starting pitcher heavy. Red Sox look like they're starting pitcher heavy.

Diamondbacks. Same deal. Yankees. You just discussed. Rockies. Good luck to them. Cubs. Cubs are still the Cubs.

Twins. Again, I don't really know what pitchers you want to use. Angels. Oh, OK. If the I don't. OK, so the Angels. Yeah, the Angels. If they they would be like the indians but if you took away kluber and miller i guess i don't know i i want this team to make the playoffs

just to see what in the hell they would do in a series because it's not let me let me level with you it's not good it's this is not a good situation yeah we've played the who's on this pitching staff game with them i believe so they're another team in that kind of situation do you know who leads the angels pitching staff in wins above replacement this year fangrass version garrett richards after like two appearances incorrect he is 13th okay uh who you smear up a tea ranks first place and by like a full win here here are the top five this is top five top five angels pitchers by wins above replacement these are the only angels pitchers this year to be worth at least one win above replacement you smear up a tea first place non-roster invitee second place blake parker non-roster invitee third place jc ramirez

believe he's out for the year fourth place david hernandez traded to the diamondbacks Second place, Blake Parker, non-roster invitee. Third place, JC Ramirez. I believe he's out for the year. Fourth place, David Hernandez, traded to the Diamondbacks. Fifth place, Alex Meyer, out for the year. So Angels pitching staff, whatever, it's there. And they have, what, three more wins than losses. They are very much alive in the race. If this team makes the playoffs, who knows what they would do because it is not.

It's been a good bullpen. Yeah. Anonymous bullpen, but good. Yeah, there you go. I guess Petit would, oh, God, would he be their Miller? Oh, this is bad. Well, this is Mike Trout. They could do whatever they want.

Yeah, sure. All right. Well, we can wrap up there, I guess. We've filled our quota for talking about actual baseball for the week already, so we can just do some weird stuff for the next couple episodes, I guess. Or talk about the Dodgers and Indians again. Yeah. Because those streaks will never end.

There's going to be new numbers to attach to their names. Yeah, that's right. All right. As I prepare to post this later in the day, the Indians have just won their 20th consecutive game. So only Buck Farmer stands in Cleveland's way on Wednesday. By the way, good fun fact I saw from Elias today. The Dodgers' 11-game losing streak is one shy of the longest losing streak in MLB history among teams that won at least 90 games. Pretty good.

Good one, Elias. Also, one more relevant email on the up-down debate that we got from listener named James after we recorded the intro. I think he came to a similar sort of understanding of this, but this is helpful. He also invokes Ender's Game, so I have to mention it. He says, I ended up trying to parse through this among some friends, and we came to an interesting hypothesis thanks to the science fiction novel Ender's Game. In this book, there is a war game that can be loosely described as zero-G laser tag, where the winner is whichever team can get a player through the other team's door or gate first. The main character comes to an epiphany in dealing with orientation in 0G when he begins to coach his team to think of the enemy's gate as down. What if the baseball terminology is not necessarily centered on a fixed orientation, such as toward home plate is down while away from home

is up, but rather it is always based on the focus of the current play? If this is true, a runner advancing toward a base with the ball coming into that base is always running down the line because they're running toward the play. A player who retreats away from the base the ball is being moved to is therefore retreating up the line. Likewise, a hit that goes along a foul line is going away from the base where any potential play may be made and is therefore also going up the line. This also means a short throw would land too far up the line to make a play. All right, maybe not completely consistent with the earlier emails, but in the same spirit. So thank you, James. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who've already pledged their support include Dan Carty, Nathan Wamser,

Lewis Bailey, Brinkley Benson, and Dylan Lake. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group, which is currently roiling and being torn apart by a batting around debate. You should join it even so. Well over 6,500 members in there now. Facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. And you can contact me and Jeff via email at podcast at fan graphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. We will answer your emails next time.

So get your questions in now. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. We will talk to you soon. Bye.