Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1117: Pats on the Back and Slaps on the Wrist

Episode Date: September 30, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Ben’s chat with Bill James, a fan who got ejected for giving Gary Sanchez pitch locations, a suggestion for tweaking the wild card game, and Sammy Sosa, then discuss the teams whose organizational stocks have risen or fallen the most this season and wrap up with brief banter […]

Somehow I know that we are for the survive So stop acting like a lady, come and cry like a baby on the outside On the outside Hello and welcome to episode 1117 of the Effectively Wild podcast, a baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I am Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs, joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello, Ben. Hello. How are you?

Doing pretty well. That's great. I understand that yesterday, immediately after we recorded our podcast, you had to get going because you had a very important phone call with one Bill James. How did that go? Yeah, just my usual every week chat with Bill James, just catching up on how he's been doing lately. No, it was the first time I had ever talked to Bill James. I have seen him from afar at a couple conferences

and just haven't really had an excuse to go up and talk to him. I could do the thing where I just go up and say, thanks for everything and you're such a huge influence and I just go up and say, thanks for everything. And you're such a huge influence and I owe my career to you and all of those things. I'm sure he's heard a hundred times. I did a very abbreviated version of that on the call, but we actually didn't talk about baseball that much. We talked about his new crime book. He writes about crime too. And he has this new book about a serial killer whom he essentially detected the crimes of. He went back into the archives and he pieced together all these different killings over a long period in all different places and came up with this profile of a killer who people didn't really know existed.

And it was fascinating. And so I did a podcast with him. So that'll probably be up at some point early next week so Bill James resuscitated a cold case like an actual cold case yeah I mean he kind of created a cold case it was a killer who had some well-known murders around 1910 1912 and good killing years yeah people were aware of these few crimes like a very small subset of the crimes and Good kill in years. figured these crimes were the work of an experienced killer. And so this guy must have killed before. And so he went back into the newspaper archives that exist now and was able to essentially retrace this guy's steps or trace this guy's steps back over a decade and put together

a profile of this killer who may have killed more people than anyone we know of in this country's history. It's really fascinating. And then he even sort of advances a theory about who it was. So I was really riveted to the book. And the nice thing about doing podcasts is that it gives you an excuse to talk to people. So when I finished the book, I just asked him if he'd do an interview, and he did. So I got to talk to Bill James, which was exciting. I was kind of nervous. I don't get nervous that much to do interviews anymore just because I've had to do them so much on podcasts that you kind of get over that apprehension. But when you're talking to someone like Bill James for the first time, it kind of comes back a little bit.

So I think it went well. That's funny because you've talked to so many people that others would describe as being on a very high pedestal. You've talked to very important people is the point. And then it's Bill James that kind of gets into your bones and gets into your brain. So did it feel rewarding to talk to Bill James and have this opportunity to talk to him for, I don't know, 30, 60 minutes and not talk about baseball? Like where in your professional career did you start to think that that's how that would go? Yeah, my editor pointed that out too. Yeah, I like that because I've been writing more about non-baseball stuff. And so has Bill James.

He's been on a crime writing kick. And we did weave in some baseball, of course. And there was a little bit of baseball in the book and baseball analogies and that sort of thing. But I mean, a million people have talked to Bill James about baseball. And everyone has heard that. And it's probably a little more unfamiliar to most people that he writes about crime and killings. So I got to talk to him about that instead. So yeah, not how I would have predicted that it would have gone. I think that's how you create the bonds of a true friendship is when you elect to talk about the thing that isn't the obvious thing that you have in common.

So I think that you and Bill James are off to a wonderful start. I hope so. Elsewhere, Patrick Dubuque wrote an article on Friday morning for Baseball Prospectus that refers to something I had missed. I definitely did not know about this on Tuesday night. I would have been somewhere else. So from your chuckle,

it sounds like you did not miss this. But I'm just going to read. I haven't actually read this article all the way through i just found this about 10 minutes before the podcast but this is a patrick dubuque article it is titled cold takes fandom interference uh published september 29th and it begins i guess about midway through one yankees fan took matters into his own hands tuesday night in what would have in what would have to be considered a strange sense of timing the bottom of of the eighth inning, with the home team already up three runs, with runners on the corners, a small voice provided some specific cheering to Gary Sanchez as he batted in the bottom of the eighth.

Sanchez turned on an outside pitch and yanked it foul, and after another pitch in the dirt, home plate umpire Dan Bellino stopped to play and strolled over. It turns out that our helpful friend was passing along a little dramatic irony to Sanchez calling out in spanish which side of the plate the opposing catcher wilson ramos was lining up before the pitch he was soon removed by security it's clear that this man without the approval of his allies is cheating and the article continues it is about fan interference and where the line is but this is one of those things where i haven't heard of it specifically but it sounds like one of those things that could be happening or probably should be happening like every game. Yeah, it's strange that this doesn't happen more often.

The only times fans really have an impact on what happens on the field or try to be helpful at all to their team, I guess there are a couple of cases where that's true. where that's true. One, there's the distraction case where the fans will try to get in opposing players' heads. So they'll shout, I got it or something from the stands and try to confuse people or they'll just heckle people or taunt them in some way. And then there's fan interference or borderline fan interference where if a foul ball is heading into the stands, you're entitled to catch it if it's off the field of play and so you can get in the way of an opposing player. But we don't really hear about this that often. Fans trying to give pointers or tips to players on the field

and fan got ejected very quickly. It didn't sound like Gary Sanchez was all that happy to have had the help as he pointed out that you still don't know what the pitch type is going to be kind of an ingrate really this guy was giving him a big part of what you need to know about a pitch and Sanchez pointed out that there's still a lot you don't know but yeah this was a much more low-tech solution than Apple watches or looking at replays or anything just some guy sitting in the stand saying outside but i don't know why this doesn't happen more often it seems like if you are given the information

about the catcher's positioning you can infer a lot about what the pitch is going to be you know what the pitcher throws and if you have the catcher set up low and away you know it's going to be a breaking ball and if it's the target is a little higher maybe it's still away but you know it's going to be a fastball there are differences in in how a catcher sets up for a pitch. So really, I wonder, either Sanchez is an idiot, and he doesn't understand how these things work, but he's a major league catcher, so he's not an idiot. So I think he's actually downplaying the assistance that he was being provided.

Now, I don't actually know what the outcome of that was. Again, I just found out about this three days late. But nevertheless, I think there's a good amount of information that is actually couched in where a catcher sets up. Yeah, so I don't know which specific rule in the rulebook this violates, or maybe it's just in the standards of the ballpark, but you can't do it. He was ejected very quickly by umpire Dan Bellino so I guess this will not set a precedent but yeah creative at least fan trying to help if somewhat misguided and against the rules so I think we're given to understand that players could do something like this right like players are allowed to pass

signs on to one another verbally yeah if they if they notice something now I think that maybe teams would get offended if they heard you shouting at, I think that maybe teams would get offended if they heard you shouting at the catcher's location from the other dugout. Like, that wouldn't go over very well. But we can now reflect back on, I think, Sam Miller's favorite rule, that a player could be ejected and then change into street clothes and sit in the bleachers.

What if a player or coach got ejected, put on street clothes, sat in the stands, and then yelled out where the catcher was setting up? I guess that he could get ejected, put on street clothes, sat on the stands, and then yelled out where the catcher was setting up. I guess that he could get ejected again. Ejected twice. A rare double ejection. Off the field, then out of the park. Something to think about.

Okay, do you have anything else you wanted to banter about? No, I don't think so. Okay, so I have one thing before we get to the actual topic. We talked, I think it might have been last week week about ways to potentially improve the wild card round and we talked about what was it the south korean approach of having two game series where the the lower seed has to win both games and i think we both concluded that that seemed a little dramatic maybe it's not i don't know but listener john sent in an idea that it can't be unique it can't be the first time somebody's brought this up but it's stuck in my head so if we look at the standings right now what what are the advantages? We have the Yankees.

They're up like six games. Yeah, six games on the Twins. The Twins have locked up the second wildcard. Yankees are up six games. And in the National League, the Diamondbacks are up six games on the Rockies. The wildcards usually are not separated by this much, but clearly the Diamondbacks are better than the Rockies, and clearly the yankees are better than the twins what if we kept it as a one game playoff except the team with the better record gets that many runs of an advantage to start the game kind of like a handicap does that seem too steep because here are advantages i will list them as i think of them one well the better team gets an advantage that's great two it keeps everything important down to the final game for the teams who are playing for the wild cards. True.

They get less of an opportunity to rest up for the playoffs, which makes playing for the wild card even more of a disadvantage. It keeps every game interesting. Even if teams are tied for the wild card going into the final day of the season, they still have something to play for. Because if you get an advantage of one run at the start of the game,'s like a 10 difference in win expectancy which is like enormous really if you're talking about the most important game of the season so if you reflect on where the standings were last year i'm doing this blind but so last year the blue jays and orioles won the al wild cards they were tied same record in the national league mets and giants tied same record so everything would have been the same in 2015 the yankees were better than the

astros by one game and the pirates were better than the cubs by one game so what do you think the downside is that with this season like the yankees they'd start the game up six runs on the twins like that game is effectively over yeah and with the diamondbacks up six games on the rockies same kind of deal but you know it would give the teams who are behind by a lot something to play for. And, you know, they would kind of prepare for this and go in thinking, well, we got nothing to lose. We have to score a lot of runs really quick. Would it make things better? I like aspects of it.

I think it would kind of ruin this year's matchups a little bit. I mean, to go into the wildcard game with that steep a deficit to overcome, that would rob a lot of the suspense, I think, from these games. This is an atypical year. Obviously, usually those teams are not separated by as much, but I don't know. I think maybe we just have to accept that this is just going to be random and it's not going to tell us much about the team's qualities. Like we're in this mindset where we're trying to find a balance between a more predictive, longer playoff series and the excitement of a single game, which really is exciting and gets great ratings and attendance. And I really look forward to it. And I don't know, maybe we just

have to accept that there is no great way to balance these things or that there's just going to be this crazy randomness and that is the way that baseball is in the postseason. I don't know if you can quite find the perfect compromise where you get the same excitement that a single elimination game gives you with even matchups heading into that game and a more telling series that will actually reveal which team is the best.

We're just not going to get there, I don't think, in a single game, preserving the suspense and yet also giving the better team an advantage. It just seems like a balancing act that's really difficult to do. Yeah, and I agree with you in that I enjoyed the one-game playoff, and I like that it's a level playing field. Really, if you win either of the wildcard positions, well, what do you deserve? You didn't win your division. But I don't know.

I like the idea of still building in sort of a hierarchy. I like that you can keep things to play for over the final weekend. Like right now, it's Friday. There are three games left in the season, and I get that the season is mostly over anyway, but only the Rockies and Brewers really have anything to play for now. The Rockies are still trying to seal up their playoff spot by not losing two games to the Brewers in three days,

which, you know, they could do. They're playing the Dodgers. So I will grant that I don't think that there's anything that needs to be solved, but I like the idea of this anyway. So I'm just going, I opened up my win expectancy spreadsheet so obviously if you if you start a game and two teams begin with the same

record so there's no run advantage then the win expectancy is split evenly although i guess the home team gets an advantage which is already that's an advantage for the better seed i get it but if you give say the home team a one run advantage well that just broke my win expectancy sheet because you can't give the home team a one run advantage well that just broke my win expectancy sheet because you can't give the home team a one run advantage at the start of the game but so let's just give it to the road team whatever it'll give us a frame of reference a one run advantage moves their win expectancy from 50 to 60 a two run advantage moves it up to 69 a three run advantage moves it up to 77 four runs 84 if you go all the way up to six which is where both the wild cards would be right

now then that puts one team at a 92% win expectancy, which, you know, it makes it seem like the game is over before it begins, which I get, especially when you're talking about a one-game situation where the best pitchers are going to be leaned on very heavily. But I would be willing to hear this one out. I like most of the aspects of it. I don't know how well you could sell a situation where a team is just given runs that technically never happened. But as I think about like the MLS playoffs, you have these two game series, I think it is.

And this is not uncommon in soccer around the globe, I don't think. But where you have series that are effectively determined by goal differential. And so if a team wins the first game by two then depending on situations then in the second game a team needs to win the other team needs to win by like three to actually win the series so i think that there's sort of a precedent for this in other sports the only difference being that in soccer the goal differential is earned on the field by actual goals whereas in this situation it would just be earned by the standings but again in 2016 no difference in 2015 small difference in 2014 the royals beat the a's by a game the pirates and the

giants tied in 2013 the indians beat the rays by a half game i don't know how you manage that but and the the pirates beat the reds by four games. So it's usually six is a widespread, and maybe in a situation where a team loses the wildcard by six games, maybe they don't deserve to have that good of a shot. Yeah, no, you could definitely make that case. These are the most lopsided matchups we've seen. So yeah, it works both ways. On the one hand, if you were to implement this system,

these games would kind of be spoiled, starting with a six-run deficit. But on the other hand, it maybe is fair in a sense in that if you are that much better than your opponent, then to lose to them and have your whole season ruined by a single game, that's a really tough thing to accept too. So I see the appeal, but I don't know. I guess I'm just fairly satisfied with this system. And I know that there are people who hate it and think it's un-baseball and it is, but I enjoy it. So I guess that just makes me some millennial or something who doesn't have long attention span and can't wait for delayed gratification. I think we're coming from the position where we're most willing to just be like, yeah, things are fine. And then I think that there are people out there who have stronger opinions, who want things to be fixed. And we might be a little too easily satisfied.

Yeah, that could be. By the way, Gary Sanchez, that at bat was in the eighth inning. The Yankees were already winning four to1 with runners on the corners and two outs. And after the ejection, Sanchez did bloop an RBI single to center a few pitches later. So it wasn't the highest leverage situation ever, but it ended up working out well for him. And one other follow-up I wanted to mention. And one other follow-up I wanted to mention, listener Jason emailed in today to point out in response to your stat segment from yesterday about Andrew McCutcheon and how he had finally hit his first Grand Slam after a couple hundred homers. Jason pointed out that Sammy Sosa took 248 home runs to get to his first Grand Slam, which was the most at that point. So it took him a very long time, too.

slam which was the most at that point so took him a very long time too and even stranger than that listener michael notes that sosa hit his second career grand slam the very next day great well i guess we should move on we have half an hour for the actual topic which is more than we usually have yeah i think usually we come down to about eight minutes to discuss but okay so i have a some recollection that maybe we we've talked about before, but, okay, here's the thought. This is the final Friday. This is really the final podcast we're going to do before the start of the playoffs. I guess we get next Monday before the wildcard games get started, but probably the next month of podcasting, aside from email shows, will mostly be taken up with discussing the playoffs, if that is the angle that we choose to go. be taken up with discussing the playoffs if that is the angle that we choose to go so this gets to be sort of our season retrospective podcast at least until after the playoffs when we get to do

our full season retrospective podcast but i think we've talked about this a little bit before i don't care maybe we'll do it again i wanted to with your help try to narrow down which team or i guess which teams have had the best and the worst seasons in terms of what they expected to have coming in, what it means for them in the short term, what it means for them in the long term. If we would have had sort of organizational rankings from 1 to 30 back in March, which team has moved up the most and which team has moved down the most? I will begin by volunteering that I think maybe the Diamondbacks have had the best season out of any team in baseball. This is why I think we've talked about this before, because I think I have a specific memory

of talking about the Diamondbacks in this specific situation before. But you know, who cares? People have a short memory, including apparently myself. So we're gonna do it. Diamondbacks last year. So we're not talking about solely for 2017, like who had the best 2017 season relative to preseason projections or expectations, we're also trying to factor in how their 2017 success influences how we think about their future expectations too. luke season that we wouldn't think would extend to future seasons would be at a disadvantage here relative to a team that had say a bunch of young players make huge strides all of a sudden and yes they got better this year but you also think that they'll be better now in coming years too so we're counting not just 2017 but the whole scope of present and future yeah sort of thinking about like organizational leverage in a way where if there was a team that was sort of on the bubble,

then their success this year would mean more than a team that was, like the Dodgers, they've won 102 games, but they were expected to be good, maybe not quite this good, but I don't know how much this really means to them aside from, well, they won the division again. So this is why I'm volunteering the Diamondbacks is my pick for the team having had the best season I don't remember exactly what their record was last season but as I'm saying the sentence it's really easy for me to pull up

the record was terrible it was 69 and 93 they are now in position to reverse that record if not do better they stand at this speaking at 92 and 67 they are of course 10 games worse than the Dodgers they were never going to be as good as the Dodgers. But the Diamondbacks, if you figure, last year, they were a catastrophe. They had their entire front office replaced. They looked like a team that was stuck. They had a new front office come in, and there was talk that, you know, they were going to let the team sort of play it out early on.

But then you would get to midseason, and if the team wasn't competitive again, then they would have to think about selling. And, you know, if you're then they would have to think about selling. And, you know, if you're the Diamondbacks, you think about selling. Not only are you giving away someone like Zach Greinke for probably not very much, but then you're thinking about, well, if we're rebuilding, we have to give up Paul Goldschmidt. We have to think about moving A.J. Pollock. We have these young pitchers in the rotation that, if they're not underachieving, we have to move them. And just have the Diamondbacks, with the new front office coming in,

you have the Diamondbacks as an organization that's thinking we might need to tear down and rebuild the previous administration did a lot of bad things to this organization no matter what you think of dansby swanson i can tell you shelby miller has not had a very good diamondbacks career so i think that given where the Diamondbacks were coming in not only have they had a strong season that's going to take them to the playoffs but I think that it completely changes their organizational outlook not that they were a guarantee to have to tear down sort of like the Tigers were at some point but they've completely turned themselves around and there's enough there's enough sort of medium and longer term talent there that you can look at this team and think, that team is not going to go away immediately. This is a team that looks like it's probably the fourth-best team in the National League,

maybe even the third-best team in the National League now. I don't know how much they're going to lose going into next season. They've had Archie Bradley find a role where he's extremely successful. They have like five or even six quality Major League starters. Granke has bounced back and then some. They have gotten help from pretty much around many of the positions with, I don't know, maybe only Jeff Mathis not being a very good hitter, but he has his defensive assets. So I think I would say that the Diamondbacks have had the most successful season, but I would be interested to hear if you have another team that you think has had a better year. Yeah, because there was a perception that they had a window, right? That it was maybe two years or three years, and then people would start to get

expensive. Some of the pitchers and Pollock and Goldschmidt would be gone. And so there was that perception that they needed to win right away, or they might not with this group of guys. And now, I don't know exactly where they stand they're not like the youngest team out there but they obviously have exceeded expectations the most probably just relative to preseason expectations I don't know it's either them or the twins or the brewers I guess probably all right up there and so they have that going for them and yeah now I don't know if you look ahead and say well 2018 is the last year for this group or 2019 is the last year for this group it's a lot more open-ended I think than it seemed like it was six months ago so in that

sense yeah I think you'd have a pretty hard time arguing that another team has had a more successful season either for 2017 alone or the way it changes our thinking about that team going forward. Well, I guess we might as well consider other options while we're here. Some of the options would be, I guess, well, we can point out the Yankees. They've arrived early, you could say, maybe a year early, which seems to be, I don't know, seems to be kind of a common theme with these teams that are rebuilding. The Cubs came early, the Astros arrived early, the Brewers have now sort of arrived early, and the Yankees have arrived early with, I think, the best base runs record in baseball. I might be wrong, but they're at least close. Their run differential is outstanding. The team has been outstanding. I think we had a sense that the Yankees were on the upswing. We knew they were going to be a pretty good

team. I know Dave Cameron picked them to win the American League East for some reason, but he looks less like an idiot now. Just to take something... He also picked the Lansome Colors to win the American League Cy Young, so let's not give too much credit to Dave Cameron, although I thought it was going to be James Paxton. And it should have been James Paxton.

Anyway, so the Yankees in a sense, they have overachieved and they have moved up their window because they have been James Paxton. Anyway, so the Yankees in a sense they have overachieved and they have moved up their window because they have of course Aaron Judge leads the major leagues and wins above replacement. He has been arguably the best player in baseball which people did not think was going to happen. So given that

Judge has been the best player in baseball and Luis Severino has been one of the five best pitchers in baseball the Yankees have moved up but I'm not sure sure if i don't think that the yankees have had their outlook change nearly as dramatically as the downback staff i think that the yankees now just know that they're good like a year earlier than they would have known otherwise it's the yankees right yeah they were going to be good eventually i thought it would take one more year than it did although i guess you could say i mean i was thinking that they would be good, but I wasn't thinking that they would be good because Aaron

Judge would be a superstar in 2018 or at any point, really. I mean, I thought there's no reason to think he wouldn't be a decent player, a useful player, but no one was really projecting him to be best player in baseball caliber. So I think a lot of the improvement that people were expecting from the Yankees was because of their minor leaguers and guys like Clint Frazier or guys who are still in the minors and would be coming along. foundation of a team as much as maybe a complementary piece or just kind of a good guy to plug into a lineup and now he is much more than that and yet they still have young guys coming and Severino is sort of the same way I think prior to this season people were thinking maybe he's a reliever maybe he's not a top of the rotation starter, certainly. And now he really has improved his outlook significantly. So not only did they beat everyone, I think, or everyone except Dave Cameron to being a really good baseball team, but you have to, I think, revise your outlook a little bit

for them even in the future. I mean, Gary Sanchez has been very good, but we were already expecting that based on his incredible hot streak last season. But Judge was abysmal in his small sample last year, so no one knew if he would even be a viable major leaguer. And now he is maybe the best major leaguer. So I think, yeah, they have a pretty excellent case and they even managed to salvage some use out of players who looked like they were over the hill and a lot of things went right for them obviously this year and they still have a lot of talent on the way so yeah i would put them i don't know if i'd put them number two i guess the other teams with an argument maybe the twins no no i mean the no i was gonna bring them up next no i'm not buying it the twins definitely in terms of this season alone they have exceeded expectations dramatically but i yeah they're kind of also a year ahead but i was fairly optimistic about the twins heading into this season too and i thought good things about guys like Buxton and Sano and Barrios

and so it's come together more quickly than I expected certainly but I don't know that they have changed my mind quite as much as the Yankees have yeah I look at the twins obviously if you look at the twins you love Miguel Sano's raw power you love the Barrios breaking ball and you you love Byron Buxton's defense and I know that Buxton has started to hit. I'm not sold yet at this point quite on Byron Buxton's bat. I think that he still is a little too much swing and miss. I shouldn't say a little. A lot too much swing and miss in this game.

What I've really enjoyed from the Twins is seeing nearly all of their hitters make some sort of plate discipline progress. It's really quite extraordinary that nearly like every single one of their regulars has improved his his discipline whether it's by not chasing as many pitches out of zone or swinging more pitches in the zone they've just gotten better in terms of walks and their strikeouts and that you always think of that as being the most difficult thing to improve in the major leagues well for whatever reason i i believe they've had a new hitting coach and whatever might as well throw some credit out to a hitting coach because we're usually just tearing them down. I have liked that about the Twins. Still not a lot of good players on this team. Brian Dozer is quite good. He's a

legitimately good second baseman. I just wrote about him the other day because by some miracle, he's actually figured out how to hit the other way, which I never thought was going to be possible. There's a lot going on here, but at the end of the day the pitching is not good they just don't have pitchers they have barrios who i like he's not an ace and they have ervin santana ervin santana is going to start the wildcard game that's fine but ervin santana would be what like the fifth starter on the indians yeah if even i don't know is he he might be worse than mike clevenger i'm not actually certain So, obviously, things have been more good than bad with the Twins, but I don't think this is going to be a playoff team next year. And I don't think that they were about,

I don't think they were on the verge of tearing down either. It was going to be about Buxton, Sano, and Barrios stepping forward, and I think two and a half of them have gotten better this year. Sano has kind of run into some issues with his leg, and he's gotten worse as the season has gone on. But there's something there, but but twins aren't really the brewers have a stronger case they were probably going to be the next team you were going to bring up yeah right so i wrote about them mid-season i didn't expect them to finish as strong as they have and probably not

going to make the playoffs unless they have a great weekend and the Rockies have a lousy one. But they've been in contention right up until the last second of the season. Didn't see that coming. And, well, on the one hand, they had some players take steps forward. Jimmy Nelson was the most notable example of that, I think, turning into an ace and then all of a sudden had a serious shoulder injury and surgery. And now his career is kind of in question. So that hurts, I think, because he was probably the most obvious example of a Brewer who really changed what we thought he was and could be. But, and, you know, they've hit on a lot of marginal players who may be marginal players after this season. They've had a lot of luck with bench guys who've just had great fractional seasons and they've put them all together and got them for nothing. And it was a lot of very clever GMing on David Stearns' part, but maybe not all the most repeatable and sustainable. But I think it was clear that they were laying the groundwork for a rebuild that everyone liked.

We liked the way that they were going about it, and it has come together more quickly than we expected. This is, again, another one in the theme, the pattern of rebuilds going more quickly and smoothly than expected. But yeah, I mean, they're on the upswing and they have been in contention now which is really impressive because this year was like supposed to be when they would bottom out or maybe just be starting to come out of their descent and they really might have the distinction of being the team that gets back to contention. I mean, they're already in contention, but gets back to it with the least suffering in the interim just because they never bottomed out like the Cubs or the Astros

or the Phillies or Braves or any of these teams that were terrible for a while where the Brewers just never got there and it doesn't look like they will ever have to get there now. Yeah, the worst month that the Brewers have had this season, the worst month was July when they went 12-13, which is crazy for a team. They haven't run into a big slump. And even in July where they went 12-13,

they still outscored their opponents. So the Brewers have just not gone away. And yeah, I would feel like you. I would feel better about them long-term if it weren't for the Jimmy Nelson injury, which is just really unfortunate because he suffered some pretty major labrum damage. And even though, I guess, specific to the surgery, his labrum was torn in an area which is not where pitchers usually tear their labrum, which was interpreted as good news, I guess. Still, it leaves his future in a certain amount of question. This is worse than if he needed like Tommy John surgery.

So we don't know what Jimmy Nelson is going to do when he comes back but what just floors me is so going by fangraph's war the brewers starting rotation has been the eighth best in baseball this season and their bullpen has been the ninth best in baseball this season this is like this is the the brewers like outside of jimmy nelson who is not supposed to be even that good coming into the year like you wouldn't think anything of this. Did you know that Matt Garza is not only still in Major League Baseball, but he's on the Brewers and he's starting like all the time and he's not good. But it doesn't matter. They just worked around him.

So they've had these breakthroughs. Like I think Domingo Santana has been good for a while. Travis Shaw obviously has had sort of a breakthrough season. Eric Thames put up all of his value in the season's first three weeks, so he hasn't actually been that good this year the remainder. But on the pitching side, Jimmy Nelson took a huge step forward, became one of the better pitchers in baseball. Chase Anderson has improved.

Corey Knabel has become almost out of nowhere, like one of the most unhittable pitchers on the planet. I was watching him close out whoever they were facing, the Reds. I was watching him close out the Reds on Thursdayursday and he was just curveball and then high gas and then every single swing against him was like a second and a half late like they just couldn't you could say the same about josh hater yeah oh my god josh hater so much fun oh he's so much fun and so this this bullpen now like they i know they they picked up anthony swarczak and you know who cares about anthony swarczak right well no you this is this is the thing about anthony swarczak, and who cares about Anthony Swarczak, right? Well, no.

This is the thing about Anthony Swarczak. Since he came over to the Brewers, he's pitched in, what, 28 games? He's thrown 28.1 innings. He's struck out 39 guys, and he's issued five unintentional walks. The big problem with Anthony Swarczak last year, I'm talking too much about Anthony Swarczak on a baseball podcast, but the Brewers have put together even when they lost jimmy nelson and i thought that was going to be devastating for the chances and it certainly hasn't helped because i mentioned the matt garza thing but even without jimmy nelson they've been able to patch together an effective pitching staff

because they're deep and swarczak aside because he's he's not young and he's not really a long-term asset they still have they don't have an ace in this group, but they have a lot of really interesting young pitchers. I don't think that the Brewers, like I can see how the Twins next year could win like 70 games again. Like I could see them dropping to fourth, third place. That division is terrible. Yeah, but they're not going to get to 60 or 50 something.

They just bypassed that step completely. Yeah, but the Brewers next year could i could see contending for for the playoff spot again because some of it's going to depend on nelson and this is not a team that's going to be able to pull much out of free agency but we've seen this this development at the major league level and still they have a really strong farm system lewis brinson is knocking on the door brett phillips is knocking on the door he's actually playing in the majors right now and he's uncorked like the four hardest throws of the year for any outfielder. Not that that's the skill that matters the most, but still, Phillips, very interesting for reasons other than his laugh,

and Brinson is there. And even with Keon Broxson just not quite materializing in the way that I thought he was going to, the Brewers have nevertheless succeeded. So it's been a good year. I don't think it's been a Diamondbacks-level year for the Brewers, but what a great season. And i was worried that when you wrote that article on the ringer then you know the brewers would just kind of bottom out after that didn't happen no yeah and i don't know if they can compete with these other teams we've mentioned

in this category but the rockies i think have had a lot of things go well. You just wrote about John Gray and made the case that he could be the best Rockies pitcher, maybe best pitcher they've developed. And that's encouraging. seemed like it at the time and some of those starters who were having a ton of success at that point have regressed and the team as a whole has regressed but it's still a legitimately good team they've outscored their opponents by 64 runs I think at this point and I don't know that they've done it really in a way that makes you think they've cracked the code of Coors Field like at the beginning of the year it seemed like they had finally built a really good defensive team at Coors Field. Eh, not so much. They've really come back to the pack in that respect. And I don't know how much you can chalk up to things like getting pitchers whose pitches work well at Coors Field, that kind of thing.

There was a lot of talk about their fastball usage. Maybe that has something to do with something. I don't know. But they've shown that they can build a team that wins with pitching, which is something they've rarely been able to do in the past. This is not a very good hitting team. And yet they've been good enough probably to make the playoffs. So there's a lot of encouraging stuff going on with this team. Yep. i guess because we are short on well i get one quick rockies note let's see on the road they have officially locked in a 41 and 40 record the rockies finished on the road not better than they were at home they uh

they've been better at home which of course they were but this is the second time in franchise history the second time in franchise history they the second time in franchise history, they have finished above 500 on the road. The previous time was 2009 when they went 41 and 40. So the Rockies have tied their best ever road record. So congratulations to the Rockies who did not fall apart on the road, considering that three years ago they played 81 games on the road and lost 60 of them. So things have turned around. Rocky is now a team to take seriously. They have plenty of

young pitchers. I'm not thrilled necessarily with the long-term outlook for the team, but yeah, they're up there. And we're running out of time, so we should try to narrow down on which teams have had the worst 2017s. And I guess we should go through these somewhat quickly, but I will volunteer just because I have to. I don't know if this is the team that I think has had the worst 2017s. And I guess we should go through these somewhat quickly,

but I will volunteer just because I have to. I don't know if this is the team that I think has had the worst 2017, but a terrible 2017 would go to the Seattle Mariners just because they have nothing coming on the farm and they need to take advantage of these sort of prime years of the aging core that they have. And nope, bad season for reasons somewhat under their control and reasons out of their control. But Mariners, what makes, I think, their position worse

than the Blue Jays' position is that the Blue Jays have guys like Guerrero and Bichette coming up in the farm, and the Mariners have guys like a boy, I don't know, coming up in the farm. Kyle Lewis, I guess, who already has torn his ACL as a professional. So bad year for the Mariners. Who do you think has had a worse year if anyone Mets maybe just obviously everything has gone wrong for the

Mets this year but it's also gone wrong in such a way that you worry about whether it will go right just because they've had so many injuries and so many pitching injuries and Matt Harvey looks much diminished to the point where people talked about him as a non-tender candidate. Syndergaard missed most of the year, Steven Matz, injuries upon injuries. So it could all come together. Those guys could all have a healthy season at some point in the next couple of years, but that looks less likely than it did going into this year. And there's dysfunction at various levels of the organization too that you worry about persisting.

So I would say that they have as good a case as anyone. Yeah, I don't want to be anyone's sort of wet blanket here, but I will point out that although Ahmed Rosario is quite young and he's very fast, does a lot of things well, his current line includes three walks and 44 strikeouts. So forget rate stats. Not a great look for Ahmed Rosario as a rookie. Dominic Smith has not hit so far in his cup of coffee.

Brandon Nimmo has been good. He's had a pretty good eye to play it. So there's something there among the young players. But yeah, Mets probably a rougher year than the Mariners just because of the reasons that you highlighted. You now have to worry about everyone. Right. And you just wrote a post entitled the San Francisco Giants baseball's biggest disappointment. So I guess we should mention them. That was more of 2017 only. But I think the way in which they failed this season is probably somewhat worrisome looking ahead to 2018 and beyond. Yeah. You look at this team and so, you know, Buster Posey is still good.

Joe Panik, good player. He's bounced back well. Brandon Crawford now is showing some signs of life. And even though Madison Bumgarner, you know, got hurt and missed half the year, he looked pretty good when he was pitching, even though he wasn't at 100%. So you can see him turning it around. But this team has had maybe the worst outfield that's ever existed in the major leagues relative to everyone else according to baseball reference i think the outfield combined has been like two wins below replacement level that's bad that's not a good place for your outfield to be they had the worst third baseman in baseball this year starting

rotation was supposed to be a strength but johnny cueto fought forearm and more specifically blister problems and uh you know jeff samarja never quite pitched up to his peripherals and Matt Moore didn't even try to have good peripherals in the first place so there was there was a lot going on there and Mark Melanson wound up getting hurt even though he was supposed to fix the entire bullpen I do think that the Giants are a good candidate to have the biggest improvement in wins relative to this year next year I still don't buy this as an actually bad baseball team i don't think that there is as much to worry about here as there is with like the mets but yeah you can't talk about the team with the worst record in baseball and not talk about them as maybe the biggest as having had the the biggest disappointing season yeah i

don't know if any other team i mean there are teams that have had lousy seasons but i don't know if they've had lousy seasons in ways we couldn't have anticipated. I guess you could maybe mention the Pirates, who've probably underperformed and have had some players like Garrett Cole and various other players maybe take some steps back or appear to have at points in the season. But they don't rise to that level for me. So I don't know that there's anyone I would really single out here. I was going to mention in the most improved teams, I don't think that they can compete with the teams we mentioned, but if we were talking about how teams have improved relative to where they stood at even like the all-star break or midway through the regular

season, I think you could maybe mention the Phillies and the A's in there as kind of course correcting in the middle of the year in that the Phillies looked like a disaster early in the season, not just with the results at the major league level, but seemed like all their minor leaguers were going backward. People were talking about them. I was talking about them, about maybe they would be the first team that would undergo this teardown and rebuild and it just wouldn't work out. And things have really been looking up. They are almost at 500 in the majors in the second half. And obviously they've had Reese Hoskins, J.P. Crawford kind of salvaged his season, made it up to the majors.

They've had other things go right. So I would just mention them. And the A's have played 500 baseball in the major leagues in the second half of the season and hasn't really come from the young pitching that people expected the A's would have this year. Came from hitters and they've been able to just pull some hitters out of places we didn't know existed. So I would say that both of them, just looking at the last few months, have really improved their stock considerably. Agreed. And on the other side, again, the team that I don't think has had the most disappointing

2017, but I would like to mention that I don't think the Padres have had a very good season. And here's why. I saw them being sold as like a pleasant surprise because the Padres have actually won 70 games this year. That's more than the Mets. The San Diego Padres have won more games than the Mets in this season. That's crazy. But the Padres have easily baseball's worst run differential. They've been a bad baseball team. And if you look at them, like the best position players,

Manny Margot has been worth like two war, and he has not been an average hitter. Jose Perela, I guess, has been like the best position players manny margot has been worth like two war and he has not been an average hitter jose perela i guess has been like the big breakthrough but i don't know how many people are counting on jose perela to be like a really good player in the medium and long term will myers has been a one win player austin hedges has been like a one win player offensively the most valuable pitcher has been clayton richard so you know it's been a bad year. Julius Chassin is second. They just haven't had young players really emerge at the major league level. They've had Brad Hand, but you know, he'll take you as far as a pretty good middle reliever can take you. And even down at the farm, coming into the year, Anderson Espinosa was the Padres' number one prospect. He had Tommy John surgery. So even though the Padres have like a

half-decent bad record in the major leagues, I think that it kind of hides that this has not been a great year for the Padres overall as an organization. I know they got like Matt Strom, who could be interesting from the Royals, but that's reaching. And, you know, Carter Capps didn't do it. He's undergoing surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome because he had a blood clot and he wasn't very good and he was pitching. So there's just not much I think has gone the Padres away this year. I know they're consolidating and they're trying to accumulate as much young want to mention, maybe we'll do a awards pod at some point when awards are announced. I don't know. But if you're wondering what we think about awards or who the best players are in baseball this year, just go read our most recent articles because they are exactly the same. We wrote the same article yesterday. They were published about half an hour apart. I think we're always dreading that that will happen.

I'm apprehensive always to know what you're working on because I'm worried it will be what I'm working on. I'm sure you feel the same way. And we both wrote about just how historically deadlocked the top of both leagues are really, particularly the NL in terms of there being almost no separation between the best player and the second best player and like the 11th best player in the NL's case so this was not the first time that we have ended up choosing the same topic but I think even for us these articles were extremely extremely similar so just pick your poison either one same lines and and the last thing I will mention unrelated to that and smaller picture,

but if you don't know much about J.J. Hardy, but you would like to learn a little more about J.J. Hardy, Dan Connolly had a really interesting interview with J.J. Hardy at BaltimoreBaseball.com that was published on September 27th. I think that you will come away thinking of Hardy differently if you've even thought of Hardy at all. But it's an interesting read. He's a deep and insightful and emotional and sensitive baseball player.

And I don't know what his future holds, but it's a good interview. It goes beyond what many baseball interviews are. So BaltimoreBaseball.com. Look for the Hardy interview by Dan Connolly. Pretty good. All right. And I don't know if you know this, but one of the Patreon perks for the people in our Ned Garver Club, it's called.

It's the people at the $10 level or above, is that we are supposed to do two Patreon-exclusive live podcasts, essentially, in which we do real-time commentary during games. Is that legal? Yes. We don't actually broadcast the game. We just kind of talk while the game is on, sort of, and people are watching it and we hang out.

We did this. I did this with Sam during the playoffs last year, because that's when everyone's watching the same games. So I don't know what your schedule is like. I know you have to write about games a lot and you do chats at Fangraphs, but hopefully at some point in the next month, you'll have the opportunity to talk to me while we're watching baseball and people still have an opportunity to sign up. If they're not Patreon supporters, you can sign up at that level and get access to that. And more info will be forthcoming soon. Very last thing, we got an email from a listener named Lewis who just notified us that our pal Jason Benetti, White Sox broadcaster, on the White Sox Minute yesterday, which is a one-minute daily White Sox podcast, he said,

tonight is your last chance to see the White Sox in Chicago in 2017 before they trampoline into next season. One last chance to see the Sox before they hit the road to finish off the season and trampoline into 2018. Lewis says he's got to be doing this on purpose. He really does because he had a tweet about trampolines and volcanoes this season that we talked about on the podcast. And we talked to him about that tweet at Saber Seminar. He claimed to not have known about your thoughts about trampolines and volcanoes. This was a complete coincidence.

But now he knows. So if he starts citing trampolines at this point, he has to be doing it just to get on your nerves. Jason, I know you're not listening to this, but I love you. Me too. All right, that'll do it for today. And if you're wondering how do I support the podcast on Patreon, it's easy. You go to patreon.com slash effectivelywild.

Five listeners who have already pledged their support include Nathan Bodnar, Chip Holden, August Fagerstrom, Chris Ruppar, and Michael Sweeney. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. Keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff Cumming via email at podcastfancast.com or via the jam messaging system. We'll probably keep doing listener email shows during the playoffs, but we will want to be reactive to news. So enjoy the last weekend of regular season baseball. We'll talk to you all early next week. But it won't be easy Stonewalls surround me

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