Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1198: The Regular-Season Routine

Episode Date: April 3, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about returning to the regular-season routine, between-innings highlights on MLB.TV, Shohei Ohtani’s Angels debut, Gerrit Cole’s Astros debut, Ichiro’s home-run robbery, Kevin Pillar’s base-stealing exploits, Mike Trout’s rapid resurgence, the first (and possibly the silliest) unwritten-rules controversy of the season, the early evidence that swings (and batted balls) are […]

This old routine will drive you mad It's just a mum who never spoke in out loud Sometimes you can't even recall the sound of his laughter Oh, well, did you ever really know the sound? Hello and welcome to episode 1198 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. Hello. I'm surprised by how quickly I settle into season mode or regular season mode.

There's just no baseball for months upon months. I don't even really watch spring training baseball much unless there's something really exciting happening. So I just go from cold turkey to suddenly there are 13 to 15 baseball games a day. And I settle right back into that routine of checking the scores and checking the stats and seeing what's happening and turning on MLB TV in the background

while I'm doing other stuff and hearing the same clips over and over and over and over again during this break in the background while I'm doing other stuff and hearing the same clips over and over and over and over again during this break in the action. Here's a popular clip from MLB.com. I hope that doesn't last all season or at least show more clips. There should be a lot of clips, a lot of baseball out there. So anyway, that's been the only negative. It's nice to have baseball back and it's just very familiar. You get back into the swing of things very quickly. One of those popular clips, you know, one of the –

there's a popular clip from MLB.com or whatever it is, and then it's Justin Verlander throwing his second no-hitter in a Tigers uniform, and he closes it out, and the announcer is like, and it's another no-hitter for the Tiger horse. It's like you probably shouldn't put two animal names right in front of one another. But Tiger horse made me think. But yeah, I know what you mean. It just feels really warm and comfortable.

And the only real struggle I have when the season comes back is that because all of a sudden there's baseball, I try to keep up with every single game at first. Just be like, what happened in this one? Oh, but what happened in that one? And then, you know, come like May 4th or May 17 17th it's just like yeah there's there are 15 games a day i i care about maybe two of them yeah that's an unsustainable pace you can't actually pay that close attention but it is nice just when i'm doing something mindless i can just put baseball on in the background or i can take a baseball nap just fall asleep on the couch with some baseball on.

That's my favorite part. I don't really sit down and watch entire games all that often at this point because I'm not really rooting for any one team. And if I did that, I would never be able to follow the whole league because there's just too much baseball. So I tend to dip in and out usually, but I do enjoy just kind of setting and forgetting it as I just fall asleep on a friday evening or something like that that's that's my favorite part of baseball yeah there's

a this is a lot of fun it was fun to be able to make like make a point of coming home to just watch joey otani there's got to be a lot of weekends where i'm just not around for the summer yeah you know it's this it's the summer you want to get out and do other things but yeah it's just it's just pleasant everything feels interesting this early which it's not i know it's not because again in a few months there's going to be all the same stuff is going to be happening and we'll be like oh there's nothing to write about but right now just want to write about everything like i don't know gabe capler yes well we'll be talking about him i'm sure and we'll be talking about otani but yeah it's just going to be another grab bag episode, I think, because we're both still enthusiastic about every little thing that's

happening and everything seems meaningful. And so I've got about 15 tabs open right now of things that I wanted to mention. So we're just going to do that again. So I guess we can start with Otani. And I unfortunately was not able to come home and watch him because I had an Easter thing going on and family and I was away from home and internet wise, it was not a to come home and watch him because I had an Easter thing going on and family and I was away from home and internet wise, it was not a great situation. So I didn't get to see it live. But of course, I've seen the highlights. I was following live as it happened. And I've looked at his stats and it turns out Shohei Otani pretty good at this pitching thing. I am feeling good about my decision to stick with him as my rookie of the year pick even after his disastrous spring

So he pitched well, I mean the line score wasn't anything amazing He went six innings, he gave up three runs He struck out six and walked one, gave up a few hits, gave up a homer So he wasn't completely dominant but the way that he got there was pretty impressive Good stuff Yeah, if you go by the rates then he threw 68 strikes which is great and when opponents swung they made contact only 62 percent of the time which is great and his fastball averaged 98 miles per hour which is great

pretty good saying that so he had a very strong game the home run he allowed to matt chapman was on a slider but i didn't think it was that bad of a slider i haven't written him up yet because i didn't want to write yesterday i'll write after this podcast but what did strike me is that you know people will say oh tony just made the one mistake they paid for and it was the home run yeah that's not how it works he made a he made a good number of mistakes with sliders and splitters that he just kind of left up and you know people swung through them anyway in some cases yeah or swung onto them and i think this is one of the things that happens when you throw a 100 mile per hour fastball you just get to get away with more of those mistakes but it's you know yesterday otani could have allowed zero home runs or he probably could have allowed three

or four and we would have seen the same pitches and thought yep that makes sense but clearly quality of stuff good swing and miss capability good the the slider has that like kluber-y kind of movement which i'll probably include in my post or something but it's just he's got three real good looking pitches and then there was a curveball that he showed three times it was always a first pitch kept it down i don't know if it's any good but the fact that he didn't throw it very often suggests no. But he's got too many pitches to use, so you can only use so many at once. Yeah. And his splitter, he threw 24 splitters and got 10 swinging strikes, and that's a pretty high percentage. That's impressive. And his fastball is really fast.

It doesn't have a high spin rate. It doesn't move a whole lot, it's so fast it's just like you know in the 99th percentile velocity wise just averaging 98 topping out at 100 when you throw that hard even if it's fairly flat like i don't know if it's like a nathan nivaldi fastball kind of thing hopefully it's better than that but because he has such great breaking balls and just secondary stuff it's kind of okay because he can throw 100 with his fastball and might not get that many swinging strikes on that, but it sets up the slider and it sets up the splitter and he gets lots of strikes and swinging strikes on those too. So it's, you know, he wasn't going after a bad lineup. I mean, Garrett Cole was really good too.

He got 21 swinging strikes in his start, which I think maybe was a career high, and that wouldn't be surprising if he's just better with the Astros than he was before, but that was against the Tigers. I'm going to disqualify any results against the Tigers. Oh, Rangers. Oh, was it Rangers? Okay. Well, Rangers are pretty bad too. So he looked good. I was looking at his pitch mix and it didn't seem dramatically different to me. I don't know. I was looking at his pitch mix, and it didn't seem dramatically different to me. I don't know. I was looking to see if he just threw a lot fewer four-seamers or something, because that was supposed to be the whole thing.

He'd get away from the Pirates. He'd be throwing more breaking balls, and he threw 53 four-seamers in 102 pitches, which is not unusual for him. So I don't know if it was a different pitch mix. Anyway, he got lots of swinging strikes. Otani got lots of swinging strikes. I don't think we have to a different pitch mix. Anyway, he got lots of swinging strikes. Otani got lots of swinging strikes. I don't think we have to worry about Shea Hayatani, at least as a pitcher, based on that start. Yeah, and between 2016 and 2017, Garrett Cole chopped a bunch of fastballs off his rate anyway.

So if he does that again, that won't be too surprising. But there's just the confirmation bias. Oh, we went to the Astros, and I expect them to do this one thing. So therefore, let's make sure he does that one thing. It is kind of weird, though. So Garrett Cole, he did, if we're going to use one start as our sample here, he did lower his fastball rate from last year's average by eight percentage points, which is big. That's a big drop. But it's also weird because you would think okay we just saw one start what an interesting story but it's almost boring because that story was written months before cole ever made his

astros debut so it's already over and i think he kind of did it down the stretch too last year right like if you look at the full season rates maybe it looks like he was throwing a lot of fastballs but he was really effective down the stretch and i thought i remembered reading or seeing that that transformation had maybe begun down the stretch and i thought i remembered reading or seeing that that transformation had maybe begun down the stretch and that maybe that was what made him more appealing than he would have been based on his full season numbers is that true let's find out yeah kind of okay all right i'll take that's what i got as far as otani just looking at his fastball the movement on his fastball you're right it's not a high spin fastball it's not a low spin fastball it's just sort of one of those in-betweeners which in some

sense is not where you want to be but in the other sense he was throwing 100 miles per hour so it's fine but in terms of the uh the horizontal and vertical movement not super far away from Nathan Yovaldi in terms of the those movements uhinez throws a similar four seamer uh louis severino throws a somewhat similar four seamer a little more rise to it louis castillo of the reds just going over some names here so otani doesn't seem to have that classic rising swing and miss kind of fastball but he does have that classic it's literally 100 miles per hour fastball so he'll probably be able to use it but it is it is interesting that he threw like uh arguably i don't know we'll see how the data plays out but

maybe the hardest average fastball that any starting pitcher will throw this season and he only threw 39 of them out of 92 pitches which is not even 50 so there is an awareness there that oh he's not pitching for the Pirates. He's not just going out there being like, establish this. He threw 26 sliders and 24 splitters and three curveballs. So lots of other stuff. And yep, good luck. Okay. A couple other individual highlights I wanted to mention. Ichiro had a home run robbery. I think it's legitimate. I think we can say this was definitely a home run robbery because sometimes you get plays that are kind of called home run robberies, but probably the ball would have been off the top of the wall or something, or it's tough to see if it would

have been going out. I think in this case, it would have. Jose Ramirez was hitting, James Paxton was pitching, and Itro was playing left, and he got up all the way on the wall, and I think he brought that ball back so that was a nice moment I don't know I'm sure you've watched more Mariners baseball than I have so far I don't know if he's getting like standing ovation type treatments every time he does anything but that was one moment where he legitimately deserved it because that was a great vintage Ichiro play and he followed it shortly thereafter with an infield single. So just kind of channeling old classic Ituro, which is all anyone really wants to see from him right now.

Actually, I shouldn't say that's all anyone really wants. Classic Ituro was an MVP candidate. So, yeah, people would love to see classic Ituro. But there's two versions of classic Ituro. There's 15 years ago and then there's like seven years ago. But, yeah, he's still getting the treatment. And you know, first series, why not? Sure.

Yeah. And while Ichiro was channeling Ichiro, Dee Gordon channeled Ken Griffey Jr., which was a fun little glimpse. Gordon hit a home run on Sunday and he did the Griffey strut out of the box. And I don't know what it's like to be a hitter who's not strong but like d gordon has hit home runs before he's hit i think 11 or 12 of them something like that

i should probably look it up because with such a small number it's worthwhile to be precise but yeah he's hit some home runs he had the dramatic one after uh the marlins resumed playing after jose fernandez passed away and everybody cried and it was wonderful. But Dee Gordon hit a no-doubter that Dee Gordon was so sure that he hit a home run that he was comfortable strutting immediately. Dee Gordon? How does Dee Gordon know what home run contact feels like automatically? Yeah, you're right. You'd think just it's a small sample,

so you'd think you'd hedge your bets a little bit. I don't know. I guess a home run when you hit it on the sweet spot Yeah, you're right. You'd think just it's a small sample, so you'd think you'd hedge your bets a little bit. But I don't know. I guess a home run when you hit it on the sweet spot and it doesn't feel like you hit it at all. I guess that feels the same even for Dee Gordon. Maybe he's able to tell. But I agree. If I had that few home runs in my career, I would probably just err on the side of caution no matter how well I felt like I hit it. There was a back in the old hit tracker online days. I know it still exists, but when it was useful, I remember. It doesn't evidently exist. Oh, it doesn't?

No, I think it seems to be gone. RIP hit tracker online. We miss you, Greg Grabarczyk. Enjoy your baseball employment. Anyway, I remember searching around and finding. So for anyone who never used hit tracker online, it was like home run data pre-statcast. So he was like estimated exit velocity and angle and distance and all that stuff. And Michael Boren doesn't really play anymore as far as I know, but he was never strong.

He was never a great hitter. He was a, you know, patience and slap and speed kind of guy. And so you would look up his home runs and it would be like 370 feet, 380 and there was one home run he hit in houston and it was like 464 feet just that was it and i looked at it and i thought how did that happen because you'd think when you have thousands of blade appearances of major league experience then you kind of you have data that settles around your personal ceiling but he had this one that stood out by like 50 feet over his next farthest home run. And this is not at altitude. It wasn't a windy day.

It's just he made absolutely perfect contact. And it was such an old home run. The video couldn't load. It was like trying to buff a real player or some nonsense. But like I can't imagine how he felt when he made that contact. I hope he didn't sprint out of the box because that was his one opportunity to just pimp it. Yeah, right. So I also wanted to mention,

did you see Kevin Pillar stealing every base in one inning? He is the first Blue Jay to record three stolen bases in the same inning. It was pretty impressive. It was in the eighth inning off Don Batances, and he stole second, he stole stole third then he stole home and he just totally got in his head I guess and he started just dashing down the baseline as Batances was kind of you know in mid delivery and Batances was so unnerved by this seemingly that he just yanked a pitch and threw it all the way the backstop so there wasn't even like an exciting

play at the plate or anything but it was exciting just that that happened. I think the steal of home is, it's still one of the most exciting plays in baseball and it doesn't happen all that often for good reasons, but when it does happen and when it works, there are a few things I enjoy seeing more than that. Yeah. That one's a lot of fun. Now, I don't know. You mean to tell me that Dillon Batances allows distractions to get into his head? So, it's 2018 and Dillon Batances has pitched in two games. He's already allowed four steals and a caught steal. So, people have tried to run on him five times. Two years ago, three years ago, I don't know what to say now, runners went 21 for 21 stealing bases against dylan batances so clearly there's a little bit of a vulnerability here and many relievers many right-handed relievers i should say are just bad at protecting is just one of those things that you think you don't have to be good at as a reliever they just go out there and they try to strike everyone out and if you strike everyone out you don't have to worry about the running game but if you're

dylan batances you walk a lot of guys people People find their way on base, and then they can run. So he's a very, very talented pitcher who is—he could stand to have some more polish around the edges. By the way, remember how we were talking on our last podcast about how Mike Trout had maybe the worst game of his career? The first time ever he had had six or more play appearances and not reached base. And he was like the lowest war according to fangraphs he was sub replacement level now he has a 151 ops plus after after three more games 151 he is now hitting 300 and slugging 600 even despite one of his four games being the worst of his career. So he homered in his second game, went one for four, then he went three for five with two doubles, and then two for five

also with another double in the fourth game. And so yeah, Mike Trout, I mean, we knew it was only a matter of time until his numbers looked like Mike Trout's again. But I would have taken the over on three more games as the amount of time that it took. And nope, Mike Trout. He's still looking up at Matt Davidson in first place with a WRC plus of 568. Mitch Haneker, though, is hot on his heels at 508. Adebiden at 388 is a distant third. But bringing up the rear in Major League Baseball,

Ryan Healy, Jose Ramirez, Jose Peraza, and Devin Longoria, all of them hit lists, all of them with WRC Plus marks of negative 100. I think that has to be the minimum. I think it's just kind of capped there for whatever reason. But Chris Davis, Jonathan Scope, also at the bottom, negative 85 and negative 74. This is, I like early season numbers. So ridiculous. Yeah. So we also had our first unwritten rules controversy of the season, and as usual, it was silly and baseless, but we should probably talk about it because of how silly and baseless it

was. And because it is related to something we talked about in our last episode about bunting against the shift and whether players should do it so it happened in a twins orioles games orioles off to a rough start this season probably will have a rough rest of the season as well but this was in the midst of getting shut out by jose barrios who pitched a complete game and this was was, I don't know, was this on Sunday? Who knows? Who cares? But that's usually your line. But this is Chance Sisko, rookie for the Orioles, perhaps one of the few bright spots of the season for them. He bunted for a hit against the shift in the ninth inning against the Twins with the Twins up 7-0. And it worked. He got on

base. The Orioles eventually loaded the bases, but Brios got out of it. No problem. Anyway, after the game, Twins second baseman Brian Dozier says, quote, I could have said something, but they have tremendous veteran leadership over there with Chris Davis, Adam Jones, and those guys. I'm sure they'll address it and move forward. He's upset about him bunting for a hit against the shift with Barrios, I guess, working on a shutout. It wasn't even a no hitter or anything because Cisco had gotten a hit himself earlier in the game. So it was a complete game, one hitter, and the twins are mad. And Barrios himself said I don't care if he's bunting

I just know it's not good for baseball In that situation That's it Bad for baseball to bunt for a hit And Cisco said just trying to mess with the timing Of the game he was kind of going through the lineup Just trying to do what I can to get on base They were playing the shift right there

So they kind of gave it to me If they're going to shift I have to take it right there in that spot. We got bases loaded right after that. We're a couple home runs away from tying the game. Bases loaded. Jones or Scope hits a home run right there. We're a couple runs from being back in the game. So this is, I mean, it's a variant of the typical case like this where someone's working on a nohitter or something, then obviously guys are mad when someone breaks up that personal milestone. And, you know, we can talk about that being silly because, hey, it's a baseball game and you're trying to win, and you're not really under any obligation to let the other guy get his moment

if you want to win the game instead. But this is even sillier because there was no no-hitter. It's a one-hit shutout. I mean, it's a great game But it's not going to be a popular Clip on MLB.com that we're going to be Watching between innings on MLB TV for the next five years so

I just I don't get it plus They're shifting so if They're shifting they're trying to get him out They're not just like conceding the game So why should he concede that Plate appearance I don't get it i have absolutely no idea what i don't even have anything to add to what you said because they're shifting and he just won when i first saw the the tweets going around i didn't watch this live why would i be watching that game but when i saw the tweets going around i thought oh the

orioles are upset because the twins bunted for a hit when they were up seven nothing no it was the opposite a team that was losing was trying to get a base runner so that they would not be losing the baseball game but the way that it's not just that one player was upset i would get like if you're burrios i get it maybe you're a little annoyed because who likes to give up a bun single it's cheap or something but for like the the uniformity and the unanimity of the response from the twin side suggests that this really is something that just like pissed them all off but i can't imagine why no to expect though adam jones is such a great leader over there he'll talk some sense into him what is that is this are they gaslighting the orioles about this like adam jones is going to tell chan cisco hey don't do that anymore and then in that way it'll be like a little advantage that

the twins get the next time because they're like now the orioles aren't gonna bunt for that single is this some sort of long con it's just the stupid i know there's a lot of stupid unwritten rules but this one doesn't hold up to any any kind of stretch of logic not even baseball logic this is just straight up stupid the one hit shutout is great but you have to earn it i'm not even opposed to bunts with no hitters, but at least that is an established unwritten rule. This one is not. This is just stupid. I don't get it. And, I mean, maybe teams don't think of shifting as like, you know, going above and beyond taking extraordinary measures to try to get a guy out.

It's so routine now. You're just doing it as a matter of course. So maybe it just feels like regular baseball and like you're not going the extra mile to get a guy out. It's so routine now. You're just doing it as a matter of course. So maybe it just feels like regular baseball and like you're not going the extra mile to get that out. But you are. You're repositioning yourself to try to get an out against that guy. I'd actually be curious if teams generally stop shifting. Is there like an unwritten rule of shifting in most cases?

Is there a mercy rule? Is it you're ahead by a certain number of runs this late in the game you just don't shift i don't know i haven't noticed that being the case not that i necessarily would but wasn't the case here so if you're gonna press that advantage then you have to be okay with the other team trying to get an advantage too so i don't get it i guess it's just a rookie so you feel like you can walk all over him because you're the veteran but i just don't understand how you could be upset about this so this is very silly and uh i don't think chase cisco did anything wrong here and certainly

should not feel abashed or bush league in any way i hope that whenever they shift him in the batter, but out of respect for the game, the opponent must continue to hit the ball where they position their defense until the score is a little closer. Is that how it works? Is he the arbiter of how the game should be played? Chance's age is irrelevant,

and although we do have a veteran presence here, that type of advice was not needed because what he did was correct, which was to reach base any way possible. So, yeah. Cosign. All right. So what else here?

I guess I'm just working through our non-Gabe Kapler topics before we get to Gabe Kapler, but I guess we are approaching the time when we have to talk about Gabe Kapler. I got one for you. Yeah, sure. Go ahead. Okay. So looking at using the Fangraph splits leaderboard.

Last season, there's a feature on the splits leaderboard. I'm looking at the team level batted balls. You can look at the whole season. You can break it down by month or you can break it down by week. There's also an option to break it down by game. I don't know what that means. I didn't want to press the button. It might make my computer explode.

Last season, the week in baseball with the lowest league ground ball rate happened in the middle of August. There was a ground ball rate of 42.3%. That was the lowest week last year. The overall season average was 44.2% ground balls. This season, we're through four days of baseball, 40.4% ground ball. Dramatic drop. It also shows up in the league average launch angles you see on baseball savant we're up like more than two degrees and so on the one hand i know it's absolutely

ridiculous to be talking about this after four days of baseball and certain games have already been postponed and so clearly we need more data but i don't think we need a lot more data to be able to say something is changing here because we you and i both identified this happening in spring training it also just makes sense based on the whole broader conversation we've been having for a few years and as noted the lowest week last season was 42.3 it was very consistently around 44 because you get a lot of batted balls over the course of a week in baseball so by like the end of this coming week we should have a pretty good idea of where this is going to be and it sure does look like it's going to be lower by a substantial amount yeah which right i mean i guess it makes sense i mean how many

stories have we seen about swing changers and guys who are trying to raise their launch angles and get the ball in the air more often this spring. It seems like every team has a few of these guys. So if that's true, if they're all doing what they say they're doing and it's working, then it would be impossible not to have some change in launch angle. It would be weird. I think over the last couple of years, people have been skeptical about launch angles and the airball revolution and all that because we were hearing this, but the league-wide numbers hadn't changed that much. It's like a degree it went up or something last year.

But as some people have shown, including you, if you kind of drill down and look, break down the stat cast data into the certain ideal launch angles like the home run launch angles, if you just look between, you know, X degrees and Y degrees and balls hit this hard and that hard, you do see more and more batted balls being in those boxes, in those buckets over the last couple of years. So it has been happening. There has been evidence that it's happening, but maybe now it's accelerating to the degree that we can see it in just your, you know, kind of league average overall launch angle number, which is not that sensitive to this type of change. Yeah, and related to that, maybe, last season, there's also the rate of pop-ups per fly ball.

That's something that Fangraphs has jacked. And last season, the highest week was the middle of September. There was an infield fly ball rate of 10.6%. That was the highest for any week. So for this year, 12.3% through four games. So as you would expect, if you are trying to swing up and hit balls in the air, you're going to hit more bad balls in the air. That would lead to more pop-ups. And unsurprisingly, the league average batting average on balls in play is at 280, down from the normal mark around 300.

So it's only four days but also these are things that would stabilize pretty quick so i will race ben to writing this up later this week yeah i mean i guess team's fifth starters still haven't started in some cases right the worst starters probably haven't or you know they're getting skipped at this point in the season so it's a little too early to draw any very firm conclusions, but not that early. And yeah, we don't even know for sure that this will make hitters better or increase scoring. Like in spring training, even though home runs were up a ton and it seemed like, you know, there were more fly balls or fewer grounders. Scoring was the same as it had been last year.

So that could be the case. I don't know. Like the home run rate isn't up this season so far. Again, tiny sample. But there have been some examples of guys, you know, there's been almost like a backlash to the launch angle movement where you have some guys saying, you know, I've taken it too far. Like Matt Carpenter, for instance, is one who was quoted this spring as saying, you know, he muscled up and he was trying to hit every ball over the fence and it worked really well for him at first. Like, you know, he went from 11 homers and 8 homers to 28 homers in 2015

just like trying to hit the ball harder and was just a better hitter overall really but then last year for instance he hit 23 homers but he only batted 241 and his ops plus was down to 120 from the mid 130s and he was saying at least that he has raised his launch angle too much and he had raised it i think with each subsequent season and he was saying like he fell in love with the homer and he was seeing everyone hit homers and he was trying to raise his launch angle and become this home run hitter and that's not really the type of guy he is he gets on base he works pitchers etc etc so it's possible that you can take it too far and I think Mark Trumbo is another guy who said something similar like in, he was kind of lumped into the launch angle revolution, but then he said after his struggles last year that he was like paying too much attention to that and it was in his head. Or, you know, maybe Ryan Schimpf, who's like, you know, the ultimate extreme fly ball rate guy and just hit so many fly balls that he ended up back in the minors, at least for a while. So you can possibly take it too far, but I don't know that the league as a whole has yet.

I'm sure there is still plenty of room for a lot of guys to improve in this area. Yep. So is it time to – are we going to do it? Are we going to Kapler? I guess we should do the Kapler. Well, first let me ask you to rate this fun fact. You probably saw this. It was going around on Sunday. I don't know who the original person who came up with it, so apologies to that person. But it was tweeted.

It was mentioned on broadcast. So there have been more pitchers used in 2018 than in 1968. This was a popular fun fact. And that's through, I guess it was three plus games of the 2018 seasons, more pitchers used than there were in the entire 1968 season, which sounds like a very fun fact. And Sam used to say, all fun facts lie, which is true. There's some kind of deception going on there usually.

And I think that's the case here too, right? Because in 1968, there Because, you know, in 1968, there were, of course, only 20 teams. So two thirds as many teams as there are today. It was the year of the pitcher, so no one was scoring. So pitchers were going deep into games and, you know, but of course, pitcher usage has changed dramatically and guys would finish their starts often in those days and bullpens were a fraction of the size of what they are now. So is it a fun fact or when you dig down on the reasons why it's true, is it not as fun? I don't like a fun fact where you are considering a league

environment where there were two thirds as many teams. Yeah. I think it's too deceptive for me. So I would rate it a two, two out of 10. Yeah. Yeah. Of course, you know, it's a full season of 162 games back then, and we're through three plus at the time that this was making the rounds. So even though there were fewer teams, there's many, many fewer games in the 2018 sample. So I kind of, I did a little double take. I was taken aback by it when I first heard it and before I started thinking about it more. But obviously, pitcher usage has dramatically changed and reliever usage has dramatically changed. And speaking of that, I guess that's a pretty good segue into our pal Gabe Kapler, who is driving that change these days. these days. So we talked about him in our last podcast because he was already a story just based on the Phillies' first game and him taking out Aaron Nola after 68 pitches and then the bullpen

blew it. And so, of course, he was blamed for having too quick a hook. And since then, he has kind of doubled down on controversy, not intentionally, just, you know, I think in part because kind of he has a target on his back, but also because he is managing differently from anyone else at this point. So it was not just the quick hook of Nola, but then a quick hook of everyone else, right? So he has used, gosh, how many? 21 pitchers in the first three games of the season. The Phillies were off on Sunday. So no manager has ever done that. So that's a lot. He used Pedro Flormone in one of those games, position player. I think I saw that that was the earliest any position player has ever been used as a pitcher in a season. And then, of course, there was the, I guess, justified

controversy where he made a pitching change despite not having a pitcher warming up and brought Hobie Milner into the game who had not thrown any warm-up pitches. The stories kind of conflicted. Kapler said he had been warming up and Milner said he had not. I guess he had been maybe lightly tossing very briefly with the bullpen catcher, but he didn't know he was coming into the game. And so then Braves manager Brian Snitker said that he wasn't allowed any warmup pitches or he should just have to, you know, throw right away. And the umpire said, I'm not going to get anyone hurt. So I'm going to give him three or five warmup pitches instead of eight. So it was weird. And, you know, Kapler said it was miscommunication and he took responsibility, but you know, that's not the kind of thing that we

see ever happen in baseball. I mean, occasionally like the bullpen phone is broken and then there's some kind of miscommunication or non-communication because baseball is still using bullpen phones hardwired in 2018. But this was weird. And so after the game, Kapler also, while taking responsibility for this, also said that the Phillies would make the playoffs this year, which, you know, maybe that was not the best time to double down and say that, but he did. I don't know if you want to say he guaranteed playoffs, but he

said, I'm remaining 100% positive. I believe in this club. I believe in the men in that clubhouse. I believe in our coaching staff, and there's no chance I'm going to let three games, two of them tougher, derail what we're trying to accomplish here, which is to get to the postseason in 2018, which I believe we will do. So it was not the strongest start for the Kapler era, but maybe we can talk about how much of this is being unconventional and how much of it is being incompetent. Okay, so there have been three

major things, right? There's there's nola there was not starting odubo herrera on opening day and there was uh there was the bullpen mismanagement miscommunication in game three is that basically the three big yeah and just you know kind of the frantic bullpen use in general just using tons and tons of pitchers well now like granted nick pavetta was not very good vince velasquez was not very good, nor efficient. So you kind of had to get to the bullpen early in some of those games anyway. Phillies don't really have starters they can trust. They're waiting on Jake Harriot to give them some stability.

So with the Nola thing, I would say that was definitely weird to see him out after 68 pitches, but I would not, in terms of, like, I don't know, my Fury rating, I would give that one like a 3 out of 10. I don't really care. It's early. It made sense. Third time's the order. Freddie Freeman coming up.

Not concerned. Not starting Oduble Herrera on opening day. I get it if you're trying to optimize maybe. But Herrera's good. And I appreciate the symbolism of starting someone on opening day. And Herrera's been there since the low point. I would have liked to start him, but in terms of fury, again, 3 out of 10. Maybe 4 if you're really into the symbol of starting on opening day.

But the Hobie Milner not warming up situation, I mean, for a regular season at this point, that's an 8.5 out of 10. That's just, that is, I understand there's room for miscommunication and maybe something did go wrong. But what went wrong is that Gabe Kapler brought in a reliever who wasn't warm. And the league had to issue a statement in defense of the umpire saying, we actually didn't have a rule for this. This is too incompetent for us to have covered. So the umpire did well under the circumstances. And it's, you know, it's a shame that the Braves had their manager ejected,

but no one knew what to do. This was so stupid. This is just like, who would ever dream to bring in a reliever who didn't know? Like, Hobie Miller might as well have been taking a nap and then Gabe Capra was like, you, go, come, it's your turn.

This is a video game and I can use you when you're cold. But yeah, I don't think I've ever seen this. It certainly doesn't feel like I've ever seen this. It's really dumb to try to do that. And I understand from the umpire's standpoint, you've got to let Milner warm up a little bit. And in a sense, this was so dumb, it's like an advantage to the Phillies

because Milner still got to throw some warm-up pitches but yeah this was this one was bad even if it's in the larger scheme of things pretty insignificant yeah I mean clearly he's going to be unconventional he's going to do things that other managers are unwilling or afraid or just you know don't think are the right things to do and so in some cases he's going to get the backlash from the old school person who just thinks that different equals bad. And so that's unfair and he's going to have to weather some of that stuff. And that's okay.

I mean we saw the same thing with the Astros a few years ago, right? Everyone was complaining, oh, these unnamed inside baseball people whispering about how they're treating their players like robots and the occasional player saying something along those lines too. Well, they were quickly good again and they won the World Series and now no one questions what the Astros do for the most part. So I think Jeff Luno even said at some point like if you're the first to do something, you're going to get some criticism for that. So Kapler has to be prepared for that sort of thing. And, you know, if it's just like using a lot of relievers, I mean, I don't know, maybe he's smart to do that or using a position player. Like, you know, we've talked in the past on this podcast.

I don't know if it was with you or with Sam, but we've talked about how probably, you know, really in theory, position players should be used even more to pitch in games just because there are so many games that are just out of hand and you have essentially no chance to win the game and you might as well just bring the position player in. But it doesn't happen because you're kind of throwing the white flag and there's this stigma against that. So we talked at some point about how, you know, maybe one team will start doing this more often and maybe it's smart. So that's the kind of case where maybe Kepler will get criticized for that, but maybe it's the right move. Maybe it helps the Phillies in the strategic elements and just the basic preparedness, which are two different things, really, or they could be two different things. But, you know, it seems like communication has been an issue here, not just in the Hobie Milner case, but also in explaining to his players what he's doing and why he's doing it and then getting his story straight with the players when talking to the press and that is a problem so the actual on field moves you know aside from milner maybe fine maybe smart who knows but the other stuff does seem as if it needs some work at this point still yeah and you think so okay on the one hand you're you can look at this and say oh gabe

capler's first series it's the the team has reason to question his skills. But, you know, it's not his first series. He had all of spring training to manage. It's not – this isn't for the players like Kapler's first impression. The first impression already happened. But you do figure that the initial impressions are going to last a long time. That's just the way that humans are wired and so if the players on the team don't trust capler's basic competence to be a manager that's going to take a long time to forget and smooth over so look i it's not like gabe capler is about to be fired or anything nothing is going

to happen anytime soon but very obviously there is a voracious appetite for capler criticism and he is going to be under the microscope he was always going to be under the microscope but now he's made things worse for himself so he could really stand to have just like a an easy series coming up against whoever the Phillies play and I don't know if the Phillies are going to have such a thing as an easy series all season long but yeah yeah I just I hope it doesn't snowball just yeah I mean we've talked about Gabe Kepler in both of our first two podcasts of this regular season I'm sure that we'll be doing regular Gabe Kepler updates on this podcast but yeah I hope you know coming as this did in the first series of the season I hope it just doesn't

sort of cement the narrative that Gabe Kepler is weird and he's different and he's you know not going to be a good baseball manager just because he talks differently or behaves differently. I mean, you know, I think there have been a lot of people who've just kind of been on the Gabe Kepler watch since the day he was hired, right? And, you know, people were criticizing the hiring even when we got the news. So, you know, I hope, I mean, he's different. I think it's not bad to be different. I think in some ways, maybe he could potentially push baseball forward. But in other ways, he could potentially send it backward because if this fails spectacularly in some way, then it's going to be everyone painting with a broad brush and saying that you can't manage with the numbers or whatever because this is what happens. And, I mean, Gabe Kapler is a former big leaguer. He has worked for front offices. He's worked in player development.

He has been a minor league manager in the past. He is not like the wonky stat head who doesn't know how the game works and can't talk to players or anything like that. I mean, he may not talk to them like most managers talk to them, but he's at home in clubhouses. He's spent plenty of time in them. So I hope it doesn't become the sort of situation where, you know, it just flames out in such a notable way that you don't get to see someone else pushing the envelope for years to come because it's, you know, we don't want another

Gabe Kapler on our hands. Yeah. My sense is that Kapler does have the full support of the Phillies organization. There's media coverage, and then there's team evaluation. And from what I've heard so far, the Phillies really aren't that concerned at all. Now, that was granted before the Homie Milner situation, so I don't quite know what you do there, but that seems like it should be a pretty fundamental thing to take care of. And not so much in Kapler's defense, but just as further evidence that people love to rip on first-time managers

Aaron Boone has gotten some New York media criticism because Tommy Canely and David Robertson allowed home runs Which doesn't really seem like Aaron Boone's fault But I don't know I haven't bothered to read the articles because I can't emphasize enough that I don't care But Tommy Canely allowed a two-run homer to Justinin smoke and then david robertson allowed a grand slam to justin smoke and then the blue jays beat the yankees seems like aaron boone did what he was supposed to do but i guess he did what josh donaldson was intentionally walked which look i kind of get it but if you look at david robertson he's like a lot better against left-handed hitters than right-handed hitters justin smoke was going to come up and bat lefty against him. And Justin Smoak has been better against left-handed pitchers than right-handed pitchers. So it seems fine. Yeah. I mean, it's one of those situations where you could just tell

that the team has better information than the people criticizing the team. Like, you know, people were citing very small sample stats, like, you know, columnists criticizing Boone. We're talking about the matchup stats. We're talking about what happened in this one series. And sure, Donaldson has something going on with his shoulder that is hurting him in the field. And so maybe he's compromised at the plate in some way. I don't know.

I know I saw him double at some point. But I think, you know, and then you hear boone say like well we you know this was the matchup we liked and we just like the way that robertson's breaking ball works against smoke and it didn't work out this time but you know you just know that they have like advanced projections that were drawn up before this series and take into account pitchers like robertson facing hitters like smoke and it's not just based on some tiny sample of their head-to-head matchup or what happened in the series. So teams' managers often have better information about that stuff than the people who are

criticizing them. And so the intentional walk itself is not a great strategy in most cases, but in this one, I think it was fairly defensible and it was just a bullpen blow up and no one was expecting the yankees to have a lot of bullpen blow ups this year and they've already had a couple so there's a backlash to that but yeah david robertson's career his entire major league career he's allowed a wobah of 298 to righties and 241 to lefties. 241. There's a lot of reverse splits that you don't really believe in, but this one is established. David Robertson, very good against lefties,

not very good against Justin Smoak on Sunday. There was another fun fact. Do you have anything else to say about first-time managers? No, probably not. All right. Well, so you can rate this fun fact for me because this was going around. So actually, I guess the Giants generated a couple of fun facts because the first two games of the season, we didn't really talk about this, but the Giants beat the Dodgers 1-0 on Joe Panic's solo home runs played a four game series and the giants scored two runs total of two runs they scored it's the fewest runs a team has ever scored in its first four games of the season how is that as a fun

fact pretty good i would say yeah that's not bad you know it's got the i mean first series of the season or whatever is kind of arbitrary but still there have been a lot of first games of the season or whatever is kind of arbitrary, but still there have been a lot of first games of the season. So, uh, yep. I like that one. And unsurprisingly, do you know who is last in the majors among team pitching staffs in wins above replacement? Is it the Cincinnati Reds? It's a Cincinnati Reds at negative 0.6. The race to below replacement is underway again in 2018 even luis castillo had kind of a disaster start right yes he did although maybe so we we were saying in the last podcast that you can start to trust the numbers when mike trout is leading in wins above replacement and i would say you can start to trust the numbers

when the marlins have a worse record than the cubs but they split their four-game series the marlins and the c. The Marlins beat them six to nothing the other day. And through one series, the Marlins numbers are actually better than the Cubs are. Why? I don't know. It's stupid, but that's what happened. Yeah. Yeah. And all right. The last thing I wanted to mention, the Rays had their first bullpen day. So there are two things I enjoy about this. First of all, I like the graphics when they show who's starting for the raise. Like the Yankees on Yes Network I saw just had Jordan Montgomery versus bullpen day, and it showed a picture of the visitor's bullpen just on the graphic. And then I think the raise, because where I am in New York, the Yankees home opener is snowed out today. So I'm talking about

actual baseball, but it is nasty outside. So I think because of that, the Rays will have two bullpen days in their next series against the Red Sox, or at least they have two TBDs, which by the way, the bullpen day. So I think that's kind of fun. Anyway, we saw the first bullpen day for the Rays, and it worked out pretty well. They didn't win the game. They lost 3-2 to the Red Sox. But I think just as a proof of concept, it worked out the way you would want this idea to work out.

They had Andrew Kittredge start, and he went 3-1. Then they had Ryan Yarbrough come in. He went 4. And then they finished it up the last inning with Sergio Romo and Chaz Rose. So if they are able to do that every time, and obviously it's not going to work out that well every time, but in theory, that's the way it would work out is that you use a couple guys for, you know, three, four innings a piece, and then you maybe go matchups from there as you need to if that happened most of the time it probably wouldn't really wear out the entire pitching staff so i mean i guess it's going to be a problem when you have a guy get blown up in his first inning or something and then you have to get through the whole game with the bullpen that will inevitably happen at some point but this was kind of a demonstration of how it could work and they held the Red Sox to three runs and they only used four pitchers.

And, you know, no one has ever heard of most of the pitchers they used, I guess, except for Romo and Rowe. And here's why I think this is and is not a big deal. So this is not a big deal because on the Rays' bullpen day, Andrew Kittredge went three and a third. And the Rays' third starter, Jake Faria, the game before, went four went four innings so really not a meaningful difference here's why it is a big deal jake faria went four innings your bullpen is going to get super taxed yeah that's true obviously free is not going to average four innings but you might average five this is uh this is one of the problems when you have jovaldi is down honeywell is down de leon down they're not going to pitch for a long time only jovaldi

might be able to come back this season so i don't know what the race is going to do about this but they uh the race had what yarbrough had one appearance and threw four innings of relief and yanni tirinos had one appearance and threw four innings of relief and so therefore the rays have two relievers who have thrown at least as many innings as two of the Rays starting pitchers. Yeah, I wonder what the breakdown will be for them. I mean, they haven't committed to doing this for the whole season. I think Kevin Cash just said we'll try it for four to six weeks and see how it goes. But I mean, inevitably, they will have probably the highest percentage of team innings pitched by relievers ever, right? I would think. I mean, we're hitting records league-wide with that every year at this point. So it makes sense that some team would set that team record in 2018.

I'm sure teams set that team record last year too. And given what the Rays are doing here, I would think that they will eclipse whatever the record for that is. Strong agree. All right. Anything else? Nope. Okay.

Well, we've gone around the league. We've covered all of baseball. Good job by us. And we'll probably switch from this format to actually focusing on one or two topics in the sometime near future. But we're still in the early exuberant days of baseball. And it seems like there's a ton to talk about. So we're going to talk about it. So you can support the podcast on patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild five listeners who have recently pledged their support include trip von minden ben detweiler tim peterson eddie campbell and steve kashore thanks to all of you you can join our facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild and you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes.

Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. By the way, I will link to this on the show page at Fangraphs and in the Facebook group. You've got to go to banishedtothepen.com. Check out Ken Maeda's post there from April 1st. It's called Baseball Video Game Effectively Wild. Ken, who is a master of the visual arts, did several mock-up images for an old-school baseball game based on Effectively Wild. It's great. I want to play it. It was a big hit in the Facebook group, so thanks to Ken. You can keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff

coming via email at podcastwithfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. It's been a while since our last full email show, I know, so I think we'll get to one next time. So we will be back to talk to you and answer your questions sometime very soon. Until then, enjoy the early season baseball. You got a nine to five, so I'll take the night shift. And I'll never see you again If I can't help it In five years I hope The songs feel like covers

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