Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1202: The Strike Zone is Scary

Episode Date: April 12, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Shohei Ohtani’s platoon splits and pitchers’ league-wide avoidance of the strike zone this season, then answer listener emails about the power and prestige of managers compared to coaches, when to trust in-season results over projections, choosing between Ohtani and Mike Trout, whether Albert Pujols or Adrian Beltre will […]

Hey everyone, in this episode, Jeff and I talk about Shohei Otani's platoon splits and likelihood of starting against left-hand pitchers. Just so you know, he did start against a lefty on Wednesday night. He went one for two off him, ended up going one for three with a walk on the night. Was also picked off once by his former teammate, Chris Martin. Could have been two for three, if not for a nice play by Matt Bush. We also talked before a couple of base brawls. It was a violent day in baseball, but we will have to get to that next time. So now on with the episode.

Hello and welcome to episode 1202 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast for No, no, no one when you sort of maybe go to bed or wake up in the morning if you do either of those things and then you kind of look at the baseball statistics but often i don't do either of those things but yeah i guess you can't really do one without the other yeah i have uh anecdotally noticed a whole lot of starts where it seems like pitchers end up with as many or more walks than strikeouts which uh happening a lot now it does seem like the early season weather has been pretty cold yeah which uh you know that's one of seem like the early season weather has been pretty cold yeah which uh you know that's one of the reasons why the home runs haven't quite been there probably but right we are looking at let me just confirm yep the walks are up strikeouts are up home runs currently down but we have a league-wide walk rate of 9.5 percent which would be a leap of an

entire percentage point from last year now granted the strikeout rate has done the exact same thing so not a whole lot of movement there but there has been a lot of not swinging and i wish i don't know what the problem is with a stat cast and and track man like right now the league wide zone rate according to the numbers at fan graphs and i'm gonna preface this by saying this is almost certainly incorrect but i'm gonna read from 2014 on to 2018 49 pitches in the zone 48.1 47.2 47.3 40.5 something is definitely off or every single pitcher has decided why strikes every strike is a home run let's do not strikes

so something weird is happening i think trackman is busted but also there's definitely been fewer swings the league-wide swing rate is down 1.5 percentage points from last season something's up interesting well so there has been a slight trend toward fewer pitches in the strike zone over the past several seasons which makes some sense just because hitters are doing so much damage on contact these days and everyone's trying for strikeouts or not trying to avoid strikeouts in hitters' case. So it does seem as if, and we've talked about how pitchers are going away from the fastball or at least some types of fastballs and are prioritizing breaking balls more, and those pitches tend to be out of the strike zone so it does make sense that zone rate would be down but that that can't be right

right that's a that's an enormous difference but yeah and if there are many more pitches outside the strike zone you would expect fewer swings so i guess the two are consistent at least yeah it's something something does make sense i suspect that there are fewer pitches in the zone overall but not by this extent something is that true broken fangraphs has multiple methods of of determining zone rate right there's the the baseball info solutions video scout way of having zone rates so does that show a large decrease technically you're right fangraphs does offer two different uh options but the other one is based a lot off of that cast or pitch effect or trackman or whatever you want to call it however now that i click on it i do see a drop from 45 last year to 43.3% this year. So something to watch.

First pitch strike rate is down a percentage point. Yeah. I think I saw someone in the Facebook group note that I think he said it was maybe the percentage of plate appearances going to a full count is up a lot this year. And that just pitches per plate appearance is also up quite a bit this year, which, again, would support the idea that there are fewer pitches inside the strike zone being thrown. So, I mean, I guess it makes sense, right? We've talked so much about the home runs that pitchers are maybe a little scared of the home runs. And between that and the whole trend toward throwing your best pitch, whatever that pitch is. I mean, it sort of makes sense.

It's not really good news, I guess, from a spectator perspective, just to have longer and longer plate appearances, especially if the only reason that they're longer is that you're just getting more waste pitches, essentially just trying to get guys to chase. That's not so fun. There are currently 206 qualified hitters around baseball which based on whatever qualified means and there are 10 of them that have walk rates of at least 20 percent now some of those

you've got bryce harpert freddie freeman matt carpenter joe mauer that makes sense matt davidson jan herves salarte something something weird has been going on there's a lot of i'm just i'm going to choose to blame the cold but i wish that I could trust the TrackMan data a little more than I do right now because, yeah, something definitely seems like it's not normal. Well, maybe you will have blogged about it by the time this podcast is posted. Stay tuned! Potentially, go to Fangrass right now and you can read Jeff's even more fully developed thoughts on this same subject. So we're doing an email show today, and of course we will answer some Shohei Otani emails. He is, at least for right now, taking the lead in the player who appears in the most emails we receive.

But I do have a quick Shohei Otani point that I want to make before our Shohei Otani emails, and we don't have a whole lot more to say about him because he has only had one pinch hit plate appearance since the last time we talked about him. He grounded out sharply against Bartolo Colon, who has looked great so far. But that kind of brings me to what I wanted to say, which is he was pinch hitting in that game because a lefty was starting the game. And so he was sitting, and presumably because he's a left-handed hitter and they're sort of, I don't know, not strictly platooning him necessarily, but kind of easing him in against lefties or something. And everyone was upset when the lineups came out.

It was just like mass outrage. How dare you deprive us of our Shoya Otani fix? We already went Monday without him. Now we have to go Tuesday too. So the thing about this is that another thing that makes Otani special is that he has essentially had no platoon splits in Japan. So just on top of being great at hitting and great at pitching and great at running and everything else, he just doesn't seem to be vulnerable to left-handed pitching. So it would be a shame if they did platoon him or they looked to give him even more time off because of a lefty starter, for instance. great site that is essentially fan graphs for Nippon Professional Baseball. So over those four

seasons, he has had 722 plate appearances against righties, 244 plate appearances against lefties, not enormous sample sizes, but in those samples, he has had against righties a 149 weighted runs created plus, against lefties a 165 weighted runs created plus so he has been better against left-handed pitching that doesn't mean that he is better or will be better against left-handed pitching it's very rare to have true reverse splits but it does mean that if we were projecting him we would expect that he would have smaller than the typical splits. So if anything, he's less vulnerable to lefties than the typical left-handed hitter of his

talent. So, you know, I'm sure that the Angels have even more detailed numbers on this than I do and are not just blindly saying, oh, he's a lefty, let's sit him against lefties. But there's no real reason to to at least based on his past performance so i hope it doesn't happen regularly i would imagine that as we were talking about the other day the angels monitoring otani's playing time and maybe playing him more often if he's good this is going to be one of the areas where they relent and decide yeah we're not going to sit you against lefties i mean if you're gonna what was it martin perez he was lefty on the mound yeah

something tells me in a few months the angels will be letting otani play against martin perez that's not the kind of lefty that you bench a lefty bat for you shouldn't bench anyone you should start 13 batters against martin perez yeah it's not like they hurt themselves they scored 11 runs had won 11 to 1 and mike trout homered so. So they were just fine. But, you know, for us, we were all disappointed. So let's do some emails. I'll answer some non-Ohtani emails first, just so we have a bit of an Ohtani buffer here. Are you sure we have any? Yeah, just a few. So, all right, let's start with one from Dennis. Given that, A, the field manager is more and more subservient to the front office and their numbers and is increasingly a mere button pusher, and, B, there seems to be more and more science and success to reinventing hitters by changing their swings and fixing pitchers by tweaking mechanics and prescribing pitch usage, by tweaking mechanics and prescribing pitch usage. How far away are we from the hitting coach and pitching coach becoming the more prestigious positions than the manager?

Higher paid. Are we not on the beginning of a track toward teams becoming more readily identifiable by their coaches than by their manager? Well, I guess with the hitting coaches, first of all, there seem to be so many cases where the players are doing this work independently and it's not the team hitting coach that's actually making these adjustments also

i think we're still waiting on more evidence that this is really working long term for a whole lot of guys because right now we have jd martinez josh dollinson maybe aj pollock and justin turner a handful of others but it's not like the league has been taken by storm by guys suddenly being phenomenal fly ball hitters anyway as for the pitching coach thing i think uh that is what we're seeing and it does seem like there's a lot of movement toward uh toward i don't know more optimized repertoires whatever you want to call it just changes in in pitch mix but i suspect in fact i i more or less know that a lot of that is not coming from the pitching coach himself that's coming from the analysts or the front office who are doing this work because if you are the pitching coach your job

is essentially to keep the pitchers happy and to work on their mechanics which is important but changes in in mix and approach a lot of that is coming from other people who are then using the pitching coach to spread the message but yeah this is uh this gets back to the what the old louis paulus argument that pay the front office people more because they're the ones who are really important in these circumstances. Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say. The same trends that are affecting the manager's role are really affecting every member of the field staff's role. So I don't know if there's a difference here. We might get to know the coaches more, but I'm not sure.

There have always been gurus and coaches in baseball who had a certain philosophy that they were known for. And those guys get lionized for a few years as long as whatever theory or whatever approach they espouse is working, and then it stops working, and then they fade away. So I don't know that that will necessarily change. It is worth wondering, why manage? who would want that job and i i genuinely don't know look at what gabe capler has been subject to in his first like two weeks just for pulling a starting pitcher early and that i i know it's more than that but for at least trying to be cutting edge he's been crapped on by everyone and to his credit he still has his job

and the phillies are five and five, so maybe the disaster is over with. But long story short, it just seems like it's a horrible job to put yourself in. It does. I guess the money's pretty good. But, yeah, it's not easy. All right, question from Sean. I know the running joke, although it's actually probably a pretty good system, is that the season has stabilized when Mike Trout is atop the war leaderboards. How close is he now, by the way, after his recent homer? I guess his numbers still aren't Troutian, but he must be moving up. Give me a second. Let's

see. Let's see if he's even on the first pitch. Oh, there he is. Okay, so he's coming. He's in 17th place, but he's actually at 0.7. He's technically tied for sixth place with about a dozen players. So is yeah a half win off the lead the lead being dd gregorius right okay but sean continues in your mind what is a large enough sample for you to believe that the projections were wildly wrong about a player or a team for example the pirates are or were when sean sent this email six and one at what point would you be willing to believe that the projections were just wrong sent this email six and one at what point would you be willing to believe that the projections were just wrong about them certainly six and one is too early but what

about if they were 12 and 2 24 and 4 and would your answer change if it were a team like the Marlins or Tigers instead of a team like the Pirates Pirates opened their season with a sweep of the Tigers then they later won three out of four against the Reds I don't care those games I know those games count but that doesn't mean anything to me. Of course the Pirates are overachieving. They've played crap opponents. So now I know they just beat the Cubs. They did win one out of two.

Oh. Well, they won one out of two against the Twins, so that's even. But for something like this, it doesn't mean anything. With the player, I think it's easier to see when projections might have been off of the player because you can just look for really strong indicators of change, especially like fastball velocity or something like that. But with teams, I've looked at this before, and when you get halfway through the season, you can compare the standings to the preseason projected standings,

and the preseason projections still tell the more accurate story for the rest of the season. It takes a lot of information, and you should just listen to the projections. They know what they're doing. Yeah, it depends. I mean, if you're talking about the preseason, like, full-year win total projection, then obviously that could be wrong based on extreme early season success. But if you're talking about what the team's true talent is and what their winning

percentage will be going forward then yeah you should still trust the projections until really deep into the season and even then you should probably just not look at the team's record but dig into why they're beating the projections is it certain players overperforming and are they overperforming in a way that makes you think they're actually better than the projections thought they were? Or is it just luck? Are they just, you know, outplaying their run differential or their base runs record or whatever it is? So it takes more information, but general guide is just keep trusting the projections even longer than you think you should. Yep. It sucks, but it's true. Yeah. All right. First Otani question.

I'll space them out a bit. This is from another Jeff who says, it seems that Shohei Otani is rivaling Mike Trout as the player most talked about on the podcast. They're about neck and neck so far in this episode. I have a silly question for both of you. If you could only watch one of those players for his career, which one would it be?

Assume that watching Otani means that you can't watch Trout at all and vice versa. I don't know why that would be. They're on the same team. But yeah, I don't know. You have to leave the ballpark or turn off the TV when Trout is up. Also assume that you can only resume watching that other player once the one you've chosen had stopped playing. I know this is highly unrealistic, especially because they currently play on the same team.

How is your answer affected as someone who makes a living covering baseball? If your boss said you can write about only Otani or only Trout for the rest of their respective careers, which one would you choose? What kind of hypothetical is this? Now, granted, I used to do this with the Mariners where I would watch Itro

and I would specifically not watch Uniesky Betancourt. So I can sort of relate to this. But I guess the answer is Otani just because he does two things, right? You get a little more variety. That's true. Although I don't know if you get more playing time. But yeah, so many of our email hypotheticals are like forcing us to choose between things we love. Why do our listeners always want to do this to us?

Why can't we have both? I think I'm taking Trout, I think. I mean, if we were talking this season alone, I'd take Otani. But I still think that Trout will end up as the better player, that he will probably even be the better player from today on. That he will probably even be the better player from today on. You know, he will end up as like an inner circle Hall of Fame type guy. And Otani has a shot at that sort of thing. But obviously, it's much more unlikely we were talking about Trout versus Otani and how Trout is amazing, but his amazingness doesn't really leap off the screen in quite the same way that Otani's did last week. For instance, it's just Trout is better at everything that the conventional player does, but Otani is the completely unconventional player who's just doing things that no other player does. So I don't know. I think that Trout has always been fun to watch and fun to appreciate, but not in such an extreme way. In a sense, you almost need

the stats or you need to see every Trout plate appearance and defensive opportunity to understand why he's so good and so amazing, whereas you can understand why Otani is so amazing in one start and one plate appearance, basically. So it would be tough for me to give Otani up, but I think in the long term, I'll probably get more entertainment and more enjoyment and more content out of Trout. And I will actually counter myself because while Otani does offer more variety, he's also half a pitcher and pitchers get hurt. And I don't want to have to write about a guy who's not playing. Yeah, right.

Okay. Damien says, given the rate that Albert Pujols' career war is falling and the steady rate that Adrian Beltre's continues to climb, who do you think finishes with a higher career war? Beltre has the momentum advantage but may need another contract to get there. Or even if Beltre retires, Pujols has enough time left on his deal to possibly fall below a retired Beltre all by himself. Are we using Fangraphs or Baseball Reference here? I might as well use Fangraphs. We're a Fangraphs podcast, a Fangraphs podcast But I don't know I don't remember how different the wars are for these guys

Alright well on Fangraphs Pujols is at 88.5 career war And Belter is at 83.5 Career war Very close So using those I mean I guess Pujols is Hitting a bit better this year

He seems to have maybe arrested his decline for the moment. He is actually offering positive value this year so far, 0.1 Winsper placement. But yeah, going by the Fangrass values, I guess you'd have to say Beltre catches up, right? Because Beltre has been a little less durable, but he has continued to play at a star level. They're essentially the same age, right? Pujols is 38, Beltre is 39. So Beltre is a little older, but just seems to be better preserved physically and skills wise. And, you know, still plays good defensive third base, whereas Pujols is DHing or not being such a good first baseman anymore. So yeah, going by the Fangrass values, I'd say you'd probably have to bet on Beltre. I don't

know. I mean, a five-win gap is a lot to make up at this age. The rest of the way, the rest of this season, Pujols is projected for negative 0.1 war, and Beltre is projected for positive 3.2. So that takes care of 63 63 of the gap or something just there alone so yeah i'm going to take beltray because pools is going to keep playing he's going to keep being bad and beltray is going to keep playing at least a couple more years and he's probably going to keep being good uh i only say that because he's never not been good except for 2001 i guess but i don't want to go back that far. him, which is pretty incredible given the way that those two guys were regarded a decade ago when Pujols was a lock inner circle Hall of Famer.

I mean, he still is a Hall of Famer, but no one was really thinking of Beltre like that back then. I did an article, I guess it was last year when Beltre got his 3,000th hit, just kind of tracing when the perception of Beltre changed. And it was pretty sudden. It was like, you know, people went from never calling him a Hall of Famer to almost always calling him a Hall of Famer within just like a couple of years. It was kind of amazing. And it's, you know, partly just that he's been fantastic in his 30s and just has been better than anyone possibly could have

expected. He's been better as an older player, really, than a younger player. But it's also that I think people have come to appreciate that he actually was good as a younger player, and people have taken the context and the ballpark and all of that into account, as well as the defense, which was always superb. So it's partly that he has gotten better somehow, and also that I think we've gotten better at realizing how good he always was. I agree.

I have a question for you that has nothing to do with Pujols or Bill Gray. It actually has nothing to do with baseball, but I just saw a promotional email in my inbox. This is from REI. The subject of this email is fact. The average American spends 95% of their life indoors. Does that sound like it's too much? Because I ran a calculation, and that means that even on a per-week basis, that's 8.4 hours of outdoors time, and the subject was your life.

So, I mean, we're counting like childhood or whatever, and then you're an old person, and I don't know what you do. But I don't know, 8.4 hours seems like a lot of, at least a decent amount of outdoor time on a weekly basis. I mean, commutes don't really count as outdoor time, even if you have some sort of... If you're in a car, eh, I don't think that counts. Yeah, so I'm not, I don't know. It sounds like a lot, but I'm not alarmed by this at all. So you're saying it sounds like you think that it would be even less outdoor time than that?

I mean, I just think that the way that this is phrased seems to imply that 95% of your life indoors, that's a problem. But as I think about it, I think that's not a problem at all. And then the email continues with a little video. I'm not going to press it, but the big bold text says, we're the first indoor species. Well, yeah, we're the first species that figured out how to build walls, for God's sake. I was just going to say, that reflects pretty well on us. We're not in the food chain anymore. We don't have to be out in the elements. We've mastered nature by not having to be in it. Look, I'm a man who loves the outdoors, but I think that we're doing just fine. I was going to say, I'm probably above 95, and you're probably well below 95. So if you average us, I don't know where we would be, but probably right around there.

Also, 8.4 hours per week. That assumes, I mean, I don't go out a whole lot when it's like horrible weather. We work from home, so that's part of our problem. But you make an effort to be outside, whereas I do not. Well, yeah, but you're also in New York City where I think the outside is still inside. I don't even know how far you have to go. Anyway. That's right.

Different podcast. Alright, well, fun fact I guess? I don't know. Alright, Thomas says, how much staying power is there in the phrase quote, Andrew Miller type role? Will there eventually become an impersonal term for the role like there is for closer and where the first closers referred to as having Bruce Suter type roles?

Does the protean nature of the Andrew Miller role make it more difficult for an appropriate term that captures its essence? Does fireman just not sound as clever? Will we still be saying Andrew Miller type role in five years? No, but I don't know. What is the actual baseball definition of fireman? Because it's kind of the idea here. Yeah, it is.

But does fireman see the game all the way through? I think it's just you come in to put out the fire, right? It's not so much the save situation as just coming in whenever the high leverage moment is when you can save the game. I think it originated back in the days when the fireman typically would pitch multiple innings. So I think we can use that. I think we should use that. And I don't know. I mean, I think Andrew Miller, I haven't even said Andrew Miller type role this season myself until now, I don't think. I've probably been thinking about that a little less than I was certainly last season coming off of the 2016 playoffs when Miller was the star. So, I mean, Miller himself might still be around in five years doing Miller type things is not something that will get associated with Miller in the very long term. I mean, maybe in the way that like a lot of people point to Tony La Russa and Dennis

Eckersley as starting or at least popularizing the movement toward the one inning closer, I guess Miller and Francona might be looked on as kind of the opposite, the reverse, the backlash trend. It kind of depends on the timing if like a lot of things change in the league. And it does seem as if we came to like an adeer for innings per relief appearance and that maybe it's on the way up very slowly again. So I guess in the long term, we might look back decades from now and say this happened right around the time that things started to go back in the other direction a little bit. And maybe it will be the convenient thing to link Andrew Miller to that. But I would bet against it. and are associated with one player tend to lose that association over time as people who were around and saw that player and saw that season die out or just forget about it. Yeah, I agree with that.

And if you look at Miller, just five games this year, 5.1 innings, nothing looks too unusual there. Let's see, he's come in in the 7th, the 8th, the 8th, and the 9th. So even now, I understand that when the playoffs start or when the games get more important miller might be used with more freedom i guess but also this is a an indian's bullpen that's been depleted it's kind of down to miller allen and and hope i know that dan otero's in there and whatnot but it's that's a little different so i think that you've written before about how there were a lot of the context allowed for Miller to be used more liberally than he would have in another situation. And I think what we're going to see is that even Andrew Miller doesn't necessarily have the Andrew Miller role anymore. I don't know who does, but Josh Hader would be one example.

So I don't know. Do we call it the Josh Hader role now? And this is why we're just going to probably go to Fireman or something else. Riot police? No, that's worse. Yeah. All right. Let's take one from Anthony who says,

Quick question. I see that with JT Riddle injured, the Marlins are running a combination of Miguel Rojas and Yadiel Rivera, whom Steamer projects for a 36 weighted runs created plus at shortstop. What are the odds that Derek Jeter had he decided in November that he had the urge to play again so full offseason and spring training would be a better option than Rojas or Rivera for the Marlins at shortstop this year and I answered this one via email I mean the thing is that Jeter was bad when he was still playing. So even if he had some time to prepare, he would presumably be even worse now, and he was sub-replacement level then. So it's not a high

bar to climb over. I think Rojas is better than Jeter was even when Jeter was still playing shortstop for the first time. So I think Rojas clearly better. But Yadiel Rivera, thank you to Anthony for drawing my attention to Yadiel Rivera, who I was not really aware of. And wow, he can't hit. He really, really can't hit. So Rivera has played at AAA for, I think, three seasons, multiple seasons. He has a 585 career OPS in AAA, and that's in Colorado Springs. So he's playing at altitude, still has a 585 career OPS in AAA, and that's in Colorado Springs. So he's playing at altitude, still has a 585 career OPS there. His AAA WRC plus marks from each of the past three seasons, 48, 52, 53. Amazing

that he is still in the majors. He must be an amazing fielder slash it's the Marlins. Oh my God. He must be like one of the worst hitters, I mean, in baseball now. But I mean, that's like Jeff Mathis numbers in the majors, but in AAA. And he is now in the majors. I mean, that's got to be pretty historic offensive ineptitude so why is he playing for the team what appeal so last where is okay uh so yadiel rivera also played in the puerto rican winter league this past offseason which in fairness i did not know that that took place and yadiel river Rivera played in 16 games. He had nine hits. He batted 191. He slugged 213. So let's see.

He definitely didn't have a promising winter ball stint. He didn't have a promising major league stint last year. He definitely didn't have a promising AAA stint the previous season. He was bad in Puerto Rico, bad in the majors, bad in the PCL. Previous to that, he was bad in the winter League and good in the Arizona Fall League in 2015. He had an 829 OPS. So maybe the Marlins got some very selective video and they watched Yadiel Rivera bat 315 against other competitors in the 2015 Arizona Fall League. But I don't know.

Did he have some sort of spring training that happened? Because otherwise this makes sense. Look, I don't know. Did he have some sort of spring training that happened? Because otherwise this makes... Yeah. Look, I don't know who JT Riddle is, but he's better. Yeah. I mean, no one's watching Marlins games. No one's going to Marlins games.

So if a Yadiel Rivera falls in the forest and no one hears it, I don't know that it actually matters. But I mean, man, those numbers are bad. Like right now he's hitting 167, 231, 167. That's a 397 OPS. That might be kind of his true talent. It's like not far.

I mean, his career 585 OPS in AAA at Colorado Springs, jumping to the majors in Miami. I mean, that's kind of almost like what you would expect him to hit. majors in Miami, I mean, that's kind of almost like what you would expect him to hit. So, oh man, that is, I mean, he must be a really fantastic fielder, right? I hope. The Marlins had me this season for four games. I was interested in, because everyone figures they're going to be absolutely dreadful, maybe they'll win like 50 or fewer games. I thought, I always look for a team like that. And I always want to watch them at the beginning of the season and say, what if this team is a miracle? And the Marlins had me for four games because they played the Cubs pretty hard.

They won two out of four to open the season. They lost one of those games in extra innings. And I thought, oh, this Marlins team, if you squint, you could, no. No, you can't. They got owned by the Red Sox. They were destroyed by the Phillies. They won one of three games, but they are outscored 28-7. They lost that game 20-1.

Incidentally, Jake Thompson got a save in that game. But the Marlins are terrible. Don't watch them. They're not a miracle. Yesterday, they had a horrible game against the Mets. You just can't. It's not happening, y'all. The Marlins are a bad team.

They had one series where they looked good. And that will be it. Way to play the Cubs hard. Only 158 games left to go after that. In fairness to the Marlins, the Milwaukee Brewers have had Yadiel Rivera in the past. And he has made the majors in each of the past three seasons. And those were Brewers teams that were kind of trying to win. Now, granted, he only played in one game for the Brewers last year,

two plate appearances. He did not reach base, but I guess it's not just the Marlins. And he does play multiple positions. So that's something, of course, when he's not playing shortstop, it's just even worse that he's as bad a hitter as he is. But he has already this year played shortstop, second base, left field. Last year he played third. He has played second in the past. So he's a multi-position guy. And I guess he is the type of Ben Zobrist player who doesn't hit at all, which is not really a Ben Zobrist type player. And I guess we have also somewhat solved the mystery in that he did have a good spring training this year. He had 46 at bats and somehow he hit 304, 373, 457. So Yadier Rivera, good spring training.

I guess that helped. He was only out OPSed on the Marlins by the following... Oh my god, where is he even? He was out-OPSed by Derek Dietrich, someone Galloway, Ryan Anderson, Louis Brinson, J.B. Shuck, Scott Van Slyke,

Patrick Mooney, Christian Adames, Jay Rodriguez, I don't want to look at this anymore. This is bumming me out. Alright, you have a stat blast? That's an interesting take, but discuss it at length and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's today's step last. Step last.

I have a few, actually. Just some quick stuff. Just kind of. I do have a real one. But first of all, I was just browsing through a page on Baseball Reference looking at teams who have used relievers on zero days rest, and Gabby Kapler's Phillies currently lead the majors with 13 relievers used on zero days rest. There are a couple teams tied for the second fewest. The Twins and the Royals have used relievers on zero days rest four times, but the Mariners are at zero.

Mariners have yet to use a reliever on zero days rest don't know if that means anything but something to watch considering their starting rotation is so terrible now yeah moving on from that we can look quickly so you know a few weeks ago we were all talking about pace of play initiatives and what was going on the current average game length this season is three hours and ten minutes, up two minutes from last year. Now, granted, there have been a lot of extra inning games, a lot of long extra inning games. So the actual time per nine innings right now is exactly three hours, which is down five minutes from last season.

But last season was up five minutes from the season before. So we're back to 2016 in the early going exactly three hours uh per nine innings we are seeing a all-time high in pitches per plate appearance up 1 20th of i don't want to talk about fractions okay so how about pace pace i have that on this sheet that i'm looking at right now so pace so this is average time between pitches in 2017 it was 24.3 seconds in 2018 23.9 seconds we've shaved off four tenths of a second people all right a lot of progress being made here but that's still the second slowest pace that we have on record it was 23.6 seconds between pitches in 2014 last time we thought that we had this solved going into 2015

everyone sped up and then everyone slowed down and here we are so we're going to see a pitch clock next season that much is almost unavoidable but the actual stat blast which now that we're on our third stat is just a quick we had an email some time ago that was asking about uh walk-off home runs and people who have not hit walk-off home runs andrew mccutcheon hit a walk-off home runs and people who have not hit walk-off home runs andrew mccutcheon hit a walk-off home run just four or five days ago yes that preceded his walk-off single that he hit on tuesday which was also exciting way to go andrew mccutcheon but i was i was curious and the listener was curious about walk-off home runs i can tell you that all time including the postseason according to the baseball reference play index the leaders in walk-off home runs for their careers are jim tommy mickey mantel and

david ortiz all of whom have 13 career walk-off home runs roy face the all-time leader in walk-off home runs allowed with a 16 roy face also the reliever who one time went 18 and won as a pitcher that comes up every so often but uh in terms of the career home run leaders who have never hit a walk-off home run, I can tell you that. And the answer is actually Norm Cash. Norm Cash at 379 career home runs, including two in the postseason,

never hit a walk-off home run. And after him, Jose Batista, actually 337 career home runs, none of them ending a game which i found pretty incredible unfortunately i don't think that he's positioned to pass norm cash because he's not going to get a job yeah jimmy win 291 career home runs no walk-off home runs i don't know who that is danny tartable never hit a walk-off home run i don't need to keep going down this list but i will because ken caminiti was at 247 home runs never a walk-off. I could probably do something at the bottom of this list,

but I don't really want to do that. I don't know if anyone, let's see. Well, I'm not going to go through this, but I can tell you that Ed Sprague, apparently, this can't be right. He had more than one career home run, so that's probably just a bad search. There are multiple Ed Spragues.

So I'm not going to go over the players who have only hit walk-off home runs because I did not prepare this, and now we're doing this on the podcast. So I'm unprepared to finish this stat buy segment. Okay well it was good while it lasted. Jimmy Wynn he was really good. Hall of Fame

voters didn't know who he was either but he was if not deserving pretty close to it. I was wondering I wonder whether players are faster or slower in cold weather like the weather that we've been having. I was wondering, I wonder whether players are faster or slower in cold weather, like the weather that we've been having. I mean, I guess games would be faster probably because there's less scoring, but I wonder whether like hitters or pitchers are trying to keep themselves warm

by pitching faster or whether they're just lethargic and slow because it's so cold. I don't know. I guess someone could probably check with a RetroSheet database or something and look at pace by temperature, but we cannot do that live on a podcast. Well, I have a question that is walk-off themed, so I guess I will slip that in here for a good segue. It's from Lewis, who says, After how many consecutive walk-offs would a team stop celebrating assume an infinite string of home games to allow this to happen i actually

meant to mention when we were talking about the astros walk-off pop-up this past weekend the celebration was like kind of over the top i thought like there was no difference in the celebration between the walk-off pop-up and like a really dramatic walk-off homer in a game that really mattered in the bottom of the ninth or something like that it was like a full celebration which i thought was kind of funny because they were just sort of wiping it in the face of the padres who pretty much deserved it at that point but it did seem i I don't know, I was curious to see what the walk-off would be like, because again, it wasn't like any Astro did something good on that play. It was just all the Padres sabotaging themselves. And yet

there was no difference at all in how the Astros celebrated. If anything, they seemed happier than usual, I guess, just because, I don't know, a win was pulled from the jaws of, well, not defeat, but at least another tie inning. Yeah, I think that a lot of the celebration is just, you know, it's a reflection of the circumstances, and I think that a walk-off walk is kind of boring because you can sort of see it coming, and so I don't really know how you celebrate that, but with a walk-off pop-up, the swing in the motion during the one play is almost as extreme as you can get. You go from. And now, granted, the Astros were not losing when the pop-up was hit.

It would have been unbelievable if it was a two-run infield pop-up, but it was not. But otherwise, you go from off the bat, we have to play more baseball to the ball dropped. The game is over. That's fantastic. You are not going to see too many bigger psychological swings such that that practically rivaled like a walk-off home run. It didn't really matter that the ball only went 20 feet. So that's what everyone is losing their minds over.

I think everyone understood that the circumstances were hysterical, and so they celebrated as such, and I don't fault them for it. But I guess we haven't addressed the question no we haven't yeah so this we get a lot of questions in this genre which is basically like what would happen if this thing kept happening over and over again and so this one is just walk-offs just infinite walk-offs happening forever when do the players just stop celebrating and I guess it would follow Sort of like I don't know for a While I think maybe

It would cause even more celebration So there'd be like a Sort of sine curve shape Almost where I think the Intensity picks up just because You'd be on such a high just like Stringing walk-offs together having A whole homestand with nothing but walk-offs together having a whole homestand

with nothing but walk-offs i mean it would be you know be extremely exciting i think but after a while i mean no one can sustain the same level of excitement for the same stimulus indefinitely and obviously you'd get to a point where it would start to seem strange and supernatural and scary uh but even before that i guess he would eventually it would just become routine so it would be hard to maintain the same level of enthusiasm how many times would they try to force it and then when would that become apparent like so when would they be able to stop fooling the viewers about the sincerity of the walk-off celebration and when would it start to look like whoever that the walk-off celebration and like when would it start

to look like whoever that met's walk-off grand slam spring training someone evans this is you can tell how much i cared about this because i forgot the first name of the player who hit it phil nick philip philip evans yes yeah when would it start to look like that where you're greeted by the bat boy and two of the three people that you drove in. Did you give it a number? No. I'm trying to remember what happened with the Indians' winning streak last year when they were getting up to 22. Like, was there ever a point where, obviously, those weren't all walk-offs, but were they treating the wins with less enthusiasm than they had been before? Or was it still, I guess they hadn't set the record yet So once you set the record I don't know what the record for consecutive Walk-off victories is But maybe once you surpass that

Then you would eventually Lose enthusiasm so it would help to know what that is And I don't but I guess I don't know I would say like The thing is that you'd have the winning streak Going too though so you'd Still celebrate until you pass the Winning streak record wouldn't you'd still celebrate until you pass the winning streak record, wouldn't you?

Because, I mean, until you surpass the Indians or the record, I mean, you'd still be building toward that. So you'd still be pretty excited about that. So maybe it's not until you get to like 30 or something, like a full month's worth of walk-offs how many games in a row would a team have to walk off before their opponent in a tie game in the bottom of the inning just walked intentionally walked in a run and quit yeah because you'd only be able to do this half the time right you're only walking off in home games so that's another thing yeah so you'd have this this would all be split up right so i think in that case if you have a team that's playing normally on the road, and I'm sure is totally reliable. The record may or may not be the Houston Astros in July 1986 had five consecutive walk-off wins.

So yeah, that's not a lot. So this would very quickly become, I mean, within one week, you would have a record number of walk-offs. So I don't know. I think I'm sticking with my month until it just starts to cross over from exciting to weird and sort of unsettling or boring. That's it. I have to look up. You said the 1986 Houston Astros? Yes, July 86. I'm going to have to pull this up so we can understand exactly what was going on. I don't know if this is actually the record, but I'm still going to search it out anyway. Yeah, I guess that was the Mike Scott Cy Young year for the Astros, but I don't know if that's relevant here. Okay, well, those Astros had nine

walk-off wins, and let's see. Oh my goodness. Okay, July 19th through July 23rd, they walked off against the Mets and Roger McDowell twice. Then they walked off against Jeff Reardon, Floyd Yeomans, and Tim Burke. We had a Craig Reynolds walk-off home run on the 9th. We had a Kevin Bass walk-off fielder's choice. That's boring. On the 15th, then we had a Jose Cruz walk-off single against Jeff Reardon. Then we had a Glenn Davis walk-off home run. Then we had a Davey Lopes walk-off single against Jeff Reardon. Then we had a Glenn Davis walk-off home run.

Then we had a Davey Lopes walk-off single scoring Dickie Thon. Has there been another Thon? I assume it was Dickie Thon. Yeah. And that was in the 11th. So they had five consecutive walk-offs wins, including three in extra innings, which is pretty sensational. Only two of them came with nobody out,

so there was a little bit of drama. But how did that Astros team actually do? 96 wins. They were pretty good. And let's see, they lost in the NLCS to the Mets. So, yeah. That's funny. They lost to the Mets, whom they

walked off against twice in that streak. Yep. Let's see. Before the walk-off streak, they won 3-0 against the M let's see before the walk-off streak they won three nothing against the mets and after the walk-off streak they won nine to three against the phillies but uh yeah there's really nothing else to do here that's a lot of walk-off wins in a row and ultimately they still lost in the playoffs because baseball is mean and in september they lost consecutive walk-off games to the podcasters right. Sam says, what is the Mendoza line for WRC Plus? So, of course, everyone knows the Mendoza line named after Mario Mendoza.

It is a 200 batting average, which Mendoza was usually hovering around. So Sam says, that is the WRC Plus below, which is impossible for a full-time player to be an above-replacement-level Major League player. Basically, how bad an offensive player can a player be and still provide sufficient positive value to make them playable? I'm not sure exactly the best way to answer this question, but I did find that in 2017, Billy Hamilton had the lowest WRC plus of any qualified batter who finished above one war. He had 1.2 war with a WRC plus of 66. Additionally, in 2014, Zach Cozart somewhat amazingly finished with 1.2 war and a WRC

plus of 56. Maybe the Hamilton line or the Cozart line, the Cincinnati special. I have the answer here, Sam. I think there is only one possibility, one player who fits this the best. there is only one possibility, one player who fits this the best. So what I did is I looked up the lowest WRC Plus seasons by qualified hitters with at least zero war, so people who were at least replacement level since 1901. The lowest WRC Pluses in that span, the three lowest, belong to the same player, Hal Lanier. Hal Lanier, in the late 60s, was a shortstop for the Giants. He was an abominable hitter, but a very good defender, and somehow he kept managing to get above replacement level

despite being a Yadiel Rivera-esque offensive player. So the lowest WRC Plus season of all time That is not sub-replacement level 1968, year of the pitcher He had a 38 WRC Plus That is 206, 222, 239 slash line And he was worth exactly zero war Then the year before that, 1967 He had a 42 WRC Plus

And he was actually worth 1.2 war that year So he managed to transcend the one war barrier as well. Then 1969, he had a 43 WRC+, and was worth 0.7 wins above replacement. So Howell Lanier, whether you set the cutoff, the threshold at zero war or one war, either way, he is the guy with the lowest wrc plus and a value that is above that level so i propose that this should be called the linear line and i don't know who is the closest to the linear line these days but uh well maybe yadier vera will make a run at the linear line james mccann in the early going this season, 32 WRC plus, 0.0 wins above replacement.

Ender Enciarte is at 41 WRC plus. So, yeah, the linear line works for me. By the way, I have a follow-up now. The 1986 Houston Astros, when they lost to the Mets in the NLCS, they lost two of those games by walk-off. Wow. All right. And, yeah, the other guys below linear on the list, there are obviously, as you would expect, a lot of other shortstop types, good fielders. Ozzie Smith made it one year. Acidas Escobar in 2013.

Ozzie Guillen, George McBride, Gary Templeton, Nick Punto, Roy McMillan, Ed Brinkman, and the immortal Ray O'Donoghue. So yeah, it's that type of player as one would expect would it be worth it to try to look over multiple seasons to erase some of the noise yeah i guess so i mean lanier did it three consecutive seasons so i think he he's the guy either way all right let's let's try over the last 20 years and we'll set a plate appearance minimum of 1,000. 1,000 plate appearances. So we're looking for the lowest WRC Plus for at least a replacement level performance, right? So what we have is Drew Butera.

Yep, that makes sense. Drew Butera, WRC Plus of 51, exactly replacement level career value. Jeff Mathis, incidentally, WRC Plus of 50 and a war of negative 0.7 probably underrating him because of other things but if you're looking for a non-catcher just to make this make more sense john mcdonald becomes a guy with a wsu plus of 56 and a career war of 0.9 uh-huh all right question from milio all right, let's take our next and perhaps last Shohei Otani question.

If you had to use Shohei Otani's first few starts and his numbers at the plate so far to oversample a season's worth of stats, how much war could he be worth? And could he be a candidate for the Rookie of the Year award, MVP in Cy Young, or any combination of the three? So let's see. I've been asked to talk about Shohei Otani on so many different podcasts and radio shows at this point. I'm probably repeating myself. So apologies if anyone has heard me talk about this elsewhere. But I think his potential, I mean, in 2016 in Japan,

according to Delta Graphs, he was worth 10.4 wins above replacement, and that's in a league with a 143-game schedule. So yes, the majors are obviously a better league, better competition, but also a longer schedule. It's not inconceivable that he could get to that kind of range, and I did pick him as my AL Rookie of the Year award winner this year. So I think it's very plausible, if not likely, that he wins that award. But I don't think he's really going to be a strong MVP or Cy Young candidate this year just because of the way he's being used. It's his first year here. He's coming off a year where he only made five starts in Japan because of injuries last year as a pitcher. So the Angels are being careful with him. They're only starting him once a week at this point. And as we've seen, only DHing him two or three times't do. He is just not going to have enough batters

faced or plate appearances, I don't think, to get there this year. Next year, maybe the leash is loosened or off entirely. If he's getting like a regular starting pitcher workload and also getting another, I don't know, 300 plate appearances or something, that it's, I mean, it's definitely feasible because, you know, I think he could probably get some bonus points with the voters just from being good at both things. I mentioned this on the Ringer podcast, but it's almost like John Smoltz got kind of a boost because he was a good closer and a good starter. And those aren't even different things. It's just one is an easier version of the other essentially and he still just you know sailed right into the hall of fame whereas guys like Schilling whatever you think of him or Mussina are still waiting with probably superior

numbers if anything so I think if he's good at both like you, above average at both, war-wise, he's going to end up with like six to eight war, and that's kind of your MVP candidate range. And obviously he's going to have a lot of buzz and attention and narrative around him too. Shohei Otani, based on the question, it sounded like we were asked to project this forward. Shohei Otani is currently on pace for 13.5 combined wins above replacement this season. Here's a fun little fact. So comparing Shohei Otani, the pitcher, and Shohei Otani, the batter, out-of-zone swing rate, 41% and 44%. In-zone swing rate, 65% and 65%.

Overall swing rate, 50% and 52%. Zone rate, 36% and 37%. Contact, 54% and 84%. Who do do you think which contact rate is going to end up lower otani the hitter or otani the pitcher this season i'll say pitcher i will also say pitcher but i think it will be close yeah probably so yeah i i just you know i don't think this is necessarily the year to get carried away about the Otani MVP candidacy. It's funny. We got another email from one of those bogus betting sites the other day.

We talked about Jason Hayward and the odds of his opting out, and we got that weird email from a betting site that is not actually a site where you can place bets, and neither of us understands what the business model of these sites is. So we got another one of those giving us the odds of Shohei Otani as an MVP candidate, again, at a site where you cannot place bets on that. I don't know. Someone has to explain to me what the point of these sites and these emails is. But anyway, people are talking about this. I don't think we'll really be talking about it in September or October october although you know if otani is great then there's a good chance that he will have helped the angels secure a playoff spot and obviously that will help with award

voting but yeah i just i don't think that this is the year it's not hard at all to see him as the rookie of the year i think that right now that's he's got to be the clear favorite i don't think that this is the year. It's not hard at all to see him as the rookie of the year. I think that right now he's got to be the clear favorite. I don't even know who's, what, Joey Wendell? Is he going to be the competition here? I don't know. Frank Goodbereto was just called up. Yeah, but he's going to sit for, he's not going to play very much, I don't think. And honestly, I don't even remember who's an American League rookie of the year

because right now it's all Otani all the time. But MVP, that's going to be a hell of a stretch. Yeah. All right. Almost there. A couple more. Lewis in Pittsburgh says, I don't know how big your email pile is. Pretty big.

But my belovedly wayward Seattle Mariners seem to have three AAA plus proven first base options. Ryan Healy, Mike Ford, and Dan Vogelbach. If we discount the fact that Ford is a Rule 5 pick and take the somewhat dehumanizing view of these people as assets instead of people, it seems that Ford and Vogelbach could become more valuable assets if the Mariners could somehow play three first basemen and give Ford and Vogelbach the opportunity to prove that they could translate their AAA success into 500 MLB at-bats. This brings me to my question. First, how much more valuable is a player who has proven

his ability in a full season in the majors than a player who has proven his ability at AAA? Second, how valuable is game time? If a player proven at the major league level is more valuable than a player proven only in AAA, then the opportunity to play in the MLB, aka game time, must be an asset to MLB teams as it can increase the value of their assets. I guess in evaluating the value of game time, one should also consider the risk of proving a given player is incapable at the major league level. So how does one evaluate the value of game time in dollars or war? It's kind of interesting. It's kind of interesting. I used to wonder whether maybe there was like a kind of scheme, like some sort of grifting thing that MLB teams could do where like when rosters expand, you just call up a bunch of fringy guys who aren't really prospects, but you get them in the them off to another team for more just because they have made the majors. I don't know whether that's actually a viable

strategy because of course you have to put them on the 40 man. And so if they're no good, then you have to take someone who is good off the 40 man. So that constraint, I don't know, maybe that kind of removes that as a viable strategy. But what do you think? Is there much more value to someone who has done something in the majors compared to, say, someone who has done something at AAA that suggests that he should be able to do something in the majors but has not yet actually done it? I'll say, first of all, Mike Ford was returned to the Yankees at the end of spring training. Couldn't crack the team because of Daniel Volkowbeck's spring training. But anyway, that's not what this is really about. Right. couldn't crack the team because of daniel valgobeck's spring training but anyway that's not what this is really about right i think that there is an enormous difference between a player

who's been great in the minor leagues and a player who's been good or great for even a small sample in the major leagues and you i think you would see this in terms of a player being traded we we very seldom see a top prospect traded who's already reached the major leagues because at that point it's really easy if the player has been good it's really easy for a team to say well why would we trade this guy he's the most valuable kind of asset you can have but as long as a guy is in the minors then you end up with that sort of prospects or prospects and no prospect is reliable like right now i know that the braves aren't going to trade ronald acuna but you know there was a little bit of talk over over the offseason whether it would even be possible and i think that acuna could have been traded

it could still conceivably be traded by the Braves now because there's still a little bit of a mystery over whether he can actually play in the major leagues. But as soon as he comes up and he's good for a month or two, then he is untouchable for the same reason that right now Reese Hoskins is untouchable. But a year ago, Hoskins wouldn't have been untouchable. But there really is quite a leap from AAA to the majors.

There are players who can be good in AAA and not in the majors. And so I think that there is a ton of value in showing that you are good even over a few months in the major leagues. Whereas if you want to trade for a top prospect, then you have to get him before he reaches the majors. Because as soon as he's there, then he's untouchable if he's good. If he's Louis Princeton, then he was bad in the majors and he's easier to move. Yeah. I mean, obviously scouting helps here somewhat. Like you can tell the difference between someone who is good in AAA because he's facing AAA competition and someone who is good because he's always going to be good.

I mean, teams aren't perfect, obviously, at making that distinction. There have been guys who have been labeled maybe as AAA or AAA players who have turned out to be just fine in the majors, but that helps to a certain extent. So it's not like teams are just looking purely at the stat lines. And I would say that the difference in perception is probably smaller than it has been in the past. Just, you know, like before Bill James and others showed that minor league performance is very predictive of major league performance.

And, you know, before we had things like minor league equivalencies, translations of what minor league stats equate to in the majors. I think probably there was less understanding of that. And maybe there was more weight given to what you had done in the majors, whereas now we look at what a player has done in the minors and we're able to make some sort of translation or projection based on that. But I agree, you still get a boost from being in the majors, and you should get some sort of boost from being in the majors. Yeah, I think that the gap has definitely gotten smaller. sort of boost from being the majors. Yeah, I think that the gap has definitely gotten smaller. I think that there's, you know, prospect hugging and all that.

Teams have placed a greater value on the players, even when they're in the system. But even so, the final test is reaching and succeeding in the major leagues. And until you've done that, then you really are considered a lesser valuable asset. All right. And yes, let's humanize instead of dehumanizing. And last question. This is from Amy, who says, I'm sure you've seen this. She then links us to the story about Scott Foster, the emergency goalie who played for the Blackhawks recently. And Amy says, so what would the MLB equivalent of this feat be? says, so what would the MLB equivalent of this feat be? Obviously, the emergency catcher is already a professional player, so I guess my question or potential stat blast idea is,

who would be the equivalent to Scott Foster's achievement in the sense of least time played at catcher, longest time since playing catcher, lowliest idea of being catcher, and potential to be put in game as catcher and be part of a winning battery? And she also links, evidently, the Frisco Rough Riders, the AA team, have extended an offer to Scott Foster to be their catcher for a game. I don't know if he has taken them up on that, but I'm sure that you're aware of this and the listeners are mostly aware of this.

But at the very end of last month, the Blackhawks had an accountant who had never played pro hockey be their backup goalie hockey just has this like emergency goalies who come to the games and he'd played like in what college and fairly high level amateur leagues but you know had never played in the nhl or anything close to that and he did just fine he stopped eight shots or something right against like a really good offensive team so it was impressive and endearing and uh is there a baseball equivalent to this that we could imagine the other day i saw a video clip on mlb.com that was titled groundskeepers save the game now what actually happened there is that the groundskeepers cleared the field of snow so that they could play a baseball game but they got me wondering what if what if the groundskeepers were called in to play

for the white socks but so are we looking for someone on the roster someone off the roster yeah i mean i think i don't know like obviously every team has an emergency catcher who is someone who maybe has played on on some level and could potentially strap on the gear and get back there if necessary. And if we're talking about catchers only, I mean, obviously, you could just stick someone in a corner outfield spot and maybe he could go most of a game without getting a chance. So that happens. I would say it's probably easier in any non-catching position in baseball than it would be for a goalie in hockey who's very important and is involved in a lot of action.

A catcher is obviously the closest equivalent just because of the role, because of the equipment, because of all of it. So, I mean, you can't hide someone at catcher, obviously. He's involved in every single pitch. You could minimize his role to a certain extent. Like, you know, he doesn't have to call the pitches. You could have the pitcher just throw what he wants or have the bench call the pitches. I mean, it would be bad, obviously. Maybe slightly dangerous in a sense.

But, like, if you had a high-level college player do it or someone who plays in a high-level men's league or something, I mean, you know, for an inning or something, I think you could get through it. It wouldn't be like 100% pass balls or anything like that. Yeah, ultimately it's really hard to figure out a way that this could realistically happen at the major league level in a way that doesn't already involve someone who's on the 25-man roster, who therefore is a very, very good major league baseball player who's just kind of playing out of position you know like you could have a position player come in and pitch well or i don't know a pitcher go out and play a position well because of some sort of desperate situation

but you know every so often we'll see a team that ends up with one of their catchers hurt during a game and then all of a sudden they're down to the one and but this is this is just getting back to the same emergency catcher situation whereas in hockey i've seen this happen every so often where a team will bring in its its actual emergency option who's just a guy who has a job who like has played hockey before knows the rules but you know isn't actually on the roster but i don't think that i can actually come up with an equivalent of that unless we want to talk about a situation where like the entire coaching staff gets ejected or something. And then, I don't know, a player or a clubby decides to take the reins. But this is a reach.

Unfortunately, I can't think of an equivalent. Yeah, I mean, in the early days of baseball, I'm sure there were things like this. I mean, there were definitely cases, you know, things were just less rigorous. Talent procurement was less standardized back then. And you would just kind of, you know, sign a guy sight unseen, and he'd show up and he'd play in that game. So it was probably more common at that point. But I can't think of a recent analog in baseball where players just come from outside of the minor league system and debuted in the big leagues. But if it were to happen, I mean, I think it wouldn't necessarily be disastrous.

I think a high-level amateur catcher could catch pitches in the major leagues just fine. Like he'd be a bad hitter, but that's fine. He wouldn't get more than a plate appearance. And I think he'd catch most of the pitches and you know like you'd probably lose some borderline strikes or something maybe he'd be less adept at blocking a ball in the dirt but I mean it's not like you're gonna suddenly lose because a non-professional catcher is playing for an inning maybe if Adam Greenberg had like hit a home run against R.A. Dickey back in 2012 that would have been something yeah. Yeah. Did you see, this is semi-relevant, did you see what Nick Franklin is doing now?

I know that he's catching. Yeah, Nick Franklin, former Mariners first round pick, rated prospect, who is kind of, you know, bummed around the big leagues with the Mariners and the Rays and the Angels and the Brewers. He was in AAA and instead of being a position player or, you know, a regular position player, as he usually has been, he is now going down to AA to catch. And the story here is that it started because he was like the between-innings warm-up catcher in the majors last year. He was just the guy who would go out and catch the pitcher's warm-up pitches between innings while the actual catcher was still putting on his gear. And that was it.

That was like his sole catching experience was just being the between innings warm-up catcher. And he'd never caught in game, I don't think at any level, certainly not as a pro, but he just always said he could do it and volunteered to do it. And now he's doing it. And evidently, the early reports on his catching have been pretty positive. So this is a weird one Alex Jackson, who I believe was a catcher in high school, in the first round in 2014. They immediately made him an outfielder, and then they traded him to the Braves as part of the package where they wound up not using Drew Smiley. Anyway, Alex Jackson, once he joined the Braves, went back to catching. And I believe he is back to being a legitimate quality prospect last season he had a 808 ops between levels he's off to a strong start in 2018 he had a pretty good fall league so the mariners have drafted nick franklin and alex jackson early in uh in recent rounds and then

they have gotten rid of those players because they have been failures then they have moved to catcher at least one of them seems to have his career back on track yeah i've heard that franklin wants to pitch too which would be if he's like a 27 year old switch to catcher slash pitcher that'd be fun he did pitch one inning for the race in 2015 i don't know what his stuff was like but uh the inning itself didn't go that well he gave up a couple runs, but that would be quite a transformation. It's something that you'd think teams catcher more often just because the offensive bar is so much lower that if your problem is that you can't hit, then maybe moving to catcher solves that. I mean, it's obviously a high learning curve. It's pretty tough to pick up in the middle of your career, but still, like, if you could do it competently, if you have the physical skills and the mental

inclination, then it can be something that salvages a player's career. It sounds horrible. Like, I don't know how you can just pick up catching, but then I'm someone who's never done it, and I'm terrified of catching hard throws. I love throwing them. I don't love getting them. And especially now with pitchers throwing harder than ever and throwing more breaking stuff than ever, it just seems like being a catcher is terrible. But, you know, especially if we go to something like an automated strike zone or framing gets de-emphasized, then you start to wonder, well, how much do you really actually need to be able to do? Right. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll end on that note. As always, you're listening to Ben Gibbard's theme song, which was once for the Ringer MLB show. It is now for Effectively Wild.

I got an email from Ben the other day saying, I couldn't help but notice my theme song had been traded from the Ringer MLB to Effectively Wild. I'm curious what was received in return. I've certainly written more valuable tunes. I will follow you into the dark, such great heights, etc. But I hope someone got at least a decent middle reliever out of the deal. I don't know that anyone got anyone. I sort of traded it to myself for cash considerations, I guess. Zero cents. Maybe for a tune to be named

later. But Ben says he actually thinks it sounds better as an Effectively Wild outro piece anyway, so I'm happy he approves. You can be like Ben Gibbard and support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners other than Ben Gibbard who have pledged their support by donating a small monthly amount include Keith Lundhorst, James Fletcher, Shani Quidwai, Benjamin Wallace, and Chris Frenier. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. I know some people are quitting Facebook these days, but the Effectively Wild Facebook group is just about all I've ever used it for anyway. So the group is still going strong. I haven't heard any Congress people ask Mark Zuckerberg

about the Effectively Wild group, but we're still adding members. Over 7,600 strong now. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. You can keep your comments and questions for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast at fangrass.com or via the Patreon messaging system

if you are a supporter. We'll be back as usual with one more show this week, so we will talk to you soon. Senses, the latest senses. There'll be more to see. In time, the land of kings will round. Heartbeat, increase the heartbeat. You know that this town isn't big enough. Not big enough for a local buzz.

This town isn't big enough. Not big enough for a local buzz. I ain't gonna leave.