Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1208: The Acuña Cometh

Episode Date: April 26, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Ronald Acuña’s debut and the Braves’ pivot to position players, the history of Peter Bourjos losing his job, Eric Lauer’s less heralded/distinguished debut, Kazuhisa Makita, the Angels maxing out their mound visits, and the state of Shohei Ohtani hype, follow up on outfield bobbling and baserunner blocking, and […]

Inside in on the hands of Marwin and it's three and one. Ohtani hasn't had his best command all night. Thirty six strikes thirty one out of the zone. Effectively wild. It's time to feel the rub Now it isn't easy Well, welcome to the club

Come on and join us in the club Hello and welcome to episode 1208 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Hi, Ben. Just before we started recording, Ronald Acuna officially made his Major League debut. He lined out to center, and he is starting against the Reds. I feel like that should be kind of the way that you ease every prospect into the Majors. It's just they have to debut against the Reds, and Reds pitching, just make them feel comfortable like they never even really left AAA. It's still the same game. You just kind of acclimate them to the majors. That seems like the most humane way to do it. Somebody sent me a tweet yesterday. Tyler Malley was working on a no-hitter against the Braves on,

I guess it would have been Tuesday, and he was no-hitting the Braves into the seventh, and somebody tweeted that, hey, the Reds' wins above replacement on the pitching staff will be in the black after the Braves leave town as a joke about the Braves not being able to hit the Rays. And while Tyler Malley was no hitting the Braves into the seventh inning, the Braves subsequently scored seven runs in the game. The Reds still won in a walk-off, but their current pitching staff war is negative 0.9.

Yes, and the Braves are already leading the Reds won nothing in the first inning or I guess it's the top of the second now so Acuna is in the majors and it's kind of funny how position player centric the Braves are now not that they don't still have talented young pitchers but we've been saying for a while and it's been looking for a while like this whole Braves rebuild was built around pitching to a greater degree than, say, the Cubs or the Astros. And it certainly seemed that that was what they were doing. The Braves have this history of kind of putting an emphasis on pitching, organizationally speaking, and seem to think they have a strength for developing pitchers, although the front office has turned over

considerably even since they started this rebuild. But now they have Acuna, who's the youngest player in the majors. They have Ozzie Albies, who I guess is now the second youngest player in the majors. They have Dansby Swanson, who's bouncing back. They have Johan Camargo. They have all these good young position players in addition to some talented pitchers. So I don't know that it turned out to be the pitching-centric rebuild that it looked like it would be you don't often hear johan camargo thrown in with the rest of those players but whatever shout out to him who he's uh the player who lost his third base job to first ryan flaherty and now i guess jose batista yes coming soon but i mean credit to camargo he's 24 years old and he's been an above average major league hitter so who knows

what's happening there but yeah albies is is up this is it incidentally he hit his first batted ball 101 miles per hour a launch angle of 39 degrees just missed a home run i wasn't watching it live but that's uh that's good contact although against brandon finnegan and the red as we've talked about maybe that's league average contact in any case i I agree with you. It's been a funny thing to observe that for a while, it was sort of like the Astros and Cubs rebuilds pitted against the Mets and the Braves sort of also throw the Cubs in there too, because I don't know why I said somebody else, but just the position players versus building around pitching.

And while the Braves, they continue to be at least talked about as if they're stockpiled with young pitching and they do have it it's definitely there led currently by Fulton Avich and by Newcomb and I know that there are several other players and a lot of them haven't even arrived at the majors yet but yeah yeah no it turns out pitching is very inconsistent hitting is also inconsistent we know that to be true but I don't know how the evidence doesn't almost conclusively say that you should build around bats because bats are more reliable. And sometimes in the case of Acuna or even Obbies to an extent and some other players, you can take meaningful steps forward. Whereas when a pitcher takes what seems like a meaningful step forward, it can be erased with Tommy John surgery at the blink of an eye. takes what seems like a meaningful step forward,

it can be erased with Tommy John surgery at the blink of an eye. Although I guess if every team has come to the same conclusion about building around hitters, then maybe there's some benefit to doing the zig where everyone else is zagging and picking up the pitchers that maybe they're not as interested in. So I guess if enough teams decide on a consensus, then going against that consensus maybe could benefit you. But our former guest, Grant McCauley, who is on for our Braves preview,

he tweeted something and noted that Peter Borges was squeezed out of center field with the Angels in 2012 when Mike Trout essentially took his job. And today Borges was designated for assignment by the Braves to make room for Ronald Acuna. And I guess that's the way you want to go. Not that you want to go in any way, but if you have to lose your job and be pushed out of a roster spot, then having been displaced by Mike Trout and now Ronald Acuna, not that those are the same caliber of player necessarily, but you have the best player in baseball and the best prospect in baseball, I guess that's the way you would want to lose your job if you have to lose it.

I guess. It's better than losing your job to 37-year-old Jose Bautista playing third base for the first time in a decade or something. I guess it's a story either way, but it's probably better to be forced out by a name-brand baseball player. Yeah, I think you'd like to be forced to the bench maybe not forced off a roster completely but yes you know now you have preston tucker so what are the braves to do yeah so the opposite i guess of breaking in against the reds would be being a

pitcher who breaks in in course field on the road that would be probably the worst way to debut as a prospect, and that is what happened this week to Padres pitcher Eric Lauer, who pitched in Coors Field, made his Major League debut as a starter on Tuesday. He gave up six earned runs in three innings. The Padres lost eight to nothing to the Rockies. That is probably a shock to go from AAA to pitching in Coors Field. And this is kind of interesting. Sam tweeted, Sam Miller on Twitter, he noted that Eric Lauer is the seventh starting pitcher to make his MLB debut as a visitor in Coors Field. Their cumulative cumulative stats, 29 innings, 28 runs with 14 strikeouts, 20 walks, and seven homers. That is ugly. That is not the way you want to make the majors, although I guess anyone's happy to make it in some way. But I don't know whether you saw the video, but it was shared around quite a bit.

Eric Lauer gave up a grand slam to Nolan Arenado. I just sent you the highlight, and I assume you've seen it already. But he just took it very philosophically. He just kind of stood on the mound and grinned. And after the game, he said, my first big league home run is a grand slam. That's perfect. He kind of took it the way that John Jaso would maybe, and such is life. And I appreciate that kind of took it the way that John Jaso would maybe and such is life. And I appreciate that kind of attitude. Didn't look too depressed.

Didn't get too fired up with competitive juices. He was just able to appreciate the greatness of Nolan Aranato and giving up a home run to him. I didn't know that this was a clip that was going around. I know every Grand Slam sort of goes around as a clip, but I didn't know. Every so often you watch a clip and you think maybe i'm the only person who noticed that and i guess i was not the only person who noticed that laura is just kind of standing there and the man's smiling about it just thinking like this is the best day of my life what a and also to i don't it's to nobody's credit but as difficult as it is to open in uh in coors field for one

thing the rockies offense is not good secondly den, Denver is a mile up, almost exactly on the nose, but Eric Lauer had been pitching in El Paso, which has an elevation of 3,740 feet. So in a sense, he was kind of acclimated to it. He opened this season in Las Vegas, which is another hitter-friendly environment. And he only gave up one home run in the minors, but it's interesting to look at the Padres pitching staff now. And you've got, I don you know, he only gave up one home run in the minors. But it's interesting to look at the Padres pitching staff now, and you've got, I don't know, coming into the season, I don't think anyone expected the Padres to be able to pitch very well. And so far, I don't think the Padres have necessarily pitched very well. But if you look at where their rotation already is,

like Luis Perdomo is not in it. He's in the minors, and they don't have denelson lamette which is too bad but their rotation currently has eric lauer and uh joey lucchesi and it has a somewhat rejuvenated looking tyson ross like and brian mitchell is terrible so like the things that you would have expected to happen for the padres aren't happening but the things that you maybe wouldn't have expected to happen are happening and And also, while we're just talking about the Padres, and I know that this has nothing to do with their bullpen, but you'll recall that they brought over Kazuhisa Mikita from Japan. And one of the, he's fascinating for a few reasons, but one of them, of course, being

his submarine delivery and the fact that he throws pitches about 55 miles per hour and all the way up to 80 or 81. But one of the things that was so remarkable about his career in Japan is that he was very good. He was effective, but he didn't strike anyone out. Last year, he struck out five batters per nine innings. The year before that, 4.9. He didn't even get that many grounders either, which is sort of surprising. He's sitting right now on 12 strikeouts in 12 innings for the Padres.

now on on 12 strikeouts in 12 innings for the padres yeah they have found a way to get kazuhisha makita to miss bats throwing stuff that i i mean i it's overhand but i can literally throw his pitches i can throw that hard and he's he's striking batters out so what's difficult about studying him and i know i've now bogarted this conversation to be about makita instead of eric lauer but pitch trackers don't track a lot of his pitches because they're too slow. So he's a little bit of a black box. Yeah, he's giving up tons and tons of fly balls or at least not getting grounders either. So I don't know if this is a weird high wire act that he is trying to pull off here. I hope he can.

But yeah, as for Lauer, I assume that you don't see that kind of thing all that often. Friend of the podcast, Michael Clare, did a good article for MLB.com's Cut Foresight this week looking at pitcher reactions to great defensive plays. You could do just as fun an article looking at pitcher reactions to giving up giant home runs, which is always great. You can kind of tell when someone knows right off the bat that it's a home run and some guys just kind of no-sell it and don't give any great reaction. And other guys look as dejected as you might imagine that they would. And Eric Lauer, neither of those groups, really. He just took it in a very even tempered way. And I don't know whether, like, I could imagine an evaluator looking at Eric Lauer's reaction and saying it's bad body language or something or it speaks ill of his competitive nature.

Like, he should be looking like the worst thing in the world just happened. He gave up a Grand Slam. Instead, he's just kind of smiling or dazed or something. But I wish we saw that sort of attitude more often. The guy's in the middle of his major league debut. It's something he has been working to achieve his whole life. He just gave up a Grand Slam to Nolan Arnauto. Most people would love to be able to give up a Grand Slam to Nolan Arnauto,

and very few people are actually able to do that. So good for Eric Lauer. Hope you have better starts in the future. There's probably a good number of podcast listeners right now who would pay money out of their pocket to give up a Grand Slam to any Rockies player, maybe especially Nolan Arenado. So I guess we'll start taking bids and we'll try to get something arranged. Yeah, we've talked about that before as an email episode hypothetical.

Would you even want to embarrass yourself on a big league field? Speaking of which, the Angels gave up a bunch of runs also on Tuesday. They ended up winning the game, but they gave up seven runs. They used six pitchers and they used up all their mound visits, which might be a first. I don't know if it had happened. I wasn't aware of it happening anywhere else before then. And I'm sort of disappointed that they didn't attempt a seventh because evidently no one really knows what would happen if you use up all your mound visits and then try to make another mound visit. There's not like in the rules, a specific penalty or punishment, I don't think. So it would probably just come down to an umpire just saying you can't go out there or something. It would be some weird, awkward situation.

As far as I know, I don't think they pushed it. But we've heard so much about mound visits this year. It seems like announcers love to talk about the mound visits rule, or at least they have early in the season. You've got broadcasts and in-stadium scoreboards tracking mound visits, and usually they don't get anywhere close to six. But it actually did happen we bumped up against the limit at least once i guess that's sort of interesting i heard

there was a quote i forgot what i was reading or listening to the other day i guess it doesn't matter but commissioner manfred said that this season compared to last mound visits are down 50 which would be very interesting if there hadn't been a rule change that made that almost obligatory right when you force mound visits down then mound visits are going to be reduced i think we know that much to be true but now that mound visits have been sort of addressed i don't know if anyone's too upset about it anymore people have had time to adjust i guess it's time to turn our attention back to pace and pace as we've about, has not really gone down at all. What that means is that I don't know exactly where the cutoff is, where the thresholds are.

But as part of the negotiations regarding pace of play, Manfred talked about how the pitch clock is not dead. Not his words, mine. But that they would review it again after the season, provided teams were able to get their games and their pace within a certain frame. They have not done that, which means, in all likelihood, pitch clock is coming. It's just delayed by a year. All right. Anything else you want to get to before we get to emails? Showy Otani pitched this week. He was not great. He was not bad, but he was not great. He, of course, had the blister in his previous game.

Maybe I should have just saved this for Fridayiday just be all otani on that podcast but how have you felt any different has your enthusiasm felt any different seeing otani now because fourth start and of course he's batted a a number of times but his fourth start against the astros it wasn't a bad start wasn't a great start he uh got his slider going but his splitter wasn't exactly there we're talking now about how his blister has turned into a callus, so already we get to talk about Otani like he's just another blistered starting pitcher. But I don't know. Are you starting to feel like it's a little less magical? Not as a reflection of his talent, but just the experience?

I suppose it couldn't really sustain the level of intrigue that I had in his first few weeks, which was just off the charts and unprecedented and unparalleled. So the fact that he is human and he's had some starts now where he hasn't looked amazing, I guess so. We know now that it's not just going to be a string of amazing starts like he had against Oakland his second time facing them, or even the very good but more unremarkable start he had against them in his first start of the season. Sometimes he's just not going to look all that great.

So I'm no less fascinated by the experiment, but I suppose I'm a little less riveted just on a pitch-by-pitch basis. I mean, he still does really impressive things just about every time he plays, right? Like this time he threw a pitch 101 or 102 or whatever it was, like he threw the hardest pitch that a starter has thrown in some number of years. Or what was, do you have the fun fact or the mildly fun fact? It was something about that. Or maybe he got a strike or a swinging strike on the hardest pitch any starter has gotten on record something like that so he does things like that that make you sit up and take notice but he clearly has issues and I don't know whether they're blister related or not but issues with commanding everything other than the fastball and I don't doubt that he will straighten those issues out I don't know whether it will be this season or in a future season. And when he does, I imagine that he will be dominant. But right now, there are some growing pains. And last I saw, Parker Bridwell was on the minor league disabled list or something because he has an elbow problem.

So at the end of the season, this pitching staff is going to be Shohei Otani. Yeah. All right. Couple follow-ups to things that we've talked about from listeners. This one is from Andrew, who said your discussion of the Baez versus LeMahieu screening situation on episode 1206 reminded me of a similar situation in hockey. I vaguely remember this, and you probably remember it better than I do. So Andrew says, Sean Avery was arguably the greatest, most infuriating pest the NHL has ever known. In the playoffs in 2008, Avery created a stir with his innovative take on screening Devils goalie Martin Brodeur. Screening is a thing hockey players do to increase the chances of a shot going in.

Traditionally, it just means standing in between the goalie and the shooter to impair the goalie's view of the shot, as well as to possibly deflect the shot, increasing the chances of the puck going in. Traditionally, it just means standing in between the goalie and the shooter to impair the goalie's view of the shot, as well as to possibly deflect the shot, increasing the chances of the puck going in. But Avery was just, you know, blatantly standing in front of him, kind of doing the hockey equivalent of the Eddie Stanky rule that we talked about on a recent podcast, just very clearly trying to distract the goalie. So within a few days, Andrew continues, the NHL had to scramble to come up with a ruling on this new thing. There was nothing in the rules to prevent what he was doing, but people seemed to think it was somehow wrong or at least unsportsmanlike. To be clear, this is a sport in which repeatedly punching each other in the face is fine and definitely sportsmanlike. Anyway, thought you guys might be interested as it feels like a very similar situation, unwritten rules, etc. Everyone just knows himself facing the opposition goaltender and engages in actions such as waving his arms or stick in front of the goaltender's face

for the purpose of improperly interfering with and or distracting the goaltender as opposed to positioning himself to try to make a play. And I guess offensive player in that context means more than one thing. But that is sort of similar, I suppose, to what Baez was doing with LeMahieu, although in that case, he was trying to prevent perceived sign stealing and was not actually in front of LeMahieu when the pitch was being thrown. Right. First of all, if you Google Sean Avery and Martin Perdue, you get a wonderful slideshow of images. This is just going down memory lane but also i think that it's true

that there exists the sean avery rule i guess we've sort of already talked about that this because sean avery was over there just like waving his stick around trying to be distracting staring at martin bradeau in the face which is not how this is usually done generally screening is very common in hockey and you will just kind of try to amass bodies in front of the net either to cause a shot to be deflected at the last second and go in the goalie can't stop or just so that the goalie can't see the puck at all this is a common practice and if a team doesn't do this then the coach will say that in the postgame interview well we're just not screening the goalie enough got to get bodies

to the front of the net so in a sense what javier baez was doing i guess you could say it's reminiscent of sean every but it was more reminiscent of just every hockey player who plays around the crease, just trying to screen. Baez's arms were by his sides, as I recall. He wasn't jumping up and down or trying to do anything too visually disruptive to the hitter, or I guess to the fielder. He was just standing there in the way,

and every so often he would turn around to make sure he was still in the way. So as this incident gets further and further behind us, I am becoming more cemented in my opinion that Javier Baez did absolutely nothing wrong. And I think that he should be allowed to do that as much as he wants. And then another follow-up to the outfielder bobbling a ball and runners not knowing the rule about tagging up scenario that we've talked about a couple of times. David said, I just want to point out that we should have all known this rule from reading the great Ron Luciano's Strike Two. I took this book down off the shelf to check if it was age appropriate for my young son. To my great surprise, I found the following passage, which I

just remembered as soon as I read it. This is referring to how the rule book taught this rule in umpire school. It says, Tests are given after each section is taught in the classroom. Rule 6.00 concerns the batter. A test question on that rule would read, Tagging up on a deep fly ball to right center, the runner from third takes off for home as soon as the center fielder touches the ball.

The ball, however, jumps out of the center fielder's glove and is finally caught by the right fielder. When the ball is actually caught, the runner is already one-third of the way home and scores easily. The defense appeals at third base that the runner left too soon, should the umpire uphold the appeal. was that the world would be a better place to live in if we would only eliminate the buts and howevers. The best answers to that question would be A, hope it never happens, B, hope that it is not your call to make, and C, hope that the runner trips before reaching home plate and is tagged out. The correct answer is that a runner can tag up after the ball is first touched by any fielder,

but managers simply do not know the rules, so there will be an argument on a play like that one. Therefore, the follow-up question should be an argument on a play like that one. Therefore, the follow-up question should be, after making your decision on the previous play, will you have to eject both managers and the outfielder, or just the manager who uses abusive language and kicks dirt on you? So this is something that umpires are, of course, specifically drilled on and aware of, but apparently even they think that managers and players do not know this rule. So loophole, it's not actually a loophole, but it may be a loophole

in the sense that people may not know that it is actually a rule, so you can get away with it, and I encourage outfielders to try this wherever possible. So maybe we've gone all the way around from thinking that no one would know this to figuring everyone obviously knows this to now maybe thinking that people don't actually know this. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. All right. I'm convinced.

All right. Question from Jay Keith in L.A., Patreon supporter, who says, why don't more teams forfeit? only penalty is the loss the team figures to have anyway, and the ire of fans and players who want to add to their individual numbers, wouldn't more stats-minded teams see the benefit of keeping their players fresh for the next game, essentially activating their own mercy rule? If a team decided to implement this strategy, how many forfeited games before the league would step in? Are there already any rules about forfeiting, or would the commissioner have to invoke the best interest of baseball clause? Also, who makes the call to forfeit a game i assume it's the manager but can he be overruled by an owner phoning down to the umps or official score from his shadowy office well technically according

to major league baseball rule 4.15 the umpire may call for forfeit when a team meets one of it looks like seven criteria i could read them all that loud if i wanted to but this and in short it is up to the umpire it is not up to the teams it appears so that is a little bit surprising to me now i i don't know what team would actually in reality request a forfeit but i i understand that in a sense you could like if you're if you're losing 14 to 1 in the ninth inning just why even play the ninth inning right but especially if you're losing 14-1 in the ninth inning, just why even play the ninth inning, right? Especially if you're just going to use a position player on the mound, you're not really getting anything out of it. But if you are earlier in a game, I don't think the teams would be looking to forfeit. I think that there's value in getting the repetitions and there's value in trying to make some sort of history. And also, I think that it's a little more difficult to articulate,

but there's value in trying to preserve the constant sense of competition and just trying to make things look like you are still trying really hard. I mean, at the end of the day, you're just out there for three hours just trying to win a baseball game. And even if you are losing horribly or maybe winning horribly, you can still put forth a modest effort that is convincing enough on camera to make it look like you care. So I think the version of forfeit that we do observe is that position players do take the mound, and they're taking the mound more and more often. But I think that if teams were to actually try, and I'm not clear that it's even possible

for teams to request this, but if teams were to actually try to forfeit games that they're losing horribly, I think that the benefits to that would be very very very small and there would be outrage because people have paid to come to a baseball game people have paid to be able to watch a baseball game and if you're taking time away from that then there will be people will would be furious if teams started to forfeit it would uh it's one of those things that you'd think in a hypothetical future where teams can request a forfeit, then the hypothetical evil Gabe Kapler would have tried to forfeit like twice in his first week, and he would have lost his head.

Yeah, yeah, no, I completely agree with all of that. I think, you know, technically it makes sense on some level tactically, but it just would have a lot of blowback that just wouldn't be worth it. And there are people watching at home, there are people who paid to come to the park, and there would be an outcry. If I can come to the park and spend my time here, then what, are they too good to finish out a baseball game? It's grown men in pajamas playing a game, etc., etc. And these guys are paid X and Y, and, you know, that typical fan refrain. And also, Jay Keith mentioned it, but I think it really is a significant factor. Players would not like this because they have an interest in playing and adding to their

playing time. That's something that helps in arbitration, helps in free agency, especially if you're in a garbage time game. You're probably beating up on bad pitchers if you're a hitter. And you're probably a pitcher who just wouldn't be pitching in another situation. You're just maybe the low leverage guy who only gets work in that sort of scenario. So I think the players want to be there, or at least, you know, there are benefits to their being there that they wouldn't like this either. So really, I don't know that it would end up benefiting you at all and uh yeah i think the the position players pitching solution is sort of the

the de facto way to do this without doing this there is something here according to rule 4.15 the umpire may call a forfeit when a team employees tech this is b employees tactics palpably designed to delay or shorten the game so working quickly could be grounds for forfeit uh related there is a condition e after warning by the umpire the team willfully and persistently violates any rules that's any rules of the game so if you had you know like bob david Davidson or Joe West back there, and maybe a team's batter just keeps stepping out of the box or out of the dirt between pitches, and he's not supposed to do it. Or maybe the team tries to take its seventh mound meeting. The umpire is like,

you better not do that again. They go out for an eighth mound meeting. Forfeit. Technically, not allowed. All right. So that almost happened. That's the fate that was averted with that almost seventh mound visit the other night. All right. Question about another high profile recently promoted prospect, Gleyber Torres. Marco says in 2016, we saw the Cubs analytics heavy front office trade Gleyber Torres and others for three months of Aroldis Chapman. This year, the consensus seems to be that even if the Orioles were to trade Manny Machado, the package they would receive would be pretty light. What's with the disconnect here? Machado is about as valuable a player as there is in baseball, and certainly more valuable than a reliever. Similarly, J.D. Martinez went for an extremely light package last year, despite having the 13th best WRC Plus since 2013.

That's an interesting stat, was the trade for Chapman simply a singular event based on the Cubs' historic losing ways and the fact that they were finally favorites to win the World Series? Were the Cubs simply fleeced? I'm just having a hard time understanding why a team like the Yankees was able to pry Torres away for Chapman and Frazier for Miller,

but that the consensus seems to be that the Orioles won't get a top prospect for Machado. Well, there's a few things here, and I'm sure Ben would say many of the same things. But first of all, I don't think that Manny Machado would be traded for a weak package. There would be a good prospect headlining that package, and you could even conceivably see someone like Addison Russell or something if there were a trade with the Cubs. But anyway, so referring to Gleyber Torres specifically, even though he was a good prospect and going into 2016, the year when he was traded, he was Baseball America's number 41 prospect.

He was MLB.com's number 28 prospect. He was Baseball Prospectus's number 41 prospect. So he was good. But that season, at the time that he was traded, he was in advanced A ball. And he had a sub 800 OPS. So he was traded, he was in advanced A ball, and he had a sub-800 OPS. So he was fine. He was holding his own, but he was not a can't-miss, at least statistically, he was not a can't-miss obvious top five or top ten prospect. He was more of a project, a long shot.

Yeah, we're thinking of him now as what he is, which is a major leaguer and one of the very tip-top top prospects in baseball. And he wasn't quite that then, although he was certainly valuable then too. Yeah, he was good. And, you know, he went into the next season with a higher prospect ranking. Shockingly high, I might say. He did not light up the minors in 2016. And yet, according to Baseball America, he jumped from number 41 to number 5. So clearly they saw something they liked, and credit to the Yankees scouting.

But the other thing here is not only was Torres further away at that point, but as anyone who's read or heard about baseball, listened to this podcast, can attest to, relievers can be leveraged heavily in the playoffs. The Cubs are making a move to try to win the World Series. And so when you have someone like Rollins Chapman, you can use him in nearly every game if you want to in the playoffs, or at least nearly every win. So you can get a whole lot out of him.

Whereas if you're talking about someone like Manny Machado or a worse player in JD Martinez, you get to start that guy in every game. But in the regular season, you're starting him in every game anyway. But there's nothing you can do to really optimize or get more out of his playing time in the playoffs. optimize or get more out of his playing time in the playoffs so even though it's it's sort of a small difference you know that Machado is going to get his standard number of plate appearances in a playoff series but Chapman might throw high leverage innings in five or six of of seven games in a series and so you can just squeeze more out of Chapman than you can a position player and I think this is why really good starters and really good relievers get a premium at the deadline. Yeah. And I think there probably was something to the, this is a historic exception idea. I mean, it was the Cubs. They were really desperately trying to break their

century plus long world series drought. So I think that they were willing to give up more than the typical team. And they also had this incredible rich depth of prospects and position player prospects. They didn't really have a place for Torres to play necessarily anyway. So he was a little more expendable to them than he would be to most organizations. So I think there were a number of factors that came together to make that possible. But as I recall, even at the time, there were people saying that this is a pretty big price to pay for Chapman. And there were other moves that were made that maybe the player was valuable, but the return was not as great. So it was something that people noticed at the time. And there was probably a bit of a Cubs premium there. And it ended up

working out pretty well for them, I would say. Yep, and I guess sort of related to this a little bit But just in retrospect I know people gave the A's so much crap For trading Addison Russell away And since Russell came up in 2015 He's been worth 7.5 wins according to Fangraphs And Marcus Semyon, who the A's wound up getting When they traded Jeff Samarja later on

Has been worth 6 wins above replacement So not a whole lot of difference here. It's just funny the way that things work out. All right. Nathan says, I was on Baseball Reference looking for some team data from seasons past, and I noticed on the index page for seasons they have listed Major League historical totals in the top right-hand corner. As of my viewing, it shows 214,986 games played, among other things. I noticed that the home run tally

stands at 295,911, and triples are at 132,830, so less than half as many triples in Major League history as homers. I was surprised these numbers were as close as they were. Obviously, we see more home runs now than triples, and the reverse was true 100 years ago, are you able to pinpoint the exact moment these two numbers were equal to one another? Can we credit a single player for being the person to push the home run mark past the triple mark? If we're going to do this, we would have to set parameters, like we only include NL stats from 1876 forward and AL stats from 1901 forward, etc. Is this possible? And if so, what would be your guess as to when these numbers cross paths? I'll guess 1945 for no reason at all.

I did not guess. I just looked up the answer. It was very easy to find also on baseball reference. And, you know, you kind of have a sense of when it would be roughly around when he's guessing maybe a little earlier. And that is, in fact, the case. The year when the two passed each other, when they were very briefly equal. I mean, there was more than one year when they were equal.

But the last time that there were as many triples per game as homers per game was 1931. That was the last time that happened. After that, there have always been more homers than triples. But that year in 1931, there were 0.43 homers per game and 0.43 triples per game. And there were many things happening around that time. That's actually the year, we talked about it recently, but that's the year when a juiced ball was introduced. And there was briefly that period when there were two different balls in use in the two different leagues, and they were both sort of juiced relative to what had gone before in some cases, even more in one case. So

there was a very notable spike in offense and in power around that time. And that's what pushed homers past triples forever. And now, of course, home runs are way, way, way more common than triples, but there was a time when triples were routinely much more common than homers. And you might say that that sounds like it's a far more exciting era of baseball to observe, but, of course, if you were watching in that era, you would think that home runs are super exciting because they're exactly as common as triples. Yes, that's right. So just be happy with whatever you get and stop complaining.

All right. That was sort of statblasty, but let's do the real thing. Statblast? Yeah. OBS Plus. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to Dasty Plus. It's a three-parter, sort of, because it's all quick. It's a three-parter, sort of, because it's all quick. So there was one, I was inspired by a recent listener email that was asking about whether there would be any measurable effect on foul outs being in decline because of the extended netting.

Yeah, we got two emails about this. People very curious about this matter. Well, so first of all, as I think about it objectively, the netting has mostly been extended just to cover dugouts, right? And I know in certain circumstances, it's gone further. But of course, there were no plays being made behind dugouts anyway. True. So that might have spoiled the surprise. But in any case, no, there's no measurable decline. The splits here are a little, I don't know, maybe a little untrustworthy. At least we have information, or at least baseball reference has information from 1988 to 2002.

But something weird kind of happens. I just, just in general, I don't really trust anything from before 2002 anyway. So what I can say is that starting in 2003, that gives us a little over a decade and a half of baseball. I looked at just the rate of basically foul outs. There are no recorded foul balls that aren't outs. So foul outs as a percentage of all balls in play. And so it essentially starts at 3.2%. That seems higher than I thought, but whatever.

That's one or two a game. 3.2 percent and then there's a very steady decline from 3.2 to 3.1 to 2.9 to 2.8 to 2.7 to 2.6 to 2.5 to 2.6 to 2.6 to this year's 2.9 percent so it's too early to really know much about whether this year's rate means anything i don't know why foul outs would be on the rise nor do i care to theorize about this. I very strongly don't care, but this is a thing. We have a current increase of 0.3 percentage points in the rate of foul outs. Who knows what it means, but foul outs have been in steady, very gradual decline over a little over a decade. That is StatBlast part one.

Yeah, I guess you could say that, you know, whatever very tiny number of foul balls you might lose to the netting because you can't reach into the stands. I mean, I guess there could be some other cases maybe where a player is not as afraid of crashing into the fence or going over the fence because that netting is there and it provides some cushion and so maybe you might catch a few more foul balls here and there just because you're able to go all out and chase them so yeah probably between all of the factors that we've mentioned pretty

negligible effect and has the safety benefit of course yep so moving on also inspired by another listener email this was from kyle lobner who observed that Carlos Gomez recently hit a dramatic walk-off home run for the Rays. That's a baseball team that's still playing, and they won a game. Carlos Gomez hit a home run to win it, and he hit that home run off of a reliever. And as Kyle observed, that is relatively uncommon for Carlos Gomez, because this is going to be a trusty StatBlast special T-OPS plus segment. But Carlos Gomez, for anyone who does not remember or has not paid attention, because this is going to be a trusty stat blast special TOPS Plus segment. But Carlos Gomez, for anyone who does not remember or has not paid attention,

a TOPS Plus of 100 would be average. This is a comparison of one player's performance against himself. So if you have a TOPS Plus over 100, it means you've been good in that split relative to yourself. If you have one under 100, you get where this is going. Carlos Gomez, for his career, against relief pitchers, this is all from the Play Index. You know it's all from the Play Index. Against relief pitchers, Carlos Gomez has a career T-OPS plus of 79.

That is bad, at least as this split goes. It does mean he's been better against starting pitchers, but that ranks him 17th worst in measurable history among players who've batted at least 1,000 times against relievers. And so that's obviously very low. He's around guys like Jay Gibbons and Gary Jones and Lucas Duda. This is the first and last time maybe Jay Gibbons will come up on the podcast. But this is still far from being the worst.

And this is one of those lists that I know you and I both love where there's like a clear worst. There's a clear separation between first and second. So here are the bottom five, or I guess top five, depends on how you're looking at this. Tom Pagnozzi, TOPS plus of 73 against relievers. Myceris Turris, 73. Giancarlo Stanton, interesting, 71. Nolan Arenado, interesting, 69. Number one, Pedro Alvarez, 63.

TOPS plus of 63 against relief pitches for pedro alvarez i would suspect that this would be reflecting the fact that pedro alvarez has probably faced a bunch of lefties coming out of the bullpen i don't know i don't know why he would show up as being so bad but other guys with platoon splits wouldn't but in any case you look at pedro alvarez for his career he is still around he's with the ori at pedro alvarez for his career uh he is still around he's with the orioles but against starting pitchers over his career he's had an 837 ops and he slugged 509 and against relievers he's got a 607 ops slugging 328 so pedro alvarez very good until about the sixth or seventh inning at which point you want to get him out of there

you don't want to be Pedro Alvarez anymore. Finally, stat-less segment part three. This is the shortest, easiest one. I was just curious about the splits, wondering who has been the best batter of all time after falling behind 0-2. This is not. Looking at TOPS+, this is just regular OPS,

which is the best you can do on Baseball Reference since they don't have WOBA or WRC+. So I will tell you, if I asked you to guess who has the highest ever OPS after falling behind 0-2, you would guess Barry Bonds, right? Sure. Yeah, so he's third. He has an OPS of 677 after falling behind 0-2. Second place, Frank Thomas.

Makes good sense, right? 680 OPS. First place, Mike Trout. Beloved Mike Trout. 692 OPS after falling behind 0-2. The weirdest name up here is probably Greg Jeffries. He's in fourth place despite not having been a good hitter. But in any case, 669 OPS after falling behind 0-2. Maybe he is the remarkable one here, but Mike Trout, just another the course of his career, right? As a two strike hitter. I was just recently writing about Mike Trout as you were as well. And I came across an old post of yours about how Mike Trout had really improved his ability not to strike out after being in a two strike count. So I know that's something that he has mentioned working on at times and

anything he has ever mentioned working on he has almost immediately become much better at so there there you have it mike trout again amazing mike trout in a sense is like a good spin on the king midas myth like everything he touches turns to gold in the way that you want it to turn to gold except for you know the team that he plays for but you know we'll see they took the series from the Astros. Yep. While you were stat blasting, Ronald Acuna had a 97 mile per hour line out with a 45% hit probability. So still hitless in actual hits against reg pitching so far.

Averaging 99 miles per hour off the bat. Yeah. Well, that's pretty good if you can keep that up. All right. We got a couple of questions about Brandon Belt and his 21 pitch at bat. And one of them is from Luke. So he says, as I was watching Brandon Belt's 21 pitch at bat on Sunday, I had a lot of time to think. Ordinarily, any out a team makes would reduce that team's winning probability. ability. However, the longer an at-bat goes, the more stress is placed on the opposing pitching staff. So at some point, simply making the pitchers throw a lot of pitches will counteract the outs made. How many pitches would that take? This may depend on game situation as well as upcoming schedule. So if you like, we can simply consider belt situation with no outs and a runner

on first in the top of the first inning on April 22nd, a getaway day for the Angels as they traveled to Houston after the game. So would, say, a 50 pitch at bat in that situation be better for the Giants than the out was for the Angels? Similar question from Steve was reading a Travis Sawchuk chat where somebody posed the question about whether Brendan Belt would be valuable if he had that long 21 pitch at bat preceded by an out every time he stepped to the plate. Travis said that it would be valuable. However, my question is different. Let's assume that there was a player that couldn't get a hit but always fouled off X number of pitches before getting out. How many pitches would X need to equal before he would be intentionally walked in nearly every plate appearance? I figure it would likely be situational, but at what point is the amount of pitches thrown in and at bat more important than the end result of an out? We've always gotten lots of questions about this sort of Takuya Nakashima scenario where, you know, guys are fouling off tons of pitches. And generally, I've answered those by saying that in this era with giant bullpens and starters who aren't really expected to go deep into the game anyway, It doesn't matter so much, but you do get to a point eventually where it might matter.

Yeah, we've answered questions very similar to this often. And I mean, if you're talking about a guy who never gets on base, never gets a hit, never does anything, but he just has long plate appearances, he's so not valuable that, I mean, you're looking at an extraordinary number of pitches that he needs to get out of out of the pitcher and i think that one of the areas you run into trouble here is that even though there are clearly direct effects of just making a pitcher wear himself out you're really if you're a team with that pitcher you're mostly worried about the cascading effects of how is this fatigue going to just affect everyone in the team over a long period of

of time so you might not necessarily flipping affect everyone in the team over a long period of time. So you might not necessarily, flipping back over to the hitting side, you might not necessarily get that benefit in the short-term series. Maybe it's going to be better for the next team to face the pitcher or the next team after that. So in any case, you are right that, I mean, if you had someone who had 200 pitch at bats, then that would clearly be a problem for the team who's who's trying to pitch i think the answer is not 21 but i i could see it being about 35 or 40 where i i

still don't think that you you would want to have the guy on the team who's who's just making outs all the time but having long plate appearances because teams do have taxi guys they have relievers they can call up on a moment's notice just to yeah fill in but i mean in in that individual inning the the pitcher would the pitcher would be so tired he would hate the batter and so you would start to i think you would start to see intentional walks even if it's not optimal if you knew going in like this is going to take for goddamn ever i don't want to do it. I'm just going to try to pick him off and deal with the next guy.

I think you would start to see that around 35 or 40 pitches. Yeah, you could imagine that guy being valuable in some games and some situations. I mean, there are some starting pitchers you'd probably rather have stay in the game than the reliever who's going to relieve them. them but if you have an ace you're facing and you can take 30 pitches off his pitch count guaranteed every time this guy comes to the plate so that he is you know essentially throwing his whole pitch count allotment in three plate appearances against this guy that's pretty valuable to get that guy out of the game so there are situations that it might be worth carrying someone like that as the last guy on your bench just for those days when it might make sense. But we also get questions about like, could you do that if that was all you cared about, if you didn't even really want to get a hit, but you

just wanted to keep fouling off pitches? No. No, you can't. It's just, it's really hard to do, which is why it was historic that Brandon Bell did this. Of course, he wasn't trying to do this and hitters generally are not trying to do this. So if they were to try, they could do it with some greater regularity if they weren't taking full swings, certainly. Like, guys can't get bunts down a lot of the time. And obviously, if you're just bunting, then you will be called out when you have your first foul with two strikes. So no, even if you're taking like a half swing and choking up, guys just throw too hard. I mean, maybe in an earlier era of baseball, this could have happened. But now it's just too hard to make any kind of contact yeah bunting is the the right comparison here if good hitters can't get bunts down then they're not going to be able to foul i know people have talked about like yitro or joey vato can just

foul pitches off forever with two strikes well they can't as you know from the fact that they strike out sometimes right yeah there's just no there's so little signal to ever identify with these two strike foul ball hitters. It just doesn't happen. All right. Vinit says, forget robot umps. Wouldn't it be more accurate and more fun to have two umpires call balls and strikes simultaneously? Basically have the second umpire be facing the batter a few feet away along the first or third baseline.

This ump would call the height, and the ump behind would call inside or outside. They would signal together and if either of them didn't call a strike, then it's a ball. This is similar to how refs work in football for field goals. I hadn't considered this before. I guess it could get crowded a little bit. Yes, right. If the guy's on the baseline, that's kind of a problem potentially, but wise it would probably improve things right you could see things that you can't see from behind whole plate i don't hate it and then you could have you know if there's like a borderline play or a borderline call and the batter is upset because the pitch was kind of over the outside edge but maybe not then he could turn argue with one umpire and tell the other one like my beef is not with you you're fine you you did just fine but then you could have a guy argue with one umpire and tell the other one like my beef is not with you you're fine you you did just fine but then you could have a guy argue with one umpire or if there's a pitch in the corner

of the zone that's called a ball or a strike you could have somebody argue with two umpires at once which would be fantastic so that's right i'm uh i'm all on board this is something that had never crossed my mind no me neither yeah i mean it would be a higher degree of accuracy just a because you can actually get a different perspective and a better perspective, but also because you can concentrate on one thing. You don't have to look at the whole strike zone. You can just see if it's too wide or too high.

It's sort of like being a line judge in tennis, I guess, where you don't have to watch the whole court necessarily, or some don't. You just kind of have to watch one line and see if it goes past that one line. It's an easier job, although, of course, they still make mistakes too, because those balls get hit really hard. So there would still be mistakes, but I guess the umpires union would like it. You get even more umpires instead of fewer umpires. And accuracy-wise, it would probably

improve things. So, I mean, maybe it's just easier to go with robot umps than to add another umpire who is standing on the field. But if you didn't want to move away from the human element, but you did want the human element to be better, I guess this is one way you could do it. Yep. All right. Question that I probably should have paired before with our forfeiting question, but this is from Guy or Guy.

What would baseball be like if the visiting manager had to declare the game to be over at the end of some complete inning? Would they simply call it whenever they had a lead? Or would there be other considerations like making sure your players don't get rusty from playing three innings half the time? How exhausted would they be willing to let their players get in pursuit of an elusive 18th inning comeback? What if, in addition, each visiting team had to play exactly 81 times nine So the visiting manager can just declare the game over at the end of any complete inning. Does he do that if his team is up like after one? Does he just take the W every time if he's behind?

Does he just keep the game going indefinitely? At what point does he draw the line and say, OK, we can stop this thing? Similar to what we talked about before. Yeah, I think if you have the lead after the whole point is to get the win, right? Right. Forget about reps. So I think you would see a lot of games called after the first or the second inning. And maybe in part so that you do have a little more energy left for those marathons where

you're chasing an extra inning win that you don't want to give up on so look this would be horrible i would everybody in the world would hate this and and baseball would cease to be anyone's pastime but you would see a lot of this the twins are playing the yankees today as we're recording this they are playing a game and if you have paid any attention to baseball you know that when the twins play the yankees the yankees score 17 runs and the twins score four and that's how the game end it doesn't matter if it's in the regular season or the playoffs after the first inning the twins are up two to one ball game that's it there's nothing else to do so uh i mean the braves beating the reds won nothing after the first inning maybe you want to

let ronald lacuna get a few plate appearances i don't know but yeah i mean i can't think of a good reason reps are important because you want players to stay fresh but on the other hand players think that the season is too long they don't need all the reps that they get. Call the game early. All right. Okay. Related umpiring and balls and strikes calling question from David. I've been thinking a lot about umpires impact on the game, specifically home plate umpires interpreting the strike zone. Evidently, he has not thought of the two umpire solution though. Keep thinking, David. I enjoy the many, how long would it take to notice X questions you've been answering on the podcast, and I'm wondering

how long would it take for players or broadcasters or coaches, the Twitter mob, etc., to notice an umpire calling one half of an inning like the most pitcher-friendly ump in baseball and the other half like the most hitter-friendly ump. Assume that the ump makes no adjustments throughout the game, either out of

spite, bias, or incompetence. Could he last all game without ejecting a player or coach from the team getting screwed? How much quicker would people notice if it was the home team in a packed stadium that's getting screwed? Finally, assuming the teams are about equal talent-wise, how much does the team that benefits actually improve their chances of winning? does it jump to 55%, 60%, 75%, etc.? Oh, yeah. The win probability would be shifted somewhat dramatically, I think. There are a lot of borderline pitches. Now, this is something, in theory, it's beyond my skill, but you could sort of look this up to see which game has had the most lopsided strike zone. That would be a fun little project to make some people mad i don't

know i think especially now in this age of social media if this if this were a game with any stakes people would start to think something was up quick because i think a lot of fans go into a game already just looking for a reason to believe the umpire is biased yes this is part of the whole the whole thing and there are so many strike zone diagrams now i know that like at brooks baseball i think you can't it's not easy to find them as a game is going on but there are still diagrams that exist out there yeah there are those those twitter bots for every team that are showing the the probabilities of every pitch so yeah yeah so you'd see those and so people would have a hunch real quick and then after the game is over based on those hunches websites would have analyses pointing out that yep no this is

this is absurd this is like really lopsided and then i think if it happens once you say okay maybe it's maybe it's a minor league umpire got called up you just think wow this is a shame but we deal with umpire shames and and you hope that they just shrug them off whatever it was a game maybe it was a really good framing if it happens a second or third time in a row with the same umpire then that guy is gonna have a long phone conversation with whoever his supervisor is, and there would be some analyses, and that umpire would not last very long. Right. I mean, the umpires get printouts of their performance according to PitchFX or StatCaster, a similar system after every game. So they would know. I mean, this is intentional, I guess they already know, but everyone else would know. And I think fans would be mad when these calls go against them. I mean,

that's the number one complaint that players make about umpires is inconsistency and calling some pitches strikes here and balls here, and it's the same pitch both times. In a way, this is consistency of a sort, I guess, in that like one team's hitters would be seeing the same zone the whole game and the other team's hitters would be seeing the same zone the whole game. It would just be two dramatically different zones. So I guess like the only people who might notice would be the catcher who is behind the plate and also hitting or, you know, the pitcher who is maybe hitting if it's also hitting, or, you know, the pitcher who is maybe hitting if it's the NL, or, you know, managers and coaches would probably just notice, I guess,

that like in one half inning, someone got the call or didn't get the call, and then the opposite thing happens in the next half inning. So I think this would be noticed almost immediately. Players would be mad. Maybe you could get through a game like this without ejecting anyone if it were like a low stakes game or if it were a blowout for other reasons and maybe people weren't sweating every pitch the same way they would in a tight game but yeah you would very quickly be unpopular and probably unemployed oh yeah all right a couple more question from we mentioned brian mitchell briefly early so let's talk about brian mitchell again scott says the effectively wild hall of fame mike trout rich hill shohei otani and brian

mitchell your comments about mitchell's strikeout to walk ratio and his awful start against the rockies this week i think he did have a positive strikeout to walk ratio no it was even oh it was so it's like two and two or something because he barely lasted at all. Got me curious in an effectively wild kind of way. The Padres can't continue to let Mitchell start with a strikeout-to-walk ratio of less than 1, right? But what if the Padres had Mitchell Bryan on their roster? He's thrown five starts this year and has the same awful ERA as the other guy, except Mitchell Bryan has more strikeouts than innings pitched and has walked nobody on the season. That's...

There have been equivalents to this kind of, right? Like guys in recent years with good strikeout to walk ratios but they just give up tons of home runs i'm trying to remember like who the archetypical player of this type yeah javier vasquez that's a good one there have been others in in recent years it seems like anecdotally maybe it's something that happens as a player's getting up there in age and doesn't really have the stuff to fool players anymore. So he's kind of like around the plate a lot, but when he is around the plate, he tends to give up a lot of hard hit balls. So you get this combination of high ERA with positive strikeout to walk ratio

that I guess like maybe was Tim Lincecum that kind of guy for a while, sort of, or I'm thinking, or like Jared Weaver even maybe? Or there have been some guys like that in recent years. Yeah, I think Weaver was the opposite of that. But Linscombe in his later years when he was declining, he was still getting strikeouts. So that made him kind of perplexing as sort of the bizarro Matt Cain. I think Javier Vasquez is the name that always comes to mind for me.

There are a few other ones like Charlie Morton has always been worse than his peripherals, or I should say before he was throwing 97 miles per hour, he was always worse than his peripherals. But teams would give Mitchell Bryan, well, I guess I should say Mitchell Bryan, he would just have 16% strikeouts and 8% walks. That's not, that's still not great. That's worse than league average. So he wouldn't get that much of an opportunity.

But if you had a guy who had a lot of strikeouts, not many walks, it would be like, what, like first year Robbie Ray, sort of? Like you look at this guy thinking like, what is it that makes him so susceptible to good contact and runs being scored? So you would, if his ear ray was up and he was a young guy, you would probably see him ship to the minors after a handful of starts because you'd figure something has to be wrong. But that pitcher would continue to get opportunities, whereas someone like this current Brian Mitchell, there's not many future opportunities awaiting him. Incidentally, Brian Mitchell no longer the owner of the worst strikeout-to-walk percentage in Major League Baseball. I can read you the bottom four.

So Chris Tillman is coming off a a somewhat strong start he had a uh a walk and five strikeouts which for chris tillman is great so he's currently at 11 walks and eight strikeouts that's a strikeout minus walk rate of a negative 3.3 percent that's bad yeah so uh we move on to Twitter sensation yet arguably not good pitcher Jordan Hicks for the Cardinals. He throws really hard. His pitches go everywhere except where he wants them to go. He has 11% strikeout. So I should say actually he has 10 walks and 6 strikeouts. So he has a strikeout minus walk rate of negative 7.4%.

That is not good. Brian Mitchell, he is sitting at 19 walks and nine strikeouts so his strikeout minus walk rate is negative 8.6 and yet spring training sensation jeff selvin fangraphs write-up favorite lucas giolito dominant start against the cubs in spring i liked it he's made some mechanical adjustments and the the big bold result is an era of 9.00 he's got his own 19 walks and nine strikeouts also for good measure he's hit four batters over four starts he has a strikeout minus walk rate of negative 10.1 percent good lord lucas g later was having a really bad season yeah that's not so good yeah i'm trying to find some other guys like

james shields in 2010 he had that season when he had a good strikeout-to-walk ratio, close to four, but he had an ERA over five because he gave a bunch of homers. Or I guess Joe Blanton, as a starter, had some times like that. There's someone else I'm thinking of here but not really remembering. But I guess maybe, sorry to say, but friend of the podcast, Dan Heron, who, if he's listening, is probably already thinking, me, me, because he is a self-deprecating guy. But in his latter years, he was still very effective at times. But once he wasn't throwing quite as hard, he still had great control. He had strikeout to walk ratios, you know, four or above at some times but below average eras because he did give up some homers he was around the plate so maybe he's kind of who i was thinking of here are the five highest fangraphs has a little stat it's technically it's e minus f it's just era minus

fip and it's a stat that they have in the leaderboard so i just searched uh since 1995 which i like to use as a starting point. Minimum 500 innings. Here are the pitchers whose ERA was most worse than what their FIP said their ERA should have been. Jose Jimenez, that's number five. Manny Parra. Glendon Rush, famous one, at least as an example of this. Jordan Lyles, still pitching.

And Ryan Dries. Ryan Dries had a FIP minus of 98 minus of 98 better than average era minus of 116 much worse than average so ryan drees also the first and last time he might come up on this podcast and just because it's a leaderboard the name at the other end of this is al levine oh i didn't care about that wow edit that out that out. Alright, last question. You mentioned earlier that despite Coors Field being imposing, Rockies are

not a great offensive team. This is a question about that. This is from Tim, who says, quote, you just know this team is going to hit, end quote, has become a bit of a meme within Rockies Twitter this year, mainly making fun of Rockies Twitter this year, mainly making fun of Rockies TV announcer Drew Goodman, but also virtually every visiting team announcer,

who continues to blithely assume that Coors will make the Rockies an offensive juggernaut, even as the team currently is the worst by WRC Plus in the league, following a season in which they finished 28th. So my question is, how bad would the Rockies offense have to be, and for how long before people no longer, quote, knew the Rockies were a team that's always hit? Is there another team that has developed this sort of reputation from their ballpark or something else so impervious to evidence? Well, there was a time that people said this about the Texas Rangers, but of course there's no ballpark that's quite like Colorado. Never has been, I don't think, and never will be again, I shouldn't think.

Maybe we'll see about Mexico City, but I mean, so right now, at least as we're recording this, the Rockies have a WRC plus of 77. That's good for third worst, better than the Orioles and the Marlins. So I don't know if the Marlins count here, but I just, I don't know how much to expect from broadcasters with regard to park effects. But like, even right now, what, the Rockies not park adjusted. Their slugging percentage is 396, which is only average. It ties them for 15th in baseball.

That's just a league average slug percentage. And they're on base. The Rockies on base percentage right now is 301. That's sixth worst in baseball. So if you look at their batting line right now, they actually aren't good even if you don't park adjust. So I would say this bad or worse. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it's usually true, right, in a sense. Like last year, for instance, the Rockies were not a very good offensive team, but they did hit. They scored runs. They scored the most runs in the National League, in fact. So it was not inaccurate to say that this team is going to hit. Maybe it would have been better to say this team is going to hit less than most or every other team would hit in the same situation. But, you know, if they do do hit their raw offensive stats generally are pretty good so i mean it's sort of a meaningless comment to make that they are going to hit if

they are not actually a good hitting team but they do generally hit in Coors Field but even that yeah may not be true anymore so maybe this is the season when people will stop saying it what's the can you quickly see like what's the worst hitting team that the rockies have ever had just like in terms of raw stats so just not park adjusted but have they ever had like just a legitimately bad hitting and run scoring team so i'm looking at a baseball reference has a year byby-year team batting ranks section. It can be a little difficult to find, but it is there. So the Rockies have history going all the way back to 1993, and they have never ranked worse than eighth in the National League in runs.

And also that's their worst by three places. So in all but one season, they've ranked in the top five in the National League in runs. So that means something. But they do have two ninth top five in the national league in runs so that means something but they do have two ninth place finishes in ops in 2018 that's actually right now so i shouldn't say finish previous to now in 2005 they had a ninth place ops and in 2018 i keep coming back to that this season they're not good 1993 expansion season they were 10th in the national league in obp so they've just by runs they've never been bad they had one year where they were kind of average but that's that's the best i got okay so odds are this team is going to hit sort of in a sense all right so we will end

there by the way one of the questions about the netting and foul outs that prompted part of jeff statblast was asked by ben and kristin and the other one was askedting and foul outs that prompted part of Jeff's stat blast was asked by Ben and Kristen. And the other one was asked by Andrew. Just wanted to give them their due. Well, Acuna did end up getting his first career MLB hit, a single off of 29-year-old rookie Kevin Shackelford. So congratulations to him. Johan Camargo got two hits, two doubles. So take that, Top Prospect.

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