Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1209: Stop, Pop, and Roll

Episode Date: April 27, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan follow up on previous talk of triples, popups, and foul balls, then discuss Ronald Acuña’s big second game, the intriguing Oakland A’s, the new and maybe-improved Joey Gallo, the transformations of Didi Gregorius and Andrelton Simmons, the post-injury return of Jonny Venters, Clayton Kershaw vs. Trevor Richards and the biggest […]

🎵 You better All the guests that I attempted to get booked for this podcast are either unavailable or didn't respond. So we're going to have a nice loose grab bag of a baseball podcast this Friday. Hey, Ben, how's the baseball world? Hi. I don't know. I know how my world is. My world's okay. Baseball world, presumably okay too. We'll talk about it, and hopefully we'll get to some of those guests next week. We're flexible around here. So I do have a couple things to

follow up on from yesterday's episode. I guess we could start there. We did an email show earlier this week, and just two points to clarify. One thing is part of your stat blast talked about the idea that foul outs are up this year. We're leading with the really sexy stuff here on this episode. Foul outs are up this season, and we didn't in the moment come up with a reason why that would be the case, but Matt Trueblood, listener and baseball prospectus writer, wrote in to point out that this might have something to do with the fact that all pop-ups are up, right? And foul outs are presumably all or almost all pop-ups, and so if there are more pop-ups, there will presumably be and foul outs are presumably all or almost all pop-ups and so if there are more pop-ups there will presumably be more foul outs as well so that's probably why i guess that leads to the

question of why there are more pop-ups which could be something having to do with hitters and launch angles and trying to hit fly balls or maybe pitchers trying to counter somehow i don't know yeah so this is something that early in the season i observed that ground ball rate was way down and i thought wow look at how meaningful this already is and since then it's been completely normal ground ball rate is it's only slightly lower than where it used to be but the pop-up rate is in fact inflated now this is something that i always have a little bit of trouble looking at these numbers year to year because these are, there's no like real strict definition of what a pop-up is. There is, like there's a cutoff.

I forgot if it's like 140 feet or 160 feet. Maybe you remember. But all these numbers come from Baseball Info Solutions. And basically, the only reason I've ever had to look up what the definition of a pop-up is, is when I'm writing about Joey Votto not hitting pop-ups. So, you know, that comes up every year or two. Yeah, or Freddie Freeman now not doing anything. Or Freddie Freeman. Or Howie Kendrick.

He's the one that no one ever talks about. But anyway. And John Jay as well. John Jay, miraculous BABIP hitter. But so this year, assuming that nothing has changed about pop-up definitions, and I don't know why it would, but just understand there's some subjectivity here. definitions and i don't know why it would but just understand there's some subjectivity here over the past five years ground ball rate has gone from 44.8 percent to 43.5 percent launch angle revolution indeed but the pop-up rate now again these are these are small differences but the way this is measured is pop-ups as a rate per fly ball so you've probably heard of

home runs per fly ball as a rate sat on fangraphs this is pop-ups infield flies per fly ball so you've probably heard of home runs per fly ball as a rate set on fangraphs this is pop-ups infield flies per fly ball so starting in 2014 it was 9.6 percent 9.5 9.7 9.6 percent and this year 11.1 that is a difference of only one and a half percentage points but that's also a difference of basically 15 percent a little more as an increase so pop-ups are indeed up and you you think about why this would be. And I don't think that coming up with an initial theory is very hard. You've got batters who were trying to hit the ball in the air more. You've got batters who might not be skilled enough

to consistently hit the ball well in the air. And you have pitchers who are trying to counter that by pitching up in the zone. I think you hear this increasingly on different broadcasts that you open. Even old- school team announcers now we're talking about the launch angle trend and yes pitchers using four seam fastballs up in the zone like the secret is out the secret's been out for years and yeah once you hear something on a broadcast the secret has has been circulating for some time already yeah so pop-ups uh are up

so far and if you just want to look at i I don't know, what's happened over the past week, just since it's still so early in the season, you can just kind of monitor how these things are moving. And over the course of the past week, the pop-up rate is loading. Pop-up rate is, yeah, still up. So I don't know, this could be, we're still so early in what's been a weird start

to the season that I want to give you. I mean, look, these numbers are going to have time to settle down no matter what we feel like. But I want to just give the numbers more time before I make too much of them. But it does look like pop-ups are up. And so long story short, this was a long answer, actually not a short story, of responding to yes, Matthew Trueblood is right. All right. Well, we're just front-loading all the exciting stuff in this episode. Pop-ups are up. Foul-outs are up. Now we know. The other exciting thing that I wanted to follow

up on from yesterday, we answered an email which was about home run rates and triple rates. And the question was when home runs caught up to triples, because for much of early baseball history, triples were more common than home runs. And so I thought the question, which was sent in by Nathan, I thought it was asking what year there were more home runs hit than triples hit for like the last time when that became a permanent state of affairs or at least permanent thus far. Who knows what will happen in the future? And so I determined that that was 1931. That's when the home run rate passed the triple rate for good, as far as we know.

That is hopefully an answer to an interesting question, but not the interesting question that Nathan was attempting to ask. So he wanted to know when the total number of home runs hit in Major League history caught up to the total number of triples hit in Major League history. Oh, no. Yes. So that's a more labor-intensive question and answer. And so by misinterpreting it, I saved myself some work because Nathan did the research himself. So thank you, Nathan.

And there are a couple different ways you could answer this question. And there is another listener in the Facebook group who realized that I had misinterpreted what Nathan was asking. That is Michael. And so he did the research himself separately. So two people trying to come to this answer of when the home run was hit that put home runs ahead of triples all time. And they arrived at two different answers, but for good reason. It's because

they defined major leagues differently. So Nathan looked at just the National League and the American League, and Michael looked at all major leagues, which includes things like the American Association and the Federal League, which I think based on what we know now probably weren't major league caliber. And so maybe should be excluded from these things, but historically haven't been. Anyway, you get two somewhat similar answers when you do this, when you look it up those two different ways. So Nathan's way, looking at just the American League and the National League, he determined through looking at many splits pages on Baseball Reference and then doing subsequent research to see what time games were played on certain days, he determined that probably the home run that tied home runs with triples all time was hit by Mini Minoso on September 8th, 1961.

And the home run that put home runs ahead of triples for good was hit September 9th, 1961. It was Don Demeter of the Phillies who hit that home run. The other answer that Michael determined, counting all of those leagues as major leagues, was 1964, August 29th, 1964. Norm Cash, probably, or possibly Joe Pepitone, but one of those was the one who did it. So now we have all possible answers to this question, three different answers to this question. I think they're all interesting in their own way. And now we know. Do we? Because this feels like this is something I'm going to forget the answers to by the end of this podcast. Yeah, you may have forgotten already. I wouldn't blame you. But just early 60s, that is when it happened. So that tells you something. So I determined that 1931 is when home runs started to be hit more than triples for good. So it then took another three decades for home runs to catch up to the number of triples. Triples had built't know. Now we know. So we can set that to rest and move on to other topics, such as perhaps Ronald Acuna, who we were talking about on our previous episode in real time as he was making his Major League debut. a single in that game, and we were talking about how it is nice for a prospect to come up and face the Reds pitching staff immediately. Didn't really pay off for him in that first game. He went one for five, I believe, but then the second game, things turned around, and

he looked like the Ronald Acuna that we've all been salivating over for some time now, courtesy of Homer Bailey, I suppose. But Ronald Acuna nearly hit for the cycle. He went three for four. He hit a home run. It was a long home run. And it took all of two games, I guess, for us to see him show why we were all excited about seeing him. See, now I'm just scrolling up and down because you had mentioned Norm Cash is maybe hitting that home run. And now I remember that we talked about him recently on a podcast, and I can't in the life of me remember why connected but it's in here somewhere i don't know what it was but i'm gonna have to relearn exactly what it was we were talking about with norm cash but anyway with ronald

lacunae as you mentioned sort of the opposite of the eric lauer debut effect where lauer has to debut in in coors field and ronald lacunae gets debut against the Twins as a hitter. And Acuna, of course, he has not only hit home runs, but the home run he hit, it was good. Look, it was a good, clean, hard-hit home run against one of the worst cutters you are ever going to see in your life, thrown by Homer Bailey. I mean, I think whenever a batter hits a pitch that's hit for a home run, the margins are so small, maybe the broadcasters aren't paying that much attention, and they're going to say, well, he just made one mistake. He just grooved one.

Now, Fernando Rodney blew a save against the Yankees. Now, part of that was Miguel Sano's fault, but this was Thursday. The Twins lost another game. We'll talk about them later, probably, because they lose a lot. But Fernando Rodney blew his third consecutive save because Gary Sanchez hit a three-run home run off of him and the pitch was a 96.5 mile per hour fastball inside off the plate and sanchez had never hit a home run against a pitch like that before but he just flew open and he smacked it down the

line and the way because it's fernando rodney and people love to talk garbage about fernando rodney they say well rodney shouldn't have grooved the fastball he didn't he threw a very good fastball a very difficult fastball to hit out of the park but sancho still got it sometimes that happens even to fernando rodney homer bailey does not have that to fall back on homer bailey did not throw a quality cutter it was you know average cutter mile per hour like just over the very if you looked at all home runs plotted in the season, in the strike zone, and you tried to find one that's like, what's the most grooved pitch that was hit for a home run? Acuna got it. He didn't make a mistake. It's one of those home runs that I think it looks harder than it seems like it actually was.

Because, you know, it looked like he hit the ball 115 miles per hour. I think it was like 104, something like that. But it doesn't matter. He got it out of the way, whatever pressure is out of the way. And it's amazing how much more exciting the Braves lineup looks now with Ronald Lacuna instead of Preston Tucker. Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of teams like that that are exciting in some way. Maybe they're not necessarily good. I mean, the Braves have been pretty good. It's possible that they will continue to be decent, but even if it's like the White Sox, for instance, who are not good and have not been good and will not be good this year,

but even they have like Yohan Mankata, who is exciting and good and interesting. And so that kind of comes back to our old argument about whether rebuilding slash tanking is actually bad for spectators and for fans, because you do get to see guys like this and they're not finished products they're not polished they're not their final highly evolved forms but you get to see glimmers of that talent and you get to then daydream about what they'll look like with another 500,000 plate appearances of experience and so I think that sort of thing is exciting and and you're right like you know a third of the Braves lineup now is like the future of the Braves and then

there are also other pretty good hitters in that lineup so yeah it's a kind of a fun team to watch now speaking I guess of I don't the Braves are overachieving you could say but speaking of teams that maybe weren't expected to be in the hunt that that, you know, it's April 27th, but they're around. Kenny Rosenthal had an article that he wrote and was published on Thursday. The thesis here was that the A's could be zigging where other teams are zagging. I think that's a little, I don't know, overwrought. I think the A's are just playing half-decent baseball. We've written that article several times, right? They were zigging to fly ball hitters, right, before the rest of the league was doing that, supposedly, back when they were last good several years ago.

But maybe there was truth to that. I don't know. Anyway. What team in baseball is doing the least zigging where others are zagging? Because everyone's trying. Who's just zagging? I think it's the Reds. The Reds are just grooving everything in every possible way.

And yet their pitching staff war is definitely zigging. Yes, that's true. But anyway, the idea that Cousin Rosenthal wrote about, and I think it's accurate, that the A's are aiming to be in the middle. They're obviously not as good as the Astros, the Indians, the Red Sox, the Yankees, maybe even the fifth team in the American League, maybe the Angels.

They're obviously not an elite team, but they're also not a seller dweller. They're not the Royals or the White Sox or the Tigers, the Orioles or the Rangers, all these other bad teams. They're just trying to be, you know, kind of like a 500 team. And there's a lot to like about the A's as they're built and as their farm system is constructed. So I don't think that there was anything that was inaccurate about the article. The A's are a fringe contender, even though they're without A.J. Puck and Jarrell Cotton. And I don't know, probably going to be others as well but what's what struck me is that it's not just the a's that are doing this or have been doing this i think and we've talked about this

before i think that the pirates the a's and the rays have sort of been doing this for a while it seems like they they don't want to tank tear it all the way down maybe they believe that they can't sustain that model with their fan bases but they also clearly can't spend to be at the at the upper tier of resource output this is a weird way to put it but anyway these teams are are always trying to be around 500 and if they have an unlucky season then they win 72 games and if they have a lucky season they win 90 games or in the pirates case what was it 98 or something where everything just came together and then they lost in the playoffs but it's interesting because we came into this season and i think maybe the a's had a little bit of dark horse wild card support maybe that was only from me but people

figured the rays would be awful and people figured the pirates would take a huge step back and and the rays are on a winning streak they're still not 500 but they've won six in a row which is very impressive they have over the last five games they have gained five games of separation between them and the orioles but anyway you look at the rays you look at the a's and the pirates and combined they are 37 and 36 they are exactly as they are trying to be so i know that when people talk about what do you root for as a writer we root for things to support the things that we've written you know we end up being stubborn like that and so i have taken to wanting the rays to be fine because i've written

about how the rays should be fine even though since then they've lost like three pictures to elbow injuries but it makes me happy to see theays sort of back in the hunt because when they were four and 13, you figure, well, that was it. It's over. But they are approaching 500. The A's are above 500 and the Pirates are above 500. So, you know, this means only so much considering the Nationals are 11 and 14, the Cubs are 12 and 10, the Dodgers are 11 and 12. So who knows what the significance is. But the teams that are aiming for the middle The Cubs are 12-10. The Dodgers are 11-12. So who knows what the significance is. But the teams that are aiming for the middle, it's more than just Oakland. And I think the three of them, if we can agree that these are the three of them, they are succeeding right now.

Yeah. By the way, I think my colleague at the Ringer, Zach Cram, noted this the other day. The A's have the highest team weighted runs created plus since last All-Star break. A's have the highest team weighted runs created plus since last All-Star break. They've been the best hitting team in baseball since July, you know, mid-July last year. I mean, that's long enough now that it sort of means something. And of course, they played pretty well down the stretch last season and they turned into a team. It's kind of like we were talking about with the Braves on the last episode where they

were built around pitching and then suddenly now they have this really strong core of position players that same sort of thing happened with the A's where I think people were somewhat high on them you were somewhat high on them last spring because it looked like they had lots of pitching and maybe we were letting our Andrew Triggs fondness run wild I don't, but they ended up being a good hitting team and a team with a bunch of really promising position players. Like suddenly Matt Chapman comes up and Matt Olsen comes up and the team looks completely different and you have this solid foundation now of position players. So it's odd how our perceptions and maybe even the reality of a team can just completely flip like that. Yeah, right now the A's are second in baseball and WRC plus behind only the Yankees who are,

you know, the Yankees. They're great. The A's probably aren't going to be as good as Yankees. But yeah, they hit very, very well down the stretch last season and they didn't lose anyone from that roster. That doesn't mean that it was always going to be able to carry over. But this is a team where you look at it and the a's are interesting now i know that their pitching staff might not be interesting although they did trade for wilmer fund and i will not give up on wilmer fund i am delighted to see them get an opportunity i understand he's given up five home runs to like three batters or something this season it's something humiliating but the a's of course

are going to give him a chance and he could, I don't know what he's going to do for them, probably long relief, but he could stand to start. But it is interesting that the A's have had a strong, a relatively strong, at least decent season so far, even though they just demoted their opening day starter to AAA. So Kendall Graveman is out. I don't know who their replacement is, but I think it's going to be Brett Anderson,

which means we've got a Cahill-Anderson reunion taking place in Oakland this week. So what is old is new again. What is new is old again. Whatever. I don't know what the expression is, but I don't know what's missing. Brandon McCarthy? Yeah, I guess so. Josh Outman?

Was he an A? Whenever you have Brett Anderson as a replacement, you know that you better start lining up your Brett Anderson replacement. So we'll see who that turns out to be. So we're maybe entering the portion of the podcast where we will talk about things that we've written about but have not yet talked about, which one of those things I wanted to mention on an earlier episode and just plum forgot, but you wrote something about Joey Gallo. And far be it from me to ignore or overlook any piece of Joey Gallo content that either of us produces because he has been, I think, one of the most fascinating players for years now. So there's a new and improved or at least evolved Joey Gallo playing in baseball today.

Yeah. So let's see. What's happened recently? What did Gallo do yesterday? Oh, he went three for three at the walk. Perfect. So this supports my thesis. So if you think about Joey Gallo in this season, you are probably imagining the very interesting shifts that he has faced.

imagining the very interesting shifts that he has faced. He has gone up there, and teams have just stacked the right side of the field against Joey Gallo because they figure he's going to pull the ball. And they do that because he has pulled the ball. Historically, that's been his thing. He's had two things. He's pulled the ball, and he's struck out, like, all the time. Like, when he's not pulling the ball, he's striking out. That's Joey Gallo.

He is, like, the three true outcomes kind of hitter in baseball anyway so when joey gallo was a rookie he came up and he made contact with 53 of his swings now that's not good some of you listening might not have a frame of reference maybe you don't delve into the stats as much as we do you did just hear ben say that's not good while laughing that's so not good it's the worst in the last 16 years that we have on record of batters who have come up to the plate at least 100 times so joey gallo missed with literally almost half of his swings the average is closer to about a quarter maybe a fifth of swings miss gallo i mean i'm not telling anyone any secrets here okay joey gallo swing and miss a lot he came back last season he made it he was a he was a quality above average hitter

all season last year he was good in the first half he was even better in the second half so joey gallo sort of proved that he could work but he still made contact with only 59 of his swings that's very low clearly not so low that he couldn't manage but it's low so he was a pull hitter and he was a swing and miss hitter this is joey gallo nothing too surprising here fast forward now joey gallo i know his his numbers are actually a little bit worse this season like his slugging percentage is down as his on base is down i know that's true but his uh his stat cast numbers are just fine if anything they're better and most interestingly i guess jo Gallo, he's dropped his pull rate. So batted balls, he hits to the pull third of the field.

Batted balls toward right field. He's dropped it from 50% to 31%. So Joey Gallo clearly is hitting more balls the other way. But even more interesting than that, Joey Gallo is now making contact, or at least has been making contact over his first 107 plate appearances, with 70% of his swings. So he's gone from 53 to 59 to 70. And 70 is still low.

It's still below average. But there are a lot of hitters who make contact with about 70% of their swings. There are a lot of hitters who make contact with about 65% of their swings. Joey Gallo has moved into, like, Giancarlo Stanton territory before Giancarlo Stanton was in a slump or whatever. He's just in regular slump or whatever he's he's just in regular slugging area Joey Gallo is putting the bat on the ball and this is vaguely reminiscent like George Springer was a similar kind of prospect he was very extreme with the swings and

misses he's become like a league average contact hitter Chris Bryant swung and missed a bunch when he was a rookie and his contact rate is currently above the league average. So this isn't unprecedented, but we'd never seen someone like Gallo before. Gallo was like on the 20-80 scouting scale of missing the ball. He was an 80, if that makes any sense. No one had ever been like this except for like pitchers. But Joey Gallo is making contact, which is unbelievable. Yeah, and if you want to go back a little bit further, this is something I think that started in spring training, right? Because I remember when I was writing an article at the very end of spring training about how three true outcomes were just up in spring training overall, I was going to write something about how the league as a whole was looking more like Joey Gallo. And then I looked up what Joey Gallo was doing,

and Joey Gallo was not really looking like Joey Gallo anymore. In fact, let's see, he had 55 at-bats in spring training, and he struck out 11 times, which is not a lot for Joey Gallo. So it started even earlier, if you want to increase the sample size slightly. And I don't know, you uh come across articles about you know intending to do this was this it seems like it must be a conscious thing because these are stats that don't fluctuate all that much and in small samples yeah i mean all i could find there are articles about how joey gala wants to become a more complete hitter so what does that

mean more contact and hitting to all fields that's. But I couldn't see anything that's like, here's the adjustment that he made or whatnot. And I mean, you watch him and he's still, he's big boy Joey Gallo. He's still trying to hit the crap out of the ball. And he still is hitting the crap out of the ball. He hits the ball still harder than almost anyone else in baseball.

So I don't know, maybe this is just one of those things where he's going up there with a better approach, a better understanding of how he's being pitched laying off certain pitches but one way or the other joey gallo is making contact and this is i know people are like wow 2018 you're drunk but like this is this is out i never thought that we would get here i never thought it was possible yeah that's right i don't know whether aaron judge is in the same boat or bucket here because he is striking out less, but he's not really making any more contact. He's making the same amount of contact. So I don't know whether that's just a mirage.

He's striking out. Well, it's not down that much. He was a 31% strikeout rate last year. He's down to 26% this year. So I guess he's more or less the same sort of guy, but he is walking almost as much as he has struck out so far. And we talked about him recently. He's still amazing. that is up at the Ringer today, Friday. The Angels are playing the Yankees this weekend, so I took that opportunity to write about Didi Gregorius and Andrelton Simmons, who are a natural couple of players to pair together. I didn't even know really their backstory.

I knew that they were from Curacao, and Gregorius was born in the Netherlands but moved to Curacao when he was young, only six. And I didn't know even, although it has been written before, that these guys were double play partners when they were six and seven years old, respectively. They were Little League teammates. They went to school together for a decade or so. So they have a preexisting relationship here. decade or so. So they have a pre-existing relationship here, but they are exciting and interesting to me because they have evolved as players in very similar ways. So obviously, they're almost exactly the same age. They came up at almost exactly the same time,

but the similarities go beyond that. They were almost identically rated as prospects. And really, people said the same sort of things about them as prospects. I think Simmons was always like a defensive savant, and Gregorius was more of a he'll be an above average shortstop type. So he's not quite the defensive wizard that Simmons is. But these were always guys who the reports on them, I went back and read old Baseball Americas and old baseball prospectuses, and it was always they'll field and the gloves are good and that'll get them to the majors. But they are basically bottom of the order hitters. You go back and read the old Baseball America blurbs and they all sort of say the same things like they can put the bat on the ball, but they have no power. They don't walk.

They're too aggressive. They can't handle advanced pitching, on and on. And they have totally transformed themselves into all-around players. I think everyone knows what Didi is doing this year because he has been the best hitter in baseball, among qualified hitters at least. And that is somewhat surprising, but it's been a slow and steady improvement. And actually, we answered a listener email this winter about these two guys, I think, and how they have both made steady improvements over the past three seasons. And there's kind of an exclusive club of people who have done what they have done or are now threatening to do. And I talked to both of them, and I talked to Billy Epler and the Yankees

assistant GM who acquired Gregorius. And obviously they've exceeded all expectations and they've become really good hitters. And in both of their cases, it's kind of a case of just laying off bad pitches. And they're among the two guys with the biggest decreases in chase rate this year they're just not lunging for pitches outside the strike zone anymore and now they're really good if you go back to like the beginning of last season these two guys are like top 15 position players in all of baseball and among shortstops they're right there with Correa and Lindor and obviously they were not the caliber of prospects that that those guys were so it's been a really impressive transformation and these two guys were always fun to watch some of the time but now they're fun to watch all of the time when Didi Gregorius was

a rookie and his first sort of full-time exposure in the majors is 2013 he was with the Diamondbacks he made contact a fair amount roughly league average and he had a pretty low chase rate swung out a lot of pitches in the zone and at the end of the day his ws plus was 91 which is fine he hit fly balls that's okay yeah yeah seven home runs and what's what's interesting is since gregorius was a rookie he got more and more and more aggressive as a hitter. And he never stopped making contact. He never really stopped hitting balls in the air. But now this season, his approach, this is the best his approach has ever been.

I think that much is clear from the fact that he's been the best hitter in baseball. And he's Didi Gregorius. But still, it looks the most like the version of a hitter he was as a rookie. But of course, one thing has changed since dd gregorius was a rookie at least we think and that's the baseball that's been played with and so i don't know if there is a better example of a guy who's taken advantage of this era than dd gregorius just in terms of having like 30 or 40 grade power that is that now is just enough i mean it's not we've talked about before it's not just a function of Yankee Stadium.

He hits home runs on the road. He just, you know, he doesn't hit 450-foot mammoth highlight home runs. He just hits 375-foot good enough home runs. They all count. And he does it a lot. He's got nine already this season. Didi Gregorius already has as many home runs

as he had his first year with the Yankees when he played almost every single game. And it's like the Simmons at least it's easier for me to make sense of how Simmons is a good hitter now because Simmons could always hit the ball and when he was when he was a rookie at 17 home runs he was powerful but the Braves wanted to coach that power swing out of him yeah he had sub 300 on base percentage that year and the following year. But yeah, when I asked him about that, he said he thought that was just mostly a product of pitchers just not respecting his power, basically, and just throwing him lots of pitches in the strike zone, which is true.

So that was probably part of it. But yeah, he's not powerless in the way that Gregorius seemed to be earlier in his career. Yeah, I think even when Simmons was younger, he would run into a ball every so often. You think, okay, this guy can swing. He still hits the ball harder than Gregorius on average, too. He just doesn't hit fly balls the way that Gregorius does. Yeah, so it's delightful to see Simmons become an above-average hitter because he is maybe the best defensive shortstop of his generation.

And so he is, you know, all of a sudden it's like, oh, wait, we've been giving all this attention to like Francisco Lindor. Maybe Simmons is actually better because he's only 28 years old. But anyway, the fact that Didi Gregorius is a good hitter now, that one blows my mind. Yeah. No, it's very surprising. And yes, it probably is partly a product of the ball, but the ball doesn't seem to be carrying quite as well this year. Home runs are down across the league and Didi's home runs are up.

So it's not just the ball, I think. And you wrote about him last year, and I kind of did some stuff along the same lines about just how where he hits the ball has changed since he ended up at Yankee Stadium. And every home run he has ever hit in his career has been to right field. He pulls every home run. He is just, you know, prototypical pull power guy. And so he is in a good park for that. And I think he's hit 38 homers at Yankee Stadium as a Yankee and 25 on the road over the same span. So it's not like a massive, massive split, but there is something there. And as you noted last year, he has pulled more and more of the balls that he hits in the air. He just doesn't really hit grounders

when he pulls balls as much. So he's kind of, I don't know whether it's conscious or unconscious, because when I asked him about it, he sort of just said like, he's the same guy and he always hit fly balls and now he's just bigger and older and stronger. And so they're going out. So I don't know whether that's what he believes or just that's what he wanted to tell me. But he has changed the way that he hits the ball. He hits it in the air more often and particularly pulls it in the air more often. And I think the title of your post last year was he's in the right place at the right time. But credit to him, he has also adapted to take full advantage of those circumstances.

So it's kind of, you know, you could just park adjust his numbers, I guess, and apply the generic park adjustment that you apply to everyone. But in a way, that's not really fair, I guess, because he has tailored his game to the park in a way that not every hitter does or not every hitter can. to the park in a way that not every hitter does or not every hitter can and you know you can be me and kind of make fun of dd gregorius's upper power if you want but if you look at like the uh the average exit velocity leaderboards right now he's right he's not he's nowhere close to the top of the list he's actually 138th place out of 181 hitters that's uh with a minimum of 50 batted balls but other names who are around him there's like matt carpenter who's been good cory dickerson who's been good andrew benatendi who should be good cole calhoun kurt suzuki who's by the way he's a really great catcher now yeah uh ozzy albies

is is down here as a is it these are guys who as we've talked about so many times i guess you don't have to hit the ball 115 miles per hour it's great when you do because then you get written up like francie cordero and people love you but if you can hit the ball 100 105 consistently you're going to be a really good hitter and uh and that's dd gregorius against literally all odds that's dd gregorius right now yeah so it was fun for me to talk to them and to try to get the behind the scenes view of like, what did the Yankees think they were getting when they led you to think that there was more in there and that they had projections and scouts who were saying that they could be at least above average players if not, you know, the stars they've become. illustrated for me. I mean, I think it was Wednesday of this week, Didi hit a home run for his fourth consecutive game. He also had two singles and two walks, I believe. One of them was a single against the shift, a bunt, which we love. And then I think he also recorded the last out of the game or had the assist on the last out of the game on a beautiful barehanded charging

throw, which it was bang, bang, and there was a replay review. So he kind of did it all. And there was a similar game last week, I think it was last Thursday, where Simmons had that double play that he started that made the rounds. It was, you know, your classic, just physics defying, unbelievable Simmons play where he dove up the middle, cut off a ball that looked almost certainly like a single, and somehow started a double play with it and flipped with his glove. He didn't even touch the ball.

He flipped it with his glove to Kinsler, and it was just a perfect feed somehow. So that play made the rounds, but that same day he got on base four times, and he walked three times and that's not really something you necessarily associate with him but if anything that may have been more valuable than the defensive play but you know he he does it all now he was always one of the more watchable players in baseball just because of the defensive highlights but now he is doing it all. And there are only five players who have improved the way that they are on track to improve here. So if they don't completely tank for the rest of the season, they will have four consecutive seasons of at least 250 plate appearances and

an improvement in each season of at least nine points of WRC+. Nine is a weird number, but nine is just the minimum amount that either of them has improved in any season in that span. And it's really rare for hitters to do that. So I went back, I looked at the whole modern era of baseball going back to 1901. There are only five hitters who meet those parameters who have improved by that amount in four consecutive seasons of at least 250 plate appearances. And three of them are in the Hall of Fame. It's Eddie Yost, who is not in the Hall of Fame, Eno Slaughter, who is, Mickey Mantle, who is, Craig Biggio, who is, and Maglio Ordonez, who is not. But those are all good players, good hitters,

and some Hall of Famers. And it's just hard to sustain that sort of improvement. And it's interesting because it kind of goes along the lines of what we've been talking about a lot lately with players improving themselves or being receptive to front office input. There's a similar story with Simmons where he was really struggling like late June 2016 and Billy Epler texted him and sent him some stats and some information and said, you know, here's where you're most successful when you're swinging at these pitches and not at these pitches. And Simmons really took it to heart. Like you could imagine getting a text from your GM with a bunch of stats saying,

here's what you should do, essentially. I'm sure it was put very diplomatically, but still, some players would probably read that and think, who are you? You don't know what you're talking about. I'm not going to listen to this. But Simmons took it to heart. He worked with his coaches, and you can see really perceptible improvements from almost that day forward. You can see really perceptible improvements from almost that day forward. He's been just a different hitter since then. Epler said that the Angels put a lot of effort into trying to scout players' open-mindedness, essentially, just because there's so much information out there that if you know that a player has some aptitude for learning and putting these things into effect, then it can completely transform the guy.

So, you know, I think maybe in both of these cases, people underestimated just how hard they were willing to work or how receptive they would be to this sort of input. So fun story, fun because they have this long history and it goes back to childhood and everything, but also fun because they're just among the most fun players in baseball now in probably i wonder if dd gregorius not a move from simmons but then to go right back but i wonder if he's sort of become the left-handed brian dozer and yeah sort of what because you you look at dozer and you know practically every

single hit home run he's ever hit has been to left field he's been the same kind of guy pull everything in the air and it's one of those things that feels like it's like it should be exploitable in some way because he just doesn't hit for power the other way and and much like gregorius dozer doesn't have really really great max power he's kind of a barely enough kind of guy but this is also someone who has hit 155 career home runs. He stopped out at 42 before the ball was really taken off. He's gotten better almost every single season. So, yeah, I wonder if there could be something there. And when you were talking to Didi Gregorius, of course,

the most interesting thing about him is that he's literally doubled last year's WRC+. But the other thing is that he is swinging a lot less often. As you mentioned, it's just about not chasing the wrong pitches but did he did he say anything in terms of how he arrived at this decision how he's been able to execute it i pardon me i have not read your article yet we are podcasting yeah he he said it's something that the coaches have been stressing to him i don't know exactly why he totally embraced it this year, but it is a conscious thing. He wasn't like, what are you talking about? He did say he is trying not to swing at those

pitches. And maybe it is in some cases just as simple as saying, I'm not going to do that anymore. I think we've always kind of thought, can plate discipline be taught? And maybe it's just innate and inherent. And I know Billy Bean said something along those lines in Moneyball, but there are examples of guys who you kind of point out to them that something they're doing is counterproductive and they can seem to just turn into different players almost overnight. So it is something the Yankees have been stressing to him. And for whatever reason, he has also taken it to heart this year. I am looking over Didi Gregorius' history in terms of his best months

when he's batted at least 50 times. So over his entire career going back to 2013, Didi Gregorius right now in March and April of 2018, he's got a W or a surplus of 219. That is Bonzian. Didi Gregorius Bonzian. Second best month that I can find, 143. And that was June of 2016.

And in that month, whatever, he was fine. But just nothing even close to this. So, you know, this is just one way of looking over the record, seeing, well, maybe this is like the kind of fluke. Maybe he just has these months from time to time. No, D.D. Gregorius does not have these months. And if you have talked to your satisfaction about D.D. Gregorius and Andrew Alton Simmons, I would like to bring something up that I don't know if you noticed.

You probably noticed this week, but something did happen this week. It's not Gregorius hitting a home run. It's not Johnny Venters making his return, although that's great. Johnny Venters back in Major League Baseball. Hopefully, we'll be able to talk to him. But who knows? He's swamped right now with requests because he is coming back from three and a half Tommy John surgeries in his life, which is amazing. He came up from the minors.

We were trying to be able to talk to Johnny Ventures this week. And as soon as I got in touch with the Durham Bulls, he was promoted away from the Durham Bulls to the major league version of the Durham Bulls, which is very exciting and also kind of annoying from our perspective. But Johnny Ventures came up and throwing his first pitch since before Chipper Jones retired, he faced Chris Davis and got him out. Now, I know a lot of people have been getting Chris Davis out lately, but still, that must have been an incredible experience. Hopefully, we have the chance to talk to him about that soon. Yeah, just going back and looking at Johnny Venters' stats from before he got hurt,

he was just unbelievably dominant, and that was kind of before there were this many relievers that had numbers that look like that. So if you kind of context-adjusted, it looks even more impressive. Anyway, we won't waste all our johnny venters material in case we do get to to talk to him but he was like it was like kimbrough and venters right they were kind of lumped together as the two unhittable guys and he was very much in that class so i assume i haven't looked at his stuff but i assume that his stuff has probably not survived the three and a half Tommy John surgeries completely intact

But good for him getting back in any shape or form. It has not When I was watching Johnny Ventures, you know, he did reach the 90s But his fastball was like 91 instead of something else So also I when I wrote about Johnny Ventures a month ago It was brought to my attention that Braves fans used to lump together not only Kimbrel and Ventures, but also Eric O'Flaherty was in there. I don't remember Eric O'Flaherty as being that dominant, but I will say that Eric O'Flaherty in 2011,

in case you had forgotten about this, he threw 73.2 innings. That's a lot for a reliever. And his ERA was 0.98. Eric O'Flaherty. So yeah, he belongs. Anyway, so over the past 10 games we know the dodges have had a slow start over the past 10 games or seven and three you can look at that and say oh look the dodgers are getting better they're uh they're going to be back in first

place in no time and maybe they will so they seven three of the past 10 games but over the first seven of those games they were six and one, they lost a series to the Marlins. It was in Los Angeles. And not only did they lose a series to the Marlins, they won a game 2-1, then they lost 3-2, they lost 8-6. On Wednesday, the Dodgers and the Marlins played a particularly interesting game. Do you know that we've played a lot of Marlins quizzes on this podcast where I would quiz you about players who may or may not exist?

But the marlins starting pitcher on wednesday was one trevor richards have you ever heard of trevor richards before i have not okay 4.2 innings one hit no runs 10 strikeouts trevor richards good start yeah his opponent this is a game in los angeles his opponent was clayton kershaw yes who in five innings i'm aware of what his line looked like yeah not good kershaw walked six batters in a game for the first time since i think 2010 when he was good but not not kershavian uh second time we've said kershavian on this podcast but anyway i saw this the dodgers who are supposed to be great had arguably the best starting pitcher in baseball going at home

against a pitcher no one has ever heard of on a team that's awful, full of players no one has ever heard of. And the Marlins won. Yeah. Didn't you used to do a post on like the most lopsided games in a season or something using some Fangraph's odds of projections? Yeah. The odds in this game for the marlins maybe maybe this is lower than you'd think the odds of the dodgers winning according to fan graphs once the lineups were posted taking into account home field were 74.5 percent that is a high rate and this is a dodgers

team that they were starting matt kemp who the projections don't really like they don't have justin turner of course who is the best one of the best players on the dodgers and the marlins did just get jt real mudo back off the dl so what look who cares so the marlins are bad the dodgers are good the dodgers at home they had kershaw so dodgers lost a game where the fangraphs game odds expected them to win three out of every four times that is a lot if you if you were to play this game over the course of a full season the dodgers would win 120 games or something like that it was just it would be absurd yeah so yeah i uh i asked for a spreadsheet of

game odds and uh they go back to 2014 but i got rid of 2014 in the spreadsheet because i think that there was just a lot of of a lot of quirks in 2014 things i don't really trust but uh anyway this would turn out to be the fifth greatest upset since 2015 i was hoping it would be the first because you're always hoping it would be the first but yes i will say the the top two first of all the numbers are extreme last september 30th the indians were favored to beat the white socks this is a game in Cleveland, and the Indians' odds were 84.3% to win the game, and they lost 2-1. Now, the top two results in the spreadsheet are games from the end of last September

that featured the White Sox as the road team, and they beat the Indians and the Astros in Cleveland and Houston. Now, that's meaningful, but also, last September, what were those teams playing for? Like, there was nothing on the line. They were resting people, probably, yeah. I mean, I will well i mean if i will say i guess resting would be accounted for right yeah that would be accounted for but nevertheless i don't care about those two because that's so late in the season cleveland and houston weren't playing for anything so i can understand there's just no motivation there so then you go down and on uh last july 24th the

white oh it's the White Sox again. They beat the Cubs in Chicago. Well, I guess, of course, it was in Chicago. In the other Chicago, in Wrigley Field, the White Sox beat the Cubs 3-1. That's a game that the Cubs were favored to win 77.2% of the time. So that allegedly is a greater separation

than the Dodgers and the Marlins. And the only other game in here, it's a Dodgers-Rangers game from June of 2015 where the Rangers beat the Dodgers 5-3. I believe I actually wrote about that game on Fangraphs as the biggest upset of the season. That was a game in which Joey Gallo hit a home run against Clayton Kershaw.

So that's bringing this all the way back. But anyway, biggest upset of this season, certainly. It's hard for me to imagine that there will be a bigger upset as this season plays out, even if these game odds, I don't know, I figure I would have given the Dodgers higher odds of beating the Marlins in this game. Maybe that's my own mistake. But nevertheless, we might have seen the biggest upset of the season.

I nearly wrote about it, but then I didn't. So it's here instead. All right. Yeah, you got the information out one way or another. All right. Well, you have just a out one way or another. All right. Well, you have just a couple minutes before you are scheduled to go from chatting with me to chatting with Fangraphs readers and people named Bork. So in the two minutes that we have, can you tell me about Gerard Dyson and his bases loaded bunt? Gerard Dyson.

He bunted with the bases. Okay. So, man, I have to bring this all back to my head. So on Thursday, Gerard Dyson hit a home run. That was the second home run in three games, which is, wow, Gerard Dyson, he's got more home runs than Jose Altuve. That's weird. But it was a Facebook broadcast of the game, so I wasn't watching it because why?

But I watched the video clip that was on the MLB game day page, and at the end of the video clip, one of the horrible announcers, his voice cracked as he said, and yesterday he bunted with the bases juiced and I was like wait what because I hadn't heard of this otherwise so I looked at Wednesday and in the fourth inning Gerard Dyson came up in the uh with the bases loaded nobody out facing Jake Arrieta bases loaded yeah and he put down a bunt Gerard Dyson put down a bunt. Arrieta got to the ball and flipped the ball home for the force play before the run could score. So it didn't work. Straight up sacrifice or not like a squeeze or bunting for a hit really at all?

It was not a suicide squeeze because A.J. Pollock was on third and he did not sprint immediately. It looked like Dyson was just trying to catch the defense by surprise. Maybe maybe he would be out but it looked like he was bunting for a hit this is the second time actually gerard dyson has done this in his career first time was a similar looking bunt and it succeeded he got a single this time not successful arietta threw uh pollock out at home the reason everyone has heard of the squeeze play whether it's the safety squeeze or the suicide squeeze but the reason you don't see the squeeze with the bases loaded is because there's a force there's force at every base and with a regular squeeze then you have to apply a tag as well tag increases the degree of difficulty makes it more likely the runner can be safe so i was very curious about bases loaded

bunts so i went back to 1998 using the baseball reference play index i like to look at the 30 team era and since then i could find in the regular season i could find 114 bases loaded bunts however 52 of those were by pitchers and i don't care because pitchers are terrible so there were 62 position player bunts with the bases loaded in the regular season over the past 20 years and change adam everett is the leader he's got three of them he was bad draw dyson is one of five other players who have two bases loaded bunts and on balance the the 62 position player bunts have led directly to 45 runs scoring which seems pretty good and there they had a net positive win probability added and of course

on average they are all bad hitters who are trying to do this which makes sense like norioki tried it once jason worth tried it once each or tried it once it's not like it's only the domain of bad hitters trying this but mostly bad hitters and i was i was just curious to see how often this happens and the answer is it does not happen very much and it turns out maybe you shouldn't bunt against one of the best defensive pitchers in baseball but arietta still when arietta had to flip the ball to home he was midair he had to dive and shuffle the ball in a very uncomfortable position so it uh it very nearly worked bases loaded but love it yeah me too all right well we will end there and uh lots of exciting stuff to watch this weekend including the Diamondbacks going for their

ninth consecutive series win to start the season sort of a fun fact that they're the first team to have eight since the 2001 Mariners who I'm sure you were watching achieve that and I guess it's kind of it's one of those to start the season facts where you know ultimately it doesn't really matter whether you're just starting the season or doing that at any other point in the season facts where, you know, ultimately it doesn't really matter whether you're just starting the season or doing that at any other point in the season, but it's probably pretty impressive either way. I don't know. The Mariners ended up winning nine series in a row, so the Diamondbacks can tie. And we'll have to talk about what it was like to watch the 2001 Mariners at some point in the future, because that must have been fun. It probably would have been fun for people who could watch them regularly.

Right. Yeah. Were you in San Diego at the time? I was in San Diego. Oh, well. Oh, well then. My greatest exposure to that team was watching them play the Yankees in the playoffs. Yeah, that didn't last that long. All right. Well, we will end there. One more quick note, by the way. Jeff mentioned earlier in the episode that we might talk about the Twins and how terrible they have been against the Yankees. We didn't actually get to that, but I will share some stats. These were emailed in to us by listener Matt. I have not verified them, but it looks like he put a lot of care into amassing them, and they certainly sound right and sound like a lot of Twins fun facts or unfun facts, depending on your perspective, about the Twins

performance against the Yankees going back to 2002. So since the start of 2002, the Twins have played the Yankees 113 times in the regular season. This is Matt's email now. They are 31 and 82 over that span. That's a 274 winning percentage in 113 games. Matt says it gets better. Overall, the Twins are a 499 winning percentage team against the entire major leagues over that stretch and 509 against everyone other than the Yankees. So thinking about it from a regular season perspective, they are an 82 win team across 16 plus seasons against everyone other than the Yankees. Against the Yankees, they are a 44 win team. And Matt continues, in the playoffs, the Yankees. Against the Yankees, they are a 44-win team. And Matt continues, in the playoffs, the Yankees have eliminated the Twins five times in that

stretch. I'm sure I don't have to remind any Minnesota fans who are listening, the Twins record in the playoffs against the Yankees, 2-13. So I guess that brings the cumulative record to 33-95. Oof. And here's one more note from Matt. What makes what I already sent you even more remarkable is that the Twins are 17 and 49, that's a 258 winning percentage, against the Yankees in seasons when they were an above 500 team. In other words, when the Twins were actually good, they did even worse against the Yankees. This is something that people have been monitoring for some time. There was a Fangrass post on this in 2011. That's how long this has been a thing. It's kind of incredible. I don't know what it means. I don't think it means much of anything. I'm sure we could calculate the odds of this happening,

and they're probably pretty remote. But obviously, the players and the manager and the front office that are there today have next to nothing to do with the team that was there in 2002. So I think it's unlikely that there's some sort of meaningful mental block here, but whatever the reason, it has been among the more fascinating flukes in the last 15 years or so of baseball history. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Join the listeners who are helping fund this thing. Five of those listeners who have recently signed up include Lucas Perea, Andrew Diaz, Michael Hunter, Jake Wilkinson, and Matt Baugie. Thanks to all of

you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild, and you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Thank you, as always, to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And please keep your questions and comments and compliments and complaints for me and Jeff coming via email at podcastofpanographs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. I will put in my periodic plug here for the Effectively Wild wiki. There's a lot of progress being made, but it is falling heavily on a few shoulders. So if anyone wants to claim just an episode or two here or there, it would be a big help. Again, people are going back and just summarizing each old episode. We're going to have a database of all the listener emails that were asked, all the topics that were discussed, so it will be easier to find and reference old episodes. There's a link on the show

page at Fangraphs in every episode directly to the Effectively Wild wiki, and you can just claim an episode that does not have a synopsis yet. There's a signup sheet in the Facebook group file section as well. Your help is appreciated. And it's fun to just go back and click through those pages, browse these old episodes that I barely remember even participating in

and see how wrong we were about many things. So have a wonderful weekend. We will talk to you, as always, early next week. messenger don't want to know about something that you don't understand you got no fear in the underdog that's why you will not survive