Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1224: Two Hands Are Worse Than One

Episode Date: May 31, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Jeff’s moderately close encounter with a volcano, various events that took place in baseball while he was away, Rob Manfred’s recent comments about changes to the game, MLB attendance issues, Ben’s Angels brunch, the early-season success of some supposedly tanking teams, stats about Dellin Betances, Patrick Corbin, and […]

I buckle in my seatbelt and plug my headset in a chair And to the music I watch flight attendants move They are pointing at the exit, but it looks more like a prayer On an ancient dance their bloodline reaches through Hello and welcome to episode 1224 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of Brian Colangelo's least favorite website, The Ringer, and I am joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. That's a good introduction. I'm proud of you. Yeah, I'm not going to do it every time, but I figured just today. How was your trip?

It was good. Anything interesting? Yes. Anything interesting you want to share? When we were landing, I always loved, I don't know why some people don't seem to appreciate window seats on airplanes. I know that you get a little cramped and you know, if you're a frequent bathroom user, then I guess that could be an issue. But otherwise, what is it? I feel like it's less cramped. Well, it's certainly less cramped than the middle seat, but I'm a window seat guy too, if I can be. Love the window seat.

Love just appreciating the earth and all the things you can see. And when you go to Mexico City, oftentimes, not only is it a gigantic, it's like the seventh biggest city in the world. So it's crowded and you can't see around the city very much. It's hard to get to a high place to get a good view, but we were able to get some views outside of the airplane window. And as we were landing, we had a very brief glimpse of both the Stoxy Waddle and Popocatépetl, which are two very prominent gigantic volcanoes. Wow, nice pronunciation on that. Thank you. I've had years of experience. Yeah, I could tell. One of them is extinct, the other one is quite active. And Popocatépetl erupts. It's in an active phase. It's been in an active phase, I think, for something like four or five years.

I don't know exactly, but it's tens of miles away from Mexico City, but it's huge. It's like 18,000 feet above sea level. It's visible from above the smog layer of Mexico City. And as we were landing, I got to see the thing for like five minutes, and I swear to God, it erupted a little bit while I was looking at it. Not one of those like cataclysmic eruptions. It doesn't really do that very often, but it puffed. It had a big ash cloud and everything. It was fantastic. Congrats.

Can you say that name one more time? Excuse me. Yes, I can. In a sentence. Popocatepetl. It's fun because it's all hard consonants. Eastoxywaddle is weird. You kind of have to walk on eggshells around it, but popocatepetl is just fun to say. I don't know. Some people pronounce the L, some people don't. It's complicated,

but I think it's a Nahuatl language. I could be wrong on that one, but it's a lot of fun. Well, I enjoyed that. Well, in case you were wondering if, had you been on the ground, you could have roasted a marshmallow on it, we have an answer to that question. We just received an email from listener Alecc who alerted us to the fact that the US Geological Survey answered this hypothetical. It's sort of an Effectively Wild email if this podcast were about volcanoes all the time. And someone asked the USGS, is it safe to roast marshmallows over volcanic vents, assuming you had a long enough stick, that is, or would the resulting marshmallows

be poisonous? And the USGS says, we're going to have to say no, that's not safe. Please don't try. If the vent is emitting a lot of sulfur dioxide or hydrogen sulfide, they would taste bad, bad in all caps. And if you add sulfuric acid in VOG, for example, there's that word Vogue, my favorite, to sugar, you get a pretty spectacular reaction. So now you know. However, I remember seeing a link, this is like old GeoCities internet, but it stuck with me for all the years since you can imagine why I remember seeing a link a very long time ago about how to cook a chicken in lava when wrapped in banana leaves. I am looking at the link right now it's an ugly website it's from dolphinbayhylo.com slash cook.html step one preparation

you need one game hen or pork loin eight tea or banana leaves one shovel and gloves i guess that's one shovel two gloves maybe one one two thousand 2,000 degree Fahrenheit fresh lava flow. Spice the game hen to individual taste and wrap it in leaves, one leaf at a time. Part is important. Step two, prepare the oven. The oven being, I guess, the lava. I'm not going to read the entire website, but there are pictures. It's been done.

I'm looking at a very overcooked chicken. Step seven is actually known as break and eat. So you have to break it open to get to the chicken, Step seven is actually known as break and eat. So you have to break it open to get to the chicken, but it is cooked. Yeah, I would think that overcooking is the only way you could cook anything in Lava, probably, but I haven't tried. So I don't know how much you kept up with baseball, the sport that you write about for a career while you were away. I know we've talked about the disorientation of returning to baseball after being away and how even if you miss one day, it seems like you're totally out of the loop.

You missed more days than that. So let's see things that have happened since we last spoke. Ronald Acuna and Noah Syndergaard and Andrew Miller and Greg Holland and Hugh Darvish and Byron Buxton again went on the disabled list. Byron Buxton apparently was hurt the entire time anyway. What else? Alex Reyes returned from the disabled list. And was pulled early because people were afraid he was hurt. Yes, that's right.

Anthony Rizzo did a dirty slide and got away with it, but then learned that he shouldn't have gotten away with it. Pablo Sandoval started at second base, and Russell Martin is a shortstop and a left fielder now, so a lot changed while you were gone. Your boy Wilmer Font got traded again, and I hope he has better results this time. You and I didn't get to talk about the Mariners trade, although you had to, I guess, cut your vacation about an hour short so that you could come back to blog about that trade.

But we since learned that Effectively Wild guest David Hesslink was one of two, I guess you could say, lower level baseball operations employees who proposed that trade. And there was a story by Corey Brock on The Athletic about how that came about. And basically, DePoto just seems to have farmed out the generation of trade ideas to an army of low-level front office people. So they just were like, well, we need an outfielder. You're going to talk to Jerry on Tuesday. Everyone come up with ideas. So everyone got together, and they had a whiteboard, and they just kind of went through every outfielder and pitcher on every other team. And they came up with this proposal that ended up being the exact proposal that they were

able to convince Tampa Bay to make. So good job, David Hessling, former Effective About guest. And I don't think Jerry DiPoto needs any help generating trade ideas, but apparently he has it. But I guess maybe he's always farmed it out or tried to farm it out. I don't know. But talk about a great way to keep the the newer people to the front office involved because that's exactly what you want to do when you join

the front office right you want to be involved in the moves so to propose a trade where you get another team's closer and starting position player and you're 23 or 24 years old i know there are two people involved i'm forgetting the name of the other one because he has not been an effectively wild guest although i guess we are open if you're if you're out there and looking to talk about the trade that you partially helped generate but yeah i had to cut some errands short because i it was your message that uh that you sent to me while i was driving away from home to get a few things at the store and uh and you said so jerry's done it again and so i looked at my email and sure enough there was a press release and i said some words that you say in traffic but for

unusual reasons uh and turned around and wrote for two hours about the mariners making a trade six o'clock on a friday evening that was stupid skylar shibayama was the other member of the trade proposal team there so don't want to give him short shrift. What else happened? Rob Manfred spoke to Ken Rosenthal. He did a very long Q&A this week, and he touched on something that we have discussed recently, which is the need for MLB maybe to actually do something. And we talked to Joshian about this, how MLB really hasn't made a substantive rule change, at least when it

comes to things like the strikeout rate or things that could affect the strikeout rate in decades. And maybe for the first time, first time I can really recall, Manfred is pretty explicit here about at least considering doing something. It doesn't sound like anything is imminent, but let's see if I can pull up the comments. He said it a few different ways. He said sort of that the pace of play stuff he considered low-hanging fruit and the actual style of play and action is a little more difficult, but they're transitioning to thinking about that now. So he said, there is a growing recognition

that analytics have produced certain trends in the game that we may need to be more proactive about reversing. That was one way he said it. He said we need to be more aggressive about managing the trends that have been introduced in the game, at least partly based on analytics. He went on, he said it in one or two other ways.

He said the hope always is the game is going to self-correct, but it looks like we are at the point in time that we do need to think about and really analyze some potential changes. So I don't know what those changes will be. He didn't seem to want to get into specifics, but at least we are gradually moving to the point where maybe we will see some sort of change to correct the creeping three-two outcomeization of baseball. There was even a weird excerpt in there where Ken Rosenthal and Manfred talked about split seasons as if that's something that was ever going to come back.

Now, you and I haven't talked about the concept of split seasons on this podcast. You might have with Sam before. I don't know. But I don't know how popular that would be. And Manfred seemed, he brought it up and then dismissed it immediately, which made it a weird hypothetical for him. But also what I liked is Rosenthal asked him about he brought up the proposal that Manfred sort of loosely, lightly floated some years ago that didn't gain any traction, but did send Twitter and saying that Manfred was thinking about banning shifts. And I liked in there, obviously obviously nothing has been done about shifts. And if you've been reading Russell Carlton's work, maybe shifts aren't really actually working.

But anyway, that's a topic for another day. I like how Manfred, everyone seems to have been surprised by the fact that no batters just still don't bunt. No one does it. Manfred's just like, yeah, we thought that bunting would counteract the shift and it hasn't happened. It doesn't happen like at all. Almost no one is trying to do it and it i i think it for me it goes in waves of being surprised that batters still don't bunt it comes up like i don't know twice a year where i think why don't they just and then i remind myself well

bunting is hard and then i remind myself well then why don't they try it more it's right there there's free hits but i it's still it goes i don't know it's like looking at jose molina's old framing numbers you kind of know them and then you forget them and then you look at it again you're like oh my god it could be an mvp yeah and i wonder whether his willingness or his openness to doing something has anything to do with the decline in attendance which i have no idea whether that is at all connected to the style of play. I kind of tend to doubt it, but attendance is down six or seven percent relative to last year on a per-game basis through the same point. I'm sure a lot of that has to do with the weather.

It really was bad and anomalous weather, particularly in April. There were a lot of games played in very cold weather and makeup games and cancellations. So that definitely is part of it. And for all I know, it might be all of it. But he maybe is more willing to make changes if MLB is not quite as profitable. And he also mentioned this was in an AP article by Ronald Blum. He sort of blamed tanking in a sense. In the Rosenthal Q&A, he sort of poo-poos the idea that tanking is really all that significant or worrisome, and I don't really disagree with what he said about that. But he did say, I would say the weather has been the overriding factor, but certainly the negative publicity surrounding some teams has played a part as well. I think it's clear that publicity

suggesting a lack of competitiveness by a team is really problematic in terms of attendance. He also found a way to then get a dig in at Tony Clark by basically saying that the teams that Tony Clark said were tanking are doing just fine, which is kind of true. But he did say that at least openly saying that you are not really competing in the current year probably bad for attendance and maybe there is some truth to that looks like pirates attendance is down about 7 000 people per game they're in the race so that's weird blue jays attendance happens to be down by the most i'm gonna guess without checking that maybe they just have they not hosted the red sox for the yankees yet i I don't know. But Blue Jays attendance is down 11,000 people per game relative to last season.

That's a lot. On the other hand, Astros attendance is up 8,000. Brewers attendance is up 5,000. Diamondbacks attendance is up a bunch. I don't know. There's nothing really here for me to analyze. A's attendance is down 400 people per game. You had a Shohei Otani-themed brunch.

I was able to keep track of the internet. There's data on my plan in Mexico. So I was able to kind of see what was going on. I went through the Acuna emotions like a lot of other people did. Yeah. So tell me, I don't know if you already explained this because I was not present for part of the podcasting last week for a variety of reasons, including Jerry DePoto. But I know you mentioned that because Otani wasn't clear to pitch on Sunday that he spoiled the brunch plan, but clearly you guys went ahead with it anyway.

So how much preparation, three questions. How much time and preparation went into that? How many people were present? And for how much of that, if at all, were you personally responsible? You being Ben, Ben Lindbergh. Yeah, the last question, zero, just about. And the first question, how much time went into preparation for me, also zero, but for my wife, Jessie, quite a lot, and also for the guests. I don't know exactly what the headcount was, but it was pretty crowded.

There were, I don't know, 10, 15 people over here for Angels brunch, and Otani hit. He did not pitch, but we had a whole spread. I took some pictures and tweeted them and put them in the Facebook group of themed snacks that we had on hand for this event. We had Mike Socha's rotation waffles, which was a reference to his, of course, removing Otani from the rotation or delaying his next start. We had Mike Dilley Trout. I was not familiar with Dilley Trout, but it's a kind of trout, and that was pretty tasty. It was like smoked trout and endives and a bunch of other tasty things.

We had Andrelton Cinnamon Rolls, which was probably the best play on words that we had. which was probably the best play on words that we had. We had muffins maldonado. We had angel food cake. Of course, we had the trout endorsed super pretzels. And we also had Halo's brand oranges. So we had a whole lot of angels themed food on hand. And it was pretty fun. I think it worked out well. I don't know whether this is something that will ever happen again. I doubt it will sweep the nation. And Otani is pitching on wednesdays at this point so that doesn't really lend itself to future otani brunches but it was pretty good yeah and i guess you could since you already had the sort of the what the clementines the tangerines little halo brandy didn't need like halo top ice cream but that also could have worked we don't need to come

up with more suggestions i'm sure people have already done this. Jabari Blash also just kind of sounds like a brunch cocktail, but unfortunately I don't think he's on the active roster anymore. Yeah, we had Quiche, and we couldn't think of a good pun for Quiche, but someone I think in the Facebook group or on Twitter, yeah, it was my friend Xavier actually suggested Eric Hintzquiche, which I wish I had thought of in time, but did not. So the quiche went nameless. What else? Was there anything else?

I don't think so. I got nothing. Well, I guess there's sort of the fun fact, and I know that maybe I am paying more attention to this than other people are, but it would be last Friday, the Rays made a trade that, of course, saved them some money. And people interpreted it as just more evidence that the Rays are tanking, just trying to rebuild. And since then, the Rays swept the weekend. They are currently over 500. I believe the Rays are one game over 500. So as an update on three teams this offseason, I know the A's were considered sort of a dark horse.

But the Rays, the A's, the Pirates, forever playing for about the same same place they're trying to be aiming for about 500 and hoping to be better than that while maintaining a lot of resources for the future the rays are one game over 500 the a's are one game over 500 and the pirates are two games over 500 so they are all nailing it they're all kind of doing exactly what they want to be doing and you know what team had the most incredible mind-blowing right or happy offseason of anyone in baseball it was the twins twins are active everywhere the twins suck so just further evidence offseason narratives are stupid based on one third of the season lots of time for these things to change but yep i don't know how these narratives get out of control i understand that you don't want to give front offices the benefit of the doubt is just like a general rule but when it i think teams indicate when they're tanking and teams indicate

when they're not they don't say that word necessarily not in in baseball but they'll say yeah we're gonna step back for a little while hang with us we're trying to get good and stay good later yeah i mean you know the white socks know, the White Sox are bad and the Marlins are bad and the Reds are bad and the Padres are bad. Some of this is predictable, obviously, but I didn't think there was really a tanking epidemic going on at least long-term and at least so far. I mean, even if there are bad teams and I guess there are what on pace to be a few hundred win teams and at least a few hundred loss teams which is somewhat unusual at least relative to recent history so the league

is sort of stratified but it doesn't look like the races are any worse at least so far obviously there's plenty of time for some teams to put these things away and for things not to be all that interesting in September but at least right now things not to be all that interesting in September. But at least right now, shaping up to be pretty interesting races all over the place. Yep. After action on May 1st, the Arizona Diamondbacks pulled up to 21-8. They were tied for the best record in baseball with the Boston Red Sox. They had a good run differential. They had everything to go with it. They led their own division by six games. May 1st, six-game lead. Two games behind the Rockies as I say this.

Diamondbacks have come completely apart. Yeah. All right, let's do some emails. And let's start with two emails that we've gotten about Gleyber Torres, who we've probably neglected so far this season. I would say Gleyber Torres right now, through 124 played appearances, he is currently in a game as we speak, but he's running a 158 weighted runs created plus right now at 21. That is pretty darn impressive. He has nine home

runs already. So two questions about Torres that are both pretty related here. So Dunagan from Saskatchewan says, this question is related to an article Katie Sharp just wrote for The Athletic taking a look at the peripheral stats for Gleyber Torres's hot start. She seemed to think all the peripherals pointed to relative sustainability in his output. She showed a graph of location of pitches he has hit home runs on, and they were all pretty inside. My question is, should we be praising Torres for being able to hit the inside pitch for a home run, or does this pattern point to a pretty easy adjustment for pitchers to start pitching to the upper outside half of the plate in order to sap his power and resulting in diminished home run numbers in the future? I'm aware this is an incredibly small sample, but while this question is about Torres,

I'm really curious about rookies in general who come up and mash a specific pitch or location and whether it's a good thing that they have a hot zone or if it just leads to pitcher adjustments and second half slumps. And then Charlie says, I'm watching the first game of the Angels Yankees series. Ken Rosenthal is in the booth talking with Michael Caine, Paul O'Neill about the Torres-Ohtani Rookie of the Year race, which is going to be interesting. I think they are tied in Fangraphs War right now. And they talked about Torres' power in the majors being a revelation. Anyway, simple question. Is this a ball thing? Could this just be the difference in the AAA and Major League ball? So people want to know,

is Gleyber Torres's power for real? Speaking of the ball thing, I just wish I could have been present for that conversation that you got to have last week. Once again, Jared, I would love to know what was discussed. I guess it's on me to listen to the podcast that I should have been on. Anyway, so first of all, it is interesting to look at rookies who come up and mash immediately because on the one hand, that's always interpreted as great news. This guy was ready, and he's just going to help the team forever. But then, almost invariably, there's going to be some sort of slump

or adjustment or fine-tuning period where people will figure out a little bit more about the player that just kind of comes with with the territory and it's it's one of the i know reese hoskins has had a down may even before he hit a ball off his own face and you look at what he did last season matt olsen kind of went through this too they were really really good for a couple of months last season but they weren't really around long enough to get adjusted to and i would suspect that's a little bit of what we're seeing doesn't mean that they're bad just means that they have something to to work through and with with glaber tours everyone is going to have some sort of hot zone unless you're jeff mathis in which case it's just

varieties of different cold zones and also every single hitter short of prime miguel cabrera is going to be is going to have a weak spot somewhere and the question i don't think that you can really analyze glaber torres's skill set or almost anyone's skill set just by looking at the numbers alone when you have a small sample you kind of need to look at what their actual hitting looks like because you can have a guy who can i remember i think it was early early last season i was really amazed by uh by taylor modder who had like a really good first month and i thought wow this guy looks like he's really figured no he didn't he just uh he figured out that if i try to overpull everything i can hit a few home runs but he just didn't have the skills

to actually do anything else as soon as pitchers threw him fewer things that he could do that too i don't think anyone's concerned that glaber tours is going to be that limited he doesn't need to focus on like one tenth of the outfield area to try to hit all batted balls He probably is going to be more exploitable up and away than he is going to be inside Based on at least on what he looks like right now and what he's done But a lot of hitters are exploitable up and away JD Martinez is a guy who's not exploitable up and away, but he loves hitting to the opposite field. There are very few players who are perfect to all fields and can cover every single part of the zone. And if you are Gleyber Torres, and if you find that you are vulnerable to pitches up and away, you just kind of wait those pitches out.

Mike Trout waits those pitches out sometimes. Gleyber Torres can wait them out, and pitchers are not so good that they can hammer one ninth of the zone over and over and over. This is why Jose Bautista was able to have so many good seasons in a row, even though he hit the same pitch every single time for a home run. People know you have to pitch him low and away, but pitchers can't really do that with that much consistency. What was the second question about the ball? Yeah, the ball does more stuff in the majors. Yeah, I mean, Gleyber Torres was one of the very best prospects in baseball before he came up. And just getting to the majors at this age is impressive and he's going to be good.

So will he keep hitting home runs at this rate? No, obviously not. But, you know, he's kind of, I guess, in the Ozzie Albies territory where we knew he was really good and we just didn't know that he had this power. And so that obviously makes you more optimistic about him. So he hit one home run in 14 games in AAA this year, and he's hit nine in 31 in the majors. So that's not typical, obviously, but he's so young that it's not like we knew necessarily what his power ceiling was. I mean, last year, I guess he hit, what, seven homers in 55 games. I mean, he was not a big power guy, but he could be. He is in a stadium that's conducive to it, and anyone can get hot over a small sample. So

obviously you think more highly of him because he has a hot zone and he comes up, right? I mean, there's no way in which you would like him less because he hit a bunch of homers in a short period of time. It doesn't mean that he will continue to do that. But yeah. And when you look at him, when you look at where he's hit his home runs, he's only hit one homer over the right center field. And I'm not even sure if that was in Yankee Stadium, according to what I'm looking at. It doesn't say't say so never mind but even if it had been yankee stadium maybe it was he's hit his other home runs all to left left center or center field which is not where yankee stadium is a joke so yeah if a guy is hitting the ball out that means the guy can

hit home runs now at the same time i've gotten questions every so often have you noticed by any chance first of all if i say the name migueljas, do you know who I'm talking about? Yeah, we talked about him, I think, right? The Marlins shortstop? I'm not going to lie to you. We probably did. Yeah, briefly. Yeah, sure.

Great. Whatever. So just remember all of that. But Miguel Rojas has seven home runs this season. He has been the Marlins regular shortstop. It was supposed to be J.T. Riddle. I guess good news for them that it's not. I don't know.

Marlins, it's a weird season. But Miguel Rojas is in his fifth major league season. Here are his home run totals, starting with the first, 2014, going year by year. One, one, one, one, seven. Seven being this season, and we're a third of the way through. And when I have looked at Miguel Rojas, I mean, even if Miguel Rojas, he's 29, even if he were having a huge breakout season, I think we'd all kind of wait to write about that one anyway,

because what's the attention that's going to be paid to a Miguel Rojas breakout? But when I've looked at him, I just think, well, this is a guy who clearly doesn't actually have very much power but he just happens to have put enough good swings on enough pitches that he has hit more home runs than you'd expect doesn't mean that he is all of a sudden on a 20 or 30 home run pace or that he will end up there but he's always been home run capable and whenever you're home run capable you can just run into a few extra balls over a span of time glaber tours has probably done that given his own power background he's probably not going to be a 40 homer threat unless all of his other teammates are also 40 homer threats but yeah when you were this young the ball does fly more in the major leagues apparently than it does

in the minors you and i have both written about that and yeah out of all of the yankees i believe it's 12 maybe 13 yankees who've batted at least 50 times. Only Neil Walker has a below average batting line. Yeah, well, I was just going to mention, right, their pursuit of the all-time team home run record, which you wrote about back in February. Of course, the record is the 97 Mariners. They hit 264 home runs. So the Yankees entered play on Wednesday with 87 homers in 51 games. That is a pace for, in home runs. So not working out so well for them. But Yankees are probably going to do the thing that everyone thought they might do.

Yeah, it's going to be one of those articles you read in September. And you do all the numbers. You say, look at the context. The Yankees have smashed this record. And then like 500 people read it, and that's it. Because everyone has already known. And what is sort of more interesting is that the Orioles will not sniff the record because they are terrible, and Chris Davis has only four home runs.

Chris Davis has been unbelievably bad. Oh, my God. 198 played appearances. He's got a WRC plus of 31. Oof. Well, Byron Buxton wishes he had 31. While we're on the subject of Yankee stats, I just saw this post in the Facebook group

from listener Lucas, who did a little play index of his own. We'll do our own play index shortly. But butt out, Lucas. Being a follower of the Yankees, I'm aware that Delon Batances is absolutely terrible at holding on base runners. However, until today,

I didn't realize quite how legendarily terrible he is. I went to the Play Index to grab some career reliever stats going back to 1908, with the criteria 90% games pitched in relief, at least 1,000 batters faced, and he calculated stolen bases per hit plus walk plus hit by pitch, which would give me a reasonably accurate measure of a baserunner denominator. The numbers, Delon Batensis, 18% stolen bases per base runner. So 18% of the base runners that Patensis has allowed have stolen a base, essentially. And Lucas says the average rate is about 5%.

So 18% is kind of amazing. Apparently, Patensis is number one all time right now. Rob Dibble was 17%. Tim Scott, 15%. Scott Strickland, 13%, tied with Kenley Jansen at 13%. And then a bunch of guys at 12% and 11%. But that's a thing that you now know about Dillon Patensis. He is the worst at something. And that was our stat blast, so that's brought to you by... I actually have a stat blast today, but... Whoa!

Well, should we just do them all right now, or should we space them out a little? I don't know. Let me tell you, here's one that is now related to that one, which wasn't a stat blast, but which functions as such. So I knew Del and Patensis was bad at this. In 2016, he allowed 21 stolen bases out of 21 attempts. So that's bad. He's already allowed eight stolen bases. Last year, he allowed eight stolen bases.

Dallin Batances has caught up to last season in the steals that he's allowed, and his OBP has gotten lower. He's improved as a pitcher, and yet people still just run on him like crazy, which might be why his ERA is still four and a half, despite the fact that he struck out like half the people that he's faced. Yeah, could be. All right, Buddy says, can you guys please do a segment on how dumb MLB's error scoring rules are? I'm watching today's Mariners versus A's game, and a Kyle Seager routine pop-up just dropped between three confused defenders. MLB.com defines an error as,

A fielder is given an error if, in the judgment of the official score, he fails to convert an out on a play that an average fielder should have made. Fielders can also be given errors if they make a poor play that allows one or more runners to advance on the bases. A batter does not necessarily need to reach base for a fielder to be given an error. If he drops a foul ball that extends an at-bat, that fielder can also be assessed an error. But he continues, Clearly, if any one of the three A's defenders behaved like an average high school varsity player and called the doggone ball, Seager is out. Nobody touched the ball, so no error is given, but the fact that nobody touched the ball

is what made the play below average times three Why? You guys know more than I do Debatable, is there something I'm missing? It seems like all three bumbling players deserve an error Seager deserved an out, and the pitcher deserved to be out of the inning Please help, I'm tired of seeing pitchers get charged with earned runs Because three knuckleheads had simultaneous amnesia around the phrase, I got it. So I forwarded this to our official score friend and listener and asked for his take on this. And he says a similar play ended a game in Houston versus the Padres in April.

You remember this one, right? With Eric Hosmer overrunning a routine pop fly in the infield for a 1-0 walk-off win for the Astros. It was scored a hit. Often in these types of situations, there has been some discussion of awarding a team error rather than to a specific fielder. There has been zero traction for this approach within any of the MLB powers that be, so I would highly doubt anything along those lines would happen in the future. He says, check out this famous play in Texas involving a no-hitter. It was May 2014. It was the one where David Ortiz ended a perfect game. Ortiz broke up the perfect game, reaching on an error in the seventh, and then he had the single in the ninth. But the

error was one of these errors. And so the official score continues, check out the discussion as this play was initially ruled an error and later changed by MLB to a hit. And was this the one where David Ortiz protested? I think maybe it was. I know he did that sometimes. plays need to be scored consistently, even if the application is flawed. Also, there's nothing in the rules requiring a player to touch a ball to be given an error. However, the argument I hear from the This Is A Hit group is that this misplay is a mental error of communication, which causes the play to be beyond ordinary effort when applying the error standard. What? I guess the thought is that it's difficult to communicate. It's above the ordinary communication effort because you've got a bunch of guys closing on a pop-up in No Man's Land, and so therefore it's hit-worthy.

Now, would it be worth having— So in football, I am given to understand there are partial sacks. You can split a sack or something like that, right? You can have 0.5. If you can't get traction or something like that right you can have 0.5 if you if you can't get traction for a team error because whatever it's kind of like a in hockey i guess you get team penalties you can get team penalties in other sports like too many men on the ice or too many men on the field or something that's not assigned to anyone but if you're in baseball

why not could you get away if you can't get traction for assigning a team error what about assigning like a third of an error in this case and also a third of a chance or something like that for each player just something where it would make people because then if you were the pitcher it just all counts as one error and it should have been should not have been a base runner and then you can get your un-unrun not that anyone cares about these things anyway but right just seems like it would be an easy solution but you can understand why this would be so unimportant to the powers that be that i mean at the same time maybe it would be an easy solution but you can understand why this would be so unimportant to the powers that be that i mean at the same time maybe it would be so unimportant that they

could just wave it off and be like yeah sure do what you want official scores nobody cares but i guess it would cause a lot of consternation and change and some people get very upset about these things yeah no one wants more fractions in their lives so I don't know that anyone wants to see a one-third in a column at Baseball Reference, but you're right. The thing is that you can afford to not let this bother you because you can just not pay attention to anything that really has to do with errors, right? If you're just not really looking at earned runs. I mean, if a pitcher allows this kind of pop-up that happens to drop, it reflects well on him in some ways. If you're looking at launch angles or exit speeds or anything like that or anything that's based on batted balls instead of outcomes, it will make him look better.

And there are just better, more insightful things that you can look at. So I don't know. Don't let it get you down buddy that's kind of uh the real the real feel-good story here is that for all these these scoring inconsistencies like the save or the win is that people just don't the people who matter don't care about a lot of the dumb stats anymore because they're proven to be kind of dumb stats so of course executives and people around the game still care about high leverage pitching and people still care about pitchers who give you a great chance to win the game that's kind of the

whole point but yeah if you if you allow a whole bunch of bloopers and they just happen to fall in it's really windy where you play or something then even though well actually here's here's where we come down to some trouble with expected wobba allowed is that actually if you allow a bunch of bloopers that off the bat are like perfect velocity and angle to drop in as bloopers you will allow a very high expected wobah but it would still reflect well in your like actual batted balls allowed so it just gets a little more complicated than ex-wobah but in any case if there's a stat and you think it's antiquated or outdated or stupid, chances are no one important in baseball is paying attention to it anyway. And so maybe it's bad news for your fantasy team, but that's not bad news for me or anyone

else. Right. All right. Jimmy says, is Felix Hernandez salvageable? If not, what sort of statistical trends move a pitcher from declining to done? Why, Ben? I'm sorry uh gosh so yeah it it depends on why this is the saddest that i've been while forcing a smile no one can see me right now

i'm making myself smile because i think that you can hear it in my voice that i'm happy trying to be happy so felix her Felix Hernandez right now is a, he's bad. If you look at his numbers, he's been kind of bad for, for a few years. He's not throwing strikes. He's not missing bats.

There was the whole conversation we had preseason where the Kings court is no longer supposed to chant K it's like pitch to contact, but it's all bad news. So just based on the quality of his stuff, like it's kind of fine. I know his velocity has actually gotten worse. I'm going to be honest with you. I hadn't looked at these things in a while because I didn't have a good reason to.

But if CeCe Sabathia could become a useful pitcher again, I don't know why Felix Hernandez couldn't. I used to hold myself to the unrealistic expectation that Felix could go the way of Justin Verlander and just re-find everything because Justin Verlander, I think hasn't allowed a run since last season, at least in the playoffs. But if the problem with Felix Hernandez is that he's just physically not

healthy, which I mean with all the miles on his arm, then I think that would not be unrealistic. There's that clause in his contract that says the team gets a league minimum year. If he misses a season with Tommy John surgery, that's probably him there for a reason if felix isn't healthy you probably can't really expect him to find the command that he needs for his pitches until or unless some sort of medical

intervention were to take place to allow him to heal but based on how his pitches move i mean he's he still has he's got all his experience he's got all the pitch movement he's fastball and changeup can still work off of one another when he has good at bats. They look like good at bats. But ultimately, if he actually can't command the ball the way that he needs to be able to, then if it's not something mechanical, it's something health.

And if it's something health, then he needs to get healthy or else the ball's not going to go where he wants it to go. It's not a coincidence that his chase rate is down a lot this season. People are not chasing Felix out of the zone, and that's where he's made his money. Yeah, well, sorry to make you do that. What sort of statistical trends move a pitcher away from declining to done other than all the things you just said

and all the things that we've said about Brian Mitchell this year? Is there anything else that is worth noting? Declining to done. So I guess it's really hard to say when someone is done, right? Like how many times did we go through this with David Ortiz? You get off to a slow start and you think, well, he's at the end of his career and he's not actually at the end of his career until his career is over. And the only real true way that we can say with real confidence that a player is done is when his career is over and the only real true way that we can say with real confidence that a player is done is when his career is over and we can say well he's definitely not coming back from

this because he's finished trying because otherwise players are just so good but i don't know what you look for like what for you if you're looking for evidence that we have all these indicators you can see if the velocity is down he's giving up harder contact or whatever, but you never know what sort of mechanical tweak might allow this player to at least have another good three months. So I don't really know where the done threshold is, but it might be holding this to too high a standard. Yeah, if you lose a lot of speed, that's worrisome, obviously, and relative to that pitcher's previous speed, that might be really concerning.

But you can find almost always someone who has succeeded while throwing that hard, right? You could look at Sabathia or you could look at Adam Clymer or anyone who is throwing in the 80s and Bartol Cologne and these guys can do that. Obviously, not everyone can do that. It takes a lot of skill to do that, but it's theoretically possible. As long as you're throwing, I don don't know mid 80s or something you can find someone who has succeeded at that speed relatively recently so you can talk yourself into the idea that maybe he can just pick up a cutter or have great command all of a sudden or something like that so yeah there's never any way to completely close the book until the player does

that himself but obviously if you're just not missing any bats and you're walking a bunch of guys, then you're not going to last very long. Yeah. Speaking of not a player who's done, but something that I just kind of, I haven't paid a lot of attention to it yet because Cole Calhoun has never really been like that high on my radar. But for anyone who's's curious i would like to recite a few numbers here so i looked at april splits and at may splits cole calhoun is currently over one in a game on wednesday as we're talking he will probably shortly be over two it's kind of his thing so in march and april out of everyone who batted at least 50 times cole calhoun had the sixth

lowest wrc plus it was a WRC plus of 12. That's the number 12, one, then a two. The four worst WRC pluses from April have not reached the 50 plate appearance threshold in May. Probably not a coincidence. Those players were bad. The fifth lowest WRC plus from April is Neil Walker, whose May WRC plus is 151.

So he's gotten a lot better, as you would expect. Cole Calhoun has gone from 12 to 2. His WRC plus got worse from 12 to 2. And I'm looking, he's not the only player who was really bad in April who's stayed bad in May. There's Orlando Garcia hasn't hit in either month. Christian Vasquez hasn't hit at all in either month. Louis Brinson very incredibly sadly hasn't hit at either month. Christian Vasquez hasn't hit at all in either month. Louis Brinson very incredibly

sadly hasn't hit at all early on. Chris Davis hasn't hit at all, but Cole Calhoun just kind of chugging along all the talk about how the Angels are interesting. They have Mike Trout. They have the best player in baseball. They have the most interesting player in baseball. They have the most fun shortstop to watch

arguably in baseball. All this talent the Angels have have and they have an everyday right fielder with a wr supplies of eight eight the number eight he's just and i i don't know i don't know why he's only 30 years old he was uh he was not a highly ranked prospect so you think well maybe those are players who are supposed to decline more abruptly than you would expect no not like this you never expect something like this so I would think that if this got any worse, I would begin to get really genuinely concerned about Cole Calhoun's overall well-being, because this seems like it would be something that would transcend just a baseball problem. But anyway, that's a Cole Calhoun conversation. And maybe it's a good thing you

didn't have a brunch snack named after him, because it would be very disappointing. Yeah, I know. I've been mystified by what's going on with him. But you mentioned the velocity loss. I mean, what about Patrick Corbin, who, as you wrote, he just suddenly lost like three miles per hour in the middle of a season when he was off to a great start, except that he's been just fine. He continues to be good, like not as overwhelming as he was very early in the season. But if he's hurt or something, he's still pitching at a pretty high level. He's coming off a game when he went seven and gave up one run and struck out seven. He struck out at least a batter per inning or more than a batter per inning in his last four starts. So seems like he's fine,

but also seems like it's scary. So I don't know what to think about him. I was actually going to bring up Corbin as you were talking, and then you talked for just long enough that I forgot to. So Patrick Corbin, he had a lot of grand slam in his game on Wednesday. The start wasn't great, but I think he still struck out a bunch of guys. Where did he end up in his start on Wednesday? Against the Reds, Corbin went six innings. He allowed six runs, which is bad. But he had one walk and 10 strikeouts, which is very good. So Patrick Corbin in April, he had a very low ERA,

and he had 55 strikeouts in 40 innings. So Patrick Corbin in April struck out 37% of his opponents that's very very high he has not kept that up in may patrick corbin has struck out 29 of his opponents which is good that's very high for a starting pitcher izzy array has still been fine in may but this one baffles me because he just like as you mentioned between starts he lost three miles per hour. He's not dialing it back to get better control because he hasn't even touched the velocities that he touched in April. There's been no sign that he can throw as hard as he did. And ordinarily, when you see that for one start, you think, well, there's any number of problems that that could be. You don't really get worried until I think you see it two starts in a row.

And it was there, two starts in a row. And it's now been there for, what is it it two starts in a row and it was there two starts in a row and it's now been there for what is it six starts in a row yeah six starts in a row he has not even gotten he's barely gotten up to 92 miles per hour which is what he used to average and i don't know how to reconcile this because the only explanation i can come up with is that he's pitching well and he's hurt right because i there's just nothing for something to last an entire month yeah i mean it's obviously something that diamondbacks are not unaware of i'm sure so i guess they're not overly concerned unless they just think well we really need wins right now but it's very strange i don't know i i wonder whether we will find out it's worrisome

except that he does keep striking people out so i don't know okay one silly one pre-play index this is from sean patreon supporter not sure if this is within the rules or not but how effective would a pitcher be if he threw with both hands not an ambidextrous pitcher but someone who used both hands to throw a pitch from over the top of his head. Would this prevent platoon splits if we say that this is acceptable within the rules? I guess it would prevent platoon splits, but there would be bigger problems than platoon splits. Okay, so we've all seen the child who bowls with both hands,

and sometimes you'll see an adult do it on a lark. But what is even the mechanism? Because the ball is so small. It's not like it's a basketball. You can do this when you're shooting a bad free throw. But what fingers does it come off? You have to hold it on your fingertips, I guess. Just between your fingertips.

What kind of speed do you think you could get on a two-handed over-the-head pitch? Okay, I'm trying to imagine this me too you could i think you could probably get to like i don't know 50 doing it i don't know what kind of accuracy this is because you kind of do the uh the ross olendorf wind up right but then you just come right back over your own head yeah so i'm just yeah you'd you'd eliminate some platoon splits in the way that like over the top extremely over the top pitchers don't really have some platoon splits in the way that extremely over-the-top pitchers don't really have big platoon splits. Yeah, you'd just get crushed by both lefties and righties. Yeah, you'd be absolutely terrible.

What movement would you get? This is an Eno Saris article. Yeah, it could be. I guess if you did it once in the middle of normal pitching, you might just surprise the guy so much that you'd get away with it. So that could work. Well, he'd be tipped off by the fact that you're not wearing a glove. That's true, too. Yeah, you'd be a really bad fielder.

That would be a problem. Couldn't protect yourself from liners. I think it's a bad idea. It's a very bad idea. But are you allowed—so we know Jim Abbott pitched with a special modified glove. Are you required to have a glove on your person when you throw a pitch? I don't know. We'll look this up later, but that would be the one.

Well, okay, that's one of several reasons that no one would do this, but it's among the legal ones. You wouldn't be able to do anything with the glove. You can't really keep it in your armpit because your arms are above your head. You'd look ridiculous. You would never – I don't know. How good of a player for how many years would he have to be so that you could do this and people on the internet would be like, he broke out a new trick as opposed to,

this guy is ridiculous and stupid. This seems like the sort of thing, you know, you come across people who have one weird trick, one weird skill, and they do it so well that you'd never think that anyone could do something so well. And you'd also never think that anyone would be surprised by how well they could do it and how accurate they could be but there's still just uh gotta be a pretty low ceiling on this strategy so i don't think i don't think so i hereby solemnly swear the next time i throw a ball around i will try this at least five times yeah me too you see it could be an ephes at least right you could just kind of lob it in there it kind of lends itself to a looping arcing kind of pitch so you could do like the the trick pitch where you just throw the ball straight up and try to have it land like directly on home plate so that it's technically a strike but you can't hit it

maybe that would work i wonder what there's a lot of finger manipulation technique here that interests me because i don't know if you could throw different like pitch spins like you could definitely do different velocities i don't know if you could make the ball break because what would it do it would tumble i guess it seems like maybe it'd be easy to throw a knuckleball using this. Like if it's on all of your fingertips at the same time, it seems like you wouldn't even be able to put much spin on it really. So maybe you can throw a spinless pitch with this kind of delivery. I don't know.

Do you think that there's a rule in the rule book that says you may throw with only one hand? It seems like the sort of thing that you wouldn't actually have to write down. I mean, if someone wants to do this, be my guest, right? It's not like it's hurting anyone except that person. So I don't see why you would have to prevent this. What if a player was, what if, okay, what if there was a Jim Abbott to the max, right? And he had not any hands. Yeah.

And what he did was he learned from a young age to flip a baseball with his foot yeah could you foot pitch because i mean you'd already throw harder than kazuhisa makita yes right i'm gonna say you cannot foot pitch i don't know you need to wear a cleat yeah i don't know if there's a rule there seems like at some point you get to like this very elemental level where maybe there are no rules because it's just assumed that everyone would know. Like you have to breathe while delivering a pitch. You cannot hold your breath for 10 minutes while pitching. That is probably not a rule, but also probably doesn't have to be.

You may not pitch while becoming dead or while in the process of transitioning to rigor mortis. Right. All right. Let's stat blast. They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS+. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways here's today's step last do we have a brian mitchell update since our last brian mitchell update this is not the sap last but i gotta take a look at this so So the Padres, because they recently traded for Phil Hughes, who's bad,

but another thoracic outlet syndrome guy. So the Padres have, I think, a monopoly now of them. Maybe they'll get Matt Harvey next. So I don't know the last time we talked about Brian Mitchell, but I can tell you that he pitched two days ago. He went one inning, and he allowed two runs. Brian Mitchell continues to be bad. Currently stands at 31 walks 20 strikeouts

that is not the stat blast for this episode the stat blast for this episode relates to launch angle just like all baseball articles and conversations so uh compared to last season league wide according to stat cast via baseball savant launch angle is up 0.7 degrees sound about right to you sure great you should because that's what the numbers are it's up 0.7 degrees sound about right to you sure great you should because that's what the numbers are it's up 0.7 degrees so what i did is i looked at the launch angle increase on average this is all average launch angle by count there are 12 different counts correct sound good to you yes it should because that's the truth so i looked at how things have gone up or gone down and so i don't know the best way to present this.

So I'm just going to do what I usually do and say them all. So in only one count has the average launch angle dropped by any amount. That's two and O. It's gone down 0.3 degrees, whatever. So I'm going to read up in ascending order of the degree to which launch angle has changed relative to last season. There are 12 counts, I'll remind you. So one count has gone down 0.3 degrees.

There has been an increase of 0.4, another increase of 0.4, increase of 0.5, another of 0.5, another of 0.7, another of 0.7, then 0.9, 0.9, 0.9, 1.1. And then the one remaining count, 3 and 0 count, the average launch angle has gone up 5.1 and then the one remaining count three and oh count the average launch angle has gone up 5.1 degrees oh so we have four years of stack cast right which really means three years in two months so in 2015 we in a three and oh count green light count 2015 the league average launch angle was 18.6 degrees 2016 it was 17.8 degrees the next year is 18.3 degrees all of those hovering around 18 degrees this year 23.4 degrees so it is an increase of about five or six degrees over where it's been before because it is a three and oh count that we're looking at it is also the smallest sample

of any information that we're looking at batters don't swing that often three now this is something that i've looked at for a few weeks and have done nothing with because i need the sample to get bigger even last year in the full season there were only like 350 batted balls that were tracked. But nevertheless, fun to think about the possibility that batters and teams are getting more confident and more willing to just let a rip in a 3-0 count. Because you figure when you're at 3-0, if you think you're getting a strike. So we talk pretty often about how players will trade contact for power right you swing harder try to hit more home runs and you swing up maybe you strike out more i wonder how good baseball players are at taking maximum power hacks and

also making sure they don't accidentally hit a bad fair ball, you know? Like, because at a 3-0 count, you figure there's very little downside to just taking a monster hack. And I wonder if that's just something that's catching on. Now, the contrary would be that, actually, contact rate has barely moved in 3-0 counts since last season. So maybe there's nothing here, but whatever.

The stat blast is done, and you can't argue with it because it was all facts. Yeah, I guess you can look at exit velocity too and see if there's an increase on 3-0. I guess those things would go hand in hand, although not necessarily. Yeah, not necessarily, because what you do find with home runs, generally speaking, home runs are not hit at a player's maximum exit velocity because actually to hit a home run most of the time, unless you have a

really steep uppercut swing you are not making ideal contact you are hitting a little bit under the ball so most like aaron judge's peak exit velocities most of the time are like line drives you'll see a lot of like 110 115 mile per hour line drives or ground balls that are hit just a few degrees above the horizontal that get tracked. And so even though, sure, one might say it would have been obvious to look at the exit velocities just as part of the stat-less presentation, sure, you could say that it's almost obligatory to do so, and I didn't, which you could pin as a shortcoming on myself. But I've been the one in charge of this segment, and I chose to conclude it. So Ben, you have another question? What's that? Maybe you were just saving the second part for next week

in order to have to come up with fewer ideas for stat blasts. I'd respond to you, but I don't want to ruin any surprises. Well, I have a sort of stat blast of my own. Maybe it's not the official one, but it could have passed for a stat blast, And this is inspired by listener Brian, who writes, the Jays have been snakebit with injuries this year. I recently did a quick tally on the shortstop position and came up with seven different guys who have played the position this year. Eight, if you count Tulowitzky, who hasn't played at all yet. So I don't count him, but I do count Russell Martin because he has. So Brian says, I was curious, what is the record number of players to play a single defensive position in a given year? And this is answerable via play index. So I did some play indexing. So the one thing you notice

as you go position by position, every record for the most players used at that position, and I was just defining this as one game played at the position. Every record comes from like the 1884 Union Association or whatever. It's all these leagues that aren't really major leagues or is barely baseball by the standards of today. So for each of these positions, I'm going to cite the all-time record, but know that the all-time record is almost always 1880 or 1890 something, and so I'm going to give you the modern era record as well. So for shortstops, the record is 14. The modern era record is 10. That's the 1944 Dodgers, and of course that was the war years,

so maybe that's somewhat sketchy too. Post-war, it is 9. That's the record. The 1987 Pirates had nine shortstops. So the Jays, through a third of the season, are already at seven. You figure hopefully they'll get Tulewitzki there at some want. But we're going to see as I go through this list that a lot of the teams that had the most players ever at a position, not really good teams, and that's for obvious reasons. So catcher's all-time record is 13. Modern, quasi-modern record is 9. That's the 1914 Pirates and 1911 Phillies. First base, 13 is the all-time record and also the modern record. That's the 2000 Cardinals had 13 first basemen. That was, of course, the year before Pujols.

So then they had the same first baseman for the next decade or so. They made up for it. Second base, all-time record is 15, and modern record is 11, the 2016 Padres. And they will come up again in just a moment. So remember that team. Third base, 19 is the all-time record. And 14 is the modern record. That's the 2014 A's.

And then we get to left field. 20 is the all-time record. 16 is the modern record. And that was just last year. 16 is the modern record and that was just last year the 2017 dodgers good team exception to the trend had 16 players play left field and that is actually the record at least the modern record there has not been a higher number of players at any position in modern times than last year's dodgers with 16 left fielders just continuing, the record for center fielders all-time, 24. What?

The 1884 Kansas City Cowboys, who went 16-63 in the Union Association. They had 24 center fielders. The slightly more moderate record is 15. That's the 1914 Reds. And then lastly, the right fielders, 22 all-time, 21, but that's the 1902 Giants. So if we want to go post-1902, it's a tie for 15 between the 1909 Senators, the 2004 Royals, and again, the 2016 Padres. So 2016 Padres had a whole lot of right fielders and a whole lot of second baseman and

They were a bad team so Lord answer yeah All right so I will Also read this question because It is sort of stat Blasty and involves play indexing this Is from Jamie who says I just wanted to make sure that you are aware

Of Josh Tomlin's continuing Record-breaking. With his 16 homers and six walks this year, Tomlin has allowed 158 home runs and 127 walks over the course of his career. Having more homers than walks over a career is basically unprecedented. Tomlin has 860 innings pitched. The next highest guy with more homers than walks is Zach Stewart, who had 25 homers and 22 walks in 103 innings pitched. So to find someone who has done this, you have to go all the way from Tomlin, who is now up to 862 and two-thirds innings, to Zach Stewart, who had 103. So this is really rare, and Jamie continues,

how long do you think that Tomlin, who just got demoted to the bullpen and has a like eight ERA this year and a career ERA plus of 88, can keep going as a big leaguer without losing his job or reversing his home run to walk ratio? too late for him to reverse his home run to walk ratio. I mean, I guess he could do it if he just suddenly allowed a bunch of walks all in a row. But if he keeps pitching the way that he has, I don't think he's going to pitch long enough to overcome this. So he now has a 60 ERA plus. Yeah. So I think with Tomlin, and I remember having a conversation a little bit like this with Josh Towers about 10 or 15 years ago. You have these guys who get a few strikeouts, and then they just don't walk anyone. So I always think, well, if they could just get the batted balls under control, the guy would be useful. And, I mean, the fact of the matter is that Josh Tomlin pretty much always has a walks per nine rate that starts with a one.

He always has one of the lowest walk rates in baseball, and that does mean something something with a zero yeah 0.9 walks per nine yeah and more more than that home runs per night so i mean the fact that he's 33 years old he obviously doesn't have a whole lot left to do but when you have someone who is so able to throw strikes i think there's still you can have a role for that guy the average j Josh Tomlin plate appearance doesn't last very long. And even if he's not really, really effective, he's still useful enough that someone like Josh Tomlin is kind of what you want in a long man in the bullpen, maybe a mop-up man if that's still a role. So I don't know how much, I don't know how much more of a leash Josh Tomlin himself has

given that he's entering his mid-30s and he already didn't throw hard at his peak. But something like this is a kind of salvageable player, even though, let's see, what's Josh Tomlin's career war? 4.8 using ERA. That's not so much, given that he's thrown almost 900 innings. But, yeah, he's better than AAA fodder. So I don't think he's going to reverse his numbers. He's widening the gap now.

He has 17 home runs allowed this year in 34 and a third innings. Oh, man, that's bad. He obviously has allowed the most home runs in baseball this year, despite not pitching all that much. So he has 17 homers and six walks allowed this year. So he is putting some daylight between those two. Wilmer Font, 10 homers five walks one intentional wilmer font has thrown 17 innings i uh yeah i hope that wilmer font is able to

reverse that if only because if he could stop allowing home runs if only for just like a week it would make me look a lot less stupid um related i was inspired you were looking up the number of the total maximum number of players who have played a position and it got me searching so now maybe i'll just do a third fourth fifth stat blast i don't know what this is but i was i was curious about the worst offensive positions of all time and uh you know there's there's been a lot of bad positions the red sox catchers can't hit marlin's center fielders which means lewis brinson can't hit in right field this is going back to tops plus old standby according to tops plus of course this season is only a third of the

way finished you know all the caveats here the three worst offensive teams in right field are this season it's the uh philadelphia phillies they have a tops plus of 60 in right field the diamondbacks have a right field TOPS plus of 50. And the Cole Calhoun-led Angels in right field have a TOPS plus of 28. 28 being worse than the actual all-time worst of the 2011 Boston Red Sox at 62. So Cole Calhoun, Chris Young, Jabari Blash, Michael Hermosillo, I think, if he's a player. They have 34 points of topis plus to make up between now and the end of the season if the angels want to avoid a record but I don't know when people are going to notice because of the whole trout otani simmons factor all right chris patreon supporter says listening

to the recent episode about the home runs and the ball right now and the discussion of the baseball's properties brought to mind a what if baseball were different trademark question. What if MLB could choose what kind of ball was used in a given season? Some years they could choose a lively ball with a high coefficient of restitution and low drag. Other years it's a deader ball with the opposite characteristics. The teams don't know what kind of ball they're using until opening day, but once a selection is is made it stays the same for the whole season assume mlb can accurately control the quality of the ball so baseball is just a wild card coming into the year how does that affect things how do teams prepare or not prepare for this well i guess you put what would you put a higher priority on on bat the ball skills on contact as opposed to you know someone like eddie rosario you know would be i don't priority on on bat the ball skills on contact as opposed to because you know

someone like eddie rosario you know would be i don't know why he's the first example but he'd be in less demand someone like miguel rojas would be in lesser demand because you would want to focus on the guys who you know can hit the ball hard but you still you wouldn't want players like a whole bunch of chris carters because his power is his only skill and he doesn't do anything else anyway. So I guess, yeah, you're kind of looking for contact. If you don't know how far the ball is going to go, you just want to make sure the ball is going somewhere, I guess, would be the way to put it. Right. And especially if this is changing every year, it's not like you're going to remake your team every single year. So you can't really count on it staying the same.

So you just go for contact. Yeah, I guess so. And maybe you hope that if you get contact-oriented players, if you know that it is a high home run year, maybe you can have them adjust. Maybe you can get them to start hitting for power or, you know, you put the ball in play. Maybe you're rewarded either way just because you're putting it in play, it's going farther sometimes. And the times when it's not going farther, at least you are kind of giving yourself a chance. So that is probably the way to go, I guess. But you can only go so far with this, I think. And especially since it's changing from year to year and it doesn't really affect people so much as long as it's affecting every team equally i don't know

that this would generally swing a race one way or another or make a good team bad or a bad team good but it would make a difference on the margins you know what would be fun is if like every so often you'll see like a three-point shooting contest and it'll have like the bonus ball the golden ball or the home run derby has like a golden ball just like once every i don't know like 10 000 pitches or 2 000 balls or something i don't know but just once every so often baseball just mixes in just like one blue pink gender reveal baseball and then the batter swings and hits it and it just puffs up in front of his face and everyone has a great laugh it doesn't count for anything it's just a good little video and it gets like dust everywhere everyone's all colorful it'd be great and people like that's a supply and they'll be like i didn't even know i was pregnant

right no all right question uh this is a very quick one jeff san francisco hamley ramirez was recently designated for assignment by the red sox effectively severing ties between them before the season i remember there was some speculation as to whether Ramirez would accumulate enough plate appearances for an expensive option for 2019 to vest. After Ramirez clears waivers, the Red Sox will still be paying his salary for the rest of the 2018 season. If a new team signs Ramirez, they would only be responsible for the prorated minimum salary.

I believe he has been released now, right? Yeah, so that's that. And the rest of the question Is whether the vesting option Would still be active even after Being released by the Red Sox if memory Serves the number of plate appearances Ramirez Would need for his 2019 option to vest Is relatively small if he gets picked

Up by another team and gets enough at bats for that Option to vest what would happen was The option rendered void after getting designated For assignment with the option still vest with The Red Sox still being responsible for the 2019 salary? If the option were still active, wouldn't it allow for some teams to screw up future payroll flexibility of its rivals? It would, but it's void. So, unfun answer.

Now, I'm not sure, but I feel like there was something similar to this. Was it Jose Reyes? When Jose Reyes was dropped, he had a vesting option i guess maybe it was a club option but in any case there was a conversation about that like does the option remain in place if a player changes teams after he is released but no i i don't know exactly what the explanation is i didn't email the commissioner but i guess the vesting option is specific to that contract with the red socks And if he's no longer on the Red Sox, then yeah, you can't just pick him up and like, you can't be the Orioles

and just pick up Hanley Ramirez, who granted would probably make them better anyway, but then just start them every day and make the Red Sox pay a bunch of money. But that would be admittedly hysterical and it would be a way to make baseball better. Yes, that would be very petty and I would like it. All right. Last question. Darius says about a year ago, I made a way to make baseball better. Yes, that would be very petty, and I would like it. All right, last question. Darius says, about a year ago, I made a trip to the U.S. and saw my first baseball game. I instantly fell in love with the sport and became a regular follower of the game since.

Now I would really love to get more into advanced stats and tactics, but for someone relatively new to the sport, I feel a little over-challenged. So here's my question. What would you recommend to me and maybe others with a similar problem? Which of the many books and blogs should I read? Or should I pay attention to specific things while watching a game? What's a good approach while trying to learn what is actually going on in the ballparks? Thanks so much in advance and best wishes from Europe. Is it too much cheating to just say you're on the right track by listening to this podcast?

Yeah, no, he's already doing that but uh if you don't know a whole lot about advanced stats in baseball and you listen to this podcast either you will soon stop listening to this podcast or you will soon know more about advanced stats of baseball so that does seem like a pretty good way to do it but what are some other ones yeah so it's a there are degrees where the the level of detail that you and i have to or at least choose to get into is by no means necessary to understand what's happening in the game if i mean if you want to drill all the way down and try to figure out exactly why this guy was able to hit this pitch at this time or something then maybe it makes sense to really get in there but otherwise i'm

not sure i mean something like exit velocity is it's easy to understand and it's not complicated. And I don't think you need to be much. OPS is easy to understand. And all that is is a combination of OPP, which is easy to understand, and slugging percentage, which is still pretty easy to understand, even though sacrifice flies and bunts get weird. So I don't think that you need to end up thinking about WRC+. Even war, I think it would be worth understanding generally, but you don't need to know all the specifics. You don't need to cling to it.

You don't need to defend it or try to make it better or understand all the ins and outs. But in terms of places to start, I guess it's been so long, but I started with reading old baseball prospectus manuals, annuals, I should say. They were wonderful. They made it easier there were fewer stats back then didn't even have bad balls but that was back in the uh what equivalent average days eqa so i think i kind of got started with eqa and and on base percentage and went from there but when you when you know that batters want to hit for power and get on

base and you know the pitchers want to strike batters out and not allow home runs, things kind of fall into place pretty quick from there. So I would, I guess I wish I had a quicker answer to this as opposed to you're in the right place and you'll get it pretty soon. I don't know. What would you say? Well, a lot of the books that I read when I was getting into this stuff, I mean, they're outdated in certain ways now, but I think they would probably still be pretty good primers for people who are interested. So books like Baseball Between the Numbers and Moneyball, obviously, and The Numbers Game by Alan Schwartz. I mean, Baseball Between the Numbers will use stats that maybe are not in use today, and maybe will even reach some conclusions that people would not reach today. But I think the spirit of inquiry in there and the way that the studies are constructed definitely inspired me at the time and I think would still be pretty instructive.

And I always recommend that people really just look around the Fangraphs glossary. It's actually a great resource, whether you're looking at specific stats or concepts. There are pages in there for almost everything that you could think of, and it's really pitched towards introductory readers in some cases. So that's a good way to do it. There are recent books that are kind of designed to be your introduction to this world, whether it's Brian Kenney's recent book or Keith Law's recent book. It's A of the curve in smart baseball, respectively. So there are a lot of resources out there.

I think those are the ones that come to my mind first. All right. So we will end there. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged their support. Alex Crisafulli, Aaron Wiens, Joe Simmons, Jeevis, and Matt O'Donnell. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild.

Heading toward 8,000 members in there. You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. If you missed our shows that went up over the holiday weekend, please do go back and check them out. I thought they were fun ones. We talked about baseball betting back in the 80s. We talked about home runs in the baseball. We talked about baseball expansion teams. We talked about why Casey at the Bat actually wasn't really to blame, or not as much as we typically believe evergreen content. And please replenish our mailbag. Keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at

podcastoffangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. We will be back to talk to you soon. Oh, they're touching. They're touching each other. They're feeling. They're crush and move. And love each other. And love each other, love each other They fit together like two hands

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