Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1227: The Draft is Done

Episode Date: June 7, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Jonny Venters, Max Scherzer and immaculate innings, the futility of pitcher hitting in 2018, the NL’s encouraging interleague record, MLB buying Rawlings, the home-run rate, Ichiro throwing BP, Derek Dietrich’s dangerous juggling, and a world where Jerry Dipoto can trade draft picks. Then they bring on FanGraphs’ Kiley […]

Out of my depth, lost in the dark, waiting for that other shoe to come down hard. I cannot communicate like I wish I could. I do not deal with my problems like I know I should. I am out of my depth, I am out of my league Watching everything just slip away from me Hello and welcome to episode 1227 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Hello.

It's a draft episode, sort of. We will be talking shortly to Dylan Higgins, our editor, and Kylie McDaniel, prospect coverer for Fangraphs. We'll be breaking down the first couple days of the draft and the big storylines, kind of on a level that you and I, people like us who are not in the weeds with the draft, can understand and be intrigued by. But before we get to that, I wanted to banter about a few things. First of all, recent Effectively Wild guest Johnny Venters is the latest quote-unquote opener. He is starting Wednesday's game for the Tampa Bay Rays, and his arm is still attached, still functional, and his stats are still impressive. He's been in 14 games now, 10 and a third innings, still has a sub one ERA.

Not that that will continue, but he has a 72.4% ground ball rate. So somehow he has, I think, increased his record career ground ball rate and he has gotten that elusive strikeout. He hadn't gotten a strikeout when we talked to him but he has actually gotten six of them so things are still working out well for johnny venters and now he will be a starting pitcher for the first time in his career and maybe that's an opportunity to have him back on the uh on the podcast i don't know how well the uh i haven't run the numbers to see how well the opener thing is actually working for the Rays. All I know is that they're doing it and that the Dodgers have also now dabbled with it. I know that the Rays just lost Anthony Bonda to Tommy John surgery,

which means they are now down Bonda and Honeywell. The other one, his name, DeLeon, who I'm forgetting, Nathan Eovaldi, is back. He nearly threw a no-hitter in his first start, so at least there's something there. Also, I would like to give a shout-out Wilmer Font, who is now pitching for the Rays. He has appeared in four games for the Rays and only allowed one home run so far, which for him is remarkable. His longest, to this point, he has appeared in 14 games. His longest streak without giving up a home run is two games.

He did that to open the season, and he did that between his first and second Rays appearances. Now, granted, with the Rays, he also has three walks, two strikeouts. I don't know what Wilmer Font is going to do, but I'm just glad to see him doing something. This isn't about Johnny Ventures at all. No. Well, I wanted to ask you about a couple things. One is the interleague record. We talk about this every year, really, about how the AL has dominated the NL for many consecutive seasons in interleague play, and that has not been the case this year. And there was a false alarm a few years ago where it looked like maybe the NL would finally snap the streak and win more interleague games, and then ultimately it did not. The AL overtook it, but off to a pretty

promising start. So what are the numbers and what do you think about whether this is real? Okay. So even last year, I forgot what the streak is at, but it's something like 13 or 14 or 15 consecutive years for the American League has won more games. Last year, the AL won 160 of 300 interleague games. That was a winning percentage of 533. So at present, the leagues have played 85 games, and the AL is 37 and 48. That's a winning percentage of 435. Now, there's a bit of a caveat here, something I always like to look at, is the OPS split between the leagues, just to see, you know,

trying to see if things are supported by the underlying numbers. And National League has hit for a 717 ops the american league has hit for a 711 ops so it's actually a very close split in terms of actual performance and you'll notice that if you uh if you look at the splits by far in the american league the teams who have played the most games interleague are the twins and and the White Sox. Not exactly the teams that you would want to represent you in interleague competition, bringing up the rear of the Yankees and the Mariners, who have been good. So my default suspicion for now is that the American League will win the majority of the games remaining, that the American League will continue to be the better league. But at least this time, it's a false start or a potential false start after two months as opposed to just one. It's something. It's lasting.

Yeah. 2003 was the last time that the NL won more games in interleague play. So this goes back a ways. And I think I had you and Dave Cameron on with me and Michael Bauman on an episode of the Ringer podcast to talk about the reasons for this a couple years ago. But just to summarize, I mean, part of it is the DH thing and the fact that the AL usually has a regular DH, although these days most teams don't and DHs don't really hit that well anymore. But that is part of it, the fact that the AL, when you play in an AL park, has an actual DH, and the NL just has to sort of find one on the roster and on the bench somewhere. But it's not just that. It is the team quality. And in the past, I think people speculated that maybe it's the Yankees and the Red Sox, and they're sort of spending a lot, and everyone in the AL has to keep up with them and also spend more.

And now in the NL, you have the Yankees spending less, you have the Dodgers spending a lot. They're just as much a powerhouse as any team in the AL. So maybe the balance of power has actually swung a little bit. Maybe with certain teams that are in non-competitive parts of their cycles, maybe there are more of those in the AL right now than the NL. I don't know. You could make that case. I mean, it's interesting because when you look at the Fangraphs war leaderboard, at least for the position players, it's very, very heavily stacked with American League players at the top of that list. And so many of the very best players are in the AL, but it does seem as if there is a chance at least that the NL is, if not the better league,

at least an equivalent league right now. Can you think of any other larger reasons why this would have changed after so long one way? No, not really. I just think about how the American League does seem to have so many of the bottom feeders, the teams that are maybe just starting their rebuilds, but no, I'll think about this in more detail if the numbers actually hold up. But for now, we're not even a third of the way through the interleague schedule. So I'm just going to give the American League the benefit of the doubt for now. All right. And you wanted to say something about immaculate innings. And I know that Max Scherzer just recorded one this week, another one. He had one before. Max Scherzer has just been fantastic this year. He, of course,

was already great, and now he seems to have reached a new level. And I know there's been some dinging of Scherzer over the last couple of years because he won Cy Young Awards, and I think there was a perception that Clayton Kershaw was probably still the best pitcher in the National League, and Scherzer just kind of lucked out in that Kershaw got hurt in those years but you know health is a skill and durability is a skill and Scherzer has had it and beyond that he's been a really good pitcher it's not like he's been some lousy guy who just kind of stumbled into a Cy Young award win or three at this point he's been really good and a deserving winner in many years and this year he's just better than ever.

I don't know whether you've looked into why, but he threw what 81 strikes in 91 pitches on Tuesday, which is a really impressive ratio. I believe that was the highest rate for a starting pitcher this season. I don't know if that counts openers since, you know, starters are starters. But in any case, when you can throw that many strikes, that's overwhelming. You look at Max Scherzer right now, he's got got uh he's looking at a strikeout rate of 39 percent yeah i did not look this up that loaded while i was looking at it my god okay so anyway well so max scherzer threw an

immaculate inning against the rays three immaculate innings ago also happened against the rays i don't know what that means three different players have been a part of it anyway what i like about so in in the same way as throwing a perfect game congratulations you threw a perfect game just like phil humber so if you throw one immaculate inning that's great it's a very impressive inning it puts you in company with guys like drew storin and rick porcello whoever jose alvarado is mike fires mike fires through an immaculate inning it shouldn't count when one of the opponents is a pitcher. Mike Fiers got Kike Hernandez, Jock Peterson, and Carlos Frias. I don't really care. But anyway, Rex Brothers has an immaculate inning. Justin Masterson, Steve

Delabarre. I remember that one. Juan Perez. Don't know who that is. I think he was an outfielder, but he got Jason Hayward, Nate McLeod, and Wilkin Ramirez. Anyway, so good pitchers and bad pitchers alike have thrown immaculate innings. Max Scherzer has now thrown two immaculate innings. This is where it gets fun, because Scherzer, at least on record, he's just the fifth pitcher to record multiple immaculate innings in his career. I don't know how well this is recorded going back before 1988 but anyway only five on record they are max scherzer nolan ryan randy johnson sandy koufax and lefty grove four hall of famers probably a fifth the difference between one immaculate inning and two is night and day max scherzer and just based on this alone put them in the hall of fame i don't care it's over yeah no i agree and it's funny also

that you mentioned that it shouldn't count if a pitcher is hitting because I'm actually writing about that right now. I mean, I'm sure we've both written about this before, but pitcher hitting is just, I mean, the bottom is dropping out. Pitchers have never been good hitters, but it's just, it's getting to the point where it's embarrassing. I don't know why anyone wants to watch them try to do this. And it's funny, Max Scherzer pinch hit the other day in the 14th inning, and he actually singled and scored on a triple and came around and ran. And I think everyone was holding their breaths because no one wants Max Scherzer to get hurt, even if it means a win. But that's the exception that he would get a hit, that any pitcher would get a hit.

I mean, at this point, the league-wide numbers for pitchers as we are speaking, pitchers have hit 115, 146, 148 this year. That is a negative 23 weighted runs created plus. That would be the worst of all time, surpassing last year, which was also the worst of all time. Pitchers are just not was also the worst of all time. Pitchers are just not designed, not selected to do this. I think it's silly that they still do. I think the fiction that pitchers have to be complete players and you have to have them bad as well is just silly at this point because they just haven't been at all conditioned to do this.

There's a pitcher on the Giants, Andrew Suarez, who's a rookie. He's 25. And he has, of course, had to hit this year, although he has not literally hit. He has not had a hit in his 15 plate appearances. He struck out eight times. eighth grade, essentially. He didn't have to hit in high school. He didn't have to hit in college. He had to hit a little bit in the minors. And then he gets to the majors, and suddenly he has to face major league pitchers who are better than they've ever been. And it's nonsense that they still have to do this. And obviously, they're not even getting that many plate appearances anymore because pitchers are getting removed from games earlier. They're getting pinch hit for it's maybe partly because they're so bad at hitting, but also because teams just don't want them going deep into games. But we're at basically a record low for the percentage of plate appearances, even in the NL that are going to pitchers anyway. So I don't know why we need to persist in making them do this. Like I browse through old newspaper

articles. You can go back a century or more and find people talking and writing even then about how pitchers can't hit and they shouldn't have to hit. And there's discussion of something like the DH even in the late 19th century. So this is not at all a new idea. This is the oldest idea. So each new generation of writers and fans brings it up. Hey, pitchers can't hit, but it's always more true than it was before because they just get worse and worse and worse because everyone else gets better and pitchers are not working on this. It's like a good proxy, maybe for the talent in the league, I guess, is just how much worse pitchers have gotten.

They're like the control group, the canary in the coal mine. You can see the league getting better around them as they continue not to get better. So I just don't want to see them hit anymore. Credit to the Colorado Rockies who have allowed the highest OPS to opposing pitchers, 406. The Mets have controlled pitchers. Pitchers against the Mets have gone nine for 119 with 64 strikeouts. I don't need to tell you what the rate stats are. They're bad. Yeah. So moving on from that, I wanted to throw out two numbers to you. So just out of curiosity, last year, between May 6th and June 5th, so just covering basically a month, May 6th to June 5th, the rate of home runs per fly ball in the league, 14.1%.

This year, so we are now through June 5th, this year of the same span of time, 12.7%, down 1.4 percentage points. Don't know what it means, but could be something there. Home runs have not returned like they did last year. Early on, we blamed it on weather. I think we were correct to blame it on weather. Could still be a weather effect, but home runs not going up. Not so far.

Yeah, not really. It's kind of confusing. I've seen some chatter about that. It seems like it might be baseball related because it's not guys hitting the ball less hard or at less optimal angles or anything. I think I saw some research from Alan Nathan or Tom Tango or someone else or all of the above saying that based on a model from previous seasons and the way that the ball has been hit this year, you would expect there to be more homers than there have been, which might mean that the ball just isn't carrying as much

for some reason. No one really knows why it carries or doesn't carry, seemingly. And in related news, maybe MLB has now become a part owner of Rawlings, the official manufacturer of the Major League Baseball. There was a sale of Rawlings, according to a report that MLB and a private equity firm called Seidler Equity Partners, which I think was started by one of the partners of the Padres, they have teamed up to purchase Rawlings for $395 million. Chris Maranek, the league's executive vice president for strategy, Chris Maranek, the league's executive vice president for strategy, said something to the effect of, we are particularly interested in providing even more input and direction on the production of the official ball of Major League Baseball,

one of the most important on-field products to the play of our great game. I don't know whether this purchase had anything to do with the strange fluctuations in the ball in recent years and all the attention that's been paid to that. But probably part of it, right? I don't know. MLB is just kind of saying, well, we should probably just take this over and figure it out ourselves. So anyway, if the ball does anything wacky in future years, we will have no one to blame but Major League Baseball.

And their own negligence. So let's see. I've got three more things before we get to the interview. You have anything else? percent of the time so pitchers have struck out this year more often than the typical hitter facing Max Scherzer by a fairly wide margin they have walked three percent of the time I will just repeat my point pitchers are terrible at hitting and I am I think going to officially come out as pro DH there's the strategy argument I guess we don't have to relitigate the whole thing right now, but there's the strategy argument about how in the NL you get more managerial decisions, I guess, whether to pull a guy for a pinch hitter, whether to pinch run. I don't know that they're interesting decisions. I mean, you get double switches. a pitcher can do at the plate these days is sacrifice bunt, which is something that teams on the whole are not doing now. It's very frowned upon because it's not such a good strategy, but for pitchers it is because they're so terrible. It's something that is almost eradicated from the

game now, except for this weird vestigial limb of baseball where pitchers have to continue hitting. I don't know. End of rant, I guess. I just made half of our listeners mad. Jose Ureñaania currently 23 played appearances sporting a strikeout rate of 74 percent jose urania so all right uh so let's see three more things real quick uh so we've talked before about how players have as part of the the uniform player contract you're not allowed to do certain things like you probably shouldn't do jujitsu or like ride atvs in the offseason you're at risk of having your contract voided so we found out this morning that at least

in the past derrick dietrich has juggled chainsaws and machetes so derrick dietrich miami marlins juggler very talented juggler i believe he does not juggle machetes anymore but that will come back the end of his playing career. Moving on, Ichiro Suzuki has moved up to throwing batting practice for the Seattle Mariners. He is not just in an advisory position anymore. He is throwing BP. Shortly after Ichiro threw BP, the Mariners clobbered the Astros 7-1. So if you believe in superstition, which all baseball players apparently do, Ichiro will never not throw batting practice again. And I guess as the last thought before we move on to our draft-related interview,

Kylie McDaniel will talk about how he thinks that a good idea, at least for the draft broadcast and maybe for the draft league-wide, would be opening up the option of trading draft picks, which is, of course, something you can do in the other leagues, and it's a lot of fun, makes things a lot more complicated and strategic. And I was wondering, Kylie will also talk about how the mariners this season drafted maybe by coincidence but probably not they drafted for proximity to the major leagues getting players who are more polished closer to making an impact with the idea that those players become tradable assets pretty quick would the mariners draft anyone if you could trade draft picks? What do you think the odds are that Jerry DiPoto would just trade every single one of his picks that he could

in order to turn them into players who are closer to the pros, if not in the majors already? I mean, from a self-preservation standpoint, it might make sense, right? There's that moral hazard there because Jerry DiPoto is probably not going to be the Mariners' GM throughout a protracted rebuilding process, I would imagine. He's already been there for a while. I don't know whether he has the staying power to ride that out. So you could see how he would say, well, I might as well go for it because I have this team that is in the running somehow, surprisingly, still very much in contention. Might as well make the most of this chance because it's the last one I'm going to get.

And you could make the case, I guess, that it makes sense in a certain way for the Mariners as currently constructed. And also, you give Jerry DiPoto any way to make more trades, he's going to make more trades. So after the Mariners beat the Astros on tuesday currently at fangraphs which does not think the mariners are a very good team their playoff odds they're at 55 percent five percent chance for them to end the longest standing playoff drought in the four major north american sports so i don't know if it's going to happen uh if you look at where they are on the fangraphs playoff odds standings they are actually still below the astros the astros are given a 99 chance of making the playoffs because the astros are very very good mariners probably not but nevertheless here we go we uh the mariners officially now if the mariners

do not make the playoffs and there are 102 games left in the season for them which is a lot that's a lot of baseball but if they do not make the playoffs this year, it will require them to have entered something of a significant slump. Unless someone like the Twins or the Angels just catches fire. So just something to pay attention to. Yeah. All right. So we'll take a quick break. And we'll be back with Dylan and Kylie to talk about the draft. All right, we are back, and we are joined now by Kylie McDaniel.

I don't know what to call him or whether he has an official title, but he does lots of prospect coverage for Fangraphs. Hello, Kylie. Hello. Do I have to match your enthusiasm? Because I don't know if I can keep that up. I don't know if I can either. We're talking about the drafts after all. Hello!

We are also joined by Dylan Higgins of Editing Assistance I don't know if I can either. We're talking about the drafts after all. Hello! We are also joined by Dylan Higgins of Editing Assistance from Dylan Higgins fame. Dylan actually coming out from behind the editing board to take the mic. Hey, Dylan. Hey, Ben. How are we doing? Doing all right. So, Kylie, let's say just for the sake of discussion, purely a hypothetical here, that you were talking to someone right now who is not a voracious consumer of draft-related content and that while that hypothetical person is happy that Fangraphs readers get to enjoy the unparalleled insight

and analysis that you and Eric Longenhagen provide, he personally has a hard time getting invested in the event because of its uncertain outcomes and the years that elapse between the draft and the typical successful draftees big league debut what would you tell such a person to get him or her excited so this is a sure this is a purely hypothetical person we're talking about it absolutely what would you say to such a person just to to get them psyched about what we saw over the last couple days any. Any big storylines, teams that had make or break drafts,

or a lot at stake, or really interesting players? Just what's the most kind of general interest thing that happened here that is something that would compel people who are not hardcore draft followers? I mean, it sounds like you should be listening to Harold Runnell's analysis of the draft, if you ask me. Maybe. Okay, so yeah, I completely, I have learned from my family that they'll be like, oh, we're glad that you have a career writing online about baseball, like question mark. But I don't understand anything that you say on social media anywhere. And I'm like, yeah, no, I get it. It's, it's a little in the weeds for some people. I would say, okay,

so we're talking big storylines. I would say the first thing would be, I'll give you the one-liner of each of these. We can dive into them as much as you feel like. The first one would be Casey Myers, who went number one overall, pitcher from Auburn that went to the Tigers. I guess the sort of prospect he is, he's not the traditional, like checks all the boxes but hasn't quite realized his potential yet sort of pitcher. I've been saying for the last couple of months, he pitches like a 27-year-old Japanese starter. so that's one thing uh he's unusual in that way

and also typically a number one pick is oh he won't be up for three or four years and so if a team won't be good for that long then he like matches their timetable he doesn't match the tigers timetable like he might be in the big leagues next year and they're not going to be good next year which is part of the reason why we were saying that it sounds like the phillies were trying to get him at three because he matches their timetable like he could just slot in the rotation next to Jake Arrieta and might be better than him in a couple years so it'd be one buzzy thing another thing would be the Kansas City and Tampa where the two teams with a bunch of picks and a bunch of money and both are in well I guess Kansas City is in not a

super competitive setting and we thought they were going to take all high school players and they took all college pitchers and we still haven't figured out why that happened we have some theories that have not been substantiated yet i'm saying we eric he's not sitting in my pocket but we'll compare notes often uh and then tampa had some very interesting things that i also tweeted about recently about the players that they got and how they got them and how much money they're probably going to get and then i guess the last interesting point for me, if we're talking about interesting players would be Jordan Adams, who, you know, is a five-star wide receiver recruit for North Carolina in football, obviously. Well, I guess if you don't know what a wide receiver is, then you wouldn't know. And his dad is the defensive

line coach at North Carolina. And he was seen as just a guy that, you know, puts on spikes and played at a couple events, but just wasn't very good. And then in late March at a really big event with like over a hundred scouts there, he was really good, like kind of out of nowhere. Like he just needed like a couple of reps and I guess scouts just didn't realize that he could explode. And so he went from a guy that basically

wouldn't have had any real serious chance to play pro ball and was gonna go play football and maybe dabble with baseball in college. And he just signed for, I believe it was $3.4 million, $3.5 million. So that was like a pretty abrupt change for a guy that if he would have played his whole life, might have gone 1-1, like could have been a sort of Royce Lewis, Byron Buxton type talent. He just hasn't really played that much. Okay. So Ben asked you a hypothetical question. I'm going to ask you a theoretical question. So you can, there's any number of

cases in the major leagues take, I don't know, Jose Ramirez of prospects who just blow past their ceilings. And there are a lot of teams who say, well, you know, ceiling as a concept is kind of unfair. So anyway, fast forwarding this question. You have a draft and you have all these players who have really good skills, really high ceilings sometimes, but there is an undeniable element of unpredictability. So do you think it makes sense or have you observed

teams drafting for proximity to the majors just on on the idea that well you know if they're closer than in in a sense that gives us greater odds of actually catching this pick in yes so there is there was a trend a little while back i don't know like 10 12 years ago of taking college relievers in the first round because you could just run them straight to the big leagues. And I think teams realized that was a bad idea in like the Ryan Wagner, Chad Cordero days, because essentially if you're relief only and sort of a finished product in college, there's probably something missing in terms of like finesse. And there's probably more injury risk and things like that. Like it wasn't as good, as easy as it seemed. And so then that didn't happen for a while.

you know, things like that. Like it wasn't as good, as easy as it seemed. And so then that didn't happen for a while. And now that appears to be happening a little more to the point where there's now high school pitchers that project as relievers being taken in like the first two rounds has happened the last couple of years, a couple of times. There's also probably wouldn't shock you to know the teams, but like Seattle was perceived as looking for only close to the big leagues, college players players and the sort of explanation i got from a non-mariners person was jerry wants assets that he can trade or that could potentially get there quickly and i'm looking at their list they took yes literally all college players the first 10 rounds so i know they were considering some high school players but they they did that

i had heard similar things with some other teams that I don't think had quite as strong as what sounded like a pre-draft preference. Like the Red Sox took two high school players and then took the reliever in the third round, Durbin Feltman from TCU that may be quickest to the big leagues. And Cleveland is another one that's similar where they'll take some high school players and they took Nick Sandlin, who's a sidearm reliever with like maybe the best numbers in the draft that'll probably be like a seventh or eighth inning guy, maybe even the summer. So there's definitely some teams that like are more interested in that sort of player than other teams it is not super common for a team to sort of exclusively look at those sorts of players but obviously it seems like seattle has has become

that team kylie i wanted to ask about anthony sigler who i felt like was maybe the most effectively wild player in the draft, or at least early on. If I'm trying to guess who you guys would like the most, you'd probably like him more than Adams, now that I think about it. Yeah, he's a switch pitcher and switch hitter as a catcher, the Yankees' first rounder. Basically, is that a thing? Is this going to be a thing? What's up with Anthony Sigler? So there was a rumor before the draft that the Rays were going to take him at the 16th pick and were going to let him pitch, hit, and play third base.

Yes, and switch catch. Left-handed catcher, right-handed catcher. Give me all of it. And the funny thing is they already have, obviously, Brandon McKay who's doing both. And then they drafted Tanner Dodson from California and announced him as both. So obviously they think that they're one of a couple teams that would even consider doing this.

And now they seem to be proactively doing it. So yeah, it was for real that you could see him being good enough. Like he's like high 80s, low 90s from the right side because he has like a 65 arm on the 2080 scale as a catcher. Left side, it's a little more, it's sort of Pat Venditti-ish. Like it's sort of lower slot, doesn't throw quite as hard.

Like it's sort of, you know, relying on deception more more than stuff which i can't imagine that there'd be a guy that throws 90 from both sides so you kind of have to realize that one of them will be a little less than the other and some teams have talked about that like don't like the risk of like you know sort of concussions and you know wear and tear with high school catchers and putting him at third base or maybe even second base because he's actually a pretty good runner he's he's got some of that sort of dodgers catcher like austin barnes kyle farmer like all the guys that could play the infield uh they have a couple of the minors as well so he actually is that good in that he is super advanced as a catcher he's probably big league ready as like a catcher within a year maybe he's got a huge arm he's actually a pretty good

runner uh he doesn't have huge power but he already knows how to tap into it in the games he has good field to hit he basically took the starting job from a much more tooled up catcher on Team USA last summer. It's just like the scouty scouts out there like love this guy. And because he was 19 on draft day, if you go back to Randy Jazeerly's study, that and the risk of being a catcher kind of pushed him down some. But in terms of like talent, yeah, he is all of those things. It is not like he throws 70 from both sides and isn't really a pitcher or isn't really that good of a catcher or is just sort of an oddity. Like he's a real prospect that also does really interesting stuff. I was going to ask whether in the wake of Otani and McKay, whether there was

any indication that there might be more teams willing to give guys a shot as two-way players before kind of, you know, limiting them to only one job? Is it too soon to say, or were there a few of those guys? It seems like Tampa is not scared of it. I am not remembering the name, but there was someone else that was announced as pitcher and hitter. And I'm looking at the MLB draft tracker, which they only have room for one position. So I'm not able to find that. There was a little talk that Hunter Green may hit some, which I guess he hit a little bit, but I think he's now stopped doing that. So it definitely seems like it's not something that's happening in a wide sense.

There's a lot of players like Tristan Cassis, who went in the first round, a high school player to the Red Sox, is like 89 to 92 on the mound, but isn't really a pro prospect. So if teams are really aggressive about it, they'd be throwing those guys on the mound and trying to figure out like,

oh, this guy that could be a first baseman for us in three years can also come in and pitch an inning and throw around 90. But there's, you know, we've seen guys come in as like emergency pitchers that can throw 90. Like that is on its own isn't like super novel. So I don't think it's becoming more of a thing, but I think more forward thinking teams like Tampa and I want to say it's the Angels. Oh, the Angels did announce a guy, William English, a high school player as both hitter and pitcher. But that one was more because he said he wants to hit, but he's better as a pitcher. So they're going to kind of humor him like the Red Sox did with Casey Kelly.

But yeah, I think the Rays have a very specific kind of player they've been drafting, which is like hit first, second baseman that could like, if you're shifting a lot, you could fake them at shortstop. They have like 10 of them in their system and they drafted two of them in the first three rounds this year. So I think they have a much more specific idea of the kinds of players they would like and the kind of versatility and skillset they like.

And they obviously are not afraid of developing guys both ways to where it's more than just a replacement level player the other way. If you can get them to be a little better than replacement level, then that helps you with your flexibility. And obviously starting Sergio Romo

also shows that flexibility and the way that you sort of build a team and deploy your your assets this has been a weird kind of trend because i remember there was a year a few years ago where it seemed like the a's entire major league roster was no glove second baseman it's kind of weird i guess it's maybe a small market well joey window was on both of those teams and daniel roberton so i don't know any of the names because i am an imbecile but i know that when i was watching some draft trackers there there was a guy who had like the the highest spin curveball that was ever tracked by trackman there was a there was of course talk about these number of guys have the highest exit velocity so obviously people have

been scouting with some amount of information for gears, radar guns, and whatnot. But clearly, more players are being exposed now to TrackMan technology when they are amateurs. So in your experience, what kind of difference has that made? Can you think of a player whose stock has risen significantly or has dropped significantly because of how they were perceived by the TrackMan software? Yes, that is. I can't think of a specific guy that like went up a lot because of that because like you're the guy you're talking about is carter stewart a uh florida actually about an hour away from me florida high school pitcher that the braves took eighth overall he has the i guess it would be off the charts like i hesitate to call things off the charts when but

i think he's literally the best i think he had like a curveball up to like 34 or 3500 rpms like almost a year ago. Obviously, he wasn't really on Trackman this year because he's just at a high school field. But his curveball graded out as like a 65 or 70 for scouts. And so Trackman may tell you, oh, there's actually a chance it might be an 80. I don't think that really changed his stock that much. But when you get into the room and you have scouts throwing around numbers and then a GM that isn't a scouting director in the past is sitting there listening to them he would like some certainty to know that what they're saying has some rubber meets the road especially with high school players because obviously with college players you can say well

this guy was at you know like Durbin Feltman at TCU who I just mentioned he's like up to 100 with like a plus slider and I think he had like 40 strikeouts and seven walks or something like that this year in like 25 innings it was like okay we know that that plays at some level against a bunch of different pro level hitters and some almost pro level hitters. Whereas with high school players, especially if they changed since the summer showcases, you just see them against high school hitters throwing however hard they throw, but with like metal bats,

some of these guys don't face any division one talent the entire spring. So you'd like to have some certainty. And so saying that this guy has a spin rate higher than Seth L Lugo's curveball and also the scouts really like it and it performed well over the summer and it performed well this spring that gives you like a little more certainty and the same thing with the exit velos like Jordan Adams who I mentioned earlier we didn't really have very much info on him and I don't think there was even track man on him from because it's only at some of the events over the summer he hit some balls like 105 when he was off balance at an event where there was TrackMan stuff, the big event where he like popped up in March.

And so now you can, you know, bring him into a pre-drive workout in a stadium and have him, you know, hit one up in the stands. And you would have TrackMan from that if you do it at your big league stadium, but you would also know basically to pick him out of a group to investigate more with that data than you would have otherwise and if

you're telling your GM hey we just saw a guy who's a guy now they might think a GM that is not a scouting director may think you're getting too excited about a player seeing him once and putting him too high but when you say he hit a ball 108 when he was off balance they're like oh okay that's a thing I can wrap my arms around and I think that's it sort of helps the internal calculus I wanted to ask you about Kyler Murray, which I understand is one of the craziest picks of the first round. And I guess one, how much of this screw up your own mock? And two, are the A's crazy? Is this a pretty good prospect here? What's what's going on exactly with Kyler Murray in terms of, you know, playing at Oklahoma and then trying to what it sounds like

eventually pick baseball, but also flirt with football for a bit too yeah definitely messed up our mock we were actually when he got drafted people were asking us hey they're mentioning on the broadcast he might go and i think we set the odds at him getting taken on the first day at like 15 minutes before he was selected so you know that wasn't a great look for us um but i i saw him play oklahoma played at ucf which is you know like a half hour from my house and went all three days and talked to different scouts were there every day. And I was like, is this guy signing? And there was like a GM there. There were like some real high level guys that would know. And they were like, no, there's another guy on this team, Steel Walker, who went in the second

round. And, uh, and they had a couple of guys that went in the fourth or fifth round and they were playing UCF who had a couple of guys that went on the second day. They're like, no, like we lucked out that like Steel Walker's on this team. So we get to watch this guy without wasting a day. But this guy's not gonna sign. He's been playing his entire life trying to become a big-time quarterback. He was the number one quarterback recruit in the country three years ago.

Pulled his name out of the draft out of high school because he didn't want anybody taking him because he wanted to play football. And he's like a little dude that's fast. It's a little more of a Russell Wilson. You'll have to kind of thread the needle and be really good. But he's gonna take over

where the Heisman Trophy winner was Baker Mayfield at Oklahoma. And he's a little more of a Russell Wilson. Like you'll have to kind of thread the needle and be really good, but he's going to take over where the Heisman trophy winner was Baker Mayfield at Oklahoma. And he's basically been waiting his entire life. He's now 21 to play on the big stage in college. And he's now going to get to do it this year. And so everyone thought, oh, he's not going to sign because he would have to be giving away his football future. He'd get to play one year and then would have to basically quit football. And that's basically what it sounds like he's doing is it's not completely done that he will be the starter this year, but it sounds like he will be.

And he's basically, I think saying that if he steps in, wins a Heisman trophy and is like a fourth round pick, he just won't play pro football, which I still find hard to believe that that's what he's going to do when his whole life has been going toward this. And he saw baseball as, you know,

seemingly a backup plan, but getting offered probably close to $ million dollars to play would seem to be more than you get as a fourth round pick that may never get to start and would have to you know get a bunch of concussions not guaranteed contract stuff like that and the short version of him as a player is he's actually we had him ranked back to back with jordan adams because they both have limited reps they're football guys and they have huge tools he's a 70 runner that can play center field probably above average he's got above average power and he hit more than people thought he would this year but he had trouble with good breaking stuff because he essentially has never seen it before so he's early enough on that he could learn to hit good breaking stuff but he also may never figure that

out and so if he played his whole life and figured that stuff out he would have gone somewhere from like five to ten so oakland's basically assuming he will continue on this trajectory if he performed this way having played his entire life he'd be more of like a late first rounder which is about where we had him as like a little bit of a hedge so he's definitely a real prospect it sounds like he will be playing baseball but it'll be interesting to see how he adjusts sort of with the hit ability because that'll kind of dictate what his career will be and do you think that the choice you know baseball over football or whatever it ends up being i mean it's not quite a draft question but does this have to do with cte stuff and risk stuff or you know is is baseball the safer option maybe even the more lucrative option is this coming to

play a lot i mean there's been multiple players that have spoken about this like jeff samarja turned down um i think it was like top three round nfl money to play baseball and i think he's now made 100 million dollars which all but like pro bowl quarterbacks make that kind of money in football and he was a receiver so he wasn't going to get that much money and i believe antoine randall l who played his whole career in football and in the nfl and had i think multiple concussions that he made the wrong call he should have played baseball so there's like enough sort of circumstantial evidence from people that have like been through this discussion that you should do it. But again, like growing up in Texas as the best quarterback in the state and being told that you're going to win a Heisman

trophy, like it would be hard for me if I'm that kid to walk away from that. So that's why I'm like still a little bit dubious that that's exactly what will happen. But that's, he hasn't talked a lot. So we don't know if he's like concerned about CTE. I will say he has some connections, we'll say, without being specific, to the people that advised Josh Bell. Josh Bell was a guy that the Pirates, obviously he's in the big league with the Pirates now. He was taken out of high school. Everyone was convinced he was not going to sign. And I found out later that he basically had decided he was going to sign and just didn't tell anybody to see how much money he could get. And so that could be what's going on here, that Murray had decided he was done with football and just didn't want to tell anybody and is going to see how much money he could get, which it turns out for both of them will be about $5 million. So if that's how it plays out, then it turns out those advisors are very good. So is he kind of the number one guy who might make an impact fairly quickly?

Or is there like a Chris Sale 2010 type who might be up even down the stretch making some kind of contribution this year? Mize is definitely the guy that will, I guess if you say make an impact, so more than just sort of like a bit player. Because there's definitely some guys in the third, fourth, fifth round, especially relievers, that may get there quickly and be useful. But, you know, for all we know, could be on waivers in three years. Mize is the sort of quickest to the majors impact guy because i think you could throw him in a big league bullpen right now and he would get guys out because he essentially has three plus pitches and plus control so you know he just sort of dominated the sec at a level that hasn't really been done recently there are some concerns about his sort of durability uh will his

stuff back up some there's been some health questions all that stuff got cleared medically but i don't think he's a guy that's going to improve any so that's what i'm saying the 27 year old japanese guy he also throws splitters and cutters uh more than his fastball so i i think that will probably you know eat into his uh projection as well a couple other guys that from the hitting side that won't get there quite as fast but are sort of the quickest moving hitters i think uh joey bart the second pick, catcher from Georgia Tech will be one. He has a lot of similarities to Dansby Swanson in that it is great makeup, great defense,

has big tools, may take a little bit of time to hit, but he's so valuable that he may be one of those guys that gets brought to the big leagues before he's ready and sort of learns how to tap into his hitting skills in the big leagues, especially because it sounds like he'll be learning a lot from Buster Posey, since he seems to be the heir apparent to the sort of catcher first base thrown there. The other one would be Nick Magiddle, who went fourth to the White Sox,

who we had at Fangraphs as the second best player in the draft, who we said a year ago was a poor man's Ozzie Albies, which now appears to be a different thing than we thought even a poor man's Ozzie Albies could be, because he didn't really have power a year ago but he is a 5'7 college second baseman is a 70 runner with 70 back control and is just like a dynamic guy and we think he has sort of the athleticism and back control to take his say eight home run level raw power to maybe as high as 15 homers if he sort of does the things that some of these you know altuve albies all uh patrory all these little guys have done to tap into power maybe even more raw power than they had we think he has sort of the um secondary skills and you know athleticism back control these

sorts of things to possibly do that while being like an above average second baseman that can fill in it short that could steal 30 bases like all that kind of stuff and because he's sort of five seven these sorts of guys tend to peak quickly um just because there's not a lot of like you know physical you know growing pains and whatnot so there's a there's an important question we haven't asked yet but it's time so as we're talking about this it's wednesday wednesday is the day when the majority of players are drafted it's uh every what is it 11 through 40 40 rounds on Wednesday? Something like that? And so Monday was the big day, all the big names, Tuesday, other good players, Wednesday, lots of players getting drafted.

So things are going to change between when we're recording this, which is pre-Wednesday draft, and when this is published, which is post-Wednesday draft. But how surprised are you that through at least the first two days, Luke Heimlich has not been drafted by a team? I am surprised. We've had probably 10 teams tell us we will not draft him. We didn't publish any of that just because it doesn't seem like that's really newsworthy that a team wouldn't draft him because it sounds like almost all of the teams aren't going to draft him.

But we've heard from no one's confirmed to us that he is on their board and that they would likely draft him. But it sounds like there are anywhere from two to five teams that will do that or that will at least consider it and have them on the board. The financial benefit of taking him would have been to take him Tuesday, which obviously didn't happen. Because the idea would be he's a senior, he has no negotiating leverage. Obviously, there's above and beyond even more than just a senior, no negotiating leverage. So if you take him and say the fifth round for $20,000, when the slot is 200 something thousand,

you can then bank 180,000. And then after the 10th round, you can spend 125,000 for free. It doesn't count against your pool, but then that money you saved at that pick by taking Heimlich can then be given to another player. Whereas if you sign Heimlich in the 11th round, it's, you can spend up to 125 for free. You gave him 20 or whatever the number is, and you've been, you get no benefit from that. So it almost wouldn't make sense for somebody to take him today because you would have gotten a benefit from taking him on Tuesday. If you take him on Wednesday, you're basically just signing him as a free agent for $20,000.

That's essentially what's happening. And it would be, I don't want to say cowardly, but it would be a real cop-out to not take him in the top 10 rounds and give away that financial benefit, and then take him in the 38th round and sign him because you think at the 38th round will you'll get you know less blowback from the media because it's the 38th round not the fifth when i don't think anyone actually cares because everyone knows he's a second round talent so where you take him behind the second round there's obviously some level of discount so we had enough people tell us he's going to get drafted

that i think he will it's also possible that somebody tries to sign him as a free agent later, like when everything's passed and you have until the signing deadline to sign him, which is, I guess, in early July. But at this point, it did not go the way that we thought it would. So I don't know how to sort of handicap how this will go. Do you have a favorite name in the draft who has selected already other than, I guess, Lars Neutbar, younger brother of Nigel Neutbar. Is there anyone with a better case than that? Yeah, that was the one I thought of. Yeah.

I think in the first 30 picks, Travis Swaggerty is probably the best one. Yeah, it's pretty good. That's a pretty solid one. And then in the fifth round, I believe, let me check this, San Diego took Duanya Williams-Sutton, which, again, not as good as those, but I don't know. It kind of rolls off the tongue a little bit. There are some interesting names that will go later, but I wouldn't say that there are top prospect names that are better than the ones we've talked about. Although there is, you guys keep talking. There's one that I remember that I want to make sure I say it right. So I'm looking it up. The Tigers took Brock Detheridge. That's the one I was looking up. Yeah. I'm guessing it's Detheridge, but it looks like Death R looking up yeah i'm guessing it's death ridge but it looks like death rage which uh i'm sure it's not but i hope it is yep

and he was a senior and the one other senior on the wichita state team that um had a couple high picks is gunner troutline and he's like uh looks like he's in mumford and sons so uh-huh so those two things together i think make that one pretty good there's a death rage on imdb the astros took seth beer which i feel like will be a popular jersey whether he makes the majors or not yeah yeah i know i know some teams or some fans were mad that he wasn't either on the brewers or didn't join jake burger on the white socks sure there was a low-level controversy about an old dumb tweet that was tweeted by the Rockies first round pick Ryan Rolison. And it was about Obama. It was something that Rolison tweeted when he was like 14 years old

back when Obama was reelected. And it was, of course, turned up almost immediately. And Rolison said it was stupid and he regrets it and he deleted it. And these things kind of come to light in every draft now, it seems like things kind of come to light in every draft now it seems like not just in baseball in just about every sport and I know that teams look at this sort of stuff before they draft a guy just to see if there are any red flags there the Rockies said they did with Rallison I guess they can't tip off the guy hey we're drafting you you might want to delete this tweet before everyone finds it because they might not want to say that they're drafting the guy. But you'd think that advisors, at least for the potential draftee, would say, hey, do you have any dumb, terrible tweets that you should delete before you suddenly become a national figure for the first time? Are you aware of how deep teams go into researching the stuff that people tweeted when they were at an age when their brains were not close to fully formed yet again we'll say i know a group that advised ryan rollison on some

professional endeavors and it like these guys know what they're doing so i would imagine they just didn't go that far back i mean if i'm just thinking i'm gonna go through like a client's tweets i feel like once i go to two or three years that's probably good but there actually was another player. So we referenced on Fangraphs that Travis Swaggerty from South Alabama was sliding because people thought he was going to go in the top five. And it sounds, he obviously went 10th.

It sounded like he was going to go a little lower. He had a, what sounds like similar tweet from I believe when he was 14 or 15 as well. And some people found it, some teams, I believe a team advised him to get rid of it and he was in the middle of switching advisors when this happened and i know of at least one team that we have reason to believe did not draft him because of that and some other sort of maturity things even though after sort of poking around we didn't believe any of these sort of maturity

concerns like we know all the different issues that sort of cropped up none of them sound like long-term concerns it just sounds yeah, if you went from being essentially an anonymous teenager that played baseball to a guy that might get $5 million in the course of a couple months, like you might do a couple erratic things too. The other thing would be if I told you that a teenager in Mississippi when he was 14 and Obama was elected said something like this in front of 10 people, you like would not be surprised at all. And it probably wouldn't even really change your opinion of him as a person. At least for me, it probably wouldn't.

Um, cause you'd have to know, well, does he feel like that now? Like, you know, that kind of thing. But because it's on Twitter,

it becomes like a thing where it's like, Oh, like now we know he did it. Like, like the Ray Rice thing, I don't think was handled correctly, but then there was a video and suddenly it became real to a lot of people who didn't take it seriously.

So I think the idea of it being sort of immortalized makes it more of an issue than it should be. It makes it easier to point to something than just, oh, someone said he said this. Oh, eight people said he said this. So now it's really bad. It's just not, I don't know. I did a bunch of dumb stuff when I was 13 or 14 and we just didn't have social media then. Sure. You still do. And you do have social media. Yeah. I had it in college and there's probably still some stuff I'd rather I didn't do then. But and also there's, you know, there are things that have sort of changed over time. And so I don't feel like it's that big of a deal.

We know it happened to at least two guys in the first round of this year's draft. So I'm sure happened with other guys. I've heard it with other players that slide in the draft in past years. Like, hey, he tweeted some pretty iffy stuff like a year before he got drafted, before he knew he was being watched. So it's definitely been a thing going back a few years, too. And we know Seth Romero last year slid all the way down to the Astros at the end of the first round because of stuff that he put on Snapchat that included like a bong and stuff like that. So there's something that makes sense to me theoretically, but that's tremendously difficult to study. So I'm just going to flip the burden over to you. Do you think that over the course of the past few decades and

up to the present day, teams are getting better at this? That actually is on my list of things to do is do a quick little study and just see are more of the high war players being picked at higher picks? Like is the efficiency increasing? Because I know from when I was with the team, I did a study like that. And I know in the international market, it was very clear that that was happening for reasons that are obvious. Like obviously all 30 teams are down there. They go from having one scout to having 15. They're not having organized games. There's, like, coverage of essentially have not been taken in the correct order. But then 10 years before that, that they were taken in the correct order, implying that because of the showcase circuit, that they're being drafted off of velocity only, and not the things that are actually predictive of success. And I think there's been a little bit of a correction there just in sort of watching the

process. But I would say, I mean, we've had this showcase circuit going for, I don't know, 10, maybe 15 years now. So I would imagine whatever efficiency mean, we've had this showcase circuit going for, I don't know, 10, maybe 15 years now. So I would imagine whatever efficiency that introduced into the system, which I'm certain it did, we may be getting close to the diminishing returns. I think the introduction of the TrackMan stuff a couple years ago, I think now that is being used at some level by essentially every team. So that may be sort of the last frontier for that sort of thing. I know some teams are doing more advanced stuff with like sports science and like bringing guys in for workouts i talked to one i talked to one advisor who had a high school pitcher as a client who went to a workout at a big league stadium but he wasn't going to pitch and he said the big league

pitching coach started massaging his arm and like didn't ask just like started touching his arm and i'm like does that really tell you if a kid's arm is going to stay healthy just by touching it like the i don't know. But I think that sort of stuff is more what we're talking about. Like, I know some teams had talked to me about, like, oh, we like this guy because his bone structure in, like, an objective way suggested he will put on weight, which suggests he'll put on velocity. And our biomechanical stuff, you know, said that, like, he has a lower risk of getting injured. But, like, every team does that, whether it's with their eyes or, you know, whatever. It's just you can, you know know calibrate it more precise way but that stuff is also isn't like crazy predictive because or else everybody would be doing it so there's like little edges like that

but i would guess that the like we're getting close to a level of efficiency that it's gonna be hard to improve upon in like a real way so we know that you have to go talk to the people of Fangraphs. Les thought there was a tweet about the ratings for the draft. MLB Network got a 0.3 overnight rating, which sounds not great, but was the best rating yet for this event and for that network. So what do you think needs to be done? I know you offered a couple of thoughts on Twitter that you won't have to delete six years from now, but I don't know. Maybe that you won't have to delete six years from now. But I don't know, maybe that content will be seen as offensive six years from now. It could be. What do you think? Obviously, we know about kind of the handicaps here and the reasons why the MLB draft is probably not going to be the equivalent of the NFL or NBA drafts.

But what do you think, Ken, or should be done to amp this up a little more? I think the big thing would be allowing the trading of picks because like there are people that like follow me which i know is like a special subset of weirdos and probably the people listening to this but i don't know you know quite specifically if that's the case um that said yeah my team picked it you know 2 and 45 and i just turned it off between those two picks because like what could possibly happen that i care about maybe i'll watch five picks before just see who's on the board so i know who to root for or whatever but if you can trade picks, I mean, you could

essentially have big leaguers, minor leaguers, cash, whatever, and then obviously picks trading hands. And so anyone can get picked anywhere. That also introduces like the need for analysis on the spot about who these prospects are that, you know, possibly a guy in double A gets traded for a high school kid or a big leaguer or cash or whatever. So then that introduces the idea of, oh, if you're a Yankee fan and you think whoever we draft at 22, isn't going to be relevant for three years.

Well, what if they're trading Clint Frazier for the number two overall pick? Like you're getting, you're then going to want to know like some guy who normally would never watch this. And then also I think, I think Fangraph specifically puts us on a spot where it's like, oh, who's going to be able to value the draft picks correctly? Who's going to be able to have a sortable board with all the players that could possibly be traded? And who's going to have the guy that can break down the trade from a big league perspective if that's included? It might be Jeff Sullivan, who knows?

be able to sort of step in and be even more important than I think we have been. But I think it also would make it more interesting to casual fans. And I think for people that are the crazy draft heads would probably like their brains would explode if you told them every top 10 round pick or whatever is tradable. And there's a bunch of little stuff you can do, like maybe having the dais not be full of analysts who have never been to a high school or college game before. It would seem like maybe we should have guys that do this for a living doing most of the talking like i think they went to 15 different analysts for opinions and two of them actually do this for a living it was like ah maybe we should get that percentage a little bit higher i'm not saying certain people shouldn't be on there or shouldn't be able to talk like

everyone has like a different role but it's like maybe we should skew toward three of the four people that are sitting at that table have some idea what they're talking about you want to get your ratings up get kylie with the microphone on that set. That's not where I was going with this, but I'm not going to argue with you. All right. You have to go. Want to give us like a three word favorite draft by a team, favorite pick, least favorite, any superlative snap judgments like that as silly and imprecise as it is to pass judgment on anything right after draft day. I haven't gone through all the teams, but none of them jumped out as being specifically amazing.

I will say keep an eye on Indian second rounder Nick Sandlin, the sidearm guy from Southern Mississippi. Him and then Durbin Feltman, who the Red Sox took in the third round. If they want to put them in the big leagues this summer, along with Casey Mize, the number one overall pick, and possibly Brady Singer, who went 18th overall to the Royals from Florida. I would say those would be the guys to watch. And then I think Nick Madrigal is the bat to watch that could be, you know, top 10 on a top 100 list sitting in AAA like a year from now. Insert joke about how he's small here. I don't know what the joke is, but he's small. Everyone will like him because he's small and he's good. He fits in the overhead bend, so it makes it convenient for teams that need to travel.

There it is. All right. You can follow Kylie on Twitter at KylieMCD. You can read the big board at Fangraphs. You can read his chats. You can go back and laugh at his mock draft, which lasted, I think, to the fourth pick, which is probably about as long as the median mock draft lasts. Our second-to-last mock was actually better than our last one, which we're going to have to review that.

All right. Thank you, Kylie. Yeah, thanks for having me. And thank you, Dylan. Enjoy editing yourself for once. Oh, yeah. It'll be good. Thanks for having me.

All right, that will do it for today. And boy, that banter about Johnny Venters and the Rays' opener plan did not age well. Venters lasted one-third of an inning, walked two, allowed three hits, and five runs. I did say that low ERA was not going to last. I thought it would last a little longer than it did, though. It's up to 5.06 now. Sorry to jinx you, Johnny. Also, we'd be remiss

if we didn't mention another couple names drafted on Wednesday. The Mariners selected second baseman Cash Gladfelter in the 27th round. Not bad. And, of course, the Texas Rangers in the 32nd round took Owen Schartz. And I'm not going to make any jokes about Owen Schartz because Twitter made them all already. Luke Heimlich was not drafted, but I would encourage everyone to go to Baseball Prospectus and read the article by longtime Effectively Wild listener Beth Davy

Stofka. It's about the Luke Heimlich situation, but also about Beth's own experience being the victim of childhood sexual abuse. It is a very powerful piece that I'm sure took a lot of courage to write, and I'm glad that she did. So I will link to it on the show page at Fangraphs and in the Facebook group. Please do go check it out, and thank you to Beth for writing it. While I'm recommending articles, I'll give you one more. Also, after we spoke on Wednesday, there's an article published at The Athletic called How One Tiny Change to the Baseball May Have Led to Both the Home Run Surge and the Rise in Pitcher Blisters. This one is by Dr. Meredith Wills, who used to be an astrophysicist and is now a sports data scientist. some tests on a bunch of baseballs a while back, and she asked if I still had those baseballs, and I did. They were just lying around, so I sent those baseballs to her, and she subjected them to yet more tests. I had had them fired out of a cannon at a flat surface at a high speed. She

completely dissected them, and she found that in terms of construction, the most notable difference between the new baseballs and the old baseballs is that the laces that are used to stitch the seams on the new baseballs are about 9% thicker than they were before. It is a noticeable difference. Meredith has pictures in her article and you can tell. And according to her analysis and some quotes from Dr. Alan Nathan in her piece, it sounds like it's possible that that may have something to do with the different behavior, the reduced drag on the ball, as well as what seems to be an increased propensity for pitchers to suffer blisters. So I now have an inanimate object to blame for Shohei Otani leaving his start on Wednesday early because of a blister again. So the case may not be

completely cracked here, but we have a potential resolution to the mystery of why the ball has been flying differently and why so many pitchers have been getting blisters. And I was messaging with her after the piece came out, and I was saying that I was glad that those baseballs didn't go to waste, and I said that they died heroes, and she said it was more like their bodies were donated to science. Twice, I suppose. So they are disassembled now, but we learned a lot from them.

I will link to that article too. And last end note here, listener Noah sent us a picture from Wednesday's Angels game of the big board in the outfield, where a Mike Trout fun fact was listed. And it was that Mike Trout is or was on pace to finish the season with 14.5 war. Since 1900, the only position player who has ever had a 14 win season is Babe Ruth in 1923. Something we talked about recently. Not saying we're the only ones who talked about this.

Not saying that the Angels video board operator who's in charge of Mike Trout Fun Facts is definitely an Effectively Wild listener. But if you are, if you're out there, if you're listening, please don't hesitate to get in touch. Because we can give you Mike Trout Fun Facts for days. You will never need to think of another Mike Trout Fun Fact. We've got you covered. You can support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly amount. Nikolai Stahlgaard-Eriksson, Dirk Keaton, Craig Cunningham, Michael Fago, and John McGovern.

Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Those ratings and reviews do help us, provided that they're positive ones. Thanks to Dylan Higgins, not only for his editing assistance this time, but also for his guesting assistance. You can find him on Twitter at HigginsFOS. We will very likely do an email show next time, so please do keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcastatfangraphs.com

or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. We will be back with that episode later this week. Talk to you then. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, if life is just a gamble, gamble if you want to win. Life can be so easy Let the wheel of fortune spin