Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1228: Dangerous DH Ideas

Episode Date: June 9, 2018

After Ben Lindbergh briefly mourns the Shohei Ohtani injury news, he and Jeff Sullivan banter about the…impassioned response to Ben’s article about the DH and pitcher hitting, a few DH-related fallacies, Steven Brault’s bullpen conversation, the newly patient Pablo Sandoval, the effective wildness of Tyler Chatwood, and the effective non-wildness of Miles Mikolas, follow up […]

A quick, reluctant note before we begin. Baseball's Friday news dump was brutal today. We learned that Shohei Otani would be going on the disabled list, not just with a blister, but with a grade 2 sprain of his ulnar collateral ligament. He also received a PRP and stem cell injection. I don't have to tell you that this is pretty terrible news about a player whose success has been one of the highlights of this season. According to analyst John Rogel's records, 16 of the 33 pitchers who had PRP injections eventually had Tommy John surgery,

and the track record for pitchers who had stem cell injections for UCL injuries is perhaps even worse. All of them either missed many months or had Tommy John surgery or both. So Otani won't do anything for three weeks, he'll be re-evaluated, and we'll see whether he can avoid becoming another distressing statistic. Of course, the news is not shocking in that Otani is a pitcher, and a pitcher who throws extremely hard, and already had a UCL strain and a PRP injection last year, but he's so much fun that we all hope this could be avoided. If he does ultimately have Tommy John surgery, he won't hit while he's hurt, and if that happens, we'd likely be looking at him missing 2019 too.

So we will wait and worry. But these concerns had not yet surfaced when we recorded the episode you're about to hear. So for the next hour plus, please enjoy a podcast that was recorded in happier times when a blister was the worst of our worries. First of all, his stuff is good. Oh, it's phenomenal. He's thrown in the mid-90s, got a good hook, good changeup. But he tends to be, what, effectively wild? I think that's the term. I don't even know if it's effectively wild because some guys throw the ball around the plate,

but they're around the zone all the time. For Chet, he's around the zone, and then every now and then, one just gets away from him. The 2-2 by Chatwood in the dirt. Nicely blocked by Jimenez. 3-2 the count now to Kingery. Cubs leading the Phillies 1-0 here in the fifth inning.

When you leave you're not gone inside me When you leave, you're not gone. Inside me, you're all. Hello and welcome to episode 1228 of Effectively Wild, the Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I am Jeff Sullivan of Baseball, joined as always by Ben Lindberg, also of Baseball. How are you doing? Well, I think you're going to have to take it from here. I think I'm going to have to lay low for a while. I expressed an opinion about the DH this week. And I think for the good of the

podcast, I've become too toxic. I've become a distraction. I've alienated half our listeners. And I think I should go away for a while and you can continue a non-controversial baseball podcast. And maybe I'll be back someday. The important thing, before Dave Cameron left, left us all and left this mortal coil to join the Padres front office, he would sort of joke, but I'm not sure if he was joking, that, oh, yeah, Jeff Sullivan, he's a guy with anger. He never has opinions or he never reaches conclusions. fangiraffs he never has opinions or he never reaches conclusions and uh i tried not i would think like no i reach like mathematical conclusions that are always like shrugs that's always an analytical shrug and it's sustained me to this point i've been a full-time baseball writer for

about nine years don't think i've taken a stance yet and here's here's what you did you didn't do anything that you hadn't done before up until the very end when you concluded. It's easy to write about how bad pitchers are, how bad pitchers have always been, and how people have talked about how pitchers can't hit for ever. We've had that conversation a million times. You've had that conversation with Sam. You just laid that out.

Allow people to arrive at their own conclusion. And then that just takes care of itself. As soon as you assert your own stance man people mad at ben lindbergh on the internet didn't think i'd see the day let me tell you the internet is not a safe space for pro dh takes or for that matter i'm sure anti dh takes any kind of dh take just my advice to you do not it. Do not have one because it is frightening out there. I experienced what Twitter is like probably every day for an average female sports writer was like for me yesterday. I had one day of that treatment and it was not pleasant. So yeah, lots of strong

opinions expressed to me. People saying that if the DH were to come to the NL, they would stop watching baseball, baseball would be ruined, etc. Yeah, it was eye-opening, to say the least. And it's kind of amazing because we're talking about 45 years now that these things have coexisted fairly peacefully. I mean, both leagues are still in existence, and yet nothing provokes stronger feelings than this. It's very odd. And I'll just say, I mean, it's funny because I think that even though I did sort of take a stance in my article, Jason Wojciechowski, frequent Effectively Wild guest in the past, complimented me on the lukewarmness of my take. So it was maybe hot by my standards, but not by anyone else's. I

mean, I kind of did say that either brand of baseball is fine and neither one is more right or wrong. It's sort of a matter of taste. And obviously baseball has survived having both of these things for almost half a century now. So this is not ruining baseball, although the conditions have changed in that pitchers keep getting worse and worse and worse. But I feel like I've squandered a decade of goodwill by coming out with this take, and all of my good deeds have been forgotten. Did you realize what you were doing as you were doing it? How did you feel about actually expressing an opinion? I underestimated the response, I would say. I think my editor was happy and surprised that I was willing to take a side here because that is not my typical thing,

as it is not for you. And so she was happy. But yeah, wow, I was not happy in the end. But I will say, I mean, there are people who made good points, and I tried to make those points in my article about why you could potentially-DH, and he also asked them whether they were AL fans or NL fans. And he found, probably unsurprisingly, that AL fans really like the DH and NL fans really don't like the DH. And I don't know whether that is encouraging in the sense that it means that baseball is good either way and we'll like it no matter what happens, or whether it's discouraging because it speaks to the human condition and the fact that we were all just indoctrinated at an early age

and we believe that the thing that we know is the best regardless of all evidence to the contrary. And I know there are lots of Astros fans, for instance, who were pro pitcher hitting when the Astros were in the NL and then they switched to the AL and they had a DH and now they are fine with the DH. So I guess it's good that people are fine either way, but also it's sort of bad and scary that there's this big Indian, little Indian debate that goes on and on and on and on. And everyone feels so passionately about it, mostly because of what city or household they grew up in.

It feels a little galaxy brainy to feel like you can see through it. Because like you said, when teams switch leagues, the fans adjust, the Astros fans haven't disappeared, the Brewers fans haven't disappeared. You know that if every team swapped leagues, you know everyone would get over it and get used to it and see the late. You absolutely know that for a fact. Baseball would lose like one fan maybe because that fan died while his team was in transition. Or her team. So it's these really, really strong opinions that you know are not grounded to anything. And now I realize as I'm saying this on the podcast,

I'm exposing myself to whatever flame you were getting over. Yes, please. Direct sub-ire of Jeff. He's a closet pro-DH guy. I know it. No, see, no, I have a nuanced position here. I think it's stupid that pitchers bet. I think it's absolutely stupid.

I'm on your side. But as a writer, i love that they do bet because i love having that sample that exists so right some people made that point that it's kind of this control group i wrote about this in the article it's like the way that we can tell that baseball keeps getting better and better and baseball players are really really good at what they do is that we have these guys who are still terrible because they're not selected to be good at it and they don't practice it and they don't get enough opportunity to do it to be good at it and so we could say yeah this is what a somewhat normal person would look like on a baseball field except even they are better athletes than the typical person so what what we need to

pull is forget about fans of al teams or al teams we We need fans of AL and NL teams, fans who are lean equally strong in both directions. Now I don't know how many of those there are. And many of them are probably younger people because I think younger people are free to have greater allegiances. I remember liking three football teams at once. That was impossible. But if you could just pull them, then I would be curious to see what the results are. And I'd also be curious to see what the results would be if you pulled like just people who don't care about baseball at all now they would probably say yeah pitchers should hit you should do everything uh that's my that's my hunch and so as i say that i realized that the results wouldn't mean anything so don't pull them leave them alone pull them about

more important things yeah so i will say there are some legitimate arguments for pitcher hitting but there are also some terrible arguments. And I got a lot of those too, I think. And I think the one maybe that stands out the most to me is I got a lot of tweets saying, well, where does it end? If you're going to have hitters hit for the pitcher, why don't you just have hitters hit for the shortstop or the catcher? Because you have a weak hitting position player or something like that, like it's a slippery slope argument. And I don't think it is at all. I think the only slippery slope is the one that pitcher offense is on, and it is just continuing to sink and fall and plummet on its own face year after year after year. No other position is in that class or category.

Pitcher hitting is on its own. I mean, catchers are bad hitters relative to the typical hitter, but they're at like a 90 weighted runs created plus roughly every year. They're like 90% of a league average hitter. And again, pitchers are at negative 23 or negative 24 or whatever. There isn't any kind of comparison between these two other than pitchers are way, way worse than everyone else. And any other position is far closer to the average or to the best hitting positions than pitcher is. So no, we can have a DH for the pitcher. It's not going to creep and spread to every position or any other position. Pitchers are in their own class and category.

That's a very dumb argument. I am on your side. It's just stupid. Here's what you do. Give teams the option. You get the DH. You get one DH a game. Use it for whoever you want. Guess what? It's going to be the pitcher. It's always going to be the pitcher. Even if you're the Giants, Madison Bumgarner's in the lineup. Doesn't matter. He's the worst hitter in their lineup. Yeah, you can make it optional if you want. It's optional, I believe, in the Pacific Coast League. And yeah, teams are not going to choose to hit pitchers if they don't have to. No one wants this to happen, really, except NL fans who have grown up watching it and have adjusted to it and think it's good. And the argument for strategy, you know, pitcher hitting enhances strategy. I get it. It's not a bad argument. There is something to it. To me, it's just, it's strange. You insert this hole in the lineup and then sure, there's strategy of avoiding the hole.

there's strategy in that you have to walk around the pit so as not to injure yourself. Does that make the sidewalk better? Does that make the sidewalk more interesting? I guess I could have said the pit on the field because we've had that discussion too instead of the sidewalk. But that's the thing. You're just inserting a virtually automatic out and then saying, do I want to accept the automatic out or do I want to actually get someone who can hit in here? out or do I want to actually get someone who can hit in here? And I don't know, on some teams, maybe that's an interesting argument. If you have a lot of good position players on your bench and you mix and match a lot, okay. But most teams, I think that decision of whether to pull a pitcher, whether to double switch, whether to use a pinch hitter, it's fairly standard and predictable. And usually you're

going to be putting the same guy in every time when you do that. So I just don't know. I think on the whole, we watch Major League Baseball, we watch high-level sports because we want to see people who are the best at anyone in the world at doing those things, right? And so it is interesting when you have the rare occasion when there's an exception to that. So when a position player pitches, it's interesting because they're really bad at it for the most part. But that's not mandatory. It doesn't happen every game. And I think if it did, it would quickly become boring. And that's where we are with pitcher hitting. I think if there were no pitcher hitting, we would like when pitchers hit. We would be excited when there was some kind of injury

stack and a pitcher had to hit. And we suddenly saw, oh, man, pitchers are really bad at hitting. Sure, then we would like it. We would banter about it. But as it is, it's mandatory. It happens every game a couple times usually. And that's a little too much for my taste. So it's a strange exception where we watch sports to see people who are incredible at what they do. And

this is this one anachronistic exception to that. And, you know, there were other people who pointed out like, well, there are people in basketball who are bad at shooting free throws. So why don't we just have a designated free throw thrower for those guys or something? And again, that's an argument of degree, I think, because I don't think anyone is as bad at free throws as pitchers are at hitting. No one is as bad at anything in sports as pitchers are at batting. Yeah, and free throws are not that hard compared to hitting against the best major leaguers. I know that some people are bad at free throws, but still, this is like a basketball skill. I mean, I know there are big

men and centers who usually are just shooting from the paint or something it's not that different to shoot from the free throw line whereas hitting is completely different from pitching these are entirely separate activities with almost no overlap of skills anyway i should probably stop ranting before we lose even more listeners no it's like handing the ball off to the punter just being like you're on the team so every once every 10 runs you have to exactly now what i'm going to be thinking about for the rest of the day is that the american league is like a sidewalk with a manhole cover and the national league is like when the manhole cover is open or missing yeah and then you know one of them is going to have a safer walk the other one might have a more memorable walk one one that makes the news.

So what's good about pitchers is that it does get us to that delightful hypothetical we talked about every so often of seeing the average performer against elite competition. But if you're going to care about that, go all the way. Don't even let the pitcher bat. Just let like a fan come in from the stands, bat for the pitcher. And that way you really get to see how good the opposing pitchers are. Yeah, I know. Anyway, it's just that. And then I got lots of responses like, well, they should just be better at hitting.

They should just work on it more. Teams should have them hit more. And I wrote about this in the article. People have been saying that for much more than a century. Not happening, folks. It's just not going to happen. Pitchers have gotten worse and worse and worse. And it's not because they now don't hit in the minors as much or they don't hit an amateur ball, which is something I mentioned in my article as an argument for why we should just give up on this now.

It's not because of that. That is a product of the fact that pitchers can't hit. It's not because of that. That is a product of the fact that pitchers can't hit. That is people accepting that they can't hit, that they've never hit, that they will never hit, and saying, all right, why make them hit? Maybe it has exacerbated their inability to hit slightly, but not really. Like, they're kind of declining at the same rate as before. It's not because they don't hit enough. I mean, sure, if they hit every every single day maybe they would be better at hitting but they'd also probably be worse at pitching and it wouldn't be worth it and there

are other good reasons why this happens it's not really a lack of effort it is a completely understandable lack of ability and practice that is not going to change so there's that there's the the all-around argument that they have to be all-around players, that they have to do everything even though they're terrible at this one thing. And the game just doesn't show them that they should put any priority on being all-around players. It's not something they're ever selected for or prized for. Anyway, everyone go easy on me. I'm sorry that I insulted your brand of baseball. I'm sorry that I insulted your brand of baseball.

Over the past decade, just looking at National League teams, pitchers batting, over the past decade, the Padres have had the best hitting pitching staff with a collective wins probability added of negative 35.89. Last place is the Braves at negative 45.27. That's a separation of about nine and a half wins over the course of a decade between the best and the worst. So it's kind of like base running, I guess, in that regard. Yeah, right. All right. Well, I've said my piece. So we will continue. And I wanted to ask you, you wrote a post that I have intentionally not read yet because I wanted to hear you tell me about it on the podcast. Pablo Sandoval is a patient hitter now what yeah when did that happen so i i don't even remember

how i found this this is just a complete fluke but so as as you understand there's a difference between patience and discipline right so patience is taking pitches discipline is taking balls and swinging at strikes for the most part so public s Sandoval, I would not say, has become a very disciplined hitter, but he's become the most patient hitter in baseball in one specific way. He hasn't swung at a first pitch since May 16th. Before that, he hadn't swung at the first pitch since April 20th. His previous longest streak of first pitches taken was 23. That's a lot.

But his second longest streak was 14. 14 consecutive plate appearances without swinging at the first pitch. Career high of 23. This year, he's already got streaks of 43 and 45, and the 45 is active. Pablo Sandoval has swung at the first pitch three times out of 112 opportunities. pitch three times out of 112 opportunities based on his history you would have expected him to swing it like 50 55 of those i look at his percentile rankings for swinging at the first pitch and swinging at all other pitches and pretty much every single season of his career in both he's been in like the 95th percentile or higher he's always been you know we talked about it was

like the next vladimir guerrero or something he was always the best bad ball hitter in baseball he's swung at everything and he's just not he's not swinging at the first pitch at all he has he's tied for the lowest first pitch swing rate in all of baseball with logan forsyth who goes up there and i think he's dead i think logan forsyth is a dead person and it's just like gas escaping that makes his bat move across the front plane of the plate. I've heard about players ever so often being told by their coaching staff like you know, if you're a coach and you're

frustrated because a hitter is overaggressive then what you want is for the hitter to be like oh, I've learned how to identify pitches. That doesn't happen. So what you do as a coach when you're frustrated is you just say don't swing at the first pitch. Just don't do it for a while i remember this happened with carlos baguero i uh i heard this happen with christian villa nueva this season and so that's what you do and then the the batter just stands up there then pitchers are like oh wait he's not even interested

in swinging so i'm just going to pepper the zone paulo sandoval coincidentally or not coincidentally is now seeing the greatest number of first pitches in the zone than he ever has. Pitchers have picked up on this, but he's still, we are, he's batted 112 times. He's only swung three times. He's fouled the ball off all three times that he's gone after the first pitch. And it, I couldn't find a single thing that was written about this anywhere. No anecdote, no quote, no nothing. So I assume that this is just something he was told to do but

in any case how often do you see somebody go from literally one extreme to the other it's sensational yeah i hope it's just a long con and he is just lulling pitchers into a sense of security and now that they're throwing more first pitch strikes, he's just going to go back to swinging at everything and he will feast for a while. Or I think it would be funny if he never swung anymore. But when he did swing, he still swung only at pitches that bounced or were like three feet outside. I don't know whether you looked at like where his actual swing comes or where, you know, whether when he swings, he swings at strikes. I would assume that's probably the case but it would be amusing if it were not yeah he's only swung at uh pitches in his three

swings this year have been strikes fouled them all off so yeah it's unbelievable to see i couldn't believe it i could i don't know if this happens to you but you know the struggle is always finding an idea to write about and when i saw this and and then I checked the numbers to make sure it was all accurate, I kind of, you know, like in Wallace and Gromit, like Wallace's hands would like shake at eye level when he was excited about something. I've started doing that. I don't know why, but it's just like a tick that I've developed when I'm home and I'm excited about an idea. I just start, like my hands shake above my shoulders. Just like, I actually have something I'm passionate about writing about instead of the stupid strike sign, which is right over at about for today. So that was exciting.

It's like one out of every 10 or 20 ideas I actually really care about. I'm picturing you at your ThinkPad or did you get a new computer? But yeah, you're sitting behind me at your laptop, just shaking as you discover blog material. I wish that there was something less nerdy, but here we are. Speaking of nerdy, I didn't catch this the other day. Stephen Brault batted again. Yeah, I saw that, and he didn't strike out.

Nope, two pitches. Brock Stewart granted out on a 1-0 count, which for Stephen Brault, that's great. Yeah, he did it. So he's up to 34 plate appearances now in his career without a strikeout. And if I'm not mistaken, we're all rooting for Steven Brault, right? Now? Yes. Oh, yeah.

He's the one pitcher hitter I can get behind. Yeah. We had no reason not to root for him. But also as a reliever, he's been good. Steven Brault as a starting pitcher. Let me just find these accurate numbers. As a starting pitcher, Steven Brault this year struck out 13% of opponents. And as a reliever, 31%. 31% strikeout rate out of the bullpen so way to go steven brault unfortunately don't get

the bat very much anymore but you've become a much more effective pitcher so uh maybe that will convince the team to stretch you back out then you can hit again could be yeah a couple other quick follow-ups so you remember vroom v Vroom Guy, who our listener CJ asked us about a couple weeks ago. He's the guy who always keeps running, never stops running, except I guess when time is called or even not then, I don't know, he stops running when there's a ground rule double. But otherwise, he gets a hit, he keeps running until he scores or is thrown out. And he's kind of become a podcast folk hero. So much to my amusement, listener Troy has created the Vroom Vroom Guy in MLB The Show, the video game, and is playing a season with the Vroom Vroom Guy,

and he is documenting the experience in the Facebook group. I asked him to post footage, and he has. So there is a YouTube video of the Vroom Vroom guy's first hit, and he triples and then tries to score and is thrown out by quite a wide margin at the plate, which is as amusing as you would think. Right fielder giving chase, but he's not going to get this one. It's into the gap. Around second now and headed for third. The relay throw. Troy is doing monthly diaries of the Vroom Vroom Guys season in the Facebook group, and I will link to that. I will link to the video. And he says that the Vroom Vroom Guys may began with a taunting tweet from a Red Sox fan telling Vroom Vroom Guy, quote, I guess you need to get on base in order to score. While this was probably a reference to his modest hitting streak being snapped, it's bathed in the irony that getting on base actually prevents Vroom Vroom Guy from scoring.

The month was bookended by a fan tweet saying that Vroom Vroom Guy's teammates need to do a better job batting him in. It would appear as though the world is somehow yet to pick up on his affliction. So, thank you, Troy. You are doing hero's work. This is, I don't even, I thought that the podcast was done when we talked to John Jaso, but really, Vroom Vroom Guy, it's the pinnacle. It's the apex of Effectively Wild chapter 2.0. Yeah. And we talked about comps for the J.R. Smith forgetting what the score was in game one of the NBA finals. And Matt wrote in about another one that maybe fits into this genre. So Brad Lidge failing to cover third base in the 2009 World Series when Johnny Damon stole

second base and there was the shift. And so Damon just sprinted to third base because no one was there and he consequently scored. And you see that happen every now and then. In fact, it happened just this week to the Phillies who were already under fire from themselves for not shifting effectively. Jake Arrieta criticized their shifting, and then this happened subsequently that Chris Bryant did the same thing. The Phillies were shifting, and no one was covering third, so Bryant just went to third. There he goes.

And he's safe, and it doesn't matter. And now Rizzo walks, and Bryant takes off for third because nobody was covering the bag. Excellent base running by Chris Bryant. He didn't get to steal a second because it was ball four, but he steals 30 centrally. Catches the Phillies napping and they didn't have coverage, one of the byproducts of the shift. That is, I guess, a variation of this. The no one covering the base when they should be is kind of a mental errors of the shift. That is, I guess, a variation of this, the no one covering the base when they should be is kind of a mental error in the same vein. One more follow-up that I

wanted to mention. We discovered, what was it, in last week's Play Index segment, maybe, or no, when we were talking about the most pitches thrown in an inning, right? And you came across, you dug in greater depth into the one where the most pitches were ever thrown in an inning, right? And you came across, you dug in greater depth into the one where the most pitches were ever thrown in an inning. It was what, the eighth inning of April 19th, 1996, the game between the Orioles and the Rangers. And there were 97 pitches in that half inning. And you talked about the game log from that inning, which was very amusing. So another Matt wrote in, he said he thinks that the pitch count is the second most amazing thing about that inning. He says the first is still

that Jesse Orozco came into the game during the bottom of the eighth with the bases loaded, and after getting shelled, was taken out during the bottom of the eighth. When Orozco was pulled, the bases were once again loaded with the same three guys who were on base when Orozco first entered the game. Just amazing. That has to be the only time that has ever happened in baseball history. I didn't confirm that it is, but seems likely. So he came in, bases loaded, and left bases loaded, and they were loaded in exactly the same way. That is excellent.

Yeah, that is fantastic. Did not notice that uh let's see unrelated to that but i was just noticing what so when you go to the front page of fan graphs is a search bar player and blog search is what it says and if you hover over it you can see the players who are being searched for most often in the major and minor leagues so uh there was there have been some weird chapters in history when it's like jorge pasada has been the most popular player because we think Jorge Posada was searching himself a lot. But anyway, right now, for reasons I'm not sure about, Chris Davis is the Orioles' Chris Davis. What's going on with Chris Davis? Perfect. This is ostensibly an email show, and I have two emails here about Chris Davis. So let me read those so that this will technically be an answer to emails. So Steve says,

not really a question, but at some point we have to talk about just how bad Chris Davis's year has been and the fact he's been allowed to continue playing, right? As an Orioles fan, it pains me, but it's also pretty amazing. We are watching, well, a few of us are watching, the worst full season ever. And then Ben in Silver Spring, Maryland says, as an Orioles fan, I always expected the bottom to fall out on that enormous Chris Davis contract at some point.

Still, I certainly was not prepared for worst hitter in baseball in 2018 bad. So I have been obsessively checking his fan graphs page, trying to understand it. So Ben in Silver Spring, Maryland is the culprit. He is the one who is picking Chris Davis come at the top of the search bar. And Ben says, immediately his home run per fly ball rate jumped out at me. The first time I looked, it was around 8% for the year. As of this writing, it is 10.5%. For the previous six years, it ranged from 22.6% to 29.6%,

only dropping below 25% in 2014. It seems like there must be some relevant information here. How much is this the cause of his terrible overall numbers, or is it more a symptom of something else that is itself the cause? Is this the kind of thing we should expect to see regress by year's end, or is it more likely to stay this low? Are there other indicators that would suggest which? So just so Ben can stop checking the Fangraphs page, what can you say?

What were you going to say about chris davis's perhaps historically terrible season can i tell you so chris davis has now played in parts of three months correct april well i guess march too but april may and june of course the sample is small here's what's happened to his uh let's see what number should i choose do you like ops do you like wrc plus do you like plain old batting average do you want slugging what do do you want? Pick a number. I like WRC+. I'm sure they all tell a similar story. Great. Yes, they do.

WRC+. This is going April, May to June. Okay. 40. That's 40. 23, negative 31. Oh, no. Chris Davis is in free fall.

I was going to ask. I mean, so last year he was not very good, but I remember, you know, he took called strike three like all the time. He took 75 called strikeouts. The year before he took not very good, but I remember he took called strike three all the time. He took 75 called strikeouts. The year before, he took 78. My goodness. He is a called strikeout machine. Now, this year, his called strikeout rate is down a little bit.

Hasn't mattered. He is just awful. I remember there was a point earlier this year where he was even near the bottom of the exit velocity leaderboard, which, I mean, at that point, that didn't make any sense at all. This is Chris Davis. Now, he has picked that up a little bit. He's still hitting the ball with a little bit of thump. But just given this kind of performance, we've talked about it. I mean, he's still not as bad as Cole Calhoun, who's hit a little less, and he's on the disabled list now.

Calhoun has a worse batting line than than chris davis does but if chris davis his strike rate has gone up every month his walk rate has gone down every month he has never been a contact hitter he's 32 years old i wonder just like with calhoun the performance is so bad you kind of have to figure there's something beyond just i'm in a baseball slump like this this could be something physical i don't know if it's like a vision thing maybe he's just not actually seeing the ball very well but to be at a depth like this i mean when chris davis before he erupted i guess with the orioles he played for the Rangers. And I will say that in the year 2010, Chris Davis batted 136 times for the Texas Rangers, and his WRC plus was 44. He was very bad then too. So maybe he's going back eight or 10 years. But just to be at this level of performance, this is execrable baseball yeah i can't imagine watching this

at least we're not talking about cole calhoun anymore i guess cole calhoun is i don't know if he's happy he probably doesn't wish the season he's having on anyone else but uh at least people are talking about someone else being terrible and i guess cole calhoun is getting a little bit of a disabled list break maybe chris davis needs one too well let's see what's at the bottom of the war list so i've uh set no playing time minimum okay so we've got here's the bottom five okay well i'll say bottom six because there's a tie bottom six so there's a three-way tie at negative 0.9 wins above replacement it's jose reyes ian desmond and kendry's morales that's a lot of money on the bottom of the war list then followed by pat valica so that's two rockies in the bottom six that's bad for them uh pat valica negative 1.1 cole calhoun negative 1.2 chris davis

negative 1.8 wins above replacement oh dear i have a note here to write about calhoun i am going to switch all right all right let's take an alex Alex Reyes question because Alex Reyes news happened. Unfortunately, this is from Kyle, Patreon supporter. You have done the research and answered it already, so you will be able to answer it now. about Alex Reyes missing the rest of the season due to surgery to repair his lat muscle. It got me and some friends wondering, are there any comps for a young pitcher who pitched one season or less and pitched at a high level? Reyes threw 46 innings with a 2.67 FIP, 10 plus K per nine and 1.4 WAR, and then followed that up with missing two seasons with two different major injuries. Is there much, if any, precedent for any pitcher, let alone former number one pitching prospect, suffering the loss of two complete seasons to begin his career? Can you guys think of any players who've suffered a similar fate? Jason Isringhausen is the only one I could

think of, and I'm not positive how well he lines up. How much should expectations for Reyes's future be lessened? Also, as lat injuries are a bit less familiar to many of us than Tommy John surgery, is that injury the type of thing that is recurring? So this is understandably kind of a difficult thing to search. I basically just went in, looked for pitchers who were 25 or younger who pitched pretty well and then did not show up in the majors in the next two seasons. What I found were a lot of players who missed time because of war. So that was just a different era of baseball where players went to war to fight for the country anyway so when i uh did some narrow i have some anecdotal points here so the one that did

immediately jump to my mind was michael panetta who came up with the mariners he was a rookie of the year candidate in 2011 and then he missed 2012 and 2013 which was bad and then he came back in 2014 he pitched pretty well and now he's hurt again but he's on the on the way back we think so michael panetta has had himself a career after missing two years steve carsey back in the mid 90s he missed 1995 and 1996 gail mesh for older maritimes fans older manners fans younger i don't know pre-millennial maritimes fans i guess gail mesh didn't pitch in the majors in 2001 or 2002 and then he came back and had a fairly lucrative career that ended with mysterious terms Zach Wheeler didn't pitch in 2015 or 2016 so those are cases that I was able to find Jason Isring hasn't actually

only missed like a year and a half maybe one year I don't know so there's not a whole lot of precedent for this but it's also kind of a specific thing that we're searching for. And, of course, with Alex Reyes, it's not like this makes him any better. This doesn't improve his stock at all, but still, you don't give up on him. It's not like he had to get Tommy John surgery again. You hear of lat strains every so often, and I think that's why, what,is santana was just scratched from the dodgers start on thursday they had to do a bullpen game because santana had lats on us and you hear about this every so often pitchers go on the disabled list but the the lat injury that i remember was in

2014 james paxton went on the 60 day disabled list with a pretty bad lat strain and he came back and now he's james paxton the pitcher that we just can't talk enough about because he's so good so you don't ordinarily hear of lat strains requiring surgery for like tendon tears i don't know exactly what that is but i would say that for alex reyes's future you know the talent is there uh you know it's at least his arm is going to stay fresher but you kind of you have to assume he's going to be a higher injury risk which is uh which is bad he was already going to be a pretty high injury risk being a very hard throwing pitcher but his career isn't over but it would be less surprising now i guess if he wound up pitching out of the bullpen because who knows what kind of durability he's got yeah and i know that the cardinals and mike metheny and his staff

have come under some criticism for this not that anyone needed any more reasons to criticize Mike Matheny, but the fact that Reyes pitched even though he had felt something in his last rehab start. And I think it's one of those cases where the player wasn't completely forthcoming about the injury. And so most of the blame, if you want to blame anyone, is the player who didn't disclose the injury. But then you wonder, well, has the team created the conditions where a player would be less likely to disclose an injury? And I don't know, maybe if you're Reyes and you're a young guy and you just got that taste of the majors and then you had to do this really long and arduous rehab process, you can understand why on the verge of being back in the big leagues, he wouldn't volunteer the information that he felt a twinge or whatever it was. So I don't know whether that's something you can hold the team

responsible for, but certainly there are cases where you would want the player to come forward and you would want to encourage that openness and not have players just gritting their teeth and trying to play through an injury when ultimately it might hurt them more in the long run. So it's a tough thing to overcome for any team because obviously players are looking out for their short-term interests and not necessarily thinking that if I try to pitch through this, I might miss the whole season. But that does happen at times. By the way, unrelated to Alex Reyes, but saying in division, Tyler Chatwood update. Tyler Chatwood started on Thursday, started off the Cubs, allowed one run, only one run,. Lasted four and two-thirds innings. Struck out six. Walked seven. Also hit a batter. Tyler Chatwood has thrown 58.1 innings this season. He's walked 56 batters. He's also, just for the sake of being thorough, he's also hit three. And if you consider a hit batter the same as a walk, he's gotten more of those than he has innings pitched. Tyler Chatwood, there have been 186 pitchers who have thrown 30 innings or more this season.

Here are the five worst walk rates. 14.6%, 14.7%, 14.7%, 14.8%, 20.7%. Tyler Chatwood, and he has a better than league average ERA. It's unbelievable what's happening in Chicago for Tyler Chatwood. I he has a better than league average ERA. It's unbelievable what's happening in Chicago for Tyler Chatwood. I don't get it. He's thrown like 53% of his pitches for strikes. Just laughably bad. And you watch him.

You watch his delivery. It sucks. He's never going to throw strikes without delivery. But his stuff is so interesting. It's just, ugh. He's like the worst version of the good version of Jake Arrieta. Just like, look, my stuff is really good no one has any idea what's going to happen it's like a gun without a barrel i'm just going to make something

explode and it's going to go somewhere and one way or another someone's going to get hurt whether it's me or if it's going to be you yeah i remember you being a critic of the tower chetwood signing over the winter but even you were not expecting this i'm sure this is amazing i hope that i mean i keep expecting he's going to get torched at some point, that the runs are going to show up. But I mean, from the Cubs perspective, I would think at this point, you've seen it. I've seen enough.

I think we've all seen enough. Chatwood, I see the name Chatwood trending often enough. I think everyone has seen enough Tyler Chatwood. I know it's only been two months and change, 12 starts, but put him in the bullpen. He's a reliever. Trade for a starter. But then even if they trade months and change, 12 starts, but put him in the bullpen. He's a reliever. Trade for a starter. But then even if they trade for a starter, I mean, they already have Lester, Quintana,

Darvish, Hendricks. You're not, you don't need another one for like the playoffs. So I don't know. Just stop. Just stop with Tyler Chatwood. And incidentally, I believe the lowest walk rate among starting pitchers, Miles Michaelis with the Cardinals. Quietly, an excellent signing out

of japan uh the nefico people nailed it they said that michaelis would be uh like the bargain of the free agent market and michaelis is i would say in almost every way the complete opposite of tyler chetwood yeah hard to be more effectively wild i suppose than walking more guys than you strike out walking almost nine per nine and having a 108 era plus it's pretty effective and certainly very wild all right do you have a quick stat blast I do okay minus or OBS plus. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways.

Here's to Deistaplast. Sticking with the Thursday Cubs game, I don't know if you noticed this i was tipped off to this uh in slack on twitter i'm not writing about it ryan white is writing about it that part doesn't matter anyway this is going to be maybe the most baseball stat blast imaginable because this is going to be something that i think and maybe you will think is extremely interesting but that is also very stupid and useless. Unimpressive.

Tommy LaStella, he started for the Cubs against the Phillies on Thursday, and in the first inning, he reached on catcher's interference, and in the eighth inning, he reached on catcher's interference. Tommy LaStella reached twice in the same game on catcher's interference on Andrew Knapp. That's like an error on Andrew Knapp. Andrew Knapp now leads the majors this year in catcher's interference calls against him with three.

Tommy La Stella twice in one game. This is not the first time this has ever happened. The play index, a baseball reference, tracks catcher's interference, which I don't know why, but thankfully it is part of their event finder. So I was able to go back and look at all incidences,

incidents, all the times that a player, one player has drawn two catcher's interference calls in one game. And there have been seven. There have been seven such instances. I feel like I'm actually missing one. But in any case, here we are. So Tommy LaStella in 2018 on Thursday, he drew two catcher's interference calls.

Last April, April 28th, Josh Reddick did it. Josh Reddick did it actually to Jarrell Cotton twice. So same catcher, same pitcher, same game. 2015, Jacoby Ellsbury, right there. That's the name that we were expecting. Did it to the Rangers. He drew the first one in a game that was 0-0. And then he drew a second one in a game that was 19-5. Anyway, in 2010, David Murphy drew two catcher's interference calls

against Ian Snell and whoever the Mariners catcher was. He did that in consecutive innings. 1979, July, Bob Stinson for the Mariners against the Orioles. He drew two in the first game of a doubleheader. In 1977, Dan Meyer for the Mariners. Lots of Mariners here. Dan Meyer for the Mariners did it to the Red Sox, lee and tom murphy were the pitchers at that point in september here's my favorite part september of 1965 pat corrales for the phillies against the cubs bob hendley was

the pitcher both times pat corrales september 29th 1965 pat corrales drew two catchers interference calls in one game and the first time i could find this august 15th 1965 pat corrales drew two catcher's interference calls in one game. And the first time I could find this, August 15th, 1965, Pat Corrales did it also. Phillies against the Giants. Bill Henry, Jack Sanford were the pitchers. Did it in consecutive innings. Both times the score was 15 to 4. Pat Corrales, two times in two months, he drew two catcher's interference calls in one game. Pat Corrales lasted for a while, but not much of a hitter.

Yeah. Well, I'd say we should call Pat Corrales, but you have a chat coming up. So that will have to wait. But we could call him. He's still around. That's true. And he has very recently been or might still be a coach, a major league coach of some sort. All right.

So let's continue with another rarity. I suppose I was asked by Doug. He says, the Mets spoiled yet another gem of a start by Jacob deGrom on Saturday. I see that his baseball reference war has jumped to an NL leading 3.7, which nearly matches his win total on the season four. Has there ever been a case where a starting pitcher's war has exceeded his win total over the course of an entire season? Whoa. And as you might imagine, that is pretty unlikely. But yes, there is such a case.

It has happened one time in baseball history to a qualified pitcher. And that is the unfortunate Eddie Smith in 1937 for the Philadelphia A's. He had 4.1 baseball reference war and four wins. And poor Eddie, he had a 190 winning percentage that year. He went 4-17, and he was quite good. He had a 120 ERA+. He pitched almost 200 innings, and he just happened to be on a very bad team. Those Philadelphia A's were 54 and 97, and they did not give him much run support, as one might imagine. He had only 3.3 runs scored in his games, not just while he was pitching, but in the entire game. And that was a rude welcome to the majors, because that was his first full season in the majors and pitched quite well. But in the way that pitchers were often judged at the time, which is by win loss record, he did not do so well. And he ended up actually moving to the bullpen for most of the following season. I guess he spent part of that 37 season in the bullpen too, and things didn't go so well the

next season either. But yeah, that is the one time. Eddie Smith, I don't think that Jacob de Grom will be the second. Okay, hold on a second. Eddie Smith for that team went 4-17, and he allowed, let's forget ERA, and let's look at total runs. He allowed an average of 4.58 runs per nine innings 4.58 runs per nine innings for the same team harry kelly went 13 and 21 and he allowed 6.76 runs per nine innings he was terrible and he led the team in wins eddie smith got jobbed. And I'm sure that most people watching that team thought that Eddie Smith was the worst pitcher because of his win-loss record. Can we call Eddie Smith? No, he died in 1994. Yeah, we could, but he wouldn't answer. All right. Question from, well, this is J.R. Smith inspired, I suppose. So Mike wants to know, J.R. Smith's lack of situational awareness

in game one of the NBA finals got me thinking, how would Mike Trout's value be affected if he never knew about the game situation? He never knew the score, the inning, the count, or how many outs while at the plate, on the bases, or in the field. Let's say that he is aware of runners on the base paths. So the J.R. Smith version of Mike Trout, who is oblivious to his surroundings, how is his value affected? Well, I feel like his value would be low because he'd spend a lot of time in the hospital getting studied for journal articles. Okay, so he doesn't know the count ever? He just goes up.

Yeah, he's like the guy from Memento, I guess. He has a very short, short-term memory and immediately forgets what happened on the preceding pitch or something, but he is still skilled and Mike Trout-level talent. Okay, let's walk through this. Doesn't know the count. Can't look at the scoreboard for whatever reason. Can't read.

He can look at the scoreboard. Maybe he doesn't know what it means. Yeah, sure. Numbers are hard so yeah he doesn't know the cat doesn't know the outs i don't care about not knowing the score that's not a big deal to me yeah outs uh it would be worse if he were an infielder but you know he's already not in position to throw a lot of people out with his arm anyway and that that wouldn't come up very often so i'm not sure the outs matter he's not bunting or anything so it's the count unless i'm missing anything else yeah i mean in baseball this doesn't matter all that much like i guess there are situational hitting opportunities where it helps to know that you have to get the runner in or something but

if you're mike trout i don't know that you necessarily want him trying to hit a sack fly or hit the ball the other way on the ground or something. Anyway, he's Mike Trout. You don't need him to make productive outs because he doesn't make many outs at all. So in this case, I don't know that it hurts that much. But yeah, not knowing the count, I mean, I guess, you know know you wouldn't be protecting the plate with two strikes that sort of thing but hitters do that less and less often as a matter of course nowadays anyway right and because he's a center fielder he's not the kind of guy who catches a ball and then tosses it to the fans at the end of an inning so you know corner outfielders do that most of the time and and he doesn't there's no there's no fans really behind him in center field

realistically in anaheim anyway. In Los Angeles, I should say, I guess. Yeah. So I don't think this would make that much of a difference. I mean, he would be a worse hitter. I think we know that much. He might chase a little more, but his discipline is so good. If we assume that his skills just improbably have maintained, even though he's lost complete situational awareness,

probably have maintained even though he's lost complete situational awareness yeah uh then i guess i mean maybe his base running would be a little worse i don't i don't know but i mean we could let's see let's talk through that so if he doesn't know how many outs there are well i mean he'll still try to move up if he can move up it's just sometimes that won't matter because it'll be the third out and he'll just look kind of dumb right if this happens enough people would just be like that's mike trout being like trout the best player in baseball is an idiot yep yeah no i i don't think it makes him much worse maybe a little bit but uh no he'd be very silly but he would still be the best player baseball you know what yeah we can solve this mike trout if he had zero if he had all the same talent and no situational awareness,

then he'd be about as good as Mookie Betts. Okay, sure. All right. Barrett from Oklahoma says, here are some excerpts from a book my two-year-old son wants to read every night. And this book is called Goodnight Cubs by Brad M. Epstein. Probably no relation or maybe relation. I don't know. It was published in 2014. So the verse goes, good morning, Chicago. The Cubs are playing their biggest rival today,

parentheses, the Cardinals. We'll be cheering for them to go all the way. Chicago is awakening. There's a thrill in the air. We all have tickets. Of course, we'll be there. It's evening and the game is about to begin. The teams take the field. We can't lose. We must win. Our team in the field, all nine running about, pitching, catching, and throwing, making out after out. Thousands of Cubs fans on their feet, cheering as one. Singles, doubles, triples. Our team scores run after run. The Cubs are at bat, swinging with all their might.

Hitting home runs, clear out of sight. The Cubs win the game by a score of 4-3, a championship season it's destined to be. So Barrett says, obviously there's a lot going on here. My question is this, has any team ever hit 2-plus home runs, 2-plus triples, 2-plus doubles, and 2-plus singles and only scored 4 runs? Is this possible? Please discuss. Because, of course, the book says singles, doubles, triples, our team scores run after run,

and then hitting home runs clear out of sight. So we know that they have at least two of every type of hit, and yet they score only four runs in the game. So Playindex can, in fact, answer this question, and it has. And the answer is yes, it can happen, and it has happened. So I looked for games with at least two singles, at least two doubles, at least two triples, and at least two homers, sorted by the smallest number of runs scored.

And in fact, there have been 13 games in Major League history, or since 1908, when all of these things happened, but the team scored four runs or fewer. There have actually been five games in which all these things happen, and the team scored three runs. That is the minimum that has happened with all these conditions met. The Cubs have never done this, so in that sense, the book is inaccurate. But yes, it can absolutely happen and has happened.

What was the line? Run after run? Yeah, our team scores run after run. I guess technically true. Why would the author settle on four runs? I don't know. Given the lead up. You have all of the freedom to assign any number that you want. But a low scoring narrow one run narrow, one-run win,

that's what tells you you're destined to win the championship? It's an odd choice, but technically not impossible. So, Brad Epstein, we have fact-checked you, and technically, I guess your facts are correct. But strange, certainly strange. All right, speaking of Chicago baseball, Aaron says, Chicago Sports Radio AM670 tweeted this after Jose Barrios beat the White Sox this week. Quote, Jose Barrios' six-hitter leads twins past White Sox 7-2.

And the question from Aaron is, I find it odd to hear a pitching performance described as a six-hitter, which makes me wonder where the cutoff should be. Obviously, a no-hitter and one-hitter are in play. What about a two-hitter or a three-hitter? So, Jose Barrios did pitch a complete game, so that is what this is signaling here. But six-hitter, should you call a complete game with six hits a six-hitter, or is there a limit there? Like, if a guy gives up more hits than innings pitched, if it's somehow an 11-hit shutout or something, an 11-hit complete game,

you probably wouldn't describe it as an 11-hitter, I don't think, not on its own. Is there a cutoff for you? Okay, let's see. I just did a Google search for seven-hitter. First headline, Tom Candiotti pitched a seven-hitter in his first major league dot, dot,

dot upi.com eight hitter, Mike Kruko and Ron Reed combined on an eight hitter dot, dot, dot upi archives. Also Bill Wegman and Dan Plesak once combined on an eight hitter, Matt Kia. Oh no, this is Matt K and rich Gossage combined on an eight hitter.

Uh, Colton Wong likely to be the number eight hitter uh colton wong likely to be the number eight hitter that's not what that means but that's from colton wong news.com what the hell so uh i haven't uh done a whole lot here i haven't looked i tried to search for nine hitter but uh here we go bartolo cologne throws nine hitter in met 70 win all right let's let's try 11 hitter this date in well no that's not a headline um well here's the here's the trouble 11 hitter i typed out the word 11 but you might actually need to make that the number right isn't that the format so let's try let's try 11 hitter 11 hitter avenue okay well this isn't going to be very interesting so i'm just going to skip this

so i think that it's acceptable in that we know what the headline means. It means pitchers through the whole game, it's a complete game, and he'll add six hits. So I think it's uncommon, but I don't think it's bad form. I think it's just a different way of saying Barrios' complete game beat White Sox. I don't think it's—it's definitely weird. I don't think it's wrong. Yeah, there are enough characters in a tweet now where you don't need this economy of characters. I guess you could have just said that he pitched a complete game and he, I mean, it was a good

game. Game score of 77. He gave up two runs with his six hits, but he didn't walk anyone. He struck out 10. And again, he pitched a complete game, which is not something that happens often these days. So would I describe it as a six hitter? Probably not.

If I did, I might say complete game six hitter or something like that. But it's not unheard of or wrong. So I will not condemn this tweet. The trouble is we don't have a term for how many strikeouts that you have in the game, like probably 10. 10. Yeah, right. So what do you I mean, is it a 10 whiffer?

Like we don't have a word for that. We only have hits. Yeah, right. So what do you, I mean, is it a 10 whiffer? Like we don't have a word for that. We only have hits. Yeah, right. Exactly. All right. Andrew says, wouldn't it be more impressive if instead of striking out three guys on nine pitches, the so-called immaculate inning, a pitcher threw fewer than three pitches in an inning total? With the relatively new walk rule, you could theoretically throw one pitch and get out of an inning. In fact, you could throw zero pitches and get out of an inning if you really wanted to and were good at pickoffs, for instance, that could happen. So Andrew says, we all know that this is incredibly unlikely. So my question is, there has to be at least someone that has thrown no more than three pitches in an inning. Who are they? And in your opinion, is that more impressive than the immaculate inning? It has to be more rare than an immaculate inning, right? Answer, no, at least not throughout baseball history. So there's a page at Baseball Almanac where they have

entries for every three-pitch inning in Major League history. Obviously incomplete. We don't have this data going back all the way, but there are on record 103 three-pitch innings in Major League history, and there are now, after Max Scherzer's second immaculate inning, there are now 91 immaculate innings. So 103 three-pitch innings, 91 immaculate innings. So in terms of rarity, the three-pitch inning is actually more common than the immaculate inning, although in today's game, the immaculate inning is obviously becoming much more common, what with the lack of contact. And the three-pitch inning is, I think, becoming less common, probably, just because hitters are taking more pitches, more pitches per plate appearance. So today, probably, the immaculate inning is less rare. But when you're judging impressiveness, I think there's probably more that goes into that,

like immaculate inning probably tells you more about a pitcher or is more of a repeatable skill being demonstrated than the three pitch inning, which is sort of a fluke and relies on the batter not being patient. I am trying to find any sort of two pitch inning, but let's see uh yoshinori tate i'm looking at an old jason stark column from espn yeah so in 2012 uh yoshinori tatayama had one inning and two pitches thrown he uh came in got a jose molina double play so that hardly counts and then uh then a grand so the trouble with trying to search these things with the the play index when you're looking for really short appearances is that ordinarily if a pitcher gets through an inning on you know one pitch two pitches three pitches the the pitcher is unlikely

to be removed because he's barely pitched so when you're searching on the play index you only get the whole appearance so you can have these hidden uh these hidden achievements but yeah i we haven't had a one pitch inning at least not recently i can find one that would be uh extraordinarily difficult but uh yeah i don't think it's happened i don't think even a two pitch inning has happened yeah because i mean i think i guess we talked about that because why would you intentionally walk someone to start an inning yeah right so anyway it's possible but a reliever generally has to come in with somebody on base. Yes, right. All right. Well, you have a chat,

so we will wrap it up there. I guess you should probably go to that chat. Do you have like a five-word take on Brendan Nimmo? Since we just did the sad Mets question with Jacob deGrom, we got a question from Damien who says, if you drop minimum plate appearances to 160, Brendan Nimmo is eighth in WRC Plus with a BABIP 27 points lower than last year.

He's probably not one of the best eight hitters in baseball, but he seems to be breaking out in a significant way. His game seems largely the same, but with fewer strikeouts and much more power. Trout is atop the world leaderboard. So do we believe in the Nimmo breakout being real now? Are you pro Nimmo? I am pro anyone who has a very, very good idea of the strike zone. I think that that is a difficult prospect to rate accurately because they're generally being rated by scouts who only see these guys for a couple of days at a time.

So I think it takes a while to understand how good a guy's discipline is. Nimmo's discipline is very good by almost any metric. You look, he just doesn't chase. He knows his zone. And when you can identify pitches well and you know your own zone, then I think that you have a much higher ceiling than Nimmo has been labeled with. So he is the rare good thing for the Mets this season as they consider whether or not to trade Jacob de Krom and or Noah Syndergaard moving forward because the Mets are further out of a playoff spot than the San Diego Padres and the Detroit Tigers who I think we said maybe 10 words about all offseason long because we found them so boring yeah that is sad all right so we will end there I've got some other good ones

that are starred that we will get to next week thanks for all the good questions and you can go answer some more questions in text form now you know what i'm gonna keep going while i'm digging myself a deeper and deeper hole with the anti-dh crowd might as well keep digging i had a couple more questions about pitcher hitting here that i hoped you would get to so jabron patreon supporter says given your article regarding the dh i was wondering your position on going with eight man lineups skipping the pitcher spot rather than using a dh I saw a number of people suggest this in my Twitter mentions yesterday when I was holding my fingers over my eyes and looking at them from time to time. It's sort of an elegant idea in that it seems to split the difference. It gets rid of

pitchers batting, but it doesn't subject anyone to the atrocity of someone who hits but doesn't field. I think probably the traditionalists would hate this even more, right? Because baseball is this base three sport, three outs, nine innings, nine batters. It doesn't necessarily have to be that way, but it's always been that way. So I think people would probably object to this. Obviously, it would screw up stats to a certain extent, single season records, that sort of thing, because people would get more plate appearances per season. I think you'd probably have a hard time making this happen because the players union wouldn't love it. I think the players union likes the DH. Not that this would eliminate roster spots. It would kind of convert the starting DH spots into bench spots.

But at this point, a lot of teams kind of use the DH as a rotating bench spot anyway. Plus, in theory, the hitters who were actually in the lineup would be more valuable because they would get more plate appearances. And so maybe they would make more money. It's not a terrible idea. I don't dislike it. I think on the whole, though, I'd rather have the DH, not just because it's less disruptive, it's something that we've already had in half of baseball for, again, almost half a century, but also because I kind of like the DH. I kind of like the benefit of having that spot where you can stick a guy who can still

contribute offensively, but is not able to field for whatever reason. I like that Edgar Martinez and David Ortiz could play and be stars in some role and in some capacity until they were in their 40s. I like that Frank Robinson could go to the Angels in 1973 and have a really great season as a DH and then end his career in Cleveland and still be good there. It gives some of these really great hitters a DH and then end his career in Cleveland and still be good there. It gives some of these really great hitters a longer lease on life. And I understand why some people think that that spoils the purity of the game. And if you're on the field at all, you should have to do everything on the field. But I like that some superstars get a longer lease on life. So I think I'm more in favor of the DH than the eight-man lineup. And you know, a lot of people talked

about how it's nice to have differences between leagues. It's kind of quaint. It's something that sets baseball apart, which is not a bad thing. It's sort of nice for a sport to have some quirks and eccentricities. Obviously, football and basketball haven't really suffered from having the same rules in their conferences. I don't think baseball would either. And from a competitive balance perspective, especially now that there's interleague play all year, AL teams do get some slight advantage because of the DH. They also get to sign certain guys who are just not really available to NL teams realistically because they're only capable of DHing. So it's probably a fairer sport if everyone's playing by the same rules.

And again, I think the entertainment value of this particular eccentricity is somewhat limited at this point, now that pitchers are as inept at the plate as they are. And then the last question from Eric in Sydney, Australia. Would it be possible for an NL team to construct a roster where the pitcher does not hit under current conditions? A pitcher could be replaced before every time his number comes up in the order with relievers coming in in his stead, rather than a starting pitcher pitching somewhere between four and seven innings and relievers pitching about one inning each to get to nine you'd have a starter throwing about two to three innings before his at bat arrives replaced by a pinch hitter and a reliever who could either throw two to three innings himself or a couple of

relievers that throw an inning or so this would be repeated at least twice to get to nine innings would such a process be considered within the limitations of a 25-man roster would a starter throwing two to three innings rather than four to seven mean that they could throw more regularly than once every six days or so? Would back-of-the-rotation starters be better suited to this diminished role? Teams would have to carry more position players if they're going to pinch hit this often. Would a less stocked bullpen be able to meet this load? And yeah, I think it would be pretty tough with a 25 main roster, not only to have enough pitchers to get through a season doing this, but to have enough hitters on the bench to capitalize on doing this. Technically, it's probably possible if you were to perfectly simulate a season such that this condition would be met. In practice, though, I think it would be tough and it would

be really tough to transition from where we are now to this with no adjustment period in between. Maybe if you conditioned your whole farm system to pitch this way, you could pull it off. Obviously, things are going in this direction as it is, though. As I wrote in my article this week, pitchers are making only a little more than 5% of National League plate appearances this year. It was close to 8% in the 60s, say. So starters are obviously already going less deep into games and pitchers are getting fewer plate appearances as a result. So we're getting there. Not so much because teams are trying to avoid pitchers hitting, although that's probably part of it, but more because

they're trying to avoid pitchers going deep into games. So obviously we're heading more toward a staff where the distinctions between starters and relievers erode. And if you take that to an extreme, we will get to this Eric from Sydney in Australia scenario someday. But right now, I think if you were to try to implement this in 2018, you might hurt yourself more than you helped yourself just from tiring people out and having them pitch on a schedule that they're not accustomed to. All right, so that is the end of the questions on this episode. I wanted to mention that listener Arthur Rudolph, who has done a lot of data-related tasks

in the Facebook group, has come up with another one. Recently in the Facebook group, a listener named Michael calculated by hand the weekly amount of Effectively Wild that there's been going back to the show's beginning, just in terms of episode length. Arthur has now taken that idea and automated it.

So he had already created a spreadsheet where you can see every song used on an Effectively Wild episode and also the number of times that each artist has been used. So that is linked in the files section of the Facebook group. He has now added average episode length and total episode runtime per week to that same spreadsheet. And there is a pretty clear trend of increasing episode length and even slightly increasing weekly podcast total runtime, even though we have transitioned from five episodes a week to three episodes a week, there's still more Effectively Wild than there has ever been. Maybe don't tell Jeff that. I don't know if he would want that to be the case. I think there are many reasons why it is the case, but

anyway, thanks to Arthur's work, which will be continually updated, we know for a fact that there is more Effectively Wild every week than there has ever been before. I hope that that is generally regarded as a good thing, that you're getting more podcasts for your money or no money. So now we know. Thanks for making us a bigger part of your week on a percentage basis. Also wanted to mention that my book co-author, Travis Sochik from Fangraphs, has a good article up now about how the opener strategy that we've discussed so much has spread to the Dodgers. Not whether it's a good thing or whether it's worked, but just how it happened. And it turns out that it was basically Scott Alexander's idea. The Dodgers reliever who became an opener the other day, he saw the Rays do it and he said, hey, I'm willing to do that.

The Dodgers weren't really thinking about it until Alexander said, hey, if you want me to do this, I'll do it. So that is how an innovative strategy spreads. It wasn't as if the Dodgers were just secretly planning to do this for years and finally got around to it. They weren't even thinking about it, really, not seriously at least. And then one team did it, and another team says, hey, let's do that. So you always hear how it's a copycat league. This is a great example of that. If the opener is an advantage, the Rays now no longer hold that advantage themselves. So it's really hard to maintain that sort of edge. And in this case, it was the player's idea. So I'll link to that article. I will also link to Arthur Rudolph's spreadsheet, which you can find in the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. And by the way, the Facebook group was featured this week at Deadspin. There was a whole Deadspin post devoted to a debate in our Facebook group about what being over or under 500 means. It was a somewhat silly debate,

although no sillier than many, many other debates in the Facebook group. I love the Facebook group. Deadspin described the Facebook group's members as extremely online baseball knowers, which is not inaccurate. So welcome to the people who joined the group. Thanks to the Deadspin post. It wasn't just that one thread. It's kind of like that all the time. It's a great group. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild

and signing up to pledge some small monthly amount. The following five listeners have already done so. Jokin McAvoy, Justin Dunlap, Greg Schaefer, David Goetz, and Eddie Bajek. Thanks to all of you. You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Please leave us ratings and reviews, provided they're positive ones. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance.

Please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcastwithfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. Have a wonderful weekend. We will be back next week. Talk to you then. You were right when you said You can't always get what you want You were right when you said

It's a hard rain that's gonna fall You were right when you said we're still running against the wind. Life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone. You were right when you said This is the end And now, for those of you who've made it this far, I give you, with a hat tip to Jimmy Kimmel, Mean Tweets, DH edition. These are all tweets that were sent to me on Thursday

in response to the ringers' tweets about my article. If you're in the car with young kids and you don't want their ears to be sullied with swear words, now's the time to turn the podcast off. At Extreme Benji, no, I'd rather die. At R. Keith Hatfield, go to hell. The DH in the NL is the last sign of an oncoming apocalypse. At TX632BB, you're an idiot.

With a gif of Action Bronson saying, I hope you win the lottery and lose your ticket. At Aserof, Bad opinion is bad, and you should feel bad. At DK Dodgers, Just stop fucking with baseball. At MountainHawk98, The day the DH comes to the NL is the day that the sport is dead to me forever. At HeroMcDerp,

I mean sure, but if the NL adopts the DH, I will stop watching baseball. At WZiders, we've lost at Ben Lindbergh to the dark side. At Topher Street, burn the ringer to the ground. At JokerFox, really dude? And last but not least, at GabeCraig97, I liked Ben Lindbergh until he started openly supporting Nazism. Hashtag fuck the DH. Until next time, stay safe, protect your UCLs, and avoid politics, religion, and the DH at the dinner table.