Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1238: Absolute Unit

Episode Date: July 3, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the joyous big-league debut and amazing minor-league history of Effectively Wild favorite and new Twins utility man Willians Astudillo, an awful Royals month, Jacob deGrom, a bobbled Raimel Tapia catch and tag-up confusion, Jon Gray‘s perplexing demotion, Marlins who may be traded, a Vince Velasquez highlight, Michael Lorenzen‘s […]

A brand new love affair is such a beautiful thing But if you're not careful, think about the pain it can bring It makes you feel so bad, it makes your heart feel sad It makes your days go wrong, it makes your nights so long You've got to keep in mind Love is here, today and it's gone Tomorrow is here and gone so fast Hello and welcome to episode 1238 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 presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Hello. Later in this episode, we'll be talking to Randy Johnson. No big deal. Just maybe the best left-handed pitcher of all time. That'll be a little bit later. But first, we have to talk about maybe an even more memorable player, perhaps even nearer and dearer to our hearts. Williams Astadio is a Major League Baseball player. How much did you enjoy the first weekend of the Astadio experience? Third base, left field, center field. Center field.

Center field. He didn't look bad on any of the plays I looked up. He swung at the first pitch three times. His first hit was on the first swing at the first pitch. It was a good line drive. Williams Astadio, he's here. first hit was on the first swing at the first pitch it was a good line drive williams asked the deal he's here i did not even realize until i wrote about him on friday and i should i should make sure i've written about him a couple times this year but i did not know about him i don't

know if we're doing like the first thing but i don't remember hearing about him before you and sam talked about him on a pre-second version of Effectively Wild. So I don't know who first brought him to notice. I know that I think you were on him first. Whatever. We're not worrying about that right now. But I didn't even realize until writing about Estadillo last Friday that he had become a versatile defender. I know. Williams Estadillo, the catcher version of Bartolo Colon, who's 26 years old, plays all over the diamond.

And the twins, who suck, it's whatever, but they're trusting him center field. William Astadio, who stands 5'9", 225, except probably less and more, played center field. Incredible. Yeah. I asked Brandon Warren, the twins writer, because he has seen Estadio up close this weekend, whether 5'9", 225 is actually accurate. And he said he thinks it might be. He's kind of his own category of professional athlete, physically speaking. And yeah, I don't know who was on him first. I don't think I was. I think probably Carson wrote about him before I did. him before I did. And then this past weekend, I learned that there are some Baseball America people who are sort of obsessed with him for a while. So he's kind of been this cult figure going back a few years now. And I'm just really happy that he's now here, the pick in this year's minor league free agent draft. We're actually getting to see him. And you wrote about him.

I wrote about him. You have not seen my article yet, but if you're listening to this on Tuesday, you can. And the fun facts are just incredible, obviously. If you look at his minor league career, I mean, I have tables in my article of like the best strikeout rate seasons for any minor leaguer, minimum 100 plate appearances. And Astadillo, relative to his league, has like five of the top 11 and eight of the top 30. He is just in his own class. It's really incredible. And I looked up his minor league swing rates and his pitches per plate appearance. He's always like first or last in both of those categories, however you want to say it. He swings about 60% of the time, which is Javi Baez territory, except that Baez has a lousy contact rate and Astadillo has a great contact rate. He does ground into double plays, as one would expect. That's the downside of not striking out. But on the whole, he's good. That's the thing. It's not like the Takuya Nakashima sort of player where he makes lots of contact, but it's not really great contact and he's not really all that great offensively, at least. I mean, Astadio is pretty good and he's actually hitting for some power

this year. And I asked Alex Hasson about this. Alex Hasson, former Effectively Wild guest, former major leaguer, current Minnesota Twins assistant director of player development. And I said, how does he do this? And he doesn't know, and no one knows. But he said, and I'm quoting here, at a certain point, we encouraged him to look to do more damage early in the count and not just put the ball in play. His strikeout rate, even after that nudge, did not go up at all, which was somewhat surprising.

It's really incredible. I mean, he's just such a, I don't even know if he's a throwback. I don't know if you can throw back far enough to find a lot of Williams' astadillos. But in a game where strikeout rate rising all the time, walk rate rising, pitches per plate appearance rising, he is just counteracting every trend. What kills me—I mean, this is a big boy. I can't imagine he's very fast. We'll get some StatCast information on him before too long if he keeps playing. This year, not that I think it matters very much, six stolen bases in AAA.

That's a, since he reached like affiliated ball in North America, that is not only a career high, but I think as many as he had previous in his career combined. So career high, home runs, career high, slugging, career high, steals. He's just, Williams Estadio. I think he's 26. I didn't even have to. On Friday, he was promoted during my chat. And to just let people in on how excited I was by this,

I did not need to write another article. My week was over. I had no more work that had to be done. But I thought, I can't not do this. So I put a few hours into writing about it because he's just so so exciting in a way that i don't know i don't know how much the average person cares but i think i think that when you are able when you or i are just the average person is able to write about someone like this who's so exciting and convey

how passionate you are about how weird this is. I think that does get conveyed to other people. So I think that there are a lot more Astudio fans now than there were. It would be funny if he wound up a better professional player than Byron Buxton, but that's something for us to revisit much later on. But what I like now is that I don't know how long he's going to be in the major leagues. The fact that he's already played center field, maybe he'll be around for a while. But I think he's 26. He was approaching a career crossroads if he wasn't already there. But now that he's been in the majors once, I think that will make it that much easier for

him to get back to the majors because he's now the next team. He's got the aura now. Right. He's the utility guy. Whether it's the twins or not, they'll be like, well, someone has already made this decision once. They couldn't have been that crazy. So let's do it again. So I think we're seeing the first steps of Willian's Estadio approaching millionaire status. He's going to be a millionaire. I sure hope so. Yeah. And I feel the same way. I didn't write about him as quickly as you did, but I also volunteered to write an Estadio article when I didn't have to because I just had to. Can you imagine the strikeout rate difference over a full season of Astadio playing instead of Byron Buxton? What would be bigger, the magnitude of the difference between their strikeout rates or

their defensive stats in center field? You're making me laugh cough so the real question Estadio has also realistically he's not going to get that much time in centerfield but he has played a lot of third base where Miguel Sano used to play now this is complicated because Jorge Polanco is off the the restricted list and Eduardo Escobar has been playing third base but in theory if the twins wanted to play Escobar has been playing third base. But in theory, if the Twins wanted to play Escobar at shortstop and put Polanco, I don't know, somewhere else and play Astadio at third base, what's the difference between his strikeout rate and Miguel Sano? It's just, it's, I mean, I don't, how, if you had to predict as you were looking at this right now, what is Steamer? And I don't know how many projections there are in zips for Astadio,

but oh, great. We've got everything. Yeah yeah i looked at this good he has the lowest projected strikeout rate in the majors and the lowest projected walk rate in the majors and unsurprisingly the lowest projected three true outcomes rate in the majors by five percentage points like perfect day one yeah so the uh the depth charts projections on fan graphs combines combine Zips and Steamer. And Estadio's projected strikeout rate is 5.8%. 5.8. Do you take the over or the under, or do you think that's right on? I mean, it would be a career high for him at any level if he did that. That is how low his strikeout rates are.

So I think it's just about right on. I mean, you never know. I haven't scouted him extensively. I don't know if there's something about going from AAA to the majors for him that is suddenly going to cause a greater jump in whiffs than the typical player has, which for him would be from like 3% to 6% or something. But I think that's about right right there's just i mean there's no track record of him striking out more than that and yeah he's going to a higher level but he's gone to higher levels before and it's not like his strikeout rate has risen as he's been promoted and we can't say it's impossible either because andrelton simmons right now is a

strikeout rate of 4.6 percent in the major league so So this can be done. It's just that Estadio swings even more than Simmons does, which means he would strike out less. Because I don't know how often... I don't know if Estadio has a crazy chase rate as much as he just has a crazy, I'm making contact early in the count, therefore my bets never get deep. In AAA, Estadio has averaged, I think,

a little under three pitches per plate appearance, where the Major League average, I think, is about four pitches per plate appearance. So that's, I mean, I don't know. Maybe that's not as eye-popping as the other stuff, but that's 25% fewer pitches per plate appearance. Anyway, I'm sure this is not the last time we will talk about Williams-Astadio on this podcast. There will be, as long as, I know Shohei Otani is coming back as a hitter, not as a pitcher. So this will be the Trout, Otani,

and Astodio podcast for the remaining three months. It's funny. I was listening to Sam just this past week on the Infinite Inning podcast with Steve Goldman, which is great. And Steve was asking him, like, are you upset about missing Otani? I mean, do you feel that loss acutely in your day-to-day life? And Sam was saying that as much as he likes Otani, like, there's always another guy who's doing something interesting. Maybe not quite as interesting as Otani, but some storyline surfaces. Someone goes on an amazing hot streak. There's someone you never heard of who suddenly appears. And here we are with Enthusiastio, maybe not quite as fascinated by him as I am by Otani,

but it's pretty close. And I will say, you know, he had that one inning in center field. For all I know, that may be the only inning that he ever plays in center field in the majors. But I think that crossed off the last unchecked space on his positional bingo card i think he has now professionally played every position at some point somewhere if you include summer leagues and winter leagues like he's played first he's played second plenty of third of course he's caught primarily he's dh'd briefly he played left field just the other day. He's played center now. He has played right a couple times, and he even played shortstop for 40 innings in the Venezuelan Summer League.

And by the way, he's pitched. He pitched in a game. This was in AAA last year. He pitched two innings, scoreless, gave up one hit, and naturally, no walks, no strikeouts, even when he's pitching. So he does it all. And I looked at, you know, there've been plenty of 5'9 or shorter center fielders because baseball players used to be tiny. All people used to be tiny, but there has never been a center fielder who was 5'9 or shorter

who was listed at greater than 215 pounds. So he has broken the positional boundaries as far as body type goes i watched him when he was playing left field he got to a ball in the gap and he got there pretty quick he handled it and did you see him barehand the swinging bunt at third base he looked smooth charging yeah yeah and he tripled so yeah he tripled on the ball that got by jason hayward yeah should have had astadio out there i mean i don don't know. He's just the best and I love him. And I hope he is in the majors with the Twins forever or with someone forever because I agree. He is now a certified major leaguer.

I think he deserves a shot, especially if he can play every position and seemingly catch pretty competently too. So there is a spot in our hearts and in the majors for Williams-Estadillo. So let's talk about a team that could use a player like Williams-Estadillo. In the month of May, the Kansas City Royals scored 135 runs and they had a team OPS of 734. Perfectly unremarkable. Nobody cares about the Kansas City Royals posting those numbers. Since then, beginning June 1st, a game they lost to the A's, 16-0. Since then, the Kansas City Royals have scored 58 runs, and they have a team OPS 545. Now, this is even funnier if you don't look at OPS. If you want to look at just the month of June, or actually the last 30 days,

this is a Fangraphs pull-down menu. This is a leaderboard you can look at. It's fun. The Astros over the past 30 days have the best team WRC plus at 124. Second place is a tie between the Dodgers and the Reds at 121. There's things I didn't know was going on. Anyway, you go to the very bottom. It's funny because I wrote about in the month of May, the Diamondbacks had their worst offensive

month ever. The Royals just put them to shame. So I'll just read from the fifth worst to the worst. Team WRC plus over the past 30 days. Orioles, 78. White Sox, 78. Remember, 100 is average. Pirates, 77.

Tigers, 71. Royals, 46. 46! Their position players over the past month have been 2.6 wins below. Replacements. If you look at the worst offensive Junes in all of baseball history, and this, I just keep switching up stats, but this now goes to a version of OPS+,

which is specific to that split. So the worst June in baseball history belongs to the 2014 San Diego Padres, who had an S OPS+, of 42, which is so bad. And there's a 1955 Orioles at 45. There's a 1981 Twins at 48. 1911 Brooklyn, whatever they were, at 54. The 1963 Houston, whatever they were, at 54. And the Royals are there at 55.

So the Royals just had the sixth, or really because of a strike short in season, the fifth worst June offensively in Major League history. So things are bad for the Royals, who as you look at them, they are 25-58. They're fresh off getting swept by the Mariners, but that still keeps them a game better than the 24-59 Baltimore Orioles. So I know we've talked about those teams a few times lately. I don't really care to do it more, but they've been so bad, so bad.

And they're going to get worse. Both of those teams on pace for, what, 50 wins, fewer than 50 wins. And yeah, they're going to get worse. So that's not great. But didn't you get a post out of like an abysmal Royals month last year? Wasn't there like some? Yeah, I remember this was giving me deja vu because there's already been a Jeff Sullivan post

about like the worst Royals hitting month ever. Double check how bad that month was. I wonder what month that was. It was probably April. Yeah, I think it was early in the year. Yeah, sure. So their SOPS plus for that month was 68. Way better than what they just did.

So that's a really bad month for the Royals. They're not out of it because they got shut out in their first game in July. Now, that was a James Paxton-Edwin Diaz game. But in any case, I know there's one more thing, at least one more thing we wanted to get to related to Rymel Tapia, I believe, and a bobbled fly ball. We'll get to that. But one thing I'll just throw out there because this is something, this is one of those narratives now where there's really not a whole lot we can do about it. But the Seattle Mariners are 54-31. They have a run differential of plus 22.

The Los Angeles Angels, not of Anaheim, are 11 games worse than the Seattle Mariners with a run differential of plus 17. Five runs worse. 11 games worse than the Seattle Mariners with a run differential of plus 17. Five runs worse. 11 games worse. It is incredible. I saw a fun fact about that in the Facebook group, that the Mariners are now 23 games above 500, but have outscored their opponents by 22 runs.

Another follow-up, by the way, we talked about pitchers who have had higher wars than win totals, as in wins and losses, the old school style. And we found that Eddie Smith in 1937 was the only qualified pitcher to have done it. Four old school wins. And what did he have? 4.4 new school wins. Jacob deGrom is still doing it, still doing it halfway through a season now.

He lost another game, or at least the Mets lost another game this past weekend. It wasn't his best start, but he is now, if you at least include his hitting, I think he has a tenth of a win of hitting value. So if you fold that in there, he's got 5.1 war and still just five wins. So he's making it happen. If he gets traded, that would probably ruin it. He could get hurt. Yeah. No, I don't wish that on him. And I guess he wouldn't qualify technically if he did get hurt now.

But he has kept it up for longer than he is happy about, certainly, because he's had some frustrated quotes lately and I don't blame him. So fly ball. Yeah. Yeah. Rockies. So I've got two things to say about the Rockies. We can start with the frivolous one, I guess. And this was a play on Sunday. And this was the classic example of the scenario that we've talked about on this podcast a few times. if an outfielder could just deke a runner by instead of catching it when a runner's on third, for instance, just juggle it, just bobble the ball, just bounce it off your glove. And that way, the runner on third might not know to leave. And of course, the rule, as we have discussed,

is that you can leave on contact. As soon as the outfielder touches the ball with any part of his body, the runner on third can start going. It does not need to be a catch. But as we have discovered since, not everyone knows this rule. And so since we talked about it, this has happened on a few broadcasts and we always get alerted to it by a listener. And it happened on Sunday. And I will play a clip. This is in the air to deep center field. Tapia will have room. He'll make the catch. Tagging is Taylor. Also tagging is Muncy. The Rockies might have a challenge here

because Tapia did not catch the ball clean. So they're going to probably challenge in second base. We'll see what happens. He challenged both. Let's see if he does not catch a clean. Whoa. The runners have already left. I had turned my head to look at Muncie at first to see if he was going to tag.

Wow. So they're going to. You've got to appeal both. You may end up with a triple play here. Look at that. He's already gone. He hasn't secured it yet. He hasn't secured it. This should this should be honestly this is going to be one of the strangest triple plays you've ever seen i would think they're gonna step off they're not they're not

wow so tapia is in center and he is kind of juggling the ball. He eventually catches it. And the broadcasters, I believe, Drew Goodman and Ryan Spielborg did not immediately know that this rule was that you can just checked on the bases. So again, this is not known by everyone. And the more we know that it's not known, it seems to me that you could actually probably deke some runner at some point in a real game if you tried. Yeah, the video clip that's posted, it includes the bubble and it includes the announcers being dismayed and flabbergasted, thinking that the Rockies are about to turn a triple play. And then it cuts off.

The video does not demonstrate that. No, actually, there's not even a challenge, not even a hesitation, no umpire suspense. Everybody knew except for the two announcers. But it was great. Nearly thought it might be post-worthy, but I haven't gotten that desperate yet. But it was delightful to see. it might be post-worthy, but I haven't gotten that desperate yet. But it was delightful to see. And what a weird thing to notice.

But I guess I was going to say it was weird for the listener to notice, but I guess since the broadcast talked about it for 30 seconds, then it maybe would be easier to pick up on. You also wrote about John Gray. John Gray at the ring. He's been good and bad. Well, Tapia is the guy who replaced John Gray on the Rockies roster, which is a natural segue. But I will say, by the way, that they did eventually in the booth come around to the rule that you can leave on contact. And one reason why this was intriguing to me is because Ryan Spielberg, who was in the booth, was an outfielder. And I was actually talking to Ryan before that game because he was

helping me out with the John Gray story. I was trying to figure out what the heck is going on with John Gray. So I asked Ryan, who I think is a smart guy and a good broadcaster and was once good for me on my fantasy team too. So I wish I had known that this was going to happen in that game. I could have tipped him off ahead of time. By the way, if this play happens tonight, don't be surprised. I have since corresponded with him and he says he was just kind of caught off guard. So I don't mean to pick on him. I mean, when we were first asked about this rule, I had to look it up. So it's not like everyone knows this. And he did know the rule. I believe it's just kind of one of those things where you're in the heat of the moment on a broadcast or a podcast for that matter and you're just not thinking of everything you know and something slips your mind

anyway he says that as an outfielder there were times when he tried to catch balls as low as he could to try to induce a player to leave early so yeah interesting so john gray was not on this rockies team tapia was because john gray is in AAA now, and he just has one of the most mystifying seasons I can remember, and I spent most or all of my Sunday trying to figure it out. and tables and hopefully there's something helpful in there but if you haven't followed John Gray's season of course he was really good last year you wrote a post arguing that maybe he was the best pitcher the Rockies had ever had last season and he's been their opening day starter consecutive years he was their wild card game starter didn't go so well but they trusted him and they should have because he's really good he He throws hard, got a good slider and a curveball, all the rest. He's like potential ace when you look at his stuff. And also when you look at some of his stats, like every stat except his ERA, essentially, his ERA close to six and it's actually higher away from Coors.

Everything else says that he has been better this year than last year. All of his defense independent pitching stats are better. His strikeout rate is significantly higher. His contact rate has decreased by more than any other pitcher relative to last year. So in a lot of ways, it seems like he's really good, except that he has given up lots and lots of runs. And that's because he has an extremely high near 400 BABIP. But it's also because he has pitched much more poorly, it seems.

Not just had worse luck, although that too, but he's pitched more poorly with runners on base. And so his strikeout minus walk rate, when the bases are empty, he's basically Max Scherzer. And when runners are on, he's below average, essentially. And it's really strange, and I don't know what to make of it. He doesn't go back and forth between the stretch and the windup, and everyone who watches the Rockies thinks that there's more going on here, that there's a concentration and focus issue, that his intensity or command is straying at times. I really tried to dig into this as deeply as I could, and it's really hard to figure out why he has this enormous split between how good he should be based on a lot of stats and how good he's actually been

he now has the highest career babbip of any pitcher with 400 innings pitched and the highest career gap between his era and fip so something's got to give here yeah you look at his his fip with the bases empty it's 1.93 and with the bases not empty it's 4.69 as you pointed out that john gray did not have a split like this at all last season. So John Gray already proof of concept that he can be a good starting pitcher. So what makes this so bizarre, I think, it's easy from the outside perspective to point to all of his numbers and say, look, he's going to be fine. He's going to regress.

Everything's going to fall in line. And I think that if you just left John Gray in place for the second half, his ERA would come down or his other numbers would maybe get a lot worse. When you start talking about maybe the psychology of it, and I think that's why the Rockies are giving him a quote unquote reset, right? Is that they're sending him down to the minors so that he can sort of get the pitch, get some reps in in a lower pressure environment and just give himself a chance to breathe. And I think that, I don't know if it's a fundamental misunderstanding, but there's something that at least doesn't get enough attention that when we know, we know that at the major league level, regression happens.

Players and teams regress toward where they're supposed to be given the opportunity. But that doesn't necessarily mean that's an automatic process. But that doesn't necessarily mean that's an automatic process. And so if you have a player who's way overachieving or way underachieving, either opponents will adjust to him or he might make adjustments to get back to his usual norm. And so if you are John Gray, maybe you do need a reset in order for the regression to take place because it would be really easy to just allow things to snowball now. If he goes out there thinking, I just can't execute when there are runners on base and he's just fighting himself pitch after pitch after pitch then that's not going to be good

for anyone we know that psychology is fragile we know that psychology is unpredictable not just for john gray but for all of us we all at least i wake up feeling different on just random days and i don't know what it means it's it's and it's not always easy to change your mindset so if there's something to keep in mind with john gray it's that i think point a and we know this he is extremely talented uh and he should be a good starting pitcher as long as he's healthy uh we can also say that two as he improves that is not an automatic process he will need to work on it the team will need to work on it and they will need to figure out a way to get him there because it is not just something that's going to happen without some form of intervention. And I do not think that is anti-analytical to

demote John Gray to AAA. Yeah, right. If this were 20 years ago and a different pitcher, I mean, certainly there were times when teams just formed the wrong impression about a pitcher because it was pre-BABIP. It was pre-FIP. No one realized that you could just have luck go against you, and it wasn't really a reflection on your performance. And I know the Rockies take a lot of abuse. Some of it deserved for some of the moves that they make, but there's no front office in 2018 that is just looking at ERA and saying his ERA is high, therefore he's bad, therefore he's a AAA pitcher. It's always more complicated than that and more sophisticated than that. And that's the distinction I tried to make.

What you just said is that it's very easy to point to a gap between someone's ERA and FIP and say it's going to regress, he's going to be better. Usually that is true. We know that FIP and FIP-like stats predict future ERA better than past ERA does, but it's not always the same sort of regression or the same reason for regression. Sometimes it really is that just balls have been falling in and there have been a bunch of bloopers and bleeders and you can just do exactly what you've been doing and you'll just get better results. Sometimes it's not though. Sometimes something is off and maybe your BABIP is high because your command is off and you're throwing a lot of pitches down the middle of the plate or

something and then your command gets better because you're a major league pitcher and you can improve yourself and your BABIP falls and your ERA falls with it. And so yeah, you regressed, but there was an active role that you played in that process. It wasn't just waiting for the universe to right that wrong. So I do think that's a distinction that is important to make sometimes, not always. Agreed. So we're going to play, I don't know how many times you've played the Marlins pitching staff game, but there is a report out there from John Marossi.

The Red Sox, and I think also the Dodgers, have been in touch with the Marlins about, let's say, three relievers. Three of the Marlins relievers, the Red Sox and Dodgers, are interested in trading for any of these three relievers. Do you think you can name them? Well, I'm going to say for sure I can't name all three. Brad Ziegler's still there. I don't know that anyone is as interested in Brad Ziegler anymore. I want to stop you there. No. Okay. Okay. I do know one because I saw him attached to a rumor and I have thought of him for a while as maybe the most emblematic pitcher of the notion of effectively wild. And that is Kyle Bearclaw. And Kyle Bearclaw is good and I think is not quite

as wild as he once was but for a while there when I thought of effectively wild pitchers I thought of Kyle Bearclaw yeah and a fun fact about him is ERA is 0.99 for some reason yeah okay two more uh nope Drew Drew Steckenreiter and Adam Conley oh Adam Conley yeah I had the same response as you I diditer and Adam Conley. Oh, Adam Conley. Yeah, I had the same response as you. I did not know Adam Conley was pitching out of the bullpen, much less pitching well out of the bullpen, because he was a guy who has one of those Chris Sale deliveries and Chris Sale fastballs and not Chris Sale anything else.

But Adam Conley is apparently a reliever now. And not only is he a reliever, but he's throwing five miles per hour harder than he did last season. So way to go, Adam Conley, for getting back on the radar, I guess. But I was talking with a friend over the weekend about how the Mets wasted money on a loogie or something. I don't know. I don't follow the Mets bullpen that closely. And we were talking about whether it's easy or hard to find a left-handed reliever.

And I was explaining, well, you know, you look at the Astros. Even the Astros don't have a very good left-handed reliever. It's harder than you think. But Adam Conley, I guess maybe it is easier than, maybe it is exactly as easy as it seems like it should be. So I don't know. Bullpens are just all over the place. There was a time when he had some promise as a starter, right? There has been a Jeff Sullivan, Adam Conley post in the past.

So you take someone with some promise as a starter, you put them in the pen. Sometimes that works out really well. So I also wanted to say in the past week or so, we've seen two demonstrations of two-way play that are pretty impressive. Oh, of course. Yeah. Michael Lorenzen, the Reds reliever, is also a really good hitter. And Matt Davidson, who you have written about this year for being a much improved hitter, he is also a really good hitter. And Matt Davidson, who you have written about this year for being a much improved hitter, he is also a really good pitcher. If you could combine Michael Lorenzen's hitting and Matt Davidson's pitching, although I guess Matt Davidson's hitting is better

now too, but if you could put those two together, you'd have another Shohei Otani, but it's two people. So it doesn't really count. And Mike Lorenzen, not that great a pitcher, but he was actually on the Ringer MLB show last year because he hit a big homer then and was being used as a pinch hitter. But he just hit three home runs. Did he hit home runs in like three consecutive at-bats or something? So I don't think it was three consecutive at-bats, but I can at least check right now to make sure. Yeah, we should look up what it was. I don't want to shortchange him because it was impressive. He was a two-way player in college, and he likes hitting and seems to be good at hitting.

The answer is it was three consecutive at-bats, but four three-in-four-played appearances because he also drew a walk, the nerve of some people. So Michael Lorenzen's current WRC Plus is 620. That's good. Lorenzen is a weird one because, you know, he is, for the Reds, he's a multi-inning reliever, and his strikeout rate has plummeted. It's half of what it was before. So on the mound, he's kind of struggling.

But he now owns a career. This is only 65 plate appearances, but he owns a career wrc plus is a hitter of 120 he's hit five home runs now he has only one walk and 21 strikeouts and he's he's bunted four times but he doesn't strike out too too much he doesn't swing out of the zone too much his contact rate is perfectly fine for a power hitter i apparently wrote a post last april two aprils ago titled michael lorenzen's officially a two-way player i don't remember that he must have hit a home run and pitched well in the game before that uh there's a quote it's above that uh from rotowire news despite lorenzen hitting a pinch hit grand slam and saturday's win over the brewers the reds are

not planning to change lorenzen's role mlb.com's Mark Shelton reports. So he's not officially a two-way player, but he is at least a two-way threat. So Michael Lorenzen, all kinds of fun. I know less about what Matt Davidson did, so enlighten me. Matt Davidson just pitched really well. I think he was hitting 90-something and had, like, legitimate breaking balls in a way that you don't typically see. I think he was getting whiffs. Granted, I think he was maybe facing Rugnet Odor, so who doesn't? But still, I think he looked pretty impressive. Maybe you can look up what his actual stuff was on StatCast or something. I don't

have it in front of me, but he pitched one inning and he was extremely effective and impressive. He did get a strikeout, didn't allow anything. He looked better than the typical position player pitcher does. So Matt Davidson on Friday, he threw, this is going off Brooks baseball classifications. So he threw six fastballs and he averaged 90 miles per hour. He had a pretty good amount of vertical break. So he's got one of those fastballs you want to use up in the zone. And his curveball, oh my goodness,

his curveball averaged 72 miles per hour. With eyeballing it, I've seen this movement profile before. It's Adam Wainwright. It's the Adam Wainwright average curveball in terms of horizontal break and vertical break, which also makes it the, I guess, Rick Porcello kind of curveball. They're not the only pitchers who have this kind of curve, but you've got a low to mid 70s curve with a lot of horizontal break and a lot of vertical drop.

So here's a hunch I have. I've read no postgame interviews with Matt Davidson, but he had a bad season last year as a hitter, and it took him a while to get to the major leagues and establish himself in the major leagues i i know every hitter like fools around with pitching on the side just like some pitchers fool around with hitting on the side i bet matt davidson started to fool around with uh let's call it slightly increased urgency as he noticed that his hitting career might not be going anywhere because this i know it's only one inning, but this is convincing. His fastballs were up.

His off-speed stuff was down. This is, and he threw nothing in the middle of the plate. As I'm looking at this right now, his curve ball in movement, they were consistent. His pitches were consistent in their speed and their movement profiles. Matt Davidson is the X best reliever right now in the white socks bullpen give me a number that'll be different in a month from now probably because they still have what soria and nate jones other good guys i'll say he's like the sixth and i don't know how many they have currently but probably seven or eight yeah i mean he, he's certainly not the 30th best reliever they have in their bullpen.

This is good. This is a convincing outing in the way that, what, Pablo Sandoval also looked good when he pitched that one time. Some hitters are pretty good at this. Yeah, fun. All right. And I also wanted to mention the Vince Velasquez play. I'm sure you saw it, the one where he got drilled by an Adam Eaton line drive on his arm and was in extreme pain. Maybe it took a little while for the pain to travel to his brain, but he was very shortly writhing on the ground in obvious discomfort. That's an understatement. But before he started writhing,

he managed to pick up the ball with his left hand. And of course, he is not a left-handed pitcher. He managed to throw the ball to first, a perfect strike on a pretty intense play. Adam Eaton, not a slow guy, and it had deflected off of Velasquez already. He threw a perfectly accurate pitch with his left hand to first base after having dealt with the pain and gotten to this ball. And it was really a pretty vivid demonstration of how good baseball players are at baseball and just generally moving their bodies. Curveball hits Velasquez and he's going to throw left-handed. How about that? moving their bodies. This weekend, I got my dog Grumpkin this thing called an eye fetch. It's like a little automated thing that you put a ball in a little slot and it just automatically throws the

ball for her and it launches the ball. It's like a little cannon. And in theory, at least she is supposed to figure out how to do that so that I don't have to, but we haven't gotten there yet. Anyway, she wanted to play with this thing all weekend. So I was lying on the couch and because of the way the couch is configured, you've slept on this couch, but I had to make the throw lefty. I was trying all weekend to throw the ball into the eye fetch with my left hand from the couch. Couldn't do it. I tried many times.

Granted, it's a very small slot, but I couldn't do it. And then as I had been trying to do this for quite some time, I open up the play and see Vince Velasquez do that. And I felt pretty bad about myself and my physical abilities so you would throw the ball and you would miss so did you have to i'm looking at the eye fetch right now online did you have to then get up or would grumpkin go retrieve it how did this work she'd bring it back yeah i i wasn't getting up one way or another okay so she was just playing one or two varieties of fetch almost regardless it was either fetching the ball you thought it was fetching it out of the eye fetch

yeah i we tried the eye fetch thing for a while. She couldn't quite make the connection that she's supposed to operate it herself, but I look forward to the day when she does. Anyway, I was just being lazy and trying to make this throw without actually moving my body, which required left-handedness,

and I don't have that. And there he was making what appeared to be a perfectly ambidextrous play. I did not know. So I was watching enough videos and reading about this. I did not know that Vince Velasquez is actually ambidextrous, I guess. Is he? Now, I don't know if that means he can like write his name with both his hands,

because it probably doesn't mean he can pitch with both his hands. Because if it did, he's had a lot of injuries, you guys. He probably would have tried pitching with the other arm at some point that was a bullet though that he threw like it was almost as good as williams astadio yeah he must have thrown that like 80 off balance i mean i mean we could probably ask like darren wilmer to mike petriello to find the velocity of that throw it looked very good so. So it was one of those very convincing throws that he could probably not be the worst pitcher in baseball if he literally switched hands. We know that we've seen Pat Venditti trying to do this. And he, of course, has done it in the major leagues. But his stuff is not good. And Velasquez

would have the best stuff we've seen from ambidextrous pitchers based on our sample of two of them in recent history. But yeah, that was the fact that he is to some degree ambidextrous. I don't want to say it takes some of the magic out of it, but it at least provides an instant explanation where I can say, OK, this wasn't genuinely the most improbable thing I've ever seen in a baseball game. It explains because otherwise you wouldn't even try the throw. If that happened to me, I would not try to throw the ball to first base right-handed. First of all, I would have been dead immediately

upon impact of the ball into my arm, but it wouldn't have even crossed my mind to attempt to throw across the diamond off balance. The fact that it did for him, clearly he's done something like this before, but nevertheless never, I don't know if this, I guess I didn't get to watch a whole lot of Jim Abbott because that was The fact that it did for him, clearly he's done something like this before. But nevertheless, never. I don't know if this, I guess I didn't get to watch a whole lot of Jim Abbott because that was before every game was on television or on the internet.

Just being aware of the fact that Jim Abbott made it work through a no-hitter, that's improbable as is because I don't really understand the whole glove flip mechanism that he deployed. But this is like one sample of some sort of weird modern day Jim Albit equivalent in terms of you watch it and you think, what did I even just see? Yeah. All right. Rate this fun fact that the Tampa Bay Rays tweeted. Ryan Stanek's seven consecutive scoreless starts is the longest streak since baseball

reference data is available, 1908. Ryan Stanek now has the longest ever streak of consecutive scoreless starts and of course we know why well okay i rate it as a zero as an actual fun fact because it is deliberately misleading but i rate it as a uh a nine humorous fun fact assuming that we tweeted it out knowing that people would know that this is ridiculous. So I love it as a tweet. Yeah. They also said change our minds. So I think they understood, but yeah, Sam used to say that all fun facts lie and this one certainly lies, but this is a kind of clever. I actually kind of like this one. It's funny. It points to a way that the game is changing. We were talking to Hans Van Sluten recently about whether baseball reference

was considering changing anything because of the opener. And not really, except that this fact now is forever altered by this opener strategy. So kind of fun. By the way, Hans Van Sluten, good job immediately promoting Williams-Estadillo after making it to the Twins.

I assume he was solely responsible for that decision. For anyone who's not familiar, the Rays started their opener with Sergio Romo pitching back-to-back games May 19th into May 20th. Starting May 19th, the team with the lowest ERA in baseball by 25 points is the Tampa Bay Rays, with an ERA of 2.73, better than the Yankees, Astros, Dodgers, Mariners, better than everyone. Yeah. Of course of course i believe that their era is actually higher in the opener games than it is in the non-opener games so really at least in part it's just that their entire starting rotation is pitching really well even in the non-opener games but it is still kind of cool i guess it's a proof of concept also worth pointing out that over that span their team batting average in balls and play aloud is

243 so that's going to go up but maybe the rays figured out defense or soft contact i don't know but the fact that the rays are 42 and 41 i know that we have done this a bunch of times but just for anyone who's not already familiar the tampa bay rays not only are they over 500 but they have a base runs winning percentage of 554 which keeps them a game better than the seattle mariners a team they trail by like a lot yeah yeah stop stealing all of john gray's batted ball luck tampa bay race he needs some too last thing i just sent you a link to a gif and this is something that i didn't notice at the time because i'm not sure it's all that noticeable but it is noteworthy. So I saw a tweet

from the official RetroSheet account. Of course, RetroSheet, the effort to record all baseball data, collect all accounts of every game ever. And RetroSheet tweeted that on Friday, there was a 5-1 force-out in the Pirates-Padres game. So that is third base to pitcher and retro seat says the only other 5-1 force out we could find happened in 1941 executed by the Cardinals against the Giants in the top of the eighth so I went and watched this play and this was in the sixth inning on Friday's game Padres Pirates Joe Musgrove is pitching David Freeze is playing base, and Christian Villanueva is hitting. And evidently, this is the first 5-1 play in 80, almost 80 years. And if I had been watching this game live, which I was not because Padres Pirates, I'm not sure that I would have really noticed.

Like the broadcaster says, you know, good job by Musgrove getting over there. And it was. But he doesn't say best job by a pitcher in 80 years getting over there because no one else ever gets over there. I don't think I would have really registered that this was weird. And it is. And it just kind of, you know, it's the old cliche about you see something in baseball that you've never seen before in every game. And Sam wrote about that last year year this is an example of that sometimes you don't even know that you saw that thing until retro sheet tweets it what is interesting i think if i were watching this live which again for the same reason as you know but had i been i would have thought okay it's

definitely weird because you know that's the picture over there covering you know that doesn't usually happen right but what's odd is that it's the shortstop. I assume that's Jordy Mercer. I don't know his number because, you know, Jordy Mercer. He's right there. He's a step away from third base when Musgrove steps on third base, and it's not like a snap play. There was time for this to complete.

So Musgrove hurried over to cover, which is fine. It's good and smart, and he got the out. But Jordy Mercer was almost right there, could have converted this. So this was very nearly a 5-6 put out, which I'm sure has happened far more often. So it also takes a little bit of, I don't know, over-aggressive pitcher behavior to make this happen. So I wonder how many of the really rare put outs involve the number one, involve pitchers who are doing things that maybe they aren't supposed to be doing. But, you know, they all fancy themselves athletic. All right.

So let's talk to someone who was Randy Johnson, one of the best pitchers of all time. I would say probably the best left handed pitcher of all time, although you could certainly make a case for Warren Spahn or Lefty Grove. I do know that Randy Johnson has the highest war of any pitcher from age 28 on except for Cy Young. And Randy Johnson won several more Cy Young awards than Cy Young ever did. So I think he should be at the top of that list. And it's funny. You get pitches to have guests on a podcast when you host a show. And often those guests are promoting something.

It's not just, hey, Randy Johnson felt like talking to you guys about baseball. What do you think? It's, you know, Randy Johnson is promoting something, in this case, a grilling company. And you always kind of wonder, well, do we want to do this? It's, you know, It's kind of crass and commercial and it's awkward a bit. Not that I have anything against the product, but you just have to talk about grills for a while. That's not really why we're all here. And so that's kind of his first answer. But when the person you are being offered is Randy Johnson, you kind of have to do

it. I don't care what he was pitching or promoting. Randy Johnson is awesome. And I know that he was your favorite player growing up. You told me he wasn't someone I rooted for as a fan, but as a watcher of baseball, I was always fascinated and mesmerized by Randy Johnson. I mean, there were pitchers who were maybe as good as Randy Johnson, you know, Pedro and Maddox, and they were fun to watch in their own ways and in some ways even more fun to watch because it just kind of felt like Randy Johnson was just breaking baseball and cheating almost just by being who he was and being as big as he was and throwing as hard as he did with that slider it was just probably the most overpowering pitcher i ever saw i don't know if he was more impressive than pedro or maddox or clemens but just pure mesmerizing baseball i don't think there's anyone who beats him in my book yeah and thankfully he existed before the point where we could just just break everything down in exhaustive detail so

we're just allowed to rely on childhood memories, which are generally the fondest of memories, childhood and high school memories. And I think honestly, because we had this conversation, I think that if there were four people who I would unconditionally talk to, even if they were just trying to pitch something that I didn't approve of or know anything about at all, and that's probably like Randy Johnson,

Pedro Martinez, Itro Suzuki, and Williams Estadio. And so it just happened to be that one of them had someone reach out to us. So that's great. It's definitely weird to have someone on who's promoting something that has nothing to do with the podcast because it is effectively an advertisement. But it's Randy Johnson. And we remember Randy Johnson's deodorant commercial. And so I remember that being great. And so we will also listen to Randy Johnson talk for a few minutes about grills and then talk for more minutes about Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols and getting lit up in one game in April of 2001 where a young Jeff Sullivan was in attendance. We didn't dwell on that one very long. $175 million in salary playing baseball during his career, plus promotions, advertisements, off the field stuff. He's in the Hall of Fame. He definitely doesn't have to do this. So I guess he

really likes grills because I can't think of any reason why he would necessarily be pitching a product unless, I don't know, he's very into photography. Maybe cameras and film are much more expensive than I'm aware. Well, you said last week that you and Michael Bauman had had Ozzie Smith on the Ringer podcast last year, and he was also marketing these grills. I mean, he only made $32 million, so he's got to get that grill money. Maybe they came around to the fact that Randy Johnson is better at pitching. Maybe they came around to the fact that Randy Johnson is better at pitching. I not only am I fake laughing at that, but this is the second time you've told me that joke. The first time it's shared with the world.

Can we stop this now and just move on to the interview? Yeah, let's do that. We will be back in just a second with Randy Johnson. I like to breathe in, find a friend and gather with him. I'm a wolf in a city of women, you only know the light is on. So we are joined now by Randy Johnson, a man who needs no introduction except to say that today he is joining us on behalf of Kingsford Charcoal, which means that we'll be talking about both baseball and barbecue. Randy, it is a pleasure to have you. So welcome to the show. Well, thank you so much. And yes, happy to be working with Kingsford.

What a great time of the year, the baseball season and barbecuing. They both go hand in hand. And to make things even easier to get all of your groceries and Walmart barbecue needs, you can do one-click shopping now with an app, a grocery app from Walmart. It's very cool. I actually have the app. You can shop online, and they'll have everything bagged up for you. You pull up into a little parking area at Walmart and they'll even bring out your groceries. So everything's pretty convenient. And so I've enjoyed my short period of time working

with them and obviously really love barbecuing. And at this time of the year, who doesn't? The baseball season going on now. Yeah. And I also enjoy having people make and prepare food for me so that I don't have to do it myself. Yeah, isn't that the greatest thing? You go over to somebody's house and they're barbecuing. You just get to sit there and enjoy things. And, you know, when everything's ready, you just go up there with a plate. And that's the same way I used to be when I was playing. And now that I'm retired and have more time and live in Arizona, obviously the weather is always fairly nice here. So it's great barbecue and weather all the time. So I have gone from being a, I guess, a rookie barbecuer to maybe a triple-A barbecuer.

I wouldn't go as far as saying I'm in the major leagues yet, but I'm trending that way anyways. yet, but I'm trending that way anyways. Well, that segues into my first question, which is about baseball, not barbecue, but related to what you were just saying, I have always been fascinated by how your career got started and really how you flourished as a pitcher, which took a little longer than it does for some guys. You made up for lost time, but of course you were a big person And you once said, or maybe many times said that baseball is not a tall man's sport. You had to make some changes, some tweaks to get to the point that you eventually did. Of course, you picked up the slider at some point, you worked with Tom House on your mechanics. Was there a moment? Was there one adjustment you made

where you went from being kind of erratic and promising, but not really having it all together, to being Randy Johnson? Well, I think the good games but inconsistent pattern trended all the way from high school to college to four years in the minor leagues. I think that's probably one reason why I stuck around so long was because I would give just enough glimpse of, you know, promise and success in any particular game. But then, you know, my next start,

you would wonder if it was the same pitcher. So things were trending upwards. There was promise there, but in anything you have for success, you have to be consistent at that. It wasn't until about 1992 in Seattle that I met Tom House, and Nolan Ryan was pitching with the Texas Rangers, and Tom House was the pitching coach. They both kind of took me aside, which doesn't happen very often, a visiting player talking to someone like that. But they had saw that I had some mechanical flaws. And unfortunately, I still had those. And those were never cleaned up, whether I was in college or the minor leagues, or even the first few years in Montreal when I was in the major leagues, or the first couple

of years in Seattle. Because up to that point, I had lots of pitching coaches and we worked and talked about lots of things. But the one thing that Tom House and Nolan Ryan emphasized after seeing me pitch, you know, from their side of the dugout was that my landing foot was, you know, incorrect. I was landing on the heel of my foot, which made my momentum go off towards third base and not fall towards home plate. And so when they said, land on the ball of your foot, Nolan Ryan was throwing a bullpen that day and showed me what they were talking about, by example.

And it all looked very good. And then it was just a matter of me, you know, obviously there was, there was promise prior to all this, but in anything you want to be consistent as an athlete in the organization, whoever you're playing for, watch your consistent. So inevitably that got me there. So we cleaned up my mechanics a little bit. It was something that is minor and as minute as that, but the results were major took me about, I don't know, six, seven months to kind of seeing that my body had been doing the mechanics incorrectly for so long. It took me about that long to kind of incorporate.

But when they did, then I became a little bit more confident. My mechanics became a little bit more consistent. And that was really it in the nutshell. I mean, being six foot 10, there was not too many pitchers that I could go up to watch on the sidelines on the day that they pitched and pick their brain. I didn't have that luxury. Mechanics are the same for me as they are for someone, say, 6' or 5'10". The thing that's different, we all need good basic mechanics. But the thing that was different was we all need good basic mechanics, but the thing that was

different was, is that my arms and legs are longer. So in order to do all that, I needed to be a little bit more compact and a little bit more aware of what my body was doing when I go into these proper mechanics. And so eventually I got into that area of consistency and you know from the 93 you know learning all this in 92 you see that in 93 that was my really big breakout year with the with the Mariners I believe I won I think you know 16 17 games and things were trending upward now I had more confidence with my mechanics and I was cleaned up a lot more and a little bit more consistent. So that was pretty much how it all came about. So when you pay attention to the pitcher, maybe a young, exciting, inconsistent pitcher in the game today,

of course, there are a lot of articles, a lot of interviews that talk about cleaning up mechanics, making this adjustment or another, whether it's the foot, the arm slot, anything you have. And you mentioned in there because you were trying to rewrite your old muscle memory and it took you maybe six or seven months to get consistent with just adjusting your foot. If you read an article or see an interview with a pitcher talking about making a mechanical change, do you have sort of a natural skepticism that these things can be made on the fly during the season? Do you think it's something that shouldn't really be attempted until the season is over? Well, I was walking in the Seattle Kingdome back in 1992. I was walking down to my bullpen to throw a bullpen session in between

starts and Tom House was sitting in their dugout and saw me. And that's when it came about when I actually watched them throw their bullpen session. And when I saw that, then I started working on what they were talking about during the year. When I hear about stuff like what you're talking about, you can't try something new while you're out there pitching or hitting in a game. You have to be focused at the task at hand. And this game is too difficult to not be focusing on the pitcher or the hitter, whichever you're, you know, if you're a pitcher or hitter, you can't be worried about what your

foot's doing or what you're, you know, if you're following through with the swing or whatever, you need to work on these things in between starts. So if you work on them in between starts, when you go out in game situation, hopefully your body kind of remembers that muscle memory as they call it, and it'll start falling into place the more you do it in between starts. So, and it also depends on what you're talking about, how big of something it is that you're trying to correct. But I tend to, you know, I don't remember exactly how it all went down the rest of the 92 season, but I remember playing catch in between starts, throwing in the bullpen and working on what they were telling me. So when I went into the game, I would just kind of naturally do that because I'd been working on that.

I don't think in a game, it's the time to be thinking about, well, did I land on my ball of my foot or did I keep my elbow up in my, you know, flying open too much when I swing or whatever you're working on. Yeah. In a game like situation is not the time to be worried about that then, but that's why you have practice before games, you have any inkling at the time?

I mean, were there any signs that we're all going to be playing until we're 40-something? Well, I had no idea because I didn't know how good I could be. I didn't know how good they could be. I came over from a completely different organization, so I barely even knew them to start off with, if you know what I mean. I was in Montreal and got traded to Seattle. So, you know, I was getting to know my new teammates and they're all rookies. And so we're kind of all in the same boat learning, if you will. And so it took until I got there in 89. It took until 95 for us to really put things together.

And that's when we won, you know, won the NL West in a one game playoff that I pitched against the California Angels. But, you know, it took us four or five years for things to kind of come together as a team. So we had, we did have a lot of rookies, if you will, on that team, but boy, what a bunch of rookies they were. I mean, all pretty good, if I do say so myself. So we were talking to Ron Darling just last week, and of course Darling is a pitcher whose career would have overlapped with yours a little bit, and he was a starting pitcher, you were a starting pitcher, and this is an era now where we are seeing starting pitchers

and their roles, their responsibilities diminished, far more diminished than they ever were, and for all the different ways that you and your own career stand out, you are, at this point there's nothing to do about it, you are one all the different ways that you and your own career stand out you are at this point there's nothing to do about it you are one of the first names that comes to mind when you talk about how how durable starting pitchers used to be how deep they used to go into games of course you were just throwing complete games all the time you're averaging 120 pitches per start so this isn't just a question of whether the game is was better when when you

were pitching but do you have any sort of, I know that you did eventually have some back problems. You weren't completely healthy for the duration of your entire career, but do you have any answer aside from freak genetics for why you were able to pitch as much as you did, as hard as you did, and still keep it together for as long as you did? Well, I really didn't keep it together. I had four knee surgeries. I've had three back surgeries. I have a left torn rotator cuff. So I had my share of injuries. And if you look at my generation, I wasn't the only pitcher throwing that many pitches or innings. You know, I think it's easy to look back. You had Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez, Roger Clemens, Tom Glovin, Greg Maddox. You know, the list goes on.

Those are just the Hall of Fame caliber pitchers. But then you had the next tier, Mike Mucina. All these pitchers could easily throw 230 innings a year and were all durable enough to throw 130 pitches in a game if they had to. So it wasn't just me. Where the game was at then, I think, was a great era of pitching. And that's simply because as a pitcher, your leash was a little bit longer. You could go out there like I did and learn how to pitch in tough situations. In today's game,

the pitch limit is much fewer, about 100, 110 pitches. And when you get to that, when you get close to that pitch count, the bullpen is going. And I think you're limited to what you're going to learn. In the seventh inning, the eighth inning, I think that's really where the games a lot of time are on the line. a lot of time are on the line. And, you know, an example could be, you know, you have 95 to 100 pitches and you've just walked or given up a leadoff double and you're winning by one run. Well, now the manager is probably going to come take you out

and you're out of the game and the bullpen comes in. Well, you're not learning anything from that experience. And that's the way the game is trending these days. Pitchers don't get to stay out there and try to get themselves out of a tough situation. Whereas myself and my peers, we did. And that's why, you know, it was also because the pitch count was a little bit higher. We were allowed to do that, but that's one reason why we threw many more innings in the game because we would get to that seventh inning

and we would be trending on our pitch count, which was a little bit higher, and they would allow us to go one more inning, whereas in today's game, you're cut off without any arguments or anything like that. So I think the game is trending now towards fewer pitches. And I think it's done a disservice in my view, in my perspective, to allowing certain

pitchers in this game to grow and understand what it's like to get through tough situations and really have a full understanding of what it's like to throw 10 more pitches in a game when you're pretty tired and you get through that and you just got through the heart of the lineup and the game was on the line there. That is an experience that you can't teach from watching on the bench when someone else is doing that. I think those are situations that elevate your game. You build from those kinds of games and it gets you to the next level if you do enough of them as a pitcher with your confidence and your physical ability. I know that you mentioned you were pretty banged up by the end of your career,

the rotator cuff, but you did come back in that last season, 2009, when you were 45. You pitched out of the bullpen in September for five games, and you still struck out six guys in four and a third, didn't walk anyone. And I know you had really no interest in trying to extend your career as a reliever. There wasn't much more you could have accomplished, but I always couldn't help wondering what it would look like if Randy Johnson just kept pitching as a loogie and just... Well, that was the year. That was the year. And at 46, going into that season with the San Francisco Giants, I believe I was like six or seven wins away from 300. After the 2008 season ended, I had had two back surgeries in 2007.

When I left New York in season, I recovered really quickly and I tried in, I think, April or May to pitch in a game and then I injured my back again in 2007, the same herniated disc. So then I had surgery again and I shut the rest of the season down. So then in 2008, I was completely healthy. And I think I won seven or eight games in 2008 at age 45. And at that time, the only reason why I stuck around, it was becoming a little bit more fun to pitch, less expectations on me. But I also was only six wins away, I believe, from 300. So that was really the carrot dangling in front of me at age 45 after the 2008 season.

I had an opportunity to win my 300th game if I could win six more games. And given the opportunity, I worked extremely hard in the weight room and knew that it would be extremely difficult at that age not having the ability and being at it would be extremely difficult at that age, not having the ability and being at the age that I was at, but I enjoyed that year. But that was also the year that I went into the season healthy, but about three quarters

of the way, I had already won my 300th game with San Francisco. I was hitting in a game and that's when I hurt my shoulder. That's when I tore my rotator cuff. Ironically enough, I was swinging a bat in the game and never recovered from that. Essentially, when that happened, that was midway through the season. So I'm very thankful that I won my 300th game by that time already. But after I hurt my shoulder, I rehabbed it as good as I could. I didn't have surgery. And then when I came back towards the end of the year, you're correct. I

just pitched out of the bullpen a handful of times and had I not hurt my shoulder and had I continued the season without any injuries and, you know, was pitching fine, it would have been an interesting decision to make at the end of the year, but I probably would have retired either way. But when I tore my rotator cuff and I'd already had my 300th win, well, I was only playing to get my 300th win because of my age and all that. And then when I had my injury that year, I think it was probably the right decision to make. But as a competitor, as a competitor and an athlete, you know, I think it was probably the right decision to make. But as a competitor, as a competitor and an athlete, you know, I probably would have waited officially until the season was over, depending upon, you know, how I had pitched that year. But I think I probably

would have retired at age 46. It was fun that year when I was healthy, but no, essentially I stayed to win my 300th game. And so I look back and that was a fun year. Absolutely. Yeah. Selfishly, I would have liked to see a 52-year-old Randy Johnson coming in out of the pen just to get lefties. I think you probably still could have done it if you'd been healthy. Boy, well, yeah, maybe one batter. But I know that having three back surgeries and having not worked out as much since I retired after the 2009 season, I would have really had to have kept up with my workouts the way I was. But I could get through my back surgeries by working out as long as it didn't injure my back again. as long as it didn't hurt my injury, injure my back again.

But, you know, after hurting my shoulder, I think I probably would have needed shoulder surgery after tearing my rotator cuff. But if I didn't do that, you know, it would have been kind of interesting because, you know, just being competitive and having the fun at that time of my career, you know, obviously I wasn't throwing 95 or 100. I was getting ground balls and happening to pitch a whole lot more.

But I don't think I would have been doing it at age 52, even if I would have been healthy back then. But boy, what a thought. When I was in high school, I was a very tall, left-handed pitcher and I remember one Christmas I was given a gift to take a day trip to one Bank One ballpark on April 8th, 2001 to go see my childhood favorite player Randy Johnson. I got to see you take on the Cardinals and allow nine runs and five and two-thirds innings. It was a great day all around for all of us to experience but what I do remember most from that game, not your best start but your season finished well. But in that game, I remember being introduced to Albert Pujols, who at that point was a rookie. I think it was his sixth ever

career game, and it was his first time ever batting cleanup. And the idea of a, I think it was 21-year-old rookie coming up batting cleanup that early in the season. So even though I didn't get to see Randy Johnson dominate in the game the way I was hoping to. I did get to see Albert Pujols go two for five, drive in two runs. And I was wondering, in light of how good Pujols was immediately, you got to see him so quickly. Can you remember the players, the hitters, who made the strongest and quickest positive impressions on you? Because, of course, by that point, you would have been around.

You'd seen Hall of Famers and Scrubs alike. Exactly, yeah. And there's players coming up for whatever reason, maybe to replace an injured player, so you don't know if he's ever going to be back up. But Albert Pujols, I don't remember that game in particular, but I know that Albert hit me extremely well for whatever reason. He saw a great player, obviously, and worked. Anytime I threw a mistake, he obviously didn't pop it up or hit a ground ball.

Those mistakes were usually hit out of the power alleys or out in the stands in left field or right field bleachers. I really don't. or out in the stands in left field or right field bleachers. And I really don't. There are several players that I don't have a list in front of me. It's not anything. I don't know who's done poorly against me. But Albert Pujols obviously trended based on the numbers pretty well. So did Chipper Jones.

You face somebody 25, 30 times, you know, I think there's going to be fairly even, or it's going to be slated one way or the other. And for the most part, I think there's a lot of players that I faced that were pretty even, you know, they got their hits and I got them out a few times. And then they, then you have people like Albert Pujols that probably have really good numbers against me and a handful of home runs and people like Chipper Jones that I understand have seven home runs off me. So you have the extreme and then, you know, that's due to them being really good players themselves. And you face somebody enough, you're going to give them opportunity and they know what they're doing up there. And I obviously. I obviously didn't see that.

They're just fantastic players. Yeah, you were not the only pitcher that Albert Pujols hit hard. And I can tell you that the hitter you faced most often was Ricky Henderson. You faced him 89 times, and he batted 115 with a 164 slugging percentage. So it all evens out in the end. Yeah, well, go go figure you know yeah there you go i mean i don't i don't know these numbers but uh you know playing as long as i did i know and i don't know everybody who they who those players are but you know i've been retired now for nine years and even when i was playing it was towards the end of my career when i was old

i faced people a lot of times. I played in the American League West for 10 years, and then I played with the Diamondbacks in the NL West for eight years. And, you know, so I had an opportunity to face a lot of players on the West Coast being within the division and a lot of good players there was. And so, you know, I'm sure there's lots of players that have had some very good stats off me, But, you know, as a starting pitcher, my job is more about kind of keeping the whole lineup intact. And there might be a player like Albert Pujols on that particular day that has a day on me.

Well, it's my objective to try to keep everybody else at bay. If Albert's going to have a great game, that might be a given because he's such a Hall of Fame player himself. My job out there then is to maintain trying to get through the rest of the lineup and have no further damage. Obviously, St. Louis was one of those teams that I never really pitched very well against for whatever reason, and I just tip my hat to them. Hopefully, the games that I pitched against them weren't going to ever be too bad.

Yeah, you pitch against enough players, and I've faced a lot of Hall of Famers. I'm sure they've had a lot of good days against me, but Albert Pujols is definitely one of them. Yeah. Well, one thing I wanted to ask you is that even Hall of Famers, they have bad days now and then. And sometimes those bad days cluster in a way that lends itself to a narrative that can then stick to that player. And at one point in your career, you had that where you had a streak of seven consecutive postseason starts where you lost. And now you had pitched good games during that stretch and you'd pitched good games before that stretch.

Now, you had pitched good games during that stretch, and you'd pitched good games before that stretch. And then, of course, you were the World Series co-MVP in 2001 when you said that it wasn't like getting a monkey off your back, but like a gorilla, like King Kong. And we've seen that with a lot of great players. You know, Alex Rodriguez, Clayton Kershaw, David Price, guys like this who we know are great, but they have some issues in a few selected starts. And then suddenly there's a reputation they can't pitch in the postseason. Did you ever feel like you couldn't, or did you just feel like you were having bad timing and it was sort of snowballing and people were making more of it than it was? Well, no, they're not making more of it than what it is. I mean, it is what it is, but it sounds like you have the numbers in front of you. I don't have those

numbers in front of me, so I don't know what that streak of seven postseason starts looks like. I don't know. I'm sure some of the games are really ugly because I know for a fact, just like we just talked about, St. Louis was in that. When I was playing with the Diamondbacks, we would have to play the St. Louis Cardinals in the postseason, and I've already admitted that St. Louis had my number for some reason. So they are part of that streak. They beat me a few times, I think, and that streak started, I believe, probably in Seattle.

And Ben continued on when I got traded to Houston. Houston, I pitched two games. If you look at the line score there that I pitched against Houston, I pitched against Kevin Brown. Good games. And I believe I lost 1-0. I think I gave up one run in like seven or eight innings. Yeah, 2-1 it was.

You gave up two runs in eight innings, struck out a bunch of guys. So you definitely didn't pitch poorly. No. And then the other game in that series, I pitched against Sterling Hitchcock and lost that game. And I believe I pitched maybe six or seven innings in that game in San Diego against Sterling Hitchcock. What was that? Six innings. Yeah, six innings, one run, eight strikeouts. I wouldn't consider that a poorly. But unfortunately, I did have some poor games. And the poor games and the good games kind of mix together. You know what I mean? And the next thing you know, you've got a seven-game losing streak.

So when you're a starting pitcher and you pitch only once every five days, you can have a game where you pitch six innings like I did against San Diego and give up one run and you get outpitched. And then unfortunately, the next time you pitch, you know, you don't have a good game. That's just what happens. And then, you know, it just kind of, they all kind of get mixed together. And that is essentially what happened because I know for a fact,

I did pitch some poor games in that seven game losing streak but I also pitched some good games but unless you dissect and look into the line scores people don't know that but everything is just kind of mixed together and and I think that was kind of what Kershaw and Price, you know, I'm sure they've had some good pitch games. Unfortunately, those games are mixed in with, you know, a bad pitch game, if you will. And I've been there as well. So I know kind of what the hard to believe that someone of that caliber during the regular season could go through that. Someone of that caliber during the regular season could go through that. But during the regular season, you have a bad game, too, and you have 33 more starts.

And you have more good games than you have bad in the regular season. Unfortunately, you don't pitch that much in the postseason. So whatever way you're pitching is how you're determined in the postseason. And for a while, despite pitching good at times, I didn't have a record that indicated that I was a good postseason pitcher until, you know, basically, you know, it spurts. In 95, I pitched pretty good for the Mariners. And then in 2001 was really the only two good years that I had in postseason. lines but there was a i think anyone who understands anything about the career of randy johnson would understand that he's a he's a prideful man who would never try not to perform at his absolute best but of course because of a a sequence of more negative events back in 1998

you finished very strong you went to houston you had some of the best years of your career with arizona but when you were traded from the mariners because your era was over for a narrative started to build that there was some sort of dispute. And I think the words that I remember from even back then were that Randy Johnson must be tanking his season because of some sort of ownership dispute. I don't know how many people actually put any stock in that. But are you in any way disappointed with how your Seattle chapter ended with a certain number of fans turning against you for reasons that I would imagine had very little to do with you at all? I'm not too much aware of what you're saying. I mean, you're talking about something back in 1998. We're in 2018 and I've

been retired now for almost 10 years. So you're going back, my gosh, what is that, 18 years ago. I don't remember stuff from two weeks ago. All I know is I was coming off a back. I've had back surgery there. I had back surgery in Seattle. I believe it was in 96, and we're talking about 98. So I was only removed from back surgery a couple years, and I believe I was in my 30s by then. So the game is not as easy.

So, I mean, what you're saying, your words, not mine. You said that I was in my 30s by then so the game is not as easy so I mean what you're saying you you your words not mine you said that I was taking it I don't think and you're sitting in front of a bunch of numbers right now I never had I believe I made 11 starts in Houston uh when I went there uh after being traded and I went 10 and 1 I would ask you when this conversation is done and over with, I never went 10-1 in 11 starts in Arizona, and I won four straight Cy Youngs. So I don't think there was any tanking. I think my numbers were still pretty good. If you look at my numbers, considering everything,

I believe I was probably leading the league in strikeouts. I had a handful of shutouts or complete games and it was what it was. But to go from that environment and then all of a sudden go 10-1, the game's not that easy where you just basically what you're saying is hit a switch and then all of a sudden start trying, I guess. I never went 10-1 in Arizona and I won four straight Cy Youngs. It was just one of those. That was the best two months of my career after leaving Seattle and then going to Houston. I never pitched like that anywhere ever again after that two months. And I won four Cy Young's the following year. I won four more Cy Young's after that. But that two months in Houston, people can say what they want, but it's right there. I never pitched like that again. It was just one of those amazing moments of my career.

So people can say what they want. I think it was a lot of newspaper editorials back at the time. But it's funny. You look back on those splits. You have Mariners first half, Astros second half. First half, second half, you struck out 12 batters per nine innings. First half, second half, you walked three batters per nine innings. Everything was right there.

It just seems like it was a fluke sequence that just the few too many runs were scored in the first half. But it's a little similar to the postseason losses where just people see a few numbers stack up and they try to create a narrative out of it. But it was pleasing to see how well you pitched down the stretch for the Astros and move on to the Diamondbacks. Because I think it helped distill the dominance of Randy Johnson that had not yet faded, even though you were traded at the age of 34. Yeah, you know, Jeff mentions the strikeouts, and it seems like nowadays you're starting to see people with strikeout stats like the ones you had, except that it took the league about 15 years to catch up to your strikeout rates from back then. And of course, it's a different game.

You were sort of an outlier in that era. And now, of course, there are just many more strikeouts, period. So it's almost like watching you, you know, 15, 20 years ago, it was like a preview of what baseball was going to look like today when a lot of people are pitching. Do you find that pleasing or not pleasing? Do you think that baseball is better when a lot of people are striking out batters like you were back then or do you like a more contact friendly game except when you were on the mound i don't know really which way the game's trending other than i guess maybe there's more strikeouts in today's game but you know like i like i said i've been removed from the game. I have utter interest.

So I'm not at the ballpark on, you know, a daily occurrence. I watch games occasionally. I don't know who's striking out all these players. I know Matt Scherzer and Chris Sale both play in opposite leagues. One's in the American League, one's in the National League, and they're both, I don't know who else is striking out players. Those are the only two pitchers that I know of that are a big strikeout game and have been for some time. So I don't know what other pitcher is striking out all these hitters. So yeah, to me, it is what it

is, I guess. So the last one I wanted to ask, it's kind of a tradition for us when we have someone on the show who faced Barry Bonds. We asked Ron Darling this question last week. You faced Barry Bonds many times, and you faced him over a period of 15 years. You first faced him in 89, then you faced him in 2004. And of course, 15 years later, you were both kind of still at the top of your game, which is incredible. But do you have any particular memories of facing him or what your approach was against him? Just pitch him really careful, you know? Pitch him really careful. I think that theory was the same theory as it could be if I was facing someone like Frank Thomas or Dave Winfield,

a big Bo Jackson, a big home run hitter. I always try to face that person very carefully and know that if I'm going to walk him or he gets a base hit, that's okay because I'll try and get the next guy out. That's why what I was saying to you earlier about people that have great numbers against me, well, you play as long as I did, there's going to be a lot of people that have great numbers against me. It was more about, as a starting pitcher, it's more about how many wins did you accumulate. That's how I'm rated. That's how my success is rated on wins and ERA,

uh, not based on individual, uh, that's, that's only for when you're having a beer with someone in a bar, you know, when you're, you're talking shop, my job is based off of ERA and, you know, wins, uh, essentially at the end of the year, what kind of season did you have? Well, you look at the wins at ERA and that kind of tells the story for a hitter. It's the home runs and batting average and all that. So when facing someone like a Barry Bonds, I faced him very carefully, but no more carefully than say I would face Mark McGuire or Frank Thomas or anybody like that. All right. Well, it has been a pleasure to talk to you. And you made a lot of well-deserved salary during your time playing baseball.

So I assume that if you're working with Kingsford, it must be because you actually like and care about grilling. It seems like it makes you a sincere pitch man because you don't need to be doing it if you don't want to be. That's true. All right. Well, we were talking before we had you on. because you don't need to be doing it if you don't want to be. That's true. All right. Well, we were talking before we had you on.

I wonder whether we can make Randy Johnson chuckle, and we just did it. So I guess we should end there. I always wondered, you know, you were so imposing and intimidating on the mound, whether you felt that way on the inside or whether it was partly just because of how big you were and how hard you threw or whether it was a persona you had to adopt but it was scary at times even just to watch you from afar well thank you so much all right thank you randy all right take care all right that will do it for today i was thinking while we were talking to randy i don't know whether any of you played small world baseball back in the late 90s early 2000s as far as i

know it's no longer around, and I've since stopped playing fantasy. But man, back then, Small World was special. It was like you would get, I think, $50 million to add players to your roster, and then it was like a stock market. So you'd start off with $50 million, but then as your players were picked up by other players, their prices would rise. And so if you had an appreciating player and you signed him and held him, then you would just get that extra money added to your budget. So I remember back when Pedro and Randy were both at their peaks, circa 99 or so, there was just this strategy you would do in Small World. I think I called it the Randro strategy, where you would just pick up Pedro,

maybe a couple days before his start, and then a bunch of other people would pick up Pedro on the day of his start. So you would ride it all the way up, then you would drop Pedro after his start, his price would go down again, but you'd have made some money in the process. And then ideally, Pedro and Randy Johnson were not synced up, so they would be starting on different days. So you could keep picking up Pedro, having his price rise while he was on your roster, making a tidy profit, then dropping Pedro, picking up Randy Johnson, riding Randy all the way up, dropping him. You could just do that all season. Anyone could pick up any player at any time, just like the stock market. I don't know if fantasy sports like that still exist, but if they did, maybe I would actually un-retire,

or maybe I'd need Randy and Pedro to un-retire to convince me to do that. By the way, you all heard Randy Johnson say that swinging as a hitter ended his career, right? Pitcher hitting deprived us of 52-year-old reliever Randy Johnson. I'm kidding, kind of. Also wanted to mention that there are now three Astadillos in professional baseball. Of course, Williams Astadillo's brother, Wilfred Astadillo, he's an 18-year-old in the Mets organization. He struck out five times in 55 plate appearances this year. Smearing the family name makes him contact Wilfred. But the Blue Jays just signed 16-year-old Wilfron Astadillo.

He's Williams' cousin, so we've got Williams, Wilfred, and Wilfron. Really hope the Astadillos are the new Molinas. Two more hits for Williams on Monday night, by the way. You can support the podcast

on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already decided to do so, for which we thank them, Michael Armstrong, Randy Sevilla, Anna Burry, Garrett Sanborn, and Jun Yan. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild, and you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. Please keep your questions and comments and iFetch training techniques for me and Jeff coming. You can email me at podcast.fangraphs.com or be the subject on the messaging system.

If you're a supporter, we'll be back to talk to you soon. We'll be on Talk to You Before the 4th. Happy grilling, I guess. Take me with you, for that's where I want to be. Teach me how to fly on these new wings you've given me. Randy, let me show you what your love has meant to me. Randy, let me be the only one you'll ever need. Hello and welcome to episode 1238 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangaff. That was a Fangaff. It was.

Rough stretch with these intros.