Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1248: Hustle and Slow

Episode Date: July 26, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the Zach Britton and Nathan Eovaldi trades, the Yankees’ unbelievable bullpen, the Rays’ most recent Sergio Romo experiment, and the Gary Sanchez hustle/groin-strain saga, follow up on athletes dominating lesser competition and Noah Syndergaard’s latest affliction, then answer emails about Odubel Herrera, Rhys Hoskins, how a bad fielder […]

Hello again, my friends. I've come to see you again. I'm a friend. The latest friend. The latest in Hello and welcome to episode 1248 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast for the Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello! Hi Ben! We're going to do a little bit of everything today. Some banter, maybe a few emails, and then a guest. do a little bit of everything today. Some banter, maybe a few emails, and then a guest, not our typical guest. We're going to be talking later in this episode to Jim Jeffries, the comedian and Dodgers fan. I'm going to talk to him about learning how to like baseball, comparisons to other sports, the Dodgers season, and whether Mike Trout is good. Jim Jeffries

has some opinions on that matter, not typically expressed on this podcast, but I don't know. Maybe we changed his mind. We'll see. So a few things that we want to get to before that other stuff. I guess we should start with the trades, right? We've got a couple trades, and they're both involving AL East teams. So there we go. Going for the traffic.

Yankees, Red Sox, trades. We've got Zach Britton going to the Yankees. We've got Nathan Evaldi going to the Red Sox. And We've got Zach Britton going to the Yankees. We've got Nathan Evaldi going to the Red Sox. And you've just been writing about Evaldi. I don't know whether you have written about Britton, but the Yankees bullpen is kind of amazing and was kind of amazing before this trade and is now even more amazing. Written about Britton is a fun thing to say. Separately, just going back to the intro real quick, we were saying just uh the other podcast that we don't really neither one of us ends up in situations where we have to like argue about baseball players this was this is unexpected i uh yeah i

didn't really anyway whatever y'all a little out of our wheelhouse but it's good we're broadening our horizons here we're all we're all getting better we can have on some other trout truthers i guess for future podcasts so okay so trades the uh britain and uh uvaldi getting moved this is i i wrote about the uvaldi and jaylen beaks trade beaks is very fun i'd want jaylen beaks to be good for his name alone but looking at that trade i know more about it just because i just i just looked at it but it is interesting in that zach Britton fetched three prospects, a pretty strong return for a rental going to the Orioles,

and he fetched three prospects even though his own numbers are not very good. He is, of course, coming back from an Achilles injury, and last year he missed a lot of the year with arm problems. And teams were interested. There were a lot of smart teams that seemed to be pursuing Zach Britton. Now, the Yankees didn't knock the Orioles' socks off. They didn't give up any of their top five prospects to get him. But there was a lot of interest in Britton because of what he used to be

and because, well, his velocity is back. And even though his numbers aren't there, he still has that sinker, still getting grand balls. It looks like he could be fresh and he could get back to being his old self for the stretch run. And then you look at another move, and Nathan Yovaldi has had his own injury problems. He's had Tommy John surgery twice. He's missed a lot of this year with another problem in his elbow. And his numbers are good. I recognize that this is a framing device that no one should really care about,

but what interests me about Zach Britton and Jalen Beeks, who are technically two major league players this season, even though Beeks is a prospect, is that Britton has shown stuff and not really good results. And then Jalen Beeks is a guy the Rays got who's shown results but not really quality stuff. And I like those things. I like those parallels. I think it's interesting when you have the Rays getting a pitcher who, based on his AAA numbers, is just having the Wilmer Font conversation all over again.

And maybe not coincidentally, both those pitchers are on that team. You could make some kind of argument, maybe not a convincing argument, but some kind of argument that Jalen Beeks might even be almost as good as Nathan Yovaldi right now. Prince Oxofli obviously don't believe that. I don't even think that I believe that, but it could be close. Beeks has the second best strikeout minus walk rate in AAA among any pitcher with at least 50 innings. He's behind an Astros underrated prospect and just ahead of, I think it was Freddy Peralta. That's a pretty good player to be compared to.

Also a lefty with a weird low 90s fastball. But I don't know. I kind of like Jalen Beeks. I like what the Rays did here. I sort of understand why the Red Sox did it. And as for Britain and the Yankees, I guess when you don't really have a good starting pitcher to go get, then why not just beef up the bullpen so it's like eight good pitchers deep? It's absurd, but it's just the same thing that we wrote about the Yankees last season, except now I think it's even deeper, right? No, it is. Yeah.

Yankees' bullpen last season was maybe the best bullpen ever. I mean, we were saying that at the time, and certainly in the playoffs after they made their midseason moves. If you just sort by war, wins above replacement by a bullpen, they are second all-time behind the Eric Gagné 2003 Dodgers bullpen. Of course, that is going to favor more recent bullpens because bullpens today just pitch more innings than they used to. So you're going to have more opportunities to rack up value. If you go by strikeout minus walk rate, this year's Yankees and Astros bullpens, which are pretty much neck and neck, are already the best bullpens ever. So again, that's another trend in the game, just more strikeouts and more dominant relievers. So it's hard to compare

historically just because bullpens and relievers are completely different today from what they used to be. But yeah, the Yankees bullpen right now has about as good an argument of any bullpen ever just for sheer dominance. I mean, it's like already five lights out guys deep, and then they're adding Zach Britton. I know that the Yankees rotation has been something of a weakness certainly a relative weakness and so there's been a lot of speculation well why don't the Yankees go get a starter who knows maybe they still will perhaps they weren't all that interested in Nathan Ivaldi because they've already had the Nathan Ivaldi experience and it wasn't great for them but if you you have, you know, several dominant relievers

and then you add another good reliever, you're in pretty good shape. But we saw that this can work really well in the playoffs last year, and now it's even better and deeper than last year. So who needs starters? So last year's Yankees bullpen down the stretch, really in the playoffs, it was led by Chapman, of course.

He's still there. Robertson and Green are still there. Batances is still there, but now he's good again. Canely is less good, but it seems like he's on the recovery track in the minors. And then you throw in Jonathan Holder, who has emerged, and you add Zach Britton. Even moving forward, the Yankees, Severino is good. Tanaka is good. Sabathia is meh.

And then you have Gray and the rest of the occasion they could just they don't need a third or fourth starter in the playoffs really they could do Sabathia or whatever for one turn and they're good enough to just bullpen it through you have Jason Treve Adam Warren whatever you want to do I don't know if the Yankees are actually going to go that far because you can still burn players out in the playoffs but I mean honestly it's just all the stuff that we wrote about the yankees last trade deadline turned up to 11 this is just the most absurd bullpen that i can recall seeing now i understand that also in the playoffs you just like the astros can just make half their starters into relievers and then all of a sudden they have an even better bullpen but looking at the fangraphs depth charts right now for the rest of the season the yankees bullpen is projected for an era of 3.32 and the second

best bullpen in baseball according to the fangraphs projections is projected for an era of 3.82 that's in the national league that's a half run worse that's uh that's unbelievable the yankees bullpen is so good it's uh i don't know if it's i don't know how much it's going to matter the yankees obviously didn't win the World Series last year, but they very easily could have. It's probably one of those frustrating things that now you have these four teams in the American League alone who are all trying to make trades to improve. The three of them now have made trades to improve.

Remind me if the Astros have actually done something yet, but I don't think that they have. But they're all going to make these trades to improve, and they'll all just get better by like a winner two or three and then they'll look around and be like oh right so we're all still three of us are still screwed not as screwed as as the wild the second wild card team but that's yeah that's that's for later on actually that's for us to banter about well remember when the yankees were the wild card team last year and they played the twins and that was kind of the first demonstration of the dominance of that bullpen, because Severino got one out in that game,

and then basically the bullpen just shut down the Twins for the rest of that game, and I know there's a whole weird Yankees-Twins thing that's going on and has been going on for more than a decade, but still, it was Chad Green for two innings, and then Robertson was like three and a third, and then Canely for two and a third, and Chapman comes in for the ninth, and of course, you can't quite do that every single game, but you can kind of come close to doing that, especially if, you know, Severino does not get one out. Severino is one of the best pitchers in baseball, so you get a good start from Severino here and there then you add Britton to this mix you have Holder I mean you kind of can do this so you used to talk about like the bridge to Mariano and it was like well the Yankees just have to go five and then you can just get whoever Stanton and Nelson and Mendoza and Rivera and that group of guys in there now

it's not even like get to the fifth. It's like get to the third and you're pretty much good. So how good is Zach Britton right now? That is the important question here, I suppose, because Zach Britton, of course, a couple of years ago was one of the very best, if not the best relievers in baseball. And he has just returned recently from a long absence and his numbers are not what they were although i understand that he's been pitching a bit better with time so how do you think teams viewed him or how should we view him well what i have heard from some people and in the game is that there's their perception that zach burton is actually still broken now i

don't know if that's true obviously whenever you have a guy who missed so much time, and he's coming back from really a lot of missed time over the past year and a half, it could take a while to settle into a groove. I think we got to a point where, with Zach Britton, as happens in trade deadline season, every tiny sample becomes meaningful. You're looking for something

from Zach Britton in every single game, and honestly, over his past three games, in each of them, just one inning since, he's walked a a batter so he's got three walks two strikeouts over his past three games also hasn't allowed a run I think the thing about Zach Britton that is difficult is that he's his sinker is so good at getting ground balls and avoiding hard contact that he can walk people and not end up in that much trouble like his I know it's a small sample here but like his era is still in the mid threes which is good for a reliever last season zach britain was not good when he pitched and yet his era was under under three year before that it was under one year before that it was over two

year before that it was under two he's been such a dominant reliever over his entire career since he converted to the bullpen five years ago that I think you look at him and you can say well we see that his velocity is mostly still there he hasn't forgotten how to throw the sinker and that's good enough even if he's not as good as he was in 2016 which by the way just about nobody is he can be good enough and and what's what's wild about the Yankees getting him is that even if Britton blows up or he doesn't find his command or maybe Dylan Batances gets worse down the stretch, he loses his command if he ever had it, it almost doesn't matter because they can just go to the next guy.

So I don't believe that Zach Britton is going to be one of the best relievers in baseball down the stretch. I think that he just doesn't have the command that he used to, and I don't know if it's ever going to come back. Troubled by the arm injuries he's had last year, and he's coming up on 31 years old. But I understand the appeal because, you know, last year you'd see trades mid-season for someone like, I don't know, Anthony Swarczak, these pop-up guys. And there's pop-up relievers every single season. But with Britton, you're banking on track record, which for relievers, there's not very many guys that

you can do that with. Well, there is a very good chance that we will actually see Zach Britton in an AO wildcard game. So that's exciting. It's long overdue. And I think that both of the teams that made these trades on the other end did pretty well, right? The Rays, who have sneakily sort of a really good system now. We went through a few years where the Rays' farm was looking a little lean. They hadn't had those top draft picks for a while and some players hadn't panned out. Now you look at the top of any prospect list and it is littered with Tampa Bay Rays. And as we have discussed, the current Tampa Bay Rays are actually pretty good too. So they are set up pretty decently and the Orioles are not, but they seem to have done about as well as could be expected with these deadline trades so far. And just looking at Eric Langenhagen's take for fan graphs, he said that other than a fully realized Tate, that's Dylan Tate, one of the pitchers that they acquired in this deal, none of the pitchers acquired for Britain is likely to be more than a role-playing big leaguer. But Eric said that the guys that they got have a probability of contributing

at some level in the majors as all three are upper level arms with at least playable big league stuff, as seemed to also be the case in the Manny Machado deal. Baltimore has, consciously or not, prioritized quantity and probability over potential impact as they begin their rebuild in earnest. And it sort of seems these days like the Yankees are just minting new pretty good pitchers at will. So maybe that's a strength for them that they are leveraging here. But the Orioles have done pretty well, it seems like, in the returns that they've got for two rental players here. And Zach Britton is a reliever who has recently returned from an injury, who has not been as dominant as he was in the past.

That's not the most attractive package in a trade. So it seems like they got as much as one could have expected or maybe more. Right. So the Orioles and the Rays are obviously teams in very different positions. As we're talking right now, this could change, but the Rays are beating the Yankees again. I will just point to this because I can't stop pointing to this. The Rays currently have the sixth best base runs record in all of baseball. They are 19. As I just wrote in the post I put about the UofL Detroit,

the Rays are 19 actual games worse than the Red Sox, but only six base runs games worse than the Red Sox. The Rays are good. They're pretty good, and they're getting stronger. And I think one of the interesting things that they've done this season alone is they've added now Jalen Beeks, who's a AAA pitcher ready to start or do whatever it is the Rays have pitchers do for multiple innings in the majors. You can say the same for Anthony Bonda,

although unfortunately he's out with Tommy John surgery. They got Wilmer Font. They traded for Andrew Moore from the Mariners. They were focusing on these AAA guys with sort with sort of you could say fringe stuff fringe starter potential because the race kind of outside of uofl who's gone and blake's telling chris archer they don't really care about starters anymore ryan stanek just started again he's got 14 starts this year he went one inning and he was good that's just the rays have in a sense they've liberated themselves because you take a guy like

Jalen Beeks. Maybe, I don't know, maybe he's not good enough to get a third time through the order. Maybe he's not even good enough to get a second time through the order, but maybe that makes him a two or three inning pitcher. The Rays could be accumulating those. And we've talked before about how like the starting pitching can't really go away unless there's a league wide shift, but maybe that's not true if you just accumulate guys who are in the high minors who aren't necessarily top prospects or guys who just want any sort of opportunity, any sort of big league paycheck. So, you know, the Rays can only accumulate so many of these guys, but it's interesting to me that they were able to do this almost by themselves. And then you have the Orioles, whose rotation looks very different from Tampa Bay's. I do like the

moves that the Orioles have made, but as Eric has has talked about the Yankees are probably or at least arguably the best team in baseball the best organization in baseball when it comes to turning raw pitching ingredients into into skill and the Orioles are the Orioles so it's going to be difficult it's going to put some burden on the Orioles to actually turn these pitchers into something good. Now, of course, they did turn Zach Britton into something good. They just had to find his role. And I don't know, maybe Jake Arrieta would have worked out eventually. I can't really say.

But they do have Dylan Bundy. Maybe some of the reputation isn't entirely deserved. I don't know. But it's somewhat interesting. Maybe it's coincidental. Maybe it's not that in guys like Dylan Tate, Cody Carroll, rogers the orioles got guys who are close to major league ready maybe that means they don't have so much development left to do maybe they don't trust themselves but as dan duquette said now that they're rebuilding they're going to work to improve every single aspect of the

organization that a baseball team is supposed to be good at so you know that doesn't mean that they're going to do it and be successful at it but at least they're going to be good at. So, you know, that doesn't mean that they're going to do it and be successful at it, but at least they're going to be looking under the hood to find what they've been doing wrong. Real-time Rays reaction. Our producer Dylan Higgins just g-chatted me. The Rays right now just used Sergio Romo at third base with a one-run lead in the top of the ninth as part of a Waxahachie swap. Third base! The Jeff sullivan post third base sergio romo he's getting to do everything this year sergio romo playing third base i have attempted a baseball reference play index search and i have tried to find the last time somebody played third base and pitched who's typically a pitcher if i did this right we're going to august 6th of 1971 looking at

bill wilson so bill wilson i don't know much about him he relieved ken reynolds in this game for the philadelphia phillies let's just find out so let's go to the seventh inning bill wilson comes in and uh wilson gets through the seventh inning shut inning. We go to the bottom of the eighth. Bill Wilson faces Roberto Clemente, getting some star power here. Gets a ground out on the third pitch. Didn't know we had pitch data for this game, but we did in 1971. That's fun. Oscar Gamble also featured in this inning.

So Bill Wilson got a ground out from Roberto Clemente. And then Bill Wilson moved from pitcher to third base to make room for Joe Hor horner joe horner came in and got willie stargill to strike out more star power and then bill wilson comes back from third base to pitcher face manny sanguian and he got a ground out back to himself so if i did everything correct that is the last time that this happened 1971 i already did an article about the rays using a pitcher 1971. I already did an article about the Rays using a pitcher at first base. I already did an article about the Rays using a catcher to pitch, I think. Right? That's something I did recently.

Yes, you did. Whatever it was. In a tie game or a close game, whatever it was. And now we have a pitcher playing third base. This is a lot more fun to me than the rash of position players pitching. I'm already used to that. We're seeing so many instances of now multiple position players pitching in the same game. I'm over it. I know

they're all different. Some of them have knuckleballs. Pity poor Alex Blandina, who's now out for the season with knee surgery. That's too bad. But the walks of hockey swaps and the flexibility of the razor using, I love it. I absolutely love it. Sergio Romo at third base. Who is batting? We have to... What was the situation in this game? Yes, I have the full play-by-play here. Yeah, yeah. Great instantaneous research with the play index there. We didn't even edit out anything at all. You just did it all in one second. Amazing. Podcast magic.

Here's what happened. Kevin Cash moves Romo to third. Duffy moved from third to second. Robertson moved from second to short. And Willie Damas came out of the game. Then, effectively, wild guest Johnny Venters comes in to face lefty Greg Bird. Venters, of course, got Bird to ground out because that's what Johnny Venters does. Then Romo goes back to the mound after being at third base.

Echevarria comes in to play shortstop, and Robertson and Duffy go back to second and third, respectively. So everything changed. The whole infield moved somewhere, basically. Okay, so the idea here was that it was Venters against Greg Bird. So lefty-lefty already, difficult matchup for Bird. But also you're going to have a shift on, presumably, Bird not likely to hit a ball toward third base unless he were to bunt.

But Sergio Roma would also be somewhat comfortable, presumably, fielding a bunt. So I like it. Instantaneous reaction, good move. I like it. All right. Yeah, it's fun. All right. Well, we's fun. All right. Well, we've been talking about all four AL East teams so far on this podcast.

I feel bad that we've neglected the Blue Jays. I don't know. Is there any Blue Jays news? Nope. Doesn't look like it. Maybe there will be a Blue Jays trade. No, I did see a rumor that the asking price for J-Hap has gone down. Ooh, exciting. Let's talk about that for 10 minutes no all right

we'll get to the blue chase someday sorry blue chase but uh what are you gonna do so two of the best teams in the league in baseball got better and uh they got better by acquiring players from less good teams in the same division that's what happens dave dombrowski trades prospects for veterans the veterans are usually pretty good and uh if the Red Sox win a World Series, then everyone will be happy. And if they don't and have no farm system, everyone will be sad. So let's continue to talk about the AL East. Actually, I didn't plan to do this, but hey, that's where the news is right now. I want to talk about the Gary Sanchez saga that played out earlier this week.

And we podcasted before it. We're podcasting after it. So we missed the entire storm that arose and then quickly subsided for the most part, although not entirely. So for anyone who wasn't somehow following this story, Gary Sanchez, what was it? On Monday night, right? So there are two plays. Yankees were playing the Rays. Again, it's an ALE story. Gary Sanchez, what was it? On Monday night, right? So there are two plays. Yankees were playing the Rays. Again, it's an ALE story. So there were two plays where Sanchez did not run as hard as a player normally would and should. So in the first one, there was a passed ball. He just sort of

jogged after it at first, and Jake Bowers scored from second. And then Sanchez grounded out for the final out of the game and just jogged down the line, even though the bases were loaded and it was a double play ball and he ended up getting doubled out to end the game. So that was that. And of course, Sanchez just got massacred on social media and in the tabloids and in the headlines everywhere. Everyone was unanimous in their anger at Gary Sanchez. And to be fair, if there were nothing more to the story, if those plays were as they appeared to be, that would have been really egregious because he really just was not running in close games where it would have made a very clear difference. And I'm always fascinated by, like, which players are perceived not to hustle and how certain guys get that reputation. I'm sure sometimes where there's smoke, there's fire, and there are actually guys who are not hustling when they should.

For the most part, I think those guys get weeded out on their way to the majors, but not entirely. Sometimes you just get really talented guys and teams live with them not running all out all the time, it's not going to matter. It's not going to make the difference, even in that play. And a lot of the time, the play itself won't make that much difference. And if you think that you need to keep yourself healthy by running at slightly less than full speed, I he left to sign with Seattle, I wrote an article about that, kind of comparing him to Jeter and looking at their infield hit rates and what happened when they pulled ground balls and how often did they beat it out. I could probably do a much better version of that article now that we have StatCast data. But what I concluded at the time

and probably what I would conclude now is that, yeah, it may have cost the Yankees a handful of runs here or there. But if you're talking about Robinson Cano and Cano said, you know, I'm trying to keep myself healthy and energized here. And Cano was almost never hurt. necessarily is. Maybe you can hustle and stay healthy, but certainly we've seen enough times guys going all out down the line and they land funny or they pull something and then suddenly they're gone for weeks and that's costing you much more than maybe losing a base hit here or there costs you. So for the most part, I think we pay too much attention to that and really crucify guys over whether they are running 100% all the time or whether we perceive that they are. Often it's just sort of a body language thing and people decide all this stuff anecdotally. Sanchez was, I think, in his second game off the DL, right? He had been hurt for weeks with a groin strain.

And as we learned after the game, he had strained his groin again. At least that is the report that he had strained his groin in that first inning past ball but that's why he didn't run as hard as he could have and he acknowledged after the game that he should have run harder or that he would have liked to have run harder probably I would think just because he didn't want to sound like he was making excuses I mean you're kind of damned if you do damned if you don't there right because if he had come out and said, well, I'm just back from the DL and I tweaked my groin again, no one would accept that excuse either, right? I mean, he was just sort of screwed no matter what he did if he wasn't going to run all out. So PR-wise and public perception-wise, I don't know that there was a way out of this. But anyway, he's been placed

back on the DL. He had an MRI. It confirmed another groin strain. He's going to be out for more weeks, maybe a month. And now there are conspiracy theorists who are saying that the Yankees are faking this DL stint, that he's not actually hurt, that they're doing this just so people will get off his back. It seems like people are out to get Gary Sanchez for this and kind of have been for a while, right? Like we answered questions last year about Gary Sanchez's defense, which when you consider everything he does, the great arm, the good framing, he's like a plus defender, at least glove because the bat is good it's like he's a passable defender too i guess passable is probably not the best word to use when talking about carrie sanchez because that is the complaint that people have about him but he has this perception now and maybe he's stuck with it and maybe there's truth to certain aspects of it but seems like he's getting a bad rap in some ways i would imagine he is definitely stuck with it these first i don't have like a database

of first impressions like general fan consensus i consensus is oh boy well i don't have any of that but you know the obvious comparison is to go back to jesus montero who granted was not a problem for the yankees so much as he became a problem for the mariners and then for the mariners scout and then for the blue jays and then for the Blue Jays and etc it all went around by the way the Rays just beat the Yankees and there was an eventful night that we can talk about more of that later but these these perceptions are so difficult to change but of course when Gary Sanchez isn't batting 180 something then people are very very supportive so it did like like is always the case fan support is viciously

conditional you can look at a case just like gary santas or you can look at a team like the oakland athletics who everyone says oh it's impossible for fans to like them and fans hate the a's because nobody likes how the a's are run but then if you look at twitter accounts after the a's with their big comeback win yesterday you just see all these tweets like oh love these guys they never quit this team is amazing love this group of young so it's always it's always always always save for very exceptional circumstances it's always about results and fans will just figure out a way to have their opinions of you in accordance with the results so with with Gary Sanchez it's I don't need to tell you why it's stupid to believe that the Yankees

are putting Sanchez on the DL and making it up because of course the Yankees don't need to tell you why it's stupid to believe that the Yankees are putting Sanchez on the DL and making it up. Because, of course, the Yankees don't want to be playing Kyle Higashioka and Austin Romine or Andrew Romine, whichever is the one that they have. They don't want to be doing that. Gary Sanchez is good. The Yankees know that Gary Sanchez is better than his results. And with Sanchez, I can't imagine many worse circumstances to not run out a ground ball than the one that he did. I understand with a passed ball, you never expect the runner to go a second base. And, of course, when the ball is right there down the third baseline and you're looking at the runner rounding the third base, you don't expect that.

And it was a close enough play. And it can be hard. It's very common. You see a ball get away from a catcher and the catcher doesn't know where the ball is immediately that happens all the time so i can forgive sanchez for that a little bit the last one less so i understand if he was hurt then you know there's there's nothing you can you can do about it i don't know how badly he was hurt but i did see the stat cast measurements that sanchez ran considerably slower than his his top speed average on a very contentious play. It was going to be close.

That's the thing. Even if you're not a hustle player, I don't think it manifests itself in that situation. If you're someone who's going to dog it every now and then, I don't think you choose to dog it when you have to beat out a double play ball in order to tie the game in the ninth inning. I'm pretty sure everyone is running in that situation if you physically can. So the fact that he didn't, like, to me, if you're going to take a little speed off because whatever, that's the way you're wired, or you think that maybe it will be

better for you in the long run, or whatever the explanation, why ever you do that, you might do that in a meaningless game or a game that doesn't matter all that much or you don't think the play is going to be close and so you just don't realize at first that you need to run and it looks bad in retrospect. In that case, I really doubt that any player in the majors would just say, eh, I'm just going to jog down the line here because I don't want to exert myself in this situation. I mean, that's like the highest leverage running down the baseline sort of situation you can have. So I guess if you're just purely looking at it on the surface, you could say, yeah, that's unforgivable. That is

extreme laziness and he should be benched forever. My interpretation is he just had to be hurt. He had to be incapable of doing it because that situation would just be so egregious if you were not running just because you didn't feel like running. Right. And now, usually, I don't care about all the chatter about the New York media market and how difficult it is to work there or to play there, but it does seem like it's true. At least no matter what people feel about you you will be aware of it with far greater intensity than you will in

many other markets so gary sanchez will feel a lot more praise when he's doing well and he will feel a lot more criticism when he's not so i would i would imagine that this it's very difficult difficult but i don't know how you recovered from having an impression like this because of course the conversation about sanchez's defense and i don't want to say laziness because it has these like racial undertones to it but you know the the pass balls are that's factually true he has let go a number of pass balls and the you know in in the same way that wilson contraris shows relatively poor framing technique you could say that maybe gary sanchez doesn't look like the most polished defensive catcher around and maybe his numbers are good because the pitchers i don't

know it's complicated but i just don't know i can't think of another player who has recovered from that sort of perception without a change of scenery like you could say matt kemp has come back with the dodgers and he had a pretty lousy reputation with the padres and braves and the padres and braves might the Padres and Braves might tell you well that's because he didn't care because why would he but then he went back to a good team where he was familiar and beloved and he was healthier and he had far greater shape and he's putting in more effort so even you can look at like Kyle Schwarber lost a lot of weight and he's made himself a good defender but the Cubs fans were never down on Kyle Schwarber Kyle

Schwarber's been beloved the whole time so can you think of anyone off the top of your head who's changed the perception like this while staying internal? I don't know anyone off the top of my head. I mean, the way to do it, I guess, is to get a big hit in the playoffs that will just override this memory, right? Or to bust it down the line in an identical situation in October, and then that's what people will remember about you. So I don't know. It does seem to be a hard perception to shake. And I don't want to say that Gary Sanchez is like the model player. I don't know Gary Sanchez, and I am not in his head and don't know what his motivations are. I know he was suspended twice in the minor leagues, and he was benched a couple games by

Joe Girardi last year. Whether rightfully or wrongly, there is this perception it's not just fans and media, it's the team as well, and the team knows Gary Sanchez better than we do. So, you know, maybe there are times, I don't know, when his effort is not quite what it should be. I'm just saying that to come to a judgment about a guy based on one game or one play or even just body language, just so often it is kind of off base because we don't necessarily know what's going on with that player.

And we don't know if his groin is strained and if he just doesn't want to say so because he doesn't want to go back on the DL immediately after coming off the DL. No, I guess you could criticize him for that, right? For not saying, hey, I hurt my groin, so take me out of the game, because then he wouldn't have been in that situation in the ninth inning to be running out that base hit. And generally, yeah, I don't like the fact that players hide injuries or feel like they have to hide injuries. I understand it.

I know it's something that teams find frustrating and wish they could curtail, but you can understand why it happens from the player's perspective. So that's something I suppose you could criticize him for, but I'd be more comfortable criticizing him for not being as open about his injury as he should have been than I would be for how hard he was running and why. Yeah, right. And then if you're a player who asks out of a game early because you tweaked something, then of course you're just going to hear it from people for the opposite reason, because people always want their players to be tough. I think you and I both come from the same area where we are inclined to give the elite professional athletes the benefit of the doubt

that they know what they're doing. And obviously's not always true but in any circumstance i think that the working hypothesis should always be that well they did something right and if i don't think that they did then there's probably a reason why i'm wrong obviously that's not always true some players don't run things out because they're just you know frustrated with themselves and it's just a momentary lapse of judgment and in those cases of course some fans can be correct but when you have a player who's coming back from injury and also heading toward injury because he's already injured then i think that it's it just it's too it's too lazy on the fence well there you go it's a the lazy fans are accusing carrie sanchez of so you are the ones being lazy and not really working your minds.

In almost every case, there is a line. You don't want to always defer to authority, whether that's for an office or ownership or management or players or anything. Because then you have no opinions anymore. You're just always thinking, well, everybody does everything right all of the time, which is not true. There are bad plays and there are bad trades and bad decisions. And we know that that is true. But as a fan, as an observer, or as a writer, you should have to have compelling evidence of something being wrong before you go so far as to be critical. And I guess there's a lot of people who watch sports. And of of course it's an emotional form

of entertainment and it's ultimately for most people it's kind of meaningless form of entertainment no one cares if their criticism isn't warranted because no one has to deal with accountability for being critical as a fan on twitter or in the ballpark it doesn't really matter but i just i i guess i i have not been in the frame of mind where I think the fun I get out of this is being mad at my favorite players. Right. Yeah. And speaking of racial undertones, I saw Marley Rivera and Andrew Marchand and others tweeting about how people were criticizing Sanchez for being too lazy to learn English well enough to speak to the media without using a translator or an interpreter, which, come on, can you even imagine? I mean, it's not easy to learn a language. I think he has learned the language, but if he doesn't feel totally comfortable speaking to a voracious audience, you know, everyone is criticizing him for every move he makes or doesn't make, you can understand why one would

want to be precise in his language. And he is under no obligation to learn any language. It's not his first language. I know from personal experience, it's not easy to learn a language. And even after you have studied it for years, you don't totally feel comfortable using it. At least in my case, I didn't. And I was just speaking conversationally to people in conversations with no stakes, let alone with millions of people listening and tweeting about you. So that is just, come on. When every single thing that you say as an athlete now has the potential to become a story, I mean, the most obvious example here is that Ichiro doesn't do interviews in English, right knows english he's fluent in english but he always has an interpreter because each row as you might be able to imagine is very particular about the way that he uh he does

everything and like you said it's all a matter of precision and i know we're conducting this in the united states we know english we're fluent in english i grew up speaking english so did you probably if not you're doing a very convincing job thank you but the expectation that people can just come from another country focus on baseball and learn a language such that they can fluently communicate with media and social media and not not get a single word even a little bit wrong that then becomes this whole thing i mean look at gary sanchez is already getting criticism for his play and he's like one of the five best catchers in the world and then if you if he does an interview in english it says one word wrong or just misstates something that they can become an entire multi-day headline so it's just they should you know what everyone

should use an interpreter even like the the English speakers who were like stupid, you know, like the stupid baseball players, they should probably have an interpreter too. Like he has glasses and like a coat. It's just like, see, see what Bud Norris was intending to say, you know? Yeah. All right. Let's move on from that. I've got a couple of follow-ups I wanted to read here, emails from listeners. So this one is from Mike. So on our last episode, we talked about Billy Butler, who is now just destroying beer league softball in Idaho. This amused us. inspired by this. He says, high school and one below average major league middle reliever recovering from surgery his name is john foster and baseball reference tells me he pitched 60 and two-thirds innings of 88 era plus ball in his career he was living in new york for the summer for his wife's career and through a friend of a friend ended up on our team he only threw an inning or two at a time and only at 70 strength at least that's what he told us but he

was unhittable literally i don't think anyone made any more contact than a foul tip and our division one catcher literally couldn't catch his breaking ball there were other pitchers in the league throwing mid to high 80s with breaking stuff who would get touched up but not john sadly it appears he never made it back to the majors, and my friend and I never took him up on his offer to drink beers and go paintballing on his ranch. I can only imagine the destruction that someone like Butler can do if this fringe major leaguer was so good. So I haven't fact checked the story, but I'm just going to take Mike's word for it. We have former middling middle reliever John Foster coming off surgery and pitching at 70% and no one could

touch him in a pretty good league it sounds like that's how good baseball players are I think I've mentioned this before more than a year ago but when Willie Blomquist announced his retirement on Twitter which is something that I'll never forget he had a little video of like him just tossing a ball to himself I think and just hitting a home run on an empty field and just being like all right it's time to walk away or whatever and it's a it's a willie bloomquist you know like the the the classic replacement level player who was never good and never terrible he just stuck around forever and he was he was would have been more of a lightning rod for criticism if he wasn't so white so yes willie bloomquist not great could just hit a home run now look i don't know how many

takes he had of that last swing but I can imagine it wasn't that many. You know, he can hit home runs. So one of the questions that I tried to ask one of our major league guests within the past few months, didn't get a great answer, was like, when you're on the field, can you tell the difference between the best and worst players on your team? Because, you know, every one of the majors is so good. But if you go down to the park and you have, like,

10 semi-regular adult baseball league players and one like guillermo heredia yeah you would know immediately because you'd be like holy shit that guy is superman yes so yeah there's there's the uh you you were up close did you participate in baseball exercises with the stompers? Not really. I was always hesitant to cross that line. Sam sometimes shagged flies with them. We considered, like, what if in the last day of the season there are no stakes? What if we just activated ourselves and put ourselves in a game just so we could get a baseball reference page? But we didn't do it.

I kind of wish we had. Did you at least, like like stand behind the backstop and watch like batting practice or pitching practice or whatever yeah yeah okay we were so very very close to the field at all times and and they were good at baseball and so i mean even that that's one of the lowest levels of semi-professional baseball that exists in in the country and i don't know i guess i shouldn't't be speaking for you, but how did the pitches look? Pretty scary. I think Sam, I don't think I did,

but I think Sam actually stepped in against Sean Conroy, our closer and sometimes starter and star of the book, who threw in maybe the mid-80s is kind of where he topped out through sidearm. And Sam hit against him I think just to see what it would look like and I think he sort of like yelled when he saw the pitch coming just because it was scary to actually see a real pitch coming at you and Sean is not a hard thrower even for that league so yeah baseball players professional baseball players are are really really good do you think Jerry DiPoto ever throws batting practice just to see if he still for that league. So yeah, baseball players, professional baseball players are really,

really good. Do you think Jerry DiPoto ever throws batting practice just to see if he still got it? That's what he has Ichiro for. We got another email in that vein from Eric who said, I play in a sandlot baseball league in Tokyo that is just baseball, except everything is a bit more relaxed. Seven inning games, the strike zone is a ball's width larger than a normal zone all around, and every player shows up in the batting order regardless of if they're playing a position. And he says, one of my teammates was a right-handed catcher in a good baseball high school who played in Koshien, the big nationwide high school tournament, and faced off against Daisuke Matsuzaka, a good player, but not someone that could turn pro. In our league, he pitches, plays all infield positions,

and when we're in a blowout, sometimes he'll bat left-handed and can still hit dingers. Nowhere near the skill gap of Butler in a beer league softball team, but just goes to show how even a smaller gap in skill separates the really talented from the guys just showing up. do what would be like the ben lindbergh equivalent of this like showing up and writing essays in ninth grade rhetoric i guess so that seems a lot less glamorous and fun but uh yeah i guess if we showed up and and blogged about baseball with some grammar schoolers. Maybe that's the equivalent. There's just so little glamour, so little that we get to boast about. Yeah. All right.

And one more from Will who says, the worst part of the Mets hand, foot, and mouth situation is that the common name is not even the most embarrassing name for the disease. The condition is usually caused by a virus named after the town in New York where it was first described, which is Coxsackie. Noah Sindergaard is on the DL with Coxsackie virus. If you can say that on the air without giggling, I will instantly become a Patreon supporter.

I said it without giggling. You giggled. Maybe that invalidates. You may have just blown this Patreon support for us. No, I didn't say it. You said it. Yeah, I said it. Iiggling. You giggled. Maybe that invalidates. You may have just blown this Patreon support for us. No, I didn't say it. You said it. Yeah, I said it. I didn't giggle.

I may have giggled when I read it initially, but not when I said it. Provide money. Yeah, pony up. Oh, shit. We giggled. How long do we have to go without giggling? Well, whatever. The moment's done.

I giggled. Ben didn't. You should donate half the money you were going to yes all right let's see we've got a couple minutes maybe all right let's see if i can pick out an email or two that we have time to answer here all right this one is from a different mike mike s audubo herrera is in the middle of his best offensive season yet that's good however his defensive value has absolutely cratered. After being a top five center fielder in two of the past three years, averaging roughly six to seven runs in the positive by both UZR and DRS,

Herrera has been more like a negative seven defender, according to those systems, with most of that damage being done via each system's range rating. Of course, this could all just be random noise, but a notable change from the first three seasons of his career has been the addition of Reese, quote, definitely a first baseman, unquote Hoskins, to left field. Could attempting to make up for Hoskins' shortcomings be the cause for the sharp decline in O'Double's defensive stats? I've heard this argument before, but only anecdotally and never with any actual statistical evidence. As a Phillies fan, I've seen more than my fair share of terrible defensive left fielders over the past 15 years.

Pat Burrell, the fossilized remains of Raul Bañas, Dom Brown. But I've never seen this effect on the center fielder. So, Oduble Herrera, is he still good and is he being affected by Reese Hoskins in left? I don't know if we've ever been able to have like a good clear and convincing answer for because this comes up all the time whenever there's a liability outfielder playing next to a good outfielder but i can tell you this much adubo herrera according to stat cast four outs above average he's actually been pretty good by that measure he's uh right behind mike trotten alex gordon just ahead of randall gritchick and

i don't know i guess i'll'll say Guillermo Heredia again. Why not? So you have defensive run saved and ultimate zone rating that say Herrera has not been very good, but based on what I would assume is a better measure, then StatCast says he's been good. Now, I don't know how you would explain that difference, because StatCast is what? It adjusts for positioning, and then the other numbers don't. So then you could argue maybe... Yeah, so that's what I was going to speculate. Right. So according to StatCast and Outs Above Average, Herrera is still good at getting to balls given where he starts the play.

So I guess in previous years, let's see, according to the same metric, he was plus five in 2016. So basically the same as this year, plus 11 last year. Of course, that's somewhat dependent on what opportunities you get. Anyway, StatCast says he's still good. Now, StatCast also says his sprint speed is down on the bases, someone significantly from the past couple of years. Maybe that is also true in the field, but we don't know yet. Anyway, what I was going to say is that, yeah, that accounts for where you start. So if Herrera is starting somewhere

different because of where Hoskins is standing, then it is possible, I suppose, that he would look good according to the StatCast metric, but would look bad according to the other metrics, and maybe would not be helping the Phillies as much. What I will also note is that Philly centerfielders this year, which, you know, mostly Herrera, have started 323 feet on average from home plate this season. So that is the fourth deepest average starting position for centerfielders this year. average starting position for centerfielders this year. Last year, Herrera and other Philly centerfielders were only 314 feet on average from home plate. So Herrera was playing about 10 feet closer to home plate on average last year. So last year he was one of the shallower centerfielders,

and this year he is one of the deeper centerfielders. So it's possible, I suppose, that that is related to Hoskins, that he is positioning himself differently so as to get to balls that Hoskins can't get to or misses or something like that. So that doesn't disprove the hypothesis, but doesn't prove it either. Meanwhile, if you look at Hoskins himself in the outfield, defensive run saved, negative 17. Ultimate zone writing, negative 8. Stat cast, negative 14.

All the numbers in agreement, Reece Hoskins, bad defensive outfielder. And in retrospect, what a weird move to sign Carlos Santana, right? I mean, bizarre. Right. Yeah, that is sort of strange, right? Yeah.

Reece Hoskinskins currently the uh the second worst outfield defender by us above average better only than nicholas castellanos who i apologize for bringing this up but i just can never not remember when you wrote your article about him improving at third base all the work he put in to become a better defensive third baseman and he's just a disaster everywhere that he's played. Yes, speaking of not totally trusting defensive stats in smallish samples, but at least every system agrees that Reese Hoskins is a bad left fielder. So some things still make sense in life. All right, one more question.

This is from Sean, who says, I'm watching the Yankees-Rays game. Well, join the crowd, Sean. And as a Yankees fan, I'm extremely frustrated With Aaron Boone's pitching management He has not used any pitchers as third baseman yet Come on, Boone, what are you waiting for? He has consistently left both starters and relievers in games When it seemed apparent that they were out of gas

Or had lost their stuff Tonight was another example Sending Luis Severino out to pitch the sixth After laboring through five And it did not go well This is not the question But I will just note that every fan thinks that their manager is bad at pitching management. Maybe they all are, or maybe they all were at some point. So I was surprised because I

just ran a polling project on Fangraphs asking everybody about their favorite team's managers. And I was surprised that the average result was actually better than average. When I've run these polls for like front offices and other team-based polling projects, I use numbers where 1 corresponds to the lowest rating in the polls and 5 is highest. The midpoint is always 3. And whenever I run these polling projects, the average response for all fans combined is always greater than 3 because, of course, there's that fan bias that you see whenever you do any sort of polling of fans but i i didn't know what to expect with managers but the overall average response in terms of numbers was 3.31 so people on average actually like their managers

or at least think they're a little better than average which is not what i would have expected for the same reason that you just brought up yeah that is interesting i i do remember doing an article at one point, I think, just kind of looking for examples of fans complaining online about their team's manager managing the bullpen poorly. And I was able to find examples for every single team. And I mean, I guess, you know, there have been points probably where every manager was bad at managing bullpens in some ways, but can't really be equally true for everyone. Anyway, the question is,

do you see baseball ever going to a more football-style approach to coaching, having coordinators, one to manage the lineup and another to manage the pitching? I ask this because it's apparent that managers have different strengths. According to rumors, Joe Girardi was not well-liked in the clubhouse, but he managed the bullpen very well, in my opinion. Oh, okay. So Sean liked his manager's bullpen management in the past. The opposite seems to be true for Boone.

What if baseball got to a place where teams accepted that different coaches were better at certain things and had a more NFL-style coaching structure? How do you think it would change team dynamics and what teams look for in coaches? Would the manager be more of an overseer of things and someone to instill culture with the specialty coordinators handling the strategy? I think we've talked a little bit about this before, maybe not directly, but we definitely have talked about the proliferation of coaches that teams seem to have. Of course, we've started to see multiple hitting coaches and multiple pitching coaches. And it seems like it would be only a matter of time before that were to extend toward the more of the i guess i don't know not in dugout coaching staff but the

the more central around manager coaching staff i don't know what the limit is of uniformed coaches that are allowed to be in the dugout but you know if you're currently going to have a bench coach who's there to drink with the manager it seems like you could probably split up the roles and i don't know i don't know if and when that's likely to happen because there are already hitting coaches and pitching coaches, and maybe those roles just sort of evolve as they are. most and it would absolutely make sense to see somebody else who if he doesn't become like the strategy coordinator at least becomes like the guy that the manager absolutely asks questions about the in-game strategy so that it's not all up to the guy yeah i think it differs by team certainly you already have some situations where a guy is looked on as a specialist and an expert on one side of things and might get a little more latitude when it comes to pitchers than another

pitching coach might, for instance. So to some degree it has happened, but it's never been formalized. So will we get to a point where you just have a pitching coach who actually makes the pitching moves directly and a hitting coach who, well, there aren't as many hitting moves, but makes whatever moves there are, and then you just have the manager sort of sitting there smiling benignly and overseeing it all. I see there isn't all that much to do in baseball games, though. That's the thing. Like, it's not like football where you really need an offensive coordinator and a defensive coordinator because one person can't do that job like in theory i think a baseball manager like the in-game demands on that person are not so steep that he can't make pitching changes like in consultation with his pitching coach certainly and you should take that person's advice and you should take your bench coach's advice and everything but there aren't that many strategic decisions that you need to make that i think it necessarily requires

that level of specialization. Like some managers are known as, you know, the X's and O's guys and others are more kind of the clubhouse leadership and press relations type. So you do, you know, emphasize certain strengths and try to paper over the weaknesses, but I don't know that you actually need to get to the point of officially designating sub coaches to make moves in games. Yeah, that's true. I guess when you have a game, a manager makes like four decisions or in the American League, like two. Right. Yeah. And you know, we're getting to the point, I think, where you will start to see some sort of stat person in the dugout. I know there's been a lot of conversation about that. And like Morgan Ensberg, who's a minor league manager for the Astros, I'm pretty sure he has said that if he gets to manage

in the big leagues, he would definitely have like a stat head bench coach or even someone in a new role, non-uniformed or uniformed, that is providing that information in real time. So I'm sure that we're getting more to that point. And of course, front offices are providing coaches and managers with more and more information that they can reference in game if they are so inclined. All right. So let us take a quick break and we will be back with Jim Jeffries in just a moment. Now for something completely different. I will not bother leaping Jim Jeffries because I feel like that would defeat the point of

having Jim Jeffries on the podcast. And would defeat the point of having Jim Jeffries on the podcast. And you've already cursed a couple of times anyway, just to get people in the mood for Jim Jeffries. So we'll be back in just a second with a comedian from Australia, not our usual guest, but I think a fun one. Where do you want an explosion now? Yeah, Jimmy Do you want to explode now? Yeah, monkey Now you see it right now Yeah, monkey

Jumping on off bed now So our guest today is the host of The Jim Jefferies Show, which sort of spoils the suspense for the rest of this introduction. His name is also Jim Jefferies, and in addition to hosting his show on Comedy Central, he has a new Netflix comedy special that I can't decide whether to call This Is Me Now or This Is Me Now. Jim, which way do you say it?

I don't know. It's open to interpretation, that one. I know. I'd probably say this is me now. It completely changes the meaning. I don't know where to put this. Yeah, I think it's a statement, not a question. Okay.

So we wanted to have you on to talk about the Dodgers and baseball, which I know is a passion of yours, at times a positive passion, at times a negative passion. I just looked up your history of tweeting about the Dodgers, which is very extensive. Yeah, I wrote the season off pretty quick this year. I was like, that's it, all over. So I typed in at Jim Jeffries and then Dodgers, and I'm still scrolling. The list is very long of tweets going back years. And sometimes you tweet directly at the Dodgers just to give them a piece of your mind, let them know who they should be playing or not playing.

And yeah, so May 13th, you tweeted, the Dodgers stink. This is going to be a long season. That was not an uncommon sentiment at the time. The Dodgers had stunk to that point. Now they're in first place, barely, but they're there. They also just acquired the best player available at the trade deadline. How are you feeling?

What has this season been like as a Dodgers fan? I'm feeling very confident now. I'm starting to think we're better now than we were last year. Yeah. And I wasn't optimistic at the beginning of the year. thought i thought they made no trades i thought they just thought they could coast in they got rid of morrow and they got rid of darvish and i thought all right well that's us done with no pitching as soon as cory seager had the uh um the tommy john surgery

i was like all right i'm gonna have to swear on this podcast? Yes, go ahead. It's kind of your brain. And so I was like, fuck it. That's the end of that. And then I felt like Taylor had come back, not the player that he was. I feel like they figured out Bellinger. It was all doom and gloom for me. But now I think Machado,

I think things are coming along. I'm very optimistic about Buehler being a very good player. I think, I don't know, I'm jumping ahead of myself a bit now, but I think this is our last year with Kershaw. I think we should get rid of him. He's too injury-prone. We've gotten some of the best years out of him. They should get as much money as they can.

But that's where I'm at with the Dodgers. This is the first time I think I've ever heard somebody say we should get rid of, quote, get rid of Clayton Kershaw So that's a podcast for us I was curious how long you've been a Dodgers fan Because I'm coming to this podcast With the background of liking the Seattle Mariners And I'm curious, you can complain about a team

That's working on their sixth consecutive first place division title I wonder if you've ever had the distinct pleasure Of cheering on a baseball team that's actually bad. I mean, I've been actively following the Dodgers for 10 years. So, you know, yes, no, the seasons have been fine. I did watch the Giants win a few pennants. Yeah, I didn't see us win the division every time, but the whole time I've been following

them, they've been a pretty good team. So, yeah, I haven't been through some late years with them yet. But, you know, the thing with the Dodgers was? All my life I've followed. So my rugby team is a team called the North Sydney Bears. They don't even exist anymore, but they were around for 100 years and never won, not once, for 100 years. And then I support Fulham in the Premier League,

and they just got back up from the Championship Division. They were, like, relegated from the Premier League. So I don't follow your Manchester United to this world or anything like that. I've never supported a team. I support the Clippers as well, the basketball. I've never supported a team that's a popular team or one that's good.

And so when I supported the Dodgers, I had this feeling of oh wow, this must be what it feels like to win. It's quite intoxicating. I should follow good teams all the time. Why did I waste my time? I was always wasting my time on losers. Do you aspire to be one of the sort of celebrity fans who is identified with the Dodgers?

You know how when it's the World Series or the postseason and you're watching the broadcast and they'll pan around the stands and, oh, here's this actor you know, here's this comedian you know. Sometimes it's like the star of the network sitcom that you've never heard of and that will get canceled the next day, but they have to promote it. Yeah, they seem to always show Ken John and George Lopez. Like, surely there's more famous people out there. Right. That's the two they seem to focus on for whatever reason. When they show a Dodgers game in L.A., the stand is like half celebrities. So, you know, there are a lot of people to choose from there.

But, like, do you want to be the, you know, what Jack Nicholson is to the Lakers, Jim Jeffries is to the Dodgers? Do you want to get to that point? I would love to be, but I like my tickets back a little bit further. I've got a club, so my season tickets, this is the requirement I have with my season tickets. What is the closest row that's always in the shade? I'm a pale guy, right?

So literally, I can go to a 1 o'clock game and the line of sun comes right to my feet. So I'm in row S on ground level right behind home plate. I've got four tickets there. So I don't know if that camera ever pans back up there, but that's where I like to see. But I'd like to be noticed. They go, there's Jim Jefferies in his cheap seats again.

Well, because you're there for the regular season games at least. Sometimes you're not showing up just for when the cameras come out in October, these people posing as Dodgers fans. I've been on the Megatron once. Once I was on the Megatron. Yeah, they came and took a photo. I don't think people were overly excited or anything. I don't remember the crowd screaming.

So baseball, I don't know if it's going through any sort of meaningful crisis at the moment, but there's at least we know that attendance is down by a couple million people this year. There's this ongoing debate about whether baseball's fans are all old, white, and dying, and several of them are.

We're not, but we will one day. And there's maybe less of the celebrity influence to get people interested in baseball. It's a slow sport. It's getting increasingly slower. So what have you had to think about? You're going to a lot of games, and watching a game from the stadium versus watching a game from home, it's a distinctly different experience. But how do you respond when you hear even the commissioner talking about how the game needs to speed up

and we need to make these incremental changes? I think the game needs to slow down. I think it's moving on at a breakneck speed as it is. It's like I grew up watching cricket, which is games are five days long. A three-hour game is too fast for me. I haven't even settled into it yet. No, I think it's plenty faster. The only thing that I would do is, I don't like the American League.

I think the National League, I think having the pitcher hit is a far superior game. It's a far more mental sport when they're bringing in another pitcher and whatnot. I think it's a much better sport, but I hear they're trying to get rid of that. The only thing I'd get rid of and change, get rid of the umpires calling strikes and balls.

You don't need that. We can watch it on the TV. Just have a red light and a green light. Like, what do we need that for? It's like, we're always getting it wrong. Just a yes or no sign. Yes, no, right? I could say strike and ball. I don't know. There's probably a better theory. But you could have sensors do that. And then as for speeding it up, I don't know. This whole thing, you can only go up to the mountain like six times now or something stupid like that? Yes, that's right.

Does anyone know the penalty if you do it seven? What happens then? I don't think anyone's actually attempted to do it yet. Do they just go, oh, you... So it's hard to say. Do they go, oh, you shouldn't have done that. You shouldn't have done that. You're getting it now.

Right. Oh, I told you not to. You've pushed my button. Like, what actually happens? So how difficult was baseball to get into as someone coming from Australia, as people who don't know you have probably intuited by now? I was watching it as I was coming down with drugs and alcohol in Britain.

They'd always put it on Channel 5. And because of the time difference, it would be on at like 3 in the morning or something in Britain. So whenever I was coming down, I used to watch it on TV in the UK. I lived in the TV for the UK for 10 years. And I decided to not Google anything about it. And I was going to figure out everything that was going on just by repetition of watching it. It took me about two seasons to figure out RBI. I kept on going RBI, RBI, and I couldn't, you know, there's still some stat stuff that I don't understand what the

fuck is going on. That one that the, there's like one that like the one where you get like OPS or some shit. I don't know what that one does. Yes. Yes. Unbased percentage plus slugging percentage. Oh, not that one. Yeah, that one. I don't understand what's going on. I don't know what that... I don't know what... And no one seems to reference it ever. No one ever goes, oh, he has a good such and such. Everyone always talks about their average.

No one ever talks about that other stat. No one gives a shit. There are too many numbers. There definitely are a lot of numbers. I can imagine that would be intimidating coming to the sport fresh. But there's a perception that cricket is impossible to understand. Is it actually more difficult to understand? Or is it just that you grow up with one and you get to know it? Cricket's technically a far more technical sport than baseball.

There's more going on in cricket. It's a much harder sport to manage than baseball. Much harder sport to sport than baseball. There's more going on in cricket. It's a much harder sport to manage than baseball. Much harder sport to manage than baseball. Because you have to change the filters for every single batter and you can hit the ball around you and the bats flat so that people are really steering their shots. I know they're steering their shots somewhat

but you're expected to get so many runs. So the fielding and when to declare and when to bring a different lot with a base but like you're expected to get so many runs and so the fielding and the when do they clear and when to when to bring the a different bowler out i'm going to say it's a much more technical sport i like that baseball is a little bit mind-numbing talk to me uh talk to me like i'm stupid here referring to cricket has there been first of all i don't even know if there is any instant replay technology in cricket i don't know if it's necessary but is there a sort of statistical revolution around cricket analysis as there is in baseball?

Because it seems like it might lend itself to that. Cricket is years before any other sport using technology. Oh, my God. They've got everything. They've got the radar that will actually predict where the ball would have gone. You've got an LBW, which is a leg before wicket. You can get out. And they've got a machine that can actually tell whether the ball would have hit the stumps or whatever

from a trajectory and speed. They have a thing called Hot Spot, where they put everything in black and white, and they can see if there's any warmth coming off the bat, if the ball actually did chip the bat. I was in baseball briefly, and then it just went away. They have a whole heap of crap like that. They're technology heavy, the baseball.

Love it. There's Stump Can, so there's a camera on the stumps there's also like uh so you can hear the actual things going down and the stumps going down like the actual sound what happened there was they uh so too close to the players you could hear all the players swearing and telling each other they're going to fuck each other's wives and stuff so i I had to get rid of that for a while. It's like if you could hear the catcher the whole time. Yeah, that'd be great, but you can understand why they wouldn't want that. We got a taste of that with an umpire earlier this season, and it wasn't supposed to get out, but yeah.

Is baseball funny? Is it a source of comedy? I mean, you just got some mountain visit material there a little earlier, but is it something you could work into an actor monologue? Not particularly, but I would love to be in a major league movie. That would be great, but I'm too old now to play one of the players.

I'd be like fucking Chase Utley. I could be like somebody who worked in the head office or something. I could be like Andrew Freeman. No, it's not stand-up. The Dodgers are as into the numbers as any organization out there. They might not say anything about it, but you know they're looking at all of the most advanced stuff that's out there. And so if it's helping them, I guess you're in favor of that.

Yeah. Look, I like that the game's a little nerdy and that involves, you know, like maths and all that type of bullshit. It's interesting. As someone who's maybe not so attuned with the numbers, I little nerdy and that involves, you know, like, maths and all that type of bullshit. It's interesting. As someone who's maybe not so attuned with the numbers, I mean, Ben and I just work here. We're constantly immersed in numbers and spreadsheets and all this shit that we have to analyze because that's just the angle that we come from. But as someone who's a little more removed from that, how has been the experience of watching Max Muncy become, like, one of the best players in baseball? Because from our perspective, it's like this is a baseball miracle,

and we can point to exactly how and why this might have happened. But what is it like when you have no idea? He looks and sounds like a throwback player, doesn't he? And up to bat is Max Muncy. Max Muncy takes the bat, you know what I mean? Oh, he takes the ball, Max Muncy. And he's also fat, and he looks like he's like 15 years older than he is. I like him.

He's like got a Babe Ruth sort of quality to him. Yeah. But dude, I think, I think, I think, I don't know if he'll be this good a player next year. I feel like it might be a good little run. Hey, what's your theory on this? I reckon Kemp's taking steroids again. I reckon he has to be. I was just going to ask you.

How's he got so much? If you had a, if you had a theory about the Matt Kemp renaissance, I guess we've just heard it. He's definitely juicing again. No way, can't be. When I say again, was he before I assumed so? I don't know if he's in good enough shape to be. When he was with Manny Ramirez and all that stuff, he was...

He was a good hitter. What's he done? Yeah, he was a good hitter, but he was shit in San Diego and Atlanta. Yes. And all of a sudden, he's back. He he was a good hitter, but he was, like, shit in, like, San Diego and Atlanta. Yes. And all of a sudden he's back. He was the person I dreaded the most. Yeah, none of us expected that.

And he was getting injured all the time. I don't think the Dodgers expected it. Last year he was with the Dodgers. He was like porcelain. So, whenever a player in Major League Baseball gets suspended for steroids, the response is generally a little bit sanctimonious. I know among the younger crowd that people don't really care as much, but baseball is treated as this sort of hallowed institution, and how dare anybody ever cheat, despite, of course, the number of players in the olden days who found other ways to cheat.

But what is it like to come into that from an international perspective, having followed different sports when you were younger? Have there been major steroid scandals in cricket and the sports that you an international perspective, having followed different sports when you were younger, have there been major steroid scandals in cricket and the sports that you've been following, or what is your response when you see how people deal? There are plenty of them. I like steroids in sports.

I want everyone to be doing their best. The thing is, I like them in movies as well. I don't want the bloody rock around sports. They're not going to be taking steroids. Also, there's an entertainer i like my entertainers to be on drugs and sports people are entertainers that's my theory on it i think i think we should juice them as much as possible yeah i mean we uh we still like looking up barry bonds's stats at his peak and you know why they look like they look but they're

still amazing to look at i guess there's the playing field concern and some guys are taking something and other guys aren't. And so they're at a disadvantage. And so that's kind of a problem, but I guess it wouldn't be a problem if everyone were taking them. The only sport I don't think should be on steroids is the Olympics because they're not getting paid. They're unprofessional athletes. Professional ones go shoot your body up. I expect the same from my movie stars. Come on, you're entertainers. Entertain me.

Okay, let's say this is a podcast that historically we've had a lot of Mike Trout hypotheticals. This is a Mike Trout obsessed podcast. You wouldn't have known that beforehand, but, you know, best player in the world. So let's say you've had a chance. I don't know if you've gone down to watch the Angels, but, you know but they're the next closest team by proximity to you. Mike Trout has at least been in Los Angeles to play against the Dodgers. How many digits do you think Mike Trout would have to play without

in order to not be the best player on the Dodgers? I don't think he's the best player in the world. Uh-oh. You think Trout's the best player in the world? Alright, let's do this now. New question. Who's the best player? I think Hopper's better than Trout. Oh boy, that's a hot take. I'd rather have Hopper in my team than Trout. Now, is that because of the

celebrity, the marquee value, or because you actually think he's more valuable on the field? I think he's more valuable on the field. Okay, we're going to have to send you some numbers that say otherwise. He's had other players around him. He's never done anything. He definitely has not had much playoff experience, that's for sure. Although I would blame his teammates more so than him for that. I think, you know, look, we're looking at all the numbers. I think Trout is a great hitter. He's a great fielder. He's a great runner. He's always in the lineup. Okay, so who do you think is the second best player in the world? Maybe Mookie Betts on the Red Sox.

All right. Where do you put Harper? Harper has been up there. I mean, a few years ago, he won an MVP award. He deserved it. Right now, though, he's been up and down the last few years. Where do you put Machado? Machado, I'm going to say we're just doing position players.

I'll put him like fifth or sixth, I think. Francisco Lindor, maybe a little better. Ben, what do you think? Machado's definitely up there. What was your take on the Machado trade? It was great. I would have given another five prospects. Who gives a shit about prospects?

I don't want to win now. I don't know if in five years we're going to be so sad. If we win the World Series, we won't be sad about it at all. No, that's true. The Dodgers want to win now and in five years, and the way they're going, it seems like they will. But it has been a while since the the World Series, we won't be sad about it at all. No, that's true. The Dodgers want to win now and in five years, and the way they're going, it seems like they will. But it has been a while since the last World Series, so you're willing to surrender some prospects in that case.

Yeah. All right. Well, we will let you go. We are happy to have had you on, and of course people can continue to follow your Dodgers takes at Jim Jeffries on Twitter all the time. They're happier takes than they were earlier this season. And, of course, they can catch the Jim Jeffries on Twitter all the time. They're happier takes than they were earlier this season. And of course, they can catch the Jim Jeffries show on Comedy Central on Tuesdays at 1030 Eastern and

Netflix special, which I won't tell anyone how to pronounce, but it's either this is me now, or this is me now. Either way, you look up the same words. Jim, thanks very much for joining us. All right, lads. Thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed the chat. Jim, thanks very much for joining us. All right, lads. Thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed the chat. All right, so that will do it for today.

So we had an anti-DH Mike Trout critic on the podcast today. You can't say that we're not giving time to differing opinions. It's kind of nice to get out of our little baseball bubble at times, talk to someone who doesn't see the game quite the same way we do, especially if it's an entertaining and funny person. I will note that not long after we talked, Mike Trout went three for four with a double and two homers. I hope Jim was watching. To be fair, Bryce Harper homered two. And to be even fairer, Jim Jeffries knows a hell after we recorded. They sent Seung Won Oh to the Rockies. That's the way the timing worked out. There was even another raise trade after we finished talking too. Tampa Bay traded Matt Andrees to the Diamondbacks. Very busy day in the AL East.

And hey, look who stopped the Pirates streak. Trevor Bauer. There's that man again. With the new tag team of Adam Simber and Brad Hand nailing down the victory, Pirates streak stops at 11. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up. Ben Gibbard, who wrote the song that you're hearing right now and, by the way, has an album coming out very soon. Christopher Pading, Tim Rawlings, Jacob Carl, and Kyle Lobner. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild.

Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and many other places. I saw that a few of you left reviews recently. Appreciate it. Thanks to Dylan Higgins, not only for his in-game updates today, but also for his editing assistance. Please keep your questions and comments coming for me and Jeff via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. We only got to a few emails today. We will have to table a bunch of questions for next week because we are pre-recording an episode. Jeff is going away and we've got a great guest lined up to tell us all about trade deadline activity. So we will be

back to talk to you about that very soon.