Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1255: Keep Your Eye on the Hidden Ball

Episode Date: August 11, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Felix Hernandez‘s demotion to the bullpen, Willians Astudillo and the hidden-ball trick, former major leaguers who are still excelling internationally, an Augusta GreenJackets tweet, Dee Gordon‘s walk rate, Javier Baez‘s success, the state of the MVP races, Tyler Glasnow‘s apparent reinvention and the staying power of coaching gurus, […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1255 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer in Los Angeles now, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Hello. How are you? How's the smoke? Is there smoke? I don't think there's much smoke or smog from what I can tell out my window, but I'm pretty tired. I can tell out my window, but I'm pretty tired. I've had a lot of travel and flights and interviews and conversations, and I'm about ready to be home, which I will be by the time we record our next episode. But I've got one more road game to do, so we will see how this goes. And I figured we could start with some news that is unsurprising and perhaps inevitable,

but still sort of depressing and probably particularly for you which is that Felix Hernandez is now a relief pitcher never thought I'd see the day yeah so it's hard to know when uh what moment is the moment when you're supposed to just start coming to terms with it and you write your eulogies. Not that his career is over, but, you know, he's been pretty average or bad going on, what is this, three years now. And he just allowed more runs in a start than any other pitcher has allowed in a start this season. Some of it was unearned, but nevertheless, it was not a good start. The thing is, it went so off the rails for Felix Hernandez

that Adrian Beltre hit a home run and then did not want to gloat or show him up while rounding the bases in a show of respect, which granted that's sportsmanship, but there's really no good way to handle that. You either gloat going around the bases and you make Felix feel bad or you say, I didn't want to gloat because he's so bad. And then you just make him feel bad. I think it's worse. Yeah. Sign of respect. It's sort of a sign of disrespect inadvertently. Right. Now, for years, I've been sort of consoling myself with the increasingly unlikely suspicion

that maybe Felix could go the way of Justin Verlander and he has his down stretch and then he just bounces back. And that's the point that so many people have pointed to if we were thinking about Felix rescuing his career and getting back to the top of his game, I think a more likely outcome, even if you want to be positive and a little generous, is maybe he can go the way of CeCe Zabathia. But at this point, he just feels broken. He appears to be broken.

I can't wrap my heart around the reality that Felix Hernandez, who was one of the best pitchers in baseball for so many years, could never pitch the Mariners to the playoffs. And right now he's been costing the Mariners a chance to make the playoffs. That's just the cruelest of all jokes that you could play on a baseball player. And it's dark. The dark days. Career not over. Still more career to go.

Who knows? He could have a magical transition into the bullpen. It's happened before. I don't know how permanent this is. I think his replacement is going to be Erasmo Ramirez, so this might last like a week and a half. That's the thing, yeah. It's not like he's being replaced by a good starting pitcher. I don't know who he's being replaced by, but that's just sort of a sign of how far he's fallen, is that it's not even that the Mariners have a great option for that rotation spot. It's just that almost any option seems to be

better than Felix at this point, which again is almost unimaginable that he could be at this point at not a really advanced age. I know he came up very young and has lots of innings on his arm, even though I think the Mariners mostly handled him responsibly and with caution. He's just had a lot of time to rack up that wear and tear, and he hasn't really found a way to adjust. And yeah, we always talk about the Verlander precedent, but I'm not sure that really is a precedent in that Verlander was pitching through injuries, as we have since learned. core injury and I think he had some other arm injury that he was pitching through and he knew it he knew he was in some pain but he just didn't talk about it publicly because he just doesn't like to talk about weaknesses publicly and so from our perspective on the outside it seemed like well he's just getting on in years and he's declining and he's losing his stuff but really it turned out to be a temporary thing that he healed and recovered from.

And with Felix, that doesn't seem to be the case because this has just gone on for quite a while now. And, you know, you hope that he could find that sort of Sabathia-esque second gear, but I'm not sure that he has it in him. strange because it always seemed like he would be the one who would just because he had so many pitches and so many ways that he could be successful seemingly even without throwing really hard but that just hasn't happened i am of course uh particularly sensitive to this decline this phase of felix hernandez's career with the mariners fan background and you are aware of it certainly being a national baseball analyst whatever you call yourself writer journalist even i don't know but i wonder how this feels relative to other players who have been declining around the league. It has always felt like there was a special kind of connection between Felix and

Seattle and Mariners fans just because he stuck around and he twice signed long-term extensions. And, you know, obviously he was so good while the team was so bad. But I don't know. I wonder how this compares. Who's another compares who's a who's another player who's terrible now chris davis doesn't really count that's not the same albert pools is bad worse now but he wasn't really an angel when he was great that's kind of maybe part of it here because who who else this should have done some more research before doing this podcast now but off the top of my head thinking about players who have just kind of started to come apart with their original teams after such long careers because even what Felix did was

unusual now for him to be doing this at what 30 31 years old yeah no I don't know I don't have a great answer Eric Hosmer that doesn't count no well there just aren't that many players who've been with one team for their whole careers and for 14 years as Felix has and yeah he's 32 now which just seems too young for him to fall completely off the map and out of the rotation and really you know barring some kind of miraculous recovery for him and also for the Mariners who are now trailing in the wild card race it really is amazing that he could potentially go his entire career without pitching in the postseason in this era where so many teams make the postseason and you don't even really have to be that great a team to make the postseason. Just fluke into it once, you'd think,

especially if you have a young, cost-controlled ace like Felix, as the Mariners have had for much of their playoff drought. So he really, I know Joe Sheehan has written about this, but he's very much an outlier in what he has accomplished in his career without ever making the postseason. And it's a shame because I know he's had a couple chances to pitch in meaningful games, and this year certainly he has has and it just hasn't gone all that well and i know that he feels pretty bad about that and so do i and mariners fans must feel even worse so we hope that this is temporary somehow and that there is a second act but

the trajectory has just been down down down there's always you look for when in a case like this because your inclination is to want to be, you look for, in a case like this, because your inclination is to want to be optimistic, you look for any sort of sign, any kind of glimmer of hope. And what you do get to do now is when starters move to the bullpen, what happens there is a little bit unpredictable. We know that on average, starters pitch better out of the bullpen for all the reasons that we already know. They just get to limit their repertoires.

They get to put everything into every pitch. Maybe they have the platoon advantage more often. So many reasons that it works to your advantage to pitch out of the bullpen. But some guys have amazing transitions, like, I don't know, this season, Adam Conley, or when Carlos Carrasco went to the bullpen and then came back out of it and was amazing. Wade Davis is maybe the most vivid recent example because he was just a terrible starting pitcher twice. He was a bad starter pitcher twice he was a bad

starter then he was an awesome reliever then they they were like well let's start a big nope nope let's put him back in the bullpen let's just let him be a closer and so wade davis was just so much better out of the bullpen felix hernandez never pitched out of the bullpen except for when he's been warming up for his starts so i know yesterday during the mariners game there was this image the beat writers were tweeting out that felix hernandez was going with Edwin Diaz to the bullpen during the game. And it was just one of those profound moments of where we are today. But for at least the next few weeks, Mariners fans get to think this could be the thing that brings it back. What if he had like a John Smoltz transition and turned into a dominant reliever?

What a great way for the second half of his career to go. The likelihood of that, it's small, but it's high. It's not zero because we just don't know what could happen here with Felix no longer having to pace himself. It's just sufficiently unpredictable that when you don't know, then there's room for hope. Yeah. All right. Should we talk about a happier topic? then there's room for hope. Yeah. All right. Should we talk about a happier topic? Williams Estadio. At the beginning of our previous episode, I just played a clip from the Twins broadcast talking about it. But of course, it hadn't happened when you and I talked. So you have

since written about it. Williams Estadio pulled off a hidden ball trick. I did not expect that article to go to 2000 words, but it did. It's the longest article I've written in a while. Williams Estadio, the second hidden ball trick that the Rochester Red Wings pulled off this season, I don't know what's normal. I think it's zero, but they're two for at least two attempts. One of the things that I was thinking about, well, this is one of those articles that you, at least for me, you start writing and you just don't know where the article is going to go i don't know how much of an outline you develop when you start writing like you know exactly what you're going to hit on in every paragraph but i'm just gonna let the fingers start going and then we end up where it ends up so williams estadio pulled off a hidden ball trick for anyone who didn't see it which among this audience is very very few of you maybe a few of you are like back

from a war and you just returned home but william-Estadio pulled off the hidden ball trick two days ago. I believe it would have been Wednesday. It was a game against the Tigers AAA affiliate. And Mikey Matuk hit a sack fly. Dawel Lugo was on second base. On the sack fly, he advanced to third base. The ball was returned to shortstop Gregorio Petit. And Petit flipped the ball to Williams-Estadio at third base.

This is Estadio playing third base, not catcherer because I don't know what's happening with him anyway flipped him at third base far too late for him to make a play on Dawel Lugo but at that point Estadio the third baseman had the ball Lugo was on third base so Estadio held the ball and he slowly walked toward the mound where Chase DeYoung new Rochester Red Wing pitcher was on the mound and the first thing that Estadio said he noticed was that Lugo was looking in one direction and third base coach, I think it was Doug Minkiewicz, actually, was also looking in another direction. They were going to talk to one another as coaches and baserunners do. So Estadio starts walking to the mound, and Chase Young is on the mound.

He's holding his glove outstretched and open like, hey, give me the ball. And then a couple seconds pass, and he's still like, hey, give me the ball. And Estadio, I guess, I didn't see it on camera, but Estadio, I guess, shook his head no. And Chase Young was like, oh, I get it. Something's going on. So then he pretended like he had the ball, went back to the whole Rosenbach thing. And he walked up onto the mound and did not quite straddle the rubber. But as he was about to seemingly straddle the rubber to pitch to the next batter, Lugo stepped off third base to take his lead. And that's when Estadio applied the tag

and the hidden ball trick was successful. Now, one of the things that I saw a lot of in the immediate aftermath of, you know, Estadio pulled off the hidden ball trick. So we got a lot of tweets. There was a lot of activity directing us toward this play. And probably half those tweets were like, whoa, we got gotta show Jeff and Ben this clip, and the other half were like, that's a bach. That shouldn't be allowed. Because I didn't know this, but in high school and college, at least in the States, the rule is that if the pitcher doesn't have the ball, he can't be within about five feet of the

rubber. But that's not the rule in professional baseball. In Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball, you just can't stand astride the rubber without the ball. That is the rule in professional baseball, in Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball. You just can't stand astride the rubber without the ball. That is the rule. I figured that was the case, but then I passed it on to Dale Scott, our guest from two months ago, and I was like, hey, Dale, what do you think about this? And he looked over the video and he said, well, it's not conclusive. We don't have a video clip of Chase DeYoung on the mound as std was applying the tag but from all the

evidence that we do have it looks like chase de young was nearly straddling the rubber but he wasn't quite there yet so by the letter of the law not a buck is allowed it looked like if uh if dawa lugo had waited another like half second to take his lead then chase de young might have straddled the rubber although at that point I guess Chase DeYoung presumably is aware of the rules and wouldn't have done that. It's funny, because after the game, there was an article on minorleabaseball.com, and Chase DeYoung had a quote where he said, oh, yeah, no, I figured something was up, blah, blah, blah.

And then I was straddling the rubber, and then we made the play happen. And that would be a balk, but Chase DeYoung just used the wrong word, I guess. He was not straddling the rubber. He was just close to the rubber. And the tag was applied. And one of the best parts of the clip is that in the background, as you see Estadio apply the tag, he celebrates, Chase DeYoung celebrates, and first baseman Tyler Austin is just watching as a disinterested observer from a distance because he had no idea what was going on. Yeah, and the question that you raised, one of the questions that you raised in your post is, why doesn't this happen more often? Why don't players try this more often? Now, of course, the reason why the hidden ball trick seems to work so well is that it happens so rarely, so no one is ever

expecting it. So if someone were to try to do it with any regularity, then people would be on the watch for it, and it wouldn't work, and it wouldn't be as fun. So it's good that it's so rare and it's special when it happens and it's fun for everyone. But you do kind of wonder why it doesn't happen more often. And as you said, I mean, it's possible that it does happen more often and it just doesn't work. Like as far as we know, the success rate for this tactic is 100% because I don't know, we know the success rate for this tactic is 100% because I don't know, I can't really ever remember reading, oh, they tried the hidden ball trick and it didn't work. Like, it seems like, A, they only really try it when they think they have a good shot to do it, when they know that whoever it is wasn't watching. So maybe that's just usually not the case. Maybe usually base runners and base

coaches are actually attentive and there's just no opportunity to do this. Or I don't know, maybe there just are kind of these sly little tags that don't result in outs and we just never hear about them. So I don't know, but it's kind of a, you know, game theory sort of thing. How often do you actually want to do this? Do you want to save it for an important moment and then unwritten rules considerations enter into it? Like if you were to do this in a huge playoff game at a high leverage moment and you got an important out because you used the hidden ball trick, nothing illegal about it, but I think the opposing team would hate it and their fans would hate it and people would accuse you of being cheap or unsportsmanlike. So I do kind of wonder what would happen if this were attempted more often. I'm looking at the Wikipedia page for the hidden ball trick just to make sure I'm not forgetting anything, because I don't remember ever hearing about this taking place in like a game of real significance, which would be the playoffs. You've never seen the playoffs. Now, what we don't have is a database of failed hidden ball tricks.

So as far as I know, for example, the Rochesterchester red wings are two for two this year but they could be two for like 30 which would be really awkward where the third baseman is just holding the ball and then nothing happens and then after about 20 seconds he just tosses the ball to the pitcher and then game resumes now there is a paragraph i'd forgotten about this and i can just uh i guess i'll read this might as well read it this is from wikipedia on august 10, 2013, in a Tampa Bay loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers 5-0, Evan Longoria, the raised third baseman, pulled the trick in the fourth inning on one Uribe. With the bases loaded and no outs, A.J. Ellis flied out to center field, with Andre Ethier tagging to score, Uribe tagging to third, and Skip Schumacher tagging to second.

Tampa first baseman and former Dodger James Loney cut off center field Will Myers' throw at the mound and flipped to shortstop Younel Escobar, who flipped to third baseman Longoria, standing several feet behind third base out of Uribe's line of sight. Longoria just stood behind the bag looking bored and kicking the dirt for several seconds before he got his chance. Quote, I was watching it, and I didn't know what to do to stop it, said pitcher Zach Greinke, who was on deck. I didn't want to yell at Uribe because I might get him off the bag. I didn't know what to do. He just lifted his foot for a tenth of a second and Longoria was ready for it. As Uribe shifted his weight and took his foot off the third base bag, Longoria sneaked from behind and slapped Uribe's thigh with a tag. Longoria looked over his

shoulder, blah, blah, blah. Call was made. So I bring that up in one reason is because, well, the on-deck hitter was aware of what was going on. That hitter doesn't have a whole lot else to do. So that's maybe one reason why this doesn't happen more often, because if no one else, the on-deck hitter could be paying attention. But then the on-deck hitter, in this case, didn't know what to do. It's Zach Rehke. He had no idea how to warn Uribe.

Now, he could have done, I don't know, something instead of just watching helplessly from 90 or 100 feet away, because clearly what Zach Reinke did didn't get the job done. But I wonder who is most likely to be aware, because it's hard for me to blame a runner or a coach for letting the guard down for a second. There's just a lot going on on the field, and almost all of the time, the ball just ends up back at the pitcher. You don't expect this, but I don't know. I don't know who you'd think would be the most aware, but there's a lot of people on the other team, and all you need is one of them who sees who has the ball and says something, and that would ruin it.

Yeah. Well, anyway, Williams Estadio now, in addition to his no-look pickoff play that went viral, now has the hidden ball trick on his resume so he kind of i guess has a reputation now as someone who will take advantage of opposing players who are not paying attention so that's just one more thing to love about him and hopefully he'll be back up soon if not before september then certainly when rosters expand and uh we'll get a longer look at him at the major league level hold Hold on, I got something else here.

So let's read this live. Well, I guess it's not live, we're recording this. On July 12, 2013, Padres shortstop Iverth Cabrera attempted to execute the hidden ball trick on Giants third baseman Pablo Sandoval after Sandoval hit a double. As pitcher Sean O'Sullivan walked onto the mound and Sandoval took his lead, Cabrera, while holding the ball, tagged Sandoval. and Sandoval took his lead, Cabrera, while holding the ball, tagged Sandoval. However, Sandoval had requested and was granted time by second-base umpire Laz Diaz immediately after his double. Because O'Sullivan never assumed his position on the pitcher's plate with a baseball, the umpires appropriately never called play, and Cabrera's tag of Sandoval was therefore not legal.

The Umpire Ejection Fantasy League, okay, explains this is why a hidden ball trick may never be executed after a base hit, mound visit, or other event in which time is called. In order to put the ball back into play, the pitcher must engage the rubber. And if the pitcher engages the rubber without the ball, it is a bach pursuant to Rule 8.05i. So, can't do it after hits, I guess. I didn't know that. So, in the Estadillo case, we had a sacrifice fly. So no one, I guess, was awarded time. But that would be one reason why you don't see this so much, because without a hit, it's pretty hard to get the ball into the glove of the defender without raising any suspicion. All right. I wanted to ask you about a couple of things that you wrote that I

haven't had time to dig into because of my travels. You wrote about Javier Baez, who right now, I don't know, we don't talk a whole lot about awards races, and we definitely don't talk a whole lot about awards races at this point when we have several more weeks to go to decide those races. But there is, I'd say, increasing buzz about Javier Baez as an MVP candidate. And you wrote about Javier Baez, and we haven't really talked about him in depth other than his non-hitting side since, I don't know, early in the season when he seemed to be succeeding in sort of an unsustainable way, like he was still swinging at everything, and yet he was hitting it, and it just didn't seem like something that someone could pull off over a full season, and somehow he has. So you did a fun fact-a-thon about Javier Baez?

I'm sorry. You said the word buzz, and we really can talk about Baez, but I just have something else pulled up I wanted to talk about quickly. It's not Baez-related, but we'll get to Baez after this. I just wanted to read you a tweet. This is an actual tweet from a Major League Baseball affiliate in Augusta. Green Jackets win. This is the Augusta Green Jackets. This is a tweet from Thursday night. Or I guess Friday morning. Green Jackets win

on a walk-off balk. Hey, we'll take it. Game two of the doubleheader to begin at 1255 AM. Game two of the doubleheader to begin at 1255 a.m. This is retweeted into my timeline by Grant Brisby. Now, the next tweet that the Augusta Green Jackets account tweeted was, shout out to those fans.

You guys are dedicated. The following tweet says, game two has been called. We will not be making up the ballgame. So they didn't actually play a game starting at one in the morning, but I was curious what in the hell was happening here in the uh south atlanta league uh affiliate with the i guess the green jackets the green jackets incidentally they were playing hagerstown the hagerstown suns the green jackets are 19 and 25 they're out of whatever the hunt is hagerstown suns are 16 and 27 they're in last place this game

had no significance but here is what uh here's what was going on hagerstown and augusta were supposed to play a game on august 7th and it was postponed by rain so they were supposed to play a double header on the 8th they got one game in the second game was postponed by rain so they were supposed to play a double header on the 9th they played the first game that's the one where the green jackets won on a walk-off block that however, was delayed by three and a half hours by rain. So the first pitch was thrown at 9.32 p.m. local time. And by the way, it went to an extra inning for a minor league doubleheader, which is to say only eight innings. But still, the game went three hours. That's why it didn't end until almost one in the morning. They, I guess, are not making up the game.

And there is no further scheduled game between Augusta and Hagerstown. But I think that after having three of those games canceled and one of those games delayed three hours by rain, maybe you just kind of let it go. It doesn't mean anything. But it's funny that on the Augusta schedule, it says August 7th versus Hagerstown postponed rain. August 8th versus Hagerstown postponed rain. August 9th versus Hager Sound postponed rain. August 9th versus Hager Sound canceled darkness. I think that they would have played the end of the game in sunrise if that would have made any difference. But anyway, you want to talk about Javier Baez?

I don't know. This is fun. I wish they would have played that game. Yeah, I like that their social media intern or whoever tweeted that was totally willing to play. He was, you know, let's play too, even though it's not the same day it was when we started the first game. There's a video clip of them winning on the walk-off block. And, you know, there's probably like seven fans who are in attendance. But the stadium has these like LED scoreboard lights and everything built in so that they do like their celebration videos and noises.

And the PA guy is like, and the green jackets win on a walk-off or whatever. Yeah. And they have just these graphics going off. There's like a green buzzing electric like vibrating line that goes around the, what is it called, ribbon board or whatever. It's just like who, at that point, as the players were celebrating, did they know they weren't going to play a second game? Because the celebration was muted.

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, Javier Baez. We can talk about Javier Baez. I don't have anything else in the green jackets. All right. Javier Baez is pretty good. Yeah.

Yeah. I was asked. I do this weekly radio thing in Chicago and I think it's The Score. Let's call it The Score. And they asked me on Tuesday, who does Javier Baez remind me of? And they asked me that, and I wasn't prepared for

that question, so that wasn't an easy thing to answer on the fly. But as I was racking my brain for comparisons, there's really not a whole lot. We know, like, Vladimir Guerrero swung at everything. We know that. But he made more contact. Pablo Sandoval swung at everything until this year. But he made more contact. And theandoval swung at everything until this year, but he made more

contact. And the best I could come up with, and I don't know how well this sticks, but the best I could come up with was actually Josh Hamilton, because Josh Hamilton now, obviously, is not out of the same issues off the field, but Josh Hamilton was a very aggressive swinger, and he had a lot of swing and miss in his game, but he was also a dynamic athlete, and he had the crap out of the ball when he hit it. So even though I think Hamilton walked a little more often than Baez does, Baez is so aggressive. Honestly, he's a lot of fun to watch.

I watched him, and I don't know how good he actually is in terms of the hitter, because until this year, he was not an above-average hitter, and it's still so hard to believe that someone who has 10 walks all season 10 unintentional walks is actually a good hitter but i mean he's been doing it for this long now and i i want him to be good because it would be more fun for me and i think both of us for a lot of us if someone like this could work because it just kind of changes the model because you know we could have a bunch of good hitters and they're good because they make contact and they hit the ball in the air and then they're disciplined and whatever. There's like 70% of good hitters all fit into that role. And it's fun to have some diversity here.

Kind of like you were talking about Malik Smith the other day. Not a whole lot of good hitters like Malik Smith. And it's fun to have this variety. Yeah. It's like if Dee Gordon were good. But he's not. But if's like if Dee Gordon were good but he's not but but if he were Dee Gordon has walked seven times well yeah pretty much but Dee Gordon has walked seven times this year that's I know he was on the DL for a little while but still he has

457 plate appearances this season and he has walked in seven of them. That is 1.5% of his plate appearances. That is a low walk rate. That is like Alfredo Griffin-esque. That's got to be one of the lowest in the past couple decades. Last I checked, it was the lowest. Now, I didn't separate out intentional and unintentional walks, but for any qualified hitter last i checked it was uh he was on track to have the lowest

walk rate since 1922 now someone responded and said if you separate out intentional walks then i think it was like manny sanguian or someone had a lower walk rate but nevertheless i've been aware as this is going on there was a tweet i'd forgotten about ryan divish tweeted in january of of this year in miami d gordon asked each row how to walk more each replied quote rake first so if d gordon were hitting he would uh he would maybe be walking more but yeah he's well he finally got bumped from the leadoff spot so that's something else that's been going on yeah that's one reason why he has as on in the Mariners' lane. That's one reason why he has as many plate appearances as he does.

He was batting leadoff up until like a day ago with that walk rate. I don't get it. Yeah, it's kind of the Mariners' version of Billy Hamilton, I guess, where you just think, well, best base runner on the team, provided he gets on base, which he does one out of every four times he comes up to the plate, So just a classic leadoff. But then they had Mitch Hanegar leadoff yesterday, and he went 4-4 with three extra base hits. So that's probably going to—it's an era of change for the Mariners. Bad leadoff hitter no longer leading off, and unfortunately bad legendary starting pitcher

no longer a starting pitcher. Yeah. Yitro seems like a weird guy to ask how to walk more because he was never much of a walker. I guess he walked a little more in his later years, but not really the person you want to model your walking after. He probably should have talked to Justin Boer or someone. I don't know. I guess he's a player who's kind of like Dee Gordon in a sense and walks at least a little more than Dee Gordon. So maybe that's why he asked D-Tro.

Or maybe he just asked D-Tro because D-Tro's awesome and he's fun to talk to. I know this is just like mirroring a tweet that I just put out a little while ago. But for example, the Nationals, well, let's just go with this month. So Dee Gordon has seven walks all season. This month, Juan Soto has 11 walks. Juan Soto has 11 walks in a month, 37 plate appearances, 11 walks at home run. He's good. D. Gordon, seven walks.

There's no point in comparing Juan Soto and D. Gordon, but for the fact that I couldn't tell if it was better to compare D. Gordon, Juan Soto, walk facts, or the fact that D. Gordon has seven walks. And this season alone, Joey Votto has seven walks against Carlos Martinez yeah that's pretty good yeah speaking of players who don't walk and also speaking of Grant Brisby Grant did a fun article about players who were former major leaguers who you know and have heard of for the most part and are still surprisingly hanging around somewhere in a high-level professional league around the world. One of the players he highlighted was Uniesky Betancourt, who of course was well known for not really walking when he was in the majors. Now he is 36 and he is playing in the Mexican league and right now Uniesky betancourt's numbers this is in the mexican league in autumn and spring i guess it's a was it a split season i don't know how that works but yeah looking at

the full season line no uniesky is hitting 380 402 576 in the mexican league this year in 388 appearances which is great because you know it's Uniesky Betancourt because there's hardly any gap between his batting average and his on-base percentage. So still the same guy in that sense, except that he has a 978 OPS, which is not at all what you expect from Uniesky Betancourt. So that is pretty impressive. I mean, Mexican League is no joke. It's not major league level. I know it's technically designated as AAA, but I'm sure it is not the same quality of play as the International League and the PCL, but it's a real league. And Uniesky Betancourt is 36 now,

and he is raking in that league. It's probably some weird BABIP thing, but it can't be entirely that. And the last time that we saw Betancourt on a major league field, that was, what, way back in 2013, right? Yeah, he was with the Brewers, and he was terrible. He had a sub-600 OPS back then, and he was only 31 at the time. 31 at the time and since then he has played in Japan and he's played in Mexico and now he is better than ever somehow in Mexico even though he didn't really hit there either last year or the year before so I don't know what's going on with him but nice to see that he's still around and thriving somewhere as is your old pal Jose Lopez, who I guess came up around the same time as Felix, right? I think he was up like a year before Felix, and he's a couple of years older than Felix.

He was an all-star, wasn't he an all-star one time? He was. Yeah. He briefly looked like he might be a good player and did not turn out to be. But he is now playing in Japan. And in 265 plate appearances, he is hitting 314, 336, 569. I'll link to Grant's article. Go check it out there. A lot of fun examples of like that guy, that guy's still around.

And not only is he still around, but he's doing incredibly, which is nice. Like, you know, not everyone makes enough money to retire based on their major league service time and be comfortable for the rest of their lives and provide for their families. And not everyone is ready to stop playing when teams are ready for them to stop playing. So if they can go somewhere else and be great in a lower level league, I mean, it's what we were talking about with Billy Butler. It's not quite that extreme playing in a local beer league softball game. And, you know, Jason Wirth, I know, has been playing in rec league games and players will do that. But this is a high level league. You're still making money. You're still playing in front of fans and you're doing well.

So I think I would enjoy that. If I were a marginal major leaguer who just had to fight for every hit for years, I think I would like just, you know, when that portion of my career was over, just go down a few levels and be a superstar and experience what that feels like. There's former Mariner Jose Lopez, former Mariner Carlos Peguero, former Mariner Stefan Romero, former Mariner Unieske Betancourt. I was just checking because last year with Mexicali and the, I don't know what all the acronyms mean, the Mexican Pacific Winter League. All right. Unieske Betancourt slugged 350 and I was curious. So Mexicali

plays at an elevation of 27 feet above sea level. This year, Uniesco-Bettencourt has slugged 576 with Oaxaca. Oaxaca is at an elevation of 5,102 feet above sea level. I don't know if we need a further explanation than we already have here. Uniesco-Bettencourt, 36 years old, hit for some power playing at some elevation. Didn't get a tweet. After I wrote the Estadio article, I got a tweet from someone. This is just an unconfirmed rumor, I guess, but he said that I had made some reference to how you don't really hear about hidden ball tricks that don't work. Those don't make cut-for video clips or

blog entries, but this guy said he had seen Yannick Esquibentencourt tuck the baseball into his glove several times, and it never worked. So I don't know if that's true but i'm just gonna go ahead and spread it as if it's fact uniski bed and court the world's worst purveyor i guess of of the hidden ball trick constant attempts zero successes maybe it's working for him now in the mexican league maybe felix should go pitch in the mexican league he'd be really good there i guess the last thing i remember the last time i remember checking in on uniski bedourt, I think it was 2014, and he had gone to try to play in Japan

and it didn't work out and he had to leave because he had gout. And I know that, look, diseases aren't funny. It's not funny for someone to be in poor health, but for a player like Uniesky Betancourt,

who is such a disappointment and who let his body go during his major league career, for him to go overseas and then not even play 20 games because of the objectively hilarious sounding gout, it seemed like that was going to be an appropriate last chapter for Uniesky Betancourt's baseball playing career. But instead, no, here he is. I don't even know why he still got a chance to play at 36 in Mexico, given that he wasn't good at 35.

But I guess he's doing it. What position is he playing? He's still playing the infield. Now, he's not a shortstop, in fairness, but he's mostly a second baseman and third baseman. So that's something, I guess. I don't know who his teammates are, but I definitely just clicked the link so we can talk about it. Erezmedi Alcantara is on this team. Jose Tabata is on this team.

Josh Judy, he's bold. I guess he was in the majors at some point. Enrique Burgos, Angel Castro, and Rafael Hinoa. So Uniski Betancourt not playing with zero Major League experience. He's got the guy who ruined Max Scherzer's perfect game. Betting right there, 25 late appearances. Yeah. So I figured maybe we could touch on this briefly.

We've been getting a bunch of questions about AL MVP race. You're about to do a fan graph chat. I predict someone will ask you about the AL MVP race. And I guess it's kind of interesting because it's kind of close in that Trout, Jose Ramirez, Mookie Betts are all within one-tenth of a win according to Fangraphs War, so essentially no separation there. And of course Trout has his issue now. He's got a cortisone shot and who knows if he will be back soon or whether he will be hampered by that at all. But our visions of a Mike Trout career year or record year are falling by the wayside now. And of course, the Angels are too.

So we now have this, I don't know whether it's a, I guess it's a four player race in the American League because you also have J.D. Martinez, who would be leading in all the triple crown categories, if not for his teammate Mookie Betts, who has an edge of about 15 points of batting average on him. vote, which who knows, maybe you will. I never get to vote because I'm in the New York chapter, and there's so many writers in the New York chapter that it's just never my turn, which is fine. But you have voted on other awards. If you had to cast a vote today, or if you just had to predict what the writers will choose to do, do you have any inkling? I mean, it's kind of like last year. Last year was the one where in the NL, at least, there was just no right answer. And there were several right answers, really, because there were just a whole bunch of guys that were clustered really closely together. And this year, you're getting a little bit of that with the AL. But it's really just Trout, because Trout is

awesome, and he's the best, regardless of whatever his war says currently. Or playoff guy. And the other three guys in this race are all playoff guys. I wonder. Okay, this might not be appropriately updated for voter mentality in 2018, but there are two guys who are a little off the radar who I think could get a lot of support here. And so I'll volunteer them both. One, I think, so J.D. Martinez is currently 10th in the American League in Fangraph's War.

He's at 4.7. He's had a very good season. I think even though the Red Sox have so many good players, like you've got Betts and Benintendi and Sale and J.D. Martinez, and maybe that's it. I don't know. That's a lot. But I think it's going to be easy for some voters to look at the Red Sox,

think about how disappointing their offense was last year. You look at how good J.D. Martinez has been. You look at what's happened with the team. I think it's really easy, maybe lazy or maybe galaxy brain, very smart to say J.D. Martinez has been the difference for this year's Red Sox. And I can see people making the argument that J.D. Martinez has changed the entire feel of that lineup and therefore they've become one of the best teams of all time. So that's the argument I suspect we're going to see for J.D. Martinez.

A hard one to refute as well because, I mean, how do you prove that the team would have been good without him? I don't know. You can't do that convincingly. We don't get to live in counterfactuals. Now the other example, the other player who I think, if you were worried about vote splitting, we know voters like playoff teams.

So Mike Trout, probably not going to be his year, just a guess. Jose Ramirez shares a team with Francisco Lindor and Trevor Bauer, even though pitchers never get credit. Mookie Betts shares his team with J.D. Martinez and the other players I've mentioned. Aaron Judge shares his team with Giancarlo Stanton and Luis Severino and Didi Gregorius and Aaron Hickson, etc. There's his team with Giancarlo Stanton and Luis Severino and Didi Gregorius and Aaron Hickson, etc. Matt Chapman is a name I am settling on as I think he's going to get a lot of support. That's going to be a little hard just because statistically he shines in large part because of his defense. Defensive run saved.

Loves him to death. Thinks he's like the best defender in baseball. But he's also been a good hitter. And it's just right in that voter wheelhouse of without this guy, the team wouldn't be in the playoffs. Like, we know the Red Sox are great. They would make the playoffs anyway. The Astros are great. Indians are great.

Not a whole lot of question with the top four teams in the American League whether they would make the playoffs. But Matt Chapman has been so good lately, and he is another guy where you could just look at him and say he has changed that team. The A's, of course, getting a lot of attention for overachieving relative to expectations, and Chapman is their best player. So I don't know if I've answered who I think is going to win, but I think Chapman and Martinez are going to be high on the ballot, if not in first place. Yeah, I wonder. I mean, Chapman does not have the offensive value that those other guys do, although he has been a very good hitter as well.

So I think there's some skepticism about single season defensive stats, except that when you watch Matt Chapman, I don't know that there is any skepticism about what the stats say, because he is clearly really, really good and was really, really good last year too. So I don't know that anyone will really ding him for a lot of his value being wrapped up in defense defense because he's one of these guys who is just known as one of the best defenders in baseball. So those guys get full credit for that, I think, and probably should. It's a case where the eye test really matches the stats. So I don't know.

But, you know, he is on A's and maybe more voters are aware of people who are on prominent East Coast teams like a lot of these other guys we're talking about. I don't know. On the other hand, the A's are sort of a surprise team and kind of came from behind. And so maybe they get bonus points for that. So I could see him stealing votes from these other guys and maybe ending up closer to the top than one would think. The NL race is kind of interesting because the best NL players are a few wins behind the best AL players, unless you count Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer. Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer, the pitchers are the guys in the NL with the highest wars And neither of those guys maybe will end up on a playoff team So I don't know exactly what happens there

And even the guys like at the top of that leaderboard in the NL Might not necessarily be playoff guys Matt Carpenter, Nolan Arenado maybe will but maybe won't And so there's no real obvious candidate there. I don't know, Freddie Freeman, if the Braves hold on and make the playoffs, maybe he's the guy or maybe it's Baez or maybe it's Lorenzo Cain if he finishes strong. I don't know. But the AL race is interesting, but I don't know if it really has a clear philosophical divide. Someone emailed us yesterday and asked if it was going to be kind of a replay of the Miguel Cabrera-Trout competitions were, A, because we've seen it before, and I think we've

all just sort of accepted that Mike Trout is not going to win, even if he is the best player, if his team does make the playoffs, because that's already happened a couple times. I'll point out, I know that these statistics are fraught with random noise but do you have a guess who is the uh last in baseball among qualified hitters right now in fangraphs clutch score this is a win expectancy metric so at least clutch hitter in baseball according to fangraphs well i remember that last year it was chris bry? I believe so. Is it Chris Bryant again? Mike Trout. It is Mike Trout.

Now, Mike Trout, if you just sort by regular win probability added, an offensive metric, he's seventh in all of baseball. J.D. Martinez, Mookie Betts, and Andrew Bennett attending are first, second, and third. My goodness. Red Sox are really good hitting. But anyway, so Mike Trout, last currently in Fangraph's clutch. That's going to be something that someone could point to if they just want to wave him away. If you look at the baseball reference splits, Trout has a 1.217 OPS in low leverage situations.

Medium leverage, 967. High leverage, 784. So even though I do not think that Mike Trout is a bad clutch hitter, he's been walked a bunch in high leverage situations. He's the dangerous one, although now they have Cole Calhoun. This has just not been his year for excellent timing. So, you know, that's something that could just kind of factor into this. I would also expect that it's going to partially reverse itself over the final two months if he ever gets back on the field. But yeah, that's something I didn't expect. I don't know where Chris Bryant is on this list, but he's not toward the bottom.

Not this time. That's good. All right. So we've got a few more minutes before you have to do your chat. Anything else on your mind? I did want to ask you about your Tyler Glasnow post because you noticed that he is better already in his brief time with the Rays. I know we talk an awful lot about the Rays,

but I'm always interested when a pitcher or any player really goes from one team to another and almost immediately, seemingly, makes some change that improves them. And, of course, we saw that happen very predictably when Garrett Cole went from the Pirates to the Astros. So has it now happened again? Well, so I don't know how it happens, but there are like, there's a certain class of prospect or young player that the internet just deems to be fascinating enough to keep watching. And Glasnow is one of them. And other players kind of fall by the wayside, like, I don't know, who's really excited about Colby Allard. That's mean. But

anyway, I'm not excited about Colby Allard. But now we do talk about the Rays a lot, which I am aware of and sensitive to when I'm writing. But something I think you and I, and this is the entire thesis of your book that you're working on right now, but you are researching how teams and players can make themselves better through data analysis. And this is always a really fun and interesting article to pursue. analysis and this is always a really fun and interesting article to pursue but i think and i feel like there's only a limited handful of teams that really are making these changes at least organizational like i'm not explaining myself very well but we know the rays have like things they want to do to players we know the yankees do we know the astros do we know the dodgers do does anyone else stand out the Red Sox

probably yeah the Red Sox are all about like the high fastball starting last year or something but are there other teams like I don't know if I think about the Mariners like I don't think people I don't think players go to the Mariners and then like suddenly have this whole pitching strategy thrust upon them that the team has spent hours working on developing they just go to the Mariners and they're just like pitch like you've pitched. And then that's it. So while that's perfectly good, lots of teams have been good by acquiring good players.

It's just more interesting to look at the teams that try to change players. And can you think of other teams besides the ones we've mentioned to seem to have done this often? Did you mention the Yankees? Cause the Yankees have, they're not throwing many fastballs thing yep yep mention the yankees so i think we've got like five or six teams up there and i'm sure some of this is happening in private or it's happening in times that you will discover as you

do your research so that's one of the reasons we talk about the race so often because not only do they do this with players but they're operating on a shoestring budget, as everyone knows. So Tyler Glasnow has gone to the Rays. He's only appeared in two games. He's thrown seven innings over those two games. He's struck out the world. He's barely walked anyone. He's thrown 70% strikes. It's far too early for the Rays to have helped him make some sort of mechanical tweaks.

And I don't even know if he's going to make any mechanical tweaks. His arm is so fast and his delivery looks good enough but one thing that the Rays have done is this is unsurprising but they're just like all right work up also work down because you know you have a good breaking ball but he used to throw a lot of fastballs that would end up below the zone which is not where a really a 98 mile per hour fastball is supposed to go he He doesn't get a whole lot of sink. So Glasnow had some quote after he came over to the Rays that said, well, they see me as a pitcher the way that I see myself, and that's as someone who works up and down. So unsurprisingly, he's gone to the Rays,

and in just the two games, he has thrown very, very few fastballs low or below the zone. His breaking ball has still been down there, but it's worked out to this point so far. He's very rarely gone over a stretch, even this short, throwing so many strikes before, throwing so few balls below the zone before. And one of the fun things that happened

when Glasnow was traded to the Rays is Glasnow is somewhat famously 6'8", and the Rays pitching coach, Kyle Snyder, is less famously 6'8", a former major league player. And sometimes i never really know how much truth there is to the conventional wisdom that it's harder for tall pitchers to get their mechanics in order i assume it has to be true because there's just more distance that you have to worry about keeping together but i don't know mechanics are mechanics and it's it's hard

it's not like your arm is going to be doing something different because it's an inch long. I don't know. So I don't know how much is true about the conventional wisdom. But at least if it is in any way true, you've got a tall pitcher, it probably makes sense that he's working with another guy who got to the highest level as a very tall pitcher. So Glasnow has said that he is excited to work with Kyle Snyder. And it's interesting, at least anecdotally, to see how the tide has turned against Ray Searidge over the past few years. Yeah, that's what I was going to say.

Yeah, he was considered some sort of pitching whisperer, even just a few years ago. And it seems like now, based on Garrett Cole going away and the Pirates not pitching quite as well as they used to, people are no longer pleased. It's almost like we don't know who's good. Yeah, I've talked on the podcast before. I'm always sort of suspicious of the coaching guru who just develops a reputation for being amazing and, you know, sometimes probably is, but other times maybe just lucked out

or had the right collection of pitchers or players end up under his care that maybe were suited to whatever his advice was or were due for some kind of positive regression anyway or were more receptive than the typical player would be to his message for whatever reason. So you just never know because there are guys who develop this reputation for being pitcher whisperers, and then they lose their reputation

and it stops working. And I forget, it was, what, two or three years ago, I think I remember writing an article about it at the time, that Searidge's magic just sort of seemed to stop working. Not entirely. Like, there have still been guys obviously who've succeeded for the Pirates and guys like Ivan Nova who've gone there and been effective. But on the whole, that reputation that he had in that track record he had of just getting a bunch of

guys off the scrap heap and turning them into great pitchers, that just hasn't really worked with the same regularity in the last couple of years. And now there is this kind of counter track record of guys who are getting better when they leave the Pirates, which is odd. I don't know if it's just that, again, maybe he's had a run of bad luck or something, or whether it's just that he developed this philosophy that everyone knows about, you know, lots of two seamers and pitching inside and getting ground balls and all that that was maybe what was working at the time in baseball and maybe now is no longer the cutting edge thing and it's hard when you develop a philosophy that works really well and gets your previously terrible team to the playoffs and gets a book written about you by Travis Sotk to then abandon that a year or two later, just because other trends in the game have developed. So I sympathize, but that's kind of one reason why it's hard to remain

at the top of your game in any area of the sport. Or in any area, no matter what you do. It's hard to remain at the top of your game. I have to go to a chat, but I will say. And do you have anything else? I'm going to read one very short email, which is from Alex, who is following up about our discussion about cricket and the silly positions. Yes. So he says, as someone who played more than a decade of cricket and was above average as a fielder, I spent many Sundays and Saturdays parked at silly mid on and silly mid off. Those are variants of the silly position that we talked about,

which is basically a suicidal way to stand and try to catch or just physically block a ball that is hit very close to you. And Alex says, to answer three common questions, yes, it was kind of scary, even with shin guards and a helmet. You generally don't position a fielder there to fastball bowlers, 85 miles per hour to 95 miles per hour. You do field there to spin bowlers who throw about 50 to 70. And lastly, yes, it's still scary. I have a permanently broken hand due to fielding this position. A small bone pokes the wrong direction under the skin which sounds pretty

terrible and uh i think we already knew that it was dangerous and scary but that just confirms it okay so in closing real quick so first of all we have news kenley jansen's going to miss about a month because of a heart condition he's had an irregular heartbeat issue before he had surgery for it but he's going to miss the next month so that's tough blow to the dodgers of course the priority is always kenley chance's health it seems like this is something that's very treatable he should be taken care of and the dodgers can now turn to dylan floro and caleb ferguson who i guess are good whatever if the a's traded for fernando rodney on thursday he's joining their increasingly stacked bullpen here is the count when the twins signed fernando

rodney and addison reed everyone said well it's only a matter of time before addison reed is the closer and rodney is bumped out of his role current and i guess final twins standings fernando rodney 25 saves addison reed zero saves fernando rodney just keeps it up it's 41 years old he's got a 309 era more strikeouts than innings pitch. Fernando Rodney still unbelievably, and I mean that in every sense of the word, unbelievably good. And the last thing I was going to mention, this was an email from Bobby Goldstein, inspired by William D'Estevio, the hidden ball trick, and just openly wondering why we don't see more of these trick plays attempted in important games.

see more of these trick plays attempted in important games. Bob Goldstein came up with the example of AJ Pierzynski running out the allegedly dropped third strike in the 2005 ALCS. That was Pierzynski striking out on a pitch almost in the dirt, and he ran down to first as the Angels ran off the field, and Pierzynski made it to first without a throw because the catcher just rolled the ball into the infield. It was supposed to be the last out of the inning. Umpire decided, well, I guess it was a dropped third strike. So Pierzynski reached, pinch runner stole second base,

and three pitches later, Joe Creedy, I believe, drove in the winning run. So I don't know if that counts as a real trick play as opposed to maybe Pierzynski sincerely thought the ball was dropped. I don't know. It was low. The burden isn't on Pierzynski to get it right. It's on the umpire. But that's the closest example. He came up with, wanted to throw it out there because I have a terrible memory.

Can you think of a trick play tried in the playoffs in any kind of recent memory? Not off the top of my head. Okay. Well, I don't know. Whoever is out there making the playoffs this year, just know there's a free out. It's going to be on second or third base. You just got to do it. All right.

You can go chat now. Okay. Okay. So that will do it for today. And for this very hectic week, you can support the podcast and ensure that there are many more weeks to come by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild, signing up, and pledging some small monthly amount, as have the following five listeners. The aforementioned Bobby Goldstein, Andrew Paddock, Shane Horn, Evan Haldane, and Anton Bejdeneshek. I definitely mispronounced that, and I apologize, Anton. Please do not withdraw your support. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild, and you can

rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and many other podcast platforms. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. Please keep your questions and comments coming for me and Jeff via email at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. Between now and next week, I will head home, so I will talk to you from my home base in New York in a few days. Have a wonderful weekend. Oh, take me there. Won't you take me there?

Won't you take me there, won't you take me there, won't you take me home? Oh, take me there, won't you take me there, won't you take me home?