Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1270: A Cup of Their Own

Episode Date: September 14, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Willians Astudillo going viral again, a Shohei Ohtani fun fact, J.D. Martinez, Mookie Betts, and how to gauge a player’s value to his teammates, the emergence of A’s outfielder Ramon Laureano, the impending ends to the careers of David Wright and Joe Mauer, a Kyle Freeland update, the […]

And if you want to do the popular thing, oh well, well then follow away. But if you want to find something unique, oh well, you can't look that way. Cause if you get it anymore than a peak, oh well, then you will have changed. Cause everybody else, everybody else, everybody else, everybody, everybody's doing it. Hello and welcome to episode 1270 of Effectively Wild, Everybody knows everybody, everybody's doing it. One thing, first of all, I'll point out, I'm setting a minimum now of 40 plate appearances. William Destedio is up to 48. Setting the minimum of 40 plate appearances, he's now second in baseball in contact rate behind only Bravik Valera, a player that many of you have only heard of because he came up in the previous Identical Fun Fact that we did a few days ago. But anyway, most importantly, I was just at a bar, just at a bar with friends,

like a normal person who doesn't live on the internet on wednesday night and there was a tv behind me i turned around at one point and who did i see on the television running around third base but williams astadio who has now i would assume his first ever like national video highlight i don't think anyone cared when he probably not right because he had before he was even famous for other things, he was famous for the no-look pickoff in Spring Training. Okay, that's true. It went viral even before he got to the big leagues. Yeah, right.

But now people have seen his face. They know more about him. They've seen him do it in the major leagues. And on the downside, Williams Estadillo is now going to be well-known for being a funny-looking baseball player. But on the upside, more people now know about Williams Estadio is now going to be well known for being a funny looking baseball player. But on the upside, more people now know about Williams Estadio. And as far as I'm concerned, there's plenty of room in this bandwagon.

And the more support he gets, the more likely it is that he sticks around in the major leagues. Yeah, I'm fine with it. I don't need this to be like the indie band kind of example where you resent when they go mainstream and they sold out. And you like to talk about how you knew them before they were big. I hope that William Zestadio becomes a superstar and everyone gets the joy of learning about him as we have because he is good and he is unique and he is evidently very memeable. He is, I believe his nickname is uh la tortuga yes he is nicknamed affectionately the turtle or the tortoise i guess by his teammates but you know this all astadio he's got he's got some

highlights now he's got some success under his belt and he's got a nickname he's got people in the dugout who are like who are friendly with him and just helping him feel welcome now sure his early pitch framing numbers aren't very good but it's been like five games it doesn't really matter he's thrown at two of four potential base stealers and he's hit so as long as williams estadio is playing i know that some of you out there might be thinking are when are they ever going to stop talking about williams estadio on the podcast but the answer during this regular season is no no we're not and he just had a highlight so you know the baseball is probably going to be without Bartolo Colon after this season.

He hasn't been very good. It's hard to see him getting another opportunity to pitch at least with any regularity. And while Williams Estadio was far, far younger and far better, I think, than Bartolo Colon, there's a certain affection people feel for the baseball players of unusual form and as long as estadio has his form then uh i guess he's going to have the potential for broad

appeal yes yeah and uh i don't want to stigmatize his body type or anything but he is kind of reclaiming it for himself i know that via translator, after he did come around to score on Wednesday night from first on a double, he said, I just wanted to show that chubby people also run. So I guess he is embracing this image. And yeah, we are not really trying to go out of our way to talk to him. We have in the past, but now we don't need to. He is actual national news. So we would be doing everyone a disservice

if we did not talk about Williams Estadio on a daily basis at this point, it seems. He's just looking at Google News. Williams Estadio was tired after first a home run. MLB.com, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Twins Estadio goes viral with Sprint Around the Bases, KMSP TV, Twins catcher Williams Est units of measurement are, which is not super fast. He's no Harrison Bader, but he looked like he was fast.

And I've brought up a few times the story of when myself and rob nair and matthew corey tried to outrun david ortiz we were not sharing a field with david ortiz but we were trying to outrun his time and i am reasonably certain that i am i go to the gym most days pretty sure i'm slower than williams estadio going around the bases oh yeah i'm sure i'm slower than williams estadio i'm sure a very high percentage of the people listening to this podcast are slower than William Testadio. So any big leaguer is better than you at everything physical, pretty much. So I just discovered a fun fact today that I wanted to pass along to you. And this will be slightly out of date by the time people hear this, but not too out of date.

This will be slightly out of date by the time people hear this, but not too out of date. So everyone knows that Shohei Otani has 19 home runs in, as we speak, 304 plate appearances. The fun fact is that every other pitcher combined in baseball this year also has 19 home runs. In their case, 4,634 plate appearances combined 19 homers it has taken Shohei Otani 304 plate appearances to hit the same number of home runs so it's him versus every other pitcher literally and he is probably going to win yeah that's a pretty good fun fact I think it's it's also it's interesting to me I hadn't I haven't thought about it too much but just the fact that the angels are giving otani the opportunity to play out the year before he decides that he's going to have tommy john surgery now obviously i don't think too many people are in a rush to have an invasive procedure done to their

arm but if you are otani you could think well you know the sooner i have it done then the sooner i can rehab the sooner i can get back on the mound. But he is presumably enjoying this. He's getting something out of it. He's continued to be a good hitter on a team that's just playing for nothing. So, yeah, this is a lot of fun. I don't know how much longer we'll be able to make honest comparisons between Otani and other pitchers hitting, because it's beyond obvious that he's not just another pitcher hitting.

But it is hysterical, and it continues to be hysterical. Yeah. Well, that is the home run race that I am most excited about down the stretch, Shohei Otani versus all other pitchers. But I think other people are interested in the JD Martinez triple crown race. I guess he's in the running not only for the triple crown of the American League, but also of the entire major leagues. He's a really good hitter, and Triple Crown stats are what they are, but he's good no matter what stats you use. So I've been interested lately because there have been all sorts of silly,

probably MVP arguments being made because you have the traditional stat candidate in JD Martinez, and then you have the sabermetric stat candidate in Mookie Betts, and they're on the same team. I mean, Mookie has good traditional stats too, and JD Martinez is also good no matter what stats you're looking at. But people are drawing that distinction, and I think looking for ways to make a case for one or the other. And one popular case I've seen lately, and Ken Rosenthal wrote an article about it and I've heard it suggested on broadcasts, is that JD Martinez makes everyone around him better because he has this analytical approach to hitting and he's sort of like, I don't know, Johnny Statcast in the clubhouse. the knowledge of launch angle everywhere he goes. And so therefore, he is in some way responsible for the Red Sox success as a whole, their team success, which is striking. And we got a listener email about that from Patreon supporter Jeremy, who noted that the

Red Sox have gone from 65 offensive runs below average last year to about 60 runs above average with a month to go, with the only real personnel change being that they added JD Martinez. My pattern-seeking brain is having a hard time believing that everyone merely slumped at the same time last year, and they're all good at the same time now by coincidence. Does Martinez deserve credit here somehow? Is there some other explanation? Chalking this big of a turnaround up to randomness feels so

unsatisfying to me. And I look back at, you know, expected Woba versus actual Woba for the Red Sox last year, and it matched perfectly. I think there was a perception that they were underperforming, that they had been projected to be better, but in terms of their

underlying results, there wasn't a whole lot of evidence that they actually had been. to be better but in terms of their underlying results there wasn't a whole lot of evidence that they actually had been now they're way better the big notable change is jd martinez how should we think about jd martinez's role in that change i mean it's pretty substantial when you consider that jd martinez is one of the i don't know five best hitters in baseball and he was filling in for i mean who was the red sox dh last year hanley ramirez i think and assume so i mean just that alone hanley ramirez last year had a wrc plus of 92 and this year jd martinez has a wrc plus of 170 so even by itself before you think about jd martinez maybe making some of his teammates better. That is an enormous, enormous leap.

I mean, Martinez has been worth five wins above replacement. Last year, Hanley Ramirez was a little below replacement. So that's like, I don't know, 60 runs of offense right there that J.D. Martinez accounts for just by being a better DH. But beyond that, there was Kenny Rosenthal in his article. He mentioned that early in the season, I think it was even spring training, Mookie Betts was coming off a year that by his standards was a down year in 2017 and he said he he wanted to make some changes he wanted to get back and become a better hitter now he'd been a better hitter in the past but apparently at least according to rose though or according to the people that he talked with jd

martinez and red sox hitting coach tim hyers in tandem suggested that muki bets make a little change to his swing plane and now one thing has led to another. And all of a sudden, Mookie Betts is leading Mike Trout in four. So it's one of those cases where I don't... Maybe Mookie Betts was going to make that change on his own. Maybe Tim Hyres was going to suggest he make that change on his own. J.D. Martinez doesn't necessarily have to be the reason that Mookie Betts is a probable MVP or a possible person who gets it in the shorts when JD Martinez wins the MVP. I don't really know.

But this is at least one of those reasons that I know it's kind of cliche to say, but I like if there's any reason for me to like awards season. I don't care about who actually wins the awards, but it is an interesting thought exercise. And I kind of appreciate having this kind of uncertainty because at the end of the day, there are things that you can do that don't show up in the numbers. There are effects you can have that are not falsifiable, which is frustrating from one perspective, but I don't know. I think it's kind of fun to think about the impact that GD Martinez might've had on his teammates in a way that doesn't just talk about like bull crap lineup lineup protection because that's not what this is about. Right. Yeah. We're not even saying it's about emotion or inspiration. It's about concrete recommendations and improvements. And I don't discount that as I've been working on this book, I've been looking at old stories about player development and

players who've given tips to other players and they've paid off. And certainly there have been hitters who had that recommendation. Guys like Ty Cobb and Ted Williams were renowned as teachers of hitting and obviously as hitters, but they were able to impart their knowledge and really improve a lot of teammates. And both of them ended up as managers. And if you look at what happened when they took over their teams, everyone in the lineup got better. And they didn't really have great teams to begin with. So it doesn't look all that impressive. But you look up and down the lineup and all the hitters improved. And there are a lot of hitters who credit their careers to one or the other of those guys. And so I think that kind of disputes that notion that you can't teach if you were good yourself because it came so naturally to you that you don't know how to explain it to someone else. I think that may be true for some people, but I think that most people who are elite in their field probably

did put a whole lot of work and effort into getting that way and so there are players like that throughout history and there's no way to confirm it really or say he was worth this much of this other guy's war because he told him to make this change and therefore he gets this percentage cut of the improvement. But there's got to be something. I mean, there are suggestions that actually improve people. And if you made that suggestion, there's value there. So I don't know whether for me that's enough to make up the difference between, say, Mookie Betts' war and J.D. Martinez's war.

Probably not. But then again, what if J.D. Martinez is partly responsible for Mookie Betts' war? Probably not. But that again, what if JD Martinez is partly responsible for Vukivets' war? So it is kind of a fun conversation to have and also kind of a conversation that it helps to have been there and to talk to all these people about. So it's kind of hard to judge from afar. Yeah, this gets into, it's similar to at Fangraphss we've been on the verge it seems like of putting up catcher pitch framing statistics for a very long time and one of the reasons i think that it still isn't up on fangraphs is that if you give start giving catchers credit for the value that they provide or take away with their pitch framing then you can't just leave it there because you also have

to try to figure out some way to change the numbers for the pitchers who are pitching to those catchers and you can do it sort of straight across the board and say well this catcher was i don't know five runs better than average per 200 innings and so we're gonna knock down this pitcher's performance by five runs per 200 innings you could try to do that and maybe get somewhere but it's just really complicated and probably something that you can't actually suss out statistically because not only are pitchers pitching to different strike zones, but they would also maybe have the knowledge that they're pitching to different strike zones. And so they might just change the way they pitch depending on who's catching them.

It just gets into this thought exercise that I sympathize with David Appelman and the people in charge of Fangraphs for not having tried to rule this out yet because it's incredibly complex, even though it seems kind of frustrating to not have the the pitch framing numbers up there at all and I should also say maybe going back more to to your point talking about Janie Martinez and his possible effects on his his teammates this kind of reminds me one of the things that might not be fully appreciated about like hitting or pitching coaches is we always get these anecdotes like I don't know i always go back and this is dating me a little bit but i always think back to 2005 when the mariners traded matt thornton to the white

socks and he couldn't throw strikes but he was a hard-throwing lefty and don cooper the white socks pitching coach was like make this little adjustment and all of a sudden matt thornton became one of the best lefty relievers in baseball. And so you hear those anecdotes. More recently, there's been like the Ray Searidge anecdotes or I don't know. There's been the independent swing guru anecdotes about swing changes that players folded in. So you hear about these cases of coaches who can make a difference with individual guys. But something that is probably not appreciated enough is that just because a coach or someone can make a difference for one other guy doesn't mean that he can do it across the board some guys are just more receptive some guys can connect with with players better than they can other ones and so

with JD Martinez that we're getting pretty into the weeds here but it's possible that JD Martinez really did help Mookie Betts and it's possible that he made Rafael Devers worse or something maybe he's made Christian Vasquez worse. Just because he might have a positive impact with one or two guys doesn't mean that it's true across the board. But again, this is just getting so weird and hypothetical that I think I'm just going to wrap it up by saying that, hey, did you realize that today Ramon Laureano recorded another assist?

Here's why that's cool. So I wrote an article. I wrote a draft about Ramon Laureano that another assist. Here's why that's cool. So I wrote an article. I wrote a draft about Ramon Laureano that's going to be published on Friday. It looks like I have to update it. So I think Ramon Laureano, to whatever extent he's known by people, it's because of his crazy throw in his second week of being in the majors. He made that throw from the warning track to first base to double up a runner, and the throw was on the fly.

It was like a 321-foot throw that people were comparing to prime Ioannis Espinous. So people noticed Ramon Laureano because of his arm. And his arm is very good. His defense is also very good. And his hitting is interesting. It turns out he's like my new Keon Broxton. So Ramon Laureano, as we were talking, he recorded an assist. Now, it's one of those secondary assists, I think.

I was just looking at the play log, and he threw the ball in, and then the cutoff guy threw the ball to get a guy. But it doesn't matter. He gets credit. So Ramon Laureano has already six assists in the major leagues this year. He's been in the major leagues for a month and a week. And if you include Ramon Laureano's triple-A numbers, and he missed the start of the season because of a broken finger, by the way, if you include his triple-A numbers and his major league numbers,

Ramon Laureano this year has 19 outfield assists. The major league leader has 12. It's Billy Hamilton, Lorenzo Cain, and Starling Marte, Kyle Schwer, Ranger Benatendi are in second with 11. It's not easy to look up minor league defensive numbers league-wide. It's so not easy that I didn't even try to do it. But 19 assists is an awful lot of assists. And it's not often that someone has an arm that's, like, actually worth gushing over.

But, man, Laureano's arm is really sensational. He's a really exciting player. But man, Laureano's arm is really sensational. He's a really exciting player. Yeah, I wonder if the Astros are ruing that trade because the Astros traded Ramon Laureano to the A's just in November for Brandon Bailey, who is a 23-year-old pitcher. He is a sometime starter, sometime reliever,

and he is in AA A now It looks like And seems like he's doing fine So it's not like he isn't amounting to anything But Ramon Laureano Has been worth a couple wins already To the A's In a pennant race with the Astros And the Astros just gave him away

Last year for a minor league pitcher Who hasn't contributed anything to them yet That is not quite letting JD Martinez go, but it's the kind of move that comes back to bite you. I mean, I don't know whether they should have thought or known that this would happen because Ramon Laureano did not hit nearly like he is hitting. This year, last year, last year in AA, he had a 668 OPS, and this year he has a 917 OPS in the major leagues. So that happened. I don't know if he made any changes, but obviously the defense and the arm have been there. Yeah, for a little background, Laureano in 2016 in high A and AA was one of the best hitters in all of the minor leagues and he was considered

basically untouchable by the astros uh david forced with the a's uh said something to the effect of a year ago we tried to trade for him and we couldn't get anywhere the astros just wouldn't even talk about it and then after 2017 when loriano did not hit very well in double a the astros not only were willing to trade him but they didn't even protect him on the 40 minute roster that's why they traded him to the a's in the first place, because they didn't want to expose him to, I don't know, the Rule 5 draft. And so they traded him to Oakland for a guy, a prospect, who didn't have to be on the 40-man roster. So he was sort of lost in a roster crunch, and the A's were like, well, we'll take it. So he comes in, and he immediately gets injured in spring training with a broken finger.

But he comes back, and he's basically hitting like he did two years ago so loriano is what i think he's 24 years old and he's got a good arm he's got good speed plays good defense has power he's patient the only thing he doesn't do is make contact a bunch but he seems to make enough of it and it looks like i think my favorite fun fact that i discovered when i was putting this article together is that oakland centerfielders this season have combined to be worth 1.5 wins above replacement and ramon loriano accounts for 1.7 of that yeah did i mention by the way we're going to be talking to emma bachelary in this episode did i get there i don't think so i don't think i did so anyway by the way in a very small amount of time we're're going to be talking to Emma Bachelary of Sports Illustrated about the Women's Baseball World Cup, which wrapped up,

I believe, at the end of August. And she wrote about it for Sports Illustrated about a week ago. So we have a good conversation there. But before we get there, I should have done that right after the intro, but had to get to Estadio stuff. Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about? Well, David Wright news came out. talked about david wright recently when he was still in the minors he's been rehabbing at the major league level for a while and he had a press conference on thursday it sounds like he is going to play one last game in late september and that will be that and he is not using the r word he is not saying that he is retiring i think for contractual reasons because if he says he's retiring he will not get the rest of the money that's owed to him although

everyone seems to know that he's retiring so i don't know where exactly the line is there but i hope he gets whatever money he has coming to him because he was a bargain for the mets for years and was a great player in franchise history. Looked like he was on a Hall of Fame trajectory. Sadly, will not get there, but was an incredible player. And it's pretty cool that he is going to be back for one game. And I hope there is a sellout crowd that will actually have a reason to go and see the Mets in late September. So that's nice. and see the Mets in late September.

So that's nice. And I'm sure it will be one of those not a dry eye in the house type moments, especially if he manages to do something positive in the game. Yeah, what is it? The medically unable to play list or something like that, which I'm pretty sure is what Prince Fielder wound up on. Is that incorrect? I think so.

So yeah, Prince Fielder couldn't continue his career because i think what was it also a neck injury yeah it's not a voluntary retirement neither of them wants to stop playing but right just unable to keep playing yeah of course so i guess i think based on that precedent i i think that means david wright stays on the mets 40 man roster or is that not correct i don't, but I guess there's still insurance payments that will be going to the Mets for that contract, which is what matters to the Wilpons. But at least David Wright gets to come back and take a final bow,

and that's nice. You don't always see that sort of gesture, but really, what do the Mets have to lose here? Nothing at all. And I don't know whether that will be a Jacob deGrom start or not. But I guess he has something to lose. But he's been losing all season long. So that's OK.

We're recording this on the day that, not to change sports here, but we're recording this on the day that the Ottawa Senators, my favorite hockey team, traded the best player that they've ever had. And they traded Eric Olsen to the San Jose Sharks. So what? You've got Angels fans who were so annoyed by national media talking about oh maybe the team now needs to trade mike trout because joey otani won't pitch for a year and angels fans get really defensive and they say no that's stupid never trade mike trout i remember that feeling rooting

for the mariners when they were bad felix hernandez was good and under club control and everyone wanted the mariners to trade Felix Hernandez, and it felt like it would be the most challenging thing to ever imagine and to stomach. And then a hockey team that I like elected to make such a move by trading maybe the best defenseman in the world to another team. It's heartbreaking, and it's one of those things that it has reminded me that actually sports are bad, and you don't always, if you get down to it, really a lot of the owners are people that you don't really want to support because they're just so far removed. So the reason that I went on this little detour here is because with the Mets in particular, you don't always assume that they're going to be able to handle anything well at all.

You just kind of assume that these imbeciles are going to get everything wrong, like almost literally everything wrong. So just the simple fact that they're making the right gesture for David Wright at all, and it's the simplest possible thing to do, to give him a start in a game that doesn't matter because the team sucks. Like, it's not hard to do. It's a very easy thing to sell to the people who are in charge. But just the fact that the Mets are able to do anything that rewards someone and shows some amount of freaking humanity you don't get these moments

that often in sports and so as sad as it is that we're likely all going to be watching the last major league game of David Wright's career at least it's something that the Mets haven't yet effed up because owners everywhere eff up everything. Yeah, and it sounds also like Joe Maurer might be riding off into the sunset at the end of the season. Unclear, but he is strongly considering it, it sounds like. And these are two guys I sort of associate in my mind. They are almost the same age. I think Maurer is about 100 days younger than David Wright.

He has also sort of had a disappointing tail to his career, not to the extent that Wright has, because Maurer lasted longer and accrued more value because he was a catcher and such an incredible catcher for years, but obviously hasn't been going out the way that he wanted to. But he had concussions and right head spinal stenosis, and occasionally this happens and it's unfortunate. But unlike Wright, I think that Maurer did rack up enough value over his healthy years as a catcher to be a Hall of Fame guy. I don't know whether he will get there. It's kind of tough when you have a case, someone like that, who even by the time he retires, it feels like his prime was a really long time ago. But if you just look at the numbers, they're really good numbers. So he managed to accumulate a whole lot of value in a pretty short time. And the fact that he has been

just kind of a middling first baseman without any power over the last few years hasn't really added a whole lot to his case, but hasn't really detracted from it. He's compiled a few extra wins that might push him over the top. Yeah, I think we talked a few months ago about Joe Maurer's possible Hall of Fame case, and I have come around just because of all the reasons that you already mentioned. There's something about, I guess there's two things about Joe Maurer's career that are kind of eye-opening to me, and one, of course, was the season in 2009 when he hit 28 home runs. This is a player who never otherwise hit more than 13 home runs in a season.

Joe Maurer just kind of having his, I don't know, Jacoby Ellsbury year in 2009 and just winning the MVP, which was outstanding. I always remember that that year, Joe Maurer batted.365, had an on-base of.444, and select.587. Just absurd numbers for a catcher. Unbelievably good. But something else I haven't been able to avoid seeing. It's less fun to talk about late career Joe Maurer, just as it's less fun to talk about late career almost anybody. talk about late career Joe Maurer just as it's less fun to talk about late career almost anybody but anecdotally I've noticed that a lot of players who are having good seasons seem to be swinging more aggressively and they're going after the first pitch more often and I haven't figured out

the right way to tackle it but I feel like in this day and age there's a lot more benefit to being aggressive early in the count because pitchers are so good at throwing put away pitches and and getting from two strikes to three but But I'm just going to read. There are 148 qualified hitters in baseball this season. 148. In terms of their propensity to swing at the first pitch, Javier Baez, unsurprisingly, is the leader at 49%. He swings all the time.

By all the time, I mean about half the time. Ozzie Albies, Freddie Freeman are second and third. If you go to the other end, you always like going to extremes. Third to last, first pitch swing rate, Brett Gardner, 10%. Second to last,

Mookie Betts, also basically 10%. Joe Maurer, 4%. 4% swings at the first pitch. This is just some straight up

J.J. Hardy nonsense, but if you look over Joe Maurer's career, he's swung at the first pitch only 9% of the time. He has very, very seldom had's swung at the first pitch only nine percent of the time he has very very seldom had a swung at a three pitch in a three and no count he's just been patient I'm not going to say to a fault because his career has been outstanding but he there's there's not a lot of players like Joe Maurer anymore and it just could be a reflection of the era because again it's hard

you don't want to get to two strikes but Joe Maurer deserves some amount of credit or at the very least intrigue for being a player who doesn't strike out very much but who is has also been very patient because that means Joe Maurer has found himself in deep counts and yet he's still been able to make a lot of contact so sure in a sense he's ended up hitting like white each row or something in the later days of his career, but he is statistically really interesting in several different ways. I just went to Hardball Talk to see if there were any very recent news stories. And the most recent story is Kyle Freeland's season deserves more attention. Just don't go down that road. We've all tried, we've all been there

There was like a Kyle Freeland day Where we all wrote articles synchronized To be on the same day And I don't think it helped Although I will say that since our Kyle Freeland push, Kyle Freeland Has continued to pitch very well And justify our attempting

To bring some attention to him So good for him yeah on uh on this very day kyle freeland got the win in the start against diamondbacks although he allowed three runs and six in the third inning so worse than your standard kyle freeland start but his era stands at 2.96 which is still very good so kyle freeland uh we we don't get any more attention for talking about him i'm pretty sure that we're losing listeners by the second as we talk about the rockies but i will say the rockies still hanging out first place two games ahead of the dodgers as we speak they might win this

division that might happen it seems like i've kind of just been like yeah okay it might happen all season long but we're now midway through september and it's still happening so the dodgers are winning as we speak also but the rockies have already won and they have a couple game cushion in the west column so there is a real chance that the rockies could actually topple the dodgers here should also say something something else. So, okay, for the longest time, even though the A's and the Mariners were for a while close to the Astros, we both kind of assumed, well, it doesn't matter. The Astros are going to win the division. And the Astros probably are still going to win the division. But it's gone with lesser notice. But even though the A's are losing

right now, they have closed within one game of the Yankees in the American League wildcard. So the A's have gone from not making the playoffs to this team is definitely making the playoffs to this team could have a home game in the playoffs against the Yankees. And now I know it's one game, anything can happen, but just in terms of the viewing experience as an observer, I would so much rather watch the Yankees and the A's in Oakland than to watch them in New York

It's just such it seems like it was such a more fun environment. I've seen enough playoff games in Yankee Stadium You've been to playoff games in Yankee Stadium. It's not the same as the old Yankee Stadium There's a variety of reasons for that Oakland. They're gonna be fun in Oakland if they get the chance. Yeah, selfishly I'd like to go So there's that I enjoy attending wildcard games I don't attend all postseason games Or even that many postseason games in person But if there is a wildcard game

That happens to be played in my city I will go and that will be fun Because it's just a great atmosphere For those single elimination games So I will try not to Let my feelings about that sway What is best for all but yeah that is a close race and as we speak the Cubs Brewers race is equally close so these aren't

really the races that I thought were going to be close at this point in the season but at least we have some because the Braves have pulled away in the NL East and doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of intrigue left there although there are still a lot of head-to-head games left but yeah Brewers really giving the Cubs a run and Rockies more than giving the Dodgers a run and all these teams that we didn't really expect to be in these situations it's exciting stuff yeah for uh we'll we'll get to the interview I guess in a second one last thing, at least that I will point out for all the writing that people have done about the Brewers and about Josh Hader, who is, of course, one of, if not the most dominant relievers in baseball. Okay. Hold on. I always struggle with this one. One of, if not the most, is that then plural or singular?

Help me out here. Yeah. I usually try to write around that because that's a tough one. Help me out here. Yeah, I usually try to write around that because that's a tough one. Hate that one. But anyway, so we've talked about Josh Hader plenty, who is one of the best relievers in baseball. If not the best reliever in baseball, that's how you nail it. You just make more words. But if you look at the top five relievers this year in win probability added, one of my favorite numbers to look at for relievers. You've got in fifth place, Craig Kimbrell. Fourth place,

Josh Hader. Third place, Edwin Diaz. First place, Blake Trine. And second place, Jeremy Jeffress. Jeremy Jeffress has been, by this weird measure, the second most valuable reliever in baseball this season. You look him up, he's got a 1-3-9 ERA. He's striking out a bunch of guys. He's getting grand balls. He's not walking as much.

Jeremy Jeffress has been through his share and more of of off the field problems i believe he's he's opened up about some anxiety that he's suffered through but anyway this isn't meant to be a profile in jeremy jefferson but rather just some sort of recognition of how great a season he's had for milwaukee and how important he's been because by win probability at it he's been exactly what josh aitor has been all right well we can take a quick break and we'll be back with an avatulary of sports illustrated to talk about the women's baseball world cup It's the motion in the music And the fire beneath your feet All the signs are right this time You don't have to try so very hard

If you live in this world You're feeling the change of the dark All right, so now we are joined by Emma Bedlari of Sports Illustrated, who recently, last week, wrote a feature article that was titled Growth of a New Game Inside the Women's Baseball World Cup. Now, I don't think it reflects too well on me, but I can tell you that I think this was the first I'd actually heard of the Women's Baseball World Cup, which might make a statement about the media coverage of said World Cup.

But, Emma, hello. How are you? Hi, how are you guys? Doing very well. And so I guess just to get started, how much can you tell us about the history of the Women's Baseball World Cup? I understand it's been around for about a decade and a half, but if you were to discuss the history of it in something that's in like a podcast-sized form, then how did it come about? How long has it been going? And which teams have been the most dominant? Yeah, well, starting in I think, 2001, the first sort of informal version of international women's baseball competition started with the US, Canada, Japan,

and Australia. And that went on for a few years in what was called the Women's World Series. And then in 2004, the World Baseball Softball Confederation picked it up and started doing it as like an actual internationally sanctioned tournament, which that's the same group that runs the World Baseball Classic. So yeah, it started officially in this form in 2004. And at the time, I believe there were five teams and it's held every other year so then fast forward to now and there are 12 teams and when the tournament started the US was one of the more dominant powers.

They won the first two World Cups 2004-2006 but ever since then Japan has just really dominated. They've won every year since 2008 and have not only won, but have been really, really dominant in those wins. They haven't lost a game since 2012 now. And yeah, they are by far the team to beat here. Yeah. And there's a good reason for that, as you explain in your piece, which I'm sure that we will get to soon. But before we get to how baseball works in other countries and how it maybe should or could work in ours, how is women's baseball structured

in the United States right now or not structured as the case may be? Yeah, so it really isn't structured as you kind of alluded to. Basically just a system where, you know, at the the youth level you'll have girls playing with boys when they're like really little but as they get older more and more are pushed into softball I know like for me growing up I wasn't a very good softball player but I did play um and it was just like never presented as an option to play baseball it was just when you turned like eight or nine you just played softball because that was what girls did. And that's the experience for a lot of girls playing at that age that you just go to softball because there are girls softball teams in middle school and in high school and then eventually at

the college level with scholarships. And that's how it works. But for girls who do want to play, that means they'll usually be the only girl on a boys little league team, the only girl on their boys high school teams. There are a tiny handful of women who have played in college, all of whom have been the only woman on their team. And then past that for international competition like this, it's just something that's held as an open tryout. This year, I believe they had a little more than 100 women come out to try to make this 20 person team. And yeah, they were able to practice for I think, like a week before they do this big international competition. But yeah, the Open Tryouts held in June, women come from all over the country, most of whom are playing

by themselves on boys or men's teams, and then practice for like a week together before doing a big international tournament in August. So within your article, you mentioned Team USA as a first baseman named Malaika Underwood. Maybe it's Malaika Underwood. I don't know for sure, but she is 37 years old. She's a first baseman. And you mentioned she's been around now because of her age and because of how new the Women's Baseball World Cup is. She's been around for essentially the entire time.

She's seen it from the ground on up, and now she's playing with a lot of younger teammates, a lot of people of an age that maybe wouldn't have been available or wouldn't have been aware back in the early 2000s when the World Cup was first created. But I was curious, maybe at the beginning or maybe now, you talk about how there's an open tryout for the U.S. team, but how big of a player pool is there, not only of players who would have interest, but players who can maybe afford to come to the tryout and take the time, have the resources to actually try to be on this team in the first place?

Yeah, that's absolutely an obstacle that, you know, USA Baseball, I believe, pays for all of their expenses at the tournament, but for going to the tryout, which this year was held in North Carolina. Yeah, that's an expense that people have to shoulder that definitely shuts people out, I would imagine. And in terms of how big that player pool could be, it's kind of hard to say. Each year, there's about a thousand girls who play baseball at the high school level. I'm not sure about numbers beyond that. But yeah, it's not a huge player pool. But certainly the fact that it's team selection is held with an open tryout that people have to travel to cuts it down even more than it's

already cut down by all the factors that have shrunk it to begin with, I would say. And so I think there's a conception and maybe a misconception that the goal is or should be to advance to the major leagues or to the minor leagues. And certainly there have been women who have aspired to do that, and there are still. And that is a noble goal, but it is not the only goal. And it is not maybe even the majority goal, which you detail in your piece, in which I think might be somewhat surprising. I think often the goal is just to find a way to keep playing and ideally keep playing with other women and play at a professional level. And that has been achieved elsewhere, but not yet here. Yeah, definitely. I think there's like this cultural idea that baseball is for men and softball is for women. So any women who are playing baseball must be playing baseball because they want to play with men and the ultimate goal for them is MLB. But yeah, for a lot of these

women, like you said, that's not the case at all that they're just playing baseball because they want to play baseball and their dream would be to do it with other women and against other women that the idea that it's their success couldn't be validated until they're playing with men at the highest level isn't true. Like they think they can build, they would like to see their own highest level built with and against other women. So you had mentioned for play recruiting in the U.S., obviously there's a small, and there's not much in the way of high-level programs and training. And yet, despite those structural disadvantages, the U.S. won the first two Women's Baseball World Cups.

But ever since then, as you mentioned, Japan has won all six, I believe. They've won the 30 games in a row. And presumably, the major reason for that is because in Japan, they have built a system such that there is organizational support. There is even a league, a paid league, where women are able to, I believe featuring four teams, where women are able to compete with other women against teams of other women and make a living. So if you could summarize the grassroots movement to the professional league development in Japan? How did this go from interest to being now where I think that the US would only dream of getting to?

Right. So as this was explained to me, it kind of happened in parallel levels where there was a group of basically school teachers over there, like gym teachers, health coaches, who noticed that girls love baseball when they're young and then they just kind of stopped playing because there aren't opportunities for them and thought that was kind of silly. Like, why don't we start encouraging girls to play in elementary school and then starting middle school teams and even if we could eventually down the line start high school teams. So there was a group of teachers who had kind of banded together and started sowing those seeds in Japan to grow the game in schools and starting with it just as a school opportunity. And that movement kind of really took off just because interest increased through word of mouth.

The girls started advocating for it at their own schools and that grew and grew. And now there are, I think, 30 or so Japanese high schools that have their own girls teams. So that was happening over the last 20-25 years or so. And then at the same time, there was a movement to start a professional league, which finally got off the ground in 2010, I think, which was started by the executive of a health company who'd been impressed by watching some high school girls play and thought, like, how amazing could this be if there was an opportunity for women to play professionally and to get paid to play and to be able to focus on baseball as a potential career so that league started in 2010 which in turn really fed the movement at schools and since then it's just been a matter of that pipeline for players that the professional league

has grown as more high schools have started teams, a handful of colleges have all girls baseball teams now. And yeah, just in the matter of really just like 25 years, it's grown at every level from high school teams all the way up until the to this professional league. And as a result, they have a really thriving program now. And it seems almost as if and you mentioned this in your piece that maybe it's harder to overcome the existing system in the US, which funnels girls into softball, either from baseball or before they even get to baseball. Whereas I don't know what the pre-existing system was in Japan, but there didn't necessarily seem to be that bias, at least from reading your piece. And so it's almost like not having to go from zero to 60, but having to go from zero to 60 and then overcome this wall that's in your way and then back up and

reverse and go back to the beginning and then go to 60 again in a different direction. So it's kind of harder to overcome this institutional belief that girls will just want to or should play softball at some point. Yeah, definitely. Softball exists in Japan. There are girls and women who play softball, but it's not as deeply entrenched as it is over here. And another big part of that is that college scholarships don't mean the same thing because college costs so much here that a college scholarship and athletic scholarship can be totally life-changing for someone. And knowing that you can get a college scholarship to play softball when you won't be able to get a scholarship to play baseball really means something. Whereas there, just because college isn't so expensive, that just doesn't mean the same thing or hold the same value

and push as many women towards softball. Now, I understand you, you don't work for Team USA Baseball. You didn't work for the Women's Baseball World Cup. You were a reporter on site to put together one feature article. So I do not hold you to the standard of knowing everything about everyone. But one thing that you do mention, and that is confirmed by Wikipedia, is when there was the first Women's Baseball World Cup, there were only five countries who were represented. And most recently, there have been not only 12 teams who participated in the World Cup, but also there were qualifying rounds for countries that wanted to make it in. And so that means there are more than 12 teams that have developed out there. So if anything, how much do you know about how this has taken off in other countries? Because it's really easy to focus on our own country or the dominant program from Japan. But obviously, this is something that is about more than more than just one or two places. Yeah, definitely. It's really kind of a flywheel effect, I guess, in that just by having it exist in 2004 and 2006, countries saw that this was a possibility that it might make sense to have a women's baseball program that like the Dominican

Republic competed for the first time this year. obviously the Dominican has competed in the World Baseball Classic like several times now so they have had that men's baseball program competing in an international competition for a while and now finally after you know seeing like oh there is a goal for a women's program if we were to have one there's a place for them to compete. Other countries have this more and more have started adding it and being successful with it. So yeah, I don't know quite as much about what exactly that process has looked like for countries beyond the USA, Japan, to a lesser extent, like Canada and Australia. But it definitely has grown just because the fact that this tournament exists gives countries a reason to establish a program and to develop it and something for them to work towards. So the way you describe the style of play, it sounds like it's calculated to drive Brian Kenney mad.

Just all the bunting, lots of bunting. This is a different game, obviously, than Major League Baseball. And bunting can be counterproductive at one level and productive and smart at another level. So not that it's the most important thing whether these teams are playing the most optimal brand of baseball, but do you think they are? Do you think that the bunting and the small ball style play makes sense? And regardless of whether it is the most optimal way, is it the most entertaining way? Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised in that I'm not someone who really appreciates seeing bunts that much at the major league level, but it was a lot of fun to watch here. Like you said,

it is a different game. It's super fast, so much small ball. And it kind of makes sense because there are very few women who are capable of hitting it over the fence since they play on a basically a regulation field the fence is removed in a little here but yeah when the home run isn't really a tool that these players have in their pocket that they're capable of doing you kind of have to change the game if you want to be able to actually score and it's different but I thought it was still really entertaining. It's just something that's not played exactly like you're used to seeing baseball, but that didn't make it less captivating or less interesting to watch.

For anyone who's out there who maybe hasn't read the article yet or hasn't watched a lot of women's baseball, I think it's only natural to wonder about some of the main statistics. And as you mentioned, there's less power hitting. Most of the fastballs top out around the low to mid 70s. And there's a lot of pitching backwards, a lot of either Japanese or like Yankee style pitching backwards, which I think is clever. If anything, it's a lot less stubborn. It's a lot more open-minded than the traditional baseball mindset. Now, one thing you do mention in your article is that the top women's curveballs spin around 2,500 revolutions per minute, which is around the major league average

for a curveball spin rate. So I'm not here to make any sort of comparisons, but what I'm mostly interested in is, are these players, do they have access to like track man techniques? Where did that measurement even come from? Who's doing this? And if there is trackman, that seems to reflect a pretty good investment in the program and structural organizations. Yeah, so the measurements at

the tournament were done by Flyscope, which I hadn't heard of before going there. I just assumed it was trackman when I saw they also were doing exit velocity. I don't think they had launching tool, but they did have exit velocity for hitters too. And I'm not sure if that was something that was installed special for the tournament or if that was already there, which they were playing at what used to be the Nationals spring training facility and since has become like a youth baseball complex in Florida. But yeah, it was tracked by Flyscope. And I know all the Japanese women were used to those measurements. I'm not sure how many of the American women or women from other countries were used to being tracked on that level. But it was cool to see

to be able to get that sort of more granular data to know exactly what they were working with here. And there is a role for MLB here, which you mentioned in your article, the Trailblazer series that MLB served as a joint sponsor of last year. I'm wondering, even if the goal isn't for these women to make the majors someday, that doesn't mean that that's the only reason why MLB would have an interest in promoting women's baseball. MLB seems to believe that people playing baseball is a big predictor of people watching and paying to attend baseball games and being baseball fans. And so this is obviously a target market aside from just a good cause if you're a baseball league. So what is MLB doing and should MLB be doing more? And what do you see their motivations as? Or how do they view their

motivations? Yeah, so they started this tournament jointly sponsored with USA Baseball last year, they're doing it again this year. And like you said, there are very legitimate business reasons to be involved with something like this that you're, you know, growing a potential future fan base. They've done lots of things with boys youth baseball over the years, so it seems like kind of a natural outgrowth of that. And yeah, that's about the extent of their involvement right now. I've heard that they're thinking of expanding that into more opportunities than just one each year down the road, but publicly they haven't announced anything other than this one tournament each year. But yeah, I think that's the level that

you have to grow it at is that youth level before America could really hope to have something on the level of this Japanese league that, you know, you kind of need that pipeline in place in order to populate a league like that. And I think investing at that youth level at the level of schools is probably the place where any group would need to focus. And so what MLB is doing right now with this annual tournament is, I think, a really good starting place. And if they want to see it grow, probably the place to focus their efforts. So I have two questions. I guess it only makes sense to go one at a time instead of overlapping them. And one, this was the first time in the women's baseball world cup that the

tournament was hosted in the united states as you mentioned it was at the nationals old spring training home and and you early in your article you had an anecdote where you talked to a fan who was there on vacation she took a 12-day vacation just to see the different teams playing in the tournament but i was wondering firstly what was your your sense of of the atmosphere what were the what were the crowds like was how much attention was there on the tournament? Like, how well advertised was it? And how popular did it seem to be in your well trained eye? Yeah, so the people who were there were super passionate for the most part, but those crowds were really, really small, which I think there were a couple of things that were working against

it there. One one was you know school had already started so not something that kids could go do for the games during the day it was Florida in August outdoors um not a great baseball watching environment and especially for a tournament like this where there were like three games a day like no one wants to sit through three games in that kind of heat. So yeah, that was working against it. And I think also like when you talk to players who had been on multiple teams, who'd played in the cup for multiple years, it seemed like just because the US doesn't have a strong cultural understanding of women's baseball, that this isn't something

that people really get. Like when you say women's baseball, most of them think, oh, you mean softball. It just didn't seem like it was something that really captured a lot of people. Like when these women talked about playing in Venezuela, where like thousands of fans packed those stadiums and were so excited for the opportunity versus here. Yeah, a pretty small turnout, which I think seemed kind of disappointing to some people,

especially for, you know, these US women, this is their first time, their first chance to play on home soil. And yeah, pretty small crowds, but very passionate ones. The second question was you were obviously you working for Sports Illustrated, you have a certain amount of pull, so you could presumably get a decent amount of access no matter what you were looking to report on. But in your media perspective, as you attended the tournament and went to talk to some of the players and the people in charge of the teams, what was the media coverage? And related to that, I guess, when you were talking

to whoever it is that you talked to at Sports Illustrated to figure out if this was something you could even go to cover, what was your experience like in requesting permission to do this, presuming maybe it wasn't assigned to you beforehand? Yeah, it was something I pitched. I, like you, had never heard of this event before, I guess in March or April, I was doing some reading and stumbled across it and was like, that sounds really, really cool. And then I started working at Sports Illustrated in May, and it was actually one of the first things I pitched although I definitely was not confident about them taking me up on it like I remember I had a list of potential pitches and it was like this was buried in between like

something on the Brewers bullpen management and something about the Braves early success like I didn't think that there was a good chance of me being approved to go travel to this and let alone having this be something that would get actual space in the print magazine. But my editors were cool with it and were willing to send me down for a couple of days. So I was there. There wasn't a whole ton of national media there, although there were a few like MLB.com had someone there there were articles done in like Huffington Post and SB Nation although I don't believe they had anyone on the ground at the tournament but yeah for the most part it was a pretty small pretty low-key affair like there

were local media there Japanese media had sent several people just because it's more popular there it's something that there's a larger fan base for. There was a little bit more in the way of international media. There were a few Cuban writers there, which was cool covering their team. But yeah, on the whole, it was pretty small, pretty low key. So there was an article in Slate a couple weeks ago and a discussion on Hang Up and Listen with Christina Cotarucci about the benefits and drawbacks of having co-ed youth teams versus single gender. And I don't know what your experience was like as a child, but in Christina's article, she kind of presents both sides and how there can be benefits to having everyone play together. And then there can be drawbacks where it kind of reinforces certain attitudes.

Or if you have just girls who are a very small minority on the team, they can get ganged up on or feel out of place. And so there's still a lot of discussion, I think, about what the ideal solution is. And maybe it's easier to have a certain solution in a sport that a lot of girls already play as opposed to one that you're trying to promote more girls playing. So what do you think the ideal solution for softball in this country looks like in the next few years or even longer term? It's a tricky question. And I think in part because softball is a valid great sport in its own right. And I don't think that growing women's baseball has to mean lessening the appeal of softball. I think it's just a question of being able to create the choice for girls and women who want it that like right now for a girl who wants to play baseball unless

she's willing to be the only girl on her team she has no choice and creating a system where there is a choice where there is such a thing as a girl's baseball team she has no choice and creating a system where there is a choice where there is such a thing as a girl's baseball team at some level somewhere could be really powerful and would go a long way in making that experience better and just making that experience viable which I don't think would necessarily have to mean much at all in terms of downgrading softball or making softball somehow lesser I think softball would still have obviously a really strong draw considering how long of a history it has of being played by girls and women at all levels. So yeah, I don't think that growing girls baseball has to mean doing

much to lessen softball. It just means seeing both of them as valid equal sports in their own right. I guess the last thing that we'll ask you before we let you go is as long as we're talking about this tournament and about women's baseball in general, how much of a role do you suppose that this Women's Baseball World Cup plays in promoting the sport itself, in that there's a dearth of high level women's baseball playing opportunities. Obviously, this would presumably be the biggest one. So how important in your estimation is this tournament to helping more women realize that there could be or should be an opportunity for them to continue playing baseball in the first place? Yeah, maybe this is naive of me, but I would like to think that it

could actually have a pretty large impact just because for a lot of these girls and women who have played and want to keep playing, they stop because they think there's nothing there. There are no chances, there's no opportunity. And so to be able to look and see there is something there, like there is a chance, even if it's just one team every two years playing you know eight games being able to see that that exists that there are other women who do this who play and who have kept playing against all odds over years and years like I think that can be really really powerful in a decision to keep playing versus switching to softball or stopping altogether. So yeah, like I said, there wasn't a ton of media coverage, but there was some and if that reaches just,

you know, a fraction of girls who have been playing and have thought about stopping, I think that could go a really long way towards just making people realize like there is something here, even if it's small and just every two years. Well, you know, you hadn't heard of the existence of this tournament until earlier this year. And then I hadn't heard of the existence of this tournament until you wrote about it and then published something. And so with the next Women's Baseball World Cup scheduled for 2020, I guess there's already been some baby steps in spreading awareness. So Emma, I'd like to thank you very much for sharing your time and for telling us a little more about the tournament oh yeah thank you so

much thanks for having me on all right that will do it for today and also for this week you can support the podcast on patreon and ensure that there are many more weeks to come by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild signing up to pledge some small monthly amount as have the following five listeners william figge julia turner r Stearns, Paul Ferraro, and Bertil Spolander. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. And you can keep your questions and comments and complaints, if you have them,

coming to me and Jeff via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks as always to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. He's working around a wedding and other obligations this week. And thanks to you all for listening. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will talk to you early next week. If you sing a song, sing a song for me. weekend and we will talk to you early next week. If you sing a song, sing a song for me