Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1299: The Whiff Heard Round the World

Episode Date: November 22, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about a Willians Astudillo strikeout (and Astudillo vs. other, more highly-touted Twins), the team-switching saga of Oliver Drake, and the singular skill of Nathan Eovaldi, then answer listener emails about changing the game to appeal to non-fans, the value of base-stealing, the odds of seeing gear from every team […]

Thanks, thanks a lot. I got a broken heart, it's all I've got. You made me cry, yeah I cried a lot. I lost you, honey, thanks a lot. Hello and welcome to episode 1299 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer and I am joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs who I believe has some sad news to relate. I was tipped off by baseball analyst Oscar Prieto Rojas on Tuesday evening that for the first time in the Venezuelan Winter League, Williams Astadillo has struck out. Mighty Williams has struck out. He struck out in his, I believe, 114th at bat.

He's had more plate appearances than that because he has drawn six walks. But Astadillo at this point batting 333, 388, 500. Still very good. Not quitejandro de aza good apparently but in any case the strikeout list streak is over it feels i don't know does this feel better or worse than when stephen brault struck out i uh i haven't really wrapped my head around it i don't know i saw in the tweet that you retweeted there was a reply from someone who

pointed out that astadio hadn't struck out for quite a while at the end of the last Venezuelan Winter League season. So if you add that together with this season, then it's something like 190 at bats he went without a strikeout in that league. So I don't know. The nice thing about this, I think this is less upsetting than the Stephen Brault one, because the Stephen Brault one was to start a career. So once it was gone, it was gone forever. He could never recapture it. Whereas Estadio just started a new streak in his next at bat. Yeah, that's fair. So it's over. But you know, the idea has never been that Williams Estadio literally never strikes out. The idea is that he strikes out a lot less often than anybody else. And that remains true. I believe actually when I checked, he didn't end up at the lowest strikeout rate in the minors this past season but you know we don't

really care so much about what happens in like rookie ball and eight ball the important thing is that estadio has done it against everybody so i don't know at this point i'm pretty comfortable just declaring that he's proved himself proof of concept has already worked out he's done it at literally every level so hopefully it's hard to tell what kind of role he has carved out for the Twins moving forward. They must keep him on the roster, right? I don't know how you don't, but they have Jason Castro coming back, and they paid him a lot of money. So I don't really know what the job is going to be, but he's ready to play any position, I guess. So they have a lot of needs.

Yeah, and he's so popular. I guess so they have a lot of needs yeah and he's so popular I don't know whether that gives him actual value to a team but you would think there'd be some kind of blowback or uproar if they actually got rid of William Testadio because it's not like the twins have all that much else to be excited about I mean it'd be one thing if Byron Buxton was doing great and all their young guys were flourishing but that hasn't really happened. So Williams-Estadio was kind of like one of the high points of the twin season. So there's a lot of attachment to him there. I'm glad you brought that up.

I want to ask you a question. This is absurd. Byron Buxton is going into his age 25 season. Estadio is going into his age 28 season. Would you rather, at this point, having seen what you've seen, would you rather, who's going to, what's going to have the higher war? Or what would have the higher war? The rest of Williams-Assadio's major league career or the rest of Byron Buxton's? Oh man.

Wow. That's, it would be ridiculous to have asked this question a year ago, but right now, I don't know. They, they're both capable of playing center field. We know that for the same team, in fact. Perhaps not with the same proficiency. It's hard to say. We don't have that simple with Williams out there to say for sure, but I don't know. I mean, the thing with Buxton is that his defensive value alone should make him valuable, even when he wasn't hitting in one of those seasons when he was one of the best centerfielders in the game. If not the best centerfielder, he was still a pretty good player. If he could just get to even Billy Hamilton-level hitting, he would be pretty good.

And it would be hard for Astadio to match that if buxton hit at all and obviously we've seen him hit really well at times for certain stretches so i guess you you still have to say buxton i think uh he's got the the few years on astadio too so there's that but uh yeah it's a question you can ask in 2018 it's also it's worth pointing out Miguel Sano is going into his age 26 season he's coming off a year where he had an 82 WRC plus he wasn't in shape he was devoted to the low minors he struck out 40% of the time the twins were supposed to be built around Buxton and Sano yeah Sano versus Estadio that that's actually kind of a conversation because Sano has no

defensive value. And if he's anything, he's a DH probably. So yeah, that one, that's kind of reasonable. Almost complete opposite players also. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, Estadio plays every position and Sano plays none. And Sano doesn't make contact and Estadio makes all the contact. So yeah, I don't know where the twins stand right now with their core. Barrios was good at least. There's that. Yeah, there's Barrios. Kepler hasn't really built on his potential.

But looking at it, Sano versus Estadio, I mean, taking Sano as sort of a stand-in for Joey Gallo here, because I think Gallo is considered still the king of the three true outcomes. But Sanoa is right there. Same idea. He walks at least 10% of the time. He strikes out more than a third of the time. He hits a bunch of dingers. He and Astadio almost couldn't be less alike.

So I think it's kind of cute that there's a chance that Astadio could threaten Sanoa's playing time in 2019. Yeah. You know how there are similarity scores on baseball reference pages? It's kind of cute that there's a chance that Estadio could threaten Sano's playing time in 2019. Yeah, you know how there are similarity scores on baseball reference pages? There should be dissimilarity scores. I mean, it would be similarity scores, but sorted in the opposite direction. But they should do that. That'd be cool, right? It'd be nice to know who's the opposite of the bizarro Estadio or whatever. Does Estadio already have a similarity score?

I've got to scroll down and check this because I want to see. I don't know when they start calculating these things, but the answer is no. He doesn't have similarity scores on his webpage yet. I don't know when those, you should ask Dan Hirsch, but that would be fun to look at. Yeah. All right.

So we're going to do an email show today. Anything you wanted to talk about before we do other than Williams-Estedio? No. I mean, I guess in a sense, Tuesday was a busy night for baseball, right? But it was just a bunch of roster shuffling. I don Corey Dickerson by the raise. Derek Dietrich was designated for assignment. Similar sort of skill set. Some hitting, no defense. But other than that, there were like minor trades. I guess there was a Padres Mariners rumor that was floated by Ken Rosenthal. But based on all reports, it seems like nothing is close.

So I don't know. I was asked to do it was what I was leading with. And it was that was sad. Now I'm just not in the mood. Yeah, the one transaction that stood out to me was poor Oliver Drake. Oliver Drake was designated for assignment by the Tampa Bay Rays. And if you haven't looked at Oliver Drake's transaction log lately, you should because it's really long. So here's what Oliver Drake's transaction history for the past year or so is really just the past six months or so.

He was traded by the Orioles to the Brewers last April, so 2017 April. And then he was on the Brewers for a year or so. He started the season with the Brewers. And Oliver Drake, if you don't know Oliver Drake, he hasn't spent a whole lot of time with any one team lately. He is a right-handed reliever. So he was on the Brewers to start the year. Then May 5th, 2018, he was purchased by the Cleveland Indians from the Milwaukee Brewers. May 31st, so later the same month, selected off waivers by the Angels from the Indians.

So that's May 31st, goes from the Indians to the Angels. Then July 26th, selected off waivers by the Toronto Blue Jays from the Angels. August 3rd, so like a week later, selected off waivers by the Twins from the Toronto Blue Jays. November 1st, selected off waivers by the Tampa Bay Rays from the Minnesota Twins. And now he has been designated for assignment by the Rays, and he may be on the move again sometime soon. So we see this happen every now and then. Someone just gets stuck in waiver wire limbo or hell and just goes from one team to the

next for a whole year, several times. I think Drake set some sort of record, I think, this year, right, for like a number of teams pitched for in a season, I think. I believe that's correct. Yeah, he pitched for five teams in the major leagues this year. And that is, I think, unprecedented. And he is probably going to be on the move again. So yeah, this happens where guys get stuck in this cycle. I remember Michael Babin and I talked to David Rollins on the Ringer MLB show maybe a couple years ago or last year at some point

because he was stuck in one of these cycles. And it's like you're just good enough that someone wants you, but you're not quite good enough to have a set place. So you just are this itinerant player who just goes from place to place. And it's a very obviously disordered lifestyle. I mean, there are a lot of people who would sign up to make $550,000 and just change employers every few months and just go from place to place, but it's got to be difficult. I don't know whether Oliver Drake has a family or whether he's single or has kids or what. He's 31 years old and he just

has a new place to work in a new city to call home every couple weeks it seems like yeah i don't know i don't know what feels worse uh several years ago there was what adam rozales was just constantly bouncing back and forth between texas and oakland and that was his own sort of cycle where at least he was just going back and forth between sort of familiar locales but oliver drake now just over his entire major league career he's belonged to the orioles and the brewers and the indies and the angels and the blue jays and the twins and the rays and now waivers again and i i don't i guess i i would imagine that if you're oliver drake and it would be interesting to just talk to oliver drake

to see what this is like as you said players get stuck in these cycles every so often. And I would imagine that if you're someone like Oliver Drake, you probably don't really know what your mood is going to be the following day. You know, maybe it's cloudy, maybe it's sunny. You just don't know what kind of affects your openness to the world. But on the good days, you would think, wow, a lot of different teams like me. And on your bad days, of course, you think, wow, a lot of different teams decided I'm not worth keeping around. You're in your 30s, of course, you think, wow, a lot of different teams decided I'm not worth keeping around.

You're in your 30s, so you kind of already know. But this is sort of one of the hidden sides. You think, oh, when you're in the major leagues, you are killing it. Like, again, the minimum salary. Oliver Drake made $554,300 last season. He was paid that money by an assortment of different baseball teams. His taxes are going to be very complicated. But, you know, you're giving back a third of that or two-fifths of that to taxes.

You have agent fees, and I can't tell if he should either give his agent a promotion or fire him. I don't really know what that's like to be Oliver Drake's agent. But you think like, yeah, you're right. I don't know if Oliver Drake has a family, but that is incredibly disruptive. Now, when you're a major league baseball player, you're already always on the road. But how much money would you need to have absolutely no idea where your career is going to take you? And I don't know. I mean, his take home is probably like $350,000, but he has no guaranteed prospect of making good money in the future. His value, if anything, is going down because he's in his 30s. You saw on Tuesday, every team is filling

out its 40-man rosters with protecting players who would otherwise be eligible for the Rule 5 draft, and a lot of those players added to 40-man rosters are like 23-year-old hard-throwing relievers with good strikeout numbers in the minors. Oliver Drake doesn't have a skill set that allows him to stand out, and he's just moving constantly. And some team is going to claim him off waivers, and then about a month or two later, another team is going to claim him off waivers because Oliver Drake is the 40th man on every team's 40-man roster. So I don't know what stability is worth

or what instability is worth, but I think what I make, and I don't make Oliver Drake money, but I definitely don't have Oliver Drake's airline miles. So I don't know if it's a better life. I am skeptical that it is. Yeah, well, I'm sure that he'd take less money to have been in one place

all season and to have been able to pitch in one place and accumulate some innings and hopefully do well and then put himself in line for a bigger or longer contract. I mean, obviously, you know, there are a lot of minor leaguers who are making nothing who would happily trade places with Oliver Drake, but it's not ideal. It's probably the least enviable season, I guess, anyone has had in the majors this year. And I would like to talk to him. I'm trying to get him on the podcast, but it's hard to know who to ask to connect you with Oliver Drake

because he's been in so many places. Usually you email the team's media person. So I emailed the Rays' media person because they're the most recent team. And they said, yeah, I don't have his contact info. He just got here. We haven't talked to him. Sorry. And I tried contacting his agency or the one that is listed on his baseball reference page.

And they said, we don't represent Oliver Drake anymore. So he's been on the move with agencies as well. Like a while ago, they said they don't know why he's still listed with that agency. So I don't know who currently represents him. Possibly no one. Maybe that's why he's such a nomad. I don't know. Anyway, I'm putting out feelers.

If anyone knows or has seen Oliver Drake lately, let me know. But hopefully we'll have him on at some point. So let's actually we should follow up by saying he we think he set a record, maybe tied a record by playing for five different teams this season. And that's true. He had the innings with five different baseball teams. But as is mentioned, because he was grabbed off waivers by the Rays on November 1st, he's belonged to six baseball teams this calendar year. And because he was designated for assignment, he could and should end up with another team somewhere in the next five weeks. Now, maybe he's not going to get a job until February. Maybe he'll be somebody's spring training NRI.

But there's a chance Oliver Drake, if he signs with a new team, he could be paid. Well, I guess not paid. I guess you don't get paid in the offseason. But he could be the employee of seven different organizations in a calendar year, if not more. But seven is where he'd get if he's claimed sometime in the near-term future. That is almost a quarter of the baseball teams. Yeah, I don't know. I i mean he's like he did pretty well is the thing like not i mean you know his his era was not great it's in the fives on the season but

he's got a you know low threes fip he struck out more than a batter per inning like he did pretty well so you can see why teams keep wanting to have him. And it can't be good for your performance to be on a new team every week or two and be working for a new pitching coach and with a new catcher and a new ballpark and all the hassle of figuring out a place to live every time you go somewhere. Maybe you get some help from your teams, and we'll ask him about that if we get to talk to him but it's got to be a an extra stress that would have some effect so he did pretty well all things considered feels like this is the kind of chapter that ends up with him accepting a job in japan to just make some like a million dollars or something pitch out of

the bullpen but then still that would be a seventh baseball team this season and a second continent so you know i don't want to assume oliver drake's future but it's an unbelievable year and i would i would read an oliver drake book i don't know if he can write but i would i would read it and i'm i'm looking up because he yeah like you said his his strikeout numbers were were pretty good i am trying to find him however on this leaderboard and it's a little distressing that it's taking me so long to to scroll down so yeah maybe everyone's got a better pruning so it's not yeah right yeah but oliver drake he struck out 24.4 percent of the batters he faced he walked 8.1 and those are basically the same peripherals as michael givens uh seth lugo did the same thing victor arano you dodubre Ramos, I don't know.

Joe Kelly, you know, he had better peripherals than sought-after free agent Joe Kelly. But because Oliver Drake had a bad ERA and Joe Kelly had a good ERA or a decent ERA, then Kelly is going to get job security. And Oliver Drake is going to end up, I don't even know where he's going to have his Christmas this year if he celebrates Christmas. So just a real interesting season by Oliver Drake. Yeah. And, you know, he was a 43rd round draft pick in 2008. So just to get to the point where he is going from team to team in the majors, that is pretty good. He has 0.1 wins above replacement according to baseball reference, but that makes him the best player to come out of the 43rd round of the draft in 2008. So he has exceeded all expectations. Let's put it like this. Oliver Drake had a strikeout minus walk rate of 16%, right? And his

ERA was 25% worse than league average. Ryan Madsen had a strikeout minus walk rate of 16%, and his ERA was 35% worse than average. Ryan Madsen was throwing like the Dodgers' most critical innings in the playoffs, and Oliver Drake was living out of like a suitcase in like a million different Best Western hotels. So life comes at you fast, I guess, or slow, or constantly. I don't know what the expression would be for Oliver Drake, but life is constantly coming at you and you need to know from which direction. I think we're done talking about Oliver Drake now.

Probably so. Yeah. So one more sought after free agent I wanted to ask you about because you wrote a post about him and it opened my eyes a little bit. You wrote about Nathan Evaldi, who I think impressed everyone in the second half of the season and particularly in the postseason. But I didn't quite appreciate how much of an outlier he is. So tell the people. Nathan Eovaldi throws hard. You know that?

Everybody knows that. That's the thing that Nathan Eovaldi has always done. But something that is somewhat underappreciated. somewhat underappreciated. So in my head, I find it really easy to compare Nathan Uvalde and Tyler Chatwood because they're both relatively young free agent starting pitchers who have had two Tommy John surgeries. And no matter what Nathan Uvalde's doctor says about the health of his elbow, it is an elbow that has twice blown out. So teams are going to be naturally skeptical of Uvalde's durability, and that's perfectly fine. He throws very hard and he's blown out twice. But there's a critical difference between Uvalde and chatwood you'll remember that last year chat

was everyone's like he's the new charlie morden and it turns out he's the new well there's really never been anyone who walked so many better than charlie chatwood he's the new kyle drabeck i guess but the big difference between chatwood and yovaldi they both have good stuff but yovaldi throws strikes all the time like two standard deviations above the mean strikes like cliff lee level strikes prime pedro martinez strikes just strike after strike after strike he was everything is in the zone he threw strikes something like 70 of the time and his fastball was like 98 miles per hour. So we only have only, we have like 17 years of pitch information. And so what I did for the post was I, for every individual season for starting pitchers,

I calculated their standard deviation fastball velocity, like the number of standard deviations separate from the average. And I did the same for strike rate. And it turns out no one on record has had Nathan Eovaldi's blend of velocity and strikes. So you can think of that as here's someone who throws really hard and controls or commands the ball. And no one has really done that before. There was one small sample, Danny Salazar season, his rookie season in 2013. Salazar was very good. He threw extremely hard and he threw a bunch of strikes. He did that over just 52 innings, and the next year, he lost a mile and a half off his fastball, and then injuries started to creep in. So Salazar

has kind of gone off the rails, and Yovaldi could have that happen too, but if you like velocity, and you like strikes, Nathan Yovaldi is your guy more than anyone else who is available out there. Usually, you'll see an inverse relationship between velocity and strikes because the harder you throw, the greater your margin of error. But this is something that's kind of extraordinary. And Iovaldi doesn't maybe miss as many bats as you might think of someone who throws 120 miles per hour, but he's a good one. And I think when you have someone who throws that many strikes,

it kind of hints at additional upside. So there is a reason like every single team is interested in Nathan D'Avali. to just say, well, we'll just take our chances and hope his elbow lasts. And he just needs one bidder to be optimistic to get a giant contract. And I wonder whether there will be a bidding war for him that, I don't know, maybe someone will end up regretting it or not if he does get hurt again. But that should help. The fact that everyone wants him should drive the price up. We've seen some clauses before. So Felix Hernandez, for example, and John Lackey have the same clause. But in Felix in 2020 is, I believe, under contract with the Mariners for $1 million if he has a major elbow injury, I think, in 2019, something like that. And Cole Hamels has an option that would vest in the event that he doesn't have an elbow injury to end one of his seasons.

And I would imagine, so my prediction, Tyler Chatwood got three years guaranteed. And I think Nathan Uvalde is going to get three years guaranteed for a higher salary. But I bet Nathan Uvalde will end up with a fourth year option at another high salary that vests provided he doesn't end. Like, I guess that would be the year 2021 with a major elbow injury if he doesn't have tommy john over the course of his contract there are different things there are different terminology that is allowed or is not allowed in drafting a baseball contract but i would imagine that that is where nathaniel valdez going to end up and i bet he might even be able to get $60 million. Okay, emails. Question from Peter.

I'm 15 years old, and you actually inspired me to start my own baseball podcast with my dad called Growing Up Baseball. As a 15-year-old, I always laugh when I hear the tagline, we need to attract more kids to baseball from Rob Manfred. As far as pace of play goes, I love baseball for its slow,

calm pace that can get intense real fast, and I like basketball for its slow, calm pace that can get intense real fast, and I like basketball for its fast pace that gets the viewer interested. My question is this, why would the people in charge of baseball want to change baseball to make it more enjoyable for people who aren't baseball fans right now? That will just make it less enjoyable for hardcore baseball fans like us who love it the way it is. Well, yeah, that's correct. And I think that the argument that we have generally come back to is that baseball probably figures now baseball being a billion dollar industry. Baseball is, of course, looking to broaden its scope as much as possible because it looks

as people as money machines, which they are, which we are. And the more people who baseball can get to like baseball, the more money it can make. Now, baseball presumably figures the people who are already in are in. They are in more or less for good. For professional reasons, I guess Ben and I can't drift away from baseball. And baseball would have a very difficult time of losing the hardcore fans. So in a sense, it's kind of taking the fans it already has for granted. And I think it also assumes that, for example, if you're a baseball fan,

you know what we've been through the last several years, the last decade. Strikeouts are nothing like they used to be. Home runs are, or at least they did, achieve an all-time peak in 2017. We've seen the game of baseball change, and we've all adapted to it. Baseball didn't do anything to prompt those changes, granted, but the game is different from how it was. And so I think baseball figures, well, the fans who like baseball now will continue to adapt to the changes that happen in baseball. Baseball's made changes before. It's raised and lowered the mound.

It's changed the strike zone. It's done things, and it hasn't lost fans. The only thing that really cost it fans was the work stoppage back in 1994. So we as fans are all taken for granted and baseball is trying to appeal to, I guess, people with a shorter attention span, which is all of us in the year 2018. And so I don't blame them. But, of course, there are degrees to which I'd be comfortable with baseball changing and I wouldn't be comfortable with baseball changing. And I think like Jason Stark wrote, the game, it's going to be a three-hour game. There's not a lot you can do to baseball to make it fast. It's never going to be basketball. But there is downtime, and especially in the playoffs,

there's dead time that baseball could stand to eliminate. And so I'm on board, and I think, Ben, you're also on board with some of those proposals. Yeah, definitely. I don't think any hardcore baseball fans are going to like baseball less if it takes two hours and 45 minutes instead of three hours and five minutes or something. I think we'll all like it better. It won't be a fundamental change. But obviously, if you want your sport to thrive and survive, then you need to attract people who are not currently already fans of it, because those fans will die. We will all die. And if we are the last baseball fans, then baseball will die with us. So it's kind of

the Bill James conversation, right, about how it's the fans are the game, because it's not the the players because they could go away and we'd all be watching. But if we all went away, then, yeah, baseball would pretty much be dead. So I do wonder whether there's something to the argument that baseball is just kind of inherently an old person's game. Like maybe the fact that the average age of baseball fans is always like 50-something. Maybe there is a certain appeal to it that when you get older and you have more patience for a baseball paste activity, maybe you get more into it. Whereas when you're younger and you need action and

excitement, maybe something else appeals to you more. But then again, I think the research that MLB has done and cited, although I haven't seen it, says that growing up as a baseball fan and playing baseball is a big predictor of becoming a baseball fan later in life and still being one. So I don't know how many people are becoming baseball fans midway through their lives just because they're older and suddenly the sport appeals to them. It seems like it's usually a lifelong thing, although I don't have data on that. Yeah, I would agree with that. Okay.

Question from Mike. I'm a relatively new baseball fan, and I have a question about base stealing. I have heard that stealing is only worthwhile if it is successful 75% of the time or more. I'm confused about how that works. I think of base stealing as binary. If it works, it was worth it. And if it doesn't work, it wasn't worth it. So how does that statistic work? Does that statistic take into account the fact that a successful steal puts a runner in scoring position and makes it more likely they will score a run? Can the statistic take into account how a successful steal might change the pitching?

I suppose I was disappointed to learn that base stealing is no longer emphasized in baseball Can the statistic take into account how a successful steal might change the pitching? I suppose I was disappointed to learn that base stealing is no longer emphasized in baseball. I consider it a fun, athletic, and graceful play to watch. So I think the thing that probably the easiest way to think about this is that a caught stealing hurts the offense more than a successful steal helps because if a runner steals a base that's good he gets a somewhat better chance to score but if he's caught he is removed entirely and he also costs the team an out so the math says that in the long run a runner just has to be safe about 70 75 percent of the time it varies based on the the scoring environment but roughly in that range has to be safe for the base dealing to add value rather than subtracting it i guess that's kind of the the easiest way to think about it yeah as as an offensive team you only get

three outs to play with and so if you have a caught stealing and that's a third of your outs gone right there plus you lose the base runner and then the advantage of stealing a base is that you move up 90 feet that you can I think you can just sort of intuit the fact that that's not as meaningful it does change the inning and and there are probably some measurables where it's bad to allow a steal beyond what we are to see but the run values that we have for stolen bases and caught ceilings are already based on how innings play out after those events take place and so to whatever extent stealing second base or third base makes it even harder on the pitcher than just uh in advance of

90 feet that would be uh that would be reflected in the data and you could say that maybe it's worse for a pitcher to have a runner on first in a sense than a runner on second because sure i guess the guy in second might be really relaying signs but when there's a guy on first you're more worried about him maybe stealing the base and when he's on second he's already stolen the base and so i think that the the decline of the stolen base we've seen it but i think it's more gradual than than people think Baseball has been cyclical. The stolen base is very much still a part of the game. But the advantage of moving up is slight. And think of it as if you're an outfielder and a ball is hit to you. If you throw out a runner on the bases, that's incredibly valuable.

But if a runner moves up an extra base on like a sacrifice fly, that doesn't hurt you so much. It's just sort of something that happens that's a that's like a small fraction of a run that you have allowed whereas if you throw out a base runner as an outfielder that is a huge play and i think you you can sort of hear that when you hear the the crowd respond to an outfield assist because the crowd knows that is a that's a big play to make yeah and we've alluded to this before, but as you were saying, the steal is not gone from baseball. In fact, there were more steals per game in 2018 than there were in any year from 1930 to 1972. So while there are fewer steals today compared to recent years, obviously the 80s, everyone was running, but there are still many more steals

in today's brand of baseball than there were for decades in the past. And kind of a period that a lot of nostalgic baby boomers will call the golden age of baseball. There were fewer steals then than there are now. So it's not gone. It's just been reduced to a more efficient level, I suppose. Yeah, on the one hand, getting on base is harder than ever. The pitching is better than ever, and there are so many strikeouts, it's hard to reach first base. So that would be one reason why stolen bases would be down. But you're also incentivized to steal more, because not only are teams more focused on getting good defenders, which means more fast players, which means good defenders, which means more fast players,

which means better athletes, which means better base runners, but because it's so hard to string a bunch of hits together now, it actually makes more sense to try to steal second base or third base because you are more likely to get one hit than two hits. And so teams are going to want to try to steal. So I don't think the stolen base is threatened certainly not anything like the sacrifice bunt which is bad and is dying right okay step last yeah sure they'll take a data set sorted by something like e r a minus or o b s plus and then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit discuss it at, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to Dexter Blast. This is a pretty simple one. They're all pretty simple. I do these things in like 10 minutes.

But sometimes I try to keep these things built around the news if you will and the big headline news as i already mentioned is that derek dietrich was designated for assignment which is something that nobody cares about that much but you know he was an above average hitter so the marlins cut him what are you gonna do so one of uh when you talk about derek dietrich which first of all nobody does so maybe we should stop right there but if one were to talk about derrick dietrich and if one were to do so from a position of knowledge one of the things if not the only thing that has stood out about derrick dietrich but for the fact that he's been a major league player which is very good is that he gets hit by pitches a lot so when we talk about hit by pitches or when we write about hit by

pitches our our hero if you will is brandon guy of all the players who have ever batted at least 1 000 times in the major leagues brandon guyers batted almost 1500 times brandon guyer has the highest rate of hit by pitches he has been hit by a pitch 5.7% of the time that he has come up. Not only is that the highest rate in baseball history, it's the highest rate by more than a full percentage point over John McGraw. So Brandon Geyer is clearly some kind of weird hit-by-pitch outlier. So that's what happens when he set a minimum of 1,000 plate appearances. But Derek Dietrich has batted more than 2,000 times.

I like a higher minimum because a higher plate appearance minimum allows more time for the noisy bits to kind of cancel out. So maybe one day, Brandon Geyer will get up to his 2,000th plate appearance and we will recognize him as the all-time hit by Pitch King.

But for these purposes, there are, let me just count this while I have you on the pod. There have been more than 2,400 people since 1900 who have batted at least 2,000 times. This is now 2,000 times. And the highest all-time hit-by-pitch rate among those players is Derek Dietrich. Derek Dietrich has been hit by pitches in 4.4% of his plate appearances. The player in second place, recent Effectively Wild podcast guest, FP Santangelo, who has hit in 4.0% of

his plate appearances. So Derek Dietrich is an all-time anomaly, at least if you sort by this, 4.4% hit by pitches. But I didn't only look at hit by pitches in this leaderboard because one of the things that I like, just as sort of a stat nerd, is I like people who get hit by pitches a lot but also don't walk a lot. And Derek Dietrich walks less than the average hitter. He's walked in 6.8% of his career plate appearances. So taking that 2,000 plate appearance minimum, I wanted to know who are the guys who have like the smallest difference between their hit by pitch rate and their walk rate. Like on

the other side of things, for example, Ted Williams was, uh, was walked more than 20% more often than he was hit by a pitch. Anyway. So when I look at the difference between hit by pitch rate and walk rate, Derek Dietrich drops to 20th. He has a difference of 2.4 percentage points between his hit-by-pitch rate and walk rate. Reed Johnson, relatively contemporary player, I think it's fair to say, Reed Johnson, has a difference of 1.2%. That is second place all time, but in first place, Art Fletcher. Art Fletcher, just a one percentage point difference between his hit-by-pitch rate and his walk rate now.

That is still, no one who has ever batted 2,000 times has ever had a hit-by-pitch rate higher than his walk rate. Art Fletcher, we're looking at a difference of minus one percentage point. But going back to that list of a 1,000 plate appearance minimum, there is one guy, one player in all of baseball history, all of modern baseball history, I guess, has actually been hit more than he walked. And that is somebody named Whitey Alperman. I don't know. Well, I guess I know both his names.

So I don't know the third thing about Whitey Alperman. I'm going to guess. Okay, I haven't looked him up yet. His thing about Whitey Alperman. I'm going to guess. Okay, I haven't looked him up yet. His name is Whitey Alperman. What years do you think he played in the major leagues? I'm going to guess it must have been 19th century, right? Or close to it, I would think. Yeah.

Okay, so first thing, I'm going to guess. Okay, I'm going to guess he died before the end of World War II. Okay. And I think he, I think he, I think he played around the turn of the millennium. Yeah. Okay. So let's see. Whitey Alperman died 1942. Killed it. Okay. That's one. and he played 1906 to 1909 okay Whitey Alperman one-time league leader in triples with 16 and uh 39 hit by pitches 30 walks he had a career opiate explosive in 93 ecstatic of that Whitey Alperman dying when he did i sure hope he didn't die in war but i can confirm to you that uh he was white and in fact based on his baseball reference picture it's possible he was albino i don't know i don't know but i guess i'll read more hmm yeah well i okay there's not a you you can look up maybe he has a a saber page i'm on his uh baseball reference bullpen page we can't cold call whitey alperman he's very dead but now he was five foot ten which seems like that was unusually tall for a player of that era who was

the uh he was a second baseman uh the baseball reference bullpen page does note that he was hit by more pitches than uh he was hit by more pitches than uh he was hit by pitches more often than he walked he batted 442 times in 1909 with only two walks the lowest single season walk rate of the 20th century and 300 or more plate appearances uh let's see he ruined a no hitter on opening day in 1909 by getting a hit off red aims of the new york giants in the 10th inning his batting averages are quite misleading in 1906 he hit 252 on a team that hit 236 in 1907 he hit 233 on a team that hit 232 why are these misleading i don't know that was a paragraph i should have read out loud after his major league career he continued to play in the

minors he was at rochester in 1912 his last name is usually spelled alperman with one n in encyclopedias although he used the spelling alperman with two n's on various documents signed by his own hand implying whitey alperman didn't know how his name was spelled there is an animated picture of him on this page choking like a third of the way up on the bat and uh so i don't know i don't know if he died in war but based on the fact that it says he died he died on christmas day that's sad died on christmas day in pittsburgh pennsylvania although he did get to a relatively advanced age of 63 so whitey albeman a by definition remarkable major League career. Yes.

Yeah. Well, I'm sure he didn't die in the war because he was, as you said, in his 60s. But, yeah, no Sabre bio, so that's out there for anyone who wants one. All right. I should also note there is also sad hit-by-pitch related news. Remember Nick Sine? Nick Sine, the Blue Days minor leaguer? Yeah, you wrote about him, and then Michael and I had him on the Ringer MLB show. Well, Nick Sine has called it a career.

He is done. He actually didn't play in 2018, I don't think, but he just tweeted that he has hung up his cleats and switched teams to the Smith and Bush team with Hunt Realty. So he is now selling houses, I guess. So that's a change. But Nick Sene, final career numbers now. He never got above A-ball, but 676 plate appearances in the minors.

He was hit by 70 pitches. 70 pitches. That is a 10.4 percent hit by pitch rate so more than one out of every 10 plate appearances ended in a hit by pitch that's like 676 plate appearances that's like a full season basically and he got hit 70 times that is unbelievable now there's more hit by pitch news i guess there was a there was was a player you and I talked about having on the podcast that we never did. And that player is named Ty France. Do you remember talking about Ty France?

Uh-huh. Yeah. So Ty France, this season, he's a Padres minor leaguer. In April and May combined, he was hit by 20 pitches. 20 pitches in just about 200 play appearances. That's a lot and so we around that point around the end of may we were talking about having ty france on so we could talk about how bad his body hurt but then in june july august and september he was hit by just seven pitches the

rest of the way and as long-time listeners know we lose interest when a player stops being anomalous so i don't know what happened to Ty France down the stretch. Maybe he backed off. Maybe he was tired of getting hit by pitches. He actually hit better at the plate when he wasn't getting drilled. But Ty France, I will point out, he has been hit by 27, 27, and 28 pitches the last three years. So, like, clearly something is going on with Ty France. He is a bit of a ball magnet.

So, like, clearly something is going on with Ty France. He is a bit of a ball magnet. And also, Ty France, sort of the opposite of Nick Sene, because he was just added to the Padres 40-man roster. He was protected from the Rule 5 draft. Ty France, a third baseman by trade. He slugged 464 this past season. So, at this point, he actually might be one of the Padres' best options at third base. He's not going to play there this coming season.

But he drove in 96 runs, which in a minor league season is pretty notable, and he's protected. So Ty France is going places and not just the hospital. Speaking of Padres minor leaguers, I have a question on that subject. This is from Matt, and he says, you may remember Alan Cordova, a Padres Rule 5 pick from last year. Well, they sent him to high A, and it's going very poorly. And he says, Cordoba's circumstances are unique, but has anyone hit that poorly in high A and even gotten 200 plus MLB plate appearances? Still a relatively small sample for Cordoba, so hopefully he can turn it around, but yikes, he did not turn it around. He was very bad in high A. So as you recall, the Padres entered the 2017 season with three Rule 5 picks on their roster, and they kept them on there all year long, which I think is one of the more Underrated instances of

You could call it tanking You could call it short term Non-competing, whatever you want to call it It wasn't just that they had three Rule 5 guys But they had three Rule 5 guys Who hadn't even played in the upper Minors, or at least two of them Were coming from like A-ball

And suddenly were thrust into the big leagues and were on the Padres all year so they could keep them. And Alan Cordoba, he made it through that full season with the Padres in the minors. Then he went back down, right down to a ball again. So he had been, let's see, he had been in rookie ball in 2016, which is incredible. He went from rookie ball to a full season in the big leagues. Then he went back down to high A and he hit 206, 233, 310. So he had a 579 OPS in the big leagues last year in 227 Play appearances then he went back down To high a and had a 543 OPS so he

Somehow hit worse in high a than he did In the big leagues I don't know how that Happens and I see that he also played 17 Games in the Mexican League this past Year so maybe they let him go did they I Think I think they may have. Yeah, I think they may have. He was just designated or released yesterday, actually. Oh, okay. So yeah, so he's designated for assignment by the Padres, who I guess this

could be like one of the all-time strange careers when you look at Alan Cordoba in the future and forget how this happened. I mean, he's 22 years old, so who knows? Maybe he'll get back to the big leagues and be good again. But the fact that he, at age, what, 21, was in the big leagues, had a 579 OPS in 100 games, and then went back down to high A after coming from rookie ball and hit worse there. I don't have an answer to the question about whether anyone has done this before. But I mean, there are probably guys who had a bad A ball season at some point and did better than that in the big league. So that's probably not that unusual. But this is one of the stranger careers and what okay so i don't remember why the padres drafted cordoba in the rule 5 draft but i'm gonna guess just on a hunch what the

padres saw i presumably what is he is he a shortstop well he's kind of a utility guy so whatever well he's probably fast he was a shortstop when he was uh drafted he was a shortstop with johnson city in uh in rookie ball in 2016 and i'm going to guess the padres liked the idea that at such a low level he could control the strike zone he had 21 walks and 19 strikeouts in rookie ball which is good the that maybe that's the kind of thing that you look at that and think oh maybe this guy could actually make a a smooth transition and get the bat on the ball. In high A this season, he had four walks and 46 strikeouts. It completely evaporated. It seems like, I don't, there could be any number of circumstances, but it seems like the Padres broke Alan Cordova. It seems like they just

completely destroyed his spirit. Yeah, it can't be good. I mean, on the one hand, like he did okay. I mean, if I were Alan Cordova and I had a 579 OPS in the big leagues at age 22 after coming directly from rookie ball, I mean, I feel like, obviously. Like, given the circumstances, it was really good. But he came from having a 922 OPS in rookie ball to being one of the worst hitters in the major leagues. And, you know, that probably is kind of tough. So on the one hand, you'd think that it would be good experience to face the best pitchers in the world. But to just skip several steps like that, probably not. So I don't know. Clearly he didn't really benefit a whole lot from that experience based on his line from this year. If I were Alan Cordoba, I would at least take some solace in the fact

that when he was in the majors, he hit nearly as well as Padre's regular shortstop, Eric Ibar. Yeah, yeah. As for the other two Rule five guys on that roster, one of them was Miguel Diaz, who had a 7.34 ERA in 31 games for the Padres in 2017. But he was back in the big leagues for at least part of this year, and he did all right. And then the other one was catcher Luis Torrens, And then the other one was catcher Luis Torrens, who in 2017 had a 446 OPS for the Padres in 139 plate appearances. Then he went back down to high A and he did all right.

He had a 727 OPS in high A. But, man, such a strange career trajectory. career trajectory. I mean, just imagine like going from rookie ball to big leagues, getting big league salary, getting accustomed to big league crowds and amenities, and then just going back down to eight ball again. It's got to be so strange. To Miguel Diaz's credit, he had 30 strikeouts this year out of 85 batters faced. Miguel Diaz going places well I've said I've said that twice in this podcast so Miguel Diaz has already gone places and now he is with uh with the budget so yeah Miguel Diaz has gone in the opposite direction from Alan Cordova so that much is sad but good for Diaz anyway I don't know if we'll ever see a team try that again that was I mean to have three guys like the three rule five picks on a roster. I mean, that's a significant percentage of your roster that you are handing over to like A-ball players. That is kind of incredible.

Did we, as long as we're just digging through the minors, did we ever do a final update on Gareth Morgan? Do you know even what I'm talking about? Gareth Morgan? No, remind me. Okay, let me, allow me to find this leaderboard. What's a good plate appearance minimum, do you think, for players and minors? 100 is too low. Yeah, I was going to say 100, but okay. Let's go 200.

200 minor league plate appearances. We're going to use that as the minimum for this season. That sound okay? Sure. Okay, great. So Gareth Morgan, Mariners minor leaguer. This should come back to you quickly. So he finished with a 66 WRC+.

Not good. You know, maybe fixable, but not good. He hit for power. Here's the thing. There were almost 2,200 players in the minors this year who batted at least 200 times. The second highest strikeout rate was 45%. That's bad. The highest strikeout rate.

I'm so sad. Yeah. 55% Gareth Morgan struck out in 55% of his plate appearances. 187 strikeouts in 343 plate appearances. He did that mostly with Modesto in the Cal League, which is hitter-friendly, and he also had nine plate appearances with the Rookie Ball Mariners in Arizona,

where he struck out seven times out of nine chances, which is sad. Gareth Morgan in previous seasons was, he definitely struck out. He didn't quite strike out like this. For example, in 2017, he struck out 40% of the time. The year before that, he struck out a little over 40% of the time. The year before that, he's hovered around 40%.

And then this year, against the most advanced competition he ever faced, 55% strikeouts. I will need to email Dan Hirsch and try to figure out if this is like the highest strikeout rate of all time in a professional level. But what's also interesting to Gareth Morgan's credit with Jaime Modesto, he had a team leading 19 home runs. He did steal seven bases and he uh he wasn't the worst hitter on the team he hit better than I don't know Joe Rizzo for example he's another player on this team I guess he had a worse OPS a bunch of players who batted at least 100 times had a worse OPS Mike Zanino had 12 played appearances at that level he had a bad OPS

so Gareth Morgan not the worst player on the team, but 55% strikeouts? That's unbelievable. And this is not, if he was like a, now I'll point out Gareth Morgan was born in Canada, so I'm going to guess that maybe he doesn't have so many reps, right? That's not uncommon. He's presumably like dripping with athleticism and real toolsy and and maybe it'll all come together but this was this was not gareth morgan's first exposure to professional baseball he played in 2014 and 2015 and 2016 and 2017 2018 he's been a regular player all this time steamer projects him for a 47

percent strikeout rate of the majors i I think that's low. Yeah. Yeah, well, maybe he'll get Rule 5'd and the Padres will show us what would happen. But yeah, this is one reason why I love the minor leagues, because these strange stat lines that you would never see in the majors can exist in the lower levels. Often because players who get filtered out at some point are doing something weird that will not continue to work for them but it works at that level so we get to enjoy their odd baseball reference pages what is the highest okay i'm gonna have to what is the highest strikeout rate in major league history in a season this is going to take me a minute because this is a lot of data to load but okay, okay, so we're working off 54.5.

So let me just, okay, okay. Harrison Wenson, whoever that is, had the second highest strikeout rate of the minors, 45.1. Gareth Morgan was 54.5, which is higher than Harrison Wenson, even if you flip-flop the first two digits of gareth morgan's strikeout rate do that and it's 45.5 instead of 54.5 this is some numerology nonsense so don't pay too close attention but you're just like the the outlier extent here is is unbelievable okay so i think the the page i was loading is loaded so we're looking at almost 28,000 player seasons in Major League history with at least 200 played appearances.

Looking for the highest strikeout rate of all time. It's 2014 Javier Baez, 42%. Gareth Morgan, not even close. Wow. All right. Well, next question comes from Ben. So he is bringing up the times through the order effect. He says, is there a known factor for how much a pitcher is less likely to be effective if the batter has seen them before in a game, if the batter has seen them twice and so on, etc.?

And then would it be of some value to adjust pitching stats by those values? by those values. For example, would it be appropriate to penalize a pitcher less for giving up a home run to Aaron Judge the third time he's faced him as opposed to the first time in a game? I think that this type of metric would be a way to treat starting pitchers who face the same batters multiple times in a game from relievers who are called on to face batters just once differently. You may even be able to see more directly how a starting pitcher's third time through the lineup compares to how a reliever's first time through the lineup might be. And then he asked the same question from the batting side, whether you would want to adjust stats to account for whether you're seeing pitchers the third time through the order or the first time through the order. So that's the question. Is it worth adjusting statistics based on times through the order effect?

Ideally, yes, but it almost certainly wouldn't make that much of a difference i think this is yeah i think we've we've seen enough numbers like this that it it would be mostly negligible it's something to keep in mind but i don't know the the usage differences aren't that dramatic and it would be really useful if we had a better strength of opposition metric than what's available at baseball prospectus which is already the best one that we have out there it would be nice to have an adjusted number that just adjust for who you actually faced but then if you're trying to drill it all the way down to times through the order you're making a lot of guesses and estimates and i think it would

make very very little difference in the end yeah well it would make a difference for like starters versus relievers right i mean that would make a difference for starters versus relievers, right? I mean, that would be a fairly significant difference. I think we all know that that's the case, that there is a difference there and that one job is harder than the other. I guess the only reason why I'd be kind of uncomfortable doing this is that I think there's probably some skill component to whether you have a big times-through-the-order effect or not. I mean, you can't tell just from a single season whether someone is good at that or not. But, for instance, Mitchell Lichtman has shown that guys who throw a lot of pitches have smaller times-through-the-order penalties than guys who throw, throw like two pitches because they just don't

have as many different looks to give hitters so i think you'd be doing them a disservice by just applying a blanket adjustment to everyone it would be kind of like you know fip or something which is useful on the whole but underrates certain guys who are able to get soft contact i think there are probably pitchers who are able to survive soft contact. I think there are probably pitchers who are able to survive multiple trips through the order better than others. And it may be hard to identify which they are, which is also the case with weak contact, but there's that. And, you know, probably some hitters do a better job of actually learning something from seeing a pitcher the first time or two as well. So you'd probably be missing something, but on the whole, I guess it would be kind of more accurate in a way.

Yeah. I wouldn't be opposed to examining the results of the research so I could look at a leaderboard, but I'm not going to do that work. Yeah. Okay. All right. And okay, this one is from Sam, not the Sam, but a Sam. What are the odds of having at least one fan wearing gear from all 30 teams at a given game? That is 30 fans each wearing a different team's gear, not one fan wearing something from all 30 teams. Is this more likely at a high stakes game Or a playoff game or a mid-August game Between two teams out of competition How much higher is the probability Given that Marlins man is at the game Okay okay Okay there's a lot here to think about

What city would be most likely Because you're kind of looking for a Would it be New York Would New York be the most likely It would be the most likely? It would be the most likely, probably. Yeah, most people coming from other cities and also high attendance. So yeah, probably like a Yankees game, I guess.

I mean, the question about stakes is an interesting one because obviously if it's an important game, attendance will be higher. There will be more fans. So your sample is bigger. But it's probably harder to get those tickets, and those tickets are probably more likely to go to true fans of the team as opposed to people who are just there casually to watch a ballgame. team's gear than just every other random team. So I would guess that the most likely scenario would be not like a playoff game or a must-win game, but just like a weekend summer game for a high-attended team that was not of any particular importance, but just high attendance team like a Yankees Saturday game in August or something. Yeah, I agree with that. And I think – so first of all, we can't answer this question. But second of all, we don't – to answer this question, we would need to know something about merchandise sales because I think there's probably a big difference between team support and merchandise sales because like certain hats especially are just sold because of

their fashion as opposed to the the team assignment some there are a lot of people who might not even realize they're wearing like an oakland a's hat they just like the hat maybe they like oakland yeah or white socks caps or yeah yeah yeah right exactly so i wondered like who which team sells the few because mostly we're looking at hats, right? Like sometimes there's going to be other teams jerseys or t-shirts, but it's mostly hats. And so first of all, I wonder if this has ever happened for something that wasn't just like an event, like an all-star, an all-star game, first of all,

it would be like the obvious example, but for hats, I don't know if this is something that's ever happened, first of all, but I wonder what team sells the fewest hats what yeah i don't you know it's probably like the rays or something maybe well i don't know we can't answer this question obviously but it is interesting to think about because people will wear their gear to a game even if it's not a game involving that team it unless it's like, if it's a super rivalry or something, if it's Yankees, Red Sox, and you're just a casual fan, maybe you won't wear your gear if you're the opposing team's fan in, you know, the other city or something, just because you

don't want people yelling at you. But otherwise, if you're just a Blue Jays fan or something and you're going to a Yankees game, you'll probably wear your Blue Jays hat just because it's baseball and you're going to a baseball game. So I would guess that you would get, I mean, certainly most teams represented at a game. Would you cross off every box? I mean, the Marlins man part of the question actually is kind of important because I don't know how many Marlins fans. I mean, the Marlins man part of the question actually is kind of important because I don't know how many Marlins fans. I guess, I mean, you're going to get a fair number of like Miami transplants in New York, but I don't know how many of them will be repping Marlins gear. Now, do we count tattoos?

Yeah, I would count a tattoo. Okay. So like, do we count 247, 247, 247, 247 as team gear? I think that's just kind of a general baseball phenomenon. But he was an A's fan, and I would think he sees it probably as a sign of his fandom. Okay. Outside of an All-Star game, I'm going to remain skeptical that this has ever happened, but I am wide open to being wrong and even wider open to the fact that we will never know because who's going to do the polling or the TV video review?

Yeah, if anyone's really curious about this, just when next summer rolls around, just walk around the entire ballpark and keep track of how many different team affiliations you see. I would be interested in that data. That'd be nice. I would guess that has happened. I don't know. Like if you're up to like 50,000, 55,000 fans, I mean, I'm sure a very high percentage of them are fans of the home team. So maybe you're down to, what, 10,000 or something that are not of the home team. So maybe you're down to what, 10,000 or something

that are not fans of that team. And then a fairly high percentage of those fans will be fans of the opposing team that day. So I guess the sample is fairly small when you get down to it. And then, you know, some of them will just be like corporate clients or just non-fans who are there to see a game or tourists or whatever who are not going to be wearing anything. So, yeah, maybe it is unlikely. But there have been a lot of baseball games. So I could imagine it. I bet there have been games where a fan of every team has been present. But to compel a fan to wear the gear, that's different.

I don't know what percentage of fans who go to an unrelated game will wear team apparel. Now, we're probably looking at like, if we're focusing on hats, because hats are most likely, I think we're looking at it as a matinee game because, you know, the sunshine

and you would wear a hat to keep that out of your eyes. So yeah, all you listeners next summer who are going to matinees, just instead of like scoring the game and instead of staying in your seat and enjoying food and beer, just walk around and take a survey. Let us know. Yeah. Or take some really high-resolution panoramic photographs of the crowd so that we can do a crowdsourced Effectively Wild fan project and we could actually count.

I mean, caps, at least you wouldn't be able to see every article of clothing, maybe some people are wearing team branded underwear or something, and we would never know. But we could scour the photographs. It's like one of those, you know, community science projects where you have a star map or something, a picture of the sky, and you have people go through and label the different stars. Well, we could do that for teams. It would be a lot less useful to science, but it would satisfy our curiosity. Remember those pictures that I think MLB posted where it was like, find yourself in the crowd or something, and it was like a really high-res picture of a crowd at a baseball game?

That's something where maybe it would be worth taking into account. Yeah. Okay. I don't think those photos had everyone. Off-season project. Off-season project for somebody else. Yeah, right maybe this exists already. Yeah. Okay. I don't think those photos had everyone. Off-season project for somebody else. Yeah, right. All right. Last question from Stuart.

A thought struck me a while ago. Couldn't it be said that the current use of pitchers reflects the modern gig-based work culture in general? Deep off-season thoughts from Stuart here. It used to be that pitchers, say baby boomer starters, would get seven innings and a gold watch on their way out of the game with any remaining work handled by journeymen. If you got into a spot of bother early on, your employer would often show patience, letting you work through it. Heck, it was even seen as good experience. Now millennials trying to start a career are increasingly treated as interchangeable as they're forced into low-paying, short-term,

high-stress gigs. Couldn't it be said that Ryan Yarbrough, toiling for the minimum salary and tasked with shouldering a starter's workload while at the same time seeing his war contributions devalued because he's technically a reliever, represents something bigger than just a new baseball strategy? Does not Steve Ciszek, for example,

who's bounced around five different teams over the last four years while putting up a 156 ERA+, hold up a mirror to our gig-based economy, where even something nearing elite performance is seen as a fungible asset instead of an employee worth investing in long term. Anyway, I'll close now, as this is already longer than I meant it to be, but I feel like this stretches all the way back to the start of baseball. Is it a coincidence that Andrew Carnegie was tightening his monopoly on American steel at the same time in 1884 that old Haas Radborn was throwing 678 and two-thirds innings? For those who are tired of interchangeable relievers and modern pitcher usage, spare a thought for those poor temps just trying to turn a job into a career. And I guess Oliver Drake is also relevant to this question i guess okay so one thing that is true is that we have observed and will continue to observe sort of the death of baseball's middle class which reflects greater america at large but at least relative to baseball beginnings

there are more jobs available now i guess like more relatively steady jobs as opposed to old house rad warrenen like two other guys being the entire pitching staff so that's good but there's also a greater population so of course there would need to be job inflation I don't know economics so I can't discuss this at great length but I uh it it is maybe if you saw this at the minor league level there would be be greater parallels because those players are not making much money specialization, which is probably true in all industries, a lot of industries, and certainly is true in baseball, where you're talking about pitching fewer innings per game and being a loogie or a closer or a setup man or whatever roles that did not exist at the beginning of baseball. So that is definitely something that is probably a parallel

between them. Yeah, I get stuck on these things because I think anecdotally, I think baseball teams used to just sort of practice greater loyalty and trust in veterans. So trust in a track record. And if you were good in Major League Baseball, then you'd get a chance to stick in Major League Baseball for a while. And now, of course, it's a little more cutthroat, where you can have a guy like Derek Dietrich or CJ Krohn, who are above average hitters, who are just out of work. Now, they'll get jobs, but clearly they've been devalued. But on the other hand, of course, no one is just, no one is eliminating jobs. They are changing the people who are working in those jobs. And Major League Baseball, as much as you can criticize some teams for not spending very much,

or just not wanting to spend seven figures on some veteran like no one is giving unpaid internships for like the first base job like these players are being compensated and for every job that is lost somebody else gains that job somebody who was looking for that opportunity so here's how if you want to think optimistically and try to concentrate not on how much money the owners are all making, you can think, okay, what is, what's better for, I don't know, baseball society? And making, I don't know what that would be, like $30 million. Or players like CJ Krohn kind of bouncing around while other players therefore get the chances that they don't get. And those minor leaguers, those young players suddenly go from making $50,000 a year to like $550,000 a year. What's better?

Is it more important to focus on the extra money CJ Krohn's not making or the extra money those young players replacing stage of cron are making and i would suggest that it's great to have so many opportunities present for the young players even though i think they should all come to understand their job security is not going to be great as they get a little older and more expensive yeah no that makes sense to me it is kind of complicated we've talked about the opener strategy and the concern that i think zach grinky expressed and others have expressed about maybe it's just depressing salaries. But on the other hand, it's sort of too soon to say. And it's giving guys like Yarbrough, if we're talking about wins and things in arbitration, Yarbrough won lots of games because of his role. So it's kind of hard to say. I mean,

generally, teams are trying to keep salaries down as much as they can, of course, but some of these strategies aren't very clear in their implications for earnings. Yep. All right, so we will end there. Norm Macdonald has a show on Netflix. In the second episode, Norm interviews Drew Barrymore, and she discusses her love for hosting Saturday Night Live. She claims she always works really hard when she is asked to host, which she justifies by saying she is, quote, always up until three o'clock in the morning with everybody, and that she loves, quote, really giving it my infinite percent. So there it is. Can't get bigger than infinite percent effort. Someone will probably now send us an example of someone saying infinity plus one, but infinity suffices for me.

All right. If you are hearing this before Thanksgiving, or even if you aren't, happy Thanksgiving. We are thankful for you. If you are thankful for us, please help us continue the podcast by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up to pledge some small monthly amount, as have the following five listeners, Bill, Chris Drovel, Rob Haverkamp, Alex McHale,

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Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. By the way, if you're curious which pitcher struck out, Williams asked the DO to end that strikeout-less streak. I found out from Octavio Hernandez, who listens to the show. It was Luis Isla, who is a 26-year-old Baltimore Orioles minor leaguer. He pitched in AA this year, and he struck out 83 guys in 72 and a third innings. So he does have strikeout stuff. Actually, he was then promoted to AAA, too. Didn't do quite so well there and didn't strike out so many guys, but I think he should be promoted to the majors solely on the basis of striking out Williams Estadillo and also being a Baltimore Orioles pitcher. All right, happy Thanksgiving again, and we will have another episode up later this week.

If you are traveling, if you need something to listen to, we are there for you. Talk to you And it's me, I should be listening to you And if we travel together only ever down This one way street Thanks for listening