Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1313: What We Missed in 2018 (AL Edition)

Episode Date: December 24, 2018

In the first of two themed episodes, Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan review one aspect of each American League team’s year that they overlooked on earlier episodes, touching on stories involving Mike Scioscia, Myles Straw, Stephen Piscotty, Rowdy Tellez, Jose Ramirez, Mike Marjama, Richard Bleier, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, a stathead in uniform, Tony Renda, Brad Keller, […]

Instead, I read the morning news in bed What endlessness ahead, and there's no more to be said You know more than I know You know more than I know You know more than I know You know more than I know Hello and welcome to episode 1313 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello.

Hello. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of FabGraphs. Hello. Hello. So we have sort of a theme week here, or at least a theme two out of three episodes this week. At some point on an episode, I don't know, a couple of months ago, I mentioned that it might be a good year-end idea to circle back and take a look at some of the stories that we missed from the season. from the season and just come up with something, some player or fun fact or game, some storyline that we overlooked that maybe everyone overlooked this season, which is not easy to do because we have done a lot of episodes and a lot of podcasting this year. So it's tough to find things that we never touched on because we get desperate.

Sometimes we'll talk about anything. things that we never touched on because we get desperate sometimes we'll talk about anything so we're gonna try to attempt to do that today and also on our next episode and i've gone to the facebook group and crowdsourced some stories from people that we never talked about this year and i've got at least one for each team so that's what we're gonna do never tried this before but we'll see how it goes. You know what you could have done if you weren't stupid? You could have turned this

into 30 episodes. I thought you were going to say take the week off. Wait, wait, wait. Can I take my back and do it again? Take the week off. Freakonomics does just old archived episodes, I think.

That's what a lot of podcasts do. Why are we doing this? A lot of baseball podcasts take the entire offseason off. Here we are the week of Christmas doing our usual episodes. That's what the Patreon people expect. I don't want to disappoint them. So, yeah, we're going to do this. I don't know.

It might be a little shorter than the typical episodes, and we don't really have any banter because nothing has happened because, again, it's the week of Christmas. So here we go. We're just going to start with American League. I guess everyone always starts with American League for some reason, so I feel bad about doing that. But we've still got a couple NL teams we need to come up with stories for. So we're going to start with the American League, and I've just sorted the teams alphabetically. So that's how we are doing this. So starting with the Angels, a team that was probably in our top five talked about teams,

at least if you count their players this year. Certainly our most talked about non-playoff team, I would say, between Trout and Otani and other stories. So the one thing that our listener, Jay Keith, recommended that we talk about, because we never did, was Mike Socha calling a Ken Rosenthal report about him stepping down at the end of the season. Poppycock. Poppycock is what he called it. And then, of course, he stepped down at the end of the season. And Ken Rosenthal, who, you know, I don't really think of as someone to take a victory lap or put other people down.

But when that news came out, Ken Rosenthal quote tweeted Bill Shakin's tweet about Socia announcing he would not return to the Angels and just said, Poppycock in all caps. Well played, Ken. So what do you think was Socia when he said that so this Report came out from Ken Rosenthal in early August And he said Poppycock And he said it's not true

He has no idea where it originated Nothing has changed since we talked In October there's always chatter Out there that's it the only word I have is Poppycock The only word I have is poppycock. The only word he had for this was poppycock. There are many other words, but what do you think? Why did he deny this report at the time? It feels so in the same way we almost put on this list and then decided because we had talked about it, how at the start of the off season, Jerry DePoto of

the Mariners said that they were not going to go through with a full rebuild and it has been followed by a nearly full rebuild to this point not even christmas yet and they've they've torn down and it's this in a sense maybe it's just because we've become inured to it it being 2018 and the environment being what the environment is that you can just kind of look at something like this and and think of it in political terms where you just have people who are deliberately lying to you or just covering up the truth because maybe people just aren't ready for the truth to come out and mike socia presumably would have known at the time that the report was accurate that in august he did know that he was not going to return to the angels but

who who would stand to benefit from keeping that under wraps? That's what I am. Here's the important thing for people to understand. These are things we didn't talk about during the season, and we are no more informed about them now than we were during the season. So who would have been protected? What's the benefit? Would it be to keep the players not just like tuning out so that they would stay focused under Mike Soucha? Yeah, I mean, just to keep him from lame duck status officially.

I mean, I think there was a sense that he was probably going to be done. But yeah, just not to have it be a dead manager walking sort of situation for the last couple of months. I mean, by that point, the Angels were kind of out of it anyway. But still, maybe it's just a little easier to do your job if players don't know that you won't be there next year and they still have to listen to you and they can't just say, well, I'm stuck with this guy for only so much longer. I mean, it's possible that he had not made an official decision or that the Angels had not made an official decision at that time. You'd think he'd know which way the winds were blowing at that point, but maybe he and Billy Epler and whoever

else and Artie Moreno just said, oh, we'll figure it out at the end of the season or something and we'll see how we all feel. I don't know. It's possible that there was no actual decision made at that point. But yeah, like who does it benefit i guess to have it known that socia would be done at the end of the season so i can see i mean i don't know why he would deny it and call it poppycock knowing that it was likely to happen so i mean maybe he was in denial at that point who knows it's he had had that job forever maybe you just don't envision it coming to an end yeah i think that's fair that's all i gotta say about mike socia it's going to be i think it'll be come 2019 it's going to be strange to look at the angels dugout and

and not see mike socia anymore because just kind of like bruce bochy he's just someone that you assume is going to be there the entire the entire time like like you don't see brian cashman every day if you watch a yankees game but like brian cashman is going to be there the entire time. Like, you don't see Brian Cashman every day if you watch a Yankees game, but, like, Brian Cashman is going to have that job until he's dead or until something more calamitous happens. Like, no one is going to get rid of Brian Cashman, so he's just going to be there. And by having Brian Cashman there or by having Bruce Bochy there,

you can kind of forget about the fact that we're all aging ourselves. But Mike Socha being gone is just a reminder that these things move in in one direction and given enough time everything that you know and are familiar with will be taken away from you right yeah and you know i i think this was actually less of a distraction for the angels this season than it could have been like i thought that there might be a lot of talk about Socia and maybe he would want to come back and the team wouldn't want him back and it would be like it got under Jerry DiPoto

when DiPoto basically left because of Socia and because of that power imbalance. And Epler obviously got along a lot better with Socia and maybe Socia changed in some ways. But I thought maybe things would get awkward in the last year and I also thought it was a difficult situation for him to have in his last year because he's dealing with Shohei Otani a unique player and having to figure out how to handle him he's dealing with Albert Pujols and having to phase him out or not disrespect him, but also not let him beat you.

And there was potential for Pujols to lose playing time, which maybe it turns out will be more of a 2019 story than a 2018 story. But there were a lot of challenges there. And I figured that Socia being in the last year of his contract might actually come up more than it did. But other than this just sort of spat with Ken Rosenthal, it didn't really seem to be a huge issue for the Angels this year. But we got 15 teams in the American League. That was six minutes on the Angels.

What are you doing? Okay. Next team up, Astros. Actually, you know what? I do wonder. There's no way. We don't have like transcribing software. I don't think that's useful for this podcast.

But it would be interesting. It feels, maybe because of otani but it feels like we talked about mike trout a lot less this year than last year not because he was any worse it just feels like he wasn't the subject maybe it's too cliche at this point but maybe 2019 will be the year of mike trout coming back to effectively wild yeah yeah we talked about his defense getting better we we talked about him i guess early in the season when he was on pace for his best season ever. And in some ways, he did have his best season ever. He was just hurt for a while. But yeah, we didn't do as many strange Mike Trout hypotheticals probably this year as we usually do. We still did more than anyone else did. else did. So Astros, again, difficult to find something that we didn't talk about with the Astros, because especially with these playoff teams where we have to talk about them for an extra month, hard for anyone or anything to go unnoticed. But you and also listener Spencer proposed that we talk about Miles Straw, who was just briefly a part of the major league Astros

season, but had one of the most interesting minor league seasons. Yeah, so Myles Straw was with the Astros for 10 plate appearances, all of 10 plate appearances. And then in the playoffs, he was with them for zero plate appearances, but he did score a run, stole a base. Anyway, Myles Straw was first brought to my attention by Darren Willman on Twitter, the guy who was behind baseball savant. And one of the things that, so here's what we're going to do.

Ben, I don't know if you've looked at this, so I'm going to send you a link. And then I want you to look at this link. I will paste it. And I want you to look at the spray chart. Okay. Milestraw in the minor leagues. All right. Oh, by the way, he's right-handed.

Wow. Yeah. No, I had not seen this. We can link to this for anyone who wants to see but basically there are almost no baseballs plotted on the left side of the field yeah so now this is this is all air balls this does not count grand balls or whatever but miles straw there there are a couple things about miles dry and i don't even know miles draw so i don't know what he's like personally but if you look at everyone in the minor leagues, one thing is that Myles Straw did lead the minor leagues in stolen bases.

He stole 70 bases this season. Second place had 56. So he led by a whole lot. It was a 25% lead over second place, which is pretty incredible. But the other thing about Myles Straw, conveniently, he batted pretty often often double a and then he batted pretty often in triple a so i looked at uh at all the fangraphs leaderboards for all double a leagues and then all triple a leagues and in all double a leagues the leader a minimum 250 plate appearance this year so looking at double a the leader in the rate of batted balls hit to the opposite field miles straw 47 but if you bump it up to triple a the leader of batted balls hit to the opposite field, Miles Straw, 47%. But if you bump it up to AAA, the leader in batted balls hit to the opposite field is Miles Straw at 47%.

So Miles Straw, not just, of course, him. 47% might not sound like that much, but remember, we're splitting the field in thirds here, not half. And again, leader. Leader at AA and leader at AAA, 47%. And, of course, he had another quarter of the batted balls up the middle. So, Myles Straw, very, very little activity to left field. It's interesting, actually, if you look at AAA, the guy in second place for highest opposite field batted ball rate is Yandy Diaz. Myles Straw, though, and Yandy Diaz.

I don't actually know what Miles Straw looks like, but I kind of have an image of what Miles Straw looks like, and he doesn't look like Yanni Diaz in my head. Let me just quickly confirm. I don't think he does in real life either. I don't think anyone who looks like Yanni Diaz could steal 70 bases in a season. And as I look up a picture of Miles Straw, yeah, no. Yanni Diaz could probably sleeples Straw within one of his biceps were it to be too cold outside.

Myles Straw could just kind of like cut the bicep open and crawl inside for warmth. So 70 stolen bases, everything in the opposite field. Myles Straw, one of the weirder, not necessarily most high ceiling, but certainly one of the weirder players in all of professional baseball. Trying to get the image of Yandy Diaz as a tauntaun out of my head. Yeah. So a couple other things about Malstrasse. So he did get to 70 steals in the minors, and it turns out he was challenged to steal 70 by his minor league manager, his double-A manager, Omar Lopez, challenged him to steal 70 to start the season, and he did exactly that. He took that instruction very literally. He also added a few steals in the majors, so he stole a couple bases in September and stole one in the ALDS, so he actually stole 73, and that is quite an improvement over his previous seasons. He was not always such a runner. He's always been fast, but he stole 38 in 2017. He stole 43 bases over his previous two seasons combined.

And he also really improved his caught stealing mark, I think. He was very efficient as well. So that is good. And evidently people just kind of talked to him like kyle tucker told him i'm reading from an athletic article here by jake kaplan kyle tucker told him dude you're way faster than me and i have the same amount of bags as you and would kind of tease him about that and so he figured yeah i can do this i can steal lots of bases and so he just did and he has one of those stories like he was cut as a freshman player because he was undersized, as you were just saying. And he was, what, a 12th round draft pick. I mean, you know, not a top prospect or anything. So the interesting thing is, obviously, the Astros

are set now with their Terrence Gore for the foreseeable future. But can he hit? Can he be a better overall player than Terrence Gore? Well, I was just going to point out that Myles Straw has a career professional on base percentage of 395. Yeah, so that's good. And he has a slight 378. He's been a lot better than Terrence Gore at the hitting part of the game. I can't speak to the defense, but Myles Straw has played a lot of, this won't surprise anyone, centerfield.

He's also apparently made an appearance in shortstop last season, so Myles Straw is kind of buried. It's weird. You look at the Astros, I don't know how good Myles Straw is going to be, but he's there, but he's kind of behind Tony Kemp, who's really fascinating and weird, but he's also kind of behind

Kyle Tucker, but Kyle Tucker hasn't emerged yet, and Derek Fisher kind of behind Kyle Tucker, but Kyle Tucker hasn't emerged yet. And Derek Fisher kind of got lost in there somewhere because he just had a bad season. But there's a lot of interesting outfield talent in Houston. And we're moving on to the next team because this is taking too long. Yeah, I think Strah is a good defender, supposed to be. He was also a Juco player, so unlikely origin story. player so unlikely origin story I almost talked about Tony Kemp as like a good choice for this segment because we didn't really talk about Kemp much this year and how odd and weird and wonderful is it that the other tiny player in baseball is on the same team as the first good tiny player but

anyway next team so the A's Steven Piscotty is a player I don't know if we talked about at all this year, but he had a very notable season. So Steven Piscotty was known, I think, most for a sad off-the-field story, which is that his mother had ALS, and so he was traded back from the Cardinals to the A's. Obviously, the Cardinals were looking to trade him anyway, but they were able to work things out so that he could go to the A's, which is where he's from, and be near his mother. Now, his mother passed away in May, and obviously that was very difficult for him to deal with, as it would be for anyone. And then Steven Piscotty came back after his mother passed away, and he was one of the best hitters in baseball for the rest of the season not immediately like he came back and hit a home run I think in his first game back which was very emotional obviously and then you know he didn't immediately take off but after late May he was like I think one of the 10 or so best hitters in all baseball

there are limits to what there's a tact to writing about baseball analytically in that maybe not everything needs to be discussed as an experiment and so this is all gonna come off as kind of cold but like i don't think anyone has ever had like the heart to go pursue like what do what do players performance look like before and after stints on the bereavement list because it's just like one of those questions you might want to know the answer to but you could never you could never really in good conscience like do the work and then publish it and expect like a warm and hospitable response but with Steven Piscotty at least you can understand what he came back from the bereavement list on may 15th he hit that home run you were talking about it was a very emotional excellent

moment and he kind of struggled on the field for the next two months for reasons that anyone could completely understand but then for him to just light it up for the remaining four months is it is a it's a storybook season in a storybook season that the A's had. And it did kind of get lost, but in the way that, you know, we'll talk to Sam, I think, this week about that which lingers from 2018 in the public memory. And, like, you wouldn't have a movie about the Oakland A's. We've already done that. No new movie could be that popular, but you could absolutely release a movie about Steven Piscotty and his 2018 in, in particular, you start with maybe a little backstory and then you, you have him get traded to Oakland and then you, you have everything else happen

and then you just have him help power the team to the playoffs miraculously. Steven Piscotty's 2018 is a story that handled appropriately and produced productively. You could have people remembering this season 30, 40, 50 years down the road. You don't even need to write that compelling of a script because the true story is already just right there. And it was going to be a sensitive subject for us to bring up on the podcast, and we're just two silly boys on this podcast. We're not accustomed to handling the serious subjects all that often,

because so little of this is serious. But Stephen Biscotti really put together the season that if you read about it and you didn't know that it happened you would think this is over the top yeah may 28th on he hit 286 352 554 that is a 147 wrc plus and 24 home runs he doesn't really walk but he has lots of power doesn't strike out too much and he was you know obviously a good player early in his career with the Cardinals and a prospect and everything. And they signed him to an extension. And then he had a down year, which you can certainly understand given those circumstances.

And so, yeah, I don't, we just didn't end up talking about him. There was so much else to talk about with the A's this year. But he kind of got overshadowed and shouldn't have. And anyone who's ever lost someone in that way probably can understand just how you're feeling during that and how, in a way, you might be liberated in a sense after the fact, even though you're sad. It can be so difficult to watch someone suffer like that and you yourself are suffering. in a way it's it's almost like a mercy when it's over and you can start to move on and he did and obviously i'm sure was grief-stricken throughout this but put together an incredible second half of the season so all right the next

story actually is somewhat related it's kind of similar, actually. The Blue Jays, we wanted to talk about Rowdy Tellez's doubles explosion or his explosion onto the scene, really. So Rowdy Tellez, for anyone who doesn't know, he's a first baseman, a big, beefy first baseman listed at 6'4", 220 is at least that. He came up in September after rosters expanded. and in his 23 games with the Blue Jays, he hit a late-season Steven Piscotty-esque 314-329-614. That is four home runs in 70 at-bats, but also nine doubles, and he, I believe, tied a record, right? Or he became the first player with seven doubles in his first seven Major League games since 1913. I guess that's the play index cut off. So he was just doubling daily, hitting tons of doubles.

And it was sort of like, who is this guy? Where did he come from? Why is he doubling every day? He is only 23 also. He is only 23 also, and he had a similar story of tragic loss in that his mother passed from one of the saddest things that ever happens to you to one of the happiest things that ever happens to you. And not having your mother there to see it is sad, but he put together kind of an incredible month, even aside from the narrative aspect.

And I was only tangentially aware, peripherally aware of this as it was happening but as i look at rowdy tell us his history i i was familiar with him as a player because his name is his name is rowdy and so you kind of it catches your eye you look at it twice but in in 2017 tell us spent the entire season in in triple a with with buffalo and he batted 222 and he had a 628 ops he was he was really quite bad, and he was 300 OPS points worse than he was the season before in AA, and you would think that kind of knocks his career off track, but you can at least assume that there would be legitimate off-the-field personal reasons that could contribute to his down performance because it's not as if his mother just became ill all of a sudden and i guess it is uh it's a coincidence

to have him and biscotti in this list back to back but just again you could well i don't know now what movie would be more successful the steven biscotti movie or the rowdy tell us story because do you throw in a major league debut as well and a record right after the heartbreak this is i'm yeah there could like this could be a like a an armageddon versus deep impact kind of like arms race toward the hollywood tearjerker i don't know i don't i don't know how many producers or script writers we have listening to this, but if there's two, then you should get to work, I guess. Yeah, or one who works very fast. Yeah. So Tellez is 23. I don't know how fluky this month was. I mean, he was a 30th round pick. He was only a 29th prospect in their system,

according to MLB.com, before he was called up, although he was barely a top 100 guy for Baseball America before 2017. So it's really hard to separate the off the field and on the field. So you can't really just look at the stats and know what kind of player he is. I don't know whether he will ever have another month like he had this September, but if that was the best month he ever has, that is probably the best time that he could have it just for healing and distraction purposes. So that was a nice story for a team that didn't have a whole lot of happy stories in September. And now we're moving on to the Cleveland Indians, where the thing that we didn't discuss was Jose Ramirez apparently being one of

the world's greatest players at Mario Kart. Now, I have played Mario Kart like any red-blooded American boy. I have played Mario Kart before, but one thing that I definitely don't do is continue to play Mario Kart in the year 2018. You are more plugged into the gaming scene, just the video game industry and those who participate. What is it, the first place that allows mario kart to have such staying power it's been like a very long time right right well yeah this is uh mario kart i i always say mario because i'm from new york and here we say mario and everyone thinks that's weird and so now i've started saying it mario but it doesn't feel true to my roots so i'm just gonna

say it the way i've always said it did you know that in i'm sorry to cross talk but did you know that apparently so we my fiance and i know someone who's who's from ohio and he and the people around him so okay you know the peanut butter cups candy right you're familiar with what those are and yeah so then you you are familiar with the small like m&m sized yes the? So what do you call those? I don't know what I would call those. Aren't they like Reese's Pieces minis or something? Yeah, Reese's Pieces. Exactly.

Apparently, there is a very specific regional dialect where they don't say Reese's Pieces. They say Reese's Pieces. What? And I thought our friend was just being ridiculous, but he couldn't hear it. And it's like a weird regional, I think, Ohio thing where they say Reese's Pieces. I can't believe it. Like, I'm a full-grown man. It takes a lot to, like, capture my wonder now.

I'm just so beaten down by the world. But you just hear our friend Josh say Reese's Pieces and then look around as if he didn't do anything weird. Anyway, you were saying Mario, so that's fine. Does he say Pieces? You say Pieces. Does he say Pieces even when it's not Reese's? No, it's just Reese's Pieces. It's just that specific candy.

All right. That's a weird one. Yeah. So how's your mirrors at Mario Kart? So this is specifically Nintendo 64 Kart, which I think if you grew up with that, you have a lot of nostalgia for it. And I still, wherever I go, I have my N64 with me. I mean, I've shed many other gaming consoles that I once enjoyed, but my N64 will never leave my side, partly for Mario Kart. I still have it, but mostly for Super Smash Brothers, I'm kind of about Super Smash for 64 the way that Jose Ramirez is about Mario Kart. And yeah, evidently he is just the best player in the Cleveland clubhouse. He actually tweeted when the Indians traded for Brad Hand in July, Jose Ramirez quote tweeted Brad Hand's tweet saying that he was excited to join Cleveland, just saying,

do you play Mario Kart? And that is all he cares about. And the athletics Indians beat writer, Zach Mizell, he did a great story where he took on Jose Ramirez in Mario Kart and he went into training. He played everyone. He spent hours doing it and he mounted a pretty stiff challenge, but ultimately Jose Ramirez beat him. And stiff challenge, but ultimately, Jose Ramirez beat him. And I think, you know, it just speaks to the fact that there are other things going on in the clubhouse. Baseball players are not baseballing 24-7, and they can be competitive about everything they do. That competitiveness that they bring to the baseball field kind of extends to all of their recreational pursuits as as well so he is just unbeatable on

koopa troopa beach he has a he likes to play mushroom cup and uh he always hits the shortcut on koopa troopa beach and he is just unbeatable and he taunts everyone and does a lot of smack talk and and that's great it's uh it's nice to know something about players off the field, even if it's just that they're unbeatable at Mario Kart. Right. What other – I mean, so we know that athletes everywhere just play Fortnite all the time, and maybe Fortnite has crowded out all the other games.

But if you had to guess, what other games might still exist in these corners of, I guess, not even just a baseball clubhouse, just kind of the people are still really, really good at, even though they're antiquated. Yeah. I would say Call of Duty is pretty big among athletes and also sports games, not surprisingly, whether it's the show or Madden or FIFA, definitely big with athletes. But when Sam and I were with the Stompers they had a 64 in the clubhouse they also later had a PlayStation and would play the show and Call of Duty but they had a 64 and would play Smash Brothers and Sean Conroy our player that we signed our closer he was the Smash expert

on that team and I was too and we would just play Smash all the time and it was like a useful thing for me to kind of blend in in the clubhouse and like have a reason to be there other than just loitering or trying to talk to people for like book related stuff or make them look at scouting reports or something i could just kind of hang out and play smash brother so it was a nice way for me to kind of become a clubhouse staple so okay i'll try to get next door yeah. So the Mariners, we had trouble coming up with a Mariner story. By the way, I meant to credit people who have suggested these things. Andrew suggested Steven Piscotti. John suggested Rowdy Tellez. And Scott suggested Jose Ramirez. You suggested

our Mariner story, which we had trouble coming up with because again, we talked about the Mariners an awful lot this year. Yeah, right. I think that was part of the trouble is that the so many Jerry DePoto is basically become a character for the podcast, also in real life, but for the podcast as well. So whenever he does anything, they get our attention. And of course, I have I still pay more attention to the Mariners than most other teams. Meg Rowley is in front of the podcast. Anyway, we did eventually settle on Mike Marjama's voluntary retirement, which took place in July. Mike Marjama was the Mariners' opening day backup catcher. They traded for him and Ryan Garten late in 2017 from the Tampa Bay Rays.

It was a small trade, not a headliner involving a bunch of minor league players, but Mike Marjama came over to the Mariners, and he was the backup to Mike Zanino, and he opened in the major leagues. He was a backup. He wound up getting sent out of AAA before too long. He was replaced by David Freitas on the roster. So Marjama's just down in Tacoma, and he's playing fairly well.

He's hitting. He's on a hot streak. roster so marjama is just down in in tacoma and he's he's playing fairly well he's hitting he's on a hot streak and then in july he informed the team that he was retiring from baseball to take a position with the national eating disorders association mike marjama had told the sacramento bee last year that he battled an eating disorder when he was a wrestler in high school in northern california he said he caught weight for wrestling and he kept dropping pounds plummeting to as low as 130 he required required inpatient treatment. He recovered and he's been outspoken about the disorder since. So we have seen in other sports, especially football, we've

seen what one might consider say premature or just kind of surprising retirements, but I've never seen a retirement that's quite like this one where Mike Marjama, I'm not going to say that it was something where he just woke up one day and felt it was right. Maybe he was gnawing at him just for days, weeks, months, and even years. But he decided, you know what? Baseball isn't my calling. He wasn't forced out by just low minor league wages. He was on a 40-man roster. He had, again, opened the year on a major league roster. He had, in a sense, made it.

But it's still the thing that he had pursued for his entire life just wasn't enough. And he thought, you know, I could probably make a bigger difference doing something else. And to his credit, he did it. He just up and quit baseball. And he volunteered himself and all of his efforts toward trying to improve people's lives. I mean, I don't know any number of words to string together to make a statement that is at least as powerful as the statement that he already made. Yeah, no, good for him. I mean, he was only 29.

He wasn't going to be a superstar or anything, but he had gotten to the major league level, which is your childhood dream for most of these players. And he then just gave it up and walked away to do something that he thought was more important. I don't know exactly what went into his decision, but I think, you know, it's pretty admirable that he made that decision and certainly unusual. So I'm glad that we belatedly discussed it. What's that? Another team. Let's move on. Yeah.

So Baltimore Orioles. Now, this one was tough because we didn't want to just bash the Orioles here at the end of the year. But what else can you say about the 2013 Orioles? But we have come up with a way to speak in a positive manner about the Orioles. Thank you to Chris for suggesting this. Richard Blyer, a name that I'm not sure has ever come up on this podcast, but really should have before this point, because Richard Blyer is kind of like the one bright spot for the Orioles this year and just one of the most successful pitchers over the past few years period. Now we can talk about how and why and whether that will continue, but the fact of the

matter is that Richard Blyer, who is turning 32 in April, has now pitched 119 innings for first the Yankees and then the Orioles over the past three years, and he has a 1.97 ERA. In all three of those years, he has had a 1.9-something ERA, three years in a row in 23 innings, 63 in the third innings, and this year, 32 and two-thirds innings. I think he got hurt. I forget exactly how he got hurt, but the Orioles were not allowed to have nice things this year. But over the past three years, so 2016 to 2018, minimum 100 innings, the only two pitchers who have an ERA below two are Richard Blyer and Zach Britton. And Zach Britton gotten a lot of attention. Richard Blyer, not a lot of attention. It was a not a lot of attention It was a lat issue

By the way that sidelined him He is expected to be back for opening Day and if you look at This is a very Silly leaderboard to look up Obviously but if you sort All time career ERA 1901 to

2018 minimum 100 Innings pitched you have only Four pitchersers who have pitched at least 100 innings and have an ERA under two. And two of them are Hall of Famers, Ed Walsh and Addy Joss from the Deadball Era. Two Deadball Era Hall of Famers, Craig Kimbrell, who has a 1.91 ERA and is looking for all the money in the world, and Richard Blyer. Richard Blyer, who just has a name that just sounds like, I don't know, it's just doesn't sound like that baseball a name. But here we are with Richard Blyer and his 1.97 ERA. Let me, okay, let me, here, I'll try to make this short and sweet because it's really, it's two things, right? It's two things about Richard Blyer. And I looked at it as a similar search to you, but I looked all time, all of baseball history going back to 1871, minimum 100 career innings pitched. Baseball leader in ERA Plus.

Baseball reference statistic. Richard Blyer. Richard Blyer, the all-time leader with an ERA Plus of 219. He's ahead of Craig Kimbrell. He's ahead of Mario Rivera, Jose Leclerc, Billy Wagner. All-time leader, Richard Blyer. And it gets better because he broke into the majors in 2016. And since 2016, there have been 448 pitchers who have thrown at least 100 innings. And Richard Blyer is tied, out of all of of them he's tied for the very lowest strikeout rate 11 he's tied with justin nicolino

it is absolutely absurd richard blier has the best ever era plus the best ever and he doesn't strike anybody out we talked about brian mitchell how many times on this podcast brian mitchell since 2016 has a strikeout rate one tenth of a percentage point better than richard blier yeah it is really wrong that richard blier has not become a podcast character before i don't know what i mean now he does get lots of grounders, as you would expect for someone who doesn't allow runs and doesn't get strikeouts. He has a 63.3% career ground ball rate. That is fantastic. That is probably one of the best over that period as well. So he's doing something right. 2016, even though he had had his 1.9-something ERA, they just traded him for a player to be named later or cash. They clearly didn't expect much out of Richard Blyer, and he has kept it up. And Fangraph's David Lorela did an interview with him this year, and he explained that the key for him was adding a cutter. So he added a cutter in 2016, and that is what he attributes his breakthrough to.

And he says, you know, he just kind of gets this natural sinking action. And he says, you know, that he doesn't want to get strikeouts or doesn't need to get strikeouts. And whenever you hear that, like someone pitching to contact or saying they don't need to get strikeouts, well, in the long run, you probably do, And it's probably going to come back to bite you But for now, Richard Plyer is making this work And he has, you know, not the greatest peripherals In terms of like FIP and XFIP and all those things But not bad, like not sub 2 either

But he's not a total mirage And he's kept it up now I mean, it's, you know, it's three seasons So it seems more meaningful Ultimately, it's three seasons, so it seems more meaningful. Ultimately, it's 119 innings, which is like a half season for a starter or a little more. So if it happened for half a season, we wouldn't make that much of it

and probably shouldn't make that much of it, but it is improbable and wonderful. If you look at the bottom of the strikeout list, in the bottom four of the lowest strikeout rates, we have a Blyer and a Boyer. And then if you go out to the bottom seven, you got a Blyer, a Boyer, and a Block. So I guess it's Black. Blyer, Boyer, and Black. They don't strike anybody out.

You put all the strikeout rates together, and you're still like 10 points below Adam Diaz. And he discovered his cutter by accident. He wasn't trying to throw a cutter. He was just warming up and in AAA and suddenly he was throwing a cutter without even trying to. And anyway, very strange. And we've managed to say something positive about the Baltimore Orioles. Good for us. Richard Blyer has a career minor league ERA of 3.96. all right texas rangers now this is another player that i am very surprised that we really didn't talk about much because he is right up our alley isaiah kiner felifa i guess it's felifa felifa i don't know but he is another 23 year old and he's from Honolulu fourth round pick and he was a rookie this year and he

came up and he didn't really hit but he certainly had a strange positional profile so Isaiah I'm not going to say the whole rest of it he played 46 games at third base 35 games at catcher 20 games Now, he is another guy that David Lorela wrote about once this year, and he pointed out that this is a unique defensive profile. Most notably, he has started 35 games behind the plate. to my Fangraphs colleague Stephen Loftus, Brandon Inge is the only other player in the modern era to have started 30 or more games in a season as both a catcher and at an infield position other than first base. Inge did that in 2004 and 2008.

So this is a very unusual skill set. If you notice, I don't have a quick way of looking this up, but Isaiah, KF, not only did he start 35 games as a catcher, he started 38 games as a third baseman, but he also started 19 games as a second base, and he started twice at shortstop for the Rangers. I know he's not the only player to ever do that, to play those positions in a season, we've seen the shane halter guys just play every position in a game but to actually i i would be curious to know who's ever started multiple times at every one of those positions because that seems just like it is extraordinary now whether he is good at all of the positions remains uh very much up in the air there are also questions about whether or

not he can you know hit uh at all but still we're looking at the fourth round draft pick and and uh he spent pretty much this entire season in the major leagues he only played five games in the minors this past year so he clearly has made it and now this is a team that doesn't have Jerks and Profar anymore. It's a team that's in a rebuild. So there are ample opportunities for Isaiah KF to go find playing time on this team. And there's something about, you have another note in the sheet. I might as well let you be the one to say it. Yeah.

Well, the thing about his catching is that he doesn't do it very well, which is not that surprising because like he's still kind of converting to catcher. He never played catcher professionally prior to 2016. He just started doing that at AA. He'd only played infield positions and outfield positions prior to that, and he hasn't been a full-time catcher in the minors. And so suddenly he's being asked to catch as much as he ever has in the majors.

That is difficult to do. So we've talked about how there's been a compression in framing performance that the bad framers have gotten better and teams have just given more playing time to guys who are good at framing. So you don't get the guys who are truly terrible at it anymore for the most part. But Isaiah KF is the worst framer in baseball this year. Minimum 1,500 podcast friendly, but just take my word for it. He is way, way, way below the next worst guy in framing on a rate basis. And not so surprising because he's trying to do that while he's also playing all these other positions and has not really played the position very much. So it's kind of incredible that he even attempted that. And you can think of it, I mean, we were talking the other day about what if Bryce Harper moved back behind the plate.

And I guess we can. The idea of somebody just becoming a catcher, because usually we see players who are catchers who then have to move somewhere else because of their needs or they're just not, you know, good at it. But I am reminded as well that you might remember this. You might not. In 2014, the Mariners used the sixth overall pick in the draft on Alex Jackson. Alex Jackson out of California. And Alex Jackson was drafted as a corner outfielder. And he wound up not hitting.

And he got traded to the Braves. And the Braves put Alex Jackson behind the plate. Yeah. That's just a thing they did. I don't remember enough about the reasons for doing that. But in 2016, Alexson started all of his defensive games in the outfield and in 2017 he started all of his defensive games as a catcher for the braves and now i haven't actually looked at the numbers he's continued to catch in 2018 and by the way

he's still only 22 years old he's like a prospect again or still i don't even know what to say what about his his trajectory but and let, and let's just see what we're looking at. Alex Jackson this year in AAA, according to Baseball Prospectus, above average framer. All right. Interesting. Good for him. Yeah. Last note there, there was a day, at least one day, when Austin Bibbins-Dirks threw to Isaiah Kiner-Falifa, which was the first time in Major League history that there was an all hyphenated name battery. So hyphenated name pitcher throwing to hyphenated name catcher. All right.

Tampa Bay Rays. This is one that I suggested because I wanted to talk about this. The Tampa Bay Rays analytics director. This is a story that just came out after the season, actually earlier this month. Tampa Bay Rays analytics director Jonathan Ehrlichman is moving from that front office position, like head of the quantitative department, to become a uniformed coach in 2019. He is going to become a process and analytics coach. And obviously, we've seen front offices and field staffs get much more in sync and on the same page in recent years. But this, I think, is unprecedented. This is a new thing that we are seeing here in baseball,

or that we will see next year. And, you know, someone suggested we talk about Kevin Cash being extended through 2024, which is a really long extension. Obviously, the Rays are very happy with their manager. And he was on board with this move. And Ehrlichman is 28 years old. He is a math major from Princeton. And now he is going from the front office to the field. He's going to be in uniform. It's not entirely clear what he's going to be doing. I don't know if he even knows. It's just kind of passing information one way and passing information back the other way and helping with that communication. But this is something that, I mean, you couldn't have imagined not very long ago at all. I think maybe he experimented with this in the previous spring training where he was in the dugout sometimes or someone with the Rays was, but to actually have this be a permanent position on the coaching staff just goes to show you how much things have changed in recent years.

Yeah, I haven't read a ton about this since it happened. I think I saw that it was happening and I thought, oh, yeah, I guess it makes sense that the Razors would be the ones to do this. coaches or advisors have we seen just end up in baseball now from outside roles, whether they're coming from, I don't know, driveline or they're just these independent hitting coaches. And then they just have like the angels have hired, I think, three of them. And there are so many interesting coaching or front office roles that are just being created now that it's hard to keep track of them, to keep straight who's doing what. But this is definitely definitely to my knowledge at least a first and now if you there's there's an article here it's from uh from the the tampa

bay times and it's written by mark topkin who does almost all of the the raised writing and for the tampa bay times because he's the big guy and it says uh the new role which kevin uh medgar kevin catch fully supported will seek to maximize jon Ehrlichman's impact in terms of adding a different perspective to what the Rays are doing and also challenging why they are doing it, covering everything from the game day routine and specific pregame drills to in-game strategy and postgame analysis. In other words, we'll see what he does. He's going to be there. And he's going to be, I don't want to say like a middleman because I think that could minimize his significance. But the real role, like Kevin Cash will still be in touch with the front office and the front office will still be in touch with Kevin Cash. But now you basically have a front office, what's the word, liaison, I guess, who's just there to be maybe accountable isn't the right word, but so that if there are questions, it's just a lot easier for Kevin Cash and the coaching staff to get them answered, I guess, so that they can just kind of have these conversations and debates in the dugout or in the clubhouse. You don't have to arrange some sort of, I don't know, team-wide meeting, which would be super nice.

I mean, we've been hearing for years like, oh, yeah, this is the next thing that will happen. There will be some stat head in the dugout giving numbers and advice on moves. And we don't know whether Ehrlichman will be in the dugout because there is a limit on the number of coaches you can have in the dugout at any one time, and that's still to be determined. But the farthest he will be is, you know, in the clubhouse or something up the tunnel. You can go talk to him. So I think this is really kind of a milestone move.

And according to Jonathan Ehrlichman's LinkedIn, he did his senior thesis on gravitational redshifts in galaxy clusters. So he was a math major, but evidently did some astronomy, too. And that guy is now a major league coach. So that's pretty cool. And I hope it goes well. Pretty cool. And I hope it goes well. And also notable from that story is that his nickname is J Money. And everyone calls him J Money because when he started working for the Rays, he was dressing to impress a little too much. And he wore, I'll quote here, a certain Gordon Gekko-esque shirt, blue with a white collar that became known as his money shirt. And from that, the nickname evolved. And so he's just J Money forever now Because he wore that one shirt Oh well Alright next story comes from the Red Sox

I think this will be pretty brief But Tony Renda We did not talk about Tony Renda this year Because there just wasn't a whole lot to say About Tony Renda He got into a single game For the Red Sox this year, and he did not get in at bat. He did not play the field. All he did was pinch run one time. August 5th, he gets into

one game. He pinch runs for Sandy Leone, and this was, what, against the Yankees, I think, and he moved to second, or I guess Le I think And he moved to second Or I guess Leon Singled moved to second on a wild pitch With two outs and the game tied 4-4 In the bottom of the 10th Renda was ready he was just up there for like One day because on August 4th

The Red Sox had sent Kinsler To the DL because he had a hamstring thing And then on August 6th they recalled Rafael Devers from his own Rehab stint. And so there was that one day where they needed an emergency infielder and Tony Renda was the guy they called. And so he comes in, tie game, bottom of the 10th, and he scored. He scored the winning run for the Red Sox. And that was that. That was the entirety of his contribution this year. And

for that, he gets a World Series ring. So good job, Tony Renda. Worked for the Major League team for one day, scored one run, did not get in a bat or play in the field, and he gets a World Series ring. That's great. This is a case study in burying the lead because, as the spreadsheet that you put together notes, Tony Renda was only in the game because he pinch ran for Sandy Leone.

So Sandy Leone reached base in the game this he pinch ran for sandy leone who so sandy leone reached base in the game this season so you uh you buried it yeah uh royals yeah one other renda he was traded in the aroldis chapman trade one of the aroldis chapman trades and he got into that game in the ninth because aroldis chapman allowed three runs in that inning to set up that walk off so that's kind of cool. And he's still in the Red Sox system. Maybe he'll be back someday. We'll see.

All right. Yes. Next team, Royals. The Royals' best pitcher, granted, not difficult to be the Royals' best pitcher this year, but the Royals' best pitcher was a Rule 5 pick, Brad Keller, who was actually technically, I guess, a Reds's rule five pick and then they immediately traded him to the royals and brad keller was the best pitcher on the 2018 royals i remember at times this season looking at the royals thinking like oh who is uh who is this brad killer and yeah so i don't maybe maybe it's part of like the writer bias. I don't like to write articles where I'm like, this guy isn't actually good because I think those are mean-spirited.

Just let guys have their success and whatever. And you know what? To Brad Keller's credit, he threw 140 in the third innings and he had a FIP of three and a half. But then he didn't get a lot of strike. This is turning into more of a negative segment than I was hoping for because he did double. In terms of his fan graphs, he was twice as valuable as the Royals' next best pitcher, and I wrote it by Jacob Junis.

I am interested in Jacob Junis, and Keller was better. And it's interesting also, Brad Keller, I don't have a list of all of last year's Rule 5 picks in front of me, but Brad Keller was presumably the biggest success out of all of them. And remember, he was taken fifth in the Rule 5 draft. Also by the Reds, a team in desperate heat of pitching help themselves. But it's not even like you have a case of Brad Keller being the first pick in the Rule 5 draft, and then he was able to have a great successful season. That was fifth in a draft where nobody's good. So he was basically off the radar.

Now, how many players were drafted in this year's Rule 5? There was a lot. I think it was like 14 or 15, something like that. But, you know, the Royals, they got Birch Smith and they got Brad Keller out of the Rule 5 draft. And Brad Keller had an ERA of 3.08. And Birch Smith had an ERA of 6.92. So you win some and you lose some.

But yeah, this pitching staff was quite bad. It would have been something I noticed, and there's no reason why you would have noticed this, but if you look at the current Fangraph set charts, which I guess in fairness are actually a few days behind, Brad Keller has spent time in the bullpen and the starting rotation with the Royals. This is unrelated now, but looking at the Royals' bullpen projections, the second worst bullpen projection in baseball this coming season,

according to Steamer, has a war of 0.4. That's the Marlins. And the Royals are 30th with a projected bullpen of negative 0.6 war. They're below replacement. That's how bad this bullpen is. Anyway, Brad Keller, good for the Royals. Yeah, yeah. So he had a 54.4% ground ball rate, which is good too.

So I don't know. He's probably not great, but hey, he was 23 too. We're talking about a lot of 23-year-olds. All right, next one. Can't believe we didn't talk about this one at the time. Maybe we didn't because we didn't know exactly what happened, and I guess we still don't. But the Detroit Tigers, not that much to say about the team on the field. I don't know. Maybe we could have dug and found something. But I think probably the most notable story about the 2018 Tigers, which says something about the team, but also something about this story. fought. They physically fought, and that was the end of their partnership on the air, which had lasted for 17 years. They had been working for 17 years together. They had been there for a long

time. Now, it's not entirely clear what happened here, but I'm just reading as we go to try to figure out what some of the details were here. But evidently on this day, it was September 4th. So Allen was scheduled for a pregame interview with outfielder Jim Aduchi. I'm reading from the free press here. Because he had been medically advised to limit his time at the ballpark as much as possible, he deals with lower back pain. He asked a producer if he could reschedule the interview for the weekend when he was

scheduled to work analyst duties at Comerica Park. The producer obliged. It's unclear whether that was communicated to Mpemba, who was seated inside the booth doing his pregame prep when Alan arrived. What began with a seemingly innocuous request if Alan could have that chair, the comfortable one, ended in an argument. Mpemba did indeed give up the chair. Who initiated the argument is not known, but Impenda's silence indicated a certain annoyance. He deals with a

bad hip, and Alan sat in the chair the previous night. Anyway, this turns into a heated and profane conversation. Alan does not show up early for the Aduchi interview. Then Alan walked over to the home radio booth to speak with a White Sox analyst, Darren Jackson. And evidently Mpemba and Alan just are not friends. Like they've been working, you know, 17 years together and may have shared two dinners

at most apparently. And post-game, what happened? Evidently there was an argument like a decade earlier when their relationship was kind of fractured. and there was some kind of post-game conversation. It didn't go well. Things took a bad turn, and Alan was standing in the hallway waiting for Mpemba to leave the booth, and then they got heated some more. Alan was frustrated with Mpemba. He questioned his professionalism. Mpemba put his finger in Alan's face. Alan put his arms above Mpemba's shoulder below his chin, pushing him up against the wall before the two were separated by a freelance TV producer.

agent denied that it was a chokehold. Whether it was or not, we don't know. There was no police report filed here. But anyway, Alan couldn't take it anymore. Mpempa was pushing his buttons. This is how it happened. But basically, these guys did not get along for most of their very long partnership. And finally, they just physically fought. And that was the end of that. And that is not a story that you ever hear really this is really something just straight out of brockmeyer how does it get the 17 years if they've never gotten along i mean with the most important thing you want out of the broadcast is chemistry between the broadcasters right right and how yeah this is at least an open secret with darren jackson involved and he's new that he that they had gotten along. But did they just never say anything to anybody?

Or did the people in charge of the broadcast just decide, you know what? Let's just keep them together. I'm sure they'll come to appreciate one another's character over the next decade. Maybe the third decade will do the trick. Because, you know, when people don't get along and see eye to eye for 17 years, they definitely figure it out in year 18. They just give in. They're like, you know what? All of the things that I hated about you before, I've just come to love.

I can't broadcast without you squeaking around in the chair next to me or I can't do a good game if you don't ask me to constantly alternate the comfortable chair and the less. Why not just get another comfortable chair? I mean, you're sitting in it like 81 games of a season. You have a bad back. You're in it for four hours at minimum. That's an excellent question. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, evidently they were mostly cordial on the air. Like, I don't think they were faking being best friends you have one, you can't just go get another one, but you would think you'd want to work wiser. I don't know. For all anyone knows,

we hate each other and never talk off the air, but we put on a fake podcast camaraderie. That is not actually the case, but it was the case for Mpemba and Alan. Anyway, maybe it's for the best that things finally came to a head here and they can each find someone to work with that they do not despise. The article concludes, Allen couldn't take it anymore, didn't control his emotions, and Mpemba pushed the last button that detonated their successful run in Detroit. Let's just take as a given, I guess, that it was a successful run in Detroit. There are differences between broadcasting teams and baseball teams, but if a broadcast team can have a quote-unquote successful run for 17 years and hate one another,

can have a quote-unquote successful run for 17 years and hate one another i think a baseball team can get along for six months if a few players don't really get along with one another because when you're on the field then you just put all that stuff aside because you have a job to do and then and then you can allegedly put somebody else at a chokehold when the job is over and then right anyway club we should move on. We've already talked for an hour. Come on, what are we doing? The Detroit News says that occasionally there would be pregnant pauses on the air because Mpemba

would quit talking while Alan focused on an email or text or tweet. The play-by-play man then had his fill of carrying the broadcast, minus help from a partner he considered distracted and disconnected. So that's not great for broadcast chemistry. I'm going to try that.

I'm just going to stop participating. All right. Moving on. Next topic. The Twins. We may have briefly touched on this at some point, but Byron Buxton, so much went wrong with Byron Buxton's season. But the service time manipulation was notable. So this was, I think we may have mentioned because Derek Falvey

actually acknowledged that they were essentially manipulating Byron Buxton's service time, which I mean, just about every team does it, but very few teams say they are doing it. And Derek Falvey said, and I can quote him here, he said, I think part of our jobs is we're supposed to be responsible to factoring service time into every decision we make. We wouldn't be doing our jobs if we weren't at least aware of service time impacts on decisions we make, which is true, but not something that most people say. So he was what he had a DL, he had a left wrist injury, then he was activated from the disabled list in AAA in mid-August and was still not called up, and I think Thad Levine said that it was partly because of his health and his production and all of that. I mean, clearly he was terrible in the majors when he started, and he's been such a mercurial and hard-to-figure-out player for years now. But also, they were sticking him in the minors for as long as they possibly could.

Answering some emails, doing some texts. Doing a tweet. Hold on a second now in i don't i don't want to say in like the twins offense because this is this is bad the twins regular left fielder down the stretch because eddie rosario was was injured was that they had robbie grossman playing left field robbie grossman is a mostly designated hitter i was going to say that the twins maybe they felt like they kind of found something in Jake Cave, who had a really interesting season taking over in center field, and like Max Kepler they wanted to play

in right field, but if you have Robbie Grossman playing left field on a regular basis as a team that's out of the hunt, like, you can play Byron Buxton. So, it is an interesting case of, like, it's weird. It catches your attention that Derek Fowler, they acknowledge that they have to factor service time into it.

But, like, of course they have to factor service time into it. Teams are always thinking about service time, especially now. In this day and age, teams are all thinking the same way. It's not even the best kept secret or anything. Everybody knows exactly what's happening, but it does still feel like, oh, you said the quiet part loud as if it means anything but i don't know like in terms of discipline purposes not that there's going to be any discipline like these grievances never go anywhere and nothing's going to happen something has to change about the way we handle service time the way they handle service time the way we handle service time is perfect but does it like

does is there more exposure now to derek falvey because he said service time it's perfect but does it like does is there more exposure now to Derek Falvey because he said service time in his in his quote I mean right it's Byron Buxton so you can't say he's working on his defense which is the standard line because we've seen his defense and it's great but when he came back in mid-August in AAA in 12 games he hit 365, 400, 596, which suggests that his wrist was doing okay and could have been called up after that, but was not. And he was 13 days short of the 172 needed to reach a full season of Major League Service time, his third season of Major League Service time. So I misspoke. I think I said it was Falvey who said that. It was Thad Levine, actually, who said that quote about service time.

Falvey actually said the opposite. He said, that's not something we're factoring in. Honestly, the way we approach it is, what do we think is the best thing by all the players and ultimately how we build our team? We're going to take that approach with this decision no different. That was like a week before Thad Levine then said that they were factoring in service time. So that was probably a miscommunication about the messaging that they wanted to have there,

where you have Falvey saying not service time and Levine saying service time. But obviously we know what it was. Oh my God, there's another team on this list.'s move on to them yeah all right well I'm sure we'll be talking about what Buxton will do in 2019 because who knows as a matter of fact we're gonna have our team previews coming up before you even know it oh boy your favorite all right White Sox this was difficult but we have found something thanks to Eric for suggesting this By the way thanks to Seth for suggesting Buxton and Isaac for the broadcaster fight And Caleb for Brad Keller

And Chris for Tony Renda So Eric suggested that we talk about Yolmer Sanchez and his innovations In the walk-off celebration Space So Yolmer Sanchez, I don't know how many walk-off wins The White Sox had this year Because they didn't have that many wins, period.

But Yomar Sanchez, he found a new way to walk off. So I think this started with him dumping Gatorade on himself. So he gave himself a Gatorade shower. And this, I think, first happened in May. So there was a Trace Thompson walk-off, and rather than dump the cooler on Thompson, Yomer Sanchez just dumped the cooler on himself. Then this happened again in September, where he dumped the cooler on himself as he was running toward home plate. So it was like he's sprinting toward home from the dugout and pouring Gatorade on himself as he goes. Now, in August, he also had one where he poured Gatorade on White Sox third base coach Nick Capra for no particular reason.

He just said he thought it would be funny. And Capra said it was funny. And evidently, Yomar Sanchez is just just a fun good clubhouse guy to be around and this is just the manifestation of that but we've talked a lot about walk-off celebrations and how they've evolved and who you celebrate and who you congratulate usually it is not yourself if you were not involved in the play but yomer sanchez decided that it could be quote quote capra that's how he is he's so creative capra said he thinks up something different every day he has grown a lot and he's a blast to have around he's a great

teammate he's great for the coaches he's very coachable on the field the personality is unbelievable i love him to death that reads like a statement written by yulmar sanchez but anyway i i do like how so yulmar sanchez he's a he, he's very quietly an acceptable regular baseball player. I guess this past season he wasn't great. His OPS was 678, but the team was bad. But he's not a problem and he's not expensive. How low would Yomar Sanchez's numbers have to be before people are like, you got to stop dumping Gatorade on the people who didn't do the thing that you're supposed to dump. I love the exploration of the space

because why just dump Gatorade on the guy who did the thing? Why not just have fun with it like Yomar Sanchez did? But you can easily see how if there was anything that was just kind of bubbling beneath the surface or if he were like a problem on the team, like if I don't know. Mario and Pemba had tried to dump gatorade on tony allen what if like

baltimore's chris davis decided like i'm just gonna start dumping gatorade on other people it'd be like yeah why if you're gonna dump gatorade on us then we're gonna dump criticism on you for being a terrible baseball player while you're making 25 million dollars like yeah i can't imagine it's a problem pleasant sensation i've never had gatorade dumped on me but it can't be great i mean it it's nice that it often it happens to the sideline reporter who's trying to interview the person who just did the good thing and then suddenly the poor reporter is getting drenched and it's nice that that's not happening because yomar sanchez is pre-drenching other people who are not even involved.

So, yeah, I don't know. I guess you have to be a great guy to get away with this probably and not piss people off. Last one. Last one. New York Yankees. So some people suggested that we talk about Aaron Hicks, who probably is an underrated player. They have so many stars. And Aaron Hicks is probably like the second best center fielder in the American League this year. Good job, Aaron Hicks. But Jonathan suggested that

we talk about one particular play, which I don't think we ever touched on, which is Gary Sanchez. One of the times he was healthy and catching, he threw out Tony Kemp on a wild pitch that was off the backstop. So I don't know what the rate of throwing out runners on wild pitches would be. Probably not great because a wild pitch is going to go to the backstop and it's hard to throw out someone if a pitch goes all the way to the backstop. But in this case, that happened and it bounced back perfectly. So like one of my, the most memorable plays of Joe Maurer's career, I think, which is sort of sad, but one of the most memorable plays is how he one time fielded a ball that

bounced off the backstop just without looking and kind of backhanded it. And in this case, Gary Sanchez, just the ball, I mean, I will link to the play if you haven't seen it and you are probably watching it right now but it bounced just directly off the backstop in yankee stadium and just kind of magically came right back into gary sanchez's glove and then he threw down to third and and got tony kemp it was a pretty impressive play and gary sanchez has kind of a lost season. So I'm glad we could focus on the positive. What do you think Tony Kemp thought happened when he got tagged out? You can see in the video he has this expression.

I don't know if he was going before it was a wild pitch or did he go because it was a wild pitch? I don't know. Probably the latter. I will find out by clicking this button. So that's a good question because it's a Rolvis Chapman on the mound. So, no. He was not going. So Tony Kemp, not going. He's standing on second base. Now, there were two

outs when this happened. He was standing on second. So he wouldn't have been trying to steal third anyway against Chapman. But he sees the ball get past Sanchez. Oh, you know what? Okay. There's another angle here. And you can see Tony Kemp, he's looking. He sees the ball get by Sanchez oh you know what okay there's another angle here and you can see Tony Kemp he's looking he sees the ball get by Sanchez but he's still looking in so he commits to running but he must he saw the ball I he must have seen the ball bounce back to Sanchez then he committed

he's like oh well I'm going I can't turn around but just the the feeling so he's he's tagged out on the hand he's sliding into the base. And then he gets up. And there are a lot of different angles of this replay. So they just won't focus on Kemp's response for some reason. But, yeah, I guess I don't know. I don't know what the feeling is like when you're sliding into third. Because he just has this expression like, oh, I'm out.

That's frustrating. But, like, by what act of God was Tony Kemp thrown out on the bases this is something I have genuinely never seen before not like this not with someone that fast no yeah and it kind of like perfectly encapsulates Gary

Sanchez because if there are two things that Gary Sanchez is known for at least as a catcher it is a not catching missing balls which is A, not catching and missing balls, which is, you know, not totally fair because he's actually a good framer, but he does miss a lot of balls. And in this case, it was really a wild pitch. Like some wild pitches are kind of the catcher's fault. In this case, I don't think it was. He was set up very low and Aroldis Chapman threw a pitch that was way high, way above the strike zone and 100 miles per hour. So if you're set up low and Aroldis Chapman throws a fastball high, it's pretty tough to get your glove in the way of that. So I can't blame him here, but he's known for not catching balls. And then he's known for having probably the best arm in baseball or just about and great pop times and great arm strength and this was both of

those things in one play one miraculous play and the yankee stadium backstop is not that far away and it just happened to bounce off the top of like the the ad sort of in a way that it just came back and of course it was thrown so hard that it just popped right back and it all worked out perfectly but yeah if you're tony kemp you have to feel like the universe is just against you here. That it will forever count against him. He stole nine out of 12 bases this season. And that wouldn't have even gone as a stolen base had he gotten the third. But it definitely counts as getting caught.

So Tony Kemp, statistically, no upside on that play. Now what have we learned? All right. So we've done it. This was a fun exercise, and that's good because we get to do it one more time on our next episode. But thanks to everyone for the submissions, and hopefully you all learned something. I think we did, and these were some stories in some cases that I hadn't even known about, and in some cases that we really should

have devoted some time to sooner. So hope you all enjoyed it. Thank you. All right. That will do it for today. I wanted to share a quick story from our Facebook group. We have a listener in there named Wyatt Smith. He is one of many submariners in the Facebook group for some reason. Not sure whether it's supposed to be submariner or submariner. I think sailors say it both ways. But Wyatt was responding to a post about something that Jeff and I talked about in our most recent episode. We answered an email about a hypothetical if you had to choose between streaming baseball games and having all other baseball information, which would be better. And Wyatt wrote, I had the worst of both worlds in 2003. Like many people, I spent the entire baseball season deployed. For me, it was submarines,

and almost all of my baseball news came in one-sentence snippets and daily broadcasts. Occasionally, I'd get the equivalent of an email from family, but it was never the depth that I craved. But the story of the 2003 ALCS and how I experienced Game 7 is a memory I will have to my dying day. I was the officer on deck, and we came to periscope depth to clear the broadcast early in the morning, Mediterranean time. The game was still being played, and all we got was 5-2 Boston, 8th inning. I was pretty dejected, figuring that it was going to be a tough comeback for the Yankees, and that I might not even get the final score until later that day. News broadcasts come in an hourly cycle, with sports being updated once an hour at the 15 after mark.

We had at least 30 minutes before the next update. Luckily, we found some reasons to stay at Periscope Depth, and at the next sports window, I get a buzz from the radio room. I pick up the phone, and our radio supervisor, another huge Yankees fan, as professionally as he could, gives me the final score. Making the ship-wide 1MC announcement that the Yankees advanced was one of my favorite moments as a submariner, and I'm still happy to have missed the entire World Series. That is definitely not how I experienced 2003 ALCS Game 7, which was from the upper deck in right field, but I love that story, so thank you for sharing, Wyatt. You can support the podcast on Patreon, stuff our stockings, by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild.

The following five listeners have already done so. Frank Hudson, Randall Woodford, Andrew Thompson, Kevin Reed, and Kevin Rust. Thanks to all of you. You can also 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. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast at fancrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system. You may not get to emails this week because we've got the NL Overlook stories coming next time. And then, as Jeff mentioned, we'll be talking to Sam at the end of the week

for the last episode of this year. But we will get to them eventually, so please keep them coming. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. Merry Christmas to all of those of you who are celebrating the holiday. Enjoy the day off to those of you who are not. We hope you have a happy week, whatever you are doing, and we will be back to talk to you soon. I'm just the point of this pageantry

But I'm grateful that you love me