Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1366: The Cooperstown Crossover

Episode Date: April 23, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the numbers behind the Yankees’ historic injury stack, an inspired piece of pitch-framing by Francisco Cervelli, Ramon Laureano as a human highlight machine, how often hitters would (and should) swing if they knew every pitch would be in the strike zone but still be called a ball, and […]

I'm missing the war. I'm missing the war all night. I'm missing the war. I'm missing the war. Missing the wall I'm trying to decide whether I should comment on the fact that I accidentally said daily. I'm not going to. All right. How's it going? Do you have any banter? I do have some banter. It is going okay. It is going better for me than it is going for the New York Yankees lineup right now.

And that is my first bit of banter here. So as we speak, we are recording late on Monday and the Yankees are playing the Angels right now. The Yankees lineup includes Clint Frazier batting cleanup, Tachman, I have to remind myself the first names of the Yankees. I was going to say it's very suspicious that you suddenly switched format from full name to last name only. I know. I actually had to look up multiple pronunciations.

So Mike Tachman is batting fifth right now. And then Mike Ford is batting sixth. Gio Urshela is batting seventh. Kyle Higashioka is batting eighth. And then Tyler Wade is batting ninth. So this is not very recognizable as the Yankees lineup that started the season. And we got a question from a listener, Jeremy T., who, prompted by the Yankees' rash of injuries, asked, what is the most wins above replacement based on the previous season's numbers that a team has had on the disabled list or injured list at one time?

I have no idea how to calculate this, but I can imagine it goes much higher than the Yankees are at right now. So I wanted to look into this because, of course, they lost Aaron Judge to an oblique injury. That was the latest and one of the most serious injuries that was this past weekend. So I have determined an answer here. I got a bunch of injury data from Corey Dawkins, formerly of Baseball Prospectus and now of Baseball Injury Consultants. And he sent me a list of every injured list stint going back to 2002.

So that is as far back as he has comprehensive injury records. And I looked up with some help from my wife, Jessie, who not only wrote the stat block song, but she did use a pivot table, I believe, for this one. She's an Excel whiz.

And so she helped me out with this. And I have an answer. So I looked up the most players on the Major League IL at any one time. And then also the most previous year war on the IL at any one time. So Yankees right now have 13 players on the IL. Which is bad, obviously, but not that extraordinary. We've seen several teams with more. The most on the IL or DL at any one time since 2002 is 16. So the Dodgers had 16 in 2016. So did the A's that same season. The

Rangers, when they had their terrible injury years, I guess it was, they had 16 on in 2016. So did the A's that same season, the Rangers, when they had their terrible injury years, I guess it was, they had 16 on in 2014 and the Angels last year had 15 on at one point. So it goes on from there. So just having 13, that is not so terrible on its own, but the identity of the 13 that they have, that is extraordinary and a real outlier. So Yankees right now using Fangraph's war have 32.8 combined 2018 war on the injured list right now. So that's like a pretty good team. Yeah, that's a playoff contender.

Yeah, all on the injured list. That is again Aaron Judge, Greg Bird, Gary Sanchez, Troy Tulewiczki, Miguel Andujar, Jean-Carlo Stanton, Luis Severino, Didi Gregorius, Aaron Hicks, Delon Betances, Jacoby Ellsbury, that's because Ellsbury is not very good. But Montgomery is, by the accounting format that you've chosen, which is last year's war, like it severely understates how much Montgomery. And Judge missed a bunch of time last year as well. That's true. Yeah, so 32.8, the next highest in this pretty long span of time is 21.1. So the Nationals had 21.1 wars worth of injured players that was in august 2017 when they were missing scherzer and harper and strasburg and

other guys so that is uh the yankees right now have like 55 percent more war on the injured list than any team has had on the injured list at any time since 2002. So that is, I mean, it is. I don't know if that's a surprise to anyone. You can look at the names on the injured list and guess at this, but it's not even close. I mean, there are teams that have had terrible injury years and maybe we'll end up with more players missing time than the Yankees will this year. But we've never seen an injury stack all at once like this, at least in recent memory. But what's really wild is that the Yankees have the third best run differential in the American League and the fifth best run differential in baseball. I know. And we've talked about how well the Rays are playing, but the Yankees are only a few games back of the race and they have a winning record as we speak, at least. So it's pretty impressive.

I mean, it's partly that the Red Sox are off to a lousy start, although they swept the Rays this past weekend. But it is impressive that the Yankees have not dug themselves a deeper hole. And I know Sanchez, I think, is due back this week, maybe Wednesday. hole and i know sanchez i think is due back this week maybe wednesday and then most of those guys could be back conceivably around may or june i guess severino is the most concerning but they could very well weather this and i don't know it's got to be good for uh like team morale i guess if you go through something like this and you come out the other side and you're still in pretty decent shape so it's uh it's really something mean, everyone knows that it's really something, but it's not the Yankees like bemoaning their fates and making too much of the situation. It really is as extraordinary as it seems. I really liked hearing you struggle with the question of whether it is the injured list in the past.

is the injured list in the past yes i i just dealt with this in the book actually because when we wrote the book it had not yet changed to the injured list and when we were writing about like prior seasons of course it was called the disabled list at that point but we decided to just change all of the references to injured list just a because it just seems to be a better term and b because we thought disabled list would kind of date the book as soon as it came out so yeah but it's tricky uh all right anything else yeah a couple other just plays i wanted to mention did you see the gif of francisco cervelli framing a pitch that he did not catch oh how great was great was that? It was exquisite. So this happened. I'll link to the GIF for those of you who haven't seen it.

This actually happened on April 11th, and then the GIF surfaced about a week later, and now it's later than that, but we're just getting to it now. So this was Cervelli framing a pitch from Joe Musgrove to Victor Caratini in the third inning, and Cervelli just acts as if he caught it he just he completely whiffed on the pitch it it goes all the way to the backstop and bounces off but he holds his glove as if he had caught it and he gets the call he then he just reaches back for uh

let me watch it again what he like yeah so he frames pitch, and then he reaches back to ask for a new ball immediately after, which is great because he just drops the fiction right away and just fesses up. I guess you have to. So I did not read this as he was trying to act as though he caught the ball, but that he wanted the umpire to see where his glove was when it hit off. Because I mean, I think I can't say for sure, but I think it's pretty clear probably that he didn't catch the ball like you would hear it. You would hear it not being caught. I guess you would. Well, I don't know. I well, yeah, well, I guess we're going to we could argue about something that I don't know. So that's not that much fun. But I'll just tell you, my interpretation of it was that he just didn't want the umpire to think, oh, well, he dropped the ball.

It was probably a ball. He wanted to say, well, this is where it was. I whiffed, but this is where it was. Yeah, that could be. It hadn't hit the backstop yet, but I guess the umpire would be able to tell that it didn't make the usual catching in a glove sound. It ricocheted off the glove, I guess, so it made some sort of sound. Anyway, it looks funny because it looks as if he's pretending that he caught it and then immediately giving that up. But maybe you're right.

Anyway, I looked up what the strike probability of this pitch was. It's a terrible pitch, yeah. Yeah, according to Baseball Perspectives, to Pitch Info. I looked up what the strike probability of this pitch was. It's a terrible pitch, yeah. Yeah, according to Baseball Perspectives, to Pitch Info. And the strike probability is this was a slider, a 1-0 slider, and it was only 4.6% likely that this would be called a strike. And it looks a little bit better than that if you just watch the GIF, but if you pause the GIF, likeif right before it gets to the glove, when it's kind of right over the plate, you can see that it's quite low.

And you can see that Caratini is upset that this strike is called on him, which I guess is not really because Cervelli didn't catch the pitch. It's just because of where the pitch was probably. It's just because of where the pitch was probably. But this is a pretty good frame job by Cervelli, who's generally a good framer, but to not only get the strike call on this pitch that shouldn't have been a strike, but with the added disadvantage of not catching it, which I don't know how to quantify it, but I would think that not catching a pitch probably makes it less likely to get the call, even though what matters is where it crosses the plate. It was Jeff, I think. Yeah, it was Jeff, who wrote in 2012 a piece about batters getting frustrated about Jose Molina because Jose Molina could get these strikes and then it'd be really bad for the batters. And you can just sort of, I mean, you really can see Caratini. for the batters and you can just sort of i mean you really can see caratini this is like a more exasperated i would say reaction than you're used to even on on bad umpire calls and i mean i think it's because like you can just see him thinking like come on it's hitting the brick right now that's how is that a strike and i do i don't think this is a workable strategy i think that it

it lined up perfectly i don't think cervelli necessarily expected to increase his chances by that much but i do wonder if as a as a one-time anomalous act the act of holding your glove there after you drop it like it's a little bit uh there's a bunch going on and maybe it actually works better to frame when you don't have the ball like it it really is like it's it's really likeervelli telling the umpire, I'm serious this time. I know that we do a lot of fun and games with framing, but this time I'm serious. I don't even have the ball.

Well, I guess it's easier to make it look good because the hard thing is that, especially on a pitch like this that was low and diving down below the zone, if you want to frame that pitch you'd have to anticipate where it's going to be and bring your glove up and the momentum of the pitch is carrying your glove down and because he didn't catch it it's probably easier to just hold your whole hand still so well and his glove i mean it hit off the bottom of his glove so his

glove never even got as low as the pitch was yeah that's right anyway well done Francisco and the other thing I wanted to mention another play I wanted to highlight it was the very unusual I guess uh 8-2-4 double play that was recorded on Sunday in the A's Blue Jays game and this was the play where Ramon Laureano robbed Teoscar Hernandez of a home run. And then he spun and fired and he just kind of air-mailed the throw really impressively very far,

just all the way to the first base dugout, basically, where the catcher was backing up and he got the throw to second in time to get the runner. And I think maybe the the most impressive part of this I mean obviously it's it's Floriano making that catch I think what was really impressive about him not only making the catch but he doesn't even pause to like see did I make the catch he he it's like one motion usually if a guy robs a homer, you take a second to enjoy it. Now here, of course, he was trying to double the guy off, but usually you can't even tell,

like, did you definitely catch it? He just spins and fires and he just uncorks this throw. And of course we've seen what kind of arm Laureano has. And usually we're talking about him gunning someone down and here he didn't directly but just to turn and get the throw off as quickly as he did and then to make that throw as far as he did too far that was really impressive he is I mean for like a non-star level player he's about as watchable a baseball player as there is right now. He's probably leading the league in ratio of highlights to war or something. I mean, he's a pretty good player, but I see so many Ramon Laureano plays, and he's not a superstar. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm going to ask you a question in a minute that that might be a relevant answer for.

Okay. And the other thing I want to mention is that like he Throws this pitch so far I Haven't tried to estimate How far he gets it and it's kind Of like a parabola like it's not A direct on a line throw He's just it's at a very

High arc so that's part of it But it occurs to me that Like the the new Less drag aerodynamic Baseball probably comes into play on a throw like this. Usually we think of it coming into play on a fly ball or a line drive that carries over the fence instead of dying on the warning track or something. But this throw was basically as long as a fly ball to the warning track. basically as long as a fly ball to the warning track and you would think that it probably carries farther because the ball is just carrying farther in general now when you're talking about a throw that's in the air this long i wonder it's probably a measurable appreciable difference in

how far it carried all right i'll take your word okay i'm watching the Blue Jays dugout right now react to that play. All right. So I was watching, this is my banter, I was watching Mitch Moreland at bat the other day, and I think it was the Rays had a four-man outfield on him, and so he squared around as though he was going to bunt on the first pitch, but the first pitch was a ball. It was well out of the zone. And so then I was kind of hoping he would keep bunting, uh, for reasons and he didn't, he, he quit bunting after that. And so I just, uh, this is relevant to the conversation that we had a while ago about

why batters don't, uh, if they, if they're thinking about bunting, why aren't they more committed? And my theory was that there's not as much gain to it and that it's hard and not as much gain to it was based partly on the idea that, well, if you're really going to bunt, if you if you start to bunt a lot, then you will get the defense to play a little bit adjusted back to you. But the key thing that they're doing is moving those three guys over and they'll still have the three guys over and it won't really do you that much good to get the third baseman to take you know four steps back over the back so that's the recap portion of the show but that with the four-man outfield that's not true at all there's three infielders and there's only three infielders and so they would either have to pull an outfielder back in and put them at third base or they would have to have only two guys on the far side of the infield which is probably unlikely because that's probably the most important thing that they're hoping to accomplish. And so you really like it.

Probably if you bunted over, bunted against that defense a hundred times, they couldn't really do partial adjustments. They would either have to abandon that defense completely or let you keep having it. But so I was kind of interested to see Moreland bunt against it and then see what would happen next and so on and so forth. But he didn't because he got ahead 1-0, which is the actual relevant information here. After he was ahead 1-0, I figured, ah, he's probably thinking like, I'm not going to bunt ahead in the count. And then he got ahead 2-0. And then I think he grounded out. And so this got me thinking about this hypothetical question, Ben, which is somewhat relevant to this question of whether batters should take the free hit, assuming that it's as easy as some people maybe correctly, maybe incorrectly assume it to be. But I want you to answer this hypothetical.

What if, Ben, if you knew or if batters knew that every single pitch was going to be called a ball, but also every single pitch was going to be in the strike zone. Okay. Every pitch is in the strike zone, and every pitch will be called a ball. What do you think the league – well, I don't want to say the league-wide swing rate. Let's say of the top 100 hitters in baseball, what do you think the average swing rate would be? So it should be zero, right?

Well, probably, yeah. You should take the walk. But maybe there is a pitch. Maybe there is a center cut fastball against pitchers with underwhelming stuff. But maybe you can make the case that average production on that pitch, especially without two strikes, is greater than a walk. Yeah.

Right? I mean, there are home runs and those home runs count for a lot. Right. So you could maybe make the case that if you were dialed in enough on a certain location, a certain pitch, and you had no fear of a strike, you never have to worry about a strikeout ever.

So you get two to play with every at bat if you want them yeah so yes otherwise to answer your question yes right so we get this question every now and then what would you be worth if you walked every time up and you'd be worth quite a lot fangraphs has a page where you can look these things up if you walked in every plate appearance you would have a 690 weighted on base average this year. That is pretty good for context. Barry Bonds' highest ever weighted on base average was 544.

So you'd be way better than peak Barry Bonds if you just didn't swing. Can I interrupt real quick? Because someone is right now screaming. But if everybody is getting nothing but balls, then you would bat infinitely. And so then you wouldn't want to swing. So let's just say that this is only going to be the case for that one batter yeah so the thing is though that the hitters like to hit i think they like to swing the bat it's hard to resist and especially if you know that every pitch is going to be hittable it's kind of like when we were planning our our sonoma stompers summer and thinking of experiments we could do.

And one of the ideas that we discussed was, you know, if a hitter was ahead in the count, just put on a universal take sign. Because we thought maybe at the lowest level of professional baseball, you're more likely to get a couple balls than you are for the pitcher to come back and strike you out. So we thought maybe that would benefit us, but we were much too afraid to actually tell people to do that because they would have hated us immediately if we had tried to stop them from swinging. So I would say that certain guys maybe would never swing, but on the whole i would guess you'd get like a gosh what's the league average swing rate now like 50 something yeah on all pitches yeah uh yeah like around there i think it's a i think maybe it's slightly below 50 yeah i guess you get uh like a 20 swing rate or something uh-huh yeah not, not quite one out of two,

but we're talking every pitch is in the strike zone. So you just zero in on the ones that are dead center, and it'd be hard to resist. The swing rate on all pitches is 46%. Uh-huh, yeah. And I'm going to see what the league hits on strikes. Because again, like a lot of the damage that pitchers do, or a lot of the, I guess, harm that hitters do to themselves

is swinging at pitches inside the strike zone. So if, just as it is now, where you don't have that confidence and where we're talking about all strikes, even the ones that are difficult to hit, and on those, the league, well, the league slugs 574 so much is fine but it's not it's not that extraordinary all right so anyway yeah so 20 you think 20 i think so at first at least although there'd be a lot of pressure on you not to swing right this you'd have i mean what would we be saying in that situation we'd be would we be objecting to

people swinging would we be saying they're hurting themselves, they're hurting the team? Well, I don't know that you should always take. That's what I'm not sure about. Probably not always, but probably almost always. I don't know. It's a weird situation that I don't know how we would get in real life anyway, so it's hard to know exactly how to treat it but but if everyone knew somehow about this calculus and uh and the situation we're allowed to persist for whatever reason then i think there'd be a lot of pressure on you not to swing but the key the key thing is that you do think batters would swing more than you would want them to swing yes okay and that's

basically what this is. That's what this question is about. Is Mitch Moreland swinging more than you would want him to swing? Yeah. What's the 3-0 swing rate right now? You know, it's been going up and I didn't write this article, but I've had it on the list and maybe I'll write it this year. I probably, in fact, probably I will write it this year,

but maybe I won't. I don't know. But a lot more guys swing on 3-0 so not just there are more swings on 3-0 i think there are but it's not like shocking or anything but a lot more guys swing on 3-0 like almost everybody has the green light it seems like at some point in the season now and the list of guys who have swung at 3-0 includes some hysterical names that you would not think. There's like, you know, I would say that in any given lineup, like six guys have the green light, at least some of the time, just based on who has swung at at least one 3-0 pitch in the last year. I think it's 10.1% this year, if I'm not, does that sound right?

Yeah, that sounds about right. But they, you know, they, you're not, are you suggesting that they shouldn't be swinging at those 3-0 pitches no just saying that that might be a guide for your scenario here because 3-0 obviously you're fairly likely to walk if you just don't swing but guys do swing and sometimes it makes sense to swing so if 10% of 3-0 swings then maybe that's a good guide for your situation. Okay. So let's talk about the topic today. And to start that off, I want to ask you a question, which is, what is that thing that Dan Hirsch invented? Game changer. Yes.

Okay. So Dan Hirsch, a friend of the pod, a really good friend of Ben. Ben's half of the pod. I like him, but I'm kind of shy around him. Ben's not shy. So Dan Hirsch invented a thing that you can, what, it's like a plug-in or something for your MLB? You use it with your computer. You can queue up the players that you are most interested in seeing or the situations, that you are most interested in seeing or the situations, and it will just automatically switch your MLB2V to those plate appearances that you have specified beforehand. Exactly.

It's kind of like a red zone channel that you can program yourself for whatever. Okay. So somebody asked us a couple of days ago or a couple of weeks ago, who fills out your top slots on Dan Hirsch's Game Changer? And I felt like this is a kind of a question that probably we should answer about once a month. I would be interested in hearing yours about once a month. And so I'm curious to know right now, just, I don't know if you literally are using it or not, but if you had say five players that are switchover players, who are they right now? Yeah, I'm not right now

because mostly I watch MLB TV on my PlayStation, and it doesn't work on there, unfortunately. But if I were to make a ranking, well, I guess Astadio would kind of be there permanently just because he is so close to my heart. And then, see, I know what your topic is for today so that is Influencing my answer here But I'll just say it I mean the two hottest hitters In the world right now are Christian Jelic and Cody Bellinger So I guess

They make the most sense Assuming you believe hot streaks are real And there's more reason to Tune in to watch those guys now than there normally Would be and I don't know I guess Streaks are real, and there's more reason to tune in to watch those guys now than there normally would be. And I don't know. I guess Trout would probably just be a default that's always there too. But yeah, I don't know.

No one else is jumping off the page to me right now. So I like Byron Buxton right now, Tatis, Tommy Pham, Mondesi, and Jelich as well. So those would be probably my five switchover guys at the moment, although I lose interest in Pham a little bit once he gets on base. But we both said Jelic, at the very least Jelic. I mean, everybody is switching over to Jelic right now. And so I just want to talk about Christian Jelic a little bit, and I've got a few different aspects that I want to, I don't know, inquire about, ask you about.

One of which I wrote about today and is currently up at ESPN. I don't know if you've read it. I hope you haven't. Nope, not yet. Yes. All right. So let me just ask you, this is going to be a hard question for you to answer, but a year ago, one year ago today, how likely would you have thought it was that Christian Jelic would make the Hall of Fame? Would you have thought he was a probable Hall of Famer or an improbable Hall of Famer? 26 at the time and he started young and there was always thought to be perhaps some more promise that he could potentially unlock so unlikely but it wouldn't have completely blown me away i don't think and now today a year after that hypothetical do you would you consider him a probable hall of famer or an improbable hall of fame gosh huh so he's So he's 27. He's at like, what, 30-ish career war, something like that.

Yeah. Depending on your war. And obviously over the past year almost, he has reached an extraordinary level that is a Hall of Fame type player and isn't showing any signs of slowing down. showing any signs of slowing down so huh i'm always sort of surprised because in the past you've i think you've done like uh maybe i've done too just like percentage of players who accrued this much war by this age and how many of them get in and sometimes i'm really surprised maybe it was when you were i don't know know, maybe you wrote about Trout very early on, and I was almost surprised to see how close to a Hall of Fame trajectory or a Hall of Famer he already was. But Jelic right now, 27 years old. He's about halfway, not quite halfway to a Hall of Fame career.

I guess I would say still closer to unlikely than likely. Like if you had to put a 50%, I would say below 50% chance, but probably not that far below. So what you're probably remembering that I wrote in 2013 was the Hall of Fame 50% probability test. Yeah. You remember that now? Yeah. So your headline headline my article so this was uh this looked at each age level and found the number of war you need to be to be 50 or well i had a hard time

explaining it at the time uh i also had a hard time explaining it in the article today uh i'm gonna try one more time now okay i'm gonna try yet one more time now. Okay. I'm going to try yet one more time. All right. So this tried to find the war total through each age, above which half the players made the Hall of Fame and half the players did not. So, for instance, at age 20, there are 40 players in history

who have produced at least 2.1 career war through age 20. And of those 40, 20 of them made the Hall of Fame. So if you have even 2.1 wins above replacement through age 20, you are kind of in a way of looking at it more than 50% likely to make the Hall of Fame. Now, this is, as that article and as the article today, and as I'm about to say, clarified. This is not actually, this is, there's a little bit of a problem with the logic here, right? Because if half the people over two war through age 20 make the Hall of Fame, but say all the players or 90% of the players over 10 war make the Hall of Fame, then you can deduce that a percentage of people at two or three or four that make the Hall of Fame is lower than 50%. So in fact, the threshold favors the people who have much more than it and disfavors the

people who don't have much more as it should be. So this is not really exactly accurate as you might use words, but it is a good guide for understanding like when a player is on the bubble and when he's kind of like oh yeah he could go either way and so christian yelich up to last year uh was on the bubble he was really like right on the line like like one through age 25 i think he was one win above the line and then at the all-star break last year he was basically on pace to be about one win above the line at the end of his age 26 season and I would have said at that point no chance unless something changes like this is not a hall of fame career that we're watching this is's a good career, but it's not a Hall of Fame career, partly because it's on the bubble

and so he's probably lower than 50% in actuality, but also because Krishnialich had a kind of a career that doesn't really get recognized a lot. That's true, yeah. At that point, he had one 19th place MVP finish. And I think if you were looking for things that are going to correlate to Hall of Fame voting 20 years later, the number one thing would be war and the number two thing would be MVP voting. Or maybe actually it might even be MVP voting first. Yeah.

He had no black ink. No black ink. Exactly. He was kind of a well-rounded player who's not a league leader in anything prior to last year. Never made an all-star team prior than last year. 21 homers was his career high. 21 steals was his career high. And he was just solidly putting up

four win seasons because he's really good he was an all-star level player but not really a hall of fame level player so the reason that i wrote this article and the reason we're talking about him now and the reason that he's fun is that he has gone bananas obviously over the last four months and everything has changed uh all of his career has changed with just those 400 plate appearances. Rarely does 400 plate appearances teach you something about a player, I would say, especially a 27 year old with a long history like this, a long history of excellence. But Yellich has just completely redefined what his career is by historical standards. So, for instance, at the All-Star break last year, he was 350th all-time in OPS+. He has now moved up 200 spots in 400 plate appearances.

He has gone ahead of Jastrzemski. He's gone ahead of Tony Gwynn, ahead of Wade Boggs, ahead of Eddie Murray. I mean, he's got a decline phase ahead of him. So I'm not saying that he's better than those guys, but I am saying that he is now up among a bunch of Hall of Famers. He's going to be raising his career rates before they drop. He presumably needs to play at all like this.

Although Pocota would probably say he won't, and we should take that seriously. But as long as we're watching him play, we can, yes, assume that he might actually build that case even more and more. Anyway, he is also no longer on the bubble of the 50% threshold. He's coming up on 30. I mean, who knows what he'll do the rest of the year, but probably he's at 28 right now on reference. So let's say he's somewhere between 31 and maybe 35 at the end of this year. And, uh, the bubble line is I think like 21 or something through age 27 or 23 through age 27. So he, yeah, it is. It's 23 through age 27. So he's now he's getting some,

some real space. And so I believe that these past, uh, four months. Oh, one more thing. One more thing is that he had never had an OPS higher than 1,000 in a month in his entire career. Ever. Can you believe that? Never. Not one. That's who Christian Yelich was. He was like a consistent 800 guy who would sometimes be at 740 and sometimes be at 860 but Never over a thousand and this Is going to be his fourth month in a row since the all-star

Break with over a thousand two Of them at 1300 Better yeah he's having one Of those I mean and he's over four As we speak on Monday night but He is still at a What 212 WRC Plus he's I think I read recently

According to some stats at least he's having one of the best march aprils of all time i mean i don't know it's it's kind of a weird offensive environment so he has 13 dingers which obviously is very impressive for one month especially earlier in the year but everyone has lots of dingers which makes it slightly less impressive the other impressive thing about his month is that he's had two home runs robbed. Yes! Which is incredible. He's had 13 homers.

You'd think that every ball that came anywhere close to going over the fence must have gone over the fence to get 13 homers by April 21st when he had it. And yet Trout took one away and Bellinger took one away. So he could very easily have 15 yeah so yeah it's pretty amazing this is neither here nor there but Shoeless Joe hit over 500 in a month three times huh over 500 there's only been eight seasons like that or eight months in history and Shoeless Joe had three of them. Nobody else had two. Wow. Todd Helton had one. All right. Do you have a favorite hot streak in your lifetime?

Like a favorite guy on fire? Well, the one that I guess is most memorable to me is the Bryce Harper hot streak from 2015. Because I wrote about that one. And at the time, at least, I found that it was the hottest hot streak ever. Or I think that was going back to 1950 because that was what baseball perspectives could do. So yeah, I wrote June 5th. I wrote for Grantland 2015, Bryce Harper and the hottest ever hot streak. So that was the one.

I think I just looked at like his 50 plate appearances or something. He had some just unparalleled, and that was looking at true average. So it was adjusting for various things, and it was still the hottest streak of 50 plate appearances from 1950 to 2015. So don't know if anyone has surpassed it since, but because I wrote about it and because i managed to slice and dice it such that it was the best ever that i think was uh my favorite he was like i remember we did a podcast about him i think i think i remember doing one when we were in sonoma and uh we we had a guest we did a podcast about how bryce harper was just impossible to retire at that point because he was just hitting everything everywhere. So I think that's the one that stands out.

Yeah. I remember Troy Tulewitzki in September of 2010 as being hotter than I've ever seen anybody. And he was really hot. He hit, over the course of two and a half weeks, he hit 14 homers, which is like that's a lot when you think about it. He slugged 1100 in that time uh but uh yeah i think uh i mean you know that was two weeks i'm looking at

tulowitzky's whole month and i'm looking at the two months and uh yeah yellich was hotter so anyway the whole point of me bringing this up is that yellelich is fun to watch on his own. But a theme of things that I like to talk about are history happening when you get a chance to actually watch it happening, knowing its history. That most history happens quietly and it builds up. And at the end, you're like, yeah, I remember that guy somewhat. But it's hard. It all comes together. But we probably just watched Christian Yelich just become a Hall of Famer. And we've been watching it. We've been switching over. He's been on our five, you know? Yeah. It has not gone unnoticed. Yeah. And so I just want this, I want that specific

aspect to not go unnoticed that Christian Yelich has gone from an all-star to a hall of famer. And we, we watched like a lot of it. All right. So that's one detail of Christian Jelic. Second detail, I'm curious if your feelings about the Marlins trades have changed at all, knowing that Christian Jelic was going to become the best player in the National League. So they traded Marcelo Zuna, Giancarlo Stanton, Dee Gordon, JT Realmuto this offseason, and then Christian Jelic. And when I wrote about the Marlins trades after the Real Muto trade, I said something along the order of like all those guys were signed for at least I think three or four more years and Jelic was signed through I think 2023. And if you look at that core of five players, generously including Dee Gordon, but he's part of it. If you look at

that core of five players all under control for four years, five years, six years, seven years, and you can't imagine a way to win with them, then I think that you're suffering from a lack of imagination. And I'm curious now that we have seen Jelic be this, but also, you know, like Ozuna has been Ozuna. He's kind of regressed a little bit from the year before they traded him. Stanton regressed a lot from the year before they traded him. Gordon regressed a ton from the year before they traded him. And Real Muto seems to still be a star while Jelic is the best player in the National League. Do you think that the Marlins setting aside the whether they were sort of like absolutely forced, like it was completely out of their hands they literally could not afford to pay like not just they didn't want to pay but they literally could not which is what

some will argue uh but putting that aside do you think that the uh marlins look any better or worse than they did when they made the decision given how these players have done since well you're almost unavoidably gonna look worse when you you trade christian yelich and he becomes maybe the best player in baseball over almost a season i mean you're gonna look worse because you i mean you'll certainly look worse for not getting the talent comparable to his talent but i i just mean as far as seeing themselves as competitors could they would the marlins be good right now basically with with the marlins with those five be a good team in your opinion well i do think that those guys are the core of like a championship caliber team or certainly a

playoff team like if you start with those five guys and you can build the rest of your team normally then you should be good so i think it's disappointing that they couldn't do that. Of course, they had things go against them. I mean, they lost Jose Fernandez, which I think was a huge blow just to the franchise and their hopes of competing. you know, in a way that perhaps hamstrung them, or at least his value was maybe not positive, given the terms of that deal by the time they traded him. So that changes things a little bit. I mean, Ozuna, I still think is really good. He had an injury last year, but then he finished the season really strong, and he's started this season really strong so i wouldn't say his stock has fallen significantly since that deal it's funny because the the yellich trade was the one that everyone kind of nodded and said okay they they did well with that one right that was kind of the consensus

like yeah they kind of gave away some other guys and stanton was a salary dump but yellich they actually got some prospects back and it was a good package. And I think that's more or less what I thought at the time. Of course, you know, I'm kind of taking other people's words for it when it comes to prospect packages, but that was the consensus among the minor league player evaluators, and I pretty much swallowed that. So I wouldn't want to change my opinion of how that trade looked at the time because i don't think it's fair to do that retroactively but if all you knew was that they had those players and they couldn't make anything of it i think that that looks bad that should look bad if you

if you have that core you should be able to build around it yeah i i also feel like if you have that core you should be able to build around it and it, I also feel like if you have that core, you should be able to build around it. And it doesn't feel like it should be that hard to put together a credible pitching staff when you have such a good lineup like that. And that's always been my position. But in fairness and relevant, is that last year, those four guys,

not counting Real Muto, who was still there, were 16 war combined and the Marlins won 58 games. Obviously, they would have done other things that you can't play it out and assume that everything would have been the same. But just on a very simple way of thinking about it, they were much more than 16 wins away from being a talented enough team to make the playoffs. much more than 16 wins away from being a talented enough team to make the playoffs. And those five, including Real Muto, have been worth about four war this year.

And they were, what, six and 15 last I checked, but they are now six and 16. So obviously four war is not going to turn that around either. And so I don't know. I mean, it's hard. It's hard for me to say, yeah, a team with Ozuna, Stanton, Gordon, Realmuto, and Jelic is bad. It's hard for me to think that that could possibly be true. A very simple way of doing the math suggests that it is, that their pitching really is that bad, that their depth maybe really is that bad, and that they are that bad. Yeah. Well, what was their payroll i mean that's the that's the whole

thing right it's it's because it's the marlins that they were bad if they were a normal team and they spent an average amount and they had those guys oh well now that's a totally different question though i mean your point is they should have kept those guys and also spent a normal amount then i'm there with you yeah right um but you know we take what we can get no we don't all right very quick one the brewers when i checked i think this morning had 4.6 war as a team yelich was two of those war the brewers which is very little from the rest of the team it's two two and a half or from the rest of the team. Brewers have a negative run differential, despite having one of the greatest hot streaks of all time batting in the second spot of their lineup. And I'm just curious very quickly, whether you think that if you were the Brewers, you would be kind of thinking this is sort of scary right now. I guess you could say that, or you could say they're one game back of the leader in the NL Central, even though they haven't gotten much from their non-Yelich team. There are guys that they haven't gotten much out of that they can expect to,

right? So I think they're in decent shape. I mean, coming into the year, they weren't like the favorites in the division, probably. They weren't my favorites in that division, but they've held their own, even though they've had all those guys slumping. I was going to say that it's kind of fortunate that Jelich's hot streak coincided with the Brewers being good and being a fun and interesting team and a playoff team and

going down to the wire in the NL Central last year and having a fun and interesting team and a playoff team and going down to the wire in the NL Central last year and having a tiebreaker game and then having a pretty deep playoff run because as you were saying we have appreciated this hot streak it has not gone unnoticed and one of the reasons for that is that we've had other reasons to watch the Brewers they have other fun and watchable and compelling players. So that's good because if Jelic had had this breakout with the Marlins, for instance, is he on year five? I don't know. Maybe he's probably still on year five at this point just to see if he hits another homer, but you probably don't see as much Jelic as you saw last year, at least because he was on the

Brewers. So I think that is fortunate. It's always nice when a breakout comes when there are other reasons to watch that player in that team. Yeah. And I think you're right. I mean, obviously this is always the case. You can always find some guys on the team who are going to regress and say, oh no, what will the team do after they regress? But you can also find other guys who will regress in a good way. And Christian Jelic will probably not stay this hot for the whole year. Neither will Yosemite Grandal, but Jesus Aguilar will hit and Travis Shaw will hit and Ryan Braun will hit and various pitchers will pitch and things will get back to probably what we thought, which is that the

Brewers are somewhere between an 82 and a 90 win team, depending on your projection system. And then whether you're worried or not depends on which website you go to. All right, last one. So Jelic and the Brewers played against the Angels a week or so ago. And it was like a big thing that Mike Trout and Christian Jelic were going to go up against each other. And it was. Like how often does it work out that, in fact,

somehow like one of the guys hits a home run and then the other guy takes it, takes bats and incredibly fortuitous for everybody. Just this past weekend when Yelich and Bellinger went head to head and Bellinger robbed Yelich and then hit the game winning homer himself. I'm not talking about Bellinger. I'm talking about Mike Trout. Because right now, Mike Trout has a higher war than Christian Yelich this year right now. And I just wanted, I know this is a Mike Trout. Because right now, Mike Trout has a higher war than Christian Yellich this year, right now.

And I just wanted, I know this is a Mike Trout podcast, but I feel like we should always recognize and remember it. And it seems worth noting that over the last seven years, seven years, eight years, seven years, eight years, seven, eight years, eight years, eight years over the last eight years we have had. There was a period where Miguel Cabrera was maybe the best player in the game and maybe Mike Trout was. And then there was a period where Clayton Kershaw was having his peak. Like he was he had reached his peak. He had the one seven seventy array. He won the MVP award.

He went like twenty one and three. He was like historically good. And you could argue about whether he or trout was more impressive, but they were both right there. And then Bryce Harper had his 10 more season and you could argue Harper trout, Harper or trout. And then Mookie bets had his nine and a half win season or whatever it

was. And you could argue trout or bets, trout orts. And then Betts again last year, there wasn't really anybody in 2017. Maybe Altuve, who was the MVP and who had been, I think, third in MVP voting the year before. But anyway, and then last year, Mookie Betts and Trout again. And then now Christian Yelich and Mike Trout. There's always a best player in baseball who you can't wait to see his team play Mike Trout. And you can put it on the front page of MLB.com and say these two guys are playing against each other. And it's just incredible that it's always Trout. Everybody else has got a lifespan in that role of about a year or two.

And Trout is just every year. It is like, it is like, I don't know what it's like it's like a lot of things but like I remember when I was really into entertainment weekly when I was like 19 and there was always this debate about who who's the best actor in the world and like one year it'd be like Christian Bale and then the next year it'd be like Philip Seymour Hoffman best actor in the world and then it'd be like daniel day lewis the best actor in the world and every year or every couple years it'd be like kind of a new best actor in the world and then just trucking along meryl streep every year all the time she's like she's

she's every year she's good as an oscar like there's no end there's no like there's no lifespan for meryl streep and uh so i feel like it's just something about these guys who get unconsciously hot and who have the best year of their career and who are so much better than you thought a ball player could ever be. And they're just right there, just right behind Mike Trout. Yep. Mike Trout has 21 walks and 10 strikeouts. Yeah, and he had three in one game.

The fact was, it was like 6-17 at one point, and I looked up all the things, and I was going to write about it, and then he struck out three times, and I thought, well, I'll give him a couple weeks to get good again. Yeah, it's partly a product of the Angels' lineup right now and missing guys, I'm sure, but it's also partly a product of him

and his incredible selectivity. So, yeah, he's just like the heavyweight champ year after year and people keep challenging him and mounting cases as his rival and i wonder how long that will continue to be the case there's obviously no end in sight but he's 27 he is is he older than y chief and they're like this i guess slightly slightly they're both 27 uh yeah so yeah by about what four months trout's four months older and trout has like uh almost 70 more already it's just oh it's just it makes you kind of giddy just to to look at it and marvel at the greatness. And it really is fun to just see like each new player who finds this like new level where you can appreciate how great a ballplayer is.

And it puts Trout – I just feel like it puts Trout in perspective anew to see like – to think like can any player possibly be good as Christian Jelic? I mean other than Mike Trout every day. And it – I don't know I don't know why the freshness of each new contender makes me appreciate Trout's longevity more like I don't know how I would feel if just nobody well if like the second best player in baseball had been uh Josh Donaldson this whole time would it make Trout better or worse I don't really know. But I think it's more fun that every year I get like the new front page on MLB.com hyping me up for the showdown between the second best player in baseball and Mike Trout. Yeah, that'll be a fun article to write as a retrospective on his first decade or something like the who was the challenger to Trout every year. And really, it's like the guy who is just out of his mind hot and

breaking out and reaching some new level every year it's like the best that guy can do is just approach what trout does every single year basically like you know i guess mookie maybe had a higher war last year mookie mookie last year was the first time that there was a real threat, I think. And I do wonder, how... Alright, we've gone through this recently with Clayton Kershaw where we all had to, in our

own time, acknowledge the passing of the torch and the changing of the guard and, okay, this is the moment when I accept in my heart that there is another pitcher better than Clayton Kershaw. I think we've all had that moment at this point. How old do you think Trout will be when you and I have that moment with him? When, I don't know, the mean moment when that arrives, how old will he be?

You know, it's honestly, it's hard to say because, you know, the actuarial tables would tell you something and we could give that answer but like willie may's best season was when he was 34 yeah and his second best season was when he was 33 and so you know like it happens like it's not like willie may's was a slouch he wasn't a late bloomer he wasn't christian yelich you know coming on learning how to hit or anything like that he was an 11 war player at 23. Well, he was a six win player at 40. Yeah. And so, you know, I would have said like, oh, probably, you know, I'd have been safe and said 30 or 31.

But, you know, there's lots of, like a lot of superstars, they have kind of long arcs, they have long arcs, long what? Long peaks, long something. And it's not necessarily, not everybody's Albert Pujols or Ken Griffey Jr. Some guys peak early and their best year is at 21. And some guys peak late and their best year is at 34 or they're Barry Bond, but you know why. So I would guess, I don't know. There's also a lot of really good players right now,

and it's not clear whether that's an anomaly or not. Like there were last year in the American League, there were what, like seven, six guys who had seven and a half war? Yeah. Six, right? Lindor, Ramirez, Mookie, Chapman, Bregman, Trout. So yeah, six guys, six hitters who were over seven and a half. So basically six guys who were over the MVP standard the MVP median and they're all young and they could all you know I mean Mookie could have been 12 or 13 if he'd stayed healthy potentially so it's not

like he's got us like soft competition at this point Acuna and Vlad Garo Jr. and Soto are like right there doing things. And I mean, I just only named three. I can name three or four more. So the safe thing would be to say 30 or 31, but I'm going to say 34. Yeah. Well, we may have talked about this. I wrote about it when Trout signed his extension that you would think that at this point, because he is 27, he's going to be 28 in August. And because there are so many incredible young players who have been coming up lately, you'd think that someone at least would at this point project to be better over the rest of his career than Trout projects to be over the rest of his career, just because you have guys like Soto and Acuna who have like seven, eight years on Trout. So even if they're not as good at their peak, they have a lot of time to make up ground. And that is still not the case. I think I had the numbers. So this was was let's see So when I wrote about this When Trout signed his extension Pakoda projected him let's see That was to be worth like 80 Wins above replacement player over the next 10 seasons

That was 13 wins more Than the next best player Mookie And I think I also asked Dan Zimborski to look at Zips as well and I think He had the same thing, that Trout was leading Lindor by 10 war.

Now that was over the next 10 seasons. So conceivably, I guess there could be someone who projects to be better over his entire career than Trout, but I kind of doubt it. So we're still at a point where, like if you were starting a franchise today and you didn't care about money you might just take trout even though he's so much older than other cornerstone franchise type players yeah uh yeah i don't know i'm excited i don't know i'm scared you're scared

what you're scared of i don't know this is something about thinking about mike trout's next 13 years it's like it's it's either too much or it's like i'm not going to be ready for the end or i'm not going to know how to write about it or something something's going to happen i feel anxiety about it yeah i feel like we've we've done him justice to this point. He's kind of been our muse, I guess a lot of people's muse, over the last seven years or so. But that will be hard whenever he does decline, because we've seen players who we out of the game and get old and decline and it's sort of sad reminds you of your mortality but i think when that happens to trout that will maybe i don't know might hit me harder than it has hit me even to see like childhood greats fade just because he's so great and for so long he seemed so young that when he's finally not young that the great thing is that he's still just as fast as he ever was right it's like if you look at his sprint speed i think i looked at this recently well we only have i think we only have four years of sprint

speed so yeah so we don't have dipped he dipped and came back last year so yeah he did dip a little in 17 and then he came back in 18 i haven't i don't think we have 19 yet but he's undoubtedly slower than when he was a rookie he's still very fast but yeah he is not if you go to his page on baseball savant they have the percentile rankings and various stat cast stats for this season he's at 94th percentile Sprint speed for this year Which So you know maybe As a rookie he would have been 99th percentile Or 100th or whatever

He would have been maybe the fastest player Period but he's at 94th percentile He's very close to the fastest player And that is at this age Because it really Seemed like he was slowing down A few years ago and that is at this age because it it really seemed like he was slowing down a few years ago and that he was still great but he was going to be differently great and maybe he was

going to be more of a power hitter and he's only stolen one base this year so far so yeah i don't know i think he started slow steals wise last year too and kind of sped up but uh yeah it looked like he was going to be one type of player and then he has become a different type of player he's always becoming a different type of player who is equally amazing so he's the best so i'm looking at the sprint speed leaderboard now and uh two things one is that albert pools is not the slowest runner in baseball this year oh who is again we're uh we have not again this is the the slowest runner in baseball this year. Oh, who is? Again, we are not again. This is the first time I've been saying this.

It's early in the season. And this is a I'm guessing a very small number of sprinting opportunities for each player. But Albert has sped up from last year from twenty two point two feet per second to twenty two point five. He's now only second slowest. He is just slightly slower than Yonder alonzo but he could be third with the next run brian mccann is now the slowest ah okay but the other thing that's fun about this leaderboard is that byron buxton is like usain bolt at the end of a race he is so far ahead of everybody else it looks like everybody else has just like fallen off the race he's like

way ahead of he's are you you're not looking at this but i mean it doesn't sound like that much when you just say the numbers it's like he's at 30.3 feet per second and then the next is mondesi at 30.0 and the next is socrates burrito at 29.5, which doesn't sound like that much, but visually, like that's the difference between Brito, who's the number three runner in baseball, and Yasiel Puig. Yeah, who's very far down, I would imagine. I mean, kind of. Not that far down, but yeah.

It's far back away. Okay. Anyway. Yep. All right. We done? Yeah. Okay.

So appreciate Christian Jelic while he's streaking. Everyone go watch him. One more thing I meant to mention. The Royals lost on Monday Yeah. Okay. So appreciate Christian Jelic while he's streaking. Everyone go watch him. One more thing I meant to mention, the Royals lost on Monday night. Their record slipped to 7-16. They did not steal any bases. However, they do lead the major leagues with 27 stolen bases, which is five more than the next best team. So through 23 games, they have stolen 27 bags. That puts them on pace for 190, and they didn't get off to a great start either so it seems like they're shaping up to be what we thought they'd be a bad team that steals a lot of bases and runs a lot so that is kind of exciting if they were to get to 190 they would be only the third team to do it this century after the 2007 Mets who stole 200 and the 2009

Rays who stole 194 I'm hoping they can pick up the pace, maybe get to 200. So, all right. Royals are fun, just as I had hoped. And Terrence Gore, by the way, 13 plate appearances. He's 5 for 12 with a walk and four steals. I love it. That's a 199 WRC plus. Not bad.

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