Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1378: Five-Tool Podcast

Episode Date: May 21, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Sean Doolittle’s delivery and Steve Pearce’s even/odd-year pattern, then discuss current record chases (involving Cody Bellinger, Christian Yelich, and the Orioles’ pitching staff), whether it’s possible to have exciting record chases based on Statcast stats, the significance of five-tool players (and scouting tools) in 2019, and more, plus […]

I got so much face that I will waste it now Put me where I belong I got lots to tell you Where'd you get to? I need a friend to be strong I've gone all over the area Kick me in the stomach Can you help me along the way?

Good morning and welcome to episode 1378 of Effectively Wild, the baseball podcast from Fangraphs.com. I'm Sam Miller of ESPN along with Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello, Ben. Hello. How are you? I'm doing all right. I always like to check in on you when I read the Monday morning exit survey of Ringer staff on Game of Thrones.

But today I was reading and reading and reading and you weren't in it. I wasn't. No, we had so many people who were willing to participate in those that we kind of had a rotation. So I just do them every other week. And this was not my week. And there are no more weeks. So that's that. Interesting.

I did not know that there was a limit on how many of those they would want. I would have thought they would want as many as possible. I don't get to the end of it and think that's all I wanted. I want the whole point is I want more to read. Yeah. it and think that's all i wanted i i want the whole point is i want more to read yeah well not enough game of thrones coverage is probably not a complete you can make about the ringer for the past there is something now there's really something very satisfying though about the sort of uh short answer format of game of thrones coverage i i have to admit that i feel a bit

exhausted with every kind of like like 1600 word meditation uh on some topic like those i do not have time for those it's it's too much but um the you know the the scrolling type article is good um michael michael bauman your other podcast co-host said one of the darkest maybe the darkest thing that i read about the the show uh this season which is that the dragon i don't know i don't learn names the dragon uh he is he is now and i am so rattled by that. So rattled. Spoilers. My goodness.

You can delete this if you want. I don't like saying it out loud. Okay. All right. So, I don't know. Listeners, we just talked about Game of Thrones and then Ben deleted it, I think. We'll find out. Ben, how are you?

I'm doing okay. Yeah, I think Tuesdayuesday first thing in the morning seems a little early for huge spoilers just just trying to have some consideration for delete yeah all right delete the thing delete it yeah you're welcome everyone all right uh so uh ben you got any uh anything you want to talk about baseball wise i? I don't think so. I don't really have any banter right now. Nothing? Literally nothing? I think possibly nothing, but I'm mulling it over, and maybe later in the episode I'll have some banter after the banter part.

So we'll see. All right. Did you see anything at all about the Shondoolittle Cubs balk brouhaha? Yeah, so the Cubs challenge because he has a toe tap, and they argued that it was illegal. Don't say anything else. Okay. How much have you explored on this topic?

Very little. I read about it, but I didn't do any video analysis or anything. Okay, you read about it. Have you seen any video? Did you see any video? I saw a GIF, but I don't think I even watched the GIF, so no. All right. I read an article that described the brouhaha

and kept talking about toe tap. And I have no idea what he's doing that could be controversial. So, do you know what they're talking about from what you've read? Like, where is the toe tap? What is happening? Well, my sense is that it was kind of a Kershaw-esque toe tap. I think the Cubs argument was that it's like a Carl Edwards Jr. thing, which he started doing this spring and was told not to and was not able to do. And the Nationals are arguing that it's not quite the same as that thing, that it's similar to people like Kershaw who do a thing that is not illegal.

And I think maybe if there is a difference, it's that there's a difference between a toe tap and a glide. Like if you do the toe tap, but there's no forward motion during the toe tap, then maybe it's okay. And so if there is a toe tap, then maybe it treads into illegal territory. So that is my understanding of the grounds of the argument, but I haven't actually weighed the evidence myself. Ah, okay. So I, having not—wow, I'm now watching it. grounds of the argument but i haven't actually weighed the evidence myself ah okay so i having not wow i'm now watching it i i was imagining something having to do with him just standing there tapping his toe i didn't know if it had to do with his delivery or his just standing there or his move to first base all of which seemed like they could have some sort of toe tap and i just

figured maybe he was standing there tapping his toe but now i'm watching this carl edwards one holy cow have you seen the carl edwards one no uh it's wild yeah it's clearly different right i mean that's yeah the carl edwards one he he really just stops and then starts again but yeah the doolittle one looks just like kershaw anyway this is the importance of gifts and this is why i think gifts should be free. All right, I wanted to talk briefly about Steve Pearce, and then we'll talk about what I actually want to talk about, which is record paces. But Steve Pearce, I sort of vaguely knew that Steve Pearce was having a bad year, and I also was aware coming into the year that Steve Pearce is one of the all-time odd-even, odd-even guys. Are you familiar with odd-even Steve Pearce? Not really. Jeff and I used to talk about, odd, even guys. Are you familiar with odd, even Steve Pierce? Not really. Jeff and I used to talk about who was our...

It was the guy who was on the Tigers and who hit the ball, who tried to catch the ball and hit it over the fence that one time. Yes. Who was that? And then he went to Cleveland. He was not Tyler Naquin. He was not Tony Armis. Why am I coming up with names that are not even close?

I'm going to look up 2011 Tigers Tigers that seems like a fair guess oh Ryan Rayburn Ryan Rayburn yes sorry Ryan Rayburn but yeah he's had more down than up lately it's just why his he couldn't come to our minds but that's yeah right yeah Ryan Rayburn extreme that's. Ryan Rayburn did have a little run there. I think Steven Pierce, Steve Pierce, I think maybe even outdoes him. So Steve Pierce at the moment has 300 OPS this year. And of course, last we saw Steve Pierce, he was the World Series MVP. So just right there, you have an odd even thing. But Steve Pierce has played 13 years now in his career, which is already crazy. 13 years of Steve Pierce and every odd year but one has been worse than the even year

that preceded it. And every even year but one has been worse than the odd year that preceded it. And if you now take the entire Steve Pierce catalog, if you treat him as two different players, so Steve Pierce in his even years has an 851 OPS, which to put that in perspective, since the dead ball era ended in the live ball era, there are 1,568 players in history with at least 3,000 plate appearances. And Pierce would rank 160th out of those. So he would be a 90th percentile all-time major leaguer, 90th percentile of all the major league regulars in history, which is great.

He has a 688 OPS in all those odd years, which would put him 1300th out of 1568, which is 18th percentile. So in odd years, he is one of the worst hitters in Major League history. He's tied with Edwin Encarnacion and Orlando Cepeda on one end and with Mariano Duncan and Darnell Coles on the other end. And these are, I don't know, it's a weird thing, the odd even thing, because there's nothing, i can't imagine anything real

about them there's not not really even anywhere you can go with it except to note that it's happening and go huh that's weird they're not actually very fun and yet we always notice them there's there's been a long line of odd even guys and odd even teams in uh in my baseball lifetime and so steve pierce is now in my opinion, the ultimate odd even guy. Huh, okay. Yeah, I really hadn't noticed that pattern. Yeah, 335 right now. And it might be it.

He might be about to get squeezed off the team when Pedroia comes back. There's going to be a roster crunch. And the World Series MVP, who last year was extremely good for them and who they brought back with a uh you know they brought back as a free agent and everything just might not be good enough for that team right now until until next year uh which is again like that i just said that that's part of the non-fun

part of odd even is then like we act like it's gonna happen again next year but it shouldn't and there's no we don't have any mechanism by which it would and yet i just said it we say it odd even stuff's not that fun you have to say it i said it all right so i wanted to talk uh in a larger view about a few record paces or a few paces i don't know when it's okay to start using paces generally but there's a few there's a few things that have been happening and i just wanted to explore them three or four four of them, if that's okay. Yeah. Before I get into that, just a couple of, I guess maybe this is more like banter,

but maybe it's not. This is stuff that I was just noticing while I was preparing to talk about various people on various chases. Shohei Otani, I don't know if you knew this, but he is fifth in the majors in exit velocity right now. Uh-huh. Didn't, but I saw his second homer, which was a very long one.

Uh-huh. He is up three miles an hour from last year. When you're watching Shohei Otani hit home runs, are you rooting for moderation, or is there a concern that he's going to hit too many home runs, and then you won't get to see him pitching next year, that if he's too good a hitter that they won't let him pitch? There is a little concern about that. I think that he is very committed to continuing the two-way thing and I doubt that his mind will be changed even if he hits really well, even if he's the best hitter in baseball. I don't think he'll say, you know what, I don't want to jeopardize this.

I don't want to pitch anymore, but it's possible that the Angels will and that they'll lean on him to do that. So I'm a little worried about that. I mean, I think that they'll want to keep him happy. And so unless he really has some sort of extraordinary season where he's just so good that you can't imagine taking him out of the lineup ever, that that won't come to pass. So I'm not actively worried about it right now i hope that he does well enough that i have to worry about that okay all right uh and then the other thing is that jason castro currently has the second highest expected woba in baseball uh all right i was definitely not aware of that um so the jason castro thing got me wondering a

quick question for you which is what do you think will be the first stat cast stat the first the first thing that didn't exist before stat cast and does exist with stat cast that we will that will have widespread recognition as a record so not not a one act thing not farthest home run or fastest but for a season when wet what will be the first stat cast record and when will it come and so here are the things that basically i think it could plausibly be these would qualify as stat stats and that we have so uh expected wobba or expected batting average so one of the expected stats exit velo uh your average exit velo for either a hitter or a pitcher, spin rate for a pitcher, sprint speed for a batter, outs above average for a fielder,

barrels for a batter, or something else. And you can tell me what that something else is that we will either get from StatCast or that StatCast will start, that will either become public that isn't now or that we will start measuring at some point in the future with StatCast. So what will be the first record that is, you know, like a headline record that like

that there's a chase for it? Gosh, I'm trying to think of all those options. And the one that stands out to me most is maybe the average exit velo for a hitter, just because that's probably the StatCast stat that I see cited most often and that generates a lot of interest. If John Carlos Stanton or Luke Voigt or Aaron Judge or other Yankees hit baseballs really hard, then you see that. It's like in the headline at MLB.com, you know, John Carlos Stanton hits 120 mile per hour ground out or whatever. And so I do see that cited as a record for single events. And so I could see it perhaps being cited as a full season record too. I mean, that's kind of like the closest thing to a batting title race or something. It's just an exit velo race. I don't know that that really

excites me that much, but if like Stanton and Judge are extreme outliers, or I guess they can't be extreme outliers if they're both in the same territory, but if someone came along who hit the ball even harder, then maybe. And if there's enough of a sample that we actually care about the record, because at this point you're talking 2015 to 2019, it's just not long enough to really be a satisfying record. You always have to qualify it maybe in the future if someone comes along and hits the ball even harder than those guys that would be meaningful except that if he hits the ball really hard like probably the headline is just that he's a really good hitter more so than he hits the ball really hard it'll be like he was

a home run champion or he won a batting title or he's the best hitter in baseball and the hitting the ball really hard is kind of a cool fact about it it helps you explain why he's good but it's also kind of obvious if you see him and it's less satisfying than just the production itself so maybe that's not it maybe maybe sprint speed is a better answer sprint speed's weird though because like you kind of like it's sort of settled by by like your sprint speed is not likely to fluctuate the way that other record stats do from year to year like you're not going to have the outlier sprint speed year where you're like ah he was a 28 foot per second guy and but then he was he had a really good year and he ran 34 feet per second

there's no roger maris of sprint yeah and you can't even tell the difference really between the number one guy and the number two guy i guess if you had a guy who was way above everyone else that would certainly be notable i don't know would that number go down in history though like you know oh he is 33 feet per second or whatever or would you just say that guy was the fastest guy and and here's the number that tells you why yeah yeah i don't know i don't think that works yeah the other thing is that unlike the expected stats which are published in real time and exit velocities which are published in real time sprint speeds you don't go what was his speed on that sprint you you just sort of see

his seasonal average because i i think this specifically is your x percentage of max effort runs and so like you don't even know whether it's going to be in the sample uh in real time let alone what it was in real time and so it's a kind of a hard thing to watch and know whether a guy advanced his pursuit of the record, which is a large part of the joy of a record chase. Ultimately, the records that we care about are results, right? They're not process. No. I mean, something like expected WOBA, I mean, first of all, that could probably change. Like expected WOBA, you always have to have these qualifiers like, well, it counts this and it counts that, but it doesn't necessarily count this and it's not park adjusted and all this stuff. And ultimately, most people are going to say, what do I care of what his expected WOBA was? What did he actually do? What did his team benefit from? So I just don't see that catching on. Like all this stuff is really valuable from an analytical perspective, and it helps us to understand where the numbers come from.

But ultimately, it's the numbers that we care about. And unless we start playing baseball based on expected stats, which is not going to happen, then I don't think that's going to supplant the traditional records. additional records. Yeah. Expected stats really have a hard time, especially in this kind of field, because like you say, if you have, let's say you set a record for, you know, expected or for exit VLO. Well, you're probably also having an, like, you know, maybe you hit 58 home runs. So then you, or maybe you hit 64 or maybe you hit 74. So in one case, maybe you have another record and then nobody's going to care about your expected stat because they have a real record that they can pay attention to. And if you don't set another record, then it's like a lot of, I don't know,

people are like, ah, come on, don't tell me he was better than he was. Like people don't always like the, like you can prove anything with statistics kind of a thing, right? Like he didn't set another record. You can't tell me that he should have now it feels in a weird way almost kind of like petty and yeah so yeah i don't uh i don't i don't think that's working either yeah and something like barrels like a accounting stat can be a satisfying record yeah much easier to have a counting stat yeah except barrels i mean a barrel can be an out sometimes a barrel is uh for people who don't Yeah, much easier to explain what that is. You can have a barrel that is not a good result.

And so ultimately it kind of comes down to, well, do you care about barrels or do you care about homers or extra base hits or what a slugging percentage was? It does have analytical value. I know that like your rate of barrels is pretty predictive. Barrels is pretty predictive. So I'm not saying don't look at it, but I'm saying I just can't imagine setting the single season barrels record or the all-time barrels record coming anywhere close to hits or homers.

Isn't a strikeout kind of a process stat, though, for a pitcher? Like, a strikeout is, it's just an out on the way to getting out of the inning. So it's not the inning. You have not prevented the team from scoring in that inning. You've just gotten an out. And we like strikeouts because they're a particularly evocative kind of out,

that they show a certain kind of dominance that other outs don't show. And so, like, in a way, like, we love strikeouts, but they're not telling you necessarily, for instance, whether the pitcher pitched well that game. You can pitch really, you can pitch poorly and strike a lot of guys out. You can, as has been discussed recently, you can strike out the side in the inning and also give up six runs in an inning. So strikeouts are somewhat detached from quality, but we think of them as being a fairly predictive

type of performance. And so we, we revere them. And I don't know if it was always, I mean, I guess it probably wasn't always that way because strikeouts weren't a thing in the, you know, in pitching analysis, particularly until somewhat, somewhat later in the development of the game. And so maybe we're just thinking about this from the lens of people who were raised on baseball card stats and who see process stats as being only analytical not actually um like familiar or whatever they're not crucial to the game itself

but maybe if you were raised seeing these things all the time uh they would not they would not be kind of uh cordoned off in the analytical bucket. Maybe you would pay attention to them. I don't know, though. It's hard to imagine. It seems to me that the answer, given what we know, what we have, I think the answer would definitely be outs above average. But to the second part of the question, if any of these are, the second part of the question, though, is when it would happen. And it would have to be decades before we have outs above average would have enough history that it would mean anything at it would have to be decades before we have outs above average would have enough history that it would mean anything at all. I mean, certainly if someone sets the

outs above average record as a defender this year, it would not be on SportsCenter. It would not get noticed in any publications other than, you know, MLB.com or a couple of sites that pay a lot of attention to these things. So it would be decades from now, right? And it would count on there being a sort of consistency in the data that we use and the way that we compute these things that heretofore we have not had over the last 15 years, where we're constantly changing the way that we measure things and what we can track and how we track it and how we define it. And so it seems like we don't even have the environment where it could possibly develop into that right now right well we've had defensive runs saved and uzr then those things since like 2002 and if someone set the highest drs record this year we would know about it it

would be mentioned we would probably talk about it at some point on this podcast there would be blog posts about it but it wouldn't be earth-shattering news. No one would be tuning in to see if that guy made an out-of-zone play or something to break the all-time single-season DRS record. That's going back now more than 15 years, and I think you'd need much more time to do that. And it's also, can an above average stat even be interesting in that way? Is it even a satisfying record chase? It just, you need like a, you need a baseline that is not just kind of the league average.

I feel like you need a number. You need to have the highest batting average. You need to have the most homers. It has to be like something you can see very clearly you have to be able to watch a game you should know when the guy breaks the record in that moment i don't know if that's always a qualification for a satisfying record chase but it might be just like yeah can you can you watch it can you name any good record where you had to find out the next day whether it was broken yeah do you know in the moment can you stop the game and put the message on the scoreboard and have the guy come out and tip his cap because everyone knows he just did it or is it like well we got to wait for the stats

to calculate and maybe tomorrow he'll be ahead by a tenth of a run or something it's it's just not satisfying all right it's the same as like even I mean, we've talked about war as a record and whether that is satisfying, given that it's always evolving and it's relative to other nebulous players. And also you can't really see it happen. So yeah, it's a challenge. We've kind of, I'm glad we have the traditional stats for record chases. I don't know that sabermetric stats that we use for analysis are really filling that role, but it's okay.

We still have the old school ones and we can still look at the new ones. Yeah, it's weird though because like, so we're about to talk about batting average, which only exists for record purposes at this point. Like I don't care about Cody.

As soon as Cody Bellinger's hitting 361, then it's like a non, I will never look at his batting average again. I don't know what Christian Yllinger is hitting 361, then it's like a non... I will never look at his batting average again. I don't know what Christian Jelic is hitting. I don't know what anybody's hitting right now for the most part. But it exists. I mean, it's like a top five record that I could see broken this year.

Well, I mean, we've talked about how a 57-game hitting streak is the most fun that baseball could produce in the current moment. A 57-game hitting streak is the most fun that baseball could produce in the current moment. And hitting streaks, I mean, are completely nonsense other than the fact that they're fun to watch, that they're tense and exciting. There's nothing particularly notable about getting exactly one hit a day as opposed to getting two in one game and none the next. Orlando Cabrera, for instance, example that we remember from this podcast a month ago and the hits can be lucky and they can be dribblers and it doesn't yeah they don't have to be homers they don't have to you might have seven plate appearances in a game and you might get walked four times and that might end your hitting streak and like it's really hitting streaks are just really like what but but they're fun and so like the uh in the same way batting average is not

is not particularly meaningful to my life in any way and yet it exists and it will exist for a very long time as the potential uh for this milestone and so we're gonna have like all these stats that don't matter to us but are what we measure records by and then all these stats that do matter to us but they have no records they have like basically no defined record at all that's i don't know nothing wrong with that just you're right as an observation interesting should we talk about some records sure or some paces or some things uh all right so uh cody bellinger is now hitting i believe 405 cody bellinger i know we don't predict baseball when we can avoid it but cody Bellinger is now hitting, I believe, 405. Cody Bellinger, I know we don't predict baseball when we can avoid it, but Cody Bellinger is not going to hit 400 this year.

All right. It's just not. There's no chance. It's zero chance. There's no way he's going to do it. And it's May 20th, and he's just not going to do it. I think when I wrote an article a couple years ago about how 400 is basically almost entirely impossible now in a way that it didn't used to be, the 400 chases have also gone away. And in the past 10 years, I think that the latest, if I'm remembering this right, the latest 400 chase has survived is to May 22nd.

So Cody Billinger is only a couple of days away from having the deepest 400 batting average in the last decade. And I care. It's funny. You wrote the piece last February about how no one will ever hit 400 again. And just a few days ago, your colleague Brad Doolittle wrote, is the 300 hitter a thing of the past? So we're now at a point where even questioning whether you can hit 300. So yeah, Bellingeranger's not gonna hit 400 and so does it uh so here's my question does it seem weird to you that i am totally into this 400 chase

even though i know that he like to me there is something really significant about him being at 400 instead of 399 today and like the longer he can keep his batting average above 400 instead of slightly below it uh is like a big victory for me it's the first thing i'm checking every day uh does it make sense knowing that a 400 batting average is impossible that there is zero chance that he is going to hit 400 that he won't be hitting 400 two months from now to want him to be hitting 402 days from now? I have not gotten invested in it myself. It's like we were talking about last week with a pitcher who is on pace to strike out 21, but he's throwing so many pitches that you know he'll never have a chance to do it.

Why even get excited about it? So that's kind of how I feel about Pellinger. I mean, I have marveled at his stat line many times this season. Just all the stats, the triple slash stats, the way that he's leading everyone in WRC Plus by a wide margin. The fact that he has like four war or five war. Is he up to five yet at baseball reference? I don't know. 4.6, I think. Yeah, 4.6 in 46 games, which is great for math, for doing math. Yeah. So I've definitely enjoyed that. I have not paid particularly attention to the batting average and have not gotten my hopes up at all there, which it doesn't sound like you've gotten your hopes up, really. So are you, you're very invested in it without getting your hopes up at the same time? Or is there some small part of you that every day he does it thinks well maybe no no no no chance it's about it's about how long it can stay active because i

care because i want to care because to me the great the great thing to root for is reasons to care reasons to be invested and the long every day he's above 400 i'm invested in it without thinking that it's real. It's weird because I think this is another way of asking the question. If he ends the season at 399, we will all consider that a great loss. And if he ends the season at 401, we will all consider it an incredible thing. And the last day of the season, we will be really rooting for that difference of one or two points that separates disappointment, failure, failure from success and this thing. And that makes sense. I also feel that way right now

on May 20th, even though he's a very, very far from the final day of the season and B because it's not the final day of the season he can go four for five the next day and yet get back over so i'm trying to figure out why it feels like it matters to me that it's over 400 right now well i mean like it's just that 400 because 400 is the threshold that we have decided is the number, is the weird number, like I feel excited that he has done it for slightly longer. Yeah, for him to be doing it even on May 20th is really impressive. So every day he does it, he's like fighting against all of these forces that are dragging everyone's batting average down. And he's not even a guy who hit for a particularly high average in

the past. I mean, by modern standards, you know, 260-ish is a fine batting average, but he was not at all a guy you would have thought would be the one to challenge 400 this deep into the season. So the fact that he's doing it, that he's made all these other improvements, it's really impressive. And I guess every day he does it, it feels like it makes him more sympathetic or, you know, you can root for the underdog. He's, everyone is an underdog when it comes to hitting 400 and he is showing persistence in the face of an impossible challenge. While we're on the topic of stat cast stats, one of the reasons that he's hitting over 400 is because he cut his strikeout rate almost in half from his first two seasons, which is a tremendous accomplishment. He is

homering a lot, which helps he is striking out not a lot, which helps and he has a 400 BABIP, which helps and 400 BABIPs are basically impossible. I if I'm remembering this right, there have been like five in the last like 75 years or something like that. So I'll correct that in a minute because I have the article in front of me, but they're very rare. So that's part of the reason he's not going to do it. But for what it is worth, this is not a fluky Babbitt. I mean, it's not a sustainable Babbitt, but he has a 394 expected batting average. According to StatCast, he is actually hitting 404 and on balls that he actually hits

so non-strikeouts he has a 496 expected batting average 496 expected batting average and he is actually has a 478 batting average on non-strikeouts so if anything he is slightly underperforming expectations um which is uh uh not not meant to convince anybody that he's doing this, but just to appreciate what it is that he's doing. He also, by the way, just keeps getting faster. He is now 95th percentile sprint speed. He is, I think, 19th out of 400 qualified batters in sprint speed. He's one of the fastest people on earth.

Well, on a baseball field, at least. Yeah. David Adler has a piece about that today at MLB.com, the unsung skill helping Bellinger chase 400, which is that he is able to beat out all these infield hits because he's super fast, even though you don't think of him that way. How many infield hits does he have? fast even though you don't think of him that way how how many infield hits does he have i do not know i know that uh according to this article he has the most sub four second home to first times this year he's done that 12 times already all right uh i believe if i'm reading this correctly the uh only four players since world war ii have managed a babbIP over 400 for a season. Uh-huh. I see.

It's very rare. One of them was Manny Ramirez. Huh. Yeah. One of them was Jose Hernandez. Okay. Remember him? Yeah.

It was the same year. I think it was the same year. The strikeout year? I think it was the year he set the all-time strikeout record. Yeah. Which I actually, I think he did that twice, but this was the year that I think he set it again. The other two were Rod Carew and Roberto Clemente. All right. So we've talked about Cody Bellinger hitting 400. Now let's talk about Christian Yelich, who has 19 home runs. And I have two things I want to talk

about with Christian Yelich. One of them is I want to know what he's on pace for. This is a question. That is the question. So how many home runs is Christian Yelich on pace for. This is a question. That is the question. How many home runs is Christian Jelic on pace for? So these are the things you need to know. He has 19 home runs, and the Brewers have played 49 games. And so one way of thinking about it is that he is on pace to hit 62.8 home runs. The other, though, is that he took five games off. So in 44 games, he has 19 home runs. And if you assume he's not going to miss five out of every 49 Brewers games, but that he could in fact play the rest, then he would be on pace for 68 home runs. So which one, Ben? What is he on pace for? Is Christian Jelic on pace for 63 or 68 home runs? That is the topic that I brought to this podcast today. What is Christian Jelic on pace for 63 or 68 home runs? That is the topic that I brought to this podcast today.

What is Christian Jelic on pace for? I think he's on pace for more than 62.8, but you wouldn't project him to miss zero games over the rest of the season. So you'd have to figure out how many games you actually expected to miss, but it should be a lower proportion probably of the Brewers' remaining games than he has played thus far, right? So you said he's missed five out of 49? Exactly. Yeah. So, I mean, he's probably not going to miss 10% of their games going forward, or you probably wouldn't project him to. So I'd say somewhere in between those two numbers. All right. The other thing about Christian Jelic is that he has nine steals, and he has not been caught. He is on pace to steal 30 bases. Again, depending on how you want to do this,

I could make you tell me how many steals he's on pace to have, but roughly 30 steals, and he has not been caught. So he is on pace to set a record for most times stealing a base without getting caught. That's not what I, that's a transition. That's a segue because I want to talk about five tools. Christian Jelic is a, would you say he's a well-rounded player?

I would. Would you say that he is like, I mean, arguably he is the well-rounded player until he started hitting massive amounts of home runs, which is a fairly new phenomenon. He was a five war, a regular four to five war player with, as I wrote about not long ago, without any standout skill that he never led the league in anything. He never hit more than 21 homers.

He never stole more than 21 bases. He never had black ink he was a great all-star down ballot mvp type of guy because he did everything well he was as balanced as they came right he's a perfectly balanced player yeah and then he started hitting tons of home runs and so in a way he's not balanced anymore but he is just as well-rounded as he was he's just as complete a player as he was more home runs does not make him worse than everything else right sure so is he a five to a player well is he no he's not yeah i don't know he's not fast enough right he is fast enough he's definitely fast enough yeah he is the arm he's not yeah he's

almost as fast as bellinger in fact he's uh he's a 90th percentile runner wow but he uh he's almost as fast as Bellinger. In fact, he's a 90th percentile runner. But at this point in his career, I would probably give him defense. I would probably give him the catch tool, whatever that is, however you define that. But his arm is definitely below average. If you look at his arm strength, maybe not accuracy, but that is not generally, as I understand it, factored in when scouts are rating arms, it's mostly strength. So anyway, he throws about five miles an hour less hard than the typical outfielder does. And that's typical outfielder, not even maximum. So he's not a five tool player. And so I wrote an article that hasn't run yet uh but is is going to run

in the next couple days about how five tool that how we we all say five tool a lot like five tool is one of our favorite ways to compliment a player and that that is especially true i think we're in a five tool moment in a way we're saying it a lot because all the young players in baseball uh one of the nice things about being young is that a lot of the time it means that you're still fast and you're still good at defense and so the superstars in our game we have an like by some way of thinking about it an unprecedented an unprecedented number of do everything superstars the superstars from last season for instance the seven what was it seven mvp six m six MVP candidates in the AL.

Lindor is do everything guy. Jose Ramirez, do everything guy. Betts and Trout are ultimate do everything guys. Bregman is kind of a do everything guy. And then in the NL, you had Yelich and Baez who are in ways do everything guys. And Cody Bellinger now, as we've just talked about, now that he's hitting 400 and so on, is a do everything guy. But then you run into, I think, some problems with the five tool. Now, as we've just talked about, now that he's hitting 400 and so on, is a do-everything guy.

But then you run into, I think, some problems with the five-tool designation. And so I wrote an article about the misunderstandings of the phrase five-tool and what we get wrong and why, even though Christian Jelic is not one, it does not really say anything about a player who I think is as balanced and as well-rounded as they come. So I just wanted to ask you, Ben, if you wanted to make the case that a major league player, we're not talking about amateurs because I think that the main misunderstanding about the five tools is that you can't really, I don't think, import them onto the majors.

They don't apply in the same way, whereas they really, really apply and are really powerful when you're talking about guys who are four years away from the majors. They're misleading and in a lot of ways come up short at the major league level, in my opinion. But if you wanted to make the case that Christian Jelic or Mike Trout or Mookie Betts is extremely well-rounded and does everything well and is close to the perfect ballplayer, I'm just curious, what five things would you say about him? Huh. Well, I mean, I think the main shortcoming of the five tools is that plate discipline is not one of the tools. And so sometimes people refer to that as the sixth tool. And obviously that's something that with Chout, for instance, that is a quality he excels at, and that's been part of his recent success. And you would definitely want to mention that sort of thing. And often with these players, an improvement in

plate discipline will coincide with other more obvious changes. So like Jelic, I think maybe Suong at better pitches, which has been part of why he has hit so many homers. So that's a big part of the trout mythology is that he's this big guy who hits lots of homers but he's also been one of the fastest guys or perhaps the fastest guy when he came up and when you watch him it seems like he's way faster than he should be with that body so that's something you'd want to mention so you know hitting for power making contact it doesn't necessarily have to be hitting for average but making contact. It doesn't necessarily have to be hitting for average, but making contact and getting on base, which I guess is sort of similar to plate discipline perhaps. But that stuff and power and defense and arm is like, you know, I mean, if you say five tools, you're kind of equating the five tools

and you're giving the same assumed weight and value to each of the tools which clearly is not the case you know although more the case for an amateur it makes a lot more sense for an amateur than it yeah that's that's true but you know if you had to choose obviously you want someone with a good power tool or hit tool or whatever more so than an arm tool that's not going to keep you from the majors if you don't have a good arm, whereas if you're not good at those other things, it might. So that's part of the problem with it. It doesn't include everything that is important to performance. And as you say, it's something you can really dream on when a guy is years away from the majors and he has the physical skills. You care more about the physical tools when you're far away from the majors, because that can tell you what that might translate to in terms of production. Whereas once you're in the

majors and you know what the production is, it doesn't even really matter that much what the tools are. The tools are what they are, and they're probably not going to get better. And what matters is how you convert those tools into production. I will also say that this is probably a good time for tool analysis, just because we have the tools to gauge toolness now with StatCast. I think that has made it a little bit easier. I remember writing something for BP years ago, where I kind of like did a statistical search. I quoted it.

Yeah. Yeah. I quoted it. You're probably not going to like it. Okay. Well, so I, yeah, I remember, statistical search yeah yeah yeah you're probably not gonna like it okay well so i yeah i remember i i don't remember what categories i used but i used proxies like i probably used like speed score or something some stat for speed because we didn't know the speed other than just what you could see with your eyes and now we have exit speed we have speed like. I think Neil Payne just recently did something for FiveThirtyEight where he looked for the best power speed players.

And that used to be a stat, like a Bill James power speed combo. And now Neil just used exit velocity and sprint speed. We just literally know power and speed. Although you could quibble with whether exit velocity is actually a fair measure of power because some guys hit the ball hard but don't hit for that much power so anyway i think it's a good time to do this kind of analysis because we can get closer to what scouts used to talk about when they talked about tools whereas in the past we would have to use these proxies to kind of derive tools from performance yeah i agree you agree. You used base running runs, by the way. Okay.

I'm not going to give you my answer because I don't want to misrepresent it. It might change, et cetera. Read the article when it comes out. But I will just note, this was not in the article, but while researching this and going through old stuff, I found a long list of things that were proposed as quote, the sixth tool.

Yeah. And these are a few of them. Durability was offered as a sixth tool, which is a pretty good one. Command of every situation, character, grit, which I actually think is if you, grit as you and Travis talk about it in your book is actually a really good one and if you had a way to project it what how how do you guys define grit what i'm trying to find the the sentence in the book right now because we we do talk about something as a sixth tool but you know like grit is is just work ethic practice like actually persisting persisting i feel like it's persisting like when when something

is hard do you are you the type of person which i am in a lot of cases not uh who um who rather than get feel defeated or rather than uh say oh i didn't really want it anyway uh pushes the road quoting from the book in an era of optimization, a player's approach to practice is a once unsung sixth tool that affects the other five. That's exactly right. I think that's a good way of putting it.

Hustle was offered as a sixth tool. And in fact, I think I saw a scouting report where hustle was actually a sixth tool alongside the other five. Plate discipline, team player, whether you're a team player. Size is an interesting sixth tool alongside the other five plate discipline team player whether you're a team player size is a interesting sixth tool for forecasting future performance and then uh michael brantley's father was offered as a sixth tool in an article about michael brantley it was noted that he had five tools but his dad was arguably the sixth i guess that's not really generalizable

but no anyway i just think the point is that uh christian yelich uh all right last thing is um the orioles pitching staff is uh still on pace to allow a record number of home runs for a team at this point they are on pace to allow uh i think it's 78 more than the all-time record um and i'm curious just to know uh how much you are paying attention to this how much you want to see it and how much uh it is a thing i don't think i care about this one. Yeah. Dan Zimborski wrote about this recently for Fangraphs, and I think he said, like, it's just, it's probably going to happen.

Like, it's not even that interesting because it seems so likely. I guess the ball could change at any moment, so you never really know. But that's a big part of it, obviously, is just the baseball and lots of homers being hit everywhere. part of it obviously is just the baseball and lots of homers being hit everywhere and i don't know there needs to be like some i don't know if it's like interesting that they're doing this because we all knew that the orioles were terrible and the orioles were coming off a historically awful season and it's not a surprise at all like when the yankees broke the all-time single season home run record that was not really that interesting because,

A, they were projected to do it. I think Jeff wrote an article before the season, like, hey, even the projections, which are fairly conservative, are saying that the Yankees are just going to break this record. And it had to do with the ballpark, and it had to do with the baseball flying all over the place. So that just wasn't that interesting to me. And giving up homers is even less interesting to me. I don't know what the records are for team staff homers allowed or even single season pitchers allowed. So it's not fun for Orioles fans, but it's not particularly fun for me either. I agree with you on that. I am not opposed to a team record. Like you're right that the any any sort of record

that has to do with home runs at this point is kind of like you have to interrogate how much you care about it just because you're not sure what you're seeing these days uh you're not sure what the what what is the effect at play here really um but uh but i do like a good team record from time to time i could see a team record that uh moved me but i am limiting it like a good team record from time to time. I could see a team record that moved me. But I am limiting it only to good team records. I have decided that a team record for failure means nothing to me, no matter what. No matter what it is. That would include the Marlins.

That doesn't mean that I won't enjoy their baseball reference team page. It doesn't mean that I won't find fun facts there that are worth sharing involving Chad Wallach or others. But to me, a good team record does sort of, you can kind of talk yourself into the idea that it is not just a collection of good players, but that something about that team is propelling them all onward. That even if each of them is all alone in the batter's box or on the mound, that there is a team aspect to it, that they are achieving something together, that they're making each other better, playing off each other, that they represent a vision, that they have been brought together for a purpose, that there is something going on that celebrates the concept of team and that together they are

achieving something incredible. But when it is a negative record like this, it just feels like a lousy collection of players. There's no real design to any of this. And all you've really done is, in your lack of care for this team, you have brought together a group of players who are a little worse than the groups of players that other people have carelessly thrown together um and uh it doesn't mean anything to me and so i i also um i guess

there is a part of me that because the orioles are on pace to break the record by 78 uh i guess there is a part of me right now on may 20th that does kind of like, I'd rather see him break it by a hundred than by 50. And so I'll check the box score and be like, ah, they gave up the first two home runs of the year to Jason Kipnis today. That sounds about right. But otherwise I do not particularly care what happens with this one. Do you feel cheated at all that we have not been granted record chases, home run record chases during this extremely high home run era? I'll tell you, Ben, I feel cheated that I have not seen a good Bryce Harper 50 home run chase. I don't know what is.

I mean, that was the bet. The bet was me. Smart me. Smart, foresightful me thinking this guy thinks we're going to have 2014 home run environment forever but i know things are going to change i can feel it and uh and i got what i bet on and it's just not coming close i have one close year i've had a lot of good aprils right well harper hasn't even played well some of these years but even the guys who are playing well are just not making a run at even, I mean, forget about Bonds, but like I would assume that some people would still consider

60, 61, 62 meaningful because some people are just going to say steroids, McGuire, Sosa, Bonds, they don't care. These are the, you know, quote unquote clean records and I'm going to celebrate this achievement, whether they should or not, that would happen. So we really haven't been given any sort of race. Stanton in 2017 with 59. I mean, he and Judge are the only guys who've hit 50 in this whole era. The league leaders most years have been like high 40s. It could be any other era's home run leader, and this is the high home run era. Now, if someone were to break the record now, then they would have the same sort of invisible asterisk attached to that too, just because we would all know that this is juiced ball, this is everyone hitting home runs, so it would be discounted, but it would still be fun to watch that chase. to watch that chase, and we just haven't gotten that.

And maybe this year we'll get it. I don't know. Maybe the homerun rate is just so high now that we will actually get it. Jelic is on pace, and Bellinger and Springer, those guys are close. They're in the neighborhood. So it's possible that one of them will hang on and actually make a real run at it. But because this era has been characterized by not just lots of homers, but this very democratic distribution of homers where everyone's hitting 20 and no one's hitting 60, we just haven't gotten that record chase. You know what I want to see is I want to see a guy,

by the way, I do think that 62 is significant. If someone hits 62, I would consider it significant. I'm not a guy who says, ah, well, that's the real record. 73 doesn't count. But I do think that, you know, I know. I know the deal. And to me, 62 is something that 73 isn't. And so I would celebrate it. I mean, I like them all.

Like I said, I'm constantly on the prowl for things to care about. And I would care greatly about a 62 chase. And so don't yell at me if I start talking about a 62. 73 was a thing too, though. I'm not acting like that. But anyway, what was I going to say? 62.

Oh, here's what I want to see, Ben. This is what I want to see. I want to see a guy hit, pick a number, 73 or 61 or 60 or anything but to to hit that many home runs through the last day of the season for a non-playoff team and then get traded no no i guess they wouldn't make up the game if the other team were a non-playoff team well they could well no i was gonna say then get traded to a team that has to make up a game but they wouldn't play it if it didn't have playoff implications so never mind i'm going to get to see that.

Forget I said it. Forget I said it along with what I said about Michael Bauman talking about the dragon. Okay. That's not a spoiler. People know there are dragons in that show. Yeah. All right. Anyway, so those are all my records.

Those are all my paces. Okay. You know, when you asked me if I had bent or I was weighing whether I wanted to like mention the Mets, because I feel like the Mets are like the topic right now, but I can't really figure out whether it's an interesting topic. So I don't, I didn't really have anything to say. It's like the Mets just got swept by the Marlins, which is about as bad a baseball thing as can happen right now. We were talking last week about how inept the Marlins are. So to get swept by the Marlins, that's a big black eye. But beyond that,

everyone's talking about Callaway being on the wobbly chair and maybe his squid is fried and now he's gotten the vote of confidence and there's been a press conference and I can't really tell what the upshot of it all is. It just feels to me like it's the Mets. It's like the Mets have all this baggage. So when anything happens to the Mets, it's like this kind of institutional suffering. And it's like the latest thing heaped on the pile of little Mets and all of that. But like, they're not doing that much worse than I thought they'd do. So I don't know. It's very early. They're like five games under 500. I thought they were like a 500-ish team. The guys who haven't been playing well are like guys I thought were pretty good. I thought Robinson Cano would be good this year. He has not been good. And now people are mad because he's been bad. And also like he didn't hustle a couple of times, which if you're mad about that, I guess you just haven't watched Robinson Cano for the last 15 years or so because that's kind of his thing. So when Callaway said this is a normal Major League Baseball season, I kind of feel like he's right.

Like Cespedes is hurt again, but Cespedes was already hurt. Mets have done a good job at developing young players, just some of the veterans, some of the guys they got via trade and signing who haven't worked out that well. But even so, I mean, they're in much better shape than the Nationals who they're playing right now. The problem with them always seems to be ownership and ownership hasn't changed. So it's the same problem. I mean, are the Mets news right now? Clearly they're news, but I don't really know what's new about them. I don't know. I don't, I don't have any, I don't want to, I don't want to late show banter about the Mets. I was waiting this whole time. Is this banter worthy?

And I can't decide whether it is or not. It's like every headline on every baseball site is the Mets right now. And I can't decide whether I'm interested in it at all. But I feel like obligated to mention that I'm also reading the headlines. I know the Mets are in the news right now. In 2013, I'm changing the subject now. Okay. I tried. In 2013, somebody was writing about Mike Trout and said that Mike Trout is the rare five-tool player, which is true now. But I mean, again, arguably at the time with his arm,

his arm is stronger now, but it wasn't at the time. But this said that there were arguably three five-tool players, Mike Trout, David Wright, and Robinson Cano. Does Robinson Cano strike you as a guy who in 2013 or ever was a five-tool player? Well, the thing with five-tool players

is that when you think of it, you have to decide, does five-tool mean that he's good at everything or just that he's average at everything? Generally speaking, average or better. Yeah. Which, if someone was average at everything, you could say he was a 5-2 player. Right. Right.

And it wouldn't be very satisfying. When you say 5-2 player, it's supposed to be this big compliment, and it doesn't necessarily have to be. Puig is probably a 5- player right yeah and and it's not like puig has i mean puig has generally been uh i don't know he like it's not like people are leaping out of their seats to um to talk about how great puig is he's just he's got he's got a good arm and he's got a good power and he's got a good everything right yeah uh so uh yeah anyway I forget I don't know why I hijacked to to bring the complication of Puig. Cano had average uh speed right and did he I think so he's I don't know I'm not sure I don't know I don't know either we didn't have stat cast then right uh I would not have thought that cano was necessarily average

speed what are you what is the average for is that is another thing like are catchers part of the average or is it only at your position that is the average is it all major leaguers that are average i also think that it's extremely difficult for a second baseman to have a plus arm now maybe cano is the exception but usually if you're a second baseman you probably are there because you don't have a plus arm um that's why you're not at third base usually or it's maybe at shortstop usually so I don't know it just seemed like a weird name to have uh to have appeared on this list of three uh-huh yeah that's right yeah something uh Craig Wright told me when I was talking to him for the

book, Craig Wright, kind of like the first official sabermetrician to work for a team. He worked for the Rangers in the early eighties and then other teams too. He was talking about, I think how a scout told him, cause he was sort of a hybrid stat head slash scout. And so he did some of both and he was talking about how your arm kind of determines your range to a great extent. Like arm is part of range because if you can get to a ball, but you can't make the throw, then it doesn't even really matter what your range was, right, for an infielder. So yeah, which is kind of an interesting way to think about it. And so like, if you have a great arm, then that gives you better effective range, because you can make a throw from farther away. And of course, you can also position yourself farther back, because you know, you can make that throw, which means that you can get to more balls, which is kind of an interesting way to think about it, because the tools separate those things. The tools separate everything, but of course they're all somewhat interconnected,

or at least a few of them are. So range, I mean, your arm is connected to your range. Your power is probably somewhat connected to your ability to hit for average, at least a little bit. Just helps determine what pitches you get to face and whether you can actually turn them into productive power and high average. So it's not really discrete abilities, even though it's kind of broken down

that way. Yeah, well, I ever, I mean, everybody who describes the tools seems to have a slightly different view of what they are and what the parameters are and how far you look at them. And that's kind of what I was going for with this. Don't bring them into the major leagues kind of conversation, because when we talk about them in the majors, we usually do talk about them specifically with, can you tap into those stats that we associate with them? So, uh, a hit tool is your, you know, kind of your ability to hit for average and the league average is two 60. So if you can hit over 260 then theoretically as a major leaguer your hit tool was was average or better but when uh when you're scouting an amateur

it's about it's about the things that would lead to a good average and even more raw than that it's about the things that would lead to good consistent hard contact so plate coverage and approach and mechanics more or less and so like your ability to hit home runs helps your batting average but would would not be a factor for scouting an amateur and really even the ability to bunt for a hit affects your average but wouldn't be and if you think about how if you think about all the tools that way, there's a lot less overlap between them because, because they are, there are five discrete physical abilities rather than trying to, um, apply them to stats that are going to be dictated by two or three or four of these different tools working in tandem. So power is another good example, which you mentioned if you're scouting somebody, I,

as I understand it again, as I understand it, and people say different things, different scouts have different philosophies, I think, and so on. But if you're scouting for power, you're looking for more or less raw strength, how strong is the person, how far can they hit the ball. And to bring that power into a game by the time you get to the majors is going to probably require a pretty good hit tool because you have to be able to also consistently hit the ball squarely. But that's not really much of a that that's where the hit tool is separate for an amateur and the power tool is separate for an amateur. So like it all makes sense to me when you're talking about somebody who's five years away

from the majors. But then when we talk about it with major leaguers, yeah, it sounds really weird. Like there's all these overlapping things and like, what is this? And why do we even care that much about arm? And so on. Yeah.

All right. I am probably, I hope I didn't mangle a bunch of things there too. Okay. All right. We can end there. All right.

All right. That will do it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up to pledge some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going.

Chuck Heimbach, Amelia Mattler, Donald Adamic, Mike Carlucci, and Daniel Moorhead. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild, and you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. We'll probably do emails next time, so please send us some. You can direct your questions and comments to podcast at fangrass.com or send them to us via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And if you're listening to this on Tuesday, we are two weeks away from the release date for The MVP Machine. My book was Travis Sacek. Some media members are reading it now.

I'm getting good feedback on it. So I'm excited that this is coming to you all very soon. Your pre-orders really help us. If you do pre-order, you will qualify for some bonus content, including an extra chapter and a conversation about the book between me and Travis and some other goodies. So please forward your pre-order confirmation to the MVP machine at gmail.com. And if you're in the New York City area, we'll be doing a bit of a public book release launch party at Foley's, the baseball bar on the

release date, June 4th. It'll be open to everyone. We'll be talking and answering questions and mingling and signing some books. So if you're in the area, please plan to attend. Thank you for listening. And we will be back with another episode later this week. I wish that I could drop a million bucks. Leave me alone at the record shop. Don't let the record stop. You got to hide, hide, hide, hide.