Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1409: Appointment Podcasting

Episode Date: July 27, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley follow up on the feedback to the preceding “best players of the decade” episode and minimum innings vs. three-pitch innings, then banter about Mike Trout‘s new-and-improved throwing arm (and Ross Stripling’s new-and-improved ability to retire Mike Trout), trade-deadline procrastination, the Giants’ and Mets’ outlooks, the future of Noah Syndergaard, the […]

And we're standing outside of this wonderland Looking sober, evening sober, revved Like a Bowery Bomb when he finally understands The bottle's empty and there's nothing left I don't know how it happened It was faster than I could feel it But all I can do is hand it to you

and your latest trick. Hello and welcome to episode 1409 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast brought to you by Fangraphs and our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing all right. Good. Today we will be talking about the best five players of the 2000s.

It seems like that's all people want us to do now after that last episode. That went over well. Yeah, I'm so glad that people enjoyed it. You were so concerned that we would have like 10 minutes of conversation. I'm like, I don't know, Ben. We managed to go for like an hour and a half when you and I don't have a predefined topic. I know. I was thinking like, well, how is this possibly going to,

like, okay, so we're just going to say our top fives and we'll probably have similar top fives and then we'll say what the top fives were and then that'll be that. But that took like an hour and 20 minutes. So it seems like whatever we're doing we end up talking for the same amount of time so uh we just like chatting with each other about baseball what a nice thing yeah it was fun but it seems like it could be a whole spin-off franchise

for us yeah just be like effectively five or something we'll just do like top five pitchers and hitters for every previous decade someone actually asked that we do the worst five pitchers and hitters for every previous decade. Someone actually asked that we do the worst five pitchers and hitters of each decade because it's kind of difficult to like stick around long enough to be the worst in terms of war. Like you have to pile up some playing time to get that negative war up there. So yeah, maybe we'll do something like that again. We'll just slowly morph into a podcast where we never look at war, which will just be the opposite of all the previous episodes. Well, we have 1,407 of them prior to then that were pretty war-focused, so it seems like we

could tip the scales a little bit. Yeah. Since Sam's not here today, we can gang up again on his minimum inning idea, which I've gotten a lot of feedback to that. A lot of people have it stuck in their heads. A lot of people like the sound of it. A lot of people have suggested improvements or what they see as improvements, either just further shortening it to minning just to reflect the inning itself. Someone else suggested the austere inning,

which I kind of like. A bunch of people pointed out, and I think this is a good point, that you can have sub three pitch innings. In fact, these days you can have zero pitch innings if you just intentionally walk someone and then pick them off and do that three times. Not that that's going to happen, but you can certainly have a two-pitch inning. So it is technically not the minimum inning. So to me, that is disqualifying. We can't use minimum inning because of that. Plus, it's just impossible to say.

It's impossible to say. Yeah, I just did it. I was pretty impressed. Yeah, you did fine. It's impossible for me to say. I have to slow down to an unnatural speaking speed in order to do it minimum menu even then it sounds strange yeah anyway apologies to anyone who had manamana stuck in their head for the rest of that i still still

now you know we're gonna wake up in the middle of the night yeah there's a good cover of that song by cake that i have been enjoying in the day or two since but yeah i thank you to whoever i can't remember now who it was but thank you to whoever posted that in the facebook group because i had not heard that previously and enjoyed it very much yeah so bunch of stuff to talk about today one thing i wanted to mention because i guess it happened before our previous episode, but we were focused on our task, was that Mike Trout threw a ball 98.6 miles per hour, which made me do a genuine double take when I saw that. It was Monday night at Dodger Stadium, and he threw just like a perfect, perfect strike to the plate to get Max Muncy. And it was his hardest throw of the StatCast era, and I would have to think his hardest throw of his career because his arm has gotten progressively better. But I didn't realize

that it had gotten to the point where he would just rip off like a 99-mile-per-hour strike. I did not know he had this in his repertoire. It's something that he's worked on because whenever he has anything that could be called a weakness or approaching a weakness, he seems to just target that and make it a strength. But I mean, he had gone from below average to average, but now I guess is just comfortably above average i guess he is just legitimately a five tool player at this point there is nothing he can't do i enjoyed our surprise in the moment and then how quickly that surprise abated yeah right because there are

plenty of of uh outfielders plenty of centerfielders specifically who, you know, we've seen great throws before. It's not like Mike Trout invented the great throw or anything like that. It is a context. We have a context for it within baseball. We just didn't have a context for it for Mike Trout. And the thing about him that is so amazing is that I think probably more than any other player in baseball pitchers included our ability to immediately absorb new Mike Trout skills. It's just, it takes so little time.

We can just do it in record time because it's like, well, of course, I mean, sure. Yeah. I believe it. It seems right.

Yeah. Right. He's one of those guys where you're like, yeah, that seems right. Yeah. I mean that same game, he hit a 450 footinger, and it's like, sure, whatever. Like, we've seen him do that before.

So every kind of highlight he now supplies. Like, this was the one kind of highlight that we hadn't really seen him ever give us. I mean, he's made good throws before, I'm sure. But I couldn't have told you, like, Mike Trout's best throw or most impressive throw, really. Whenever we see a Mike Trout highlight, it's usually that he hit a 450-foot dinger, or he ran really fast, or he made a nice catch, or he robbed a homer. I mean, he does all those things fairly regularly, but this one was the one thing that he didn't really do, and now he does it. So, I don't know. I guess it makes sense if pitchers can go to velocity gaining programs and and add velocity then i don't see why a center fielder couldn't do the

same thing but i'd love to know what exactly he has done differently because right i guess it's it's mechanical changes i think like maybe he's changed his arm action and maybe it's just a new workout regimen something that he's doing to target the muscles that are involved in throwing. I don't know what it is, but it is really impressive. He's just the best. I'm having an experience that is very, I'm about to label this feeling as being quite unfair of me. It's like the worst. I shouldn't say this at all.

The fact that I'm going to admit to it is going to some people be like Meg That's not reasonable. I'm kind of mad at Cody Bellinger for being close to Mike Trout in war right now Yeah, he's not there but like he's close and it makes me mad. It makes me angry with him in a way That is totally unreasonable Particularly because he plays in the National League and so we can just have two very good players in each league. I mean, we have a lot more than just two, but we can have two very good players atop their respective leagues just doing a great job, having incredible seasons. And that is fine. And that should make me happy.

But it makes me mad because Mike Trout's year is so phenomenal and we get to enjoy it. But I will admit to enjoying it a little bit less because Cody Bellinger is within spitting distance, which is silly because in a lot of years where Mike Trout was the best player in baseball, there was another guy who was like kind of hanging out, being like, hey, I'm close. Don't I get credit for that? And we were like, nah. So it's not new, but it's making me mad. Yeah. I mean, I don't mind if people's war rivals, Mike Trout's, if it's just like a different guy every year, if there were, I don't really, as long as Mike Trout is at this peak, like I don't

even want a second Mike Trout, not that there ever could be one, not that there's ever been one, but that's why he's so special. But I kind of like that other people will come close for a year at a time, but that's all. It's like Christian Jelic out of his mind, Bellinger out of his mind, Mookie Betts out of his mind, Josh Donaldson out of his mind, Miguel Cabrera out of his mind. Like year after year, there's someone who is having his career year, who maybe comes close to Trout that year, but usually doesn't quite catch him and usually is not there the next year or the previous year, which in a way that kind of drives home just how good Trout is to me. That like the best other possible person having his best possible year maybe can come close to Trout one time. And Trout does it every year. Yeah, that's a much healthier way to think about it.

But instead, I'm thinking about how I'm mad and also just really impressed with how good Xander Bogarts has been this year. Yes, he has. Yeah. Although there was one thing that Trout could not do this week, which was hit Ross Stripling, recent Effectively Wild guest, who when he was on, we talked to him about his inability to retire Mike Trout to that point in his career. Trout had gotten him every time, but this week Stripling faced the Angels and he got

Mike Trout out the two times he faced him. So good job, Ross. we'll have to have him back on sometime to see how he figured out mike trout yeah i uh it's one of those things where i i tend to think that we are hyper conscious of some of those those specific matchup issues in a way that like not every player is but that some players certainly are but that not every player is but i think that he's told that story uh to a couple of people since that happened right he's like i got him i finally got him that he's told that story to a couple of people since that happened, right? He's like, I got him. I finally got him. Right?

He's told that story. I would think so. I would tell that story. Probably podcasted about it. I don't know. But yeah, it took some courage for him to come on and be like, yeah, Mike Trout owns me, knowing that he was scheduled to face the Angels in a pretty short time. And yeah, even after confessing that,

that was maybe he just had to admit it to the world that he had a Mike Trout problem in order to conquer that problem. Yeah. See, therapy is good for everyone. Yeah. Anything on your mind? I would like it if some baseball teams would make some trades. Yes. I'm, you know, the deadline is a weird, it's a strange exercise. It presents us with a problem that is a problem for people who do our jobs, which is that,

you know, sometimes it like wrecks your weekend. And that's okay, because then you get to write stuff and people read it, but we are incentivized to root for a very particular kind of deadline. And normally that is a, is a good thing. Like a healthy trade deadline, I think indicates a lot of teams trying to improve and get better for, for the last couple of months of the season with the hope of making the post season. And so it is a particular problem that most people might say is kind of selfish, but I think actually lines up very nicely with the broader incentives that fans have, which is that you want teams to be getting better. And so they should get on with it.

Yeah, it would be nice also if they didn't do everything they're going to do in like one day. Yeah, don't do that. Especially for you as someone who will be frantically directing traffic and saying we need a piece on this and we need a piece on that. And then you will have to be editing all those pieces and posting them as quickly as possible. And that will not be convenient. Yeah, we're properly staffed for it. But yes, it can be quite frantic.

So, you know, why not ease in, you guys? Just like do a little Friday afternoon business. I'm scheduled to go to a Mariners game tomorrow. So I imagine that 1.15 is when things will pick up. But I've already warned the folks I'm going with that I might be editing from my phone and drinking only water well the cubs have acquired derrick holland so maybe that'll break the seal that'll get things started the the blockbuster we were all we were all waiting for a dfa trade right yeah let's go it's not even it doesn't even tell us anything about like oh maybe the giants are selling or something because they had already sold tara collins so yeah that's uh i i have been reading giants trade

rumors with interest and just before we started i saw one that said they're like 90 not likely to trade bum garner and will smith or something which I don't know. But I saw another earlier rumor from John Marossi, which was a lot of fun, which was that the Giants had a high-level scout at Matthew Boyd's tart in Detroit on Tuesday, which supports Mark Feinstein's report about the Giants potentially buying in the coming days. There's like a 0.5 chance that this happens but i like that we're in a world where we're talking about the giants trading for one of the top players on the trade market with just a couple days to go before the deadline yeah i have also been watching with with interest in some amount of sadness and sympathy the swirling rumors around no Syndergaard. Yes. You know, as a person invested on some level,

although to an increasingly small degree, in the Seattle Mariners, I know how it feels to be sad. And I feel that the sadness of Mariners fans dealing as they are with a team that is quite bad and an uncertain future and some just truly devastating quotes from Felix Hernandez about his own future in the game. We have it easy because the worst thing I think as a fan is to look at your franchise and think they might trade one of the best players on the team and one of the better players in baseball. And we have very little confidence that they will either get a prospect return that merits the trade, and even if they do,

that their player development will mess up those players. And I don't know. You know, fans react strongly, and I think that there are arguments to be made about how player dev in the Mets organization can be improved. But, you know, they have had some good homegrown players. But that feeling is terrible because there's no winning. There is only sadness. So I'm sorry, Mets fans, you are officially in a worse emotional spot than Mariners fans and that takes some doing. Yeah. Jill Sherman reported that there's some sentiment within the Mets, or maybe it's just

Mets ownership, probably, that they're afraid to trade one of their players to a quote-unquote smart team that might actually make that player better because it will make them look bad. Which, my stars, what a thing to say out loud in front of people. I know. It's like then the answer is to go figure out what those guys are doing and do that in-house. What are you doing admitting to that sort of nonsense? Or even if you think that's the truth, A, let that player go and be good somewhere. And B, just ask for the return that you think a player as good

as that player will become would merit it just be like well if we think you're gonna make this guy better then give us more in return but yeah that just doesn't reflect well in any way but what should we expect at this point yeah what a mess a mess. What a mess, the Mets. I don't know what to make of Sindergaard right now. Like, I don't know. Conceptually speaking, it's not the worst idea, I suppose, to trade him just because he's not under team control for that much longer, right? He's a free agent after. He's a free agent in 2022. Okay, well, that's a while, I guess.

But I don't know. I don't know if the Mets will be good again. He is kind of on a downward trajectory, or at least there's always an injury concern, I think, with someone who throws as hard as he does and has missed some time. And he hasn't been quite as effective this year either. So I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised if he went somewhere else and pitched at a cy young level yeah man he is just uh he has to really not be happy about his roster photo this

year that is not what i was going to talk about but i am now noticing that like noah what are we doing let's cry for help here um i i was disheartened to – because, you know, Syndergaard's been one of the guys named as one of the big starting pitching chips along with Boyd and potentially Bauer, and I thought there was more daylight between Syndergaard and Bauer this year, and there's not a ton in terms of the performances they've already turned in, although, you know, I think the profile for what you get in terms of control and whatnot is obviously different. I would point out, because I just like to brag about our player pages

because they've gotten better, that as we're going into trade deadline season and you're like, hey, how long until that guy's a free agent? How many options does he have left? You can just look on his Fangraphs player page, and we got all that information for you. It's super convenient. Thank you, Jason Martinez. Yeah, just go check that out. It's pretty cool.

Yeah, I don't know what to make of Syndergaard either. I imagine that the return would probably still be fairly weighty because, I don't know, can you imagine like Noah Syndergaard as an astro? That sounds like a thing that we probably shouldn't let happen. That sounds scary, yeah. That sounds very scary. I mean, you still have to worry about the injury stuff, and I think that's true of every pitcher, but especially of a guy, as you noted, with his particular profile. But, man, that sure sounds scary. It seems unlikely to happen because I don't know.

The Astros trade deadline situation seems sort of murky because I don't know how people feel about Kyle Tucker. But it seems like trading Noah Syndergaard to the Yankees is a better idea than trading him to the Braves. But I guess that we're not dealing with a typical front office, so who knows? Right. Yeah. Or at least that that front office is not dealing with typical ownership. Ownership. Yes. I think, I think, uh, yes, both of those things are true and interacting with one another in ways that seem designed to make people in New York crazy. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind

of curiously similar to the 2017 situation, I guess, with the Astros where at the end of the regular trade deadline, they felt comfortable standing pat. And then between July 31st and August 31st, they decided we need an ace. Let's go get Justin Verlander. Except this year, you can't do that after July 31st. So if they are going to do that, you better do it now. But they did at that time. I think they had some injuries in August and they also played very poorly in August and they had Dallas Keuchel publicly complaining that they hadn't made any moves at July 31st. And so that kind of goaded them into doing that thing.

But now you don't really get that post-July 31st period to have extra incentive to make the moves. So that's why we thought there might be more moves. But on the other hand, we thought there might be fewer moves because of the way the standings are set up this particular year. And thus far, that's been the case. It's been like a quiet even lead up to the deadline, I think. Yeah.

So. Yeah. Make some moves. Yeah. Go do some trades. Yeah. Yeah, please do. Plenty of teams need stuff.

You guys need things. They definitely need things. Don't put off your shopping till late. Yeah. The holidays have taught us nothing. That's true. I always think teams are really procrastinating. It's probably partly procrastination.

I know it's largely that they are gaining insight and intelligence every day that the season goes on. It's that they're learning about what they need and what other teams are offering and what their playoff odds are and all of that. You're finding out more every day. But it's got to also be just that deadline and just the human tendency not to act urgently until you have to. It's got to be partly that. It's partly that, although it's a very silly sort of thing because i mean granted like we'll compare it to writing there are people not me i would never do this who write the the best and the most very close to deadline because the presence of the deadline helps to inspire some stuff and

gets you going and you write some things but here's the. While it may have an impact on the eventual quality of the piece, it doesn't matter really. You don't gain anything in terms of clicks or people reading your work or thinking you're smart or savvy by filing early, except insofar as it affects the quality of your copy. But for some of these teams, the differences are quite narrow in their playoff odds and every game that they could win would help things out so it it does always sort of surprise me that we don't see a lot more activity early it didn't end up working for the mariners for instance but last year the mariners were just like hey why don't we do all of our deadline dealing in like what april may and see if it helps to get us closer because we'll have you know we'll have these guys on the roster earlier and we'll win more games in

the meantime and you have jerry did his selling early too right jerry's always up for a trade yeah jerry's like jerry must be miserable this is his favorite time of year it's like christmas falling on a wednesday you don't enjoy it as much jerry's he's like yeah he's ready he's out there he's like where's everyone else come on guys let's go he literally had quotes in the seattle times this year being like we've been calling people we've been making calls like where's everybody man i might be editorializing his quote a little but the the sentiment is accurate. So, you know, if you're, and I understand that people tend to, when they criticize teams for not making trades, forget that, like, it takes at least one other team in order to do a transaction. And so if everyone's waiting around, even if you want to move early, you might not be able to do that.

And so these things are interconnected. But, like, if you're cleveland you're like hey we're only two games back they probably won't do anything because they continue to drive me mad or you know you're the brewers you're staring up at the cubs and cardinals really wow some starting pitching would really help maybe we should make moves you know so i i do remain surprised you know that nobody blinks earlier right yeah the way, since we're on the subject of Mets pitchers, however, briefly, we had talked earlier this year when Clayton Kershaw and Jacob deGrom faced each other about how that was not as exciting a matchup as it. He had like a four-ish ERA through May. And since then, he has basically been Jacob DeGrom. He's got a 2.05 ERA since the end of May in 10 starts. And I thought it was interesting that this week he made a start and it was a good one. He pitched

against the Padres and shut them out for seven innings, nine strikeouts, one walk. And he actually threw more than 50% sliders. He threw 54% sliders in that start, which was a career high. And his previous career high for slider rate was also this month, July 5th, he threw 50% sliders. And before that, he had never thrown, well, I guess in June, he threw 43% sliders. That was also his high. He had never thrown 40% sliders in a start in any point in his career before then. So his three highest slider rate starts have come just in the last month or so, which is probably not a coincidence. So that's kind of interesting because that's the way the whole league is going.

And I don't know in his case whether it's like an analytics-driven thing that they recommended to him or whether he adopted on his own, but that's kind of cool. Coming off one of the best pitching seasons in recent memory, he is making some changes. And I don't know if that's a response to his pedestrian start to the season or just observing league-wide trends or the Mets actually funneling information to their players in a useful way.

But he is making that adjustment. That seems unlikely. I know, far-fetched. But suddenly De grom is doing the like patrick corbin robbie ray thing where you're just throwing tons of sliders and seems to work for most of those guys yeah that is true i'm gonna ask you a question i'm gonna pull sam and ask you a question that you're not at all prepared for, so you can tell me to buzz off if you want to. So the top 10 pitchers by Fangraphs wore this year. I'm going to ask you if you consider them

appointment viewing or not. Okay. Because I'm just curious. Okay. And no one's going to hold you to this answer. It can change over time. Max Scherzer. Yes. Yes. Agreed. Lance Lynn. I wonder if Michael Babin's listening. Michael, close your ears. No. I will tell you the following. I probably watch more of the first three innings of a Lance Lynn start than any other starter just because I still don't get it. I still don't get this.

I don't. I've read about it. I've researched it. I understand what's at play yeah i guess craig edwards is on the lance lynn beat for oh yeah he's on the beat yeah yeah he's he's keeping an eye on lance for us but i still don't get it and so i watched the beginning hoping to be like oh yeah now i get it and i still don't so i watched the first three innings of a lot of lance lynn starts and then i switched someone else he's another uh he's another pitch selection change guy yeah fewer sinkers another league-wide trend but yeah charlie morton charlie morton i mean appointment viewing like i

can't honestly say i have thought to myself charlie morton start gotta tune in but there's no reason not to like charlie morton is really, and I think he's a fun pitcher to watch. So he's got the stuff. It's not like he is fluking his way into this. So he should be appointment viewing, but has not been. What a Rays thing to say. Should be watching more of, but eh. And of course, the Rays, now without Blake Snell for a while,

seems concerning. Yes, that's not so good for them. Not so great for them. And of course there is Now without Blake Snell for a while Seems concerning Not so great for them Get excited about Brandon McKay Oh wait you already were Garrett Cole Yeah Garrett Cole probably is at this point Since he is just raising the strikeout ceiling It's amazing

When that stat circulated recently About how he was so fast To 200 strikeouts The more impressive part when that stat circulated recently about how he was so fast to 200 strikeouts, the more impressive part of that stat was not how quickly he got to 200 strikeouts, but that Randy Johnson got there faster in 2001 when no one was striking out people the way they are today, which is something that I tried to ask him about on our somewhat notorious Randy Johnson interview episode. I just, I just really want to talk about one thing. He did. He just really did. He really did. And yeah, I tried to make that point to him, though, that like, when he pitched in the late 90s, early 2000s, it was like 2019 baseball, like on those days, and not on all the other days, because no one else was pitching like him but like randy johnson's strikeout stats stack up to like the best pitchers today even

though the league wide rate has grown by leaps and bounds since then so he was such an outlier that what garrett cole is doing just made me appreciate what johnson did even more yeah yeah we've already talked about to grum steven strasburg well strasburg has been appointment viewing and his debut was like the ultimate appointment viewing and he's having a really excellent season michael bowman just wrote about it for us at the ringer so should be i guess it i guess it could be should be he's really good yeah i i think that we're gonna look back on strasburg's career and just feel like we never properly calibrated how much we were yeah i think so too it was supposed to appreciate him in any given moment and how much

we should have been watching him in any given moment i just feel like we have because of how how much hype there was around his debut and as a prospect we just we've never gotten it quite right i don't think we've ever gotten it quite right yeah he's been almost a disappointment but because we were expecting like you know the world but he's right he's been fantastic yeah uh shane bieber well i am invested in shane bieber's success because he was my breakout pick in this year's staff predictions post so i'm feeling good about that he's very good but i cannot honestly say that he's appointment viewing hunjin ryu i think is appointment viewing for me in part because of him and also just because that dodgers team is really fun to watch but he is he's been quite quite good and quite fun yeah to watch yeah yeah i will always watch

zach granky yes so he has appointment viewing for me at nine nine wow what a year yeah i gotta get somebody to write about zach granky it's time for for a zach ranke post and then patrick corbin no no i would say that of the the guys immediately following that type five that i i would consider chris sale of late to be appointment viewing that ray star was super fun jose burrios is appointment viewing for me because i really like watching him through a breaking ball so yeah there's some guys who are are just outside the top 10 who I would say are appointment viewing. Yeah. Walker Buehler's up there. Yeah.

Giolito. Yeah. A lot of appointments. We've got busy schedules. I know. We are very busy. Okay. So that was my digression away from what you actually wanted to talk about this episode.

But I just, you know. I don't know what I want to talk about. I don't know. The digressions are what I want to talk about this episode but i don't know what i want to talk about the digressions are what i want to talk about usually yeah so but i guess since we weren't maybe finished with the giants i think yeah i would just love to know what's been going on in farhan's head over the last few weeks that giants actually lost a game this week they lost a game on thursday so that was a change of pace but when teams are tanking when we say they're tanking or

rebuilding, I think for the most part, their executives and their players and staff want them to win on a daily basis. Like the number one pick, I think is kind of overrated, especially these days. Maybe it mattered more in the past, but it only helps you so much. If it's the right year, of course, it can be a difference maker, but the difference most years between the number one pick and the number two or three, I mean, the gap between one and any other position I think is larger than the gaps between any other positions, but still it's usually not going to be the difference. But I think the benefit from a rebuild or tanking or whatever just comes from setting your sights on the future and saying we're going to operate on this timeline while

other teams are operating on this more urgent accelerated timeline and we'll be content trading the guys who are good now for the guys who'll be good later and that will benefit us in the long run but while you're in that down period you don't want to win 50 games, I don't think, for the most part. And on a day-to-day basis, you're probably in a better frame of mind if you're winning every day. And so Farhan and the Giants probably did not expect to contend this year. They probably expected to sell off a lot of pieces and embark on this rebuild.

And yet I'm sure they wanted to be competitive and give their fans an entertaining team to watch and yet yeah at this point it is verging on the point where it maybe is affecting their plans or what they think would be best for the team in the long run so i'd really like to know just is he rooting for the team on a day-to-day basis? Because like, if he thinks that they're not going to contend, which I think is likely, and their playoff odds are up to 6% now, and it's all wildcard odds, and yet they're so close that it's really going to be unpalatable to some people if they do sell off a bunch of pieces in the next few days. He has to be somewhat conflicted about this.

who sell off a bunch of pieces in the next few days, he has to be somewhat conflicted about this. Oh, yeah. I mean, if ever you wanted to read like an accurate TikTok of, you know, a front office a week before the deadline, I would certainly put that Giants team up there. I think that two or three weeks ago, I would have put the Rangers in the same conversation, although I think that the right course of action is getting increasingly clear for them. Yeah, I don't know. You also, you know, these are not that anyone has to feel bad

for front office personnel, like they're fine, they get to work in baseball professionally and like pursue a ring, they're living their dreams. But I always think it's funny how fans react to decisions one way or the other around contention as if it is the sole, you know, at the sole discretion of baseball operations when we know for a fact that it's not, right? Like ownership has a stake in all of this clearly, and they tend to make that stake known at moments that are sometimes inopportune from a baseball ops perspective. And I don't say that with like special knowledge of what's going on in san francisco but i do wonder is he like really dreading getting a phone call

from ownership it's like oh don't win because i don't want my phone to buzz because then we're gonna have to go all right you know you just wonder whose calls he's dodging yeah i can't dodge him forever right so i would love to hear sort of how things have unfolded for them behind the scenes. You know, as I've talked to, and you've probably had this experience too, as I've talked to like front office types over the last couple weeks, I've been struck by how much uncertainty there has been even for them, not only with respect to the market generally, but just their own teams and what's going to end up making the most sense for them so i think that not because we had a consolidated deadline but more because of the competitive landscape there's just a lot more indecision than there's been maybe in prior years and without fail everyone i've talked to has said like it would really help if the giants would just start losing already because then we'd know who's around we could get a better sense of who's actually available so that we could either make a move or move on. Yeah.

Well, I'm sure people want to hear trade talk. But at this point, trade deadline speculation has a very short shelf life. And I'm sure we'll be talking a lot next week about what could happen or what has happened. So we won't date ourselves too much. But interesting things will happen eventually they're just taking their time probably should we talk about tulo a little bit since yeah announced his retirement this week and i assume that rachel mcdaniel is in mourning somewhere i hope that she will write about tulo perhaps at some point i don don't know. Yeah, I have asked. We have to see how the muse hits her.

But yeah, it is always a funny thing to have to write about your guy as you've made the transition into being a more professional writer type. I had that thought about Felix yesterday. I was like, oh, I guess I should start getting this ready. Man, I don't want to do it though. So, um, but yeah, Tulo it's, I mean, it makes, it makes sense. I think there's something dignified and knowing like when your moment has passed and getting ready to do

another thing. But yeah, every time we have these retirements, you're just like, wow, but yeah every time we have these retirements you're just like wow like troy tulowitzky is 34 and change and i am 33 and let me tell you i don't think i'm ever going to be able to retire well we don't have to we can just we don't going until we're old and decrepit trudging along it's he's just he's just maybe one of the all time like what would have been if he could have stayed healthy guys. Because, boy, did he have some some moments that were you really? Wow, this dude's really special, especially especially defensively. It's just like kind of incredible. Yeah. Like the bat spoke for itself.

But I think the defense was really fun. Yeah. He wasn't like he was much better than the like a guy who had a single spectacular season or like he had all the tools and you wonder like what could he have been? Like he was a fully actualized like Hall of Fame level player. Caliber, yeah. We just didn't get to do it as long as we would have liked for him to do. But yeah, Zach Graham wrote a nice appreciation of his career for the Ringer, which I will link to. Plug in lots of ringer links today good company man it's okay he had a lot of signature moments he played on fun teams like he

was on the 2007 rockies team he of course was on the 2015 blue jays team he was a big part of both of those and those were very memorable teams so he had that he had a lot of like individual moments and plays but he was like by far the best shortstop in baseball and like simultaneously probably the best hitting and best fielding shortstop which is yeah why he was like a head above everyone else it wasn't just like he was a good hitter for the position or he was like andrelton simmons or something like he was just the best of both worlds for yeah half a decade for you know maybe more than half a decade so i just i wish it could have lasted longer but it was really impressive while it lasted yeah and i think the perception of rocky's hitters can be unfair in both directions right where we tend to you know average fans tend to inflate

how good Rocky's hitters are without factoring in cores. And sometimes sabermetrically inclined writers can make people sort of mentally discount how good guys are when they play at Colorado, even though we have park-adjusted stats. But Tulo was just like, no one was ever like, eh, that bad though, don't know about that you know he had years where he had you know WRC pluses in the 140s so he was just one of those guys were like yeah this is a really this is a really good player on a hall of fame trajectory and if only he could

have stayed healthy I think we would have you know we would have seen him there yeah bummer yeah I appreciate that like even this year when he barely played he played in five games he had 13 plate appearances but he still had a 118 wrc plus he doubled and homered in his very very brief so it was like when he could get on the field he was i think diminished physically these past few years with toronto and briefly the yankees were even when he was healthy, he had finally gotten to the point where it wasn't like hurt or great. It was like healthy or quasi healthy and just kind of average-ish because he'd had so many injuries that they had taken their toll on his

skills, I think. But still, I kept hoping that there would be like a late career Renaissance Tulo season where like, yeah, in his 30s, we would get to see it for one more year. And the thing about him was that like, he injured everything. him eventually having a healthy run because like right it wasn't like he had some debilitating chronic like back issue or something where it's like oh he's just not gonna get over that or like you know he tore his knee apart and it was never the same after that or something it was just like he'd hurt everything like he'd hurt his ankle and then he'd hurt his quad and then he'd hurt his calf or you know then he'd hurt his wrist or and it was just like maybe it's a fluke maybe it's like he's just hurting all these different body parts and it doesn't mean anything but ultimately it probably does mean something just about his ability to recover or whatever it is you know health is a skill etc and he didn't

have that one but he had all the other ones yeah he sure did too low be well yeah he he's already i learned not on yankees broadcast or the blue jays broadcast i don't remember what game i was watching he's going to like take on some sort of volunteer coaching role at the university of texas that's right and we were talking about that in our slack channel like he didn't go there as a player. And evidently it's just that he was like friends with a couple Texans. It was like, yeah. I mean, if that's what it's hard to decide what to do after you retire, that's a difficult transition for any player who's been doing it his entire life.

So if that's how you just decide your soft landing, your first phase of your post-playing career, then that's fine. Yeah, there are worse places to retire than Austin. Yeah, he was teammates with Houston Street and Drew Stubbs. I guess they're both Texans and they were like, hey, go work here. That worked. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Well, go have a nice retirement.

Eat some tacos. Enjoy yourself Yeah, sure. Yeah. Well, go have a nice retirement, eat some tacos, enjoy yourself too, though. Yeah. And hopefully we can remember him for the good times in addition to just the lost promise and what might have been. And Zach pointed out in his piece that he ended up with an identical war to Nomar Garciaparra, which is fitting because those are both guys who were Hall of Fame level talents on Hall of Fame trajectories and then were just done in by a series of injuries. It's the same story. Yeah.

Be well, Tulo. Yes, please do. So I guess we could wrap up maybe by talking about something I wrote. Another ringer link. But on Friday, I have a piece up about strategy, the strategy, the strategy that Sam and I have been discussing on and off on the podcast for weeks now, inspired by a listener email.

I wrote about it, it just, I couldn't get it out of my head and I had to get it out of my system. And so I ended up writing a very long article about this, which I did not expect. Well, thank you. I enjoyed working on it very much because it seemed like sort of a wonky thing and it is, but there were a lot of people who were enthusiastically prepared to talk about it. So for those who have not been following along, this is the idea of pulling pitchers in the middle of plate appearances, making mid-plate appearance pitching changes in order to get the element of surprise on the batter, or maybe to take advantage of some matchup, like you know that your first pitcher,

he's good at getting ahead of hitters, and you have a guy in the bullpen who's good at finishing them off, and so you pair them, or maybe someone in the bullpen's got a great slider and you know that this hitter is susceptible to sliders so just being flexible about when you bring guys in and knowing that hitters would really not like this because yeah hitters like to see the pitchers and they get better as plate appearances go on not only as they face them multiple times within the same game, but also as they see more pitches within the same at-bat. And to bring a guy in, particularly with two strikes, let's say, and not give hitters the luxury of taking that first pitch just to time the guy and see his stuff and see his release point, that would be a very difficult situation to be in. And you can

see it in games. There's data I have in my piece that when hitters are facing a pitcher for the first time, even if it's not their first at bat in the game, they are much more likely to take that first pitch than they are if it's a pitcher they've already seen in the game. So you're really putting hitters at a disadvantage here. And much to my delight, it turns out there's this whole cult of the mid-plate appearance pitching change in college. There's this brotherhood of college coaches who have kind of pioneered this idea on their own. And the strategy has been spreading in Division I now for a few years. And I tried to trace it back to its origin, the patient zero, coach zero of the mid-plate appearance pitching change.

And it turns out to be a guy named John Cohen, who is a very accomplished college coach. He is the athletic director at Mississippi State now, but he's been the head coach at a few schools, including Mississippi State. And when he was at Kentucky in the mid-2000s, he started doing this. And the origin story is kind of interesting. Like when he was a player and he was a college player himself and briefly a minor league player with the Twins as well, and he was a hitter, and his college coach would have these sort of sped-up games, which other teams do too,

and they called them count games where hitters would come up to the plate and they'd start with a 3-1 count or a 1-2 count. It would just alternate. And the idea was mostly just to speed up the game, accelerate the pace. But having been in that situation himself as a player, he knew that to start in a bat with a 1-2 count is very difficult. And so he figured, well, if this is so difficult for me, then why don't I put other hitters in that difficult position? And when he became a head coach, he did it and he started doing it a lot. And he found, at least anecdotally, that it seemed to work really well.

And so many members of his coaching staff have now gone on to be head coaches elsewhere at Auburn and Kentucky and various other places. He worked with Wes Johnson, who is now the Twins pitching coach, and Wes Johnson did it a bunch of other places. A few other coaches have independently developed this idea and started doing it at Dallas Baptist and NC State and various other places. So it's becoming more common now in college, and as college coaches now cross over to pro ball and even to the majors in Wes Johnson's case, I really have to think that we're not far away from seeing this far-fetched

idea or so we thought when we first discussed it happen in a big league game. I enjoyed this for a lot of reasons, this article and the idea of it for a lot of reasons. The first of which is that it just continues to highlight the discrepancy that currently exists between how college programs are thinking about pitching versus how they think about hitting and it you know the this is different than some of the more specific player development stuff that you see at the college level that ends up being quite useful to guys after they get drafted and move on to the pros. But it just seems like there is a general willingness to innovate and think strategically on the pitching side that the hitting side has not yet caught up to. So it was just interesting to see another iteration of that, right?

Yeah. I mean, in this case, I don't know if it's like a college thing or whether it's just a hitting versus pitching thing. Like what is the hitting equivalent of this? Yeah, I don't know that there are necessarily. I can't think of what one would be. It's just all these innovations like the opener and bullpenning and pulling your starter. It's like you can do that with pitchers. Because you have so much more control over the situation.

With hitters, I mean, making a mid-play appearance pinch hitting, that's just going to hurt you. Yeah, that wouldn't make any sense. So that was interesting to hear, and especially that this one seems to predate some of those other sort of player devinivations. I would be, and you note this as a potential pitfall of the strategy and something that might hold it back,

the psychology of this, note this as a potential pitfall of the strategy and something that might hold it back the the psychology of this as you try to get players to buy in at the major league level is fascinating because on the one hand if you're dell and patantis you walk away from this feeling amazing right you are being put in a position to do the thing that you do the very best of anyone in baseball in a high leverage spot you are being counted on you are resplendent if you are the guy he is replacing you feel like garbage because you are not being trusted to get one more lousy strike right and you did your job like you got ahead of the hitter exactly you're poised to finish him off. And then it's like, someone else gets the strikeout.

And all the credit for the work that you did setting up the hitter too. Right. It's not as if you have fallen behind 3-0 and your manager comes out and is just like, hey, man, you don't have it tonight. It happens. But we're just going to, we got to get back in this thing. It's an important at-bat. No, you've done exactly what you're supposed to.

You've poised your team to take advantage of one of the worst count a hitter can get into. And your manager's like, nah. Someone can throw that one strike we need better than you. Yeah, I mean, it's got to be a tough thing. I talked to a bunch of college players who've been on one end or the other, hitters and pitchers, and the hitters confirmed that, yeah, this really sucks and they don't like it. And pitchers confirmed that they think it does give them an advantage, but that there are occasional ruffled feathers and players who don't really like it. But they mostly, I think, to a man said that guys got over that because it does seem to work and you can only complain so much.

In one sense, like you can't tell in any one instance whether it worked because like if you're up one two on a guy, usually you're going to get him out regardless. So if you get him out, that doesn't necessarily mean that the strategy benefited you. You might have very well, odds are you would have gotten him out anyway, but you do it enough times. And I think just conceptually and theoretically, it should work. But I think, yeah, they said that is a problem and it requires some finesse and coaching and communication and explaining this is why we're doing this and don't be shocked if we do do it and it's not because we don't trust you even though it kind of is in a way um and they said that guys got on board because they like winning and they understand why it makes sense and if it works then you can't complain that much but yeah i mean

it is something that guys wouldn't like. And maybe you've got bigger egos in the big leagues than you do in college. So it's something of an obstacle. But like all these things that have happened, you could say the same thing. It's like pulling the starter instead of letting him go deep into games. That was an ego thing. That was something starters didn't like. Or the opener, that was something people didn't like or the opener. That was something people didn't like.

I mean, all these things are like, you know, you can't count on the traditional roles. We're going to do whatever we can to get out here and you have to be somewhat selfless about it. And so I don't know that this is harder than those things that have already happened. Well, and I think that it and you note this in the piece, you know, baseball is sort of is sort of odd compared to to a sport like football where, you know, you have concepts from, you know, college offenses or defensive schemes that make their way into the NFL all the time. Right. And there's a lot of guys who move up from the college ranks to then join pro staffs and they bring those ideas with them. And you just seem to have more sort of college back and forth than you do in major league baseball you know the twins excluded right and so it is very neat to see a strategy sort of come the other way because it suggests that there might be other things that we could potentially glean from the amateur game that would be useful at the pro level although you know we might just rule change our way out of this being particularly useful. So they should forestall it for a year so that

we can have some of this, because I don't imagine that it would happen all that often. Yeah. I mean, there's already the rule coming next year about how you have to face three guys unless it's the end of an inning. So you wouldn't be doing this constantly. And that's one of the obstacles is that in college, you have much lighter schedules, fewer games, and you have 35 man rosters. Right, you just have a lot more people. Yeah, which, you know, I'm not, this isn't necessarily going to be burning many more guys, because it's not like you're just going to be bringing in guys for a pitch. It's just like you'd bring them in a pitch or two earlier than you would otherwise, basically. So it's not like you're going to be going through arms willy-nilly.

But I think those things make it harder at the major league level, but not impossible. There are times I talked to one executive who's quoted anonymously in the piece, and he was saying, you know, you'd have to pick your spots, and it wouldn't be something you'd do all the time, but currently it's something you do 0% of the time. And that's probably not as many times as you should be doing it. And he said he thinks it'll happen and that once someone does it, we'll see more people doing it just as we have with the opener. And I guess in the last few minutes that we have, we should talk about whether this is actually a good thing or not. Because the feedback to my tweet about this thus far, I think people are enjoying the article, but they are not enjoying the idea of this actually happening.

I've gotten a lot of quote tweets that are like, nope. And so I think people are saying like baseball is an entertainment product. And even if this is optimizing the game, even if this is smart, even if it's an advantage, they do not want to see this happen. And I mentioned that in the article that like a lot of the things that we say are smart, that maybe we advocate, then they happen. And we're like, oh no, we don't actually like this and we've talked about that with bullpenning and kind of missing having the starter go the whole game and in this case like it would be fun i think the first few times it happens like the novelty i'd be

very excited if it happened but then if it happens a lot then you know what are you really getting you're just probably getting hitters looking overmatched more strikeouts and more rallies snuffed out i think that it would be fine because i don't think it would happen very often and so and and i maybe am especially inclined to think it would be fine because this is not an equivalent from a strategy perspective at all and the leverage is obviously different but i'm kind of over position players pitching like that isn't fun and novel anymore you know i meant to talk about that today because of stevie wilkerson and yes okay that was great that was the first ever position player pitcher save and throwing sub 60 miles per hour.

That was awesome. That was wild. I will admit that I fell asleep before it happened because it was late and I was tired. And I was like, why are they still playing this game? First big leaguers ever gone by Stevie, by the way. That's a choice. I like that. Yeah.

I like Stevie more than Sco scooter in a way that makes me think that my aesthetic preferences are not perfectly consistent yeah that outing was just like i guess it it speaks to the the importance of just like throwing strikes because like yeah seemed like the angels were just either waiting for him not to throw strikes and walk them or they just couldn't time him because he was throwing so slow. So slow. It's like good hitters. It's like Cole Calhoun and Albert Pujols, and they're gearing up to try to crush these pitches and could not do it, could not hit him.

Could not do it. It was great. Yeah, I fell asleep, but before I had been texting with a friend, like, why is this game still happening? Why am I still watching an Orioles-Angels extra innings game? I'm going gonna go to bed and then in the morning i was informed what had happened and my buddy said you know stevie wilkerson picked up the save lobbying 54 mile an hour grenades at pool halls and i was just like

that's a sentence i never expected to read ever in my life you you know, let alone in, I don't know, I guess in 2019, it's the most likely of any of the times that you would read that, but what the heck. So I'm set on position player pitching, and this would not replace that in terms of strategy or efficacy or any of those things. But I think that like having moments where baseball breaks a little bit is entertaining and fun. And because this would probably be naturally limited in terms of how often it is deployed, I think it would be fine. And it could be cool and interesting. And it would result in, it certainly would result in some amount of, you know, strikeout increase that we might get kind of nervous about but also there would be times that it didn't work and then those times would be great fun also right because it wouldn't work all the time you would have a guy come in and you're like i feel very confident and then and then yeah the times when it backfired would be a lot of fun like when

a team did this and just like did something that you could consider gimmicky or unsporting and the odds are really against you and you you pull it out anyway i know that's what people sometimes say about pitchers hitting that the times when it works justify all the other times i disagree just because they're they're really rare and i don't like those guys hitting because it's just not that much fun to watch usually but right but in this case, if another team did that and they're pulling out all the stops to get you and they're using this trick and then you win the matchup anyway, that'd be really cool. Right, because you are putting your best foot forward, right? You're putting Dell and Batances ahead in the count up in a critical situation. That is like the very best that you can do. And then imagine if he like gives up a home run,

you're gonna be like, that batter is incredible because they, you know, you have strength against strength. It's great. Yes, right. It's like the end of that Yankees-Twins game. I was watching the Twins broadcast the next day and the Twins announcers were saying how that game was just fun.

And there wasn't actually, you know, everyone was doing their job. And it just happened that one guy did his job a little bit better. But like Max Kepler did exactly what he was supposed to do. He drove the ball. It was going to win the game. And then Aaron Hicks was like, no, it's not. That's so fun when you have that strength against strength matchup. And granted, sometimes you wouldn't, right?

Sometimes Dylan Batances is going to come in ahead in the count and the batter he's facing is going to be pretty bad. And any batter he's facing when he's ahead in the count is going to be pretty bad anyway. But it's just exciting. It's tense. It's tense. It feels tense.

You're going to sit there and watch. You're going to sit there and watch the batter as he's watching patances come in and throw like a couple of warm-up pitches but not very many because you want to take as much advantage as you can i think it would be great theater and then if we get annoyed about it we'll have something else to yell about and we love yelling about stuff and we're gonna lose some cool stuff with the three batter minimum yeah we're gonna lose some tactical trickery like the wade miley curly ogden maneuver we're gonna lose most of the waksahatchee swaps that we've seen pitchers playing positions as the rays did again this year that's going to be very difficult to do

under those new rules so this could compensate and yeah zach cram made the point to me and i mentioned in the article that this is like baseball's version of the alley-oop, kind of. I don't know if it's as fun to watch, but it's like one guy setting up another guy and the other guy jamming at home. And so I wrote that the first pitcher getting up on the hitter is the alley, and then the other guy coming in to finish him off is the oop. And so I think we should call him the oop-inner. Oh, I like that a lot lot i don't know if that's gonna catch on but no you know why it will because when you say it you can't get monomena stuck in your head so it'll take take the country by storm yeah last thing you've got to go i know i just

wanted to mention because so many people have responded to that by saying like this would be bad for entertainment value. It is a conflict, I think, because a lot of us do really like this strategy stuff. And I was reading an interview today with Stephanie Apstein, the excellent baseball writer and reporter for Sports Illustrated. And she was saying that when she was a kid, she thought sports were dumb and boring and that athletes weren't interesting until she heard about the infield fly rule. athletes weren't interesting until she heard about the infield fly rule. And she realized that players would sometimes choose or, you know, if not for the rule, would choose to like let a ball drop and get an extra out, which is not fun, really, like recording an extra out. But the strategy of it is interesting. And that's what got her hooked. And she's turned out to be someone who does this for a career because like that was what initially got her interested in sports that there was this strategic tactical element to it and that is

something that gets me going it gets me excited and yeah i don't know how to balance those two sides of things because sometimes the innovative optimal tactic can ultimately make the game a little bit less entertaining but I remain intrigued by those tactics. And I'm not saying that we have to celebrate them above all else, but I do admire someone who's willing to do something that no one's been willing to do before. And I admire cleverness and taking advantage of the rules. I mean, within reason, if you can do it and you're not hurting a person, then sure. And that's what this falls under. So those sides of my personality are warring because I want balls in play and I want people to like the baseball that we see on the

field. But I also do really get intrigued by this kind of idea. So I don't know. I just have to accept that about myself and try to reconcile it as I can. I think that this one you probably get a pass on because while it does involve a pitching change, which adds some time, it is, I think, mildly, it's only moderately disruptive to the general understood flow of baseball and so it might be it might be the perfect strategy because it doesn't really do a whole lot to switch things around you're not getting rid of starters but you do get to have a little a little fun bit a bit of

strategy and trickeration so i think i think you're okay I don't think you should feel bad about it. All right. Thanks for assuaging my conscience and absolving me of this. All right. So we will wrap up there and we'll talk again next week. Sounds good. All right. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks to you all for listening. You can, and dare we say should, support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelyw wild and signing up to pledge some small monthly amount and help keep the podcast going. Get yourself some perks. Following five listeners have already pledged their support. Patrick Gordon, David Dudley, Evan Davies, James Cubbin, John Tower Ackerman, and Nick Barbie. Thanks to all of you. You can

join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild, and you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. You can contact me and Meg and Sam via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. If you are a supporter, you can go get my book. It's called The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players. It got reviewed in the Washington Post this week. The review said, In the MVP machine, Lindbergh and Sochik

make a convincing and faith-restoring case that genuine, unadulterated miracles can happen in baseball. It's an awfully nice thing to say. That is what got us excited about the topic. Some of these player transformations really do seem almost miraculous. Although, of course, there's science behind them. That science is exciting. Lots of science is

exciting. Dylan Higgins was off today. You can thank me for editing assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you in what's sure to be a very eventful early next week. I've thrown everything at the wall But nothing will stick Won't you hang round a while Oh, you do the trick I could build you a home on high I could lay each and every brick. Will you be there by my side?

Will you do the trick?