Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1429: Catch Me if You Can

Episode Date: September 12, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the costs of Christian Yelich’s broken kneecap and other injuries disrupting pennant races and the Mets-centric personal-catcher controversy involving Noah Syndergaard, Wilson Ramos, and Tomás Nido. Then they answer listener emails about the mystery of Edwin Díaz (and the more minor mystery of Justin Verlander) and whether we’re […]

Season 2, rolling in this bitter pill and chasing blood There's fire in my veins and it's boiling down like a fire Whoa, bitch, it's in my mouth Whoa, bitch, it's in my mouth Whoa, bitch, it's in my mouth Hello and welcome to episode 1429 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast and fan graphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Sam Miller of ESPN. Hello, Sam. Hi, Ben.

Last time we talked a little bit about players returning in the thick of a pennant race and how teams handle that. And the flip side of that, the unfortunate flip side of that, is players getting hurt in the thick of a pennant race. And we've had that happen too. Obviously, the example this week, Christian Jelic, fractured kneecap, done for the year. And the outpouring of disappointment has probably outstripped any similar outpouring I can remember for a player who is missing 18 games in September,

which if you think about it, it could have been worse. It could have happened earlier and it could have been even more costly, I suppose. But because Jelic is at the center of so many storylines right now, it feels like a large loss. I wrote about it and you can make the case that it won't actually change anything. There are ways in which maybe the outcome of the season and the things that Christian Jelic was involved in wouldn't actually change. Like the Brewers are sort of long shots, at least if you look at the playoff odds,

even with Christian Jelic. I mean, they're a game back of the Cubs in the wildcard race as we speak, but because they're not quite as good a team, they are not favored. And one player, even a player as great as Jelic only makes so much difference over the span of a few weeks, in theory, at least. And you could say that maybe he probably wouldn't have gotten to 50-30 anyway if he had stayed healthy. It would have been challenging, though not impossible,

to get the six homers he needed. And you could say that maybe Bellinger was a more deserving and more likely MVP candidate anyway, even if Jelic had been able to play the rest of the schedule. But you put all those things together, and those were a lot of the reasons why we were excited about baseball for the rest of the regular season. The Brewers trying to chase the Cubs and Bellinger trying to chase history, whether a home run title or the 50-30 race or back-to-back MVP awards. So it's a big bummer. And he's just generally one of the more compelling

players in the sport right now. So it is sad to lose him at a crucial time. right now so it is sad to lose him at a crucial time well okay ben let me uh let me give a couple of um counter arguments about how it would have affected things or it probably would have affected things or you're underplaying how much it would have affected things his home run rate per game if you assumed he would have played the final 18 games as well as all of the one game that he mostly missed because he did this in the first inning would have put him at 50.4 home runs and so 50 30 was actually right what he was on track for and while the brewers it is true are not favored by the playoff odds because the cubs are seen by these playoff odds as being a higher quality team. They're still at 25% even without Jelic and presumably with Jelic.

I don't know. I don't have what those would be, but I would guess that it would have been in the low 30s maybe when we woke up this morning. The Cubs also, I believe, benefit from the playoff odds perception that the Cardinals aren't very good. The Cubs have, I think, seven games left against the Cardinals, and these playoff odds don't think the Cardinals are a particularly good team. But the Cardinals have been the best team in the National League for the second half or roughly so and are a good team.

And so, you know, you could make the case that the Cubs actually have a very challenging schedule ahead of them, while the Brewers have almost no challenge ahead of them. Yes, that is true. They have one series against the Cardinals. That's it. I don't think the Brewers are favored by any means, and they wouldn't have been.

And I think, in fact, a week ago, I thought the Brewers were completely out of it. It's the fact that they've managed to claw back in with a sweep against their rivals over the weekend and that they've got to win. Well, three out of four, I think. Three out of four. think but three out of four thank you yes you uh you live a life of luxury and you count thursday as a part of the weekend i i'm a i'm a worker um no three out of four sorry about that so they fought their

way back in their only one game out and also to be honest there's not a lot going on in these standings and uh it has felt in a there have been multiple days in the last few weeks where it has felt like the National League is all sewn up. And then the next day, the Cubs lose and three teams win and you squint and you go, OK, well, maybe you weren't. And so I've just had this rooting for whoever is closest kind of feeling for the last few weeks just to keep some interest going in that race. And the Brewers were, you know, five games out not long ago, and now they're one game out. And

so it's a real shame that it came when it did. But I mean, that's not to contradict anything that you were saying. It is a bummer. It seems to me that I'm sure this is not true. I'm sure this is just my perception in the moment, maybe specifically because of the Yellich injury. There's injuries every year, obviously, but it really feels like in a lot of ways, this has been the year of the pennant race shifting injury or the, I don't know, like the work. I don't know.

Injuries feel like they've been such a part of the storyline, particularly for contending teams. So you have Yellich going down just as the Brewers are getting back in it. Uh, and then you had Jose Ramirez going down just as he was kind of reaching his, his peak again. And, and, and Cleveland was one of the main competitive teams in a competitive race. So he goes down and you have Javi Baez is, is gone from the Cubs simultaneously with Jelich and he's probably gone for the rest of uh September and I'm there's probably others that I'm thinking of

in the in Byron Buxton done for the year Byron Buxton done for the year you also have just the fact that the Yankees being um yeah that that's been in a larger sense that has been one of the huge storylines of the year the Yankees going through this historic run of injuries and somehow coming out of it even stronger you had cleveland losing carasco and kluber and it's seeming to doom them early in the year you know sean menea i don't know carlos correa has been out i'm obviously you can name injured players in on any team in any year but it feels like there have been a lot of injuries that have felt like like that was going to be doom for the team and maybe maybe in this case it's it actually will be for milwaukee or for chicago without javi baez or for cleveland without jose ramirez who's

to say but i don't know it feels like that's been a bigger storyline than usual this year yeah it's a big bummer and to be clear my column about this was not actually it's okay that christian yelich has heard or you're all making too much of it i am as upset about it as as anyone it's i think partly that he ended last season on such an incredible run that he as close as a baseball player ever comes to carrying a team or single-handedly propelling a team into the playoffs, that's what Christian Jelic did last September. And of course, he propelled the Brewers to the tiebreaker with the Cubs and then into the NLCS. do the same thing again this year, this September. He had also been on fire. Five of his first eight games had come against the Cubs, and he had torn it up, and he had a walk-off against them on Saturday. So he was doing the same sort of heroic thing. And even though if you look at the wars and the projected wars, it will tell you that, well, an eight-win guy, if we say that Christian Jelic is roughly an eight-win guy, then over three weeks, 18 games, you wouldn't even expect him to be a one-win guy over replacement. Or in this case, I guess, over Trent Grisham, who maybe is a bit better than replacement level.

We'll see. But that just kind of doesn't really mirror the way that we feel about this. Maybe we should understand that and know that, yes, it's baseball, and you usually can't do what Christian Jelic did last September. And even if you do, there's just no way to predict. Maybe Trent Grisham will get hot, or maybe Jelic would have slumped, or maybe it just wouldn't have made a difference. The difference between those two guys wouldn't have made a win's worth of difference because of the performance of the

rest of the team. But storyline-wise, that's why we're watching is to see the best players play at quote-unquote the most important times of the year. I know that technically speaking, every win matters the same, but this is when everything's magnified because we know how much the wins matter and we can count the remaining games and look at the standings and have it signify something. So it's a real shame to lose him and such a fluky injury too. I don't know that I've ever seen this exact injury happen. seen this exact injury happen. I was looking at Corey Dawkins's injury database to see if I could come up with comps and nothing was immediately suggesting itself because we're so used to seeing players foul pitches off themselves all the time and limp around a little bit and maybe get a big bruise and be day-to-day and that's it, they're back. And that is not the case here. And as we

speak, we don't know quite how serious it is whether it will require surgery what the recovery time will be obviously so much of Jelic's appeal is the power speed combo that of course you really hope that he won't be hampered at all when he does come back which hopefully will be in time for a full season next year but that this won't be a lingering thing that saps his speed at all. Because in addition to being maybe the best non-Mike Trout hitter in baseball this year, he's also been almost the best base runner. And over the past calendar year, just edges out Trout as the highest war guy, at least according to fan graphs. So it's a loss.

I think he probably doesn't really have a chance at winning the MVP award right now. Yeah, probably not. If you look at the history of MVP award winners, which I did when I was reading this article, there have been like nine guys who have won the award playing 130 or fewer games. So it's not out of the question, of course. But A, some of those guys, more than half of them came before the schedule expanded to its current length. And B, probably most of them didn't have a Cody Bellinger who was neck and neck with them, perhaps even ahead of them, according to some sources.

So I think probably not. according to some sources. So I think probably not. His best shot was that he'd just have a hot September and the Brewers would squeak into the playoffs and then he'd get the narrative boost. But Bellinger, unless he goes into some strange slump, he will probably pass Jelic in all three wars by the end of the year. He's already ahead in baseball reference and baseball prospectus. And of course he has the playoff boost. So I wonder if anything, you might see guys like Rendon or Quetel Marte pick up some vulture votes.

Although looking back at the whole history of MVP award winners, there have only been three guys who ever played 130 games or fewer, hitters, obviously, who even finished second or third in an MVP race. And all those guys were a long, long time ago. So I think Yelich will do that. But yeah, he probably has a very slim chance now that depends, I guess, entirely on Bellinger having a bad few weeks and maybe on the Brewers making the playoffs without him. And, you know, if you're going to play 130 games, obviously through no fault of his own, you don't want to miss the final 18.

Yes. Independent race for your MVP candidacy. But as it is, Bellinger is the only person who will pass him in Van Graaff's war. And Marte might pass him or might not but otherwise only bellinger will be ahead of him and if you were to use win probability added he would have a case to be better than than bellinger he's by far the number one win probability added in baseball he's about two wins ahead of bellinger and he's only probably he will probably not be two wins behind him in war although he might in on reference so so there So there is a case for him.

There is a case for debating that award probably even still, but yeah, probably no chance. Yeah, and it's kind of incredible that the Brewers are in it at this point because, A, they've had a bunch of injuries, but also they've been outscored by 27 runs as we speak right now. And they have been very successful in one-run games and one-and-two-run games. And they've won a whole lot of those, and that has kind of kept them in it. So it's not really a great team as currently constituted. And, yeah, losing Jelic hurts them a lot. Not just Brewers fans, but also all baseball fans, because really he was probably the player who was agnostic of team loyalty. He was probably the most compelling player down the stretch right now.

Just the combination of the award chase and the 50-30 and where the Brewers are in the race. He was probably the guy who should have been at the top of everyone's game changer list. So it's a big blow. The man managed to slip and slide naked without hurting himself. Yeah. I thought he was invincible. One other thing I wanted to bring up, there's been a personal catcher controversy in the past week, and it seems like we've gone a while without one of those. Not that they were ever extremely common, but it seemed almost like a throwback to have some disagreement and maybe even some acrimony over who was throwing to who. This is obviously Noah Sindergaard and the Mets, and it was reported

as Sindergaard being upset, even livid, I think the New York Post said, about being forced to work with Wilson Ramos, who he has not had as much success with this season. The team has done just fine when Sindergaard throws to Ramos, but Zindergaard has not done nearly as well as he has done throwing to other catchers, particularly Tomas Nito. And so it was reported that Zindergaard was upset about having to work with Ramos, and Mickey Calloway and Brody Van Wagenen were just kind of like, well, you've got to suck it up because Wilson Ramos is a really good hitter. because Wilson Ramos is a really good hitter. Callaway even said that Ramos has been the best hitter in baseball over the past month and a half, which seems like quite an exaggeration, but he has been very good. He was great in August.

And so it's kind of this interesting question that always comes up with personal catchers, which is what's your obligation as a player and what is actually best for the team. So Callaway said that when Jacob deGrom wanted to work with a personal catcher last year, that he was okay with that because the Mets weren't really in it and deGrom was chasing this historic season and going after the Cy Young Award. And so that sort of took precedence over the team results. Whereas now, because the Mets are still sort of in this wildcard race, he's saying that Noah

Syndergaard just sort of has to live with it. And if you're Noah Syndergaard, then maybe you want to put the team first and you care more about the team winning than the results. And maybe Wilson Ramos' bat outweighs Tomas Nito's glove. But also maybe you think about this not selfishly but selflessly. And you think, well, I'm actually so much better when I'm throwing to Tomas Nito that this is the best thing for the team. And the team is wrong about this. And, of course, there's all sorts of other stuff here where Brody Van Wagenen gave Wilson Ramos his contract, and he had encouraged Jacob de Grom to try to work with Devin Masarocco because he was representing Jacob de Grom at the time. So it's another vestige of

that strange former agent storyline. But I'm always kind of curious about this. And of course, it goes back to maybe Greg Maddox working with a personal catcher or even the days of Mike Napoli and Jeff Mathis and just trying to weigh these separate skills because Sundergaard is right that Nito is the superior defensive catcher. The numbers are pretty clear. If you look at baseball prospectus nito's the better framer he's the better thrower and ramos ranks pretty low on the leaderboard for catcher defense nito ranks pretty high so he's not imagining things and that's even going beyond what center guard is probably talking about which is the symbiotic relationship and the personal catcher kind of melding of minds yeah i know i i I feel like if you're a star pitcher and you want to have a personal catcher

and you frame it as like you just want to have a catcher who is more dedicated to you and you're more dedicated to him and just it's not about picking one over the other. It's more about having that dedicated relationship where you can, you know, really, I don't know, bond, you know, meld together. I feel like that usually goes well. It doesn't usually go well when it's framed as I have a teammate and I just don't really like working with him.

Not that, I don't know, not that i would know who's to blame in that relationship or whether syndergaard is is is right about his performance suffering or or anything like that it just usually doesn't really go as well and so just the messaging here isn't ideal it's more it's it's a very mets kind of message yes in that sense. So Zach Granke, for instance, last year, Zach Granke started 33 games, and all 33 of them were started by Jeff Mathis. And Jeff Mathis only started, I think, 28 other games the whole year. And I don't think that was very disruptive. I never heard that Granke didn't like the Diamondbacks other catcher who at the time was was what Alex Savila.

And it was always just like, you know, he he likes to have a catcher who's got a little bit more attention for him on him. And they work well together. And that's all it is. And they made it work. It wasn't you know, you're going to have a backup catcher who starts one or two games a week. And so you just put them on that schedule. And I don't know that it feels like when the way that this story came out, though, it just is instantly like a tabloid story instead of a baseball story. And it feels like the messaging of it. You don't have to try that hard. I wouldn't think to be a little bit more diplomatic about it. I will note that when Syngard is pitching to Ramos, he has a better strikeout rate,

he has a better walk rate, and he does not allow any more stolen bases than when Tomas Nito catches. Now he does allow a higher BABIP and he has a lot more home runs, and maybe that's Wilson Ramos' fault. I'm not saying that it is not, but I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. It just feels like it's always the Mets. Yep, it usually is. And to be fair, Syndergaard didn't dispute that this conversation happened, but did dispute the characterization of it. He portrayed it as a more diplomatic and civil conversation. Of course, he probably would say that even if it wasn't one. So I don't know exactly what was said. But yeah, it's better if this sort of thing does not come out, of course,

and is settled behind closed doors. And I can understand, I can imagine that there are probably players who form an attachment that is unnecessary. Like maybe they just become comfortable working with a certain guy and they kind of have tunnel vision and they're looking at how they feel and not how it impacts the rest of the team. And maybe they just imprint on a certain guy because they happen to have a good game with this guy and a bad game with the other guy and they think well i can work well with this guy and i can't work with that guy and really it's just small sample and they're being fooled by something we all do things like that where we draw hasty conclusions based on some

positive or negative experience that we had with something. And so if you're the manager or you're the GM, maybe it can be your job to take the bigger view and say, don't form your impression. Don't decide based on this. It's so subject to random variation. And yet, if you are really feeling uncomfortable working with a guy then at a certain point maybe it does impact your performance even if it wouldn't have otherwise. Once you decide that it probably will that you can't work with this guy then it's a self-fulfilling prophecy and maybe that guy's feelings are ruffled and he doesn't like working with you. I can imagine catchers not wanting to work with Sindergaard because he allows a lot of stolen bases through no fault of the catcher. So

maybe catchers have personal pitchers they don't want to work with Noah Sindergaard. I don't know. But yeah, I'm sure that there are times when if we could run the math and there's just really no way to do it because we can look at eras with this guy and that guy and maybe if it's a multi-season sample you can have a little more confidence and you can look at components instead of just the big results but it's hard to know it's hard to say statistically speaking that this is the optimal pairing because there's just a lot you kind of have to either disbelieve or take on faith when it comes to the pitcher-catcher relationship. And so if Syndergaard says he works so much better with this guy, maybe it's just a comfort thing. Like maybe he's not actually better, but he just enjoys it more. Maybe he's not actually better, but he just enjoys it more. He just, I don't know, he likes talking to that guy more, or he have someone who is actually good at defense and is employed by your team for that reason to begin with.

And ideally, of course, you want to keep this thing quiet and settle it, not in the York Post. Sean Conroy, Sean Conroy of the Sonoma Stompers, I asked one time if he likes if he had a personal catcher or if he likes having a personal catcher, or if he believes in the value of personal catcher. And he said he, he really liked having a personal catcher, he just didn't care who it was, he was satisfied with any catcher that he ever had, but he wanted it to be the same face behind the plate every every game. And where I'm sympathetic with with Syndergaard, and with a lot of catchers is that you don't often have the same face behind the plate. If you're lucky, you're drafted by the Cardinals and then you do. But,

um, you know, Syndergaard in his short career, he's basically played like four seasons and he's had, he's thrown to nine different catchers. You're just not going to get the familiarity that I think pitchers would prefer from that. Maybe you luck out and maybe you realize immediately that, you know, Tomas Nito is your soulmate. And in fact, that's who you want to lock in with. And then it could be frustrating

that that player is not the primary catcher. And that particularly is the in the stretch run when everybody's asked to do a little bit more and Ramos being the primary catcher is asked to do a little bit more by playing every day. Now all of a sudden you don't have your familiar face back there. But the larger challenge of just having to adapt to a new catcher in this relationship that pitchers value a great deal and think matters is tough in an era where players move around a lot, where teams are trying to churn through cost-controlled pre-arb players or whatever the case may be. And you're dealing with three catchers every year. And then the next year, it's three new catchers.

Yep. All right. Emails? Sure. All right. Well, I sort of teased this one last time. And since we're on the subject of Mets pitchers, I guess we'll start here. This is from David. Any idea what the hell is up with

Edwin Diaz? Has any pitcher ever been so good and so bad at the same time? It seems like it should be impossible to strike out 15 and a half batters per nine innings and still have terrible results, but he's found a way. He has the ERA minus of Peter Lambert and the XFIT minus of Max Scherzer. Is this just small sample size and bad luck, or is there some way he's breaking some of these metrics? And I'll just, to set this up a little bit, I will quote something Edwin Diaz said after one of his recent blowups. This is, of course, deposed Mets closer Edwin Diaz. Diaz said, I think it's been a lot of bad luck. Sometimes I leave pitches over the plate and they just pop out and I get outs, but it's just been a little bit of bad luck. But I go out there every time and I just try to get outs because I know my stuff is pretty good. Obviously not something that Mets fans probably want to hear from the guy who has been causing them mental stress and strain all his case that it actually is bad luck. And in the same story that I usage has been a story all season, and you can't use

him this number of days in a row or in this inning or that inning. But really what Callaway's talking about here and what Diaz is talking about here is dingers. Diaz has allowed a lot of home runs, even though he has also been excellent at missing bats most of the time. Yeah, I mean, these are by far the most frustrating player evaluation challenges because the overwhelming majority of pitches that Diaz has thrown have presumably, like the evidence suggests, been like the ones that he threw when he was really awesome.

And most home runs... Throwing just as hard. He's throwing just as hard. He's throwing just as many strikes. And he's getting just as hard. He's throwing just as hard. He's throwing just as many strikes and he's throwing, he's getting just as many swinging strikes. And that tells you that in like a sort of broad pitcher profile, he is mostly the same. Now, all of the home runs that he is allowed presumably came on mistakes and you could

very easily isolate those 14 pitches and go, oh, yep, 14 garbage pitches. But pitchers throw lots of garbage pitchers. They throw a ton of mistakes and most of them don't get hit out. And it's very hard to look at a pitcher and decide how many of those mistakes should have been hit out. And so in this case, I have no doubt that the 14 pitches that he's allowed home runs on were not good pitches. But I have, I mean, I also have a lot of doubt about whether he's actually systematically throwing more mistake pitches it it's possible that's how bad seasons happen is

that that the pitchers do make more mistakes but then that's also how flukishly bad seasons happen and so with when you compound that with just the the inherent small sampleness of a of a reliever throwing yeah throw 234 batters i mean this is well i don't really have a stat blast today ben but i i i sort of i i i have one very very quick thing so do you want to just transition into that sure Step Blast. Okay, so here's the stat blast, Ben. We are going to have this year a record number of hit by pitches on 3-0 counts. All right, so that's all. Okay. But while I was, I don't know even why I was looking that up.

This was like the sort of thing where I was on the phone and instead of doodling when I'm on the phone, I, I, I play index while I'm on the phone. And so I somehow thought I've always been fascinated by three ball hit by pitches, not just three, Oh, but three ball hit by pitches. And I think I had just seen someone get hit on a three Oh. And I thought, I wonder if those are going up or down. So I went and I looked and it's going to be an all-time high this year. But one thing I noticed while I was on this totally inconsequential play index query was that the Babbitt, the league's Babbitt on 3-0 this year is 321. And last year's, it was 263. And that's a big jump. And you could say, wow, the league wide batting average on on 30 pitches has gone up 60 points. And you could fill all the little nuggets of information that you have about

behavioral change league-wide and the home run era and young players and the Orioles and all these trends, and you could actually make some sort of semi-coherent narrative explanation for why BABIP went up 60 points on 3-0 pitches. But of course, it would all be wrong. The BABIP just fluctuates crazily on 3-0 pitches because it's a fairly small sample. So BABIP, this is something that we mentioned before, but one of the one of the sort of strange and wonderful things about baseball is that BABIP on 3-0 is basically the same as BABIP on all other counts. It is like sort of the nail in the coffin for any argument that like babbitt is primarily uh something driven by better hitters being better like it's just it's just 3-0 you

can't be a better hitter than a 3-0 hitter and in in fact only the better hitters are even allowed to swing and yet they produce a cumulative babbitt that is like about the same as every everywhere else it's a few points higher but over the course of the last 30 years, it's been like five points higher than the normal BABF, but it does fluctuate wildly from year to year. So it was 321 last year. It was 263 the year before it was 338 the year before that it was 256 in 2012. It was 333 in 2003. It was 229 in 1999, 229, the league as a whole had a 229 BABIP on 3-0 counts in 1999, whereas they had a league-wide BABIP of 338 in 2017. And so if you look at the league-wide number of balls put in play, it is about the same as a player's season. In fact, this year there have been about 300 balls put in play, not counting home runs on 3-0 pitches. And Mike Trout has put 305

balls in play, not counting home runs. And so if Mike Trout's BABIP jumped 60 points and you wanted to make some narrative about why it jumped 60 points or why it dropped 60 points, which is more common. A lot of times when a player's BABIP drops 60 points, we say, well, sometimes it's luck, but sometimes he's not hitting it hard. But also a lot of times it's luck. There's nothing about the pool of hitters in the major leagues this year that has any sort of connection to each other. They're just all sorts of different players who, because of small samples and because of the flukish nature of this, randomly have years where they hit 320 on those balls and years where they hit 260 on those balls. Which is all to bring this back to

Edwin Diaz. Edwin Diaz, I mean, what is it? 100 balls put in play? I mean, how many balls? I don't know if you have it in front of you, but how many balls does he allow in play in a year? Is it he okay, so he's faced 234 batters, he has struck out 91, he has walked 20. So that gets us down to 120. He's hit four. So that gets us down to 100 and roughly 15. And he is allowed 14 home runs. And so out of 115 balls in play, everything is going to be extremely neurotic. And that applies to his BABIP. It applies to his hits allowed. It applies to his home runs. And so that all makes this very, very frustrating. We're talking about the difference between five mistakes being hit and five mistakes not being hit. And so at the end of it, I just don't know. And I don't know if I were Mickey Calloway, how I could possibly have the courage to send him

out there with a one run lead, or to leave him out there, say with a two run lead when the first two two players get singles against him. But I also don't, I mean, you'd have to, you'd have to just feel like if you did anything else that you would always be doubting whether you overreacted and whether you could could somehow tell yourself just you probably have to stick with this yeah it's really tough it's he's had he's got a 390 babbitt he has like a 28 home run per fly ball rate. So more than one of every four fly balls he's allowed has turned into a home run. It looks like an utter disaster.

It is an utter disaster in the sense that it's hurt the Mets. But if you look at the underlying numbers, like at baseball perspective, this is DRA minus right now, which is adjusted for the park and lower is better, is 60.7, which is great, really great. I mean, not as great as last year. Last year he was otherworldly, but better than he was in 2017 when he was also a celebrated closer and had a much more respectable ERA. So it's just a very difficult question to answer. I think you could say the same thing about Justin Verlander. You could ask the same sorts of questions. Obviously, not quite to the extremes that we're talking about with Diaz, but it's similar with Verlander where he's allowed a ton

of home runs and that's really the only thing that has hurt him. And Craig Edwards wrote about Verlander's home runs recently at Fangraphs and he did do the thing that you were just talking about, just look at the pitches that turned into home runs, see if he throws a lot of those pitches, etc. So he says, I looked into the pitch types and locations for Verlander's home runs. More than half of his homers were in three fairly distinct categories. Eight homers to righties on fastballs down the middle, middle low and middle away, but still in the heart of the plate. Seven homers to lefties on fastballs at the top of the strike zone. Four homers on sliders down the middle.

four homers on sliders down the middle. And then he says, across those three categories, I found that Verlander threw those pitch types in those locations more often than other pitchers with similar pitches and velocity, which might lead to some predictability to his pitches, though clearly not enough to prevent him from getting hitters out the vast majority of the time. He challenges hitters, and it works most of the time, but that same approach might make him slightly more vulnerable to homers. In that very paragraph, batters miss a lot of those trying to figure out whether a pitcher who's unhittable most of the time, if he challenges hitters more of the time too, then I guess you could say that he's kind of playing with fire all the time and usually it works, but he is going to get burned more than a pitcher with lesser stuff who's trying to stay away from those

danger zones more often. I just don't know if that really explains it to my satisfaction, and it certainly doesn't really with Diaz. With Verlander, you have, you know, in some ways he's been very lucky because he has a 204 BABIP and he has an extremely high strand rate. So maybe that's partly him pitching better and differently with runners on base, but also maybe he's getting a little lucky and the Astros defense is good. So his season is also tough to evaluate, but it's not quite as confounding, of course, because with Verlander, you're talking about, is he having like one of the all-time seasons? Or is he having just a merely really excellent and still Cy Young caliber season? So it's not quite as pressing to figure that out as it is with your closer who is either

dominant or terrible. Yeah, I mean, I'm almost in a sense on on Edwin Diaz's behalf, grateful to Justin Verlander for doing this in this year because he is the you know, he's the best pitcher in the American League having the best season of his career. spate of home runs and you don't say ah well there you go justin verlander's a failure um you say wow that's really weird i i mean he's so good it must you know there there must be an aspect of it that is just simply out of his control and that makes it a little easier to say the same thing about edwin diaz who given that he is a reliever and that when he fails, he fails in the most frustrating and sort of permanent way, makes it easy for you to just like point and say, you know, get him out of here and like hate him, hate him. It'd be like people hate their closers.

And so this Justin Verlander is a well i don't know it seems like is a is a a hand of grace reaching out to edwin diaz and saying saying hey friend we're in this you know together edwin diaz by the way his babbitt is almost entirely driven by a babbitt on ground balls and you could again you could be like ah well there you go he's probably allowing a lot of hard hit ground balls he's not really and you could again you could be like ah well there you go he's probably allowing a lot of hard hit ground balls he's not really and you could say ah well maybe it's the Mets infield but it's 42 he has 42 ground balls and yeah and you know that like a babbip on 42 ground balls is just what it sounds like so I don't know where do you fall on this? Edwin Diaz, what ultimately,

if you having not studied him, nor having no stakes whatsoever that matter, if you had to decide whether Edwin Diaz is your closer on game 163, is he? Oh, I'm so happy I don't have to decide. But obviously, it depends a little bit on who else you have. If you have someone else who is also really impressive that you can feel confident in, then maybe you are more likely to go to that guy. But I think I'd probably be far more likely to continue to trust Edwin Diaz than, say, the typical Mets fan who has been burned by Diaz repeatedly this year and doesn't care what his DRA- and XFIT- are, only cares how many games he's blown and how many games he's lost. That person's not going to have that patience. I think

I would have that patience. And I guess just inherently, I do tend to believe that if you're throwing that hard and your pitches are that nasty and you're getting that many whiffs, that you must be good. him but if you're mickey calloway then of course your job is on the line when you're making that decision and people are yelling at you all the time if you do trust diaz and it's just a miserable situation for both of them to be in yeah the real the real loss here if they decided not to to use him i mean they do have a pitcher a reliever who's really good and could be a lockdown closer or as pitched as well as a lockdown closer and it's's Seth Lugo. But the problem is that Seth Lugo, they've been using as a two inning guy, high leverage guy. And that's a super valuable thing. That's arguably more valuable than a closer. Although if he fails, then maybe the failed closer is more damaging than anything else. But like, it would be very easy for them to say, all right, we're just gonna, we're gonna put Seth Lugo in the job until things settle down,

figure it out. We're going to know we have the ninth inning locked down. And then just you, you know, that like the, the reaction, the average fan reaction to a game blown in the seventh isn't going to be as painful to deal with as a game blown in the ninth, but you might be losing just as many games because of it. Although, as you noted with Christian Yelich, we're now to the point where who even knows, like in 18 games, everything could be the thing you're best, you know, like eight in 18 games, the fact that you traded for you, Darvish could be the thing that costs you the world series or whatever. Like the like the thing that seems like the best possible thing could be the worst and the worst thing could be the best and you just you just roll with it but yeah I think I'd stick with Edwin Diaz I think

but I mean what you want look it's hard and what you want is for life to be easy um and but it's often not and you just have to deal with it and sometimes when it's hard there isn't a good option sometimes when it's hard you think you have a better option and it turns out to be the worst one. And so the Mets just kind of have to hope that this thing that they got really unlucky on, like they traded for a lockdown closer to lock down the ninth. And the fact that Edwin Diaz came over, whether it's because he turned bad or whether it's because he turned unlucky from the Mets perspective, they got unlucky. They traded for an awesome closer who didn't for no reason whatsoever that they could

have anticipated is suddenly one of the worst closers. That's bad luck. And so now you just hope that you get a little good luck or at least a normal luck, but it doesn't always happen. Sometimes, sometimes bad things happen while we're on the topic of closer volatility, can I talk about something else on the same topic? I'll just say, by the way, that that trade probably complicates the situation further. Maybe it shouldn't, but the fact that Diaz was the centerpiece of this direction of the franchise-defining move that you made, defining move that you made and you gave up the guy who's now ranked 22 in baseball among all prospects according to mlb.com and that guy's making you look bad every day as Diaz makes you look bad on the other end that probably is part of it because if you just decide all right well that's it we're throwing in the towel here We're not going to trust Edwin Diaz anymore.

Then you're essentially admitting that you really blew that trade. And no one wants to do that either, at least Brody Van Wagenen doesn't. So that's water under the bridge, and it probably shouldn't affect your decision making. But that's always in the back of your mind, too, in this particular case. Yeah, the game that the Mets game last night I I assume I don't know I I assumed Diaz was unavailable but I'm looking now and he hadn't pitched for a couple days so I don't really know I think I had the sound off but it was bizarre to watch they had a one run lead and and Justin Wilson was the was the closer that night and

they brought him in in the eighth and then he comes in in the ninth and he two guys get on with uh tying run is on third there's one out and you're just watching justin wilson lefty face a bunch of you know righties although i guess katel marte is a switch hitter so but all the same to like watch him go through like to to watch just facing Cattell Marte in with a one run lead and it worked they got out of it Cattell Marte grounded out the first base and it was all very wild but they won so they're in a mess right now but in episode I think 1303 you and Jeff were talking about Oliver Drake specifically this is at really peak, Jeff. I don't know. This sounds so good,

I almost feel like this is a joke that the internet already knows about and that I somehow missed it. But I think he was talking about how Oliver Drake's middle name is Oliver Gardner. Oliver Gardner. Gardner, do you remember this? Yeah, vaguely.

His player nickname was something like Bucko or Buck, B bucky maybe buck i think he was known as bucko when he was growing up and jeff said his name is oliver gardener drake obviously you go by olive garden which means you go by breadsticks his nickname should be breadsticks i thought that is unbelievable jeff is the best but uh jeff was talking about how oliver drake i think is maybe his stat blast at the time was about players moving around or something like that and or maybe you had done the research who knows but you start talking about oliver drake and jeff says he says you can have a guy like oliver drake

who is bouncing around constantly not getting an opportunity to get settled in and then you can have a guy like blake parker similar sort of journeyman who just sort of wound up for several months as the closer for the Angels. Now, Blake Parker is presently out of a job. He was not tendered a contract last week, so he's out there, and he's likely to just kind of float around and look for some sort of medium leverage role. But the gap between someone like Oliver Drake and someone who has been a closer in the majors is really shockingly small. All someone like Oliver Drake has to do is keep five more splitters down low in the majors is really shockingly small. All someone like Oliver Drake has to do is keep five more splitters down low in the zone instead of hung out over the plate. And then all of a sudden you have a guy who can pitch the eighth or ninth inning. And the truth

is that Oliver Drake probably leaves 50 splitters out over the zone in the year. It's just that only like eight of them get hit for homers. And if you take five of those eight and they are low in the zone or they get missed now all of a sudden he's really great so anyway the end of that offseason for both of those was that blake parker actually ended up signing with minnesota and he was the closer for a first place team for the first half and then like after he was their closer he was just released in the middle of the season he was, he was just released in the middle of the season. He was both their closer and released in the middle of the season. And Oliver Drake, meanwhile, is employed by the same people who employed Jeff.

And he got his second save the other day. And he is pitching in high leverage right now and has been. And so I always like to at the end of the year. By the way, he's pitching in high leverage. He has an ERA 0.3 runs lower than Blake Parker had when Blake Parker got released, but Oliver Drake, et cetera. I always like to look at the end of the year at the closers, at who the closers are and where they were at the beginning of the year. And so I have, uh, at the beginning of the year.

And so I have here, I would say the nine best closer stories from 2019 or at least the nine closers who it is. It would have been hardest to tell me in March that he was going to be the closer. And so these are the nine. I think it's nine, might be eight. The Angels closer is Hansel Robles, who just one year ago was selected off waivers,

and he is now a closer for a big market baseball team. Liam Hendricks is the A's closer. Of course, Blake Trinan last year was maybe the greatest closer of all time for a year, and now it's Liam Hendricks, who in the first outing of the year, he pitched the fourth inning. He didn't throw any high leverage inning other than extra innings when he was forced into it until May 4th.

That was only the sixth inning. It happened to be a close game, but it was only the sixth inning. And then he didn't throw another high leverage inning until June 4th. So through June 4th, through June 3rd at least, he had thrown one high leverage inning until June 4th. So through June 4th, through June 3rd, at least he had thrown one high leverage inning in the entire season. He's now the A's closer independent race. The Braves closer is Mark Melanson, Mark Melanson, Mark Melanson. There's an advertisement. He does ads or he did ads for the giants that appeared on giants radio for like a home mortgage company or something.

I don't remember what it was, but they had some pun, some pun, you know, some baseball pun. And he was like, it's a relief, something like that. And I just remember thinking like, this sucks for the home mortgage company because, I mean, Mark Melanson, like famous closer, like very successful, signed a four-year deal or five-year deal, whatever it was with like very successful, signed a four year deal or five year deal, whatever it was with the Giants to be a closer. And like the pun that you want to use is like close your deal. But they couldn't because he wasn't the closer anymore.

So it was like, don't get caught in the middle or like we'll get you a good setup or something like he was just like a low leverage reliever now well now he's a closer for the Braves who are a hundred win team and who traded for Shane Green an all-star like a month ago and now it's Mark Melanson all right this is what we're talking about here okay Emilio Pagan is the Rays closer not Oliver Drake but Emilio Pagan Emilio Pagan last year second lowest average leverage index in all of baseball second lowest he's a closer for a team in a pennant race. Mariners' Matt McGill is their closer. He was purchased, purchased in July. He had the same ERA with Seattle that he had with Minnesota,

but with Minnesota, he was essentially released, and with the Mariners, he's the closer. Jose Ureña appears to be the Marlins' closer. He was their opening day starter it's not i don't know that that sounds better than the number like like if you hear that you're like well okay but then you then you see how he got there the rockies closer is jairo diaz who i believe was a minor league free agent picked by you a few years ago. He threw five major league innings from 2016 to 2018. So he pitched in the majors in 2015.

He threw none in 2016. He didn't pitch at all. He was injured. He threw five in 2017 and he spent 2018 both injured and then also in the minors. He was he is the Rockies closer. You remember minors. He is the Rockies' closer. You remember I said that. He was the Rockies' closer right now. Last summer, he was released by the Rockies,

and then he just hung around for a while, and then the Rockies signed him again. So that shows how in demand Jairo Diaz was one year ago. He's now a closer. And then Joe Jimenez is the Tigers' closer. He has a career war of negative 0.9. His career war is negative 0.9 in three seasons. And in those three seasons, one year he was an all-star,

and a second year he became a closer. That's a good list. Oh, man. So anyway, that's all the same story as edwin diaz basically yeah it's just a different it's a different it's a different tab in the same spreadsheet and you could probably come up with a very similar list in most seasons right if not all yeah no that's why yeah that's why that's why i do it and so always it's always good and sometimes i write the article around this time i think last year i I did, or maybe the year before, where I tried to predict who was going

to be every team's closer one year later, if they all met the archetypes that had been established by that year's closers in September. And so like I had to find a player with a 5.7 ERA in short season ball. I had to find him because one of those guys was now a closer. So who would it be next year? By the way, I left off one. Rowan Wick, I believe, is currently the Cubs closer.

And he has thrown more innings in AAA than he has thrown in the majors this year. He was acquired for someone named Jason Vosler last year who had previously been picked up on waivers. And he is now a closer for a team

in a pennant race. All right. I don't want to turn this into a Michael Lorenzen fun fact debate, but do we need to convene a tribunal to talk about this 1995 to 2019 thing that's going on here? I don't know what to make of this, but I don't want to ruin anyone's fun, but I don't get it. I don't understand. So the fun fact or the fun facts are that Bruce Bochy, at least for one day, was 1995 and 2019 his career win-loss record from the years 1995 to 2019. And now it has been unearthed that the Mariners, again, for one day, are also 1995 and 2019 since 1995. And I just, I don't see it. I don't get it. I think I'm more willing to go along with the frivolous fun fact, maybe, than you are. Maybe that was just the case with Lorenzen.

But this is just not doing it for me. It's true for one day and then it's not true. It'd be one thing if it were the end of the season. Even then, like, it doesn't mean anything. But, okay, I'd find it more satisfying that there was this confluence of wins and losses and years. But it happened one day i mean i'm sure you could you could probably find similar stretches like this for teams and players and managers if you looked hard enough just for one day and it's fleeting and then it's over and i

i don't know sorry to rain on everyone's parade but this one is just not fulfilling my needs. So you like the fun fact. You just want it to last longer. Well, yeah, I guess. No, you don't like numerology fun facts, which are not accomplishments. They're just coincidences. Yes. And there's, I don't know, like the other day, Ben, I had the most glorious revelation and I realized,

I'm going to say this, and I realized I believe probably everybody has had this revelation at some point. I am amazed that I have not heard it more or, oh my gosh, it's going to be so frivolous. I can't believe I'm setting you up to be disappointed like this. But have you ever noticed? So what is, tell me what happens in the month of January? It's the new year, right? Sure. Janu-yary. Janu-yary.

It's practically in the name, Janu-yary. Janu-yary. Practically is doing a lot of work there. If you say it right, if you practice a little bit, then you can say it a little more smoothly. If you completely mispronounce it. January. January. All right.

Anyway. That's a revelation that a lot of people have had. I told someone this and they went, yeah, I know. I thought of that too. Yeah. thought of that too um yeah anyway the point is that there's nothing significant about new year almost kind of being in january but if you're into puns you like it when a word conveniently sounds like includes or can be somehow manipulated into another word that's all a pun is a pun is to all puns are words that do not actually have any

intrinsic meaning they are merely symbols that were assigned to represent meaning that somehow by coincidental convenience have some resemblance to each other that then you can turn into like wordplay and this is just wordplay with numbers that That's all it is. It's just like, oh, wow, what a coincidence I can for this moment in this convenient moment. And I mean, most puns only exist for a moment to like a pun headline usually only works for that particular news for that particular article. And so for this moment, you can make these numbers kind of like look like a thing. And it, it you know we all know it doesn't mean anything it's all fake but it kind of has a sort of a feeling of like serendipitous design

like oh wow isn't it cute how the universe accidentally makes designs and that's uh all it is i enjoyed it i uh would say i enjoyed it like on a skip like like on a one to ten i would say i got like a three or a four of enjoyment. I have no problem with somebody publishing it on a microblogging platform. I would say that I don't need to see it like a lot. I've seen it a whole lot. And if it had ended the year, if the year had ended on that, then I would have said like a seven or an eight. Then that would have been really like, then it would have said like a like a seven or an eight uh then that would have been really like then it would have been really something look all chris davis is all the 247

stuff is the same thing it's just like wow what a weird coincidence there is nothing in intrinsically more consistent about chris davis because it's 247 than if one of those had been 248 if he had gotten one extra plate appearance that made it impossible for him to get 247. But we like it. We like it. It's sort of fun. So the 247s is like an eight or a nine or maybe even a 10. It's probably a 10, to be honest.

That's a 10. Like, how could it be? It's impossible. Well, that one's so improbable. It's unfathomable. Yeah. Right. This is not even improbable, really.

I mean, maybe, sort of. Well, no, because you have, right, you have whatever. You have so many combinations of years and records and days. Not really, though, because you have to have a number of wins that is realistically divided by the number of years since the year that you are starting the thing in. So, like like you can't have one it's very unlikely for instance that any team's going to have 1911 wins since 1911 so you have a yeah some narrow window that's the thing aren't we just searching for the combination that works i mean there's nothing about 1995 to 2019 for the mariners that's i mean what is that that's well they won they won the

you know randy johnson pitched and edgar martinez and around the thing and macklemore macklemore so did the song but there's nothing about that period you what are they from 1994 to 2019 it's just yeah probably not, you know, so you're just kind of backwards engineering this fun fact, it seems like. At least Boti, like, that's when his tenure started, right? That was the beginning of his career with the Padres at that point. I did not know there was a Mariners one,

and the Mariners one is definitely like a one or a two, because you're right, there's nothing particularly significant about the Mariners one and the mariners one is is definitely like a like a one or a two uh because you're right there's nothing particularly significant about the mariners one i don't think it's quite as common as you think it is that you could i mean look numerology that's the whole point of numerology it's all bs because if you try enough combinations you're gonna find it you're gonna find the thing so yeah you're right it is just reverse engineering to find something that you can then you know sell like um like a psychic or something but um the bocce one would have been cool if it is already like cooler than the mariners one it's a three the mariners is like a one or two or maybe it's a four if if it had ended his career if he had if he that had been the last day of the

season for if it had been the mariners it'd be like a five if it had if he that had been the last day of the season for if it had been the mariners it'd be like a five if it had been bocce it would have been like a nine or an eight maybe and if he had found out about this and said well that's that i'm leaving i'm gonna leave early and left then it would have been a 10 and it would have been legendary because nobody could care less about this than bruce bocci does and if he had actually been like no kidding flan you're the manager now i don't even know it's tim tim flannery already retired too who's who's the man hensley mullins is he still around you're the manager now anyway yeah i think what this teaches me is that i'm just really not very good at predicting the virality of fun facts or really of anything in general. But you'd think I could at least assess which fun facts would be everywhere and probably have, it's not like a random chance, but I would not have known if I had seen this original Reddit thread, I would have thought, okay, that was worth a Reddit thread. That clears the extremely low bar for what is worth a Reddit

thread. But I wouldn't have thought everyone in the world is going to pick this up and aggregate it and tweet it because I just didn't have that reaction when I read it. And yet this has been everywhere. I know, Ben, even on fun facts that i care about i'm still i'm not very good at predicting them and a couple years ago i had uh i had i i had an article that was a it was the whole article was just mike trout fun facts and uh i one of the mike trout fun facts which i didn't think all that much of was was in there. And it was just one fun fact in an article. And then a few weeks later, somebody did a Reddit thread with just that fun fact. And then they linked to the article like the way that Reddit headlines do. But they didn't

credit me in the text. So there was the fun facts and then there was the link. And I went, wow, text. So there was the fun facts and then there was the link. And I went, wow, that got a Reddit? No kidding. And then someone else wrote a blog post about the fun fact linking to the Reddit page and then not crediting me directly at all. And that thing got like 5,000 retweets. I couldn't believe it. And I see it now. I see it all the time. I see that. Not all the time, but I see that fun fact once a month. Which one was it? I'm not going to. I don't want to. It's a friend who accidentally did this.

Alright. Alright. This is from Andrew Patrick, Patreon supporter. In reference to the Udarvish discussion that we had about Udarvish's many pitch types, do you think we'll ever reach a point where certain pitchers just don't have repertoires per se? They'll have such mastery over their mechanics they can just sort of go for break and run or whatever on demand. Then he goes for a big drop inside, but his mastery of mechanics is such that he's not limited to what we would call pitches if they had to be classified. So will there be an end to pitch types and ability of a pitcher to, as we move on, to really be able to manipulate velocity and movement on each of his pitches in a much wider band.

That seems very plausible to me. I think that the pitch types themselves are so structurally different in the way that you grip them and whether you're basically going with the seams or against the seams whether you're breaking your wrists or not whether you're i mean there's big there's big sort of structural genre type differences and so i don't think that you're liable to see a total i i don't think it's possible for them to all bleed into each other i think that you can have sliders that look more like fastballs, and you can have curveballs that look more like, you know, changeups or something, maybe, but you can't, they helps that they're different colors once they're classified. So you can see these are separate pitch types, but they're still clusters. It's not like a big cloud where you can't really differentiate from one to another. There are places where they bunch up and congregate and other places where there's no pitch that has that combination of movement and velocity. And to some extent, this happens. Obviously, pitchers sort of finesse their pitches,

so they might take a little off, put a little more on. Maybe they change their finger position just subtly to get a little more movement of a certain type on one pitch than they do on another but you're not going to confuse dramatically different pitches that break like in different directions entirely for one another so i think you're probably right that there there still have to be some distinctions and you still have to be able to say that was that pitch and that was not. Obviously, with certain pitches, that's tougher to do than other certain pitchers. Their pitches are not so clearly defined, or at least some of their pitches are not.

And that can be kind of a tricky classification problem was that this or was it that but yeah i think there's still some order to what a pitch type is because you have to hold it in a certain way and in a dramatically different orientation of seams that i think you can probably always distinguish one from another. But I also like the idea. I like the breakdown of traditional pitch types and just someone finding ways to get into all the in-between spaces. If anyone were going to do this, it would be Darvish or Zach Granke or someone.

They seem to have experimented about as much as you can and yet you can still identify pitch types even though with darvish it's like here's the slow curve and here's the regular curve but it's still a curve yeah uh it would uh i'm trying to think would it totally selfishly for analysis would it be more fun or less fun would it be just so frustrating to not be able to deduce pitcher intent since you wouldn't be able to necessarily know what he was trying to do you wouldn't be able to separate the pitches into those buckets that give you a reasonable sense of predictability and intention yeah that sounds like a nightmare right even just as a writer like having to describe what a pitch

was oh yeah something you have to do often yeah it's just so handy to be able to say that was a slider and this was a curveball and to just say that was a pitch. I don't know. It moved this many inches and it was thrown this hard, but can't really call it anything other than that. That'd be a problem. And, yeah, just trying to figure out, like, well, this guy has a good pitch that he's not throwing enough

and here are the results on that pitch, and maybe he should throw it more. This would just muddy everything. It would make it very difficult to do a lot of the analysis that we do. All right. All right. Two quick updates after we recorded. Anthony DeComo reported that Wilson Ramos will be catching Noah Sindergaard in his next start on Friday, so Sindergaard's request appears to have been denied

again. And also the Brewers won and the Cubs lost. So we now have a tie for the second wild card with the Phillies, Mets, and Diamondbacks all within two and a half games. So things are getting pretty exciting. That will do it for today. Thanks for listening. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up, pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going, and gotten themselves access to some perks. Massimiliano Pitana, Stefan Sanderson, Matthew Fong, Louis Euler, and Mackenzie Watton. Thanks to all of you.

You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. Almost 9,500 listeners in there chatting about baseball at all hours of the day and night. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions coming for me and Meg and Sam via email at podcastatfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. You can buy my book, The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players.

The reviews and ratings for the book are appreciated, too. And I will be back with Meg for one more episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. I need you, but no one's listening to my songs Am I just making up numbers? Am I just making up numbers? I tried to believe you But there's a chance that you could be wrong Are you just making up numbers? Are you just making up numbers?

What the fuck are we doing here? I've made my intentions clear We should get out while we can