Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1471: The Stories We Missed in 2019 (Part 1)

Episode Date: December 16, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the Texas-Cleveland Corey Kluber trade, the Diamondbacks signing Madison Bumgarner, the fallout from both moves, and what Kluber and Bumgarner meant to their franchises, and then, in the first installment of a three-part series, discuss stories that they overlooked about 10 teams in 2019, touching on Mike Soroka, […]

He starts telling me the stories of the glories of his past But he always saves the story of his calling for the last And he says my core is coming No more sad stories coming But midnight, moonlight, morning glory is coming on your girl And like I told you, when she holds you, she ringer. Hello, Ben. Hello. We're going to be talking about 10 Major League Baseball teams and things that we missed earlier this year.

But before we do that, the season of baseball activity continued. Corey Kluber was traded. Madison Bumgarner was signed. Those are two big pitchers. I spent much of Saturday night talking to somebody at a party who all they wanted to know was which two good pitchers the Angels were going to sign to make all of this plan work for the team. And now those two pitchers, the two pitchers that he had heard of, are both gone.

Yeah, that's right. Yes. So Madison Bumgarner signed a five-year, $85 million deal with the Diamondbacks, and Cleveland traded Corey Kluber for what has, I think, generally been regarded as quite a light return. The Rangers acquired Kluber for Delano DeShields Jr. And Manuel Classe, who is a reliever and a very promising Reliever, a nasty reliever Who throws like a triple digit Cutter and had a

Fangraphs post written about him in August Just because of how extraordinary His stuff seemed. He throws a lot of Strikes, he gets a lot of grounders And he's 21 years old, so They got something back, but I think The consensus, fairly Is that it was not a lot back for Corey Kluber.

And the only way that it really makes sense to me as a baseball trade as opposed to a financial one is if there are things about Corey Kluber's injury that maybe teams know that we don't know that he missed most of last season. He didn't pitch particularly well before the injury. Then he got hurt. It was a fairly serious thing, and we don't know of any lingering effects. But if there are concerns about that, then I guess that could account for it in theory, because you wonder kind of, well, if the Rangers got Kluber for that package, then why weren't the Angels interested? Or why weren't the Twins trying to trade for him? Well, maybe the Twins couldn't have because Cleveland might not have wanted to trade him within the division. But, you know, why didn't someone put together a better offer than

that? Because it's just, it's not much. But it seemed like Cleveland was shopping Kluber long enough and that he was connected to enough teams that it probably wasn't one of those cases where the team was just in such a rush to trade someone that they didn't call around or make sure they got the best package in return. And Kluber had a forearm fracture and missed a lot of time. He was out from May on, basically. And I guess the cause for concern is that he didn't pitch very well before that injury. And that's sort of worrisome. And he wasn't getting as many whiffs and his velocity is down. He's lost a couple ticks, I guess, given his age and given that 2018 was a good season, but not one of his best seasons.

Maybe there's some just lingering ineffectiveness there. That's the only thing I can think of. But still, he's Corey Kluber. And this was just not a lot to get back for Cooper, it doesn't seem like. Yeah. Yeah. You know my 127 hours thing, right? Where when I watch the movie 127 Hours, I have to fight the instinct for my brain to go, oh, come on, just pull harder.

And remind myself that if he could pull harder to get his arm out before he sawed it off with a pocket knife he would have tried that and the this is a underwhelming deal and it in in some ways if you proposed it uh on a message board it would kind of defy belief it feels though that the incentives are definitely for cleveland to have tried to get the best they could, and it is data that this is what they got, I think. It's not conclusive of anything, but you do sort of have the feeling. You don't have the feeling. You're speculating. I don't imagine that they finished this trade in the Cleveland front office

and gave each other high fives. There's something about it that feels like, well, I don't know, maybe, I don't know, some combination of, uh, well, ownership told us to do a thing and they probably maybe didn't think it was in their best interest, but I'm totally like speculating here. Right. Yeah. Well, but, uh, ownership told him to cut, to cut costs. Uh, you work for ownership, you do the thing that sucks and then um and then there's not much market out there as it turns out for cory kluber for whatever reason um and um so it's a it's disappointing for for cleveland it's disappointing i think that it's always disappointing to see a great player get traded from a competing team so there's that too

um yep i don't know who's happy here except for texas no i mean it's the second straight winter when cleveland seemed very interested in offloading good players and not very interested in acquiring good players yeah to be i i do i do think though to be somewhat fair to cleveland when we were talking about them last offseason and they were shopping trevor bauer and maybe cory kluber they did not trade either one right they were they were talking about it and they didn't trade it and it seemed really weird and they didn't do it and then when they did trade trevor bauer when they finally did trade trevor it was for good major leaguers it was to make their team better right now arguably or at least to make their team you know a little bit more well-rounded and and it was not a punt and so when we were seeing trade rumors saying corey kluber is available it might not have been like well they were trying to cut costs and get four prospects

they might have been trying to trade cory kluber for two good major leaguers uh on the other hand here we have them trading cory kluber for you know a young reliever and cost saving so maybe not yeah i mean this is it seems like a straight salary dump i mean they got something back but unless cleveland turns around and uses that money to sign some other good starter or, you know, give Lindor an extension or something, which based on the way that they've operated over the past year does not seem very likely. It just seems like a straight, we've got to save some money. And so trade Corey Kluber. So I know it's not a big media market and they don't draw well, but that's sort of a shame. I guess, you know, he's signed for $17.5 million in 2020. That's like basically the Cole Hamels deal that Cole Hamels just signed, except that he's Corey Kluber. And then there's

like a club option for the following year that will become a vesting option if he pitches 160 innings and if he's not injured at the end of the season but if he does those things then you would be happy to have him back probably for 18 million in 2021 so you know Cleveland has I think excelled at pitcher development and even after this trade they still have Clevenger and Bieber and Grosko and guys who came up this past year like Aaron Savalle and Zach Plesak so they've done a good job of developing pitchers, and in that sense, they're dealing from a strength. Maybe they can be competitive even now,

but that doesn't mean this trade made them better in any way. It's just that after narrowly missing the playoffs in 2019, you'd hope that they would go out and try to get better instead of going in the other direction. I guess we'll see what Kluber looks like. But even if it's unfortunate for Cleveland fans, it is fortunate, I guess, for fans of other AL Central teams because the White Sox and the Twins now have a better shot. I think the Twins' inactivity thus far is maybe more glaring now because it seems like they have a real opportunity here. Obviously, they're coming off a great season, but maybe primed for some regression after taking such a large leap. So you'd like to see them be a little more active,

and they haven't really done much other than bring back Michael Pineda. So they could use some pitching too. But the Rangers, meanwhile, I don't know that they are quite to the point where I see them as a good team, but you can start to see them As a potential wildcard contender Because I saw Eric Stephen Tweet that Rangers starters Other than Lance Lynn and Mike Miner Last year had a 7.22 ERA in 97 starts

So there was just nothing there And now they've added Corey Kluber Kyle Gibson and Jordan Lyles Which I mean that's a pretty Great rotation that they have suddenly assembled there. It projects to be, I think, one of the better rotations in baseball. They also had the third worst offense in the American League. Yes, they did.

So there's that. Yes. No, I'm not saying they're good, but it is refreshing to see them go for it. Like, I don't know that they're going to get what they want out of this, at least in the coming year, but it is fun to see teams that we have not seen go after it in a while try to go after it. And I don't know how much of that is because of the new ballpark that they are opening, which was

on fire at one point this weekend. And they put out the fire and also traded for Corey Kluber. So that's nice. And I guess they could still go out and get Donaldson or someone whom they have been connected to. But they've gotten a good deal better to the point that, I don't know, they could start to worry the Angels at least, if not the A's and the Astros.

Yeah, it could be like the AL could be, what, 13 teams trying, 12 teams trying this year? Yeah. No. Especially after last year, after the lopsidedness of the super teams and the terrible teams, we're seeing good players. Yeah, I guess. But good players going to non-playoff teams.

I mean, Rendon going to the Angels and Kluber going to the Rangers. Granted, from a non-playoff team, but from a pretty good one. And then Bumgarner going to the Rangers, granted from a non-playoff team, but from a pretty good one. And then Bumgarner going to the Diamondbacks, who were competitive, but did not end up making the playoffs. So that is refreshing to see. Of course, if it's just coming from other not-so-great teams that also didn't make the playoffs last year, then that doesn't help with the lopsidedness so much But there will be a lot of teams that will be in the running And fun to watch in 2020 that were not those things in 2019

And I don't have as much to say about Bumgarner Bumgarner stayed in the division, went to Dimebacks I guess it's sort of surprising to see them offload Grinke And then still be talking about trading robbie ray but then bring in bum garner but well they got four prospects for zach grinky and now they have zach green now they have four prospects in madison bum garner yep they've done a really good job of picking up unsung players and turning them into good ones and they're pretty well set up i think for the future so bum garner is just i mean five years i guess you could have some concerns about how bum garner will age over

those five years but uh they're not expecting an ace really from him i don't think it's uh five years and 85 so yeah i mean if it were four years in 85 it seems like we'd like it more yeah i guess yeah probably the fifth year seems like more than you thought he'd get but the money doesn't seem like more than i mean if you if you like just if you adjust the pre-off season contract predictions for you know what we've actually seen happen he you know He got a little bit more than was expected, but not like a lot of other players got more than they were expected. So in this market, it seems like it's not a bad deal. I would be perfectly happy giving $85 million in five years to Madison Bumgarner.

Yeah, sure. So sort of sad for the Giants, I guess, to lose someone who is very important to the franchise and to not really have a whole lot else to interest you in the 2020 team right now. But I don't know. I guess hopefully they put that money to good use on the international market or player development or something and build themselves back up again. Yeah, yeah. I wonder what the Angels will do.

I know. And the Twins really need some pitching too. Not as much as the Angels do. back up again yeah yeah i wonder what the angels will do i know and and the twins the twins really need some pitching too not as much as the angels do but yeah what are the options that are left now i mean david price i guess is a potential trade target ryu is still available keitel keitel yeah that's yeah i don't know if that's enough to uh make me optimistic about the angels going into next year they'd have to sign or trade for at least two of those guys. So the pressure's on. I hesitate to say that.

I hesitate to bring this up, but are you at all surprised that we haven't heard any Chris Sale rumors? Well, he just signed that giant extension. So did Nolan Arenado. And then he got hurt and pitched sort of poorly but then so did cory kluber i mean i like i hesitate to bring it up because now i've brought it up now i in fact i take it back i take it back i didn't bring it up that was edited in someone took it a thing and edited in that's dirty oh we've got great deep fakes

on this podcast i can just simulate sam's voice saying something about chris sale rumors uh yeah i mean it seems like sale is almost the combination of cory kluber and nolan arenado where you would think well they would never trade. He just signed a big extension and he's amazing. And then also they would never trade him. He's coming off of a down year. You would never get full value out of him. Why would you trade him now? And yet Kluber actually did get traded.

And Arenado somehow is in MLB trade rumors Like he has posts this year. So that's why I just asked. I'm not saying that I'm surprised because nobody should ever talk about trading Chris Sale. I wondered if you were surprised. I mean, they've talked about trading Mookie Betts. So I would not be more surprised to hear that they were interested in trading Chris Sale.

Anyway, yeah. And I guess for the Diamondbacks, good to get Bumgarner also Because he had been connected to Like almost every other NL West Team I mean he was rumored to Maybe go to the Dodgers maybe go to the Giants back to the Giants maybe go to the Padres

And instead the Diamondbacks got him So extra little victory I guess that they don't have to face him a bunch too And for Giants fans I suppose sort of sad that he stayed in the Division and that they have to face him a bunch too. And for Giants fans, I suppose sort of sad that he stayed in the division and that they have to face him a bunch of times, but at least he didn't go to the Dodgers. That's probably pretty good consolation,

because that would have been the nightmare scenario. But you can imagine other scenarios where Baumgartner either stays in San Francisco for a really long time, because they were talking to him about an extension a couple of times, and then injuries intervened when he had his dirt biking accident in 2017, and then the fractured hand in 2018. He might have gotten extended either of those times. And then, of course, if the Giants had not had their surge in 2019, it's possible that he would have been traded somewhere else at the deadline. But this is the way it worked out. the way it worked out. And it occurs to me to mention how similar the track records of Kluber and Bumgarner were in some respects, or at least in terms of their overall contributions and

significance to their organizations. Of course, Bumgarner was drafted by the Giants. Kluber only pitched in the majors for Cleveland. Baseball reference war-wise, Bumgarner 32.5, Kluber 33.2. Couldn't be closer. Of course, Bumgarner did that in a couple more seasons and Kluber started later and had the higher peak so Kluber has the two Cy Young awards Bumgarner of course has the legendary post seasons but if you look at where those almost identical wars rank in franchise history and these are obviously two old franchises kluber ranks eighth all-time in war by a cleveland pitcher bum garner ranks eighth all-time by a giants pitcher bum garner is the best giants pitcher to debut in terms of career war with this one team bum garner is the best giants pitcher to

debut since gaylord perry in 1962 and kluber is the best Cleveland pitcher to debut since Sam McDowell in 1961. So those are almost perfect parallels, and obviously they will both be missed by the fans who watch them get good. So that's that. And while we're on the subject of Cleveland legends, I want to wish a happy birthday to Eddie Robinson, who turned 99 years old on Sunday. He is the oldest living major leaguer, and of course was a 1948 World Series winner with Cleveland. He was our guest on an episode last month, episode 1454. Check it out. And our best wishes to Eddie.

Okay, so what we plan to do today is continuing, I guess, a tradition. We can call it a tradition, although this is only the second year we've done it. But last year, Jeff and I, at the end of the year, we reviewed for each team one story that we had overlooked about that team in 2018. And now we're going to do that for 2019. So we're just looking for something of note that we did not talk about. Could be a fun fact, could be a player, could be a stat, whatever. We talked about as many things as we could this year, but lots of stuff happens that we don't notice or don't have time for.

So now we are going to try to make up for that. So I put out a call to the Facebook group, as I did last year, and I said, hey, what did we ignore about your team this year? And some people came back with some suggestions for almost every team, at least. So we're going to start off with the national league right now and i'm just going to go alphabetically by team name all right so i loved this episode last year yeah it's my favorite episode that i think i've listened to from the jeff years so far yeah it was fun so for Braves, we got multiple requests to talk about Mike Soroka, which is not obscure.

He was probably one of the better known players on the Braves this year. But I think it's true that we didn't really talk about him, especially given how good a season he had. He was, of course, the National League Rookie of the Year runner up. of course, the National League Rookie of the Year runner-up. He had a 2.68 ERA in almost 175 innings, and he finished sixth in Cy Young voting. He was an all-star. And oddly, at the end of the year,

he was not the guy who got multiple starts for the Braves. He didn't start their playoff series. You'd think that he would have gotten the ball more often, but he didn't. I don't know why that was, but maybe it is because we snubbed him and so he didn't get his due. But a couple people had some stats about Mike Soroka in the Facebook group here. I have about 50 tabs open as I look up all of these stories. So Tommy Long says that Mike Soroka doesn't pitch like most modern pitchers, which may be why we didn't talk about him much. In addition to not having a blazing fastball or

striking out a lot of batters, he was top 10 in the following stats among qualified pitchers, ground ball percentage, home run per fly ball percentage, and infield fly ball percentage. Ground ball specialists aren't supposed to be good at the other two, and he sticks out like a sore thumb on those leaderboards. Is that true? Ground ball specialists probably, they don't allow a lot of fly balls, but they're good when they do. There used to be a theory that ground ball pitchers actually were worse on home runs per fly ball because when they allowed one in the air, it was on a mistake pitch. And I think that there was some research into this that found that it wasn't that compelling, that in fact, they shouldn't be much worse but but also that they shouldn't be much better and the

infield fly ball one does feel a little bit feels a little off it feels incongruous because um we we tend to think of getting infield fly balls as a fly ball pitchers skill yes and tommy continues it seems like he is trying to induce weak contact Instead of get a swing and miss Of the top 30 pitchers in Fangraphs War He was one of only three who averaged fewer than 15 pitches per inning The other two being Kershaw and Ryu

He also overperformed his peripherals Is it possible he is the elusive pitcher Who can indeed induce weak contact More often is a player like this Likely to continue to outperform his peripherals. And that's pretty tough to say based on a single season, I think, because we've had debates about this type of pitcher who have done that for multiple years, and you still kind of question it.

And so after 175 innings, at least this year, I don't know, probably too soon to say, 175 innings at least this year i don't know probably too soon to say but the fact that he did this in his age 21 season is pretty impressive obviously and atlanta's had a lot of weird things happen with their rebuild and it hasn't gone completely as planned i wrote about this at the beginning of the playoffs that they kind of came out of it at the time when they were expected to more or less maybe a little later but they did get good but they didn't necessarily get good for the reasons that you sort of thought they would get good or that they were supposed to get good but mike soroka he has panned out and he is uh an example that braves pitching staff in the playoffs was very largely not homegrown, I think especially the bullpen.

So even though they had a very pitcher-centric rebuild, they don't really have a very homegrown-centric pitching staff, or at least they didn't in the playoffs. But Soroka, who was a first-round pick in 2015, he is an exception. He has done quite well. Yeah, I'm sad by the hypothesis that we might not have talked about him because of the way he pitches i would like to think that we're better than that uh it does feel like if he were 28 we wouldn't care as much that if he were 28 we would happily talk about him no matter what sort of stuff he had if he had the great results it feels like when you're talking about young pitchers, so much of that is about projection. It's about harnessing the sort of excitement in that arm. And we love to talk

about young pitchers who throw hard because we think they're going to, you know, sort of figure out all the nuances and become like reach this new level. And with a young pitcher who's already figured out all the nuances, I think we get a little less excited about the future. But yeah, I mean, Soroka was like, I don't know if you saw this, but I think Andrew Baggerly gave him his rookie of the year vote and suffered a lot of online abuse for it because he kept Pete Alonzo from being unanimous. But, you know, Soroka had a higher war and like he was a 21-year-old pitcher for much of the season. And it is, especially because I have this theory that I think I might write about soon, that pitcher war is undervalued in public conversations relative to how much it's valued by team decisions. And so if a pitcher has a higher war than a slugging first baseman,

it might actually be underselling how much better he was. And I wonder if, so the thing about Soroka's season is that like there's a first half and a second half. And the first half he was, he was Ryu-like. He had an ERA of 1.38 through his first 10 starts. And then after that, he was much more normal. He had an ERA of three and a half, starts and then after that he was much more normal he had an era of three and a half which is good in a high offense era but it's not quite phenom ish but his peripherals were actually better in the second half than the first half and i wonder a how much our kind of like lack of feeling that soroka has like huge momentum going into the rest of his career comes from a sort of shallow misreading of his second half. So yes, Mike Soroka. Yeah, he was really good. And we do have a bias, I think, against ground ball pitchers

or ground ball pitchers who don't strike out a ton of guys as Soroka didn't for good reason. I mean, generally, it does benefit you to be a strikeout guy. And when people have done studies on ground ball pitchers versus strikeout pitchers, even if you kind of norm for their performance their their run prevention i think typically the high strikeout guys tend to have longer careers which doesn't mean that he couldn't potentially become a higher strikeout guy but i think that's probably why he didn't get the attention i mean if he had gotten that ERA with more impressive strikeout numbers, then I'm sure that we would have been talking about him more. And so we are essentially, I guess, downplaying the idea that he is actually that good, right? Because he did

outperform his peripherals. And unless he is the rare guy who can do that consistently, well, he's maybe not going to have a 2.68 era every year but he could still be a very good pitcher without doing that and i think he also had pretty dramatic home road splits which also probably means nothing but may have gone into the braves decision not to start him at the beginning of series in the playoffs he had a 1.55 era on the road and a 4.14 at home obviously probably meaningless but i don't know if that was behind that decision but it was sort of strange just to to see him not getting the ball after the really great season he had unless it was the the second half thing and the idea that maybe the wheels were coming

off a little bit that's probably a little strong but you know what i mean yeah one uh one of the stories of the last few years league-wide has been that um a lot of the sinkers have gone away and a lot of the four seamers have um have like have gone up and i've i have kind of taken that story to be like sinker ballers as as individuals are in a bad spot because they're being phased out. But one of the things that happened that I started noticing this year, and Soroka is not an example of this, he threw four sinker, three sinkers for every fastball, for every four seamer. But some sinker ball pitchers quit being sinker ball pitchers, and they became four seam pitchers and they did just fine.

Like the fact that the leagues is moving away from sinker ballers does not mean they're moving away from those pitchers necessarily. It just means that a lot of those pitchers are moving away from their sinkers. And so it'll be interesting to see if he pitches this way forever. I tend to feel like sinker ballers make me nervous because they have to spend so much time out of the strike zone. And it feels like you have to be perfect to get batters to continually chase that pitch when they know it's coming. But it works for some people. It's worked for a long time for Dallas Keuchel. Yep.

All right. Brewers. People want us to talk about Corbin Burns. And I don't think we talked about Corbin Burns this year So Corbin Burns was a Very popular breakout pick For 2019 I think I recall

I don't remember who I actually picked But I have to pick a breakout Pitcher or player in our Staff predictions post every year And I remember at least thinking about Corbin Burns And he looked So good in the playoffs In 2018 Staff predictions post every year And I remember at least thinking about Corbin Burns and He looked so good in the Playoffs in 2018 and

And good in the regular season too In a fairly small sample and then In the 2019 regular season Oh boy 32 games, 4 starts 49 innings He struck out a ton of guys He struck out almost 30% of the hitters he faced

and he gave up 3.1 home runs per nine innings that is uh that translates oh gosh and a 414 babbip so he he stranded fewer than 60 percent of of the runners he allowed on base. So basically everything went wrong that possibly could have gone wrong, and he ended up with an 8.82 ERA to go with a 6.09 FIP and a 3.37 XFIP. Oh, I got better, though. Ben, I got better for you. He only made two appearances in the majors after the All-Star break because he was in AAA, where his ERA was 8.46.

Oh, no. Yeah, although, in fairness, instead of allowing— in the majors, he allowed 17 homers in 49 innings. In AAA, he only allowed two homers in 22 innings. And if you look at his peripherals there, it does seem like the Babbitt monster got him. But still, 8.46 ERA in 22 innings as a starter, actually. Gosh, man.

Yeah. Rivers could have used him being good. And then I guess it looks like he went on the IL in July, like mid-July to late July with shoulder inflammation, which I don't know if that was an actual shoulder thing or whether that was just a homeritis kind of IL stint, but boy, I guess wherever he went, the terrible luck or results pursued him. Yeah. Well, he, um, I don't know if you mentioned this in, in, when he, when he was one of your breakout picks, if he indeed was, but he, one of the reasons he was a popular breakout pick, is because he is a spin rate monster right he has one of the top like three or four spin rates in all of baseball in fact i'm looking now of pitchers who threw at least 200 fastballs this

year his spin rate average spin rate was the second best and that is just this is just proof that one metric no matter how new it is, is not... There is definitely a feeling when you're writing about baseball that you can sort any column in a spreadsheet and write an article about it. But you have to be careful what that article is because the name at the top is not always good. It is often a good... In fact, it is often the case, maybe it's not often the case, but I'm going to say it's often the case that a stat that it is good to be,

or maybe not a stat, a description, a characteristic that is good to be good in is not necessarily good to be the most extreme in right like for instance to give an example a simplistic example launch angle it is generally thought to be good to have a higher launch angle and so we write profiles of christian yelich because he gets his launch angle higher and if he got it higher still then we probably would write about how that's good. And if he got it higher still and still and still, he'd be at the top of the league, but he'd be hitting every pitch backwards. And so like the best spin rate in baseball, we're not going to talk about. I'm almost, I have not seen the list of what we're going to talk about. I am a hundred percent certain that

we have, we are not going to be asked to speak about dylan maples that's true dylan maples is like if he i he's on the top of my list of things to write about but he can't stay in the majors long enough to get like good video evidence of his existence dylan maples has the highest spin rate in baseball in i think three pitches and he is reliever by the way who cubs reliever and he is like if you look at his his stats uh they are crazy they are both crazy impressive in some ways and then just crazy like they're irrational numbers in other ways and so in 22 career innings in the majors he has 21 walks but he has struck out 38. So he strikes out 15 batters per nine. And yet as a 20, I mean, he's a 27 year old with three years of big league

experience, and he's only accumulated 22 innings despite having a strikeout rate of 15.3 per nine, because he walks almost a batter an inning. And if you look in the minors, he's much better in the minors, but he still has those same tendencies. And so Dylan Maples, I keep waiting to come up and be the most interesting pitcher in baseball because of he's at the top of three columns if you sort the spreadsheet. But it is not necessarily, it's not necessarily good to be that extreme. In AAA last year, he struck out 75 in 38 innings. This year year he struck out 75 in 38 innings this year he struck out 79 and 43 innings in triple a but he also walked a batter an inning in triple a so uh

corbin burns spin rate monster and it was just yeah it was just absolutely awful just uh heartbreakingly bad yeah i went back and looked he was not my breakout pick my breakout pick was shane bieber so that worked out pretty well however in my breakout pick My breakout pick was Shane Bieber So that worked out pretty well however In my breakout pick text I said if we were picking breakouts By league evidently we only did one For each league I'd agonize Over Brandon Woodruff versus Corbin Burns

And if we were predicting bounce backs I'd go with John Gray So I guess three of those four were good Yeah but Corbin Burns Was about as bad as you could be. Yeah, so I don't know what to say about that. I mean, it's like go back and listen to our Edwin Diaz discussion and our complete perplexness about what it means when a pitcher strikes out everyone

but also allows home runs left and right. It's hard to figure. I wrote an article a year ago about, well, a little more than a year ago about the Brewers as they were going to the NLCS and about how their strength was their bullpen, as everybody knew. And by that point, anybody who was following the playoffs could name like their five good relievers or their six good relievers. And I just looked at the point in the season when each one of those six relievers other than josh hater was like a complete non-entity either he was pitching terribly and had lost all leverage

opportunities or he was in triple a or he was injured or whatever and within the over the span of five months each of these players went from completely useless in the bullpen to being part of this postseason dominating bullpen and i thought about writing the exact same article this year because the Brewers were again in the same spot and it was almost all new names. And the players from the previous year were like Corbin Burns and Jeremy Jeffress and Corey Kniebel. But they had they did the same thing with new pitchers and found found good pitchers again.

It's it's a it is quite the skill and i don't know i feel like the gms who are good at it must feel like a lot of us feel if you have imposter syndrome i bet they're like this is amazing and i don't know how i'm doing it like i don't know what to do i don't know why it worked once everybody's going to see right through me they just must feel constantly like today is the day they are exposed Kyle Lobner in the Facebook group mentioned that the Brewers used 1,010 players off the bench That's combining pitchers and position players Wait, wait, wait, wait

In history? No, this year 1,010? Yeah, so like games for batters off the bench and relievers, I think, which is the third most in MLB history behind the 2018 Dodgers at 1,065 and the 2007 Nationals, 1,030, which is odd because you wouldn't think that would have happened back in 2007 because teams weren't using quite as many relievers back then and maybe there wasn't quite as much Positional versatility

I don't know but anyway 2007 Nationals did it Those are the only three teams with a thousand or more Alright Cardinals We got multiple requests to talk about Tommy Edmund And I felt like We must have talked about Tommy Edmund

At some point but I think maybe I was just thinking Of the Ringer podcast and Ringer Slack where Tommy Edmund was a frequent topic of discussion because former Ringer editor who just departed, Donnie Kwok, is Tommy Edmund's cousin. And so he was tracking Tommy Edmund all season long and asking us, is Tommy Edmund going to be good? And he wrote about Tommy Edmund and he went on the podcast to talk about Tommy Edmund all season long and asking us, is Tommy Edmund going to be good? And he wrote about Tommy Edmund and he went on the podcast to talk about Tommy Edmund. And he asked me like for a scouting report on Tommy Edmund at some point, I think when he first came up and, you know, I didn't know much about Tommy Edmund. So I was cribbing from other people and asking prospect type people about him. And they sort of, even then, even when he made the majors kind of downplayed his potential and said well he doesn't seem like he has a lot of power and doesn't seem like there's

a great path to playing time in the short term and then tommy edmund ended up being absolutely indispensable for the cardinals this year and he played 92 games he had a 123 WRC+. He was worth three war. He was basically a starter by the end. I mean, he was playing in the postseason every day. He was great. It's just like the classic Cardinals kind of player, I guess. I mean, he was drafted in the sixth round in 2016. So classic Cardinals player would be like 12th round or something. But still pretty good.

He was actually signed by former baseball prospectus prospect person zach mortimer by the way whom we both overlapped with and worked with at bp he became a cardinal scout after that so edmund was never like a top-ranked prospect or anything and at age 24 he came up and had a heck of a rookie season. Yeah, I love Tommy Edmund. I wrote about him briefly a couple of times for playoff previews or playoff-type pieces, and one of the great fun facts of this year, I think, is that Tommy Edmund on a per-game appearance was as valuable as Jordan Alvarez, who, of course, had one of the most historically great per you know per game or rate stat seasons of all time and edmund you know it's a based partly on defense which we are a little more

skeptical of in small samples but edmund is a from what i saw he was a fantastic defender at third base especially but also good at second base he's he's quite fast he's a you know he was a good base runner. And yeah, I mean, every year they have one. Every single year they have one, and you never have any idea who it's going to be. And if you were to try to guess, you would constantly cheat and go too high on the prospect list.

You would constantly, like, you'd have to pick the non-prospect who's going to be cardinal devil magic this year and you would sort of like fudge and pick like the number eight guy thinking there's no way i can pick the number 17 guy and it's always the number 17 guy yep and they get one every year i promise you you could go every year for like the last eight and find the guy it certainly seems that way yeah I'm looking Let's see he was on the fan graphs Top 40 prospects for the Cardinals Last November he was at number

20 so yeah he Was way down there and He played let's see he played a bunch Of positions he played second he Played third he played right he played center He played left I guess he's gonna have To do that again because Just glancing at the cardinals depth chart right now at fangraphs at least he's not the top player at any position but he is a player at four positions it looks like so he's probably

gonna be like a good i don't know who's a comp for him He's just as you said it seems like There's just always a Cardinals player Like this who just looks so polished And just plays a bunch Of positions and I don't know if He will be a starter it seems Like he could certainly be a starter if he Had a spot to be but he's Kind of stuck behind Colton Wong and

Paul DeYoung right now but Well no I mean he's at third right Yeah I get well that's what i mean he was carpenter yeah exactly i mean he was so unlike jordan alvarez too and this is obviously not a knock on alvarez in any way but unlike alvarez edmunds war like the replacement in replacement when wins above replacement was very true for edmund like he was replacing he came in and was a pinch hitter for a little bit and a bench guy for a little bit.

And then Matt Carpenter got hurt and had been, you know, really bad for a while. And so Matt Carpenter got hurt and Edmunds was a starting third baseman for quite some time. And then Carpenter came back and Edmund kept the job, which is probably right because Carpenter was not a, Carpenter was not a ball player this year.

And then Colton Wong got hurt. And then he slid over and played second base when Colton Wong got hurt. And so he was really necessary. I have a hunch that the Astros would have figured out a way to fill DH if they hadn't had Jordan Alvarez. The Cardinals wouldn't have made the playoffs, though, if not for Tommy Edmund. And so I assume he'll play third base next year I don't think unless Matt Carpenter shows up and it was like you know it turns out that he had a bad shoulder all year and he got something cleaned up over the offseason and he's back uh I think it's Edmund's job to lose

right now yeah let's see Roster Resource actually has Carpenter listed as the starter at third and Edmund as the starter in left field but who knows that's probably going to be a spring training decision so we'll see yeah yeah all right Cubs this is a good one Robel Garcia, Dylan Maples yeah well we covered that so Robel Garcia who I'm surprised we didn't talk about but we were asked about

him we were asked about him yeah we were and then he went avocado on us yes right yeah I mean I didn't know much. Someone asked us, like, what's the deal with this guy? Where did he come from, right? Yeah. I didn't know.

So it's a wild story. And a lot of these, like, end of season fun facts end up being, like, this guy came out of nowhere. He was playing in a place he didn't even know there was a league. He was a bartender. And now he is in the major leagues. And Robo Garcia is sort of like that So he How old was he this year? 25 or something like that?

26 Okay, so he was in Cleveland's system Years and years ago He never made it above A ball I believe Or high A And he washed out of there Released on his birthday, no less. So he's from the Dominican originally.

But after he got cut by Cleveland, he moved to Italy because his wife, I think, had grown up in Italy. And so he went to join her and their kids and he became a dual citizen. And he started playing for Italian independent league teams. And he did that for a while. And then he made it onto Team Italy. And he wasn't supposed to make the trip with Team Italy to the instructional league. So Team Italy went to instructs and played against minor leaguers in the US. And he was not supposed to be on that team because he was too old and they wanted to send younger guys. But then one of the younger guys who was supposed to make the trip, he hurt

himself. He hurt himself sliding, broke something, I think. And then they added Robel Garcia to the roster, and he was spotted there by a Cub scout because the Cubs, I think the Reds Instructional League team was playing in Arizona against Team Italy. This was last October. And a Cub Scout, area scout Gabe Zappin, was watching the game. And I'm reading from a Chicago Tribune article here. And he said, I just felt like I'm going to make that phone call. And they'll be like, hey, man, this kid's 25 years old and he's been out of the country for five years. Like, why are you calling? So he almost didn't call. He was almost too sheepish to say that he had spotted this player.

But he saw him make a big league looking play on defense. And then he hit a home run on a 97 mile per hour fastball. And he said, well, I've got to say something. And he did. So the cubs offered rebel garcia a minor league deal and he mashed yeah in double a and triple a he slugged like 590 ish at at both levels and he did eventually get a call up to the cubs and he struck out a whole lot that was kind of his problem with cleveland in the minors is that he struck out a whole lot that was kind of his problem with Cleveland in the minors is

that he struck out like 30% of the time even in the low minors which is generally not a good sign and so when he was with the Cubs this year he did show some power and he hit five home runs and I think he hit one that was like a 454 foot home run so he clearly has power he hit five home runs, and I think he hit one that was like a 454-foot home run. So he clearly has power. He hit five homers and 72 at-bats, but in those 72 at-bats, he struck out 35 times. That's not so good. And I believe when the Cubs acquired Nick Castellanos, they sent him down, and then he came back up in September and kept striking out a whole lot.

And he has also not hit in the Dominican Winter League recently. So I don't know what the future holds for Robel Garcia, but the fact that he had this odyssey and came back from overseas six years after he was last playing in the minors in the U.S., it's a pretty amazing story yeah i mean i just can't i can't even imagine what it must have looked like to see him playing against the italian baseball league i i am i mean that's a league that tommy lions could have probably played in right yeah from the stoppers yeah and and uh and maybe did we i'll ask tommy and this is a player who hit, you know, like a major leaguer a year later. I mean, it must have been crazy and looked weird.

But on the other hand, I bet it didn't. I bet he looked like no better than Matt Chavez looked against us in the Stomper season. Well, that was pretty incredible. But yeah. Right. And I bet you his. So Garcia is, I don't know if Garcia might be the only major leaguer.

I don't know. We'll call him a major leaguer for now. The only active major leaguer who has professional stats that are not on baseball reference, because pretty much every league now is in baseball reference, plus college and plus winter leagues. But, I mean, even putting aside college and winter leagues, if you just look at where players played

from April to September as professionals before making the majors, I don't know if there's a league out there that is represented in the majors that isn't on baseball reference other than the Italian Baseball League. And so he is a unicorn. And also, here's the other thing about him.

So he, like you say, he mashes in the minors, and he comes up and he mashes in the majors. And so through his first 15 games, he's hitting 279, 319, 698, which is an OPS of 1,000, over 1,000. So he's got an OPS over 1,000. How long of a leash does that buy you when you just got signed out of the Italian Baseball League? Even with months of crushing double and triple A, how long a leash does that buy you when you just got signed out of the Italian baseball league even with months of crushing double and triple A how long a leash does that get you it gets you one

uh four games including three starts four games later his OPS was down to 779. he went 0 for 1 0 for 5 1 for 5 0 for 5 they sent him down to the minors with that. So he went from 1,000 OPS, legit phenom. Like you could, he was as good at that point as Jeff Francour was when he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. You could have, if you were a writer for Sports Illustrated, you could very easily have pitched that to your editor and been on a plane. And by the time you figured out where your hotel was, he would have been in the minors. Yeah. Yeah. You know who was sent down when he was called up? Chris Bryant for service time reasons? Dylan Maples.

Oh, no kidding. Yeah. And in his first at-bat, he pinch hit, and he struck out against Dobidas Nevaroskis. Speaking of players with unusual backgrounds and European baseball experience, I'm looking at Rebel Garcia's baseball reference bullpen page, and it has some of his stats here from the Italian Baseball League. In 2017, he hit.274,.365,.21. Oh, I'm so disappointed. In 24 regular season games, and then in 2018, he hit 281, 343, 490.

Get out of here. What is wrong with this sport? I'm not sure if I'm disappointed or happy about this. It's even weirder that he wasn't demolishing that league. It really makes a compelling point that they're doing baseball really wrong by separating all the good players into leagues. You know, like instead of having hierarchical leagues, everybody should just be constantly shuffling. And Mike Trout should be playing sometimes against the best pitcher in the world and sometimes against the 4,000th best.

Like there should be so much more intermingling of talent levels i think and this is proof yeah it'd be fun for us huh anyway oh my goodness major league hitter in italy yeah one of the wildest stories of any major leaguer in 2019 so yeah pretty great and i believe he just got totally destroyed by like off-speed pitches or breaking balls or something. He just couldn't hit them, which isn't that surprising, I guess, given his background. But I think he was seeing a lot of those and was not doing a great job of laying off. So not sure if that's a correctable flaw, but regardless, he made it. In a 26-man roster, if he hits 208, 275, 500 for the rest of his career,

is there room for him on 26-man rosters? Well, he plays like all the infield positions, right? You think he played short, second, third? Yeah, I guess, maybe. If he's good at playing those things. I don't know if he's actually that good a defender, though. Yeah, he only played second for the Cubs second in the corner outfield spot okay yeah all right maybe in the minors he had okay so diamondbacks we didn't really get a diamondback

suggestion or not a good one i guess uh we talked about madison bum carter that was a story he signed with the diamondbacks didn't talk about that this year until today, but that's kind of cheating. So I don't know. Yeah, I think, well, one of my very favorite phenomena in baseball is when you trade your expensive player for the young player, and then the young player immediately is better than the expensive player. And that's kind of what happened with the Paul Goldschmidt trade. And I'm not saying, like, I mean, Carson Kelly, who was the catcher who came over and was half of the trade return,

was a 24-year-old catcher who hit basically as, I mean, so he hit, he had a 348 slugging percentage, 348 on base. Paul Goldschmidt had a 346 on base. Carson Kelly had a 478 slugging percentage. Paul Goldschmidt had a 346 on base carson kelly had a 478 slugging percentage paul goldschmidt had a 476 slugging percentage that's two points on each uh on a difference on each of those and kelly was to the better now he had a slightly better home ballpark but he's also a catcher he's 24 he was not gotten this year because he thought the diamondbacks thought they were going to get better this year with Carson Kelly.

And the Cardinals might be perfectly happy with that trade. They probably would have thought, well, Carson Kelly, we didn't have a plan to get him to do that. And so maybe they're not regretting it. But I just love that you get these trades that happen and you're so used to analyzing them in the same way every time, which is one team's trying to get better now, and one team's trying to get better for the future, and there's not really much you can say besides the team that was trying to get better now did, and the team that was trying to get better for the future did, and in nine years, maybe we'll be able to sort out whether each team is happy with with how its priorities played out and a trade like this

where the future guy is better than the now guy now just makes it so much more interesting it makes you remember that everybody's playing on two tracks, two time tracks all the time. And even the future teams are also playing now. They keep playing games. And so I was delighted. Midway through the season, Kelly was well ahead of Goldschmidt. And there was a day when the Diamondbacks passed the Cardinals playoff odds. There was one day and one day only. And that was basically the day that the Cardinals turned everything around

and got really good. But for one day, the Diamondbacks were ahead of them. And if you looked at that point, Carson Kelly had like, I don't know, 3.7 Warren, Paul Goldschmidt had like 1.1 and you just sort of laughed at it. So I don't know. I hope they both win because I like Paul Goldschmidt. So I hope they're both happy with it ultimately. But I personally enjoyed the way that this played out this year. Yeah, yeah, that was good. Too bad you already used your Tim LoCastro fun fact. Yeah, we talked about him a lot this year.

That would have been a good place to do that. Yeah, and I mean, by the way, Luke Weaver was also very good for the Diamondbacks. He was the other half of that. So that trade was, if the Diamondbacks had made this trade with the Pirates, we would be dunking on it so much more Because this was an immediately lopsided trade That it didn't even go in the direction That the Cardinals thought it was going to go

Let alone to the margins that they thought they were going to get Right, yeah Someone asked Mike Farron on Twitter What we should talk about for the Diamondbacks And he said we should mention Alex Young Who is a former second rounder who was left off the 40 man and ended up being a very good starter this year. For a guy with below average velocity, he had strong ground ball and swinging strike numbers. So there you go.

Shout out to Alex Young. Here's something I want to talk about for the Diamondbacks. So Mike Farron does these interviews with players one um one half inning on each radio broadcast they don't go to commercial the whole commercial is is mike's interview with the player it's like called like get to know a diamondback or something like that and i think it's probably sponsored by like a you know escrow company so that it is a commercial but it's not really a commercial and and mike just does this these interviews like get to know you interviews and they're all so good they're really good they're like three questions and they're like about their favorite video game and they're all done really well and i always look forward to that inning in the game all right

yeah love mike okay dodgers so we talked a ton about the Dodgers this year. We did talk a ton about the Dodgers this year. I was thinking about that because I was trying to decide what we – before I realized this was going to be this episode, I thought I had to bring a topic, and I was thinking about things, and I kept thinking about Dodgers topics, and I thought we have talked about them a lot, and you and Meg also talked about them a lot. The episodes I listened to was a lot of Dodgers stuff.

They were an interesting team, but it is true that we talked about the Dodgers a lot. Yeah, so I don't know if there's much that we didn't discuss because I think we only got one Dodgers suggestion here from a listener named Eric who says, two potential breakout guys debuted for the Dodgers this year, Edwin Rios and Kyle Garlick, two high exit VLO guys who dominated the minors and saw brief time this year. So this kind of got lost, I think, amid all of the other great Dodgers who debuted this year.

So we see, I'm hearing Edwin Rios's name for the first time. Yeah. I mean, we talked about, let's see, we about dustin may and we talked about tony gonsolin we talked well uh of course we talked about some of the i mean we talked about matt baity i think he probably came up at some point obviously gavin lux came up will will smith will smith yes was a big part of the season they debuted they had that they had that it seems, they had that run of walk-off. We talked about the walk-off run, you know, three walk-offs by

three rookies in a three-game series. Yep, talked a lot of touch here. So the ones that we didn't talk about I guess were Edwin Rios and Kyle Garlick. Edwin Rios, he got into 28 games for the Dodgers this year and he had a 1, OPS that's a 162 OPS

plus he was uh 25 years old he plays the infield corners and uh let's see how he did in the minors this year he was uh quite good I mean it's uh everyone hit well in AAA, especially in the PCL, but he had a 915 OPS there. Wasn't like a top prospect guy, but he obviously made good. And then Kyle Garlick. Kyle Garlick had an 842 OPS in 30 games, so he was pretty good too. I don't even know where the Dodgers found room and playing time for all of these excellent rookies i don't know how they had them i don't know how they managed to keep them on their 40 all these years because like garlic's 27 and he made his major league debut this year

and he's a 28th round pick he must have been exposed to all these rule five drafts the last couple years, right? Garlick had a 1,057 OPS in AAA with 23 dingers in 81 games. So, yeah, it's just good hitters all the way down with them, I guess. And he played outfield corners. So outfield corner guy, infield corner guy, neither one a top prospect blue chipper or anything. And I don't know how they'll continue to find playing time with this roster so stacked But yeah, they just had so many good rookies who hit well That I don't think we ever mentioned their names if we ever noticed them And Garlick was a 28th round pick in 2015

Humble Origins and Rios was a 6th round pick that same year you know if you put something tasty on the hood of your automobile guile carlick yeah okay pretty good that's okay all right all right yeah anyway garlic wow yep okay giants so everyone wanted us to talk about Mike Yastrzemski. My wife just learned that spoonerism is a word. Oh, yeah? Yeah, she was very amused. She thought I had invented it at first. No, Grant Brisby invented it, I think. So Mike Yastrzemski was a very common request. We did talk about Mike Yastrzemski when he hit the Home run in Fenway Park

Which was obviously a really cool Moment but I don't know if we ever Talked about his season as a whole And it was a pretty good One especially because They picked him up for nothing Basically from the Orioles in March they

Traded Tyler Herb To the Orioles on March 23rd for Mike Yastrzemski. Tyler Herb is a 27-year-old pitcher, I believe, who was in AAA and got knocked around in AAA this year. So I don't know. Maybe Tyler Herb will make good someday, but he's a 29th round pick, and I don't think anyone particularly noticed when Mike Yastrzemski was picked up because he was a 14th rounder. And that was the third time that he was drafted. So obviously, you know the name, but he was 28 years old when he debuted. He's 29 now.

And he was one of the Giants' best players players which is not saying much because as I was looking up Mike Yastrzemski I noticed another fact about the Giants which I guess is not a fun fact but we never said these had to be fun the Giants were the only team this year that did not have a three win player according to baseball reference which uh there were worse teams than the Giants this year, but there were no teams that did not have at least one player better than the Giants' best player, according to baseball reference war, which I think that makes a season less fun for fans. I mean, if you have all else being equal or even not being equal, even if you have more wins than another team, it's nice when you have a really standout season that you can follow and take some pleasure

in. And I guess that was Mike Yastrzemski for Giants fans, or maybe it was Jeff Samarja, who was pretty decent, somewhat surprisingly, too. But someone else noted in our Facebook group that he doesn't think Farhan Zaidi got enough credit for giving the Giants a momentary shot at contention. And obviously we talked about that at the time because it affected their trade deadline plans. But Farhan, I guess, in season added Alex Dickerson and Mike Yastrzemski and Steven Vogt and Donovan Solano. And all of those guys were picked up for More or less nothing and

They all contributed As it may have been so That was weird and fun when that happened The Giants were really Unbeatable for a while there Yeah Yastrzemski Out hit Ronald Acuna Did he?

By OPS plus He had a higher OPS Plus No kidding For real You served skid at 123 Hakuna you didn't have better than a 123 122 dude Wow

Okay The last time we'll be able to say that Alright then Someone also said that we should mention that pablo sandoval had a good year which uh he did i guess that's wild it was only like 300 plate appearances but he had a 114 ops plus he was still very much worth employing as a major league baseball player all right i begged for a marlins fun fact and i didn't get one i put out the call just generic give me a fact about every team then i noticed that we didn't get a Marlins fun fact, and I didn't get one. I put out the call, just generic, give me a fact about every team. Then I noticed that we didn't get a Marlins one.

And I said, Marlins, anyone, please, someone give me a Marlins one. No one did. So, well, I, I, I'm fascinated by the fact that Don Mattingly is still the manager and i think that it's it's a weird i don't know if there's another example of um of a situation where the more a manager or a you know a baseball competitor loses in a way the more respect you have for him or that you must have for him because he has now he's going to manage his fifth year on the marlins and you you would be hard pressed to explain what uh what his style is why him yeah why like he's not famous for anything in particular and every year the marlins get worse and so they won 79 games the first year then 77 then 63 then 57 and keep in mind it's not like he came to the marlins

as like some legend legendary manager he got fired by the dodgers right and yet they they have kept him around yeah through this process and and so it makes you the by far the most important reason that a manager is employed by his team is something you don't know like it is it is something about his the way that the way that he is to work with what he can convince you of in one-on-one meetings what you see of him reflected in the people who play for him and so despite all of this there is something about him that gives the marlins total confidence that they've got the right guy and uh and also he just does it like he just keeps managing there yeah yeah and it's it's also like you know it's probably not like

he needs the money he's done matting, and he certainly doesn't need fame or anything. I bet he could make more. I would not be surprised if he could make more as a media personality than as the manager of the Marlins. He can't make more than, what, $850,000 a year or something in the Marlins? He's got to be the lowest paid, one of the lowest paid, if not the lowest paid manager in baseball, right? On it being the Marlins. Right.

I think he maybe took a on it being the marlins right didn't he i think he uh maybe took a pay cut to come back this year because i think we actually talked about that yeah because ken rosenthal wrote about that and we talked about well what will managers make in this landscape where you know a lot of the times they're they're just kind of doing what the front office tells them to do. And, yeah, so Mattingly, he had $2.8 million. Wow. He had been the sixth highest paid manager in baseball. Probably just because he's Don Mattingly. And, you know, you have to give Don Mattingly a good salary, I guess, to get him to manage, except maybe you don't.

Because he had—so wait, so he just got a two-year deal in September? He got a two year extension And according to Ken his salaries will Be in the two million dollar range and Possibly below so I don't know Where that ranks but yeah so he took a pay cut So he likes managing the

Marlins enough To take a pay cut even though He's Don Mattingly even though he's been there For years he said Yeah I want to keep doing this I want to take a pay cut, even though he's Don Mattingly, even though he's been there for years. He said, yeah, I want to keep doing this. I want to see it through, I guess. Maybe that's it. Maybe he just really wants to come out the other end of this thing

and show that he can win with the Marlins. I don't know. All right, so now I am serious about what I was saying. So imagine that somebody with the time machine comes back from five years from now and you're like, so what's the world like in five years? And they're telling you some things and they're like, Don Mattingly is still the manager of the Marlins. And you're like, oh, no kidding. How are things going for the Marlins? So I'm going to give you two scenarios, all right?

The time traveler goes, well, you know, not great. They've had some tough years and some okay years. And you say, oh, how many wins have they had in each of the years since then? All right. And the time traveler says, well, 62, 67, 72, 79, 74. Okay, that's one option. Or the time traveler says they won 51, and then 42, and then 33, and then 16, and then 4. Now, which one would you think Don Mattingly must be an incredible manager? It's not the first one.

It might be the second one, though. You might actually think, wow, he's employed after winning 16 games? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. It's really— and he's not young so Ken mentions that he will become the game's eighth

oldest manager once Bruce Brocci retires so and Ken says he likely would have found it difficult to land another of the major league jobs and I don't know so the Marlins love him evidently but Ken's saying maybe he would have had a hard time

making someone else love him. So I don't know. It says, Mattingly's quoted in here, just saying, like, talking to Jeter, knowing that he wanted me here. He felt I was the right guy for the job, so maybe this is just like a Yankee bond kind of thing. I don't know.

Maybe Mattingly was nice to cheater when cheater was a rookie in spring training or something like that and now he's paying it forward i don't know granted the marlins went through a teardown total rebuild sort of a slash and burn thing so since that was initiated by ownership in the front office you couldn't really hold him responsible for it his yankee buddy his former teammate came in and took over and that had to help but yeah you probably would have a hard time finding many managers in history who have not only kept their job during a progression of losing more and more games for this number of years but then also signed a two-year extension at the end of that sequence yeah yeah

yeah i mean he doesn't have the same sequence that ron garden hire had but ron aaron gleeman wrote an article not an article the the twins chapter in the baseball prospectus annual for the 2015 season and i forget exactly what the fact was but uh garden hire had had four straight 90 loss seasons i might i might have my years i think garden hire had three straight 95 loss seasons and i think no manager had ever been employed for more than one more year after that or something like that anyway none of the details matter garden hire got fired a year later anyway and all my numbers are jumbled but yes to to your point the scarcity of managers surviving under conditions like those that don mattingly has been in is about what you think it is yeah all right so by the way do you think derrick jeter would

like to manage or do you think he thinks it's beneath him like do you think that he's thinking i ought to just manage. This is stupid. Why don't I, I would obviously be the best manager. Why don't I just go manage? Or do you think he thinks like he's in the ownership class now and people who get paychecks are like different? Yeah, I think he skipped a step

and I think he's happy to have skipped it. I think he always had an ambition to be an owner, to be the face of an organization in a different way i don't think he wants to go back to traveling around and wearing a uniform and all that yeah he's derrick cheetah so i do kind of wonder if he would like to wear the uniform as the owner like if it were a better team like if he were the yankees owner it would not surprise me if he wore the uniform just around. It wouldn't really make any less sense than managers wearing uniforms. No, it's true. All right, Mets. So some people suggested that we discuss J.D. Davis, an example of a move the Mets made that worked out

really well. They traded for him in January and he was great. Sort of stole him from the Astros, for whom he had not hit at all in 2018. Then he had a 138 OPS plus in New York. But we've got to talk about Dominic Smith. So this is the second consecutive season, I think, that we have had a notable player break out after he is diagnosed with sleep apnea and started using a CPAP mask. So that was the story of Josh James the previous Season right he kind of came out of nowhere

And suddenly he was thrown a hundred and He was so promising and it turned out that it was Like his minor league roommate Said that he was not Sleeping and so he got a CPAP mask and suddenly he was Josh James Same thing happened to Dominic Smith essentially this

Season so he said It's A game changer They told him when he started using the mask That it was a 14% difference In reaction time Which he says was equivalent to a pitcher Throwing 95 and he's seeing it 103 now when he sees

A guy throw hard I don't want to say I'm seeing It in slow motion but I can see it and react To it in a way that I couldn't in the past So to him he was thinking that guys were throwing 88 to 90 and then he looked up and they were throwing 94 to 95. And it was because he actually got a good night's sleep. So the Mets medical and performance staff wanted him to look into that over the off season. But there was something with a change in insurance because he was like a minor leaguer going to the majors and that didn't happen. But once he showed up in camp, they made him do it and they had him tested and got the mask.

And he was really good. He had, what, 133 WRC plus, I think I saw, in 200 plate appearances or something because then he had a fracture and he missed most of the second half of the season. because then he had a fracture and he missed most of the second half of the season. But then he came back in game 162, last game of the season, and he hit a walk-off home run in a three-run comeback in the bottom of the ninth to end the midseason. So impressive. That is, to me, the most impressive single physical act that a baseball player did this year because he did not there was

no rehab outing you know the the minor leagues were all done he didn't get the bat for he didn't get the bat for two months and then he comes up as the pinch hitter i mean you already have there's already a major pinch hitting penalty for batters just normal ones who were playing every day. He comes up in the 11th inning. He had to wait two extra innings to get his chance. His first at bat in two months against any speed of pitching and he hits a home run. I can't imagine how your brain can do that. That is incredible. He got a good night's sleep. That was all it took. He did. Honestly, like I didn't, I believe, I did not know that he had the sleep apnea mask. I totally believe that it is. I believe that not sleeping, well, I guess I believe that sleeping

is a superpower. And I have a friend who has the mask. And when he got the mask, it was like a coloring book that someone finally colored. Like he was so bleak as like a human and then he gets a sleep mask and he's still like got his faults but but it is like it is incredible what not sleeping and i thought that sleep apnea was just like you're uncomfortable maybe you woke up in the middle of the night and but he tells me it's not that at all that like you just you never ever ever get a good night's sleep you don't know that you're ever get a good night's sleep. You don't know that you're not getting a good night's sleep. You just simply wake up feeling terrible.

That's the amazing thing. Yeah. He says I'm reading a post article from March and he said he forgot to wear it one night and then he struggled the next day. And then he said a reminder on his phone in case he ever does fall asleep without the mask on to wake him up because he says, I feel like a new man. And it's like he said that, you know, he couldn't even focus. He couldn't comprehend what people were saying to him. He wanted to take a test for ADHD because he couldn't focus. He was tired. He was groggy and he thought it was normal. He just didn't know like this is not how people are supposed to feel. So it's kind of incredible that he managed to get as far as he did and be a prospect given that he was just sleepwalking through every game

and he didn't even know it. So it makes you wonder how many other players are out there and just people in general in life. So everyone should, I guess, get tested for this if they're tired. Could be the next Josh James or Tom Smith. All right. And then last one for today, we're only going to get through 10 because these take a while. So Nationals, many people mentioned that we should talk about Aaron Barrett. So didn't talk a whole lot about the Nationals bullpen for positive reasons this year, but Aaron Barrett was a really nice story. So he's another

one of these guys who came back from things that you wouldn't expect someone to be able to come back from. So he was on the Nationals as a reliever 2014 to 2015. Then he had Tommy John surgery in 2015. Then he came back from that, and this is like uncomfortable Even to read so if you don't want to hear About a gruesome injury You can check out now but I'm quoting From Barrett here On one pitch a four seam fastball as I was accelerating My arm forward my humorous bone

Snapped in half It was a clean break hands down the most Excruciating thing I've ever gone through I blacked out and went into shock Witnesses reported hearing A gunshot, it was that loud Many teammates couldn't handle The sight, Barrett's doctors

Thought he had been in a car accident Dr. James Andrews Said he had never quite seen an injury Like it, you just don't break your bone Like that throwing a baseball Barrett said, some pitchers of course have Broken bones but I guess not in quite this way. It took two plates and 16 screws, but doctors repaired his arm again.

He described it as a miracle surgery. His surgeons just wanted his arm to function again. They told him ever pitching again was a long shot at best. And then he got back to the big leagues this year. And four years after he had been on a big league mound, two surgeries, he Got back to the big leagues this year and Four years after he Had been on a big league mound two surgeries He came back he pitched a Good inning he struck out Ronald Acuna

Which is why Ronald Acuna did Not have a better OPS plus than Mike Ostromsky and then He he started crying It looked like as he went back to the dugout and There's a video that MLB's Twitter account tweeted of him just Sobbing in the dugout with his head down. And Davey Martinez comes over and like puts a towel over his head and Barrett takes it off and puts it around his neck.

It's OK. There's there's crying in baseball. It's all right. And after that, things didn't go so well because Barrett's next outing, I think he Threw a third of an inning and gave up three runs And then he gave up a run in his Next outing too and he ended up with an ugly ERA on the season however He got a World Series ring I Assume so that is Pretty cool because he's been in the Nationals organization

For a very long time He was drafted by them in 2010 so a lot Of the players on that team have been around him, know him, have played with him before. And I'm sure they were all thrilled for him. So just imagine coming back from what happened to him, not only physically, but psychologically. Having that happen to your arm on a routine pitch and then having to keep pitching anyway, not knowing if it could happen again. Just a pretty cool.

Yeah, I mean, there's a that it was very good there were there are a lot of reasons that i think were jealous of professional athletes um you know there's the money and there's the fame and there's the fact that they for a living get to do this thing that we had you know associate with fun but i think an underrated one that is maybe in the back of our minds all the time is that we just see these players who get to care so much about their jobs. And even if you love your job, you will just never have a day where you care about it the way that you have to sob in the middle of it just out of happiness, just out of caring, just out of emotion that you're doing it. I mean, you have good days, you have bad days, you have great days, but you never have a day where someone comes over and puts a towel around you because you're sobbing with joy that you did your job. And I mean, obviously most players do not have to have the comeback that Aaron Barrett did, but the emotion that they do their job with,

that I said that they play the game with. No, it's that they do their job with is in a lot of ways what you're watching. And it's quite a thing that we get to watch. We get to watch them care. And really, I do think that a huge part of the work that we do in our lives. We do work, not work, employment work, but work like the self work is we work to make ourselves care about things because we want to care about them.

We want to have strong feelings about things in the world and we want to have emotions. And so we do, it takes a lot of work to care. And for professional ballplayers, it doesn't. It just comes to them every day. All right. So we will end there. We've gotten through the first third, and we will get to the rest a little later on.

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Someday I'll make it all up to you Well, it's true, so true I didn't do right by you Guess I didn't know exactly what to do Someday I'll make it all up to you