Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1472: The Stories We Missed in 2019 (Part 2)

Episode Date: December 19, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Scott Boras’s mystifying goose metaphor and then, in the second installment of a three-part series, discuss stories that they overlooked about 10 more teams in 2019, touching on a Fernando Tatis Jr. fun fact and BABIP extremes, Ian Kinsler cursing, JD Hammer, Scott Kingery, and a Phillie Phanatic […]

The goose that laid the golden egg was an extraordinary goose. Now just imagine a goose laying a golden egg. Why, it's a dream come true. Oh, but you don't lay no golden egg, but you're a golden goose to me. Hello and welcome to episode 1472 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, and I'm joined by Sam Miller of ESPN. Hello, Sam. Hello, Ben. of The Ringer, and I'm joined by Sam Miller of ESPN. Hello, Sam.

Hello, Ben. Our friend, friend of the show, Andy McCullough, added to the annals of Scott Boras' Metaphorous Analogies. He just wrote about Boras for The Athletic, and he elicited a classic Boras quote here. And I asked Andy, and he told me this seemed totally unrehearsed and off the cuff, and it was, the revenues are the barometer for, if you will, the cooking of the winter goose. If you've got the winter goose and it's there, and that barometer says revenues are there, now you know the probability that the temperature is going to get turned up,

and we're going to get a cooked goose that's going to make the game interesting. So I think he's saying that if the baseball's revenues are high, then you're going to get a hot stove that will cook a goose. I guess he wouldn't cook a goose on a stove. It would be in an oven. But one way or another, I don't even really know what a winter goose is. Is there something special about a winter goose? I'm not much of a chef. I've been Googling it to try to figure it out.

There is something called a snow goose. I don't know. I mean, what's a barometer? What's a barometer doing in your kitchen? Well, yeah, that's true. You wouldn't really have that there. I actually think the most surprising part of this might be that he said, if you will, the revenues are the barometer for, if you will, the cooking of the winter goose.

Usually he doesn't give us much choice in the matter. He doesn't care if we will. He will regardless. Maybe that means he wasn't so confident in this one that he asked us to go along with him. I don't know if he's just been playing untitled goose game or what a winter goose is exactly. I guess it's like maybe you have goose for a holiday meal. Is that a holiday meal? Not my family's holiday meal,

but it is, right? Yeah, well, I mean, Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat. Right, Christmas goose, that's a thing. Anyway, so this was not something that he had workshopped beforehand. And Andy wrote elsewhere in this article about the hawk quote from the winter meetings, the sparrows and the hawks and so forth. Boris just has birds on the brain. He has the scene in here, the genesis of that quote. So that one was not completely off the cuff. So Andy writes, some of his showmanship is natural. As a speaker, he is both lyrical and florid. He enjoys the poetry of E.E. Cummings and the fiction of Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway would hate Scott Boris, I would think.

So many words, so florid. But he also prepares for these addresses like he would for any negotiation. He considers it his duty to educate the public through entertaining the press, so he does his homework, thus the swallows. Boris got to thinking about birds. He started asking questions of the staffers riding with him. Which teams are like hummingbirds, buzzing around but accomplishing little? Which are hawks? Which are wise owls? The group laughed as they lumped the various teams into categories. Boris put the extended metaphor into use during his stump speech a few days later he added a joke that doubled as a warning and you don't want to be an ostrich and lay the biggest

egg so it it was workshopped a little there was thought that went into this days in advance but it seems that there is no boris corp writer's room and the the winter goose that one was just off the top of his head, and it shows. All right, so let's resume the exercise that we were doing on our previous episode, which is our tradition now of going through a story about each team that we missed in 2019. And we got through the first 10 National League teams on our first episode doing this. So we ended with the Nationals, and now we are going to pick up with the Padres. So Padres, all the recommendations I got almost were talk about Fernando Tatis, and I wanted to tell people to go back and listen

because we probably talked about Fernando Tatis Jr. as much as almost any player this year. He was extremely easy to talk about. But there were a couple specific things about Tatis that people suggested that we bring up. So one is a fun fact, which I have not vetted. Listener Dan McMenamin Who says the last Two players to match or better All three of Fernando Tatis Jr's Slashline stats in their debut Season were Ted Williams

In 1939 And Albert Pujols in 2001 Minimum 300 At bats which if True I'd say that's a pretty fun fact Yeah I would agree with you this doesn't Really qualify for the exercise that we're doing. No, it doesn't.

But it's the exact opposite. Yes, yes, it is. But yeah, I'm vetting it right now. It is good. And of course, the cheat is kind of there for everybody to see, which is that a debut season, most players don't even bat 300 times in their debut season because they get called up in september or or or august so that would would toss out a lot of people but certainly you can you can just make up fernando tatis jr fun facts whole cloth they don't even that you don't even need

to cheat you can just make them up uh because he earned it whatever whatever fake one you make up he earned that too yeah that's how fun he was. Yeah, I have here Tatis Pujols. And before them, the only player who had ever done it before them was a gentleman who was not included in this fun fact because he's George Watkins. George Watkins in 1930 as a St. Louis, I think, Cardinal. I'm checking to make sure that's not the Browns.

Yes, St. Louis Cardinal hit 373, 415, 621, which in 1930 was only an OPS plus of 141. That's a 1037 OPS, but only an OPS plus of 141. And he was 30 at the time when he did that. And he had two more pretty good years and then not. And if I had to guess, I, I kind of feel like his career sort of maps on to like Ryan Ludwig's from like the, uh, great season on like, so if you take out and Ludwig was 29 when he had his great season. So if you just throw out everything that Ryan Ludwig did with Cleveland and you just had him appear in the majors at 29 with St. Louis and then play out the rest of his career, that's George Watkins.

Well, we can't leave George Watkins out of that fun fact. That's cheating. You can't mention Williams and Pujols. What was the wording here? It was the last two. He said the last two, right? Yeah, I guess he did say the last two. All right. Well, okay. We should give George Watkins his due though. While we're talking about Tatis, I just wanted to look up something myself. Tatis had a 410 BABIP this year, which is obviously extraordinary. There were two players who had a 400 or higher batting average on balls in play this year. Yohan Mankata did it too. And there have only been 10 players who have had a 400 BABIP going back to the beginning of the 90s in 350 plate appearances in a season. So I wanted to ask you to guess what you think their average BABIPs, these 10 players in the season when they did it, was 406. And what would you guess their weighted BABIPs were the following year?

All right. Well, let me think hard about that. The thing about it is if you had, say, everybody over 370, then I would probably pick not any number near 370, but pretty high. I might say like 338, because I would figure that those are going to capture a lot of the players who have a true BABIP skill, and particularly in the true BABIP skill period of their career. But if you're limiting it, I mean, if we're really just saying the 10 at the extremes, I'm going to guess that those 10 are like nine flukes. And I know

Avisail Garcia is one of them right i don't think so he must have been very close but no all right so i'm gonna say something like really low like 3 3 13 well your first guess would have been good because it's uh 3 35 oh okay all right not bad yeah i mean you would think that tatis would be a high babbit guy just not quite that high and his babbit could come down quite a bit. He could still be very good. But yeah, I guess that's, I don't know, maybe you'd expect his not to come down quite as much as the average player who's done it because there's some weird fluky ones in that group. Who else you got for me on there?

Let's see. So Jorge Alfaro did it in 2018. And he did a pretty good job repeating it. He went from 406 to 364. Yeah. And then Tyler Naquin did it in 2016, and Chris Colabello did it. Wow. Yeah.

So this is, you lowered the threshold because these are really a lot rarer than I realized before I wrote the why no one will hit 400 ever again article a couple years ago and was surprised to find how few batters in history have ever babbitt 400 and if i'm not mistaken if you raise the threshold to 502 i think it's like i think maybe it could be nobody since like 1960 has done it something something really crazy if you raise the threshold up to that. It's very, very, or maybe it's like three people since 1960 or something like that. So far you've described only people who were not batting average qualifiers, I bet.

Yes, this is all 350 plate appearances minimum. But I'm saying like I bet all three of those were more 350 than 502. I see. Yes, right. Yeah, the highest plate appearances ever to do it is probably someone you would not really expect, I guess. Jose Hernandez. He did it. I remember that one. 2002.

Yeah. That was a year. He struck out a ton, especially for that era. I mean, he was the strikeout guy of that era. And yet he had a 404 Babbitt. You know what's funny is I frequently confuse him with Fernando Tatis Sr. Seriously. Moncada, by the way, was over 500 plate appearances.

So there have been five who did it since 1960 in full seasons. And so they are different than the list that you're, but they're Jose Hernandez, Manny Ramirez, Roberto Clemente, Rod Carew, and now Moncada. All right. So the actual unsung story, or at least story, that I was not really aware of that someone suggested that we talk about for the Padres was the time

that Ian Kinzler appeared to curse out the entire Petco Park at fans. And this was somewhat contested by Kinsler, of course, but this was in May, I think May 17th, and Kinsler was off to a slow start to the season. Didn't really get much better after that, but he hit a three-run homer in the sixth inning, and it put the Padres up a run, and he was very happy about it. It was a nice home run. He even bat-flipped, which is not something I would really expect Ian Kinsler to do.

And then when he crossed home plate, he certainly appeared to just put up a big F-bomb to the entire Petco Park crowd. And I've watched replays of it and slowed it down and seen some GIFs. And it was not just one. It was an F-you, F-all of you, it appeared to be. of you it appeared to be and so he said that he he said that the message he did not deny that he said it yeah which is the interesting thing he said that it was for his teammates it had nothing to do with the fans he said it was an inside thing with his teammates that he was trying to fire up his guys and at that time kinsler i think was batting at 175 with a 233 on base percentage or something.

And so he had come in for some criticism from the San Diego faithful. And so I guess it's up to everyone's interpretation what was in Ian Kinsler's heart at that moment. But it would be sort of a strange thing to yell at your teammates as a motivational message, I would think. It seems sort of strange to me. And he said, the only thing that I do regret is doing it on the field in front of everybody so everyone can interpret it their own way. Asked if he wanted to say anything to fans who thought he was directing it at them

to clear things up. He said no, which maybe that's a little suspicious. I don't know. Anyway, Andy Green said that he didn't approve of it, that he took him at his word, but the organization apologized for the appearance. The appearance was not the appearance that we want in this Padres organization. And that was, I guess, about where it ended. Oh, wow.

I don't know what to think about this. I don't have... Oh, boy. What do you think of it, Ben? It seems far-fetched to me that that would be an inside joke to your fans that you would, like like F you, F all of you. Is that something you could imagine a player shouting? I mean.

Well, let's just assume that it was to the fans. Let's just assume that for a second. That was for my teammates. It had nothing to do with the fans. It's for my teammates. It's an inside thing with them. I was trying to get everyone fired up. We had a tough road trip.

I'm a passionate player. I tried to get my teammates going that was it uh-huh right so all right but let's just assume that's a lie just just because we're talking about it because people thought it was to the fans and that's why it kind of got uh viral and and why we're we're talking about it so what if it was at the fans would it be do you think there's something talking about it. So what if it was at the fans? Do you think there's something understandable about it? Well, it's not the first time that a player has gotten angry at the fans, right? Players have flipped off fans before even home crowds, right? I think that's happened. I couldn't call to mind any specific examples, but there are often feuds between players and fans. Sometimes there are feuds because players question fans' dedication.

Like if a team is in a playoff race or something and the attendance hasn't been great, then players will sometimes say something about that. And that never seems to improve the situation. It just leads to further backlash. backlash so it would be understandable i guess in the heat of the moment if uh you're having a lousy season and the team is struggling and you're getting heckled all the time you would hope that a player wouldn't do that particularly a veteran player who has heard his share of criticism over the years you'd think he'd just sort of suck it up at that point so not ideal yeah i i find that i'm a lot of times having conversations with people that don't know that i'm having a conversation with them like it my internal monologue is not with itself the internal monologue is usually

with an imagined other and that imagined other is often somebody i know um somebody in my life or maybe somebody who is only a small part of my life and yet like i'm having this debate about something uh with them which they're not aware of any imaginary debates many yes yeah we have i mean most of my internal monologue is practice speech. Like I'm practicing what I'm going to say and under the guise of internal monologue. And if you're going to say something, then the audience is intrinsic to that. And so you have that audience in mind. Again, this is all like very fuzzy and dreamlike when it's actually happening. But I think that that's the central like kind of like premise of the internal monologue,

at least in my head which is that i'm having a conversation in my head with a real person or with a real imagined you know person and so i would not be surprised if if you are ian kinsler and you're at that point you've been playing baseball in san diego for a month and a, and you're hitting 175, 230, 316, that you're in your own head, that your head is making words, and you're thinking of them when you're working out or when you're driving home or when you're sleeping. And in order for you to think words, there almost has to be an audience. And that audience, maybe everybody else finds this concept that I'm describing totally foreign.

And your audience is yourself. Maybe your internal monologue is genuinely a discussion with yourself and yourself alone. For me, it is not. And so I could imagine that after six weeks, there is a part of him that forgot that the conversations he's been having with the fans are imaginary and he hit a home run and the the loud part of his brain actually went see so you think that his side of the imaginary conversation where he's rehearsing what he would say to the fans is just F you, F all of you. In the hype of the moment, I think possibly, yeah.

Like I think so. My imaginary conversations, I should note, are also more profane than my real ones. There is something a little bit unrefined and blirty about some of my things that I think. Anyway, I'm sounding crazy. No. Do I? No, I know what you mean. All right.

Okay. All right. Let's do Phillies. By the way, I said let's assume he was lying. I just meant let's assume for the purpose of conversing about it that he was lying. Let's not assume in fact that he was lying. Like I don't think that I need me or anybody else to go to Ian Kinsler and say, just so you know, we think you're lying. Like I'm not saying that.

Starting now, we can assume he was telling the truth. That was a temporary assumption. Okay. All right. Phillies. A couple quick ones. So we never talked about J.D. Hammer on the podcast this year I don't think, but if you have not

already done so, do yourself a favor and just look up J.D. Hammer's baseball reference headshot. That's basically it. It's just... The whole story. They look drawn on. Yeah, it's Rick Vaughn glasses, basically, so I applaud him for that. Also,

Scott Kingery's season was sort of under my radar. I don't know why. Sometimes they're just good seasons that you don't pay particularly close attention to. And Scott Kingery, of course, signed that extension, that long-term deal with the Phillies in March of 2018 before he had made his Major League debut, which was notable at the time. And he was just seen as, you know, sort of a sure thing. And then in his first season in 147 games, he was a sub-replacement of a player and had a 61 WRC+, which was, I don't know if it was concerning,

but it was not the way anyone wanted it to go. Anyway, in 2019, he was very good. He was almost a three-win player. he was a roughly league average hitter so good for him and i guess good for the phillies for for picking the right player yeah we did definitely talk about him a few times not at length but we did talk about him you're sure that wasn't imaginary and and he uh and then he did kind of after i think the point in the season when we would have talked about him. You're sure that wasn't imaginary? And then he did kind of after, I think, the point in the season when we would have talked about him, he did fall off quite a bit after that. So he reached a peak in the season. I mean, you could debate where the peak was exactly. June 19th,

for instance, he was hitting 349, 388, 683. So that's three months, you know, three months into the season almost, and he had an 1100 OPS. A week later, it was still 1006. So maybe you would consider that his peak. He was hitting 331, 376, 630. And so then let's start, let's start there for the final three plus months. He hit 220, 284, 395. And so that might, like I said, we definitely talked about him when he was hot. We didn't talk about him as much when he was struggling. And I would say that's merciful of us. But yeah, Kingery, I remember being really struck by what Kingery was doing because at the beginning of the season or before the season, at some point I mentioned him as an example of,

oh yeah, this was pre-season in an article. I mentioned him as an example of how those early pre-arb extensions had been not only adopted by big market teams, but in fact, big market teams were now the most aggressive about them. They had not just matched the small market teams, but they were using their big marketness to be even more aggressive and to absorb even more risk and as an example i gave scott kingery who was signed to at the time the most uh aggressive pre pre-arb extension that had ever been and i as i wrote that i remembered thinking of the imaginary reader in my head someone's gonna say yeah but scott kingery sucks and so then i was kind of happy when a month later, Scott Kingery was playing very well. And yeah, he had a good season. He's very utile. I like that about him. He was playing a lot of

center field when Oduble Herrera was suspended. I think that he ended up slotting into one position for most of the rest of the year. Well, no no it looks like in september they slid him over from mostly center to mostly third but yeah he's a he's a good ball player and does a lot and fun i like yeah yeah well i also wanted to mention the ongoing dispute over the rights to the philly fanatic which is uh i don't know how serious this will prove to be but there is at least some chance here there's a risk that the Phillies would not be able to continue to use the Philly Fanatic after mid-June of next year. So just summarizing here, I'm looking at the most recent article I saw, and this was from November. The Phillies filed a lawsuit against Harrison Erickson, which is a design firm, and its owners in August saying the firm sent a letter terminating the rights the team had to the mascot in June 2018. The Phillies purchased the rights to the fanatic in 1984 for $250,000, granting the team the rights to the character and costume forever, according to its lawsuit. The Phillies say Harrison Erickson now wants millions of dollars in renegotiations for the character, and Harrison Erickson argued,

it's very hard to say Harrison Erickson, and argued in its counterclaim it had the right to renegotiate the licensing agreement it had with the Phillies under a section of the Copyright Act. If not, the Phillies would not be able to continue to use the Philly Fanatic after June 15, 2020. The Phillies said they have the right to use the character under the 1984 agreement, and they said they also have rights to versions of the Fanatic created over the years. So I think that Harrison Erickson is alleging that they had more of a role in the creation of the fanatic than they have been given credit for, that I think they claim that they had real creative input into the character, whereas the Phillies claim that they were essentially given the concept for the character and they just made the suit essentially so I think that's at the heart of it and no idea what the merits of either side of the case are but this is uh the most famous mascot

in baseball so it seems uh somewhat notable that there is even a remote chance that the Phillies would have to stop using the Fanatic in the middle of next season and i wonder what would happen if they did would they just uh try to come up with something that is an approximation of the fanatic that they could get away with that would still be recognizable or would they just not have a mascot just retire mascots in philly this probably won't happen but it made me curious you're thinking about it from the philly's perspective i was wondering if the fanatic were a free agent whether another team would sign oh yeah if you could rebrand the fanatic as simply like any team's fanatic and like if it would be a source of pride like like you really like you're disrespecting the phillies in particular by by getting the fanatic and just

rubbing their faces in the fact that the fanatic now, it'd be like when the can you hear me now guy switched phone carrier companies. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I think the fanatic would go unsigned as a free agent. I mean, an indie ball team would sign the fanatic, but I think just out of respect, professional courtesy, I'm not sure that another major league team would do it. And would you really want to do it anyway because if you have your own mascot then you're just conceding that your mascot's not very good and it's so associated with the philly's brand and plus it

it only works i mean it half of the reason that it works so well is because you can say philly fanatic and that wouldn't work with many other teams, if any. So I don't know. You'd have to rename your team. It's true. Yeah, right. Or you'd have to move it to Philadelphia, I guess. So maybe Cleveland. Yeah.

Your team's mascot is bad, though. That's fine to concede because every other team's mascot is genuinely replaceable. Yes, that is probably true. The only mascot that I think is even really resilient at this point is Dinger, the Rockies mascot. And that's the worst of all of them. But I can see why if you were a Rockies fan, you might have accepted Dinger and now love Dinger. But every other mascot, it seems to me, could very easily be replaced with that. It would take many months for every other mascots disappearance to be

noticed by anyone. Yeah, that's probably true. Yeah. I can't imagine that, uh, stealing the Phillies mascot or signing him legitimately would actually help anyone.

I think that would be widely criticized. Next case. Well, I didn't want to do this. I'm calling kangaroo court on this. Kangaroo court. It't want to do this. I'm calling kangaroo court on this court. A kangaroo court. It's a kangaroo court. I'm calling kangaroo court.

And you know what? I'm going to toss in my counter suit. Charlie Kelly versus Major League Baseball on the Philly Phrenetic. Come on. Don't do it, Charlie. Don't do it. Matt, this guy's got a stranglehold on the mascot seat.

What's happening? All right, first of all, I had to call him the Phrenetic. His name's the Phanatic, but you know, I'm going to get sued by Major League Baseball if I call him the fanatic. And let's talk about steroids. Can we talk about steroids? Can we talk about steroid abuse? It's bullshit.

It's ruining the game. It's ruining it. All right, Pittsburgh Pirates. Most of our suggestions were to talk about the various brawls that the Pirates were involved in. I just watched two of them. Both with other teams and within their own clubhouse. They had quite a few brawls this year. A great variety of brawls with bullpen coaches were involved.

Performance coaches were involved. Relievers were involved. And that was just the intra-Pirates brawls, let alone the ones that they had with other teams. But let's focus on the story of Mitch Keller. Babbitt hitter than a 400 Babbitt pitcher. Mitch Keller had a 475 Babbitt this year. And when I saw that, I thought, well, what is that? Two starts or something? No, 11 starts, 48 innings. A 475 Babbitt, even for that sample, is extraordinarily high, unprecedented. So assuming we're not counting Joe McDermott of the 1872 Brooklyn Eckfords of the National Association, there hasn't been a pitcher within 50 points of Mitch Keller's BABIP with a minimum of 40 innings. The closest you got to go back to, well, not very far, but Trevor Rosenthal with the 2016 Cardinals had a 425 BABIP in 40 and a third innings. That's it.

So Mitch Keller is just out there on an island. I mean, it's like Trevor Rosenthal is 425 and then there's someone with 418. And then Corbin Burns, our friend from the previous episode, was at 414 and Jose Mejarez at 410. So, you know, there's not a big gap between 2-3 and 3-4 and 4-5. There's 50 points between Keller and the next highest guy. And

he's another guy who, he's a top prospect, of course. He's the Pirates' top prospect. He is right now at MLB Pipeline the number 26 prospect in baseball. Very promising pitcher and did very promising things in the major leagues this year. He struck out a ton of hitters. He had decent control. He had a 3.19 FIP, which is excellent. He had a good XFIP and he had a 7.13 ERA because he had by far the highest BABIP in history, by far.

And when he was in AAA this year for a bigger sample, he had a 3-24 BABIP, which is not good. Like he was probably thinking, gee, I've been unlucky. Everything's fallen in. Then he got called up to the majors and suddenly 4-75. And I wonder what he thought. and suddenly 475 and i wonder what he thought like are you able to even take away the positives from that season of which there were many did he just replay the the strikeouts that he had and how he overmatched hitters or did he replay that that almost every other ball and play against him

was a hit yeah what what did you set as the innings minimum for that 40 40 yeah well so not only is he an island in that no one is within a half you know 50 points of him by babbitt but he's on an island if you go the other way where if you set the minimum babbitt and then look to see who had the most innings with that babbitt like basically who survived the longest with that babbitt because with the hitters part of the reason that a Babbitt like this doesn't exist is because it's hard to maintain. With the pitchers, part of the reason that Babbitt like this doesn't exist is because you would never survive long enough. I mean, you could, but many pitchers would not survive 40 innings. And in fact, nobody has survived half as long as Keller.

The longest that anybody has made it with a Babbitt of at least 475 is Nate Minchey in 1994, who had 23 innings. So a little less than half of Mitch Keller's. And Mike Burns had 21, and nobody else has even had 20. And in fact, Al Jackson in 1959 had 18. Nobody else has even had a third of Mitch Keller's longevity. And only 18 pitchers in history have even managed a quarter 12 innings yeah with that babbitt so he should by the way yeah he despite this he allowed considerably lower than a league average home run rate so it's not like he was getting bombed

with he his average exit velocity was 421st out of 588. He's like the 70th percentile exit velocity in a good way. He had the highest gap of any pitcher between his actual WOBA, weighted on base average, allowed, and his expected weighted on base average allowed. There was an 82-point gap there. And his expected weighted on base average allowed. There was an 82-point gap there. Now the number three guy on that list is Edwin Diaz. And the number four guy on that list is Corbin Burns.

So we've talked about both of those guys. But those guys were extremely homer-prone, which, you know, maybe they were making mistakes at least. With Mitch Keller, it's harder even to argue that he was consistently making mistakes. it's harder even to argue that he was consistently making mistakes. And yet the degree of bad luck that it would have taken him to do what he did is just off the charts. So if you're Mitch Keller, you should try to take the positives away from this experience. And one of them would be, hey, the Pirates let me keep pitching all that time. They must have really believed in me, or they must have really liked what they were seeing in the times when I was not giving up a constant stream of hits because again as you said no one has pitched even close to this many innings with that high a babbitt so that is a testament to the skill and the stuff of Mitch Keller that the Pirates kept running him out there and thinking

that his luck would change. Yeah, yeah. The downside of that is that, I mean, it is true. It is a statement of faith that people who know a lot about baseball continue to think that you are going to turn it around. But it's also just reassuring when your boss specifically likes you. It's always a reassurance to know that the person whose opinion of you matters the most is behind you. And so throughout this very difficult season, at least he knew that his bosses liked him, and then they all got fired. And so it's conceivable that the new bosses will not like him. Yeah. And you know, it's not like he got sent down or something. I mean, once he came up, he was up pretty much. So I guess he was up initially and then was sent down.

He just came up for a couple spot starts. But once he came up in mid-August, he made eight starts and he was there until the end of the season. Obviously, part of that is expanded roster. So the season was over anyway in the minors. But, you know, it's not like they gave up on him at any point. And I doubt that the Charrington regime will either because he continues to be a well-regarded prospect. But, yeah, that is some season. Yeah, I think that probably everybody's going to read a lot of Mitch Keller breakout candidate pieces in the spring.

Yeah, probably. It helps, I guess, when you just had a 7 ERA. this ring. Yep, probably. It helps, I guess, when you just had a 7 ERA. And so people who don't dive any deeper than that will not give you a second glance unless it's to say, wow, 7 ERA, that guy's terrible. So, all right. Next team is the Reds, of course.

Probably lots of stories that we didn't talk about with the Reds this year. But let's talk about a couple that were suggested. year but let's talk about a couple that were suggested so i don't know if this is uh this i don't think this even qualifies but i'm curious about whether you think this is even a good thing so the reds had a 136 wrc plus in the first inning of games league average is 104 wait this is the hitters yes the hit inning? tuned in and already there's action we're scoring runs we're playing from ahead that's fun but then your bats go cold after that and you're not a good hitting team in any other inning is that then extra disappointing because you just have to keep watching other teams slowly catch up to you as you fail to add to your score i tend to believe that so there is a, there is a broadcaster love of getting ahead that I think is over,

over exaggerated. There are certain, there, there are some teams broadcasters who will give you the team record if they score first every, every game. And, and it's,

it can be misleading because every, you know, every team does pretty well when they score first it's, and there's like often no real context given for that. And it's, it's not any different than the team that, you know, scores second or like the second run, like the second run is just as well. Anyway, my point being that I don't want to over exaggerate the power of scoring first by any means, but the strategy that you employ throughout the game, particularly from about the fifth inning on,

is different depending on whether you're ahead or behind. And if you're ahead, you're likely going to use better pitchers than if you're behind. And so your chances of, you would rather be ahead for reasons other than that you would rather be ahead. You're probably, you're more likely,

I guess what I'm saying is you're more likely to win innings seven, eight, and nine if you've already won innings one through six. And so given the choice between having a team that's really good in the first or really good in the seventh or eighth, I think I would, I would take the first. I think that's probably a good thing, but I think it's probably faint. Yeah. I just mean from a spectator perspective, even more than will it actually help you win more games? Definitely.

Well, except for one thing is that you're, I don't know, what inning do you think is most viewed by a, by a, by a fan of a team, like by a, by a real team? It's probably not the first, although I don't know, you're on the East coast. You have a very different baseball watching experience than me. All the games pretty much start when you're, you know, the generic you, when you're home from work, and many of them end long after you could possibly be watching baseball. Whereas for me, it's the opposite. There are many games that happen before work is over. And so you're much less likely to see the first inning than the ninth, except in as much as all first innings are competitive and many ninth innings are not.

Right, that's the thing. You're not going to have to bother to tune in for a lot of those games. So from a spectator experience, if you were to, you would like to load your team's best into the inning that you're most likely to watch. Yeah. So I think first is a good one for that. I think so too. So that seems good. It's interesting because you might theorize that the Reds would be a candidate for this sort of strange fluky split

because their top of their order is so good and the bottom of their order is so bad. But it's not the case. The top of their order wasn't that good. They were league average in the one and two spots. They were league average in the seven and eight spots, basically. The cleanup spot was their second worst position. So it's not really that they had like a great top of the order.

Okay. Another story I missed about the Reds. I guess this is as much a Cardinals story as it is a Reds story, but the Reds and the Cardinals played five games in three days in August, late August and early September. I guess they had two doubleheaders in a weekend. So there was a Saturday doubleheader, and then there was also a Sunday doubleheader, I believe. Yeah, and this was the first time that

the Reds had had anything like that in more than 50 years since 1968. And so I'm reading the story on MLB.com right now, and everyone is saying it's the first time they'd done anything like this since youth travel baseball. This is totally unusual. And it's, I don't know the exact circumstances. I assume just rain outs and not having a day where these teams could play again after that. But this was, and then I think the Reds, after the four games in two days, then they had a day game the day after, I think. So it's like five, I guess, five games in two and a half days or even more than three days, really. So that's rough.

That's weird. That's unusual. You don't see that anymore. So the September one, at least they had the expanded rosters and the Reds were kind of out of it by then. So if theoretically you were a team and you had to play back-to-back doubleheaders, would you rather play them at the end of the season when you're already out of it

and so the games don't count and you can sleepwalk through it, but then it's like an extra boring way to spend your day and you're committing to like 10 hours more per day of a season that you just wish would be over? Or would you rather it be kind of when you're in the middle of it where you're able to bring the fire, you're more likely to have the energy

to make it through, the adrenaline will get you through, but on the other hand, it's going to exhaust you when you actually care to be good. At the end. Yeah, I'd rather sleepwalk through it or not even have to play because rosters have expanded. All right. And then also for the Reds, just wanted to mention Derek Dietrich's season because that was a pretty wild one because I remember, I mean, when he started the season, he had 17 homers by the end of May. So he had a good April, March,

and he had an unbelievable May. He had a 1241 OPS in May. He hit 12 homers in May. And then after that, his OPS is for the rest of the month, 592 in June, 606 in July, 473 in August, zero in September, October. That's only nine games, 15 plate appearances. I think he had maybe a shoulder injury in the second half that probably explained that power outage but he hit 17 homers through the NMA and then he hit two from then on so one in June one in July none in August and none in September October so he didn't really have extended absences but I guess

he was nursing an injury and that's got to be one of the strangest TOPS plus months. I would think that's a 204 TOPS plus, a 219 SOPS plus. So that's relative to the league's split in that month. And just the combination of Derek Dietrich having that kind of month at all and then having the months that he followed that up with, that was about as hot and cold as season to come. Yeah, one of the brawls that I was watching yesterday was one that was started because Chris Archer didn't like Dietrich admiring his home run. And so he hits this like big high fly ball for a home run and he kind of like leans way back like, ooh, like he's i did that you know and uh it was it was a nice it was a nice look i thought i thought he he had a a bit of

good swagger with it and and archer didn't like it and the pirates jawed at him and then the next time he came up i think they threw behind him or something like that but uh it was funny because uh one of the broadcasters goes uh well you know you're allowed to look at it when you hit it that far that ball was hit and then you can sort of hear him shuffling and he's like 430 feet and you're like 430 feet that's such a disappointing way to end that sentence 430 feet is is no to me no more stop and watchable than like 410 feet is it's gone but it's not like you didn't break the sound barrier yeah right in this era yeah yeah so dietrich uh has an over 20 going into next season so uh i don't know when do we start a chris davis watch these days oh not for a while i guess okay

yeah he's at over 21 i should should say. Yeah. All right. Rockies. This is another entry from the genre of improbable player who became the feel-good story of the season. Tim Melville, Rockies pitcher. So Tim Melville was a fourth-round pick in 2008. He was a Royals pick at the time, and he was a hard thrower. And he's had injuries. He had Tommy John. He has gone on and off of, I think, six major league organizations now. So he's been all over the place, and he was pitching Major League games in April. So he was at a game, I think. He went to a Chase Field game, just sort of imagining being back in the big leagues.

He quite famously worked at a barbecue joint, so he is a barbecue expert, and he spent the off-season working at Little Miss Barbecue, a restaurant in the Phoenix area. And he came back, had two good starts, really dominant starts for the Long Island Ducks, so basically the Rich Hill. He was just with the Ducks for a couple starts, and then Colorado signed him to a minor league deal. He went up to AAA, and then they called him up. And he has been in the big leagues before. So never for long though. So he made it in 2016 with the Reds. He pitched nine innings. He made it in 2017 with the Twins and the Padres, you know, three innings here, two innings there. Then he was out of the majors in 2018 and he made it to the majors with the Rockies and he pitched quite well. He pitched seven starts. He threw 33 in a third innings, and he had a 108 ERA+.

Yeah, he throws very soft. Now I remember him. Yes, now he does. Yeah. Yeah, he used to throw very hard, and now it's the other way around. So when he was working at Little Miss, his job duties included cashier, cutter, bathroom cleaner, and customer pleaser. I don't know what a customer pleaser, that sounds vaguely dirty somehow, but isn't everyone who works- Bathroom cleaner.

Isn't everyone who works, well, yeah, not dirtier than that, but isn't anyone who works at a restaurant supposed to please the customers? Is that just like a greeter? I don't know. Anyway, he was doing that that and so there's a Quote in this Denver Post article I'm reading from Bud Black Rocky's manager and he's talking about The adjustment Melville has made from hard Thrower to soft tosser and how

He understands pitching now and Black Says he's not pitching to radar Guns he's not pitching to track man He's not pitching to Rapsodo He's pitching to get outs within a scouting report and knowing what he does well which is uh i don't know if that's a worrisome quote but black has a good track record with pitchers but i don't know if i would want to hear not pitching to those things described as a positive but probably he just means he doesn't

rate well according to those Things so it's not that Players who do rate Well on those things do not also Pitch to get out but Melville is getting out even Though he does not light up Raider guns or track man or Rep Soto so that's the story

Of Tim Melville and from what I understand he's Probably have a role on Next year's team if he's healthy he'll probably have a role on next year's team if he's healthy he might even have an outside shot I guess at at being back in the rotation and that's a nice story and he even uh brought cookies for the whole team on the last day of the season chocolate chip cookies okay yeah all right I saw a Tim Melville game. It was jarring. Yeah, well. He pitched really well.

He was like really, it was a very impressive start and surprising. Yeah. All right, that is the National League. Now on to the AL. So Angels, we didn't really get a good suggestion, maybe because no one could come up with a Mike Trout fun fact that we hadn't already talked about. Yeah. So I suggested that we could just, uh, commemorate the season that Matt Harvey had, um, which, uh, you know, it was very bad. I, I, I don't know the part of it. I I'm almost positive that this happened to me in the last day or two. And, uh, so this is part

of the reason that I was thinking about Matt Harvey today. But I'm almost positive I dreamed that Matt Harvey was re-signed by, I believe by the Angels for one year and $21 million. And we were actually taught, I know it seems weird that I have this much specific for something that I'm not totally claiming definitely happened. But in the dream, I believe I remember we talked about it weird that i have this much specific for something that i'm not totally claiming at definitely

happened but in the dream i believe i remember we had we talked about it and we were like well it's good that owners are spending money again so matt harvey had a 7.09 era he he basically mitch keller-esque but that was the only thing that was mitch keller-esque yeah he had you know he had uh he had 12 starts and only twice did he get 10 swinging strikes, which is kind of like the minimum for a decent outing as far as bat missing. So he had those two and in those two, he allowed 14 runs in eight innings. And so those were arguably two of his three worst starts. So there just wasn't really anything going on there. And you know, know they these uh players the pitchers who collapse

it has sometimes it happens fast sometimes it happens slow um and sometimes it just goes a long time and i i would say that with matt harvey as of a year ago there was still some feeling that that's not a bad signing that getting a pitcher like harvey you're still betting on on what he has done in the past what he's shown he can do he had had a bit of a bounce back with Cincinnati and uh it it made some sense I mean he didn't he he wasn't cheap he didn't take like a one million dollar deal he he got he got 11 million dollars to be the Angels probably number three starter and then it's done I mean this is a pitcher who five years ago you could have included him on your likely to make the Hall of Fame team at his age.

And now he's just, that's it. Yep. Yeah, seems that way. All right. Well, that's a downer. Yeah. Okay. All right.

The next team is the Astros. We did not get a single suggestion for the Astros. The Astros, we did not get a single suggestion for the Astros, and I think that is as it should be because, frankly, we've all talked too much about the Astros this year. And I don't know that even Astros fans would want us to talk about the Astros any more than we have. But I have one thing I will mention with the Astros, which is that Cy Snead is a pitcher on the Astros, obviously one of the great names in baseball today. And so I looked up some Cy stats. So there have been 31 Cys in Major League history. I guess technically one of them, Cyclone Miller, didn't go by Cy, at least according to baseball reference.

But 30 Cys and 31 if you count Cyclone. Wait, are you counting Cy SI? No. There's probably been about a million size there. Yeah. Nah, I just, I want the CYs. So how many of the CY size of the 31 would you guess have not been pitchers? 15.

Four. Four have not been pitchers. Yeah. There were some who were two-way players back in the early days, but only four have been exclusively hitters. Cy Williams, Cy Perkins, Cy Neighbors, and Cy Rehm. And the fun thing about Cy Sneed is that A, his name is actually Cy. His name is Cy R. Sneed.

And that is unusual. Usually it's a nickname, and it's especially unusual today because the name Cy is all but extinct. I would have said it was extinct in baseball until Cy Sneed came around this year. He made his Major League debut, and he is the first Cy in the majors, I believe, sincesy Acosta, who pitched from 1972 to 1975. And Psy Acosta is the only other post-World War II Psy. So Psy has been out of vogue at this point for, you know, seven, eight decades. It was really something that was contemporary with Psy Young or a little bit before Psy Young or or after Cy Young when there was still a strong memory of having seen Cy Young pitch. So I don't actually know the backstory of why Cy Snead is named actually literally Cy Snead, but I'm happy about it. I'm glad that that's the case. And I kind of wonder whether it would be an advantage or a disadvantage to a player, to a pitcher, as an amateur, to be named Cy.

On the one hand, maybe there are high expectations. There are people who make fun of you. If you're not pitching well, people will say it in a derisive tone. Cy Sneed over here. And what are you supposed to do? Because it's his actual given name. It's not just a nickname he chose for himself or someone even gave to him. He has no choice in the matter.

I guess he could give himself a different name, but he was probably always pretty good wherever he was pitching because he's a major league pitcher now. So I'm glad that there's a Cy back in the big leagues. I don't know when we'll see another. Yeah, I have a daughter, but if we had had a son, we were thinking of naming hypothetical son Cy, but we were going to do S-I. But then we couldn't.

We decided that we couldn't because my wife's parents are Mandarin speakers, and Psy is a profanity in Mandarin. Okay, yeah, that'd be bad. At least I did not probably have the correct intonation there, but it would be close, too. So I'm looking. Sy Snead's father was a college baseball player who was drafted, which suggests that he was probably named after the baseball affiliation of Sy, maybe. His brother's name is Zeb, and that's not a baseball-affiliated name. And so that would suggest that he's not named after the baseball-affiliated side. But could be. I would also be interested in the backstory.

His dad was a pitcher selected in the 42nd round. You'd think that someone would have written about this, right? If a Psy gets called up to your team and you're a beat writer, that seems like the first question you would ask him to do a little human interest story about Psy Sneed. I googled it and I didn't see something immediately. I'm sure it's out there, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to say, I think that it's more likely we haven't found it than nobody. Yes.

Go ahead. Two Zebs in Major League history, but none since 1945. All right. Athletics. We got multiple suggestions to talk about Mark Canna. Oh, he's so good. Yeah, Mark Canna. We did a Ringer MLB segment where we just named unsung seasons,

and we mentioned Mark Canna because he was so good. And, of course, he has an interesting origin story. He's like the quintessential A's origin story Where he was a rule 5 pick I think technically by the Rockies but it was A prearranged pick where The Rockies selected him and then traded him To the A's so

Essentially an A's rule 5 pick And his first season with the A's He justified that faith He lasted He had a 105 OPS plus. It wasn't a particularly valuable season, but he was a major leaguer and deserved to be. And then after that, he sort of faded and I guess had injuries and didn't get much playing time. And when he did, he didn't hit. And that looked like it was going to be it, that maybe that first season was the best he was going to get. But then he had a pretty good 396 517 with 26 homers and 497 plate appearances and

that's a four and a half win season i mean that is a heck of a season by him and a heck of a find so that's a pretty cool story yeah it's interesting because he and um ramon l Laureano both kind of broke out offensively at the same time. And they were, I didn't generate the fun fact fast enough, but from a certain point in the season on, they were both like top 20 hitters in baseball. And I feel like Canna is entirely unsung and Laureano is not. Laureano is pretty, pretty well known for the for how makes the highlights right exactly and so it's it's funny because uh he's his offense is much better known because uh he makes the highlights and canna's offense is is not nearly as well known and canna doesn't make the highlights but like loriano isn't as i understand it a very good defensive

player he makes the highlights but is in fact not a particularly valuable center fielder relative to other center fielders. And so I don't know. There's something jumbled about the whole thing. Yeah. Canna started the wildcard game in center field over Laureano. Yeah. It's just kind of because I, you know, when I first found out about Mark Canna, like in

my mind, he was a first baseman and so for him to be starting in center field I've had to update my my mental understanding of what Mark Canna is and in more than one way but yeah it was a really impressive season. Derek Dietrich by the way his home run how how many home runs obviously there's a way of thinking about it that if you hit a home run and you're sure and you're right, then go ahead and do what you want. They all count the same. But just out of curiosity, how many home runs do you think there are that you think that a batter can appropriately and confidently and without expectation of too much backlash, can they stare at very aggressively? How many across the majors?

10%. So the 10% of home runs that are the longest. Yeah, or I guess maybe depending on the context too, if it's a big clutch homer. Okay. So that would mean that there are 677 homers that a person could stand and stare at. And Derek Dietrichs was the 560 second deepest. So I take it back. The 436 feet is exactly the right distance.

If you hit it that far, you can stare at it, Ben says. Okay, Blue Jays. This was recommended by listener Matt. Matt Shoemaker earned Three times more fan graphs war in Five starts this year than in 14 starts in 2017 Which is on its own I don't know if that's that amazing

But Matt Shoemaker's career Has been kind of strange It's been just a mix of Sort of mediocrity With bursts of really Really good pitching so he only made Five starts this year because he, I think, tore his ACL and then was out for the rest of the season, which was a shame. But his line for the season was frozen at a 1.57 ERA, which is where he was when he got hurt. And I think of Shoemaker for a couple of things. A, he had that impressive rookie season when he was the rookie of the year runner up in the AL in 2014 with the Angels. But then I think of him even more for that stretch that he had in 2016 when he became,

I think, one of the first players that I really zeroed in on and paid attention to. Well, the first players that I really zeroed in on and paid attention to. Well, maybe not one of the first, but in relatively recent times that just dramatically upped their usage of a particular pitch and seemed to experience immediate and dramatic results with it. And of course, Jeff Sullivan blogged about it at Fangraphs, and he wrote about how Shoemaker had started the season terribly and then had been on an incredible run. So he wrote, Shoemaker isn't one of the best pitchers in baseball and he isn't one of the worst pitchers in baseball, but he's looked like both within a very short time frame. The rebound here has been extreme. And just looking at his game logs from that season. So on May 16th, Shoemaker had an 8.49 ERA. That was seven starts into the season. And then from there, he won on an 11-start run where he had a

2.36 ERA with a 6.41 OPS allowed, and this was with with a 325 BABIP, so he wasn't getting extraordinary lucky in that way. He was striking out everyone. He struck out 88 guys in 76 innings. He walked nine, so he was just dominant, and as Jeff pointed out, it was seemingly because he had done the Masahiro Tanaka. He had gone away from his four-seamer, and he was throwing splitters just to a great extent. He was throwing a ton of splitters, and it just spiked up all of a sudden, and with it, so did his strikeouts and his results. And then after that, I think he kind of came back to earth. So after that extraordinary stretch that I just mentioned, let's see, that took him through July 16th.

And then in his last nine starts, well, he was still good. He had a 3.5 ERA, but the strikeouts were way down, 33 in 54 innings. Like during that run, he had a 12 strikeout game, an 11 strikeout game, an 11 strikeout game, a 13 strikeout game. And then it just sort of went away. It just sort of disappeared. And I don't know whether he dialed down the splitter usage after that or whether hitters just caught on or what. But it was this magical run and this flip from one extreme to the other.

And that's always stuck in my mind so i kind of like that uh he had a whole season that was like that this year except that it was only five starts but the season stopped before it could flip back the other way yeah i'll i'll even take this story back further because what i always think of first about matt shoemaker is that he was undrafted which is is particularly uncommon these days andemaker is that he was undrafted, which is particularly uncommon these days. And so he was undrafted, and then the Angels signed him. He was just a name in the system.

I had to write about the system a lot, and he was just a name that you didn't really think about. And then in 2011, he suddenly got incredible in AA. And so he was the pitcher of the year in the Angels minor league system. He was the pitcher of the year in the Texas league. And I remember the Angels not calling him up, even though they really needed pitching. And there was this sense that like they didn't really necessarily believe in him. And I was banging the drum for him at the time.

And then in 2012, still in the minors, he was terrible. Six runs a game. And then in 2013, still in the minors, he was terrible. Six runs a game. And then in 2013, still in the minors, he wasn't very good. And at that point, he was 26. And I thought, oh, okay, well, then that's that. And then in 27, at age 27, he was terrible in five starts in the minors. He had an ERA of six. And they had to call him up for some reason. And they called him up and he was, won the rookie of the year? Did he win the rookie of the year him up, and he won the Rookie of the Year. Did he win the Rookie of the Year?

He was second. Went 16-4 with an ERA of 3.04. So even then, he was like all his life, he has been that. He had a lot of, you said, mediocrity, but a lot of really actually quite a bit worse than mediocrity. And then interspersed were these periods, not brief periods even, extended periods, like full seasons sometimes, half seasons often, where he was as good as any pitcher in the world. and be frustrated that you can't continue to pitch at that elite level when you make it? Or would you never even test that? It's like, I don't know which one I would rather have. Yeah, I would not want that. I would, in fact, if you told me I was going to be,

if you told me I could either be great sometimes and bad sometimes or slightly worse than okay sometimes and bad sometimes, I would choose the latter. I would rather, if I knew I was was gonna have to be bad half the time i would want to be as bad the rest of the time as possible so as to not raise expectations so as to not feel that i was letting everybody down all the time to me the the shoemaker plan is the least appropriate for my temperament. And I hope it's working for him. I know a lot of people would do the math and say, no, Sam, you want to be good.

But I wouldn't. Okay. All right. And the last team for today is Cleveland. So a couple people mentioned Jordan Luplo's line against lefties and his just extreme splits in general. So Jordan Luplo, minimum 100 plate appearances this year against left-handed pitching. He was the third best hitter in baseball behind JD Martinez and Alex Bregman. So JD Martinez, Alex Bregman, Jordan Luplo. He had a 198 WRC plus against lefties and 155 plate appearances. And that's not a small sample for a single season against lefties. And he had a 573 OPS against righties.

So that's about as extreme as you'll see a split in a single season. That's a TOPS plus of 28 against righties and 153 against lefties. So that's weird. There's only so much you can say about a single season split, I guess. Yeah, let's be clear. It is a small sample. Yes. It isn't a small sample for a, by definition, small sample split, but it is still a very

small sample. Exactly, yeah. And I don't know what he's done historically, whether he is always that kind of guy. I'm sure not that extreme. But yeah, not really. So the previous year, even smaller sample, but not that huge a split. And also got some suggestions to mention James Karinchak. If I am saying that correctly, I hope I am.

But he was one of the absolute strikeout monsters in professional baseball this year, at least in the upper minors and majors. He did make it to the majors for five games toward the end of the season, and he continued to strike people out there. He struck out eight guys in five and a third, which would not on its own jump off the page. But that was after he had a minor league season where he struck out oh my goodness yeah so boy all right uh what yeah it was like what are the i was almost hoping that that cleveland would make the playoffs because i wanted to see like what would happen to j Karinczak. He's 24. He's a ninth round pick. And I was wondering like, is this going to be the guy who comes out of nowhere and dominates the playoffs or something? And I don't know whether he would have, but his 2019 season, do you have the numbers? Yeah, I have it. In the minors, in the minors, in 30 inningsnings in the minors, he struck out 22 per nine. Yeah, it wasn't that many innings, right?

It was 30 innings. He had a 2.670 RA. I mean, it's a good thing he's already on Cleveland or they would have traded Corey Kluber for this guy. Yeah, 30 innings 74ks that's so i used to i used to keep track of what the record was for most strikeout and for for most strikeouts in a 27 out period you know like hidden 20 strikeout games remember that remember when i was going through that phase yeah and i think that was inspired by edwin diaz having struck out like maybe 23 in a 27 out period, which is a, you know, obviously a, a hidden 20 K game, but even more than that. And so then I, I found a, I think I found a minor leaguer who had done 24 or 25 and then here's over one 27 out stretch, but here, this guy has

22 over 27 out stretch. And then he just kept repeating it for the whole season that was his his rate that is really incredible i mean that is nuts yep like so he struck out 74 out of 125 batters he faced in the minors which is 60 percent um which is actually a little less it sounds less good than yeah it's the same stat rephrased but the 22 per nine is a better phrasing of it even though it's a slightly less uh precise analytically and he was good he wasn't he wasn't it's not like he was dylan maples out there yeah our old friend from last episode where he had the strikeouts but he overall wasn't fully able to harness it he had a 2.670 ra he uh he he was a little wild but he's he walked five batters per nine but that's like a still a really good strikeout to

walk rate and even better so it might be the greatest strikeout minus walk rate in history in fact right that's a k minus walk rate of 17 which is oh no not 17 hang on it's uh it's uh 74 divided by that it is a strikeout minus walk rate of 45 which given that 45 strikeout rate by itself would be most major league teams franchise record right like i think there are maybe a dozen pitchers who have ever topped that in a season uh i'm fairly confident that that would be the all-time best strikeout minus walk rate yeah garrett cole this year was 34 so yeah yeah so and do we have a story here do we know what what it is i don't know i don't know if it's a trick pitcher or something it's got to be more than that because uh he made the majors and i think he i mean he throws hard he throws 97 so and he threw 70 strikes too in the

majors yeah yeah which is very good i think i don't know why why it took as long as it has i mean he was a college pitcher so it hasn't taken that long he was drafted in the in the 2017 draft so out of bry in Smithfield Rhode Island which you want to guess a division there I don't know uh are there any big leaguers from Bryant College I'm looking Bryant Bulldogs baseball one former Bulldog has gone on to play in the majors before him and that is keith mcwhorter okay mcwhorter uh and then uh the notable alumni is only mcwhorter and brian terrio who who you haven't heard of uh brian not ryan terrio but no and and it's spelled it's also spelled different okay all right wow yeah i uh that's also spelled different. Okay. All right.

Wow. Yeah, that's something. That's a good one. All right. And honorable mention also to Carlos Santana, who had his career year, best offensive season, best war season at age 33, which is not something you see often these days or ever, but especially now. So wait, is this guy, is current karen chak is he a prospect well he's i mean we we are obviously like there's something there right there's obviously

something there he's not like he's not he's not not anything but i mean are we are people hyped about him or is is he just a a relief arm who had a good stint in the minors? Yeah, I think it's more of that. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's pretty exciting. All right. Tim Melville, by the way, was once a top 100 prospect, according to Baseball Prospectus, back in 2010, long before the barbecue days. All right.

So that is 20 teams. We're two thirds of the way through. We'll finish up next time. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Travis Ingram, David Salem, Matthew Wittrock, Joe Mielenhausen, and Jake Silverman. Thanks to all of you.

You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Your reviews are greatly appreciated. They help other people find the show, if they're positive, that is. You can contact me and sam and meg via email at podcast of fan graphs.com or via the patreon messaging system if you are a supporter thanks to dylan higgins for his editing assistance and we will be back with one more show a little later this week talk to you then I I found this out

I I found out Oh