Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1576: The “Is This Guy Good?” Game Returns

Episode Date: August 11, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about a realization about fake crowd noise discomfort, a disastrous start to a Derek Holland outing that recalled an earlier podcast discussion, whether Fernando Tatís Jr. will ever have a moment as remarkable as Fernando Tatís’s two-grand-slam inning, outfielders showing up pitchers, and more, then bring back the “Is […]

What do you see? The skyline's closer to me. And the freeway may be shut down. And the two of us stuck in the same town. No way that we can leave. Too crazy to be believed. Be as good as you want to be. Be as good as you want to be Be as good as you want to be ring hey ben hi i've zeroed in a little bit on a discomfort with the crowd noise that i tried to talk about but i wasn't quite actually clear on my discomfort i focused on it i addressed it this weekend and i think i can be a little more clear now so the normal sequence is of a baseball game is player hits the ball into the outfield it lands for a hit they show the outfielder fielding it and then they you know cut to the the runner sort of rounding first or or like returning quite frequently just returning to first after after his turn and the crowd of course cheers because it's a base hit especially if it's the home team cheers because it's a base hit and you have all these sort of sequences

locked together in your mind because you've seen that sequence one billion times and you know exactly what the pace of it is supposed to go. The fake crowd noise for events is like a quarter second to a second too late pretty much all the time because it makes sense. These people are very scared of cheering the wrong thing. And this actually, I remember this, I think was in the book, but there was a moment in the Stomper Summer when I cheered a line drive that our team hit that got caught. And I was just scorned for this. Like this was one of the dumber moments. I mean, really, probably a top three or four humiliation

moment for me was when I got caught being the only one cheering an out. And I've seen a couple of instances where that has happened, where the cheering starts for what is an out, and you can just sort of feel like the fake audience person is kind of

in that drill tweet. I'm sorry, I'm'm sorry i'm trying to delete it um but but it's like that once you start the cheer i think that the cheer kind of has to play itself out once you press that button yeah it has to play itself out and so then it's very embarrassing and so there's always a little bit of a lag just a very slight lag with the cheer which you understand and there might just have to be, not even for fear-related reasons, but just because you have to find the right cheer noise on your app on the touchpad, and you have to choose it, so you have to process that you need that sound and that that thing just happened. And instead of just emitting a noise from your mouth

as you would if you were an actual fan reacting to it in real time yeah you have to select something so there's probably an inevitable delay there great point absolutely and what you are identifying is that it is not quite natural it's not quite a instinctive response that a crowd cheer is an instinctive instinctive response and so it's just a little late and so when i'm watching the fielder field the ball routine routine single or maybe a single that's you know slightly uh in slightly toward the gap maybe or slightly toward the line maybe i'm still hearing the crowd cheer too long too late when i know that the runner is rounding first and to me that sound of hearing the the crowd still cheering at that point is the sound of a runner going for

second or perhaps a different base. But I'm constantly expecting off screen the runner is actually winding down. But I'm hearing crowd cheer. And so I'm thinking that the runner is actually accelerating even more. And so that's what I'm getting tricked on. Yeah, I've become very conscious of it if it's one of those situations where the crowd noise subsides and then builds up again between pitches, like if it's two strikes or two outs in an inning or something, they're one strike away maybe from getting out of the inning. And so there's the big cheer and then there's the pitch and maybe it's a foul or it's a ball and then there's a hush and then the noise builds back up again but i'm just so conscious of the fact

that there's no crowd organically doing that and that someone's up there pressing the touch pad and trying to decide okay it's time now this is about when the real crowd would actually be building up its anticipation for this pitch. So here I go. And I'm just... It's like a DJ set. Yeah, basically. So I don't know that the crowd noise has enhanced my enjoyment of these games. It's hard to say.

The crowd noise for the Joe Adele play, I was really impressed by how quickly it happened. To me, that was the most natural crowd noise that i and i i saw the replay of that and i wondered are they going in post-production and adjusting the crowd noise to make it better on on these highlights perhaps because you know joe joe adele is just sort of settled under it and then it pops out of his glove and goes over the the fence for a four base error home run and it was immediately a perfect crowd noise and i thought how did how did you get that so quickly i was really impressed the sound clip queued up for four base error off the glove over the wall yeah finger finger hovering over that button just in case yeah yeah all right uh anything going on well Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Anything going on? Well, you know how sometimes we'll talk about something, some hypothetical, and then by coincidence and almost miraculously it will happen just a few days later. For instance, when we talked about the possibility of having drones in the ballpark just about 10 days ago. And then lo and behold, a few days later, a drone appeared over the Twins Pirates game and there was a drone delay. And we had talked about whether it would be distracting to have a drone in the field during a game just for broadcast related reasons. And clearly it was distracting because they weren't expecting it and they didn't know why there was a drone there and it stopped the game. So that was weird. sometimes that just happens after we talk about something sometimes it takes years for something that we talk about to happen or something quite close to it and that happened on saturday when derrick holland had a disastrous start to his

start so derrick holland was starting for the pirates and he was pitching against the Tigers, and he came out for the top of the first, and the sequence went home run, single, home run, home run, home run. So four homers in the first without getting an out in the first five batters. He hasn't retired anyone, and as someone on Twitter pointed out, we had discussed a scenario very much like that about four years ago on episode 891. A listener had asked us, I think, how many home runs we thought a starter would get, how long your leash would be if you just went out there and started serving up home runs. And we had a guest, a listener on with us in that episode, Corey. And Corey thought it could go as high as six home runs. And according to the Effectively Wild wiki, that is, I have not gone back and listened, but he said six,

we said four or five consecutive home runs to begin a game before pulling their starter. So we know that in this case, at least, it was not quite consecutive, but five consecutive hits, least it was not quite consecutive but five consecutive hits four of them were homers and Holland get got to keep pitching so after he gave up the fourth home run he gave up a sharp liner to deep center I did not look to see how deep but hard hit I think then another single line drive to deep right still in the game then he got a pickoff first, which was merciful. Then he walked a guy. And then he got a foul to get out of the inning. Foul pop-up and then a ground out.

And at that point, you might think, okay, he's down 5-0. He can't be long for this game. He ended up pitching five-plus innings. He stayed in there. He sort of settled down. He gave up a run in the second. Then he kind of cruised through the third, cruised through the fourth. Then he also cruised for the fifth.

Then he came out for the sixth, and the sixth went home run, still in there. Double line drive to the gap, still in there. Another double line drive down the line. That's when he finally, finally got pulled. And at that point, he had thrown 112 pitches, which is a lot in 2020, or just in this day and age period. And he did it, really, despite all expectations and odds, even though he started the game with five straight hits, four of which were homers. So there it is, the real-life proof of how long you can be left in.

You can give up at least four homers in the first five batters you face and end up pitching five-plus innings and throwing 112 pitches. Who knew? Yeah, and the hypothetical as I remember it was if every home run came on the first pitch. And a lot of my recollection, I don't know for sure that I was involved in this conversation. But my recollection is that part of the discussion was just how long it would take to warm somebody up, how much you could stall. And I think that there was a feeling that you would have to stick with them for a certain amount of time because you wouldn't have time to get anybody up.

But Holland did not have to adhere to that part of the hypothetical and got to throw 11 pitches. Yeah. Although, let's see. I mean, you wouldn't – the single was a ground ball single, so it was four pitches for the first two batters, home run single, and then 0 o2 to cabrera and then it went homer on the o2 and then an o2 homer to cj crone and then a first pitch

homer to jamer candelario and so that's all more details yeah okay well it kind of happened well good for him yeah i know it's a lot of trust yeah derrick shelton or desperation i don't know which i'm glad that he was allowed to stay in i think that i mean we sort of there's we the evidence suggests that a pitcher who has a start like this is not actually like irredeemable for the day that sometimes you have bad stretches of 11 pitches. And if you thought that the pitcher was your best option 11 pitches ago, there's a pretty good chance that he still is right now. And so I'm glad that he was left in and that we got to see it in action. I think that probably there should be, I don't know, maybe more leash than we expected a pitcher would get in that situation

well what are the pirates have to lose at this point I guess just uh more baseball games one other thing I saw kind of an interesting discussion in our Facebook group about Fernando Tatis Jr. who is uh really just kind of leveling up it looks like and was already at a very high level. I think you christened him, or maybe we all agreed he was the most watchable, most exciting, most riveting player of 2019 before he got hurt. Now he has come back and is just seemingly the best player, at least he has been so far. He's leading the majors in war. He's leading the National League in home runs. He is also, I think, second in stolen bases in the National League behind his teammate Tommy Pham. And he seems to have become much more selective all of a sudden.

He's just still fun, but even better than he was before. And listener Mark started a discussion in the Facebook group about the fact that he's probably going to pass his dad any day now in war, probably this season, if the season is completed. And yet, Mark wanted to know what are the odds that at some point in his career, he'll do something more remarkable than what his father did, which of course was hit two grand slams in a single inning. And Mark says the word remarkable was chosen carefully there yeah i'm not asking whether he'll be a better player or end up with more war or anything like that this is specifically a reference to the single greatest inning of his father's

career and whether he can do something that is more remarkable remarkable i've always found such an odd word anyway because you are saying that this something is so whatever of whatever essence that one remarks on it remark being such a weak verb as it is like oh my gosh it was i had to remark so i guess if you treat remarkable in the literal sense of like needing of, of something that one remarks upon, it's remarkability. It's, it's,

I guess it's oddness or it's being unique or being curious. It curious maybe would be something. Then two grand slams in an inning is tough because two grand slams in an inning is right there with two no hitters in a row being almost impossible to imagine breaking in fact you would have to say that it is much more likely that a pitcher will someday throw three no hitters in a row than that a batter will someday hit three grand slams in an inning. Yeah. I mean, aren't there like an extremely small, extremely small number of batters

who have batted three times in an inning, I think, in history? Yeah. Yeah, it can't be topped, really. It could be equaled, but it wouldn't be nearly as remarkable if it were equaled. Yeah.

So what would Tatis do to... Well, we have to remember that most of the, most of the world has never heard of Fernando Tatis, seniors, two grand slams in a inning, or doesn't, isn't kind of like, couldn't remark upon it from memory because most, you know, it's a very, it's a very niche achievement. If you hang around the game and listen to a bunch of broadcasts, then you'll eventually hear it and you'll know about it but it has not i i wouldn't say that it is broken through to widespread knowledge and and if you if you don't know something you can't remark upon it and so i

think that simply being like like mike trout's career has been remarked upon more than more than fernando tatis is too grand slam inning right yes but the the percentage of people who have heard of mike trout's career that have then remarked on it is lower than the people who have heard of fernando tatis's two grand slams an inning and then remarked on it i think like it's almost a hundred percent remark rate for the two grand slam inning whereas a lot of people just hear the trout news and then and then file it away, perhaps for a later remark. So I think that it is probably, I'll put it this way. I think that Tatis Jr. will be much more famous

than his father, even in a hundred years when his father's achievement is still in baseball trivia books and is still remarked on in broadcasts, assuming they are still broadcast, Tatis Sr.'s achievement is immortal. Since it won't be topped, it will never go away. And yet I think that Tatis Jr. will still be more famous if he has a career that he's currently on trajectory for. Yeah, if the question is which of the Tatises is more often remarked on, I think that would certainly be Junior. But if we're talking about if there's anything specific that he will do or a certain play that he will have,

I think it's very unlikely. As good as he is and as long as he'll hopefully play in as many wonderful plays as he'll hopefully accomplish, I don't know that any of them really could rise to that level of remarkability. It would almost have to be something we can't even think of because it's not like we were sitting around waiting for someone to hit two grand slams in an inning. It's just, it would have seemed so inconceivable before it happened. So there are very few things I think that could even clear that bar his most recent homer as we record this was against madison bumgarner and it was just i mean it was an absolute bomb madison bumgarner was struggling at the time and tatis just you know

really hit the ball a very long way and tatis you know witharner, Bumgarner is the cop, right? And so if you show too much emotion on a home run against Bumgarner, it's like 100% chance that it's going to turn into a thing. And so I was watching to see like, oh, are we going to have a thing? And Tatis confidently tossed his bat aside and put his head down and jogged around the bases. And Bumgarner, you you know disgustedly spit at himself and walked down the mound and then the catcher you know went whoa and and it was all very normal and you thought okay there's not going to be anything here and then they cut to left field

where bum garner's teammate david peralta never turned around and very ostentatiously never turned around and it was as though he was doing tatis's bat flip for him like tatis tatis didn't want to start anything and so peralta did it kind of like showed the showed the flex for him by not moving not turning around not not budging at all like there's there's outfielders that don't move on home runs and then there's outfielders who purposefully become statues and Peralta did that and it was very impressive and drove home the point that Tatis had just completely buried Madison Bumgarner and I wondered why the outfielder not moving which is essentially a way of showing up the pitcher. I mean, it shows up the pitcher

more than a bat flip ever could or a slow jog around the bases or admiring your home run from the batter's box. More than that, the outfielder on the pitcher's very own team sort of like disgustedly expressing hopelessness shows up the pitcher much more and i'm surprised that that isn't an unwritten rule that like outfielders are not supposed to do that but apparently they're not and i'm grateful that that it has somehow escaped the fun police's

notice that we're still allowed to see outfielders do it yeah that's a good point all right i sent you a file yep last year a quarter of the way into the season we played a game called is he good and it was about relievers who a quarter into the season quarter away into the season were you know had either had either been good or had not been good and we're now a quarter of the way into this season we're 15 games into the 60 game season and it is i mean last year a quarter of the way into the season was was of course mid-may it was 40 games and it was impossible to say who had been good and to know who had been good because relievers are so difficult to track and their performance is so difficult to even assess in smallish samples and is so wildly unpredictable. And so is absolutely outrageous to try to do it 15 games into a season. And so we're going to do it. And we're going to do

it partly just to stress the weirdness of this season. I think that one of the ways that the the weirdness of this season is actually going to be most obvious when you're looking back five years from now or like when you're just living your baseball fan life five years from now is you're constantly going to be looking up player pages of players who are you know by that point normal they're going to be either they're just going to be living their normal careers again and you're going to want to look up their stats to see like oh how they doing this year and you're going to see that 2020 line and there's going to be a lot of pitchers with good careers who have an era of 8.93 in the middle of it because it's this year or they're going to be

pitchers who i guess the opposite they're going to haveRAs of zero in the middle of a bunch of fours because this is the year. And that's true for everybody. I think to some degree or another, there's going to be a lot of career high rate stats and there's going to be a lot of unthinkably low career low rate stats, I think. But relievers are already subject to this wildness and this year is just going to really intensify it. So to take one person off of this spreadsheets example, Kirby Yates last year had one of the great reliever seasons of all time. And presumably he is still capable of, I mean, he is still that pitcher and he might be just as good going forward. And if he is, he'll he'll probably have an era even if the rest of the season he's like essentially unhittable kirby yates his era will probably be in the threes or

fours at best just because a quarter of the way into the season he has an era of 10.38 that 10.38 coming on you know four and a third innings yeah one fourth one fourth of the season is four and a third innings start one game like Derek Holland and you're you're done ERAs and I I yes exactly and I do wonder whether what it's like for players a quarter of the way into the season to already be in holes statistical holes does it motivate you that you're just going to chip away but yeah i mean relievers this year are going to get 20 25 innings and they've already got a quarter of them booked so anyway we're going to play this dumb this outrageous version of an already silly game and so i've sent you a file you're going to need to get a random number generator. You will roll a number,

name a pitcher, tell me the team, and then I will tell you whether he has been good and then vice versa. And that's it. That's the game. Okay. Yeah. Last time we played this, it inspired a website, right? We had a listener, Corey Martin, who built a website so that everyone could play this game at home. It's called istheskygood.gq, and I don't know if it's been updated with 2020 data, but it was fun. You could just click through, and you'd get relievers, and you can choose good if you think a ZRA is below 3 and bad if you think it's above 420.

Is that what we're doing? Do we have numbers for this? Yeah, I made it a little more extreme this year. So every reliever on here has thrown at least five relief appearances, and every reliever's ERA is either below 2.5 or above 5. So they've either been really good or they have been really not good. Okay. All right.

So go ahead. And yeah, I was thinking that maybe just to help add a little information to this, if it's a pitcher, name the pitcher and I will volunteer to read their baseball prospectus blurb this year. Okay. If that seems like it. And if it doesn't work, then we'll edit it out. Sure. Okay.

All right. I have selected a random number it is nick turley nick turley nick turley oh my goodness i saw nick turley pitch a game and i remember thinking this is what the experience of watching nick turley made me feel i thought oh wow it just occurred to me that in like seven years, there's going to be a whole generation of pitchers who looked up to Joe Kelly and modeled themselves after Joe Kelly. And Joe Kelly will still be in the majors somehow. And he will be the most like we will be surprised to find that Joe Kelly has aged into the most one of the most respected veterans in the game. one of the most respected veterans in the game in the same way that like you would never have been able to convince the average fan that Jason Giambi would someday become one of the most

respected players in the game that Fernando Rodney would would someday you know become one of the most respected players in the game I think Nelson Cruz might be the most respected veteran in the game right now and probably eight years ago or whenever he had his PED test that might have been surprising to the fans. But I think there's, my guess is that like a lot of people probably like really like Joe Kelly among baseball players. They see him as like a cool guy to party with. You know, he puts in the works, been around, pitched in high leverage situations and has a look, you know, has a particular look. And I watched Nick Turley,

who was throwing high nineties fastballs while wearing goggles and kind of looking like Joe Kelly on the mound. I think, I think I'm thinking of Nick Turley. So Nick Turley, my recollection is that he basically missed the last two years after surgery. Has come back throwing gas. Looked good when I saw him, but it's been a tough year for the Pirates. You want to probably default to not good for an average Pirate. I am going to go with good. Okay. And I will, real quick, I'm going to read Nick Turley. Let's see if I even have the right guy.

Nick Turley. I don't even if I even have the right guy. Nick Turley. I don't even know if I have the right guy. He's on the Pirates. He's on the Pirates. He's not in the book. He has missed seasons. He last pitched in 2017 in the majors. I wonder who I'm thinking of.

Well, let's just assume I met Nick Turley all along. Go ahead. Is he good? He's not good. I was thinking met Nick Turley all along. Go ahead. Is he good? He's not good. I was thinking of Nick Birdie. Oh. Close enough. No, Nick Turley, he's not the worst.

He's got a 5.68 ERA right now, although he has walked about twice as many batters as he has struck out. So not good. Well, that's very embarrassing. I mean, I couldn't have told you anything off the top of my head really about Nick Turley, which I guess would have been more accurate if I had said I know nothing about Nick Turley than what you said, which was not Nick Turley related at all. Nick Turley is not in the baseball prospectus annual. So he is not one of the 2000 players that got a write-up this year.

So that makes me feel a little bit better. Nick Birdie, similar name, scans the same in poetry. And here is his write-up. It was a 1-0 pitch to gerard dyson a 97 mile per hour fastball birdie released it and then clutched his throwing arm and knelt to the ground in pain he had been marked by a scalpel two winters ago for tommy john and now this fortunately in a sense it wasn't the tendon but rather the nerve he saw another surgeon and this time they corrected his thoracic outlet syndrome birdie ought to be able to reaffirm his reputation for heat and high leverage tolerance come

spring. He'll try to throw more than 20 innings in a season for the first time since 2015. That's Nick Birdie. And sadly, he probably will not throw more than 20 innings in a season for the first time because it's the season. Nick Birdie, two innings, four strikeouts, one run allowed, only three appearances, not on the spreadsheet. Yeah, I remember Nick Turley vaguely just because he was drafted by the Yankees and was coming up when I was working there, although he was a 50th round draft pick.

So for him to be around, even if he's on the Pirates, as a 50th round draft pick, that's pretty good. Good for you, Nick Turley, even though you're not pitching very well this season. What would you say is because you're like one of the best hitters in baseball still somehow. But if you're Jason Giambi, who wasn't much of a hitter at all for the last few years of his career, you don't stay around unless you are that kind of guy probably. And still no one would have seen that coming that he would be that kind of guy, but he was. And that's kind of why he was there at all. Whereas, I mean, with most guys, by the time you're 40, you're not good anymore, you know, or you're not like a starter level good. You're maybe just a bench bat or a bullpen guy or something. And at that point, what's keeping you on the roster is probably your personality and

your reputation and your reputation and your leadership and your calming presence and all that. So it's pretty rare that you get someone who is that age who is not seen as the wise, beloved veteran. Yeah, it's at least 90%. And you could even, even if you narrowed it down to players who in their 20s had the opposite reputation, it's still 90%. Yeah. It's just like the reputations follow certain. It's like a survivorship bias thing. If you're still there, you're one of the good guys, as they say.

All right. I rolled number 78, which is Josh Tomlin oh on the brains currently a brave huh and i will uh i'm gonna read you josh tomlin going into the 2019 season tomlin had a clear reputation he hated walks like your dog hated the vacuum cleaner seemed like he was pitching as if he was trying to avoid walking the batter at all costs as it turned out his walk averse ways on the mound ended up transforming him from a waning starter to a somewhat reliable middle reliever. What's intriguing is that he managed to cut his home run rate in half

and did so without impeding on his strike-throwing proclivities. He's not someone you want for a high-leverage situation, but he's easy on the eyes, and regardless of whether it works or not, you know it'll be over quickly. Well, I mean, I the the braves have been fairly successful so that makes me think good otherwise i would not have expected a lot out of josh tomlin at this point what i really remember about him is that his home run allowed total and his walk total

were tracking pretty closely together for a while because he was just a total home run dispenser but he was not allowing any walks and so it was kind of interesting to see if one or the other would be better but I guess I will say since he's still there and since he's on a good contending team I guess I'll say he's been good he's been extremely good he has thrown nine innings scorelessly he has allowed only two hits in those nine innings struck out 12 what yeah walked one his fip would if it holds be the all-time record for the lowest fit ever it's 0.64 and uh and just this is actually he is currently on track because he hasn't allowed a home run yet he is currently on track to have a home run per nine that's lower

than his walks per nine for the first time since 2012 so that's that's one two three four five six seven years in a row that his home run rate was at least as high in most cases much higher than his walk rate one year he had double he allowed twice as many home runs as walks he allowed 25 homers while walking 12 i'm looking at his velocity now i'm wondering if there was some sort of late career bullpen velocity boost for Josh Tomlin. And no, there hasn't been. He's averaging under 88 with his fastball. How is this happening?

This is weird. I certainly did not expect Josh Tomlin to have 12 strikeouts per nine. Yeah, Tomlin, I like Tomlin because he was a college shortstop drafted as a college shortstop in a late round. And he wasn't very good. And he didn't sign as a college shortstop. And then he got drafted again. And they converted him to a pitcher. And when you hear a story like that, and then the pitcher goes on to make it in the game,

you go, wow, this game is so rich with unusual career arcs i mean this shortstop made it as a pitcher even though he didn't even start pitching until he was 22 and it wasn't his first position and he was a late round draft pick and he didn't make it to the majors until pretty late. And all that is already a testament to how unpredictable baseball is. But then you add to that that he is one of the most extreme and unusual pitching careers ever. It's not just remarkable that he made it, but that he is unlike anything else in the game. He's unlike any pitcher that we've seen in 20 years. And there's all these sub shocks within the shocking story

that keep revealing themselves and so now here he is 35 years old and he's an ace he's a bullpen ace he's very good wow well i'm learning a lot all right your name oh this could be a tough one jonathan hernandez ah okay jonathan hernandez give me a give me a team rangers and uh any other information about jonathan hernandez you know i think i actually know this one, but I might not. So, 482, Jonathan Hernandez got a line out in this year's annual. It's fun to play this game, so here. In Jonathan Hernandez' big league debut, he faced Albert Pujols, and the game was won on a Hunter Pence walk-off single.

For now, that's not a super fun fact. So, it's up toandez to stick around long enough to let it age into a fine vintage fun fact okay jonathan hernandez has been good but i can't tell you anything beyond that i'm impressed that you could tell me that unless you're guessing but it's true he's been good he has been good yeah i i know that he sometime Yeah, I know that he, sometime this weekend, I saw that he had not allowed a run, I believe. And that is all I know. Yeah, he has allowed runs now. He's allowed two runs in nine innings, but he has struck out 14 in those innings. So yeah, he has been quite good. Who is he? Who is he?

Well, you know more than I do, apparently, about Jonathan Hernandez. He debuted last year and didn't pitch a whole lot of innings last year either, so we haven't had a lot of time to see him. And we're exhausting my Jonathan Hernandez knowledge here. He has been with the Rangers his whole career, signed out of the Dominican. He has been with the Rangers his whole career, signed out of the Dominican. So he's 24 years old, just turned 24, right-handed reliever. Yeah, he actually has struck out 14 per nine this year. I think I actually didn't see him as a no runs allowed guy. I think I saw him as a top strikeout rate guy.

He had 13 strikeouts in eight innings uh before his last outing and something about the strikeout rate i saw and then thought that i had to look him up later and i never did 6-3 right hander and appears to be quite good yep all right let's see here i am going to roll. All right. I got number nine, which is Andrew Chafin. Andrew Chafin, Arizona Diamondback. Yeah. I saw him the other night because I was watching Padres Diamondbacks game, and he was pitching.

Can I? This is interesting. Okay. So here's his write-up. Chafin faced two batters or fewer in nearly half of his 77 appearances in 2019, a stat that is only now relevant given the upcoming rule change requiring pitchers to face at least three batters or end a half inning before being removed. There's hope for Chafin despite this, however. While he has primarily been used against lefties throughout his career, his splits aren't so extreme that

facing the occasional right-handed bat will sap his value entirely. It's a good thing, too, as we could all use a little more of the mustachioed man nicknamed the Sheriff in our lives. Yeah. I think I recall that I was surprised to see his numbers when he came in because I think of him as good. And so I think he has not been good. Wow, very, very good. He has not been good. And I actually wonder whether I thought that you might have missed that one because I wondered whether you saw him the same time I saw him, which was two days ago, Saturday. He came into a big spot against the Padres, and he was very good.

And it was one of those things where they brought him in. Okay, so the Diamondbacks are up by two. Merrill Kelly allows the leadoff single. And so now the tying run is coming up, and it's Eric Hosmer. They bring in Chafin to face Hosmer, the lefty and of course that would have been traditionally the easy call but now you since this is this year we're watching to see well what happens now and what happens now is then he has to face will myers who is a right hander with power and then he has to face jerickson profar and he gets both of them and he looked very good and it was like a great a great moment for andrew

chafin and so i was hoping that you had seen that and remembered him being good but he has otherwise not been good but he has more notably he has pitched a lot so the three batter rule well i guess i was going to say the three batter rule has not affected his usage, but maybe the fact that he's doing bad is bad because it will be observed and seen as evidence that he shouldn't be used much. Right. Yeah. Okay. My pick for you is Hobie Milner. Hobie milner uh hobie milner i have seen he is either he is an angel he is a lefty he has big floppy mechanics i thought you were gonna say big bushy eyebrows because it looks

like he has those too and he came into a game he lost one of the extra inning games that i saw one of the first actually he lost the first extra inning game in fact the first 10th inning game in baseball history or the first you know 10 inning artificial rules in baseball history hobie milner was brought in to face i could have so many details here wrong i believe he was brought in and had to face some batters and i believe he lost. I'm going to say Hobie Milner has been bad. Hobie Milner has been good, actually. Yeah, he's pitched eight games and only four and a third innings,

so I guess he's making a run at the Lukey role, or as close as you can in this day and age. And he has allowed only one run yeah you know that one run that was the one that you happened to see yeah it was the matt olsen walk-off grand slam uh-huh he came in and gave through one pitch through one pitch to to matt olsen and from that i was confident saying that he had not been good yeah since then as you, as you say, he hasn't allowed a run. And since then, he has allowed hitters he has faced to bat 077, 143, 077. All he has allowed is a single and a walk while striking out four.

And that's all really very good. Yeah, very good. And I feel bad because when you told me that Hobie Milner has been good, and I went, ah, I am not rooting against Hobie Milner in general. So Milner was basically released by the Rays. He was briefly a Ray last year, was released and signed by the Angels, briefly appeared as a ray last year had actually been a ray before that and came into this season with a career all right of 3.4

so he's probably an average loogie and we'll see whether like andrew chafin he survives yes all have the number 63 the number 63 is oh it's javi guerra okay okay well i uh i saw javi guerra did you no wait yes wait did you i'm thinking of uh i'm thinking of another reliever i saw the other day okay well because so here's the problem there's two two Javi Garas. Yeah, right. I'm thinking of the Padres Javi Gara. There's a Padres and a Nationals. Yeah, that's, oh, which one is... We don't know which one is number 63. Okay, well... They maybe have both been good,

and they maybe have both not been good. Yeah, so I know the Padres won. I don't know if he's been good, but I know that he is good because he was quite impressive when I saw him Padres won. I don't know if he's been good, but I know that he is good because he was quite impressive. When I saw him the other night, he actually threw 102, which I wasn't sure whether to believe because he was throwing like 98, 99, and then all of a sudden there was 102 out of nowhere. Very easy, too. Yeah, right.

It didn't look like he had reared back to try to do it, So I wasn't sure whether that was actually accurate, but he looked very good. But again, I think like with Chafin, I think that was a case where it was like he looked good, but hadn't been good up until that point because the announcers were saying like it's an important inning for him or something, as I vaguely recall. So I think that Javi Guerra has not been good, but probably is pretty good if he's pumping 102 in there. As for the other Javi Guerra, who I guess is the Javi Guerra who's been around longer, right? He's the Padres Javi Guerra, is the javier come lately this is this is the veteran javier who's been bouncing around but i have no idea whether he has been good this year uh although i think of him as good in general so that's all i've got to go on. What if I told you that he is on the Nationals?

Yeah, I don't know if that really helps me very much. Yeah. I guess I'd guess good just to balance out the universe of Javi Geras. Okay. Well, you have actually, you nailed it. Javi Gera, the Padre, has not been very effective thus far. And Javi Gera, the National, has thrown seven and a third innings has allowed only one run struck out eight and walked nobody and let's see javier the padre unfortunately javier the padres hitting stats are still above his pitching stats on his baseball

reference minor league page which is what i was leaning at but in this major league page uh he has a 7.94 era in five and two-thirds innings and yeah gara the the padre is the much more interesting player uh he was a top prospect as a as an infielder as a red sock and he got traded to the padres in the cra Craig Kimbrell deal. And then they converted him to pitching. Now, did they convert him to, I don't know. Is he a two way player or is he just a pitcher now? I don't think he is a two way player.

I don't either. Let's see. He, he batted. Well, he batted 19 times last year as a Padre. Yeah. He,

he played short, he pinch hit and he played third as a padre last year let me see here batting 2019 uh or maybe that was 2018 uh no last year all pitching sorry last year all pitcher year before all hitter so yeah he is a full convert and yeah it looked intimidating you can see why he he converted javier, the national, is part of the Nationals bullpen. And that was their big problem last year. Let's see how their bullpen is doing this year. As a reliever, their bullpen this year has a 3.48 ERA. So it's been quite good and just goes to show yeah Padres manager Jace Tingler said of Padres Javier in March I've seen Guys convert but I've never seen anybody In 14 or 15 months go from Shortstop to do what he's doing on the mound I don't think I've seen such

Easy strikes with premier velocity And movement plus the ability to throw A secondary pitch while having the shortstop Background he can make bounce off The mound on bunt plays field his position It's like having a fifth infielder out there i think that's important when you were throwing a 99 mile per hour bowling ball so yeah he seems good all right let's do one more round okay your reliever

is jimmy cordero by the way the pitcher a, a few years ago, the position player converting to pitcher story was really in a boom. There was, like, I wrote an article for ESPN, the magazine about that. Christian Bethencourt on the Padres. And he is another one. And at the time, it was, I want to say something like a fifth of the closers in the game

had actually converted from positions like Joe Nathan had, the guy on the Cardinals with the beard had. Kenley Jansen. Kenley Jansen, of course, had. Sean Doolittle had. Carlos Marmel had. There were a whole bunch of them, top closers. I wrote about why that was so and what people look for when they're making these conversions

and whether it was going to happen more. And there have still been conversion stories, but it feels like a lot fewer of them. Nobody is asking me to write magazine articles about that anymore. Okay, who'd you give me? Jimmy Cordero. And the team that Jimmy Cordero's on? White Sox. Oh, I need a hypnotist to pull this one out of me.

I have seen him. I don't think I'm going to get it. I can't get it. I can't get a single thing out of this. Jimmy Cordero. Jimmy Cordero. I saw it. What did I see?

Jimmy Cordero. I saw it. What did I see? Jimmy Cordero. I saw it. I don't know. He's been, I got to say, well, I'll just play the odds and I'll say that I've recently seen White Sox innings that were high leverage and Jimmy Cordero was not throwing them. So I'm going to guess that he has not worked his way into high leverage. I'm guessing that based on a very small exposure. And I'm going to say Jimmy Cordero has not throwing them. So I'm going to guess that he has not worked his way into high leverage. I'm guessing that based on a very small exposure. And I'm going to say Jimmy Cordero has been bad.

Yeah, he has a 5.06 ERA. Oh, that's barely bad. That's barely over the line. One outing away from being good. Seven games, five and a third innings, three earned runs, four runs, period. Not great peripherals. Nothing particularly standing out About Jimmy Cordero

And evidently nothing particularly stood out to you When you watched Jimmy Cordero He is a right-hander He is a large gentleman 6'4", 235 And he debuted In 2018 with the Nationals But he was already in his

Age 26 season at that point. He is closing in on 29 now, so he seems like a fairly generic middle reliever, although he was fairly good for the White Sox last year, at least ERA-wise, but has a very low strikeout rate for a reliever in 2020. Very low strikeout rate for a reliever in 2020. I mean, his career strikeout rate is 6.9 per nine in 60 games all out of the bullpen. And that's got to be one of the lowest strikeout rates I would imagine for any reliever over that period who's thrown 60 innings pitched, probably. It's tough to stick in a bullpen these days if you're not even striking out seven per nine here's his blurb cordero has huge biceps a pathological hatred of sleeves he rolls them up

when he pitches and very easily touches 98 with a sinker that generates heaps of ground balls that he's changed teams six times in his young career seems like a flagrant display of ignorance of how cool it is to watch a pitcher huck high 90s heaters with his guns out. But given how often Cordero was re-gifted, and whom he was re-gifted by, you would have expected a more arduous reclamation project than he proved to be. He was fine. He torched AAA like legit big leaguers tend to do, and threw enough strikes at high enough speeds to balance out how non-particular he was about where in the zone he located them. strikes at high enough speeds to balance out how non-particular he was about where in the zone he located them if he continues to do that he should remain in the majors tease some possibility of

more and never have to wear his sleeves down again i remember that because he pitched on saturday night baseball this week and i remember his sleevelessness because people were commenting on his pythons oh see i was eating dinner when he came into that game, and it was the fact that I think Evan Marshall and Alex Colomay pitched later is what actually caused me to miss Jimmy Cordero. There was a stretch of that game where it was like nine or ten strikeouts in a row, like both sides.

It was like Bieber, Giolito, Evan Marshall, James Karinczak the the strikeout god came in and it was just strikeout after strikeout after strikeout and that's kind of what baseball has been a little bit this year because strikeouts are at their highest level ever again and BABIP is extraordinarily low which we talked about and I just wrote about because it's still extraordinarily low so that's kind of what baseball has been. And I was enjoying it when it was Bieber and when it was Karen Chak and when it was Giolito. I was not enjoying it as much when some generic middle relievers came in or when Evan Marshall came in.

No slight against Evan Marshall, but he's not quite as fun as James Karen Chak. All right. Last one. I got 28, which is Sy Sneed. Oh, Sy Sneed. Okay, I have spoken to Sy Sneed because I interviewed him for the MVP machine. He is an Astros swingman or probably reliever.

I don't know what he's been doing this year because their whole staff has been injured. But he was not particularly good when I talked to him. He was kind of like a borderline fringy prospect type, maybe just a depth guy. And I'm going to guess that he has not been good. Let's see. So Sy Snead has...

Would it matter to you if i told you that si sneed has the highest average leverage index in baseball this year that sounds promising i would hope that he's been good if that's the case well unfortunately he hasn't yet been good uh you you are correct that he is on the uh lower half of our rankings of our spreadsheet. He has allowed eight runs in six innings, five of them earned, and has walked five in those six innings, two of them intentionally. And the intentional walks are part of why he has such high leverage index. Snead has been in two extra innings appearances this year. And he was actually, i'm looking at his

game log here he has pitched the only two 13th innings in baseball thus far so he was in the astros dodgers game that went 13 and he pitched the final two and a third and took the loss and then he was in the astros a's game this weekend that went 13 and he came in in the 13th and he also took the loss in that one and then he had another outing in between where he gave up some runs so he's extremely high leverage but um not because he's the club's closer or anything like that yeah so size need thus far is not but you know it's he's got he's got 13 innings left this year to to right the ship did you see the a's astros game that went 13 no okay this game okay so top of the 10th astros sacrifice which already wow yeah so sacrifice They get a runner to third with one out. Jake Diekman strikes out.

Abraham Toro gets out of the inning. Bottom 10. A's sacrifice. A's sacrifice the runner to third. They have the runner at third. One out. Marcus Simeon strikeout swinging. And then after a walk, Matt Olson out.

Okay. Top of the 11th. Ground out by Alex Bregman. Doesn't advance the runner and they don't score. Okay. That's a nothing. Bottom of the 11th, Matt Chapman, lead off single. Runners on first and third.

Nobody out. Strikeout. Strikeout. Hit by pitch. Strikeout. Okay. Top 12. Lead off single. Runner on first and third nobody out line out strikeout

ground out okay bottom 12 walk line out hit by pitch bases loaded one out strikeout ground out to the 13th the astros score one on a double and then the a's score two on two singles so they went oh for seven not just over seven with runner on third and one or none out they had seven chances to score that run and did not get the run home which is the most exciting to me a runner on third um uh win particularly a winning run but runner on third with less than two outs when the pitcher gets out of it is one of the most exciting turnarounds in baseball uh particularly like mid-inning and so to see seven of those situations come up and get squandered to see twice where you had runners at the corners with nobody out and

they couldn't get them in and i think that one of the fears that I had with this extra innings format is that you were going to have a lot of runs scoring on outs, which I don't think you want. And what has happened almost entirely has been run scoring on hits, a lot of runs scoring on two out hits. And all three runs in this game scored on hits, not on sack flies or ground outs or anything like that. So it's been really fun. It's quite exciting. There was that safety squeeze in the Sunday night game, which was very fun and well executed.

It doesn't detract from the thrill of escaping the jam that you didn't really work your way into the jam fully. Like one nice thing about the rally that you usually get in a normal inning or working out of a jam is that you were there from scratch and you put that runner on in the first place you got yourself in trouble and then you get yourself out of trouble it's even more exciting when you do that i think so when you start in a jam essentially you're always in a jam in extra innings now does Does that take away at all from it for you? I guess not.

Yeah, you guess not. It doesn't sound like it. So far, not. Yeah, it cheapens it a little for me, I think, just because you're always in. It's like, you know, if you were always in the red zone or something in the football game, which is exciting. There's a whole channel devoted to that, so I guess it's good. But I don't know if I'll tire of that just because, I don't know, it feels a little artificial, which it is.

That's kind of the complaint about it all along. But I can't dispute that it is quite exciting. All right, that's all. Okay, that will do it for today. Pretty happy with the names the random number generator selected for me there. When Sam sent the file over, I opened it, and I was scrolling down and seeing names I didn't know at all. I could have gotten Anthony Masevich or Caleb Beriger.

Instead, my biggest problem was which Javi Guerra we were talking about. I'll link, by the way, to the article I briefly referenced about BABIP. It's up at the ringer now. When we spoke about it last week, I think BABIP was at 275, 276. And as I speak right now, it is still at 276. As a result, the league as a whole is batting 230 right now, which makes 1968 look like a good year for batting average. And it's still sort of a mystery why that is. We're kind of past the point at which small sample is a sufficient explanation, but it could be the pitchers. It could be the hitters. It could be defensive positioning, it could be fielder performance. One thing I didn't mention is that hitters have been somewhat limited in their access to batting practice, especially if they're on the

road. Because of COVID, they're not really allowed to congregate in the cages, so especially if you're not at your home park, you may not have a lot of time to get your work in. Plus video access has been restricted, both because of COVID and because of sign stealing, so hitters haven't been able to study themselves and break down their swings as much. Don't think that's the answer, but could be something. Maybe it would have some effect on home field advantage too. Anyway, I tried to unravel that knot, so feel free to check that out. And please feel free to 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 Thank you. Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can rate review and subscribe to effectively wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Sam and Meg coming via email at

podcast at fan graphs.com or via the patron messaging system. If you are a supporter, we will probably answer some emails next time. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We will be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We will be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then. Sucking out another mouth in the smoke You're a good kid You're a good kid You're a good kid You're a good kid

You're a good kid You're a good kid You're a good kid