Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1677: Fully Armed and Operational

Episode Date: April 5, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley convene an emergency podcast to discuss Shohei Ohtani’s exhilarating, terrifying, and historic Sunday Night Baseball performance against the White Sox (which veered from triumph to near-tragedy), touching on Ohtani’s titanic home run and resounding bat crack, the aesthetics of his stuff, his Statcast superstardom, his narrow escape from injury after […]

You were smiling by my table Had a call of every woman I date Beautiful, mind and body What a happy ending I see My mind had been enabled In the memory you overflow I wanna be your superhero Even if I tumble fall

I'm okay You have been a fake army Okay, you have that effect on me But I need you desperately You know I need you desperately Hello and welcome to episode 1677 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg.

Hello. I may not survive this season at this rate. Oh my gosh. Ben, people were asking me on Twitter to do a wellness check. I know. They were asking if you were okay. They were asking if you were conscious. were asking if you were conscious how are you I'm drained I was exhilarated and now I am spent but we're gonna do this episode anyway mostly I think to provide proof of life for my followers who were tweeting at me throughout the night to

ask if I was okay so we are recording late on Sunday night where you are, early Monday morning where I am. We are doing a Shohei Otani pitched and hit in the same Sunday night baseball game emergency pod. And we probably won't do an emergency pod every time Otani pitches and hits in games this season, which I hope will happen a lot. But this was just a wild, chaotic night and really brought me high and brought me low. My heart stopped twice tonight,

once out of joy and once out of terror. So I basically feel like I just watched an elimination game in the playoffs. That is my level of drained right now. What better to end an elimination game in the playoffs with than Tony La Russa managerial decisions now? I think there's a natural instinct in baseball to try to impose a narrative onto a game. I think that we are inclined to cinematic narratives. This one was a roller coaster. Early in the contest, I thought, well, this is a triumphant tale. This is like when a plucky animal traverses the continent to find its owner. You're like, wow, it's got gumption, it's got skill and craft, and it has emerged victorious. And then we were in a horror film briefly.

And like a Cronenberg horror movie where you're like, there's this weird body stuff going on and I'm worried. So it was a lot of ups and downs in this one. Yeah, it went from triumphant to almost tragic. Easily could have been tragic, looked like it was tragic for a moment. And we can laugh about it now because it seems like Shohei is okay as we record here, but he was very nearly laid low. I guess he was literally laid low, but only for a moment. So we're talking about the Angels White Sox Sunday Night Baseball game, which was just a

great matchup. Many of the baseballers I love the most in the world were playing in this game. You had Otani, you had Mike Trout, you had David Fletcher, you had Nick Madrigal, many of my favorites. You had Man of the Hour, Jermaine Mercedes, fresh off his eight straight hits to start the season. The only disappointment was that I couldn't hear Jason Benetti's call. But other than that, it was pretty great. And so this was a historic occasion in that Shohei Otani hit and pitched in this game. He started as the pitcher and he hit in the second slot in the lineup. And this was just something that we've been waiting to see.

It happened in spring training, but it hadn't happened in a regular season game where the Angels gave up the DH to let Shohei Otani hit. And this is something that we've known was a possibility for a while, but it just didn't happen until now. This is obviously very unusual. but it just didn't happen until now. This is obviously very unusual. I asked our frequent StatBlast consultant, Adam Ott,

to look up the previous instances for me earlier on Sunday, and this was the seventh time since the institution of the DH in 1973 that a team playing under DH rules chose not to use a DH and just to let the pitcher hit for himself. So it happened in 1974, Fergie Jenkins. It happened in 1975, Ken Holtzman. Happened twice in 1976, Ken Brett. Then it didn't happen at all until 2009 when Joe Maddon, then managing the Rays, screwed up his lineup card and accidentally lost the DH and Andy Sonnenstein hit for himself. And then it happened most recently in 2016 when Madison Bumgarner hit for himself. So this is a rarity as you would expect it to be. And I assume that the Angels probably had their R&D department slice and dice the numbers here

and figure out that it made sense statistically because Otani is just so good that if you lose the DH spot and you have to have a pitcher hit later in the game or you have to do a double switch as the Angels did or have a pinch hitter come in, Albert Pujols hit in that spot later in the game. Not that that's anything new to Joe Maddon, who has National League managing experience. So there is a penalty to it. But if the pitcher is someone who hits like Shohei Otani and someone who hits like Shohei Otani did on Sunday, which by the way, he hit a gigantic home run on the first pitch he saw of this game, then I guess the Angels concluded that it made sense. And it seems like it's something that Otani wants to do. And he says that it gives

him confidence as a pitcher if he hits well in a game. So this was just exciting to see. He's become this weird totem in the conversation around efficiency and optimization and yeah i think that you know there are plenty of good reasons to prioritize one role over the other right so and we saw one tonight right that the injury concern which again this was this was a fluky thing that ended up happening but there is some perceived heightened injury concern when it comes to otani there's the risk of him you know in in the more normal realm of pitcher injuries suffering some elbow or shoulder thing that would impact his ability at the plate or cause him to miss time as a hitter and so i i understand that there are

reasons that aren't just pure like bleep bleep bleep number reasons to to think that he might be better served and that the angels might be better served by having him sort of pick a lane, right? But this prior to the home plate collision and him being left in a little too long, which I think that we can, you know, him kind of losing his feel in the fifth there, I think we can just attribute to it being early in the year. But this outing shows why, like,

you can't fault him for wanting to try.'t can't fault him for wanting to try you can't fault him for wanting to try can't fault the angels for wanting to try can't fault you for being a basket case but finding that worth it right so i think that there's something that is so tantalizing about one person being able to do these two just incredibly difficult things that so many people who who specialize in one of those two things cannot do to this level right there otani threw eight pitches 100 miles an hour faster tonight right nine i think yeah yeah he hit that home run to the moon right the sound that that home run made yeah maybe the field mic was loud it doesn't matter yeah let's play it i feel like i might play this you should play the sound crack

multiple times in this episode because it's that resounding okay here's number one okay yeah that like i know espn had the plate mic'd up in such a way that a grounder to second sounds like a thunderclap but but still like i don't if you had no mic i would have heard that from anaheim like that was just a titanic blast yeah it was it was spectacular and so the idea that one person could do both of those things so well, and like the splitter was so good tonight when it was working. You're just, it's very hard to give up on that. And I think that it's an area where when we're thinking about the balance between entertainment value and the aesthetics of the game

and a completely well-optimized lineup, this is a place where I think it's useful to have a conversation about what is valuable to us as analysts and as fans, because when this works and we've only caught glimpses of it, it is so cool. Yeah.

It's just so cool. It's just the best. Yeah. So I don't anticipate that like you know when otani's career is over hopefully many many years from now and we look back on it i i suspect that we will view the two-way time as like a chapter i don't want to call it an experiment because i think it will last longer than that and i think think it will be more meaningful for him and his career and for the Angels as a franchise. But I suspect we will look back on Otani's two-way chapter and that he will end up being a hitter and maybe he'll end up back in the field and we'll get a new chapter. We'll get Otani the outfielder, which American audiences have not

seen at any great length right and so i think that that's the way that it'll go but i hope that it is a chapter and that we get a little more we get a little more run to it because it's really cool now having said that it might behoove joe madden to be like you are a pitcher right you're a starter and when you are a starter you're a starter and i'm gonna treat you the way I would treat starters, which means that you should have been out of that inning two batters before you were. ended up looking so four and two thirds innings pitched two hits three runs one earned five walks seven strikeouts and at the plate one for three with the biggest home run that you'll ever see so yes he he looked really good early on especially after he hit the home run maybe it actually did give him confidence the way he says it does. But his command improved for a while there, and then he sort of lost it again.

And in that final inning, he was sort of struggling. He didn't have his location. And Joe Maddon was on the broadcast doing the live in-game interview, and he said something like he's nearing his number, his pitch count target. thing like he's nearing his number you know his pitch count target because otani like obviously the the light workloads the last few years he's barely pitched and then in spring training you know was a little bit behind ramping up and then in his last start of spring training he had the blister issue which worried me because his velocity was down and at first that was terrifying me before we realized that it was the blister but then even once we realized it was the blister, that was sort of scary because this is a two-way player. He needs to use his hands a lot to play baseball. So we've seen how

devastating blisters can be with podcast idol Rich Hill and others. And fortunately that doesn't seem to have hampered him here. So I hope that that won't be a recurring issue but because of that he wasn't all the way built up and I don't know exactly what his target was but they were saying on the broadcast if you could get him through five if you could throw 85 pitches or so that would be great and it seemed like that was what Madden had in mind as well but then in that last inning Otani lost the plate a little bit and he put a bunch of guys on and there were a bunch of walks and madden just really really wanted to get him through that and i understood because like there was part of me that was just like gotta get shohei the w here which i've like never said in my life about anyone but i'm like i want to get him

through five i wanted him to like end on a high note i wanted him to go out on top and have that inning be over and get that release of having him get out of the inning and everything but it kept going and going and much as i wanted him to get out of that jam I just also want to take it easy with him it is his first start of the season so hardly Joe Maddon's first questionable pitching decision and he justified it by pointing to his stuff he said he had great stuff I don't believe in the third time through stuff it depends on what the pitcher has I don't think any of those hitters had good swings at him did Did they hit any balls hard? He did walk a couple guys.

There's no question, but his stuff was still premium. That part, I think you can get yourself into trouble by believing that, oh yeah, this time is the exception to the third time through. But I don't want to totally discount what he said about the psychological aspect. That's the part of a player's situation that he can really mentally become something even more special than he is by fighting through that moment that's how a guy becomes a guy you got to give him that opportunity on the one hand i applaud that madden seems to be trying to show confidence in him trying to really give him his rope and just let him sort of decide how he is going to be used

because he knows his body better than anyone else and he's done this for years but that was a bit much and obviously it nearly backfired in a really long lasting way on the last play of his outing when he got decked by Jose Abreu but you know we didn't know that was going to happen but even so it was it was pushing it to leave him out there as long as they did although atani said i'm really grateful to joe for letting me face that last hitter i think it'll prepare me for future outings he also said he felt almost perfect at the plate and that he's glad he got this game under his belt because it will lead to more confidence there's a huge difference with the fans it helps me concentrate at the plate and on the mound i feel like i get that extra push and that extra gear so can i can i read to you how that moment reads on our win probability graph

sure adam eaton advanced on a pass ball to score jose abrejo advanced to third scored on error yohan moncada error by max stasi pass ball by max stasi and so they came into the inning with a win expectancy of 85.7. And all of this happens, the shenanigans transpire, and they dip, they dip, they dip considerably, but they're still expected to win by our win expectancy numbers, they were at 53.6% win expectancy. And it really just drove home to me, like the limitations of what these graphs capture, we point to them so often when they have the dramatic drop at the end right where yeah a team comes in to the the top of the ninth and they're they're just gonna win the game and then it just plat it just craters right and it goes

from like 98 to zero and you're like wow i feel the roller coaster of emotion and it it seems to adequately represent the experience of us as as fans it probably doesn't portray adequately the depth of of both the shock and despair when that happens to you as a player on the field but we look at that and we're like wow that's dramatic in a moment like this it's like yeah this is a dip but uh you know they're still expected to win. If we didn't care about any of these people or their careers or their ability to keep doing this weird project that they're engaged in as professional athletes, we'd be like, that's sufficient. But my Twitter was about you needing a wellness check. So sometimes, you know, we use the numbers to heighten the moment, but sometimes they prove to be just to come up a bit and it just wasn't Stassi's best night behind the plate.

And Otani sort of missed his spot on this pitch, but didn't really miss the zone by all that much. It was inside a bit and Stassi's glove just didn't get to it. And so it rolls back and then Stassi throws the ball away at first and then Fletcher throws the ball way high at home. way at first and then Fletcher throws the ball way high at home and Otani jumps for it as Abreu is sliding in with the tying run and it just it could have gone so wrong in so many ways and I think we're very fortunate that it didn't if in fact that's the case and I think when Otani landed, like if he had had his leg and his foot planted as Abreu slid in there. I mean, yeah, it could have been ACL. It could have been ankles. Who knows what?

But he was kind of bouncing up and his weight wasn't fully on it. And Abreu, like I don't think there was anything wrong with the slide. Oh, no, no. No, it seemed like he tried to slow down if he could. It's just he's a large person and has a lot of momentum and he's trying to score as is his right. And he was, you know, attending to Otani immediately. Yeah.

Probably because he realized that like he might have just taken out this national treasure, international treasure. Like, how do you feel if you're a Breyu in that moment when Otani is showcasing his one-of-a-kind skills here and you just potentially took him out? But he was as concerned as you would expect him to be in that situation. And Otani said he sort of landed on a Breyu. It's hard to miss him. He is a very large person, as I just mentioned, and he kind of cushioned the fall, I guess. But man, it was scary because he braced himself with his arm a little bit, not his pitching arm, but still, he lay there for a moment and many thoughts ran through my head during that moment because just imagine like if it had been taken away from us in that game after seeing it fully deployed really for the first time in a way that just would have been the most tragic ending you could have envisioned but he says he feels fine he came

back out into the dugout before the end of the game when the game ended on a walk-off he ran out onto the field and seemed to be moving fine and smiling and laughing because he was walking pretty gingerly after he got up and left the game. And the Angels said that he was not removed because of the injury, which was kind of a, I don't know, I guess I understood why they said that. He would have been pulled anyway at that point. That was pretty clearly his last batter. And also, I think he would have been pulled anyway at that point that was pretty clearly his last batter and also like i think he would have been pulled just as a precaution because he was like you know

limping almost as he was walking off the field so right but i guess they were just trying to say like he's okay you know trying to talk us off the ledge a little bit and apparently he did actually ask to stay in the game so i think that as of now, he's okay. Who knows? He wakes up a day later and he's sore. And he's still saying, as we were recording this, that he won't know if he'll be in the lineup until he gets to the park and sees how he feels. I would suspect that they would probably just give him the day off. Yeah, I would imagine so. Seems like if he just pitched and hit and hadn't had a day off before that game and also just got bowled over by a Bray, I think probably he deserves a day there.

But fortunately, the worst outcome there seems to have been avoided. So that play was just Keystone Cops kind of everything going wrong. And that was the worst possible ending for it. Well, I have Twitter up as we're recording, and I can say this has just come across the transom from our friend Fabian Ardaya at The Athletic, who says that Joe Madden said he's giving Shohei Otani the day off tomorrow, but he could be available to pinch hit.

So that seems very responsible. I've probably copied and pasted more Fabian Ardaia tweets this season than anyone else in the world. Sending it to my wife, sending them to Ringer Slack. I am just constantly copying and pasting Fabian. If you're listening, Fabian, thank you for being on the Otani beat this year. So the hit itself. So we should mention, I guess, that the Angels won the game. Oh, yeah, they did. That was kind of an after guess, that the Angels won the game. Oh, yeah, they did. That was kind of an afterthought, but the Angels won 7-4. And really, former two-way player Jared Walsh was sort of the star of the game.

Yeah. Because he hit go ahead and walk off home runs. And it was just a wild, wacky, chaotic game. And the home run was hit 115.2 miles per hour. That is the hardest hit ball that Otani has had, just edging out a 115.1 mile per hour double that he hit in 2019. It's also the second hardest hit ball hit by anyone this season, and he threw the fastest pitch by any starter this season. It was the hardest hit home run by any Angel in the StatCast era. So even Mike Trout has not hit a home run that hard. He hit one 115.0 in 2018. He hit the two hardest hit balls in this game. So obviously the homer was the hardest hit, but the second hardest hit ball was his 109.7 mile per hour line out

to center in the second. So he crushed multiple balls in this game. And of course, he threw many pitches, as you noted, 100 miles per hour or faster. His fastest was 101.1, which tied his hardest thrown pitch of his major league career. hardest thrown pitch of his major league career. And he threw a hundred one in that first inning. And then he went out and hit the 115 mile per hour homer. And it's just like, man, to see those things back to back in quick succession, it's like the old broadcaster cliche where they say, as so often happens, or how often do you see it a guy throws 101 and then he comes up second and hits the ball 451 feet you actually never hear them say that because no one

ever does that right it is it is funny that a profession that has its moments um i will not say they are prone to hyperbole but i will say they have their moments of grandeur. Would not lean into that further. Yeah. Unprecedented. Never before. Doesn't matter that we didn't have stack-ass back then. It would have been harder than anything. Which is, you know, that's true.

That's true. Jason Bernard at MLB tweeted, it was the 40th team game in the StatCast era where there was both a 115 mile per hour plus batted ball and a 100 mile per hour plus pitch thrown from any player on that same team see that's much more impressive to me

that is a much more impressive stat let me make sure I'm understanding that little tidbit right that is to say that in only 40 other did you say 40 other contests yeah this was the 40th in 39 other contests only 39 other contests has there been a pitch thrown that hard and a ball hit that hard and it does not have to be of the same person clearly yeah same team though

oh same team game i still think that that's a pretty impressive extra qualifier but yeah but that's still pretty impressive to me because it it doesn't say that it has to be a starter right it could be a reliever and as we know relievers they throw very hard they throw very hard and there are a lot of big boppers so i i find that to be a pretty uh fun little tidbit i won't say it's a fun fact but it is a fun tidbit it was also the 11th time that a pitcher had the hardest thrown pitch and the hardest hit batted ball in the same game. Of course, all these stats just go back to the beginning of 2015. What other stat cast tidbits do I have here? It was the hardest hit batted ball by a pitcher in the stat cast era and considerably harder.

I think Madison Baumgartner's 112.5. He hit a home run that hard on opening day in 2017 one of his two homers so considerably harder than that although i will note that michael lorenzen did hit a ball 116.5 miles per hour in 2018 he just happened to be a pinch hitter at the time so right but speaking of other two-way players so really like there are many fun facts and some semi fun facts about this but i think the sound itself i'll just play the sound again because the sound itself is a fun fact play it again ben all right so as far as the the spectator experience what's your favorite otani pitch aesthetically speaking oh just watching it it's a splitter for sure yeah i guess so although really

i appreciate the slider i really like when he just drops the slider in there at like 81 or something and it's coming after the 101 mile per hour fastball and sometimes he seems to have better command of his breaking balls than his fastballs and so sometimes he'll he'll throw two or three of those in a row and he'll just lay it in there so i i do like the slider quite a bit but yeah perfect otani splitters just i mean it's one of the most effective pitchers there is. And also one of the most aesthetically pleasing as well. Yeah, but I think that you are right to say that the slider is very lovely to watch. And I think that it gets kind of short shrift compared to the four-seamer and the splitter. So yeah, he like a perfectly, perfectly placed.

And he had a couple tonight that were real dandies. And there were times over the spring where, like, you know, his command of the breaking stuff was like kind of, it came and went. And so, like, that was really fun. He's just, I just, you're a very athletic young man, sir. Please stay healthy. He's probably the fastest player on the Angels, right?

From a sprint speed perspective Yeah, that's probably something that we don't Talk enough about Because he hits the ball so hard and throws so hard He also runs really hard Runs faster than almost anyone too Yeah, he's a very effective base runner Which I don't think that we

Pay enough attention to probably because It's Relatively minor compared to the rest of his skill set. But so you just sit there and you're like, you seem put together well, can't you keep it all, all your bones in the places they belong and your ligaments where they're supposed to go? And, you know, isn't it easy to be a pitcher and not get broken? Like surely no one's thought of that before. I'm a great helper. Yeah. Another thing that bears watching is that his spin rate seemed to be up significantly this season.

His four-seam fastball in this game averaged 2448 RPMs. In 2018, that was 2164. Really, all of his pitch types are up to the 300 RPMs. Could just be that he's added velocity. When you add speed, you tend to add spin. So that may be part of it. That probably doesn't explain all of it. So whether that is a fresh UCL or some data-driven change, or perhaps he is using some sticky stuff that he wasn't in 2018. The NPB ball just comes out sticky. They have a tackier feel, and so you don't have to doctor them. So who knows, maybe he has picked up that art, and that could be a big

deal too, because as fast as his fastball was, it didn't get great spin and didn't get as many whiffs as you would think from the VLO alone. Anyway, that would be an interesting case for MLB's new foreign substance CSI unit. So I was like, not only was I there for some reason wanting him to get the W, but also I'm there every time he's getting squeezed. And I'm very much the anti-Robo-Umps or at least have serious reservations about Robo-Umps. But every time Otani got squeezed and there was one pitch that at least one maybe two that should have been strikeout pitches that were in the zone but were called balls and so me normally the not sure i really want robo umps guy was like robo umps now we need to get otani these strikeouts

but i felt bad for uh rookie umpire edwin moscoso because the White Sox were jawing at him too. He had to warn them to stop yammering at him, but it seemed like neither team was thrilled with his zone. Yeah, they didn't seem especially happy, but you gotta, you know, if you want the ump to pay better attention to the strike zone, quit doing so much weird shit at home plate

I think is the answer to this. That's not really the answer. He should call a better zone. But yeah, they didn't seem particularly pleased how much how much of the rest of this series did you end up watching over the over the last couple of days a fair amount yeah i i kind of it's like my default mlb tv i mean sometimes it's late if it's an angels game and they're at home but if uh if i just put on mlb tv it it's like, are the Angels playing? Are Trout and Otani playing? Okay, I'll start there at least.

Yeah, I watched a good deal of this. And just some, you know, it wasn't the best fielding series by either team. Let's put it that way. There were a couple of moments where I was like, you guys are generally pretty good at this, right? Like, I'm not imagining that. But I love that Otani inspires, you know, it inspires

fan feeling in you. It does. His game and the whole mystique around him and all of it makes you feel like a fan. That's so cool, man. Yeah, it's not a feeling that I have all that often.

I know. It's really great. I'm happy for you. Yeah. So I want to read one of my favorite Sam Miller passages just about the dropped third strike. And as many people pointed out, this was not the most momentous drop third strike in a White Sox-Angels game because there was also the disputed A.J. Pruszynski call in 2005 ALCS Game 2 with the Doug Eddings controversy. But this one was up there too. So here's what Sam wrote in a BP article back in 2012.

And it was really just an aside almost in the middle of one of his best pitches of the week pieces. So he wrote, I'm not going to quit watching baseball over it, but as far as dumb rules in baseball go, the uncaught third strike has to be up there, right? Maybe the dumbest. The point of pitching is to get outs. The most reliable way to get an out is via strikeout. And the best way to get a strikeout is to get the batter to swing at a pitch he can't possibly hit hard. So here we see Francisco Liriano throw perhaps a perfect pitch to Jeff Francoeur and beat Francoeur so badly that the rules allow Francoeur to go to first base. Why, that makes no sense at all. Does a running back who jukes a defensive player have to stop if the defensive player loses his balance and falls to the ground?

Is a basketball player's three-point shot declared void if the shooter is too far behind the line? If a hockey player does a thing that's something about the other guy's thing, does the thing get unhockeyed? No, of course not. And yet here we are watching Jeff Francoeur run to first. Does anybody in baseball pump his arms while running more than Jeff Francoeur? Note, according to the Dixon Baseball Dictionary, the rationale comes from the principle that the defense has to make a proper fielding play to record an out. Except for all the exceptions. The many, many exceptions, such as infield fly is called.

Foul bunt with two strikes. Batted ball strikes a runner. Fan interferes with a fly ball. Batter runs into his own batted ball while out of the batter's box. Batter steps out of batter's box while swinging. Batter obstructs catcher's throw on a stolen base attempt. Runner leaves the baseline. Batter swings at a two-strike pitch that hits him.

Fielder intentionally drops a line drive or fly ball in the infield. Runner collides with fielder attempting to field a ball, or batter has too much pine tar on his bat. Jeez, the rule is just so arbitrary. You could put any stupid obstacle in front of any player during any routine play and call it colorful but why why do that stupid stupid rule which doesn't actually lessen my enjoyment of baseball at all but in this case it almost did because it almost cost us shohir tani i agree with everything that sam said there and i'm not unsympathetic to the idea that, you know, because catchers exist, the pitching experience is never totally 100% the province of the pitcher, right?

And we like framing, you and I, we're like framing fans. And so there are definitely instances where we are okay with outside influences, you know, sort of tipping the scales in favor of the pitcher in a way that might not be entirely his doing. But I agree with Sam. It is my least favorite rule in baseball. And I understand that sometimes it results in weird like yackety sacks throws and what have you. But this very game proved that you do not need to allow the runner to reach first

base on a drop third strike for for Yaggity Sacks to ensue. All you need is a reliever trying to throw to third really, like that's all you need. So I, I like the idea of us allowing for, you know, errors in the game to kind of spur some action that we don't get to see very often because like we like to see weird stuff and then look around and be like that was weird and then i write 2 000 words about it when you know i wrote 2 000 words regularly so i'm sympathetic to that as an argument but also i think that sam is right like the thing that we want a pitcher to do is get an out and the most reliable means at his disposal to do that is to get a strikeout and a swinging strikeout. And once he has done that, it should be done.

And that batter should go back to the dugout and think about what he did. And he should not have the opportunity to advance a base. And other guys shouldn't get to advance bases either. And not just because the next time Shohei Shani has to leap for a wall, you know, Jose Abreu may not be there to break his fall. As an aside, while I was scrolling through Twitter, I saw that Ohtani, after, did you say this, that he said that Abreu broke his fall? Because he said that after the fact.

Okay, I thought you said it, but I couldn't remember if you were like, oh, he broke his fall or if you had said that. Oh, Tani, he said that. I couldn't remember, but I'm glad you made note of it. I do feel bad for guys like Jose Abreu in moments like that because you can't stop 250 pounds going full steam. You couldn't stop if you wanted to. It's like being a train trying to stop

because some SUV tried to cross the tracks while you're barreling through town. I'm full of analogies tonight. Otani is like homeward bound. I think I just described the plot of Homeward Bound earlier. Anyway, it's a dumb rule, and we should feel ashamed about it and do better as a sport so yeah i also enjoyed that otani yelled like he screamed after his strikeout to end the fourth yeah he just i

mean he did some little fist pump things but also he was caught on that same mic that mics up the batted balls so effectively. I'll just play. I got a little clip of him screaming here. So you can hear that that emotion was coming out and he was pumped up. And that was exciting too, because Otani is like, he seems from afar like a fairly laid back happy-go-lucky guy but like clearly he has some competitive spirit where he would not have gotten to this point and be pitching and hitting at the level he has and sometimes that does come out in games so you often see him you know smiling and hugging and looking just very cheerful and friendly but then when that intensity comes out that gets me going too just to see how excited he was by this whole thing and i don't know if that was just the pitch or just the holistic effort that he had on the night when he was showcasing all of his skills at once so that was great too yeah and and like we talked about earlier when he was like you know talking about how how hitting on the same day he's pitching it's just interesting So that was great too. and not really doing what you want the way you want to because of injury that, you know, like getting into the mindset where you can be thinking about and feeling something other than

anxiety that like injury might recur or just wanting to like kind of get through it and be done and show that you can, you know, allowing yourself to sort of have the fullness of human emotion because of all the stuff that's been not fun that's happened to you know, allowing yourself to sort of have the fullness of human emotion because of all the stuff that's been not fun that's happened to you in the past, like that takes some time. And so it's, it's really cool. I mean, I don't want to like, I don't know him, so I'm not trying to like armchair diagnose Otani or anything like that, but I just think that it, you know, it, it would be a really hard thing to, to do and display and feel comfortable doing because I have one shot in my arm and I still feel anxious about the pandemic all the time,

which is not a bad approach, but there hasn't been a cessation of that anxiety feeling yet. And it will be weird to let that in and then be able to kind of be a full, complete self again. And so it's just, it's nice to see it's so there's a vulnerability to being able to have all of your feelings in public and we're so quick not you and i necessarily but like we're so quick as fans to like pick it apart and try to figure out what it means and so i understand when guys want to kind of play it close to the vest and so it's cool and they let us into stuff that's bigger than that i think that's really neat so yeah and he hasn't actually gotten to do this all that often i saw jim allen had the stat that in his npb career otani had 43 plate appearances as the starting pitcher and his

slash line in those plate appearances was 286 395 457 he hit a single home run in that time that came leading off a game against the Softbank Hawks, the team that Otani's team needed to overtake to win the pennant that year. And in that game, he also scored the other run and threw eight innings in a two nothing victory. So that's really a do it all yourself type game. That wasn't quite the case here, but you saw that there was the potential for that here. So I don't know how often they will do this. I don't know if this is just going to be every time out now that this will be what happens or whether they'll just pick their spots to do it, but it's

pretty exciting. He ended up throwing 92 pitches, only 53 strikes, which is not the ratio that you would want to see. So clearly he needs to get his command going. And, you know, the stuff is there. Obviously the velocity is there. It's just, it's too good really not to work. And he very nearly got out of this with a scoreless appearance. And if a few more calls had gone his way, it might've been even more impressive.

So I'm hoping that the command will come with the workload and just, you know, getting further and further removed from Tommy John surgery and just getting more innings under his belt. I hope, you know, often they say that is the last thing to come back after the surgery. So let's hope that he gets the pinpoint command back.

But as long as he has that stuff, he's going to be fairly effective, I think. So I just hope that he will be allowed to do that. And it is a tough thing because they're really letting him have a longer leash. They're like, all right, we're removing the restrictions. You tell us when you're ready to go. And that's great, I think, as long as he doesn't push himself too hard as long as he has that restraint you know it's harder than what he was trying to do in npb with shorter seasons and less travel and a single time zone and you know not quite this level of competition so i hope that

he can manage that but after a few years here i that he can manage that. But after a few years here, I hope he can and that he'll know when he has to take a day off. And you got to let him run. You got to let him try this at some point if you're going to find out if it's feasible and if he really is as valuable or more valuable in this role as he would be doing one or the other. So this seems like the year when they're just going to let that ride and let him eat and see if it works. And I hope that it does. I hope so, too.

Can I share a tweet from the angels with you? And I want you to look for three things. OK. OK. I'm going to send it in our little window here. OK. So this is a video for our listeners. I'm going to send it in our little window here.

Okay. So this is a video for our listeners. This is a video that the Angels posted that says, Sweet dreams. And then they have three of the little Z snoozy emoji. And this is a shot down the third baseline of Jared Walsh rounding third and coming around to score after his walk-off home run. And the guys swarm him him and everyone is happy. And we can see Otani here.

Okay, so have you watched this? Yes. Okay, now I want you to go back to the beginning of the video and I want you to watch Jared Walsh take off his batting helmet and slam it to the ground. Yes. See how he takes his batting helmet off and he slams it to the ground. And then you see that batting helmet ricochet and almost bean shohei we can laugh at this because it didn't

hit him but it and i don't know you know that it's hard to tell from this um video because we don't have like the depth perception we would have if we were standing there. How close to actually hitting him this comes. He flinched. But he flinches, and Juan Ligares looks back and does a like, hey, you okay, man? And Shohei's like, yeah, I'm fine. And then he comes up to... So the first thing to note is that Shohei Otani was almost decapitated

on the Jared Walsh walk off which is hilarious because he wasn't on the field for most of it and then that Juan Lagares is apparently a really nice guy who's like hey you okay man and then Jared Walsh gets to home plate and I just would like to enter this in evidence that the way that men

respond to moments of extreme emotion in sports is to try to get each other naked because they they really just try to take his his jersey off they they they rip it off of him and i find this to be very funny and endearing and very strange but i'm happy that everyone's having their happy feelings out in public but really like I cannot believe how close to hitting Otani in that that appears to have gotten. Imagine if he had survived the slide,

made it back out there to celebrate the walk-off. It would have been horrible. At first, I thought that when I watched this the first time, I thought that Juan Ligares was saying, hey, man, why don't you hang back? Because you had a harrowing experience and you need to stay healthy and it would be terrible if you got injured in the scrum at home. That was what I thought his gesture meant initially.

Then I watched it again and I realized that he was checking in to make sure that he hadn't been struck by an errant projectile. Baseball's very dangerous. Yep. Just a couple last fun facts here. checking in to make sure that he hadn't been struck by an errant projectile so baseball is very dangerous yep just a couple last fun facts here otani is the first al starting pitcher to homer versus an al team since rorick harrison on the final day of the 1972 season so the last day without the dh so alas poor rorick you are no longer the last AL pitcher to do this. Shohei has done it. And the other fun fact that was everywhere before this game was that Otani is the first player to start the game as a pitcher or appear in the game as a pitcher and at no other

position, and also to bat in the second slot since 1903 when Jack Dunleavy did it, and Waddy Lee did it in 1902 as well. So that stat was making the rounds. I just wanted to note, sort of a side note, but perhaps an important one. One of the positive byproducts, I hoped, of the Negro League stats being reclassified as major league status by MLB was that we would start to see Negro League's players and stats show up in this kind of fun fact. And I know that there are obstacles to that because the stats are not as comprehensive and not as easily searchable, but that would be one of the happy effects that could come from that is that you would start seeing

Negro League's action included in the sort of fun fact. And then that might prompt people to say, oh, I don't know about that player. Let me look up that player or that event. And that didn't happen here, but I figured this must have happened at some point in Negro League's history, which is now Major League, according to MLB. And so I think those instances could or should have been mentioned here. So I emailed Gary Ashwell and Larry Lester, two of the foremost Negro Leagues statisticians and researchers and two of the people behind the Seamheads Negro Leagues database. And I asked them if they had examples of box scores

where players started as pitcher or appeared as pitcher and also batted second in that game. And they do have several examples of that. So it's not comprehensive because these years they don't have all of the box scores set up to be searchable. So about a third of the years from that 1920 to 48 period that MLB redesignated were not able to be searched. But Gary was able to see that in 1921, Harry Kenyon did this three times. In 1924, Cool Pop Bell did it. In 1937, Joe Sparks did it. And in 1936, Sparks did it. And in 1936, Homer Goose Curry did it as well while batting leadoff. So there are a bunch of examples of Negro Leagues pitchers who also batted second or even leadoff in that game. And there's also a stat that made the rounds in 2018 about how Shohei Otani was the first player

in Major League history since Babe Ruth to throw at least 50 innings in a season and also hit at least 15 home runs. And there are a couple of Negro Leagues players who did that, too. So Martin DeHigo did it in 1929 and Bullet Joe Rogan did it in 1922. So just seems like the sort of thing that I hope we'll start making it into these fun facts at MLB.com or ESPN just as these stats get more searchable. But that is Major League history as well. So just wanted to mention it. Yeah, for sure. So I think that's all I've got on this game. I just am really happy that this happened, that disaster was averted. We haven't really

talked about it on the show, but Otani in Japan is or was called, or what he does is referred to as Nito-ryu, which is what the two-sword samurai fighting style is. That of the term for two-way player there, Nito Ryu, N-I-T-O hyphen R-Y-U in English. And you'd have the longer sword in one hand and the shorter sword in the other hand. And it's a very advanced fighting style because swords are often meant to be wielded with two hands. And so to wield one with one hand and then also have another in your off hand it's very difficult and pretty impressive and so that's kind of the term for two-way player and that's what otani did in this game with everyone watching on a national broadcast so i applaud him for the effort and i hope that this is not the only time that we can talk about this though perhaps

it's the only time that we will devote an entire episode to it I mean what else would I do on a evening really yeah right ah well we were all watching anyway and and I'm kind of curious also because uh Otani hitting in the second spot this was a point that jim allen made also that in japan the number two hitter is still not typically a power hitter it's you know kind of the the old school number two style hitter in the majors where it's you know your your bat control guy your hit and run type guy which is maybe not dead yet because uh tony larusa still will bat Adam Eaton second because of the bat control and everything. And he gets on base too. But Jim wrote that to have a number two hitter be a power hitter is a shot across the bow of the way that many Japanese people see their game because it's

different. So I kind of wonder also if Otani batting second all the time, which I think Joe Madden said that he chose to leave him in the second spot here just because that's where he usually hits on the days when he's DHing. And he felt like it's probably better just to have it be consistent. So obviously many people in Japan watching that and seeing Otani hit second. So I wonder if that changes some minds there about the best way to order a batting lineup as well. He's just doing so many things. Changing hearts and minds. Did you see, by the way, I meant to mention this also,

that Otani's teammate or was his teammate, Ty Buttrey, did you see his farewell address? Yeah. Yeah, he had an Instagram post where he chose to end his career. I'll link to it, but it's a nice message. It's really kind of a sentiment that you don't often hear from people when they walk away from the game, which I think he is, what, 27 or just turned 28. And many players, you know, you have to tear off the jersey, etc. But I thought it was really cool. And I admired the statement that he made in walking away, which was basically that baseball, you know, he thought it was his dream, but it was not necessarily.

Or he realized that it wasn't, that he liked the appeal of being a big leaguer and making lots of money, but ultimately didn't love playing the game. And he had sort of, you know, it was part of his self image, but he didn't enjoy it as much as he felt like he was supposed to or that others did. And so he walked away like he felt like, well, he proved he could do it. He made it to the majors and then he is going to now do something different with his life, which was a cool thing. He said, in my head, I accomplished what I wanted to prove people wrong and accomplish something extremely hard. And now he's just going to transition into a second career and be with his family and, you know, not have to be away all the time at games. And I thought it was really interesting because we had that conversation not long ago about like what happens when your dream job, you get it and then you find out that it's not actually your dream job and maybe you want to do something else. you want to do something else. And it's really easy to just keep doing that thing, even though you don't like it as much as you thought you would, especially when it's something that comes with the salary and status of being a major league baseball player. And so, you know, to have the strength of character to do what you want to do and, you know, resist the peer pressure and the

expectation that you're just going to keep doing that thing. I think that is a really cool sentiment that he put out there. Yeah, and neat that he would talk about it with such candor and sort of transparency because, like you said, I think that it's really easy to, you know, you just assume that you're going to get your dream job and then everything's going to be great and you'll never have a bad day and that it'll be enough. And there's a lot else in the world. And I think that we should probably talk more as a society about like the necessary distance between yourself and your work and i say that as

someone who does that perfectly um doesn't need to go back to therapy about it at all so so i appreciate in moments like this when people are candid about it and talk about both the cost of being there and the cost of walking away and why it ultimately makes sense for them to do that. So I was very impressed. I was like, oh, this is why I had to redo the reliever positional power rankings at 10 p.m. the night before they were supposed to run. Well, that's a good reason. That's a much better reason than most of the others. Yeah, because it's hard to be a professional athlete, probably harder than ever. I mean, obviously, it's harder in that you have to be better, but also in the sense that the training that comes with it and having it be a year-round thing. I mean, of course,

players in earlier eras would have to get some other off-season jobs, so it's not like they could just slack off. But you have to train year-round, you have to pay attention to your conditioning, you have to use all the technology. In addition to all the pressure that comes with it, there's just a lot more work that goes into getting ready to compete at this level now. So if it isn't necessarily your dream or you don't really love it, then I totally understand why you wouldn't want to subject yourself to that. But once you get to that point, it must just be so tempting to say, you know, to put off that decision and say,

well, I don't want to disappoint people who helped me get here. Maybe I'll actually come to like it. Maybe I'll just keep doing it for a while and make some money and then figure it out. And then you could get stuck doing that for the rest of your career, which, you know, might not be the worst thing in the world because baseball careers end earlier than many careers. But still, like, good for him getting started with whatever he actually wants to do at this stage. So I will link to that statement and recommend that people read it in full. But let's hope that Otani loves what he does and will continue to do that. And look, I know we're talking about a guy who went one for three and didn't get through five innings, but the way he does it is so singular. He just gives you these glimpses, these moments of magic where you really rethink what's possible. It's like Joe Madden said, it was everything we thought he could be. That's a complete baseball player. He throws 100, hits well over 100 miles per hour,

and hits it well over 400 feet. That's what we're talking about. He just needed the opportunity to do it. So I'll just play us out, I guess, with one last big backcrack. Thank you to Shohei. Yay! And first pitch crushing! Oh, man! Lean into it! All right, that will do it. And thanks to everyone who reached out via Twitter or Facebook or any other medium to check on my well-being during the game, I felt embraced.

Some people sharing in the excitement of the home run, others commiserating with the anxiety about the drop third strike play. Anyway, I felt like I had hundreds of emergency contacts who were aware of what I must have been feeling during that emotional rollercoaster, and they were right. I was feeling all of those things. Didn't Meg say on the last episode that she was looking forward to feeling less this year? That was not the case for me on Sunday night. We were so busy talking about Otani, I didn't even mention the semi-fun fact that Mike Trout swung at a 3-0 pitch out of the strike zone for the first time in six years. Maybe he was so excited about Otani he lost a little control himself. And thanks also to everyone who alerted me on Saturday to the two-team half no-hitter in the game between the Twins and the Brewers. Jose Barrios and Corbin Burns took no-hitters into the seventh, so they each had half a no-hitter,

or more actually. So you put it together, it's sort of one whole no-hitter. For a while there, they were making a run at a two-team half-perfect game. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. 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. Joseph Borghese, Francis Levesque, Paul Garrity, Greg Mitchell, and Tyler Baber. 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 Spotify and other podcast

platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance, especially on this late night, early morning episode. And we will be back to talk to you a little later this week. and very discreet Will you give me your hand so I can pretend I'm holding it for the first time Let's do everything for the first time

Forever And if forever you are my friend I'll never ever feel unhappy again You are a miracle