Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1686: The Best and the Rest of the West

Episode Date: April 27, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the latest riveting Padres-Dodgers series, the beef between Trevor Bauer and Fernando Tatis Jr., Tatis’s fielding, the end of GM Jeff Bridich’s reign with the Rockies, Madison Bumgarner’s hitless start (but non-no-hitter?), Jacob deGrom’s dominance and starts in which pitchers produce as many hits as they allow, and […]

You know sometimes those guys who throw very hard like Cabrera and have a little bit of iffy command they're the hardest ones to hit because you're not sure if they're going to throw one behind you or cut one right on the edge. Effectively wild. Yeah. It sounds like a great name for a movie or a TV show. It's probably been done right. Effectively wild. I think it's a podcast. I know that much.

I'm thinking it would be a good, like, you know, buddy cop drama. Be me and you in a patrol car, you know, driving around town. Checking in with our informants, wearing trench coats and fedoras. Heading over to the donut shop. I'll definitely be there. Yeah. In character or not. I got to do it for the show. You know hey just like you need

Yang just like a hot dog needs a bun just like you need three bases and a plate to score a run just like came in a baseball Warren brothers but to be at And a plate to score a run. Just like Cain and Abel. They're baseball's warring brothers. But to be at their best. Both sides need one another. Rivalry. Rivalry.

Passion's running hot from sea to shining sea. This is the real thing. Ain't no fantasy rivalry rivalry hello and welcome to episode 1686 of effectively wild a fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our patreon supporters i'm mcrowley of fangraphs and i am joined as always by ben limberg of the ringer ben how are you not bad how are you doing Not bad. How are you? Doing all right. Cool. You know, I said last time that eventually there would be a bad Padres-Dodgers game. I think I might have to walk that back. Yeah.

I mean, there's still a lot on the slate. So maybe there will be, I guess you could say, like the Friday game was 6-1 in the end. But it was pretty close most of the way right up until the end. So that wasn't a bad game. And the others were all one run games. The Padres and Dodgers played a four game series. Padres took three of four, but they all almost came down to the wire and were fun in different ways. So yeah, I might have to amend that statement. Maybe they will all be great games. Well, and the nice thing is that we have this, well, this part isn't nice per se,

but for this particular point, it is useful that we now have to wait a while before we get another one, right? And so even if the next round isn't quite as thrilling, we're going to be longing for it so strongly that we're going to be like, these are the best baseball games we've ever seen, even if they're not quite.

So I think that your sense of it might remain intact, even if just out of sheer deprivation in the meantime. Yeah, not till late June, I guess, do these two teams match up again. Yeah, it's too long, I would say. I think that's too long. Yeah. So I guess Fernando Tatis is okay.

Seems like he's doing all right. I was kind's too long. Yeah. So I guess Fernando Tatis is okay. Seems like he's doing all right. I was kind of worried about the shoulder. Are they rushing him back? Are we going to see another swing where he grimaces and then he's gone for the season? And I guess that's not out of the realm of possibility, but I'm feeling a little bit better about it after he went yard, what, five times? Five times. Against the times the dodgers yeah that was pretty impressive it was it was a very good bit of business from him this most recent dodgers series he hit 444 500 he had a 112 78 slugging he had a 719 wobba a 359 wrc plus yeah he hit five home runs, scored nine, stole three bases. He stole three bases too. He did that also.

So, yeah, I think that he's feeling okay. And he showed up Trevor Bauer multiple times. Just the icing on the cake. So, I'm about to contradict my own point. I want the listeners, you're about to say,

Meg, aren't you doing what you said we should all not do i want to hear i want you to know that i hear you and you're right and i'm wrong but do we need to have like peeking back at the catcher discourse actually i don't think we need to have discourse about this because here's what i have to say many guys on all of the teams peek back to try to see signs. And every team gets annoyed when their opponent does this to them, even though they do it to their opponents. And the thing that generally happens is that the catcher notices

and switches up the signs, or the pitcher notices and calls the guy out for a mound visit, and they switch up the signs, and they go about their business. And then life continues on and i don't know we like all eat a pretzel or something so we don't have to have discourse about this this is a silly thing to discourse we need not discourse as a verb here so i get that the discourse often demands its answer and you know there are column inches to fill and takes to be had but sometimes it's okay

for us to look at something and say, this is not serious and move on. And again, eat a pretzel or do literally anything else. Yeah. I don't care if he was peaking. That became a controversy. Was he, when he looked down briefly before one of these pitches, it seemed like maybe he was peaking where the catcher was set up or what the sign was and if he was more power to him

everyone peeks I don't mind it if someone's peeking successfully then I guess you've got to do a better job of disguising the signs or switching them up or call them later or I don't know do it to them

it doesn't really bother me that much. If someone is successfully peeking is a very strange sentence to utter out of context. But yes, he did get the better of Bauer and he dished it out and it was delightful. And this was just, you know, I have said at various points over the last couple of weeks that I didn't share your fervor about the runner on second rule. And I think I'm pretty much there now. I think that the last couple of weeks have swayed me because between very good pitching matchups that then went to extras and we had to sort of see that good work undone or at least not celebrated in quite as ceremonious a fashion as we might expect. And then yesterday's Sunday night baseball game where now there being a runner on extras and the whole sort of situation

and the way that substitutions had worked did result in Clayton Kershaw batting with the bases loaded. Yes. And I didn't enjoy that. I didn't like it. I didn't think it was good. But I just, I could have kept watching that game i did not feel the need to watch less of that game now i don't think that every game being five hours long is sustainable for the sport because we will reach a point where

even people who are very invested in baseball and like it a great deal and like to spend their sunday evenings watching it don't want to to spend their Monday one in the mornings watching it. And it can start to try people's patience. But I think that I've come around, I find it very silly. I think part of this is just that my patience for sort of rule alterations that are ostensibly about the pandemic, but seem to mostly just be about there being less baseball I'm starting to have less patience for i'm sure we'll talk about madison bumgarner at some point in this episode but i could have just kept watching i could have kept watching it and i'm not just saying that because we got shouted out on the nerdcast which was so nice yeah that was nice we actually got mentioned on multiple major league broadcasts this weekend that was fun

it was fun thanks guys um but yes i I could have just kept watching Dodgers and Padres with increasingly ridiculous pitcher-hitting substitutions. I did not want it to end, and I was sad when it did. But what a rally. What a fun Sunday night game. I did not at any point feel the need to check in on the Oscars, although it sounds like LA was disappointed in multiple facets yesterday. So perhaps that's for the best. The Oscars also

had an unusual ending. But I think I am happy to have you on the virtuous side of this discussion, though I am sorry that we have lost the point of disagreement here because generally we're pretty aligned. It was nice to disagree about something, even if it was more me being anti and you being indifferent than you being an ardent defender. It was still something we disagreed about. So I don't know, maybe one of us will come around on the robozone or something and then we can argue about that, but we'll have to come up with something. We can talk about burritos and the approach to eating them because I think the way you do that is unhinged, Ben. I'm here to tell you I don't think it's right.

The middle out method. I don't like it. I don't think it's right. I think that it suggests something wrong with you deep in your soul. I can't dispute that. It has its merits. But most people disagree. Yeah, I mean, I think that some of the weirdness in these extra inning games is because of the strange rules.

Some of it is just because of roster construction. You should probably have enough hitters. No kidding. Yeah, like you should, if anything, be more able to have actual hitters hitting in games now that you know that games are probably not going to go as long. So a lot of that is just roster construction being out of whack. And really, now that we have the 26-man rosters, can we please put the stricter pitcher limits in place that we originally intended to? That would be nice. But I am with you.

And I think also with Tatis, I wanted to mention, you know, this was an example of dumb beef between teams. It wasn't like harmful beef between teams. I don't think it wasn't a beanball war. It wasn't a brawl. It was just, you know, good natured or maybe not so good natured, who knows, but just mocking and back and forth. And so when Tatis homered twice off bauer and once he covered his

eye imitating the way that bauer sometimes pitched with one eye closed during spring training and then he did the connor mcgregor walk which i guess bauer had done for whatever reason and then there was a social media component to this too where bauer you know i guess to his credit i mean he wasn't uh gonna drill tatis in his next at bat or something he said he was fine with it but then he also was kind of up in arms about the sign stealing thing he was like i'm not mad but actually i'm mad like the drill tweet sort of yes and and then tatis just had the the perfect response where he just said tranquilo hijo and had Bauer as a baby. That was wonderful. All of this is like, this is the good aspect of Bauer, I would say.

It's one of the things that I mind less about Bauer because you can't have Tatis dunking on him without Bauer doing the things that got him dunked on. on him without Bauer doing the things that got him dunked on. And if that's all it were, if it were just him pitching with one eye closed, sometimes that's not hurting anyone. I don't care if he's doing it for attention, if he's doing it for differential training, whatever his motivations are. It's different. It's remarkable. It's fine. If not for all of the negative aspects that we have talked about before and that we don't have to rehash in great depth again, but the Twitter harassment and all of that. If it was just that he was kind of an attention seeker and outspoken and did strange stuff that got backlash from other players so that they mocked him when they hit home runs off

of him, that would be fun. I'd be fine with just pure trolling in a non-harmful way. So if there were a way to just limit it to that, which historically speaking, there hasn't been, there's a fairly long track record here of Bauer not really being able to leave it at that. But if he could, that aspect of things, just giving Tatis the material to mock him with, that I'm fine with. I think it enhances the rivalry between these two teams. Yeah, I mean, we even saw it in this exchange where it's like Bauer had his tweet and Tatis had his great response.

And if it had been left there, it would have been perfect. And then Bauer had to be like, you and Manny are such a cute couple. And I'm like, come on, man. Like, you don't have to do that part of it. you're such a cute couple. And I'm like, come on, man. Like, you don't have to do that part of it. But yeah, I think that, like you said, there is part of what makes it frustrating is that there are aspects of this that I think repackaged and repurposed in a person who, you know, didn't like seriously harass people on Twitter would be fun and engaging and good for the sport. But we, you know, it's hard to, you can't ignore the one you have to acknowledge

both things and so yeah i was you know it's it's always i think it's it's always useful to hear someone say like we shouldn't throw baseballs at people because apparently this is not a settled question and so we have to keep saying it so i think that there is value in saying that and rather settle it on twitter than settle it with a beanball exactly yeah i mean like you just don't want you just don't want guys throwing at guys like that's that we don't need to tolerate or encourage that so like that part of it yes i agree is good but i i just continue to wish that we could talk about him less but but yes there are so many things to like about fernando tatis jr and i think that we have learned that one of them is that he can dish it.

And there's something satisfying in that. So it is just a great, it's just a great fun, fun series. And it's exciting to think about, you know, the Dodgers have been, it's not as if this is like a team that is deprived of good hitting, but like the next time, hopefully, that the Dodgers and the Padres meet, like maybe Cody Bellinger will be back. And, you know, they were without Gavin Lux this series. They were without Zach McKinstry. So there's still potential to sort of elevate the stakes

as these teams line up to meet again in June. And I don't know. I just could watch it forever. I could watch it forever and ever. How about Kenley Jansen? He's got the old cutter back sometimes at least. It seems like if they give him a day off, then he comes back and he's the old Kenley again, which is wild.

Because when we talked to Pedro Moura on the Dodgers preview segment and we asked him to identify a weakness on this roster, which he was hard pressed to do. But one of the ones he came up with was closer or late inning relief. And that was based on Kenley looking old and over the hill. And now it seems like if you use him carefully, he is able to throw that cutter really hard with that movement that he had in his prime. So they have enough laid in in guys that they don't have to have an established closer necessarily they don't have to have one guy who gets the saves so if you're able to mix and match and give guys days off then you can use pete kenley again seemingly at least for now so that would be a boon to the dodgers yeah i think

that you know when like dustin may is your starter, you probably have the depth to be creative in your bullpen and not have to stretch a guy. And you can just say, OK, Kenley's going to get the day off today and we're going to have David Price throw because he's a reliever now. Although he is a little dinged up. But they have just this absurd wealth of pitching. And so I think that when you pair it's sort of existing talent that they have on the roster with the talent that the organization has for maximizing what they get out of guys and sort of thinking about their usage

in a smart way, you have the potential for something really special. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're not going to throw the same guy in the ninth and 10th inning of a game that he has let slip away. But you know, not everybody is perfect.

Yeah. One more thing I wanted to mention about Tatis. It's odd that his fielding inconsistency has returned. I mean, it's a minor nitpick because obviously he's hitting like Fernando Tatis. And ultimately that is more important. And I have faith in his defense long term. Ultimately, that is more important, and I have faith in his defense long term. But this was an issue for him in his rookie year when he had, I think, 18 errors in only 731 innings. And then it seemed like he had completely gotten that under control last year.

So he had three errors last year in 473 innings. And now in 124 innings in the field, he's up to nine errors. He is leading the majors, I believe, by three errors. And errors are not the best measure of defensive performance. Sometimes errors can be because you have great range and you got to a ball that someone else wouldn't have even gotten to. But in his case, he's clearly bobbling some balls. He's throwing away some balls, which was his issue as a rookie. And he has the raw skills. And so when he had those defensive miscues as a rookie, it was like, okay, he'll get these ironed out.

And then it seemed like he did last year. And now they've come back. And so I don't know whether that is a product of the shoulder or whether it's unrelated or it's just those bad habits and that sloppiness from his rookie season rearing its head again he has the speed and the range and the arm strength and all of that to be a good shortstop but you know it's uh even if you have those things you do still have to have your throws be on target and field the routine grounders so that's a little bit of an issue but i don't know if it's a long-term concern. Yeah. I do wonder if he's just sort of pressing because he's not confident in what the shoulder

can kind of accommodate and do, but yeah, he does, he does seem to have reverted back to this mode where he, you know, he's just throwing it's you got to eat it sometimes. Like it's okay to, to feel the ball and just hold it. Sometimes it is better to do that than to rush the throw that you can't really step into and end up misfiring or sailing the ball. It seems like that has been the sort of vibe of most of his errors this season. I will admit to perhaps not having seen all of them, but it doesn't strike me as something that isn't correctable, both because we have

seen tetis correct it in the past and because you know it's not as if his like range is severely compromised or his arm is weak in a way that it wasn't before so it's not as if he is suddenly less potent in the field by virtue of something that would make you say oh there's there's a mechanical issue here there's an underlying injury that is preventing him from sort of doing what he needs to, or he's lost a step, or his lateral movement's messed up. Like it's none of that stuff. So in theory, we should see him be able to clean that up, but it is kind of striking just how many there have been, you know, in this last little bit. So sometimes just just hold it fernando it's okay right yeah so staying in the no west a couple other no west stories so dramatic yeah jeff

bridich is no more his his reign of error himself is over now i guess are we calling it a firing i guess we're not technically calling it a firing we're calling it a mutual parting of ways yes uh he resigned and everyone agreed that it would be best to go in different directions yes but that is the end of his uh what six year tenure six plus year tenure much to the dismay of that anonymous rival executive in nick groke's Rockies takedown. Yeah, no kidding. Who said he hoped Breidich would keep his job. That is not the case. And there will be an interim GM.

I think one of the executives who's there took over as the president of the team. And there will be an interim GM. And then there will be a hiring process for a permanent GM. Of course, there is still Dick Monfort, who is the owner of the Rockies and has not mutually parted ways with himself. So this seems like a necessary step just because the Rockies had really floundered under Breidich largely, at least in a lot of respects. And certainly his record in the free agent market, as we discussed on the Rockies preview

segment, was really an incredible run of futility. What was it? $300 plus million spent on sub-replacement level performance from free agents. That's hard to do, even if you are randomly selecting free agents from the board. So he gone, but we will see who actually wants this job and whoust to trade Nolan Arenado to this is a person we're going to let quit. Because it's a really dramatic shift in not even organizational philosophy, but that is one of the single most impactful moves that anyone has made in the Rockies history as a franchise. And for that guy to be out, you know, a couple of months later, it's just a wild turn. It is a little concerning that like Greg Fiesel, who they have sort of promoted to serve as an interim or who they've promoted to club president and who will be overseeing baseball

operations in the meantime is not like a baseball person he's been around the team for a long time but he's a business side guy is my understanding and so you do wonder like what does that mean in terms of the team you know potentially dealing important members of their organization now in the hopes of jump startinging some kind of a rebuild and netting prospects, like who is being entrusted with those decisions? How are they being evaluated? Which for a normal org would be less of a concern, but we also know that most of the baseball operations department quit this off season. And so they were already sort of thinly staffed to begin with and now are finding themselves at even more of a deficit. So it is just on the one hand, like it was clearly time to move on. And I am optimistic if moment, to be committed to a broader search that will hopefully bring in new ideas and new voices and perhaps a new way of doing things that might not net returns in the immediate term, but, you know, hopefully sets the organization up to have some kind of a plan for what it's doing and how it's going to develop players and draft and like staff an analytics department.

Just as like a thing that teams normally do that the Rockies seem to be like kind of iffy on so that part of it is good but there are there is potential for a couple of missteps in the meantime and I wonder if it just means that a lot of the guys who we had maybe thought would be deadline pieces are just going to stay put. Like, you know, Story was going to be gone this offseason no matter what. So maybe just move him if you can, because you think you're not going to get much in the way of return anyhow. But, you know, you look at someone like, you know, Germán Marquez and it's like, oh, does this mean that he's like more likely to stay in town or to scoot on out? We just, you know, it's going to be interesting to see kind of how active an org they even are over the next, you know, couple of months as they're trying to navigate this very strangely timed departure. It is so weird to, not that like saving any number

or winning any number of series would likely to have like saved his job it seemed like things had corroded to the point of him not really having a future in in colorado anymore but it is kind of funny like the day after the rockies you know put a real hurting on the phillies they finally have a positive run differential which they accomplished in like a day's worth of baseball and it's like bye yeah 8 and 13 record though so yeah i mean like this is not a good baseball team but yeah it is just kind of a funny bit of of timing you know even more than i mean it was already a funny bit of timing but this is a funny cherry on top what would a funny cherry look like it is anyway so yeah colorado very dramatic and they are to have the All-Star game. Like who's the, what's, huh?

Well, no one's going to see the GM at the All-Star game. I guess it doesn't matter. But Jeff Passan tweeted, executives have long seen the Rockies job as a potential gold mine, a place in which a creative GM could leverage the inherent advantages and mitigate the issues that have long plagued players there. It's a gig for a thinker. Question is, is that what owner Dick Monfort wants? And I don't know if I buy this really. Like what are the inherent advantages? Are there? I mean, maybe I'm not smart enough to pick up on

them like the disadvantages and mitigating those. Yes, certainly. But the inherent advantages of playing in Colorado, I don't know like it's certainly a different environment and so it seems like there's some asymmetry there like if you could figure out how to win in cores then does that actually give you an advantage or does it just do away with the disadvantage that the Rockies seem to have been at throughout their history which they have failed to even fluke into a division title in all of this time. And it doesn't seem to me like there's an advantage really waiting to be gained there. I guess in the sense that maybe if there are some undervalued players who would succeed in particular in cores, then you could pick them up on the cheap or something. But I don't know.

That's a positive spin on Coors and on Altitude, I think, given their history. I just like the idea of it's a job for a thinker, as if any baseball jobs are jobs not for thinkers. They're like, no, we need a real dope in this seat. Yeah, but it's a question about whether Munford wants a thinker. It's a job for a thinker. It's a job for a person who understands the difference between baseball writing and brain surgery.

That kind of a thinker, you know, like a really deep thinker. No, I mean, I think that I'm giving Jeff a hard time, and I don't mean to. I think that he's right to note that the ownership dynamic here is not is fundamentally unchanged. And so it will take not only a thinker, but perhaps someone who's particularly adept at managing that relationship and doing so in a way that allows the team to kind of shift in its direction and and is sort of well versed in having hard conversations that would keep Montfort from meddling to the extent that he seems to want to. So yes, it requires both a thinker and also someone perhaps with good emotional intelligence and managerial skills. But I don't think you're wrong.

Like it is a weird, it is kind of weird to think of cores that way i guess that there are perhaps hitters who would thrive there when given the the chance i mean we know that to be true but yeah the pitching thing is just always going to be really hard as an aside have we talked about how weird the futures game in denver is going to be no let alone the the home run derby that should be fun yeah that'll be fun but it's just like how do how do you evaluate those prospects? I mean, this is always a challenge when you're at altitude, but it's like all of the hitters, 80 power, all of the breaking balls, terrible. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I guess that is sort of a scouting showcase. I just think of it as kind

of like a prospect all-star game. It's just fun to see all those guys on the field at the same time. But as a scouting opportunity, yeah, could be compromised. But there are minor league teams who play at altitude all the time. Yes, exactly. But yeah, that BP is going to be compromised, shall we say. Yeah. Anyway, whoever takes that job should probably get some guarantees in writing from Montfort if possible. I pledge not to meddle for X number of years. Well, and I think that going in and selling ownership on a modern front office, and I don't mean that they can't sign free agents, but to be able to talk about, because so many modern front offices say that we shouldn't do that. That's silly. But the team has shown a willingness to spend. I think that it's helping make the case for

investments in people and infrastructure to guide that spending in a more productive direction and kind of bring them up to speed to where other organizations seem to be and to get them in conversation with other orgs, like, you know, teams are cagey, and they don't like to share their secret sauce. And that's fine. But I think, you know, we talked about this with Nick, like, there's just like an insular nature to that organization that is very strange within baseball, and the degree to which they don't seem to talk and have conversation with and being in sort of the normal amount of communication with other orgs is surely to their detriment. So I think that, you know, the person who comes into that role

is going to need to have a vision, not only for how to overhaul the roster, but how to overhaul the process by which a roster is constructed, because the way that they've been doing it doesn't seem to work, at least not in a consistent way, and certainly not when you consider the natural sort of barriers to success that are going to exist from playing baseball on the moon. So yeah, I mean, I think that like, if you're a really smart thinker, if you're a thinker out there in a baseball front office, you know, if you're a thinker out there in a baseball front office, if you're a middle manager type and you want to make a bold statement, being able to finally write the ship in Colorado would be something that you could feel really proud of. And you get to live in Denver, which is cool. And I think that as baseball puzzles go, it is a really compelling one at a time when we tend to think of baseball puzzles as being sort of smaller stakes by virtue of how much we have figured out. So I think that like,

if you can think about it that way and approach it that way, I think there's a lot to be done there. But you do have to kind of sell ownership on like, why don't we be a modern front office? Like, why don't we be a normal baseball team and try to kind of work your way to something that is closer to industry standard? And that I think takes a while. You know, we saw the first couple of years of sort of rebuilding in Miami were spent just like putting the infrastructure in place to do the things you need to do to rebuild, right? To get your like systems and technology and people sort of lined up in the way that you need to look to rebuild, right? To get your systems and technology and people sort of lined up in the way that you need to look like another front office. And then once you do that, you can

kind of go do in a much more effective and cohesive kind of way. But that does take a little while. So you also have to, as the potential new GM, be able to sell ownership maybe on a longer plan than we normally see GMs sign for, right? We have this idea of the five-year plan, and it might take longer than that in Colorado because there's just so much work to be done from the front office to the field that, I don't know, five years might not be enough time. My poor grandfather. You might need the Dayton Moore eight-year plan. Right, right.

Yeah. Well, they say that you should use job interviews as an opportunity to interview your potential employer. So anyone who's up for that job while answering some questions should also ask some questions and say, if you hire me, can I hire other people? Yeah. So, yeah, do some homework there before you sign on the dotted line. So, yeah, do some homework there before you sign on the dotted line. constructive criticism the ownership group is going to be because one of the things we felted them for is just really not having a great sense of like where they are in their competitive cycle and i don't know how open to honest feedback on that question monfort's gonna be so someone should someone cool should get that job and someone also cool should not get that job tell Tell Passon about it. The other NL West story of the weekend is Madison Bumgarner's

complete game no hit outing. I'm trying to carefully parse my words here as I describe this seven inning shutout. Dumbest era. We just live in a dumb time. It's just a dumb, dumb time.

Seven inning shutout complete game in which he allowed no hits. And there is a great debate about whether this is in fact a no hitter or not. And according to MLB and the Elias Sports Bureau, at least when the seven inning game was instituted, they said that seven inning games scheduled for seven innings would not be eligible for no hitters. They would be what notable achievements or something is the wording that Elias uses, but not officially no hitters. And of course there have been many games that were no hit outings that were this long or at least complete games, but those games were shortened for some reason, weather or darkness or whatever. Jay Jaffe had a post on FanCrafts with the dozens of games. So many different kinds. Yeah. Many reasons why pitchers have had outings in which they allowed no hits, but they're not

technically considered no hitters. And there is a sort of a well-known 1991 ruling by Commissioner Faye Vincent's Statistical Accuracy Committee, which said that any game of fewer than nine innings in which a pitcher or pitchers do not allow a hit should be considered, yes, as a notable achievement, but not a no-hitter. So there's precedent here, but as Jay and others have noted, in most of those precedents, it was a case where the game itself was not scheduled to be seven innings or fewer than nine innings. So it was not completed as planned, which does set this Bumgarner outing apart in that it was always supposed to be seven innings and he pitched the appointed number of innings and he did not allow

a hit. And so he seems to have a stronger claim on the phrasing of no hitter than most of those previous pitchers would have. So this debate continues to rage as we record. And there was a John Heyman tweet that suggested that it's not entirely a settled matter, that MLB and Elias are still mulling this over, and that MLB in fact may favor making it a no-hitter. So perhaps there will be some further developments here, but this was the controversy that we are forced to reckon with here as a result of seven inning games. Where do you fall? Do you think that he threw a no-hitter?

I don't care. I really, I don't care. We can all agree that he threw seven no-hit innings, right? So whether we actually call it a no-hitter or not is just not important to me. Like, I get why it's kind of cool for him. What was fun for me was watching how the Diamondbacks celebrated this. Yeah. Because you couldn't tell if they thought it was a no-hitter.

At first, whoever it was who caught the final out in right field sort of tentatively started to celebrate the way that one would after the last out of a normal no-hitter. And then there was like a mobbing on the mound, but like at first it was like, okay, I guess we're doing this. Was this a no-hitter? Well, the game's over. He hasn't allowed any hits. And you could kind of tell that there was a little bit of uncertainty and trepidation there, but then ultimately it looked like they got into the spirit of things. So always interesting to see how the players perceive these things and how they celebrate. But yeah, I mean, for me, frankly, a seven-inning no-hitter or no-hit outing or whatever we're calling it is significantly less impressive than a nine-inning no-hitter. There are many nine-inning no-hitters that don't impress me

that much either. This was a good outing. He should be happy that he is pitching any number of no-hit outings considering the way he started the season. Bob Carter, he looked kind of done after his first three starts. He had an 11-plus ERA, and then his last couple starts, he has been much better, and he did this against Atlanta, right? So quality team. So whether we call it a no-hitter not, like I do think we should distinguish it from a full length nine inning no hitter just because probability wise, that's a lot less likely. Right. But, you know, whether we call it a no hitter in seven innings or no hitter parentheses seven or like whatever, it really doesn't matter to me i think that i oh we found we found a thing that we disagree about yay it didn't even take a whole episode i think that we should call it a seven inning no hitter because you're right that i think we need to distinguish it from a nine hitting a full normal a normal ass no hitter. Yeah.

I think that that is useful to do because you don't want to diminish other achievements by sort of valorizing this one. And while there is always some amount of luck and good fielding or a fortunate strike call or what have you that goes into a no hitter, you know, like you went two more whole innings without giving up a hit. or a fortunate strike call or what have you that goes into a no-hitter. You went two more whole innings without giving up a hit. You went two more, and that's more.

That's more than not doing that. Yeah, and those are two innings when you're facing hitters for the third or fourth time in the game. It's even harder to do. Maybe you're tired. Those are tough innings. Yeah, those are hard innings. And I think that, was it you who wrote about we're getting more and more no hitter in progress inning notifications not this season but in a previous season yeah so you know i i was thinking of that as we were kind of getting primed to have more discourse

and so i think that it is important to distinguish them. And I think that the logic that all of the other stats in this count, and we called Zach Gallen's seven inning effort earlier that same day a one hitter, although Zach Gallen was like, is it a one hitter? I don't know. I don't care about that. It's only seven innings. So there is that perspective to consider as well, I suppose. But all of the other stats count. And we do note that he threw a complete game like that is not in dispute. And so I think that he did the best he could do given the circumstances that he knew he would have in advance. And so I think a seven inning no hitter is like a, a good thing to know.

And it's, it is useful in that in the future when we don't remember any of this, because we will have lived other years of our lives that hopefully don't have seven inning double headers and don't have runners on second base and extra innings and don't have a pandemic. We'll see the little notation and we'll be like what's that about again and then we'll go back and look and we'll like have appreciation for it all over again and we'll kind of remember our weird moment and what it was like

coming out of that weird moment and so there's like also a nice bit of like there's a prompt in there for future researchers to like go learn a thing that they may have not known or forgotten about since it has transpired and so i think that it's important to market as an occasion both of bum garner's career and of our broader strange moment because it is indicative of something even if it isn't an outing that is perhaps as sterling as a typical nine inning no hitter would be and so i think it deserves official, it deserves more than, what was the phrase? Significant achievement? Notable achievement.

Great contribution to the game of baseball. Does he get a Nobel Prize but not a no-hitter? Yeah, I don't want to normalize the seven-inning game, so if we just call it a no-hitter straight up without any kind of asterisk or caveat. Agreed. Yeah, yeah right we're back to agreeing again oh well we need to distinguish it somehow from the nine inning games very important to do i'm against seven inning games especially when most of the games are nine innings because it's like let's pick the number of innings that we want and stick with that and if at some point in the future we just want to go to entirely seven inning games, okay, we can consider that. I'm not in favor of that. I am in favor of

exhausting all options to actually shorten the innings that we have before we just give up and lop off a couple at the end because we've just surrendered and we've accepted that we will never be able to shorten these games. I think we can if we actually tried, I don't think we should give up on that, but yes, I, I don't want to sort of codify the seven inning game on a permanent basis by equating this with the nine inning game, but really like the league is batting two 32 on the season right now.

So this may come up again. Like there may be another seven inning hit list outing at some point, another notable achievement at some point this season. So get used to it. Well, and part of my reticence to call it something that doesn't distinguish it from other no hitters is that we've literally had no hitters this year. Yeah, right. And I want to distinguish what he did from Rodon going nine.

Like that's a different, and he was almost perfect, right? So we want to thank goodness he did not throw seven perfect innings because then the stakes of this conversation are significantly higher and we have to, for both sides, everyone's going to be much more sort of up in arms about what they think about it. So good job you know nick ahmed committing an error and sparing us that conversation maybe it wasn't an error at

all maybe he's clairvoyant and knew what the discourse would be i think conversation is nice and we host a podcast so i'm not like really down on discourse i just think that sometimes we like get wound around the axle about stuff that like doesn't matter and we could just log off and like eat a salad or read a book or do literally anything else so sure anyway that's neither here nor there but as a person who talks at you for a couple of hours every week i think it is important to note the conversation is good please please listen to our podcast you're not down on discourse in all forms that's good no yeah A couple other observations from this weekend. Do we need to start some sort of antitrust case against Jacob deGrom?

Do we need to just break up Jacob deGrom somehow? Has he gotten too good? Does that mean like lopping off one of his fingers or something? How does one break up a deGrom? I don't know. I've actually been worrying about Jacob de Grom breaking because he keeps throwing harder and harder and harder. And at some point, he has to reach the human limit. So I don't even want to joke about breaking up Jacob de Grom,

physically speaking. I just mean, he's gotten so good. So good. He doesn't even need run support really anymore. I mean, he needs a run, but that's about it at this point. He's just unbelievable. He is so good and fun to watch. And he has stuff that is on par with the best hard throwing reliever, except he is a starter and he goes deep into games and faces guys multiple times in each game. And if anything, he's throwing slightly harder than last season when he threw harder than the season before when he threw harder than the season before. So he's throwing hard. He's just like pinpoint command. He's just kind of like throwing a lot of pitches in the strike zone now because it's just like, well, here's my 101 pitch

that moves in this wild way and you're not going to touch it no matter where I throw it. So here it'll be a strike whether you swing or not. He is just really unbeatable at this point. It's like cheat code level pitching. Do you think that it would get even better if he brought his long hair back? Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's like a reverse Samson or something where the shorter hair is giving him greater power. So we don't need to break him at all. We just need to kidnap his barber. Yeah. Let his hair grow. Yeah. We don't need to commit assault. We just need to engage in a little kidnapping.

Yeah. Right. I think Zach Allen has taken over the DeGrom hair mantle. It makes me feel very well represented in the game because we have similar hair. feel very well represented in the game because we have similar hair yeah i don't have anything to add to the de grom um observation of him being good because you know what he's really good yeah it's like everyone who says like oh everyone's just like a thrower now not a pitcher and i'm always sort of skeptical of that but like jacob de grom is like pinpoint command while throwing like 102 it's like how are you doing this? And will you ever be beaten? It seems like no, unless the Mets fail to score, which sometimes happens. Sometimes happens.

Even then, it's a no decision because he will leave with zero runs being scored against him. I don't know. It's kind of like Padres Dodgers where I keep saying one of these will be a dud. One of these Jacob deGrom starts will be bad again someday, right? But that's barely been the case for the last few years. And it seems like he levels up every year. So I don't know. It's just like it's become appointment viewing now

where it's not just like, yeah, this guy is like the Cy Young winner, but also he's like clearly the best pitcher in baseball. I mean, apologies to Corbin Burns and his walkless pitching thus far. I guess he's pitching today as we speak, so we'll see if he actually issues a walk. But Jacob deGrom has nearly the strikeout to walk ratio that Corbin Burns does, and he's unbelievable. There aren't really enough superlatives, so I have nothing insightful to say other than it seems like he has broken baseball at the moment. Yeah. I got a question from someone that was like,

why haven't you guys had a DeGrom piece on fan graphs yet? And I was like, what do we say? Yeah. Right. You know, sometimes like, you know, you want to speak to the news of the day and you want to be engaged with the moment. But, you're, when you're writing about Corbin Burns, like there's just a lot more to say because he was not good in a way that was surprising, right? That a guy who was able to throw as hard as he did, but who got just no movement at all on his fastball would be bad. You're like, wow, that's kind of strange. And then he improved. And now he's even better. And that's a, you know, there's a narrative there.

Like, you know, Ben Clemens and JJF, we can have a Corbin Burns day where we have multiple things. But sometimes a guy is so good, you're like, yeah, he's good. You know, like what else do I? You need him to do something weird so that you have like an interesting in because sometimes you're just Jacob deGrom and you're incredible. Now, we managed to talk about Mike Trout all the time. So at some point, I imagine we will Jacob deGrom and you're incredible. Now, we manage to talk about Mike Trout all the time, so at some point, I imagine we will have deGrom content, so don't fret, deGromheads. We will

find a way to you, but yeah, he is too good to write about because it's just so obvious. Yeah, because he's doing this semi-late in life. That part of it is interesting. Right. That is interesting, but it also prevents you from doing the Mike Trapp

fun facts where it's like, best ever through this age. DeGrom's not doing this at age 20 or whatever, and that does make him more interesting in some respects, but yeah, it doesn't have the same sort of historical resonance necessarily, although if he keeps this up, we shall see. But with him, it's more

about like okay what are the most dominant spans of you know three or four seasons or three or four starts you know where it seems like he has what the the most strikeouts to start a season in this number of outings or the most strikeouts in a span of this number of starts like he's dominating those leaderboards although those are obviously influenced by the high strikeout era. But even by the standards of this high strikeout era, Jacob deGrom is a high strikeout era all to himself. So I look forward to seeing him continue to stunt on the rest of the league, hopefully throughout the season. And hopefully he does not throw so hard that his arm

flies off on one of these impressive pitches. Just keep doing it. It's been a lot of fun to watch. If he doesn't keep doing it, we're going to have to engage in some kidnapping. And I don't think anyone wants that. Yeah. And I meant to mention what prompted this little de Grom soliloquy was his outing on Friday when he pitched a complete game shutout against the Nationals. Nine innings, two hits allowed, no walks, 15 strikeouts. And not only was he dominant on the mound, but he had two hits. He doubled, he singled. And this led to a

question from listener and Patreon supporter Henry who said, Jacob deGrom just recorded two hits of his own in a complete game in which he only allowed two hits to opposing batters. Maybe I missed a graphic on the broadcast or this is already common Twitter knowledge, but can you find out how many times in history a pitcher has recorded as many hits as he has allowed in a complete game? I guess zero hits in a no-hitter counts, but it's boring. And I asked Adam Ott to look this up for us, and it's not that rare if you look at all of baseball history.

Adam had 716 examples entering this season and dating back to 1916 in his RetroSheet database. But as you might imagine, it's pretty rare these days, what with pitchers not going deep into games and pitchers also being very bad at hitting. So the greatest differences ever between pitcher hits recorded and pitcher hits allowed in the same complete game start is three. And that was Catfish Hunter's perfect game in 1968, allowed zero hits, obviously, and recorded three hits himself against Minnesota.

And then in 1964, the Yankees' Mel Stottlemyre allowed two hits to the Senators but recorded five hits himself. So plus three hit differential. But in 2020-2019, the only times this happened was no hitters. Alec Mills and Lucas Giolito last year, Justin Verlander and Mike Fiers in 2019, and James Paxton and Sean Mania in 2018. So the last time it happened in a game with at least one hit allowed was April 8th, 2018, when Jameson Tyone, then with the Pirates, allowed one hit to the Reds and also recorded a hit himself. And Jacob deGrom himself did it previously, July 17th, 2016, against the Phillies, one hit allowed, one hit recorded. And Jacob deGrom himself did it previously. July 17th, 2016, against the

Phillies, one hit allowed, one hit recorded. The last time there was a differential of two was April 21st, 2016. Jake Arrieta recorded two hits and allowed zero hits against the Reds. And I'll just tell you the all-time leaders in this type of game, at least in Adam's database. Bob Feller had 10 such games. Nolan Ryan had nine. Bobo Newsome had seven. Four guys had six. Lon Warnicke, Red Ruffing, Steve Carlton, and Warren Spahn. And then Don Sutton is the only other guy with at least five. I'll put the whole spreadsheet online and link that from the show page if you want to check that out. I have one more bit of banter about this past weekend's action. Kudos to Orioles ace John Means for stopping the

Oakland Athletics freight train at 13 straight wins. John Means has been impressive in his own right. I wrote the paperback afterward to the MVP machine, largely about the Orioles and their attempts to sort of follow in the Astros, hopefully non-cheating footsteps. And John Means was kind of the main character of that afterward. And I talked to him and wrote about him for that piece. And I was kind of apprehensive because he had this sort of out of nowhere, strong rookie season with the Orioles in 2019, where he underperformed or outperformed, I suppose you would say, his FIP by almost a run. And so I'm thinking, well, I'm building this whole narrative around John Means.

And what if it turns out that he just got a little lucky with that low BABIP and he isn't actually this good? But I kind of bet on him because he sort of seemed to have the mindset of, I'm going to keep finding ways to get better and I'm going to learn new pitches and I'm going to go to off-season facilities and fine-tune my repertoire. And he has continued to do that and semi like DeCrom on a lesser level, you know, sort of later than the typical pitcher tends to debut or break out. He has himself gained velocity and gotten more impressive stuff and has had more impressive

results. And so, you know, we don't have a lot of opportunities to single out and celebrate Orioles pitching. So let's take this time to say congratulations, John Means, for snapping the A's streak. I'm going to ask a question that just by asking it, I will further differentiate myself from professional baseball players and from people who work for the A's for that matter. But what percentage of you, let's imagine you work in the A's front office. What percentage of you is relieved that the streak ended before you started to approach the prior streakaks number in a more meaningful way. Like, you know, 13 is a lot of games in a row.

And so that's an accomplishment, certainly. But you're still, you know, a good, you're still a good distance away from eclipsing the prior A's like magical run, right? And so you're not necessarily nervous about that part of it yet. You're nervous about winning the next day because you want to win and you had the rough start to the season and this winning streak has erased that rough start and your playoff odds you work for the A's and that's important to you. But is any part of you a little relieved that you're not having to chase the prior number? Well, there are many members of the A's front office who have been there since that earlier streak. Yeah, I know that the athletic talked to Hattaberg, so I'm sure that some part of this question has been answered but i've been

too busy to read it yeah it's a little different i guess when you're chasing yourself a team that you were on or that you helped construct yeah so it's maybe not quite as much fun to climb that leaderboard and threaten your own record i hope it would bring back nice memories for them as they got closer and closer and remembered the equivalent game in that earlier streak. And yeah, obviously you want to win, but it gives you an opportunity to play highlights from those games and that streak. So maybe it's sort of nice to revisit it, but you don't get the satisfaction of trying to claim a record that some other franchise holds. Yeah. I guess that part of it is a pretty important distinction to make, that it is

eclipsing your own record rather than, you know, eclipsing that of a not only another team, but like maybe a rival team where you're sitting there going, oh, I gotta we gotta get past 19 to push ahead and set a new American League record, it would probably go very differently. I wonder how many times he was reminded in this week that he was played by one of the famous Chris's in that movie. Probably a lot of times. So just a couple of quick responses here.

We got two emails we answered on our last episode. In one of them, we talked about the idea of fan unions or some kind of collective fan action inspired by the dissolution of the Super League. And we wondered whether we could ever see something similar in American sports, that we could all come together to stop the zombie runner rule or something else we all disliked.

And David writes in to say, your discussion on fan organizing in European soccer versus American baseball got me thinking about times when fan outcry on a league level ever did anything to change MLB's behavior. Both times I can recall it was regarding advertising in the early 2000s when they tried to plunk ads for a Spider-Man movie on the bases for a bunch of interleague games in 2004. Remember that? And some of the early giant screen ads, green screen ads behind home plate during World Series when the tech was especially clunky and I believe superimposed images of Ally McBeal

were really distracting from the hitters. These were times I recall baseball actually responding to fan outcry far more substantially in the former case where they completely pulled the promotion and set the cause of on-field ad creep back until the pandemic provided sufficient cover. I have a hunch in that they have far less to worry about these days for a variety of reasons, but I'd peg a major one as the reduced influence of traditional and traditionalist sports writers. as the reduced influence of traditional and traditionalist sports writers. So yeah, David's right. Those were a couple of cases along those lines. Not really what I was thinking of. But yes, those were cases, I guess, where some amount of fan outcry prompted a change. Although we've gotten really all the way toward having ads superimposed on mounds and

everywhere behind home plates and swooshes on uniforms and such. So that was only a temporary walk back, I guess. But still, fans struck a blow against commerce in those cases. Were they distracted by how short her skirt was? Or were they like, oh, that Allie, she's incorrigible. I don't recall. Aren't we getting an Allie McBeal reboot? Are we really? Isn't that one of the infinite number of reboots that's in the works? Maybe.

I feel like I saw something about that. Well, I have the following to say, which is that if they do that, they need to bring back Robert Downey Jr. Because he was delightful on that show. And their chemistry was very fun. But what would they? I don't know. Is she still practicing law? I don't know. She's still practicing law. I don't know. Yeah, I think RDJ may have priced himself out of the Ally McBeal.

Maybe he's bored. Given subsequent events. He'd be like, oh, I'm on a set and everyone is wearing clothes that will not be green screened and changed later. This is lovely. Here I am in a law office. No explosions. I can touch the wall and then uh i

don't have a i don't have any weird aliens involved no aliens at all alien free zone could be refreshing to act with actual human actors next to you yeah that little dots on their faces so we also got an answer from matt who wrote in about our little cricket discussion of replay review. Whenever we dabble in cricket, we inevitably get many well-intended and informative emails from people who actually understand cricket because we don't really know what we're talking about when we invoke cricket. interesting analogs that we bring up and then inevitably we fail to provide some useful context and then our listeners who actually know and care about cricket will write in to educate us and we appreciate that very much so i will read at least part of matt's email here and it seems like you know we were talking about the fact that in cricket, apparently at times, there are cases where umpires will not make a ruling on the field. It's too close to call, and they will just outsource that call to the replay review booth.

And we talked about whether that would be feasible in baseball. And Matt says the short version is that rarity is key here. So that type of call is not very common in cricket. And also the uniqueness of this type of call, the only time in cricket you really get a bang-bang style play is this one kind of play really. So umpires are not commonly making these decisions. In fact, umpires in cricket actually make far fewer decisions than in baseball. A baseball umpire makes at least one decision on every pitch, ball or strike, for example. In cricket, the vast majority of time, the umpire is simply waiting to adjudicate something. I would suggest that maybe 90% of deliveries or balls bowled require no input from the umpire, which is interesting. Interesting. Yeah. In cricket, there is, Matt says as far as he's aware, only one instance where an umpire can ask for a review without making a call. That is in the judgment of what is called a run out. This is the same as a simple put out where a runner is short of the base

when running to it. In cricket, batters run back and forth between the wickets, and if the fielding team knock the bales off the wickets before a batsman reaches the crease. Matt may be making up some words here, but I don't know. That's a line four feet in front of the wickets, which is sort of a safe zone. Then they are run out. Sometimes pundits will refer to it as the batter being short of their ground. And the only other instances of wickets or outs where decision can be reviewed by replay are leg before wicket

where the ball hits the batsman's leg without hitting the bat first and had it not hit the leg it would have hit the wicket this is probably confusing everyone and something called stumping which is similar to a run out imagine if in baseball a batter could be tagged out if they left the batter's box during and at bat this is kind of the equivalent to a stumping. We should probably bring stumping to Major League Baseball. That might help with the pace of play problem. Anyway, a run out is the only time in cricket where you get the equivalent of a bang-bang play. These are not common, especially in longer forms of cricket where fewer risks are taken in running. According to Wikipedia, a run out is on average one in every 29 wickets. Considering a single innings is only 10 wickets, you can see, can I? I don't know,

that for most matches, there will not be a single run out or even the possibility of one. So they're more common, apparently, in shorter versions of cricket. But anyway, he sums it up to say the reason this works in cricket is due to rarity and the difference in the type of call made. And so in cricket, you tend not to expect umpires to make a call on a run out without help unless it was really obvious purely because it's just not something umpires are generally asked to do very often. If you ask the cricket umpire to be a first base umpire, they would no doubt be completely awful at it. So that is some useful context. Thank you, Matt. And one other problem that we didn't bring up that someone I think emailed us or tweeted us about, or maybe left

a Facebook comment to say that this would also be an issue in that what happens to the play in progress if the umpire doesn't make a call? Do you stop play? Do you call time out? Is the ball dead? Sometimes you need to know, am I safe? Am I out? Should I keep running here? Is the ball alive? Can we continue to play? So that would be a bit of an issue. It's kind of like when we were talking about the idea of cutting out the call from the replay footage so that the replay review umpire doesn't know what the call in the field was. That's all well and good in theory, but often it's tough to cut out the call from the footage of the play because the umpire's right there making the call.

So sort of similar here in that, you know, I guess you could just declare the play dead, at least in a lot of cases that might work okay but that's definitely an issue with just saying well i don't know safe or out who's to say the replay ump let's go upstairs and see you know you'd get some confusion on the field for sure have we talked about whack bat on this show i don't think so have you read fantastic mr fox or seen fantastic mr yeah yeah we should make effectively wild people play whack bat, I think. Every time we talk about cricket, I think about whack bat. And I don't say that to insult cricket, which is a real sport played by people who are good

at it and have practiced and worked very hard to have the skill that they do, which far surpasses my own, both in terms of their skill on the field and their understanding of the game. But I do think about whack bat every time we... Because you were talking about cricket and I was like, I have no idea what a crease is. I don't know if that's right or not at all. Like someone could write in, please don't do this.

But someone could write in a totally bogus cricket thing and we'd be like, that sounds like cricket, sure. Yeah, that could have been a prank. Matt, you have just pranked us with fake cricket words. We don't know. I hope it's not, though. Me too. I don't think Matt would do that to us.

If he did, then kudos to him because he wrote a very long and detailed answer. It was very convincing. Quite convincing. All right. So just my daily Asadio Otani moment of zen. There were some notable events in their lives. And as we speak, we are minutes away from Shohei taking the mound against the Rangers. He will be starting and also batting second.

And I saw a fun fact from Angels communications person Matt Birch who tweeted, It's been almost exactly 100 years since a player made a pitching start while also leading the majors in homers. Babe Ruth led MLB with 19 home runs when he started against Detroit on June 13th, 1921. So as we have said recently, maybe there are some Negro League exceptions to that that occurred more recently, but that is the case at least in the AL and NL. Babe Ruth, it's been a century, and Shohei Otani did enter Monday with seven home runs, which ties him for the Major League League. So that's cool. And maybe I'll have an update in

the outro or something if Otani has a particularly notable game, but did just want to mention that he played the field. He stood in left field using Justin Upton's glove for an inning. I don't know if that makes him a three-way player or if he is just a different type of two-way player like two ways is like both sides of the ball right it's like offense and defense and i guess this was also defense in the sense that pitching is defense too but whatever we call it he played outfield professionally in a game for the first time since 2014 back in the npb And I don't think this was a sign of things to come in the immediate future. This was just a weird game. It was a blowout. The Angels were shorthanded. Again, odd roster construction, as we were talking about earlier. I think they only had 12 position

players and Trout was unavailable and they had already replaced a couple of guys and Anthony Bemboom, the backup catcher, was pitching. And so there wasn't really another option. And Otani evidently volunteered to play outfield. But, you know, he looked like a natural out there. And I don't doubt that he could handle any outfield position just fine if the opportunity presented itself. I'm debating whether I want Otani in the field more so that you have another facet of his game to appreciate or if it would just stress you out because if he goes

into the field more frequently like if he were to get a start in the outfield and do well then it might be another sign that he is not long for the continued two way experiment and that would make you very sad.

But also, what if he's really amazing out there? What if he's really, you're like, oh, we've never had a left fielder like Otani. And then, Ben, what do you do? I think it would be more anxiety-provoking for you than anything else. So I think that I want it to be something that occurs only in sort of limited stints as injury elsewhere on the roster or you know bench usage elsewhere on the roster sort of dictates and then sdo can hit all the high home runs he wants to and that would be just fine

so that one i think you can enjoy sort of unequivocally without any sort of consternation but i have said before that you picked all good players to have as like your guys. People are like, I got to tweet at Ben about this thing. I do really like it when people, well, like is maybe strong, but I don't dislike it. I don't want to discourage people from engaging with us. It's interesting when people will tweet at us

like during Sunday Night Baseball about Effectively Wild. And, you know, I think your listeners are right to assume that we don't watch like every game. It's interesting when people will tweet at us like during Sunday night baseball about Effectively Wild. And, you know, I think your listeners are right to assume that we don't watch like every game and we might be doing something like maybe we're out to dinner. I mean, less lately, but like theoretically out to dinner or on a walk or or busy with some house project. And then we might miss Effectively Wild getting shouted out and we appreciate knowing it it but it is kind of funny when it's like the only game on and like did you see that and i was like yeah i'm watching i'm watching the baseball game yeah i appreciate the real-time notifications there are sometimes people who will tweet at me like several hours after the fact or like the next day or something and they're like i just wanted to make sure you saw that you know

shohei otani did this thing that was huge news. I still appreciate the impulse. Obviously, it's the thought that counts. They want to make sure I see that, but believe me, I've seen it. If they've done it, whether I was watching or not, people told me about it in the moment and I'm grateful for that. But if a lot of time has elapsed and maybe they don't realize that a lot of time has elapsed, then maybe they don't realize that a lot of time has elapsed and they just want to be helpful. So thank you. But maybe I've tweeted about it or other people have already tweeted at me about it.

It's a safe bet. It's a safe bet. But what I was going to say was I have sort of lauded your judgment for the guys who you have selected, where you get bombarded with tweets whenever they do anything remotely good or when they or when they get dinged up and then it's it's all you know like a protracted wellness check on you of all people as if you've been injured in the field but i will say that the otani decision while i think generally a smart one because he has had such a great season at the plate so far and like the pitching stuff is fun even if we're still nervous about how well it's going to work there there is anxiety to to the

otani of it all that i perhaps underrated in terms of how universally positive an experience it is for you because the potential exists for him even if he does not have another like scary collision at home plate like he did in that game against the white socks where he does not have another like scary collision at home plate like he did in that game against the white socks where he does something as a hitter that continues to just be so outstanding that you start to lose your grip on how on the likelihood of him continuing as a pitcher so so maybe there are stakes here that i did not appreciate before now. And so I don't want to discount the native anxiety that it might inspire in you. Yeah. Well, I don't doubt that he could handle that position if he set his mind to it.

And I'm not as worried about him hurting himself as I would be with a normal pitcher who gets stationed out there in an emergency like Joe Musgrove the other week. But still, when he is DHing and starting as a pitcher and occasionally playing the field, you know, that's asking a lot of him. So I don't want to overtax him. But hey, Shohei Otani will have a UZR now, I suppose. Can you have a UZR with one career inning in the field? I guess you probably can. You probably can, but you shouldn't pay attention to that. No, you shouldn't. You shouldn't pay attention to it when it's a lot more innings in the field, I guess you probably can. You probably can, but you shouldn't pay attention to that.

No, you shouldn't. You shouldn't pay attention to it when it's a lot more innings in the field. You let it rest and then check in in a little while and it'll be there for you and you can feel a little more confident in it. Won't you go, oh, it's not that it's a bad stat. It's just, you know, it's a noisy stat.

It's the drums of stats. It's crashing cymbals. I don't know how drums work and you alluded to the high homer that astadio hit or the high pitch that he hit for a homer goodness just wanted to pass along a fun fact about that so we got a question from listener rod who said last friday i was watching the twins pirates game and watched williams astadio hit a home run off jt brubaker that was incredibly high the pirates broadcast mentioned the pitch was 4.24 feet above the plate with Ostadio's listed height of 5'9".

This would only be a difference of a foot and a half between his height and the height of the ball. This made me wonder, what is the smallest difference between a player's height and the height of a home run or any hit and where this home run ranks on that list? So this was something I had not seen. Many people pointed out that this was the highest pitch hit for a home run this year and since some point last season. But what that failed to take into account is that that pitch was high off the ground.

William Testadio is not. And that made it even more impressive that he was able to get around on this pitch and launch it. And so I asked Lucas Apostolaris of Baseball Prospectus to look this up for me. And indeed, in the entire pitch tracking era, which dates back to 2008, this was the smallest differential between pitch height and hitter height on record. So it was indeed historic. Wins SDO listed at 5'9". The pitch height, according to the BP data, was 51.6 inches. So you had a difference of 17.4 inches. And there was only one with a smaller differential from 2009. And we watched it,

and it looked like a pitch FX error. It was clearly not a high pitch. So this was in fact, as weird and wonderful as it looked. So not the highest pitch hit for a homer, but the highest pitch hit for a homer by someone who is not high himself, physically speaking. So that was impressive. And there were some hits that were higher, like a David Fletcher one where he just had an ax swing on a ball that was a double, I think, down the line. But it gets tricky because you do have some pitch FX errors when it comes to tracking the height of these things on the outliers. But the home run, definitely notable as it seems. thank you to williams for yet another notable moment see unequivocal good all right and i have another quick stat blast that is tied to something from

this weekend This was also prompted by a listener email, and this was from Nick, who said, As you are likely aware, each MLB division has 120 possible permutations of its standings, and yet April 24th, 2021 was the first time in the eight-plus year history of its current configuration that the AL West had its teams perfectly aligned to spell out the word asshat with their logos. Truly a great moment for MLB and for humanity in general. And it's true. At first, I thought this was sort of a stretch because, of course, there's only one S technically. But if you look at the standings and you look at the logo, the A's logo is A apostrophe S. And so there are

actually two S's. It is legitimately asshat. There's the A apostrophe S for Oakland, and then the S for Seattle, and then the H for Houston, and then the A in the Angels logo, and then the T for Texas. And I think that this is, in fact, worthy of comment. And some people were excited last week about the AL West's sloth standings, right? Because it was Seattle, LA, Oakland, Texas, Houston in order, spelling out sloth. And I didn't particularly care about that because, I mean, it's a word, but it's not a funny word. So the fact that it's sloth didn't excite me much really but but asshat i i can certainly enjoy that is that a swear are we going to get people mad at me for saying asset on a podcast i hope not i said ass earlier we're not trying to upset your children we promise no so

nick says my question to you is can you determine which divisional permutation has been the most common since the new six division format began? Anecdotally, there was a period from 1998 to 2006 when it seemed like you could set your watch to a Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Orioles, Devil Rays alignment in the AL East. But is that in fact the most common divisional alignment of all time? And if it's only fair to start this calculation in 2013, when all divisions had the same number of teams, then which combination emerges as the most common? I'll take a stab and guess the NL West wins with Dodgers, Giants, Rockies, Diamondbacks, Padres, but who knows? Well, I know, and I know courtesy of Adam Ott, frequent StatBlast blast consultant so he looked this up in in a couple of ways and as usual he provided the necessary caveats he said i made a couple of decisions when figuring out how to look this up that may lead to minor discrepancies with standings as reported in other places on a given day first i ordered by win percentage rather than by games back second instead of trying to use a tiebreaker to order the standings when teams were tied,

I just used a random number generator. Neither of these two choices should impact the number of days a given permutation shows up by more than a day or two. Finally, I only looked at the standings on days when there were MLB games played. Thus, the all-star break wouldn't be counted four or five times. Thus, the all-star break wouldn't be counted four or five times. And this is like the percentage of days on which games were played in which this actual alignment was in place. So he did look up what Nick asked about the 1998-2006 AL East, and he found that, in fact, there is some truth to that. So from 98 to 2006, Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Orioles, Devil Rays occurred about 35% of the time, with Red So when we've had the same number of teams in each division, and he also sent me 1998 to 2020, just the whole 30 team era. So for the 2013 to 2020 period,

the most common alignment we have is actually in the NL East, and it is Atlanta, Washington, Philly, New York, Miami. So that is 14% the rate, the number of eligible days. That was the order in 14% of them. So that's the leader. And then NL Central is second with Cubs, Brewers, Cardinals, Pirates, Reds. That was 10.9% of days. Yeah, right. They don't all form fun words, unfortunately. They don't all say asshat.

They don't. AL East, Yankees, Rays, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Orioles. That was 10% of the time in this most recent period. So those were the alignments that were 10% or more of the time. And then I asked him to go all the way back to 1998. And these proportions are based on the number of days where the division existed in that format. And the most common over that whole long period is, in fact, Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Orioles, Devil Rays, or I guess Devil Rays and Rays. And that's 14% over that long period.

And then the second one, this surprised me actually, the second most common is AL West, Mariners, Athletics, Angels, Rangers, and NA because there were only four teams in the AL West at that time. and that was 13.4 percent of the time so you remember those days remember when the Mariners were often a first place team that happened I was in high school I was drinking very light beers in public parks often in the rain not every day because I was a good student, but on Fridays occasionally in public parks. Yeah, that was a long time ago, but it did in fact happen.

Third place, also 10.8% was NL Central, Cubs, Brewers, Cardinals, Pirates, Reds. So I'll put these spreadsheets online for anyone who's interested. But yeah, it is pretty wonderful that this was the first

ever incarnation of Asshat, and we got that thanks to that 13-game winning streak. So, go Ace. You made Asshat happen. Asshat. Asshat. So shall we close with our other new segment? Shall we meet

major leaguers? Let's do it. Alright, we introduced this last week. It is time for Meet a Major Leaguer, the recurring segment where we take a short look at someone semi under the radar who just made his major league debut. All right. Would you care to go first this time? Sure. would you care to go first this time? Sure.

So over the weekend, there was a notable debut, notable in part because of the player's age and because of what he was up to, not this season, but last season when he was dealing with pandemic ball. So Lewis Head debuted. Lewis Head is 31, which made me think of that tweet about how you feel young and vital,

and then you see a 30-year-old in a professional sport, and they talk about him like a unicorn. But Lewis Head debuted this weekend for the Tampa Bay Rays. He threw a scoreless inning. This was also the same game where Luis Patino made his Rays debut, not his major league debut, but his Rays debut. So a day for debuts. And they let Lewis pitch in a close game. So it was not without drama or import.

So Lewis has had sort of a winding trajectory through professional baseball. He played college ball at Texas Tech and then transferred to Texas State and was initially drafted in the 2012 draft by Cleveland in the 18th round. He played with them until 2018 when he was released by Cleveland and picked up by the Dodgers. And he kind of talked out at AAA for them and then elected free agency in November of 2019. Again, after not having made the majors, if he had, he wouldn't be part of this segment. And he actually was signed by the Mariners to a minor league contract in late February of 2020 and was assigned to the Rainiers.

But obviously there wasn't a minor league season and he was released in May and kind of thought that he was going to be done playing professional baseball and ended up selling solar panels door-to-door in Arizona and seemingly did pretty well, but was having to support himself that way. This is kind of one of those stories where you're like, it's cool that you persevered, but it's a bummer that this was what you had to do to make ends meet in professional baseball and had actually caught the attention of the Rays in that offseason

when the Mariners had signed him, but they got to him a little too late. The thing that was intriguing to them was the spin on his slider. And when 2021 rolled around, he was sort of on their list again as they were trying to fill in some arms to fill out camp. And he actually asked for additional time to get back into throwing shape before he threw for them in an audition because he'd been selling solar panels. He hadn't been playing organized ball because he made the decision to do that instead of trying to bop around the Indie Leagues during 2020 because it just wasn't lucrative enough

for him to do that. And they sort of appreciated this is from a story in the Tampa Bay Times by Mark Topkin, where he says that the Rays agreed, figuring that they had nothing to lose. Arizona-based scout Mike Brown worked him out, noting his fastball velocity was down, given his need to build up more arm strength, but he could still spin the slider. Head's humility and overt appreciation of the interest helped convince the race to go ahead it was a signing born ibach said of interdepartmental work diligence perseverance and a good bit of fortune when head got to camp he showed a willingness to take suggestions and instruction from the race coaching staff making some slight tweaks to his slider

that allowed him to make a good impression all the way around his work in exhibition games then at the alternate training site led to Friday's promotion on his 31st birthday. Oh, nice. Yeah. They debut. And I also saw something about,

they initially saw him because of a tweet, right? That's right. Yeah. There was some footage tweeted. This is like a thoroughly modern way to find a picture. It's like, see a tweet of some video of him throwing or his data or whatever,

and then investigate his data and like his spin rate. So it's like you sign this guy who's, you know, past the usual sell by date for a player who has not yet made his major league debut, but is sort of saved by a tweeted video and some data that you see sight unseen. Yeah 2020 spring training he was working out at a performance center in houston he's from texas and they were looking like i said to add bodies and a few arms to camp and they saw this video of him and were like oh that guy's intriguing and i think they had some pre-existing data from him from his time with cleveland and with the dodgers and they reached out to him but by the time they had,

he had already signed with Seattle. So yeah, a thoroughly modern sort of story when it comes to how he was discovered. But yeah, he's 31. He made his big league debut this past weekend and got the call up on his birthday. And that is Lewis Head. All right.

Nice to meet you, Lewis Head. And congrats on your belated debut. Shades of Jim Morris from The Rookie. And hey, if he has to go back to selling solar panels at some point, that seems like a growth industry. It seems like we're all going to need some solar panels. So that wouldn't be the worst thing either. All right. Well, my major leaguer to meet is another old timer in a relative sense. So the second oldest player to debut this season made his major league debut on Saturday. And this is Kent Emanuel, a left-handed pitcher for the Astros from

Woodstock, Georgia, 6'4", 225. And he also had a notable debut, not just because he is 28 and will be turning 29 in June, but also because of the way he debuted. So he was called up to the big leagues on Friday. And then on Saturday, Jake Odorizzi made the start for the Astros and he threw five pitches before he was pulled after one out with forearm pain and the Astros needed someone. They needed someone to come in and pitch innings. And there was Kent Emanuel who had just been added to the bullpen to provide some depth. And not only did he step in to replace Jake Odorizzi, but he went the distance. He pitched the rest of the game. He went eight and two thirds, which is really quite notable.

So he is the fourth pitcher in the modern era to have a relief outing of eight and two thirds innings or more in his debut, joining Fred Smith in 1907, Maury Kent in 1912, and John the Count Montefusco in 1974. He is also the first pitcher period to throw eight and two thirds innings in relief since 1988 when Yankees pitcher Neil Allen did it. So yeah, he went nine in that game. So obviously it's quite rare to come in after one out, you know, to have the opportunity to throw eight and two thirds, but also to capitalize on that opportunity. So he threw 90 pitches and he carved up the Angels lineup. I think this was a blowout that the Astros won 16 to 2,

and he just soaked up all those innings. And I think he gave up solo shots to Pujols and Otani, and that was just about all the damage that was done against him. So this is quite a memorable and unusual debut. And the reason why he hasn't debuted up until now, and I guess there are multiple reasons, but this is a guy who's been in the Astros system the whole time. So no strange journeyman story about being spotted on Twitter or whatever. This was the Astros'

2013 third round draft pick. So he was drafted right behind Mark Appel and Andrew Thurman, neither of whom ever made the majors, although I guess Appel is trying to make another comeback. But he has finally made good, drafted in the depths of the Astros' tanking era, you know, drafted in the depths of the Astros tanking era. And he stuck it out and eventually made it. No longer really a ranked prospect, Eric Langenhagen didn't rank him on his Astros top 33 prospect list, which was published earlier this month,

though he did mention Emanuel to say that he generates big sink on his fastball. And that was on display in his debut when he got 13 ground outs against only three fly outs. He's a sinker, slider, change up guy. And so, you know, he's been bouncing around. He had made it to AAA in 2019 and pitched pretty well there after years of not pitching particularly well at lower levels or at AAA. You know, it seemed like he was poised to be called up after that 2019 performance. And then he tested positive for PEDs. So that is part of the reason why he did not debut until then. He was suspended for 80 games last August after testing positive for a PED called, I will attempt to pronounce this, dehydro... Oh, boy.

It's a really long compound word. Dehydrochloromythyltestosterone, more commonly and mercifully known as DHCMT. It's an anabolic steroid. It's the oral form of Turinabol or T-Bol. And he has protested vehemently that he did not actually take this. Of course, that is not unusual, really, for players who have tested positive for PEDs. They often proclaim their innocence, but he has really gone all out in proclaiming his innocence. And in fact, he is wearing the jersey number zero because he says that is the number of games that he should have been suspended. Because, he says, that is the number of games that he should have been suspended. So his uniform number is sending a message here.

And, you know, it's a little more plausible than the typical PED denial because apparently there's been a rash of players who have tested positive for this same substance. And it's sort of strange that MLB players would be taking this. Like, this is something that goes back to the 70s and 80s. It's like, you know, associated with East Germany's state-sponsored doping program. And it's odd that MLB players would be taking this in 2020, 2021. last year by Jared Diamond and Ken Rosenthal about the fact that 21 major and minor league players had been suspended for using DHCMT since 2015, which is odd. And in a lot of those cases, their urine contained trace amounts of a metabolite that comes from the breakdown of this substance supposedly. And it's just a very, very small trace amount. He had seven picograms in his sample, which is what flagged this. That's one trillionth of a gram is a picogram.

And he had seven picograms per milliliter. And he says he doesn't know what could have caused this. And there are apparently some risky supplements that might have something to do with this. But it sounds like there are talks at least to raise the threshold to, say, 100 picograms per milliliter just so that you get fewer potential false positives. So there may actually be more reason to believe that Emmanuel is innocent here than there are with a lot of players who get popped and protest their innocence. But whatever you think of the PED suspension, he has finally made it at an advanced stage and he debuted in a historically significant way. So a couple of veterans who've been bouncing around forever and finally made it this past weekend. So Ken Emanuel, welcome to the majors.

We have met you. I like this segment a lot, Ben. Yeah, this has been a lot of fun because I would not know these guys. I mean, I may have seen some headlines just because Head is old and because Emanuel pitched eight and two-thirds innings in relief in his debut. But otherwise, I would just not know much about them and not know much about the other players that we have talked about and will be talking about. So, yeah, I enjoy this too. And I would think that that might be a good way to debut, just to be thrown into the fire without any warning. Because you're going to be nervous about making your major league debut, even if you're almost 29 and you've been in AAA for years.

You're going to be anxious at that moment. So maybe the best time to do it is just when Jake Odorizzi gets pulled after five pitches and you're totally not expecting it. You didn't have to be dreading this moment. I mean, I guess he's a bullpen pitcher, so he didn't know when he would be in the game. So maybe he still had a sleepless night, but he wasn't expecting it in the first inning, let's say. So get it out of the way.

Just rip off the Band-Aid. It's like distracting someone when you have to give them a shot or pop their shoulder back into its socket or something. It's better if you're not anticipating the exact moment maybe you know i don't know if that's why he was so effective but i'm just saying psychologically speaking that might be the way to do it yeah i think i'd rather not know uh in advance because as our listeners have probably discerned i can make myself anxious about just about anything so um the less time i have to formulate a narrative of my own demise the better off i am yeah all right well we will end there so

that i can go watch shohei otani okay well i did indeed watch shohei otani i was worried that i wouldn't get to watch him for long because the first inning was ugly he allowed a single a walk and a home run, then another walk, then a hit by pitch, then a wild pitch, then a sacrifice fly, and just like that the Rangers were up four. But then he recovered, and even though he threw a lot of pitches in that first inning and had no commander control, he got it together. He ended up facing 14 more batters, struck out nine of them, allowed only one to reach base on a single, and in addition to walking and scoring in the first inning, he contributed a two-run double and a bunt hit against the shift. So he helped his own cause, as they say. Anyway, after that

first inning, he looked great. It was maybe his best sustained run of pitching post-Tommy John surgery that we've seen so far. So he had a 113.8 mile per hour hit, a 27.5 mile per hour hit, and he threw 99 off the mound. It was pretty brilliant. And yeah, he was facing the Rangers, but it's clear that that sort of stuff would play against any lineup. He just has to have that command, which comes and goes, as one would expect, given that this was only his fifth start since Tommy John surgery. So he was pulled after 75 pitches in part because, hey, he's a two-way player and he needs his rest, but also because he was developing another small hotspot blister on a different part of his finger, this one from throwing his splitter.

But apparently they caught it early and it's not a problem. And he's also starting to throw this harder slider in games, kind of a cutter. And with that and the fastball and the splitter working, he's just hard to handle if he can throw strikes and get ahead in counts and then get guys to chase. It's tough because to work on his command and control, maybe he'd have to throw more. And yet it's hard for him to throw regularly, both because of the blister and because they don't want to tire him out. He has appeared in some way in every Angels game this season, and he said he wants to start on Tuesday following this two-way performance. So that's an area where two-way play makes it harder for him to do one of

those jobs, but I believe he can get this under control, so to speak, and the first outing when he doesn't have one of these wild innings will be something to see. So started out ugly, was worried that Joe Maddon would regret hitting him on the day that he pitched. If he had been pulled very early in that game, then the Angels would have lost the DH, but it ended up working out well. And as Fabian Ardaya tweeted, Shohei Otani allowed four runs, but scored three and drove home two. So his plus minus for the night, his plus one. As Maddon said, if you weren't entertained by watching him tonight, you can't be entertained by watching baseball. I was entertained. I was also entertained by Mike Trout getting four hits in his comeback from getting hit by a pitch. He's batting 426. Another something to see is

Corey Dickerson's 200th career double. He got it on Monday against Corbin Burns, who was outdueled by the Marlins' Trevor Rogers, although he did not allow a walk. And as far as I could tell, no one noticed Corey Dickerson's 200th double. It wasn't even mentioned on the Marlins broadcast. The game took place in Milwaukee. So, you know, no scoreboard message, no stoppage at the game. If Dickerson called for the ball to be saved, it wasn't shown on the broadcast or wasn't remarked upon. But hey, we noticed.

Congrats, Corey. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Alex Siebert, Kurt Steger, Encore Desai,

Adam Hirsch, and John McGinley. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. 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 podcastoffangraphs.com or via the Patreon nesting system if you are a supporter.

Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We will be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. Some guy in uniform says I know you. I say I don't know you, but how do you do? He said everyone has heard what you put her through. Man off with his head. April is the cruelest month, but she shouldn't have to be this cruel.

April has betrayed my trust. Would you look at what I've turned into? April's fool.