Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1720: Fun Differential

Episode Date: July 16, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Meg’s airport problems, discuss the All-Star Game (touching on mic’d up and profane players, unsightly uniforms, All-Stars being friendly on the field, and MLB embracing the game’s lack of stakes), lament that the zombie-runner rule may not be (un)dead after all, follow up on more players with high […]

I watched the planes coming in, felt my heartbeat begin, and I knew that I would stay. Hello and welcome to episode 1720 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast for Van Graffs, brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Vallee of Van Graffs. Meg, I understand Denver did not want to let you leave. yeah it's a cool city i have family in colorado i had a lovely trip got to see friends in person and you know pinch them i didn't do that i don't pinch people that's rude but you know like enjoy their company in person for the first time in quite a while but then i wanted to go home because i was tired and the denver airport was like, no, you live here now. What happened? My understanding is that the airport lost power.

I mean, I witnessed that. I saw the power kind of fritz in and out while I was there, which was strange because you'd think that of all the places that really don't ever lose power, that the airport would be high on the list. Yeah, you'd think you'd want a generator or some sort of redundant system set up at an airport. Well, and the speed with which the power came back on made me think that actually all of those systems worked exactly the way they were supposed to, right? That's good. But it did cause some issues. And then the plane coming to Denver to take me back to Phoenix

was I think on the tarmac for like two hours. And then by the time it arrived, there are rules about how long a flight crew can be active for safety. You don't want sleepy pilots. That would be bad. So that crew couldn't fly, it was again for everyone's benefit and then there was another crew that was supposed to come but they got delayed so then i'm waiting on a crew from philadelphia so anyway i was supposed to be home by like 6 p.m last night and the actual time i

got home was close to 1 a.m. so that seems like a long time for a flight that's like an hour and 20 minutes yeah I think it only takes 12 hours or so to drive from Denver to Phoenix you probably could have made it in just about the same time exactly so and and the other thing about it is that and I have because I as i mentioned i have family in colorado i've flown in and out of denver at least once a year for pretty much every year of my life and i i swear that the the dia has been under construction that entire time that it is just ceaselessly under construction that there is always a thing and a widget and a what have you that needs to be remedied in some way and so i think that the combination of the current construction

that they are doing and then the continued sort of, you know, aftermath of COVID, things close on those concourses real early. There's some mad dash to get a sandwich before everything closed. So it was just a long time. But what are you going to do? You know, that's nobody's that was nobody's fault uh you just gotta sit there and roll with the punches and i edited a piece uh and scheduled it for this morning and future meg was really happy that past meg did that because then

i just uh slept in a little bit this morning so it all worked out fine. Everyone got home safely, which is the most important thing. No flight crews flew while feeling sleepy. It's all good. But I was sitting there and I thought to myself, you know, it's nice to feel inconvenienced and sort of put upon in a normal way because we spent so much of the last year being put upon and inconvenienced in an extraordinary and terrifying and sometimes devastating way. I was going to say, when was the last year being put upon and inconvenienced in an extraordinary and terrifying and sometimes devastating way. I was going to say, when was the last time you were able to tell a nightmare travel story? It's been a while. We've all had those experiences, but not since 2019 for most of us. So that's something. So that was something. And then I wondered, how long will I be able to maintain that perspective before I am just actively annoyed by this situation

and I don't know if I just transitioned into being tired quickly enough that I didn't have the energy couldn't muster the energy to be more actively annoyed than I was but it all worked out fine it had been it had been more than a year since I had had the oh I'm bone tired from work-related travel feeling. So that was new to re-familiarize myself with. Yeah. Well, the novelty of air travel mishaps probably wears off pretty quickly. I've had some harrowing flights in and out of Denver or over Denver just because of the turbulence. Yes.

And I have feared for my life on multiple occasions, but that is also harrowing in a way, not being able to take off at all. So for a solid several hours there, because you were not the only baseball media member who was marooned intent for baseball Twitter was like, I'm stuck at the airport. The power is out. So I was following along with everyone else. I was not in view of anyone else. And I was sort of sad about it. I was like know at some point I'm hoping that the you know the cesspit boys will just walk by and we'll start playing wiffle ball in the terminal or something like that but yeah I just had to content myself with a glass of wine so well not

an ideal ending to the all-star break but the rest of it was pretty good yeah did you have any thoughts about the all-star game which took place after we recorded our preceding episode? You know, I found myself just enjoying the hell out of the All-Star game in a way I did not anticipate. I, you know, from start to finish, just really, I really enjoyed it. I mean, I could have, I know a number of people have commented on this. I could have stood to see a little more Otani and Tatis in that game. I could have stood to see a little more Otani and Tatis in that game. But I also like that they prioritize getting everybody in. Because I think that for fan bases, especially of teams where it's like,

you're a Pirates fan, right? So you're having to live that reality every day. But you have two NL All-Star starters. That's hard to say in sequence, which is why I goofed it. And you get to see Adam Frazier be really in the middle of stuff. I don i had a great time and it was a little surprising to me how much i enjoyed it but i was delighted by it so yeah i don't know as i have said and written before i am very much against micing up players in regular games, certainly in postseason games, which we have seen before and I have decried. But in exhibition games, I don't mind

it. It's all in good fun. It's all pretty meaningless. But it does make me nervous when they have the hitter mic'd up. Yeah, that I did not care for. First of all, they don't really say anything because they're trying to focus so joe buck's like what are you looking for here and they're just like fastball fastball they're just trying to whisper it so i guess the catcher can't hear them right also because they're trying to hit max scherzer or whoever like that's a tough job to do without joe buck just nattering on in your ear i'm trying to imagine how i would do at my job if joe buck were just quizzing me in my ear as i was trying to do those things.

Oh, my God. So that I just am unable to enjoy because I worry about the batter being distracted and taking a fastball in the face or something because he is trying to pay attention to the broadcast. But at other times, it is fun. Freddie Freeman was a lot of fun. It's like a stand-up routine out there. And Tatis, as you said, being mic'd up when guerrero hit his homer and those guys being as close as they are so that's all in good fun i think and then there was liam hendrix

who made it all worthwhile i want to know what the production meeting was like where they where they were like this will be fine right this isn't't an FCC violation waiting to happen, is it? Like, this would be all right. I think that one of my favorite moments of that exchange, well, the best moment was when he immediately swore upon them, realizing that he could not hear them. And I said at the time, and I don't know that I want to let go of this particular conspiracy theory.

I think he might have been able to hear them and just opted to ignore them. But he maintains that he just couldn't hear them. So we will let him maintain that even if I think the conspiracy theory is more fun. But the best moment of that for me was Zanino going out there and being like, Hey, buddy, reminder, you're mic'd up. And him just being like, it's not working. You know, it's not working. So it's going to be fine.

Nothing to worry about. Yeah, just get the Australian super intense closer and mic him up. And yeah, he's swearing and not warning Dylan that he's going to do any swears. And so it was all on air. And they kept him on for a while. They didn't cut the mic or anything

after it was clear that this wasn't going to be a dialogue. It was just going to be Hendrix swearing periodically. So I don't know why they stuck with it as long as they did, but I'm glad that they did. Yes, I admire their gumption for just being like,

we're going to let this happen and we'll just see where it goes. I do think it's funny though, because it's funny though, because, you know, it's not uncommon for when a guy is as vocal as Hendrix. I mean, granted that was a full crowd. So maybe, you know, maybe it's a little less likely given how good the attendance was, but it's not like field mics don't occasionally pick up,

you know, expletives from a pitcher. So the idea that they were going to get away with him being literally might without hearing anything is just so spectacular. It was great. It was great TV. He was delightful. I appreciated how many different reminders we had

through the course of that game of the international nature of baseball. It was clear that that was something that, you know, was on the minds of the players and that they emphasized. And I just like watching baseball dudes be pals. It is enjoyable. I don't know if objectively baseball players are more sort of congenial with one another

than other sports are. Like there is, I'm sure, an objective way to measure that. And so I am speculating here. But I think that in part because baseball does not have the same sort of moment to moment potential for intense physical contact yeah these guys just seem to really like each other and there are plenty of basketball players and football players and soccer players who seem like they're pals away from the court and are you know opponents when they're on it so i don't mean to say that like they're all meanies and baseball

players or angels but they just just seem to be a really nice sort of you know friendly atmosphere with these guys we talked about it a little bit with the home run derby but you know when vladimir guerrero jr almost takes max scherzer's head off he goes out and hugs him like yeah i was i was worried for vlad like interrupting the scherzer noun trance, especially after almost drilling him with a liner. That seemed scary, but Max was okay with it, assuming that he didn't react the way that he did when they checked him for sticky stuff. So it went okay. No, everybody seemed to be having a great time. You mentioned Freddie Freeman's stand-up routine.

I recall him being mic'd up. It might have been last spring training who knows what time is anymore but they had him miked up for a spring training game and he was just so charismatic you know tis is okay they're all great like they're just i think that it would be nice to have sort of different interlocutors for each of these guys, right? So like have, you know, a franchise icon come and be the guy in the ear who's talking to a young dude. Like I think that they could switch some of that stuff up and maybe make the actual Q&A part of it a little more engaging.

But I think that for something like this, where it doesn't really matter what happens as long as no one gets hurt, it's great. It's great. It's just great stuff. Yeah. In addition to less physical intensity, as you said, there's also just more standing around and players aren't as winded in baseball as they tend to be in other sports. So, yeah, there's just more time to chat and they take advantage of that. And I've also seen some videos that have been released after the Home Run Derby, like Otani and Soto were both mic'd up for that. And I've also seen some videos that have been released after the Home Run Derby,

like Otani and Soto were both mic'd up for that. So we weren't hearing it live, but there have been some highlights released where you get super cuts of that stuff. So yeah, that's been a lot of fun. And the uniforms in the All-Star Game, which we talked about when they were unveiled and roundly disparaged, and I don't think they looked any better on bodies than they did just in pictures. But I don't mind. I don't really care. As I've said, I tend not to have very strong opinions about uniforms and especially one-off uniforms.

Now, I do understand the critique that it's an all-star game tradition to have all of the players wear their own team's colors. And that's good for fans who are tuning in to see those players and want to know who they are and where they're from. And they looked bad. They looked baggy and pajama-like even more so than typical uniforms. I kind of liked the blue ones in a way just because they almost looked like old-timey baseball uniforms in a weird way. They weren't flattering on every body type necessarily,

but they did kind of look like throwbacks. I don't know whether that was the intent or not. And I could imagine that for not even casual baseball fans, but non-fans who may have been tuning in just to see Otani, maybe it would have been a little less confusing to see that all the players on each team were wearing the same uniform, because I could imagine that that might be a bit overwhelming. Also, if everyone is just wearing their own uniforms and no one looks like teams. So that was something I thought of.

I also liked that they had the stars on the back of the jerseys under the numbers, which was sort of hard to see. was sort of hard to see, but it was what we talked about on an email episode last week about how maybe they could have stars on jerseys to indicate how many all-star games a player has made or appeared in. And they actually had that in the all-star game, though not in regular season uniforms, which is what we were talking about in that episode. But on the whole, I didn't hate it and it didn't really detract from my enjoyment of the game, but I understand why the reviews were pretty poor. Yeah, I mean, we don't have to relitigate our earlier conversation about that.

I will say one twist to the uniform conundrum that I just didn't anticipate and found even more frustrating was that the names and the numbers on those uniforms were kind of hard to read because they had a pattern in them, right? They were not just a plain number. They had a pattern, and then they have the little name, and they replicated that for the Futures game. And when you're sitting in the stands and you are trying to watch a batting practice and the roster you have isn't fully up to date and then you can't really see the numbers clearly it makes it it makes it harder i heard a fair amount

of scout grumbling near me who's this guy who's that so then i will say the board ended up being useful for a couple of people there because you could triangulate between uh the the hat which was the the actual team hat uh and then and then what you could make of the the name or the number so so that was good but i just it's the same thing just make the barrier to entry for this stuff really really really low because you want people to instantly be able to say oh that guy and for you know for the all-star game i think that for a lot of folks that's easier than it would be for the futures game for instance but just make it easy because

it it's great fun and if you're if you're a sort of casual baseball fan who doesn't really know the guys in the other league and you tune in and you're like that freddie freeman guy's funny like i like that guy fernando tatis junr's reactions to vlad's home run amazing love that dude right you're just chris bryant managing to politic better than anyone in his franchise incredible put him in congress right like you're just you want people to be able to with very little effort follow the direction that that initial hit of good feeling about the game takes them in and i think that this this was a good showcase of that so that it was cool it was very cool yeah that's the true test of your scouting skills i guess can you recognize which

player you are currently scouting that's forget about projecting whether he'll be good or not just do you know who this person is well and most most of them it was fine but they're you know as is as is often true with the the futures game in addition to the all-star game you know they're last minute replacements a guy gets hurt or he gets called up to the majors and then he's not available which is so fun and you know there's a lot going on and and so i don't i don't mean this as a knock at at the the folks who printed the rosters at cores at all but you know there were a couple of replacements that just weren't on there and we had to sort it out but it was really only an issue for the national league because during the nl batting practice they were doing their tech run for the celebrity softball game but for the al they just had the

guys up there and it was it was a lot easier so i was like oh right i i rec i also recognize you know julio rodriguez he's a little easy to spot but yeah i don't know i i will say when i was like oh right i i also recognize you know julio rodriguez he's a little easy to spot but yeah i don't know i i will say when i was at the futures game and i was in the auxiliary press box in a place that seemed like it was gonna get a lot of home runs during the derby and uh that was where that guy went over the rail and almost broke his neck thankfully he didn't so anyway these are my thoughts from denver denver cool. There's good food there. There's good beer there if you're a beer person. There's good other drinks if you don't drink beer. I'm in favor of all major league jewel events, as they are called, being conducted in an hour and a half flight radius of where I live.

Imagine how much grumpier I would be if I had had that same delay and then had a six hour flight on the back end. Yeah. Visit Denver. You won't want to leave. And if the airport loses power, they might not be able to anyway. Yeah. I like that they've leaned into the all-star game being an exhibition and they're not trying to make it count anymore. And obviously it doesn't have the same juice that it used to have when you didn't have constant interleague play and players actually cared about the bragging rights and the fact that one league would dominate, which, you know, the American League has dominated the all-star game lately.

But I don't know if any NL players feel bad about that or AL players feel pride in that because they're constantly switching leagues and playing each other. And I think that's probably just sort of a strange small sample thing. I know a lot of that period was dominated by the AL in interleague play too for many, many years. And there were many theories for why the AL was the superior league during that time. That has kind of changed in recent years and maybe even swung back in the other direction. So the fact that that's still persisting, I think is mostly meaningless and you're not really seeing it in the World Series either. But I like that it's just kind of a fun time for everyone to hang out and be together and joke around and they're still trying. They still want to do well, but it's not cutthroat Pete Rose crashing into Ray Fossey kind of game. It's just

everyone enjoying each other's company and enjoying the sport and not checking for sticky stuff even because it doesn't matter. It's not that serious. And we got an email from a listener who was wondering why Kevin Cash was shifting. Why would you shift in this exhibition game? That seems like too much. And it turned out that he wasn't shifting. In fact, it was Nelson Cruz who just on a lark was directing the infielders from the AL dugout just for fun. So that's kind of the atmosphere at these games and it's infectious and I enjoyed watching it. So yeah, looking forward to it. So a few things that we can talk about. One thing is a little bit more of a bummer, and this is a follow-up to something we talked about last time, which I was very

excited about. And it turns out that maybe the fact that I was so surprised to hear this was an indicator that it was too good to be true. So we let off the last episode by talking about how Commissioner Rob Manfred in his address to the BBWAA in Denver had suggested that seven inning double headers and the zombie runner rule were not going to be back for 2022. Well, not long after that Q&A, he talked to our pal Mike Farron on MLB Network Radio. And as transcribed by Craig Calcaterra, he unfortunately walked back the zombie runner rule portion of that. He is still anti seven inning double header, which is nice, but not so fast on the zombie runner rule. He said, I grouped the two together and said they were COVID rules. the two together and said they were COVID rules and the point I was

trying to make was that just because we use them for two years you can't jump to the assumption that they were going to stay because they were COVID rules. I also said that I don't see the seven inning double header as part of our future and that's right. I'm softer on the extra inning rule I think. You know there's more of a

split of opinion on it. I guess we'll just have to see how that one goes. So zombie runner rule, not dead yet, still undead as someone else joked to us on Twitter. It's the zombie zombie runner rule. It is back from the dead or maybe was never dead to begin with. So I don't know if that aligns with what he said when you were in the room, but at some point between then and when he talked to mike he walked it back a bit and i was sorry to see that i think that the issue he expounded on at the greatest length was definitely the seven inning double headers and not the zombie runner rule so i don't think that this is a huge

departure from what he said in the rumor what was initially reported, which is why I told you, Ben, not to get your hopes up, that it was not definitive. But I think that the split doesn't necessarily surprise me because I think it's hard to make the case to someone purchasing a ticket that they might be buying a lot fewer innings in a planned kind of way, not because of a weather delay or some kind of other disruption, but we're just going to plan to deliver less baseball to you. And I think that that is a hard sell

when you're trying to get someone to pay for a product. I think that that calculus changes clearly for both the league and for fans in extra innings where a lot of people don't stick around for those. And as we've noted in the past, it doesn't seem like it is universally despised by players right so we will see this is why i said you know you don't you that way lies madness if you're getting your hopes up about stuff that has to be collectively bargained but i imagine

that there will be some moving and shaking on it they're just aren't they going to survey the players and kind of get a sense there too and go from there, I would imagine? Yeah, one would hope. I want them to survey me and stop there. But yes, they probably should talk to the baseball players too. Yeah, so wouldn't it be nice if this is the worst issue that we have to contemplate

when stuff gets going this fall? I mean, they're already having conversations, obviously, but when they get in the meat of the negotiation, wouldn't it be cool if this were the big thing? I mean, clearly we want a good, equitable agreement. We have some issues that we have highlighted as ones that we hope get decided differently than they were in the last CBA, but maybe they will miraculously agree on all of that stuff and the thing that will hold them up from getting a deal done will be the zombie runner.

And then what do you do, Ben? Do you admit defeat so that we can have baseball on schedule? Or do you hold your ground against the zombies? It's really a conundrum for you, Ben. I think I will take the L on that one. I would lose the battle to win the war. I would rather have baseball with a CPA that is acceptable to both sides than no baseball and no zombie runner rule. I don't hate it so much that I would prefer that there not be baseball.

So there are limits to my antipathy. but let's hope that they reach the right conclusion here. So we got a lot more submissions for players with high highlights to value ratio who were not named Ray Ordonez. So I figured I would just mention a few more for those of you who are just joining this conversation. I figured I would just mention a few more for those of you who are just joining this conversation. I mused the other day that Billy Hamilton sure has produced a lot of highlights, but has not produced a ton of on-field value. And so we were trying to come up with names of other players who were good sources of highlights, but not great war sources.

And Ray Ordonez was a popular submission. Here are some others who've been mentioned. Nick Punto, Jeff Francoeur, Chris Carter, Sioshi Shinjo, late career Bartolo Colon, not the peak Bartolo Colon, who was very good, but late career when he was just kind of adequate, but was also maybe the most gift player there was. maybe the most gift player there was. And also one that I can't believe we didn't think of and say sooner, which is Pat Venditti. Oh, yeah. Maybe it's one highlight, one sequence that you tend to see with him, that one from before they had the rule really nailed down about what would happen with ambidextrous pitchers. And so he and the batter were just switching back and forth side to side.

But he is a good one here because obviously just a singular player who could pitch with both hands and no one else could do that really the way that he did it. And also a replacement level pitcher on the whole, unfortunately, without a ton of staying power. But that's a good one, I think. And also someone mentioned Williams' Astadio, which I had to concede is actually a pretty good one. Much as I want him to be a superstar, he is in my heart, but not necessarily statistically speaking. And yet everything he does is a highlight. So that's a pretty good one too. I wonder if he is still too early in his career for us to pronounce that he fits in this category, right? Don't you kind of want a little bit longer of a track record?

Because you never know. Maybe Estadio has another gear. And then we'll look back and be like, wow, we're really glad we were on that Estadio bandwagon early because now he's the best player in baseball. That seems unlikely, but weirder stuff has happened. Yeah. Who else? Cubs legend Tony Campana was submitted as a candidate here. Sure, sure.

And here's an email from CJ who says, I was thinking about the discussion of highlights to war and realized everyone had been thinking about it the wrong way. All the suggestions so far have been guys who sucked but had a few highlights anyway. What if the answer isn't someone bad but someone good who has had a disproportionate amount of highlights anyway? With that approach, I think the right answer is Javi Baez. He has 21 and a half career war but approximately 21,500 highlights. Everything that gives him value is the exact kind of thing that generates highlights. He makes incredible defensive plays, runs the bases like a madman, vroom vroom. And when he connects with a ball, he hits it 500 feet. And from a negative highlight angle, he's good for swinging pitches above his head about 12 times a year. That would make him a supporting character in plenty of pitchers highlights. A supporting role in a highlight still counts as a highlight. You could make an argument against him in that he has been boosted by his career taking place in the YouTube era, but that would be a bad argument because the highlights per war is not era adjusted in how commonplace highlights are. I'm not really asking this as

a question. I just think I'm right and would like to hear it discussed. And that's true. If we were going strictly by highlight to war ratio, then I guess it might be a good player who would win. But the spirit of the question was sort of hamilton-esque players players who actually just aren't that good but are still a significant source of highlights now i'm thinking about whether the highlight to war ratio is just it's like clutch right when we calculate clutch it's relative to a player's own performance. Like that's how we calculated it at Fangraphs, which I think is the thing that always confuses people. So maybe highlight to war is sort of a similar conundrum

or sort of thinking about it in relation to oneself. But I think that it's more fun to think about guys who manage to have big moments that you're like, wow, look at that when the rest of their career is sort of mediocre or underwhelming. That's just, it's just a lot more fun. And I think that part of it is that highlights have the magic of not necessarily really being that closely correlated to the baseline talent of a player. And there's obviously some amount of that, but also think about some of the things that Mike Trout does really well.

So if you think about a Mike Trout highlight, if you were going to think about him as sort of like a gift machine, you'd think about the home run robberies, right? And the really, really long home runs that he's hit and maybe some of the base stealing stuff. But I think that part of what you come to appreciate when you're watching a player like that is all of the small and subtle things that accumulate to just

build the best baseball player of his generation. And some of that stuff is like, I don't know. I don't know how many like plate discipline highlights people are really keen on. I don't see cut for like sharing those being like, wow, that take was amazing.

But sometimes you watch a, a trout app at, and you're like, holy crap. Like his understanding of the strike zone is so incredible this is so cool to watch but that doesn't you know that doesn't like go with emojis really that's like not an emoji thing yeah you're right i don't know someone else mentioned jack wil, the former pirate, which you mentioned Brendan Ryan. So Wilson kind of in that category. Adam Everett maybe would be in that category.

You know, someone else mentioned Barry Bonds. And yes, Barry Bonds, a significant source of highlights, but also one of the best players ever. So not exactly what we're looking for here. So thanks to everyone who wrote in with good ideas there. And while we're talking about Javi Baez and highlights and lowlights, I wanted to mention that there's been a development with Will Craig, who was on the wrong end of that Javi Baez highlight. So when we talked earlier this year about Craig's boner about the play where Avi Baez, if you want to look at it this way,

deep Craig into chasing him back to home plate instead of tagging him or throwing or retreating back to first base or any of the other things that he could have done. We felt a little bad about making fun of Craig or making Craig the focal point of this because you knew he had to feel bad and it was just one of those brain farts. And it has had some consequences here, although not terrible consequences, but it's clear that this has stuck with him. And Jason Mackey, former guest of ours who covers the Pirates talked to Craig recently, who has now departed the pirates and he has gone to play for the Kiwom Heroes of the KBO.

Took his boner. Yeah. Partly this is an economic decision and we can talk about that aspect of things, but here's what Craig told Jason. There are times where it hits me and I'm like, did that really happen? I'm a really good defender. I am. Everyone who has played with me knows that, but I feel like that play kind of defined me. I didn't want that to be the case. There's another thing that went into my decision

to go over there. I need to almost start over in a way, which it's probably going to hang over my head for the rest of my career. Not probably, it will hang over my head for the rest of my career, but just give myself an opportunity to break away from it a little bit. Obviously, they have the internet over there, so they're going to know the play, but kind of address it the way I addressed it with you guys the next day. Don't run away from it. Kind of attack it head on and let them know, I'm a really good first baseman. Here's my gold glove. I can show it to you if you want. You can touch it. It's real. I feel like most players always have a play or some type of event that happens in their career. Mine just happens to be a little bit bigger than others. But because I only had a month, it made it seem that much worse. So I feel sorry for Will Craig that this play is haunting him or that he feels like he needs a fresh start or needs to escape to another continent to outrun the legacy of this play. the great fear that all of us have right that we will make some goof and it will end up defining our lives and sometimes you know sometimes people make terrible mistakes and do bad things and that should be the thing that defines their life but i don't think that this is one of them this is not

in that category of error or offense right and so yeah you do feel bad for the guy i hope that he's able to accumulate some good highlights. And if he wants to come back to baseball in the States, is able to do so having spent some time playing ball that he thinks is more representative of the kind of player that he is. Because it's just, you know, everybody's brain freezes up on him every now and again.

Now I'm wishing that I had given more credence to the idea that this was hobby bias magic because I feel like I contributed to him needing to flee the country. Yeah, and I don't want to make it sound as if he has been banished to the KBO or as this is some horrible sentence. It may make good sense for him to go to the KBO because, frankly, he is a marginal major leaguer at best. him to go to the KBO because frankly, he is a marginal major leaguer at best. He was on one of the worst teams in baseball and didn't really have a secure spot on that roster either. He was demoted soon after that play and it was not solely because of that play. He hadn't hit and he's had some

success in the minors, but he was not a great prospect. And so he was probably going to be bouncing around at best. And this way, he gets to go to the KBO and play regularly and get a guaranteed $371,000 for the remainder of the season, which is much more than he would have made, presumably, if he were playing for the Pirates in AAA mostly. So this is probably smart for him. And he was going to be a free agent, I think, at the end of the season anyway. So he can decide if he wants to stay over there or if he wants to try to come back and catch on with some other organization. So again, it's not

a bad career move for him. So we shouldn't necessarily look at it as a demotion. Getting demoted to AAA was a demotion, but this is not really a demotion from that. But because he said it's not entirely that, but it was also partly that he felt like he just wanted to get away from it all somewhere where he would not be the guy in the Will Craig, Javi Baez play, I feel bad for him. So I hope that somehow he does manage to make something else the first line of his story. I don't know what that would be, but we've talked in the past about how would you want to be known for a screw up of some sort if it's just an on-field thing, or would you want to be not known at all? Is it better to be anonymous or remembered, but remembered for something that

didn't go your way, the way that Fred Merkel, who by all accounts was a great guy, but was dogged by his bad play for the rest of his life, really. There are things to recommend either. If you just want to be remembered, then Will Craig has that, but not for what he would want to be remembered by. Yeah, for sure. So I'm going to take a break from giving Otani a tongue bath today because I have done that enough and probably will do it again sometime soon. But I did want to talk about another angel whose work I have enjoyed while watching Otani. And something I've noticed whenever I see a tweet or a story about Otani, inevitably, someone in the comments, the replies will say, oh, great guy on a fourth place team. Good for him.

Something like that. You know, just kind of belittling Otani's performance because of the performance of the rest of the Angels, which I've never really understood. I don't know what the point of that is supposed to be. Is that a reflection on Otani? Are they saying that we can't care about what someone does for a fourth place team? It renders it irrelevant because he won't make the playoffs? Or are they casting doubt on him actually being good? Because if he were so good, then the Angels wouldn't be a fourth place team. I don't exactly know what they're saying there. But I think that's a product of everyone hyper-focusing on team success and playoff success, which is absolutely important, but does not diminish what Otani is doing. If he were on the worst team in baseball and he were doing this, well, the rest of the team around him would have to be truly terrible. But even if that were happening, it would not take away from what he has accomplished as an individual. But I just want to point out that the Angels are not entirely a lost cause. And as I have been watching Otani, I have really enjoyed the work of David Fletcher. And I already had some appreciation for David Fletcher. He's been a good and valuable and versatile and underappreciated

player for a few years now, but he has been on fire and he enters the so-called second half with a 24 game hitting streak, which is the longest hitting streak this year. And it's not cheapies. It's not like he's going one for four every day. He is on an absolute tear. And I'm not saying we should be on DiMaggio watch or anything. He is a long way away from that. But just to celebrate what he has done during this period. So his hitting streak started on June 13th. And if we look on the Fangraphs leaderboards, 175 qualified hitters since June 13th. The best hitters by WRC Plus have been Joey Gallo, 237, Shohei Otani, 232, and David Fletcher, 190, right above Fernando Tatis Jr. and Carlos Correa and a bunch of other name brand stars. So he has been unbelievable. He has hit 439 over that period in 103 plate appearances.

That's 439, 455, 592. He's even hit a couple homers in the last few games, which is not his calling card. Yes, he has a 466 BABIP over that period, which is not exactly sustainable. But if you watch it, he does it in such a fun way. There is no one else who hits like David Fletcher, I don't think. And you can see that he makes a ton of contact and he has one of the lowest strikeout rates in baseball, but he just slaps everything through holes somehow. ball, but he just slaps everything through holes somehow. StatCast hates him sort of. He just doesn't hit the ball very hard. And so if you look at his baseball savant page, the percentile rankings are really funny because he's like at one extreme or the other. He's like, you know,

his expected weighted on base, his expected slugging, it's like ninth percentile, eighth percentile, his walk rate, fourth percentile, but then his expected batting average is 83rd percentile, his whiff rate, 100th percentile, and that's in the good direction. He doesn't whiff, and you can throw him anything. He likes the ball high, despite the fact that he's listed at 5'9". You can throw the ball at his head and somehow he always makes contact and he doesn't really load in his swing. He just sort of slaps it and always makes contact and just hits a bunch of bloopers or he finds a hole somehow. And it is so much fun to watch because he just doesn't look like anyone else. So he's not obviously nearly as good usually as he has been over the past month or so, but he has been really fantastic and he's been part of what has kept the Angels afloat

in Mike Trout's absence. So Otani rightly stealing the spotlight from David Fletcher and everyone else on that team. But if you have not checked out his work, please do, because I don't know if he's a player who gets in a lot of highlights. I guess he does when he does hit player who gets in a lot of highlights i guess he does when he does hit a ball chops a ball that was over his head for a double down the line or something but it just looks like he could do that all day where he just pokes balls to right in almost like a jeter or lemay hue-esque way except he doesn't hit the ball as hard it's just

like if he hit the ball harder he he would probably be worse. He's like in the donut hole, as they call it, where you can find holes in the outfield because he doesn't hit the ball hard enough to get it out to the outfielders. And it's not a pop-up. So he just has these balls that fall in somehow or sneak through. And it's really wonderful to watch. So thanks to David Fletcher for being the supporting star in Otani's main story. Yeah. And gosh, like he just, he had such a lousy start to the year, right? His run through May.

I mean, he had a 57 WRC plus in the first month of the season and a 75 WRC plus in May. And I remember when I saw him in June, I guess it was when Otani came to play the D-backs. I was like, yeah, what's going on with David Fletcher? Like, this is not quite what it used to be. And then he just went on this tear. And yeah, it's been pretty remarkable since then. So not only, you know, to check him out,

but if you did check him out in the beginning of the season and you're like, oh God, what happened to David Fcher like re-engage because it's it's looking pretty different now than it was then yeah of course now that we have singled him out and he's been hitting like this for a month uh maybe he is due for some regression and perhaps if you tune in now you will miss as great as he has been for the past few weeks but But it's been a lot of fun to watch. Yeah, I mean, he had a BABIP around like 295 for the first two months of the season, and then it was 381 in June. So, you know, some of that might scooch back a little bit,

but also he's a guy who has done that at different points in his career. So, I don't know, he's just an interesting guy, right? He's probably not a 381 BABIP dude, in his career so i don't know he's just an interesting he's an interesting guy right he's he's probably not a 381 babbitt dude but his career number is like 325 so maybe he's maybe the way to think of it ban is that we are not going to jinx him we are simply noting him rounding into form uh in a way that that uh is consistent with his his some of his good stretches that's all we're doing we're just noting we're just noting a trend that's what we do on here we're trend noters among other

things i can't believe that you snuck boner back into this podcast i can't believe it sorry yeah i'm not saying gambler's fallacy here that he is due to be bad because he's been good i'm just saying he's probably due to be more like his usual self which is still fun and good so yeah and and like you noted very different than a lot of the other good that we see and that's that's great fun too can i return to the the all-star game for a second because you brought up gambler's fallacy and this made me think of it i am surprised ever so slightly that the league has shown a willingness to be not sort of not fussy or fastidious about the competitive integrity of either the derby or the all-star game because people bet on those yes they bet on them and then i think they probably lose money i think they do

that regardless of the competitive environment of those contests but i am surprised and i'm a little nervous to have pointed it out because then i worry someone will be like oh we got to tighten that up so that you can do prop bets or whatever whatever you all enjoy yes sound like i'm saying with a great deal of judgment and i promise i am only saying with this very small amount of judgment so darren revell was up in arms on Twitter because, according to him, there may have been a Trey Mancini homer in the home run derby that was actually on a pitch that came after the buzzer. And he had video footage of, oh, this was thrown up here, the buzzer sounded, and people who bet on this are going to be so mad. And it was sort of that robotic Daron Revell kind of tweeting where there was no acknowledgement of, yeah, but Trey Mancini is a pretty fun story. And this is just an exhibition and all of that.

But you're right, because he represents the people who probably had money on this. And maybe he had money on this for all I know. He was not pleased about them not taking that more seriously. You know, some things are predictable, like the sun rising or us enjoying baseball or Darren Revell having a goofy tweet. I don't know how much of my apathy when it comes to gambling is just my acknowledgement that there's no way I would win. I don't know whether for most people they fool themselves into thinking they will win

or whether that is not really the core component of why they do it, that they have are a lot of ways that I could throw away money. But I know more than the average person about baseball, and I still accept that there's no way that I'm going to beat the house when it comes to betting on baseball. So that is part of why I have no interest in it. But I guess that's not the whole reason. Yeah, I think that my thing started when i realized that i was a bad poker player which i think is the entry point for a lot of people into just gambling generally right is that they learn to play poker because and this will absolutely shock you and our listeners i have a terrible poker face i don't do a good job you know suppressing my own expressions. I'm bad at it. And so I think that

that important on-ramp, at least for some people, just wasn't there for me. And then when it comes to sports more specifically, it's just, you know, it's just never been the way that I've experienced it. I managed to get all worked up about plenty within the game without needing additional stakes. So I don't know. Again,, people should like the stuff they like. I just wish that it weren't on the broadcast quite so much. So anyway. So as the second half starts, I'm so pedantic about calling it the second half,

and it's not actually the second half, but that post-All-Star break, which everyone else calls the second half, it's maybe a decent time to take stock of the standings. I was just looking at the Fan graphs, playoff odds, and there are nine teams that have pretty solid playoff odds. Now they're not locks, but they're looking pretty good in order of descending playoff odds.

It's Dodgers, White Sox, Astros, Giants, Padres, Red Sox, Brewers, Mets, and Rays. Most of those teams are up in the 70, 80, 90-something percent playoff range. The Rays, I think, are at 68%. The playoff odds have not liked the Rays all year, really. Yeah. Yeah. But there are a bunch of teams that are in a range where they're within striking distance, but below 50 i think there are

six teams that have sub 50 playoff odds but are in the double digits at least there are also some teams that are in the picture but the playoff odds don't think they have a realistic shot like the mariners for instance who have been playing playing over their heads and have had good results, but seem kind of unlikely to keep that up. And then there are others like, I don't know, the Cardinals and the Nationals. These teams are far from out of it, certainly. And the Braves, who, as we mentioned, are down into single digits now. But if we're going to go with the playoff odds, also Cleveland 6.7% according to the playoff odds, even though they're three games over 500, but they're eight games behind Chicago. So

if we take the playoff odds at face value and say, okay, these are the six teams that are not currently in the playoff picture, but have the best shot. I wonder if you see one of these as the best candidate to sneak in or to make a run or you have a good feeling about them. So we've got the Athletics at 47.9%. We've got the Yankees at 21.7%, Phillies at 18.2%, and Angels at 16.0%. So A's, Yankees, J's, Reds, Phillies, Angels. Part of what influences my understanding of this stuff is both obviously what is not working for them super well right now, and then what theoretically could improve for them based on their activity at the deadline yeah and so some of this for me is like toronto has already made

some moves to try to fortify their bullpen i think that that is the weakness that really needs addressing and they might make some moves at the deadline i could also see them looking at nate pearson and going why don't you just throw out of the pen for us? Like, why don't you just come up and move to the bullpen and just like wreck people's day? So I could see them doing that. You know, they do have some internal options to help fortify their relief core, which is a lot of teams' weak points. So that's that, I guess. I don't know. Plus that offense is just so potent. His thumping. I don't know.

Which of these teams do you like the best? Maybe I'm having a Carson bias. I'm open to that. Yeah. I'm still so mystified. I'm open to that. losses. They had one just heading into the break when they lost that game to the Astros, just another really devastating comeback by the other team. And I kind of enjoyed the pettiness in that series because you had Aaron Judge hitting a home run in a 1-0 game that the Yankees won, and then pinching his jersey as he rounded the bases, emulating Jose Altuve in his supposed buzzer incident in 2019

when he didn't want to show his tattoo, as he said. And Judge, of course, explained the jersey pinch by saying, whenever they keep the roof closed here, it's a little chilly. I was just telling my teammates to button up a little bit, which is about as believable as Francisco Lindor and Jeff McNeil fighting over whether they saw a rat or a raccoon in the dugout tunnel. And, you know, his tattoo, it's pretty small, really, and it's not that terrible. It's strange. It's just like a name, and then it has a heart, and it looks like the heart is almost unfinished as if he just got up out of the chair and walked away before the tattoo was entirely finished. So maybe that's why he doesn't love showing it or whatever he said about his wife not wanting him to be shirtless. It sounded strange at the time, but I find it more believable than the buzzer theory, which is entirely unsubstantiated. But anyway, I enjoy that back and forth. You know, as long as no one's getting hurt, I'm fine with the petty just, you know, war of words and war of actions, but not violent actions. That's kind of fun. So sort of tired of Astros being booed.

Not that I think they shouldn't be booed. It's just kind of a stale story at this point. But when players are doing it, that's kind of fun. But I think Martin Maldonado got in on it too because he hit a home run before Altuve and he opened his jersey and said he was doing so because it was too hot. So that was his retort to Judge. And Judge, after the Altuve homer, he said, that's fun. He just hit a walk-off homer to win the game. That's big time. You do whatever you want. You can celebrate. You can walk around the bases.

It's all part of the game. So he took it in stride. Anyway, that ended in another pretty devastating Yankees loss. So we've talked a ton about why they have underperformed and how perplexing it is. And they're another team that could be a candidate to add at the deadline, could also be a candidate to subtract at the deadline, depending on how the next couple of weeks go. And they're tied with Toronto right now. So it seems like one of those teams is going to make a run and maybe squeeze in there. Not for sure, but I would say that there's a pretty good chance that if one of these teams is going to have a great second half, it would be one of those. And I had higher expectations for the Yankees coming into the season.

And maybe they get Severino back. Maybe they get Cooper back. I don't know what he would be anyway. they get Severino back. Maybe they get Cooper back. I don't know what he would be anyway. Maybe they add in some other way, or maybe they just hit better with runners in scoring position, which it certainly seems that they're bound to do at some point. So it could be too late. They're behind two good teams. They're tied with another good team. They're 46 and 43 as we speak on Thursday. So I don't know know I still think there's a chance there yeah I think that one of those two teams strikes me as the most likely I guess I'd put the

A's in third place behind those I really have very little confidence in Cleveland and I don't see them necessarily doing much to improve the club at the deadline so there's that part of it and as much as I would love Otani in the playoffs and you know the angels do get to say that they are getting the best player in baseball back at some point in the second half so their their second half additions are not you know all that shabby but uh mike trout still doesn't pitch so at the very least i think they'll be a more entertaining team in the second half because they'll have Trout and presumably Justin Upton and maybe a healthy and more productive Anthony Rendon. And maybe Joe Adele shows up at some point. So they could have a pretty decent lineup.

But yeah, the pitching is the pitching. So I don't know what you do about that. The fact that the Angels opted to sign Adam Eaton doesn't seem great for either Joe Adele or Marsh, really. So that's something that we'll probably want to circle back on at some point. But yeah, I don't know. Unless all 20 of the pitchers that they drafted are big league ready. I think they're still going to have some problems there. 19 of them were college guys so yeah there you go i think they probably still need a little more seasoning than that i also

had forgotten that dylan peters was on the angels he was dfa'd to make room for eaton so that's neither here nor there but just the thing that i had forgotten about but yeah i don't know i really want this Angels team to be better. And they have sort of maintained some kind of spark and position admirably, like you said, like the fact that they're not fully out of it having lost Trout is pretty remarkable, not only because they have the holes on the roster that they do, but just because any team losing Mike Trout is going to be in significantly worse shape than they were. But, you know, we love Otani, right? We love him and he has been quite good for them.

But you probably want another good pitcher. Yes. Although if Patrick Sandoval's changeup keeps working, then. Yeah, no, he's been great lately. You know, maybe maybe it'll be fine. But I would say that among the other teams that are sort of in that potential wildcard picture, I think that they're probably in worse shape than certainly than the A's, definitely than the Yankees and the Blue Jays. And I guess I'd probably put them behind Cleveland. I don't know if I have any conviction in that decision. But when Cleveland's pitching is healthy, it's significantly better. And they do score some, although not as much as they'd like, I would imagine, especially of late. Yes. Yeah. And the Reds have been hanging in there in the Central. And the Reds.

They're only four back of the Brewers, and they're playing the Brewers again. They went into the All-Star break with a series against the Brewers, and they emerged from the All-Star break with another series against the Brewers and they emerge from the all-star break with another series against the Brewers so if they do well in that one they could close the gap here and their pitching has been good and Luis Castillo is looking like the pitcher everyone expected him to be and the starters have been going deep into games and so their bullpen hasn't been stressed and it's pitched well when it's had to so So kind of like the Reds, but still like the Brewers more and don't know if they don't take that division. I don't know that I see them taking a wild card. So yeah, that's a tough spot to be in, but they are certainly a candidate, at least more so than the Cubs who've lost a lot of ground lately and seem raring to sell at the deadline.

Raring to sell in a way that just feels so bad, but raring to sell. So, yeah, I mean, the Central, I think that that Brewers squad is just like a good baseball team. I think there's just a pretty good baseball team. So I don't know that the very top of that division is quite as soft as I imagined it to be when we were coming into the year where I was like, any of these teams could win because they're all bad. Well, maybe not the Pirates, but any of these other teams could win because they're all bad. But I think that the Brewers are probably just a legitimately good club at this point. So how busy do you think the deadline is going to be? Tell me how tired I'm going to be.

Yeah, it seems like there's some factors that would make it not so busy. It's going to be, tell me how tired I'm going to be. Yeah, it seems like there's some factors that would make it not so busy. It's certainly, it seems to have been slow to develop to this point, maybe because of the late draft consuming teams' attentions or I don't know what, but there haven't been a ton of trades made or really credible or interesting rumors circulating. made or really credible or interesting rumors circulating. So I haven't seen signs so far that it's going to be especially busy, but it seems like some of the ingredients are there for teams that are out of it and seem like good candidates to sell and other teams that are good candidates to add. So you can certainly make some matches here and there are some pretty enticing players like there's some teams that have already done a lot of their selling and they're just bad now

and so there's not a lot left on their rosters really but there are still some good players you would expect to be dangled like I don't know if we're talking about non-rentals how much the CBA and all the uncertainty about that could complicate things I don't know if we're talking about non-rentals, how much the CBA and all the uncertainty about that could complicate things. I don't know. What do you think? be busy. But I think that there are enough teams in this category we've just been discussing where they really need to sort of break away from that wildcard tier that they will endeavor to make some

moves and really improve themselves. How widespread that is outside of that group, I don't really know. But I think that there will be activity. I wonder wonder though, if it'll be a deadline that's defined more by sort of medium sized deals than anything really particularly big and splashy. I mean, I guess of the guys that we all anticipate moving, what it's Bryant and story that are sort of the biggest names that seem likely to, to be on the go,

but beyond them, you know, I don't know that it'll be huge marquee deals but i said that in 2019 and then like the astros got granky so yeah and to name another name that might have some bearing on the conversation we just had i know there have been rumors about the yankees and joey gallo which would be a lot of fun gallo in yankee stadium the yankees and Joey Gallo, which would be a lot of fun. Gallo in Yankee Stadium. The Yankees actually having a left-handed hitter who could hit some home runs. That might help.

So yeah, that's another potential player who could be changing teams. Craig Kimbrell with the Cubs, of course. But there are still some teams that are close enough that you might have thought, oh, the Nationals are going to be out of it and maybe Max Scherzer will be on the move. And it doesn't look like that's going to be the case right now, although things could change. And then there are other players who would certainly be of a lot of interest but just might not be moving.

Players who are under team control for years to come, like Quetel Marte or German Marquez, for instance. There'd be plenty of suitors for their services, but their teams don't have to make those deals now. No. And I would imagine for both of those guys, I mean, like you said, the deals are so club friendly and they're so talented and there's still so much time left that there's not a ton of reason to move it. And like, I think that the Giants being good really has thrown a wrench in the trade deadline market, right?

Because I think at the beginning of the year, we talked about this with Grant. We had this expectation that if their rotation plan worked out and some of these guys, you know, hit and they were good, well, great. They would move them at the deadline and, you know, potentially, you know, start to accelerate their own timeline of contention. And then they're just in first place in the West. Like they're not going to move any of their starters. They need those guys. So I think that them sort of exceeding expectations has really altered this, at least the starting pitcher landscape when it comes to the deadline. And

then the next best available guy probably in Marquez isn't available. I mean, he's better than I think a lot of those those giants dudes just on pure talent but like if you're colorado i don't think you move him you probably focus on moving story which is heartbreaking given the reception he received during the all-star facilities and the reception that aaron auto got during the all-star festivities i was just like oh colorado you're having a rough time and you can't ever leave either you live here yeah though on the flip side i guess you also have the twins a team no one really expected to be sellers who should be it looks like so yeah there are teams on both ends of the spectrum there but of the nine that i mentioned with

solid playoff odds there really weren't any that I would drastically disagree with where I say, oh, they're a mirage and they're just going to completely fall apart. Like even the Giants at this point would have to be really bad to miss out based on how good they've been thus far and how many wins they've banked. And so you might very well end up with three NL West teams making the playoffs or a team like the Red Sox, for instance, who are another sort of surprise team. They're also in that boat where maybe they're not quite as good as they were in the first half, but they don't have to be necessarily anymore to make it. So yeah, it's kind of a crowded field of pretty good teams. So not that many races that will necessarily come down to the wire at least when we're talking about who's going to win the division although you're seeding and whether you win a division or whether you win a wild card that may be in doubt for a while but this is something we could

potentially revisit in a couple weeks as we get even closer to the deadline and as the picture gets clearer and as we have some trades to break down. So I just wanted to end with a stat blast that is sort of related to what we were talking about in that it concerns a team that is really not in the playoff picture, but looks like it should be based on some of its underlying stats. And with that little teaser, I will play the StatBlast song. So we got a couple of questions concerning the Miami Marlins, who have outscored their opponents to this point in the season and have not had the success that one would expect. Got a question from Mike who said on July 4th, notice the Marlins still have a plus 21 run

differential. What's the best run differential for a last place team? The Marlins seem to be really good based on this. And it's true. Their run differential is no longer plus 21, but it is still in positive territory. It's plus 17. And you look at the teams that they have a better run differential than they have a better differential than the Mets, who are in first place in the NL East. The Marlins are in last place in the NL East. There's no justice. The Reds have a positive run differential, but not as positive as the Marlins. The Marlins have a better run differential than the Yankees. They have a better run differential than the Phillies and Nationals, than Cleveland, who's

over 500, than the Cubs, than the Angels, who are over 500, than the Cardinals as well. Much better than the Mariners, who are 48 and 43, but have been outscored by 50 runs. So things have not gone the Marlins way. According to the base run standings at Fangraphs, they have underperformed their expected record by nine wins. Nine wins. Yeah. That is the most that any team has either outperformed or underperformed.

The Red Sox have overperformed by eight wins according to the base run standings but Marlins at negative nine and really I guess it comes down to the fact that they are nine and twenty in one run games and that'll happen and sometimes it just doesn't mean that much you know you might think oh they have a bad bullpen that's blowing close games or something but they don't they don't have a bad bullpen they They just have had extraordinarily terrible timing. It seems like their pitching has been unclutch or has had bad timing or bad sequencing or whatever you want to call it. If you look at the pitching leaderboards at Fangraphs and sort by clutch, which is on the win probability tab, only the Diamondbacks pitchers have been less clutch

than the Marlins, which just means that much of the damage has been done against them at inopportune times. And you can look also at baseball reference. They have splits by leverage. And if you look at TOPS plus by high leverage, so how much worse has the team been in high leverage situations than it has been overall? The Marlins pitchers have a 127 TOPS plus. In this case, higher is bad. So they've been 27% worse in those situations. And that is the worst in baseball relative to their overall performance. So things have just not gone their way And pitching has been a strength for that team. And they have this great young rotation, even in the absence of Sixto Sanchez, who has a shoulder injury and he's missing the entire season, which is a big blow. But even without him, they have for the team and for Kim Eng and her first season as GM. And you might wonder, well, why did they pick up Don Mattingly's option recently? Why do they want to bring this guy back? And we've talked in the past about how Mattingly has had sort of an

unexpectedly long tenure with a rebuilding team that has not made as much progress as you might have hoped. And he just keeps staying there staying there well maybe one reason why they want to keep him around is that the team has actually played better than its results and it's 39 50 record would suggest so that's tough anyway mike wants to know how tough is it historically speaking what's the precedent for a team like this that is outscoring its opponents and yet losing so often. So I submitted this question to frequent StatBlast consultant, Ryan Nelson, who did his data wizardry, and he found that there have been three teams ever to finish last in their division while maintaining a positive run differential. So it has been done before.

The 1984 Pirates finished last in the NL East, 6 out of 6, with a 75 and 87 record, and they had a plus 48 run differential. The 2001 Rockies were last 5 of 5 in the NL West, with a 73 and 89 record. They outscored their opponents by 17 runs. And the 1991 angels finished last seven of seven in the AL West with an 81 and 81 record. So they were 500, but they had a plus four run differential. So that's not actually that bad. I guess the 1991 AL West was stacked, but no team has ever come in last place in their league with a positive run differential. The 1966 New York Yankees came quite close when they finished last in the AL with a 70 and 89 record and a negative one run differential.

They scored 611 runs, allowed 612. No other team has come in last in their league with a run differential better than negative 40. Now on the opposite end, Ryan writes, there have been six teams to win their division with a negative run differential, all in Western divisions. And I'm more likely to remember these teams. You remember the teams that outperform, I guess more so than the teams that were bad, but had a good run differential. No one really cares if you had a good run differential, if you had a losing record or finished last in your division. But if you had a great record, then people will point out that,

well, you didn't outscore your opponents. Maybe you got a little lucky. So the 1997 Giants won the NL West with a 90 and 72 record, negative nine run differential. 1984 Royals won the AL West with an 84 and 78 record, negative 13 run differential. The 2007 Diamondbacks, who were very memorable for me, they won the NL West with a 90-72 record and a negative 20 run differential. They are the only team ever to have the best record in the league with a negative run differential. The 1987 Twins won the AL West with an 85-77 record, again a negative 20 run differential. The 2005 Padres won the NL West with an 82-80 record and a negative 42 run differential. And the 1994 Rangers in the strike year, that was a weird one in the AL West as well. They had a 52-62 record and a negative 84 run differential. So losing record, but the best record in the division, but a terrible run differential. So that was weird. The worst place a team has ever finished in all of MLB with a positive run differential is 21st place,

which has happened twice. The 2001 Rockies were 73-89, fifth in the NL West, plus 17 run differential, and the 2006 Rockies, 76-86, fourth in the West with a plus one run differential. The highest a team has ever finished in MLB with a negative run differential since 1969 to weed out teams that finished third of eight, for instance. Sure. to weed out teams that finished third of eight, for instance. Sure. Fourth place, which was achieved by the 1984 New York Mets, who finished with a negative 24 run differential and a 90 and 72 record behind only the Cubs, the Padres, and the Tigers. They did not make the playoffs.

And so the Marlins are in pretty historic territory now with a 39 and 50 record that gives them a 438 winning percentage and ryan writes that if they were to finish there that would be the worst record ever the worst win percentage ever for a team with a positive run differential the closest are the 1907 Reds, who finished 66th and 87th and outscored their opponents by seven runs. So something's got to give here, basically. Either the Marlins are going to win more games, or they are going to start getting outscored. And I don't know which is more likely. It seems more likely to me, maybe, that they will end up with a negative front differential, but also that they might improve their winning percentage to this point. Both of those things could be true, but it would be very strange if they maintained their current clip in both of

these categories for the rest of the year. Yeah. I think that when you look at assessing a club like this, surely we have the analytical tools if you're a front office making a case to ownership to be like this is a promising ball club and here's what went wrong for us but like this would suggest that we have really good some really good players who can help us next year and and we can launch into something that looks more normal like this is such an unusual circumstance so i'm sure it's disappointing to them. But I think that in some ways, when you're in that territory

where what you're doing is so aberrant relative to what we would expect, given the sort of underlying talent of the squad and what that team is producing, it's almost easier to make a case to like stand pat or perhaps improve because you're like, this is just really weird. Like, isn't

baseball weird sometimes anyway next year right like i i do think that it is a compelling case to be like we could really do something next year and it might take some people by surprise because they're going to look at our record and not have a a good understanding of just what we were actually doing as a team and then the onus is just put on the front office to say, okay, well, what about, is there something about the way that our club is currently constituted that facilitated this weird set of circumstances

to transpire? Let's fix that thing, you know? But what a weird thing. We all said that the NL East would be weird. And I think that we were right, but I don't think we anticipated the kind of weird it would be. I think we got that particular part of the puzzle wrong. Yes. I guess for the Marlins,

this is sort of the inverse of 2020. Right. They had a winning record and made the playoffs in the weird pandemic season while being outscored. And so everyone after that sort of said, well, congrats to them. They made the playoffs and they did it despite just having everyone get COVID. And so they went through a lot of adversity to get to that point. But they were outscored and probably they're going to take a step back. And so in some ways, they have taken a step back. But in other ways, they've potentially taken a step forward. So it's weird.

It's like you got a discount last year's winning because of the run differential, but you have to discount this year's losing because of the run differential. So all things told, I guess you'd rather have the winning record and playoff appearance and the run differential in the red. But from a future standpoint, from a projection standpoint, you'd probably rather have this. So that's the positive spin that we can put on this. Yeah, for sure. I think that you want to be in the playoffs, but you really want to be a good baseball team. Yes. And I just want to share a fun fact here, sort of stat blasty, but I've been meaning to mention this. We've talked a bit about how the fact that the Negro League statistics from 1920 to 1948 are now being treated as the major league statistics that they were, how that would change leaderboards and records and such. And one implication of this that I had not considered until I read it in Craig Wright's

great newsletter last week, Pages from Baseball's Past, is that we now have a new youngest ever major leaguer, which I just had not known, but it's kind of cool. As I was growing up, a famous bit of baseball trivia is that Joe Nuxhall was the youngest major leaguer ever. Pitcher for the Reds who debuted as a 15-year-old during World War II in 1944 and he has now been usurped by an even younger player and it's a hall of famer roy campanella who now has this title as youngest player ever so joe knucks hall debuted for the reds at age 15 and 316 days and campanella has him beat now he debuted debuted on June 22nd, 1937 at age 15, years, seven months and three days. So he has just edged out Knox Hole. And that's kind of cool because I've always sort of thought of Campanella as having a short career that was tragically cut short because he was in a car accident after his age 35 season and didn't play again. After

that, he was paralyzed and didn't play after 1957. And so his career looks kind of short, but now it looks a whole lot longer because he had a pretty lengthy career in the Negro Leagues before he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers. And he was not a regular starter all that time, but he did make it very early on. And just quoting from Craig's newsletter here, although still in high school, Campy was already playing professional baseball at that point. At age 15 in 1937, he began playing on weekends with the Baccarat Giants, a strong semi-pro black team. It made a big impression on Campy and his parents that he was paid more to play a couple of games than his father made in a week peddling vegetables and fish. Roy wasn't much of a hitter against the grown men, but his defense was so outstanding that in June he was signed by

the Washington Elite Giants in the Negro National League to give an occasional day off to Biz Mackey, their Hall of Fame catcher. Mackey was also the manager, and he took Campanella under his wing and helped the schoolboy refine his catching skills and adjust to professional baseball. And so the earliest box score with Campanella playing for a major league team is the Washington Elite Giants against the Pittsburgh Crawfords on June 22nd, 1937. He now has several more war at baseball reference because those seasons are counted. But yeah, imagine being a big leaguer at 15 years, seven months and three days. And then he went back to school that fall. And then after a little while, he decided to quit and start getting ready for the next season. And he stayed on as a reserve catcher for the elite giants until replacing Mackey as

the starting catcher in 1939. So that's kind of cool. Another distinction for a hall of fame player. Very cool. All right. So we can call it there. Well, as you may have divined,

we recorded this episode before the Cubs traded Jock Peterson. We told you they were raring to sell and they did so before we posted the podcast. Peterson went to Atlanta in exchange for first base prospect Bryce Ball. Peterson will replace Ronald Acuna in Atlanta's outfield, which would seem to suggest that, at least for now, the Braves are buyers, not sellers. We will see how the next couple weeks go. We also recorded this episode before the COVID outbreak that caused the postponement of the Yankees-Red Sox game on Thursday. That is not how anyone hoped the second half would start. If we have more details, perhaps we will discuss that next time.

Thanks as always for listening. 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. Tom Rhodes, Melissa Danielson, Russell Goldstein, Three Games to Love, and Gus. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcastatfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance.

We will be back with one more episode before the end of this week. Talk to you then. In this scene, do I fall right here? What's all? What's all? What's all?