Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1741: Call Up the Cavalry

Episode Date: September 2, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Wander Franco coming into his own, Kevin Newman’s steep offensive falloff post-spring training, a strikeout milestone for Robbie Ray, the Kendall Graveman��Abraham Toro trade and promotions/extensions for the Mariners’ Jerry Dipoto and Scott Servais, the new-and-improved Blake Snell, Austin Adams’ historic hit-by-pitch pace, Cardinals radio broadcaster Mike Shannon […]

The leaves of brown came tumbling down, remember? In September, in the rain The sun went out just like a dying ember, that September in the rain. Hello and welcome to episode 1741 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I am doing better now that you're back. Hello, welcome back.

Thank you. It's nice to be back. Yeah, I've missed banter. It's nice to talk to guests and get interesting people on the pod, but banter, it just isn't the same. I tried to banter by myself, and it just doesn't work quite as well. I thought of trying to do voices, maybe just play multiple parts or something. But I opted not to do that. But the monologue, it's just not quite as engaging as the banter.

No, I've heard that folks who process events in their lives out loud, sort of regardless of whether or not there are other people there, right, whose means of process is vocalization, there are other people there, right, whose means of process is vocalization, I guess do better in crisis situations. I don't remember where I heard that, Ben. I'm going to do what my mom does and say, I think I heard that on NPR. And I don't know what they mean by crisis situation. And I don't know how we mean better. But, you know, think of it this way. You were honing your skills for the day when, I don't know, you were faced with some conundrum and need to work through it quickly. So that's all. That's all you were doing.

That's reassuring. That's good. Well, I made a number of notes of things to mention to Meg when she got back. Most of them just minor, just like a random assortment of observations that I had no place to put for the past week or so. And I should note that we are spending much of this episode talking to Eric Longenhagen, lead prospect analyst of Fangraphs, about September roster expansion and some of the prospects who have been called up or perhaps are about to be called up and could potentially make

an impact on the stretch run. So we'll get to Eric soon, but just a few things that you may have missed. I don't know how plugged into baseball you were while you were away, but you missed Wander Franco getting on base every game. Yeah. He's been doing for more than a month now. That's pretty fun. Yeah.

I feel like, you know, Wander started kind of slow right although i feel as if we have perhaps learned from prospect panics of the recent past that i didn't see too much fretting over that it didn't seem like people assumed that he was gonna bust or something maybe we've no we've corrected based on the the vlad experience but he's really come on quite strong in the last little bit. And then he was like, not strong enough. Let me come on stronger.

Yeah. I don't know if he ever looked overmatched or out of place. And it wasn't like Jared Kelnick's first call up or something. It was not quite that bad. He was just not great. But he had that initial exciting game, his first game where he hit the homer, and then he scuffled for two or three weeks. And since he has really turned it on. So as we record here on Wednesday evening, he has made it on base 31 straight games, which is the longest active streak in the majors.

But it puts him in some pretty good company for someone who is as young as Wander Franco is. There are now some streaks still ahead of him. Mickey Mantle, Mel Ott, Arky Vaughn, and Frank Robinson, all Hall of Famers, are the only players who have had longer streaks in the AL or NL among players age 20 or younger. So we are stacking some qualifiers here, but this is a case where I'm okay with some qualifiers because to do what he's doing at this age, as you can tell by the company of the players who have done it previously, it's pretty impressive. This is the longest streak by a player under the age of 21

since Robinson got to 43 games in 1956. Mantle got to 36. That's the longest AL streak. Mel Ott got to 33, as did Archie Vaughn. But those are all a very long time ago. Ken Griffey Jr. got to 24 games in 1990. This is the longest since then. And it's not like he's been totally turning it on over that span, to have an on-base streak. You just have to reach base once once which isn't necessarily even a good game every time but most of his games have been good during that span he had a 75 wrc plus through july 24th which was his last on baseless game as we speak so july 25th is when the streak started he had had i think just

a little over 100 plate appearances prior to that. He's had 135 plate appearances during the streak, and he's hit 314, 385, 504. That's a 149 WRC+, which is pretty special at that age. I mean, those numbers maybe don't pop off the page the way that they would have at an earlier time, but a 314 batting average in 2021 is pretty impressive, and a 385 on base of that is pretty impressive too. So he's only hit three homers over that span, so the over-the-fence power hasn't quite shown up, but he's been getting on base every day,

which is sort of his skill set, and he has walked a lot and not struck out a lot. He wasn't even striking out all that much before so it's what we were led to expect Wander Franco would be and that has helped sort of put the Yankees away it seems like right now as far as Tampa Bay's pretty commanding lead in the AL East and hopefully he'll go on to star in the playoffs so it's been fun to see him thrive so soon absolutely and yeah i feel like um one of the things that happens when you go on vacation and we're only sporadically checking in on the standings is you're like who's where now doing

what stuff but yeah it's it's exciting to see any prospect doing well there's you know there's some like pride of authorship stuff that comes with a guy who's been aided which you know we had at fangraphs not done before franco from franco who am i ben who's he who's franco that's not anyone that we're talking about um you should leave it in because here i am back again all relaxed from vacation um but we hadn't done that at f graphs prior to franco so uh you you especially want those ones to work out right when you've gone out out on something of a limb i mean not me personally but eric and so that's exciting and then for him to be on a team that does look poised to have a reasonably long playoff run just has the potential for some really exciting October moments in in his rookie campaign so it's cool it's just cool stuff yeah Dan Siborski just wrote about him for fan

graphs and I will link to that post but he notes that he may have sort of inserted himself into the rookie of the year conversation probably still an underdog just because he missed half the year I mean he was in triple-a for half the year so it's's a lot of catch up that he'd have to do over this last month and probably won't get all the way there. But as Dan noted, like Rookie of the Year, it can go to just like not necessarily the most valuable rookie. I never get a vote seemingly, so I rarely actually review what the voting instructions are. get a vote seemingly so i rarely actually review what the voting instructions are but as dan noted

unlike the mvp award which explicitly instructs you to consider value and games played there are no similar instructions for rookie of the year it doesn't necessarily mean most valuable rookie although that's usually the way it's treated yeah but if you want to give it to someone who's had a good rookie year and also is likely to be the best rookie long term, then he has a pretty strong case. So, you know, as Dan mentioned at the end of that piece, it's just fun to see him take his place. excellent players in Tatis and Guerrero and Acuna and Soto. And Franco was sort of expected to join their ranks. And at least over the past month plus, he pretty much has. Yeah, exactly. I should note, by the way, if people are hearing little skittering of paws in the background and possibly barks, I'm not in my usual setting. So my dog Grumpkin is actually overhead today and is chasing a tennis ball with great verb. So that may come through. That's what that sound is. Gr today and is chasing a tennis ball with great verve. So that may come through.

That's what that sound is. Grumpkin is also enjoying vacation. Yes. So you've not missed Wander Franco making many outs. Another thing that you may have missed is Kevin Newman making many outs. I don't need to dwell on this, but I just wanted to mention pirate shortstop Kevin Newman. We have not had much occasion to talk about him, but he's not having a great year. And he's not alone on the Pirates and not having a great year.

But I was just looking at his stats and wincing a little bit. He has a 52 WRC plus, which is, yeah, not so great in more than 450 plate appearances. That's like up there or down there with the worst offensive full seasons in recent memory. And I was casting my mind back to when we did our Pirates preview episode this spring, because remember Kevin Newman had an incredible spring training. Newman hit 606, 641, 788 in spring training. I don't know if you do remember that because it's not really all that important to remember, but he just like, he wouldn't make it out. He didn't strike out a single time in his 33 at bats in spring training. Like you just could not get the guy out. It was the highest spring training batting average on record with a minimum of 30 at bats. There was some talk about how he'd adjusted his stance and he'd lowered his hands. Adam Frazier evidently did something similar. He had a good spring and he had a good start to the season. Newman, not so much, but in the spring, 1429 OPS and he has gone

straight from that to hitting 220, 259, 302, which I don't say just to remind everyone that spring training stats are meaningless because sometimes there is some meaning to them, especially at the extremes. And there have been people who've done studies and have shown that if you really outperform or underperform expectations in spring training, it can be a good sign for your chances of underperforming or overperforming your projection heading into the regular season. But this is not a case where that has been true. So real whiplash going from spring to regular season for poor Kevin Newman. I'm just glad that Pirates fans have Brian Reynolds because, you know, when you look at the leaderboards and you filter it down to Pittsburgh and you leave

the qualified PA filter on. So, you know, that's part of this too but it's brian reynolds who's having a great season 4.3 wins and he's got a 139 wrc plus and then there's adam fraser who is no longer a pirate and then there's kevin newman yeah adam fraser hasn't done much better in San Diego, unfortunately for them. But I was just reading this Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article from March 30th about Newman. He said, definitely a fun spring, probably the hottest streak I've ever had, which is a lot of fun, but excited for the regular season. Definitely a new slate. So looking to carry it into here. Narrator, he did not carry it into here. Sometimes a clean slate can be bad. You want to keep the old slate when you're batting 6-0-6. So another thing you may have missed while you are away narrator he did not carry it into here sometimes a clean slate can be bad you want to keep the old

slate when you're batting 606 so another thing you may have missed while you are away is i think a fun fact i saw it shared widely and i did say or at least think wow when i initially saw it which is robbie ray he hit the thousand inning mark in yet another strong start against the Orioles in this case and he has the most strikeouts ever by a pitcher who reaches the thousand inning mark and so if you look at the baseball reference career leaderboard for strikeouts per nine innings which has a 1,000 career innings pitched minimum he is now on top he is the all-time leader in strikeouts per nine, according to Baseball Reference, which kind of blew my mind for a moment. And I thought about it a little more. And obviously, you have the era effect.

So right below Robbie Ray, you have Chris Sale, Hugh Darvish, Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer, Randy Johnson, Steven Strasburg, Garrett Cole. Almost all of those guys are active and all of them are recent. Sure. strikeouts per nine as opposed to just the percentage of hitters you strike out because he'll have some long innings where he walks a lot of guys or at least he used to when he used to walk guys and so that maybe helped him rack up more strikeouts per inning whereas he perhaps could not quite compare to some of those other luminaries in strikeouts per play deference or batters based but still it's pretty impressive and I would not have expected Robbie Ray to top that leaderboard so he's topping that leaderboard in a season when he is leveled up as we have discussed recently and he has found the strike zone and is still

striking out a lot of batters so he has set himself up to really cash in in free agency but that's just a sign of the times I guess that robbie ray would be on such a leaderboard right because you look at his you know if you look at his player page you wouldn't think it's particularly remarkable you know like his keeper nine numbers are not bad but you wouldn't be like ah he's just a machine is it because his pants are so tight is this a is this a tight pant phenomena? Is it about the tight pants? It's not hurting him, clearly.

I mean, we don't know that, Ben. You don't know what the state of his gut is. Isn't that nice that we don't know? Maybe he's pitching through pain, and that is what motivates him to strike out so many batters so he can get back to the dugout and loosen the pants a little. Yeah. I mean, you see all those double digit k per nine numbers there when you look at his page and usually not black ink like one year of black

ink leading in case per nine but he has just consistently been there striking out 11 12 batters per nine right and when you do that long enough and you get to thousand innings i guess that gets you to the top of that leaderboard. But yeah, prior to this season, he hasn't even consistently been a good pitcher or even last year a close to average pitcher. He's been decent some years and he had the one excellent year in 2017 with Arizona, but hadn't totally put it together until this year. I guess he has the same ERA plus this season that he had that season, but just with even better control. So yeah, Robbie Ray, who knew? Yeah, because last year his problem was that he walked a bunch of guys, but it was fine because he was also giving up a lot of home runs.

fine because he was also giving up a lot of home runs. Now, one thing I imagine you have not missed is some news that the Mariners have promoted our old pal Jerry DePoto from general manager to president of baseball operations and extended him and also extended manager Scott Service, which was not news I was expecting to wake up to necessarily. I don't know how surprising it is or was to you. I was thinking about this just because I think the last time we talked about Topoto was a month ago, right? The trade deadline. Right.

Where he made the divisive, particularly Kendall Graveman trade, trading the Mariners closer to the Astros. The Mariners had just beat the Astros the previous night and Graveman had pitched in that game and he was revered by the clubhouse seemingly. And then before anyone knew it, he was sent over to the enemy. And a lot of people in the clubhouse were not pleased about that. And Jerry said, hey, just wait and give me a chance here and I'll make some subsequent moves. And I guess he did. And I guess that's died down a bit. And the Mariners are still probably in contention, which I guess is what earned him this extension. But I was just thinking of that in terms of Graveman and Abraham Toro, one of the players Graveman was traded for.

Because I guess this is just a classic case of you can't predict baseball. Because Abraham Toro on Tuesday won a game for the mariners over the astros by hitting a grand slam off of kendall graveman yep which supplied all of seattle's runs in that game and sure did abraham toro has just been unstoppable basically since the trade deadline he has hit like wander franco he has a 140 wrRC plus over that span. So he has out-warred Kendall Graveman pretty handily. Not that Graveman's been bad for Houston. Like his luck has normalized somewhat. He has a higher ERA.

His peripherals are still strong. And the Mariners' bullpen hasn't been bad in Graveman's absence. It hasn't been as good as it was with him. I don't know whether it would have been anyway. They were 10th in bullpen war in August, 11th in bullpen win probability added, although the bullpen pitched four scoreless innings after Logan Gilbert's five scoreless innings in a shutout against the Astros on Wednesday. That pen was probably a bit over its head, but you never know.

Like, that seemed like a long-term play. Like, hey, Toro seems like a semi-promising player. You know, he is under team control for years here. Sell high on the reliever who kind of came out of nowhere. Turns out they didn't even have to wait for future seasons. That has paid off immediately. Yeah. I mean, as you said, he has 140 WRC+.

He's hitting 311, 387, 459. So, you know, like he's getting on base mostly by hitting. And yeah, I don't know. It's been nice. Like he's striking out less than he did in Houston, but neither of these are samples large enough to really think it means anything necessarily. But yeah, he's having a nice little run for Seattle. I do find the timing of DePoto's extension curious, not because I necessarily think that that's a bad decision, but it just seems like all of the timing around what Seattle has done this year has been sort of off a little bit. It is odd that they let him do the deadline without an extension already in place in this year that theoretically could have ended up

being kind of important to them as they go into what they hope to be their competitive window here so i don't know i think that when depoto and the mariners front office writ large were able to sort of get ownership buy-in on a plan for what they wanted to do to rebuild the farm and get ready to compete after you know having good veteran players come in but coming up short a couple years in a row the thing sort of settled back into something that he kind of gotten into a place where he was able to execute on his vision and that's good and now his next challenge will be convincing mariners ownership to spend some money as they come out of this rebuild but it it does seem like, you know, set aside Depoda for a second. It does really seem

like that clubhouse likes Scott's service a lot. So that seems good. Like he got all emotional on behalf of his guys. I love it when managers get emotional on behalf of their guys. So I don't know. I guess if you trusted him to try to win with the existing major league talent that you had and a couple of big free agents and you trusted him to rebuild the farm after that didn't quite work out it's not wild to me that you would then trust him to take them into a place of contention again uh if you like the even if you don't like the results because they still haven't been to the postseason, but if you think that his process was good or that the way he's running the org is good, then that's not super surprising. For better or worse, it doesn't seem

like some of the front office personnel issues that they've quite publicly had in the last couple of years have ended up sticking to him all that much and i i don't know how to account for that necessarily but um here we are five five more years is it five years i didn't see the terms but yeah well and and now they'll have uh now they have a gm opening right because he got promoted in addition to extended so ben i think they should let us do it. Oh, yeah? Yeah.

Like, what do you think? You think we could do it? I think we could do it. I have a plan. My plan involves them spending some money. There's other stuff, too. But I think they should let us do it. Jerry DePoto podcasts.

Yeah. So we could keep doing this, presumably. You'd have to write another book, though. So, yeah. Yeah. I'm pretty sure I've said on a podcast that like the only reason I would want to work for a baseball team is to write a book about it, which if anyone has ever heard that means that no one will ever want me to write for a baseball team.

So, but you could, you could submit, you could submit the only rule as part of your resume. And then, you know, in 2022, like like you you me and sam we could tag team it we we have stuff to write about we just uh would have to wait a couple years presumably yeah i'm not sure that book actually made us appear qualified to run a baseball team i like the book but it's a very good book so i I also wanted to talk to you about, well, one pitcher Jerry DePoto traded not too long ago. And this is in relation to the Padres pitching situation,

which we will talk about with Eric shortly, but two Padres pitchers. We haven't talked about much lately, if at all, Blake Snell, while you were away, turned into a pitcher who goes seven or eight innings now. That's happened. And it's interesting how that's happened. It doesn't seem as if the

Padres pitching coach change has necessarily unlocked something in Snell. He has actually been pitching pretty well for a while. And this is really dating back to late June. Like on June 16th, he had a 5.72 ERA. He was going three or four innings every time, seemingly. He was just not really contributing to that rotation. But since then, he has pitched very, very well. And he has pitched 59 and two-thirds innings, 11 starts with a 2.87 ERA. He has struck out 74 batters in those 59 and two-thirds innings. And lately, he has been just dominant. He pitched seven and two-thirds against the Dodgers in that wild 16-inning game. And then he came back in his most recent start this week and shut out the Diamondbacks for seven innings with 10 Ks. And it seems like he has adapted his approach, and Brian Menendez wrote about this for Baseball Perspectives recently, so I'll link to his analysis. But it seems as if Snell has just kind of consolidated his pitch mix,

and he has gone away from his changeup. He's basically stopped throwing that. He throws a lot more sliders. He's just gone to that pitch all the time he's throwing more four seamers he's been like almost a fastball slider guy in some of his most recent starts and it seems to be serving him quite well and he's also not nibbling he is throwing pitches in the strike zone like i was looking at fangraphs rolling averages and just over his past seven starts, he has like almost a 52% zone rate. He has thrown more than half of his pitches in the strike zone, which is, I think, the highest rate in his career over a span of that length.

And that's not what you're used to seeing with Blake Stone. You're used to seeing him nibble and try to get guys to chase. Now you're used to seeing him nibble and try to get guys to chase. And seemingly now that he is trusting his best pitches or certain pitches, he's also comfortable coming into the zone with them and getting swings and misses anyway. And then I guess that's paying dividends in terms of his pitch efficiency and helping him go deeper into games. He left that Diamondbacks game with a no-hitter after seven innings, and he had thrown 107 pitches at that point. So they weren't going to push him past that, but just for him to get there, that's quite an accomplishment for Blake Snell. So the Padres seemingly have kind of pulled out of their nose dive a little bit lately, and he's been a part of that. So nice to see. Yeah. I feel like if you're

at 107 and you've gone seven innings you probably have the expectation that you're not going to be left in to try to complete a no-hitter right yeah especially if you're blake snell yeah but even if you're not before you want to be but yeah even if you're not blake snell you're probably like we are going to leave this effort to to the rest of the group at this point i I feel like that would be... I thought you were going to tell me about Austin Adams and how he can't... Well, I am, yes. He is the other Padres pitcher.

So Austin Adams is kind of the other end of the spectrum in terms of control, but has also been very effective. I've thought for a while that we should anoint a pitcher every year, the effectively wild pitcher of the year who best embodies the term which we've never really done maybe we should do that even retroactively because i thought for a few years that kyle bearclaw when he was with the marlins sure he really fit the description because he was quite effective even though he was walking everyone because he was striking out a ton of guys and austin adams is walking a lot of guys but also plunking guys just constantly he is constantly leading the majors in hit by pitches

even though he is a reliever who's only pitched like 45 innings yep and yet he is hitting guys more often than even starters and it's odd because coming into this year, he had not really done that. He had pitched parts of a few seasons, 2017 to 2020. He was with the Nationals. He was with the Mariners. He was with the Padres last year. He totaled 42 innings in those seasons, and he only hit two guys. And this year, he has thrown almost the same number of innings, and he's hit 18.

18. And like Snell, he seems to have really gone heavy on the slider. He has thrown sliders like 90% of the time now. And his control clearly is not the best with that pitch. And so I saw a stat that he has already hit, I think maybe it was 16 or 17 guys with sliders. And it's the most in the pitch tracking era that anyone has hit players with one particular pitch type. But also he's like in the running for some records, which you probably don't really want to have no the fewest innings pitched in a season by any previous pitcher who has had at least 18 hit by pitches is charlie morton in 2014 he hit 19 guys in 157 and a third innings

so he threw three times as many innings to hit basically the same number of guys so no one has been this efficient with hit by pitches, even though this is the era of high hit by pitch rates. Austin Adams is really in a class by himself. Well, and can I tell you something that will just make your, your head spin even more? He hit two more today, Ben. No way.

19, 19 and 20. Two more today. He hit Pavin Smith and he hit David Peralta in their game against the D-backs, which as an aside, if you're the Padres, you should probably beat the D-backs. I mean, I know that they have been better over the last month than they were at the beginning of the year, which isn't hard because they were real bad. But like if you're trying to make up ground in that wild card race, you can't be, you know, losing to the Diamondbacks.

You got to take advantage of the soft part of your schedule but he hit two more today that is unbelievable so i just updated my stat head query now so fewest innings pitched in a season by anyone with 20 hit by pitches bronson arroyo in 2004 with 178 and two-thirds and austin adams is at what 46 47 innings at this point i mean that is like Sometimes they say that someone is an uncomfortable at bat I mean this is literally an uncomfortable at bat Because you're probably getting plunked That's like it's get to the point where

I don't know if it's a safety issue Like I know he did hit someone in the back of the head Or the helmet once not too long ago. And I think he was sort of shaken by that experience. But he has continued to go out there and keep plunking people. So I'll link to this MLB.com piece with a bunch of painful but fun facts about Austin Adams and his hit-by-pitches. So the most hit-by-pitches in a season in the live ball era that's since 1920 is howard emke 23 in 1922 22 ben and that was 279 and two-thirds innings pitched so he's got a real

chance at that i mean he has a whole month left just to get a measly three more hit by pitches. He just got two today. Got two today. The most recent, Kerry Wood hit 21 in 2003, but that was in 211 innings pitched. Can I tell you how his eighth inning went today? Yeah, please. So he came in, he replaced Daniel Hudson, Cattell Marte singled,

and then he hit Pavin Smith, and then he hit David Peralta. And then Josh Van Meter walked, and then they took him out. And I'm sorry it's terrible to laugh at this, both because I'm sure he feels awful about it. There have been moments that have been really high stakes, high leverage moments against the Dodgers. And he has just hit guys.

He's just hit a bunch of guys and walked a bunch more. But thankfully, Smith and Peralta seemed like they were fine. But you just got to be, you have to be in awe. I think my favorite part of this is that having loaded the bases, knowing what he is, Tingler was like, yeah, i'll leave him in for one more yeah right yeah i mean no one can hit his slider except with their bodies bodies apparently which is a winning strategy sometimes but also a painful strategy but yeah it's like getting to the point where i mean clearly he's been quite effective not today but usually yeah and so you keep running him out there if you're the padres but like yeah you have to be careful about when you use him and also i mean i guess it gets to a

certain point where it's like hey if you can't stop hitting people like maybe you shouldn't be pitching like i know you have a good era and everything, but it does become a safety concern at some point, and maybe we're past that point now. So I don't know what the remedy for this is. They're going to keep using him as long as he's getting out when he is not hitting people with pitches. But really, got to get it under control here, Austin. Yeah.

The year that he was with Seattle, he was Austin Adams. And then they also had Brunnen Brennan, who's left for his first name might be Brennan or it might be he might be Brennan Brennan for all I know. I could never remember. And the difference. Yeah. And they just kept they got they got hurt in alphabetical order. So first it was Austin Adams and he was closing and then he got hurt and then it was Brennan

and he was closing and then he got hurt. And then it was Brennan and he was closing and then he got hurt. And then I guess Austin Adams said, I will do the hurting now. No, I'm not attributing any malice or intent. That's a terrible thing to accuse someone of. But yeah, it's a lot of hit by pitch, man. Yes. And my last note for something to mention to meg i don't know whether you caught cardinals broadcaster mike shannon discovering nfts live on the air no tell me

everything well i'll play a little clip here for the benefit of the audience and i will send you a link so that you can enjoy it at your leisure. But late in August, Cardinals radio broadcaster Mike Shannon, who is in his 50th and final season, he's about to retire. He was almost out. It's like the classic story, like one last job and something always goes wrong. And that's what happened here to Mike Shannon, who almost escaped without having to find out what an NFT was or try to tell his audience what an NFT was. But Mike Shannon, at 82 years old, encountered NFTs for the first time in some kind of read that he was expected to do. And understandably, he had no idea what an NFT was.

He had trouble pronouncing many of the words associated with NFTs. And it was all very relatable for me, for us, for a lot of people who have struggled with understanding what an NFT is and why we should know or care. And eventually they handed him a printout. And so he was able to read from it, although that didn't really seem to help all that much when he was trying to talk about crypto and various cryptocurrencies. It's just not really his natural element. I mean, one second he's calling play-by-play, and the next he is expected to talk about cryptocurrency. And this is radio, so while he is attempting to figure this out in real time, the game is going on. He occasionally does a bit of play-by-play here and there. Check out the full clips on the show page, but here's an edited excerpt. Now is your chance to come digital with the keepsakes and memorable experiences from St.

Los Cargos. You can bid now on one-on-one at Bush Stadium, NFT. What's NFT mean? Jim's going to tell us what the MFTs mean when he researches it. Here's a pitch outside and high, and it's 2-1 now on Sosa. What's an NFT? We're going to find out. We're going to have to turn this place upside down, and we'll find out what an NFT is. No friggin' touchdowns. No.

No friggin's. No. No friggin tonsils. No fundable token. Limited digital item. That's what you're going to give me? That's it, huh?

No fundable token. NFE. Oh, hey we got a printout here's a strikeout number five NFP stands for non fungible token what's the? What is that word? Cypro, uh, cypro, uh, currency. Man, they have words in here I've never heard before. Really, as someone who receives a lot of press releases and PR emails, and a disturbing number of them are NFT related, and even if I can pronounce the words, they do sort of blur together in my mind as I

read these emails as sort of just all of these arcane terms and word salad. And for a moment, at least, Mike Shannon was all of us live on the air. I feel better. I don't feel any shame that one could make a joke about the age of him relative to us if one wanted. And I would say it's disrespectful for people to make that joke. They shouldn't do it. I think that it's only natural in the course of an ad read to say, I'm going to have to goof around on something, and eventually I'm going to just lose the thread. I'm no longer going to be able to suspend the weird affect

everyone puts on when they do ad reads. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm just going to lean into being confused. Like, can you imagine if I had to read him's ad copy on air? Actually, people would enjoy that at my expense, but they would enjoy it. But yeah, that's what you're going to give me. That's it, huh? Amazing.

Yeah, it was pretty great. Yeah, I mean, it's not really an ageist thing because I think people of all ages struggle in the same way. I mean, maybe this is a sign that we ourselves are old, not in the same age bracket as Mike Shannon, but perhaps we have crossed some divide where we are no longer hip enough to know these things or understand them. But from the fairly wide reading I have done on the subject, I don't feel that bad about not knowing more.

No frigging touchdowns. Terrific. That's great stuff. Pretty good. All right. You also missed a bunch of Mets nonsense. But I got your tweet the other day about how you were going to make me explain the Mets to you when you came back. I had already invited David Roth on the podcast at that point, and really, as I said to him, he is far more qualified to explain the Mets or attempt to explain the Mets than I am. And sadly, there has been even more Mets nonsense since I spoke to David, which was just yesterday. And this was not even the fun, silly sort of nonsense. This was Mets acting general manager Zach Scott, who was arrested early Tuesday morning after allegedly failing a field sobriety test and being charged with DWI.

So he was apparently reportedly driving erratically and then he was sleeping behind the wheel. And that's not good. That's not the nonsense of the Mets that I enjoy, which is the thumbs down stuff, which is just so absurd that you almost have to enjoy it, at least if you're not a Mets fan. But this sort of stuff, the creepy front office behavior, the law-breaking front office behavior could definitely do without that. Right. Yeah. The thumbs up, thumbs down thing I thought was mostly just deeply silly. I just thought the whole thing was mostly very silly. I am always interested in how people decide to express and perform feelings in public. Like, I think it's a fascinating thing because we all feel feelings as humans. And I think that sometimes we operate

under the assumption that we should keep those to ourselves. And sometimes we just can't anymore. And how we do that, I think, is always really interesting and tells us stuff about ourselves and other people. And again, just deeply silly. A thing you can goof on endlessly, really. It's just like endless goofing potential. But stuff like this is very serious and you don't want to goof on that. So I think my preference would be that they just get their act together. You can keep the silly controversies. Those are fine.

Those we have fun with but you know don't don't drink and drive it's not it's bad for anyone to do but i always find it particularly unconscionable and people who are just like in no way limited by money right like you can afford to hire a driver for the night and make sure you're not endangering yourself or other people like you just don't have to there's no one ever has to be in other people like you just don't have to there's no one ever has to be in that position but you super don't have to be in that position so yeah he was uh jeff passon reported that he was at steve cohen's home prior to this for some sort of fundraiser for a team charitable foundation and that ended long before the DUI arrest. So it's not clear what the sequence

of events was or where he went after that. But yeah, I mean, certainly if this was related to anything that took place at that party, pretty sure Steve would have sprung for a car service or something. But at any point, wherever it was, yes, if you're the general manager of a major league baseball team you have options yep yep you sure do so let's get it together so we can go back to making fun of you instead of feeling like we need to take an opportunity to remind people to make safe and responsible choices yes please all right so we will take a quick break and back with eric long and hagan to talk about september call-ups and exciting prospects. But the days grow short When you reach September

When the autumn weather Turns the leaves to flame One hasn't got time For the waiting game All right, so as many of you no doubt know, gone are the days of complete September roster chaos, but there still are often some call-ups this time of year. There are some prospects who might help contending teams down the stretch and into the postseason,

and to get a sense of all of it, both the new roster dynamics and also the guys who you might see making a meaningful difference for their clubs in the next couple of weeks. We are joined by FanGraph's lead prospect analyst, Eric Langenhagen. Eric, hello. Hey, guys. What's up? So I guess the place that we can start with this is perhaps you can familiarize our listeners who are not aware of how this dynamic has changed in the last couple of years. What is the current state of September roster expansion? Yeah, you alluded to it gone are the days of the entire 40 man being brought up for september which created it was

the thing that i always loved is like the obscurity of some of the players who finally got to uh to play in september uh specifically when i was like working for the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, this would have been circa 08 through 2011-ish. Guys like Les Walrend and Mike Servanak and Andy Tracy and, you know, like upper level guys who are org players, basically veterans who are getting a big league cup of coffee in the truest sense, almost as an honorarium. And now the rosters only expand by two spots. So our rosters went from 25 to 26 on an active basis through the meat of the regular season. But your September rosters go from 40 down to 28 relative to like the old roster rules. So a little bit of expansion. I think, relative to like the old roster rules. So a little bit of expansion.

I think, you know, it's the right balance because as folks who watch September baseball are familiar with, like there were an excessive amount of pitching changes. It provided managers almost with like too much flexibility. It's like looking at a diner menu in the Northeast and not knowing what you're going to order because it's just so expansive. That's a good problem to have.

I like that problem. But you know, like your standard omelet with the sausage and hash browns is still on the menu. It's just, you know, that's what there is. There's not like a crab dish that you can ill-advisedly order on the diner menu now. But yeah, it's less fun in a certain way, but also pretty reasonable for in terms of accelerating pace of play in September. Yeah, mixed feelings for me. I think on the whole, it's better just for the aesthetics of baseball in September and maybe for competitive balance and the integrity of the playoff race too. Also sort of sorry for the few guys every year who will not get a chance and may never make the majors because they don't get to be September call-ups like our recent guest John Poff who only came up in September in his career

but I see the benefits of it but we will talk about the implications for the pennant race and the stretch run in a second but what does this mean for player development in that in the past when you had prospects when their minor league season wrapped up and you still had a month left of major league play to go, then there was a place to put them. You can still do that for maybe a couple of prospects, but not for a wider swath. So was that seen as really beneficial to let players dip their toes into the water at the major league level? I think in certain situations, it absolutely is, like inarguably so, especially if you're not a contending team and the player in question is already on your 40-man roster. You're not giving anything up to give this individual

big league experience in a low stakes way. And to some extent, the 40-man roster rules from the days of yore diluted the pitching population such that performance samples in September could be misleading because it was more like a spring training look in terms of the quality of the pitching that season was extended this year. So rather than September being a time when the minor league season at like the upper levels kind of wraps up and there are some playoffs, but not every team is involved in that. And the minor league season is basically over. That's still going on. So like AAA plays entirely through September and like, I think into the first weekend of October, even like AAA goes. So there's not as much of an opportunity cost as there would have been if like the minor league schedules had stayed the way that they used to be where the regular season ended at the end of August and the minor league postseason began in September. So not as, not as severe a penalization of that specific player who, you player who is already on the 40

or the big league team wants to give them a look in September against some semblance of big league pitching. But yeah, the player development stuff related to COVID impact, this is one of the smaller aspects of it. We will have instructional league instructional league dates are starting to trickle out like actually just before we hopped on i had a chunk of the arizona instruct schedule sent to me and it's actually going to begin before the minor league regular season in some of these places even ends which is totally new and so yeah like there's just some of the scheduling impacts as a result of covid are still being felt. We are definitely not back to normal in terms of a player dev cycle and scheduling standpoint. So that's another one of the things that's sort of at play that's

impacting September call-ups. You mentioned how the look that you would sometimes get during those call-ups wouldn't necessarily be indicative of what the player could really do. I'm curious from an evaluation perspective, is it better for someone like you on balance to have these guys sort of filtered through the minors and then down to instructs where you might be able to see them in person more? Or did you feel like you gained a lot from the look that you would get in September? I mean, these are, like you said, normally upper level guys. So presumably your sort of perspective on the prospects at that stage is, you know,

the concrete is a little more dry. But what does this mean for you from an evaluation perspective? Yeah, there's definitely something about an in-person look that you can't replicate. But at the same time, the big league data piece that is created by September call-ups when they're occurring with frequency is another thing that's nice for me to have, especially at that stage to go through and start to firm up evaluations for the off-season lists on the players who are in the big leagues in September because they're the ones who are most likely to be in the big leagues next year or who are a threat to be in the big leagues

next year. And so combining all the video that being in the big leagues creates with the data that the players are generating there, it's a really nice quick way to evaluate the close to the big league prospects over the course of a month and then set nice jumping off points and baselines for the evaluations for the mid and lower level minor leaguers that we do deeper into the off season. Even if it's just like an up-down relief guy who is playing in the big leagues for the first time, I can see what the pitch data looks like and place that guy up where he'll belong on the prospect list during the offseason and then use him as like a way station for the other players in a given system. Since like that player's evaluation is, as you said, like the cement on it is just more dry. And so, yeah, I think like it's give and take.

And definitely for some of the players who, you know, if there's like a 26 year old reliever at AAA who's crushing it for like the White Sox or whatever, and up he comes in September, it's not like a name that has been obvious for me to source on over the course of the season, unless the guy's like absolutely, totally dominant. But if he were at this point, he'd probably already be up. And so like getting a look at September call-ups, even just the fact that someone is a September call-up is an indication that I should be paying attention to this guy so that I'm not missing anything. So we're speaking on September 1st, and we don't know everyone who will be called up

at some point this month or even in the next couple of days. But we can talk about some possibilities and maybe a couple of guys who've come up already officially. For instance, the twins have called up Joe Ryan. He's actually getting the start on Wednesday, and he is one of the guys that they got in the Nelson Cruz trade just last month from the raise, and he's been pretty impressive for them in the minors. So not that the twins are about to make a run or anything at this point, but at least they'll get a look at one of the spoils of that trade. So give us a little preview of Joe Ryan. Yeah, it's pretty fascinating. Joe

Ryan is one of the prospects who over the course of his career, it wasn't really a big deal. It was like a seventh round pick, came out of nowhere and began dominating. you know he's a one pitch guy not in a literal sense but in a practical sense uh you know he just commands the heck out of a fastball that lives at the letters and that's mostly it like there's not a lot of precedent for someone who uses their fastball this much to succeed as a big league starter just with what they're working with right now. But of course, like, Freddy Peralta used to be this type of guy. Like, there is precedent for longer-term development even after the guy's been in the big leagues for a little while. So, you know, I think if they run him out as a starter,

then it's going to be pretty fascinating to see how that plays a couple of times through the lineup. I mean, we're talking about a guy who the last time I checked, and this probably would have been right around the time he was traded, was throwing like 76% fastballs at AAA. There's just not a big league starter who even comes close to that. The consistency with which he commands that fast ball to the place in the zone where it is effective, which is just like at the very top of the zone, is really special here. So maybe this guy is an exception in some way. I think that we have a multi-inning relief projection for Ryan here ultimately. But yeah, it's going to be fascinating to see him try to navigate a big league lineup a couple times through the order here, if that's indeed what the Twins ask him to do.

So this is a little bit of a cheat because we saw 18 innings of Nate Pearson last year, but I'm curious, you mentioned Pearson in a piece that you recently wrote for Fangraphs about young guys, prospects who might make a difference for postseason teams. I'm sure the Blue Jays hope that they will be able to work their way into that wildcard. How do you expect Toronto to use him and sort of what should fans expect from him this go round? Yeah, so Pearson's always been on the relief start line, scout-wise anyway. He's had a sports hernia injury that he's dealt with, still dealing with it. I expect he's going to have some sort of off-season surgery. And since he's been rehabbing for, I want to say

since mid-August, he's been going. He's been in the bullpen. And where he is on our prospect list is where we think he belongs if he were just to be a reliever long-term because of the quality of reliever that we think he's going to be. Iver long-term because of the quality of reliever that we think he's going to be. Like, I just think this is like, you know, better than James Caronchak has been. It is, you know, like, all right, if you know someone's going to be Liam Hendricks for half a decade, where does that guy belong on a prospect list? And it's just like, where we have Nate Pearson right now? And he's throwing really hard. He's been sitting 98 plus and his repertoire has been pared down. That was part of the reason he's projected as a reliever. According to some scouts and orgs and publications is that he had to develop more of a repertoire coming out of a junior college in Florida. And now that's just sort of been pared down. So you'll see one breaking ball and the fastball out of the bullpen. And it's absolutely the type of relief weapon that the Blue Jays need with, you know, Julian Merriweather having gone down, like that was a

guy whose stuff fit in the back of the bullpen. You have Jordan Romano there who throws really hard, but like we want to compete for a championship. Like you need big time pieces in your bullpen, I think. And he gives them something that they don't have right now. Like what the White Sox have in Garrett Crochet and Michael Kopech and Hendricks, the Blue Jays only really have in Romano. And it would, I think, be a really big deal if he is a fully operational late inning bullpen piece. And just in terms of what the arm strength has been like since he's returned, it is there you know they're within shouting distance of a playoff spot and i think you know especially if you're in the wild card game having a piece like

this in your bullpen is a huge huge deal and uh so i think that yeah he he's one of a couple still eligible prospect the arms who toronto might call on here at some point. Anthony Kaye and Thomas Hatch are still lurking in the minors, more as emergency, one of our starters just went down type of depth on your 40 man. But I could see either of those guys and Pearson just being one of the best 26 players to end up on a postseason roster if the Blue Jays do indeed make it. And both Anthony Kaye and Hatch are like sitting 92 to 95. Hatch has been better from a command perspective more recently than he was in the middle of the year, which is part of why he's not just on the big league roster. And both he and Hatch I think are like long-term multi-inning relief type pieces, which I think would be a

great role for them to play in the Blue Jays bullpen here in September or ultimately in the playoffs if they make it. One of the most intriguing potential call-ups this month is another right-handed pitcher who is still on the race, Shane Baz. So another ALA's team, another potential major impact guy who could come up. Do you expect him to? And what would he give them if he does? And of course, Boz is part of the Chris Archer trade that never stops giving. Right. Yeah. It's funny. I've been working on the NL piece of the potential call-ups and rehabbers and stuff. And yeah, there are just some teams like the Rays who have had a litany

of injuries that's created a lot of interesting fodder for these pieces and who I think that some of the orgs who anticipate this stuff a little better than others are probably doing advanced work on some of the players who I'm about to mention. So Shane Boz is definitely one. Boz has been a known high profile prospect since he was a high school underclassman. He's just always had that. Boy, look at this young guy, 6'4", built like he is with the kind of arm strength that he has. I think we talk a lot about the high schoolers with big arm strength from day one because of their rate of failure. Guys like Riley Pint and Tyler Kolek, et cetera. But this is one where it's just worked out. From a frame and athleticism

and delivery standpoint, he has always checked the traditional scouting boxes and has lived in that 93 to 96 range pretty consistently his whole life, as long as I've been scouting Shane Boz. He was at the Futures game. I saw him there. That was my most recent look. And he's different now. The uptick in strike throwing that Boz has exhibited in 2021 might be real. I tend to take a longer view when it comes to strikeout and walk rates for hitters and pitchers, but Boz's delivery is a little bit different. He's exclusively from the stretch now, which is what the Rays did with Tyler Glass now that got him into a more acceptable strike throwing range and enabled him to start. Obviously, he still has some workload limitations that he's been subject to when healthy. And I

think that might apply to Boz as well. You know, Boz is sitting in the upper 90s with a better changeup than the breaking stuff has been of late. He was always like a four or five pitch guy. And now it's really like two and a half, three pitches. The slider utility for Boz, I think has regressed a little bit. It doesn't have that two plane break that plays as a weapon to the back foot of opposite handed hitters anymore. It really just has feel for a changeup that that puts away left-handed hitters now, and I think that's fine. As I'm sitting here trying to figure out what this guy is going to be long-term, I've been reticent to move him to this point,

even though he's been utterly dominant up through now AAA, like split between double and AAA this year, just because I do have questions about the breaking ball utility ultimately. But that's what I said about the Reds, Luis Castillo, right? Like, I was just like, oh, this is really a two pitch guy. The fastball shape is suboptimal because it's like a lower slot. And it just didn't matter. Like there's enough action and velocity on that fastball. And his changeup is utterly unbelievable. Like that he still is one hell of a big league starting pitcher, probably should have been, you know in the top 15 or 20 prospects in baseball when he was there. So that's where I'm at with Boz long term.

But yeah, like with the other names that are hurt in Tampa, you mentioned Chris Archer. Nick Anderson is rehabbing. He does not look like peak Nick Anderson. He's been like sitting 92, 93. David Robertson is coming. David Robertson's looked pretty good, like 91, 94 with four pitches. Shane Baz's Olympic teammate. they lack without a fully healthy Nick Anderson. So I think that, yeah, you could see this guy throwing high leverage innings for the Rays down the stretch here. Or in October, it would not surprise me if he or Hunter Green with the Reds were – I

just like comp their potential narrative arc over the next couple months to like 2003 Francisco Rodriguez. Yeah, you mentioned Green. He was who I was going to ask you about next just to make you preview your NL piece a little bit. What do you sort of expect there? Because I think the NL is interesting. You have Green and then I guess once we move to the West, we should talk about a guy who maybe won't necessarily be coming up or hasn't yet in Mackenzie Gore, but let's start with Green. So what should folks expect there? Because that Reds team, they're in a tight race with the Padres. It is funny that in some respects,

pitching is so easy to evaluate because so much of it is quantifiable, and yet it is still so volatile from an individual standpoint for reasons that are often totally difficult to forecast. And so with Hunter Green, Hunter Green, again, has just been known about since he was a literal child and was on the cover of Sports Illustrated as a high school kid. And yet he's changed in significant ways three times over the last two years, one of which we didn't even have a baseball season during which to evaluate him. So Hunter Green, he had Tommy John surgery. His arm slot during the 2020 all-site coming back from TJ was totally different. It had lowered considerably to the point where this guy was like almost directly over the top

before his Tommy John and then was like an extreme low three-quarter slot at the 2020 alt site. And in talking to Red's developmental folks about why that happened, it had to do with like his posture. His posture changed during the TJ rehab layoff and then COVID and his arm slot just naturally fell a whole hell of a lot in a way that altered the shape of his fastball significantly and his slider. And in 2021 in the minors, it's in between those two. So it's changed again and is now resting in between where it was before his Tommy John, but also above what it was at the 2020 alt site. So what his fastball shape looks like now is more like there's a little bit more carry to it.

It's like run and carry. Actually, over the last couple of weeks in sourcing pitch data on green for this, yeah, this piece I'm writing on like the potential NL contributors here down the stretch and in the playoffs, it's falling. So he was sitting 99 to 100, like sitting there, guys, at AA

and then early on in AAA. And now he's only, I hope everyone can hear me. Those are my fingers doing air quotes. He's only sitting like 97, 98 now. So I don't think that's bad. Washed. Interesting. It is interesting that it is starting to tick down and whether that's just because, hey,

It is interesting that it is starting to tick down and whether that's just because, hey, this is the first time that Hunter Green's had a workload this large in a couple of years because he had a TJ rehab and then we had a pandemic season that canceled minors. Or if like maybe there's something wrong. I don't think so. He's still throwing really hard. And, you know, like he's fastball slider right now. I bet you threw him in the Reds bullpen. He'd be awesome with tj anton going down again and eating tj which is you know nominative determinism if you there's ever been any of it

then you're like yeah like hunter green could could be in the reds bullpen tomorrow i bet he'd be freaking awesome uh he's still his change-up is very much in the developmental stages he doesn't need a change-up he just needs a third pitch the fact that we're talking about a guy with a three-quarter slot means that it maybe is a little bit harder to have two breaking balls with well demarcated movement. And so I think changeup development is ultimately an important piece of what he's going to be long-term. But in terms of the rest of this year, I bet, yeah, you throw this guy in the Reds' bullpen tomorrow, and I bet he's parked at 101 to 103 with his adrenaline pumping. And so we could see that in the playoffs, and it would be awesome.

So, Meg, you just mentioned Mackenzie Gore, and I guess we might as well cover him here because, Eric, you recently documented some changes that he has made too, which may explain why we haven't seen him and probably will not see him super soon. I don't know. Like, I think that the Padres are in a position where you might need him. I have lost track of which... They're signing Jake Arrieta. Right. Yeah. I've lost track of which days Gore has been throwing on and which big league starter that

coincides with for the Padres. And I know Darvish has come back and made a couple of starts since he went down with a back injury at a start here in Arizona that I attended. But like, you know, Mackenzie Gore, they reworked his delivery and it's pretty significant. The pacing of it is totally different. Folks should go to Tess Tereskin's Twitter account. I retweeted it from my account, but Tess does stuff for us. And side-by-sided Gore's delivery from spring video I shot compared to Arizona Complex League rehab video from like 10 days ago that I shot.

You know, his velo was up in that outing, sitting more 95 up from like the twos and threes, touch a five or six that he was for me during the spring. His arm path has totally changed. Not really the path of it, but the swing of it. He's got the arm action change that is similar to Lucas Gilito's alteration where it's really short now. Warming up his feel for it is not quite there. It's so new. It hasn't really changed the shape of his stuff in a meaningful way. so new. It hasn't really changed the shape of his stuff in a meaningful way. It's really just about trying to tighten up his arm action, I think, so that it's a little bit more consistent. You know, I bet he could give you 12 big league outs right now. He's not going to work very efficiently. That level of command has just sort of gone away. But his feel for locating the change

up consistently, his stuff is not so nasty his fastball is nasty he's got a power pitchers fastball that plays with the letters it's hard especially from a lefty it has that angle it has that sort of like directly efficient spin axis although it's not like uh it's not as perfect and uniform on the high speed video as it was in 2019 Gore version, which I also have the high speed of. But like his secondary stuff is going to be location dependent because it's not utterly dominant, vicious secondary stuff. And what I saw from a change up consistency standpoint in that rehab outing was very

encouraging in that regard. It's a lot of that like enticing changeup location that is still hard to hit. The curveball depth, and this is again corroborated now by pitch data sourcing that I've done since I saw this start. His curveball depth is a little bit worse over the course of a small sample here with this new delivery. And there's more heavy reliance on the slider slider which was better in my look than it was in the two looks i had at gore during the uh during the spring before he like kind of voluntarily

demoted himself and they shut him down and reworked his delivery and all this stuff so i do think he's a viable emergency option for them i think that it would be in a limited capacity more like what we saw luis patino doing for them during the playoffs last year, where it's like truncated outings, he's working inefficiently, but he's giving you more or less 12 outs, and you're hoping to bridge the gap with other relievers. Where we stick him this offseason on a prospect list, your guess is as good as mine. It's really bizarre to have this guy have been so dominant in 2019,

and then it just to totally go away, basically. His feel for locating just disappeared. But I do think it's not terrible. He's not like totally unsalvageable. And I do think that as thin as the Padres pitching staff is right now, if you ask me if I'd rather start Mackenzie Gore or Adrian Martinez, I'd rather start Mackenzie Gore. So we may or may not see Gore, but I'm sure there'll be a couple of other guys who maybe come up and help contending clubs. So of the folks who we haven't mentioned yet, is there anyone who you're expecting that we will see in September who you're particularly excited to see get a promotion? I think you want to watch the Yankees, Clark Schmidt, who dealt with an injury for most of the year. His stuff seems to be where it was before the injury, 92-95 with a big time breaking ball. So I still think that he's probably higher in the pecking order than Davey Garcia with the Yankees, but probably behind Luis Keel at this point,

just because we've seen Keel and he's been very good. Also in that division, Boston, you know, Tanner Houck's been up plenty and mostly been dominant. Connor Sebold and Cutter Crawford are two names at AAA Worcester to watch. Sebold, who the Red Sox got in that Heath Embry. Who else came over in that deal? They traded a bunch of relievers to Philly last year for Sebold. Sebold was rehabbing for the first half of the spring and summer. And it's low 90s with a change up in command, the type of guy who outperforms typical scouting projections. He could probably take a turn in the Bo Sox rotation if he needed to tomorrow.

Cutter Crawford's had a little bit of a velo spike. Both those guys have been on Daily Prospect Notes fairly recently, so folks should check that out. But I do think Connor Siebold and Cutter Crawford, especially if something happens to one of the Red Sox starters, they could be up in a moment's notice and contribute to that effort. And then Enoli Paredes was a big Astros prospect who struggled pretty mightily with walks, who they have added to the roster here for September. To see how he progresses maybe with Brent Strom in his immediate vicinity for the next month might be valuable.

So like watching Ole Paredes, he's got big, big stuff. Jose Urquidy has been rehabbing. Josh James has been rehabbing. They've both been sitting like 94, 96 during their rehab outings for the Astros. So neither of them are prospect eligible, but they are coming. And I think they're going to help a competitive Astros team. Justice Sheffield with the Mariners has been pitching in the bullpen. Velo's been down a little bit there, 90-92 based on my sourcing.

So maybe the horses aren't really coming for Seattle. Going through some of the NL guys, which this would be a nice little preview and supplement to the article. In the East, I haven't hit the Braves guys yet. Some of them are up like Ian Anderson just came up from rehabbing. Jordan Yamamoto with the Mets, 89-92. Noah Sundergaard before he went down with COVID was sitting 92-95, which is obviously kind of down for him, but still good overall.

Serenity Dominguez with the Phillies, a lot of 93-95 initially upon rehab, more 95-96 here of late. Used to be a big-time cutter guy, just natural cut on like 97-99. The cut action on his fastball is sort of gone. I don't know if that's intentional or not, or if it's just like something that has naturally occurred as he's coming off of injury. But more two-seam action here than there used to be from Sir Anthony Dominguez,

so that's pretty interesting. Vince Velasquez, again, not a prospect, but rehabbing for a team that has playoff aspirations. His velo is also down, 91-94. In the central, Justin Topa is a name to watch out for. Pitched about 10 innings last year for Milwaukee. Indie ball guy they signed, like 97-plus, low slot, pure lateral action on a slider.

He's thrown a couple of rehab innings and his velo is all the way back, like 97, 98 with sink. So watch that name for Milwaukee. Ethan Small is another one where he's not on the Brewers 40 man, but he is at AAA. He's a big time prospect. This is a guy with like plus plus carry on his fastball. He's been 92, 93 92 93 has really only used his change-up since uh at least when he rehabbed here in arizona his breaking stuff is not very

good he's like fastball carry change-up guy who you're hoping develops a breaking ball so that that's another name and then trey wingenter who's another padre's arm he came in after mckenzie gore at the start i was at he's 94 97, 97. He's coming off a TJ. So that might be a guy who quickly bubbles up for the Padres bullpen here. His stuff, just again, like working on a pitch data call with a front office person, his stuff is the same as it was in 2019, almost exactly. So I think that's a pretty comprehensive look at some of the names that I've been asking around about. Again, not all of them are prospects, but seem to be relevant.

You know, everyone's just dying for pitching depth. If everyone can remember what last postseason was like and how ridiculous it was in terms of like injuries. Obviously, there are some teams who are just dealing with that reality right now, like the Padres and the Rays and the Braves to a degree. So, you know, I think that the pitching piece of this is the most relevant one to be looking at right now. Yeah, I mean, it seems like, yes, the roster rules have changed, so the expansion is not as large as it once was. But on the other hand, you have COVID creating depth issues and other injuries. And then you have the fact that you can't make trades this month.

I mean, you can't just sneak someone through waivers. So if you're really desperate, like the Padres were when they picked up Arrieta, or you mentioned the Red Sox, like they just threw Brad Peacock out there as just like a sacrifice to Tampa Bay. He had never pitched in the majors this season, and he had like a 7-plus ERA in AAA even. So it's like at that point you're not expecting anything good out of him really it's just like you need someone to take the ball and those are meaningful games for that team so that kind of changes the calculus where yeah you

don't want to rush anyone who's not ready of course but if the concern is just that like they won't be quite as good as you would want them to be like if your alternative is just like someone who is going to be knocked around then you might as well and then if i'm looking if i'm just like looking now at the mlb transaction wire here to see what's going on in the last 48 hours or so rocky's fans like watch what some of these bullpen pieces who just came up do like uh justin lawrence it's weird for a guy with a slot as low as that to sit 97 plus. And with like coherent development, maybe Justin Lawrence could be a real bullpen piece. Antonio Santos, same thing, you know, just like 93, 96 power relief prospect, but is a Colorado Rocky. And so like, that's generally been bad. They called up somebody else. There was another, there was another Rockies guy who I wanted to mention who's escaping

me right now. But like the Rockies bullpen now has a bunch of interesting young guys who have been on the prospecting radar to some extent for quite a while now. Kevin Padlow, who the Mariners claimed from Tampa Bay is another, you know, like this guy hits the ball in the air a ton and has plus power. Bay is another, you know, like this guy hits the ball in the air a ton and has plus power. So maybe he'll be something, even though he's relatively positionless on defense. Denelson Lemaitre is up too. That's another one I sourced on. He's like 94 to 97. Again, not a prospect, but people should probably know that he's coming up. But there haven't been a

whole lot of names added to rosters who people don't know. It's been guys who've gotten a cup of coffee already, like Hoy Park with Pittsburgh, who had a big time statistical breakout as an older guy in the Yankee system and then was traded for like Clay Holmes and stuff ahead of the deadline. Definitely leveraged. Diego Castillo and Hoy Park were both sort of 40-man leveraged from the Yankees. Le'Win Diaz, who was, what trade was that? Sergio Romo from Minnesota, from Miami to Minnesota, got netted the Marlins' Le'Win Diaz,

who was a husky young guy who the Twins asked to lose a lot of weight. He hit for no power in the year after he had lost all that weight and then started to sort of rebuild some of it into strength. His swing doesn't really work. He's kind of got like the Eric Hosmer,

Jason Hayward style swing, but can really pick it at first base. He's a lot of fun to watch play defense. And I do think that he's like a James Loney-esque piece of some sort. Caber Ruiz is awesome. His numbers hitting fastballs were so ridiculous at AAA this year that I got

an unprompted data set from someone because it was so ridiculous how dominant he was against fastballs. I think he's got a chance to be an all-star catcher for Washington. AJ Alexie, the Rangers called him up. Pennsylvania kid, big time arm strength and stuff. Probably a reliever. The Diamondbacks brought up a bunch of guys. Andrew Young, Stuart Fairchild, Jake McCarthy. A bunch of potential pieces who deserve to get some run for a non-competitive team in September as they cut Asdrubal Cabrera loose and stuff like that. It's a lot of guys like that. I don't know that anyone added other than Ruiz.

It was like, oh man, this is so exciting. A September call-up debut of a potential superstar on a rebuilding team, where that's why the fans should be watching for the next month. That doesn't seem to have occurred just yet. Yeah, and I was going to ask you about Ruiz because he's someone who he was up,

obviously, earlier this year with LA and last year even. But it's been nice. I mean, it eases the sting somewhat, I suppose, of trading Max Scherzer and Trey Turner, that you get to see Josiah Gray just step into the rotation right away and pitch pretty well, and then Ruiz shows up. So I don't know if there's anyone else who comes to mind as like impressing even post-trade deadline who's been up for a few weeks or month at this point, but we've actually gotten a look at them. But that's always nice, I guess, when you can get someone. I mean, just to name another Nationals catcher who doesn't have the reputation of Ruiz, right, but who has been on fire since he was traded from Toronto, Riley Adams, who went over for Brad Hand, who's now gone from the Blue Jays. So I guess the Nationals already won that trade regardless of what they get out of Adams from now on. Adams has been fascinating for a really long time. He was, again, known about as a high school underclassman, went to the University of San Diego. And at his size, like he is such a hulking guy. There were thoughts that this guy can't actually catch and

he's just been fine. Like he's got big time arm and his mobility back there because of his size is what was thought to potentially be an issue. And it's just been totally fine. And he's going to strike out a bunch, but he's got rare power for a catcher and is just like built the way he is in a way that we see a lot of these big league catchers sort of break in their mid to late 20s pretty consistently. And it's often the guys who have gigantic power who figure out other stuff. And when you can take the beating that a catcher takes back there,. You just give yourself chances constantly to break out and do something like what Travis Darnot did or what Tyler Flowers did. The list is long and it's almost always these bigger, stronger body guys with power. And Riley Adams is absolutely

in that vein. If there are other groups of players that people interested in this stuff want to watch, it's like the Angels pitching staff has like Jose Marte, who throws really hard, who came over from the Giants in a deadline deal. Converted outfielder Elvis Peguero, who came over from the Yankees in the Heaney trade, I think it was. Who else? They brought up somebody else recently. Oh, Paki Naughton. Paki Naughton, who is just like a viable viable, everyone needs this one war arm with roster flexibility. And that's what he is going to be. So watch those guys and see what kind of long-term fits they might be. For the Rangers fans out there, Glenn Otto, who came over from the Yankees in the Gallo trade, he just got brought up. Probably a slider monster reliever. brought up probably a slider monster reliever nick snyder who's got one of the best arm actions i've ever seen and is really just like a fastball only guy who your fingers crossed are that like

the athleticism and the beautiful nature of his delivery yields something else like let's see what he can do at the big league level uh yo help pozo who's sort of astudio-esque in his body and his uh statistical profile is going to be of interest to folks who listen to this podcast almost surely. Jake Latz left you with a breaking ball who's had like experimental stem cell treatment on his arm because he was so injury prone. He's in the big leagues now. Edward Cabrera with Miami who actually, I kind of want to source pitch data on him because it looks like his arm slot's different than the last time i saw him but i don't know for sure he's up now and is like in the middle of the top 100 list so there are definitely guys some of it is like you got to be a prospect hipster to know about some of these

dudes already like to know that yanni hernandez's strikeout rate is like super low and so are his exit vlos and like what kind of player is this guy going to be you probably have to be following our work consistently at the at the site to have any kind of interest in this guy going to be, you probably have to be following our work consistently at the site to have any kind of interest in any of this stuff at all. But maybe, maybe. At the very least, you've saved us like 20 future meet a major leaguer segments because you just named a whole bunch of guys who will be big leaguers. Yeah, but we already had Paki not banked,

so we're not missing out on anything. I'm curious. I know that the rosters for this are not yet fully announced. But one thing that you will get to enjoy, even if guys aren't getting called up to the big leagues this fall, is the return of the Arizona Fall League, which we obviously went without last year because of COVID, although there were instructs in the desert. went without last year because of COVID, although there were instructs in the desert. And I'm curious if there's anyone who you've heard is going to be attending the Fall League who you're particularly excited to see. Yeah. I haven't really been fed any of the high-profile names and I haven't even sat and thought to draw logical conclusions about who some of the individuals will be. You could probably sit here right now

and look at about where some of the injured prospects are developmentally and go, the fall league is a good fit for this guy who played in high A in 2019 and then was at the all-site last year or whatever and then didn't play this year. There are ways of triangulating who some of the guys are likely to be. I've been sourcing more on instructional league stuff. I know the fall league is gonna start on or about October 13th, whereas the instructional league dates that I have precede that, like starting late September.

So I've been a little bit more focused on that. It is still unknown how many teams are actually gonna do instructs. I think the Delta variant piece is causing some teams to rethink it. Most of the West Valley teams here in Arizona now have a schedule. I think everyone but the Mariners in the West Valley are going to play instructs. I don't know about the Brewers yet. The Cubs have typically done intra-squad stuff and not played other teams, but have done some amount of activity. The Florida piece of it,

I think is another variable because of COVID there being slightly different than it is in other places. So like I was on the phone with someone a couple hours ago, who's still not sure if their org is going to do instructs or not because of the COVID piece of it. Like it is still causing some consternation in the front office in terms of having a bunch of young Dominican kids mostly playing instructional league ball in Florida. So that part of it, I don't know just yet. But yeah, I expect fall league should go off. I don't know what it's going to be like in terms of allowing fans, but if there were no restrictions, it would still be pretty easy to distance from everybody at a typical Fall League game just because they're so poorly attended, which I love.

Yeah. So it shouldn't be a problem. I will drag your ass, Meg, to Fall League games. Oh, yeah. I love Fall League. Because of your editorial schedule, I haven't been able to get you to come to any of the complex level stuff, but you don't have an excuse when there are day games for Fall League. Oh, yeah. Fall League is great.

It's, you know, like you said, there aren't a ton of people there and it's really nice. You just get to sit and watch baseball and be like, hey, I now have some sort of like mental image when I'm editing a prospect list about this guy. It's just really, it's nice to be able

to fuse those ends of the- So you can disagree. I don't know. I've seen this player, Eric, so I think he should probably, yeah. I look forward to getting plenty of that. I'm definitely prone to that. I've seen two innings of this guy, so I don't know. You might be a little high on him. Turn you into a human comment section. Yeah. One last question for you. Bobby Witt Jr., not a name you mentioned, no pressing reason for the Royals to call him up really. But of course, there was some buzz about him potentially even making the opening day roster and the Royals are a team that doesn't

tend to play service time games as much as some others. And he has pretty much lived up to expectations. It seems at least from afar in the minors this season, putting up a 945 OPS across AA and AAA as a shortstop, which is pretty impressive. So is there any chance of seeing him or has he just sort of solidified his case for making the opening day roster in 2022? Yeah, that's a good question. I think that you hit the nail on the head in terms of identifying why he might be a viable candidate because of how he's performed in the org that he plays for. I don't have any intel on his potential September debut. I would assume that if he crushes next spring that the Royals, again, for the reasons you mentioned, would be very open to him being on the opening day roster.

Adelberto Mondesi hasn't exactly seized control of that job via injury and inconsistent performance and i like nikki lopez as a player but he's been fun surprisingly productive with a very unusual skill set i've been meaning to mention him at some point just because he's a good little player great plate discipline and contact and like zero power seemingly and yet like also never gets caught stealing and pretty good defense. It's just like, it's added up to being a pretty valuable player after like not being that at all in the last couple of years. Yeah.

When Nikki was a prospect, there were some mostly forward thinking front office people who were like, I think this guy belongs on the back of your hundred. And I think that I kind of split the baby and 45 them. And I think still long-term that's what he is. But yeah, with witty, like it's funny.

Cause in 2019, the complex level here in Arizona was Bobby Witt, who had just been drafted CJ Abrams, who had just been drafted and Marco Luciano, who was making his stateside debut basically. And those three were like of a piece. They were all like sort of lumped together and who scouts preferred over the other was kind of dependent on their individual taste. Witt was a better defensive player than either of them, a sure bet to stay

on the middle infield at that time. Luciano had the best hit power combination of the three and Abrams had the most projectable body and best feel for contact of the three whereas like Bobby Witt might be a four bat at maturity I still think that ultimately you're you're looking at someone who's going to strike out a ton but because he's a capable middle infielder with ridiculous power for someone who plays that position. He's still going to be a star. And keep in mind that that's the type of thing that we were saying about Fernando Tatis at the time. Was that, hey, this guy is going to strike out a ton.

It's enough that whether you prefer him or Acuna or Vlad Jr. or Otani to one another is up for debate. And that hasn't really been a huge issue for Tatis. He's just been incredible so I think that like that's sort of the trajectory that Bobby's on and as CJ Abrams has been hurt and Luciano's development has progressed a little more slowly because the Giants are just not quite as aggressive that his proximity to the big leagues means that at this point like you'd have to the people who at the time were like, you know, I'll take Bobby Witt over these other two guys are, as we sit here today, like they're the most correct, I think. So I still, you know, like I love C.J. Abrams long-term, but like at this point

sitting here, yeah, Bobby Witt is the guy of those three who is most likely to be up and has responded to the challenges that the Royals have asked of him. And he's got, I think like 30 bombs or something like that split between double and triple A as the age of most guys who were just drafted out of college and are, you know, some of which I'm seeing debut here in Arizona on the complex. So he's an unbelievable prospect. He's, you know, a top 10 universal prospect, no doubt, probably a top five guy and a high probability all-star by virtue of his tool set all right well that's all i got so follow eric on twitter at long and hagen read him at fangraphs look out for his upcoming pieces

that will be this podcast conversation in written form and you can also hear him pretty regularly on fangraphs audio thanks as always eric my pleasure guys thanks for having me well wander franco got on base. Although he didn't stay on the bases, he just rounded them. He hit a two-run opposite field homer off Chris Sale to produce the Rays' only two runs against the Red Sox on Wednesday. Actually, he also doubled, so I suppose he spent some time on the bases. Anyway, his on-base streak is now up to 32 games, one short of Ott and Arkey.

And Joe Ryan pitched pretty well in his big league debut for the Twins except for a three-run homer he allowed to 29-year-old Frank Schwindel, who is somehow hitting.337,.385,.644 with seven home runs in 101 at-bats since the Cubs claimed him off waivers from Oakland in July. Go figure. Just a quick PSA or request for assistance. As many of you know, there is an Effectively Wild Wiki. It's a very handy resource for me, but also for a lot of listeners. If you want to go back and reference something that was said on an earlier episode without actually re-listening to the whole thing, that wiki was created by listeners and it's administrated by listeners. And foremost among its

contributors has been Adam Mayell, who has done hundreds of episode recaps for the wiki and has also compiled the email questions database. So we're very grateful to him for his work. And he is still chipping in, but he's having trouble keeping up and really he shouldn't have to shoulder the whole load himself. So he posted in the Facebook group asking for assistance. Doesn't have to be regular assistance, just an episode here or there would help. I will link to his post in the Facebook group, which you can see even if you're not in the Facebook group or on Facebook at all. There's a sign-up sheet where you could claim an episode, and then you can just follow the template from previous episodes and fill it out,

just kind of jotting down the basics of what transpired on that episode. So if anyone has enjoyed the wiki and would like to give back a little bit and lighten Adam's load, that would be much appreciated. Again, check out the show page for relevant links. That will do it for today. 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, keep the podcast ad free,

and get themselves access to some perks. Emily Johnson, Robert Marinko, Carl Brass, Dino Champlone, and Natisha Hutchins. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcast.fancrafts.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. You better get up for your mama.

I know you're ready to get over by anyhow.