Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1743: On the Bubble

Episode Date: September 8, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Mike Yastrzemski, “bubble guts,” and the right way for a manager to publicize a player’s intestinal distress, then follow up on Miguel Cabrera and the factors that influence players’ career ratios of pitchers homered off of to total home runs, review the state of the standings, discuss the […]

I am a sympathy in CNN, now the new cycle started, don't think I can take it again. Living in a bubble, eating out of time, I stick my head out every once in a while. Life is full of trouble, what am I to do? Just another day at the zoo Hello and welcome to episode 1743 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing alright. I have a little bit of banter about intestinal distress.

Oh no! Not mine. And that's good. Herman Marquez's. I just wanted to mention this as a contrast to the Herman Marquez experience when we talked about that and Bud Black. This was maybe a few weeks ago. Bud Black just came out and told the world that Herman Marquez had left the game early because he had diarrhea. And we talked about whether that was the proper etiquette for a manager to just come right out and announce that so explicitly. And there was sort of an analogous situation this week where Mike Jastrzemski, he had a good game on Sunday for the Giants in the rubber game of that big Dodgers-Giants series

we talked about last time. And Yaz went two for three with a double and a walk on Sunday. All good. Giants won that game, won the series, left with a lead. But then on Monday, Yaz was not in the lineup against the Rockies. And it turned out that he was dealing with some issues, but some semi-unspecified issues. So Susan Slesser tweeted that Gabe Kapler said that Yaz ate something that disagreed with him, but could have played in an emergency. You see how delicate that is,

how nice and discreet just he ate something that disagreed with him. That could be a whole range of possible symptoms. Exactly. There could be things coming out of one end or another end or nothing coming out of any end at all. Maybe he was just feeling a little bit under the weather. That's what I'm saying. We can just leave it at, you know, something disagreed with him and he wasn't up to playing today. That's all we have to say. You started in this delicate, refined place of a range of symptoms and immediately went to things coming out of ends.

Immediately. That's where my mind goes. But I don't have confirmation. There's plausible diarrhea deniability. Yes. Yeah. Because all we know is that something disagreed with him. Now, Giants broadcaster Sean Estes got a little bit

more specific about the apparent stomach ailment. And Estes said he's got bubble guts. We call that bubble guts. This was not actually a term I was familiar with. I don't know if you know about bubble guts, but I was just Googling bubble guts and I found some site that says bubble guts is a term we don't hear all the time. That is true. But it is a real condition. Okay. Most people have experienced a bubbling sound in their abdomen at some point. But what does bubble guts mean?

Talks about how digestion is not always a silent process. But it goes on to say the sounds that come with bubble guts can last for just a few minutes or longer. The sound coming from our stomach is produced by fluids and gases and also by peristaltic movement of the intestines. However, the causes of bubble guts can be due to a number of different factors. If a person has excess amounts of fluid in the gut, it can lead to a bubbling sound. Excess gas that accumulates in the intestines, certain diseases, diarrhea, swallowing excess air, eating certain foods, some medications, and even hormonal changes can cause bubble guts. And it goes on from there. I probably don't need to tell our audience how digestion works.

We've all done it, but I'm not familiar with the term, but I guess I'm somewhat familiar with the experience. But this is all we know about Yaz. We don't know if his stomach was merely loudly burbling and bubbling or whether it was something more and that's okay this is all we need to know he wasn't in the lineup something disagreed with him right and we we hope that that disagreement passed without incident um or anything else for that matter but yes i think I think having a bit of, you know, you want a bit of mystery with your intestinal distress. I mean, not when you're suffering from it,

then you want answers like of a concrete variety. But for the rest of us, it's like, we just need to know that he wasn't well enough to be on the field that had he been called upon in a moment of extreme need in the game that he could have summoned the resolve and quieted the bubbles long enough to play and that whatever was ailing him is not something that is likely

to keep him off the field for an extended period of time. It's all we need. We can be genteel about these things. Again, we don't mean to make you feel bad about your weird body because we all have weird bodies. Bodies are weird. They make funny sounds and smells

and they are a land of contrast. But I am good not knowing the particulars of yours unless you are a friend and you need some care and support, in which case I will rally. But otherwise, I'm content to not know. I've written my piece. I've covered that beat. I feel as if I've done my service,

and now I can move on to other gross things about the game. So there you go. Well, Mike Kostromski's privacy partially protected. Well done, Gabe Kapler. And he could have played in an emergency, but he wasn't necessarily having an emergency himself. That's good to know. So we're going to answer some emails today. Apologies to people who are eating breakfast as they listen to the podcast during their morning routine.

We got some messages last time, but we will not be talking any more about that for the remainder of this episode. As far as I know, it's not planned, at least. We wanted to talk maybe a little bit briefly about the state of the playoff races before we get to emails. Anything in particular catching your eye as we get down to crunch time here well as our listeners know i i took a little i took a little vacation time and so was not checking in perhaps quite as regularly i guess i am surprised by some of the leads that have widened you know remember that brief stretch where the yankees were like winning all the time?

Yep. Well, they haven't been doing that lately. So gosh, do the Rays have an eight and a half game in the East. So that has widened out a bit more than I was expecting. I did not anticipate the Mariners leapfrogging the A's in the West. So that's a thing that has happened. I remain just flummoxed by the NL East and its strangeness. Atlanta's lead there has dwindled somewhat,

although they remain in first place. Then we, of course, had the barn burner of a series that we previewed last week with Grant and Eric, and now the Giants game up on the Dodgers in the West. Oh, and those Reds, those Reds, they had such a chance, those Reds, to push ahead and be on the right side of the wildcard line. And they just have kind of been underwhelming in the last little bit.

But thankfully, so have the Padres. So it hasn't hurt them quite as much as you might expect. But I don't know. I just, I think that here we are with, gosh, like what, three weeks? Ben, how did that happen? It's almost over. Yeah. Gosh.

Yeah. There are, I think, four teams within five games of the Padres in the second wildcard spot. As we speak on Tuesday afternoon into evening here, as you mentioned, you've got the Reds game back. You've got the Phillies who are still hanging around just two games back and the Cardinals three and a half and the Mets four and a half. I think David Roth may have fixed the Mets when he came on the podcast because they have had a wild week, but they have been better despite their best efforts to blow some games.

They are still sort of hanging in there. their best efforts to blow some games, they are still sort of hanging in there. And then on the AL side, you have the Yankees and the Red Sox who are barely separated in the two wildcard spots there. But then you have another three teams within four games as we speak with the Jays and the Mariners tied three games back. And then the A's a half game behind them. and the Mariners tied three games back, and then the A's a half game behind them. So not everyone is into wildcard races to the same extent as division races, but these are not bad. These are kind of coming down to the wire here, and obviously there are stakes with Giants-Dodgers,

but you know both of those teams are going to make the playoffs no matter who wins the West, whereas when we're talking about these wildcard races, it's either win or go home. And if you win, you may play one more game and go home, but still you would be a playoff team officially. So I don't really know how to handicap these races here. Like we're down to the point where I'm not looking at the playoff odds as regularly, just because I can kind of eyeball it in a sense. Like over this span of time, I have a sense for how good these teams are and how many games they have left. And it's all just kind of a toss up at this point because it's tough to predict what will happen over three weeks. And even looking at something like strength of schedule, again, over this small amount of time,

there are cases where like with the Padres for instance who seem to finish their season with just an unending slate against the Dodgers and Giants of the like that nearly killed the Mets recently so that's not great for them like if you're the Rays you have to be looking at the Padres remaining schedule and feeling pretty good about that but otherwise like as Joshian sometimes says variance swamps everything especially over a sample like this so it's just kind of coming down to who has a few hot weeks right exactly and I think that we have generally been pleased that these races have become as competitive and have remained as competitive as they are because there have been times this season where it has felt like we will just have an

inevitable march to the teams that we thought would be good for the most part with the wrench of the Giants thrown into the mix. But this has remained tricky and competitive and not every race is like that, right? You know, if you're the White Sox, you've had your place sort of sewn up for a while now. But in general, we have managed to keep things relatively interesting uh even though some of the the division races themselves have been either decided or appear close to decided for a little while now so that's fun yeah and i mentioned the phillies in the context of the nl

wildcard race they're actually even closer to the top of the NL East as we record this. They're a game and a half back of Atlanta and Atlanta has sort of been scuffling lately too. So that's a race. Again, it is a race between a bunch of teams that just don't seem to want to win this thing very much. I mean, they've tried, they've upgraded, but they're just not playing particularly well. So when you talk about the NL East Division race or the wildcard races, it's just mostly a bunch of kind of lackluster teams that are just sort of stumbling into a playoff spot. They hope more so than overpowering squads that are impressing you on a day-to-day basis. It's like, who's going to mess up least over the next few weeks? But still, they are races. There is still suspense. And that's pretty good at this point in the season. And as you said, I wish that we could kind of reseed based on the goodness of the team and abandon the wildcard structure altogether. And I think that it has things to recommend it, and we don't have to relitigate it as a form of sort of deciding playoffs.

And I know that it's silly to look at something like the NL West, which I think that race has been enhanced by our experience of it as one, you know, sort of imbued with rivalry and close division competition and then say divisions are dumb. We shouldn't do that. We should just see teams based on quality. But I am sad that those two teams, you know, one of them has the potential if they if somebody has a bad day or someone on the other side has a particularly good day to just be flukily cast aside. This is the risk we run every year.

And I preemptively mourn the early exit, although it isn't guaranteed. You know, I know a lot can happen in one game and the Dodgers have lost a couple and the Giants, too. But if I were an NL team staring down one of those teams in a wild card, I would feel not confident maybe. I would maybe not feel confident. So there's that. Yeah. Well, we will return to the Rays a little later on in a stat blast segment.

Wanted to follow up on something you sort of idly mused about when we were talking about Miguel Cabrera's 500th home run. you sort of idly mused about when we were talking about Miguel Cabrera's 500th home run. You mentioned that he had hit his 500 home runs off of 346 different pitchers, which sounded like a lot of pitchers, but it's kind of hard to tell. Is that a high ratio or a low ratio? Not necessarily the sort of thing you can answer off the cuff as you are recording a podcast. Fortunately, we have very smart and industrious listeners who are able to look these things up and motivated to look these things up. So we got an email from Aaron who looked into this question. He says, I'm trying to learn Python and I decided to mix this interest with my favorite podcast

to generate some compelling problems to solve. And thanks to the amazing work at RetroSheet.org, I was able to lend a little insight into Meg's question. Miguel Cabrera's pitcher to home run ratio is 0.69. Going back to 1915, the average pitcher to home run ratio for all players is 0.71. That's calculated by taking the sum of unique pitchers for each player in the set divided by the sum of home runs for each player in the set. So he's close to that pace, but Aaron says, I thought this list is likely skewed by many players with just a few home runs.

After all, every time someone hits a home run against a unique pitcher, they increase the chances that their next home run will come against a pitcher. They have already taken deep breaking down the pitcher next home run will come against a pitcher they have already taken deep. Breaking down the pitcher to home run ratio in 100 home run segments shows a predictable trend. More home runs, lower pitcher to home run ratio. The 500 homer club has an average ratio of 0.48.

So for someone who is homered as much as Miguel Cabrera, he has hit homers against a comparatively large number of pitchers. So if you have fewer than 100 career homers over the course of baseball history, Aaron finds that the average pitcher to homerun ratio is 0.82. But if you have, say, 700 plus homeruns, it's a small group, then the average ratio is 0.51. However, Aaron writes, while doing this research, I also found it fun that the player with the most home runs without touching up the same pitcher twice is Roberto Perez with 46. The RetroSheet database doesn't include 2021 games, and Roberto has homered six times this year. Aaron didn't check to see if he has a duplicate so far. times this year. Aaron didn't check to see if he has a duplicate so far. If so, Keith Lockhart will own that distinction with 44. He shared that number with Tucker Barnhart heading into the 2021 season, but he has not checked Tucker Barnhart's seven homers this year. Aaron says he also wondered

who has taken the most pitchers deep. And as you would expect, it is the usual suspects, And as you would expect, it is the usual suspects, Barry Bonds, 449, Albert Pujols, 428, and Alex Rodriguez, 422. And he showed his work and linked to it as I will. However, I had a follow-up for Aaron. I said there must be an era effect, right? Because Miguel Cabrera's ratio is high for a 500 homer guy. a 500 homer guy he has hit homers against a comparatively large number of pitchers because there's so many pitchers used per game i would think and so many pitchers used per season these days and they're just more teams and everything i mean if you were playing in an era where there were like 16 teams and all of the starters were pitching complete games all the time right then

you would expect that your ratio would be different from today, where there are 30 teams and you're facing multiple pitchers per game. So I asked him if he could check how the career ratios vary by career start date, and he has looked into that, and I will link to what he found there. Basically, when you adjust for the era effect, Basically, when you adjust for the era effect, Miguel Cabrera's pitcher to home run ratio is pretty normal, especially if you look at the number of home runs he has hit. So if you adjust for both how more homers is 0.70. So he is right on track there. And for players who debuted post-PD era and have 300-plus homers,

the average is 0.74. So again, it pretty much tracks. He is pretty much average. It was hard to tell at the time, but yeah, it sort of fits. And he has a breakdown by when they debuted. So if you debuted, say, in the live ball era, as he calls it, 1920 to 1941, then the average ratio was like 0.6. That's for all players league-wide. Expansion era, 1961 to 76, it was 0.61. Free agency era, 77 to 93, it climbs to 0.75. PD era, which he's defining as 94 to 2005, then it's 0.81. And now, post-PED era, 2006 to present, the average ratio is 0.86. So it's a lot different from how it used to be. But Cabrera, just kind of what you would expect if you do all of that research that Aaron did and presented it to us.

So thanks to him for that. Thanks to him. And sorry, Miggy, you're not special at all. Just some guy with 500 home runs. Yep. Yep. So that was sort of statblasty, but it was not actually the statblast. But thank you for that anyway, Aaron.

So just the last thing before we get to some emails, we talked about how the A's had fallen behind the Mariners in the AL West and wildcard races, you know who the A's could use is Frank Schwindel. I think if the A's had Frank Schwindel, MLB player of the week and New Jersey native, they probably would not be behind the Mariners now. And the A's very recently did have Frank Schwindel, but like everyone else in the world, they did not suspect that Frank Schwindel was about to be one of the very best hitters in baseball over the past month or more. So for those who have not followed the Frank the Tank Schwindel story, he has powered the Cubs to seven straight wins as we speak. And he has done so in sort of historic fashion. So according to ESPN stats

and info, he is the first MLB player with a go-ahead RBI in the sixth inning or later of four straight games over the past 40 years. So that sounds impressive, but if that's too many qualifiers for you, then you can just look at Frank Schwindel's stats for the Cubs because he has now played 33 games and had 133 plate appearances for Chicago. And he's hitting a cool 374, 421, 699 with 10 homers in 123 at-bats. And I do not know how to explain this. I do not know if I was aware of the existence of Frank Schwindel until fairly recently. We can't do a meet a major leaguer because technically this is not his first season. He was with the Royals briefly for 15 games in 2019, but he has come out of nowhere and has taken this moribund Cubs lineup and team to new heights just by setting

the world on fire for several weeks. He's like literally, I mean, since August 1st, I guess technically Tyler Naquin has been the best hitter in baseball over that period. Sure. Minimum 100 plate appearances. Anyone can do anything over 100 played appearances apparently that's like voros's law voros mccracken had like a an early sabermetric law that was just sort of like anyone could do anything over 60 played appearances i think it was but since the start of august 1st

it goes tyler niquin 197 wrc plus frank schwindel at 196 and then you get to like bryce harper so the only players who have a higher war since the start of august are harper jorge polanco and jose ramirez so there you go frank schwindel so are you saying that he schwindeled another player out of his talent i am saying that are you saying the cubs i'm implying that are the are you saying that the Cubs swindled the A's out of an exciting player? I should be put in prison. You're making up for our not actually punning last time after I talked about our punning powers. I can't believe it. Not one pun, not one pun between me, Grant and Eric.

We weren't being held hostage, but you wouldn't know it. Yeah. Anyway, this makes no sense, obviously. Frank Schwindel, first baseman, Anthony Rizzo replacement. Who needs Anthony Rizzo when you have Frank Schwindel, who is a 29-year-old former 18th round draftee of the Royals in 2013. And if you look at his transaction log on Baseball Reference, the Royals released him in May of 2019.

The Tigers signed him in June. Then he became a free agent. He signed as a free agent with the A's last November. And then the Cubs claimed him off waivers from the A's in July after the A's had designated him for assignment. Granted, the A's have a pretty darn good first baseman in Matt Olsen, but you would think that they would have liked to keep Frank Schwindel around if they knew that he was about to have an 11-20 OPS over a period of several weeks. With the A's, he played eight games this season,

20 played appearances, and his slash line was 150-150-350. They probably figured, yep, that's Frank Schwindel for you. Guess we can let some team claim him off waivers from us. Move on. Then this happened. Yeah. I can't account for it, Ben. I think that you're right that it's just likely to be a stretch that he will look back on when he is, you know, an older man and is done with his playing career and perhaps is telling friends and family

about the best time of his professional life. And he'll sit there and tell them about this stretch where he was just one of the better hitters in baseball he probably won't do puns on his own name because he's probably sick of those he probably thinks those are in poor taste but i don't really have anything to to say to account for it other than i hope he's enjoying every single moment of it yeah because who knows i mean like every now and again we do get a guy who like turns the corner and we look back and say, wow, I can't believe that. And they do seem to get let go by the A's sometimes, don't they?

Some of those guys. But, you know, we'll look back and go, I can't believe that the team that brought him along thought to let him go. He's fantastic. But that isn't likely. The more likely thing is that he's having a hot run and then he'll regress back to his normal little bit of business and he'll be an up and down guy and probably play on another 10 teams and that'll be his career. And that's a perfectly respectable bit of business

for a professional baseball player. But because of that, I just hope he's having a great time. Although I would imagine if you're a guy like that, you probably don't want to think too hard about how good a time you're having because then you'd realize, wow, since I made it into the upper levels of professional baseball, don't typically have this good a time. And then you might think about that too much and get in your own way. But I hope he is able to enjoy it without uh jinxing himself really yeah you don't

want it to be like a wily coyote kind of thing where you suddenly look down right and you realize that you ran off the cliff and you are in thin air and it was fine until you look down right but once you look down then you plummet and so if frank schwindel were to think to himself, I'm Frank Schwindel, how is this happening? I mean, I'm sure that thought has crossed his mind at some point, but if he were to dwell on it, maybe it would be tough to sustain this. So better not to think about it too much, better to just enjoy it. But he has certainly waited a while. He has like 3,500 career plate appearances in the minor leagues. So it's pretty cool for him that this is happening. And if we wanted to dive into the advanced stats and everything, I'm sure we could tell you that maybe the exit velocities and the ex-Wobas and whatnot

do not quite match the Wobas and the power production here. But you probably knew that just because if you're hitting this well, then you're almost certainly overperforming, particularly if you are Frank Schwindel. But hey, it's been fun. And maybe it's sort of eased the sting a little for Cubs fans to just have a bunch of guys raking like this because it's not just Schwindel. It's also Rafael Ortega, who is a 30-year-old who has bounced around, definitely a journeyman, a two-time effectively wild minor league free agent draftee. I took him back in 2016 and Sam, I believe,

took him in 2018. And I think we both got some playing time out of him, but it was not great playing time for his teams. However, for the Cubs this year, almost 250 plate appearances and he's putting up an 800 plus OPS. So that's nice. I'm not saying it makes up for trading the entire core of your championship team in very short succession. But at least you're watching a little less depressing baseball in the short term, even if it is coming from Frank Schwindel and Rafael Ortega.

Right. I think that every team has, you know, they have those guys who have a good stretch and sort of endear themselves to their fan base, even though they aren't very good. I know Ashley McLennan wrote about some of those guys for us at FanGraphs, like the bad players. And Ashley qualified bad in, I think, all the appropriate ways. But the bad players who just managed to worm their way into guys' hearts. And Ashley focused on the guys who were good for important stretches on teams that work good. But I think that there's something to be said for the, the guy who shines bright,

if briefly on, on a bad team, even if you know that he's not likely to, to stick around either in terms of his quality or even on the roster, because yeah, you just need, you just need something to be like, well,

what did that guy do today? Like we lost again be like, well, what did that guy do today? Like we lost again, but what was that guy up to? Did he continue his improbable run? And then you sit there and say, I guess I'm just like a Schwindel head now. I'm a Schwindel stan. I got to buy Schwindel stock. I just am enjoying his name. It's really great.

It's a great name. Lindell Stock. I just am enjoying his name. It's really great. It's a great name. So yeah, I think won a Rookie of the Month award this season at a somewhat advanced age. And I was saving him because we got an email about him. So here is that email. This is from Vince, who says, It's been a roller coaster of a season as a Cubs fan. And I expected Patrick Wisdom's hot start to fall off when the Giants did, which hasn't happened in either case. I know we're never past the point of pitchers adjusting to a hitter, but are we past the initial point

of pitchers adjusting to a rookie and the rookie adjusting back? Is this someone who I can root for on the 2024 Cubs when they lose 81 games? Also, am I wrong for drawing Mike Yastrzemski parallels? Basically, my question is what to expect long term from this man. However, as I enjoyed others on past bad Cubs teams, I'll enjoy this while I can. And Patrick Wisdom, I guess we can not meet him either because he is not a new major leaguer. But again, like Schwindel, he had short stints with his previous teams, the Cardinals in 2018. They drafted him in the first round, late in the first round in 2012. And then he was with the Rangers in 2019.

And then he debuted with the Cubs last year. Didn't really show signs, I guess, for some small sample performance in 2018 for the Cardinals that he would hit like this, which is 239, 308, 539. That's an 848 OPS with 25 dingers in 309 plate appearances for the Cubs this year. And yet another effectively wild minor league free agent draftee. Your first overall pick last year. You picked the wrong year to draft Patrick.

I sure did, Ben. You picked the wrong year to draft Patrick I sure did, Ben. Sure picked the wrong year. He was on the 26th man. He's on the big league roster. We know how to pick them. We just don't know when to pick them. I know, but I think that we're proving something here, which is

that the Cubs clearly listen to this podcast. I think that that's what's what. It is always nice when we get emails and then by happenstance, someone at Fangraph writes like a long article about the subject of the email without me even asking them to

so that we can just tell them about it. And so Devin Fink wrote about Patrick Wisdom and this exact question of sustainability for us last week. And I will say one of the nice things about being on vacation is getting to consume both Fangraphs and Effectively Wild as like a reader and listener again, because I just don't get to do it very often. And it's two of my favorite things. Two great tastes that taste great together.

And I but I know how the sausage is made. So then the taste is I don't know. I don't know where I'm going with that. But anyway, I read Devin's piece and I kind of re-familiarized myself with it a little bit before we got on the air today. And I think that his conclusion would be, he probably will not be this good,

but there is some underlying stuff here that makes you think that there's a bit of a substance to Patrick Wisdom, albeit perhaps not substance quite like he has shown so far, perhaps evidenced by the fact that when Devin wrote this piece, I believe that Patrick Wisdom's WRC Plus was a 136, and now it is lower than that. So we've already seen some of it.

But he noted that Wisdom is in some ways similar to Tyler O'Neill in that he is just like a two true outcomes hitter, right? He strikes out a lot and he hits a lot of home runs. And the way that he hits a lot of home runs, I think is the part where if you're sitting there and you want to have some faith that he might continue to be a productive member of the Cubs or any other team that you're going to be pleased here because he hits the ball hard and he hits the ball hard in a particular way, right? He barrels a lot of balls. And here I'm going to just, I'm just going to quote from Devin because he wrote a whole article about it. So why

not quote from him? Because he wrote a whole article. This goes hand in hand with what we know about barrel rate. It is A, sticky from year to year, and B, predicts power better than current power numbers. But as Ben discussed in his piece on O'Neill, not all barrels are created equal, and Wisdom is one of the best at generating the highest quality barrels. He's fourth in Ex-Woba in that stat, and it's not just because he's posting world-beating exit velocities on these barrels, it's also because he's putting more loft on them than any other hitter in baseball. And so he is good at this particular thing. And that particular thing has resulted in just a lot of home runs relative to how many barrels he has hit. All but two of his 25 barrels have gone for homers. This is again published on September 1st. So that folks remember a 92% rate that is 16.1 points above the next closest player in baseball.

And Devin goes on to say that there's something to this, that it's not just luck, but that ultimately the degree to which he strikes out is probably going to be limiting to some extent. But the batted ball data is legit and it is predictive. So there's some good luck to be had here. And if he walked a little bit more and struck out a little bit less, you might feel a little bit better about it, but yeah, there's, there's something, although perhaps not quite as much something as we're seeing right now. Do you feel like that's a fair assessment? Yeah. The 40%-ish strikeout rate, it's scary. Yeah, it's terrifying. It's not what you want. No. You really do have to have extreme power to make something like that work or walk as often as Joey Gallo and have Joey Gallo's power.

So it's tough. You would hope that that would come down a bit, which could compensate for perhaps the power coming down a bit. But yeah, I mean, I didn't do nearly as much investigation as Devin did, but you can when someone kind of comes out of nowhere like this. And he is also, Wisdom is also 30, like Ortega and like Schwindel will be next year. And so, yeah, when someone arrives on the scene like that then it's often the case that when they have an extraordinary hot streak then even without doing any work you could probably say well he is somewhere in between this and where we thought he was which is just kind of how expectations work but that doesn't really lend a lot of insight so i'm glad devin dug deeper there but yeah it's it's tough if you're striking out that often then you really have to make all your contact count and

yep and he has yeah right but also the odds that he does quite that even with um some of these stats being sticky seems uh seems a little unlikely as as devvin said. That being the bad at ball data combined with a bit of luck in the BABIC and home run rate departments has yielded results that are almost certainly too good to be true. Is that to say that he won't be a productive big league hitter? Not at all. When making contact, the results are elite, but with his current rates, he probably is too reliant on the two true outcomes to succeed at this level

going forward. That feels fair. Yeah. The questioner asked whether he's sort of a Mike Yastrzemski, and hopefully he's not in the bubble guts department currently, but also he doesn't strike out nearly as much. Mike Yastrzemski has a pretty polished approach at the plate. So he's similar in that he hit the scene at kind of an advanced stage and impressed people but i don't know if he really has the same sort of fundamentals and peripherals as a player but again it is a blessing i think when wisdoms and schwindels and ortegas come along at a tough time and give you something good to watch and i don't know whether we're better off with the knowledge that we have today so that when someone like this comes along, and I don't want to say that there'll be flashes

in the pan, but there are such things and such players as flashes in the pan. And so do you want to know what we know and have all of this data and be able to pass judgment in this way and sometimes be surprised, but also not be surprised sometimes? Or do you want to have it be a kind of Kevin Moss situation, which is sort of the go-to that people in New York often cite who remember him breaking in with the Yankees and setting the world on fire for 300 plate appearances in 1990 as a rookie and then never living up to that again. Back then, maybe you didn't know as much about players who were coming up and about prospects, and you certainly didn't have the batted ball data that we have now. So it was maybe easier to convince yourself and talk yourself into this just being a diamond in the rough who showed up whereas now it's always is this sustainable and no it's not sustainable and maybe that's a little less fun generally i'm in favor of knowing things over not knowing things but again if you're following the cubs these days I would advise you not to stress too much about it because it's kind of gravy that you've gotten so much out of these players and that they are giving you some good baseball and saving you from what would otherwise be a pretty bleak stretch run.

Well, and I'm going to offer a perspective that Cubs fans could adopt. And you tell me if this is just terrible and backhanded. You tell me. So it doesn't really matter if Patrick Wisdom is going to be part of the next good Cubs team because the next good Cubs team is probably a ways off. The next good Cubs team, you've gotten to this point, and I don't know that we don't have to relitigate

why the Cubs got to where they are in this particular conversation. But the likely fact of the matter is that it's going to be a little while before you get back to thinking about October and worrying about whether someone like a Patrick Wisdom is going to be a contributor next season or whether he might get kind of turned back into a pumpkin in the postseason. You don't have to worry about any of that. You can really just enjoy the moment because the moments that are going to be relevant to people who aren't Cubs fans, who are just baseball fans and concerned with the goings on of the sport, like those are a couple of years away for you now.

And that sucks. And it's been a hard summer and you've had to see a lot of people go. But in this moment, you could view it as freeing because you get to do a thing that we don't get to do very much in the modern game. It's hard for us to curb that impulse to predict and to try to understand sustainability. I think that we have been conditioned to try to sort all of that out. And goodness knows that the website that I run helps to contribute to that instinct so it's not a bad one but it can be one where it gets in the way of you enjoying the thing that's right in front of

you and so i think you should embrace the suck and just enjoy patrick wisdom because you know who cares if he's gonna be good in like two years he might not be good in four years he probably won't be he's gonna be 34 and he strikes out 40% of the time. So I think we can feel confident that he probably won't be very good then, but who cares? You might have more than four years before that matters to you. So just enjoy. It's Patrick Wisdom wisdom.

That's what I'm offering you, Patrick Wisdom wisdom. Yeah. All right. Since I just briefly invoked Joey Gallo here, I'll answer a quick one from Brett who says, a Joey Gallo box score caught my eye last night. He was 0 for 4 with zero strikeouts and zero walks. For a normal quote unquote ball player, this is a bad day at the plate. For Joey Gallo, this is a really weird day at the plate.

A quick run through his game log this year shows that he has had one other 0-4-4, 0-K, 0-walk day this year. And it was also just this past week. How rare is it for a player to have so few days at the plate where they put the ball in play every time at bat and don't get a hit? Does Gallo notice when he goes 0-4-4 with no strikeouts or walks? I noticed. goes 0 for whatever with no strikeouts or walks. I noticed, I imagine, this era of baseball has meant the death of 0 for something days at the plate with zero strikeouts and zero walks. And that's what I just wanted to look into with the help of the Baseball Reference Play Index.

And Brett is indeed on to something there. We are at kind of a low ebb for the 0-4-4 with no strikeouts and no walks, just the no true outcomes day. Just all outs, but putting the ball in play. Obviously, the fewest in a full ALNL season since 1901 was last year, but that doesn't help us very much. There were 408 such games last year, but 60-game season. However, the fewest in a full season came in 2019 with 1121. So that does indeed suggest that this is a period where you don't see a lot of those games in the box score. 2018, there were 1,231. That's also in the bottom 10 totals for this. And really, it looks like the previous nadir for this kind of game looks to have been the mid to late 50s or early 1960s. That was sort of a static and higher strikeout and higher walk version of the game, not compared

to today, obviously. But we are on pace this year. There have been 979 such games, which I believe puts us on pace for about 1154, which I think would be the second lowest total in a full season after 2019. So yeah, it's weird to have this sort of game in 2021. It's particularly strange for Joey Gallo to have this kind of game. And I don't know if he noticed, but I'd imagine if you're Joey Gallo, maybe you think, hey, I didn't strike out or walk today or homer today either. A no true outcomes day for me. I'm sure he is aware that he is the ultimate three true outcomes player and that he is constantly

setting three true outcome rate records. And so if he has an all contact day where he actually has to run a little bit as an offensive player, then yeah, I'd imagine that doesn't escape his notice entirely. Especially within the context of struggling more broadly, I imagine it doesn't, right? Like he's just, since he's come to New York, it has not been, it hasn't gone quite the way that I imagine either he or the Yankees were hoping that it would. And so I suspect that you are on the look, if for no other reason than you're hoping to see signs that you will be turning things around, that you're very intimately aware of the sort of shape that your production is taking and keen to find something that will let you be able to say, I'm going to I'm going to turn a corner here. Right. I'm I'm not a 75 WRC plus hitter. Right.

I'm not a 75 WRC plus hitter, right? I'm not a, well, I have maybe at times been a 130 hitter, but I'm not a guy who only hits six home runs. I haven't struck out 40% of the time in many moons, right? So I think that you're probably looking very carefully at what's going on so that you can sort of assure yourself that it's getting better or because you're really nervous that it's going to get worse. I bet he knows. I bet he knows and is taking note of the weirdness. Although, I would also imagine that if you have a weird day that you might be able to sort of take that in stride a bit better than if it is an extreme version of

the bad day you typically have that would probably make you feel the worst because you're like god it's just not getting better yeah i don't know if this is even a good sign for gallo because this is not his game right i mean when he is going well he is striking out and walking and hitting home runs so for all i know like putting the ball in play as often as he apparently has lately or at least in those couple games is a sign of something awry yeah i don't i don't know gotta start swinging and missing more so yeah i don't think that he should swing and miss more ben i think not more no he's striking out a lot already. He is, yes. But yeah, maybe it's a sign that he is not in his usual groove. Because when he's going well, he is inevitably going to do those things sometimes.

Or maybe it's just random and weird and one of those things. So here is a question from Peter who says, You've mentioned the recent epic 16-inning Padres-Dodgers game on the podcast. I watched the full game and, like you, enjoyed it very much. I thought the intentional balk by Corey Knabel in the 15th inning was very interesting. Presumably, Knabel was uncomfortable with Victor Caratini on second and Fernando Tatis Jr. at bat. It was also very funny because he had to balk twice since time was called just before he dropped the ball for his first balk attempt. I do not recall seeing an intentional balk before.

It's probably not recorded as intentional, so I assume there are no numbers available on how often it happens. In general, do you feel an intentional balk is a good strategy in such a situation is sign stealing such a prominent thing that it's worth moving a runner to third base interested to hear your thoughts as always so i'll link to the video but for those who didn't see it yeah knaple dropped the ball literally like intentionally dropped the ball just because he wanted to move the runner who was on second over to third, ostensibly to prevent sign stealing of some sort. And this is not a first. This has happened multiple times in recent years in the majors. I don't know if it goes back further than that. At that level,

if you go to the Wikipedia page for intentional box, which does exist. It notes that the first known intentional box in baseball, which was attempted for reasons unrelated to sign stealing, came about in the 1956 Claxton Shield, a multi-team tournament in Australia. Victoria and South Australia were contesting the final game of the tournament and the standings were such that the outcome of the tournament could be determined by run differential. After playing to a tie and going into extra innings, South Australia held a 5-4 lead entering the bottom of the 12th inning. However, they knew that a one-run victory would not be enough to win the title on run differential. When Victoria had a runner on third base, South Australia attempted

to allow that runner to score in hopes of forcing another inning and then winning by more than a single run. After a failed attempt at throwing the ball out of play, the South Australia pitcher deliberately balked to try to send the runner home. However, the umpires ended the game and awarded it a 9-0 forfeit win for Victoria on the basis of South Australia bringing the game into disrepute. So that's a weird one. And there's nothing on the intentional Bach Wikipedia page between the 1956 Claxton Shield and 2019 when I think Kenley Jansen did it. And Jansen, I think, was doing it not for sign stealing related reasons, but just because he found the runner distracting. I think it was Jason Hayward and he just didn't want to have him there behind him, I guess. And so he just balked him over to third. concept as sort of a sign stealing prevention method that spring training.

And then Kenley Jensen used it against the Cubs in June of 2019. So it hasn't been common, but it did happen with the Cubs and Craig Kimbrell. In May, he balked against the Pirates. And then in September, just this week, I think Colin McHugh of the Rays balked against the Red Sox intentionally, and both of those were science-stating related. So this is happening, and it's weird, and I don't love it. But if you're wondering why the pitcher is intentionally

sending the runner to third, that is why it is happening. I find this to be some of the weirder baseball behavior that we have witnessed in quite a while. Because I understand not wanting to have a guy communicate your signs, but moving a runner to third, like, on purpose, voluntarily, like, surely you can have better signs that reduce the necessity for that. Am I missing something here? You just have your catcher go out to the mound, do new signs. I'm sure we have some team people listening who are like, oh, Meg, you're underestimating the difficulty here. And I may well be, but that seems like a wild concession to make, doesn't it? Doesn't it seem wild?

Right. I mean, I guess there are cases where that runner doesn't matter that much. Sure. And there are cases where it's a zombie runner, so it doesn't count against your earned run record anyway. But it counts if you score. It counts for someone. I mean, it doesn't count against you if that's like a zombie runner who's not charged to you I guess but still like I don't know I don't love it like if it makes the pitcher more comfortable

then I guess I see the value of it obviously there's risk of like a run scoring past ball or a wild pitch if you move that runner over to third. So if that runner does matter, then there is a potential cost to that. I'd imagine that that cost probably would weigh the risk of the potential stolen sign. I don't know. Hard to do that math. But I don't love the look of it. I mean, boxers are silly to begin with, as we have discussed many times and to have a pitcher just like intentionally dropping the ball to take advantage of a weird rule to move the runner over to third which in

theory is the opposite of what the pitcher should be wanting to do it kind of does plunge the game into disrepute maybe that's a little strong but i see what that umpire was going for so i kind of hope it doesn't catch on i mean i guess if it's a zombie runner situation, it's a silly situation to start with. And all the rules are out the window. So maybe it shouldn't bother me. But it's an extra bit of weirdness that makes it not like the real baseball that you watch for most of the game. baseball that you watch for most of the game right and you know if it's a zombie runner sure it doesn't count against you as an individual pitcher but it's not like they don't count the run right and you're right there are enemy circumstances where like that maybe that doesn't matter but i just it seems very strange that we would be we would have instances where people are willing to do this and i don't mean what i'm about to say in like a moralistic way but i just find it interesting because we are so averse to

we're just really averse to conceding things to the other team in the sport and granted like this isn't like forfeiting it isn't anywhere near so serious as that but we do have a resistance like seemingly both philosophically and psychologically to those kinds of concessions. And so for there to be an instance where you would prefer it when it seems like there is another potential solution is just surprising to me. Wild, as I said earlier, wild. Yeah. electronic sign passing system then i guess that would curtail this activity or make it unnecessary because you won't be worried about those signs being stolen anymore so maybe hopefully like the zombie runner itself this is a temporary problem one of those weird quirks that we will look back

on and laugh but it's it's strange for sure so here's one one from Kyan in Chicago who says, amateur teams and predominantly white schools have the resources to conform their fields to those standards. Ball fields in Latin communities and inner city black areas do not have money to move the mound back. So those pitchers will not have the practice of pitching at 61 feet, six inches, thereby putting them at a racial disadvantage to mediocre white pitchers who came from privilege. And I think it's a worthwhile point, definitely a valid concern here, as I think it is with all sorts of player development issues when we it so that you don't move the mound back at every level. Right. Maybe not even below the minors. I don't think that you need to.

The reason to move it back at the big league level is to counter pitchers who are throwing too hard to hit or too hard to hit in a way that leads to a lot of contact. And at lower levels, that isn't really happening. At lower levels, pitches are throwing less hard and as hard as they used to be in the big leagues when this wasn't such a pressing problem. So I don't think there's a need necessarily to do it in amateur ball. I mean, once you get into like affiliated ball, yeah, okay. it in amateur ball. I mean, once you get into like affiliated ball, yeah, okay. Presumably you want to have some practice on that mound distance and get used to it and you want things to be consistent and standard. But the further down you go, I think the less necessary it is, the bigger a hassle it

is just because there are so many fields and that would be so much effort and so much expense for everyone, let alone the communities that might not be able to do that. So in Little League, the mound is 46 feet away. So there's already precedent for moving the mound back gradually as the players get bigger and stronger and they throw harder and they get closer to the majors. And I don't think a difference of a foot or two requires such a massive adjustment to pitching technique that you have to be throwing at that distance for years and years once you start pitching just to be prepared for potentially being a big leaguer someday.

So I would say, yeah, actually just mandate not moving the mound below the minors or like division especially because I like that we have this pipeline that goes from Little League to the majors, and it certainly is a feel-good story when we talk about that. But I think it's useful for us to remember that most kids who play rec league sports do it because they want to hang out with their friends and have a good time. We don't have to optimize that experience for big league readiness. We just don't. We can just let kids have fun. And I think that you're right that it probably will require something like a mandate or strong guidance from the majors to encourage teams to keep their field sort of as they currently are constituted so that they don't have to incur additional expense. I think that there's a lot that we could say about the disadvantages of partnerships between some of some of the development leagues that amateur players participate in and Major League Baseball. But I think one place where that would be useful here is making sure that, you know, some of the big showcase tournaments and travel ball tournaments don't institute something different than you would see like at a high school because we already see a gap emerge from the players who have the financial resources to participate in those kinds of events and those who don't and we certainly want wouldn't want to

widen that gap further but i think the main reason to do it is like let kids have fun when they're playing baseball they don't all have to have big league ambition and we don't need to optimize their experience for cultivating those kinds of players. I don't think that there's a big developmental disadvantage to them starting to phase into that kind of a pitching environment when they get to affiliated ball, as you said. I mean, like you said, most of them don't have the velocity that it's going to matter. And so, you know, they're going to leg their way into greater velocity, a lot of them, as they get on a pro conditioning routine and hopefully get access to better nutrition and what have you, or at least more guided nutrition. And this can just be one of the things that they

do as they start to adjust to the pro game. Yep. All right. And the last one comes from Michael, Patreon supporter, who says, have you two talked about quote unquote, allowing fans to throw home run balls back and keep them in play on the show? Morgan Sword mentions this in this recent New Yorker article, Invasion of the Robot Umpires. So this is a New Yorker piece from late last month by Zach Helfand,

who talked about some of the efforts to bring in an automated ball strike system. Morgan Sword is an MLB executive who is sort of in charge of baseball operations and trying to figure out tweaks that could improve the game, among other things. So I'll just read a little bit from this piece here. According to Sword, the automatic ball strike system was part of a larger project to make baseball more exciting. Executives are terrified of losing younger fans and worried that the sport is at risk of becoming the next horse racing or boxing.

We started this process by asking ourselves and our fans, what version of baseball do you love the most? Sword said, everyone wanted more action, more hits, more defense, more base running. This style of baseball essentially hasn't existed since the 80s, etc., etc. We know about the problems. Sports team brainstormed potential fixes. Any rule that we have, we've talked about changing. Change the bats, change the balls, change the bases, change the geometry of the field, change the number of players on the field, change the batting order, change the number of innings, the number of balls and strikes. Sword said, we talked about regulating the height of grass on the infield to speed up ground balls and create more hits. We've never talked about this in any serious way, but we talked about allowing fans to throw home run balls back and keep them in play.

That's one that even I don't like. End quote. So nice to know that MLB is basically doing an internal Effectively Wild listener email show. I know we're saving them some work by considering these things so that they can just listen to our discussions about them. But almost all of these things we have talked about at some point. I don't know whether we have addressed this one specifically. I know we've talked about like, what if fans could catch balls? What if balls in the stands were in play?

What would happen there? But I don't know if we've talked about this exact scenario. And I think Sword's instinct to think that this is a terrible idea is probably right but i like the notion that mlb has just been like so unable to control the ball that they're just like what if we just let the fans throw the ball back like they'll just keep hitting the homers because we can't do anything about that but we'll just let them throw it back so that even if you hit the ball over the fence it'll still technically be kind of in play first of all can we just marvel at there being a human person whose last name is sword is it sword or

swords sword sword sword like like a sport like a sword like yeah that people. This would be complete and utter chaos. This is a terrible idea. I mean, it's great fun, but it's also chaos, and it would result in chaos, and people would hate it. People would hate it. Don't you think they'd hate it? I don't know because it would be sort of like a free-for-all out there. I think people would enjoy being able to participate in the game in some way if you were wired that way and if you were in the park.

But for everyone else, I think it would be bad. discuss at some point about fans being arrayed around the field to catch foul balls and catch other balls that are in play because it would be sort of a similar situation where you would want to stack the deck and stack the stands with your fans right and i mean it would be a safety issue for a number of reasons i mean for one thing you would have fans just pegging players with the ball, which sometimes they do or try to do anyway as it is, but they would definitely do in this scenario. But also you would have just people jostling and wrestling for baseballs even more than they already do, because it would be not just like getting some memorabilia or getting the satisfaction of throwing a home run ball by the opposing team back on the field but it would still be in play you could help your team win so right people would probably die i would think oh yeah people would they'd beat the crap out of each other if you threw the ball back they'd beat the crap out of each other if you elected not to throw

the ball back right if you were like no i shall not do that they'll be like you will be forced to so there's that part of it i do think ball players would get hit a lot that would be bad i think that it would be like a much more violent version of our reaction to framing because you know it would be the kind of thing where when it benefits your team you'd love it you'd be like i got to help i you know fans want to be a part of the game more than anything. That's why you stand up when you sit behind the home plate and do like crazy arms to try to distract the pitcher. And it's why we boo umpires and it's why we heckle, right? We want to think of ourselves as participating in this venture that we're all doing together, but we don't really, cause like baseball players are pretty good at

tuning that stuff out. And I don't think that it ends up mattering all that much, but we don't really because baseball players are pretty good at tuning that stuff out. I don't think that it ends up mattering all that much. We don't boo umpires correctly, so I don't think it really matters there either. We love the idea of participating. This would be real participation, but it would come at quite a cost. Yes, it would. Yes, there would be blood. Plus, you try to game it, right? If you're the home team, if you're the home team, wouldn't you put the state championship

softball and baseball teams in the front row of every game? You'd put them in the outfield. You'd be like, let's have the local college baseball and softball teams come down and try to throw strategically.

You'd put your minor leaguers there and have them participate. It would be cats and dogs living together. That came up in a previous discussion because you'd basically have ringers arrayed around the field. So they'd be fans, but really they'd be former pros who were just paid to stand there and pretend to be fans and there'd be all kinds of implications for like home field advantage because obviously if you have more fans out there then you are more likely to be able to get to that ball and throw the ball back if the opposing team hits a home run so yes it would be complete chaos and glad this quickly ended up on the reject pile for mlp but hey i'm glad that they are thinking outside the box at least as long as they're

quickly putting things back inside the box if they are terrible ideas yeah like swords all right let's end with the stat blast they'll take a data set sorted by something like e r a minus or o b s plus and then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit discuss it at length and analyze it for us in amazing ways here's today's step last Amazing ways. Here's to day still past. I have two for you here. This one is prompted by Grant, who spotted something interesting. Grant writes, I was at the Red Sox-Guardians game on Saturday and was

shocked to see Ryan LaVarnway in the Cleveland lineup. I then looked him up to see when the last time he played in the big leagues was and came to find out he's played in every year but one since 2011, but that he's played in so few games in each season that Saturday was just his 162nd career game spread over 10 major league seasons. The run since 2017 is especially incredible to me. He has played in six games, six games, five games, five games, and six games in each of those years. Has anybody ever taken more seasons to reach a full year's worth of games? taken more seasons to reach a full year's worth of games. P.S. I've got to think it's very difficult to both stick around this long without in any one year establishing yourself enough to surpass 162

much quicker than this. Catchers like LeVarn Way make some sense if you're consistently the third or fourth catcher in an organization, and maybe a September pinch run specialist similar to Terrence Gore, although with speed declining quicker than other skills, the longevity needed may take them out of it. So I posed this question to frequent StatBlast consultant Ryan Nelson, and he was able to quickly get an answer using RetroSheet. He sent the data as usual, which I will link to, and he writes, when looking at the longest time slash most seasons to 162 games, it's dominated by pitchers, unsurprisingly. And he writes, And I think that is the thing to do for this kind of question. There has actually never been a player who has gotten to 162 games but taken 10 plus seasons to do it. LaVarnway is the first. So there you go. You say that you see something new at a ballpark when you go every day and Grant saw something new on Saturday at that game. Ryan LaVarnway, the first player ever to take 10 or more seasons to get to

his 162nd career Major League game played. The closest to do it previously were Chico Walker, who had a pretty interesting career. He was a third baseman, an outfielder, kind of a utility guy, really, with the Red Sox and the Cubs and some other teams. And I believe he was the player who was replacing Carl Yastrzemski,

not Mike, when that Yaz was removed from the field for the final time. And the other two guys who have taken nine or more seasons to get there, Raul Chavez, the catcher, and Corky Miller, the catcher. 14 other players have taken eight seasons to get there. So, yeah, it's your utility guys and definitely your backup catchers or your third or fourth string catchers. And Ryan continues, Grant was right on track with the

Terrence Gore suggestion as well. He is one of only four active hitters defined as having played in 2020 or 2021 to have seven seasons in the majors with fewer than 162 games played. No one has eight or nine, but the ones with seven are Terrence Gore, Rob Brantley, Dustin Garneau, and Mason Williams.

LaVarnway took 3,670 days to get to 162 games played. That places him as the 20th longest to get to 162, the record being 4,626 days. That's 12 years, 246 days held by Stuffy Stewart. And Stuffy Stewart, he played quite a while ago, as one would expect from the name, but he played with the Cardinals and the Pirates and a bunch of other teams, the Senators in the teens and the Pirates and a bunch of other teams, the Senators in the teens and the 20s. So it's been a while for him. But sometimes just looking at his baseball reference bullpen page, he would even voluntarily

go to the minors. In those days, that was a century ago or more. And sometimes a minor leaguer, depending on the league, could certainly get more playing time, but also maybe make a better living or live in a more convenient place. Being a big leaguer was certainly less remunerative in those days and less prestigious. So that partially explains why it took so long for Stuffy. But the last note that Ryan has for us, LaVarnway has averaged just 16.2 games per season, which is actually the least ever for someone who has played 162 plus games As one would expect

And he gives us the top 10 there also Which will be on the spreadsheet link From the show page But Corky Miller is second in that category With 19.6 games per season From 2001 to 2009 So good for LaVarnway He stuck it out longer than anyone ever has, who has eventually played a full season's worth of games in the majors. So yeah, it's tough to do, not only for the reason that Grant mentioned that you have to be good enough to stick around, but maybe not quite good enough or not in the right place at the right time to really break through and establish yourself. But also you have to not get discouraged and

demoralized. You have to keep on going and believing that you're going to get up there. I mean, I guess if you're there every year, even if it's for five or six games, that's something to look forward to. So it's not like he's one of these players who's bouncing around the minors for decades without ever making the majors. He's making it. He's just kind of wetting his beak and getting a little taste and then going back down again. But he has stuck it out. So I guess he probably really likes playing baseball. But he just turned 34 a month ago, and is still going strong we had a lot of good names

on today's episode then yeah a lot of good names yeah i think you would have the sense that like yeah i can do it i've done it i think we underestimate the degree to which having some small amount of experience doing a thing at a high level inspires in us the confidence that we can keep doing it because there is this bright line between guys who just never make it to the majors at all and those who do right once you're there it is some respects a special and rare thing and so it's it's not surprising to me that he would say well yeah like one of these years it's bound to stick so good for him what is he made history he's the first there you go nice to be the first nice to be a big leaguer however briefly and sporadically yes that is true yeah well well spotted by grant yes very

well accomplished by ryan lavarnway and well researched by ryan and the last one here also prompted by a listener question and this is a fun fun one, I think. So this comes to us from Paul, Patreon supporter, who says, In trying to figure out how the Rays do it, I was stunned by a simple fact. They have gotten the most contributions per fan graphs war from your pal Mike Zanino at 3.7 wins above replacement. Baseball reference is even less charitable with Randy Rosarena leading the team with 3.3 war. This got me thinking, who is the worst best player on a division winner? Or put another way, which division winner had the lowest war total from their team leader? And this was a few days ago, I guess, but it's largely unchanged. Entering Tuesday's games, the baseball reference war leader for the Rays. It's still Randy Rosarena. He is up to 3.4 now, which is just not a high total. Actually, I guess he and Brandon Lau are now tied at 3.4 and they do have a bunch of guys right behind them so they have joey wendell

at 3.2 and they have zanino at three according to baseball reference where which doesn't include framing and then wander franco whom we have discussed quite a bit lately has three and if he had come up earlier he would probably have more than that but they have a bunch of guys who are within a winner so of lao and rosarena but still for a team that is as good as the race that essentially has the division sealed up and is winning it like a six 30 clip to not have a single four win player or even 3.5 win player. Now a week into September, that sounded strange to me.

And I was kind of clicking around, looking at other teams, trying to think of some other whether they made the playoffs or won their division and also with their listed war leader for that season and how many war that player was worth. And it turns out that the Rays are threatening to also make some history here. some history here. I don't know if it's good history or bad history, but it turns out that if you exclude 1981 and 2020, those shortened seasons, the average leading war total on a division winner is 7.1, which is roughly MVP contender range. So generally a division winner has at least one guy who has some semi-credible case to win an MVP award or a Cy Young award. At least he's going to get some votes. So that kind of calibrates the baseline, but we want to know how low you can go. The lowest leading war total on an AL or NL division winner was Will Clark's 4.2 for the 1987 Giants. Others on the list at 4.9 war or below, 2006 Padres Mike Cameron, 2006 A's Barry

Zito, 2015 Rangers Adrian Beltre, 2003 Twins A.J. Pruszynski, 1984 Royals Bud Black, 2008 Dodgers Derek Lowe, 2012 A's Josh Reddick, 2019 Twins Jorge Polanco, 2018 Dodgers Justin Turner, 2005 White Sox Mark Burley, 2005 Padres Brian Giles, and 2009 Dodgers Matt Kemp. But not every division winner is a great team, as we were discussing earlier, so I got curious about the lowest leading war totals on very good teams and the lowest leading war total on any ALNL team with a 600 plus winning percentage, regardless of whether the team won its division. Again, excluding 2020 and also 1878, which was also a 60 game season, was Joe DiMaggio's 4.3 war for the 49 Yankees. And DiMaggio, that was the year when I think he had heel surgery and the injury the pain recurred in spring training and I don't think he debuted that season until like late June and then he was sort of his old self even though he was literally his old self at that point in his career

was kind of winding down but he still had it and he ended up leading the team, even though he missed half the season, but with only 4.3 wars. So those are the marks to shoot for. If you are Lau or Rosarena or Wander Franco or anyone else on the Rays, you got to get above 4.2 or 4.3 for those records and i don't know maybe they would look at this as some sort of badge of honor or something like this is a very raised thing to do right to be this great without any really noteworthy individual contribution i guess other than franco who's done it like dimaggio in just a portion of a season but really what could be more raised than this, where it's just this amorphous mass of talent? It's like no one who's going to be challenging for an MVP or a Cy Young. It's just kind of that team concept of no assigned roles and we'll be deep and we won't have any positions where we're just hemorrhaging runs and running sub-replacement level players out there. Like everyone will be pretty good or competent or average, but we just won't have a whole lot of stars because we tend not to pay our players very much and have high payrolls. And so that kind of leads to not having a whole lot of superstars. But given how good they have been at developing talent,

they just don't have a lot of holes either. So it's working for them. Yeah. I mean mean they might end up with the rookie of the year so like that part i guess you know we've already discussed franco's contribution so we don't need to belabor that point here but yes it is a very razy sort of thing it's not as if they don't have good players right like they even traded for a good player they have nelson cruz nelson cruz is a good player some of their really good players are hurt so that hurts them here right like if glasnow was had been active and healthy and doing well the whole season then this might look a little different but yeah it is a very it is a very razy sort of thing and then we sit there last

postseason and we're like, how is it that this is the shape that the offense has taken for the Rays? I wonder how it could have happened. And you're like, well, this is how. So yeah, I do just once again wonder what a Rays team with all of the talent they have been able to develop and all of the sort of front office personnel talent they had and even just a slightly higher budget

would be able to do because I think that it would be cool. Yeah. I mean, they couldn't be that much better than they have been because they have consistently been one of the most winning, successful teams. I mean, just like outside of the big bi-coastal behemoths, the Yankees, the Dodgers, I think the Red Sox, other than the teams that spend many multiples of the amount of money that the Rays spend, the Rays have been the most winning team in baseball over a period of 15 years at this point. And that's dating back to even before they really got good for the first time. So yeah, back to even before they really got good for the first time so yeah it would be nice to see them spend in addition to all the other things that they do well but even without spending they have managed to put competitive teams on the field year after year after year and often it is with these

kind of interchangeable players who a casual fan might not know which i think leads to the rays getting underrated like we tend to fixate on stars right and the race just tend to have fewer stars for the caliber of team that they are and this year is no exception so i mean you look at the rays right now and it's like well does any one individual player scare you that much maybe not necessarily like that old cliche of like well you can't let that player beat you in this must win game right I don't know who that is for the Rays really but it doesn't matter because they've gotten to this point and they've outplayed a bunch of other good teams in that division without having any one standout, at least on a full season basis. But they could be more comfortable, Ben.

It could be more comfortable. It could be a thing that you're a little less worried about. It could be, hey, that guy's really good and doesn't need to be platooned. He's just there every day. They could feel so cozy. It is a lot of work. It's a lot of plates spinning constantly. It's a lot of juggling.

Right, don't you just want to rest? Jeff Sullivan busy over there, I'm sure, because it's like constantly cycling players in and out and going and getting guys who no one's ever heard of and then finding a role for them. And like, they have managed to, out and going and getting guys who no one's ever heard of and then finding a role for them and like they have managed to i don't know whether you praise them for kind of inculcating this this team spirit or whether you say they've like brainwashed everyone or what but it seems like rays players are kind of into this like team first mentality i don't know if they all are, but it seems like often they tend to embrace their

identity as like the plucky Rays who were trying to be the Davids taking down the Goliaths. And if that means not having a regular starting role, but being an opener or coming in at all kinds of points in the game. I mean, what is it? I think they've had 13 different players get a save this season, which I think they broke their own record for the most had 13 different players get a save this season, which I think they broke their own record for the most individual pitchers to get a save in a single season. Like, nope, no established closer. Like, you know, even established starters are sort of few and far between. It's just gravitating more toward this pitching staff where everyone is just kind of in an

in-between role. And maybe that is the future of baseball because baseball teams tend to copy the Rays because they win and they win without spending, which is obviously pretty attractive to major league owners. Well, and I think that the puzzle box nature of it all is part of why folks like us tend to find them fun and interesting and engaging because we are prone to liking puzzle boxes but i can also appreciate how it might be tiresome for some part of their fan base at times and also you know you could rest you could be snuggle a stingray don't do

that but like you could just you know you could you could let your hair down you could do all those things that you do when you're able to rest i I don't know where I'm going with this, man. But yeah, I think that the Rays are cool and they should try building a similarly good team by spending a little bit more money like as an exercise. You know, like when drama students are like, I'm going to translate this into German. And you're like, I don't understand why, but we'll see what we get on the back end of it. It could be like that. Yeah.

I mean, winning is the ultimate goal. understand why but we'll see what we get on the back end of it it could be like that yeah i mean winning is the ultimate goal and i think uh you know a lot of fans are hey sure pay the players their fair share absolutely but also i want my team to win that's my top priority and so i think a lot of fans of higher spending teams would gladly trade for the raised results at least but there are some aesthetic costs, perhaps, that come to their style of play. And also there's like the, whose jersey do I buy dilemma?

I mean, if you're buying a jersey now, buy Wander Franco's jersey. That'll probably last you for a while, at least. Although you never know exactly how long with the race. And so that is the bummer, I guess, when it comes down to it, is that it's nice to have some superstars, right? Especially some that you can count on actually being there over a long period of time.

So when everyone is just like worth three wins or three and a half wins, well, you're going to win a lot of games. But also like who is the player who you're going to stop everything to watch? And it'll be Franco, obviously, because he is more than a three and a half win player he's only that because he is a very young rookie and because he's only been up for part of the season so maybe for the next several seasons the Rays won't be in this boat anymore they will have superstar

Juan DeFranco who's putting up five or six or who knows what win seasons so maybe that won't continue to be the case but at least for now this is extremely emblematic of the way the Rays tend to build their teams and tend to win with them. Yep. And you just want to, what I mean by saying, you know, you can breathe easier, you can be cozier. You just, I think, have a greater margin for error when every potential

means of roster construction is at hand for you and is accessible for you because they do such an excellent job of scouting and they do a great job of player development and their analytics group is so good and those things all have to remain true for them to be this competitive whereas if you have a bit more budget you have another means of acquiring talent if something goes wrong in those other areas. And so, you know, that'd just be nice, I imagine, to have that escape valve and release, release valve, escape valve, turn a thing. What's the steam off?

You know what I'm trying to say. Anyway, I think that as our first episode back from vacation, I was remarkably coherent. So I'm pretty pleased that I only struggled here at the end. All right. Well, while we were speaking, Sandy Alderson said that Jacob deGrom's elbow injury was a sprain or a partial tear of the UCL in his right elbow. However, he emphasized, deGrom is fine now. The ligament is perfectly intact at this point, he said. Whatever condition existed before, it's resolved itself. So nothing to worry worry about there i'm sure we will never hear

about jacob de grom's ucl again just totally fine just the weirdest ass team just such a weird ass team they are my goodness it really is but i hope he's okay all right that will do it for today thanks as always for listening for anyone who is wondering Mike Yastrzemski was back in the Giants lineup on Tuesday. He went two for four with a walk and a two-run homer as the Giants beat the Rockies, so it sounds like the bubble guts are behind him. If you'll allow me to plug a piece I published on Tuesday, I took a little look, or really quite a long look, at the famous Juan Soto shuffle. Partly it was just a reason to celebrate the season Juan Soto is having. He's reached an even higher level of plate discipline and patience and walk rate and just overall productivity of late. He's been great, but I've always been fascinated by his routine

between pitches, why he makes the motions he does, which pitches cause him to shuffle, what counts, what pitch types, what locations, etc., etc. So I watched every pitch that he has taken this season, and I broke it down. And I learned a lot. So I will link to that on the show page. Juan Soto is a treasure, not only one of the best players in baseball, but one of the most watchable. So if you like Soto too, you might like that article. Thanks also to those of you who responded to my plea about pitching in on the Effectively

Wild Wiki. One of our listeners and Patreon supporters, Chris and Elle, actually came up with a Chrome extension that automates part of the process of creating a new episode page on the wiki. So if that makes you any more likely to help, I will link to his instructions for how to do that. Just take some of the grunt work out of the process. Always happy to have some of our technologically handy listeners make things easier for everyone. You can make things easier for us by supporting the podcast on Patreon

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and Alexander Bertland. 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.fangraphs.com

or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And we will be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. Out Dangerous disguises That you never expect to see Something's Never changed Nothing's gonna Change that Something's you can't explain Like what we're all

Afraid to imagine We're all in a world that's just so Unconventional Well, in a world that's just so fucking national