Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1894: The Indomitable Dodgers

Episode Date: August 26, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the approving responses to Ben’s blistering (by Ben’s standards) Yankee Stadium review, Christian Walker’s scale-breaking defense at first base, “defended” vs. “defensed,” the Dodgers’ historic run of regular-season success, and the battle between teammates Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt for NL MVP frontrunner status, followed by Stat Blasts […]

Still dreaming of that perfect home by the sun Run Christian, run Wishing for that perfect home by the sun Come, kingdom, come Hello and welcome to episode 1894 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley, Fangraphs, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Van Grafson. I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm feeling pretty relieved because not only have I not received any hate mail about my blistering take on Yankee Stadium on our preceding episode, but I've gotten a chorus

of agreements and hear-hears even from lifelong Yankees fans who seem to share my enmity toward that stadium. So I was a little worried because I figured, you know, if you say something about the Yankees sucks, that some Yankees fans might take exception to that. But maybe because I came from the area, I grew up as part of that tribe, perhaps I'm entitled to say it. Or maybe it's just that actually even Yankees fans really do not like this new, not so new Yankee stadium. Like no one that I've seen on any channel has spoken up in support of the stadium. I'm not saying everyone hates it or thinks it's the worst, but no one has said, actually, I like it. Actually, it's charming. Actually, what a pleasant place to go see a game.

Everyone has just written in to say, yep, you nailed it. This place is a bummer of a ballpark. Bummer of a ballpark. It's just you know, we don't have high demands. That's not true. We have such specific demands. Yankees fans especially.

But when, you know, when you're getting ready to embark on a social outing like that and you're being expected to spend as much as you have to to sit really anywhere in Yankee Stadium, the least that they can do is make you get in and out of there without a whole bunch of hassle. It's always frustrating.

I used to have this experience. I'm about to convey an anecdote that is going to be unrelatable to you, Ben, because it involves driving, which I know you're not prone to. I'll try to follow along. But I remember, especially in Seattle, there would be times where I'd be like, I'd be going to meet a friend for dinner and I'd drive there and you can't find parking. You're like, I want to give someone American dollars to take this car off my hands, you know, for just like an hour or two. I just

want to be able to pay you money for a particular service. And there's a scarcity of that service. Now in Seattle, like we should have better transit and people shouldn't have to drive so much. And there's all sorts of stuff that goes into that, right? But you're sitting there and you're like, I want to pay for a thing. And you're making it hard for me to pay for that thing. And that feels like the balance of this relationship is all out of whack. And so if you are getting ready to pay

a lot of money for tickets, or you're getting ready to pay a lot of money for what is, let's face it, still one of the worst beer selections in baseball, or for your snacks, for your little snackies. And you're like, I want to give you this money, facilitate this process better. And then you can't. It feels especially silly because you're like, I've already bought into what should be the hardest part of this, which is believing that this gigantor beer, which will

be warm by the time I get to what would just be beer number two, a thing I assume you guys do on purpose. So I will then go buy another Gigantor beer that I won't finish because the bottom half of it is going to be warm by the time I get to it. I've already agreed that this thing that is less than a six pack, but costs 300 than one i'm gonna give you that money and then you're giving me a hard time and of course the people who really end up on the short end of the stick not from you because you're sweet as can be but from a lot of people are the poor folks who have to sell you concessions or manage the line or whatever and i'm sure that these things are largely the result of decisions made far above

their heads and yet they get yelled at it's ridiculous there should be a strike or a riot or something we do have high expectations but we also have low expectations we expect some hard things and we expect some easy things right and the easiest of the things is just being able to get into the ballpark with the ticket that you purchased and see the entirety of the game if you show up some goodly amount of time before the first pitch. You weren't late. No, I was early. It's the bare minimum. You weren't like, oh, I'm going to get in under the wire.

You were like, this is a process that takes a lot of time because there are only so many holes in the outside of this building and a lot of people trying to push through them. Maybe that is the issue that there aren't enough holes. I don't know if I, uh-oh, uh-oh. What do we do? Because it seems like people who have written in share my mystification about why exactly it's so hard to get into. Yeah, why does it take so long? Because it doesn't take that long to get into Citi Field when the Yankees are playing there and it's the same sort of attendance. It just, it mysteriously takes so long to get in there and not even when it's a sellout or some

marquee matchup, just your run of the mill game. It takes forever. And the lines just snake this way or that. And some people have suggested that maybe they just do not have enough ticket takers or ticket scanners and that they have not opened up the number of ingresses is that a word ingress ingresses i don't i think it's i'm more comfortable with us using that than continuing to go down this whole rabbit hole that i have put us on i think that was a bad mistake on my part you know i don't think we should stay away from holes i guess ingressing is more the act of entering. Yeah.

It's very difficult to do is the point. So maybe that they need to employ more people to wave you in or just open up more gates or something. It's not even that I was trying to go into the most crowded gate, Gate 6, which is right by the subway. I mean, I started out there. Sure. And at one point, I thought I was attempting to enter there. But then I ended up at a different gate entirely. I felt like I was just going to circumnavigate the entire ballpark

and just be swept around and around and around like some sort of event horizon and eventually, hopefully, plunge in, but maybe in the third inning or something. And yeah, I just kept circling in this sort of whirlpool until eventually, finally I got in. But that seems to be what really struck a chord with everyone is that it's just not as hard to get in. And it's not the greatest experience when you do get in, but just getting in would be a great start. Seems like just a low bar to set into the ballpark. Let me see the baseball game. Yeah, they just have not managed to clear that quite yet. It's very odd.

But maybe when they're 20 years or so into the stadium's history, they will have worked out the kicks. Like I remember it being kind of like this, like the first season or two of the stadium. It was like, oh, well, they'll figure it out eventually. And no, they still have not after all this time. So I'm heartened to see that other Yankees fans and people who have attended the games at the stadium share my frustrations that everyone was just kind of clapping me on the back and saying, well said. We have had the same sort of experiences. We didn't have anyone too angry about whatever I said about Wrigley versus Fenway either, although some people pointed out that there are still some limited view seats in the lower level at Fenway. This is the question I asked, right? I was like,

well, aren't there still some? But I haven't been to either, so what do I know? Right. Well, as long as you've been to Yankee Stadium, that's the important thing. And you actually got in. Yeah. Old and new. Do they have... Here's a question for you, Ben. And I don't know if you are...

Are you a bag guy? Are you a guy who carries a bag? I'm using a neutral word because I know that the discussion of men in bags can be fraught in a way that I think connotes that we still need to do more therapy as a nation. Are you a bag guy? No, I generally try to be unencumbered. Often I just, I try to eat my fill before I go if I can, which can be difficult because it could take some time to get there. And then baseball games are notoriously long at times, but I try to eat before I go so that I don't have to wait on the extremely long lines and pay ballpark food prices. And I try to take care of business and just bring as little with me as I can just to smooth the process, grease the wheels, because they're so sticky as it is hole is just like, I don't care for that. So it wasn't even as if you had to go through the process of like getting a bag checked out.

No, I had nothing. Yeah, I don't know if Yankee Stadium is one of those ballparks where they have decided that no one gets to have a bag at all, which I think is terrible. Yeah, I just generally assume that they will strip search you and remove you of all your belongings. So I just save them the trouble and don't have any belongings with me. Yeah, my favorite is going to Chase Field and having to carry the clear bag,

which still gets rooted through. So I was like, this is security theater anyway, but it's not even time-saving security theater because you're still poking around in there. You're making me open my sunglass case. I was like, don't I have the mature face of someone who doesn't need to sneak like airplane bottles of hooch into your ballpark? Don't I have a trustworthy non-childlike face?

I'm not an ASU student, and look, I'm not knocking it. The booze in there is expensive. Sometimes you got to get creative, but I'm just saying it doesn't save any time in line. Instead, I have a clear bag. I got all my stuff there for people to look at. Got to freak out the poor security guys who are like, human tampons, what are these for? It just feels like it's such a fraught experience. It's not hard to get into Chase, though, because people don't really go to those games.

Right. Tends to be fine. I've got some stat blasts lined up. We have a past blast, as always. Maybe just a few banter topics before we get there. So you just brought up Chase Field. Maybe I will use that as a segue just to banter about Christian Walker for a moment. Oh, sure.

Because we've not talked about Christian Walker as far as I can recall this season. And we have a listener named Christian Walker who has been trying to get us to talk about Christian Walker. Yes. And I feel bad that we have not heeded his pleas. Although in one of his recent emails, he misspelled Walker in the subject line. See, I wasn't going to share that part. You decided. I was. Because he then followed up to explain that it was an autocorrect issue. Even though he is Christian Walker, his phone still insists that he's Christian Waller. But he is Christian

Walker. The Diamondbacks first baseman is Christian Walker. I will read his email, which was from nine days ago as we record here on Thursday. And he wrote at the time, my name is Christian Walker. And because my name is Christian Walker, I want to talk about Christian Walker. Sounds reasonable. Sorted by outs above average for first baseman, he has 11 so far this season. And the second highest tally is Josh Naylor at four. Wow. And now just to update that, Christian Walker is now at 12 outs above average according to StatCast. And the second place fielder is still at four. It's now Josh Naylor and Freddie Freeman at four. So he's lapping the field there like thrice. He has tripled the outs above average total of any other first baseman.

Christian Walker, the listener, continued sorting back from the beginning of the 2019 season through that day for first baseman, which amounts to about three full seasons. He's at 30 outs above average. The second place mark belongs to Paul Goldschmidt at 11. This means that Christian Walker has as many outs above average in about seven tenths of a season as the next highest first baseman has had in three full seasons. That does seem pretty wild. And he can hit, too. He's not just a gold glove defense kind of guy. So I was reminded of this because Mike Petriello, our pal at MLB.com, he tweeted also around the time, I think, Christian Walker is going to hit 35 homers with gold glove defense and absolutely no one is going to notice.

Yeah. Well, Christian Walker noticed and now we have noticed and now hopefully if you're paying attention to this podcast, you have noticed. Yeah. But that's pretty impressive. He has 30 homers now. It's a 120 WRC plus, so nothing super spectacular there. And I guess outs above average loves him more than most systems, although defensive run saved has him at 16 as well. be that good at first base? I don't think so. Have you been gobsmacked by Christian Walker on your trips to Chase Field this year? Is he that visually impressive as a first baseman? I mean, I don't mean to downplay the position. And as Scott Hattaberg memorably told us, or I guess

Ron Washington told Scott Hattaberg, it's really hard, right? Yeah. It's incredibly hard. It's incredibly hard. The quote, yeah. Yes, indeed. But Christian Walker apparently makes it look easy. And yeah, you don't like, I mean, if I try to think of like sweet fielding first baseman,

which is not really a phrase that you hear very often, but like there are certain names that come to mind maybe. Now, Christian Walker has not gold gloved before. As far as I can tell, he has not won that hardware. So this is maybe a little bit of an outlier, but it's not a completely new thing for him. so maybe he's just underappreciated because being a truly elite first baseman just sort of goes under the radar because we assume well if you're a first baseman you're probably not that great at defense and if you were then you would be playing some other more demanding position that fewer people can play but perhaps he's the exception here so i gotta just like queue up a bunch of christian walker first base highlights and figure out what it is here like is he a scooping savant does he never make mistakes does he have incredible range I

don't know because I can't say that I have watched so much Christian Walker and play at first base this year that I could tell you just based on the eye test but the advanced stats are pretty impressive yeah so now we have noticed christian walker as have you all listening yeah like um i don't think here's the thing i don't think that the d-backs are like a good baseball team you know because that would be kind of a thing to claim like they are as we are recording i think think they are 56 and 67. They're 30 games back of first place in the NL West, which granted, a lot of that is because they play in the NL West,

and so there are those Dodgers there. But they're not a good baseball team. I think they are in an importantly different category of not good than the Pirates or the Reds or the Nationals or the A's or gosh, there are a lot of teams that have crested 50. You know, that feels not, that probably doesn't feel very good if we think about it for too long. But I don't think they're a good team. But I don't think that they're like a horrible team.

I think that they are, they're not yet respectable in the way that the Orioles are just... I don't think they're good, but they're not bad either. It's a different kind of category of indeterminate quality than the D-backs have, but they have a couple guys on their team where you sit there and you're like,

you would get playing time on pretty much any big league roster. There have been times in the past where you could not say that of many of the guys who played for the Diamondbacks. And now you can in Christian Walker, one of those guys. Here we are looking at a guy who has three wins. He's been worth a little more than three wins by our version of war,

which, as you noted uh is influenced by that sort of average so i'm sure that's that's definitely factoring but christian walker look at you it's just it's rare to be that much better than your major league peer at anything really if he is like three times as good a glove at first base as the next best. Now, you might take that with some grain of salt. But if you're head and shoulders above this next best at your position at that level, then that seems worth celebrating, even if it is something that is often unsung, like first base defense. So he's a true elite outlier of first base defenders.

So now you knew that if you did not know that already. Yeah. He's a true elite outlier of first base defenders. So now you knew that if you did not know that already. Yeah. He has zero scoops, according to this is... Wait, no, hold on. Scoops come from... Huh? Scoops come... I don't know if I know where the scoops stat come from.

Scoops stat is hard to say um according to the fan graphs page he has zero scoops no scoops no scoops i think we should leave this whole thing in because like yeah it makes us look a little silly for not knowing where scoops come from but i've enjoyed the way we've said the word scoops scoops scoops yes zero scoops no scoops no scoops for you no yeah like terrible journalist christian walker it's a good thing he's a good first baseman because he wouldn't make a very good reporter at all you know why it doesn't have any scoops yeah the scoop nazi said no scoops for you. He had 15 scoops in 2019, according to his FanCrafts player page, I believe from SIS, but zero this year. Is that possible? It seems like the league totals are roughly in line with last year's. Anyway, I don't know if that's accurate.

He must have scooped at some point. I would think that he would have had to scoop at some point this season. He can't go scoopless. Yeah. You know what they say. It is better to have scooped and lost than never to have scooped at all. I don't quite know if that's a thing they say. Now we know that he's really good at first base defense.

We don't know exactly why and how, but he is. Yeah. Now we know. Yeah. Christian Walker, I hope you're satisfied with our noticing of Christian Walker. You know, Ben, one thing our listeners don't know is that we started to try to record and then something went wrong with the little recording thing that we use. And then we had to start a new recording session and we trade off intros, you know. And sometimes what will happen is I will say, oh, it's my turn.

And then I like look away and you have started recording. And then I go, oh, crap, I have to do the intro now. Anyway, I feel like I did that before on our first recording session, which you didn't hear because you, you know, you couldn't get in there. There was an error. And I feel like that energy has carried over into this recording session where it's like, you know, here we are. Oh, oh, no. We're recording a podcast. Okay.

I have some news, not about scoops, but about Christian Walker's defense. Okay, tell me. This is timely. So friend of the show, Mark Simon of Sports Info Solutions, earlier this month at the Sports Info Solutions blog, he wrote a post entitled, Want to see good defense? Watch Christian Walker Field and Hit. Intriguing. So Mark says Christian Walker is saving runs and has had some runs taken away by opposing defenses.

So it works both ways. But Mark said Diamondbacks first baseman Christian Walker is having the ultimate defensive season, the combination of his work as both a fielder and a hitter. So his defensive numbers are great. He is the runaway leader in defensive runs saved at the position. As we noted, no one has even half as many. And here's the answer. Mark says what separates Walker from his positional peers is his range, which accounts for all 15 of his runs saved as of August 4th, specifically the skill he has at handling a ball hit to his right. I guess that makes sense. There's only so much range you can have to your left as a first baseman, I suppose.

But Mark wrote he has converted 67 of 123 plays on balls hit in that direction in which he had a greater than 0% chance of recording the out. He is the only first baseman at 50% or higher in that stat and is more than 10 percentage points better than anyone else with at least 50 such opportunities. He's 9 percentage points better than the expected out rate on those plays. the expected outrate on those plays. So Matt Olson, who is a past Fielding Bible Award winner, has 10 fewer plays made on 20 more opportunities. So Christian Walker does it all.

He can do it standing up. He can do it diving. Mark has some highlights here. This is exactly what I wanted. Thank you so much, Mark Simon. I don't have to go hunting for Christian Walker defensive highlights. They're all collected for me here. He's also a standout on balls hit to his left. So he is an 86% outrate against an expected outrate of 79% on balls that they define as middle. So balls in which he didn't have to go in either direction. So he's good where he stands. He's great when he's going to his right. He's good to his left. And then the problem is that apparently

his expected batting line is better than his actual batting line. He has 19 fewer hits than expected, or he did as of earlier this month. And that's because, Mark said, defenses have 14 runs saved against him in terms of turning batted balls into outs. So the only players who had been more victimized by opposing defenses were Corey Seager and Whit Merrifield at that point. So not only is he doing a great job at defending, but he is being defended extraordinarily well as well. So he has experienced both sides. And the double-edged sword, it has come back to bite him. He has bitten others. How do you feel about using defense as a verb,

like he has been defensed? Yeah, I don't like that at all. I don't like it either. I'm hearing it more and more. Are you? I am, yes. People are saying I've heard more and more, and I'm not happy about it. Wait, really? Where are you hearing that more and more? You're not a footballman. You're not a man of the football.

Because you say pass-defense, which is a crime. Yeah, broadcasters say it in baseball, defensed sometimes. Use defense? I've never heard a baseball broadcaster say that ever in my entire life. A Bader- Meinhof situation. You're going to be hearing it every day. Oh, now I'm mad at you for bringing it up. Really?

You're hearing that a lot? I'm not hearing that at all. Oh, no. Now I am going to listen. People can confirm that I'm not imagining this, but yeah. Defensed. Wait, so they say he was defensed? Defensed, yeah.

It sounds like they don't know how to say defenestration, which, to be clear, also would have, like, not any real place in a broadcast. Sounds like they don't know how to say defended. Yeah, just say defended. We have a whole normal, not hard to say word for that. Yep. Defended. they defended what well this was a little pedantic detour so defensed i don't i i'm telling you it's been said yeah you'll hear it now keep your ears open. Yeah, defensed. Defensed. The act of defending against a tactic. No, no, no.

See, you know how you know? You know how you know it's not real? You know how you know it's not real? Is that you don't get like one of the Google dictionary results that's like, this is what this word means. And that's how you know. Because sometimes. Yeah, because defense is not a verb. No.

I'm not going to say, and so therefore it should be defend, and therefore defended. Right. Yeah, language balls. You play defense, right? You play defense. You might practice your defense, but if you were describing yourself on a field,

you'd say I defended whatever i would hope so yeah i played defense against him and i defended the integrity of the english language you know yes you pick like a thing that one might defend the upshot is christian walker amazing at defensive first base but has also run into a lot of great clubs himself as a hitter. But how many scoops? Some lousy luck too. Not sure how many times he has himself been scooped. You know, a lot of the time we're like,

we don't really have anything to talk about, and then we talk for an hour. But I think this time we were like, yeah, maybe we didn't have something to talk about. Often it turns out that we did have things to talk about. Sometimes it turns out that we did have things to talk about. Sometimes it turns out that I don't say that's not Christian Walker. Scoops and defend it versus defensed. Yeah. So you mentioned the Dodgers and that was going to be one of the things that I brought up because we don't talk that much about the Dodgers, even though they are yet again doing historic things. It's just ho-hum. I mean,

another amazing humdrum dominant Dodger season. They are on pace for 113 wins and they've been playing at a better clip than that for quite a while lately. So if they were to stay at their more recent pace as opposed to their full season pace, then they might very well end up challenging or setting some records. So we were on record watch with the Yankees at the start of the season. They're not going to get anything in the vicinity of records, but the Dodgers are absolutely there, even though it seems like often when we talk about the Dodgers, it's like, oh, Clayton Kershaw's back again, or Craig Kimbrell is struggling at times, or Cody Bellinger has suffered a historic drop-off, right? Dan Siborski just wrote about that for Fangraphs, that arguably an unprecedented decline for a young superstar hitter in terms of what has happened to him since, even though he is seemingly healthy, as far as we all know. So you can reel off this list of things that have gone wrong for the Dodgers, Walker Bueller

having common job surgery, et cetera. And yet they're having maybe their best season yet during this incredibly dominant, extraordinary run. And Mike Petriello put this into perspective recently in an MLB.com piece where he pointed out, you know, this has been going on for a decade. That's why it just hardly seems remarkable at this point. But if you divide that decade into two and you look at since 2017, then the run they've been on over that term in terms of winning percentage, basically better than any team since like the 50s Yankees. And before that, mostly you're going back to like dead ball days. Like this just does

not happen anymore. This streak of dominance, there's no end in sight. Like I wrote years and years and years ago, maybe for Grantland, that's how long ago it was, about how there's no end in sight for the Dodgers. What could derail the Dodgers? Because they have money and they have a farm system and they have a commitment to winning. And that was before they had even really distinguished themselves in player development the way that they have. And so there just does not seem to be any slowing of the juggernaut. And things go wrong for other teams in that division. And the Padres, they make all that noise at the deadline. And now lately they can't hit. And Josh Hader is not pitching well. And things go wrong for them because for everything that's gone wrong and everyone who's maybe underperforming expectations, there's someone else who is at least playing up to them. And they just have no weakness, really, because they lose one pitcher and then they bring up Dustin May or Cody Bellinger doesn't hit. And then Gavin Lux does hit. Like, there's just always someone else and they do everything well. They don't make mistakes. They're good at pitching.

They're good at hitting. They're great at defense. They're on their fifth consecutive season of scoring the most runs in the majors and allowing the fewest. That's ridiculous. That should not happen. That should not be possible. You should not be able to do that. They've done that four seasons in a row now. And if they do it for a fifth, I guess it's actually the league that they have led. No team had done it for four straight seasons since the, again, 1936 to 1939 Yankees, Sarah Langs tweeted last year. So they're going for the record there. It's like we should just stop and pay attention to this every now and then because the Dodgers cannot be stopped. They cannot be slowed. They cannot be beaten. I mean, maybe they can be beaten in the playoffs, but in the regular season, they cannot be stopped. They cannot be slowed. They cannot be beaten. I mean, maybe they can be beaten in the playoffs, but in the regular season, they cannot be beaten.

Well, they've been beaten 37 times, Ben. Yes, they have. That is quite true. How now? I think that it is one of those things, sort of like Mike Trout, where we lose sight of the prolonged excellence, even when it is maybe a standard deviation or two removed from what we would otherwise expect, even such great excellence. We're like, eh. We should take a peek. Now, we'll say the following. I do worry about their pitching in the postseason, Ben. Yeah. I do worry about it. Although, as we have discussed, maybe having less to work with will inadvertently curb some of Dave Roberts' weird pitcher postseason proclivities. Postseason pitcher proclivities?

Yeah. Anyway, so I do fret about that part of it and what they will be able to manage on the pitching side. Not because what they have now and the guys they have now aren't good, but just because what happens if one more of them goes down? They're in that territory where you're like, okay, but you'd be done now. You'd be done with your attrition for now. You don't have a lot or nearly as much wiggle room as you once did. But I don't know, man. Freddie Freeman is the third most valuable position player in the National League.

And Mookie Betts is the sixth. And Trey Turner is the eighth. You know, it's just. Joey Gallo's back. Joey Gallo's back. You know, Joey Gallo is back being um a big bopper he loves la you know you can you can just imagine at the end of every game that they win and that song comes on he's like i really get what randy newman was going for man because i do love la beard gets

a little longer the bat gets a little better. Yeah. So it's just extraordinarily impressive. Even if they only end up with the one World Series championship throughout this run, and they could very well add another, but the level of sustained regular season dominance in this era is truly extraordinary and obviously unsurpassed. And you can't say, extraordinary it's obviously unsurpassed and you can't say like oh it's coming to an end like the window is closing i mean yeah there are definitely some players who are getting up there in age and are showing some effects of that this is not a young team it's not a young lineup certainly they have traded some players away but they still have a pretty strong farm system they still have this track record of developing players.

Obviously, they still spend and they will go get the superstars whenever one is available. So like, how does this perpetual motion machine ever stop? Right. I don't know. Like, all things must come to an end at some point. Sure. And one of these years, maybe it'll just be a disaster where everything goes wrong. But it's hard to see, like, you know, as long as like the people in place are not poached

and the team is not sold and like all of the underlying conditions that have contributed to this run, as long as those largely remain in place, it's just it's hard to see how this stops. And there are other teams that at various points you could have said that about, but really no one has managed to keep it up the way that they have for this one. Yeah, I think that when we have talked about them, in contrast to say an organization like the Rays that certainly does the drafting piece well and the player dev piece well and has managed to deploy the depth that that has generated both to acquire talent that they need and to patch holes on the big league roster when guys go down with injury?

The thing that really differentiates a team like the Dodgers is that they have that third player acquisition path where they can go out and spend and they, you know, it's not just a willingness to spend, like it's clear that they manage their payroll situation in a really thoughtful way that they are mindful of when it is worth it to them to break through some of the luxury tax, you know, thresholds and just pay a penalty because they want that, the luxury tax thresholds and just pay a penalty because they want that collection of guys. And so I think that there is just a lot to recommend their ability to weather the storm when it comes to a prospect not panning out the way that they hope that he will, or a player might be vital to their dreams of contention, getting hurt or whatever, that they just have a lot of different ways to try to paper over the inevitable attrition that comes through either players not being as

good as you expect or not being available for a variety of reasons. So it's a pretty impressive thing. And you look at the depth of their farm system is really impressive. You look at their ability to take guys on and help them to find a better way to produce at the big league level. And it's just a really intimidating thing. And they're not a perfect organization. There have been times when we have been critical of specific player moves that they have made, right? It's like, hey, you're rich and smart.

You don't have to sign Trevor Power. You can make different choices than that. So I don't want to say that there are never times where we think that they could have made a better choice for either baseball or sort of moral reasons, but it's pretty impressive. And you're right that people leave, people go to other teams, but I also think a lot of people really want to work for the Dodgers. Like I imagine, you know, if you're a player dev person, if you're a scout, if you're an analyst, to sit there and say like, we're really good at this.

We're going to contend every single year. And every part of this organization is contributing to that effort. Like that would probably be pretty cool. So I think that they're going to, you know, have an okay time retaining talent, even as they do lose some people to opportunities with other clubs. So I don't know. Blake Trinan has pitched three innings this season. Yeah.

So what? Shrug. Yeah. He's probably tweeted more than that, which is probably not the best for him. But yeah, if you look at their death chart, it's not like they don't have a bunch of dudes on the injured list, right? And notable names, guys who they expected to contribute in a kind of meaningful way, and they're just not available and some of them will come back but not all of them you know and uh it's fine like it's ended up just kind of

being fine man i forgot kevin pilar was a dodger yeah yeah i kind of thought like at some point people would get really sick of the dodgers, that everyone would collectively turn on them after they won the World Series and they finally got the October monkey off their backs. Because they had been really successful in the regular season, but they kept having these heartbreaking or perhaps in some cases self-inflicted but still heartbreaking losses. And people like Clayton Kershaw and other Dodgers. And if you were a neutral observer, maybe you wanted to see them finally break through and have Kershaw shake the playoff reputation and all that. And then they finally did. And they have been even better since then, if anything.

I mean, they were great in that shortened season, too. I regret that we didn't get to see what they would have done over a full season that year. But they've not gone away. And they're still the World Series favorite. And so I don't know, like I'm sure fans of other NL West teams are probably sort of sick of them. Yes. They do keep changing the cast and they do have a bunch of players I enjoy watching and rooting for. So I can't personally say I'm sick of the Dodgers. I mean, yeah, maybe give

someone else a chance to be the best team in baseball at some point, but I still enjoy watching them play in the way that they put their team together for the most part. So it's not a terrible thing for the game to have the Dodgers be great every year, I guess, at least. It doesn't seem like everyone has just decided, ah, we're so sick of these guys and seeing them in October every year, even though they did finally break through. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think they've had their moments where people have been ready for someone else to sort of take the reins. But, you know, for having a couple of players who people really don't like, they have so many guys who people just... Who doesn't like Mookie Betts?

Who are the people out there who are like, eh? Yeah, Trey Turner, Freddie Freeman. Right. They just have a bunch of guys who I think people really enjoy watching and who seem to enjoy playing together for the most part. And I don't know. It's just like it's easy. I think they are aided.

Here's a theory, Ben. I think the fact that they have only won the one World Series over this stretch actually helps with their likability in a pretty meaningful way. I think that if they had like three or four, then we would be like, eh, go away from me now. I'm ready for something new. But the fact that they have had a couple of years where they have like almost been there just about to cross the mountain and then they can't do it for whatever reason, I think actually aids in their likeability because, you know. achievement any less impressive, but people were distracted. Sure. Had a lot on their minds. It was a weird year. Yeah. So I'm not saying like write it off or discount it in any way because the Dodgers obviously would have been in the playoffs that year if they played a full season. And that

was, I think, a legitimately great team and we don't necessarily need a bigger sample to say so. So I don't think that is tarnished or anything but yeah yeah and you can't i think it's really hard we can't quantify it but like i think we should all acknowledge like even though it was a short season the degree of difficulty given what was going on in the world like you know they earned that world series in my opinion yeah. And they faced tough opponents in the playoffs. I mean, yeah, that was absolutely legitimate. But also, like, maybe we all just sort of memory hold that entire year and season to some extent. So that could be part of it, too. All right. So last little bit of banter, you mentioned that the Dodgers have a couple of potential MVP candidates, but they're

not the leading ones in the National League. Right. So in the AL, we talked about this not too long ago, and Aaron Judge is still holding steady, maintaining a somewhat sizable lead over Shohei Otani. But in the NL, over Freeman, over Mookie, you have the two Cardinals who are just neck and neck now. There is no apparent- Well, they're not going to be neck and neck after today can i well can i tell you about the day that paul colchman has had yeah i mean i guess nolan arenado said a decent day too because i think his wife went into labor and that's why he's not playing so

that's nice for him as well but i don't mean to say that like two home runs equals one baby like that's that would be a weird thing to say. That's not what I'm saying, but I will tell you that he has three hits on the day, including two home runs and has driven in five and also walked. His season WRC plus is up to 195. His season line is up to 339, 420, 637. He has a 448 Woba.

Yeah. Wow. So if this were a season-ended-today situation, I think he would win. I mean, there's no difference in war. Maybe there will be a slight difference after this game. But there's effectively no difference. Yeah. They were exactly equal at 6.5.

Fangraphs were entering the day. They're a tenth of a win apart in baseball reference were indistinguishable. And it's a different shape of production. Yes. It's almost like you wish you could just give it to both of them. Just have co-MVPs like Keith Hernandez and Willie Stargell did one year. I don't know whether there's any, like, vote splitting that goes on here. I guess, like, even if there were, like, who are the next best candidates?

Probably both Dodgers, right? Yeah. Unless you're going to go Samuel Contra, maybe. And Machado, that's right. Yeah. Machado and Lindor. Right. Yes.

So there are other great players, but it does seem like there's some separation between the two. It's just that Goldschmidt has had such an overpowering offensive year. Yes. Now, it's Nolan Aranato we're talking about, so I'm not saying take the defensive stats with a grain of salt. It's Nolan Aranato. So the fact that he has great defensive stats and that that is inflating his war. Yeah. I think we can trust the samples at this point and the eye test i think nolan arenado has impressed me even more than christian walker in the field i think i can safely say so i'm just like grappling with his his defensive his like

underlying defensive metrics yeah oh my god at 30 at third base you know he's just uh 15 drs he's got 16 outs above average when you convert that into runs it's 12 his ucr 150 is 11.1 yeah i mean aronado is hitting 300 365 557 yeah so know, that's like almost a 160 WRC plus. So no slouch at the bat either. Yeah, it's not like he's been bad at the plate. Yeah, so really it's hard to separate the two. Yeah. I don't know, man.

Paul Goldschmidt has two more stolen bases. So I think that that's going to be what it comes down to ben it might just be those two extra bags he swiped if you know if the season were to end today which would be weird because they still have a bunch of games to play goldsmith's got a like a 382 babbitt yeah right now which again like you don't necessarily have to discount that or the expected stats, which he has somewhat overperformed quite significantly, actually. So if you think that is a little fluky, then I guess you could hold that against him. There are some people who will say, oh, this is retrospective.

It doesn't matter. He got the hits. I think there's still something to be said for whether what you did, the underlying performance deserved that kind of result. Like if you're just looking for a tiebreaker, which you are in this case, because they were literally tied war-wise during the day and they're on the same team and everything. So it's hard to differentiate between them. And I haven't done a deep dive into their candidacies.

You know, obviously, like there's not going to be a big difference in terms of like quality of opponents faced or anything. Right. That would be weird if you found that. It would, yes. Oh, no. I think I've done something very wrong with my analysis. Yeah. I haven't really looked into the clutchness. I guess it looks like they've both been a little unclutched, if you use the fan graphs clutch definition, which is just relative to their extremely high baseline.

Right, right. Which doesn't mean much. Yeah, it's self-referential. And when you're having a year like theirs, it actually strikes me as somewhat reasonable that they would be unclutched relative to themselves because themselves is really great. Well said. Are really great. Yeah. So I don't know how you choose between them.

I guess you don't because it's August 25th. Right. So you don't actually have to. You can wait more than a month and see who finishes strong. So that's one reason why we haven't talked about this until now. Because there's no pressing reason to talk about it until the season is actually just about to be over. And neither of us is voting in this award, I assume. because there's no pressing reason to talk about it until the season is actually just about to be over. Right. And neither of us is voting in this award, I assume.

I do not expect to be. I am not voting in this award. I am an awards voter, I found out. Ooh, interesting. I am not yet again. Yeah, so I'm going to have to – can I say? We can't talk about what I – I can't talk about my vote before they're announced, right? Right.

No, you cannot. But you can say that you have one. Yeah. I found out that I have an NL Rookie of the Year vote. Ah, okay. Yeah. It's only my second vote since I joined the BBWA, which I feel very fancy. Yeah.

Well, you can choose between some Braves probably. I haven't looked at the leaderboard there's a lot of doubling up in some of these award races you're right about that where it's like wow you know these uh these good teams have good players film 11 yeah some dynamic duos here yeah today i had the following experience i had following. It's like a Mike squared experience. So I went on vacation on Friday. And I didn't do a lot of baseball watching while I was on vacation, Ben, because I was trying to not be working.

Sure. And so I totally missed Mike Trout coming back from being hurt. So that was sure a pleasant surprise when I looked up yesterday. I was like, hey, did you know that that's Mike Trout? surprised when I looked up yesterday. I was like, hey, did you know that that's Mike Trout? Then today, I had the Angels and Rays game on before we started recording.

For a guy who has had all of entering today, he had had 50 big league plate appearances in this season. He's added four more today. I have said that player X is a what now about mike ford more than any other

player in baseball this year yeah did you know that mike ford's on the angels now bud i did i didn't know he had just been added to them right because he has been with three other teams yes yes not really hit for any of them no he has not had yeah on the angels now the weird and wonderful and terrible thing about the angels is that like when they pick you up it seems like you are batting cleanup that day yeah even if they just picked you up off the metaphorical scrap heap essentially the discard pile from other big league teams. Somehow you are slotted in at the cleanup spot. He did go two for four, so good for Mike Ford. Yeah, good for Mike Ford.

That's not the Mike that you want batting cleanup in that lineup ideally. Right, and now sitting here, I realize that mostly this is a continuation of the Angels' season-long plot to just profoundly confuse us about who is on their roster by doubling up on names or having names that are quite similar. So I hope that Mike Ford does well. But if, you know, in the offseason, he manages to end up somewhere that doesn't also employ Mike Trout, that might be less confusing to some of us, particularly if we go on vacation.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, it's a pleasant surprise to see that he's back because it's often been an unpleasant surprise that he has been absent. Yeah. All right. Let's finish with a little stat blast barrage here. They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA minus or OBS plus. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. lost. Okay, so this is a question from Chip, Patreon supporter. This is a week ago. The Yankees fortunes have perhaps looked up a bit since then, but it's been a bad run

for them. So Chip wrote, I was watching the Yankees taking another beating at the hands of the Blue Jays this evening and the announcers were commenting on the fact that the Yankees were now on pace for just 99 wins, the first time since they were 6-9 on whatever day that was. This got me thinking and researching, and I found that the Yankees are now 9-17, that's a 346 winning percentage in the second half, according to fan graphs. That seems pretty bad for a team that is virtually guaranteed to make the playoffs. I know the Dodgers had a fairly bad second half a few seasons ago, but I didn't think it was quite that bad winning percentage wise.

So the question is, are the Yankees on the verge of something historic with such a bad second half while still making the playoffs? If not, what is the worst second half to still make the playoffs? making the playoffs. If not, what is the worst second half to still make the playoffs? Possibly put another way, what playoff team had the largest negative differential in winning percentage from the first to the second half? I did see a stat in a Tyler Kepner Times column this week. He noted, until these Yankees, no team had ever played 700 baseball for the first 60 games of a season, then followed that up with a losing record for the next 60. So whatever else happens, the 2022 Yankees will always have that first team to ever be that strong and that sluggish

in equal measures just before the stretch run. So that's something. It has indeed been notable, the Yankees' slump over the past couple months. It's been bad, especially relative to how good they were at the start of the season. This is not a perfect answer. So Ryan Nelson, frequent StatBlast consultant, he's on Twitter at rsnelson23. He did kind of a close proxy using StatHead, which, by the way, sponsors this segment. Go to StatHead.com, sign up for a one-year subscription, $80, and you get access to all of the StatHead goodness.

And if you use the coupon code WILD20, then you get a $20 discount on that. Not just baseball. You can also get StatHead for other sports as well. But powered by baseball reference, StatHead.com. You know the drill. So Ryan did a little stat head search here as an answer to this question, and he found that only 11 teams have ever had a losing record in their last 70 games of the season and made the playoffs. A's who went 30 and 40 in the second half, second half being post-All-Star break, I assume. Yankees would only have to go 20 and 19 the rest of the way. This was a couple of days ago to beat those A's, which should happen, but who knows?

They would have to go 24 and 15 the rest of the way to get to 500 in the second half of the season. And that actually does seem in doubt. But again, who knows? I did see a tweet Ryan writes about teams that won more than two-thirds of their games in the first half. For ease of research, this is a list of teams who won more than two-thirds of their first 92 games. That was the first half for the Yankees this year. These are elite teams. So of those, 29 of 53 won the World Series.

39 won more than 100 games. Only two teams had a losing record in the last 70 games, the 1958 Yankees and the 2006 Tigers. That was courtesy of Stathead as well. So we'll see how the Yankees actually finish out the season. But it was somewhat dismaying to Yankees fans on top of the fact that they can't get into Yankee Stadium to begin with. When they actually did manage to get in there, they saw their team losing a lot. And, you know, they've had worse luck. They've had a lot of one run losses and close losses lately. They've had some significant injuries. John Carlos Stanton is back. Maybe things are looking up a bit from a health standpoint. So they'll be OK. Like we didn't wring our hands too much and talk about the Yankees too much because they built up such a big lead.

Right. That there wasn't really ever a time when it seemed like, oh, they're actually going to blow this thing. Right. Because even when they were looking like they were bad enough to blow it, they just still had such a buffer built up. And so they still have an eight game lead in that division, which is like a lot to blow over six weeks or whatever's left. I mean, it would be a truly historic and unprecedented loss if they were to be overtaken. Like, I think they would have had the biggest division lead to have lost that lead, certainly at the point in the season when they had it. But they just didn't really ever seem to be in great danger of that as bad as things were looking for a while.

So like, you know, their odds of winning the division, according to fan graphs, are down to what, like over 90 still. Like I think they peaked at 99.1 percent. But now they're still really strong and their playoff odds, making it one way or another, have not budged from 100. They're at 91.6% to win the division as we speak. No one else in that division is over single digits. So they just built up such a big lead that it's really hard to fritter away, which does not mean that you can't be concerned for the postseason, but we'll see what state that roster is at the time, right? I mean,

they've had famously slow ends to a season before, like the 2000 Yankees ended very slow, and then they just went on to win the World Series anyway, despite winning only 87 games and having a rough stretch. And like Jay Jaffe has looked at this, right? And others have, like basically backing into the playoffs in a slump doesn't seem to be all that predictive, right? Based on what we can tell. I don't think so. You know, all else being equal, I guess you don't want to go into the playoffs dispirited because you've had a terrible end to the season. But I don't know how predictive it is just like above and beyond like, well, who's actually on your roster at that point?

If it's a different team than it was when you were winning in April and May, well, that could be a cause for concern for sure. Right. And if, you know, they were to have a collapse such that they end up, you know, either in the wild card, which would just take, I mean, I think the Rays are seven games back now. Okay. The Blue Jays are eight. Tampa won today. But, you know, they're still in a, not only are they in a division spot, but they're still in position to receive a first round buy. I mean, there are things that could unfold over the next little bit that might materially alter our perception of them going into October. But that would have more to do about the circumstance of them entering

the postseason and rest and not getting a bye and all of that kind of stuff more than my opinion of the underlying roster. So I mean, I'm sure they'd rather have been winning than not like it isn't it isn't as if this is the the way they wanted their second half to unfold but like if I were characterizing it to someone I think I would say like you know they probably were kind of hot when they were really hot right and they're probably colder than their roster really indicates right now. And so you take the spot in between those, and it's like this is a really good team that's going to be dangerous in October. Yeah, not the Dodgers though.

No, or even the Astros, right? I mean, I think that when I – and it's not as if there aren't some things that we could poke at when it comes to that Houston roster either, but when I'm thinking about the team that I would be the most concerned about coming out of the AL, I don't know that it's the Yankees anymore, but that's only because they're second in my mind to that. So that's not the same as being actually worried about them. I meant to mention, by the way, that questions like what's the worst slump by any playoff team to end the season?

There's always going to be a big era effect there because the playoffs used to be much more exclusive than they are now. So with a 12-team playoff format, you can get away with a much worse slump than you could have in the past when many fewer teams actually made the playoffs. But as long as you're aware of that going in, it can still be fun to look these things up. Okay, so here's another Dodgers dominance question. This is from Eric who said, as of today, August 25th, Trey Turner is leading the National League in singles. Freddie Freeman is leading the league in doubles. And Gavin Lux is leading the league in triples. Cool. The Dodgers, alas, have no candidate to lead the league in home runs. But this makes me curious whether any team has ever had a different player lead the league in each of the four types of hits so ryan says no a team has never it's hard to dash your dreams that quickly but no a team has never had four different players

lead in the four different hit types the closest he could come up with. So teams that have led in all four, the 1927 Yankees, famously pretty good hitting team, murderer's row. So Earl Coombs led in singles and triples. Lou Gehrig led in doubles. Babe Ruth led in homers. The 1908 Tigers, Maddie McIntyre led in singles. Ty Cobb led in doubles and triples. And Sam Crawford led in home runs.

And then there have been a bunch of teams that have led in three with three different players since 1900. So just in 2019, the Royals led in singles, triples, and homers. The 1964 Twins led in doubles, triples, and homers. The 1949 Cardinals led in singles, doubles, and triples. 1915 Tigers. 1914 Philadelphia A's and 1903 Pirates. They also led in three as well. I'll put that data online. But, yeah, I guess that's the one knock on the Dodgers this season.

They have not had someone who will lead the league in home runs. So I reckon it's— Well, then what's it all for even, Ben? Yeah, exactly. All right. Here's another question from Daniel, who wrote about a week ago, After Lucas Giolito's seven-earned-run performance against the Astros today, I happened to notice that in his last eight games, Giolito has allowed every number of earned runs between zero and seven with no repeats.

Is this a record? Has there ever been a longer stretch of unique earned run totals for a pitcher? What about a longer stretch of unique consecutive earned run totals, for example, 0-8 or 1-9. I will not say out loud that I am rooting for an 8 earned run game next time out because that would just be mean. And Daniel also said I was only looking at his last 10 games to find the 8 game streak in my previous email, but between June 11th and July 27th, Giolito allowed the following earned run totals, 4-8-7-2-1- 5, 0, 6, 3. That's a nine-game streak. Is Giolito punking us? So Ryan reports,

there have been 24 spans in history where a pitcher has had nine consecutive games with nine unique earned run totals, but that can include any total, not necessarily consecutive totals like zero to eight or one to nine. Of those 24, only nine were unique consecutive numbers, all zero through eight. So Vance Worley did it in 2013. Bobby Shantz, former podcast guest, did it in 1955. Rick Rushall, 1975 to six. Matt Morris, 2004. Rodrig Rushall, 1975 to 6. Matt Morris, 2004.

Rodrigo Lopez, 2003 to 4. Jimmy Haynes, 1999. Chris Capuano, 2004. John Burkett in 1996. And JT Brubaker in 2021, just last year. Ryan says never has a player had a 10-game streak with 10 unique consecutive numbers of earned runs, although 0-9 would be most likely if it were to happen. There has been exactly one streak of 10 consecutive starts with 10 different earned run totals that were not consecutive,

and that was by Chick Frazier from May 16, 1901 through June 28th 1901 in consecutive starts he allowed 12 5 3 9 8 4 0 1 2 and 6 earned runs. No one has had an 11 start streak consecutive numbers or otherwise. Gioito would need two straight eight plus earned run games with different earned run totals course, to join Frazier and three to beat him seems fairly unlikely. Yeah. Indeed, it didn't happen because I think he allowed seven on August 18th and he allowed one just this week on August 24th. So the streak is over, but he had a good run or sometimes a bad run, but a very varied run at the very least. All right. In that same genre, so questions about differentials between starting pitcher performance from one start to the next. who wrote on August 10th that on August 9th, Miles Michaelis had had a bad game.

Two and two-thirds innings pitched, 14 hits, 10 earned runs, two strikeouts, zero walks. In terms of a starting pitcher, is this one of the worst individual starts? In terms of how our Fantasy League scores points, he has earned me negative 29 points. It's the largest single-game negative score that most of us can remember. Now, that I answered already and noted that he had the worst game score of any start this season, but that there had been worse ones in previous seasons. So that was noted on an earlier stat blast. But the follow-up to that, Chris wrote, he followed up with an eight inning performance, good for a 72 game score. So that was an 80 point swing

in Bill James game score from one start to the next. So in either direction, that seems like a large swing. That's pretty notable. So what's the biggest swing in game score from one start to the next in either direction? Ryan says the biggest drop ever was by Joe Eschger for the Boston Braves on May 13th, 1920. In his previous start, Eschger set the all-time record for game score 153. That's breaking the scale. Not everyone has internalized game score, but that's huge. You don't tend to see triple digit game scores, let alone 153. So he had gone 26 innings, nine hits, four walks, seven strikeouts and one earned run. Not surprisingly, his next start was worse. There was a bit of a hangover perhaps after the 26 inning game. What? In that one, he went seven innings, nine hits, two walks, one strikeout, and six earned runs. That's a game score drop of 121 points. He was probably still broken from the 26 innings just three days before. He didn't even get the type of rest that you get now after not going 26 innings. The biggest drop in the integration era was by Joe Kennedy of the Rays in May of 2003. He had a 90 game score followed by a negative five game score. Wow. that. In his previous start, Leclerc set the all-time record for worst game score with negative

56. He went nine innings and allowed 24 hits, eight walks, zero strikeouts, and 20 earned runs. He then followed that up with a perfectly respectable nine inning, three hit, three walk, nine strikeout, three earned run start. That was a game score gain of 131. The biggest gain in the integration era was by Jeff Samarja in September of 2015. He went from negative five to positive 91. So that's a gain of 96 points. So he went from going three innings and allowing 11 hits, 10 earned runs, three walks, three strikeouts, to going nine innings and throwing a one-hit shutout with 6 strikeouts and no walks. So Michaelis' recent swing of 80 would slot him in a tie for 77th most dramatic swing of all time, tied for 43rd since 1950 or 18th this century.

So notable but hardly unprecedented. And I will link to the data there. And I mean, that just has to be dizzying to go from just the bottom tier of performance to the top tier or vice versa. In the same league, back to back starts. I don't know, like you must just lose your bearings at that point.'s like am i the guy who's great or the guy who's terrible evidently i'm both within a week or so so that's just gotta leave you spinning i think and questioning everything yeah it would be very disorienting i would think and then this one same genre here so this is from morgan who said I'm just thinking back to a couple of games I saw back in 2019 because I found the starting pitching outcomes to be particularly strange and have been on the lookout for something similar ever since. Back in July of that year, Mike Leak made

back-to-back starts against the Angels. The first one was actually the game where the Angels honored the memory of Tyler Skaggs and threw a combined no-hitter, but Leak took the mound on the other side and it was a disaster. He threw almost 50 pitches before being pulled in the first inning after allowing seven runs, including two run-scoring hits to Mike Trout. In the very next start, the scene shifted to Seattle and away from the Skaggs Memorial, and Leak had one of the most dominant starts a pitcher can, putting up a Maddox with a 98-pitch one-hit complete game shutout.

The game scores in these two starts were 15 and 90 so he wondered too how many other examples there are of a pitcher having such wildly different outcomes in back-to-back starts and if this has ever occurred when both starts came against the same team as Leak's 2019 adventure did or if I witnessed a cool little fun fact in the making back then so Ryan notes this ties in with the Michaelis question we just answered. The highest game score bump ever between two consecutive starts, both against the same team, was by Howard Emke of the Red Sox against the Yankees. In 1923, Emke made his last start of the season on September 28th against the Yankees. He went six innings, allowed 16 earned runs on 21

hits, four walks, and six strikeouts. That's a game score of negative 34. Staying in games longer really allowed you to rack up the negative game scores back then, if that's the right term. In 1924, so okay, this is not the same season, but he made his season debut against the Yankees, and he pitched a complete game, five hit, three walk, four strikeout, one earned run game, game score of 72. So that's the biggest differential and improvement from one game to the next against the same opponent. All right, last one. This comes from Nate, who wrote in earlier this month, just a few days ago, to say that in the Royals-White Sox game of Monday, August 22nd, I believe, Drew Waters drew a bases-load player ever to drive in a go-ahead run in the eighth inning or later with a bases loaded walk in his MLB debut. That seems like a lot of qualifiers. Fun fact aside, this made me think about first career RBI a bit more.

So I have a question that might make for a stat blast. Unsure if the answer will be interesting, but I'm curious nonetheless. if the answer will be interesting, but I'm curious nonetheless. As far as I can tell, this question has not been asked yet, what is the record for the most RBI a player has obtained via a non-hit, that is sack fly, bases loaded, walk, ground out, etc., to open their career before collecting their first actual RBI hit? So most RBI on non-hits to start a career before your first RBI on a hit. Ryan says, the record for most non-hit RBI to start a career is five, which was done by Jim Adusi for the Brewers in 1988. That's Jim Adusi Sr.

Those five represent one-third of his career total, all of which came in the 1988 season. So on May 29th, Adusi got an RBI on a sack fly. On June 7th, June 12th, and July 7th, his only three games in that entire span, he got an RBI in each game on a ground out, a sack fly, and an error by the first baseman, respectively. And then on July 14th, he got yet another, his fifth RBI ground out before finally getting an RBI single on July 15th. So five is the record. In second place is an eight-way tie with four. Of note is Joe Brovey, who got all four of his career RBI between July 4th and July 16th of 1955, and none of them was on a hit. Ground out E1, ground out Sackfly. The others are Jim Cooney, Zach Davies,

Dick Egan, Joe Hassler, Dion James, Don Lee, and Bud Matheny. 75 players have gotten their first three RBI via non-hits. And nearly 2,500 have gotten their first RBI via non-hits. I guess you're happy to get it regardless if it's your first. But ideally, I suppose you would want to get it on a clean little hit probably. All right. So that's the end of the Stat Blast. Thanks as always to everyone who has sent in the questions and thanks to Ryan for his research. And that brings us finally to the Past Blast. This is episode 1894.

So the Past Blast comes from 1894 and from Richard Hershberger, historian, saber researcher, author of Strike for the Evolution of Baseball. So he writes, a condemnation of bunting to advance the runner. So again, this is 1894 here. This is not 2022. Condemnation of bunting to advance the runner. If there is any excitement in seeing a great big fellow like Dan Brothers or Roger Connor lumber up to the bat with a label on his back reading, Watch me. I'm going out so the other fellow can walk down to second. Then I mistake the game, declared Frank Bancroft. It is disheartening to see men who are hired to slug the ball going up and dying like calves because the runner ahead of them won't

take any chances in stealing a base. So, Richard says, sacrifice hits were all the rage in the early 1890s. Not everyone was happy about it. Even some observers who agreed that it was smart scientific baseball disliked bunting as poor spectacle compared to the long ball. Frank Bancroft here adds the argument that a sacrifice is coddling the runner at first who should be able to steal second without the batter giving himself up. Most modern fans admire a well-placed bunt,

but the tension between winning strategy and good spectacle is very much alive. The details of the debate in 1894 are quaint, but the tone of the discussion is familiar today. So even in the 19th century, there were people who were saying, stop bunting because it's a waste and also it's boring. Well, I mean, sometimes though you get to see guys go fast. Yeah. I mean, look, I think that we still conflate the different kinds of bunting. Totally. I think the blanket, stop bunting, that has made people lose sight of the fact that bunting for a Yes. Totally. meant never bunt for a hit, I don't think. But it's often taken that way because there's been such a backlash to sacrifice bunting,

which I agree is not only not great strategy most of the time, but it's boring and has apparently been apparent to people since 1894 that it was often boring, especially if it was a capable hitter who was giving himself up, dying like a calf instead of swinging away. I don't think that calves famously give themselves up. I mean, you have a sacrificial lamb. People eat them, right? I mean, I guess we don't say sacrificial cow as much. No, you have sacred cows.

Yes. I don't know. But yeah, sack bunts, boring for the most part Bunting for a hit, completely entertaining often All right, that will do it All right, well, after we finished recording I tracked down the aforementioned Dodgers article That I wrote for Grantland

Turns out that was in March of 2015 It was a 2015 season preview piece When I speculated about how the Dodgers might someday be stopped. The lead image atop that piece was of Brandon McCarthy, who has not pitched in the majors since 2018. Yet the Dodgers roll right along. They are indeed indomitable, as the title of the episode says. Also, one small correction in the outro to our preceding episode. I included a broadcaster name mix-up.

It was a pronunciation of Lamont Wade Jr. And yet again, in the midst of reporting a pronunciation mistake, I made one myself because that call was by Rockies announcer Jack Corrigan. I believe I called him Jerry, as some owl-eared listeners noted. I was probably confusing him with another Rockies radio announcer, Jerry Schemmel. I've learned my lesson. I'm not going to relay any broadcaster screw-ups today, because if I don't say any names, I can't screw up any names. I'm just happy I came up with the one universally unobjectionable take, which is that Yankee Stadium is a disappointing ballpark. That's the one position that can unite us all in

a polarized world. 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 or not so small monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free aside from our StatHead sponsorship, and get themselves access to some perks, Doug Gale, Kyle Lewis, Tyler Bradley, Tom Ahn, and Emily Fiasco. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the patrons only discord group, as well as monthly bonus episodes hosted by yours truly and Meg discounts on t-shirts playoff live streams and more.

You can contact me and Meg via email at podcast fan crafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system. If you are a supporter, you can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively Thank you. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you soon. I know, I know I ain't gonna lose Ain't gonna lose my way again Time may pass, but I may still remain Time may pass, but I may still remain