Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1925: Cristian Science, Monitored

Episode Date: November 5, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley review all of the action from the historic, eventful fourth and fifth games of the World Series, banter about a fan heckling Rob Manfred, and share multiple Past Blasts (33:22) from 1925 (plus a throwback, Philly-centric Past Blast from 1868). Then (50:08) they talk to Baseball Prospectus writer Michael Ajeto […]

🎵 This is something they just can't handle Hello and welcome to episode 1925 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing pretty well. What a difference a couple days makes in this series. At least. Boy, last time we talked, the Phillies were in the driver's seat, commanding position. And we were citing postseason odds that said that they were the favorites. And that has changed in the last couple days and couple games. Yep, that has definitely changed.

It turns out that two wins by the other team will shift things around. Yeah, when you only need to win four in the series two is half as many as the total yeah you need to collect yeah so that hurts if you're the phillies so yeah the astros after falling behind 2-1 in the series with the phillies having a couple home games ahead of them that they could potentially clinch in. That did not happen. So we had a no-hitter in game four. So this was, I think, maybe the best illustration of momentum or the lack thereof or the momentum being the next day's starting pitcher or whatever cliche you want to throw out there.

Can't really do better than this because after game three, where the Phillies just put up a seven spot on the Astros and shut out the Astros and hit five homers and looked like they were just walking all over Houston the next day it could not have been more different the Phillies did not get a hit they didn't gotta get a hit at some point and they they just failed to do that and the astros won five nothing so that was an even more commanding performance in the other direction which i guess can be heartening for phillies fans because if you're now feeling like the astros have the big mo they're going home they just have to win one of the next two well they were in that position in 2019 too and look

what happened so just as quickly as it flipped one way it could easily flip the other but that was a about as big a disparity in just sort of like home team loudness and loud loudness and just enthusiasm and energy because it's just it's hard to get up and get pumped when your team does not have a hit and really does not threaten all night. Yeah, I mean, like you can win without getting a hit, but it's a lot harder. You know, it takes some doing for sure. Yes, it is theoretically possible, but you're really putting yourself in a hole there. Yeah, particularly when the other team scores five runs. Yeah, that's even tougher.

That's even tougher. That's just hard to do no matter how many hits you have. the other team scores five runs and you're like that's enough runs for them to win yeah i mean like it's not done by any means we've talked on the pod we we talked on our our patreon live stream yesterday they're not cowed the phillies right they're not at all they're not afraid you know sometimes they should maybe they would be within their rights to be reasonably more afraid than they are and no one would fault them for it and they seem to go i don't care about that i'm just not gonna be afraid you know when you are embodying a thump based feral you know vaguely horny spirit you're not gonna be afraid because you're doing other

stuff you gotta maintain those energies so they're they not out of it, but it does get harder because now, and like you said, Houston, they only have to win one more in order to win four. And as we've established, that's how many they need. They need four. So it's going to be harder work, and they will have to face good pitching to do it. They'll be able to counter with some good pitching of their own,

although pitching that hasn't been good of late. I know, that's the thing. If you had told Phillies fans that they would have gotten what they've gotten out of Nola and Wheeler in this series so far, and that they would still be in it going to game six, maybe they would have felt relieved about that. But now they need Wheeler to stave off elimination. So they kind of need him not to be bad. And they gave him a little extra rest. And it seems like he's dealing with some fatigue and diminished velocity. And it's been a long season. And he's been a very durable guy over the past couple of years. But they have taken it easy on him lately. And it seems like he is feeling the effects of those innings but they really need him to to be the primo Zach Wheeler in this game and try to get the ball back to Ranger Suarez in game seven so yeah it would be tough like yeah could you win without getting much of anything of use from Wheeler and Nola yeah you could yeah but but it would be quite a tough path to victory so I think we really have to just sort of salute the Astors pitching,

which we've done enough of this month and last month too. It's November now. I don't know if you noticed it's a different month. I did notice that, yeah. Yeah, we're going to get, I guess, the latest World Series game ever played, I think. So we're at least a tie for that.

It's the latest World Series game that I've ever had to care about professionally. That's certainly true. Does that make it a fun fact? It's too many qualifiers. I think but yeah Christian Javier was so good that we are actually going to devote the large part of an interview in this episode to him. So Javier just dominant six innings no two walks, nine strikeouts. Everyone was singing his praises. Everyone post-game was trying to explain why he is so good because he's not that hard a thrower by the current standards where everyone is a ridiculously

hard thrower. And yet he surpasses his stuff, or at least that very surface level understanding of his stuff. And it's not very surface-level understanding of his stuff. And it's not new. He's done it all season. He's done it all postseason. But he was particularly good in this game. So we are going to bring on Mikey Aheado, who writes for Baseball Prospectus and FiveThirtyEight and PitcherList and Lookout Landing and other places. And he wrote a good article about Javier. article about Javier. And so he's going to explain how he does what he does and how he and his success illustrate some modern pitching concepts, some new age pitching terminology like vertical

approach angle, which he is someone who stands out in that respect. So we will get into all of that. So save your Christian Javier questions for a little later in the episode. But Javier, Abreu, Christian Javier questions for a little later in the episode. But Javier, Abreu, Montero, Presley, just dominant stuff really from all of them. And look, we have disparaged the concept of the combined no-hitter certainly in the past. And it's obviously not as impressive on an individual level. But on a team level, to throw a no-hitter in the World Series against a good-hitting team like the Phillies, that is very impressive. So I don't want to disparage the combined no-hitter. This is not the time or the place, I don't think. excited about a combined no-hitter and I'm not going to talk about any individual the way that I would have talked about Don Larson throwing his perfect game or any one single starter throwing a no-hitter himself but but to no-hit the Phillies in that situation yeah it's pretty impressive

yeah it's you know it's funny we we expect to, I think sometimes in the pursuit of like really keen and insightful analysis, we think we have to find something hidden. And sometimes stating the obvious can just prove the point like they got of his performance or his capacity to all you know like sure authoring a no-hitter on your own authoring a perfect game like that changes our estimation of an individual guy and we might sort of combined no-hitter adjust a no-hitter in a way that i think is fine but also the thing about it is the phillies got no hit in a world series game so that seems bad for them you know like it's not if you're them it's fine. But also the thing about it is the Phillies got no hit in a World Series game. So that seems bad for them. You know, like it's not if you're them, it's not what you want. And I think that whatever mental asterisk we might apply to the fact that it's a group of pitchers combining for this thing, you know, we at least have to smudge away part of it when we account for the environment in which it's happening, which is like, that's hard to do against that team. And to do it when you really can't think of more impressive

or important stakes seems, you know, it seems. I guess like they could have done a combined no-no in like the game that clinches them a World Series championship. Yes. They still can. They still can, to be clear. But also, that's like literally the only circumstances under which the stakes are higher. So that seems good, you know, or bad, depending on who you're rooting for in this series.

Yeah. Any kind of win would have been nice for them. They wouldn't have taken any victory. But to do it in that way, it's more emphatic. So, and Javier's parents were there. They flew in from the DR to see him pitch. I think it was the first time his father had seen him pitch in the major leagues. He's probably like, I don't do this every time, dad. And maybe I will if you come watch me. Maybe you should come see

all my starts. I'm sure they have watched many of his starts from afar. They know he doesn't throw a no-hitter every time, but I'm sure it was extremely cool to see. Yeah. So there was that. And the top of the Astros lineup delivered. Aaron Nola did not throw a no-hitter. He allowed too many hits. No home runs. Yeah. There's that. But the guys in the Astros lineup who are supposed to do some damage,

they did enough. Yeah, they did enough. As it turns out, I guess one run would have been enough. But they scored four more for good measure. So that was that. Now game five, which, as you mentioned, we were live streaming during. Yes. But most of our podcast listeners were not in the live stream.

Happy to have those of you who were. But this was a fun one. This was a nail biter. Yeah. We were nervous in the latter stages of this game. We were definitely feeling some secondary anxiety on behalf of both teams probably yeah but the astros won this thing 3-2 and they took a 3-2 lead in the series and i guess this was the justin verlander game or coming into it the big question was what will just Justin Verlander do? Will he get this World Series monkey off his back? And he did, I guess. He got the win. It was his first win in a World Series

game, and I think maybe the second team win in a game started by Justin Verlander. Now, he was not great in this game by Justin Verlander standards. He was great by Justin Verlander in the World Series standards. But normally, we would not be raving about a five-inning one-run start with four walks and six strikeouts and a homer. I mean, it was good. It started out scary for the Astros because Kyle Schwarber ripped a dinger. And that followed the Astros scoring one in the top of the first where it looked like things might get out of hand there. And Syndergaard gave up a quick run but then got out of things. So it looked like it was going to be a higher scoring affair initially in each of those first half innings. But then both pitchers clamped down and Verlander, he looked shaky for a little while. And there were people who were calling for him to be pulled and Dusty don't make the same mistake you made in game one where you stick with Verlander too long. But then he settled down and he kind of gutted through five and seemed like he didn't have his best fastball and so he started relying on it less and he was just good enough to leave with a lead, which the Astros bullpen held. So Justin Verlander, World Series winner.

Yeah, and I think he said after the game that it was meaningful to him. It seemed like it. You could tell. He was relieved. It looked like a load had been lifted from him when he was removed. Yeah, so it is a good reminder to us.

We can watch a story like this and note its imperfections, and we did in the moment. We were right to do that because when you walk a bunch of guys and look like he did, if they had pulled him, I would not have batted an eye if after narrowly escaping, Dusty had said, I've seen enough. We're not doing this anymore. That bullpen is loaded.

They're going to have the off day. Let's try to tie this up and keep it close. I would not have really questioned that decision, but it's useful for us to remember what matters to the people who actually play baseball, which isn't to say that we have to regress our understanding of the game or suddenly put more stake and store into stats that we know don't tell us as much as other ones that

we've developed but like i think it is nice to remember like what matters to these guys because they are the ones playing it so that's a good thing even justin berlander who's had an incredible career and right will be a hall of famer and yeah made a ton of money and has everything you could want in a baseball career except pitching well in the world series i guess and that was a pretty big but so yeah now he has that too or pitching well enough at least yeah so guess and that was a pretty big but so now he has that too or pitching well enough at least yeah so it's nice that we don't have to talk about jesse verlander in the world series that doesn't have to be the the narrative going into the postseason i think we mentioned this on the live stream that we didn't necessarily have the same sort of

sympathy or feeling for verlander's struggle in the world series that we did for clayton kershaw in the postseason and i don't think it's been as big a part of the justin Verlander's struggle in the World Series that we did for Clayton Kershaw in the postseason. And I don't think it's been as big a part of the Justin Verlander story as it has been for Kershaw because it's just it hasn't lasted as long or it hasn't been a talking point as long. He's been very good in the postseason prior to the World Series. So it's just a smaller sample and he's won a World Series. And so it wasn't like as big a monkey on the back but it was becoming a bigger one so now it's off there and that's nice for him and for the astros and the rest of the game it was just it was exciting like there were a fair number of base runners in this game like there were threats there were. I think there were 15 combined hits and eight combined walks.

And so there were a lot of leadoff guys getting on in the late innings and then just a lot of stranded runners and not great production with runners in scoring position. And so there weren't a lot of really relaxing innings throughout. And there were some great threats and some great defensive plays. And I guess it came down, there were a couple of pretty pivotal plays at first base, one involving one Reese Hoskins, which for those of you who were not in the Playoff Livestream, Meg was going in on Reese Hoskins as a defensive first baseman before this play happened. Yeah, you were talking at some length about your notes

you've said that you have no notes for the phillies but specifically for reese haskins you have some notes yeah i mean it's just like you know you asked me like is your issue with his with his footwork there and i was like yeah and i don't like the way he scoops the ball i just think that it's you know he's not good over there is the thing. Even when he manages, it doesn't look easy. It never looks smooth. You're worried the whole time. He's not the only player on the Phillies whose defense we could nitpick. He is the only one who plays first base, which again, I think being a first baseman is hard

despite all the jokes we make on it, but on a relative basis, you're like, that one, surely you can lock that down. Sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn't, Ben. Sometimes he really does not. I had some notes on that. We also talked about the TV series, The Cleaning Lady. It was a wide-ranging conversation because we were all confused by that one. A lot of Fox promos for that. We had to do some deep dives.

What is she doing? What is the purpose of this show? What's the rewind? It's more complicated than you would ever imagine. I will say that. We don't have to get into it here. We don't. You can do your own research.

Oh, no. We did some. And we're still kind of flummoxed by it. It sounds like it's several shows just kind of wrapped into one. Yeah. Yeah. But Hoskins, this is, right,ed by it. It sounds like it's several shows just kind of wrapped into one. Yeah. Yeah. But Hoskins, this is, right, the eighth inning. It's first and third.

It's nobody out. And Alvarez is up, and he just pulls a couple hopper down the line. And Hoskins, you know, he's trying to keep the game with a one-run margin. Yes. And he charged the ball, and he wanted to throw home and try to get Altuve. And it wasn't a bad decision. Like, to throw home and try to get Altuve and it wasn't a bad decision and like it was okay to try to do that but yeah it looked like he took his eye off the ball and he was looking at Altuve and home plate more so than making sure he actually gloved

the thing and it kicked off his glove and yeah and I don't know that he would have necessarily gotten Altuve anyway but it didn't look great and then really the opposite happened because same inning eighth inning yeah and remember Yuli Gurriel out of the game yeah at this point and so Trey Mancini is at first base for Houston having not played I believe a defensive inning for the Astros all postseason long. Yeah, in like a month. He hadn't played a defensive inning in like a month. Yeah, so the old cliche about the ball will find you, right? And so here he is, and Schwarber just smokes one.

Like 99, I think it was. At least, at the very least, would have tied the game if not allowed them to pull ahead. Right, and Mancini was was holding Segura on first and so he was over there he was right there yep and and he stopped the ball and ended that thread and Schwarber looked quite disappointed and yeah and then Gurriel's a good fielder too so he may very well have made the same play if he had been out there but it was a tough play and a game-saving play and not the only game-saving defensive play because the even more notable one for Houston was Chaz McCormick. Chaz McCormick.

You would not necessarily think of as a prototypical center fielder. I mean, he wasn't always the Astros center fielder. He played more in the corners than he did in center, but he just kept kind of finding his way to center and other people didn't hit. And so you stick McCormick out there and man, he was the right person at the right time because Real Muto just crushed a ball that looked like it was going to be off the wall

in the gap in the ninth. And then the Phillies really would have been set up yeah McCormick just made a really nice play on it and Joe Sheehan mentioned in his piece that McCormick was one of the best outfielders going back on balls and also one of the best outfielders going to his left yeah and Joe somehow resisted the jfk seinfeld back into the left reference here but but i will not resist so back into the left you want jazz mccormick apparently and that is what he was doing here and he gets good jumps and he got a good jump here and he didn't cover the most ground i've ever seen a center fielder cover but it was more about the timing and the position of the ball because

he leaped right at the right time to catch the ball just as it was about to intercept the wall. And if he had mistimed it even slightly, he could have been too early, too late. He could have clanged against the wall. He could have trapped the ball against the wall, whatever it was. It could have gone awry in a number of different ways. And it did not. He just made a really clutch and crucial play. Yep, he sure did.

And the way that his high socks are interacting with his pants, he kind of looks like he's wearing bicycle shorts. So I don't think that adds to the degree of difficulty, but it was like a thing I noticed while he was fielding. Yeah, it was an incredible play. He was just like, he was perfectly positioned. He timed his jump perfectly. It was great, know they got they got

what they needed there i want to return to the the first base play for a second because like i should be fair about stuff you know i should be fair so it's like you know you said that goriel is a good defender and like when i watch him i'm like goriel is a good first base defender the metrics don't like goriel at first at least not this year that has not always been true of him you know like i think from an outs above average and then when you when you convert it into to runs like hoskins rates better they're both bad by the those metrics but i don't want to watch goriel i don't have the same feeling of dread i don't have like the gripping trepidation that i do when watching hoskins i think part of it is that like hoskins seems to struggle even just on like scoops and it's like Isn't that your whole thing out there? It's not the whole thing,

but that's a big part of it. Anyway, but yeah, Chaz McCormick, he sure did ruin somebody's night. It's an interesting thing because he's a local kid. He's a Pennsylvania guy. I wonder what Thanksgiving will be like for him you know especially if houston holds on to win the best thing for him might be for the astros to lose the world series because then he can talk about that great play at thanksgiving but the phillies will still have won a world series and then his family will be you know it can satisfy both of their needs right yeah and and we talked coming into the series like the astros good defensive team and that showed in this game and and brandon marsh who

is not one of the worst phillies defender he did not have a great night no and he misplayed a ball on altuve's double just leading off the game and that allowed him to go to third and and then the infield came in and Jeremy Pena we should also tip our caps too he lined a single up the middle that may or may not have been a hit otherwise so that extra base helped and changed things and so sometimes those little edges in a one-run game that can actually make the difference so it's tough because I mean we could fall back on all kinds of cliches. We could talk about game of inches. We could talk about the ball finding you, whatever it is. Some cliches are cliches because there's a lot of truth to them. But Jeremy Pena, really, like,

I talked and wrote early in the postseason about how this postseason was potentially a showcase for some rookies who had great years and Peña that has turned out to be the case because we were giving him props early in the postseason for getting on base in front of Jordan yeah and now it's not that it's Peña doing the damage and Jordan has been quite quiet since demolishing the Mariners and I guess maybe he's still providing some protection for Pena, potentially giving him some pitches to hit. But really, Pena, I mean, he struck the big blow in this game. He hit a home run. It was not the most towering or high-powered homer you'll ever see, but it was high-powered enough. It got over the fence and Pena's been really good. So he started off great

this season. He slumped a lot. He made some mechanical changes. He got his mojo back for the playoffs. And he's been really excellent, not just setting up the big boppers, but being a big bopper himself. So that's where we are. And I guess next time we pod, we will know how this thing ended. Wow, that's true. We'll be able to talk about that.

Yeah. We'll be able to close the book on the 2022 MLB season. The book will be closed. We can't reopen it. Nope. We'll be sorry to see it closed, but it's been a good book. I feel like I've held on to seeming like coherent during the post-season while potting a lot longer than you know i normally do i am down to one functional brain cell but yeah it took longer you know than it usually does so i think that's a

testament to the quality of this postseason so far that i've just had a really fun time watching it it's been a lot of good games and some really incredible individual performances and some great team stories um and i feel like that's kept me sharp ben it's kept me with it in a way that um normally degrades a lot sooner so good job postseason yeah how many brain cells did you have when the postseason started don't know more than one but maybe it was only one more you know it might have only been the one more because it is a long season. Then get tired. This last one's got to hold out just for a couple more days.

That's all. Just get more mileage out of that thing. I'm glad that for these last couple games, there weren't any major managerial decisions that really swung things or that everyone's up in arms about. There are always things you can quibble with. swung things or that everyone's up in arms about there are always things you can quibble with but i guess that we might wonder in last night's game if noah cinder guard really shouldn't have gone back out there for that last batter that is true yeah that's my that's the only one where i'm like maybe that was a little too cute yeah we were talking about that in the moment in the live

stream and we were talking about how many batters we would let him go right and he was at 10 he was at 10 i think after three correct and i think at that point we were like okay you got your 10 yeah because clean ending yeah we were saying rj anderson was on with us and he was saying he would give him 10 batters and and he got through that and he was kind of cruising. Cruising can be dangerous. It can be dangerous. Because it lulls you into a false sense of security. Yeah, you sit there and you're like, I'm fine.

And then wham, there's a Jeremy Pena. Yeah, there's Jeremy Pena leading off the fourth with the dinger. And yeah, I generally, and I said this on the stream, but I don't love the going batter to batter kind of approach because it's like, you know, you got what you wanted to, but can we steal a little more, right? And I get for the Phillies, it's maybe a little more imperative to get that length than for the Astros. There's a little less step there, but you had a lot of your top guys who were fairly fresh and you had an off day coming up the next day. So I think you kind of have to pat them on the back and say, you gave us three and that's what we wanted from you.

And when you get into the let's go batter by batter, let's see if we can steal another out. Well, maybe it works, but also often it doesn't work. And then you have to bring in someone with a jam, someone on base, or you find yourself behind. Down a run. Yeah. So that can get you into trouble when you just try to push it a little too far.

So yeah, you're right. That is one thing we could critique. But for the most part, this was largely about just baseball players being good at baseball and maybe a little bit better than the other guys. And when you get no hit, there's not so much you can do from a criticizing the manager perspective you just have to get some hits at some point and you just have to give credit to the astros for not letting the phillies get any hits and then yeah i guess in any one run game there's probably going to be something where you could point to and say maybe

if you'd made a different decision there but really it kind of came down to great plays and misplays yeah that's my preference it can be fun to talk about managerial moves but my preference is for it to come down to the players and some of them just excelling and some of them kind of coming up short yeah i think that it's better when the guys on the field and not the guys in the dugout are the ones who are determining like what's what at the end of the day spares us discourse we get great plays i see you know i truly no no no so it was fun so now the postseason zip sods heading into game six it's astros 81 probability to win so that's uh that's tough it's tough to surmount it's tough to beat a team as good as the Astros. Back-to-back games at home with Fran Bervaldez starting

that first one, but it can certainly be done. Of course, we saw the Phillies tee off on McCullers the last time they faced him, so if they do get to a Game 7 and they get another look at him, well, anyone's ballgame, anyone's series. We'll see. I hope that these are fun games,

but really my primary wish for this series has already been fulfilled, which is that it would be competitive and that it would give us some length because we saw a lot of sweeps or near sweeps heading into this series. We just didn't see a whole lot of series going the distance.

And now we're at least close to the distance. So this has been really fun. However, this ends, I cannot complain about this postseason or this series. Both have delivered. Yeah, agreed. All right. Rob Manford was at that game.

Oh, I was supposed to read a thing and I didn't. No, there's not that much to say about it. He posted a letter about the future of the game. And I do not blame you for not reading it. Because really, we have other things to think about than Rob Manford posting a letter about the future of the game. And I do not blame you for not reading it because really we have other things to think about than Rob Manfred posting a letter about the future of the game. After our live stream was done,

I had to think about eating some Indian food. Yeah, that's a better thing to think about than Rob Manfred. But he wrote this letter. I actually don't have many quibbles with the letter itself. I held off on reading the letter until the game was over

just in case something in the letter made me mad, but it didn't really. He doesn't mention the zombie runner. It's fine. And actually, if anything, he strikes a more positive note than Rob Manfred usually does. Like people get on him all the time about not being a good spokesperson for baseball and just talking about the ways that baseball is broken and not as good as it used to be and not promoting the sport. And here he's doing his best in his Rob Manfred way to promote the sport. Of course, he does devote a paragraph to record revenues. And I guess that's good for some people. Probably doesn't get the fans as into it.

But if anyone was wondering, league revenue approaching $11 billion, surpassing pre-pandemic levels. But look, he talked about the upsets and the good teams and the talent and the players. And so I have to hand it to him. It was a fine letter. And really, he was just trying to convey that baseball is good, but it could be better. And he's talking about some of the strategies and some of the rules changes that are coming and sort of trying to prepare people, it sounds like, for maximizing the entertainment value of the rules changes that are coming and sort of trying to prepare people it sounds like for

maximizing the entertainment value of the fans and because he did not include the zombie runner among those changes then i would not be too mad about it but he got heckled nonetheless at this game because someone was at the game user fire underscore chip on the r slash baseball subreddit wrote i'm in the box next to rob manfred at the world series tonight i'll scream the top comment at him and was as good as his word he did do that and this generated a lot of conversation and this guy said i'm in the box next to rob manfred he was very close. He was just a few seats over. And he got Rob Manfred's attention, and Rob Manfred looked over, because how could he not? He was very close to him.

Yeah. And he yelled, you want the youth and the blackouts, dumbass. And that was his message from Rob Manfred. The top comment on Reddit was, you'll get the youth by ending blackouts. Dumbass. Hey, Rob, if you want the youth, end the blackouts, dumbass. They have to end with the dumbass, I think. It's what you expect from Reddit, probably, and what you expect from fans talking to Rob Manfred. I don't know. I was almost disappointed, I guess, just by just how, I don i don't know like i guess it's a good

sentiment and and rob edford seems like he wants to end the blackouts potentially it's kind of a it's a tough thing to do at this point they've gotten themselves in a situation where it's it's tough to get around the blackouts but it seems like he he has at least expressed some willingness to do that he's he's tried to take some steps to do that. I guess I was a little disappointed that this was the best the hive mind could come up with. Collectively, we could not summon from the internet's id some better message from Rob Manfred. I mean, I guess it could have gone in some directions that probably would have been better not to go. So maybe it's impressively civil, I guess, for a crowdsourced message to rob manfred

but i'm like very specific i appreciate yeah this was a whatever you may think of the the exclamation at the end this was like a policy-based proposal yeah you know and and one that i think you're right there they would like to change some stuff but that we agree with that we think it would be really good for the game and the people who like it if we didn't have blackouts. So I think that's probably, this is about as good as we could have hoped for from Reddit, really. Yeah, because you could have said, Manfred, you bum, you're ruining the game. Why do you hate baseball or something like that?

And instead, they had a specific policy point that they wanted to press. So yeah, I guess I was expecting something more elaborate or something, but not bad. I don't know. It's probably best to, you know, who knows who was sitting around there. Just keep it more or less PG or PG-13 or whatever dumbass would be. Yeah. I think that that's probably, it's at most PG-13. I think it's probably PG, right? Yeah. I mean, people have taken objection to my understanding of swears in the past, so I might not be a reliable narrator when it comes to these things.

All right. Well, that was entertaining too. So we have an interview. We're going to talk about Christian Javier and vertical approach angle. Just got to give you a pass blast first. And this is going to be a somewhat involved pass blast. So first, I will just give you the standard pass blast from Jacob Pomeranke, Sabre's Director of Editorial Content and Chair of the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. We're up to 1925 here. And Jacob writes, 1925, the national game. Before the 1925 season began,

American League president Ben Johnson found himself in hot water when some team owners were stunned to learn he was in favor of a long shot proposal for Congress to nationalize the game. Here's a report from the Pittsburgh Press on January 15th. federal commission by the president. Among other things suggested is the licensing of each club manager, player, coach, and umpire, prohibition of one man owning more than one club in the same league, seems like a smart one, a ban on intra-league sales and trades without the consent of the majority of the clubs, and payment of the same salary to each player depending upon the length of service. And Jacob writes, the petition was sent to Ohio Senator Frank Willis, who wanted nothing to do with it, but not before every owner

in baseball ripped the idea. Yankees owner Jacob Rupert called the proposal a joke. Someone must have fed the authors raw meat. Ban Johnson later claimed his support was taken out of context and what he really wanted was stronger federal legislation against sports gambling and game fixing. Baseball was dealing with yet another bribery scandal involving New York Giants outfielder Jimmy O'Connell and

coach Cozy Dolan, who were both permanently banned by Commissioner Kennesaw Landis. So, I guess that's something that the fans could have shouted at rob banfred to nationalize the game cozy doyle and he was cozy dolan dolan yes cozy and and he was banned for uh that's that's i know that wasn't the primary point of the pass blast, but that was a really nice little on the end of it. Yeah. So that was that pass blast. Now, Jacob's pass blast for 1924, if you recall, was about how even back then Philadelphia fans had a certain kind of reputation for maybe being overly vocal or overly critical at times. And that jogged my memory because I remembered that back when Richard Hershberger was doing the pass blast in 1868, he gave me options. And one of the options was about even then, at that point, Phillies fans distinguishing themselves and

having a reputation. So I asked Richard if he could dredge up that 1868 potential pass blast about Philly fans, and he did. And so he writes, to set the stage, the Athletics went on a month-long Western tour in June of 1868, playing 19 games as far as St. Louis. They won every game but one, the Excelsior Club of Rochester, New York, beating them 26 to 20. This is a report of their return home to Philadelphia. And the story says they arrive home and instead of a welcome are met by the croakers with the salutation. Oh, you're pretty chaps, ain't you? To lose the Rochester game and similar expressions.

This is Philadelphia all over. The players themselves felt bad enough and did not need a reminder of an occurrence that was painfully uppermost in their minds. No recognition is given them. They are allowed to straggle off to their homes, conquerors though they be and victors though they were in 18 contests without anyone saying welcome home. That's from the Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, July 12th,

1868. So Richard said, I haven't looked to see the reactions to the no-hit debacle. Perhaps it is entirely on point, but they went 18-1 on this road trip, and then they get home, and the Phillies faithful just riding them for the one loss to Rochester. This is 1868. That's funny. Yeah. History, it's not as long ago as we think. I guess the character of Philadelphia and Philadelphia baseball fans at least was established early. They've been playing the type ever since, I guess.

But they've been fun to watch this week, whether it's them getting super excited about good things happening to the Phillies or sometimes being very sad about things that are not good happening to the Phillies. They've been riveting either way. Yeah. They can only ever be themselves and they can also be riveting. Now I have one last component to this Pass Blast. I'm just going to warn you. It's about boners. Oh boy.

This is well-trod territory for us, but always enjoyable. So I've been saving this for a while because I saw this. Wait a minute. You're really going to just say. Yep. Voters are always enjoyable. That's what I was like. Oh, Lord.

This came to my attention first from the old-timey baseball article's Twitter account, at Old Baseball News, which I follow and recommend that people follow. And this is operated by listener and Patreon supporter Sir Parsifal, who I believe also posted this on Baseball Reddit, where it generated some discussion. But this is from a 1925 article, and Sir Parsifal posted an excerpt. And, of course, I looked up the whole thing and it's great. And I am reading this from the Birmingham News, but this was syndicated by the Consolidated Press Association. And this ran, at least this version of the article, on April 27th, 1925.

And here's the subhead of this article. Coolidge, that's President Calvin Coolidge, pulls boner as he stands up in wrong half of seventh inning. Coolidge pulls boner as he stands up in wrong half of seventh inning. Which,

you know, if he had pulled on a boner the way we think of boners today as he was standing up, that probably would have been newsworthy. But that is different from what happened here. So here is the little subheader in the middle of the article. Coolidge's boner, quoting, President Coolidge certainly has got to square himself with the baseball fans of Washington before the season is over. with the baseball fans of Washington before the season is over,

when he stood up in the wrong half of the seventh inning of the game, he pulled a boner that the baseball team is not likely to forget for a long while. Fortunately, the seventh inning magic was not needed in this game, for Washington was romping along with a big lead and wound up at the right end of a 10-1 victory over the babeless Yankees of New York. If anything had gone wrong in the late innings, however, if the president had wittingly or unwittingly called a jinx out of hiding by his untoward stretch, the fans would have put the bee upon him forever. The president's boner once more has called up discussion as to whether he really is the

dyed-in-the-wool, the truth-in-fabric fan that he has been pictured in the public prints, his somewhat slighting remarks toward the art of angling, his disdain of golf, and all that sort of thing have caused some doubt to arise. The president does not pretend to be much of a sportsman. He likes yachting. That is to say, he likes the placid steaming of the Mayflower in the Potomac, but cares nothing for the full sheet of the sloop standing before half a gale with rigging taut. His rigging was not taut here, though. This was not that kind of owner. The strenuous life is not for the man of Plymouth Notch. Baseball is placid if you remain neutral, but the Washington fans don't want the president to be neutral. They want him to stand up at the right time for the old home team, and the chances are 10 to 1 that he will the next time out. So committing a major boner here by stretching at the wrong time.

I have questions about, like, how you confuse this. How do you do a seventh inning stretch in the wrong half of the like i i guess back then it's 1925 so you wouldn't have like take me out to the ball game playing over the pa or anything but like i mean first of all maybe he just needed to stretch at that time people need to stretch it at other times than after the top half of the seventh but like how how would you confuse this if he actually thought that the seventh inning stretch was, what, after the seventh or before the top half of the seventh? Like, did he not notice that other people were not stretching? Was he just given bad information here?

He's very absorbed in his boner. Yeah, apparently. So naturally, I kept reading a little bit about boners after this because this was kind of it was just a common term at the time because this was not the only time that Calvin Coolidge pulled a boner in 1925. He pulled a different boner in the same year. Well, yeah, if it had been a persistent boner, he would have had to call a doctor about yeah so i found an article february 11th 1925 headline president pulls boner during visit of coolidge female arby which sounds like a terrible time to pull a boner but apparently there was like a ladies group that supported calvin coolidge and he pulled a boner by endorsing a senator that this group didn't like. No, they campaigned against him and he did not realize that. And so that's a big boner that he pulled there. But I mean,

I had to just Google the phrase president pulls boner just to see like, I mean, I didn't have to, but I did just to see like when peak president pulling boner was, when presidents stopped pulling boners, or at least when it was no longer described that way. Oddly enough, I couldn't find a mention of, say, Bill Clinton pulling a boner. By that point, the phrase had fallen out of vogue, if not the pulling of boners. But many presidents have pulled boners and have been said to pull boners, but many presidents have polled boners and have been said to poll boners. I found, like, just searching this, you're going to come up with all kinds of nonsense. Really? Yeah.

I mean, some of them having nothing to do with presidents, but I found a 1925 article that the headline is, rights for boner to be held today. Jeremiah Boner, R.p he passed there is also another story about an alleged lover named martin boners but i don't want to speak ill of the dead here i want to focus on the president's pulling boners so it turns out that fdr pulled probably more boners than anyone, which I guess makes sense because he served so many terms. He just he had more time to pull boners. So in 1935, he pulled a boner. President pulls boner in talk to farm group.

Apparently, he talked about cotton being like bales. being like bails and apparently the the cotton farmers were mumbling that he should have been citing the pound the price for pound instead of the price for for bail so big time boner there huge boner yeah 1936 president pulls a boner that was a different boner 1938 still fdr here president pulls double boner oh boy yeah and then 1943 did president double boner. Oh, boy. Yeah. And then 1943, did President poll boner? Yeah, it sounds like he did pull a boner. So, really, it spanned the whole, you know,

the New Deal. There were just boners pulled during much of FDR's long reign. Well, yeah, it was a growth period, you know. It was. Yeah. Good one. Put me in prison. President Truman, he also pulled multiple boners. So 1948, President pulls boner in airport dedication ceremony.

And 1951, President pulls boner over flood. Still Truman at that point. And now 1955, we're in the Eisenhower administration here. Headline, even presidents pull boners. We've established that. Dateline, Washington. Those who have pulled bloopers, now they use both terms here. Boner in the headline, blooper in the copy.

Found distinguished company today. President Eisenhower in a news conference discussion of the Dixon-Yates power controversy got his tongue twisted once and it came out Yixon-Dates. So he should have said Dixon and that would not have been a boner if he had said Dixon instead of Yixon. So he should have said Dixon and that would not have been a boner. 1958, Eisenhower pulled a boner by endorsing General de Gaulle of France. He expressed his approval of General de Gaulle, which was seen as a boner at that time. And then 1964, Lyndon Johnson, president, pulls appendage, then you would not fail to notice LBJ pulling a boner. But he pulled a boner in 64. 1970, we had Nixon pulling a boner by dismissing his secretary of the interior. And then even 1972, someone says, that's what we are hoping for, that the president

pulls a boner. They needed Nixon to pull a boner so that he could be defeated, but I guess he did not pull a boner unless Watergate qualifies after he was reelected. Then he pulled a pretty big boner, but it was not described as such. The last president pulls boner that I could find was Ronald Reagan, 1988, August 11th, headline, was Ronald Reagan, 1988, August 11th, headline, President Pulls Boner on Purpose. I love all of the headlines. I will link to them just in case anyone is as childish as I am and wants to look at these things. I just can't believe that we didn't do more with the placid mention earlier. Could have been a real Freudian slip there, Ben.

You avoided it. You know, you're quite dexterous. Yeah. So really, like when Coolidge pulled his boner, his baseball boner, or when Merkel pulled his famous boner, like at that time, no one would have tittered about boners. Right. Because it just it did not have that meeting at that time. Yeah, it wasn't the connotation. From what I could tell, the meaning that is causing us to be silly now, it kind of came in like in the 50s or so.

And so really, like the mentions of presidents pulling boners persisted past the point where this was a meaning of boner. Maybe it was not the dominant meaning but now you would probably not see this so much unless the president were actually pulling one and even then it probably would not be described that way yeah i i think that if anything we're in a stretch where it would have to be like a literal description so i don't know i can't believe you did this i guess it's friday it's you know in keeping with it being a friday show yeah it i mean it started out totally relevant with a 1925 baseball related boner anecdote and then it ran off the rails a little bit but yeah how could i not do further research

i'm nothing if not thorough yeah you you uh i don't know don't even nope okay all right let us stop there and we will be back in just a moment with mike a head oh who did not know when we spoke to him that he would be following a long, deep dive about presidents pulling boners, but that is in fact the case. And he will be here to bring it back to baseball and talk about Christian Javier and how effective he is and what he can teach us about the latest knowledge about pitching. I might seem like I could take care of you For a brief moment For a few nights

Until the changing world has tumbled back into view All right. Well, no one has quite figured out Christian Javier, at least not the hitters who faced him. But perhaps some analysts have figured out why he is so difficult for hitters to figure out, or at least gotten part of the way there. And I'd say one of the foremost pitching analysts in the baseball internet these days is going to tell us a little bit about Javier and how he illustrates some of the latest cutting edge pitching concepts. You may have read his work at Baseball Perspectives, FiveThirtyEight, Lookout Landing, and elsewhere. He's Mikey Aheado. Michael, welcome. Thanks for having me. So how did you become a cutting edge pitching analyst?

Thanks for having me. So how did you become a cutting edge pitching analyst? Because I find that pitching analysis has gotten better and better, but also more and more complicated, which can be kind of off-putting, I guess, if you're just like, wait, I thought all I needed to know was like FIP. And now I need to know everything about your velocity and also your movement. But it's not just that. Now it's like several layers more than that. And we've talked a lot about seam shifted wake and tunneling and just like all of these advanced concepts that make pitching more and more interesting, I guess, if you're inclined to dig into these things, but also more complicated. Like even I, who am inclined to get interested in this stuff and dig deep, Like sometimes I just despair of like keeping up

and, you know, trying to figure out like, why is this picture good? Becomes like a day long exercise. It's just like looking at all sorts of like spin and spin efficiency and just all of these physics concepts that we just weren't even aware of or didn't at least have terms for until recently. And Javier is someone who fits into that.

So how did you get into this and, I guess, become conversant with the latest lingo? To be honest with you, I think, and I'm not just, you know, like, currying favor. I think Fangraphs has made me very smart, you know, as it pertains to, you know, well, to baseball analysis in general. So I think it's that. Since 2010, that's when I started reading Lookout Landing. That's when I read USS Mariner. That's when I read... Not BP. I still can't afford

BP. I hope you get a cop subscription now. Craig, get this guy a cop subscription. Yeah, come on. I do. I do. Craig is very nice and gave me one, but I'm forgetting one I think. Oh, and fan graphs. Yeah. And so I think it has to do with, you know, reading very smart people talking about very smart concepts. And honestly, I think the rest of it is like my obsessiveness and fixation on these kinds of things, which I think, you know, is generally how people kind of get to where they're at. So I just am never really satisfied, you know, with really surface level outcomes or articles,

I guess. And so when I started at Pitcher List in 2019, I was writing like 3000 word articles. They were like going deep articles. And now I'm like, why were you doing that for an undisclosed or uh yeah undisclosed i'm still doing that so yeah um but like like breakdowns on one picture you know and i've over time have have tightened it up and now my articles are about you know a thousand to thirteen hundred words but honestly yeah it's just like really really latching on to different concepts talking to different people i think i mean jeff sullivan is and it's like oh surprise really the the person who made me adore you know writing about baseball i think he still i think you know remains like i think the most unique baseball writing voice that at least i read

and i still pull from things that, you know, he's written about. And I'm like, oh, well, you know, I've seen this done before. I can just apply it with this new pitcher. So yeah, I have Jeff Sullivan to credit for really getting me excited about baseball analytics. Or maybe I don't have him to thank for that. To blame. Curses, Jeff. Right, exactly. And then I think Alex Chamberlain is obviously very, very sharp, very smart. And I've learned a lot from him with the more advanced concepts. Recently, Nick Pollock gave me a shot and I learned a lot from him and Enos Sarris.

So a lot of men. A lot of men. God, damn. A lot of, yeah. Yeah, that does tend to be the case but we're trying but yeah we got some work to do yeah so it is it does become like a do you want to find out how deep the rabbit hole goes with some of this stuff because you can't do the the surface level look at pictures but then if you have the right audience and the right kind of mind, you could just go deeper and deeper and deeper and figure out all these aspects of pitch

characteristics and such. And so you wrote this piece for BP called Christian Javier is, comma, was unreal in the wake of his no hit start. And I think it was not a shock that Christian Javier was effective because he was effective all year. And if you look at pitchers, minimum 130 innings, I think he had the fourth highest strikeout rate in baseball behind Spencer Strider, Carlos Rodon, and Shohei Otani. I guess if you look at just how hard does he throw, it might be semi-surprising because, to be clear, he throws hard. And up until recently, he would have seemed like a wizard or something because no one just regularly, you know, he sits

like 93 or 94. He sat about 93 in his most recent start, topped out at 96. You know, he can get to 97 sometimes. Like that's hard throwing for a starter, or least it used to be and now it's it's good it's kind of pedestrian though for someone who is as effective as he is and so he's one of these guys you kind of have to dig deeper to figure out what makes him tick because I guess nominally you might say he's the Astros fourth starter in a very deep rotation, but I guess by effectiveness, he's at least number three, let's say, and he had a great start in the series. He's had a great postseason, so you can tackle his tricks in any order you want, but how would you sum up what makes him even better than his on-the-surface pretty impressive stuff? I feel like over time, it's almost like trial

and error, but I've just found that we've said for I don't know how many years over a dozen that, you know, like relievers are volatile. And I think part of the reason why they're so volatile is because they're really good for, you know, like if Paul Seawald raises arm slot by six inches, like, I don't know what would happen to him, but his fastball wouldn't be as good. That's, that's all I know. And so I think you can trace a lot of, you know, production down to just like arm slot alone. And obviously, like, it's important to take into account, like, what does the pitchers fastball traits look like, you know, for example, and so like, for a pitcher like Christian Javier, I think I found like, I've seen some, I don't know, you call them, just like plots like from R, where it's plotted

like induced vertical break versus release point. And obviously release point doesn't take into account arm slot, it kind of tries to, but it's pretty imperfect. And like Christian Javier is a perfect example of that. But I guess before I get into that, it's like if you throw from a low arm slot, you're probably going to have a pretty good fastball unless you throw 88 like Penn Murphy. And Christian Javier, actually, like if you look at his spin traits, you would think he throws out of a high three quarters arm slot because I think his, I think his spin tilt is like at 1245 on a clock. But, you know, he throws out of more of like a three quarter, like low three quarter arm slot. And so for him, I think a lot of it is, you know, it's it is release point, it is arm slot that he throws from a low release means that the ball enters the zone at a really flat angle, those

are really hard to hit. And I think something that that isn't considered with vertical approach angle is, you know, I wrote something about Josiah Gray, maybe over the offseason, preseason, and like he has one of the flattest fastballs in an MLB, but he doesn't have a good fastball. And I think that's because he gets his vertical approach angle out of, you know, like a drop and drive delivery instead of actually dropping his arm down. So I think they're like the TLDR is Christian Javier in a vacuum, you know, his fastball traits are good. But also, he has what I've kind of hastily called like, you know, the Josh Hader effect where when he releases the ball, he throws from a low arm slot.

And yet he's able to keep his wrist really vertically oriented. So it creates that really like vertical spin profile out of a horizontally oriented release, if that makes sense. It is like a really convoluted thing, but I think that's the bulk of it. Yeah, I was going to ask you about sort of the pronation of the wrist and how that plays into the angle that he's able to get because it is funny to watch Hater and be like, you know, he's down, I'm doing down here on a podcast, which is great because this is famously a visual medium and everyone can see exactly what

I'm doing. And then, you know, but he's not just down here, he's flicking the wrist up so that he can get, you know, that break into the zone, which is, as you said, the Josh Hader effect. So you've described that. So I won't make you say it all again. But one of the things that I thought was noteworthy in your piece is this idea that it isn't just that he's getting called strikes, although he does get that sometimes, or whiffs. He does get whiffs sometimes. But talk about how the foul ball is playing into his profile here. Because even when hitters are able to make contact with his fastball, they're not making good contact with it, right? Yeah, that's the interesting thing. Because if you look at vertical approach angle alone,

you're like, this guy has the best, you know, if you're not looking at any other traits, you're like, this guy has the best fastball in MLB. It's obviously not true. It is very good, but not quite the best. And that probably has to It's obviously not true. It is very good, but not quite the best. And that probably has to do with his secondaries. You know, like he has a very good sweeper, but hitters don't have to look for much else because he throws it 60% of the time. But to answer your question, I think it's, you know, when you're a hitter, like the first thing that gives you trouble with him is you're looking for something that, you know, drops and has some run and his doesn't drop it, it doesn't really fall, like whether you're considering it by IVB induced vertical break or vertical approach angle,

it doesn't fall. So that's the first thing. And then it also runs less than you'd think. So he really gives hitters fits. And really, that's like, if you think about like what it means to be a good pitcher, it's like, I think think stuff this might be kind of a hot take like it's kind of overblown at this point it's like putting your pitches where you want and then giving hitters a look that is unique or that they don't see very often yeah and so that his fastball rides so much that it rides more than than hitters expect it seems like you know it seems like if he had another secondary like it would be kind of more like even more of a like knock your socks off kind of pitch but it just it just rides more than you expect so hitters can get their bat on it but they don't get very much of

the bat on it so that's why he creates so many pop-ups because he's he's getting the bat above the barrel that's why he gets so many foul balls because he's getting the bat above the barrel. That's why he gets so many foul balls because he's getting the bat above the barrel. And that's why he gets so many whiffs. If there's a flaw that his fastball has, it's that he doesn't get enough called strikes. But there's also that there's only so many percentage of pitches that, you know, can be these outcomes. I don't know that you can rank super highly and foul balls and whiffs and, you know, pop ups, super highly in foul balls and whiffs and, you know, pop-ups, all these things. So I think that's really, you know, the crux of it is that it just ends up higher than hitters expect, which is like not new, you know? Right.

Yeah. And I've heard hitters, sometimes Astros hitters. I remember Alex Bregman talking about if the scouting report says that someone has, say, a high spin fastball or whatever it is that makes the ball appear in a slightly different place than you expect it to because you expect it to sink a certain amount and then the spin or whatever it is resists gravity and it sinks less than you expect it to on the way to the plate, which is the quote unquote rising effect. And you can, as a hitter, at least Alex Bregman said he can mentally adjust and prepare for that so that he knows, okay, I better actually swing a little bit in a different position from where I think I should swing, which sounds really difficult to do. Maybe if you're Alex Bregman, you can do that, but it's hard enough to hit the ball when it's moving that fast, when it is actually where you think it's going to be. So do you have to then do some other calculation and anticipate where it will actually be knowing that it is not going to

be there? That sounds tough. That sounds tough for many hitters to do. So just to step back slightly, just to kind of define these terms, vertical approach angle or horizontal approach angle, horizontal approach angle. This is a concept I think I maybe first saw in an old BP article, a guest piece by Matt Lensner that was called Looking at Pitches Through the Batter's Eyes back in 2011, where he worked with Mike Fast and some data. And I edited that piece and was impressed by it, but it didn't really have a term at the time. He didn't call it that. And in recent years, people may have become more familiar with the approach angle terminology from Ethan Moore or Alex Chamberlain or others or you for that matter. So what does this mean exactly? And you mentioned flat being good at least

sometimes, right? Which might seem counterintuitive to people because often when someone says that a pitch flattened out, it means it's something bad, right? It's like a hanger. You don't want it to be flat. You want it to be moving a lot. So I think that could potentially confuse people. Yeah. So I feel like when giving example, like when you give ridiculous examples, it's the easiest way to imagine something so for vertical approach angle like imagine i don't know imagine you have like a giant throwing you know a fastball and like welcome to effectively wild we do that a lot yeah they're like i don't know how tall this giant is let's say 20 feet tall they're going to have a very steep vertical approach angle because they're

throwing from i don't know 30 28 feet in the air you know it's it's just going to have a very steep vertical approach angle because they're throwing from, I don't know, 30, 28 feet in the air. You know, it's just going to be steep. And then you think about, I don't know, the opposite of that, a very short person or Tyler Rogers, who is a submarine pitcher. He's basically scraping his knuckles off of the mound every pitch. He throws, I'm trying to think because it's counterintuitive. I think his fastball is 73 miles per hour. And yet he has one of the flattest sliders in baseball. His like 82,

83 mile per hour slider. And it's very good, even though he only throws at 83 miles per hour. And part of that, I think there's kind of a conversation about like, is he just a gimmick pitcher? Like when you see him multiple times, is he not so great, but also he throws 83. So when you think about these, you know, these pitches, and I guess we're kind of moving into the article that you sent me that Ben wrote, but Ben Clemens. Yeah. Yeah. As far as I'm concerned, like generally speaking, you want to pair flat pitches with a flat approach, which looks like Paul Seawald. And you want to pair steep pitches with a flat approach, which looks like Paul Seawald. And you want to pair steep pitches with a steep approach, which looks like, I don't know, Chris Flexen. And I think that's kind of part of the thing is that steep pitches get a really bad rap. But I think what

the issue is, is that, you know, the pitchers who throw these, because if you look at the numbers, like, it seems very clear by the data that steep pitches are bad. And I don't think that's necessarily a good takeaway. I think it's if you have a steep pitch, you want to be throwing out of a higher arm slot because and be throwing to the bottom of the zone. So you want to be pairing all these different traits that that match your pitch. And it's like, duh, like, you know, that's, that's always kind of the goal of hitting or pitching. So that's kind of the vertical approach angle brief for, you know uh that's that's always kind of the goal of of hitting or pitching so that's kind of the vertical approach angle brief for you know for me i mean with steep pitches i think they fall probably more than you expect and with flat pitches they fall less than you'd expect

both are good i think you just want to avoid being in the middle right right yeah because with your giant example that would probably be beneficial right in order I mean, I don't know if that is the sole reason, but that could be one reason why, say, raising the mound is beneficial to pitchers, I assume, is that you get a steeper angle and maybe you get more momentum and other things too but if you're that giant and you're almost throwing it like straight down at that point i mean if the hitter is swinging on a fairly level plane or a slight upswing then i would assume that the steeper the angle of the pitch like i guess the less time it it spends in the zone theoretically right or the harder it would be for that bat swinging to intersect the pitch on its path through the strike zone so for the giant then it's it's good to be very vertical i assume but i'm glad we're running with this yeah no i mean we've talked about bigger giants and so yeah yeah 20 feet is a small giant what if a 75 foot tall person tried to hit the ball?

Yeah. Like what would you do? I was worried about him stepping on the first baseman once he gets there. That was my primary concern. Yeah. So if that's good, then why is flat also good? Is it flat is good because flat defies your expectation for there to be sink. So essentially you're just, as you said, you always want to avoid the middle kind of the cluster where most pitchers are and that most hitters have seen the most and have kind of trained themselves against. I think y'all read my Zach Gallen article of creating room, which I heard about through Brent Strom, the former Astros pitching coach and now the Diamondbacks pitching coach. And it's really obvious. It's basically like if you're a pitcher, you want to be as unpredictable as possible. It's not new knowledge to change eye levels. I think if you look at like, Garrett Cole, maybe not so much in like the past several months. But if you look at a pitcher with a really flat fastball, they will throw them to the top of

the zone for whiffs. And they also have a really uncanny ability to get hitters to just take at the bottom of the zone. Like it's I was telling Craig, I think two days ago, it's maybe my favorite pitch in baseball to watch to see like a Shane Bieber or Walker Bueller fastball painted at the bottom of the zone and just see them strut off. Like it's just really aesthetically pleasing. And when you're able to throw your fastball up and down, there's also that, you know, you can, let's use Zach Gallen as an example. Like he has a pretty flat fastball. You can throw your big curveball below the zone that in a vacuum, like might not be a special pitch, but has been because he started elevating his fastball more.

You can throw elevated cutters like you can you can just do more because if you're throwing straight fastballs to the bottom of the zone, hitters don't have to look up so much and they also can spit on breaking easier. So I think that's kind of the thing that happened with like Tyra Glass now back in the day, like 2019. 2019 he started elevating his fastball and the curveball played up yeah so i think that's a lot of it i'm curious like as we think of as we think of javier specifically like you've you noted in this piece in here that like he is he has changed the shape of his fastball in the time he's been in the big leagues there has been an evolution for him and i wonder in some ways this is like an unfair question to ask you because you're it's not like you're sitting there with him and the astros player dev folks but i wonder if you see this as a

shift in profile that is replicable particularly for guys who throw you know what we would now think of as like the underwhelming phase of Noah Sindergaard's career when it comes to fastball velocity, where they aren't necessarily lighting up the radar gun every single time, but might have other characteristics that can play up. What can we look to in Javier's ascension and say, well, good news, if you too throw a fastball that averages 93, maybe you can try this yeah i think generally speaking it's like you want to lean on your traits that are unique and i think i'm trying to remember so he started he's cut his fastball less yeah over the past few years so for the layperson i guess like when you think about a

garacle fastball it's it spins with perfect backspin, layperson's a really not layperson term. But like it spins with 100% backspin and efficiency. Javier threw with like 92 and then 94% in the past couple of years. He's up to like 96. So that means that he's creating more movement with, I guess the amount of raw spin he has, he's able to use more of that. And

I guess, specifically, like two to four more percent to turn into more ride. And that's why he has, I think, like almost an inch more ride, fastball ride this year. So you know, it means it's falling less. So leaning into those traits, and it's a really, it's a really convoluted, you know, conversation. But conversation. But if a guy... So there's also the concept of having pronators versus supinators. So it's easier to be able to... You basically have one skill a lot of the time. To be able to efficiently spin a fastball and not really be able to throw breakers, or to be able to really rip off breakers and throw an inefficient fastball.

That's kind of what makes pitchers like Walker Buehler really special. It's like he had a really good fastball and then he also had really good breaking pitches. So there's also that. It's like taking these like, I don't know how to describe, really like Walker Buehler is like a freak of nature. Like it doesn't seem like it, but he is. So leaning into these different traits, because if you think about an inefficient fastball, like a Marcus Stroman fastball, he's just not going to throw an efficient fastball. So you want to lean into that drop, I think, and then lean into he throws a good slider. So the more pronating type pitches. I don't know if that answers your question. It's interesting because the Ben Clemens post

you mentioned, and I'll link to all of these things on the show page as usual but ben was talking about how maybe the giants have figured out this thing at least with some of their pitchers where it's actually good for a sinker to be flat and have a shallow approach angle and then throw it at the bottom of the zone so that the hitter maybe expects it to sink more than it does and it doesn't sink and it stays up high enough to get the called strike and so if you pair that with the right release angle then you deceive the hitter i mean it's all very complicated but that can be something that benefits you at the top of the zone it can also be something that benefits you at the bottom of the zone. It can also be something that benefits you at the bottom of the zone.

It's just all about, well, the old cliche about hitting being timing and pitching being upsetting timing and just upsetting the hitter's expectations in general. These are just all these different ways to do it. And I guess there were always pitchers who did these things intuitively and just had these traits. did these things intuitively and just had these traits. And now it's just that we can quantify them and to some extent develop them and actually name them and recognize them when they're occurring. So I guess part of it is that pitching has changed. Part of it is just that the technology has illuminated aspects of how pitching always worked probably. But it's just you got to dive deeper and deeper. And I wonder, because we were talking about the Derek Thompson Atlantic piece earlier this week about how baseball is sort of solved and that that is why baseball is broken is that everyone kind of

figured it out too well. So these concepts that we're talking about here, is there a reaction to the action? Is there a counter move to these things is it just that when everyone starts throwing a sweeper or starts throwing pitches with certain types of approach angles etc then it won't be unusual anymore and then hitters will have seen it so much that it won't work as well or can these these things not be countered? Like maybe it's just really hard to hit this stuff because guys are throwing such nasty stuff that there is no counter reaction. And so you then have to figure out a different way to hamstring pitchers other than just getting better at hitting. Seems like with the concepts that we have now, we're starting to reach kind of

the upper, you know, kind of limits of where we're at. There's also, you know, I think what you're talking about is like hitters training bat path. And Robert Ord at Baseball Perspectives has written about just that. Actually, that's the Giants are smart. The Giants. Yeah, yeah, have have done that, you know, and in making matchups. It's like one example is in the playoffs. I and I guess I'm like, really patting myself on the back. But it's like, I was just like, you know, I think I think Dylan Moore is going to have a good game against from Bervaldez. And my thinking was Dylan Moore has a really steep vertical bat angle, which is basically like, when you look at his bat at contact, it's like a 45 degree angle. Like that swing, you want to see pitches at the bottom of the zone. And I think that's part of why like Cal Raleigh, if I was a pitcher, I would just throw him fastballs at the top of the zone because he's not so great at hitting those.

So I think hitters are getting better at it. But also, I think it's a really bad idea to create, you know, a team of one bat path, because there's always going to be there's always going to be fluctuation, it's always going to be really fluid. And so like some teams might have a year where you know, they do have guys with really steep VBAs or vertical approach angles, and it works, but it won't always. So I think it's kind of just a, there will always be kind of a give and take, but it seems like pitching will always be ahead of hitting without, you know, the MLB really stepping in. And by the way, I didn't say the MLB, I said the, and then paused.

Appreciate the clarification. Yeah. But yeah, I think like it it's it's really hard to see gains as a hitter and like really i say this as someone who probably throws like 50 miles per hour you know like it's it's not so hard as a pitcher you know you add below you lower your arm slot and you're like you know you go from 2019 paul seawald to like 2021 Paul Seawald. Yeah, Seawald was one of the poster pitchers for some of these concepts that I think helped popularize them. And yeah, now you have Jeff Passan just wrote about Christian Javier for ESPN as well.

And he got into this stuff too and vertical approach angle. And he called it the pitcher's equivalent of launch angle, essentially measuring the angle at which a ball goes to the plate. And so he noted pitchers with extremely high arm slots have high vertical approach angles. Ones like Javier with lower arm angles come with low vertical approach angles. What's exceptional about Javier isn't just a VAA that is third lowest among starters, and behind Freddy Peralta, Joe Ryan, a couple other pitchers who maybe have more effective fastballs than their velocities would suggest. But also he noted his high front side adds some funk and deception to the delivery. His spin rate and spin efficiency are well above average. And so he has a scout here who calls his

fastball a unicorn because there's just a lot going on there. And I'm always partial to deceptive pitchers and I've written about that. And that can mean so many things. Just that term, deception, can mean so many things to so many different people in baseball. And so it sounds like there's just, it is the vertical approach angle. That is one thing that's happening with Javier, but it's not the only thing. He's also got good spin, and he's got good deception. And so you can maybe teach some aspects of that. But I guess probably to get the complete package in there would be difficult.

But maybe you can at least recognize it now where it already exists, which is something that in the past you might have discounted someone who didn't seem to have remarkable stuff just based on the radar gun reading. That wasn't really a question but it leaves room for you know like diversity in the ecosystem right it's like you don't have to it's not that every fastball can play but there may be there are more fastballs that can play if they are properly utilized and paired with other pieces of a pitcher's repertoire than just the guys who can throw 100. Because sometimes you throw 100 and it's not good. Sometimes those fastballs are bad. Very weirdly hittable.

It's like, I asked Xto Sanchez. Shape matters. Well, I'm glad that we have analysts like you who are delving into some of these concepts and can explain it to the olds like me. The olds. No, Ben. I used to be cutting edge.

The game has passed me by. No. It's just got a new generation now. But at least you want to talk to young people instead of being bitter about that. That's what distinguishes you from a lot of the other olds, Ben. Yes, that is true. You're not grumpy about being an old. I don't want to just write all this stuff and say

these concepts didn't exist when I was learning about baseball and therefore I want to know nothing about them and they are invalid. No. It's easier I think nowadays. I mean, in some ways. I don't envy you having to write about FIP and BABIP in 2011.

In the dark ages. Yeah, honestly. It was easier in some ways FIP and BAPEP in 2011. In the dark ages. Yeah, honestly. Like, I was so much at my disposal. It was easier in some ways because, like, that was all you could do, right? So it's like, well, why is this good? I don't know. Like, we have more stats than they used to have to explain that, but a lot fewer than we have now pre-PitchFX or pre-Trackman or pre-Statcast.

So I guess it is easier now in the sense that you can actually answer the question a lot better than you could before. But also, it is harder because you have to do a lot of research and analysis to answer the question as opposed to just throwing up your hands and saying, well, I don't know. Here's what we do know. So yeah, I guess it's harder in some ways and easier in others. Yeah. It can be proven wrong a lot easier nowadays. That's true. You know, Brent Strom is 74. And like, if you think about pitching coaches who are able to sort of marry their experience with this stuff with, you know, what is really just a shift in

vocabulary in a lot of ways, you know. He's at the forefront of this. I also love, if you Google Brent Strom, people also ask, why did Brent Strom leave? Where is Brent Strom? Which they mean as a team thing, but just makes you wonder, where is that guy? Is he okay? The Diamondbacks are kind of a low-profile team.

There's something about the Diamondbacks that's just sort of semi-anonymous, and maybe he's just disappeared into the Diamondbacks vortex and everyone's wondering where he went. But yeah. No, it's true. Even something like Seam Shifted Wake or whatever, pitchers and pitching coaches and people in the game, often they know intuitively that these things exist. And they can identify that there's something funky going on there that we can't currently account for. And sometimes we get better, more granular information. It turns out that was some old coach's tale here and something wasn't actually true or old scout's tale. But very often, no, they were onto something and we just didn't have the tools to detect it yet. So there are some things like a high spin fastball or something that sinks less than you thought. And maybe that wasn't always identified. Maybe you couldn't see that that clearly or you could kind of see it indirectly just by looking at like hitters reactions to a pitch perhaps.

And now every scout just knows that. every scout just knows that. And so there is sort of a reliance on technology that maybe explained things that prior to this either couldn't be quantified or scouts just sort of had a sense of it, but now we can actually put a number on it at times. It's just, you know, all this stuff, the stats versus scouts, it's all just converging constantly to the point where it's just completely indistinguishable now. So it's not even like stats and scouts. It's like, no, they're just the same thing at this point, basically. It's all data. So, all right.

Well, thank you for trying to explain the phenomenon of Christian Javier to us and vertical approach angle in general. And you can read Michael regularly at Baseball Perspectives and elsewhere. And you can find him on Twitter at underscore Kuyamaiki. You can hear him on the Never Sunny in Seattle podcast. It's Never Sunny in Seattle. And we look forward to talking to you again and reading more of your work. So thanks very much.

Yeah, thanks for having me. All right. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks, as always, for listening. I should have noted, by the way, that Christian Javier was, of course, part of two combined no-hitters this season. The first one came in June against the Yankees, June 25th. That day he went seven innings, walked one, struck out 13. So seven no-hit innings plus six no-hit innings.

Can we give him just credit for a full no-hitter there, applying whatever discount is appropriate? Maybe not quite, but impressive outings. And in fact, one notable thing about his performance in Game 4 was that the Phillies really didn't even come close to getting a hit against him. There was one Jean Segura lineout against Rafael Monteiro with two outs in the eighth that looked like a hit off the bat, had an expected batting average of 910, but the highest expected batting average on any batted ball off of Javier was 320 on a Kyle Schwarber ground out. So he really didn't even allow a lot of hard contact or likely hits, just impressive stuff and very fastball forward, very four seamer forward as the Astros are as a staff, which kind of goes against

the grain of the trend these days toward fewer fastballs. But when you have a really great fastball like Javier does, then you might as well use it. Also, I was just rereading Rob Manfred's letter on MLB.com that we referenced earlier. I said he didn't mention the zombie runner, and I think that's true. But you be the judge. Is this hinting at it? He wrote, through thorough research, common themes emerge. Fans want to see more balls in play,

athleticism, defense, and base running. They don't want unnecessary delays that prevent them from enjoying the late innings and conclusions of our games. Maybe that is an allusion to The Zombie Runner. I assume that is mostly talking about the time of game and the pace and not having games go so late that people aren't around and awake when the games are over, but maybe he is suggesting there that one thing that is preventing fans from enjoying the late innings and conclusions is just how many late innings there are. Although I wouldn't call that an unnecessary delay. They don't want unnecessary delays that prevent them from enjoying the late innings and conclusions of our games. I wouldn't put it past him, but I would not portray extra innings as unnecessary delays.

But that is kind of what he has done by imposing the zombie runner. Maybe I was too charitable in my first interpretation. Also, as some listeners probably saw, the Grand Junction Rockies of the Pioneer League, they have a new name. We mentioned that they were soliciting suggestions for a new name. I don't know how many of those suggestions were Chubbs, as in Grand Junction Chubbs. But if the Grand Junction Chubbs was the most popular suggestion, they have disregarded it because they have chosen to

adopt the name Jackalopes instead, the Grand Junction Jackalopes. That's also a good name. It's just not the Grand Junction Chubbs, which they will always be in my mind. Lastly, got a good email from listener Devin, who wrote in in response to my stat blast on episode 1924 about umpire accuracy and offense. I found that there's some correlation between how accurate an umpire is and how high scoring games are when that ump is behind the plate, and I speculated that that might be because a more predictable zone could be beneficial to hitters, which could be a sign of things to come if we get a robo ump. I still think that's the case, but Devin pointed out an interesting confounding factor, pointing out I'm

a little curious about the causal arrow that Ben implied with his reasoning. I wonder if bad pitching is actually making both hitters and umpires more effective at their jobs. It's probably easier to tell if a fastball with no movement is in the zone or not compared to a slider with a lot of break. Of course, a caveat to my point is that you are measuring accuracy on pitches that hitters took. Whiffs or contact wouldn't count toward accuracy, so maybe these aren't obvious meatball pitches that are beefing up the umpire's accuracy counts after all. That's a good point. It's difficult to do baseball analysis because there are so often confounding factors, and it is possible that, for instance, pitchers who throw harder and with more movement, pitchers who throw invisible balls like Christian Javier, they're harder to umpire just as they are harder to hit. And so maybe if you have a worse pitcher who is

easier to umpire and would also be easier to hit, then that would make it look like the more accurate umpires also are offense inflating, which is a good point. My response is that that stat blast was based on such big samples, almost 40,000 innings, or at least almost 40,000 half innings, for each of those umpire groups, the more accurate and the less accurate, that I don't know how likely it is that there would have been appreciable differences in the typical stuff of the pitchers that, say, the more accurate or less accurate umpire pools encountered. That might all just wash out. But it's a good thought. It's worth looking into.

It would also be much more complicated to look into. So if someone wants to redo that, accounting for the stuff of the pitchers somehow, I would welcome and applaud that. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free and get themselves access to some perks. Kyle W., Ryan Young, Evan M., Chris, and John Thimel. Thanks to all of you. Our Patreon playoff live streams have concluded,

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Thanks to all of you for listening. Have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back early next week with a busy week. Not only will we wrap the World Series, but we'll talk free agents, we'll talk the new Willie Mays documentary. We've got a lot lined up. Talk to you soon. The medical man don't lay down documentary, we've got a lot lined up. Talk to you soon. Come on, kick the bottom out Stomp your feet, scream and shout Let it go

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