Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2044: The Catcher-Crotch Catch

Episode Date: August 10, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about whether the plight of running backs in the NFL is analogous to any data-driven developments in MLB, the benefits and drawbacks of more or fewer off days during postseason series (and the problem with pluralizing “series”), the White Sox going 0-11 in games when they’ve struck out 14 […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2044 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Going to say something about football. Oh, okay. Fact check me, please. But you know how there's a running back crisis going on in the NFL? And this is largely analytics, sabermetrics driven, right? That teams have

recognized that passing yields more yards per play tends to be more efficient on the whole. So teams have gravitated toward more passing oriented offenses and to the point that now even your, say, third string receivers are more efficient when it comes to gaining yardage than your starting running back, right? And it's other things, too. It's that I guess running backs have a pretty high replacement level. You know, if you switch running backs, you don't tend to lose a lot. And there have been some prominent, successful Super Bowl winning teams that didn't really invest in their running backs. And then also running backs

get beat up, right? Even more than the typical NFL player. So they don't have a whole lot of longevity. So for all these reasons, running backs who used to be big stars of the sport, right? When we were kids, when I had any awareness of football, running backs were the stars. I knew running backs names. It was like quarterbacks and running backs and wide receivers, right? And now that position has been devalued to such an extent that running backs are kind of getting together to figure out what they can do. And they're talking about the fact that they're not making what they used to. And even the backup wide receivers are making more. And there are talks about what

if anything can be done about this and can the NFLPA do something about it, right? So this is kind of like a labor issue that I guess is caused by data analysis to some extent. So I was wondering what you think the closest equivalent to this is in baseball, if there even is one. equivalent to this is in baseball, if there even is one? What position in MLB has changed or been devalued or morphed the most as a result of sabermetrics over the past couple decades? Do you think there's any equivalent to what has happened to running backs?

It's a little bit different, right? Hmm. It's a little bit different, right? But I think that you could maybe look at the perceived fung such that relievers are taking up more innings relative to what they did as starters have sort of a quicker hook and don't go as deep into games. And I think that because player development has advanced the way that it has and has equalized for the most part across big league organizations are obviously exceptions to that. But like for the most part, teams are pretty good about developing, you know, a guy with a really hard fastball and a wipeout slider. And there are a lot of those guys. And there is difference amongst and between them, right? And there's the inherent volatility of relievers. Even good ones have seasons where

they're not as good. And, you know, you'll have guys who shine brightly for a couple of months and then don't replicate that success again. But I think that there is a perception that all of these guys are sort of the same, you know, and that isn't, I think, totally fair. And I think that there are certain organizations where that perception is more highly concentrated than in others, right? Where we don't talk about the relievers on like the Rockies the way we do on the race. and thus difficulty in distinguishing amongst them exists. But the counterargument to that is that when you look at the way that, like, free agent relievers get paid in free agency, they often dramatically exceed our expectations, right? So, I think that, you know, the in-game use of relievers suggests that teams are really open to the idea of sort of mixing and matching and, you know, calling guys up from AAA and then sending them back down, though not as often as they used to be allowed to do that, right? But then when you look at how they get paid, like, they still get paid.

They get paid in a way that is somewhat disconnected from their sort of production. a way that is somewhat disconnected from their sort of production. Not that they aren't good, but that they get paid more than you'd expect given sort of the war that they generate and how much volatility we know there to be. And so, I think that it's an imperfect fit, but it's the closest one I can come up with. I mean, I think that I have been sort of disappointed by what I perceive to be a lack of not care that maybe assigns more of a value judgment to it than I mean to. But like we learned some we being baseball sabermetrically inclined folks, I think, learned some hard lessons about how a fixation on the puzzle box without an understanding of the impact that this view of baseball might have on the labor market had. I think that if we could go back, we would try to think about those questions more actively early, which isn't to say that no one did. But I think we learned hard lessons by not being as forward thinking or perceptive about the impact that like moneyball might have on labor

and it does seem as if there is some some of that discourse being replicated as the understanding of football analytics advances and it's a tricky thing because i do think the numbers bear out that like passing oriented offenses are more efficient they tend to be higher scoring and i think that when you look at the the relative production of running backs like there are exceptions and exceptional running backs but there are also a lot of guys whose production is largely interchangeable and so the reality reality is that if you're going to concentrate your money, particularly in a sport that has a salary cap somewhere, that seems to be a place where your spending is less efficient. But you also need to acknowledge that these guys are still a necessary part of an offense, right? You don't have any teams that don't run the ball at all.

And if sabermetrics have taught us anything, it's that sometimes like the really obvious and easy conclusions you get at the beginning that yield a lot of value are, you know, ripe for re-examination and nuance and tweaking later, right? And also like these guys run their heads into a defensive line, like, all the time. And they should be compensated in a way that I think is sensitive to the physical risk

that they are undertaking. I think that the damage that can be done to football players, not only on the field, but in their lives after they exit the game is something that like analysts should be cognizant of. And I think that it's appropriate for that to be a compensated cost for labor, right? And like you want to always be mindful, like, am I making an argument that is going to lead to just a better football team with the spending rearranged? Or am I facilitating, you know, less spending overall on the part of ownership? Because like Moneyball as a concept isn't inherently anti-labor if what you're doing is saying, okay, we have a certain budget we have to operate in. We have identified places where the market is undervaluing a particular

skill. So we might be able to acquire that skill for less money and then reinvest those savings in other parts of the roster. Like that isn't an anti-labor proposition to my mind because you're still spending money on the team and the purpose of owning a team is to win championships. the team and the purpose of owning a team is to win championships. But as we've seen, like, sometimes it's just like, oh, so we can just be cheap and like, you know, rely on cheaper rookies. Great. And that's, that's a, I think a place that I hope football stays away from. Now, the dynamic that a cap introduces to payroll stuff is like obviously quite different than it is in baseball so like there is a limit to how much teams can spend and there are so many complications with the cap that i am not an expert in that like i want to acknowledge that as a factor that

teams even even as they treat the you know competitive balance tax thresholds as a harder and harder cap, don't actually have. So that exists too. That's a lot of me saying, yeah. Yeah. I don't know that there is a realistic recourse as I understand it, in part because the NFL PA is not as strong as say the MLB PA and also some of these trends that are placing running backs at a disadvantage, maybe placing other players at other positions at an advantage. And so then it kind of pits them against each other. And then can you have a collective action of just running backs who say, we're all going to sit out at once?

Well, that's tough because all NFL players tend to have fairly short careers, Tom Brady aside, and running backs even more so. And so you sit out a year. Well, now you're just a year older and closer to the end, and it may not actually improve your bargaining position. At the end of that, it may not give you greater leverage. So it's difficult to solve that problem if you consider it a problem beyond just it is obviously a problem for the running backs. problem beyond just it is obviously a problem for the running backs. I have been given to understand that there may be sort of a swing back in the other direction where as passing becomes so dominant and everyone is set up to defend against the pass, well, then maybe suddenly it's a little

bit better to run than it used to be. And so maybe the pendulum swings back in that direction. Yeah, that might be the zag to the passing zig, right? Yeah. Or running backs maybe have become a bit more versatile where they can catch more passes as well. They're not just running the ball. So, again, stretching my football knowledge here. But I think it's interesting that it is kind of equivalent to some of the changes that have happened in MLB. to some of the changes that have happened in MLB. Obviously, there have been a lot of changes on the field that have stemmed from or been exacerbated by the things that teams have discovered about baseball through the use of technology and data. And so we've seen certain

trends accelerate and some of the rules changes or responses to those trends, right? But on an individual position level, I think there are some limits on how much it could affect any one position because you have more rigid structure to the game. Like in football, you have your offense and you can choose to distribute the ball any way you want, right? I mean, you start a certain way, but the quarterback can hand it off to this guy or that guy, could pass it to that guy or that guy or run it himself. Right. But in baseball, there's a structure to it where everyone has to hit other than the pitcher. Right. There's a batting order and that just kind of governs the way that these things work. You've seen players at one position suddenly play a whole lot less. There might be some load management going on at a league-wide level where certainly with hitters, you see fewer qualifying hitters now. Guys take more days off. And then there are the changes with pitchers.

And those are the big ones. And I think you're right. If there is an analog here, it has to be pitchers. I don't know whether starters or relievers are the better comp. I could make a case for either. I think what you're saying is true where people just assume, oh, we can just find these fastball slider monsters. There's not that much difference between them. And I guess the comparison to the way that running backs have declined in fame and stardom and prominence, that has happened maybe with fireman-type relievers, you know?

Now it's just a parade of relievers who come in and you may not know who they are, and you're like, who's this guy with a two-fip? Where did he come from? I've never heard of him before. You're not getting Goose Gossage anymore, right, who's pitching multiple innings and is your stopper and is pitching tons of games. And even closers now, saves are more widely distributed. So you don't necessarily have one

designated save-getter guy. It's distributed based on matchups and availability. And you now have many save-getters and there's less of a mystique with the closer and a little less rigidity when it comes to the assigned roles of relievers. So I think that's a good case. Although I could also make a pretty persuasive case, I think, for starting pitchers who get likened to quarterbacks often because they're the ones who initiate the play. They start with the ball, they throw, they get things going. And it used to be that they would be constants the way that quarterbacks are throughout the game and they would be very valuable. And starters now are much less so on an individual level where they're not out there that whole game anymore and they're not throwing nearly as many innings. They're not making as many starts in many cases, but they're certainly not going as deep into games as they did. It doesn't seem like when you look at the top starters, though, that there's been a great depreciation or a great decline in what they make on an average value or even total years, right?

It's not like starters now when a top starter is available on the free agent market. We don't say, wow, starters that don't make any money anymore. Like starters still get pretty hefty contracts, even though you can only expect them to pitch some percentage of how many innings you would have expected a starter to pitch back in the day, right? They're just not out there nearly as much. And so you would think that thus they would be paid a lot less, but doesn't seem like that's necessarily the case, at least for the top guys. You know, whereas even with running backs, it seems like the best guys, they've really taken a huge haircut here. So I think that's a change. And I guess partly, again, it's just that you still have to have just as many innings as you used to on the whole.

than they used to be, but you still do have to have a pitcher out there all the time. Unless it's a position player pitcher, you still have to have a pitcher. But those innings are just split up among many more pitchers than they used to be. And thus, there has been a bit of decline in the prominence of the starting pitcher, which is kind of what people are talking about with the running back, where it's like, oh, running backs used to be really cool. Like, it's fun to watch running backs, you know? they're just like finding holes and they're just doing spin moves and they're breaking tackles. Like watching Barry Sanders or Emmitt Smith or whoever, like running back highlights, that was fun even for me as an on football fan. So I think maybe something has been lost there. Not that watching great catches and passes isn't fun also.

Similar to with starting pitchers where we've talked about how we've kind of lost that main character, the starting pitcher protagonist who's out there the entire game. And you get to track how he's doing and how he's adjusting and watch his pitch count climb and watch batters adjust back to him. pitch count climb and watch batters adjust back to him. A little bit of that has been lost too, where it's just like, you know, we're going to see several pitchers in many games. And so it's not just your one guy out there who's going to go the distance. Right. I mean, you're going to be,

well, in theory, you're going to be limited to how few innings a starter can throw, provided you have roster limitations on how many pitchers you can have on the roster, right? And how many batters they have to face. So, like, there is, like, a lower bound to that. But, yeah, like, I'm a Seahawks fan. I grew up watching, you know, Sean Alexander,

which didn't go great at the end, but was fun for a while. And then, you know, Marshawn Lynch, who, like, I challenge you at his height to find a player who was more fun to watch and also just like, like weirder and cooler presence off the field than Marshawn was and remains like he's just, you know, only, only ever the one of that guy. So I think that you're right that like, there's a lot still to be sorted out here. And while I think that you can make an argument about, you know, offensive efficiency that is probably going to be well supported by the data, even as, you know, teams look to Zag where others have zigged,

like we know that the sort of initial returns of Sabermetrics got refined and better understood and adjusted over time. And that, you know, I think a piece of this that I imagine, you know, I don't want to like act like the folks doing advanced analytics for football are like fumbling around like babies. Like, you know, a lot of people have had experience in baseball as an aside. But, you know, I think one of the things that they will likely discover is that when you have the staff and the infrastructure and the buy-in on the organizational side to bring that kind of analysis to bear, like you might find a better, cooler use for a running back than like an old school team would have because you're bringing like rigorous analysis to your understanding of the game. Does

that make sense? Like maybe there's a really cool way to use a running back that like people just haven't figured out quite yet because, you know, that't been the the lens through which x's and o's are viewed before now and i think it's fine for your games and sports to evolve i think it's okay for us to look at football now and say it's different in ways that we think are better than it was before like it's you know all you have to do is look at our understanding of player safety, for instance, to be like, well, this is obviously a better, even if it's still imperfect and quite damaging way of playing the game. And so you want it to be adaptive. But I think that, you know, if I could encourage the people who are looking at this stuff for football

teams to just have two things in the back of their mind. You know, there's the question of what are the labor implications of what I'm advocating for as a public side analyst? And what does this do to your point to like the watchability of the game? Because you're right, like, you know, when you see like a really, really powerful, strong running back, like rip off a big run, that's so fun. It's so funny. It's like one of the better highlights, you know, for me, it's like, it's that crazy interceptions and like a perfectly thrown deep ball. Like those are the things I'm really, really portraying that I am a Seahawks fan, like with my list of things, it's like really a lot of the stuff that the Seahawks,

the good Seahawks teams of my fandom have done well. But like that's really satisfying. And so I think that when you can come to your sport with an understanding that there's probably like efficiency and improvement to be gained, but do so also with the knowledge that like when other sports have ventured down that road, they have sometimes ended up in like a cul-de-sac of unwatchability. You can just like not take that turn, you know, be on a different road, a different path. Yeah. Another byproduct of this, we were talking about the reduced prominence of relievers maybe and reliever Cy Young award winners or reliever MVPs. That's not going to happen anymore, probably. I know that last episode's Future Blast featured an award-winning reliever, but it had been

40 years at that point in the future since Eric Gagne's year. So it would be extremely difficult for a reliever to win one of the major awards now. And that is largely because we're not looking at saves anymore necessarily when we're valuing relievers. So I think that's part of it. And also part of it is that when you see the innings total decreases for starting pitchers, it is hard, I think, to amass as much value in a 200-inning season or a sub-200-inning season, which is what many of the top guys top out at now. I think it's tough to accrue the same value as one would back in the day when you're throwing 300 innings or something.

But even more recently, Dwight Gooden's 85 season, which was obviously ridiculous in a number of ways, but he threw 276 and two-thirds regular season innings that year and was worth 12-war at baseball reference. It would be very difficult for a starting pitcher to do that now because they're not going to throw that many innings, which is probably for the best. It probably didn't help him in the long run. But even more recently than that, Justin Verlander, for instance,

in his Cy Young MVP year, he threw 251 innings in 2011, which wasn't ancient history. I know Justin Verlander's old, but he's still pitching, still pitching pretty well. And that's not going to happen. Top 100 prospects, Ben. Yeah. So I don't think anyone's going to get there anymore. Even Zach Greinke in his Cy Young year, he threw like 230 innings. I don't know that anyone's going to get there. That's the outside. That's the extreme outlier, right? That's, I mean, what did Sandy Alcantara get last season?

He was at fewer than that, 228 and two-thirds. And that was like, whoa, throwback. It was like beamed from the 80s as a time traveler here somehow. So I don't think we're going to get those innings totals anymore. However, the reason or one of the reasons why we're seeing individual starters throw fewer innings is that it does make them more efficient and that does make them more valuable on a per-inning basis. So I think when you look at the top starters now, I think the degree to which their wars have declined is not quite commensurate with the degree to which their innings totals have declined,

because even though they're throwing fewer innings, those innings are, in theory, more efficient because they're not facing the same hitter three or four times in the same game. They're not gas. They're not fatigued, right? So they're fresher and they are more effective in quality, which preserves some of that individual value. But I think on the whole, there is some effect here. I have cited Rob Mainz's piece for BP.

This was in September of 2021. this before, but he found that that had happened, that when salaries were stagnating league-wide for a while there, that one of the drivers of that was the way that pitchers are used. He said, a byproduct of modern strategy, rather than a plot to pay players less, reducing pitcher workload leads to more pitchers on rosters who make less money than hitters anyway. It also yields less money paid to individual pitchers since they shoulder less of the responsibility for team wins. As a result, player compensation goes down and team profitability goes up. So it's not quite as dramatic and it's maybe not affecting the leaders quite as much as it is for running backs. But yes, when you have a whole bunch of anonymous relievers and guys who are

making the minimum and guys who are on the shuttle and shuffling up to the majors and back to AAA to the degree that that's still happening, then yes, it is depressing. Pitcher pay collectively somewhat and thus player pay somewhat. It's just not nearly as dramatic as what has happened with running backs. Right. Yeah. I think that that nearly as dramatic as what has happened with running backs. Right, yeah. I think that that's all. I think that that is all correct. All right.

I made a foray into football. I think it went okay. Thinking about football. I know. You know, this is what happens when we have to podcast three days in a row. You're like, what are we going to talk about? I guess I'm talking about football. Yeah, well, I was listening to Hang Up and Listen, the excellent slate podcast that we

sometimes appear on, and they did a segment on this. And often that's my exposure to trends in other sports. And then I often think of baseball equivalents if there are some. And it's always interesting because a lot of the same sort of prevailing movements are happening when it comes to studying data and making decisions based on that. But the specific ramifications of that differ by sport. In some cases, they are very similar. And in some cases, they make sports more entertaining, in some cases, less entertaining. But this is one that I think is more muted in baseball. But there are definitely some strains of this happening in our sport as well. Yeah. And, you know, I think we there are going to be differences. And so you can't perfectly apply our lessons to another sport. But I think that there's stuff there that is useful, particularly for public side analysts. that is useful, particularly for public side analysts, right? Like when you're employed by a team, you're going to have different obligations and your motivations are going to be, I think, different than they are for the public. But I think particularly as, you know, public side

analysts are both trying to advance their own work and help readers understand like the ways in which having a rigorous sort of evidence-based approach to strategy and player usage and whatnot can enhance enjoyment of the game. You guys are in a position to really help illuminate and elucidate concepts that might be new to a lot of people. And so you just want to treat that with care and view it as a responsibility because we still see fans sort of parroting what is very thinly veiled like pro-ownership rhetoric on, you know, when a guy signs a free agent contract in MLB. And some of that I think is just unavoidable, but some of it is, I think, directly a result of the way that some Saber 1.0 folks talked about some players at one point.

And I don't want to, like, you know, tar anyone specifically. And I do think a lot of people's thinking sort of evolved over time in a way that's really understandable. But, like, you do, you know, that first impression can be a lasting one. So I think it's just good for everyone to be cognizant of some of the questions that aren't just X's and O's questions that are associated with all of this stuff so that people are less annoying online, if nothing else. One segue suggests itself that also is related to pitcher usage. The postseason schedule came out this week, and Ben Clemens blogged about it at FanCrafts. And the schedule is not atypical, but is different from last postseason schedule and also 2020s. Those were weird years. 2020 was weird in so many ways. And 2022 had the post-lockout impacted schedule. So for various reasons, those two seasons, those post-season schedules had fewer

off days baked into them. So things were more compressed. And that means that depth was more important. Whereas now, there are more off days, and thus depth is a little less important. You can concentrate your innings in your top arm's hands. So just to read from Ben here, in 2022, teams more or less had to use five starters if they went the distance in the wildcard round. The 2022 NL schedule had only one off-day total across the round, and while the AL schedule had two off-days, it closed with three games in three days across two cities. With more time, thanks to the lack of a lockout-impacted schedule, the rest days have multiplied. An NL team could use its three best starters in the wildcard round, a fourth starter in Game 1, and then its three best starters again in Games 2-4 a fourth starter in game one, and then its three

best starters again in games two to four. Amazingly, its ace could come back for game five on regular rest. He'd be pitching on October 3rd, 9th, and 14th, hardly a strenuous schedule. That won't work quite as well in the AL, but it won't be much worse. An ace could pitch on October 3rd, 8th, and 13th with four days of rest between each start. Relative to last year, this year places less premium on depth and more on top end starting pitching, and I guess also top end bullpenning. Fifth starters, I'm sorry, your services likely won't be required. And there's some of this in the championship series as well. Ben said that double travel day setup that we have now here. We have two games, a travel day, three games, another travel day. Then the last two games, the NL schedule is the same as the AL, except that it starts a day later.

So because of that, teams will never play more than three games in a row, which means a four-man rotation and shortened bullpen should work just fine. This was not the case last year when both league schedules provided for five straight games with no travel day. Again, because of the compressed timeline, the takeaway here is the same. Rotation depth is less important than it was in the 2022 postseason. So again, this is not the deviation from the norm. Last year in 2020 were the deviation from the norm, but I kind of liked those deviations from the norm. I don't know about you, but do you think this is better or worse? The reason I like it better is that it tests the depth that you had to have to get there, right? I mean, you have to use five starters or

cobble together bullpen days to get to the postseason. So it always feels almost like a cheat to me when the schedule then allows you to say, forget about the weak back end of the rotation. If you're a team that has a really strong top five, if there are any such teams now, that you would feel like, hey, this was a strength. This was what got us here. And now it doesn't benefit us anymore.

And now this other team that has three good guys and then they just have to fake it, well, now they don't have to fake it anymore. Now that just obscures that weakness. So in a sense, I don't like the conditions being so different when October rolls around, even though, of course, October is already really different and the postseason is just, you know, totally different. It's just a whole different game, really. So I don't know why I would be bothered about this in particular. It's not like the postseason is super telling when it, it's the postseason. We're already watching the best teams

and also some teams from the Central who qualified for the postseason. Wow. You need to say Ben, I think we need to say the AL Central now. Yes, I guess we should specify. We need to start being specific, I think, because some of those NL Central clubs,

they're not so bad. The Reds are at least a lot of fun, you know? Yeah, yeah. Not so much over the last week or two, but yes. But everybody has a bad week, Ben. That is true. So, okay, fair enough. The AL Central.

So you're already kind of cutting out the weaker teams from the postseason field. So then why not cut out the weaker players from the teams in the postseason field? This is high stakes time. Everything's on the line. Everyone's tuning in to watch. Is it really a bug that we don't get to see the fifth starter or is it a feature, right? Maybe the fifth starter is the necessary evil to get through the slog of 162 games. But now you're in the tournament. Every game counts. Do we really want to insist on seeing the back end of your bullpen in the fifth starter? Or is it just better to concentrate those innings in pitchers' arms who are better and more entertaining to watch?

Plus, we didn't talk about this in our running backs discussion, but the expansion of bullpens has led to fewer spots for bench guys. And those bench guys now have to become more defensively versatile, like running backs maybe are becoming more versatile to keep their roster spot. So you see lots of multi-position players and you don't see single DHs and left fielders so often. Players just rotate in those spots and across positions. But what you don't see so much is just dedicated pinch runners and dedicated pinch hitters and bench weapons like those can be entertaining in a playoff series. So if you're not carrying the fifth starter or the extra bullpen guy, maybe there's room for some non-pitcher specialists.

So there are benefits and drawbacks to either approach. forth on this because I think that to your point like the incentives and and motivations in the postseason are already so different like you're just so much more likely to need to prioritize like winning in the present even if it means hamstringing yourself a little bit in the future. It's just such an odd scenario. I do think it's good to give guys a little bit of time. I mean, it felt so tight last year. It felt so tight. I mean, the greatest travesty is the fact that there is a scheduled game on Halloween. Like, that's the biggest problem.

They still haven't resolved that. Like, we're giving all of these days off and we can't give people Halloween off, Ben. You can't give... I love Halloween. Why, I gotta work on Halloween? A potential decisive game four? Gotta work?

Yes. It's gonna interrupt your trick-or-treating. It is gonna interrupt my trick-or-treating. I mean, I'm not trick-or-treating. I'm handing out candy. You'll be dispensing, but yes. Yeah. I'm 37. I don't go trick-or-treating. And I don't trick-or-treating i'm handing out you'll be dispensing but yes yeah i i'm 37 i don't go to and i don't have kids so you know it's like really but i like to you know participate in the neighborhood the neighborhood here likes

halloween it's anyway that's not the point of your question i think that i tend to agree that you know to the extent that we can make what is already a weird stretch of the calendar more like the regular season, the better. And I think that I like it when teams are rewarded for depth. I like it when they have to assemble a really good, or at least survivable roster top to bottom. I don't think this is going to change anything about the fact that Dave Roberts seems to make really weird choices in October

when it comes to his pitching usage. So, you know, going to be some strangeness sprinkled and then just regardless. But yeah, I think that if I'm, I mean, if I'm Tampa, I'm not thrilled about anything right now, but I may be a little more relieved

that some of the pressure on depth is alleviated by this because even though my best starting pitcher like is probably done for the year at least i don't have to be able to go quite as deep as i was going to have to when i had fewer rest days i don't know like i i yeah i don't know i feel unsettled about it not like in a I'm on like uncomfortable but I'm just not quite sure what I prefer yeah I'm kind of conflicted too because there are a couple other wrinkles I think one nice thing is that when you have to use that depth then you have to reuse certain guys that you might not have to use otherwise I mean I guess it's mostly about using guys that you just wouldn't use at all.

But one of the storylines that I enjoy in a postseason series is like, oh, they've already seen this guy. Maybe they'll be better against him this time. It does seem like there are some penalties associated with relievers who pitch against the same team in the same series multiple times. I haven't found the same penalty with a starter,

but it could exist in theory. So that whole, hey, we made this team work and they had to bring in this guy and maybe they beat us in that game, but it could come back to bite them in a later game because they had to use him here. Now we've already seen him and maybe we'll be facing him again in short order and that will help us in some way so that whole storyline that kind of fascinates me and also i think sometimes it feels like the momentum just as a spectator the momentum is lost a little bit if there are multiple off days in a series it's like let's let's get going you know i guess you could see the alternate interpretation, too, which is, hey, let the series breathe a little bit and we can anticipate and dissect and we can all talk about what happened and what's going to happen and we can drum up more interest.

But I kind of like it when it's rapid fire. It's like, oh, OK, that game ended that way. They'll be back tomorrow. Right. Like we're going to get the answer to who's going to advance sooner rather than later. So I think I like it more as a rapid fire thing than play a couple of games, take a day off, play a few games, take a day off, right? You travel across the country. Again, I don't want everyone to just be exhausted. You know, I want to see the best

baseball possible at that time of the year. So some rest makes sense. But also, I do kind of like, you know, it's like the difference, I guess, between the binge drop model of TV and the weekly model of TV. You know, sometimes you just want to binge the whole thing and just see how it ends. But sometimes having it come out once a week allows us to really savor it and analyze it and anticipate it. So again, I could see either side. I continue to be conflicted. Yeah, it's tricky. I mean, I think about some of the like surprise performances, for instance, that I've really enjoyed in the last couple of world series. And even those, you could make the argument on either side, right? Like, remember how great the Braves bullpen was in 2021? Like,

you know, remember how much time we spent with like, Tyler Matzik? You know, we were like, really invested in Tyler Matzik. And we were really invested in AJ Minter. And Matzik was a great story, right? He's an indie ball guy, and he's pitching these incredibly important innings, and he did so well, and they all did so well. And they were, you know, they were managed and deployed so expertly, and it was so great. But also, like, do you want relievers to be, like, the stars of your World Series? And you're rolling the dice on that in any postseason, right? You never quite know who, the decisive important guy is going to be. And ideally it's someone who, you know, is either already really good and famous or

suddenly really good and has a crazy backstory. But I don't know that you're advocating for relievers being the like stars of the show. And I guess when you, I don't know, it's tricky because you could say that's an argument for more time off or less time off. You could say any kinds of, you could say so many things, Ben. We could see all sides of this issue. Yeah. Yeah. It's tough. What really bothers me, though, I've decided is that the plural of series is series. That is unacceptable to me because you were just saying series plural, referring to series. Yes, I was.

And I could hear you stress series. Yeah. But that doesn't really work so well. And it certainly doesn't work in spelling. You can usually pick it up from context. I don't know what the solution is. I don't know that I want us to start saying serieses, but it is very odd that it relies on just pronunciation and stressing certain parts of that word just because sometimes it's really, it's tough to tell from context whether you mean series singular or series plural.

When you're indicating possession for a word that ends with an S, are you a double S-er or an S apostrophe move on guy? I know what the ringer house style is, if only because I wanted to make sure I remembered what year I was so enamored with Tyler Matzik and pulled up a piece that Zach Cram wrote and here is Dodgers S apostrophe. But I'm an S apostrophe move on person, even though I know we say like Texas's or the Dodgers.

Do we? No, we don't. What are we doing? No. Yeah. I am also, at least by inclination, an S apostrophe move on guy. Most of the time it depends. Usually the ringer actually goes with the S apostrophe S

tacked on at the end. And so I've kind of acclimated to doing that more often. But yeah, if left to my own devices, it may have changed over time. But yeah, if left to my own devices, I probably would not stick that extra S on there at the end. Most of the time, the rules are complicated. But yeah, Siri's, that's the real problem that we have to confront here.

People are like, you know, we like it when you guys talk about baseball, too. And we are, but sometimes we have to think about these things. Hashtag editor problems. Editor problems, yeah. All right. Well, here's another pitching-related matter that's been on my mind. I know we talked about the White Sox last time, but one more thing about the White Sox. Have you seen the fun fact, which for White Sox fans is an extremely unfun fact going around, about the White Sox?

White Soxes? White Sox? Actually, the Xs are, you know, where people get really jammed up. Yeah, this is a problem. Yeah. Major problem. Actually, the X's are, you know, where people get really jammed up. Yeah, major problem. Chicago's lack of success. Yeah, that doesn't work. That could be two teams, too.

That doesn't help. But see, no. If I were editing your piece, I'd say you've already laid the groundwork that you're referring to the American League club. And so you don't need to specify further. Yes. The pale hoses. There you Paul. The pale hoses. There you go. The north-siders.

I don't know. They're the south-siders, Ben. Yeah, the south-siders. Good gravy. What a mess. We got a lot of notes for this paragraph. Oh, boy. Yeah.

Okay. Got my directions wrong there. So the important thing is that the Southsiders, they are winless when they strike out 14 or more this season, which sounds maybe a little arbitrary. It's like, why are we picking 14? But it's not really that arbitrary. It's a lot. That's a lot of strikeouts. When they themselves strike out that many times or when their pitchers strike out that many guys? Good clarification there. When their pitchers.

Not a fun fact. No, not at all. Right. Yeah. And it's kind of putting the line there where it makes them look worse. Maybe. I don't know how they've done when they've struck out 13 exactly. But it is, I think, a fair fun fact because typically when teams strike out 14 or more opposing batters, they do tend to win most of the time. They tend to do quite well. Yeah. Even in these days of high strikeouts, right? So it is very odd that they are now 0-11. And I've been trying to figure out why that is exactly. Like, some of it's always just going to be bad luck, of course. But I think it probably goes beyond that. Like, I was trying to look at

just like, trying to put this into perspective, how bad this is. And it really is quite bad and quite improbable. Like, all teams combined this season have gone 126-61 when they strike out 14 or more opposing batters. That's a 674 winning percentage. If you take the White Sox out of that, which perhaps isn't fair when you're looking at the typical success here, but is fair when you're trying to point out how bad the White Sox have been and how much of an outlier they are here. Other teams, 126 and 50 when they strike out 14 or more opposing batters. That's a 7-16 winning percentage. Here are the other teams that have at least 10 of these games this season, along with their record in those games. Twins, 10-2. Marlins, 7-5. Blue Jays, 9-2.

Mariners, 8-3. White Sox, 0-11. Atlanta, 7-4. Angels, 7-3. One of these things is not like the others. And as far as I can tell, there's really no precedent for a team that has had this many of these games and has had so little success in those games.

I mean, I was looking at Baseball Reference's StatHead tool, and you can look up games like this and see how teams did. And if you look up teams that had, let's say, 10 or more of these 14-plus strikeout games, you have the White Sox there at 0-11. These 14-plus strikeout games, you have the White Sox there at 0-11, the next worst team or teams, 4-6. So if you're setting the minimum at double-digit games of this kind, right? And in fact, it looks like there has never been a team that has—well, that's not true. It's the way that I'm sorting this. never been a team that has, well, that's not true. It's the way that I'm sorting this, but,

but among teams that have had at least like six or seven of these games in a season, there's never been one that was winless. Like the 2015 Reds went one in six in these games, the 2013 Mariners were two in six in these games, but to have this many of these games and to be winless really is weird. And I looked at this on a longer time frame, too. And I looked at all teams that had five or more of these games in a given season. And there were 315 of them to this point in baseball history. And collectively, they've gone 1861 and 846 in those games. That's a 687 winning percentage. And I think part of this, you could say,

okay, a lot of teams strike out 14 or more opposing batters these days. The strikeout rate is high. And so this kind of game is less extraordinary, less special than it once was. You're more likely to be facing a team that also struck out 14 or more of your guys in that game, right? So it's not as much of a separator, which I think you can see. I divided those teams with five or more of these games into pre-Wildcard era and post-Wildcard era. There are many, many, many more of them post-Wildcard era and post-Wildcard era. There are many, many, many more of them post-Wildcard era. This has become much more common than it used to be. But of the 288 teams since the Wildcard was instituted that had five or more of these games in a season, they've gone 25 54 and 17 53 in those games that's a 593 winning percentage whereas the

much fewer many fewer teams pre-wildcard era 27 of them that had five or more of these games in the season they in those games went 108 and 46 that's a 701 winning percentage so pretty big difference so again it's still really strange, even in this era, that they would be winless in these games, but it's a little less strange, or a little less likely to win on the whole in these

games than you used to be. But still, they should have won a lot of these games. Why haven't they? I was wondering. Part of it, I think, is that the White Sox are not very good. So even when they are striking out 14 or more batters, they are still bad at a lot of stuff, right? So they are 28th in WRC Plus this year, right? So some of these games were well-pitched games.

It's just that they didn't really score. So hard to win if you don't score, even if you pitch pretty well. So they have one of the worst offenses in baseball that that will do it. Also, they have, depending on your metric, maybe one of the worst defenses in baseball. Certainly not a good defense. If you go by defensive run saved, they have the second worst defense better only than the athletics so that's part of it too right like strikeouts the defense doesn't affect those that's a defense independent but in the non-strikeout the batted balls the outcomes of plate appearances that didn't end in strikeouts, those might not have gone so great for the White Sox due to the defense. And then also the White Sox, as you might imagine, have

been a pretty good strikeout rate team. They are sixth in strikeout rate. However, they also have the second highest walk rate of any pitching staff this year. Again, better only than the A's. And they also have the third highest home run rate, which is better only than the Nationals and the Rockies in Coors Field. So, yeah, they're good at one of the true outcomes eliciting, I guess they're good at eliciting all of the true outcomes. Yeah, depending on what side you're looking at it from. Yeah, pitchers only really want to excel at getting a lot of one of those outcomes. And so they've done them all. So even when they strike out a lot of guys, I guess, they're probably undercut by walks and dingers. And so if you look at the actual 14 games thus far, they have mostly been close games.

So the average margin of victory or loss from Chicago's perspective, 2.6 runs. There were four one-run games and two other non-one-run games that went to extras. So a lot of close ones that, again, could have been coin flips, could have gone either way. We know there's a lot of luck involved there. And in those games where they averaged 15.8 strikeouts, they also averaged 4.5 walks allowed and 1.3 home runs allowed. 4.5 walks allowed and 1.3 home runs allowed. And also some hits, 8.4 hits as well. So they weren't doing other things well, I guess is the problem, which is why I think it makes a pretty good fun fact. I sort of the first time I expected it, I sort of expected it to be lying a little or cheating a little, distorting things like, well, what's the baseline? How weird is this?

No, it really is weird. There really isn't a precedent for this having happened. And teams still do very well in those games. And so I think the takeaway actually is, gee, the White Sox are so bad that even when they do this one thing well, they still lose. And I think that's an accurate and deserved takeaway. So it is a pretty good stat to sum up their season, sadly, for them. Yeah, I think that it is, you know, things can be descriptive and devastating. You know, those aren't mutually exclusive categories. You know, those aren't mutually exclusive categories.

And I don't, you know, I don't want to make light of it because their fans, like, deserve better than this. And it looked, you know, it looked like they were going to get it for a while there. I mean, not this year, but like, you know, like we talked about last time, they had exciting young prospects. And then those prospects graduated and and made an impact and they you know had a bunch of fun guys on their team and they seemed like they were going to be like these plucky upstarts who were really going to solidify a place in a division that had room for like new a new dominant club and then it all just yeah and it's not like there aren't you know guys on that team that aren't you know like luiz ribera juniors having a good season like they're still they're still highlights but they are really few and far between and you're

right nothing maybe sums that up better than like saying you did this thing that we tend to associate. Like if you heard just offhand, you know, this team struck out 14 hitters. You'd be like, they probably won. No, like, you know, no, they didn't. And look, White Sox fans, I really am not trying to like give you a hard time. I know how it feels to have a part of a pitching line feel like it should come with, and then they won the game at the end of it, and not have that be true. I watched Prime Felix from here. I know, friends.

But yeah, you feel like you can't trust things when stuff like that happens. And you feel like you can't trust things, you know, when stuff like that happens. It's like the tungsten arm O'Doyle stat of the White Sox sort of is like the White Sox struck out 14 plus guys and they lost. It's just it has not failed or they have unfailingly failed in all of these games this year. So I don't think the White Sox have been that unlucky as a team on the whole. I mean, last year it was like, gosh, they sure had a lot of injuries. And this year you look at base runs record, for instance, which tells you what a team's expected or should have been based on base runs. You know, this ranges from the Royals at negative 10, extremely unlucky, to the Orioles at plus 9 and the Reds at plus 8. And then you have, of course, the extremely unlucky Padres at negative 8. The Cardinals are also at negative 8.

Were you aware that the Cardinals' record in one-run games is 9-23? I was not aware of that, no. That is not good. You know, a thing happens when a team is, like, obviously very bad, which is I kind of check out a little bit. You know, like, I don't get into the minutiae of it quite as much unless specifically asked. So, no, I was not aware of that. My weird performance in a strange situation, fun fact, is about the Padres not being able to win in extras.

Yeah, there's that too. What is up with that, Ben? They've been unlucky in a number of ways. But yeah, the White Sox, not really unlucky, just bad. So, I applaud that stat. I mean, I offer my condolences on that stat, but I endorse the stat as telling and fair and definitely makes me say, wow, because that hasn't happened before. It really should not be happening. So maybe we could just talk about the Northsiders for a sec here, because things are going a little bit. I mean, it's good that we corrected it in line, because you were going to get emails, and I was going to say. Yes, I know.

I know it. It's a momentary mix-up. I mean, look, do non-New Yorkers know the difference between Eastside and Westside? Yes, Ben, because you guys won't shut up about neighborhoods in your city. Are you kidding? That is true. Yeah. With love. She says with love. But like, I know so much about your stupid mayor. So much. Why do I have to know so much about your stupid, stupid mayor? Yeah, you say with love and exasperation.

Yeah, that one is not full of love. Yeah, that one is just exasperation. That one is not full of love. Yeah. Yeah, that one is just exasperation. No, I will not defend his honor here either. But the Northsiders, things are going better for them these days. Yeah. First of all, have you seen Cody Bellinger? I know we've talked about Cody Bellinger and how he's having a good season.

But my goodness, he's up to a 150 WRC plus now. Yeah, how about that? As some people have pointed out, he has doubled his batting average, more than doubled his batting average from 2021. Yeah. From 165 to 331 right now. Wild stuff. Yeah. Wild.

I mean, it's kind of, I guess, the opposite of the Angels where they held on to their guy and they at least made some mover moves to get better. And then the angels instantly self-destructed whereas the cubs have been doing well and they held on to bellinger and gosh he's been good now he's not that far behind like his mvp year wrc plus obviously he was doing that in many more games and also for whatever it's worth his expected weighted on base average is almost 100 points lower than it was that year. So, I mean, he has just been better lately. I think there's a bigger disconnect between the expected and the actual stats early in the season, whereas lately he actually has been kind of hitting the tar out of the ball. He seems to have collapsed that gap some, yes. Yeah. He's striking out 15% of the time. Cody Bellinger, right? I mean, I guess he was doing that more or less in his MVP year.

But again, he's almost halved his strikeout rate, which I guess is related to his doubling his batting average. But those things maybe move in tandem. But that's pretty impressive. That's pretty impressive. And the Cubs now, they are just nipping at the heels of those NL Central teams that you were just complimenting as not being that bad. They're not. They're just like they're so much more middle of the road, mediocre than the AL Central is my point. Like it does seem to be, you know, it's different. It's not good, but it's different. Yeah. And some of this is just like things that seemed like they might come to pass over more games are kind of coming to pass. Like Eli De La Cruz, he still does super extraordinary things on a regular basis, but he's run into a rough patch, right? Which is something that we thought might happen at some point, because when you have the strikeout to walk ratio that he has, which is 0.2 walk to strikeout, he's struck out 34% of the time, walked less than 7% of the time. now has a below average WRC plus on the season and he hasn't been running as much partly because he

hasn't been reaching base as much again like the things he does will still astound you but maybe you know the league has adjusted a little and I'm sure he will adjust back but it often happens and he was doing so incredibly well that he has cooled off a bit and the Reds have collectively, because it has seemed that as goes Ellie, so go the Reds to some extent this season. So they've been slumping. They're now tied with the Cubs a game and a half back of the Brewers. And of course, we've been talking about this since early in the season that the Cubs had one of these confounding records relative to their underlying performance because the run differential would lead you to believe that they're one of the best

teams in the league. They've outscored their opponents by 67 runs. Every other team in the NL Central is underwater run differential wise, in most cases by quite a bit, right? So the Cubs, I think, have the second highest run differential, no, third highest run differential in the National League after Atlanta and LA. So their results now are finally kind of coming into line with their underlying performance. And now, I mean, the playoff odds have them as better than 50-50, a little bit better than 50-50 to make the playoffs. They are, I guess, tied with the Reds in wildcard position now and within striking distance of the NL Central title too. And the playoff odds have them, I think, as about a one in three shot to win the division.

think as a about a one in three shot to win the division and i don't know i think i might go higher than that in my personal playoff odds which tend not to deviate that dramatically from the actual playoff odds because what do i know but yeah exactly one in three now to win the division and i think i might take the over on that just because they've played better than their record really all season. And another factor is that their strength of schedule projected over the rest of the season is easily the weakest in that division. So that helps as well. In fact, it is the weakest in MLB, or it is tied with the Southsiders. I'm just going to keep saying North and South just to remind everyone that I know which one is which now. But they both have a projected rest of season strength of schedule of 474, which is quite low. So that favors them also.

Two things can be true simultaneously. Like we can be looking at Bellinger, for instance, and saying that like, yeah, is he a little over his skis? Even still, even with him sort of narrowing this gap. Yeah. But, okay. Like, that, the degree to which that is true or not true is mostly a problem for him and whatever team wants to sign him this offseason. Like, it doesn't diminish, like, how fun this has been and how nice it is to see you know he was like so bad he was bad in that way where you were like worried about him bad you know you're like

is cody bellinger okay like and he seems like pretty mellow guy yeah famously but you know you were like this is going really this is just so off the rails and the fall from grace has been so pronounced and how much of this is a shoulder injury. That was this fluky thing in a pandemic season celebrating in the postseason, even though like his underlying stats suggested that like things have been kind of on a decline from before that. But still, you were like sitting there like, OK, but it's good, Ben, you know, and it's it's good for a club that had been in an intentional rebuild or step back or tear down or whatever the hell you want to call it to be contending and in a spot where they're doing stuff. That's good. Yeah. Well, last topic then before we finish with a meet a major leaguer, a team that is not doing so hot lately, your Arizona Diamondbacks, who we mentioned briefly last time.

They've sunk to.500. Yeah, they're right at.500 now. Yeah, they are two games behind the Cubs, in fact, in the wildcard race. And look, if you had asked me preseason how the Diamondbacks would do this year, and you told me that they would be in the wildcard hunt at this point in the season, and 500, and that they would have had some encouraging individual seasons, I don't think that would have been a disappointment, right? At least for me.

I mean, you were higher on them. You picked them as a surprise team, and they did surprise surprise for some time they've surprised in the wrong direction lately but fancraft's projections had them at 78 wins right so so they're actually kind of right what they were expected to be but the way that they've done it where where they jump out to NL West leads fairly deep into the season, right? So deep. Yeah. And they have Corbett Carroll tearing it up and, you know, things are going great and it looks like they're ahead of schedule and they're America's sweethearts, you know, they're speedy and they're fun. And now I think it's like the sequencing of the season makes it more disappointing where it's like

oh okay this is a playoff team like they're they're giving the Dodgers a run for their money here and now suddenly it's like can they even stay in the wild card race because they've just been so bad like if we pick it's been really bad yeah just some selective starting point here like if we go back to July 2nd let let's say, since then, they're 7-23. That's the fewest wins in the majors. That's fewer wins than the A's have over that span. Or if you go back even further to June 13th, let's say, they're 16-32. That's not good. That's more wins than only the A's over that span. So they have been really results-wise, record-wise, the worst team in the league for a couple months now,

sort of sneakily. So is this, it's obviously a disappointment relative to how it's like one of those, how it started, how it's going. And to my expectations. Right, yeah. But is it, I guess, a step back on a seasonal level or like, are they going to pull out of this stall and make it competitive over the rest of the season? Was this all a mirage? Like, what positive takeaways can we have from this if they do end up on the outside looking in? How would you sum up this season so far? in so far? Well, I'm so glad you asked, Ben. I mean, I think that a not small part of what's going on right this very moment is that they are, you know, they're pretty injured among their

sort of regular contributors. The ones that we might point to as impactful, like Gabriel Moreno, who was one of their big off-season trade acquisitions. They traded Dalton Varshow to Toronto for him. He has been on the injured list since late July with shoulder information. Evan Longoria, who was sort of a good platoon bat for them in the early going, has a lower back strain, so he's out. Zach Davies is out, but he was bad. So like, that's less impactful, right? But Tommy Henry has an elbow thing and Austin Adams is like, got a fractured ankle. Andre Jamison is out. And so some of it is that they're hurt. Some of it is that like, I don't know what the interior Corbin Carroll shoulder looks like, right? Some of what's been going on with Corbin Carroll might be, probably is, the league adjusting to him to some degree relative to the first half

of the season. It isn't like super confidence inspiring that his sort of swoon at the plate seems to correspond with the first time it looked like he screwed up his shoulder again. So, you know, we don't quite know what's going on there. And like all of, not all of them, but most of their hitters have been bad and the pitching has not been good. And the bullpen was really a problem. And then they traded for Paul Seawald and he probably blew his first save opportunity.

So like some of this is just probably fluky normal fluctuation that you're right if it were happening over the course of a season where they were kind of playing 500 ball the whole time. We wouldn't notice to the same degree because we wouldn't have had this dramatic fall off, you know, but we have. I think that if I were diagnosing it personally, I would say that they continued to need pitching reinforcement. Some of their young guys who we thought would be standouts have not pitched especially well. Fott has struggled at times. And even Gallin, who was so incredible in the first half, has these streaky periods where he's less good and he's been less good lately. And so right now it feels like everything associated with the team is bad. Yeah. And I expect that some of those things will kind of course correct, but it doesn't feel good. It feels bad. year where the West seemed much more winnable than it typically is, right? Where the, you know,

this Padres team that we thought was going to be so good and so dominant has underperformed, and the Dodgers looked vulnerable, and, you know, the Giants kept trying to sign, like, big, literally big free agents in some cases and not being able to do it. And so here was this chance for the D-backs to, like, really,backs to really grab the West and run away with it. And they haven't been able to do that. So I don't know what their appetite is going to be for spending in the offseason. I don't know what their appetite might be for sort of consolidating some of their more highly regarded prospects and trying to trade to reinforce some of the areas of the team that are bad. I don't know if they'll just want to ride it out, but it doesn't feel good. And it's really a shame that Paul Seawald couldn't fix it all on his own.

But that was probably unrealistic for them to expect of him or like Tommy Pham for that matter. So, yeah. So, yeah. I wonder whether it's better as a fan to have your team take this trajectory or to have the reverse, right? Because you got the— Would you like to talk about the other team that I root for? Well, yeah, that's a good cop, I guess, because obviously you would rather just whichever way helps you end up in the postseason, but that's a matter of your final record. I'm just saying, given the same record, is it better to get out to a hot start and then slump,

or is it better to start slow and then catch fire as the season goes on? If you miss the playoffs, it's going to be disappointing either way, but I could see where where on the one hand, it's kind of like, well, they got off to such a great start that for at least a few months there, you really got to enjoy the idea of like the Diamondbacks as a favorite or a potential division winner or a playoff team and everything's clicking

and how fun is this, right? Now, then it's an even bigger letdown, obviously, if that falls apart, but at least you did get that. Whereas if they had started slow and then kind of caught up as the season went on, then you might not have ever had that moment where you really believed that it was going to happen. It's like, okay, things are looking up, but they're still probably not going to make it or it's, you, things are looking up, but they're still probably not going to make it or it's, you know, they're on the bubble. So you never went to sleep at night thinking, wow, this is so great, right? Like we're going to be watching a playoff team, even if that

turned out not to be true, even if your dreams were dashed, at least for a while there, you lived in that happy fiction, but then you're left with a sour taste in your mouth. I mean, we'll see how they end the season, but you can be left with a sour taste in your mouth if it's like things started out so great and then it was all downhill from there. Whereas if it goes in the other way, even if you still end up missing, you leave on a high note. It's like, okay, maybe we can build on this heading into next season. I don't know whether you will or not, but at least you can dream about that over the winter. Well, and I think that you, going into the offseason with this sense of like being on an upward trajectory might be preferable when the team you're talking about is one like the Diamondbacks, where this season they're sort of tracking to be sort of similar to what they ended last season doing. But it's sure an improvement over 2021 when they won, what, 52 games? I watched some really bad Diamondbacks baseball that year. I remember going to games in the early going of that season and it still felt uneasy to be in a big crowd i felt uneasy about it and then i realized it was fine because there

wasn't a crowd there wasn't a big crowd it was um it was pretty pretty empty especially if you went to those like wednesday day games nobody was there it's fine but i think that when you're a club that is like trying to establish that you've completed your rebuild, you're on your way to being a competitive roster, even though you're in a really hard division, like you're at least going to be sort of perennially in the wildcard mix. feels like you're moving forward, even if ultimately it is just a difference in sequencing. And so I think it might have been preferable to start out kind of crummy and then end high. And they might end up on a high note anyway, right? Maybe they'll steer out of the skid and even if they don't make the postseason, they'll be like, well, we turn things around, though. And, you know, our guys started performing better. And we really feel like this is a season where we've built on what we've done in the farm system. And we're going to go into 2024, like really strong. Maybe they'll still do that. But right now it kind of feels like it feels less good and it was so fun you know it was so fun there are still a lot of people going to those games and i uh now having lived here a couple of years and like i said having been to games over a number of seasons like you know you

see small changes that are meaningful right or at least suggestive of like the the trajectory that the organization is on like some of the players ben Ben, that they would have to put in the hype video in 2021, and even last year, boy, it's different now. It feels a lot better to have Corbin Carroll in there and to have this year healthy and productive Quetel Marte and Zach Gallen. It feels much better because, boy, there were some names in there. And some of those guys are still on the team, so I don't want to make them feel bad. But like, I bet whoever works for PR for the D-backs is like,

oh, thank Christ. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess if there's a perception that things are on the upswing and things are looking up, then maybe that would make ownership more likely to spend, right? So, and maybe it would make fans more likely to buy season tickets and that might make ownership more likely to spend. So, there might be a bit more buzz heading into the offseason and the following season potentially. Yeah. Like, you know, I just want, I want us to get to the point where we're like the D-backs are on such a deep post-season run that reporters are really having to like do the work of human interest stuff. And someone finally asked Merrill Kelly how he feels about looking exactly like Chris Elliott. Like I need the team to be good enough that I get an answer

to that question. Because when there answer to that question because when there's you know when they're swooning you know it's like uh it's like asking Walker Bueller about his tight pants right after a playoff loss like you don't want to do that that's that's that's having bad feel you know and when the team's not doing well I mean I don't know how Merrill Kelly feels about it maybe he thinks it's um insulting no matter what I don't know I don't know what I don't know very much about uh Chris Elliott that matter, other than he's a comedian who I describe as like often gross, like he's often cast in a way where he's supposed to be kind of gross, like on his person. So I don't know how Merrill Kelly will feel about that comp. But you know what would make sure that I got an answer to that division series. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Well, speaking of the Diamondbacks, let us meet two major leaguers. Yeah!

Meet a major leaguer I am very eager To meet this nascent major leaguer It's the thrilling debut of somebody new All right. So we do this meet a major leaguer exercise periodically. There are just so many major leaguers out there. We talked about that at the beginning of the episode, how pitcher usage has changed. And so a lot of guys make their debuts,

and we may never know about it, and we may know nothing about them. In fact, there have been 188 and counting newly minted major leaguers this season. We've talked about some of them. We'll talk about two more of them now. And you mentioned those injuries to Kyle Davies and Tommy Henry on the Diamondbacks staff. Not great for the Diamondbacks, but one beneficiary, I suppose. Not that he's delighting in the misfortunes of others, but I'm sure he was happy to get the call as a replacement. And that is Slade Ciccone. Let me tell you about Slade Ciccone. I know you know about Slade Ciccone. I do. I will tell the audience about Slade Ciccone. Let me tell you about Slade Ciccone. I know you know about Slade Ciccone.

I do. I will tell the audience about Slade Ciccone. If you have heard of Slade Ciccone, it is probably because of the circumstances of his first career strikeout. Okay. So Slade Ciccone, not a huge prospect. We'll get into that. But he made his Major League debut on August 2nd. He made a start. He was filling in. Henry wasn't able to go. So here he is.

And his first batter, he's facing Lamont Wade Jr. of the Giants. And he's kind of yanking pitches. And it looks like maybe he's a little extra amped up. Sure. Understand up. Sure. Understandable. Yeah. He gets a strikeout. He strikes out Wade for his first K and his first batter's faced on a full count, but

he lucked out a little bit. It was a full count pitch and he yanked this one too and it went inside and it hit the tip of Wade's bat and it bounced hit the tip of Wade's bat. And it bounced off the end of Wade's bat and directly into the crotch of Diamondbacks catcher Jose Herrera. Yeah, sure did. It definitely did. Definitely did. Not something that I can recall seeing previously.

And Herrera held on to it. Yep. seeing previously. And Herrera held on to it. I don't know how exactly, but it struck with such force that he was able to hold it in his crotch there. And guess what? That counts as a catch. That is an out.

And it was initially actually ruled a hit by pitch. And then there was a replay review. And Davey Andrews did a great, hilarious breakdown of this for Fangraphs, which I recommend and will link to. But the replay review showed what actually happened, which is that this ball was tipped directly into the tip. It went from one knob to another.

Oh, my stars. Now you're yanking it. It's just regrettable, Ben. of the whole thing was broadcasters kind of dancing around the description of what happened. And eventually Mike Kruko ventured into the crotch region. He decided I can say crotch. That's not going to get me canceled. I can say crotch on TV. That's okay. And so he took advantage of that opportunity to say crotch several times. But the best part was that Dan Iasonia, who was the umpire placed in the position of having to explain the outcome of the replay review to the crowd he explained it but i gotta say he was not completely transparent with the facts here he said it was not after review the

ball the pitch ball he was sort of stammering. It's like you could see the wheels turning. Like, how am I going to say this to a ballpark full of 29,000 people here in San Francisco? After review, the ball, the pitched ball hit the bat, went into the catcher's glove. The call is overturned. It's a foul ball. It's strike three. Now, it did not at any point go into the catcher's glove so this was i guess you could say it was a white lie it was a useful fiction for dan isonia but

he was not being completely honest with the fans about what happened here the result is the same it's a catch in the crotch just as it would have been in the glove. But it was a crotch catch. That's what it was. Crotch catch. This was really, I think, a special way to record your first career strikeout, right? I don't think anyone was like, oh, yeah, this happened before. I saw this some other time. I mean, there's just so much baseball that maybe it has happened. But no one seemed to recall it or have a highlight handy so so this

is uh the first for all intents and purposes and the quotes were amusing about this uh ciccone after the game said jose did a great job putting his cup on today which was true if anyone was wondering catchers they wear cups one would hope in all cases. And he also said, I look over and they're reviewing and they showed the video and it went knob to groin area to catch to out. It was like, oh my goodness, that's one way to get the first one. And Herrera said, no hands, tried to hold it with my pants as long as I could. He said, it feels a little sore, but hopefully it'll be better. And Tori Lovello, Diamondbacks manager, said it's going to be talked about for a long time. You can't dream up how you get your first career strikeout.

So look, he one day will be able to tell a great story about my first one and nobody will believe it. You'll have to go to the tape for proof of that. But we had a good laugh about it in the dugout. Yep. It's just, you know,'s uh of all the goofy ways and it would be it would have been talked about i imagine regardless of who you know who had struck him out right but the fact that it is his very first one and thus will be like in circulation, I would imagine a bit more than, you know, if some random reliever had done it is here I am committing the running back fallacy. But, you know, I think it brought additional attention to the crotch area that it might have otherwise, you know, could have petered out.

Yeah. As Davey pointed out in his post, I mean, it's a very crotch forward sport. We are constantly staring at the catcher's crotch, perhaps without being conscious of it. And our attention in the past used to be directed to the catcher's crotch because he'd be flashing signs down there. Now, not necessarily. So the spotlight, I guess the catcher crotch has seeded some of the spotlight, but here Herrera reclaimed it. the spotlight, but here Herrera reclaimed it. And Davey did me the favor of sending me the clip of the crotch catch. I almost split that. I melded that into crotch. I conflated crotch and catch, but he sent me the clip here. And if you listen keenly, we will play it a couple of times, but you can definitely hear two distinct impacts. And the

second one is certainly louder. The crotch sound is more resounding than the foul tip. So that was audio evidence of this happening. I'm just so glad that they wear a cup. Me too. This is why. My stars. You guys are so vulnerable down there. Yeah. And Kruko said, I guarantee that's not in the rulebook.

I've never seen it happen where it gets caught in a guy's crotch before. Now, obviously, that particular case doesn't really have to be in the rulebook. We don't have to draw a distinction between catching it with your crotch or any other part of your person. But as Davey pointed out, the word crotch does appear in the MLB rulebook 15 times. B rulebook 15 times. However, those crotches refer to the space between the thumb and the index finger in the section of the rulebook that regulates glove size and construction. So we were talking about and briefly confused about fingers recently and their numbering and naming, but I was not aware that you could use crotch to, I mean, I guess you could refer to any kind of juncture as a crotch, but I would not have used it to describe. Any kind of what, Ben? Any kind of what?

Any kind of juncture? Oh my gosh, that was entirely unintentional. I promise. We do have fun, don't we? If it had been on purpose, but yeah, you can refer to the crotch between your thumb and your index finger if you care to. But I wouldn't recommend it. I've never heard that even one time in my whole life. No. I mean, you've read the rule book, so you probably came across it at some point.

I've come across it, but I've never heard it. You banished it from your mind. Yeah. Well, and I haven't heard it deployed in another context, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And it was, I think, a 95-hour per hour pitch to the crotch, too. Yeah. Had to hurt. Yeah. It was sore, he said. So anyway,

I chose him because that was funny. I'm sure a lot of people saw that, and we tend to pick obscure players to receive the honor of meeting a major leaguer because we might not know them otherwise, whereas you may have heard of Slade Ciccone or at least saw the guy who got his first career strikeout with a crotch catch. And he went on to pitch a pretty good game. He gave up two runs over four and two thirds, although the Diamondbacks lost, as they have a lot lately. But I knew nothing else about Slade Ciccone except that he was the guy who threw this pitch. So just a brief summary so that he's not solely known for that, right? There are other things to know about Slade Zucconi. So he's a big guy. He is 6'4", listed at 219, which adds a ring of truth to it when it's not a 5 or a 0 at the end of the listed weight. He is 24. He's from Florida. He actually

went to Trinity Prep in Winter Park, I believe. I know I have friends who grew up in Winter Park and maybe went to that school, too. He's only the second draftee from that school ever. The first was Max Moroff, who also made the majors some in 2018. He didn't sign. He went to college. He went to the University of Miami. And then he signed in the supplemental around the 33rd overall pick in 2020 with the Diamondbacks. And he's just kind of climbed the ladder one rung per season ever since, essentially. And he's not a top prospect. He's not like a top 100 guy or anything. Longenhagen had him ninth on his Diamondbacks list in June. I think Pipeline also had him ninth and Baseball America had him 11th. So somewhere in that range. And Eric put a 45 future value on him. So, you know, below average big leaguer. Best pitch looks like the slider based on the grades. And I'll just read you his blurb. It appears that the Diamondbacks have altered Zucconi's delivery this year,

opening up his stride direction so he isn't quite as cross-bodied as before. It looked like it has helped his fastballs playability as he's getting more chases and whiffs on that pitch than he did last season. And his ability to locate his slider has also improved. As of list publication, Zucconi has an ERA well over 7 with Reno. He did have a high ERA there, but that's the PCL talking high offense environment and also higher offense this season with the robo umps as we've discussed.

His peripherals are actually quite good as Zaccone has maintained starter quality walk rates for the third straight year and has been healthy for the last two. He sits 92 to 95 miles per hour and will peak around 97 while making heavy use of two distinct breaking balls, an upper 70s curve and a mid 80s slider. Zucconi has three average or better pitches and average command enough to project him as a number four or five starter. And probably soon he'll likely tussle with the likes of Blake Walston and Tommy Henry for a rotation spot next spring.

So that is Slade Zicconi. Very good. Should I do mine? Yes, please. And yours was by request, actually. Yeah. And a fun request that we received from a listener named Lily, who wrote to us and said,

Hi, I'm Lily, and I'm 10. Please tell us how great the Blue Jays' new fancy boy, Davis Schneider, is. Fancy boy. Which is great. So, yeah, if a 10-year-old asks us to do a meet and meet for the game, we will probably do it. Yeah, we're going to indulge.

Don't pretend to be a 10-year-old. Don't pose as a 10-year-old imposter. No, don't do that. But if you are legitimately 10. Legitimate 10-year-old. Don't pose as a 10-year-old imposter. No, don't do that. But if you are legitimately 10. Legitimate 10-year-olds. My wife was talking to a co-worker yesterday who told her that her son, who is also 10, was listening to Effectively Wild at the time. So we've got at least two 10-year-olds in the audience, not even counting people who are subjected to us in the car on the way to school or whatever. We apologize for the swears that sometimes leak through.

People wonder why we sometimes bleep things. This is, I guess, one reason. Yes, that is one reason. Really, I love that we've got this 10-year-old demographic has found its way to baseball and to Effectively Wild, cultivating a new generation of listeners here. Though, it does make me feel slightly ancient that we now have listeners who were not born when this podcast started. It's a little disconcerting. Yeah, you know, and look, here's the thing. That's a you problem because I wasn't a co-host when that happened.

That's true. So I'm still in the clear for a little bit longer. Not just listeners. I mean, you know, we have babies who've listened to Effectively Wild, right? But listeners who are old enough to be 10, so they're 10 years old is how old they are, and old enough to email us. Yeah. That is sort of scary. Or at least have their parents do it.

Yes. But let's satisfy this request. So, you know, Schneider is a second baseman and a left fielder for the Blue Jays, as noted. He was selected in the 28th round of the 2017 draft out of Eastern High School, which is in Voorhees, New Jersey. And he steadily climbed the minor league ladder. He didn't get a ton of prospect notice. In 2022, he finally found his way to everyday reps, advancing from high A to double A and eventually to triple A. And he had combined two 53 with a three 66 on base percentage and a four 57 slugging percentage, hit 17 bombs.

And coming into this season, he was 28th on Pipeline's Blue Jays list. I know that he was an honorable mention type for baseball prospectus, and Pipeline had this to say, it may not be a flashy brand of baseball, but Schneider has an advanced plate approach and knows how to get on base. Even if there aren't true standout tools here, you don't have to squint too hard to see how Schneider could end up being a utility option for Toronto as a right-handed bat off the bench. This year, prior to being called up, he hit.275,.416,.553 with a.140 WRC plus in AAA, and he made his big league debut on August 4th. And it was, I mean, it was a fancy boy debut, Ben, because he has been on fire in limited big league action. He has hit 529, 579, 882 with a 307 WRC plus and two home

runs, including one in his very first major league at bat. His performance is record setting. So after he went three for three on Saturday, he posted a four for five showing in Sunday's finale against the Red Sox and became the first major league player ever to record nine hits and two home runs in his first three games. And look, does that stretch? Fun fact a little bit. I mean, yeah, but also when you're a 28th round pick, I think you get to be a fancy boy, even in a small sample. He has the first his nine hits. I saw Sarah Lang tweet, tied for the most in a player's first three career games since 1901 with Coker Triplet in 1938. Coker Triplet. So I think it's a fun fact just by virtue of involving Coker Triplet.

Yeah. And, like, look, a guy can be endearing just with that performance. He could be the most boring guy. But he also, like, has a fabulous mustache. I don't know if I would call it fancy. It makes him look like he is prepared to be in a Western or make you a cocktail that has a lot of different constituent elements and that involves egg white. But he also has a very cool story associated with his glove. And I'm going to quote liberally here from a Yahoo Sports Canada piece by Thomas Hall.

While most professionals feature top-of-the-line models, Schneider found his in the lost-and-found bin last season, according to SportsNut's Hazel May. Schneider discovered nobody had claimed the old-school mitt despite it remaining in the container for close to two years. So he picked it up essentially off the scrap heap and has since put it to good use. The place where i gave lessons at and train that in the off season it was in the lost and found for about a year and a half schneider told me no one got it and it looked cool and it looked old and i was like all right i'm just gonna use it for now one aspect that remained a mystery however was the vuk inscription written behind the mazino logo its origin was unknown to schneider or at least it was until he learned

about the connection to his skipper after news about Schneider's glove spread, Vince Vukovic, Blue Jays manager John Schneider's old college roommate and former teammate at Delaware, reached out to the team to explain its origin, revealing it originally belonged to his father, John. The former Philadelphia Phillies third base coach played 10 big league seasons from 1970 to 81, with many of his teammates and coaches referring to him as Vuk. He passed away at the age of 59 in 2007 from brain cancer. I guess Vince also joked, I've been looking for this. Tell Davis I want it back. How Vukovic's vintage glove found its way into the lost and found

remains a bit of a mystery. But, cool story, random connection, incredibly random considering that the guy happened to have an association through family with the literal manager of the Blue Jays. So that's a fun story. Now, does David Schneider have a 636 bad bit? He does, Ben. And are some of his other metrics suggestive of the fact that he's playing a bit over his skis? I mean, maybe. He did have an 0-4 in his fourth game, right? Right.

And so here I'm going to quote from Nick Ashbourne, I think also writing for Yahoo. His max exit velocity is in the 30th percentile among big league hitters, while his sprint speed is in the 47th percentile. A four-game sample can't tell us definitively if those numbers represent his ceiling, but his AAA results offer some clues that it might not be far off. His max exit velo with the Buffalo Bisons this season would rank 184th among 267 qualified big league hitters. It's tough to pin down his exact sprint speed without AAA running data, but Schneider has never stolen more than 17 bases in a minor league season, and we've already seen him go full out to log an infield hit in the majors, so it seems unlikely he has another gear. But he's played very well in his limited big league sample, and he's provided right-handed thump with the Blue Jays' need,

especially with Bo Bichette hurt. So, Schneider, his cool mustache and his cool glove, you've met him, all of those things now. And that's David Schneider. Yeah, very fancy boy. I love a guy with glasses and a mustache. Oh, yeah. He's got a face to be on a t-shirt, and apparently that has already

happened in Toronto. I'm sure, yeah. Just a cool outline of the glasses and the mustache on a blue background. It's pretty snazzy. 5'9", 190, which is quite beefy for 5'9". Yeah. He's from Voorhees, New Jersey.

Voorhees, New Jersey. I don't like Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th, but actually, I guess like former New Jersey Governor Foster McGowan Voorhees. But that's not the first name that came to my mind. Anyway, welcome to the majors, Davis Schneider. Schneider. But anyway, welcome to the majors, Davis Schneider. Schneider. All right.

We will wrap up with the future blast, which comes to us from 2044 and also from Rick Wilber, diplomacy helped keep the Pacific Rim from boiling over, at least for the moment, as the Taiwan crisis heated up following China's occupation of the Kamui Islands. islands. Texas Rangers second baseman Chin Hui Wong, one of the new crop of Taiwanese players to make it to the big leagues through several years of success in Japan's Nippon professional baseball pipeline, put together a barnstorming tour of China with American and Taiwanese players playing a total of 10 games against Team China, the country's national team. Much improved in recent years, Team China won six of the ten games while negotiations continued over the Kamui Islands. An exhibition doubleheader in Taipei between the Barnstormers and Taiwan's national team wrapped up the tour.

On the field back in the States, a stellar 21-win rookie season by 20-year-old lefty Francis Wiggett kept the Angels afloat well enough to make the postseason as a wildcard. Alright, the Angels made the playoffs. After which they reeled off ten straight wins in the new expanded format to make it to the ALCS before falling to the Yankees in six. Slugger Jalen McLeod, the younger brother of established star

Kenton McLeod, was called up from the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre Rail Riders in September and made quite an impact with 11 postseason homers to lead the Yankees to their 32nd World Series championship. As I recall, Rick, not a great lover of the Yankees, nor was his dad a former Red Sox player, but I guess got to give the Yankees a World Series at some point, right? I mean, they've suffered long enough, those poor Yankee fans. I don't know whether they've won one between now and 2044, but finally getting back on the board. If there is a gap between 2009 and 2044, then they get to be bummed about that.

You know, I don't think that that's not having perspective. I think that's having perspective. I think that's fine. Yeah. Although I'm actually realizing now that the Future Blast said this was their 32nd world championship. They have 27 now. So evidently they've gotten five more between now and 2044. So we don't have to feel too bad for them having been a Yankees fan. I know that's probably not enough for the Yankees fans, but it's also way too many for the Yankees haters to say, OK, we got to give you that one. All right. After Meg and I recorded, Michael Lorenzen threw a no-hitter in his first home start for the Phillies. Always rooted for Michael Lorenzen as a two-way player, as someone who was

trying to get established as a big league starter, as someone who was surprised to learn that he was an all-star this season and has been lights out since then. And also as an effectively wild listener, at least to one episode when we talked about him and he responded to me about it. Even if that was the only time he listened, that qualifies him as an effectively wild listener. Also 124 pitches, the highest pitch count of any game this season. How old school, what a throwback, letting a guy go longer in pursuit of a no hitter in a seven nothing game. So congrats to Lorenzen, condolences to the Nationals and also condolences to all of us for losing out on what briefly appeared to be one of the

best fun facts ever. This was making the rounds on Twitter. It appeared that Mike Lorenzen was one of only four pitchers to have attended Fullerton Union High School in Fullerton, California, and all four had thrown a no-hitter now. Walter Johnson, Mike Warren, Steve Busby, and Mike Lorenzen. So Fullerton Union High School grads going four for four and throwing no-hitters would have been amazing. However, some sleuths have discovered that there does appear to be at least one more major league pitcher who attended Fullerton Union High. That's Bob Ross, who is still with us at age 94, did make the majors. Did not throw a no-hitter. Could be a good nonagenarian cold call candidate to call him on the carpet for spoiling this

fun fact. It seems like baseball references records when it comes to high schools attended are not quite as comprehensive, which is understandable, but it does seem to spoil the fun fact. Still, it was fun for the brief time that I believed it was a fact. Finally, we've talked a lot this year about the Rays and their ability to improve pitchers. Tom Verducci just wrote about this for Sports Illustrated under the headline, The Secrets of the Rays' Inexplicably Successful Pitching Development Machine. So the fact that the headline says that it's inexplicable doesn't bode well for the article explaining it.

And I don't know that it does exactly. The things that they divulge in the article such as they are don't seem to be revolutionary, nor would one expect them to divulge very valuable secrets in a Sports Illustrated article. But it could just be that the Rays are really good at communicating these messages to players and getting them to buy in. Anyway, I will link to that article on the show page. It does not mention Jake Diekman or Zach Littell. 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 monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free and get themselves access to some perks. Harrison Weddle or Weedle or Waitle. I

wish Patreon came with a pronunciation guide. Benji Mailings, Sam Dinning, Ryan Quans, and Chris Hilton. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, access to monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, discounts on merch

and ad-free Fangraphs memberships, and more. Appearances on the podcast. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectivelywild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can contact us through the Patreon site. Anyone can send us questions and comments via email at podcast at fangraphs.com. Thank you. dot com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod, and you can find the Effectively

Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with one more episode this week. Talk to you soon. How can you not be pedantic? A stab blast will keep you distracted.

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