Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2158: Small Sausage Size

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

After a podcast preface by Ben Lindbergh about Mike Trout’s knee injury (sigh), Ben and Meg Rowley banter (4:19) about a weekend White Sox sweep, the overdue news that Nike is supposedly fixing the much-maligned MLB uniforms, follow-ups about rule rollbacks, ballplayer dirt ingestion, the “group Maddux,” and promotion/relegation, and the Twins’ summer sausage. Then […]

Hey everyone, Ben here. The episode you're about to hear was recorded before the announcement that Mike Trout, longtime podcast favorite, would be undergoing surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his knee. And maybe it's just as well that we recorded before that news, because as it was, we got to giggle about summer sausage without adopting a funereal tone. Look, maybe we'll talk about this next time, but what more is there to say? This is news, but it's not new. This is the fourth straight season with an extended Trout absence following the pandemic shortened season. Those games played totals from his youth seem almost mythical now. No fewer than 157 games played in any season from 2013 through 2016. But now this is sadly what we expect. We've been bracing ourselves for this. Every time we talked about Trout's hot start,

we acknowledged that it could be interrupted by an injury at any time. I'm ready to get hurt again by Trout getting hurt again, is how I put it once. And yeah, it still hurts. Very much for him. He's the one having surgery. But it also stings for his fans. Yet another ailment. A knee now, as he continues to go griffy.

His fast start had slowed somewhat. Over his last 11 games, he hit 105, 261, 263. That's a 524 OPS. But at least he was healthy. And this may be the most dismaying injury of all, in that it's not even clear how it happened. He isn't sure how he tore his meniscus. As the NPC in Skyrim says,

I used to be an adventurer like you. Then I took an arrow in the knee. Doesn't sound like that's what happened to Trout. I'm sure he would have noticed an arrow, but at least an arrow would have offered an explanation. He felt a twinge as he was running in from the outfield in his game on Monday. Didn't think it was anything serious, but it really started to bother him after the game. How can you even try to prevent something if you don't know how it happened? If your downfall comes without any apparent inciting incident, it just reinforces the sense that his body is breaking down, that there's nothing he can do about it.

He was clearly prepared. He was clearly driven. He was clearly fit. That wasn't enough. Throughout his career, including this season, Trout has targeted every weakness and either eradicated it or turned it into a strength. But this weakness, this physical infirmity, seems to be beyond even his capacity to improve. Our listeners used to have to concoct far-fetched hypotheticals to construct scenarios where Trout might not be amazing. Now it's starting to seem like a far-fetched hypothetical that he might be amazing again. Now he should be back this season, and I know we've heard that before. According to the Baseball Prospectus Recovery Dashboard, players who've had torn meniscuses, menisci, have missed a mean of 31 days and a median of 54. That doesn't sound so bad, but in May of 2021, Trout suffered a calf

strain in mid-May, which proved to be season-ending. Median days missed for a calf strain, 24, mean 34. Trout missed 139. Or last season, hemate fracture, median days missed 37, mean 43. If you put together Trout's two aisle stTS stints caused by that injury before and after his brief comeback, 89 days missed. So it's not just that he gets hurt, it's that he doesn't seem to heal that fast. Given that track record, I think you'd have to be happy if he's back by his 33rd birthday on August 7th. When he does return, I think you've got to seriously consider moving him out of center field because even though he's still been speedy, he can still play the position, maybe minimizing wear and tear would help. Who knows? But here's hoping that somehow he can put this injury and injuries in general behind him. It's just tough to keep that faith. As he told

reporters, if you couldn't make that out, he said, it's just frustrating. I do. If you couldn't make that out, he said, it's just frustrating, but we'll get through it. Trout recently announced that he and his wife are expecting a second son this summer. Maybe he can focus on that. As for us, let's listen to a time capsule from a few hours before we knew Trout's once durable body had let him down again. And we were once more forced to confront the fragility of this star who once seemed unstoppable. On, the curveballs bend and the home runs fly. More to the game than meets the eye. To get the stats compiled and the stories filed. Fans on the internet might get riled, but we can break it

down on Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2158 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. So we led our latest episode prior to this one by talking about how bad things could get for the White Sox and could they bounce back and would there be positive regression in store and noted that it wasn't going to get any easier for them over the weekend because they were playing Tampa Bay. And I guess arguably it didn't get easier for them, but they did better.

They swept. The White Sox swept. They doubled their win total in one weekend. They sure did. They swept. They did it. They did it. I think they were a bad team before, but now Tommy Pham is there and they're going to win the Central.

The Pham effect. That was it. Of course, they did lose to the Twins on Monday and order was restored. Still a bad baseball team to be clear. if we had recorded after the weekend sweep instead of before. It's so early in the season that that can kind of change the vibes to some extent, although the vibes are just in the basement, just cellar-dwelling vibes. But still, a few wins makes all the difference. It makes the world seem sunnier for a while there, at least. And even as we speak, they don't even have the worst record in baseball, Meg. The Marlins have the worst record in baseball. Meg, the Marlins have the worst record in baseball. I think that we would have still been pretty dire about the White Sox. Yeah.

Perhaps marginally less dire, but I don't know that any of my assessments of their sort of long-term trajectory have changed. You were so skeptical of Dan's projected win totals, like the 50th percentile sort of win totals per zips. Are you still skeptical? Did three wins move the needle? I guess when you're talking about so few wins, three wins can be enough to move the needle, you know? Right. Yeah. There's not that much margin there when you're chasing history, when you're in the conversation for most losses ever. Just staving off defeat for a few days can meaningfully change the odds there. But still think they're very bad at baseball, to be clear.

So bad at baseball. Wow. At least for one weekend, they weren't that bad. And look, being okay, being serviceable, giving your folks something to get excited about, I think that that's a good thing. You know, it's a nice change of pace, if nothing else. Well, maybe we lit a fire under them. They heard us bantering and it became bulletin board material. And they said, we'll prove Ben and Meg wrong.

We'll show them. And if so, all right. I'm happy to be used as motivation if it pays off that quickly. I'm also happy to be used as motivation if it means off that quickly. I'm also happy to be used as motivation if it means that another thing that we have been talking about being dire and complaining about this season will be changed. The uniforms. Change is coming. A fix may be in. No, a fix is in. That's not the expression that I want to go for here. Yeah, we've been trying to avoid fixes being in. Yes, but they might be fixing the uniforms.

We will see. There has at least been acknowledgement that there is something wrong with the uniforms, which seems like progress, right? We're no longer being told that there's nothing to see here. Move along and everything's fine. And actually, everyone will love them. here, move along and everything's fine and actually everyone will love them. There was a memo sent by the MLBPA to its members that was leaked and reported on by Jeff Passan and maybe others, noting that there will be change coming to these uniforms at the latest by the beginning of the 2025 season.

And given the parties involved here, I think it's probably safe to expect the latest, but we may at least have new uniforms or the old uniforms once more when next season starts. There will be fixes of some sort to the pants because, of course, as we know, the universal concern is the pant. The pant. Sounds like that concern will be addressed in some way. And also bigger letters and numbers and maybe pants that don't tear the way that Riley Greens did. Seams and zippers.

Yes. The Athletic article put it, the potential for catastrophic failure of the pant steam. Catastrophic failure. That sounds like, you know, when the airplane depressurizes. Right. Catastrophic failure of the pants. I guess it could have been more catastrophic for Riley Greene if he had not been wearing something under the pants. Yeah. Which he was, fortunately.

I'm going to level with you, Ben. The Athletic is not going to, in the course of a piece that appears on their august pages, adjacent as they are to the New York Times, they're not going to say, the potential for us seeing Big League Dick has decreased dramatically. They're not going to say that. They're respectable. Effectively, Wilde would say that. Yeah, we're going to say that. They're respectable. Effectively, Wild would say that. Yeah, we're going to say that. I mean, I just did. I was troubled by their piece in some respects because there is not a seeming admission that

we can see right through these pants, you know, and we can see right through those pants. I was watching a brilliant, wonderful Mariners-Braves baseball game last night. Thrilling on both sides from both teams. And at several points in the course of that game, I stood there. Well, I was sitting down. They were standing in the batter's box. And a hitter would be preparing to stand in and take his stance. And I could see the and take his stance. And I could just, I could see the,

I could see the tag on his jersey. I could see, you know, they have some piping on their home whites. I could see the piping right through the pants. And so on the one hand, I'm troubled that they're not coming out and saying, yeah, we know you can see right through the pants. But because they have been not transparent with the pant issues what i suspect is going to happen is next season there will be quote-unquote new pants that address the the potential for catastrophic failure aka seeing big league dick and you know the zippers and belt loops being all goofy uh the seams being weak and they will be notably less transparent and they will say to us these are the same pants they were the same pants before

they're the same pants now and i am going to say jacques those are not the same pants but i think they will be fixed i think they will fix the pants and they will deny that they have fixed the pants because they have denied there's ever been anything wrong with the pants uh at least as it pertains to pant transparency but i think that we will see less in the way of visible undies and nike swooshes yeah if i were a big leaguer right now i would be calling their bluff every day with the pants i would be i would be calling their bluff every day with the pants. I would be wearing patterned undies, briefs every day. I would be fine, you know, in the same way that they can, you know, they wear like sometimes they wear sleeves that have a nice pretty pattern on them. You know, like earlier in the season, Julio was wearing like a flowered sleeve and it was so nice. And if I were him, I would be like, there are flowers on my undies.

And if anyone asked, I'd be like, I don't know what you're talking about. You have said that we cannot see through these pants. Yeah. What do you mean? What do you mean about these pants? A decal of Rob Manfred's smiling face. Yeah, I would be like, I would do. Which is the kid in calvin and

hops is it is calvin the kid or is how's the kid calvin's the kid i would do like you know there's the the meme of like calvin peeing on stuff i would do like calvin peeing on like the probably not the commissioner's face that's a little that's a little much that's a little but like the seal of me you know, and be like, what? What do you mean? What is the problem? You have said that you cannot see through these pants. Or maybe they will claim that they fixed some other stuff about the pants and that just inadvertently also made the pants more opaque.

But that wasn't really what they were trying to do. And they were plenty opaque before. And it's just a coincidence. But apparently, they're going to be targeting six deficiencies of the current uniforms. So the pant seam, the weakness thereof, that's going to be one fix. And then more stitches, a higher stitch count along the seam to prevent blowouts. More stitches, a higher stitch count along the seam to prevent blowouts. Incredible. The language here, the catastrophic failure and the blowouts.

I'm just imagining like tires exploding or something. Yeah. Also, larger lettering, full tailoring, a higher quality zipper, to-be-determined fabric fixes to minimize sweat stains, so no more still suits. And mismatched gray uniforms. They're going to actually try to have the tops match the bottom. So these all seem like great goals to have. It's nice to set goals. So they have plenty of time to figure out how to make the pants the same color as the tops and not see-through and legible letters and the whole deal. They're going to say that it's the tailoring that accounts for the pants being less transparent,

I bet. I bet they're going to, you know, because they've chalked some of the issues with the pants up to the fact that there is not customization in the same way as there has been in prior years. And so they'll say, oh, well, the tailoring's different. Or they'll say, you know, the pants are the same, but this year they're shy, you know, and last year they were not. So that's why you can always, or maybe the undies were shy

and the pants are like being respectful of the undies boundaries. I would push that. I'd push it every day. I would be like, what outrageous thing can I put on my briefs and dare them to say I can't? Catch them. Catch them in this lie. I would do it. Yeah, that is a real catch-22. Either got to admit that the pants are transparent,

or you could send a private memo or find you or someone, but then you could disclose that that happens. I would disclose. I would be a real pill. I mean, like, look, I want to make clear. I've said a lot about the pants, both today and in prior days. They're a universal concern. They're a universal concern. I want to make clear that I know they're a universal concern. I'm not claiming to have had anything to do with this. If big corporations listen to me, you know, first of all, the world would be really different. And as much as I am perturbed by the pants, this would not be high on my list of grievances to remedy.

But I was very annoying about it. And I feel so vindicated, Ben. I feel like the smartest girl in school. And again, other people have noticed this. This is not me. Other people have done reporting. I just was annoying and complained a lot, but I do feel vindicated about my behavior. You know, I think that I, I helped hold the line. I kept it. I kept it in the consciousness, you know, for the tiny slice of the internet that listens to me because every day I'd sit

there and go, those pants are wrong those are bad pants they are wrong they are bad there's something wrong with those pants a different thing than what is wrong with otani's dog but something nonetheless you know doesn't wear any pants maybe that's part of the problem but yeah zombie runner rollback is next we just have to keep complaining about that and there will be a memo one of these days. Hold the line. Hold the line. Well, maybe I was going to say we'll look back and laugh, but really we looked and laughed. We don't even have to look back. We were laughing in real time often, even if it was a rueful laugh. But maybe in the future, if they do fix the uniforms,

we will just be able to tell 2024 MLB footage from the uniforms the way that we can tell 2020 by the empty stands or the cardboard cutouts. We'll be like, oh, what year is that highlight from? Well, I can see his underwear, or I can't read his name. So therefore, it must be 2024. I deduce that it was that one season where the uniforms went sideways. 2024. I deduce that it was that one season where the uniforms went sideways. The MLBPA memo totally pins the blame on Nike, which I think is fair, is accurate as far as we can tell based on other reporting. But they did really seem to go out of their way. They said this has been entirely

a Nike issue. At its core, what has happened here is that Nike was innovating something that didn't need to be innovated. Fair, but harsh. Then also goes on to defend Fanatics. Again, maybe fairly in this situation, although many people who've had their own negative experiences with Fanatics may have a hard time being persuaded of that. But they went on to pump up. Fanatics recognizes the vital importance of soliciting player feedback, obtaining player buy-in, and not being afraid to have difficult conversations about jerseys or trading cards.

Our hope is that moving forward, Nike will take a similar approach. All right, laying it on a little thick there with the Fanatics praise and having difficult conversations about jerseys or trading cards. And I don't know if they disclosed in this memo that the MLBPA is a business partner of Fanatics. They invested many millions in Fanatics. They derive many millions in licensing fees from Fanatics. And Effectively Wild, in a roundabout way, also has its own relationship with Fanatics because we were sponsored by Topps last season, which is owned by Fanatics. Just saying. Maybe that's something you need to disclose if they didn't.

Yeah, I have thoughts about this because you're not the first person who has raised a conspiratorial eyebrow toward this relationship. And I don't want to give them a pass just because like you know uh is a union and yeah i think those are good not to say that you think they're bad but you know like i i'm trying to be fair here but like my understanding of this issue from the reporting we've seen is that like they are not wrong to level the the blame at nike's feet right like this is a nike problem like these are not misprints i know there are a lot of fanatics misprints and like put me put me down in the camp that says you nationalize fanatics use use fanatics on the campaign trail let's go radicalize some

suburban dads with fanatics but this seems like this is a Nike problem, you know? Yes, that is my understanding as well. These were produced to spec, right? Yeah. Okay. Nike changed the design that was a majestic design. And then now it's Fanatics just taking its marching orders from Nike. And Nike decided to do these things that pretty much no one likes. And Fanatics is just like, we're just following orders, which does seem to be the case. But I don't know if the whole, like, you should be more like Fanatics.

Fanatics is sort of like the model company when it comes to these things. That's a bit much. And like, you know, on the one hand, there, I think, is a difference between like a press release and an internal memo. But also these memos are written with the understanding that they will be leaked. So, you know, I don't want to like imply too much of a distinction where there's really minimal difference. But, you know, like I saw people be like, you know, and I was like, I'm like, what are

you saying? Like, did Nike not goof this? Is this? No, it's good to push back to that narrative, I suppose, because even when like a larger sentiment about a person or a company or something is true, when the specific complaints or allegations leveled are not true, then I think it is good to be consistent and intellectually honest and not hammer someone or something for something they don't deserve when there are plenty of things that they do deserve. So yes, I think this is not a misplaced sentiment, but maybe they went a little bit out of their way to lay it on with the fanatics. But they also said, we caution Nike against various changes when they previewed them in 2022, particularly regarding pants.

MLB had been and has been aware of our concerns as well. They knew about those pants, man. They knew about those pants. Unfortunately, until recently, Nike's position has essentially boiled down to nothing to see here. Players will need to adjust. But of course, there was too much to see. Too much to see.

Part of the problem. They knew about those pants, man. Okay. Well, I'm glad everyone has gotten on board with reality. They're not trying to tell us that our eyes deceive us. And hopefully this will be rectified in some fashion. And it is literally fashion. But we'll see.

Until they actually put them out there and look good and everyone's satisfied, then we will reserve judgment. But we'll hope for the best. All right. satisfied, then we will reserve judgment, but we'll hope for the best. All right. So we've got other Ben Clemens of FanCrafts joining us today to talk about some early season risers and fallers on the player side, individual players who have impressed Ben, changed his evaluations the most in a good way, but also in a bad way. And also we talk more generally about how to evaluate players at this point or any point of the season and how small a sample is too small to draw firm conclusions. I'll just note a couple

follow-ups to things we talked about last time. So we talked about changes, rule changes in MLB and whether any of them would be rolled back in the wake of the pitch clock in particular. But basically, anything MLB has done over the past decade or more, is there anything that we would envision them taking back, basically? And of course, we've endorsed some and said, sure, we would like to have a smaller playoff field again, and we'd like to have no zombie runner, and maybe we'd like to have no shift restrictions again, even if those things aren't likely to happen. But I think we forgot a few rules changes. Again, you know, it's not usually going to make

a difference most seasons, but it might at some point. So having a tiebreaker game instead of having tiebreakers settled by somewhat Byzantine rules that no one really remembers without looking up, that is one that I would prefer to roll back. I guess that goes hand in hand with the ever-expanding playoff field. Also, some that I'm fine with, though, that we neglected to mention, sticky stuff, enforcement and inspections. Okay with those. Keep them coming. The Otani rule. I'm okay with the Otani rule.

Sure. And mound visit limits. Just not really that noticeable for most people most of the time, but I'm very okay with them. I would be fine without long those visits altogether. So keep lowering the limbo bar for mound visits. It's okay with me. to discover something about the man visit rule, Ben. They lowered the limit again this offseason, right? We went from five to four. And then I was watching a game and it was the ninth inning. And they were saying on the broadcast that like, oh, but if it's in the ninth inning and you've used your four, you can go back out there one more time, but only in the ninth.

And so I was like, so they didn't lower the limit then. Not really, right? The limit is the same. Yeah. What are we doing? That's not a change The limit is the same. Yeah. What are we doing? That's not a change. That's the same. You have five.

You just have – There have to be consequences. You can't just say, what are we doing? You can use up all of them. Yeah. I know there have been similar things with replay challenges, right? Where like if you use up all your replays but then in certain situations – You can be like, don't you want to look at that?

And they'll go, yeah, we do. Yeah, right. So in that case, I'm kind of OK with it because, again, I do want the calls to be right. But yeah, this is already a thing where like it's not that onerous a restriction really for mound visits. Come on. How many mound visits do we need to make here? Talk between innings. Get your story straight before you go out there. Right.

So, yeah, to have this on the books but unenforceable and basically like if you run afoul of it, it's like, oh, well, in that case, okay, here you go. Here's one more mountain visit for you. This is like – this is bad parenting, I think. You got to – there's got to be some consequence. There's got to be some sort of discipline or they'll just walk all over you. You need to put them in timeout is what you're saying. They need mountain visit timeout. I mean,

I didn't think that the, that the rule needed to change. Like, I think it's fine. I don't think that it really ends up being much of a problem one way or the other, right? Like how many teams are taking five mountain visits in a,

in a game? Very few. I would imagine that they get exhausted on very rare occasion. But they're like, yeah, you can take one. If you've already done four and it's the ninth, you can take one more. And I was like, so it's not different. I mean, it is, I understand it puts, it effectively puts restrictions on when your fifth, hypothetical fifth mound visit can occur, but you could in theory just have a fifth mound visit. It's not a different rule now. What are we doing? It's pretty lax. It is. And in that vein, I guess the position player

pitcher restrictions, which also haven't had that much of an effect, maybe a little bit of an effect. And I don't know, they're kind of like inconsistent with what you can do when you're winning versus what you can do when you're losing. But generally, I am on board with the idea of trying to minimize these. So I'm okay with those. Maybe they should go even further with those. And I can't believe I didn't mention the 13-pitcher limit, which is my favorite maybe of the rules changes. And I want that one to go lower too.

So definitely not interested in rolling that one back. Although I will say that some of the dissenting opinions when it came to throwing the intentional balls as opposed to just having an automatic intentional walk, my it was at least swayed by some of the arguments that our listeners put forth. Because I was in the camp of, we don't really need to go through this farce. We don't really need to throw the intentional balls. Most of the time, it's just a formality. So we'll just save some time and we'll just wave them down there. But I think there are a few arguments that don't just rely on the very rare instances of someone actually offering at a pitch and getting a hit or a sack fly or something, or the intentional ball wild pitch, which is also rare but amusing when it happens. And so you could say, well, it's worth it just for the odd time that it happens.

But I think maybe the better argument is, A, you sort of rub the team's nose in it. You maybe make them experience some degree of shame, you know? I don't know whether it's a disincentive to have intentional walks to make the pitchers throw them. Obviously, we've seen a lot fewer intentional walks as it is because it's usually just not a great tactical move. But if you actually force the pitcher, and to be fair, it's usually not the pitcher's call, right? Right. It's coming from the dugout more often than not. It would be better if we made the manager go out there and throw the four intentional balls. I think that might be good.

That might really discourage some managers from putting up the four fingers, you know? Like if they knew they had to trudge out there and surrender and concede defeat and actually lob those pitches out there themselves, I think that might actually do something to curb this behavior. But, you know, maybe that's a consequence, right? If you're going to take the coward's way out and say, no, I will not face you, I will face the next guy, then you should have to face the jeers, right? And then the other argument, which I think we were reminded of, but Russell Carlton

advanced in his book, The Shift, is that it does maybe build up some drama and allow some time for suspense because you actually have to throw those pitches. And so the insult to the next batter, like he gets some time to stew about this and we all get to anticipate, oh, they wanted to face you instead of that last guy. There's another guy on and it's a bigger moment. And so maybe it's kind of good to have the slow build up to that. I could see that. That's sort of persuasive to me.

And it's kind of confusing sometimes, especially maybe if you're in the park when someone just suddenly starts trotting down to first and it's like, what happened? Oh, I guess it was an intentional walk, you know, whereas there's no confusion if you actually have to throw those four pitches. And it's not a big time savings either, really. And someone else pointed out that it's just satisfying from an accounting perspective to actually have the pitcher throw the pitches. Right. But that doesn't move me as much as some of these other arguments. I don't feel strongly about it one way or the other,

candidly. Like, I'm fine with just having to put up four and then the guy trots down to first base, but I don't feel like it's a big deal either way, which then sometimes confuses me when there are people who are clearly, like, very animated by it. But they probably wonder why we get so worked up about the zombie runner. So, you know, who am I to say? We also got a follow-up to our conversation about dirt consumption by players who play on dirt much of the time. And listener Patreon supporter Max pointed out, have you considered how much dirt is in spit? Accounting for how much spitting there is in baseball, maybe the players consume less dirt than average. This is also a key difference between baseball players and astronauts. That is true because I had comped baseball players' exposure to dirt to astronauts' exposure to

radiation. And it's true, you definitely don't want to spit in zero G because that stuff just goes sailing away and can create collisions. But it is true. They are constantly expelling dirt in the spit. But then my rejoinder to that was, well, that's probably why they're spitting so much. Or maybe that's a part of why they spit so much is because their mouths are all gritty because they're eating and breathing dirt all the time. To expel the dirt, you have to have the dirt. You know, you can't like spit out dirt that you don't have dirt.

And so it's like where in the dirt consumption process does the spitting occur, right? Is it like, oh, I have mouthful of dirt, spit, spit, spit, spit, spit. Or is it like, oh, I have gunk. You know, when you wake up in the morning sometimes, I don't know if this is happening like, oh, I have gunk, you know, when you wake up in the morning sometimes. I don't know if this is happening in New York, but like I didn't have seasonal allergies really until I moved to Arizona. And they're not terrible, but I do have stretches where I'm like, and I sound really attractive in the morning when I go. We podcast in the afternoon, fortunately. Right, yeah.

Mostly. This is why, because I sound like a bridge troll in the morning. And so, you know, the question is, like, are they trying to, like, get it out of them? You know, like, blah, blah. Or are they like, mm, I've, you know, I just slid into second base and I have, you know, you make noises with your mouth.

Yeah. Yeah. So, when people wonder, well, why are they always spitting? Right. Well, probably a few reasons. It's tradition and they're chewing stuff and gum and seed and chew, et cetera, right? But it's also maybe because their mouths are full of dirt. Right, full of dirt.

Yeah. Okay. We also got a response from the attempted creator of the term groupmatics, right? So the idea that you can have a groupmatics, like you have a combined no-hitter. So this would be like a team shutout of fewer than 100 pitches. This was, I don't know if it was coined, but it was used at least by the excellent Matt Sussman of Baseball Prospectus. And clearly our critique came to his attention because he responded in a subsequent column and he had a subsection that says, regarding the group Maddox. Last week, this column referred to a Washington Nationals 98 pitch shutout of the Houston Astros baseball club as a group Maddox.

Popular podcast, Effectively Wild. Oh, we're popular. Thank you, Matt. Strongly dismissed the concept. The creator of the Maddox statistic, Jason Leucard, has also previously expressed that there should be no such concept of a group Maddox. I was not aware of that, but I'm glad to hear he agrees. Both parties use the same reasoning. Greg Maddox was one person. Therefore, the statistic is an individual accomplishment only. A team that uses 99 pitches or fewer to shut out a team can be celebrated, but it should be called something else. And that carries some weight. The architect of the GIF, the late Stephen Wilhite, has long said it should be said with a soft G. No, I just said it with a hard G because that's the way I say it. So I guess that tells you how much respect I have for the argument that the creator is the ultimate arbiter of these things.

Anyway, Matt continues, the point here is we should always listen to the people that come up with concepts. The stat is rightly named for Greg Maddox because he had double-digit pitch shutouts 13 times, nearly twice more than anyone else. So in searching for a proper name for this phenomenon, we must look to which team has had more combined shutouts of this nature. And since 1960, the answer is the St. Louis Cardinals with 11. There are a number of collective words for a group of Cardinals, but none sounds befitting of this accomplishment. A Vatican of Cardinals? A conclave? Go take a walk on a chessboard diagonally? Websters?

However, since there are a handful of avian baseball teams, and the idea that a huge swarm of birds really did a number on you evokes the proper imagery for the phenomenon, we humbly rechristen this team accomplishment, a combined shutout with fewer than 100 pitches, as an Audubon. Also, two of 30 MLB teams already end their names with a plural X the precedent carries. So Matt's now trying to make autobond happen. And I don't know if it'll catch on. I'm into it, though. I have no objections.

Yeah. I like that very, very much. I was going to be like, you're doing a red bird or like it's like a swarm of birds and like you don't get out alive. So it's a, we could call it a hedron. We could call it a tippy. I mean, she survives in that movie, but other people do not. There was a commenter on Matt's piece, Jay Stevens, who argued that, in fact, calling it a combined or group Maddox doesn't diminish the accomplishment of Greg Maddox. It actually highlights how great he is that it takes a team to do what one man used to do. So it actually pumps up Maddox that

this is a group Maddox and it's sort of a lesser accomplishment. A bunch of people had to combine to do it, whereas Greg would do it single-handedly. I don't find that persuasive, but I can appreciate the rationale behind the argument. Was that sufficiently diplomatic? Yes. I appreciate Matt entertaining our objections and responding to them as well. And calling us popular. That's okay. Oh, yeah.

That feels nice too. And lastly, we got many, many responses to our discussion of promotion and relegation in baseball. And they took many forms and there were many specific plans bandied about and proposals. And if one were so inclined, one could do an entire podcast episode just going through all the intricacies of people's proposals for promotion and relegation in baseball that would be workable. I think most people agreed that it's very far-fetched that it won't happen because of tradition and precedent and interest and everything. However, one, I think, common theme to the responses, aside from the fact that, gosh, Ben and Meg don't even watch a league with promotion and relegation so that they may not know what they're talking about, which is fair. So fair, you know, the fairest of fair, the Snow White of fair.

We will also acknowledge reasonable critiques. However, one thing that we didn't really entertain was the possibility that instead of taking the current system where you have several levels of professional baseball and you have the minors and you have the majors, and so you could have minor leagues being promoted to the majors and major league teams being relegated to the minors, you could simply subdivide the current majors, right? So you're not really demoting any current major league teams to the minors. You're just sort of introducing a distinction among the major league teams, and they would remain major league, though there would be sort of like a higher level league.

And maybe to make the math work, this would have to be coupled with expansion, so you could add some teams. And it would basically be like divisions of a sort, which by the way, divisions wouldn't play that well with promotion and relegation, right? That's another hurdle and obstacle there. But this would be sort of like saying there's a major league and then there's like a really major league, major, major league. And then you could kind of graduate from the lower major league to the higher major league so it's sort of like introducing a distinction without demoting anyone to a level that currently exists and i think that would be more feasible it is still almost as unlikely to happen, I think. But I agree that if one were to do it, that might be the better plan. Sure. Yeah.

That seems right. We'd have to build like so many ballparks. Don't you think we'd have to build a bunch more ballparks? The virtue of this approach would be that you might not have to build any ballparks unless you expanded and added new teams. Then they would need ballparks unless you expanded and added new teams. Right. Then they would need ballparks. But if you get to remain major league but there's like a tippy top, you know, lift the red rope and this is the real major league. And even if you remain major league, I guess these distinctions would still sort of settle into the point that maybe like the lower majors would just start to seem like the minors sort of.

Maybe like the lower majors would just start to seem like the minors sort of. But you could have various playoff plans and you could have a champion of the upper majors and the lower majors. Or you could have some kind of setup where they actually meet up and you have sort of like a world series of the upper and lower. You have two different championships or something. There could be various paths through the postseason or postseasons. But that is, I think, one virtue of this approach. There's not going to be any geographic relocation and no one has to move out of their ballpark or move into a ballpark, or you don't have to have a major league team playing in a tiny city with a small population that wouldn't support that payroll for a major league team. So it does address some of the drawbacks. I think that they should have to like wear a silly uniform at the

all-star game, but that's mean to the players. And really we want this like a dunce cap sort of situation. Yeah. And really we want the person and people who are made to feel sort of lousy about this to very much be the ownership group, not the individual players. Time zones also, some people pointed out that maybe promotion relegation easier in a smaller country where everyone's in the same time zone, because if you were to promote teams that were in different time zones, and then again, it would be hard to have divisions, but it would be tough from a scheduling perspective. Anyway, another reason to just sort of stick with the current teams or maybe add some to your current complement and then draw some sort of distinction among those. Still just not going to happen.

Yeah, I think ultimately that is why I'm a little less interested in this because, I don't know, it's not like we don't entertain far-fetched hypotheticals constantly, but something about this one, it's just, you know, it's not going to happen. So we can drop all sorts of plans for formats. I think I'm just, I'm generally a little less excited by like, here's how we could restructure the league or divisions or the playoff field or promotion or relegation. That just sort of floats my boat a little less than maybe conversations about hypotheticals on the field as opposed to sort of the structure of the league or leagues. But that stuff's pretty important, too. Yeah, it is.

All right. So let's take a quick break. Wait, Ben. Oh, what? Wait. What? You're going to do let's take a quick break. We're not going to talk about the sausage? The sausage.

I beg your pardon. I just assumed that we would end up talking about the sausage. We don't have to say a lot about the sausage. But I want you to know that I have not enjoyed something as much as this in many many weeks i am the quotes coming out of the minnesota twins exquisite yeah they have been exceptional first of all i was very concerned that like rocco baldelli did not understand how like cured meats worked right he was talking about this sausage if people don't know what we're talking about oh boy what a journey awaits you you know what a what a summer child sweet summer sausage if you weren't aware of the summer sausage they had a sausage it was a cure it's a summer sausage i don't know that there are many foods

beyond like twinkies that are more processed than summer sausages. They are heavily, they are a shelf-stable food store. And I will own up to, I'm familiar with the concept of cured meats, but I really was not very familiar with the concept of summer sausage. So I don't know if this is a Midwest thing or not a Northeast thing or not a New York thing or just not a me thing. I don't know. But this sausage fest has really opened my eyes in many ways. And so they have this sausage, right? It's a cured sausage and it's in a plastic package. it's in a plastic package they are now look this is gonna sound so much more juvenile and horny than it is i would say that this story has transitioned from the twins making jokes that will make you giggle and i think they are establishing a new religion potentially like

i want to get those like new religion scholars to go observe the the minnesota twins but like they will like toss the sausage around they will tap the sausage and they have been they after having a very rough uh offensive start to the season have been on a little bit of a heater lately you know rocco is like worried that the packaging is gonna split and then they're gonna like i don't know start a super fun site at target field or something and you know you have beat writers talking to cured meat experts about how it is unlikely to be you know it's a shelf-stable product it might taste quite gross and all of the jostling of it, the the the tapping and tossing might lead to it eventually kind of oxidizing. And so both looking and tasting probably pretty gross. But here are some quotes, Ben. Here are some quotes.

This is this is from Brian Jeffers asked whether switching to a new sausage would ruin the magic of this moment. He didn't think so. He said, and I quote, it's the idea of the sausage. It's the meaning behind the sausage. We're going to learn more about the sausage as the days go by. The universal concern is the sausage. Yeah. And then Carlos Correa, who has been on the IL but returned yesterday. The vibes as you guys can tell are great we've got

a sausage now and all that it's good to be a minnesota twin right now i am obsessed with this they are tossing a sausage they're gonna get a new sausage when they're like kind of luck turns here and they are like gonna they're like, we have some, we have some fungibility with the sausage, but it's important to have a sausage, you know? And I, I think that my main takeaway from this,

apart from the fact that they are soon, I think, you know, worship the sausage. I want to see how the brewers respond to this. Do they view this as like the twins? Granted, not in the NL Central, but a Midwestern team in Minnesota. Look, there is there is beef, if you'll pardon the expression, between Minnesotans and Wisconsinites. sausage-based aggression will stand. But mainly, my takeaway from all of this is that it is an argument against what we viewed as sort of artificial, architected, inauthentic home-run celebrations. Because when you get one that's organic, much like a sausage, it is shelf-stable, much like a sausage.

And it brings with it oddity and creativity and quotes that you couldn't— You're not getting this with their fishing vest from last year. No, you need sicko weird sausage shit. That is—sorry for the swear. But that's what you need. You need that energy. And when you bring that energy to this endeavor, you go on a heater and then you have vibes, man. And it's the idea of the sausage.

Yeah. It's like the monolith. I am. Yes, it is like the monolith. It is like a salty monolith. I am. Yes, it is like the monolith. It is like a salty monolith. It inspired an entire conversation on their broadcast about what a summer sausage is. I don't remember who it was in the booth, but one of the broadcasters comped charcuterie boards to adult Lunchables, which is a great take. And I say that as a charcuterie board enthusiast it is this sausage

has everything i love this it is i am exuberant i feel genuinely joyful i am oh man i'm so happy i'm so happy about this stupid sausage now i agree with rocco that like no one should eat that sausage because even if it is shelf stable i am sure it is disgusting and it's not you know people are like it's not refrigerated it's like it doesn't need to be refrigerated it's it's shelf stable you know like the whole idea is that you buy it and it can sit in your pantry yeah but not like infinitely right i? I mean, no, not infinitely, but like for the length of a baseball season. And

here's the thing about summer sausage. It's not going to last infinitely. They're delicious, Ben. You know, you should go try a summer sausage, Ben. They should add summer sausage to the new weird ballpark food delivery app. Where is the summer sausage?

Oh, I love it so much. I'm so happy. It would be blasphemous for them to take a bite of the summer sausage at this point, right? I do think it would be disgusting. Because I'm sure it has been, like, you know, the casing, not the plastic packaging, but the casing of the sausage itself seems like it probably has been compromised and there is talk of moisture which means that like maybe the plastic isn't perfectly sealed anymore i'm just saying that this is perfect every quote i see about it i like more than the last quote i saw and i liked the last quote so much.

Yeah. So give me a – they need a sausage hat. I would buy it. It should be a dad hat. I'm still waiting, Mariners, for a Humpy the Salmon hat. Where are those? Give me that. Keep the sausage away from Byron Buxton and Royce Lewis. I don't want the sausage to jeopardize anything with them. Although,

who knows? Maybe they will be miraculously protected and cured by the healing powers of the summer sausage. Again, I don't think anyone should eat the summer sausage or get a fresh summer sausage. And by fresh, I mean, like, hasn't been touched by a bunch of baseball hands over. They're like tossing it around. Ben, I can't believe you were going to go. You were just going to go without talking about the sausage. I'm so glad you interrupted my attempted transition there.

Look, I had to do it. It's important, Ben. It's important. Yeah. Okay, now you can transition to our delightful conversation with other people. You want to talk about before we take a break? No, we started with transparent pants and we ended with sausage.

I feel like we have a theme. Okay. It's come full circle. We'll be right back with Ben Clemens to talk about players who've been better and players who've been worse. Small sample size. Small sample sample size. Small sample size. Small sample size, small sample size, sample size. Small sample size, small sample size, small sample size, small sample size, sample size. It's a small sample size, small sample size.

It's a small sample size. It's a small sample size. Small sample size. Small sample sample size. Small sample size. Small sample size. Well, before today, Ben Clemens was tied with Grant Brisby for second place on the all-time Effectively Wild guest leaderboard. But with this appearance, he shoulders Grant aside and moves into sole possession of second, trailing only Eric Langenhagen. Clearly, Clemens' stock is rising and Brisbane's stock is plummeting, which is appropriate because Ben is here to discuss players who've seen their stocks rise or fall so far.

Welcome back, Ben. Congrats on your new status. You're number two. Oh, thank you. I was always hoping to get into the top 10, so, you know, I'm doing way better than expected. Oh, yeah. You've been there for quite a while. You've been a real riser, a real helium guy

on the Effectively Wild all-time guest leaderboard. So you've written about some players who are playing better and some players who are playing better and some players who are playing worse and who have changed your evaluation of them in meaningful ways, despite the fact that it's still early. And I wanted to start with a conceptual question about how early is too early, because we got a question about this the other day from a Patreon supporter named Mick Mick who said, I know Russell Carlton has done some analysis of when is a small sample size no longer small

and it varies based on what stat you're looking at, but I wanted to know what you guys thought was a good general threshold for batters and pitchers to no longer use the small sample size excuse for good or bad results. So I want you to give me your answer, and then I will say what my answer to Mick was, and we will see how closely aligned they are. Okay, so results, not like I can go look at this one process stat, but hey, this guy's

having a good season. Yeah, I took this to mean sort of overall output or production. Yeah, that's how I am understanding it. So I'd say for batters, I feel like in somewhere like about a half a season, even if they're doing it in a way I don't really believe, I'm like, okay, I'm probably not, I'm probably missing something here, or I need to be really sure that I'm, like at half a season, the burden of proof switches to me from them, if that makes sense. Like I need to really disprove that they're doing something good to be satisfied that they haven't changed. And for pitchers, it's much longer.

Well, it's weird. For pitchers, ERA, it's much longer. But I can watch one start and be like, oh, this guy's different now. Yeah. Yeah, my answer initially was that this is sort of unanswerable, which I realized was not a very satisfying answer. And so I offered a further answer. But it really is sort of silly to just pick a point because it's just a continuum. Every plate appearance adds to your confidence.

So to say, this is the threshold. We've cleared the moment where this is no longer a small sample. It just becomes less and less small with each plate appearance, right? And your confidence in it grows and grows. But if I had to pick a point, initially, I was going to say, I mean, I didn't want to be like, oh, it's a small sample guy, right? Because it's just – There's already so many of us. Yeah, join.

You sound like that all the time. I know. You're just like, people leave reviews about that. Play into the stereotype. So I wanted to get aggressive and be bold and say like 100 plate appearances. But then I felt like that was too risky. I was getting out over my skis a bit. And so I switched to 200 plate appearances.

But then I was like, live a little. And so I switched to 200 plate appearances, but then I was like, live a little. And so I split the difference and I said 150, which is appropriate as it turns out, because later today, the day we're talking to you, I think the first player will reach the 150 plate appearance threshold. Mookie just needs four more as we speak here on Tuesday afternoon. But again, that is sort of arbitrary. Obviously, there's signal in small samples because you look at a leaderboard not that far into the season. And generally, the guys who are high on the leaderboard are good, right? There are some you don't expect to see there.

And yeah, Mookie or Mike Trout or whoever is not always there early on, although Mookie has basically been strangled from day one. But there's obviously some correlation there, even in super small samples. So it's sort of a squishy answer. I feel confident saying that Mookie Betts is good even today before he has reached the 150 paid appearance threshold. Bold. I'd go out on that limb. Pretty bold, Meg. A hero.

So brave. What percentage of Effectively Wild listeners do you think would agree with you if we put it up to the poll? Well, and I think that having a restrained both optimism and pessimism when you're looking at guys is useful because, again, we don't want to get out over our skis. And we've all been fooled before, right? We've been sure, confident that like changes are going to be sticky and that they're going to weather adjustments from either pitchers or hitters on the other side. But I also think it's useful for us to keep in mind that like sometimes we ask this question and I feel like it implies that players are static in a way that they aren't necessarily, which doesn't mean that every further adjustment they make is necessarily productive or going to

yield good results over extended stretches, but they're not the same player on opening day that they were on the last day of the season last year. And they're likely not going to be exactly the same guys at the midpoint of the year this year that they are today right so you know i think we have to keep checking in on them throughout the course of the season because they might they might change something right they might have a great second half they might start fiddling with a new pitch they might get found out and sort of um figured out by um by opposing teams. So, I don't know.

I don't want to imply that they're the same. And that works out great because we have to write about them the entire season. If they were precisely the same, it would get really boring for everyone. Multiple posts out of it. It's great. The way that I think about it is that players' true talent level is never static. It's just constantly moving around. And it tends to move around in kind of like Brownian motion.

Sorry that that's so nerdy. But, you know, it bounces up and down randomly with the most likely bounce being small. And then, like, larger changes getting increasingly unlikely. But over time, you can get, like, your true talent can improve or worsen meaningfully in a year.

It just mostly doesn't. But it's crazy to think that like, oh, like this guy's a two-win player right now. And so that is like what he's going to be next year. Like, no, like that might be the most likely outcome, but it's still not that likely. If you add up all the other possible outcomes, they're way more likely.

What would you say about Hunter Brown's motion thus far? This near 10 ERA, it's not the kind of Brownian motion you want. You'd think Brownian motion thus far. Near 10 ERA. It's not the kind of Brownian motion you want. I think Brownian motion for him would involve a little bit more backspin on the fastball. Yeah. Has not gotten there so far. No. Yes.

His pitches motion have largely taken them outside the strike zone so far. So I think when Russell and Derek Hardy and others have done studies on when stats stabilize, quote unquote, they have taken pains to point out that, yeah, 50% of it or 70% of it or whatever you choose was real, was reflective of the true talent over that span, which means something about what will happen next. It tells us something, you know, past results sometimes predict future results to some extent, but not necessarily. So you could add a new pitch or change your swing. And then those previous, however many plate appearances are not irrelevant, certainly, but maybe of reduced

relevance. Well, that's that like, um, reliable versus sticky kind of issue. I really liked the way that Russell and, um, there's that Sean Dolan article, you know, like a new way of looking at sample size where he's, he does like the split half thing. I really like those ways of looking at it, but I'm, I'm with you. I feel like a lot of people see that and they think, oh, well, like a new way of looking at sample size where he does like the split half thing. I really like those ways of looking at it, but I'm with you. I feel like a lot of people see that and they think, oh, well like, hey, for the first two months, this guy's had 16% barrel read and I know that's very quick to stabilize.

So he's great forever. No. And also I think that if you are focused on certain stats, like it could be plate discipline stats, swing decisions, that sort of thing, those things do become meaningful in smaller samples. And so if it's a player whose big problem was plate discipline or swing decisions, and that improves dramatically as it has perhaps with the first player we're about to talk about, then that's encouraging. Even if the overall

numbers still seem like small sample, you can kind of drill down. And of course, you can get first player we're about to talk about, then that's encouraging. Even if the overall numbers still seem like small sample, you can kind of drill down. And of course, you can get yourself into trouble by drilling down too far. But there are, I think, indicators that maybe give you confidence that this will persist in a larger sample. And of course, we have more sensitive tools available to us today than we did, say, pre-statcast. So we can look not just at velocities and exit speeds and angles and sprint speeds and all sorts of things that, again, give us greater confidence in small samples, though it's always possible to read too much into those things. A thing to be mindful of, and this doesn't really apply to the folks who you're highlighting today, Ben, but there will also be times where particularly when players are very early in their careers and we're still trying to get a sense of like what the totality of their tools are. If a guy has like never hit the ball very hard and then he starts walloping the ball,

I don't know that he's going to keep doing that and being able to hit the ball hard isn't the only thing that matters obviously but there is sort of this thing that happens where you know guys will demonstrate the capacity for a new skill and then it becomes a matter of monitoring to see you know how often are they able to do that and under what circumstances and does their newfound ability to do this thing they couldn't previously do before compromise other aspects of their profile that they had you know previously excelled at but like if a guy has always been kind of a light hitter and then he suddenly hits the ball hard or he suddenly starts throwing much harder than he did it's like oh i

gotta pay attention to that because if he can do that now and he couldn't he didn't show us that he could do it before that might radically change sort of how we understand him as a player. So I think that's a good thing to keep an eye on at this sort of stage of the game, too, particularly for the young guys. I think Jeff Zimmerman told me this, a maxim of fantasy baseball. Once you demonstrate a tool, you have that tool. Right. And yeah, I kind of buy that. Like, it doesn't mean that you'll get to it all the time. But hey, if you're wondering if this guy could do it, we're lucky to –

Right. Showing you can can be a really big deal. Yeah. I think Bill James dubbed that signature significance, the idea that you just do a certain thing one time and many people can never do that one thing. So that shows that you have the ability to do that one thing. And now it can be a single pitch that you throw. It can be a single ball that you hit. If you hit a ball 115 miles per hour, even if it was an out, there's only a small group of guys who can do that. So that tells you something significant and predictive and meaningful in the smallest of samples. And speaking of guys who hit the ball very, very hard and also run very fast and throw

the ball hard and kind of just do everything at top of the scale tools, Elie de la Cruz, we've talked a bunch about him this year already on the podcast. How could you not? I think he was the subject of one of your bold preseason predictions, which is looking pretty solid right now, which makes me mad because you sort of vult your bold preseason predictions, which is looking pretty solid right now, which makes me mad because you sort of vultured my preseason prediction related to cruises. And we've talked about how things seem to be coming together for him. And so you included him on your list of four risers.

And I know that you have some additional guys you considered from reading the comments. So maybe we'll mention some others. I guess you could have just sorted by the difference between rest-of-season projection and pre-season projection, right? And that would tell you what the projection systems think the biggest risers are. But you are looking at it in sort of a similar way but also with maybe more information or granularity looking at the tools and the shape of the production. So what encourages you about Ellie? Maybe that's a simple question, because what would not encourage you about the season that

he's having so far? I set out to not just look for people who are doing better than expected and his projections have thus gone up, because that's real, but that's not as much an article. Like, it's more of a list. I'm not against lists, but this struck me as more of a, like, what are some things that really stuck out to me that aren't just like, oh, man, like, things are going well. And, look, lots of things are going very well for Ellie.

Let's not pretend that that's not the case. He's doing incredibly. And he's, like, he's hitting the going very well for Ellie. Let's not pretend that that's not the case. He's doing incredibly. And he's like, he's hitting the ball really hard this year. He's barreling the ball up twice as often as he did before. He's getting the ball in the air a little bit more than he did last year, which obviously matters when you hit the ball so hard. He's playing better defense. I think all those things are like true, but they could all be happening.

I don't know. Any of that can happen for a month. And it doesn't like vastly change my opinion of him because, I mean, have you seen this guy play? He's obviously capable of it all. Like there's nothing, well, God, maybe I'm speaking too soon, but I don't think there's anything he could do where I'd be like, wow, I didn't think he could do that. Well, he was clocked at throwing a ball 107 miles per hour, and everyone said, I didn't think he could do that. And it turns out he didn't because that was just a stack-ass data error. So if he did that for real, I guess that would be one thing.

One thing that really encouraged me about him is you could always see the failure case here, right? The success case is easy to see, but the failure case is too. And it's just like, what if he's not very good at figuring out balls and strikes? Like, it's so much of baseball. And he wasn't very good at it last year. And it kind of worked out because he's just so good. His tools are just so loud that he can make a lot of mistakes and then make up for it with a few plays. But that was that was definitely the worrisome case. And last year, he chased more pitches than league average and swung at less pitches in the strikes than the league average.

So it's like not an approach issue. It's a recognition issue, it looked like. He was not good at recognizing balls and strikes. And that's a problem because he's not like a high contact guy either. How could you be? He's so big. And like his levers are so long. He's taking these giant swings.

And so if Ellie was going to fail this year, my guess was that it was going to be because he could not figure out balls and strikes and he would just strike out way too much, never walk like he did last year and have a disappointing season despite loud tools like he did last year. That hasn't happened. And the reason that it hasn't happened is not because of anything he's done other than getting better at recognizing balls and strikes. So great. That's the kind of tool where like, it's the thing that he's doing that makes me most excited about his future that he could do this year.

Like he could have, he could have 15 home runs by now. And I'd be like, yeah, like, that's cool. Like, I know he'll have hot stretches like this, but if he was doing it while swinging out of his shoes and like striking out, I mean, he's striking out 30% of the time. He's going to strike out a lot forever. It's just, that's kind of the player he is. But his ability to recognize balls and strikes changing makes me very, very excited for his future. And I think that's kind of the point of this exercise is like, what are some guys who are doing new things that you think pretend better than they did before the year? And if he can walk 15% of the time,

man, like, that's game-changing. He is, do you think he's the best base runner in baseball? Like, he's got to be close. He's on pace for like 100 steals. Yeah. It's either Ellie or Freddie Freeman, best base runner in baseball. The best true talent base steal baserunner in baseball.

The best true talent-based stealer, baserunner in baseball. The person who will add the most value via baserunning in baseball. Maybe it's Acuna. Acuna is very good. Bryce Kurek leads baseball in it this year. Impressive guy. But yeah, I'm tremendously encouraged by the fact that he's, like, as a switch hitter, at a young age, in the major leagues, when he didn't have much minor league training, figuring out how to recognize pitches a lot better. The fact that he's swinging less often at bad pitches without cutting back his swing rate at good pitches is so encouraging. It's not that he changed his approach. It's not like some coach told him, hey, man, you just can't afford to chase so many pitches. He's just getting better at recognizing them. And that's great. That's the best thing you could hear as an L.A. De La Cruz, like, admirer, supporter,

whatever you want to say, coming into this year. So that's why he headlines the list to me. I was really surprised when I was editing this that the next guy you highlighted is he's just really not that much older than L.A. De La Cruz. And if some of the adjustment that de la cruz had to do was because he didn't have that much time in the minors and debuted really young cj abrams debuted at 21 he also was was pretty rushed and then had to do this adjustment at the big league level where the nats were just like look man you're gonna figure it out

um and he seems like he's he's doing that so like walk us through the case for cj abrams because he's so young but he feels like he's been around forever because he debuted so young yeah it's wild to me how little he played in the minor leagues yeah because just just the timing of it right he was drafted in 2019 and not only did he miss the 2020 season because every minor leaguer did but then he he got hurt in 2021. So he just didn't play very much in the minors at all. It makes it kind of easier to write him off. Like, he wasn't that good on the Nats when they got him for Soto. Like, he was below replacement level that year. Yeah. It wasn't like he had a terrible start with the Padres and then kind of evened out to level on the Nats. No, he was just bad with year long. The things that encourage me

so much about Abrams are like pretty different than De La Cruz. I've never been worried that he's going to strike out too much. That's just not what your worry is with him. He's like a high contact guy. He was a high contact guy, even in the minor, like in the minors, He's like a high contact guy. He was the high contact guy, even in the minor, like in the minors. He's maintained it in the major leagues. He swings a ton and hits a ton. It's kind of like a Jose Altuve looking skill set when it comes to like his approach at the plate.

And I mean, lots of other guys, but that's just the, that's like the best possible case. He doesn't look like Altuve, but in terms of like what his numbers might look like if he gets to everything. The big problem that I was seeing with Abrams, and Esteban Rivera wrote a really good article about this as well, actually. He's kind of powerful for being a slight stature shortstop, but he was just not getting to that power in useful ways. Like his swing was producing a lot too many pop-ups and a lot too many grounders and just not being on plane. I'm not an expert in this

kind of stuff. I just look at the batted ball mix and everything and say, oh, I mean, that looks bad. Like his didn't look very good in 2023. And I was like, oh, that seems bad. Like if you're going to have this mix of like a decent number of pop-ups and a decent number of grounders and not really walk that much and not play great defense. Like it kind of caps your upside, but also he has a really high floor because he doesn't strike out very much and play shortstop. And so now he's just starting to put the ball in the air more and it turns out that's just kind of what he needed to do. I don't think he's going to continue hitting this well. Like I don't think that all of a sudden he's a 160 WRC plus player or anything like that.

Like, he's on an unsustainable hot streak. I think that it would be, like, pretty irresponsible to say anything other than that. But it's one of these situations where I didn't need to see a lot because the tools to give him a baseline were pretty good. Yeah. baseline were pretty good yeah like if you can strike out i don't know call it five percent less often than average and walk only a little less often than average and you're very fast like so you'll probably be a good base runner and you can play i mean look a bad shortstop i'm i'm not gonna lie and say a good shortstop the nats broadcast thinks he's the best shortstop in history defensively they compared him to mookie bet and were like, look, he's made fewer errors.

stabilize. And then we really caution them not to read too much into defensive metrics and over a much longer stretch of time because they just take forever to really mean anything. And even when they do, like they're easily the least good public facing metrics that we have, even as they've gotten better over time. So like, how do you at this stage in the game, this point in the season, kind of think about defense? Like, are you looking at defensive metrics at all? Or do you mostly just watch the game and go like, that guy doesn't look good out there? I want both to point the same way before I care. Yeah.

So if I'm like, that guy looks good. And it's like, oh, his numbers aren't that good. I'm like, eh, like, let's see which one of these breaks first. Yeah. Or vice versa. But if somebody looks awkward and they're grading out badly, particularly if they've already graded out badly. Yeah.

Like, I'm very skeptical of changes, if that makes sense. Yep. Like, if you told me that Cabrian-Hayes was very suddenly a bad defender and every system agreed, I'd be like, I don't know. Yeah. I just assumed he was hurt. Look, defensive metrics, I think one thing that gets people mixed up is we've made a huge leap in their reliability. I mean, DRS has gotten a lot better and out-to-up average has also come onto the scene.

And so we think, well, we didn't really trust defense in 2015, and then the metrics got a lot better. Yeah, but they're still not trustworthy. They got better from taking years to stabilize to taking less years to stabilize. It's really hard to measure this. Even if you had like the stat cast level of data of perfect clarity of where everyone is, it depends what opportunities you get. And it depends if you were on the balls of your feet or on the heels, that's not the same for every player. And there's just tons of luck involved in it. And even if you can measure what actually happened, like very perfectly, that is not a good measure of true talent until you've had a lot of what has happened.

And I feel like that's one thing that StatCast actually tricks people with. Like XWOBA has kind of the same thing, right? It's like, well, look, it says 375. So that's how good he should be. It's like, no, there's like a lot of luck in that, too. Like it stripped out some kinds of luck and some kinds of measurement error. And so we think it's stripped out a ton. Yeah. So yeah, I'd say like, like CJ Abrams had a reputation as a bad defender, looks like a bad defender to me. And when I watch him,

it looks like he's got the tools to be a good defender, but hasn't put it all together yet. And so I'm comfortable saying that, but I would not feel comfortable changing my opinion based on either the eye test or the numbers after a month. Yeah. Even though he will likely come back to earth a bit, it is fun to see him doing so well because I made fun of how popular a breakout pick he was, obviously with Ellie and to a lesser extent with Abrams. These were ultra elite prospects and guys who had sort of a slower mixed starts in the majors, but aren't even at the point of really, maybe Abrams was post-hype sleeper perhaps, but only became because he came up so early and so young. And a lot of people were pinpointing that Abrams could

take another leap here. And I didn't pick him as my breakout player because I was like, well, I can't, everyone else picked him. So I need to pick someone as my breakout player because I was like, well, I can't. Everyone else picked him, so I need to pick someone else different. So I have that in print at least. But he has obviously surpassed any expectations of anyone who saw him as a breakout candidate. And a lot of those predictions were based on how he had performed in the second half last year, especially after he moved to the leadoff slot and his swing decisions improved and Robert Orr wrote about him. The only thing that I'm disappointed about is that he has not continued his stolen base pace from after he started leading off last year, because once he was in the leadoff slot,

he was the major league's leading base dealer from that point forward. And he has a mere six so far and six out of eight. So that has not quite continued. But yeah, if you're going to hit for this much power, it's rare unless you're Acuna to be that big a power speed threat. So yeah, not not surprised. One thing I will say about Abrams, I don't think he's gonna keep walking so much. He's just like so aggressive at the plate. Yeah. And like that works out again. There's plenty of players who do that with success and you just need to capitalize on it by hitting the ball hard in the air, which he's starting to do. So I think this way it's going to work for him will work, but I don't think his production is going to look that much like it does right now. that much like it does right now.

I think it's going to continue to have like kind of the power-speed combo look, but I don't think it's going to have quite the same on base that it has so far. It's just really tough at the aggression level that he has to keep that up for a long period of time. Well, it's encouraging. The Nationals, not bad so far. So that in itself is also encouraging.

As we speak, they have a chance to go over 500 on the season for the first time at any point since I think July 2021. So pulling for you guys, even if it's only for one day. So the next riser you identified has also come to our attention here on this podcast this season, although was not called to our attention as much as he should have been or really to anyone's attention probably because Jared Jones of the Pirates was a prospect. He was ranked 62nd by Eric Langenhagen on the FanCraft preseason top 100. I think MLB.com also had him 62nd. Baseball America had him 74th.

Baseball Prospectus ranked Spencer Jones and Drew Jones, but Jared Jones did not keep up with the Joneses. He was not even on the top 100 for BP. So he was like a prospect, absolutely, but not like day one, he's going to be great and incredibly nasty. So I know we're all waiting for Paul Skeens to arrive, but it seems like an ace may have already arrived in this rotation. I never am ashamed to call back to my own writing. And I did the positional power rankings. I did like the bottom half of pitching. And my first line was, I'm not ashamed to admit when I have to look somebody up and Jones is the first top five starter on this list I had to go to the data for.

Because that was not long ago. And I was like, I have never heard of this guy. And then I did say, I have to say the more I see, the more I like. So, you know, good call. Bounce back. Yeah. But this has to be on anybody's list of risers. Because realistically, like, even if you knew who he was even if you were the highest guy on him out of prospect mavens you didn't think he was better than skeins and you didn't think he

was freaking spencer strider like like he's just spencer strider right they did a body swap and that's why strider's out because i was gonna say there can be only one it's like highlander yeah has anyone ever seen them in the same room at the same time strider has a better mustache and jones has better hair so they're they're different people but it is amazing to me how quickly you can watch him i watched his first start and i was just like oh this guy's one of the 10 best starters in baseball yeah i think he is like he has that jacob de grom style like long extension low release high carry fastball that like it's not a mistake that all the

models like those styles of fastball so much they're impossible to hit they're hard to locate and they're hard to do consistently if people more people could throw them they would the big extension long stride so you release low but you still release from a high arm slot like it just works this is not a secret but he can do. And it seems like he adjusted his extension, like his stride length quite a bit in the off season. That seems like a good change to make. I don't understand quite how he's suddenly the best strike thrower in baseball.

That doesn't really seem fair. He was wild in the minor leagues, but this is what I mean about, I'm willing to accept the pitcher being better, like almost right away. I don't know how long it'll keep, but right now you watch him and you're just like, well, he throws a slider that he can command to the corners of the plate. And consistently, like not just one or two, and it looks like he's getting lucky. He's made six starts. And he's walked five guys like he can clearly command this really well right now. And that's kind of all I

need to see like he has the best fastball in baseball for a starter, probably since all the guys who are better on the IL and like one of the best breaking pitches. And yeah, that's basically it. I don't know if this one felt like cheating. Like, of course, that's one of the names it has to be. It would be very disingenuous to not have him on there. I mean, there's lots of other pitchers who have made leaps. And I could have highlighted one of them instead because I don't have a lot new to say about Jones. I still think he's great. But yeah, I just don't think it would be realistic to have a list of players whose projections have improved the most and not have a pitcher who none of us had ever heard of who is one of the best pitchers in baseball. Well, I think the good news for your purposes is that while he might be sort of an obvious choice because he plays on the Pirates, I still think there are probably people who aren't familiar with what he's up to.

So I'm sure someone learned something. Slight digression, but you guys should really join me in celebrating Jared Jones Day, which just means watch the away broadcast or like the other team broadcast of his games. Because none of the announcers have heard of him. Yeah.

They're just like, like in the first day, they're like, Oh, his stats are pretty good. Oh, he throws a hundred. And then by the third inning,

they're just like laughing. Like Keith Hernandez was befuddled. He, he, he ran out of good things to say that he would just start laughing during the pitches. It's very enjoyable. I, I highly suggest it. He ran out of good things to say, then he would just start laughing during the pitches. That's right. It's very enjoyable.

I highly suggest it. If you're bouncing around MLB.tv, the other team broadcast of the first time they've seen Jared Jones is great. Yeah, that sounds fun. Although I worry once someone gets their own day, sometimes they break not long after that. Yeah, I remember Harvey Day in a bad way harvey day strasburg day felix day i guess felix lasted a while at least yeah that lasted a while right yeah relax relax over there yeah anyone who throws that hard mason miller yeah please be okay i hope that's actually another reason to uh to enjoy this is because how long will it last? Yeah.

Well, I guess if Jones is an unknown, Jordan Hicks is well known, but not necessarily in this role. We've talked about this on the pod, too. Ben Lindbergh is continuously debating how to refer to guys like Hicks. Like, are they converted believers? Does that make sense? Does it do justice to the like Hicks? Are they converted relievers? Does that make sense? Does it do justice to the shift in role? But I will count myself among the people who was skeptical that this would work. I was skeptical that all of the relievers who are now starters would do well. And

so far, most of them are like, screw you, Meg, we're doing great. What about Hicks is working this time in a starting role? This is kind of a stand-in for all of the relievers, like you said. Yeah. Basically, you thought that the thing that Hicks did so well was throw 100, but it turns out the thing he does so well is throw with good movement and, like, fairly hard. So he can throw 97, 96, and still be pretty effective. Like Like his sinker has just a ton of movement and it's not like he was missing a lot of bats with it at a hundred. So it's okay. At 97,

his, his stuff grade on the pitch has not gone down much because like, it just still moves a ton and you don't get a ton of extra juice from throwing it harder. Like it's gone down. Don't get me wrong, but it's still above average. And he's actually able to locate it now, like a little better.

Which, I mean, he's just a guy who, when he was max efforting, could not locate. And that's fine. It comes with the territory, you know. He throws 104. Or he threw 104. And so, yeah, he didn't know where it was going. It was going 104 miles an hour. No one knew where it was going.

And that was the joke. His ability to dial it down and have going. And that was the joke. His ability to dial it down and have more of the plate, I mean, he's still minus command. I think he is a 40 command guy even now. But I think he was more like 30 as a reliever. And the fact that the Giants realized that he could throw 70, 80 pitches every fifth day with 40 command, maybe 45, I don't know. The pitching bot thinks it's exactly average, which is pretty impressive. Like that's a real skill that I did not think he would ever be able to demonstrate. And that's basically what this is, that when I saw them put him in the starting lineup, I was like, yeah, okay, sure, sure, guy. You can have

Jordan Hicks as the starter for three turns in the rotation until it doesn't work like the Cardinals did in 2022. And it turns out that's not the case. He has been able to make six starts already on not an infinitely long rest schedule. He's made several starts on regular rest. He's completed five innings in every start. He's completed six or more innings in half of his starts. If you could do that with more relievers, like you'd be a lot better. He's putting up very similar numbers to what he did in relief as a starter. And that's amazing. Like I just didn't remotely see that.

There's actually a lot of guys like this this year, like you intimated there. Like Ronaldo Lopez is another one. Like he was maybe the first cut from this list, if it wasn't a few other people who I'll mention. Like he was maybe the first cut from this list, if it wasn't a few other people who I'll mention, where I was even more skeptical of him being a starter than Hicks, to be honest. But that was more because the Braves have starters. And then there were injuries. So it makes more sense to me that he's staying in the rotation. Like, I kind of thought he might be able to be a starter years ago when he was on the White Sox.

But yeah, he looks quite good. He's doing a very similar thing, right? He's dialed everything down a little bit. And the Braves are quite cleverly are giving him a little more time before starts. Because I just don't think he's actually really used to this workload. So if you look at his pitching workload, he pitched and then he had six days rest. Then he pitched and he had six days rest. Then he pitched and he had seven days rest. Then he pitched. and he had six days rest, then he pitched, and he had seven days rest, then he pitched. They're making sure that he has time to build up and recover. And I think that's kind of masking. That's one of the

main reasons you don't see relievers go to starting is that the workload is tough. It's really hard to be a starting pitcher. And this is a clever way to handle that, is just have them start less often, like kind of the NPB model. So I'm a little less impressed by the change, if that makes sense, because Hicks' degree of difficulty is harder. But I'm impressed quite a lot by both. And neither of them will continue to be as good as they've looked. But just the change from a reliever, where a good reliever is worth one and a half wins above replacement or so, but also they're kind of buried in the bullpen hierarchy most often neither of these guys are projected to be the closer to a guy where if you're an above average starter even

if you only pitch 140 150 innings like you're an all-star and a good one uh that's just really valuable and was nowhere near what i thought of these guys entering the season i think you could throw a tanner Houck on there. He's been better than them. And if I put him on the list, I wouldn't have felt bad. He was already a starter last year, which is why I'm less impressed by it. But I was impressed by his transition to starting last year. And it seems like now he's gotten better.

He's getting back to his relief level while being a starter. So I do like that. Yeah, he was okay. He was competent, at least as a starter, though there were still issues going deeper into games. And there were still people who thought he's a reliever masquerading as a starter. And of course, he had been fairly successful as a reliever in 2022. And he has been very successful as a starter this season. So I was going to bring him up because a commenter on your piece mentioned him and he was maybe one of the cuts from your list. If you had gone more than four,

who else would have appeared? Cutter Crawford while we're on the Red Sox. You know, that very similar story, right? There's a lot of these guys who are like, maybe they're a multi-inning reliever. Maybe they're a starter. They bounce back and forth. So Crawford threw 130 innings last year 23 starts eight relief appearances and like he looked like a starter but not that like like you said like good but there were

questions and then it seems like he's answered a lot of those questions this year who else I mean Zach Littell I don't know, I'm just constantly impressed. Yeah. It's just really unreal. It's not like he's as good, it's not like he's been as good as these guys, but how is he doing it? Yeah. This doesn't really count. Ranger Suarez, I didn't really ever consider putting him on there because I already thought he was pretty good. Yeah.

But he's another, like, I don't think he's ever been a unanimously agreed upon starter like if you asked 50 talent evaluators there i don't think there's been a point where 50 of them would say oh yeah he's a starter until like maybe this year because like he does end up kind of back in the bullpen off and on i guess like i briefly considered you say kikuchi but i i don't really know if i think it's gonna stick depends how many books he's able to read, you know? Depends how often he's able to face Otani. Did you see he was throwing like 98, 99 against Otani? He's just like, all right, let's go, guys. I mean, he's throwing harder this year.

He's like slowly increased his velocity on the Blue Jays. But yeah, he was just like jazzed up. He was really getting after it. And he looked pretty good in that game. Although the Dodgers are quite good. So they dodged him around. There are a lot of pitchers you could consider for the pitcher side. And honestly, there's plenty of hitters too, but I was limiting it to two each. And I figured Hicks would work as kind of emblematic of those types of guys. But that is the big story, I think, in pitching this year, aside from injuries. But the big positive story is that a lot of people who we had pigeonholed as relievers are better at starting than we thought.

And you don't really need as broad of a pitch mix as we thought, I don't think, to succeed. And as I've pointed out, you aren't expected to go as deep into games. So it's not necessarily as large a leap as it used to be, the distinction between reliever and starter. So it's maybe more feasible, but still impressive when it works this well. You have also written about four fallers. It's not quite as fun to talk about people who are not doing well, but we must. Apologies to those players. So let's talk about them, I guess, maybe a little more briefly. But Spencer Torkelson of the Tigers

was the first you identified. And that's maybe kind of a demoralizing one because he was a breakout pick, right? And he made strides last year and his teammates, Riley Green is continuing to maybe make those strides, but Torke, not so much so far. This one's pretty straightforward. Like we all, me and Dan particularly, I think, but we all thought that he was figuring it out last year and the profile has always been there, right? He's like a patient slugger. We all know what those guys look like. You have to be pretty good at hitting to make that work

because he's first base only. And, but hey, he looked like he might be pretty good at hitting. And then it's just all gone backwards this year. Like, it's not one thing. It's just everything has gone backwards. He's his approach has gotten worse. So the big issue is that he's a guy who doesn't chase. And he's managed to continue that, but he's not swinging enough. And that's a really big problem. Like he just needs you can't get by without a super elite batting eye if you're not absolutely punishing the pitches you swing at.

And he doesn't swing enough to do that. The second part of this is that he's not hitting the ball hard anymore when he does swing. And yeah, that's kind of baseball. Like he is just never going to add value any way other than by crushing the ball and walking. Those are his skills. That's what he was drafted for. I mean, I know they announced him as a third baseman when he was drafted, but no, like he's first base or DH only like walk and then hit the crap out of the ball.

Like last year, everyone was very excited about him, right? Like we've decided it's all good. He still only had a 107 weighted runs created plus. And his underlying stats were better than that. And so you could project him becoming like a like 20-30% better than average guy and thus an above average player. But that was like, we were kind of hoping he'd improve on last year that both the underlying numbers and like his production relative to the underlying numbers would both improve. And instead the underlying numbers have gotten worse and they weren't like elite last year.

So this is kind of a case of, I think I let my prospect goggles blind me. I just decided like this guy was a top prospect and look, he started slow, but sometimes you'll start slow and he's improving. So he had this pedigree and now he's improving. That's two pieces of the puzzle that fit together well. Like I can do this analysis. Let's just keep the line moving up. And that hasn't happened. And I mean, maybe I'm being too quick

to revise my like view back down, but we're up to his third season of the majors. He hasn't been good in any of them. And you can cut him some slack for a while. And I'm sure I'm going to keep cutting him some slack longer than I should. And I've cut the cord too early on, guys. I don't want to say that I'm a great arbiter of this. I feel like I'm pretty good.

But this doesn't seem good. There's nothing you can point to and be like, oh, this is a mitigating circumstance. This is why this is happening. It just looks like he did not consolidate his improvements from last year. And he wasn't good enough to be a great player last year. So he needed to keep improving, not go the other way. So now I'm just kind of like, I'm out. And I hope to be proven wrong because I would always rather have more good players than less.

But this just feels like it's not going to work. Yeah, it doesn't seem great. Sort of a sad end to recent ASU guys too, like me. Who are the others? Well, they haven't really done very well, so you don't know their names. It's fine. Our program has fallen off in a way that is like a real tragedy of college baseball. Ben Lindbergh doesn't care, but I'm trying to make you care, Ben. The next faller makes me sad in a profound way because, like, is 33 old? Are we at a point where 33 is old? Is it just the combination of being a catcher and 33 that makes you fall off precipitously?

off precipitously. We're talking about JT RealMuto, who was like this magical guy who stole a bunch of bases, played great defense, had a powerful bat. He did it all as a catcher, which made it particularly exciting. And now it's not good, Ben. It's all fallen off at once. I'm 38, so it's all over for me. Yeah, it is all over. I think this is a fault of mine, is that RealMudo was kind of uninspiring last year. And I just said, eh, he was so good so recently. I'm going to completely ignore this

and just assume that anything that looks bad is wrong. One thing that happened last year that I kind of do buy is that his defensive catching numbers got much worse. Yeah. Look, I know I was just talking about how you don't want to overreact to defensive numbers. Framing is very noisy, but directionally, it's not that noisy. And he went from being considered a pretty good receiver to not great. I don't know if he was as bad as the number said he was, but he didn't seem nearly as elite as he was at the time.

His ability to stop the running game and block balls has decreased a lot. And that I feel more confident about the numbers. StatCast actually has this cool thing where they break out blocking chances into easy, medium, and hard. And he was the best blocker in the game for a very long time. Basically, since he'd been in the Major Leagues. He hasn't always been a good receiver,

but he's always been good at everything else in catching. Yeah. And recently, he's missing easy plays. That tracks with how my life has gone as I've gotten older. That like the things that I would just do automatically before, like require a little more effort and that's tough to adjust. I think that, you know, he's caught a lot of innings.

Catcher is tough. And when your body gets creaky and you don't, like let's say that you could expend 15 like units of energy to do the exact right like textbook form for every pitch or 10, because you could use 10 and be a little bit worse, but save a third of the energy you're expending. The older you get, the more you're like, I'll take a few shortcuts here. It's veteran savvy, you know, like keep yourself fresh for the long run. But the problem is that that is hurting. He's like missing more easy plays. He's not really throwing guys out at the same way,

at the same level he used to. Some of that is just because it's harder now. But you'd think that his value would be magnified as a running game controller. And instead, he just looks average now. And he used to look way above average. So the defense has just come way off. And I don't really know how to think about this

because some old catchers only keep their defense and their hitting just becomes abysmal. Jeff, Jeff Mathis was still good at catching. He just got like awful at everything else. It seems like it's kind of gone the other way with Real Muto where it's not like he's a bad hitter now. He's a, I think he's probably about an average hitter. And I never thought he was a lot better than average as a hitter.

Like he had better seasons than that. But to me, he's always been like a average with upside for more kind of guy. And that still looks like the case. He's got a lot of power. That's kind of enough. Yeah, he's no longer stealing bases. That's no fun. But I don't feel awful about his offensive game. He has a career 110 WRC plus and he's at 101 for the last two years. Like, yeah, a little worse. But what do you expect? He's older. It's really the defense. And if he's not a great defensive catcher, he goes from being a, like,

you know, hipster MVP candidate to like, I hope he's average. And like, this actually happened last year. So I'm kind of telling on myself that I wasn't quick enough to notice this. But man, I really noticed it this year. And it's sad. I thought you were confessing

to like RealMuto-related crimes. Like you, you know, like kneecapped him or something. I was behind all this. Self-flagellation going on there. Yeah. Well, your last two followers, one is Michael King. The other is Kyle Gibson. And Gibson, maybe not so surprising.

I mean, he's been kind of what passes for an innings eater these days. He's the bulk guy. He's never been great on a rate basis, but there are worrisome signs, even more worrisome than usual with him. King, though, was kind of in the camp of the players we were talking about earlier, right? in the camp of the players we were talking about earlier, right? The relievers turned starters who made that transition work really well, so well that he then kind of became the centerpiece of the one Soto trade for the Padres. And that hasn't worked out so swimmingly thus far.

You know, I thought King had more of a career as a starter because people were pretty excited. I mean, myself included a little. I went back and read all my soto trade analysis and i feel like i wasn't too like up on king so thankfully that's just lucky because i i don't know what i was thinking at the time we were mostly thinking we were worried that the trade wouldn't happen yeah that i do remember but basically like king was a very good reliever for the yankees uh not your normal overpowering style reliever.

He threw a lot of pitches and he threw fairly hard, but he wasn't like a complete flamethrower of obliterating the top end of the scale. And then he made eight starts for Yankees team without a playoff contention and they were great. And in those starts, he threw really hard and like not even that much softer than he did as a reliever and went a bunch of innings. And I was just like, wow, like great. That's good. I mean, it already looked like he had starter stuff in the bullpen. So let's just make him a starter.

And his stuff has regressed massively this year. Like every pitch to me looks worse. He's throwing two miles an hour softer with his fastball. And that's a lot. Like that is a big problem. And not like from last year as a whole, from last year when he was starting. That's like really bad. That's a lot to lose at a young age. And I'm guessing that it's just like a workload thing. Like before he was like a reliever,

and then they switched at the end of the year and he was like, all right, I can do it. Like, I'm adrenaline. I'm loosened up for the season. Like, let's just keep going. Let's keep the ball rolling. And then now he's trying to prepare to throw 180 innings. And you just can't do it. Like, you can't throw that hard that frequently for that long. So we need to combine him with Kyle Gibson somehow. Right, exactly. There is something to the fact, too, that the other guys who we're talking about,

who are transitioning from relief to starting, threw really hard. Like, really hard. They had velocity to spare. I need to do more research on this, but it does seem like getting above 94 and like I picked 94 kind of arbitrarily because I wrote about 94 a long time ago as a break point when it related to Joe Musgrove, when he was getting his like sitting up

in the 94, 95 range from 91, 92, he looked a lot better. I think that a little bit of that has been the case with King. I think more, though, just we looked at one sample of what a guy can look like when he's good, and we're maybe too slow to think pitchers can

pop up and pop down and move around. Maybe Jared Jones is going to get tired in two months, and his stuff will just be different. But right now, Michael King's stuff is bad. It's meaningfully worse than it was last year. And so like the reason that he's not doing well is because his stuff isn't good. So it feels like I don't think he has a justified 6.3 FIP.

That's pretty bad. But he should not be faring well. One big problem that he has is that, look, when he's throwing this slower fastball, and when his command has gotten worse, which it has, he's falling behind in counts, and he's just like, I'm going to huck a fastball down the middle and get back in the count. But he's throwing a 93-mile-an-hour fastball down the middle. You can't do that. He's given up seven home runs on pitches that are down the middle. You can get away with that if you're Jordan Hicks, even when you're only throwing 97 instead of 103.

But the difference between Michael King's 97 and 93 seems to hurt more. And that'll come back some. He's not going to keep giving up home runs on a quarter of his fly balls. But I did not consider enough what would happen if he lost some velo. And it's hurt, like, badly.

Like, this is a guy who could not afford his stuff to come back. Because he was basically a sum is greater than the parts guy. And it just, when it doesn't all fit together, it looks a lot worse. I think he'll be better than he's been. Bold take there, yeah. He's been one of the worst pitchers in baseball. Thought he was a king. He's merely a pretender to the throne.

He's Michael Caine. I'm very worried about his ability to be an average starter going forward, let's just say. Well, anyone else who is raising red flags for you that didn't make the list? I didn't put Blake Snell on there. That feels unfair. Yeah. He's just hurt, right?

Well, he is. We know he's hurt. At least allegedly hurt. No argument there. I'll tell you this. I went to his start, his last start before hitting the IL, like just because I wanted to go to a Friday night game. He looked bad.

Like he looked like he was both rusty and like hurt. And he was either bouncing his curveball in the dirt or like hanging it. And not always hanging it like down the middle, but like it was either not breaking or breaking too much. It looked pretty bad. I'm not as worried about Joe Musgrove as the stats would suggest. So I left him off, even though he's obviously put up very terrible results so far. Another person who I started writing about and then changed my mind completely on was Nolan Jones. I was ready to say like, oh man, like this is like things have

gone much worse than I expected. Then I looked back at it and I was like, say like, oh man, like this is like, things have gone much worse than I expected. Then I looked back at it and I was like, his process is still fine. Or well, I don't know. His process is unchanged. I'm not sure I loved it. Even when I was working last year, he is not a Ben Clemens like styled hitter. Let me just say,

I'm a Lars Nuthbar Juan Soto kind of guy, unless you have like crazy tools. And that is not really Nolan Jones. Like he never swings at all, but without not chasing much. I think he has bad strike zone recognition, but makes up for it by never swinging. And I don't know, that's not really my style of guy. I like his defense, very fun. But I don't, like nothing has really changed for him, except he's just getting brutally unlucky and his expected stats are bad but i think he's been unlucky to have such bad expected stats i don't i think he was lucky to have such good expected stats last year i think he'll bounce back to being like a a coarse field inflated like good fantasy player with good outfield defense but not an incredible hitter so i I considered him for quite a while and then left him off the list in the end.

Ultimately rejected him partly on the grounds that he wasn't that good to begin with. I mean, that's the good news. The good news is you're not one of my four fallers. The bad news is it's partly because you didn't have that far to fall in retrospect. Yeah, like that's kind of what I mean. I wanted it to be guys where I went, like, my opinion changed meaningfully. Like, Kyle Gibson, we're not going to talk about much, but basically I thought he was going to be, like,

better than replacement-level innings eater. And after watching him some, I'm like, eh, I don't know. I actually think he's going to be a replacement-level innings eater. Whereas Nolan Jones, like, I think he know. I actually think he's going to be a replacement level in Xeeter. Whereas Nolan Jones, I think he'll probably still end up as an average player. And I kind of thought he was an average player before the year. Well, samples continue to accrue, and we can have you back on

again later in the season to discuss who has changed your mind since this podcast appearance. I guess we could just keep doing this, and you can keep inflating your all-time guest appearance, I guess. We could just keep doing this and you can keep inflating your all-time guest appearance total, which I know this is what it's all about for you. It matters hugely to me. You know, someone pointed out to me that I had Ellie sixth on our trade value list last year. So like how much more can his stock really arise? At least five spots.

At least five spots, yeah. Yeah. So he can be on at least four more of these. We'll see if we get there. Well, after we finished recording, the White Sox lost again. The Marlins won. So the White Sox have reclaimed the worst record in baseball. 6-24 to the Marlins, 7-24. And don't forget the Rockies. They're making it interesting at 7-22.

They actually lost to the Marlins. You know, earlier this month, we noted that the Dodgers' Tyler Glasnow had been pulled from a game in which he had struck out 14 through seven innings and had thrown only 88 pitches. I wondered whether, despite his injury history,

despite how early in the season it was, despite the Dodgers' October aspirations, whether Glasnow would have been pulled if he had had 15 strikeouts and thus had still had the potential to reach an unprecedented 21. Well, in game one of a Cardinals-Tigers doubleheader on Tuesday,

Detroit's Jack Flaherty was pulled after 14 strikeouts through six and two-thirds. So maybe this is a data point. It was still theoretically possible for Flaherty to get to 21. Flaherty had thrown 93 pitches and had gotten one less out than Glasnow did. So even more unlikely that he could have gotten to 21 without an exorbitant pitch count. I suppose his strikeout pace had already slowed down. He tied an American League record by striking out the first seven Cardinals he faced, mowing down members of his old team. But yeah, we've seen teams let players stretch

pitch count limits when they're pursuing no hitters, even in this era of pitcher usage. On rare occasions, though it's become much more common for pitchers to be pulled, even in hot pursuit of that accomplishment, doesn't seem like even the allure of the 21-strikeout game is enough to conquer that caution and prudence when it comes to the times-through-the-order effect. By the way, Flaherty's Tigers lost that game 2-1 as Kyle Gibson allowed only one run over seven, nine strikeouts for him. So rumors of his demise, perhaps slightly exaggerated. All right, I'll leave you with an unofficial past blast from official past past blaster, Richard Hirshberger, historian and author of Strike Four. Because we've brought up the shift restrictions a couple times, Richard messaged me to say, in his inimitable way, the discussions about the banning of the shift included its being

unprecedented to limit where the fielders could position themselves. The 1892-93 offseason included lively discussions of proposed rule changes to increase offense. The outcome would be moving the pitcher back five feet to his modern position, plus some noodling around the edges with bunting. But many extravagant ideas were bandied about. This one comes from John Gaffney, a well-respected umpire from 1884 to 1900, who proposed the outfielder's box. Here's an excerpt from Sporting Life, December 17, 1892. I think we may have answered a hypothetical like this at some point. Gaffney's suggestion is to put the outfielder's in boxes, just as is done with the pitchers nowadays, and not allow the fielder to move from his box until the ball is hit. These are not literal three-dimensional boxes, to be clear.

That sounds inhumane, the kind of boxes one could draw on the field. Wouldn't that make things lively for the umpire? Wouldn't he have his hands full to watch those fielders, especially when a left-handed batsman came to the bat? It would be a job to keep Tommy McCarthy and his box depend upon it. Again, this idea would prevent the fielders from playing for batsmen as is done at present and tend to make the automatic fielder just as valuable as the man who does not play baseball with his head. And that is not automatic fielder like automatic runner. Automatic as in defends everyone the same way, presumably. Stands in the same spot. Doesn't play the percentages. So the idea,

at least, if not the reality of limiting where fielders could stand in an attempt to increase offense and have more balls fall for hits, that one goes back to the 19th century. File that under nothing new under the sun. And I would have preferred that Rob Manford and co. follow the example of the 1892-93 offseason and move the pitcher back again instead of constraining the fielders. Alas, 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. Brian Blahn, Al Dimmitt, and Parker Oliver Williams, and Peter Armstrong. Thanks to all

of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, as well as monthly bonus episodes, one of which we recorded over the weekend and is either already available

or about to be available by the time you hear this. It's our 30th bonus podcast for Patreon supporters. So if you sign up at that tier of support, you get immediate access to a big back catalog,

30 more episodes of Ben and Meg. This time we did a low stakes rant and a low stakes confession. And then we drafted our five favorite artists slash entertainers of all time. Your Patreon membership can also bring access to playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, discounts on merch and ad free fan crafts memberships and so much more. Check out all the offerings at Patreon.com slash effectivelywild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can still contact us via email. Don't hesitate to send your questions and comments and intro and outro themes to podcast at fancrafts.com.

You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. If you check the show page, look at the last links, you'll also see the place to sign up for Effectively Wild listener meetups

taking place at MLB ballparks all across the country throughout this season. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We will be back a little later this week. Talk to you then. and pedantically it's Effectively Wild Effectively Wild