Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2159: The Bees and the Birds

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Meg’s unexpected experience at the bee-delayed Diamondbacks game, Shota Imanaga’s hot start, Reed Garrett and the phenomenon of pop-up relievers, Steven Kwan appreciation, how Mike Trout’s and Bryce Harper’s careers will be remembered, José Abreu being optioned to the minors, and a declined penalty in baseball, plus follow-ups […]

How can you not be pedantic? A stab blast will keep you distracted. It's a long slog to death, but the short will make you smile. This is Effectively Wild. This is Effectively Wild. This is Effectively Wild. This is Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2159 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I am joined by Ben Lemberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm all right. How are you? Covered in bees! Tell me about the bees. You were at the bee game. The last time we were recording, you were in a hurry to get to the ballpark. And I guess it turns out that you didn't have to be in a hurry because bee delay. anything at all it's just been hard go for me you know it's like uh the the muscle has atrophied um

and so i feel like i keep tweaking it every time i so anyway i've been i'm fascinated by chase field as like a place i think that it is a a reflection of like a particular kind of arizona dirt bag but also like a place that is aspiring to be more than that. There's a gym in center field, Ben, like you can, you just have a gym membership and you can't see the game from the gym to be clear,

but like there's a, there's an entry point to the gym in center fields. Why? Why? Yeah. Why? Okay. So,

so like, there's a lot about it that is very arizona and i i felt myself uh compelled to like defend it as a place um in october when various uh tired um not trying to be snarky but snarky members of the the national baseball media, bright minds, friends of ours came through and were they were pretty rude about Chase, if I'm if I'm being honest. And look, some of that rudeness is deserved. You know, there's like an earned aspect to it. But also when you live in a place and you come to inhabit it, you get defensive on its behalf, even if it objectively isn't a thing that requires an answer from you. Right. Like it's just a big baseball Costco in the middle of the desert. I could leave it alone, but I can't, Ben. I feel attached to it. Right.

All of that is preamble to say, like, you know, I've been trying to write about it as a place. So I was like, can I get back on the horse? I'm going to go to the field and I'm going like observe the vibe particularly with the dodgers in town you know because i got to observe that vibe in a playoff setting going very differently than anyone anticipated including me even given uh the injuries to the dodgers rotation last year and so i was like i'm gonna go i'm gonna go to the park. And I got there and I'm thinking about Vibe and I did a lap, you know, be free lap, a be free lap. Not at the gym, to be clear, just around the ballpark. Although I did walk past the gym, mostly to confirm. Yeah, so there, that gym. There's a gym in center field, Ben. You know, people fixate on the pool, but really you want to know the spirit of the place. I think it's that gym.

When they added the gym, the Diamondback CEO, Derek Hall, I'm reading, said, it's a perfect fit. It's a perfect fit. Yes. I guess it was physically. It fit, hopefully. Well, sure, but spiritually also. Yeah, true. Like ecumenically.

13,000 square feet. Yeah, it's big. It's a big gym. And according to the story, first public fitness center housed inside a U.S. sports venue. Incredible. Yeah. I mean, I guess it's not surprising that there weren't many prior to that, but okay. Someone's got to be the first. Right.

We spent all this time a couple episodes ago thinking about like living at the ballpark and having apartments in old ballparks. And we didn't even talk about the gym, Ben. So anyway, I do a lap. There are no bees. No bees to be seen. I'm up in the box. I'm working on the Diamondbacks prospect list, which went live at FanGraphs today.

Beautiful night. Roof open. Always nice. Not always true, right? You sit there and you're like, it's probably one of the last times until later into the fall that the roof can be open because it's getting hot. I'm not thinking about bees. I just wasn't thinking about bees because why would you be thinking about bees, Ben? You're at the ballpark. You're there to watch baseball. You're there thinking about Dodgers. You're thinking about Diamondbacks. You're thinking about snakes if

you're thinking about a creature at all, right? Unless you were watching the Salt Lake Bees, but otherwise, yeah. But otherwise, and I wasn't. I was there to watch the diamondbacks and the Dodgers and you're sitting there going, there's Baxter. He still doesn't have pants. So you're thinking about that. And then you look up and you notice down on the field that the umpires and the managers are having a chat and they look very serious. And then the pointing starts. And above home plate on the netting behind home, perched, buzzing. You know, we need bees. Like the ecosystem calls for bees.

There's bee death. It's very alarming. We, you know, we want to protect the bees. They're important. But also, the sight of any large group of insects swarming and walking over each other, I do find very off-putting. There's something about it that I think you have an evolutionary response to. I shouldn't be close to that. response to like i shouldn't be close to that you know and so i was sitting there and there were the bees and everyone's starting to notice the bees and then noticing how many bees and ben it was so many bees it was just you know after the game they said that it was thousands of bees and i don't know if it was thousands of bees but it might have been thousands of bees so many bees and then you're thinking about the fact that they are on the netting. It's going to get hit by foul balls. If you foul the ball back, what happens? And then you think about the fact that the Chase Field press box is at bee level. parallel to those bees and there were so many bees spent and then uh they announced over the the press box pa attention media we are currently in a delay due to a bee swarm on the net behind

home plate again we are currently in pre-game delay due to a bee swarm on the net behind home plate if there were just bees somewhere in the ballpark, it probably doesn't delay the baseball game, right? Like, there can be ambient bees. There probably are ambient bees a lot of the time, even when the roof isn't open, right? There's all kinds of critters running around in there. And you don't see most of them, but they're there. You know, they're there. There's food and spit.

So there's bound to be, you know, critters of some kind, insects, small mice, other rodents, probably scorpions in the desert. Could be true. I don't know. I've never seen a scorpion in Arizona. Like I have lived here for a while now and I haven't seen them, which I'm happy about because you don't want to mess with those. But when the bees are concentrated on the netting, you're like, again, what happens if a foul ball goes back into the netting as it is sure to do, at least at some point? Do they disperse? Do they swarm? Do they sting everyone around them? Do they come into the press box? And then I'm sitting there and I'm like, there aren't windows on the press box. Are we, we're not closing the windows of the press

box? We're not, we're like, somebody in here has to have a bee allergy. I don't, but somebody surely does. And so we learned that we're in a bee delay. And in one of those moments where you realize how interconnected the world is, it takes mere moments for the news of the bee delay to reach the internet and then for the internet to go absolutely crazy for the bee delay. And this is not unprecedented in baseball. There have been bee delays before, but it's been a while and I had never experienced one in person. So it was new to me. Baseball Twitter was buzzing. Yeah. And telling us to be careful. I'm going to pause here and allow you to ask any questions if you have them before I continue on with my tale of the bees. Well, I just wonder how you spent your bee delay, because if you didn't have a membership at Mountainside Fitness and you couldn't go get a quick workout in Centerfield, did you write about the bee delay as you were waiting? Did you edit

the Diamondbacks list during your bee delay? Yeah, I did do that. I mean, I took some notes again because at some point I'm going to have a breakthrough. I'm going to be able to do it. The good thing about being in a state of writing paralysis is when you set for yourself a high degree of difficulty pieces because that makes it easier to get out of it. It's a really good way to steer out of the skid. I spent it editing the Diamondbacks list. I was seated between our lead prospect analyst, Eric Langenhagen, and Bob Nightingale. So we were talking about the bees. We talked about the bees for a little while. We learned some stuff about bees. Did you witness Nightingale taking any blurry phone photos of the bees? Oh, yeah, Ben.

I sure did. Were you starstruck in the presence of the Nightingale blurry photo well you know bob's my um my bvwa chapter head right so i didn't want to rib him too hard but i i did delight in watching him get you know get good in good position and then of course one wonders like how long does it take to get a beekeeper quite a while as it turns out yeah and where does where does the beekeeper come from and then i'm like does the beekeeper have like their beekeeping equipment in the in the car are they just like on call as a beekeeper all the time are they like is it like you know are they batman are they beam man you know i was impressed by the um logistical awareness of the D-backs, baseball, ballpark ops people.

Because it became clear that they had located the beekeeper in the greater Phoenix metro area and wanted to be able to take action as soon as the beekeeper arrived. And so they brought out one of those scissor lifts. And then I sat there and I was like, how tall did those things go? I was worried for a moment that it would not be tall enough and they would have to either lower the net, but then doesn't that disturb the bees? I was like, it's going to be really funny if they go to the max height

and then they're like, it's too short. We got to get a different lift. That didn't happen. They actually know how tall those are. It's sort of a predictable thing. But so they brought the lift out. And when the guy initially came out with the lift, there was cheering. And then there was another gentleman who, in hindsight, foolish of us to think he was the beekeeper because he was

not in. Not only was he not in gear, but he was in a D-backs polo. And I was like, if they had a beekeeper on staff, I think that they would have been he would have been out there much faster than he was so that's clearly not the beekeeper no he was just the guy who got the biggest cheer anyone has ever received for bringing a vacuum out yeah then we waited you know and i was like oh i'm gonna edit christian men as blurb and gonna check in on tommy troy and oh drew jones it's not going well. As an aside, boy, what a bad situation that seems to be right now. And then he emerges, the beekeeper, the man himself, you know? Yeah, man of the hour, bee guy. With his suit, you know, that was thrilling to have. He's got his suit. And then I sat there

and thought, has he ever operated a scissor lift before? Because there was definitely a little bit of like teaching him how to do it. And then he puts on the suit and people are cheering and ecstatic. And again, press box not being evacuated. And like, I don't want to overstate the potential peril, but I was like, if this goes wrong, are those bees just going to come in here? Should we close the windows? We did not do that. He gets up there and, you know, he's spraying stuff on them because they don't want to kill the bees.

They want to remove the bees and stun them, but not kill them because, again, precious. And they are dying, Ben. They are dying in alarming numbers. Remove them humanely or beemanely. I don't know. I don't know. So he, you know, he sprays the bees and then he vacuums up the bees. He just vacuums up the bees. He just vacuums up the bees.

The gentleman's name is Matt Hilton, and he's been with his pest control company for like 14 years. He was out at his kid's t-ball game in Surprise. Miraculously did not hit traffic coming into the city, which I remain shocked by. That's like a 30, 40 minute drive. But if there's traffic, it can take you an hour because, you know, the metro is kind of silly in that way sometimes. And he vacuums them up, and then he triumphantly fist pumps and tries to pump up the crowd and, you know.

And then, like, we were like, great. And then we had to wait another half hour because, like, then they had to get ready again. And I sat there and I was like, is Jordan Montgomery going to be able to start this game? And as it turned out, he was not able to do that because by the time first pitch rolled around, not the ceremonial first pitch that Matt Hilton threw out, but the game's first pitch, we had effectively had a two hour long delay. That know, that game was supposed to start at six 40. And I was like, Oh no,

the cats, like who's going to feed the cats? Like, good God. So it was a, a thing I had never seen at the ballpark before, you know, fulfilling the cliche.

Yes. Seeing something you'd never seen before. I saw something I had never seen. I saw a bunch of bees. There were so, there were so many bees And he just got them. He got them all. And I got to say, you know, I can't imagine that when Matt Hilton woke up that morning that he thought his day was going to go that way at all.

To save the game. Because, you know, they addressed the media afterward, like in the middle of this Dodgers-D-backs game. And they were quite close to having to call it, you know, because there comes a time where it's like, it's just been too long and you have to call it and I guess play double header the next day. And so him getting there as quickly as he did and dispensing with the bees allowed them to play that game. And then this guy gets to get a huge cheer, standing ovation from the crowd, gets to throw out a ceremonial first pitch. I will admit, if I have one note

for Matt, I wanted him to throw the first pitch with the mask on, you know? And he very dramatically like threw it back to reveal his face. And that was a nice moment. And I get it, because he was like, I did it, and you should know what I look like. Yeah. And no small amount of internet thirst for Matt Hilton. Yeah. He was not a bad-looking guy and had a chiseled jaw. And we love a beekeeper, but we especially love a beekeeper with a chiseled jaw, I guess. Sure. And he throws out the first pitch, does just fine at that, having had no warning, right? Not having warmed up.

And then they brought him up to the media dining room that is adjacent to the press box. And this guy, who is like a pest control dude, who I'm sure doesn't typically have to engage with the media at all sat there and gamely answered questions as 40 people were like this is great we got to know everything about your life and now he has a tops now card and I bought it and we're not even sponsored by them right now I was like you know what I was there and I want this tops now card I do I sponsor us again, Tops Now. I bought your product. I'm excited about it.

It's interesting because we joke sometimes or people will joke about, well, what if we went about our business and our jobs and we were greeted the way that Major League Baseball players are greeted, professional athletes. Like what if there were people heckling us while we were doing our jobs or hailing us as heroes when we were doing our jobs? Just whatever office job you do, whatever routine thing that generally people don't sell tickets to. It doesn't draw great attendance. You don't do a press conference. You don't get to throw out

the ceremonial first pitch, right? And he ended up in that situation where he was just going about his business. He was just doing the thing that he does every day. And I'm sure that people are grateful to him sometimes and say, great job with the bee removal. Because wherever he's removing bees from, people are probably pretty pleased that he took care of that situation. But he's not usually getting a standing ovation and internet attention and a baseball card. And yet he didn't do anything different from what he does probably every day. He just did it in a different context.

And that context changed everything. So we're all heroes in some small way is what I'm taking away from this. If we were just transported to a situation where us completing our typical task was essential to starting a Major League Baseball game, then we too could take our bows and throw out a first pitch. So it's just a routine, mundane excellence that we all practice in our respective fields. And this time he got to tip his cap or remove it entirely and then throw out a first pitch. It reminds me of the email hypothetical we had recently about how long could a ceremonial first pitcher delay the start of the game. I guess the Bs in this case were doing the delaying, not Matt, not B guy. But if he had delayed the B removal longer, if he had dragged that out, then he could have delayed the start of the game even longer.

But he did not. He expedited the start of it. So, apian all-star, Matt Hilton, bee guy. Bee guy. Thank you, bee guy. You know? And I love it when, you know, a person has an appreciation for a moment that they're unlikely to find themselves in again. Right.

Like he kind of hammed it up a little bit. Yeah. And I said, tip of the calf to you, Matt, when is this ever going to happen again? When are you ever going to get to be the guy who gets cheered, who gets to,

I do want to know who they bumped. Cause in theory, there was already a ceremonial first pitch planned, right? True. Who did they bump? Or was that person like, look, it's been too long. I got to get out of here and be traffic calm. Or maybe they gracefully stepped aside and said, you know what? This is the man of the hour here. This is his moment. Let him seize the spotlight.

Maybe. Maybe they took one for the team, literally, because they were like, this guy is the hero of the moment. But yeah, he clearly enjoyed himself as well as he should. It was a delight. It was a very weird thing to get to witness. And then, you know, it was a two-hour delay. It knocked Montgomery out. And then the D-backs had to throw an impromptu bullpen game. And went to extras and went on a walk-off.

So there was a little bit of that game had everything. There was a little bit of something for everybody. But, yeah, it was quite a time at the ballpark. All right. Well, we had an on-field, on-the-scene correspondent, effectively, while Wes there. So thank you for reporting. And were the lights brighter at chase once they got the game going at least did you notice that i will say uh i will say

that like the the facelift that chase has undergone this year is like on some level kind of superficial right there are there are bigger issues that need to be addressed like they still aren't allowed to open the roof with fans in the stands and clearly like there's you know the bathroom still smell weird um but it has been brightened i i can also confirm i think that they have um improved the sound system because it sounds much better than it did and there have been some new concessions added and they are good, but I still think that the beer needs an upgrade there. And that's no knock on four peaks. Your product is fine. But I came of age, I came of drinking age at a ballpark that has superlative beer choices

and my standards are high and Chase does not meet them and like i went yesterday just on a ticket because i wanted to see yamamoto uh in person that was great fun not for the d-backs they had a bad night but um yamamoto was great and uh i tried a new beer and it wasn't you know it wasn't a four peaks don't worry you guys but it wasn't it wasn't good ben it was it was it was three it was bad enough that i even though it was I was like, I will not succumb to the sunk cost fallacy and drink this beer I don't like. And I didn't. I poured it out in the bathroom. So you had yourself a beer?

Bad. Bad. It wasn't a honey ale, though, so the joke falls apart on those grounds. I should just stay silent for the rest of the episode and penance for my terrible wordplay so far, but that would place an undue burden on you to just monologue for the rest of the pod. So I will continue to talk,

but I'll try to refrain or at least improve my wordplay from this point forward. So I wanted to revisit one of your preseason predictions, your bold preseason predictions, so far, looking pretty good for you. Shota Imanaga will finish with a higher fangrass war than Yoshinobu Yamamoto. That was one of yours. And I guess a good deal of the audience actually agreed or said 50%, I think, of voters supported that contention. So there was a sizable Imanaga lobby out there. Yes.

But boy, he's looked really great through his first several starts. Friend of the show, Bailey over at Foolish Baseball tweeted that his.78 ERA is the lowest through a pitcher's six career starts, first six career starts since Fernando Valenzuela in 1981. So as Bailey said, it's Imanaga mania. Now, Yamamoto has been good too, particularly after his initial brief disastrous start in South Korea, right? But he's looked more like himself and more like the Dodgers, the guy the Dodgers thought they were getting since then.

So he's going to be just fine. But it's working out so far. So Yamamoto is 60th in Fangraph's War thus far with a solid 1.0. And Imanaga is 33rd at, well, 1.2. So it's not like he's built up a big lead or anything. Right. third at, well, 1.2. So it's not like he's built up a big lead or anything. The problem is that some of Imanaga's success so far probably built on the back of a low home run per fly ball rate. I was just going to say, I mean, like, if you sort the leaderboard, it's dramatic.

Right. He's not a big ground ball guy, Peter Ward, it's dramatic. Right. He's not a big ground ball guy, and yet he has not allowed a lot of home runs so far in his 34 and two-thirds innings pitched. He has allowed a mere, well, 0.52 home runs per nine. That will come up, right? Yes. Especially that will come up.

Now, you know, if the ball is a little deader, which remains to be seen as we discussed, then maybe that'll help him. But still, Wrigley, when the weather warms up, depending on which way the wind is blowing, things might not go so great for him at that point. So the 0.78 ERA is backed up by a very solid 2.21 FIP, but the XFIP, which normalizes the home run rate and regresses that to the league average, that's 3.15, which is still great, but higher than Yamamoto's 2.73, right? So, you know, look, Yamamoto, he's got better stuff.

He misses more bats. This is why he was much more hyped and much pricier in addition to the fact that he's a lot younger, right? But I'm not actually saying that the hierarchy has changed here. However, through six starts, Imanaga has been great and is making your bold prediction look good and has endeared himself to Cubs fans in more than one way. He's a good quote, clearly. He's a fun personality, and it's fun to see him get off to such a strong start. And actually, yeah, Yamamoto's had seven starts because of the early start to his starts that he had. But he's had like the same number of innings because that first one didn't last very long.

It sure did not. I've been quite impressed with him i think you're right that he will almost certainly give up more home runs than he has and he's like you know he's his left on base percentage is super high too but he's been fantastic in the in the early going here and just seems like he also seems like a fun affable dude um so like that's nice but yeah i think that he doesn't have to maintain this level of home run suppression to still be incredibly effective as a starter right when we talked about sort of the places where it could go wrong for him uh coming into the season like we were we were worried about how fly ball heavy he was in his MPB career, particularly with that ballpark. And I think that what I was worried about is that if it was going to unravel, it was going to be

like, this is actually a catastrophic level of fly balls. And he's giving up a ton of home runs. He can give up more home runs than he is now. And it'll probably still be fine. Like he seems like he is avoiding the extreme downside scenario, and he's been fantastic so far. It's really exciting. You know who has a lower ERA than Imanaka? Is it a B? Is it a B?

It is Reed Garrett. Oh, okay. Sorry. You don't have to force one. I'm being annoying. You don't have to succumb to my irritation. Jeff Sullivan beat of pop-up relievers who kind of come out of nowhere and are amazing and how excited should we get about them. And he pitched another scoreless inning today as we speak on Thursday, and that lowered his ERA further to.54. He's a 31-year-old who had some unspectacular stints in the majors previously with a few teams, with the Tigers, with the Nationals, with the Orioles, and then with the Mets. And he entered this season with a career ERA of 7.11 and a career FIP of 5.92 in a mere 44 and a third innings over three major league seasons.

And so far with Mets, he has pitched now 16 and two thirds innings and he has allowed, well, four runs, but one earned. And he's struck out like 15 per nine and he doesn't have like a super unsustainably low BABIP or high home run per fly ball rate. It's kind of low, but not as low as Zemanaka's. So he's got a two FIP now. How excited do you get about a reliever who kind of comes out of nowhere and is good in 10 or 15 innings or how many innings does it take for you to get excited about such a guy? If he plays for the Mariners, two and a third. No. As much as I am snarking and perhaps betraying a fan bias, I do think that my answer is in some ways predicated on who the guy plays for and what my prior understanding or bias, depending on how you want to put it,

of their pitching dev is, right? So if it's a guy who is playing for a team that is lousy at that, I tend to be a little bit skeptical for longer, although it really depends on the way that they're better, right? So if a reliever was previously sort of meh and now is throwing harder, well, maybe I'm more intrigued, although I'm concerned that they're going to snap in half because if they've added a pitch that gives them new effectiveness against a handedness that they were previously kind of stinky against. Right.

That might change it. But it takes a little while. But I also don't try to get too invested in relievers because even good ones can suck for stretches because it's just a very volatile profile. Right. On the one hand, get excited about all of them because who cares? You know, like they might suck later, but that's just sort of an occupational hazard. Enjoy fun stuff while it's in front of you. On the other hand, don't get excited about any of them. Think that they're

all suspect and be wary forever because they're going to suck soon. You know, you can make a argument in either direction there, I think. Yeah, and he went to Japan and pitched there for the St. Louis Lions for a couple years in between major league stints prior to this season. And it's not like he's overpowering or anything. Ben Clemens in his post said, how is he doing it? With a big pile of junk, more or less. And I mean that as a compliment. He just doesn't throw a lot of fastballs. He's like a big slider splitter guy.

But he has like multiple sliders and kind of like a hard gyro one and then a sweeper style one that he added last year. And it's working really well. So, I mean, there are just so many relievers. And many of them are just interchangeable and kind of anonymous as Reed Garrett was before now. So it's like, how long does it take for someone to graduate from the ranks of, yeah, he's just another guy you probably haven't heard of to, oh, wow, we got to pay attention to Reed Garrett suddenly. And I guess Mets pitching dev is on the upswing. I've heard good buzz, so to speak, about Mets pitching dev. They've had some success in the past, obviously, too. But more recently, it seems like maybe they have unlocked something with their pitching development there.

So, Reed Garrett, I'm interested in seeing what he does. Maybe there's going to be a bit of an Imanaga-esque regression coming at some point, I'm sure. But suddenly he's a useful reliever, at least. Who knew? Who knew? I have also been watching a lot of Stephen Kwan lately. Me too, Ben. Me too.

Oh, I'm so glad. Stephen Kwan is just delightful. What a great player. I mean, I know Fangraphs was high on him relative to the consensus. Relative to consensus. He was a 50. He was a top 100 guy, but he wasn't like, it's not like we had him stuffed at 10 or anything like that.

He was a top 100 guy for us. We were the high publication on him for sure. But he wasn't a top 100 guy for anyone else really, right? Like Baseball America, MLB.com, Baseball Prospectus. I don't think any of them had him as a top 100 guy because the thought was, well, it's just not going to work as well at the upper levels, right? Like he just won't have the power they'll knock the bat out of his hands it's all well and good to be selective and take walks in the minors but at some point you gotta swing and you gotta hit and you gotta drive the ball he's is it an exaggeration to say that he's like one of the best players in baseball i mean

you know i guess you have to specify one of, what does that mean? That could mean top 1,000 or something. But, you know, he's really good. I mean, he has been basically a top 10 player this year. Yeah. And he has been really good in the past too. I mean, in 2022 when he was a rookie, he was like a five-win player. And then last year, not quite as good, but still above average.

And this year, he's off to just a fantastic start. Fantastic start. I love his game. Like, we just, there aren't a lot of players who do it the way that he does it. There's a lot you could say about Kwon this year. But here's the part that I find the most fascinating. And I know that Davey Andrews plans on doing like a deep dive on Kwon next week. So like I'm claiming the cupcake in the break room on Davey's behalf. Everybody, here is the stat that I find the most sort of

interesting about Kwon, which is like you said, he doesn't he's not a power guy, right? That's not his game. He's like a contact and speed guy. So you would think like, oh, he's been so good. He's taking a step forward. Surely he's unlocked his power. And it's like, well, but not really. He has the best barrel rate of his career, but the lowest hard hit percentage. And so it's just like an interest, like how he is hitting the ball hard on when I love this. And I'm going to do the thing that I tell everyone to not do. OK, but you made me because you were like, let's talk about Stephen Quentin. And I was like, yeah, it's exciting. Almost a two win player already.

Yeah. Yeah. almost a 2-1 player already. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like he is in some ways the very special particle who behaves differently when I'm observing him. I do not watch every Guardians game, okay? I know that they're having a fine start to the season.

They're 20-10, right? They're doing well. They are so far exceeding my expectations of them, which were very middling coming into the year and took a hit, a further hit when Bieber went down, right? I was like, well, this isn't going to go well. But they're 20-10. They're atop the

AL Central. They are rounding into what looks to be a good team. I feel like every time I turn on a Guardians game, Stephen Kwan is doing something cool in the outfield. Yeah. He is, you know, and like his defensive war is going to be suppressed in large part because of the positional adjustment because he plays left.

But like if you, and you shouldn't, if you shouldn't look at war at this point in the year, you really shouldn't look at underlying defensive metrics at this point in the year because that way lies madness. But he's just having a great start out there so far in a way that you know we talked about this a bit with with other ben when he was on to talk about fallers and risers like you kind of at this stage of the game want your your eye test and the stats to be pointed in the same direction even if you don't think too hard about sort of the magnitude

of any of those defensive metrics like i'm not gonna change my opinion about who the best defenders in baseball are at this stage based on you know a couple of weeks of like oaa or drs like that that would not be sound but you look at his underlying metrics and then i turn on three guardians games and like every time it's been like yeah those seem right, you know? Or pointed in the right direction. And it seems like every time I turn on the Guardians, not only is Stephen Kwan doing something cool in the outfield, but he is very often doing the left field version

of the Nick Castellanos, but in a good way. You know that slide-on-your-butt grab that Castellanos has done a couple of times in the playoffs in a way that makes you like, is he a good defender? It's like, no, he's still just a DH and it's really sexy. He has to be out there so much. But anyway, Kwon.

Yeah. Steven Kwon. I, oh, Ben, I'm so glad you brought him up. I got, I got so many good things to say about Steven Kwon. Like he's just a super fun little player. Yeah. Yeah. And he's hit three homers, which doesn't sound like a lot, but that's halfway to his career high.

So he has hit for more power, like his ISO is up from the 100 range to the 150 range, which given everything else he does and the contacts he makes and the base running and the speed and the defense, that's a pretty darn good package in the player. And there was some talk during spring about how the Guardians were trying to get their contact guys to hit for a bit more power, even if it meant swinging and missing more often. And I think one of those guys was Myles Straw. So, okay. They didn't really even find out if that was going to work and probably wasn't. And Kwon was like, I don't know how to swing through a pitch. Like, I don't even know how to miss or how to tolerate missing. This is so far into my approach at the plate. And I was kind of worried that they were going to screw him up or something.

Yeah. That like they'd get in his head and he'd be like, okay, I have to try to be a power guy now. And he'd get away from his game. And clearly that has not happened. So maybe selectively he is swinging harder and maybe is producing harder contact at times. But that so far at least has not taken any toll. There has not been any tradeoff when it comes to his contact rate.

When it comes to his strikeout rate, he is striking out even less so far than he did last year. So he's like one of the few guys who's going to give you maybe almost as many walks as strikeouts. Not quite this year, but in the past. That's basically, you know, been even more or less. He walks roughly as often as he strikes out. He does not strike out a lot at all. And yeah, he is probably playing over his head a bit too now. He's got a.378 BABIP. Yeah, I was just about to say.

Woba's well over his ex-Woba, et cetera. We know all the signs there, right? But when you start with the high floor that he has because he's an elite base runner and left fielder at least, then you only have to be kind of good, like pretty good, decent, average even to be a valuable player overall. I mean, at the plate, that is. And if he can be significantly better than that, then he's a star, you know, whether he's really regarded as one or not. So I also just I like an elite left fielder because it's so weird. I like an elite left fielder who doesn't really have her power. Yeah, right.

There have been good defensive left fielders over the years, but usually if you're a really talented outfielder, you get shunted over to center or right, let's say. And every now and then you get like an Alex Gordon situation where you get a really good outfielder who plays left and just wins the gold glove every year as Kwon has his first two seasons and seems well on his way to doing again. And it's interesting because when he came up as a rookie, his stat cast arm grades weren't great and his arm strength and

his arm value were both subpar. And then if you look at last year, his arm value was still slightly subpar, but his arm strength was higher, was above average. And this year, at least so far, yes, small sample, but 86 percentile arm value, 75th percentile arm strength, in addition to 92 percentile range. Like he's kind of overqualified to be a left fielder if his arm is pretty decent or better now too.

And it's maybe, I don't know if it's kind of like an accident that he ended up being entrenched in left field. And maybe if his arm had been as good when he came up as it is now, it's not like the Guardians have had a surplus of outfielders or skilled center fielders, right? So I wonder if there's any consideration of moving him at some point, but I just, I kind of like just having someone who, you know, it's easy to like rack up high values relative to the average if you're playing a position where the average is, you know, you just stick someone out there because they can do the least damage there.

They're going to get the fewest opportunities. And, you know, it's the closest thing to a DH left fielder. And so when you get someone like Stephen Kwan out there, relative to your expectations for the person at that position, it's like you're being treated to, wow, the left fielder made that play? Oh, right. It's like you're being treated to, wow, the left fielder made that play? Oh, right, it was Stephen Kwan. Yeah, totally. And you're right to say that, you know,

the guardians are on any given day still trying to shake off the curse that I am convinced was laid upon them when they refused to give Michael Brantley a qualifying offer. You know, I just like, after that, it was like, well, I guess you have to suffer now. Like the gods have something to say but yeah i i do wonder if there would have been a change in his trajectory

i don't want to overstate the case of like how adept he would like he's he gets to be plus and left and so that's nice you know it might um might not be quite so impressive and right and i do think the arm is like you know there, there's some limitations there. He's a small guy, you know. He's 5'9". He's not a big dude. It's not like Straw had a good arm either, really, either. I mean, what did Straw have that was good?

I don't want to be mean here, but like there wasn't a lot bolstering the profile. Let's put it that way. Yeah. And I guess his speed, I mean, maybe he'd be sort of slow for a center fielder, Kwon would be, because he's not super fast, but obviously he gets good reads and reactions and everything. So could make it work, because there have been center fielders who were super speedy and they're just not good.

That's not all there is to defense. So I do... Like Corbin Carroll, but doesn't look good up there right now. So I do kind of wonder as they try to figure, you know, they've got like Tyler Freeman out there in center right now. So he's not exactly like blocked by someone

who just kind of has that position on lock. But maybe it's just like, well, if you move him over, then he has to learn that on the fly if he wasn't prepped for it and then you have two people maybe playing out of position and then you're gonna have a weak left fielder instead and right he's so elite in left that you might as well just let him cook there you know so whatever he's he's playing i just enjoy his game because yeah there are not a lot of players with this profile and every time you see

someone like this, you kind of wonder will it inspire copycats or will player development organizations say, oh, we can develop more players like this? Probably not because it just kind of goes against things that typically are beneficial

and teams have identified the traits that tend to work well and Stephen Kwan works well because he has like elite top of the scale, plate discipline and contact ability and not everyone has that.

So it's tough to really replicate that profile. But man, when you can, when you see it, I'd love to see him just break out and win a batting title or something.

I don't know that he can do that or will do that. He's, again, a little bit over his skis right now. But it would be really fun to see him do that. You're right that it isn't as if teams are going to look out at the world and be like, let's develop guys to be like this. But I do like there being proof of concept guys who are really good. And you're right that they often have a truly elite standout tool. Finding guys who have truly elite standout tools

is not easy, regardless of the tool. It's hard to be elite because baseball is really hard. But I think having an openness to this guy doesn't look like other dudes in our system but he does have this elite characteristic and we have seen that guys with that elite characteristic if it truly is sort of a top of the scale tool, can be meaningful big league contributors. Like having room within the ecosystem for an understanding of that as potentially valuable, even if you're not going to reorient your entire sort of scouting and player dev apparatus to that profile, I think is a good thing because it's good. You know, we've talked about this a lot.

Baseball is more fun when you see a lot of different kinds of guys and you want all of those kinds of guys to be really good. And there are ways that are easier to be really good or at least, you know, have greater margin for error within the profile than a guy like Kwon. But when you have a guy like Kwon who can do what he's doing and do it really well, that is exciting because, you know, we, we don't want it to all be Aaron judge. It would be kind of boring. It would be interesting and it would be interesting to see like,

are all of their toes vulnerable or is it just that Aaron judge? But, you know, it's good to, I think, have a little variety because it's more fun to watch. Yeah. And maybe it makes you a little less likely to miss the next guy who could potentially become that player. And you could get yourself into trouble if you see every player like that, every prospect who kind of has that profile and makes it work, let's say, as an amateur in the lower levels of the minors and you say, oh, he's the next Stephen Kwan. He's the next Luis Arias.

Well, probably not, right? There's a reason why they are rare and why that doesn't work for everyone. active examples floating around, then you can at least dream on it and you can just not rule them out and say, oh, there's no one who has that profile at the major league level. So there's no way this can work. I wrote a story about Luis Uriah's last season and how he wasn't a top 100 guy either and scouts sort of missed on him. And a lot of it was just like, well, yeah, it's hard to anticipate someone who's an outlier like that. And it is. So it's really hard to scout even like conventional kind of players, let alone those guys. But if you do have some outliers around, then maybe you recognize the next outlier.

Or maybe you fall prey to thinking that the next guy will be an outlier and then he won't and then you'll look silly. But at least there's a possibility. So we didn't talk about Mike Trout's injury last time because it happened after we recorded. I did append a little update on that news to the pod before it went up. But it's bad news and we were sad about it and we were sad about it. And everyone was sad about it, even though it was not unanticipated. And I got distracted by bees. Yeah, I guess that was a good thing to take your mind off. Bees instead of knees. Trout used to be the bees' knees. But trout, what I have reflected on is that I think there is kind of a popular thought about Trout now that, oh,

what if? Like, we're already into what might have been a territory, which is sort of sad. Like, we've all kind of just conceded, okay, well, the back half of his career is not what we hoped it would be. And, you know, we keep hoping that he'll actually have another healthy elite season again, but those hopes are just eroding season by season and injury by injury. And I feel like mentally we've already kind of lumped him into the Griffey post-30 category, right? I mean, Griffey also had knee issues and other issues, but it's instructive, I think, because Griffey and Trout, similar career wars to this point. I think Trout passed Griffey in the career wars maybe last season. I mean, he's just like a few war ahead of Griffey, and it was kind of a – maybe we talked about it when that happened because there was a lot of discourse around like, oh, war says Trout's better than Griffey, but Griffey was such a star, right?

And so they differ in that respect. But Trout is a top 50 player all time right now, at least according to baseball reference. I think he is exactly 50th. And so it's hard to call someone like that a disappointment. And yet it does feel disappointing with Trout, which I think is a testament to how great he has been. The fact that you can't say that like, oh, he didn't fulfill his potential, but you can kind of, you know of. You shouldn't be able to. He's one of the best players ever.

You don't even have to do any extrapolation or anything. He's a top 50 all-time player. He's like between Chipper Jones and George Brett, basically, on the baseball reference war leaderboard. And we think of those as great Hall of Famers. And we will think of Trout as a great Hall of Famer too. And yet, if he never does really recover and be healthy again and play at a Trout-like level for a sustained stretch again, then so much of the conversation about his career and the way we remember his career will be kind of a downer. It'll be like, oh, if only, you know.

But I don't know that there's a player ahead of him on that Warheader board who has that if only, really, because it's really hard to get that high and still be a case of like, gosh, if only things had gone right for him, you know. Like generally everything has to go right for you to get into that elite territory that rarefied air so it is it has made me reflect once more on just how productive and valuable he has been to this point that he could be at age 32 still the 50th

most valuable player of all time and yet we're all like lamenting the turn his career has taken. I don't know that I can think of an equivalent, at least in my experience, like lived experience of baseball. It was different with Griffey because in part because he switched teams, in part because like, at least as a Mariners fan who saw him playing at the kingdom, it always felt like his lower half was on borrowed time. So I'm like, aren't you just playing on concrete basically? Like you're running around on concrete and running into walls. Yeah.

I also think that part of the difference for me and this, this might be memory betraying me a little bit here. might be memory betraying me a little bit here um so we we should allow for that and for the fact that like my my sense of trout is like so current and present but griffey like first of all i think that we kind of forget that like some of some of his early seasons and at least at the plate some of his early seasons and since you were like they were not terrible, right? Like they weren't bad some of those early seasons in Cincy. At least in terms of him swinging the bat the defense declined really rapidly.

But the drop-off feels more precipitous to me in the case of Griffey and some of that might just be that all of a sudden Griffey wasn't my guy anymore. You know what I mean? Like that some of it was that where I was like, well, that's not a Seattle problem anymore. And that's wild.

Why would I think that? Like he was still an active baseball player. I was just like, I guess I have to worry about my Cameron now. My Cameron's my dude. But I don't know. Is it my fault for letting Leo write about his base stealing? Is it my fault? Is it Leo's fault? It's not Leo's fault. No, I don't know. Is it my fault for letting Leo write about his base stealing? Is it my fault? Is it Leo's fault?

It's not Leo's fault. No, I don't think we can blame ourselves. Basically, here's what I'm wondering. How many games in a season does he have to play for us to be like, well, he got one more good one in? Like, you know, he is obviously hurt now. He has to have surgery he's gonna be out for a little while but in theory he's not done for the year right this isn't a season-ending injury potentially we've seen you know we've seen joelle and bead come back and play basketball

after tearing his meniscus so like yeah we've also seen trout not returned from things that also weren't supposed to be season-ending injuries. when he is quote unquote ready to return or begins his rehab back to return, like, are they going to rush him if he's, if they're 15 games under 500, like probably not. Right. Because he's, he keeps saying he's not leaving.

He keeps saying that Ben, you know, like people are like, you can't be serious. And he's like, no, I'm quite serious. I am in fact very serious about be serious. And he's like, no, I'm quite serious. I am, in fact, very serious about not leaving.

And now, another injury. He just seemed so dejected, too, when he was talking about it after the fact. And I don't know Mike Trout, right? And I think that we should be mindful of not armchair-chair psychologizing people we don't know. But I think a person, even a person as talented and as hyper competitive as he is, like, it has to get to a point where you're just like, enough already with this, right? Like, how many times am I going to have to rehab back from something? You know, how many times am I going to have to have the mental and physical fortitude to overcome my body betraying me? And like in a different way now, you know, like.

Yeah. One thing I said on the last pod is just, this is in a sense, maybe the most frustrating or dismaying injury yet because nothing happened. It's not like he collided with something. It's not like he slid and broke a bird bone. Like he didn't even know how it happened. Nothing happened. It's not like he collided with something. It's not like he slid and broke a bird bone. Like he didn't even know how it happened. He didn't. Right. He doesn't know. He was just out there and then he felt a little twinge and it didn't feel like anything serious.

Just like as he was coming off the field, he didn't get hurt in the course of play. There's nothing he could do differently really and say, oh, this is why I got hurt. And therefore, if I avoid that behavior in the future, then this won't happen again. No, he can't do that. And we can't do that. And imagine what that does to his mindset, and certainly for his fans, because you're just thinking, well, at any moment, he could break for no discernible reason, really, right? And it's not like he's not prepared to play or like he's not fit or training hard or taking care of himself. He certainly appears to be, you know? Yeah, we spent time last time being like, he looks great.

Look at that body. It wasn't weird. And yet, yeah. So it's really frustrating. I guess now that I'm sort of scanning the 49 players above him on the all-time baseball reference of war leaderboard, maybe the best comp is the player he's been comped to his whole career, Mickey Mantle. Yeah, people have been talking about Mantle. Who ended up as close to a top 20 player all time. And so how could you say disappointing? And yet you look at him post 30 and he was not the same player. And of course, he did not take very good care of himself. And he was a drinker and a carouser and also hurt himself and tore up his knee. And that was never the same. And he had to tape it up his whole career and grit through a lot of pain and everything. So there's a bit of what if with Mantle, even though he's like a seven-time World Series winner

and one of the very best players of all time and like iconic to a generation, you know. So you wouldn't think that anyone would think of Mickey Mantle as a case of like unfulfilled expectations. And yet he sort of was. And maybe that was exacerbated by the way he, drank himself to death, sadly. But yeah, maybe that ends up being the best comp for Trout for different reasons. Yeah. Just in the sense like inner circle, all time great, who could have been even better somehow. Yeah. I just, whenever there's non-contact injuries, stuff like that, it just feels, in a way that I don't know is necessarily supported by data, but it always just feels more ominous to me, right?

Like, because like you're saying, like, how do you avoid that? If you get hurt running into somebody, you're like, well, first of all, don't do that. And second of all, groundbreaking. And second of all, like, that is a set of circumstances that is theoretically avoidable in a way that is much easier than just the force of your body betraying you, you know, and tearing you apart a little bit, right? It's the same reason that every time Corbin Carroll swings, I feel a little nervous because there's precedent for that guy just being too strong for his own good. And if all the things that you do to try to, you know, weather 162 game season are also putting you on an internal path for destruction, like, what do you do with that? That's rough stuff. path for destruction. Like, what do you do with that? That's rough stuff. Yeah. One thing I raised the specter of briefly was, well, maybe this is the impetus to get him out of center, which is also sort of sad because he does seem to still have the skills to play center field. Like he has the speed and the capacity to play it. And it's not like you can

necessarily look at this and say, oh, he hurt his knee because of the extra running and wear and tear and mileage that a center fielder gets. But since there have been rumblings about him moving, and in the past, that was mostly because his performance out there had declined. But then he seemingly restored his performance out there to some extent and made himself very playable again. And so there's been a little less talk about that, but it is sort of a young man's position. And maybe at some point it's just, well, you got to reduce the wear and tear on Trout and Hope.

Or you could say, well, he's going to get hurt wherever he is. So you might as well just leave him out there as long as he can hack it to just accrue the most value that he can while he is actually on the field. Because who knows? But maybe this makes the calls for that a little louder. Yeah. It's just such a bummer. And it's really sad when you see a player clearly dejected and sort of demoralized um yeah he's an important guy to the sport he's an important player to like our generation of baseball fans he's not the only important guy but he's you know he's one of the best guys and he's had to deal with so much and has managed to like come back from all of that and you know you're allowed

to sound and feel and be disappointed in the moments after learning stuff like that and having to share that stuff and you know invariably go through a round of discourse about what it means for your legacy and your ability to continue and all of that. But it's a rough thing to have to sit and listen to. It's like this means a lot to these guys generally, means a lot to that guy. And now he's going to have to do all of this rest and rehab. And it's definitely something you can come back from, but I wish he didn't have to keep demonstrating a capacity for

that particular kind of resilience, you know? Yeah. Because his whole thing for his whole career has been, what is my weakness or my relative weakness? Okay. I will concentrate on that with laser focus and then I will show up and be the best at that, or at least be better at that. And it seems like he's had that mindset when it comes to his conditioning and his availability, and it hasn't worked. He has been stymied in that area. He's improved in every other respect over the years, except this one. Even Mike Trout cannot just simply set his mind to being better at staying on the field. Like he can. It seems to be the one thing that is beyond his power that eludes him.

So whether we get him giving Stephen Kwan some competition in left field or something or he sticks it out in center, I just continue to hope that at some point. But my hope, it's just getting more and more tenuous. And I was thinking about that also because the Phillies were just playing the Angels and Harper and Trout, and they've kind of been matched up and compared throughout their careers, right? Because Harper was the much more hyped and sensational prospect and has been a great player and a Hall of Fame player in his own right, but was sort of surpassed by Trout initially. And then I was like, well, gee, with Trout being off the field so much and being kind

of compromised when he's on the field, like, has Harper narrowed the gap here, like, career war-wise? Is he catching up? Like, could he catch him? Because I think we answered a listener email about Mookie catching Trout, right? And we said at the time, like, it's possible, but gosh, it'd be hard even for Mookie, though he's certainly making his best attempt this season because just a lot of ground to make up. Yeah, he's playing a good shortstop, though.

And like, oh. That'll help. Yeah. It'll help. Yeah. But even with the recent results for Trout, he has like almost double Harper's Award. And worse, not everything, obviously.

Like you could say that Harper maybe has had the better career in some ways or the more enviable career, at least. Like, you know, if you had to choose one of their careers to have, and hopefully both careers are far from over. But to this point, would you rather be Mike Trout, who he's won plenty of hardware, obviously, but he's been lower profile, you know, by choice as much as anything, and hasn't played in the big games. Harper has played in so many big games and had so many sensational signature moments where he's come up big. And Trout hasn't really, not that he's had many opportunities to come up big in a moment that anyone would really remember, right?

So when you look back at these two careers, at least up till now, you could say that in some respects, Harper's will have been the more memorable. Trout's maybe the more memorable if you look at war leader boards a lot. And I don't know that Harper can really make up a lot of ground either because he's a first baseman now. I was just going to say, yeah. Right. But ultimately, you could say Hall of Fame. I'm not one of the people who's like, it says Hall of Fame. Fame is the name. It's about being famous. I don't think that is really what it's about, but it certainly matters when it comes to how we remember players, if not necessarily whether we enshrine them in the plaque room at Cooperstown.

I don't think my sense again, I do not know. No. Well, I don't know either of them, but my sense is that the relative fame and sort of notoriety that they have suits each of them just right. You know, I think that, you know, I'm sure that Harper's relationship with that level of scrutiny and attention has sort of ebbed and flowed over the years because there have been times where it hasn't been going as well as it has lately um and you know there was all this talk of trout and i'm sure that there have been times when that has been quite frustrating for him but you don't do what he's doing in philly both on the field but mostly off of it unless you're like a willing participant i think in your own sort of hype machine. And I don't I really don't mean that as a knock on him. I know that I talk about like being famous, seeming terrible.

But like, I think if you go into it clear eyed as like a guy who's like, I have an obligation as one of the faces of this franchise. I'm going to try to establish a connection with the fan base. It's going to look like pandering. It is pandering, but it's also sincere pandering. And we're all having a good time. Like, I think that's all fine. And I think that Trout being more interested seemingly in like the weather and hanging out with his wife is also fine. I don't say that like Bryce Harper doesn't want to hang out with his wife, but like, you know, Trout has just assumed a lower profile. profile the most visible outside of baseball he seems to want to be is like when the eagles play and even then you know like he's there to watch the eagles so i think that they're each kind of in the lane they want to be when it comes to that i i do wonder like trout has all this hardware it's not like harper's lacking in it like he's been an mvp twice right like and i think that he was an nlcs mvp and

my truck can't say that and not just because he only plays in the american league you know like you know i don't know i don't know how they would if they were sitting down with like their resumes in hand which pieces of it would they trade with each other i'm not sure neither of them have a world series so no there's that but harper's played in some at least yeah and like if i were taking a guess at which of them has the best opportunity to uh check off that box on the resume my you know i would say harper every single day you know absent trout finally consenting to a trade but like you keep getting hurt like this and the calculus around that changes it it just does like it's a big contract he's often hurt he doesn't want to go anywhere seemingly like i don't know you know but maybe it's for the best

i don't know it's it sucks to think about one of the best players of his generation, arguably the best player of his generation, and have it feel like a letdown. Like, that sucks. And it's not his fault, you know? It's just like guys get hurt. It just happens. Ben, you've bummed me out. I was so excited about the bees at the beginning of this episode. And now I'm just sitting here thinking about Mike Trout being hurt again.

Like, the bees did distract me. I forgot about Trout. And then I remembered when I got home and I was like, oh, right. Mike Trout got hurt today. Or we learned about it today anyhow. By the way, I said Bryce Harper played in some World Series. I should have said played in one World Series. But has been close to some.

I hope that they become teammates like at the very end of their career. I think that'd be great. I want them to become teammates next season. That'd be better. Why wait? But if Trout is really committed to staying with the Angels until his deal is done, I would love to see just aged Trout and Harper just like one last ride together it would be like Tris Speaker in his final season being teammates with Ty Cobb in his final season for the A's like

1928 you got like 40 year old Tris Speaker and 41 year olds Cobb, but we could have that with Trout and Harper, like two of the defining players, outfielders of their generation. That would be really, really cool. I hope that their paths cross in that way at some point, preferably sooner rather than later. But yeah. Speaking of someone who may be sort of circling the train career-wise. We have an update on Jose Abreu, which is that he has been demoted. He has been optioned way down to the complex league, which, I mean, it always sounds like when a player goes to the complex league, that sounds like, gosh, he didn't just go to AAA or something. They busted him down all the way.

But that's not saying he's not even a AAA caliber player at this point. It's just that's where you go to like get yourself straight. Like if he were just playing every day at AAA or something, then he would not. He'd be the best guy on the field probably. I mean maybe not the best guy, but he'd be one of the better guys. Yeah. Right. He'd probably be a good deal better, but he might not have the opportunity to tinker or overhaul himself.

Whatever he has to do to get himself good again or at least playable again, you go down to the complex league and you actually have time to do that and sort of rebuild yourself or maybe it's a mental break. And we've seen pitchers do – it's more common with pitchers, right? Right. Like, you know, the Alec Manoa attempted comeback where you just go all the way down and try to rebuild yourself from the ground up. I guess it makes maybe more sense that it's common with pitchers because, I don't know, they're just like more moving parts mechanically, right? Literally. Hitters, yeah. Hitters, it's probably a little less common to have that happen. And obviously it's not common for a guy of Abreu's status and age and salary to do that because you have to consent to do that, right?

He could not be sent down without his permission and approval. and approval. So for a guy who has been a great player and MVP and, you know, national hero in his home country when he played there and then a star over here, for him to go down and kind of have the humility slash desperation, I guess, to do that, you know, he's got a negative 20 OPS plus. He's batting 99. Yeah, it's really bad. And so I wonder whether he was at all conflicted about accepting that. You know, I don't know whether he suggested it or he acquiesced to it or what, but obviously he was on board with it. And putting myself in his place, like I think it does speak to some humility, as I said, like there are probably a lot of players who would just say me, like I'm, I'm Jose Abreu, like I'm a star. Yeah.

If like, I'm, I'm not a Bush leaguer, you know, no way bench me or release me or, or whatever, but I'm not, I'm not going to go down there again. And you could also say, gosh, I wonder if I'm hastening my exit because out of sight, out of mind, or like, you know, if you're kind of conceding that you're not currently a major league quality player, maybe it feels like it's harder to get back up there when you go all the way down there. So I guess I would be reluctant. And yet at the same time, I'm sure he doesn't like to be this bad. Like it's probably not fun for him. He's making a lot of money. So that eases the sting a little bit, but still like to go out there and just kind of suck,

especially when you've been a star and an elite hitter for so long. It must really do a number on your self-conception and your self-esteem. And so maybe you would want to just get out of the spotlight for a while and be able to focus on fixing whatever ails you. You know, I do think that like earning the salary he has is probably some comfort,

but like he's also, you know, he wasn't hurting for money coming into that contract. So I think that you reach a certain level of being established and sort of having the cushion which I think for regular people tend to be very much financial, right? Where it's like the place you feel and experience precarity is, you know, can I pay rent? Can I, you know, live a slightly comfortable life? Can I take care of the people and things that I need to? When you have the kind of money that he does, you know, other concerns are just going to naturally feel more pressing and more urgent. And so I don't know, I'm sure that it, you know, came with a big mix of emotions because there is an admission of like it going really badly to have to go all the way down to the complex. But on some level, like maybe it wasn't hard because the,

the performance is just so obviously untenable, right? Like he's not rosterable playing the way that he is right now. I'm sure that because the rest of the team isn't doing great, like there are guys who are hitting well, but like Bregman's not having an easy time of it right now. And obviously their, their pitching is just a disaster. There are guys who are hitting well, but Bregman's not having an easy time of it right now. Obviously, their pitching is just a disaster.

It's not like the blame for their early season skid sits solely with Abreu. That would be unreasonable. But I'm sure that in the context of how bad their season is going, on the one hand, you might say, because there is blame to go around because everything is going so badly. Like, what's one first baseman who's not hitting? But it's like, no, he's really not hitting, it. I have to give it a try to see if I can salvage this. Not just because you want to make a big league money, but I'm sure the game is important to him, and he'd like to keep playing it if he could. And it has to feel really lousy to be struggling like that. I think we talked about this a little bit within the context

of Jackson Holiday and like, what does it, what does it mean to fail that way that publicly? And for him, he's got so much time to rebound and change. But if you're a Brayu, like, I think it would be potentially quite destabilizing to your understanding of yourself as a person to suddenly be this guy you know and who knows like how he experienced his final year in chicago where we you know we talked about this the last time we talked about his performance where it was like his profile changed and he was still really valuable but it it looked really different and we at the time i think kind of foolishly were like oh well maybe this is the next evolution of jose abreu i wonder how abreu understood that change

right like he might have been like oh gosh it's coming for me man it's coming for me right now it could be that this is rather than him having a sort of existential crisis of what, who am I? What, you know, thinking that stupid song from Barbie. It's not a stupid song. And just like kind of sick of hearing it. But it's like, what, what am I made for now? Like, what do I do? You know, and sometimes you got to go, I don't know, Rollerblade in LA or something. Go down to the complex, figure it out.

See if you can be a different version of yourself or recapture something of your prior form. And I don't know, man, I feel for him. I think that it would be really hard at this stage of his career and life to be like, I'm just, I got to be a different guy now. And what does that even mean? You know, I think that would be really hard. Yeah. And one other thing I wanted to ask you about, there was sort of a not very baseball-y play the other day in a Padres game against the Reds where Mike Schilt, Padres manager, had to decide whether he wanted to accept or decline a catcher's interference ruling. Baseball, there aren't that many cases like that where, you know, essentially you have like a flag on the play or something, right? Yeah, yeah.

You have to decide whether you want the outcome to stand or you want to kind of take the penalty. And so I'll read from our Padres preview guest, AJ Kassvel's game story at MLB.com. It's not often that a manager willingly chooses to take a run off the board, but Padres skipper Mike Schilt did exactly that Tuesday night. His faith was promptly rewarded, courtesy of Manny Machado. With one out in the fifth inning of San Diego's 6-4 victory over the Reds at Petco Park,

Padres first baseman Jake Cronenworth hit what appeared to be an RBI groundout to second base. Tyler Wade scored from third. Fernando Tatis Jr. advanced to second. Machado was due up, ho-hum. But Cronenworth made a signal toward the plate for a catcher's interference ruling. Sure enough, home plate ump Corey Blazer made the call, leaving Schilt with an intriguing decision. On catcher's interference, the batting team is allowed to accept the result of the play

rather than the base that the batter would otherwise have been awarded. Almost always when catcher's interference is declined, it's because the play resulted in a hit anyway. But on this occasion, Cronenworth made the inning second out. He also played at a run. It left Schilt with these two options. Number one, decline the interference, take the out and the run and a two nothing lead, or accept the interference with Wade returning to third, leaving the bases loaded with one out for Machado and a 1-0 Padres lead. And Schilt said, you can have the bases loaded and one out for Manny Machado. I'm going to bet on Manny Machado. And so that's what he did.

He erased the run and the out and Machado hit and he cleared the bases with a double. And the Padres took a 4-0 lead. So that worked out well. And after the game, Machado said, that's Schilti. It's just the confidence he's been giving us all year. It truly speaks volumes. That's Schilti sounds like a middle schooler trying to get away with a swear. I guess, you know, vibes, leadership, looking up for the Padres this year. And AJ went through the

run expectancy matrix, which supported Schilt's decision and, you know, doesn't account for Machado being up, which Schilt said that was a big part of the calculus. I'll take my shot with Manny. It really wasn't that hard a decision. And you have to take into account not just the run expectancy, but also the win expectancy. And Tom Tango at his blog went through all the tables and the calculations. And ultimately, it seems like it probably was the right call. But if it had backfired, if Machado had grounded into a double play or something and they had not scored that run and then the Padres had lost, then that would have probably reflected poorly on Schilt. Or at least, you know, people who judge by the outcome as opposed to the process

would say, should have taken that run. It's probably kind of a tough decision for someone to erase a run from the board, even if there is a sound basis for doing so, even if you have Manny Machado up to actually reduce your tally, your run total. That's got to be tough, right? At least because it opens you up to criticism probably, right? Like what if you lose that game two to one or something, you know, and then everyone's piling on and saying, oh, we should have just taken that run and that out. It's a very high stakes kind of decision because it's sort of the offensive equivalent of when you take your starter out, when he's going good, right? And you're rewarded if the reliever who comes in keeps runs off the board and you get pilloried if he doesn't, even if the decision to take the starter out was the right one. I don't envy managers having to trust the public's sense of probabilistic

thinking. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a clear cut call here. I'll just read some of the analysis that Tengu did. So he has the run expectancy charts, but again, it looks a little different if you look at it in terms of win expectancy. So run expectancy, sorry, I'm going to read some numbers here. We see that the bases loaded one out situations worth 1.590 runs while runner on second base with two outs and banking the runner is worth one plus 0.325 runs. The difference is what we care about. And the difference is a whopping 0.265 runs in favor of taking the run and out off the board and putting those two runners back on the bases. So adding 0.265 runs, he says, is equivalent to adding almost 0.03 wins. OK, well, I mean, that doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a single tactical decision,

so it's never going to add that much, really, in terms of wins or run value. However, he says run expectancy is a proxy for win expectancy. As a proxy, it works well until it doesn't. If we consult our win expectancy specific for that half inning, the bottom of the fifth, well, now we get something different. The typical home team up by one with the bases loaded and one out has a 0.799 chance of winning, but give up the runner on first to an out and plate the runner on third for a run. And the win expectancy will go up to 0.811. In other words, we lose 0.12 wins by loading the bases with an average batter batting. And that's maybe the difference here is that these things

don't account for who is at the plate and who is pitching and everything. Now, Manny Machado, to this point this season, has been an exactly average batter, 100 WRC plus. So I guess you could argue that maybe at this point, post-injury and everything, maybe he's not that much better than that. But you could also argue that he is. He's Manny Machado. He projects to be better, considerably better, right? His depth chart fangrass projection right now is 128 WRC+. So if you think he's that guy, he's considerably better than an average batter. So it depends how you do the math, but it's not a clear cut call in favor of Schulte making the right call here. And you could even argue that it wasn't the right call. But I guess if you read it as statistically speaking, maybe it wasn't the right call,

I guess you could say that the soft factors might make it worth it anyway, you know? Yeah, yeah, totally. In the clubhouse, yeah, right? Because like the fan perception, yeah, it could backfire and people could say, that's shilty. They could say it in a completely different tone if the Padres end up needing that run, right? You were trying to get away with this, War.

No need to bleep Schilt-y. Maybe we should just substitute Schilt every time. Shane won't have to bleep anything. But you could see that Machado really appreciated it, right? Yes. Machado is veteran and star and team leader and everything. And so in the clubhouse, trusting your guy, your franchise player you signed to a long-term contract at one point, etc., right? Like maybe that pays dividends. to consider not only what the numbers say and accounting for the specific players involved,

but also will there be a backlash in the press, in the fan base? Will there be a backlash in the clubhouse? Will there be a bonus in the clubhouse? So it's really interesting. And I guess I almost wish that this situation arose more often because we could analyze it. Then again, I guess I wouldn't love for there to be, it is kind of frustrating when I do watch a football or basketball game, which is not all that often, but you know, you think something happened and then it's like, oh, there was a foul called or, you know, hockey or whatever, right? Like, oh, because the play's continuous and things are happening and, oh, something fun happened. Oh, wait, someone threw a flag. Oh, there was a penalty. Oh, he knocked over that guy over there and it doesn't actually count. Right. And that that's deflating kind of. And yet going through this matrix of like,

was this smart? But have you considered this? That's kind of interesting. So I'm not sure whether I wish there were more of this in baseball or not, but I thought maybe you as more of a football fan would have some perspective on that. It's hard to move the football case over because, well, here's the thing that I like about coaches having to make these decisions in football. And maybe I like it because it doesn't exist in baseball all that much is like the potential for wilding out is really high and that's entertaining as long as it's not your favorite team doing the wilding which like you know I'm a Seahawks fan and I will always think fondly on the Pete Carroll era but there were definitely times where I was like, Pete. But I don't know if I would have the same fun with it in baseball because, well, you know, this call might not have been like perfectly optimized. I suspect that the number of times

that we would get something like really wacky would be pretty limited if for no other reason that Tony LaRusso is not actively managing anymore. So I don't know. I think it would get kind of rote after a while because we would optimize it so quickly because we love to optimize things. Whereas in football, sometimes they still like to be like pew, pew, pew. That's them being gunslingers. It's not always – Sure.

I got it. Thank you. You don't want me to make the sound again? You don't need me to do it again? By all means. No, it's okay. I think my point was made. Well, just a few final follow-ups then, a few notes.

One, I've had some fun on occasion at the expense of the OptiStats Twitter account, which will sometimes have very convoluted fun facts and many, many qualifiers. And I got to give credit where it's due. There was one of theirs that was kind of convoluted and like, how did they think of that? But also it was pretty good. It made me go, huh, it was a fun fact.

So here's what they tweeted. This was about Trevor Williams of the Nationals and his outing against the Rangers on Wednesday. Here's the stat. Over the last 50 seasons since 1975, there have been 21,395 scoreless outings by MLB starters, regular season and postseason, including Wednesday. Only one of those, 21,395, did so while facing a bases-loaded no-out jam in two separate innings. That one was the Nationals' Trevor Williams today. I was like, gosh, how did they think to check that? That must have been kind of tough to check, but also it is kind of a cool fact, you know? Like the old noble noble tiger that no out space is loaded ending with team incapable of getting easy run.

So, no previous scoreless outing had featured two noble tigers until Trevor Williams on Wednesday. I thought that was a pretty fun stat. I don't know why they did over the last 50 seasons since 1975. Was it just a round number? Was it because there was one in 1974 that would have ruined the fun fact? Or was it because maybe there's less than complete data coverage once you go super far back with play by play? And so they couldn't say with any confidence. I don't know. I don't want to cast aspersions, but I thought that was a cool fun fact.

That is a cool fun fact. I love that you still managed to kind of knock their other fun facts. But yes, that is a cool fun fact. Yes. And then maybe the last word on promotion relegation. We'll see. Sometimes these topics have long tails because people keep contacting us. Sure, yeah. Yeah, that's true.

Everyone carries a secret dare. We didn't realize, but here we are. But one email, we got many responses to our response to this topic. Someone pointed out that the scenario we outlined last time of having kind of like multiple divisions within the majors as a way to affect promotion and relegation without some of the downsides is similar to English county cricket. That's how it kind of works in the county championship there. But Jake wrote in to say, your discussion in episode 2157 and 2158 talking about MLB doing promotion relegation was interesting because European football slash soccer is trying to move away from it in more ways than one.

Obviously, there's the Super League stuff, which we did allude to, but there's also a quickly growing trend of multi-club ownership. The most obvious examples are City Football Group and Red Bull. City Football Group owns all or part of 13 clubs all over the world, and Red Bull has seven. There are other examples, and there are more every year. These are with the same purpose of increasing your pool of talent and players under contract while funneling the best players up the ladder that MLB teams have for having minor league clubs. Soccer uses the loan system generally to

develop younger players at a lower level, but then the loaning team has almost no control in that player's coaching or deployment, it wouldn't really make much sense for MLB to move to promotion relegation when soccer teams are moving away from it as much as they can. So that's one trend that's happening there that's kind of a countervailing force to any momentum building toward promotion relegation in MLB, which there isn't really much aside from us getting emails about it. We've also gotten a lot of emails about loaning, soccer-style loan systems. Yes, we have. I'm pretty sure that

actually has been addressed on the podcast. We have talked about that. I don't know when, but I know we did. I know we did, Ben. Once or twice or thrice, that has definitely come up, but we get emails about that. And then lastly, we objected to the term group Maddox for the shutout by more than one pitcher on a team with fewer than 100 pitches thrown by all of the pitchers. And we objected to it on the grounds mostly that he was one guy. He was Maddox, famously Greg Maddox, one pitcher. And so you kind of it it's almost oxymoronic to say group Maddox even more so than group no-hitter or combined no-hitter. And we read the response to our response, which was written by Matt Sussman at Baseball Prospectus where he acknowledged our objections and gave them some credence and was trying to find a replacement term instead of groupmatics. And ultimately he settled on Audubon because the cardinals have had the most quote-unquote groupmatics and therefore you'd have something bird-like. I guess, you know, we've come full circle. We started with bees and now we're back to birds.

Maybe that can be the episode title here. But – People are going to think that it's about something else if you give it that title. I know. Well, Matt suggested Audubon and, you know, we didn't think about it in depth and we were just like, yeah, sure, I guess, you know. Yeah. Prefer pretty much anything to groupmatics. And we were just like, yeah, sure, I guess, you know, we'll prefer pretty much anything to groupmatics. And a number of listeners informed us that Audubon would probably not fly, so to speak, these days because John James Audubon has been a terrible person.

Yes. Yeah, really bad. Justifiably canceled postmortem. Yes. Yeah. Really bad. Justifiably canceled post-mortem. So for valid reasons. And there's been a lot of wrestling in the birding community with the Audubon legacy and the National Audubon Society and chapters thereof have wrestled with whether to change their name and therefore probably not the best idea to bestow that title upon. So back to the drawing board, I guess we came up for at least we inspired a solution to the problem of the groupmatics that was, I think, worse than the initial problems such as it was. So yeah, groupmatics better than Audubon, still not our preferred term probably.

You know that it's bad when one of the lines that the National Audubon Society includes in their conversation about this is, who did despicable things even by the standards of his day. Right. That's pretty gross. So we remain in search of a term. Yeah, it's been a big conversation in the birding community. I know that a lot of plant enthusiasts are also having to grapple with the names themselves and also the people who initially supplied them for some names. So I like wingspan, but I didn't know about this. And I'm not glad to know, like, you know, because it's – but I'm glad to know because now we know.

We won't advocate for naming things after a guy. Who sucks out loud? Well, he's dead now, but, you know. Yeah, past tense. Yeah. Past tense. Well, he's dead now, but you know. Yeah, past tense. Yeah.

Past tense. I'm actually glad we circled back to birds and bees because about eight episodes ago, you asked me whether birds get attacked by bees. And I did some quick Googling about that. And yet somehow neither of us made the obvious birds and bees joke at the time. And I felt like it was a missed opportunity. And now that opportunity has presented itself once again and we're not gonna miss that fat pitch a second time you can support effectively wild on patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild the following five listeners

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