Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2213: (Get) Out of Left Field

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Giants extending Matt Chapman and Manny Machado’s pursuit of Nate Colbert’s Padres home run record, Stat Blast (20:42) about Luis Arraez’s extreme three-true-outcome avoidance, Ben Joyce’s potentially unprecedented pitch speeds, and whiff-averse flamethrowers, and then discuss (54:31) the Yankees’ left-field dilemma(?) involving Alex Verdugo and Jasson Domínguez, […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2213 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Van Graaff's presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Van Graaff's. by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer joined by Meg Raleigh of Van Graaffs. Hello Meg. Hello. No, it's not often we get a major long-term contract to discuss in early September. Strange timing, right? Because usually you make it this far and you're an impending free agent. Why not wait another month or two? Right? That's when free agency starts, two months, nearly to the day, right? You've stuck it out this long. And usually you're in sort of a talk to me in the off season mode, especially if you're a Scott Boris client. I was just about to say. But that does not apply to Matt Chapman of the Giants,

who was just extended. It's a $151 million deal over six years. So it runs from next season through 2030 with a $25 million annual salary and a $1 million signing bonus paid out next year. It includes a no trade clause. And I guess it's sort of an unusual situation because there were opt-outs and he had an existing deal, right? So he signed with the Giants on a three-year deal worth 54 million with opt-outs after each season over the off season, last off season, that is.

So technically I guess he was under contract, but of course he would have opted out. But yeah, usually you'd wait. So I wonder whether this has anything to do with the fact that his free agency didn't go so smoothly last time or whether he just got an offer he couldn't or chose not to refuse. I feel like this deal strikes me as quite fair. I imagine if you're Matt Chapman and Boris comes to you and is like, this is what the giants would like to do that you would go, yeah, okay, that works for me. If I were to have been forced to guess, I probably would have come around to an annual

salary about where he was. I think that especially after the first month of the season, we've talked before about how he had a rough go to start, you know, his WRC plus in, in April was like a 79, but since then, 125, 120, 134, 164, like he's having a good year at the plate. He's still a quite good defender, but there have been times in Matt Jettman's career where the bat has swooned in kind of an appreciable way. And so do I think that he is in some respects, like the beneficiary of a very good year coming together with a team that is desperate to spend some money on a good player?

Yeah, I do think that. But if you keep striking out on free agents, just don't let your guy get to free agency. Yeah, just don't let him leave. I think that this feels like him getting basically fair market value. He gets to stay in the Bay Area. He had the two-year jaunt north of the border, but now Chapman gets to go back to being a Bay Area guy and the bulk of his career will have happened there. I think that's cool. And he will have gotten to spend a bunch of time with Bob Melvin and

that's cool. And so I get it. And from the player and agent side, we are right to say that Boris clients almost always hit free agency. They very rarely do extensions. But if you are presented with a version of the deal that's within striking distance of what you were hoping to get on the open market and you had the off season experience that Chapman did, it just makes a ton of sense. This feels like a win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win. It's interesting that it's being framed as I saw the first line of Ken Rosenthal's reaction column was the Scott Boris revenge tour is on. So the idea is Scott strikes back, right?

After his lost winter last year, now he gets to make good again, at least with Chapman and I guess with maybe another client or two of his depending on how they act and what they do with opt-outs and such. Of course, it's an extension that wouldn't have had to be signed if Chapman had done better last winter, but since then, Chapman has been by far the best of the Boris 4 or Boris 5, if we want to include J.D. Martinez. Martinez has been pretty good, but as a DH, and Blake Snell, yeah, the Snell

surgeons has been striking, but he dug DH and like Snell, yeah, the Snell surgeon has been striking, but he dug himself a pretty deep hole and Jordan Montgomery is still digging that hole deeper. And Cody Bellinger has been okay. So Matt Chapman has been really good. Excellent. Like close to peak Chapman. So close to peak Chapman. Yeah. And it's funny that you mentioned just a real rollercoaster for him in terms of results and also perception, right? Because he has had these swoons. You mentioned last year was one, right? Like second half of last year, right? He started strong and then he swooned. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe that wasn't the only reason why he had a hard time finding the contract

he was looking for this winter, but it was one of the reasons. And that wasn't even his first swoon, right? He had a previous swoon. And what was his down year? Was it 2021? 2021, yeah. He played basically every game and he was a league average hitter. He had a one-on-one WRC plus plus still good defense, which keeps providing him with a, you know, a meaningful floor, but almost all of his value in 2021 came in the form of good defense. So he was having a hard time hitting fastballs and then Dan Szymborski of fan crafts in 2022 listed Chapman as a bust candidate. Yeah. Picking on Dan here, he makes a lot of predictions. Some of them are right. Some of them not. But a lot of people thought that maybe Chapman was kind of cooked or at least heading that way.

Dan and Zips are some combination of the computer and Dan, they're just melding like in that Superman movie where they just kind of blend together into a cyborg, wrote, I'm not very confident about his bat bouncing back much from its 2021 levels, let alone to what he showed in 2018 to 2019 when I think he was one of the best 10 players in baseball. And part of it has been injuries, right? He had the hip stuff and even last year when he wasn't hitting, he was dealing with what hand stuff, finger stuff, hand stuff, phrasing. Anyway, Chapman has totally rebounded and yeah, the glove is about as good as ever, right?

And the bat is back to almost as good as it's been too. So even though he's been through the ringer injury-wise and even though he's 31 years old, he's still holding up quite well. And now that he's had this bounce back season, suddenly it kind of changes the narrative of, oh, he's a player in decline heading to the downside of his career. Clearly the giants don't think so. I think that that's right. I'm just looking up the third base defensive stats to see where he ranks because I'm guessing it's going to be high. I guess it's interesting also in terms of the giants and how they view themselves and how their position for the future.

For Hans-Eidie signing Chapman to this contract, some uncertainty about whether he'll be around to watch Chapman be a giant. I mean, he'll be around somewhere in the world, presumably, but perhaps not in charge of Giants baseball operations. So there's some question about that and is he running out of rope

and will there be a regime, sorry, administration change at some point in the not too distant future? And just what are the giants in general? Are they just a 500 team in perpetuity? Is this a sign that they intend to contend and continue to try to spend and surround Chapman with other great talent and what talent would that be and will they be more successful in persuading that talent to sign with them? So it's an interesting signing for the franchise as well as for Chapman. I think that we should all set ourselves a challenge to just like not talk about Scott Boris until like March.

This is definitely a nice recovery as it pertains specifically to Chapman. I again want to say that I think any assessment of Boris's results this winter are going to be clouded by the fact that he represents Wonsodo. Like, Scott Boris is going to be fine. It was the Boris blip. Yeah. Like, and I don't want to say too definitively that he's got his fastball back or anything like that either, because I think a pretty bad agent could probably get Wonsoto a good deal.

And he's also positioned to represent the best starting pitcher free agent. So I think that in much the same way that we perhaps had a hard time disentangling the piece of his seemingly bad luck last winter that was the quality of the particular free agents versus him misjudging the market. We will have a similar issue in the opposite direction this year because I think that Juan Soto will do well. I think that Corbyn Burns will do well. Obviously, Matt Chapman did well here. If we wanted to put something on our radar to continue to monitor as it pertains to Boris's,

does this in any way signal a change in his willingness to entertain extensions when the prices rate? It's one guy in one contract, so it's hardly a trend. But that might be something that's worth keeping an eye on because perhaps the way that he is going to have adapted to some of the struggles he had last year is to be a little more flexible in his thinking about things. Or it could just be the matchup and it was like, hey, I'm ready to be done now. I'd like to buy real estate.

I think about that a lot. How do you decide when to buy a house if you want to live in the place where you play? I know a lot of players have, I sound like I'm talking about their ancestral homes, but they have places they live in the off season. And so that's where I imagine they put their most precious decorations, right? But how do you decide? I would feel so flummoxed by that.

You know? It is a tough call. I mean, not that tough a call because one way or another, you're going to be living in a beautiful mansion somewhere. It's just where or when. But it is funny how we make Boris the protagonist of these proceedings. The player is the protagonist. As Boris always insists, it's the player who has the final say and is the boss here between the two of them and tells him what to do. One would hope that that is actually the case and the way that he operates. And I'm guessing it is because even if he gets you

a lot of money, players probably wouldn't appreciate having that agency taken out of their hands. I'm sure a lot of players do defer to his judgment and wisdom because why wouldn't you? If Scott Boris were my agent, I'd be like, yeah, you do your thing, Scott. You got a pretty decent track record. I will put my faith and trust in you and usually will be rewarded for that. But ultimately it's, it is the player who has to make that decision. And so once in a while, even if Boris is a default position is let's test the market, someone's going to say, yeah, I like this Chapman is leading all third baseman in defensive runs saved by a wide margin. And he is tied with Nolan Arnado at five fielding run value runs above average. I mangled the name of that, but that's the stat cast stat.

He is behind only Joey Ortiz by one run in that category. So still pretty much cream of the crop at third base. All right. Well, there you go. Speaking of another sometime third baseman, a couple things that I'm looking forward to over the rest of the season, aside from the obvious milestone watches that we're all on. Manny Machado is two home runs behind Nate Colbert for the all time franchise record for Padres home runs.

This is our periodic Colbert report and maybe one of the last ones we'll have because we've been tracking this for some time. This came up on a Jeff Sullivan episode of Effectively Wild Long Ago and then it was the subject of a stat blast on episode 1952 where I just marveled over the continued possession of the top spot on the franchise Home Run leaderboard by Nate Colbert. I think the occasion of our last discussion of this was unfortunately Nate Colbert's passing, but never a bad time to talk about Nate Colbert still continuing to possess the Padres all-time home run record. And we may not have much more time to talk about that because he is about to be passed by Machado seemingly.

And my question is, will he do so this season? So he is at 161 homers as a padre, Colbert at 163. So he's just two behind. The fan graphs on pace extrapolations say that he will hit three more this season. The fan graphs depth charts projections say he will hit three more this season. The fan graph's depth charts projections say he will hit four more. So this is well within his reach, but not a certainty, not a lot. We could go into this long off season still not knowing whether Nate Colbert will ever be surpassed by a Padre.

So I'm on the edge of my seat. I'm checking Padre's box scores every day to see if Manny Machado homered. I think he'll do it. Yeah, you think so? Yeah. I think he'll do it. I don't have a good reason other than he's pretty good. I know that the start to the season was kind of slow for him, but he was still coming back from the injury and he was having to figure out how to be in the field again after a while because he had been DH'ing to start. Now he seems like settled. He has a purpose and that purpose is getting on the other side of a home run record that

I'm sure every person in this country is aware of. They are all waiting, baited breath. We're doing live look-ins at Machado plate appearances in Padres broadcasts these days. Every day. Yeah. Just every single day. Did he do it? Will he do it tomorrow? Has he taken the swings he needs to? What's going on with him? Cats and dogs living together. Everybody's obsessed. Colbert? Cats and dogs living together. You know, everybody's obsessed. Colbert watch. We're on it.

Colbert watch. Yeah. And I went deep into these stats on that previous stat class. So I won't repeat myself other than to just stress how improbable it is that this is the record and that this record persists because the next lowest home run total that leads a franchise. When we did the stop-loss was Luis Gonzalez of the Diamondbacks at 224, which is over a third higher than the Padres total. And the Diamondbacks are a much younger franchise, of course.

And there had been hundreds of players who had hit more home runs since Colbert's first season with the Padres with one franchise than Colbert hit with the Padres. But it just so happened that none of them played with the Padres. And there have been a bunch of close calls. And that's why it seems like there's no suspense here. He'll get there one way or another, but you just, you never know.

You never know. Dave Winfield was signed by the Yankees after 154 home runs as a Padre. Adrian Gonzalez was traded away after 161. So close. That's where Machado is right now. So you just never know what an AJ Preller run team is going to do, right? And you know, Padres payroll uncertainty. Now, when we did that previous stat blast, Machado's future with the Padres was still somewhat up in the air. And he had the ability to opt out after the season, right? This was a January, 2023 stat blast.

And so the effectively wild Wiki summary of the stat blast says Manny Machado is currently at 108 Padres home runs. If he opts out after next season, he's unlikely to make it to 164. The next best hope is Fernando Tatis Jr. who is currently at 81. Ben predicts that if Tatis stays healthy and out of trouble, he would be on track to break the record in 2025. And he didn't really

stay healthy enough to do that. I guess that was a conditional prediction if then. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Classic Lindberg hedging, but I guess he could still theoretically get there if he has a big bounce back year and hits like he did at his peak power performance again next season. But assuming Machado remains a Padre because he is signed with the Padres through 2033. It's such a long time. Take that other third baseman who just signed a long-term extension with an L West team, Matt Chapman will be long gone from the San Francisco Giants, or at least this contract

will be long since concluded when many Machado's is still going wherever he is at that point. So if he doesn't get there in 2024, then it is virtually certain that he will get there next year. But again, as long as there is some sliver of doubt, we must remain watchers on the wall of the Colbert watch. And so my vigil, my watch will be ended as soon as Mini Machado hits three more homers. And maybe that will happen this year. I think he'll do it this year. But if he doesn't, then I think it's only right that we go in to the off season with some sort of skepticism, because Ben, we're humble podcasters. We don't want to overstate our influence in the world.

But we have learned that we are also witches and that sometimes we have the ability to lay a curse upon a player or even a manager. And we never delight in that. We always feel badly about it. And I can only imagine that the circumstances under which Manny Machado would be unavailable to hit, imagine he doesn't hit another home run the entire rest of this season, like to hit just three next year, it would have to be like a catastrophic injury. We don't wish that upon Manny Machado. We're not monsters. And so I think he'll do it this year, but if he doesn't, I remain a skeptic because

that feels like kind of like reverse jinxing it, like counter jinxing it. I don't want to assume his availability. I assumed he'd be able to play third base on opening day at the end of last season. And what an ass I was, you know, just a complete ass. And so I say to Manny, good luck. And also, you know, whenever you get around to it, really, just like you have so much time, we know you'll hit, well, we don't, we don't know you'll hit any more home runs ever in your entire career. You could wake up tomorrow and decide you're going to go be a, you know, a youth pastor.

I don't know, like Who knows what will strike you? Hopefully not lightning. So good luck. BF It seems like a cinch, but it's not a done deal. And I hope that the Padres have a whole highlights package prepared for if and when he does surpass Colbert, that there's a nice little ceremony because this must be marked and not just via effectively wild stab, blast and banter. I hope it's more about Machado having done the thing than the particulars of who he surpassed. Cause it does feel a little weird to be like the other guy's dead

now, you know, like you're not excited. You're excited that people are hitting home runs, but you want to be respectful. You know, definitely don't maybe go to great lengths to convey how unlikely it was that Nick Colbert held that record for so long. You know, you can leave that to this podcast, perhaps. Sure. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. In life or in death, Padre's franchise legend, Nate Colbert, he must be given his due. One other thing that I'm looking forward to, and it involves the San Diego Padre, and I guess this is a banter, but if producer Shane wants to apply the StatBlast label and song, I won't protest. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbits, discuss it in length, And analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to days that last. It involves Louisa Rice, who of course is an object of some fascination. And look, he has been fascinating for a few reasons and he's been less fascinating this season because he hasn't made a run at 400, right?

Not that he was ever a real serious threat to do that last year, but yeah, and he was about as real a threat as we're ever going to get these days. So it was fun to watch and believe for a while or if not to believe at least a hope. And he is poised to claim his third consecutive batting title. And for a third team, which is in itself strange. That's not why I bring him up here, but he is on the precipice of batting title history, which doesn't matter so much anymore. You will definitely get fewer people even able to tell you who won the batting title

these days than you used to. It used to be about the biggest deal there was for a hero, right? Now it's kind of an afterthought, but he is still just an outlier, even in terms of batting tight lists, right? Because no one in the modern era has won a batting title with three different teams, let alone three different teams in three consecutive seasons. And maybe that tells you something about Luis Arise

as a player, right? I mean, maybe it tells you something about the batting title and how that's perceived these days, but I guess that's sort of saying the same thing, right? And that Luis Arise, this is his standout skill. He is an outlier in terms of making contact and hitting for a high average by 2024 standards. And that's just not a skill that's as valued these days as it used to be.

And also maybe most previous batting titleists were better rounded players, were, you know, brought some more ancillary and secondary skills, right? That made them more valuable overall. Better rounded makes it sound like they're like more ideal models for an art class, you know? They're better rounded. They provide a canvas. I think that he is like the perfect batting title winner for the modern era. Him winning is like cool. We like that he exists, you know, that he and the kind of player he is has space in the modern game, even if, you know, he is limited in terms of like how much war he's

ever going to put up or whatever. But I also think that the fact that he has done it with so many teams tells you so much about like how that skill set is valued and how not disposable, but maybe fungible it is and it isn't. I think that like that sense is a little overblown because not every contact guy is as consistent and I think as good as Arise. So, we risk sort of under appreciating him even as we acknowledge that one, he was very unlikely to actually hit 400 and that also there are other skills and sort of combinations of skills that might be more valuable. But imagine a prior era of baseball where a reigning multi-time

batting champion did it for a bunch of different teams. You couldn't do it. That guy would never get moved. He would never get moved. And so I think that he is a really great player, one, because I enjoy his game, but also because he tells you something about baseball. He's not, to my mind, a Hall of Famer, but I look forward to when he is on a Hall of Fame ballot because I think it'll be like, gather round as we fight the water wars.

Let me tell you the story of Luis Reyes and what he meant. He tells you something about baseball and I like it when a guy is both fun to watch and emblematic of the area he plays in. So that's my Louisa Rice thought, really. Yeah. And it reminds me of Bill Madlock, who was the subject of a recent trivia question in a David Laurel Assundee Notes, which was, who has the most batting titles among players who haven't been elected to the Hall of Fame?

And it was Bill Madlock who won four batting titles for two teams combined and was in some ways sort of a similar player to Arise, but they don't make Bill Madlock's anymore. And so for Arise to be this type of player in this era makes him even more of an outlier and even more special. And that's what I'm getting at here. Look, if he wins the batting title, I hope he does. That would be fun. It'd be great if he could add to his collection.

And I did a deep dive feature into Luis Arais and how it's hard to scout and project players like him these days and how scouts sort of missed on him. Not that he's a superstar in terms of war value. Maybe he is in terms of play and fame and entertainment value, but obviously still a miss if you don't have that guy ranked in your top 100 or whatever and he turns out to be a three-time batting title

winner even if that's all he does. That's still quite a productive major league player. And not a lot of 300 hitters this season, right? This era of low batting averages, there are currently six qualified hitters in both leagues combined who are hitting 300 or above, two in the National League. It's just a rise at 311 as we speak and Marcel Azuna at 305 and that's that. So it's not quite Yaz winning the 1968 batting title with a 301 batting average, but it's not that far from there. That's kind of where we are these days.

So he doesn't have nearly as high an average as he did last year and hasn't been nearly as valuable overall. And yet he might end up the class of the league when it comes to the batting title. But here's the thing. He is poised to make history in another way that I think is more interesting and entertaining to me. And that is in his lack of three true outcomes, his three true outcome aversion. Because part of his lack of production overall this year is that, well, he hasn't walked and he hasn't hit for power, right? And not that he was ever a big walker or a big power hitter, but he's done less of both of those things this year. Right. So a big, a big walker is just like a funny, that's funny. It makes them sound like

a giant toddler, you know, like still trying to figure it out. He can't keep falling down. He needs the like, you know, spin and spell to like ground him. Yeah. No, he is, he's quite spry and firm footing, but he really, he had a 7.9% career walk rate coming into this year, which is like roughly league average, right? Not far below. And it was lower last year, but this year it's extremely low. He's walking in 3.7% of his plate appearances. And whereas last year he reached double digits in home runs for the first time, he hit 10 in 147 games

and 617 plate appearances. This year he has only four in 131 games and 589 plate appearances. And I guess it doesn't help to be playing for the Marlins and the Padres, but he was playing for the Marlins last year too, I suppose. Anyway, he's always been a good contact hitter,

but he just never Ks anymore. I saw a tweet by Sammy Levitt, who does Padres pregame and postgame. And he noted that Arise has gone 97 plate appearances without striking out the longest single season streak in MLB since 2010, when Jeff Keppinger went 107 played appearances, arises struck out twice since the All-Star break. So he had a 7.5 career strikeout rate heading into

this season, which was extremely low. Now it's 4.4%. And I mean, that's just pretty ridiculous, just like sub 5% walk rate and strikeout rate and also barely hitting homers. And that goes against every trend in the modern game too. And so I got curious, would this be some sort of record? And you know what? Quite close, at least in anything resembling recent eras and recent history. So I had to do a little home brew spreadsheet work here because, uh, fan graphs has some handy dandy plus stats where it will sort of normalize to the league average that year. So if you want to look at someone's strikeout rate or walk rate relative to

that seasons, you can do that easily. I don't think there is a three true outcome percentage plus on the fan graphs leaderboards or custom leaderboards or if there was I didn't see it immediately. Yeah there's a three true outcome percentage which just adds up the rates of you know puts all the homers and walks and strikeouts over plate appearances and gives you a TTO percentage and so I made a plus version of that and just got that for all qualified hitters going back as far as I could, which was the early 1910s at FanGraphs because there are a few years there that are missing strikeout rate data for early baseball history.

So going back all that way, even before the live ball era and then adjusting that for each season's TTO rate, this was just AL or NL, he is on the shortlist right now for the lowest 3 true outcome plus basically, you know, your TTO rate relative to the league right now. So his 3 true outcome rate is 8.8 going into Thursday's game. So 8.8% of his plate appearances have resulted in a walk, a strikeout or a home run, which is really preposterous because if that were just his strikeout rate, that would be eye-poppingly low. If that were just his walk rate, that would be normal. but no, it's those things plus his home runs also just all lumped together. And meanwhile, the league three true outcome rate is 33.6% of plate appearances. So his TTO percentage plus, I know this is a lot of acronyms and numbers,

but it's 26 or 26.2 to be precise. Wow. Yeah, so it's basically like a quarter of the league rate, only slightly more than that. And if we look at live ball era and exclude some 19th century guys, sorry, Joe Start, very interesting career, people should look up, but not going to dwell on that right now. And Gus Getz in 1915,

I did this on a single season basis, by the way. Then the only competitors, the only people who currently have a qualified season that had a lower TTO percentage plus than Arise does right now are the great Stuffy McInnis in both 1922 and 1924. Stuffy was always good for putting the ball in play. Stuffy Ben. Stuffy. Yeah, so this is live ball era. The lowest TTO percentage plus ever is 22.8. That was Stuffy in 1922 when the league rate was a mere 15.9% of plate appearances, but Stuffy had a rate of 3.6% of his plate appearances, so less than half of Arise's right now. And apologies to Mike McGeery, another 19th century guy, not trying to snub you, but we're focusing on more modern era history here. The only other guys besides Stuffy who have a rise beat

in the live ball era are Mattie Allou in 1970 and Amel Verban in 1947. So a rise has the lowest relative to the league since Mattie Allou in 1970. And Mattie Allou was at 25.7. Furbin was at 25.9 and Arise again is at 26.2 thus far. So he is right there. And now I am also in addition to being on Colbert watch,

I'm on Arise TTO watch to the point that I was pissed on Wednesday because Arise got intentionally walked once. And then I was kind of gloating because he got intentionally walked to bring up Fernando Tatis Jr. who just came back from the IL and maybe is rusty. And also it was like setting up a double play and a force play and everything.

Although Tatis said he took it personally and then he delivered a walk off single. And you know what? Tatis was gloating and I was kind of gloating too, because you're trying to spoil my Luis Arais fun fact here. And it blew up in your face because I'm counting intentional walks here too. So he does, I think three of his 22 walks this season were intentional. So if we were doing unintentional walk rate, he might be even more extreme.

But the point is appreciate the history we're seeing here. It's not just batting title. It's that look, if you want more balls put in play, and according to everything we always hear from the league and other sources, people want more balls put in play, then you want people to be more like Louisa Rice. Yeah, and again, like it is good to have variety. I think that it makes for a more interesting

game for us to have variety and for it to look a bunch of different ways. And so we don't have to make him more than he is, but we shouldn't diminish what he does provide. That's what I think about that. There are so many exciting and fun words to say in your little segment there. I enjoyed many of them very much. Thank you. Well, I'm greatly enjoying Arise. And even if he's a little less productive in this incarnation of his game than he was, say, last season, I'm enjoying it even more. And there aren't any like him anymore. And there barely been any like him going back many decades. So appreciate it because who knows when someone else will come along and

break the mold like this again. And I've been guilty of underappreciating him myself. I feel a fool because I spent all those hours obsessing over Williams Estadio and though I'll always cherish the time we had together. He had a teammate who was right in front of my face and was not only a far superior player, but has now evolved and or devolved into being just as anti TTO as Astadio. Do you think that when people tell other people, appreciate it, do you think that people are more inclined to do that?

Does that work? Yeah, does it work? In some ways it might. Yes, I think, I don't know if you can instill that emotional attachment to the thing that I feel. Can I, is this contagious? Is my enthusiasm contagious? But I have at least made more people

aware of this because I wasn't even aware of this. I'm sure other people have pointed it out, but I wasn't quite conscious of just how TTO shy he has been. TTO, it makes me think of Tata for now, but it's different. It's not Tata for now, it's TTO. It's a little bit of a problem because we have the times through the order penalty, which some people will abbreviate as TTO or TTO-P. And so we have multiple TTOs, Warring TTOs. I guess the good news is that that league rate that I noted 33.6% across MLB this year, that's not the highest ever. For a while there, it was trending up year after year after year.

2020 was the max to this point. So that year, 36.1% of plate appearances ended with a walk home runner strikeout. And that was a weird year, but the next closest was 2021, which was 35.1. And then 2019 and then 2023 and then 2018. And then this year. So that's partly a reflection of the fact that homeruns have come down a bit from their recent peak and also the strikeout rate increase has plateaued somewhat. So I guess that's good. At least it's not continuing to climb. Although as Joshian pointed out to me when I was sort of celebrating that we've arrested the rise in strikeout rate. That is probably in part just because there are many more outs on balls and play these days.

Right. And so there are fewer opportunities to strike out. So it's not necessarily a good thing. It's just that people are making outs, I guess, maybe before they can strike out because defenses are so good or pitchers are some combination of both. By the way, if you're wondering who has the highest TTO percentage plus in the live ball era, well, it comes from the first season in the live ball era, 1920, and it belongs to Babe Ruth at 297. So sometimes it can be good and valuable to break the scale in both directions. Here's another thing that caught my eye because there was also some sort of semi-history made

this week when Ben Joyce threw a pitch really hard. Now that's not in itself historic because Ben Joyce throws a lot of pitches really hard, but this was hard even for him. So Ben Joyce threw a pitch against the rival Dodgers. He was extra amped up. The juices were flowing. He said it was a big time game.

I guess what qualifies as a big time game when you're all Los Angeles angel and the fans were into it and it was two strikes and Tommy Edmund was up. I don't know whether the Tommy Edmund part really psyched him up, but other than that he was really amped and he threw a hundred five point five mile per hour fastball. That is not quite the hardest thrown pitch on record, though there's an asterisk to that that I will get to in a second, but you can make a fun fact of it, which is that it is the hardest thrown strikeout pitch on record. So this was indeed a strikeout. And Aroldis Chapman has

thrown harder pitches. So he threw 105.8 mile per hour pitch in 2010 and 105.7 mile per hour pitch in 2016. And we're talking two or three tenths of a mile per hour difference there. So that's probably within the margin of error of these tracking systems, especially since we're talking about 2024 versus 2010 versus 2016, right?

Like these are pitch FX versus early stat cast, maybe pre-Hakai and now current post-Hakai stat cast. So it's sort of three different technologies here and also they're like ballpark variations and everything. So I don't know that we can really distinguish, but I suppose a record is a record. Interestingly, I looked at fan graphs, which houses not just the MLB supplied stack cast data, but also pitch info, pitch level data, right? And the pitch info, pitch level data does correct

for park calibration issues and does various under the hood, behind the scenes adjustments. And so it doesn't perfectly match the data that you'll see on baseball savant, for instance. And all else being equal, I've typically trusted pitch info over the MLB supplied stats because the MLB supplied stats are automated and algorithmic and the pitch info ones are kind of more curated and sort of hand done by Harry Pulvitis and his team. And there's a lot of care that goes into that. I'm sure that the statcast tracking and algorithms have improved, et cetera, but we're talking about past seasons here.

And if you look at that data on fan graphs, then Roldis Chapman does not actually possess the record for the hardest thrown pitch in the pitch tracking era. That's interesting, right? I mean, all of this is kind of malleable. And if you trust pitch info, then in fact, the hardest pitch that Aroldis Chapman has ever thrown is actually 105.1 mpH, which in a further reflection of his freakish nature. He did in both 2024 and 2010, his first and most recent season in the majors, they have him clocked maxing out at 105.1. So I don't know which to trust really. What's the real velocity record? You could certainly make

a case that Ben Joyce is actually the hardest thrower and that he's unsurpassed in this category. But that was the asterisk. That was sort of a side note. What caught my attention other than just that ridiculous radar reading is the fact that Ben Joyce doesn't miss that many bats really. Not as many as you'd think given that he is throwing pitches that are like too fast to see seemingly, right? And he's basically fast to see seemingly, right? And he's basically had a league average-ish strikeout rate. In fact, for a reliever, just a hair below league average. He's at 8.6 strikeouts per nine or a 23.2 strikeout rate, and he's been effective.

You know, he's kind of gotten his control problems under control, I guess you could say. He's walked only 3.6 per nine and he's got a nice sparkling 2.08 ERA and a FIP in the low threes and you know, things are going pretty well for Ben Joyce on the whole. And yet I thought, shouldn't he be missing more bats with that sort of stuff? And then that got me interested in who are the all time, at least in the pitch tracking era,

guys who stand out for not missing as many bats as you would think, given their velocity. Yeah. Because he's gotta be on that list somewhere. And so since I was already deeply buried in the plus stats and concocting massive spreadsheets. I went a little deeper and I did a little research into this too. And I used for this, the sports info solutions,

velocity data. We've got three different sources of pitch speeds on fan. I love that fan grass, you know, it's open source. It's like, Hey, you want to put our stats on your site? You're a reputable. Yeah. We'llinkress. You know, it's open source. It's like, hey, you want to put our stats on your site? You're a reputable... You want to see? Yeah, we'll host your stuff, you know? It's for the betterment of the baseball community. Opening a trench coat and showing you all of the watches.

But not nearly so unsavory. Oh yeah. I mean, we pay for that data on like the watches, which I'm given to understand most of the trench coat folks have stolen. They're ill- ill gotten, Ben. When you started talking about opening up trench coats, I was worried that there wasn't going to be anything under there. Watches was a relief to me.

You know, you open it and you're like, here, you know, like watches, you know? Flash graphs. Oh no, terrible. Really bad. Really bad. So I managed to come up with a formula here and I had some help from listener and Patreon supporter and former guest Michael Mountain, who helped me massage this data somewhat. And basically we looked at your velocity or your fastball speed relative to the league average fastball speed, and then your strikeout rate relative to the league average strikeout

rate. I didn't do a reliever starter adjustment because that just would have broken my brain, but you could if you wanted to be really thorough. I did minimum 30 innings basically because I wanted to include Ben Joyce who is throwing 34 something. Yeah. And I did a little leaderboard here and I did sort of a plus version of like your fastball velocity relative to the league over your strikeout rate relative to the league and kind of this elaborate home brew stat, which doesn't really have a snappy name. And I use the Sports Info Solutions data for this because A, it goes all the way back to

2002, predating the PitchFX era. And also they just lump all fastballs together in fastball velocity, which sometimes is not what you want. Very often you want them separated out. But for this purpose, it was actually sort of helpful because some pitchers' fastest pitches are four seamers and some are sinkers. And for this purpose, I just wanted all your fastballs. You know, maybe it's if you've got like cutters

or something lumped in there, maybe that sort of skews things. Anyway, this worked for my purposes. And the problem that we kept coming up with here is that no matter what we did, Aaron Cook broke the scale. Remember Aaron Cook who just somehow survived as this low strikeout guy, past the point where he should have been able to do that.

It only worked for so long really. But Aaron Cook in 2012, and he was pitching for the Rockies and getting away with that a lot, but Aaron Cook in 2012 when he was pitching for the Red Sox, this was his last major league season, he threw 94 innings and his strikeout rate per nine, which, you know, usually I cite strikeout percentage, but sometimes you just want the K per nine, just to kind of put things into historical perspective here. He struck out 1.9 per nine that year. Or in terms of raw totals in his 94 innings pitched, he struck out 20, 20 hitters.

20? That's it? 2-0? 2-0. That doesn't seem like very many. It definitely is not. And he kind of got away with this, but not really in that he didn't get to come back for another tour of duty. And also he was sub replacement level and he had a 5.65 ERA with a 5.45 FIP but he got to make 18 starts for a major league team doing that. He walked more batters than he struck out that year. He walked 21 and struck out 20. This is like something out of the 1950s or something when the strikeout walk ratios were way out of whack to our modern

sensibilities and somehow he got by doing this. And one reason he got by is that he got a lot of ground balls. So he had a roughly 59% ground ball rate that year. Didn't give up a ton of homers. Well, I guess he kind of did, but not as many as he would have if he'd given up more fly balls. So he kept breaking the scale because he had like a 91 ish miles per hour average fastball that year, or at least his four seamer, which was, you know, not so slow in 2012.

And yet somehow he didn't strike out anyone. But I wasn't really going for Aaron Cook exactly. I was kind of going for a flame thrower who didn't strike out because you didn't expect Darren Cook to strike out anyone and Mostly he did not surprise you What we ended up doing was just having a cutoff at 95 mile per hour average just to restrict it to hard throwers and When you do that, it's interesting like the correlation between your fastball speed relative to the league and your strikeout rate relative to the league, it's only like 0.4,

which is meaningful, it's something, but it just goes to show that velocity isn't everything, right, and it's movement and it's command and it's your secondary stuff, et cetera, et cetera. So that's why it's not automatic, that you won't miss lots of bats and get lots of whiffs if you can throw really hard. And so when we look at things this way

and Michael worked things, I'll put these spreadsheets online, but he worked things so that we have sort of an expected strikeout rate versus an actual strikeout rate. He looked at the trend line and the deviation from the trend line and how many strikeouts should you have had given your velocity and how many you actually had. And it turns out the twist here is that the outlier

is not in fact Ben Joyce. He's on the list, he'll be mentioned, but it's a teammate of Ben Joyce's this season, who I had not been paying any attention to because he's a rookie and we have not met this Major Leaguer, though I guess in a sense we are right now. It is Jack Kohanowitz. Are you familiar with the work of Jack Kohanowitz?

I mean, I am, but I don't want to make you feel bad for not being, so I'll let you talk about him. You could talk for ages about Jack Kohanowitz. Yeah, like all day, every day, everyone's like, one could talk for ages about Jack Kohanowitz. All day, every day, everyone's like, one will make shut up about Jack Kohanowitz. She just keeps talking. Why won't she stop? Yes, well, thanks for holding your piece right now

and humoring me as I discover Jack Kohanowitz. But Jack Kohanowitz is a third round draftee of the Angels from 2019. So by Angel standards, I guess they took their time promoting him. This is his rookie year. He's 23 years old. He is a right-handed pitcher, 6'7", 228. So he's not hard to miss in that sense. But Jack Kahanowitz, now he's not an outlier velocity-wise like Ben Joyce. He is a hard thrower, but more like a 96 or so, which is only a

couple of miles per hour past the league average these days, especially for a reliever. But the thing about Jack Kohanowitz is that he has what is essentially as close as we're ever going to get to Aaron Cook again in this day and age, which is, I guess, not a great sign for Jack Kuhnowitz and maybe is a sign of why I was not familiar with his work the way that you were, clearly, intimately. But so far, he has pitched about the same number of innings as Ben Joyce, 32 and two thirds, and he has struck out 12. That's not good. He's struck out about 3.3 per nine or if you prefer a percentage, 8.8%, which is, I guess, basically, Luis Arise's TTO rate. So maybe if we have Jack Kohanowitz face Luis Arise, would there ever be a strikeout? Would Luis Arise ever strike out against Jack

Kohanowitz? I hope we find out someday. I hope we do too. He is the outlier here. He is number one on this list and Ben Joyce actually places ninth on this list in terms of deviation from expected strikeout rate in the negative direction. Fewer strikeouts than one would expect. Now, number two at the bottom of the list, I think is kind of the archetype for this player profile. So I was happy to see him show up here. Brewstar Gratteral. Right? Like he's the guy maybe you think of if you thought of it, who throws hard and just doesn't get case Brewstar Gratteral. Right? He gets grounders, right? And so does

Ben Joyce and so does Jack Ohanewicz. You basically have to get grounders, right? And so does Ben Joyce and so does Jack Kohanoff. You basically have to get grounders if you're not gonna get strikeouts. And even that might not necessarily be enough, but Brewstar Graderol in 2021, he's next on the list. Brian Mitchell in 2017, Mauricio Cabrera, he's another good one in 2016, Jordan Hicks, I'd say also, you know, fits the mold

of who I had in mind here in 2018. Jose Dominguez in 2016, Trevor Gott in 2015, Carlos Hernandez in 2022, and then Ben Joyce. And then after Joyce, you have Austin Adams back in 2015, Tehran Guerrero in 2019, Mike McDougall, 2009, Archimedes Caminero. Yeah. Saying and seeing that name back in 2016. And then I guess Dylan Cease shows up in 2020. And again, I'll link to the full spreadsheet, but those are some names that I might've eventually

identified as fitting this profile. And there's some starters who fit them all too. Like Dustin May shows up here. He's a guy, right? If you watch Dustin May pitch, which we haven't had as much opportunity to do lately as we'd like, you always watch him and you're like, nasty stuff, electric stuff. And yet somehow doesn't miss many bats, except it looked like he was for a while there before he got hurt. And it was like, Ooh, tantalizing, but then he got hurt. But you can see that the guys on this list who get lots of grounders, some of them hung

around and the ones who didn't, not so much, they didn't really stick around because you know, you gotta do one or the other. At least if you're not going to miss batch, then you gotta have those people pound the ball into the ground. Fundamentally, the project is to get outs, you know? And there are a couple ways to do it, but some of them are more near control and one of them, it has to be there. It doesn't, I won't say it doesn't matter which one, because again, it does, but it's necessary. There have to be outs had.

Outs have to be had. It is pretty important. Yeah. It's the pitching prime directive really. Right. Record outs. I was also pleased to see on the opposite end of the list, if we look at pitchers who exceeded their strikeout rate based on their velocity, it's just the strike

out monsters, but it's not necessarily just the recent strike up monsters. Eric Gagne, number one. Oh, how was that? Yeah. He was certainly a monster back then by the standards of his day or any day, 2003. Yeah. He was certainly a monster back then by the standards of his day or any day really. And then 2012, Craig Kimbrell in happier times for Craig Kimbrell and also for people

whose teams employ Craig Kimbrell and who watch and root for those teams. 2004, Brad Lidge, you know, those guys were like, their strikeout rates would look impressive even now. And we're talking 20 years ago. So they were true outliers at the time. And 2015, Carter Caps, a much discussed picture on this podcast in that era. Remember, remember the Carter Caps hop and all of the uproar about the rules and where we gonna have to ban the Carter Caps hop or multi hop?

I remember it was a source of much consternation and nowhere more so than on this very podcast. Yeah, this was sort of the epicenter of the Carter Caps consternation. And then Josh Hader, 2019, another Craig Krimple season, then Eroldis Chapman back in 2014, and some Edwin Diaz in there, some Al Albuquerque. Missed that name too, great reliever names. So that's your answer. So those are your guys who don't get as many whiffs as one would want or expect given how hard they throw. And if you raise the minimum from 30 innings to a hundred,

get some starters in there, then the strikeout underperformers, you get Graham Ashcraft showing up. You get a bunch of Nathan Ivaldi seasons. Some Jose Urena, Michael Fulmer, Sandy Alcantara, the late Jordano Ventura. And on the other end, some starter strikeout monsters. Garrett Cole, Justin Verlander, Spencer Strider, Carlos Redon, the late Jose Fernandez, Danny Salazar 2017, remember him, Blake Snell, Garrett Crochet this season. Just cracking the top 10. Well, what are you going to do other than, you know, do something else?

Yeah, hopefully get some grounders. What do you make of Alex Verdugo-Gate, speaking of people who produce a lot of grounders? You know, I've been... What a transition. I've been, like, waiting for the other shoe to drop or for Alex Verdugo to be demoted and drop and Jason Dominguez to be promoted and end. All of this tabloids unrest

and Yankees fan roiling sentiments. But I gotta say, I'm about as confused as Yankees fans are. Now, am I making as big a stink about this as many Yankees fans are? Maybe not, but then again, I'm no longer a Yankees fan. But you know what? In this specific case, they've got a gripe. They've got a grievance here. I got to say,

I don't have a great explanation for why the Yankees seem so enamored of Alex Verdugo, unless it's that they just feel bad that he was allergic to his batting gloves and they want to give him a shot to produce post allergies if he has solved that problem. Remember when he just was like, I'm going to not go and see a doctor about this thing that's been wrong for like 17,000 years. It wasn't quite that long, but it probably felt that way to him. I will say, Ben, I do find myself quite flummoxed by this whole situation. There's like the moral component of it that I think the Yankees are doing fine on, right? I think there was some initial

early kerfuffle about the potential for this being a craven, calculating, dastardly service time manipulation game. And that is because I think folks didn't quite understand the rules around the prospect promotion incentive. And look, laypeople can be forgiven for confusing those things because everybody assumes that if one is rookie eligible, that one is PPI eligible. And that is not true, Ben. It's not always true. Because there's a service time component too, right?

So it's not just you lose your rookie eligibility for either days on the active roster or a certain number of at bats, right? And this is, yes, yes. He was on the major league IL. And so he was accruing service time. Thus he can remain rookie eligible next year. He could win a rookie of the year award.

Because he wasn't on the active roster and he doesn't have enough at bats. And it would be nice for him if he won the rookie of the year award, but it wouldn't have any competitive implications for the Yankees. I'm sure they'd be happy to have a rookie of the year, but they wouldn't get a draft pick or anything like that. They wouldn't get a draft pick. Yeah. So there was some confusion about that. Right. Because to be a rookie, we concern ourselves with active roster days, so days actually on the active roster, but the PPI concerns itself with 60 service days and you

can fulfill, you accrue service time when you're on the big league IL. So there was some initial confusion about that. And so I think from like a moral perspective, there aren't shenanigans at foot here on the part of the Yankees. I don't know if you're a Yankees fan, if that is much comfort though. I mean, it's not, it's good. You'd prefer that they not be playing games with guys, particularly when they're in the midst of a very competitive division race, you know, they and the Orioles trading back

and forth all the time. And you know, a buy might be on the line, a first round buy. So like the stakes are quite high. So I don't know if being in sort of like the moral clear is much comfort because I worry that what this suggests is some organizational mis-evaluation of their options because Alex Verdugo has not been very good at baseball. And lest we forget, Verdugo is playing in a corner, so it's not even as if he's like,

his bat is anemic, but he's playing plus centerfield defense. That's not what is happening here. Their best bat is playing centerfield, despite me continuing to think that that's a little bit goofy at times. And so he's just not really contributing all that much. I don't want to overstate things too far in the other direction because Dominguez had, you know, he had the blistering torrid initial seven eight game debut and then, you know, goofed his UCL needed

Tommy John and it hasn't been like, it's not like he's the best prospect in the minors this season. He's been good, but he hasn't been like otherworldly or anything like that. So the possibility exists that the Yankees would listen to all of the online grousing, bring in Dominguez who is, we should remind folks, on the 40 man right now. So despite the fact that he is not on the big league roster, he is postseason eligible. So if something were to happen to Verdugo, if they get to a point where they're just

like exhausted of him and they want to try Dominguez, it's not like they are hamstringing themselves for Dominguez's October availability by not having him on the big league roster right now. He's supposed he's ineligible. But you would think that if you have some notion that this guy is going to play a role for you come the playoffs, that you would want to get him in big league game action like right now so that he can kind of tune up and in theory be in a better position to contribute come October.

So it is confounding when Jay wrote about this for us, like he noted that this is, I don't know if I want to say MO, that might be too strong, but this would not be the first time that Aaron Boone has refused to publicly grapple at least with these considerations and has maybe refused to publicly grapple at least with these considerations and has maybe been a little stubborn about moving on from guys when their play suggests that perhaps they aren't worthy of the time that they're getting. So I don't know, what makes you feel better? A not real service time manipulation concern, not at play, or the fact that they might be bad at evaluating their internal options, or the possibility I suppose also exists we should acknowledge.

I think when you look at sort of rest of season projections for Verdugo and Dominguez, they're about the same and depending on the one you look at, Verdugo sometimes grades a little bit better, but lest we forget, Dominguez hasn't been in the majors for that long, so it's leaning a lot on his minor league translations, at least as it pertains to some of ours. So it's like, you could, I think, very easily make an argument that those projections are underselling him, especially if he looks anything like he did when he first came up and hit a home run off of Justin Verlander and his very first at bat. I don't know how to explain the vibe I'm bringing to the pod today, other than I'm tired of

having to deal with stuff around the house being broken. But I will say that I feel spiritually connected to Yankees fans, exhausted by the choice of one of their corner outfielders. And so I would like the Yankees to make a change simply because that kinship makes me fundamentally uncomfortable. I'm about to get very angry and call in to talk radio. I don't know what to tell you. Yeah, Yankees fans are sick and tired of Alex Verdugo's bat being broken.

And really, it's maybe more frustrating, arguably, this way, because if it were purely a service time thing, A, there's some segment of the fan base that would say, well, we're locked in a playoff race right now, and also we're the Yankees, and we don't need to sweat the small stuff like this. But also, okay, at least like it makes sense in terms of team control, like analytically speaking, you could make a case for that.

Right, at least there would be a reason. It wouldn't be like an ethical one and you could raise issues with it, but you would be able to point to it and say, well, you know, I get what they're doing even if I don't like it. And it would also be less likely to linger because he's at the point now where it was like, you know, a game or two. Like when I was reading, when people, reputable sources were saying that this was a draft pick, a prospect promotion incentive thing, I was thinking, Oh, well, if that were the case, then really they might just have to wait another day or two or something like it, you know, so it seemed like it could be imminent if

that were in fact the case, but it's not. And so if, if that's not the sticking point, then who knows how long this could linger or whether there will be a change at all. And yeah, what does that suggest about the process? Is it that Boone is too veteran reliant? Now, one of the other common critiques of Boone is that he's basically a puppet of the front office, which you could say to some extent

about almost every manager, right? But that is something that Yankees fans say about Aaron Boone. It's not necessarily always a bad thing if your front office is smart. And I don't really think of Brian Cashman as someone who is unwilling to ever let a veteran go. He certainly has done that many times in the past, right? Although maybe he's more reluctant to if he's the one who acquired him or signed him. Then again, I guess he's been the one who acquired or signed basically every Yankee for the past 30 or so. I guess that's gone for a while. And you would think the fact that Verdugo is like,

at the end of the season, it's done. They don't have teams. So it's like, what do you lose if you don't think this guy can get it done for you? And I'm not saying they have to like DFA him necessarily, but like, what are we doing? Yeah. And it's not someone who's like looked on as like the veteran mentor leader clubhouse chemistry guy, right? And the quotes have been frustrating to fans from Boon because, you know, in the way that he always says these sort of vague non-committal things that maybe often are right, but still the way he phrases them are frustrating sometimes. Like if he doesn't just say, we're a bunch of bums, which I guess is what Yankees fans want him to say in every press conference after the Yankees lose.

They do really want to get that whiff out and just whack it across their own backs. I don't want to necessarily call it a pathology, but that's the closest word I know. And I don't know whether that would be good or bad for Boone's job security because on the one hand, if he's calling his own players a bunch of bums on the regular, then that doesn't reflect well on him. Then again, he might be more popular among Yankees fans if you were basically a Yankees fan himself siding with the fan base and just kind of slagging off everyone constantly. Just the id of the Yankees fan, right? And we're painting

with a broad brush here. We're speaking of some subsets, some vocal subsets of Yankees fandom. But when Boon alludes to, oh, under the hood, he's been better and he's been better of late and we like his at bats and all that sort of thing. And I mean, who knows what their proprietary metrics are telling them, but based on the public metrics that we have, that doesn't seem to be the story they're telling. I mean, yes, maybe he's underperformed his batted ball quality a bit, but not enough that even if he had exactly matched that, he would be productive for a player at his position. And worse than he's been in the past few seasons

when he was a league average hitter, right? So according to DRS, he's been plus eight in left field this year. According to StackCast, he's been plus three. And so they've praised his glove. I know there are some notable flubs that he has had. Are those isolated occurrences or are they reflective of his work as a whole?

I guess reasonable minds and also some Yankees fans could disagree about that. Sorry, I can say it because I was one. But I just don't see the case for, oh, there's a big bounce back coming here. And yeah, you mentioned the projections. He's projected to be a league average hitter and maybe like a slightly below league average player overall. So if that's what you're waiting for, that's not worth waiting for. And as you said, yeah, maybe Dominguez projects not to be that good and maybe those projections have bigger error bars. But also sometimes we can be irrationally exuberant about prospects, especially prospects who come up and set the world on fire in a small sample.

We've seen plenty of prospects struggle and even better prospects than Jason Dominguez. So that is well within the realm of possibility. And to be clear, I don't know if this would be true today, but long-term, I think that Jason Dominguez will be a better player than Alex Verdugo. And so there's that, to the extent they want to listen to ol' Meg. Is that going to be true tomorrow if he were to get called up? I don't know. But I think that the odds of him being a useful contributor come October are higher if you

call him up today, because I think it's worthwhile to get some big league run. Like how much is that worth? How many runs? I don't know the answer to that, Ben. I couldn't, I couldn't rightly tell you, I wouldn't want to speculate, but it's worth something. Like you want him in against big league pitching. So like go do that so that he can be useful to you later.

If you are going to do it, the sooner the better, probably. Right. Yeah. The sooner the better, the sooner the better. And you're right. Like Verdugo is not like a bad defender out there, but again, he's not like, he's not better, probably. Right. Yeah. The sooner the better. The sooner the better. And you're right. Verdugo is not a bad defender out there, but again, he's not playing a plus on our field

right now. So I'm like, what are you doing? What are you doing, Ben? And I guess in terms of having backup plans and redundancies, if you cut Verdugo, you'll lose him, presumably, right? And he's gone. Isn't Trent Grisham still on this roster though? Well, yes. I'm sure Yankees fans would welcome that development. Rocking a hard place from their

perspective. But yes, Trent Grisham's around as well, but you could lose Verdugo if you were to cut him loose now, whereas you sort of have the redundancy, the safety of being able to bring up Dominguez if something happened to Verdugo. Whereas if something happened to Dominguez between now and the playoffs and you don't have Verdugo around, then maybe you're really in a tight spot there. But should you be planning for that worst case scenario or should you be going for it because you're fighting tooth and nail for first place? My opinion is that you should go for it.

Here's a further question that I have about the whole thing. Do we know for sure he has new batting gloves? Do we actually know that? I have not heard that. I have not myself seen confirmation of that. One would hope. Someone go find that out for me, won't you please? Yeah. The results would not suggest that he has or that that was the problem. But look, we are thinking of Yankees fans. You're in our thoughts at this difficult time when you have one of the best records in baseball and also are fighting for first place. But we will acknowledge that there are some glaring flaws on this roster

and some frustrating flaws to be sure. And this is certainly one of them. I want them to know that they are not in my thoughts. I am fine with them being on their own. I think that there are other teams and fan bases that need our thoughts more, and my thoughts are with them. It's not that I'm wishing the Yankees ill, it's that I'm not expending any emotional energy about them at all. Many people would forgive you for wishing the Yankees ill

if you want to go that way. I don't wanna be unkind. I want to be clear, here's what I will say. I want to see Aaron Judge and Juan Soto play in the playoffs together for as long as possible because I think that's gonna be great TV. I think that's gonna be good fun baseball. You know, I think that's going to be good fun baseball. So I'm not, I'm not wishing them ill.

I mean that genuinely, but I also, you know, if my particular vibes are the ones that make the difference, I regret to inform that they are completely absent at this juncture. So what are you going to do? World's smallest violin being played by Meg Rowley right now for the Yankees and Alex Verdugo. Okay. You know who we should have in our thoughts just because things are going well for them and I think we should- Danielle Pletka Oh, I was like, if this is going to be a serious thing, I'm going to be so upset.

Jared Ranere No, not in that way, but like in a good way that we're thinking about them because of how good they've been. Danielle Pletka Sure. Jared Ran them because of how good they've been. And also how good they've been on defense specifically. The Milwaukee Brewers. We have sung their praises from time to time this season, but I think not enough. I think we've talked about other surprise teams

and we've talked about plenty of AL Central teams at length this season. And I think we've given short shrift to the Brewers. And maybe that's because the Brewers have been too good. They haven't really made it interesting in that division. They're kind of going wire to wire without a whole lot of competition. The Brewers have been in a pretty commanding spot

in the AL Central for most of the season. And thus we haven't really delivered regular updates about, yep, Brewers still playing well, but you know what? They are. And I meant to mention this a couple of days ago and then they lost a couple of games, but it still applies that they have had a fantastic season, especially relative to expectations, projections,

certainly my personal projections and predictions for them, which I just did not see this sort of success coming. And man, they have really been fantastic and they've done it despite losing Corbin Burns and despite losing Craig Council and David Stearns and despite having this spit and bailing wire and chewing gum starting rotation, which is not what we're used to seeing from the Milwaukee Brewers, not spit in like a legal foreign substances way. I mean, you know, in the figure of speech sort of way, presumably, hopefully. But they are one of

the best teams in baseball. They are leading the majors in run differential right now. How about that? That's pretty darn good. Yeah. And I mean, they have one of the best records in baseball. Only the Dodgers and the Phillies have a higher winning percentage than the Brewers and the Brewers had much lower expectations and spending and everything else than the Dodgers and Phillies coming into the season. And if we go by base runs record, then it's just the Dodgers, Phillies, Orioles ahead of the Brewers. However you slice it, they're one of the very best teams in baseball. And I just did not see them sustaining that sort of success and mea culpa and hat tip to them because they've continued to do it

even in the absence of Christian Jelic who was like their one truly standout hitter. One of their strengths has been having no bad hitters, but he was sort of their one really star level hitter when he was healthy and he's been gone. And if anything, they've been better since they lost him, which is, you know, one of those weird random unpredictable things. But still, I was kind of worried that maybe that would let some of the air out of the

batting balloon for them. And it has not. They are just a really good baseball team. They are a really good baseball team. Look, I would never say that I wish Yellidge to have been injured. I will say that his absence has allowed me to pay closer and better attention to Jackson Churio's sort of flourishing and him rounding into form. And you're right, there are obviously parts of this roster that are less good than other parts, Ben.

The starting pitching part specifically is one such part. Maybe the reason we haven't talked about them is because of that one time where I was like, there's so much more balance. And then I was like, that actually is not remotely true. Meg did a goof. But here's what I will say. If I were a Brewers fan, I would be so excited because they have a bunch of young guys. They have a bunch of young guys who look like they're going to be quite good for them for

a while. You hope to see continued growth and development. And so if they can figure out the pitching, which look, do I think that their existing group of guys is going to become like a top five rotation next year? No, I sure do not think that. I don't think that at all. But I do think that the Brewers have shown real talent for developing pitching over the years.

And so if I were a Brewers fan and I were looking ahead to next year, which I probably wouldn't be, I'd be looking at it to October and feeling very nervous about the state of my starting pitching. But if I got over that feeling of anxiety, I would be like the thing that feels good to have like in hand is like an interesting group of young hitters because we have shown a greater aptitude for developing the pitching side of things. And so maybe we can kind of get something going there. Now they will have decisions to make like Willie Thomas is a free agent, you know, it's

going to be free agent. So they have to figure out what they're going to do. You don't know what Yelich is going to be like. So there's, there's stuff to do here, but I think it's all quite exciting except for the pitching, which is, it's not good Ben, you know, like it's, see, it's like the, if you could take the Brewers and you take some, but not all of their hitters, like, and then you could take the Mariners starting pitching could take some, but not all of their hitters, and then you could take the Mariners starting pitching and then you could put them together and it's like they've got this common lineage and then they'd be unstoppable, Ben.

It would be an unstoppable postseason force, but they don't let you do that. That's against the rules. Benji No. Then we would have an actually really good baseball team, which are in short supply this season. But- Danielle There are a shortage of really good baseball teams, you know? Yes, there are.

But the Brewers are about as good as it gets right now. And really, I guess it's the defense that's the unsung aspect of their performance. And that continues to be true. And how long have we been saying this defense is underrated and you got to look at the defense and there have been all these famous Sabermetric makeovers, you know, the rays, the devil rays going from the rays in 2008 and their defensive makeover and how that helped transform them. And it's often something that sort of slips under the radar and you wouldn't think that it would anymore because it's on the radar. We have good defensive

stats, we pay attention to those stats and yet somehow it is still sort of overlooked. And the Brewers right now, if you average their defensive run saved and their stat cast fielding run value, they are third in the majors. And if you go by defensive efficiency, just the percentage of batted balls converted into outs, they are also third and I think best in the national league. And that has really propped them up because if you can't pitch or at least you can't starting pitch, then you got to turn those balls and play into outs. And they really have done that. And I don't know whether we should have anticipated that more than we did.

It's funny cause like, we don't really have defensive projections. I mean, we do like they exist. They're baked into the systems, but they aren't really easily accessible in a way. Right. Like if you look at fan graphs or baseball prospectus or wherever else you can look what a pitcher is projected to pitch or a hitter is projected to hit, but you're probably not in the standard pages or spreadsheets going to see a defensive projection. Maybe Dakota has that. I don't recall, but it's just not something that is in the spotlight. And that is true on a team level too. And it's just kind of not really focused on like team level defense projections. Although I noted

Mike Petriello did do a team level stat cast based defensive projections article back in February. And he counted down the teams with the top 10 best defensive projections. And then also mentioned some other interesting ones. Milwaukee Brewers are not mentioned in that article. So, so I guess even if we had been paying closer attention to defense, maybe they still would have gone under the radar because they weren't projected to be this adept defensively. But I always say like, that's the thing. If you can't quite figure out how a surprise team is surprising, look at the defensive

stats because seven times out of 10, at least I pulled that number out of my butt, but I would say that it is the defense that often. And I guess I may have made this comp previously, but kind of guardians ask what they're doing this year, just in terms of you think of them as a good starting pitching team, but they're not this year, but they've compensated with a good bullpen and defense and maybe a surprisingly competent offense, better than competent in the Brewers case. I guess it's really the offense that has surprised me the most with the Brewers, that they've been above average consistently, even post--etch or even post all-star break.

They've not been great, but good enough when you pair it with a pretty good bullpen and you get Devin Williams back, et cetera, and you've got great gloves. And sure, maybe a little bit of luck and timing and other things that are part of the secret sauce for most successful teams. But yeah, you just, you got to tip your cap. Sometimes Meg, you got to tip your cap. I don't know if you've ever heard anyone say that. Sometimes you got to tip your cap.

Yeah. Defense, health, and you know, an abnormally good bullpen performance. Those are almost always the things for me that drive a team being like a lot better than I thought that it would be. It's not always, but a lot of the time. Now in this case, we've just said that it's actually the hitting. So, you know, what do we know? But it's also the defense. It's more than one thing. Yeah. That's why the Brewers have been good. They're good in more than one way. And they've had a knack for a while now under

this current administration for- You could say regime, I know I'm not going to win this fight. I understand. I mean, you could win on this podcast. Look, we can create our own reality here and we can call things. Oh boy. We can apply labels to things that most of baseball doesn't use and hope that we persuade people. And if not, we can just- Dangerous direction for a podcast to go in. Although I hear it's very lucrative, so maybe. Yeah, that might be one way we could go, but we have our various quixotic quests and this could be one of them. So I support you in that. So the Brewer's administration has had a knack

for a while now of finding free talent and really excelling in terms of depth, you know, so not necessarily having a ton of star power, but also avoiding the awful as Jeff Sullivan used to say, just not playing a lot of replacement level or sub also avoiding the awful as Jeff Sullivan used to say, just not playing a lot of replacement level or sub replacement level players. And they've done that. And last time we talked about the Brewers, I think we talked about like, is it harder to do that consistently

or to find stars and have a sort of stars and scrubs roster, but whichever way you come down, they have not come down this year. And it's been pretty impressive. And so I want to salute their continued success. And you know, one of Joshian's frequent critiques of the current playoff system is that we end up talking more about marginal teams than the best teams now because division races don't really matter anymore. And so we end up focusing on teams that like it's who's gonna lose least really more so than who's going to win most.

And you know, are we going to end up at 86 or 87 wins? It's so exciting, right? But something's actually at stake. You're in October or you aren't. Whereas with division races, sometimes those are sort of ruined or some of the excitement is sapped now because it's not you're in or you're out. It's you get a buy or you don't, or you have a superior seating or you don't, right? It's just not quite the same. And certainly it depends on the season and under the old playoff format, you had duds and boring races too.

But it just so happens that it is true that we probably pay more attention to like the fight for the third wild card than we do for the fight for first place in some divisions, a fight among or between better teams because it's elimination or not versus just a better playoff positioning. Now, I guess in this case, the Brewers haven't had a compelling division race either, really. So we might not have been talking about that either. And maybe it's not so applicable in this season specifically when the best teams aren't that

great. And so the difference between talking about the best teams and the more marginal playoff fringy contenders isn't a vast golf. And also, I guess we've ended up talking about some of the best teams just because they have some of the best standout individual performances. So we talk about the Yankees because they have Aaron Judge in one standout individual performances. So, you know, we talk about the Yankees because they have Aaron Judge in one Soto and also Alex Verdugo and the Dodgers

have Shohei Otani and Mookie Betts. So one way or another we do get to them, but it is true. We probably don't focus enough on the top teams because what can you say other than they're good. They are good, but they might be good in surprising ways like they're defective. Yeah. They are good, but they might be good in surprising ways, like their defense. Yeah. And I also want to return briefly to the topic of NPB offense, because that continues to claim my attention. NPB offense, so major leagues of Japan, offense has been down. We talked about this earlier this season, and it is still really down. If you think offense is down in MLB this year,

then get a load of the Pacific league and the central league because it is really an offensive outage over there. For instance, this year, the MLB OPS is 714, which is lower than we've been accustomed to in many recent seasons. But in the central league, let's say, which is the less potent league this year, but not by that much, 639 is the average OPS this year. And look at the progression.

So if we start 2018 and go to 2024 league wide OPS in the central League each year. 730, 716, 714, 698, 678, 668, 639. So we're lopping off tens of points by the season essentially here and for a string of several seasons and it's strange and kind of confounding and I'm wondering why this is happening. And even if you're not interested in other leagues, and there are a lot of reasons to be, even if you're interested in just players who come from those leagues to MLB, this is relevant, right? Cause you got to know what the offensive environment is over there. If you want to try to forecast what someone is going to do when they come to MLB, there's some pretty prominent players that has played a role in.

So what is going on here? There was some discussion in our Discord group this week about, well, maybe what's happening here is that pitching development happened all at once. So the modern data-driven progressive pitching development and usage that we've seen happen in MLB over the past decade or decade plus. Maybe the pitchers have just gotten way ahead of the hitters in Japan because it is true that they have embraced data and data-driven player development and driveline and other facilities and all the rest, right? Like they were a bit behind in those areas, but they've kind of caught up or at least

closed the gap. And so maybe what we're seeing is that happening all at once teams following the lead of MLB front offices when it comes to that cutting edge stuff and hitters haven't been able to keep pace. And I think there's probably some truth to that. I asked Jason Koskri who covers NPB for the Japan times. And he said that there are suspicions about the ball, but that he also thinks pitchers are getting better and throwing harder. A former Cebu player in Daily Sports recently said that pitchers are getting better and using more varied pitches, cutters

and two seamers and whatnot to throw off batters. He also said that a lot of players are using lighter bats to kind of counter the pitchers and that that's having an impact. And Jason said also that the influx of Trackman and Rapsodo is aiding the pitchers, but a lot of guys are all in on the driveline, etc revolution. They're definitely learning new tricks. I have access to Delta graphs, which is kind of a fan graphs equivalent for NPP. It's a subscription based site. And if you look at the velocity data over there, they don't have as much as we

have with stat cast and movement and spin rate and all that. But if you just look at velocity, so their data goes back to 2014, their pitch tracking. And if I do an average, weighted average of the Central and Pacific leagues for each season, then in 2014, the average four seam fastball speed was 141.5 kilometers per hour. This year, it's 146.7 a decade later. That is a difference of 5.3 kilometers per hour in miles per hour. Of course, you were probably wondering what that is. And I will tell you, thanks Google, it is 3.3.

So that's a difference of 3.3 miles per hour in 10 years, which is certainly more than we've seen over the equivalent period in MLB. MLB, forcing fastball speed has increased by only 2.5 miles per hour over 16 years since 2008 and only 1.2 miles per hour since 2014. So the average NPV now is higher in the Pacific 16 years since 2008 and only 1.2 MPH since 2014. The average MPB villain now is higher in the Pacific than the Central, but overall it's

just 91.2 MPH, which is slower than MLB's average was way back in 2008, but they're gaining. So it is true that that velocity gap has closed and maybe that is playing a part here. I don't discount that. However, there really does seem to be something going on with the ball over there. That kind of complicates things when you're talking about how do you translate player performance and how do you project players. It's hard enough to keep track of how the baseball is behaving in MLB, let alone also in NPP when those are both moving targets. So I was messaging with Jim Allen earlier,

who is an English language journalist who has covered NPP since the 90s, just going back decades and decades. And I was asking him, is there a consensus about what is happening here? What's up with the offensive outage? And he says there are more advances in pitching, but also there have been more pitching injuries and also more pitchers who are coming to MLB.

So some of the best pitchers have been lost to NPB teams, but he says, he believes it's mostly the ball and some of it is an offensive response to the debtor ball, which is interesting because we've seen an offensive response to the lively ball that we had here in MLB, you know, swinging up, trying to hit the ball in the air. This is maybe sort of the opposite of that. And he theorizes that maybe the lack of pop may have made some pitchers more aggressive too, but he doesn't have any hard evidence for that. But he believes that it's the ball and he's pretty plugged into these things.

And he says, NPP is channeling Rob Manfred's former stance. You know, no changes have been made to the ball. It's not the ball to our knowledge. Nothing is showing up that sort of thing. But he says that that's the big thing that the ball has become less lively for one reason or another. He did note that this year when home runs dropped by nearly half compared to the previous three seasons, teams had track

man data to compare how much less barreled balls were traveling. So it was a little more data-driven and less anecdotal. And the problem, one team told him, was the opposite of MLB's past problem with the ball. So the yarn for this year's baseball allegedly was apparently substandard, frayed easily and the balls became less aerodynamically sound. The hardest hit balls were traveling three meters less, so about 2.5% less carry. And he notes that it appears anecdotally just based on the eye test and how the balls are carrying that maybe NPB has stopped using the 2024 balls

or the 2024 balls to this point and instead is using balls meant to be produced for next year. He can't prove that, but the home run rates inched closer to normal in August and it just looks like that. But players were remarking and complaining about the ball flight or the lack of ball flight previous to this recent uptick. He said players were checking their trackman data from previous years and telling him that balls hit as well in previous years had been going out, whereas they were not now. And he said that one source of his told him that teams were adjusting to the lack of carry

by not trying to drive some balls that they used to try to put big swings on. So trying to play small ball. And culturally there is more of an emphasis on small ball in Japan and Japanese baseball as it was, right? And so that's kind of baked in, but maybe was changing except that now the ball sort of supports small ball to some extent. So Jim wrote back in April April and I'm quoting him here in a piece from his site,

the center of Japanese baseball is the belief that the test of a quality team is the ability to impose its will on opponents by meticulous execution of one run tactics, both on offense and defense. Japanese teams practice executing one run offensive tactics and defensive counter moves to the nth degree. The balance between sacrifices and bunt shifts and stolen base attempts and holding runners is considered of vital importance to the defenders of faith who comment in the media about how Japanese players are supposed to play baseball. So it seems like maybe they're leaning back into

that archetype given that the ball's not flying or hasn't been until lately. And it's all surreptitious and who knows if it's intentional or not. Apparently three Pacific League clubs shortened the distances needed to hit home runs in their parks over the past decade or so. And that maybe this was a response to that, but again, kind of conspiratorial, except that I guess there's precedent for that in NPV, right? Because they had a ball switcheroo that the commissioner seemingly didn't even know about and certainly didn't acknowledge and then was sabotaged and deposed as a result of that

scheme or cover-up or whatever it was. So you can't completely discount it, although you'd think you'd probably learn your lesson from that happening fairly recently. Yeah, you'd think you'd probably learn your lesson from that happening fairly recently. Yeah, you'd think so. So I will be curious to see if this recent uptick picks up. And I guess what we're sort of seeing here, maybe in Japanese baseball is kind of like, if MLB offense had not been propped up by the lively ball and by power hitting over the past several seasons, cause that's been sort of the

alarm that people have sounded like, well, if the ball several seasons, because that's been sort of the alarm that people have sounded like, well, if the ball suddenly died, like that's the only thing that's keeping scoring at a reasonable level, right? And if that went away and everyone was still swinging for the fences, but the ball was not clearing the fences, then we would have a precipitous drop and it would be a total power outage. And I guess that's sort of what we're seeing and what we could have seen if that had happened in MLB or if MLB players had a different approach, right? And man, if you think offenses at a low ebb in MLB right now, then check out Japanese baseball. I guess if you like pitching and defense and one run games and small ball, then that's the game

for you. And you know, maybe in the sense of having global variety in baseball, like if you were sort of a, a sports citizen of the world and you were kind of consuming all leagues equally, which I don't know whether anyone really does that, but if someone did, I guess it would be to your advantage to have a different brand of baseball in NPB and MLB and the KBO and everywhere else, right? Like

some variety. Oh, if I want some pitcher's duels and low scoring affairs, maybe I'll check out NPB. And if I want some higher scoring affairs, maybe I'll check out the KBO. And if I want some sort of Goldilocks range, maybe MLB is more my speed. You could sort of sample based on your taste that season or that day, which would be nice. But most people don't consume sports or baseball that way. They're kind of plugged into one league and you're stuck with that league's scoring environment. Yeah, you sure are. I'll just finish with a few followups here.

First, I have been citing that stat about 40 year old batters and how Yuli Gurriel is the first 40 or older hitter this season and how we had a streak dating back to 1919 of having at least one 40 or older hitter every season. However, listener Tony Adams pointed out that there's a caveat to that, which is that is including 40 year old hitters who are primarily pitchers. And that's a pretty important caveat, right? Because pitchers, not real hitters, right? So technically, I guess that streak was real. But if you discount pitchers

and count only primary hitters who were 40 year older, then the streak extends only back to 1971, which is still a long time, but meaningfully different from 1919. So that's a pretty important point. Thanks to Tony for that follow-up. I guess 1971, that encompasses the entire designated hitter era, plus a couple of years that preceded that, which is maybe not entirely a coincidence. The game is just more hospitable, at least in terms of roster spots and positions, if not fastball speeds and aging curves to older players who don't have to play defense and just can kind of go along for a while at advanced ages. So that is probably a relationship there. Yeah, probably.

Also, we have talked a bit in recent seasons about wild pitches and past balls and trends when it comes to those because remember there was that intriguing reversal where we were seeing more wild pitches and past balls and there seemed to be a lot of good reasons for that and pitchers having nastier stuff and throwing harder and of course why would you be able to block and glove those balls? And also catchers are prioritizing framing and pitchers are going for strikeouts and trying to expand the zone and all these different reasons. But then suddenly it reversed and there were fewer wild pitches and pass balls. This was the subject of a past stat blast.

And then we also talked to Tanner Swanson, the Yankees catching coach. This was episode 2052, about a year ago, last August. And he came on to defend the one knee down catching style, which has kind of prioritized framing, but he made the case that actually this is better for blocking and wild pitch avoidance also. And also we have seen catchers move up closer to the hitter, which has led to

more catchers interference calls, but also better framing and potentially better blocking too, just a little update, which is that that trend, the more recent turn that that trend has taken has continued and wild pitches plus pass balls. If we do just wild pitches plus pass balls if we do just wild pitches plus pass balls on a per game rate. This season's combined rate is tied for the lowest since 1985 and is in fact the lowest since 1984. 40 years. Think about how different pitching and catching were 40 years ago and how much less nasty the stuff seemingly was back then.

And catchers are doing a decent job of gloving those balls these days, which I feel like the average fan might not know that and might in fact assume the opposite. Yeah, that surprises me. That's interesting. And I think we might talk a little tomorrow. I wanted to banter a bit about Whit Merrifield and his response to getting hit in the head and his calls for rules changes there.

But hit by pitches are high historically speaking, and there have been a lot of those. And you might think that that would kind of move hand in hand with wild pitches and pass balls, you know? Can't get out of the way of one, can't get in the way of the other, right? And yet not really, those things have kind of diverged. So credit to catchers and catching technique, I guess,

that still seems to be doing the trick. And if you do think that pitchers these days have no command and control, which I haven't seen the most compelling evidence for, but I get why one would think that, one would think that would One would think that would also make catcher's jobs more difficult. And yet they seem to be doing a better job of this, even though they're working with more pitchers over the course of a season on any given staff or even

during a given game. You know, it's got to be tough, right? Like, do you think there's a times through the order effect when it comes to catching? That's an interesting question that I just intrigued myself by asking. I don't know whether anyone has looked at that, but do you think that would show up like in framing or in wild pitches or pass balls or whatever? Like it might, right? It seems plausible to me that it would. I don't know that I feel definitive about it one way or the other, but I know that it's an incredibly demanding position physically and I could totally see there being a fatigue effect, both in terms of your ability to move laterally the way you want to and also on your attention over time.

So I wouldn't be surprised, you know? Yeah, there have been some catcher fatigue effects documented when it comes to batting and late in games and after you've had a number of days without rest. And of course we refuted the contention about infield hit rates for catchers falling after August, but one might think catchers would be a bit tired late in games as pitchers are or were

when it was the same pitcher late in the game as it was at the beginning of the game. But you would think that if part of the times through the order effect benefit for a hitter is that you get used to the pitcher stuff and you can anticipate how it's going to move and pick up the ball coming out of his hand and everything, might that not apply also to catchers to some extent? I mean, maybe not to the same extent, because if you're used to working with that pitcher over the course of a season,

it's not like you haven't seen him before. That can be very challenging if you're a catcher and you're traded mid-season and you have to learn a whole staff, right? Yeah, you gotta get to know a whole new staff, yeah. Yeah, but even so, I would think that if you're in the sixth inning and you're starting pitchers still in and you've been catching that guy the entire time, that's got to be a little

easier than if your starter comes out after four and then you've caught two relievers since then or something, right? Like it's different looks. Granted, you know the scouting report and you're putting your target somewhere and you know which pitch to expect, but even so, I wonder, maybe it would like fade faster the effect. But I would think when a new pitcher comes in, someone out there aspiring sabermetrician or someone with the complex, the ability to wrangle data that this would probably require

to do right, I'd be interested to see if there's like a times to the order catcher framing effect or other aspects of catcher defense, not specifically framing. Yeah. Also remember when we talked earlier this season about White Sox second baseman not hitting a home run all year? Yep. Well, I come this one time not to bury the White Sox, but to praise them because a White Sox second baseman has homered in fact, two White Sox second base.

Yeah, home runs, they come in bunches. And they've come in a duo at least for the White Sox. I noticed this because Nicky Lopez homered on Wednesday when he was playing second base. And I thought, oh wow, they did it finally. And then I dug deeper and I realized that rookie Brooks Baldwin, another major leaguer we haven't met or most people haven't if they're not watching

White Sox games, which why would they be? He homered, he snapped the streak, he ended the drought. As a second baseman on August 12th, he had a three run shot off of Eniel de los Santos in a 12 to two route of the Yankees. One of the last times the White Sox won, one of the last times the White Sox won was- Oh my gosh.

Partly powered by a home run by a White Sox second baseman. So they have done it. They've done it, but just think about the sentence that you've just said. One of the last times they won. They did win on Wednesday. They snapped the 12 game losing streak, the most recent one.

You've got to specify which 12 game losing streak. The third one. Yeah, exactly. Once you have to specify the 12 game losing streak, don't... But hey, you got to celebrate your victories where they come because usually they don't come at the end of the game in the win column. You're a White Sox fan. Yeah, no, and in their defense,

White Sox second baseman have out hit Red Sox and Angels second baseman this year. 62 WRC plus for the White Sox second baseman versus 46 at the Keystone for the Red Sox and 61 for the angels. I take it all back then, Ben. I don't know why I ever doubted them. There have been teams that were worse in this one specific respect. In this one specific respect.

And also in defense of White Sox second baseman, they have not been as bad as White Sox catchers or White Sox third baseman. Yeah, but like that's damning with the faintest of praise. Yeah, you're still comparing to other White Sox. Yeah. It doesn't say that much. At the end of the day, the vibe in that clubhouse isn't going to be good, you know? What a time. What a time they're having over there. My goodness. Yep. And also one last little Otani update. We talked last time about his run at Ronald

Acuna Jr.'s record set last season for the highest single season power speed number, the Bill James stat, which rewards both hitting lots of homers and stealing lots of bases, but also doing those in a fairly even and balanced way. And I had overlooked that there was a post in our Facebook group by listener and member Michael, who wrote on September 1st, predating that podcast, just so we don't forget about Shohei Otani, which wasn't in danger of happening. But hey, we led that last bit of banter by saying that we hadn't talked about old Shohei in a little while by our standards. Michael determined that Otani,

who had just finished August with 12 homers and 15 steals, by his calculation, which I have not verified, Otani's power speed number for that month was the highest in history. So that's something, even if he doesn't end up surpassing Acuna, which is doable, but would be tough, he may, if this is correct, possess the best power speed calendar month ever in history.

12 homers, 15 steals, power speed number of 13.3. Wow. Yeah, that's something. Surpassing the previous record holder, Carlos Beltran, in August of 2004, 20 years ago to the month when he hit 10 homers and 16 steals. And then the great Eric Davis in May of 1987 had 12 homers and 11 steals. And then Acuna last year had the fifth and six spots on this list with his September,

October, and June. And by the way, Elie De La Cruz this year, his March, April comes in fourth on the list. So we're in sort of a power speed golden era, one could say, now that we've made it easier to steal some bases and also hit home runs. Yeah. Hmm. I don't know. That Otani might be good. And lastly about that Otani, my final update here is that I threw out in our banter last time that I presumed that the number of episodes in which Shohei Otani was a headline topic that we really focused on Otani and bantered about him had declined this season because I thought that would be the case now that he was no longer a two-way player. And I was wondering whether that actually was the case.

And I shined the Raymond Chen sign in the sky, our effectively wild wiki keeper and listener and Patreon supporter. And he ran the numbers here and he determined that the number of episodes in which Shohei Otani was mentioned in the episode description. So this doesn't count offhand casual mentions when he didn't merit a mention in the episode description. So this doesn't count offhand casual mentions when he didn't merit a mention in the description and a tag in the FanGraphs player linker. Last year, he cleared that bar in 56 of 156 episodes.

Oh my God, Ben. 35.9%. So that's more than a third of episodes. No. Focused somewhat on Shohei Otani. Oh, Ben. Look, he had one of the most impressive seasons ever. I know, but my God, I just, my stars.

So now you're wondering what's the percentage this season. I am wondering, yeah. So entering this episode, it was 24 out of 107, which is a comparatively low 22.4% rate, down from again, 35.9% last year. So it was a little more than a third last year, it's a little less than a fifth this year. So that is a lot. That's a like roughly a 38% reduction in our rate of

invoking Otani. So that's, that's something. And as I said, I bet if we e-pay adjusted that, it would probably be more striking. Like if we started from the start of the season, because we had to talk, we had no choice, but to talk about Shoet. If I recall correctly, we maybe did multiple emergency pods. We did do an emergency episode, yes. And really we would have been derelict in our duties if we didn't talk about the biggest story in baseball, which just so happened to involve Shoet-O-Tonny, which magnified

it even more, but would have been a big story even if it involved a lesser and less famous player. But if we Ipe adjusted, so Raymond determined that Ipe adjusting would strike four episodes from that total. That's all? That's all, but that makes a meaningful difference. So episodes 2140, 2141, 2144, and 2150, we talked about Otani solely in the context of the Ipe situation and the betting on sports scandal. Oh my gosh. So if we remove those when we talked about only that and not some other Otani topic,

then that would bring our rate down to a mere 18 out of 107. You know, it's starting to sound reasonable here. I mean, 18 out of 107, right? So that, or wait, no, I undercount. Leave it in, leave it in. 20, 20 out of 107, okay? 20 out of 107, that is an 18.7% rate.

And the thing is that if you do the math there, that's about a 48% reduction in Otani talk rate. And you know what, isn't that perfect? Because he's gone from being a two-way player to a one-way player. And we have essentially halved the rate at which we talk about his play. It's math. It checks out.

Okay. I cannot believe how many episodes he was tagged in. Oh my God, Ben. That is... Yeah, I was giving that player linker a real workout. Oh my God. that is so funny. It's so funny, Ben. I mean, come on. Don't you think? Don't you think it's so funny? You could say that we were over discussing Shohei Otani previously, but our current rates

are, I mean, you were my accomplice. You ate it and abetted. That's true. You were present. You were at the scene. That's true. Okay. Okay.

Maybe you gently discouraged me to kind of curtail those activities at times, but you humored me. You went along with my whims. And if we were properly calibrated previously, which maybe we were not, then we are, I guess, equally well calibrated now. Unless you say that really we shouldn't have halved our rate of talking about Otani because he's less than half as interesting as a one-way player than he was as a two-way player. And so maybe the drop-off should have been steeper. But he's so good though, you know?

He is. And so I think that it's defensible because you don't want to, I mean, it would be, the man's probably going to win MVP. Like it would be ridiculous to not talk about him. So I think that we're maybe at the right level. Man, can you imagine if the eBay stuff had gone differently? Good Lord, what a, what a, I feel like, you know, I just remember those days and I felt like a ghost had brushed up against me.

I was like, this is going to be, we're going to talk about this every day, every day. And then we stopped, we were able to stop talking about it. That was good to be able to stop. Now the question is, am I obligated to mention Shohei Otani in the episode description for this episode, therefore boosting the rate at which we've talked about Otani? Because does this count as talking about Otani or does it really count about us talking about Otani? Is this more of a meta podcast conversation? I think I would, if it were me, I would probably not tag him. I probably would not do that.

But I also probably would have talked about him less just generally absent your encouragement. And like, look, people listening, don't get it twisted. I love Otani. Otani is amazing. What a joy, what a treat that we get to watch him so often. I'm not here to bury the man. Couldn't do it. He's too tall. But also we all have our guys and they

don't give you extra points for being creative about the ones you pick. And Ben settled on his dude. And there are times when I am just along for the podcasting ride. So here we are. But you know, it does go to show that I'm not talking about him indiscriminately. I am sensitive to how interesting he is. Am I perhaps not sensitive enough? Do I find him more interesting than most? Maybe.

But relative to myself, my logic is internally consistent, I would say. So there's that. I think that's totally fair. I don't think that you are engaged in any kind of behavior that I would feel compelled to talk to Jesse about. So there you go. Okay. Jesse's right there with me with your Shohei Otani. I am, but you shouldn't. No, see that- We present a united front when it comes to this topic.

Yeah, you shouldn't have said that. You should have just, you should have. Anyway, Ken confirmed, we have quantified it in the way that we quantify all things at Effectively Well, that there has been less Shohei Otani talk this season, for better or worse, though not necessarily less Shohei Otani talk talk. Talk. All right. Look, when my daughter grows up and she says, Dad, did you talk enough about Shohei Otani when he was doing once in a century stuff?

I'll be able to honestly say I didn't talk about him too little. By the way, tough outcome for the Padres who lost to the Tigers on Thursday, but no true outcomes for Louisa Rice, who had four more plate appearances without a walk, strike, add or homer. 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 month or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free, and get themselves access

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