Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2369: The Epitome of Mid

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley talk about not talking about the Cardinals, then banter about Sandy Alcantara’s resurgence, whether Walker Buehler will have his own bounceback for the Phillies, Ha-Seong Kim’s reunion with Jurickson Profar, the concept of “adversarial location,” Aroldis Chapman and Taj Bradley‘s discoveries of inside/outside and scouting reports, respectively, Chapman’s extension, whether […]

Hello, it's fair game, even Kee's dirty pants. And maybe if you're lucky, we'll co-call by the chance. You never know precisely where it's going to go. By definition, effectively wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2369 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg.

Hello. I was just pondering this. Which team do you think we've talked about least this season? I know that canonically, by tradition, it's the Reds. Yeah. And the Reds are up there. Don't get me wrong. But I think there might be a team we've talked about even less than the Reds.

and with good reason because we just haven't had a whole lot of reason to talk about them. I just, I scanned the standings. I was looking down the list of teams thinking about all the times that we had talked about each and the reasons why they merited discussion

at some point. Then I got to this one and I thought, gosh, we just haven't really talked about them at all this season and I can't blame us. Is it the Cardinals? It is the Cardinals. Wow.

Same division, but really, when have we talked about the Cardinals this year? I know we talked about them last week because of the Wilson-Cancheris kerfuffle. Sure. But other than that, when have we talked about them? When have we talked about them? And why would we have? You raise a great point, really. They're in this interesting spot because, like, for the Cardinals.

They're in the least interesting spot. That's why we haven't talked about them. They are, right? They're like, they're not good. And so there's that. And they also aren't so bad as to be like really remarkable. And because they are a team that is so often at the very least competent, they're not, you know, like they don't have this like run of of woe and misery that necessitates like talking about it much. We know that there's like a leadership change on the horizon, but it's not here.

yet. It's like many of the things that would inspire us to be like, let's talk about those cardinals, those redbirds are looking a little long in the tooth. Like we don't have any reason to do that. Yeah, it's right. John Moseilac we know is moving on after the season. And then there's the constant rumors surrounding Ali Marmal and Yadir Malina, but nothing is happening yet.

It's all possibly impending. And the team itself, so I don't think any team is closer to its projected pace. than the Cardinals. I don't know how they could be because I was just looking at their pre-season projected win total, which was 78.9, and their current projected win total

is 78.8. So they're a tenth of a win behind their projected pace and teams don't win tenths of games. So they are dead on, essentially. They were projected for, I think, a 488 winning percentage,

and they're at like 489 right now. So they're bang on what they were supposed to be. And they were supposed to be mid. And they are. They have succeeded in being the epitome of mid. That's what they are. And they haven't been completely out of it and they haven't been completely in it.

They never, I think their division odds peaked at around 25%. And that was pretty early in the season. and then their odds of making the playoffs, period, have never been at 50%. They were almost at 50%, their high point late June. That's it. So you look at their playoff odds graph, and it's just not particularly spiky. It was up for a while, but sort of steady. And now it's dwindled almost to nothing, but most teams have.

So there's just nothing notable really about them. And it's not new because they're a little bit below 500 now. They were a little bit above 500 last year. It's just more of the same. We probably talked about them more in 2023 when they were worse than they are now because that was surprising because they were the Cardinals. They were the steady eddy of baseball teams. Right. They don't normally do that.

Yeah. And so that was new and noteworthy. And now it's not. And they didn't do much over the offseason. They didn't do much at the day. deadline. So not a lot of transaction activity to talk about. Right. Not really any noteworthy individual player seasons. I mean, no one is really just setting the league on fire. Like, Mason Wynn is leading the Cardinals with 3.5 fan graphs war, which is fine. Like he's having a

solid season. He's a good player. But that's not very good for your best player. I think I just quickly checked. I think there are 24 teams who have a better best player or more valuable best player this year than the Cardinals and Mason win. So, and some of the teams that have worse best players are noteworthy in other ways, like the Braves. Well, we've talked about the Braves plenty because they were supposed to be good. And then they weren't. And so that was noteworthy. And they had lots of injuries and everything.

And the Cardinals, man, I mean, I don't think even Cardinals fans, if you're listening, if you're still listening, even though we've essentially ignored your team all season, can you blame us really? can you fault us for that? What did we miss? They're also afflicted by being a division with other teams that are very interesting, right? Like the brewers are dynamic and winning a bunch and fascinating and the Cubs are like in it and they got the Kyle Tucker of it all and what are they going to be and how are they going to compete? And that's like there's other stuff. You know, we saw, we've seen multiple examples and had multiple occasions to like talk about the ineptitude of Pirates ownership and like the situation.

they find themselves in in the division and like the reds have dynamic players and for all of our joking or like in this position where we might want to say much more about them if they're able to like rally in this last month and make a run at that final playoff spot so it's just there's there are a lot of factors conspiring against them but like think about it this way cardinals fans we've had a lot of occasions to talk about your team over the years much of a complimentary right and i think that really this is this is a good thing since you're not in a position to be good right now but we we clearly don't view that as some sort of like intransigent intrinsic intransigent intransigent and then i lost my

confidence and so then i said it a bunch of wrong ways and i said it the correct way but you know we we view this as sort of you're you're in a waste on your way to presumably better days or at least hopefully better days. So I don't think you need to take it as like an indictment. It might be boring for you. I'll allow that. And I would understand being like, can't you throw me a Mason-Win-shaped bone. But I don't know, what was up with the way I said, bone?

Now I'm going to be weird the whole episode. I'm nervous. Yeah. Even Mason-Win is like good all-around player, but it doesn't really stand. out in any particular respect other than defense arm strength. That's, you know, that's, impressive. But the offensive stats also pretty pure mid. So that's just who they are at this stage. And yeah, they had a good run. They're just sort of vaguely disappointing their players you can point to and say, Lars Neupar, huh, thought he was really going to have that

big year finally didn't happen. Or Jordan Walker, woof, right? But really, there's just nothing there. It's just, it's vaguely disappointing, but not in a way that we want to just analyze what went wrong and how did it all just go so horribly. And we've talked so much about the Braves and other disappointing teams that we thought were going to be good. And then they weren't. And the Cardinals, we just never really thought they were going to be that good. They're playing perfectly up to or down to expectations. So that's that. I mean, at the end of every year, we typically do an episode or two.

on stories we missed about each team, and it's going to be every story about the Cardinals, I guess, because we must have missed it if it was a story about them. So if Cardinals fans want to write in and make the case that we have underappreciated the Cardinals and that there are things that we should have said, maybe we could have talked about, like, the attendance decline, but that's just a manifestation of the fact that even Cardinals fans aren't interested in the Cardinals right now, and why would they be? So I don't know that we're going to get that much pushback. What else can I say about them?

I thought that they really nailed Nikki Glazer's likeness for her bobblehead. Is that something? Something, yeah. I didn't know Nikki Glazer was a Cardinals fan. I learned that. And I thought, you know, sometimes they do the celebrity bobbleheads. And I'm like, excuse me, I swear, who the fuck is that? You know?

And I was like, oh, that looks like Dickie Glazer. If you had shown me that bobblehead and not told me who it was, I've been like, is that Nikki Glazer? Is she a Cardinals fan? So they got that right, you know, that's something. Yeah, there was a person. period early in the season when it looked like, hey, maybe Victor Scott the second is something. And then you got, you got Mason Wynn and Yvonne Herrera and, hey, maybe they're kind of

putting back together the Cardinals way and a bunch of homegrown guys. And just it has not turned out to be particularly exciting. I wonder if Cardinals fans, I mean, look, before I say what I'm about to say, I want to allow that the degree to which Cardinals fans talked about, like, the Cardinals fans talked about, like, the Cardinals, way might have been overstated, which isn't to say that there weren't Cardinals fans who were really annoying in a particular way, because that's definitely true. Every fan base, right? But like, Of course, yeah. Some of them are a lot. And so I don't want to overstate the case. But I wonder if Cardinals fans will sort of look at this as like, as an opportunity, right? Like, you've had this

stodgy persona, right? And then you've had this sort of like puckish, fantastical persona, right? Demilandry, Cardinals Amalgamagic. I always wonder if those constituencies view themselves as mutually reinforcing or at odds, but that's a conversation probably for a Cardinals podcast, not for this one. And so, you know, that's sort of been the identity of the team for a long time. And, you know, it's nice to have like a bit that you're known for. And that's been a successful bit for them, right? It has yielded World Series.

Yes. But also, maybe the bits of little tired, you know? Yeah. Maybe you need a, you know, it's time to workshop new material, right? The last special, you can't, you can't run those jokes anymore, right? You need a new tight 10. So you're in this transitional moment where you still obviously have holdovers from the last good Cardinals team, but they're sort of on their way out. You have this new group that's starting to coalesce.

You have new leadership up top. Like, think about it. You could be anyone, right? You can be. Yeah. Reinvent yourself. We invent yourself, right? You can be, I know that rebrands are controversial these days.

I'm not saying to make your logo worse or less distinctive, you know, don't get it twisted. But also, you could be anybody. You could be anybody. It's like the talented Mr. Ripley, except hopefully with us boat murder. Yeah, you'd think, okay. Well, we just did a tight, not quite 10, not even a tight 10, whatever it was, 12 on the Cardinals. Everyone else can reinvent themselves. Yeah.

It was tight for us. So we talked about how we hadn't talked about them. So there, that's something. We did throw you a bone. There are people you just referenced who host Cardinals podcast. They talk only about the Cardinals. There are multiple such shows, and they find something to discuss. Oh, sure.

They managed it somehow. So I'm sure if we were in the weeds enough, there would be things to talk about. But, yeah, feel free to let us know the most notable St. Louis stories that we have missed this season. I want to say that, like, there is always something interesting about everybody, right? Like, you know, and the question is, is it interesting to other people? And that's a question you have to satisfy for yourself. But there's going to be a constituency for the content, right? There are people who they're not thinking about this cardinal season in isolation.

They're thinking about this cardinal season within the context of their fandom, within, like, the context of their lives, you know? And so what's one down year? One down boring year. That's nothing. That's nothing. And that's, you know, and there's always something to say, although I will admit that I feel, I do feel for those who have to generate content out of it because as someone who covered

some really boring and bad Mariners teams, it can be a challenge. But that can also be a creative boon, right? So you got to. Yeah, it's, you know, yeah, the constraints, force creativity. Right. Yeah. Right. So we discover that every off-season when we still do three episodes a week.

I just looked at the year-over-year attendance figures, and the Cardinals are down the most in the majors, down about 7,600 fans per game relative to last season, which was itself disappointing. More than the Rays, who are playing in a minor league park this year, more than the Orioles who were extremely disappointed. relative to expectations, more than the pirates who've given their fans every reason to stay away, though that's nothing new. So that in itself is notable, the fact that fans are fleeing because the team is so uninteresting. And we now have generated content out of the fact that they are so uninteresting as evidenced by that attendance decline. Okay. So we'll see if we come back to the Cardinals when they're good again and if the fans return as well.

I have confidence that those things will be true. Speaking of seasons that have been righted, perhaps, their ships have, Sandy Alcantara. I don't know if it's premature to say that he's back to being his ace adjacent self. But I was just looking, since July 23rd, this is his most recent eight starts. He is a top 15 pitcher by Fangraph's War. He's top 12 if we go RA9 war. So he's been one of the best pitchers in baseball now for more than a month, and most of that period has overlapped with the post-trade deadline period. Do you think there are any teams that are looking at Sandy O'Contra's recent work and saying, huh, maybe we should have taken a plunge?

Maybe we could have pried him away from the Marlins and we could have gotten post-deadline mostly good, Sandy. because he's had like at least four consecutive vintage sandy starts where he's gone six or seven innings, mostly seven, allowed a run or two tops, gotten some strikeouts, good control. He's just, he's kind of looked like his old self lately. And we speculated about that that maybe someone would sort of buy low on Alcantra at the deadline, even though he had been so bad to start the season, just banking on, okay, there's some glimmers of life here. There's some signs. Maybe he's returning to himself. And I guess if you had made that bet, and if everything else had played out the way that it has, then you would have been fairly richly rewarded thus far. But we don't really know what the Marlins were asking for because they may have been banking on Alcantra come back to.

And they may have thought, oh, we can just deal him over the offseason, which now they can. Now they can. I suspect that they're, I mean, these are related things. We can't completely decouple them. But I suspect that what the Marlins were asking for was a bigger barrier than a desire to trade for Sandy. And you might be saying, well, yeah, duh, like, they were probably asking for a lot because they thought he was going to be good again and everyone else thought he was going to be lousy. But, like, I bet that the consensus opinion of what kind of pitcher he is actually, wasn't actually that far apart from the Marlon side versus. And so they might have been asking, like maybe they're just asking for too much, regardless of the, if you agreed with them and their internal evaluation of his likelihood of turning things around.

But yeah, he's been quite, he's been quite good. And, you know, Ben, there are some less good pitchers who are going to maybe see October time because of injuries on contenders. So I think that there are great many teams that are probably like, you know, I wanted to Sandy. Yeah. I don't know if this is the one you were thinking. But what do you think the Phillies see in Walker Bueller? Because we talked about the Wheeler injury and the fact that even in Zach Ler's absence, the Phillies still have the second best projected starting rotation the rest of the way.

And now they're adding Walker Bueller to it. So the Red Sox cut him loose. It's not like they're really rich in starting pitching necessarily. And they're headed for October. And the Phillies, even without Wheeler, I mean, they've. got a solid top three, certainly, and, you know, five or six guys who seem like they're better than Walker Bueller based on how bad he has been this season for the Red Sox and, frankly, most of last season for the Dodgers as well. So he's going to make one minor league start

for the Phillies, AAA affiliate, and then he's going to be up starting for the Phillies. And I wonder why is it, why is Walker Bueller worth going to a six-starter rotation? I think that if I were the Phillies, I would be sufficiently concerned about the gap between what Taiwan Walker has managed to produce on the field and what his peripheral say he ought to have produced to at least give it a try. Obviously, things are not going super great for Andrew Painter in Lehigh Valley. And so part of it is just like, if you are concerned that you're going to need to have depth, particularly as guys like Christopher Sanchez bump up against like a season high innings pitched number

why not cycle through a little bit of depth and see what you have and see if you're able to turn something around there. I will say this. I don't know if it's going to work, but if it does, if the Phillies manage to help Bueller write

the ship, even if he's just like, I'm a useful death starter that allows, you know, Sanchez or Ranger's Juarez or what have you to, like, or Lazzardo, to take a turn off and maybe come into the postseason a little bit fresher. I think that that could be useful.

But also, if they managed to turn Bueller back into a version of himself that is recognizable to us as like the Bueller of old, we're going to have to have a conversation about the Red Sox and pitching stuff. Because like I think that we all went through this period where like the Red Sox have pitching dev figured out now. And then, like, we saw the second half of that season where they were like, we're not going to throw any fastballs. And it was like, well, that didn't go great. So maybe, like, you figured some stuff out and you're like, you're making progress, but also there's still work to be done. And now all the guys who were good for half a season are hurt. And so what are they now?

We don't even know. The Phillies have the best projected relief core as well. Oh, yes. Of course, Alvarado is not postseason eligible. So you can move Bueller to the bullpen. if you think he'll be good there and maybe you're banking on big game Bueller just like World Series Walker

showing up, proven postseason starter. And I think that it sounds like the Red Sox were planning on giving him more run in the bullpen and then like injuries just forced their hand and they needed to bring up Tolly and they needed the 40 man spot and so Bueller was the just like

the guy that they felt like could jettison not miss him. But yeah, I mean like I don't know. It could be that it doesn't work out at all, but there's also the reality of the calendar where if you're going to try it and you want the best version of, you know, the best case scenario to be a dominant Walker who was also, and by Walker, I mean Walker Bueller, that's going to get confusing potentially. People are going to have to be very clear about this. But if what you want is a best case scenario where Walker Bueller either is able to write the ship from a. starter perspective or isn't but shows a lot of skill as like a as a postseason reliever you need him on the roster and time to be postseason eligible right and that deadline was noon yesterday yeah so you only had so much time i keep going like i keep going like bang bang bang with my hands like i would never have known but they do need the the nominative determinism to be a little less

strong with walker bueller they need him to go back to control pitcher bueller because the the walks have been a bit out of hand, literally and figuratively, especially because he's just not striking guys out so much anymore. So I hope that someone can figure him out or that he can figure himself out because it has been a swift fall for someone who was really like young ace type pitcher. And I guess it's that second Tommy John surgery that'll get you sometimes. So I am always kind of interested in seeing who goes from worst teams. to better teams around this time of year when guys get released

or picked up on waivers and then you see like ICF, Isaiah Kyner Folefa went from the Pirates to a better team the Blue Jays rejoining the Blue Jays whom he had some success with last year and so you have a team like the Pirates

and it's not always like it's not as if he couldn't play for the Pirates and now he can play for a potential playoff team it's more like well they don't want to pay him if they don't have to I guess But, like, you know, Carlos Santana goes from the Guardians to the Cubs or Bueller from the Red Sox to the Phillies. That's a contender to contender swap. But I'm always sort of fascinated to see just, you know, one team's trash is another team's treasure sort of at this time of year.

You can find a spot for someone. Or the Braves picking up Hassan Kim, which would have been cool several months ago because I was sort of, I was fantasy. drafting the Braves to sign Hassan Kim because I was sort of invested in the buddy comedy that he and Jerks and ProFar had going. I know. They seemed to be baseball besties and seemed like the Braves needed a shortstop, which turns out, yeah, they could have used one. Maybe it wouldn't have been Hassan Kim because he was actually hurt for most of the season

and hasn't played well since he returned to the race. But I like that those guys were reunited. Maybe it's a little less heartwarming now that ProFar is. post-PED suspension, but at least those guys are together again. And this is a case of, obviously, the Braves are not picking them up for the stretch run, really. They're picking up for next year. So you can get your off-season shopping done a little early. Do you think that part of why Profar made the mistake of taking PUDs is that he missed his friend

and his judgment was compromised by that? Do you think that this is another outgrowth of the male loneliness? epidemic? Do you think that that's what happened? He needed some sort of illicit substance for company because he didn't have Hassan Kim. Hey man, we've all been there. You have a bad day and you're like two drinks and then you're like 39, bad idea. Yeah, who knows, could be. ProFar, by the way, haven't paid that much attention to his season because of the suspension and because of the Braves. But he is having essentially the same season on a rate basis that he had last year. So, you know, never know, like, that's not going to convince people that last year was not a product of

PDs. Obviously, we don't know that he was taking them. Yeah, we don't know that he was taking them then, and we don't know that they were responsible for the season that he had. And we don't know that they wouldn't have lingering effects even after he got caught. And people say, oh, we don't know that he's not secretly taking something now. But between that being an outlier, and yes, I'm comfortable saying breakout year for him late in his career, and then the subsequent suspension, you might have thought, oh, well, he's going to crater now. No, he's basically been just as productive as he was last year for San Diego on a rate basis with Atlanta.

It's too little too late for him and for the Braves. But nonetheless, nice to see for anyone who's still rooting for Jerks and ProFar, perhaps including Hassan Kim. Sure. Okay. You know, speaking of Red Sox pitcher development, so I wanted to do. to get into this, and it'll be a little bit Red Sox related. But I have been musing for the past few days about the role of command and pitching to spots

and pitching to scouting reports because Jonathan Judge wrote this piece for baseball prospectus, which somehow had escaped my notice. It was last month. And then I came across it and was impressed by it. And it's about what he's calling adversarial pitch location, which is basically pitch location tailored to the traits of the hitter. Yes. So we have all these stuff models at baseball perspectives, at fan graphs, and they aren't really specific to the hitter for better or worse. So they consider the locations and they consider is that generally a good location, but they don't consider was that a good location against this.

specific hitter. So he writes, these and other metrics are a good start, but none of them consider an important reason specific locations are chosen. The batter's individual weaknesses. Pitchers with effective command don't just locate pitches in generally good spots. They locate pitches where they know a particular batter will struggle with them. So that sounds reasonable. Of course, we never know exactly what any individual pitcher is trying to do.

We don't know if they've read the scouting reports. We don't know if they're applying the scouting reports. and this is kind of tricky to do because you can't just look at heat maps or hot zones or whatever because a lot of that is very small sample based and so he's done some of his Jonathan Judge Magic and to his satisfaction at least has come up with a way

to sort of tell where a hitter is actually productive or not just kind of extrapolating from their production elsewhere in the zone and looking over a bigger sample, et cetera. And so he's now applied that, mapped that, onto the pitcher pitch locations. So he says there are at least two layers of pitch location and they should be quantified as such. The first is the general value on average of locating a pitch in a certain place. This is probably captured more or less by existing public approaches to measuring location

quality pitches down the middle are a bad idea, with pitches on the edges usually much better. But the second layer addressed by this article is the value on average of a particular location specific to each batter, as compared to some other locations specific to that batter. Location analysis based solely on overall hitter tendencies ignores how teams choose pitch locations and how great pitchers defeat great hitters. So this is adversarial location. So they're still refining it. They're still rolling it into their pitch metrics.

But this was interesting, I thought, and he comes up with a value for this adversarial pitch location, and he comes up with some leaders. and it mostly looks like whom you would expect it to. It seems to pass a sniff test. The leader in adversarial pitch locations, both last season and this season, is Jose Quintana, which, you know, I guess that sounds about, right? Sounds like the type of guy who probably would have to make the most

of these specifically tailored pitch locations because he's not a flamethrower and, you know, just kind of your crafty, lefty type. Right? Veteran pitcher. So that checks out and like Kyle Hendricks shows up here. You know, you always want Kyle Hendricks toward the top of your your pitch location leaderboards. Paul Skeens is there too, which just like goes to show how good Paul Skeens is because he can blow you away. He doesn't have the Quintana Hendrix stuff. But also apparently he's pretty good at this. Yeah. It is nice when you have a guy on there who you both expect and are like, oh yeah, and he's good. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Because otherwise. Yeah, I guess if it were all kind of, eh, pitchers, it might still be measuring what you're trying to find here because meh pitchers are probably the ones you have to really focus on this, but be a little less sexy, a little less exciting. So it's nice when a skein shows up or Zach Wheeler shows up for this season.

And that checks out because those guys are just great at everything. And, you know, like looking at the career, so they took this back to 2017 and Kyle Hendricks is the career leader. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. And then, like, Zach Granky, yeah, checks out, Wade Miley, Dallas Kichel, et cetera, right? So it's your finesse guys, it's your soft tossers for the most part, and then some other guys who are just really good and good at everything. Rich Hill shows up there, which is always heartwarming to see. Why won't someone pick up Rich Hill if you're picking up Walker Bueh for the playoff run? Come on.

I mean, I don't want to insult your family or the loves of your life. Did you enjoy watching John Brebeah this weekend? Yeah. So I get into a game and I was like, oh, Ben must be so happy right now. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Look, I can't pretend that Rich Hill was great in his brief Big League. No, you're an honest man.

Yeah. But Walker Bueller was not great in a bigger sample. I'm just saying. Anyway, I didn't mean to get sidetracked, but I saw Rich Hill. I know. And you were like, I have to, you know, I have to. I simply must. Who else other than me, Ben Lindberg would do it, you know?

Yes. Who will speak up for Richel. Yeah. Right. So as Jonathan notes, this is, it's maybe like explanatory more than it is additive because in theory this should show up in your overall value. Sure. And so you wouldn't want to double count like, okay, they're this good. And also they're this good at pitching to locations and tailoring their stuff to scattering reports because that should be baked into their overall numbers.

But it's still interesting and enlightening and helps illuminate why certain guys are good. or at least pitchable, basically. Right. So I had this in my mind, and then immediately after that saw two stories that made me think of this. Now, one is about Red Sox Closer for this season and next season, because he just signed an extension, a rolled as Chapman. So the story, and this is hard to believe, but it is sort of backed up by the stats or seems to be at least. And this is something that Buster only said on his Baseball Tonight podcast for ESPN, essentially explaining why Chapman is having arguably a career year this year at an advanced stage, certainly a resurgent bounceback season. Apparently in spring training this year, Connor Wong was catching him in a game.

And as you know, Roldus Chapman's command during the course of his career has been kind of spotty, right? but Connor Wong is catching him and for years of course the Rolls Chapman is one of those guys who when he's on the mound the catcher basically is like just might as well have just waved his hand just throw your fastball right and he just throws it down the middle Connor Wong is using pitchcom and he pushes on his pitchcom inside fastball and the light bulb goes off over Chapman's head and he tells Connor Wong and Veritec like wow I've never thought about

spotting my fastball. I just threw it to home plate. But this is the first time, like, verbally here's inside fastball or subsequently outside fastball. And so it's that whole thing of, and you've seen in movies, sniper, et cetera, aim small, miss small. That's what Chapman has done this year after hearing those words on pitchcom from Connor Wong. And all of a sudden his whole perspective has changed. And we have this new dominant pitcher. in his late 30s. It's hard to swallow the idea that he never thought of like you could throw an inside fastball or an outside fastball, not just a generic fastball.

It seems overly simplistic. But I don't know. Dan Slemorski just blogged about the extension for fan grass and pointed out that, well, he has avoided the middle of the plate more this year. And like his locations really have improved. And he sort of simplified his pitch mix and everything too. But pitchcom's not even new. I mean, pitchcom's been around for a few years at this point, right?

So is it possible that he just wasn't wearing the pitchcom device for the past few seasons that he never heard inside, outside? It sounds like just too pat a eureka moments. And yet it is sort of backed up by the fact that, yeah, he's not walking anyone and he's not throwing it right over the middle anymore. I wonder if we are maybe taking, and I'm not trying to impugn, Buster's reporting here or anything. But, like, I wonder if this is maybe being taken, like, a little too literally or was presented a little too literally? Because I do think there's something to the idea of, like, guys finding, well, we can put

this a couple of different ways, right? It could be that there is something about the relationship that he is established with Connor Wong, with Veritech, with the Red Sox, that has sort of allowed advice to permeate and that is being presented to him in a way that he finds compelling, maybe in a way that he didn't before. Obviously, like, the end of his tenure with New York had a fair amount of acrimony in it. So, like, maybe, you know, and then, like, Pittsburgh, who knows? So, like, there's, you know, there's perhaps there is something to the notion that, like,

this was just, like, the right combination of people to help him adapt his game as he has aged. or maybe it's that, you know, he wants to remain a productive and employable pitcher. And it's not like the stuff is any, I mean, like, it is kind of remarkable how. I know that Chapman is Chapman and there's stuff with Chapman. And I'm not trying to discount the stuff. And the best you can say is he seems like a weird guy. And obviously he's been a guy who is, you know, surges suspension under the domestic violence policy. And so, like, it is an appreciation for him isn't uncomplicated and, like, it is really remarkable what he is able to do at this age.

Oh, yeah. I've marveled at it. His arm is just one of the wonders of the baseball world. But that doesn't mean that it is precisely the same as it was when he first debuted. Remarkable, though, it has remained. And, like, you know, the stuff is freaking nutty still. And so it could be that, like, it's a combination of the realities of him pitching at, you know, at this age as a 37-year-old and he and Connor Wong have a good report. And, like, he likes Verdeck.

And, like, this kind of all came together. I, again, I'm not trying to, like, say that Buster, like, got the reporting piece of it wrong. But I do wonder if it was, like, you know, like, you know, this happens when you retell stories a bunch of times. And, like, you kind of distill it down. to its most important essence. And then suddenly you're on Buster Olney's podcast, and it's like, no, it's literally a pitch. Like, I, you know, I'm, it's not as if we don't give,

give the pirates a hard time or, you know, the Yankees when they deserve it. But I am skeptical of the notion that this is like literally the first time he was ever like, oh, my God. It's also kind of, like, to take it literally as like a little thing to Chapman because it's like, I mean, come on. It's true. He's seeing how his pitches get hit. He's, you know, he's been a dope, but he doesn't seem like a dummy.

You know the distinction I'm trying to draw here? And it could be, yeah, like maybe they sat him down. Maybe they had a planning meeting. Maybe they emphasized, hey, you could work to the sides of the zone a little more. And then, yeah, through a game of telephone or something, it turned out, oh, what, inside basketball? Never heard of such a thing. I don't know that I. I'm sorry.

I have to interrupt you because, like, You know, again, we have, we have remarked upon, like, the, the career that this guy has had. And, like, you know, he is a, he is, like, an important figure in, like, the history of Cuban baseball and the history of, like, Cuban players coming to the United States. Again, not an uncomplicated one, not a holy good one, right? Like, I've had a lot to say about Aureld's chabin over the years, and I still do. I will also know, I don't think that I, like, really sat with his numbers before the extension. He literally has a one ERA and a 178 fifth. That's bonkers.

I mean, good. Yeah. And it, yeah, anyway, I. Yeah. And his walk rate is like half of what it's been in a very long time, at least. I mean, in like a decade, well, almost. And so, yeah, no. So maybe, you know, it could also be that he's coming off a down year for him.

And he averaged a mere 97.9 on his fastball. year. Well, that was his four-seamer, I guess, but I don't know. His speed was still high for most people, but down a bit for him. And so maybe he was just more receptive to this message than he had been perhaps. I mean, he still got he is. He topped out last year at 105.1. So, you know, he threw asyncer that hard. He threw a four-seamer 104. And this year he's topped out at just about 104 also. So the average. was maybe down a bit, but he could still dial it up there when he wanted to. Anyway, I mean, look, I'm not really someone who votes on the Hall of Fame and I won't have to wrestle with this. But probably he's going to come up in conversation with Hall of Fame discussions at some point because he's had that kind of longevity and had that kind of fame. And, you know, then people can reckon with all the off-field stuff too. But just purely performance based on the stats and how long. he has managed to do this with no end in sight. Like, you know, he certainly compares to the best relievers who were his contemporary. So if you want to make that case for anyone, he's going to be up there in the tier below. I don't know, Kenley Jansen or someone, right? So anyway, that's not the point.

The point is really just like maybe he was more receptive to tweaking things because he started to see Father Time make some inroads perhaps. And, you know, then you wonder, oh, gosh, if he had had this. epiphany a decade ago, does that mean he would have been even more dominant this entire time or not because you could barely be more dominant than he was 10 years ago when he was in Cincinnati? And maybe his approach then worked fine for him then, which is kind of what I'm getting at here, like, do you need to have that adversarial sort of scouting and locations or can you

get away without it. So the other story that made me think about this had to do with Tage Bradley, who is with the twins now. And he just had a fine start in which he basically said that he looked at scouting reports for the first time ever, essentially. Right. So he made his first start for the twins. He got roughed up against the white socks. Maybe that'll give anyone incentive to do something different. I don't know. They haven't been that bad lately. I know. But after that, he decided to do something different. So he said, I worked on a few things in between adding some new stuff that I hadn't done prior in my career, which is study the lineups and looking at the numbers and stuff like that. So kind of know what I'm getting into. So this

was new stuff that he'd never done before. Look at the lineups. Look at the numbers. Know what he's getting into. Bradley said he had never done that before in his career. This is coming from a Bob Nightingale, Jr. piece, by the way. He said he had never done that before and was, quote, kind of out there blind in the past. After his last outing in which White Sox hitters got a lot of soft contact against him, he figured now was the time to get his head in the books and study opposing hitter's weaknesses. Quote, they give you the numbers. They think it's the best thing and they are right.

It's just me being hardheaded, me finally getting out of my own way. So then he has a strong start against the Padre. And so I saw people reacting to this thinking, like, he just discovered scouting reports for the first time. I mean, okay, this is a young pitcher, but he's in his third big league year. And he was with the race who were known for their acumen and, you know, integration of numbers and working with pitchers and all that stuff. And how could he have been either just ignorant of all of this or just willfully ignorant of it? And, you know, he was just traded at the deadline from the race to the twins for Griffin Jacks. And now all of a sudden, again, coming off a rough start, that's often when players are receptive to changing things.

And he's just suddenly had this realization that maybe I should know who I'm pitching against, basically. It's just like nothing super advanced, just like I will acknowledge the existence of scouting reports. So, but he's coming from the raise who, for all of their smarts and know-how, they've been one. one of the teams that has been at the forefront of the philosophy of just throw it down the middle, which we have talked about. This is something that the rays have embraced, that other teams have embraced as well, just the idea that pitchers don't really have pinpoint command. Even if you have good command for a pitcher, you're still missing regularly by most of a foot.

And so if you've got good stuff and you trust it, okay, just throw it down the middle and your natural movement will take it to the corners, the edges at the strike zone, and that'll be fine. And you can just simplify things for yourself and for your catcher, just fire it in there. And that seems to be something that has sort of swept the majors to some extent. So I am curious. I've asked Judge about this, and if he's able to provide me with an answer, I will relay it. But I wonder, looking over that 2017 to 2025 period, whether this adversarial location, like, whether this has gotten more or less common over that time. Because I could see it either way.

I could see, well, scouting reports have probably improved and been refined and probably teams are more adept at getting true talent measurements and projections of where hitters are productive and providing that information to players. and they have conduit-type people who can provide that information and distill it down and everything. So that would suggest that, okay, pitchers are going in armed with more information than ever, and so they're tailoring their locations better than ever to hitters. But I could also see it the other way, which is just everyone's got such good stuff now, and this throw-it-down-the-middle philosophy has been ascendant.

Maybe pitchers have abandoned the idea of tailoring their approach to the hitter's weaknesses, and maybe it's just more strength on strength than it is trying to account for the hitter's weakness. And that would maybe go along with what people say sometimes about, oh, you know, they're all throwers, not pitchers today, which I'm somewhat skeptical about. But perhaps there's some truth to that. Yeah, I could see that being, I could see that being true. I always get nervous when teams are like, well, we're telling guys to do this. And they should tell guys to do that. But also they should tell guys to do what the this is that works best for them.

And sometimes I work. Because, like, you don't want guys to get too fine with stuff, right? Because then they nibble, then they walk dudes, then they are bad. But sometimes guys, like, take the throw, just throw it down the middle thing too literally. And then I'm yelling at the TV. What if you contemplated throwing a different pitch just like as an exercise to see if you could do something with it? Sometimes ultra-simplifying things for players can be beneficial. because you can just tell them to focus on quote-unquote executing their pitch and they don't

have to think about anything else, especially now with pitchcom. If you're using it, you don't have to even think about what's going on. A disembodied voice in your head will tell you what to throw and where to throw it. And if you don't even have to worry about where to throw it, then that's another thing off your mind. And you can just, I'll just throw the best version of this pitch that I can. And maybe if you're consciously thinking of, oh, I'm going to try to hit this spot, then maybe that messes with your head. And you kind of have to know the player and their individual makeup and mindset because, you know, obviously there are guys who want that information and feel naked without it. And then there are guys who are just like, tell me what to do, just point me in the right direction. And I'll just go.

And that's all they want. And, you know, like Chris Sale is famous for never wanting to call his old. pitches or anything and has never wanted to even pre-pitchcom. And so, you know, he's a pretty good pitcher. So maybe that has been a pretty prevalent thing. But, yeah, I'm hoping that Judge can get me those numbers because I really want to see which way it's trending if it's possible to tell either way. Because, yeah, I could buy that there are more of these guys than ever who are just like, yeah, I don't know. I'm just throwing it in there not really trying to be precise.

And there's certainly seems like fewer finesse type pitchers, fewer like command and control-based guys who are just soft tossing and trying to expand the zone and all of that. Like that archetype of pitchers on the way out, it seems like. So I could buy that there are a lot of Tash Bradleys and Arnold's Chapman's out there who are just like scouting reports. What is that? But clearly there is value to it, as Judge seems to have captured here. unless there's other value that you would lose that can't be captured just from the simplification of it, essentially. So just like, yeah, let's take that out the window, forget about location, and that gives you some confidence or concentration or focus or something, which would be difficult to quantify because it looks like, huh, he's just firing it down the middle every time. And he's not even taking into account who hits well there.

but maybe there's something nebulous that, yeah, they might be kind of firing it down the middle, but they're firing it down the middle faster and better than they would be otherwise if they were trying to hit a certain spot. Yeah, I think that that's right. I think that there are guys who, I think it's just like a land of contrast kind of this. And like there's a real, and it's not like the guys who don't want a complicated scouting report aren't taking an information. Like I don't want anyone to walk away with the impression that we.

we think that these guys are like dullards because they are taking information like from what the batter is able to do right like they are like they're not just in like a sensory deprivation booth being like what happened with that pitch i'll never know you know it's not yeah but i do think that there are guys who want to simplify it down focus on quote unquote trusting their stuff allowing that sort of like allowing the reps going in to be the thing that is sort of dictating their success and then they you know they tend to adjust as you know as game state dictates right like it's not like they're up there going like wow you know the the hitters are really on my slider today but i guess i better just keep throwing it because i'm a simple man you know like

they're yeah not that but then again if if paul skeins can do it and has done it then anyone maybe could benefit from it sure but i think yeah maybe he has that analytical way of approaching pitching, and there are people who have great stuff and just wouldn't want to do that or would be worse if they did do that. It probably is a factor that has made him so great is that he pairs the stuff with that adversarial scouting. Perhaps that's like the secret sauce that has made him maybe the best pitcher in baseball since he showed up.

Not that he'd be bad throwing all the pitches he throws as well as he throws them, but you have that. And then you add the pitchability to it and you have Paul Skeins and stuff. Well, that's a formula for maybe the best pitcher at baseball, which is basically what he's been. And I do think that, like, as much as guys are really good at hyping themselves up and being like, I'm the best. Like, on a, on some level, I'm sure that there are plenty of pitchers who know, like, I am not Paul Skeens. Yeah. You know.

And for some of those folks, they're like, I guess I got to lean into all this information as a way to try to close the gap, right? Yeah. Just like there are probably some of them who are like, maybe I shouldn't throw that pitch right down the dick. I'm not Paul Skeens. Yeah, you can be misled if you're going just from the small sample, which is what historically pitchers had to work with. Just what has this guy done against me or against my team or maybe what my advance scouts say if I'm paying attention to that. And maybe they haven't seen a whole huge sample of his games either because they were just sitting on a series or two before we came into town. you can be led astray by that because a guy might have had a few good games or a few bad games

or maybe he had some outlier performance against you. So if you can go based on the big sample and the projections and all of that, then that would be better. So I guess, well, I don't know. I want to say it couldn't hurt to have this information or to study this information. But I guess potentially it could. But, you know, if you have the stuff plus the mindset, then that's the best of both worlds. Right, yeah. I mean, like, I think ideally guys would be taking all of it in and using it to some degree to inform their approach in any given game or any given at bat. But I also think that, like, if you have tried that and you feel like it's gumming up the works, then maybe simple is better.

You know, I think there's just a lot of ways to kind of get at good performance. And I think that the teams that are doing the very best job, with player development. This is true for pitchers and position players, are able to be adaptable to the guy and find ways to either communicate complex information in a way that is going to resonate. Again, I'm like, hesitancy use the word complex versus not

because it sounds like I'm calling everybody a dummy and that's not what I mean, but to bring analytical concepts to bear in a way that's going to resonate with the player, there, that sounded more neutral, and or, you know, know how to kind of, talk to them in whatever level of nerdery is going to be useful to them and is not insistent on, well, you must do it this way.

Because it's like, it's less about the process is important because it facilitates an outcome that you want. But like being overly hung up on the process can also be a little navel-gazing counterproductive. So all of that to say, who, you know, it's an N-1 at the end of the day, every single one of these guys, you know. And Bradley said that it was his own hard-head. not getting out of his way, so it's not as if the Ray has never tried to give him that information. Perhaps they did try, and he wasn't receptive to it. For all we know, maybe that

has something to do with why he's somewhat underachieve for a guy who was a pretty highly touted prospect. Maybe that was why they were willing to move on from him. I have no idea. I haven't talked to anyone with the race about that, but just inferring from afar, sometimes that's a source of frustration for teams with some players. Some players are very stubborn. be clear. And it's like they are not taking an information that would be useful to them. And it's like, hey, and I can imagine if you're like a baseball ops person on a club dealing with a player who just like pick a generic player, we don't have to like keep coming back to Bradley. And he goes to the meeting and he's like, yeah, I was like really not looking at scouting

reports. You know what's in there? I would be like, I'm going to smack my own head against the wall. I'm going to take my head to the wall go whack, whack, whack, right. Yep. We gave you the answer key. Right. And you said, I'm not. not interested. It's not even cheating. That's just information that could help you. Definitely weed with that. I bet that that really brings guys in. Like, it's not even cheating. It's like, what? Don't worry about it. We won't get in trouble with this at all. Yeah. What a weird way to put that. Obviously, Chapman's been asked about what happened in 2016 a lot and he was asked when he was traded to the pirates. He was asked when he signed with the Red Sox. And like when he signed with the Red Sox, he talked about how after that he went to therapy. And it sounds like has been seeing that same.

therapist ever since and this has been like a process for him but he thinks he's like a better person now and has talked previously about wanting to like be a mentor to the younger guys particularly young Latino players about like how to conduct oneself both on and off the field and so like I want to you know I think when we get to the point where we're talking about Chapman's Hall of Fame legacy we're going to have to take all of this in in totality but he does seem to have taken steps to try to be like a more productive communicator in relationship someone who's not tending toward a violent reaction. And I want to acknowledge that because when guys try to make a effort to improve, we need to make room for that.

Because otherwise, like, what do we do? As a society, like, what do we do? And so I wanted to acknowledge that because it feels like he should, you know, we should give him the credit of the work that he seems to have put in. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, you never know, obviously, what's going on with anyone. Right. But based on what he said, at least, as far as we're aware, which is kind of all we can go on. Right.

And as long as he takes care of his tattoos... Yeah, that too, doesn't get infected by... I don't need to hear about seeping. No seepage. Seapage-free zone over here, please. Yeah. Yes, please. I agree with that.

And I guess the Red Sox are happy with him, and he's happy with the Red Sox because he signed a one-year $13.3 million deal, which is $12 million salary for next season with a $1 million signing bonus. And then there's a mutual option with a buyout. And that option gets guaranteed if he pitches $4 million. 40 innings next year, past the physical, et cetera, et cetera. But, like, coming off the season he's having right now, I mean, this is barely a pay bump over what he's making this season, right? Yeah.

And he's having a fantastically better season this year than he had last year. So if he had wanted to test the market, one would imagine that on a one-year deal. He would have had bidders for his services, as it were. I would think, yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, speaking of throwing it right down the middle,

when people have done that to Luis Arise lately, he hasn't hit it. And I mentioned that because I'm worried that Luis Arise is ruined for me. Maybe that he's just kind of ruined as a good hitter just in general. But my joy, my delight in his performance has been reduced somewhat. And I blame Sam Miller for this because, yeah, he wrote something for his substack pebble hunting last week that set some of the joy that I feel when I see Louisa Rise's performance and stats. Because I think he's a very fun player. And we've talked about whether there even is a culture war surrounding Louisa Rise

or why there even would be because can't we all just agree that he's fun? And it's okay if he's not that great, really, because he's just kind of an outlier and quirky and it's weird and it's fun to have someone who plays like he plays regardless of how good he is. But the point is he's not very good now. And we've talked about that a couple times this season. Dan Samborski wrote about this for Fangraphs earlier this season two, how he sort of had entered a contact rate death spiral maybe where he's making too much contact. And I was aware of that and I was still delighted by it because he struck out in 2.7% of his plate appearances.

It's preposterous. And so I was still enjoying that. And in a way, I want to still because his K percentage plus, so this is the fan graph's indicator of his strikeout rate relative to the league. The league strikeout rate is down slightly, as we've discussed lately. But even so, Louisa Rises K percentage plus is 13, 13, where 100 is average and low, in this case, means fewer strikeouts. And that is just absolutely incredible because, I mean, looking at qualified hitter seasons, at least, going back to 1920, ALNL, live ball seasons.

No one has had a lower K percentage plus than this since Joe Sewell in 1933. There's just a lot of Joe Sewell below him, and that's basically it. He's like, Joe Sewell, Nelly Fox, like these are the only guys who have, with any regularity over the past century plus, had the kind of contact skills relative to the league that Luis Arise has. So I want to celebrate that, regardless of whether he's good overall. And he hasn't been. He's been a league average hitter. He's not even in contention for a batting title. You know, he hasn't been that valuable war-wise. But the thing that has sort of spoiled this for me now is not so much that he hasn't been that valuable, but because it seems like now his goal

is not to strike out. It seems like this is not just a byproduct of. of his approach or his otherworldly contact skills and hand eye and all of that. It is that, obviously. He still has those skills. But it now seems as if this might be his primary goal when he goes up there. And it's hard to say what he's thinking exactly. But as Sam notes, like his swing rate outside the zone keeps going up. Like he's unwilling to take a pitch, basically.

Yeah. Like, he still chases, and because of his preternatural contact ability, he makes a ridiculous amount of contact outside the zone. Like, he has a 93.7% contact rate outside the zone. So he almost always makes contact when he swings at non-strikes. His contact rate in the zone is barely higher than that. I mean, there's almost no one who has a higher zone contact rate than his outside the zone contact rate.

It's incredible, except maybe it's less incredible because that seems to be what he's going up there to do. Like, he's essentially, he's decided that he doesn't want to strike out, and that's kind of his main goal. And he hasn't said as much. He has said he doesn't like strikeouts and tries to avoid them. And he's always had great contact skills, but his chase rate has increased pretty significantly since his twins days, at least. It's up about 10 percentage points, which is a lot on a percentage basis. And his inside the zone swing rate is not up. It's down a little bit.

So he's swinging at all these pitches outside the zone. And he can make contact with all of them. Yeah. Because... Good contact? Right. Is it good contact? Not really.

I mean, as Sam notes, he's actually hitting better on pitches outside the strike zone this year than inside the strike zone, which sounds like another. testament to his contact skills, and I guess on some level it is, but it also suggests that he's not really concentrating on pitches that he can drive. He's not trying to put a hurting on any pitch, and so he's not. Even if it's like down the middle, he's not necessarily getting beat by these pitches. He still makes contact constantly, but he's not hitting them hard. Yeah. And you want some amount of that. You want some willingness to whiff every now and then. Yeah. And that's, I guess, how we got in the sense.

situation. We are league-wide because a lot of hitters have made that calculation. I've said, yeah, actually, it kind of makes sense to whiff sometimes if you swing hard and you have all these ancillary skills and you focus on pitches you can punish. And if you swing and miss, it's not the end of the world. But he's now, it seems like he is now trying to lower his strikeout rate. And so it's not fun for me anymore. Like Sam liken this to Goodhart's Law, which is basically like when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure because you're just trying to do things that will juice that metric as opposed to doing things that are good and maybe they'll show up in that metric or not.

And sometimes this can be counterproductive, actually, because you're trying to run up this one number and maybe it's coming at the expense of your other numbers. And there are just some indications that that's the case. Like his swing plane has gotten flatter as if he is prioritizing contact more and more. And I guess you can understand why, because he's won these batting titles. And he's been somewhat celebrated or at least been of note because of his high batting averages and making so much contact. And it's like he's high on his own supply of contact skills, essentially. And if that is what is happening here, then it just, it feels less fun to me now because it's like he's not just good and also great at making contact.

He's just out there trying to make contact. It's like he's become self-aware. I mean, he was self-aware all along, obviously. But, you know, he's self-aware of the fact that his contact skills are the thing that's sort of special about him. And so now that's all I can think is that he's kind of like artificially trying to inflate or suppress, depress this number. And now it feels less fun to me because it's like his whole goal is not striking out as opposed to, no, he's a pretty good hitter. and also he makes tons and tons of contact now he's he's just a contact hitter and that's kind of all he's going up there to do and and now the fun has been leached out of it for me thanks sam i do

can i offer a more sympathetic rendering of i think the same idea restore my faith well i don't know that it will i don't know that it will it'll just make you feel bad for him um which you know that's not fun but maybe it's better than being annoyed i mean I do imagine that because he is, you know, he seems like a guy who's like into craft, right? Not crafts that I can't speak to, but like he's aware of the craft that is hitting. And I'm sure mindful of his own limitations as a hitter and certainly aware of what he was doing in the seasons when he has been legitimately very valuable. It's not hard for me to imagine a guy who's probably on the down swing. in terms of being able to be like really productive,

have an argument as an everyday guy, gripping it a little too hard, you know, like this is the thing I, when it's going good, it looks like a version of this. So surely I should, you know, spin the dial to, you know, a higher number on that same scale.

So I think that your diagnosis is probably accurate and that maybe this is what happens when a guy who is quite self-aware, and has been sort of a student of his own game is trying to put it together in a way that justifies a roster spot even though he's not playing particularly well. So that would be my guess as to what's happening. And I don't know that there are a lot of other...

This is going to bum me out even further. I don't know that there are a lot of other compelling alternatives for him because I don't know that he is a guy who could like... It's not like he can be like a slugger. I mean, maybe he could, but, like, he hasn't demonstrated that ability before now, now that he never hits her power. You know what I'm trying to say. Like, he's not Aaron Judge. He's Louisa Rice.

So, yeah, I think it's kind of a sad thing. Yeah. I think it's mostly kind of a sad thing. It is, because so his strikeout rate this season is half of what it was two years ago with the Marlins when he had, yeah. And it's not a big difference in terms of, like, raw number of strikeouts because he already He wasn't striking out much at all. Right. This is the thing.

It's so wild. Yeah, he's halved his strikeout rate. He's gone from 5.5 to 2.7. It was already just infinitesimal, and now it's even more infinitesimal. But maybe that makes the difference when he was like a 5 to 7% strikeout rate guy. Maybe that was the sweet spot where he was still able to drive pitches sometimes, and he wasn't prioritizing contact so much. Like, you know, Sam's suggesting that he's just going up to the plate, thinking, can I hit this as opposed to should I swing?

Because he's already defaulted to, yes, I will swing in almost all cases. And so maybe there is a world where he could just go back to that and realize I've taken it just a little too far. Maybe skills have slipped or something, but, you know, he's only 28 years old, so I don't know. Maybe he's just fallen too in love with that aspect of his game. And if he could just dial it back a tad, then he could get back to being that guy who's winning batting titles and has a 130 WRC plus and still has an outlier strikeout rate, just not quite as microscopic as it is currently, because, yeah, that was more fun for me. It's just now it feels like it's an exercise in making contact.

And to be clear, it's still impressive. I don't think anyone else in the majors could do this if they set their mind to it the way he seems to have set his mind to it. The fact that he's able to do it once he set his mind to it is still really impressive. in a way. It's just that every hitter, I think, exists along some spectrum of power and whiff, basically, like contact and power. And so, you know, it's not one to one necessarily, but if you prioritize contact a little more, you can maybe improve your contact rate and it'll come at the expense of some power because you're just swinging less hard. You're taking more

time to try to direct the bat and you're not swinging with abandon anymore. and everyone tries to find the optimal balance there and you make some of tradeoff that you think makes sense for you and it seems like he is now taking that too far and that has been maybe to his detriment as a player but also now I guess to my enjoyment of him as a player because I really want to just delight in the fact

that he's given Joe Sewell a run for his money here but if he is highly aware of that if he knows about the K percentage plus chase And that's what he's thinking about when he goes up there, then that is less fun for me. I want it to be almost just an accident, a happy accident of the type of player he is, as opposed to now this is what he is aiming for. Yeah. And, like, I don't want to overstate the case, right? Like, to your point, he is only 28.

I can't believe I'm probably a decade older than Luis was right. That feels bad. I, like, slept really well last night. I slept so hard that I didn't, I can tell I didn't move in my sleep. And so now my entire like left shoulder up into my neck on that side is like really uncomfortable and stiff. I did the thing you're supposed to do, right? I slept and I slept well. It was not fitful.

Yeah, you slept too well. I slept too well. He makes contact too well. 39, man. It's a fucking raw deal. raw deal. But yeah, like, I don't want to restate the case. Like, guys can, guys can shift and change and be adaptable. And, you know, I'm sure he's aware this isn't going the way that he wants it to, right? Like, so, you know, I, I wonder, it's like, what does an offseason bring for him in terms of the way that he might try to adjust and re sort of formulate his game? Who knows? You know, we don't know. We don't know. Hopefully he, of course, corrects, make Louisa Rice fun again, even if that means a few more whiffs here or there. But, you know, I guess if we get a Joe Sewell-esque season, then I will try to enjoy that as best I can.

I just, I wish it were a little less complicated in my mind as it is now. All right. I'll just note maybe my favorite fart bat of the season. So. You got to remind people what that means because this might be. someone's very first episode, and they're like, what's a fart bat? It's true. So we helped disseminate, popularize this term earlier this year.

So popular. Episode 2326. I've seen it in the wild once or twice. Have you? Yeah, it's the effectively wild influence. But the fart bat, so this is the, so this is in the vein of like the fart slam, which is a fielder allows run to score like a nincum poop. And fart alarm, which is the fielder allows runner to advance like a real moron.

And fart bat was, a fielder accidentally rewards the batter a tater. And we liked this because at first we had said fart alarm, which was a fielder-assisted run that brings about tragedy. But it, yeah, it wasn't specific enough because we were referring specifically to when an outfielder propels a ball over the wall that would not have been a home run otherwise. I still like fart alarm personally. It's fun to say. but I guess there's an alternative meeting and it's just not specific enough. So Fielder accidentally rewards the batter a tater.

This might be my favorite and it was committed by John Kenzie Noel of the Guardians on Trevor's story of the Red Sox and I'll send you the link in case you didn't see it. It sounds like you farted on Trevor Story. You walked up to Trevor's story and he went, poot. It sort of does sound like that, but it was much better. That's not how farts sound to be clear, but, you know.

It depends. But, no, this was much better for Trevor Story than being farted on because he got a home run out of the deal. So Trevor Story just poked a ball down toward the pesky pole in Fenway. And from watching many a Red Sox game in my days, I've always been a bit flummoxed by the pesky pole and just anything hit in that general direction in Fenway because I've been fooled many times. Oh, yeah. Even after the ball lands, I'll think, oh, that was fell. And it wasn't somehow. There's like a parallax effect or there's some sort of optical illusion with the pesky pole.

But this one was going to be in play, but John Kenzi-Nuel comes over, and you have to slow it down even to be able to tell what happened. But the ball bounced off of his glove. Oh, but he had it in his little hand. Yeah, it bounced off his glove into the pesky pole, which of course extends down to the. the height of the fence, which there is, you know, at players, like, chest level. And so I guess is this the lowest altitude foul pole in baseball? Like, usually the foul pole isn't really, like, within reach of the fielder, typically, or if it is, it's over the fence, at least.

I mean, there's over the fence here. It's just the fence is so low. Anyway. So, Noel, the ball clanks off his glove and into the pesky pole. and then back at Noelle and he almost corralled it but he didn't quite he didn't have possession

and it was like into and out of his glove so it was weird because usually with the fart bat the ball goes over the wall it's off the glove and over the wall but here it was off the glove

and into the foul pole which you certainly don't see often if ever but then still within reach of Noel I mean at that point it's a lost cause because it's off the foul pole.

It might as well be over the fence, but he's still kind of trying to wrangle it, I guess. Like, if he had, like, trapped it against the FALP, I mean, it's still a home run, right? So I don't even know what the ground rules are in that situation. It's such a strange outlier ballpark-wise. But, yeah, he hit it off the foul pole.

It's a home run. It's got to be, like, the shallowest home run you can hit, right? I mean, other than an inside the parker, in a way it was inside the park, but it's not scored that way. As soon as it hits the foul pull, it's a home run. I think it, and it's for all intents and purposes, and over the fence home run, even though it was like to this.

I mean, ultimately it went out into foul territory, I guess, because it pushes it out. It's weird. You kind of have to see it. It's weird. I'll link to it on the show page. But I don't know that you could hit a shallower home run than this, which is, you know, 306 feet or whatever.

It's just a unique circumstance. And I wish we had more. Weird parks. Obviously, Fenway dates back to the days when parks were just crammed into whatever city block you had, basically, and you just built it around whatever real estate was available to you. And parks are less like this now, to my dismay, you don't want it to be super cheap as some of the parks in the past have been. But you want some characters, some real character, not retro try hard character. So I enjoy the alignments, the layout of Fenway. And yeah, I don't know that you could hit. a shallower non-inside-the-park run in modern-day baseball, Major League Baseball. It's extremely strange. It's not helped by the fact that he kind of looks like he's farting while he's running. Mark Tashire is running for Congress. Mark Tashire also a guy who looked like he farted when he ran.

I don't know if he really did, but he looked like a fartter. You can take from that what you will about my thoughts on his congressional campaign. I mean, pretty ridiculous to put the number of gold gloves you had in your, or silver sluggers in your campaign announcement, just to offer some feedback on what matters. But anyway, that's not the point of this conversation. It has to be one of the strangest home runs I've ever seen. Yeah. And I feel so bad for him because he immediately knows how badly he screwed up. You know, it's just like, oh, bother.

And that's key to the fart bat. There should be an immediate fart bat reaction. Oh, yeah. That says, yep, that was a fart bet. That was a fart bet. Yeah, I just committed a fart bat, you know. Have we popularized this within clubhouses, do you think? Do you think that clubhouses are like, oh, no, we can't, a fart bat, a fart bat.

Because people in clubhouses know what a toplan is, right? Yeah, probably. I don't know how often they say containment, yeah. Tootland, but they know what a two plan is. Like, I bet if you ask most guys, they would know what a two plan is. More guys in a clubhouse know what a tooplan is than a pog. Yeah. A toot plan sounds like it would be.

fart related but it's oh yeah oh yeah like an actual fart and not the sound i made earlier suggesting a fart people don't know what pogs are anymore remember pogs yeah we'll never forget pogs that'll be one of those things that uh that places us in a certain generation in time forever i've i've noticed and then i will move off of this um you know we had this like wave of 80s nostalgia we're probably still in it to some degree but now we're starting to to get um not starting we've been we're in a new wave and it is mostly 90s nostalgia and i'm noticing it in fashion where you know those sweatshirts where there would be like the stripes on the the collar you know like the three stripes on the collar yeah yeah that's everywhere and

my desire for every single one of those is visceral in a way i don't feel good about but is real and so what i've realized is that like i was you know i was born in 86 and so i don't really remember the 80s. I remember the aftermath of the 80s. That's called Reaganism. But I don't remember like the 80s themselves, at least not well. Very tail end, but only like in a way that I don't trust that it's a real memory, right? I trust that it feels like a fake memory from from absorbing the media after the fact. Yeah. But I do remember the 90s and some of those clothes were cute, man. And now I have disposable income in a way that I didn't as a kid. Not enough to buy all of the sweatshirts, but enough to get one of them, you know, if I really wanted to. Sell no one powerball.

Disappointed in that. Specific house I want. Sign up. Support the podcast on Patreon so that Meg can just be rolling in sweatshirts. I almost said. You got plenty of those. I'm already rolling in spreadsheets. I sleep in them. Well, that's good because we've talked about this on the Patreon bonus pods. And I know you haven't been happy with every fashion trend that has come back into vogue. So I'm glad that there's one now that you're pleased about. And I probably still have, well, clothes from the 90s would no longer fit me. But I probably, when the 2000s stuff comes back into play, I might still have some stuff in the closet that I can just break out again because I never got rid of it.

Okay. Last thing. We have not talked about Carlos Cortez this season, and I guess that's understandable. He plays for the A's. He has played 26 games. He's been fine. He's been a battle league average hitter. It's not that noteworthy except for one thing.

He has played multiple positions. He's played right field, left field, mostly corner outfield. But he also did play third base for an inning one time, which made him historic. And I meant to mention this at the time and for whatever reason didn't. And then Tyler Kepner caught up with Cortez just recently at the athletic. and it reminded me that it seems like someone we should mention because Carlos Cortez is the first switch-throwing position player in MLB history.

Cool. Yeah, the only position player who has ever switched thrown, which is just a weird thing to say. I'm not used to saying it. Really hard to say. We've never really had to say it, with the exception of a few pitchers, obviously, who have done that. Well, sure, but you call them a switch pitcher.

Switch pitcher, right. Yeah. So a switch thrower. he's the only one to do it. He did it in Baltimore on August 10th when he played right field as a left-hander and then third base as a right-hander. And it was sort of an emergency situation

because the A's had used a pinch runner for Gio Urchella who was playing third and they were behind the Orioles in the top of the ninth, and then they took the lead, and the game continued. And so Cortez, who had entered as a defensive replacement in right field replaced Urchella at third, and he got a little cameo

at third, which was enough for him to make history, this unprecedented defensive performance. Cool. Yeah, and he had to work at this, so. I would, I'm adding so. Yeah, so he's a natural left-handed thrower, but he explains when he was eight, his father, Juan, encouraged him to throw righty as well to optimize the positions he could play. So this is, it's not usually something you hear, obviously. This isn't done. You like, you hear all the time, okay, try to hit lefty and be a switch hitter, sure, okay. Or, you know,

maybe you're a natural righty and they say throw lefty because lefties could pitch forever in the big leagues or you have the unfamiliarity advantage as a lefty. But this is the opposite. So Juan Cortez was just covering all the bases literally here just being like, yeah, you're a natural left-handed throw you already have the platoon advantage you already have many advantages but just why not throw righty too so that you have that glove as well and cortez said we started consistently doing it for years and years it was every single day for six plus years and then about when i got to 14 i became pretty natural with my other side but my motor skills are all right handed so i think i was a little blessed in that aspect where it was just a little bit easier so this yeah this did happen in a minor league game

with Anthony Siegler, who was a minor league draftee of mine, minor league free agent draftee. I think when he was in the Yankees system, he did this. And he actually played outfield and catcher in a game. Wow. Yeah. Now that's extra fun, of course. Yeah. I'm pretty sure we talked about that at the time.

And then I drafted him. He's been up in the big leagues with the Brewers this year. But he's been a utility guy, but he has not done what Cortez has done. I guess he could theoretically. But we know about the pitchers who have done this. And so it's weird because it's like unprecedented and special and yet like not that valuable, I guess. I wonder whether Cortez, whether it would have affected his career because, like, has it even helped him make the majors that he had the theoretical capacity to do this? Because it wasn't even the plan.

He's just like, he's an emergency replacement at. more positions, which I guess has some value, but they don't even really intend to play him at those positions. They kind of just want him in the outfield. And I guess when he was drafted, the Mets drafted him in the third round, and he signed as a second baseman, and he played there for a couple of years, but then he asked to focus on the outfield where he uses his natural side. And so he has the theoretical ability to play positions that lefties can't really play.

he can play second, he can play short, he can play third. And so that's good, I guess, but because he's morphed into primarily an outfielder, it hasn't actually benefited him that much. Like, it seems like he kind of made the majors without this extra ability, and it's kind of a curiosity more than anything. And he has a stronger arm lefty, at least according to Brett Beatty of the Mets, who is his minor league teammate. But Bady says he is a really good thrower with his right hand, too. Bady says, it's strange. I don't know any other switch throwers,

but I know a bunch of switch hitters. And I guess that's just more valuable to be a switch hitter than a switch thrower unless you're a switch pitcher maybe. Yeah. He doesn't switch hit. He bats left-handed. That's the weird thing. He's a switch thrower, but not a switch hitter.

Yeah, which might have been a more valuable versatility if he had cultivated that one, arguably. But he decided that it would be better for him to. not be as rigid or just to specialize and concentrate on just hitting from one side. And I don't know, for all I know, he's right, he had decent minor league stats and he made the majors, obviously. So it's this weird thing where you'd think if someone could do that, it would be key to their success. And yet it seems almost incidental to his success.

I mean, it hasn't hurt, right? No. I can see why you would wonder if cultivating it would do you some good. And then you get to a point where you're like, well, no, I'm going to specialize in a thing that I feel like I can do better or what have you. But I don't know. It's cool. It is cool. It's a good trivia question answer at the very least. It might never happen again. I don't know.

Right. So here's a question for you. It's completely unrelated to that. I mean, not totally. Why is it that some guys on their player pages, their, you know, bats throws will be like Bats S for Switch. And some of them, it's B for both. What's up with that? Why? I don't like that. I don't either.

What's up with that? I don't know. What's up with that? Seems like it should be standardized. It doesn't seem like that, doesn't it? I didn't realize it was not. I mean, it mostly is most of them are S for Switch. Yeah.

But some of them have B for both to drive me, a Meg. insane well you are fan graph perhaps you have the ability to change that's not my part of the store you know i like to i i i know i know i know i know my part of the store and i tend to it carefully and other people's parts of the store um it's not that it's not my business it's just that's like i'm not going to tell them how to i don't think it's us this is not a fangraphs issue this is upstream of fan graphs right this is a data problem is probably too strong but is it you know quirk Quirk. It is a data quirk. I think that it is very cool that he is a switch thrower. And now a thing that I really want is to have him not only throw with both arms in the course of a game, but play every position. You know, like really lean into it. Like, show me the whole thing.

Yeah, right. Yeah, because he does, the story mentions that he takes infield practice. every other day, and he does have a right-handed infield glove, although oddly in the one situation where he was called upon to use one, he didn't use his. He just borrowed his teammate Max Schumann's because he had one on the bench handy, so Cortez just wore that one. But if he is spending that time just putting in the practice, then he does seem to think that it could benefit him or that he needs to stay practiced enough to actually do it in a game. So he does say, at the end of the story, I would like it to be just in an emergency for now.

So he doesn't want to be like a career ambidextrous fielder, but I want him to be. It seems like a waste to be able to do that and not. I don't know how it would affect him. It's hard enough to play multiple positions, let alone to play these and to be switched throwing and different angles and all the rest.

So maybe it would hurt him as an outfielder if he were playing infield regularly and having to focus on throwing with both arms. But if you can, then, you know, don't tie one of those hands behind your back. I want to see you use both of them. Yeah, that would be cool. I mean, just do it like, I think that if the commissioner can put Jacob Mizorowski in

the All-Star game because he's fun and exciting and young, that he should be able to put this guy in and just have him. You don't even have to bat, you know, just have him rove, you know, show to me one time. You can do it in a silly setting. Like some sort of skills competition, but maybe it wouldn't even be interesting. No, it wouldn't be that interesting. It would just look like a guy throwing normal. It's not interesting.

It's not interesting. It's impressive, but also. It is impressive, though. Visually noticeable even if you didn't know the backstory is the problem. Yeah. A switch picture switching from from batter to battery. That's cool. Yeah, you know that that's happening.

Right. I mean, unless he's actually. moving from position to position from batter to batter or something, which would be sort of a side show. But if he did want to do one of those stunts, yeah, play every position in a game, yeah, I'd be all for it. But otherwise, you wouldn't know. You'd just look out there and say, yeah, there's a third basement.

Oh, I didn't even realize that there was anything preventing him from doing that. So I want this to be cooler than it is. But it is still kind of cool. It is still cool. Like, is it the coolest? No, that would be overstating the case. But it's still cool. You don't have to let go of it being cool.

It's just not as cool as like, well, certainly as being a switch pitcher and probably some other things besides, but definitely that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Hey, how you feel and as a Mariners fan? Very nervous. I barely can talk about it. I, you know, the rational part of my brain knows that half.

of the rangers squad is in the hospital seemingly and things aren't going all that much better for the royals but i as i was discussing with michael bowman in our slack earlier today like anxiety for a mariners fan that's earned you know that's a lifetime of experience before and you know how it has ended at least yeah like it was so many times like a lot of times. Recently, too. It hasn't even had time to like, the rawness of it has not worn off. Right, yeah.

A little too close for comfort of those rangers. I know they've had an easy schedule lately and they're about to have a much more difficult schedule and perhaps that will provide a bit of a buffer for your mariners. Maybe. Yeah. It doesn't feel good. It feels very, it feels very tight. You know, I would describe my emotional experience.

So baseball at the moment is pinched. I am reminded, and we've talked about this, but I'll say it again. Like, we say we want our favorite teams to be in the postseason, but do we, you know, it's not fun. It's not fun to have them absent, but it's also not fun to have them present. Maybe the takeaways that life is pain. It's not funny either way. Fandom is pain. Yeah.

Yeah, but I was asked by a friend, like, how are we? feeling and i was like you know it's at least familiar yeah um but it's not it's not great i i noted being uh i noted being nervous i i also will just say and maybe this would be better for me to focus on because it's a little less anxiety provoking it's at least like a more um kind of caloric feeling i just don't understand the astros um i don't get it i i resent it um I don't care for it. I don't get how this is happening. So, yeah, that's, those are some of my thoughts, you know.

If I, if I'm being honest, they're not, they're not great. I did have like a nice relaxing weekend. That's nice. Yeah, that part was nice. But even in that nice relaxing weekend, there were plenty of moments punctuated by the, this is bad. So, yeah, that's where I'm at. Okay. Well, it's not entirely surprising to me and not unreasonable, but we'll continue to monitor the Mariners situation and do regular wellness checks on you. Best of luck with everything. Yeah. I mean, it'll be okay or not. You know, those are really the options.

That will do it for today. Thanks, as always, for listening. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild, as have the following, five listeners who have already signed up and pled some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get yourself access to some perks. As have the following five listeners, Mike Robinson, Ted Mulvey, Tess, Jeff, and David Moll. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, one of which we recorded and published this past weekend. We shared all manner of low stakes, rants, and celebrations and observations.

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Thanks to Shane McKean for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then. Well, it's moments like these that make you ask, how can you not be horny about baseball? Every take hot and hotter, entwining and a budding, watch them climbing mountain.

Nothing's about nothing. Every stitch wet, loose wet, breaking balls back, dormy on effectively while that can you not be horny? When it comes to podcasts, How can you not be horny?