Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 436: How Playoff Chances Have Changed

Episode Date: April 25, 2014

Ben and Sam discuss which teams have seen their chances of making the playoffs change the most since Opening Day.

Changes, changes I'm sure they'll kill my fear and the world will be fine Changes, changes Rearranging things to bring me down Rearranging things to bring with the hand People fooling around And I don't want to be the same I don't want to be the same I don't click on it.

How many home runs is Albert Pujols going to hit? I don't think I speculated about that at all in that article. What? It was very clearly promised. It was. Sometimes when you write articles that are republished on other sites or appear on other sites, I find that the headlines or the Twitter teases are not always an accurate reflection of the content of the article. I have found that to be the case.

So the tweet that I saw says, so how many homers will Albert Pujols hit? Ben Lindbergh does more than just guess. Since you didn't even do that, can I at least ask for a guess? I didn't even do that, no. Yeah, my article, which I wrote for BP a few days ago and was republished at Fox Sports, was mostly about how I thought it was nice that Albert Pujols' 500th home run came under the current circumstances, that he was leading the league in home runs when he got the 500th, as opposed to just sort of limping to the finish line, crawling across the finish line, as it appeared that maybe would be the case.

So that was sort of the point. I didn't really talk about what would happen going forward so much, except to say that it seems like he still has some home runs left in him. I did not specify how many, but let's see. So he has 500. He is 34. 70, 80, 185, according to Pakoda's long-term forecast. 185 according to Pakoda's long-term forecast. Oh, okay. So if he gets to 685.

Oh, sorry, that doesn't count this year. Oh, okay. So add another 25-ish. Yeah, so that's right around Ruth. Yeah. Does that seem realistic to you? I don't know. I mean, he probably won't do exactly that. I think that there's a range of about 100 more or less than that

that all seems reasonably realistic to me. I'm still holding out hope that A-Rod's going to get the record and Andy McCullough's going to owe me that sweet $30. So there's some sad Matt Albers news. I don't know if it's sad, but it's discouraging, Matt Albers news. Just got some shoulder stiffness. He's been unavailable for three consecutive games. So that's worrisome, right?

Is it? I mean, it's probably better for him. It's probably better for his, in this particular case. Oh, because the Astros are such a void. Yeah, in a sense, every day that he's with the Astros, there's great danger that he's going to accidentally be their best reliever and get a save. And so he's basically playing out the clock until he can get to another team where it's not so perilous. Yes.

Actually, the MLB.com story that I was reading says that he has been the most consistent option in Astro's bullpen. So that is dangerous. And it says that he has been in the Astro's mix at closer this season. He's been in the mix. He's been in the conversation, I at closer this season. In the mix. He's been in the conversation, I guess you'd say. So the injury isn't believed to be serious, but he may hit the disabled list with it regardless. There's also some Ryan Webb news, or not really news,

but Buck Showalter made some appreciative comments about Ryan Webb, which is not really news, but Buck Showalter made some appreciative comments about Ryan Webb, which is also a little scary. Someone asked him if he's more of a situational guy, or whether he can do more, and Showalter said he's capable of doing more.

Yeah, but there's two things about that. One is that situational guy generally means righties only or lefties only, depending on what hand you throw it. And so to some degree that's just saying that he's capable of a full inning, and that's how he's been used. So that's one thing.

And the other thing is that what's Showalter going to say? Right, right. Gosh, I hope someone else cares about this story as much as we do. Can I do a quick, unanticipated, unexpected, unprepared play index segment? Yes, sure. So tonight, Mike Karp pitched. you know it just it just occurred to me that uh mike carp is uh is is actually a decent pun for a mic harp like a harp with a mic on it like did you mike the harp mike harp uh he gets all the attention for the the other horrible pun, but it just occurred to me that he's also a Mike Harp. Mike Harp pitched today in a blowout, and he had one of the great pitching lines that you'll ever see. Did you see it?

I saw some highlights of him giving up a lot of stuff, but I didn't see what the final line was. What was it? One inning, five walks, and only one run allowed. Huh. Which is impressive, you know? Is that a unique pitching line? Well, so here's the thing. His line specifically is unique because he also allowed no hits and he got no strikeouts. And nobody's ever put together a 1-0, 1-1, 5-0 line before. However, there have been five lines in which there were at least five walks and no more than one run in no more than one inning. So if you

just take out the hits and the strikeouts, which in this case are merely window dressing, it is the sixth time ever that somebody's done a 1X, 1-1-5-X line, which sounds sort of shocking because it's very hard to walk five guys in an inning and only allow one run. And so I looked at these five and it turns out that in fact Juan Acevedo did it in 2000 but he came into the sixth inning in the middle of an inning and then left in the seventh. So basically if you come in, if you inherit half

of an inning and you walk two guys and then you get out of it and then you walk the bases low to the next inning, there's really no reason that you have to give up any runs in that situation. It's a cheat, right? You see how it's a cheat? And so Juan Acevedo, I'm throwing him out because that was a multi-inning, a spread over two innings. Mitch Williams naturally did it. How could anybody but Mitch Williams do it if not Mitch Williams?

But again, it's a cheat. He did a 7- eight split and um and walked the first batter in the seven so uh then ken howell did it again a cheat and so now we're left with two guys who did it and uh one is rusty pence in 1921 who actually walked six and only allowed one run and then dick crutcher in 1914 who uh who walked five and allowed only one run and we don't have play-by-play for those games and so it's actually kind of hard to discern what happened both of them entered the game fresh in a clean inning okay so like in both cases they were relievers the one of them, the starting pitcher, had gone six innings,

and then he came in in the seventh. The other was five innings, and he came in in the sixth. However, by looking at the box score and looking at how many batters they faced, which is one of the few things that is recorded in those early games, it does seem impossible to have had this line in just one inning, given the number of batters they faced. And so it seems that what happened is that each one came into a clean inning, walked a bunch of batters, only gave up one run, got out of the inning,

and then came out the next inning, kept walking batters, and then got pulled in that sort of classic one plus inning situation you know and so they it seems as far as i can tell it seems mathematically impossible that either of them did this without having their own cheat so that is to say that mike carp is so far as i can tell the first pitcher ever to have a one inning outing with five walks one run all contained in the same frame massive spoilers for your unique pitching lines post no tomorrow no he's a he's not a starter i only look at starts ah okay yeah you should start a separate series for reliever only there are very very few there just aren't that many there aren't that many possibilities for

a relief line and so uh and there's also been many more relief lines at this point than there have been starting lines and most of them are you know a third of an inning two-thirds of an inning or an inning and so i i think that even though there are like four times as many relief lines uh these days or maybe three times as many relief lines as starting lines every day, I think that you might actually go a week without a unique one. It wouldn't surprise me. Maybe I'll look someday. All right.

Well, impromptu play indexing is always a good time. Promo code BP. That's correct. So I don't know if you know this, but our iTunes show description says that we cover a mix of topics from the big picture to the pennant race every weekday morning. And I don't know that we have really covered the pennant race, which is probably because it's April. But we've covered Matt Albers exhaustively, so I figured we could give one episode over to some pennant races. So I, I did what you did after, I don't know, a week or so where you just looked at changes from,

from the beginning of the season to now in terms of playoff odds, percentage chance of, of making the playoffs via any means wildcard division title. And took this from the baseball perspectives,pectives Playoff Odds page, which is updated every morning. So this is through Wednesday's games, not Thursday's games. But I'm going to tell you what the biggest increases and declines are in terms of change in playoff percentage from March 31st.

And then we can talk a little bit about whether we believe in them. And yes. Real quick, somebody just mentioned Mike Karp's FIP in a tweet to me or asked about his FIP. And it's actually only about 18. He doomed himself by not allowing any home runs. Although I think if you think about it, five walks with no strikeouts per inning would almost certainly lead to more than 18 runs per nine.

And so I think that that's probably FIP is stretched at the extremes in that sense. But just to be clear, not even close to the record for a career. The record appears to be 41.76 by Tom Foley. And just looking for position players, I recognize Manny Alexander had a 40.67 FIP

for his career. So Karp is unique, but not uniquely bad. All right, so go ahead. Bobby Bonilla, worse FIP. Did you know Bobby Bonilla pitched? No. At age 38.

Baseball references created a monster by adding FIP to its site. All right, so there are 10 teams that have barely changed their playoff odds percentage. They're within three percentage points in either direction. They're within three percentage points in either direction. So the Dodgers, the Mets, the Reds, the Astros, the Marlins, the Blue Jays, the Orioles, the White Sox, the Royals, the Giants, and the Twins might as well not have shown up. They have all changed very, very little since opening day or the day before opening day.

The biggest declines. Should we talk about declines first or increases first? Let's talk about declines first. Okay. So the biggest decline, would you care to guess what the biggest decline is? Well, proportionately, it would have to be the Diamondbacks, but the Diamondbacks didn't start all that high, and so they might not have enough room to drop all that much.

So I'm still considering them as a possibility, but I think I'm going to say it's the Seattle Mariners. Mariners are second. The biggest decline is actually the Rays, who have started out at 70.5% and are now, or were yesterday, at 47.9%. Wow, that's impressive because they're only two and a half games out of first. They're only one game under.500. Nobody's running away with the division.

I guess it's the fact that everybody in the division is, is kind of keeping pace with them. Huh? It's that. And it's probably also injuries. Cause this is, this is reflecting depth charts changes and estimates of, of playing time for the rest of the season. So they don't have any Matt Moore. And I, I mean, I guess the which other injuries of theirs would have been, have happened since? Yeah, right.

That probably would have been factored in already at the beginning of the season. But so Moore and I don't know what else has happened since the season started. But so that's probably part of it. And they, let's see, do they still have the highest percentage in the division? No, the Yankees are two percentage points ahead of them. Uh-huh. So that's a pretty wide open division. Pretty wide open division.

There are three teams in the AL East right now with over between 40% and 50% chances of making it. And no team below 17%. So that's, well, we knew the AL East would be an interesting race. But so, yeah, I wish you could see depth charts changes since the start of the season. I don't think there's a way to do that, but or quickly. But I guess it's it's a product of Eric Bedard now having an 120 inning projection. And that's that's probably a he's probably a hit. Yes. And it takes probably a hit. Yes, he's not. And he takes forever to suck also.

The Rays have a lot of slow pitchers. Do they? Yeah, I think Price is very slow, and Bedard is painfully slow, and someone else is pretty close to the top of that leaderboard. And I think someone that they had and no longer had, I remember from the article I wrote about it, although I wonder, I know there's an impact of catcher on pitcher pace. So I don't know whether that has anything to do with it. So that was the biggest decline.

I don't know what question to ask. Are you worried about the Rays? Are you still confident in the Rays? Are they still the favorite? Uh, I don't, yeah, probably. I would say I still think that they're the favorite. I wonder if I haven't radically reshaped my opinion about the Rays this season. I guess the big worry for them is just that they are in a division where theoretically any of four teams could either fluke.

I don't know if fluke is the right word. They're pretty good teams. is the right word. I mean, they're pretty good teams. They're all capable of having, you know, their upper threshold performance and, you know, in getting, you know, 97 wins and making it very hard to win that division with 91 or 90 or 89 or 88. So, I mean, that's always the A at least, though, right? It's more wide open than it's been for most of their history. Yeah. And I wonder if there's another team that has as much riding on making the playoffs this season because they're a team that kept saying before the season, Friedman said it, I think Sternberg said it, that they are spending more than they can afford.

And you never know whether teams are really telling the truth about that. But they said they were over budget and were spending it sort of an unsustainable level for them. And they decided to hold on to David Price because they must have felt that whatever offers they were getting back for him did not outweigh the benefit of keeping him in what seemed like a season when they had a good chance to make the playoffs. So I wonder if they don't make it, whether there's a team that suffers as much, whether there's a team that had as much riding on making it this season. It's hard to know because in a sense, no team needs it less than they do.

Because no one's going to show up anyway. Right. they're going to sell exactly as many seats next year, whether they make the playoffs or not. So it really all comes down to the postseason, you know, the extra postseason revenue. And so, yeah, I don't know how much they're dependent on that to make payroll or anything. know how much they're dependent on that to make to make payroll or anything um i mean does does playing two home games in a five game series before you go out make a big difference i i doubt that does yeah and the games probably won't even be sold out so i don't know uh the next

next biggest decline i already gave away is the Mariners. They started out at 34.5. They are now at 14.5. And standings-wise, they are 5.5 back at 8.13. So, Mariners. Yeah. Yeah. yeah um i'm trying to think that iwakuma and walker were both were both already shelved and paxton yeah um although they were all the the buzz about them seemed to be that they would be back quickly and i guess with walker at least it's taking longer than it was supposed to yeah

i think iwakuma has been sort of right on track all along but yeah yeah with Walker who knows I don't know I don't know how much that's changed in our projections how many innings do we have him projected for uh let's see and I don't know whether he would have been projected for such a good season that it would make all that much of a difference. Walker is now projected for 95 innings. Yeah, so that's certainly lower probably than he would have been at the beginning of the year. Let me ask you. What's that?

I would think so, yes. Yeah, so let me ask you this. There are very few teams where the environment gets more credit for performance than in New York, partly because of the ballpark for left-handed hitters. And where, like, right field in Yankee Stadium is sort of captured popular imagination as, like, the closest thing to Coors Field at this point, right? And then Kevin Long, as far as like sort of, you know, the work he did with various hitters over the years. And so do you think that there's anything to Canoe doing poorly right now that is more troubling than any other good player doing poorly right now that is more troubling than any other good player doing poorly

right now because of that? And also, New York, this idea that some players respond extremely well to it and some players respond extremely poorly to it. No. Probably not.

I don't know. I think that's right. I just would like to... He's been with the Yankees his whole career, so going from New York to Seattle and from a small ballpark for him to a big ballpark is certainly a mental adjustment, I would think, if nothing else. So it could reflect something other than just a random slow start,

but not particularly concerned about it. Well, Ben, while you were talking, I've been quickly reading bleacher reports how leaving Yankee Stadium has destroyed robinson canoes power and uh and i think there's there's multiple viewpoints out there is all i'm saying i wonder how many fly balls he has hit so far that would have been out in yankee stadium that were not out looking at his his set or his uh spray chart at brooks baseball it looks like he just hasn't hit many balls that way at all yeah deep yeah yeah this bleacher report article both uh blames it on leaving yankee stadium in the same sentence that it says that he's not hitting the ball well enough to give himself a

chance at long balls because he's so upset about leaving his stadium yeah uh so yeah i know i think that that's probably true i mean uh who if if you had to write an article tomorrow um like you if you just had to like it was the the your boss' decree that you had to write an article definitively stating that either Miguel Cabrera or Robinson Cano is toast and will never be the same player and his team has got stuck with the worst contract in baseball history and they should probably DFA him right now.

Who would you choose? Whose negative narrative is more convincing to you? Cabrera's, I think. I like this line in Bleacher Report's piece. Perspective aside, early season numbers don't lie. Which is exactly what early season numbers do. It's the entire thing that they do. It's the only reason they exist.

How many people have read that article? Page views don't lie, Ben. What do they say in this case? 16.3 thousand. Internet. All right. This article is only a couple hours old, too. But it's worth it.

Stop. One hour. It's one hour old, Ben. There was really some demand for that that topic Padres are the third biggest decline from 30.4%

and I'm actually surprised that they were that high to 12.8% yeah they were one of those you said you were surprised they were that high they were one of those uh you said they were surprised they were that high they were one of those sort of pakoda sleeper teams that nobody really thought had a chance and pakoda had them with like higher playoff odds than you know like the rangers i think maybe at the beginning of the year and the yankees at the beginning of the year. They're 11-12, two and a half out. Yeah, wow.

It's just nuts. And they just won. Does that include the game that they just won? Yes, I think so. This is MLB.com, so I think it's real time. Yeah, that's interesting. I don't know why that would be. I guess, well, they lose whatever 45 innings or whatever we had projected josh johnson to have

um yeah i don't i don't know um i mean that you can certainly you look at the padres individual lines and they're depressing almost almost across the board there's a couple guys who are playing well and they're people you don't really believe in at all and then there are a lot of people who are doing very poorly and you can't help but be worried which is a logical inconsistency and yet it's it's often how we look at things so uh you look at jed jerko right now and it's hard to be optimistic that he's going to be a middle of the order batter uh you know hitter that that they needed and you look at chase headley and he seems completely lost and like maybe he might never be good again kind of a thing um and so you can sort of look at the individual lines and see a team that's having a very disappointing season more than you can look at the record and i don't know

what their pathag is i don't know what they're uh like what they're what well i guess i do they're they're overperforming their pythagorean record by a game or something well it was a game but then they just won a one run game so it might be two games by now so you know if they were 9 and 13 or if they were i guess 9 and 14 instead of 11 and 12 right now we'd look at them a lot differently and it would make a lot more sense so maybe because incorporating that yeah they're i didn't really think that this team would hit i think when we had jeff young on i i asked him if if it would hit and i i liked the rotation and and parts of the rotation have been quite good but they're they're true average and i i know that you sometimes wonder whether

park factors are, are, you know, whether we're not doing something quite right, or they're not perfectly capturing something with this, the Padres or the Mariners or the giants or these teams with, with notable pitchers parks or hitters parks. Um, but right now their true average is is easily the worst in baseball by by 10 points uh they are last in the national league at 229 where 260 is league average so um not good six relievers pitched for them today these are their six relievers eras 0.77 1.64 2.08 2.31 0.93 and 1.00 three half of those guys are one or lower some good reliever league action right there plus cashner and tyson r Kennedy. Yeah. There's some pitching there. Yeah. Okay. We'll just do the top five for each of the next.

Next decline is Pirates, 24.1 to 12.8. Boy, the top five for each. That's much deeper than I was expecting you to go in retrospect. Yes. Maybe too deep. I was thinking top three go in retrospect. Yes, maybe too deep. I was thinking top three of each would work. Probably, yeah. Well, we can do this quickly.

All right, so boy, the Pirates. That's been disappointing. 9-14, 7-0. Yeah, we didn't have the Pirates doing very well, right? I think they were projected to win 80 or something at the start of the season. Yeah, I think it was like 79, 80, yeah. Yeah, so didn't consider them to have great chances. Do you have the breakdown of what their division and wildcard chances were at the beginning? Or do you just have...

I can get it, I think, in a second. I mean, to some degree, they're not underperforming particularly. I mean, they're like a game or two worse than Pocota would have expected them to be at this point. But you really feel like what's doomed them is that the playoff odds have— other teams' playoff odds have to come from somewhere, and the Brewers are going to be your highest riser. And all those Brewers' playoff odds have to come from somewhere. And the Cardinals have been playing pretty well,

and so they haven't lost a lot. So I would imagine that the Reds are going to be one of the trailers in your list. And then the Pirates, right? Pirates had a 13.0 division percentage and 11.1 wildcard percentage at the beginning of the season. Yeah. So their division chances have dropped by like almost two thirds and their wildcard chances by like one third. And then rounding out the bottom five is the Diamondbacks, who, as you said, didn't start out very high. They were at 12.9.

Proportionally, they have lost a lot. They are now at 2.9. Yeah. So that's not shocking. You think there's some wobbly chairs, or do you think the fact that those guys both signed extensions makes them safe? I have, as we've talked about, in this particular particular case i have a personal interest in kirk gibson being fired and i'm not like rooting for him to be for any any you know i it's always sad when a person loses his job however if if he's

going to it would be nice if he does it before any other manager does just because you picked him in your pool yeah um yeah i i'm ever since i wrote that article about how no gms have been fired i've just been rooting for no gm ever to be fired so that that article looks better in retrospect um but yeah it seems like there are some wobbly chairs there i if anything i I mean, it's not like they were coming from a spotless reputation and then just having a really bad month. There were many questions and complaints about them before that and how they handled things over the past couple of winters. And at the same time, apparently ownership didn't share those concerns to the same degree, at least in that they,

they did give them those extensions, which, which were kind of curious that they gave them those extensions. As we talked about with Nick Pecora on the preview episode, they, they seem to not be willing to give them extensions. They didn't give them to them last year and then surprisingly did it all of a sudden.

So they've pitched themselves as a contending team and they haven't really made the moves that a rebuilding team would make. They've made the moves that a competitive team would make. So they have put themselves in the position of being on wobbly chairs if they finish very far out of contention. And right now they are 7-18 and 7.5 back. Remember yesterday when we talked about the Diamondbacks and the Cubs

and how much better the Diamondbacks look if you just go person by person? backs look if you just go person by person. The playoff odds have the Diamondbacks projected to win one-tenth of a game more than the Cubs this year. 72.8 to 72.7. All right, and now the biggest gainers, as you said, top of the list is the Brewers, who have gone from 29.2 to 61.5. Yeah, I think they are currently the, I think, the fourth most likely team to make the playoffs in all of baseball. Wow. Which is crazy. 16-6, four-and-a-half game lead.

It's not a total shock that they're good. I mean, their, you know, the Thag record last year good. I mean, their, you know, Pathag record last year suggested that they were like, you know, roughly a 500 team. And then you add Ryan Braun. And as we noted, simply adding even a player who's not good, like Mark Reynolds to first base

is like a four win upgrade over what they had. And so it's not a shock that they're pretty good. Pakoda sees them winning 86 at the front you know going even even banking their 16 and 6 record uh it still sees them as an 86 win team at the end um and basically a 500 team going forward so that seems to be both uh great news for the brewers and yet not like a cataclysmic shift in how we would look at the world. Yeah, not particularly. I mean, when we had Jack Moore on for the Brewers' preview show,

we were kind of pushing him on whether the Brewers should rebuild, right? And whether they actually had talented young players who could be more than role players. And so far they have. Uh-huh. And so far they have. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, and next is the Braves,

who have gone from 30.7 to 60.5, have almost doubled their playoff odds. And it's conceivable, I don't know this, but it's conceivable that they've done that even with their depth charts incorporating more pitcher injuries possibly so march 31st yeah i don't that that was i forget exactly when when medlin and and beachy were officially ruled out. Uh-huh. Yeah, well, they've had, they've gone through four or five turns of their rotation

being completely gutted, and yet they have, like, the second best pitching in baseball. So that's a good way to play. Yes. I mean, it's not so much, I mean, it makes you think, oh, this is a pretty good team. They're capable of winning a lot of games.

But more than that, it's just that this was supposed to be their one bad month. They were kind of desperately clawing to get out of April and start getting some healthy arms back and some of the, like Gavin Floyd back. And so just to survive this month was a pretty like lofty goal and so to come out of it in first place is is massive and yeah they get they get to take all those wins going forward yes every crazy fluky erin harangue start counts yeah exactly as long as they i i can't help but think of your travis hafner comment in the bp annual uh when i think about aaron harangue um because yes it's really super awesome to get

aaron harangue's starts right now and you just have to make sure that you can get rid of him before it goes really bad because yeah as you noted hafner hit 167 249 286 from may through late july before succumbing to a rotator cuff strain if the yankees had cut bait at the first hint of trouble he would have been well worth what they paid him which should serve as a lesson to his future employers give up on the hurt hafner before he undoes any good that the healthy hafner did and uh yeah harangue sort of the same kind of a thing right now. Although, maybe not. Maybe he'll be good.

You think he's kind of good? Eh. A little bit. I mean, at least the peripherals are good. Yeah, they are. And it's not like, I mean, they have Miner about to be back. And at that point, I guess Horang and David Hale will be competing for that last rotation spot. It's not like Hale is a lockdown fifth.

He's probably a fine fifth starter. But it's tough because when you're running a baseball team and you're accountable to the players to some extent, you can't really get rid of Aaron Harang when he has a, you know, a one ERA or something. So you almost have to wait for him to blow up a little bit, but, but then you're, then you're getting those blow up starts. So you're kind of in a tough spot there. Well, yeah. What you hope is that you, he has the one blow up and then you, uh, you have the trainer check him out and the trainer finds a little bump or something.

Right. And then you put him in on the DL for 15 days and then in his rehab starts he can blow up as much as he wants or you can say, oh, well, geez, you got pipped by J.R. Graham or whoever's pitching at the moment and then put him in long

relief. That's what you hope. Yeah, they should just put him on the DL for being out of shape. That would solve all of their problems. The next team on this list is... Coming from elite athlete Ben Lindbergh. Yes. This next one... Yes, Ben Lindbergh, who sounds like he's fat,

according to people on Twitter. The next one is actually a team that's in a similar spot as the Braves. The Rangers, who have gone from 28.1 on opening day to 47.3. And this was another team that had a bunch of injuries, and their goal was kind of just to get through those injuries and wait until guys like Profar and Haaland came back and instead of just treading water they have their record is now 14 and 8 and they are tied with the A's for the division lead so that I mean that has to make you really optimistic about these two teams.

If you thought going into the year that they were contenders for the division, but that they would struggle early and just have to get through it until they got all their guys back, and then even without all their guys, they played really well, and you expect them to be even better when the guys come back, and they already have those wins that is that's a very positive sign that is except the problem is that um you could very easily draw the lesson that because baseball never follows the script that they're actually doomed you could you could i mean it at a certain point if you fancy yourself a team good enough to make the playoffs at a certain

point you'd like to see baseball make a little bit of sense. Because then you'd think, oh, well, it will reward me for being good. It will reward me for practicing more than other teams and being better than them. But no, the lesson of April is generally that it doesn't, and you are doomed regardless. Yes, the lesson of April is that Prince fielder has a 671 ops and kevin kuzmanov has an ops over 1000 yes kevin kuzmanov yes so um so is this why oh okay let's talk about this next team next so the athletics have gone from 43.9 to 61.3. So, Pocota still, I suppose, wasn't giving them a ton of credit. It had them as less than even odds to make the playoffs to start the season,

and now they are well above that. As I mentioned, they are tied with the Rangers for the division lead at 14-8. Is that? Yeah. Is that? That. Is that? That must be coming out of Seattle's share. Because I was going to say, well, it makes perfect sense. The Angels were the division favorite by Pakoda's figuring going into the season,

and the Angels have been disappointing. And the A's and the Rangers have like four or five games on the Angels now, so sure. But then I look and the Angels have a 56% chance which as I recall is just basically unchanged I think they were at 60 yes, they were at 60 so it's kind of interesting that the Angels

are still up so high yes and I guess it's partly because the Angels have a if I'm not misremembering they have a killer run differential at this point. And so is this why you are so into the AL West right now? Because they've got three teams on one end of this list? Yeah, pretty much.

All right, and the last team is the Yankees, All right, and the last team is the Yankees, who started out at 32.5 and have climbed to 49.5. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I didn't think the Yankees were going to be very good this year, and maybe they will be. I thought they would be roughly where they were last year, pending injuries and various fluctuations. They are now 12-9, although they're – or no, they're not 12-9. They are – what are they? 13-9 with a one-and-a-half game lead. And Pythag is a little worse, I think,

but obviously they've gotten great, great Tanaka, and the injuries have not been crippling although losing Nova hurts quick question for you CeCe Sabathia has 35 strikeouts to 8 walks which is an excellent

ratio, an exceptional ratio in like 33 innings or something like that his ex-fip imagine, is just tremendous. He also is throwing 86 and looks horrible. Looks like he's going to just get completely torn apart at any turn. So given those two facts about him, the velocity and the X-fit, where are you going on him? Buy or sell?

He currently has a 4.78 ERA. So it's like he's turning into Tim Lincecum. Yeah, it is like that. That's a pretty good comp. Although we don't even, baseball being what it is, we don't even really know what Linscombe is yet. We have strong suspicions that he's not very good, that he's an XFIP outlier, but we don't really know. So it's hard to draw conclusions about a person that you haven't even drawn conclusions about his comp. Sabathia going into the day, 2.5 X fit for a 5.2 ERA.

Excellent ground ball. Excellent ground ball. Career best ground ball rate, which makes you think that the career worst home run, that the career worst home run rate might not hold up. So, yeah. Buy or sell? Hold. I guess

buy relative to what his ERA is right now, but not strong buy. So that is the week. Please send us emails for next week's listener email show at podcast at baseball prospectus.com. Please join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild,

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