Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 451: Cueto, Greinke, and Green Lights

Episode Date: May 16, 2014

Ben and Sam reach into the topic grab bag and discuss Johnny Cueto, Zack Greinke, when to give hitters green lights, and more.

I see a green light Good morning and welcome to episode 451 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives presented by the BaseballReference.com Play Index. I'm Ben Lindberg, joined as always by Sam Miller. I have no particular topic today. I have many topics that are worthy of a few minutes of discussion and topics that are worthy of half an hour of discussion.

So we will string some of them together and see how it goes. I think, did you want to start with something? I do want to start with something. Okay. In reference to our conversation about 3.0 swinging. Yes, I was going to ask you about that. A few days ago, I saw today the most, to me it was the most remarkable statistic. I didn't know it before, so I'm going to tell you and now you'll know it.

And I'm fairly certain that you wouldn't have guessed this, but 3-0 swings. Let's see. If I'm understanding this correctly, this is according to Chris Moran of Beyond the Box Score, and it was just from a few weeks ago. According to Chris, if I'm reading this chart right, 28% of 3-0 swings are on pitches outside the strike zone. Hmm. Wow. Which, that's incredible. Yeah. Right? I mean, that's incredible, right?

Isn't that incredible? Yeah. I mean, I'm incredible, right? Isn't that incredible? Yeah. I mean, I'm sure a lot of them are an inch outside the strike zone, but even so. Right. I mean, everybody says, I mean, you should be keyholing it, right? You should only be looking for a pitch that's, you know, dead red. Like, you only want a perfect pitch on 3L, otherwise you shouldn't swing. So, you know, I guess there are pitches outside

the strike zone that are super hittable, but usually they're off-speed pitches. Usually it's like a breaking ball that's an inch high might be incredibly hittable. But it's hard to imagine a fastball that's outside the strike zone anywhere that would be an ideal pitch to hit, right? Well, yeah, right. And you and I often talk about how maybe people overrate pitchers' command and their ability to actually hit their spots, and it seems like maybe they can't actually do it more than two-thirds of the time or so. So is the corollary...

Corollary? Exactly. This is exactly what I was thinking. Is the corollary that hitters cannot actually judge the location of the pitch as accurately as we tend to think. Exactly. Basically, the fundamental job for a pitcher is to throw strikes, and the fundamental job of a hitter is to identify strikes, and both of them are bad at it, even when there are no challenges, really. When there should be no, even in the easiest circumstances for their job, it is still more difficult than we imagine. And it just goes back to my theory, or I guess it's not really my theory, but my sort of fundamental confusion about the sport of baseball at the highest level

is I can't tell whether it's that hitters are really bad at hitting or pitchers are really bad at pitching. I guess another way to say that is whether pitching is the incredibly hard thing or whether hitting is the incredibly hard thing. Because I do see Chris Davis strike out David Ortiz. Was it David Ortiz who he struck out? Yeah, I think so. That sounds familiar. So I see Chris Davis strike out david ortiz swinging

no it's adrian gonzalez wait no maybe yeah it was adrian gonzalez yeah so i do see i'll google it if you'll give me a special dispensation to google something during the podcast i guess the point i'm saying is that pitchers who uh sorry position players who pitch do way better than they ought to. And pitchers who hit also do way better than they ought to. So it's either really hard to hit because Adrian Gonzalez can't even hit Drew Butero or Chris Davis or whoever scrub comes in from up, or Chris Davis, or whoever scrub comes in from up, or it's really hard to pitch, because Craig Kimbrell can't even strike out pitchers reliably.

It was Adrian Gonzalez. It was also Jared Sotomaki in the same game, it looks like. All right. So I wanted to ask you about a couple of things that you touched on there. It just occurred to me that it's been a while since we've had a correction or clarification, and this might be one on Monday if I've misread this chart. Yeah, I'm sure it's not because we've stopped making mistakes. That's true. Maybe people have just given up on correcting us. Yeah, go ahead.

Maybe people have just given up on correcting us. So does that help explain the even more, to my mind, surprising stat that you shared on Wednesday, that the league batting average on balls in play on 3-0 is only 3-0-2, which to me is inexplicable. But maybe if guys... Home run rate does go way up, though. So guys are hitting the ball hard. And one thing also is that... I mean, Babbitt is so weird.

Last year, I wrote about Pablo Sandoval's swings inside the zone versus swings outside the zone, and he essentially has the exact same Babbitt, whether he's swinging at pitches inside the zone or outside of the zone and he essentially has the exact same babbitt whether he's swinging at pitches inside the zone or outside of the zone yeah which you can take either way i mean he's a great hitter with a very good batting average so i guess you would take it as pretty impressive that he manages the same babbitt but babbitt's just it's just fundamentally confounding yeah and well so you you wrote an article today following up on that 3-0 swing stuff, and you talked about which teams or which managers advise their players to swing on 3-0 and which don't. So would you, if you were manager Sam Miller, would you just give your whole lineup

the green, the green light on 3-0? Would you do it selectively? Would you give it to no one? What is your inclination? My inclination has always been to swing a lot more than they do. But, I mean, the idea behind that piece is that even now, even after sort of 15 years of readjusting our thoughts about count control, it's not clear whether swinging at 3-0 is a

stat head friendly thing or a non-stat head friendly thing. It doesn't really fall into one of the camps the way that almost every action in baseball does. And you have stat head teams on each side of the divide and you have non-stat head teams on each side of the divide. And I looked at some, you know, maths that people had done, including a piece in BP in 2011, I think, to sort of answer this. But none of them were really all that rigorous and none of them were really convincing and none of them necessarily agreed with each other. So I don't think it's an answered question. And that also is interesting to me. It feels like this is such a simple thing that we see all the time.

And there is a lot. Anytime, you know, it seems like practically anytime somebody gets the green light and swings at it, somebody writes about it. Somebody mentions it in the game story or in a blog post or whatever. I mean, there's been, and yet there seems to be a lot more work done on every other possible curiosity in baseball, but not really necessarily 3-0 pitches. But my instinct has always been to swing more. I just think it's a pitch that you never get back. I mean, there's no pitch like a 3-0 fastball down the middle and you mentioned drew butera um and we

talked about steve tollison pitching yesterday but we sort of buried the lead as as far as position player pitchers go um drew butera pitched it was his second career appearance he also pitched in in 2012 and both times he has pitched, he has looked fantastic. He has thrown 95-mile-per-hour fastballs, and he's thrown something that is classified as a changeup. It's like a mid-'70s sort of sinking, fading type of pitch, and he's looked great. And it's like he's sort of a savant or something.

It's like we've seen Drew Butera just sort of be a backup catcher guy who can't really hit at all and has a career 186, 236, 273 batting line. And then he gets on the mound and he looks like a late-in reliever. So if you were Drew Butera's agent, who is apparently named David Schwartz. Would you recommend that he change careers immediately? Probably not. He has played in four straight major league seasons. Or five, I guess this is now.

And he has carved out some sort of part-time role for himself. He is not hit at all. Yeah, he's making three-quarters of a million dollars this year. He'll probably make a million and a half next. And at this point, I mean, he's 30 years old. It's unlikely, I would say, that he's going to get any big payout as a pitcher, even if he were converted right now. And so it's probably too risky.

I mean, this is a guy who's going to retire, you know, having made somewhere between probably $3 and $9 million. And so if I were Drew Butera's agent at this point, I would say go for nine. You know, just push for nine. Just push for nine. Don't do anything radical. Now, knowing how his career went, if I were his agent in 2007, or if I were the twins in 2007, I guess he was with the Mets in 2007, I think.

But anyway, I would... Actually, he was with the twins and the Mets in 2007, I think. But anyway, I would... Actually, he was with the Twins and the Mets in 2007. That was the year he was traded. I would probably consider it. Yeah, I mean, when I did the article for ESPN the magazine a couple years ago about position players converting to pitching, to pitching, everybody said that the first place you look for your conversions is catchers because they've got this short arm stroke that you look for in a reliever. And so you're basically looking for that guy or maybe a short stop.

Very few outfielders do it. And then nobody at the other positions has the arm for it. Nobody at first or second has the arm for it. So catchers, where they all come from, or a lot of them come from. And yeah, it seems to me that in retrospect, probably somewhere along the line, Butera might have made a different decision and it would have been the right decision. I mean, we've seen so many catchers become dominant relievers in the last half, I guess, decade or so, that it's not

a novelty or unrealistic at all to suggest that he could have been a high leverage reliever. Yeah, Kenley Jansen did it. Rob Johnson is doing it. And he's like 37. Not to mention Jeff Francor. Is Jason Lane still going?

Yeah, Jason Lane too. I think Jason Lane is starting, I think. In AAA somewhere. El Paso, yeah. Let's see. Yeah, seven starts for El Paso. 37 years old. Wow.

This, I tell you what. 41 innings, 4-1-4 ERA. So far, so good. 12 strikeouts and eight walks and six homers in 41 innings. That's an ambitious conversion. You rarely see the position player to starting pitcher conversion. That seems particularly rare. I'm going to do some fifth math real quick. the position player to starting pitcher conversion. That seems particularly rare. Got some, uh,

yeah, I'm going to do some fifth math real quick. Uh, we have a FIP of actually not that bad. 5.2. Uh, we should also mention that the Mets pitching staff got its first hit of the season. So they,

they had to bring in someone else. Right. That debut, a guy, his major league debut, Jacob de Grom. got its first hit of the season. They had to bring in someone else. Major League debut. A guy made his Major League debut. Jacob deGrom. So I like the idea that they had to dip into the minors to get someone who could get a hit. They couldn't do it with the collection of pitchers that they had on hand.

Yeah, you do sort of imagine that this is like the scene in the movie where like Kelly, what's his name kelly leak kelly rides up on the motorcycle and they're all like look around like who's this kid right yeah it looked from seeing the video it looked like he didn't know about this streak of what was it it was over 64 streak or something did the mets know about this because when i watched every at bat that they had and it wasn't really ever mentioned, up to 42. Yeah, it looked from the bench reaction, there was a lot of celebrating going on there,

but it didn't look like DeGrom. No, but it was a guy making his Major League debut. True. And he got his first hit, so. True. There would be. And it was a pitcher. I mean, even if, in any circumstance,

I feel like the bench would be making a ruckus, laughing, doing that sort of hijinks. You're right. Hard to distinguish. Another thing I wanted to ask you about was the Angels and their productive org guys. I saw you retweet a tweet by Alden Gonzalez who wrote about this in a game story and this is this is a topic that is of interest to you because you wrote an article about how the angels farm system has been ranked last the last couple years and how they are trying to turn it around and they have gotten some contributions out of members of that farm system who were not top prospects in any way. Are those guys a symptom of the system being underrated

and maybe some bias in prospect lists, or are those guys not any good? Well, boy, I don't exactly know how to answer that. It depends on who we're talking about. I mean, some of the guys that they're getting contributions from are from back when the system was good. I mean, I'm not talking about Trout and Howie Kendrick. I'm not going that far back. But like Garrett Richards, for instance, is from when the farm system was good.

So you wouldn't necessarily count him. But, yeah, the Angels, I feel like the Angels system, while very bad, it did have a lot of guys who seemed like they were going to have, you know, have, that they were likely to have careers, that they were, you know, likely to be major leaguers. They just didn't offer any upside. And there was no upside guy to put any sparkle on the farm system. So like you had a top 10 where there was nobody who belonged in a top five. And that, you know, that's one big reason why the system gets ranked so lowly. But all ten of them could have been a six or a seven.

CJ Krohn, for instance, is going to have a career. Grant Green is probably going to have a little bit of a career. Who else is contributing? Matt Shoemaker had a good start. He's probably nothing. Michael Kahn predates this conversation. Corey Rasmus is not much. So, I mean, they've got, they also have no pitching in their farm system,

which even they would acknowledge. Even when defending the system, they would acknowledge that, well, they didn't really have any pitching. And they're not really getting much pitching. But, you know, they've had some relief arms emerge over the last few years in the system. And they're going to end up having three or four pretty good relievers come out of the system.

And Mike Morin, I think, is one of those guys. So, I mean, yeah, it's like... Efren Navarro. Luis Jimenez. Yeah, well, those guys aren't really contributing, though. Like, they're there. But, like, Luis Jimenez isn't doing much. He's just filling a spot.

Efren Navarro just came up and, you know, has played, like, a couple games. But, well, I guess he's had a couple good games. But no, Navarro's basically a defense-first quad-A player who can't even really hit enough to be a quad-A hitter. But defense-first baseman, I should say. I don't think he has any outfield experience, really, and they called him up to play play left field so that's not really the situation you're looking for

but I don't know I mean they're going to have you know they'll produce 10,000 I don't know 10,000 is maybe a bit much but yeah they'll produce 10,000 plate appearances will they? out of their farm, they'll produce 10,000 plate appearances. Will they?

Out of their farm system? Yeah, probably 10,000 plate appearances. They just won't be particularly great. And mostly they'll be forgotten in the next few years, and none of those guys will be an all-star. But yeah, they'll get some role players out of it. They definitely

have players who are good enough to be role players. It was not a system that was going to produce nobody. Right. Well, yeah, we've seen this with teams like, well, we talked about the White Sox and how Kenny Williams said that even though their prospect rankings are always bad, they're always near the bottom, they have managed to graduate some people who were maybe

not the high ceiling types but they they contributed so maybe yeah i don't know there probably is some bias in these in these scouting lists towards towards ceiling as opposed to major league readiness um i think that's probably fair other thing, I don't think that it's necessarily fair to compare them to the White Sox either. The White Sox would say that they, you know, have a system that gets overlooked but has churned out good players. The Angels system wasn't very good, and it was for obvious reasons. They had completely blown a draft in 2010. I think they had five first-round picks and produced, you know produced basically nothing out of it because they were drafting toolsy guys who didn't turn into anything. That happens when you draft toolsy high schoolers every year.

Some years they turn into Mike Trout, and some years they don't. And then they forfeited a ton of first-round picks to sign a bunch of guys, and then they had a big scandal in their international scouting. They essentially abandoned their international scouting and development for a few years and weren't investing anything down there. So it's not like they, I mean, there's a real reason that they weren't well respected for those few years. Like there were reasons that they hadn't, and theypected for those few years. There were reasons that they hadn't...

And they traded a bunch of guys, too. They traded a ton of guys for Granke and for Kiaspo and for Heron and so on. So I don't think it's particularly unfair to criticize them, and I don't even think that they would deny it. They had some institutional disadvantages for a few years. I forget where I was going with that. But in their defense, yeah I think a lot of their top prospects in as much as they have prospects tended to over the last year or two were guys who were drafted in like the fourth, fifth and sixth

rounds. And they would say that those guys are always undervalued by prospect rankings because nobody fell in love with them originally. No one fell in love with them when they were first scouted by prospect magazines and industry guys and other teams. And so they're always kind of under heralded. So if you have a third-round second baseman, that guy's never going to get you any buzz, no matter how good he does in the minors, is what they would say.

And speaking of Trout, we have started to get some questions about him and his strikeout rate and his slump. to get some questions about him and his strikeout rate and his slump. And it seems to me, I mean, I was early to wonder about this. And I don't know, we were talking about it when he was striking out a lot, when his contact rate was low. And I was asking if it was silly to even be thinking about this. Should I bother writing about this? be thinking about this? Should I bother writing about this? And I'm thinking we probably have a tendency to overreact to small samples even more in the case of really good players, because we

kind of expect them to be really good all the time. And so there have been a bunch of articles about Trout lately. What's wrong with Trout? Why isn't Trout hitting? And I think Gabe Kapler tweeted something about how we should probably all back up a bit and calm down a bit about Trout and how we were all fussing about Miguel Cabrera not hitting not long ago, and now Miguel Cabrera is hitting. So, I mean, Trout, again, he struck out twice tonight. He was over three. His strikeout rate is high. It is close to 30% now, which is unusual. That's not what we've seen from him. And yet I still don't know what to make of that,

and I'm defaulting to nothing because he's still making contact, still not chasing a ton. I think a lot of those strikeouts are called, if I remember right, and I just, I don't know, I'm kind of inclined to dismiss it. It's Mike Trout, so anything he does is news, rightfully so, but it's nothing to worry about, right? Second in the AL in war. Right. Why?

Wait, that's interesting that a lot of them are called. I think that's the case. What do you think that means? What does that tell you? I don't know. I mean, to me, it's probably less concerning than if he were suddenly swinging and missing at everything. But I don't know. Maybe it tells you he's being too passive or something

or that his pitch recognition is temporarily off, something like that. But again, I don't know. I mean, it would probably be more worrisome to me if he were just not able to make contact anymore but his his contact rate is is close to what it was it's a little down but but not a whole lot but he is i mean he's leading the american league in strikeouts and that sounds scary but of course he he has gotten a lot of plate appearances and he hits close to the top of the order and and that's part of it he's just gotten a lot of plate appearances and he hits close to the top of the order and that's part of it he's just gotten a lot of chances to strike out

but when you see Mike Trout leading the league in something that's generally regarded as negative then it's understandable that people are talking about that yeah yeah I'm still waiting.

Like I said, I want you to be the first person to call an end to Mike Trout's greatness. But you might be late. People are starting to write those columns. I know. Well, I tried. I talked to him. If he had told me that he was no longer great, I would have written that. Yeah, I don't know.

I don't have any great insight on it. It does seem like he's striking out a lot. He is. That's my impression by watching him. Spot on. I also wanted to ask you where Johnny Cueto ranks on your list of pitchers that you you need to win one game and you can give him the start as he is on he's on an incredible run and he he had a another great start uh granted it was against the Padres who everyone has great starts against this year but he is now

what he's had nine starts three complete games uh, I think, has been above seven innings. And he's allowed two or fewer runs in each one, which is like the first time anyone's done that since the dead ball era. Or maybe it was to start a season, which is not nearly as impressive. But if you go back to 2011, and he's been inning per inning, just about the best pitcher in baseball. Clayton Kershaw, a little better maybe, but that's it. If you sort by whatever, ERA plus is what I did just as a default. But before his latest complete game, he was at 161, and Kersaw was at 168 and Verlander was at 147.

So big gap from Cueto to the next guy, although there's also a big innings gap. He has pitched about 500 innings since 2011, including 2011. And guys like Kershaw and Verlander and Cliff Lee have pitched well over 700 innings. So there's a big difference in value there. But start per start, for start, he has been fantastic. Yeah, you know, when—well, I thought you were going to fade out. I was. Go ahead. Yeah, you know, when Goldstein, Kevin Goldstein, would talk about how there were only like, you know, when Goldstein, Kevin Goldstein would talk about how there were only like, you know, one and a half aces in all of baseball and people would get all mad and then go, what do you mean there's 30 teams that have to be 30 number ones?

Right. And he would say, no, number one is like an abstract concept. It's not set in stone, you know. Which always struck me as just a kind of unproductive debate. Yeah. I mean, who cares? It's a,

it's a, it's a label and you can put, you can put labels. However. Yeah. So I think, I think it's fine. I mean,

I, what he's saying is that there is an emotional idea behind a number one starter. It literally, there are 30 number one starters, but figuratively, emotionally, we know the difference between a number one and a, and you know, number one with a but figuratively, emotionally, we know the difference between a number one

and a number one with a capital N and a number one with a lowercase n, right? So I don't have a problem with that. But I do feel like when we talk about who number ones are, a number one in that construction is an emotional reaction to a guy. It's like we look at him and say, oh, is he a number one? And when people, and I think Sky Cockman a couple months ago, I think it was Sky tweeted a request for people to name their number ones, or maybe it was somebody else, and I did my list of number ones,

and oh, I think he had a Google Doc, and you were supposed to vote on who's the number one. Yeah, I think that was it. And when you get emotional, like, it really distorts who the number ones are. And so, like the other day when we had Jack Moron, and I mentioned that Kyle Loesch has the 13th best ERA plus over the last four seasons, and it's better than David Price and it's better than Felix Hernandez um Jim Breen right JP Breen yeah sorry yeah uh and uh yeah that's because there's only two brewers pretty much yeah and uh yeah so anyway um uh but nobody would put Kyle Osh on their list, and they certainly wouldn't put Kyle Osh on their list ahead of Felix Hernandez.

And Cueto's the same kind of thing. I just feel like nobody puts him there. In fact, it's almost like the less you know about baseball, the more likely you are to put Cueto on the list. And that's right. You should put Cueto on the list. Cueto has been significantly better than all the guys that you would name he's been significantly better than you darvish and steven strasberg and david price and felix hernandez and zach granky and probably

probably adam wainwright and he's made just as many starts as adam Wainwright in that time. Is it just a sinker ball bias or something? Is it just a ground ball guy who doesn't have the truly insane strikeout rates and the truly insane velocity readings? Is it that plus the injuries? Is that why he's underrated? Yeah, probably. Do you think there's a small guy bias? Yeah, that could be.

Well, I wonder. I mean, in a way, it's even more impressive. I don't know if there's a small guy bias when it comes to the – like if you're a fantasy team, I think that probably most people are capable of putting size in perspective and drafting the best guy. But the emotional element of an ace, team, I think that probably most people are capable of putting size in perspective and drafting the best guy. But the emotional element of an ace, but specifically, I think we want to see a big mouth breathing giant who stands tall on the mound and looks bigger than the

hitter and screams at the manager when he comes out to pull him from a game in the eighth inning. And yeah, has the big fastball. I feel like with Pedro, that almost added to his aura. Yeah, that's true. It can work. I mean, all sorts of different things can work, but it's harder. You know, it's like, yeah, I mean, you can definitely be successful in different ways. But, yeah, you just have to be extra successful in order to kind of overcome that stereotype.

Maybe. Maybe. Just a hypothesis. But, yeah, I mean, well, look, just look at it this way. If Johnny Cueto were 6'5", just me putting that in your head just changed something in how you think of him. Even with the sinker i mean look baldo jimenez throws a sinker right i guess he throws a sinker 99 so maybe that's not fair but um uh yeah big guy with a sinker you know has downhill plane if you're a big guy with a sinker then you have downhill plane if you're a little guy with a sinker then it's like oh durability concerns so he needs to like assume control of matt latos's body while latos is on the dl and then then people will respect him yeah yeah although even cueto is striking people out

this year too he's doing that also now so he just does everything johnny cueto really good um yeah i rj is the one who yeah he wrote what was that that was a while ago that was like two years ago i think yeah he's the one who who who first put it in my mind that we are all missing something about johnny cueto and johnny cueto is fun too because he does you know he's got that incredible pickoff move and like i just like a guy i To me, a good pick-off move is the pitcher equivalent of smart hustle. I just like that a guy would put that

extra energy into doing something that matters more than probably most pitchers want to put the effort into. There is a story. We talked in the listener email show and then in the Tommy John show about how maybe pitchers just shouldn't throw as hard as they possibly can throw and how that's difficult to do because there's a lot of incentive to throw really hard.

But in the long run, maybe you're better off not doing that, not being a max effort guy. And there was a great, great article by Tim Brown, who writes a lot of great articles for Yahoo Sports about Zach Granke. And Granke, as always, has interesting things to say on this subject. And he says that he's pretty frank about not going 100% all the time. He has thrown his slider less because he is trying to preserve his arm. He says if it's a high leverage spot and he really needs an out, then he will throw the slider. But he will not throw the slider if he thinks he can get away with doing something else. And he will not throw as hard as he can at all times. And Brown made the connection to a couple other guys recently, Jared Weaver, who he says, asked out of a game because

of fatigue, and Jonathan Papelbon, who declined to pitch in three consecutive games. And then I think Hisashi Iwakuma just told his manager that he was done in a couple starts. And I wonder whether this is the new thing that we're going to see. And he also mentions as a contrast, Nathan Evaldi, who we've talked about a couple times recently, says that he throws every pitch as hard as he possibly can, which shows, which is why he throws harder than any other pitcher, I guess. Um, and so maybe, maybe that's sort of scary when you hear that,

but, uh, Clayton Kershaw also says the same thing to Brown that he throws as hard as he can all the time also. And he really hasn't had any major injury problems. So I wonder whether this will be the new thing whether there will be a change in uh in how this is how acceptable this is deemed whether whether is is this the equivalent of not running out every ball to first base is this going to be a an old school versus new school thing where we where the old school people argue that you have to give your max effort on every pitch uh just like you have to bust it down the line on every ground ball whereas other people will say no you want to you want to save your strength you don't want to go full out because you you want to make sure that you're healthy for your next start is this going

to be the new central thing or will everyone just accept that this is okay now? Now that we've seen so many Tommy John surgeries, is it acceptable for pitchers to be open about not giving their maximum effort all the time? I don't even think that it has to do with the Tommy Johns. I think that there's always been an appreciation for the fact that pitching a you know starting a game is an endurance uh an endurance feat uh and playing an entire baseball season is too but not not in the same way or maybe not appreciated in the same way um people see baseball players standing around a lot and think well why can't you run you run hard to first every time? And I think sensibly they ask that. But there's been a long tradition of pitchers pacing themselves.

Christy Mathewson very famously would talk about how he would basically go less effort, I don't remember what it was, but like 70% effort, you know, 90% of the time, so that he would have 100% effort 10% of the time. And, you know, Levon Hernandez, you know, mastered it and is therefore the legend of durability for an entire generation. And, I mean, it's just that it's not a matter of being lazy. What Zach Greinke's talking about is inherently different. It's not, not he's not saying um you know i just don't want to throw my slider because it's you know it's too hard or anything like that it's uh it's about being more effective

for the next pitch it's a strategy it's a strategy that i think everybody can intuitively appreciate that's i mean that's sort of what robinson canoes said though when he was defending himself about not sprinting down to first um it is what i know it's what he says but it's not something that anybody has it's not something that fans like kind of relate to i mean that's a very nuanced kind of uh explanation of why you don't have to run 90 feet when it's your job to run 90 feet right i feel like though i mean christyy Mathewson's pitching a complete game all the time, right? And the typical fan line, a certain traditional sort of fan who grew up seeing pitchers go deep into games says, you know, why can't these guys go deep into games? They're going five, six innings and sort of, I don't know, questioning their manliness or something. Whereas, so if you're combining the fact that starters don't go deep into games anymore

with this pronouncement that you're not giving your max effort on every pitch because you have to pace yourself for six innings instead of nine, I feel like that might be a harder sell for some people. Yeah, right. If it's Granke saying he's not throwing as many sliders, I think that plays well. be a harder sell for some people. Yeah. Right. If it's Granke saying he's not throwing as many sliders, I think that plays well. If it's Granke saying he should only have to go five innings a game, then I would agree with you. You're right.

I think that would play a lot worse. The sliders thing, I mean, if his slider is his most effective pitch or he thinks it is a more effective pitch than another pitch, then, I mean, if you're pacing yourself, then you're saying, well, I'm taking a little off this pitch because I want to still have something left later in this game. I want to go into the seventh with something left. That's a little different than saying I don't want to throw my slider because if I throw my slider all the time for years

I'll get hurt at some point down the road when I might not even be on the team that you're rooting for anymore I feel like that may be and I'm totally on board with the Granky approach but I feel like if you're a fan of a team that wants and

you want to win every game and you're in a pennant race and you have a guy who's saying i'm gonna save my arm for for later for years down the road when maybe i will have i'll be pitching for a team that is playing against your team um you know maybe that is something that would get some some pushback you're convincing me. You're slowly convincing me. Because it does seem like what Greinke has exposed himself to here is in game six of the NLCS this year, when he gives up the go-ahead double in the seventh inning on a changeup, what he's exposed himself to is everybody going,

well, if he'd thrown the slider, but he didn't throw the slider, he shouldn't have been saving the slider. There's all sorts of reasons to throw the changeup there. He doesn't have to throw the slider every time, but now every pitch he ever gets hit on that isn't a slider, you could point to and go, well, if he'd thrown this slider that time you can assume that that's the one that he was saving the energy right and based on his comments i think that wouldn't happen right if it were the if it were the world series he would throw the slider whenever he felt that it was the best pitch to throw in that

situation but if you if you didn't really internalize his comments, if you just read the headline that says he's throwing fewer sliders because he wants to save his arm, then yes, there's a possibility there. Or even a solo home run to the second batter in the first inning of the game that you lose 1-0. He's exposed himself to a level of second-guessing that won't be fair and that won't be fair and that won't be necessarily comfortable so he probably just shouldn't have talked but it is an interesting

quote hey i have a question for you though sure um so we just talked about how cueto is you know at the top of the game over the last three plus years and i remember you writing an article about Josh Johnson in early 2012, very early 2012 for ESPN Insider. And at the time, Josh Johnson... I don't. What did they say? I couldn't find it, believe it or not. Josh Johnson at the time had the best ERA and ERA Plus over the previous two years. And that's a little bit of cherry picking. But if you go back three at the time to mimic Cueto's, he had a 158 ERA plus to Cueto's 161.

And in 70 starts to Cueto's 68. And Johnson is one of the guys who convinced you that the hurt or good model doesn't work. Should we be assuming that Quato will never be healthy, reliably healthy, and before we know it, he will also be awful? I think it's safe to assume or fair to assume that he is not going to – he's not a workhorse now just because he has pitched three complete games already this year. I wouldn't necessarily expect him to be a 200-inning guy. He's had a history of these shoulder strains. And I mean, he hasn't had the sort of record that like that Josh Johnson has had or that I don't know.

Who else have I used as an example of that? Sean Markham. Yes, right. Sean Markham. He hasn't gotten to that point. He hasn't. I mean, he hasn't had a surgery, for instance, I don't think, just glancing at his injury record on his BP player card. So it hasn't gotten to that point. But that's clearly what holds him back from being at the top of that list

of Kershaws and Cliffleys and Verlanders, is that he doesn't give you the innings that those guys do. And so that's fair. But it seems like part of the lesson that you learn from all of those guys is that there is a big drop in performance likely looming. Yeah, sure. I mean, I don't know. That comes for all guys and probably, I would guess,

comes faster maybe for guys who have a long injury history but his isn't as scary as Johnson's or Markham's. I don't think he's in the same class. Alright, so that is it for today. Do you have

Delon Batantes on any of your reliever league teams? Three of them. Three of them I 11. Yeah, he had a great... He struck out six consecutive Mets in his last outing. He faced seven batters, struck out six. He now has a

44.8% strikeout rate, which I think is second in the majors to Craig Kimbrell, just behind Kimbrell. The latest reliever to kind of turn into a strikeout monster when we weren't necessarily expecting it. He has pretty nasty

stuff if you've seen it. He looks the part. He is huge and has a really nasty breaking ball. A true number one. Right. Okay, so that's it for the week. Please send us emails for next week at podcasts at baseballperspectives.com. Please join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild.

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