Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 534: Ned Yost, Clayton Kershaw, and Russell Martin’s Most Shape

Episode Date: September 15, 2014

Ben and Sam compare Kershaw to Pedro and discuss Ned Yost’s bullpen usage, Russell Martin’s fitness, and Jenrry Mejia’s save celebration.

Push it up, push it up, let me see you jazz! Wobble baby wobble baby wobble baby wobble Good morning and welcome to episode 534 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from BaseballPerspectives.com, presented by the Play Index at Baseball Reference. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg of Grantland.com. Hi, Ben. All right.

Hi. What? What? I anticipated you asking me how I was. I see. I had a response all ready I was. I see. I had a response all ready to go. I see. How was your weekend?

Okay. I'm excited to talk about baseball again because I spent most of the weekend playing and writing about destiny. What's that mean? It's my budding side career as a video game writer oh destiny is a game yes great how is it not so great you can read about it today no um so few updates in fact almost nothing but updates i don't have a topic. I brought no topic. Okay. So I figured we could talk about some things. Okay.

All right. So one thing is Nick Markakis has just collapsed. He's just had a terrible collapse since the last time I fretted about him. I'll get you some exact numbers. Remind people why you were fretting about Nick Marcakis? Because Nick Marcakis has a chance to become the greatest player of all time with no all-star appearances and never a single MVP vote. He's not there yet. Mark Ellis, as I think we talked about at the time,

Mark Ellis is the leader in the clubhouse. Well, not even technically in the clubhouse. But I think Mark Akis has a shot at catching him by whatever standard you want to use. But the problem is that all it takes is one vote to kick him off of this list. And with the Orioles in first place and Mark Akis is the leadoff hitter, as I've written before, voters love them. Some leadoff hitters for a down ballot symbolic gesture vote. It was making me nervous. So in, in mid August, around the time that I was worried about this,

he was hitting 297 and there were, I think, I think I saw a he's been our mvp reference if i recall correctly uh he was getting talked up by people around the orioles as this is the sort of things you would say about a guy who gets the symbolic eighth place vote um but since then 23 games pennant race, 153-202-194. And that's before today. I think he actually went over, well, no, I don't actually know. That was the night game. I saw him when he was like over two. Yeah, he went over four.

So that's before his over four. So he's now down to, you know, 270. Ain't no 270 Nick Markakis getting a vote. So I think we're pretty safe there. He's down to like 1.3 war, which doesn't mean he won't get a vote. But this is the second worst season of his career. So it would be cruel irony indeed if I lost this. Yeah, I don't think you have to be nervous.

Yeah. All right. Speaking of players, baseball players, I noticed something in your piece the other day, Ben, about the Pirates. Uh-oh. You mentioned, well, 1,700 words or so were about Russell Martin being in great shape. were about Russell Martin being in great shape. In fact, there were multiple people around him saying that he was in the best shape of his life.

And you did link to a general, generic, best shape of his life explanatory blog post probably that Ray Calcaterra had written. Yep. I don't think, though, that you... You probably didn't remember this when you were writing it. Maybe you've never heard of this.

But I once wrote in 2011, February 2011. Oh, it's coming back to me now. Yeah. Yeah. Russell Martin is the all-time best shape of my lifer. Oh, man, what a missed opportunity. I want to go take that article down and rewrite it and resubmit it and have it reposted so in 2011 spring of 2011 he came into camp having done mma

training regimen during the off season his body fat was down to seven percent he said that he was in quote the best shape of his career and somebody else said he came to the gym pudgy. Now he looks like an athlete. He was in the best shape of his life, right? That was the fourth consecutive year at the time that he had been in spring training saying he was in the best shape of his life. 2008, came to spring training with reduced body fat. 2009, quote, never felt better and took up yoga 2010 new quote extreme that's extreme without the e at the front of the word training program in the

off season which meant working out in 100 degree arizona heat and swinging sledgehammers at tractor tires quote i needed to get into better shape so that was four years in a row there was a 2012 reference as well so there was actually he had a five-year run and then i think he took 2013 off and uh and actually his career was revived uh that year and i don't know if i quit paying attention in 2014 but as you've found he is definitely still in the best shape of his life yeah i think I think I actually made a note in my Gmail draft folder for ideas to look for Russell Martin best shape of his life stories this spring. I don't think I saw any. But I'm glad that I supplied one in September of all times.

I liked that piece. And I enjoyed it. Well, okay. So I read the first half and I enjoyed it. Well, okay, so I read the first half, and I was enjoying it. And then somebody else came into the room, and I lost focus while I read the second half. And I have to admit, I don't really remember what your conclusion was. Not because it was very well written. It was a good piece.

But what did you find about the pirates? What did you ultimately conclude? Is this worth a book? No, not yet, certainly. The first half was kind of about the argument in favor of the Pirates having done something special with their injury rate this year because they have the fewest days lost or games lost to injury this year, which, given where they are in the standings could

actually make a major difference for them and so I was in Pittsburgh and I talked to some pirates and and they all had various reasons for why this might be and Clint Hurdle praised the training and conditioning guys and some of the players did too and they talked about these special warm-up exercises they do, and Russell Martin wears this wearable exercise tracking technology thing that looks like the Iron Man suit power core and tracks all of his movements and his calories burned and everything. And so you can come up with a narrative for why the pirates are really good at preventing injuries and how this is their secret weapon

and market inefficiency and all that. And so I spent the first half of the piece sort of doing that and then the second half kind of deconstructing that idea and looking at the pirates' recent injury history, which is very, very extreme. In the last few years, they've gone from one of the worst to one of the best to one of the worst and now the best again. And there's no perceptible pattern.

And then I showed the pattern for every team over the years, and there's little consistency from season to season. There's a slight correlation from year to year in injury games lost, but it's a smaller correlation than just about any other aspect of team performance. Like maybe bullpen performance is less strong. I think you found that was nothing essentially. But everything else, runs scored and runs allowed

and strikeout percentage and walk percentage and wins and everything has a higher correlation, stronger correlation than injury rate from year to year. So I concluded that in some cases it might mean something, but it's really hard to tell which those cases are because even when there is some real ability, what which those cases are because even when there is some real ability the players move around or a young team gets older or front office people who are able to identify players who can stay healthy go to another team or trainers move around the pirates current trainer who will a lot of the players gave credit to used to be the dodgers trainer so everyone moves around and if there is some ability it's probably pretty hard to preserve in fact the dodgers trainer so everyone moves around and if there is some ability it's

probably pretty hard to preserve in fact the the white socks who were oh yeah that's i'm glad you read that i wanted to bring that up i wanted you to bring that up so the white socks right so i showed andrew koo of baseball prospectus made this this cool chart for me with pitcher days lost to injury and hitter days lost or games lost over a period of years. And all of them swing pretty wildly from one extreme to another from year to year. But the White Sox, of all teams, look like the clearest outlier. And they got a lot of national attention. I wrote about it in 2010, I think, first was when I noticed it. And I had probably picked it up from some other comments that had been made. And then after the 2012 season, a lot of people started writing about it

because the Pirates had this record a decade long at that point of always being among the league leaders in fewest pitcher injuries. And this seemed like a real thing. And Don Cooper, the pitching coach, sort of gave these cryptic comments that sort of suggested that he had the secret to preserving pitchers. And it was just year after year after year. And since then then since that attention, since they got all that attention, like early in 2013, late in 2012, the White Sox have been unremarkable in terms of pitcher injuries. They were, I wrote, I think, 13th or 14th fewest pitching injuries in each of the last two seasons, last season and this season. So basically middle of the pack. And so that could mean any number of things.

It could mean that they never really had an ability to prevent pitcher injuries and they were just lucky all those years and that luck ran out. It could mean that they have the same ability they always had, but they've had particularly poor luck the last couple years. It could mean that they've changed their strategy for acquiring pitchers somehow. Maybe because they are so good at preventing pitcher injuries, they have gone out and acquired lots of injury prone pitchers thinking that they could keep them healthy and that that has inflated their numbers somewhat. So hard to say why that is, but even the White Sox

and their seemingly miraculous ability to prevent pitcher injuries has subsided over the last couple of seasons. You'd think there would be some significant correlation just by the fact that we know that the most predictive variable for a player's health is his past health. And so if you have the same player from one year to the next, you would think that just having his health correlate from year to year, as it sort of does, would make a team's health correlate.

Yeah, and age too. Age is another important factor. And if you have a young team one year, you're going to have a slightly less young, but still probably young team the next year. And there was some correlation. It was like.2 for pitchers and.3 for hitters, which is something. Yeah. Not a whole lot. Yeah. So 2012, Craig Calcaterra found it uh for for russell martin 2012 uh an

article in yahoo um in which russell martin not only says that he's in the best shape of his life quote if there's any guys in more shape than me i'd be surprised not better shape more shape i like that me too i am in the most shape of my life uh but but the best part about this is quote before 2011 spring training martin had little chance to build power in his legs so a full winter of workouts quote will be a huge difference martin also says he's been taking uh begun taking swings something he didn't do until a few days before spring training began last year last year was the year he said it was like the year before was when he said he was in the best shape of his life just the year before and then and then the next the next year he's he's bad mouthing that guy

i guess that's why he's so successful that's that's that's why he's at the top of his game now at an age when lots of catchers and lots of players decline maybe it's just because he just thinks that he's in awful shape all the time and he always wants to get better or more shape he's not in enough shape ever. Every few weeks he adds a shape. All right. Enough about Russell Martin. Let's see. We got an email about when pitches are – when baseballs are thrown out of play.

Oh, yeah. Remember we had that conversation? Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. Remember we had that conversation? Mm-hmm. So we had talked about whether... It's not going to sound very exciting in retrospect, so maybe I shouldn't go forward with the update,

but we had discussed when a baseball gets thrown out of play, if it hits the... Because, okay, so if a pitch hits the ground, it's automatic now. Automatically, it's out of play. And as somebody noted, and you and I probably It's automatically, it's out of play. And as somebody noted, and you and I probably both knew this, but we forgot to mention it, that's a fairly recent development. It used to be maybe 10 years ago or so, you would,

the umpire would have to sort of ask for the ball, or they would inspect it. The umpire would inspect the ball to see if it could go back into play. Do you remember that? Do you remember seeing umpires inspecting baseballs? Mm-hmms huge part of my childhood was watching umpires look at a baseball but then i don't know 10 years or so ago they decided what the heck just take the ball out if it hits the dirt take ball out and so then somebody wondered well why don't they take the ball out when it's a grounder those hit the dirt too oftentimes and we said well we don't know maybe they do who knows but it is odd that they wouldn't so uh andrew writes as a guy who goes to 75 or so major league baseball games a year and about 50 college games i am irrationally interested in when baseballs get thrown out and

always pay attention to it i must admit i get a little excited i got a little excited when you discuss the topic on the podcast uh what usually happens on an infield grounder at the major league level based on my bizarrely astute observations of this are a most infield grounders are thrown out but you have to be at the game to see what happens because tv almost never shows a wide infield shot of the ball being thrown around the infield the first baseman catches the ball from the infielder and assuming no one is on base he throws it around while it's being thrown around the umpire will toss a new baseball to the pitcher without fail every time the third baseman by the time the ball that was thrown around the horn gets to him will start to toss the ball to the pitcher and upon seeing he has a new ball the third baseman will loft it into the stands it's a

ballpark that has little foul territory it's a ballpark with too much foul territory where he doesn't want to throw it because it's too far they they either A, toss it into the dugout if the third base dugout is the home team dugout, or we'll toss it to the third base coach, who will then toss it into the stands. B, scenario B, if there are runners on base and the ball isn't thrown around the horn, typically once the out is recorded and the play is dead, the home plate ump calls time and tosses a new ball to the pitcher and the first baseman will do the same thing i said above for the third baseman except of course on the other side uh so either way the ball is removed from play uh let me real quickly skim this to see if there's anything else

i'll just keep reading i don't know i don't really know where the rest of this goes in a way this is one of the few things that baseball does to speed up the pace of game even just a little bit because it allows teams to multitask with the baseball because a new ball is tossed to the pitcher while it's being thrown around he's able to step off the mound and rub it up to his liking while the previous ball is still being thrown around the infield as soon as the ball is thrown around and gets the third baseman, the pitcher has already been given a new baseball, rubbed it up, and he's ready to go. Personally, my favorite ball check is when there is a ball into the gap or the corner and you have the bang-bang play at second or third and the batter-runner slides in safely at second or third and

the base ump calls time and takes the ball from the infielder and checks it. He, of course, always throws it out. He never, ever, ever gives it back to the pitcher. At that point, why even check it? Just take it and throw it out. I don't know why, but I get a kick out of that every time. Andrew then signs off, thanks, Andrew, which is what I want to say. Thanks, Andrew.

You have taken the words right out of my mouth. Thanks, Andrew. Yes, good update. Great stuff. Last update I had, and then I'll go to my topic, which is going to be 16 seconds. This is a fun fact. I just want to share a fun fact with you. Okay. Clayton Kershaw today pitched very well. I was just trying to construct the Clayton Kershaw fun fact as you were speaking. Yeah.

Go ahead. Can I give you a little time? I'd love to hear it. I don't think it's that good. Go ahead. So Clayton Kershaw today, eight innings, seven hits, one walk, nine strikeouts, two runs allowed. And he has, everybody knows he had that one bad start against arizona in i think may or

something like that and then anyway he had the one bad start and that's the only bad start he's he's had all year so i noted um i noted at one point that his second worst start of the year is i think it's uh by game score his second worst start of the year is like uh it's not that one it's not that one it's this one seven innings seven hits two walks seven strikeouts and three runs which is a pretty good outing he was on the deal not after the diamondbacks start though oh no no he's on the deal for all of april and i know no i know but not after the Diamondback start. It's not that he was, he had the one bad start and then I implied that that preceded an injury, but it did not. Okay.

All right, so anyway, so then I started thinking, I went one step further. So his game scores this year, he has the one, a game score everybody should know is, is a, is a way of looking at a pitcher's pitching line. You, you know, add points for some things, subtract points for some things, and 50 is basically average. And you want to get, you want to be higher than 50. So 50 is an average start. 100 is like the greatest start of all time. And you know, 16 is really awful. So 16 was his terrible start. So his second worst start of the year was a game score of 56.

Steven Strasburg's average game score this year is 56. His second worst start of the year, the second worst he's been over an entire season, is like one of the nine best pitchers in the league. It's good. That's really good. So that's it. How's yours coming?

Well, I'm just thinking that Clayton Kershaw's season makes me appreciate Pedro Martinez's 2000 even more. I know. It's like not even close. It feels silly. It's so far away. It feels silly to be hurrah-ing Clayton Kershaw. I know.

Like we lived through a season not that long ago that totally. The difference between Pedro and Kershaw is like the difference between Kershaw and like, well, it's still actually somebody who's really good. So that's not going to work. But anyway, yeah, use your, tell them about Pedro. Yeah, so right now after Kershaw's, what was it, eight inning, two run start against the Giants tonight sunday night or sunday day i don't know what time of day it was um kershaw's era is now 1.70 which sounds great it is great it's wonderful pedro martinez's era in the year 2000 was 1.74 so almost the same as Kershaw's is now. But, of course, the environment that he was doing that in is nothing like what Kershaw is doing this in.

The league ERA now is 3.83. That's major. That's the AL, actually. actually let me see what the the nl um the nl league era this year is 3.67 so the so that's the nl average era wait wait 3.67 let me give you a fun fact the the league's era is 3.67 okay you got that everybody's holding that number 367 The year that Ben is talking about with Pedro, the second best ERA in the American League was 3.70. The second best. Number two, Johnny Cueto that year, basically.

The Johnny Cueto of the league. It was Roger Clemens, and he had a worse ERA than the NL average this year. That really enhances this not even quite fun fact, this fun paragraph. Yeah, so the league ERA that year in that league that Pedro was pitching in was almost 5, 4.91. And of course, that's league ERA, right? So the starter ERA would be over 5, I would imagine,

because reliever ERA tends to be lower. And the second worst ballpark in the game for pitchers. Right. And Fenway Park, whereas Kershaw is pitching in Dodgers Stadium half the time, which is a fairly favorable environment for pitchers, or on the favorable side at least and so in this league where the average era was about a run and a half higher in a much less favorable ballpark Pedro had the same era that Kershaw has now yes it really it puts Kershaw's season into perspective in a way

that makes Kershaw's season I don't a way that makes Kershaw's season, I don't know whether it makes it a lot less fun or it makes Pedro's more fun in retrospect. You stole all of my fun for your own fun. You can still enjoy Kershaw's season. You should still enjoy it, but Pedro's season just puts them all to shame. All right. Just curious. We talk about the difference between talent from, you know, the true talent, the true ability of Babe Ruth versus Pete Incavelia

and who's actually better. You know, we've had that conversation. Is 14 years enough to make a difference? Is there any chance that Clayton Kershaw is actually tougher to hit right now than Pedro was that year? No, I don't think so. I can't buy that. All right. And the thing about Pedro too is that he was arguably, arguably much better the year before. Argu arguably. I mean, you don't have to agree with me. Yeah, in some ways. But his FIP, his FIP the year before was 1.39. And all the same environmental stuff is going on. 99 is as bad as 2000. Fenway is still Fenway. He was still a starter. And he had a 1.39 FIP. So, just out of curiosity, qualified for, let's do, what should we do?

Since 88, minimum, let's do minimum 50 innings. So we'll get all the relievers in there. Since 1988, lowest FIP. Pedro, a starter who threw 200 innings, is sixth all time. Well, not all time, but sixth in 1988. The others ahead of him, Dennis Eckersley, Greg Holland, Wade Davis, Eric Gagné, Craig Kimbrell. And to get to the next person who made even one start, not counting Pedro, even one start, you have to go all the way up to kershaw this year at 42nd

and of course kershaw is pitching you know as we talked about all those things that we just talked about so yeah and if you look at the just the peripherals like both kershaw and pedro led and Pedro led or are leading their respective leagues in strikeout rate in those seasons. But Kershaw's strikeout rate is a full strikeout per inning lower than Pedro's was in that season, despite the fact that the league strikeout rate is about one and a half strikeouts per nine higher now than it was in Pedro's league. And you're talking about 2000? Yes. Yeah.

And if you went to 99, Pedro struck out 2.5 batters more per nine than Kershaw is this year and allowed nine home runs in the entire year. Oh, my gosh. I wish I could go back and watch that season again. So good. So good, yeah. Yeah, I do too, actually. All right.

So my topic is really, I'm not joking. I think we have about three minutes that we can talk about this. Today, Ned Yost. Today, Ned Yost. Yes. Really, I'm not joking. I think we have about three minutes that we can talk about this. Today, Ned Yost, in a crucial spot, in a crucial game, had two runners on and one out in the sixth inning. Were they up by one? I think they were up by one. Let me check.

They were up by one against Boston. Six. They were up by one against Boston. Sixth inning, two on, one out. And then shortly thereafter, bases loaded with one out. And he brought in Aaron Crow. And Aaron Crow is his sixth inning guy. Or I guess in the sense that you don't really have a sixth inning guy. Aaron Crow is his best, maybe his best pitcher. He has a sixth inning guy, clearly. Aaron Crowe is maybe what he would consider his best pitcher

who's not a seventh inning guy. Now, he would never pitch in such a situation in the seventh or in the eighth or in the ninth, but in the sixth, it's different. And so he brought in Aaron Crowe. Aaron Crowe walked a batter, then he struck out a batter, and then he homered, allowed a homer, a grand slam, and the Royals lost a crushing game. And after the game, Ned Yost was asked about this.

Andy McCullough asked him. Well, I don't know if Andy McCullough asked him, but Andy McCullough reported what he said in response to questions about this. And he said, well, you know, basically it's too bad it wasn't the seventh. Because if it was the seventh, I could have brought in one of my better pitchers. But he actually said that he brought in Crow because he was looking for the strikeout. Now, this, of course, begs us to do the Royals gaff-o-meter. to do the Royals gaff-o-meter,

because Aaron Crowe is out of 312 pitchers this year who have thrown at least 50 innings. Aaron Crowe has the 12th lowest strikeout rate. So he's the fourth percentile for strikeouts. And so, I mean, you know, he's not who you go to to get a strikeout. But they brought in Aaron Crowe. So the sub-question is, on the gaff meter, does this rate? But the real question is, it's postseason time. We're coming up on postseason.

we're coming up on postseason uh you are always um i don't know amused slash troubled or somewhere in between about how obsessed we get with managerial moves in october uh because we have like it's like we have we have so much attention uh to distribute to the games and there's not as many games and and every place seems like it makes such a huge difference and it's all amplified. And so we just, every game, the lead story seems to be this manager screwed up. And so is it too early to put the mega focus on managers? Does Ned Yost deserve, because this was the dominant story

on my twitter.com for a solid 75 minutes after that, more than anything else that happened in baseball today. Does it merit it? Does Ned Yost, should he be wobbly chaired for this play alone? Or is the fact that the long regular season requires you to sort of manage differently you have to have routines you just simply can't go out and put your best picture in every situation every time it's a it's a marathon you've got to have people in roles they're comfortable with you've got to have you got to continue to show confidence in guys you certainly

don't want to overwork guys or overuse guys. These are tactics and ticks as well that managers develop because they need them to get through six months. And they should rightfully throw them away, throw a lot of them away in October. Does the last two weeks of a marathon become a sprint? Or are we still in a marathon? And thus, he can be judged as a marathon, become a sprint, or are we still in a marathon and thus he can be judged as a marathon runner doing marathon tactics. It's not bad, right? I got something out of that. You landed it. So, I mean, he's I think had his, more than his fair share of comments that would probably be wobbly chair worthy alone if i were if i were running a team i would think

if you were in charge of stabilizing chairs if you were the chair wobbler yeah um so this one is i mean it's the rationale makes it so much worse, I think, just because it's just so rigid that I kind of wonder whether he's trolling because, I mean, he has to know that that's the worst possible thing he could say as far as fan reaction and beat writer reaction. Just coming out with the just incredibly candid, just this was this inning and I couldn't use it because it was this inning,

seems like he's almost asking for it or inviting the criticism. I don't know how much of a disadvantage it puts the royals in in the playoffs i i looked at i did this thing last month called the i called the managerial meddling index and i made all these i made like 10 different categories of managerial meddling under the premise that that the less of manager interferes or inserts himself into the game in in many cases, the better that is. And Jos rated as the second least meddling manager. He doesn't do certain things that sabermetricians get angry about. He doesn't intentionally walk people, for instance.

He did that, I think, less than anyone else. Ben, Ben, I have to, real quick, can I interrupt? Was Freddy Gonzalez the most meddling manager? Because he manages meddling. Well, he doesn't this year. So this year he didn't show up as one of the most meddling. It would have worked better in print. All right.

Yeah. So I don't know. I think I'm going to do a thing. I was planning to do a thing on Yost and like the contrast between Yost and Joe Girardi, two managers, one who's maligned for his bullpen usage and the other who's somewhat celebrated for his bullpen usage and the other who's somewhat celebrated for his bullpen usage and each of these guys has this major weapon out of the pen this season in yost case way davis and in gerardi's case dylan batances and each of these guys has been one of the most valuable relievers

in baseball and you look at their usage patterns and davis has been used exclusively in the eighth and the ninth. And you would think that at some point there would have been some situation where he had pitched in some other game. I mean, 63 games he's been in, and not once has he pitched outside of the eighth or the ninth. It is kind of amazing. And Batances, meanwhile, has pitched all over the place, and maybe partially because early in the year, Girardi didn't really know what he had.

And he was sort of experimenting with what to do with him. And lately, he has gotten a little bit more rigid with his role. And he's been more of an eighth inning guy than he was previously. But he's pitched all over the place, the fifth and the sixth and the seventh. And both of them have been extremely valuable and i don't know it might just be a product of the fact that the royals have a strong bullpen deep bullpen with lots of guys who could pitch in the sixth and do pretty well whereas the yankees don't really they kind of have sean kelly and david robertson and batances and no one else that they can trust to that degree. So I talked to Yost about Davis, and I asked him about that,

and he said, what you'd expect. We feel like we have a bunch of strong guys behind him, and we like established roles and all that sort of thing. So that's definitely what he thinks. I'm going to try to do some sort of manager, reliever, role, rigidity ranking and find out who the most rigid manager is and see whether it is actually Yost. But I don't know. I don't know what kind of disadvantage it puts the Royals in tactically.

It definitely puts them at a disadvantage on Twitter, but I don't know what that counts for. Four Rs in a row. Isn't that... Yeah. Well, I was going to ask you before we wrap up what you thought of Henry Mejia's short-lived save celebration. Did you see it? I did not.

Oh, well, you're something of a connoisseur of save celebrations. So let me send you this one one which he was immediately chastised for and said that he wouldn't do it again so this is probably a one-time sighting you are watching it now that goes on and on yeah it's pretty good so he out, who was it, Ian Desmond to end the game, and he sort of side stumbles off the mound in a celebratory way, and then he basically... Passes the line and reels it in. Right. I don't even know how to assess the acceptability of save celebrations. I mean, it seems to be that if you get away with it once, then you're good forever. And so you really have to just hope that the first one doesn't get noticed.

Like if Mejia were, you know, like if he were a padre, he probably could have gotten away with this. You know, but people pay attention to the guy in New York. And so once it's established, it seems to be okay. You can do whatever you want. But the first one always shocks people. It's always a shock to the standards, to the sensibilities. And so this looks horrible. It looks awful it doesn't look worse than pulling

an arrow out of your quiver and shooting it up at a blimp an imaginary blimp like fernando rodney does um i really like how he executed it he cast and reeled with the same hand and also reels like over his head he's got a glove on what's he you should take it off and reel is there any he should take off the glove throw it at the batter and then he'd have two hands to do this what what is he doing let's see i will put a link are we sure are we sure he's reeling in is this definitely a cast in in real it's gotta be right pretty sure he yeah he doesn't have you know his imaginary cast does not get very good distance either just just knowing the pace at which gravity pulls something down this is not he maybe cast what 18 feet he's not gonna catch anything

casting 18 feet i'd like to see him really do a like a I'd like to see him fly fish and like to really just stand there doing the side to side and really contemplative and you know how you sometimes do it when you're fly fishing where you might whip it back and forth like 12, 14 times as you let a little line out each time and sort of looking and making sure you're clear in the back

and you finally fling it out it takes about 35 seconds I'd be on board with that you should wear waders you should wear waders uh well we'll never see it again so i'll put it in the facebook group so that you can enjoy the one one time it happened i was thinking about aroldis chapman's somersault the other day. I was just thinking how kind of sad it is that he got caught. Yeah, that was one of the best.

It was so unexpected. What is this? The guy who's on first base, what is he doing? It looks like he's staring at the reel. Is that Harper? Well, you know Harper cares about the way the game is played. There's something flapping on his head, isn't there?

Looks like there's something flapping on his head. That's why I wondered what he was doing because I was wondering if he was sort of doing something with his hand. This is great radio. Pretty good radio. I wouldn't say it's great it's pretty good okay 40 41 minutes without a topic yeah a little less because of the parts that get edited out right okay so that's it for today we'll be back tomorrow, perhaps with a topic. And in the meantime, you can email us at podcast at baseballperspectives.com.

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