Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 707: Kershaw as a Closer, the Phillies’ Pitching Apocalypse, and Other Emails

Episode Date: July 24, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about analytics and secrecy, then answer listener emails about aces in relief, the Phillies’ terrible rotation, and more.

Far standing in your heart is where I want to be and long to be. I bet I may as well try and catch the wind. episode 707 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Muttering Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Hi, how are you? How are you feeling this morning? Uh, late night. I feel good. I feel good. And I feel like I won't always feel good. Sleeping in a hammock is good for the body. I slept in a hammock last night.

Yeah. Ben is alluding very, very, very directly. To where you slept. To my hammock sleeping. Hammocks are great. But as I told you, the hammock was going great. I was enjoying the hammock. I was asleep in the hammock. And then I turned over, as one does at some point in the night, and the swaying of the hammock made me seasick, and I woke up needing to not be in a hammock anymore.

So then you relocated to a couch. I did. Which wasn't moving. A nice stable couch, which, because of me, was covered in leaves. That is the one problem with my hammock back there. It's directly under a tree which we thought would be nice because it would be shade and nice looking at the sky through foliage and it is except things are constantly falling on you.

Trees are falling apart all the time. You're right. I never thought about it like that. Anything else? Yeah. Well, I mean, it's kind of bigger than the hammock talk. So I wanted to, if we could, I wanted to talk. I'll pretend

I emailed this question. Maybe I'll just, just tell me when we're done with banter and then I'll take an email. I think we're done. This is an then I'll take an email. I think we're done. This is an email show, by the way. Okay. All right. I'll read the first one.

Okay. Dear Ben and Sam, great show. Is there any way that we can help you guys promote the show? Like perhaps with iTunes ratings and reviews? If so, let me know. Thank me thank you that's true i was interested in your discussion about zach granky the other day it seems like over the past 10 years while much of baseball data has gone proprietary and into teams front offices data and data analysis both there has nonetheless been very few secrets. Most things that teams try seem to be

visible pretty quickly. We either see them in results or somebody reports on them. And while some of them change strategy to a significant degree, there hasn't really been an example of a bombshell secret knowledge that any team's front office has been working on. Your discussion of Zach Granke made me wonder, though, whether it's possible that there are indeed some of these secret breakthroughs that we don't know about. Is it possible that Zach Granke's resurgence or corner turning is a result of his having access to an extremely analytical front office for the first time and having access to all the data they have. Is it possible that there are instances where a team is doing things that are just invisible enough

that we don't immediately spot them on the field, and yet they're making huge... I can't read this word. They're making... I don't know why I would have trouble reading this word because it's in this fiction that I'm pretending. This is typed. This is not a handwritten email. Anyway, that's the question. Thanks, Sam.

Okay. So what do you think, Sam? It's a good question. So this actually comes from Scott because we're having a dialogue with scott uh who emailed about granky and and he was thinking i'll just talk about the conversation scott said you know zach is well known as a baseball savant fan of analytics etc um i've watched each of his starts this year he's often seen moving his defense around the infield asking rollins to slide over maybe he just knows precisely where the ball is going to be hit if he makes his pitch pitches to get that out to the

exact spot so even if his stuff isn't any different from the past few years perhaps his run this season is more a result of an advanced knowledge of his craft um and I replied well yeah but he's been known as a baseball savant his entire career and yet he is he has no pattern about pitching his peripherals or or really even any pattern of out-pitching his peripherals or really even any pattern of out-pitching anything. He's if anything been seen I think other than 2009 and now this year as sort of a little bit of a disappointment given how good his stuff is and how smart he supposedly is. I've heard, I've had people in front of us say, you know, he's not, his craft is maybe what gets him in trouble.

He's too creative. Who knows? Overthinking it. Overthinking it, exactly, like your column name used to be. And I once wrote about Zach Granke in that old parlor game where when he came up, he would hit every number on the radar gun reading. And, like, not intentionally. Like, I don't think he was doing that. But that was sort of the mythology of Granke is that he'd hit every number from 66 to 95 in a game

and uh it would very much fit the mythology of grinky if he were intentionally trying to do that though yeah yeah and i looked at whether that had actually ever happened whether he'd ever whether he'd ever reached that target but also i, I think I sort of talked briefly about this hypothesis that he's too smart, that his pitching has too much gimmick in it, and that with his stuff and his command, he actually should probably be better than he is. And so anyway, I suggested that to Scott, that if this was the answer, then you would think that it would have shown up in more than the last nine starts. And Scott talked about the changeup, replacing the slider, and that's good evidence. But also in this conversation, the idea came up where perhaps it's that he's now been paired with the extremely analytical front office. And so he might, it could be that, that this is like the,

um, like some sort of, uh, you know, two ingredients coming together and making something that had previously been impossible to make, right? That it's, uh, that all, all the analytics were lacking was a player of cranky's intellect and ability and all all that a player of Cranky's, that all that Cranky was lacking was a front office of the Dodgers' analytic ability, and maybe they actually have some sort of secret sauce that they've developed with these two perspectives. And so, I don't know. I mean, I don't have any reason to think that's true, to be honest, even though I raised it. But I'm curious if you agree with the premise that, in fact, you don't, even though we think of all this stuff as secret and proprietary, that, in fact, it's really just basically as public as it's ever been. We can't necessarily, as a writer, you can't necessarily get all the data you want, and

you have to go through back channel sometimes to get it but as far as what your favorite team is making their decisions based on is it any less clear now less you know basically public and open now than it was 10 years ago 20 years ago at any point in history? Probably not much. I'm trying to, because anything that works really well would become clear very quickly because there are so many people writing and blogging and covering every single team that if there's any sort of pattern to how they're acquiring players

or what they're doing in games, it just, someone notices. Nothing goes unnoticed for very long. Like the Pirates seem to be doing some stuff with injuries that maybe other teams aren't doing, or at least they're trying to, and they won't let their trainers, their training staff, talk to the press, so we don't know exactly what a lot of the things are. But it's obvious that there's something like, you know,

I wrote last year about how they were having a really good injury year and whether maybe that meant something. And then Travis Sachik wrote about it this year and he delved into it because they're having another good injury year and he got a lot of details. So we might not know exactly what they're doing, but we know that they're doing something. And even the fact that they won't talk about certain things is kind of a tip off. And he got details from players, as I did at the time, about what their warm-up routines are and those are different and how they're using tracking technology and everything. are and those are different and how they're using tracking technology and everything. So even if they won't talk about these things, they can't really stop the players from talking about them totally. And so details come out.

And if it makes a difference in how the team performs, then we notice that something's going on. So we might not know exactly the method by which they're doing it, but we know that they're doing it. know exactly the method by which they're doing it, but we know that they're doing it. And when it's something like the shift or removing starters early, like the Rays are doing, or, you know, that sort of thing is obvious immediately because we watch the games and you can see it in the games. So I guess the only secret-ish stuff might be, you know, if you were doing draft analytics, doing a better job of

drafting guys, you wouldn't necessarily know about that right away. Although we do have a sense of which teams are doing those things because they have opened up a bit about them. Or, you know, if you were using like HitFX or something to find undervalued hitters that probably wouldn't have been noticed immediately. Like the Yankees talking about how they used it because it said Chris Young was better than his results actually were. So they got Chris Young. But even so, that was like last year. And Brian Cashman has already said it publicly that that was why they got him and why his analytics people recommended them. that that was why they got him and why his analytics people recommended them.

So, yeah, I have some stuff going on with stat cast or positioning that is kind of hard to tell, but even that is on the field. And people like Chris Mosch at BP are writing good articles about defensive positioning in the outfield and that sort of thing. So it's pretty hard to hide anything, even though teams are maybe try to be as secretive as ever. There are just a lot more people watching and paying close attention. Thanks for answering my question, guys. And hacking. And hacking. Okay. So other questions, which are actually in my inbox. This one comes from Marcus.

In past episodes, this is more of a comment, in past episodes you guys have discussed the reliability of a pitcher's control and ability to pitch in the strike zone. If hypothetically a pitcher knew the batter was not going to swing at any pitch, how successful could he, the pitcher, be at striking out the batter? That's what we've talked about, sort of. Well, this situation came up on Tuesday in the Rangers-Rockies game. In the top of the fourth, with one out and no one on, Matt Harrison came up to bat. Matt Harrison, who has made eight starts in the last two years and has missed the last 14 months, all because of a series of four back surgeries, was up to bat.

Everyone in Coors knew he was not going to swing and risk hurting himself again. Everyone in Coors knew he was not going to swing and risk hurting himself again. Kyle Kendrick started off Harrison 1-2 and then proceeded to throw two balls down and away to load the count. Kendrick then struck Harrison out with the sixth pitch of the at-bat. The only thing was that when they showed the pitch tracker, one of the called strikes should have been a ball. Just wanted to point out another one of these situations to you guys. I, you know, I actually think that, thank you for bringing this up, and it's good data. The problem with our way of measuring this has always been that

the only situation where we're certain that the pitcher is not swinging and everybody knows the pitcher is not swinging and there's no way the pitcher is swinging is 3-0 to a pitcher, and you've got a skewed sample if you're looking at pitchers who go 3-0 to a pitcher. But I feel like maybe within the next 10 years, because pitchers are getting worse at hitting, and because nobody, I don't know, Because, you know, nobody, I don't know, it seems like more and more there's a feeling like pitchers just shouldn't risk getting hurt.

Particularly certain types of pitchers or certain pitchers in certain situations. And so it would not surprise me at all if within the next 10 years it became routine to have, not every at-bat, but routine to have pitchers go up there just to stand in the box and be under no circumstances swinging. Like, if you've got a pitcher who's cruising 9-0 and it's your ace and it's the sixth inning and he goes up to bat or it's the eighth inning and he goes up to bat or whatever, you know, why wouldn't the manager say, you know, don't, just leave your bat here. Just don't even take it up there, right? And you sort of see that sometimes, but you see it sometimes with the reliever who comes in and it's his first ever plate appearance and he's clearly not going to swing until he does. And it wouldn't surprise me if it became common enough and obvious enough, overt enough, that

we could put together a decent sample of these plate appearances and figure out the non-skewed strike rate. I think that would probably bring the NLDH on. I think that would be the final thing that does it. Because if it becomes known that that's common, if managers acknowledge it and pitchers acknowledge it, that they're going up there not even intending to do the thing that hitters are up there to do, I think that would convince the holdouts. I think so. I think so would convince the holdouts. You think so? I think so.

All right. Eric, relief pitchers as a group have better stats and peripherals than their starting pitcher peers because their stuff plays up in one-inning spurts. But starting pitchers are generally thought of as more talented, their job is harder, etc. So if you had to choose one pitcher to get three outs to save your life, would you choose an Aroldis Chapman slash Kenley Jansen slash Andrew Miller type or a Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, Chris Sale type? Assuming equal rest and preparedness and assume any three random hitters are coming up.

My gut is leaning towards the Chapman Jansen answer, but it feels wrong to go against the best overall pitcher. Presumably Kershaw wouldn't be able to throw 97 to 98 even out of the pen, but in what ways might he elevate his level if he doesn't have to conserve anything for subsequent innings? More bite and movement, even more elite command than normal. That's the end of the question. So in this, he says preparedness.

Here's the only reason that I wouldn't pick Kershaw over Chapman. I don't know what Kershaw would do, and he hasn't done it. And so there's somewhat larger error bars, right? Like, yeah, maybe he just wouldn't be as good. Maybe there's something about him, or maybe since he hasn't done it, maybe he doesn't really know how to prepare for that. So when you say prepared, are we talking about a hypothetical universe where Kershaw's been a reliever for the last four years because of some circumstances? And so he comes in just like any other reliever would, having a full storage of relief experience in his history to draw from and and if it's that if that's the case uh then there's just absolutely no doubt in my that you take kershaw i mean maybe sale

maybe sale profiles better as a reliever than kershaw well he's done it yeah he has done it and but yeah i mean i think i don't know what do you think first of all what do you think would make kershaw better in that situation? Because you don't really see Kershaw holding back in any particular way. I mean, he goes out there and he just pitches the devil out of the ball. Like, how much harder do you think he would throw? And where would his advantage come from? Like, I guess he wouldn't be fatigued,

so he probably would hit his spots better. I mean, it is a lot of work to throw 110 pitches. And it is like shooting free throws in the fourth quarter of an NBA game. Your legs are tired. You're tired. Your core is tired. And so it might just be that

in ways that we don't see he's subtly worse with his command than he would be if he only had to pitch for four minutes yeah and no no times through the order effect because he'd be facing everyone for the first time so i don't know what his career stats are the first time through the order but whatever they are they'd be like that just just from that well and maybe even better because he's presumably pacing himself. Yeah, right. And, well, so he averages 95, so I don't think it's unrealistic to think he could hit 97, 98

as a one-inning guy. I would guess that. Let's see what his max is this year. His max this year is 97, so he has it. And so if he has thrown 97 out of the rotation, then I think it's reasonable to assume he would hit it more often out of the pen. So... How hard?

If you paid him a billion dollars to hit 100 hundred, do you think he'd, he'd just test to hit the broad side of the barn or whatever? He doesn't have to aim for anything. No, no, it's gotta be, it's gotta be a pitch. It's gotta be a quality pitch, but he's only got to do it once. And you know, it's, if he misses, if he throws a ball, it's a ball. It just has to be a legitimate pitch. It has to be, you have to look at it and go,

yep, Major Leaguer threw that pitch. Let's see, the hardest pitch that he has ever thrown is in 2008, he threw a 98.2 mile per hour fastball. 98 in 2008, yeah, but seven years ago. His speed is not that much different now Than it was then I would say No I would say if he's never done it In a major league game

He can't do it I was talking to one of our pitchers Who sits 88 and I think he touched 90 Has his santos touch 90 yet for us uh i don't think we have him as doing that okay so he's touched he's touched 89 for us a few times and he uh he's building up arm strength because he'd taken up he'd taken a couple months i mean his season ended and he was inactive basically for a couple months until he started pitching for us.

He's still building up his arm strength. I asked him how hard he can throw. What's the hardest he could throw? In college, he would touch 92. I asked him if I paid you a billion dollars to hit 94, could you do it?

It required him to think and make sure that he was giving a thoughtful answer and concluded that yes, he could. Yeah, I'm going to say. He thought he could add four miles an hour for one pitch with the incentives we're right. Well, I'm going to say no. For Santos? Not for him specifically, but just for any pitcher.

I don't know. Not for him specifically, but just for any pitcher. I don't know. There had to be so many times over the course of Clayton Kershaw's career where he really needed one out. He really needed a strike, and he never did it. And you'd think that if he could do it, there would have been one situation at one point in his career where he would have felt like he really needed to do it there would have been one situation ever at one point in his career where he would have felt like he really needed to do it but of course he always would have been in a start where he wasn't throwing just one pitch so it's possible and also it might not be his best pitch to throw 100 you

know a no command straight 100 mile an hour for se. That's not his game. Yeah, yeah. The question is whether he could. Yeah. If the incentives were aligned for nothing but that. I'm going to say that he could. I think that he could. Gosh, though. You know, here's the problem, Ben.

Unless I'm giving Clayton Kershaw superpowers because he's Kershaw, then what I'm saying is every pitcher who averages 94 could hit 100, which would mean that there are hundreds, I don't know, scores of living humans who can throw 100 miles an hour. And I don't think that's true. That doesn't pass the smell test. Yeah, I'm skeptical. 100 is still 100. As for Eric's question, I would take Chapman probably over any starter if I needed a relief inning tonight, I think,

just because I know he can be unhittable, dominant in that role, and there's some slight chance that Scherzer kershaw or sailor whoever would be uncomfortable and out of their routine and they wouldn't warm up right or whatever so so just that slight risk because you couldn't be that much better than a role as chapman that's the other thing i think well we don't know this is the first episode yeah that's that's true. That first episode, we talked about this. That's true. No one go back and listen to it. Specifically, we talked about it with regards to trying to figure out how good Chapman actually is. Yeah.

Because we've never seen, at the time we said, Justin Verlander was the best pitcher in baseball, and we said we've never seen the best pitcher in baseball used as a reliever for an extended period of time. And so it's conceivable that the outer bounds of pitching performance in relief would be something like a.15 ERA and 22 strikeouts per nine, but we've never seen Verlander do that. We never saw Pedro do that. Well, we saw Pedro relief, but we never saw peak Pedro do that. We never saw Pedro do that. Well, we saw Pedro relief. But we never saw peak Pedro do that.

We never saw Randy Johnson do that. I mean, really, Randy Johnson during his peak is, I would say, the difference between him at his peak and Aroldis Chapman, I would say, is like the difference between Aroldis Chapman and, I'm trying to think of a good name to land on here, Jerry Blevins. Ryan Webb. No, Jerry Blevins. Like I think it's a huge margin

and I have no proof of this. I can absolutely not justify this statement, but in my mind, I think if Chapman's able to do what he's able to do, I would think that Randy Johnson would probably be somewhere around a.4 ERA and 20-plus strikeouts per night. And I'm saying that right now in this moment. I might not have said this an hour ago.

I might not say it an hour from now. Don't hold me to this. It is simply what my gut just said. Say this, Sam. That's it. That's all I've got. However. See, I think the starters are unquestionably more talented than relievers on the whole.

But I think a lot of that extra talent manifests itself in the ability to go deep into games without losing a ton of effectiveness. without losing a ton of effectiveness. So I think the best starter would be better than the best reliever in an inning if he had time to adjust to that role, but I don't think it would be by that much because I think there are some relievers who are just really, really, really good at being relievers. They only have to go one inning. They only have to throw two pitches or whatever. They don't need a deep arsenal of pitches. They don't need a deep arsenal of pitches. They don't need a lot of options.

They don't need to have the skill of pacing themselves or the endurance to go multiple innings. But for one inning, they are, I think, probably close to as good as anyone. I don't know. I think it's hard to imagine being better than what chapman can do in one inning and we talked about what chapman could do as a starter i don't know i don't think he could be you know like one of the guys that we're talking about if he were a starter but i'm not sure that it would work the other way where if you went from starting to relieving it would automatically because it's a different job it's a totally different job description.

And I think the starter could be really good at that job, but there might be ways in which the reliever is the best possible person for that job, even though he would be bad at the starting job. You know what I mean? I think there's, I mean, there are a lot of relievers who are in the major leagues now who would not have been in the major leagues in the past because there wouldn't have been a job that they could do but now they can not only do a job but they're really really good at the job like Sean Doolittle or someone like that I don't know whether he's the best example but just the guy who can come in and pump fastballs really hard for an inning and can be really good

at that job and that job didn't really exist 30 years ago so that guy might not have been a major leaguer at that point but now he's perceived as being a really good major leaguer or he's really good at that limited role that now exists so i i don't know how much better you could be than Chapman. I know. I acknowledge your perspective is equally valid, and I have no problem with it. I might also share it in four minutes or so. A couple things, a couple remainders from this discussion, though. First of all, I have a little bit of an answer to a question that you raised. Clayton Kershaw, career, first played appearance in a game against him. 189, 249, 280 for a 529 OPS.

529 OPS. Chapman, total line, so always as a reliever. 154, 268, 493. So the OPS is about 25 points. But Kershaw, Chapman's is about 25 points better. Sorry, 35 points better. However, Chapman's is much higher OBP and much lower slug. And so probably if I had benefit of using Woba or something like that,

it would be extremely small. Now this is career, which I would, I think hurts Kershaw for the Chapman. Uh, cause Kershaw right now is undeniably a better pitcher than his career stats are, uh, because those first few years were good, but whatever. Um, And these are also unadjusted, so the ballpark helps Chapman. Although Kershaw's career extends into the hitter's era, too. And so in that sense, maybe the unadjusted has some benefits to Kershaw. And so that's first time through the year. That's basically the same. He's getting the first time through the order

advantage that chapman has but he still has the has to pace himself penalty he also gets to face pitchers the first time through the order chapman probably has never faced pitcher in his life yeah uh so that hurts i guess kershaw's side of this debate uh but uh what was I going to say? But, well, it's hard to adjust. We still can't adjust for the fact that Kershaw is pacing himself. Right, exactly. We can't adjust for the fact that. Also, Kershaw, it's the first time in the game, we're saying first time through the order,

but Kershaw has faced so many more batters so many more times that he's facing a lot of these guys for the 30th or 40th or 80th time. Chapman rarely faces a guy more than a few times in his career. So I would imagine that's another penalty for Kershaw, or I guess it makes it harder for Kershaw, so it helps Kershaw's side of this argument. What I'm saying is that, to me,

this feels like evidence that Kershaw is quite a bit better than Chapman. If he can match Chapman first time through the order, more or less, even pacing himself, this suggests to me that he probably could be considerably better if this first time in the order was the only time in the order that he was going to face him. To me, this is a hint that, in fact fact there is a theoretical bound that has not been reached by a better pitcher than Chapman.

Secondly, Chapman is really good, but I mean, he's not that good. I don't even know if Chapman is the right person to have this conversation about. Right. Yeah, it might be Pete Kimbrell or something. Yeah, it probably would be Pete Kimbrell or maybe that one year of Gagne or something. But to be clear, Chapman is the most intimidating reliever and the most likely to get a strikeout. But if you're talking about nobody being able to be better than Chapman, well, all you have to do is cut four and a quarter walks. You know, give him...

I mean, look at what Koji Ohara does with much worse stuff and basically has been as good as Chapman. So you can imagine that if someone was a pitcher like Koji Ohara is while also having a velo like Kershaw has, that'd be a big difference. Anyway, Chapman is doing what he's doing while walking five batters per nine. It's very easy to imagine, to me, somebody doing mostly what Chapman is doing plus cut the walks by four per nine. You've just got a huge advantage right there.

Carter Capps? Carter Capps is right. We should have said Carter Capps instead of Aroldis Chabot. Yeah, and Kershaw actually, he relieved a couple times in his first two years, I think, in the majors. He pitched three innings out of the bullpen. No runs. Two walks, one intentional, four strikeouts. So, big sample and the uh the right the thing about if we were doing this tomorrow is the all-star game the all-star game is like

the only time that we get to see aces in relief and it's also an exhibition game which kind of screws things up so and it's the throw day it's there i mean it's basically their throw day it's also an exhibition game which kind of screws things up so and it's the throw day it's there i mean it's basically their throw day it's not and they're facing all-stars yeah but zach cranky gave up a run as a reliever in the all-star game and we know that zach cranky doesn't give up runs anymore we could i don't i we could probably well we wouldn't even learn this but we might i'm sure i'm We could probably learn a little bit about what would happen to the average starter's velo, the average great starter's velo. Kershaw, has Kershaw pitched in relief?

I mean, of course he's pitched in relief in an all-star game. I wonder what his velo has been. Yeah, I feel like that's something that Sullivan must have written about at some point. I mean, we've got enough pitchers in the postseason, I think, to have some data there. But again, these guys tend to be pitching. When we're talking about the ace pitching an inning of relief or coming in like Bumgarner did or like Randy Johnson used to do, it's either they're coming in on their throw day

or they're coming in a day or two after having started. So it's not really a fair gauge of what they could do. Okay, play index? Yeah. gauge of what they could do okay play index yeah so um so last night the stumpers with the stumpers we had a game where our starting pitcher pitched very well and came out of the game in the fourth or sorry in the fifth before the fifth was over and he was leading and um and so he and then the the next guy came in and he went the rest of the way. And we held the lead the entire time.

And so in a world where you didn't have the five-inning minimum for a starter to get the win, the starter would have gotten the win, and the reliever would have gotten the save. But you can't get the win if you're the starter and you don't go five innings and so there was no save and the win went to the reliever okay now i wondered i was trying to figure out first if there's any way around this like i was trying to imagine a scenario where like i i don't know if there's any exception to this. So I looked to see if any pitchers had ever gotten a win starting the game but not going five innings. And there were a bunch. And I looked them up and I realized, oh, there's an exception to this rule.

The exception is that if the game is rained out after five, you don't have to go five. You can go four and a third. and then the reliever comes in, and then the game gets called after five. It actually specifically says it. The five-inning minimum rule is for games that go six innings or more on defense. Now, this is bizarre, right? The starting pitcher did the exact same thing in either scenario i guess the spirit of this is that the there's not a good relief candidate to give the win to and so you might as

well give it to the starter he's probably more deserving than the relief pitcher was but it's the same thing this is a starter who didn't finish, and the rules deem that not worthy of a win. But because of things that happened after he left the game, we'll give him a win. This is like literally a deus ex machina, right? The guy gets pulled from the game in the fifth and is like, doggone it, I'm not going to get the win. Hand of God.

Weather happens and he gets the win. It's weird. Win rules are so weird, Ben. And that's what I'm going to talk about. So this came up. The reason I was thinking about this is because I was talking to somebody else on the team about whether our starting pitcher could get the win. Because, of course, in a game where the starting pitcher doesn't go five, the win is at the scorekeeper's discretion.

He gets to decide who pitched best in that game and award the win to that person. And the only rule is that he can't give it to the starter. He does not have the discretion to say that the starter pitched the best. And I looked up to see what is the best game ever that a starting pitcher has thrown where he left the game with the lead, which was not given up, which was never lost.

The lead was never lost, and yet he didn't get the win because of the five-inning rule. And the answer is, by game score, and by common sense, is Mike Messina. On June 30, 2006, Mike Messina went four innings.

They were perfect innings. No base runners, no anything. Four strikeouts. And he had kind of tweaked his groin in the first. He was pitching through that the entire time. And then there was a rain delay of 67 minutes. And so the combination of those two things led them to pull him from the game. And this was, I was reading some internet web board postings.

This was not popular among some internet web board message board type people. Yogi Joe, for instance, says Tori should be fired immediately and so on. And I mean, it really is a weird arbitrary rule that Mussina was ineligible for the win because he's ineligible for the win because the rain came 10 minutes too early and lasted a half hour too short basically like if it had just come a little later he'd have gotten it uh and lasted a little longer he'd have gotten it but this hand of god was uh act of god sorry um was uh not sufficiently godlike and so they didn't give him the win. And so this is really weird. And win rules in general,

I just want to just go on a quick little thing about win rules in general. So the official rule is 10.17 in the rulebook. And it lays out exactly what you need to do to get the win, and it's not a simple thing at all. There are weird variations. And a couple of years ago, I wrote about one of these odd variations that hardly anybody knows about.

This was a game in which Ryan Cook entered the game in the eighth. He blew the lead but got out of the inning. And in the next half inning, the A's took the lead back. So Cook was the pitcher of record when the A's took the lead. And then Jerry Blevins came in and got the final three outs, and the game was over. So Ryan Cook would get the win. Jerry Blevins would get

the save. Classic baseball thing, right? Sure. But the scorer awarded Blevins the win, and there was no save. And I had never heard about this discretion that the scorer had, but in Rule 1017c, it reads, the official scorer shall not credit as the winning pitcher a relief pitcher who is ineffective in a brief appearance when at least one succeeding relief pitcher pitches effectively in helping his team maintain its lead. In such a case, the official scorer shall credit as the winning pitcher the succeeding relief pitcher who is most effective in the judgment of the official scorer. And so this is such a weird carve out in the rule where the, all the rules are basically designed to take subjectivity out of it and to have a defined

winner where it's sort of not debatable. And then you've got this one place where we have, um, the word ineffective in a brief appearance, ineffective being subjective, brief being subjective, and then the win can go to whoever is deemed to have pitched most effectively afterward. So you can't win it if you pitched before, even though you might have been the best pitcher in the game. And so I wrote about this a couple years ago because I found it so interesting that the rulebook is essentially acknowledging that its own stat, the win, is stupid. And that we have to have some fixes to it in some cases. The fixes are very narrow.

But this is a case where, undeniably, it is said that the process for deciding who gets the win cannot do the job. And so we are going to allow the scorer the discretion to do that, which, fine, you have about 1,000 of those carve-outs as far as I'm concerned. And yet it does not give the scorer the discretion to award the win to Mike Messina in a game where he is perfect through four and then leaves because of a 67-minute rain delay. where he is perfect through four and then leaves because of a 67-minute rain delay. And so it is very, very odd to me that the rulebook has allowed only this tiny, narrow room of all things, this case, the Jerry Blevins-Ryan Cook case, this tiny, narrow sliver of humanity for the scorekeeper where he gets to decree something uh and but otherwise will not

allow any of the other many necessary fixes to the logic of the win rule to take place um so anyway that's why mike massini didn't get the win that's why jerry blubbins got the win and that's why our pitcher last night was ineligible to get the win even though though I thought he did a bang-up job, and I shook his hand after and told him, good job. So what I want to know is, was that anecdote the reason for your Jerry Blevins name drop earlier in the episode, or was that independent of it? It wasn't intentional. I was thinking of an effective lefty who doesn't throw that hard, and I almost said Jeremy Affelt.

But you were possibly primed by your preparation for the play index? It seems almost undeniable. Okay. Yeah. Alright. Play index. Coupon code BP. Get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. So we got a question from

Scott that requires a play index-like answer. He says, now that we are beyond the all-star break, shouldn't we be considering the historical implications of what fans in Philadelphia have been subjected to this year? The starters ERA is almost a half run worse than the Rockies. I'm really wondering if a unit has ever had a batting average allowed of 300 for a season before because the Phillies are chasing it. for a season before because the Phillies are chasing it. So I don't know if there's an easy way to look up batting average allowed by starters for a team over time. That seems unplay-indexable, I think. But if you just look at effectiveness of a starting rotation by other metrics,

then you will find that, yes, this is possibly historic, what is happening in Philadelphia this year. So I just went to Fangraphs and I used their leaderboards and searched the expansion era, so 1961 to the present, and I just looked at starting pitchers for teams. So the best starting rotations in this era were the 97 and 98 Braves, the Maddox, Glavin, Small Tears, and this, I'm just using ERA minus right now since he asked about that. So ERA minus is just, it's ERA, but park and league and era adjusted. The Braves are the best by that metric. The Phillies, the 2011 Phillies are just behind them. So that's how quickly you can go from having essentially the best starting rotation of the last 60 years or so to the worst, which 2015 Phillies are the worst starting rotation ever. And there's some time for them to be better.

Maybe they'll regress a little bit. But right now they have a 143 ERA minus as a group, which means that they're 43% worse than league average, their rotation. And that's the worst. The 1984 Giants are second worst. And if you look by defense independent stuff, though, the Rockies are still worse. The 2015 Rockies have a 123 fit minus,

whereas the 2015 Phillies have a 121. So the defense independent-wise, the current Rockies are the third worst of this entire era. So we are watching some historically bad starting rotations right now, potentially. And I guess the names match the stats. There's not a whole lot of surprises here, really. Could you name the Phillies' starting rotation? I don't want to put you on the spot, even though I just did.

Okay. Well, so there's Cole Hamels. Yes. There's Jerome Williams. Yeah. Yeah, he's been hurt some of the time, but yeah. There's, given enough time, I think I could get four like i've got two on the tip of my tongue right now yeah i'm just cycling through the generic bad pitchers yeah they've well

they've had a lot of start they've had 12 starting pitchers 12 guys who've started at least one game but they've had seven guys who've started at least seven games. Is Miguel Gonzalez one of them? No. Does Miguel Gonzalez pitch in baseball still? Like the Orioles' Miguel Gonzalez? No, the Cuban one who was a huge flop. Oh, right. Then he started pitching okay again, and then he wasn't.

I have to look that up. Yeah, and that's the other thing. If Hamels is traded sometime in the next week, then this rotation could get significantly worse. Improbably, because he has been by far their best starting pitcher. So take him away from the worst starting rotation ever to this point. And that's scary. Miguel Gonzalez was maybe waived this year. Yeah, I think that's right.

He doesn't pitch. He couldn't quite crack the worst rotation ever. Yeah. Joe Savory? Jerry Blevins. So Aaron Horang is the big name. Oh, yeah, sure. And then there's Jerome Williams, Sean O'Sullivan.

Yeah. Oh, man, yeah. David Buchanan. That one I knew. That was one of the ones that I was going for. I definitely had Buchanan in me. Yeah. Severino Gonzalez.

Yeah, yeah. I thought about guessing, but I was stuck on – my brain was saying Luis Severino. Uh-huh. Right? That's not it at all. Yeah, that's Yankees prospect. Yeah. Chad Billingsley. How's he doing?

He's not the best. Not very well. Pretty bad. Uh-huh. Adam Morgan, which is, I think, a neighborhood in D.C., if I remember right. Kevin Correa, our old friend. I think he already washed out of this rotation. Aaron Nola is the recent arrival, and I guess the best hope of making this rotation better than it's been. Dustin McGowan got a start. And Philippe Amant got a start. And Philippe Amant got a start.

So all kinds of guys getting a start. It's been a true team effort. So as the trade deadline comes up, they'll trade some guys. They'll be in full tank mode by July 31st. They might not have Cole Hamels anymore. They might not have anybody who's any good. And they might be able to get rid of chase

utley and i'm just wondering if if the phillies trade a few guys and then they trade chase utley would it be an acceptable headline to say phillies chase ugly or is that too is that too convoluted i have to explain i mean did i because i had to i had to lay the tanking. Right. I get it. I had to slip little clues in before I got there. Is that too convoluted? I think it probably would be. Okay. Yeah, sorry.

That's okay. All right. I would just say that in a normal year, I would do better at naming the Phillies rotated. Like, I don't want people to judge my career based on how well I am naming Philly starters in the summer of 2015. You could name every Stomper starting pitcher, which is not something that you could have done in any other summer. Exactly. Call me next year, and I would say you could challenge me, and I could name minimum 20 active players on any team's roster at any time.

All right. I'll try to remember to do that so i'm gonna someone just set a google reminder to email this to me and just hope we're not i just hope we're not working on a sequel next all right well we've talked for a while we didn't actually answer that many questions. And I have more questions. Let's do another email show. Yeah, alright. Maybe we will. Okay, so that's it for this week. You can send us more emails at podcast at baseballperspectives.com

Our well-populated Facebook group is at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. We already told you about rating and reviewing us. We already told you about the play index. So we can release you. Have a wonderful weekend. We will be back next week.

Shoot, I can name every San Rafael Pacific. I know. Yeah. All right. All right, see you. See you. I'm going to walk into that.