Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 717: The WTF Washington Nationals
Episode Date: August 19, 2015Ben and Sam discuss the Washington Nationals’ seemingly lost season, followed by special appearances from podcast legends Ryan Webb and Matt Albers....
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I want to grab both your shoulders and shake, baby.
Snap out of it.
I get the feeling I left it too late, but baby, snap out of it.
If I watch, don't continue to swing on the fact.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be here waiting there so patiently for you to snap out of it. Good morning and welcome to episode 717 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball
Prospectus presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Ben Lindberg of
Grantland joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus in my backyard.
Hello.
Hey, Ben.
This isn't even close to morning.
This is probably the furthest from morning we have ever recorded.
If you're going with the Price is Right model.
Yes, I am.
But people will probably hear this in the morning because we've missed the commute.
So, how are you?
Pretty good.
How are you? All right. Speak up. Speak up. There you go. Wait, where is my mic? Is my microphone on top here?
It says Sam's on. This microphone literally says Sam's on. Yeah, I think About banter? Yeah. No, I saw that you wrote about
Webb Albers. I sure did. I've thought for the last year, every time I've not had a topic over
the last year, I've thought maybe I should write about Ryan Webb and Matt Albers and see whether my editor would be as interested in
that as our listeners are. Was she? She was. And I have yet to not interest her in something that
seems very effectively wildish and esoteric. She always goes for it. And I spoke to Webb and Albers
and that piece is up at Grantland now.
I will link to it.
But the upshot was that they know about their record, or Webb's record,
which is now at 97 games finished without a save.
And Albers is way behind at 86, which is still 10 more than any other pitcher has ever had.
And they are very good sports about it.
They'd like to have a save, I would say.
Their preference would be to have a save,
but they're not stressing about it.
Huh. Well, yeah. Okay.
Yeah, so it was good to talk to them.
They were aware of the record,
but they were not aware of the extent to which it has become a thing.
They didn't know that there was a banished to the pen Web Albers Fantasy League
where people try to draft games finished and avoid saves.
They were not aware of that, but they had the same sort of perspective on it that we do
That they could easily have recorded a save at some point in their lives
That it's largely random
That they haven't just picked up a three inning save at some point
Or one of the other ways you can get a save
Closer unavailable or even becoming a closer
Webb is not a believer in the closer mentality.
He thinks any pitcher who is in Major League Baseball
can go out and get three innings or get three outs in the ninth inning.
And he thinks that he could too if he were given the chance.
I would love to poll Major League relievers
and see what the split is, what the breakdown is,
of closers versus non-closers
believing in the closer mentality yeah well you would there's a there's that old saying or i don't
remember the saying exactly there's there's that old saying that i forget that i'm now going to
butcher that says the the basic geez wow really all right the basic idea that it's almost impossible to change someone's mind
if their financial interests are aligned with their original opinion.
Yeah, right.
And he actually sort of thinks there's like a swingman mentality
or whatever you would call Webb.
Webb has pitched in every inning from the third through
the ninth this year, as well as extra innings. And Albers has pitched in every inning from the
fourth through the ninth, as well as extra innings. And Webb sort of, he sort of said the closer
mentality thing about the job that he does. Like not that many people would be able to pitch in
every inning and not be flustered by that.
So I guess maybe whatever job you do, you think that not everyone can do it,
except for podcasting.
We think anyone could do this better than we could.
Anyway, interesting interview.
Glad I got to talk to them about it.
I think I will close this show with a clip or two from my
interviews with them, just so you can hear
Webb and Albers speaking about this
record after all the many months of
us speaking about them.
So, anything
else? No.
There is one thing that
Marcel Azuna said that some people
pointed out in the Facebook
group. He was called up from triple a and
he compared triple a to jail and uh maybe maybe that's a slight exaggeration but he was kind of
kept there it it seemed like for maybe service time marlins related reasons and so they have
called him back up he obviously had a good year year, has not had a good year this year.
And he had one interesting quote, which was,
I know what happened when they sent me down.
I knew that's coming.
I don't go there for work because they know me.
I don't need the work.
One for 36, one for 100.
Every big league player has it.
I have it and everybody has it.
One for 100.
Every big leaguer has that.
Yeah.
John Lester doesn't quite have that.
He's at like one for 80 or something.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
One for 100 is something that I don't think any big leaguer has.
What was that?
There was a quote that Mike Trout's dad once gave me that he knew that the 0 for 28s were coming or something like that.
And he hasn't been like remotely close to that ever.
Yeah. Well, isn't there some famous player had an 0 for 28, right? It was like Willie Mays.
Willie Mays had one and Joe Morgan had a huge one. I think Joe Morgan had like an 0 for 56 or something absurd.
Wow. Yeah, that's halfway to Marcelo Zuna's number. So John Lester. John Lester is one for
80, exactly. We didn't even talk about John Lester's pickoff throw last week.
Oh, I didn't know he had one. What did he do?
It was his first one since his first start of the season and he threw it away he threw it wide very far wide really yeah seriously yeah
wow it was an inning where he allowed like four stolen bases or something like that and he he
finally threw over there and he threw it way wide and And he is, I think the last time I checked, on pace to allow the most stolen bases ever
by a left-handed starting pitcher in a season.
So that has happened.
What we were wondering has happened, although he has still been an above-average starting pitcher
because it seems like that's just— it can't hurt you that much.
It only hurts you to a certain extent if you're good enough at keeping guys
off base.
It doesn't matter how bad you are at controlling the running game.
So hang on.
So how far wide did he throw it?
Well, we can pause for a Sam watches something no one else can see segment.
Okay.
It looks like Joe Morgan by the way
he had a 14 game hit list stretch where he went over 34 so he might have gone
like over 40 if you include the first and last at bats in the previous and late
last games I'm not sure and then he also had an over 31 stretch those are both
pretty bad yeah but not as bad as I thought. Yeah. The longest, it looks like Willie Mays was only in like the low 20s, by the way.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, I thought it was 20-something.
Yeah, the longest game streak, hitless game streak he had was seven, and that covered 19 and 17.
Second Brewers hit.
And now Lester throws over and throws it away.
Oh, wow, that's a bad throw Very bad
He basically threw it where the base runners
Was standing
Before he got back to the base
And so since then
Was that his last start
Or has he had a start since
That was August 13th
So that was his last start Okay has he had a start since? That was August 13th, so that was his last start.
Okay.
Because now it feels even more like you ought to be able to go.
I still don't understand why there hasn't been a team
that stole like 14 bases against him in a game.
I'm still waiting for it to get absurd.
Yeah.
And it's still the weirdest thing about it that that hasn't happened.
They stole five in that game.
Yeah.
I don't know what inning the pickoff attempt was,
but they stole five and he caught one.
He's caught four guys in his last five starts.
Yeah, there was an inning in the Stumpers season
or a game in the Stumpers season where the opposing catcher
was a guy who didn't normally play catcher,
and we just ran and ran and ran and ran and stole eight bases, right?
In a game.
In a game.
And there was no reason not to because we could have just kept doing it all day,
and he just didn't have the skill that would allow him to catch anyone, really.
So you would think that something similar would happen with
with lester yeah thanks for telling me sure okay so we are gonna talk a little bit about the
nationals and every day that's gone by i thought maybe we should talk about the nationals
and then they lose again and and the story gets even more confusing and surprising.
And so we are going to talk about them now.
They are 10-20 in the second half and 4-12 in August.
So just in the last few weeks, they have gone from being a playoff favorite,
really a very strong playoff favorite, even though their season had
been regarded as slightly disappointing to that point. They were still in pretty good position,
and I wrote something in the Grantland second half preview about, you know, are we going to
see the real Nationals that we all expected to see in the second half? They haven't been the
juggernaut that some people projected,
but there's still time for them to become that juggernaut by the playoffs and get their hurt
players back healthy. And by the time October rolls around, maybe they'll actually be the
Nationals that we thought we were going to see this spring. And instead, they have gone backwards
in every way since the second half, and they are now long shots really by by any
estimation they are uh according to bp's playoff odds as we record this they have 20 a 20 chance
of making the playoffs and most of that almost all of that is a chance of winning the division and coming back and overtaking the
mets who have a four and a half game lead but uh they are under 500 the nationals are 58 and 59
today which is one of the more surprising if you were to open up the standings page right now, if you could show today's standings page to your April self,
what do you think would be the most surprising result?
Well, I can tell you that if I had a chance to show it to my April self...
You'd be surprised that future Sam was there for one thing?
Well, the one that I would most want past self to know
so that I could just like
hard code a fix in is the royals yeah uh now is that the most surprising is the royals more
surprising uh i don't know i mean it's definitely this the the surprises are the A's, the Nationals, and the Royals.
Those are the three big ones, right?
And maybe the Yankees.
There are really a lot to choose from.
Oh, and Boston.
And Boston, and probably the Astros, right?
Yeah, they're not.
I mean, they're on...
I mean, 64 and 55.
I didn't see that coming.
They're nine games over 500. I mean, they're on pace to win, 64 and 55. I didn't see that coming. They're nine games over 500.
I mean, they're on pace to win like 84 or 85, something like that.
Right?
What are they?
They're 538.
So, yeah, 87.
Okay.
If they keep winning.
But if...
Sorry, when I say on pace, I mean, our playoff odds, our projections,
we probably have them at 84, 85.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's not that surprising.
I mean, didn't we already do this?
We predicted them.
Each of us projected them at like 80 or 81.
Yeah, right.
And there are tons of surprises.
I mean, I'd be surprised that the Cardinals were 34 games over 500.
I wouldn't be surprised that the Cardinals were in first place, but
be surprised that they were on pace to win 100 something. And yeah, the teams you mentioned,
I'd be surprised that Seattle is 55 and 64. I'd be surprised. I'd probably be more surprised about
where the Mariners are than where the A's are, because I thought the Mariners would be the best team in that division
and I thought the A's would be okay so I'd be more surprised probably about the Mariners I'd
be surprised about the Astros about the Tigers remember do you remember when my big weird uh
unconventional pick in my predictions preseason predictions was the Tigers wasn't the White Sox
no I had the Tigers in fourth oh and yeah right Wasn't it the White Sox? No, I had the Tigers in fourth.
Oh, yeah, right.
Well, you had the White Sox winning, right?
I think you had the White Sox winning.
I think I did have the White Sox winning.
So I got nothing about it.
Sorry, I just want to be very clear.
I got nothing, nothing about that division right,
except the Tigers being bad.
Yeah, I got nothing about any division right,
except for the NL Central and maybe the NL West,
sort of, at least the teams that are on top.
And lots of people predicted that the Indians would be very good this year,
that they'd win the division.
They were in last place, and they've probably played better than that,
but still, they're in last place.
So there's almost no division that
isn't surprising you know other than the central and to some extent the west in the nl everything
is weird but the nationals being under 500 it has to be one of the the weirder where does that rank
is that in your top three didn't we correct you might be wrong, but didn't we talk about how trading for Max Scherzer felt unnecessary?
Yeah, sure.
Yeah, one of the weird things about that trade
was that they would take on seven years of a guy,
basically a contract that you knew would hurt them by the end,
to get really good in a year where they were already so good
they didn't need him.
Yeah.
It just felt so easy for them to walk to the NL East crown.
Yeah.
Why take anything out of your future to pursue it?
Yeah, that's right.
And we thought it would be a weak division, and it has been a weak division.
And the Mets have been a little bit better than expected,
but not extraordinarily better than expected but not extraordinarily
better than expected so it is the Nationals just being very weak and I I didn't make any crazy
predictions for the Nationals I didn't come out and say they were going to win 105 games or even
100 games but but the fact that they are under 500 is definitely one of the more surprising things of the season.
And Dave Cameron wrote about it, and he kind of broke down where they've gone wrong,
which is, you know, everywhere, but most notably in the lineup.
And the rotation has been worse than expected.
You know, Strasburg, we've talked about Strasburg. He's
missed a lot of time and was bad at the start of the season. Seems to be okay now.
Gio Gonzalez hasn't been great, and Doug Pfister has sort of fallen apart. But Joe Ross has kind
of established himself as a viable starter. So this still seems like the best rotation in baseball,
or on the short list if you were going
to pick a rotation for the rest of the season but the lineup is weak and uh and Bryce Harper
obviously has been way better than most people expected I guess there was the odd Bryce Harper
breakout MVP pick but you certainly couldn't have expected him to do what he's done coming off of last season.
So Harper's been great and a little less great lately, but still excellent.
But everyone else has been pretty terrible.
And Anthony Rendon has missed most of the season.
Jason Wirth has missed a ton of time and just has been very, very bad when he has not been missing time.
And Ian Desmond was bad for quite a long time.
And Wilson Ramos and Ryan Zimmerman has been bad.
And he's had injury issues also.
So it's partly injury issues and it's partly guys who are playing and are playing poorly. And maybe in
some cases, they're playing through some sort of injury, but in other cases, they're not as far as
we know. So it's just, I guess we, you know, some of it could have been predicted, perhaps, like
Ryan Zimmerman not being all that great that maybe was sort of predictable
after last season but a lot of it is just not um and I I don't know if there's a a lesson that I
can draw from the fact that they've been bad other than the usual humbling reminder that we don't know anything and that we can't
take anything for granted and that when we talk about the unpredictability of
prospects we're often talking about the unpredictability of baseball players
mm-hmm because Ian Desmond there weren't many more sure things than Ian Desmond
right yeah sure and and he's been horrible in all aspects. I mean, that's shocking.
And Jason Wirth, like, was what? Hang on. He was an MVP vote getter the last two years.
And he's hitting like Andrew Jones worst year right now. He's hitting like Brandon Wood
right now. Yeah.
One year later.
Yeah.
I mean, these are the sorts of things that if you tried to predict them,
you would be a horrible predictor.
Yes, right.
You're awful at predicting things.
Yeah.
And Matt Williams comes in for a lot of criticism about his in-game management
and maybe even about his clubhouse management so
maybe that hasn't helped but it's also very hard to imagine that he has his presence has
turned good veteran players into bad players wait what are the beefs on him clubhouse wise
besides i guess true store and well that's not even him but yeah
was unhappy and then they had the bryce harper thing last year yeah has there been more bryce
harper this year he well there was there was some scolding of harper when he got ejected from
that game but that that's not necessarily a sign of dissent or anything but um there were reports
earlier this month i think it was john hayman um said that many national player nationals players
are unhappy with manager matt williams uh i can quote it said to be an unhappy scene around the
nats as manager matt williams has not been well received by many players who find him not
loose and never relaxed. So, and then players are wondering about Williams's bullpen choices,
even going back to the Drew Storen decision in last year's NLDS and etc, etc. So, you know,
maybe it's just the usual carping that comes up with a team that's not playing well.
Or, I don't know, it's the age-old chemistry debate about which came first.
But he has not distinguished himself tactically in a way that would make you happy with him regardless of how the players feel about him. So I don't know if there's a lesson other than the fact that as the Mets talk about,
you know, resting their starters down the stretch and workloads and monitoring and,
you know, limiting their innings and that sort of thing.
It's another Strasburg sort of reminder that maybe the Nationals at the time felt that
they would have this great team for years and they'd have many more chances to be back in the playoffs.
And whether the Strasburg shutdown actually cost them anything or not, that seemed to be part of the rationale that they'd be back.
And now it's looking very unclear that they will be back this year.
be back this year and this is this is the second time that the nationals of recent vintage have notably under achieved and people talked about the tigers when dave dombrowski was let go and
whether the tigers are a disappointing team because they never won a world series in the last
you know four or however many years of winning division titles.
And I don't see them as a disappointing team at all because they won a lot of regular season games.
And they won some playoff series.
And they won a lot of division titles.
And those are all hard things to do.
And it never quite felt like they put it all together maybe in one year
that you know it just seemed like they were going to be so much better than the weak al central
competition they never really blew them away but but they were one of the winningest teams over a
several season stretch whereas the nationals have now had a couple years during this run where they've been projected to be the best team in baseball and everyone thought they'd just sail into the same position this year and i wouldn't call it a make or break year or
anything but you know they are getting closer to losing some guys they have free agents this year
like jordan zimmerman and denard span and others and the strasburg yeah doug fister not that not
that anyone would be sorry to see him go right now. And the Strasburg clock is ticking, and there's always some clock ticking.
So it's probably fair to call the Nationals of the last few years disappointing.
I don't know.
Not that they'd be devastated to hear that I have authorized people to use that label on them.
Well, no, they had back-to-back number one picks. Yeah. authorized people to use that label on them. They had
back-to-back number one picks.
The two most hyped
sure thing number one picks ever.
And they had a
huge market payroll.
And they've
missed the playoffs.
They're likely to miss the playoffs
two of the four years.
And basically their entire franchise existence up to now
is two playoff appearances.
And if that's all you get out of it,
if they don't make the playoffs next year,
then it would be certainly disappointing, this run.
And I think it's fair to say.
And two losses in the NLDS,
which I don't know that I necessarily distinguish between a, if a team wins 100
games and it loses in a five game series, I don't know that that would make me call
them disappointing.
But for many people, obviously it would, if they had won a World Series one of those years,
then we would not call this disappointing.
So the fact that it's been early exits both times that they have made it only reinforces that perception.
Burn it down? Trade Harper?
Yeah, they're not at that point, right?
They're not at the point where you say that they missed something, they missed their opportunity, and now they have to start over.
No, so right now I looked yesterday and I think their expected winning percentage is 538, which if let's say we took that into next year on opening day, would make them
a very serious playoff contender.
It would basically make them the Astros of this year as a projection.
And so that would be pretty good.
And you mentioned that yes, there are free agents.
They're losing Zimmerman who's a key loss, Spann who's an interesting loss, and Pfister
who's no longer a loss and presumably, well, maybe they will.
Oh, and Desmond.
So I don't know what their expected winning percentage drops to without those guys.
What would you guess if you let's say they
they replace those four guys with nobody getting more than two years uh so you know you're talking
your your basic second or third tier free agent patches or triple a promotions what do you think
the expected winning percentage is of that team? Probably not a lot lower.
5-30?
I bet it's more than that.
I mean, Zimmerman is...
I guess if you lose Zimmerman and don't replace him.
Zimmerman and Desmond.
I think Desmond probably still has good projections.
I'm sure that that expected winning percentage is based on Ian Desmond playing like a normal Ian Desmond going forward.
Let me check.
Ian Desmond is projected to about two wins per
season per full season uh so average shortstop uh yeah like roughly so I think more than 538
I don't know that it drops down to 500 I'd guess that they're like an 83 win team without those guys and so yeah that's not tear down for sure but what it's one
more year till strasburg's a free agent and two more until harper is and so you definitely have
to see a window for winning next year and i don't know i i agree with you but I also don't know that a 5-10 winning percentage team necessarily
has a clear window. That's kind of the scariest place to be, right? A team with fairly big payroll, expiring contracts,
and a 500 projection.
What do you do with that? That's a challenge.
Harper has three years,
I think, by the way.
Does he have three? I thought he had two after this.
After 2018, he's a free agent.
Okay. Wow. That guy is young.
Yeah, he sure is.
Yeah, you're right.
So yeah, what would you do?
Do you go out and sign the two biggest free agents of the offseason
and then all of a sudden you're the Red Sox
and you're wondering why can't their majors in public stand up?
Are they the worst players?
Yeah, well, you hopefully do better than that.
No, they're all that.
Every free agent is the worst player ever.
Um,
I,
I guess you,
yeah,
you,
you probably bring in someone cause you can't afford not to you.
You have to fill those spots and,
and maybe,
maybe they have enough guys that they don't necessarily need to go out and get
an ace because we were talking about them having too many aces.
And Ross has been good, and they've got Cole and Roark and all these guys.
So they could probably absorb that loss
and still have one of the best rotations heading into next season.
But you would think that they would bring in some sort of offense.
but you would think that they would bring in some sort of offense.
And it's also a reminder about the almost inevitable disappointment of the super rotation, which I think we talked about this spring
and maybe when we did our Nationals preview episode.
And the Nationals have the 10th best ERA from a rotation in baseball.
And their FIP is about a half a run lower
than that. And maybe part of that is defense. Their peripherals seem to be better than their
ERA. But still, when you put together a collection of just five aces where we're talking about how
they have too many aces, it's still very likely to just go wrong. And, you know, I think it still probably is
one of the best or the best rotations in baseball, but the results haven't really shown that so far.
So even if you go into the air with Scherzer and Strasburg and Zimmerman and just Pfister and just
all of these excellent starters and you're pushing starters who
were really good last year into the bullpen, you still just might have a middle-of-the-pack
rotation ERA because that's just what happens. So baseball is frustrating sometimes.
At least this year they did manage to turn Steven Souza into two awesome prospects.
That's true.
That's a coup. That might be the best move of the offseason
Yeah, maybe so
Alright
So that's our possibly premature post-mortem
Of the Washington Nationals
And maybe they can salvage something
Over the last few weeks
But if not
I wonder if
Is there another MVP candidate Who vultures votes from someone who believes in the has-to-be-a-playoff-team-to-win-an-MVP award.
Well, if the Giants make it, there's going to be a huge Buster Posey push in the next month.
Yeah, Granke and Kershaw split that vote, I guess.
And Goldschmidt has the same non-playoff team
problem that harper does so mccutcheon mccutcheon has the not only great numbers but the benefit of
the strange benefit of they came later in the season yeah the the the distribution bonus that
some guys get yeah the giants have have I feel like maybe they have
they have a few candidates right Brandon Crawford and Matt Duffy and maybe those
guys would sort of split the vote I don't know yeah they might I don't know
that I think that you could make the case that they should split the vote but
I don't think that they will.
I think it'll be fairly easy.
They seem like the types who would win a beat writer elected team MVP.
Oh, yeah.
No, you're right.
They're the kind of guys who would win a team MVP but not get the beat writers votes for the actual MVP.
I mean, you can certainly make really strong cases for them to get those votes. But to me,
those are down ballot names at this point. Yeah, probably. Okay. Are we finished here?
All right. We've been accumulating lots of emails. We will get to an email show soon. So send us some
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Rate, review, subscribe on iTunes. And I will leave you with a moment of zen from Matt Albers and Ryan Webb.
You and Matt Albers are kind of competing for this record.
And every time one of you guys comes in to finish a game, there are a bunch of tweets from people on the internet who are keeping track of this record.
And there's even a website this year with a Ryan Webb-Matt Albers fantasy league where people drafted relievers, and they get points if they finish a game, and they lose points if they get a save.
Are you aware of any of that?
Yeah, I wasn't aware it was that in-depth.
But the one thing that I would say is that, you know,
I'm fortunate to have been around long enough to have a record like that.
So that's nice.
Yeah, right.
You know, I've played on a lot of teams that had bullpens that were,
every time I went in, they had an established closer.
And a lot of times, you know, I spent three years in Miami,
and we were not scoring runs, not winning a lot of ballgames.
Yeah.
You know, pitching in Baltimore last year,
Britton and O'Day had that on lockdown.
They were doing a great job.
And so I think there just, you know, there was never many opportunities.
And I, you know, pitched in a lot of close games and a lot of tie games
and a lot of games we were down one, things like that.
You know, maybe that opportunity will come one day.
It's not, you know, it's not something that I'm offended by or anything like that. I'm pretty sure I could go
out and get three outs, no matter what the situation. If you get a chance at some point,
what would a Ryan Webb save celebration look like? Would you shoot arrows off? Would you do anything?
Would you shoot arrows off?
Would you do anything?
I assume it would probably be a lot like my other outings.
I would just get the third out and shake my cousin's hand.
I'm not going to do cartwheels out there or anything.
Maybe that's why it hasn't happened yet.
Maybe you've got to have the celebration ready to go.
I'll have to think about it.
I'll start giving it some thought.
I might have to step off the rubber for that last bout to think about what it is I'm going to do.
So I talked to Ryan because he is the record holder
in sort of a strange stat,
which I don't know maybe you've heard of,
but he is the record holder
for having the most career games finished without recording a save.
And so you and he have kind of been going back and forth with this record.
And every time one of you guys comes in to finish a game, there are a bunch of people on Twitter who are tracking it.
And there's a website with a WebAlbers Fantasy League where people draft relievers and they get points if they
finish a game and they lose points if they get a save. I don't know. Really? Yeah, no, I didn't.
No, I had no idea. Yeah, I'm not. Twitter is a little bit after my time, so I'm not,
I'm not really on Twitter and follow too much of that. But that, I mean, no, I knew that,
actually kind of knew about the record. You know, I played with Joe Smith in 2013 and I think he had, he might have had the record or he had a bunch of games without getting a save and he ended up getting a save at the beginning of that season.
And that kind of brought my attention to it. So I was like, do you know you have a bunch of games without a save? And I don't think I ever had a save opportunity.
Yeah, so what do you, how does that make you feel? I mean, do you wish that you could get off that leaderboard?
I mean, it's, I mean, what's, I mean, what's going to change?
I have one save instead of zero, you know, it's not, I mean, it's kind of funny, but
you know, I just, you know, I guess I'm surprised I probably didn't, you know, throw three innings
at the end of the game.
Right, right.
You know, when we're winning, you know, it'd probably be more likely, but, you know, I mean, there's not, you know, not too many guys get of the game, you know, when we're winning, you know, it'd probably be more likely.
But, you know, I mean, there's not too many guys get to save opportunities,
you know, when you've got to, you know,
I've been on teams with pretty established closers.
So, you know, when you have that, the opportunities just aren't really there.
And, you know, it's not, I mean, it's kind of one of those just fun baseball stats
that you can kind of look at and, you know,
because there's numbers everywhere in baseball. So, you know,
I think it's kind of cool. I'd like to get one. I mean, yeah, might as well.
But we'll see.