Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 727: The AL’s Outscored Contenders

Episode Date: September 17, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about one of the worst games of the season, Madison Bumgarner, and an old bet, then talk to Adam J. Morris about the Rangers and Brandon Warne about the Twins.

What am I doing hanging round? I should be on that train and gone I should be riding on that train to San Antonio What am I doing hanging round? What am I doing hanging round? I should be on that train and gone Good morning and welcome to episode 727 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 Sam Miller

of Baseball Prospectus. Hello, Sam. Hello, Ben. So we're going to have a couple guests in a few minutes. Right now, as we start to record this, there are basically eight teams that are almost locks for the playoffs. If you look at various playoff odds reports, you will see eight teams in the very high 90s or 100s. And then the remaining uncertainty is concentrated in the AL West and the AL Wildcard, where the Astros and the Rangers and the Twins and to a lesser extent, the Angels and Yankees are still sort of battling things out. So we're going to talk to people who cover a couple of those teams. We're going to talk to Adam J. Morris of Lone Star Ball about the Rangers and Brandon Warren about the Twins. And we're going to find out how those teams have defied everyone's

expectation that they would collapse or never contend to begin with and how they have remained in this race in mid-September. But before that, just a couple quick banter items. Since we brought up the using tons of players and pitchers in September in last week's play index, which is what prompted us to call Ned Garver, the Rockies and Dodgers played a notable game on Tuesday. The Rockies and Dodgers played a notable game on Tuesday. 58 players used, 24 pitchers used, both Major League records for a single game, according to ESPN's stats and info. The Rockies used 13 pitchers, which is the most ever used by one team in a game. Rockies won 5-4 in 16 innings Took 5 hours and 23 minutes And it sounds excruciating

It sounds like the worst baseball game to watch ever Yeah, I would rather watch anything but that At least it did look like Most of the pitching changes came at inning breaks Not all That helps But most Yeah, it was 16 innings So there were a came at inning breaks not all that helps but most yeah it was 16 innings so there were a lot of inning breaks i mean by leverage index it would be one of the best games

of the year by uh you know like it was tense and exciting and everything but by sort of seasonal leverage index it feel it's index, it's near zero. And given the eternal aspect of that game, I consider it a contender for worst game of the year. Yeah. When you do your annual pick, I'm interested to see if that's the one. Especially since you just said you'd rather watch anything but that. And if you do pick that one, you'll have to watch that. Oh, that's a good point.

Yeah. Like many times usually i watch whatever the worst game of the year is usually gets a good four or five watches yeah you should not watch a five and a half hour game four and five times yeah i won't now don't pick that okay all right i wanted to ask your opinion of the impressiveness of the thing that also happened on Tuesday night, the Madison Bumgarner walk against Aroldis Chapman. So Bumgarner, we've talked about his outlier hitting performance this year, the last couple of years, a couple of times. Most of the time it manifests itself in home runs and pinch hit appearances. And this was a pinch hit appearance. He's the second pitcher ever to face Chapman, first to reach base.

And so he went down 0-2, and a lot of the discussion of this focused on the fact that he went down 0-2, because once you go down 0-2 against Chapman, you are dead meat for the most part. 57 hitters before him had gone down oh two against chapman this year 41 of them struck out none of them had walked i believe looking at his career stats before that game he'd gone up oh two 315 times 218 of those guys struck out only eight of them walked they produced a 231 ops so once you you go down 0-2 against Chapman you're you're pretty much dead and Bumgarner worked a walk and none of the pitches that he

took was really particularly close the the highest called strike probability of the pitches he took was 15.6 percent the the one that was closest to being a strike so it wasn't very close to being a strike but chapman threw him all fastballs chris mosch wrote an article for bp recently about how pitchers have approached bum garner lately and he pointed out that they've thrown him fewer fastballs chapman of course throws really goodballs, and he threw solely fastballs, but he did stay away from Bumgarner, which was another thing that Chris noted. Pitchers have stayed away from Bumgarner,

and Chris also noted a tendency for Bumgarner to chase up in the zone, and Chapman threw some pitches there, and Bumgarner laid off. So how impressive is it to you that he went down 0-2 and worked a walk, or it to you that he went down oh two and worked a walk or is the fact that he went down oh two kind of a false fun fact because it reflects poorly on him that he went down oh two to begin with i don't know i don't have any i just don't have any i mean

look it taking pitches is harder to do when you're facing a better pitcher and it is harder to do when you're facing a better pitcher, and it is harder to do when you're trying to hit it. But otherwise, it is the one thing that I can do, and you can do, and a fingerless Mike Trout can do. And I don't know, I mean, if the pitches weren't that tempting, if Bumgarner, did he, I mean, if he'd fouled off three. He fouled off one. I mean if he'd fouled off three he fouled off one yeah if he'd fouled off three that'd be impressive

fouling off one is pretty good but I mean if he'd fouled off one on like 2-1 we wouldn't be like whoa see that he fouled off a pitch I'm gonna say pinch hit penalty had the pinch hit penalty going against him I'm gonna say

it is a quality fun fact that does not in any way change my opinion of madison bumgarner or aldous chapman okay i i would tweet it uh-huh i don't love it okay he threw four balls you know dude threw four balls he did all right and last thing i just want to take one little victory lap just a small little victory lap i've gotten so many things wrong this season i think if you if you looked at my projected al standings coming into this year and just reversed them they would probably be pretty close to right that's how wrong i was about everything. So I want to hearken back to one thing I was not wrong about from episode 683, which we recorded on May 25th.

Going to play a short little clip from that, which I will also send to you. do you think strasburg zra at the end of the season will be higher or lower than 4.45 huh i think it will be i think lower really my uh bold take looking pretty pretty non-bold pretty uh plain plain text yeah what is non-bold. Pretty plain text. Yeah. What is non-bold? What is the opposite of bold? I don't know. Pretty italics.

Unbolded. Pretty unbolded. Yeah. Well, yeah, maybe they'll just meet in the middle somewhere. Maybe they'll end up at the same place. Okay. This is a fake bet, but I bet a dollar that Tim Lincecum will have an ERA higher than Strasburg this year. How much would you put up to win that dollar? At any point this year, end of the year?

End of the year. End of the year, Tim Lincecum has a higher ERA than Steven Strasburg. I'll say, yeah, I don't know, $2. So you think there's a 67% chance that Strasburg will have a better ERA than Lundskam at the end of the year? Yeah. Wow!

Wow, he's four runs behind! ERAs can change pretty quickly. Look, I think the Warriors are much better than the Rockets, but when they were down 25 in the first quarter, I kind of was like, okay, I would have quit betting on them. Four runs. That's a pretty big gap. Yeah, I don't know. That's a bad bet, probably. I'm going to bet only Andy McCullough would know. Yep. gotta bet only annie mccullough would know yeah so steven strasburg also on tuesday night had one of the best starts of his career maybe the best start of his career probably not the best because it was against the phillies but he struck

out 14 12 swinging which i think matched his career high, which he set in his Major League debut. He got whiffs on 30 of his 55 swings. 54.5% of swings were whiffs, which is the highest whiff percentage in a game by any starter in the last 10 seasons with at least 100 pitches in the start. Another stats and info stat. So he had great strikeout stuff working more importantly he did not allow a run which dropped his era to 3.98 so when we recorded episode 683 tim lincecum's era was 2.56 strasburg's was 6.50 and lincecum finished his season at 4.13 so that start by strasburg sent his era below

lincecum's although he could technically blow it because the bet was at the end of the year so if he has a couple bad starts he could go behind lincecum again but i'm counting this as a win so 27 swinging strikes in that start in may he had 20 the whole month yeah yeah in five starts in five starts yeah he's been very strasburg-esque lately and there was a another stats and info stat which i don't even know if it's a fun fact, but Harper and Strasburg had played in 88 games together, and there had not been a game where Strasburg struck out double digits and Harper hit two home runs, and they have now had back-to-back games of that sort. So this has been like peak Harper and strasburg coinciding at a moment when the nationals have never been more depressing so this is like the harper and strasburg that everyone

envisioned just kicking everyone's ass when they were drafted and it's coming at a moment when it doesn't really help the nationals very much at all. Yep. All right. So something to take away from a lost season in terms of things I expected to happen. Okay. So we are going to welcome in, you better hang on to your head. Come on. All right. Our first guest is Adam J. Morris, who runs SB Nation's Rangers site, Lone Star Ball. And I can just sense the swagger over Skype. He hasn't said much yet but it's a quiet

confident silence coming off him in waves and with good reason the Rangers just beat the Astros 14 to 3. Dallas Keuchel started for the Astros came into the day as the AL's ERA leader and Cy Young favorite hadn't allowed more than five runs in a game since 2013. The Rangers scored nine runs off him in four and two-thirds innings, and they have taken the first three from the Astros in a pivotal four-game series. They're now a game and a half up on the Astros. They're 18-10 in August. They're 10-5 in September, 78-67 overall. And they're trying to do something that not many teams have done. There was an ESPN stats and info note the other night.

They are the fifth team in the divisional era to get sole possession of first for the first time on September 1st or later. Trying to become the fifth team in the last 40 years to win its division, despite trailing by at least eight games at some point in August or later. And even after picking up the plus 11 in run differential tonight, they have been outscored by 13 runs in the season. And Adam, your recap of tonight's game alluded to that and said something about the Rangers being tired of hearing about run differential. So where did this team come from? I wrote about them in early June when they were on a little bit of a roll.

And this was several weeks before the Cole Hamels trade. And I didn't really see a very good team on the roster at the time. And I didn't write about the Cole Hamels trade, but many of the people who did sort of just took it as a 2016 move. And since then, the Rangers have been one of the best teams in baseball. So where did this come from? That's a good question. You know, my feeling about this team coming into the season was basically let's see if they can hang around 500 until they start getting some pitchers back get start getting uh you know Derek Holland back Martine Perez back Matt Harrison back um and if they're in they're in the race you know come July if they're hanging around there then maybe they can make a move Cole Hamels was the you know come july if they're hanging around there then maybe they can make a move cole hamels was the you know the pie in the sky type guy they've apparently been looking at hamels since 2011 or

something but he you know he's the guy who everybody's been talked about but you know the idea i think the hope was hang around 500 stay sort of within striking distance start getting some guys healthy and back, and then maybe you can do some damage in August and September if things break right. And I mean, that's basically what's happened. This team does look very different right now than what it did in the early part of the year when you're getting contributions from guys who you didn't reasonably expect to continue contributing long term. As we're sitting here right now, the number three and number four pitchers on the Rangers so far this season in terms of innings pitched are Nick Martinez and Juan D. Rodriguez.

Okay, when Nick Martinez and Juan D. Rodriguez are among your team leaders in innings pitch, you're not going to expect to be winning games, and yet here we are. Yeah, so who has been doing the damage, and how pivotal is the Hamels trade? Is this a case where, you know, Hamels has been really good, but is it like a cesspit-ist sort of thing where it's not just the headline guy, but everyone on the team suddenly got a lot better, or can we really trace it to this trade to a greater degree? You know, part of the Hamels trade that really has had a big impact, obviously Hamels coming in has been significant.

also came over to the Rangers as part of that deal and helped solidify what had been a really big problem for the Rangers this season, which was the bullpen. Other than Sean Tolleson and Keone Keeler, for much of the season, the Rangers bullpen really was a disaster. And those guys were worked really hard. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, Sean Tolleson is one of the leaders in relief appearances and relief innings this season. Kiel is right behind him. But by going out and getting Diekman as part of the Hamels deal and picking up Sam Dyson for Cody Eagie and Tomas Talese,

a fringy catcher prospect and a potential loogie, what the Rangers have done is picked up a pair of guys who they have been able to plug into the back of their bullpen and immediately get results from. The two of them have given up just nine runs in roughly 40 innings since coming over, and the two of them, together with Keela and Tolleson, have really turned the bullpen from a weakness into a strength, particularly in situations where you can go six, seven innings with your starter, have a small lead, and then go to your back-end

bullpen guys. You know, I think that's part of, and I think that might potentially help explain part of the reason why the Rangers have exceeded their Pythagorean win-loss expectations is because, especially here since the trade deadline, the Tolleson, Keeler, Dyson, Diekman group has been so good the guys that they brought in when they that they bring into the game when it's a one-two run lead have been so solid that they've been able to outperform expectations in those close games and offensively speaking i mean there was a time earlier this year where it seemed like chu was just gonna be a total disaster and t turned his season around and Fielder's been good. There's no, like, super masher on this team. Even Fielder's having a good year is, you know, around 20 homers and maybe 30% above league average or something. He's the best hitter. So is this kind of, I don't know, is this kind of like an Angels from last year sort of,

except without Trout, where there was an entire team that was just sort of average-ish without a big hole? Or where have the runs been coming from? You know, it's interesting because it seems like everybody, nobody, it's not a situation where everybody's getting hot at the same time. Nobody, it's not a situation where everybody's getting hot at the same time. Shinsu Chu was having a bad run early in the season, but Prince Fielder was hitting well and carrying things. Adrian Beltre struggled early in the year, then hurt his thumb and was having issues, but he's picked it up of late.

Prince has slowed down a little bit, at least before tonight, when he had a two-home run game. But with Prince slowing down in the second half, Chu has been on fire. Rudnit Odor since coming up. And that's really, to the extent that there is somebody who has really sparked and fueled the second half surge offensively. You know, Delano DeShields is the guy that a lot of people talk about as being the catalyst. But Ruggie Odor has put up near a 900 OPS since coming up from the minors after his demotion. He came up in mid-June and has just done nothing but hit. Elvis Andrews is, you know, he's never going to be a great hitter, but he has, especially in the second half since he added a leg kick to his stance,

has improved and been a solid bat as a shortstop. has improved and been a solid bat as a shortstop. I really, it's one of those things where nobody is great, but for the most part, you haven't had any big gaping holes. I mean, the crazy thing, even at catcher, Robinson Torinos goes down, and so all of a sudden it's all great. You know, Torinos had been a solid hitter for a catcher. The Rangers are now looking at a black hole there. Well, Chris Jimenez has an 821 OPS this year in almost 100 plate appearance as a catcher.

It's just one of those things where the Rangers have been fortunate in terms of being able to find guys who they can plug in and get solid work from in the short term. You know, whether that's a catcher, the revolving door out there in left field or what have you. And so one of the mistakes I probably make when I do playoff projections or predictions or previews is going too much on what a team has done over the course of a season as opposed to what it is right now, who's on the playoff roster, what their status is.

So the Rangers, they're at 78 wins. They've got a couple weeks left. They'll finish with 80-something. Their numbers won't look all that impressive if you look at them on a full season basis. But what are they right now? If they played a full season, if they could restart the season with the roster they have right now, how many wins do you think this team would have? Mid-80s. So about what they actually will end up with? Yeah, I think, now again, they're going to end up, they're probably going to have a run differential of roughly even on the season.

And they're going to probably end up with 85, 86, 87 wins. Despite, you know, having a run differential, which would suggest they'd be about a 500 team. So, you know, they've outperformed their run differential expected one loss. But I think if you could take this roster right now, rerun the season with it, I think you'd end up around the same place, but with a run differential that's more indicative of that. Basically, I will acknowledge that part of the reason that the Rangers have the record that they do right now is because of having a certain amount of

good fortune as it comes to playing in close games and that sort of thing. Sequencing and all those other things we've talked about in terms of why they've exceeded projections. And is there any Jeff Bannister element to this? Is he getting credit locally for, I don't know, steering the ship through the tough times or anything like that? You know, it's weird. There's, there's early in the year, he was being, doing some really unconventional things, was seeing, coming across as sort of an outside the box guy, was giving young players shots, was being real aggressive in terms of pinch running and moving people around the lineup and that sort of thing. And the interesting thing is, as the season has gone on, in particular in

August and September, it feels like Bannister has gotten a lot more conventional and conservative in terms of the way he's running things. You know, the thing that people have been talking about quite a bit that's been somewhat controversial is the decision to put Mike Napoli, the catcher turned first baseman who had never played in the outfield on any professional level before this week out in left field against left handers so that Mitch Moreland could stay in the lineup at first base against lefties. Prior to this, Napoli and Moreland had been platooning against first base.

The argument as well, Moreland as a left-handed hitter has never hit lefties prior to this Napoli and Moreland had been platooning against first base the argument as well Moreland as a left-handed hitter has never hit lefties well it doesn't make sense to take a guy who's never played left field put him out there take the defensive hit so you can have Moreland face lefties the response has been basically hey it seems to be working so and nobody else is right-handed is hitting who is a left field option. So why not try it? It's interesting. It's hard to get a read. I mean, you can't really criticize the job that Bannister has done. He's taken a team that a lot of people are picking to finish last, and he's got them a game and a half up in the AL West. As somebody who really supported Ron Washington in no small part because of the team's success, despite what appeared to be strategic, questionable strategic decisions.

I can't turn around and beat up on Jeff Bannister and say he's a problem. You know, so Bannister, you know, some of his moves, some of his decisions have earned some criticism. There are a few decisions in particular that stick out of the course of the season that really have been lightning rods for controversy, but for the most part, you know, he seems to be getting more than the most out of this team, and so it's really hard to complain. So this will go up a little bit after the win tonight, but the Rangers have by far the lowest World Series odds on our playoff odds of the teams that are likely to make the postseason at about 3%. In fact, the next closest is like 5.5% the Cubs.

And like I said, it'll go up a little because their playoff odds are going to go up a little after tonight. But do you think that that is underselling them at all? Or are they in fact, you know, I know anything can happen in the postseason, but of course we know they're not literally coin flips. Is one in 30 about how you feel? That sounds about right. You know, during the offseason, before, you know, you Darvish got hurt and other bad things happened,

I put some money down on the Rangers at 30 to 1, and that's about where the odds are the way as I would anticipate that they would. I feel like with Hamels, Holland, Perez, and either Gallardo or Colby Lewis, the Rangers have as good a playoff rotation as anybody in baseball. good a playoff rotation as anybody in baseball. And if you take that group and you take the Keela, Dyson, Dykeman, Tolleson grouping at the back of the bullpen, four guys who've been really solid, you know, the problems that the Rangers have had in terms of their bullpen depth and their number five starters and stuff in a playoff series, a lot of those issues go away.

And I think they, it's one of the, if you really believe that strong startingoff series a lot of those issues go away and i think they it's one of the if you really believe that strong starting pitching and a couple really good relievers are the key to winning in the postseason the rangers are a team that you would flag as a dark horse because they're set up to have some success that way to give given the way they're currently constructed and lastly it's obviously too soon to say this with any kind of confidence, but looking ahead to 2016 with Darvish presumably coming back, Hamels for a full season, maybe getting something out of Profar, is there any team that right now looks to you like a 2016 favorite more so than the Rangers in the AL West?

You know, that's hard to say. I mean, Houston obviously has a really good collection of good young talent. And Houston and Texas are both in a situation where if they decide they want to go out there and use some, they both have the young talent available to go out there if they decide they want to get a big move to get an impact player that's maybe a year or two away from free agency. Both of them have the trade chips to do that. In addition, Houston has a very low payroll.

You know, Texas is locked in with some questionable deals with guys like Prince and Shinsu Chu. Houston isn't necessarily saddled with that, and so Houston's in a situation where if they decide, you know what, I want to go out there and spend big on David Price, or I want to go out there and make a real aggressive run at Justin Upton or somebody like that, Houston's in a position to make a splash on the free agent market. So they've got the ability to do that. If I'm sitting here right now, though, I'm hard-pressed to think that any of the other three teams in the division

are going to project to be likely to be a real serious threat to Houston and Texas. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if a year from now we're sitting here looking at a similar situation where Houston and Texas are neck and neck for the ALS lead while the other three teams are also Rams. All right. Well, everyone can find Adam on Twitter, at LoneStarBall. You can read his writing and the rest of the Rangers' coverage at LoneStarBall.com.

Adam, thank you for joining us, and enjoy the rest of this run. Thank you. Hold on, just hang on All right, our next guest is Brandon Warren. He's written for many places on the internet. You may know him from baseball perspectives, from fan graphs. He's now a journalist at Sport Radar US, and he covers the Twins for 93X Radio in Minnesota. So we're talking about the twins now so june 5th

episode 689 we talked to aaron gleeman in an episode that we called reluctantly trashing the twins and the twins were fun at the time and they were having all sorts of improbable victories but none of us was really buying the twins long term if anything we were more pessimistic than than aaron but it was just degrees of pessimism i think we were all expecting a correction and that correction kind of came shortly after that when we talked to him the twins had just won to go up 32 and 21 and as we speak they are trying to decide whether they're going to win or lose this game against the Tigers. It's been a back and forth affair, but they came into the day 75 and 69. So they have been under 500 since that episode when we talked to Aaron, but not by as much as I think

we expected and lately, not at all. But they came into the day having been outscored by one run on the season. As of now, they are tied for four, so they have still been outscored by one run on the season. But they're hanging in there, and they are very much in the playoff race. And we wanted to talk to you about how that happened, how they managed to hold off the collapse that everyone saw coming. So how have they done that? Well, I think it boils down to that stretch where the Twins raced out to 10 games over.500.

And the big idea that even if they weren't for real, getting out to a start like that is something that can't be taken from you. And if you play under.500 or 500 from that time forward in an American League right now that's been absolutely bananas in terms of parity, in terms of levity, that's been enough to keep them afloat. I think the most important thing since the trade deadline has been the teams in front and around them falling out of the race. The Baltimore's, the Cleveland's never having really been in the race at all, the Tampa Bay's, the Angels to some extent. And it's been kind of a war of attrition, and the Twins have just kind of been there standing tall

at basically 500 since the All-Star break. And so it's been amazing. Everybody thought with all the moves that everyone else was making at the trade deadline the twins went out and got a reliever that they weren't even expecting to do big things for them and everybody thought you know what you're just gonna fall you're just gonna fall backwards you can't keep up with toronto and you can't keep up with anybody else but but they've managed to do that yeah we um we had a sort of well in may ben and i had an episode where we talked about where the Astros were for real. And the Astros at this point are perceived to be, I think, more for real.

And yet, since then, they're under 500, too. And it's probably fair to say that most playoff teams are essentially, if you look at it in a certain way, 500 teams who had a good month at some point to break up the 500. The question, though, is whether the Twins are even a 500 team. I mean, we didn't see it coming in. Do you think they are even truly a 500 team right now? No, not based on true talent, I don't. And I think you could make the argument that it's a bottom five team talent-wise in the American League. Now, I made that argument before Eddie Rosario started hitting

home runs and Miguel Sano came up and all that, but it's not a team that's drastically different than the one that finished with 90-plus losses for the fourth straight season last year. Yeah, and when we talked to Aaron, I think one possibility we allowed for was that it wouldn't be the same team all year and that even if the team as constituted back then would collapse the twins could make some improvements throughout the year so you know they could call up buxton and they could call up suno and rosario and all these guys that are now big parts of this team and they could get irvin santana back although that turned out to not quite be what they were expecting for, for much,

much of the year. So, Oh, that's right. Remember we thought that urban Santana was just so that they could trade him at the deadline. Yeah. Right.

So the twins have gotten different. So I assume they've also gotten better relative to what they were when everyone was writing their twins are a ticking time bomb article? Yeah, I mean, they've had emergence. The big thing for the Twins is if you look at the guys that are making all the money on the team, and then you look at the guys that are making all the waves in terms of quality play, it's two completely separate pillars. You know, Brian Dozier obviously signed an extension.

He's been pretty good all season long. But otherwise, Miguel Sanoa has racked up an incredible amount of value to the team in a short amount of time. Eduardo Escobar has picked up his play. He's been fantastic over the last month or so. And Eddie Rosario has been great. Aaron Hicks has finally turned into the player they had kind of hoped he would be. And so the big thing Trevor May told me on the last homestand was they kind of felt like Sanoa's call-up was the shot in the arm that they needed when they started slumping. And now I don't know if that correlates to, you know, closely to that stretch where they fell back to the pack and fell back under 500. But I think it's pretty close. And so, you know, they've gotten production out of pretty unlikely sources.

The pitching staff doesn't have an ace. And in fact, if you were to try to decide on this day who would start a one-game playoff, assuming they made it, it's literally picking a name out of a hat right now. So it's just been bizarre. It, to me, does not look constructed like a postseason team. I've been one of the biggest advocates saying that it's not. But at the end of the day, so so far I've had to eat my words and you know I don't mind it's it's a lot more fun to cover a team that that wants media around to cover them but at the same time it's just I just don't see a team right here that's going to go into a one game playoff and knock somebody off especially

if it's against a David Price or a Masahiro Tanaka, Cole Hamels, or a Lance McCullers, Scott Casme or something like that. I just don't see it. Yeah. And I mean, Sano is, without looking around the rest of the league, the difference between Sano and the next best Twins hitter has to be about as big as the difference between the best hitter and second best hitter on any other team. I mean, it's an enormous gulf at this point. So what have you seen from watching him? Has there

been the usual rookie adjustment and counter adjustment kind of push-pull that happens with any high-profile guy who gets called up? Well, you're right. It's a gorge between him and the next best hitter, whether it's Trevor Ploof or brian dozier who again for their positions are relatively good hitters but no it's it's absolutely amazing the the difference between him and any of those guys especially in this era where you know a lower on base percentage is more acceptable than it was maybe 10 years ago when they were still kind of a stronger offensive era but with snow and as far as adjustments go you know you look at his rates and he's obviously a guy who's still in that settling in part of his career batting average on balls and play over 400 striking out almost 40 percent

of the time walking 15 16 percent of the time all those are inflated and kind of indicative of how he's taken the league by storm but it's gonna be interesting to see how those all settle in i mean no other twins batter with a regular amount of playing time has more than a 10 percent walk rate and that's joe mauer who's obviously known for his eye he seems to know the strike zone very well and is more of a gambler within the strike zone and maybe that's why the strikeout numbers are so high but the adjustment period he's probably in like that second or third one where he'll have an 0 for 10 stretch over 12 stretch with a bunch of strikeouts and look bad and then he'll he'll hit one solidly to right field go the other way and cover the plate like like very few hitters of that caliber power can but he'll go the other way with power, with juice.

And it's just kind of amazing how he's already at age 22, seems to be making the adjustments that a lot of guys take a little bit longer to make. Now, again, is he a kind of guy that can slug 550 at this age right now over a full season? I'm pretty skeptical of that but he's he's a an incredible talent a once in a generation talent for this this twins organization and one of the things we talked about with aaron and everyone talked about concerning the twins is that it didn't seem like their pitching and defense were built to go together in that they're the twins they have the typical twins pitch to contact staff as usual they are last in the major leagues in strikeout rate their pitchers have struck out 16.7 percent of batters most dependable performance in

baseball and it seemed like they were not a good defensive team They were one of the worst defensive teams last year They signed Torrey Hunter Didn't really seem like it was going to be a whole lot different coming into this year Now you tweeted something earlier today That Phil Hughes said earlier this week That he couldn't remember pitching in front of a better outfield defense Than this Twins teams And that's not something that we would have expected

anyone to say about the Twins, probably. So has there been a bit of a defensive improvement that has helped keep them afloat? There has been in recent weeks, as Byron Buxton has gotten healthy again and taken center field, and Aaron Hicks has gotten healthy again, he's moved to right where he so basically, they have an alignment of three center fielders out there with eddie rosario and left who is among the league leaders and assists has a really good arm pretty good tracking skills but it's just basically been a good marriage for guys like hughes guys like trevor may guys like casey fiend who's taking a step back glenn perkins guys that rely on fly balls an awful lot.

In a big park like that, you know, you can kind of live with fly balls as long as they're not leaving the yard. And into right field, they don't. So your right-handed fly ball pitchers are going to have a little bit more of an advantage. But they got three guys that can go get it. They've been sitting Torrey Hunter quite frequently down the stretch because he's faded really, and I mean really hard. quite frequently down the stretch because he's faded really, and I mean really hard.

And so that's where the context of the story came from. It was his first start with that outfield alignment. And I just thought, you know, he's probably never played with an outfield defense quite like that. But that's also why coming into the season, they had a pretty good idea that those three guys were on the cusp of being able to be in an outfield together. You thought maybe Oswaldo Garcia would be in the mix. He took a huge step back this year. And you thought maybe Torrey Hunter, going into his age 40 season, his 39-40 season, was going to be someone you couldn't lean on quite as much.

But the emergence of those young guys, and granted, they're all at different stages of evolution with the bat, but defensively it's a really good outfield right now, and that's been huge for the Twins in the last probably three weeks or a month and what about buxton's performance at the plate obviously it looks a little bit more like young aaron hicks offensively than twins fans would have hoped for but of course he is very young and very inexperienced and the plate discipline has not been there but is there at all any cause for concern or is it just you write off whatever happens because most people do not come up and hit like Miguel Sano

it's actually pretty funny through the first I think 33 or 34 games of Buxton's career I looked it up last night when I was at the game he's basically mirrored Hicks's production and obviously I think the worry about Hicks, whereas people are a little more patient with Buxton, was there was never that savior idea with Hicks. I think Hicks peaked as the number 19 prospect on your guys' list. Buxton was number one pretty much universally, or he was in the conversation with a couple other guys. The other thing, too, is Hicks was kind of he was he was the the prospect up on

just a horrible 2013 twins team that was the first year I covered the team regularly and so his struggles were just magnified hitting at the top of that order got off to like a just a ridiculously bad start in April with Buxton you know they've been able to put him at the bottom of the order the defense has really really been evident but as far as plate approach he's exploitable with sliders same-sided sliders away you know a lot of right-handed hitters are going to be that way for their entire career but it's still very much him taking rookie at bats you know three pitch strikeouts and that kind of thing he's bunted for more base hits of late but he does look like a guy who will probably get sent back to Rochester to start next season. And when he was down there on his rehab

stints after getting injured this last time, he was great. And so he's succeeded at every minor league level in a decent sample size. So there's reason to believe with a little bit more time in Rochester, he should be able to round into form. And I don't think he's going to need the old three-year plan like Aaron Hicks needed. So at the trade deadline, the Twins had roughly 20% chance of making the playoffs. They were four games over 500 at the time, but there was a lot of season left and it wasn't a team that, you know, I think you or anybody took really super seriously as a talent. They now obviously are only a couple weeks away from potentially making it. Their playoff odds have gone up only a little to 25%, but they're in it.

There's a chance. Do you, in retrospect, wish they had done more at the trade deadline, or is this, in your mind, a season that you're comfortable letting slip away, feeling that the future is in the next three or four years you know i was in that lap the ladder because i always felt like i know you were i'm asking if you are i know i still am no i still am and i but but i mean i what i want to say is i remain steadfast in my belief that i don't want to see a team borrow from their future to you know close the back end of the potential winning window by taking prospects like a Max Kepler, a Jorge Polanco, guys that are right on the cusp and probably their most valuable trade chips at this point,

and borrow from the back end of any possible contention window when you've got guys like Buxton and Sano on their third or fourth, fifth seasons. or fourth, fifth seasons to make a run this year when in July it was still pretty murky, especially when you consider that I think there were like seven or eight teams in the American League at that point that were within like five games of the playoffs. Might have even been more than that. So I believe then and I believe now that this is still a team that should sink or swim with whatever got them there. It's a flawed team, but it's really hard outside of Toronto at this point to look at any other team in the American League and not see something that makes you really go, you know,

geez, that could really doom them in October one way or another. And so, you know, I think it was just a matter of this is the horse we rode into town and we're going to ride it out. All right. Well, I was hoping that we could string you along long enough to get a final in this game, but the Tigers got out of a jam in the bottom of the ninth. So the Twins and Tigers are going to extra innings. So we are going to conclude this interview with the Twins still technically being outscored on the season by one run. And we'll see where it ends up by the time people are listening to this. So thank you, Brandon, for joining us.

I appreciate it, guys. Thank you. I think a minute ago they did just take the win probability lead in this game. Okay. Just so you know. In case you're there about standings. That was maybe before they put Blaine Boyer in, though. That's a tough move. Probably doesn't take that into account.

All right. So everyone can find brandon on twitter at brandon underscore warn w-a-r-n-e yes it's a funny thing i need a friend, not an angel. What do you do? I try. All right, that's it for the show today. Thanks again to Adam and Brandon.

By the way, I can't officially end the suspense. The twins lost that game by three runs, which takes their seasonal run differential to negative four. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. Send us emails at podcast at baseball perspectives.com rate and review and subscribe to the show on iTunes and support our sponsor, the play index at baseball reference.com. Use the coupon code BP when you subscribe to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription.

We will be back with one more show this week tomorrow. Thank you.