Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 859: Ross Stripling and Trevor Story

Episode Date: April 11, 2016

Ben and Sam discuss two surprise stars of week one, debuting Dodgers starter Ross Stripling and Rockies rookie slugger Trevor Story.

Oh, please don't strip my mind. Leave something behind. Please don't strip my mind. Good morning and welcome to episode 859 of Effectively Wild, La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, the Play Index, the singular Play Index. I'm Sam Miller along with Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight.com. Hi, Ben. Hello. How are you? All right.

We're going to, you know, it'll be kind of like almost just an all banter episode. So if you have any banter about action, things that happened on the field over the last week, hold it. But do you have any banter that is kind of off the field banter? I don't think so. All right. So a week is done done a week of baseball is done and i just want to talk about a few of the things that happened you might have other things that happened i'm not sure this is a very weird time in baseball to observe because for one thing you're trying to watch all of it. As the season goes on, you get to start kicking things out of your focus. You don't really have to worry that much

about who's pitching in the sixth inning for the Phillies. But right now you're trying sort of ambitiously to watch all of it. So there's that. And then as you start to max out or fall away a little bit, then the opinions that you have developed early on in the year become hopelessly outdated, but you haven't updated them. And so this is always the situation where, like, in August, I'm going to be shocked to find out that Starlin Castro isn't having a great year. Yeah. I always, like, I get way too influenced by these early year things um and yet we're going to talk about these early year things because that's what we do so there's a a bunch we could talk about but i guess there's three in particular that we must talk about today uh one is the dodgers decision decision to pull Ross Stripling

from a game in which he was throwing a no-hitter. This happened on Friday. It was momentous enough that we considered recording an emergency podcast on Saturday, but the timing just didn't work out. Sorry, everybody. But Ross Stripling was pitching in his major league debut. He had gone seven and a third innings of no hit ball. And then he crossed the hundred pitch threshold and concurrently walked a batter.

It was a two to nothing game. Dave Roberts, brand new manager, walked out, removed him from that game and prevented him from being the first player in over a century to throw a no-hitter in his Major League debut. And the decision ended up being especially controversial because another player who I have never heard of named Trevor Brown immediately hit a home run off of the reliever who was brought in, tied the game, and the Giants won in a walk-off in the 10th.

And so you wanted to talk about this. I have an email from you while it's happening, which is rare. Yeah, actually before the home run, right? Before the home run, yeah. And so what was it that you wanted to talk about? Well, it was a bold move, I think. It certainly caused some consternation. I was watching this sort of, I had decided to take a couch nap, a Friday night nap, and I put on this game.

My girlfriend was out and I was tired. It was the end of the week. And one of the joys of being an East Coast person is that you can put on a West Coast game and it will be on for a really long time, really late in the night. and it will be on for a really long time, really late in the night. That's sort of a pleasure that West Coasters don't get, I guess, unless they're very early to bed people. So I put this thing on in the second or third inning or so. And sadly, there was no Vin Scully, but there was John Miller, which is the next best thing. So I put it on just sort of as background and dozed off for an inning or two. And then I was unable to complete the nap I had planned because someone was throwing a no-hitter.

And then there was this decision that we hadn't really seen that engendered a lot of conversation on Twitter and lots of difference of opinions. Yeah, I saw tweets pointing out that he had the longest, Yeah, there were, I saw tweets pointing out that he had like the longest, he had thrown the most no-hit innings in a debut in whatever long in history since Bumpus Jones. But that's because, of course, nobody would ever get pulled. You either throw the no-hitter since bump is because nobody in history would have been pulled uh you know up until maybe a few years ago would it even have been considered to pull ross stripling in the eighth inning of his no-hit bid all right so what's your what's your take was this a unique pitching line by the way i assume it was we've we've talked about unless someone had unless someone was removed with an injury or something well yeah we've talked about the uh i think i've written about the uh or no, it was a play index once, the longest no-hit bids interrupted.

And there are very few, although a lot more no-hit bids in which the pitcher is removed than perfect game bids. So I wouldn't guarantee that it's a unique pitching line, but probably is. Well, so first I had to figure out who Ross Stripling was. Yeah, well, and it's not irrelevant I mean, it's like half of the math here is who is Ross Stripling So first, before we get into the details and judging the move I do think that it's notable that Dave Roberts made this move

That it is notable in a good way At least some aspect of this move. I'm going to criticize it. However, I think it's notable in a good way that he was bold enough to make this move, that it does seem like a move that he made with his players' welfare in mind, which is not always common.

It's an extremely bold move, extremely second-guessable move, and of course the opposite move would have been much less second-guessable. Nobody would have second-guessed it if he just left the guy in. And, you know, I think we, like Joe Sheehan was just on here, talking about how one of the big flaws that is persistent throughout managerial DNA is the preference to the safe move, the preference to the move that isn't

going to get you, uh, five questions after the game. If it doesn't work out, you would rather have the one that maybe only gets you one question after the game or no questions because, uh, baseball orthodoxy would have dictated that you made that move anyway. And so just the very fact that Dave Roberts did this very unconventional move and seemingly out of humane reasons is, I feel like, somewhat of a very good indication of what his career as a manager is going to look like. Yeah, it's admirable, I think, that he stuck with the plan. I guess there are two ways to look at it because he did say that this was a plan that they developed before the start, not, you know, if he's throwing

a no-hitter after seven and a third, we're pulling him. But I guess the hundred pitch limit was the plan going in. And so it's kind of good that he followed the plan that he had developed in a less emotionally charged, tense atmosphere. He didn't allow himself to be swept away by this moment and make a decision that he would regret later. He stuck with the decision he had made when he was thinking rationally and was not under pressure and had plenty of time to make that decision. Some really great traits were on display here. Yeah. Unless you want to argue that he should have. Well, I think there were some bad traits too. No, I think it was, I don't like the move.

Well, okay. Actually, let me just say, I don't like the move. Well, okay, actually, let me just say, I don't like the move for the reasons that he made the move, if we believe him, if we take him seriously, that this was about sticking to the plan as far as his pitch limit, his health, about respecting his career. I feel like I don't like the move for any of those reasons. I do like it for Ross Stripling being not your best option there reasons. Yeah.

It is the right move to have the better pitcher in, I believe. I don't think that there's anything about what Ross Stripling had done in those seven and a third innings that made him better than your second best pitcher in, you know, in the bullpen coming out, um, you know, to throw nine pitches as hard as he can. I think that you just have to assume that Chris Hatcher is more likely to get an out than Ross stripling in any circumstances that you can name, but especially after a hundred pitches and, you know, facing guys for the third time, uh, and so So yeah, if he'd come out and said, you know, just wanted to get the outs, then I would have said a plus. Well, I wouldn't have said a plus because I also I have an addendum to that, which maybe I'll wait and hear what your take is. And then I'll give my addendum. Well, so a lot of these moves end up looking worse in retrospect when the reliever

doesn't cooperate. So whether it's Matt Williams taking out Jordan Zimmerman and Drew Storen coming in and losing the lead, or maybe to stick with the Dodgers, some of those times that Clayton Kershaw came out in the playoffs and relievers came in and blew the lead or whatever it is. But that doesn't help. If you're a manager, you have to be rooting for things to work out because some percentage of the time they will work out most of the time probably they will they will work out and when they don't when there's an immediate loss of the lead then that really adds fuel to the fire and everyone who was mad about this move a minute ago is now 10 times more mad about this move because

it seems to confirm the idea that if a pitcher is throwing a no hitter, he must be special that day. He must have some sort of great stuff when in reality, we know that most of the time what a guy does through the first six innings or seven innings or whatever doesn't really predict what he does after that. And Stripling had seemed too tired. what he does after that and stripling had seemed too tired he admitted that he was getting tired and his performance seemed to be suffering he he looked less impressive he wasn't overpowering to to begin with but he looked like a guy who was not going to complete the no hitter probably i mean yeah you know obviously it's so dependent on luck and who knows, but the odds are always against you getting those five outs without allowing a hit. And particularly if you

are tired and you admit you're tired and you seem to be slipping, then that makes the odds even longer. So there's that, there's the fact that, you know, it's his first start of the year. It's his first start in the majors. It's lots of pressure. If you believe the idea that intense pitches and teams operate that way, then this was the most pressure Ross Stripling had ever faced. And he threw 100 pitches. And I don't love the idea of being married to exactly 100 pitches, but it maybe is just a convenient way to decide when to pull someone. It could be 99. It could be 101.

Who cares? But it's around the time when you would want to pull these people because they're conditioned to throw that many pitches and early in the year of course it's it's pretty rare for guys to go much deeper into games than that anyway even if they are established people he hadn't thrown more than 70 I think in any spring training game and then there's the fact that he had Tommy John in the past I don't know whether that really matters because he did come back and throw, what, 14 starts in the minors, I think, last year. And after you have Tommy John seems to be the time when you're maybe least susceptible to Tommy John if you actually make it back to games. So there's that. And I don't know whether a lot of people were mentioning that it was raining, that there was bad weather. I don't know whether that really matters.

Just based on wanting to win the game, it was the right decision, I think, to remove him. And it's an important game against the Giants, and it's close, and these are your big rivals. And if you are just focused on that one game, then I think it's certainly the right move to remove him. then I think it's certainly the right move to remove him. And if you are worried about Ross Stripling's well-being and health in the future, then that just makes it the right decision even more clearly. But there is the fact that he is Ross Stripling, who we were just talking about. He is not necessarily the franchise or anything. He is not one of the Dodgers' top prospects coming into the year. He's not DeLeon or Urias or anything. And he was, you know, not one of the Dodgers top prospects coming into

the year. He's, he's not DeLeon or, or yes, or anything. He's, he's Ross Stripling and, you know, maybe he wouldn't be even pitching if not for some of the other injuries that the Dodgers have suffered. So I don't know whether that makes you want to sacrifice his health or something. It's not like, you know, Ross Stripling will never have another good moment. So we might as well maximize this one. I don't know whether that makes him any more expendable. Well, it's, it's not expendable. It's it I have, geez, I have so many thoughts on this that are kind of all like slightly different. And so I feel like there isn't a great way to lump them all together. But anyway, it's not that he's expendable. It's

that if you're doing this to protect his career, you have to think philosophically about what a career is and what the goal of a career is. And Ross Stripling, you could make the case that because he doesn't have a big signing bonus, because he's fringy enough that if he gets injured again, no team's going to invest a lot in bringing him back. And so his margins, his injury margins are kind of small, slimmer. You can make the case that in fact, it is more humane to protect him than to protect DeLeon or Urias. I mean, if Urias hurts himself today, that's a great loss for the game, but maybe you could argue that, well, he's going to like teams will rehab that guy for seven years. If they need to, he will get, he will get every chance he needs.

Stripling won't. So maybe that's one way of looking at it. But I think the other way of looking at it is that Stripling is most likely, you know, he's probably not going to make it to free agency. He's probably not going to have another moment that earns him a Sabre bio. And this isn't just a no-hitter.

This was a chance to be essentially do something that nobody has ever done in real baseball years. And if it were his third start and he were going for a no hitter, I wouldn't necessarily feel that, that, that it was worth going for. If he, if it was his third start, he was going for a perfect game. I probably would. Cause you know that I like perfect games, but not really no hitters, but there is like, you have to, there is more to this world than the one path to success in baseball. You know, it is not just about winning the world series for a team. And it is not just about making as much money as you possibly can as a player. There are other ways that we can define success, particularly in those situations

where the two things that I've just named are unlikely, as they are for most teams and as they are for most Ross striplings. And I think that you have to look for opportunities. You know, like you basically have to look for the winning hand where it is. And Ross stripling just potentially got dealt a monster hand and he is not ever going to get another monster hand. He, this is a guy who is going to be chasing, um, you know, a runner,

runner inside straight draws for his whole career. And here he's got four to the straight flush draw after the flop and you're pulling, you're, you're mucking. It's crazy to me that you would do that in this guy's career. And just based on what I think is like, I mean, look, I know that this sounds very disrespectful to Ross Stripling and where he is. And I might be wrong. I mean, maybe the Dodgers feel very differently. I think I read somewhere before this that Friedman loves him and that he's like Friedman's pet in the farm system or something. I might not have read that. I might've made that up. Don't take it to the bank. But maybe in fact, there's something about him that he is the shoemaker. He is the McHugh of this organization and he's actually poised for a breakout. But realistically, he was the 10th man who's only starting because five got

injured. And so it's not like there's any indication that there's this great investment in his future by the industry or by the team or anything like that. This is it. This is probably it. And he got this amazing situation. And so that's why I think that you don't worry too much. Now, the other thing is, it's not like he had thrown 125 pitches and it was the seventh, you know, and it was the seventh or the eighth inning.

Yeah, maybe he, maybe a no hitter is going to take a lot of pitches, but also he needs five outs. There's a runner on first. Maybe he gets the first pitch double play on the next batter. Realistically, there is a path where he completes this no-hitter in 112, 115 pitches. I just have a hard time thinking that there's anything wrong about letting a guy go 112, 115 pitches. And I also don't think that the fact that the Dodgers pulled him at 100 gives me any evidence that they know. If they had said 103 is his limit, we've done the math and it's 103, I might be convinced. But this false precision of the number 100.

And so I was looking at Ross Stripling's minor league starts. And this is like this is it's amazing to me for a quick digression. Ross Stripling has never thrown 100 pitches in a start. He has thrown 99. He has thrown 98. He has thrown 97. So it's very clear that 100 is the number. And we all know that 100 is not the number. There's nothing special about the number 100. It looks pretty. And you can put it in a tweet with an emoji, and Drake says it. But it is not a real significant number any more than 101 or 99 is. And yet, clearly, they're treating 100 like a very significant number. But 100 is not significant. And it's not clear to me that 112 would have been dangerous in the context of having 100 as your pitch limit. But also beyond that, it blows my mind that a guy, a 26-year-old who's essentially his career path to success is journeyman rotation filler, how he gets to be 26 and never throw 100 pitches in a start.

To me, this is a guy who should be throwing 120 at some point. I mean, the Dodgers are very good about using their player development to get people accustomed to doing whatever they need to do to be a contributing major leaguer. And so last year, we talked about how they have guys playing out of position in order to so that when they grow that when they make it to the majors, they won't be freaking out when you ask them to shift 25 feet or they're batting in different spots in the batting order so that they won't see themselves as a leadoff hitter or a cleanup hitter or a number eight hitter,

but they'll just see themselves as a hitter, ready to contribute no matter what the situation is. And for Ross Stripling, you have to figure that the ability to throw 120 pitches in a start is an important part of his tool belt, of his tool kit, whatever. And there's no excuse, I don't think. Now, the Tommy John surgery took a year from his career, and then last year he was rehabbing. But still, I feel like you have to be letting your starters, particularly your starters who are not 18 year olds that you drafted in the first round and bought, you know, gave a

$4 million signing bonus to you have to be letting some of them pitch very deep to see what you know how they handle it, so that it's not a foreign concept to them. So that yes, probably you can weed some of them out. And I don't think. And I don't think Dave Roberts has necessarily done any favors being given a starter who's never thrown 100 pitches. He should have by now. And that kind of blew my mind that he could get here without doing it. Yeah, I kind of agree with that. I mean, he's only made 48 minor league starts,

and a bunch of those were post-Tommy John rehab starts. But 14 of them weren't. There's no reason. I don't think there's any reason that in the 14th he couldn't go 100. I mean, again, he was going 95. If you can go 95, there's no evidence that you can go 95 but not 105. Yeah. On the other hand, Russ Stripling is exactly the sort of guy that we

would usually say should never probably throw a hundred pitches, right? I mean, unless like it's, you know, it's just a blowout or something and you want him to, to absorb the innings. He is not good enough that you would really want him going deep into many games. You would always, if you're trying to win the game still, you would always prefer to have, you know, Chris Hatcher or whoever it is that day. It is true, although realistically, that is not how the team is going to use him. True. If the long-term plan was to be pulled by the 19th batter every game, as you and I might like, then that's true. But, you know, when he was being developed in 2013, you know, when Ned Colletti was running his

player development plan, I doubt Ned Colletti was thinking, love this guy, let's limit him to four and a third when he's in the majors. I mean, you know, you want him to eat innings. And if you want him to eat innings, start having him eat innings. But now anyway, here's my last wrap up. I think that what Dave Roberts did have perhaps a obligation to do if he's going to pull the kid, which again, I think admirable sentiment. But if you're going to do it, if you're going to take this kid out of this close game in which you're removing him from a chance at history at a career defining achievement, at the very least, you bring in Kenley Jansen there. You sometimes have to treat the game with gravity beyond the normal game.

And this was a close game. It was against the Giants. And if Kenley Jansen will come into the third game of the LCS, I think Kenley Jansen has to come into this game out of respect for the situation, out of respect for the guy who you're taking out. I don't think that there's a big difference. Hatcher is a good pitcher. Well, Hatcher's a good pitcher. Hatcher's not that good a pitcher. That's the other thing, is they don't have a good, a great bullpen after Kenley Jansen. And Hatcher, he is below average for that leverage. And he might be below average for a reliever, kind of. I mean, his FIP and his ERA last year at least were below average for relievers.

But if you bring in Kenley Jansen, I think you're treating the situation with the respect that it deserves. And it's a little easier to see the logic of the decision. Now, the problem is, and I have that, that's easy for me to say. I also am not sure how realistic it is to do that because you certainly don't want to warm Kenley Jansen up in the eighth and not use him. And I don't know how long it takes Kenley Jansen to warm up. I don't know how long it took for it to be clear that Stripling was coming out. If you knew that you were pulling

him at a hundred. Yeah, it sounded based on, I mean, it was definitely a batter to batter thing at that point, based on what Robert said, you know, he was going to let him have the first batter, see what happened. And then I guess the walk settled his mind. So it was definitely, you know, you could have had someone warming. Right. If ball four is instead grounded out to second base, then you're not bringing in the reliever. And then you've got Kenley Jansen, maybe hot, and you don't want to have Kenley Jansen hot. So it's possible that it, I mean, that, that is maybe the most underrated complication in our outside analysis is not knowing exactly, not really having the internal pitcher warmup clock that managers have to

have, particularly for their slotted in guys. So it might not be possible to have done that. And it's also, it might be that, you know, maybe they haven't said this or maybe they have said this, but maybe, you know, Dave Roberts didn't just think that stripling was a little bit worse as a pitcher than Hatcher and maybe was a little bit more likely to be injured if he kept going. But maybe he actually saw his, you know, mechanics falling apart and thought, well, oh, that's the sign, you know, like maybe he had educated reasons beyond principles, beyond, you know, heuristics here. Maybe he actually saw the arm slot dropping. Maybe he saw the arm dragging. Maybe he saw his follow through was not right.

And he could see these indicators for injury risk. So I don't want to necessarily remove the possibility that Dave Roberts perfectly reasonable position was actually much more reasonable and even bulletproof. But just based on what we know, that's kind of what I took. Yeah, I just, it's always really hard to decide how much the manager is obligated to any one player's pursuit of history, when it comes perhaps at the expense of the team's chance of winning on it. Like if you ask Dodgers fans, you know, say you have a X percent chance to win this game against the Giants, you know, which could come down to the last few days of the season and removing this guy makes that chance a little bit lower, but it also gives you the chance of having this cool moment of, you know, Ross Stripling becoming the new Bumpus Jones.

I mean, it's nice for Ross Stripling, whatever else he could have accomplished in his career, it would be nice to know that you're at least Bumpus Jones. You're not going to be forgotten no matter what, because you have this one achievement. Jones, you're not going to be forgotten no matter what, because you have this one achievement, but maybe if, as we both agree, taking him out was the, was the better move was the higher probability move as far as getting a win against a team that is your main division rival. And that is expected to be roughly as good as you are. Then I don't know how much that should really factor in to your decision. It's tough. I mean, you're trying to put an entertaining product on the field, and this is the ultimate in entertainment, having this no-name essentially go for a no-hitter in his first career start. So you are satisfying the fan base in that sense. I mean, everyone who watches the game is going to be

pretty excited that they got to see this chance, at least, even if he doesn't complete it. But on the other hand, at the end of the season, I don't know whether anyone's really going to care about whether Ross Stripling got that no-hitter or not, and they are really going to care about whether they won the division or not. So I don't know. It's always a difficult decision for a manager to have to factor in one player's individual accomplishment and the team's accomplishment because they are often at odds. Yeah, this is the most complex decision a manager will have to make this year because you have two very difficult decisions happening concurrently. You have the stripling arm health long-term versus short-term decision. And then you have the no-hitter, the benefits of the no-hitter attempt versus the benefits

of winning the game attempt. And those two things make it exponentially more complicated. And on top of that, Dave Roberts had to make this decision in his fifth game as a manager, which is pretty incredible and quite a challenge. I do envy him. I still think it was pretty good before the TJ2. We might also be maybe slightly underrating his career potential because he was pretty good before the Tommy John. And, you know, maybe he's got a career, but maybe he does.

I hope he has a career, but maybe he's got a post free. It's hard to imagine he's got a post free agency career, though. I mean, let's let's play the game. Only let's play a twist on the game. Ross Stripling's career earnings in the future. How much? game only let's play a twist on the game ross stripling's career earnings in the future how much um i guess i'll say uh eight million i'll say like like 3.8 okay i'm not sure if i think that it would have been higher if he'd thrown this no hitter hmm well he could have made the autograph circuit forever that's true signed glossy photos of him being the new Bumpus Jones.

True, true. Okie doke. All right. That took a while. Yeah. All right. Let's then just go quickly to Trevor's story. Okay.

And then we'll end on that. So Trevor's story, what I want to ask you about, I have two questions for you about Trevor's story. What I want to ask you about, I have two questions for you about Trevor Story. Trevor Story, if you are not a baseball fan, has seven home runs in six games. They are the first six games of his career. He is the shortstop mainly because Jose Reyes hit his girlfriend. He would otherwise be in AAA right now, but instead he's made all sorts of histories. At this point, making kind

of okay history. We don't love the opening day history. And so he's making a history in the sense that like nobody has ever homered this frequently to start the season at any level of, you know, with any service time, but also like really more significant rookie debut history stuff here. And so my two questions for you, two ways of asking him about this. One is every year there's some guys who have big opening weeks, or they have big Augusts, or they have a big Major League debut in June,

or they have a particularly bad League debut in June, or they have a particularly bad Major League debut or whatever. Something that they do in a small sample is outrageously outliered. And I wanted to know, if I told you a guy had seven homers in six games to start the season, what profile player would you be most convinced that this was significant? Like if it were Raul Abanez doing it right now, or if it were, you know, Hector Sanchez, some like journeyman who, you know, never did much, or if it was Bryce Harper, or if it was Trevor Story, or if it was Byron Buxton, in which, in what profile of a player would you be most convinced that you are

seeing something new, a true breakout, a true corner turnt, a true, you know, development into a great, well, not necessarily a great player, but a different player than you had previously thought. Well, probably the less I know about the player, the less history the player has, the more excited I would allow myself to be. So this is probably one of the best cases for making me think it means something. A top prospect who is making his major league debut. making me think it means something, a top prospect who is making his major league debut. And at least, you know, it suggests that he is not overmatched and that he has some raw skill and that he's able to hit some good pitches for home runs. I mean, it wouldn't sway my mind as much probably

with someone who's been, you know, a journeyman bouncing around the big leagues for 10 years or something like that. And it wouldn't sway me if it were a superstar who's done this sort of thing before. So this seems like probably the case where I would allow myself to get the most excited by this sort of performance. The journeyman though, like Jose Bautista was a journeyman who'd bounced around the majors for 10 years. I mean, you could sort of imagine a guy like Bautista has demonstrated a, yes, he's got a big, you know, a long record of being mediocre. But he has also demonstrated something sticky about his talent, his skill set, about his ability as a major leaguer there is a reason that he has been able to hang around and so when and the reason he's been able to hang around is that presumably he's very close to a major a good major leaguer that the difference

between a utility guy who hangs around for 10 years or a journeyman who hangs around for 10 years and a great major leaguer is fairly small like to a you know from space you can't even see the difference and so you know you make one maybe you just have to make the one adjustment or maybe it's two adjustments or maybe it's three adjustments but you're already kind of close um and so yes i mean you're going to be suspicious of all of these the answer to all of these is okay that's a fluke, but you can make a case for the Batista. Maybe you could, I mean,

guys do change. Veterans do change. Raul Abanez made a significant change midway through his career and Edwin Encarnacion and Josh Donaldson and all sorts of guys who you thought that you had, you either thought that you had pinned down by now, or you didn't even really pay attention to them but they were old enough that when it happened you looked at them and

discovered that they were mediocre players for a long time trevor story by the way to be clear is not a top prospect he uh was briefly a top 100 prospect but in the 90s, three years ago. And since then, he's been losing, for the most part, losing prospect trajectory, was not on any top 100 prospect list this year. He was 10th on BP's Rockies list. Exactly. Which is a good system and a deep system, but still not a top prospect. He is a prospect. Yeah. And you would think that that kind of change that a journeyman might make is also a change that a young player might make. And you'd think, if anything, it's probably more likely for a 23-year-old to make that kind of transformation

than it would be for a 29-year-old. I mean, Batista was so crazy because it's so unusual, so improbable for someone in his position to have suddenly gotten so good. Whereas if we haven't even seen the player yet, if he's a 23 year old rookie, you'd think players at that age might be more willing to make a change, might be more able to implement a change that goes against their previous manner of playing. So I don't think the fact that he's 23 really, I mean, you know, he's just as capable of making a Jose Bautista style change. Not that that's what this is going to turn out to be, but just, you know, because he's a rookie doesn't disqualify him from being able to transform himself that way.

Yeah, no, you're right. And I think you're probably right completely about this. I, to play devil's advocate just slightly, it's not that I think that Jose Bautista is more likely to make a change. I think that the journeyman has demonstrated as well as probably developed over the course of that career, a more complete, fuller understanding of the game. And so you make the switch and maybe a 23-year-old though still has other things about his game that are not as developed, not as refined. He's not as strong, whatever. Whereas the, you know, Batista was. He might've been working.

I use Owen Meany constantly, but he might have been working toward this moment, his whole career, Owen Meany style. Whereas Story might make the switch, but might still have four other switches that he has to make, or a player like Story. But no, I think you're probably right. I think that the point I'm arguing, I think, is probably wrong.

Okay. Was there a second question? Yeah, we're done with that one. So wait, but you haven't, all you've said is a prospect. What kind of prospect? Give me your profile of the prospect that you would believe. Is it more believable that it's story? Would it be more believable if it was Ross Stripling throwing three straight no-hit bids? A guy who's even less of a prospect in the story?

Or would it be more believable if it's Nomar Mazzara who comes up and does the same thing in the next week? I mean, obviously you believe Mazzara is realer, but you already did. Whose opinion has changed? Sorry, of whom has your opinion changed the most in these three scenarios? If Story, Mazzara, and Trevor Brown, who I don't know who he is, let's assume that he's a young player with no prospect pedigree. Of those three do it, of whose future have you changed your opinion the most?

I think probably Story, because I think in the Mazzara case, I mean, he came up and hit a home run immediately. And I thought, well, that's impressive, but that's what he is expected to do eventually. So, okay. So maybe it's, you know, infinitesimally more likely that he will actually become that kind of player, but I already expected him to become this kind of player. He was, you know, a top 10 prospect in baseball, so sure. And with the Trevor Brown case, I don't know. I think I'm more likely to just write that off as a fluke, whereas Story is kind of in this middle area where he is a prospect and was at one time,

I guess you could say a top prospect, not Mazzara-level prospect, but a top 100 guy at least. So he kind of had that pedigree. And where was he drafted? I think he was 45th overall. Yeah. So that's impressive. So at least he looked like close to a top talent in the minors or in amateur baseball at one point in his life. And, and so, you know,

he had some physical skills and he also had some drawbacks. And if he reduces the drawbacks, then the physical skills could show through. And so I think he would probably still, and maybe I'm just saying it because he is the one who did it, but I think he would probably still be the profile that I would pay the most attention to. Yeah. Okay. The second question I have is, this is from one of the last paragraphs in Jeff Sullivan's piece about Trevor's story. Sorry, this is going to be tricky because within this story is a block quote that involves a block quote as well. This is a nesting doll of block quotes. So I'm going to summarize the block quotes.

Granke said that Story took some good pitches out of the yard. Quote from Granke, the first one was a fastball, maybe a little up, maybe me not knowing what he likes, Granke said. And then Sullivan takes from that, the reports haven't gone around yet. Trevor Story is still new, so pitchers are in the process of feeling him out. And this is an opportunity until they know what he likes and doesn't like. He can try to maximize his feasting on what he likes, and that could elevate his numbers.

The challenge comes when pitchers have a well-informed plan. It's coming. It comes for everyone. At that point, we'll see how story responds. Do you buy this? Do you believe that there is that big a difference um especially in this day and age especially when everybody's well scouted story's been around forever not advanced scouted necessarily but scouted that there's that big a

difference between a player's first go around the league and his second go around the league? I think it must be smaller than it used to be. And someone could probably do a good article on that. Maybe I will. But yeah, I mean, it must be smaller because there's so much more information available. On the other hand, we know from personal experience probably is that pitchers don't always follow scouting reports. And even if you have good information, pitchers might think that they don't need to follow that information. And so if it's their first time seeing a hitter and he's a rookie, you might think, I mean, I don't know whether Cranky would think this because it seems like Cranky pays a ton of attention to this information and would take advantage of any information at his disposal. ton of attention to this information and would take advantage of any information at his disposal.

But for most pitchers, you'd think that they'd be more likely to write off the hitter's strengths at that point and over their own strengths. So you'd think that maybe your first time seeing a guy, you'd just say, I'm just going to give him my best stuff and we'll see how he handles it. Because no matter how much scouting information you read, I'm sure pitchers have their own mental scouting reports based on the small sample of times that they have faced this hitter before. And so when that sample is zero plate appearances, maybe you're just more likely to disregard and go with your own strengths. And maybe there are cases where that plays into the hitter's strengths.

I mean, there are probably some hitters, even after you make the majors. And if you make the majors, you probably don't have an enormous gaping hole in your swing or your strike zone, or you never would have made it that far. But there must still be a difference between some guys who are more exploitable if you have that scouting report and other guys who don't really have that obvious weakness. So maybe story is in the former group. Yeah. I'm not sure. I'll look forward to your article because I don't know the answer. I think that you can get about 90. Baseball players are really smart and they know baseball players really well. And I think that they can get about 96%

of the way to a pretty good scouting report on a guy just by looking at his body type and his swing. Yeah, like the Pedro Martinez video that goes around sometimes about him just looking at the hitter's swing plane and how he holds the bat. And supposedly Pedro says you can tell what kind of hitter he is just based on that. I believe him. Yeah, which maybe you can only do that if you're Pedro Martinez, maybe, maybe most pitchers can't do that, but I do believe that he can pick up something from that. Yeah. Anyway, I, I'm not sure what I, I, there is a, a lot of talk about the adjustment, the adjustment of league makes and then having to adjust back. And,

and I am torn between believing that to be important and believing that to be overstated, which you, both of those things can be true. Um, and I don't know how much it matters for story. I mean, we do know that in general, and this doesn't take scouting advanced scouting reports into account, but we do know that in general, the first time you face a pitcher, the pitcher has the advantage and that advantage shrinks every time you see him. And so the flip side of there not being a book on Story is that Story is facing pitchers that he's never seen before. And that puts him at a disadvantage. And so, you know, you could just as easily maybe argue the opposite. I'm not sure.

Yeah. All right. We're done. Yep. Okay. So that's it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild today's five Patreon supporters to thank our Adam Schwaber, Kyle Sutherland, Samantha

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