Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 868: Jake Arrieta is Reaganing

Episode Date: April 22, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about this spring’s Tommy John toll, tanking, Barry Bonds, closer erosion, and a replay wrinkle, then discuss the dominance of Cubs starter Jake Arrieta.

Lemon, you may be witnessing history here. Making it through a full 24 hours without a single misstep is called Reagan-ing. The only other people who've ever done it, Leia, Coca, Jack, Welsh, and, no judgment, Saddam Hussein. Get up, Jake, it's late in the morning The rain is pouring, we got work to do Get up, Jake, there's no episode of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, presented by our Patreon supporters and the Play Index at

BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Yo. So Mike Trout made a mechanical adjustment and has been on base in seven of his last eight plate appearances, so I think it's time to talk about Trout and Harper. Who's better? Yeah. Right now?

Yeah. Right now, in the last 14 hours or so, you gotta say Trout. Now, in the four or five hours before that, Harper. Yeah. He homered in his first at bat, and then Tom Kohler struck him out in the second, and then he ended up going one for four. Yeah. So Trout was on base a bunch of times.

His quote about why he is succeeding now was as scintillating as the typical Mike Trout quote. I'm not trying to do too much. Just hit some balls up the middle. My timing's been on, and I've been putting some good swings on balls. It's pretty neat. Yeah, all right. And a few other things. This is going to be a little bit of a grab bag episode.

A couple follow-ups to things that we have spoken about recently. To things that we have spoken about recently Joe Sheehan in one of his recent newsletters Pointed out another potential place Where the closer role is being eroded The A's The A's have three guys with closer experience They have John Axford They have Ryan Madsen

They have Doolittle And they are sort of using Madsen and Doolittle Interchangeably I am quoting from Joe here. The key is that the A's aren't making these choices based on the save rule. They're not picking one guy to pitch based on score and inning to the exclusion of other information. Doolittle has made nine appearances, three in the eighth, five in the ninth, one in the tenth. He's twice been used to preserve a one-run deficit in the ninth.

Madsen has been used three times in the eighth four times in the ninth And once in the eleventh he's also Been used twice to preserve a one run deficit In the ninth Melvin may not be bringing Back the usage patterns of the 1980s But he's working as best he can To use his relievers effectively within The strictures of the 2010s

So sort of a Similar thing to what we were talking About I guess this would be closest to the Braves, Aratus Viscaino. I don't know if that's quite right. No, I think it's different. I think with the Braves, there is an acknowledgment that one guy is best, and they're going to try to use the best guy in the best situation a little bit more fluidly. With the A's situation, it is that different guys are best

depending on the context, depending on the situation. And rather than declaring that only one best can be the best and therefore he has to pitch in all the best situations, they're going to treat everybody as simply qualified relievers who might be the best at any given moment, depending on who's coming up. Uh-huh. Okay.

So, yeah. So, now we've got four different shots taken. Yeah. Shots fired. Closer roll is retreating on multiple fronts. Mm-hmm. All right. Which is probably good.

Probably. The normalization of non-typical closer roles Is what is going to ultimately lead To mass exodus Of typical closer roles Alright, Barry Bonds We talked about him over the winter Or in the spring We were not optimistic that he would last long

In his role as hitting coach for the Marlins Marlins are off to a bad start Marlins hitters are off to a bad start But Barry Bonds seems to be off to a great start, job satisfaction-wise. There was an article in the AP about how happy he is. He says, it's nice to be back on the field. I like it a lot. It feels better on this side than when I was playing.

I was always focused in on I've got to do the next job. I've got to go play defense. Now I get to be on this side and enjoy it. When I see something they are working so hard on, it's exciting. Dusty Baker says he seems like he's having fun. This is as feeling happy as I've seen him in a while. So he sounds very happy. Sounds like someone who might do this for a full season. Yeah, but he's, I mean, no, he doesn't. He sounds like Barry Bonds. That's like, that's Barry Bonds. Sometimes Barry Bonds was very happy and then sometimes he was not. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah, Barry Bonds is more like weather than climate. Okay, so you're still not optimistic that he's going to make it? More because I didn't think that – I feel like spring training was possibly going to be a bigger challenge than the regular season. I thought that if you'd asked me to map out the ways that Barry Bonds' experience ends, probably one of the most likely ones would have just been day two. And so he cleared some pretty important hurdles. pretty important hurdles yeah so yeah i would definitely revise my estimate but i'm not i wouldn't treat him the way that i would still treat the typical batting instructor in terms of his longevity with that job okay and just wanted to answer a quick question since it's about a play

that happened this week from matthew yayo who asked about the aaron hicks throw that was 105 miles per hour according to stat StatCast, he said, That has to be a mistake in the measurements, right? Is it really possible that a position player could throw as fast as the hardest throwing pitcher? Could the extra two steps he gets to take before the throw really make up for being not a Roldis Chapman? And I assume this measurement is accurate. I know StatCast has not been perfect. It doesn't track everything. There are occasional tracking errors. But this is not such a huge outlier.

There had been, you know, 103-point-something mile-per-hour throws before. So I don't really have any reason to doubt it, do you? Especially since Hicks was a pitcher in high school who reportedly threw in the high 90s then. And now he is older and bigger and stronger and he had a running start and he didn't have to save his arm for anything and he didn't need to be accurate to within inches necessarily and he wasn't the throw was not quite online it was good enough but do you have any reason to doubt this and are you impressed in general by fast outfield throws because i'm not sure i don't know what the baseline is it i don't

know how fast a fast pitcher would throw if he could throw like an outfielder so i'm not sure exactly how impressed to be yeah the other thing is that he's throwing at a he's throwing to a different angle and it's it seems plausible to me to me that if somebody asked you to throw as hard as you could, it seems plausible to me that you would throw at, say, a 10-degree angle upward rather than a 20-degree angle downward or whatever pitchers do. It feels like there's already a little deceleration by that point. It feels like there's already a little deceleration by that point. So I would say the answer to your question is I am impressed with Hicks because relative to other outfielders, it is the hardest that we've seen. I am not – it is like kind of like – you're right. It's a number that lacks a lot of context.

It would be like if somebody came to you and they said, holy cow, I just won 48,000 Taiwanese dollars. And you'd be like, oh, well, what's, I don't know, what's the exchange rate? I don't know. How much is a Taiwanese dollar? Is it more like a yen or is it more like a peso? And so that's the problem here. The other thing is that even within the outfielder

Subgroup We have a lot of outfielder throws And this is the hardest one So it's the most impressive to me In a year As long as we have the data This one is more impressive to me than other outfielder throws But they're not all standing on a mound

And throwing in the same situation With the same circumstances. So it's not clear how much you can compare them from one to the other. Some guys will launch themselves and fall down after the throw. It is always going to be messy for that reason. But, you know, it's definitely worth putting in an article. And it's definitely worth tweeting about. And I did not lose my mind over it.

It was not chapman hitting 105 the first time for me uh-huh yeah but i believe it i believe that it's real yeah right if nobody else had ever thrown over 97 then right i would think it was probably not real but yeah i guess i'd feel about it the way that i feel about 48 000 taiwan dollars which is 1483 US dollars. That's nice. That is nice. You'd, yeah, you'd trade your TV for it, but not your car. Right. That's a, that is a, that is a.

Reference to a book that no one has read. What's the opposite of a callback? Call forward. That's what that was. Yeah. All right. We got an update from official statistician or scorekeeper of Effectively Wild, John Chenier. A contest has been completed, and I am victorious. Tommy John.

Obviously, I'm going to point that out. Tommy John. This avoid Tommy John surgery in the following calendar year. And we got a certain amount of points for starts they made. And if they had Tommy John surgery, they lost a bunch of points. So basically, whoever had a Tommy John guy was probably going to lose this thing or not win this thing. And that's kind of how it happened. The four of us drafted, what, 10 pitchers each or something? And I think only one of them ended up having Tommy John surgery, Lance Lynn, who was picked by Doug Thorburn. And that was the difference. I won.

Doug came in second. Would have come in first if not for Lance Lynn. And Randy finished third? No. Jeff finished third. And you, relying on Randy, the random number generator finished last but wait wait no i didn't finish last uh doug finished last no doug oh even with the tommy john doug didn't finish last i think not no impressive wow yeah all right and uh and that because john brought

that up i was thinking about this year's tommy john toll because I wrote for Grantland last year, I found that the greatest danger zone for Tommy John surgeries is March and April. And there are a bunch of reasons for that. Partly, it's probably guys coming off an off season and having to ramp up to pitch again, and maybe going overboard with that. But also probably that certain guys get hurt near the end of a season, and they hope that an off season of resting will fix Whatever ails them and then it doesn't And so then they have surgery the following spring For whatever reason though that's when you

See the biggest concentration Of Tommy John surgeries and We are just about through April and this year's Tommy John toll has been very light At least at the major league level And I'm looking at John Rogel's Tommy John toll has been very light, at least at the major league level. And I'm looking at John Rogel's Tommy John tracker, which he links to from his Twitter handle. And it's only six

major league pitchers or guys who were projected to have major league time or have had major league time have had Tommy John this spring. And really the most prominent one is probably Carter Capps. Sort of sucked to lose Carter Capps because he was fun, but he wasn't going to make a big difference in this season. And the other guys are pretty nondescript. You know, Tim Collins, Felix DuBront, Manny Pera, Jairo Diaz, and Andrew McCurahan. So this is not big names lost. And over the previous four springs, the average number of Tommy John surgeries performed in March and April was 11 and a quarter. So this is like half of the usual toll numerically and probably less than that going by how much of an impact those guys were projected to make. I mean, 2015, we lost Brandon McCarthy and Zach Wheeler and

Hugh Darvish. And 2014, lost a bunch of guys, AJ Griffin and Yvonne Nova and Matt Moore and Bobby Parnell and Bruce Rondon and Jared Parker and Patrick Corbin. And the list went on and on. There were 16 that year. The year before was pretty light. Also, there were six that year, too, and no huge names. And then the year before that, there were 11 and some fairly big names there, too. So I don't think this means anything. I don't think teams have figured out Tommy John surgery or anything. But it is nice, at least, that we haven't lost anyone this year that we're going to be lamenting the absence of all year. It's a nice little change from the last couple of years. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so Rich Hill pitched. Oh, yes.

I can make this quick. Hill so far has been fairly binary. He has either had a ton of strikeouts in a game or a bunch of walks in a game. And this was the first game that he did both, which was an interesting thing to see. It's to me strangely encouraging that he could synthesize those things uh-huh uh that he could as i mean this is a cliche but that he could you know not be all the way there not totally have his stuff or whatever and still be very good he pitched six innings he struck out 10 he allowed one earned run two runs and both of the runs came on really cheap hits, like a flare to center and a swinging bunt that hugged the line, and the baseman had to just sort of eat it.

And otherwise, he was very good, though he, you know, again, lost his release point early in the game and walked. I think he walked four in the first two or three innings or three or four innings. He did not hit any batters. He did. The unearned run was a wild pickoff throw that he made. And, you know, all in all, this was a totally different kind of hybrid start for him. And he is now at, he has, he now has, you know, he's back to having good numbers this year.

He has a 114 ERA plus. He has a 2.72 FIP. He leads all of baseball with his strikeout rate and he's got 29 strikeouts in nine walks in 19 innings and over now we've got eight in eight starts which is twice as many as when we first began this and in those eight starts he's got a 2.25 era a 2.45 fib 12.2 strikeouts per nine it's starting to get more convincing, even though it's not as, you know, it's not nearly as clean as it was four starts ago. And what's so odd to me about Rich Hill, what's the kind of weirdest thing about how he's

good, is that he is, he pitches like a like a 21 year old super prospect right now he is he's Vince Velasquez he's what we think Vince Velasquez is or he's what Scott Casimir was when he came up this guy who was sort of unhittable struck out a ton but his uh he would just lose his control and he didn't have great control, generally speaking. And that was always the risk. And so it's weird because he's 36. And I'm not sure we've ever seen a 36 year old, or really anybody over like 31, who had a profile like this at all. He's like, it is like he is a guy who got a new arm and is now learning how to pitch with it. So anyway, so if he were 22 right now,

imagine for a second that he was 22 and these were his eight Major League starts. He would probably be, I mean, obviously this is just on stats, not on this stuff or anything like that, but just on these eight starts, he would probably be a better prospect than Velazquez. And he'd be, I mean, he'd be an elite, elite prospect going forward. But of course he's 36 and I don't care about his seven-year outlook. I only care about his two or three for this exercise. But I'm going back up to three years and 28.5 million. Okay. Anything else? Yes.

Did you see the overturned and then re-overturned Bach play earlier? I wanted to talk about that briefly. Okay. I used to be very interested in Bach calls. This was a very odd Bach call because what happened is Colin Ray was pitching from the windup. Andrew McCutcheon was on third. McCutcheon bluffed like he was going to steal.

He convinced Ray that he was going to steal. And Ray, mid-windup, sort of quick pitched. He cut out a lot of his motion and then threw a pitch home. And a balk was called. And then the umpires sort of gathered to talk about whether it was really a balk. The Pirates announcers were extremely whether it was really a balk. The Pirates announcers were extremely confident that it was a balk, which is weird because you should never be. And they, no, I don't think, it's hard for me to tell, but I think that they didn't understand why it was a balk.

I think that they thought that the quick pitch was a balk, but of course, pitchers quick pitch. Johnny Cueto does it a lot, for instance. And so the umpires apparently decided, well, actually, that's fine. And they called it not a balk. And then Clint Hurdle went and looked at the replay, or somebody who was looking at the replay called him and described what had happened. And Clint Hurdle went back out and argued and said that he, Ray had like left the mound. He had sort of kind of come off the mound in doing this, which then makes it yes, a balk.

And the umpires did not go and look at the replay. The umpires just trusted him. I think we talked about this hypothetical very early on in the replay era where I forget what the hypothetical was, but for instance, say you've used your replay already your review but you can still see on camera as a manager or as a person with access to the camera that in fact the umpires got the call wrong if you go out to the umpires and say i watched it dude you got it wrong i watched it that's all there is you like i what i saw the video you're gonna be embarrassed yeah and the umpire believes you because you have some credibility in the game and they figure, oh, he's a trustworthy man.

Do they overturn that even though you don't have a review? And in this case, it's not clear to me whether it could have been reviewed. I don't know if this is a reviewable play. But the point is they did not review it. They just went, oh, well, Clint says. And they might say that, in fact, Clint Hurdle clarified the rules with them or something, but it looks pretty clear what happened. Clint Hurdle got access to the video review, went back out after the call had been settled, and said,

saw it, you're wrong, and they changed it. And so that is, there's this very weird way that replay review is it puts video of the play all over the park, like sometimes on the board where the umpires could see it, sometimes in the concourses. Yeah. And so you have this situation where like the crowd might be reacting to a replay, even though the umpires didn't see it, even though the play hasn't been officially reviewed. Yeah. The manager might be able to come out and tell you exactly what happened. But this is like extrajudicial video. It feels to me— It's not admissible.

Like it shouldn't be admissible. But the jury heard it. It's like you have to instruct them not to. But then that gets to the question of what is the point? The jury heard it. It's like you have to instruct them not to. philosophical question that is not, in my opinion, currently addressed by replay rules or by human self-actualization, and I'm not sure what's going to happen going forward, but I do envision that there will come a time where this type of play happens on a much larger scale with much higher stakes, and an umpire is going to have to decide whether to ignore facts that he knows, because it is not within the official parameters of video review. And I'm very curious to see how

we will react, particularly how we will react if the umpire chooses to ignore relevant information, which I think, as I stand right now, I think would be the correct action. The other thing that, this is just a little tag on to this, but I learned after this, Andy Green came out and yelled that you can't argue a bot call. Everybody knows you can't argue a bot call. It's automatic injection if you argue a bot call. And Andy Green came out and was arguing that Hurdle never should have been given the chance to convince them

because it's automatic ejection. And Green himself got ejected for this, which reminds me of another little tack on, but Green himself. And the crew chief, Brian Gorman, was quoted by the newspaper explaining that, in fact, you can argue a bot call, Ben. You can argue a bot call. But as Gorman was quoted by the newspaper explaining that, in fact, you can argue a balk call, Ben. You can argue a balk call, but as Gorman says, you can't argue a step balk call, like a step to first. You can argue all the other kinds of balks. If he does or does not step, then that's an automatic ejection, but other types of balks you can argue, end quote. What? Baseball rulebook is weird.

So weird. Well, baseball rulebook is weird, but baseball automatic ejection rulebook is the weirdest. The things that you're not allowed to argue is so weird. And the way that that is enforced is especially weird. The tack-on to the tack-on is that Andy Green, who is, you might remember Andy Green, the ball player, little guy, and he's like 37. And so a combination of those two things, he looks not just like a player, but like a rookie. He looks like a rookie. It's sort of fun.

Just watching him argue made him one of my favorite managers in baseball, and I hope that he sticks around 75 years more, but he's, he's ejected. He's arguing. He's not like punching the guy. He's not doing the full, uh, demonstrative. He's not throwing dirt on the plate or anything like that. He hasn't thrown anything. He's just arguing like a manager would post ejection.

You know how it goes. You argue, you argue, you argue, you get ejected and now you're going to get your money's worth, so you argue even more. And after maybe 30 seconds of post-argument escalation arguing, post-ejection escalation arguing, Mark McGuire came out and got in between him and the umpire and sort of pushed him back to the dugout, which I don't think I've ever seen. Have you ever seen a coach? No, it's always the manager, the coach getting in between. Right. And usually specifically to, you know, to avoid the player getting ejected or to avoid

the player getting suspended. And that just wasn't really a factor here. He was already ejected. He wasn't doing anything close to the limits that you would normally put on a manager's post-ejection argument and it was because mcguire is giant and an adult sized adult and green is fairly small for a ball player it had this very weird belittling vibe to it and i was i was really uncomfortable with it all right i don't know if green was or not anyway it's you should watch the replay so everybody should find the replay just to see if i'm projecting as a as a formerly very very small

young looking person maybe i'm projecting but it was weird i don't and maybe i'm if i'm wrong and that this always happens and i just never notice but i don't think the bench coach ever comes out and steers the manager back to his place Does he? No, I mean if the manager makes contact with the umpire Then that can increase the length of the suspension But I haven't really seen anyone come out And try to prevent that

Yeah That I can recall That's weird Alright Love Andy Green though Fun to watch Yeah, I don't know if he's any good as a manager But love him

By the way, the Clayton Kershaw 46-mile-per-hour pitch to Tyler Flowers, would you do things like that if you were Clayton Kershaw? Well, do you know the back story? No. He sort of started his motion, and then he was crossed up by the catcher's sign or by the catcher's location. It did look awkward and unintentional. Yeah, and so rather than throw a cookie, he just decided to do that.

Okay. So he said it was not planned. He wasn't throwing any of those. Okay, because it would be fun if it hadn't. I don't know whether it would be a good idea if you have Clayton Kershaw's stuff, but it'd be fun. I mean, my first thought was that this was part of a bet with Granke, because didn't Granke have the slowest pitch bet going with somebody? I don't know.

Yeah. Back when Granke was with the Dodgers, I think he had a slowest pitch bet going. Googling right now. Playing a game within the game with Randy Wolfe, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Sean Markham, Randy Wolfe, and Zach Granke have been having a who can throw the slowest pitch bet. And so, yeah.

So that's what I assumed it was. But yeah, you once wrote an article about how Zach Greinke had thrown a pitch at every mile per hour, right? Was that you? It was like between 60 something and high 90s. He had hit everything. Yeah, I was that was like a parlor game back when he came up that the BP writers would often talk about how he could do that, how he would hit every number in a start between 66 and 93 or whatever.

And so I went and looked and saw if he ever did, how close he ever did. And I think I found that Jared Weaver, surprisingly, is actually the king of that. Huh. Okay. He is exploring the bottom range of that in his later career. All right. So quick on Arrieta. We don't have to say that much because this no-hitter against the Reds didn't really tell us anything about Arrieta that we haven't learned over the last year, year and a half. He's awesome. You and I are not that high on no-hitters generally as an achievement,

and you'd think we might be in for a bunch of them this year, given how many strikeouts and lousy lineups we're seeing. But I thought, at first, I thought it was not a particularly impressive no-hitter, just because, you know, his command didn't seem great, and he walked four, and he only struck out six, and it was the Reds, and so for various reasons, it was not his most overpowering looking start. But I think the more I thought about it, the more impressive it seems because it was a 16-0 game. It was a blowout.

And he sort of pitched as if it was a blowout. He threw a ton of fastballs. He threw 66.4% fastballs, which I think ESPN Reported was his most In a start since May of 2014 So he was really just Firing fastballs in there just

Kind of pitching to contact as he said After the start and yet He still did not allow a hit still did Not allow a hard hit ball And he is kind of the King of not allowing hard Contact over the last season plus, according to the StatGast exit velocity stats last year. There were 197 pitchers who allowed at least 180 tracked batted balls, and Arrieta had the lowest average exit velocity of anyone at 85.1. And this year, I think he's second in that

stat behind Max Scherzer. So he does seem to have this ability to, even if he's not using all of his repertoire, even if he's just sort of trying to get out and firing it in there, guys still can't seem to square up his pitches. And that is in a way as impressive as someone who misses a ton of bats in a start, which obviously he is also quite capable of doing. And there is really an orgy of Arietta fun facts that came out after this start. You had a couple of those. You pointed out that over his past 24 starts, the median number of runs he has allowed is zero. You also pointed out that the Cubs now have a plus 60 run differential, which is higher than every AL team with a positive run differential combined.

And just the basic raw stats, you don't even need a fun fact. It's just the stats over his last 24 regular season starts. .86 ERA, 178 innings pitched, 91 hits, a 173 to 33 strikeout to walk ratio. Which, by the way, is that to me is the most interesting thing about this. I still don't really get why Jake Arrieta is this good because that's a normal Strikeout to walk rate for a good pitcher Yeah He's striking out a batter per inning And striking out four and a half

Or five per That's Corey Kluber, that's Chris Sale That's David Price, that's a dozen guys And he's so much better It's not just that he's better And you're like oh why is he outperforming his fit It's like remember when we talked We had a play index a couple years ago about

Talking about whether Bob Gibson's record Could be broken I think and Looking at guys who had managed An ERA below one Or below 1.12 over A qualifying season's worth Of innings even if not an explicit Season and I think

As I recall I think that Oral Hirshhiser was the best that we could find. And it was at like, I think it was like high 0.9s for 162 or something like that. It might have even been a little higher than that. So we considered, you know, I mean, Gibson obviously threw 300 innings and, you know, we found that somebody had done it, but, you basically it even even loosing the arbitrary end points of a full season it's still extremely hard and arietta is just blowing hersheys are blowing everybody away a 0.86 over what is essentially a full season's worth of innings i mean almost as a starter as a starter he's better he's better As a starter. As a starter. He's better as a starter than Wade Davis has been. That's true.

That's crazy. It is. It's really crazy. I don't know whether you find this impressive or not, but the consecutive quality starts record that he is now approaching, I don't know whether if I had asked you before he started this streak, do you think this is an unbreakable record like the ones we talked about the other day, whether you would have said so. But the record for most consecutive quality starts, which obviously

was not a thing that pitchers knew about when they were doing it because it's a fairly recent invention. But Bob Gibson had 26 in a row in the year of the pitcher, and then you have to go back to pre-Babe Ruth times, like dead ball era when everyone pitched a complete game every time. And Arrieta is now at 24, which is third longest. He's one behind Eddie Sicotti and two behind Bob Gibson. So he has a very good chance of breaking this record I mean, I don't know, it's sort of the same thing as saying he has a.86 ERA over the last full season almost

It's a little different in that essentially he hasn't had a single bad start in that bunch Of course, if he had, maybe he wouldn't have a.86 ERA over that span But it is impressive that he has never been bad over that span. Even his off days have not really been off. So I don't know whether you would have considered that an unbreakable record if I had asked you before he began this streak. Yeah, I don't know. Quality starts is a fine measure of a pitcher in a lot of ways.

But it's also got enough loopholes on both sides Quality starts is a fine measure of a pitcher in a lot of ways, but it's also got enough loopholes on both sides that it's hard to stake the guys. It's hard to stake a fun fact on it to me. But it is cool. It's good. By the way, Bob Gibson's ERA plus in his 1.12 ERA, 1.12 ERA season, okay? His ERA plus was 258, all right? Arrieta's over the last 24 starts, 178 innings, is 467.

That's nuts. And he got two hits and a walk in that game as well. And Jeff Sullivan tweeted the very fun fact that over the last 24 starts, Jake Arrieta has batted 238, 262, 429. And Jake Arrieta's opponents have batted 150, 199, 214. 199-214. So even in this era when pitchers are mostly terrible at being batters, Arrieta has been good at that too and just totally blown away the actual professional batters that he has been pitching to. And I saw a few references to, you know, this is the Reds and they're tanking. And I've kind of been feeling this year that we are now over applying the term tanking. And I've kind of been feeling this year that we are now over applying the term tanking. I've a couple times I've had to edit it out of articles. Yeah. Like it's possible to just be bad at baseball. It's possible just to have a bad

baseball team. And it's fun. Look, it's fine to say rebuilding. Rebuilding is fairly value neutral. I mean, they traded Chapman and Frazier they're rebuilding They're not aggressively trying To seek losses tanking implies That losses Yeah that it's sort of an acknowledgement That losses are more beneficial to you than wins Not just that not just that you're Limited in what you're going to do this year

But that yeah we kind of know that we'd Rather lose than win yeah right So so which teams to you Qualify as tanking Right now as opposed to just kind of know that we'd rather lose than win. Yeah, right. So which teams to you qualify as tanking right now, as opposed to just, you know, being in the down part of the cycle, which is something that baseball teams have always gone through? Hmm, I don't know that I, nobody's clear enough that I would want to use a term that they would take offense to. It's a loaded term.

I want to be sure. I mean, there are some very bad teams this year. I think that there's, I think that there's, I mean, I even want to be cautious about this, but I think that there's some evidence that the Cubs preferred to lose at a certain point in their rebuild toward the end of the season.

And I think that there's the degree to which the Astros went, I think could fairly be called tanking. Other than those, I And I think that there's the degree to which the Astros went, I think, could fairly be called tanking. Other than those, I don't think that there's really any point in baseball history where I necessarily want to use the term. Yeah, well, I'm sure in early baseball history there was probably. But yeah, I mean, there are some truly terrible teams in baseball right now, But yeah, I mean, there are some truly terrible teams in baseball right now, but it doesn't seem to me like certainly all of the teams that have had that term applied to them this year, I don't think it's necessarily fair.

I don't think it's that they are doing this for draft picks or something. They're just bad right now. Some teams are, you know, the Rockies are bad probably just because they're bad. They don't know how to be good. They haven't known how to be good. And, you know, the Padres were really trying last year and that didn't work out. And so now they're pretty bad. And the Brewers are also bad. And, you know, they had a good team and it kind of got old. And now they're sort of starting over. But that's the way that baseball has always worked. I mean, at any point in baseball history,

there were a handful of teams every year that were very bad. And a lot of them were very bad because they had been good and they were, you know, trying to be good again, but weren't there yet. So I don't know. Even, I mean, the Braves, I guess, are the closest you can get. I think the Braves, the Phillies, and the Reds are the three teams where you can, are the closest you can get. I think it is clearly misapplied to the Rockies. Yeah.

And probably clearly misapplied to the Brewers. And I don't know if anybody's saying it about the Marlins, but it would be. Even though those are not good teams. They're very bad teams. And, yeah, I would probably at this point the Braves, you know, in this season is probably the team that you could come the closest to saying. The Phillies over the past couple seasons is probably the closest you could come to saying. And then the Reds are sort of on the bubble between the Rockies and the Phillies to me.

All right. Well, anyway, that was just a side note. So Arrieta, another fun fact from Tom Tango, he has a game score, an average game score of 76 over his 24 recent starts and Clayton Kershaw's best stretch in his career of 24 starts, 74 game score, slightly worse. So when we talked about Noah Syndergaard the other day and who's the best pitcher in baseball right now, I mean, we both put Arrieta ahead of him, but we didn't do so emphatically. I don't think maybe we should have been more emphatic about that. But I mean, is this clear that he should be like all time great. And, you know, Randy Johnson was huge and threw incredibly hard and struck out everyone. And Pedro was, I mean, you know, it was just so clear from watching him that he was incredible. And Arrieta, the soft contact seems to be a big part of why he's been so

excellent over the last season plus. And maybe that's a real thing, but it's a little fuzzier. It's a little harder to see or to understand. So maybe it's just not on the surface quite as impressive as those previous highs, but results wise, it certainly is in the same class, if not in a higher one. Yeah, well, I think that given the fact that I admit to not really getting Arrieta, I readily acknowledge that what I say might not be giving him enough credit, because it's not that I'm saying Arrieta's a fluke, or Arrieta's not this good, or anything like that. I'm saying Arrieta is a fluke or Arrieta is not this good or anything like that. I'm just saying that I don't know. It's hard for me to say. And it's very possible that in fact, he is literally the greatest pitcher of all time. I'm not ruling that out by any means. However,

just because I have a certain way of viewing the sport and because I put more confidence in things that I can see and identify and consider very solid. I still think that my brain fires more electrons when I think about Clayton Kershaw from May 22nd on last year, which was 24 starts, same number of starts as Arrieta. And he had a 1.39 ERA. So clearly sub gibson but uh but he in those starts you know he struck out you know 13 batters per nine he struck out nine batters per walk he had i think a sub one fib and it's just easier for me to get a handle on that. And so and you know, there's no shame in choosing Kershaw over Arietta, I don't think. Did I specifically answer your question? I can't remember what the words were in your question.

Sort of. I mean, is this in the Pedro at his peak class? It's in the class. Yeah, no, it's in the the class if you're asking me if you gave me a twitter poll i would not click this bubble however uh-huh uh it's definitely in the class it's it would be one of the ones that you would ask yeah i think i mean yes definitely yeah you got here's the thing about here's the greatest maybe here's the other thing about arietta is that all fun facts you choose your parameters right To suit the fun fact And you sort of cheat In whatever way you can

And so I have seen a lot of Jake Arrieta fun facts That instead of going back 24 starts They only go back 16 Yeah I've seen one That goes back to his previous no hitter So it includes two no hitters Yeah well if you go You can make an even more impressive fun fact Yeah, I've seen one that goes back to his previous no-hitter. So it includes two no-hitters.

Yeah, well, if you go, you can make an even more impressive fun fact to some people's eyes if you only go back to the trade deadline. So you only have 16 starts. And then I think his ERA is 0.55. But what's amazing is that people who are cheating in making fun facts by eliminating the less impressive starts. This is what they're eliminating. They're eliminating eight starts where Jake Arrieta had a 1.53 ERA. They're eliminating that because it ruins the narrative. They're eliminating the 1.53 ERA because it's not good enough to capture what Jake Arrieta is doing, which is a meta fun fact.

Arietta is doing, which is a meta fun fact. Uh-huh. Okay. Well, we can end on the meta fun fact. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Just like these five exemplars of listenership, Joel Gillespie, Nick Dyer, Kevin Rust, Kyle Jones, and Aaron Schaefer. Thank you. You can also buy our book.

The only rule is it has to work. Not only can you buy it, but you can have it in your hands very soon. Comes out on May 3rd and you can pre-order it now at Amazon or Barnes & Noble or your local bookstore. It is the story of how Sam and I spent last summer when our podcast schedule was spotty

because we were running a professional baseball team. The Sonoma Stompers. I really hope that listeners of this show will like the book, and I hope that they will give it a shot. So please consider pre-ordering if you are interested in reading it. You can also rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Your reviews are appreciated. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild,

and you can reach us and send us your questions at podcasts at baseball prospectus.com or by messaging us through Patreon. You can get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription to the play index by going to baseball reference.com and using the coupon code BP. So that is it for this week. I'm sure that noted admirer of Jake Arrieta's physique, Sam Miller will spend some of his weekend admiring a portion of that physique that was revealed by Arrieta's tank top at his post-game press conference after the no-hitter.

However you choose to spend your weekend, I hope that you have a wonderful one. We will be back on Monday. Jake, it's not too late To start again By making amends You go loud Don't have no doubt, don't have no doubt.

You don't have to know what the world's about. Get out of here. He is pitching a no-hitter. What? Miss Lemon was just leaving. No, Lemon, please come in. When you're pitching a perfect game, you don't walk Albert Pujols. And you are the Albert Pujols of having problems.