Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 897: Mark Simon on Fun Facts and The Yankees Index

Episode Date: June 3, 2016

Ben and Sam talk to ESPN Stats & Info’s Mark Simon about fun-fact philosophies, David Wright, Daniel Murphy, and other notable players, and his new book, The Yankees Index.

So every now and then you gotta be effectively wild. And the comms will know who we're made from When the skyline rides and the high rise I see through you Hello and welcome to episode 897 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus Presented by our Patreon supporters and the Play Index at BaseballReference.com I'm Benton Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight And I am Sam Miller with... No, still doesn't. You're really trying to make this work. Trying to make it a thing. Mostly what I just want is I want you

to have a little hesitation where you're not sure. I like to be unpredictable. Yeah, well... For you. That was unpredictable Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus, and I'm assuming that he is okay. So I'm not even going to ask. We have a guest today. That guest is Mark Simon, who is a professional stat generator. He is

officially a stats and info publishing specialist at ESPN, so he helps oversee the stats and info blog and Twitter, and he covers the Mets and Yankees And some of you might remember him from Baseball Today The dearly departed podcast that I know a lot of people have found Effectively Wild as a Baseball Today substitute And I'm a former listener as well And he has now become an Effectively Wild listener also And he has a new book out which is called Yankees Index And we're going to talk to him a little bit about that and some other assorted stories, his philosophies about fun facts and maybe some players who are over and underperforming. Hello, Mark.

Hi. Hi, guys. Thanks for having me on. And also emailed me something Yesterday there was an ESPN Stats and info fact via Elias About the crazy Mariners Comeback on Thursday And this evidently has It refers to a previous Comeback that has some significance To why you work at ESPN So tell the story

Yeah so if we're going to talk fun facts We have to talk fictional fun facts You had this game last night This insane game that ended at like three o'clock in the morning, the Mariners and the Padres, where the Mariners came back from 10 runs down. A lie is found that it was the first time that a team came back from 10 down in the fifth inning or later since that goofy 2001 Indians Mariners game, where the Indians came back from 12 down to beat the Mariners, thus preventing the Mariners from getting the 117 wins.

Remember that they finished with 116, which tied the major league record. Anecdote to go with that. I sent a letter to an email to Jason Stark saying, hey, I thought that this was really cool. I've got a fun fact for you. This is the greatest comeback in a baseball game since Charlie Brown was pitching.

He had a 50 to nothing lead with two outs in the ninth inning. Peppermint Patty went to sell popcorn and Charlie Brown gave up 51 runs to lose the game and beat Peppermint Patty in the process. So he runs that in his useless facts, fun facts column. And I say, oh, well, this is good. I have an entryway to Jason Sirk here. So I send him a follow-up that says, hey, can you give me the name of the person who's in charge of hiring for Baseball Tonight? I've been in the newspaper business for a while. I'm considering switching careers and thought that something like that would be interesting. So sure enough, him not knowing me at all, he sends me the name of the producer of Baseball Tonight. I write the producer of Baseball Tonight. He sends me a name back. And six

months later, that guy hires me. Cool. So you owe it to Peanuts also. Yes, Peanuts, Jason Stark, and the 2001 Mariners. So somewhere out there, someone hopefully is inspired by that game that took place last night, and maybe they'll send me a note, and maybe I can help them in the entryway into their dream job. Well, so give us your philosophies about fun facts, Well, so give us your philosophies about fun facts, because every night you're monitoring games, you are feeding information to TV people and written content people, and you're answering questions and fielding stat requests. And you're also generating these emails, and you're trying to come up with content yourself and the people you work with also. So Sam and I talk a lot on the show about what constitutes a good fun fact or what constitutes a bad fun fact. So for you, when you are researching

and you're trying to put together interesting information for people, what are your criteria? What are you looking for? And when does something not rise to the level of being worthy of passing it on? Okay, I'm glad that we're talking about this, because I've heard you guys disperse some of our fun facts, and I've heard you guys praise some of our fun facts. It's good that we kind of get this out and open. First and foremost, it's really simple. There's got to be the, when you see it, you literally have to go, wow! Like, that to me is the ultimate and fun fact.

And it could literally be anything. Some people are so into the idea that everything has to be predictive. It doesn't have to be predictive. All you're looking for is the wow. If I can get the wow out of you, I feel like I've really accomplished something. Now, I don't necessarily need eight qualifiers to do that. Does it have to be an audible wow? Because that's asking a lot. No, we can have a telepathic wow, I think I would take that too. Okay. All right, sure. But just I think sometimes we get into these where we get these eight qualifiers,

and I think some of those are actually pretty good because you get great lists. For the most part, though, all right, you want to limit the qualifiers. I'll give you – here's one that's really simple, and this one's kind of stupid, but I thought of it because it's probably my favorite Mets fun fact. So Jesse Orozco, he wore uniform number 47 for the Mets. You know what his career record for the Mets was? Four and seven. No, 47. No, 47 and 47. 47, yeah.

Yes. I just think that that's cool. Wow. Yeah, exactly. And that's kind of the point. It doesn't have to tell you anything. I'm trying to remember what the Bryce Harper one was that you guys were talking about a couple of weeks ago. Oh, right. It was the one about his opening day home runs. Right.

I thought that one was okay. I think sometimes we can push the envelope a little bit. But for the most part, I feel like we do a good job with that. We're looking for the emotional reaction, and we're understanding the idea, and I was talking about this with someone last night, that if something happened three years ago, it's not a rarity, and that we shouldn't call it a rarity, and no one should call it a rarity. And I would hope that people are smart enough to recognize that.

I think that the 47 and 47 one is a good one in it. I think it's good because it sort of, well, we probably shouldn't think of these things as being just one thing. A fun fact is a kind of a way of communicating, but you can communicate in this language with lots of different tones. And 47 and 47 one is basically, it's like, you know, it's telling a joke. It's like a little, it's a little pun almost It's like a little, it's a little pun almost. It's a little, it's a little bit of whimsy. And just as you might in real life tell a joke and someone wouldn't be like, well, that's not predictive. Your joke isn't serious.

Well, of course it's not serious. It's a joke. That's the whole point. And then we have our, we have our other things that are serious. And then we have things that are in the middle. And then we have things that are propaganda. And then we have things that are argumentative. And all of these things do um do their own

things and so um so uh yeah like i i think that the arasco ones it's just a beautiful little it's almost like a little coen of of of like of accidental wisdom or something like that right and like there are themes like i tried to i don't some people might think this is a reach but from last night you had the warrior bench scored 45 points last night. And I think that it's kind of cool if you were going to do some sort of cross-sport comparison, the Warriors bench, which I don't know what they shot, versus the Mariners bench, which went six for eight with eight RBIs or whatever it is. I think that that's kind of fun.

Everyone watches sports in their own way. And I think that with the fun fact, I feel like we've created a fun way to watch sports. Do you put much thought into how you phrase? I'm going to give you an example. I saw somebody sent me a fun fact a couple days ago,, Michael Fulmer is the first Tigers pitcher or the second Tigers pitcher in 45 years to have two starts of seven innings or more with no earned runs and three or fewer hits in his first six starts. And too many qualifiers. But I feel like that is a perfectly legitimate fun fact. If you just, you hide the, you have to hide, you hide a couple qualifiers, you tuck a couple in the back in a parenthetical. So like minimum seven innings is, minimum seven innings is the, is like, is like, you know, in journalism school. Did you go to journalism school, Mark? I didn't, but I studied, I majored in it.

So they always tell you that, wait, that's the same thing. Basically. Yeah, okay. So they always tell you, you know, just say said when you're quoting somebody. Don't say exclaimed. Don't say laughed. Don't say, just say said. And the reason is that people, when they're new in journalism, they think that, oh, I keep repeating this word said.

And they feel like they have to do something new because otherwise the reader is going to notice the repetition. But in fact, when you repeat, it becomes part of the furniture and the reader just, their eye goes right over it. And that is the unobtrusive way of doing it. And when you start trying to get, you know, clever with your exclamations, that's really when the reader starts to get, you know, annoyed at how many of these things there are. So you just say said. And I feel like minimum seven innings or minimum 500 at bats or minimum whatever. If you do it, if you tuck it in the back as a parenthetical, it almost blends in perfectly. And if you put it in the front, now all of a sudden you've got a mouthful. And so like

the Fulmer one, again, not knowing the details exactly, but I mean, you know, if you said Fulmer's the second Tiger to have two shutout starts in his first six outings, well, look, that's not going to burn. It's not going to burn the world down or anything like that. But that's a legitimate, that's an interesting thing to know. Like, oh, that puts it in perspective what he's done. And then you just put them in the back minimum seven innings per start. And so yeah, anyway, this all started with a question. all started with a question. How much of the crafting of a fun fact would you say is the finding of the fact and how much of it is the editing of the text? Boy, that's great. I would say it's, well, think about it this way. We have like 20 people looking at baseball reference play index at the same time. So that kind of cuts down a little bit, I guess, on the amount of time that you might spend on a fun fact. We put a lot of time into the wording and teaching people how to, I guess, how to get it right.

Because as you're saying, there is definitely a nuance to it, tucking the qualifiers in the back, making sure that you haven't overdone it, making sure. And this is the thing that we, that the biggest challenge for us is it's very easy for someone who's repeating the note to leave out a qualifier and thus completely mess up the note. We hear that from audiences all the time if I go talk to my friends about a fun fact that we said. So there's not much we can control with that, but we can control how we word it. And certainly ease of understanding is an extremely high priority for us. I hope all those people are using coupon code BP because that's a lot of money you're leaving on the table otherwise. Of course.

By the way, fun facts do not just have to be statistical. A colleague sent me this last night, and I remembered it, and I was glad that we did. Coco Crisp, you've seen the heat maps that we do. I presume that a lot of your listeners are familiar with this. We had a heat map, and this is like five years ago. I don't remember if it was an 0 for 3 or a 3 for 3, but we had a Coco Crisp heat map where the three hits looked like Mickey Mouse.

Yeah. Tim, let's start with the plug there. So you just wrote a book of many fun facts It's not entirely fun fact based But there are many inside it It's called the Yankees Index And it's organized as a series of short chapters That are structured around some fact from Yankees history

Going all the way back And of course you did many interviews as well, and you peppered this with lots of anecdotes and stories. But how did you come to write this book? Because I know that you grew up a Mets fan, and you have covered the Mets largely, and I would have laid pretty long odds on your first book being about the Yankees, but that is what happened. Sure. Funny small world, Jason Sturge again. I proofread his book. At the end of the proofreading, I sent a 20-page report to the company that published the book, Triumph Books.

And I said to them, you know, I'd like to write a book someday. And they said, we'll get back to you. And I said, okay, I don't know if that necessarily means anything. But in the publishing world, I guess you never know because nine months later, they saw my silly video where I recited the last Out of the World series

for the last 60 World series, which was a bevy of fun facts. And the guy wrote me and said, hey, we've got a project. And he explained that it was a Yankees book. And I took a deep breath and said, I think I can do that. And here it is. It is out. It is,

in fact, one of the people that I interviewed for the book was you. That's true. Yes. Do you have a favorite either fun fact or story or anecdote or interview or something in the book that you are particularly fond of? All right. Two. Dr. Bobby Brown was the best interview. If you ever see, he's kind of like the Ned Garver of me. Dr. Bobby Brown is, I think, 91. He lives in Texas. He's the former president of the American League. And he also happens to have, if you fit the qualifier higher than us, and that's always key for a fun fact, I think he has the second highest World Series batting average. And he's actually rooting for Ort fun fact. I think he has the second highest World Series batting average,

and he's actually rooting for Ortiz to make the World Series this year and have a bad World Series so that he can be ahead of him. But every story he told checked out. The parallels between talking to him and you guys talking to Garver were incredible. I couldn't believe how good the stories were. He was funny, like with the Ortiz thing believe how good the stories were. He was funny, like with the Ortiz thing. He had very clear memories. I went back to newspapers from the 50s. He was fantastic. The other one is, and this was an AP story that was buried in like a bunch of podunk papers that didn't necessarily make its way to the, I guess, general public like New York Times

or anything like that. But apparently two guys were listening to the John Larson perfect game bid on the campus at Vanderbilt. And one guy in like the first or second inning said to the other, he's going to throw a perfect game. And they had a little wager about it. And sure enough, one guy had to pay up. And I debated whether to include that because I had no real way of confirming the legitimacy of it. But it was such a good story. I felt like it was a cool thing to include. But this book isn't so much about like Dr. Bobby. It is about the Dr. Bobby Browns and the Aaron Smalls. The cool thing about it is that it kind of mixes those guys with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle

So you get all the fun facts and the fun stories about those guys And then you get kind of the secondary guys I guess you're equivalent of Ned Garber, so to speak Yeah, I wonder what percentage of no-hitters or perfect games Have a bet somewhere in the world going About whether that will be a no-hitter or a perfect game Because that's a fairly common thing that people will do at a game or in the press box or wherever, watching at home, talking to their friends, speculating about whether it will be a no-hitter.

I can tell you that I didn't bet, but I did it with Fulmer, and I basically embarrassed myself with a bunch of people saying that he was going to get it. And I know that you almost crashed your car trying to talk to Don Mattingly. Yes. Yeah. That's so, it's good to know that baseball managers are, are reasonable human beings. Uh, Don Mattingly called me while I was driving and because I didn't want to

break any laws, I want to be a good citizen. I pushed a cap speaker on my cell phone and I screamed out, Mr. Mattingly, Mr. Mattingly, I'm pulling over,

I'm pulling over. Don't, don't hang up. Don't hang up. And he goes, no problem. Mr. Magli, Mr. Magli, I'm pulling over. I'm pulling over. Don't hang up. Don't hang up. And Tramp goes, no problem. Yeah, I hate when you don't know when they're going to call, and there's just a window, and it's like the window for a cable service to show up or something,

and you can't leave your house, and you don't want to go anywhere because you know that you'll miss it. And, yeah, I've had some awkward calls where I've had to go searching frantically for somewhere quiet where I could hold a recorder up to the phone. So in my lifetime, for most of my lifetime, pretty much from 1995 to at least 2012 or so, the Yankees were pretty much, I would say I would say hated by the other 29 teams particularly, that they were seen as a team that was no fun to root for. And you were either a Yankees fan or you were a, you know, bandwagon kind of Duke, you know, Duke Lakers, Yankees type fan. Or if you were a baseball fan, otherwise you hated them. And that makes sense.

I mean, they spent a lot of money. They were super good. There's frequently a backlash like that. The Yankees before that obviously had this huge history of incredible success, franchise success. And many of the greatest players and many of the greatest stories of the sport involve the Yankees. Were they always hated like they were in the Jeter-A-Rod years, or was that a new kind of relationship that baseball had to them? And I kind of ask because I want to know if the Yankees are always going to be that, or if this was a blip, and that in fact the Yankees are maybe closer to a team like the Celtics. Do people hate the Celtics?

It doesn't seem like people really hate the Celtics, do they? Not anymore. And so there are examples of good teams in sports that aren't generally despised, right? Right. Well, so in answer to your question, first of all, there were examples, and I know I went to the Hall of Fame and I went through a bunch of clip files there,

and I can remember that there were multiple articles. I know that there was one from the 60s, and I'm almost positive that I can remember one from the 30s. Back when the sporting news was such a huge deal, there were letters to the editor about the unfair advantages that Yankee Stadium provided and how ridiculous it was. And there was a tone. There was definitely a tone. They were like, the managers, the opposing managers would always speak of the Yankees with like the utmost respect. Like you go back to like someone like Joe McCarthy or Miller Huggins, and they were kind of revered by their peers in the sport.

But I think as far as fan hatred goes, that I think that that's something that's been a constant, probably, I would guess, since the late 30s, when they had the run of four in a row, 36 to 39. And then there were a lot of people, certainly, and I'm pretty sure I remember this from the clippings that I read, that were glad to see what happened in 65 and beyond happen to them. So I would say it is a pretty long term in 65 and beyond happen to them. So I would say it is a pretty long-term thing. We just happen to know more about it now because of the various needs of communication that we have. And because I'm alive now.

Exactly. Any stories or fun facts left on the cutting room floor that you'd like to mention? So do I get to turn the tables and ask you guys the same question? Yeah, sure. But first, let me turn the tables on both of you and ask, why were you interviewing Ben? What was Ben going to contribute to this book? I'm desperate to know what role in Yankees lore you decided that Ben had. Well, Ben, I wanted to get the perspective of the common man. And I felt that Ben was a good representative. He was a common man fan. So he wasn't... He cuts with the people. It wasn't because of his role as an intern during the Yankee dynasty. I guess, actually, it was sort of the collapse of the Yankee dynasty that Ben presided over.

I would describe Ben's observations as very astute. Yeah, we talked about A-Rod. We talked about John Sterling. We talked about Enrique Wilson, maybe. I believe that we did. Enrique Wilson, unfortunately, was left on the cutting room floor. That's a shame. I want to see if you guys have the same thing that happened to me happen to you. I was sitting and just thinking about, I don't remember what I was thinking about, but all of a sudden it came

to me, oh crap, I left Ron Bloomberg completely out of my book, first DH ever. How am I going to be able to explain that to people? I guess that's my big one, I left Ron Bloomberg completely out of my book, first DH ever. How am I going to be able to explain that to people? And I guess that's my big one, that I left that one out of the book. But I feel like that was a product of happenstance, and that wasn't so much of a statistical accomplishment. And the book is more about statistical accomplishments. I'm using that to justify my unfortunate leaving out of Ron Bloomberg. my unfortunate leaving out of Ron Bloomberg. Yeah, for me, there's not a ton that keeps me up at night about the book.

I mean, we've been told about some typos and things that we'll fix in the next edition, and I wish we could go back and fix. But as far as actual content, we came in way over our word count. And so there was a lot more in there than there was originally supposed to be. And we were allowed to keep just about all of it. And everything that went, I think should have gone. It was all just, you know, it was originally sort of a long slog to get to the start of the season. And so we were cutting some of that scene setting throat clearing stuff, which I think was good. And, you know, there's a thing here or there that I wish we could have stuck somewhere in the book, but it's not anything that bothers me. I remember one thing that I had a note to

include that never got included was there was one guy on the, kind of on the coaching staff named who we called Captain. And he was much more hostile to us than really any of the players were or than really anybody else was. And he has a type of personality that would be really hostile toward anybody. And so he was kind of an obstacle to the extent that he had much of a role on the team. He was an obstacle to us. And there was a point in early August when my computer got soaked with a hose. And so it didn't work anymore. It was just barely hanging on. And I was trying to save it. I was trying to either fix it or at least save everything on my laptop. And I was trying to save it. I was trying to either fix it or at least save everything on my laptop. And I was kind of bemoaning this before a game.

And this was right around the time that we had, if you've read the book, that sort of the thaw is happening. And we're like really starting to see progress culturally on the team. And he says, I got a guy who can fix it. Take it to my guy. And Dan is, was like the least computer savvy person in the world. Like he was hostile toward the idea of computers. Oh, geez. I just remembered my favorite thing that I didn't get in the book was he actually came over one time. I had a laptop and this laptop had a, had a mouse with like a pull out cord. And then, you know, you put the cord into the, uh, into the USB port or whatever. And, uh, and that would be your mouse. And so he comes over one time pulling the cord and it, you know, it was like, you know, zipping up or something like

that. And he goes, what is that? And I go, Oh, the cord, it's just like, you know, the cord, uh, you plug it in and then you could take, he goes, no, what is that? And I go, this is a mouse. This is a computer mouse. And I don't think he And I don't think he knew what a computer coming together to get Mark Watney off of Mars. I was really excited. I thought he's on our side. We're on his side. Everything is good. And I really wanted to include that moment as like a pivotal moment of the season.

And then he was just so hostile toward us every day after that. And it wasn't anything at all. So I wanted to get that anecdote in the book somehow, but it turned out to just not be significant. It was a fun fact that was a total lie. Yeah. Much to his chagrin, if he's realized this, he was really indirectly responsible for our being there at all and for the book existing Because he recommended Tim Livingston

The Stompers broadcaster To Theo Fightmaster, their general manager And Tim was the one who reached out to us Initially and invited you to a game And if that hadn't happened We wouldn't have done this Or wouldn't have done it with the Stompers So it was really all his fault

Which probably keeps him up at night If that connection has ever occurred to him The word count thing I was 20,000 words over and I had to cut. And that took like three weeks. So there are a lot of, what you get in this book are a lot of, in addition to the chapters, which are generally like three pages each, you get a lot of blurbs. And there are some good stories that were longer that are now blurbs

that are hopefully still pretty good stories. All right. So book is called The Yankees Index. You can find a good chunk of it if you want to get a preview. You can read some of it at Amazon or Google Books. Is there anywhere else that people should get information about it or the usual places? Sure. Triumphbooks.com, your local bookstore. It's all over Manhattan, tri-state area. If you're overseas, you should

be able to get it. Someone sent me a note that they got it, I think, in like Finland or Sweden or somewhere pretty foreign that I was kind of pleased to see that it's got an international following as well. Yeah. So before we let you go, I want to ask you about a few players you often on Twitter at msimonespn, you are constantly tweeting facts about players and sometimes those are notable over or underperforming players. So I pulled a list of players who have most over or underperformed relative to their preseason Pocota projections. And number one on that list, probably no surprise, Daniel Murphy, who is now, I think, 115 points above his true average projection and is just the best hitter in the National League so

far this year and best hitter in the majors, non-David Ortiz division. So you wrote about Murphy recently, and you've obviously seen a lot of Murphy when he was with the Mets. So what is going on with Daniel Murphy? Well, I don't remember if you guys have brought this up at all, but, and most of the guys that are on this list, you could attribute this to his ground ball batting average of this season right now is 491, which is kind of like the ultimate fun fact, I guess. It's beyond absurd. Last year when he hit a ground ball, he hit 203.

So if he was hitting 203 this year, he'd be taken off. If he was hitting 230, 240 on ground balls this year, he would take off about 80 points of his batting average. I think you can attribute almost all this to this silly, and I saw it when they played the Mets. He hit three or four balls that just snuck in. And, like, if you were ever going to come up with, we always talk about luck and guys getting really fortunate.

But sometimes I feel like you can never actually see that in action. With Daniel Murphy, it's like every night you see that, that he gets a duck snort or a seeing eye single. That's just ridiculous. And I don't know when it's going to end, It's like every night you see that, that he gets a duck snort or a seeing eye single. That's just ridiculous. And I don't know when it's going to end, but it should end. I would think that it will end, although I guess who knows. But I would think that the regression for him will be interesting because you wonder if he's going to go through like an 0 for 40 on ground balls just to even it out.

Well, he has hit more fly balls this year than ever before, which I think maybe goes hand-in-hand with the power. He's hit the ball harder. I mean, there are real ways, right, in which Daniel Murphy is better now, maybe not best hitter in the majors. I worked with him last year on building power, which was part of the reason, I think, that what happened in the postseason happened a little bit.

Yeah, right. But, yes, it's been a crazy last year or so for Daniel Murphy. And I wanted to ask you about David Wright, actually, since you've written about him, since there was news about him today. He's out for at least four to six weeks. And given his health issues and just how much time it takes him to get ready for a game even when he is on the field you have to take the outside of that range probably to to be safe so one i guess what do you think of the new model of david wright this year who has been quite productive but has looked very

different than david wright has in the past. And what are the Mets without David Murphy? How big a handicap for them is losing him? Well, he's been like he's getting on base, but he's been a shell of what he was. It seems like he's capable of like three or four good games in a row. And then he just runs into this wall where he strikes out like 10 times and 18 at-bats or something like that. And I think this latest injury, I have a feeling it's going to be a long one. They said four to six weeks. But based on what you hear and kind of, I guess, the undertones of it

and what Terry Collins said about it being similar to what Bobby Parnell went through, it just scares me,, it scares me. And it makes me wonder how much David Wright's got left in the tank. I had talked to someone who, a former major leaguer in the off season, who said that he has no idea, David Wright, has no idea what he's in for post-career with the different things that he's going to have to deal with, with regards to the spinal stenosis. And now you throw the truniated disc on top of it.

So I guess Biden would be a state of concern for him. As for the Mets who are trying to come up with names last night, the best I felt like I could come up with was like a Danny Valencia to replace him. But boy, I don't know that they can get him. I don't know that they necessarily want him because he's not a good defensive player. And who knows if the hitting would carry over for a whole season. But it's definitely a big concern.

And I think it was wishful thinking to think that David Wright would get through this season unscathed. Yeah. I mean, it's impressive that he hit for as much power as he did, because he was, his isolated power was higher than it had been since 2010, so it's... Yeah, it's amazing that what he was able to do when he actually

when he made contact. The problem was that he was having so much trouble making contact. Yes, right. Alright, so... And he can't throw. Yeah, that too. The movement is definitely inhibited. So, I sent you this spreadsheet of over- and underperforming players. Anyone else you want to single out? Anyone with interesting numbers that make you optimistic or pessimistic?

All right, yeah. So I guess there were a couple. One was, and this ties back to yesterday too, was Kyle Hendricks and whether or not he can keep this up at the rate that he's pitching. And I'm actually looking on the spreadsheet for him right now to see where he was. But his hard hit rate this season is second best in MLB. He's between, and here's a fun fact, he's between Kershaw and, he's between Syndergaard and Kershaw.

Syndergaard's one, Kyle Hendricks is two, Kershaw's three. And, like, there isn't that much of a, you guys, the true ERA is what, like, 3-9, and the predicted was, like, 4-2. So I guess the gap on him isn't that big. But the question becomes, can he stay at a 2-9 ERA for the rest of the season? Your guess is as good as mine. It's kind of like a how do we know what's real and what's not. Like I was looking at his tip.

His tip is basically a match for his ERA. So am I supposed to believe that this is the real Kyle Hendricks, the one that I've seen these last four or five starts, who's been great, who's the best number five starter in baseball, or not? Like I don't know. Yeah, we were – I remember we got an email from someone before the season who was asking about why Kyle Hendricks isn't mentioned when people talk about the Cubs and rave about their rotation. Kyle Hendricks was kind of an

afterthought, even though he had an excellent 2015 season. And I dug into the numbers a little bit, and there was a lot to like about what he had done. But that was kind of a, you know, it was new for him to have struck out so many guys. And there was pretty weak competition that he faced. He had one of the weakest opposing quality of hitters last season of anyone. And so there was some skepticism, he has sustained it He has improved even further this year He is a ground ball machine now He's getting a 60% ground ball rate So there's a lot to like about him

Right, now will he have a lower ERA than Rich Hill? No, I don't think so Rich Hill, by the way, is the number one over-performer on the pitcher's list He is over-performing his projected deserved run average by over two full runs. And you wrote about Rich Hill recently. Was there anything you uncovered about Rich Hill that we have not covered in our extensive Rich Hill conversations? I think you guys probably touched on it, but he has the best fastball swing and miss rate of anyone in baseball, but he has the best fastball swing and miss rate of anyone in baseball,

which I thought was pretty amazing. But I guess it's all because everyone's so freaked out by the curveball that when the fastball comes, they can't time it. That's my guess. That would be my... In my preseason predictions contest, we did Rich Hill versus Justin Verlander, and that one's starting to look a little lopsided right now. Right. And you wrote about Jose Fernandez recently, too?

Yes. So this is a question for you guys, more or less, because I didn't know how to answer it. He's throwing more sliders now than he has at any point in his career. And that, to me, I felt like was a red flag that this guy who's had a history of arm trouble throughout his career, who's unbelievable when he's on the field, is now going more and more to a pitch that is an arm chewer. And I just thought that that was really interesting that maybe he just thinks he's got a rebuilt arm right now and he can afford to do it. That's something that just made me a little nervous, but I didn't know necessarily how to react to it. Yeah, I don't know either. I mean, he's missing more bats than ever, so I guess it's working short-term-wise. Yep, and I think the difference,

he's the second-highest guy on the list. I think a lot of that's probably attributable to the ballpark, right? Like, he doesn't give up home runs because he pitches half his games in Marlins Park. Yeah, I guess that would have been taken into account by the projections, presumably. But yeah, he's been doesn't give up home runs because he pitches half his games in uh in marlins park yeah i guess the that would have been taken into account by the projections presumably but yeah he's been even better than they first like it's an extreme for him right and uh and there have been a couple

articles about him recently because he has been at once the most unhittable pitcher one of the most unhittable pitchers but also has been hit very hard when people have made contact he's allowed one of the highest stat cast exit velocities which seems like a strange profile to have i think august fagerstrom just wrote something for fan graphs about how it might be because when he throws pitches outside the strike zone no no one can touch them. And so no one really makes contact with Fernandez on pitches outside the zone. And so the only times that they make contact are when he leaves one over the plate, and that might skew the exit velocity a little bit in a weird way. So that's something worth thinking about. I don't know that we have the greatest handle on what StatCast exit velocity

tells us about pitchers yet. Anyone else you want to touch on? I think that was the fullest. The other one that I know that a big underachiever is Jose Abreu, and I just watched him for three games, and he looked old and slow, which I don't have an explanation for. He's actually, he's been late on fastballs a lot this year. His misrate against fastballs is up similar to a couple of years ago, but it's way up from last season. And I guess there would be some worry there as to what's going on with him because he hasn't looked like the, it's amazing that the White Sox were as good as they were, considering that he hasn't looked like the Jose Abreu that you would have expected to get. Yeah. All right. Alright well we will link to

The Yankees index in the usual places You can follow Mark on Twitter At msimonespn And see his fun fact work At espnstatsinfo Also on Twitter Mark thank you for coming on Yes and I just want to say one other thing

All hail Sibi Sisti by the way Who did not homer as a teen and a 40-year-old. No, famously didn't. But he was in the natural, I can tell you that. Yes, that's true. All right, so that is it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Today's five Patreon supporters are Chris Hutchison, Josh Mank, Jeremy Bernfeld,

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