Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 904: The Big Baseball Grab Bag

Episode Date: June 14, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about a wide range of topics, including Ray Searage and the struggling Pirates pitching staff; the pitcher home run derby; rehabilitating Ben Cherington; the amazing Matt Shoemaker; Clayton Kershaw; crowd chants, and a bad fun fact.

Good morning and welcome to episode 904 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by The Play Index, BaseballReference.com, and our supporters on Patreon. I'm Sam Miller along with Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight. Hey, Ben. Hello. How are you? I'm all right. All right. But you know who's not all right?

I don't know. The Pirates pitching staff. No, they're not alright? I was just thinking, this is shaping up to be a pretty devastating year for the Ray Searidge is a genius narrative. Where it's definitely under threat right now. The Pirates are, let's see, by deserved run average For relievers, they are third worst By deserved run average for starters They are third worst

By deserved run average for the entire pitching staff They are third worst And by CFIP, I think they are Second worst So it's been a pretty bad year For the Pirates pitching staff Other than Garrett Cole and Mark Melanson That's kind of it

And the Projects Who were supposed to for the Pirates pitching staff other than Garrett Cole and Mark Melanson. That's kind of it. And the projects who were supposed to take a leap perhaps this year under Searidge's tutelage haven't really. Juan Nicasio seems like he's on the verge of losing his rotation spot. He's been pretty bad. I mean, he's struck out guys, but hasn't been great. I don't know who else was on that list. John Neese. John Neese and Neftali Feliz.

Yeah, well, Neftali Feliz has been pretty good. So maybe we can give him that one. Pretty good. Yeah, it's hard to know. It's always hard to know with a reliever whether the, I mean, if he gave up this many home runs as a reliever, he would be a bad reliever going forward And it's always hard to know whether that is what he's going to do

Or whether it's just too scraped the wall Right But yes, Nese has been bad Does it help or hurt? I always have trouble with this one But does it help or does it hurt that J-Hap is back to being exactly what J-Hap always was? Huh, yeah, I'm not. That could go either way, obviously. That could go the way of that wasn't a real change, it wasn't a lasting change,

or it could go the way of you have to actually be in contact with Ray Searidge. You have to be within a certain radius of Ray Searidge for the Searidge magic to work. So when he goes to a new team, it stops working and that makes Searidge look even better. I'm not sure which it is. You'd think that if he was imparting some lesson that really made Hap better, that that lesson would be transferable to a new team. But I guess if the problem with the guy is that, I don't know, he can't keep his mechanics in check and he drifts away from the best alignment

and he needs constant tinkering from his pitching coach, then that's something where you would actually need him to be on the team under the actual supervision. So could go either way. So who else was there? There was Ryan Vogelsang who got hurt. That's not Sirich's fault, obviously. who got hurt. That's not Searidge's fault, obviously. And I don't know whether the fact that Jeff Locke is bad again counts against him. Francisco Liriano is giving up tons of home runs again, and he was a Searidge fix also, who is still with the team. And he's giving up lots of walks, lots of home runs. He's kind of bad Liriano again, although he's still striking some guys out. So I don't know. I don't want to make too much of it. It's just that when you have the reputation for being the genius coaching guru, then one year where everything goes

wrong is almost enough to derail that really. Because, you, because if it doesn't work one year, well, was it you the whole time or was it other things? It's enough to start to question it. And we already kind of questioned it just because we're naturally suspicious of coaching gurus because we've seen them rise and fall over the years. But if the Pirates pitching staff doesn't pick up and maybe it will, maybe Tyon will make a difference. Maybe some of these guys will come back to normal. But this is a blow to the mystique. Yeah, it's serious. I agree that we shouldn't make too much of it.

And I also think that it's important that we make some of it because we always fall for this. And I think it's maybe our, right now it's our most persistent collective blind spot is that we're always falling for whoever has a good pitching staff as being a pitching guru of the moment. And I think that there's, you know, there's only one Dave Duncan. Maybe there's one Leo Mazzoni. I mean, you know, they happen. But I mean, we should be very suspicious. Yeah.

All right. So we'll see what happens over the remaining 60% of the season. But Searidge Watch is on. All right. Anything else? Nope. Not for me. Okay.

Ben, Jose Fernandez wants a pitchers-only home run derby. Yeah. Who doesn't? What NL ace does not want one? Well, yeah. only home run derby yeah who doesn't what nl ace does not want one well yeah they this started as madison mongarner wanted to be in the home run derby and it is now morphed into pitchers want to have a home run derby uh do you have any any thoughts i would watch it once maybe i don't know if i would keep watching i don't blame any team for not wanting their

ace to be in a home run derby where they're doing something that they don't do all that often, and they're trying to jack home runs in front of a big crowd. So that seems like a situation where you could potentially pull something. I could see why it wouldn't be worth the team's trouble. I could see why it wouldn't be worth the team's trouble. But yeah, I mean, I would watch it. It's kind of a weird idea. I mean, would I rather just watch the next best 10 home run hitters or something instead of the pitchers can't hit, and so now we want to see whether they actually can hit. And we know Bumgarner can hit, and some of the other guys who have expressed interest, Arrieta and Wainwright, these guys have hit home runs. So we know that they are capable of it, but I don't know. I would watch it once probably, which is more times than I would watch the regular home run derby at this point. Really? I would watch the regular Home Run Derby at this point.

Really? So if there was a pitcher's Home Run Derby and then there was the regular one with, you know, Stanton. Like if you could do a pretty good, like because the one as it is now, there's always some dead spots. And I'm not that interested in Todd Frazier, for instance. But like if it was Stanton. If Stanton's in it, I'd watch any home run derby with Stanton. Yeah. I would not watch the pitchers one. I think the pitchers one, I think Jose Fernandez and anybody else who was on the path that took us from Bumgarner to Fernandez has, in my opinion, totally missed the point.

I want to see Bumgarner in the home run derby. Like, I think that would be fun. Because, A, because it's Bumgarner. And he's the only one who I'd really actually be interested in. Because he has actually hit home runs as often as anyone else. Exactly. Exactly. Like, did you see the fun fact?

This is like an all-timer. That Bumgarner has as many home runs, as many or maybe one more, but I think as many home runs as Babe Ruth had as a pitcher in the same number of, basically the same number of innings pitched. So Bumgarner's pitching career and Babe Ruth's pitching career have essentially lasted the same amount of time. And Bumgarner has as many home runs as Babe Ruth had in his. That is an insane, an insanely good fun fact. Much better in my personal opinion than the one about Trout and Harper's last hundred and whatever it bats. That one is good too, but to me, the Babe Ruth one. But having one pitcher in a home run derby

is great. Then it's variety. Then it's like you've got an underdog, you've got texture to it. Having Jose Fernandez and seven pitchers like him in a home run derby sounds like just complete hell and totally, completely missing the point. And it really feels like, like, it's like Jose Fernandez and others took the praise that we were giving Madison Bumgarner for being special and just wanted to glom onto it and go, yeah, I'm a pitcher too. It's not that he's a pitcher. It's that he's a pitcher and does this, that he's doing this right now. Yeah, right.

Well, all of these guys who have commented are good hitters for pitchers or, you know, they have hit home runs, which is impressive for pitchers. Right. They're okay, but they're not like transcendent pitching power hitters. No one is in B bum garner's class so yes i agree that i would much rather see bum garner in the main home run derby than a separate home run derby just for pitchers although i would probably watch that too just to see bum garner if you were in that one i would rather have bum garner in a regular home run derby that would be my first choice jose fernandez in a regular home run derby, that would be my first choice. Jose Fernandez in a regular home run derby would be my second choice.

And then way, way, way, way down the hierarchy of needs would be an all-pitcher home run derby, which I just don't think would be interesting. I mean, if you watch pitchers take batting practice, it's not interesting. Right. Which is a home run derby. They bunt a lot They do but then they also swing They also hit before interleague

It is basically a home run derby Between them they're all just trying to hit more home runs Than each other and it's not interesting Whereas watching Giancarlo Stanton take BP Is itself I mean the reason Home run derby is interesting is because it takes BP Which is already interesting If you're a big power hitter and adds a competitive competitive element to it. But the pitcher's BP does not have the pre-existing

interest. Right. And I'm offended on Bumgarner's behalf that Fernandez is trying to make them a cohort. You're not the same. I agree with that. Okay. I would take a prospects home run derby or a rookie home run derby as part of the match. Like, if it was rookies against veterans, I'd take that. Although, maybe not rookies. It's hard because, like, rookies aren't rookies for very long. If there was a prospects home run derby, though, if it was prospects against big leaguers, I'd be into that. Yeah. And I guess, look, if they could convince me, which they can't, but if they could convince me that a team of pitchers could homer at anywhere close to the rate of John Carlos Stanton and even Todd Frazier in a derby, I would watch a competition between those two.

I'm not interested in seeing pitchers compete against each other. I am interested in seeing pitchers compete against power hitters. That wouldn't be much of a competition, right? Well, no, it would have to be competitive. If it weren't competitive, it wouldn't be fun. But if it were competitive, which the premise of this is that Bumgarner might be competitive. Yes. And so I'd want to see it but oh it's i just i just feel like it's just

such such a massive missing of the point that i'm i'm just insulted by it and i'm really upset about it well ariana hit the longest home run right by a pitcher the one that i mean he's going opposite field he's hitting some real shots not with the the frequency that Bumgarner does, but when he hits one, it's a real big boy home run. It's kind of, it's a slippery slope where you put, I mean, Bumgarner is in a class of himself. And then you say Arrieta, well, he hits some real moonshots. So maybe we could put him in. And then Wainwright, Wainwright's not interesting. I mean, he hits one every now and then, but nothing special.

He's got seven in 650 career at-bats. So he's Alcides Escobar. Right, yeah. I mean, I think we have to ask what are we trying to get out of all of these exercises? For regular power hitters, when we have a home run derby, we want to see home runs like we've never seen before. There's a belief that in a home run derby, it's not a belief, it's true. In a home run derby, you get to see all the highlights.

It's like the red zone channel in a competition. It's just nothing but 470 foot home runs. And every single one of those moonshots really does make me go, wow, you know? I guess instead of the red zone channel, it's more like it's the equivalent of when buildings collapse. And every single big home run, I giggle, right? So that's part of it. And then part of it is much less interesting, but part of it is that it is a competition

that sort of feels like, you know, some sort of skills competition. And you're kind of interested to see who has the best skill among these people that have, that are the best at this skill in the entire world. And so if Bumgarner joins that, then that's really interesting because, you know, just for novelty's sake and to sort of get a sense of how good Bumgarner is. But if there were eight pitchers, you're not getting reliable moonshots. You'd get some home runs, but not reliable.

And I don't particularly care who the best power hitter is among pitchers in batting practice. I'm not that interested in the competition. So what would you be interested in? Why would you watch it? Well, I'd watch it just because it hasn't happened before and I'd want to see how bad certain guys were. I'd be kind of curious just to see how regularly all these pitchers, if you go eight deep, are they just embarrassing themselves? Can they actually hit home runs regularly? I wouldn't watch it a second time, but I'd watch it once. But yeah, I mean, Bumgarner has hit home runs as often as anyone. And so there is a real case to be made that he is as good a home run

hitter as anyone who could be in the home run derby, sort of. And so, yeah, you would definitely want to see if he could stack up because we're all really curious. What would happen if you gave Bumgarner a season worth of at-bats and he were just a regular hitter or you were using him as a pinch hitter all the time? Would he keep hitting all these home runs or have pitchers gone easy on him because he's a pitcher? And so, yeah, that would be fascinating to see Bumgarner compete against the best power hitters, but no one else. All right. Did you see the video of the Texas A&M crowd chanting when the pitcher threw a four-pitch

walk? No. Well, I saw a screenshot of the video, but I did not actually watch the video. But I gather what they do. They shame you for intentionally walking somewhere. It really is great. And one of my favorite pieces that I ever wrote before I worked for you was about Derek Holland throwing, I think, 12 or 13 straight balls in the World Series. And just watching sort of the slow deterioration of his soul in front of everybody as the camera the camera's shot gets tighter and tighter and

the crowd gets louder and louder and it becomes after about the seventh ball it becomes this sort of almost like frenzy where you're not sure if you're watching a career and right in front of you yeah and you're not sure if he's ever going to throw another strike and so this the crowd basically after ball four they start chanting ball five ball five ball five ball five until he pitches and then it's a ball and they immediately the volume goes up and they start yelling ball six ball six ball six and it is so fun and i'm torn between whether i want this to be a thing that catches on at other stadiums or whether that would just turn it into an overdone meme. But I loved it.

There are about to be no intentional balls anymore. Oh, they weren't intentional balls, though. Oh, well. It's not an intentional walk. It's a four-pitch walk. I see. So it's a wild pitcher. And so I can't remember if you've heard me say this on some interview at some point, but I can't remember if I've ever said it on this show.

But the one thing that I really wanted to do with the Stompers more than anything else was figure out a way to use the crowd as like a psychological force against the opposing team. cognitive scientists to figure out what type of noise, what type of rhythm and visual and noise would actually most disrupt the opposing team, maybe the opposing pitcher, because everybody thinks about the fans behind the basket when somebody's shooting a free throw, and they all wave, and they have their signs, and they yell, and they shake their arms. And apparently, according to like a slate piece, I one time, that talked to cognitive scientists about this, that actually does nothing. It just creates this white noise that isn't disruptive to the shooter at all,

and in fact, if you really wanted to disrupt them, it would be more disruptive to have the entire stadium go dead silent. So like college, some college fans have experimented with different sorts of distractions behind the plate, behind the basket to disrupt the shooter. And I really wanted to see if I could figure out a way that would disrupt the pitcher or disrupt the opposing hitter or disrupt the opposing team or somehow do more than just make noise. Because we all make noise.

We make noise for two reasons. One, because it feels good. But the other, because we feel like in making noise, we are make noise. We make noise for two reasons. One, because it feels good, but the other because we feel like in making noise, we are helping our team. As fans, we want to be useful. We want to contribute. And the noise we make is intended to be productive, but it's not very productive. It might be a little bit. It probably is a little bit. There's a home field advantage for a reason, but I feel like you could do more with it. And this ball five, ball five, ball five chant felt to me like a pretty good step toward that. And I love it. And I encourage everybody to go find it and you get totally swept up in it. And you can imagine a pitcher

regularly panicking. Yeah. I mean, it'd be more fun to have crowd participation as a regular part of baseball games because that's just it's not really a big part of American baseball. It's a big part of Japanese baseball. And it'd be cool if we had coordinated chants and cheering sections and something other than the wave, but something that would be distinctive and really give you a home field advantage and make you feel like part of the team in a sense. So I wish there were more of that. Okay. I saw a tweet from Patrick Sullivan a few weeks ago that I keep thinking about. I retweeted it. I think I retweeted it twice because I like it so much and I keep thinking about it, but it was Patrick said, can you vote for Ben Sherrington as executive of the year? Is that even allowed? And somebody should write an article about that. But now I'm going to ask you, if you could vote for Ben Sherrington as executive of the year, is there a case, could you make a case that, in fact,

this great, phenomenal Red Sox team is essentially entirely him and that he gets as much credit for that as any GM could possibly get for any team's success In 2016 Yeah is that an ALNL award Because if you can Do it without depriving the Cubs Of that award then

Yeah I think there's a case to be made We've talked about how Long a GM's Influence lasts after the GM Is gone and I think we had slightly different figures, but I mean, we were going out, what, five years, more than five years. There's still a fingerprint that is the GM's on the roster that he left behind. And so one year after, then obviously it's very much a Charrington team. The players that are starring for the Red Sox now

were largely developed under Charrington. And so, yeah, I mean, sure, he has as good a case as almost anyone in the non-Theo Epstein department. Is he, does he, I want to say, is he vindicated? Do you think that Ben Charrington required vindication? I think he did. Yeah. I think, I mean, I think even when he was let go, a lot of people pointed out that, you know, some weird things had gone wrong and he'd done a lot of things right and he won a World Series. And so I don't think he was looked at as a complete disaster or anything. or anything. But yeah, I mean, after the last place finish and after Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval and those disastrous signings, I think his reputation was certainly hurt by those. So yeah, I think he is in need of some rehabilitation. And the fact that guys like Betts and Bogarts are

amazing now and, well, you can't really restore the luster of the Sandoval signing. Right. Other than that. And Hanley's not, you know. Those two moves, the Hanley-Sandoval moves, only look ever so slightly better than they did eight months ago. Yeah. Well, Sandoval looks worse. Right.

I mean, cumulatively, though. Right. So, yeah. And, I mean, cumulatively, though. Right. So, yeah, and I mean, I don't know. You could, I'm sure that if the Red Sox go on to win the division, make the playoffs, have a good year, a lot of people will credit Dombrowski and, you know, fairly, I guess, for putting the finishing touches on and for going out and getting the ace that they lacked and getting Kimbrel and, you know, getting those kind of high-profile pieces that the 2015 team didn't have. So, I mean, I think it hurts that the thing that people held against Charrington was that he didn't want to do that. He didn't want to go get the big piece. He wanted to just have a rotation full of number three starters

and they'd all be okay and they'd get through it that way. And he didn't want to go after the ace. And that turned out terribly. And then they go get the ace and they go get the closer and now they're a good team again. So I think a lot of people will probably look at this as Dombrowski doing something that Charrington failed to do. But Dombrowski went, he got Price, he got Kimbrell, he got Carson Smith. Smith isn't pitching. And there were some people who were, you know, thinking that he might be high injury risk before they got him. And sure enough, he's injured. Kimbrell's been good. They gave up a very large fortune of players to get him. But he has been, he's been good.

He hasn't been the greatest closer in baseball or anything like that, but he has been, he's been good. He hasn't been the greatest closer in baseball or anything like that, but he's been good. He's helped. And then David Price has not been good. And it's still, I think it's an open question of whether that's troubling or not. The velocity is down. The raw stats are, are way down on the other hand, sort of some of the peripherals are not as far down. So it's not totally like you could point to those three moves and say that they're unambiguous successes. Or that they're even the reason that the Red Sox are doing that. I mean, we're talking about, you know, an ace who has an ERA of almost five. And a relief shutdown setup man who has two and two-thirds innings pitched.

And then, you know, and then Kimbrell, which is fine. But if you're the Red Sox and you're going to the off season, you ought to come out with at least Craig Kimbrell. Uh, so not, not knocking any of those moves. It's too early to say whether they're good or bad, but I wouldn't say that those are the reason that the Red Sox are good this year. It's also unclear though, whether the reason that the Red Sox are good this year, uh, is how much credit to give to Charrington and how much credit to give to the organization as a whole and how much to give to Dombrowski. So if you just look at Bogart's bets and Bradley, because those three plus David Ortiz having the best year of his career at age 40

are the primary reasons that this team is as insanely good as it is. Bradley, I think you have to give a lot of credit to Charrington. I was just listening to an interview with Rob Neier and Bill James, and Neier was asking him about Bradley and the decision to call him up and then the decision to stick with him, and James was saying that Charrington was a very strong advocate for keeping Bradley and for believing in him, even though there wasn't much historical precedent for someone being as bad as he had been

and then going on to be a good player. So he was evidently a big Bradley backer. So you have to give him credit for that, I think. Good to know. And as for Betts and Bogarts, I mean— Great players that just got turned 23 instead of being 22 yeah basically yeah okay all right so and you know David Ortiz is having the best offensive season in the game that I don't think we can give credit for that to anyone but David Ortiz really so

I mean it's you know it's like a historically great offense it's by far the best offense in baseball and the only part of that offense that you can give Dombrowski credit for is what Chris Young, who has been very good, but he's one guy who hasn't played all that much. So that and maybe the willingness to give Travis Shaw a starting job and bench Sandoval even before he was hurt, possibly. So maybe that is Dombrowski, but the rest of it is people who were there already and are just older or healthier or better for one reason or another. So if you had a World Series share to give to the GM position, and you could split it up however you wanted to who you thought deserves the most credit for this team right now. I would give Charrington 70%. Okay, 70%.

I think I'd go higher. I would go higher except that it feels weird to give it to a GM who's not there. So I might think that it was weird. I just might think it was weird. But I would probably go even higher than 70%. I might go like 87%. Okay. All right. Let's see. What else do I have on my list here? Clayton Kershaw. I want to give an update on Kershaw versus Pedro. Okay. I have broken out Kershaw against non-pitchers and Pedro against non-pitchers in their three-year peaks.

So Kershaw's three-year peak is this year, last year, and the year before. Martinez, 99 to 2001. And facing pitchers was a big part of your hatchet job on Clayton Kershaw. And this is still not going to be perfectly valid because Martinez pitched in a much tougher ballpark than Kershaw. And I'm just going to ignore the ballparks. But over the three-year period, Kershaw and Martinez have essentially the exact same line against non-pitchers. Kershaw, 196, 232, 287. Pedro, 189, 236, 274. The average hitter in the American League by OPS

was 50 points higher than the average hitter in the National League by OPS. So if you're adjusting for the level of competition, ignoring ballpark, Pedro Martinez has an OPS minus allowed of 65 and Kershaw of 71. So that goes against my argument that Kershaw is getting closer. He is still measurably worse. However, if you look at just the best year, the very best year, this being Kershaw's, though it's not done, Pedro's being 2000. So it's not done. Pedro's being 2000 Kershaw against non pitchers this year, uh,

has allowed a one 72, one 89 to 47 line, which by the way is one 72, one 89 to 47 against major league hitters. That is a four 36 OPS against major league hitters. Pedro's Pedro's best. Is it that much lower against actual pitchers?

No. He's given up the home runs to Bumgarner. This is a fun fact. I've hidden the lie, but you found it. Pedro against non-pitchers in 2000, 167, 213, 259. So that is higher, as well

as it's an extra 24 points of on-base percentage and an extra 12 points of slugging percentage. Of course, again, the quality of competition. So Kershaw has faced mostly National League hitters. National League hitters, excluding pitchers, have a 747 OPS this year. Martinez faced mostly American League hitters who had a 791 OPS. If you do OPS minus for just the one year, Kershaw 58, Pedro 60. So we've still got ballpark. However, just if you ignore the pitchers, if you lop out the NL advantage of getting to face pitchers, Kershaw has arguably gotten there for a year. Wow. All right.

Just for the year. Something to watch. Yeah. All right. Matt Shoemaker, Ben. Yes. What in the world? I'm not sure that there has ever been anything as incredible as Matt Shoemaker's first and second half of the current season splits. To go from being the worst pitcher in baseball, arguably, to the second best pitcher in baseball over his last six starts, I just cannot cope with this. And so I'm going to need you to help me.

with this. And so I'm going to need you to help me. So in his last five starts, 38 innings, 48 strikeouts, one walk, he has, as Jeff Sullivan wrote in a piece, he's essentially at the top or very near the top of every measure of a pitcher's skills, strike percent, first pitch strike percent, O-swing rate, contact rate, hard hit ball rate, FIP, XFIP, ERA. It's all there. And so this is because he's, you know, the only, I mean, the big change is that he's throwing his split finger fastball more than, you know, like anybody ever has thrown a split finger fastball. He used to throw it like 15, 20% of the time or even less.

Now he's throwing it almost half the time. And so I want to get your kind of Rich Hill-esque sense of how much we, what we think about Matt Shoemaker's next 30 starts. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what, if any, if Rich Hill and Matt Shoemaker have taught us anything, it's that we have no idea what to expect from the next six starts or four starts, let alone 30 starts. So I don't know. I mean, I guess he's throwing more pitches outside the strike zone probably

as he's throwing all these splitters. So maybe there could be some kind of counter adjustment. Yeah, but he's walked one batter in 38 innings so some adjustment still gets him to carlos silva right well i don't know what to say it's it's really i mean the the common thread maybe between those two guys is that they just had a good pitch that they didn't throw as much yes and suddenly they started throwing that pitch more and it worked really well. Yeah. So that is, I mean, that's kind of an incredible thing to think that these guys may have just had these weapons already and they were just using them at a far less than optimal rate.

Far less than optimal rate And they could have just doubled or tripled How much more often is he throwing the splitter in this stretch Than he was throwing it before? Or how much of an increase is it? Okay, so Jeff says When he was recalled from AAA to start on May 11th He threw 12% splitters When he faced the Dodgers on May 16th

His next start he threw 43% splitters when he faced the dodgers on may 16th his next start he threw 43 percent splitters so he increased his usage rate by more than three times over the past month he's thrown 44 percent splitters so basically three and a half times more often than he was throwing this pitch before and i don't remember what the numbers were for rich Hill and his curveball, but he obviously has thrown that pitch more. So he throws curveballs basically more than like anybody in history has thrown curveballs. Yeah. So I don't know. That's a really interesting thing because it suggests that almost anyone could just make this transformation that they just might have this Really good pitch that is just lurking In their arsenal and they bring it out

Every now and then and maybe they think It's so effective because they don't use it As often and they think guys aren't Expecting it or guys aren't used to it And then it turns out you can just throw it way Way way way way more often than you were throwing It before and still no one can hit it And you're much better so

I don't know I mean that's a really uh that's a really exciting idea and sort of a scary idea that you could just completely change who you are by doing a thing you already do much more often and it kind of makes you think like you would think that by the time a pitcher gets to the big leagues and has some big league experience, he would already have optimized his approach. Like maybe he could pick up a new pitch or improve a pitch in some way, but you wouldn't think that he would just be sitting on this weapon that could turn him into one of the best pitchers in baseball. And he's just not using it because I don't know, he doesn't want to use it that often. You'd think that at some point he would have said, well, what would happen if I threw this more often? It seems to be working pretty well for me.

Or a pitching coach would have said, hey, why don't you throw that really good pitch more often? Or a front office analyst would have said, hey, this is a really effective pitch. You should throw it more often. So it's really hard to believe that this could be the case for that many guys, that they could undergo such a transformation. Yeah, you have to, it's hard to know whether this is only because Rich Hill has an elite curveball and Matt Shoemaker has an elite split finger. And if it was, you know, if it wasn't, I don't even know. I don't know how good Shoemaker's splitter is, to be honest. But, you know, assuming for the moment that it's a extremely good one, maybe most pitchers don't have a pitch that they can throw,

but it does change. I mean, I think that we have maybe, maybe what we learn is that we've misunderstood the sort of game theory applications of these pitches. We tend to think, well, the curveball is, or say the splitter. The splitter is really good. If you throw it more, it's going to be worse

And you know that's true But it's also going to make All your other pitches better and like Mark Simon pointed out that Rich Hill who Throws a you know 90-91 mile an hour fastball Had one of the highest Whiff rates With his fastball and that's because

He doesn't throw it as much it's much more of a surprise And Jeff points out that Shoemaker's fastball, which he's throwing a lot less, has been more effective. He's also been throwing that fastball in splitter counts and the splitter in fastball counts. And as long as you're unpredictable, and everybody who throws more than one pitch is going to be unpredictable, you're never going to know exactly what it's going to be.

And whatever predictability you give up by throwing one pitch more simply moves the scale so that the other ones are less predictable. And so it might actually not matter whether you throw one 60% or 30%. It might make the 60% one less effective than when it was at 30%, but it should make all the others better. And maybe it's actually better If your worst pitches Are the ones that are surprising

And if your fastball is not your best pitch Then Maybe that's the one that you should be Using more like as a surprise pitch Yeah so I'd like to see A list maybe I'll try To make a list of guys who could Be the next Rich Hill or Matt Shoemaker.

I don't even know what the parameters would be for that. They don't throw that hard. They have a pitch that is not a fastball that they don't throw that often. And maybe it's effective, but they still don't use it that much. And so maybe they could be the next candidate to be a Hill or a Shoemaker if they just suddenly tripled their usage of that pitch. So I don't know. It's, I mean, it just reinforces the idea that we don't know very much. There are a lot of things that can surprise us. The other thing is that the splitter is such a weird pitch that, I mean, when I was growing up, the splitter was the pitch that, like, everybody good through

a splitter. And there was a feeling that the splitter was really bad for your arm. And I think that feeling still exists. There was an article in the New York Times in 2011 about how the splitter had almost totally disappeared, especially in player development, because everybody considered it too harmful for your arm and beyond the box score looked at this with a unfortunately because not many people throw it a fairly small group of pitchers but found you know essentially the same injury rates as for anybody else and it's an interesting article that one of my favorite quote in this new york times piece is from joe madden who talks about why nobody in the Rays system was taught one and why they, in fact, discouraged their pitchers from developing one, citing health reasons as well as the belief that throwing it too much can reduce the velocity of a pitcher's fastball.

And then Madden says, I always thought that if thrown properly with the fingers really split like a fork ball, that's when you get hurt because there's no resistance against the ball being thrown. And it really put a lot of pressure on the elbow. Okay. Interesting. And then he goes on, but it's not just about them getting hurt. They'll never develop that their other pitches because they'll always get guys out with that pitch. Well, that seems like a good pitch to know. You never have to learn any others because it's so good that it will always get guys out. I keep throwing that. I teach everybody that one. Yeah.

So I don't know if Matt Shoemaker is tempting fate now by like if this is his if this is his desperation attempt to save his career and that he's going to leave it all. He's just going to bet on his elbow being able to handle it. And if it doesn't work, well, he was a 30-year-old undrafted free agent who was carrying a 9 ERA into AAA. Maybe this is just what he had to do. And maybe you would never recommend this for somebody who had better future prospects. But it is, I mean, I don't think it can be overstated what he's done. I'm not sure it's ever, I'm not sure that there is a precedent for this in history, a pitcher being this good out of nowhere. He's

been better than Rich Hill was when we were making a huge deal out of Rich Hill. It reminds me a little bit of the Esteban Loaiza year where he added the cutter and was suddenly amazing and won a Cy Young and then was bad again from shortly after. Yeah, I was sort of thinking about, it's not really similar because it's not about the pitch, but I was thinking about Ubaldo Jimenez, 2013, I think, when like he was a guy who had been really good some years earlier and then his career just seemed to be completely done like he was almost oh you almost couldn't carry him on a major league roster and he then just got his mechanics in order and for four months he was one of the three or four best pitchers in all of baseball got paid and then uh you know he's just been reliably unreliable

ever since and so yeah i don't know if it's different when it's only one pitch. You know, Ari Dickey, we talked about with Rich Hill, is something of a precedent too. So I don't know if you had the next 10 starts of Shoemaker or Rich Hill, who are you taking? Probably Rich Hill. Okay, if you had the next 10 starts of Shoemaker or John Lester, who are you taking?

Lester. Okay. All right. Yeah. How about Shoemaker or Marcus Stroman? Hmm. I guess Shoemaker. Stroman hasn't been that great, so.

48 strikeouts and one walk in 38 innings. Yeah. And great batted ball stuff too. So you're going to supplant Rich Hill in your heart if this continues for the rest of the season? I don't know. I always liked Matt Shoemaker because he was like, like I said, he was an undrafted free agent, signed as an undrafted free agent, was old for his levels, and he was dominating in AA in 2010 or 11 when i was covering the angels and they really needed a starting pitcher and i kept asking mike social like you're gonna bring shoemaker up you're gonna bring sure and he they wouldn't do it they like they didn't consider him to be an

option he wasn't on their depth chart even though he was like the minor he was their the double a pitcher of the year that year and i remember talking to trout who had played with him about what shoemaker was like and he was you know telling me about how good this guy was uh and and then after that just like three years passed where shoemaker disappeared like he's bad again like he goes to triple a and he was not good and then all of a sudden he's a 27 year old rookie who finishes second in rookie of the year voting and then bad again and so i uh i like shoemaker but i have quit trying to guess what's next yeah he used to have really incredible facial hair too and i don't know if he still does but i guess he still has he has a beard

he has a big beard now but but facial hair is no longer interesting uh he used to have like this really great fu manchu uh all right should we mention that the tiger's pr twitter account has become self-aware possibly that like 10 different people pointed out to us their tweet from yesterday which was uh worse than the previous michael Fulmer fun fact that we mentioned on the podcast a couple weeks ago. This one was, Ian Kinsler is the fifth Tigers player since 1913 to score a run in 40 of the team's first 63 games of the season. And that was one out of two.

And then the second tweet was the list of other players who had done it, the previous four players who had done it. So that was bad. It's perfect. And I think at this point it's such a convoluted fun fact that anybody who's going to send us a fun fact now just needs to think, is this better than the Tigers one? Because if it's not, then we're just going to send us a fun fact now just needs to think, is this better than the Tigers one? Because if it's not, then we're just going to be disappointed.

Really, a standard has been set. This might have ended this thread. Yeah, maybe so. Okay, so we have covered many topics. That is it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon at patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Today's five Patreon supporters are Adam Mayel, Ted Miles, Ryan Layback, Michael Workman, and Andrew Mearns. Thank you.

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