Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 906: Beware the Diamondbacks’ Bench

Episode Date: June 16, 2016

Ben and Sam discuss the Diamondbacks’ bench (literally), Johnny Cueto’s varied deliveries, Zack Cozart’s incredible power, the demise of David Wright, Ichiro and Rose, and Kershaw’s unjust walks.

Take the best little girl, and spit her little heart out. Take no good facts, alright, but she hasn't any feelings. We'll meet again 538, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Hey. Going to do a little bit of a grab bag episode again today. Is there anything that you want to banter about? No. I had something and I've forgotten it. It might pop up. Okay.

Well, did you follow the tweets about the Diamondbacks visitors bench yesterday? Well, I didn't follow the tweets. I watched the Dodgers broadcast. I was watching the Dodgers broadcast when they mentioned it, and I was skeptical. Uh-huh. Well, so was I when I heard it because it sounds like such an insignificant bit of gamesmanship. It's just frivolous gamesmanship. But John Wiseman, who's the Dodgers insider blogger, tweeted that, according to Alana Rizzo, who is the Dodgers sideline reporter or crowd reporter,

the Chase Field visitors bench is designed differently from the home bench and that Clayton Kershaw refuses to sit on it because of the discomfort. And Alana then tweeted that it makes your legs fall asleep no joke and someone asked her was that the intention of the bench and she said yes to make opposing players as uncomfortable as possible yeah and then uh julia morales who is she does the the alana rizzo job for the astros she jumped into that Twitter exchange and she said that this is true. AJ Hinch, former Diamondbacks manager, explained this to me when the Astros were in town. And I said, so it's intentional gamesmanship? And Julia said, yep. So evidently the Diamondbacks visitors bench is designed in such a way that it's uncomfortable to sit on and that it

makes your legs fall asleep and this was intentional this was a plot this was some sort of money ball or money bench idea oh my gosh you just you did you did that you just went there i did that they went there first so i don't this is this is crazy because it seems like such just a ineffective way i mean i love it i like the philosophy behind it just like subtly changing something in the dugout so that you're uncomfortable and maybe you don't even know why and maybe this was before all the research about standing desks And how beneficial it is to stand while you work Maybe they're actually making opposing players healthier And living longer because they're not sitting on the bench

But this is weird And I asked John Baker about it Our friend, former Major League player Who played for the Padres a couple years And so he's been on the visitor's bench at Chase Field. And I asked him about that, but he seemed to think, which maybe calls this other stuff into question, that this is just a problem with visitor's benches everywhere.

He says, there's no such thing as a comfortable bench. Can't remember a visiting dugout that I played in that didn't have some sort of hidden problem. Weird railing, half benches. So maybe this isn't just the Diamondbacks. Maybe it isn't. So maybe this isn't just the Diamondbacks. Maybe it's everywhere. Maybe it's going on in every ballpark in the major leagues. Some weird difference between the home and visitors dugout that is supposed to impact those players. Yeah, I'm still skeptical. And I would say that Until to me the things that I'm skeptical about it one is that

This bench has existed for 18 years Presumably Unless they swapped in a worse bench Unless they swapped in a worse bench But the Dodgers broadcast Oral Hershiser said That it was Buck Showalter

The Buck Showalter It was Buck Showalter well I don't know He basically said it was Buck Showalter. It was Buck Showalter. Well, I don't know. He basically said it was Buck Showalter's thing. But the way he said it wasn't convincing. Like, it didn't sound like he... Like, he didn't say, oh, yeah, Buck told me. Or, you know, oh, yeah, it's well-known among the Diamondbacks. Like, it sort of sounded like he maybe was making it up as he went along.

Like, he transitioned from that to... Like, he said, yeah, sure it was Buck Showalter. Buck Showalter had his hand in all sorts of things in the design of this park. And then he transitioned to the dirt path between the mound and the plate, which is not really comparable. And it sort

of felt like he might have been reaching for confidence in this. It was, again, I don't think I, I certainly don't know enough to say that it's not true. I'm just unconvinced by any of this. It feels very thinly sourced. It's, there's no, nobody saying really, like, on the record,

oh, yeah, Buck told me, or anything like that. And it just feels like... Although Julia said that A.J. Hinch told her. Well, okay. So A.J. Hinch telling her is somewhat convincing, but I want to go back to what I was saying about it being 18 years that this bench has existed. It feels like we would know by, like we would have seen this reported before and a very brief search didn't find any reporting on this before. And so given those facts, it seems somewhat more plausible to me that this is a conspiracy theory that developed over time that is well accepted. I believe that A.J. Hinch probably believes it and maybe heard that this was true, but so far removed from the original contemporaneous reporting that I think there's a lot of room for gossip to develop into perceived wisdom. I would say that my,

it's more likely to me that they maybe designed the benches, and this would be true for Baker's hole for what Baker was saying. It makes sense that if you are designing a ballpark, you might not get it right the first time. If you're designing a bench, you might not get it right the first time. And if your home team complains about it, then you fix it. Right. And so there's a self-correcting mechanism for the home dugouts, but there's not really a self-correcting mechanism for the visitors' dugouts. If they complain, you just blow it off. And so I believe that, you know, probably people have complained about this bench and the Diamondbacks have said, you know, we're not going to fix that. We have other things to worry about, whereas they might have not done that for the home park. I still, not ruling it out by any means, but given the information we have, I still think that it is less likely that somebody designed this bench intentionally to have your legs fall asleep.

Like that feels, that feels too clever for me to accept without good sourcing and the lack of good sourcing over two decades. Like this is a great story. We're talking about it. I know. That's what I was thinking. Like, reporters could go in the dugout. Like, it's not off limits before the game unless Arizona is different from the ballparks I've been in.

No, reporters all sit in that dugout. They sit there every single day when they talk to the visiting women. Someone bring a tape measure, find out. Even that, though. Like, I believe that the bench is probably uncomfortable. It's probably different than the home bench I just don't buy Yet, I don't buy the

Conspiracy that this was intentional I'm not giving the Diamondbacks that much credit yet Would you give them A lot of credit if they were intentional? Yeah, sure I really really hope that someone Was twirling a mustache about this Bench thing If they got away with it For all these years I really hope that someone was twirling a mustache about this bench thing.

I would give them, if they got away with it for all these years, then I would definitely give them credit. The one perhaps thing where it might be too clever by half is that I remember somebody telling me one time, a GM telling me that your visiting clubhouse is one of your best recruiting tools for free agents. Visiting clubhouse is one of your best recruiting tools for free agents. And if you have a lousy visitors clubhouse, free agents think of your stadium as being lousy. They think of your franchise as being kind of, you know, not a comfortable place to be. It affects them in ways subconsciously and consciously. And so you have, I think there was, this came up because some team was redesigning their visitors clubhouse to be super nice.

And the GM was saying, oh, that'll, you know, that'll actually help them. Believe it or not, that'll help them recruit free agents. And so it's possible that the bench is costing the Diamondbacks free agents. Even because they don't know that the home bench is better. Right. They don't know that as soon as they switch over all their problems all their leg problems will be relieved they just think that every time I go to Arizona build benches right and if you play badly it's a weird too because if you

play badly in Arizona you might actually attribute it to Arizona you might think oh I don't do well in that park I don't do well in that city that's a like if you hate going to Arizona you're not gonna want to, oh, I don't do well in that park. I don't do well in that city. That's like, if you hate going to Arizona, you're not going to want to sign with Arizona. I don't know how much that matters. You're only signing a couple of free agents a year. And usually it's probably going to come down to the, you know, many, many millions of dollars a team is offering, but it, it might be that they are, they've actually been, uh, shooting themselves in their very much not fallen asleep foot by doing this. Yeah, well, I love the story. I hope someone goes and confirms it. I also kind of hope no one does because I want it to be real. If it is real, it doesn't seem to be helping them that much

this year. They're 16 and 14 on the road and 13 and 25 at home, and that's playing against players who can't feel their feet. So you think they should be doing better. Did you follow the Vallejo mound controversy at all this year? Not this year. Last year, I did. Well, this was the bullpen mound. In the Pacific Association, Vallejo's visitor's like, you know, complete wildlife when the season started and the stompers weren't able to warm up. They weren't able to warm up at all. So Sean Conroy started opening day and he had to warm up on flat ground.

And then Vallejo's got this like titanic pitcher's mound on the field. So he was going from Everest. Yeah, Mound Everest. So he was going from flat ground to Everest. Yeah, Mound Everest. So he was going from flat ground to an abnormally steep mound. And I think it was a problem for him, as the mound is often a problem. And it got so bad that the league actually had to prohibit Vallejo from using their own bullpen mound until this was resolved. Because it was determined that it was unfair for one team to have a bullpen mound in the other.

And so nobody was allowed to warm up. Well, that's something you expect in Vallejo, but not necessarily in Chase Field. So anyway, I hope Nick Picoro, if you're listening and you haven't done this before, someone smuggle a tape measure in there and find out whether the Diamondbacks bench is really shorter or longer or lower or whatever it is that would produce this effect, because it's a great story. And I was going to bring up the clubhouse thing, because I guess it's not that different from most teams just having a nicer home clubhouse than visitors clubhouse, right? I mean, you're, I guess it's

not, it's not totally different from that. I mean, that's maybe not quite as much of a direct impact on your performance as your feet falling asleep during the game. But if you have worse training facilities or less space to relax or spread out or take a shower or whatever it is, then that's sort of similar. No one mandates that the home and visitors clubhouses have to be the same and that you have to have the same facilities. So anyway, I like it. Oh, but that reminds me because I was just trying to figure out if this makes you a hypocrite about your no markers on the field policy. I don't think it does. I thought about it, but I couldn't make the argument. But the markers on the field conversation we had recently,

Mike Kruko was talking about this on the Giants broadcast. And he said that he's pro marker because he says that teams routinely deface the field as it is. That he says every, you see it constantly where the coaches go out before the game and they are digging, they're digging these thick marks into the field before the game during batting practice. And he says, uh, at least a marker doesn't face the field. Uh-huh. Okay. All right. Yesterday, Dustin Palmatier wrote an article for Baseball Perspectives on Johnny Cueto. And it's kind of funny how every year someone rewrites the article on Johnny Cueto. And it's always different and fun and has a new spin on it. But someone rediscovers just how amazing Johnny Cueto is every year.

And so RJ Anderson has written articles about Cueto, and you wrote an article about Cueto, and Chris Moshe wrote an article about Cueto last year. And now Dustin did his Cueto article. and he watched a ton of Quato pitches. And it's about his timing and his different deliveries. And of course, I knew about this, but Dustin classified how many there are and just how different they are. And everyone's seen like the shimmy that he does or the quick pitch that he does. Everyone's seen like the shimmy that he does or the quick pitch that he does. But there's so many variations of it and subsets of each type of delivery.

It's really impressive and fun to watch. And after watching that, I just I don't know how anyone hits Johnny Cueto. Maybe the answer is no one does because no one has this year. No one does because no one has this year. But it's really incredible because, A, he has this good stuff and he's just a good pitcher anyway and good command and good movement and good velocity and all that. But, I mean, he is a completely different guy from pitch to pitch. And it's amazing because that's not the case for almost anyone else on anything like this regular basis. And so hitters time the pitcher, and Dustin showed hitters timing Cueto, and then Cueto's switching it up, and suddenly they're late. And it's amazing that when you add in all of this timing stuff

that anyone can ever figure out when he's going to throw the pitch. I would be standing up there just not knowing what was going to happen, just not knowing when I should be prepared, where I should look. I would be completely out of my element, I think. And for major league hitters who are generally seeing major league pitchers repeat exactly the same delivery time after time after time, it's just amazing to me that Cueto is not even more dominant than he has been. And I'm curious about how much you think it makes him better. Like if he's a five-win pitcher, let's say, and he's been on a better pace than that this season, but he's been a five-win

pitcher in the past. So if he's a a five win pitcher with this incredible variety of timing and deliveries what is he without that i appreciated dustin's latest piece because uh it did try to pin down how effective it is and found some reason to think it is effective as a uh as a friend what he found that when he does certain when he does the quick pitch, he throws a fastball more often, and it also seems to hurt his velocity a little bit. So he does breaking balls or fastballs a little bit differently depending on the delivery, but we still have no idea if it works or how well it works. Yeah, as a longtime close Quato watcher, I have come to believe that Quato's, I told Dustin that I had been working on a tweet that I finally gave up on because it was terrible. And so now I'm going to just tell you this terrible tweet that I couldn't get right anyway. But it was basically that, Jesus, nothing is worse than saying aloud a rejected tweet idea. I'm going to do it anyway.

That I call Johnny Cueto's shimmies my no good son-in-law because sure, it might be a lot of fun, but it never works. And yeah, there you go. And I have seen very little evidence that it works very often. There might be a pitch here and there where you go, oh, yeah, that guy's definitely off balance. But I think it's somewhat exaggerated. And so if he's a five-win pitcher with the shimmy, if you took away the shimmy, I would say he's 4.98 win pitcher. Wow, really? I think it's mostly nothing.

And occasionally he gets called for a balk with a runner on third. Huh? Well, that's, that's amazing. I would think because, well, for one thing, he must think it works because he keeps doing it. And so he must have some, at least anecdotal evidence that, that it's doing something for him, you would think, because it has to make his job harder. I mean, I guess he is maybe uniquely able to do this. Most pitchers, even if they wanted to, probably just couldn't do this. It would screw them up too much. But you would think that his life would be easier if he just had the same delivery every time. And so he seems to think it works. And I mean, it's it's as long as it doesn't make him significantly worse.

And maybe it does. I mean, maybe this distracts him. Maybe his stuff would be better if he didn't have to worry about this. I don't know. But if it doesn't, then I mean, it seems like it should it should help because it's just an added factor that no one else has, right? I mean, it's not like, I mean, almost no one else does this with the consistency or the opposite of consistency that he does. And so you would think that if you gave this to any pitcher and if that pitcher had really good stuff to start with, and then he really varied.

And it's not like a small hesitation here or there. I mean, he's doing a twist. He's not doing a twist. He's quick pitching. He's shimmying. He is adding, you know, elements or subtracting elements from the delivery in ways that seem like they would be incredibly confusing. So I guess if hitters are just so locked in that they are watching the ball and it doesn't matter what happens before the ball leaves his hand, then maybe that would explain why it wouldn't do anything.

But gosh, I mean, just watching all the gifs, it seems like that would make it much harder to hit him. I don't know. I would guess that it does something. I also would have guessed that it does something. And I'm just, it's mostly anecdotal, but I, after writing about Quato's quirks in 2013 or so, I have watched every single one just about, it seems like. And it just feels like a lot of times the ball gets hit. Like, it seems like it should work and then the ball gets hit uh-huh so yeah i don't

know i i mean look a pitcher slide steps inconsistently and we don't think that that's going to make a big difference but that's basically the same thing right yeah um i guess so i mean slide stepping is i mean people tend to think of that as something that makes the pitcher worse, right? Right. So I don't know whether that's the case with Cueto because it's, I mean, maybe when he does the quick pitch, but often he is just, I don't know whether the things he does impairs him in the same way that a slide step impairs a pitcher because he's still doing a wind up. It's just a weird, different wind up. So I don't know. I would love to know somehow. It's really hard to figure out exactly what Cueto would be without this thing that he

always does, but he's fascinating. I mean, he's got to be one of the best pitchers to watch and analyze just because of all this weirdness. Yeah, my favorite thing that Dustin noticed in his first part of his two-parter was that Cueto sometimes, not often, not always, but Cueto sometimes will shake off pitches before Buster Posey has put signs down, which is great. Like, you don't notice it until you do. And then, yeah, he's just sitting there shaking, shaking, and Buster's just sort of waiting, waiting for Cueto to finish,

and then he puts down a sign. I thought the thing that I always wanted to follow up on from mine was that Cueto doesn't just change the timing on his pitching motion, but he seems to dramatically change his timing between pitches. He had, I think, the third biggest standard deviation in time between pitches from the stretch as well as time between pitches from the windup when there's nobody on base. And you would see him sometimes, he would just randomly take 35 seconds in between pitches. He normally works quite quickly, and then suddenly he would just stop,

and he would just take 35 seconds for no reason at all. So all these things seem very small, and I'm willing to give all of them a little credit, just a little, like not a lot. I don't think they all together even add up to a win necessarily. But they all add up to a little bit. So, I don't know. I enjoy it. Oh, yeah.

It's great. All right. So, anyone who hasn't should go read Dustin's article. I'll link to it. Lots of fun gifts. I do want to say that I am really excited by the resurgence of quick pitching across the league. I love the quick pitch in general, and I was disheartened and shocked to find out a couple years ago

that quick pitching is considered bush league, is a violation of unwritten rules. And enough pitchers are doing it now that I think that the stigma has mostly worn away in the last year or two, which is good. Quick pitching should be done. It should be a strategy. It should be done even more aggressively, in my opinion. And I worry because I feel like anecdotally, this is something that Latin pitchers are doing more in the majors than American-born pitchers. And I worry that this is going to turn into another racial divide in the game where we're going to start getting quotes about playing the game the wrong way.

And I don't like that conversation ever at all. I love quick pitching. It's great. It's the Diamondbacks bench of pitching. All right. So a quick detour to Reds land, just a quick little Red's comment. A year ago, episode 693, we talked about Zach Cozart and Zach Cozart, his season had just ended at the time. And I was sorry because he was having a anomalous season for Zach Cozart. So he came back this year and he's doing exactly the same thing that he was doing last year. Zach Cozart hits for power now. He has a 200 isolated

power this year and last year. This is something he had never done even at any minor league level. He was, of course, coming off his 2014 season When he was literally The worst hitter in the major leagues Or you know the worst qualified hitter In the major leagues and even before That he was better but he was Not an offensive force he was A glove first shortstop and

That's all anyone expected him to be And then Zach Gozart turned into A good hitter with power all of a sudden And he has just one of the best origin stories of any of these sudden mid-career changes I think it's kind of the the hitter equivalent of the Matt Shoemaker Rich Hill thing that we talked about earlier this week and I will read it again for those who weren't listening a year ago, but this is from an April 2015 C. Trent Rosecrans story, and it starts, This spring training, Reds Hall of Fame shortstop Barry Larkin had a simple question for the team's current shortstop Zach Cozart.

Quote, Hey, you ever thought about telling yourself just to crush the inside part of the ball? Not guide it, but wherever that ball is, just crush the inside part of it? For some reason, that struck a chord with Cozart, who was hopping between two minor league games to get extra at-bats. He thought about crushing the inside of the baseball in that very next at-bat, and he crushed the ball off the wall for a double on a changeup. I was like, oh, Cozart remembered before Sunday's game with the Cardinals. It was kind of eye-opening. The simpler you can make everything, and if it's that one thought that keeps me clear,

it's definitely going to help. And this was the moment that turned Zach Cozart from one of the worst hitters in the major leagues into a guy with actual power who is now a good player because he's still a good defender, but he hits for lots of power. So just crazy. This is just the weirdest thing.

This is like a pitcher who just suddenly starts throwing a good pitch more often. It's a hitter who just wasn't swinging hard, wasn't going up to the plate thinking about hitting the ball hard. Something just very, very obvious like that, that you would go up there trying to hit the ball hard or hit the inside of the ball or whatever it is. That seems like something that by the time you get to the major leagues, you would have already considered that or someone would have told you, hey, swing hard or hit the ball hard or think about it that way. It's just, it doesn't seem like it would produce a real difference in anyone. And yet somehow it seems to have done that. And Zach

Cozart now at 30 or whatever he is, is a significantly better hitter, it seems, than he was a couple of years ago. So I don't get it. We don't know anything, but I love the Zach Cozart story. I almost the exact same advice turned me into a much better golfer when I was back in high school when I was a competitive golfer. The same advice on drives added like a huge – The inside of the ball? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, hit the inside of the ball.

Yeah, just like that. I have wondered why – well, not why, but whether it would be helpful to tell a hitter to aim for the low, you know, for the bottom you saw that he was missing on, he was more likely to swing and miss under a pitch or he has a problem with pop-ups or something, could you just tell him to aim for the top half of the ball? I don't know. I don't know if batting instructors work that way. Seems like good advice. But this is different.

I think aiming for the inside of the ball, I think, is more about having your hands be in the right place. Well, if it worked for you in golf and Zach Cozart in baseball, then maybe hitting coaches should just go around telling all their players to hit the inside of the ball or swing hard or something, because maybe it'll work for other people too. All right. So maybe Zach Cozart will be a trade target for someone with the deadline coming up now that he is a good baseball player. Maybe the Mets will acquire Zach Cozart to fill a void in the infield because they have a void in the infield caused by the absence of David Wright,

who is having hernia surgery and seems to be done for the year. hernia surgery and seems to be done for the year. And given the way his last couple of years have gone, you certainly have to question whether his career is coming to an end or whether his time as a productive player is coming to an end. And that stinks, right? Doesn't that sort of stink? It's like David Wright is having a, it's kind of a pitcher sort of thing is happening to David Wright, where we don't see this that often with position players where something just goes wrong at a not terribly advanced age. I mean, you see it every now and then with, with back injuries and you get kind of a Dale Murphy kind of career where you just peak very early and then you don't really have a decline phase. You just fade out very quickly.

So it happens with back injuries or shoulder injuries now and then, but it's much rarer than it is with pitchers who might just have a single injury and then they're a completely different guy or they're gone forever. And David Wright, it seems like, Might be following that trajectory I don't want to write him off completely Because when he has played Over the last couple seasons He's still been a pretty good player Or definitely a good hitter So I mean there could be A future for him if he comes back

Or maybe he becomes a DH Somewhere maybe he's able To get himself ready to play enough To fill that kind of role. But the years of star David Wright, I think, are clearly very likely to be over now. And that's too bad because he was definitely on a Hall of Fame trajectory and was just a fun player and just such a great player. I feel like I've already almost forgotten how great his peak was, and it really was great. And he basically meets the Jaws standard for peak period for a third baseman to be in the Hall of Fame.

he needed was a few more years of being decent and, you know, compiling a few wins a year to be a very strong Hall of Fame candidate. And now it doesn't seem like he has much chance of getting there. So that's a shame. Going to miss the really good David Wright. He was just a fantastic player. I mean, he was one of the best hitters in baseball some years, and he was a good defender many of those years, and he just kind of did it all. And he was a very, just a very fun offensive player, like a kind of a, I guess he wasn't often a 300, 400, 500 guy, but he did do that. And he was that kind of player. it's uh it's a shame gonna miss good david right uh i think that you in episode 906 of this podcast you might have just pulled off the first segue in our shows it was a very labored very labored one when we uh yes the the reds

short stop and the might be available yeah uh the when we were, you know, our formative years as baseball prospectus, readers, baseball fans, say 2004, 5, 6, 7, that era. The greatest players at the time of that sort of generation, young players, were, you know, Albert Pujols was the star. And then you had Grady Sizemore, Joe Maurer, David Wright, Chase Utley. Those were basically the four guys who were young and who you thought surefire Hall of Famers. The best players, super good, other than Utley, super good at young ages. And just, it seemed inevitable that they would all be Hall of Famers. And then Sizemore burned out early because of injuries, but the other three kept on being good and they all really got right to the cusp of where they only needed to compile. And all of them turned out to have

real problems with compiling, Utley partly because he started late and so he's already near the end of his season and he might get there anyway, although he's still underrated. And Wright is not going to, I don't think Wright is going to get there. And then Maurer, as John Chenier wrote about a week ago, Maurer is like in this really close space where a good month makes you think, okay, well, he's going to hang on another six years. He'll put up the few wins he needs. But all those guys got to 50 pretty easily, except Sizemore all those guys got to 50 pretty easily. Except Sizemore. They all got to 50 pretty easily, and then they just stalled.

And I wonder if there's going to be a Hall of Fame lull. Because who is there from that era? You got Pujols, and then you've got Beltre, thank goodness. Beltre has worked his way into it. And Beltran. And maybe they saw him. But Beltran is a little bit before that era. But Beltran is another guy who I think.

He's doing some good compiling this year. Yeah, you think Beltran's going to get there? You think he's going to? I mean, he's been another very underrated player. Teixeira, Teixeira didn't get there and had a real chance. Who's a Hall of Famer? Who debuted? I'm going to look.

I'm going to play index real quick. Okay. So I'm going to look for players from 2003 to 2008, under 26 war leaders, or maybe I'll do under 27 war leaders. Okay. The young stars of that era are the ones I named. Wright, Sizemore, Teixeira. Karl Crawford, not going to get there.

Oh, Beltran Cabrera. So Miguel Cabrera will get there. Jose Reyes, not going to get there. Maurer. Alex Rios. Vernon Wells, not going to get there. Jimmy Rollins, not going to get there. Granderson, not going to get there.

Who's the Hall of Famers? Hanley. Hanley Ramirez, not going to get there. Eric Chavez, not going to get there granderson not going to get there who's the hall of famers hanley hanley ramirez not going to get there eric chavez not going to get there yeah you just missed each row in that cutoff yeah he too uh too old i mean he was 27 before you know when he debuted yeah uh so yeah there it looks kind of like there's this whole there's like a i think there might be like a five year period where nobody no Hall of Famer debuted except for perhaps pitchers. And so maybe maybe Felix and maybe cranky. Well, that's got to be very unusual. Yeah.

All right. Well, if there's still any backlog left on the ballot, maybe that's when you finally get it taken care of. Those guys won't be eligible anymore. Maybe that's when you finally get it taken care of. Those guys won't be eligible anymore. Maybe Utley, who I wrote about like five years ago, fits every qualification for Hall of Fame snub. Maybe this gets him there. Right, yeah. Beltre, Utley, Beltran, guys who might have been underrated.

Maybe this will benefit them because they'll still be on the ballot And there won't be other guys coming on and pushing them off By the way The same period for pitchers Through age 27 The stars younger than 27 From 2003 to 2008 Carlos Zambrano, no

Johan Santana, no CeCe Sabathia, meh He's in Mauerland right now Peavy? No. Brandon Webb? No. Josh Beckett? No. Dan Heron? No. Scott Casimir? No. Don Trell? No. Rich Harden? No. Matt Cain? No.

So, but Cranky and Felix debuted toward the tail end of that period, and both have good chances, I would say. Yeah. Okay. Well, we will hope for the best for David Wright. And in the meantime, the Mets should trade for Zach Kozart and move Astroble Cabrera to third. Problem solved.

All right. And lastly, just quickly on Ichiro and Rose. And I can't believe this has become such a big topic. How is everyone writing an Ichiro Rose article and talking about Ichiro Rose? And now I guess we are too. So I don't know how this has become such a big controversy or talking point. It seems like something that could only happen in baseball, where everyone is obsessed with statistics, where we are talking about whether someone gets a title that is not actually an official title, and no one is actually talking about counting Ichiro's hits from Japan

in some sort of major league record. Like, this wasn't on the table. And so Ichiro's not saying that that should happen. And I don't know if this is a straw man or if some people are actually saying this, but it doesn't seem like something that was going to happen. So it'd be nice if we could just celebrate Ichiro and not talk about who was better or who had more hits or whatever, but I guess we can't do that.

So I am curious, though, about the Ichiro hypothetical hit total, and I know that Aaron Gleeman wrote an article about that today for Baseball Perspectives looking at how many hits Itra would have had in the majors if he had actually started his career here. And I was thinking about that before I saw Aaron's article. And I think that as Aaron also kind of concluded, there is a very strong argument to be made that Itra would have had more hits if he had been here or, you know, To be made that Ichiro would have had more hits if he had been here or, you know, he would have roughly as many hits if he had been nine-something OPS, and he has never had a nine-something OPS in the major leagues. So clearly different environment.

He hit for more power. really wasn't all that different from the first year that he became a full-time player in Japan, 1994, through his last full season in Japan. He was a.359 hitter, and then, you know, his first year in the majors, he hit.350. And his first four years in the majors, which is through his age 30 season, he hit.340. So I don't think that it affected his ability to hit singles really all that much. And so I don't think it would have hurt him in the hits department all that much. Even if you take off 20 points and you say, well, he was a 359 hitter in Japan as a regular, and then he became a 340 hitter in the majors. I mean, if you take off 20 points or whatever, I mean, that's not much at all. That's like, if you have the same number of

at-bats, that's about 60 hits or something over that span of time. So there's that. And then, of course, there's the fact that Japan's seasons were shorter. And Ichiro is a guy who usually plays just about every game Or did when he was younger And so instead of 130 games or 140 games He would have been playing 160 games And so I think that more than makes up for the batting average drop-off And really that's kind of all the math you have to do And Aaron was speculating about when he actually would have come up And been a regular in the major leagues And I think it's probably safe to say when he actually would have come up and been a regular in the major leagues.

And I think it's probably safe to say that he wouldn't have been up as an 18 and 19-year-old. And he was briefly in Japan, but he only added about 35 hits in those couple of years and he wasn't very good. So I think it's reasonable to assume that he would have come up as a 20-year-old. I mean, he's an all-time great Hall of Fame player. Those guys often debut when they're pretty young. And so, you know, there could have been some bias against him maybe because there hadn't been precedent for a superstar Japanese hitter at the time. But if there wasn't, if someone actually looked at his AAA stats at the time and said, this guy could help us, then I think it's reasonable to assume

that he would have been good right away, because he was basically as good as he ever got in Japan in his first season in Japan. Like, as a 20-year-old, he was as good as he was in any season that he played in Japan. So I don't think there's really any reason to think that he would have fewer hits if he had been here. Not that that changes anything.

Not that we have to say he holds some sort of record. He doesn't officially. But I think we can say that it wouldn't have really affected his ability to hit for average and his ability to hit singles all that much if he had been here sooner. He's awesome. He's Ichiro. It would have worked anywhere. Yeah. I agree. hit singles all that much if he had been here sooner he is he's awesome he's itro it would have worked anywhere yeah i i agree and and it's not like it's not like he was in the it's not like he wasn't in the majors because nobody thought he was good enough to be in the majors so that he wasn't in the majors because there are rules that prohibited him basically from being in the majors

uh and that's sort of out of his control so you don't have to go out of your way to to devalue what he did he did exactly what he could do where he was allowed to do it more or less and yeah i mean what you said is is right i didn't really realize this until you know until talking to aaron about his his piece but i, we know how good he was at 27, right? We know exactly how good he was because he was in the majors at 27. And probably how good he is at 27 is how good he is at 26, because that's, you know, the aging curve is not that steep. And it's hard to think that a guy who is as good as he was at 27 and so on is much worse at 26. So let's say we know how good he is at 26. And then like you say.

And there's just no clear difference between what he was at 20 and what he was at 26. Yeah, exactly. None at all. Which makes it easier for us. And not just, it's not like we're just cherry picking 20 and 26. There's no difference between 20 and 21, 21 and 22, 22 and 23, 23 and 24, 24 and 25, 25 and 26. He was exactly that good. And so you could very easily imagine that Ichiro in the majors would have been putting up, you know, 200 plus hits all those years. It's

not a stretch. I think Aaron is right that he's probably doesn't have an opening day job as a 20 year old in the majors. And it's hard to know how a major league team would have viewed this really super skinny guy who had no power and was mostly a speed guy. Maybe they'd say, oh, well, the speed plays now and he gets base hits and they bring him up early. Or maybe they'd say he needs more time. Maybe they'd screw with his service time. We don't really know. But yeah, anyway, it's been said.

Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, if he had been hitting 380 or something in AAA, then I would think that even though he was this young, wispy kid, someone would have promoted him probably. I don't know if he would have been blocked with the Mariners at the time. I don't remember who was in their outfield at the time, but obviously he was there in 2001. It's a fun career arc to look at because even though it is different environments, I think with Ichiro specifically, it wouldn't have affected his ability to do the one thing that Ichiro does incredibly well, which is get hits. say that he would have had about as many hits as he has now and not add too many caveats although of course i think it's also fair to not have him be any official record holder because these are actually different leagues and different qualities of competition and that's fine so i don't know if part of it is just that we're all so sick of pete rose and we are tired of his public comments and his complaints and his whining and that's Why there's been such a response It's just each roast a more Sympathetic character at this point

But but yeah no need To make too much of it we can just Celebrate the awesomeness that is True we can each row was better At getting hits than Pete Rose was Yeah I guess that's true Well that they had a roughly The same like hits per plate appearance rate or hits per at-bat rate, I think, right? After he was in the majors?

Did they? I mean, Ichiro's career 314 hitter, although I guess maybe walks would be... Oh yeah, Pete Rose drew a lot more walks. Yeah. Yeah, So probably. Yeah. And, you know, Rose played until he was 45, and Itro's only 42. Comparable. Comparable. Comparable hitman. Yes, definitely.

And it makes it much more fun, I think, that Itro is not limping to the finish line. It looked like he was the last few years. It like he was having a A Rose-esque end to his Career but this year He is good again I don't know whether That will last but it's pretty Great that Ichiro's Making contact with everything and Has the lowest strikeout rate of his career

And is walking more than he Struck out and I don't know how He's doing it but I love That he's doing it you know lots of other hitters were better than both of them as hitters as as total hitters so that kind of puts the controversy in perspective like who even cares this is a i mean i care we all care it's fun to care but we can also not care too much because lots of players added more with their bats than both of them. Yeah.

Not like not tons of players, but enough. Yes. It's just for fun, guys. Just for fun. Like all baseball. Yeah. Okay. So the last little thing you did a quick blog post last night about Clayton Kershaw's walks.

His walk total is now up to seven on the season. Who was it he walked last night? Yasmany Tomas. Right, and there was a questionable call on the ball four, and so you looked at the called strike probabilities for each of the balls in his walk sequences this season, and we can also look at the called strike probability. This is from VP's database, from Harry Povlidis.

He found that the called strike probability of ball four that Kershaw threw last night was 97.8%. So 98% of the time that pitch is called a strike. I didn't see it live. Was it caught badly? Was it just... I'm looking at a picture of it right now, and it looks like the catcher is definitely reaching out with his arm extended, and he seems to be set up on the inside part of the plate.

The pitch is low and, well, not really low and away, but on the kind of lower away part of the plate, the pitch is low and, well, not really low and away, but on the kind of lower away part of the plate quadrant. Okay, so that happens. Sometimes you miss your spot. But this was in a place where pitches are almost always called strikes. And so this was a case where a walk shouldn't have been a walk. And we can say that with some certainty since this was the outcome pitch. It was a full count, and so if that pitch had been called a strike, it would have been a strikeout instead of a walk.

So should have six walks in a way, and you looked at the previous six walks, and you found that how many of them had at least one pitch that would have normally been called a strike? All but two. So now five of his seven walks, sorry, of his seven walks, only two involved four pitches that are not usually called strikes. The other five have at least one pitch that is typically called a strike. Right. Okay. With different degrees. So his first walk had an 85 percent strike his second one was nuts it was 98 81 68 42 so that all the pitches three of the four balls

in the right in in places where you get a strike in the drawing of the strike zone that you see in like matchup plots all four of them are in squarely in or of the strike zone that you see in like matchup plots, all four of them are in squarely in or touching the strike zone. And one is one was one of his own 12 pitches that I've been writing about this year. It was literally directly down the middle. Then he had a true walk to Freddie Freeman. The highest was 12%. A true walk to David Wright, the highest was 17%. To Votto, he had a 55% strike in there. And to Daniel Castro, he had a 57% strike in there. So you could say that he should really have two walks on the season. Yeah, you could. I mean, you shouldn't.

You probably shouldn't. You could for fun. Yeah, sure. Right. So because of this anomalous call last night, he had a mere 11 to 1 strikeout to walk ratio. Hey, what is the strike rate for ball one of that at bat? The previous three pitches were okay. Because ball one was kind of close. Yeah, that was an eight percent okay so so yeah so that just uh i mean i guess that kind of makes sense because if you have a guy who never walks anyone then you would think that when he

does walk someone then he's more likely than most to have had a call go against him in those at-bats because he's a he's a guy who doesn't walk anyone, doesn't really throw balls. So when you look at the end of the season and Clayton Kershaw has a 19 strikeout-to-walk ratio right now, pretty good as it is, but could be even better if a couple umpires had complied with the standard strike zone along the way. Although, of course, he could be getting beneficial calls at other times. So I don't know.

Maybe it all evens out. Yeah, it definitely all evens out. I am making only tongue-in-cheek outrage over here because I'm sure it all evens out. For one thing, I'm sure it—well, no, I'm not sure it all evens out. One thing we've learned is that it does not all even out. But I'm sure he's gotten many favorable calls. So that's one thing. As I've noted in this, in my brief write-up, getting one strike call does not end in a bat. He might still have walked those guys. And, you know, in the case of like, for instance, the Votto and David

Wright walks, those are both basically coin flips. So he only maybe, quote unquote, deserved one of those coin flips and so on. But as far as fun, fake, whimsical outrage, I think this is rich territory. Right. Okay. So that is it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up for a small monthly donation. Five listeners who have done so are Mark, Gary Jacobs, Evan Haldane, Andy, and Daniel Thrasher.

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