Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 977: Indy Outliers

Episode Date: November 17, 2016

Ben and Sam reprise their “multiple Andrew Millers” conversation for the final time, banter about the AL Rookie of the Year Award and the NL Platinum Glove Award, and spotlight some of 2016’s most eye-catching indy league stat lines.

I know that she's nothing but nothing Nothing but a lover girl See the way she gives away those kisses She's everything you need and more Suckin' on a cert, that ain't no desert I cannot compete On an independent slate Good morning and welcome to episode 977 of Effectively Wild,

the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus, brought to you by The Play Index, baseballreference.com, and by our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller along with Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. How are you, Ben? Doing all right. Great. Anything you want to talk about before we start talking about? Well, we got a couple follow-ups about our Andrew Miller discussion, which was in itself a follow-up to our Andrew Miller discussion. We're getting a lot of follow-ups on topics these days, I guess, because

there's not all that much going on in baseball, so we can talk about the same things three or four times without anyone getting impatient. But we basically got a question from two people. So the first question was from Justin, who said if you really had five Andrew Millers,

different guys, same stuff, would you face some sort of times through the order penalty? If so, would it be spoken This guy has the same stuff as the last guy Or subconscious You don't even know why you're hitting the closer But you are And if so, what is the greatest number of Andrew Millers you would want

Before you would prefer a Darren O'Day Or a Mark Melanson Just for the different look And similar question from Keith who is currently in Zanzibar Tanzania and says if all five Millers had the same pitches would closer Miller be less effective because batters would potentially be getting their second or third look at the Miller repertoire what do you think well it depends whether we're talking about actual clones or people with the same stuff. I think maybe something like arm angle and delivery would matter.

I don't know how big a part that is of the times through the order penalty. And you don't even think there is a times through the order penalty, right? You think it might be more likely to be fatigue. Yeah, I lean that there's some of both And I think I'm on the more fatigue side of the spectrum than most people are Yeah, I think I lean more toward the familiarity side of the spectrum So if we just say that it's familiarity mostly Then I think if you have five guys who look exactly like Andrew Miller Then yes, I suppose he would be subject to the times through the order penalty. I don't really see why not. So if it's five different guys, like we

talked about on the most recent episode, then maybe not. Maybe even if they have the same stuff, there would be enough different about them to disrupt that. But yeah, I mean, there would be a point at which I guess the third or fourth Andrew Miller or whatever would be less effective because you've already seen Andrew Miller. Wouldn't it be fascinating to see at the end of like, I don't know, three weeks, three months, three years, ten years, how different the Andrew Millers are? I mean, they might, after five years, for all we know, one might be throwing a totally different pitch. They might just go off on these totally different journeys, partly because of their roles and partly because of lived experiences. Yeah. I want to see it.

I want to have somebody create a simulated future. Yeah. Or it could happen because of what we're talking about. If there is this familiarity effect, then each Andrew Miller would have some incentive to differentiate himself somehow

from the other Andrew Millers. So I don't know what that would be. Maybe it would just be changing up your pitch selection or working on a new pitch or changing your arm angle or moving to a different part of the rubber or who knows what. But yeah, you're right.

It would be fascinating to see how they changed. But basically, if they didn't change, if they were all the same, then yes, right? There would be an effect, and maybe the Andrew Miller who comes in after the other Andrew Millers would not be as good as the first Andrew Miller who comes in after the other Andrew Millers would not be as good as the first Andrew Miller was. Yeah. I still think if you had your choice between a fifth Andrew Miller and the fifth best reliever in baseball, who would you choose? Would the familiarity make the fifth Andrew Miller and the other andrew

miller's worse enough that it would close the gap between andrew miller and the fifth best reliever yeah i think so because i mean what is he is he the first best now even if he's the first best now the gap isn't so enormous so so yeah i think so it's not so enormous but you don't you probably don't think that the familiarity effect would also be enormous. If we're using enormous as our standard, then both of those would be not enormous. Yeah, but unless we think there's some reason why it would be smaller than it is for the typical starter, say, then it's pretty significant. I think it's significant enough to overcome the difference between best reliever and fifth best reliever. So yeah, I'd choose someone else. Okay. All right. Another quick thing. The Rookie of the Year award voting was released yesterday. Michael Fulmer won. Are you surprised by how easily he won? I'm sort of surprised by how easily he won.

I am. by how easily he won. I mean, I am. Yeah, we talked about it at some point toward the end of the year, whether Fulmer should win or Gary Sanchez should win or who would win. And I think we basically concluded that,

I mean, they were essentially even, I think you could even make a case that Sanchez was maybe more valuable, but we wondered whether he would be penalized for the fact that he accrued all of that value in a short time period, whereas Fulmer was up all season and was accumulating innings. And it's hard to look at just, you know, the number of innings he had versus the number of plate appearances Sanchez had and not penalize Sanchez, even though in theory you really shouldn't. Or did we agree that you shouldn't? Because when he wasn't playing, we talked about their substitutes,

like what would have happened when they weren't playing and whether their teams were worse off in some way that should count against them. But we weren't going to hold it against Sanchez because it wasn't his fault that he wasn't there, right? He just didn't get called up because the Yankees had other guys till they traded some guys yeah yeah I've I think voters like to vote for playing time even when they don't have to I think yeah I should mention what the actual voting was that there were 30 votes and Fulmer got 26 of the first place votes and Sanchez got the other four so so if it wasn't close at all if a player, and we have some differences in the wars here

that is significant if you're actually deciding how to vote. But if you had, let's say you had four players who all had exactly three wins above replacement, and they all had exactly three wins above replacement on every model of war. So you cannot use war discrepancies for your argument at all. They're all identical of war. So you cannot use war discrepancies for your argument at all. They're all identical by war. And you have one guy who was on the opening day roster

and played 162 games to produce three war. One guy who was called up at the, let's say, that's a loud crow, isn't it? One guy who was called up at the Super 2 deadline. One guy who was called up around the trade deadline and only played like 70 games. And then one guy who was called up with three weeks to go. And in those three weeks, he was still a three-win player. Still a three-win player in 20 games, okay?

So we're talking about a 20-win player over the course of a year. Break down the voting. How many first-place votes go to each of those four? Hmm. Well, I mean, I would have answered differently probably a month ago, but now having seen what Fulmer did, I would think that the late- season sensation gets the fewest, even though he was the most impressive in his small sample. So I would say it would

probably go something like, yeah, I don't know, you know, 20 and seven and three or something. 27, three and zero. Yeah. Well, oh wait, there were four, there were four different guys. There were four. There's a guy with 160 games played, 120 games played, 80 games played, and then we'll say 30 games played. He's a September call-up, okay? So those are your four. Okay. Well, if there's a candidate who's fairly close, then maybe it would be a little more split.

So I don't know. split so i don't know i'll say the winner gets half the first place votes and then the other 15 go uh i don't know 10 and four and one or something yeah even i wouldn't vote for the september call up i don't think i think that i i don't put a big premium on playing time for rookies or for cy young's but i do want to have a big enough number that I don't feel like it was just a hot small sample fluke that you should have to produce something that looks real. And so I probably would even myself not vote for the Barry Bonds September candidate. On the other hand, you could say that if there had been a larger sample, he still would have offered some value in that sample.

Probably he might not have played at the same pace, but he still would have been better than nothing. And so that would have moved him ahead of all the other guys. Yeah, except to the degree that I don't trust anything over the course of a month. What is the, isn't that voros's law wasn't that voros's law that any major leaguer can do anything over the course of you know 150 plate appearances yeah right yeah so i uh so for that reason i almost would hardly consider it data but the you know if it's over the course of a few months, I probably would say that that is a, that's a season. That's a legit season. Dude hit 20 home runs. Yeah. I mean, we did this already,

but I feel like once you get to 20 home runs, it's a season. You get to call it a season. He did it. He hit 20 homers. If Gary Sanchez had started opening day and finished the season with 20 homers, he would be the rookie of the year right now a catcher same rate stats doesn't even matter no no no forget the rate sets give him a seven 750 ops give him you know give him lousy numbers the rest of the year he if he were a catcher in new york with 20 home runs who played the whole year he would have been rookie of the year he would have won yeah there the year. He would have won. Yeah, probably.

Because there's a big bias against giving it to pitchers. And so I think Sanchez would have won. I think Sanchez could have ended up with a 7.55 OPS and 20 homers over the course of a full season and exactly three war, which is what he had, and he would have won. All right, well, it surprises me that it wasn't closer because Sanchez was a really great story, one of the most interesting stories,

one of the most watchable players of the second half of the season, and linked to sort of the Yankees rebuilding efforts, and they're actually trading people, and, hey, they made room for some young guys, and now the young guy is the best player in baseball over a certain period and the hottest hitter we've seen for a while, at least other than Bryce Harper. So, yeah, I thought people would sort of want to vote for that story, especially since the stats made it a perfectly legitimate decision. So surprised that more people didn't do that. Yep. All right. On the other hand,

we're also living in a world where the best defensive player in Major League Baseball was determined to be a first baseman. Yes. Right. Yeah. This is just not feeling voting lately. Yeah. No. All right. All right. How many many votes if you had a platinum glove vote how many votes down before you would give a give it to a first baseman before you would vote for a first baseman like would you vote for every shortstop over the best first baseman in baseball or would that feel unsatisfying to you would you still wrote you know vote for these guys partially on how they compare to their peers at their position and you know i mean would rizzo be closer to the 25th guy you'd put on your ballot or closer to the um uh you know 250th guy you'd put

i think he'd be closer to 25th than 250th but but he'd be below 25th, that's for sure. He is fun to watch. He is super fun to watch. And if somebody put him at 25th, if someone put him at 15th, I would go, oh, that's your priority. Cool. And I nod. But I don't even know how they vote for these. I don't even know if there is a ballot.

It might be. I was just looking through it. even know how they vote for these i don't even know if there is a ballot it might be i was just looking through it i saw an old tweet that i had from august of 2011 in which uh you have been all over the old tweets lately i have i've been looking for for something and uh that that required a lot of uh scrolling and clicking anyway in august of 2011 i was trying to get let me see if I get real quick. All right. August, 2011. Let's all vow to get super angry about the major league baseball delivery of the month voting for August.

So this was a award. I don't know if they still do it, but it went to the best reliever of the month and they would give it every month. So then I, so then a few weeks later they announced and I said, Oh, just saw the full voting for MLB delivery man of the month and they would give it every month so then i so then a few weeks later they announced and i said oh just saw the full voting for mlb delivery man of the month award for august valverde second embarrassing and then i went on about why jose valverde didn't deserve to be second and anyway was that sponsored by like dhl or something i'm sure it was. But the best thing about it is that the, oh, so here we go. Kimbrel was the winner.

Wow. There's no, the press release doesn't say who it was. It was DHL. Okay. And yet they didn't put it in the, how did they not put it in the press release? Quote, the DHL presents the Major League Baseball Delivery Man of the Month Award. That's the full name of the award. I love that you guessed DHL presents the Major League Baseball Delivery Man of the Month Award. That's the full name of the award. I love that you guessed DHL, too.

I must have had some residual memory of that award because I don't think I would have guessed DHL. If you were voting for the sponsor of the Delivery Man of the Month Award, DHL would be at best four. Yeah, definitely. Is DHL even still around? DHL was briefly the most likely sponsor of whatever commercial you were watching and i haven't seen a dhl ad in a while does it still exist no i don't know it's okay so the delivery man award was from 2005 through 2013 so they do not give it anymore and maybe that's why we don't know whether DHL exists anymore.

They no longer sponsor this extremely popular award. But it does still exist. All right. So the great thing about this award, though, is that it was determined by, I believe, a panel of four. And one of the four was, quote, sometimes Daryl Hamilton. times daryl hamilton uh major league center field retired major league center fielder was an expert on relief pitchers occasional panelists and also we should note uh the late daryl hamilton yeah anyway let's transition back out of that daryaryl, so DHL, Delivery Man of the Month, Platinum Glove. Yeah, so I don't know who votes for the Platinum Glove,

and therefore I don't know if I have to care at all about it. Is this part of the Gold Glove schedule? Do they announce it at the Gold Glove ceremonies or something? Yes, it is part of the Gold Glove award. Is it possible that it's just, you know what, my here's a guess here's just a guess i have not looked this up my guess is it is whoever wins their gold glove by the largest margin oh yeah i was gonna guess that too apparently and this explains the winner to To determine the Rawlings Platinum Glove Award winners, fans can only select one player among the Rawlings Gold Glove Award winners from each league.

So it's a fan voting thing. It's a fan voting thing. So the fans pick one of the Gold Glove Award winners to be the Platinum Glove Award winner. Okay. All right. And that explains how you get a popular first baseman as the best fielder in baseball. That's fine. Yeah. So, okay. So I'm going to let that one be. I'm just going to not care. Okay. To me, the easiest way to do this is just not to care.

It says there's also the Sabre defensive index, which is part of it too. So that takes into account defensive stats. I don't know. It is a joy. I mean, it really is a joy to watch anthony rizzo play first base he's my first he's my favorite first baseman in a while to watch he's very imaginative uh all right then anything else no so i wanted to talk about my favorite lines my favorite stat pages in indie ball this off this season okay i went through uh the big six leagues i guess uh the atlantic league the american association can-am league frontier league pacific association which is what the stompers were in and the pecos league looking for my favorite lines because for one thing indie, IndieBall cultivates

some very interesting lines, and for another, because I wanted to see how extreme baseball performances get in some of these leagues. So I have here up to eight that I'm going to mention, and so I'm going to start by, what I'm going to do is, first I'm going to send you the page of each one. You look at them, and you just let me know if it jumps out at you why I liked that line. All right. So first we have Tim Holmes.

Oh, okay, I know Tim Holmes. You do. Your sources, you have your scout sources. Have you talked to him about him? I, well, Tim Holmes, he started. Were you asked about him? I was. Oh, did. Have you talked to them about him? I, well, Tim Holmes. Were you asked about him? Oh, a Yankee scout asked you about him, didn't he? Yes, that's right.

Yeah, Tim Holmes started the season in the Stompers League, the Pacific Association, playing for Vallejo. And he was great. And in 14 and a third innings, he struck out 30 guys, which is really crazy. And yeah, then I got an email from someone with the Yankees. I don't, I guess who knew about the book and thought we would know something about Tim Holmes as it was. I didn't actually know anything about Tim Holmes because he wasn't in the league when we were, but I asked Stompers broadcaster, Tim Livingston about Tim Holmes. And if you want,

I also asked Tim about Tim. Okay. And I can first, first off you read yours and then I'll read mine. See how different. Okay. So he said fastball in the low nineties, big time power curve. He's been the best reliever in the league, although he's been used a ton. And that was the scouting report from tim all right here's what i got big right hander low 90s fastball santos like movement on power curve slider have no idea how he made it to this league he was filthy could go multiple innings too good command of both pitches like to think that if he gets on a throwing program he has a shot rookie league numbers are promising we'll get pushed hard as a 23 year old next year i imagine so yeah holmes was um i actually found a

an article of uh him as like this great comeback story in high school uh he was a he was homeschooled growing up and i i guess he was pitching for some high school team uh and he broke his arm mid-pitch which is the worst thing like to to to watch to like if you're if you're a local reporter writing about high school baseball and you watch a kid uh quote break the growth plate in his elbow in the middle of a pitch you're gonna remember that and then you're gonna write about him when he comes back and they did so uh he was uh he went to i think he went to some schools didn't get drafted and uh yeah i also wonder how he ended up in vallejo it's it'd be interesting to to know i found his college page but there was no bio and no stats he He went to a small school. So I don't have any idea how he was discovered.

But the reason that I have him on here on this list to talk about is that he struck out 18.8 batters per nine, which is more than two per inning, obviously, and would be a record in the majors. Might be a record in any league. I'm not sure. I haven't checked in any uh affiliated league but uh somewhat surprising to me that uh there really weren't any players outside of him who were pushing the like kind of record for strikeout rate i thought that you'd have um you'd have various players who were,

you know, simply put in the wrong league, who were in a better league, a worse league than they should have been, or who were like extreme type pitchers who, you know, were throwing 98 to guys who had literally never seen anything higher than 96 and would just strike everybody out. And maybe they'd be wild or maybe they'd get end up getting promoted quickly but they do it but really you have homes who struck out 30 and 14 innings before he was signed and then you have a guy who struck out 16.3 per nine innings in 22 innings and then you have to go all the way down to have any sort of reasonable sample. You have a guy at 14.4 strikeouts per nine in 15 innings, and then you have a guy at 14 in 48 innings. So really, oddly, there aren't really any extremes here except for Holmes. And even Holmes was 14 innings in relief, and then he was gone. So we don't even know if he would have picked that up. I mean,

there are various major leaguers who average 18 strikeouts per nine over 14 inning samples every year. I bring it up just because it sort of oddly, there aren't as many extreme indie league stats as I thought. Baseball turns out to be kind of limited by the same statistical boundaries, no matter where you go in a way. Well, all right. Well, Tim Holmes was signed by the Yankees, and he gave up one run in 15 and a third innings in the rookie league. And I asked if you and I could take credit for drawing their attention to the Pacific Association, and they said that they were giving all the credit to Tim.

All right. Can Tim take credit for drawing? Yeah, he drew, well. Did he draw? Right. Like, I wonder if he gets credit for our book. Yeah, he should. He should, yeah.

All right. Next guy you have sent me, Tim Brown of the Wichita Wingnuts in the American Association. So this is the anti-Tim Holmes, I guess. He struck out only 43 guys in 124 and two-thirds innings. Is that why I'm looking at him? No. Okay. Is it because he didn't walk anyone?

Yes. He walked five guys in those innings? Yeah, he walked five guys in those innings. That's crazy. Isn't walk anyone? Yes. He walked five guys in those innings? Yeah, he walked five guys in those innings. That's crazy. Isn't that crazy? Is that better than Carlos Silva, or is that the same as Carlos Silva? 0.4 walks per nine innings. Is that better?

Carlos Silva's peak was 0.4. Yeah, he had. But oddly enough, that was his only year under 1.5 walks per nine. So he had one year where he walked nine batters and 188 in the third innings, two of which were intentional. I bet he was so mad. Yeah. Ah, okay. So Tim Brown did have a lower walk rate than Carlos Silva as a percentage of batter space. I actually, I actually first noticed Brown, not because of the walks, but because of the strikeout rate, like you said, he had the lowest strikeout rate in all of independent baseball

of any significant innings at 3.1, and then I sort of scrolled over going, have a good ERA, have a good ERA. And he did. He had a pretty good ERA, especially for that league. And that's when I noticed that the walks are actually the story there. Much more interesting. He managed to have one of the best strikeout-to-walk rates in all of minor league independent baseball while striking out three batters per nine. And there is an extremely long profile of him at minorleagsportsreport.com,

in which most of the thing is about how his nickname is The Professor. Most of the thing is about how his nickname is The Professor. And I wonder if this means that he's a professor at all. Do you think that we just default that if you're not very good at throwing hard, but you don't want guys, that we just ascribe intelligence to that? Is that a very lazy bias that that would be described as intelligence? Yeah, well, he's been pitching since he was 22, so I'm guessing he's not an actual professor. But he probably, I bet he has, I mean,

he must have some sort of pitchability or smarts or something. Does he though? I would think he probably does. I mean, I don't know. Maybe he just doesn't walk anyone and that's enough. And this was kind of out of character for him too. I mean, he always has a low walk rate, but this was his lowest ever by far. So I would guess he's got some smarts.

Yeah. There's probably a bias toward thinking that someone like him has smarts though. Yeah. The Wichita Wingnuts, let's see uh are looking to become the first team to repeat as champions in the american association since 2007 it will take all kinds of talent and will to duplicate the success of the previous season it takes intelligence skill commitment and desire those are all adjectives that made greg maddox a star in the majors they are the very things that make tim brown the Greg Maddox Of independent baseball

The Greg Maddox Of independent baseball And Kevin Hooper Our friend Kevin Hooper Described him as Greg Maddox-like So there you go He was with the Phillies for 24 innings In 2010

And he did just fine But didn't get a shot above rookie league yeah there's um i spent a lot of my of my youth wanting people to believe i was smart uh wanting to to have people think i was smart and if i'd known all i had to do was throw strikes to to have that reputation i would have probably read less, thrown more strikes. Yeah. All right. Let's see.

Who else do I like? This one, I don't want you to say his name. All right. Just out of politeness. I don't think we need to bury this guy. All right. You should have it. Oh boy.

Yeah. Okay. Well, those are some ugly numbers right there. Yeah. This was the worst line that I could find. And I had, I think that I probably missed some of the, you know, one third of an inning type careers that might've happened last year. And this is not much longer than that. And in fact, if I'd looked at the previous year, this same person, you don't see it on his page because Baseball Reference thinks he's two different people. But last year, he threw one third of an inning for the same team, allowed three hits, including a homer,

one walk, four of the five men he faced reached, and he allowed two runs. So he had an ERA of 54, a whip of 12, 81 hits per nine. And so that was last year. But you want to read his numbers this year? Sure. Six and a third innings, 12 runs, only 10 earned, and 12 walks, and only three strikeouts. So that is a 14.21 ERA with 17.1 walks per nine right and what he's especially notable for is actually not just the runs allowed not just the walks it's the it's the full complement of wildness in six

innings he had 12 walks four hit by pitch four wild pitches wild pitches yeah and it's a 3.158 whip yeah and um i don't know if you do you remember him nope he came and tried out for us he was friends with baps i think he knew baps from their hometown he came and tried out for us uh one day and i watched him throw a bullpen and it was a it was it was kind of close like it was a perfectly we didn't sign him we we didn't need him we didn't sign him. We, we didn't need him. We didn't sign him. And we all agreed, uh, Parker, Theo and, and me agreed that he wasn't going to be adding anything to our team. Then that day he showed up on, on our opposing team's roster. He was playing a right field for them after pitching, uh, throwing a bullpen tryout for

us. And he threw, at the time, he threw 88, 89 in the bullpen, which is pretty normal for our league. He had a hard curveball that he couldn't get, he couldn't sort of tame, but had a lot of snap on it. And he had very little pitching experience. And I think that if he'd been in spring training for us, there's a pretty good chance he would have made it out of there. People would have said, ah, he's raw, but we'll work with him.

And he ended up, now his throwing career, his pitching career is, you know, six and two-thirds innings with, you know, everything I said. So it's kind of close. Like, the difference between being the worst pitcher on this spreadsheet and having and being totally normal in this spreadsheet is not that is not that wide yeah i so i feel a bit bad for him let me see i got a tim scouting report here tried out oh tried out for the stompers again this year Quote, big curveball but couldn't handle it Straight fastball in the low mid 80s

Ooh, that's not good So that's it, that's all the scouting report I got That's all you need, I guess Alright, let's see This one, you're going to be delighted by Alright Ah, I know this guy Yeah, friend of the book

Yeah, this is the famous Zach Pace, who may or may not have reported the outcome of the pivotal hit of the Stompers season accurately. Played for the San Rafael Pacifics. So here he is. I don't know what he did this season, so this is new to me. He was 31, played for the Pacifics again. Wow. Okay. So this time he had a 234 batting average.

Then do the slugging. Do the slugging. Do the slugging. 234 batting, 264 slugging. All right. Now the reveal. 431 on base. Oh my goodness.

I know. Wow. 84 walks. I know. And 38 checkouts. I know. Wow. 84 walks.

I know. And 38 checkouts. And his nickname, or when he would be introduced at the park, it would be as On Base Pace. And so he lived up to that nickname despite otherwise being really bad. Wow. Plus, look at his hit by pitches. Oh, okay. So 12 hit by pitches also. In 77 games.

Look at his hit by pitches. Oh, okay. So 12 hit by pitches also. In 77 games. So basically he got, if you count walks and hit by pitches together, he had 96 free passes in 374 plate appearances. So more than a quarter of them. And nearly a quarter were walks alone. And this is a guy who hit 234 and slugged 264.

And also can steal a base. And so you had- 15 out of 17. You had no batter in the entire league, I would say, who gave you more incentive to just throw strikes. And yet, in spite of that, in spite of that, he walked in a quarter of his plate appearances, which is the most in all of independent baseball.

The gap between his on-base percentage and his batting average is the most in all of independent baseball the gap between his on base percentage and his batting average is the biggest in all of independent baseball he is so so good at one thing and i i love it yeah it was very frustrating to face him i mean not only was he an excellent center fielder but he would just crouch over at the plate just you know not a big guy to begin with. And then he would crouch over and just take everything that was close. And it was very frustrating. It seemed like he got more calls than the usual player. Maybe it just seemed that way because he would just take everything. And it was so frustrating when he would walk, but

he was definitely, I don't know if he's looking for walks but if he were looking for walks he really couldn't find them any better than he already does yeah oh yeah i the thing that i missed the least about that experience is watching pitchers walk zach pace yeah and they would all they would all know going in just throw strikes strikes, just right down the middle. And then it'd be, you know, 3-1 before you blinked. And you had no chance. He also, were you there for either of the games he pitched? Don't think so. He pitched in mop-up work against us twice.

And he was great because everybody else comes in and wants to show how good they would be as pitchers. And he didn't. He would just come in and he'd just throw, he'd just play catch. And he'd go, you know, I know why I'm here. And he would throw, you know, high 50s because he wasn't even trying to throw hard. Just throw a pitch right down the middle

with no velocity, no windup. Just like he was asking the umpire for a new ball over and over and over. It was wonderful. All right. Man, I love that. I love Zach Faces on base percentage. It's crazy.

And again, part of the reason I went into this exercise is because I thought I was going to find a bunch of guys like that. And it is true that there are more, you know, like Mike Jacobs. Remember Mike Jacobs? Yes. Okay. So Mike Jacobs, as a major leaguer what was he like he was like uh like a brad eldridge or something like that yeah but better but yeah like he had some better for the league yeah he was the first baseman and he hit for lots of power and he'd strike out a lot but he was one of the best hitters in the league in our year. Exactly. Mike Jacobs now is

sort of a Zach Pace hitter. He hits for a low batting average. He hits for little power. He draws a ton of walks. He's 35 years old or so. And he's found like this sort of little way to exploit independent league baseball. So I thought that there would be ever extreme examples of that. And Pace is extreme. He's as extreme as that concept can go. Mike Jacobs this year in the Atlantic League, 236, 320, 326. Anyway, for the most part, nobody's doing it as well as pace. The limits, again, the limits of what you can do in baseball seem to be sort of firm no matter what the level of competition is all right this one is martin cronin all right martin cronin 6-5 pitcher for the stompers this season 24 years old and martin cronin walked more batters than he

struck out never a good sign uh you have not you have not found why I sent him to you, though. Okay. He allowed 27 hits in 19 and two-thirds innings. No, you're close. I found it. Okay. You found it! He allowed 21 runs and six earned runs. Wait.

Are we sure that's right? I'm totally sure it's right. I was following it throughout the year a 2.75 era and a 9.61 ra that's ridiculous it is ridiculous he had the highest unearned run average in baseball in independent league baseball and I don't think that he is entirely blameless here. I don't think he is entirely to blame here. He had, as Tim puts it, ground ball pitcher, and we had some pretty terrible infield defense.

One bad outing where a couple errors led to a huge inning, and so he ended up staying in to mop up too. He was better than the stats. So he ended up staying in to mop up too. He was better than the stats. And by the way, Martin was a player that when I went to the tryout this year, I advised Theo to draft. And I was very excited when Theo drafted him.

He seemed like a really great kid. He was close friends with Sean. He looked like a pitcher. 2.75 ERA. 2.75 ERA. 2.75 ERA, right. And I feel like partly this is interesting just because of what an amazing statistical fluke or whatever it is and how much it says about Indy Ball and how many unearned runs there are and all that. But also that like I imagine that Martin, if he doesn't pitch again or if he does pitch again, he will live his whole life in this sort of limbo where he doesn't know if he was good or not. One stat says he was, and it's the most famous pitching stat there is. It says he was good. And then another stat,

which maybe we could just sum up as his experience, tells him that he was, he was often allowing runs and he could go either way on that. And I, uh, I don't know how he'll remember his career. I don't know how his career will be remembered, but like there probably are no answers for him. He's just sort of stuck with this kind of unsatisfactory conclusion on his baseball career. Yeah. All right. This one, uh, real quick, there's really nothing to, to even notice about it, except you can just read the slash and then that'll be that. All right. Daniel Aldrich in the Pecos League, born in Würzburg, Germany.

Yeah, I think that went to college here. Is it a military base maybe? I'm guessing it was. It's just a guess. The background on him is that he went to college, same school where Brett Gardner went. He was signed as an undrafted free agent by the Yankees, but not as a senior sign, which is the normal undrafted free agent. He signed as a red shirt sophomore, which is unusual. They signed him for at least $150,000 with their leftover bonus pool money, I guess, or something.

And so he ended up playing for the Yankees very, very, very briefly. And now he's in the Pecos League. And what did he hit this year, Ben? In 114 plate appearances, he hit 421, 518. I don't even know how to say, 1011 slugging. Yeah. How many home runs did he have? He had 17 home runs in 23 games. Yeah. That just happens sometimes in the Pecos League.

Yeah. They make fun lines there. Yeah. Yeah. So his team's collective line, so he had like a 1500 something OPS and his Teams collective line was 951 so It's a league where everyone

Hits really well but he hit Really well even relative to Everyone else hitting really well Yep slugged 1011 1011 in a Professional baseball league he is 25 years old. He ended up also playing this year.

I don't know if it was before or after. I'm guessing. Well, actually, it was probably before because he played there last year. In the Frontier League, which is just two stops higher. Now, granted, totally different environment. Pecos League has like 280-foot center fields, and it's dry and crazy and no pitchers go there. So it's partly that too.

But he went two levels up to the Frontier League, and for Lake Erie, he hit 160, 192, 347, which is a 539 OPS. The year before, he was also in Lake Erie, 171, 259, 237. The year before that, he was playing for Windy City in the Frontier League, 239, 255, 304. So basically, he has three stints totaling 250 plate appearances in the Frontier League. And he's a low 500s OPS guy. And then just dropping down two levels into a league that plays on the moon and he gets to slug 1011. And the goal for all of these guys is to move up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up. They

only want to move up, but there is something to be said for getting to live a summer of your life where you get to slug 1011. It doesn't matter where. For that month, you feel, I have to assume, like you can do anything and that you were put on this earth to mash baseballs. Yeah. And I would take that. I would totally take that. I feel like there's not enough indie league players who find the league they thrive in and just leave it at that and just mash.

Probably because you don't make any money. you can't keep doing that that's true you're right all right last one ah jose canseco yeah last one is jose canseco who uh had a more extended engagement in the pacific association this year than he did. Well, actually, he didn't. I guess it turns out that he didn't. He was supposed to. But Canseco played for Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Diamonds, Aaron Miles managed team. And he played seven games. He hit 143, 176, 143, which I feel somewhat justified.

which I feel somewhat justified. I was pretty vocal before he showed up on our team for those two games that he was not going to be good. Just knowing what I knew about baseball, I mean, he is physically in great shape. He looks different than everybody in the league. He looks like an athlete in ways that many of them don't. He is impressive, and he hit the ball very far in batting practice, but I put my marker down on he is not going to be able to hit in this league, and sure enough, he wasn't able to hit in that league. Over the course of two seasons, he had, what, 50 plate appearances, and in those 50

plate appearances, he had eight hits, which is a 160 batting average. Well, it's not quite. He drew two walks in that time. He hit one home run in that time. He had no other extra base hits in that time. So in fact, even a great, really, like, really, I mean, really, one of the all-time great players. If you set the denominator fairly low, go to maybe 1,000. Jose Canseco is one of the 1,000 best players who ever played the game.

And he's only 51, which seems only except in baseball when it's night and day. It's the difference between everything. Stayed in shape, still huge, still knows how to, you know, see a baseball coming out of a pitcher's hand, but cannot hit these guys who are six levels below rookie ball, five levels below rookie ball. But that's not what I wanted to mention then. I wanted to mention his pitching line. Okay. He pitched three games.

Don't look, don't look, don't look, don't look. Have you looked? No. All right. He pitched three games for Pittsburgh this year. I saw him pitch the previous year in relief for Pittsburgh. So I sort of have a scouting report on him. But I will tell you, he pitched three games for them.

He threw nine innings for them. I want you to guess what Jose Canseco's ERA in the Pacific Association would be. So he's throwing lots of knuckleballs, right? Yeah, he threw mostly knuckleballs when I saw him. Yeah, so I'm guessing it was somewhere between Martin Cronin's ERA and Martin Cronin's run average. But I'll guess it was closer to Martin Cronin's RA than his ERA. It could be great, I don't know.

But yeah, all right. Could be. It's double Martin Cronin's RA. Oh ERA. It could be great. I don't know, but yeah. All right. Could be. It's double Martin Cronin's RA. He had an ERA of 17.36. He faced 54 batters. He walked 13 of them, gave up 14 hits. Baps went yard on him. He had a 2.9 whip and gave up in his nine innings. He gave up 19 runs. And if there is one other thing that I learned about baseball players that didn't get in the book, it is that every single one of them thinks that they have a knuckleball that would work in a game. Every position player is sure that his knuckleball is good enough to get out. Maybe not all the way there yet. They're still working on it,

but they all think they have a good knuckleball. And Jose Canseco thought he had a good knuckleball, and he got crushed. Tim's scouting report on Canseco. The first time that they faced him, he struck out the side, and then he fell apart. Baps hit a grand slam off him. There was an eight-run inning involved.

Knuckleball didn't do anything. 70 miles an hour on slam off him. There was an eight run inning involved. Knuckleball didn't do anything. 70 miles an hour on the fastball. Hit a bunch of guys. Yeah, that's true too. He hit six batters in nine innings. And in two years in the Pacific Association, he threw 17 innings and hit 11 batters, which is I'm sure, a record. tend to be because you're actually closer to major league level? Yeah, what I found is that at the Atlantic and the American Association, in fact, the stats were more tightly bunched than in the majors. Like you'd have very, very, very few guys with an OPS even over 900 and very few guys with an OPS even under like 650. And I mean, I want to say that that's because if you're any

good, you move up. And if you're any bad, they have extremely short leashes on you and they just cut you. But it didn't even seem like for the smaller samples, there was a lot of extremes that somehow these leagues are really tightly bunched in talent. And I might spend a little bit of today trying to come up with a hypothesis for why that would be all right so this is what we do at this time of year we review the interesting independent league stat lines i've wanted to do this for the entire year i just finally got around to it i wanted to do this all year all right because early on in the year, Pace, he started the season 0 for 19 with 10 walks. Actually, if you go before that, he was at one point 0 for 14 with 10 walks, plus a few hit by pitches. So he had a batting average of zero, a slugging percentage of zero and an on base percentage of 440 and i just wanted to see how long he could keep that up and the answer is for a season pretty impressive yeah he is

basically he is basically the conversation we had yesterday about eddie goodell yeah and like how he'd be used yeah the the answer is he'd be used as the leadoff hitter on the Pacifics and he'd play center field. I hope they bring him back for next season. Me too. All right. So we will end there. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who've already done so.

Jared Tuckman, Marcus Callas, Xander Berg, Fresh Out the Kitchen, and Elisa Gale. Thanks to all of you. Use the coupon code BP when you sign up. You can buy our book, The Only Rule Is It Has To Work, our wild experiment building a new kind of baseball team. Check out the website at theonlyrulesithastowork.com. You can contact me and Sam at podcastatbaseballperspectives.com or by messaging us through Patreon. We will be back shortly with another episode. If you want my love You've got to hurt it If you deserve it, you can get it I'll be glad to see you with it

Just show me that you love me And you've got to thinkin' of me You can get it in a heart