Fantasy Baseball Today - 07/11 Fantasy Baseball Podcast: The Ringer's Ben Lindbergh & CBS Sports' Jonah Keri

Episode Date: July 10, 2017

The Ringer's MLB writer Ben Lindbergh joins the show (1:30) to talk about the 'Juiced Ball' theory, and then CBS Sports' Jonah Keri (26:30) comes on to talk about all things baseball. Are home runs here to stay? Is Judge for real? Scherzer or Kershaw? To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wasn't that home run derby great? I can't believe insert thing that happened happened. All right, I'm recording this on Monday. It's Tuesday, so I didn't actually get to see the home run derby yet. I can't wait. I can't believe you guys already know what's going to happen. I'm very, very jealous of that. We've got our first of two guest pods out today.

We'll have another one on Thursday. Today's has a very interesting conversation with Ben Lowe, Lindberg on the various data involving the juiced ball theory and very persuasive. I think you're going to believe in the juiced ball after this interview. If you don't already, we've also got CBSports.com's own Jonah Carey for a very fun interview in the second half of the show, so make sure you listen all the way through. We'll get to those, but first, sports trades are scary. One person can be replaced by another

exchanged for money or given away for a hypothetical future person. Once they leave your team, you can't like them anymore even if you have their jersey, which you can't wear anymore. Except at B-dubs, they won't judge, but others might. Buffalo Wild Wings, Wings, beer, sports.

And here's the interview with Ben Lindbergh. Thanks for listening. All right, we've got Ben Lindberg from the ringer.com. also has been found at Grantland previously 538, co-author of The Only Rule is It Has to Work, The Ringer MLB Show, the Achievement-oriented podcast, which got me back on to Pokemon Go over the last few days. So thanks for that. Ben, how's it going? Great, happy All-Star Break. Yes, it's nice to get a little break. I'm enjoying the time off. I'm going to take Tuesday off. Heath still has to do a bunch

of football stuff, so he's the big loser in the room. But if you're taking it, off tomorrow, then I kind of get a day off too. Fair. All right. So, Ben, I wanted to talk to you. We've seen this home run surge. There's been a lot of talk about whether the ball's juice, whether it's the fly ball revolution, a little bit of both. And you've done some research at the ringer. There was a, I guess the first bit of it came out at 538 last year. What was your first inkling that there might be something going on with the ball? Well, just the fact that home runs were up so dramatically. And so suddenly, and it's not just that this is a record home run rate and that we're seeing more home runs hit than ever, but that this is also the most rapid rise in home run rate ever.

We've never seen an increase this quick. And we do know in some past years, there have been times when we've seen spikes in home runs. And we could trace that to the ball, or at least we strongly suspected that it had something to do the ball to do with the ball. And, of course, it's always the first thing that crosses your mind because when a challenge, you know, change happens almost overnight, seemingly, in 2015, when this home run spike started, it's hard to come up with a scenario where anything else could be responsible, really, because even if you're someone who thinks it could be PEDs, if you think it's player approach, if you think it's pitchers throwing harder, well, those things all might play some role,

but they don't change as dramatically and as quickly as we saw home runs change. And so the ball is maybe the one thing that stands out to you as something that, could fit that timeline. And the timeline is basically the 2015 All-Star Break, right? Yeah, that's right. And before that in 2014, we were talking about scoring being at its lowest level in the major since the mid-70s. And there was a lot of hand-wringing about what's baseball going to do to bring offense

back. And then suddenly and seemingly conveniently to some people, although I am not myself a hardcore conspiracy theorist on this issue. I think it's possible that the ball could have changed without an intentional change without some sort of plot from above. But certainly the timing is somewhat suspicious, which I think has fueled some of the discussion about this. And the juice ball is basically, or the quote-unquote juiced ball, I guess, has been basically blamed for everything bad in baseball over the last couple of years. Like rise and pitcher blister occurrence has been a big one over the last couple of weeks. Marcus Stroman went off.

Justin Verlander has as well. It's been blamed for some of the pace of play stuff. It's been blamed for Logan Morrison's return to prominence. So there's a lot bad going. What's the evidence that the ball might be juiced? Well, of course, aside from just the circumstantial and statistical evidence, and Rob Arthur, my co-author at 538, who has continued to do his own research on the home runs and the ball at 538 since I left there, we found that we just couldn't explain what we were seeing any other way.

We looked at changing talent levels, and of course there were a bunch of young prospects who came up to the big leagues all at once, and maybe that had something to do with it, or maybe it was the pitchers throwing harder or throwing more meatballs or all these other factors. Maybe it was guys hitting more fly balls to stay out of the shift, et cetera, et cetera. And we just couldn't find anything, you know, temperature, weather. We went through everything we could, and we couldn't find anything that would occasionally. for the bulk of the home run shift. And so that is maybe the evidence that we started with, but then we've done some direct testing on baseballs. And my co-author on a recent article at the ringer, Mitchell Lickman, purchased some game-use balls and sent them to a lab where they were tested very precisely. And those tests of balls from before and after the home run search

seemed to show some significant differences in the circumference of the ball, in the seam height, and in what's called the coefficient of restitution or the core, basically the bouncer of the ball. And the balls were a little bit smaller after the home run surge. The seams were a little bit lower. And that core was a little bit higher. And when you put those things together, it did seemingly explain a lot of what we were seeing as far as balls being hit harder and traveling farther. And that's some of the research that Rob Arthur has done at 538 looking for evidence that the ball is carrying better. And he found that that's...

Now, it seems like we've heard more the last couple years from pitchers coming up to the major leagues about how they had to get used to the new ball. Jose Barrios is a great example of that. He said a lot of his struggles last year were because he was using the minor league ball in his side sessions, and he credits some of that to switching to the major league. So in the minor leagues, are they still using the ball that Major League Baseball was using two years ago, or have the ball has always been slightly different? Do you know with it? Yes, they've actually been slightly different for some time now, possibly forever.

they're manufactured in different places, both by Rawlings and roughly to the same specifications, but the MLB balls are manufactured in Costa Rica. The minor league balls are manufactured in China, and they do have some slight differences in seam height and that sort of thing. So there always have been differences in the balls when you go from the minors to the majors, but in the past we haven't seen dramatic changes in power when guys have gone from one to the other. And we have seen that more and more often when guys will come up to the majors and all of a sudden they're hitting more home runs than they ever did in the minors. And that sort of raises a red

flag because you expect it to go the other way. So something we've noticed is that hard hit rate has gone up around baseball. 30% used to be roughly average. Now it's around 33%. Is that something you would expect to see given a change in the ball? Yeah, that could definitely be related. And hard hit rate, that's a human is making that designation, right, as is watching the play and saying this was hit hard. If you look at statcast and exit velocity readings, we also saw a big increase right around when the home runs were coming up, and people have done research that shows that exit velocity increase

basically explains the entire home run jump that we saw in 2015, and the question was, well, why are balls being hit harder? and one possible reason for that is because the ball is different. And as I mentioned, the coefficient of restitution, the bounciness, that would cause a ball to be hit harder, even if the swing is the same, the pitch is the same, everything else is the same. So, yeah, I think that's consistent with the idea that there's something different about the ball. But as I've taken pains to point out in my articles, I think there are more than one factor here. when you see a result this significant and this dramatic, it's likely that there isn't just one single cause that explains everything perfectly. And I think if there was some change in the ball,

say in 2015, well, we've continued to see a rise in home run rate since. And this year's is higher than last years, which was higher than 2015's. And maybe there have been subsequent changes to the ball. But I think that probably we're also seeing a change in approach by the hitters who maybe have noticed that the ball is carrying better and it's being hit harder. And if you see that the ball is carrying farther, then it's to your advantage to hit it in the air. And so we've heard a lot about this fly ball or airball revolution. And maybe it does have something to do with the fact that we have data for this now. We have statcast. We can look at launch ankles and quantify these things much more precisely. But I think it also has to do with just this larger change and that maybe it's not so much

the cause of the initial home run spike as it is a symptom. It's a secondary effect. It's a response to that first spike that we've seen. And there's been some concerns about this changing the game into more of a three true outcomes game. What has MLB had to say about it? Yeah, I would say that's true. And personally, I don't think this is a problem that the ball is different. I think we might be better off the way we are now than we were in 2014 when no one was scoring and no one was hitting home runs. I think fans largely like home runs, which is something that MLB has said they've found in their own surveys. So I think they don't want the appearance of having meddled with the ball and sort of putting their thumb on the scale. And as I said, it's very possible that they didn't, that these changes in the ball are small enough that you kind of put them all together and they add up to a significant result.

But it could just be some slight change in the manufacturing process, some machine, some personnel change. the balls are still hand-stitched, maybe something very slight change there inadvertently and without anyone noticing. So I think that's entirely possible. But, yeah, MLB has said consistently that they have tested the balls. They put out a memo a couple of weeks ago that showed that the balls they claimed were the same in 2017 as they were in 2016, which was sort of a strange time frame to choose because no one was really arguing that when we're talking about the.

the ball being different, we're talking about a difference from, say, 2016 to 2014. So 2016 to 2017, you're comparing a very high record home run rate to an even higher record home run rate. So I don't know that that necessarily cleans any of the suspicion. And also, they've said consistently that the balls are within specifications, which, again, can be true, but doesn't rule out the idea that the ball is different because some of the legal limits for a baseball are very wide. And by the admission even of MLB's own official ball testing facility, you could have two legal baseballs and one could travel 49 feet farther than

the other hit in exactly the same conditions just because it's at the upper end of the allowable range as opposed to the lower end of the allowable range. So when a legal baseball can be, you know, something very different at the upper end than it is at the lower, and the fact that it's still within that code doesn't really tell us all that much. So when it comes to the conspiracy theory angle of this, you can look at it one way. You can look at it like, well, they've made all these small changes

to make it so that nobody can notice. Or you can look at it and say, well, it's just a bunch of very small changes that have led to this larger outcome, right? Yeah, I think you could interpret it in two ways, right? The fact that it is just these small changes, in a few different aspects of the ball, you could say, oh, well, that's brilliant, that's devious, that's an even better conspiracy that they didn't just change one aspect of the ball in some

dramatic way. But, yeah, I think probably the more likely takeaway from that is that it could go under the radar, it could go unnoticed even by MLB much more easily just because it's a slight change to the circumference. It's a slight change to the seam height. It's a slight change to the core, as opposed to a giant change in one area that would very obviously show up in any test. If this were to change in the future, what would be some of the leading indicators to keep an eye on? Would it just be a drop in home run to fly ball rate or what? Yeah, I think it probably would be that how we first noticed that this was happening was just as simple as, hey, more home runs are being hit. So it doesn't take anything too complicated, I think, to see it. And then we delved a little bit more

deeply and we saw changes in exit velocity and all of that. So I think we would notice it fairly quickly as we did when it changed on the other side of this in the other direction. But it does definitely have some implications for fantasy and for real-life baseball maybe to a lesser extent. I think maybe the main takeaway here is that as we know, strikeouts have continued to rise. And maybe that is in part a response to the ball being different in that hitters are swinging for the fences because they are being rewarded for that approach. And so that tends to lend itself to strikeouts. But of course, we've seen strikeouts increase, I think, 12 consecutive seasons now, something like that. And it's just a larger trend over the course of baseball history, really.

And I think that right now we're being bailed out of essentially another deadball era by the home runs and possibly by the ball, whereas in 2015, strikeouts were less frequent than they are now. So if we were suddenly to go back to 2014's home run rate and keep the strikeout rate what it is today, then we would really be seeing 1968 levels of scoring, like a much higher percentage of runs today are being scored on home runs than before. So if suddenly something changed with the ball and home runs went away, but everything else stayed the same and pitchers kept missing bats the way they have, then we might see a dramatic drop in offense. And obviously that would be very noticeable and possibly bad for baseball from a spectator perspective.

But yeah, what you're talking about, we've just seen this democratization of dingers. And it's just a more egalitarian distribution of home runs now. It doesn't look like things did in the so-called PED era when you had guys hitting 60 and 70. And there was this huge variance between guys. Now we're just seeing less of a spread. And no one is really challenging any record. right now on an individual basis, but everyone is challenging records on a collective basis. And so, yeah, we're not seeing anyone on pace for 60, even judge right now, but we're seeing

seemingly everyone hit 20, you know. And so you do have to take that into account, I think, when you're drafting, when you're planning your fantasy team, obviously there's less of a premium on power now than there once was. And I think that that new distribution is consistent with the idea that there's something different about the ball because there is a fly ball sweet spot, a distant sweet spot where fly balls are more likely to turn into home runs just because of how deep outfield fences tend to be. And so if you're someone like Judge who's hitting the ball 495 feet now, well, with the right, yeah, exactly. With the old ball, maybe that goes 460 or 470 or something. It's still way out of any ballpark. Whereas if you're a guy who had warning track

power before and suddenly you're reaching that sweet spot much more consistently than you're going to see a much bigger boost in your home run totals relative to the guys who were at the elite end of the scale already. And there are obviously some concerns about the league, like we said, turning into a three true outcomes league, everybody moving towards the same kind of player. What do you think about that? Yeah, I think that's certainly a legitimate perspective. I tend to think that we're not close to the point where that would be a big concern for me.

I think we see a lot of articles about, you know, baseball's an all or nothing game and the way we're going. There won't ever be a ball in play. And I think that we focus on these things because we're watching baseball and we're looking at leaderboards all day and we're hyper aware of these changes in every rate. But I think if you look at it kind of over a longer view, it's not all that dramatic really. if you break it down on a per game basis, for instance, you know, you go back, say, 20 years, and I think it's just two plate appearances out of every 20 or something like that are more likely to be a strikeout walk and home run today relative to that time. And I don't know that we would necessarily notice if we just had to, you know,

brought someone forward in time from 1996 and say, here, watch a game in 2017. they might notice that the game's a little longer, and that's another trend that MLB is trying to work on, of course. But as far as the balls and play, I mean, we're still at a point where strikeouts, home runs, and walks, the three true outcomes that everyone is stressing about, collectively represent one-third of the outcomes of played appearances. So they're still very much the minority.

We're still seeing balls and play be hit most of the time, and to me it's just not an imminent threat. we've seen baseball change dramatically across the years. And I think if we were able to freeze the rates in a certain way, if we could all survey baseball fans and agree this is the optimal way that baseball should look and we could just set every year's strikeout rate to be like that, I think we'd get tired of it. I think we like change and the fact that we can look back in baseball history and say, oh, this was the 80s, this was when everyone ran, and this is the PD era, this is when

everyone hit home runs. I think that adds a richness to the analysis of the game that we wouldn't have otherwise. So for now, I like home runs and I don't really mind strikeouts all that much because, you know, if we're trading bouncers back to the pitcher and routine grounders to second base and routine throws and a guy jogging down to first base, it's not as if every ball in play is exciting and you're on the edge of your seed. And I think there is a value to watching some unhittable closer like Jansen or Kimbril come in and just have this, you know, epic showdown with some power hitter who's swinging as hard as he can. And even if that doesn't result in a batted ball or a ball in play, I think there was still entertainment value there in seeing those two guys

face off. Okay, what's one player who's one player who will be better in the second half than they were before the All-Star break? Well, I think probably Kyle Schwerber is an easy answer, right? I mean, it would right exactly and i think when they sent him down to triple a he immediately started raking we know he can hit maybe he was screwed up by expectations or hitting in the lead off slot at the start of the year maybe there was some bad luck mixed in there i think he's too bad he's too good too talented to be a below average hitter so i think that's a fairly obvious call but if you're looking for reasons why the cubs might get out of this funk one of them is that schwerber should be better than he has to this point. And on the other side, who's one player who'll be worse in the second half?

Well, probably an equally obvious pick, and we've sort of been waiting for this to happen all year, but Jason Vargas, right, All-Star for the first time at almost 35 years old, and, you know, he's been great, whatever 17-18 starts, he's got a 26 ERA, I think, and that obviously has value, but I think, you know, when you look at all of the other more detailed stats and rates, they're just doesn't seem to be that huge in improvement there. And I know that maybe he lowered his arm slot a little when he came back from Tommy John and maybe his changeup has been more effective. But, you know, he's just not striking out guys more often. He's not really walking guys less often. He's not getting more grounders. He just doesn't seem to be really doing anything

different on a granular level. And so I think a lot of this is probably sequencing and he's happened to have a lot of success with men on and runners in scoring position. And I just can't see that keeping up. So a weird thing that's been happening this season is all these guys who were big prospect bus, but who were like top prospects in 2009, Logan Morrison, Justin Smoke, Elvis Andrus, Yonder Alonzo, which of those guys do you actually buy moving folk? Well, I think Andrus has started last year, right? He's hitting just about as well as he did there. So I guess he would be maybe the most dependable if you want to say that he's broken out and that he's been in above average hitter now for, I think, about 900 plate appearances. So that seems fairly real,

and we know that he's a good defender. So I think that might be the top of the list just because of how long he's been doing it. I think Smoke has a case here just because we know that he has had power all along. He had fairly encouraging stat-cast stats last season, and if you just looked at his launch angles and his exit velocities, they seem to portend better things. things ahead, except that he couldn't make contact consistently last year. So even though he was hitting the ball hard, he wasn't hitting the ball hard often enough. And this year, he's just dramatically cut down on his strikeouts and raised his contact rate. And those are things that tend to be fairly meaningful in small samples. And I don't have a perfect explanation for that,

other than that I think he has said he has just had a more moderated approach and not tried to swing for the fences as much. But whatever the explanation, that seems somewhat real to me, at least looking forward at the second half. All right, we've got some of the dumb debates that we do on the podcast. What's your favorite cereal? Oh, gosh. I think I'm a simple cereal guy, just like a raisin brand and milk. Is Moneyball a top five sports movie?

Huh. Gosh, I don't know that I would put it up there this soon. I think I need more time. Excellent movie. Certainly the best baseball movie we've seen in a while, other than maybe everybody wants some from last year, which I liked a lot. But I can't quite put it that high in the Pantheon yet. Is Aerosmith a good band?

I would have to say not particularly. I think the hits are good, but they're so overplayed that I think it's hard for them to have the same impact that they did the first time you heard them. and they're just not quite my taste, but I don't know. They're not a replacement level band. I'd say they're certainly above average as bands go, right? But they're not really one of my favorites. Okay. All right.

Do you like raisins? Are raisins good? Look warm on raisins. I'll have a raisin for now and then. I have raisins in raisin brand, right? But they're not my favorite part of the raisin brand. I like the brand better. And last silly stupid question.

question. Are peeps good? No. Peeps look good and they smell good and you think they're going to be good and then you have one and it's sugar overload and for me at least it's too much in a concentrated dose. All right. That was Ben Lindberg of the ringer. Ringer.com is where you can find his stuff. Also the Ringer MLB podcast, achievement oriented video game podcast. So make sure you check out Ben's stuff. We'll get to that interview with Jonah Carey in a minute, but first, Indochino is making it easy to get a perfectly tailored suit at an incredible price. And guys, if you don't have a perfectly tailored suit yet, it's a must. I'm in that part of my life where I'm going to like six weddings a year and there's nothing better.

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Jonah, how's it going? Enjoying your All-Star break so far? It's a little crazy, fellas. I'm running around, but my Kyle Andre Dawson, we chatted a little bit, because I was a nice following. It's good with the expos folks. So, yeah, good stuff. That's awesome.

All right. We had Ben Lindberg on the show a little while ago. We talked about the juice ball theory and the evidence behind that. What are your thoughts on that and how it's, impacted the major so far this season. Yeah, I mean, listen, you know, Ben used real research, so to Nicky Lickman, so to Rob Arthur, and I think the preponderance of evidence suggests that there's something going on here that the ball does seem to be juiced, and not only just juice, but that the,

you know, the seams have been changed. The higher seams create an easier, easier for the pitcher to grip, and also creates more wind resistance, and the ball doesn't carry as much, and the seams have been flattened. Major League Baseball gave a non-denial denial. They basically said, well, it's within the normal range. but as Ben pointed out in his research, the range is gigantic. You know, you basically, you know, the analogy I could use is,

well, you know, you are an American male, you're within the normal range, cool, within 5 foot 2 and 6 8. Like, that's a big, there's a lot going on.

If you're 68, you're tall, if you're 5, 2, you're not, and that's basically what it amounts to, and they're essentially, you know, the analogy would be more

toward the 68 side in terms of how far the ball is traveling and what explodes off the bat. What's really interesting to me, there's kind of two types of power thing right now. Number one is this, Brett Gardner,

Lander Alonzo, Justin, Smogel Logan Morrison, kind of thing where guys who never hit for power in the majors, have been in the majors for five, six, 10 years,

are now hitting for power. And then in addition to that, you're seeing guys like Cody Belanger, Pelanger was a very good power hitter in the minors, but paradoxically, it's actually easier right now to hit home runs in the majors in the minors because there's no evidence

to suggest the ball of juices to say one of the minors. So you could see other guys come up and really mash right away. It's perfectly good prospect, but who hit even better than you expect. Didn't happen with, let's say Lewis Brinton, maybe the small sample of it, whatever,

but there's only Judge and Bellinger, and there might be other power prospects that, whatever, for fantasy or for real life, if you're like, oh, God, you know, Austin Meadows is going to be up soon. Maybe he'll do something. Oh, bro, but he only hit five home runs in the minors, and then he hits, like, 50 seconds and a half. Like, that's not out of the question.

To me, it's something like I could have. Yeah, it's actually, it's interesting, both Judge and Ballinger before the season. We're getting some hype based on their spring training performance, and then I look at their minor league numbers, and like, they're fine. They're probably going to be pretty good if they can make conference. and then they've been unbelievable.

What's your favorite either MLB or professional sports conspiracy theory since we're on the topic of the juice ball? You believe the draft lottery's rig? I'll give you one. I'll give you one. This is my own personal thing, okay? All right.

So I believe the relief usage is entirely governed. I don't really talk about this. I don't really talk about this. I believe in the past, maybe not so much now. But in the past, certainly, and maybe now, reliever usage is driven by drug usage or substance usage. I'll tell you exactly what I mean. There's always, you know, when the pitchers come in and the night thing, oh, one, two, three, they breathe fire, they do great. They come in in the seventh or the eighth to get, like, just working, they haven't pitched in a week or whatever.

Let's get our guys on work. And they're awful. I believe that's because relief pitchers are used to ramping up substance use. They're used to, you know, okay, I don't. something in the night fitting. It could be anything, by the way. It doesn't have to be anything horribly listed.

It could be coffee, could be coffee, whatever. And I'll give you, for instance, Troy Percival was interviewed by Tyler Keper. I think of Tyler Kepner,

while the Angels were on that big world series driving in 2002, Percival was really great. In the K-Rod, dynamic combination. And they asked Percival, man, you come in there and Dean is starting fire.

What are you doing? He says, I drink 10 cups of coffee. Ten cups of coffee. So that he peaked by the ninth inning. And so I think guys have a routine where whatever they you, and Ken, maybe it could be five-hour energy.

It doesn't have to be crank or whatever, but I think there's something to that, that they're off their game that way, and I think that that when we look at it, forget about tangible, when you look at it from a analytical point of view, why are you using your best relief pitch in the nine sitting and make it supposed to say, bring him in the basis loaded in the six? Well, that's a high-everage situation. Get to what, buddy, he doesn't have a 10 cups of coffee or 10 cups to crank or whatever, and that's the problem.

I really truly believe that. Well, I know that Peter Moylan agrees with you, so his espresso machine's done wonder for the Royalty. That's true. That's true. That's been a big story in Kansas City. I forgot about that. But this has been my series since literally 2002. That's fantastic. I'm a huge fan of that. Let's get into some of the topical MLB debates.

You wrote about this last week, or two weeks ago maybe. Shurzer or Kershaw? Who are you taking right now? Well, I'm taking Kershaw, but the question sort of depends on the parameters a little bit, too. if you ask me who's the best pitcher in baseball, the best can necessarily be who is the best literally. The second, it has to be, by definition, a combination of track record and recent performance because, like, if James Paxton through five shutouts in a row,

you'd be like, well, you'd be like, well, because there's a certain amount of, not the best pitcher as bad, but there's a certain amount of reputation involved. Now, Scherzerz has a good reputation, too, but Chris has literally been the best pitcher for, like, six or seven years now, so you can't just flip it automatically, and it's one thing if Shurzerzer's,

was pushing like this and Kirchho's pitching badly, Kirchaw's been awesome. So, you know, Kershaw has marginally better stats over the course of three months. That's not enough for me to knock one guy off. And I would also say that we don't pay enough attention to strength of schedule. I don't think we do that enough.

And I say that as a fantasy player and in real life, the animal east is hot garbage. It's terrible. The Marlins can actually hit. They have some hitters. But generally speaking, the division is awful, and there's a lot of pushovers, you know, that in Mets are very injured. the Phillies are brutally brutal.

Scherzer hasn't necessarily faced all in the least competitions. So look at his game log sometimes. You think the Padres randomly twice. Like there's all these weird big of giants. Like he just just mowed down weak competition. Kershaw's had a fair bit of Rockies and Diamondbacks. Not that the Padres and Giants are any good, but just if you

look on the one-to-one basis, Scherzer is benefiting from that. And we still haven't really come, you know, we have kind of catch-all metrics. We have more. We have fifth, whatever. But I haven't seen one, at least that I like, and it's easy to understand that is strength of schedule baked into this stuff that it really accounts for that. And I don't like the unbalanced schedule.

I know why you do it. It's not the Yankee for Red Sox's your rival because you don't Seattle can't travel to Tampa Bay every other week. I totally understand it. But from a fairness point of view, it really gives BS and so is the unbalanced schedule. Everybody should play the same number of teams and same number of times. You don't until what ends up happening is team records change. And sometimes individual performance can change.

And Scher is a great pitcher who is benefiting at least a little bit from that. So sticking with the Kershaw-Sureser theme, but a little different. angle. You mentioned that Scherder's been marginally better than Kirschar this year. Lower ERA, lower whip, 14 more strikeouts, but he's scored 40 less fantasy points because of those stupid wins and losses. Are those the two worst fantasy categories?

Yeah, I mean, I guess so, but the thing is I just don't treat fantasy like real life, like I don't get too agitated about it. I accept the fact that I'm going to look at whatever it is, park-adjustice FIP in one round, and not even consider it in fantasy. Like, I just don't You just play the system of your belt, I guess, is kind of the answer to that question. So, you know, saves, like, saves are pointless for life. We just talked about reliever usage and all that stuff.

It doesn't bother me. And I'm only in one league at this point, which is my insane league of football, which is crazy. And the only thing that I've adjusted is I made a batting average OPP. Just because, you know, I don't mind. I kind of like Matt Carpenter or Adam Donner. I like those guys. I find it interesting when they walk a hundred times there should be some award. That's literally just a personal preference thing.

It doesn't mean that whatever, batting average is the scourge on fantasy or whatever. I don't really care. I must personally like ODP as a scoring category. But I don't want park adjustment to my fantasy. I don't, you know, I don't think it does that much. It gets into kind of the like, do you want the person who's best at this to win, or do you want it to be hugely influenced by luck? And I think, you know, everybody plays fantasy football,

and I think a big part of that is it's random. You know, you can win fantasy football without having ever. played or watched football. And I think that's, there's value in that, even if it's frustrating when you have the best team and you lose because Clayton Kirschall gets four more wins or whatever than Max Scherzer.

Right. Is Aaron Judge really this good? And if not, how good is he? What's the expectation moving forward? Well, just I'm a lot of lucking to close that loop for a second. A lot of it is luck. And I don't think the nationals are good, so it's not a great example,

Generally speaking, Kirchow's getting a lot of wins to be placed for a really good team. I told you that. I'd pay an extra buck at the auction table for that. Tracked an extra buck from the guy with that. You know, like Jeff Samarza, and Strang of the Lock Ration's, preposterous.

He's incredible. He looks like freaking, like, best picture of all parties. Pedro Martinez, but he plays with the Giants were horribly terrible. They have bad defense, they have bad run to support. He has a four or five year and, like, four wins, whatever. Yeah.

You know, but you should know that. By the way, I own Jeff Samarza, so I'm not, like, I'm so smart or whatever. I did happen to get him. on a discount, but the point is, you know, it should be factored in. And we're talking about relative to degrees here. Yeah, maybe there's a little bit of luck, and this guy gets more wins or whatever. But if you really get down to the end of your season and your league is so closely matched

that three wins by this guy versus this guy decides it, all right, but how often does that really happen? You know, most likely if you, you know, you drafted a bunch of slim meals for your pitch, you have a bloke or whip, or you know, you just didn't get Alonzo and smoking more something like everybody else. It's very rare that it comes down to the worst. football's almost. Like, I find bad football to be silly almost, but I, you know, I, again, I buy into those rules, and because I don't really follow football as well, it actually works to my advantage. I would hate if baseball is driven by randomness so much because I feel I have knowledge, so if some schmuck got over on me, I'd be like, well, gee, like, that guy

doesn't know as much about it. That gal doesn't know as much about baseball. The thing about Judge, I mean, what happened was he always had raw power, right? It was that he didn't know how to control the strike, so. That was a big issue. He didn't have it in the minors. his cup of coffee last year he struck, I don't want to say 44% of the time and his 96th plate appearance. If I'm right, that means I need to not watch that much baseball. That's a little too much.

But anyway, and then he started figuring it out. Now, part of that obviously, it's discipline is two things, right? If you start hitting home runs and pitchers don't challenge you as much, and also if you figure out the strikes, then I hit more home runs. But it really seems like in this case it was more him than pitchers, but he really just sort of figured it out.

That can happen. and then we don't have a comprehensive study. We sort of know in players peak, we know this, we know that, but in terms of the plate discipline, I don't even mean just walk, I need the ability to get ahead and account two O and to identify the pitch to crush and all that stuff. We don't know exactly when it happens, you know, there's no precise peak range. It can happen early, it can happen later. Sometimes it happens after the physical prime.

It can happen in like 30. You know, in Judge's case, it just happened very quickly, and he's a guy with incredible bat speed, is very strong. And you look at the, you know, the home run revolution, what's going on, I just talked about smoke. There's a home run, a class of home that's called Wall Scrapers, which is exactly what it sounds like it falls and just barely go out. Smoke's got like 10 of those, you know?

So, I mean, yeah, you've got the 20 home runs or whatever it is, that's indisputable. But the fact of the matter is, you know, if there's no shoes ball, they're not going out. Judges are like taking out missiles in the sky, right? I mean, you know, it's satellite they're going down when Judge goes to play. That's a different story. So I think the raw power is there, and he did figure out the strike zone.

Will there be an adjustment, probably, but I'm not willing to short him too hard. I think if there's a lot to it. The ballpark is beneficial. You know, I think that he's a superstar. Weird thing about him that you don't see with a lot of power hitters. And a good comparison is Cody Bellinger and the NL, who's kind of the B-plus version of Aaron Judge and the NL, is that Cody Bellinger is a straight pull hitter.

And we know Yankee Stadium a little more favorable to left-handed batters, but Aaron Judge, I think, hits like 70 or 80 percent of his batted balls in the air to the center field or opposite side. That actually works to his benefit at Yankee Stadium. stadium. I mean, obviously, it's very difficult, you know, it's the right center. I think to try to pop it down the line there, where it's 340, I think 30-09 or 314 at the line. Even like that, just when you go out of the right center, it's still like 3.30, basically those shallow seats right there. That's harder to do. That sort of requires

a weird swing or you really have to come into an outside pitch. He's in them out, you know, still 385 out there to the right center to the gap or whatever. So, yeah, you know, right center or, you know, he does have that kind of swing. And I think that also makes you a little a bit more slump-proof, right? I mean, if you're trying to pull or whatever, then if one thing goes wrong, then theoretically your mechanics are all messed up, you're trying to pull, you end up grounding at the second, if you're all out of whack. You know, it's scouting 101, right? You hit them more of their pitch and whatever that works for your advantage, and if you're Tony

Glenn, you hit him with a pitch, you'd dunk it into the opposite field and the left field, and if you're at a judge, you have a right center, or whatever. So, yeah, you know, the combination of raw power with real hitting skill, it seems like, you know, especially based on that number, it that tracks. You know, he really does seem to have it all together. What's up with the Cubs? Do you have any feel for it?

I have, the way, I'm a very strange person. You know, my story ideas, I don't even have like a spreadsheet or whatever. I literally, you know, I come across something or it's on Twitter. I'll email myself a tweet or whatever from Derek Gould about the Cardinals or something. I just compile with stuff in my Gmail. And so I have a million unread emails or start. email or whatever, like, oh, I'm going to use that for this week's call. This could be long form, whatever.

And one of the threads is what's up with the Cubs, literally verbatim, and what's up with the Cubs. And what I do is when I start a thread, it's email, right? I just reply to each one. I have about 27 emails to myself nested under what's up with the Cubs. Like Montero, the game where they stole 800 bases, that's one. I'm going to get rid of, well, now he's gone. Contra's a little bit better at it, but that was an issue where at one point, Lester being totally Jekyll and Hyde was another one.

Russell being awful was another one. Schwabordered Demoaga that was like five you know about that. There's a lot of things wrong with the Cubs. And the point of building a team like that is that you're supposed to be inured to this stuff. You're supposed to be able to dodge it because they've got all kinds of talent.

Like if you're, you know, we see that here's Blue Jays, they're pretty bad because they're old, right? So old guys, you know, they can all get old at the same time that's it. But it's not just, you know, their veterans are not good. Swarper stinks. Russell stinks. You know, these younger guys, Brian is having a good year, not last year, not as good last year.

You know, there's just regression by young guys. We've seen old guys not perform. I wasn't as, what hasn't been to any devastating injuries? If anything that's war per season ender is worse than anything that's happened to them this year, nobody's on TJ or anything. Yeah. But, like, you know, Arietta's mechanics all whack. You can't find the play.

Like, he's not spotting what he did. It's just a lot of guys didn't perform well. And I think that if we run it back, a hundred times, this confluence of circumstance might happen like two or three times. I really think they're just, yeah, I don't want to say they're, I think they're more unlucky this year than they were last year, but last year they were playing at the 90th percentile positive outcomes. They're like at the first percentile. Yeah.

It's just like, you know, except for the, like, devastating, mind-blowing injury, everything has gone wrong. They just haven't really been able to take to anything. Russell, you know, aside from the on-field stuff, he's got the off-field, which is his own, you know, potentially his own doing. I'm not excusing anybody, but just these things keep escalating. you know, so how do you fix something like that? I don't think they're going to fix all of it. I think that some of these things will work. I think that Lester maybe won't give up a 10 spot his next.

You know, maybe I'm going to start starting the zone. Maybe Shorba's back, maybe hit some home runs. Maybe he has half picks up the slack. Does it, maybe Rizzo does that. You just sort of figure it out. But, you know, everybody was producing for last year's Cubs. And half the roster isn't this year. You know, who's the biggest overperformer on the Cubs this year, I guess?

I don't know if I can think of... I don't think they have anybody who's overperforming. Yeah, like, Wade Davis is really good. Wade Davis, here I mean, like, there's not one guy is like, wow, that guy came out of nowhere. I don't know if I was telling us. Oh, but all those things being said,

I mean, you're still picking the Cubs to win the National League Central, right? I mean, I have been, but there's going to come a point from we have to believe in the Brewers. You know, they talked about going on getting Kitana or Gray or whatever to trade that one. I don't think will. I don't go out and get real another starter. Loofing Anderson sucks.

I mean, he was pitching really, really well. but they still have Nelson, they still have some functional pitching. And if they get it in Cantonana, I mean, you know, that's a game change, right? I think they'll be there. I think mass matters. It's like the thing, I don't know, they're up by the last check, three and a half or whatever. But that's still not nothing. You know, it still means that one team has to get a little cold, one team has to get a little hot.

I still like the Cubs, but, you know, every day I start to, you know, become more open-minded. I think that we have to be open-minded about basically because of the same change. I wasn't ready to accept that Aaron Judge had great places. That's what the evidence suggests. Yeah. You know, the brewers, maybe they're a fluke. But, like, at a certain point, you know, they've got 80-odd games where they've proven this. Corey Canable some.

But they're starting to have these guys emerge. You have to start to take them seriously. So I consider it the Cubs of the favorites, but I'm not willing to bet the mortgage on it by any means. All right, who's one player who will definitely have a better second half than their first half? Ben Lindberg said Kyle Schwerber. So that's a pretty obvious one, I think. I think Justin Verlander, right?

Yeah. Nuclear disaster. And the thing about, so I didn't interview with Verlander last summer. I know he gave him like 20 minutes. It was like a long four minutes. It's a big podcast, whatever.

And he talked about the lat injury that he had. And he only missed a total of like 12 starts with that thing. But it was probably for a year and a half. To reduce his velocity, wasn't locating the thing. You could see that something was wrong with him. There's been nothing reported now.

And his velocity is the same. I think it's up. That is the technical term. Yeah, I think his velocity is actually up this season. That's why I, like... Right, yeah, I think I have a good answer. And so when I don't have a good answer, I'm like, okay, well, something will work out. Either he'll get into it and it'll get better.

Go ahead. Who's one player who will definitely have a worst second half, Jason Vargas being another obvious example? Yeah, I guess pitchers are easier because you look at their strikeout to walk or whatever, so I guess I should give you a hitter. I'll say Justin Smoke. I mean, you know, the fact that he's got that many home runs that are just clearing the tent, but that's a little bit of a fluke, so I could see that happening.

I wonder about that whole country of hitters. I own in that League of League business I picked up Yonor Alonzo right before he went crazy, so I've written it out, and, you know, he had three home runs in a few games, but he had an home run for like two weeks before that. And the other thing about Alonzo is it's not just that it's performance that coming out of nowhere. He was also, in addition to hitting nine home runs of his career high, one of the most injury-prone players in baseball,

and I have tried to trade him to no success because people are like the Gonder Alonzo, dude, he's going to get hurt. So I almost feel like that's kind of like a Jason Bargis level obvious, too. Alonzo doesn't take for 36 home runs. I would be 37. I'd be very surprised. All right, we'll just stick with the theme here. I was looking at baseball perspectives as this top 100 prospects yesterday from 2009

because there's been a theme where Smoke, Alonzo, Logan, Morrison, Elvis, Andrews, Mike Mastaka, Cameron Mabin, all these guys are having, outrageously good years, just out of nowhere. These guys who have been in the league for seven or eight years, who from that group of players do you think is real? Yeah, maybe he has not quite as many homersers. He's 14 or 15.

Cardiner has a diversity of skills, right? He's athletic. Despite being in his mid-30s this point, he's athletic. He draws walks. Yeah. Good park. Despite not being a quintessential power hitter, he is a pretty significant pull-hitter, especially this year.

So he got absolutely short porch. I can see that. I don't know. Is he going to hit 45? No, but I think he's on pace for, let's say, 26. I think he gets there. You know, I think that's about right. So I think that's just a late career bloom,

and we see that with guys occasionally, right? So I guess he would be the guy. But, you know, one or two of these other guys are going to, like Josh Donaldson was always a good talent, but he just kind of figured it out. He was early on this swing for the defense kind of thing. Yeah. It'll work for one of these guys.

I can't tell you definitively this will be Logan Moore. but maybe Logan Morrison, you know, I think that's possible. I feel more comfortable shorting, smoke to some extent, Alonzo's since time, than I do declaring for sure that Morrison is for real, but maybe it's for real. Don't forget he doing this stuff at that park, too. That's a banana.

I mean, that's really hard-hit in that park. All right, how many people hit 50 home run to this season? We've got four on pace right now, Judge Springer, Votto, and Stanton. How many get there? Zero. Okay. Nice. Bet the under. Always bet the under in Mayful.

And how many 300... Arringo hit 49. How many 300 strikeout seasons do we see? We've got two on pace, Chris Sale, Max Scherzer. Going to go with the same logic? Yes. Especially with pitchers, right? Atrition is going to happen. Somebody's going to take a day off or... Give me a ques it. That's not for sure. I don't settle up to 300. All right. We're going to close out the show with some rapid fire. We've got some dumb debates on the podcast that we always have. We're going to have.

Uh, our guests, yeah, we're going to have our guests settle them this week. So, what's your favorite cereal? Uh, two different answers to this, because I eat the exact same cereal for breakfast, unless I'm, when I'm on a work trip, it's different. You know, you're not in your kitchen. But at home, I eat the same cereal every day, and I don't eat anything else. I don't eat toast. I don't have more juice. I don't have eggs.

I only eat this with milk every single day, which is raisin brand. That's two raisin brands. Wow. every single day. That is, Ben Lindbergh's answer was Raisinberg. But it's not like over the top. Is Lindberg in the Reagan Bank? Yeah.

That's amazing. Which is really pretty close to Scott's Crecklen Oprah. Yeah. I'm not at the same level as Lindberg, but I'm also like a workout. I work out all the time, too. And I think there's just something about like when you work out at night, there's going to be a point when you're going to have six eggs or a protein shake or whatever. So you go to bed at like 1130 having eat.

or consumed a lot because maybe you went to the gym at night or something like that. So when you wake up in the morning, you know, I can't have eggs, bacon, and pancakes because it's disgusting. I just had a bunch of things at night. So you wake up,

I'm raising bread. I wonder if you, that would be the follow of questions. And that is like a serious a key list where it's big time. But, you know, I thought if I can't, that's the reason for me.

I just physically can. I don't want to have a lot of food when I was up. Okay, and next is Moneyball a top five sports movie? Well, let's see if I can think of my favorite sports movies and then we can do it by fault. League of their own is for sure one of the top five. The Sanlott is for sure one of the top five.

It's interesting. Well, no, but not to count like us a rocky hoop dreams. Yeah, yeah. All right, so we're getting real close. That's four. Is Caddyshack a sports movie? Does that get in there? Of course it is.

Candy Shack's so weird. Oh, major league. I like major league. Okay, so no. Good answer, good answer. Is Aerosmith a good answer? band. Wow, that's a really hard question.

That's one of the hardest questions I've ever asked. And I like that you're not clarifying. You're not like, well, those are not doing your night. Nope, good or bad. I'm going to say... Yes. Yeah, yeah. They were good when Stephen Tyler,

when his voice, like, Dreamon is in my favorite song, but his objectively a fine song, and he had a lovely, like, this melodic voice, and he just killed it by the, like, like, 1977 was finished. Like, there's so much heroin, man. He killed his voice.

Joe Perry is so boy. Like, they ask him. Like, when you're, when you lead vocal, it's just, he's bad. Like, what are you going to do? So, yeah, no, not in, not enough body of work for me to, justify everything that happened

pretty much after, like, 1980. Okay, we're moving over to cold cuts now. Ham or Turkey. Oh, I hate ham. Yes. I eat bacon and stuff like that, but there's something about ham in particular. Dally ham is like slimy.

Yeah, but dally ham is, like, slimy. It's gross. It's not good. Well, ham is also a broad thing, right? So what do we talk about? The thing about, I don't like any American ham. I don't like the really fancy black forest ham. But for sure, I love. For sure, it's kind of ham. People just don't think of it that way. I also don't like turkey very much, by the way, either. I think the turkey's like a, what

do you go? I guess turkey is fine. And bad turkey's fine, but I'm not a fan of either one particularly. All right. The next question is just raisins, question mark? Yes or no? like a pack of sun-made raisins like as a snack yeah in our

it's a funny question so when I was growing up my mom would buy raisins they buy like 12 little you know little packs whatever you throw in your lunch and one way

my sister grabbed a pack of raisins whatever so was in her lunch she comes back from school I'm like 12 she's nine or whatever and she says for little bugs within the raisins

and they were hard to because the raisins are black and that's why. And like, that's easy. Even though I read Raisin brand every day, there's something about the pack of raisins that I'm like, I'm not going. Even though it didn't happen to me, it was like 30 years ago or whatever. I don't know. So no, I guess. That's funny.

You and Ben both say Raisin Brand as your favorite cereal and both say no to raisins. I like it. I appreciate it. Well. Ben is, you know, an unbelievable talent, a truly like good guy, whatever. Like any company that I made with him is great. Okay. All the good, everything you get out for in a person and a sports writer, Ben,

it's not enough of much. High praise. Is Die Hard a Christmas movie? Yes. Okay. Easy enough. Are Peeps good? No, but I don't like marshmallows.

So you might be actually the wrong guy. I don't marshmallow. I like, like, smores well enough, but it's the chocolate part that I like. So I'm not so, peeps, which are a bad version of marshmallows. All right, Jonathan. Thanks so much. I appreciate you taking the time, and I appreciate you taking the dumb debate questions as seriously as you did.

It's very important. Listen, there aren't no dumb debates. The hot dog is a sandwich, all the stuff. You can be elemental things. But Aaron Judge is, you know, he'll retire eventually. These debates, raisins will always be a thing. Aaron doesn't want to be a thing for 12 more years or whatever. We have to get the important stuff right.

I totally respect what you're doing. All right. Thanks so much.