Talkin' Baseball (MLB Podcast) - Most 'Nothing Games' in MLB this Year (Jimmy's 3 Things)

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

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Hello and welcome to today's edition of Jimmy's two things. Only two things I want to talk about today. One's a fun topic that's quick. Another one is a kind of long, breathing Jimmy Liddix that I've been diving into. And I've been looking at for the last two hours while I prep for this. And then I realized why I've been doing this too long. So anyway, let's get right into it and take a sip of my coffee. We're going to talk some baseball. All right. Here we go. Hope everyone had a fantastic weekend. First thing. article from Forbes from uh mori brown who wrote an article on us once thank you mori for that uh melb attendance headed for biggest increase since 1998 baseball's hot how about that that's exciting for baseball fans people are enjoying it some of the cool data and uh facts here is that uh through august 14th

attendance is up 9.2 percent uh when you remove the 2020 and 2021 seasons because those had limited capacity to COVID and all that. They're, uh, let's see. Some of the numbers are too broad for me to even understand, but I like this one. Of the 30 clubs in MLB, 23 of them are seeing gains year over a year.

23. And it goes on later to say that some of the ones that are seeing the opposite, that are seeing less in attendance is very, very slight. The Dodgers are seeing less, but it's 10. people a game. The brewers are seeing less, but it's like 32 people less a game. So I don't know, if you wanted to have a buffer zone, like, like umpires get of like, uh, I don't know, like a 500 people a game. I guess that adds up. Whatever you want to make it. Like, they wouldn't even fall into that category for me. Like that's not down. 10 people a game. Dodgers, they're not down.

That's a plateau. That's fine. So in my mind, we're at like 25 of 30 are plateauing or seeing gains. That's awesome. The largest gain is being enjoyed by the Philadelphia Phillies, and that makes a lot of sense. They went to the playoffs last year. People are starting to maybe the Phillies fans were like, hey, the regular season doesn't matter that much. We're going to be good.

Also, I think what Philly has done is invested in lovable heroes. I mean, Bryce Harper has got the keys to that city. Trey Turner had a terrible year, and the Phillies fans gave him a standing ovation. Be like, no, he's our guy. Let's get him through this. Schwabber's awesome. He's fun to watch.

I mean, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. They're seeing over 10,000 more per game. That's awesome for the Phillies. Others with big gains include the Cleveland Guardians. That one kind of made me go, huh. Texas Rangers, yep, they're good. Cincinnati Reds, yep, they're young and surprisingly good. Baltimore Orioles, yep, they're really good.

So a lot of people are going to point to a lot of different things here and say, this is why. a lot of people are going to say the rules made a huge difference, and that's the number one factor. I don't know if that's the number one factor, but I think faster game plays being done by 930 on the weekends definitely is a big factor. I don't know if it's the biggest factor, I think, winning baseball. I think we've had the most amount of teams switch into winning this year. We just named a bunch of the Rangers, the Reds, the Orioles. I mean, even the pirates went on a fun run and had the young kids.

The Cubbies are doing really well. Like a lot of teams that in the last couple years weren't competing are competing. And then you're going to come out and you're going to watch that. It's going to be a lot of fun. I think that's got to be the biggest factor. And then maybe you could go and say like those teams are doing really well because the rules are helping them. I have no idea. Also, they said the guardians lowered their prices.

So that's why the guardians are up a ton. I mean, they also, their divisions weak. they're steady. Maybe they just know they're going to have a fun team. They went to the postseason last year. They got some lovable guys over there. I don't know. But good for Cleveland.

Good for Texas. Good for Sincy. Good for Baltimore. Good for MLB in general. That's awesome. The White Sox are down 3,000 per game. And the nationals are down 2,000 per game. Again, bad baseball.

I think good baseball versus bad baseball might be the biggest factor. I think a lot of people are going to try to point to all these other things, start times, prices. Price is probably a decent factor too. And then basically, is your team competing and winning, that's going to be a huge factor. You can do as many bring your dog to the ballpark nights as you want. If your team is not good, no one's going to come watch. Let's see, there was another number here I wanted to point at that I thought was cool.

Saturday, August 5th, average 38,284 fans across all games played. All 15 games were over the 30,000 mark. That's kind of nuts to me. Saturday, August 5th, baseball reference, can I just search a date in baseball reference? August 5th? No. I want to see who the Marlins were playing.

Marlins, 2023 Marlins, schedule or were they away? That might help. That might help a lot. August 25th. No, they were home. What date did they say?

Saturday, August 5th. They were away. Okay. Saturday August 5th. Let's see who. So Yankees and the Astros in New York Nationals, Reds, Incense, so the Nationals were on the road, so that helps. The Brewers were the home team. Tigers were the home team.

Tigers Tampa Bay. That true, 30,000 people. That's awesome. Royals at Phillies, yep, Diamondbacks at Twins, yeah. Cubs were home, Baltimore were home, Cardinals were home, Padres were home against the Dodgers. So, yeah. Ooh, the A's were home against the Giants? Oh, Giants.

Wow. Okay. So close fan base. Texas hosted Marlins. Red Sox were home. Guardians are home. Angels were home. So good for the Angels.

What's the big one? The Raised Tigers one is the biggest one that's shocking me. I mean, 30,000 people. Did they have anything? Did they have a giveaway or something? Are we just doing that? Tigers celebrate 18th annual Fiesta Tigres presented by Miller Light on Saturday, August 5th,

versus Tampa Bay Reyes. So they had a Miguel Cabrera recognized. Okay. First 15,000 fans, ages 21 and over, will receive a Miguel Cabrera something. So they had a giveaway. Okay. So that's the help there in the raised Tiger series

because what was the next game? 21,000 was the next game. And what was the Friday before? Oh, oh, oh, shit, shit. The Friday before was 26,000. So, okay. How about that? And then the Coliseum got the 37,000 because the giants were in town,

and that's the Bay area. And if you live in the East Bay, it's even a little closer for you. And then the Angels, Seattle was 35,000. Okay. So the biggest weak spot was that Tigers Marlin or that Tigers, Ray's series, but they had a giveaway, which got them over 30,000. Good job by them, good investigating by me, we figured it out, Nats, and White Sox were on the road. All 15 games over 30,000, making it just a third time in 20 years that Mark had been reached.

And out of those 15, the vast majority pulled in at least 35,000 and paid attendance, which is the most games above that threshold since 2004. They've had nine weekends so far, nine weekends where the total attendance has topped 1.5 million. That's crazy. And zero of those in 2021, once in 2022, if you go back to before COVID, two times that happened in 2018 and 2019. It's happened nine times this year. So attendance is on the way up. How about that?

All right. The next topic is a, it's a double topic because it's a deep dive Jimmy Liddix, and maybe you're going to learn some players. I'm hoping to learn as I do this. So I organized data, but I haven't sifted through it yet. I'm hoping to learn as I do this. This segment is brought to you by Draft Kings. We were, well, to be frank with you, no Monday talking baseball because it was the holiday.

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slash football for eligibility. Terms of responsible gaming resources. Bonance bets, expire seven days after insurance. Eligibility and deposit restrictions apply. All right. So I have this thing that I've been saying in my head mentally for a while that I like OPS. And if you're very new to baseball or like you've heard people say OPS a lot, but don't really know what it is. It's on base percentage plus slugging.

It's supposed to be a pretty good, easy, casual barometer for offensive output. The thinking is, do you get on base? Well, that's on base percentage. when you hit the ball, do you hit for power? Because doubles are better than singles and home runs are better than doubles. So slugging. So do you get on base?

On base percentage. When you do hit the ball to get on base, do you hit for power? Slugging, right? They combine. I like OPS. I really do. I do think it's a very casual, good barometer. Like all stats, it can be manipulated or you can have it be like, I don't, that doesn't add up.

For me, what I usually say, and I have been saying, and I wanted to finally check to see if. is true, I don't like when a player has a good OPS, but it is carried by slugging. I think you need the batting average or the on base to be part of what you're doing. If you're just carried by slugging, I don't value it as much because you can have a three-home or day, and that can boost your stats so much because the slugging, but that's only one game you helped out. And the regular season, you need to be consistent.

You need to help routinely, right? So the Joey Gallo effect. Sure, you're going to hit 30 home runs over the course of the year, but you could have only helped in 25 games, probably some multi-homer games while doing it. that. Meanwhile, in a hundred others, you were like nothing. You didn't really contribute because you're just doing that. So I wanted to finally go kind of look at numbers here. And first thing I did was I took all the players that have an OPS in this spreadsheet I have here. This is all the players

that have an OPS above average. All right. So we have the average OPS is 735. and there are how many players. There are 96, I believe, players that have an above average OPS. Well, let's see. It would be 99 minus 4. So 95. 4 is that I get? Minus 3. 96.

All right. Jimmy, you stupid idiot. So if I sort this by highest, oh, I want to freeze. the top two rows. Freeze the top two rows. All right. Otani's got the highest. 1.066. Then Corey Seeger, 1.065. I only did qualified hitters. So they have to have enough played appearances and all that to be qualified because it's just easier that way. So I'm sure there's some outliers here that you guys are like, what about my guy? What? I don't know that guy because I did qualifyed only. And then what I did is I highlighted when they're below average. So our first guy, Pete Alonzo, he's got the 18th best P.S. in baseball right now, 8.53. He's got a below average batting average. The average batting

average in MLB this season is 249. He's 225. But he's not below average and on base. He's got a 327. So that's fine. That's not really what I'm talking about. I think you'd want that average a little higher, but he's above average and on base by seven points. Jorge Saler, below average and batting average, barely above average and on base percentage, barely. I think he kind of, yeah, he kind of falls into like, yeah, you want one of those to be a little higher, but it's not terrible. Really, it's not terrible. I think that's kind of what, that's kind of the line.

If you have the three true outcome, Joey Gallo type, and I don't know, Soler's strikeouts, that's fine. Like, be a round average in the other two. but as we go down, our first player that is below average in both batting average and on base percentage is Jake Berger. So his slugging is truly carrying him. 241 batting average, 303 on base percentage, 522 slugging, way above average slugging. So that's carrying him to an 825 OPS.

So he's kind of the highest example of what I'm talking about. So maybe I'll look into his name later. second part to this. All right, and as you get down, you get more and more. Muncie is way below average and batting average, but above average in on base and slugging. And then how many more players do I have that are both? Schwabers below average and batting average.

Aronado's below average in on base. Rooker batting average, hat batting average. Rosario on base. I'm looking for more doubles. Here you go. Cal Rayley, Raleigh? Fuck, I always get that. confused. He's below average and batting average and on base percentage. But the slugging gets him to

above average OPS. Who's another double? Spencer Torkelson is below average, barely an on base percentage, but below average and batting average. So those are the only three that are both. Spencer Torkelson, Cal, and Burger. Those are the three guys that have a beloved above average OPS, below average, batting average and on base percentage. The next thing I did is I did my stat that I've referenced a lot on talking baseball before called, well, I don't, I've never called a nothing game.

A nothing game. What I did was on baseball reference, I said, okay, I want to find all the games where you've had three or more played appearances. So not, you know, you came off the bench, you got two, or you pinch hit. or you were a defensive replacement. I took all of those out.

Unless they pinch hit and got a hit, I kept that in. Good for them. Let's give them the number. Or they played two, where they played, like there was one game where I think Alonzo had two played appearances. He got a hit, and then he got hit by a pitch, and then he came out because he was hurt. Maybe it wasn't Pete.

I'm not going to count that against him. But I'm not, I'm going to give that, I'm going to count that for them, but I did a very selective thing where if they had, just two plate appearances and no hits, no nothing. I didn't count that against them. It's hard to be a part-time baseball player. So it's three or more played appearances, zero runs, zero hits, zero walks,

zero times on base with reaching on an error, zero sack flies, zero hits. Nata, nothing. Offensively, you weren't there. Just outs. So I took that Nothing games And I took that stat And I matched it up

With these players that have above average OPS And I wanted to see One, just kind of look at the nothing games I like that stat And if you sort nothing games By

Sort sheet A It's really cool Because Freddie Freeman, Corey Seeger both have nine nothing games, the least. McCutcheon also has nine. But Acuna has 12.

Freddie Freeman is crazy. He's played in 134 games where he had three played appearances or more. Only nine of them have been nothing games for a 6.72% nothing game percentage, which I did. The best nothing game. percentage has to be him.

Yes. Acuna is third. McCutcheon is second. So Freddie Freeman only nine nothing games, and he plays first base, so I'm sure he was very much a part of the game when you're playing that position. I mean, Acuna's playing right field. Probably getting Paul's hit to him, but anyway. So then I wanted to go look at my theory that if you just have slug,

Cutch is Cutch, just looking at it, is also wild because he's below average and slugging but has above average OPS because his on base percentage is 3.78. Let's go look at the most nothing games from a player who has, the most nothing games from a player who has

an above average OPS is 31 from Orlando Arcea 27% of the games he's played have been nothing games. You know, one-fourth, a little over one-fourth. That's wild. Yet he's not below average in any slash line. So I kind of want to go look at his game log because it seems like a little bit crazy to me

that he can do nothing so often, but still have good batting average and on-base percentage. So he must really not compile those nothing games. Looks like there was three in April. Yeah, I mean, I'm just, so I'm just looking down the hits column right here where my cursor is. That's pretty steady. Oh, it looks like he had, okay, so it looks like he had one, like this is a bad stretch. This, he had one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

In this nine game stretch, he had two hits, zero walks, zero six one batting average. So he actually was streaky with his bad and he's consistent. assistant like he had one bad streak that does this he compiled uh in a short time is nothing games other than that yeah is baseball here's another one against the Mets three in a row oh no here's another one so he had oh come on jimmy baseball reference doing the wrong thing so it looks like he had two stretches of uh you son of a bitch stop doing that in august this looks like this looks like like a real bad stretch for him. Nine games, one hit.

So seven of the games we're looking at there. So actually, okay, two dry stretches for Orlando, RCA, otherwise it's there. Let's go back to our list and find our guys that have doubled up, our three guys that have doubled up. Jake Berger, he's got 23-0 games out of 114, 20% of the time he's doing nothing. Who's got the highest nothing game percentage?

This is the highest nothing game percentage out of players who are above average OPS. So if you sort it by it, you can see all the red. Every other player is below average somewhere besides Jamer Candelario and Luis Renhifo, but the rest of the top 15 are all going to be. low average on base or something. Where's our next Cal Rai? He's 19%. Let's look at his game log.

Also a catcher. So like the fact that he's above average OPS from the catching position, I don't think you care about any of this. That's a position that this does not matter. He also doesn't play as regularly and he's got other shit to do. Wow, here's a bad stretch. Early June. Not good.

Okay. So what was I looking at? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if I've drawn a conclusion. I think I maintain that. I think I maintain that decision. I think that all these guys are pretty good

because they are, they qualify for above average OPS. I guess there's probably players. If I go MLB batting leaders. No, I want to. go to stathead. What's the, so the average slugging is 415? I want to, I guess more so is player batting, is finding players that have, so finding, I'm doing qualified players on baseball reference, and I want to find players that have a

true statistical filter, slugging percentage, the average right now is 415, that are above average slugging but below average above average slugging below average on base which is 320 choose another statistic and I'm going to go batting average below average the batting average 249 we said so these are going to be your sluggers they're they're they're not their OPS might not be above average they might miss out on that but they're the slash line that carries them is their slugging percentage, which I think plays if you have on base or something else high. Let's see. Who do we got here?

We got, and the highest slugging percentage that has this is Adam Duval. Did he not come up anywhere else? Why is he not on the other list? Oh, is he not? 833 OPS? What the fuck? I don't know why he's not on the other list. if his OPS is that high.

Oh, my God, Jose Canseco. We're like all time. 2023 only, please. This is career, I believe. All right, so there's eight players in this season that have an above-average slugging and below-average batting average on base. And the ones we know, Spencer Torkelson,

Cal Raleigh, Jake Berger are above-average. You got Nolan. Does he not have the plate appearances to be qualified? Yeah, I don't think so. So he's carrying by slash line, Salvi Perez, Hunter Renfro, Carlos Santana, and Tommy Edmund. I wonder if they got nothing games. I'm sure some people just want to see nothing game leaders.

You want to see who's got the most nothing games? All right. Now, this is offensive only, because obviously some people play some pretty important positions, and that leads to them, right? So, like, offensive only, most nothing games just counting is Paul DeYoung with 35 shortstop. Salvi Perez with 34, catcher. And then C.J. Abrams, shortstop.

And Volpey shortstop. And Martine Maldonado, catcher. And Shailang Ulyers, catcher. And Trent Grisham. He's the first non-shortstop, non-catchez. Center fielder, I guess that would be the order of things, of the defensive first positions, would be a catcher, shortstop, center fielder. And then after Trent Grisham, Orlando Arcia, short stops?

You playing mostly short? Yeah, all short this year. Obviously. It's like the best. Okay. And then another center fielder. Leoti. Shit, okay, that's interesting.

Who's going to be the first that isn't a center fielder, a catcher, or a short? stop on this list. Rosario? Eddie Rosario is the first one on this list that has a ton of nothing games, 30 nothing games that isn't catcher, shortstop, or center fielder, and he's not in the top 10, he's the 11th. And then Jimenez is going to be year 12th, and he's a second baseman. But yeah, mostly the defensive positions have this. So the top five are DeYoung, Perez, Abrams, Volpe, and Maldonado. nothing games. I wonder, like, what position would this be terrible at? I guess Castiano's.

And then this is a bunch of pages long. Because I, the fact, Freddie Freeman only has nine is nuts. Royce Lewis only has eight, but we're not in qualified, and the stats might not be great. Joe Adele only has one. Good job, Joe Adele. Drew Maggie, only one. Great job by him.

Let's go look at Freddie Freeman's game log, because that shit's insane. We'll end it there. Freddie Freeman's game log is nuts. They just have a total basis stat on this page? No. Well, second game of the year, 0 for 5. Nothing. Boo.

And then it's just one hit, two hits, three hits. No hits, but two walks. hits one hit four hits one hit one hit no hits three strikeouts oh there you go another one uh no hits two walks in an rbi i nuts dude is just as consistent as you could possibly be and not even like doing at the bare minimum like every fucking day remember that stretch he had last year i think he might be the best all right this ran a little long two topics today nothing game stat and OPS. And I still think I,

I think I wasn't overwhelmingly doubling down on my stance that I don't like when you're slugging carries your OPS. I think I have to find like other barometers. But yeah, I think you need to be every day to contribute as a baseball player on a 160 game season because you can have the other stuff and have a home run streak go on in the postseason. That's great.

But you got to at least get on baseball. base in between homers or in between, yeah, mashing. I think we're getting away from that anyway. See you later. Goodbye. Thanks for watching and listening. Love you guys. Go baseball.