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- [00:02]
A
We're gonna crunch those stats. We're gonna talk about baseball sticky stuff and torpedo bats. We'll talk about it all. If you want good takes on baseball and life, just tune in to Ben and his lovely co host, Ben and Meg. It's Effectively Wild. Hello. And wel to episode 2367 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindbergh of the Ringer, joined by Meg Reilly of Fangrass. Hello, Meg.
- [00:44]
B
Hello.
- [00:45]
A
Been talking about the trio of Clayton Kershaw, Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer all season, since before the season, even when I speculated about whether this would be the last hurrah for all three of them and how they would go out. And and then we talked about them later in the season when it looked like they would go out not particularly well, and it was looking maybe more like a swan song and none of them was pitching all that well. Well, lately things have looked up a bit. Maybe the old guy still got it a little bit. So through July 26th that we're recording here on August 27th, so I'm going to compare the past calendar month to prior to that. So through July 26th, the three of them, Scherzer, Verlander and Kershaw had combined for 1.5 Fangraphs War total in 172 innings pitched.
- [01:40]
B
Yeah.
- [01:40]
A
So approaching a full starting pitcher season and not completely terrible, 1.5 war, I guess. But that's what you're getting from all three of them put together. And probably if you were going by baseball reference, War Ra9 War it would have been even worse. But over the past month. So July 27th on two and a half war, 2.5 war in 99 innings pitched. So they have pitched a lot fewer innings over the past month than they had in the previous several months, but they have been worth a WAR more than they had through July 26th. So they've actually been pretty good over the past month. In fact, Verlander has been a top 10 pitcher in baseball by Fangraphs War. He's sixth in Fangraphs War over that span. Kershaw is 13th over that span and Scherzer is 51st. So they've all been pretty credible rotation options. And now a couple of them at least are possible post season starting options. So that's exciting. I don't know whether that means that this has postponed the end whenever it comes for all of them, but at least they're finishing stronger this season.
- [02:56]
B
I wonder this perhaps betrays something more about my personality than it illuminates anything about any one of those three guys. But I almost wonder if it makes it more likely that they're done after this year. Right. Like so so many careers, they just end on whatever note they end on. You don't get to really determine whether it was a good, a good note, a high note, or a sour one. And I wonder if all of these guys sort of round into a form that resembles a past version of themselves. And particularly for Scherzer and Kershaw, if they are able to have some sort of impact in October, does that sort of satisfy whatever drive they have to keep going? Are they able to say, okay, I had this good final note and now I can kind of let go of the need to keep pitching? Or maybe they say, look it, hey, I've been telling you, I've been telling you that I was good and now here I am being good, you know?
- [04:02]
A
Yeah, I don't know. It could go either way. I would imagine that just given the competitive fire that Scherzer seems to have and Verlander's previously stated desire to pitch forever essentially, and continue to crawl toward 300 wins, that maybe it would encourage them to keep going. I saw an Optistats tweet about Kershaw. Since pitches were first tracked in 1988, there have been 566 instances of an MLB pitcher winning five or more games as a starter in a single calendar month in the regular season. Lots of qualifiers there. As usual, only one of them threw fewer than 400 pitches that month. Clayton Kershaw, who just threw 395 pitches in August 2025. I guess when I said calendar month before, I really meant just over the past month. Not exactly a calendar month, but this is a calendar month stat. So he's been winning games efficiently. He's just been out of there early. He's not going particularly deep into games, but he's picking up the W's. So Verlander must be jealous. He just got his second of the season. I think his. His first home win as a Giant.
- [05:11]
B
Oh, gosh, I wonder if they're on a group chat. You know, they call it the, the old guys. They're like, here's the old guy chat. You know, I'm like, I wonder.
- [05:21]
A
Although I grouped them together and Kershaw is significantly younger than the other two. It's just, you know, he's been around a long time, too, for such a long time. He reads as old just because of all the Physical frailty and the injuries and everything. And he's got some gray going on, so. He's talked about retirement, too, and has flirted with it in the past, but yeah, really, the cohort of the other two is more Charlie Morton or even Rich Hill or Jesse Chavez or something. But yeah, gosh, Kershaw's the. The young guy, the junior member of the trio. Anyway, glad to see them turning in some. Some strong starts at least.
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B
Sure.
- [06:01]
A
Not quite vintage then. Not bad.
- [06:04]
B
Not bad, you know.
- [06:05]
A
Yeah. Another old guy or oldish guy who still got it is Patrick Corbin. And by it, I mean a rotation spot mostly.
- [06:14]
B
And.
- [06:14]
A
And his health. And he is continuing to. To climb the leaderboard for Rangers starting pitchers. And this is something that I. I forecasted that I wanted to predict until Clemens made his Corbin prediction in the preseason. Predictions. Jeff, he snaked me with a. A much less bold prediction that has already come true, which is that Corbin would throw a hundred innings. I was going to predict that he would lead the Rangers in innings pitched, and he might just do it. He is still very much in the running to do that, but because unfortunately, Nathan Evaldi is done for the year. He has a rotator cuff strain, and he's been pitching super well, except for that one recent start after we talked about how well he'd been doing. He's had plenty of injuries in his career, but not, I believe, shoulder injuries. And so this is a. A new one and not one that you want, but he ends the season with, I think, a 1.73 ERA. Not too shabby, but he is done with, which does further damage to the Rangers meager playoff hopes. But it helps Patrick Corbin's quest to lead the Rangers in innings pitch because he has now leapfrogged Ivaldi. He has thrown one more inning than Ivaldi because Corbin's coming off of a fantastic start. He just made an excellent start and he's healthy, he's durable. Of course, he cannot be stopped. He's the Energizer starter. And now he trails only Jacob deGrom.
- [07:44]
B
Wow.
- [07:45]
A
Who I believe. Did he miss a start recently or he just had an extended time off or something?
- [07:51]
B
Yeah, I can't remember.
- [07:53]
A
Yeah, yeah, it wasn't serious. But also it's Jacob deGrom. So, like all along, I've been saying, because Corbin was trailing only Nathan evaldi and Jacob deGrom, and those are two guys who have checkered pass when it comes to actually staying on the field and taking the ball. So now only deGrom stands in Patrick Corbin's way. DeGrom has about a 14 inning lead over Corbin, so probably deGrom would have to be shut down or something or miss some starts because they've made the same number of starts. But deGrom has been better than Corbin, of course, and he's gone deeper into those games. But if he were to falter now, the field is more open for Patrick Corbin. Only one man stands ahead of him, and it's a man who's not known for staying healthy.
- [08:39]
B
Well, I wonder, I wonder if he is the guy I should point to when people are like, war's on accounting stat. I'm like, well, volume does sure does matter in there though. Sure does help. It's not the only thing. They have to be. Quality innings is maybe too strong. Although they haven't been as bad as, you know, I don't want to, I, I don't need to knock Patrick Corbin right now.
- [09:01]
A
He's been okay.
- [09:02]
B
I mean, she's been fine.
- [09:03]
A
Yeah, he's, he's given them some bulk, but he's actually, he's below replacement level according to Baseball reference, which I'm guessing is one of those weird baseball reference defense adjustments or something because he doesn't have a big ERA fit. Yeah. So it must be something else or, I don't know, quality of opposition or something like that. But Fengres has him at 1.5 war, which, you know, if he has a, like a two war season as an emergency pickup at the last second when everyone else in the Rangers rotation was hurt, that's exactly what they wanted him to do and hoped he could do. You know, he's been, he's been decent. He has been better than he had been for the Nationals for several years. So it's, it's progress, it's an improvement.
- [09:49]
B
And you know, like, some of this is definitely the current state of injury in the league right now. But I don't know, man, there are, there are playoff teams, actual playoff teams, not one that are sort of struggling with the fringes the way that the Rangers are that have had guys go down and they're probably like, I didn't take a bad Corbin right now. I mean, like, you know, the Mets lost Montas. Trevor McGill just went on the aisle today. Like there's, you know, there are all kinds of guys who are meant to be playing some sort of role in a contending team that are just going to be sort of missing in action for a little bit. And I don't, I don't know, man. Like sometimes you Need a bulk guy. You need a. Oh yeah, you need a bulk guy. It's not a guy you're likely to look to come October, but bridging the gap to get there. That, that's something I think.
- [10:42]
A
Yeah, we, we talked about it on that preseason pod, I think because there, there were some indicators that maybe Corbin was a partial bounce back candidate that Chris Young talked about this when they signed him and acknowledged that it was sort of just a emergency move. Just break glass and, and call up Corbin essentially. But, but also like he pitched better I think down the stretch last year and the peripherals were better than the surface stats and he'd made some changes to his repertoire. And so they were kind of seeing some upside at least in Corbin. And they weren't wrong.
- [11:17]
B
Sometimes showing up to work is valuable even if the output on that particular day isn't the best it possibly could be for someone. If it's your best and you're there and the someone'. I don't know. Something.
- [11:33]
A
Yeah, I guess a couple other starting pitcher related items. One person who will not be showing up to work any longer, at least for his previous employer is Andrew Heaney, who was designated for assignment by the Pirates. Yeah, and I remember praising that pickup for them because I thought, oh, it's so low cost. It was a one year deal. It was like 5 million or something. And at the time at least it seemed like they had a promising rotation and young guys and Jones and Sky Skin and Chandler and this was just okay, just a additional depth guy. And for a while there it was working out great, just like through mid June or so. It was paying off. He had been really good and seemed like a bargain and then just everything completely fell apart. Yeah, he's, he's been awful since then. So he's actually been the worst pitcher in baseball by fan Graphs were Since June 19, no one has been less valuable than Andrew Heaney. So yeah, minus 0.9 fan graphs were since that point. So he has been cut loose by the Pirates. But the good news is that they did allow him to trigger one of the incentive clauses in his contract. So he had a number of escalators in his deal that were tied to innings pitch thresholds and he just passed the first of them because he just got to 120 innings. He's at 120 and a third and so he got a bonus of 50k I think for getting there. Now he did have additional bonuses to come if he had gotten to 130 innings, 140, 150, 160, 170. Like he would have gotten more payouts of 100,000, 150,000 each. And maybe that played into why they let him go. But honestly, he's. He's been so bad that I can't really even fault the Pirates for. For cutting him loose. But they did allow him to get to 120 innings and pay him 50k. And you know what? That's progress for the Pirates. I think that they just didn't dfa him at like 119⅔ innings pitched or something. Because. Because that's kind of what happened with Rowdy Tolez last season.
- [13:50]
B
Yeah.
- [13:51]
A
Which became a big thing. He hadn't been good for them either, but at least lately. But they cut him loose, what, four plate appearances, I think, before he was going to have a sizable bonus. And they were roundly criticized for that. So. You know what? Maybe this is a new leaf being turned over for the Pirates. We'll at least let Andrew Heaney trigger the first of those escalators. You know, it's just baby steps for Bob Nutting, but, you know, just a. A slight pat on the back. A slight. Have to hand it to him for just shelling out some amount of money that in theory, they could have gotten out of.
- [14:32]
B
What's that? A football for me to kick? Lucy, I will. I will note that I've been pleasantly surprised this year. There have been like a number of teams where guys have not made the all star team. They haven't been named to it, but like their teams have just sort of.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Paid out their all star bonuses anyway. Like if they had an all star incentive in the, in the contract. Like, I think this happened with Vivaldi, it happened with a couple of the Phillies guys. And it's just like, oh, that's like, that's nice. That's. That's good, you know, Seems good.
- [15:04]
A
Yeah, it's. It's a pittance. It's a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things. And maybe it will pay dividends for you down the line in terms of improving your reputation or just making someone happy. I don't know these things. Often if you have a negotiation with someone, it just comes down to are you willing to pay up at that point, it's not necessarily loyalty or hometown discount or, hey, you did me a solid, so I'll just cut you a discount here and do you a favor. I don't know that there's always a quid pro quo exactly like that, but just the general sentiment. And, and, you know, you. You buy yourself some positive PR, at least, or absence of negative pr, which is maybe worth something.
- [15:47]
B
Yeah. I don't imagine, you know, in much the same way that as much as I would like for teams to conduct themselves differently in arbitration, I don't know, that makes a big difference. I mean, there are examples of guys who have said, like, the way that I was treated in the art process made me not want to sign with them once I hit free agency or whatever, but I don't imagine it moves the needle all that much. But I have often thought that teams sort of. It's really cheap. It's really cheap to buy that kind of good pr. It's, It's. It's an inexpensive, you know, marginal move toward being perceived as a club where, you know, a guy might want to come spend some time. And it just seems like, why not, you know, why not do that? That seems good.
- [16:33]
A
Yeah. Yeah. There was a study that made the rounds earlier this month. It was a sentiment analysis study where you kind of classify text as representing certain emotions, which is not the most rigorous, but there's usually some sort of signal there. And it was based on looking at the 30 MLB team subreddits and trying to detect the anger toward ownership in each of those subreddits. And so they came up with the top five most hated and most appreciated owners in baseball. And it mostly tracked. So number one, most hated was John Fiser. Well, yeah, that's. That sounds about right. There's probably something to this method. If he comes out number one. Jerry Reinsdorf was number two of the White Sox, Mark Lerner of the Nationals, number three, Paul Dolan of the Guardians, number four, and Bob Nutting of the Pirates, number five. That's. That's a solid starting five, I would say, for most hated owners. If anything, nutting seemed low to be fifth there because I don't know, when I talk to Pirates fans, like, I don't detect any positivity towards.
- [17:45]
B
No, no, I. I can't say that I do either, you know, and. Yeah, not. Not even one little bit, really. Not even one little bit. I think the. The most. This is such a depressing way of saying this, but it's like maybe there wasn't more negative sentiment because they have pushed through that stage of grief, and now they are just in acceptance, which I think at the fan level probably looks a lot like indifference. That's. That's not good for your team, you know. Gotta tell you, that's not good.
- [18:15]
A
Yeah, you can this model classifies the comments based on whether they're anger, disgust, fear, sadness, joy and surprise. So maybe maybe they've moved past some of those emotions. Like, yeah, it's the stages of grief sort of thing. Like, maybe they've. I don't know, they've moved past anger and they're just in disgust and sadness now. It's. Maybe there's less fear because they're. They've just resigned themselves to their fate. I don't know what it is, but. But yeah, he. He rated highly at least on, on hatred. And of course, Dick Montfort escaped mentioned there in the top five at least. Which I just goes to show, I, I guess that Rocky's fins, you know, they're out there to have a good time at the ballpark. And maybe they're a little less worked up in general about how bad the. Or maybe you just resent incompetence slightly less than you resent incompetence combined with miserliness. So it might just be that those top five can't compete with the guy who just abandoned a city, moved a franchise and is moving them to a vaporware ballpark at this stage. And then other ones who've just had absolutely terrible teams for years now in some cases, like Paul Dolan and the Guardians. The Guardians are the exception among those top five in that they've actually been in contention. They've been a pretty good team, unlike the A's, the White Sox, the Nationals and the Pirates lately. But obviously still resentment about they could have been a better team if Paul Dolan had spent some more money. The top five most appreciated were John Sherman of the Royals, Tom Ricketts of the Cubs, which sort of surprises me.
- [20:00]
B
Fascinated by that. That's shocking.
- [20:03]
A
Yeah, it is, because it seems like there's a lot of Cubs friend frustration directed toward the Rickettses. Christopher Ilitch of the Tigers, Ken Kendrick of the Diamondbacks, and Stu Sternberg of the Rays. Yeah, interesting group there. Anyway, I don't. I don't know how much stock to put into those results, but it generally seems to map onto. Yeah, these are the owners who are most loathed. It's not. It's directionally correct, but I don't know if it's so precise that I would keep the rankings as gospel.
- [20:36]
B
Well, and it's an interesting collection of emotions, right? Like given. Given your. Given the ability. Because they're. You said that they're just, they're doing text analysis of like, online forums and stuff.
- [20:47]
A
Reddit. Yeah.
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B
Yeah. So given the ability to design a survey where you are asking specific questions and sort of gauging emotional response. I wonder, I wonder how 1. Which they would choose to emphasize because I wonder if that exact mix is what you would go with and if the results would be remotely the same because some of those names are surprising to me.
- [21:15]
A
Yeah. Another starting pitcher observation. I'm always, I'm fascinated by players who seem less famous than they should be. And I often talk about this in terms of position players. And I remember talking about Reggie Smith and Willie Davis and you look at the wars of those guys, 60 plus and you think, why, why aren't they hall of Famers? Or why don't we talk about them more? And I had theories for why that was. And, and often when it comes to position players, it's like, well, they're good in a lot of ways, but they're not great in any one way. Or they're not leading the league in that many categories. They're just kind of all around good. Or maybe they're good at defense and. Or they were good at something that wasn't really appreciated in their day. Maybe they just got on base a lot or something. So something not flashy about them. Or it could have to do with market size or any number of factors. But I always am interested in interrogating why exactly that is. Why don't we hear about this guy more? Why doesn't he have a higher Q rating? And there's a pitcher equivalent to that who came to my mind sort of vaguely when David Lorela did his weekly quiz, his weekly bit of trivia in his Sunday notes. And it's funny, I religiously read his Sunday notes on Sundays and I look at the comments and most of the comments tend to be about the quiz. Just people being like, I thought it was this and no, I got this one, or this one was easier than usual or oh, this was a clever one, or whatever. They go through their thought process or whatever. And I'm not a trivia person. I just, I'm not really that into trivia for whatever reason. I guess just, you know, I'm so focused on, on serious weighty subjects that I just, I don't have the bandwidth.
- [23:07]
B
For trivia which might be past it being called Learned League. You're like, oh, God, it's.
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A
That bothered me. That was, that was a MEG thing.
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B
But, but, but that is a MEG thing. I'm right.
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A
Learn. I don't, I don't see the problem with Learned Link. It's okay. It's. You Know, it's a different. It's. It's same spelling, but. But different, like part of speech that when you say you learn something, it's.
- [23:31]
B
You know, I also have pretentious aspects of my personality.
- [23:35]
A
Okay, so. So I often kind of just skip over. I read his notes and, and there are so many interesting items, and maybe I'll see the trivia question and then I'm, I'm so uninterested in the trivia that I will then skip over the answer and I'll get to the end of the Sunday notes and I'll wait. What was the answer to the trivia? Oh, right. I didn't even. I just glossed over it somehow. Like, my eyes glaze over because I'm just not really riveted by the trivia, which is interesting because I'm, I'm fascinated by plenty of esoteric topics. But sure, trivia. For whatever reason, I'm just, I'm not really.
- [24:12]
B
It's never moved you.
- [24:14]
A
Yeah. So. So this one, though, I did pay some attention to because it was. Three pitchers in Montreal Expos slash Washington Nationals history have won 100 or more games with the two city franchise. Who are they? And there was a hint two of them played exclusively with the franchise, while another had more career wins with a team other than the Expos or Nationals. And I thought about this one for a second and, and I, I got two off the bat. I was thinking, okay, Steven Strasberg is in. It's, you know, played for the Nationals many years, good pitcher. He's got to be one. And then I thought of Dennis Martinez, who is, you know, not super well known, but for whatever reason, I've always just enjoyed the career of Dennis Martinez. He was, he was good. And, and I remember him, he was still pitching when I got interested in baseball late in his career. He pitched forever. He pitched for 23 years. And, you know, he was, he was good. So I, I thought of him. I wasn't sure if he had enough wins with them because he had pitched for other teams, too. But I associate him mostly with the Expos. So I thought, okay, Des Martinez, El presidente. That's probably another reason I remember him. Memorable nickname. And then I thought, okay, I know. I know who the third one is, but I don't know his name because I knew, because I, I knew that there was a great Expos pitcher because I've, I've had this epiphany before or I've gone through this thought process before where it's like, you know, probably the greatest Expos pitcher, but I cannot retain any information about him. And so I've, like, reminded myself multiple times. Ah, yes, there was this guy named X, and he was a really good pitcher for the Expos for years. But then I will forget his name instantly and just forget everything about him. It's just. There's almost somewhat something supernatural about him. It's just like. So I retain the memory that there's someone I always forget. And so I. I knew, oh, the third guy must be that guy who was on the Expos for years, and I just can never remember anything about him. And it was, in fact, that guy, Steve Rogers. Steve Rogers, who had 158 wins for the Expos, and in total, because he was a career Expo, and it was, in fact Steven Strasberg and Dennis Martinez. So I. I kind of thought, oh, I. I got the answer to this one, because I. I named two. And then I knew that the third guy was that other guy whose name I could never remember. So I was like, you know what? That's close enough. That counts. I think I knew who it was. I just, you know, I couldn't remember his name, but I remembered that he's the guy whose name I can never remember.
- [26:53]
B
Yeah.
- [26:53]
A
And so I saw this also someone in the comments, I think multiple people were like, who is Steve Rogers? Like, I've never heard of Steve Rogers. And someone else says, I remember him, but he didn't come to mind. And like, these other guys, I thought of instantly, but Steve Rogers. There's just something inherently anonymous about Steve Rogers, and I'm trying to figure out what it is. And now that I've made a point of talking about him, maybe I can actually retain that information. Prolific Fangraphs commenter, Sad Trombone. They also had this comment on this post about Steve Rogers and said, Steve Rogers might be one of the most forgettable 150 game winners in MLB history. Even now, as I am trying to remember him, I am drawing a blank. That's exactly what happens to me with Steve Rogers. I don't know. He's like, he's just blurry. I expect to go to his Baseball Reference page, and his headshot will just be some blurry out of focus.
- [27:56]
B
It's like, you know, it's the back of his head.
- [27:59]
A
Yeah.
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B
Like, looking out on the field, you can tell a guy is there, but who is he? We don't know.
- [28:04]
A
Yeah, I think he must be. And then there were multiple comments who were saying, like, yeah, I can't remember Rogers either. I just don't know much about him. And other people were saying, I think it depends on when you were born, which probably has a lot to do with it. So I'm sure there are people listening to this who remember Steve Rogers well because, because they were watching baseball when Steve Rogers was in his prime. But he was a really good pitcher for quite a while and I just, I cannot remember anything about him. So he pitched from 1973 to 1985 and in his prime, which was like 73 to 83. So, so that decade, or I guess 11 seasons, but that decade he was one of the top five pitchers in baseball. Like I just did, the Fan graphs were 73 to 83 and the top five pitchers by fan graphs were in that span were Steve Carlton, Burt Bly, Levin, Nolan Ryan, Gaylord Perry and Steve Rogers. So, so four hall of Famers and, and four very well known pitchers. Even now, like people know Steve Carlton, Burt Bly, Leven, Nolan Ryan, Gaylord Prairie. Yeah, Steve Rogers. And then after Steve Rogers, Phil Negro, Tom Seaver, Don Sutton, again, more hall of Famers and notable names. And it's not until you get to the bottom of the top 10 and you get Rick Russell and Jerry Kuzman, Tommy John, you start to get to some non hall of Famers. But he's right smack dab in the middle of just some legendary names. And yet he's Steve Rogers. But he had almost 50 war over that Spanish of 10 years, 11 seasons. And I think the reason, or some of the reasons maybe why I can't remember Steve Rogers and other people can't either, evidently. So a, he was a career Montreal Expo. So that probably has something to do with it. A little less visibility, a franchise that doesn't exist, at least in that same city anymore. Yeah, and another thing I think is that his name was Steve Rogers. Yeah, maybe that was part which I still think with like Reggie Smith, you know, it's just like Reggie Smith. I mean, I guess it's not really less memorable than say Reggie Jackson, but I think Reggie Smith is maybe less memorable because of Reggie Jackson. That was one of my theories. Like Willie Davis overlapping with Willie Mays and Reggie Smith overlapping with Reggie Jackson. And they were just sort of out there shown by those guys. But yeah, Steve Rogers, it's just a very forgettable name. Just a couple common, not very distinctive names. And then the Expos, and he didn't really, I think he pitched in one postseason and it didn't go very well for him. So that probably hurts too. Just like pitching on the National Stage very much. He did have a nickname at least. His baseball reference page has him nicknamed Psy, which I guess suggests that he must have been pretty good. I mean, then again you have Si Sneed, who wasn't really that good. But, but his, his name was actually Psy. His, he's like Si Sneed, but if you're, if you're nicknamed Psy, then you probably were pretty good. He did finish top five in Cy Young voting three times and he was a five time all Star. So he was like recognized in his day and he was runner up for rookie of the Year. So he had some awards, he had some hardware or close calls, at least to hardware. But yeah, I don't know, mostly wasn't leading the league in that many categories regularly, but he was just a really good pitcher. The other factor I think is that that span of seasons that I cited is it for him. Like he then got hurt and, and was more or less done. Like he was, you know, playing out the string in 84, 85, but wasn't adding much value or pitching that much. So he had that peak of about 10 years, but that was it. So unlike Dennis Martinez, he didn't hang around for an additional decade. Like if Steve Rogers had had as long a career as Dennis Martinez, he probably would have been still pitching when we got interested in baseball and maybe we would have been more aware of Steve Rogers. But he had a, a fairly short career. But this is my way of now cementing in my mind and maybe other people's minds, Steve Rogers, he existed. He was real. He was pretty spectacular for a while there. And I don't know, I should, should try to cold call him. He's still around 75 years young and maybe I could call him up and say, why can't I remember you say something, say something memorable so that you'll stick in my mind.
- [32:50]
B
He'd be like, why are you calling me to tell me I have left no impression on you whatsoever? That's weird. I, I was having this conversation about trivia with no less illuminary than, you know, Sarah said at Saber seminar this past weekend where I, I enjoy trivia, like bar trivia. I have a good time doing bar trivia. I have bar trivia. Sports category paralysis. I get so nervous, right, because the assumption is particularly as it pertains to baseball, like, oh, she's gonna know this. Yeah, that's for sure, right? And then I get in my head about it and I'm like, I don't know if I'm Right. And I, you know, I'm worried that I won't be able to recall it fast enough. And so I get like bar trivia yips in that category, but I do much better in other random categories where, you know, if a. And it's been a while since I handed that to you. I. You had a layup there and you totally whiffed.
- [33:57]
A
You gave me a. It's been a while. And you paused.
- [33:59]
B
And I paused. I was like, surely he's gonna. You have. It's been a while. Yips.
- [34:05]
A
I know. I guess so. The pressure's on me now. Yeah.
- [34:07]
B
Anyhow, it has been a good minute since I've played bar trivia. You don't get another one right away like that. You gotta earn it now, you know, you gotta work for it. But I just like that experience of like the heads of the table kind of whipping around at you like, surely you know this. It's like, oh God, if I did it wrong. So anyhow, that's me and trivia.
- [34:29]
A
Yeah, and trivia. It's just, it's a separate thing. You can have expertise in trivia without having expertise in sort of broad baseball knowledge or baseball analysis and vice versa. You can, you can be good at one of those things and not be that great. Not have a great head for trivia because they are really distinct categories of knowledge. And sometimes I've talked about this, that people will brand saber metrics as trivia. Sort of like the, the joke will be, you know, some obscure split like in that Simpsons episode that was sabermetrics inspired. And it'll be like, oh, what did right handed hitters do on the third day of August with the full moon with, you know, when it's raining or whatever. And like that's, that's trivia.
- [35:15]
B
That's right.
- [35:15]
A
Ephemera. That's hyper specific small sample splits. That's in a way kind of not what sabermetricians are often interested in. But they both involve stats a lot of the time. And so people kind of conflate them.
- [35:27]
B
Yeah. They get lumped together. I agree on unfairly, you know.
- [35:33]
A
Yeah, yeah. Well, if you're listening and you remember Steve Rogers or you are Steve Rogers, then please write in, let us know what you remember about him and why you remember him. And I'm sure if you were watching baseball in the 70s and 80s, then you probably do remember Steve Rogers quite well, even if you weren't an Expos fan. But for whatever reason, his name is not really lived on. It's been lost to history A bit.
- [35:57]
B
Can I offer another potential exposure explanation? Right, so. And, and perhaps I'm overstating the case. Right. Maybe this would have been less common as a reference at the time because comic books existed, but we didn't have like the Marvel thing to socialize them. But, but he played for the Expos. So you wouldn't call him Captain America. That would be weird to have. And so maybe it's that there's this like disconnect between the most obvious potential nickname you could assign to him and the place he played where it would just be so strange to call him Captain America. I mean, was he American? Is he American? Is he born in the US he is.
- [36:42]
A
He's from Jefferson City, Missouri.
- [36:44]
B
Jefferson City, Missouri. Okay. Well, I say that like, oh, yeah, my deep and abiding knowledge of Missouri geography, which I will embarrassingly admit is quite poor. Not as poor as my ability to play bar trivia if it pertains to baseball, but poor nonetheless. But maybe that's the problem is that like, if he had played for an American team, people would have just been like, ah, Captain America. And then you'd remember because it would have. It would have a nerd hook for you, you know, but it lacks a nerd hook because he played for the exposure.
- [37:19]
A
Yeah, that is a good point.
- [37:21]
B
Is it a good point?
- [37:22]
A
I think it is. I think it is a good point. I think, yes. It would have been an oversight if we had not noted it.
- [37:28]
B
Right. It is certainly a point. Good. I'll leave to our listeners to decide. But it is a point that one could make.
- [37:36]
A
SEO for him, certainly.
- [37:38]
B
Right.
- [37:38]
A
Because you're not going to get as many Steve Rogers former pitcher results as you are.
- [37:42]
B
Right. This is like our question about James Wood versus James Woods. You know, how do you.
- [37:49]
A
Yeah.
- [37:49]
B
What do you have to.
- [37:50]
A
The autocorrect. Did you mean? I did not mean.
- [37:53]
B
Yeah, I did not. I did not mean. I really didn't mean. Yeah.
- [37:58]
A
Okay. So here's something that caused a bit of controversy in the Twins sphere the other day and I thought was kind of interesting. There was a quote by Royce Lewis about how he doesn't want to make mid season mechanical changes because he is worried that it will jeopardize his stats and thus his earnings. So Royce Lewis has not had a good year and he had a good game the other day. He hit his latest grand slam, but the grand slams have been fewer and farther between for Royce Lewis of late. And he wasn't great at the end of last season either, which maybe was fatigue or Maybe was something else, but he's been a significantly below average hitter this year and he's been beaten by fastballs. And so it seems like some sort of change is in order. But I'm quoting here from an athletic piece by Dan Hayes. Lewis says he has been hesitant to make swing adjustments arbitration eligible for a second time. Lewis doesn't want to do anything drastic that could hurt his counting stats before the season ends. Still, before Friday's game, Lewis worked with his coaches to slow down his quick hands. He's hoping adding length back to his swing will prevent him from missing hittable pitches. So he's tinkering but not doing a wholesale overhaul. And then the quote from Lewis is it's also hard to make a full in season adjustment because you can try that. And those 30 games are at bats of trial. Go toward your stats.
- [39:26]
B
Yeah.
- [39:27]
A
Do you really want to sacrifice that? And if it doesn't work, then you go back to what you were doing before. It's always hard. I know Michael Harris II just did a significant change. Obviously he's been on fire. Being under contract probably helps because he knows what he's making that year and the year after. For someone like me, I'm fighting to take care of myself and my family. I don't want to put any of those stats in jeopardy. I'm trying to do what's best as fast as possible, but feeling like I've been on an island, it's kind of tough. So obviously some people were going to criticize Royce Lewis for sure. Stating that so plainly. And it's. It's not a team first attitude, clearly. I mean, it's by definition, basically he's saying that he's, he's putting his stats and his earnings first and he's just being upfront about that in a way that I appreciated. Just him just not dancing around it really, because I'm sure he's not the only person to feel that way. But not everyone would say it that way because they would be worried about how that would land with people. And you know, he's in his, like he hasn't gotten his payday yet. Now obviously like major league minimum is what many people, most people would consider a payday. But you know, he was, he was a 1:1 pick, right. He was a first overall pick back in 2017. So I don't know offhand what his bonus was, but I'm assuming it was significant. And then, you know, you add the pre arbitration earnings, so. So he's thinking long term now when it comes to his stats and his salary. And there's something, I think, admirable about how candid he was there, but what do you think of just having that attitude of. Of saying, I gotta look out for number one here?
- [41:18]
B
He had a $6.7 million signing bonus in 2017.
- [41:23]
A
He's probably doing okay, or he should be if he invested wisely.
- [41:27]
B
Yeah, I. So it's interesting because I. I find it interesting that he. Before we get into, like, the. The politicking part of it, I do find it interesting that he. He made a decision in the quote, and who knows how conscious this was or how much he had really thought about it, but to sort of put these things as sitting in tension with one another, I don't know that that's even really true. Right. So, like, I think my broader takeaway from this is that, like, yeah, it's maybe like a little impolitic, but I do appreciate it being honest. And I understand, particularly for a guy like Lewis who has lost so much time to injury and who I think is. You can't separate his profile from the injury concern. Right. And I imagine that regardless of the quality of his production, even if you were having a fantastic season, you know, by the time his free agency rolls around, like, the injury piece of. It's going to be a major consideration for whichever team signs him. Right. And he's still, you know, he's still a good bit away. He's three seasons from. From being able to hit the market, which gives him time to bounce back from this sort of down year, but is going to mean that he is. So he's 26 now. He turns 26 in June, so he'll be almost 30 by the time he hits the market. Right. And so it's like, I can understand a guy in his position saying, I need to maximize my earnings as much as I possibly can. I don't think that the twins did anything like, untoward with him from a service perspective. I don't remember that being part of his narrative. But, like, the fact of the matter is the guy's just been constantly hurt and, like, big kind of catastrophic injuries. Right. I understand the sort of more general mentality, which is like, I gotta take care of myself and I have to take care of my family. And I'm reticent to make in season changes that affect my. My stat line because I don't want to jeopardize my earnings. It is a little odd, though, right? Because it's like, Royce, you have an 81 WRC plus, like, you're hitting.223, right? Like, you know, for a guy whose calling card has been his power, his barrel rate is down relative to the last two years. And you know, you can imagine him, although his heart hit rate's too inviting. So it's like you can imagine that like adjustments might be in order and why not do them now? Like, you guys, sorry, Twins fans aren't going anywhere this year, right? Like, this is, this is a reasonable time to adjust, but if you think it's going to make things even worse, then, then maybe you want to wait until you have the, the sort of space of the off season to make those changes and fail further before you hopefully like land on something that helps you course correct from what's happened this year. So, yeah, I find it a little odd just in terms of the sentiment, right. Because like, what do you have to do? Do you really think it's going to get worse than like hitting 20% worse than league average? I don't know. But if you do, then maybe you, you just wait until you can get to, you know, the off season and you know, go work at a facility or whatever it is. The other part of it is like you doing well benefits you and the team. And so there is like a, a more maybe polished version of this answer that doesn't seem like you view what you're doing as working at cross purposes with the Twins interests. I don't know. It's mostly it's just a little bit of a head scratcher because I, I, my sense of, of Lewis from like his prospect days was that like he was so well regarded in the scouting community, you know, like people were throwing around like Jeter makeup comps with, with Royce Lewis when he was a prospect. And you know, there's like, I'm not saying he's like a bad makeup guy now or anything, but part of, part of that I think comp. Came from this perception of polish, right. Of being able to like have a Captain esque presentation and you know, maybe they just caught him on a bad day or maybe he was just thinking out loud or I don't, you know, I haven't heard him delivering the quote, so I don't know what the tone of the comment was, but it is a little, it's just a little surprising to me given sort of his reputation more generally. And I want to be clear. I'm not saying Russell's a bad guy and I don't think that like that's not what I'm working toward here, but it is Just a little surprising to me because it is a little impolitic. Right. Like, there's a smoother version of this answer that I think communicates the same kind of thing, but makes it sound like you're, you know, working within the interests of the Twins or like maybe you just feel like I. You could put it in terms of like, I've struggled within season adjustment. I don't want to further exacerbate what's wrong right now or whatever. Like, you know, there, there are other ways to.
- [46:54]
A
It's not going to help the team if I'm even worse because I'm trying to rebuild myself midstream. And certainly it's true that if you are going to make serious changes, it's better to do that in spring training or over the off season so you have time and you can work all of that out, not in major league games. So there's some sense to what he's saying here, certainly. And I'm sure that this is a fairly common thought process for other players at that stage of their careers. They just probably wouldn't say it. And so I do appreciate that he vocalized that just to show that, yeah, players are out for themselves to a certain extent. Why wouldn't they be? I would be. They should be. They should be thinking about themselves now, often, as you're suggesting there, what works for them would also work for the team. It should be mutually beneficial in theory. And so, yes, it's, I guess, a little odd that he's focusing on the downside potential as opposed to the upside, which is that, hey, maybe I'll hit better and then I'll make more money. So, yeah, so, you know, I guess in a way he's betting on himself to just sort of fix things or, or not betting on himself to make those changes. I don't know whether that speaks to any lack of confidence in the Twins being able to help him make those changes in season. The other thing is that you could say, well, having a team first attitude is sort of a two way street. And Twins as a franchise, yeah, like they have not invested in the roster, so why should he take a team first mentality if, if their owners aren't doing that, if they've kind of left this roster out to dry now for multiple deadlines and winters in a row, then you know, they're not in a playoff race right now. So they're. They're really playing out the string. And so in that context, yeah, players are kind of looking out for number one because what's the point of being a team first player if your team isn't going anywhere. And a big part of the reason why it's not going anywhere is because your owners haven't invested in the team. And also you just traded a huge chunk of the team. So would he think this or would he say this if the Twins had been on a different trajectory or were they in a different spot in the pennant race? Well, no, maybe not. Maybe that changes things. I don't know that he said that or that that explicitly had some bearing on his attitude here, but it's not hard to imagine that it might have.
- [49:19]
B
Well, and, and like, I don't want anyone to come away from this conversation thinking like, wow, it's quite, it's wild how, you know, Ben and Meg don't think that Royce Lewis is a team player, that he hates his team and he thinks they're stinky garbage. That's not. But I do think that if you're a player on a club that has just gone through a tear down and is looking at an uncertain future in terms of like the, the level of investment and commitment that that ownership is going to bring to bear, like it does it at the very least, like lays bare the, the transactional nature of it, right? Like you are investing in the team. You, that is often a terrific investment for you as a player. It can be incredibly lucrative. You get to have the joy of going to the post season. You're giving back to your teammates. You have camaraderie like it's not a bad value proposition by any means, but like it is one that you, you only have so much control over how much investment there can be. You can really only bring your own and you can, you know, if you're a sufficiently important player, perhaps you try to bring the, the power of persuasion or pressure to that ownership group. But like you're kind of limited. You're, you're depending on all of your teammates doing their best and you're dependent on the organization both from a, you know, on field and front office personnel and ownership to, to do its part. And I think that like the guys that they have, have dealt with difficult circumstance and are doing as well as they can. I think that, that you know, the people who work for the organization in a non ownership capacity are working very hard and ownership hasn't held up their end. And I can understand there being frustration with that and sort of a, you know, not that you have to view it cynically but that you view it honestly, that there's like an eyes Wide open component to it. You know, I think that these guys probably take seriously a commitment to, like, playing for each other and having camaraderie and wanting to bring winning baseball to the Twin Cities, but also have an understanding that, like, you have to protect your own interest because it's not like ownership is going to swoop in necessarily with like a super lucrative extension offer or, you know, free agent offers to other players or what have you. So. Yeah, that's. That's what we mean. All of that. Not stinky garbage. We are not implying stinky garbage. We are simply saying that, like, they haven't done a great job and now they won't even sell the damn team. I mean, get out of here. Get out of here.
- [51:58]
A
Yes. If there was any confusion about our takes being bad, actually, the takes were good. So it was just a mishap. Tension. Yeah, right.
- [52:08]
B
I just don't want anyone to come away with the wrong idea. We had a great take. And any, like, refusal to see that sounds like a skill issue. Are you annoyed that we're not on any of these great podcast lists? I'm not annoyed, but I do feel a little. I feel a little ruffled. But there aren't very many sports.
- [52:27]
A
Very little sports podcast representation.
- [52:30]
B
I'm mad on behalf of the genre. This isn't about me. That would be selfish. But there's so many. There are so many good sports shows out there.
- [52:41]
A
Sports podcast of the show, and we weren't on there.
- [52:44]
B
That I would get smart about. Yeah, I think I would be annoyed by that. I can't decide if that's reasonable, but it is how I would feel. Yeah.
- [52:52]
A
Yeah. Certainly the top 100 most sports podcasts of the.
- [52:56]
B
Right.
- [52:56]
A
That's.
- [52:57]
B
I mean, I think arguably a top 100 most podcasts, you know, possible. Yeah, like, we're talking about counting stats. We're putting up numbers here. You know, I'd like to think the innings are better quality than what Patrick Corbin brings to bear on a regular basis, but they were. We're. We're matching volume. We got that.
- [53:18]
A
That'll be reflected in our. Our arbitration payouts or our Patreon payouts, which is our equivalent of that. Well, Royce Lewis, even though he is not hitting as well, is actually striking out less. And the league as a whole is also. We. We talked about this not that long ago. Earlier this season noted that the rise in strikeout rate has been arrested, perhaps even reversed to some extent. I think it's even lower now than it was when we talked about that. It's 22% on the dot, league wide, that's 22% of all plate appearances have ended in strikeouts. And that is down from 22.6 last year. 22.7 the year before that, 22.4 the year before that. It's the lowest it's been since 2017. So you know that's significant and it's lower. Even if you account for the universal DH and just look at position players only the strikeout rate, which was just seemingly inexorably rising for more than a decade, it has halted that rise. And we talked a bit about why and how, and I don't know that we had a firm answer on why that's happened exactly. I have a theory, a hypothesis here, or at least something that I think might be part of the anti strikeout soup here. So I'm just going to throw it out and you can tell me whether you think this is at all believable. So there's a paradox or apparent paradox about strikeouts, which is that it's very good to have a high strikeout rate as a pitcher, but it's not that bad to have a high strikeout rate as a hitter. There just seems to be an imbalance there. It seems like it should be equivalent. How could strikeouts be so good for pitchers and not so bad for hitters? And I guess there are multiple ways that one could explain that. I know Bauman wrote about that earlier this year, but the way I think about it is that it more or less is equivalent on a single plate appearance basis, I think. And so this apparent paradox, it's more on the player level or on the season level because like in a single plate appearance, it's just about as bad for a hitter to strike out as it is good for a pitcher to get that strikeout. I think just, you know, getting a strikeout, making, making an out, getting it out, it's, it's kind of similar. And of course, like one reason strikeouts aren't so bad for batters as well, it's better than a double play. And, but that goes for pitchers too. Like getting a strikeout, a double play would have been better. So I think on a single plate appearance level, maybe it's not that different, but I think it's, it's different on a player level because striking out is often associated with other things that are good for hitters. So if you're a high strikeout hitter, it might be because you swing hard and you're swinging for the fences and when you do make contact, you hit home runs. So okay, you can live with the lower contact because you're poking the ball over the fence sometimes. Or it could be correlated with patience. You're taking a lot of pitches, and sometimes you strike out on those pitches, but sometimes you take a walk. And so you look at those things historically, and they do tend to have a positive correlation, like strikeout rate correlated with power and with walk rate and everything. And so you put all those things together, and it's not necessarily that the high strikeout rate is good, but it's that it's associated with other things that are pretty good. So you can live with it and make up for it, compensate for it in other ways. But there is sort of a second paradox about strikeout rates, I think, to invoke another Apple TV series I'm watching, because I must be watching multiple Apple TV series at all times. There's not just one foundation, there's a second foundation. And so in foundation, there are two foundations. There's one secret hidden foundation, and there's sort of one secret hidden strikeout rate paradox, which is that.
- [57:18]
B
Wait, wait, so there's a show. There's a show called Foundation. Foundation. Is it about a literal. It's about a. A building foundation.
- [57:27]
A
It's like, about a building an organization called the Foundation. Yeah, it's okay. It's a far future sci fi series about trying to hasten the end of an empire or. Or abbreviate the interregnum between empires. Oh, he is. He is extremely. In this. He is all parts of Lee Pacer in this series.
- [57:51]
B
Do we get. Do we get naked Lee Pace? Do we get a little.
- [57:54]
A
Not like full frontal, but sidle. At least I would say. Yeah.
- [57:59]
B
So we're gonna talk more about that on the bonus pun.
- [58:02]
A
If you're interested in looking at Lee Pace, which. Who isn't? Then you should check out.
- [58:06]
B
He's very handsome.
- [58:08]
A
Oh, yes.
- [58:09]
B
Oh, I'm so happy to see Jared Harris continuing to work. I just.
- [58:12]
A
Of course, yeah. Jared Harris in a sci fi series. Just Match Made in Heaven.
- [58:17]
B
Okay, so it's about a shadowy organization in the future.
- [58:22]
A
Yeah.
- [58:23]
B
Okay.
- [58:23]
A
I like our new Ben Explains Apple TV series to Meg.
- [58:27]
B
I mean, popular segment. I'm sure some of these are. Oh, I recognize some of the other people in this show. Okay.
- [58:35]
A
Okay. Yeah, it's good. It's in its third season now anyway, so. So the. The secret second strikeout paradox is that even though it's not that bad to be a high strikeout hitter in the majors, generally, it is actually generally bad to be A high strikeout hitter in the minors?
- [58:57]
B
Yes.
- [58:57]
A
Like it's, it's not good for a prospect to be a super high strikeout.
- [59:01]
B
Hitter, you know, tends to not be.
- [59:03]
A
Yeah. And so I think that is because it tends to suggest like if you can make contact in the minors, it suggests that you have good bat control, you're not overmatched and then maybe that bat control could translate into power down the road. Whereas if you're just missing in the lower levels, then you're just going to miss even more when you get to the upper levels. It's like Spencer Jones, the Yankees prospect that we've been talking about, but he's not the tippy toppiest of prospects even though he has a ton of power and everything because he strikes out so.
- [59:36]
B
Much and in fact he's 20ft tall.
- [59:38]
A
Yeah. And he's, he's struck out what like 31% of the time in AAA, even something like that this season. And I think he has not continued the tear that he was on the last time we talked about him at aaa. So it's, it's a significant downside for that for a prospect for a young player in the minors. And so I wonder if that could be part of why we are seeing a reduction in strikeout rate at the major league level. That teams are now more cognizant of the fact that minor league strikeout rate is actually a pretty good predictor of major league performance and thus they're doing a better job of drafting and developing and promoting based on that expectation. And thus there is a priority on less strikeout prone, more strikeout averse prospects. And maybe that is starting to show itself in the majors because you know, there's a preferred prospect profile essentially. So you buy that maybe that the, the analytically oriented teams, even if they're not anti strikeout in the majors, they just are prioritizing players who tend to avoid strikeouts, at least extreme strikeout rates in the minors.
- [60:56]
B
I would buy that, I buy that as a reason to, to explain it where it's like you call the, the guys who have a non livable number that, that makes some amount of sense to me. Yeah, I, I could buy that as a potential explanation.
- [61:12]
A
Yeah. Because I, I sometimes cite the down on the farm substack and, and they have the oyster analytics folks writing for them sometimes and, and doing various studies and research on what's predictive and what's not about prospects. And so one of their big takeaways is they say a great ability to avoid strikeouts is worth Taking note of even if the other stuff isn't there yet. They say caring about avoiding strikeouts is certainly not in vogue in professional baseball these days. We're not Luddites trying to suggest that the game needs to go back to the dead ball era or anything, but. But we have found that in prospect land, being able to get that on ball remains a really important indicator of future success for a lot of guys. It's also the first trait that solidifies making it a way to identify talent earlier. Yeah, and even way down in rookie ball you can tend like strikeout avoidance tends to be pretty sticky and just history shows that even for obscure prospects, like it's a really positive indicator. And, and the guys who excel are disproportionately the ones who avoid strikeouts. And so they conclude the ability to avoid strikeouts shows an understanding of the zone that has the potential to play up with a solid hit tool, good launch angles or boosted strength, etc. So I think maybe that's more of the prevailing mindset among teams and front offices these days and thus they are targeting that type of hitter. And perhaps we will back our way into higher contact hitters in the majors because higher contact hitters in the minors are valued more highly. So yeah, I, on the margins, maybe that's suppressing the strikeout rate a little bit. Now if that were the entire reason, then I guess you would see that the strikeout rate decline in the majors was all concentrated in the young guys who were just coming up and the old guys would be striking out as much as ever. And Rob Means wrote about that recently and I think he showed that it's not, not just the young guys coming into the league who are dragging this strikeout rate down. But yeah, in my mind this is, this is a factor possibly and maybe it's a reason for hope for, for people who do want to go back to balls being put in play more often. Is that this is, it's actually, it's like a rare example, I guess, of saber metrics of analytics actually going against the trend toward three true outcomes and strikeouts and everything. Because yeah, on the pitching side, everyone loves high strikeout pitchers and the stuff that goes along with that, but maybe this is a slight corrective to that. So, you know, going against the grain, going against the stereotype of the stat heads who are just like, yeah, strikeouts, bring them on. We love them. Not necessarily when it comes to, to the prospects.
- [63:54]
B
Yeah, I, I think you're right to, to be skeptical that it, it would account for the entirety of what we've seen, but it being an ingredient in the soup. Yeah, that seems, that seems feasible to me.
- [64:06]
A
Okay. Yeah, that's all I want. And maybe it presages a wave of higher contact hitters coming down the pike at some point perhaps as this understanding of prospect value is enhanced. So, you know, we'll see. It's a reason for hope, I guess. Although now Jonah Tong is coming up for the Mets and man, I know those strikeout rates are just ridiculous. Like.
- [64:35]
B
Yeah, they are impressive.
- [64:37]
A
He's making his debut for the Mets this Friday, I believe, and he's. He's a highly rated prospect, but not like the highest rated, I guess, because he's not a big fellow. Right. But. But the minor league stats this year are just ridiculous. Like he's been the best pitcher in the minors, statistically speaking. And the strikeout rates are just eye popping. Like I'm sort of, sort of excited to see because he has, he has a over 40% strikeout rate in the minor as a starter.
- [65:09]
B
Yeah, that's.
- [65:10]
A
I mean that's never been done in the big leagues. That's. That would top Garrett Cole's 2019 when he was at 39.9%. Like, we've never seen a starter throw 100 innings with a 40% strikeout rate. And he's I think at 40.5% this year. That is wild. Or. Or not really that wild. That's another thing in his favor. But yeah, he's thrown in the minors across Double A and Triple A this year, mostly in Double A, he has thrown 113⅔ innings with 179 strikeouts.
- [65:45]
B
Oh my God.
- [65:46]
A
Upwards of a 14K per nine.
- [65:49]
B
Yeah.
- [65:50]
A
Exclusively as a starter. He only worth, like, you don't see starters with that sort of strikeout rate that is.
- [65:55]
B
Boy, it's sure something. Yeah.
- [65:57]
A
Sizzling.
- [65:58]
B
It's fun. He's funky. He's quite funky. So it'll be a cool thing to watch.
- [66:03]
A
Yeah, I like when the strikeouts come from the funk as well. Not just from just blowing everyone away, but also some sort of deception or weirdness or something unexpected that. Yeah. And this I'm looking. Yeah, this has never been done. I'm even looking on the Fangraph's minor league leaderboards, which go back to 2006. And if I set a minimum of a hundred innings pitched, he's at 40.8% strikeout rate this year. And no one, it looks like in the minors has even been above 36.3%, which was Tyler Glasnow back in 2013. No one else has done it with that number of innings. So maybe the best strikeout rate starting pitching prospect we've ever seen. I don't know. So this is, you know, I guess he might single handedly just do away with this progress that I am highlighting here. But we will see. We'll see whether that translates to the big leagues. How, how big is Jonah Tong?
- [67:05]
B
He's like six one, I think.
- [67:06]
A
Yeah, six one, one eighty. Yeah.
- [67:08]
B
Yeah.
- [67:08]
A
He's not huge for a power pitcher type.
- [67:10]
B
And no, and I, I think that like Eric has noted that he was like kind of wispy but has improved. Like the physicality has taken a step forward this year. So it, it gave him greater confidence in his ability to like withstand a starter's load basically. Yeah.
- [67:28]
A
He's also, he's from Ontario, I believe, and he is nicknamed the Canadian Cannon, which I love.
- [67:34]
B
Canadian Cannon.
- [67:37]
A
That's the good stuff.
- [67:38]
B
The Canadian canon, I do declare.
- [67:42]
A
Yeah, I've been to him already. Already more memorable than Steve Rogers who was not Canadian, even though he spent his whole career pitching for a Canadian team. Yeah, the other thing that sort of strikeouts adjacent and this is something that we've also talked about in the past, but I think not this season. So there's this prevailing sabermetric mindset that hitters swing too much. And you know, Eno wrote a big thing about this for the athletic, I guess it was probably a couple years ago, a few years ago maybe. And Tom Tango has harped on this and, and other people who are, you know, at the forefront of baseball analytics in the public sphere, they have made this point that seemingly it is better usually for hitters not to swing.
- [68:29]
B
Yeah.
- [68:30]
A
And you can see this at Baseball Savant if you look at the statcast leaderboard. So you go to the batting run value leaderboard and if you look at the swing slash take leaderboards, I guess, and you just see like on swings, what sort of value has there been? And on what on takes, what sort of value has there been? So if you just look at swings, there are 14 hitters in baseball who have provided positive value on swings. 14. And this is of hundreds of qualifiers for this leaderboard. And you know, it's Aaron Judge and Nick Kurtz and Shohei Ohtani, the guys who just are having the best offensive seasons. And Juan Soto is there, of course, you know, it's mostly just some of the best series in baseball. But only 14 of the 300 on this leaderboard have positive values on swings. And this is, this is not like relative to the average batter, because that wouldn't make sense. This is just like, is it better for hitters or is it better for pitchers, basically, in terms of run value? And only 14 hitters have had positive run value when they have swung. So usually when hitters are swinging, it's good news for pitchers. Whereas if you look at the leaderboard for takes, you have the same 300 hitters, every single one of them has positive value overall on their takes. So, so when a hitter takes, in general, it's good for the hitter. When a hitter swings, in general, it's bad for hitters. And this seems counterintuitive because, like, obviously a lot of good things happen when hitters swing too. You know, they need to swing sometimes or it would be difficult at least to put up a number of runs. But they also swing and miss a lot, and they also swing and make outs a lot. And so on the whole, swinging tends to backfire, and savant breaks this down by the region of the strike zone and everything. So obviously if you're, if you're swinging at pitches in the waist zone, which is way outside the zone, or even the chase zone, then that's particularly bad for you. But even in the heart, even in the heart of the zone, which you would think would be the pitches that you would want to swing at, that often also is not that great for hitters. So Tenko put it like this at at his blog. At some point, batters are going to set aside their ego and do what the genius batter, who is Juan Soto has figured out. Treat every pitch as if it's a 3:1 pitch. I know it's hard to do, but that's what batters should do. And once they do that and walks skyrocket temporarily, pitchers will then adapt and throw hittable pitches. So then batters just need to treat each pitch as a 2:1 pitch. You see, pitchers aren't that good at locating. The batters really have the upper hand if they can learn to take a pitch. And as Tango acknowledges, easier said than done. You know, just don't swing at that pitch that you're not going to hit that well. Well, you know, pitchers are, are good at making it look like a hittable pitch, and then it's not. So he's also breaking it down by, like, when it's a certain distance from the plate and, you know, at that decision point, what does it look like and everything. But, but the takeaway, I guess, still stands, which is that hitters, seemingly based on the numbers, swing too much. And if they all collectively decided to swing less, then that would be good, that would benefit offenses. And then, you know, I don't think it would benefit spectators necessarily because there'd just be even less action, there'd just be more walks and you know, it might just be kind of boring. But if your goal is to score runs, it seems like it would further that goal to swing less and to be more selective. And yet it doesn't seem that that has happened on a league wide level, which I'm really intrigued by because so many insights that the analytics people have had have quickly made inroads in the game and maybe become the dominant strategy. Or, you know, you can just see it in the numbers like over the past decade, as all of this thinking has infiltrated front offices and come to dominate front offices. Just everything that's like the bloggers were advocating for, you know, 15 years ago. It's, it's mostly been embraced and it's happened and it seems like old news, but not this particular thing that a lot of writers have, have been belaboring this point. And yet I look at the plate discipline stats and we have pitch FX, pitch tracking back to 2008 and comparing 2008 to 2025, there's no sign that this is happening. Just the swing rate on all pitches is higher this year than it was in 2008. And it's not just more swings on pitches in the zone though, it is that even the chase rate is higher this season than it was in 2008. Yeah, you know, there's different vendors and different tracking systems and could be some slight inconsistencies here. But, but overall there's no long term trend toward greater selectivity, greater patience, greater passivity, whatever you want to call it. So I'm really fascinated by this because if you read some of these studies and look at the numbers, it would suggest that there's like a lot of value to be gained here if you could somehow drill into your hitters, hey, don't swing so much. And yet it doesn't seem as if any teams have done that. Really.
- [73:57]
B
Yeah.
- [73:58]
A
And I don't know, don't know why that is. I don't know why if that the message is not getting to them or they're not receptive to the message, or pitchers are so good that they can't help themselves. I don't know.
- [74:09]
B
I don't know either. I am skeptical of any advice to professional athletes. It's like, just do this. And it's like, all right, well, okay, right. Get right on that. And I know that Tango is acknowledging the difficulty of the thing, so it's not as if he is indifferent to that notion. But. Yeah, I. I mean, yeah. Like. Yes. But also.
- [74:30]
A
Yeah. Could it be. Yeah, maybe it's just gotten harder and harder to lay off because the pitchers are all wizards.
- [74:38]
B
They're so good.
- [74:39]
A
Yeah.
- [74:39]
B
And they're so tricky, you know, and they try to be tricky. They're trying to trick you. You.
- [74:44]
A
Yeah, right. They're good at their jobs, too. So, you know, hitters are good. Pitchers are also good. Maybe have had the upper hand in some respects.
- [74:51]
B
Right.
- [74:52]
A
But. But hitters have changed their ways demonstrably in. In other respects, like, you know, shifting the ball or. Or pulling the ball in the air. Like, you can see changes there and yet no changes whatsoever, seemingly here. So now maybe it's just that this has not fully pervaded the front offices yet, or it hasn't made the leap to the field yet. Or maybe it's just too difficult to convince hitters not to do the thing that they really want to do because, like, they want to hit the ball.
- [75:26]
B
They want to hit the ball.
- [75:28]
A
Yeah. Like, I, Sam and I considered this, I think, when we were going to the Sonoma Stoppers, because we thought at that level, well, pitchers can't find the strike zone. So if, If a hitter gets ahead in the count, what if we just put the take sign on? Like, what. You know, they're probably going to walk a lot of the time because pitchers just won't throw three strikes before they throw two or three balls or whatever it is. But we were hesitant to do that because, like, hitters are going to hate that. You know, you come in and your big message is like, don't swing. Because, right, A, you look silly if there's a pitch down the middle and you don't swing at it. That's kind of embarrassing. And then B, like, the whole reason you got into hitting and playing baseball to begin with probably, is that you like to swing. I mean, it's fun to swing and to make contact and hit the ball, and you want to have the home run trot, and you just. You don't get the same applause and everything for drawing a walk. And we talked about that, too, historically, how hitters didn't even get credit for a walk. It was seen as more of a mistake by the pitcher than the skill of the hitter. And even if that's changed, you're still less celebrated for walking, unless you're maybe Juan Soto, and you're just so known for that. But even Juan Soto hits lots of homers, so I don't know that you could actually convince hitters you'd just get like, run out of the room if you stand up in your big messages. Well, we've crunched the numbers and we've concluded that you should not swing. Just stand there, just carry your bat up to the plate and then just either walk to first base or walk back to the dugout when you strike out. And it's not quite that extreme. You should swing sometimes, but.
- [77:09]
B
Yeah, but.
- [77:10]
A
And then maybe it's also hard to develop that mindset of selective aggression as, as teams call it. But like, if you're being really selective, then is it hard? I guess if you just say, okay, I'm, I'm sitting fastball down the middle, basically, and anything else, I'm never swinging, then maybe it's hard to even strike that balance because you're so in a mindset of like, the bat's on my shoulder that you, you can't even get it off your shoulder when the fat pitch comes along.
- [77:40]
B
Yeah, I think that, like, we underrate how difficult that sort of switching tracks can be for guys. Right. Like it, you know, we call it an approach for a reason. Right. There tends to be some consistency in it. And I know that there's variability and guys are trying to adapt to the pitch that they see. They're trying to be multiple and have A swings and B swings and. But also like, they have an approach and so trying to tell them might be difficult.
- [78:06]
A
It also seems like it would be a skill to be more selective, but it seems like something anyone could do. Like. Right, because I could go up there and not swing. I could do that about as well as anyone. The problem is that no pitchers would be afraid of me if I didn't swing or if I did swing for that matter. And so thus they would just like throw meatballs over and over. And you know, I probably couldn't reliably hit a major league meatball even. So there would be no fear factor. But it would appear as if you were not doing anything different from some schlub who was not good at baseball. Because the way that you demonstrate your skill most visibly is by actually putting the bat on the ball as opposed to not swinging the bat. But it, it's just one of those, it's one of the few areas left, it seems like where there's like, arguably it's not low hanging fruit, but it's. Right, it's a juicy fruit. It might be on a higher branch but it's there. And there aren't that many areas you can point to other than, like, solving injuries or something like that, which, you know, that's. That's on the highest branch of the tree, probably. But, like, this is an area where so many studies nowadays, it's like, yeah, you could probably eke out an extra run or two here maybe, you know, and it's just not that compelling. But this is one area where you look at the numbers and you think, man, there's actually potentially a lot of value being left here if this makes sense and if you could actually convince players to do it. So there's an incentive there to try to drill that into hitters. And, you know, we've heard about the brewers, for instance, just really trying to get their guys to be selective and not chase. So maybe that's part of this, though it hasn't really been described, I guess, so much as just, like, don't swing at all. Just, you know, swing smart, really. But, yeah, there's something here. So this is something I will continue to track for any evidence, any sign that this is starting to resonate or that we're going to get in a generation of hitters who just stand there, and won't that be fun? And then there will be a big backlash to the numbers nerds who broke baseball and ruined baseball again. Right, because they just told everyone to watch.
- [80:13]
B
Yeah, right.
- [80:15]
A
I can't argue that this would be good for. For entertainment value at all, but, yeah, nonetheless. Okay. This is something I think you. You feel somewhat strongly about, too, which is that minor league attendance is down. Is down significantly. And not just because there are fewer teams, though that's a big part of it, but because there are fewer fans going to the teams that remain in existence. So, JJ Cooper just wrote about this for Baseball America headline. Minor League Baseball projected to draw under 30 million fans for the first time in decades. So as recently as 2019, pre pandemic and pre contraction of the majors, yeah, Minor league baseball was drawing more than 40 million fans per year. So 2019, 41 and a half million fans attended games, and now we're on pace for fewer than 30 million. So that's a huge drop. Now, part of that, obviously, is that there are fewer teams, which is lamentable in its own right, but that will account for a big part of it. But it's not just that. There's also an attendance dip of about 275 fans per game, just across the board. All teams, all levels. And. And it's down even relative to recent seasons. And I could even think because like some of the teams that were contracted were probably not the top attendance teams. And so you would think that that might have increased the average per game attendance, if anything. But you know, even down to recent seasons compared to last season, compared to recent post pandemic and post 2021 and post contraction, like the trend is down. So, yeah, there are many fewer people attending minor league baseball games per season, which was inevitable once they lopped off a lot of the teams. But also it's just less of a draw per team. And if anything, you'd think that the scarcity might increase the attendance because if there are fewer teams, then you'd think that the per game attendance of the remaining teams might be higher. I mean, yeah, in a lot of cases. I mean, you did that research with, with other Ben about just how many people would not have minor league baseball within close distance of that. So I don't know. I guess in a lot of cases, when a minor league town lost a team, it wasn't like the people there were gonna just go to another game instead.
- [82:51]
B
Right.
- [82:51]
A
Or another times. Yeah. Another affiliate at least. Right. Yeah. So it's not like, oh, I'll just go to the next town over. There might not be a team in the next town over. So maybe it's not the case that you reduce the supply, you really increase the demand on a per team basis because instead people are just staying home. But it's a double whammy. It's fewer teams and evidently it's less hot ticket for the remaining teams, which I would not have guessed and I'm somewhat dismayed by. So I don't know, what do you think that there's like some overarching reason to this because major league attendance is not down even though you have two teams playing in minor league parks this year.
- [83:35]
B
Right.
- [83:36]
A
So that has actually been up in recent years. So there's like, there's an appetite for baseball.
- [83:41]
B
But yeah.
- [83:43]
A
Why would minor league attendance be faltering on a rate basis as well as the counting stats?
- [83:50]
B
There might be a sort of a prevailing exhaustion with the approach that the league has taken to minor league baseball, where it's like, if you, if you guys aren't taking this as seriously as you used to, why should we? Yeah, I wonder too, if I haven't done this as a study. So I could be totally wrong here. Right. But minor league teams tend to be concentrated in smaller cities, smaller communities. I wonder if there is perhaps, to the extent that you have communities dealing with like rising prices more generally that there are just fewer people to absorb. Like if you're having to prep. We see some of this in our Patreon, right. Where folks are like, I'm having to cut back on costs because things are more expensive. And I have to prioritize, you know, necessity over discretionary spending. And if one of the things that you count as sort of discretionary spending is a night out at the ballpark, even though attendant attending a minor league game is, is obviously much less expensive on average than going to a big league game, especially if you're taking like a family. Right. That you just don't have as many people to necessarily absorb the empty seats. Right. Whereas like in a big city you just have a lot more people. And so maybe you're a little less, you know, subject to the, the vagaries of people having to balance a budget and coming away from that exercise being like, I guess we're not going to, you know, a game or as many games or what have you. So I, I wonder if it's that. Although I don't want to overstate the, the case there, I don't know for sure that that's true. And I imagine it, it varies because some, some minor league teams are in sizable cities of their own. Right. Some of them are approximate to the big league club. You know, I wonder, like, I guess it was sort of depend on the, the particular town, but like, do you have a lack of enthusiasm that is particularly felt, you know, in teams that are sort of on a rebuilding mission? Maybe you don't want to support the minor league clubs of the A's or the Pirates or whatever. But you know, also, and like some of it might be that while we definitely still have talented prospects, and I don't mean to say we don't like, I think there's sort of a general consensus among prospect types that we're in sort of a down, a fallow period in terms of prospect talent. So maybe it's just that it's harder to get people hyped when they're not confident they're gonna see like the very best guys.
- [86:29]
A
And maybe also, I guess some of the top prospects, I think, tend to spend less time in the minors these days. Like they get promoted more quickly and so they're not going to be draws for quite as long.
- [86:41]
B
Yeah. And so I, I, I wonder if that has something to do with it. And again, I haven't, I haven't made a study of it, so I'm not quite sure, but it could Be. It could be related to those things. And I do think that people are sort of cost conscious right now because, I don't know. My coffee was two bucks more a bag at Sprouts last time. Two whole dollars. That's a big. That's a big increase, Ben.
- [87:05]
A
Sure, yeah. Comes down to the James Carville catchphrase. It's the economy, stupid. Maybe that's what it is. Or, yeah, maybe it could be just that kind of MLB sending the signal that the miners aren't important. Maybe that trickles down somehow in some nebulous way. Oh, yeah. Okay. If you're. If you're trying to end this thing, then why should I get invested in it? Maybe.
- [87:33]
B
Yeah.
- [87:33]
A
Or, yeah, maybe it's different prospect promotion patterns, it seems like. You know, I guess it could also have something to do with the prices of minor league games, which. I don't know exactly how those are fluctuating, but. But the Baseball America story does include these two sentences. These numbers aren't as bleak as they may look for minor league baseball operators. Teams have adjusted their ticket models, concessions, and other aspects of operations to make more money per fan in many cases. And then, I guess it's a chicken or the egg thing. Okay. Are they. Are they making more money per fan because they're getting fewer fans and so they have to milk the remaining fans for more? Or are there fewer fans because they're making more money per fan? So if there's, you know, I mean, we've talked about the private equityization of minor League Baseball and how that hasn't been quite as nefarious as it sounds so far, although everyone's kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop. But maybe if there is more, like, I don't know, variable pricing or you're raising prices on tickets or concessions or whatever else, then maybe you're keeping people away from the park and you're making money anyway, but you're. You're shrinking the pool of people who want to come to a game, so that. That could be it too. So, yeah, I don't know. At the MLB level, it's flat. Essentially. It's a tiny bit up per game relative to last year, despite the A's and the Rays. But I don't know. It's. It's not good. It seems disconcerting that regardless of the reason that there are 12 million fewer people. You know, it's not 12 million people. It's some people who are going repeatedly, of course, but 12 million bodies passing through turnstiles or purchasing tickets Fewer now than there were six years ago. That that can't be good for the long term future of baseball. Like unless you want to be really just optimistic about it and say, well, those people who aren't going to those affiliated games, they're going to indie ball games, they're going to college league, there's summer league, you know, whatever.
- [89:41]
B
Bananas.
- [89:42]
A
They're going to the banana.
- [89:43]
B
Yeah, they love the bananas.
- [89:45]
A
Could be, you know, maybe we blame this on the bananas. The bananas are killing minor league baseball because they're just too popular. But that would be one positive interpretation that people have just pivoted to other forms of baseball consumption.
- [90:01]
B
Yes.
- [90:01]
A
You know, maybe they're watching major league games more. Maybe they're going to these other local alternatives that either already existed or have sprung up in the wake of the minor league downsizing. And so the, the amount of baseball consumption and enthusiasm is constant. I guess that's possible. I'd like to think that that's true, but I don't know that I believe that, you know, some number of those people have probably just forsaken baseball and just aren't paying attention to baseball anymore because their minor league team picked up stakes or, or just was folded. And so they thought, well, screw you too, I'm out. You're leaving? I'm also leaving.
- [90:39]
B
Yeah. Could be true.
- [90:41]
A
Well, speaking of other. Ben, Ben Clemens, he published an interesting piece at Fan Crafts on Wednesday, which started with a search for streaky hitters. And in order to determine whether certain hitters are streakier than others, he had to define hot and cold streaks. And then he checked on whether those are predictive, following in the footsteps of many an analyst who has searched for some hot hand effect. And he didn't quite come up empty. But like a lot of previous hot hand researchers, he found only a slight signal that there is a meager tendency for hot hitters to remain hot for a while and cold hitters to remain cold for a while. But it's such a small effect that it's barely worth factoring into projections. It's not enough of a change that you'd notice necessarily. And I expect that some of it might be explained not by being locked in mechanically, but just by being healthy, not nursing any nagging injuries. He also struggled to find any sign that certain hitters or certain types of hitters are more prone to streakiness than others. So there's not nothing to it. But as is often the case, it seems that there is less to it than many would like to believe, even than I would like to believe the world would make a little more sense. It would match our intuition more closely if hotness or coldness were more predictive, more persistent. Nonetheless, I applaud the effort and will link to it on the show page. I must also mention that that Brian Wu streak that we discussed, consecutive starts with at least six innings pitched, or in his case six innings pitched and two or fewer walks, has ended at 25 to start the season. He came so close in his start against the Padres on Wednesday. He went five and two thirds. He walked one, so he was one out away from extending it. Nonetheless, as Ben's research suggests, all streaks must come to an end. And hey, he got the win. Because the important thing from Seattle's perspective was that the Mariners won lost a one run game on Tuesday, won a one run game on Wednesday. Finally, I should note that another reason why strikeouts can be better for pitchers than they are bad for hitters is that hitters do exert more control over their balls in play. So with most pitchers, if they do not strike out the batter, then they are at the mercy of luck and their defenders. Not so for hitters or not so to the same extent. So that's another difference between the two types of players that'll do it for today. Thanks as always for listening. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com effectivelywild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks as have the following five listeners Phil Neufer, Tim McGinley, Emily Schoendorf, Kyle Nelson, and Michael Henshaw. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, the next of which we'll be recording this coming weekend Playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, discounts on merch and ad free fangraphs memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings@patreon.com effectivelywild if you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcastamgraphs.com youm can rate, review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music and other podcast platforms. You can join our facebook group@facebook.com group group effectively wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at R Effectively Wild and you can check the show notes at Fan Graphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats recited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you then. I wanna know about baseball. I wanna know about every single team. I wanna know about stat. Yeah, some fan graphs and about. Oh, oh, oh, Tony. I'm a very modern fan reading up on all the analytics. I want to know about baseball. Presented by Patreon. Supporters of that.