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Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
Effectively Wild Episode 2486: Has the Clutch Code Been Cracked?
01:48:57
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- [00:12]
A
Every weekday, break down your favorite pastime. Sit down, relax, and unwind as we learn our t wor. Hello, and welcome to episode 2486 of Effectively Wild Baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Riley of fangraphs. Hello, Meg.
- [00:37]
B
Oh, hello.
- [00:39]
A
Well, a couple quick updates for everyone. First, last time, we talked about how one of our listeners had created a website to inform everyone about whether Fernando Tatis Jr had hit a home run. And that podcast was posted on Saturday, and that website had to be updated on Saturday because Fernando Tatis Jr. Hit a home run. So now if you go to has Fernando Tatis Jr hit a home run yet? Streamlit app, you will see in big, glowing green letters, yes, all caps. He finally did. Good for him. Good for you, Fernando. You finally went deep again.
- [01:17]
B
Went deep again. He looked so relieved. You know, the body language was that of a man who probably knew, like, with 95% confidence, yeah, I'm gonna hit at least one more in my career. But had, like, that 5% sort of nagging doubt where it's like, but is he. Am I. One second.
- [01:42]
A
Yeah, I know. You go 55 games and roughly 240 plate appearances. That's. That's a long time. You might start to question, even if you've been a fairly prolific home run hitter, both pre and post pds, you might start to think, do I just have warning track power? Am I cursed? Is this an effectively wild hypothetical witch sort of situation?
- [02:06]
B
Right.
- [02:06]
A
When he finally hit one, though, he did not get cheated. That thing went 451ft. So he whacked it. Yeah. So that's nice. We can all get off of Tati's home run watch. I mean, he has one that's not good either, but sure, one is meaningfully different from zero.
- [02:24]
B
It's. It is. You know, it's just like a whole bunch more home run. It's the. It feels like the beginning of something, you know, you're in. It is funny, though, because Kyle Schwarber is 22, you know, and. And Jordan Alvarez is 20, as says Murakami, although he's on the IL now, so might be a bit until we see him. Him bop one. But, yeah, there. There are some boppers who have been bopping, and Tatis has not been among them, so I'm sure he's relieved.
- [02:58]
A
I am bummed about Murakami because he's just been.
- [03:01]
B
I know.
- [03:02]
A
One of the most fascinating of the season, and now he's out four to six weeks. And, and the White Sox have been so fun too.
- [03:10]
B
And.
- [03:11]
A
And they've called up prospect Jacob Gonzalez, so that'll be interesting for their fans too. But yeah, a month, month and a half without Murkami.
- [03:19]
B
That's.
- [03:20]
A
I don't know if I can make it that stuff. I've gotten quite attached to that man.
- [03:24]
B
Well, and this is among the very least important parts of it. Especially since that team is sort of surprisingly competitive and has been bopping. But I was starting to hope that we would see Murakami participate in the derby and you have to imagine that that's out of the question now. So we'll have to wait another year until we get Murakami Home Run Derby appearance or at least the potential for one. I don't know what his interest was in participating in that event, but I was hoping that he would decide to do it.
- [03:55]
A
Yeah, I had not considered that. I guess if he returns on the shorter end of that timeframe, there's no
- [04:01]
B
way they let him do it.
- [04:02]
A
Yeah, probably not. Come on.
- [04:03]
B
Come on.
- [04:04]
A
Yeah. I don't know if the Home Run Derby is seen as a risk factor for hamstrings, but I guess it could be. I mean, it's unnatural. You're just kind of. You're not running is the thing.
- [04:14]
B
Right.
- [04:14]
A
So maybe it wouldn't be seen as something that would stress the hamstring. It's. You could imagine other injuries it. It might induce. Cause you're really. You're swinging as hard as you possibly can repeatedly. But running was what got him in trouble here. He was trying to beat out a double play and he did. But this is why I sort of tongue in cheek, say never hustle.
- [04:36]
B
Yeah.
- [04:38]
A
You know, would have been better if he had trotted down to first. If he had been out, had not beaten out the double play, but had not missed the next four to six weeks. On balance, you'd rather have that out and him not out.
- [04:50]
B
Correct. I imagine though that they will say, hey, why don't you take advantage of the time to rest up a buddy and make sure that that's fully 100% so.
- [04:58]
A
Yeah, probably. But it's a bummer. Cuz I did want to see whether he could sustain this excellent start and how good he could be for the full season. And we will resume the Murakami watch when he returns. But it's gonna be rough. The other update is that Craig Kimbrell is now injured. He made his race debut. He pitched a scoreless inning with a couple ks I was thinking he was de. And then suddenly he is on the il with a. A wrist strain. So ye.
- [05:33]
B
I worry that we did. Did a little light magic on our most recent string of episodes and didn't realize it. As soon as I saw that, I of course had to alert you because I know that you're very invested in these things. But yeah, between Kimberl getting hurt, the rays are bad now, you know, there's like losing to the Angels all the time. I think we've done some damage. It's our fault.
- [05:58]
A
It could be. Yeah. I wish we could just do away with hamstrings somehow. That would be bad. Obviously you need hamstring hamstrings, but hamstring injuries at least because Ellie tweaked his hamstring too. And I guess Yuri Perez's stretching related injury turned out not to be his hamstring. He thought it was, but it was a gracilis, a muscle I was not familiar with.
- [06:22]
B
A gracilis.
- [06:23]
A
Yeah. Every now and then there's an injury update that I just think.
- [06:28]
B
Am I saying the word correctly?
- [06:30]
A
Gracilis, I believe so. I write gracilis strain. It's a muscle on the inner thigh. Every now and then I just. I think they're messing with us. They're trolling. It's just like you invented a new part of the anatomy that I had never heard of. I. Yeah, right. Gracilis strain. So he's out for quite a while. So that's. That's why you never stretch. Because you could hurt your gracilis. A muscle that certainly exists.
- [06:58]
B
The most superficial muscle on the medial side of the thigh. It is thin, flattened and broad above proximal and narrow and tapered below distal.
- [07:08]
A
Yeah.
- [07:09]
B
Huh. Wow.
- [07:11]
A
I learned a lot about anatomy from following sports. That's really. I haven't gone to medical school or anything, but just at least awareness of body parts. That's about the extent of it. But I would not have known about the old gracilis if not for Yuri Perez.
- [07:27]
B
The muscle adducts medially, rotates with hip flexion, laterally rotates and flexes the hip as above, and also aids inflection of the knee.
- [07:39]
A
Yeah, obviously.
- [07:40]
B
Obviously. Free functioning flap is clinical significance. Why didn't you just say what the clinical significance? I tracked that. I mean, what questions do you possibly have? Wikipedia. I don't need to look at the inside of the muscle.
- [08:00]
A
No, no, no, no, no, no.
- [08:02]
B
Gracilis. It sounds like that sounds like. Like a cheap cut of meat, you know?
- [08:08]
A
Yeah.
- [08:09]
B
Like. Because. Because of gristle probably more than anything else.
- [08:15]
A
Yeah.
- [08:16]
B
Wow. Gracilis.
- [08:18]
A
Talk to me about Julio Rodriguez's defense because, you know, Julio's hitting. He's hitting well. Yeah, quite well. Like he often hits at least over a full season. He's got a 125 WRC plus that's right in that Julio range. And yet the war.
- [08:36]
B
And that includes his slow start.
- [08:39]
A
Yeah, the perennial slow start. And.
- [08:42]
B
But, but a, but a briefer slow. That's true, yes. Like a two week, like little swoon. And then he was off to the races.
- [08:49]
A
Got it out of his system sooner than usual. However, his WAR is not what one would expect given that level of offense and a center fielder because his defense, which is always graded out very well or elite even, has been below average according to Statcast FRV drs. They all have him well below average. And I'm not accustomed to seeing him in that range. And it's, it's not as if he's getting old or something. He's been with us for a while, but he's still just 25 years old.
- [09:26]
B
Yeah, well, and it's funny you say range because that appears to be the problem for him, at least as far as the metrics are concerned. It's so, it's, it's an interesting thing. And I, I'm not trying to, you know, defend the young man in a way that doesn't comport with the eye test, but it is not something that has stood out to me visually as him sort of being less rangy than in years past. I suppose we have to entertain the poss that he started eating chocolate again. You know, that was, I mean, he offered that anecdote back when he was a prospect. I'm not, I'm not trying to impute Julio or say anything. His physique remains impressive.
- [10:06]
A
But diet shaming?
- [10:08]
B
No, not at all. But he, he said he gave up chocolate when he was a prospect because he was starting to fill out in a way that was not bad, but just made him less agile out there, less speedy. And so he gave up chocolate. And I was like, wow, Julio loves his job a lot more than I love mine. Which isn't to say I don't love my job, but for chocolate. I don't know, we'd have to talk about it. So it is one of those things that I was surprised by and I was looking at. It's so funny that you asked that because I was looking at his player page today and was like, oh, wow. That's surprising to me because I have not thought him to look particularly unrangy. It looks like statcast is pregnant to sort of lateral movement toward first base and his movement back as being less good. But I don't know. I don't quite know how to account for it. Now I'm going to watch for it. I will find a way to blame this on Randy. Just want everyone to.
- [11:08]
A
It is ready. Okay. It's striking because you look at his savant percentiles and his arm strength and arm value are unchanged from last year, as is his sprint speeds, basically as a runner.
- [11:22]
B
Yeah, he's not slowing. And the other part of it that I found striking when I was looking at this earlier, is that not an obvious meaningful change in how he's positioned in center field. Like his average starting distance in center is pretty similar. Not only distance, but sort of where that starting point is quite similar to in years past. Now his depth in feet is like a difference of a foot, you know, Is that enough? I don't know. It would appear that, you know, Stackass doesn't love the way that he is angled. So maybe he is positioned largely the same but is slightly angled in a way that is diminishing his ability to like get a good jump and run a direct route. It is quite odd. It's a mystery and I don't care
- [12:13]
A
for it because stat cast should account for his starting position anyway. So I don't know if that would ding him. It might hurt the Mariners, but not necessarily his right.
- [12:23]
B
I was just trying to understand like what is different this year and he's just. He's in his no fly zone. Yeah, you know, it's.
- [12:32]
A
It's a precipitous decline in the percentile as far as his range rating because he's gone from 97th percentile last year right. To fifth this year, while his arm strength, arm value, sprint speed are largely unchanged. So it is perplexing. I am not that worried about it because it does appear that his tools are intact. And also if you look at some of the components of his jumps, for instance, it doesn't seem that those have changed that much either because there's an outfielder jump section on the baseball savant player page for Julio and his reaction times, his burst ratings, his roots, all of that appears pretty much in line with where he has been. And overall the jump is a little worse. Fewer feet versus average, fewer feet covered. It's not a huge difference, but maybe it's enough. I guess small margins make a big difference, but because a lot of those metrics Seem more or less in line with where he has been in previous seasons. I wonder if it is just sort of a sample size plus opportunities just sort of skewed. Maybe he's missed some easy ones. And. And that's just kind of thrown off the numbers because you could almost have. It's like when we look at expected weighted on base versus weighted on base, we don't really have equivalent of that for defense, I guess, where we just kind of look at the underlying components and say, well, should he have been good? You know, more of like a. A true talent rating almost based on the underlying skills. So you. You almost need like an X FRV or something so that you could kind of compare to. Well, should he have been worse or less valuable given the inputs and given the physical performance? Because I wonder if it is that he has just flubbed a few plays that he normally would get to or even did get to, but just didn't complete the catch for whatever reason. Because, yeah, the underlying numbers just don't look all that different. So I agree. That does make me more optimistic that this will correct itself, most likely. Yeah. The good news is, is that everything else that you usually worry about with Julio early in the season, a lack of offense that seems to have corrected itself. So if he can just get the glove under control, which has not been an issue historically, I guess he's not running very much on the bases. I mean, either he's been a bit below average as a base runner. He's stolen five bases in seven attempts. I don't know if that's connected. But again, his sprint speed, it's down a little bit. But the percentile that you really worry about. Yeah, it's still roughly in the range he's been in before. So I don't know whether the lack of trying to steal reflects something, Some sort of nagging something or other that has manifested on defense, but not so much at the plate. It's possible, but yeah, looking at. At the underlying components, I'm not too worried about it.
- [15:41]
B
Well, now I'm going to have a weird obsession.
- [15:43]
A
And hey, the Mariners in first place by two and a half games, right? So if they can just get Julio's defense straightened out, then maybe they'll run away with this thing.
- [15:53]
B
I mean, maybe run away. I mean, he is as fast as ever. I suppose it's sort of possible, but it's good if you care about them winning, which I ostensibly do. It's nice that they're above.500. I would like it. It's a Weird thing because you want there to be surprises in a season. Right. If our, if our preseason projections are spot on, well, that's feels smart, I guess, but it's a little bit boring. But you want pleasant surprises more than I think you want glaring disappointments. We talked about this a bit on our last episode. Like, I would much rather our surprises come in the form of like, wow, the Rays. Look at that. How does that make any sense? As opposed to like, my God, what's happening with the Mets. Although they're no longer in last place in the nle, so maybe we reverse jinx them.
- [16:45]
A
Could be. All right. Last time we talked about Abner Reba and his crotch chop suspension.
- [16:51]
B
Yes.
- [16:51]
A
I was wondering if there was any precedent and I still don't know if there is a crotch chop suspension.
- [16:57]
B
Yeah.
- [16:58]
A
On the books before this, but as some folks reminded me, there was a crotch grab suspension that was levied against Jonathan Papelbahn in 2014. This was, this was not the choking incident. This was, this was the. I guess it was a form of choking, but not the choking Price Harper, but Jonathan Pavlopon. In 2014, he was suspended seven games and fined for making a lewd gesture. And MLB.com described it as he rather aggressively adjusted himself before he entered the Phillies dugout.
- [17:36]
B
He rather aggressively aggressively adjusted himself.
- [17:41]
A
Yes. Yes. So, okay, that's great. Yeah. Now it wasn't a 7 gamer solely for that. That would have been.
- [17:49]
B
I was going to say, yes, that
- [17:51]
A
would have been stiff, so to speak. He also, he bumped Joe West. He made a little contact with Joe west. So that was part of it. But he was grabbing his crotch in response to jeers from the crowd. Or at least that is how Joe west perceived it. West said he made an obscene gesture. He had no business doing that. He's got to be more professional than that. And that's why he was ejected, because the model of professionalism, Cowboy Joe. So that's a little bit different, I think, than what happened to Uribe where it was not directed at the fans and it wasn't a grabbing, it was a chopping. And also there was no ump bump involved in Uribe's situation.
- [18:36]
B
They do get very worked up about ump bumps. You know, they really, their, their level of tolerance for that is quite low. I think that to your point, we can only ever be ourselves. Right. And I think that was part of Jonathan Papel Bond's problem. There was pre existing papal bonding that had gone on here. There was a, a pattern of behavior.
- [19:01]
A
Yes.
- [19:01]
B
You know, once that happens.
- [19:04]
A
Papal pattern.
- [19:05]
B
Papal pattern. Yeah, Pattern bond. Papal pattern. I will work on it.
- [19:14]
A
Okay. Speaking of ejections, we had a few this weekend because of a national anthem staredown standoff.
- [19:23]
B
Yeah. I kind of talk about college baseball for a second. I was going to fall right over.
- [19:28]
A
That would have been quite a surprise. But no, it was. On Saturday, three players were ejected from the Raise Angels game. And actually they were ejected before the Raise Angels game.
- [19:40]
B
Good grief.
- [19:41]
A
Because it was a national anthem standoff, and it was Angels reliever Brent Suter and raised pitcher Steven Wilson and Manuel Rodriguez.
- [19:51]
B
Okay.
- [19:51]
A
And they really committed to the bit. And they were out there. And they were out there even when Rays starter Drew Rasmussen was warming up. And they were accompanied by Ray's mascots, Raymond and DJ Kitty, who were not ejected from the game because I guess hijink's part of their job description.
- [20:11]
B
So I feel like I'm having a stroke.
- [20:13]
A
It seems like a double standard to eject the players but not the mascots. But then I guess. I guess it's an appropriate double standard.
- [20:20]
B
I love that your problem with this is that they didn't bounce back. DJ Kitty, you're offended. On behalf of, you know, equally applied justice. Yeah. I don't understand the anthem stare down phenomena. I don't get that at all. It has never made sense to me. What are you trying to prove?
- [20:39]
A
It is absurd. It doesn't make sense. Which I think is why I like it. Although it's the typical baseball player thing where I think it was a funny bit and that they have just run it into the ground because they just do it over and over again. But it's still. Yeah. It's still sort of funny, though. It. Because it's so strange. It's just. Why are we doing this? I always wonder about how they coordinate it when it's because it's players from different teams, opposing teams, and. So is it that they know each other or they were teammates before or something? Or is there a text chain? Are they like. Is it just spontaneous? They just. They see each other and they. There's a glint in each other's eye and they just, you know, catch each other's gaze and they say, oh, we're facing off, we're staring down. Or do they pre plan it? I assume there's some level of coordination here. And in this case, there was no cost to this, really, because the pitchers were all probably unavailable for that game. Sure. Anyway. Because the Rays guys are rehabbing there on the il. Anyway, so they've been Sidelined. They weren't going to pitch.
- [21:45]
B
So were they ejected because they were on the field? Is that. That. That was the. Yeah, the issue.
- [21:51]
A
Yeah. And Suter probably wasn't gonna pitch because he threw 25 pitches in an inning, in two thirds on Friday. Friday night. So they were probably all just out. And so they decided to do this. What's the downside? And, yeah, at some point, it's just like, delay of game. It's just. Just disruption of the proceedings. We're trying to play, and you're just standing in front of your dugouts, so.
- [22:13]
B
But, Ben, you failed to answer the broader question. What's the. What's the point of it, though?
- [22:19]
A
Like, silly, I guess.
- [22:21]
B
I don't understand. I don't understand it as a. As a. Are you saying something? Are you trying to say.
- [22:29]
A
No, I don't think. I don't think you're making any sort of statement. I don't think it's. It's a Rebel Without a Cause kind of situation. I think. I don't. Okay. I guess it's. Yeah, it's just. It's defiant.
- [22:41]
B
But we acknowledge that it's kind of dumb, though, right? We acknowledge dumb.
- [22:44]
A
It's dumb, but funny. Brent Suiter, he's kind of a jokester. He's the one who's always doing the same impressions of, like, you know, Will Ferrell doing Harry Carey or whatever. So.
- [22:55]
B
Okay, you're helping me to calibrate humor in the case of. Yeah, I don't have anything against him. I just. This is what. One of those things that happens sometimes where I feel completely disconnected from what other people find funny, and I don't like that very much.
- [23:16]
A
Yeah. Yes. Suter, he's a big environmentalist. He's like.
- [23:20]
B
I know.
- [23:20]
A
I like that about him. Yeah, I like that, too. Yeah. But so this. I don't know. It's just one of those weird baseball traditions. And so I kind of. I value it on that level. I guess it's just we have the normal routine, and what would happen if suddenly a few players were just conscientious objectors to the beginning of the baseball game and everything's off kilter? And it's. It's sort of like, what if the mundane proceedings. What if we just didn't do that? It's like Bartleby the Scrivener or something, but in a baseball context, it's just, what if you withdrew from the normal, nice tease and you just said, nope, I'm gonna stand here in defiance of the game beginning right yeah.
- [24:04]
B
Yeah. Okay. I still don't get it, and I think I find it kind of doofy, but okay.
- [24:10]
A
Yeah.
- [24:11]
B
Okay.
- [24:12]
A
I just wanna know how they coordinate this or. Or whether they coordinate this. Is it ever spontaneous? Is it pre planned? I think it's kind of funnier if it is spontaneous. Well, sure, but it's. It's probably not, because how would that happen? You're just kind of looking across. There must be some relationship there.
- [24:30]
B
Such great humor to chance, you know?
- [24:33]
A
Yeah. So. So then if you've planned it in advance, because it's not some sort of demonstration or something, you're not making any kind of point. So then if you've planned your hijinks in advance, then I think it loses a little hijink. Yeah, right. It's just. It's too rehearsed or practiced. Pre planned. It should be just.
- [24:52]
B
It's a failed bit. It's. It's not.
- [24:54]
A
Yeah. Spur of the moment, just the. The fever seized us and we just. We saw him standing over there and was like a bull seeing red or something, and we just had to stand there until he left and he refused to leave. That would be funnier to me maybe. But yeah, you know, it's a baseball bit. All the baseball pranks have been done before and they're passed down through the ages, and there's something nice about that, but there's also something extremely unoriginal and uninventive about that.
- [25:23]
B
Yeah, I'm gonna have to think about it. I mean, I won't, because it's not funny. And that's in keeping. But that's in keeping with baseball players. You know, like, a lot of the time they're not very funny. No.
- [25:37]
A
Okay, So I don't know if you noticed this, but did you perhaps happen to see who was the most valuable Dodgers pitcher in May? It was.
- [25:49]
B
It was not Shohei Otan, Was it Justin Robleski?
- [25:54]
A
It was not, actually. No. You. You thought I was going because, Justin,
- [25:58]
B
we were gonna get horny about spreadsheets and I was gonna have to be a bit of a. Yeah.
- [26:02]
A
Justin Rubleski outed himself as a spread ease guy.
- [26:06]
B
Yes.
- [26:07]
A
You know, Brea was there first.
- [26:09]
B
Yeah. Then all the stat nerds on Baseball Blue sky were like, oh, my God. I know.
- [26:14]
A
It is. It's funny because it's 2026. Right. Like, the baseball players are very stat savvy. They're not necessarily all opening up Excel after their start to enter a bunch of stuff about how they pitch. Like Justin Rubleski is, or like, or like John Brebia was when he was rehabbing. But they're all, I get why we reacted like this when it was Brian BANNISTER in, in 2010 or whatever it was. You know, when he's talking about FIP and stuff. And then it was, wow, a player is actually looking at this stuff that we're looking at. This is so exciting and flattering. Whereas now they're all kind of doing that. So it's. It's not new and novel anymore. Even if they're not looking at a spreadsheet or creating their own spreadsheet, they're looking at someone else's spreadsheet. So, yeah, maybe we're acting too thirsty or flattered or something. I act like we've been there before.
- [27:10]
B
I'm just saying that, like, don't be such a cheap date. You know? That's all I'm saying. I also. And then I will allow you to continue with your, your quizzing of various Dodgers. But sure, I also will just say, like, you know, we should display a skepticism toward, like, let's be less charmed by guys. You know, I'm just. I'm not saying Justin Robleski is a bad guy or anything like that. I. I don't know anything about the young man, but I just. We can all take a minute. I feel like I'm being a real bummer by saying they're not funny and that we shouldn't be so charmed by. But it is just such a predictable little reaction. It's like, it is Justin, stop flirting with us.
- [27:54]
A
Yeah, Rusky. Yeah, he's. He's quite. Yeah, he's good. Yeah. And he was the second most valuable Dodgers pitcher in May, but he was not the first. And it was not the obvious candidates. It was not Ohtani. It was not Yamamoto. It was Roki Sasaki.
- [28:14]
B
No way.
- [28:15]
A
It was Roki Sasaki led the Dodgers in fancraft's war in May. And he wasn't the Miz, he wasn't Christopher Sanchez, but he was pretty effective. He started five games, 28 and a third innings with a 3.18 ERA and a 3.32 FIP. And maybe this says more about the Dodgers pitching staff lately that this was the best. He was the 33rd most valuable pitcher in baseball, but he was the best on the Dodgers. And he had his best start state side. He strung together multiple effective starts. Seems like I'm. I'm damning with faint praise or this is a backhand compliment or something, but. But he was pretty good he was pretty effective, especially for someone who was sort of penciled in as the fifth starter.
- [29:05]
B
Right.
- [29:05]
A
So that's an encouraging sign for the Dodgers because if they could get Roki right even if he's not elite or ace, like even if he were just a, a good serviceable starter, that would be a big improvement if he, and he, he got the, the command, the control under control. He walked 1.9 per nine Roki in five starts while still striking out about a batter per inning and sitting 97 or so. It's, it's pretty encouraging.
- [29:35]
B
Yeah, I think it's just a useful reminder that, and you know, I'm not saying that he will sustain this forever and I want to be careful to not overcorrect in the pro roky direction. Not that I'm anti but just because he happens to be a dodger. But I, I do think that it's useful to remember that these things can take a slightly non linear course and that adjustment can happen over time in a way that feels like a guy is behind and then you look up one day and you're like oh, he's actually been very effective for a while now. We will always I imagine judge his performance relative to the pre posting expectation of him, which was that he was going to be this like transcendent talent. Sort of a continuation of the line that they really started with Yamamoto when he came over. But you know, it just, it can take a minute, it can take a beat to get kind of acclimated to something. And you can also note this is sort of in keeping with some recent conversations we've had about like how do we think about young players? Like you can be a useful and productive, even maybe integral piece and not quite be like as good as Yamamoto. So I think just letting it kind of breathe for him is probably the order of the day and see where it goes next after, you know, hitters have had time to adjust to his adjustment.
- [31:01]
A
But if the Dodgers do get him straightened out and then get Snell and Glasnow back at some point and they
- [31:08]
B
could certainly use Ohtani and Yoshi to help. Yeah, yeah. It's a, I mean you'll be shocked to learn formidable group when healthy.
- [31:17]
A
Yeah, I know. Yeah. Everyone's like, finally the Dodgers will have their fully effective rotation. That's what everyone has been rooting for all this time. Well, we're talking about rotations. We might as well talk about Carmen Majinski. So I don't know if you have followed the Pirates rotation drama, but late last week Jared Jones returned, so that's exciting. He didn't have a very good first start off the il. He had had several effective starts on his rehab assignment, but, yeah, a bit of a rude reintroduction to the majors, but someone had to go because even though, as I always say, you can never have enough pitching, the Pirates did at least briefly have enough starting pitching. Starting pitching and. And maybe too much. They had an excess of starting pitching. And so someone had to go. And that someone, the odd man out was Carmen Majinski, which is rough for him because he's been quite effective, actually. And he's been the fourth most valuable pitcher on the Pirates this year and I guess has basically also been their fourth starter. So that tracks. And Skin and Ashcraft have been fantastic and Mitch Keller's been good. And then Maginski. Now, Bubba Chandler has not been very good. He's had individual starts that were pretty impressive, but on the whole he hasn't been great. But the Pirates elected to keep him in the rotation and move Majinsky, which you can kind of understand because Maginski has worked in relief. He's been the bulk guy in a couple starts after an opener, and he was effective in that role. And also Chandler. It's hard to break this to Majinski, I guess, but Chandler was the bigger prospect and is seen as having the higher ceiling and was effective last year. So the idea is let's not mess with the top prospect. We will move Majinski to the pen. And the Pirates could use. I said you can never have enough pitching. They could use some simple pen pitching. So they have the fourth most WAR by starters this year, but 19th by relievers. And that's with a couple of extended effective outings by Majinski in relief. Okay, so makes sense to move him. But he boxed at that. Not literally, but he didn't balk because he wasn't on the mound. He decided that he was unavailable physically, mentally. He sort of opted out of being available, out of the bullpen. And he conveyed that to the Pirates and they said, well, we need bullpen help and also we can't play a man down. So if you just will not post, then we will have to put you on the restricted list. And that's. That's what they did. Which is pretty rare. Usually when a player's on the restricted list, it's. It's bad news. They misbehaved in some serious legal way often, but this is not that serious. But it's out of the norm. It's a mini Derrick Bell operation shutdown, but brief. Probably and not as dramatic. But Ben Charrington did a radio hit and he was talking about the decision to move Majinski to the bullpen, which I think Charrington said was sort of endorsed or led by the coaching staff. And Charrington said that not surprisingly he didn't agree with that decision making Ski we want players to be honest about how they feel about decisions, then it's our job to work with them to get them into a spot where, okay, we've disagreed on this, we've made the decision, let's go win games. That's a process sometimes. My belief is that Carmen Majinski is going to pitch a lot of meaningful innings for this team this year and he's going to help us win games. I'm looking forward to that. He's a very tough minded, strong willed guy. That's part of what makes him successful, etc. So they're trying to downplay it and Don Kelly's talking about how he's a competitor and he's gonna be out there and he's gonna help the team win and all of that. So they don't want to blow this up into something more than it is. And I imagine Majinski will soon accept his fate and his lot in life and will pitch out of the bullpen and it won't really spiral from here. But it's pretty rare that we see this happen. Sometimes we see a player grouse about something, but fairly rare that they just said, no, I'm not doing it even for a day if that's how long it was.
- [35:56]
B
Well and it's interesting too when you think about it sort of in conversation with the decision to keep Chandler in the rotation because he had expressed frustration. He came up at the tail end of August last year.
- [36:10]
A
That's right, yeah.
- [36:11]
B
And he had expressed frustration in the lead up to his call up that he had not yet been brought up to, to the majors. And you know, it was an interesting thing because like he was clearly very talented and was a top prospect and, and what have you but had been, you know, he was a, was a 60 for us entering the season because he had just looked barely held onto his rookie eligibility from an active roster days perspective last year. But it wasn't like his 2025 at AAA was totally pristine. His, his sort of peripherals and underlying metrics, other estimators were better than his era, but he wasn't like running a sub two ERA or AAA or anything like that so. But he looked ready and it's like, hey, you gotta like make this guy Figure it out in the majors at some point. And he got brought up and he appeared in seven games, but he also pitched him relief a little bit. And so I wonder how intertwined these decisions are where they're like, well, you know, we want to keep Bubba in the rotation. We want to give him big league run. We want to make sure that he's taking the ball when his turn comes up. But in order to do that, you have to kind of pull a similar disgruntled over roll move with another guy. So they're just funny to sort of consider next to one another. But you're right, it's like, you know, other than legal trouble or visa trouble will be the other thing that gets guys on the restricted list. Right. Like when a, when a player is having immigration related issues. You know, this happens around spring training every year where it's like getting the visa stuff sorted takes a little longer than was anticipated. Like sometimes a guy will go on the list for that right reason where it's like there, he hasn't done anything wrong, there's just this hang up and he's not, he's not available to report when he's supposed to. But yeah, like the inseason restricted list for. Not for. Without a, you know, police report.
- [38:13]
A
Yeah.
- [38:14]
B
Doesn't happen very often. It's interesting because doing that, you know, I'm sure that this stuff would have gotten out anyway. But there's, once you make that move, there's no hope that you're keeping any of this drama in house because you have to account for the restricted list placement.
- [38:29]
A
Right.
- [38:29]
B
Like people are going to say, why is he on the restricted list? Did he do something? You don't want to leave the impression. Yeah. That he, you know, stole a car or whatever, you know, So I don't know the right way to deal with that. But I do think that it is a good reminder that like these are guys with. I'm gonna sound patronizing when I say it this way, and I don't mean to like hopes and dreams. Like they wanna, they wanna get big league run, they want to be a big league starter. They want to be the dude. Having pitchers assume roles that aren't kind of in keeping with their own expectations of their career doesn't mean that it's necessarily the wrong decision, but it can have personnel consequences. When we talk about why we can't fully gauge the value of a manager, it's stuff like this, you know, which, like, I don't know, it's going super great, but you know it's, it's stuff like this where it's like you need to be able to keep in balance the egos of a bunch of like very driven, very talented, incredibly confident young men. Good luck. It's kind of amazing that there aren't more problems like this. Not because I think, you know, baseball players are like uniquely hot headed or anything like that, although I'm sure some of them are. But it's just a, it seems like a ready mix for that kind of a, you know.
- [39:48]
A
Yeah. And it's gotta be tough when you're Majinski and you're off to a strong start. And he pitched well last year too. He pitched well his whole career, really. And he's been largely in the bullpen. He's been sort of a swing man in previous seasons. And so he's probably feeling, hey, I established myself as a starter. I showed that I could do this right. And look at Bubba here with a near five ERA and fip. And they're telling me that the Pirates are better with me getting demoted. And I'm sure they're pitching it and not unreasonably as, hey, we have a bigger need in relief right now. We need a long man. You can fill that hole for us. And, and that's true, but it's still seen historically as a demotion and it's something that could affect your earnings in the future. So. Yeah, hard for him.
- [40:42]
B
Consequences.
- [40:43]
A
Yeah. And it's not like he's somebody aged veteran or something. He's 27 years old and he's only in his fourth big league year. So even though Chandler's in his second year and is 23, he's probably thinking, well, I'm not past my sell by date or anything. Maybe I can establish myself as a starter. And so that's tough when you're like, we know you've been better with this guy, but we think that long term this guy will be better. Like we kind of care about him more. We, we look at his long term outlook more favorably than we do at yours. That's a tough message to send. So I do understand. But this has been going on since the beginning of baseball and the beginning of sports and sometimes you do have to just sort of not like it, but lump it. You just have to kind of accept it and figure that at some point a spot will open up again.
- [41:33]
B
Right.
- [41:34]
A
Or I'll be on another team or whatever it is. Or you just have to resign yourself to it and hope, hopefully embrace the role and say, I'll just excel in this role and I'll help the team and maybe I'll work my way back to starting or whatever it is because you know, it doesn't reflect well on you to balk at it to such a degree that you're just kind of checked out for a game, even if it was just one game. And from what I've read, it's not like he's a bad guy or anything. It's just yeah. And as I was reading@mlb.com the description of him was he's very much in unique dude as people have learned. Deadhead, sort of a hippie. Spends his off seasons in Hawaii or other remote places. Grew up without technology and loves getting away from it. I guess he's getting getting away from it now while he's on the restricted list. Yeah, convicted and how he wants to do things Now I've ranted on the bonus pods about how I don't like describing frustration. Yeah, convicted stop. But, but yeah, this is an example of how he is, I guess, convinced he is set in his ways that this is the way he wants to do things or not do things. But he sounds like the heir to another Pirates player in effectively wild legend John Jason.
- [42:46]
B
Yeah.
- [42:47]
A
Who was known for his quote such as this game and such is life and of course appeared on the podcast and had that sort of attitude to him. And but it is interesting. He's kind of like this laid back guy, but also hyper competitive. I guess that's not a unique mix of traits for a professional athlete. But anyway, I'm sure they'll get it straightened out and they'll all get on the same page or at least he will not be so vocal or demonstrative about his displeasure because you'd prefer for this sort of thing to be handled in house and behind closed doors.
- [43:22]
B
Yeah, I think what I would say to him if he were like a person in my life I were offering advice to is I can sympathize why with why you feel put upon in this moment and it may I don't think it's unreasonable to view it as sort of an unfair situation even if there's a rationale that isn't, you know, like malevolent or anything on the part of the Pirates. Having said that, like you should approach situations like this strategically and the best way for you to get back into the A rotation is to pitch well and demonstrate that you can, if you're in long relief and you know, show that you have a starter's repertoire well the next time there's an injury in the Pittsburgh rotation, you're going to slot into that spot. And you know, this isn't exactly a team that's been shy about trading guys in the past. So even if you're not showcasing yourself for them, showcase yourself for the rest of the week league so that you might draw some trade interest if you're worried about it. And again, this stuff can take time. Seattle is dealing with sort of a similar situation where they are trying to figure out how to deploy Luis Castillo in a way that makes him maximally effective and sort of protects him from the third time through. The order effects, which have been pretty intense for him this season, that gives Bryce Miller a slightly lighter workload.
- [44:47]
A
But.
- [44:47]
B
But all of that stuff is being forced by the fact that like, Emerson Hancock has been good this year, right? And so if I were a friend of Carmen's, I would be like, you know, be like Emerson Hancock. Emerson Hancock was kind of an also ran from a prospect perspective, was supposed to be good, got hurt, you know, hasn't been able to sort of elevate himself. And all of a sudden this year, you know, got put in the rotation because Bryce Miller was on the island. And then he just pitched so well that they're like, well, we can't remove him from the rotation. He has a 278 ERA and like a 35 FIP. Like, he's been one of their better, more reliable starters. And so they kind of rejiggered things. And it wasn't just Hancock's performance. Like I said, like, they have to deal with the reality of an aging Luis Castillo. They have to figure out how to make sure that, like, Bryce Miller doesn't get hurt again. And so they've been having Miller and Castillo kind of piggyback and like, Luis Castillo is a veteran and was, you know, was their frontline starter for a lot of years before the young guys came up. And so I'm sure that they're having to manage some egos around that stuff too. But if I knew Carmen Majinski, I'd be like, hey, this doesn't have to be like the end, be all, end all decision. Like, you need to, to like, have a strategic approach to it, which isn't to say again that it doesn't. Isn't unfair or doesn't feel unfair. But, like, I think when you're a guy in this circumstance, you do end up better off if you try to make the best of it with an understanding that it is probably not a, you know, permanent decision. If that changes, then, like, you Know that sucks, but.
- [46:31]
A
Yeah, well, good problem to have for the Pirates, at least. Well, excessive starting pitching. Not the way that it's been handled. No, it's true. But surplus of starting pitching. Yeah, that's not something the Pirates have always had or that any team always can count on. So, yeah, the dream of the all homegrown Pirates, only in their career, effective starting rotation. It's been fulfilled thus far. It's been quite impressive. And if they could get Jarrod Jones right, too, and also get Chandler to be his best self more consistently, that'd be pretty exciting. Yeah. Okay. I don't know why it made the rounds this weekend, but I saw a lot of people citing Wemby holding a baseball. Did you see? I don't know why, because this was a photo from, I think, three years ago or something. But there is just.
- [47:23]
B
They just made the Finals, like.
- [47:25]
A
Yeah, I guess that's why. I guess everyone was just talking about Wemby. And so for whatever reason, people were sharing this picture of him grasping a baseball in his giant hand. And I saw a lot of people speculating about how good he would be as a pitcher because he has this gigantic hand. I will link to the photo and send it to you as well. But it is. It's just ridiculous. It's just like.
- [47:55]
B
All you can do is laugh at it. I mean, it's really just. What else do you do but laugh at it?
- [48:01]
A
It's just a tiny little baseball grasp. It's like his. His fingernails are like, as big as the baseball when you put them together. It's just. It's like a. A giant spider or something is grasping the ball. It's like, she. Love. I don't know. It's just like, what? It's hard for me to imagine this because I wonder whether it's at the point where this would actually be an impediment to his success. Because I saw a lot of people saying, imagine how much spin he would get on this thing. Because sometimes having long fingers is cited as an advantage. And people will say that about Pedro Martinez. Not a big guy, but long fingers.
- [48:45]
B
Yeah.
- [48:45]
A
Or Satchel Page or Mariano Rivera. And the idea is that you can just impart more spin because you've just got this grip. You can really just get some torque on that thing. And in his case, I guess it's like the ultimate example of that. But it might be overkill. It might be too much. Like, it might be to the point where he wouldn't get any grip on this thing because how would he even get the pads of his fingers on the ball. It's just like it's so buried in his palm. Yeah.
- [49:18]
B
I mean, who could teach him how to grip the ball? You know? Like, you're right to say that there have been there. It's hardly unprecedented for there to be big league pitchers who have big old mitts, you know, and can. Could offer some insight there. But like it would just be so fascinating to. To see how it moves off of his. God, the extension that guy would get.
- [49:44]
A
I know. That's what I was thinking too. He would release the ball so close to the plate.
- [49:48]
B
God.
- [49:49]
A
Yeah.
- [49:49]
B
Like you'd. I mean he's such an alien. He's just like a freak of a guy.
- [49:54]
A
This photo is From I think 2023 originally from June of that. It's. It's been a full three years. He has grown in that time too. I don't know how much his fingers have grown, but he's gotten taller. So he's taller.
- [50:08]
B
Taller.
- [50:08]
A
Yeah. There's been a whole thing about how tall actually is Wemby and just having to like remeasure him because he's. He's grown. Like he's listed at 74 maybe, but he's. That has increased. And also maybe he's taller than he's actually listed at because it's like he's just so, so big. He's. He's unmeasurable. Yeah, he's just so tall. Get up there.
- [50:30]
B
We have two story buildings. He's not, not unmeasurable, but he is enormous. I, I love that he's. I have missed this bit of NBA related discourse. My, my main concern was that the spurs bounce okc, rip Sonics. But I didn't know that he was thought to be taller. Thought to have grown.
- [50:50]
A
Yeah. Yeah. There was an article at the Athletic last October why Victor Wembanyama's true height may be at the NBA's biggest mystery.
- [50:58]
B
Well, okay, that's a very funny thing to say because it's like. Well, it doesn't have to be a mystery at all. Just go. Can't he just be measured?
- [51:05]
A
Well, he, he had been listed. His official Height had been 7:3 at some point. And then they upped that to 74. And then the spurs website briefly listed him at 75 before going back to 74, which they said was just a clerical error. And at some point it's, it's immaterial. Does it even matter? He's huge. He's great. Like 7 4, 7 5. I don't know that it matters all that much at this point. You don't really want him to get bigger because the, the only concern about him is his health, really. He can already just basically stand there and put the ball through the rim. So you just kind of don't want added strain on his joints and everything.
- [51:44]
B
But I, Yeah, I do wonder how he. I do wonder how his body would hold up to the repeated stress of pitching and you know, like, he's not. I. My mental sort of catalog of incredibly tall basketball players is admittedly shallower. It does not encompass the entire population because even, you know, as I get my rip sonic stroke in, I. I was never like such a huge NBA fan that I was like watching every game or anything like that. But like, like Wemby is appreciably less fragile looking than like. Yeah, like bull. He was just such a spindly little guy. 7 7. His listed height was 7,7 manoo bulls. And so like he looked very fragile at points because he was like, your legs are not supposed to be that long. I mean, not, not supposed to be that long, but. But it's just like arresting to see human legs that long. It's like when those guys go to Turkey and get their legs lengthened. I'm like, you didn't watch Gattaca? You should. It didn't. He didn't like it. It was. That was ouchy for him. Anyway. Wemby has more to him than. Than some of the other like very famous spindly tall guys, you know. And there have been a lot of home men in the NBA, to be clear. I'm talking out of my ass a little bit here. Can you tell?
- [53:15]
A
I just don't know how tall men in the NBA is that it's just breaking news.
- [53:21]
B
Tall. But there's like tall and then there's tall.
- [53:24]
A
Yeah, right. You know what I mean? He makes tall men look tiny.
- [53:27]
B
And he makes other men as tall or maybe around as tall as he is, look skinny. Yeah. Bowl is more filled out than his dad was.
- [53:40]
A
Yeah. Anyway, Bulked up a bit, but he's
- [53:42]
B
built up a bit. Yeah.
- [53:43]
A
It's just certain aspects of him, you'd think, wow, what an amazing pitcher he would make. But then. Well, we do have one pitch that he threw. He threw a first pitch on a visit to Yankee Stadium three years ago.
- [53:56]
B
That's right.
- [53:56]
A
This is maybe when he held that ball. This was, I think shortly before he was drafted. So he was 19.
- [54:02]
B
Wasn't good, right?
- [54:03]
A
It was not good. No. I just sent it to you and I'll Link was the mechanics were horrendous, as you might expect for a non baseball player. Now, if he had trained as a baseball player the way that he is trained as a basketball player, look on his face like, whatever, this isn't my problem. It's not my sport. Yeah. So even though basketball players are incredibly coordinated and athletic in some respects, maybe more so than MLB players and, and fitter conditioned and all the rest, you can just see whenever they take hacks in the cage or throw a pitch, they just, they look like they've never done it before because in many cases they haven't.
- [54:43]
B
They haven't.
- [54:44]
A
Yeah. And so he hasn't dedicated himself to it. Also, I think there is a point at which it does impair your coordination. It's just like you got such long limbs, the signals have to travel farther and back to your brain and, and, and then you have to tell your body what to do. And we've seen that with some giant pitchers who are not as big as Wemby, but you know, like your Randy Johnson's, they often have to kind of get their mechanics in whack before they can be effective. And so he had all sorts of control issues and everything and then made mechanical changes and then was suddenly dominant. And obviously being as big as he was has helped and probably helped him generate speed and certainly made him more intimidating. And he had the extension and all the rest, so.
- [55:33]
B
Right.
- [55:33]
A
But it took time for him to harness that and really leverage that. So it was perhaps counterproductive at first. And then his, his hands are so big that I, I wonder whether it's just. It's too much. And instead of being able to impart more spin, he would have even less tactile control and feel for the pitch because the ball is just so teeny
- [55:55]
B
tiny, fine on the ball the way.
- [55:56]
A
Yeah, it would just get lost in there. It's like wearing a mitt or something.
- [55:59]
B
Right.
- [56:00]
A
I guess the coordination, the lack of practice, the gigantic hands. Now, of course, what makes him so special as a basketball player is that even though he is so gigantic, he doesn't play like that. I mean, he does in the good ways, but also the typical downsides of being that huge, he doesn't have like, he has the athleticism, coordination, finesse and. Yeah, right. And that's what makes him such an outlier. Not just the height, but the, the skill set that goes along with the height. And now that he's fully refining that, he's taking San Antonio to the finals. And boy, that's. That's going to be a fun series.
- [56:38]
B
Are you. Are you a Knicks guy?
- [56:41]
A
I'm not really, but. Bong. I mean, I think New York is just going to be so into this series that it will just be fun to follow. So.
- [56:50]
B
Yeah.
- [56:51]
A
Yeah, I don't have a deep emotional connection to the next.
- [56:54]
B
Sure.
- [56:54]
A
But. But, yeah, it's going to be fun to follow and root for and just all the storylines and everything. It was a fun Spurs Thunder series and just all the discourse about flopping and all that went into that, and Wemby just having amazing games and everything. But, yeah, I don't know. I don't think he. If he had to convert to pitching right now, let's put it this way. I don't. I don't think he would be as adept at pitching as Michael Jordan was at hitting, which was not very, but surprisingly so.
- [57:26]
B
Terrible hitter.
- [57:27]
A
Yeah. But as everyone points out, it was pretty impressive for him to not.
- [57:31]
B
No, I mean, I think Wemby would be a terrible.
- [57:33]
A
Oh, yes. Oh, definitely.
- [57:34]
B
That swing would be.
- [57:35]
A
Yeah, I think pitching. Pitching would be the thing that he should gravitate towards, too. But I think he's picked the right career.
- [57:42]
B
I'd love it if he got in the box and they were like, hey, try to be short to the ball. And he's like, I haven't been short to anything in my entire life.
- [57:48]
A
Yeah, make your strike zone smaller. If you can crouch over, bend double or something. Just. Yeah, yeah, it would be. It would be a sight to see, certainly. But, yeah, all you have to see to be disabused of the notion that, wow, Wemby would be an amazing pitcher is to look at this ceremonial first pitch he threw now, his work ethic, his desire to be great. If he had applied that to baseball pitching, then maybe, maybe he could have been great. Maybe he has the raw materials. But there are also some things that could have held him back there. But, yeah, it is wonderful just to see pictures of him in any other context, because in basketball, he already looks like an outlier, but he's so surrounded by giants that you don't get the full effect that you do when you see him in a civilian setting or on a baseball mound or something. And then, yeah, you think, whoa, wow. Anyway, Wemby, okay, and now I have a couple brewers topics to take us home here, and one will just be a fact and another will be a mystery that I hope that people can help me solve. So we got an email from Ted O. Patreon supporter who said, so I was looking at stats leaders, as one does the current major league wins leader pitcher wins, that is. Is Aaron Ashby of the Brewers a reliever? He is 9. 0 in 26 appearances over 36 innings. If he can make it to 20 wins, would he be the first pitcher who is primarily a reliever to do so? I certainly hope he does. Yeah. He's on pace to go 260 this season, which would be pretty impressive. And I think the relief record, the true reliever wins record, it's. It's Roy Face, the late Roy Face for the Pirates in 1959 and he won 18 games and that was really something to do it in this day and age though I, I think would be particularly impressive. We just lost Roy face at age 97 this past February. I was sorry to see him go, but yeah, in, in 1959 he was 18 and 1, but back then, now he pitched 57 games which is something you might see today. But he threw 93 and a third innings so you probably wouldn't see that. Certainly with a guy who's in 57 games, I think we should see that. I think there's room for that. Maybe. Carmen Majinski I was just gonna say, yeah, the new Roy Face for the Pirates. Just following in his footsteps and have multi inning outings and rack up wins. You could get more pitcher wins out of the bullpen maybe than you did starting these days, Carmen. It's possible. But it is pretty wild that Aaron Ashby has gone 9 0. He is leading the majors in pitcher wins. He is ahead of Chris Sale and Davis Martin and Gavin Williams and he's done it now. Yeah, 26 games, 36 innings and he's been quite effective, obviously. 2 ERA, 2.19 FIP, good strikeout rate, all the rest. But this is quite improbable. There's just lots of in the right place at the right time and vulture wins and whatever. He did start one game I guess probably as an opener, but to get nine wins, yeah, that is, that is really something. And Cartman Bijinski, I think the Pirates have, have won eight of his 11 starts or games. He, he has, he has led to wins in most of his outings for the Pirates, but he's no Aaron Ashby when it comes to the pristine win loss record. I love it.
- [61:27]
B
That's pretty, that's pretty impressive.
- [61:29]
A
This is why I still kind of enjoy that we have wins and losses and that they're measured the same way because we've entertained questions about well, should they change how you define a win? And guys aren't going as deep into games. So maybe they should lower the threshold. You shouldn't have to go five or maybe if you just throw the most innings in the game or something. And I get that, but I think a it doesn't matter that much because no one really pays attention to pitcher wins anymore unless it's some fun statistical quirk or curiosity like Aaron Ashby. And also in that vein, I think it's nice to have the consistency over time.
- [62:09]
B
I agree.
- [62:10]
A
Yeah, because if we just change the baseline and change the bar, it's good if only to be able to track differences in pitcher usage and guys not getting as many wins. Now. It would be totally skewed if you just sort of redefined the stat to conform to the modern pitcher usage model. I guess you could have a modern win and still report the old traditional win. But I don't know. I don't care enough. But, but Aaron Ashby, he's never had more than five wins in a season like last season. He was similarly effective and he pitched 43 games, 66⅔ innings. But he went 5 and 2 that year and now 9. 0. It's not like he's had some incredible knack for picking up wins in the past. So I'm sure this won't continue. But it's pretty fun while it's happening.
- [63:01]
B
It's a funny thing. I don't. I think as long as you don't make too much of it that it, it doesn't tell you nothing. And the year over year comparison is. Is interesting and kind of fun if only to highlight the limitations of the stat. Right. But I like that we maintain a consistency to it, even if our understanding of its impact, importance or sort of how much weight we place on it when trying to evaluate the quality of a guy changes appropriately over time as we learn more about the game. I don't know. I like that.
- [63:35]
A
Yeah, me too. He's pitched or entered in every inning from the 5th through the 10th. Well, he also started that one game so he's been just a roving reliever and. And they put him in and. And I guess he's a good luck charm if nothing else for the Brewers. He's a a pretty effective reliever and has been for a while. But this is something else. So we will be on Aaron Ashby wins watch from now on and probably he won't have any more now that we have brought this up. It'll be a reverse jinx or. No, this is just a jinx. The Tatis was a reverse jinx this will be a reverse. Reverse jinx, which is just a jinx,
- [64:14]
B
but just a jinx.
- [64:16]
A
Yeah, I'm sure the brewers will keep winning, and that is the question that I bring to you here. I I have something that I will probably be writing and doing further reporting on. So consider this a first draft and a first crack at the topic. And I'm. I'm claiming it. I'm licking this topic, so it's got my germs all over it.
- [64:38]
B
The cupcake is yours.
- [64:39]
A
Yes, but this is about brewers clutchness and whether they have solved clutch, whether they have figured something out that enables them to hit well with runners in scoring position. And I was thinking of this because the other day Joshean had an edition of his newsletter, joshean.com and he was talking about teams that were and weren't doing well with runners in scoring position and how the Cubs were having trouble in that department. And Joe wrote, hitting and leveraged spots isn't a skill. Over and above hitting, no players and certainly no teams have an ability to map their performance 2 situations. However, performance with runners in scoring position, especially in close games, goes a long way toward winning a baseball game or toward winning baseball games. And then mentioned the brewers, Padres and A's. All surprising us to one degree or another are 2, 3, 4 when it comes to overachieving with runners in scoring position. The Red Sox, Giants and Royals, all disappointments, are at the other end of the scale. So this has been sabermetric orthodoxy for a long time, and it's typically true. I don't disagree with Joe's larger takeaway here. However, I'm starting to wonder whether the brewers are the exception to the Certainly no teams have an ability to map their performance to situations because they are really raking with runners in scoring position this year, and it is far from the first time that they have done this. They have shown a capacity to do this year in and year out for several seasons now. So this year the brewers are hitting.284, 381, 438. That's an.819 OPS with runners in scoring position and they have the highest tops plus in that situation of any team. So that's just looking at their OPS in that situation versus their OPS overall, and they've been 38% better with runners in scoring position. So that's a 1:38 tops plus and that is leading the majors. And then you have the Diamondbacks next and the Twins and the Padres and the Phillies, et cetera. Okay, if this were Just one year. It would be noteworthy. It would help explain why the brewers are once again doing so well and surpassing expectations and projections and scoring more than you might expect given their overall offensive abilities, because they're not a great hitting team. They're 19 in WRC plus, they have a 97 WRC plus and yet they have punched above their weight. Their 268 runs scored, their 11th in run scored. So they have scored more runs than you would expect given their overall offensive inputs, because they have timed and sequenced their production well. And they keep doing this because when I read that passage from Joe, I flashed back to an episode that you weren't on. I think you were in the mountains. Because it was the end of the year and Hannah Kaiser was filling in. This was the very end of 2024. It was episode 2263 and we were doing the stories we missed for the National League and we got a question about brewers runners in scoring position, production. And Ryan Nelson did a little mini stat blast at the time and found that the brewers had the best tops plus over a three year span of any team ever. And yeah, Hannah was, was captivated by this and she was thinking, oh, someone has to write about this. The brewers have figured out clutch, this must be a real thing. And I was similarly intrigued. But I thought, okay, well, three years, maybe even that's not sufficient. Well now they're doing it again. Last year also they were above average in that situation. And so I asked Ryan to run these numbers again. And the brewers now have the highest tops plus ever over a three year span, over a five year span and over a seven year span.
- [68:53]
B
Wow.
- [68:53]
A
Yeah. So this is unparalleled. No other team has ever hit this well with runners in scoring position relative to their overall production over such a long time. So it was the 22 to 24 brewers are on top of the three year spans and also other Brewer spans during this time are toward the top of the list. And then the five year spans, it's 2020 to 2024, the brewers are on top with a tops plus of 120.20.9 over those five seasons. Over the three season span, it's 122.3. And now over the seven season span, 2020 to 2026, it's 119.8 and that's the highest by quite a lot. The Brooklyn from 1916 to 1922, they're the number two team in tops plus over a seven season span and they were at 116.2 so a 3.6 point tops plus gap between the brewers and the number two team, which might not sound like that much, but it actually is a lot when it comes to this.
- [69:59]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [70:00]
A
Because the, the difference between the brewers at number one and those Brooklyn teams at number two, even though it's only a few points, it's like the difference between the second place team and the 65th place team or something. You know, it's a big, big gap as these things go. So they've been doing this for a really long time. And what Joe said is typically true, that there's no consistency here. Ryan looked at the year to year correlation of runners in scoring position, tops plus, and found that there isn't one. It's a correlation of.04. It's nothing. Basically, it's negligible. So if a team is good or bad at that in a given year, it doesn't really tell us anything in general about whether they'll be good at that the following year or whether they were good at that the previous year. And I've seen some other studies about this where they just divide a single season into two. And even then, there's often no correlation between how a team hits with runners in scoring position in half of the year and how it hits in the second half of the year. And so Ryan and I were wondering, is this just a fluke? Is this statistically significant? How improbable is this? Is this just. Well, you have enough teams and enough seasons, sooner or later somebody's bound to do this. So Ryan said, if you fit a normal distribution on the seven year span data, the 2020-2026 brewers are 4.2 standard deviations above the mean, which would imply something like a 1 in 50,000 chance that this is random and not an underlying trend of some sort. But he says normal distributions can get a bit unreliable or skewed in the tails. So I found a metric called the Gumbel distribution. It's G U, M, B, E L. The Gumbel distribution. Not. Not Bryant Gumbel, not Greg Gumbel. I don't think it's named after them. Yeah, but the Gumbel distribution, okay, which I was not familiar with. And. And I guess Ryan wasn't either. Maybe, but seems like a useful tool here. So the Gumbel distribution, rather than answering, how likely is it that the brewers would have a 119.8 tops plus over that 7 season span? Instead answers, how likely is it that the best seven year span of all time would be that extreme?
- [72:21]
B
Okay.
- [72:22]
A
And so he says, if we run that metric, it tells us that there is a 0.78% chance that the most extreme streak would be this extreme if it were all truly random. So we can say with a very high degree of certainty that something they are doing is affecting their runners in scoring position, tops plus, whether it be their personnel, their strategy or something else. And people have, have written about their runners in scoring position success in individual seasons. But I don't know that anyone has written really connected it over multiple seasons, even the way that I did back on that long ago episode. And I did ask, you know, one thing Ryan noticed is that tops plus with runners in scoring position has, has increased a bit over time. Like the league hits a bit better relative to its, its overall production with runners in scoring position now than it used to for whatever reason. And so I asked do we need to account for that? Is it just that the league hits better with runners in scoring position these days, so that makes the brewers look more significant? And Ryan said he's basically like a tops plus plus where multiple levels of adjustment here. And Ryan said that it doesn't make that much difference. So the, the overall average with runners in scoring position, the average tops plus back to 1910 is 106. Over the past seven seasons it's 108. So a couple points. But their 119.8 is still really significant and their competitors aren't in that range. And if you apply the old gumble to this, the gumball distribution famously. Yeah. And account for just the last seven years, then it's still 1.68%. So it's, it's really, it's not that much less unlikely though there's sample size issues there. So. And I guess you have to account for the fact that this seven season span does encompass 2020 which was a 60 game season, and this season which is also roughly a 60 game season thus far. So that does decrease the sample, it's true. But they've been doing this long enough now that this appears to be repeatable for them. And I did ask Ryan about the longest stretches of consecutive seasons of being above average by any amount relative to the the league average. Tops plus. And this is not the longest streak. The longest streak is eight years. So it was Brooklyn from 1915 to 1922, the Yankees from 1958 to 1965 and the Phillies from 2008 to 2015. They all managed to be at least a hair above the league average Tops plus with runners in scoring position. But in most cases those were just small Differences like, they were a little bit better for a bunch of years in a row, whereas the brewers have been better a bunch of years in a row and by a lot in some of those years. So they are out on an island. They are a team unto themselves in this category.
- [75:31]
B
Did you guys look and see if there's any change to the sort of shape of their production in those circumstances versus in.
- [75:40]
A
Yes. Yes, I do have. Yeah.
- [75:42]
B
If what you're trying to discern is are they doing something right, like, do they have an approach in these circumstances that would account for their outsized production? That might be compelling. Although, you know, still. I'm still skeptical. But is it. Are they hitting the same way that they are in. In non men in scoring position situations?
- [76:06]
A
Yeah, I looked into that a little. I'd like to look into it more. And part of the reason that I'm.
- [76:11]
B
That's part of you licking the cupcake.
- [76:13]
A
Yes. And I'm. I'm bringing this up on the podcast because people might have good suggestions for things to look at or potential explanations here. But just to. To give people some sense, because I was curious about. Okay. How much of the brewers seeming to exceed expectations every year is attributable to this.
- [76:33]
B
Right.
- [76:34]
A
This quality. So I'm looking at 2020 to 2026, just because that's the year that the brewers started consistently, unfailingly hitting better with runners in scoring position. But you could have some other sample of seasons if you cared to. But. So over that 2020-2026 span, the brewers have exceeded their preseason depth charts projections by fan graphs by 47.4 wins, which is second most in baseball. First is the Dodgers, who have exceeded their projections, it seems like, by 70.3 wins. Now, in some cases, this is just. And Dan Siborski wrote about this last week, too, because he wrote a post about how the brewers keep making zips look bad, keep beating the zips projections.
- [77:27]
B
Yeah, it's his biggest mess consistently.
- [77:30]
A
Yeah. So. And these depth charts, this is zips plus steamer plus playing time projections from the Rustic Resource Crew. But he found that it's partly that the brewers just seem to do a really good job of recognizing when someone is better than they were projected to be and then giving them a lot of playing time. So that, yeah, maybe they're good at evaluating their guys or deviating from the plan. When someone exceeds at least public expectations, we don't know what their internal expectations are. But when someone is better than they were projected to be, the brewers seem to. To pivot to that player quickly. And as Dan also mentioned, it can be that teams that do well, they also tend to improve themselves by adding at the deadline. They tend to be buyers, and that's not something that projection systems account for. They don't model that, that, oh, if this team is this good, it'll probably get even better because they'll be adding at the deadline. And that applies to a lot of the teams that are on top here, like the Dodgers or, or the brewers, for that instance. Next are the Guardians, another team that has perennially beaten projections. And then the Mariners are next, the Rays, the Orioles. Anyway, the brewers are second. So if we say 47 or so wins, they have been better than the preseason projections. This tendency of theirs to hit better or to score more than their underlying offensive numbers would suggest has accounted for about 12 of those wins, near as I can figure. I looked at the base runs page at fan graphs, and it, it gives you kind of the deserved scoring versus the actual scoring. And then I also looked at Clay Davenport, Baseball Prospectus co founder. He has a website, clay davenport.com where he has adjusted scoring and adjusted standings. And so I looked at all of that, and basically, they have scored, According to Clay, 117 more runs than they, quote, unquote, should have, and according to base runs, 120 more runs than they should have. So those two measures are in, in close agreement. So roughly 12 wins if you do the 10 runs to a win, kind of shorthand. So they've exceeded expectations by about 47 wins. Roughly 12 of that comes from scoring more than they should have given their actual offensive stats. So not even the fact that, that some of their guys just turn out to be better than projected, which seems to be another knack that the brewers maybe have, too, is that they're good at player development and they can just, hey, give us Kyle Harrison, your prospect who has struggled. We will turn him into a good pitcher, that. That kind of thing. So it's not just one thing that they have done, obviously, to be good and to surpass expectations, but this is maybe, I don't know, a quarter of it. Something like that just seems to come from their clutchitude, the fact that they're just constantly hitting well in those big spots and only hitting well. They have not shown the same consistent knack for pitching well with runners in scoring position. So if they figured out clutch hitting, they haven't figured out clutch pitching or preventing clutch hitting. And I'll. I'll caveat. I'll stipulate that runners in Scoring position, it's a little different from say, high leverage. Often runners in scoring position situations are high leverage, but not always. You could have runners in scoring position situations in a blowout when you're winning or losing by a lot. And then, yeah, runners are in scoring position, but it's not actually high leverage. So I think they might be a little less outlying if you look just in terms of leverage, which is what the fan graphs clutch stat measures, for instance. So it depends how you define clutch, I guess, but by this one metric, they definitely have been singular in all of baseball history. Okay, so as to your question about what are they doing differently? So or.
- [81:33]
B
Or are they doing different or are they.
- [81:35]
A
Yeah, right. Yeah, so. So one thing I wanted to just see is the expected weighted on base different. Like, do the underlying inputs here suggest that they are actually hitting better with runners in scoring position or are they just somehow getting better results with the same kind of quality of contact? Right, and that's interesting. So by weighted on base average, just by Pure Old Woba with runners in scoring position, since 2020, they are second in baseball, the second best hitting team in baseball, with the runners in scoring position behind. Only the Dodgers have had a much more star studded lineup over that span. So The Dodgers have a 346Woba with runners in scoring position, and the brewers are number two at three. 38. Now if we look at runners not in scoring position, so you can do that split at savant. And I just, I checked runner not on second and runner not on third. The Dodgers are still first overall. So they have a. A333 Woba with runners in scoring position. So they're good all the time regardless of the situation. But The brewers are 21st, so they plummet all the way from second in baseball to with runners in scoring position to 21st with no runners in scoring position. So yeah, they go all the way from a.338 Woba to a 3.06 Woba. They're. They're sandwiched between the Rockies and the Angels in no non runners in scoring position woba. Whereas they're between the Dodgers and the Braves with runners in scoring position. So that's just another way of representing how clutch they have been.
- [83:14]
B
Yeah.
- [83:15]
A
However, when it comes to the expected weighted on base, this is pretty interesting. So with runners in scoring position, they are 8th in ex Woba, so that's 3. 24. And with runners not in scoring position, they're 19th at 3. 10. So that's a much smaller split.
- [83:37]
B
Yeah.
- [83:38]
A
Than, than the Weighted on base, the actual results, when you go to the expected, so they're 32 points better with runners in scoring position than without runners in scoring position, looking at the actual results. But when you look at the expected results, the difference is only 14 points. So it's still something, but it's much less pronounced, which is interesting, which, which you might think, okay, they're just getting a little lucky. Then it's, it's not as if they are just crushing the ball. They're just getting results as if they're crushing the ball, maybe. So that's. And it's, you know, a pretty big sample at this point too. So it's hard to just say small sample. But that does suggest that whatever they're doing is not fully being captured by the quality of contact or just expected weighted on base. So. So that's one thing to factor in here. And then I did look at some other things, so a lot of it does seem to be a Babbitt boost. Okay, they have a much higher BABIP with runners in scoring position. They have a 310babip over this seven season span, which is the best in baseball. And without runners in scoring position, same span, they are much worse. They're 21st with a 287 BABIP. So that, that accounts for a lot of the difference. It's a baby difference. And yeah, often we kind of default to oh, BABIP luck fluke. But that's not always the case when it's hitters in particular. Hitters, you know, they can kind of dictate their babip. They're governing that much more than pitchers do. And that can be sensitive to a difference in approach or something. So I looked at some other things. I looked at whiff rate, for instance, and there doesn't appear to be any difference. They're not whiffing more or less. So I was wondering, like, are they just, you know, shortening up or not swinging as hard or something? I haven't looked at swing speed stuff or swing metrics yet, and we don't even have them for, for this whole span. But the whiff rate is the same. I was wondering about maybe like pole percentage. Are they just like going the other way or something? Again, like staying within themselves, not trying to do too much, not trying to swing for the fences, I don't know. With runners in scoring position, they're 14th in pole rate. And with runners not in scoring position, they're 28th in poll rate. So that's maybe something the actual Numbers aren't that different. It's like 38.6 versus 37. But the, the league averages are a little different in that spot. So they do fall from 14th to 28th, which suggests that, yeah, maybe relative to the league, they're pulling the ball a little less and, and maybe they're just trying to not do too much, that kind of thing. But there's more that I could look into here, I'm sure. But there wasn't like a super obvious smoking gun. So it does suggest that whatever it is is not completely captured by woba X woba.
- [86:46]
B
Yeah.
- [86:47]
A
Which might mean that it's a fluke, it's luck, or might mean that there's just something that's not even being completely captured by that. But it's been going on long enough and has been pronounced enough that it does really make me start to think, even though my, my baseline, my prior is absolutely signal, not noise, and teams can't control this, the brewers are really making me question that in their case at this point. It's just, I thought it was noteworthy when I first mentioned this in late 2024, and now it's going on and it's even more demonstrated difference this year. Just drastic. So I don't know what, what do you think? Like, is this, is this something? Have the brewers cracked the clutch code?
- [87:33]
B
So, like part of the under projecting puzzle, one of the big pieces to that puzzle, as Dan noted when he wrote about this last week, is that they do seem to just self scout very, very well. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that a combination of their own self scouting and sort of a willingness to give playing time to guys who might not be as high profile as, as other dudes puts them in a spot where they are always maximizing the production of the guys that they have on their roster. And maybe they're identifying something about them when they're drafting them or trading for them that they know they can help to bring out the best in those guys through their player development. So I'm sure that's part of it too. But I know that like when, when other Ben has looked at this from a in terms of our projections, not just as it pertains to, to zips, but like what are we not really accounting for in our playoff odds, for instance, that might help to explain the success that they've had. Some of it is like the kinds of things that they tend to be good at. You know, good base running. Yes, I'm going to say like situational hitting generally, which is sort of what you're trying to get at, quality of depth, which speaks to Dan's partial explanation. Those are things that we tend to not be able to model particularly well or account for quite as well as maybe we should in the playoff odds and in the projections. So I wonder if the answer to your question sort of lies in that same direction. Right. That we're sort of. They are good at things that tend to lead to run scoring in those circumstances. Now, the counter to that is you can score runs hitting homers, famously.
- [89:33]
A
Yes.
- [89:34]
B
That's a good way to do it. And, you know, the power is kind of come and gone on that roster, depending on its exact composition, which does change a good bit. But, you know, maybe there's something to the approach that was part of why I was curious. Like, are they. Are they doing things. Are there hitters doing things differently in those circumstances that suggest they have identified? Like, this is the approach to hitting that yields the best return in those moments, or something like that? I'm skeptical of that. Because if. If it did. Well, why wouldn't you just do that?
- [90:09]
A
Yes.
- [90:10]
B
All the time.
- [90:11]
A
That's always the thing.
- [90:12]
B
Yeah, right. That's always the thing. So I'm fascinated. But I agree with you that it's like, it's a. It's a persistent enough trend to at least invite the question and require some amount of explanation. If what we're going to end up concluding is. And it's just kind of fluky thing, it's like, well, that's sure a sticky fluke, as it were, you know? So I. I think it's a worthy question. I can't really account for it. I don't have a good instinctive answer other than some combination of the things that they are doing that their hitters do well, showing some amount of resilience in those moments that gives them a little bit of a boost. And it would potential if that's the case. Right. If it's an approach thing that you have a bunch of, like, speedy little athletes on that team. There's a bunch of. You know, I know Caleb Durbin's gone, but is he, though, you know.
- [91:08]
A
Right.
- [91:08]
B
Like, spiritually, isn't he still a Brewer? Isn't he on the Brewers? Even if he's not on the brewers, if those things help to account for some portion of their success with runners in scoring position, well, it would make sense to me that that would work, you know, to some degree and maybe to an outsized degree relative to other teams in the regular season. And then we tend to see, although not always, their offense dry up when it comes to October. And part of that is they got a bunch of little speedy guys. But when the quality of pitching improves in the postseason, and defense.
- [91:41]
A
Yeah.
- [91:41]
B
And defense improves in the postseason, well, suddenly it's not that you can't score that way, but it's a lot. It's not necessarily as reliable as it once was. So I don't know, maybe. Maybe that's the thing, or maybe it's just a big trick. You know, it's a big trick that the baseball gods are playing on us, trying to identify some actual skill here. But, you know, they're. They're. They got a lot of smart people working for that team.
- [92:05]
A
Yeah. And that's the thing. I guess part of it is just, oh, because it's the brewers, it seems more likely that they have figured something out than if it were just some other team that is not known to be, quote, unquote, smart or progressive or populated with former raise executives, you know, so that lends it a little credence. And of course, that could maybe mislead you because you're overly inclined to think, ooh, they. They have the one weird trick they figured out. Clutch.
- [92:31]
B
Yeah. They know what's what. Yeah.
- [92:32]
A
But another way of putting it is, is with no runners in scoring position, their WOBA is 4 points lower than their expected WOBA. But with runners in scoring position, their WOBA is 14 points higher than their expected WOBA. So they don't seem to have the same knack to outperform their WOBA in other spots, but in this spot, they have. And so, yes, that is always what it comes down to. Well, if you could do it at that time, why wouldn't you just always do it? And I guess the only answers would be, one, there's, like, something that you can only do sparingly, like, I don't know, you have to go Super Saiyan or something like, you just. You have to power up and so you can do it. You have to pick your spots, otherwise you would burn out. And so they just reserve it for this one time because if it were just, I don't know, swinging harder or something, you could imagine, okay, well, you can't swing that hard always because there'd be fatigue or injury, and so they just save it for these moments, maybe. But other than that, it's hard to come up with an answer or it's something unique about that situation and maybe about how your personnel conforms to that situation, that the conditions are more conducive to you producing in that spot for whatever reason, Then you start to think, well, what. What would that even be? What would that look like? You could imagine, okay, it's like maybe with a runner on first, the first baseman's holding that runner on, and there's a hole opened up or something, and you could be really good at just aiming for that hole in the infield, or there's something. Right. But, like, with runners in scoring position, with a runner on second or third, it's a whole jumble of spots. It's just as long as someone is at least on second, then I don't necessarily know, except for one thing, and that's sign stealing. Right. Legal sign stealing, to be clear, not accusing the brewers of anything nefarious here.
- [94:28]
B
Yeah, doing a bigger. We're doing a different kind of show than I thought we were doing.
- [94:32]
A
But could it be related to the brewers being adept at picking up signs when they have a runner at second or something and relaying that to the batter? I'm not saying they are. I have no proof that that's the case. It's just I'm trying to figure out, well, what's different about this situation that they've been so much better in? And one thing is that sometimes you can pick up the signs and relay them. And to be clear, they have exactly the same WOBO with runners in scoring position at home and on the road.
- [95:02]
B
Sure.
- [95:02]
A
Just over this span. So it's not like they've done this only in Milwaukee, which might lead you to think, oh, it's an Astros situation. It's a banging scheme. It's cameras, whatever it is, they have excelled equally on the road, as at home with runners in scoring position. And. And in fact, because typically there's a home field advantage, I think they have the. The best WOBA in baseball on the road with runners in scoring position over this span. So could it be signed stuff? And this is relevant maybe to the Abner Reba incident from last week, because Uribe's explanation, which does actually seem to be backed up by the facts, is that he was upset. He was extra ostentatious here because Cardinals manager Ali Marmal was warning the brewers about relaying signs, and he did seem to be doing this. And. And there was video of Marmel seeming to gesture to his ribs as if
- [96:03]
B
to say, yeah, someone's gonna wear one if you guys don't stop this.
- [96:07]
A
Yes. And when he was asked about that after the game, initially he said, I'd rather not blow anything out of Proportion, I think it already has been, to be quite honest with you. But he was asked to about it more, and he said, I've got no issues telling you the full story, but I just think, like anything these days, it gets blown up. This is like an everyday occurrence. We felt like the brewers were being pretty demonstrative about relaying signs from the dugout. And so Marmil said, I looked over and I said, hey, you got to do it. Be smart. You're going to get somebody hurt, while pointing to his ribs, like, what we trying to do here? That was it. He said there was also an incident involving an unnamed brewers coach before the game concerning the sign relaying issue. And that same coach in Marmal spoke after the game, according to Marmal, who said he hadn't talked to Pat Murphy. So Marmal said the issue is settled now. I think, frankly, it's still for Marmal to signal, I'm gonna plunk you on purpose is not great. I think if anyone should be fined or suspended, it's him. Maybe. I mean, maybe both. But. But him. If he's basically saying, knock it off or we're gonna.
- [97:14]
B
Yeah, we're gonna get you, that's.
- [97:15]
A
That's a threat. I. You know, I understand that science dealing, since time immemorial, it's just been policed by the players. You know, this kind of legal science dealing, I get it, and. And the hit by pitches, that's part of how players enforce these norms and codes and unwritten rules and everything. But the fact that Marmo was worked up about that, and I don't know exactly how he thought that the signs were being relayed exactly from the dugout. I don't know if he means like a runner relaying it to the dugout and then to the batter, or whether he was just saying, I guess he was suggesting that a coach or coaches were just picking this up and relaying it from the dugout. So I don't know if it even needs. Needs to be necessarily a runner standing on second and picking up the signals sort of thing. But, you know, there's been a little smoke and. And suggestions around the brewers and sign stealing, and people have wondered about specific instances. So it could be, I suppose, that they are very good at this. But then again, even if they were, why would that show up in the WoBA, but not the expected WoBA, right? Because if it was that they know which pitches are coming and thus they are dialed in on that pitch, then wouldn't it just be that they hit the ball harder and they. Right, don't swing when they shouldn't swing or whatever. And, and so that would just be reflected in the underlying performance as well. So I don't know how to, to square those things. But, yeah, I'm just laying it all out there. I have submitted interview requests for various brewers players and coaches, and we'll see if I'm able to talk to any of them. And. But I'm, I'm soliciting inputs, hypotheses.
- [98:56]
B
Yeah.
- [98:57]
A
Anything that might occur to people to suggest why or how this is happening. Because I'm, I'm fascinated by it because the brewers, they. They keep beating expectations every year and they keep defying gravity when it comes to hitting with runners in scoring position, and it's been going on long enough and pronounced enough that I am starting to suspect that they're onto something here.
- [99:22]
B
Yeah, I don't know. We'll see.
- [99:25]
A
I guess we will see. So, yeah, please send me your. Your analysis, send me your. Your questions. And thank you also to Patreon supporter Ryan Top, who I think was the first back in 2024 to suggest this on a. As a topic and prompted the initial stat blast about how the brewers. Because Ryan's a Brewers fan and had noticed that the brewers consistently were hitting with runners in scoring position better than at other times. And that was what prompted me and Ryan to look into this initially and to follow up on it.
- [99:59]
B
Now, I also do not want to suggest any sort of rule violating behavior here, but it would be very funny if there were some underlying scandal and it was a fan of the team that started the inquiry that exposed it. Like, no, I should never have asked that question. Yeah, I don't care how they're scoring. I'm just glad that they are.
- [100:19]
A
Yeah, there have been all sorts of scandals or suspected scandals of. Yeah, man in white. Just the, like, you know, where the Blue Jays doing something at Rogers center or just. Yeah, and all this stuff. It's rarely actually substantiated, but obviously we know sign stealing, legal or otherwise, has been a, a constant since the beginning of. Of baseball, so.
- [100:43]
B
That's right.
- [100:43]
A
All just hyper vigilant about this in the post banging scheme era. Anyway. All right, well, I look forward to people writing in to flesh this out in any way that they can. And I will do some additional digging. But yeah, my, my spidey sense has been triggered. My hackles have been raised. Not hackles, I guess. But yeah, my awareness has been heightened
- [101:07]
B
by this for sure.
- [101:09]
A
I am quite curious. Curious. Yeah.
- [101:10]
B
There you go.
- [101:11]
A
Did you see that? Tim Healey, writing for the Boston Globe. Evidently there are people in the Red Sox organization who think that Craig Breslow should have an interpreter that, oh my God, like a Obama anchor interpreter, anger, translator, sort of. But for Breslo, kind of like, I guess the Mariners have done with Jerry and Justin Hollander in recent years, maybe, where it's like, let's have someone else speak for us. But according to Tim, multiple officials within the organization believe that Breslo might benefit from having an interpreter of sorts. And over the past month, he's made a concerted effort to have more conversations with players and clubhouse level personnel to tell them that he cares about them and winning and he's there to support them. But yeah, evidently there are people who think that he's leaned way more into his Yale self than his player self, in the words of Healy, which that seems to be undoubtedly true. I mean, we've talked about this, the business speak and the gobbledygook and the word salad and the buzzwords that he deploys just habitually. And it's weird because he is a former player and you'd think that if he wanted to, he could at least speak passable clubhouse, and he just hasn't, at least to the media. So maybe there are situations like the Mariners perhaps, where when an executive keeps putting their foot in their mouth that it might be better to have a different spokesperson for them. It's not. It's not ideal because that's supposed to be part of the job.
- [102:42]
B
Yeah.
- [102:43]
A
But when they prove less than adept at that part of the job, then maybe you do have to find a different messenger who's less likely to be shot.
- [102:52]
B
I do think that, you know, if I want to be sympathetic to the end instinct, I do think that communicating both internally, which I think is honestly, to the extent that it is a failure, the bigger failure and the bigger problem for both Breslow and the Red Sox. Right. But to the extent that being able to communicate with the media is part of the PO BO's job, which I think it is, I can imagine there being parts of that communication thread and obligation that you, that you might excel at, while you're sort of deficient in other ways. So maybe there are things that you look around and say, well, you know, he's really good at talking about whatever pitching development or whatever it is. But when we are having to get into some of the nitty gritty of roster construction, we're mindful, at least for now, that there have been some issues in the past. And I think when we talked about Breslow and you know, some of the comments that he made subsequent to the Devers deal that didn't even really relate to the Devers deal. He's in this danger zone now where it's like people are and we do this with Jerry and I'm hardly immune to the instinct. So, you know, I don't mean to like throw stones or anything, but you get used to interpreting everything that the guy says through this sort of like suspicious tech babble. Guy. This gets my hackles up. I don't like the way that this washes over me and you can, I think, get in, in trouble and you know, like everything when you're, you know, a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right? So maybe pulling him back from some of the areas where it has caused issues in the past and letting him focus on sort of the, the, the particulars of the players themselves and how they're, you know, shaping their repertoires or whatever, maybe that's a, maybe that's the solution. Oh my God. The Eagles finally traded A.J. brown. Wow.
- [104:55]
A
All right. Well, the Pirates reinstated Carmen Majinski from the restricted list on Monday. He did some damage control in an interview with MLB.com I want to do what's best to help us win baseball games, he said. He did say, of course I want to start and we'll always want that. But winning games takes precedence. So our short local not exactly nightmare is over. Update On a stat I relayed just last Week on episode 2483, I noted that on May 23rd, the White Sox scored nine runs on five hits and all five of those hits came in the fourth inning, which was the second most runs in a game by a team that got all of its hits in one inning. It was a record. In a nine plus inning game, they were the only team to score nine plus runs runs in a nine plus inning game in the modern era with all of their runs and hits coming in the same inning. However, on September 11, 2021, the Blue Jays had all 11 of their runs and hits in the seventh inning. But it was a seven inning game, the second game of a doubleheader. Well, we can wipe all of that away because the Yankees, barely more than a week after the White Sox said we can top that. And on Sunday they scored 13 runs on 11 hits. And all of those hits came in the third inning. All the runs too. So new high score. Most runs in a game by a team that got all of its hits in one inning. We did get a question from listener Kenny about whether the Yankees set another record because in that third inning they had 12 plate appearances before an out was recorded. But that was not unprecedented. Per Sarah Langs and Elias Sports Bureau, the first 12 Yankees batters reaching safely was tied for the most consecutive batters to reach safely to start an inning before the first out. In the end, Expansion Era 61 on the Red Sox did it May 7, 2009 in the sixth inning. The Royals did it Aug. 2, 1986 in the seventh inning. So there have been so many seasons, so many teams, so many games, so many innings that many improbable events have occurred previously. But that Sunday Yankees game was one of one. In another respect, you can be one of fortunately, more than one people who have decided to support this 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 themselves access to some perks. And here are five listeners who have done so Todd Nicholas, Lamp or Lampa or Lampy, Daniel Hardy, Joran Elias and Teddy Wong. Thanks to all of you, Patreon perks include access to monthly bonus episodes we just published one Sunday night. We riffed on a number of topics which some of our supporters seem to enjoy. You also get a full third regular episode of of each week, plus exclusive live streams, membership in our Discord group, shout outs at the end of episodes, potential podcast appearances, prioritized email answers, personalized messages, fan graphs, memberships and 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 podcastangraphts.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 effectively wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at R Effectivelywild and you can check the show notes in the podcast, posted fan graphs or Patreon or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with another episode soon. Talk to you a little later this week.
- [108:14]
B
I seen baseball used to fit me and the colony semi erotically Stack Blast pass and better for free. Three new episodes for us each week. Effectively Wild Wild Effectively.