Aaron Judge - is he injury prone? How about compared to Mike Trout? Ep. 712 6.8.2

Yankees and the Red Sox rem renew their rivalry. Not much juice in that. You know, who's going to make it at the end of the season besides the Atlanta Braves. It's this week in baseball.

The Dodgers might have something to say about that. Well, they don't have as big a lead as the Braves do, and and and the Braves ⁓ are virtually unbeatable ⁓ this year ⁓ on the road. ⁓ the Braves have a nine and a half game lead. The Dodgers only have an eight game lead. Well, there you go. I mean that's and and the Padres aren't doing really really much. I think they climbed into second place, but just barely ahead of Arizona at this point.

A and if we look at you know, just going week to week, last week we talked about how the athletics time atop the AL West would not last and here we are next week and they are in third. Yeah, and and the Mariners did not last a long the Mariners all of a sudden have a little space between them and despite some the fact that shockingly Julio Rodriguez has gone from the one of the top, you know, defensive outfielders in baseball to the worst rated defensive center fielder this year.

Yeah, and surprising to have a guy kind of just forget how to play defense. J Rod, as he's sometime called, is is is hitting a little better recently, but also didn't get off to a great start offensively. And and the the Mariners are doing all this without Cal Raleigh. That's gonna change because he's coming back soon. That is gonna change, but I still look at that team and even with Raleigh coming back, I kinda feel like there there's nothing different from last year. This the flaws that existed in that team last year are still largely in around

They did go pretty far last year. Right. And I guess that's how you have to look at it. If you're a Mariner fan and go, Okay, yeah, we were a series against a a crazily hot Blue Jay team that doesn't look like they're gonna be around in the same way this year. Why can't it be our turn this year? Right, right. And and and I would say that the Guardians, ⁓ I wouldn't say they're surprising me, but they are also playing well enough. ⁓ and and with the pursuer being right now the Chicago White Sox, who I I just can't

see the White Sox being there. It's a great story now. Right, but it's it's great for the Guardians to have that being your pursuer 'cause you're thinking, okay, am I really worried about them? Nah, not really. The best thing for the Guardians is that there's a decent chance come late July Tarek Skoobel is no longer in your division. And he's gonna come back and pitch for the Tigers, I think I know he's g doing a rehab start. He's coming back soon. Right, but there's there's a d decent chance that he has a couple proof of concept starts.

And then they're like, Yes, he is still Terek Scuble. Please give us everything we have for him before they shut him down again for precautions because the last thing they can afford is somehow those loose bodies in his elbow come out again and they have to shut him down a second time. Because God forbid, how much is how much would that cost him in compensation? Yeah.

It would be it would be like a C Well they except that, you know, it n and not until he signs the new contract. But you're in this weird position where you almost only want to pitch him enough to prove that he's still himself and then you don't want him to pitch anymore because if you're good if you're if you're Scott Boris. If you're Scott and if you're the Tigers and you're thinking about trading him. If the plan, if your Detroit's plan is to trade Terra Scouble, you almost you cannot afford for him to get hurt in the next month and a half. And the only reason that it's not a hundred percent that they would trade him is because

Like we said before, the the division itself, even with the Guardians playing well, you know, the Tigers could put together a hot streak and all of a sudden, you know, like look at this and saying, Hey, you know what, we do have a chance. So they they're they're not ready to do that just yet, but man. But ten and a half games back, their willingness to pull the trigger on that trade because it feels like it's even more a certainty that if he's gonna after the season he'd leave in free agent 'cause they've fallen apart in this fashion that hasn't just been hit. Not you can't blame them being

This far under five hundred on Terrace Google being out as well. I don't know who did the article in the Athletic last week saying, you know, which teams could use Terrax Google? Every one of them. Right. There's no team even the Dodgers would be like, Yes, we would like one place to produce. Yeah, we could use him. Hey, and you know, the ⁓ the every team. The Dodgers, you know. Yeah, we could you could use that guy, right? You know, he's I can say I was just saying that they would take him. So ⁓ anyway, and I and I mentioned in the A L East that the Yankees and the

Red Sox are playing this week and and and usually, you know, when you have a Yankee Red Sox series, it's a big deal. This is the quietest Yankee Red Sox series. We don't need four hour gains with the Yankees and the Redox fortunately due to the the pitch clock would and would end ⁓ that.

Right. And it's so it's like I I kinda wonder about that a little bit 'cause it's just like I don't think it also just it's hard to have a really impactful rivalry game and you know we could this is Met fans when we're playing the Phillies and Braves. When one of the teams and rivalry sucks that year. Well, and and of course the marquee players aren't there either, with Aaron Judge being out for the Yankees and Stanton still not being there. Yeah, you got Cody Bellinger and Jazz Chisholm, but that doesn't count. And even on the Red Sox side when you think about who's

playing for them this year, you know, Trevor Story being injured and and is he your biggest star? How much of a star is he? Right, at this point. So no more Raphael Devers, obviously. And so they got a bunch of, you know, good players who aren't getting it done this year o on the offensive side of the ball, but they're just not you know, there's just not that wow flair on the Red Sox either. So it kind of makes the whole series a little a little muted. And I was watching ⁓ Cam Schlitzer p pitch today for the Yankees and

He's amazing, amazingly good pitcher. But working hard and you know, the Red Sox were were making him, you know, throw a lot of pitches and fouling off a billion pitches and driving his pitch count up. And it was interesting to watch a young pitcher

Yeah, sort of make his way through. I don't know that he didn't have his best stop, but he was able unable to put the the hitters away for a good part of the game, even though he only gave up one run over, you know, it's five, six innings. Right, exactly. I mean how much trouble do they really give him? And that's just the pitcher like, Well, you he's throwing too pitches. I the Mets had Nolan McLean do that last night, you know. He had some difficulties like he gave up one run over six innings. Anytime my starting pitcher gives up one run over six innings, I'm happy.

For what we expect out of our hitters, but then simultaneously, what do we expect out of our pitchers? It's like, well, you can't have both. You can't expect your your starting lineup to hit 300 as a team as an average, hit home runs left, right, and center. Yeah, I can, but then your pitchers are also lockdown starters that never give up a run ever in any game. And it's like, okay, yeah, obviously I want that as a fan, but like you're not like other teams are gonna have good pitchers that are gonna do that too. They're gonna have good hitters that hit your pitchers.

So sometimes it's not necessarily like you doing bad that's the reason why you're doing bad. It could just be other teams doing well. But we never accept that. It's always like, No, we should just be yeah, we should just always be elite in every aspect of our game all of the time. So a couple of newsie items and I'll stay on the Red Sox because

watching Kyle Harrison pitch for the Brewers this year, he he's been amazing. I remember I picked him a couple of years ago to be rookie of the year and he didn't do anything near that and that with when he's with the Giants. ⁓ and so the he they sent him off to the Red Sox who cast him off and they got a couple of players back.

But you got Red Sox gotta be looking at Kyle Harrison going, What the heck did we do? Again. It feels like they've just whiffed on a bunch of their we'll not resign this guy c moves and they've just really regretted those. Another lefty ⁓ finally had his consecutive innings pitch, ⁓ scoreless innings, ⁓ capped at fifty point two innings, ⁓ fifty and two thirds.

⁓ that being ⁓ Christopher Sanchez of the Phillies. ⁓ and when he finally gave up a run, I it was in Philadelphia and the the fans gave him a standing ovation. Of course, he deserved it at that point. You gave him a run, yeah, you're human. So and he is obviously still a a major ⁓ contender for the Cy Young Award in the National League, which has a lot of guys that are are major contenders as we talked about in our last podcast.

And Yamamoto pitched a terrific game last night for the Dodgers and I hadn't even really included him. He started out the year okay and had a little bit of difficulty, but there's just a lot of a lot of good pictures. Mizarowski, Sanchez, Otani, Skeens will be in there purely off of name value, even though he's not put up the the the numbers. Yamamoto. So there's gonna be a lot of guys in that race this year. Mason Miller, I keep saying, you know, and might might have a chance. So ⁓ I also noticed that, you know, two guys who, you know, been around a while, that Miguel Vargas of the White Sox.

And Mauricio Dubon of the of the Atlanta Braves, who kind of came in because they had to have another guy and they, you know, use him as he was gonna be a utility player. He's hitting the ball out of the ballpark as is as a Vargas. And these guys are far outpacing what anybody could have imagined they do. Right. And you're and you're gonna get a couple of these guys every year that just have their year. And if we look through you know, you look through MLB history, you know, we just remember some of them more than others. But there's a lot of guys that have had a lot of years like this where it's just like, you know what?

It all went right for him now.

Well, and then and and a few couple of months doesn't make a season. So particularly with guys like that who don't have a history of of hitting the way that they're hitting right now. A streak and then it ends and it ends up. And Vargas is doing this now without you know having the benefit of Murakami in the lineup who is on the ⁓ injured list right now. So that puts a little bit more pressure on him for a team that is still well something like five games over five hundred, and you could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather that the White Sox would even sustain their good play for this year. Right, right. I mean would you be s would you have been stunned at the beginning of this?

season

that somebody would have told you, yeah, it's June seventh, Jordan Alvarez is on track to win the triple crown and the Astros have a worse record than the White Sox. Yeah, I think I think the former would be more believable than the latter. Right, but both of those are true. Yes, and they b they both are true. And yeah I I I look at Jordan every day and now that judges

Injured, right? That sort of takes him out of the ⁓ NVP data. And he's gonna be out for a long enough period of time where he's not gonna really have a shot to accumulate the stats to become NVP. So at this point it truly the only thing that'll hold Jordan back is how bad do the Asteras suck around him. Because there's a certain point where it's like, okay, you got the triple crown this year and your team still finished like fifteen games under five hundred.

I don't know. Do you still give that guy the MVP? We finally might have a really interesting discussion on what MVP means in that category. Well, that's right. When and when you think Bobby Witt Jr., you know, is is probably the the front runner for the MVP for a team that's going nowhere for Right, right. It's just an interesting to talk about. It's like, okay, at a certain point of how bad or would a team have to be before an individual performance, it wouldn't matter. The fact that you were that bad disqualifies you. Well, if you were in nineteen eighty seven Chicago Cups and you had Andre Dawson on your team, you would finish last and have

the MVP too. So it can happen. It can happen. our favorite guy to sort of the ⁓

crank on a bit here is PCA who yesterday had a ⁓ a a really good game ⁓ and he hit a home run to tie the game twice and then the Cubs won an extra innings ⁓ against the Cardinals and I read an interesting article on the Cardinals and their TARP ⁓ have you re have you read about this? No I've not the the the the TARP crew out in the outfield in sections one seven and one nine so the men take their shirts off and the women ⁓ yes but put men that have t-shirts on that look like a men's chest

And they are all going crazy out. And the Cardinals, who are the best fans in baseball, as we always have very much embraced this. They have embraced it. And I think that's the most interesting thing. Like, you know, you you think they might go all stodgy and you know, don't do that and kind of stuff. No, they they bought in, and I and I'm really glad ⁓ good to see that. It looks like it and really what it is at the end of the day is it's people having fun. That's what this is. And it's fun, and baseball needs to be fun. And when we talk about when we had our our

friend Rob Fitz on talking about Japanese baseball. Right. That's a thing that the Japanese baseball maybe has over the over American baseball. And it's just all in out just fun. Let's have a good time. It's still competitive. It's not savannah banana stuff here. Right, but it's just about let's just have some fun. And this is about, you know, getting you know, we all recognize we're showing up at the ba ballpark to have a good time here. So before we get to our stories of the week, ⁓ I guess we got a a couple of things to talk about in terms of the rookies race and ⁓ the American League. I I just took a took a

Jot down of the guys that are in competition for the AL rookie of the year. There's a lot. Right, right. I think it's interesting because the NL race is not that interesting because you've just got a well, you like four guys that are doing so well. It's just gonna be who sustains it. Whereas then the AL, you've got like eight different people that could win it because so many guys are having good seasons. Because you've got Kevin McGonagall, Trey. Who's my pick? Trey, Treya Savage, Cam Schlitzer, Peyton Toley, Murakami, Kazakomado, Chase Delauder. Like, and they're all playing for.

a lot of teams are good teams. Who do you give it to in this situation? I think it's gonna really come down to something like do the White Sox end up sneaking into the playoffs?

Yeah, and then you gotta give it to Murakami. Right. He's not a rookie. As you like to say. Well, I the same way would you really feel like you were gonna give Cam Schlitzer and Ya Savage pitched so much last year? Are they really rookies this year? Right, right. But if you're gonna do that then then Murakami and Akadama. Right, right, exactly. You you can't tell me by rules these guys, not these guys. You know, in the National League, you know.

You JJ Weatherhope was my pick, and he is still the front runner. And I think he will get it. If the Cardinals, especially, can have a a good year this year, he will get it purely off of the thing that nobody expected them to do anything this year. And the worst thing for a guy like McLean, who's having a solid year so far, is the Mets suck, so he's gonna get less credit than he should otherwise. Yeah, yeah, exactly. ⁓ the ⁓ the the other thing I noticed last week was an o was a story injury-wise that more than 50% of time.

That are under the age of 20. So half of all the surgeries, these guys aren't professionals, right? These are, you know, aspiring professionals, I assume, and all that kind of stuff. As we know, we've seen some even ⁓ preventative Tommy Johns surgery, like, let me get it over with so I can get that. Right. I think that's where we got us. And and it has to be the slider. There's nothing else I could point to that going, look, all of a sudden the slider becomes the dominant wipeout pitch in baseball, and Tommy Johns proverbially and literally start exploding everywhere, essentially.

And that now guys are getting it. 50% of the Tommy John surgeries on are on basically high schoolers. Probably is the slider, because at some point we were all like, that's okay to throw in comparison to the curveball. We don't want the kids throwing curveballs too early because it's bad for your arm. But we'll let them throw the slider and now this is what we have. And you know, and the Brewish Jacob Bizerowski, you know, he's throwing pitches. I think he threw in 103.7 miles an hour this week, the fastest. Well, I am kind of curious because was he the one that hit somebody yesterday?

No I don't I had a pitch yesterday, so he though Josh Naylor got hit in the head yesterday but it wasn't by Mizorowski. Yeah. Who was it?

Anyway, Mizarrowski hit Tyler Freeman in the head with a ninety-eight mile an hour fastball yesterday. And then they tried to take him out and he was refusing to come out after that because he was definitely a little like after. Like the next pitch you threw was like, wow, that is not normally how hard he throws. But you take all of those guys, right? You take Mizarowski, you take Skeens, these hard throwers and all that stuff. And I I kind of just feel like, well, when's it gonna happen? Right.

When are they gonna go up my arm hurts and all that. It it's it's it's like a ticking time bomb, you know, that you have a guy in there and he's he's pumping it like that and you hope can we get him through the season? Can we get him through the playoffs before something happens? Because these guys are stressing out so much that you know, the harder they throw the more the more likely that eventually they're gonna have a problem. Eventually right. And we're worried about it on the other side too. How long is it until some batted ball back at the pitcher hurts some guy and we lose some guy for longer than we should or in even worse way.

And we're like, okay, now what do we do? Yeah, yeah. Did you see the play b with Max Muncie of the Dodgers running the first base and Il Demargo Vargas? Or they just slay him like so. Yeah, he basically runs to the base, does Vargas, he feels the ball. Muncey's running down there, and they both arrive at the f at first base of the same pain and they crash into each other like Keystone Cops goes to stop. Yeah, and then and they go bait. They both left the had I think they both left the game. I know I know Muncie did, and he's now gonna go in the IL, I think. Right, right. And that's the problem with the

And so having that extra base like they do in in in college and we've been watching fair amount or I have been watching a fair amount of ⁓ college baseball in the World Series for both the softball and the baseball. I I love that. I think I I can't see how that doesn't make baseball better than if it can help alleviate a collision like that where both guys are you know gonna suffering. ⁓ I'm all for it. And all I can hope is that Nelson who was pitching, I think it was Ryan Nelson pitching for ⁓ the Diamondbacks at the time, he better buy Eldolarbo Vargas a couple steak dinners 'cause part of the

yeah, you're gonna hear about him. So ⁓ all right, I think ⁓ let's let's get to our stories of the week. So so do you wanna you want me to do my story? Sure, why don't you do that? So how often this season, ⁓ as a Met fan, have you watched our New York Mets play an afternoon ball game? How often have you seen it gun well?

⁓ I I I haven't really been cataloging 'cause the answer I I went to an afternoon game and they won. Right. One of the rare times apparently, because it's really interesting looking at the early day. Right. Early slate records this season. So these are the teams that have played games starting before three PM this season. And what's really interesting is that on average, if you play lots of games early, you're not doing so great in them. So the teams that have played more games early actually have worse records in a lot of them. Like the best record in early games of the Dodgers who have only played thirty

They've by far played the least early games. They're nine and four in them. The worst record in in them is the Kansas City Royals who have played 19 early games. They're four and fifteen. But that's only and it's only a difference of six, right? So I'm surprised that it's that small a difference. Right, right. But that's a 692 winning percentage down all the way to a 211 winning percentage. And you see like teams like the R Royals, the Blue Jays, the Mets, the Twins, the Rockies. So obviously, yes, bad teams are going to perform badly, but the fact that they're all

have like a f almost a four hundred or lower winning percentage in afternoon games is just really interesting that the bad teams seem to specifically struggle more there than in other places. I guess you have to have two bad teams play each other in the early afternoon and see who's who's right and that could come on. Right. And that could be as much as is as anything else. Like the Mets are seven and eleven. So th they're not bad you know it's not that bad. But that's probably better than their percentage for the season. Right at this point right when you look at but if you thought about that you do that over course of the whole season you're not very good. That's about how they play actually so and actually

Actually, not that surprising when you think about it. The three eighty-nine winning percentage. Woof. So that's interesting. So my ⁓ you know, and and there we're a few we're forty percent through the season. I saw a couple of you know I mentioned the Braves being so so good on the road, like historically good, ⁓ and they're obviously have a great record themselves, and how great Tampa Bay is at home. So Tampa Bay, who didn't play in their ballpark last year, they played a Steinbrenner Field, ⁓ has just crushed everybody at their twenty one and nine at home right now. So how interesting. And that's you that's at a almost not counting the game.

Not a historic pace, but winning two out of three games at home is is very is up there, yes. So so my story of the week, and I started thinking about Aaron Judge and I posted this week after he he came up injured was is Aaron Judge injury prone? And and I don't know why I I it's it it struck me, it just seems like well he's he's had some injuries and and then I started thinking, okay, so if you had to compare Aaron Judge ⁓ to this point in his career, eleven seasons in the majors, and Mike Trout over the first

first

eleven seasons of his career, ⁓ you know, who who was more injured? And and I I thought Judge rivaled Trout, ⁓ and really it's Trout's more recent injuries that have you know that that have hurt him. But Trout ha played through his first eleven seasons ⁓

1288 games and Judge played twelve hundred and four. So that's pretty close, you know, with all that. And their so their stats through the 11 seasons are pretty comparable. Judge with a 64 B war and Trout with a 75 B war, so better. Judge has more homers and RBIs. Trout has a h more stolen bases, ⁓ a higher batting average and a higher on base average. And and Judge slugs more and all that. So I I was thinking, okay, so now you've got so now and and here's the thing about the two of those guys, right? ⁓ Judge is as entering his 11.

That's weird. Right. He feels like he's been around for so much longer.

Right. That that's a five years there. Wow. And a big five years, right? So so in terms of his all time stats and all that stuff, you know. That really could affect him. I I think it could and and I and now I I I don't think anybody well, somebody will always argue, but both of those guys are Hall of Famers. I d I think if they didn't even play any more right now, they'd both be Hall of Famers. ⁓ Trout's injuries have really taken place over the more recent injuries all they stole from him was not his Hall of Fame career. They stole his greatest of all to ever play the game. His all time great

Right, right. He was going to put up the war in statistics of the guy that might have been the ever to wear a pit wear a baseball uniform. And now he's just going to be one of the best center fielders we've seen. And so I I I charted that Judge over his first eleven seasons, he he played ⁓ 76.7% of all of his team's available games, meaning out of 162. And Trout ⁓ was 70.3% or something like that. So that's not a huge difference, but it is 10% difference. And and that's how Judge was able to put up so many some counting.

So at this point I I I'd say you know judge to me is in better shape to stay healthier than I feel that Trout is going forward, both of them being age thirty four. What do you think? definitely. He's he's had more sustained good play recently. Trout is at the point now where we're asking questions like what is he in his career? Whereas with Judge we're asking, when is he gonna get back? We need to see him hit. And and you know when it comes to injury, I remember when Nimmo came up to the Mets and early in his career he had a few injuries and they're like, was this guy injury prone? Right? He kinda had that knock in and it turned out not to be true. Right sometimes

Did have some injuries early in his career. Right. Some guys just have it. Is Corey Seeger injury prone? Yeah, maybe. I think when you have one of those guys that has like a yearly more than two-week trip to the I. Because every guy's going to probably get banged up at some point in the season and miss like a week or two here. Even like the healthiest of players for the most part have.

But like the guys that seem to have the IL injury where they're like, yeah, there's that scheduled month he misses every season. It's kind of hard not to call them injury prone. And when when Judge is both the captain and and by far their best player, I I I'd have to say you even you feel his loss of out of the lineup even a little more than a great player like Seeger. yeah. Right. So you really the Yankees Yankees team is built to run off of Aaron Judge, so his loss in any lineup is uniquely impactful. And the Yankees are sh gonna shuffle the deck, they're gonna try to

get Jason Dominguez back up to the majors. He's in rehab starts right now down in in the minors. ⁓ and because they really want to leave Corey Bellinger out in Cody Bellinger out in left field where he is the best left fielder, I believe, in baseball by outs above at this point. So and such is a really quietly excellent player, Cody Bellinger, who in the shadow of Aaron Judge probably is exactly what allows him to excel the most where everything isn't focused on him. You know, as it might have been had he stayed

In Chicago, I think he would still be the guy there. Yes, he would be the one that's that it's all about him at that point. You come to the Yankees, and that isn't the case. And the other thing that I that I noticed ⁓ is that this season the major league hitters are hitting 243, which is way down there by batting average, and among the lowest that will ever have been if the season finishes this way. So the same problems we've been having for the the past few years are still kind of there. Still kind of there.