Being thrown out of 2 straight games is a rare feat - Ep. 716 - 7.6.26

This week in baseball we're gonna talk about the All-Star Game rosters being announced. The Yankees are sinking, the Mets are falling deeper than the Yankees, the Rays are rising, and so are the Dodgers. Here we go.

It's Sunday. ⁓ the NBC Peacock had all the L B games today and they all played it and similar times. I it was it's a weird thing, right? 'Cause if you didn't know, you know, you you you you're like Where's where's my team? And by the way, d I didn't know, so I wouldn't have known that they're all playing and had to do with the World Cup or or what Day after fourth of July maybe. I have no idea. But what you got to hear just for what it's worth is ⁓

bunch of different announcers doing games that you don't normally hear. But Peacock doesn't have the baseball announcers that we're used to hearing. But a as a Met fan, and then as a Met fan, I guess I was a little spoiled because I tuned in and I was immediately like, That sounds like Todd Zeal, and it was Todd Zeal and Adam Otavino doing the game. But I think certainly having a

you know, if you want to be, you know, funny in your schmorgis board in a sense of a baseball games you can't pick from in one easy to access place. Right. That is pretty nice. It it would it was free, so you went to Peacock and you could watch any I think you would have an even easier time, like you almost could simulate a baseball red zone in a way. You could just move around games watching whatever the big moments in each of the games were in K at bats and that would be interesting. But I don't know, there's something to be said for watching the game just all the way through.

So and and speaking of watching the game, you know, I I mentioned that they ⁓ came up with the All-Star Game rosters and they named the reserves and and and I I don't know what it is, but because the fans vote in guys and and and there are guys in there that necessarily shouldn't be in there and there's I I I j it makes me care less ⁓ about what's going on. I I don't know what it is, but the the all-star game juice is is i is just less than it is every you know every year before it. The all-star game

will never feel like it used to because the players don't take it

The game itself. Right. You're never in because the game itself is no longer a highly competitive game in the way it used to be. Right. And that in that sense it's that's true. The players still want to win. They're still competing. It's not winning doesn't mean as much. Our league is better than yours. Right, right. The players are not going out there putting themselves on the line to try and win that b baseball game. But getting named to the All-Star team and totally matters. Maybe we'll we'll we'll do something about that when the All-Star game comes.

Up so have to talk about at that time. But I I think we talked about it this morning a little bit. So Vlad Guerrero Jr. was voted the starting first baseman in the American League. And what he did, which I I I I mean I'm really impressed by this, is he said, yeah, nah, I'm not having a good season, basically, and I'm not going to go to the all-star games. Right. He Thanks for the fans for voting me, but I'm gonna sit this one out. And now Nick Kurtz. He still gets credit for being an all-star game starter in his career, so he doesn't have to play in the game to have that happen. So at least he doesn't.

You know, like, well, you have it's like it never happened. Right, right. He still gets the right, right. It's a kind of a weird thing because he's like, he's not going to the all-star game, but you when it's an all-star. Yeah, he's an all-star this year. So when it is end of his career, he'll have an all-star nod for this season, which I'm sure he would probably prefer not to have because it doesn't look great. He's having a terrible year this year for him. So it's just it is interesting seeing how, yeah, an element of the fact that the fans do factor so heavily into the voting does make it kind of feel silly when guys that are not having objectively good years statistically can make.

You can't make the game count for anything. You want to give the fans something to do to participate in this process, and so that's a good reason not to have the game count for anything. Right. Because if you were actually trying to win, you'd have the players pick who should be the players representing their league, but there's no stakes. Right, there's no stakes, and I don't think we would want stakes in that way. Right, and we were all like this is not you get the seventh game in the World Series and your boy you get the extra home game in the world series if you win the all-star game. As a baseball fan, what you have to do is instead of looking this

says glass glas glass half empty. Like all of the you know, wow, our All Star game is nothing like it used to be. We used to be that. Look at it this way. You still have by far the most competitive All-Star game of all the major sports. Your All Star game actually resembles for All Star at least the Major League Baseball All Star game resembles a regular game of baseball. It is still ninety five percent of a normal baseball game. And the NBA All Star game isn't sixty percent of a normal basketball game. Per perhaps it's the

They don't even try with the Because, you know, Major League Baseball's, I think, are going to be coming up on the hundredth anniversary of the All-Star game if they played every single year, like around 1933. So 2033. That's not that long from now. So that that that will certainly make something happen. you know, I think when they had the hundredth anniversary celebration. ⁓ I mentioned you know, the Yankees sinking at this point, and they have played particularly bad and and just lost, and we're not doing injuries at the moment, but lost Carlos Rodon for fifteen days ⁓ going to the IR.

With an elbow problem, which he had before the season. and ⁓ the Rays, in turn, have done the opposite and have gone on a wild winning stream. Right, right. So just after last week, as we were talking about, the Yankees are ready to assert themselves, they go one and nine over their last ten. Rays are nine and one, and the Rays are right back on top of the ALE's. So, and and it looks like those two teams will, you know, ⁓ be the class of the league. Although run differential-wise, the Yankees still far outpace the Rays. Right. Expected win law says these teams should basically have reverse records. The Yankees.

Have

just found ways to lose games this year. And the Rays are a team that keeps finding ways to win games. And you know what? And they can hit. Right. They they're a good offensive team. And they're a good pitching team. And the and the Yankees, you know, we're hitting in A Aaron Judge's absence. He's and we mentioned he's not due back until August sometime, I guess. ⁓ but all of a sudden they forgot how to hit. and so now it seems like his loss is much deeper because, you know, like, okay, well, the other guys have stopped hitting. Where's Aaron Judge? Yeah, he's not coming back for another month and a half. He is the center fielder for the All-Star game.

I think it is interesting looking at runs allowed right now, like how many runs you've given up this year. Because I think if you're a team that's given up a lot of runs already.

You gotta be really concerned because traditionally pitching gets worse as the season goes on. So if you're really if your guys are already giving up lots of runs, like the Minnesota Twins have scored four hundred and forty eight runs. They've scored the most runs in the American League. The problem is they've given up four hundred and sixty-five runs, which is the second most in the A. And it's not like they didn't know that going into the season when they put the pitchers out there. You know, they they've got Joe Ryan, and which we think he's gonna be traded to the dead lineman. May maybe not. ⁓ aside from that, you know, their their pitching is is weak.

Their bullpen, they traded away their closer to the Phillies last year, Joan Duran, who has has ended up doing just fine. But in that central division, you know, you have you know, the White Sox hanging on the the ⁓ the guardians in there with them, and you just think as you said about the pitching going, yeah, whose pitching is gonna collapse first, you know, in that division. Probably the you know the the White Sox would be the key. Right, right. My assumption is that the wheels would fall off for the White Sox. Probably the best thing for them is that the Tigers and the Royals have.

Sort of fallen apart this year. Not sort of. Sort of. And you would guess the twins are 44 and 47, and I don't think that's going to keep holding up. And so the thing that you might benefit from is just getting to beat up on the rest of those teams and the rest of an otherwise relatively weak American league. That that might be able to kind of buoy you when you would have what would normally be a sort of second half fade for a team like this. And the White Sox have been doing this without Murakami, obviously, who's been on the IL for a while, but I noticed today that Colson.

Montgomery, who's a second year player for I think he's got the most home runs in major league baseball over the past hundred fifty five games ex aside for Kyle Schwarber, ⁓ and I think Shohei. So he's got he's got like forty, you know, five home runs or something like that. Right, playing shortstop. ⁓ You'd love him if he had his average up a little bit because he's hitting two twenty-five right now. But he's still got twenty three homers hitting him for at out of the shortstop position, which is why.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, he's he's been ⁓ he's got forty three homers in a hundred and fifty five games, yeah, since his call up a year ago in July. So's talking Colson Montgomery? We are right, right. And it he and he looks like he might do that over a hundred and sixty two came pace, not only the first hundred and sixty-two games, but then this season as well. He's got twenty-three right now. He could very easily hit forty plus this season. And as much as the Mariners, you know, kind of have a clear path to that division, the Rangers actually showed up and played decent enough baseball to now have it be the two of them at the top.

That looks like a division that somebody's gonna back into like like or go on a win streak and just put it away. The American League, when you look at it right now, does not look very good. But if you had to put everybody knows that right, everybody knows that. But if you were a betting person, what I would be looking at is which one of these teams is gonna go like 60 and 22 in the second half? In the American League? So somebody will. Somebody some team always does. Doesn't it feel like every year there's some team out there that has some unbelievable second half record? They play amazingly well, considering how

This year, though, it's really hard to see that for me. But I I gotta think one of these one of these teams is gonna go wild over this the second half, especially after the all-star break. And maybe it's not 60 and 22, but they go ⁓ 50 and 25 or something. You know, it's still really good. They're 25 games over 500, and now all of a sudden the Mariners are now looking like that would be the team I guess if I had to pick because did you you how many home runs Cal Raleigh has this year? Like three? He's got eight. Come on. Yeah, he's got he hit sixty last year.

Right,

right. Eight home runs. We all knew a regression of some short was gone. That's a crap. That's the short Right, right. And this was something we talked about when we were looking at this team. Is like, okay, last year you were helped out so much as a team by the fact that he did hit sixty for you when he took a step back this year and re like even if he hit thirty, where were you gonna make you lost Eugene or Suarez, where were you gonna make up all of these home runs? J. Rod's only got ten now. You you are getting fourteen. he's got fourteen now. ⁓ you are getting a really good

Year from Randy O Rosarena. I think you you didn't He's got nine homers, right? But but not from a power standpoint. But he's I mean you got three guys on their team that have hit fourteen homers this year. You've only got four guys that have ten home runs. They they've hit not a ton of them as a team. Yeah, and and they've got you know you know, so they've they've got the pitching. Bryce Miller has you know eight starts this year, but he's been unbelievable now. So I think his whip is zero point six six in his eight starts. So now that he's back and he started the season injured. ⁓ I just feel like the Mariners have the best chance to put it together.

Raleigh will be at least better than he's been to this point in the second half, even if he's not thirty home runs or something like that in the second half. ⁓ and and the Rangers, you know, I don't know. They

It just doesn't feel like they're they're they're going to be able to sustain anything at this point. But there's a lot of good players on that team. I keep looking at them that way. Part of that is due to a variety of reasons. Where is Roman Anthony, by the way? Is he playing he's played thirty games this year? Yeah, he's played thirty that's and you know, this was He's hitting two thirty. ⁓

With a home run. And he is their, you know, 21-year-old or 22-year-old, you know, gigantic contract. And I think he'll live up to it, but man, is it taking a long time for that to happen? And they, as you mentioned on a prior podcast, they relied way too much on him sort of bringing bringing ⁓ Devers, you know, ⁓ departure, you know, to a nothing thing for the Red Sox. And and that hasn't happened. Right, right. Well, that was something I was saying before this. And look at the look at this. Jaron Duran, who was Mr. Forgotten before this season, you know, he's helped you out because he's

He's

giving you 12 homers. He's sitting a 193, but he's got 12 homers. He's on the trade block and he would have been more viable as a trade piece a year ago. Right, right. Because now teams are looking at him going, do I really want a set left fielder that's going to hit sub 200 with 104 strikeouts already? Yeah. So and and and 254 on base. But I mean, the Red Sox themselves are in a whole big thing this week with Wilson Contreras and ⁓

Well, he had a c a couple of things happen, you know. He he he got he got you know, th thrown out of a game ⁓ and and ⁓ for basically what I was saying, I'm to mention with the order of the two games that it happened in. Well the first was he was ejected on Monday because he struck out in first base umpire Nick Lentz. ⁓ he tapped his helmet mimicking the gesture and the umpire threw him out for disrespect. Then the next day, ⁓ Kate Gavalli decided to open his mouth and Wilson Contreras rightfully objected to that.

Well he objected to it. So what happened was he he he ⁓ basically told Wilson Construirs, sit down boy, and everybody heard this. And Wilson Contreras is kind of looking at him and incredulously going, Are you talking to me? ⁓ and then threw his helmet, and that's what Contreras, so of course it made this is my story of the week. Okay. It it made me think, okay, so he got thrown out in consecutive games. That can't have happened very often in major league baseball history, because that's the way my mind works. So I go in and I do some research, and I'm gonna write about this. So I won't I won't I'll just do a a quick one on this.

So there's thirty thirty-five guys since eighteen ninety seven that have been thrown out twice ⁓ in in the major leagues. But what then I noticed the weird thing about this, okay, from eighteen ninety seven to nineteen forty three, a guy named Billy Jurgis got thrown out twice. It didn't happen again for thirty-nine years until nineteen eighty two, and it's happened another seventeen times since. So this is weird time where nobody got thrown out twice. ⁓

So and and Enus Cabell was the guy who got it doing, and I remember watching Enos Cabell play, and he got it started again in 1982 by getting thrown out of both games of a doubleheader. So two for one day, you know, and you gotta be I gotta believe something like that. And I had to look this up. Like like Cabell got thrown out the first game and the umpire behind the plate, and he didn't even get to bat in that game. He said something, and now you're out of here. Right, right. Like probably from the dugout before the game started. So and and there's no other sport like that I think that I can think of like like that would get, you know, you wouldn't you remember guys being thrown out twice in a row and all the basket.

No one would care. That probably has happened, but probably Rashid Wallace has been three games in a row. I am sure guys have been thrown out multiple games in a row. The NFL guys don't get thrown out very much. And ⁓ you have to you have to try a lot harder to get thrown out in the NFL. You have to kind of generally like do something. So yeah, that that was that was that was my story of the week is how many guys have been thrown out? Now you know, 35 in Major League history, and that is that.

How about you? What's your story of the week? Well, my story of the week was something that I was looking at because we we talk about it all the time with like with our pitches and like what makes a changeup really good. Because now when you see everybody, they're all throwing these split finger changeups to get these crazy drops on them, right? But there was actually somebody that did a really interesting bit of research that was looking at this year the the with percentage on your changeup based on whether the velocity gap

or the extra d or the drop rate of the percentage. And basically how much you whiff on the pitch has nothing to do with the drop rate.

It is just a flat like they d balls that have a lot of drop rate have some guys whiff a lot, some that whiff a lot, you know, they drop a ton. And it doesn't really So it's the timing of the it's the speed. Right. You can see a direct correlation that the more v of a velocity gap between your changeup and your fastball, the more of a whiff percentage you're getting. So there there is a clear thing when you're looking at this, when you look at what is making a change up. Now, there's obviously when you s it's kind of interesting that when you get towards the extreme end of it, so you're talking 14 to 16 miles an hour.

There's not actually a lot of guys in this orange. No, you need to have it be closer, right? You don't want it to be that far apart. There's only four, five pitchers that are in this range. Four of them are the low are below average. They are below average on the whiff percentage. They're all under 30%. One guy who is about 14 miles an hour is the single highest whiff percentage in the major leagues, over 65%.

Wow, who is that? I don't know, unfortunately. The r the research did not give me who that one guy was. So so to clarify, you know, basically if you throw a fastball at ninety-five, right, your changeup is is probably most, you know, effective in the eighty eight range, eighty seven, in in that your eight off of the fastball. The best pitchers. Four two is a big number. The best pitchers on average are between six and ten. Okay. There you go.

So fourteen is like a number that normally would allow the batter the opportunity to adjust because it's such a difference, you know, believe in that that he can do that. No, I th I'm talking about like major league baseball hitters not other humans. And this did require a and just so that if people were curious, it did require a more than a hundred and fifty changeups thrown. Okay. So you had enough of them. Right. There had to be enough of these thrones. It wasn't like just one guy threw like a couple of them and that's how he got them. He to throw a number of them. The other the other story I saw this week, and I don't know if you read about it, was about ⁓

The baseball's flying further in June in particular. ⁓ you know, which just closed we're here in in in July. So they they claimed that they the production run had some ⁓ oil in the baseball yarn that made the baseballs a little yellow and a bunch of the and they they they passed them through and and basically balls were flying somewhere between six and eight feet further in June ⁓ than they had in other measured months. So this is back to two thousand and nineteen home run pace is what happened in the So that little

difference in how the ball was made. Now the baseball thing as it always does, we that a production error, you know. I mean we didn't try to do that. And I actually don't believe baseball's good enough. This is my thing is like every and they were trying to juice the baseballs. I don't think they're good enough to be able to just dial it up or down a little bit like that. Not the mid season. Not mid season. I a hundred percent believe that they could between seasons look at the ball and make alterations to it just 'cause they can look at how it's made scientifically and change how they're doing it. It's arguable.

Right. But I don't think that would be something they could change mid season production sw stream. Like I don't think they're that good and I think you're right at that respect. Check out the article in the athletic because it is interesting and it'll be interesting to see if this is sustainable for the rest of the season because you know I think baseball is still about, you know, home runs and and I've seen plenty of pitchers, you know, ⁓ in June look hit have a ball get hit and look at it and go, That that went out. You know, so ⁓ maybe the you know, six to eight feet is is a big difference. ⁓ right. And I think I think you gotta keep it in there. Baseball

Is a game ultimately about scoring runs. That that is what you are trying to do. And all of the statistics and all of the analytics that we look at are generally in an effort of trying to answer the question of what is the best way to score the most amount of runs, and what is the best way to prevent the most amount of runs. And that's why you've seen baseball of all from a sport where, yeah, a guy that hits 300 but only hits singles would have been once considered a good hitter. Now people

People would look at him with scorn yeah, as saying that's not a good header because a guy that hits two fifty but hits forty home runs is much, much more valuable. I saw read an article about Otis Nixon. I don't know if you remember

Anyway, he's a he was a speed player ⁓ and wasn't wasn't a hitter, had a career ops of like, you know, I don't know, ninety-one or something like this. But but the guy stole five hundred bases. So it's really hard to see we evaluate so much neighbours on their ops, and that this guy was never gonna have an ops because he'd hit no power, you know, and so he couldn't so the and he was not a great on bass guy, but he could steal bases. And that doesn't help you in ops. No, it it is interesting. Like I wish there was a way for that. We've talked

⁓

About that. So we have to remember when we think about ops that it isn't for er it isn't everything. You know, it tells you about the slug percentage, but it would be cool and we had the our you know our additional stats. That included steals and caught stealing percentage, so you could basically value the entire factor that in a little bit. You almost want to be like a runs created statistic because a guy that steals because it's like like people.

Would say with Soto sometimes, and like when we you see guys stealing bases, like, okay, yeah, he had five hundred steals, but what percentage of those five hundred steals were actually meaningful steals? Right, and and I think you would say what percentage of runs are scored on times that they steal bases more than they would have scored had he not stolen the bases. I would like I would love you know you'd love to adjust people's careers to be like, okay, what if we removed all garbage runs and stolen bases and home runs and stuff like that? Like, okay, in games where your team was up sixteen to three

And you were facing a non-standard pitcher, we're just not going to count those statistics. There are stats like that. But like I feel like if you looked at that, it would be interesting because then if you took a speed guy and you okay, yeah, we'll factor in your stolen bases, but we're taking out all the steals you got when you were up 10 0, the catcher just didn't throw. That's not counting. That's not a stolen base for you anymore. Well, they actually a lot of times they call that catcher's indifference. Right. They did not used to always count that catcher's indifference. You used to get free steals left and right. I don't think so. ⁓ let's just, you we don't we're not

gonna talk about the Mets ⁓ too much, but I think what's happened here because the Mets are so bad is I'm not watching as much baseball because the Mets aren't worth watching and we've got the World Cup going on right now. So it's it's a little easier. There's gonna come a point where the World Cup's gonna be over, you know, and and it's gonna be really rough. And and you know the the the Mets are just playing out the strings. So it's just it the the nice thing is I've got a lot more time in my hands because I don't have to watch the games anymore. I may kinda I follow it, I kinda know what's going on, but I'm okay if I'm not watching.

I'm not listening. It's okay. And it's it's too darn early in the baseball season for me to feel that. Usually it's like as a jet fan, I'm used to this, because as a jet fan, you usually hit this point by about like September. It's like, okay, it's week three. Yeah, this is where I expect to be. The Mets, I usually at least hope they usually keep me on the string until about August before they finally break my heart. This year they just took went for the knees in like May. So I'm I'm gonna work on I'm on here. My ⁓ my wife, Michelle, our producer is always talking about

Coming up with another team to root for. I tell her I can't do that. I can tell you one thing it won't be. It won't be the Yankees. I know who it should be.