Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the Indians (again), the AL Cy Young race, Jacoby Ellsbury’s new record, the 2018 MLB schedule (and the possibility of a pitch clock), and Shohei Otani’s impending availability. Then they answer listener emails about Mookie Betts, what constitutes the “heart of the order,” ERA hypotheticals, the hot corner, sign-stealing vs. pitch-tipping, and more.

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Episode 767
Matt Olson was absent from most or every top-10 prospect list for Oakland entering the season. This year, however, he’s recorded nearly two wins for the A’s in fewer than 200 plate appearances. Similarly, Philadelphia’s Rhys Hoskins and the Yankees’ Aaron Judge have defied all reasonable expectations with the bat. How is it possible that all three players — and others like them — have so thoroughly transcended their future-value estimates? Managing editor Dave Cameron does less to answer that question than raise it over and over.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 43 min play time.)

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My sense is that the fly-ball revolution isn’t something I even need to explain. You know the argument, you know the theory, and you know about some of the most successful cases. Ground balls are mostly unhelpful, right? So why not…not…hit ground balls? Francisco Lindor has attempted to stop hitting ground balls. He’s doubled his home-run total, from 15 to 30. Good luck finding someone who scouted him in the minors who thought he’d hit for that kind of pop.

Yet, largely, the fly-ball revolution’s very existence feels anecdotal. One can’t help but notice the league-wide numbers, and how little they’ve shifted. Compared to last year, this year’s average ground-ball rate is down half a percentage point. The league has hit 44% ground balls. A decade ago, the league hit 44% ground balls. Who cares? Is anything actually going on?

It is. It’s just a little bit hidden. Thanks to the wonders of Statcast, we can see where the league has been actively changing.

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A veteran scout once described baseball to me as a “big man’s game.” When you spend some time in clubhouses, particularly around starting pitchers, that certainly seems to be an indisputable fact. Many starters are beginning to resemble tight ends or wing types in basketball.

But there are always exceptions. There are always outliers. And those cases are particularly interesting, at least to this author, because they represent instances in which a player has weathered whatever selection bias exists and found his own path to the pinnacle of the sport.

Zach Davies is an outlier.

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Episode 766
Tim Wu argues in his book The Attention Merchants that “capturing and reselling attention has been the basic model for a large number of modern businesses.” This idea of attention is relevant to the game of baseball. Will the use of radar tracking systems allows scouts to divert more attention to the field? How do the increased responsibilities of the beat reporter remove his or her attention from the game itself? Also discussed: innovation. What if it weren’t allowed, if clubs were permitted no competitive advantages? Travis Sawchik doesn’t care for the idea. He is, nevertheless, the guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 12 min play time.)

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While we at FanGraphs have tried to supply you with plenty of Indians-related content during their historic torrid streak — Cleveland matched the 2002 Oakland A’s for the American League record with a 20th straight win Monday night — it seems like the club’s run might be failing to receive the recognition, nationally, that it’s due.

Perhaps one reason is Major League Baseball’s criteria for what constitutes a “winning streak.” The 1916 New York Giants are credited with baseball’s longest winning streak, at 26 games. But that Giants club didn’t actually win 26 consecutive games. Over a 27-game span in September of that year, they sandwiched a 12- and 14-game winning streak around a tie.

A 26-game winning streak? Fake news!

To this author, it’s nonsensical that a “winning streak” would not feature an actual, uninterrupted, consecutive series of wins. A better way to characterize the Giants’ feat would to define it as baseball’s record non-losing streak. The “real” mark ought to belong to the 1935 Cubs, who won 21 straight and whose achievement Cleveland has the opportunity to match this afternoon against the Tigers.

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You wouldn’t believe what the Angels have had to deal with on the mound. I know that you wouldn’t believe it, because I’ve had trouble believing it, and I look at this stuff every day. The Angels aren’t the only team in baseball that’s had to work around pitcher injury and ineffectiveness, but their staff has been left in relative tatters, and still they’re pushing to advance to the playoffs. Now, when you’re thinking about the Angels, you have to think about Mike Trout, and he’s been very obviously the best player on the team. Andrelton Simmons, too, has had an outstanding five-odd months. But teams need to have some manner of pitching. The Angels have had to find ways to survive.

It’s the rotation that’s been depleted in particular. As I write this, the Angels rotation ranks 28th in baseball in WAR, with only the White Sox and Reds down below them. Out of curiosity, I pulled up every single individual team-season since 1950. For every team in every season, I identified the starting pitcher with the highest WAR. The Angels’ starter with the highest WAR this year stands at 1.2. That currently has the Angels ranked third from the bottom, in terms of having the worst best starter. And I should say, while there are a few weeks left to play out, that guy at 1.2 is done for the season. So if a pitcher will surpass 1.2, it’ll have to be somebody else. The 1983 Padres rank lowest, among teams that finished at least .500. Their best starter had a WAR of 1.6.

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The Shohei Ohtani show has unofficially begun. After missing over a month with a thigh issue, Ohtani returned to the mound two weeks ago, with scouts from half of the Major League teams reportedly in attendance. For his start on Tuesday night, both Andrew Friedman and Jerry Dipoto were known to be in the stands to watch in person, a start in which Ohtani was clocked at 101 mph and allowed just one hit over 5.2 innings. And after that start, reports from Japan have begun to suggest that there’s an agreement in place for Nippon to post Ohtani this winter, clearing him to come to the Majors for the 2018 season.

Yahoo’s Jeff Passan has a good breakdown of the situation.

It isn’t about the money. Athletes reflexively say this, and sports fans roll their eyes, because of course it’s about the money. It’s always about the money. Then along comes Shohei Ohtani, 23 years old, the finest baseball player Japan has produced in years, maybe decades, a once-in-a-generation sort who can throw 102 mph and hit tape-measure home runs, a player whose free-market value would start at $200 million if Major League Baseball didn’t restrict the signings of international players under 25 to barely $10 million.

Only Ohtani, it seems, does not mind the prospect of giving up literally hundreds of millions of dollars to play in the greatest league in the world. Multiple reports out of Japan on Wednesday morning there said the same thing: Ohtani, who has been called the Japanese Babe Ruth, will enter the posting system this winter and play for a major league team in 2018. This came as no surprise to the general managers and scouts who have flocked in recent weeks to watch him pitch for the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters. It also didn’t lessen their excitement any.

“It’s really happening,” one GM said, half-mocking, half-giddy at the prospect of the 23-year-old spicing up the free agent market this winter. And fascinating as his courtship would be in normal circumstances, the prospect of the best player available signing one of the most piddling contracts makes it unlike any free agency sports has seen: One where it literally isn’t about the money.

Because last year’s CBA raised the age of international prospects covered by the bonus-pool system to 25, Ohtani isn’t eligible for true unrestricted free agency for two more years. Rather than wait that long — and as a pitcher, two more years of good health is no guarantee — Ohtani will reportedly be posted this winter and then sign under the same rules by which 16-year-olds are bound. He’ll receive a signing bonus of some size (up to about $10 million) depending on which club he ultimately joins and then sign a standard uniform player contract that binds him to the arbitration system until he accrues six years of service time.

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