On the 10th anniversary of Effectively Wild’s first episode, Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley kick off a week-long celebration by reflecting on the milestone, then (6:40) bring on producer Dylan Higgins and listener Chris Hanel for a round of Effectively Wild trivia and fun facts. After that (41:49), they dig into the podcast archive for a highlight reel of favorite moments from Effectively Wild’s past, narrated by broadcaster Jason Benetti, which is followed by a Past Blast from 1877 (2:21:48) and a collection of listener-submitted audio tributes to the show (2:27:43).

Audio intro: Travis, “Anniversary”
Audio interstitial 1: Mark Eitzel, “The Last Ten Years”
Audio interstitial 2: Tennis, “10 Minutes 10 Years”
Audio outro: Al Stewart, “Anniversary”

Link to EW trivia spreadsheet
Link to Chris’s scorebug Twitter account
Link to @NoContextEWPod
Link to Facebook post about the EW wiki
Link to “How to Help” wiki page
Link to EW podcast archive
Link to EW competitions/drafts sheet
Link to listener emails database
Link to 10th anniversary shirt
Link to all shirts
Link to playlists and music/episode info
Link to clips reel order
Link to clips reel files
Link to Richard Hershberger’s Strike Four
Link to 1877 story source 1
Link to 1877 story source 2
Link to listener tribute clips

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Here is a mock draft compiled using a combination of industry rumors, deductive reasoning, and pattern recognition of teams’ past behavior. I go down to pick 40 so that I get to touch on every team at least once, but there is only verbiage explaining why I’ve mocked a player to a team for the first round. If you’d like to learn more about the players mentioned here, head over to The Board for rankings and scouting reports. I’ll be chatting live during the draft this evening at 4 PT/7 ET. In the event that I learn pertinent info in the middle of the day, I’ll have a mock of just names up shortly before the draft. Read the rest of this entry »

Robert Hassell III hasn’t experienced much adversity in his young career. Since being drafted eighth overall by the San Diego Padres in 2020 out of a Tennessee high school, the 20-year-old outfielder has climbed to No. 42 on our Top 100 Prospects list while logging 134 wRC+. Last night he was in the starting lineup for the National League in the All-Star Futures Game.

He’s shown that he’s well-equipped to handle adversity when it does occur. The sweet-swinging Nashville-area native went through a cold stretch in May, and just as he was emerging from it, he contracted COVID. That learning experience is what Hassell chose to share when I sat down with him in late June to ask about his season to date.

“I had a 3-for-30 stretch — something like that — which I hadn’t had in pro ball, or really anywhere,” said Hassell, who has spent the season with the High-A Fort Wayne TinCaps. “Playing every day you’ve got to be able to make immediate adjustments, and it took me awhile to get going again. Basically, I had to begin simplifying things, which is something I continue to do.”

Mature beyond his years, the third-ranked prospect in the Padres system agreed when I suggested that a slump doesn’t necessarily mean that changes are in order.

“That can be an adjustment itself, realizing that you don’t need to change anything,” said Hassell, who was featured in our Talks Hitting series in April. “At least not mechanically. It’s about knowing who you are, and like I said, keeping things simple. Looking back at video, it might be, ‘There is is no real difference between that guy and what I’m doing now.’ That’s why I’m big on the mental part of the game. Read the rest of this entry »

With Meg Rowley on the road, Ben Lindbergh does an almost-all-interview episode featuring the authors of four new baseball books: First (3:22), Howard Bryant on Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original; second (42:45), Jeff Fletcher on Sho-Time: The Inside Story of Shohei Ohtani and the Greatest Baseball Season Ever Played; third (1:19:36), Mark Armour and Daniel Levitt on Intentional Balk: Baseball’s Thin Line Between Innovation and Cheating; and fourth (1:58:38), Paul Oyer on An Economist Goes to the Game: How to Throw Away $580 Million and Other Surprising Insights From the Economics of Sports, followed (2:32:42) by a Past Blast from 1876.

Audio intro: Drive-By Truckers, “Dancin’ Ricky”
Audio interstitial 1: Sir Douglas Quintet, “Revolutionary Ways”
Audio interstitial 2: Franz Ferdinand, “Cheating on You”
Audio interstitial 3: Dan Bern, “Economy”
Audio interstitial 4: Feist, “Past in Present”
Audio outro: Kelley Stoltz, “Read it in Books”

Link to Rickey
Link to Howard’s website
Link to Sho-Time
Link to Jeff’s website
Link to Ohtani’s Garcia impression
Link to Ohtani’s bat CPR
Link to Ben on Ohtani’s origin story
Link to Intentional Balk
Link to Mark’s website
Link to Daniel’s website
Link to EW sign-stealing episode
Link to Ben on overrated cheating
Link to An Economist Goes to the Game
Link to Paul’s website
Link to Richard Hershberger’s Strike Four
Link to vaccination story source
Link to 1876 story source
Link to Facebook post about the EW wiki
Link to “How to Help” wiki page

 Sponsor Us on Patreon
Subscribe to Stathead (Code: WILD20)
 Facebook Group
 Twitter Account
 EW Subreddit
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Get Our Merch!
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

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2:02	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to my final chat of the first half of the 2022 season. Bear with me for a bit as i finish a late lunch…

2:02	Jay Jaffe: some housekeeping: Just before the news that he had been cleared to ramp up his swings, I published this about Fernando Tatis Jr and the slumping Padres https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fernando-tatis-jr-remains-in-limbo-as-padr…. The article has since been revised to reflect the news

2:04

Jay Jaffe: I spent the rest of this week doing an unofficial series on some interesting All-Star selections: Sandy Alcantara https://blogs.fangraphs.com/sandy-alcantara-is-the-games-hardest-worki… Willson and William Contreras https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-rare-all-star-brother-act-for-willson-an… Byron Buxton https://blogs.fangraphs.com/byron-buxton-is-finally-an-all-star/

2:04	Jay Jaffe: and Martín Pérez https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-second-act-in-texas-has-made-martin-pere…

2:05	Jay Jaffe: OK, on with the show…

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Note: This article was published shortly before a San Diego radio station reported that general manager A.J. Preller said that Fernando Tatis Jr. has finally been cleared to begin his hitting progression.

A 23-year-old star shortstop walks into a doctor’s office and… well, we don’t exactly know what happens next, at least in the case of Fernando Tatis Jr. On Monday, Tatis had his left wrist examined by the surgeon who repaired the fracture he sustained during the offseason, but the Padres did not announce a timetable for his return, because while he had been cleared to resume nearly all baseball-related activity, doctors had yet to allow him to swing a bat at full intensity. That holding pattern lasted until Friday morning, shortly after this article was originally published, when general manager A.J. Preller revealed that Tatis was finally cleared to take hacks. The green light comes with team in the midst of a four-week skid after briefly supplanting the Dodgers atop the NL West.

All the uncertainty has been par for the course, as the entire saga of Tatis’s wrist injury is rather murky. In early December, shortly after the lockout began, he was reportedly involved in a motorcycle accident in the Dominican Republic, via which he sustained “minor scrapes.” He apparently did not begin feeling the effects of the injury until he began taking swings in mid-February in preparation for spring training. On March 14, with the lockout finally over, the team announced that x-rays revealed he had suffered a fracture; when asked about the motorcycle accident at the time, the shortstop responded, “Which one?” and acknowledged “a couple incidents” without further specificity. Tatis underwent surgery to repair his scaphoid bone on March 16, at which time general manager A.J. Preller estimated a three-month recovery and a mid-June return.

That timetable proved to be too optimistic. As of early May, Tatis was running and taking grounders, but on June 14, Preller told reporters, “Another MRI scan continues to show healing, but it was not quite at the level for … a full green light.” In other words, he had not been cleared to hit, though he was able to play catch at full intensity. Eight days later, he was able to swing “at 40% intensity” for what acting manager Ryan Christenson called “a systems check” (manager Bob Melvin was in COVID-19 protocol at the time). After a visit to doctors on June 28, Tatis said he expected to be taking swings in two weeks, but he did not get the expected green light in Monday’s follow-up.

Via the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Kevin Acee, the delay reflected the team exercising caution because there had not been a full consensus from among the doctors the Padres were consulting on whether Tatis has healed enough to begin swings:

Multiple people insist Tatis has had no setbacks.
As stated in previous tweet, team is being extremely cautious. As is often the case in these situations, doctors differ on opinions re: what is "enough" healing.
Tatis could begin swing progression by the weekend.

— Kevin Acee (@sdutKevinAcee) July 14, 2022

The hope that Tatis would finally be cleared at some point this weekend has now been realized. The expectation is that his “progression from dry swings to swinging against live pitching is expected to take about 10 days,” after which Tatis will go on a rehab assignment whose length of time will be dictated by how comfortable he feels and how quickly he gets up to speed. Thus, even with Friday’s announcement, it sounds like he won’t be back until the end of this month or early in August. Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball is a dynamic sport. Sure, it’s static plenty of the time — there’s a lot of spitting, scratching, and adjusting between pitches — but wait for a ball in play, and everyone on the field moves as though jolted by electricity. Fielders rearrange themselves based on the path of the ball. Baserunners charge, pause, and retreat according to a set of rules they know by heart. The batter tears out of the box — or jogs, or strolls, as the case may be — before adjusting based on the flight of the ball and the action on the field.

That intricate burst of motion is thrilling. It explains why fans, players, and the league as a whole want more balls in play. Thanks to Statcast, it’s also measurable. More specifically, Statcast measures and publishes sprint speed, which you can think of as the average top speed a player achieves across all of their competitive runs.

Because it’s directly measuring what’s happening on the field, the sprint speed leaderboard mostly matches what our eyes see. The fastest player in baseball? That’d be Bobby Witt Jr., barely edging out Trea Turner for the top spot on the list. Muscle-and-hustle standouts Oneil Cruz and Tyler O’Neill are near the top. Three catchers (Yadier Molina, Martín Maldonado, and Yasmani Grandal) are tied for last. The board works!

On the other hand, maybe the board doesn’t work. An average of your competitive runs depends on what “competitive” means. Loaf on one of those, and you’re dragging your average down. Loaf on a run that just ticks over the border to uncompetitive, and it won’t count. Anytime you’re measuring a subset of all runs — an admirable goal, because comparing apples to apples is important — you’re opening yourself up to error due to the definition of that subset.
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In my opinion, the least interesting part of All-Star Week is the All-Star Game itself. The Home Run Derby has surpassed it in terms of energy, and the Celebrity Softball Game, which mashes together celebrities and former big leaguers, has more enjoyable silliness. The Futures Game is the week’s most normal actual game of baseball, and even if its players are less accomplished than the ones in the Midsummer Classic, it’s fun to get a glimpse of the future. You should pay attention to everyone in the game (full scouting reports and tool grades for the entire roster can be found on The Board), but as the ZiPS guy, I wanted to highlight eight players who have had huge breakouts in terms of their projections. Three of the eight made this year’s preseason ZiPS Top 100; next year, all of them figure to rank in the top 50.

Gunnar Henderson, 3B/SS, Baltimore Orioles

I’ve talked about Gunnar Henderson recently, but I’d be remiss if, in a piece talking about breakouts, I didn’t address the biggest one in ZiPS in 2022. Henderson fared quite well on the ZiPS Top 100 entering the season, but he’s gone on to absolutely terrorize the upper minors this season, propelling him higher in the rankings. Suppose I were to stuff Henderson’s projection into the preseason top 100. In that case, he’d now rank as the fourth-best prospect in baseball, with Bobby Witt Jr. just a hair ahead of him. Henderson’s improvements this year have been broad, from plate discipline to power, and at 21, he’s still on the young side for Double- and Triple-A. There’s still some uncertainty about his future home in the field, but the Orioles are wisely keeping their options over and aren’t pegging him or Jordan Westburg to definite positions yet. Read the rest of this entry »