Diamondbacks, Baseball, Zach Allen discussed on Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast

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Think it would be bad. I'm just trying to imagine, oh my God. Oh, I'm like sweating. Tried to play themselves into better playoff position in an ultimately played themselves out of playoff position. I just think that you never, you never want to employ a strategy where someone can look back in hindsight and be like they were too cute. You don't try to be cute. 'cause you might be too cute. And then right. Yeah. Yeah. Having a fit. Yeah. I think that also like baseball is less susceptible to tanking, at least the type that should be a is susceptible to for a few reasons like when it's just not as advantageous to get a high draft pick and MLB as it is in other leagues. But also, I think it's like harder to lose. It's purpose. Yeah. Once you've assembled your team, you can assemble a non competitive team, but it's harder to say, okay, given the players we have on hand, we're going to reduce our odds of winning today because you have a bigger team in their more players and what are you going to do like your entire lineup? NBA, you can sit like one star and significantly impair your odds, but in baseball, as we know, like having one or two superstars doesn't make you a great team and being down to start two doesn't make you a terrible team, so there's only so much you can do realistically without making it incredibly glaring that you're doing this. So between that and the fact that there's probably not going to be so huge a difference in the standings between the teams that are in the wild card position and the teams that are just out of it, maybe there's not that huge, maybe it's like more of a, this doesn't look good because it's not great to have a team that is not as good, be rewarded for not being as good, so that's not good. Just from a optics perspective. But maybe it's not as dangerous from a competitive integrity standpoint. No, you still shouldn't do it. It's just bad. It's just so bad thing to mess with it and just do your job. Work your head down. Go in some baseball games, play in October, and let me have a happy family text threat. That's all. I want. Yeah. And also, just wanted to briefly salute what Zach gallen is doing for the Diamondbacks. I almost caught myself when we were talking about Keiko and saying that he had played for a couple of bad teams well, arguably he's only played for one. Diamondbacks, not so bad. Now, in fact, they're half a game behind the Giants in the west. How about that? How about that? I guess says as much about the Giants as it does about the Diamondbacks. But they're only three games under 500 or four games at this point and a lot of that is because Zach Allen has a 41 and a third inning scoreless streak going. Spectacular. Yeah, so he's close to entering the top ten score of a streetwise and he has already tied the record for most scoreless starts in a row, so he has tied Don Drysdale in 68 oral hershiser 88 Zac cranky 2015 with 6 scoreless starts. Of course, he has pitched fewer innings than all of those guys over those starts and significantly fewer than Hershey's or drysdale, her shows are streak of course is the record of 59, and this will be fun to watch gallon chase this dense and borsky gives him about a 2% chance, according to his new fan grafts post on the subject, but everyone's talking about gallon, there's a fan grass post about gallon in a baseball perspective post about gallon and people have been expecting big things out of gown for a while, like he was good and then he got hurt. He had a stress fracture in his arm, right? And so he was not so effective last year, but now he's healthy. He is making some changes. He's maybe throwing some higher fastballs and working more secondary stuff in basically like every other picture, I guess, but he's been better and he's been just really great lately and has propelled the Diamondbacks to respectability, so Craig Calcutta raised a question in his newsletter. He said, if gallon does keep going and challenges her scoreless innings record, there's an argument to be made that it's more impressive for it being over more starts. I mean, the more starts you make, the greater the odds you show up one day and simply don't have it or that you'll face a team with their hitting shoes on, right? I guess I understand that perspective. I still think that probably going deeper into games is harder just because it requires greater durability. It requires you to face the same hitters, multiple times in the same game. So yeah, like you're rolling the dice, I guess a little bit that you won't have it one day, maybe, but also you're having an easier assignment in each given outing. So I think if anything I would go with gallons being a tad easier, but it's an impressive accomplishment, nonetheless. And yeah, it's happening when offense is down a little bit, but so did it when drysdale did this or when her scissor did this, like, as we talked about recently, often record or near record setting performances require the conditions to be right for that, which is what makes judge and what he's doing so impressive because the conditions aren't really ripe for it. But good job Zack gallon in the Diamondbacks have been a lot more watchable lately in part because of him. Yeah, I mean, I have been to, so I was present for his start against nola when the Phillies came through, and then I was just at the ballpark to watch burns versus Bumgarner, which went the brewer's way, does not involve Zach Allen, importantly, but not because bunga earner was particularly bad, which is its own interesting, but a business. But there's just like, there are a lot of people at D back games, and they are excited about the D backs. And it's pretty cool. You know? Like, there have been stretches where that is not true. I remember, I remember in early 2021, I went to a Diamondbacks game and I think I had had, I think I had had one of my vaccine shots, but not both. And so I won, and I was like, oh, is this a bad idea? And then I was like, oh no, I'm very socially distanced. This is in fact fine, 'cause you know, it was a warm enough day that they had the roof closed because they wanted the air on. And I was like, it's still a big space, but I don't know. Is this the right thing? And then as I know it's, it's fine. And that hasn't been the experience lately. People are there and they're excited and, you know, you got gallon doing what he's doing and you have some of the young guys coming up and it's cool. It's nice to be there and see the corner start to see them starting to turn the corner, you know? It's the difference between groaning and respectable baseball. That's pretty fun. Yeah. The Diamondbacks headlines are looking up lately and last thing is that Joe Maddon former angels manager was on Jason stark's podcast starkville with Doug glanville and he had some things to say about analytics and managers, perhaps not surprising things he is maybe said some somewhat similar things since his dismissal from the angels, but he is really harping on this. He basically thinks that analytics have been taken too far and teams implementation of them have gone too far. And it's somewhat notable, I think, when he says it just because he was such a standard bearer for more progressive managers who were incorporating front office input when he was with the rays or even earlier in his time with the cubs and things have changed and he has not changed along with them and he thinks that they've changed for the worst and maybe he makes some valid points here.

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