A new story from Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast

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So then you find out they got Jake deek been. Okay. But if you really believe in Rey's magic, then you should think that Jake DeepMind is going to be the next great pitcher for the race who no one was thinking about. I don't know about that if you really believe. Can you name 5 of their relievers then? Even really good player dove teams and I think that, you know, it's not controversial to say that the razor one of them, they don't hit on every guy. That's part of why you take a volume approach too. Like if you're good at it and you know, not everyone is going to work out, but you're willing to sort of cycle through the fringes of other big league rosters. Now, there are some parts of that that we might think of as sort of unsavory. But like, you know, you know you're going to miss on a lot of them, but if you hit on a couple, really worth it, you know? Yeah. I think why this particular example was so intriguing to me is because it is seemingly a case of the race betting on raised magic to some extent, right? Because again, he's been very bad. So he has to be better, they have to think he'll be better than he's been. Or they wouldn't do it. Yes. He does take a roster spot, so. Yeah, so they're thinking we could fix him at least to some extent that he will be as a stop gap temporarily useful to us. And the White Sox who seemingly are in more need of him concluded that that would not be the case for them. So this is kind of a bet on player development at the major league level, right? So I wanted to make a little bit of our own with zero stakes. Even lower stakes than the raised signing Jake dickman. So that's our extended analysis of the race signing Jake diekmann. I don't know where else you're going to get that kind of content, honestly. What other podcast is breaking down the race signing? Jake dickman. I don't know. I think it's emblematic of larger trends that we talk about. So we'll see if the raise are just so special that they can actually make Jake diekman into a serviceable reliever on a first place team in a great division. But I guess we can sort of segue into injuries because it's an injury that caused the race to sign Jake diekmann. And that was what a knee injury, right? But there have been so many arm injuries lately. And that's not new we could have said that at any point in the past several years and we have while doing this podcast. But there have been a notable number and I've been particularly struck by the number of, well, elbow issues that turn out to be Tommy John or UCL related in many cases, but start as forearm strains or flexor strains. And I don't know whether people listening to this have the same shutter that I do when I hear forearm strain or flexor strain. I just have this instinctive. I recoil. Oh no. It's more ominous than some more serious actual injuries because on its own it shouldn't be that bad, but my impression at least was that in many cases it's a prelude to Tommy John two in extended absence. And I was thinking of this because max freed just went on the IL for Atlanta and max fried has already had a Tommy John surgery. And that was some time ago. Now he is on the IL. And again, they're downplaying it to a certain extent. And I know nothing about max fried specific situation, but forearm strain was the diagnosis and then it was reported, hey, he had an MRI and nothing super concerning and structural damage. He's just going to need some time, right? And it went as had other pitching injuries too. And Kyle Wright is out to so they're hardly alone there. But when I saw that max fried had a forearm strain, I thought, is that as concerning as I suspect that it is. And then I was thinking of Hermann Marquez, who it was reported that he had a four arm strain. And the same song and dance about MRI and nothing super concerning and no structural damage. And then pretty soon after that, he was having Tommy John, right? And cashew you don't even have to range far from the rockies because Antonio sent a tele now he has also gone on the iel, I think, or was removed from a game with at least came out yesterday. Yeah, yeah. So if rocky's fence are probably thinking, here we go again, we just saw this with Marquez, are we going to lose another guy when we're already shorthanded literally? So I was just kind of curious about like, what does a forearm strain mean? And as I was looking into this, the twins announced the Tyler malley is going to have Tommy John surgery, not our listener named Tyler malley, but the actual Tyler malley who pitches for the Minnesota Twins. So he was also a guy who just recently went on the IL four a flexor strain. And those are the same thing, by the way, which I kind of clarified for myself, a forearm strain and a flexor strain. Those are just different terms for the same injury, at least in most cases. So I wondered, I wanted to talk to some people who know more about this to decide whether we should be worried about max freed beyond just this immediate forearm strain and whether just in general, is it a death knell for your UCL if you go on the IO with a forearm strain or a flexor strain. So I called up a couple people, one was Glenn fleisig of the American sports

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