00:00:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, Aaron Judge already kind of answered it. But the big question, will Aaron Judge return this season?
00:00:09
Speaker 2: And I know the Cincinnati Reds are basically out of the playoff picture, but it's gone from bad to worse out there.
00:00:17
Speaker 1: It's not looking good there. This is injury territory. I'm Will Carrol, that's Edward E. Gross. This is injury territory. And it's gonna be a quick, tight episode today because we had some big injuries, not a ton of them that are gonna really move the market. Everything's still calming down after the frenzy of the trade deadline. Derek Scooble, the Dodgers are getting some people back. They are pieces and parts figuring out where things go one cursed trade. Maybe with the meat and early both on the shelves, but let's start off off with the big one. Aaron Judge says he'll be back, says he'll be back this season. Is that the case? Well, probably yes. Everything we know tells us that, yes, things are healing up, things are moving in the right direction. But what was he cleared for light activities? He can run, he can work out, he can't do anything upper body, he's not doing baseball activities. He's not swinging off the traject, he's not taking dry swings. I understand he is doing a lot of things. He's sitting in the meetings, he's still being the captain. We need a better name for this drill because the one that the players used for it, I can't repeat on a family show. But watching pitches on a traject, taking at bats against the picture that's going to go that day keeps these guys going. And they have a term for it, which is eyebleeping, so be it. We need a better do for that. But those are the things he's doing that's not swinging. That's not swinging like Aaron Judge. Is he gonna get his time had, Yeah, I'm not worried about that. Is he gonna have to take an extensive rehab? No, I don't think so. The question is that rib gonna hold up or is it going to start to stress, stress, stress, and then snap as it's done twice now, we don't have any answers to that. The Yankees don't have any answers to that. I think so much of their their season is gonna come down to Bellinger, Stanton, then Judge, and I think it's gonna be in that order. You know, Bellinger doing well, Stanton is running, and given the state of his calves this season, that's a positive. He's been swinging kind of a steady swing. He's not stepping into it a whole lot, at least that was last week. Haven't checked in to see where he's progressed. But obviously this Yankees team, even with the acquisitions, is very very different without all their injured players being ready for the playoffs.
00:03:16
Speaker 2: You're absolutely right, and certainly the idea that, Okay, assuming the Yankees do make the postseason, that's you know, added time to get judged back in. So maybe you're not feeling that kind of pressure. But I think it is worth saying something that I know a lot of benevolent, altruistic, kind hearted New York media type are saying about the Yankees, and that is that they have a supporting cast problem. And this has been going on for you know, really quite some time. I look this up in terms of specifically Cody Bellinger's last game in late July. If you look at how this Yankees offense has performed since then, they rank thirteenth, the next wOBA tenth and average bat speed at seventy two and a half miles, But then they have the second lowest on base percentage at two eighteen. There really isn't this idea to reinvent themselves in terms of just getting on base and hitting for average and all that good stuff, because they lose the power bats. They can't really do that either. And this matters because prior to Cody Bellinger's last game, Yankees ranked third in x wOBA. And yes, they were twenty eth and on base percentage, but even as some of those big bats have sort of been in and out of the lineup in that span, they've still been able to manufacture something pretty solid. But as of the end of July and start of August, that has not been the case. And especially as you're looking at how Boston is performing, especially after that insane White Sox game last night, it's starting to have the makings of a Rays Red Sox Division.
00:04:52
Speaker 1: You know, I was talking about the Red Sox on radio this week, and I was saying, I think there's a chance they don't make the playoffs, and I'm gonna look like an idiot on that. I think this is just the streakiest team and I don't get why. What I thought we saw was a five hundred team on true talent that had a bad first half and an epic heater. Now they're doing it again. So did we Did I misread the true talent level? Is this really a sixty percent team? A sixty two percent team, because right now they're playing like a ninety four percent team, and those just don't exist. This team still has Trevor Story coming back. They gave away a bunch of young pitchers, including Connelly early. They traded for Curtis Meade, which I liked that deal. Unfortunately broke his hand in the first game. You know, with the Yankees, I'm just curious what they're gonna do. Is Ramo's gonna stay in when Bellinger's back and just knock out Spencer Jone Ozones? Does George Lombard continue playing really well? Where does Luis Garcia fit in given Ben Rice? You know they're functionally the same player, They're both lefty. You know Garcia is not going to catch, but I don't think Rice is either in anything but an emergency. Uh. It's just an odd setup. I realized that was the best available hitter, But if you look at this lineup, The Yankees definitely are relying on not just those hitters that we talked about, the three key hitters. They're three best hitters probably outside of maybe Lombard if you really like him, and Rice and Rice I should I shouldn't discount him. But you take a look at where Boston is. Yeah, Caleb Durbin's gotten hot. They've got a bunch of no names a shortstop right now. Also, you know Andrew Monasteria over there, and he was another brewer. They're outfield good raphaela Abrau, but this does not feel like a team that should be on a run. And they still don't have an ace without Garrett Crochet, who may not come back as a starter. You know, Sonny Gray is a nice three ranger. Suarez was the four, maybe the five on a good Phillies team. Tolan Bennett solid, Patrick Sandoval has been an absolute revelation. That's the one. If I were the pitching coaches over there, I'd be hanging my hat on Dan. Look what we did with this guy. He's been terrible. I just don't understand this run, but I don't have to. That's baseball, Susan. It's one of those.
00:07:52
Speaker 2: It is and if you look at sort of precedent, I mean, isn't how the Red Sox haven't they been operating sort of a similar vein for a long time now where the moment we sleep on them, they's suddenly a real contender because I'm looking at, you know, some of the other postseason runs that they've had over the last several years. It they weren't teams that I would have necessarily thought going in were overly impressive, and then suddenly you know, they're out like gangbusters. And this is one of those things where Okay, does precedent matter in all of this? Have they figured something out that maybe we just don't know, et cetera, et cetera. But I look at this and go the Garrett Crochet thing is probably why they were even more ambitious buyers and not necessarily, you know, having internal conversations saying, look, we're just being streaky. This is going to fall back down. We don't need to ruin our future things like that. There is more reason for optimism during this streak than I think the last one. And it's been fun to watch.
00:08:54
Speaker 1: It has been fun to watch, So we'll see where that goes. What has not been fun to watch hunt a green season for as good a picture as he is, for as good as he looked in the brief time we saw him. This season, another elbow issue and he had an MRI. He headed out to LA to see his physician, doctor Neil Latrosh. He is an LA kid. He's gone to Latrosh since before he was drafted, so there's a comfort level there. He did his Tommy John back in I think twenty nineteen, he did his elbow chips. Terry Francona said there's a slim chance that Green is going to return this season, So that tells me there is likely no or at least very very minor UCL damage. I'm not that worried about that. If it happened, it happened, he's outside the honeymoon period. He throws over one hundred miles an hour. It wouldn't surprise me. And if it had happens, you just say, again, that's baseball season, especially in twenty twenty six. We're going to see these hard thrown pitchers blood there. What would worry me more is if the bone chips are back. If they're back that quickly, what is he doing? What is slamming together what is going on as a biologic process inside that elbow, So I know, you know, something minor that could be fixed with a nano'needle. Very curious to see if that gets involved. If it's chips, I have a whole lot more question than if I have Tommy John. If it's Tommy John, I shrug my shoulders and say, you know, see you in twenty twenty eight.
00:10:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, he does have a history, and I think that does matter when it comes to at least the conversation of what to expect for this going forward. This would be what his second Tommy John, if that is the route that we go here. Last one was what.
00:10:55
Speaker 1: Twenty eighteen nineteen, I can't remember which.
00:10:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, somewhere around that span. But he's also had an elbow soreness not that long ago, and I think a shoulder injury something of the sort. So I'm with you. I don't really like using the word brittle or injury prone when it comes to describing him, but the causes of concern are very real.
00:11:20
Speaker 1: I think the word we can use for him is picture right, Oh, hard throwing pitcher game. Yeah, I think it was twenty nineteen. I was looking to see whether I put that in under the knife today. I did not, So yeah, Green, we should know significantly more very soon. He saw Aniela La Trosh yesterday Thursday, recording this Friday afternoon, So we should know more. I'm gonna guess they're gonna announce it. Yeah, probably before the game, or at least give us more information. Again. The MRI was done in Cincinnati at Beacon with their doctors, great group. If if you want to kind of an inside one, I'll put the link in the description. But Travis Sauchik a couple of years ago, I took him down to Beacon Ortho Tim Kramchak and his radiologists walked us through the entire process to the point they put Travis in the tube and got the look at why MRIs are more art than science, even at this stage, even with them getting better and better, even with these AI assisted ultrasounds that we're starting to see now. It's crazy, but hopefully we'll get better news than worse, and that's my expectation. I don't think this is a UCL I don't think Francona would have gotten that far out. So we'll see one more before we take it. We don't have to take a quick break, but now I want to. We got a couple.
00:12:55
Speaker 2: More fire hose here, baby, exactly, we could.
00:12:59
Speaker 1: Do another injury prone young starter. That's Trey Savage who has torn his meniscus. They're making a decision on what they're going to do. If it needs to be surgical now, then it held be shut down. I would think this is gonna be the route they're gonna go, simply because Blue Jay's going nowhere. It's unfortunate. They've been a bad year. Part of that is keeping their pictures together. I don't think you can blame anybody for a meniscus tear. It's gonna happen. This is the same sort of thing we're pretty sure that Shoeotani is dealing with. You can manage it. So if they want to push him, not really push him, If it's not painful, if it's not screwing up his mechanics, he could play through it. They could manage it for another couple of months, or they could just say, you know what, let's take a look at this guy and that other guy. Though I'll come back to that in a second. One of the things we'll see here is whether or not. They want to manage it. There's a couple surgeries you can have, and you'll hear repair, which is basically stitching it back together, and you'll hear mena skectomy where they just yank off a part of it or pull the whole thing. They try they try to do it as minimally as possible, because we've learned over the years, you don't want to yank the whole thing. It's stability, it's cushioning, it's a lot of things. But either way, the repair takes about six months to recover from. So if he had it now, he would likely be back late spring training, so you would see him throwing. He would probably miss the first month of the season in a normal year. This is going in to a lot of things. You know, players that are having off season surgeries are basically saying, you know what, I don't have to be back for February. I don't have to be back for April. You know, if I need to wait a little bit longer on surgery, I can this year because nobody expects April to have been baseball. So hopefully that's all we're looking at. The Other part of that is that we're not going to see as many guys at the end of the season stepping up going on to the forty man. Usually you have to make a decision about the forty man because of the Rule five draft. But this year, anybody on the forty man can't play baseball. The minor league contract is one more year. Theirs goes until twenty twenty eight, So if you're a minor league player and not on the forty man, you can play baseball next year. So I'll pull a name out of the hat of heyesus made the number one prospect in baseball. He's been at Double A this year largely because of roster crunches. Boards have too many shortstops and they want to see him play that position. So I don't think we'll see him at the end of the season. You know, if he were going to make a difference for them in the playoffs, yes, but they've got a pretty good team now they're not They've got bryce rating for now, so I don't think we'll see him come up first. I don't know that he's ready. He's pretty close, but definitely so that he can play next season, or at least start the season in the minor leagues, and I think we're going to see that across the spectrum.
00:16:31
Speaker 2: What do you think that means when it comes to you know, there are a lot of sort of competing forces in all of this. You know the minor league, you know rules, and you know what's the CBA going to look like, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, how does someone even try to map out what's good for each individual player when you know things are changing sort of at this lightning pace.
00:16:51
Speaker 1: I think most people are going to say, does this player help me win? Right now? Does he help me win in a playoffs series? And there's not even the top prospects are not gonna do something. George Lombard Junior, you know, he just came up. They finally gave up on the idea that Cavaliero was going to be, you know, a positive shortstop, even though he's still a good utility guy, you know, starting him every day over Anthony Volpei and I'm curious see where volp ends up. They're gonna know on tandorum there's a lot of places I think he could fill in. I think he could still be a good player. Is he just one of those guys that got overwhelmed by being a young Yankee shortstop. I don't know. I think you know, Lombard shows us that if you think somebody's gonna help your team, you're calling him up and you're not thinking about next year. But if you're replacing trey Ya Savage, do you call up one of your young guys who hasn't been up. I don't know the Jay system that well to say who would be the next man up? Who's not on the forty. So those kind of guys, I don't think we're going to see gotcha?
00:18:03
Speaker 2: And that makes a whole lot of sense. I mean again, you have still a lot of teams that can very much contend for a postseason spot, and you're not exactly sure how things are going to go going forward, so you might as well, you know, take the prizes when they're available.
00:18:17
Speaker 1: Exactly. Dodgers or another case, were they going to call up Hope who just went in the Schoogle trade, or to Paula or Serota or one of their infinite pitchers. Probably not. You know, you could see it in a injury situation where they were like, hey, let's get this guy two weeks. Show them what the bigs are like and teach him to compete for the spot next year. I don't think we're going to see those guys. I'm not sure that we were speaking of the Dodgers. This guy has been in the big leagues before, Blake Snell. He is going to be back in the big leagues, probably Monday. I'm told they haven't made a final decision on it, but everything would line up for a Monday start, so if you're a fantasy player, you get one of those two start weeks. But Snell well back from that nano needle bone chip surgery. He was pushed to the sixty eight because of a roster situation, so people will say, oh, why did it take him twice as long to come back as Schoogle rules roster crunch that was it. He's looked good in rehab. He is going to be limited on innings, but not by much, and for god's sake, they've got nine hundred pitchers, so it'll be fine again. I think this is a situation where they could pair down the line and Otani with somebody. You compare Snell in Sasaki each going four, and that'd be pretty nasty. Glass Now when he's back. He's about to start a rehab, so Blake Snell will be back, he'll slot in. We assume that kicks probably well, Emma Chian's already yeah, so I guess it would kick Lour out of the rotation exactly. So yeah, we'll see where it goes. But things look good for us now.
00:20:10
Speaker 2: And thank goodness for it. We've been waiting for this for quite some time. You know, the impatience level has been quite high on this end. So it's good to see him finally get back out there and see what he's capable of doing. And certainly, you know, a month and a half or close to two months is more than enough time for him to ramp things up and you know, be in you know, tiptop shape in terms of you know what we'll see in October. So all of that matters. I do wonder though, and this, I don't know if this is even relevant to this situation, but maybe it is the fact that the Brewers, you know, they're up to seventy two wins now, if I'm not mistaken, the Braves I believe across the seventy win threshold. This is a situation where the Dodgers, with this current losing streak or what they've had up to this point, it's a situation where they may not get that sort of first round by and I wonder in terms of priorities where that fits into what they want to do in terms of pitching, who's going to be out there, things like that, and that this is something that they do want to be gunning for. And so this whole idea that we've talked about at link about getting as much information as possible to know exactly who you can rely upon in certain situations, should that take a back seat at some point so that you make sure you're not having to play an additional series.
00:21:25
Speaker 1: And that is a good point, and it's one of the things. You're exactly right. Of those numbers that Dodgers currently have sixty nine wins, Brewers have seventy one, Braves have, is that right? I updated this? Nope, I had not. Excuse me, Braves have sixty nine, Well, Dodgers have sixty nine, Brewers have seventy two, Braves have seventy. But I was looking at this earlier, which is why pardon me for not having updated it today. What I was looking at is playoff chances after I said that dumb thing about the Red Sox. I realized they have a ninety six percent chance to make playoffs. If I predicted a four percent chance, thing, that'd be pretty cool, but all of Boston would me, so it's even. Yeah, Obviously, the Dodgers are at ninety nine point nine nine two at Claydevenport dot Com, which is where I look. I know there are other places. ESPN used to carry it. Fangrafts obviously carries it. I think Perspectus carries it. But obviously the Braves are locked in. The Phillies are all but locked in at eighty seven percent. The Cubs are pretty much locked in at ninety six percent, but only a twelve percent to be champion. The one that surprised me a little bit is that the Marlins only have a nine percent chance. And I was like, you know, even though they were slight sellers, that's been a team that's really overperformed what we expected. Maybe not the talent level, because they've had some career seasons like Lopez. Certainly Mac has broken out and looks like one of the good young catchers. But this is what got me really intrigued, is that Clay does a thing called a Monte Carlo simulation where he plays it's either one hundred thousand or a million. It's a lot. Yep, he plays it a million times. So he takes the rest of the season with the team that exists, plays it out a million times, and what he got for the average wins over those million was really intriguing to me. The Brewers finished with ninety seven wins, the Braves finished with ninety three wins, and I think those are reasonable numbers. The Dodgers won with ninety nine. So just playing the probabilities they're coming in and getting home field advantaged are out at least the NL side, and when you take a look at the other side, I don't think anybody besides maybe the Rays are predicted to go over ninety wins. The Yankees are right now at ninety. They were at eighty nine yesterday. So the Dodgers once again are the favorite to have home field throughout what's.
00:24:28
Speaker 2: New and so yeah, despite getting swept by the Red Sox and the Cubs, it really doesn't matter at the end of the day because there is another massive run in store for them. Regardless of what they're trying to do, They'll still find a way and you know these other ball clubs, Yeah, they have a bit of an advantage right now, but they might fall back down to you know, some sort of small reality, so to speak.
00:24:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, the sweeps intrigued me in the sense that we never really talk about the strength schedule. You've talked about it several times here on this very show, but strength of schedule is not something. You know, the Dodgers lost to two really good teams, so I don't think we read that much into it. On the other side, both the Cubs and the Red Sox swept a really good team. That tells us something. The fact that they happened back to back tells us something about the Dodgers. I don't know whether or not the school thing unsettled the Dodgers. Do they like being the villains. I was talking to somebody that covers the Dodgers on a national basis and they were like, you know what I've heard you say, they're playing the villains, They're playing the black hat. Those are a bunch of nice guys, and thinking about it, you know, Mookie Bets, nice guy, gets along with everyone, Freddy Freeman, all time nice guy, Max Munsey, who supposedly in his last season, is killing it. Nice guy with bad glasses. There are not two. There are always exceptions, and I know there's exceptions of that team. Most of those guys who I describe as nice guys, guys you'd want to have a beer with, you know, not guys you'd want to play in a game of baseball, because they're really, really good. But when I say I'm calling them a villain, it's never personal. It's just, you know, the perception. But by being the villain, by having everybody saying, oh, you're ruining baseball, you're doing all that. I don't think it bothers Andrew Friedman one bit. I know it doesn't bother Mark Walter one bit. Does it bother the players? I don't know. I think it's one of those things that Dave Roberts manages these things so well that he doesn't normally allow a slump for a player, and certainly not for his team. Happened very much. I'd be curious, this is knowable. I'd have to go back and look it up. What's the longest losing streak they've had under Dave Robert I'll guarantee you it's probably not much more than this.
00:27:06
Speaker 2: I think you're right, and this was actually something that I thought about looking into. And I know there have been basketball studies on this, where if you are going to finish as the one seed or have the best record or something, then what is the likelihood that you have a three game losing streak, a four game losing streak, things like that. I'm sure someone has done a study like this in baseball. Wouldn't take a whole lot for me to do something like that, and maybe we'll do that in the not too diss the future, but it is something where, just given the length of the season and given variance in general, a six game losing streak might be a little longer than what you might expect from say a one hundred win team, but it's not going to be a lot longer than what's anticipated. And again, this also goes back to do you trust Milwaukee? Do you trust Atlanta? You know, if we really do believe that these divisions are you know, wrapped up just in terms of who's going to win them, if you believe that this is how if it's going to be chalk the rest of the way, then the question for me is, do you still trust Milwaukee and Atlanta to be able to make you know, epic runs just like the Dodgers will have to. Or is this something where water is going to find its level and they're going to be gunning for you know, one to two wins and that's what's ultimately going to side home field advantage, which still matters in the grand scheme of things, regardless of what the Dodgers did last year. They would like to avoid playing an additional series they would like to play in front of their home crowd in terms of games one and two of whatever series they're a part of.
00:28:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, And thanks to step News, I was able to call up exactly what it was. And I actually remember this if you go all the way back to twenty sixteen and Dave Roberts took over most years. Six six six two game losing streak was their longest in twenty twenty hats twenty twenty, so that's odd four four four five seven, and currently they're at six their longest losing streak, and I think you'll probably remember this as well. Ed they lost eleven straight and sixteen of seventeen in September of twenty seventeen and everybody's like, oh no, they're creating this one hundred and four win team is falling apart, and they ended up going to the World Series losing to the Astros. But you know, this wasn't something that took them away even at the end of the season. So, you know, an eleven game winning screen. If this becomes that, then I'll be like, Okay, last time they did it, they went to the World Series. I still think you have to consider them the overwhelming favorites to do that again, go to the World Series win it. Who knows?
00:29:44
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, yeah, I think that's kind of a given. And you know, we haven't had enough schooball starts to exactly know what this rotation is going to look like. And granted, you don't want to read too much into that, because the pitching up to this point has been spectacular and the hitting has been spectacular. You know, regardless of how old you think these batters are, still though, you know, the proof has been in the putting up to this point. So I'm with you, regardless of these losing streaks, the Dodgers should still be the favorites because we know the infrastructure is very much there, and regardless of what's happened the last couple of years. The preseason projections, even in August still should matter at least a little bit, because sometimes, you know, we get to enamored with the regular season and what happened in these really nuanced situations when big picture things tend to be what we see in October exactly.
00:30:34
Speaker 1: So we'll see what happens in October in October. For now, that's the end of our show. Thanks to everybody that's been a part of it. Thanks Ford, for Edward E. Gross, for everybody back at Foul Territory Network, for Dylan Cha who's working so hard on these putting together these interviews and scheduling them. One quick reminder before we go, we will have an odd schedule. Maybe next week. I think we'll have a Monday show. I'm going to the White Sox Pulp hat game on Tuesday, and then further afield the rest of the week. I am hoping we will have good Wi FI. I'm hoping we won't have big injuries where we'll have to come on here and do an emergency pod from my phone or something crazy like that. But just a heads up that next week is gonna be a little bit different than most weeks here on injury Territory. I'm will Carol, We'll see you next time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Aaron Judge already kind of answered it. But the big question, will Aaron Judge return this season?
00:00:09
Speaker 2: And I know the Cincinnati Reds are basically out of the playoff picture, but it's gone from bad to worse out there.
00:00:17
Speaker 1: It's not looking good there. This is injury territory. I'm Will Carrol, that's Edward E. Gross. This is injury territory. And it's gonna be a quick, tight episode today because we had some big injuries, not a ton of them that are gonna really move the market. Everything's still calming down after the frenzy of the trade deadline. Derek Scooble, the Dodgers are getting some people back. They are pieces and parts figuring out where things go one cursed trade. Maybe with the meat and early both on the shelves, but let's start off off with the big one. Aaron Judge says he'll be back, says he'll be back this season. Is that the case? Well, probably yes. Everything we know tells us that, yes, things are healing up, things are moving in the right direction. But what was he cleared for light activities? He can run, he can work out, he can't do anything upper body, he's not doing baseball activities. He's not swinging off the traject, he's not taking dry swings. I understand he is doing a lot of things. He's sitting in the meetings, he's still being the captain. We need a better name for this drill because the one that the players used for it, I can't repeat on a family show. But watching pitches on a traject, taking at bats against the picture that's going to go that day keeps these guys going. And they have a term for it, which is eyebleeping, so be it. We need a better do for that. But those are the things he's doing that's not swinging. That's not swinging like Aaron Judge. Is he gonna get his time had, Yeah, I'm not worried about that. Is he gonna have to take an extensive rehab? No, I don't think so. The question is that rib gonna hold up or is it going to start to stress, stress, stress, and then snap as it's done twice now, we don't have any answers to that. The Yankees don't have any answers to that. I think so much of their their season is gonna come down to Bellinger, Stanton, then Judge, and I think it's gonna be in that order. You know, Bellinger doing well, Stanton is running, and given the state of his calves this season, that's a positive. He's been swinging kind of a steady swing. He's not stepping into it a whole lot, at least that was last week. Haven't checked in to see where he's progressed. But obviously this Yankees team, even with the acquisitions, is very very different without all their injured players being ready for the playoffs.
00:03:16
Speaker 2: You're absolutely right, and certainly the idea that, Okay, assuming the Yankees do make the postseason, that's you know, added time to get judged back in. So maybe you're not feeling that kind of pressure. But I think it is worth saying something that I know a lot of benevolent, altruistic, kind hearted New York media type are saying about the Yankees, and that is that they have a supporting cast problem. And this has been going on for you know, really quite some time. I look this up in terms of specifically Cody Bellinger's last game in late July. If you look at how this Yankees offense has performed since then, they rank thirteenth, the next wOBA tenth and average bat speed at seventy two and a half miles, But then they have the second lowest on base percentage at two eighteen. There really isn't this idea to reinvent themselves in terms of just getting on base and hitting for average and all that good stuff, because they lose the power bats. They can't really do that either. And this matters because prior to Cody Bellinger's last game, Yankees ranked third in x wOBA. And yes, they were twenty eth and on base percentage, but even as some of those big bats have sort of been in and out of the lineup in that span, they've still been able to manufacture something pretty solid. But as of the end of July and start of August, that has not been the case. And especially as you're looking at how Boston is performing, especially after that insane White Sox game last night, it's starting to have the makings of a Rays Red Sox Division.
00:04:52
Speaker 1: You know, I was talking about the Red Sox on radio this week, and I was saying, I think there's a chance they don't make the playoffs, and I'm gonna look like an idiot on that. I think this is just the streakiest team and I don't get why. What I thought we saw was a five hundred team on true talent that had a bad first half and an epic heater. Now they're doing it again. So did we Did I misread the true talent level? Is this really a sixty percent team? A sixty two percent team, because right now they're playing like a ninety four percent team, and those just don't exist. This team still has Trevor Story coming back. They gave away a bunch of young pitchers, including Connelly early. They traded for Curtis Meade, which I liked that deal. Unfortunately broke his hand in the first game. You know, with the Yankees, I'm just curious what they're gonna do. Is Ramo's gonna stay in when Bellinger's back and just knock out Spencer Jone Ozones? Does George Lombard continue playing really well? Where does Luis Garcia fit in given Ben Rice? You know they're functionally the same player, They're both lefty. You know Garcia is not going to catch, but I don't think Rice is either in anything but an emergency. Uh. It's just an odd setup. I realized that was the best available hitter, But if you look at this lineup, The Yankees definitely are relying on not just those hitters that we talked about, the three key hitters. They're three best hitters probably outside of maybe Lombard if you really like him, and Rice and Rice I should I shouldn't discount him. But you take a look at where Boston is. Yeah, Caleb Durbin's gotten hot. They've got a bunch of no names a shortstop right now. Also, you know Andrew Monasteria over there, and he was another brewer. They're outfield good raphaela Abrau, but this does not feel like a team that should be on a run. And they still don't have an ace without Garrett Crochet, who may not come back as a starter. You know, Sonny Gray is a nice three ranger. Suarez was the four, maybe the five on a good Phillies team. Tolan Bennett solid, Patrick Sandoval has been an absolute revelation. That's the one. If I were the pitching coaches over there, I'd be hanging my hat on Dan. Look what we did with this guy. He's been terrible. I just don't understand this run, but I don't have to. That's baseball, Susan. It's one of those.
00:07:52
Speaker 2: It is and if you look at sort of precedent, I mean, isn't how the Red Sox haven't they been operating sort of a similar vein for a long time now where the moment we sleep on them, they's suddenly a real contender because I'm looking at, you know, some of the other postseason runs that they've had over the last several years. It they weren't teams that I would have necessarily thought going in were overly impressive, and then suddenly you know, they're out like gangbusters. And this is one of those things where Okay, does precedent matter in all of this? Have they figured something out that maybe we just don't know, et cetera, et cetera. But I look at this and go the Garrett Crochet thing is probably why they were even more ambitious buyers and not necessarily, you know, having internal conversations saying, look, we're just being streaky. This is going to fall back down. We don't need to ruin our future things like that. There is more reason for optimism during this streak than I think the last one. And it's been fun to watch.
00:08:54
Speaker 1: It has been fun to watch, So we'll see where that goes. What has not been fun to watch hunt a green season for as good a picture as he is, for as good as he looked in the brief time we saw him. This season, another elbow issue and he had an MRI. He headed out to LA to see his physician, doctor Neil Latrosh. He is an LA kid. He's gone to Latrosh since before he was drafted, so there's a comfort level there. He did his Tommy John back in I think twenty nineteen, he did his elbow chips. Terry Francona said there's a slim chance that Green is going to return this season, So that tells me there is likely no or at least very very minor UCL damage. I'm not that worried about that. If it happened, it happened, he's outside the honeymoon period. He throws over one hundred miles an hour. It wouldn't surprise me. And if it had happens, you just say, again, that's baseball season, especially in twenty twenty six. We're going to see these hard thrown pitchers blood there. What would worry me more is if the bone chips are back. If they're back that quickly, what is he doing? What is slamming together what is going on as a biologic process inside that elbow, So I know, you know, something minor that could be fixed with a nano'needle. Very curious to see if that gets involved. If it's chips, I have a whole lot more question than if I have Tommy John. If it's Tommy John, I shrug my shoulders and say, you know, see you in twenty twenty eight.
00:10:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, he does have a history, and I think that does matter when it comes to at least the conversation of what to expect for this going forward. This would be what his second Tommy John, if that is the route that we go here. Last one was what.
00:10:55
Speaker 1: Twenty eighteen nineteen, I can't remember which.
00:10:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, somewhere around that span. But he's also had an elbow soreness not that long ago, and I think a shoulder injury something of the sort. So I'm with you. I don't really like using the word brittle or injury prone when it comes to describing him, but the causes of concern are very real.
00:11:20
Speaker 1: I think the word we can use for him is picture right, Oh, hard throwing pitcher game. Yeah, I think it was twenty nineteen. I was looking to see whether I put that in under the knife today. I did not, So yeah, Green, we should know significantly more very soon. He saw Aniela La Trosh yesterday Thursday, recording this Friday afternoon, So we should know more. I'm gonna guess they're gonna announce it. Yeah, probably before the game, or at least give us more information. Again. The MRI was done in Cincinnati at Beacon with their doctors, great group. If if you want to kind of an inside one, I'll put the link in the description. But Travis Sauchik a couple of years ago, I took him down to Beacon Ortho Tim Kramchak and his radiologists walked us through the entire process to the point they put Travis in the tube and got the look at why MRIs are more art than science, even at this stage, even with them getting better and better, even with these AI assisted ultrasounds that we're starting to see now. It's crazy, but hopefully we'll get better news than worse, and that's my expectation. I don't think this is a UCL I don't think Francona would have gotten that far out. So we'll see one more before we take it. We don't have to take a quick break, but now I want to. We got a couple.
00:12:55
Speaker 2: More fire hose here, baby, exactly, we could.
00:12:59
Speaker 1: Do another injury prone young starter. That's Trey Savage who has torn his meniscus. They're making a decision on what they're going to do. If it needs to be surgical now, then it held be shut down. I would think this is gonna be the route they're gonna go, simply because Blue Jay's going nowhere. It's unfortunate. They've been a bad year. Part of that is keeping their pictures together. I don't think you can blame anybody for a meniscus tear. It's gonna happen. This is the same sort of thing we're pretty sure that Shoeotani is dealing with. You can manage it. So if they want to push him, not really push him, If it's not painful, if it's not screwing up his mechanics, he could play through it. They could manage it for another couple of months, or they could just say, you know what, let's take a look at this guy and that other guy. Though I'll come back to that in a second. One of the things we'll see here is whether or not. They want to manage it. There's a couple surgeries you can have, and you'll hear repair, which is basically stitching it back together, and you'll hear mena skectomy where they just yank off a part of it or pull the whole thing. They try they try to do it as minimally as possible, because we've learned over the years, you don't want to yank the whole thing. It's stability, it's cushioning, it's a lot of things. But either way, the repair takes about six months to recover from. So if he had it now, he would likely be back late spring training, so you would see him throwing. He would probably miss the first month of the season in a normal year. This is going in to a lot of things. You know, players that are having off season surgeries are basically saying, you know what, I don't have to be back for February. I don't have to be back for April. You know, if I need to wait a little bit longer on surgery, I can this year because nobody expects April to have been baseball. So hopefully that's all we're looking at. The Other part of that is that we're not going to see as many guys at the end of the season stepping up going on to the forty man. Usually you have to make a decision about the forty man because of the Rule five draft. But this year, anybody on the forty man can't play baseball. The minor league contract is one more year. Theirs goes until twenty twenty eight, So if you're a minor league player and not on the forty man, you can play baseball next year. So I'll pull a name out of the hat of heyesus made the number one prospect in baseball. He's been at Double A this year largely because of roster crunches. Boards have too many shortstops and they want to see him play that position. So I don't think we'll see him at the end of the season. You know, if he were going to make a difference for them in the playoffs, yes, but they've got a pretty good team now they're not They've got bryce rating for now, so I don't think we'll see him come up first. I don't know that he's ready. He's pretty close, but definitely so that he can play next season, or at least start the season in the minor leagues, and I think we're going to see that across the spectrum.
00:16:31
Speaker 2: What do you think that means when it comes to you know, there are a lot of sort of competing forces in all of this. You know the minor league, you know rules, and you know what's the CBA going to look like, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, how does someone even try to map out what's good for each individual player when you know things are changing sort of at this lightning pace.
00:16:51
Speaker 1: I think most people are going to say, does this player help me win? Right now? Does he help me win in a playoffs series? And there's not even the top prospects are not gonna do something. George Lombard Junior, you know, he just came up. They finally gave up on the idea that Cavaliero was going to be, you know, a positive shortstop, even though he's still a good utility guy, you know, starting him every day over Anthony Volpei and I'm curious see where volp ends up. They're gonna know on tandorum there's a lot of places I think he could fill in. I think he could still be a good player. Is he just one of those guys that got overwhelmed by being a young Yankee shortstop. I don't know. I think you know, Lombard shows us that if you think somebody's gonna help your team, you're calling him up and you're not thinking about next year. But if you're replacing trey Ya Savage, do you call up one of your young guys who hasn't been up. I don't know the Jay system that well to say who would be the next man up? Who's not on the forty. So those kind of guys, I don't think we're going to see gotcha?
00:18:03
Speaker 2: And that makes a whole lot of sense. I mean again, you have still a lot of teams that can very much contend for a postseason spot, and you're not exactly sure how things are going to go going forward, so you might as well, you know, take the prizes when they're available.
00:18:17
Speaker 1: Exactly. Dodgers or another case, were they going to call up Hope who just went in the Schoogle trade, or to Paula or Serota or one of their infinite pitchers. Probably not. You know, you could see it in a injury situation where they were like, hey, let's get this guy two weeks. Show them what the bigs are like and teach him to compete for the spot next year. I don't think we're going to see those guys. I'm not sure that we were speaking of the Dodgers. This guy has been in the big leagues before, Blake Snell. He is going to be back in the big leagues, probably Monday. I'm told they haven't made a final decision on it, but everything would line up for a Monday start, so if you're a fantasy player, you get one of those two start weeks. But Snell well back from that nano needle bone chip surgery. He was pushed to the sixty eight because of a roster situation, so people will say, oh, why did it take him twice as long to come back as Schoogle rules roster crunch that was it. He's looked good in rehab. He is going to be limited on innings, but not by much, and for god's sake, they've got nine hundred pitchers, so it'll be fine again. I think this is a situation where they could pair down the line and Otani with somebody. You compare Snell in Sasaki each going four, and that'd be pretty nasty. Glass Now when he's back. He's about to start a rehab, so Blake Snell will be back, he'll slot in. We assume that kicks probably well, Emma Chian's already yeah, so I guess it would kick Lour out of the rotation exactly. So yeah, we'll see where it goes. But things look good for us now.
00:20:10
Speaker 2: And thank goodness for it. We've been waiting for this for quite some time. You know, the impatience level has been quite high on this end. So it's good to see him finally get back out there and see what he's capable of doing. And certainly, you know, a month and a half or close to two months is more than enough time for him to ramp things up and you know, be in you know, tiptop shape in terms of you know what we'll see in October. So all of that matters. I do wonder though, and this, I don't know if this is even relevant to this situation, but maybe it is the fact that the Brewers, you know, they're up to seventy two wins now, if I'm not mistaken, the Braves I believe across the seventy win threshold. This is a situation where the Dodgers, with this current losing streak or what they've had up to this point, it's a situation where they may not get that sort of first round by and I wonder in terms of priorities where that fits into what they want to do in terms of pitching, who's going to be out there, things like that, and that this is something that they do want to be gunning for. And so this whole idea that we've talked about at link about getting as much information as possible to know exactly who you can rely upon in certain situations, should that take a back seat at some point so that you make sure you're not having to play an additional series.
00:21:25
Speaker 1: And that is a good point, and it's one of the things. You're exactly right. Of those numbers that Dodgers currently have sixty nine wins, Brewers have seventy one, Braves have, is that right? I updated this? Nope, I had not. Excuse me, Braves have sixty nine, Well, Dodgers have sixty nine, Brewers have seventy two, Braves have seventy. But I was looking at this earlier, which is why pardon me for not having updated it today. What I was looking at is playoff chances after I said that dumb thing about the Red Sox. I realized they have a ninety six percent chance to make playoffs. If I predicted a four percent chance, thing, that'd be pretty cool, but all of Boston would me, so it's even. Yeah, Obviously, the Dodgers are at ninety nine point nine nine two at Claydevenport dot Com, which is where I look. I know there are other places. ESPN used to carry it. Fangrafts obviously carries it. I think Perspectus carries it. But obviously the Braves are locked in. The Phillies are all but locked in at eighty seven percent. The Cubs are pretty much locked in at ninety six percent, but only a twelve percent to be champion. The one that surprised me a little bit is that the Marlins only have a nine percent chance. And I was like, you know, even though they were slight sellers, that's been a team that's really overperformed what we expected. Maybe not the talent level, because they've had some career seasons like Lopez. Certainly Mac has broken out and looks like one of the good young catchers. But this is what got me really intrigued, is that Clay does a thing called a Monte Carlo simulation where he plays it's either one hundred thousand or a million. It's a lot. Yep, he plays it a million times. So he takes the rest of the season with the team that exists, plays it out a million times, and what he got for the average wins over those million was really intriguing to me. The Brewers finished with ninety seven wins, the Braves finished with ninety three wins, and I think those are reasonable numbers. The Dodgers won with ninety nine. So just playing the probabilities they're coming in and getting home field advantaged are out at least the NL side, and when you take a look at the other side, I don't think anybody besides maybe the Rays are predicted to go over ninety wins. The Yankees are right now at ninety. They were at eighty nine yesterday. So the Dodgers once again are the favorite to have home field throughout what's.
00:24:28
Speaker 2: New and so yeah, despite getting swept by the Red Sox and the Cubs, it really doesn't matter at the end of the day because there is another massive run in store for them. Regardless of what they're trying to do, They'll still find a way and you know these other ball clubs, Yeah, they have a bit of an advantage right now, but they might fall back down to you know, some sort of small reality, so to speak.
00:24:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, the sweeps intrigued me in the sense that we never really talk about the strength schedule. You've talked about it several times here on this very show, but strength of schedule is not something. You know, the Dodgers lost to two really good teams, so I don't think we read that much into it. On the other side, both the Cubs and the Red Sox swept a really good team. That tells us something. The fact that they happened back to back tells us something about the Dodgers. I don't know whether or not the school thing unsettled the Dodgers. Do they like being the villains. I was talking to somebody that covers the Dodgers on a national basis and they were like, you know what I've heard you say, they're playing the villains, They're playing the black hat. Those are a bunch of nice guys, and thinking about it, you know, Mookie Bets, nice guy, gets along with everyone, Freddy Freeman, all time nice guy, Max Munsey, who supposedly in his last season, is killing it. Nice guy with bad glasses. There are not two. There are always exceptions, and I know there's exceptions of that team. Most of those guys who I describe as nice guys, guys you'd want to have a beer with, you know, not guys you'd want to play in a game of baseball, because they're really, really good. But when I say I'm calling them a villain, it's never personal. It's just, you know, the perception. But by being the villain, by having everybody saying, oh, you're ruining baseball, you're doing all that. I don't think it bothers Andrew Friedman one bit. I know it doesn't bother Mark Walter one bit. Does it bother the players? I don't know. I think it's one of those things that Dave Roberts manages these things so well that he doesn't normally allow a slump for a player, and certainly not for his team. Happened very much. I'd be curious, this is knowable. I'd have to go back and look it up. What's the longest losing streak they've had under Dave Robert I'll guarantee you it's probably not much more than this.
00:27:06
Speaker 2: I think you're right, and this was actually something that I thought about looking into. And I know there have been basketball studies on this, where if you are going to finish as the one seed or have the best record or something, then what is the likelihood that you have a three game losing streak, a four game losing streak, things like that. I'm sure someone has done a study like this in baseball. Wouldn't take a whole lot for me to do something like that, and maybe we'll do that in the not too diss the future, but it is something where, just given the length of the season and given variance in general, a six game losing streak might be a little longer than what you might expect from say a one hundred win team, but it's not going to be a lot longer than what's anticipated. And again, this also goes back to do you trust Milwaukee? Do you trust Atlanta? You know, if we really do believe that these divisions are you know, wrapped up just in terms of who's going to win them, if you believe that this is how if it's going to be chalk the rest of the way, then the question for me is, do you still trust Milwaukee and Atlanta to be able to make you know, epic runs just like the Dodgers will have to. Or is this something where water is going to find its level and they're going to be gunning for you know, one to two wins and that's what's ultimately going to side home field advantage, which still matters in the grand scheme of things, regardless of what the Dodgers did last year. They would like to avoid playing an additional series they would like to play in front of their home crowd in terms of games one and two of whatever series they're a part of.
00:28:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, And thanks to step News, I was able to call up exactly what it was. And I actually remember this if you go all the way back to twenty sixteen and Dave Roberts took over most years. Six six six two game losing streak was their longest in twenty twenty hats twenty twenty, so that's odd four four four five seven, and currently they're at six their longest losing streak, and I think you'll probably remember this as well. Ed they lost eleven straight and sixteen of seventeen in September of twenty seventeen and everybody's like, oh no, they're creating this one hundred and four win team is falling apart, and they ended up going to the World Series losing to the Astros. But you know, this wasn't something that took them away even at the end of the season. So, you know, an eleven game winning screen. If this becomes that, then I'll be like, Okay, last time they did it, they went to the World Series. I still think you have to consider them the overwhelming favorites to do that again, go to the World Series win it. Who knows?
00:29:44
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, yeah, I think that's kind of a given. And you know, we haven't had enough schooball starts to exactly know what this rotation is going to look like. And granted, you don't want to read too much into that, because the pitching up to this point has been spectacular and the hitting has been spectacular. You know, regardless of how old you think these batters are, still though, you know, the proof has been in the putting up to this point. So I'm with you, regardless of these losing streaks, the Dodgers should still be the favorites because we know the infrastructure is very much there, and regardless of what's happened the last couple of years. The preseason projections, even in August still should matter at least a little bit, because sometimes, you know, we get to enamored with the regular season and what happened in these really nuanced situations when big picture things tend to be what we see in October exactly.
00:30:34
Speaker 1: So we'll see what happens in October in October. For now, that's the end of our show. Thanks to everybody that's been a part of it. Thanks Ford, for Edward E. Gross, for everybody back at Foul Territory Network, for Dylan Cha who's working so hard on these putting together these interviews and scheduling them. One quick reminder before we go, we will have an odd schedule. Maybe next week. I think we'll have a Monday show. I'm going to the White Sox Pulp hat game on Tuesday, and then further afield the rest of the week. I am hoping we will have good Wi FI. I'm hoping we won't have big injuries where we'll have to come on here and do an emergency pod from my phone or something crazy like that. But just a heads up that next week is gonna be a little bit different than most weeks here on injury Territory. I'm will Carol, We'll see you next time.
