February 17, 2026 • 14 mins
Mo chats with ESPN Betting Analyst Derek Carty, who became an internet villain this weekend for what we wrote about the Reds and their pitching staff.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You found Cincinnati's ESPN fifteen thirty. So we read this
last week. Comba legger, this is ESPN fifteen thirty. Thanks
for listening.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Last Friday, we read a blurb. I think blurb's the
right word.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
There's an ESPN dot com piece on.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Best nuts for the upcoming baseball season, over unders, things
like that, and we read the snippet We'll go a
snippet on the Reds, which was authored by a guy
named Derek Carty, ESPN betting analyst, and he had the
Reds finishing with fewer than eighty two and a half wins,
and that I don't think is that far fetched. I've
(00:38):
got him a little bit better. But you know, it's
they won eighty three games last year. If they won
eighty two games, it wouldn't be a shock. Eighty two
would be the under. But what stood out to me,
and I think what stood out to a lot of folks,
was the explanation. And the explanation was, well, there's questions
in the rotation. Andrew Abbott's been one of the luckiest
pitchers in baseball. Nicoladolo's stuff declined after returning from injury,
(00:59):
and Derek wrote about projections having this as close to
a bottom five pitching staff. And so we read this
on Friday and I said, man, I'd love to get
this guy on because that doesn't mesh with the consensus.
Over the weekend, this was spread on Twitter and Derek
Carty became the latest Cincinnati sports internet villain. You know,
(01:21):
on this show, we love getting on Cincinnati sports internet villains.
And so, in the middle of being called a bunch
of names, I reached out to Derek and said, love
to have you on, and he was nice enough to
agree to a join us.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Derek Carty is here. How you doing, sir, I'm doing
pretty well.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Thanks so much for having me on.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
What is the meanest thing a reds Fain either called
you or said to you over the weekend.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I don't know about the meanest, but I did learn
this weekend that the R word is in heavy rotation
for most people these days.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yeah, that's that's uh, that's unfortunate. All right, let's uh,
let's get to a few of the the the basic
premises of your article. Let's start with Andrew Abbitt, who
you expect to have regression. It's worth pointing out by
the way you offered it me a couple of sorts
on social media, a little bit of an explanation talked
about misreading some data. The snippet on the ESPN dot
(02:15):
com piece has been rewritten to reflect that. But you
expect Andrew Abbott to be a candidate for regression, and
he was awesome in the first half last year. The
number is not so great in the second half. They
weren't atrocious, but they weren't up to the standard he
set with that amazing first half. Why do you expect
him to take a step back in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
So a lot of it has to do with just
some of the core principles of sabermetrics, with that limited
control over certain things. They have limited control over the
hits that they allow on balls and play, the percentage
of runners that they strand on base, the percentage of
their fly balls that turn into home runs. Generally, when
a picture does really well in one of these categories,
it helps his era. He looks really good, but it
(03:00):
doesn't necessarily carry over to his future era very well.
Abbot has outperformed in all three and even though he's
done it for three years, and that seems like a
long time when it comes to these stats, the math
kind of says he's still probably likely to get worse
at them.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
So, all right, you can get worse, you're also getting
worse from what was a pretty lofty standard in the
first half of last year. Does getting worse mean he's
a bad picture?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
No, No, I have Andrew Abbot projected as about an
average picture, maybe a little below average, which I think
is still well below what most people want to hear.
But when you look at kind of his underlying peripheral metrics,
he doesn't strike a lot of guys out. He doesn't
have great control. He gives up a lot of fly balls.
Even when you dive even deeper into the stackcast data,
(03:46):
you know what his pitch mix is and how good
his stuff is. If you look at his velocity and
his movement and his spin rate and his tilt and
his tunneling and all that kind of good stuff. We
can quantify all that stuff now and we can say
precisely what scouts see with their eyes. And the problem
with Abbot is that all of these stuff models, no
matter who you look at, they don't like him. They
don't believe that he's one of these guys that can
(04:06):
outperform the underlying metrics, the way he's done for the
past couple of years. So it really just comes down to,
you know, maybe I'm wrong, Maybe the statistics here are wrong.
Maybe he really is an outlier like those guys do exist,
But probability wise, I don't think he is. And we've
seen it time and again with guys throughout the history
(04:28):
of baseball, Like look at what Rick Corcello did in
Boston twenty sixteen. He had what like twenty two wins
like a three fifteen ERA, He won the Cy young.
He was only in the league for another four years
after that, he never had an ERA under four again,
and then he was kind of forced out of the league,
like we saw it with Barry Zito in Oakland where
he was overperforming his peripherals for so long and then
he completely fell apart. In the final like ten years
(04:49):
of his career. He never had an RA under four.
Like it's just it's one of those things where he's
doing it, he's doing it right up until he can't anymore,
and a lot of times guys just can't do it
long term.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Derek Carty is with us explain or elaborate on I
guess Nick Lidolo's apparent decline and stuff after he came
off a three week stint on the injuredless last year.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
So, I mean, anytime a pitcher comes off an injury,
there's always a chance that their stuff is going to
be diminished. Nicklodolo, his fastold velocity was down a little bit.
I'd have to look into exactly what the difference was.
But if you look at the stuff metrics, especially the
one that I just developed, which is going to be
a fangrass pretty soon, it says that his stuff was
(05:35):
worse last year, and so it's you project him out
just using what he actually did. I'd have him projected
for a four to seventeen ERA when you account for
the decline and stuff, he projects for a four to
seventy three RA. So pretty significant drop off there for
a guy that, uh, you know, maybe next year the
stuff bounces back. I mean, he came back from from
(05:57):
an injury. The stuff. You know, there might have been
some rust that he was taking. Often he might go
back to being the guy that he was before the injury,
but we don't know that. It's another question mark.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
I just want fewer blisters. I'll settle for that when
you talk about stuff, dive into that. For me is
that control is a command, is a velocity is an
accommodation of everything to find stuff.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
For me, yes, stuff is. When I say stuff, I
essentially mean the physical characteristics of a pitch. So it's
the velocity, it's the movement, it's the spin rate, it's
the tilt, the late break, how well he tunnels it
off of other pitches, whether he has bridge pitches to
work with it, all kinds of stuff like that that
essentially tells us how good a fastball is, how good
(06:37):
a curveball is, how good a slider is, and we
can quantify that. And when you do that, you've wind
up seeing, okay, the guys that have really good stuff
for the guys you'd expect, and the guys who have
bad stuff or the guys you'd expect. And so you know,
it can be a really informative way of telling us
who a picture is, or when a picture changes who
he is, which did appear to be the case with
(06:57):
the Ladola last year. After the injury.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Your original premise had Chase Burns, as you put it,
representing a significant injury risk, and you've kind of walked
that back.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Explain that to me, Yeah, so significant. Maybe I overstated it,
but he did have the flexer strain last year, which
does oftentimes lead to Tommy John surgery. So that was
where I was coming from. With Chase Burns, I had
a lot of red stands tell me that they don't
believe it was a real injury, that it was a
phantom injury. They were trying to manage his workload. Maybe
(07:29):
that was the case. I'm surprised they'd call it a
flexer strain if that's what it was, if that's what
they were doing, But that's kind of where that train
of logic with that came from.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
They have prioritized the bullpen this spring, and there have
been off seasons where it felt like what they're doing
in the bullpen is just find some random guys who
used to be good and maybe they catch lightning in
the bottle or get a failed starter and put them
out there. It felt like they made a priority, made
it a priority to get guys to fill specific roles
in the bullpen. With Ameliopegon coming back to be the closer,
(08:01):
you don't love the bullpen as much as people here may.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Why they made they made additions to the bullpen, but
I don't know if they made any real impact editions,
Like they added, uh, they had brock Burke, who's like,
he's fine, but he's not anything special. They added Pierce Johnson,
who again is fine, but he's not anything special. They
(08:24):
don't have an elad Arm in the bullpen. A lot
of teams have two or even three. Amelia Pegan is
you know, by you know, ninth inning closer, you know,
fireman standards. You know, he's realistically one of the weaker
ones in baseball. So they just don't have that high
end of the bullpen to really make their bullpen threatening,
even if they do have a little more depth to
(08:45):
it now.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Offensively, you know they did at ayuhanios Lorez And you
mentioned your your model projects close to seventy nine and
a half wins for the Reds and that was even
accounting for the addition of u Haaneosuarez. So what was
it before and where do you think the biggest shortcoming
is going to be for this team?
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Offensively?
Speaker 3 (09:10):
I think the biggest shortcoming really is it's not any
one spot specifically, It's just that they don't have a
lot of star power outside of Ellie Da La Cruz
and they It's hard to put my finger on it.
It's just that they have a bunch of guys that
are kind of mediocre or below average, and that's kind
of what their offense is. It's a little below average.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Yeah, that's the thing, right, Like it was it was
fourteenth and one score less.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Not like they were terrible, but I understand the general point.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Yeah, and they have upside. I mean they have guys
like South Stewart, who could you know, do something. Maybe
Matt McLean turns it around. Cabrian Hayes was always a
guy that I thought was interesting coming up for the Pirates,
Like they have guys. It's just, uh, you look at
it right now, and there's not a lot of proven
offense in this lineup.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
So uh, you go from originally concluding they could have
close to a bottom five rotation too, when you're Miya
Kalpa talking about how like actually top five rotation? How
and don't take this the wrong way, but how do
you interpret the data one way and then look at
it in another way that gives us such an extreme
difference between the two conclusions.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Yeah, I mean there's no way around it. It was
a mistake on my end. It was a stupid mistake,
and it's one that I'm going to be very careful
to make again. I'm not one hundred percent sure what happened,
but what I'm pretty sure happened is kind of the
way I approached that piece. Again, it was a betting
piece that wasn't like a deep dive into the reds.
So I was giving a bet and a sentence or
two to support the bet. And I always start with
(10:44):
the projection because I run the projection system the bad X,
which you might know from fangraphs or elsewhere. It's found
to be the most accurate the last six years running
like it's good. So when people tell me that they
hate when you say trust the math, I have a
very good reason to trust the math sometimes because my
math is pretty good. So I was just trusting the
math on the projection. The projection said, okay, they project
(11:07):
for about seventy nine and a half wins under eighty
two and a half. There's a little bit of value there. Okay.
Now I need to find a sentence or two to
write up to explain why the projection sees that. And
I must have pulled the data wrong because when I
went back and look, the Reds do not have a
bottom five rotation in baseball. They actually projected the top
five rotation in my system right now. So I don't
(11:28):
know if I had it sorted.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
The wrong way or what.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
I have no app I have no no idea it was.
It was just a mistake, you know what.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
The Miya Kulpa and the transparency and the willingness to
do this and engage some fans on social media are
things that I admire. Go back to last year, so
they won eighty three, which, if memory serves me correct,
they barely hit the over.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
I know they hit the over.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Because I, like an idiot, I bet them to hit
the over every year, and my track record's terrible.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
What did you have the Reds out last year?
Speaker 3 (12:00):
I think I had it similar last year where I
had them about two or three wins under the line
and it wound up losing. I think if you looked
at what I had for all thirty teams, it wound
up being very profitable. But I was wrong about the
Reds last year as well.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Go back and I know you're tied on time. Two
things one Andrew Abbot being lucky which is something you
put out there for lack of a better way of
putting it. How do we account for that? Dive into
that for me, because I could look at Andrew Abbit's
number seco dude had a pretty good year. Walk me
through like factoring and luck Why was he lucky last year?
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Well, so Andrew Abbot, Like you look on the surface
and it looks like he was fantastic. He had pulling
up this page right now, he had a two eighty
seven ERA, which is fantastic. But you look under the
hood at the peripheral metrics and his ex FIP was
four thirty one. His SIERRA was four twenty. He had
a two seventy four Babbitt, which is probably lower than
he's able to sustain. He had an eighty percent left
on base percentage, which is much higher than anybody can sustain.
(13:00):
You look at his stuff plus and it's below average.
It's just uh, you look under the hood and it's like, Okay,
he's done these things on the surface, he's been able
to prevent these runs, but he's not doing the types
of things that guys who prevent runs consistently are able
to do.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
And what is that.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Strike? Guys out. I mean, that's a big It sounds
so simple, stupid, but that is a big part of it. Like,
strikeouts are one of the stickiest stats we have for
a picture. It's one of the most important things that
you can do as a pitcher, and Andrew Abbitt doesn't
do it. So at the very least, I think we're
seeing a guy who's going to regress to being above average,
(13:39):
if not a little bit worse than that.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
What do you project from my guy, Hunter Green this year?
Speaker 3 (13:44):
Oh? I love Hunter Green. This year Hunter Green and
Chase Burns. My system absolutely loves it, has been both
his top ten pictures in baseball at this point, projecting
big years for Green, especially this year.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Among all the baseball fan bases, where are red fans
on the me scale?
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Oh, they are pretty high. They are pretty high, all right.
The BackFlash was it was a lot this weekend. It
was a lot.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah. I uh.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
I was sitting there at my kitchen table on Saturday
morning watching you take it, and I'm like, all right,
I got to see if this dude will come on
the air with me, and hopefully he doesn't think I'm
gonna yell and scream at him as well. So I
appreciate you doing this and uh we'll do it again.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Man.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Thanks so much, Yeah, no problem.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Thanks for having me on
You found Cincinnati's ESPN fifteen thirty. So we read this
last week. Comba legger, this is ESPN fifteen thirty. Thanks
for listening.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Last Friday, we read a blurb. I think blurb's the
right word.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
There's an ESPN dot com piece on.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Best nuts for the upcoming baseball season, over unders, things
like that, and we read the snippet We'll go a
snippet on the Reds, which was authored by a guy
named Derek Carty, ESPN betting analyst, and he had the
Reds finishing with fewer than eighty two and a half wins,
and that I don't think is that far fetched. I've
(00:38):
got him a little bit better. But you know, it's
they won eighty three games last year. If they won
eighty two games, it wouldn't be a shock. Eighty two
would be the under. But what stood out to me,
and I think what stood out to a lot of folks,
was the explanation. And the explanation was, well, there's questions
in the rotation. Andrew Abbott's been one of the luckiest
pitchers in baseball. Nicoladolo's stuff declined after returning from injury,
(00:59):
and Derek wrote about projections having this as close to
a bottom five pitching staff. And so we read this
on Friday and I said, man, I'd love to get
this guy on because that doesn't mesh with the consensus.
Over the weekend, this was spread on Twitter and Derek
Carty became the latest Cincinnati sports internet villain. You know,
(01:21):
on this show, we love getting on Cincinnati sports internet villains.
And so, in the middle of being called a bunch
of names, I reached out to Derek and said, love
to have you on, and he was nice enough to
agree to a join us.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Derek Carty is here. How you doing, sir, I'm doing
pretty well.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Thanks so much for having me on.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
What is the meanest thing a reds Fain either called
you or said to you over the weekend.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I don't know about the meanest, but I did learn
this weekend that the R word is in heavy rotation
for most people these days.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yeah, that's that's uh, that's unfortunate. All right, let's uh,
let's get to a few of the the the basic
premises of your article. Let's start with Andrew Abbitt, who
you expect to have regression. It's worth pointing out by
the way you offered it me a couple of sorts
on social media, a little bit of an explanation talked
about misreading some data. The snippet on the ESPN dot
(02:15):
com piece has been rewritten to reflect that. But you
expect Andrew Abbott to be a candidate for regression, and
he was awesome in the first half last year. The
number is not so great in the second half. They
weren't atrocious, but they weren't up to the standard he
set with that amazing first half. Why do you expect
him to take a step back in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
So a lot of it has to do with just
some of the core principles of sabermetrics, with that limited
control over certain things. They have limited control over the
hits that they allow on balls and play, the percentage
of runners that they strand on base, the percentage of
their fly balls that turn into home runs. Generally, when
a picture does really well in one of these categories,
it helps his era. He looks really good, but it
(03:00):
doesn't necessarily carry over to his future era very well.
Abbot has outperformed in all three and even though he's
done it for three years, and that seems like a
long time when it comes to these stats, the math
kind of says he's still probably likely to get worse
at them.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
So, all right, you can get worse, you're also getting
worse from what was a pretty lofty standard in the
first half of last year. Does getting worse mean he's
a bad picture?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
No, No, I have Andrew Abbot projected as about an
average picture, maybe a little below average, which I think
is still well below what most people want to hear.
But when you look at kind of his underlying peripheral metrics,
he doesn't strike a lot of guys out. He doesn't
have great control. He gives up a lot of fly balls.
Even when you dive even deeper into the stackcast data,
(03:46):
you know what his pitch mix is and how good
his stuff is. If you look at his velocity and
his movement and his spin rate and his tilt and
his tunneling and all that kind of good stuff. We
can quantify all that stuff now and we can say
precisely what scouts see with their eyes. And the problem
with Abbot is that all of these stuff models, no
matter who you look at, they don't like him. They
don't believe that he's one of these guys that can
(04:06):
outperform the underlying metrics, the way he's done for the
past couple of years. So it really just comes down to,
you know, maybe I'm wrong, Maybe the statistics here are wrong.
Maybe he really is an outlier like those guys do exist,
But probability wise, I don't think he is. And we've
seen it time and again with guys throughout the history
(04:28):
of baseball, Like look at what Rick Corcello did in
Boston twenty sixteen. He had what like twenty two wins
like a three fifteen ERA, He won the Cy young.
He was only in the league for another four years
after that, he never had an ERA under four again,
and then he was kind of forced out of the league,
like we saw it with Barry Zito in Oakland where
he was overperforming his peripherals for so long and then
he completely fell apart. In the final like ten years
(04:49):
of his career. He never had an RA under four.
Like it's just it's one of those things where he's
doing it, he's doing it right up until he can't anymore,
and a lot of times guys just can't do it
long term.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Derek Carty is with us explain or elaborate on I
guess Nick Lidolo's apparent decline and stuff after he came
off a three week stint on the injuredless last year.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
So, I mean, anytime a pitcher comes off an injury,
there's always a chance that their stuff is going to
be diminished. Nicklodolo, his fastold velocity was down a little bit.
I'd have to look into exactly what the difference was.
But if you look at the stuff metrics, especially the
one that I just developed, which is going to be
a fangrass pretty soon, it says that his stuff was
(05:35):
worse last year, and so it's you project him out
just using what he actually did. I'd have him projected
for a four to seventeen ERA when you account for
the decline and stuff, he projects for a four to
seventy three RA. So pretty significant drop off there for
a guy that, uh, you know, maybe next year the
stuff bounces back. I mean, he came back from from
(05:57):
an injury. The stuff. You know, there might have been
some rust that he was taking. Often he might go
back to being the guy that he was before the injury,
but we don't know that. It's another question mark.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
I just want fewer blisters. I'll settle for that when
you talk about stuff, dive into that. For me is
that control is a command, is a velocity is an
accommodation of everything to find stuff.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
For me, yes, stuff is. When I say stuff, I
essentially mean the physical characteristics of a pitch. So it's
the velocity, it's the movement, it's the spin rate, it's
the tilt, the late break, how well he tunnels it
off of other pitches, whether he has bridge pitches to
work with it, all kinds of stuff like that that
essentially tells us how good a fastball is, how good
(06:37):
a curveball is, how good a slider is, and we
can quantify that. And when you do that, you've wind
up seeing, okay, the guys that have really good stuff
for the guys you'd expect, and the guys who have
bad stuff or the guys you'd expect. And so you know,
it can be a really informative way of telling us
who a picture is, or when a picture changes who
he is, which did appear to be the case with
(06:57):
the Ladola last year. After the injury.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Your original premise had Chase Burns, as you put it,
representing a significant injury risk, and you've kind of walked
that back.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Explain that to me, Yeah, so significant. Maybe I overstated it,
but he did have the flexer strain last year, which
does oftentimes lead to Tommy John surgery. So that was
where I was coming from. With Chase Burns, I had
a lot of red stands tell me that they don't
believe it was a real injury, that it was a
phantom injury. They were trying to manage his workload. Maybe
(07:29):
that was the case. I'm surprised they'd call it a
flexer strain if that's what it was, if that's what
they were doing, But that's kind of where that train
of logic with that came from.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
They have prioritized the bullpen this spring, and there have
been off seasons where it felt like what they're doing
in the bullpen is just find some random guys who
used to be good and maybe they catch lightning in
the bottle or get a failed starter and put them
out there. It felt like they made a priority, made
it a priority to get guys to fill specific roles
in the bullpen. With Ameliopegon coming back to be the closer,
(08:01):
you don't love the bullpen as much as people here may.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Why they made they made additions to the bullpen, but
I don't know if they made any real impact editions,
Like they added, uh, they had brock Burke, who's like,
he's fine, but he's not anything special. They added Pierce Johnson,
who again is fine, but he's not anything special. They
(08:24):
don't have an elad Arm in the bullpen. A lot
of teams have two or even three. Amelia Pegan is
you know, by you know, ninth inning closer, you know,
fireman standards. You know, he's realistically one of the weaker
ones in baseball. So they just don't have that high
end of the bullpen to really make their bullpen threatening,
even if they do have a little more depth to
(08:45):
it now.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Offensively, you know they did at ayuhanios Lorez And you
mentioned your your model projects close to seventy nine and
a half wins for the Reds and that was even
accounting for the addition of u Haaneosuarez. So what was
it before and where do you think the biggest shortcoming
is going to be for this team?
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Offensively?
Speaker 3 (09:10):
I think the biggest shortcoming really is it's not any
one spot specifically, It's just that they don't have a
lot of star power outside of Ellie Da La Cruz
and they It's hard to put my finger on it.
It's just that they have a bunch of guys that
are kind of mediocre or below average, and that's kind
of what their offense is. It's a little below average.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Yeah, that's the thing, right, Like it was it was
fourteenth and one score less.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Not like they were terrible, but I understand the general point.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Yeah, and they have upside. I mean they have guys
like South Stewart, who could you know, do something. Maybe
Matt McLean turns it around. Cabrian Hayes was always a
guy that I thought was interesting coming up for the Pirates,
Like they have guys. It's just, uh, you look at
it right now, and there's not a lot of proven
offense in this lineup.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
So uh, you go from originally concluding they could have
close to a bottom five rotation too, when you're Miya
Kalpa talking about how like actually top five rotation? How
and don't take this the wrong way, but how do
you interpret the data one way and then look at
it in another way that gives us such an extreme
difference between the two conclusions.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Yeah, I mean there's no way around it. It was
a mistake on my end. It was a stupid mistake,
and it's one that I'm going to be very careful
to make again. I'm not one hundred percent sure what happened,
but what I'm pretty sure happened is kind of the
way I approached that piece. Again, it was a betting
piece that wasn't like a deep dive into the reds.
So I was giving a bet and a sentence or
two to support the bet. And I always start with
(10:44):
the projection because I run the projection system the bad X,
which you might know from fangraphs or elsewhere. It's found
to be the most accurate the last six years running
like it's good. So when people tell me that they
hate when you say trust the math, I have a
very good reason to trust the math sometimes because my
math is pretty good. So I was just trusting the
math on the projection. The projection said, okay, they project
(11:07):
for about seventy nine and a half wins under eighty
two and a half. There's a little bit of value there. Okay.
Now I need to find a sentence or two to
write up to explain why the projection sees that. And
I must have pulled the data wrong because when I
went back and look, the Reds do not have a
bottom five rotation in baseball. They actually projected the top
five rotation in my system right now. So I don't
(11:28):
know if I had it sorted.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
The wrong way or what.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
I have no app I have no no idea it was.
It was just a mistake, you know what.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
The Miya Kulpa and the transparency and the willingness to
do this and engage some fans on social media are
things that I admire. Go back to last year, so
they won eighty three, which, if memory serves me correct,
they barely hit the over.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
I know they hit the over.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Because I, like an idiot, I bet them to hit
the over every year, and my track record's terrible.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
What did you have the Reds out last year?
Speaker 3 (12:00):
I think I had it similar last year where I
had them about two or three wins under the line
and it wound up losing. I think if you looked
at what I had for all thirty teams, it wound
up being very profitable. But I was wrong about the
Reds last year as well.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Go back and I know you're tied on time. Two
things one Andrew Abbot being lucky which is something you
put out there for lack of a better way of
putting it. How do we account for that? Dive into
that for me, because I could look at Andrew Abbit's
number seco dude had a pretty good year. Walk me
through like factoring and luck Why was he lucky last year?
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Well, so Andrew Abbot, Like you look on the surface
and it looks like he was fantastic. He had pulling
up this page right now, he had a two eighty
seven ERA, which is fantastic. But you look under the
hood at the peripheral metrics and his ex FIP was
four thirty one. His SIERRA was four twenty. He had
a two seventy four Babbitt, which is probably lower than
he's able to sustain. He had an eighty percent left
on base percentage, which is much higher than anybody can sustain.
(13:00):
You look at his stuff plus and it's below average.
It's just uh, you look under the hood and it's like, Okay,
he's done these things on the surface, he's been able
to prevent these runs, but he's not doing the types
of things that guys who prevent runs consistently are able
to do.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
And what is that.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Strike? Guys out. I mean, that's a big It sounds
so simple, stupid, but that is a big part of it. Like,
strikeouts are one of the stickiest stats we have for
a picture. It's one of the most important things that
you can do as a pitcher, and Andrew Abbitt doesn't
do it. So at the very least, I think we're
seeing a guy who's going to regress to being above average,
(13:39):
if not a little bit worse than that.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
What do you project from my guy, Hunter Green this year?
Speaker 3 (13:44):
Oh? I love Hunter Green. This year Hunter Green and
Chase Burns. My system absolutely loves it, has been both
his top ten pictures in baseball at this point, projecting
big years for Green, especially this year.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Among all the baseball fan bases, where are red fans
on the me scale?
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Oh, they are pretty high. They are pretty high, all right.
The BackFlash was it was a lot this weekend. It
was a lot.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah. I uh.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
I was sitting there at my kitchen table on Saturday
morning watching you take it, and I'm like, all right,
I got to see if this dude will come on
the air with me, and hopefully he doesn't think I'm
gonna yell and scream at him as well. So I
appreciate you doing this and uh we'll do it again.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Man.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Thanks so much, Yeah, no problem.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Thanks for having me on
Mo Egger News
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