Hello and welcome to episode 2065 of Effectively Wild, a fangrass baseball podcast

brought to you by our Patreon supporters, I'm Megarelli, a fangrass, and I'm joined

as always by Ben Limberg of the Ring or Ben. How are you? I'm doing all right. How are you?

Doing all right. I have a question for you. This might sound galaxy-brained a bit, but

it is necessarily which is the more impressive aspect of Ronald Acunia Jr.'s season. Is it the power speed

split, which we've talked about, and which has been the centerpiece of the praise that he has

received? Everyone is focusing on the fact that he's the first 40-70 player because he's the first

40-60 player for that matter. He's the first 40-50 player. In fact, can't even say he'd

joined the club. He inaugurated the club. He created the club. He opened the club. It is not a soft

launch. It is open. And when we talked about this on a previous step last, he had the highest

Bill James power speed number ever, which recognized the fact that he has so many of each of those

stats. But is that more impressive than the fact that he has cut his strike outrate so dramatically?

That has not gotten nearly the same attention, and it's kind of hard to make it sound as sexy as

40-70. He picked up the bag, Ricky Henderson style, when he's still his 70th, and good for him.

He's entitled. He can just walk away with all the bags. He's still a mom. He's the first

player to steal 70 since Jacobi Ellsbury. Remember him blast from the past in 2009. But it's really,

I think maybe more impressive to me that he has an 11.3 percent strike outrate, which among the

134 qualified batters this season is the fifth lowest. And the guys below him are mostly pretty

powerless. Not entirely. Obviously, Luis Arise has, by far, the lowest strike outrate. And then

you have Jeff McNeil and you have Stephen Kwan. Those are the kinds of hitters you think of as

low strike out guys, Jose Ramirez, who's also amazing and good at everything. He has the third

lowest strike outrate. And then Caper Oweez is fifth, and then it's round to Cuniu Jr.

...