VEB Podcast: John LaRue on Nootbaar, wES, and Your Questions

Happy Saturday, Viva El Birdos!

The VEB Podcast is back and we’ve brought back an old friend! Fromer Birdo John LaRue joined the writing team to talk about Lars Nootbaar, a new pitching stat called wES, and answer your questions!

We spend a little time talking about our high expectations for Nootbaar this year and discuss all that “red” over at his Baseball Savant page. Inevitably we compare him to Dylan Carlson and that leads to an interesting discussion on expectations, hitter types, and how we evaluate that as fans.

I promised I would post Nootbaar’s stats summary here, but instead, since we go so far reaching into his offense and defense, I’ll just provide the link to his whole Baseball Savant page. Everything we talk about is on that page and pretty easy to find.

John also introduces a new stat to us called “wES”.

wES is a variation on CSW — strikes, swings, and misses — that rates a pitcher’s stuff based on when they get strikes. The premise is that it’s easier to get called strikes in hitter-friendly counts than it is when hitters are protecting the plate.

Jordan Montgomery checks out pretty well in this stat — in the top third of the Cardinals’ starters — but the rest of them don’t. You can check out the stat and the complete list of starting pitchers in the study right here.

After that, we get to some of your questions for John! If you want those, you’ll have to listen! Or watch! Because, as always, both platforms are available to you.

Here’s the embedded audio. Or you can download through your favorite podcast provider.

Here’s the embedded video. Or you can watch it directly on YouTube at the VEB Podcast page.

As always, thanks for listening and watching! And thanks to JL for coming on with us. I think we’ll hear from him again soon.

Enjoy your weekend!