Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1032: The Outfield Impostor

Episode Date: March 15, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about WBC tiebreakers and the efficacy of the infield shift, then answer listener emails about a Mike Trout body snatcher, dropped third strikes, bricks behind home plate, premature rebuilds, your WAR compared to Tim Tebow’s, new Statcast stats, and more. Audio intro: Lenny Randle & Ballplayers, "I’m a Ballplayer" Audio outro: […]

I'm a ball player, and I love to play the game. I'm a ball player, I got ladies from here to Spain. I'm a ball player, do you have a phone? I'm a ball player, can I call you up at home? I'm a ball player, I like singles. I'm a ball player, and I like to mingle. I'm a ball player, can you give me a high five? I'm a ball player, can I eat up with your thighs? Hello and welcome to episode 1032 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello, Jeff.

Hi. How is the blizzard treating you? It is coming down in some form or another. The last term I heard was a muted wintry mix, although it has not been muted where I am. I'm in a tall building and the wind is very strong and loud and was blowing against the side of the building with a lot of sleet. We delayed our podcast a little bit so that it would not sound like I was recording in a blizzard, which hopefully it does not right now, but know that I am bravely podcasting in spite of the storm.

It's like a natural white noise machine at worst, provided you're inside. Yeah, it wasn't distracting for me, so if it's uh being picked up then maybe you like the added atmosphere so we're going to do an email show a couple quick things to banter about first you want to talk about the wbc yeah okay let's deal with this a little bit there's some controversy that has sort of already died down because the pool has been determined but in pool d of of the World Baseball Classic, there were four teams, as in all the pools. It was Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Italy, and Mexico. Puerto Rico won that pool, being the best team. They went 3-0.

That left Venezuela, Italy, and Mexico all at one win and two losses. And one of those teams needed to advance into, I guess, Pool F, which has already been determined because, oh, by the way, there was a tiebreaker game on Monday where Venezuela beat Italy. In any case, there is controversy, or there was, is, I don't know. Is Mexico still upset? They're probably still upset. I don't know.

But we got a question about it from a listener named Stu. So that gives us a reason to talk about it. Mexico is disappointed. They were left out of the tiebreaker game. Obviously, there could only be one tiebreaker game. And it wound up being between Venezuela and Italy and italy played on monday which again venezuela won mexico was upset because it seems like there was some miscommunication over the rules that would allow a team to qualify for said tiebreaker game so i'm going to read straight from the online

published world baseball classic rules for a situation where there are three teams tied with a one and two record this is going to be word for word this is also going to be annoying i'm sorry if there are three teams tied at one and two then the tie breaker rules would be applied to rank the three and the first two ranked teams would play a tie breaker what's the point of this paragraph we get it it's not a it's not a round robin situation okay step one first tiebreaker the tied teams shall be ranked in the standings for that round according to fewest runs allowed divided by the number of innings parentheses including partial innings played in defense in the games in that round between the teams tied so that the second part of that is super clunky what that means is that for purposes of determining this tiebreaker you ignore the games that venezuela italy and mexico

played against puerto rico because puerto rico was not tied in that group so you only care about the games between venezuela italy and mexico there are four of them and the tiebreaker rules specify runs allowed in all innings including partial innings so mexico allowed 19 runs in 17 innings the other teams allowed i forgot which is which one of them allowed 21 runs in 19 innings and one of them allowed i think 20 runs in 19 innings so mexico allowed this is so bad stupid mexico allowed the fewest runs of the three in those games against the other teams but they allowed them in also the fewest innings and so by dividing the two which is what the tiebreaker rules say to do mexico comes out with the worst average therefore mexico was not included by maybe the narrowest possible margin they did not make the tiebreaker game that went to venezuela

and italy and so there's controversy here oh my god it's hard to talk about a lot of this controversy because uh mexico in one of the games allowed a massive bottom of the ninth rally to Italy, right? Yeah. Mexico blew a game against Italy, allowing five runs in the bottom of the ninth, and no outs were recorded, which, by the way, that's embarrassing. Maybe don't protest your inability to make a qualifier game because you let Italy score five runs without recording an out. Italy. We're talking about team Italy playing a baseball game anyway against team Mexico. Okay. Anyway, anyway, so there are two issues here.

One, maybe you can read off what Mexico was, was told or what Venezuela was told before the games. Yeah. It seemed like there was some miscommunication what the teams were told about what they would have to do to qualify or whether they were on the verge of elimination maybe because it's kind of a confusingly worded rule or maybe someone didn't understand it perfectly so that seems to be part of the controversy here is that not that the rule was misapplied, but that maybe it was misexplained to someone at some time. I don't know exactly what the timeline was or what was reported, but it seems like part of it is that there was just some confusion about what was actually going to happen. Yeah. So I think Adrian Gonzalez has lamented the fact that he was told or Team Mexico was told that if they won their last game by two runs, then they would make it or something along those lines.

There were more conditions. But here's the deal. Looking at the actual rule, this is basically it's like calculating ERA except RA because unearned runs are included. ra because unearned runs are included and in the era calculation for as long as certainly i've known it and for for probably as long as time innings have been calculated as basically the number of outs partial innings include only outs mexico seems to have the dispute that when they allowed i'm going to do this again five runs to italy in the ninth inning without recording an out mexico's dispute is that they clearly played some sort of inning there because five runs scored there was not no baseball so they argue that they played a partial

inning if i run the math so mexico allowed 19 runs in uh 17 innings which gave them uh runs allowed per inning of 1.12 however had they allowed 19 runs in say 17.33 innings that would have been 1.096 i don't know i don't have all the numbers in front of me mexico argues that they played a partial inning by allowing italy to dominate themselves the problem i at least as i see it is that this should be a really simple issue it shouldn't be a confusing issue because partial innings have always, always, always, always been based on outs and not just on the fact that some baseball was played. Pitchers can allow runs in zero innings if they allow, you know, a bunch of base runners like Mexico did against Team Italy in a tournament. So they are upset. I mean, anyone would be upset if you miss a tiebreaker by a technicality,

but it seems like based on the rules, there's really no ambiguity here. A partial inning has always been understood to be either 0.1, 0.2, or full inning. That's it. That's how it's always been done. There would be two issues here. One being, I don't know what that miscommunication was about beforehand, because if the people in charge can't understand what I think are pretty simple tiebreaker rules, then that doesn't really speak well to the tournament. And problem number two, maybe a bigger problem here, is why runs allowed?

Why not run differential? Which seems like it would make the most sense. Because why ignore the runs for? It seems like whoever wrote this rule just strongly believed that pitching and defense wins championships and decided to make that literally true in this tournament. Because it doesn't matter really how many runs you score for this purpose. It's just I don't know why you would choose runs allowed only over run differential. And if you had chosen run differential, I guess it would have made a difference, right? Because all of these teams had been outscored, but I think Mexico had been outscored by the least. Mexico was at negative four. Italy is at negative six. Venezuela was at negative 12 So Mexico and Italy would have played the tiebreaker in that scenario

So maybe that would have made more sense But those weren't the rules for whatever reason So it's something they can correct next time If there's a next time I think these rules have changed even since the prior WBC2 So there's some other weirdness about the tiebreaker potentially being complicated by the mercy rule in the tournament, which could change a team's runs allowed per inning, or maybe something about the extra innings rule with the runners at first and

second base to start any inning. There could be some strange incentives, but I don't think that really came into play here. I think this was just poorly communicated. It's difficult to communicate well, as we have just proved in this podcast, but I think it's that, and it's the weird runs allowed per inning rule. So strange stuff,

but I guess no actual injustice was done if you go by the letter of the law. Okay. So you mentioned, I think you might've mentioned this already, but just looking at run differentials for games between Mexico, Venezuela, and Italy, there were four such games. Anyway, Mexico plus one, Italy, even Venezuela minus one. So if you looked at run differential yeah Mexico would have played Italy and that seems like that would be the more sensible tiebreaker here so Mexico could argue that they deserve to be in because the tiebreaker rule is stupid but the tiebreaker rule as written correctly obviously led to the two teams that made it here's what's looking so

the the first tiebreaker, as mentioned, is that it's runs allowed divided by the number of innings, including partial innings. The second tiebreaker, if that is all even, is it's the exact same except it's earned runs divided by the number of innings, including partial innings. And the third tiebreaker, if that's all the same, is batting average.

The highest batting average in the games between. Why not just runs? Why not just run differential? I don't understand. If that's all the same is batting average. The highest batting average in the games between. Why not just runs? Why not just run differential? I don't understand. Why would you say runs allowed, uttered runs, batting average? It doesn't make any sense. And then step four is the drawing.

Standings shall be determined by the drawing of lots conducted by WBCI. What is a lot? That sounds fun. I don't know. Is it like a Powerball lotto thing where you pick numbers out of a spinner i don't know it's either lottery or it's like a game of competitive pictionary where it's like you draw a lot and then you have to make sure that you've done a good job i don't know something's weird mexico missed out because they rightly didn't qualify based on the way the rule was written the rule was interpreted correctly afterwards clearly someone didn't qualify based on the way the rule was written. The rule was interpreted correctly afterwards. Clearly someone didn't interpret it correctly beforehand, but it's a weird rule. It's

a bad rule. Should be run differential. All that stuff, poorly drawn out, but the WBC is still a lot of fun. Right. Other than that, there's your answer, Stu. I hope it was satisfying. I was also going to ask you about something else that is not the easiest to explain, although I feel bad putting you through that now. You did an Instagram post about the shift and the state of the shift and effects of the shift. And you didn't make it a main post because, as you mentioned, it kind of confirmed what we know already or what previous research has shown. But not everyone is familiar with that research. has shown, but not everyone is familiar with that research. So you essentially showed how results on balls in play, specifically grounders, have changed over the last several seasons as the shift has become more and more common. And you showed that the batting average on grounders

in play to the pull side, which is most grounders because most players pull the majority of their grounders, has gone down, which would suggest that the shift is working. But grounders up the middle, grounders particularly to the opposite field, the results on those have improved tremendously from the hitter's perspective. And maybe that's the thing that people don't realize. I remember seeing this myself and being surprised by it when I was writing about it at some point, because of course you out the benefits from the pulled grounders, although it's difficult to say definitively that the shift doesn't matter looking at it like that. What was the batting average on balls in play increase for balls hit the other way, grounders hit the other way? Yeah, grounders to the opposite field.

So I looked at 11 years of data because it looks like we have about 11 years of reliable consistent data so to the pull side batting average on grounders to the bull side it's never been good by the way it's like yeah you pulled grounders have largely been outs used to be a little above 200 now it's gone down to a little below 200 maybe not the drop that people would expect but there you go don't hit pulled grounders yeah there are a lot of them so even if it's a small decrease it's it's it adds up yeah yeah for sure nearly every hitter pulls the majority of his ground balls this is true for power hitters and it's also true for a lot of middling power hitters it's not true for like nori aoki or ichiro or d gordon or these these slap hitters but generally if you have a guy who's any sort of threat,

he will pull his ground balls. Anyway, to the opposite field, and there are not many grounders hit the other way because it's difficult to engineer a swing to hit consistent grounders the other way. But used to be, about a decade ago, that batting average in balls in play hung around somewhat comfortably below 300,

sort of the 280 to 290 range. And then that number has very consistently gone up to the point where last year it was about 373. So it was encroaching on 400. So it's gone up almost 100 points over the span of the last decade. And it's easy to understand. This is not just looking at shifts or not shifts this is looking at the whole picture so it includes everything but you picture the standard rearranged infield then you sort of stack the uh the hitter's pull side which leaves a big open space the other way and very much unsurprisingly baseballs have found that little area whether hitters have intended that or not balls have gotten through to the outfield because the ball has sort of been hit the other way on purpose or dribbled off the bat in that direction and i don't know if you can say that this is something that defenses are doing wrong i don't

know if the shifts have been optimized but the way it works out even though there are so few grounders hit the other way relative to the ones they're pulled batting average on grounders has stayed basically the exact same over the era where we've seen shifts taking off shifts are not just about grand balls also low liners that's not included because i don't know how to do that and you know you're also dealing with mindsets and trying to make power hitters hit the ball the other way on the ground because that way to avoid a home run but by the way most played appearances don't end in home runs anyway most power hitters don't hit home runs every time they go up there so it's still after all this time i've seen the data where

what i think baseball info solutions points to like shift runs saved every year and i know that a lot of runs yeah it claims to be a lot of runs i don't want to dispute that because i'm looking at things very simplistically but if you just look at the batted balls like this i still don't see that compelling evidence that the shifts have been saving that much right yeah it'll be interesting to see as the stat cast information is applied more and more rigorously and we'll talk a little bit about that later in this episode but there's been some initial suggestion, I think, just based on some research that Tom Tango has done that maybe some guys who are getting shifted in the outfield shouldn't be shifted or teams are actually being hurt by that. So perhaps as the StatCast info gets

mined, more and more teams will decide that they've been shifting too much or suboptimally and for all we know maybe the the cubs and joe madden who went from being a leader in shifting to being a trailer in shifting although i think they've said that maybe they're shifting in ways that are not classified as shifts and more subtle sort of positioning but maybe it'll turn out that certain teams were shifting too much and it'll find some sort of medium where teams will shift more efficiently, but less frequently. So I'll be curious to see how that turns out, but I agree. It's always been perplexing if the shift is really doing that much that we would not see some kind of league-wide change on a large scale, which we don't really. So confounding.

Agreed. Emails. We should talk about some emails. Yeah. Okay. So we got a question from Dylan who says, one day you wake up and you're Mike Trout. You look like him. You talk like him.

You are in his bed, but you play like you. You are not the best baseball player in the world. You're you. How long will you play like you. You are not the best baseball player in the world. You're you. How long will you last in the big leagues? How long can you last before someone realizes something is up? How long until you get cut? Sort of similar to the trout running backward question, but with the added wrinkle that at the very least you can probably fake it. You'll be slow and you'll probably never get a hit, will you?

But there won't be anything obvious about what is going on. You'll probably never get a hit, will you? But there won't be anything obvious about what is going on. And surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, we got almost exactly the same question from another listener named Ryan, who envisioned it as a sort of Freaky Friday scenario where not only do you wake up and you're Trout, but Trout wakes up and he's you. And Ryan wants to know how long it would take for the situation to get straightened out or at least for everyone to realize what was happening. It has been 14 years since the last Freaky Friday remake. So maybe this is right material for a movie.

But what do you think? How long would it take for you to be unmasked as a Mike Trout imposter? I think it would be an outstanding movie. And the complication with Ryan's situation is that you inherit the other person's body. So, you know, if you're 10 years older than Mike Trout, even if you have all the same baseball skills and knowledge, you're still limited by the fact that you're a 36 year old out of shape person who is very much not Mike Trout. So you wonder what could Mike Trout do in an average person's body? Anyway, this is one of those things that I've thought about often not

that i have everything arranged coherently in a response but it's sort of the the other fun if horrible way to imagine the uh the mike trout level ability switcheroo so you figure okay it's i don't know july 1st and mike trout has had three months of being the best player on the planet and then all of a sudden i don't know maybe there's a lightning storm or the microwave turns on and surveils him and then something happens to his dna and there's a little swap so mike trout fantastic numbers and uh and then he's you and i think we can speak for the average listener slash podcaster in that we have we all have a familiarity with what baseball looks like and some of us have played at a at some kind of level but we're not Mike Trout and I think there would be giveaways almost immediately because we would us trout I don't know how to

refer to this properly the the new trout us would look different at just about everything if you're just standing there of course there's no difference you're going to go through the stretching routine and you can sort of follow the other players in the pregame stuff and uh you could do your little runs and your squats and your sprints and your lunges and you think okay maybe you're kind of out of it you don't really remember the routine exactly but but whatever, we can all do those things and not look out of place because no one's really going at 110% during the pregame stretches anyway.

But then you get to batting practice and maybe if you wake up and you realize, oh wait, something's wrong, maybe you opt to skip that first batting practice. I don't know, say something's wrong. Maybe you have a headache, you ask for a day off, but before very long, something's going to look headache. You ask for a day off. But before very long, something's going to look weird.

Yep. You're going to take swings. You're going to try to hit baseballs in a non-game environment. And someone's going to be paid attention. I don't know how close attention they pay. Like the coaching staff pays to Mike Trout, you know, because he's Mike Trout

and he's probably fine. But, you know, there's someone throwing to you. There are people watching you because there are people shagging. And they would think, oh, you know, there's someone throwing to you. There are people watching you because there are people shagging. And they would think, oh, this guy, this guy either isn't hitting the baseball or he's not hitting the baseball more than like 200 feet at maximum. And then there would be there would be some questions, but there would be so much evidence that, hey, this is still Mike Tr that no maybe he's just kind of having an

off day maybe he's preoccupied maybe he's trying something new maybe he's intentionally trying to be terrible to inspire the people who are watching batting practice in the stadium so then you get into a game and i think it would not take long for it to be clear we're not talking about someone going like over four we're talking about someone going over four and looking like they're i don't know not even adam greenberg because adam greenberg had been a professional baseball player we're talking about someone who looks like he was like a make-a-wish selection for a terrible baseball team and he got to play in the season end game so i think you would have immediately there would be questions of the broadcast questions in the stadium questions in the dugout i don't know do

you think i'll send this back to you do you think that you would be removed from your first game would mike so should do that or would you let you play through i think if you had the status of trout i think you'd be spared the embarrassment as long as you're hustling now maybe you would be hustling and it would look like you're not hustling because you're you and not Mike Trout. So if you're like, hey, stop dogging it down the line and really you're sprinting at your top speed. But assuming it looks convincingly like you're trying, I think you get spared the embarrassment of a mid-game removal as the reigning MVP and best player in the world. I mean, there have been cases where a superstar has gone from superstar to not very good very quickly, whether it's, I don't know, Dale Murphy, who was one of the best players on the planet and declined very quickly. But even he went in stages, sort of. He went from a seven win season to a three win season to a 1.5 win season to replacement level, and then he was out of the game. So it was a rapid decline by historical standards, but a very slow, gradual decline by the standards of you taking over

Mike Trout's body. So yeah, I don't think you get through more than one game, really. You'd look so overmatched. You'd look like worse than Tim Tebow up there. And I think everyone would be asking you what was wrong. It would, you know, now like Lou Gehrig, for example, was wasting away and had a degenerative disease. And he played for quite some time when I think everyone was worrying about what was wrong with him and he was worrying about what was wrong with himself. And he stayed in the lineup for quite a while as a pretty terrible hitter, just because obviously he had ALS and it was impairing his abilities. So maybe that's a precedent, but even compromised, you know, mortally ill Lou Gehrig was, I think, better than we would be just stepping into a major league baseball game. So, you know, whether it's that or whether it's some pitcher who was a flamethrower and then he hurt his elbow and was never the same and washed out of the game pretty quickly, all of those precedents, I think, would be different from this situation where you would look instantly worse than anyone else has ever looked.

So I think you'd make it through that first game, but then everyone would sit you down and say what's wrong. And maybe it depends on how you react. If you tried to bluster and say, I'm Mike Trout, who are you to question me? I'm the MVP of the American League. Leave me in there. I don't know. Maybe you get a second game. But after that, I think everyone's going to be so concerned that they will be sending you for tests and rehab assignments and you're not going to get better and and that'll be that and you'd probably hang around for a while teams would keep giving you chances you could go to indie ball and and kind of limp around and be terrible for a while as people would just

hope that you had recovered your skills but i guess ultimately everyone would just conclude that you had hit some sort of wall you'd suffered a mini stroke or you just prematurely aged in a way that no one could detect clearly you are not the same player and i don't think anyone would be fooled by your microtrad exterior for very long yeah this wouldn't be one of those declines and stages this This would be going from like 10 war player to, what is it, negative 20, negative 30 war player, which is basically what our true level is. I don't have to run the exact math. So I don't remember the specifics in the question, but was this like Ryan's question where you inherit Mike's body, but do you at least have Mike?

I mean, if you have his body, then it stands to reason you sort of have his athleticism, right? You just have your own terrible instincts. I don't know. I think the spirit of the question is that somehow you have his body, but you don't have his skills. So it's like a Mike Trout skin without any of the attributes of Mike Trout. Okay. okay so you basically maybe you have the muscles but you don't know how to use them it's like quap yeah in a way so yeah your your mic trap i think you would so quickly people would get mad the good news is about the whole thing you said about hustling is that well you wouldn't have any opportunity because you never hit the ball

you wouldn't be doing anything i mean you'd be trying to track down some fly balls probably and that would go very horribly wrong although maybe we would be better at faking it defensively than faking it offensively because there are a lot of easy plays yeah and there's then there's the matter of how you look trying to make an easy play but in any case let's say maybe you're not susceptible to the pressure but of being observed by so many millions of people but you would very quickly i think get placed on the disabled list and you would be put through a battery of tests like you mentioned yes like you would i think they pretty quickly figure out that nothing is wrong they would be looking for any sort of neurological condition that i don't know i guess you get one of those early onset overnight als situations that doesn't exist but they would be giving you a lot of those neurological onset overnight ALS situations that doesn't exist, but they would be giving you

a lot of those neurological tests. They would be examining your brain. And then I think the conclusion would be, well, we don't actually understand the brain well enough, but clearly your brain has some cortex in your brain or series of cortices has stopped functioning in the way that it used to. And this should be a big deal. And then all of a sudden, there would be a new reason for people to worry about their own favorite superstars on their favorite team, because you just never know if overnight, Bryce Harper is going to turn into Ben Lindbergh. Right? Yeah, Gary went from obviously being one of the best players in baseball history to in his final season, it was just eight games and 33 plate appearances. He hit 143 and

slugged 143. And then he retired and it was clear that something was wrong with him. And I think I've read research that if you look back at the previous season, he had begun to decline that year too, but you are not going to hit 143 or slug 143. I am not going to hit or slug 143. And that was career ending for him fairly quickly, despite all he had accomplished. So this is going to be quick. The fun question. It's going to be over quickly. How quickly would the other pitcher notice?

Because, you know, you're first at bat. You're probably, if you're aware, you're going to take pitches. You're going to try not to swing. Yes. Ever. So the pitcher is still going to pitch around you, because as far as the pitcher is concerned, you're going to take pitches you're going to try not to swing ever so the other the pitcher is still going to pitch around you because as far as the pitcher is concerned you're mike trout but would it be the second the third plate appearance where he's like this isn't this isn't my shot at

all this is a midget so i'm just gonna pound fast not even fastballs necessarily the pitcher would still not take everything off the pitch but your zone rate would probably increase almost immediately yeah i i mean maybe after your first swing, maybe that would reveal it. So as long as you took pitches, I bet you could probably just take pitches for a full game and not arouse that much suspicion. The old Robert DeSelman. Yes, exactly.

The weird thing, Lou Gehrig, by the way, in 1938, his worst month was April, and then he was actually better down the stretch. That was unexpected. All right. I think, was he in the playoffs that year? Maybe it was that he was bad in the playoffs. I mean, we can guess he was in the playoffs.

Yeah. I mean, 1938 World Series, he hit 286, slugged 286. So, yeah, I think his power was down. All right. So, related question, I suppose, from Addy, who says, would Tim Tebow and I have the same war? And she writes, as you may have heard, as you are both people who breathe, Tim Tebow debuted in spring training last Wednesday. And as you also may be heard, he went 0 for 3, hitting into a double play and getting hit by a pitch and then getting out on another double play ball. and getting hit by a pitch and then getting out on another double play ball.

Tebow's resume entering the Mets farm includes playing in the NFL and playing some baseball 12 years ago and in the Arizona Fall League. He certainly has power, but he can't seem to connect with live pitching, although apparently it occasionally connects with his body. Here's my question. Would Tim Tebow and I have the same war? Let's just assume that I, through whatever means, get an invite to spring training. I have not played in the NFL, and frankly, that might be to my advantage, but I am pretty fit and reasonably strong and a somewhat fast runner. Plus, I also played some ball around 12 years ago when I played catcher in my youth softball

league. I am 99% certain I could not connect with live major league pitching, but I could probably draw a walk before my scouting report got around, or I could pull a Robert Kesselman, as we just said, and get on base with a bunt, which apparently you can do even if you can't swing a bat once on base. Whether by walk or hit by pitch like Tebow, I'm fairly certain I could steal a base, which frankly I might even have a better chance of being able to do than Tebow.

So I'm not saying it would be a war to hang on my mom's fridge, but would Tim Tebow and I have the same war? And Addy also cites a Twitter user named Megan who was saying that she, despite being, quote, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far from MLB caliber, could strike Tebow out. Could she? with the questioner. It's not even a male-female question. It's not about Addie or Megan specifically, but I think with virtually anyone who emailed us this question, and certainly for us also, the answer is no. The answer is, oh God, no.

We would not have the same war as Tim Tebow and not even close. He is bad relative to the other baseball players he's playing against and still really good compared to all of us yeah Tim Tebow if I'm reading this correctly in his baseball reference page last year in the Arizona Fall League he hit I think 194 I don't know there's some weird two lines of the same I don't know Tim Tebow hit something last year in the arizona fall league and he struck out not every time that he batted he had some extra base hits and speaking personally as someone who is aware of what baseball looks like and is in decent shape i would not hit anything i would

strike out in nearly all of the plate appearances i would attempt to bunt but i would only hurt myself tim tebow does have one hit in spring training. I would have none. He is a, uh, on his Arizona following team. If I'm reading this correctly, he was of course, one of the worst hitters by OPS, but there was one, uh, I'm going to pronounce this wrong, but I'm going to guess you don't need to know Matt. Oh, burst, Matt. Oh, bursty, Matt. Oh, burst. I don't know. He had a worse batting average than Tebow, a worse on base percentage. He did hit a home run, which Tebow didn't and might never. But, oh, by the way, Tim Tebow, there was the tweet that went around a few weeks ago that he hit a bunch of batting practice home runs.

Oh, my God, I couldn't even pull a ball in batting practice. And I've been trying really hard. He is, at the end of the day, a bad baseball-playing level athlete and i think that it's so easy to forget that athletes are not we don't want to like put them on a pedestal but they kind of belong on a pedestal you know yeah there is so much physically superior to the rest of us that it's impossible i as a weird like nine or ten years ago for reasons I really don't need to get into I wound up at a club in Seattle with Felix Hernandez and Jose Lopez Jose Lopez was the Mariners second baseman at that point maybe shorts off but hopefully second baseman by that point he wasn't

even supposed to be invited he just kind of showed up that's what Jose Lopez did and then once he was invited to places he didn't go away but I was expecting to just be there with Felix and I was very excited because I was essentially a child and he was Felix Hernandez and I wasn was expecting to just be there with Felix and I was very excited because I was essentially a child and he was Felix Hernandez and I wasn't expecting to see Jose Lopez but then I was there in like the VIP room standing next to Jose Lopez and I didn't really know what to say to him and he didn't really know what to say to me but I was struck by just how massive Jose Lopez was in that circumstance and he's not he wasn't like an unusually large major league baseball player. He got a little bigger as he got older, because I think maybe

he didn't try so hard, but he was still young at this point. And he was in maybe even like below average athlete shape, but oh my God, he could have, he could have beat me to death and I wouldn't have even had the time to notice what he was doing. Yeah. He is enormous and very fit. These people can bench press you and your best friend almost without breaking a sweat. Yeah. I don't know how many. I mean, you've interacted with far more professional athletes than I have. You can speak to this better.

Yeah, they're massive. And I'm in good shape. You're in good shape. Addie says she's in good shape. I'm sure she is. But these people are in a different kind of shape. They're massive. And I'm in good shape. You're in good shape. Addie says she's in good shape. I'm sure she is. But these people are in a different kind of shape. They're all huge. It's like if you look at their listed weights, like no one is listed. Like you think of little guys are like scrawny baseball players and baseball players are certainly not the beefiest of professional athletes.

But you think of small baseball players and they're all listed at like you know 180 or something like that it's like how are you that big you're not that big but they are that big it's it's muscle and it's that they look small relative to other baseball players who are huge but they're actually pretty big relative to the typical player and Tebow obviously is giant compared to most baseball players. He looks like a football player, or he looks like a late 90s baseball player, perhaps. And so he's ridiculously strong, even if that doesn't play up on the field. The strength is there. The speed is there compared to the typical person.

So Tim Tebow would be better at stealing a base no matter how bad his instincts are. I don't know what his 40 times are, but I'm sure they're great relative to the typical population. And I'm sure his weak arm is stronger than all of our arms. So, yeah, I mean, he would be a below replacement level player. He might be the worst player we've seen if he played a full season in the big leagues. I don't know how far you'd have to go back to find someone with his war. Maybe it wouldn't even exist, but it would still be way, way, way, way, way better than the war of probably anyone listening to this podcast, except for former baseball players who might be listening to this podcast.

And as for the question about striking him out, I've never seen Megan throw. She might have an incredible arm, but in the Arizona Fall League, Tim Tebow batted, it looks like, 123 times. Seems like a lot, but anyway, he struck out in a little more than a quarter of his plate appearances against pitchers who are professionally trained to strike out as many batters as they possibly can. So Tim Tebow still struck out more than the average player on his team which was more like a fifth of the plate appearances clearly he has something of a contact trouble he had a bad blend of high strikeouts and zero home runs again tim tebow not a great baseball player but yeah no we we could never none of us none of us could couldn't strike him out unless we had like i't know, some sort of trick pitch or yeah.

I mean, if like maybe if we come out there throwing 40 and he's geared up for 95, like maybe he'd just be so confused that you could sneak a few lobs past him or something. Or if you do have some weird trick pitch or knuckleball or something, maybe. But otherwise, I don't think so. Yeah. trick pitch or knuckleball or something maybe but otherwise i don't think so yeah if we were pitchers we wouldn't net like our true talent strikeout rate wouldn't be exactly zero percent i assume we could eventually get a strikeout by some means just like we see position players do it every so no no i'm going to take it back no it's zero percent it's zero percent strikeouts yeah i think so so Alright question from Brian

I don't know how much attention you guys pay To the WBC well Brian let's Talk about tiebreakers The other night a dropped third strike Was a big part of the game I think it was the first US game but I watched four games in a row They kind of ran together in 24 years Of fandom I've never seen a run score

On that play until that game I believe It tied the game and sent it into extras Where the US won. Was wondering if you could give your thoughts on the rule and explain the origin slash reason behind it. And I think both of us agree with Sam Miller's take, which is that it's the stupidest rule in baseball, or at least let me read Sam's take. It's probably come up on the podcast before when Sam was on the podcast. But I'm going to quote from an article he wrote in 2012. I'm not going to quit watching baseball over it. But as far as dumb rules in baseball go, the uncaught third strike has to be up there. Right. Maybe the dumbest.

The point of pitching is to get outs. The most reliable way to get an out is via a strikeout. And the best way to get a strikeout is to get the batter to swing and miss at a pitch he can't possibly hit hard. So here we see Francisco Liriano, this is a gift that he has in his article, throw perhaps a perfect pitch to Jeff Francoeur and beat Francoeur so badly that the rules allow Francoeur to go to first base. Why? That makes no sense at all. Does a running back who jukes a defensive player have to stop

if the defensive player loses his balance and falls to the ground? Is a basketball player's three-point shot declared void if the shooter is too far behind the line? If a hockey player does a thing that's something about the other guy's thing, does that thing get unhockeyed? No, of course not. And yet here we are watching Jeff Rancourt run to first. Does anybody in baseball pump his arms while running more than Jeff Rancourt? And here's something about the origin, since Brian also asked about that. Sam writes that according to the Dixon Baseball Dictionary, the rationale comes from the principle that the defense has to make a proper fielding play to record an out,

which on the surface is somewhat persuasive because you could say that the catcher is part of the battery. He's part of the defensive team. The catcher is part of the battery. He's part of the defensive team. And if he can't catch the ball or he can't block the pitch, then the batter should be rewarded for that or the defensive team should be penalized for that. But as Sam points out, he says, except for all the exceptions, the many, many exceptions, such as infield fly is called foul bunt with two strikes. Batted ball strikes a runner. Fan interferes with a fly ball. Batter runs into his strikes batted ball strikes a runner fan interferes with a fly ball batter runs into his own batted ball while out of the batter's box batter steps out of batter's box while swinging batter obstructs catcher's throw on a stolen base attempt runner

leaves the baseline batter swings at a two-strike pitch that hits him fielder intentionally drops a line drive or fly ball in the infield runner collides with fielder attempting to field a ball or batter has too much pine tar on his bat Geez the rule is just so arbitrary You could put any stupid obstacle in front of Any player during any routine play and call it Colorful but why why do that Stupid stupid rule which doesn't

Actually lessen my enjoyment of baseball at All so I Think we're more or less on Board with that yeah I When I was first saw the email i was thinking about the whole idea that the defensive team has to make a play to get the out but uh reading over sam's few paragraphs convinced me just for the sake of some reference last year there were actually 23 runs scored on strikeouts in major league baseball which i never would have

guessed yeah that probably seems like some sort of post, although 23 is a daunting number of things to look up. The year before that, there were 14 runs scored on strikeouts. The year before that, there were 17. And the year before that, conveniently this page just loaded, there were 25. So over the past four years, we're looking at, what is it, 48, 62, 79 runs scored, an average of about 20 runs scored per year on strikeouts.

I have no idea what the historical trend is here but it all looks the same you have a runner on third hopefully not on second but maybe sometimes and then there's a strikeout at a horrible pitch let's just say that the batter is i don't know probably always jeff frank or and then the run score is from third i also can't recall off the top of my head seeing this happen. Can you? No, I don't think so. So I'm surprised it happens so often.

Yeah, I don't know. It would be interesting to compare this to other things that happen infrequently, but that frequently, because it seems like this is more common than an inside the park home run. I'd estimate there's maybe a half dozen, maybe 10 of those a year in Major League Baseball. That's completely off the top of my head. But yeah, one of those weird rules that I don't know's completely off the top of my head but yeah one of those weird rules that i don't know what you do to legislate it away probably nothing it'll never go

away and it's one of those things that happens so infrequently i don't have a rate on how often batters actually reach on strikeouts because of course you can't look it up easily the on base percentage is always zero but if you wanted to do a very exhaustive search through baseball reference to look for these things using the play index well there's only about 37 000 plays to sort through see how often somebody reaches uh it's not even that often that a player tries to run to first in the first place so it's a weird rule that even at the the lower levels like little league it doesn't exist right the uncaught third strike rule because catchers are terrible right yeah uh yeah yeah so i don't think

i have anything else to say i don't know if i agree with sam that it's the worst rule in baseball because there are rules that are in there that no one even realizes exist like i don't know for the world baseball classic also a bad rule maybe the worst rule but definitely the uncaught third strike is among the very worst rules of the baseball rules that i think the majority of baseball fans know about all right you have a quick stat segment i don't know how quick this is going to be but over the weekend darren willman tweeted out his darren willman is a guy who runs the baseball savant website and works for mlb advanced media he tweeted out a link to

the catch probability leaderboard powered by statcast this is something that they've been previewing for some time mike petriello has written about this for mlb.com matt myers went on television during the WBC last week to talk about it. Catch probability should be a pretty simple, well, not simple, intuitive statistic that if you take a given batted ball to the outfield for now, let's leave the infield alone, given batted ball to the outfield, and you know about where the outfielder starts with his positioning, you know how much distance you would have to cover to get to the batted ball and you know how long the batted ball is in the air then just using those

points of information gives you the ability to calculate how often a given batted ball is caught now this is in what we can think of as like beta form because right now the numbers don't take into consideration which direction the ball is hit in whether it's in front of an outfielder behind him to his left to his right it also doesn't adjust yet for like being close to the wall because it turns out the wall ruins everything it's really hard to play ordinary defense when there's a thing that doesn't want you to go through it so beta form all that but the numbers are out there willman has the link on his Twitter page. And when you use the catch probability leaderboard, you get buckets.

You have defensive plays that are rated from one star to five, five star plays being the most difficult, the four star plays being the next most difficult, et cetera, all based on catch probabilities. So I went in and I made some approximations of the approximations if you will but it's possible if you look at all of the league numbers to look at the average catch rates man i'm having to talk about some really complicated things on this podcast you can get the average catch rates by group for all of major league baseball so for example if you look at the five star play opportunities these are supposed to be plays that are turned

into outs zero to 25 percent of the time that's the group overall for baseball out of the thousands and thousands of five star plays eight percent of those plays were confronted in outs for the next group 42 percent then 68 84 and 93 for the easiest I guess somewhat non-routine plays long story short if you take those rates and apply them to every single player and every single group you can approximate how many batted balls an outfielder should have caught right this is what anyone I think would do with the numbers if they were sufficiently motivated that's the easiest thing that you can do here and if you look at the plays that somebody did make, and then you look at the plays that you estimate they should have made,

then you can sort of get a measure of ability, which is fun. So looking over some of the numbers, I looked at the two years of data that we have for StatCast. This is sort of incomplete data because StatCast hasn't captured every every batted ball but one of the neat things about this information is that it a lot of it kind of confirms stuff we would have guessed from the numbers that we have which is i think the mark of a a pretty good new statistic where it's not a total surprise but there are a few surprises i don't know a better way to put that but maybe unsurprisingly over the last few years the player with the most plays made more than expected kevin kiermeier who is probably the best defensive player on the planet he is

followed by billing hamilton followed by lorenzo kane jake marisnik and mookie betts these are all very good defensive defensive outfielders i don't think anyone would be surprised to know that they're good defensive outfielders rounding out the top 10 there's a double herrera i know there's been some questions over whether he's actually a good defensive player because he makes things look so interesting but one way or another he has been getting the baseballs looking at the other end because it's always fun to look at the worst we're not in the business of being critical but it is fun when we have a new reason to poke fun at players. Again, unsurprisingly, worst defensive outfielder with 39 fewer plays converted than expected. Matt Kemp, who the Braves traded for on purpose

after the Padres also traded for him on purpose. I think the Dodgers have laughed first and laughed last. Two behind Matt Kemp, again, meeting expectations andrew mccutcheon he's bad i think my favorite thing here is uh is mark trumbo so mark trumbo is second to last year he has 27 fewer converted plays than you'd expect based on his opportunities so just as a refresher matt kemp minus 39 mark trumbo minus 27 and i think you could estimate the run value of a play made or not made in the outfield is around one run right like it's in that vicinity maybe even more because extra base hits anyway matt kemp negative 39 plays but he's played in nearly 2600 innings over the

last few years in the outfield mark trembo minus 27 plays but he's played a little more than half as much as Matt Kemp has in the outfield. So Mark Trumbo has been a complete freaking disaster in the outfield for the Orioles, which again, we all knew. And this is why when he was a free agent, we were talking about him as a first baseman or DH. But Mark Trumbo is the league. What's the opposite of league leader? League laggard. What's a better way to put that? Mark Trumbo is the league laggard in the one star play so these are the easiest basically routine plays these are plays are supposed to be converted like 93 of the time

he's made nine fewer of those plays than expected i don't know he's got a basically like a 75 conversion rate of the easiest possible plays to make. So I don't really know how that works. Again, there's some material here for a further investigation, except I'm not really in the business of trying to make Mark Trumbo look bad professionally. But he has been a very bad defensive outfielder, which makes me wonder the Orioles brought him back. They say he's probably not going to play the outfield very much. But the people in front of him right now are Joey Rickard and Craig Gentry. So Mark Trumbo probably will play the outfield very much but the people in front of him right now are joey rickard and craig gentry so mark trumbo probably will play the outfield much the orioles also signed pedro alvarez which isn't weird on its own except that they're going to have him play the outfield which

is maybe not the best way to shoehorn pedro alvarez into a lineup maybe the best way would be not trying at all but seth smith is bad hy Hyunsoo Kim I think I'm maybe I'm wrong here but I'm pretty sure he's bad by these numbers Adam Jones however it's worth pointing out he looks pretty good by these catch rate numbers he's actually there in 15th place over the last two years he's between Leonis Martin and Travis Jankowski a young Padres player who has I think incredible hair defense and baseline skills, who hits maybe similar to Tim Tebow as a hitter. But yeah, Jones comes out looking pretty good. And it makes me wonder if maybe Jones has been sopping up some balls hit to either side of him. That's always

a point of some discussion when you're looking at defensive numbers, because you wonder how outfielders interact with one another. And yeah, he did say something recently about how the Orioles need to get more athletic in the outfield. Yeah, because he's probably getting to an age where he'd like to conserve his energy and he probably doesn't want to do dead sprints every other plate appearance to either side. But I noticed that Adam Jones has a lot of opportunities. In fact, if i sort conveniently by this column adam jones is sixth in opportunities here over the last two years and mark trembo has relatively few opportunities given his number of innings played over the last few years which makes me wonder has jones been going over and catching a lot of balls to his side because mark trembo is over there i think without doing any research the

answer is oh god almost certainly yes because you have Adam Jones and Mark Trumbo in the outfield Jones well aware of some of the orders of doing I don't know if wrong is the right word because they've still been a pretty successful team but there's room for them to get better and given how many questions there are but the pitching staff they could probably stand to be supported by a defensive unit that is more than just Manny Machado so I don't know how much further to go into these numbers because I've also broken into 2015 and 2016 numbers here's a I guess a podcast sneak peek into a post for Fangrafts that will be live long before this podcast is actually published but I did look at these same numbers for outfielders who played in both 2015 and 2016 and i looked at the year-to-year stuff i was calculating basically catches over expected catches over a constant denominator year to year

there are no names for these metrics yet and there's a pretty strong correlation year to year which is a good sign so this this is clearly measuring a real skill but if you are curious the players who show the biggest improvements from 2015 to 2016, the top three in order, Stephen Souza, Giancarlo Stanton, and Melvin Upton. And bringing up the rear, the players who got worse by the most, Gregor Blanco, Billy Burns, and, well, Mark Trumbo. Mark Trumbo shows up as bad and then worse. So hopefully, I've heard good things from orioles people about craig gentry

this spring he used to be an elite level defender kind of a travis jankowski sort i guess then he had things like injuries and brain injuries and assorted other maladies that sort of got in the way but if craig gentry is back to being healthy which is something the angels were banking on in that year when craig gentry was not healthy then i don't know. Maybe that's good for Gentry and good for the Orioles because it keeps Mark Trumper out of the corner. Yeah, happy to have these stats. And I agree. And in most cases, they'll probably just back up what we thought already and what the stats said, but they should become telling in smaller samples, which will be helpful in the future. And some isolated cases where these numbers do disagree with other numbers we had or with the perception are interesting.

As you mentioned, Jones, you also had Nick Markakis on your laggard leaderboard. And those are both guys who have won gold gloves in the fairly recent past, but have not had great defensive ratings. And so there's been some discussion about whether they're actually good or they're overrated. And maybe this is helping to show that Jones is actually good and Mark Hickus actually isn't. So that sort of thing is interesting. some early research that there is a lot of variation in the opportunities some outfielders get, which, as you mentioned, might partially be because they are stealing opportunities from bad corner guys, but also just might be because there are only so many balls hit to an outfielder in a season, and some of them are challenging and others aren't, and you can have different

distributions of those in a single season. So it's still going to jump around a bit, but it's nice to have more and better information. Yeah. And just to throw in one more point, first of all, Keon Broxson looks great. Keon Broxson, all aboard. But so I looked at all of the outfielders from just last season who had at least 25, which is not very many, opportunities. There were 156 outfielders who had at least 25 opportunities, and I calculated just for the sake of having a constant denominator, their plus minus per 150 opportunities. That would be basically a near equivalent of a full season of play. So I'm just going to go ahead and read some names at the bottom of the list. Chris Young,

surprisingly, fifth from the bottom. I'm going to suspect that it would be a Fenway Park issue that will be corrected because he's supposed to be a pretty good defender. I could be wrong, but having the green monster messes things up. But anyway, before we have those adjustments, Chris Young, minus 20 plays per 150 opportunities. That's bad. Fourth worst, Domingo Santana, minus 21. I think that's not a total surprise. He seems like someone who hits the crap out of the ball and he doesn't really care about doing anything else robbie grossman minus 22 plays per 150 innings i don't think i've ever talked about robbie grossman before probably never will again daniel nava minus 24 daniel nava second worst minus 24 and at worst it's mark trumbo mark trumbo the worst last year and the best part it's not just that Mark Trumbo is the worst, but let me remind you,

I'm going to keep saying this, Daniel Nava, minus 24 plays per 150 opportunities. Minus 24, second worst. Mark Trumbo, minus 43. That's bad. Worst by 19 plays. All right. You've answered this question already, so this should be easy. David says, while trolling the AP wire for construction photos, I could pair with a story at the business paper I work at. I came across

photos of construction at SunTrust Park. In one of the photos, they're working on the area around home plate, but the ground is paved with bricks. Why would there be bricks around home plate? Surely they'll have to be removed, but why would they be there now? And he's attached a photo and a link which confirms what he's saying. And he says any insight would be great. So I had never heard about this before. I've never built my own baseball field. I don't know about you. I have built my own mini golf course in the backyard without my mom's knowledge, but never a baseball field. And so I did some Googling because I thought, well, that's weird. I mean, I figure that whenever you're building a new stadium, you're taking over land that

maybe used to be used. But I assumed that they probably would have cleared any old bricks or foundation materials before actually getting to the baseball field construction part. So did some quick Googling. Maybe this is obvious. Probably is not. But I found a website for a company called Diamond Pro and a link to a product that they have that's called Clay Bricks. And I'm just going to read this short paragraph that they have on the site.

Diamond Pro registered trademark mound home plate clay bricks are unfired compressed clay bricks that are perfect for constructing, maintaining or repairing high stress areas. When watered down, the bricks turn to firm clay to provide greater durability and reduced maintenance in these areas clay bricks can be used to construct maintain or repair pitchers mounds bullpen catchers box and batters box so the bricks are presumably there to offer greater stability because if you didn't have the bricks if you just had dirt then when the batters kind of dig themselves in then eventually they would dig their way all the way to china which would make for some non-competitive Plate appearances and some disappearing Hitters so the bricks presumably

Help keep hitters from Literally digging themselves or screwing themselves Into the ground which I never knew about But I guess that makes sense Right yeah I never knew that either Alright and the last question for this week From another Ben Who wants to know about successive rebuilds

He says what would happen if the Cubs or the Red Sox or the Astros decided to rebuild now? We always hear about how a team can get more in a rebuild if they can trade away quality assets, especially if they are younger and controllable. The Cubs have tons of those. Would rebuilding now possibly lead to some even better super team in the future? A mathematical way to put this might be, are the effects of trading away more and more future war linear, or are they more like a logarithmic curve evening out at some point? I presume they aren't exponential.

If the latter, at what point does the curve start to approach horizontal? So this would be different from the typical rebuild. Obviously, teams at their peak do not rebuild. Maybe the closest we've seen in recent years would be the Braves, who decided to tear things down very soon after having been a good baseball team. And they traded a lot of still fairly productive and young players to other teams. And some people were surprised that they decided to do what they did. And maybe the Braves case is instructive because even though they did that, they are far from assured of being a great baseball team really at any point in the future. There are definitely promising aspects to their rebuild, but a lot of prospects who haven't taken the steps anticipated. And of

course, they've built around pitchers. And who knows, maybe that wasn't the smartest move, wasn't really what the Cubs or the Astros did. But the point is, there's still a ton of uncertainty, even though they did that. Now, this would be taking the best team in baseball. I mean, if you took the Cubs, who have a ton of young and cheap and under control assets, I mean, if you took the Cubs, who have a ton of young and cheap and under control assets, I mean, you know, there'd be no precedent for this in baseball history. I don't think any fire sale you could come up with would probably pale in comparison to this. So question is, if you have a super team in the present, can you build an even more super team in the future? I mean, so the answer is basically no, especially if you're taking the Cubs because their team is already so good. They're like the best team that we've seen in a very long time. The fun part is if the Cubs actually tried like a partial rebuild, they could, you know, maybe sell Baez or Javier Baez. They could maybe sell players to find room for like top prospect Eloy Jimenez or top prospect Ian Happ or I guess they're already playing Albert Almora but you could try to find room for like

Heimer Candelario so there are players who could slide in if the Cubs wanted to do something absolutely bizarre I think what you'd actually see in the event of a really good team just deciding well we're gonna tear down now we did well enough let's just see if we can build more you would have death threats from people who follow the team i think contrary to the braves they're the best recent example but probably the obvious example is the marlins two fire sales where they they won the world series in 1997 and 2003 maybe the extent of the 2003 fire sale is exaggerated i don't know because they actually finished at 83 and 79 the two successive years but the marlins have been so good ever since initiating their 2003 rebuild they haven't made the playoff since the 1997 marlins so they won the world series with 92 wins but they didn't finish

500 again until they won the world series in 2003 to say nothing i guess of the talent that those marlins teams were selling and how well they did in trades but i think there's also i guess some other variables to consider with how the marlins have been run we don't need to get into that that person will be out of that job within i guess maybe a calendar year the one of the biggest problems with trying to tear down a team by selling i don't know i assume you're going full bore here you're trading chris bryant or boogie bets or or these players who are so good that their value is it's almost impossible to match in a trade that you could trade chris bryant for i don't know two or three really good prospects but

the chances that that package is actually worth what chris bryant is worth it's infinitesimal at least in well i'm not going to try to pronounce that word again it's it's small it's a mini school min you skew i'm having a bad morning so it's like when when you talk about trade value and dave cameron at fangraphs makes a trade value list every year he basically projects like surplus value that players have over the remainder of their team commitments and then he sort of orders that based on well i guess that just based on surplus value plus some judgment calls and when you get to the top of the list it's basically all theoretical because you don't see i guess the herschel walker trades in baseball you don't see even that that old bartolo cologne trade to the expos you don't really see anymore there are of

course a few exceptions but i mean you get one addison Russell in a trade, you know, but you don't get two, three, four Addison Russell equivalents in a trade because you just don't see those moves made. It would be bold, I guess, to see one of the really good teams tear down just as, I guess, the ultimate we're just in this for the puzzle and for the hell of it kind of angle. the ultimate we're just in this for the puzzle and for the hell of it kind of angle yeah but yeah i think that take the cups clearly the best team in baseball world series champions if they tore down if they tried to initiate like a full rebuild and they didn't even necessarily care if they got full value for bryant rizzo everyone they can they can keep hayward they trade everyone would someone try to step in would there be a sort of best interests of baseball issue here? Or would Rob Manfred allow the Cubs to operate like, I guess, the Marlins did? Because they did win the World Series, at least.

Yeah, I wonder. I mean, this would definitely be bad for baseball, I think, to have the highest profile team right now and the best team right now that's aboard its peak after having put so much time into getting to this point. So yeah, I'm not sure exactly what the commissioner's powers are these days when it comes to preventing people from doing things. And it's been a while, I suppose, since a commissioner has had to step in and veto something that big or that's maybe never happened. So I don't know how that would play out exactly, but I'm sure there'd be that impulse, that temptation. Definitely. It'd be pretty bad.

It'd be bad for any sport if someone, I don't know, dismantled the Warriors or whatever. It would be bad. Bad for competition. It would work in two ways because one, you'd have one of the highest profile teams in professional sports basically dismantling for no reason. But then on the other hand, it's good for competitive balance, which I guess is one of Rob Manfred's priorities. Because I guess if you knock down the team who has the best projected record in like

11 years before the season, then that's good news for the rest of the division and it makes things it suddenly opens up a lane for the pirates or the cardinals or the mets or the etc because you don't even know who's trading for the best players that the cubs have to offer but that would be fascinating i guess we'll never know unless we do find out but we we probably won't i don't know what that would ent, but that would be sort of the front office equivalent of waking up in your mic drought. Yeah. All right. That's it for today. You can support the podcast by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have already done so include Justin Held, Ryan Gabriel, Greg Scarfo, Kevin Seal, and Andy Young. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild,

and you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. I've neglected to mention the season preview series at Banished to the Pen. The site started by Effectively Wild listeners at banishedtothepen.com. They've been publishing season preview posts on the same day that we've been doing preview podcasts about those teams. If you go to banishedtothepen.com, you'll see a link right at the top, 2017 Season Preview Series Index, which will take you to all of them. So maybe you've been following along by reading the Baseball Prospectus essays, but this is something else you can check out or a good substitute if you don't have the book. I should

also mention that Banished to the Pen is running its third annual Effectively Wild Tournament bracket classic, the Wild 4 Tournament. This is a bracket involving Effectively Wild references and memes and inside jokes. You can go and vote for your favorite, or if you're a new listener, you can go and figure out what all of these things are. As I know, it can be daunting to start after a thousand plus episodes of a show.

Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. Please keep your questions coming via the Patreon messaging system and via email at podcast at fangraphs.com. Jeff and I will be back on Friday to do previews for the Mets and the Orioles. We will talk to you then. You better get back, you body snatchers You better get back, get back, get back You better get back, you body snatchers