Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1053: The Baseball God Speaks

Episode Date: May 4, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about infield-alignment terminology and walking Bryce Harper, then answer listener emails about proper pitch usage, winning minor league championships, the minimum acceptable velocity given perfect command, improving equipment, taking batting practice seriously, Eric Thames vs. Ivan Nova, making positions be dictated by batting order, the Royals’ awful offensive month, […]

And they just turn, smile, shift, repeat. Turn, smile, shift, repeat. Turn, smile, shift, repeat. Turn, smile, shift, repeat. Hello and welcome to episode 1053 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. My name is Ben Lindberg. I'm a writer for The Ringer and I am joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Hello. What have you to say to me? Okay, so, quick question. I was watching, it doesn't matter what I was watching, there was just a usual

comment, the announcer in the game said that whatever left-handed hit batter grounded into the shift, ordinary play call, pitch on the way, ground ball into the shift, and the play is made. I'm really paraphrasing this poorly, but there's a grounder into the shift, and the announcer said it was grounded into the shift, which got me wondering,

how long will it be until people stop saying, into the shift, and just say, ground ball into the shift and the announcer said it was granted into the shift which got me wondering how long will it be until people stop saying into the shift and just say ground ball into the defense at this point are there not more shifts than non-shifts maybe i'm wrong but it feels like that yeah i haven't seen the numbers this year i think they're up again right they've become even more common than they were but i'm not sure if they outnumber non-shift plays. There was a long debate previously on this podcast about beating the shift and what constitutes beating the shift. Is that when you go the other way or drop down a bunt or hit something through a hole that is vacated because of the shift or is beating the shift hitting it directly through the shift and i think we came to a consensus that beating the shift is going around the shift essentially aiming or happening to hit the ball somewhere where the shift isn't as opposed to just

hitting it directly into the shift but hitting it hard enough that it goes for a hit anyway. So yeah, I guess, I mean, as long as there's such a thing as a non-shift, I guess it's still helpful to say that it's into the shift. It's not all that interesting now because it's far from a rarity, but just because you don't always get to have a great sense of where the defenders are standing if you're watching on TV because you only get to see them after the ball is hit. I guess maybe it's still helpful to know how they were positioned before the play. Yeah, no, I get why you would say it now. I just wonder the shift by its own seems to imply that it's a strategy that is a change from the norm. And at some point, it will no longer be a change from the norm. Regular alignment will become become irregular alignment and then that will be the shift from the norm so obviously i get why it makes sense

in 2017 but a natural is you're going to have to study up on your game because the terms are going to change yeah and you have to start getting specific about what type of shift it is right because yeah it used to just be that there was kind of either shift or no shift and now there are all sorts of permutations of the shift so you got to get specific that's right that's all that's all i have to say all right so we've got emails one follow-up this is a response from jay who wants to quibble with the claim that the phillies invented walking bryce harper which we were talking about on a recent podcast. We were saying that the Cubs and Joe Maddon get all the credit for being the first team to pitch around Bryce Harper and

possibly getting in his head last season. And Jay wants to stand up for the Cubs as the innovators of that strategy. So he says, with regard to the Phillies walking Harper a bunch last season before Joe Maddon did it, I don't really buy that they were doing it as some pre-planned course of action. For one thing, they walked him five times in a three-game series, which isn't exactly hugely out of the ordinary for a star player. Secondly, they didn't walk him at all in the third game. Of the two intentional walks, both came with two outs, a runner in scoring position, first base open, and Ryan Zimmerman, whose OPS was basically half of what Harper's was, coming up next. Compared to that, the Cubs walked Harper 11 times in four games, four times intentionally,

with six walks and a hit by pitch in the final game. Two of the three IBBs in that game came with runners on first and second, hardly a standard time to intentionally walk a guy. I don't know if it was a good idea or not, but I think it's pretty obvious that the Cubs went into the series with the plan to not let Harper see anything to hit. I haven't fact checked any of these claims, but if all of that is accurate, do you want to give the Cubs credit? No, I don't care. Sure. Madden turned it up to 11 in terms of walking Harper all the time. But when he faced the Phillies, the Phillies threw him like roughly 30 percent of pitches in the strike zone.

They were clearly pitching around him. They walked him a little bit. And I think the Phillies took the first step and the debated the ideal success rate for replay challenges. The idea was that if you're successful on every replay, you're not challenging enough, so there's probably an ideal rate. This same logic can be used on stolen bases. If you're stealing at too successful a rate, maybe you should be making more attempts. Does the same logic apply to pitch values? Does the same logic apply to pitch values? I heard on last night's Twins A's game that Irvin Santana's slider had a batting average against of 45 last year and an OPS against of 170. It strikes me that if Irvin Santana's slider is that good, he should probably throw it more,

although admittedly a 37% slider rate is pretty high for a pitcher third in the majors. Do you agree or disagree, and is there an ideal OPS against for a pitch type where you're confident the pitcher is maximizing his value okay so yes and no yes it is absolutely true that the same works for pitch values I think this is why like Rich Hill somebody said Rich Hill your curveball is your best pitch so he's like I'm just gonna throw it most of all the time then or Lance McCullers is doing the same thing and they're doing that because the pitch is so good mitchell lichtman will go around and he'll tell anyone who will listen that what you need to do with pitch values is pitch with your distribution in such a way that all of your pitches are exactly as valuable as any other pitch all of the time which is one of those things that is true and also completely impossible to ever

calculate one of the things that makes pitch values really complicated is that I don't know how well they take count into consideration. So like I hate, I hate hearing that this guy's breaking ball has a really low batting average against because that breaking ball is generally going to be thrown in two strike counts or with the header behind. So of course, the numbers are going to look worse. It's like when you see guys batting averages on the first pitch well sure because if they swing through the ball then that doesn't count against them there's there's a whole bunch of complicating factors but it is absolutely true if you have a pitch that has a very high value chances are you should probably be throwing it more you see andrew miller doing

this with his slider maybe irvin santana he's pitching he's pitched for a while with that sort of ucl issue in his elbows that maybe, maybe he could throw a slider more, but he doesn't want to because when you go beyond, well, hell, even the 37% sliders, that's crazy. But you know, if he started throwing his slider, like Lance McCullers throw curveballs, then I don't know, maybe Santana's arm snaps tomorrow. But there are other considerations. But yeah, when you have a high pitch value for a pitch, you should probably throw that pitch more. Yeah, that's right. And maybe you'll end up with an unhealable blister like Rich Hill has when he throws his curveball a lot.

But otherwise, yes, in theory, this is correct. I don't know if I would go by OPS against in a single season for a single pitch. There's a lot of noise there and other complicating factors. But yeah, throw your good pitch more often. That anecdotally seems like something that's happening more often, but I haven't been able to come up with really compelling evidence that it has on a league-wide level. All right, question from Corey. If you can throw the ball exactly where you mean to every time,

what's the minimum velocity needed to be an average pitcher or an elite pitcher? Exactly where you, and I assume this applies to all types, all pitch types. So if let's say you're. Yeah, right. I mean, it depends, I guess, on your movement and your spin and all that, right? That if we just assume all of that is average. Yeah, let's say that this pitcher has just an ordinary moving fastball slider changeup. Or actually, the slider's dangerous.

Let's give him a curveball. Fastball curveball changeup. Why not? And they are all very average, like twins bullpen kind of pitches. And you can put the ball exactly where you want. I think, so we see Jared Weaver. Jared Weaver currently has a higher strikeout rate than Cole Hamels, by the way. It's a fun fact.

And Jared Weaver's throwing probably about 83. Mark Burley was down there. Tim Wayfield, of course, threw garbage and he was like 72. I think that you could be an excellent perennial all-star pitcher, if not even better, if you could perfectly locate topping out, completely topping out at like late career Barry Zito, 79, 80 miles per hour. I think that at 75, I think you could still be effective because at the end of the day, that's still moving pretty fast. And I mean, location is so important. It is, it is the biggest thing. We love talking about velocity because it's so easy to measure, but Oh my God, if you can command the ball, then you're a prime Doug Pfister. And if you can't, well, then we saw what happened with Doug Pfister.

But command and location, super hard to identify. But if you have it, you can be extremely good. Look at Mark Burley. Yeah, Mark Burley was great. Yeah, I think that's probably about where the line is. That would be fun. We'd probably learn a lot about pitching from watching this hypothetical guy who throws 80 but is really good because he can put the ball exactly where he wants because we'd learn what the

optimal pitch locations were or what pitch locations matter how much location matters in relation to velocity and i don't know whether we have a great handle on the correlation between velocity and command. Obviously, if you are in the major leagues and you don't throw hard, you probably have better command than the typical hard thrower just because you had to do something really well to earn your place there. But I don't know if you're a pitcher who has a certain maximum velocity. I don't know if you're a pitcher who has a certain maximum velocity. I'm not sure whether you can improve your command significantly by easing off the throttle speed-wise. Because there are cases where pitchers will say something like that. Like, I took a couple miles per hour off or whatever and was just trying to hit my spots. But if you take too much off, then maybe it throws you off your rhythm because most of the

time you're training with your max speed or something close to it, and maybe that's what you're used to. So I don't know, like take the average guy who throws 95. If you tell him you only have to throw 80, how much better is his command? I don't know if it's a lot better, a little better, or not better at all. Yeah, I agree. And I think that there's a lot of fun to be had in analyzing this. It's kind of the same as in the way where I don't love that pitchers hit, but I actually do love the pitchers hit because it gives us an opportunity to study what it means. And so as much as I don't think any major league team should have Jared Weaver in its current starting rotation, I love that that is still happening because we get to learn from from this although somewhat disappointingly to me uh his

fastball philosophy has actually gotten a little better this year he is not sinking which uh that's that's what i was really hoping for but hey the home runs are there all right question that involves both joe madden and pitch speed this is from marcus say this is from dav. This is from David Lorela's most recent Sunday article at Fangraphs, I think. And it's about Joe Madden having had a conversation with Jessica Mendoza. And the quote is, when the Cubs skipper was 20 years old and playing in the Atlantic Collegiate Baseball League, he did double duty as a shortstop on a fast pitch softball team. He considers it a harder game than baseball. I'd love to have a fast pitch pitcher throw batting practice to major league hitters, said Madden. There's less time, so it would definitely make them shorter and quicker and stay through the ball longer. There are positives that could be derived from that. And so Marcus wants to know, why don't teams do this? Why don't teams face live batting practice from people who are trying to get outs, with batters and defenders both going going at game speed with pitchers throwing fringe major league pitch velocity as is done in japan

there are plenty of non-prospects out there who could do it make a shadow five-man rotation and then he links to an article that gabe kapler wrote before the dodgers hired him for weei where he's talking about japanese batting practice and how they take it more seriously and how they, I think, have two guys taking BP at the same time just to maximize the amount of BP that they can take, which maybe some major league teams started doing. I forget. Maybe Kapler even implemented it. But anyway, Marcus wants to know, why is there such a thing as a batting practice fastball? Why isn't every batting practice fastball just a good fastball? I don't know. And I never thought about it until I got this email. And I probably even read that Kepler article and just went in one eye and out the other. I guess I don't know how to use that expression for reading on a computer.

But I don't know. The one obvious reason is that as things are currently staffed, all those old ass coaches who are throwing batting practice can't really do much more than just put the ball in an area but aside from i guess the the fact that there is not an endless supply of disposable pitchers who can just throw forever because that you are throwing batting practice for a long time so you can't have someone out there throwing a hundred percent the whole time because you will have injuries for what reward but i guess there are really good pitching machines and i don't know why not use them because if the idea maybe if you slow things down then you can have a hitter like work on his mechanics or something but it seems like you could

do that also in a more real life game circumstance so yeah i have i do not have a good answer for why they don't do that. There's got to be a reason. Obviously, Gabe Kapler works for a team and he's seen this firsthand. Lots of people have come from Japan and they've seen that firsthand. They've participated in it even. It has not been implemented in the major leagues to my knowledge. So there's got to be a reason for it, but I can't think of a good one. Yeah, this seems like an area. I mean, we're always having that conversation about where do teams even spend their money now because spending is limited on the international market and in the draft. And you've got revenue sharing stuff and luxury tax and how do teams that have high payrolls or great resources even make a difference or get an edge anymore? And it seems like they're dwindling options for that sort of thing.

a difference or get an edge anymore. And it seems like they're dwindling options for that sort of thing. So this is a case where, I don't know, maybe that rich team just pays like a few quadruple A guys who are ready to retire or tired of just hanging on in the minors forever and want to be around a big league team, if not necessarily on a big league team. I don't know how you'd do it. You'd have to have them travel with you. You'd have to have at least a few of them probably. So you could rotate them and have them throw at maximum speed despite having to throw lots of pitches in batting practice. But sure, you could do that. It's a drop in the bucket expense-wise for a major league team to beat a AAA salary and have someone travel with your big league team. So I don't know, maybe just because it would be hard to quantify the benefit derived from it.

And as wealthy as teams are, often owners are still setting pretty strict budgets for, say, a baseball operations department or a field staff. And if you can't point to a verifiable improvement, there'd be no way to say really without doing some kind of controlled experiment where you had like half of your team take regular old fashioned BP and half of your team take real BP against like actual close to major league quality pitchers and then see which one did better over a full season. That'd be kind of fun, actually. Maybe you could do that at a minor league level.

But yeah, if you thought it would work, if you had strong evidence that it would work, there's no reason not to. It definitely seems like one of those situations where if it hadn't always been the way that it is now, then you would never start it this way. Because right now, I can't imagine that it serves any purpose, aside from, I guess, giving us something to write about each row and you have seen some teams just start skipping batting practice going back to Joe Maddon again at least as the oh what an innovator as the season wears on I'm sure the Phillies did it first but as the the season goes on and

his hitters are fatigued or they have a day game after a night game or something, they'll just cancel BP because, you know, hitters know how to hit already and maybe they don't need to practice hitting every single day on top of the hitting that they're doing in actual games. So good question. Question from Thomas. I'm interested in reclamation projects in baseball. We all are. My two favorite right now are Yvonne Nova and Eric Thames.

Whom would you rather have right now on your hypothetical team? Let's say the team is looking to contend this season and they have equal need of a bat and an arm. So which one would you rather have and which is your favorite reclamation story? Well, it's Thames. It's definitely Thames. And I like that Nova is interesting and he's picking up right where he left off in terms of just kind of throwing strikes all of the time yep it's a simplified game plan that he has and it helps to i guess no longer be pitching in the american league in yankee stadium half the time not a good fit for ivanova's skill set i like him he's fine he's a workable starting pitcher but i've seen enough of the carlos silva experience to know that you can't just survive on strikes forever and eric thames looks like he's one of the best first basemen in the league. So sorry, Nova,

you're great. Thames is a world leader. Yeah, it will be fun to see if he does get into Carlos Silva territory because what's the is Carlos Silva? Does he still have the record? Or did Cliff Lee beat him at some point for walks per nine or walks percentage or whatever? Do you remember? I don't remember. I could look it up. I'm not going to because we're on a podcast. However, what Silva, I think had one year where I think he finished with nine walks.

Does that sound right? I think it was single digits. Let's see that at least we can look up. Yeah. Okay. I'll get it. Yeah. Nine, nine walks in 2005 and two of them were intentional, which is fantastic.

So he had seven unintentional walks in 2005. He started 27 games, which is an absurdity. And he was good that year, despite not striking out anyone. So as long as you can keep doing that, you can be good. I just don't know how long you can keep doing that, you can be good. I just don't know how long you can keep doing that. He only did it at that extreme level for one year. And beyond that one year, he was pretty mediocre. Yeah, right. So Nova, he is definitely picking up where he left off. And it's not like he doesn't get strikeouts. He's got 22 this season, which because of he has one walk, he gets to have that

bold faced strikeout to walk ratio of 22.00 the fun thing if you just look at nova obviously you can look at the walks i always go underneath that uh last year nova was throwing 63 strikes with the yankees went to the pirates started throwing 70 strikes here's what's weird this year he has one walk however he's throwing just 66 strikes which is still good it's better than, but it's certainly not one walk good. So it seems like Nova's whole plan is to go out there and allow contact. And at some point, there's going to be too much bad contact. He's going to try to miss bets, and then that's going to lead to deeper counts, more walks,

because he is not actually commanding the ball like he did last year. All right. Question from Andrew. Clever use of finances is something We prize in a front office With more avenues of spending being restricted As we were just saying, there are fewer ways To differentiate teams While a lot of exciting changes are happening

In nutrition, biomechanics, injury prevention Mental skills and analytics applications I haven't heard about any innovations In equipment Being done by individual teams What gains do you believe could be made in an engineering lab for a team? If the Dodgers, for example, had a bat fabrication lab that could produce the perfect bat for each individual player that could hit the ball 1.5%

further while still passing the scrutiny of the league, how long would they be allowed to use it before the league stepped in to level the playing field or other rich teams caught up? If a win really is worth $8 million, is there a win to be found in equipment development for less? So I saw this question, and then I was hoping you wouldn't bring it up because I don't have a good answer. Do you know? I haven't heard of anything being public about teams actually having their own sort of labs, I guess, is the right word for them. of labs, I guess is the right word for them. Yeah, the Dodgers had that incubator thing that was talked about a year or two ago where they were going to fund startups and whatever the startups found, the Dodgers would have some interest in it. And I don't know if we know exactly what they ended up investing in or what has come out of it, but that was the closest that

I can think of to this actually happening. Right. The only thing that would make sense to really engineer is a bat, right? Like you can't really do much with a glove. You can't do anything with a uniform. Cleats probably a non-starter. I don't know. You're looking at so little gain with those. Maybe you just make the lightest cleats possible. But I mean, already the various companies are probably doing that. I don't know anything about cleats. I'm not an athlete.

So it's probably bats would be the one thing. There are strict regulations on how a bat can be built. But you could still, I guess, try to study your own players to optimize length and weight of the bat i guess yeah would be possible but i guess one of the issues there aside from i don't know if you can actually find gains because i don't know how you're studying that is that players aren't actually static their mechanics do change and players get bigger get smaller maybe not height wise but they definitely get stronger seemingly all the time so i don't know if there's enough of a stable target to really try to optimize that but it's an interesting question because i don't know i don't know to what extent players actually have their bats optimized because every so often you do hear

of a guy who's on a hot streak and it says oh i just recently changed my back yeah i never know if that means anything there's no studies on it but it's it's something to think about and i would be surprised if some teams out there haven't at least thought about it. Yeah. There was a story in Chipper Jones's recent memoir. He used a pretty heavy bat and it was something about how he was in the minors. He talked to, I forget who it was now, a Braves coach or a Braves player, David Justice, maybe someone who told him to use a bigger and heavier bat. And Chipper at first thought it was too big and too heavy, but then he became comfortable with it. So maybe there's a case where players get used to something and they don't realize that

they've actually gotten bigger or stronger. They could move up to a bigger bat and they need someone to push them to do that. So that's possible. Andrew sort of answered his own question, which is always nice. quicker transfer or catcher's gear that could shave off.05 seconds in throwing to second, a superior rosin bag, the bats and maybe even batting gloves could be improved. I'm sure the jerseys could be more comfortable. Baseball uniforms are not the best. This is like the opposite of that Seinfeld episode where George thinks he's going to redo the Yankees uniforms and he makes them all hot. But Andrew also writes about other sports where this sort of thing has happened, which is helpful because our knowledge of other sports is limited. So he says, in rugby, there is an arms race going on in producing the perfect jersey at the 2015 World Cup. The All Blacks, already the best team, also had the best jersey, which was quite an edge.

Adidas made a promotional documentary about it. Who knew that textile engineers even existed? Cleats have also really improved at the pro level. They do motion capture on each player to determine how his feet hits the ground, then make custom cleats for his gait and their positional needs on the grip slash speed spectrum with options for different ground hardness and wetness conditions. If one team does a better job on the boot, that definitely pays off. They don't ever really talk about this. It's kept pretty quiet. I've just been told by a player that he had his running motion studied for custom boots by his team. So I guess that sort of thing could work in baseball. I've never really heard of anything like that, like a team having custom equipment based on the atmospheric conditions or the weather or anything like that. But I mean, at this point, we're probably getting down to small benefits.

And this baseball is not rugby or soccer or swimming, things where you need to move quickly and optimize your profile and cut down on wind resistance and weight and all that, it probably wouldn't be as big an advantage. But I guess if you really start splitting hairs and looking for fractions of a run, there's probably something there. Ultimately, how many different ways can we find for them to do something other than pay minor league baseball players? I guess as far as the bats are concerned, I guess there's like the famous story not too long ago of Ronald Torres trying to use Aaron Judge's bat and then he just got trapped underneath for two hours. That was a good one. Yeah.

All right. Question from Jason. I don't know if this question or a version of it has been asked before, but I was wondering if a major league team out of contention would consider optioning a player to AAA. For instance, if their AAA or whatever minor league affiliate was in contention for their level's championship. For example, would the Angels ever consider using one of Mike Trout's remaining

options and send him to the Salt Lake Bees to help them win the AAA championship? If you were an owner, would you consider doing this? Do owners care at all about events in the minor leagues? I say the answer is no, not really. I don't know if we need to address this question. Yeah, I mean, there's some slight benefit, I guess, to winning your league championship in the minor leagues. Just

maybe you get to play more playoff games. I don't know how the getting a percentage of the gate works at minor league levels, but for the most part, it doesn't matter. It's not like you draw more if you're a winning team, or at least not significantly more from what I've read. And obviously, the players would hate this and protest and not want to miss out on major league stats because they were helping the Salt Lake Bees win a championship so aside from burning the options and all the other reasons why you wouldn't do this no you wouldn't do this although we at least finally get the answer of what mike trout would be like in triple a today although yeah maybe the problem is that he would definitely not try like even a little bit yeah all right stat segment yeah okay stat segment so the royals have been bad and in particular the royals have been bad at hitting they had i wrote about this at fangraphs the other day and they had what i would say very probably was the worst offensive month in franchise history they've

existed since i believe it was 1969 that's a very long time longer than i've been alive by years and the royals have never had a month so bad than i've been alive by years and the royals have never had a month so bad while i've been alive by hitting standards until now they achieved a 65 wrc plus for the month of april which means they were 35 percent worse than the league average offense they were even worse than that in terms of run scoring because oh by the way their wrc plus with runners in scoring position was 16. Literally the number 16, which is extremely bad. However, the good news, if you want to call it that, is that the Royals had the worst offensive month by Royal standards.

But it is not the worst offensive month ever. And it is not even particularly close to being the worst offensive month ever. Now, there are a few different ways you could try to look this up but i use some search features on fan graphs use some baseball reference and i've settled on this is maybe arguable but i've settled on the april 2004 montreal expos i'm going to read you some numbers they batted this is this is like around the height of offense right this is like still within what people consider the steroid era which was really the tiny strike zone and golf balls going everywhere era and also i guess the steroid

era there was there were a lot of different factors it turns out you can't ever simplify they batted 210 they had an on-base percentage of 260 they slugged 292 552 ops their wrc plus for the month for the month was 37 the fan graphs search feature split feature only goes back to 2002 however using baseball reference this still looks like it is the worst month for however long we have monthly splits they just narrowly beat out the 2003 april detroit tigers everyone remembers the 2003 tigers even though nobody would have actually remembered watching them they had a 39 wrc plus for their first month so it's close however it is no 2004 expos let's talk about those expos just a little bit wrc plus again 37 37 this was a team that was it the year before that they made the

bartolo cologne trade does that sound right yeah yeah So they thought later they had to leave the city. Yeah. So they, so Fangra still has some. So 2004, I looked at all teams, position players split by April, the Cardinals, the 2004 Cardinals,

good for them, led all major league baseball teams in position player war in April at 6.7. Second place, the twins at five. The average was 2.9. Second worst were the devil rays they had a war of 0.5 that april and the expos brought up the rear at negative 3.5 there were three and a half wins below replacement level for a month it will not surprise you to learn that the expos in

that month went 5 and 19 they played 24 games and they scored 45 runs. 24 games and 45 runs. I believe their team runners in scoring position, WRS Plus, for that month was 6, the number 6, which is the Royals' number,

minus 10, which was most of the Royals' number. It's just, it's extraordinarily bad. The team did not pitch well in April, again, 5-19. This bad the team did not pitch well in april again 5 and 19 this the opening month after a year in which expos thought they would contend and just to close it out there were 30 different expos players who i guess played on the expos that one month their

leader can you maybe let's test your memory this is fun let's let's have some engagement who do you think was the expos leader best player by war in april of 2004 think classic expos jose vidro there then jose vidro was there however he was not the leader hmm what's his name uh you're right the answer is yes you're getting it it's brad wilkerson i think that's the name you're going to say yeah probably brad wilkerson led the expos in wins above replacement in april of 2004 with can you guess can you guess his war for the month um 0.3 the 0.1 brad wilkerson led the team in wins above replacement in that month with a war of 0.1. He was 29% worse than the average hitter. I should say it was actually a five-way tie for the best hitters on the Expos in war that month. It was a five-way tie between Brad Wilkerson, Brian Schneider, Andy Fox, Louis Sayala, and Tomo Oka. Two of those being pitchers, one of those being a utility player who batted 14 times.

Bringing up the rear, there is Ron Calloway, who went, I don't know, basically 0 for 35. Termell Sledge was terrible. Luis Lopez, Tony Batista, Peter Bergeron. There were five players on the roster in that month who had a positive war. All of those positive wars were 0.1, and there were 14 players who had negative wars,

almost all of which were greater than negative 0.1. It was a very bad month. It was a very bad month for a very bad team in a very bad year. And then the next year, they got to go to Washington, D.C., turn things around, something, something, Ryan Zimmerman. What a horrible month. I can't imagine a team will ever have a worse offensive month than this. But, you know, who knows? Because in 2014, the Padres had an absolutely terrible June. I believe they had a WRC plus of 40. And that one is interesting because so many of the worst offensive months in history have come in April because the weather is cold and teams aren't really ready yet. June, Southern California. So, you know, it's possible, but I don't know who is likely to be

so bad again, because I can't imagine that a front office in this day and age will ever allow things to sink to those depths. Although Astros, I guess. Yeah, that is sort of the only sad thing or one of the sad things about teams getting smarter is that when we look back at past eras of baseball and you just marvel at how suboptimally some things were done and how terrible some players were allowed to be for very long periods, it's kind of almost sad that we never get to see that sort of ineptitude last as long today because it's nice to have contrasts in baseball. And the incomparably great Entertaining but so is the incomparably Terrible and teams seem to

Be a lot faster on the uptake About getting rid of the terrible guys today Strong agree Alright question from Jonathan imagine Baseball god comes down from the heavens And tells you that your favorite team will never Win another world series in your lifetime

Your team may make the playoffs Or even the World Series from time to time, but will never again, as long as you live, win it all. There is nothing you or anyone else can do about this. It is written in stone and cannot be changed. What would you do with this information? Would you consider rooting for your doomed team? Would you try to convince other fans of the futility of rooting for them? Or would you sacrifice yourself to the baseball god to give the rest of the team's fandom a chance to be happy?

more however I do remember being a fan and you were a Yankees fan not too long ago I guess baseball god could never come down and tell you that because the Yankees basically are a baseball god I feel like baseball god visited me during the my Mariners era on a near daily basis to just say don't don't do this it would to me as a fan it would immediately spoil everything I would find no more joy in following the team because as much as it's obviously all about so much more than winning a championship, I think my belief is that what underlies everything, everything that we do, the whole pursuit is that hunt of the championship around which everything just kind of falls in place. And so if you don't have that, then it's easy to just wonder, well, what the hell are we here for? think as a national writer if baseball god

came down and said hey the mariners are never going to win the world series by the way just wanted to let you know i'd say thanks baseball god i guess and i would allow that to influence my writing and i would just always pick against the mariners and people would maybe eventually pick up on it they'd be like you're being too cynical about the mariners and then 30 years later they'd be like you were exactly right i guess you knew the team would never win but I think it would destroy everything I think the the sweet spot for a fan and I say this as a fan of teams who've never actually won anything but I think the sweet spot is to always believe that your team is getting closer and getting better to being championship ready but never never actually winning. But I think that you

need that faith underpinning everything. And I think that the House of Cards falls apart without it. Yeah. I don't know how I could be convinced that a baseball god was actually visiting me and giving me this knowledge. Not just your neighbor. But if we assume that somehow I become convinced of this, then I agree. I think in those circumstances, you can't be blamed for switching your allegiance. I think that would be fair. You'd have a hard time convincing anyone else of this without coming off as a completely crazy person. So I would probably just quietly switch my fandom to the team that I had the second most affinity for. And I think almost

anyone else would do the same under the circumstances and you couldn't be blamed for that. It's funny. I've heard or read hundreds of times, oh, the Mariners are never going to win the World Series. And I guess in retrospect, any one of those people could have been baseball guy. I really don't know yet. All right. Question from Adam. Suppose the batting order was not up to the manager but was determined by the order of numbers assigned to defensive positions, as in one for pitcher, two for catcher, three for first base, et cetera. And for some reason, the DH doesn't exist. Would pitchers focus more on hitting because they'd have to be the leadoff hitter? And would guys who are currently borderline starters with some hitting ability be able to supplement their pitching value with hitting performance enough to be good? Do you just say screw it and bullpen every game, never letting the pitcher bat?

Is catcher still a defense first position or does Ryan Domet like framing become acceptable for good enough hitters? And since no hypothetical is complete without Mike Trout, does he move to the infield in order to bat higher in the order? No. So pitchers, first of all, they definitely would focus a little more on hitting because they would, of course, be batting first. That would not be a surprise. I don't think that it would make a dramatic difference. I'm trying to look up. Okay, so some splits. splits so the difference between first place and ninth place hitters last season worked out over

the league to be 4,293 plate appearances which divided by all the teams worked out to 143 plate appearances over the course of a full season that is the difference between how often the first place guy came up and how often the last place guy came up so if you divide that 143 by nine you can figure that there's roughly 16 plate appearances difference between lineup spots so it all makes a pretty big difference however when you're talking about the 16 plate appearances that's like basically one every 10 games which is a very minor difference the biggest change obviously would be pitchers batting first however i guess the good news is it would be universal so you're not really at a disadvantage in that circumstance so i don't think that much would actually change because

every team would have to do the same thing right pitching and run prevention catcher defense and all that still going to be critically important so i think it would be uh it would be a silly game but it would be a familiar game yep i completely agree with all of that all right question from jacob back in the days of the royals being an utterly hapless team guess what jacob they're back again my friends and i used to daydream about a scenario that would make their attendance soar regardless of their on-field performance. The idea was to dub the team the Crazy Royals, with a K, and attempt to assemble as entertaining and insane a collection of personalities as possible. The owner would actively encourage his team to get in trouble on the field and off the field. Press conferences would resemble WWE-style promos.

There would be bench-clearing brawls on a nightly basis Basically, the hope would be to turn their season into must-see TV By creating drama and controversy To give a sense of the types of players that might be rostered Consider Carl Everett, who didn't believe in dinosaurs And had a propensity for violence Doc Ellis, who threw a no-hitter on acid Julian Tavares, who bowled balls to first base

Broke his hand punching a phone and just generally seemed bizarre, etc., etc. We decided Ozzie Guillen would be a good manager. I think you get the idea here. My questions are as followed. If a team decided to create this sort of spectacle of personality, would the league allow it? At what point would Rob Manfred draw the line? And what repercussions could there be? And two, would this ploy work would

people tune in on a nightly basis to see what shenanigans they'd pull or would people be put off by them making a mockery of the game well if you would like a reference I guess you could watch an Orioles Red Sox game at present and that would get you some of the way there I think so this is what this is

essentially the movie Slapshot yeah that's a different sport but kind of gets the idea now I guess the movie Slapshot. Yeah, that's a different sport, but kind of gets the idea. Now, I guess the difference in Slapshot, that was mostly three. It was I guess it was a team full of goons, but it was built around three specific goon brothers. If you haven't watched the movie Slapshot, you should definitely watch the movie Slapshot. I think that it would not work. It would it would undoubtedly create some memorable moments, but so much of the drama comes from how a bench-clearing brawl

or a fight or something crazy is organic. And if you're just expecting these things to happen, then I think you lose a lot of the fun. I guess we could try to build a roster. I haven't put that much thought into it because I don't know who's actually a crazy person in baseball. Besides, if you think about it by our own standards, probably pretty much every single one of them I think uh the team would be

so bad almost certainly and like who's your catcher AJ Pierzynski or something like that's not actually entertaining he's just like a dick you know but he's not like in an entertaining way also he's not playing anymore so I don't know the team would like probably just end up fighting itself and there would be constant suspensions and Rob Manfred I'm sure in the offseason would not playing anymore so i don't know the team would like probably just end up fighting itself and there would be constant suspensions and rob manfred i'm sure in the off season would kind of like have some off the radar conversations with ownership be like what are you doing and then as soon as the season got started he'd be like you can't do this and you're going to face severe discipline for making a mockery of the sport and getting people injured and getting players

arrested you would also run out of players very quickly. Like, do you do this all throughout the minor league system? Like, do you have boons on options or something for when you have somebody suspended for 30 games? And I guarantee you, some of your players are going to get busted for steroids. Yeah, I don't think you could build this team out of players who are already in the majors and make it entertaining if they continued to act and play the way they do today. I just don't think you could come up with a roster of players who are all that interesting or crazy to watch in this way. I mean, you could come up with the most quotable players, but on the field, at least, there just isn't that much character there where there are guys who stand out in this way.

So I think you'd have to pay them enough, essentially, to get them to act crazy. It'd have to be like paid actors, essentially, who were hopefully also good at baseball. Which, as we know from the history of acting, none of them are. Tons of overlap there. I think probably there'd be a lot of initial interest, and I would watch to see what would happen. I think Manfred could, certainly if anyone was getting hurt in this process, but even if it was just a completely non-competitive team that was embarrassing baseball, completely non-competitive team that was embarrassing baseball. He could invoke that best interest of baseball clause, and I don't know exactly what he would do or what he'd have the power to do, but maybe even just oust the owner or something. I'm not sure what his recourse

would be, but you'd definitely see baseball make an attempt to try to do away with this. I think we'd probably lose interest pretty quickly because, yeah, this is interesting because it's a deviation from the norm. And once it becomes the norm, I don't know if it's as interesting. Maybe the continued existence and flourishing of professional wrestling is an argument against that. But I don't know that baseball fans want the same thing from baseball that wrestling fans want from wrestling so i'm not sure that it would be greeted with uh much acclaim i think probably it would be nearly universally condemned yeah it'd be fun for a series but i guess if you want to know about the overlap between baseball and wrestling we should

just have jeff passon on the podcast Uh huh yeah I like wrestling But I'm not an expert Alright so question From Nathan Regarding pace of play how much do you think Late night playoff games drive the Conversation regarding speeding up baseball games A casual fan wouldn't

Mind leaving a regular season game early Or turning their TV off in the 7th inning Because of the promise of baseball the following night To quench their casual thirst It really becomes a problem if you're an east coast So he's saying essentially that baseball slows down the most Do you think the conversation regarding game times for regular season games would dissipate? So he's saying essentially that baseball slows down the most when the most people are paying attention. So if you could somehow do away with that and the time when more people are watching or more casual fans at least are watching and the games are starting later anyway, would we care or still be talking about the length of regular season games well so i think on the contrary i would suggest although i don't know but i would suggest that people care about pace of play less than the playoffs because the games actually matter everything is more meaningful like the game seven of the world series went what like seven and a

half hours and it was great nobody reminded there was a rain delay and it was dramatic it does make a difference, of course, but when you have a playoff game, especially if you're watching from the East Coast, if the game starts at like 8 o'clock on the East Coast,

you're already in there until 11, 15 at night, probably at least the games start late. If it goes a little later, you're losing sleep from what was already going to be a late night.

I mean, I remember watching those Red Sox-Yankees-AL games from school in connecticut and then we basically would i would go to class and no one could really function the next morning and the teacher would be like yeah i get it i was doing the same thing let's just all sit here and talk about mariana rivera i guess i think that the bigger problem comes with the slow games that are meaningless, which is many of them. I remain a little uncertain how much people really care about pace of play versus how much writers drive that they care about it. That's something that I can't really answer from where I sit. However, I think people would still complain because at the end of the day, baseball is a slow game and it is a slow

game for seven months of the year, I guess eight, eight months of the year, but nobody pays attention to March. Yeah, I wrote something during last year's playoffs about how the games we were watching were like Rob Manfred's worst nightmare. And that if it weren't for the fact that we're watching the Indians and the Cubs and Andrew Miller and Kyle Schwarber and all these fun players and matchups, there would be, I think, a lot more people noticing how slow and painful the games sometimes were, but the storylines were enough to prop up the product. starts to look like playoff baseball did a few years before because the game just keeps slowing down and playoff baseball is sort of like a leading indicator for how regular season baseball will look some years in the future. So that's not a great sign, but yeah, I think we'd probably be

talking about it less, but I think we'd still be talking about it and baseball would still be trying to change it. Yeah. All right. Last question from Andrew. It makes perfect sense that the Giants have no real incentive to make Bumgarner pay financially for violating his contract. But what would it take for a team to actually attempt to go through with a contract restructuring in a similar situation? I have to think the Yankees would have jumped at the chance to use an A-Rod trampoline injury as leverage to void his contract or at least lower their obligation. A-Rod trampoline injury as leverage to void his contract or at least lower their obligation. Can you imagine another situation in which you could see it happening? Or would it have to take a contract so large and a player so despised as A-Rod for a team to actually try it? I'm not convinced that it would ever actually work.

I know that these things are written into the contracts. I know there was some dispute when Ari Dickey went to climb Mount Kilimanjaro that one off season and his contract with the mets didn't allow him to like climb 20 000 foot mountains or something probably not explicitly but basically covered and dickie was like yeah i'm still gonna do it because it turns out kilimanjaro is super safe and everything was fine he was still a really good pitcher i can't think i tried to think the rockies tried to avoid the denny nagel contract right because? Because of the prostitute. Oh, yeah. That whole history. But I'm pretty sure the way that worked out is that the Rockies got out from under Denny Nagel's contract, but then they settled, and the settlement was basically exactly how much the Rockies owed Denny Nagel on his contract.

So that would be voiding a contract based on a morality clause. And now this is talking about voiding a contract as opposed to just trying to get some sort of compensation back for a player missing time, which I know is different. But yeah, if you look at where the Yankees were with A-Rod, there was, I think, always constant chatter about ways for them to try to get out from underneath the deal. And yet ultimately there was never a way for them to do it. So I'm pretty sure he's still getting paid this year, right? Is this the last year of his deal? being caught using something. And then I think there was something in the CBA that would allow the team to try to avoid it potentially if the player was injured or something happened as a

result of the violation of the drug policy, but that didn't happen or is hard to prove. So I am not sure you could really do it. I mean, if there were a case where a player were hated by the fan base, because obviously you don't want to risk some sort of PR problem by punishing a player and having the fan base think that you're tight-fisted or overly harsh. is already disliked or not well-liked and who has an onerous contract and probably is coming close to the end of that contract or if it's too close to the beginning of it, probably you just recently signed it and you don't regret it yet and you're looking forward to a lot of good times ahead after whatever thing happened blows over. So it'd have to be a pretty specific set of circumstances and it would probably be tough to do because the Union would fight it. The Union was going to defend A-Rod

even though the Union didn't like A-Rod. So I think they would always sort of have the players back unless he did something truly heinous. I've got content. So while you were talking, something truly heinous. I've got content. So while you were talking, I looked something up. I will now read. Sorry, I'm just going to read these several paragraphs out loud because I don't have anything to add.

I might as well just read them word for word. This is a blog entry that I Googled written by I don't know. There's no name attached. Hopefully this stands up. Anyway, this is a subheader. Voiding contracts colon from drug trafficking to strangulation. Fun teaser. Case in point, Lamar Hoyt.

In 1987, the San Diego Padres voided his contract after he was sentenced to jail following multiple drug charges, including intent to distribute cocaine and attempting to smuggle drugs from Mexico into the U.S. This would seem to be specifically the type of conduct that would justify voiding a contract, right? Wrong. The Players Association filed a grievance and won. Back in 2004 the colorado rockies tried to void denny nagel's contract after he was charged with soliciting a prostitute

the mlbpa stepped in and ultimately the rockies agreed to pay him 16 of the 19.5 million dollars left on his deal i am not done in 2005 the baltimore orioles avoided sydney ponson's contract for driving while intoxicated as well as some other stuff. The MLBPA grieved and the sides ended up settling. I'm going to guess the Players Association didn't grieve so much as they filed a grievance, but that's neither here nor there. According to reports, Ponson got a sizable chunk of his $11.2 million salary. Still going, as a member of the Red Sox in 1997, Will Cordero was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

Cordero pled guilty to criminal charges for beating his wife and threatening to kill her still the red sox decided not to void his contract that is incredible there is however an instance where a player contract was successfully terminated and now i remember this after the fact in 2008 sean chacon refused to leave the team dining room to speak with houston astros g Wade in his office. This confrontation ended with Chacon grabbing Wade by the neck and throwing him to the ground. Each time Wade tried to get up, Chacon knocked him back to the ground. Chacon's contract was terminated with cause. The move was appealed by the MLBPA, but the appeal was unsuccessful.

So short of strangling your employer, it can be tough to successfully terminate a contract. Even then, Latrell Sprewell only got 68 games for choking NBA coach PJ Carlissimo. All right. That's an answer. Thank you, unnamed author. So we will leave it there. By the way, my friend Theo Fightmaster, GM of the Sonoma Stompers, asked me to mention that they have some new gear available and that there's a discount for Effectively Wild listeners. They've got 2016 Pacific Association champions merch.

They have new t-shirts that say don't stop believing and other things. They've got hoodies, crew necks, t-shirts, etc. So if you read the book and you like the Stompers and you want to wear some Stompers gear, you can go to StompersBaseball.com. Click on Fan Shop and when you check out, use the coupon code EW17. That's EW17. You'll get 15% off. Always good to support the Stompers and always good to support this podcast, which you can do by going to Patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. Five listeners who have done so already include Vince Morales, Ben Tarhan, Glenn Deering, Andy Young, and Timothy Cullen. 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 the podcast on iTunes. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. Michael and I have a new episode of the Ringer MLB show up today. We talked to Stephen Goldman about historical precedents for the Manny Machado, Red Sox, Orioles feud, and whether such things are getting more or less common over time and whether they'll ever be eradicated. You can find that on iTunes too. Keep your questions coming for me and Jeff to podcast at fangraphs.com and we will talk to you soon. Stranglehold, you know you got more on me I don't wanna go without you Stranglehold, you got me where you want me

But I wanna know more about you I wanna know more about you