Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1094: Not-Live Listener Emails

Episode Date: August 10, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about live shows, bounced throws, the spread of “such is life,” stats displayed on baseball broadcasts, more strange fields, a Dan Haren rules question, and the best non-All-Star seasons, then answer more listener emails about the Angels and Albert Pujols, an odd Brian Dozier game, crooked numbers, Chris Tillman’s […]

Hello Hello and welcome to episode 1094 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Hello. Are we supposed to do this again? I forget that we only do live shows now. So this is kind of disconcerting. I don't know how to do this without the excitement of a studio audience. I need to start bringing in listeners to sit in my office while I record the podcast and clap and laugh and boo and stuff. And we should just get Fernando Perez probably to just

do the podcast from now on because that's been a popular request since our most recent episode. Yeah, I'm not sure we even need to be on it. I think we can just kind of let him. He can play characters, I guess, if he needs to ask himself a question. But yeah, this is, as I think about it, now I'm recording from Hamden, Connecticut. Previous recording was done in Brooklyn, New York. Previous recording was done in Boston, Massachusetts. Previous to that was Portland, Oregon.

So this is a national tour. Cool expanding. Mm-hmm. Yeah. All right. Well, we haven't actually done an email show in quite a while now. So we have built up a backlog. We might do an extra episode later in the week and maybe get some more emails out. But I have recorded a bunch. Of course, we've also accumulated some banter over that time. I think I've probably forgotten a lot of banter I was going to banter about during that time, but that's probably okay. It's probably not that relevant anymore. So a few things that I did want to mention. First, when we were at Saber Seminar this past

weekend, there was a talk inspired by a listener email show. So this was delivered by Andrew Dominiani, who writes for Fangraphs sometimes, and was about the physics and timing of the bounce throw. This is a question we answered once, and I think we had maybe Alan Nathan weigh in. It was about whether an infielder can derive some benefit from bouncing a throw to first, whether it's inaccuracy or speed. And Andrew looked at this, and he used some very complicated physics modeling that I can't even pronounce without looking it up. So I can provide the slides and the PDF that Andrew sent us if anyone is curious. Maybe I will post it in the Facebook group. In fact, I will. But his conclusion was that the bounce throw to first base is only faster than the air throw for slow speeds from long distances.

So if you are far away, if you're like deep in the hole, that kind of thing, then it's better to bounce the throw than to throw a slow ball to first from a long distance. So I think he basically is suggesting that like it's better than lobbing the ball. And so I think he basically is suggesting that it's better than lobbing the ball. If you're just kind of sailing it over there slowly, it would be better to keep it low. And that's, I think, the main benefit here. It's not so much about the bouncing making the ball go faster, but about keeping the trajectory low and thus shaving some distance that the ball has to travel off the trajectory. So that was his conclusion. distance that the ball has to travel off the trajectory. So that was his conclusion. And so in the typical case, it would not be faster to do this, which I think is kind of intuitive, except for whatever comment initially prompted this discussion that we had, because someone said

that it wasn't intuitive. Yeah, I guess it's all about reducing the path length, which makes all the sense in the world. But as far as as i guess a realistic situation in which this would be of benefit uh no not really you're seldom in a situation where your options are either high lob or really hard throw that's low right one implies that you were chris davis and the other one implies that you were i don't know aaron hicks who incidentally i surprisingly saw last night at a trenton thunder and hartford yard goats game yeah the yard goats uh stadium i realize this is a conversation shift but i had forgotten it's only 308 feet down the right field line and to compensate for the uh the narrow dimensions they have a high wall however

the physical wall is only about ordinary wall height and then there is a net behind which there are seats and then above the net there's a yellow line so a net is part of the wall height. And then there is a net behind which there are seats. And then above the net, there's a yellow line. So a net is part of the wall, which is of some interest. I have never seen that before. Yeah, that's cool. And I wanted to also do some banter about Miranda, who emailed us and said, the Cubs commentators were discussing recent trades and said, business is business and such is life.

Ed Miranda says, it's spreading. I just thought you should know. I don't know whether it's spreading or whether we're just realizing that people have been saying such is life in baseball all along. But we have had a few instances now. So I enjoy this. I think it should spread. So please continue to say and such is life. People in baseball remains quarantined within the National League Central. However, we get to see it broach

division lines. And I wonder, like you, it could be one of those things where you learn a new word and then you notice it everywhere. But I feel like I honestly haven't seen. I don't know. Broadcasters talk about broadcaster stuff. I don't know what their usual words are but the the such as life in print i definitely feel like i've never seen that before i i feel like i would either one of us would have noticed that before i think in a player quote so it's possible players have always said this but only now are writers thinking this is printable this will go in my quote section of the article as opposed to i'm not going to transcribe this right it could be it could be a writer thing instead, but I will say I'm 95% certain this is newly in print.

All right. A follow-up from Ryan. This is very helpful. He says, I was listening to your podcast and had my curiosity piqued by your comment about Adrian Beltre and the best non-All-Star seasons, so I took the initiative to go ahead and give you an answer.

Thank you, Ryan. I went ahead and used Fangraph's War as our ranking stat, and sure enough, with 9.7 War, 2004 Adrian Beltre was the best non-All-Star season in the history of the Summer Classic. I've attached the file, but I took the liberty of giving you my top 10 rankings below. So Adrian Beltre, 2004, 9.7 War, narrowly beating out Ron Santo. 1967, he had 9.5 war. Then you've got 1944, Snuffy Sternweiss with 9 war. Yep. 2004, J.D. Drew, 8.6.

1989, Ricky Henderson, 8.4. 2004, Jim Edmonds, 8.3. 1995, John Valentin, 8.2. 1964, Dick Allen, 8.2. 1962, Frank Robinson, 8.3, 1995 John Valentin, 8.2, 1964 Dick Allen, 8.2, 1962 Frank Robinson, 8.2, and 1947 Ralph Kiner, 8.2. Note that I did not split it by first half war, which may be a better gauge of all-star snubs. If some dude sucks it up in the first half, you can't blame all-star voters there, because I had neither the knowledge nor the drive to do so. That is understandable, right? because I had neither the knowledge nor the drive to do so.

That is understandable, right? If you rank the players by another stat, like WRC+, the top 10 looks as followed. And this is among qualified players. So 2002, Jim Tomei, 189 WRC+, not an all-star. 1938, Johnny Mize, 179. 1991, Frank Thomas, 179. 1958, Rocky Calavito, 179. Then you get Travis Hafner, 2006 at 179. 1991, Frank Thomas, 179. 1958, Rocky Colavito, 179. Then you get Travis Hafner, 2006, at 176. Boog Powell, also 176 in 1964. Harmon Killebrew, 176 in 1967. Then you get 1994, Kevin Mitchell at 175. 1992, Frank Thomas at 175. And finally, 2002 2002 Brian Giles at 174.

And Ryan writes, Adrian Beltre falls to 51 in this offense-only ranking. If you rank by defensive war, Beltre is 61st. But he had the best combination of offense and defense of any non-All-Star since the implementation of the game in 1933. One final point. The worst All-Star of all time was the 1953 selection of St. Louis Brown shortstop Billy Hunter. Hunter was a rookie in 1953 who slashed 219, 253, 239 for a lofty WRC plus of 29. 26-254-274 slash line, but most would consider that less than all-star worthy regardless. By the end of the season, in 604 plate appearances, he had 20 extra base hits and one home run. He also only walked 4% of the time and also only stole three bases. He was a decent defender as he had plus 9.4 defensive runs above average,

but even that couldn't save him from his negative 2.3 war. All-star Billy Hunter, negative 2.3 war. I wonder what the story was there. He must have had some good off-the-field story or been like a spark plug or something like that. Well, he was a rookie. It was his first ever year in the major leagues, which maybe, I guess, makes that more surprising. He was never an all-star again. He played six years in the majors.

That was his worst offensive season and his only all-star appearance that season he was worth at least according to this baseball reference page negative 0.5 wins above replacement for his career negative 1.9 that year uh that rookie year he was he's listed at having been worth 2.9 defensive war implying he was about 29 or 30 runs better than average in the field which is uh incredibly good however he was nearly that much below average or replacement whatever it is by offense and so he wound up being a non-helpful player as already discussed by his being identified as the worst all-star of all time i don't know i guess uh let's see is he dead he's not listed as dead yeah i was wondering about that we could uh could call billy hunter

and say why were you an all-star you were so bad i guess yeah maybe i it's hard enough to ask a current player why are you bad and uh i wonder if it would be better or worse to talk to an 89 year old man about his horrible rookie year that was nevertheless rewarded with yeah with one of the great honors that baseball can bestow yeah that's uh he might be tough to find with a name like billy hunter that is a little difficult born in punxsutawney uh high school indiana looking like wait indiana pennsylvania what the hell that's confusing he uh in the winter of 1952 i can say this much in the winter of 1952 billy hunter played for the Santurce Crabbers, a Puerto Rican team that later on, near podcast guest Dickie Thawne has recently owned and has played for before. So we got a near effectively wild Santurce Crabbers connection going on here.

Billy Hunter, Dickie Thawne. Let's see. We've got a saber bio for Billy Hunter. Does it say anything about how he was an all-star? So he was the 1952 Texas League MVP, which made him a coveted player, apparently. And Bill Veck pried him away from the Dodgers in exchange for $95,000 plus three players, making him the highest-p highest priced rookie in team history. And he found out about the trade while reading the Daily News in Puerto Rico, as you mentioned, where he was playing winter ball.

And then he signed for $6,000. The league minimum salary was $5,000. According to Hunter, Vec apologized for only being able to pay me $6,000. Bill, we're bankrupt, but I'll take care of you next year. for only being able to pay me $6,000. Bill, we're bankrupt, but I'll take care of you next year. And then the Browns moved and Hunter did not get his raise. So let's see what happened here.

Okay, so this maybe explains what was happening here. Well, it says, despite his low batting average at the end of the season, Hunter was hitting well enough at the All-Star break to make the American League All-Star team representing the Browns along with Satchel Paige. He didn't get to bat in the game, but he pinch ran for Mickey Mantle. I was in the top 10 in hitting at the end of June, Hunter later said. I always joke that I must not have gotten another hit the rest of the year because I ended up at 219, which also turned out to be his career batting average. So I guess that was it, that he was just

kind of hot at the beginning of the season, batting average wise at least. And maybe he had a lot of attention on him because he was this coveted player and Texas league MVP, and there was a bidding war for him. So maybe there was some hype surrounding him and he had an empty batting average for a bit at the beginning of the season and that was enough to do it and he was a decent defender too so I guess that'll get you an all-star selection so he was sort of I guess Ray Ordonez remember how he was hyped and he never hit or did anything kind of Jose Iglesias as well yeah yeah I'm having trouble pulling up some numbers from that year to see what his shortstop competition was. But I guess, I don't know, better to just leave it as a partial mystery. Along coaching and managing career after he retired, he was a contender for the Orioles

job when Earl Weaver was hired to manage. And Hunter was disappointed about that. But Weaver said, I really think I need him. So Hunter stayed on for nine years under Weaver. And so it was Hunter who would take over when Earl Weaver was ejected from Orioles games, which would happen pretty often. He even managed the Orioles in the fourth game of the 1969 World Series because Weaver became the first manager in 34 years to be ejected from a World Series game. And this I like. He became the manager of the Rangers later on, but then while he was still an Orioles coach, in 1974, Hunter displayed a new gimmick. When an Oriole hit a home run, Billy would unbutton his shirt and display his T-shirt to the crowd.

There was only one word on the shirt. Zap. The New York Daily News called the gimmick Bush. That's good. Yeah. All right. Well, there are too many Billy Hunters for me to track him down right now, but he is out there somewhere, 89 years young, and perhaps we will be able to find him. If anyone knows Billy Hunter, drop us a line.

Let's say there would be a very modest sense of urgency with this one. And going back to how that began, Adrian Beltre, I will point out that looking at the 2004 All-Star game, Scott Rowland was the National League starter at third base. He had an amazing 2004 season. So, you know, it kind of makes some sense that Beltre didn't get the nod there. However, among the other National League All-Stars, just as I read down this lineup, there was Jack Wilson. Jack Wilson was an All-Star in this season. Mike Lowell made it as a third baseman representing the 2004 Florida Marlins. However, that year, Miguel Cabrera, also an All-Star.

So it's not like Lowell was the necessary team representative. Lowell was far worse than Adrian Beltre. This was also a season in which Johnny Estrada made the All-Star game and Mark Loretta. And who could forget Danny Kolb. Danny Kolb Danny Kolb all-star in 2004 I'm going into this blind and his season era was oh it was fine good for Danny Kolb this season era the next season not so fine all right a submission in the strange field category nope nope stopping you right because now we've got to point something out. 2003 Danny Kolb, 8.5 strikeouts per nine innings. That's good. That's good for 2003 Danny Kolb. Not his all-star season. 2004 Danny Kolb. I will remind you, 2003 Danny Kolb, 8.5 strikeouts per nine innings. 2004 Danny Kolb, all-star, 3.3 strikeouts per nine innings. Closer, 39 saves. All-Star. Unbelievable.

What happened to Danny Kolb that year? ERA under three. I don't understand. Wild season. Good for him. What was his BABIP that year? Let's say low. I haven't seen it.

Let's say very low. Do you have a guess? I'll say 203. The answer is 246. Okay. Good for Danny Kolb. A lot of grounders. Must have been. And he was worse

with men on base. Okay. Well, anyway, that's all we need to say about Danny Kolb. We can talk to him as a cold call in about 40 years. Kolb call. All right. A strange field submission from Jason Collette.

I played college ball for a small team in Kansas, and we got to play at some funny little parks all over the Midwest. Many of them had one quirk or another. One of the most memorable was Duncan Field in Hastings, Nebraska. It was an old minor league stadium built in the early 1940s. What's remarkable about this field is that it has a brick wall around the perimeter. Not just a smooth brick wall, but there were little brick posts that stuck out from the wall. So in addition to the dangers inherent with running full speed into a brick wall, there was the fun possibility of balls hit off the wall taking terribly unpredictable caroms. To further the danger the poor outfielders faced,

there were two massive four-post steel light towers in play in right center and left center. These were at a minimum 10 feet in width, and to top it all off, they decided a flagpole in dead center with a small stone or brick base that stuck up a foot or two off the ground would be another great update. Sadly, it appears the city decided to renovate the field a few years back, and most of the pictures available online are to celebrate the more modern appearance. Below are links to the few pictures I could locate online from before the renovation. Attached is a picture one of my teammates provided when I was trying to recollect if

there was in fact a flagpole since none of these web links showed it. I will post those in the Facebook group. I have a whole album of strange looking ballparks going now. And Jason also says another slightly less crazy but still memorable stadium was in Cocoa Beach, Florida. It was a massive complex that hosted a tournament we played in. At the time, one of the fields was a perfect square. I think it was a normal 330 feet down each of the lines, but since it was a square, center field was deep. It was one of the hardest places for the center fielder to figure out where to position himself. Every center fielder the whole tournament struggled with it because he was so far from the fence. So thank you, Jason. I like these.

Let's see. We've got here from Brian, who in the Facebook group, this is a nice genre of listener email where they come up with a question and then do all the research themselves and then send us the result. I like this. So this is from is from mike actually it was prompted by a question from brian in the facebook group who wondered which broadcasts include ops in their stat line and it motivated mike to look at all broadcasts and their stat lines which must have taken some time here's what he found he sent a complete list of all the stats in each broadcast which i will post for people who are interested. And he says he included one network for each team, except the three networks for the Cubs and two for

the White Sox. And he can do further research if there are any networks he missed. But basically, he found that every single network has batting average home runs and RBI, as you would expect. And then he also looked at ones that included on-base percentage and slugging and OPS. And then he also looked at ones that included on base percentage and slugging and OPS. And he found that eight teams show OPS. That's the Brewers, Cardinals, Diamondbacks, Marlins, Pirates, Red Sox, Tigers, and Twins. And then there are seven teams that show the full slash line of average OBP slug. That's the A's, Blue Jays, Cubs, all three channels, Giants, Mets, Phillies, and both White Sox channels. And then there are only seven teams that show only average home runs and RBI. The Astros, surprisingly, the Braves, the Dodgers, the Mariners, the Nationals, the Orioles, and the Rockies.

So I will post this if you are interested. There seems to be no team that shows all five of those things because screen real estate is at a premium, I guess. And I appreciate the research because we get that question often about what stats we would show on the broadcast, that kind of thing, which is not the same as this, but still helpful to know what stats are currently shown on the broadcast. So thanks for the legwork, Mike, and the question, Brianrian do you know who makes those decisions for a network like i know that i even seven eight nine years ago watching mariners games they would talk about things like uzr sometimes and defensive runs saved especially now of course

when you have jerry depoto who's putting together an athletic defensive outfield he wants people to know that there are things that they do that aren't just hit so of course they talk about those other numbers so it makes me think that maybe it's just the network that's independently making those decisions when a batter comes up to hit because like you said it's kind of weird to see the astros on that list as well because well i don't really need to explain the because so yeah weird and it would be interesting to know who's deciding yeah a lot of these teams have more advanced stats like on the scoreboard even at this point so yeah i would assume it's just a producer but obviously this doesn't mean that those networks don't discuss

other stats they do this is just the the standard line that they show at the beginning of a plate appearance what was the emailer's name mike mike okay so yeah i think the the truer reflection of at least what the team wants would be what's on the scoreboard. So now you have a new project, Mike, and you are about to take a very long trip. Yeah. All right. And one final thing. This is from Dan Heron. This was a while ago, but I have not had a chance to bring it up yet. So Dan was listening to our obscure rules discussion, and he says he enjoyed the one about the outfielder bobbling the ball on purpose, and it made him think of this one. A teammate of his in A-ball, or I'll read this from his perspective, a teammate of mine in A-ball once lost a no-hitter on runner's

interference on a seemingly routine ground ball. I never knew that the batter was awarded a hit. Anyway, I always wondered this while playing. First and third, one out with the tying run on third, a slow batter, say Kendris Morales, hits a routine ground ball to second, a double play ball. The runner on first acts like he's trying to jump out of the way, but the ball hits him. You avoid the double play if you seemingly were trying to get out of the way right, and your team gets one more shot to tie the game. Also, I always wondered, if I was a first base coach, how much the hitter would appreciate if he hit a grounder to first and I let it hit me. He gets a hit, right? And he also he sent along the documentation of when this happened to his teammate. It was Thursday, May 2nd, 2002. This is reading from minorleaguebaseball.com. Technicality robbed Peoria Chiefs left-hander Tyler Johnson of a no-hit chance in a 9-0 victory against the Michigan Battlecats.

With a no-hitter through seven innings, Johnson walked leadoff hitter Kerry Hodges to start the eighth, retired the next two batters on flyouts, and induced a ground ball off the bat of Brooks Conrad. The batted ball struck Hodges as he headed toward second. Hodges was called out on the play for interference the third out of the inning, but by rule, Conrad was credited with a single. So I asked a friend who is an official scorer and helps out with these questions sometimes on the show, Darren. He says he's right. If a batted ball hits a runner in fair territory, the runner is out and the batter is credited with a base hit. I've seen players do this also to stay out of double plays. He says it can't be intentional that this ruling is made. He thinks Adrian Beltre did it as a Mariner, but he wasn't

able to find that for sure. But in section 6.01a and note 7, if he and the umpire's judgment willingly and intentionally interferes, both the runner and batter can be called out. And then there's also something in section 9.05 where it talks about the value of base hits. And Heron says that that was interesting, but he thinks a runner could make it look like he's trying to get out of the way. So he thinks there is a potential loophole to exploit there. Why on earth would that count as a hit? Why? Because when you have catcher's interference,

it doesn't count as anything, right? It's not an at-bat. It's not a plate appearance. That's why Jacoby Ellsbury only ends up with 119 plate appearances a season because the other 573 are catcher's interferences. So why a hit? Why not nothing? Why not just...

I get that an at-bat took place, but why not just treat it as if the runner was caught stealing where you don't get credit for anything in that event? That just seems like a weird, that's a bizarre quirk. Yeah. I don't approve of that. That sucks for Tyler Johnson. Yeah. Everything in the rulebook probably has some obscure origin for it.

Some time when it should have been a hit. I mean, I guess a lot of the times it would be a hit, like it would be through the hole or something. So maybe it was deemed more fair. Maybe there was a specific play that inspired it. I don't know. Maybe there's some case we're not thinking of immediately, but the runner is always in front of the defender. So it's not as if the ball hits the runner and then there's nothing beyond them and it's just outfield grass. I don't think you should, you shouldn't be able to take this if this happened in the major leagues even if tyler johnson had this happen to him in the major leagues i don't think i don't recall anyone

really cared that much about tyler johnson i'm sure his parents did but if this happened and to ruin a major league no hitter which to my knowledge it never has that would be that would be patently absurd that i have never heard of this rule i'm glad that it was brought to our attention that is stupid that is a stupid rule current current possibility for stupidest rule on the books i understand there are stupid rules this is the dumbest one yeah albert pool holes this is now transitioning from the the banter portion of the podcast although there are a bunch of emails in there too so robert says if the angels and pool holes agreed he would play for them until he died how long would it take for him to reach zero career

war? With negative war this season, he has fallen under 100 career war. So that's Robert's question. Jamal's question, which is related, I think there's a strong case to be made that the Angels would be justified in straight up releasing Pujols and eating the money owed to him. He's already 37, has a 650 OPS, cannot play position position and cannot run at all. And to make matters worse, he's been batting third or clean up all year, although he has been clutch, right? As you wrote and as the Mariners have pointed out, not that that's a repeatable skill, but it has hurt the Angels less than one would expect because he has had good timing this year. But Jamal continues that he's going to end up being a negative two war player this year and he still owed 114

million dollars over the next four years with just a league average hitter at dh this year the angels could be four to five wins better i don't know about that but getting the negative two pull holes is worth plus whatever a league average hitter can give you the contract is going down as one of the worst ever should the angels just bite the bullet and dfa him can't the angels just give him the Bonilla deal and give him payments once a year for like the next 30 years? Even if the Angels manage to sneak into the wildcard game this year, there's no way you can play him right. If not after this year, at what point do the Angels pull the trigger? Okay, well, let's see. I'm going back to an article from the LA Times in 2015.

This was written by Mike DiGiovanna. And this was written about Pujols who says that, let's see, his daughter, Sophia, I'll just read here. Pujols, who arrived at spring training camp Sunday, said his nine-year-old daughter, Sophia, an elite level gymnast, could force him from the game

if she achieves her goal of competing in the Olympics. Pujols said Sophia is shooting for the 2020 Tokyo Games, even though current Olympic gymnastic rules require girls to be 16 and Sophia would be 14. That seems like there's nothing to be done here, but I'll just continue anyway. Quote, that might have to be the year I retire, Pujols said.

You can put that in the paper because I don't want to miss it. Either that or they'll have to put me on the disabled list for two weeks. OK, well, that seems like that's a much more reasonable option. So I think Pujols probably would not walk away from however much money he would have left in 2020 i remember it was a pretty common question to get in chats over the winter and even over the previous winter if albert pooh holes would get to 100 career war at least according to fangraphs i don't know if he's there by baseball reference and i i would always figured well no i don't think it's going to happen he's in his later 30s and he's still about nine war away and no matter how good he's been as a hitter in recent years this just doesn't

seem reasonable well now the task has gotten all the much more difficult because he's gotten nearly a year older and he's moved a win and a half further away from the 100 war threshold as far as the question about if the angels kept playing him until he was dead well i think there would be some other questions however uh is he playing is he playing regularly until he was dead? Well, I think there would be some other questions. However, is he playing regularly? Is he just always in the starting lineup? He would be as a DH, I guess. I don't know the value of the worst possible DH you could have. I think it stands to reason his decline would accelerate over time. So wait, he would need to lose about 90 wins from now. Yes. He's at 99.6 on baseball reference, and that's with negative 1.6 this year. So he was over 100. That's a bummer.

That's like when a guy sets the all-time rushing record and then loses yards on the next handoff. You got to do it again, man. Enjoy your brain. So Pujols, just using fan graphs, he's got to lose 90 wins I'm not going to be able to do this math that quickly in the head figure he's going to lose another I don't know half win this year whatever it's a negligible then uh maybe he'd lose another win or two next year and then I don't know how much he would start to add but you figure by the time he's

he's 50 then at that point he's oh my goodness he that'd be so bad his base running value wouldn't be terrible because he'd never be on base anymore but i would need to calculate the worst possible war you could have as a regular dh by this point i would imagine that maybe the park would start to play a little differently because i imagine that the angels fans would torch and destroy the one that's currently standing if this continued to happen but at the same time i guess wins above replacement factors in park effect so that wouldn't really be much of a big deal yeah he how long let's see 37 now 90 wins 90 wins to lose i don't think he'd get there by 50 i think he'd have a chance because he'd be so bad uh i think that i don't know maybe maybe if he was he can still hit the ball you know he's not striking out that much he still has some pop he just can't move can't move is the problem so if

he just went all late career frank thomas and hit everything in the air then he could maybe kind of float around i know he's not as good as barry bonds but you know he used to be kind of close and bonds and still hit dingers at least against batting practice pitching. So, goodness, 55 maybe? Maybe by 55 it could be sooner. I don't know. We've never seen a player that bad play regularly. But I'll put it between 50 and 55. He would have called.

When does ARP membership start? That's not in the 60s, right? Yeah, no, he'd be back to zero before his ARP membership rolls in. Actually, you can join at 50, but I think the discounts start at 55. So maybe he would do it by then. Yeah. How long do you think he will actually go? I mean, he's signed for four more years.

He is really, really bad this year if you factor out the timing and the clutchness. So if that doesn't repeat next year, then he will just be bad. He has a 74 OPS plus right now. He has a DH. That is very bad. So if he gets worse from there, I mean, what's the largest contract ever eaten? Like aside from injury cases, do do we know like there was a there's I mean Sandoval maybe that was a big one but I doubt there's ever been one as big as like cutting four years of Pujols now right but I mean you could make an argument that it's the the right thing to do like if maybe he has a bounce back in him a little bit but it's hard to imagine him being a valuable player at this point you know. I don't know whether he is

dealing with any physical stuff right now, but he is always dealing with physical stuff, and that's not likely to change as he gets older. Well, I can tell you there's another one that might be creeping up on us too, because let's see, this season by Fangraphs, Miguel Cabrera has been an average hitter, and he's at 0.5 war. He is 34 years old and if I just do a little control F, Miguel Cabrera it's 2017 now he is in the second season of an

8 year, $248 million contract. Now there are 2024 and 2025 okay, well thankfully they're club options. Those are club options so good news those options are guaranteed if he finishes in the top 10 of the previous year's mvp vote i don't think that that's going to be very likely so taking this back to pool holes talking to dave cameron about this

not too long ago uh we weren't able to come up with a real known answer of course because neither one of us is albert pool holes but dave was of the mind that there's no way Pujols would ever walk away from the money he has left on his contract because it would be basically unprecedented for non-health reasons. Now, I guess you could argue that a physical decline is a health reason, but in any case, there's a lot of money left that Pujols has. I was more of the mind that maybe Pujols would be sufficiently prideful or self-aware or whatever character trait you would like to believe in. I was more of the mind that Pujols might consider walking away with money left on his contract. I know we saw what Gil Mesh walked away from, I think it was eight figures

left on his deal that he just left on the table when he left baseball. And that was surprising, but it did happen. Now, it's hard to know know i've never been in position to walk away from 25 or 30 million dollars i don't think i've ever been in position to walk away from 25 or 30 dollars so i don't know exactly how it would feel to be pools i would imagine that when this offseason rolls around he's going to identify things that maybe weren't working for him and he's going to believe that he can have a big bounce back season and we're going to see those articles written next February and March I'm sure Pedro Moura will do an excellent job of laying out Albert Pujols's case of why he's going to have a better 2018 than 2017 and you know what it's going to be believable and it's going to be believable because he used to be has about as

good as Barry Bonds he was the best player or maybe the best hitter on the planet. And it's hard to believe that's all gone. And I don't know, he seems to have the capacity to think with greater perspective than your typical ball player. He seems like he's a pretty thoughtful individual where maybe that makes him more likely to retire early, or maybe it makes him less likely to retire early because he could think of all the good he could do with all of that money that he has signed as per his his rights so the conclusion of all of this answer is i don't know what he's going to do but this is uh this is i think more or less unprecedented and then shortly after pools his contract situation is resolved we will have the miguel cabrera contract situation to deal with this is yeah it's gonna be i don't even want to say interesting to watch. I mean, it is, it's also kind of sad and depressing to watch, but we will be watching nonetheless. All right,

let's do a stat segment. You want to do a stat segment? And we actually have a listener email that has inspired this stat segment. So let me read that. This is from Kyle, who says, as a diehard Orioles fan, I know that the fan base can't stand the first inning by none other than Chris Tillman. Seems like he's guaranteed to give up two to three runs to start the game, but oddly enough, seems to be much better from the second inning on. Is there any statistical analysis to back this up who are the worst first inning starters of all time the answer is yes yes there is firstly i want to i want to throw out two quick stat things that are not related to this i will come back to first inning pitching but firstly you might remember that last year jacoby ellsbury set the all-time

record for reaching on catcher's interference uh he did it 12 times which shattered the previous record by 50 previous record in this season was eight so that was uh that was fairly mind-blowing and ellsbury reached 12 times second place had three this season ellsbury is in second place he's reached on three catcher's interference but josh reddick has reached seven times on catcher's interference josh reddick trying to break the previous record so something is definitely weird and happening there keep an eye on that or don't nobody cares yesterday in the minor league game i went to a batter reached on catcher's interference i did not know that and i thought the scoreboard was wrong declaring the number of outs for the remainder of the inning

so i was very confused it is poorly signed the only other thing i want to throw out before i address chris tillman and the orioles is that at the all-star break aaron judge led mike trout by 2.3 fangraphs wins above replacement the margin now judge is still in first place among position players he's at six wins above placement mike trout has closed to within 0.9 wins above replacement he is less than one win away from aaron judge it has been less than a month since the all-star break happened Trout has been arguably the best player in baseball since the all-star break that would make sense because he is the best player in baseball so he has risen to find his level to whatever extent people were concerned he would uh be rusty and to take

his time to get back no unless this is him being rusty and the world is about to end for reasons other than the reasons that are in the news. So addressing Chris Tillman and the Orioles, I will say two things and then I will say several more things. One, Tillman has indeed been much better after the first inning this season. He has started 15 games. His first inning ERA is 11.40. That is a terrible first inning ERA. The bad news is that after the first inning, he's still been terrible. His ERA after the first inning is 7.14, which as far as I know,

would probably still be the worst or one of the worst ERAs in baseball for a starting pitcher. But in any case, as usual, when somebody asks us about something small, why not go big? So I now have a bunch of first inning pitching stats that i can i can run through looking for starting pitchers i was using the baseball reference play index former sponsor of this very podcast i i searched first of all for the worst individual seasons of first inning pitching i said a minimum of 15 starts that felt like it was appropriate also coincidentally the number of starts tillman has and this season so far I mentioned Chris Tillman has an 11.40 first inning ERA that it would be the 29th worst on record I don't know how far back these logs go I am going to guess they only go back into the 70s but still that's a lot of time

if you were born in the 70s you're older than you think that you are and the second worst the uh the second worst first inning ERA belongs to 2000 Paul Bird at 14.11. That's quite bad. However, first place or last place, depending on your perspective, 1996 Jim Bollinger. Jim Bollinger that year, he started 20 games. He threw 20 first innings and he allowed 35 earned runs for an area of 15.75. After the first inning, Bollinger's's season era was 4.86 which was fine for the year 1996 so jim bullinger had the uh the worst first inning problem in a season

at least uh that is on record here i have six tabs open so sorry everyone this is going to go for a while to twist it around the best first innings seasons of all time. Might not surprise you to learn that there have been several pitchers who have ERAs of zero in the first inning. There's Roger Clemens in 1985, 15 starts, no earned runs. There's 2008 Charlie Morton, apparently, 15 starts, no earned runs. There are nine pitchers who met my search for criteria for this and the uh the second most first innings started among them ron gidry in 1981 he had 21 starts but i would say the leader and the clear leader 1997 pedro martinez who started 31 games and did not allow a first inning earned run era of zero i'm pretty sure that was his era for all subsequent innings Pedro Martinez greatest pitcher I've ever

seen moving on I looked at uh career splits so uh this time I set a minimum of 50 career starts so this is now going beyond first innings the worst ever first inning pitcher Scott Scudder he's a pitcher I've never heard of so here he is first in the area of 9.85, over 64 starts. That's quite bad. Jose Silva, Todd Van Poppel, Mike Birkbeck. Mike Birkbeck? Wow. Well, that's a name.

That's a name that somebody had. He was not good in the first inning. Maybe he thought about his name a lot. Fifth place, Jim Bollinger shows up. He was just the winner of the previous category for individual seasons. He shows up here with the fifth worst first inning ERA. Now moving to the more fun side, category for individual seasons he shows up here with the fifth worst first inning era now moving to the uh the more fun side i can tell you the list of the best first inning pitchers ever is uh

not quite what i expected clayton kershaw is there in eighth place with a first inning area of 2.47 that's pretty good and pedro martinez is all the way down in 150th place at 3.63. Not exactly what I was expecting. Randy Johnson is in 59th place, a first inning area of 3.22. So I'm just going to read some names here. Fifth place, first inning area of 2.33, Dave Righetti. Pretty good pitcher. All right. Fourth place, the late Anthony Young, 2.29. Third place, Zach McAllister for some reason, 2.22 third place zach mccallister for some reason 2.22 second place dick woodson 2.09 i'm gonna do the thing ben do you have a guess for the best ever first inning era for a starting pitcher minimum 50 career starts i will tell you that you can guess probably 3 000 names and you will not guess this particular name ubaldo jimenez no i'll just why don't we stop this here? It's Aaron Laffey. Aaron Laffey

is the best ever first inning pitcher in 68 career starts. He's thrown 68.1. What? Okay, something's weird. Okay, 69 career games in the first inning. He must have relieved once in the first inning. That was a desperate situation. Aaron Laffey has thrown 68.1 innings in what would have been the first inning. And he has an ERA in those innings of 1.98. So congratulations, Aaron Laffey, you are much worse after the first inning, historically. And just for some team perspective, the best team on record for throwing first innings, that's the 1974land athletics they had a team area of 1.67 in the first inning that's uh that's quite good this season's leader is the kansas city royals at 3.21 they are tied for 102nd place that is not a place that anybody has ever cared about and the

worst teams the 2000 texas rangers when in 162 games allowed 142 earned runs in the first inning that's good for a team era of 7.89 which is a half run worse than the teams tied for second place at 7.39 that's the 1996 colorado rockies who don't count and the 1998 detroit tigers who definitely do count and this season's worst team first inning pitching the new york mets new york mets this season tied for 13th or i guess 12th worst here they have a first inning era of 7.04 over 110 starts so just as everyone expected coming into the season the new york mets would have a worse first inning era than the san diego padres who were supposed to have maybe the worst starting pitching in the history of baseball. And should we say, did you say that generally first inning ERAs are higher? I mean, just because you have the top of the lineup up and also there's some speculation that the pitchers need to adjust

and get used to the mound and all that sort of thing. So I think even if you adjust for the quality of the hitters, there is still a tendency for more runs to be scored in that inning than most. So it's not bad to be worse in the first inning, but it's bad to be Chris Tillman in the first inning. Well, let's see. This year, league splits. The league average ERA is 4.34, and the league ERA in the first inning, so 4.34. First inning ERA of 4.90. So, indeed, you're facing the top of the order, and you're a starting pitcher. So, yeah, first inning ERAs tend to be up, but not Chris Tillman or Jim Bullinger up. I mentioned the Padres were supposed to have the worst pitching of all time.

As you probably remember, we talked a lot about the 2016 Cincinnati Reds, who had the first ever below replacement level pitching staff. This season, they're hanging at 1.4 plus 1.4. So that's good. Good for the Reds. However, their starting rotation is at 0.0. They have had once again, a replacement level starting rotation. The Cincinnati Reds, everybody. All right. Question from Brian. While I was watching the Red Sox Indians game, Dave O'Brien stated that the Indians have already put up a crooked number here in the first inning. Given that they had scored three runs, that seems premature to me. However, I also realized that I didn't have a good sense of what qualifies as a crooked number for one half inning.

Five? Fewer? I also wasn't sure if there was any other meaning to crooked in this context other than implying that the balance of the game was tilted towards one side. Even that may be completely off and just one of those things I never thought about before now. So I believe that crooked number just refers to scoring multiple runs, really. I think that's all it is. I don't think it has to change the balance of power in the game. I don't think it has to be a lot of runs. I don't know whether you disagree. I just pulled my Dixon baseball dictionary off the shelf and the entry for crooked number says any number greater than one and lower than 10 in reference to the lack of straight lines for numerals two through nine. A high scoring game is one with crooked numbers. A one0 game is one in which neither team was able to post a crooked number. The first use of this that they found was 1993, when Tony La Russa was quoted as calling crooked numbers in the 1993 World Series by Roger Angel in a 1993 New Yorker piece. So that's my understanding of what it means. I don't know whether some people have higher standards for crooked numbers or not, but the point is that the numbers are crooked and that seems to be true for anything over one. So I think that's all it is, right? Yeah, I think this one there is not much disagreement out there. You can disagree about the significance of having a crooked number, I suppose, because there are a lot of numbers that are higher than one and below 10. There are eight of them, I guess, would be the number of those eight being

a crooked number. But yeah, everything I'm looking up agrees with the Dixon baseball dictionary, you look up the definition of crooked, and it just says, bent or twisted out of shape or out of place, I guess you could argue that an integer is never bent or twisted out of shape, because it is its own shape. But otherwise, how uh how it's intended i think yeah this one is this one's pretty clear crooked number is just any number greater than one wasn't done yeah you could also argue maybe about the crookedness of these numbers like is three crooked it's it's kind of uh i don't know crooked seems like like an angular kind of description to me whereas three is just a bunch of swirls and circles and like a sideways W.

It doesn't look all that crooked. But the point is that it's not a straight line, basically, and it's not a circle. So there you have it. 8's a good number. It's an aesthetically appealing number. It's probably the most sexually attractive of the integers between 0 and 9. I't know I guess it would still count as crooked It's not twisted out of shape Because again as discussed 8 is its own shape However if you figure that the relation here is to a straight line

Then an 8 is definitely Still bent or twisted It's inarguably a twisted pretzel Of a number So still no argument 8, pretty number, however, bent and or twisted. All right. Andrew says, in a game against the A's, Brian Dozier went one for six with a home run and five strikeouts. Would you say Dozier had a good day at the plate? If someone did this for

a whole season, homered once every six plate appearances, and struck out in all of the others, would they be a good offensive player okay well let's see i'll just run some wobba numbers here because that would be the easiest thing to do so we went one for six with a home run and five strikeouts that's what it was yeah okay so he would have a game wobba of 330 approximately the league average wobba this season is 320 so brian dozer leaving aside the fact that he has no productive outs he also has no double plays so congratulations brian dozer you have become ultra joey gallo and uh yeah i would say that he because of the home run he still had a fine game i wouldn't say it was a good game i think

a good game you need a good threshold is higher than just barely better than average but if uh if brian dozer hit 162 home runs over the course of a season and struck out whatever that times five is then uh that would count as obviously an unbelievable season but it would still be a productive season and also the twins would probably be thrilled because if brian dozier is averaging six plate appearances every game then their offense has been just unbelievably good so the twins would be going into the playoffs as the probable World Series favorite, and there would be a lot of Brian Dozier think pieces

and long-form pieces that talk to Dozier about how probably there would be a big disagreement between old-timey people and contemporary analysts about whether or not Brian Dozier should be the Twins MVP, and the reality is that actually, no, with these numbers, he still probably shouldn't be there. MVP, that would be Miguel Sano, who incidentally might be doing the exact same thing in the same season. Yeah, right. But that is kind of illuminating

because that sort of tells you why we have gone toward this all or nothing game because it actually pays off. I mean, if you hit one home run, it makes up for a lot of strikeouts. So that's kind of the cost-benefit analysis that teams and players are doing, and it is leading them more toward the home runs are good and strikeouts aren't so bad kind of camp. So not that anyone's going to start having this sort of season, although Joey Gallo is trying, but this is, you know, the math kind of works out. So that's how we've ended up or one of the reasons why we've ended up where we are. Over the weekend in Boston, Alan Nathan gave his presentation that was addressing the ball and the home run spike and all that stuff. And this is, you know, near and dear to your heart, or maybe by this point, it's no longer near and dear to your heart. I'm not sure. But Nathan presented the argument that it's not all the ball and this lends itself to the conversation about launch angle and the fly ball revolution and all that. But I think that you can talk about it a lot more generally. We've seen that league-wide fly ball

rates are not increasing, but I think that we're just seeing that it's just more hard contact. And for the same reasons that you just described, I think that you just have players who are swinging harder or they're not doing the two strike protection mechanism thing and players are just being selected for making firmer contact because as is I think pretty intuitive home runs and strikeouts are related to one another and so you just have players trying to hit more home runs because they realize yeah if you strike out it's really not so bad so I think when people are searching the league trends for more fly balls I understand it and there is a certain certain something there that some players have attempted. But I think it's even more general than that. Players are just swinging really hard and they're doing it all the time now. of 2015 to 2016 in home runs because of a decrease in drag on the ball, which could be related to seam height or the size of the ball. So he did find something that supports the idea that the

ball has played a part in this, but he also theorized that there's more to the story, which I agree with. All right. Stuart says, with the big Hugh Darvish acquisition, all I'm hearing around Southern California from arrogant Dodgers fans is how the Dodgers are absolutely 100% going to win the World Series. I'm trying to persuade my blue-goggled friends that betting their houses or significant others on the Dodgers to take it all is a bad idea. My rationale is based on this. It's baseball, it's a weird game, and stuff happens to even the best teams, which is why since the wild card was introduced, the team with the best record has won the World Series only six times. Can you gents come up with any statistical or matchup related reasons why the Dodgers won't win

it all and save my friends from losing their money, marriages, and freedom? So actually, if you look up the World Series odds, the Dodgers are at 100%. So no, they're right odds the dodgers are at 100 so no they're right the uh the dodgers are uh they're a lock so shut it down no uh obviously this is a this is not a lock the the current fan graphs odds take them for what you will but they have the dodgers at roughly one out of five they have the highest world series odds because they're the best team

in baseball but they're at about 19 chances chances of winning the World Series. So you figure the reality is probably somewhere between 15 and 25%, something like that, where just from the perspective of someone who has a fondness for the Seattle Mariners, I'm always reminded of the 2001 Seattle Mariners who had tied for the most wins of all time in baseball history, and they won one fewer game in the ALCS than they won the year before. But maybe the most, maybe the easiest way to think about it is that even a team like the Dodgers has to go through three rounds, they have to go through the division series, the championship series, and then the other championship series. And in each of those rounds, the Dodgers are likely to be the favorites. But in each of those rounds, the Dodgers will play

a good team. So if you figure that their odds of winning any given series are 60%, which I don't know, you know what, even we let's just let's go crazy let's say 70% which is definitely not true the Dodgers are not 70% favorites against any team they're going to meet in the playoffs let's just say that that's true well then they're going to be 70% favorites in the first round then you multiply that by 70% in the second round you multiply that by 70% in the third round and even then you just have the Dodgers winning the World Series 34% of the time which is obviously makes it twice as likely that they don't win the World Series and if you figure something like I don't know 60% is more likely than you just run through that math and you have

the Dodgers winning the World Series just 22% of the time so it's pretty easy to see how this could go awry and obviously something would have to go wrong in the field. But just based on the probability, there is no way, there is no reasonable way to argue that the Dodgers are more likely to win the World Series than not. It's just not true. Yep. I completely agree. You could argue that maybe they're a better playoff team than the postseason odds, World Series odds are giving them credit for. If you want to say that they will have a really great playoff rotation and a great playoff bullpen, and maybe they'll get more benefit from that sort of thing than the typical team, perhaps you could make that case. But even so, you can't get them up to more than, I don't know, 25%, 30%. It's just too small a sample. So the arrogant Dodgers fans, odds are we'll get their comeuppance in a few

months. Not that I'm rooting for that to happen or anything. I'm enjoying the Dodgers winning a lot, but odds are that that will be the case. It's going to be all Clayton Kershaw's fault. All right. Maybe last one from Harrison. I was just taking a look at Corey Kluber's fan graphs page after his gem of a complete game. And here are his breaking ball usage rates from the past three seasons, 15.6%, 19.7%, 24.8%. This is great news from an aesthetic standpoint. I love Corey Kluber's breaking ball, but he also has career highs in fan graphs FIP and baseball reference ERA+. I don't think the evidence is all in yet since Kluber was awesome even before this development, but it's something to watch. And I think you have written about this and Travis Sachik has written about this. So what do we know about Corey Kluber's breaking ball usage? So wait, what about career high in FIP implying career best

or career worst? Because it's definitely not career worst, it's career best. So what is the question here? Is Corey Kluber great? Because yeah, he's great. I guess how much of his success is related to the breaking ball usage or guess how much of his success is related to the breaking ball usage or just how much should he be using his breaking ball yeah okay so yeah I've written about this before because Corey Kluber if when people have asked him about his his breakout he will I think frequently refer to this time in the minors there was like a rain delay or something and he uh he was supposed to start and then he wasn't starting and so he was just kind of waiting waiting out the rain and then he started messing around with a two seamer or a

sinker and he just started throwing it like indoors or something off the field then he realized oh i like this pitch and he will just trace his his breakout back to learning how to throw a two seam fastball and learning how to command it and indeed when he showed up in the majors in 2012 he was throwing a sinker at at least according to Brooks Baseball, 42% of the time. It was his primary pitch, and he threw the sinker half the time the next year and the year after that. But what is interesting is that if you look at how the fastball has actually done for Kluber, it's never had a positive run value. Not in 2011, not in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017. I know the run values are not perfect because they don't really do a great job of factoring in the counts in which these pitches

are thrown. However, Kluber historically has had a very, very good cutter and a very, very good curveball or slider, whatever you want to call it. It's his breaking ball. It's amazing. It's always been great. And I think that Kluber this year, he is throwing a career low rate of fastballs, I think at least since he became an established starting pitcher. And I think that's good. I think that he's kind of following the Yankees pitcher path that Tom Verducci has written about and how the Yankees are issuing fastballs more than any team has on record. And we refer to the Rich Hill idea fairly often the lance mccullers idea and i think that in kluber's case it's it's also true that he can be better as he throws fewer

fastballs obviously he needs to throw a certain number of fastballs but considering he's having an incredible season as he's throwing a breaking ball i don't know if you combine the cutter and the curveball or or whatever you want to do with it but he is currently i think for the for the first time yeah he's throwing more combined cutters and curveballs than he is fastballs and he's having a an incredible season i think this is not a coincidence i think his breaking balls are are so good he could probably throw fastballs a third of the time and still be an ace all right well i have other questions start here but we are tentatively planning perhaps to do an extra listener email show to

make up for missing last week. So we'll see if that happens. I will save some material in case it does, and we can end this episode here. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have already pledged their support include Tom Mully, Matthew Court, Daniel Watkins, Linus Marco, and Pete Eckert. 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. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. Please keep your questions and comments coming via email to me and Jeff at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. We will be back very soon.

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