Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1150: Sighs and Signings

Episode Date: December 16, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the Zack Cozart and Carlos Santana signings and the Matt Moore trade, then answer listener emails about when it makes sense to rebuild and how the second wild card has affected that calculus, Shohei Ohtani’s intel on other teams, the competitive futures of the Cubs, Yankees, and Dodgers, […]

It's talking woo-woo, this is what the band City so damn great, I feel like Alexander Way on halo like a hat, that's like the latest fashion I got angels all around me, they keep me surrounded What the band I got angels all around me, they keep me surrounded I got you, you, you Hello and welcome to episode 1150 or 1150 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters.

Hi, I'm Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs, joined as always by Ben Lindberg, technically also a Fangraphs, but really not a Fangraphs. That's sort of a, he's laundering his productivity. He works for the ringer. Hello. Hi, I'm trying to decide whether I should keep in the heavy sigh that you heaved right before you said hello. It's just this week, I don't like when, this time of year is fun because things happen

and now things are starting to happen, but I also don't love the unpredictability of it. I would like to just be able to relax and not have to think about, do I need to write about Matt Moore now going to the Rangers for prospects? I really don't want to have to do that. He's not a very good pitcher. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we recorded full transparency earlier today.

So the most recent episode you heard recorded the same day as the one you're hearing now. And we talked about a move that might happen, the Angels signing Zach Cozart. And shortly after we finished recording, it did happen. And he is now on the Angels on a three year deal. In addition to that, the Phillies signed Carlos Santana, one of the bigger free agents available this winter. And as you just alluded to, Rangers got Matt Moore. So we're doing emails, but I guess quick roundup of even more recent transactions. Already talked about Cozart a little bit, but now that he's officially there, the Angels have a heck of an infield defense, I guess, at least when Pujols is not playing the field

in Cozart and Kinsler and Simmons, that is quite a sweet fielding infield. And that's something that they seem to have prioritized under Epler. And I don't know whether defense is still undervalued, but maybe it is relative to something like power. like power. And if you're trying to make up for the weaknesses of a pitching staff that has been heard and inconsistent, then one way you can do that is just by getting a bunch of great clubs. So they've done that. And Travis Sochick, your colleague, my kind of colleague, has declared that they have won the offseason. Well, yeah, but whichever team got Shohei Otani was going to win the offseason. I guess that's true. So congratulations to the angels for their lottery ticket that they won and they got otani and because of otani now everything else looks better i wasn't sure if they had a hole at third base because they had luis falbuena but if you've ever seen luis falbuena play third base then you know that you'd like to not see that anymore so made sense for them to go

get a third baseman made sense for them to go get a second baseman both of them cost a lot relative to what you and i make but neither one of them cost a whole lot to the angels in terms of their resource outlay so now they have a i mean you would come into the offseason and you think okay the angels have mike trap angels have angel simmons the angels have cole calhoun and you know whatever you want to make of garrett richards and the pitching staff but they have signed shohei otani they have re-signed justin upton they have acquired ian kinsler they have acquired the other guy weani they have re-signed Justin Upton they have acquired Ian Kinsler they have acquired the other guy we were just talking about his name is uh Zach Cozart they will probably acquire a reliever at some point I don't know but I mean if you think okay Kinsler

close to a three-win player Cozart somewhere between two and three Upton somewhere around three Ohtani hell if I know four ten thirty really't know. But that's just so much value that the Angels have added. And other than the Otani sweepstakes that were just going to be won in part by preparation, but in part by luck, none of these have seemed too difficult. looking for a shortstop and Kozart wanted to play for a winner so that's not the Padres. Kinsler kind of fell in their lap because I don't know how many teams out there are looking for a how many competitive teams out there are looking for a good but old second baseman and Upton they already had and they basically just gave him his opt-out money plus I think another season right. So man we talk about how the Angels just didn't have a very good outlook and all of a sudden they're like the fourth or fifth best team in the American League by like a good margin. didn't have a very good outlook and all of a sudden they're like the fourth or fifth best team in the American League by like a good margin. Yeah I mean I guess the one thing they could use

is more of a dependable innings eater type which is you know generally more available than the top of the rotation talent but if they were to get someone like CeCe Sabathia for instance I don't know why he would go there instead of just staying with the Yankees who presumably have a need for him too but they I think were linked to him at some point this offseason, but someone like that, just someone not super sexy, but, you know, at least as dependable as any pitcher is in giving you starts, that's something that they could probably use and plug in there amid all the guys who are coming off or currently dealing with injuries. But other than that, yeah, their roster is really rounding out nicely. So I did not really see

this coming when Epler took over or even a month ago, but here we are. Angels are good. There is currently a delay on fangrass. We have all of our team projections, but we don't have a player ID for shohei otani from baseball info solutions you don't all need to know how the sausage is made but the point is that we don't have shohei otani on the angels depth chart because as far as fangraphs is concerned he doesn't exist so given that i don't know how many wins otani is going to project to be worth but right now the angels project for 39 wins above replacement that puts them between the cardinals and the mets that latter point doesn't sound very promising so i should have chosen a

different team to identify the angels as being sandwiched between but they are just behind the red socks and the cardinals if you look at the projected standings in the american league this is not having added matt moore to the rangers depth chart that will move the needle not even a little bit the angels project for 86 and 76 as a record that puts them nope this doesn't look right because i think that there is an error on the standings page so uh hey everyone fan graphs is fine don't worry about fan graphs but i think something isn't loading properly right now because the angels are definitely not just five games worse than the astros that doesn't make any sense so ignore that page the point is that

the angels look good. Angels look good. We're just saying the same thing over and over again. They don't look as good as the Astros. They can't look as good as the Astros, but they look good. All right. Well, let's talk about the other move that we have not really talked about before. This is Carlos Santana going to the Phillies on a three-year $60 million deal that makes

me very happy because he was one of my draft picks in our free agent contracts draft. He had been projected for $345 million by MLB Trade Rumors, so I'm racking in $15 million. It makes me feel good. Getting tired of this. Probably makes Carlos Santana feel good too. Has any of your guys signed yet? Have you had any wins or losses in that draft?

I don't remember which guys you drafted. I'm not going to lie to you. I don't remember, but I know that I took the over on Eric Hosmer, who was at six years and $132 million, and I am feeling very confident about that. Right, yeah. So I picked him in that draft.

I thought he would get more than 345 just because he has been the model of consistency more than, I don't know, maybe any other player in the majors. He is not a star, but he is a three-win guy year after year after year, whether it was six years ago or this year. And obviously he is 31, he'll be 32 in April. So, you know, you worry about the skills declining a bit, but it's only a three-year contract. And he seems to have a bunch of skills that maybe would age fairly well. Good plate discipline, certainly. And, you know, he's just been an excellent hitter. Makes good contact.

That has not slipped at all. In fact, he's making better contact in the last couple of years, certainly relative to the league. So I guess maybe there's been a lot of speculation about when the Phillies would spend, whether they should spend this offseason or in a future offseason. It's not clear. Are they contending this year? I think a lot of people have picked them to improve. But, you know, are they good enough to start making this sort of veteran free agent addition to the roster? And evidently they have decided that they are. I think the Mets have a pretty good bounce back potential this season. Noah Syndergaard and whatnot.

But as I look at things, Marlins obviously going to be terrible. Braves, I think, are going to be pretty bad. Mets hit or miss. Phillies could finish second place in that division right now. I know that Steamer thinks that they're not terrible. Zips thinks they're not terrible. And if you look at the Phillies right now, you see, I mean, so Santana is going to be a lineup anchor and anchor in baseball terms is a good thing, I guess. But Santana, pretty good. Cesar Hernandez, pretty good. J.P. Crawford could be pretty good. Michael Franco, less said the better. Reese Hoskins,

pretty good. Oduble Herrera, Aaron Altair, pretty good. Aaron Nola, pretty good michael franco less said the better reese hoskins pretty good oduble herrera aaron altair pretty good aaron nola pretty good tommy hunter pat neshek pretty good you can look at this team and there are some veterans and there are some young guys but you can see a core starting to develop depending on how high you are on a guy like aaron altair who i know isn't isn't super young but the santana signing in particular is weird because Reese Hoskins is not a good outfielder. I don't know any reason to think he would be a good defensive outfielder. I don't think he would be a disaster. I don't think that he would be as bad as, I don't know, Kyle Schwarber or for UZR throwback, Brad Hopp.

I think that Hoskins should be okay, but it's definitely not the kind of fit anyone would have expected. But Santana is one of those high floor guys. I was talking to someone earlier today who said that Santana kind of fell into Philly's lap. This wasn't their plan, which I think is clear because he doesn't really make sense. But they saw an opportunity to get him for three years and $60 million with a fourth-year option that's reasonable. And they thought, well, this is just too good to pass up. So it gives them flexibility now. If they want to make a move, they could, I don't know, trade Nick

Williams, or they could put him in the minors, or they could just have Hoskins, Santana, Williams, and Altair and everyone just kind of rotate around, and one guy can sit on the bench on any given day, and you can have a steady rotation. Chances are not everyone will be healthy and productive at the same time the whole season. So Santana doesn't make immediate great sense for a team that isn't likely to make the playoffs this season. But it's, you know, sets other things in motion if the Phillies want it. And as usual, offseason moves shouldn't be evaluated on their own, which ultimately they are as the offseason progresses. Because all we know about the Phillies is that they just signed Santana. But this could open the door to something down the road they could move i don't

know they could move nick williams for a starting pitcher because they could use a starting pitcher point being phillies are coming and they have like no money locked up down the road exactly yeah so they can add to this and yeah i mean i wouldn't have said 360 for santana was like such an unbelievable bargain that I would sign him no matter what like that to me is kind of about what I would have thought I guess I thought 3 and 45 was conservative 3 and 60 I mean you know I could have envisioned him getting more but it's doesn't sound to me like such an amazing deal that I would just sign him regardless but they could use I mean they are at the point roughly

where it's fine to start investing and they certainly have enough money to start investing. And he's a good player who has shown no sign of decline. And even if you don't think that they're quite good enough to win this year, he's signed for two more years after that. And they'll certainly be good enough at some point during that period.

So this has been interpreted because Santana signed for a little more than expected.'s been interpreted as a good thing for eric cosmer it's not eric cosmer's free agency is completely independent of carlos santana's free agency eric cosmer is going to get like 175 million dollars from some clown shoes organization and carlos santana has nothing to do with that carlos santana is on a different tier of first baseman. Now, statistically, you could say he's not. He's on the same tier. They're both pretty fine first baseman and nothing more than that. But for whatever reason, probably Scott Boris's propaganda, Eric Hosmer, is viewed as a long-term face of the franchise kind of player.

And Hosmer is not going to sign for more because Santana just got $20 million a year. It's just, I don't know why people choose to link free agents like that. I understand with the relievers, like there was that run on relievers this week where everyone was signing the same contract. I understand those are all the same players with the same values. Hosmer and Santana, one has nothing to do with the other. They were both the first baseman, but that is the extent of it. And the late breaking move of Matt Moore. I don't know if we have a whole lot to say about Matt Moore. He's Matt Moore. But did you come up with any kind of talking point for Matt Moore? numbers i think in the upper minors and as i reflect let's see if that's true in 2011 in triple a he struck out 13.5 batters per nine in double a he struck out 11.5 batters per nine then he made it to the majors and he struck out nearly a batter an inning in his first full season and

matt moore has not been good as a major leaguer and not only that i know he's had some low eras and stuff he had a 329 era in 2013 but he's never i mean what did i say he's never been good yeah i'm gonna stand by that he's been fine but he's never you think with a player with this kind of talent or at least what used to be this kind of talent at some point such a player just kind of flukes his way or maybe just puts it all together in one season and has like a ceiling kind of season you know but nope matt moore for his career era minus of 107 fip minus of 105 x fip minus of 110 now for those of you who are familiar and said with era plus era plus says that a number over 100 is good era minus says that a number over 100 is bad matt moore minus says that a number over 100 is bad.

Matt Moore has been a career number four starting pitcher, and that's disappointing given what he was supposed to be. But if you can believe it, Matt Moore still just 28 years old. So, you know, it's something, and the Rangers pitching staff is pretty bad. Yeah, not to call out Kevin Goldstein, who is great and has gone on to great things and is doing things much more important than public prospect lists these days. But in 2012, Matt Moore was Baseball Perspectus's number one prospect, right above Bryce Harper, number two, and Mike Trout, number three. That hasn't aged all that well, but that gives you some sense of the perception of Matt Moore at the time.

I don't remember whether that was the consensus. I don't know if other lists had it like that that year. I mean, I think just generally having a pitcher above a position player for your number one prospect, that pitcher better be a whole lot better than the position player. And I don't think that was really the case with Moore and Harper. This is all retrospective analysis here but i think uh for me to ever rank a pitcher as number one prospect he would have to be like in the majors already like have a you know impeccable reputation health-wise and also just be a lot better on talent than the next best position player option not that you know there's the old saying about

there's no such thing as a pitching prospect. That's not true. There are pitching prospects. And that saying was originally intended to mean more that you should just bring up your pitching prospects because they're ready sooner and you can use them before they wear out and that kind of thing. But yeah, that tells you at least how highly rated a prospect. And, you know, Kevin wasn't just like Google scouting and baseball reference scouting matt moore he was obviously talking to people in the game and scouts and everything and that was informing his opinion and yet he still had matt moore as the number one prospect in baseball above one hall of famer and one guy who certainly has hall of fame type talent so yeah that was matt moore then that is not matt moore now when matt moore was a rookie he came up to the major

leagues and he was throwing his fastball 96 miles per hour he's now 28 years old that's down around 92 it's not great last year he decided he wanted to start throwing a whole lot more of this cutter Matt Moore was like all right I'm going to come up with a cutter lots of pitchers play around with cutters and I'm just gonna make it part of my repertoire because the other stuff hasn't worked and batter slugged 549 against it wasn't a very good cutter so you know he could put it together and i can't bring myself to say any more about matt moore look earn it if you want me to say more about you on the podcast earn it matt moore so far you have been fairly nondescript yeah all right so let's do some emails unless you have anything else that you want to talk about first and i usually i prepare the emails i curate

the emails i have a whole document full of emails that i read down as we do the show this time we weren't sure we were doing emails we had a call an interview possibly planned turns out we'll be doing that next week instead so feel free to speculate it's with a player who has been mentioned on recent podcasts and that's all I'll say. But that'll be coming next week instead. And right now we're going to do some emails. So we'll see how this goes, doing it live, doing it on the fly. So let's... The interview is with Matt Moore. Why are you bad? Not that recently mentioned. All right. Well, we got a couple that were kind of about when a team should rebuild.

And I remember at the beginning of this offseason, we talked about what constitutes a rebuild, what the definition of a rebuild is. Maybe that will help us answer these questions. So this one's from Eric Hartman. He says, there's been lots of chatter here in Toronto that in the wake of the Stanton trade, the Jays should just rebuild. This has been a common refrain for a while now, as Alex Anthopoulos traded most of the system's treasure to acquire Donaldson, Price, and Tulitsky.

However, Zips and Steamer both see the Jays as an above 500 team, I think, and their farm system, while not elite, is far from bereft. This is a team that can and will run a payroll in the top 10 in baseball with two teams in the division in talks to rebuild themselves. I would not say the Jays are even a favorite for the wildcard spot at this point due to Shohei Otani and his arrival in Anaheim, as well as strong challenges from a few other clubs, but I doubt anyone would be surprised if they made the playoffs this year. All of this has been a preamble for me to say that I think teams are too quick to tank and rebuild in the

two wildcard era. I think a season like the Twins just had should be treasured and strived for. To me, all but the sorriest situations in baseball should try and at least start every season with a plan of how they'll make the playoffs with the potential for a mid-season pivot if it goes south. And then we also got a second similar related question from Mike, our Patreon supporter. He just sent us a question sort of about the idea of the win curve and the fact that in an earlier era of analysis, it was sort of assumed that either you would be really good or you'd be really bad if you were kind of in that middle range of like, you know, 70-something wins, but not really trying to get better or trying to

get worse. That would be criticized. And so he also invokes the Blue Jays here. He says the instinctive reaction that being a high 70s win team is extremely bad doesn't seem to be present And so he also invokes the Blue Jays here. He says, bar for competitiveness down enough that it's now worth being basically a 500 quality baseball team and hoping you have a bunch of career years because that seems like what's going on all over mlb right now and 15 years ago that would have been pilloried on a weekly basis okay well which what was what was the question in there when to when to rebuild is basically and we've talked about this a little bit before where i think my sense, my gut sense is that when the wildcard was expanded, there were a lot of teams trying to be like 85 wins good. And in particular, in the American League, we saw that nearly every team was trying to be something very similar. And there just weren't teams that were great.

And then it seems now more recently we have trended toward this sort of super team era. Last year was a very lopsided playoff pool. It's looking like this coming season we could have another very lopsided playoff pool where you'll have a tier of something like 10 to 12 teams that are quite good and then everyone else will be much much worse or in the case of the tigers much much much much much much worse so i don't know which is correct because we don't have a very good understanding of the value of a mediocre but somewhat successful above 500 season. Like, I don't know who is actually who is decent last. So, gosh, I forgot that in the American League, every team that finished above 500 made the playoffs. I had a bunch of teams kind of hung around till the end and then just kind of fell apart at the end so if you look at okay take a team like last year's cardinals i guess because

the brewers are rebuilding last year's cardinals finished 83 and 79 or if you go to the season before that if memory serves the mariners were pretty good they were competitive they didn't make the playoffs but they they hung around and then you can also look at the team last year like the twins who hung around and ultimately did make the playoffs. Very briefly, you could have seen them in the playoffs for about three and a half hours. I hope they all had fun

and their mothers were proud of them. They did make the playoffs. So we don't know the value. At least I don't think we know the value of a season where you are okay. And at no point does anyone consider you like a championship contender, even if you have some sort of legitimate odds of winning the World Series.

No one ever looked at the Twins and thought, this is a team that is going to go all the way. But the fun of it is that, well, maybe this is a team that can go to October. And then once you're in October, anything can happen. We don't have a great understanding of that, nor do we have, I think, a great understanding of the damage do we have i think a great understanding of the damage from just tearing your team apart i don't know how much the astros lost for being absolutely dreadful as they tore completely down i don't know the same about the cubs i don't know the same about the white socks i don't know if those fans you lose because of course you lose fans i don't know if they come back my sense is that they do come back because this is sports it's not like you swear an oath that says i'll never give another

dollar to this team because it rebuilt so there is a i think a very convincing argument that a team should try to be competitive every single season because this is just here for the community and fans want to be happy they want to have something to hope for and there's absolutely nothing to hope for in a empty rebuilding season at least not at the major league level but at the same time an organization has a responsibility to do what is in the fans long-term best interests and i can't think that there's much of a worse place to be than like right now you have a team like the mariners or the rangers who are just kind of stuck in the middle clearly they're not as good as the teams above them. They're not bad baseball teams, but they have pretty empty farm systems, the Mariners in particular,

and they just can't really get much better right now. So I'm not real convinced by the argument against rebuilding in those cases, unless you figure the rebuild can't really put off a cliff anyway. Like the team is going to end up having to rebuild soon enough so why not just take one more run at it i think it's kind of a feel thing where i think it makes sense for the marlins to be rebuilding i think it makes sense for the pirates to be considering sort of reloading if not rebuilding i think it makes sense for the royals to be thinking about rebuilding but it is a i think it's a case-by-case basis and i i can't

come up with a firm rule because i just don't know the damage of of tearing it down you want to suit a fan's short-term interests to a certain extent it's just it's so difficult yeah i mean i have to think that if it's not part of a long-term legacy if it's not the marlins i mean it's one thing when the marlins do it because with them a teardown just happens every few years and you can't really analyze it independent of that context. Whereas if the Astros do it, if the Cubs do it, and if there's clearly a purpose behind it other than cutting costs, I think that fans are willing to go along with it. I mean, obviously it does lead to an attendance drop and decline in TV ratings, but I don't know that there's great evidence that you can't bounce back from it. I haven't seen a great study of that sort of thing, but at least based on recent history and, I mean, I think you have to compare it like if you're the Cubs and the Astros

and you end up winning the World Series, then I think net, you're profiting, you're winning there rather than, I mean, if the baseline is just sort of humming along at 70 something or 80 something wins and maybe lucking into a playoff appearance every now and then but mostly not i think if you get a world series win in there and just several years of playoff appearances i think it probably pays for itself and more than that but obviously you can't really count on things working out that well even though it has happened a couple times recently i know billy bean has talked about how he doesn't think that the a's can rebuild if he thinks that it would cause too much damage for the team's brand and it's it's fan base now on the other hand the a's kind of have rebuilt the last few years so i

don't know if that was a coincidence or or what they've certainly never been shy about trading good and valuable players away. But I also don't know if it's fair to say yet the teams are being too hasty with their teardowns, because we haven't yet actually seen that many teams commit to it. Like a team like the Tigers, I don't think there was any question that they needed to tear down because they just weren't good anymore. But you know, we haven't actually seen the Royals start to rebuild. We haven't actually seen the Orioles deal everyone away or the Blue Jays or these other teams. So I think that there's a sense that more teams are thinking about it and maybe setting themselves up to tear it down.

But until we see a swath of teams actually make those difficult moves, like, I don't know, trading Donaldson or trading Machado, then maybe it's too soon to impugn them for giving up the present. All right. Next question. Let's go with Nick, who says, sorry for another Otani question. That's okay, Nick. But I'm just curious, does Otani have any value, even if he never plays a game of Major League Baseball?

This is not about his marquee or financial value, which might be there also. But Nick wants to know specifically. He talked to 27 of the 30 front offices in baseball, or at least got survey responses from them, and they all were willing to tell him something of their plans to become World Series champions. When Kevin Durant was a free agent in basketball, he also sat down for meetings with really good teams, and at least one of them, the Boston Celtics, told him their scouting reports on the Warriors and Cavs. I don't really know if this is a good analogy to baseball, just because there isn't a Warriors or Cavs of baseball, but I still think basketball front offices have to be just as

smart and just as secretive as those in baseball. Do you think that there's any sort of value to be found from Otani, just simply from what teams told him? Do you think it would be unethical of him to share any of the things he learned? I'm sure no team told him, yes, we're going to sign this guy from this place for this much and here are scouting reports on different players and these are the trade talks we're involved in but do you think they told him anything that other franchises would still pay some amount of money to know no yeah probably not i don't think so because i mean what would he have heard how they're going to use showy otani that's it or that he's going to hear a pitch about how the team could really use a good player that's not a scattering report that's yeah scattering report i mean you know some of the survey

responses were about like well how can you keep me healthy and what are your facilities like and you know what kind of perks do you offer to players that sort of thing like how are you going to integrate me into your culture? And all of that is potentially something that teams could learn from. But, I mean, you know, they're not going to give away their secret to keeping pitchers healthy and all the algorithms and the equations and the equipment that they use in the memo to Shohei Otani that they had no assurances would not eventually end up in someone else's hands. So I have to think that any team that submitted a response was aware of this risk and would not have put any great competitive secrets in any of those memos.

Agreed. Okay. All right. Question from Andrew. When do you anticipate will be the next season in which the Cubs, Dodgers, and Yankees all fail to make the playoffs in the same year? The last time this occurred was in 1994 when no teams made the playoffs. It also occurred each year from 1990 to 1993. Will it ever happen again?

On a related note, when do you anticipate will be the next season in which any of these three teams fails to make the playoffs? three teams fails to make the playoffs i know it's likely that one of them will have a fluky bad season at some point but it sure is hard to see any of these teams being legitimately bad at any time in the next decade or two okay so i andrew i emailed them back and then he he emailed me back or us back and they received a little pushback from him because i i don't remember exactly what i said to him but i don't think that this streak is going to continue on that much longer and i mean there's a mathematical way to break it down and then there's the slightly less mathematical way to break it down where if you want to say just take one given season and let's say that each team has a 90 chance

of making the playoffs which is not true that's too high but whatever let's just go with it and the odds that all three make the playoffs in one given season is 73 percent and so if you then multiply that by itself then that yields a 53 chance that all three teams make it to the playoffs two years in a row given 90 odds each of making the playoffs which is just not true so that's one way of breaking this down where it's almost a coin flip just that they'll all make the playoffs two years in a row and the other way to look at it is that of course they they all look very good they all have a lot of money they're all set up for the short term and the long term and they are each not too afraid of the competitive balance tax they have gone over even though i know that they're trying to get

under at present but even with these teams spending a lot on their payrolls they are still spending less on their payrolls relative to even the lowest payroll teams in baseball the floor has risen and the cap the soft cap has sort of kept the highest spending teams somewhat in place and so there's just a less of a spread in payroll and of course there's more to baseball than how much you spend on your roster but that that's kind of a leading indicator, if that's the right term. And so the amount of resources that teams can pour into their roster will be related to how good those teams are. And if the Yankees, Cubs, and Dodgers can't spend that much more than their competition, well, it stands to reason that they won't play that much better than their competition over the long haul. Yeah, I just, I think, I mean, look at recent history.

The Cubs came fairly close to missing the playoffs this season. I mean, it was in question for much of the season and they were expected to be the best team in baseball probably, or maybe the second best. And, you know, they kind of just limped along and they ended up making it, but it wasn't a convincing victory on their part. And that was in a pretty weak division overall. And then look at recent Yankees history. Obviously, they just missed the playoffs a bunch of times. So we're not so far removed from these things happening or almost happening

that I think we can forecast with any kind of confidence that they won't happen soon. I mean, you know, historically, when people have looked at, like, how predictive is the current season of records in say two or three seasons. And I think if I remember right, and then Russell Carlton has done this, it's like basically a coin flip by the time you get to like the third season, like there's no correlation between this season's records and records a few years from now. And, you know, maybe if you put market size and payroll into that, it might be a little more predictive probably.

But still, you're going to get a fluky bad year. You're going to get injuries. You're going to get luck that doesn't go your way. And, you know, I guess the better question is how long will it be? Maybe until any of these teams is not favored to make it or until it's surprising that they don't make it. And that could be a while. Like, you know, it's hard to anticipate that now. But then again,

it's I mean, you know, remember, like the Rangers from a few years ago, who just had that horrible injury year or, you know, two years and missed the playoffs after being one of the best teams in baseball. And they seem to be set up long-term, and they had just a great core, and they had young guys coming up, and some of the young guys didn't pan out, and some of the older guys got hurt, and suddenly they were bad. Not even not good, but legitimately bad. So it happens, and it wouldn't be that shocking if it happened. But obviously these teams all have

institutional advantages that give them a leg up on the average team you know at any time and now of course they all have cores and young cores that seem to be promising and should in theory keep them in contention for a long time but but yeah two decades that's uh that's a long time i mean the yankees have not been a losing team for longer than that, and that's extraordinary. But that is the exception rather than the rule. It's worth remembering in 2014, the Nationals won 96 games. In 2016, they won 95. This past season, they won 97.

But in 2015, they went 83 and 79. They missed the playoffs. They were a terrible disappointment. And I remember before that season started, the nationals were projected to be like super good they were some people were calling them like a super team even before these super teams started to emerge around major league baseball that people have blamed matt williams some people have blamed like bad pythagorean luck or whatever but the 2015 nationals were supposed to be extremely good they were not they were not horrible but the clubhouse atmosphere seemed like it was horrible bryce harper and jonathan papelbon had a little choke off showdown that this is this is a while ago yeah at this point but one of those important points to keep in mind

great teams can turn bad awfully quick and then and then win 95 games the next year yeah all right patreon supporter troy says what would happen if through a nefarious series of bribes and corruption, a single team secretly gained control over the MLB schedule? The schedule still has to contain the same matchups and locations. You can't only play the Tigers or force the A's to play all their games at home, but the controlling team can rig it however they want beyond that. Force your division rivals to play double headers and take red-eye flights, etc. I may be crazy, but I think that this power, properly leveraged, gets any team into the playoffs. So I'm sure that the spirit of the question is that you, I mean, you can't make the team play like five games a day or something like that, but we're talking about realistic tweaks, I guess, tweaks that you could get away with in theory here? Yeah, there have been rule

changes about red-eye flights and like getaway days, right? Where games have to, like getaway games have to be played earlier so that teams don't have to travel overnight and have those horrible trips. And it's not like you can schedule rain delays or anything. So you can't do a lot with red-eyes eyes and of course ultimately the the real trick to this is that you have to have the final schedule come together in something that does work i'm sure there are infinite ways to do that i've never tried to build a major league baseball schedule it sounds like the worst thing in the world to do just with your hands but you have to build something that's reasonable which means that just because of that most of the

schedules will work out to be fine so i think you would have to pick a team maybe two teams that you want to sabotage and the best you can do to sabotage those teams would just be to have them fly from like san francisco to miami to seattle to atlanta just like constantly going coast to coast back and forth for just like at at random you get the games in but you just make them travel all i don't know like i know darren willman has calculated the miles flown of teams but i i would love to know like what is the theoretical maximum number of miles that a team could travel in a reasonable schedule i that sounds like it would be terrible to try to work out but you know maybe it's like 50 000 miles or maybe more i don't know because the the most mileage now is somewhere

around i think 23 000 so as for what you could do for yourself i guess it's the opposite travel as little as possible and i don't know try to i don't know are there areas where it makes a difference where you play by the season i mean of course like chicago was different in april and it is in august but it doesn't really do much for you so i I don't know. Is there anything here that you can do besides just mileage tweaking? do this in retrospect like you knew when teams were going to be hot or cold or have injuries or not have injuries or have a trade deadline acquisition or not have a trade deadline acquisition and you knew all of that in advance and you could arrange the schedule so as to take advantage of those cold streaks and avoid the hot streaks then you could certainly profit from this but as it is it's kind of tough to come up with realistic ways that you

could do it i mean maybe maybe you try to play more good teams earlier and bad teams later just anticipating the trade deadline and not that much talent will change hands at the deadline but if you figure strong teams get better and bad teams get worse then you would love to end like if you could just sort of end with like a national league east kind of slate you know for like the last six weeks of the season then you could pile up a bunch of wins but of course the danger there is that if you play tougher teams earlier on then you would end up with maybe a lot of ground to make up and you would have a worse opinion of your own team just based on on the standing because of the strength of schedule so turns out schedule manipulation really difficult yeah right okay you don't have a stat plus do you i don't because i didn't i didn't prepare

them but i can tell you because i was just looking at the nationals baseball reference list i'm just going to tell you one fact i don't have any build-up okay but if you've looked at like a team history then you know on baseball reference you see every year you see the team's record the pythagorean record where they finished in the division if they made the playoffs run scored runs allowed attendance blah blah blah all this stuff and you you see the manager and the manager's record but you also have one column that says top player you're familiar with a top player column yes so i don't have a spreadsheet if i had done some work i could have done something better with this i don't have a spreadsheet of like the worst ever top player so this is going to be a very

underwhelming stat blast segment. I'm sorry. Last year, according to Baseball Reference, the best Nationals player was Max Scherzer. Not surprising. He was worth 7.6 wins. But just to try to make this a little more interactive, you probably don't remember much about the 2011 Washington Nationals, but I'm going to quiz you about them anyway. That's a team that technically had three managers, Jim Ricklemanman john mclaren and davy johnson that's unusual the team finished 80 and 81 didn't play 162 games that's unusual but they did play nearly 162 games and they weren't bad they were almost

exactly 500 using your own washington nationals historical knowledge from seven years ago who do you think was the best player who's the the top player on the 2011 Washington Nationals? Because this is wild to me. Well, not Zimmerman, I'm guessing. No. Was Christian Guzman still on that team? That's a good question, to which the answer would be no. Okay.

Ian Desmond was on that team. But I assume it's not. No, it wasn't him, and it wasn't Lance Nix. He's not going to be my next guest. 2011 Nationals. Gosh, that was a pretty forgettable team. Well, Jason Wirth was still on that team. Was it Jason?

He sure was. Yeah. He sure wasn He sure was. Yeah. He sure wasn't. No. Okay. All right. Well, was it the other Zimmerman? Jordan Zimmerman?

All right. Let's just put this to a stop. Okay. So the answer is Tyler Clippard. Tyler Clippard was the most valuable player on the 2011 Washington Nationals who finished 80-81. Tyler Clippard, pitcher, not a starting pitcher, not a closing pitcher, but a 1.83 ERA pitcher. He was actually worth 3.4 wins above replacement that year. He allowed 11 home runs, a lot of home runs, but I was just shocked to see that a team's best player was not like a staple player, not a core player,

not a player who's counting stats. you wouldn't have him on like your fantasy team you know he didn't get saves he didn't get wins he didn't get a whole lot of strikeouts because he was a setup guy but just to make matters worse now i'm just kind of eyeballing things i can tell you that last year the san diego padres had a worse best player it was julius chassin 2.8 wins above replacement that's pretty bad But I guess as long as we're going to do this exercise, we have to look at the 2003 Detroit Tigers, do we not? Well, hey, good news for them. Demetri Young, 3.4 wins above replacement,

just as valuable as 2011 Tyler Clippard. So I don't know who has the worst best player in a single season of all time. That's probably something that I could pull up within about half an hour using the Fangraphs leaderboard. So maybe I will have to do that for next week's actual stat blast segment instead of this little teaser. Yeah, I remember answering this question, I think it was maybe just about a single season,

not all that long ago, a worst best player. And I think the worst best player was maybe Will Myers on the Padres. But yeah, that was not like an all time type question. Well, we'll be back with a full stat blast next week. But this is sort of a stat-blasty email we got from a listener named Will, who said, after listening to your podcast segment about the O'Brien twins, I thought you might be interested to learn about Oscar Robles, if you haven't already. I have not. He says, Robles' career slash line was 260, 323, 348.

Okay, not great. But in 63 career plate appearances after falling behind 02 when normally you would be much worse he slashed 338 361 463 and in 23 career plate appearances after getting ahead 30 when normally you would be excellent he slashed 000 609 000 i found him while searching for guys with TOPSs over 100 after falling behind 0-2, and his 3-0 slash line was just the icing on the cake. So yeah, I don't have any historical rankings of where Oscar Robles falls, but that's pretty weird. And obviously, that's the sort of thing that can only happen in a small sample,

and Oscar Robles' career was a pretty small sample. He played for three years, 163 games in total. Okay, I have to look at this math. Okay, so Oscar Robles is there. A TLPS plus of 145 after falling behind 0-2. That doesn't make any sense. Roger Clemens is up there at a 107th place. Roger Clemens exactly is good after falling behind oh

and two that's a good thing or a bad thing but let's all be curious and let's sort this now in ascending order who's been the worst hitter of all time after falling behind oh and two our answer is kent bottenfield okay well that's well that's fine k Kent Bottenfield went 0 for 53. Kyle Hendricks, 0 for 51. Over 61. So actually, Kyle Hendricks looks like he could be the worst here because he's played the most. Mark Redman, Dan Straley. These are pitchers.

However, what do we have here? Do we have a non-pitcher? Mark Clark? Nope. Definitely he was a pitcher. So I'm just going to keep going here until I find someone who is a non-pitcher. Fernando Seguinol. am i doing that right seguino seguino yeah fernando seguino he seems to be the worst all-time among position players after falling behind oh and two he went two for 77 52 strikeouts a top s plus of negative 73 he is on this list just surrounded by pitchers

just nothing but pitchers as far as the eye can see all right well so we sort of ended up with the impromptu stat blast but we'll be back with a real one next week all right question from another patreon supporter hope i'm pronouncing this right. Hebron. And he says, Hi, Ben and Jeff. Every team seemingly now has a quality control coach, but none of them can seem to give a clear delineation of the job duties. Can you clear it up? And it's true. This is an increasingly common position. It's not always called quality control coach. Sometimes it's called like defensive coordinator. It's not always called quality control coach. Sometimes it's called like defensive coordinator. It's very like football sounding positions. But I think what it generally entails, and this probably varies team to team and person to person, but I think it's often kind of a liaison

role between the front office and the field staff. So it'll be like defensive positioning and spray charts and that sort of thing and kind of like taking the data from the front office and distributing it and explaining it to the coaches and making sure it's applied in game. And often it will be someone who has sort of a hybrid background, maybe has some playing and coaching experience and sort of is at home in the dugout and has that typical coaching background, but also has some experience or familiarity or interest in things that front offices talk about more. So kind of speaks both languages and is a go-between of sorts. And I'm sure that is a very broad definition that varies a lot in specific situations, but that's my understanding of what it typically entails

okay question from jerome what if in a bizarre tactic to cut payroll combined with a lack of appealing candidates the yankees decided not to employ any coaches for the 2017 season no manager no pitching coach no coaching whatsoever what could we expect regarding the on-field product and any off the field-field storylines? I don't know why Jerome chose the Yankees. It seems like a Marlins move, most likely, but maybe the answer would be similar no matter what team did it, but maybe not. Anyway, I know you wanted to answer this one, so I'm sure you had some thoughts. Oh, it's so open-ended. want to answer really badly i haven't thought of some sort of real clever response but the possibilities are limitless you would i mean

this is lord of the flies is what you have yeah so is this this team would do we assume that the yankees were built by brian cashman under the assumption that like does he know they won't have a coaching staff going into the year so So does he clearly assemble regular starters and bench players that are much worse? What do you think would happen? I mean, if we had this coachless situation, would you have a premium on character guys and veterans and clubhouse leader types who could be de facto coaches? Would suddenly those guys' salaries would go way up because it's not just paying lip service to them as something that is valuable but actually is valuable because they're

the closest thing to a coach that you have i could see that happening the trouble though is if you bring one of those guys in from another organization he's unfamiliar so you need those guys to be around like i think that if eric osmer goes to the padres they'll say oh he's a character guy we want him to be a leader in the clubhouse because he's been a leader in the clubhouse in kansas city but i think he's been a leader in the clubhouse in kansas city in large part because he came up with these guys he's been there from the bad years he's been there the whole time and so he's been through the wars so to speak and if he goes to san diego he's just like he's a newcomer like anyone else who's new to the clubhouse so you can't just suddenly be a leader around a different group of guys so you would have to prioritize i think

leadership characteristics and players who were already there but then that gets complicated because if you identify leaders well what if some players don't want to pay attention to those leaders a leader of 25 men might actually be a leader of 22 of them and then you have three holdouts but the real truth what do you do when do starting pitchers come out you would end up almost certainly the team would have to have some sort of vote the team would come together and i think that they would identify within their own ranks a coaching staff yeah probably based on league seniority yeah because i think that's the only thing maybe like the the star player someone who clearly can't leverage his own playing time because he's already going to have to play a bunch you know like john carlos stanton could be a leader of the yankees because if he starts

himself every day that's good for the the yankees yeah but you would have to have i assume you go to spring training and so the yankees do have all spring training to think about this and plan for the season ahead. And so maybe they just kind of stick it out in spring training and see what characteristics emerge over a few days or weeks. And I think that you would definitely have some sort of clubhouse vote to identify, here is the leader of the team, here is the leader of the pitchers. They will have to communicate with one another. Hopefully neither one of them gets hurt, cut, or traded, because then that would complicate matters. But you would have to.

You have to have some sort of leadership for, some sort of leader for a group of 25 players that's constantly changing, because otherwise, I don't know how the performance on the field would get worse. I don't know what it would look like but i know that it would you would probably have a lot of televised shouting matches in the dugout because i don't know how many of those a manager actually breaks up but i think that the presence of a manager or bench coaches prevents them before they even get started so you would have a it would it would be explosive and in new york this would be a do you think do you let's who's who's the best team in baseball

do you think astros okay take away the entire coaching staff yeah do you think do you let's who's who's the best team in baseball do you think astros okay take away the entire coaching staff yeah do you think they make the playoffs i do i think i do and sometimes we get the question like what would happen if you didn't have a first base coach or something because i think fans like to think that first base coaches don't do anything and don't serve any purpose and they just stand there and anyone could do it. So we get that question every now and then. But this is every coach. So you're not only not having the controlling influence of coaches and managers who are telling the players what to do, you're also not having the in-game whatever benefit that you accrue from that.

And I know there's a lot of question and uncertainty about that but if you think a mound visit from a coach is worth anything if you think like coaches are able to pick up on mechanical problems that players have and correct them mid-start that's gone you know maybe scouting reports i mean i guess you'd still get scouting reports like a front office person could you know put a piece of paper on your chair or something but if no one's looking over your shoulder are you really gonna spend the time to do it and if no one's leading the meeting with the pitchers and the catchers and the hitters at the beginning of the series is anyone going to take the initiative to do that so you know and you're not getting any kind of improvement as a player like no one's working with you on your swaying

except maybe some veteran teammate or something like that. So there are a lot of ways in which you are potentially losing here relative to other teams. And that's without even going into the potential for conflict and strife, which in some scenarios would probably totally tear apart a team. So that said, I think the Astros are really good and they'd probably still make the playoffs. team so that said i think the astros are really good and they'd probably still make the playoffs okay so now what about a team that has too many coaches you take a regular coaching staff now that triples in size college of coaches right yeah is that better because the student to teacher ratio is is better for the players or is it is it just too many cooks well we have seen teams increase the size of their coaching staff recently like you'll have multiple hitting

coaches or maybe an assistant pitching coach or something like that so there's some benefit but then i'm sure there is some point where not only do you get diminishing returns but maybe you get backfiring so i think yeah i think at a certain point like you just get coaches jockeying with each other to prove their worth and they would have different ideas and suggestions for what a player would do. And it would be confusing and distracting and ultimately harmful. Okay. Astros in the World Series, no coaching staff. And Dodgers in the World Series, 150 coaches on the coaching staff. Which team wins the World Series?

All 150 coaches are in uniform. Where do they stand during games? Auxiliary press box. I don't know. Okay. I think, I mean, in practice, maybe it would be sort of the same. Because if you have 150 coaches, no one coach has any sort of authority, right? And so you can't listen to all

of them you'd probably just start to disregard all of them right so i think functionally it might be similar so i guess i would take the no coaches over the 150 coaches maybe but i think i want to take the 150 okay i think it's similar i mean i guess you know you could pick and choose your favorite coach so if there's a coach you do work well with then you can work with that guy he's probably going to have plenty of free time on his hands because he's one of 150 coaches so i guess that could still be beneficial but i think the two scenarios end up sort of not only i mean you have the potential for conflict among the players in the no coaches scenario but you have potential for conflict among coaches in the 150 coaches scenario so i'm not sure that that would actually turn out to be any better but and just in terms of sheer space and living conditions i think

traveling with 150 coaches would be challenging it would be like the mayflower yeah i think that i would i'll take the team with 150 coaches and here's why i think if you go through the season then some sort of hierarchy develops these aren't just like 150 coaches who suddenly descend on the dodgers in the world series and i think that you could get so specific with what all of their roles are like we their article came out the other day of quoting some anonymous astros player of how you darvish was tipping his pitches and of course the dodgers are like oh maybe it was maybe it wasn't. We'll never know. But you have 150 coaches. You could put six coaches on every opposing player if you wanted to, or, you know, one on each of your own players and then five on every single opposing player. And you could just find little things

that those players are doing and you can just identify. I think that they would have a lot of advantages. I don't know how they would manifest because not every player is doing something you can take advantage of but oh man you would have like you would have george springer conferences because you know you wouldn't want to dedicate five coaches to like i don't know some guy who's never going to pitch in the series let's just call him uh ken giles clearly the astros even even the even the coachless astros know like whoa we should steer away from this guy if he's pitching like he did in the playoffs let's just go ahead and not use him he seems like he's in a bad place so you know you could even have like 10 coaches 12 coaches 100 coaches on jose altuve you could

sit 50 of them in center field and they could like just do the wave all the time really annoying like you know just like in the batter's eye i don't know what you could do but i i think that there would be some some litany of advantages the dodgers would have with 150 coaches or as long as you're doing this 700 coaches for the los angeles dodgers uh i mean if more coaches were such a competitive advantage we'd see more teams hiring more coaches right i mean there's a limit on the number of uniformed personnel you can have in the dugout, but there's no limit to coaches you can stick in the auxiliary press box. So if there were an advantage to doing that, you'd think teams might be doing that. They're not.

Is there a limit by rule to how many coaches can stand in the first base coaches box? I mean, how many do you think you could physically fit in there well first of all none of them stand right to begin with but you know could you could you put your pitching coach in the first base coach box as well just like to hang out i do not know the answer to that yeah i wonder yeah it's it seems like it's a rule i haven't looked at the rulebook seems like something you could exploit for no reason other than to exploit it. But, you know, maybe there's something there. Maybe.

All right. Let's wrap up with one slightly less silly question. This is from William, who says, simple one. Who puts up more combined 2018 war, Trout and Otani or Judge and Stanton? I think I responded Trout and Otani. You did. You're free to change your mind if you feel like it no no I'm not gonna do it okay Trout and Otani here's why Trout great okay so Trout I'll give nine wins he's uh really good I'll give him a nine win projection Stanton I'll put it five

so that's a four win difference is Aaron Judge four wins better than Joey Otani I don't think that he is I think that there's like a 35 or 40 chance that I'd be wrong here because I really like Aaron Judge and he doesn't have to do that much to repeat or not repeat he probably won't repeat but to be a very good player so it's close but I I would assume that all the projection systems will say Trout and Otani and I can't in good conscience disagree with the projection system's gut feeling. Yeah, yeah, I guess that's right. I mean, I don't know. This email may have come before the Otani-UCL stuff.

I don't know how much that changes things. But, I mean, with Trout, you're getting the closest to a guaranteed seven wins or whatever as anyone in baseball gives you but otani has pretty huge error bars around what you're getting from him and at least you know that judge and stanton are position players primarily and you know presumably can give you something although of course stanton has missed lots of time in the past so man i man, I don't know. I guess just starting with Trout, it's really tough to overcome that. Trout is just so much more dependable than any of the other three people in this scenario. Let's see.

Let's see what Steamer says. It's the only projection system I think that we have out there right now. So that's just to do as much as we can here. Mike Trout is projected for 8.7 wins above replacement john carlos stanton is at 5.9 and aaron judge is at 3.8 probably low but we'll see so that would give the astros two was at 9.7 and trout is already at 8.7 so shall we otani would just have to be a one win player under those circumstances to put the Angels over the top. Now, I don't agree with that Aaron Judge projection myself, but it is what it is.

Blame Steamer, not me on the messenger. All right, so we can wrap up there, I think, and we'll be back with a full slate of podcasts next week. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. next week. and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. And as I always remind you, please help us replenish our mailbag. Send us some questions via email at podcast.fangirls.com or via the Patreon messaging system. Hope you have a fine rest of your weekend.

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