Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1152: The Pod Calling the Ketel

Episode Date: December 21, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter (and bantler, again) about what they’ve learned about antlers and antler-rubbed bats, the Evan Longoria trade, Derek Jeter’s town-hall event with Marlins fans, and Jeff’s breakout-player pick for 2018 (and breakout player-picking philosophy). Then they debut a new Stat Blast theme song by Jessie Barbour, do a Stat Blast […]

Oh no, these blues are gonna rub me off I say, oh no, these blues are gonna rub me off Hello and welcome to episode 1152 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. My name is Ben Lindberg. I'm a writer for TheRinger.com. Mostly I cover Star Wars these days, but I'm going to talk about baseball for a little bit with my pal, Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. When do you think that we became pals? After a few dozen episodes. I don't know.

Maybe after we did the the eclipse thing and actually spent a little time with each other in person maybe that helped so i had just spent time with you before that in new york that's true yeah that too yeah my dog liked you you liked my dog so that helped i think oh my god who couldn't like that dog i know i do remember one of the first time maybe the first time i ever actually met you in person was at the San Diego Winter Meetings, I believe it was. Yeah. And we had gone to dinner. I don't know how you end up invited, but kudos. Maybe you were at the other table, the Keith Law table. I don't remember. Yes, that's right. I think. Yeah.

Yeah. And then we had walked from dinner back to the hotel where we were staying. And I thought, oh, what a what a neat opportunity to maybe talk to one of my, what I consider my internet friends. And I think that on our walk back to the hotel, we said a total of about 10 words. Yeah, that's sort of the first time I spent any time with Sam. He always says we went to a baseball game and sat there silently for three hours. So I guess that's how all my podcast co-hosting relationships start. So we are doing emails today, but we have some stuff to talk about first.

And we've learned a lot in the last couple of days. I don't know about you. I've certainly learned a lot in the last couple of days, largely about antlers more so than anything else. I feel so embarrassed for not knowing some of these things. I mean, I kind of do. So turns out antlers are shed, deer shed antlers. And I feel like this is something that part of me knew because I feel like there's a time in my past.

I often go to British Columbia and my mom likes to walk around in the forest and on the beach and pick up various items from nature and try to smuggle them past customs because you're not supposed to actually take them. And sometimes I think she found antlers and sometimes they were kind of gross and had stuff on them and other times they were scoured and bony. But I feel like I know that now after we received several emails and tweets and Facebook messages and every form of communication informing us that yes, deer do shed their antlers. But in our defense, what a ridiculous system. I mean, can you imagine like growing bones out of your head every year and then having to do it all over again the next year because they just fall off? All right, hold on.

Let's think about why that might happen. Let's try to think this one through. Deer, they hibernate. We should. Maybe we can Google this. Maybe we can go to deerfarmer.com and do the whole thing over again. Do deer hibernate? Google.

Let's find out the answer to this one. Deers don't hibernate in the winter. I did look this up because I was curious and I found out why the antlers fall off. It's like a testosterone thing. Like after the mating season, their testosterone declines and then suddenly their antlers fall off, which must be very emasculating. Except I think also does doe, is doe plural, singular? I don't know. Whichever. I think they can sometimes get antlers too that fall off. It's all very complicated. And that's why it happens.

That's like the direct mechanic of why the antlers fall off. But I don't know what the evolutionary purpose of growing and regrowing antlers every year would be rather than just keeping the antlers you have. It seems like a lot of effort. So I don't know. I feel somewhat justified in thinking that it would be harder to remove bones that are sticking out of your head. That seems like a logical assumption. It definitely feels like one of those facts that I've learned

about like a half dozen times and just subsequently forgotten. Like you read it on a placard, some informational placard. You go to the zoo and because in the zoo they have deer because people don't realize they're not in deer country that like deer aren't that interesting but if you're at the zoo and you aren't in deer country then you're like oh my god it's a deer and then you have a little placard that talks about how some of them grow antlers and some of them don't and then i i guarantee you i cut damn guarantee you that it says right there on the placard and the antlers are shed every winter when the deer don't hibernate.

But you know what? I didn't remember either one of those facts. And it is silly. You can just keep them. Just keep them. Also, how do they shed? Do they just fall? Do they hurt the deer when they fall?

Yeah, evidently they just come right off. They're not really stuck on there all that tight. Once the testosterone goes, the antlers soon follow. It's a very strange system. But you're sort of an outdoorsman. You're traipsing around the forest and wooded areas all the time. I'm surprised you haven't stubbed your toe on any antlers at any point. Yeah, that's why I feel like I should have known this,

because I encounter enough deer or deer-like creatures out there. But I guess I have more recently been trying to go above timberline, known this because i i encounter enough deer or deer like creatures out there but i guess i have more recently been trying to go like above timberline and so i don't think mountain goats lose their horns they have horns right yeah there we go again this is i guess we have done a poor job here of discouraging further communication without antlers in our emails but i'm going on vacation soon so i'm'm not going to see them. A whole lot more questions. Yeah, well, for anyone who is just listening to this podcast for the first time, I always think that there's probably someone, right,

who we just launched right into our discussion of deer antlers after announcing that this is a baseball podcast from Fangraphs. So apologies to anyone who is joining midstream here. But we were talking about this because there is a European Slovakian bat manufacturer called Yaya that uses antlers to rub their bats instead of bones. And so after we talked about this, we actually received an email from a PR person for Yaya who was pointed to this episode, seemed to find it amusing. He asked if he could help. His name was Tony.

He said if we had any questions, he'd be happy to help. So I asked about antler rubbing, asked if there was any evidence that it does anything or that it's better than bone rubbing or, you know, any more info he could offer about antler rubbing. And he got back to me very helpfully. He said there really is no significant difference between rubbing with a bone or antler or really any other hard smooth surface it could be almost anything evidently as i'm sure you are aware bone rubbing is a common practice around baseball and has been for a very long time we are aware admittedly the idea of rubbing the bats with antler is a bit quirky but as you said on your podcast, it is more Instagrammable.

We just took the idea of bone rubbing and tweaked it a bit. So this is mostly a marketing move here. I guess antlers and bone are very similar, if not identical surfaces. So that makes a lot of sense. But Tony says that the beechwood that they use, the Euro beechwood, is what really sets their bats apart. And he claims to have studies to that effect, but I have not reviewed them. I have confirmed that mountain goats have horns and they do not fall off. Okay. We also got an email from a listener named Kevin from Germany who has

one of these bats and is using it in an amateur league. He says he finds it to be durable and with surprisingly good pop and that it won't break even if he gets jammed. Although he credits the beechwood also more so than the antlers. So we should probably talk about a couple other things. We can talk about the Evan Longoria trade, which happened just as we were about to record several hours ago. And that put off this recording for some time. A couple follow-ups I wanted to get to from emails. But I guess we'll wait until we do our little Longoria banter.

So you wrote about the Evan Longoria trade. Evan Longoria, now a San Francisco giant. And this kind of like, along with the Braves-Dodgers trade that we talked about this past weekend, where a bunch of guys who used to be good and famous are now just salary dump candidates because they're bad

and no one wants them this kind of also made me feel old just because the idea that evan longoria would be traded was like the furthest thing imaginable for the first several years of his career like i i didn't go back and look at the old trade value rankings, but he was like the king of those for a while, right? Because he signed the classic team-friendly extension. I guess he signed multiple extensions, but particularly the first one was just like, seemed almost like agent malpractice. And it was just so much surplus value to the Rays. And he was one of the most valuable players and assets in baseball. And now here we are, and Evan Longoria has reached trading age. So that is sad because you had a sentence, something in your post about how, well, they couldn't keep him or, you know, there's no reason to hang on to him or something.

And times have changed. Evan Longoria was like Manny Machado like six years ago. Yeah, I was thinking about this trade, and I was glad that it happened. At the time, I wasn't good for it, the reasons that you mentioned, but I was glad that it happened because it meant I had something to write. And, you know, you go into it and you look at Evan Longoria's player page and you think, oh, he's declining, he's getting old, and he was born a week and a half before me. So, you know, everybody goes through that phase of fanhood. But just looking back, I know times have changed and there's been inflation. But Evan Longoria signed a contract extension with the Rays.

Here's the timeline. His contract was purchased by Tampa Bay on April 12th of 2008, just late enough in the season for the Rays to manipulate his service time. Classic move. And Evan Longoria was so upset with the Rays for manipulating his service time that he immediately signed one of the friendliest contracts that's ever been given to anybody in baseball. He signed for six years and $17.5 million. But wait, there's more. There were three club options, the friendliest of all options for 2014, $7.5 million, and then $11 million, and then $11.5 million. Evan Longoria for the first, I don't know, what do you want to say six six years of his career was very close to being the best player in baseball and yeah he was still great

when mike trout proved that he was great so there was some like longoria trout overlap there and in 2013 and and longoria eventually signed a new contract with tampa bay that of course the rays did not allow to happen until after they used all those very team-friendly club options and then he signed for six years and a hundred million dollars with you know another club option but that was more of a normal contract I think it still looked somewhat team-friendly at the time that it was signed and these uh it's fun I came into this podcast thinking that we would banter about Zach Britton's Achilles tendon and Derek Jeter holding a town hall in front of crying Marlins fans and maybe we'll still get to that but this is it's so hard to look at

sports and evaluate them in the biggest picture perspective where I think that fans in Tampa Bay would love to have seen Evan Longoria retire having been a member of the Rays and the Devil Rays. No, just the Rays. Just the Rays. The entire time. His entire career through ups and downs and the inevitable horrible decline and bottoming out. It is wonderful to have those rare faces of a franchise that stick around from the first day to the last day and they never leave. the last day and they never they never leave this is a a clear sound business move because at this point longoria's remaining contract is underwater not dramatically but i don't think that he would get the money that he's due if he were a free agent right now and so the rays are able to shed

that of course the rays need to be more efficient with their money etc everything makes perfect sense and if longoria were any other player you wouldn't even think twice about it but yeah from i guess the rays front office perspective you think you do this of course it hurts but you do this because it will uh in theory help your team be competitive and what fans want more than anything else is for the team to be competitive that is why teams behave in these sort of i don't know a personal ways so often it's why the a's have traded so many stars when they couldn't afford them anymore it's because they just needed to do what they could to make the team good and team's figure winning makes up for everything and it does it does kind of make up for everything but then when a player retires i i guess i just don't know

how the longoria memory will be different in tampa bay given that he will not spend the rest of his career presumably in a a raised uniform i don't know if he'll be remembered differently i don't know if he'll be a part of like permanent Trevor Tampa Bay Ray's lore because he's going to play another, I don't know, six or seven seasons somewhere else. Yeah. Well, he is the best player in franchise history, right? And so I would think that that would earn you a pretty exalted spot until you're taken over. And I think, yeah, I mean, I guess they did this now because they're not really expecting to contend in the coming year. And Longoria is getting his 10-5 rights in April. That'll mark his 10-year anniversary in the major leagues. So he'll have

a no trade clause at that point, or he would have. So they're trading him while they have the ability to trade him but also it seemed like he was not averse to this and if anything was in favor of it because he doesn't want to go through a long rebuild and looks like that might be what's in store for the race so as you mentioned in your piece they were open with him about this whole process and it seems like sort of the opposite of the stanton deal just in that both player and team were communicating and on the same page. And there wasn't really, I mean, Longoria didn't have the leverage that Stanton did, obviously. But team and player weren't really butting heads in that same way.

But I do wonder also just how we're going to think of Evan Longoria as a player, because it's hard to say. His last year, obviously, was his worst year. And somewhat worrisome trends as you documented stat cast wise exit velocity wise and i wrote about longoria i think it was the summer of 2015 at grantland because it just dawned on me all of a sudden like heaven longoria is not that good anymore this is weird because he was one of the very best players in baseball for a very long time and then at that point, I guess he had gone a season and a half of basically being like a league average-ish hitter.

And I just, I wrote about why or how odd it was to not see him among the best players in baseball. And then he did kind of bounce back last year, at least power-wise. His power kind of came back all of a sudden last year or not last year well technically last year 2016 and then it went away again in 2017 so there had been a trend toward declining power and it seems like that has sort of solidified at this point between 2008 when longoria debuted in 2013 his final peak season he did lead at least all major league position players in fangraph's war at 35.2 he was a win ahead of miguel cabrera two wins ahead of joey vato and chase utley and there's albert pujols in there and there are two things one uh there is a i had

to laugh when i saw that longoria he'd handled this all with grace and he he talked about how the rays were very open with him the whole process he was grateful for the race for sending him to san francisco for giving him a chance to win of course the rays just finished 16 games better than the giants last season and uh even post trade looking at the fan graphs projected standings the san francisco giants project at 81 and 81 with evan longoria on the team and the campabay rays projected 81 and 81 without Evan Longoria on the team now of course the Rays will probably trade some more players they will get worse the Giants will try to find an outfielder if that outfielder is Jay Bruce they'll get a very tiny bit better so I do understand but you know Longoria might actually have a better chance of winning

multiple times over the next few years if he were still with Tampa Bay because the Giants have a brutal looking future coming up where they have several players under long-term contracts that will be giving them somewhere within like 60% of the competitive balance tax threshold just in like seven players all of whom will be in the early to mid 30s but it is worth remembering I guess when you were talking about a player like this going away I can tell you as someone who still kind of likes the mariners it's been painful to see what's become of felix hernandez and his arm and you don't actually really want to see your favorites get worse i don't think up close i don't know i was kind of privileged before to have seen edgar martinez stay great almost entirely through the end right but like you as i just mentioned albert pujols he was so good like i don't think there's any cardinals fans out there wishing that pujols was still around and even though he clearly

meant a lot to that organization i don't know it i can't tell what's the right there's big picture and then there's biggest picture and in the biggest picture where you can completely remove yourself from the team's outcomes because too much time has passed you can think well it would have been nice to have albert pujols be a lifetime card. But in the other big picture, good Lord, it's a good thing for the Cardinals that he's not their first baseman. Yeah, exactly. So the Giants evidently had prospects to get this deal done, and maybe past tense is appropriate there, because I don't know whether they still do. But since you have written about the specifics here, do you want to run through it? I mean, we knew that the Giants wanted to do something. They've tried to do almost everything and have failed to this point,

but they finally did a thing, a notable thing. And obviously Longoria, even perhaps in a somewhat diminished state, is clearly superior to Pablo Sandoval. So that helps them. Not clear that it helps them enough to matter a whole lot, unless they have some other moves up their sleeve here, but it doesn't seem like they have much of a farm system left with which to make them. There were four prospects that went to Tampa Bay. One of them is named Denard Spann. He's 33 years old.

He's batted in the majors 5,455 times. It's a little unusual for him to be considered a prospect. He's under contract for $9 million this season but i don't know the rays might think that he's a potential fit for a long-term one season pinch hitter or a salary dump there were the other ones christian arroyo is the actual centerpiece of the package going to tampa bay and christian arroyo was a seemingly overrated prospect who can play shortstop and other positions he did not hit well last year when he came up to the majors he in fact hit extremely poorly and then he got hurt then he went to triple a and he was he was okay but he is 22 years old he can play a multitude of positions that he can make contact so you know

in this era he can be whatever you want him to be and then there's also matt crook and steven woods they are two prospects but i think that they're the sort of prospects that you can look in any system where you say this team doesn't have any prospects and you can probably find a matt crook and stephen woods because uh systems that are bad are not completely empty they're not completely bereft of talent uh these are just you know low level strikeout getting pitchers who also get a lot of walks so they you could say that they are very experienced pitching out of the stretch right yeah and so i i guess i don't know are there subsequent moves that they can make because like the giants seem sort of like a bounce back candidate just because so many things went wrong but maybe not as big a bounce as they would need to matter all that much

i mean they have pitching clearly and i guess the hope is that that's good enough to kind of get them somewhere and they have this older team still pitching, still a core of position players. And it's kind of in the one last ride sort of category here. Yeah, even now, you can look at this team and you can think, OK, Buster Posey, we know he's great. Brandon Belt, he's kind of underrated. He's perfectly fine. You see the upside in Joe Panik and Brandonrennan crawford and of course evan longoria and and then you can just look at the rotation and you can you can definitely see upside in madison bumgarner jeff samarza and johnny cueto these are all three good starting pitchers i'm quietly kind of high on chris stratton as a completely forgettable

number four who could be a number i don't need to talk about chris red you can look at the seam and you can see this team could be a wildcard contender I can't squint hard enough to see them as being close to the Dodgers. If I squint any harder, my eyes are just shut, which I guess would make that a dream. But this team still has an outfield of, I guess, currently Hunter Pence, the familiar one, Gorkas Hernandez, and some sort of combination of Jarrett Parker, Mack Williamson, Austin Slater, and also Gorkas Hernandez. There's some dude named Steven Duggar who's gotten some attention for maybe being the Giants center fielder. And he's gotten attention because he's not Gorkas Hernandez, I guess. I don't know.

The outfield's bad. And now the Giants are rumored to be interested in Jay Bruce, which means that it's probably inevitable. They'll sign Jayay bruce for three years and i don't know 39 million dollars and then they'll just make the future even worse because i guess they just want some home runs yeah all right well that's the story with that trade i suppose and you want to talk about the marlins latest marlins massacre at all uh i don't I certainly don't want to talk about whatever the Marlins man impact was. That was just sort of a silly aspect of the whole, I think I was not, I poked some fun at Derek Jeter on Tuesday night.

I wasn't alone. And it's really easy to poke fun at Derek Jeter firstly and the Marlins secondly. But I would like to say, first of all, I did not watch the town hall. I couldn't care less. No one did, I think, because they didn't like to say, first of all, I did not watch the town hall. I couldn't care less. No one did, I think, because they didn't have cameras there, which they said, I believe, was so as not to embarrass any of the fans asking questions. But I think the real reason, probably the opposite of that. Yeah.

So I guess I would like to say that Derek Jeter deserves some credit for just being there and, I don't know I guess being partially accountable because I am willing to give this ownership group the benefit of the doubt and figure that this isn't a teardown similar to the previous teardowns the Marlins have had in fact we've gotten some emails over the last few days that have talked about how the Marlins have been perceived differently from how they've actually been run and they have had a maybe two sort of bad faith fire sales but this team came into the offseason not good and it came into the offseason with not enough money to get good and if I don't know the the Astros were in this position you'd think okay well sure they're gonna tear down and start over

and it makes all the sense in the world that this team would tear down and start over because they just didn't really have an option they weren't going to get as good as the nationals or the cubs or the dodgers or any of the other contenders in the national league it just wasn't going to happen as horrible as it is to reflect upon you do have to wonder like what impact did losing jose fernandez have on the course of this franchise because sure i'm not comfortable talking about it in the baseball sense because it doesn't feel appropriate. But he was the most valuable asset in the organization. And then he was taken away.

And without him, there was just a void. The team couldn't pitch. And they had a good number of star players. But then you take away arguably the best one. And it just left the team in a really challenging spot. I think maybe it's gotten a little less attention than it deserves specifically because of how uncomfortable a subject it is but it makes sense that the marlins would rebuild it makes sense that they would be hurting for money i know it's a bad look for new owners to come in and immediately tear down especially given the team's history but

i do want to give them the at least i don't know three years to show that they can do something develop a damn pitcher one of these days in addition to jose fernandez who i guess was already developed by the marlins but the the player development with the system on the pitching side has been so bad i don't know i they're starting the marlins aren't really in that much worse of a spot than like the giants it's just the giants haven't yet had their reckoning unless that's what 2017 was. But yeah, right. If the Giants are going to give it one last gasp, it's not hard to see the Marlins being good again before the Giants are or maybe before the Royals are good or before the Orioles are good. Yeah, I was listening to a contentious snippet of an interview with Rob Manfred and Dan Lebitard earlier.

Or Lebitard was just grilling him over what he knew and when he knew it about what the Marlins plans were and Manfred was saying you know I don't know what he knew and when he knew it but he was saying that it's not really his job to know what a team's plans are for its own personnel before they actually own the team like it's not like you get approved to buy the team based on your offseason plan and who you're going to trade and sign and all of that, which I thought was a fair defense. I mean, maybe because it's the Marlins,

it's sort of naive to say that you're not even paying attention to that. And it does seem as if they took on a lot of debt, which has put them in a hole that they've had to do a lot of these things so they can just make payroll and pay off the debt with pretty exorbitant interest. So I don't know exactly how much blame Manfred deserves. Perhaps some. I don't know. If they really are not cash rich enough to operate a team competitively, then that probably doesn't reflect well on MLB in the league, but maybe it's too soon to say that that's the case. So we could give them a little time to see if they can straighten this thing out. But of course,

Jeter, you know, it's almost irresistible to make some joke at Jeter's expense when a Marlins fan is crying and asking him questions and he is answering what seems like in kind of a, I don't know, callous manner, polished manner. It's hard to tell in a tweet, obviously. I think that the narrative about accountability, like being there to answer questions, I think is often overblown because often when writers talk about that, they're talking about like being accountable to writers and answering writer questions, like being at your locker after you have a bad game or something and you know if you if you're the closer and you blow the game and you're not there you're just getting a shower getting treatment or something then writers will

tweet oh he wasn't there after the game or when cheater wasn't at the winter meetings everyone was tweeting about how oh he's making all these moves and he's not even there to be accountable. I don't really care all that much about that. I feel like it's not really my problem. I guess if you're the teammate of the guy who then has to answer a question because the guy's not there, well, you could be entitled to be a little miffed at him, I guess. And if you're whoever has to answer questions on behalf of the Marlins when Jeter's not doing it, then maybe, but it's not really something I care about all that much. But being accountable to the fans is a little different, I think, from being accountable to the media. And I did see that the statement that the Marlins put out essentially saying, too bad, Real Mudo and Jelic were not trading you just because you want

to be traded. That was under Michael Hill's name. So he had sort of receded into the background for a while there. So I don't know what that means. I don't know whether that means that Jeter is happy to just have someone else take these body blows for a while or not. But I wonder how long, if the abuse continues, how long it'll be before he suddenly just realizes, I have everything already. I have a kid and i have a wife and i have millions and millions of dollars and i have a reputation and i have a business and why am i putting myself through this so we'll see i'm curious it might be the last good the last great challenge for like theo epstein right he's already solved the curses in Boston and Chicago.

And if he could complete the trifecta by going and building a team that is good and people care about in Miami, Florida, like that would be, I mean, it's no getting the Mariners into the playoffs, but like that's almost as good

as it can get. So I don't know what Epstein's motivation is anymore. And I don't know if he's kind of a Southeastern American kind of guy. I don't know if he wants the Miami lifestyle, but what just imagine the the possibilities and i should also note that while derrick jeter was not at the winter meetings i can say because i was sitting in

the media room john carlo stanton was he was at the winter meetings and who cares there's really no you know one look like if this isn't understood no one needs to be at the winter meetings the winter meetings don't need to exist. There's like a Baseball Writers Association of America meeting. And I think there are like umpire meetings and there's gear that gets hawked and like sales people are there to do whatever it is that sales people do with companies like Nike and Under Armour. And I know agents are there and they're trying to meet with teams so that they can give the teams their own agent propaganda about why their terrible player is better than these other terrible players. But like none of this needs, none of this needs to be done. It doesn't need to be an official event.

The whole thing is antiquated. We have phones. First of all, we have phones. Second of all, we have cellular phones that you can text on. And even at the winter meetings, teams are communicating through their phones almost all of the time. It doesn't need, there's no, I don't know why, I can't complete a sentence because it's so stupid. It's such a dumb waste of everyone's money for it to exist. But I guess I like it because I get to see people in person.

Yeah. I think the move for Theo, if he wants to stay in baseball and set a challenge for himself, would be to go to the Rockies, right? The Marlins have already won a couple. I guess if he does it with a low payroll and maybe a not great ownership situation, that would be impressive in a different way. But he does it with the Rockies. No one's been able to build a consistent winner with the Rockies, and there are all the altitude effects, and they never won one. So I think that would be a good challenge for him to take on if he wants to at some point. I want to see him in Miami and I want him to have that job until he gets a home sellout on a weekday in August. And then he could just kind of like wipe his hands, get up and retire

and just like live on the moon or whatever it is he's going to do when he's done with baseball. Yeah. So this is going to be one of those shows where it's an email show ostensibly but we don't end up answering that many emails because we talk about other stuff maybe we can antlers yeah we can probably squeeze some emails in tomorrow we'll see but i wanted to ask you one last thing about your breakout player pick your kian broxton of 2018, I guess, unless Keon Broxton is still your Keon Broxton of 2018. But I've heard you either talk about him or seen you chat about him before. It's Cattell Marte. He is your pick. You like him. And I'm curious about why Marte specifically, but also just your

process for arriving at a breakout player pick. I don't know if this is something we talked about maybe last spring, but I never know what to say when a new season's starting and people ask me for breakout picks. I don't feel like I have any special ability to predict breakouts. If I did, that would be really valuable and I'd probably be leveraging that skill in some other way. And so I, you know, you can kind of, I think we've talked about that often breakout picks just tend to be people who already broke out really, but maybe you didn't realize it. So you're just, you know, you were paying attention a little more closely than most people were, but it's not really like you're foreseeing something. But if Quetel Marte breaks out,

I would say that that would qualify as a genuine breakout i have a sneaking suspicion after having looked at the data i was i was looking at the biggest exit velocity drops between 2016 and 2017 and i saw keon broxton had the biggest drop that's not a good look but also domingo santana had one of the biggest drops and and hernon perez also had one of the biggest drops and i have a sneaking suspicion now that the numbers, that something was wrong with the numbers in Miller Park. And that would, there'd be a lot of egg on my face given everything I made of Keon Broxton's 2016 average exit velocities.

He can still hit the ball hard, don't get me wrong, but so much of it was based around the fact that he hits the ball very hard. And now I'm starting to think that maybe that wasn't actually true. But anyway, the problem for another day, maybe tomorrow, I think with Quetel Marte, there are a few things. I think the first thing that led me to Quetel Marte is that he is, last season, he played about a half season in the major leagues. And I think that's one reason why he could qualify as a 2018 breakout. because even though I think he was good, he was pretty good in 2017. He played about a half season last season and he was he was pretty good. I think it was pretty good. And I think he could still qualify as a 2018 breakout just because he only played about a half season last year. The first thing that led me to him was that he's a relatively high walk middle infielder who also makes contact. He has an above average contact rate.

He has a better than average strikeout rate. That's a skill that he came up through the minor leagues with, and he showed it a little bit when he was a rookie with the Mariners. And two seasons ago, his numbers kind of collapsed. So he is a pretty disciplined hitter, and he also hits the ball in the air. He's no Ryanyan schimpf uh i don't know the last time we talked about ryan schimpf on this podcast but that might be the this might be the last time right now yeah it's a good thing not to be a ryan shrimp right a ryan shrimp shrimp uh so marty effect yeah i got there first because i liked his his discipline it

reminded me a little bit of jose ramirez with the Indians, who was also a high contact hitter who could draw walks and hit the ball in the air. Ramirez just had an MVP caliber season because he has good back control. And I think that he was able to convert his good back control and a pretty good eye into hitting for power. Not like light tower power, but nobody needs light tower power anymore. So I think that I just sort of have a hunch that even though marty was able to make some gains with his discipline and power last season i think that over a full season he's going to be able to convert that back control into

even more power i think he made some strides defensively to become a more consistent short stop so even away from the offensive profile i think he's he's getting better so it's part hey people should have noticed katel marte's half season from last year. And it's also part actual speculation, which makes me a little uncomfortable because it's not like I actually know if this is going to happen. I would have an easier time trying to project like a pitching breakout because I just understand the mechanics of pitching better than hitting. But I just kind of have a hunch because I think that we've seen a lot of contact hitters

become better all-around hitters. And Marte seems to have these skills that foretell, I think that's a word, right? Foretell an offensive development. All right. Well, we'll see. Better be right. It did help. I mentioned I was talking to Nick Picoro for a little bit, a Diamondbacks beat writer, when I was at the winter meetings.

And I like Nick. And I had mentioned that I had this this feeling about Cattell Marte. And he said then and then he later wrote in an article a few days later that the Diamondbacks have been talking about trading many of their middle infielders. They have a whole lot of them. I think they have like a half dozen major league caliber middle infielders. And Marte is the one that they're not thinking about trading so that was uh at least it's it's not only me who has this feeling yeah that's that's encouraging all right so unless you have any objection i guess we can transition to the somewhat abbreviated email portion of the show shall we use the stat blast as a transition to emails we have an exciting addition to the stat blast segment this time now that stat blast has a name which it did not for quite some time we also have

a theme song for stat blast because stat segment didn't really lend itself to a song but stat blast does and i happen to have a very musically talented wife who enjoys writing theme songs and writing music. And if you listen to the podcast, you know her from writing their One Last Meaningless Thing song and their Yankee Minute song. She also wrote the theme song to Reading the End, which is a great podcast about books. And now she has contributed a theme song for our StatBlast segment. So without further ado, Jessie, take it away. All right. Do you feel energized?

You have a song playing you in now. I don't even want to say my own words. Can the song just be the stat segment the stat blast it's catchy okay well we're going i'm just maybe maybe it's going to be a weekly tops plus because you know what f you i don't care we're going to do tops plus again and i was uh inspired to look at this because the nationals signed matt adams that's not i should say that's not that's not an inspiring transaction under most circumstances but i was looking at it because in a lot of ways matt adams is like the same as adam lind adam lind

is the guy that the nationals had to fill the same role last season he was just sort of a left-handed backup to ryan zimmerman and adam lind can't hit lefties for a hill of beans and neither can matt adams they had basically the same season last year they have the almost exact same career numbers and splits the nationals declined adam lynn's five million dollar mutual option for the season ahead and they paid him a five hundred thousand dollar buyout which means the nationals essentially decided okay we're we're making a four and a half million dollar decision here and we're just going to let adam lynn go and so to replace adam lynn they signed matt adams to a four million dollar contract with five hundred thousand dollar in incentives which

means they're making a four and a half million dollar decision to sign matt adams so they let adam lind go and replaced him with adam lind the almost literal exact same player except that matt adams is five years younger which is probably everything that matters here i don't know maybe they could have signed adam lynn for a little less but in any case one of the things maybe the thing that is most interesting about both adam lynn is and matt adams is that not only can they not hit lefties but they like really can't hit lefties like even a little and here's here's what i mean i wanted to we're doing tops plus because that's what i like and i don't care if you don here's what I mean. We're doing TOPS+, because that's what I like, and I don't care if you don't know what I mean. And I looked at the baseball reference splits

all time, and I was looking at hitters who have batted against lefties at least, what did I put, 300 times? Yeah, sure. At least 300 times. And I searched for the lowest TOPS+, so essentially, I'm looking for the hitters who are most worse against most worse for the hitters who were worst against lefties relative to how they were against righties and so Adam Lind as a TOPS plus against lefties of 50 remember that an average mark would be 100 so that's terrible but he he still that's only good enough or bad enough I should say for 21st place on the all-time list I don't know how many players are on this all-time list. I certainly don't want to go all the way to the end to see what that number ends up being.

So Adam Lind, TOPS plus against lefties of 50. That's bad. Matt Adams, 22nd place. He's right after Adam Lind with a TOPS plus against lefties of 51. So that's fun. But so even beyond just their splits, I was curious who's been the worst.

Like you remember john vanderwall left-handed pinch hitter top s plus against lefties of 40 that's awful tim flannery a well-known musician who apparently had a baseball career top s plus against lefties of 35 but in first and worst place we have rich becker rich becker a somewhat contemporary baseball player he last played on october 1st uh 2000 he first played in september of 1993 so he had himself a decently extended major league career i don't know if he's a rich becker but he's at least a he's a modestly wealthy becker and he was a left-handed hitter which should not be surprising uh against righties in his career he had a 781 ops that's pretty good

even for that era that's a tlPS plus for him of 114 and against lefties same side pitchers he had an OPS of 464 which is good for a T-OPS plus of 27 Rich Becker the worst hitter against lefties of all time relative to his overall performance but there was another name that stuck out just a little bit above or I guess below rich becker and this is a name that's uh i think well known to many baseball fans and it's a name that i think for this very stat blessed segment on some previous podcast i had talked about we're looking at wally backman wally backman is the worst hitter all time against lefties if you set the minimum at 500 plate appearances which is uh significant he batted against lefties 547 times and he had a 460 ops wally backman's actual splits if you look at his career numbers against righties he uh he had a 726 ops he slugged 362 against lefties he had a 460 ops

he slugged 201 now those are terrible numbers against lefties that there's no mistaking that wally backman could not hit lefties at all but what i had forgotten and the reason i'd clicked on his page before for a stat blast which was previously not called a stat blast said wally backman was a switch hitter wally backman batted from both sides and he batted almost his entire career as a righty against lefties and he was terrible he was absolutely terrible at it they let him bat 547 times against the lefties as a righty and i know i don't even look i don't have footage of what wally backman hit like he last played in 1993 which i'm going to admit it that's actually more recent than i thought that date was going to be when i scrolled up but still he played

in the pre-mlB TV era by like a decade and meaningfully more than that. So I don't know how he looked when he was facing lefties, but I'm not picturing a very good swing because a very good swing wouldn't have led to him zero home runs. I didn't even look at that column yet. Wally Backman had zero home runs against lefties over 547 plate appearances. Now, granted, he only hit 10 home runs in his career over nearly 4,000 plate appearances. So not a power hitter. But that's just so bad. He had a TLPS plus of 33 and he was a switch hitter.

What was he doing in the minor leagues that convinced his coaches that he should keep this up? And according to his baseball reference bullpen page, he gave up switch hitting later in his career. his baseball reference bullpen page, he gave up switch hitting later in his career. But I guess I don't see any evidence of that in his actual splits because it just has versus righties as a lefty and versus lefties as a righty. How did he do go into detail of why that seems to be leaving something out? But Wally Backman, I guess that makes that doesn't make him the worst switch hitter of all time, but it at least makes him the, I don't know, stupidest switch hitter of all time. Just the numbers that make the least sense forest switch hitter of all time just the numbers that make the least sense for a switch hitter yeah so yeah i have no explanation but

how do you do that and be that bad for i mean when he maybe he was playing on a team with no coaches like we talked about recently 1985 wally backman batted 152 times against lefties that's a career high for a season played appearances against lefties he batted 152 times and he hit 122 and he slugged 153 his tops plus that year was 11 but more importantly his sops plus which yeah you know what i just hate the listeners so much i'm going to use two letter OPS plus numbers in this segment. His SOPS plus was four. Wally Backman just dreadfully bad against left-handed pitching. Like John Lester bad.

And I'm talking John Lester as a pitcher batting against lefties. I'd need to, if this were any other player, I'd be like, you know what? We should have him on the podcast. But I don't think I want to talk to Wally Backman about this. No, I'm not sure I want to talk to Wally Backman, period. But yeah. All right. Well, the theme song says OPS Plus in it.

So you delivered. You lived up to the theme song. Thanks for the stat blast. And thanks to Jesse for the theme song. It'll be back next week. It's funny. I was talking to one of the producers, podcast producers at The Ringer this morning, and we were working on a script for a podcast I'm doing.

And there were like a few numbers in it. Not even like I wasn't doing math or looking up stats. It was like years and like how long ago and how many of a certain thing there were. And he was telling me how in audio, you're not supposed to use numbers. You're not supposed to say numbers because it's hard to process in sound. And so he was like, well, we could cut this number. We could cut that number. He would hemorrhage if he could hear a StatLess segment.

It's a total refutation of his entire career. I hope he never hears it. That's what this show is going going for though you know you're getting numbers if you're gonna listen to this podcast all right so we're finally getting to an email or three here oh no wait a second wait a second backman okay i already this this is a discovery while you were talking so backman i mentioned to you against lefties in 1985 backman was terrible over 152 plate appearances he had an ops of 365 that same year it appears that he was platooned he was given a platoon mate who is kelvin chapman kelvin chapman also of the mets chapman was brought in i guess to hit lefties he was a

right-handed hitter and so in 1985 chapman against lefties at a 418 obs plus they couldn't even improve on wally backman with their first attempt to platoon with them they were like hey kelvin chapman can you hit again i guess maybe if you were assigned the role of hitting lefties in wally backman's stead there was some sort of like wizard curse yeah uh I'm done. We got a few more numbers in there. That was good. Okay, so let's take this one from Dan. This is something I've wondered about for a while. The Padres organization, by my count, had 207 players who played for their minor league affiliates in 2017 without reaching the majors from AAA down to rookie ball.

I'm using the Padres as my example, but this could be any team. Assuming an average salary of around $2,000 a month and an eight-month season, I estimate the Padres paid minor league salaries of around $3.3 million last year. This is likely too high as not everyone has a full eight-month season in the minors, so we can round it down to $3 million. Now if you pay those 207 players a yearly salary of fifty thousand dollars instead it comes out to about 10.4 million dollars or around 7.4 million dollars more than the current estimate speaking of numbers the value of one win above replacement in 2017 was approximately 10 and a half million on the open market that is citing a fangraphs post and so in other words the Padres would need approximately

0.7 war per season of additional value in order to justify the additional expense of paying their minor leaguage more in other words approximately Mitch Moreland or Joe Smith I find it nearly impossible to believe the team wouldn't recoup that value with the additional income minor league players would be able to eat sleep and, and train more effectively. The organization would be vastly more appealing to minor league free agents. High school prospects may be more willing to forego college to sign with you, or older prospects may be willing to stick around the system longer with the hope of a late breakout. Plus, whatever marketing benefits you get and the fact that it's just the right and decent thing to do, why hasn't anyone done this?

So this is the age-old, why don't teams pay minor leaguers more but less from the moral perspective than from the this would just benefit the team in the long term or even the short-term perspective not too long ago i asked dave cameron this exact question and his response was that everyone would be furious at you yeah if you did now not your not your own minor leaguers but but the commissioner, the commissioner's office, and all the other owners would be furious for you acting unilaterally to just suddenly pay your minor leaguers more.

Now, whether or not that should matter to you as a, let's say, ethical, but also progressive and business-minded owner who's just trying to squeeze as many wins out of the system as possible, I don't know if it should matter that much. I don't know what recourse the league would have to discipline you as an owner for just giving people a living wage but they would not be

happy with the team doing this i i don't know if it's something that would have to be collectively bargained or what but yeah nope i wish i remembered the dave's answers a little better than that but that's what i got yeah no i think that's probably i mean as soon as one person pays them then there will be pressure on everyone else to pay them, which is not a bad thing. They could all pay them and it wouldn't really affect them all that much. Teams are worth a lot. And as we're saying here, it might not even cost them anything because it might help them. It certainly would help the first movers here probably who would get the initial benefit from being the first to do this but yeah

it's just peer pressure kind of thing i think just you know it's collusion in a sense just from the perspective that you know you don't want to be the one who breaks ranks and gives everyone money and forces everyone else to give them money even though it would probably be a good thing if you did that so eventually maybe someday it'll happen if teams continue to make more and more money and are unable to spend it on their major league rosters in the way that they used to maybe the incentives will be there for someone to withstand the ugly looks at the winter meetings the year after when when they do this so i agree they should have just set up a whole bunch of cots

at the minor league baseball stadium and then all of the players can just always be at the minor league baseball stadium and then they're never too far away from work they can eat sleep and breathe baseball 24 7 even during the offseason they can't go home very efficient all right michael says jason hayward can opt out of his contract after the 2018 and 2019 seasons. What war would he need to make him want to do so? So he can opt out after either of those seasons, I guess. Okay. It does seem like, I mean, just based on past precedents here,

it seems like essentially what you do in the season before is largely what dictates your decision here whether you are going to opt out or not yeah okay so let's say we're talking opting out after 2018 so that would mean that hayward would be giving up i'm going to run my little calculator here 21 hayward would be giving up 106 million dollars over five years which i believe is exactly what justin upton signed with the re-signed with the angels for so hayward would be opting out going into his age 29 season so not old isn't that like right where eric hosmer is yeah let's see justin upton opted out but two seasons ago so in 2016 upton was worth just 1.3 wins above replacement he was a league

average hitter he's obviously not much of a defender and then last season he was worth five wins above replacement and he was a really good hitter again he went back to being the familiar Justin Upton and so I think as you said it seems to kind of mostly come down to the season before so I think that if Jason Hayward were a I guess Jason Hayward would be a different kind of five win player than Justin Upton. But I mean, Hayward has three, Hayward has four seasons in his career of being a legitimately good hitter. And he has one other year of being an above average hitter. So if he went back, if he just had like his 2015 that he did, he had with the Cardinals where he had a 121 WRC plus, he was actually worth 6.1 wins. It's an excellent season. Then I think that he would he had with the cardinals where he had a 121 wrc plus he was actually worth 6.1 wins it's an excellent season then i think that he would opt out if he had the season he had before

that then it would be a tougher decision because his wrc plus was lower by 12 points and he was a win less valuable but i think you're basically looking at a five to six win season because i think people know his defense is good and if he hit again i think people are ready to believe that jason hayward could hit i think it's kind of the mystery why he's gotten so bad so fast so i don't think it would take a whole lot of convincing yeah maybe not i wonder i mean maybe the fact that teams have already seen him decline very steeply maybe they would just having actually seen that come to pass they would be even more afraid of it happening again but on the other other hand, you're right. People have been waiting for the opposite to happen. So that sounds about right.

Eric Hosmer's 28, by the way. Don't want to get any angry Eric Hosmer age emails. All right. Let's take one from, well, you answered this via email and I mentioned the podcast already. So let's take this from Mike, sports writer Joe Posnanski, TV producer, Michael Schur, and pitcher Brandon McCarthy were chatting about the Yankees on the most recent podcast episode. Schur joked that the 2018 Yankees will be so good that if he were the fifth starter, they would still win the AL East. He stipulated that he would make 32 starts with at least 60 pitches per start. He also assumed he wouldn't get many batters out. I think he actually assumed that he wouldn't get any batters out, as I recall. What would happen if Schur were the Yankees' fifth starter? He'd be in his age 42 season, and I'd guess his stuff is ceremonial first pitch caliber.

Would the Yankees still win the AL East, and what would Schur's war or ERA plus be? Well, I didn't calculate his war because that's hard, but he would be terrible. He'd be the worst thing that's ever happened to baseball. He would be like Adam Greenberg's one at bat, except as a starter over and over and over and over again, except not even that good because Adam Greenberg was a professional baseball player, for God's sakes. So I don't know anything about Michael Schur's baseball talent, but I can assume him being a comedy writer and all that he sucks. So the Yankees are currently projected on fan graphs to go, what is it, 91 and 71. And so I'm just remembering the email off the top of my head now.

So over the 130 games that Michael Schur wouldn't start, the Yankees would be projected to go 73 and 57. You can argue that they'd be a little better than that. But anyway, they would have fewer than 80 wins. So then you'd be trying to win the division or make the wild card with Michael Schur getting 32 starts. And I don't have an estimate of what would happen. I can guess that he would get completely obliterated and the Yankees every five days, the Yankees would be like, who's taking the hit? Are you serious? It's going to be Schur again. We're going to start him again. What are we doing? But okay, this is clearly some sort of promotion. But I i looked over the past i think since the turn of the millennium i looked for all the games where a team's starter lasted no more than one inning and gave up at least four runs

now that might be being generous to michael sure i don't know we're talking about a minimum era of 36.00 position players eras tend to be around 9, but again, they're baseball players, they're professionals. But anyway, the teams won 39 of those games and lost 355. Works out to almost an even 1 out of 10 winning percentage, and if you apply that to Shor's 32 starts, you'd be looking at 3 Yankees wins. Now, they have a very good offense. Maybe that means they win 4 games, but if you want to take the other perspective, he would be so much worse than what i queried that maybe the yankees would win two of the games so in any case you would have the yankees projected to be somewhere around like mid 70s wins 76 and 86 or 77 and 85 and they would be about as about as bad as the baltimore oils right now yeah the baltimore

oils are a very good baseball team starting a comedy writer in one of their rotation spots, and he's extremely durable. Really good comedy writer, but yeah, they're not going to win the AL East, I'm afraid, with Michael in the fifth starter slot. The real problem is that he has to throw 60 pitches, and if by his own admission, he's not getting any outs. I mean, what's the minimum number of runs he could allow? I mean, if he throws 60 pitches, let's say he just, I guess the least damage he could do would be to walk everyone like on a full count, right?

So, well, I mean, I guess he could get guys to foul off pitches, but realistically, I don't know. I don't think he could do that. pitches but realistically i don't know i don't think he could do that so you you would have such weird timing issues though with the hitters because they'd be like this is this is like 40 miles per hour this isn't even like a pitching machine batters would be amazed the ball is even making it to the plate probably i think he could get some outs if only because of batted ball luck right if not though i mean if he goes to full counts on everyone and then walks them, he's just going to issue 10 consecutive walks, right, and be out of the game. So his bullpen will then have to get nine innings, and they'll be down what? He's going to load the bases three.

What's the score? 7-0. I'm losing track of these runs already. Nobody out. Okay, let me pull up my win expectancy calculator that's not that's not gonna work so well all right okay so seven we're gonna set the visitor it's always gonna be the visitor seven nothing nobody out bases loaded first inning win expectancy at 97.1 percent seems low but okay yeah but whatever the yankees can hit so

97 probably more like 98 percent but you know then the yankees can hit. So 97, probably more like 98%. But then the Yankees could bring in their bullpen. So Chad Green could shut down the rally and get the win. That's right. Okay. All right. Let's see if there's another quick one I can take. All right.

Let's do Matt. He says, following MLB's recent censure, the Braves were limited to international signing bonuses of no more than $10,000 for the next signing period. The public discourse decided this meant the Braves would sign no prospects as anyone worth signing would command a higher bonus. But is there any way to get $10,000 worth of positive publicity? My first thought went to Melissa Mayu. I don't know if I'm saying that right. Mayo? Mayu?

Mayu. That sounds about right the female shortstop from the french national team and as far as i know the only female registered for the international registration list her registration was a big story two years ago imagine how much bigger an actual signing would be or why not pull from different sports maybe there's a competitive javelin thrower in the czech republic who just wants an excuse to move to arizona or a fin Pesopajoslugger with something to prove. Am I saying that right? I have no idea. It's unlikely any of those athletes would be competitive prospects, but neither would anyone else you could sign for so little.

Could the newsworthiness alone be worth it? Yeah, sure. I mean, yeah, I guess you have nothing to lose except $10,000. Right. I mean, now the alternative is you just throw $10,000 at like almost infinite kids from Latin America. And you're just like, all right, let's see what you can do. But see, then you end up with a problem of resources. You can't actually play them all and see how they do.

But you could definitely just go sign one, two, three people. You can get Melissa, last name. You can get a javelin thrower. And you can get a cricket player, cricket bowler. And you can just see what you got. And I don't see any reason not to do it. Yeah, and I was just, I've been watching Bachelor Canada. There is a Bachelor version for the Canada in many countries, but I've been watching the Canadian version.

It's excellent, actually. It's been my favorite Bachelor season ever of any kind. But the Bachelor, one of the reasons why I'm watching it, The Bachelor Canada, is Chris LaRue, former Major League Baseball player, who was not a very good former Major League Baseball player. But yeah, there was a baseball hook. So I've been watching that, been trying to see if I could arrange an interview with him because he was a great bachelor. But the point is that they went to the Dominican. They had a baseball date, like a baseball group date, where the contestants played.

And also lots of kids came out, and they just gave away lots of equipment and bats and balls and gloves. And at the end of the season, Chris LaRue said it was his favorite date of the whole season. So that was positive publicity for Bachelor Canada. Probably cost them $10,000 or less. So I don't know, maybe the Braves could just give away a bunch of stuff to people from the country that they were trying to plunder talent from without fully paying for it. Maybe that would be a nice way to get back, I guess. Not that the current regime is responsible. The sins of the GM father are not really extended to the GM son, I guess. But still, maybe that would be a nice message to send.

The following countries have had or will have international versions of The Bachelor. Of course, we have the United States, but also Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Finland, Germany, Greece, Cyprus, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, brazil canada china france finland germany greece cyprus indonesia israel italy japan new zealand norway poland romania russia switzerland slovenia united kingdom thailand ukraine vietnam and india in ukraine it is known as holostiak in slovenia it's known as nope i'm not gonna do that one i do like uh in germany and switzerland it's just der bachelor which uh which I enjoy. In Romania, it's Berlacul. Poland, Kowaler do Wieczja. Nailed it.

No, Polish, don't at me. Norway, Unkarin. And let's see, where's Israel, Haravac? And we've got, where is it? Thailand. Yeah, The Bachelor, Battle of Love. Hosted by Nat Pawin Kulkarnayadee. Wow.

All right. Yeah, it's a globe-spanning franchise. It's probably Bachelor in more countries than baseball at this point, just about. All right. I guess we can wrap up. I'll just read a couple that I wanted to read. These are not actual questions. They are just responses to things we've talked about recently.

This is from Greg, who was talking about our no coaches hypothetical. And he says, having played on many beer league baseball teams for the last 10 years where there were no coaches,

I can tell you that there are inevitably about three or four guys who form the core of decision makers. When it comes to making up the lineup in game decisions, these people will be the ones that everyone defers to. When dealing with pitcher substitutions, we generally let the older guys make the call, and they let us know if they have enough left.

If they get out of a shaky inning, we'll let them know they have a short leash the next inning. Sometimes the younger pitchers will get a quick hook if they can't find the zone. It generally goes about as well as when players call their own fouls in basketball. The water finds its own level in that everyone just kind of knows their role and it's mostly based on experience in mlb every team probably has two or three guys backup catchers six guy in the bullpen who stick around because they're professional and understand how things work six guy in the bullpen is like the eighth inning guy at this point that's not even it's not even like one of the the bottom guys these people will be the ones that everyone would expect to make the in-game decisions training wise i'm guessing that guys will still have their instructors on the side even if they

aren't in uniform that's a good point we're at the field with them day to day these guys are professional athletes and they know that their future paychecks depend on their performance so i'm guessing there'll be motivation enough to keep things in line and this was reminding me of the summer with the stompers when essentially we kind of had no coaches. We had like one coach and a player manager, and there was no official pitching coach. And so the players just sort of by default treated the oldest guy as the pitching coach, and he would just walk out to the mound and make the pitching changes.

It worked terribly. Like we had a player manager. The manager was out in center field. We tried to give him a walkie-talkie so that he could make pitching changes or at least have input, and that didn't't work out so that was kind of a mess i meant to bring that up when we were talking about it last time but it was sort of the same thing where just the veteran gets elected almost by default and steven last email says and this is maybe our last shohei otani signing shenanigans email, because hopefully that

just won't be a story anymore. I wonder if that's actively being investigated now or whether the angels have been cleared of any potential wrongdoing. I don't know whether we'll ever hear if there's an investigation or it's been suspended or not. But Stephen points out that there is something of a precedent for this, because we had talked about would Otani be penalized if it was found that he had done something that was not above board or would it just be his team? And Stephen points out, well, I'm unsure if there are any precedents for a player

team getting caught doing an under the table deal in baseball. There's a famous one in basketball in 1999 with the Minnesota Timberwolves and Joe Smith, not the free agent reliever who just came up on this podcast. Smith agreed to sign a series of three one-year deals for below market value, after which the Timberwolves would have his bird rights. Tough to explain precisely, but they allow a team retaining a player to pay him more than the 29 other teams, and would sign him to an $80 million plus extension. His pair of agents split during the second or third of the three one-year deals, and the illegal agreement came to light in a lawsuit between the two agents. The Timberwolves lost four first-round picks, the owner was suspended,

the GM had to take a leave of absence, and the team was fined $3.5 million. That sounds severe. Smith merely lost his bird rights and became a free agent. Therefore, if we think MLB would dish out similar penalties, there isn't much they could really do to Otani besides ban him from re-signing with that team. He'd likely be made a free agent. Action would likely be taken against his agent and whatever his team was. I'm sorry.

I'm going to be thinking about bird rights for like the rest of the night. Yeah. I'm going to have to do some additional research there. All right. So we can wrap up there. And we've got a fun guest planned for next episode. And depending on how long that goes, maybe we'll squeeze in a couple emails, but we'll be back soon. I hope Joe Smith is able to have a bird.

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Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. Please keep your questions and comments coming via email at podcastfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. We will talk to you it. Just let it out of my head. Don't you know that I'll send it out of my head. Ah, nice tea. Yeah. I can tell by the swallow.

Recently microwaved some soup, made myself some tea. We are moving into an on-campus apartment. And I took a little tour of the apartment the other day. Three bedroom, which is nice. Has a microwave, but I think we're going to get rid of it. So even if there's one just supplied for free. It's funny. The apartment is currently full of, it's like no one's lived in it for like eight years. So it full of like dorm room furniture and stuff it's just like a used storage unit and there's a microwave sitting on the

kitchen counter but even before i ever looked at it there's a little sticky note on top of it that just says remove it's like yeah i hear you random apartment stranger