Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1167: The Economic Volcano

Episode Date: January 26, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the Padres’ social-media accounts getting hacked, Scott Boras’ “volcano” comment, Hall of Fame voting results, and Jeff’s article about batting practice, then answer listener emails about team construction and the wild card, consistency and Carlos Santana, the baseball equivalents of football’s recent Super Bowl staples, the decline and […]

Hey everyone, just a quick note. Jeff and I recorded this episode slightly before the brewers finally delivered us from our cold stove stupor. So a few times we lament the lack of transactions. Thanks to David Stearns, our hopes have been answered. So we will discuss the Christian Yelich trade and the Lorenzo Cain signing on our next episode. Carry on! Hello and On your own, just take it slow Something always happens whenever we're together Hello. Hello. You were away. I was, yeah. I don't have any exciting engagement stories or anything like that. I already got those out of the way, but I was on mountains, as you were. I was skiing down them as opposed to hiking up them, which I find to be easier and more exhilarating personally. But it was a lot of fun. I went to Colorado, spent a few days skiing, saw a ski trail called Cubs Way and felt right at home. You didn't give me a chance to ask a question. How was your trip? It was good. Conditions were nice. It snowed and it's a fresh powder, etc. Have you ever,

have you ever gone with skins on your skis to skin up and then ski down? No, I have not. Okay. skins on your skis to skin up and then ski down no i have not okay so in baseball news that exhausts our skiing conversation yeah i was hoping that maybe there would be baseball news while i was away but not so much no one signed really although the padres were hacked and misled people into thinking someone had been signed briefly which which is kind of funny what the late night hours of Wednesday or early Thursday morning West Coast time, the Padres Instagram account posted a picture of Eric Hosmer with no caption. And then their Twitter account around the same time said, stay tuned, and then just tweeted Eric Hosmer's handle with no other text.

And the implication was clear, but it turns out that according to the Padres, they were hacked. And I don't want to accuse Dave Cameron of anything, but the timing is somewhat suspicious. But they have obviously been connected to Eric Hosmer for a while there, but no actual news. And Dennis Lin of the San Diego Union Tribune wrote that they don't have anything imminent with Hosmer and that they have continued examining options to back up Freddie Galvis. So back up to Freddie Galvis. That is what is actually happening in baseball right now. Ordinarily, you think of any case where a celebrity or a major organization says that they got hacked on social media. And it's almost always not true.

They almost always did something themselves. But in this case, as much as it seems like the timing would have been believable, and of course you could see them announcing something like this by themselves on social media, just the delivery was not... It wasn't... If you're going to hack... Look, it's not hard to hack hard to hack well okay maybe it is hard to hack although it seems like the Padres maybe have the same password for the social media

accounts but in any case it wouldn't be hard to to post a believable image or tweet with a caption but if the Padres signed Eric Hosmer they're not just gonna put his picture yes on Instagram and just not announce anything or they're not gonna tweet just his handle so that's that's dumb so i whoever was doing this clearly either they didn't want it to be believable or they just don't give the padres social media team any sort of credit for being able to do their job responsibly but in any case this could be one of the only cases in recent history of a uh of a major organization saying they were hacked and actually telling the truth yeah that's still nothing on eric cosmer because it turns out eric cosmer would probably like to have a competitive team to uh choose from

in his suitor pool yeah and one with more secure passwords possibly with the uh mlb cyber security division which is what it's actually called, apparently, is on the case. But yeah, you're right. I've seen more convincing tweets from fake Ken Rosenthal accounts than this Eric Hosmer announcement. But it gave us something to talk about very briefly. And I wanted to ask you about something else that is in your area of expertise, which is a Scott Boris quote, which I know that generally you find pretty tiresome, but he was quoted as saying, well, I'll just, I'll read the full quote here. When I hear them say we're the poor Pittsburgh

pirates, I go, whoa, just a minute. This guy, Nutting, is sitting on an economic volcano. Where else can you increase the value of your franchise to $1 billion and not have to win anything? What do you think about the comp of the Pittsburgh Pirates and volcanoes? Are baseball teams economic volcanoes? Sitting on an economic volcano? Yes. I don't, I'm not entirely certain.

He could have just said gold mine, gold deposit, sitting on top of a gold deposit. But volcano implies some sort of threat of disaster. I mean, they can go with it. First of all, there are volcanoes of many different sizes. Not unlike the economic landscape of Major League Baseball. There is the maybe, I don't know akon quagga sized new york yankees and then you can have the paricutin sized tampa bay rays so it doesn't

that's just it doesn't account for the fact that there is not a perfectly equitable volcanic landscape around the world volcanoes can be active they can be extinct yeah precisely volcanoes spend most of their time being mountains doing nothing sometimes they stink and sometimes they blow up but that's relatively uncommon uh you figure that of the expanse of a volcano's lifetime spends a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of one percent of the time in any stage of eruption so you know nothing really doing there but i guess scott boris is trying to say that bob nutting's bank account could cause people to evacuate which actually is not entirely true people could be evacuating the ballpark because they're so furious with him yes i was amazed i

ran some ownership polls on fangraphs which i hadn't done for two years i mentioned when we were talking to i think it was jeff passon i don't know it was no it was recently i mentioned that it's probably travis that i should rerun that pull series and of course the pirates ownership pulled out uh very poorly this time around i believe they were fifth worst or fourth worst in terms of fan opinion of ownership but two years ago 11th best not great that's still 11 out of 30 teams but But people had, at least the Fangraphs audience, had a relatively, a modestly positive view of Pirates ownership when the team was winning. It's funny. Something seems to have changed in the two years since. I don't know. I can't put my finger on what. Yes, the timing of that poll coming immediately after trading Andrew McCutcheon and Gary Cole perhaps influenced those results. perhaps influence those results.

But yeah, as you found there or discovered or confirmed, there is quite a high correlation between winning and payroll and how fans think of their team's ownership. It turns out if you spend a lot and you win a lot of games or even either of those things, people like you. So you can buy your way to baseball fans' hearts, essentially. Crack analysis on Fangangrass.com right so i know that uh we don't talk a whole lot about the hall of fame here but maybe just a brief and we're going to continue digression into the hall of fame perhaps just a bit of

hall of fame banter if it's any consolation it'll be what 10 months until we talk about the hall of fame again or you know we'll talk about the induction weekend, which will be big in July because it's going to be a six-player class in addition to Alan Trammell and Jack Morris, who got in via the Veterans Committee or whatever it's called now. We have four players elected by the writers this week, Chipper Jones, Jim Tomey, Vlad Guerrero, and Trevor Hoffman. So a really fun group of players, a really great group of players, and Trevor Hoffman. So congratulations to them. And I don't know, any trends, any voting percentages, things that you want to take note of? I'll just mention, I suppose, that according to Jay Jaffe, the voters used an average of 8.46 ballot slots out of a possible 10.

Jay says that was the highest in history. Everyone who I think should be in, or kind of the maybe consensus among statistically inclined writers tends to be that they should be in, all of them saw their percentages rise some degree. There were very, very slight upticks for some. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, whose case seems to be kind of plateauing here, but they're making small gains. And then Edgar took a big jump. Looks like he will almost certainly get in next year in his last year of eligibility. And Mike Messina took a pretty sizable jump.

Looks like he might get in next year or in the next few years at least. And Schilling is up and Larry Walker is up, although not quite enough probably. Well, Schilling is up, but not a lot. Schilling is up a little bit. He's still down from two years ago. Is that right? Okay. Interesting.

So he has not gained. Yeah. He's not helping his case these days. It's complicated. Right. So I don't know. I mean, we've talked about Trevor Hoffman on this show. I mean, if you're going to put relievers in the Hall of Fame, non-Mariano Rivera relievers, then you might as well put Hoffman in. I might not myself, but there's a precedent for this sort of pitcher getting in now and of course Rivera will get in next year and probably Halliday and there will still be something of a backlog but maybe we're

getting to the point where it's it's going to start declining a little bit the size of the people who are just waiting for induction so I don't know one interesting thing I think Omar Vizquel after all the discussion of where he'd end up he debuted at 37 percent which is actually quite a strong showing and there was sort of a fun fact i saw rob arthur tweet that 80 of 83 players who started at 30 or above eventually did earn an induction and by the baseball writers vote and the three who did not got in via the veterans committee so essentially if you start with the percentage that omar viskell started with you have been in historically there are no exceptions according to rob to that rule which is strange of course

because i mean we've talked probably about the silliness of the distinction between a first ballot hall of famer and just a regular Hall of Famer. And you would think that if there are some guys who are debuting with 30-something percent, some of them would be people who are just not Hall of Famers, but that has not happened. Anyone who has started with that strong a debut has eventually crept all the way up to where they needed to get in. I don't know that I believe that Vizquel will follow that trajectory, but it's hard to argue with a perfect record with that sort of sample. Yeah, right. The voter pool has changed over time. The BBWA has eliminated people who haven't written about baseball for a long time. That's been a more recent change. The

voting pool is getting younger, more progressive slowly, but it is happening. And so there is some concern with evaluating the entirety of voting precedent because it just doesn't apply so much anymore. That being said, clearly, Vizquel, a very strong start. I believe that give him a meaningfully better start than Edgar Martinez, which is what I don't. The trends are undeniable. Like even right now, we can say, well, Edgar Martinez didn't get in and next year's his last time on the ballot but it looks like it's a virtual certainty that he will get in next time because every player who's ever gotten to 70 has gotten to 75 i get it but what i don't get is why why this keeps happening i know that recently we've had the crowded ballot situation

so yeah voters have had to be strategic about it but that hasn't been the case in the past at least not as far as i know it's not like the ballot has had more than 10 worthwhile players every single year so what i don't understand is who are these people how is omar vizquel how are we just going to assume that omar vizquel is going to start with half the support he needs and then he's going to get it like what is if you're re-examining a player in theory his stock can go up or his stock can go down so like where did edgar martinez reference let me pull up this i want to be sure i think he started around 25 or 27 percent so i will confirm he's not the only player to look up for like this but hall of fame where are the voting results okay so i was wrong edgar started at 36 but in 2014 he was down to 25 which is i guess that

would have been a crowded ballot because no one got in in 2013 so that was a problem but just a few years ago edgar martinez had one third of the necessary support to make the hall of fame and now we're just going to assume that he's going to get in next year. I'm happy. I think he deserves it. Well, I know that he deserves it, but that's ridiculous. Why? Who are these people who need 10 years to evaluate a baseball player?

I don't understand. So I guess my sense is that when writers, I think, want to elect people to the Hall of Fame, they want to see the best in players. Now, I know that the counterargument would be that it's to elect people to the Hall of Fame. They want to see the best in players. Now, I know that the counterargument would be that it's harder to get into the Hall of Fame than ever. Historically, writers have been more rigid or strict, I guess. But I think they want to see players make it because there's really, the writers don't really lose much of anything if a player makes the Hall of Fame. And they get to feel like they did something good for someone's existence while they're still alive. of fame and they get to feel like they did something good for someone's existence while they're still alive and i i guess that when you re-examine a player's case you don't go into it

being like okay i'm looking at omar viskell why isn't he a hall of famer you look for reasons to think why he makes it and you can make the case he stuck around for 73 years in major league baseball that's a hell of an accomplishment so good for him and you can say well he was a really good defensive shortstop so good for him but i'm just floored i guess by the idea that people can't evaluate these players the first time or maybe the second time why do you need so many years why is edgar martinez still look you either you either think edgar martinez was great or you don't and that's it and he's clearly it clearly it's the dh thing that's being held against him because he had a by either measure of war he had a superior far superior career to vladimir guerrero but guerrero played a position so he gets to make

it on a second try and edgar still but how does trevor how does trevor hoffman make it into the hall of fame as a one inning closer and edgar martinez i know he's gonna make it he'll make it next year and in the long run it'sinning closer. And Edgar Martinez, I know he's going to make it. He'll make it next year. And in the long run, it's not going to make a difference. But that doesn't make any sense to me. Hoffman is not the best closer of all time. Mariano Rivera is the best closer of all time. Hoffman was good.

Edgar Martinez is the best designated hitter of all time. And he's still, how is that? How is that being held against him? And Trevor Hoffman can make it as a guy who failed as a starter. It's really strange. There are so many inconsistencies, which I think is one of the things that frustrates people about the Hall of Fame and the Hall of Fame conversation. And, you know, on the whole, the process works fairly well. I think most players who deserve to get in, get in. Most players who don't deserve to get in, don't get in. There are exceptions to that, of course. But yeah, when you start drilling down and looking at individual

cases, I mean, you know, Vlad Guerrero is a great player. Is he a better player than Larry Walker? No, I don't think so. I'd probably vote for Larry Walker over Vlad Guerrero. I mean, Guerrero was great and really fun, and that's kind of the thing that helps him get in. He was fun, and he was flashy, and he was sort of this folk hero character, and he was appreciated by people in his time, MVP votes, all-star appearances, et cetera,

probably more so than Walker was, and his memory seems to have lived on more than Walker's has. And I know there are other reasons and Coors Field and all that, but neither of them really had career length in their favor, longevity in their favor. Walker, by the way, was much more valuable for his non-Expos teams than he was for the Expos, whereas Vlad was much more valuable for the Expos than he was for his non-Expos teams, but seemingly will be going in as an angel anyway, much to Jonah Carey's dismay, I imagine. But in terms of overall value, it's really hard to find a difference between those two guys. And yet Vlad sails in with, what, 93% of the vote in his second appearance on the ballot. And here's Walker, who's been on longer

and is at 34% and is probably never going to get in, at least not via this method. So it's really strange. Some players just have that aura to them or they have that narrative to them and others don't. And voters prioritize some strange things while overlooking some other things. You could even maybe make a decent Trevor Hoffman, Billy Wagner comp, and yet Wagner is at 11% of the vote. But at least, you know, Scott Rowland stayed on the ballot. Andrew Jones just barely stayed on the ballot. And Johan Santana fell off the ballot with 2.4% of the vote. And that's sort of sad.

I mean, you know, not that he should have been a Hall of Famer, but man, I mean, he's just exhibit A whenever you have a pitcher who looks like a certain Hall of Famer. But man, I mean, he's just exhibit A whenever you have a pitcher who looks like a certain Hall of Famer, you just point to Johan Santana because no one pitched more like a Hall of Famer than he did for a span of several years. And then it just completely fell apart, which can happen to any pitcher at any time. So an instructive example, at least. But remember, Johan Santana, not only was he on the Hall of Fame ballot, but he also recently said he has not given up on wanting to continue to play Major League Baseball. And he's not, this isn't exactly like a Rafael Palmeiro situation, because Rafael Palmeiro is

53 years old, and Johan Santana is, I don't know, 36, 37, something like that, probably. So Santana, it's more conceivable. And so if he wanted to get back on the ballot, it is possible based on the precedent of Jose Rio, who was on the Hall of Fame ballot in 2001. And then he pitched in 2001 and 2002. He pitched 44 games to the Reds. He was fine, not very good. And then he was back on the ballot in 2008. Now, he didn't get a single vote, but he did make it back on the ballot in 2008. Now, he didn't get a single vote, but he did make it back on the ballot.

So if Johan Santana wants another look, maybe with a less credit ballot, all he needs to do is come back. Face a guy, give up a home run, doesn't matter, as long as he's active. Yeah, sure. He's actually about to turn 39. That's older than I thought he was.

He turns 39 in March. But yeah, I mean, his short peak, I mean, everyone has seen the COFAax comps, which are pretty apt. But yeah, that's an example to remember next time you think that someone is a lock. No one is ever a lock, really, except for maybe Mike Trout. Question for you. Maybe you just looked, but in case you haven't just looked. So Johan Santana is about to turn 39 and he is

still trying he's still trying to pitch he has of course signed many contracts he's had many opportunities over the last few years according to baseball reference when is the last year in which johan santana threw a competitive professional pitch any level minor leagues or majors uh well let's see 2012 correct yeah 2012 uh he hasn't pitched at any level since 2012 which surprised me because i feel like every year i've read something about santana having a chance and then he gets hurt and i just would have assumed he was collecting some innings in the minors in fact i probably would have guessed that he threw a few pitches in the majors in like 2014 or something but yep nope five years wouldn't have been eligible i guess it

had yeah yeah it had to be five years never mind that was a bad question you could have pitched in the minors right that's just a major league thing i think is it is it is it i think so right well you can't go to like indie ball and reset your clock so yeah i think that's the case for the minors as well and i guess it's not like any of these guys are finishing their careers in the minors that wouldn't make any sense. No, not so much. That happened in the old days more often than it does today. All right. So we're doing emails, right?

Are we ready to go to emails? By the way, the Heartball Times annual is out, and it's an online-only affair this year. It's available now. It's free. It's linked from the Fangraphs homepage, and you have an article in there that I just read. It's about how batting practice is bad. And people should either stop doing it or do it differently. And I recommend it.

And you mentioned early in the piece that this was going to be a departure from your typical piece and that there was not going to be any data, really. Usually you will have an argument of some sort, or you'll have a theory, and you will test it. You'll look up the stats, and you'll present the table, and maybe there'll be some gifts or something, and at the end you will have a somewhat satisfying answer. Often, not always, sometimes it's open-ended, but often you'll be able to answer the question that you posed with stats and this time you could not did you find that refreshing or anxiety inducing it makes me less confident about responding to people who disagree and clearly there would be a lot of people who disagree

because batting practice still happens as it's happened forever yes in uh in in all levels of baseball but i also this is uh this is an entire article that would not exist if not for our Effectively Wild live podcast with Fernando Perez, who first got me thinking along these lines. So thank you, Fernando. And that was a wonderful episode. But he was the one who first got me to think about how batting practice is kind of dumb.

And then it turns out people have written on this before. And a lot of other people in baseball agree. Clearly not enough. But, you know, Bryce Harper in his best year didn't take any batting practice joe madden has said several times that he thinks it's the stupidest thing they do in baseball every day and now granted joe madden still schedules batting practice from time to time but whatever tradition is tradition and some players get something out of it other players don't it's something that players do because it's how they've always done it if people want to disagree and say that batting practice actually is good, well, I can't really say anything that I didn't already say in the article.

So the most important thing is that the whole Hardball Times annual is free. And so if you don't like it, that's well, it didn't cost you nothing because it cost you some time and time is undervalued, but it didn't cost you anything beyond your time. Yeah, I was curious about that different style of piece because that's something that I deal with at The Ringer if I go from some data-intensive baseball article to like an opinion about a TV show or something. And, you know, sometimes that'll be reported in some way, but sometimes it won't. It'll just be pure criticism or whatever you would call it. And that can be a relief in some ways, because if I write some deep dive baseball stats article, it often takes a lot of time and a lot of spreadsheets, and it's very complicated.

And then I will write about a video game or something, and I won't have to back up my opinions with anything anything i can just say whatever i think and it's uh it's kind of freeing in a way but it's it's also it is it does kind of make you nervous because it's like well i'm just i'm just saying what i think here i'm when when i write about baseball often i'm not really expressing an opinion so much as saying well this is what the facts are. This is what my best interpretation of the facts are. Here's what the stats say, and here's how I'm interpreting those stats. And obviously there's some judgment and opinion involved in that process, but ultimately you're

pointing to something objective in many cases, whereas you're not in different types of writing, and it's a very different sort of feeling. And yeah, you have very different responses when someone tweets at you or something to disagree. If it's just an opinion, you kind of have to say, okay, well, that's your opinion. Yeah. Not a snarky way, but really, it is. It's really easy to have opinions, but knowing the way, I think, and knowing the way that you you think if we were going to write about opinions we want them to be informed you know we want them to be thoughtful so when you're writing about a video game or a movie or a tv show then you're still

offering a thoughtful opinion of what you have been watching or or playing and so it would be really easy to just be an opinion haver and And I don't know, maybe if you're a good enough or strong enough opinion haver, you could market that as a job. But it turns out having an informed opinion and supporting it in an article, really not easier than having some sort of statistically informed article that is not at all based on opinion. So still hard, still takes a long time. Yep. All right. Well, let's offer some opinions on emails that we have received recently. This is from Robert, who says the Giants offseason has them looking like they're gunning to be an 85 win team in a division that already has three playoff teams. This has me thinking about the advisability of shooting for a wildcard spot in a division with a clear favorite, given that a wildcard spot is not the reliable playoff berth it once was. Do you guys think the Giants feel more strongly about the value of a wildcard spot,

given that they have an ace who seems unbeatable in the playoffs? Should they feel this way? Are there certain constructions of teams, whether it's contact hitting, strong bullpen, etc., that profile better for a one-game playoff? Or is baseball too random and finicky for this to be a consideration? Okay okay so i think as usual mostly the last one it's mostly the last one you know you could say it's important to have an ace and of course a team that has like a shut down ace for a wildcard game if they're lined up to use said ace for the wildcard game that would be great you want that but on the other hand the yankees had a really good bullpen and

they just used that bullpen for almost the entirety of their wildcard game and they beat the twins who couldn't really contend with their starter or their bullpen but i would think you look at the giants and what this is is they've the last two times they've won the world series they got in as a wildcard team so i'm sure that i should say the last two times they've made the playoffs and once they won the world series and they made it as a wildcard team so I'm sure that informs them a little bit but also the Giants weren't going to tear down they're like the last team in baseball you would imagine trading from their core they mean too much to the city etc they weren't going to tear down but they needed to get better so I don't think the Giants really had that much of a choice here to be honest they could

either sort of punt 2018 and accept their descent into becoming the tigers or they could try to get kind of good as good as they can in 2018 and and then descend into being the tigers after that uh not to express too much certainty about where the giants are going but you know you know the situation so i think that they're just trying to get as good as they can and they're not too worried about the context because of course if they had their druthers they would play in like the national league east or i don't know the american league central i know that would do weird things for their travel and flight patterns and whatnot but of course they'd prefer to play in a worse division but they don't have the chance and and so they've upgraded as almost as much as they can maybe they'll still get lorenzo cane or

something but i think they they just couldn't really stomach another 2017, and so I don't think that they're thinking about their contacts too much at all. Yep, I agree with you, and personally, I wouldn't let a player's performance record in the postseason affect the way that I built my team, even if it's someone like Madison Baumgartner, who has a very notable postseason record. For me, I wouldn't count on that enough to let it affect my other decision-making. But sure, if you have an ace, that improves your odds in a wildcard game, and maybe that enters into your thinking, and maybe it should. In this case, I don't think it needed to. But, you know, Madison Baumgartner, in addition to his strong postseason record has a

very strong regular season record he's just a good pitcher and he's better than the pitcher that most teams can deploy in a wild card game and so that does improve the giant sods but then of course you are banking on madison bumgarner not having any unsanctioned ATV accidents or being hurt in some normal way or just being less effective because as we just talked about with Johan Santana, that can happen to anyone at any time. So best not to pin your playoff plans on any one player. All right. Colby says, when Carlos Santana signed with the Phillies, one of you mentioned how amazingly consistent he's been in his career. Indeed, you said correctly that over the last seven seasons, Santana has averaged three war with little variance, a high of 3.7, low of 2.1.

By the way, if I can interrupt this question for another fun fact, Joe Sheehan wrote about new Hall of Fame inductee Chipper Jones that he had 19 seasons in the majors and never had a bad one which is kind of an underrated thing about a career that long if you never have really an off year i mean he had off years relative to himself obviously but his worst full season rated as 2.3 wins according to baseball reference and so joe had a chart, fewest seasons, minimum 50 plate appearances of fewer than two baseball reference wins above replacement. For Hall of Fame hitters, there has never been a Hall of Famer who had fewer, in Chipper Jones' case, zero.

So there were a bunch of guys who had one. They'll have one bad year at some point in their career and chipper jones never really did he missed time obviously with injuries but even as an older player he was still really good probably could have played long follow-up wanted to yeah so chipper jones debuted technically at 21 but he debuted really as a major leaguer full time at the age of 23 he played through the age of 40 and his lowest ever wrc plus so basically ops plus but difference that lowest ever was 112 and he did that in his first year when he was 23 his career mark was 141 never worse than 12 better than the average hitter incredible over almost two decades

now miguel cabrera miguel cabrera debuted at the age of, and last year was the first year he ever had a below average batting line at 91. He debuted at 106. He was 20 years old. Unbelievable. But Sherpa Jones, kind of like Miguel Cabrera, but for longer, which is, it's an easy thing to forget because Jones hasn't played since 2012, and he hasn't really been peak Jones since five years before that. But my goodness, at the age of 36, Chipper Jones, 174 WRC plus, 36 years old. Yeah, that's pretty incredible. By the way, one other Hall of Fame

thing I meant to mention, Ryan Thibodeau and his excellent voluminous Hall of Fame vote tracker, he has a line in there for each player's percentage support among first-time voters, a line in there for each player's percentage support among first-time voters, which in this case, there were only 11, at least 11 with public ballots. But among those, Roger Clemens had 100% support. Barry Bonds had 91% support. So among people who are being added to the voter rolls, those guys are basically automatic yeses, at least among the public ballots, but they're not getting added to the rolls quickly enough for it to get those guys in, probably, at least not on its own. All right. Yes. Chipper Jones, great. We have established that. Now back to this question about Carlos Santana, who again has been very consistent. Colby's

question is, how much a player's volatility would factor into a team's considerations? Imagine that you could strip away all red flags behind the inconsistency. Injury, lack of playing time, ballpark, life events, aging, etc. Imagine that the player's variance was truly inexplicable. You may have a player in mind, but Alex Rios is in the neighborhood for this. From 2007 to 12, Rios averaged 2.7 war, but peaked at 5.5 and plummeted to negative 1.5. Hypothetically, then, say you have two players hitting free agency, both with six years of full-time playing. One has been three wins exactly every year.

The other has averaged three wins, but has been worth as many as seven and as few as negative one. Again, we have to assume the variation is a total mystery there's every reason to expect that this vacillation could continue to some degree which player would you want for a long-term high money contract and why is this sort of random variance enough of a factor that some sort of volatility index stat should be applied to free agents okay so we can call one of these players i don't know carlos santana the other one we'll call i don't know eric hosmer justin upton eric hosmer sure yeah hosmer uh his his wars according to fangraphs have gone from negative 1.7 to 3.2 to 0 to 3.5 to negative 0.1 to 4.1 not reaching those high highs but hitting those low lows so harry cosmer pretty weird track record

i don't think from a team's perspective i really don't think they believe in volatility as a meaningful trait certainly outside of injury or other explanatory concerns i think that teams mostly just think like well here's your three or four year track record here's a projection and we're done so i don't think teams worry that much about it. But if we were to figure that teams do worry about stability or volatility, I'm actually torn. Because I think teams would love being able to plan around someone's actual stability. But if you if you were signing a free agent who was volatile, and you figure, well, this guy is either going to be really good or really bad, then if you had him and he was having a really bad year,

then you could just go try to upgrade on him during the year. You get a short-term upgrade, one-year player for the stretch run, and then you enjoy the highs and you somewhat mitigate the lows. But in reality, it just doesn't really work like that, and you're not going to block a player. Like if a team signed Eric Hosmer and then he had a bad first half this year, you wouldn't go trade for a short term for a spaceman and say well we're still gonna start osmer next year because we know he's gonna be good because that doesn't make any sense so i think that teams would prefer the uh the consistency and the stability because that's just easier to plan

around yep i think so too and i i just i have no opinion really on whether i would be more likely to sign one of these guys or give one of them more money because I just don't know whether a track record of consistency predicts future consistency. I'm just not sure. I would have to look into that and do some sort of study, which would be difficult because again, we're trying to eliminate other factors that might have led to that lack of consistency, which is hard to know just from the stats alone so i don't know teams do value consistency but i don't know the extent to which it is predictable so i don't know that there would be that big a premium there paid to a santana type although santana did

get signed which makes him an exception among free agents this offseason. So there's that. All right, let's take one from Matthew, who says, Since 2002, there has been only one Super Bowl that didn't feature either Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, or Ben Roethlisberger. Many sports have had similar runs where the leagues were much smaller or talent acquisition was more skewed toward large market teams. the leagues were much smaller or talent acquisition was more skewed toward large market teams if you had to choose three mlb players right now who would be represented in 95 of the next 15 world series who would you choose correa on a young and terrific houston team aaron judge and the reassembled yankees machine or is baseball just too damn weird and awesome to allow a run like

this uh okay so firstly yeah the second one but as long as we're going to do this then i'm with the yankees i'm torn between judge and glaber torres just because judge is a little older than your standard rookie but he's also so good and we don't know about labor torres yet so whatever i'll just a lot i mean judge would be in his 40s by the end of that run so yeah i you want a yankee probably and you want a Dodger, right? And I don't know. I mean, Correa is a good pick, obviously, because the Astros are probably the best team in baseball right now. He is probably the best non-trout player in baseball right now.

At least I might make that case. So between Correa and the other young guys that the Astros have under control, it certainly seems like they will be good for a while. They're in a large market, etc. They have lots of factors in their favor, but they're not the Dodgers or the Yankees. So 15 years is a lot. Yeah. Well, I guess I'll just throw in Bryce Harper there because he's young and he's going to go play for some good team next season.

Probably. So let's see. Where is that? I agree with. Well, I guess let's just go. I'll go Correa, Seager, Corey Seager, not the other two, and Bryce Harper. That would be my pick. Understanding that, of course, I'm missing out on some hotshot prospect that we don't

even know about yet. Yeah, I would take Correa. I would take Seager. I feel like I should take a Yankee, but Judge doesn't have quite the same track record that those guys would have stanton is a little too old torres is a great prospect but hasn't even made the majors yet so yeah i don't know maybe there and you can't take a pitcher for reasons that we just talked about you pretty much have to take a position player in this draft the way that you would take a quarterback in a football draft of this type so yeah i guess i'll take judge and and seeger and correa sure why not unless you think because okay

there's another way you can do this is there some sort of like versatile bench player that the like ronald tereas tyler wade are they just gonna stick around forever because they're never really good but they're just comfortable enough? So, yeah, forget Aaron Judge. Ronald Toreas. All right. Question from Scott. I grew up watching and listening to baseball in the 70s when most teams used four-man pitching staffs.

I never have been clear on why this changed to the current five-man staffs we see now. I guess it had to do with information that pitching every fifth day was better for pitcher health, but I don't know that that's been borne out. Anyway, now that teams seem to be leaning more toward less usage per start and allowing only very good or elite pitchers to go through a lineup for a third time, do you think it makes sense to go back to having four-man starting staffs? It seems to make sense from a logical standpoint that if the load on a pitcher's arm is reduced when they do pitch, then maybe they could pitch a bit more often, say every fourth day instead of every fifth day. So two questions. Do you think this makes sense?

And second, do you foresee any teams going to this model in the near future? Okay. Question about the future of pitching staff alignment. We do some variation of this fairly often. And the answer, I think, generally comes down to we're going to see things change, we're going to see shorter starting assignments, and we're going to see some sort of like, I don't know if it's gonna be a piggyback system necessarily, but we're probably tandem starters or something that mirrors tandem starters, the question is going to be whether that goes through a four tandem rotation, five, or even six, we don't know, maybe rosters

are going to get bigger and the biggest issue as always is going to be who's going to do it first who's going to do it second how gradually is this going to go because if a team decides to do something like this players are not going to sign with that team so they're going to need to develop their pitchers internally and get buy-in from the lowest levels and then they're going to need their experiment to work so that other teams pick up on it so i think that we are seeing some sort of early signs of some sort of trend in this direction but i mean if you're gonna what's the what's the usual thing that we that people write in about the 3-3-3 system right you get three pitchers to go three innings a game and then you just cycle through three or four or five times so i would

think that if you could really narrow or shorten the starting assignments to like sort of the colorado rockies-esque 75 pitches or fewer then yeah you could do this over four games and and that would work out probably fine no need to go to a five-man rotation at that point if you have really short starting assignments can't imagine we would go to a three-day rotation so yeah four four makes sense but i mean it's still i don't know how long it's going to be until either nothing's going to change for a while or things have already changed and we just don't know how to label it because starting future assignments are different than they've ever been but in terms of seeing something dramatic i can't imagine we're going to see something that dramatic.

I mean, we're seeing the occasional six-man rotation, but shorter than that, that feels like it's still some time off for anyone who isn't terrible. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. You hear more chatter about teams moving to six-man rotations than you do four-man rotations. I mean, the whole trend has been toward fewer innings from starters. trend has been toward fewer innings from starters. And while this makes sense, I think what Scott's saying does make sense. If you are having starters pitch fewer innings, then maybe you could use them more often. I think the trend has just been fewer innings, period, just fewer innings. And I think probably teams are still trending in that direction. And so I think they might be more likely to use the starters

less often, even though they're using them less within games. So I don't know whether that makes sense. I don't know whether it's really hard to say whether like the five-man rotation protects pitchers' arms more than the four-man rotation. It's hard to study these things because you don't generally have very clean perfect experiments that baseball runs for us you kind of have to extrapolate these things and try to back calculate them and and find them out in some suboptimal way so i don't know that the current system is protecting pitchers perfectly although i mean the fewer pitches you throw presumably the lower your injury risk or at least there's some kind of correlation there.

But, I mean, I think what Scott's saying makes sense, but I just haven't heard enough teams even putting this up as a trial balloon that I would say that it's going to happen sometime soon. Yeah, and everyone throws too hard now. Slow down. All right. Let's take one more weird one here. This is from Brian, who says, On a recent podcast, you briefly mentioned backyard baseball, a treasure from my childhood where you could hit a ball that went underground

or a seeing-eye single that avoided fielders. It got my brain up and throwing. What if a hitter could go the way of knuckleball pitchers and gave up hitting for power for the ability to hit balls with zero spin? Would it be effective? So he's asking about a knuckleball hitter, essentially. If you could have a knuckle hit, would that be valuable? Would that be just as effective as hitting the ball hard well i guess how much how much are we sacrificing here like is he going to hit balls still to the outfield can he reach the fence can he hit any home runs or is this just

like a whole bunch of knucklers around the infield right that is an important question there this is kind of a physics question i don't know that this is feasible. This seems like sort of a supernatural ability. I don't know that anyone could have a talent to hit a ball with zero spin. Batted ball spin, not something that StatCast currently reports. So it hasn't really been a subject of a whole lot of analysis. But yeah, you're not going to get zero spin batted balls i don't i don't know what it would take to to do that like maybe some sort of bunt or something but uh let's just assuming that it's feasible i mean if you if you can put the ball in the air with zero spin i guess it would float and flutter around like a knuckleball does and so it would be hard to predict for fielders i mean i don't know if if the ball's not being hit that hard though it seems like it would be hard to predict for fielders. I mean, I don't know. If the ball's not being hit that hard, though, it seems like it would be a lot easier to anticipate than a knuckleball, because, I mean, the thing with a knuckleball is, you know, especially when Ari Dickey throws it,

Ari Dickey has or had a very hard knuckler, so he would be throwing his knuckler in, like, the 80s, and it would still be dancing around. So if you had to sacrifice a lot of speed to get this knuckling effect on the batted ball, I don't know that it would be as effective. So you'd have to still be hitting it pretty hard and also getting the knuckling effect. Right. I'm looking for pass balls, pass balls. Okay, so Ari Dickey in his career, which has spanned 15 years, he's registered 91 wild pitches and there have been 128 passed balls on his watch. You go to Tim Wakefield, and he is at, where is he at?

134 wild pitches and 253 passed balls, but that's over 19 years. And so remember, in Dickey's case and in Wakefield's case, in the case of these knuckleball pitchers, they've had like personal catchers who learned how not to always be able to catch a knuckleball, but they at least were pretty good at it. Which is not to suggest that every team would suddenly develop an infield that's good at catching knuckled hits, because clearly these pitchers have struggled with other catchers. with other catchers but first of all the hitter's batting line would still not be very good because he would get he would reach based a lot on errors and those don't really count for batting average percentage so it would you'd have a hidden value here probably because you'd have a lot of balls off gloves or just going right under guys but he would in theory you're talking about like the ultimate babbitt hitter but no power if he makes a lot of contact then i can see it he's got to be fast but teams

would depending on how much power you're sacrificing here teams would clearly the outfielders would play shallow or they would bring them in almost to the infield no matter what and so it would be all the much harder to get a ball past a guy i mean you're talking about fielders are standing 100 120 feet away from home plate so maybe the knuckling batted ball would basically stop moving unpredictably somewhere before it reaches a fielder so i don't think that this would work out very well unless you didn't have to sacrifice that bounces i mean does this zero spin is that preserved after it bounces already would you get a weird hop every time or would it just be a normal batted ball after it hits the ground i don't know so this is almost like an alan nathan physics question

probably but uh i don't think it would work as well as the the knuckleball pitcher well what about a guy who when he hit batted balls instead of bouncing they would just thud they would come to a complete stop that would be pretty valuable if you could aim them. That guy could be really good. All right. You have a stat blast. An interesting tidbit, discuss it at length and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's today's step last. Let's do it.

And it's related to a post I put up. I guess I wrote it yesterday, but it went up today and it was a post about the Tampa Bay Rays. So this is not a TOPS plus post, but base runs is also a little complicated. But base runs is an estimator. It's a team performance estimator. Essentially, I would imagine a lot of you have heard about Pythagorean record or estimated wins and losses based on run differential. I have. Yeah. Base runs is like that, except it goes one step further and it doesn't think about actual runs and actual runs allowed. I have. years the rays have been tied for 20th place in major league baseball on actual wins but they have

been in 10th place in base runs wins they actually should have made the playoffs two times in the last four years they would have never finished under 500 in the last four years just according to base runs they have been 32 wins below their base runs estimate over the last four years and the kansas city royals who we've talked about before they are maddening in the sense they have been at plus 35 wins over their base runs record so just uh just for perspective here the royals have actually won 40 more games than the rays over the last four years however according to base runs the rays should have won 27 more games than the royals so big swing, a swing of 67 wins.

So I have this data going back to just 2005, which is a weird starting point, but it's what I have anyway. The Royals have the greatest four-year overperformance in that span by a significant margin in second place, the 2013 to 2016 Kansas City Royals. So they're basically just building on themselves. And the Rays have the most powerfully negative four-year underperformance at negative 32 now that's all well and good the royals too good rays too bad it's all kind of weird but i was looking at some uh had some splits to try to figure out why this has happened this is probably not going to surprise you very much but as sort of a proxy i mean now i'm going to go to another statistic this is weighted on base average wobba and i like looking at wobba differential

it's like run differential not too complicated it's just annoying to say wobba instead of run over and over but wobba differential is simply wobba by the hitters minus wobba allowed by the pitchers pretty simple so over uh example, over the last four years, the Tampa Bay Rays are actually ninth best in baseball in Woba differential. They have hit eight points better than the hitters they have faced. Now, why have the Rays been so bad? Here's why. In low leverage situations, the Rays have hit better than their opponents by 20 Woba points. That ranks them fifth best in baseball that's low leverage situations the least important situations medium leverage

situations the rays have hit better than their opponents by five woba points that's the 11th best in baseball still pretty good high leverage situations the rays have hit 38 points worse than their opponents in high leverage situations 38 38 points worse. That is dead last in baseball. It's dead last by 14 points. The Brewers are next worst. The Twins are next worst after that. Interestingly, let's now look at the Kansas City Royals. In overall, just overall situations, the Royals rank in 19th place.

19th place in Woba differential. They have been out hit by six Woba points. Okay, let's think about that now. Low leverage situations, the Royals are 26th. They have been out hit by 16 points. Medium leverage situations, you can spot the theme here. Medium leverage situations, the Royals are 17th. They've been out hit by four Woba points.

They've been out hit by four Woba points. But in high leverage situations, the Royals, of course, first place. They have out hit their opponents by 37 Woba points. Second place Yankees, third place Dodgers. Yankees are 12 points removed. So the Royals and Rays, for reasons that I still don't have a good explanation for it, they have essentially been opposites of one another over the past four years. They've been the Rays by all the usual metrics have been the better baseball team but the royals have made two world series they've

won one of them and the royals have just been clutch there's no other way around it they have performed like a very clutch baseball team and the rays have done the opposite of that and what is frustrating or if you're a royals fan not frustrating at all is that i still don't think that there's a good explanation you can try to tie it to strikeouts the rays have struck out a bunch and the royals haven't you can try to tie to the bullpens but the rays have had some good relievers and the royals bullpen last year wasn't that good but they still overperformed but for one reason or another this is just the way things have gone the royals have been extremely clutch over the last four years and the rays haven't royals hitters in high leverage situations over the last four years have hit for a 332 Woba and they've overall just posted a 311. Royals pitchers

have allowed a 317 Woba but in high leverage situations 295. I don't have any kind of good explanation here and the Rays hitters have been terrible in high leverage situations. I mean the patterns remain consistent they They stay the same no matter what you're looking at. But Royals, super clutch, raise, not clutch. What does it mean? I don't know. This has never been predictive in the past in any sense. You look at actual wins minus base runs wins. You look at any sort of mark of sustainability year over year, and there's just nothing except in these cases. How you explain it no idea but what a weird alternate reality we've seen yeah i don't know how to explain that either it's uh must be

frustrating for the race i'm sure but they probably as well as anyone know that maybe it's not their fault and it's just the universe conspiring against them i don't know that's probably not very satisfying for race fans but yeah it is fun to imagine how baseball would have been different over the last few years if those numbers had been reversed, for instance. It would have been quite different. All right. It's been a while since we've done any Mike Trout hypotheticals. And since we have no signings, no major transactions to talk about right now, let's run that back.

Let's do a couple quick mike trout questions so this one's from aaron following up on your discussion on the lack of triples in modern baseball i'm wondering how many triples you think mike trout could hit if his only objective for a season were to hit as many triples as possible he would try to leg out every surefire double and every single i suppose two, too, and try to hit every ball hard, but not hard enough to go out of the park. Is this something he would have any control whatsoever over? If other teams didn't know this was his objective at the beginning of the season, how long would it take for them to make any sort of adjustment? Would they even make an adjustment

at all? And some relevant facts. We know that triples are rarer. They're down in part just because batted balls are scarcer these days and there are more balls being hit over the fence. But Rob Maines did an article for Baseball Prospectus recently where he showed that hitters just aren't trying to try to stretch a double into a triple. Runners are less willing to try to steal third. Runners are less willing to try to advance from first to third on a single. So basically, runners, batters are just being more wary of trying to go to third base and they've been rewarded with better success rates at most of those things. So maybe they are making smart decisions here. But in this scenario, we were talking about Mike Trout making very stupid decisions because all he cares about is inflating his triple count. Could he do it? So first of all, how many triples has Mike Trout hit recently? Does he hit a lot of triples? Is he a triples producer? He has produced three triples last year, five the year before, six the year before that. He was more of a triples producer. He has produced three triples last year, five the year before, six the year before that. He was more of a triples guy before that, maybe back when he was

a little faster, perhaps not hitting quite as many home runs, maybe. Anyway, not a great triples producer, but he hits a few triples a year at this point. How many could he hit if that were his sole concern? Okay. Well well so he goes into this knowing he just wants to hit a bunch of triples so i think that one of the first things he'd have to do is hit fewer fly balls and try to hit more line drives because all those balls sailing out of the park those are doing him no good i mean his team would love it but oh he'd be so annoyed so one thing he could do oh ah no okay here's what he can do he can hit home runs go to third base and then leave you just go to the dugout yeah and so he's out but he gets a triple i believe

yep uh he could uh he could hit a home run and then refuse to advance past third base that might actually oh might be the best strategy yeah yeah okay so let So let's do that now. The other team would gladly give Trout triples instead of home runs. So, okay. So then we're giving Trout triples for his home runs. So there's an easy hidden swap. Now, in terms of advancing, he had 25 doubles last year, 32 the year before that, 32 the year before that. So already not that many advancing opportunities. But you can assume, if you're giving them maybe 30 doubles

in a year you can assume you could probably stretch at least five of those something like that into triples you know players are going to be fairly conservative there's usually not too much of a benefit advancing from second to third base on a hit unless there's a few than two outs etc but the break-even point is pretty high but there's always or there's frequently the opportunity to stretch a double but players are going to be pretty conservative about that unless they're, I don't know, Luis Perdomo. So Trout could stretch some of those. So maybe never mind about trying to hit fewer fly balls because if you can turn your home runs into triples, that's going to be the thing.

So he could therefore easily end up with like 40 triples in the year, if not more than that. He had 41 home runs just a few years ago. So he would get up there. And plus, remember that for any hit that he attempts to stretch and then he's thrown out, his batting line still gets credit for the hit. So even just looking at the service numbers, you would have to look at his outs on the basis to really understand how frustrating he's been when he's trying to stretch. I can't imagine he would stretch more than one single into a triple. I't know actually no it would be none because here's the thing you try to

stretch a single into a triple first of all no but also the only way you're going to be safe is in the event of some sort of defensive blunder so it's just going to be an error anyway so that's not going to yes count for anything but it's it's the home runs into triples thing that's the key here. Yeah. Well, the all-time single season triples record is 36 by Chief Wilson in 1912. So I'm going to say that Mike Trout breaks that record if he's doing the turn all your home runs into triples strategy, certainly. But probably if he's not doing that, if he's actually counting his home runs as home runs, then probably he could not. It'd be tough just from stretching and trying to advance. He'd have to adjust his whole batting approach. And even then, I don't know.

But technically, if he wanted to do it, it would be easy to do. It would just hurt his team quite a bit. He'd be like the new, the modern day Dave Orr. Right, exactly. Who we've discussed on this podcast before. All right. Another Mike Trout question. This is from Colin.

How much would it affect Mike Trout's value if he had to wear noise canceling Bluetooth headphones and the opposing team got to control the audio going into the headphones? They could play a loop of a song for three hours or shout into it at the most inopportune times or force him to play in complete silence or anything else what do you guys think this would do to trout's on-field ability god what would be the most distracting i would it be like playing

lou reed's metal machine music the whole time or something or would it just be like silence i guess it would be silence right because Because then you couldn't hear various context clues that you might need to hear, whether it's, I don't know, a fielder calling for a cutoff or another fielder calling for a ball saying, I got it. That would hurt him, perhaps, literally. There would be a lot you'd lose just not being able to hear, I think, and then interjecting occasional very loud and distracting noises into the silence at inopportune times. That seems to me like it would be the best strategy. Yeah, the important thing is to have absolutely no pattern to it.

You can't do anything that Trout can get used to. So whatever you're going to play has to be different or at least timed differently every single time now if you're talking about trout at the plate and he's trying to hit a pitch you have like what four tenths of a second within which to play some sort of sound and you could and he's going to start swinging around two tenths of a second into that or something so you have a narrow window but there's a lot of different noises you could play conceivably you could even if you wanted to run some repetitions and just try to analyze which sounds are the most effective against mike trout maybe you find out that he's particularly susceptible to like sound of children giggling or like an eagle screech or maybe you just play like the philadelphia eagles yeah yeah play like the team theme song and maybe he just gets distracted

but yeah i think ultimately the biggest problem would be him not being able to communicate with other defensive outfielders with his ears or his voice. I guess he could still use his voice, but he couldn't be able to hear any responses. Yeah. So then you're talking about real injury risk. I wonder if he's hitting, would it be effective at all to like play the sound of something sizzling by to make him think the pitch is faster? Would that make any difference? Yeah.

I mean, this would hurt him quite a bit. I think he'd still be a very good player, though. I think if you took away his hearing or just made him listen to loud, unpredictable noises, he'd still be really good. I think I'd still take Mike Trout pretty high up on my list. And he'd probably adjust to this over time, too. He'd somehow just develop coping strategies. So, I don't know, he'd learn to lip read or whatever, or he'd just develop better situational awareness. So he wouldn't need those clues quite as much. I guess Mike Trout would learn the same strategies and maybe would just manage to just attain some sort of Zen state where sounds can't distract him at the plate. So I'm going to guess he would get after a year or two of this, he would get almost as good as he would have been anyway.

But he'd certainly be affected for some time. affected for some time. Do you think Mike Trout would hit zero or more home runs in a full season if he had to do everything with Ronald Torres on his back? I don't think he could hit a home run with Ronald Torres on his back. I don't know. Ronald Torres is very small and we've seen, I've seen pictures of Mike Trout working out and running pretty fast with heavy weights on his shoulders. Probably didn't weigh much less than Ronald Torres, but I would think just the mechanics would be pretty severely affected by having another human on your shoulders. Could Aaron Judge hit a home run with Ronald Torres on his back? Yes.

Yeah, I think he would hit at least five. Yeah. All right. And last Mike Trout hypothetical. This is from Joseph. He says, when I was a kid, it was impossible to assemble enough friends for a full nine versus nine game of pickup baseball. Instead, we would play with the field cut in half.

There would be an imaginary foul line that ran from home plate to the second base bag or all the way through straightaway center. Any ball that landed outside the 45 degrees of fair territory would be foul. This way we could fill the field with fewer players. We would alternate pull side versus oppo side each time through the order. It was always a strategic decision in where to play your first baseman. Suppose in 2018, Mike Trout were required to take every at-bat in this constricted 45 degree slice of fair territory, but in this case with the usual number of fielders. The opposition could place their defenders wherever they wanted, bunching all seven degree slice of fair territory but in this case with the usual number of fielders the opposition

could place their defenders wherever they wanted bunching all seven fielders in the smaller area how valuable would mike trout be if forced to deal with this all season what minimum babbitt would trout need to stay above replacement levels oh man this wouldn't even be a babbitt question because this babbitt would be terrible it would just go into the crapper we're like talking under 100 almost certainly. I mean, definitely, definitely under 100. So Trout becomes just the premium only. He has to go all Ryan Schimpf and try to put every single thing in the air.

He would concentrate pull side, which he's done before. He's a good pull hitter. He would look in our half of the plate. He'd get pitched a lot like Brian Dozer or Jose Batista, where pitchers try to stay outside. So Trout would have to be more disciplined he wouldn't be able to really chase those pitches outside almost at all he seldom can pull those pitches with power but everything would be in the air he'd i don't know how many how many home runs would he end up with if the only thing that he could do was walk and hit home runs because otherwise he doesn't really have an alternative right and he has to be right to the pull side so i mean at a minimum i feel like he'd

be as good as like the old tony batista who is just an extreme pull hitter he had he's a more skilled player than brian dozer and brian dozer has been a good hitter hitting most of his power to the pull side so i think that he could still be an above average player even despite having to play with effectively twice as many defenders, if you want to think about it. I don't know. I think he could hit a lot more home runs. I mean, he'd also be more exploitable as a hitter because everyone would know that he's just trying to yank everything out. And so, I mean, I don't know, his batting average would be so low, both because he's trying to hit home runs and because of all the fielders. I just, I don't know if he could get on base often enough.

Like, I guess he would still walk a fair amount, right? Because pitchers would still respect his power. Although, like, if the bases are empty or something, I mean, you'd pitch to Mike Trout because, again, his odds of getting on base are going to be very low. I just, I don't know. Obviously, it still has some defensive value, still has some base running value, the rare time that he actually gets on base in a non-home run situation. But I just don't know that he could keep his on-base percentage high enough to be valuable. Playable, yeah, but good? I don't think so the highest pull rate for a qualified

player in the 16 years we have available it's oh tony batista 2003 tony batista what did tony batista do that year in 2003 tony batista was good for a oh no well his wrc Plus was 71. That's bad. What was his pull rate? His pull rate was 64%. Second place, 2004 Tony Bautista. Also, Moises Alou, Carlos Santana from 2014. Interesting. Brian Dozer, though, is the recent contemporary. In 2015, Brian Dozer pulled 60% of his batted balls, hit just 16% to the opposite field.

Is it 2015? Yeah. And that year, he had a 102 WRC+, as a lower power guy, whereas Trout is a higher power guy. Dozer struck out 21% of the time, walked 9% of the time. Trout would walk a bunch. He'd have to. We know he has a good eye.

He would strike out looking probably fairly often, and he would fall behind on the count. But remember, pitchers aren't that accurate trying to stay away. Pitchers make mistakes all the time, and Trout would be able to sell out for it. He'd hit so many home runs, but yeah, he'd have a lot of trouble. Yeah, I can't think of... Well, okay, there's clearly no actual comp for a player like this,

but you figure he still has his defensive value, he plays a premium position. I guess he loses his base running value because he would never really actually reach base except for when he walks so that would cease to be a positive for him but i think he could still be like a two maybe a three war player if he was really amazing which he is he's my trap yeah all right we can end i just want to end with a couple questions on economics. We got a ton of questions about the baseball market and financial structure responding to our episode with Jeff Passan last week. Thanks for all those thoughts. I didn't want to do a whole episode of questions about that. I'm not sure how entertaining it would be, but a couple that I think are interesting. So one, this is from, well, Joseph says, in the Jeff Passon interview, Ben mentioned the possibility of fan reactions changing if we knew what teams actually made. It's worth pointing out that the NFL actually has a version of this

because of the unique and now against the rules ownership structure of the Green Bay Packers. He wants to know if anything would change if, say, the Pittsburgh Pirates had a Packers-style ownership structure. And he also points out that the U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on monopolies looked into baseball's antitrust exemption in the 1950s, which gave the public a very rare, clear, complete, and objective look at the finances of baseball teams. But those finances were very different in the 1950s from what they are now. So Joseph's asking about open books, basically. And so is Brandon, who says, my question has to do with the essential issue you raised at the end. How do you make teams accountable for winning and trying to win?

The answer that keeps coming back to my head is that fans have to understand that losing teams make money. So maybe if I'm the Players Association, I change my tack entirely for the next CBA negotiation Give on an international draft Give on pace of play Give on drug testing Whatever else The sole and only demand Is that all 30 teams publicize audited financials

That meet requirements for publicly traded companies Transparency is hard to oppose anyway But if that's all you're asking It's even harder And it feels like that's the way to open the door on the other issues. Bob Nutting is really rich and makes money is a good rallying cry, but Bob Nutting made $32.5 million last year, and even if revenue stays flat, he could extend both McCutcheon and Cole and still turn a profit is a better one. Plus, it might be a better way to get a little additional support on the stadium funding and public subsidy side

with other actors asking for more transparency. So would it be a big change? Is it possible if Players Association made this their only goal? Can you imagine baseball owners actually opening their books? Well, okay, no. But let's say that this is part of the negotiation. So players would be giving away a lot of their own benefits in exchange for what? I guess essentially the benefit of increased public pressure on owners to spend because i don't know now the the point is good that this would alter conversations about publicly or privately financed ballparks presumably i think i don't know but teams would still make the same arguments that this is valuable to the city for you to have it

and this is an investment and you're going to get all this money from the neighborhood and etc the usual arguments that are generally hogwash to a large extent but i don't know what's the value of public pressure on an owner the public can't force an owner into a sale in that i mean jeffrey lori was owning the marlins for more than a decade and everybody hated him and everybody in the world hated jeffrey loria and he only i don't know what compelled him to sell the marlins but irey loria and he only i don't know what compelled him to sell the marlins but i feel like he just wanted out i don't think that he bowed to public pressure because why would 2017 have been any different from 2016 2015 2014 etc so i don't know what it would be worth and i'm also increasingly unconvinced that that many fans

would care beyond the fans who already care because i think if you have fans who care about how much ownership spends they all those fans already know that the owners are billionaires at least collectively they already know that they could spend more and so if you if you revealed what bob nutting actually made on the pirates of course that would embolden the fans who already hate bob nutting but otherwise you there's a large chunk of the population that would think, well, this is a business and they're being run like businesses. Businesses want to make money. So good for the businesses. So now I'm increasingly unconvinced or you could say decreasingly convinced that this would make that much of a difference at all.

Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, some owners obviously want to be liked more than Jeffrey Luria did. Maybe they bought a team because they want to be liked and popular and prominent. So I do think this would change maybe not all that feasible either. I'm not sure. Would owners give up the secrecy and privacy that they currently have in order to make more money? Maybe they would. They sure like making money. But I would not recommend this to Tony Clark, I don't think. When did Deadspin publish the Marlins books? Yeah, when was that? Let's see. Looks like it was 2010.

2010? Yeah. When in 2010? August. I guess it doesn't really matter. Okay, so the Marlins... The Pirates, too. Oh, great.

Well, that made no difference. So let's say they published the Marlins books in 2010, and what the Marlins did do in 2012 to coincide with when they introduced their ballpark is they spent a lot but in 2013 and 2014 the marlins payroll was effectively the exact same as it was in 2010 now payroll climbed since then it went from 46 to 69 to 74 to last year's 115 million dollars good for the marlins apparently that's not going to happen again but did not compel the marlins into spending a bunch more money maybe it maybe it helped compel major league baseball to keep a closer eye on the marlins but i doubt it i don't think it made that much of a difference in

and the pirates will you know didn't really turn bob nutting into a big spender i don't remember what the details were of that but to the pirates credit i guess you could say that in 2010 their payroll was 39 million dollars and it has gone up well it went up every single year until in 2016 it reached 100 million dollars that's uh it's a substantial investment took a step back last year uh clearly not about to go up again and there has been more money in the game just across the board so you know it's not fair to just look at flat payrolls but i stand by by the previous argument. Yep. All right. And Ross wrote in, this is more of a comment than a question, but it's informative. So I wanted to read this. He says, toward the end, Jeff Passan asked a question, why the hell does baseball operate in a system in which guys pass their best years,

generally speaking, are getting paid the most money? Here's an excerpt from Marvin Miller's autobiography, 1991, which at one point describes the lead-up to the 1976 free agency CBA. We, of course, should recognize the inherent bias of any autobiography, but I felt this section was simply instructive, so here's a paragraph from Marvin Miller. Initially, management had proposed in essence a 10-year service requirement, an inch down in the next four or five months to seven years, but management's view of the problem made their position uncomplicated. The owners wanted as few players as possible to become free agents. I wasn't entirely opposed to this. I didn't want so many free agent players as to flood the market. I had no doubt that my position was sound, but I agonized over the eligibility requirement. What would be likely to produce the optimal mix of

supply and demand? With no history of free agent movement to study, it was impossible to know which eligibility requirement would be best. I proposed four years. My feeling, and I stress feeling, was that five years would be better and that if the choice lay between four and six years, I would choose the latter. The owner's committee proposed six years.

I suggested five. However, as other essential parts of an agreement began taking shape, I agreed to the six-year requirement, provided we included the right of a player within five years of service to demand a trade to designate up to six clubs to which he would not accept a trade and to have the right to become a free agent if his club failed to trade him by march 15th so this system we have ended up with six years of service time before you become a free agent is uh i don't want to say arbitrary but it was something that he wasn't sure if he, I don't want to say arbitrary, but it was

something that he wasn't sure if he wanted or didn't want. And it was just kind of a negotiated process here. And as Ross says, we seem to operate in the system because of the legacy of the reserve clause. This system is what Marvin Miller wanted at the time. He wanted part of the reserve clause preserved. He didn't want the market flooded with free agents. Short term, probably a fair conclusion. Long term, maybe seriously harming free agency. So Ross says maybe Marvin Miller was wrong about this. Maybe decades later, the players are being punished in a sense for the system that was set up then. Obviously, they've been very richly rewarded in the interim here. But Ross's question, to the extent that he has one, is just what can be done. So the CBA is a few years away, but maybe it makes sense to start discussing the pros and cons of more significant changes, such as a lowering of the eligibility

requirement or adoption of a restricted free agent system. What needs to happen for a power shift within the union toward the younger, but less politically influential players and we've been talking about this obviously and i don't know i guess maybe what just needs to happen is what is already happening which is that those players have been a lot more productive and eventually they're going to get fed up and if the free agent market does stay slow in future years then players are going to realize that they're going to need to get theirs while they're still good. And eventually they will be putting pressure on the owners in that direction. So that is essentially what has to happen. I don't think it will be easy because this new system seems to be working out fairly well for owners, but I guess that is what has

to happen in order for this system, this long entrenched system to change. Agreed. I guess that is what has to happen in order for this system this long entrenched system to change agreed I guess the two sides aren't coming at this from the same angle where if you are a player and you talk about like a good young player signing a long-term extension and those extensions as we know are almost always team friendly players I'm not going to say they get screwed but they don't get market rates you think of like where Madison Bumgarner, Jose Altuve have been with the Giants of the Astros, and they've signed long-term extensions that from the team's perspective, they get cost certainty. They can know from a pretty good standpoint that you're getting a good investment here.

The team has a lot of money to spend, but from the player's perspective, you think, well, just getting your first millions of dollars is hugely critical for your quality of life. And so clearly, I think players can look at this collectively and say we're making less than we have before relative to what the teams are making and that's a problem but is that going to prevent say the next jake arietta contract that he signs with the cubs for a below market rate arietta now is not going to get what he wants in free agency probably and he can look back and say well maybe i should have gotten here sooner

maybe i shouldn't have signed a contract before. But also, that money was guaranteed tens of millions of dollars to Jake Arrieta, which, I mean, from a business standpoint, you're talking hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars. And you're just trying to make the best investments in every case as possible. You have different incentives. But from a player, you just want to support yourself and your family. And you're just less incentivized, I guess, to go after every single extra million dollars. And so I don't know how you bridge that gap unless, I mean, agents could stand to catch up. Maybe you're going to see fewer of these team-friendly extensions. Maybe players are going to find alternate sources of revenue. You can raise salaries in the minor leagues. You raise league minimum salaries. You fix arbitration. Maybe you talk about introducing

free agency after five years of service but then you have to increase revenue sharing probably so that you're not screwing over the smaller market teams it's complicated but i think at the core of this there's just that difference in incentives where if you can get a player five million dollars first five means a lot more than the second five yep all right it's time to start talking I just received a tweet about the old woman in the red cap Do you remember our discussion from last episode About the minor league free agent draft day player Manager named Charlie Pabor

Came up, 19th century player whose nickname on baseball reference Is the old woman in the red cap We were trying to find out why that would be the nickname of a baseball player There was one theory, Sam Unearthed That John thorne had come up with but here's a different one so this tweet is some research from a twitter account called baseball obscura at just underscore mckinney and someone a listener of this podcast asked that account why this player was nicknamed the old woman in the red cap and this twitter account dug into some old newspaper accounts and seems to have found what may be a convincing explanation here. So according to this tweet, the nickname appears to come from his longtime catcher, David Birdsaw.

So David Birdsaw played in the majors or, you know, what was technically the majors, the Boston Red Stockings from 1871 to 1873, but he'd been playing baseball for a while there. So the nickname appears to come from his longtime catcher, David Birdsaw, who caught Pabor for several years in the 1860s with the unions of Morrisania. Birdsaw was known as the old man, so Pabor became known as the old woman. Source, April 22nd, 1870, New York Tribune. And there is a screenshot here that I can't actually read all that clearly, but it seems that because they were a pitcher-catcher battery for years and Birdsall was the old man, then evidently Pabor became the Old Woman.

Although that wouldn't explain the red cap part necessarily, unless he actually literally had a red cap. But that's an alternative explanation, at least. So there's that. I got nothing to add. Five listeners who've already pledged their support include Scott Caruso, Andrew Perlman, Paul Jagerst, Brandon Erickson, and someone who goes by Jeevis. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. I've been saying for a while now that we've been approaching 7,000 members. We have now blown by 7,000 members. You can add to that total. You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes.

Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcastfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. We will be back with another episode later this week. It sets you free It sets you free It sets you free It sets you free It sets you free