Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1240: Make Some Noise

Episode Date: July 6, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the third-place Nationals and Wade LeBlanc’s extension, then answer listener emails about trading Bryce Harper, signing Bryce Harper, throwing super-slow pitches, a DH as the best player ever, hitting flares on purpose, losing games to set up a specific playoff matchup, John Olerud and the Hall of Fame, […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1240 of Effectively Wild, a FanGraphs baseball podcast brought Ludi Bean Power, I know that they've been in a slump, and I know that every team slumps, so the Nationals are fading a little bit, but I did not realize that when I looked at Roto World, just innocently looking, I glanced up at the top of the page and I saw Miami 7, Washington 0. Didn't know what sport I was looking at. Checked in, second inning, 7-0, Marlins over the Nationals. I know in the National League, none of the three teams that we expected to win the divisions are actually out in front yet. But I still kind of feel like it's just a matter of time for the Dodgers,

just a matter of time for the Cubs. I feel like they're still the pretty clear favorites. But the Nationals are actually in a lot more trouble than I've given them credit for so far. Have you looked at them at all? Well, I know that Travis Satchik wrote an article about the Nationals being in trouble on Thursday at Fangraphs, and so I'm aware that they're in trouble. I'm also aware that they had a closed-door meeting, the dreaded closed-door meeting, after their most recent loss, but it would appear that the closed-door meeting has not helped immediately if they're losing 7-0 to the Marlins as we speak yeah right they are i assume that you know everyone who's listening to this will be listening to this after the game is over maybe the nationals come back that would be fantastic for them and if they do so they will be

back to 500 but otherwise they will be 42 and 44 as i'm looking at the standings right now it's thursday evening we're five and a half behind the phillies who are in second place seven behind the braves who are in first i'm not saying the Nationals are going to trade Bryce Harper. I don't know what it would take for them to trade Bryce Harper. But there was no part of my brain that thought there was even a possibility that the Nationals would get to the middle of the season and be in position to be able to justify trading Bryce Harper. But you could make the argument pretty soon if they slumped for another week.

Well, we actually have a listener email on that very subject, which I will read very shortly. But they are, as we speak, seven games back of the Braves, and then they have the Phillies in between the two teams. And both of those teams are pretty good. That's the thing. Maybe true talent-wise, I don't know. Maybe they're not as good as the Nationals, and the Nationals are just having a bunch of things go wrong. But both of those teams are good. Neither one is super fluky.

They're talented and young and have had a bunch of people come up and be good. So it's not really one of those situations where an obviously inferior team gets out to a hot start, and then it's just a matter of can they hang on. It seemed like it might be that, but maybe these teams are actually as good or close to as good in which case it is hard to make up seven games over half a season and yet Juan Soto is 19 and he has a 158 OPS plus he somehow hasn't been I know that Daniel Murphy hasn't gotten back to speed and I know that Steven Strasburg is idling I know this team is is thinner than it ought to be. I know they've been playing a little too much Wilmer Defoe.

I know that they have Matt Adams and Mark Reynolds on this team. There's a lot going on with the Nationals. Matt Adams has played the outfield. No team that plays Matt Adams in the outfield deserves to be in the hunt. So in that sense, maybe credit to the Nationals for hanging around. But still, it used to be like the hunt so in that sense maybe credit to the nationals for hanging around but still uh used to be like uh didn't early may i i thought maybe the dodgers are the uh the early season favorite who were in the most trouble but no no they're not it's the nationals and they're in it

right now yeah yeah ryan zimmerman was bad and then has been hurt and you know they still have good players on this team like anthony rendon is his usual good self, and Trey Turner has been pretty good. Soto's been unbelievable, and Harper has been somewhat disappointing, which we can talk about in just a moment. But yeah, this is not great, because I think coming into the year, there was maybe a perception that the Nationals were kind of looking okay for the long term even though harper was entering his walk year that there were enough young guys such as soto coming up that you could imagine them kind of extending this run even though things were about to get much tougher with the braves getting good and the phillies getting good you could still kind of envision

the nationals continuing to compete but this this is bad. This is like Matt Williams' year bad, almost. I don't know whether it's worse to have this sort of season or to have yet another heartbreaking early playoff exit, but it looks like they're choosing between those two every year at this point, so not great. I know that Bryce Arbery, his numbers are down. I'm sure we'll talk about him again soon, but you know, his batting average on balls in play is very, very low. So it's easy to say, well, as soon as he gets that back, he'll be back to himself. I will point out that in June, Bryce Harper had a WRC plus of 87 and a pretty normal looking BABIP.

So Bryce Harper, not all the way back. He's had a bad start here in July. I don't actually know what's wrong. I don't think I've done a deep dive into him. What's probably wrong is not a whole lot. But still, you think about coming into the year, I know you already wrote your article about the pending free agent class, but boy, this is the complete opposite of what Bryce Harper needed to do. And all he's missing now is a DL stint. Yeah, yeah. So looking at the Fangraphs playoff odds, this is prior to this ongoing probable loss. But entering play on Thursday, they still had the best odds of winning the division, according to Fangraphs, and a 58% chance of making the playoffs.

So I don't know whether you buy that or not and think that maybe those odds are overrating them in some way. But that is a lot of ground to make up. that maybe those odds are overrating them in some way, but that is a lot of ground to make up. And you figure that the Braves and Phillies might be buyers at the deadline, might get better in some way. Maybe the Nationals will too. But yeah, for now, like the Cubs are not in first place, but they have 76% chance to win the division according to fan graphs right now. And the Dodgers are also not quite in first place as we speak they're half a game back but they have what 78 percent odds to win the division if anything that seems low to me now so nationals have come down quite a bit but according to the

playoff odds maybe there's still a better chance that they win this than not. I don't know. This is kind of the perpetual battle between believing the in-season results and believing the projections. And as you've shown repeatedly, usually better to believe the projections. Speaking of not believing the projections or maybe doing so, I don't know. Wade LeBlanc contract extension. We didn't talk about this, but this was definitely a press release. I didn't think that I would ever receive a Wade LeBlanc press release related to anything happening. Maybe if Wade LeBlanc put together some sort of artificial press release to announce a house party, and he was so desperate for friends, he invited me. But Wade LeBlanc, contract extension, Seattle Mariners.

He says it's life-changing money, which it probably is. I don't really know. But just the idea of a team making a commitment to Wade LeBlanc, it's not even a bad idea. He's done fine. And this is, I don't know, is canary in the coal mine the right expression here? But I have this sneaking suspicion, and we've talked about this before, but I'm waiting for baseball to turn against the high velocity,

or at least the highest possible velocity. And I need this guy. This guy is the guy that I need to be around for another 10 years or so. And you know what? To his credit, he's been real strong this season. He's been a good pitcher short of like one or two games. Glad to see him get extended. But, you know, you put him in the free agent market.

What does he get? Because I'll tell you what he gets. It's the nothing that he got last offseason when I think he was a free agent. Yeah, right. I mean, he'd get more than that that now but he's been everywhere and he's been bad almost everywhere until now so good for him good story i don't know exactly how it happened or how it is happening but evidently the mariners are confident that it will keep happening so good for wait will bonk so we're doing an email show and we don't have uh much in the way of fresh banter because you just heard it so let's do some emails you got them yeah i do so let's just start with the nationals questions i guess so this one is from colin and he asked this

i think months ago so it was more unrealistic then less unrealistic now but here's the question if we believe that postseason odds are not meaningfully altered by one hitter, should the Nationals not trade Bryce Harper for prospects at the deadline? Unless they are in a surprising division race, the value to them down the stretch from Harper will be minimal, assuming Robles can hack it at the MLB level. The choices are, one, let Harper walk in the offseason and pick up some picks. Two, trade Harper to someone who needs

outfielder dh help and spare him a qualifying offer discount on his way out cleveland boston new york if they have injuries seattle oakland all need outfield help nationals are going to lose in the nlds again anyway obvious clubhouse and fan revolt aside does this make sense from a pure nerd slash value angle okay so we've had the conversation about completely dismantling a juggernaut right after they win the world series that one's kind of fun but yeah this one okay this one i like now in theory okay so you if you keep harper you're a little bit better and then you get a some sort of compensation draft pick a high one because he's going to sign a big deal if you trade him because he's going to be a rental and certainly right now

with the way he's performing he's not like a even a man in machado level rental he's a guy where you i think that when we see machado traded and if we hypothetically saw bryce harper get traded fans are i think they're going to be surprised by how late the return package is so i think that you know if you're if you're looking to move somebody like harper then you're going to get a huge return two three years before his contract is up. But you move him now, I don't think that you're going to get like necessarily a franchise-changing player. But now I'm going to look past the part where we have fatalistically determined the Nationals are just going to lose in the NLDS. Because at that point, trade them all.

What does it matter? But who would you the indians i guess make the most sense maybe or the yeah or the astros if they aren't real settled and left field but gosh i mean robles is coming back he was hurt to start the season probably wouldn't have a one soda situation but you know you wouldn't have expected one soda to be better than bryce harper at this point in the season and and look where we are so we've never seen a good team subtract right it just it wouldn't make any sense closest we've seen was that the white flag trade which was not really that dramatic but I can't think of a single right good team that has ever subtracted because how would you

sell that no I I don't know I mean you could make the case that maybe the Nationalists need Harper down the stretch now even more than they would have before, in that before we would have assumed that they would make the playoffs. I mean, I don't know how much having Harper versus not having Harper, if he's even good, improves your odds of winning a five or seven game series. But over three months, if Harper is actually the good Harper, then he's worth a few wins potentially, and that could get you into the playoffs, which is valuable. So maybe now their odds right now, we just cited them, they're still decent according to the projections of winning this division. So you subtract Harper.

If you don't replace him with someone equally good, then those odds go down and that hurts you. But I just don't know how you could ever sell it to the clubhouse, to the fan base, to your manager, to all the personnel. I mean, it might make sense from a certain perspective, just in terms of expected future value versus present value in the very cold and clinical way that you look at it. But I don't know. If they're on the playoff bubble, then you could make the case that it's more valuable to them to make the playoffs than to trade him for prospects who probably will not be franchise-altering players.

It might be easier to sell it to the clubhouse than you might think. Okay, so put yourself in the place of one or two baseball executives. Let's say that you're in charge of the Nationals. You've got Bryce Harper, who's a very good player, a contract here, having a down season. And let's say the Indians are interested in Bryce Harper. The Indians have Andrew Miller, very good player, valuable, contract year, having a down season. And let's say the Indians are interested in Bryce Harper. The Indians have Andrew Miller, very good player, valuable in the playoffs, having a down season, contract year. If you're the Nationals, you're looking at the rest of this season and of the playoffs,

would you rather have Bryce Harper or Andrew Miller? Well, we've seen what a healthy and effective Andrew Miller can do in the playoffs. And I think that Andrew Miller is more valuable relative to his regular season self in the playoffs than Harper is relative to his regular season self. So I think probably if I were confident that Harper were going to be great Harper again, I'd rather have Harper. But at this point, I'm not. So it's pretty close probably it kind of depends on like what you need on your roster and maybe you could make the case that the Nationals need a shutdown reliever if that's what Miller is or will be more than they need an outfielder that'd be a fun who hangs up

Bryce Bryce Harper for Andrew Miller right now yeah and I I think i think it's absurd to say that the indians hang up but i don't know if it's so absurd because i just there's like winds of breath replacement hanging over my head but then there's also you know the rest of it right so yeah didn't think we'd end up here but this is where we are well here's another bryce harper question this is from a listener who goes by t he says sam once asked how much a player could get if he only took one year deals i think another Bryce Harper question. This is from a listener who goes by T. He says, Sam once asked how much a player could get if he only took one-year deals. I think he estimated that if one of the very best players

took one-year deals only, they could ask for $45 million or so per year. Maybe more than that. That was probably years ago. Bryce Harper's relative down year leaves open the idea that he could take a one-year deal or short-term with year-to-year opt-outs. How much could Bryce Harper get next year on a one-year deal? If, say, we were from the future and could look back and see Harper only took one-year deals and his war totals

fluctuated from average to superstar with some age decline, and if he retired at 38, how much would Bryce Harper have made in his career? So if Bryce Harper takes the pillow contract this year, he is a Scott Boris client. Scott Boris loves the pillow contracts. I can only imagine what sort of nautical analogies we will get when it comes to Bryce Harper this offseason. But if he decided to do that, and you could imagine it because he is coming off a very bad year as far as a platform or walk year. What would he get? Look, Bryce Harper is an oil tanker. And just because one oil tanker runs aground

and pollutes an entire coast of the state and some provinces, it does not mean that we should no longer ship oil by water. Most oil tankers don't run aground. They don't pollute the globe. They don't pollute the oceans. Most oil tankers serve a necessary function for a daily existence. I know that you don't drive, but you've got electricity that powers your computer. Everybody else drives.

I drive. My fiance drives. Most people drive, at least over here. People need oil. And just because Bryce Harper is having one disaster, it doesn't mean that the next Bryce Harper voyage is going to end up in... So what do you think he would get as a pillow contract this year? $25 million? One year?

At least, right? I think. That's if he went... I mean, there's still three months of the season left, right? So if you look at the projections, he's projected to do better in the next three months that he said for the first three. And he would end up a three and a half win player. So let's say he ends like that.

A three and a half war over full season. He stays healthy. But he's hitting below his career mark. He's hitting well below with his perceived ceiling. So I think he would be able to find $25 or $30 million over one year. I think actually without even tremendous difficulty. Teams love signing one-year contracts. I think now teams would also like to have someone like Bryce Harper

for longer than that. But okay, so we'll say 25 or 30. Well, just 25 is easier. Well, maybe it's not, but we're still doing it. So we'll say 25 this coming winter, and then he's going to be going into his age 26 season, and he's probably better than this right yeah i i think that this is not the real version of bryce harvard now i i think the ship is somewhat sailed on his

nine war seasons he's uh he's not mike trout no one is mike trout mookie betts isn't mike trout only mike trout is mike trout what sort of ship would that be mike trout the ship is that the oil tanker is that a different oh? Oh, the ship that sailed? Yeah. Do oil tankers sail? Do you need to sail the sail? No, I don't think so. No?

I'm not speaking metaphorically. No, I think you can sail with just an engine. Okay. I guess I don't actually know that. Well, if anyone out there is a sailor or a mariner. Well, that's got words. So Bryce Harper would have 13 more seasons. I was supposed to do all this math on the fly on a podcast.

Yeah, that's a tough ask. Okay, well, hold on. Okay, so let's say 13 seasons times, we'll just use as a baseline, 30 million average. So that takes him up to 390 million. Now, he would make more than that because of inflation. But toward the end of his career, he would be getting worse. So I'm going to start. I'm going to put it at around 500 million.

Do you take the over or the under? This is including what he's made already? I mean, he hasn't made that much already, right? No, I don't know. But I didn't consider that. Yeah. I'll take the over. All right.

Well, in 14 years, we're going to come back and look at this podcast and we're going to determine. Okay. Sail, by the way, to sail, to move along or travel over water is at least one definition of sail. It doesn't specify that there needs to be a sail involved. I feel like there does need to be a sail involved. Okay. You're just a literalist when it comes to the word sail. All right.

Question from Joseph, Patreon supporter. Considering the AL playoff bracket, should the Astros consider purposefully being a little worse in terms of record than the Yankees and Red Sox, but still good enough to win their division? Assuming the best record in the AL comes out of the AL East, then both of those powerhouses would have to face off in the division series the astros first round matchup would be easier and they would only have to win four games against the yankees or red sox to get to the world series they would lose out on home field advantage in the alcs but that seems like the only downside no they shouldn't purposely tank in order to get a more favorable playoff matchup you're saying

i thought this was just gonna end end up, you know, like, hey, the Indians are up 11.5 games on the Tigers. Should the Indians consider trading Francisco Lindor for prospects and relievers? No, I mean, for one thing, the Astros are still trying to win their division. I know that they're a great deal better than the Mariners, but you can't give away games at this point. So definitely can't do that. And in the playoffs, things just get

so different. You don't want to give up home games and opposing rosters just don't resemble their regular season selves. Everybody is extremely good in the playoffs. And I don't think any team would ever pick its opponent in this kind of scenario. All right. Colin from Virginia says, I've been thinking about John Ulrud and the Hall of Fame recently. Ulrudod was a quietly productive player during his 16 full seasons, 1990 to 2005, roughly 60, baseball reference war and fan graphs were, which is an average war per season of about 3.6, even though he didn't receive a lot of MVP or all-star consideration. He was on the Hall of Fame ballot once in 2011. That year he received

0.7% of votes, which seems laughably low for someone with his credentials. Former teammate Joe Carter, for example, received 3.8% of votes in 2004, and he has fewer than 20 career wins above replacement. So here are my questions. First, has anyone with as many career wins above replacement as Ulrud received so few Hall of Fame votes? Second, why was Ulrud so underrepresented by Hall of Fame voters? Finally, should Ulrud receive Veterans Committee Hall of Fame consideration if a case exists for Ulrud? What is it? I would love for there to be a case for Ulrud because John Ulrud was my first favorite player. I can tell you, looking at John Olerud's fan graphs page, there's a post linked from January

8th, 2010 by Jack Moore titled John Olerud's Hall of Fame case. So there's an article that's out there for people interested to read it. I think it's pretty easy to look at Olerud. And I don't know exactly what the Hall of Fame voting pool is going to look like down the road, but I know with a lot more clarity what it has looked like. And John Olerud is a first baseman who didn't hit for a lot of power, and his game was drawing more walks than he struck out. So his game was contact and singles and doubles. And that's just not, it hasn't been an appealing profile for a Hall of Fame player. And now I don't think that John Olerud had a, he was close, but I don't think he had a Hall of Fame career

by my own standards, but he was a very, very good player. He should have probably gotten a little more support than he did, but he just didn't hit any of the thresholds that you would have expected from someone who was already in the Hall of Fame. Whereas if John Olerud had the exact same career

in 10 years or even just having it right now, and he was able to have different people voting him, I think he would have stayed on the ballot more than a year. It's a little bit like a first base version of Chase Utley, I guess. Yeah, I was trying to think of guys who might have gotten even less Hall of Fame support despite being as good or better. And the obvious ones that I thought of first, guys like Kenny Lofton, Bobby Gritch, Jim Edmonds, those guys actually did get a little more support than Ulrud did. See, Edmonds got 2.5% of the vote. Lofton got 3.2%. Bobby Gritch, 2.6%.

So lots of guys in that range who really should have had more support and didn't get it. And Ulrud, I loved watching Ulrud. He was really great. When I first got into baseball, the Blue Jays were really good. And so I kind of focused on the Blue Jays. And I was briefly like a Blue Jays follower just because I was very young and very bandwagon. And John Ulrud was cool. And John Ulrud hit.363 in 1993. And John Elrood was cool. And John Elrood hit 363 in 1993.

And he was third in MVP voting. And he had the sweet lefty swing. And then I got to see him when he came to play in New York a little bit at the end of his career with the Yankees. And before that with the Mets, of course, you saw him, great fielder, just a really good all-around player. But going by Jaws, at least, the Hall of Fame standards, he's a bit below the average first baseman in the Hall of Fame. I'm sure he is considerably better than some Hall of Fame first basemen. So if you want to make that case, you can always find someone who probably shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame

and say, well, he's better than that guy. So I'm sure he passes that test. But he's not on the top of the list say, well, he's better than that guy. So I'm sure he passes that test, but he's not on the top of the list of snubs, guys who should be in who aren't in, but I am generally in favor of more appreciation for John O'Rourke. How many seasons from now going out, how many seasons would Albert Pujols have to play before his war drops under John O'Rourke. There's a difference of about 40. Yeah. Pujols is in positive territory this year, right? Barely, maybe. Is that true? One second. Had a little bit of a hot streak and maybe got into negative 0.2. Yeah. Okay. Well, all right then. So I don't know. Probably he'd have to play

what, 10 years if he were playing first base every day because uh the latter half of those years would be like a negative four five kind of war season probably yeah no I'm trying to find any sort of other players who didn't get a whole lot of support but like even Greg Nettles stayed on the ballot for four years Andrew Jones got seven percent support so yeah Olerud's just kind of out there. I'm not going to say he's all by himself, but he just did not have a very appealing case, which is too bad because John Olerud

was a whole lot of fun. And I think that if you can imagine a less charismatic Joey Votto, there's elements there. It would be fun to have Olerud around right now. Yeah. All right. Mark says, Hey, Ben and Jeff. That's us. Joey Votto, there was Elements there, it would be fun to have all of it around right now Yeah, alright Mark says, hey Ben and Jeff That's us, Ben lamented

Trout's time as a DH a few weeks back Because of its impact on his war Which made me think, how good Would Trout have to be this year to maintain His historic war pace if he were Permanently a DH Is there a path for a DH to achieve 14 or 15 war?

Fortunately, Mike Trout is back in center field, which is nice, but he did have, what, 10 days or so there where he was DHing and not hitting particularly well, and maybe that will be what ends up preventing him from getting the all-time single-season war record. But, yeah, how good would you have to be as a full season dh to challenge that record you would have to be gosh double berry ponds or something i don't know yeah there would be a way to run these numbers but it would take me too long to actually

do right now but you would basically okay so if you're a dh and you're looking at this we're gonna we're gonna pretend that trout is just an average defensive center fielder so there's no extra value there right so then the difference would be the positional adjustment which over 600 plate appearances i think it is the positional adjustment for war for center fielders is plus 2.5 runs and for a designated hitter it's minus 17.5 so there's a 20 run difference between center field and dh so essentially you would need mike trout to have a 14 war mike trout season except plus 20 more runs of value at the plate so that can come from a variety of areas whether that's like oh what like 15 more home runs or just a bunch more singles

and doubles. Can't get hurt. It's tremendously difficult. I'm trying to figure out the best ever season by a DH, but like even what, David, I think Eddie Martinez topped out around eight or nine when he was a player. I mean, if Bonds had had a full DH season at his offensive peak, so what was that, 2002, I guess, was his highest WRC plus. He had a 244 WRC plus that year. He ended up at 12.7 war in 143 games, and that was as a left fielder. That was as a left fielder. Okay, that's it. I am typing on a calculator on the podcast. So here's what we're doing. In 2002, according to Fangraphs, we're going to round some numbers here.

In 2002, according to Fangraphs, Barry Bonds was worth 126.8 runs above replacement. So here's what we're going to do. He was a perfectly average left fielder that year, which makes things easier for us, maybe. Yeah. Well, now let's take that away. So I'm going to subtract from his value minus 4.3 runs of fielding value, but I'm going to add back in 6.3 runs of positional. Just, okay, just bear with me here. Now I'm just going to subtract the DH penalty here.

So I'm going to do that. I'm just going to do it. Okay. So he comes out there's like 11.2 war just about so he loses a win and a half or something like that so that's 2002 barry buns a little over 11 war as an everyday dh so is that with his actual games played total from that year played 143 yeah so if he had played 20 more games or 162 games, maybe he gets there. Okay.

We have to prorate everything. Get your calculator back up. Let's prorate everything out there. He's close to 13 war. So Barry Bonds, if he played every single game in 2002, he could have been a 12.5 to 13 war designated hitter. So all Mike Trout would have to do is be the absolute best offensive version of the absolute best offensive player that ever there

was in the planet and then do that every single game that year barry buns walked 32 percent of the time and he struck out less than a quarter of that yeah so he'd need to do that and maybe somehow play 10 more games or be even a little bit better than Barry Bonds was that year to get to 14 or 15 more. So you could do it if you were better than the best player ever at hitting. Yes. Okay. All right. Question from Tony.

Every once in a while, a gif will circulate of an Ephus pitch rolling in around 62 miles per hour for a called strike. This got me wondering how slow a pitch could be and still get called a strike. At some point, the deception of a huge change in speed is lost because the hitter who misidentified the pitch initially is able to reevaluate it and swing accordingly. For example, a 30 mile per hour pitch is probably slow enough that an MLB-quality player could get multiple reads on it as it comes to home plate, so excluding knuckleballs, what is the slowest called strike of all time? Also, why don't more below-average velocity pitchers add a very slow pitch to make their 91 mph fastball look faster? So I will say I tried to look up the slowest called strike. It's pretty much impossible to do just because of data errors, essentially. So if you search for the slowest called strikes on there, but most of them are from years where we can't easily look up video. So it's really pretty impossible to say what the slowest called strike on record is. It's probably in the low 50s or something, I'm guessing.

There was probably like a really slow curve that was thrown at some point, maybe mid 50s. I don't know. Yeah, probably. Probably Zag Rankier of Ascente Padilla has thrown one of those, maybe mid-50s. I don't know. Yeah, probably. Probably Zag, Ranky, or Vicente Padilla has thrown one of those, at least one of those. Yeah, there is a, I should try to look this up, but I think there's like a theoretically slowest pitch you could throw, right? Because you have to throw the pitch at a certain speed just to get it to home plate. And I think that people have maybe done that calculation, but you can't just

throw pitch 10 miles per hour or something. It may not, I mean, it might bounce and roll there, but I think to get it into the strike zone, you would actually need to throw it a certain speed. There is a minimum. Maybe we can find it. Well, I found a, uh, I found a Quora, Quora.com. It's, it's basically, it looks like a dressed up Yahoo answers but anyway, there's somebody who left a comment who claims to have a BS in physics from MIT, which is almost like having an advanced degree. So he says

the slowest you could throw the ball from the mound to the plate is about 28.5 miles per hour. So I'm not going to read his explanation, I'm just going to take that as fact. Okay, it's either a BS in physics or BS physics. I don't know which, but we'll accept that it's true. So yeah. So why don't more guys throw an Ephus and like a genuine Ephus, not what people today call an Ephus, which is just kind of any slow pitch, but the Ephus is like the real lob,

the real floater. But I guess it's just because it's probably somewhat distracting to the pitcher, just as it is to the hitter. You have to do something completely different, and guys like to get in a rhythm. There's probably also a macho bravado element to it in that you don't want to look like you have to throw a trick pitch to get the guy out. You want to throw your best stuff and challenge him and win like you're a couple of animals locking horns in some battle. But I think that's probably what it is. And also it's just hard to camouflage that that kind of pitch is coming if you haven't practiced it.

And even if it is a big change of pace as the question says it's probably something that a great hitter could detect if it's very clearly telegraphed yeah i mean you can't throw an ephus with your regular arm action it's just impossible if you throw an ephus with your arm action you're just throwing a regular pitch that's that's like a we call that a change up so what uh what you'll see generally when someone says the word efas now what they mean is the pitcher threw a slow curve a few pitchers will throw a slow curve but otherwise yeah i guess it's for one thing i i agree with your your macho angle for quite another i think it's just hard you're so accustomed to trying to throw the pitches that you throw into the zone and you're you're trying to know your mechanics and i think that if you actually slow things down and you go out of your normal mechanics and you're you're just actually trying

to throw a lob i think it pictures would actually quite find it quite a bit more difficult to do that accurately so then you're just not only throwing a change of pace but you're probably throwing a ball plus there's the enhanced risk of the batter knowing that you're clearly telegraphing something slow and just looking to swing from the heel so i think that there there's a variety of issues here but when you have a pitcher who's used to throwing 93 on the black then when you ask him to throw 48 on the black then he's he's just going to be all worse for wear yeah all right you have a stat blast several okay oh they're quick. So we did, I did a few quick ones here. We got a reader email a short while ago that was talking about how Mike Trout was drawing

a lot of walks after Fallen Behind 0 and 2. Ah, yes. It's an unusual circumstance to draw a walk. So Mike Trout has already drawn 10 walks after falling behind 0-2 in the count. He's batted 69 times after falling behind 0-2. 10 walks is a lot. So we only have pitch information, like pitch count information, going back to 1988. The highest walk total in a season after falling behind 0-2 is 15.

It's a tie between Jose Bautista and Tim Salmon. So we have a fish thing going on. But if you were curious about walk rate, the highest walk rate after falling behind 0-2 is 17% belonging to 2009 Chipper Jones. So he walked 17% of the time. That's

11 walks in 64 played up years. Mike Trout right now is at 14%, which is high. It about ties him with a Barry Bonds season. This is kind of a fun top of the list here. We go Chipper Jones, Barry Bonds, Bill Miller, Lance Berkman, Jack Clark, Barry Bonds, Mike Trout, JT Snow, Elijah Dukes. Elijah Dukes, do a bunch of walks.

Anyway, I will also say, pointing out quickly, that if you want to really get into the play index and play around with after 0-2 count SOps plus there's really no way to shorten this i will only say this to point out that currently mookie bets is having the best ever season after falling behind oh and two his sops plus after falling behind oh two is 418 he's batting 347 his on base percentage is 396 he's slugging.776. Mookie Betts has been extremely good. Third place currently, Miguel Andujar.

Nothing to make of that. I have more. I'm still going. That question was from Brian, by the way. Thank you, Brian. Thank you. I forgot to say the name. So something I think I mentioned briefly last season is that for a time,

the Colorado Rockies actually had a higher winning percentage on the road than they had at home, which was weird. It didn't end up that way. It doesn't. It just doesn't do that. If you look at the full history of the Colorado Rockies, 25 seasons through last year, 24 times they finished with a higher winning percentage at home. The one exception was the strike-shortened 1994 season, when their winning percentage at home was 28 points worse than it was on the road. Well, this season, the Rockies are 18-22 at home, and 26-21 on the road. The winning percentage difference is 103 points, or 10.3%, however you want to call it. They have a 4.50 winning percentage at home, 5.53 on the road.

Their historical winning percentage difference home, 553 on the road. Their historical winning percentage difference is 0.142. They have won 54% of the time at home. They've won just 40% of the time on the road. So right now, again, we're just past the halfway mark of the season, but the Rockies have been more successful away from home than they've been at home, which is weird for all the same reasons I said last year. This is a team that has the biggest home field advantage in all of baseball. And as the final thing I will point out related to that, when you hear about home field advantage in baseball, where do you put it? What's your home team winning percentage usually? You know, 54%? Yeah. Something around there? Yeah. Historically, it's been around 54%. In fact, last season, it was exactly 54%. All right. This season,

In fact, last season, it was exactly 54%. All right. This season, home teams, we're through nearly 1,300 games. And the home team so far, they've won more than half of them, but their winning percentage is just 51.8%. This is very low. This is the lowest home winning percentage since the strike-shortened 1994 season when they won 51.7% of their games so it's uh it's been a long time since we've seen home teams quote-unquote struggle like this before there was a stretch back in the

aughts in the 20s even in the 40s when the home teams were winning about 51 percent of the time every so often but right now home teams are having their worst performance they've had in about 25 years i have absolutely no explanation for this. Might just be the Rockies. Could be any number of things. Could be nothing. Still have to let the second half play out. But for now, home field advantage in baseball for, as far as I can tell, no reason.

His half disappeared. Yeah, there was someone in the Facebook group who was tracking that early in the year and posted about it a few times. And most people said probably a small sample or probably it's an uneven distribution of home games. Maybe bad teams have had more home games disproportionately this early in the season, but it is still happening to an extent. So kind of curious, but since it's not a trend, really, it's not as if home field advantage has been declining gradually over a period of years. I don't know why it would be, and it probably won't be.

So, or if it is, it probably doesn't mean that much, but it is kind of quirky and interesting. Yep. All right, let's continue. This is from Cameron.

A ton of guys gather base hits from balls that aren't really hit hard. These balls are flares, where exit velocity is something around 70 to 90 miles per hour and some launch angle right above the infield but not too high where it's a pop-up. Do you consider this a skill? Usually we classify high exit velocities as a skill because not a ton of guys can do it, but there are players who consistently hit these flares and accumulate a batting average from that. Can you work on those skills? So you can work on your content. I think this is one of those things where it's fast players, right?

Like you look at Dee Gordon, and he's been, I don't know, roughly an average hitter over the course of his career. And he doesn't hit the ball hard at all. But he clearly has some sort of skill that makes him a better hitter than, say, Billy Hamilton, who doesn't hit the ball any any harder i think it comes down to a matter of bat control i don't think you can necessarily learn flares but you can learn to spray the ball and i think this is where spray hitters are able to post higher than usual batting averages on balls in play so alan nathan has this concept that he calls the donut hole which is like this area in between bad outcomes that can be a good outcome. So he has explained it, if you have a 22 degree launch angle, for instance, then 70 miles per hour is good because it just clears the infield and it falls in. Whereas say 90 miles per

hour is just a lazy fly ball and even softer than 70, it's not even going to make it out of the infield. And of course, if you hit it really hard, if you hit it 110, it's a homer. But if you hit it 70, just that right amount, right? The Goldilocks zone there, it will fall in. And so I don't know whether that's something you can train to do. Like, I'm sure that some guys just do it naturally more often but if you were trying to do it then you would probably be precluding the possibility of hitting that 110 mile per hour ball that you really want to hit so i don't know like if you

can't hit the ball that hard if your max is 90 or something i mean i don't know if anyone's max is 90 but if you're generally not hitting triple digit exit speeds maybe you're better off just aiming for that donut hole and just trying to dunk a bunch of balls in in the middle i don't know whether any players intentionally set out to do that though and of course if your if teams find out that you're a guy who just can't hit the ball hard and you're always hitting a bunch of flares then they will adjust their defense to account for that right so one fun thing you can do on the the fangraph splits leaderboards is you know that their baseball info solutions classifies every battered ball as soft medium or hard and one thing i was able to do just now is look at the the

leaders in soft balls hitting so just isolating all the balls grouped as soft contact so i'm looking over the last three years or I guess two and a half years, with a minimum of 100 batted balls classified as soft contact. The league leader in WRC Plus for soft contact, maybe unsurprisingly, is Jose Altuve, but he's at 45. That's not good. The top five is Jose Altuve, Brandon Belt, Chris Bryant, Dee Gordon, Adam Eaton, followed by Rajai Davis, and oh, look at that, Mike Trout.

And at the very bottom, very unsurprisingly, last place, Kendries Morales, with a WRC plus of negative 86 on soft contact. When Kendries Morales hits the ball soft, he might as well turn around and go back to the dugout. So there's a hint of a skill here, and I think it requires that you make pretty good contact. Or maybe if you're just a power hitter

and you're able to make sure that the outfield if you're maybe you have to be a power hitter who has high max power ability but you also make enough contact such that you put weak balls in play it's just easier to say no probably not no, it seems like the sort of thing where if you actually tried to do this, you would probably screw yourself up and never hit balls hard, and ultimately it would be counterproductive, even if you did manage to hit more of these things. So it's kind of one of those things where when it happens, it's nice and fortuitous, but it's usually sort of an accident.

Yeah, I think it's like when they say that if a hitter changes a swing to try to hit against the shift, then you've won yeah it's one of those things now granted you know bunt but right that's that's a different conversation yeah all right michael patreon supporter this one's actually kind of statplasty but he asked if it could be play indexed it was from a reddit thread and it asked who is the player with the most RBI in a career against one team. Michael says he would love to know the answer, and I now know the answer, so I can tell you and Michael. So here are the leaders against each franchise.

I'm not going to go through all 30, but I'll just give you the top five. You will not be surprised by most of them. Number five, Babe Ruth against the Athletics, 323 RBI. Number four, Babe Ruth against the athletics 323 rbi number four babe ruth against the orioles 326 rbi number three babe ruth against the white socks 331 number two babe ruth against the tigers 342 number one not babe ruth mel ott mel ott against the phillies 343 RBI, just topping Ruth against the Tigers. So Mel Ott against the Phillies, that is the most RBI that any one player has against any one franchise. If you want to know the fewest, it is the Diamondbacks RBI leader or versus the Diamondbacks. That is Todd Helton, who has 138 RBI against the Diamondbacks.

That is Todd Helton, who has 138 RBI against the Diamondbacks. And actually, the Mariners one, I'm kind of surprised the Mariners one is next here because that's kind of weird, right? Because the Mariners have been around so much longer than like the Rays, for instance. But the Rays, number 20 on the list, the Rays, because it's David Ortiz has 178 RBI against the Rays. The Mariners, though, are second to last. So Rafael Palmeiro has the most RBI against the Mariners with 143. And yet the Mariners have been around for 40-plus years,

and the Rays have been around for 20 years. That's kind of weird, right? That is weird. No player has more RBI against the mariners than david ortiz has against the rays i mean i guess it's just kind of a quirk of i don't know for one thing they were in a division with four teams for a while but if anything you'd think that would make it more likely for one player to accumulate rbi against them or maybe it's just that they haven't had david ortiz who's been with one team in

their division for a really long time is that possible like they just you know the a's are always trading their good players for instance so they're not going to have someone who really racks up a ton against one team maybe but they haven't been doing that for 40 years it's strange but true evidently so what's wild is so i i first started doing any of this i was participate on the mariners espn message boards back around the turn of the millennium and what i remember was back in the day and this is as far as i know like before baseball reference before knowing anything about baseball and people swore by the fact that you know every every team's fans have that like oh nobody kills us quite like this guy on the other team, you know, like Giants fans with Paul Goldschmidt or whatever.

But Mariners fans swore no one hits us quite like Rafael Palmeira. He just kills us for some reason, and wouldn't you know it? They're right. Sorry for being so critical, message board people. All right. Well, I'll link to a Google Doc I have of all of these leaders if you're curious about the guy who has killed your own team. But, yeah, some strange quirks

On there but Melot top of the list Can't swing a dead cat without Hitting a Phillies fan who's just furious at Melot Just never giving them a break yeah All right question from Jared I went to the Los Angeles Angels parentheses of Anaheim Question mark nope versus

Blue Jays game on June 21st At Angel Stadium. This just happened to be Mike Trout's thousandth game, and he went 0-2 with three walks, one intentional. I, too, would be scared of pitching to him. Anyway, sporadically throughout the game, the Jumbotron would flash the big make noise image, and the crowd would muster up a meager cheer. Angel Stadium was only about two-thirds full on a warm Thursday night. Typically, these pleas to show enthusiasm happen at logical times. Men on base, ninth inning, close game, etc. However,

the Angel Stadium scoreboard operator decided to plaster make noise across the stadium with two outs in the bottom of the fifth and a 2-1 count to Andrelton Simmons. The bases were empty and the Angels were leading 6-3. This did not seem like appropriate timing. My question is, when is it appropriate for the Jumbotron operator to artificially pump up the crowd during a game? My first thought is that this should be tied to something like leverage index.

This at bat had a leverage index of.18, according to Fangrass, the lowest leverage for an Angels at-bat up to that point of the game. Surely the bar must be set higher. Perhaps a leverage index greater than one? Even then, you'd be including a lot of near-average moments. This Simmons at-bat followed a home run by Louis Valbuena. Does this context influence the use of the jumbotron message or perhaps win expectancy should be considered the angels had a win expectancy of 87.4 percent

following the valbuena homer so what is the the proper use of make noise i think it is tied to leverage but that's also it's something that the they'll put up on the scoreboard when the fans should already know to make noise in the first place. But here's what I like about this. Okay, what if you go to an Angels game, whatever. It's like a Tuesday night in September. They're out of the race. Or even they're in the race.

I don't know. I don't care. The entire game, scoreboard never changes. It just says make noise. It's everywhere. Everywhere around this game just says make noise. Nothing changes. Maybe there's one of those fake decibel meters or something.

It's constantly exhorting the fans, make noise. Make noise the Nothing changes. Maybe there's one of those fake decibel meters or something that just, it's constantly exhorting the fans, make noise, make noise the entire time. And how long would the fans do it? Because I mean, you know, it would never work, but if it worked, look at that, presto, you got an ambience. Yeah. Did you ever believe the fake decibel meter? I definitely believe. Yes, I still wonder if it's connected to anything. I know. It should be. Someone should have a real one. But yeah, I mean, I kind of object to the whole concept of the make some noise message because as you're saying, if it is a moment when noise is warranted, you should know that

without having the scoreboard tell you to clap. It's like a laugh track during a bad sitcom or something. I mean, you should know that you have to cheer or clap at the appropriate time. So yeah, I think that's sort of silly. I mean, you could make the case that this is when the scoreboard needed to flash the make some noise because no one would be making noise at this moment. It would just be dead. Maybe you just flash it at the lowest leverage index point just so it's not depressing.

What a great way to we know how the scoreboards usually use this and it's the conventional way to do it. I love the idea of just putting it on at literally complete random, even like during plays, you just put it up there because the scoreboard itself doesn't make noise. You could probably

do it. Yeah. Because you can't play music during the play, but if you just put a message up that just says like make noise here comes like some rookie reliever making his debut or it's just like a a three and one count pitch in the sixth inning and it's like the pirates playing the second game of a doubleheader against the royals and you're just like you know what i just want to see what they do just make noise if you make it at random uh you know the best thing to do and this is impossible but if you could somehow cue the fans without putting it on the scoreboard so the players are just like what you make it at random, you know, the best thing to do, and this is impossible, but if you could somehow cue the fans without putting it on the scoreboard so the players are just like, what the

hell is happening? But that would require maybe some smartphone activation, which actually you could do. Yeah. Maybe we should talk to someone in the scoreboard department, find out how they go about deciding when to put, make some noise up. Maybe there's some sabermetric scoreboard operator that is actually looking at real-time leverage index and win expectancy, and it has to actually clear that threshold in order to press the button, put the make some noise up there, but probably not. I'm sure they're all going by feel and gut, and probably they have some finely honed sense of when it's time to make some noise. we at least now know of the one Corporate operator who's not Sabermetric right all right Kiefer says

One question I've always wondered is say A cheap team like the Marlins wanted to Save money this is starting off very Far-fetched here Kiefer how detrimental Would it be to fire all area scouts and Cross-checkers and conduct the draft Purely based on online prospect lists and Keith Law's draft boards, or even the board at Fangraphs, courtesy of Kylie McDaniel and Eric

Longenhagen. Would the savings perhaps allow for more spending in the international market, assuming they don't go to their limit, which would compensate for maybe having slightly less fruitful drafts? I've always thought, with how good independent companies like BP and Fangraphs have become at evaluation, teams could just use those lists this would have the added benefit of guaranteeing positive ink following the draft and a plus draft ratings by keith law in major publications buying an otherwise maligned ownership group good press well okay so i guess the one thing you could say is that whoever is doing this in the public, they're not doing this like 10,000 players deep. So like when you get to like the seventh round, you got no one who's on any sort of board.

You're just picking players at random. Now, the counter to that is in the seventh round, you might as well be picking players at random because I've heard from enough people who work from teams who have been through the draft process a few times and they're just like, yeah, no, just throw a darts. Because honestly, some teams have done this such that it's almost all automated. They almost draft like you drafted for the Stompers. Like they just have sheets up. They have data.

You know, like the first round, the first several picks, you have a lot of information because that's where the real pretty well understood value is. You know, the top 5, 10, 15 players that are going to be drafted but after that it just gets so random so fast that i'm not saying that a team should stop having anyone who knows anything about drafting but i mean the downside here is there's not a lot of money to be saved because these people aren't like super highly paid especially the scouts like you yeah you trim them off the payroll and no one's even going to notice. That's just like maybe cutting one major league minimum roster spot. But you could draft without knowing much. Very honestly, you wouldn't be great, but you would take a long time for anyone to find out you were worse than average.

Yeah, I mean the prospect rankings that you see at Baseball America, for instance, are kind of the industry consensus, I would say. Like they're formed in many cases, especially at Baseball America. There are many people at BA who collaborate on those rankings and all of those people are talking to sources with teams and checking these rankings out. So in a sense, it's kind of like a blend of what those people think and what people with teams think. And it probably wouldn't be all that different from the average draft board of a team, I would think. Maybe in some cases, like if teams are looking at spin rate and a bunch of data that we don't have access to, there are probably some pretty big differences there. But if you looked over a certain amount of time, I'm sure there would be a number of teams who would have been better off drafting based on the public rankings just because you're always going to get that.

It's so random. There's so much chance and fluctuation there that I don't know whether the industry, the public rankings would be like the median team outcome. Like, I don't know whether half of teams would be better and half of teams would be worse. I would guess that probably more than half of teams would be better than the publicly available, but I don't know. Cause it's kind of like a wisdom of crowds approach when you have a bunch of people producing these rankings and also checking them with many

people inside front offices. It is kind of like, you know, you're probably not going to get the real guys who are undervalued because you're talking to every team. And so the consensus is going to be that these guys are not that great. And so you're probably going to miss out on some gems there that like one team is on or two teams are on and everyone else isn't. So that's a problem. But on the whole, yeah, I'm sure you could do a lot worse than going with those publicly available ones. Yep. The problem is that there's just no incentive to do this really, because yeah, as you're saying, these employees don't make all that much. And also, there's just really no hard spending limit on baseball operations departments at this point, just from talking to people as I've been working on the book with Travis, and we've been talking about all the new sources of data and technology and everything. when it was hard to get spending approved. If you wanted to buy some new system or hire some new R&D people,

you had to get that past ownership and it wasn't easy to do. But now that draft spending is capped and international spending is capped, there just aren't that many places you can spend. And so if you want to win and you're willing to spend, then you're going to go get a bunch of scouts. It's what we talked about on the last episode with Sal and the Phillies.

They just hired 17 international scouts over the offseason because why not? So I just don't see any real argument for doing this. Look out for the Washington Nationals who fell behind 9-0 in the game we were discussing. It is now 9-5, halfway over. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. All right. I've been meaning to answer this one for a few weeks.

Arjun says, I have a pretty silly hypothetical that came to me while watching the first round of the draft. Suppose we live in some alternate universe where in the AL, each team submits its batting orders but not the positions of their batters. Before the game starts, the team managers do a snake draft, where they assign a fielding position to each player. They can lock in the position of either their own guys or force an opponent to play a certain position. For example, say the Angels are playing the Astros. With the first pick, the Angels force Evan Gattis to play shortstop. With the second pick, the Astros lock in Brian McCann to catch and then use the third pick to force Angleton Simmons to DH. The Angels get the next two picks, continuing in that fashion until all players have been accounted for. I guess for this exercise,

we would assume the teams can't employ shifts to move players from their drafted position to a better position. I've also left pitchers off the draft because that would be a bit too unrealistic, position. I've also left pitchers off the draft because that would be a bit too unrealistic, unlike the rest of this. What would be the best strategy for the teams and how would this affect player values? So you said that you've been meaning to answer this one for a while. So does that mean you want to answer this or should I just go ahead? Doesn't mean I have an answer. You don't have an answer. All right. So now I think that the first thing you do is you actually make Mike Trout catch. I think that you just immediately make the – I think that if players – okay, you take Mike Trout, and he could fake it at almost any position.

The one thing he couldn't do is catch. There's no chance that I think Mike Trout or any non-catcher who hasn't caught could look like a competent catcher. It is so hard. The ball is going so fast. You don't know the signals, for one thing. So maybe you're just back there being like, curve ball, just throw a curve,

or just throw a fastball, but take something off of it, please, because it's just diving, going all over the place. You don't know where it's going to go. You don't know how to catch it. You're probably just going to strain your oblique catching your first high fastball that's off to the side.

So automatically, you make the best player on the other team catch uh so that's what i would do you would have yeah teams some teams or do you lock in your own catcher do you do that oh yeah maybe hmm maybe i guess it depends you do that first yeah huh it depends to some extent on the teams i i mean one effect of this i guess would be that there would be an added value to multi-position players there's already some value to those guys obviously they give you some flexibility they give you backups they let you you know pursue a player at this position instead of that position because you know you have a fallback option but in this scenario then they'd be really good because you just take them off the

board basically the the team could have this guy play left field or third base you could have williams astadio play wherever you want and he'll be competent because he's done it so that would probably put a premium on those players okay so maybe maybe if you do it like this the first pick is always i'm going to preserve my own catcher so maybe that just ends up the default like you don't even have it as part of it so then you're just placing eight players at eight or i guess seven players at seven positions or counting dh i guess eight at eight so then yeah you definitely have a lot of emphasis on multi-position players this would be good for someone like billy hamilton now assuming the answer isn't zero percent by how much league wide do you think dl stints would go up 15 i don't know whether guys would even try that hard would they i mean we don't really have any

data on like what happens when guys play out of position as far as injury rates i don't think i think we know that russell carlton has shown that when guys switch positions, like mid-game, they play a little worse maybe at the position that they switch to than they typically would. But if you had catchers, obviously, I think they'd be getting hurt all the time. But if catchers are kind of off the board, yeah, I don't know, 15%.

I'll say you can stand somewhere without getting hurt you just don't get to any balls yeah that's right so maybe i don't know it could be infielders who don't know how to get out of the way but you know they would they would learn pretty quick probably so yeah actually i'm gonna go five percent okay it reminds me kind of like the the pick ban phase at the start of like a moba, multiplayer online battle arena, the type of esport where you have lots and lots of heroes or champions you can choose. And each team has players who specialize in certain champions. And so there's a pick and ban phase where you can pick the heroes you want to use. You can also ban the opponents from using them.

So if you know that one of your opponents specializes in a certain hero, you can say, nope, you can't use that hero in this game. And so they will have to choose their next best option. So it's kind of like that, except that you can actually assign your opponent to the position that they would be bad at. So I don't know, if you had like a Byron Buxton or an Andrelton Simmons, then moving them to DH would probably be a pretty high pick. They have zero defensive value in that case and depends on who the backup is, obviously. But

if you're facing the twins and they have Byron Buxton and Williams Astadio or something, and you can make them play Astadio and Sutter, they probably have a better option than that. But I think... How many games in a row would Byron Buxton have to be shoehorned to DH until you have a game where you're like, you know, he's gotten so few reps in center, I actually want him out there? I don't know. It would basically ruin his career, essentially, right? I mean, I don't know. It would basically ruin his career, essentially, right? I mean, that's the end of Byron Buxton. It's just maybe he's not even worth having on your roster because he's always going to DH. And if he can't hit, which most of the time he hasn't been able to, then it doesn't matter that he's an elite center fielder because in practice, he never will be. So how does the bench work in this hypothetical?

Well, that's another thing, right? You'd probably need bigger benches and fewer relievers. So if you want smaller bullpens and fewer pitching changes, this is one way to do it, the most convoluted and invasive way. But it is a way because you'd have to make sure that you weren't just completely out of it. Like you'd need someone who could play every position in a pinch and you'd need more than one someone because every team has a someone now, but you probably don't have two someones at this

point with as big as bullpens are. So you would need to carry more position players and guess there are no position switches and substitutions in this scenario because that would kind of spoil the whole concept but you'd still need I don't know benches that are twice as big as they are now I think what spoils the whole concept is that it sucks I like it it's innovative but it sucks yeah it's interesting strategically but the byproduct of this is that you never get to see good players make good defensive plays so not sure that that's a net positive there no you should uh this should happen uh once a season for every team yeah yeah i'd enjoy seeing it every now and then all All right. And okay, I'll just, I'll take this one because it is related.

So this is from Patreon supporter Matthew. He says, suppose MLB decided to implement a re-entry rule of some kind, such as every player getting to return to the game once a la softball or a designated player is allowed to return to the game a la all-star game, or whatever other rule along these lines, what do you think would be the effect on roster composition? What would be the effect on gameplay? I could logically see both more specialization, more pitch runners and defensive specialists,

and less specialization, less need to carry multiple lefties in the bullpen. Under the softball rule, we could possibly end up in a situation where a savvy manager could avoid allowing his starting pitcher ever to bat or his lumbering catcher ever to run the bases. We would no longer see situations where relief pitchers need to play the outfield, unfortunately. What do you guys think? Okay, so you would, I guess maybe the most obvious implementation here is that you would essentially have like pinch runners.

That would be like Byron Buxton's job. We were just talking about Byron Buxton. Well, guess what? We found him a job in this other weird league. He can't start anymore, but now he's constantly running for a good hitter who can't move around. So he would be a perfect player on someone like the peak Tigers where Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez just could hit the crap out of the ball but they couldn't move uh so that would be i think the most obvious first with pitchers you would have you wouldn't goodbye to the wakasahachi swap i guess that's gone as strategy but pitchers would re-enter but only to a certain extent you wouldn't have a guy who's coming in to pitch in like the

first and the fourth and the ninth or whatever because i think managers would be really hesitant to use pitchers after giving them so much downtime same reason you see guys who don't return after long rain delays so i guess you would probably see maybe one or two fewer bullpen spots and and one or two more bench spots because now every team wants someone like a terran score or uh or a Billy Hamilton. Billy Hamilton's value goes up. So I can't think of another better implementation than that. Although, yeah, I guess you could just pinch it also in the National League every single time your pitcher comes up with another one of those guys off the bench. Right. Yeah, that's all that really comes

to mind. I'm sure there are many other effects that would come from this, but I kind of like the forcing other players to play other positions even more than I like this. At least you could see the second catcher used as a pinch hitter in some situations without managers being like, oh, God, what happens if I lose my second catcher? Yes. So that would be nice. That's true.

All right. I'm going to read a quick play index that I did. This is from Mike. What has been the lowest number of wins a team has had and still made it to the postseason? What has been the biggest number of wins that a team has had without making it to the postseason? the lowest winning percentage, 1981 Royals, that was, of course, a split season and a strike season. They made the playoffs with a 50 and 53 overall record. That is a 485 winning percentage. If you won the first half, you didn't really have any incentive to win the second half because you were already in the playoffs. So in a real season, a full season, non-strike season, the worst playoff team is the 2005 Padres, who were 82-80. That's a 5.06 winning percentage. or at least it was until this year's AL Central, which the last time I checked was even worse. But yeah, after that, it's 1973 Mets, 509 winning percentage. And then, of course, the World Series winning 2006 Cardinals with a 516 winning percentage. And then 2008 Dodgers, 519, also 519, the 97 Astros and the 84 Royals. And then as far as the best teams, of course, there were some really, really excellent teams

that didn't make the playoffs back when not many teams made the playoffs. Only two teams made the playoffs for decades. So you had the 1904 Giants, the hard luck losers that year, 106 and 47. That's a 693 winning percentage. Did not make the playoffs. Then you had the 1909 Cubs, 680. 1942 Dodgers, 675. 1954 Yankees, 669. And of course, Jonah Carey's beloved 1994 Montreal Expos. There were no playoffs, but they were 74 and 40. That's a 6-49, as were the 1915 Tigers, 6-49. So yeah, only two teams made the playoffs.

The playoffs were just the World Series. So lots of really excellent teams did not get in. What blows my mind is that last year, the Twins made the playoffs. They were the second wildcard in the American League with 85 wins. And this year, the second AL wildcard team is on pace to win 102 games and lose 60 that's the mariners they will not win 102 games but that's their current pace wildcard i've never really seen anything quite like this before but i don't know what i'm rooting for whether the mariners win 100 games and actually push the astros for absolutely no good reason or if they just collapse down the

stretch and let someone like the a's in but you know you know, the A's are there. They're at 48 and 39, which means that, what is that? They're on pace right now to win 89 games, and they are not going to sniff the playoffs. No. That's too bad for them. Yeah. All right. I had one more on my sheet here, and I have the answer already.

Christopher says, How effective would it be if, to drum up some interest in the general public, Rob Manford brought in a hitherto unknown phenom, a young player who's essentially a fives tool star. Whether this phenom exists right now is worth debating, but bear with me. The only qualification though, is this player is always wearing a mask. Similar to the masks worn in Lucha Libre wrestling in Mexico. He wears it in the field, at the plate, and in any context where he is participating in baseball or team activities. Also, to keep the air of mystery, this baseball luchador is not available in pre- or post-game interviews.

He's just gone. Who is this mysterious player? I'm going to interrupt you here. You already have the answer to this? I do. Yes, probably. Continuing, who is this mysterious player, the public will wonder Would this be seen as merely a gimmick

If it only lasts a season or two at most Or could this genuinely make people interested Just simply for the mystery Of who this man in the mask is And the first answer There's the Freeze, right? Remember last year when the Freeze appeared He wasn't even a player, he's just the guy who sprints really fast between innings at Braves games. Everyone was fascinated by him. Who is this guy crowd saying, who is this mysterious player?

This happened. Have you ever heard the story of Mysterious Walker? Look up on baseball reference, Mysterious Walker. He was a real player and no one knew who he was. So his name we know now was Frederick Mitchell Walker. He just appeared out of nowhere with the 1910 San Francisco Seals in the Pacific Coast League, and it did cause a sensation because no one knew who he was. Now, he probably didn't wear a mask. If you look, there is actually a 1915 newspaper report that says that he did sometimes wear a mask for the Seals. I don't think he did. I think that is probably exaggeration. But it is true that no one knew who he was and where he came from. And he was just this very polished pitcher who showed up and started pitching well.

And his Wikipedia page actually has a sketch of him from the Spokane Press in 1910 that just has like his sketched mugshot. And it says, who is he? And it has him just mysteriously looking out at the people and no one knew who he was. And so he was first referred to as Mysterious Mitchell because he said his name was Mitchell, which was his name, but he didn't give his whole name. And so the press was speculating. They were trying to take photos of him. He was avoiding being in photos. He wouldn't say anything about who he was. Eventually, he was photographed, and this photograph was circulated everywhere, and people figured out who he was. And he had been a star pitcher for the University of Chicago some years earlier. Evidently, he wanted to be

mysterious because he had signed earlier in the summer with the Giants, the New York Giants, but he, quote, got into trouble with a chambermaid at a hotel where he stopped, who accused the young pitcher of attempted assault. So evidently, he assaulted a chambermaid and didn't want to be known for this and so he hid his identity and was just mysterious mitchell which is i guess less funny once you know that he assaulted someone than it was before but still he was mysterious and uh ultimately people figured out who he was and he did make the majors. He pitched here and there, not with any great distinction, but yes, it was a sensation and everyone was excited and trying to figure out who he was. And so if it happened today, yeah, I think it would obviously be even harder to pull off

today. You really would need to wear a mask and it would just i mean there's so much press and high definition cameras and genetic tests i mean you could figure out who anyone is it's pretty hard to be off the grid if you're on a major league baseball team but if it somehow happened that would be the biggest story in sports i guess there's no reason they couldn't do it now you wouldn't this isn't one of those things you try at the major league level right you'd have to do this at some lower level but then you'd have to do it you'd have to find some way maybe you have to do it. Now, this isn't one of those things you try at the Major League Lever, right? You'd have to do this at some lower level. But then you'd have to do it. You'd have to find some way. Maybe you have to do it internationally or something

because you can't telegraph that you're trying this out as a scam. Or maybe it's not a scam, but as a technique to generate interest. But if you have a really hot shot prospect and you just – maybe it starts you just always wearing one of those seafold helmet c-flap c-flap helmets you know it's easy you only kind of see him off the side of his face and you can't really get a good look at him but you could what it's mark canna wears a balaclava or at least he would often wear a balaclava on the field this season because maybe it was just really cold in the outfield in oakland if you just had a guy wear a balaclava all season it's already happening you just need a prospect to do it and never tell i don't know if you're is it enough to disguise what he looks like or do you also need to disguise

his entire identity or yeah i mean he can't talk to the press ever i guess or if he does he can't talk to the press ever, I guess. Or if he does, he can't say anything about who he is. So I mean, Tango Tiger gets by, right? He's like kind of works for baseball and we don't know who he is. They know who he is. They have his real name. They must for like benefits and salary and whatnot. But we have absolutely no idea who he is. And he's kind of a public figure.

He's less sensational than a five tool on field baseball player but i don't know there's some evidence there that this has been could be sustainable he's been around for 20 odd years writing about baseball analysis achieving a certain level of fame i don't know 10 years ago so it's doable you know maybe it has to be an international player who's ready to jump right into the majors you just sign them maybe you give them a little stop over in triple a whet their appetite and people can be like whoa look at this prospect no one knows who he is and then you promote him i don't know how you yeah right i don't know what like his

his mlb page i'll tell you right now this would really mess up the fangraphs automated player pages we would just like how shohei otani destroyed websites for a little bit because he's both a hitter and a pitcher this would be uh very very confusing so i don't know how he would be addressed mysterious man mystery man probably something more clever than that but i think it is it's feasible but i don't know how short term it would be because you know he could oh by the way the nationals are beating the marlins now 10 to 9 i don't know how short-term it would be because, you know, he could... Oh, by the way, the Nationals are beating the Marlins now 10-9. I don't believe you. Trey Turner just hit a grand slam.

I was watching this on game day as this was unfolding. So we were talking about the Nationals behind 7-0 earlier. It wound up 9-0. They're winning 10-9. The Nationals are beating the Marlins 10-9. You're actually telling the truth. I'm telling the truth. I thought you were kidding.

Nope. Off Adam Conley, a player we discussed just the other day, but this definitely is happening. I thought he was a. Nope. Off Adam Conley, a player we discussed just the other day. Oh, no. This definitely is happening. I thought he was a lights-out reliever now. Evidently not. Yeah, no, not today.

All right. This could end up the game. This will be fun for people to listen to. The game that turns around the national season. Or they could still lose. Who knows? That closed-door meeting. It didn't take effect right away, but it just, it was delayed effect. They

just had to wait a few innings to really be motivated. Extended release. Yeah. So I think that you could, you could have a mysterious player, but how long until he gets doxxed? I don't know how you doxx him, but it would happen. It happens to everything on the internet, right? You just get milkshake ducked and they would milkshake duck the player in the mask. Yes, it would happen, but it'd be fun and sensational before it happened yeah all right we'll end before the nationals score 10 more runs somehow well the nationals took a 14 to 9 lead and the marlins made it close scored three runs in the eighth but the nationals held on to win that one 14 to 12 that's a wild one and if they end up winning the east you've've got your narrative prepackaged right there.

That meeting and that game. The Nationals turn the corner. Oh, it writes itself. And the Dodgers won their game on Thursday too. So they are back in first place at long last. Those teams and their true talent asserting themselves. This podcast does not support itself, but you can help support it by signing up at Patreon.

Our page is patreon.com slash effectively wild. You can pledge some small monthly amount, help keep us going. Thank you. Effectively Wild, and you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and elsewhere. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. Please replenish our mailbag by sending us emails at podcast at fangrafts.com or by messaging us through the Patreon site. If you are a supporter, we hope that you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you next week.